Seismic surveys have no significant impact on commercially valuable fish in NW Australia

New research has found marine seismic surveys used in oil and gas exploration are not impacting the abundance or behaviour of commercially valuable fishes in the tropical shelf environment in north-western Australia.

The research is the first of its kind to use dedicated seismic vessels to measure the impacts of the survey's noise in an ocean environment, with the eight-month experiment conducted within a 2500 square kilometre fishery management zone near the Pilbara coast.

It involved using multiple acoustic sensors, tagging 387 red emperor fish and deploying more than 600 underwater cameras to track and measure fish behaviour before and after firing seismic air guns into the ocean.

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) Principal Researcher and project leader Dr Mark Meekan said the large-scale experiment measured the short-term and long-term effects of seismic airguns on the community of commercially important species in the region, such as red emperor (Lutjanus sebae).

"What makes this research unique and robust is we used an actual seismic vessel in a real ocean environment and some of the most advanced technologies to track and measure possible impacts," he said.

"Commercial fishers are concerned seismic survey noise could change the abundance and behaviour of key fish species - this research directly sought to determine if commercially valuable fish leave the area or hide when exposed to the seismic noise.

"The results reveal there were no short-term or long-term effects on the abundance, behaviour and movement of bottom-living fishes.

"This suggests seismic surveys have little impact on commercially valuable fish species in this environment."

AIMS acoustic scientist and co-author Dr Miles Parsons said Baited Remote Underwater Video Systems (BRUVS) were deployed to document the movements, feeding patterns and abundance of the entire benthic fish community.

Red emperor fish - an important target of fisheries - were tagged and tracked via an array of acoustic telemetry receivers to understand their movements.

"It was surprising to find no changes in the key behaviours we were assessing after the fish were exposed to seismic blasts," he said.

This research fills in a key knowledge gap in the effect of seismic exploration on fisheries in the area, which is necessary for managers, marine industries, and policy makers to make informed decisions about its sustainable use.

"The magnitude and extent of this study also means the results provide valuable knowledge on potential impacts in other environments, not just in Australia, but internationally."

The research experiment is part of the North West Shoals to Shore Research Program. The program also investigates impacts on pearl oysters, with this study still in progress.

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The research was a collaboration between AIMS, University of Western Australia, Curtin University, University of Tasmania and the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development.

The research paper 'Large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna' is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

AIMS' North West Shoals to Shore Research Program is supported by Santos as part of the company's commitment to better understanding Western Australia's marine environment.

Images and vision:

Download: https:/ / cloudstor. aarnet. edu. au/ plus/ s/ FaqqI5Jh1Bf0jG7

Media contact:

Principal Researcher and project leader, Dr Mark Meekan: 0429 101 812

Media Officer, Molly Knapton: media@aims.gov.au; 0448 887 697

This story has been published on: 2021-07-19. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
RTHK: High school pupil arrested for murder in Singapore

Singapore police said on Monday a high school pupil had been arrested and would be charged with murder over the killing of a 13-year-old boy, whose body was found in a school bathroom along with an axe.

Extreme violence in schools is rare in Singapore, a country known for low crime and obedience to rules that counts itself as among the safest places in the world.

The victim was found with multiple wounds and pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Police will charge a 16-year-old boy on Tuesday with murder and seek a court order to remand him for psychiatric assessment.

Investigations were continuing into the motive for the assault and an axe was seized, police said, adding there was no indication the two teenagers knew each other.

"We are all shocked to receive news of the tragic incident," Chan Chun Sing, the education minister, posted on Facebook.

He said the ministry was working closely with police on the investigations. (Reuters)

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RTHK: China denies hacking claim as US charges four

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has slammed as "irresponsible" a claim by the United States and its allies that China conducted a global cyberespionage campaign.

The United States was joined by Nato, the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and New Zealand in condemning the spying, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said posed "a major threat to our economic and national security."

Simultaneously, the US Department of Justice charged four Chinese nationals  three security officials and one contract hacker  with targeting dozens of companies, universities and government agencies in the United States and abroad.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, called the accusations against China "irresponsible".

"The Chinese government and relevant personnel never engage in cyber attacks or cyber theft," Liu said in a statement.

While a flurry of statements from Western powers represents a broad alliance, cyber experts said the lack of consequences for China beyond the US indictment was conspicuous. Just a month ago, summit statements by G7 and Nato warned China and said it posed threats to the international order.

Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, called Monday's announcement a "successful effort to get friends and allies to attribute the action to Beijing, but not very useful without any concrete follow-up".

Some of Monday's statements even seemed to pull punches. While Washington and its close allies such as the United Kingdom and Canada held the Chinese state directly responsible for the hacking, others were more circumspect.

NATO merely said that its members "acknowledge" the allegations being leveled against Beijing by the US, Canada, and the UK. The European Union said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in "malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory"  a statement that left open the possibility that the Chinese government was itself innocent of directing the espionage.

The United States was much more specific, formally attributing intrusions such as the one that affected servers running Microsoft Exchange earlier this year to hackers affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security. Microsoft had already blamed China. (Reuters)

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South Africa: Cele satisfied with Durban, Pietermaritzburg mall security as businesses reopen

Police Minister Bheki Cele has expressed his satisfaction at the security measures established at retail centres as they reopen for business following last weeks incidences of violence.

Cele on Monday visited businesses and shopping complexes in Durban and Pietermaritzburg affected by the business lootings and public violence that claimed over 200 lives in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

Management teams of Liberty Mall in Pietermaritzburg as well as the Pavilion and Gateway Malls in Durban provided the Minister with the security plans they had put in place in conjunction with the South African Police Service (SAPS).

The three centres were among over the 150 malls that came under attack from looters. However, they were among the least affected owing to the members of the SAPS speedily containing the volatile situation.

Together with private security, SAPS continues to guard the shopping complexes to prevent further violence and looting, the Ministry said in a statement.

While all three malls are currently open only for essential shopping, the retail centres will be fully operational within the coming days as per their respective security plans.

While in Durban, Cele joined security forces in the citys business district as they responded to tip-offs from community members on the whereabouts of suspected stolen property looted during last weeks unrest.

The Minister said the recovery of stolen property would be the order of the day in the two provinces.

All suspected looted goods will be placed at various police evidence storage facilities.

We are thankful for communities who keep on providing information that can assist police and we also commend people that are voluntary surrendering the stolen goods and must continue to do so, but those who choose to keep these stolen ware in their homes are being warned that the law will not have mercy on you, Cele said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: PSC pays tribute to former Deputy Chairperson

The Public Service Commission (PSC) has paid tribute to its former Deputy Chairperson, Phelele Tengeni, who passed away on 16 July 2021.

Tengeni was resident Commissioner in the KwaZulu-Natal provincial administration for 10 years.

She also served as Deputy Chairperson of the South African Public Service Commission from 2010 to 2014 and Acting Chairperson of the Public Service Commission from February to August 2011.

Whilst at the PSC, she served as a member of the following Specialist Task Teams:

 Monitoring and Evaluation and Service Delivery Quality Assurance (Member)

 Institution Building and Special Operations (Member)

 Leadership and Management Practices (Member and Convener)

 Integrity and Anti-corruption (Member)

Tengeni made a significant contribution to the body of work that the PSC produced during that period.

Prior to her appointment as Commissioner, she was a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the erstwhile Durban-Umlazi Campus (DUC) of the University of Zululand, where she had been an academic for 13 years.

She also served as Branch Secretary of NEHAWU at DUC, and volunteered her time in extra-mural activities such as Provincial Coordinator for the KZN Churches Democracy Education Project and Electoral Officer for the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC).

In October 2003, she received a merit award for excellence in service from the University of Zululand.

She participated in the empowerment of women and consolidation of democracy in South Africa through voluntarism.

She was also a member of a number of professional organisations, including the South African Political Studies Association, the International Political Science Association, the Union of African Population Studies, the Fulbright Association and South African Association of Public Administration and Management (SAAPAM).

In 2006, SAAPAM honoured her with the award of Distinguished Practitioner in the field of Public Administration and Management.

She served the PSC during the time of the late Chairperson, Professor Stan Sangweni.

She continued to take keen interest in the work of the PSC and public administration in general, until her untimely death.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Parliament committees conduct oversight in KZN, Gauteng

The Joint Standing Committee on Defence and the Portfolio Committee on Police will today undertake an oversight visit to KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng to assess the impact of police and soldiers deployed in the provinces.

The two-day visit follows the outbreak of violence, looting and destruction of infrastructure, especially in the two provinces.

On Sunday, the Joint Standing Committee on Defence received a briefing on the deployment plans, capabilities required and projected resources to be spent as part of Operation Prosper.

Members of the Portfolio Committee on Police will also join the Joint Standing Committee on Defence for a confidential briefing, as the police and army have joint operations.

Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Police, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, said the decision to undertake the oversight visit was primarily to ensure operational effectiveness of the South African Police Service (SAPS) in quelling violence and maintaining calm and respect for the rule of law.

Also, we wanted to ensure a seamless cooperation between the SAPS and South African National Defence Force (SANDF), Joemat-Pettersson said.

Joint Standing Committee on Defence Co-Chairperson, Cyril Xaba, said the visit is necessary to ascertain the effective implementation of the operation, and also to assess the impact of the deployment of 25 000 members of the South African Defence Force (SANDF) to the two provinces.

Co-Chairperson of the Joint Standing Committee on Defence, Mamagase Nchabeleng, said the committees have scheduled their oversights in such a way that there is adherence to the Disaster Management Act regulations, as well as to reach as many areas as possible within the provinces.

We will thus in the morning have joint briefings with senior management of the SAPS and SANDF, and later on, separate the two committees for in-loco visits to sites and areas that fall under the respective portfolios of the two committees, Nchabeleng said.

The committees have reiterated their strong condemnation of violence, looting and destruction of infrastructure in the two provinces.

The impact of the disturbances on the economy is concerning, especially in the context of the already ailing economy as a result of the devastation caused by COVID-19, the committees said.

Both committees have also reiterated their call for effective investigation and arrest of instigators of violence, as their actions are contrary to the spirit of the Constitution, that guarantees the right to protest.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Vaccination of SA's inmates gets underway

Minister of Justice and Correctional Services Ronald Lamola has appealed to both officials and inmates to get vaccinated as government rolls out the COVID-19 vaccination programme at the countrys correctional facilities.

Vaccine scepticism continues to permeate across some sections of society. We therefore encourage both officials and inmates to empower themselves with the correct scientific information on vaccines, Lamola said on Tuesday.

The National Department of Health has provided the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine to the department to vaccinate inmates.

Some of our inmate population has been vaccinated under the 50 plus bracket. We will target to reach all inmates, irrespective of their age. Many DCS employees have already received their first dose of vaccine across both public and private vaccination sites in the country, the Minister said.

As of 15 July, DCS employees, irrespective of age, can access any vaccination site without having to undertake self-registration on the Electronic Vaccine Data System (EVDS).

To date, 1 325 health care professionals in Correctional Services, 1 899 correctional officials and 61 educators at correctional facilities have received vaccinations.

The Minister said 1509 inmates who fall in the 50 -59 age bracket have been vaccinated.

Yesterday when we kick-started our vaccination programme targeting all inmates a total of 2 569 inmates across the country were vaccinated, the Minister said.

At the start of the year, the Health Department unveiled its plan to vaccinate 40 million South Africans as part of a three-phase rollout.

According to this plan, 67% of the population will need to be vaccinated in order to achieve population immunity. This is approximately just over 40 million South Africans.

Of the 40 million South Africans we need to vaccinate to reach population immunity, 140 319 constitute inmates. This translates to 0.34%, the Minister said.

He said correctional centres are generally overcrowded and as result, non-pharmaceutical interventions have their limitations, and people in correctional centres have contact with a large staff pool.

Large, explosive outbreaks in crowded institutional settings remain a major ongoing risk not only for our centres, but for society at large. Thus far, this pandemic has affected correctional centres ability to function.

It has heightened the risking of infections seeping outside of Correctional Centres through interactions between correctional officials and communities, court visits, hospital admissions, and the admission and release of inmates, Lamola said.

Government is obliged to provide vaccinations for correctional officials and inmates to prevent outbreaks, and ensure the basic rights of inmates, officials and the wider community are protected.

The health and safety of our inmates, officials and the public have been our top priority during this pandemic.

Vaccines are the best defence to protect both offenders and officials against COVID-19 and when paired with existing measures, this will help to bolster our overall public health and safety.

DCS will continue to work closely with the National Department of Health on its vaccinations plans and rollout, the Minister said.  SAnews.gov.za

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South Africa: Transnet operations normalise in KZN

Transnets port and rail operations in KwaZulu-Natal have normalised following last weeks unrest in the province.

The Ports of Durban and Richards Bay have reported normalised levels of operations over the past two days, with all employees having reported for their shifts, and we are working towards clearing the backlog caused by the unrest in the past week, Transnet said on Tuesday.

The reinstatement of the supply-chain on the key national roads, the N2 and N3, has increased activities at the port terminals as trucks continue to call at the ports.

The two ports remained open throughout the protests of last week, but the operations were significantly impacted by the shutdown of the warehouses and cold storage facilities, public transport, as well as limited truck movement, Transnet said.

In Richards Bay, the Multi-Purpose and Dry-Bulk Terminals handled seven vessels over the weekend. Pier 2 in the Port of Durban serviced four vessels, while Pier 1 continues to work on the two berthed vessels.

Transnet has been engaging all impacted customers throughout this time to ensure that services can resume as quickly as possible and where required, to deal with bottlenecks caused by the protests.

The rail-corridor network between Gauteng and Durban, which was negatively impacted by the unrest, has been re-opened, with train services running since Friday.

Transnet Freight Rail has since managed to run 42 trains since its re-opening on Friday, and will continue to run more trains as efforts to stabilise this key network intensify, Transnet said.

Transnet said the challenge of cable theft continues unabated, along with community encroachment on the network.

To deal with these problems, all trains will be accompanied by security to ensure that Transnet is able to provide a reliable service. Transnet's pipelines network remains operational.

Additional patrols have been deployed across the entire network, resulting in the arrest of four people for tampering with the pipeline last night. Transnet has confirmed that this is not linked to the unrest.

Transnet remains on high alert and additional security and protection of critical infrastructure across the network remains in place. A 24-hour Nerve Centre hotline remains operational to monitor and respond to security-related incidents, Transnet said. SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists announce 2021 laureates

NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 - The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences announced today a neuroscientist, inorganic chemist and an electrical engineer as the laureates of the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Each will receive $250,000, the largest unrestricted scientific prize for America's most innovative young faculty-rank scientists and engineers.

They are:

Kay M. Tye, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., who studies the neural pathways of addiction and compulsive behavior.

Mircea Dinca, an inorganic chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who develops metal-organic frameworks.

Andrea Alu, an electrical engineer and physicist at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York, who studies nano-structured metamaterials.

"These remarkable scientists and engineers are expanding our world through their groundbreaking research," said Len Blavatnik, founder and chairman of Access Industries, head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation and member of the President's Council of the New York Academy of Sciences. "Their discoveries are improving the human experience and the future will be made better by their work and innovations."

Nicholas B. Dirks, the New York Academy of Sciences' president and CEO, said: "The pandemic of the past year has shown that the world needs science, now more than ever. These new Blavatnik National Awards Laureates for 2021 have forged new ways to use scientific research to create new and important understandings about ourselves and the world in which we live. We welcome these brilliant young scientists into the global community that is the New York Academy of Sciences."

The 2021 Blavatnik National Awards competition received 298 nominees from 157 research institutions across 38 states. The three independent juries--one for each of the awards' categories of life sciences, chemistry and physical sciences and engineering--were composed of some of America's most distinguished scientists. These judges selected the laureates from a group of 31 finalists.

The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists will celebrate the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards laureates and finalists in a ceremony Sept. 28 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Due to prior pandemic restrictions, the laureates and finalists of the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards and the honorees of the 2020 Blavatnik Regional Awards also will also be celebrated at this event.

2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Life Sciences

Kay M. Tye, Ph.D.

Professor, Systems Neuroscience Laboratory

Wylie Vale Chair

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Tye has broken boundaries in the search to unearth neural circuits in the brain that process emotion. She is recognized for uncovering problems in processing reward, fear and learning that can cause a range of psychiatric disorders. Tye investigates the neural circuitry that drives these emotions and cognitive abilities to better understand addiction and depression. For example, she discovered a neural pathway that underlies an animal's willingness to engage in compulsive reward-seeking behaviors despite negative consequences. More recently, she has explored the neural circuits that are activated when animals are exposed to social isolation and experience a "loneliness-like" state, particularly relevant now because of the restrictions and increased isolation experienced by many during the COVID 19 pandemic.

"Kay Tye is a trailblazing investigator who studies the neural circuits underlying emotions, which are among the most complicated and fascinating circuitries in the brain," said Elaine Fuchs, Ph.D., Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor at the Rockefeller University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and chair of the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Life Sciences Jury. "Kay is not only a superb neuroscientist, but a superb speaker who has the clarity of explaining her science in a way that dazzles her audiences and a strong advocate for women in science, serving as a role model for many. She was a unanimous choice to be the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Life Sciences."

2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Chemistry

Mircea Dinca, Ph.D.

W. M. Keck Professor of Energy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dinca has discovered ways to make certain porous materials, known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), highly conductive--unlocking many new applications in sustainability, from gas and vapor sensing to energy conversion and storage. He has revolutionized the field of MOFs by building them out of specific organic molecules that can both form charges and conduct electricity, thereby linking the metal atoms together to create a solid that is both porous and conducting. Dinca has partnered with Lamborghini to use these new supercapacitors to power future high-performance vehicles, and he co-founded Transaera, a startup building MOF-based air-cooling devices that consume less than half the energy of conventional air conditioners.

Scott E. Denmark, Ph.D., Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and chair of the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Chemistry Jury, said, "Mircea Dinca has been widely recognized as the consensus leader in the field of conducting metal-organic frameworks, a field that he himself invented. His creativity, his deep understanding of fundamental principles and their application to solving important chemical problems and his tremendous productivity led him to be selected by the jury to be the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Chemistry."

2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering

Andrea Alu, Ph.D.

Einstein Professor of Physics

Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center

The Graduate Center, the City University of New York

By tailoring the complex interactions of waves with artificial materials, Alu is challenging limits in material science, resulting in scientific breakthroughs that influence a wide range of engineering applications in electromagnetics, nano-optics and acoustics. His work with metamaterials--man-made materials designed to produce unprecedented behaviors in light, sound and heat--theoretically and experimentally demonstrates how cleverly designed nanostructured materials can push boundaries in physics. Alu's efforts are leading to new and enhanced materials technologies with potential applications in areas including cellular communications, energy harvesting, radar cloaking, optical computing and nano-optics.

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Ph.D., director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Physical Sciences and Engineering Jury chair, said, "The jury has been following Andrea Alu's career quite closely as he has been a finalist every year since 2016. In the meantime, his research has only bettered, achieving many breakthrough discoveries in the field of metamaterials, with important technological applications. On top of this, since his first nomination, he made the transition to the City University of New York because he wanted to enhance the impact of his work by reaching out to and working with a much more diverse group of students. Andrea should be praised for his many courageous steps, both in his research and in his career."

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About the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists

The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in the US in 2007 and independently administered by the New York Academy of Sciences, were first awarded in 2014. In 2017, they were expanded to honor faculty-rank scientists in the United Kingdom and in Israel. By the close of 2021, the Blavatnik Awards will have awarded prizes totaling $11.9 million. About 60 percent of all recipients are immigrants to the country in which they were recognized and hail from 47 countries across six continents, reflecting the Blavatnik Family Foundation's recognition that important science is a global enterprise. For updates about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, please visit www.blavatnikawards.org and follow on Twitter and Facebook @Blavatnikawards.

About the Blavatnik Family Foundation

The Blavatnik Family Foundation is an active supporter of world-renowned educational, scientific, cultural and charitable institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Russia and other countries throughout the world. The foundation is headed by Len Blavatnik, a global industrialist and philanthropist and the founder and chairman of Access Industries, a privately held industrial group based in the U.S. with global strategic interests. Visit www.accessindustries.com or www.blavatnikfoundation.org.

Media contact

Kamala Murthy

kmurthy@nyas.org

212-298-3740

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Save Our Seas Foundation announces a record 61 grants for 2021

After a bleak year, with ongoing Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns and increasing threats to our oceans, we could do with good news. As the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) celebrates its 18th year dedicated to protecting life, especially sharks and rays, in our oceans, the Foundation has found hope in its biggest-ever cohort of grant recipients. The organisation continues to invest in research, conservation and education projects, albeit with experience now gained and looking ahead to its evolving conservation strategy in our changing world. This year, the Foundation exceeded its average of 50 projects funded annually by announcing 61 grant awards for 2021 and received a 50% increase in applications for its keystone grants. Never before has the number of grant applications been so high: an optimistic indication that despite the mounting challenges, there is willpower to turn the tide in the conservation sector. From researchers harnessing citizen science to solve local problems, to projects that meet current conservation crises with cutting-edge technology, this year's grant recipients span all seven continents and embrace a new era of innovation, communication and compassion.

Learning to listen, and to incorporate existing local knowledge, is important to Ilse Martinez, one of 22 Small Grant recipients for 2021. Working with fishers around the largest coastal lagoon in south-east Mexico to glean insights from their lived-experiences, Ilse's project demonstrates one of the Foundation's philosophies of fostering awareness beyond the boundaries of traditional scientific publications. Other Small Grant recipients, like Fabio David Cuello Mercado, are also emphasising an inclusive approach: he is training local personnel to save Critically Endangered largetooth sawfish off the coast of Colombia.

Our oceans are getting noisier and busier as ocean animals compete with us for sea space. Jeremy Kiszka is one of 24 new Keystone Grant recipients for 2021 and he is monitoring blue whales and other cetaceans visiting Seychelles. When do they visit, and why? Jeremy spends hours observing whales and dolphins from a boat to document their behaviour, where they move and what they do. He uses their calls to identify whether they're feeding or mating, and where they come from, hoping to identify important areas to protect for Seychelles' cetaceans.

Some Keystone Grant recipients, like Demian Chapman, are tackling the illegal trade in 'rhino rays': the guitarfishes, giant guitarfishes and wedgefishes nicknamed for their pointy snouts and Endangered status. He is developing DNA tools to help border control officers in Hong Kong to identify illegal shark products. Others, like Aristide Takoukam Kamla, are visionary in their quest to gather information for regions where we know little of sharks and rays. Aristide has created a citizen science platform and mobile app for fishermen across Cameroon's 400 km coastline to record sightings of marine life: the information he gathers will be some of the first for the region.

'Our newly expanded network of grant recipients represents some of the most creative minds working in marine conservation around the world,' says Dr James Lea, the SOSF's chief executive officer. 'As a collective, project leaders have focused their work primarily on shark, skate, ray and sawfish species, many of which are listed as Endangered and continue to feel intense pressure from human activities worldwide.'

The Foundation continues to fund the SOSF D'Arros Research Centre in Seychelles, the SOSF Shark Education Centre in South Africa and the SOSF Shark Research Centre in the United States of America. Its long-standing partners - the Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation, Manta Trust, North Coast Cetacean Society, Shark Spotters and The Acoustic Tracking Array Platform - all received renewed funding. Continuity, long-term monitoring and collaboration remain at the core of these relationships.

'Our innovative range of projects for 2021 gives me great cause for optimism at a time when we need to rethink our relationship with the environment,' explains the Founder of the SOSF, His Excellency Abdulmohsen Abdulmalik Al-Sheikh. 'When we most need hope, it is humbling to support such passionate individuals who can envisage healthy oceans and a sustainable future for sharks, rays - and ultimately - ourselves.'

Whether better protecting baby scalloped hammerhead sharks in their nursery grounds like Kelly Kingon, gathering data on sharks in Congo like Phil Doherty, or diving in to protect deep-sea sharks in fishing grounds like Sofia Graca Aranha Ramos, all 2021 Project Leaders join the almost 400 projects funded in more than 80 countries around the globe since the Foundation's inception. They passionately uphold the Founder's wish to make a lasting impact on the health of our oceans and ultimately for every person on the planet. To learn more and follow project news, visit the Project Leader story section here and follow the SOSF on social media.

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About the Save Our Seas Foundation

Founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2003, the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) is a philanthropic organisation whose ultimate goal is to create a legacy of securing the health and sustainability of our oceans, and the communities that depend on them, for generations to come.

Its support for research, conservation and education projects worldwide focuses on Endangered sharks, rays and skates. Three permanent SOSF research and education centres reinforce its actions in Seychelles, South Africa and the USA.

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: IEC to urgently study Moseneke inquiry report into elections

The Electoral Commission says it will urgently study the final report of the Inquiry into Ensuring Free and Fair Elections during COVID-19 before making a final decision on the implications of the report.

The Commission today received the final report of the Inquiry from former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke which found that it will not be possible to hold free and fair Local Government Elections - scheduled for 27 October 2021 - as it will put more lives in danger.

Addressing the media in Pretoria earlier today, Justice Moseneke said the report has recommended the elections be held no later than February next year.

The postponement of the elections will save lives, he said, adding that large groups during this time of the pandemic are inclined to become super spreaders.

He said COVID-19 will remain a threat until most of the population has been vaccinated

The Commission said while it is cognisant of the very limited time available to make a final decision, it will consult with key stakeholders, including political parties via the Political Party Liaison Committee system, as well as various state role-players.

Next weekend the Electoral Commission has scheduled a national voter registration weekend on 31 July and 1 August.

Thereafter, on 2 August, the Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma is expected to proclaim the elections which will trigger an 86-day election timetable.

With this in mind, the Commission expects to make a final announcement on the way forward within the next few days.

The Commission is extremely grateful to Justice Moseneke and his team who conducted this Inquiry under extremely tight timelines necessitated by the Constitutional requirement to hold Local Government Elections before 1 November 2021.

Despite these pressures, in just 61 days Justice Moseneke and his team managed to conduct a thorough, comprehensive, transparent and highly inclusive investigation into whether free and fair elections can be conducted under the current COVID-19 conditions, the Commission said.

The Commission said the Moseneke Inquiry has significantly contributed to the national conversation about what constitutes freeness and fairness of elections.

The Commission hopes that the final report on the Inquiry will not only assist the Commission in making a final determination regarding the upcoming Local Government Elections but will also contribute to the emergence of a national consensus of what conditions are necessary for free and fair elections and how we can ensure the safety of voters, candidates, election staff and all other participants, the Commission said.

A copy of the report has been published at https://www.elections.org.za/freeandfair/. - SAnews.gov.za

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Hong Kong: Myocarditis after jab reported

The Department of Health today said it received from the Hospital Authority a total of three reports of suspected myocarditis for adolescents who have received BioNTech vaccines up to July 19 and their conditions were stable.

In response to media enquiries, the department noted around 63,000 doses of BioNTech vaccines have been administered to adolescents aged 12 to 15 in the same period.

The three cases involved one 12-year-old and two 15-year-old boys. They complained of chest pain about two days after receiving the second dose of BioNTech vaccine.

They were all admitted to the authority's hospitals for monitoring and treatment, and their conditions were stable.

These cases will be passed to the Expert Committee on Clinical Events Assessment Following COVID-19 Immunization for causality assessment.

The expert committee noted that there were reports from overseas drug regulatory authorities about cases of myocarditis and pericarditis following vaccination, especially among younger vaccine recipients.

The committee has endorsed the inclusion of myocarditis and pericarditis in the list of serious or unexpected adverse events following immunisation to enhance monitoring.

The department has also been closely monitoring adverse events of myocarditis or pericarditis among adolescents of 12 to 15 years old.

According to the BioNTech vaccine manufacturer, cases of myocarditis and pericarditis have primarily occurred within 14 days following vaccination, more often after the second vaccination and in younger men.

The supplier has also updated the product's package insert to include myocarditis and pericarditis as its adverse reactions.

The department reminded adolescents and young adults to avoid strenuous exercise for one week after vaccination.

They should seek immediate medical attention if they develop symptoms indicative of myocarditis or pericarditis such as acute and persisting chest pain, shortness of breath or palpitations following vaccination.

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
South Africa: Thousands of jobs at risk as government consolidates relief proposals

Acting Minister in the Presidency, Khumbudzo Ntshavheni, says an estimated 150 000 jobs are at risk in the aftermath of looting and destruction of property that swept through KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

In a briefing on efforts to recover and rebuild after the wave of destruction, Ntshavheni on Tuesday said Ministers in the economic cluster are consolidating proposals for a government package of interventions, including for small businesses that are largely uninsured.

Ntshavheni said data and estimates provided by the SA Property Owners Association (SAPOA) showed that in KZN alone, 161 malls, 11 warehouses and eight factories were affected, with 161 liquor outlets and distributors being extensively damaged.

The Minister said estimates place KwaZulu-Natals loss at R20 billion. Work is, however, still underway to assess the total cost of the damage to property.

Furthermore, 1 400 ATMs have been damaged and 300 banks and Post Office outlets vandalised. Ninety pharmacies were damaged.

 150 000 jobs are at risk as we speak 50 000 informal traders were affected, 40 000 businesses were affected and [it is] currently estimated that the [impact to the KZN GDP] is R20 billion, Ntshavheni said.

The impact of this will be felt both in KZN and across the rest of the country, the Minister warned.

She said SAPOA will later in the week collate data on the cost of damage in Gauteng.

Proposals to support for small businesses being considered

Ntshavheni said after a challenging two weeks, the country has turned the tide and is well on a trajectory of stability, rebuilding the economy and ensuring social cohesion.

She said in the past 24 hours, there were no reported incidents of looting and violence in both provinces.

Governments stabilisation efforts include the South African Police Service (SAPS) maintaining high visibility in areas that have the potential for a resurgence in violence and looting.

Ntshavheni said members of the South African Defence Force (SANDF) are working together with the police in conducting roadblocks, vehicle control points, foot and vehicle patrols, cordoning and searching vehicles, clearing roads that were blocked and recovering stolen goods.

The South African Special Risk Insurance Association (SASRIA), in which government is a sole shareholder, will conduct an assessment of the full extent of the damage.

The economic cluster Ministers are consolidating proposals for a government package of interventions, including for small businesses that are mostly uninsured.

The Department of Small Business Development is working with SAPOA, business associations such as the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry; SA Franchise Association; National Healthcare Professionals Association; the SA Informal Traders Association and others to ensure that interventions also benefit small business directly and quickly. The package will also [provide for small households], Ntshavheni said.

Large retail chain stores have reported that the supply of food to SA stores and neighbouring States affected by disruptions in the KZN supply chains are largely back on track.

Ntshavheni said most shopping malls that were closed due to violence and looting in Soweto, including the iconic Maponya Mall, have reopened their doors for the community to start buying the products they require.  SAnews.gov.za

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
New study investigates formation of dangerous compounds by e-cigarettes

Scientists with the Desert Research Institute (DRI) Organic Analytical Laboratory in Reno, Nev., led by Andrey Khlystov, Ph.D., have been awarded a $1.5M grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study the formation of dangerous compounds by electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes).

E-cigarettes have grown in popularity in recent years, and emit nicotine and other harmful compounds including formaldehyde, a dangerous human carcinogen. However, the production of these chemicals may differ across different e-cigarette devices, use patterns, and e-liquid ("juice") formations - and scientists currently lack a thorough understanding of how these chemicals form and how to best test for their presence.

DRI's study, which will run for three years, will test popular e-cigarette types and devices under a wide range of use patterns to resolve questions about harmful and potentially harmful substances produced by e-cigarettes. Among other things, the research team will investigate interactions between flavoring compounds and coils at different ages, temperatures, and e-liquid formations, and how different combinations of power, puff topography, and e-liquid viscosity affect emissions.

"This project will identify the most important parameters underlying the formation of harmful and potentially harmful constituents produced by e-cigarettes - and thus help inform the public and policymakers regarding health safety of different e-cigarette devices and e-liquid formulations," Khlystov said.

Information gained from this project is needed to advise the public on potential health risks of different devices and configurations, to establish standardized testing protocols, and to inform policymakers on regulating certain e-cigarette designs and/or e-liquid constituents.

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Additional Information:

For more information on DRI's Organic Analytical Laboratory, please visit: https:/ / www. dri. edu/ labs/ oal/

For more information on Andrey Khlystov, Ph.D., and his research, please visit: https:/ / www. dri. edu/ directory/ andrey-khlystov/

About DRI:

The Desert Research Institute (DRI)?is a recognized world leader in basic and applied environmental research. Committed to scientific excellence and integrity, DRI faculty, students who work alongside them, and staff have developed scientific knowledge and innovative technologies in research projects around the globe. Since 1959, DRI's research has advanced scientific knowledge on topics ranging from humans' impact on the environment to the environment's impact on humans. DRI's impactful science and inspiring solutions support Nevada's diverse economy, provide science-based educational opportunities, and inform policymakers, business leaders, and community members. With campuses in Las Vegas and Reno, DRI serves as the non-profit research arm of the Nevada System of Higher Education. For more information, please visit http://www. dri. edu .

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
CEPI and IVI collaborate on clinical research to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines in Africa

July 20, 2021; Oslo, Norway and Seoul, Republic of Korea: The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) today announced a new programme of clinical research which aims to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. CEPI will provide funding of up to $12.7m to the Expanding Access and Delivery of COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa (ECOVA) consortium led by IVI to carry out clinical trials of Sinopharm's BBIBP-CorV vaccine which will support the expanded use of the vaccine on the African continent.

Up to 170 million doses of BBIBP-CorV will be distributed by the COVAX Facility under an agreement announced on 12 July 2021, and the vaccine is already being deployed in over 50 countries around the world. However there have been no clinical trials of BBIBP-CorV in African populations or against the variants of concern circulating in southern Africa. The ECOVA research programme aims to generate crucial data to inform the use of the vaccine in Africa, and potentially expand use of the vaccine to HIV-infected individuals. All results generated by ECOVA will be made available open source to inform policy makers and regulatory authorities' recommendations on the use of BBIBP-CorV in national immunization programmes.

The ECOVA consortium is led by IVI, working in partnership with Mozambique's Instituto Nacional de Saude (INS), the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), the University of Heidelberg, Germany (UH), Harvard University, USA, and the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar (UA).

Clinical trials in Mozambique

ECOVA will conduct two clinical trials in Beira and Maputo, Mozambique, which will be led by INS in collaboration with IVI. The trials will begin shortly, with the first interim results expected before the end of 2021. Participants in both trials will be followed up for two years to gather important long-term data about the vaccine.

A Phase 3 trial will assess the safety and efficacy of BBIBP-CorV against locally circulating variants of concern (VoCs) in healthy adults. This will be the first trial of this vaccine in an African population, and against the VoCs prevalent in much of southern Africa. The trial will also assess the vaccine's safety and immunogenicity in HIV-infected individuals, which could broaden the indication of the vaccine for use in this population. In addition, it will investigate the potential for co-administration of BBIBP-CorV with seasonal influenza vaccines.

A separate Phase 2 mix and match trial will evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of mixed schedules of BBIBP-CorV and AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine. The trial will investigate the potential of giving two different vaccines which are both likely to feature significantly in Africa's vaccine rollout, which could bring greater flexibility to vaccination campaigns at times of uncertain or fluctuating supplies.

Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said:

"Only a handful of clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines have taken place in sub-Saharan Africa, but for vaccines to have the maximum impact they must be evaluated in the populations that will receive them and against the variants those populations are most likely to encounter. The ECOVA project in Mozambique will generate valuable additional data about BBIBP-CorV, with the goal of expanding access to the vaccine for people in Africa.

"Through our collaboration with the African Union and Africa CDC, CEPI is working to enhance vaccine R&D and manufacturing on the continent, which includes boosting clinical trial capacity so the region is better equipped to respond to emerging infectious diseases. Investing in high quality clinical trials such as these will fill in immediate gaps in our clinical knowledge, while also strengthening regional health security in the future."

Dr Florian Marks, Deputy Director General of Epidemiology, Public Health and Impact at IVI, said:

"To end the pandemic as quickly as possible, it is vital to evaluate vaccines in a variety of populations and contexts, and to ensure safe and effective vaccines are available to countries everywhere. We are extremely grateful to receive CEPI's support for the ECOVA project, aiming to expand access and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. To achieve this goal, IVI and our consortium of partners, the National Institute of Health in Mozambique; icddr,b; the University of Heidelberg; Harvard University; and the University of Antananarivo will work to generate critical clinical data, including the effect of BBIBP-CorV against new variants of concern, vaccination strategies using two different vaccines for two doses, and the use of COVID-19 vaccines in individuals with HIV infection."

Dr Ilesh V. Jani, Director General of the INS (National Institute of Health) in Mozambique, said:

"We are pleased to partner with IVI and our other consortium members on this important study to evaluate the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against new variants of concern--particularly the Beta and Delta variants which now account for the majority of infections in our region. The ECOVA project supported by CEPI will have a significant impact on bringing an effective and much-needed vaccine solution to Mozambique and other African countries."

Dr. Sonia Enosse, Director of Research on Health and Wellbeing at the INS, said:

"The ECOVA project will be of great importance to Mozambique, further developing the country's clinical trial capacity that has been established in the past decade. Data originating from ECOVA will not only provide information on vaccine efficacy of the BBIBP-CorV product but generate additional epidemiological data on transmission patterns of SARS-CoV-2, which will be valuable for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic."

Expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines by filling R&D gaps

ECOVA is the second programme to be funded in response to a CEPI Call for Proposals launched in January 2021 which aims to address current gaps in our clinical knowledge of vaccine performance both now and in the long term, in order to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines as part of the global vaccination rollout. Examples of such gaps include assessment of the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women, infants and children, and immunocompromised populations, as well as studies on booster doses, length of vaccine efficacy, 'mix and match' strategies, and dosing intervals. CEPI is also co-funding a study of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in immunosuppressed and transplant patients led by Oslo University Hospital in response to this Call for Proposals. In addition, CEPI has previously announced funding to support a mix-and-match study led by the University of Oxford

This funding forms part of CEPI's next 5-year plan, published in March 2021, which aims to reduce or even eliminate the future risk of pandemics and epidemics. As part of this plan CEPI is working to strengthen our defences against COVID-19 and reduce the risk of future coronavirus pandemics, by optimizing our current vaccines, addressing variants of concern, developing next-generation COVID-19 vaccines, and initiating the development of broadly protective or universal coronavirus vaccines.

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About CEPI

CEPI is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil organisations, launched at Davos in 2017, to develop vaccines against future epidemics. Prior to COVID-19 CEPI's work focused on developing vaccines against Ebola virus, Lassa virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, Nipah virus, Rift Valley Fever virus and Chikungunya virus - it has over 20 vaccine candidates against these pathogens in development. CEPI has also invested in new platform technologies for rapid vaccine development against unknown pathogens (Disease X).

During the current pandemic, CEPI initiated multiple programmes to develop vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants with a focus on speed, scale and access. These programmes leverage the rapid response platforms developed by CEPI's partners prior to the emergence of COVID-19 as well as new collaborations. The aim is to advance clinical development of a diverse portfolio of safe and effective COVID-19 candidates and to enable fair allocation to these vaccines worldwide through COVAX.

CEPI's 5-year plan lays out a $3.5 billion roadmap to compress vaccine development timelines to 100 days, develop a universal vaccine against COVID-19 and other Betacoronaviruses, and create a "library" of vaccine candidates for use against known and unknown pathogens. The plan is available at http://www. endpandemics. cepi. net .

Follow our news page for the latest updates. Follow us via @CEPIvaccines, @DrRHatchett, and LinkedIn.

About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI)

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a nonprofit inter-governmental organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). IVI has 36 countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) on its treaty, including Korea, Sweden, India, and Finland as state funders.

Our mandate is to make vaccines available and accessible for the world's most vulnerable people. We focus on infectious diseases of global health importance such as cholera, typhoid, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, chikungunya, Group A Strep, Hepatitis A, HPV, TB, HIV, MERS, COVID-19, as well as antimicrobial resistance. For more information, please visit https:/ / www. ivi. int

Media Contacts

CEPI

Email: press@cepi.net

Phone: +44 7387 055214

IVI

Email: aerie.em@ivi.int

Phone: +81 2-881-1386

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
UTHSC secures $121 million in research grants and contract awards

Memphis, Tenn. (July 20, 2021) - The University of Tennessee Health Science Center's Office of Research announced that annual research grant and contract awards for FY21, which ended June 30, total more than $121 million, a 20.6% increase from last year.

The FY21 research award total is $121,700,667. Roughly half of these funds come from federal sources. The faculty of all six colleges and four campuses broke records in a number of categories, including grant proposal count by fiscal year and quarter. Additionally, the UTHSC College of Pharmacy moved up to Number 14 nationally among colleges and schools of pharmacy in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Year-over-year metrics show a total increase from $85 million in FY17 to today's $121.7 million in research awards for the university. This represents a 43% growth in research grants and contracts in five years.

During this same period, UTHSC's all-source, non-clinical grant and contract expenditures (sponsored programs, research, and education grants and contracts) were more than $300 million, showing strong growth in all grant and contract portfolios.

The infrastructure overhaul, accomplished by the UTHSC Office of Research and led by Vice Chancellor for Research Steven Goodman, PhD, as part of the five-year Operational Strategic Plan for Research written in 2016, allowed the UTHSC research enterprise to remain fully functional during the pandemic, despite the fact that the campuses were operating primarily remotely. Increased staffing, improved resources, and new streamlined and automated processes allowed researchers to successfully adapt and advance their projects, despite the physical restrictions in place on all campuses. Additionally, a part of the research strategic plan, the Office of Research's Collaborative Research Network (CORNET) seed grant funding program is credited by the faculty as driving major collaborative grant efforts.

Many programs and faculty had exceptional performance over that period, which added to the growth in funding. A few recently include:

The UT Institute for the Study of Host Pathogen Systems (ISHPS) led by Colleen Jonsson, PhD, Van Fleet Endowed Professor and director of the UTHSC Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL), received a multiyear national grant for nearly $23 million in 2017.

The Tennessee Heart Health Network led by Jim Bailey, MD, Robert S. Pearce Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine and director of the Tennessee Population Health Consortium, received a $4.5 million multiyear grant in May from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Sam Dagogo-Jack, MD, A.C. Mullins professor of medicine, director of the General Clinical Research Center, and chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, along with Nawajes Mandal, PhD, associate professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology, Anatomy and Neurobiology, and Pharmaceutical Sciences, received $1.99 million in April from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for their work to advance understanding of the pathophysiology of prediabetes, diabetes, and related complications.

Jonathan H. Jaggar, PhD, Maury Bronstein Endowed Professor in the Department of Physiology, received a $2.3 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in March for blood pressure research.

Francesca-Fang Liao, PhD, and Fu-Ming Zhou, PhD, both professors in the Department of Pharmacology, Addiction Science, and Toxicology, received $1.9 million in March from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study possible causes of dementia.

Since its launch in 2018, the Clinical Trials Network of Tennessee (CTN2) has brought more than 200 clinical trial opportunities, including three related to COVID-19, to the university and the citizens of Tennessee, generating more than $10 million in awards to the university.

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As Tennessee's only public, statewide, academic health system, the mission of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center is to bring the benefits of the health sciences to the achievement and maintenance of human health through education, research, clinical care, and public service, with a focus on the citizens of Tennessee and the region. The main campus in Memphis includes six colleges: Dentistry, Graduate Health Sciences, Health Professions, Medicine, Nursing and Pharmacy. UTHSC also educates and trains medicine, pharmacy, and/or health professions students, as well as medical residents and fellows, at major sites in Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville. For more information, visit http://www. uthsc. edu . Find us on Facebook: facebook.com/uthsc, on Twitter: twitter.com/uthsc and on Instagram: instagram.com/uthsc.

This story has been published on: 2021-07-20. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
Update: 17-07-2021 | 07:22:51

The Pathet Lao newspaper of the Lao News Agency (KPL) on July 16 run a front-page article on the long-lasting friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Laos and Vietnam.

People in Hanoi welcome Lao Party General Secretary and State President Thongloun Sisoulith in his official friendship visit to Vietnam

Published to mark 44 years of the signing of the Vietnam - Laos Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (July 18, 1977  2021), the article wrote that the two neighbouring nations share over 2,340km of border and a longstanding relationship and cooperation.

They stood side by side during their struggles for independence, with their traditional ties nurtured by late Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh and his Lao counterparts Kaysone Phomvihane and Souphanuvong, and maintained and developed over the years. After the two countries were liberated, their relations have been deepened, reaping fruitful outcomes across fields and recording regular exchanges of meetings by their leaders and officials at different levels.

The article affirmed such special solidarity is key to the success of the revolutionary cause in each country and it is a rare model among relations worldwide and an invaluable legacy of both nations.

The year 2021 marks the 59th founding anniversary of diplomatic relations and the 44th anniversary of the signing of the Vietnam - Laos Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, it said.

Over the past 59 years, political and diplomatic ties between the two countries have continuously obtained significant achievements, with their economic relations playing an important role as they share similar expectations and goals toward prosperity.

Over the past time, the Vietnamese Party, Government and people have offered prompt, valuable, and effective assistance to Laos annually and whenever needed, the article noted, adding that Vietnam was the first nation to lend a hand to Laos in curbing the spread of COVID-19, which reflected their special cooperation.

It said high-ranking leaders of the two countries have always drastically directed their competent agencies to strengthen the connection between the two economies, especially regarding their infrastructure, transport, as well as exploration and development of energy resources. They have also paid attention to solving existing problems to deepen the bilateral collaboration toward effectiveness in line with the strengths of the two countries.

Currently, Vietnam is one of the leading investors in and a major trade partner of Laos. Their cooperation in the field of defence-security continues to reap achievements in various aspects. The two sides are further coordinating and effectively implementing their signed agreements on border issues, promptly preventing transnational crime, handling violations in boder areas, and promoting the signing of cooperation pacts in the fields of defence and security, while cooperative ties in culture, education, and science and technology have seen positive results.

The article concluded by saying the estblishment of diplomatic relations and the signing of the treaty was an important historical event of both nations./.

VNA
Update: 20-07-2021 | 07:54:06

While Thailand is setting up checkpoints to restrict mobility in 13 provinces in a bid to prevent COVID-19 from spreading from the dark-red zone, the pandemic situation has also yet to ease in other Southeast Asian countries.

People wait for their turn to get vaccinated against COVID-19 in Bangkok, Thailand, on July 16

Taweesilp Visanuyothin, the spokesman for the Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration of Thailand, said on July 19 that the checkpoints are being built and more security personnel will man all roads linking the 13 provinces with their neighbours.

He confirmed the Civil Aviation Authority of Thailands announcement that domestic flights out of Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang airports will stop from July 21. Besides, the capacities of other public transport modes will be halved from the same day.

The number of new COVID-19 cases in Thailand continued to hit a new record of 11,784 on July 19, raising the tally to 415,170. The country also saw an additional 81 patients succumbing to the disease in 24 hours, adding up to the total fatalities of 3,422.

Cambodia is reportedly facing a growing risk of the spread of the Delta variant posed by people entering the country from Thailand.

Its Ministry of Health said Cambodia found 75 imported cases infected with this highly contagious variant between March 31 and July 14.

The large number of Cambodian workers returning from Thailand, many of whom have contracted the coronavirus disease, has been putting great pressure on the healthcare infrastructure in the provinces bordering Thailand.

Despite the concern over the high number of imported cases, Cambodia on July 19 reported less than 800 new infections in 24 hours for the first time since June 28. They included 209 imported cases and 581 domestic infections, raising the total to 67,971.

Besides 1,087 recoveries, the Health Ministry also announced 22 deaths on the day, bringing the COVID-19 fatalities in Cambodia so far to 1,128.

Meanwhile, the number of coronavirus infections in Indonesia has topped 2.9 million after 34,257 new infections were confirmed on July 19, the lowest daily number since July 6. The fatalities reached 74,920 after 1,338 more deaths were recorded.

The same day, the Philippine Department of Health reported 5,651 new cases, raising the total to 1,513,396. The number of related deaths rose to 26,786, including 72 recorded on the day.

This country has found 35 cases infected with the Delta variant, including 11 domestic infections./.

VNA
Update: 20-07-2021 | 07:54:06

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh demanded ministries, sectors, and localities reinforce all forces to ramp up the COVID-19 combat while addressing an unscheduled meeting with the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control on July 19.

Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh speaks at the meeting on July 19

The Government agreed to issue a resolution on the procurement of materials and equipment for the pandemic prevention and control, he said, urging ministries, sectors, and localities to tighten discipline during the COVID-19 fight and call on all people to support the efforts as people are both the centre and the key player in this combat.

The Government leader told the Ministry of Health to ensure the reasonable and swift distribution of COVID-19 vaccine as well as timely vaccination.

Asking for the flow of food and essential goods to be kept uninterrupted, PM Chinh requested the State Bank of Vietnam to push ahead with policies supporting people and enterprises, and ministries, sectors, and localities to guarantee social security.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was tasked with promoting the vaccine diplomacy and technology diplomacy to help with purchasing supplies for the COVID-19 fight.

The PM demanded the entire grassroots political system engage in the pandemic combat, underlining the need to attract resources via public - private partnership so that people and enterprises can join hands in the task.

At the meeting, Minister of National Defence Phan Van Giang noted his ministry is mobilising forces for transporting vaccines and assisting disease prevention and control efforts in offshore islands and remote areas.

Participants reached high consensus on the necessity to focus resources on the COVID-19 combat in Ho Chi Minh City and other southern localities, which are witnessing complicated developments of the pandemic.

As of 6am on July 19, 53,785 domestic infections and 2,060 imported ones were confirmed in Vietnam. The number of local cases reported since late April, when the fourth wave of COVID-19 infections began, amounted to 52,215./.

VNA
FRC Launches New Website Tracking Taxpayer Funding of Planned Parenthood Since 1994





NEWS PROVIDED BY

Family Research Council

July 20, 2021



WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ -- Family Research Council launched a new tracking website titled "America's Direct Deposit to Planned Parenthood" that shows taxpayer funding and abortion data of Planned Parenthood since 1994. This new analysis combines information from Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports which track federal tax dollars and Planned Parenthood's own annual reports that cover all government funding as well as service information. Over the 25 years between 1994-2019, Planned Parenthood has reported performing 7,059,206 abortions and receiving $9.7 billion in total taxpayer funding.



Over the same period, while total abortions in the U.S. have decreased, Planned Parenthood's share of total abortions reported to the Center for Disease Control have increased from a mere 10.5 percent in 1994 to 55.8 percent in 2018, the last year for which numbers are available. At the same time, annual taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood has nearly quadrupled, from $163.1 million in 1994 to $618.1 million in 2019. While Planned Parenthood's expanding abortion business is not directly caused by an increase in taxpayer funding, the $9.7 billion in taxpayer funds that Planned Parenthood received has made a substantial impact in transforming Planned Parenthood into the nation's single largest abortion supplier.

The House is considering an appropriations bill which repeals the Hyde Amendment and includes $400 million for Title X, the second largest source of federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Much of this 28 percent increase in Title X family planning grants will further Planned Parenthood's abortion business.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said:

"Planned Parenthood has become America's abortion giant, and it has been taxpayer dollars that has bankrolled the baby-killing industry. Planned Parenthood now performs more abortions annually than every other abortion supplier in America. Far from escaping its racist, eugenicist roots, it increasingly targets minority babies by locating the vast majority of its abortion facilities near black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood does not deserve billions in government funding. Even pro-choice Americans have long agreed that taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions. The time has come to put an end to the forced partnership between taxpayers and Planned Parenthood," concluded Perkins.

Connor Semelsberger, FRC's Director of Federal Affairs for Life and Human Dignity, who analyzed the data, added:

"Congress and many states have enacted policies like the Hyde Amendment that prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions directly; however, Planned Parenthood continues to receive millions of dollars in federal, state, and local tax subsidies each year while expanding their abortion business. This analysis brings to light what Planned Parenthood has long tried to keep in the dark, that their single goal has always been and still is to 'weed out the unfit' and receive public validation for that goal through taxpayer funding. As history shows us, at Planned Parenthood nothing is certain but death and taxpayer funding."

For more information, visit: frc.org/track.



SOURCE Family Research Council



CONTACT: J.P. Duffy or Joshua Arnold, (866) FRC-NEWS or (866)-372-6397


Kenyan, Chinese trade promotion bodies woo Kenyans to invest in Shenzhen

Xinhua) 16:44, July 19, 2021

NAIROBI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Kenya Investment Authority (KenInvest) and China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) Shenzhen Municipal Committee partnered to showcase China's booming coastal city of Shenzhen through a photo exhibition dubbed visit, trade and investment.

The three-day exhibition, which ended on Monday at the Nairobi University Conference Hall, featured several images of Shenzhen taken by Kenyans living in the city, giving the world a taste of the city through their eyes.

Speaking at the launch on Saturday, the KenInvest representative Pius Rotich highlighted the emerging opportunity for investors and members of the public to explore Shenzhen City.

"We are pleased to be partnering with the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shenzhen Municipal Committee in this great initiative that is aimed at giving Kenyan investors, traders and tourists a picture of Shenzhen and its position as one of the top financial centers in the Asia-Pacific region, with a picturesque landscape," said Rotich.

"Our mandate is to facilitate domestic and foreign investments, and through our long-term partners CCPIT Shenzhen we are welcoming all to explore this opportunity with us", he added.

Shenzhen City is one of China's fastest-growing cities in the past decades.

"Shenzhen is a city rich in culture and very well known around the world as a technology hub. We are launching this exhibition to showcase in detail the landscape of this beautiful city as seen through the eyes of foreign tourists," said Li Changhao, CCPIT Shenzhen representative in Kenya.

"Through the eyes of these tourists, we are able to see the raw unfiltered images of the landscape, but that is not all. Shenzhen is an unexploited business destination and that is why we are inviting all to not only visit but to trade and invest as well", said Li.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Commentary: China, ASEAN embark on new journey with closer partnership

Xinhua) 16:47, July 19, 2021

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- As China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are commemorating the 30th anniversary of the establishment of their dialogue relations, both sides have vowed to strengthen cooperation to promote regional and global progress and prosperity.

For a world still in the throes of a ravaging pandemic and ensuing economic challenges, a closer China-ASEAN relationship will continue to become an important pillar of peace, stability and prosperity.

In early June, a special foreign ministers' meeting was held in southwest China to mark this milestone in the development of bilateral ties. In a joint statement afterwards, both sides reaffirmed their commitment to promoting China-ASEAN relations to new heights, adhering to multilateralism, and underscored the importance of promoting common development and prosperity.

In fact, since the beginning of the year, the two sides have maintained close in-person communication despite travel restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, highlighting the importance of each other in the other side's foreign policies.

Over the 30 years, China-ASEAN cooperation has thrived as the two sides helped each other succeed. Among ASEAN's dialogue partners, China has been number one on many fronts. China was the first to join the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the first to forge a strategic partnership with ASEAN, the first to start negotiations on a free trade area with ASEAN, and the first to give unequivocal support for ASEAN centrality in East Asian regional cooperation.

Fast growing economic and trade cooperation further consolidate and bolster the partnership. Facing the continuous global trade and economic recession amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the two sides became each other's largest trading partner for the first time in 2020. The two sides also jointly pushed for the signing of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which gave birth to the world's most promising free trade area with the largest population and biggest economic aggregate.

Most importantly, the two sides have always demonstrated a deep mutual trust and commitment in tackling major challenges.

Over the 30 years, China and ASEAN countries have stuck together through thick and thin and supported each other in coping with the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the 2003 SARS pandemic, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, the two sides have worked closely and helped each other fight against the pandemic, promote economic growth and safeguard people's livelihood, turning East Asia into a stellar exemplar in the global fight against the virus and an early bird in achieving economic recovery.

The two sides have also handled differences and disagreements through communication and negotiation based on mutual respect and consultation.

At a time when the world is confronted with resurgent protectionism, unilateralism and hegemonism, which are posing a grave threat to world peace and development, China and ASEAN, both as staunch supporters of multilateralism and an open world economy, can become a powerful catalyst of global peace and prosperity.

Standing at a historical juncture, the world can expect an even closer China-ASEAN bond in their joint quest for regional and global stability and development.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Chinese premier exchanges congratulations with Brunei's sultan on 30th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue relations

Xinhua) 07:52, July 20, 2021

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei, chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for 2021, on Monday exchanged congratulatory messages to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue relations between China and ASEAN.

Over the past 30 years, China and ASEAN countries have been standing together through good and bad times and forging ahead, making important contributions to the stability, development and prosperity of various countries and the region, and setting a benchmark and model for cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, Li said in his message.

Since last year, Li said, China and ASEAN have joined hands to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, which has further demonstrated the spirit of a community with a shared future which features supporting and helping each other through thick and thin.

Li added that China-ASEAN relations have entered a new phase of comprehensive development, and China is ready to work with ASEAN to build a higher level of strategic partnership, forge a closer community with a shared future, and better respond to future regional and global challenges for the benefit of the more than 2 billion people in the 11 countries of both sides.

In his message, Hassanal, on behalf of ASEAN, extended sincere congratulations on the 30th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue relations and the centenary of the Communist Party of China, saying that ASEAN-China relations have achieved fruitful results over the past 30 years and have become one of the most strategic and comprehensive partnerships.

The two sides have joined hands in anti-pandemic cooperation and continuously deepened exchanges and cooperation in such fields as economy and trade, as well as people and culture, said Hassanal. He also thanked China for firmly supporting ASEAN's central role and expressed confidence that the ASEAN-China strategic partnership will create a better future for people of the two sides.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Xi's remarks on promoting China-ASEAN cooperation, building community with shared future for mankind

Xinhua) 07:54, July 20, 2021

Aerial photo taken on Nov. 19, 2020 shows a cargo ship leaving a berth of the Qinzhou Port in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Zhang Ailin)

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- This year marks the 30th anniversary of China-ASEAN Dialogue Relations. China-ASEAN relationship has grown into the most successful and vibrant model for cooperation in the Asia-Pacific and an exemplary effort in building a community with a shared future for mankind, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in 2020.

China, which established a dialogue relationship with ASEAN in 1991, was the first to ink the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the first to become ASEAN's strategic partner and the first to start free trade area negotiations with ASEAN.

Xi has, on various bilateral and multilateral occasions, called for greater China-ASEAN cooperation. The following are some highlights of his remarks in this regard.

Aerial photo taken on Nov. 26, 2020 shows the view of Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center, the venue of the 17th China-ASEAN Expo, and its neighboring buildings in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Lu Boan)

Nov. 27, 2020

China will work with ASEAN to advance all-round cooperation and maintain good momentum for development and prosperity in the region, Xi said while addressing via video the opening ceremony of the 17th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit held in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

China welcomes the signature of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and looks forward to its early entry into force, Xi said.

China will work with ASEAN members to sustain the smooth flow of trade, promote mutual investment, open markets wider to each other, and foster deeply integrated industrial, supply and value chains, he said.

July 14, 2020

In a telephone conversation with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Xi said that cooperation between China and Singapore in the fight against COVID-19 has become a new highlight of bilateral relations and added significant connotations to their all-round cooperative partnership.

China, Xi said, will continue to provide Singapore with firm support.

In the battle against COVID-19, China, upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, has been sharing its experience unreservedly with other countries, and providing supplies and technical support for the international community to the best of its capacity, Xi said.

The first batch of COVID-19 vaccines arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, Feb. 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Keren)

July 14, 2020

In a telephone conversation with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Xi said China stands ready to work with Thailand to cement solidarity and cooperation among regional countries and safeguard the sound momentum of development and prosperity in the region.

The two sides, Xi suggested, should better synergize the Belt and Road Initiative and Thailand's development strategies such as Thailand 4.0 and the Eastern Economic Corridor, promote cooperation in such innovative fields as e-commerce, and push for new development of their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

April 10, 2018

Xi met with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference on deepening cooperation in key areas.

China is willing to strengthen coordination with ASEAN countries including Singapore, and synergize the Belt and Road Initiative with ASEAN's development plan to build a community with a shared future for both sides, he said.

Workers work at the construction site of the China-funded Binondo-Intramuros Bridge in Manila, the Philippines, Nov. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

Nov. 11, 2017

On the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte discussed how to strengthen bilateral ties.

China will continue to treat neighboring countries with amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, and push forward the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, Xi said.

Xi also said China is to work with ASEAN countries to maintain peace and stability, as well as development and prosperity in the South China Sea region.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
England lifts all COVID-19 restrictions amid rapidly rising cases

Xinhua) 08:06, July 20, 2021

LONDON, July 19 (Xinhua) -- England has lifted almost all its remaining COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, according to its roadmap out of lockdown.

As the number of daily infections continues to rapidly increase, the final stage of easing coronavirus restrictions came with a note of caution.

FREEDOM DAY

This Monday is being described by the British government as Freedom Day, where almost all legal restrictions on social contact have been removed.

The detailed arrangement of the final step out of lockdown includes: no more limits on social contact to allow people to gather in groups of any size; removing the "one meter-plus" rule in almost all settings, except for specific places such as airports; no capacity caps on large scale events; and people are no longer required to work from home, among other changes. Face coverings will be recommended in some spaces, but not required by law.

The government said the removal of restrictions is the right step, despite the rising number of infections in much of the country.

Recent swab tests show that one in every 95 people has the virus in England, up from one in every 160 from the previous week, and the more infectious Delta variant accounts for almost every case.

Reactions by members of the public towards Freedom Day are mixed. Some say the virus has more "freedom" than the public, but others look forward to a life resembling normalcy.

Eduarda Masotti de Oliveira told Xinhua at a shopping center in London that she has long awaited this day, "but at the same time I think we have to do the jabs to get protected."

CAUTION STILL NEEDED

All adults in the UK have been offered a COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the planned lifting of restrictions on Monday, the government said.

The latest figures showed that 46.2 million adults, or 87.8 percent of the population, have had a first dose of a vaccine, and 35.7 million are fully vaccinated.

Still, medical experts were reminding the public to exercise caution.

Stephen Winchester, consultant virologist at Berkshire and Surrey Pathology Services, believes that vaccines are key in allowing England to have its Freedom Day, but as restrictions are eased it is imperative that the government continue to urge the public to remain cautious and exercise sound judgement.

"You need to be careful, use your own judgement and use the mask sensibly. And then beyond the mask, it's just general common sense in terms of isolating if you have symptoms, getting tested, not going out, avoiding contact with anyone who is symptomatic where possible," he said.

He added that a further rise in cases is a risk, but if the public remains aware of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, "then it should help to mitigate the spread."

"THREAT TO THE WORLD"

Hours ahead of England's Freedom Day, Imperial College London epidemiologist Neil Ferguson warned that the current wave of coronavirus infections in Britain could see up to 200,000 new cases a day. He told the BBC that it was "almost inevitable" that daily infection rates would hit a record 100,000 within a week after the lifting of restrictions.

The UK government's decision to lift virtually all of England's pandemic restrictions was also criticised by international experts as "a threat to the world."

More than 1,200 scientists have backed a letter in the journal The Lancet last week, saying that the UK's plan to lift most coronavirus restrictions in England is an "unethical experiment," which poses a serious threat to the rest of the world.

The letter argued that lifting restrictions at a time when infection rates are rising could increase the chance of new vaccine-resistant coronavirus variants emerging.

"Because of our position as a global travel hub, any variant that becomes dominant in the UK will likely spread to the rest of the globe," Christina Pagel at University College London said during an emergency summit of scientists and doctors on July 16.

Government advisers in New Zealand, Israel and Italy were among those who sounded alarm bells about the policy. Professor Jose Martin-Moreno of the University of Valencia, a senior adviser to the World Health Organization, said at the emergency summit: "We cannot understand why this is happening in spite of the scientific knowledge that you have."

Others warned the UK's approach would be imitated, for political expediency, by authorities elsewhere.

According to the latest data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, new virus cases are rising in 20 European countries, including Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and Greece, with Delta spreading throughout the region. However, several European countries also plan on relaxing restrictions and opening borders in anticipation of increased tourism, summer vacations and related events.

"COVID is still troubling and dangerous," the WHO warned in a recent analysis of the global situation.

For Winchester, the threat of new variants will "always be there," even with restrictions. What is key, he believes, is that the country continues with its strong vaccination program and testing structure.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China hopes WHO can maintain scientific, serious nature of COVID-19 origin tracing: FM

Xinhua) 08:07, July 20, 2021

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- China hopes that the World Health Organization (WHO) will adhere to the spirit of science, professionalism and objectivity, and work with the international community to maintain the scientific and serious nature of COVID-19 origin tracing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said on Monday.

He said China is concerned about certain countries' move to politicize the issue of origin tracing, which is in fact a serious issue need to be dealt with through the collaboration of global scientists.

"We hope the WHO can ... resist the backlash of politicization and safeguard the sound atmosphere of global anti-epidemic cooperation," Zhao said at a press briefing when responding to a query that the WHO has proposed a second-phase study into the origin of the coronavirus in China, and called for transparency from the Chinese authorities.

"The work plan on the second-phase origins study proposed by the WHO Secretariat is at odds with the position of China and many other countries on the issue," Zhao said.

He said a resolution of the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly had clearly requested the WHO Director-General to continue to work closely with countries to identify the zoonotic source of the virus and the route of introduction to the human population.

The next phase of origins study should comply with this request and be led by member states, Zhao said.

"We hope that the WHO will have full communication and consultation with member states, listen to and take the advice of all parties, and ensure that the drafting process of the work plan is open and transparent," he said.

The spokesperson added that after a WHO-China joint research for 28 days in China, the WHO on March 30 issued a joint report with clear conclusions and science-based recommendations for the next phase global origins study.

The report concluded that lab leak is extremely unlikely, and recommended conducting further research around earlier cases globally and further understanding the role of cold chains and frozen foods in the transmission of the virus.

"The conclusions and recommendations of the report should be respected and upheld, and fully reflected in the work of the next phase origins study," Zhao said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Over 4 million Chinese petition WHO to probe Fort Detrick lab on COVID-19 origins

Global Times) 08:07, July 20, 2021

Play Dirty. Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Over 4 million Chinese netizens have signed an open letter as of Wednesday morning, demanding the World Health Organization (WHO) investigate the US' Fort Detrick lab on COVID-19 origins, and the number is still increasing.

The letter was issued as the WHO on Friday proposed a second phase of studies into the origins of the coronavirus in China, including "audits of laboratories and markets in Wuhan," calling for "transparency" from authorities. The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday said the latest proposal was not consistent with the position of China and many countries, and urged the WHO to work with the international community to resist the adverse trend of politicizing the COVID-19 origins issue.

A group of Chinese netizens drafted an open letter to ask the WHO to investigate the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) at Fort Detrick, Maryland, And entrusted the Global Times with posting the letter on its WeChat and Weibo platforms on Saturday to solicit public response.

They said in the letter that to prevent the next epidemic, the WHO should pay special attention to labs that are conducting studies on dangerous viruses or even biochemical weapons. The open letter particularly noted the Fort Detrick lab, which stores the most deadly and infectious viruses in the world, including Ebola, smallpox, SARS, MERS and the novel coronavirus. The leak of any of them would cause severe danger to the world.

Prior to this, the same group published an open letter in June calling for the WHO to investigate Fort Detrick.

The Global Times also launched an online poll on Saturday, and over 90 percent of the 18,000 respondents agreed that the WHO should investigate the Fort Detrick biological lab, as of press time Monday.

At Monday's press conference, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said the US should be transparent and face up to the calls of the international community, including the Chinese, and give a satisfactory response to the open letter and online poll.

The public and the media are trying to get answers to questions that the international community has been asking for a while. However, some people in the US have been keeping the public in the dark, Zhao said.

"Please answer the following questions: First, what's the connection between the Fort Detrick lab and the unexplained respiratory diseases like those suspected with vaping? Second, why hasn't the US invited the WHO to conduct a thorough investigation at Fort Detrick? Third, why can't international experts visit the US for tracing virus origins since they have visited China?" Zhao asked.

On WHO's proposal for a follow-up study into the origins, Zhao said that it was not consistent with the position of China and many other countries. China hopes that the WHO will have full communication with member states, listen to and adopt opinions of all parties and ensure that the drafting process of the phase-II study is open and transparent.

China is concerned about the politicization of the coronavirus origins tracing by some countries. We hope that the WHO,in the spirit of scientific professionalism and objectivity, will work with the international community to resist the adverse trend of politicizing the issue, Zhao said.

Yang Zhanqiu, a deputy director of the pathogen biology department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times that almost all prevailing coronavirus variants have been discovered in the US. By comparison, the virus strain found in China has no bearing with many variants. Therefore, it is appropriate to carry out a virus origins probe in the US, said Yang.

The virologist also called on the US to hand over blood samples of those COVID-19 patients, and disclose more information about the country's epidemiologic survey, to give a clearer picture of the relation between US cases and those of other countries. He said that US labs keep blood samples dating back to the 1980s.

In June, a study of more than 24,000 samples taken for a National Institutes of Health (NIH) research program in the US between January 2 and March 18, 2020, found that seven people in five states - Illinois, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - may have been infected with COVID-19 well before the country's first confirmed cases reported in January 21, 2020.

The WHO-China joint study report issued on March 30, 2021, reached a clear conclusion and offered suggestions for the next phase of global study into the origins, which concluded that the Wuhan "lab leak" hypothesis is extremely unlikely, and that we should look for possible early cases of the outbreak more widely around the world and further understand the role of cold chains and frozen food.

Zhao said that the conclusions and recommendations of this report should be respected and upheld, and be reflected in the next phase of studies into the origins of COVID-19.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
At least 28 killed in bomb explosion in Iraqi capital: ministry source

Xinhua) 08:10, July 20, 2021

A bag and a slipper are seen at the site of a bomb explosion in Sadr City, a suburb district of the capital Baghdad, Iraq, on July 19, 2021. At least 28 people were killed and 66 others wounded in a bomb explosion in a marketplace in eastern Baghdad on Monday, a source with the Iraqi interior ministry said. (Xinhua/Khalil Dawood)

BAGHDAD, July 19 (Xinhua) -- At least 28 people were killed and 66 others wounded in a bomb explosion in a marketplace in eastern Baghdad on Monday, a source with the Iraqi interior ministry said.

A bomb detonated at a crowded popular market in Sadr City, a suburb district of the capital Baghdad, before the sunset, destroying several nearby shops and stalls and damaging surrounding buildings, the ministry source said on condition of anonymity.

The Iraqi authorities said in a brief statement that more information will be released after investigation into the incident.

"The explosion destroyed our shop, and many people here were killed and wounded ... All the people here are poor and can hardly make their living," said Haider Gatie, a young man at the marketplace, expressing his anger about the deadly incident.

Deadly bombings have been rare in Baghdad, as the security situation has improved in Iraq since the Iraqi security forces fully defeated IS militants across the country late in 2017.

However, IS remnants have since melted into urban areas or deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
U.S. continues to see increasing COVID-19 infections as Delta spreads

Xinhua) 08:13, July 20, 2021

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The United States continues to see a surge in COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalizations, fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant and vaccine hesitancy.

The country is averaging over 32,000 new cases per day, a 66 percent jump from the previous week, and 145 percent higher than the rate from two weeks ago, CNN reported, citing data from Johns Hopkins University.

An average of 258 Americans died from COVID-19 each day this past week, up 13 percent from the rate of daily deaths the previous week.

Currently, about 25,000 people are hospitalized with COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a 26 percent increase from last week and a 50 percent increase from two weeks ago.

The surge came as the Delta variant is spreading rapidly across the country, becoming the predominant lineage in the United States.

The proportion of cases attributed to Delta is predicted to increase to 57.6 percent, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Meanwhile, the pace of vaccinations in the United States has dropped sharply in the past few months. Twelve states have yet to vaccinate 40 percent of their population, CDC data show.

About 48.6 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 56.1 percent of the population has received at least one shot as of Monday, according to CDC data.

More than 97 percent of people getting hospitalized with COVID-19 now are unvaccinated, said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

About 99.5 percent of deaths are among the unvaccinated, said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Sunday.

Getting people vaccinated as quickly as possible "is our fastest, most effective way out of this pandemic," Murthy said.

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended universal masking in schools for everyone over 2 years of age, regardless of vaccination status.

"AAP recommends universal masking because a significant portion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccines, and masking is proven to reduce transmission of the virus and to protect those who are not vaccinated," the AAP said in a release.

Experts have stressed that an important reason adults should get vaccinated is to protect children who are not yet eligible for COVID-19 vaccines.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Measures to ensure commodity prices stable

China Daily) 08:14, July 20, 2021

An employee works at a copper processing plant in Dongyang, Zhejiang province. [Photo by BAO KANGXUAN/FOR CHINA DAILY]

China will take more steps to curb rising commodity prices and crack down on the hoarding and speculation of commodities, marking a key step to ensure stable prices and supplies of commodities in the market, officials and experts said on Monday.

Wan Jinsong, director of the National Development and Reform Commission's Department of Price, said the commission will work with departments to release more copper, aluminum and zinc from the national reserves to boost market supply and ease the pressure on enterprises' production and operations.

In the next step, regulators will closely monitor commodity price changes, strengthen regulation of the futures and spot markets and crack down on market violations such as hoarding to maintain normal market order, according to Wan.

On July 5, the NDRC and the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration completed the first release from the national reserves, publicly auctioning 100,000 metric tons of copper, aluminum and zinc. More than 200 nonferrous metal processing and manufacturing companies participated in the auction, and transaction prices were about 3 percent to 9 percent lower than the market prices on that day, Wan said.

"It is believed that the release (of national reserves) has sent a positive signal that the government will ensure stable supplies and prices of commodities, which helps stabilize market expectations," she said. "The release provides a window of opportunity for midstream and downstream processing and manufacturing companies to replenish inventory, and it also helps some enterprises to reduce the cost of raw materials."

Experts said they believe that with the help of effective government measures to ensure stable prices and supplies of commodities, prices will gradually return to a reasonable range.

Zhou Maohua, an analyst at China Everbright Bank, spoke highly of the government's moves to curb the commodity price rally and crack down on illegal activities such as hoarding, saying the factors supporting this round of commodity speculation are weakening.

"Commodity prices will stabilize with the steady recovery of the global economy, the tightened monetary and financial environment and the recovery of commodity supplies," Zhou said.

Tao Jin, deputy director of the macroeconomic research center of the Suning Institute of Finance, said that while the commodity price gains did bring about profit growth for China's industrial sector in the early stage, the price rally will now lead to an increase in production costs for enterprises in midstream and downstream manufacturing industries and will increase risks in the country's industrial chain.

He said more efforts should be made to boost domestic supplies, crack down on irregularities on market violations, strengthen cooperative development of foreign mineral resources and encourage domestic manufacturing and extractive companies to invest overseas.

During a news conference on Monday in Beijing, Yuan Da, spokesman for the NDRC, said China's economy has enjoyed a steady growth in the first half of 2021, and the country has the confidence to achieve the projected annual growth goal for this year.

Yuan said the NDRC will make a big push to continue to deepen supply-side structural reforms, focus on expanding effective domestic demand, further support the development of the real economy, advance reform and opening-up, and strive to keep the economy running smoothly within a reasonable range.

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
U.S. bullying act will never hinder Hong Kongs prosperity and development

08:16, July 20, 2021 By Zhong Sheng ( People's Daily

Photo taken on June 29, 2021 shows China's national flags and flags of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on a street in south China's Hong Kong. (Xinhua/Li Gang)

On July 16 local time, the U.S. government arbitrarily issued the so-called business advisory, which smeared the business environment in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), and sanctioned officials of Chinas central government in Hong Kong.

The act of the U.S. has seriously violated the international law and basic norms governing international relations, and grossly interfered in Hong Kong affairs and Chinas internal affairs at large, vividly revealing the American bullying and American double standards.

It should be noted that the sanctions and threats against China havent frightened, and will never frighten, the Chinese people. China will never give in to coercion, intimidation or pressure, and will certainly counterattack.

The world is well aware that by smearing China and distorting the truth, the U.S. attempts to undermine Hong Kongs prosperity and stability, endanger Chinas national security, and contain Chinas development, which is totally arbitrary and unreasonable.

The truth is the historical trend will not be changed by the sanctions and threats of the U.S., which will only end up in failure in front of the ambition, indomitable will, and confidence of all Chinese people.

China has always stood on the right side of history and upheld fairness and justice, no matter what kind of obstacles are along the way.

Just when the U.S. was busy issuing the so-called business advisory and imposing sanctions against officials of Chinas central government in Hong Kong, Beijing, Hong Kong and Macao held an online symposium marking the first anniversary of enacting the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR.

During the symposium, officials stressed that by brutally trampling on the international law, interfering in Chinas internal affairs, and imposing meaningless so-called sanctions against China, the U.S. and other Western countries that intend to mislead people about the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR will only arouse indignation and contempt among the Chinese people, sound the death toll of anti-China forces that aim to cause chaos in Hong Kong, and be hoist with their own petard.

The U.S. issued the so-called business advisory by knitting a bunch of lies, making purely false charges against China. While claiming that a sound business environment cant live without the rule of law, the U.S. has left no stone unturned to obstruct Hong Kongs way to improving the rule of law.

It refuses to admit that Hong Kongs status as an international financial, trade and shipping center has been more stable, the rule of law and its business environment have been sounder, and the society has been more harmonious as the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR has been implemented and Hong Kongs electoral system improved.

The truth of Hong Kongs business environment is nothing like what depicted by the U.S.

Under the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR, the public order of Hong Kong has been restored, the rule of law principle upheld, and its development back on track. Hong Kong residents enjoy lawful rights and freedoms, and foreign investors in Hong Kong have a more secure, stable and predictable business environment. Lawful rights and interests of international stakeholders, including U.S. enterprises stationed in Hong Kong, are better protected.

Last year, the inflow of funds to Hong Kong amounted to $50 billion. The balances of Hong Kongs banking systems reached new heights repeatedly, and the amount of funds raised through initial public offerings (IPOs) in its stock exchange ranked the second in the world.

Hong Kong was one of the regions attracting the most foreign direct investment in 2020, according to the latest annual world investment report released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. A report by the International Monetary Fund not long ago reaffirmed Hong Kongs status as an international financial center.

Numerous facts have proven that both foreign investors and local investors in Hong Kong have become more, not less, confident about Hong Kongs business environment.

The confidence also comes from Chinas robust economic growth. Investors are getting to know that exploring Hong Kong market will help them grasp the huge opportunities in the Chinese mainland.

The enacting and implementation of the Law on Safeguarding National Security in the HKSAR has fundamentally closed the loopholes in Hong Kongs system of protecting national security, blocked the black hands in Hong Kong and the U.S. that aim to undermine Chinas national security, and effectively protected the constitutional order of Hong Kong established by the Constitution of China and the Hong Kong Basic Law.

It can never be emphasized too much that whatever means the U.S. adopts, it will never reproduce the old days in Hong Kong when it was roiled by rampant black violence, pro-independence movement and mutual destruction activities, nor hinder Hong Kongs prosperity and development. After all, the wheels of history will only move forward.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People's Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China announces five leading cities in developing int'l consumption centers

Xinhua) 08:45, July 20, 2021

Photo taken on Nov. 4, 2020 shows a light show at the Lujiazui area in Shanghai, east China. (Xinhua/Zhang Haofu)

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- China's Ministry of Commerce (MOC) announced on Monday that, with the approval of the State Council, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Tianjin and Chongqing will take the lead in developing international consumption center cities.

The move is a major strategic decision made by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, and will play a significant role in serving the establishment of the new development paradigm, Commerce Minister Wang Wentao said at a meeting.

It is also significant for the country's high-quality growth, he noted.

Efforts will be made to pool quality international market entities, goods and services, as well as to accelerate the cultivation of local brands, Wang said.

The minister pledged efforts to develop business communities and improve market regulation services.

The MOC will work with other related departments to unveil a general plan on building the international consumption center cities and the five cities will formulate their implementation plans to advance the construction tasks, according to Wang.

Over the years, consumption has become a key driving force of the world's second largest economy amid its broader economic transformation.

China's consumption further recovered in the first half of this year, with its retail sales of consumer goods totaling 21.2 trillion yuan (3.28 trillion U.S. dollars), up 23 percent year on year, official data shows.

For the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), China is expected to become the world's largest goods consumption market, the Hainan-based China Institute for Reform and Development forecast in a research report.

WHY THE FIVE CITIES?

The five cities to take the lead in developing international consumption centers were selected based on their respective advantages in the consumption field and economic strengths, according to analysts.

Shanghai, for instance, has ranked the country's top consumption market.

With a population of over 24 million, Shanghai's retail sales of consumer goods last year reached 1.59 trillion yuan despite the impact of COVID-19, up 0.5 percent year on year and ranking first among Chinese cities.

For the 14th Five-Year Plan period, Shanghai aims to become the first Chinese city with retail sales of consumer goods totaling over 2 trillion yuan, according to a guideline released by the city on developing as an international trade hub.

As the country's capital city and an international tourism city, Beijing has also seen robust consumption growth. In the first six months of this year, Beijing's total consumption value expanded by 22.1 percent year on year, official data showed Monday.

In May, Beijing unveiled 10 special measures to advance the cultivation of an international consumption center city, focusing on new consumption landmarks, new brands, digital consumption and the development of cultural, tourism, sports, education and medical consumption.

The international consumption center cities not only have huge consumption markets, but also act as barometers for global consumption innovation, said Wang Wei, a research fellow with the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Under the new development paradigm, building international consumption center cities will help foster new platforms for both the internal and external circulation to reinforce each other, Wang said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
US should allow WHO teams access to its facilities, says renowned Singaporean scholar

(Global Times) 08:55, July 20, 2021

Kishore Mahbubani Photo: Li Hao/GT

Singaporean political scientist Kishore Mahbubani voiced his objection to politicization of the tracing of coronavirus origins and called for the US to allow WHO teams to access its own facilities, in a recent interview with the Global Times.

"The US should declare that it is willing to give WHO teams access to its facilities. In that way, the US will set an example for others to follow," said the scholar, a distinguished fellow at the Asia Research Institute of the National University of Singapore.

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US and some Western countries have been trying to stigmatize and politicize the origins of the epidemic. They have hyped the so-called lab leak theory and tried to turn the process of investigating where the virus came from into a campaign against China. US President Joe Biden in May ordered the country's intelligence community to investigate whether the virus originated from a laboratory. It's widely believed his target was the Wuhan lab.

"Recently, I watched an interview with a Dutch member of the WHO team that went to China. She said on the BBC that if the Biden Administration has new evidence on the origins of the virus, it should share that evidence," the Singaporean scholar said, emphasizing that the evidence has not been shared.

Mahbubani stressed that scientific evidence is best left to the scientists and it's very dangerous when politicians try to make capital out of scientific issues.

He said it's important to allow multilateral organizations complete independence in their investigations. Mahbubani emphasized that every country should agree to allow WHO teams to visit and provide access to their facilities to enhance the credibility of the WHO. "It's not fair to say that China should allow access, and that other countries do not have to allow access," he noted.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has demonstrated a scientific, professional, serious and responsible attitude on the issue of traceability of the origins of the virus. China was the first to engage in cooperation with the WHO on the matter. Since last year, China has invited WHO experts twice to conduct tracing research in China. Earlier this year, a 34-member WHO-China joint expert team carried out a 28-day research mission in Wuhan. During their visit, WHO experts analyzed data, conducted field visits and communicated with peers.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Algeria to boost cooperation with China under BRI framework: president

Xinhua) 08:58, July 20, 2021

ALGIERS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said on Monday that Algeria is ready to deepen cooperation with China in various fields under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Algerian leader made the remarks during his meeting with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Tebboune asked Wang to convey his cordial greetings to Chinese President Xi Jinping, while also extending his warm congratulation to the Communist Party of China (CPC) on its 100th anniversary of founding.

Tebboune spoke highly of the outstanding achievements the Chinese people have made in the course of revolution and construction under the leadership of the CPC.

Noting that China and Algeria share a long history of friendship and mutual trust, Tebboune said Algeria's policy on China has never changed since the North African country gained independence. He cited that Algeria has always deemed China as a diplomatic priority and stood firmly with China.

As both countries have entered a new stage of development, it's hoped that they will deepen cooperation in the areas of economy, trade, investment, energy, mining and infrastructure construction under the BRI framework, so to achieve common development which will also benefit other developing countries, said Tebboune.

He stressed that Algeria has supported China in the past, is still supporting China now, and will continue to support China even more in the future.

The Algerian president also congratulated China on the 50th anniversary of restoring its lawful seat in the United Nations, adding that Algeria expects China to play a bigger role in international affairs to promote regional and global peace and stability.

For his part, Wang conveyed warm greetings from President Xi to Tebboune.

Praising Algeria as a country of heroism and principle, Wang said Algeria has always adhered to an independent policy and upheld justice in international affairs, which has earned respect from the international community.

Fifty years ago, Algeria and other developing countries, battling against pressure and interference, gave full support to restoring the lawful seat of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations, Wang noted.

"Fifty years later, I came to your country to celebrate this historic event and to show gratitude to our Algerian friends," said the Chinese diplomat.

Wang added that his visit also aimed to send out a clear message: China will continue to treat Algeria as an important partner in strengthening unity and cooperation among developing countries under the new circumstances.

China stands ready to join hands with Algeria to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries and uphold international justice, he said.

China and Algeria, Wang said, used to be comrades-in-arms who fought side by side and now have become partners in seeking common development and prosperity.

The mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries has great potential and space for development, Wang said, adding that China encourages its enterprises to invest and do business in Algeria.

China is willing to work with Algeria to translate their high-level political mutual trust into tangible results of cooperation, help Algeria accelerate the pace of industrialization, and enhance its capacity for independent development, the Chinese diplomat said.

Wang promised that China will continue to provide COVID-19 vaccines to Algeria and promote cooperation in vaccine production to help Algeria overcome the pandemic at an early date.

Also on Monday, Wang held talks with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Employment of AI and other digital technologies benefits citizens in Shanghai

09:01, July 20, 2021 By Xie Weiqun, Shen Wenmin ( People's Daily

Photo taken on July 7, 2021, shows an exhibition area displaying the latest advances in the application of AI in the medical field at the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held in east Chinas Shanghai. (Peoples Daily Online/Chen Yuyu)

Residents in east Chinas Shanghai are witnessing and benefiting from the application of a good number of AI and other digital technologies catering for economic and social development, peoples livelihood and other fields.

In 2018, Shanghai Tenth Peoples Hospital carried out in-depth cooperation with relevant science and technology enterprises in the diagnosis and treatment of venous thromboembolism. They creatively designed an AI system to assist doctors with diagnosis and formulation of treatment regimens and nursing staff in their work, helping medical workers better safeguard patients health and safety.

A few days ago, a 55-year-old female patient hospitalized for meniscus injury at the Shanghai Tenth Peoples Hospital got two different results in the assessment of her condition. She got two points in the assessment by a doctor, but three points in the assessment by the AI system.

It was found out that while assessing the patients health condition, the AI system automatically identified the fact that the patient had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. As proven by further inquiries, the patient was admitted to the respiratory medicine department of the hospital a year ago.

By complementing blind spots in the acquisition of information through manual work, the AI system helps make diagnosis and treatment more effective and accurate.

At the beginning of 2021, Shanghai issued a guideline on comprehensively promoting digital transformation in economy, peoples life and social governance, aiming to become an internationally influential metropolis for digitization by 2035.

The city has successfully held the World Artificial Intelligence Conference for three consecutive years, and recently won the approval for the implementation of its Field Experiment Plan for AI Application. It is seeing steady progress in the construction of the countrys new-generation national AI innovative development pilot zone and national pilot zone for the innovation and application of AI.

These achievements have laid a sound foundation for developing Shanghai into a leader in AI industry and building world-class AI industrial clusters in the city during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025) of China.

As of 2020, the city had 1,149 key enterprises in the AI industry and formed a relatively complete AI industrial chain. The city saw the combined annual industrial output value of its AI enterprises above designated size reach 224.6 billion yuan (about $34.68 billion) last year, up around 50 percent year on year.

Attaching great importance to the employment of AI for improving peoples livelihood, Shanghai installed intelligent water meter for elderly people who live alone. If the reading on the water meter of a house is below 0.01 cubic meter in 12 hours, the unified management platform of the subdistrict will automatically raise the alarm. Then people from the management office or the residents committee of the subdistrict will immediately go to the home of the elderly resident to check his/her condition.

The city also established a platform to address social problems using AI and big data technologies. For instance, if a citizen discovers disorderly parking of shared bicycles, he/she can take photos of it and post them on the platform, which will then quickly identify the problem and automatically inform relevant people of the situation.

AI and digital transformation reinforce, complement and integrate with each other, said Wu Jincheng, director of Shanghai Economy and Information Technology Commission.

According to Wu, on the one hand, AI is an important driving force for digital transformation of the city, and on the other hand, digital transformation in Shanghai provides better opportunities, a huge stage, and more application scenarios for the development of AI.

Starting from the smallest unit of the citys governance, Shanghai has embarked upon a brand new path of social governance, trying to connect and benefit residents in the whole city with AI systems and smart technologies.

On July 7, Shanghai released the results of the second phase of its smallest governance unit digital governance innovation project, which suggested that the city had established 12 innovation scenarios of urban smart complex, which have involved 58 urban digital transformation ecosystem partners.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Fauci says natural origins theory of novel coronavirus still "the most likely"

Xinhua) 09:02, July 20, 2021

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Xinhua) -- White House Chief Medical Advisor Anthony Fauci has recently said that he believes the natural origins theory of the novel coronavirus is still "the most likely."

"The most likely explanation is a natural evolution from an animal reservoir to a human," Fauci, also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the United States, told CNN during an interview on Saturday.

Paul Offit, a member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee, echoed Fauci's remarks.

"I think the chance that this was created by laboratory workers -- that it was engineered -- is zero," Offit told CNN in a separate interview.

Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy &Politics Initiative at Georgetown University told Rolling Stone, a U.S. magazine, earlier this month that U.S. President Joe Biden's use of the intelligence community and not health officials to conduct a review into the origins of the coronavirus may have already politicized the matter.

"This tells us that this is a political and an intelligence story: not a story mostly about science," Kavanagh said. "And so we should understand the picture in that sense, and not be naive about it. We're in a place where politics is driving people's scientific understanding in a dangerous way."

Kavanagh added that if the aim of Biden's report was to find a scientific explanation for the origins of COVID-19, he would have tasked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the National Institutes of Health with it, instead of U.S. intelligence agencies.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Co-host city of Beijing 2022 Winter Games Zhangjiakou pioneers hydrogen energy

09:05, July 20, 2021 By Zhang Zhifeng ( People's Daily

A fuel cell bus runs in front of the Terminal 2 of the Zhangjiakou Ningyuan Airport, Zhangjiakou, north China's Hebei province, Aug. 4, 2020. (People's Daily Online/Chen Xiaodong)

Zhangjiakou, the co-host city of Beijing 2022 Winter Games in north China's Hebei province, is working to deliver the Olympics in 2022 with a green approach. Since the city was approved to build a national-level demonstration zone for renewable energy in July 2015, the installed capacity of renewable energy in the city had hit 2,003 MW at the end of last year, and the number is still growing.

Three years ago, the first 74 fuel cell buses purchased by Zhangjiakou started operation in the city. Today, there are 304 such buses running there, accounting for around 40 percent of the city's bus fleet.

"The temperature in Zhangjiakou always falls below minus 20 degrees Celsius in winter, but it has no impact on the launching of the bus," said Li Baosheng, who has been steering buses for over 30 years. As a driver who has driven diesel, gasoline and electric vehicles, he speaks highly of the fuel cell buses, which are powered by electricity turned from hydrogen energy. "They have better acceleration, run effortlessly even when fully loaded with passengers.

"Fuel cell buses' performance does not degrade in low temperature. They are powerful and able to keep a long range. Most importantly, they discharge no pollutants," said Huo Junqing, vice general manager of Zhangjiakou's municipal bus corporation.

According to him, 80 fuel cell buses attended a test program held in February this year examining the service ability of the Zhangjiakou competition zone. Twenty kilograms of hydrogen could enable a bus to run 400 kilometers, he said.

By the beginning of July this year, fuel cell buses in Zhangjiakou had run a total mileage of 15 million kilometers, carrying over 43 million passengers. Another 140 such buses are expected to be put into operation in the city in October.

Bai Yan, head of a hydrogen energy company under Zhangjiakou City Traffic Construction Investment Holding Group Co., Ltd., introduced that Zhangjiakou plans to build seven hydrogen stations to serve the Beijing 2022 Winter Games, and three have been completed.

One of the stations on Weisan Road was built in February last year. "Four vehicles can have their hydrogen refilled simultaneously at the station, and it only takes five to ten minutes for each of them, much faster than charging an electric vehicle," Bai said.

According to Zhao Hui, who's in charge of the technical work of a new energy company in Zhangjiakou, introduced that electricity and water are needed to create hydrogen fuel, and as a city rich in wind power and solar resources, Zhangjiakou enjoys natural advantages in making "green" hydrogen with "green" electricity. The consumption of hydrogen energy generates water, which can be recycled. Therefore both the production and use of hydrogen energy are green and pollution-free.

"To encourage the hydrogen industry, Zhangjiakou offers favorable electricity price for relevant enterprises. We sell hydrogen energy at a price that is lower than its fair market value to nurture the market," Zhao said.

China has set its goal to peak carbon emissions and carbon neutrality. By making "green" hydrogen with "green" electricity, Zhangjiakou is striving for whole-process carbon reduction and even zero emission.

The city has made a plan on hydrogen energy construction for the next five years and long-range objectives through the year 2035, which aims to comprehensively and synchronously advance the planning and policy making of the sector and enhance both industrial and enterprise development.

So far, a wind power hydrogen production project has been completed in the city's Guyuan county, producing nearly six tonnes of hydrogen on a daily basis. In addition, another green hydrogen demonstration base built by Zhangjiakou City Traffic Construction Investment Holding Group Co., Ltd. is also under construction.

Seven hydrogen projects have been put into operation across the city, and 23 are under construction. A whole industrial chain is taking shape, covering the manufacturing of hydrogen making, processing and storing equipment, core parts of fuel cells, and hydrogen car making.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
China calls on APEC members to work for bright future of prosperity for all in Asia-Pacific

09:17, July 20, 2021 By He Yin ( People's Daily

Chinese President Xi Jinping attends and addresses the Informal Economic Leaders Retreat of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) via video link, July 16, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xueren)

Chinese President Xi Jinping called on members of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to work for a bright future of prosperity for all in the Asia-Pacific while delivering a speech titled Fighting COVID-19 and Leading Economic Recovery Through Solidarity and Cooperation at the APEC Informal Economic Leaders Retreat via video link on July 16.

Xis speech conforms to the development trend of the Asia-Pacific region, shows the noble ideals of the Chinese leader who cares about people all over the world, demonstrates Chinas sincere desire to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic together with countries of the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the world, manifests Chinas sense of responsibility as a constructor of and contributor to cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region, and is of great significance for promoting the building of an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future.

The current situation under the COVID-19 pandemic is undergoing many twists and turns, including the constant mutations of the virus. Controlling the pandemic still poses a difficult challenge, while global economic recovery is still on shaky ground. Against this backdrop, the international community is in urgent need of more confidence, hope, and cooperation.

At the crucial moment, Xi proposed strengthening international cooperation on COVID-19 response, deepening regional economic integration, pursuing inclusive and sustainable development, and seizing opportunities from scientific and technological innovation at the APEC Informal Economic Leaders Retreat.

He encouraged countries to reach a consensus about pushing ahead cooperation, offered a new formula for global response to the pandemic and a new approach to world economic recovery, and injected new impetus to deepening cooperation in the Asia-Pacific.

For member economies of the Asia-Pacific, defeating COVID-19 and restoring growth at an early date are the top priority for the time being, Xi said in his speech.

We must stick to solidarity and cooperation as we go through this difficult time and jointly work for a healthier and brighter future for humanity, said Xi, noting that vaccines are a powerful weapon to prevail over the pandemic and revive the economy.

China was the first country in the world that promised to make COVID-19 vaccines a global public good, and has been calling for closer international cooperation on vaccines to ensure that they are accessible and affordable in developing countries.

Keeping its promise, China has provided more than 500 million doses of vaccines for other developing countries, and will provide another $3 billion in international aid over the next three years to support COVID-19 response and economic and social recovery in other developing countries.

Besides, the country has financed the founding of a Sub-Fund on APEC Cooperation on Combating COVID-19 and Economic Recovery, one again proving itself to be a reliable and major contributor to global fight against the virus.

How to promote economic transformation and upgrading and achieve lasting economic recovery remains a major issue for the Asia-Pacific, a major engine for global economic growth. Grasping the crux of economic problems in the Asia-Pacific and even the world, Xi put forward a solution to stimulating economic recovery.

We must remove barriers, not erect walls. We must open up, not close off. We must seek integration, not decoupling, said Xi, who believes win-win cooperation is the only right way forward, while a closed-door policy, exclusion, confrontation and division would only lead to a dead end.

We must follow a people-centered approach, foster a sound environment to buttress sustainable economic and social development worldwide, and achieve green growth, he continued.

Chinas proposals for promoting open, sustainable and innovative development have fully shown the countrys sincere .hope to work with countries in the Asia-Pacific and beyond to achieve higher-standard mutual benefit and win-win cooperation.

The country will host a workshop on digital capacity building and take forward such initiatives as bolstering the recovery of the tourism sector with digital tools, which is expected to give a fresh impetus to the economic recovery in the Asia-Pacific.

With its root struck deep in the Asia-Pacific, China will continue to serve the regions development and prosperity, and promote the building of an Asia-Pacific Community with a shared future.

During the 27th APEC Economic Leaders Meeting on Nov. 20, 2020, Xi proposed building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future featuring openness and inclusiveness, innovation-driven growth, greater connectivity, and mutually beneficial cooperation, and comprehensively expounded on the rich connotations of an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future, charting the route to the regions development.

The meeting adopted the APEC Putrajaya Vision 2040, which specified the goal of building an open, dynamic, resilient and peaceful Asia-Pacific community.

The APEC Economic Leaders Statement issued following the APEC Informal Economic Leaders Retreat on July 16 reaffirmed the goal, which has fully proven that APEC members are confident that building an Asia-Pacific community with a shared future meets the expectations of all parties and will facilitate regional prosperity and development, and improve the well-being of people in the region.

China has embarked upon a new journey toward fully building a modern socialist country, which will bring about greater development opportunities to the Asia-Pacific and infuse more positive energy into world peace and prosperity.

The country will continue upholding the idea of a community with a shared future for mankind, and join hands with other APEC members to promote anti-epidemic cooperation and economic recovery and work for a bright future of prosperity for all in the Asia-Pacific.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Liang Jun)
Chinese-built seaport in Kenya receives bulk cargo vessel

Xinhua) 09:21, July 20, 2021

NAIROBI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese-built Lamu port located on the Kenyan coast on Monday received a large cargo vessel as the port reaffirms its strategic position as a transhipment hub serving the greater eastern African region.

John Mwangemi, acting managing director of the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), said the arrival of MV Spirit of Dubai, owned by the French shipping line CMA CGM, at the recently launched first berth of Lamu port, will inspire confidence in its ability to host international logistics business.

"The dream of spearheading the transhipment business at the Lamu port has now become a reality with the arrival of the world's biggest and most reputable shipping lines," Mwangemi said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on May 20 inaugurated the first berth of Lamu port, which is part of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor to pave way for the docking of bulk cargo ships.

The seaport that is located in Lamu archipelago which is also a world heritage site is being constructed by the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and will have 32 berths in total upon completion.

The 310 billion shillings (2.86 billion U.S. dollars) port is expected to be the largest deepwater port in Sub-Saharan Africa besides enhancing regional connectivity, trade and investments.

The Lamu port on July 15 received the first commercial ship MV AMU 1 owned by a local shipping company and is expected to attract large vessels transporting cargo destined for the greater Horn of Africa region and beyond.

Mwangemi said MV Spirit of Dubai will pick the same cargo offloaded by MV AMU 1, for onward transhipment to the Middle East and Europe.

He said the port is capable of handling Panamax and post-Panamax vessels with a capacity of over 10,000 TEUs adding that two additional berths will be operationalized at the end of this year.

"We are prepared to continue receiving more vessels in the coming few days," said Mwangemi, adding that installation of modern infrastructure and deployment of skilled personnel will enhance seamless operations at the mega seaport.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Vice premier urges building world-class trade-promotion body

Xinhua) 09:29, July 20, 2021

Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, speaks while attending a conference held by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) in Beijing, capital of China, July 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Bin)

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Hu Chunhua on Monday called for efforts to build a world-class trade-promotion body that plays a greater role in advancing high-level opening-up.

Hu, also a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks while attending a conference held by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT).

Giving credit to the CCPIT's work in recent years, Hu urged the body to base itself on serving businesses and speed up the building of a wide-ranging service system.

Efforts should also be made by the council to create more platforms for high-quality economic and trade cooperation, and foster a favorable external environment for high-level opening-up, he added.

Founded in 1952, the CCPIT is China's national foreign trade and investment promotion agency.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China to help stimulate innovation vitality of female sci-tech talents

Xinhua) 09:43, July 20, 2021

Scientists monitor the operation of China's Hard X-ray Modulation Telescope (HXMT) at the Institute of High Energy Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, capital of China, Feb. 18, 2021. (Xinhua/Cai Yang)

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- China will ramp up efforts to help stimulate the innovation vitality of female scientific and technological (sci-tech) talents, according to the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The ministry and the All-China Women's Federation, as well as other 11 departments, have launched a series of measures to support female researchers in playing a greater role in sci-tech innovation.

These measures include training high-level female sci-tech talents, supporting their innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities, improving evaluation mechanisms for them, and supporting their research during pregnancy and nursing periods.

The ministry will work with relevant departments to implement these measures so as to create a better environment for female sci-tech talents.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Two trapped workers found dead in flooded tunnel in China's Guangdong

Xinhua) 10:24, July 20, 2021

Photo taken on July 17 shows rescuers pushing a water pump deeper into the flooded construction site of Shijingshan tunnel in Zhuhai, Guangdong Province. (Xinhua)

GUANGZHOU, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Two workers trapped in a flooded tunnel since last Thursday were found dead on Monday in Zhuhai City, south China's Guangdong Province, the on-site rescue headquarters said.

A total of 14 workers were trapped at the construction site of the Shijingshan tunnel, part of the city's Xingye expressway, when the site was flooded at around 3:30 a.m. on July 15.

The two victims were found Monday afternoon at around 1,060 meters and 1,070 meters into the left-side entrance of the tunnel, respectively.

Rescuers will spare no effort to search and rescue the remaining trapped workers, and more than 2,400 rescuers and over 200 rescue vehicles have been dispatched to the scene, the headquarters said.

The narrowness of the tunnel and complicated hydrological, geological and meteorological conditions have made the rescue difficult, it added.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Chinese FM meets with Arab League chief

Xinhua) 10:42, July 20, 2021

ALAMEIN, Egypt, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Arab League (AL) Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit here on Sunday.

During the meeting, Wang said that Arab countries created splendid civilizations in history, and China sincerely hopes that they will continue to create new glories in the future.

China supports Arab states in pursuing a path of unity and self-improvement, taking their destiny in their own hands, said Wang, adding that China supports the AL to play a greater role in promoting regional peace and stability as well as political settlement of hotspot issues.

The top Chinese diplomat noted that China and Arab countries have taken the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum as a platform to promote the development of China-Arab ties in recent years. The two sides, he said, agreed to jointly build a China-Arab community with a shared future in the new era and hold the first China-Arab Summit to inject strong vitality into the development of China-Arab strategic partnership.

China is willing to work with Arab countries, implement the outcomes of the 9th ministerial meeting of the China-Arab States Cooperation Forum, and jointly build a China-Arab community with a shared future, Wang added.

Gheit congratulated the Communist Party of China (CPC) on its 100th anniversary and spoke highly of the historic achievements made by the Chinese people under the leadership of the CPC.

The Arab-China relations are very strong, and the AL hopes to further strengthen the ties with China, said Gheit. He also thanked China for providing anti-epidemic material assistance.

The AL appreciates China's just positions on regional issues, supports China's initiatives on regional situation and hotspot issues, and stands ready to stay in close communication with China to ensure the successful convening of the upcoming first Arab-China Summit, said Gheit.

The two sides also exchanged in-depth views on international and regional issues of common concern.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China, ASEAN open new chapter in common development, prosperity

Xinhua) 10:54, July 20, 2021

Thanks to the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), more commodities from ASEAN countries, ranging from agricultural products such as mango, durian and coffee to primary and intermediate products like rubber and paper, have entered the Chinese market. In 2020, China and ASEAN became each other's largest trading partners for the first time.

BANGKOK, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China on Monday celebrate the 30th anniversary of the establishment of their dialogue relations.

Since the relations began in July 1991, bilateral trade volume had soared from less than 8 billion U.S. dollars to more than 680 billion dollars last year. With such a strong foundation, the two sides have pledged to enhance cooperation in all sectors to open a new chapter in ASEAN-China common development and prosperity.

Aerial photo provided by the Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone (TCRIZ) shows a part of the industrial zone in Thailand's Rayong Province on May 21, 2021. (TCRIZ via Xinhua)

The Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone in Thailand's Rayong Province has been a miniature and fruit of such win-win cooperation. Established in 2006 and now home to 160 overseas companies, the plant boasts 40,000 local workers, mostly in automobile, electronics and machinery sectors.

Himile Group, a major tire mold supplier headquartered in China, chose to set up a factory in the zone in 2014.

"Most of our clients, the world's top tire producers, have built their production bases in ASEAN countries. We want to move closer to them ... to serve the Southeast Asian market," said Qiu Jinliang, managing director of Himile's Thai branch.

Over the past seven years, the plant's production and sales capacity has expanded 60 percent annually, Qiu said, noting that "the biggest challenge now is our production capacity falls short of clients' demand."

In the past year and a half, despite the COVID-19 outbreak and related travel restrictions, the industrial zone managed to attract 27 Chinese companies to invest there, said Zhao Bin, president of the Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Realty Development.

Aerial photo provided by the Thai-Chinese Rayong Industrial Zone (TCRIZ) shows the administrative building of the industrial zone in Thailand's Rayong Province, on May 21, 2021. (TCRIZ via Xinhua)

With more than 650 million consumers and being a supply chain hub for major industries, ASEAN is becoming an important strategic market for Chinese businesses, Thailand's Siam Commercial Bank said in a research report.

In 2020, China's foreign direct investment (FDI) in ASEAN countries surged 52.1 percent year-on-year, bucking a global downward trend. Meanwhile, ASEAN investors continue to see a rosy prospect in China for its solid post-pandemic recovery and the new development paradigm of "dual circulation," with the bloc's investment in the Chinese mainland jumping 50.7 percent in the first half of 2021, according to China's Ministry of Commerce.

Bilateral trade has also thrived over the years, buoyed by a friendly relationship between the two sides and the China-ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

Thanks to the CAFTA, more commodities from ASEAN countries, ranging from agricultural products such as mango, durian and coffee to primary and intermediate products like rubber and paper, have entered the Chinese market. In 2020, China and ASEAN became each other's largest trading partner for the first time.

Photo taken on May 7, 2021 shows fresh mangoes during a ceremony marking the first shipment of Cambodia's fresh mangoes to China, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. (Xinhua/Ly Lay)

In May, Cambodia exported its first batch of fresh mangoes directly to China as part of increased agricultural cooperation between the two countries.

Cambodian Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon expected the country's fresh mango exports to China to total 100,000 tons this year.

"We will continue to enhance cooperation with China, increasing exports of our products to the Chinese market," he said.

Trade volume between China and ASEAN maintained a robust growth in 2021, surging 27.8 percent year-on-year in the first six months, according to China's customs statistics.

The signing ceremony of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement is held via video conference in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, Nov. 15, 2020. (VNA via Xinhua)

In November last year, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement was signed by its 15 participating countries including China and the 10 ASEAN members, creating a massive free trade zone covering roughly 30 percent of the world's gross domestic product, trade and population.

The RCEP marks "the beginning of a new era for China-ASEAN ties" and is a boon to trade and investment in not only Southeast Asia, but also the world, said Panitan Wattanayagorn, chairman of Thai prime minister's Security Advisory Committee.

Chheang Vannarith, president of the Phnom Penh-based Asian Vision Institute, said the RCEP would promote regional trade and investment as it would further reduce trade barriers, expand the integrated regional market, and strengthen regional supply chains.

Photo taken on June 29, 2021 shows workers inspecting new cars in a factory of the SAIC Motor-CP Co., Ltd. in Chonburi province, Thailand. (Xinhua/Wang Yaguang)

"The tailwind from the RCEP will give us a lift," said Zhao Feng, vice president of the SAIC Motor-CP Co., Ltd., a joint venture between the Shanghai-based SAIC Motor Corporation and Thai conglomerate CP Group. Once coming into effect, the agreement will facilitate the company's imports and exports, lower operation costs and minimize risks.

With a planned investment of more than 30 billion baht (about 1 billion U.S. dollars), the SAIC Motor-CP's plant in Thailand's Chonburi province represented one of Thailand's largest FDI projects. "We aim to make it the MG brand right-hand-drive vehicle manufacturing base in ASEAN," Zhao said.

Having worked 25 years in the auto industry and eight years in the SAIC Motor-CP, Jakkit Chuwitsakunlert is now a senior manager of the company's quality assurance department. He said what impressed him the most is the company's efficiency, or "the Chinese speed" as he called.

"Everything should be done very fast. It is very challenging, but think in a positive way, it's a good thing," Jakkit said. "Boosted by the Chinese speed, I have no doubt that our company will grow faster and faster."

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
World's first 600 km/h high-speed maglev train rolls off assembly line

Xinhua) 13:14, July 20, 2021

QINGDAO, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China's new high-speed maglev train, with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour, rolled off the production line on Tuesday. It is currently the world's fastest ground vehicle available.

The new maglev transportation system made its public debut in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province.

It was self-developed by China and marks the country's latest scientific and technological achievement in the field of rail transit, according to the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC).

China's new breakthrough demonstrates that the country has mastered a complete set of high-speed maglev train engineering technologies, including system integration, vehicle production, traction power supply, rail trails, and transport control and communication, said the company.

Launched in October 2016, the high-speed maglev train project saw the development of a magnetic-levitation train prototype with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour in 2019, and conducted a successful test run in June 2020.

Engineers have completed the integration of the maglev transportation system, and a train with five carriages has been running well on a test line within the factory, the company said.

Aerial photo taken on July 20, 2021 shows China's new maglev transportation system in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. China's new high-speed maglev train rolled off the production line on Tuesday. It has a designed top speed of 600 km per hour -- currently the fastest ground vehicle available globally. The new maglev transportation system made its public debut in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. It has been self-developed by China, marking the country's latest scientific and technological achievement in the field of rail transit, according to the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

The train can travel with two to 10 carriages, each holding more than 100 passengers, according to Ding Sansan, chief engineer of the project.

The train provides the best solution for trips within the range of 1,500 km, Ding said, adding it fills the speed gap between aviation and high-speed trains.

Compared with traditional vehicles running on wheels, high-speed maglev trains do not have contact with rail tracks. They have advantages in terms of efficiency and speed, and produce very little noise, said He Yunfeng, with CRRC Zhuzhou Electric Co., Ltd.

"They can start and stop quickly, are safe and have strong gradeability," He said.

Noting that the new maglev transportation system has great strategic significance, He Yunfeng said it will maintain China's edge in the high-speed transportation field while also advancing the development of high-end equipment and emerging industries.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China, Algeria agree to strengthen bilateral cooperation

Xinhua) 13:15, July 20, 2021

ALGIERS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Monday that China and Algeria have reached a broad range of consensuses on strengthening bilateral cooperation.

At a joint press conference with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, Wang said he had in-depth and friendly talks with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Lamamra, during which they have reached a series of important consensuses.

First, China and Algeria agreed to renew their traditional friendship, Wang said.

The Chinese side appreciates Algeria for always standing firmly with China on issues concerning China's core interests, and it will continue to uphold justice and speak up for Algeria on sovereign independence and territorial integrity, Wang said.

Second, the two countries agreed to open up new prospects for practical cooperation, Wang said.

China and Algeria should as soon as possible conduct consultations on signing a new five-year plan for comprehensive strategic cooperation and an implementation plan for jointly building the Belt and Road, make solid progress on the El Hamdania Central Port as well as other key cooperation projects, and help Algeria accelerate the realization of independent and sustainable development, he said.

Third, the two countries agreed to work together to win the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang said.

China will do its best to continue to meet Algeria's demand for vaccines, and offer all necessary assistance to Algeria, so as to help the country overcome the pandemic at an early date, he said, adding that China thanks Algeria for providing support for its "Spring Sprout" program, an inoculation drive for Chinese citizens living overseas.

Fourth, the two countries agreed to make new contributions to maintaining international and regional security and stability, Wang said.

China and Algeria should strengthen strategic communication, actively push forward the political settlement of hot issues, maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, and defend international equity and justice, he said.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China supports Algeria in taking its own development path: FM

Xinhua) 13:17, July 20, 2021

ALGIERS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- China highly appreciates Algeria's strong support on issues concerning China's core interests and major concerns, and firmly supports Algeria in taking a development path in line with its own national conditions and in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday.

Wang made the remarks during a meeting here with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra.

Wang said China will continue to regard Algeria as a reliable good friend and partner, carry forward the fine tradition of mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual support, strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with Algeria and push the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level.

China will continue to provide Algeria with vaccines and anti-pandemic materials to support Algeria's complete victory over the pandemic at an early date, he added.

China is willing to work with Algeria and other developing countries to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, and expand their representation and voice in international affairs, said Wang.

Lamamra warmly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, saying that Algeria hopes to work with China to promote the continuous development of the traditional friendship and pragmatic cooperation between the two countries.

The Algerian side will always "stand in the same trench" with China, safeguard international fairness and justice, and is willing to strengthen cooperation with China in economy, trade, science, technology, and human resources training to achieve common development, said Lamamra.

Algeria opposes external forces pointing fingers at China-Africa cooperation, and is willing to work with China to promote tripartite cooperation, said the Algerian minister.

The two sides agreed to speed up negotiations to sign the five-year plan for China-Algeria comprehensive strategic cooperation and the implementation plan for joint development of the Belt and Road.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Paratroopers descend with parachutes

China Military Online) 13:18, July 20, 2021

Paratroopers assigned to a brigade of the PLA Air Forces airborne troops descend to the ground after jumping out of a transport aircraft during a recent massive airborne assault training operation on July 3, 2021. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Yang Jielin)

(Web editor: Zhong Wenxing, Liang Jun)
How Chinese astronauts maintain personal hygiene in space

Xinhua) 14:34, July 20, 2021

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Three Chinese astronauts have been living and working in China's space station core module Tianhe for more than a month.

The astronauts have the same personal hygiene needs as people on Earth, but see to them in different ways due to their microgravity environment.

A video released on June 23 shows how the astronauts start their day. Tang Hongbo uses face wipes to clean himself, squeezes toothpaste directly into his mouth, and swallows it after brushing his teeth.

Huang Weifen, the chief designer of China's manned space program astronaut system, said that it is impossible for astronauts to shower as they do on Earth. According to Huang, the astronauts heat wet towels to wipe their bodies.

As for washing their hair, they put on shower caps, massage their hair with rinse-free shampoo, and towel dry.

The astronauts underwent comprehensive training to live in space, said Huang, adding that they can shave and cut their hair.

"My barber is right beside me," said Nie Haisheng in an interview before the three astronauts traveled to space, pointing to Tang Hongbo.

Nie said they would cut each other's hair in space and had practiced many times. The hair clippers are attached to something like a vacuum cleaner, which produces negative pressure and can suck in the hair that is cut.

Liu Weibo, the deputy chief designer of the astronaut system, said that the three astronauts don't do laundry in space and use disposable clothing instead.

Chinese scientists have devised a system to recycle water from the urine, breath and sweat produced by astronauts in space, which could save up to 100 million yuan (about 15.5 million U.S. dollars) in a period of six months with three astronauts in orbit.

"The most valuable thing in orbit is water," Liu told reporters.

He noted that water, which is contaminated with detergent as well as skin debris and dirt washed from the body, will be challenging to recycle.

Liu said they have calculated and verified that disposable clothing that is regularly changed and discarded costs much less than doing laundry with water.

Liu said the astronauts change their clothes according to their needs. He said that underwear is the most frequently changed item of clothing, that sweatshirts and socks are changed less frequently, and that working uniforms are changed every month.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Scientists under pressure for denouncing "lab leak" conspiracy theory: media

Xinhua) 16:07, July 20, 2021

HONG KONG, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Scientists and research institutions around the world are under increasing pressure for denouncing the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab, according to a recent article published in Hong Kong news website Min.news.

The article cited a number of public health experts and scientists, who were pressured and threatened for disputing the "lab leak" theory.

Anthony Fauci, an American immunologist who serves as the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the U.S. president, faced criticism and calls to resign, the article noted.

Additionally, Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and member of the World Health Organization mission team to Wuhan, was removed from the COVID-19 commission looking for the origins of the pandemic, while Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of Sydney, also became a target of unrelenting online attacks.

U.S. intelligence agencies have never found any solid evidence on lab leaks and more and more scientists have spoken out against the conspiracy theory, the article said.

As there have been resurgences in COVID-19 cases in many parts of the world, the rumor-mongering and politicization of COVID-19 must stop and let the truth and science decide, it added.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China's big data industry impressive: Luxembourg's ambassador to China

Xinhua) 16:10, July 20, 2021

Marc Hubsch, Luxembourg's ambassador to China, has praised China's big data industry's development during a visit to southwestern province of Guizhou.

Guizhou is now one of the regions with the highest number of mega-data centers in the country and even in the world.

Its rich big-data resources are injecting growth momentum into the digital economy. Between 2016 and 2020, Guizhou's digital economic growth rate ranked first in China for five consecutive years. In 2021, the added value of its digital economy is expected to exceed 600 billion yuan (about 91.7 billion U.S. dollars).

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
China braces for two typhoons

Xinhua) 17:10, July 20, 2021

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China is bracing for two typhoons, Typhoon Cempaka and Typhoon In-Fa, which are expected to lash the affected areas with strong winds and heavy rains.

At 3 p.m. Tuesday, the center of Typhoon Cempaka, the seventh of this year, was located in a coastal area approximately 60 km southeast of Yangjiang in Guangdong Province, or at 21.5 degrees north latitude and 112.4 degrees east longitude, the National Meteorological Center said.

Typhoon Cempaka is expected to make landfall between Taishan and Dianbai in Guangdong on Tuesday afternoon or night.

The weather authorities said Typhoon In-Fa, the sixth of this year, is approaching the coastal areas of east China's Zhejiang Province and Fujian Province, indicating the likelihood of a binary typhoon.

Typhoon In-Fa is expected to make landfall at the coastal regions of Zhejiang and Fujian on Sunday, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said Tuesday.

The headquarters on Tuesday morning launched its Level IV emergency response to fight floods and typhoons. Before this, it sent a task force to Guangdong to provide help on Monday night.

Guangdong has called back fishing vessels and asked fish-farming workers to be evacuated.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
Flights canceled as typhoon approaches China's Guangdong

Xinhua) 17:10, July 20, 2021

GUANGZHOU, July 20 (Xinhua) -- More than 200 flights have been canceled in south China's Guangdong Province as Typhoon Cempaka approaches.

China's national observatory has renewed an orange alert for Typhoon Cempaka, the seventh typhoon this year, which is forecast to make landfall on the coast of Guangdong on Tuesday afternoon.

By noon on Tuesday, authorities in areas of Guangdong had issued 58 rainstorm and typhoon warnings. The provincial authorities have upgraded the emergency response level due to strong winds.

China Southern Airlines has canceled 219 inbound and outbound flights in Guangdong, including 123 in the provincial capital Guangzhou, 77 in Shenzhen and 19 in Zhuhai.

On Tuesday, passenger ships stopped operations in the township of Chuandao, under Taishan City. More than 7,000 tourists there have been evacuated.

China has a four-tier color-coded weather warning system, with red representing the most severe warning, followed by orange, yellow and blue.

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)
After the Pandemic: From rain to sunshine  understanding China-Australia relations

People's Daily Online) 17:00, July 20, 2021

After the Pandemic is an upbeat, realistic, and innovative documentary series that takes a deep dive into the enormous opportunities awaiting businesses and entrepreneurs in Australia and China in a post-COVID world.

The five episodes focus on the economic recovery along with ongoing developments in the areas of trade and investment in both countries as well as throughout the wider Asia-Pacific region. In the second episode, host Tim Harcourt interviewed the Daigou Queen, Livia Wang, who has built up a booming business with a turnover of one billion dollars over the past four years. She believes that each country has its own unique characteristics and individual potential to grow. Tim also talked with James Laurences, the director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at the University of Technology in Sydney. James stated that there are a lot of opportunities and a large scope for cooperation that Australia and China can continue to take advantage of moving forward. Cooperation rather than competition is the name of the game, both emphasized.

(Web editor: Hongyu, Bianji)
Collective Horologys second collaboration in their Portfolio series is a three-way collaboration with URWERK, the independent Swiss watch manufacturer, and the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in New York. The project has produced a bespoke timepiece that pays tribute to the experience of piloting the Space Shuttle Enterprise on the 40th anniversary of the first Space Shuttle program. It is the product of their shared passion for space exploration as well as mutual quest for creative, concept-driven watches. Ever wondered what that final countdown feels like before being launched into space? The URWERK UR-100V P.02 collectors wristwatch will give you an idea with a dial display that tracks the space shuttle programs typical launch and landing sequences in minutes. These are visible through apertures that also show the approximate location of the shuttle at each phase of launch and landing. Green represents the shuttle on Earth. Blue indicates the shuttle traveling through the Earths sky or lower atmosphere. Red represents the upper atmosphere and black indicates time in space or, more precisely, low earth orbit. The latest addition to the Portfolio Series by Collective Horology, a membership driven watch community cofounded by childhood friends Asher Rapkin and Gabe Reilly in California, is a bespoke timepiece that is an ode not only to space travel but the travelers themselves. Collective was formed to connect a community of enthusiasts, who are passionate about watchmaking, through an exclusive membership that enables access to the production of two collaborative series. The Collective Series is an annual collaboration with their favorite watch brands while the Portfolio Series is a showcase for independent and high-horology watchmaking.

Time machine

Martin Frei, URWERK Co-founder and Chief Designer, and Felix Baumgartner, URWERK Co-founder and Master Watchmaker, had never collaborated with anyone other than other watchmakers (and one fine whiskey maker) before, but through some good introductions Collective was able to get their attention. What we like and think is exciting is that a watch is a creative canvas upon which stories can be told. We dont fancy ourselves watch designers but, because of our marketing background, we do see ourselves as storytellers, says Rapkin. We loved URWERKs use of orbiting satellite hours and minute hands for the UR-100 SpaceTime launched in 2019, but we saw an opportunity to tell a different story. If URWERK were to create a watch that was a tribute to the space shuttle prototype, Enterprise, what would that be? says Reilly.

Childhood Dreams

Then, being native New Yorkers, Rapkin and Reilly decided to find an institution they love in the city that could assist with and benefit from the project. They approached several museums, including the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, whose complex has sat on the edge of New Yorks Hudson River for 40 years and is just two miles from where Rapkin grew up. Going there as a child was just the most incredible experience. We chose the Intrepid Museum, which has the space shuttle Enterprise on permanent display, because they were open and enthusiastic about the project, he says. because the museum was such a major part of both Gabes and my youth, and because 2020 was a uniquely challenging year for museums around the world, we and Goldsmith & Complications, the official authorized dealer, are going to donate a total of US$50,000 dollars from the proceeds of this project to the Intrepid Museum to help ensure that Enterprises stories of bravery and innovation will be told for generations to come.

Owners of the unisex URWERK UR-100V P.02 for Collective will be the recipients of a very special wristwatch... We sincerely hope that they will derive as much pleasure from owning this watch as we did in creating it. Quite literally, it is a childhood dream come true. This note from Frei and Baumgartner in the Owners Manual acknowledges the investment of all of their knowledge, skills and creativity  with significant creative, scientific and historical contributions from the Intrepid Museum  to produce the piece. Through conversations with Collective, the Museums Curator of Aviation Eric Boehm and even a former astronaut, they ultimately landed on what this watch is  a tribute to the experience of flying the space shuttle. My father is a physicist and nighttime was his favorite time," says Frei. "When I was a child, he sometimes woke me so that we could gaze at the sky together. The seemingly infinite black of the night would sometimes appear terrifying and, despite my fathers presence, I did not always feel particularly reassured. But then he started to teach me how to "read the sky". At night my father did not speak to me like a scientist, but as a storyteller. The sky was not the limit anymore but the place to reach.

Collectors Piece

Everybody portrays it as a much simpler experience than it really is. When you ask an astronaut about it, which we've never had the chance to do until now, they tell you that for some it can be transformative, others downright scary," says Rapkin watching First Man, starring Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong, captured the feeling for him of how terrifying and intense it must have been to sit in a capsule - or Space Shuttle - being rocketed into space. "The watch lets you contemplate what these early explorers went through to explore the Universe beyond Earth on behalf of all of us. While the standard edition of the UR-100V tracks the kilometers traveled on the equator in 20 minutes and the kilometers the earth covered around the sun in the same period, the P.02 takes a completely different approach, using the two lateral apertures to track the process and timing of both take-off and landing for the Space Shuttle. A custom made, detailed manual provides great detail into that process, allowing the wearer to experience the same period of time that an astronaut might have when launching or landing a Space Shuttle mission.

UR 100V P.02  Urwerk

Wandering Hour

When you get your hands on the P.02, your impulse is immediately to watch the wandering hour complication play out. As you watch the hand wander through the space shuttles typical launch sequence you really can think about what seven minutes sitting at the top of a rocket must be like. Therein lies the value. Owning a watch like this is an investment in the art of watchmaking as well as storytelling. Boehm says the Museum was excited to help Collective and URWERK capture the experience of flying the space shuttle by highlighting the instrumentation on board. I was thrilled to assist in bringing the P.02 to life, taking design inspiration from Enterprises cockpit instruments to help tell the story of some of the shuttle programs most dramatic moments: launch and landing.

Availability

The Urwerk UR-100V P.02 for Collective will be available exclusively to existing and new Collective members. Those interested in joining Collective and acquiring the timepiece can visit Collective's website (collectivehorology.com) where more information as well as a membership application are available.

Florida based, independent watch salon, Goldsmith & Complications is the official authorized dealer for the collaboration and will handle delivery in partnership with Collective and URWERK.
Samsung will inoculate staff with Pfizer's coronavirus vaccines instead of Moderna vaccines amid a supply shortage.

The company was told of the change by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency on Monday, a spokesman said.

The government has admitted that an expected shipment of 1 million Moderna vaccines failed to arrive last week. Samsung will start vaccinating staff aged 18 to 59 at its plants and research facilities next Tuesday.

Other companies like Hyundai and LG will also give the Pfizer vaccine to their staff.
Teachers and school administrators are grumbling because the National Human Rights Commission of Korea has become a favored conduit for disgruntled kids to file complaints about their schools and educators.

According to the NHRC last week, 15 percent of all complaints it received last year were filed by schoolkids. They are filing complaints at the drop of a hat -- from having to stand outside the classroom to having their precious phones confiscated. Teachers say it has become increasingly difficult to discipline students because the commission has repeatedly ruled in their favor.

The commission seems to regard most of the disciplinary measures used by Korean schools as violating students' human rights. The Busan office of the NHRC sided with students back in 2018 after they complained about having to write letters of apology for their misconduct or stand in front of their classmates holding placards listing their infractions.

The commission opined that one could violate their freedom of conscience and the other their right to safety and study. Last year, the commission said confiscating students' phones every morning and returning them after school violates their freedom of action. Its solution? To let them use their phones in their lunch break.


As Korean society ages, the country tops OECD member states in terms of outpatient visits to hospital per person, although the number of medical professionals is smaller than the OECD average.

Korea's life expectancy at birth is 83.3 years, 2.3 years longer than the OECD average. According to analysis of 2019 OECD statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Monday, Korea's life expectancy was still 1.1 years shorter than Japan's. Men's life expectancy was 80.3 years and women's 86.3 years.

But Korea's suicide rate was also the highest in the rich countries' club at 24.7 per 100,000 population in 2018, more than double the OECD average of 11.

In other health risk factors, 16.4 percent of the population smoke, the same as the OECD average, and the per capita consumption of alcohol is 8.3 liters per year, slightly less than the average of 8.8 liters.

The percentage of overweight or obese people is 33.7 percent, the second lowest after Japan's 27.2 percent. But Korea's proportion of overweight and obese people increased from 30.5 percent in 2009 to 33.7 percent in 2019.

The annual number of outpatient visits to hospital is 17.2 per person, the highest in the OECD countries and a whopping 2.5 times the OECD average of 6.8. The average length of a hospital stay per patient was 18 days, the second longest after Japan's 27.3 days. But the number of doctors is only 2.5 per 1,000 population compared to the OECD average of 3.6.
"Following on from the strike group's inaugural deployment, the United Kingdom will permanently assign two ships in the region from later this year," Britain's Defense Minister Ben Wallace said in a joint announcement in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart, Nobuo Kishi.

Plans for the high-profile visit by the carrier strike group come as London deepens security ties with Tokyo, which has expressed growing alarm in recent months over China's territorial ambitions in the region, including Taiwan.

Britain said on Tuesday it would permanently deploy two warships in Asian waters after its Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier and escort ships sail to Japan in September through seas where China is vying for influence with the United States and Japan.

The British Embassy in Tokyo did not immediately respond when asked which ports in the region the Royal Navy ships would operate from. After their arrival in Japan, Kishi said, the Queen Elizabeth and its escort ships would split up for separate port calls to U.S. and Japanese naval bases along the Japanese archipelago.

A close U.S. ally, Japan hosts the biggest concentration of U.S. military forces outside the United States, including ships, aircraft and thousands of Marines.

The British carrier, which is carrying F-35B stealth jets on its maiden voyage, will dock at Yokosuka, the home of Japan's fleet command and the USS Ronald Reagan, the only forward deployed U.S. aircraft carrier.

The Queen Elizabeth is being escorted by two destroyers, two frigates, two support vessels and ships from the United States and the Netherlands. It will come to Japan through the South China Sea, parts of which are claimed by China and South East Asian countries, with stops in India, Singapore and South Korea.

In a further sign of Britain's growing regional engagement, Wallace, who traveled to Japan with a delegation of military commanders, said Britain would also eventually deploy a Littoral Response Group, a unit of marines trained to undertake missions including evacuations and anti-terrorism operations.
China's export container shipping index up 13.9% in June

From:ChinaDaily | 2021-07-19 17:31

SHANGHAI -- China's index of export container transport went up 13.9 percent month-on-month in June, according to the Shanghai Shipping Exchange.

The average China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI) stood at 2,483.6 last month, according to the exchange.

The sub-reading for Persian Gulf/Red Sea service led the gain with a month-on-month rise of 21.3 percent, followed by those for the Mediterranean and Europe routes, which went up 17.9 percent and 15.2 percent respectively from the previous month.

The CCFI tracks spot and contractual freight rates from Chinese container ports for 12 shipping routes across the globe, based on data from 22 international carriers.

The index was set at 1,000 on Jan 1, 1998.
by Jackie McVicar

Kathryn Anderson and Wilf Bean, members of Mining the Connections, at an information table at the General Council in Corner Brook, NL. [Photo: Ann Russell]

Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia -- Sitting in her living room overlooking Tatamagouche Bay, Kathryn Anderson recalls a recent United Church of Canada (UCC) decision to divestment from Goldcorp. In August in Corner Brook Newfoundland the General Council met with about 360 voting representatives of the United Church from across Canada, says Anderson.

Seventy eight per cent voted in favour of a motion that indicates that it is the will of the church to divest from Goldcorp Inc.

One of the worlds largest gold mining companies, Canadian-based Goldcorp has been plagued with allegations of human rights abuses since it started operating the Marlin mine in Guatemala. Anderson has been part of a working group of the Maritimes Conference of the United Church of Canada called 'Mining the Connections', that has been working for six years to get the UCC to publically divest from one of the worlds largest extractive companies.

Flashback: Questions About Canadian Mining & Investment Emerge

In March 2004, members of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Solidarity Network embarked on a two week educational delegation in Guatemala. Anderson, a founding member of the network, helped lead the delegation much like she had for over a decade. In a chance meeting, a well known Guatemalan environmental activist and political cartoonist told the group about Marlin, a gold mine that was being built in the northern highland region of the country. Though Anderson had spent a significant amount of time in Guatemala accompanying communities who were impacted by the bloody internal armed conflict of the 1980s and 1990s, she had no idea that the latest threat for indigenous populations was gold mining.

Returning to Canada, the group - made up of university professors, students, a teacher and stay-at-home mom amongst others - started investigating Glamis Gold, the company that was building the Marlin mine. Marlin was in part funded by the IFC/World Bank. Its open pit and tailings pond would sit between 19 indigenous Maya communities in the municipalities of San Miguel Ixtahuacan and Sipacapa, in the department of San Marcos.

Marlin was Guatemala's first mega mine and when the land for the mine was bought up in the late 1990s - a controversial process since the land is actually registered as communal in the municipal office - most residents had no idea what kind of questions to ask or even what a mine was. On top of that, local communities were lied to and told that the land was going to be used for an orchid nursery. There seemed little reason to oppose.

That started to change around 2004, just when the Maritimes delegation was in Guatemala. The tailings pond was built and the mine installations were being set up. Community resistance grew and Sipakapa, one the municipalities directly affected, started organizing a community consultation, or plebiscite, to educate locals about the possible impacts of the mine.

Though Guatemala had signed and ratified the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169 on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and later supported the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), which includes the right to Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), compliance was difficult to enforce and the push for foreign investment was on. 36 years of violence and hundreds of thousands of extrajudicial murders and disappearances had become bad for business in Guatemala. The economic elite and event its military allies pushed hard for the negotiations and signed the 1996 Peace Accords, an opportunity to make Guatemala open for business. The Marlin project was a significant part of the international investment that started flooding into the country.

Back in the Maritimes, Andersson who is also a member of the United Church and others who had traveled to Guatemala through Breaking the Silence, got together to form Mining the Connections. A working group of the Maritimes Conference of the United Church of Canada Church in Action Committee, they started educating members of the church and the general public about mining in Colombia, where New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Power purchase coal, and Guatemala. They organized a two-day forum on ethics and investment, where over 80 participants from churches, unions, Aboriginal groups, environmental groups, local mining-affected community groups, students, and Amnesty International members focused on local and global issues.

In 2006, Goldcorp Inc. acquired Glamis Gold for $8.5 billion and opposition to the Marlin mine continued to grow. There were local complaints about water contamination and health impacts, houses being cracked by the dynamite the mine used and social conflict that was driving an otherwise united community apart. Shareholders started to take note and in 2008, at the request of some of the more socially inclined Goldcorp Investors, the company agreed to an independent Human Rights Impact Assessment. Groups like Breaking the Silence started working on shareholder activism at corporate AGMs to draft resolutions to make the company more accountable for its actions. Anderson personally became a Goldcorp shareholder in order to have a voice at these meetings, and Guatemalan partners were brought to Toronto and Vancouver to speak.

A 2008 Goldcorp shareholder resolution submitted to the Annual Meeting of Goldcorp asked the company to halt any plans to expand the mine and/or acquire new land without the free, prior, and informed consent of affected communities. Goldcorp rejected the resolution, stating, The Corporations view is that the proposed resolution appears clearly not to relate in a significant way to the business or affairs of the Corporation. As a result, Jantzi (now Sustainalytics), a sustainable investment advisory company, removed Goldcorp from their list of socially responsible investments.

United Church of Canada Direct Investments in Goldcorp Inc.

Anderson started wondering about other investments, especially pension funds that she had through the United Church of Canada Pension Plan (UCCPP) as a diaconal minister. When she asked specifically about UCCPP investment in Guatemala, she was told that they followed the Jantzi recommendations. She didnt press, knowing that Jantzi had removed Goldcorp from their list. A year later, she found out that the UCCPP was in fact investing in Goldcorp and had received special permission to do so.

Mining the Connections worked quickly when they found out about the United Church investment. They had been working to raise awareness about what was happening in Guatemala without knowing that they were directly investing in Goldcorp.

In 2009, the United Church voted to say that it should find a legal way for the Pension Board to divest, and divest," says Anderson. "They (the Pension Board) came back and said it would be legal to divest and were not going to. We were never given much of an explanation we were just told we arent going to. It was as blunt as that.

In 2010, the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) ordered the Guatemalan State to suspend operations at Goldcorps Marlin Mine as a preventative measure. A couple of weeks later, the HRIA was presented and outlined some of the companys controversial tactics of acquiring land and expanding operations in Guatemala. (Though the State did not comply with the IACHR recommendations and the precautionary measures were later changed - and subsequently not implemented - in 2014, the IACHR admitted the petition about collective and indigenous rights surrounding the Marlin Mine.)

In 2012, Mining the Connections tried again, bringing another motion to the General Council.

The motion was to ... direct the pension board to divest. That motion was declared invalid without any opportunity to proper input from our committee and others who were deeply concerned about this within the church, says Anderson. This included partners from Guatemala and El Salvador, who Mining the Connections had been consulting with throughout the process.

Anderson writes, After the (2012) vote General Council guest Miguel Tomas Castro, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in San Salvador, stated at an Open Space gathering that open-pit gold mining is a matter of life and death. He was disturbed to see the issue of Christians profiting from Goldcorp transformed into an institutional debate around fiduciary duty. We take his words seriously. We will continue to support our partners.

Around the same time, Cathy Gerrior, an indigenous Elder and Ceremony Keeper whose spirit name is white turtle woman, was invited to Guatemala by Breaking the Silence, and in part paid for by the United Church of Canada, to participate in the July 2012 international health tribunal. She visited communities affected by Canadian mining companies including Hudbay and Goldcorp. Reflecting on her experience in an open letter, she writes, Please educate yourself. Then do something. It is all very devastatingly familiar. Do what you know to be right."

After hearing that that the most recent motion to divest was not passed, Gerrior penned a second letter: To the People of the United Church.

She writes:

It has been partly through the reconciliation work of the United Church that I have reconnected with my own heritage and culture. I recently learned, however, that the United Church's pension plan is invested in Goldcorp. I feel confused and betrayed. My teachings are that an apology is not sincere when the one who apologizes continues to do the same thing that was harmful... I was devastated by the news that the United Church; who i have considered groundbreakers, has chosen to allow the United Church Pension Plan to remain invested with Goldcorp. Goldcorp is a mining company in Guatemala that is accused of being responsible for many atrocities perpetrated against the Mayan's, their culture, and Mother Earth.

In public venues, Gerrior has repeatedly said that she stands in solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Guatemala because if more people had stood in solidarity with her people, perhaps she would have a different history.

Leading up to the August, 2015, meeting in Corner Brook, Anderson and the members of Mining the Connections turned a Maritimes movement to a Canada-wide call within the United Church to reconsider its investment.

We did all those organizational things that in the end, led to significant change," says Anderson. "Because its one thing to get a vote, its another thing, and another one of our purposes, even if we hadve lost I think, Canadians have to become aware of what our Canadian companies are doing around the world. So part of our task was education and organizing. And thats what people are doing around the world now around fossil fuel divestment.

The motion stated that the will of the church be that the United Church divest publically from Goldcorp. As of June 2015, the UCCPB held 66,700 shares worth $1,352,000. At the same meeting in Corner Brook, the United Church also voted to divest from fossil fuels.

Divestment Matters

Divestment takes a lot of energy. Even small amounts of divestment are important, but Anderson doesnt underestimate the importance of large divestments, and the potential there is for unions and universities to divest. Pension funds matter a lot and have much more impact," says Anderson. "Individuals should divest for their own ethical reason but pension funds and organizational divestment does have an impact often on the reputation of the company. So investors and other large investors start to question. And that can be useful.

The Canadian Pension Plan Pension Board (CPPPB) continues to invest in Goldcorp and many other companies accused of human rights abuses overseas, including Goldcorp spin-off company Tahoe Resources. CPPPB, which represents the investments of 18 million Canadians, invests about $217 million in Goldcorp Inc directly.

Despite divestment campaigns, there is reluctance of Pension Boards to divest for fear of losing money. For Anderson and others, this argument holds little weight. Examples in the extractives industry, where Canadian mining companies like Hudbay Resources are being sued in Canada for over $12 million for allegations of human rights violations including murder and gang rape in Guatemala, or in fossil fuels, where the Supreme Court of Canada recently ruled that community in Ecuador can proceed with a legal claim to help them collect US $9.5 billion against Chevron Corp in Canada, the risks are high and come with a cost.

We do believe that it is time for pension boards to stop working out of old paradigms which most of them have been trained for in their MBAs," says Anderson. "Most pension boards and investment companies are working out of a paradigm that just does not serve the planet, or indigenous people, or marginalized people, or the earth at this time. And its time for a change. Surely people who are in unions, that were socially driven in their creation, just like universities that were created to serve the common good, begin to look at the common good as part of their fiduciary duty.

Anderson believes that while pensioners want a good return on their investment, they dont necessarily want that to come at the cost of the destruction of human life and the planet.

Aniseto Lopez, the Maya Mam coordinator of the Front in Defense of San Miguel Ixtahuacan (FREDEMI) where Goldcorps Marlin Mine operates was glad to hear about the United Church divestment from Goldcorp. This information makes us very happy, an example for all of those people who invest in metal mining," says Lopez. "Although in San Miguel Ixtahuacan the damage is already done, this serves as an example to show that they are a bad company for society. We will share the news publically.

Lopez and others have long been part of the struggle to make Canadian companies accountable in Guatemala. With almost nowhere left to turn, in 2009, Lopez and members of FREDEMI presented a complaint to Canadas National Contact Point (NCP) for the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, one of the only mechanisms that exist in Canada to denounce human rights violations committed by Canadian companies, including lack of adequate consultation and consent to the project.

Instead of investigating the allegations that FREDEMI put forward, the communities were asked to participate in non-binding dialogue that would ultimately pave the way for the company to continue working in the area. The NCP recommended that: the parties participate in a constructive dialogue in good faith with a view to addressing the issues raised.

In 2011, Breaking the Silence helped draft a resolution to bring Goldcorp into compliance with international law. According to MiningWatch, only 6% of Goldcorp shareholders voted in favour.

Breaking the Silence is the only Maritimes-based organization that is member of the Canadian Network of Corporate Accountability, a national network that advocates for federal legislation to establish mandatory corporate accountability standards for Canadian extractive companies operating abroad. Their initiative, called Open for Justice, is key for Anderson. The most fundamental thing to have happen is to have laws and certainly laws that make it possible to bring companies to account with the Canadian judicial system is important.

For Anderson, extractives industry investments must be questioned. In terms of gold mining, though there may be cultural value of the metal, she notes that there are stockpiles of gold bars and plenty that could be recycled. Enough gold has been mined, she says, for medical and technical use. In terms of fossil fuels, Anderson notes that its time that pensions consider the ethical and economic interests of their investors.

There are new opportunities for economic development," says Anderson. "Investing in infrastructure, investing in renewable resources. Pension boards have been very reluctant. To put it at its best, they do not want to lose money for their pensioners. And that we support. We are not against that, although there are times, quite frankly, when you do have to say we are not going to make money on that.

Eyes are now on the United Church of Canada Pension Board who will have to make a decision: listen to the will of the church and publically divest from Goldcorp or keep investing in a company that they say have made strides in terms of human rights, thanks to shareholder engagement.

The United Church will also have to consider how to implement a motion that was passed to take active steps to sell their holdings in the 200 largest fossil fuel companies and reinvest $8.7 million in renewable energy. Old paradigms and accepting the conventional is no longer an option in a world where people and the planet are at stake.

Jackie McVicar works as co-coordinator of the Maritimes-Guatemala Breaking the Silence Soldarity Network. She was once told by Canadian embassy staff in Guatemala, We cut down trees and mine. Were Canadians. Thats what we do. She would like to see that change.
Registered Nurse Jose Leija puts on personal protective equipment before entering a patient's room in the coronavirus unit at CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital on Friday, Jan. 22, 2021. MIKALA COMPTON | Herald-Zeitung
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FILE - This undated photo released by the FBI on Dec. 30, 1998 shows Boston mobster James Whitey Bulger. The FBI says it posted hundreds of pages of records from the notorious mobsters file earlier in July 2021. (FBI via AP, File)
A Kokomo teacher has spent part of her summer possibly saving the life of a 75-year-old woman.

Late last month, Lacey Jones, a veterinary careers instructor at the Kokomo Area Career Center, traveled to the Hoxworth Blood Center at the University of Cincinnati to donate stem cells to a woman she was genetically matched with who was battling myeloid leukemia. Now, all Jones hopes is that her stem cells were enough.

I really want nothing more than to hear that she is in remission. That was the emotional part of the process. Once it was all over, I just went to my hotel room, and I could not help but to just kind of cry and cry and cry and pray and hope because you want nothing more than for your cells to work for the patient, Jones said.

But the opportunity to help someone was a chance that some dont ever get. Jones registered as a donor through Be the Match, which operates the national bone marrow registry, late last year after the story of her friends daughter, who was diagnosed with infant leukemia, inspired her to want to help someone.

According to Be the Match, only one of 430 people who register as a donor is selected as a match, and some of those who are selected wait years before theyre matched. For Jones, she became a genetic match for someone in just eight months.

At the end of May, she received a call from Be the Match, letting her know that there was a woman who had been diagnosed with myeloid leukemia, and Jones was a secondary match for her. Jones was told that there was someone who was the primary match who matched just a little better, but in the chance that that donor fell through, Jones would be at the plate.

I just kind of waited around, didnt really think anything of it, and then they called me at the beginning of June. She explained that the original person who matched ended up not being who they really needed, and of course with HIPPA and all that they cant really tell you any of that information as to why, Jones said.

As far as the patient, all Jones was told was that it was a 75-year-old woman who was battling myeloid leukemia somewhere in the world. Jones was asked if shed be available to donate during certain dates, but at that point, there were no details as to where she would be donating or exactly when. What Jones did know, though, was that she would do it.

The process then became a whirlwind of scheduling, logistics, and injections. She went to Indianapolis for lab work to ensure she was healthy enough to donate. Then, for a week leading up to her donation, she was required to take injections of a drug called filgrastim to increase the number of white blood cells in her bloodstream so they could be collected more easily.

Theyre actual injections that are given to people who have cancer to increase the white blood cell count, but theyre given to donors because it increases your bone marrow production. Then what happens is your body naturally expels the extra bone marrow into the bloodstream, she said.

Jones was a bit hesitant because shed never given herself injections before, and she was warned of the side effects that could occur. The most common side effect of filgrastim, she said, was soreness due to the overproduction of bone marrow.

They explained some of the side effects of the filgrastim, and that makes you feel a little intimidated. But because of my passion and my empathy for the patient and hearing about there not being donors and just knowing that I could potentially help save her life, it overruled any type of fear I had, she said.

At the end of June, Jones traveled to Hoxworth Blood Center at the University of Cincinnati to begin the donation.

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There are two donation methods, either marrow or peripheral blood stem cells. The marrow donation is a surgical procedure done under anesthesia. Doctors use needles to retrieve liquid marrow from both sides of the back of a patients pelvic bone. The hospital stay is usually from early morning to late afternoon, according to Be the Match, while some donors are kept overnight for observation.

The peripheral stem cell donation, on the other hand, is a non-surgical procedure that takes place at a blood center or outpatient hospital. Blood is removed through a needle in one arm and passed through a machine that collects only the blood-forming cells and returns the blood through a needle in the donors other arm.

As soon as Jones got to the blood center, nurses took a blood sample to see where her white blood cell count was. A normal count, she said, was between four and 10. Hers was at 42. Because the filgrastim injections were so effective for Jones, she was able to do the peripheral stem cell method.

So began a five-hour process of Jones sitting very still while a machine filtered out blood-forming cells from her left arm and put the blood back in her right arm. The nurses took her blood pressure every 15 minutes to ensure she wasnt having any kind of reaction, and the staff knew down to the minute when her donation would be complete, she said, and had the transfer staff ready.

At the end of the donation, Jones said it was like a movie when the person came in to take her stem cells that would be delivered to the patient.

They actually had somebody come up with the cooler because they flew my sample to the patient. Its almost like a movie. You watch someone come through the big steel door with the cooler and watch them package your sample, she said.

And while she didnt know where the sample was going, she was told the recipient was nowhere close to where they were.

When the process was over, Jones was thankful. She said the nurses told her it was a textbook donation, and the only side effect Jones experienced from the injections was mild soreness.

Three months after the donation, the recipient will have the option to find out who her donor was and to contact Jones if she chooses.

Jones said shed love to one day hear from the recipient.

I want nothing more than to one day get that phone call that says, OK, the person you donated to wants to get in contact with you. I dont know what Ill do. Ill probably cry again, she said.

Jones will remain on the Be the Match registry, and in the event she ever receives a call that shes a match again, she will be ready to go, she said.

To join the bone marrow donor registry, visit join.bethematch.org. The process requires a cheek swab, which can be done with a kit thats mailed to potential donors. Afterward, the person will be added to the registry and have the chance to get matched.

Be the Match encourages those who are contacted to donate to go forward with the donation as theyre the patients best genetic match from the entire registry.
Six residents recently died from COVID-19 at Century Villa Health and Rehabilitation, located in Greentown, during a span that ran from June 30 to July 5.

Exceptional Living Centers, the parent company of Century Villa Health Care and Rehabilitation, said the outbreak began when a resident was admitted after being discharged from the hospital. It was believed the resident was exposed prior to the hospital admission but tested negative until their arrival at the facility.

The company confirmed that deaths included at least one vaccinated individual and that most of the vaccinated patients largely were asymptomatic with mild symptoms. Century Villa worked with the Indiana State Department of Health following the diagnoses.

Century Villa offers on-site vaccine clinics for residents and staff but does not have a policy mandating vaccinations among staff and residents.

According to the companys representative, 52 percent of staff are fully vaccinated.

Century Villa currently is screening employees for virus symptoms as they enter and leave the facility. Both staff and residents also are tested daily. Residents who test positive or show symptoms are placed in isolation or, depending on the severity, sent to a hospital. Residents in isolation are cared for by staff wearing personal protective equipment (PPE).

The health and safety of our residents and employees is always our first and foremost priority, said Lauren Germain, director of public relations and communications at Exceptional Living Centers. Our residents are like family to us  Our hearts break for these residents and their families.

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Jennifer Sexton, the public health nursing manager at the Howard County Health Department, said the Delta variant was not responsible for the outbreak at Century Villa but warned that the variant was serious.

First, the Delta variant is approximately 50 percent more transmissible than the Alpha variant (B 1.1.7) which was already 50 percent more transmissible than the original virus, she said. When people are unvaccinated and not wearing masks, each person infected with the Alpha variant, on average, will infect two-and-a-half other people. If a person has the Delta variant, they would transmit it to three-and-a-half to four other people, causing cases to increase exponentially.

Sexton said the verdict was still out on whether the Delta variant makes people sicker than the original virus or its other variants. Symptoms also can be slightly different from the coughing and loss of smell that is associated with COVID-19. Sexton warned that people should pay attention to symptoms such as a runny nose, sore throat, fever, and headache.

She said the key to ending the pandemic for good was vaccination. Howard County residents can register for the vaccine at OurShot.in.gov and choose between the St. Vincent Kokomo Education Center (Pfizer) or the Howard County Health Department (Pfizer and Moderna). Local pharmacies, such as at CVS, Walgreens, Herbsts, Kroger, Meijer, and Walmart are also options.

[Vaccination] is the best recommendation there is for preventing this disease, said Sexton. If you are not fully vaccinated, wear a mask in indoor public spaces and even in crowded outdoor places where social distancing is not possible. If you are already fully vaccinated, you should still watch for signs and symptoms of COVID. If you have those symptoms, get tested right away and stay home and away from other people. Consider wearing a mask in indoor public spaces. This is especially important if you have a weakened immune system.

If we do not get more people vaccinated, we will very likely see another surge in cases in the coming weeks to months, she said. Delta is here in Howard County, and if you are unvaccinated, it is very likely that you will get it.

As of Friday, 237 residents have died from COVID-19.
Pangilinan lauds PH Coast Guard, calls for higher budget for WPS patrols & fishermen protection

AFTER the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) vessel BRP Cabra's successful challenge against a Chinese navy warship, Senator Francis "Kiko" Pangilinan on Tuesday said that higher budget is needed to provide much-needed support for patrols in the West Philippine Sea and ensure protection of our fishermen and territorial waters.

"Ang galing ng ating David sa kanilang Goliath. Super lodi ang ating Coast Guard lalo na't limitado ang kanilang resources. Kailangang bigyan sila ng saktong budget para mas marami pa silang matulungan (Salute to our David to their Goliath. Our Coast Guard is doing a commendable job with the limited resources available to them. We should provide them with more budgetary support so that they could do more)," Pangilinan said.

The PCG on Monday, July 19, confirmed that BRP Cabra challenged Chinese Navy Warship 189 in the Marie Louise Bank in the West Philippine Sea on July 13.

Located 147 nautical miles from El Nido, Palawan, BRP Cabra spotted the Chinese ship and issued a radio challenge that was ignored.

Moving closer to the Chinese war ship, PCG personnel led by Commander Erwin Tolentino issued another verbal challenge using a long-range acoustic device (LRAD).

It was only then that the Chinese ship began moving away from Marie Louise Bank.

"We commend our brave PCG personnel for asserting our territory and rights within our exclusive economic zone. We thank them for their invaluable contributions in protecting our territorial waters including the livelihood of our fishermen. Pagkain, buhay at hanapbuhay ang nakataya," Pangilinan said.

Noting that the PCG's budget for 2021 is lower than its 2020 budget, Pangilinan said that giving support to the PCG signifies deeper commitment to assert our claim over West Philippine Sea.

"Biruin nyo, 80% ng ating territoryo ay mga katubigan ngunit kakarampot lamang ang budget upang protektahan ito. Pinagkakasya lang ng ating mga magigiting na Coast Guard. Supporting the Coast Guard means supporting our stand on the West Philippine Sea," Pangilinan said.

PCGs P13.2 billion budget for 2021 is 13% lower than its 2020 budget of P15.22 billion.

The senator has earlier proposed the creation of a Department of Fisheries and Aquatic resources to better allocate resources for Philippine maritime assets.

Pangilinan commits to supporting higher budget allocation for the PCG in the upcoming budget deliberations for 2022.
Southaven has settled a lawsuit over the 2016 death of Troy Goode. Goode died after being taken into custody following a report that he was acting erratically following a July concert at Snowden Grove. Although it was later determined that Goode had taken LSD and marijuana, the family sued the city alleging that he died as a result of being hog-tied by first responders.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is worried about the tensions around the Al-Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Al Quds and calls on political leaders in the region to refrain from any provocative action, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said in a press briefing on Monday.

On Sunday, Israeli security forces fired gas and rubber bullets at Palestinian protesters to empty the Al-Aqsa Mosque shrine for Jewish visitors, who refer to the place of worship as the Temple Mount.

The Secretary-General is following with concern the heightened tensions in and around the holy sites of the Old City of Al Quds. He underscores that the status quo must be upheld and fully respected, Farhan Haq said.

He calls upon community, religious and political leaders on all sides to refrain from provocative action and rhetoric in the interest of peace and stability, the spokesman added.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) has announced an additional US contribution of $135.8 million to support its operations.

The signing of the US-UNRWA Framework and additional support demonstrates we once again have an ongoing partner in the United States that understands the need to provide critical assistance to some of the regions most vulnerable refugees, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said in a statement.

Lazzarini noted that the additional contribution will help UNRWA to address its main health, relief and education programs, its emergency appeals and humanitarian challenges in its fields of operations in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In April, the US announced a contribution of $150 million to UNRWAs life-saving programs, and in May it also provided UNRWA with $33 million following the Israeli 11-day offensive on Gaza.
According to information published by Daily Sabah on July 15, 2021, the Ukrainian Navy received the first batch of Turkish Bayraktar TB2 Unmanned combat aerial vehicle.

Follow Navy Recognition on Google News at this link

Bayraktar TB2 (Picture source: Armyinform)

Ukraine had ordered the UCAVs from Baykar Defense and Turkish MILGEM (National Ship) Ada-class corvettes from Istanbul Naval Shipyard at the end of 2020.

The Ukrainian army already has Baykars Bayraktar TB2s in its inventory, but this is the first batch for the Naval forces.

Ukrainian Navy announced earlier that the UCAVs produced by the Turkish firm Baykar for the Ukrainian navy are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2021.

The Bayraktar TB2 is a Turkish medium-altitude long-endurance (MALE) unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) capable of remotely controlled or autonomous flight operations.

The Bayraktar TB2 has a lenght of 6.5 m, a height of 2.2 m and a wingspan of 12 m. It has a maximum a maximum take-off weight of 650 kg with a maximum payload capacity of 150 kg. It can fly at a maximum speed of 120 knots (222 km/h) at a maximum altitude of 27,000 feet (8,230 m) and has a flight endurance of up to 27 hours.

Bayraktar TB2 has 4 hardpoints for laser-guided smart munition, with provisions to carry combinations of L-UMTAS (Long Range Anti tank Missile System) , MAM-L and MAM-C precision-guided munitions, Roketsan Cirit (70 mm Missile System) and Tubitak-Sage Bozok Laser Guided Rockets.
According to information published by the government of the United Kingdom on July 19, 221, the Carrier Strike Group will undertake a series of exercises with forces from the US, Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand and Korea in the Philippine Sea in August.

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HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier (Picture source: Vayu Aerospace Review)

On a visit to US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) in Hawaii, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace met with the Commander Admiral John C Aquilino and announced that the UK Carrier Strike Group will undertake a series of multinational exercises with global allies in the Philippine Sea this August.

Operating alongside Naval and Air Forces from the United States, Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand and the Republic of Korea, the UK Carrier Strike Group will undertake a number of integration exercises designed to build interoperability between like-minded international partners in this globally significant region of the world. The HMS Queen Elizabeth led Strike Group will operate with a US Carrier Strike Group, which combined, will be the largest concentration of F-35 jets anywhere in the world.

Complex exercises like these will enable 617 Squadron to develop F-35 Lightning interoperability with partner nations, building a core of valuable Royal Air Force and Royal Navy experience in operating this cutting-edge technology. These air exercises will build upon the capability development that 617 Squadron achieved through the combat missions mounted from the Carrier in the East Mediterranean, during a dedicated period in support of Operation Shader, the UK mission to defeat Daesh in Iraq and Syria.

The Carrier Strike Group will also undertake Anti-Submarine exercises with US Pacific Fleet with allied submarines, helicopters and P8 Maritime Patrol Aircraft.

Overall these events represent a crucial milestone in the regeneration of the UK Carrier Strike capability that will contribute to collective defence and security for decades to come. Carrier Strike Group 21 embodies the Prime Ministers vision for the UK as an outward-facing, modern and responsible international actor who also takes its global defence and security responsibilities seriously and invests in them accordingly.

The involvement of the UKs fifth-generation Carrier Strike Group in this significant series of exercises right across the Indo-Pacific region highlights the renewed importance we place on the UKs long-standing defence and security relationships with our valued partners and allies in the region.

Following on from the strike groups inaugural deployment, the UK will permanently assign two Offshore Patrol Vessels to the region from later this year as well as contributing a Littoral Response Group (LRG) in the coming years. HMS Spey and HMS Tamar will deploy to the Indo-Pacific at the end of August 2021 and will be supported by partners during their operations, including Australia, Japan and Singapore.

UK Carrier Strike Group that comprises different types of ships and aircraft including the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier with Merlin helicopters and F-35B fighter aircraft, Fleet Auxiliarys fast fleet Tide-class tanker, Type 23 also called Duke-class frigate, Type 45 also called Daring-class guided-missile destroyer and Astute-class nuclear-powered submarine (SSN).

The Type 23 frigate or Duke-class is a class of frigates built for the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. Originally designed for anti-submarine warfare in the North Atlantic, the Royal Navy's Type 23 frigates have proven their versatility in warfighting, peacekeeping and maritime security operations around the globe. Thirteen Type 23 frigates remain in service with the Royal Navy, with three vessels having been sold to the Chilean Navy.
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Appeals court reverses $1 million ruling against Sheremetyevo airport

 Sergey Kiselev, AGN "Moskva"

17:02 20/07/2021

MOSCOW, July 20 (RAPSI)  The Tenth Commercial Court of Appeals reversed a lower court ruling against AO International Airport Sheremetyevo that had been ordered to pay 74.3 million rubles (about $1 million) to the town of Khimki for the environmental damage.

The airport appealed against the decision of the Commercial Court of the Moscow Region of February 2, made in favor of a claim submitted by the Moscow Region Ministry of Environment.

At that time, the court after examining the claim ruled to collect the funds from Sherermetyevo. The amount was ordered to be transferred to the budget of the Khimki Urban District as a compensation of harm to the environment.

According to the claim, local residents informed environmental authorities about the fact of dumping of untreated sewage into a creek running from the airport territory. In 2019, the Ministry initiated an administrative case over these facts. As it was established, it was Sheremetyevo airport that used a waste treatment facility on the said creek under a concessionary agreement.

Environmental authorities estimated that harm to the ecology made 74.3 million rubles; the airport was found guilty of the respective administrative offense. After Sheremetyevo had failed to comply with that decision, the authority turned to courts.

The lower commercial court then rejected the respondents arguments that the Ministry of Environment of the Moscow Region was not a proper claimant in the case.
State Duma proposes to suspend taxes for businesses amid pandemic

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

15:17 20/07/2021

MOSCOW, July 20 (RAPSI)  A bill suspending land and property taxes for businesses for the period of COVID-related restrictions has been submitted to the lower house of the Russian Parliament.

The bill was submitted by Sergey Katasonov, First Deputy Chair of the State Duma Committee on Budgets and Taxes.

The bill amends the Russian Tax Code to the effect that a zero rate of the property tax on organizations and individuals, as well as of the land tax in respect of objects used in entrepreneurial activity is to be established for the period when restrictive and other measures aimed at suspending (restricting) operations of certain enterprises located in respective regions of Russia, among them those introduced under a high alert regime or that of an emergency situation, the explanatory note to the document reads.
The Concerned Citizens Group (CCG) made its ninth visit to Kashmir from July 5 to 7, 2021. The latest visit came in the wake of a meeting called by the Indian prime minister on June 24 of all the J&K political parties. While there was much expectation centred on the meeting, especially related to the restoration of statehood of J&K, it turned out to be more about the Centre seeking the support of the mainstream political parties from the Union Territory for the delimitation exercise necessitated by the J&K Reorganisation Act of 2019 and legislative assembly elections thereafter. The restoration of statehood was postponed for an undefined appropriate time once again.

The short visit of the CCG was to ascertain the mood of the people and the parties in the Kashmir Valley after the interaction organised by the prime minister.

The CCG is a non-official voluntary group with no government or political party association. Its visits to J&K are neither sponsored by the government nor by any political party or NGO. Each member of the group pays for his or her expenses. Ever since it was set up in the wake of the protests that erupted in J&K in October 2016, the aim of the CCG has been to ascertain the mood of the people and bring it to the attention of rest of India. In that sense, the CCG acts as a bridge between the people of J&K and the rest of the country, making the latter aware of the trials and tribulations of their fellow citizens in the benighted region. It seeks nothing more, and can do little else, except attempt to increase awareness about J&K in the rest of India.

From the very beginning the group has comprised five members: Yashwant Sinha (former External Affairs Minister of India), Sushobha Barve (Executive Secretary, Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation, Delhi), Wajahat Habibullah (Former Chairman of the Minorities Commission and the first Chief Information Commissioner of India), Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Kapil Kak and Bharat Bhushan, former editor and independent journalist.

Only four members of the group  Yashwant Sinha, Sushobha Barve, Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Kapil Kak and Bharat Bhushan undertook this visit. Wajahat Habibullah could not join because of pressing personal reasons.

During the visit, the CCG members met leaders of political parties (including former Chief Ministers Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, former Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti of the Peoples Democratic Party, Chief Spokesperson of the Peoples Alliance for Gupkar Declaration Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and former Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig, civil society activists from both South and North Kashmir, members of the Kashmir Economic Forum, representatives of trade bodies and of the Horticulture sector.

Delimitation of Constituencies:

The entire political spectrum in the Kashmir Valley, notably the leaders of the Peoples Alliance of Gupkar Declaration (PAGD) have all along questioned the need for the delimitation exercise. Many conveyed to us that the on-going delimitation was entirely the Centres call as indicated by the PMs June 24 meeting with the leaders of political parties of J&K. His enlisting their support for the delimitation of constituencies, people believed, seemed to be aimed at providing legitimacy to the exercise and pre-empting its possible reversal in the future.

By coincidence, the Delimitation Commission was in Srinagar the same time as our Group. It sought participation by the political parties in its deliberations and assured the people that the Commission would act in a fair, transparent and judicious manner and that before preparing the final report, a draft would be put up in the public domain for comments. But given the all-pervasive mistrust flowing from the Centres humiliating nullification of Articles 370 and 35A, bifurcation of the State and its down-gradation to a Union Territory all at once, suspicions and cynicism continue to persist.

Not surprisingly, Mehbooba Mufti-led PDP affirmed that the Delimitation Commission lacks constitutional and legal mandate. There are apprehensions that the exercise is part of the overall process of political disempowerment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir... The peoples worst fears are that an unjust and unfair delimitation could result in the mainstream parties being denied the numbers to form a Government. The Congress described the exercise as meaningless without the restoration of full statehood. The CPI-M termed the Commission as unconstitutional since there was a freeze by Parliament on reorganisation of constituencies until 2026. On the other hand, people in Jammu argued that the freeze created inequity for their region.

The PAGD leadership by a prior arrangement allowed each constituent to take a call on whether or not to meet the Commission. The PDP stayed away. The BJP highlighted the need for getting representation to the Scheduled Tribes (STs), most of whom live in the Jammu region. The Awami National Conference too stayed away as the matter, in its view, was in court. Two key PAGD constituents, the National Conference (NC) and Communist Party, Marxist (CPI-M), however, met the Commission. Significantly, when one of the NC members asked the quasi-judicial Commission on what basis seven additional seats had been added to the Union Territory of J&K to take the total number from 83 to 90, he was told it was a political decision! This could confirm the Valleys worst fears that the arbitrary increase of seats is aimed to benefit the Jammu region.

The principal concerns of the Kashmir Valley political leadership on delimitation were succinctly summed up in the CPI-Ms memorandum to the Commission. We are not against delimitation, it said, but want it carried out along with the rest of the country. In 2002, the J&K Assembly had amended the J&K Representation of People Act, 1957 and Section 47(3) of the Constitution of J&K and put a freeze on delimitation till the first census after 2026. Both J&K High Court and the Supreme Court had upheld the decision to freeze any delimitation. It appealed that the perceived apprehension that the exercise is aimed at benefitting some sections of the population should be removed.

Though population forms the foundation of delimitation of constituencies, the Commission announced it shall take into account constituencies practicality, geographical compatibility, topography, physical features, means of communities and conveniences available. It is worth underscoring that the 2011 Census recorded the population of the Kashmir Valley as 69 lakh (area about 15,000 sq. km) and of the Jammu province as 54 lakh (area 26,000 sq km). The Valleys fears lie in possible manipulation of the area dimension and other non-population factors. The Commission will also stipulate the number of seats to be reserved for SCs and STs in the Legislative Assembly. Although J&K already has seven seats reserved for the SCs primarily in the Jammu region, it would be a first for the STs, including Gujars and Bakarwals, mainly living in Poonch and Rajauri districts of Jammu region, to get reservations in the legislature.

The BJPs contradictory stance is palpable. It conveyed to the Commission that using the 2011 Census alone for delimiting constituencies was flawed, alleging that it had been deliberately skewed in favour of Kashmir. Yet, the ruling dispensation at the Centre singled out J&K UT for delimitation on the basis of 2011 Census. As Omar Abdullah of the NC said, They (the Centre) could have waited for the 2021 Census.

Our Group learnt that the J&K Apni Party in its memorandum to the Commission drew attention to about two lakh Kashmiri Pandits who belong to the Valley but, following their tragic exodus in the early 1990s, have been residing in Jammu. Their population has been covered under 2011 census as being from Jammu but they exercise their right to vote in Kashmir. In redrawing the assembly constituencies, this component of population, Kashmiris hope, will be accounted for in the Valley, as earlier. The provision for 24 seats in the Assembly for people of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir would continue as before and as envisaged in the J&K Reorganisation Act 2019, the said area (PoK) would be excluded in delimiting the territorial constituencies. For the Lok Sabha, there are two constituencies in Jammu province and three in Kashmir. These, in all probability, could remain intact.

Statehood:

In discussions with people across the socio-political spectrum, the impression we gathered was that nothing short of restoration of statehood, with the same powers as in other major states of the Union, would serve to calm the public somewhat. It is most unlikely that the PAGD would accept the Delhi model of statehood in which the effective power over public order, police and enacting laws is vested in the Centre and the government is defined as the Lieutenant Governor, not the elected Executive.

Unsurprisingly, apprehensions about the Delhi-model of statehood were raised by the Congress during the meeting of the J&K leaders with the PM on June 24. Even statehood with the rider that the Centre would retain Home and Finance would never be accepted in the Valley. Nor is it likely to resonate in Jammu and Ladakh. Within the BJPs support base in the Jammu region, there appear to be stirrings of a demand for full statehood.

As for the two districts (Kargil and Leh) of Ladakh, Kargil had opposed the August 5, 2019 changes, with a majority of Shia leaders demanding that the district should remain a part of J&K and its special status be restored. In contrast, Leh was jubilant over the getting Union Territory status to Ladakh. This had been a long standing demand of the Buddhist leaders of Leh.

However, having attained the long-cherished UT status, the people of Leh have now described their standing as a car without an engine in the absence of any protection for land ownership and preference in jobs. Last year, the Leh Peoples Movement for Sixth Schedule (an umbrella group of all political parties and religious groups) raised the demand for a Sixth Schedule status for Ladakh. The Centre promised them a Sixth Schedule-like status. With no progress on that assurance, now the Leh leaders have demanded raising the status of Ladakh to a UT with an elected legislative assembly.

Political and civil society leaders of Kargil in their recent talks with the Union Minister of State for Home have made a somewhat contrarian demand of full statehood for Ladakh and restoration of Article 370 and 35A!

Our Group witnessed that the sequencing of the Union Governments three-step process of delimitation, statehood and elections had assumed pronounced salience in the State. The PAGD leadership is united in demanding the restoration of full statehood before elections. The Congress also supports this sequencing. But the Prime Ministers statement that the issue of statehood would be considered at an appropriate time has met with a great deal of suspicion and cynicism.

The level of distrust is so overpowering that a respected human rights activist and civil society leader, while admitting that all elections since 2002 had been free and fair, said that given the Centres obsession for shifting the electoral balance towards Jammu, the possibility of a 1987-style rigging of state elections, as and when they take place, could not be ruled out.

Disconnect between politics, State and people:

The J&K political parties have been jolted alive by the sudden revival of dialogue with Delhi, even though they may not be able to control the way it is unfolding. However, the mood of the Kashmiri people remained downcast. They were not enthused by either the political parties engaging with the delimitation exercise or the prospect of elections to the legislative assembly of a shrunk Union Territory.

The peoples mood was marked by lack of expectations from the State, a pervasive sense of hopelessness not witnessed by this Group earlier and deep-seated despondency in the youth.

It is a measure of their disdain for the mainstream political parties that the people show no interest in the political process which was ostensibly sought to be restarted with the Prime Minister inviting the political parties from J&K to Delhi on June 24. They seemed indifferent to the development, having concluded that nothing would come out of it. By and large people claimed that they have no contact or connection with the leaders of the mainstream political parties who they say have cheated us in the past. Most seemed not to care about what happens to these parties.

They were, however, against delimitation of constituencies being carried out in a hurried manner, doubting Delhis political objectives.

Delhi is not coming near, it is becoming more distant, quipped another referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modis call for reducing the distance between the people as well as the distance to Delhi (Dil ki doori aur Dilli ki doori). A journalist said, When the prime minister talked of removing Dil ki doori and Dilli ki doori, I felt like laughing. We wanted India to bring back even PoK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) as well as parts of Kashmir that are with China. We had entrusted you to look after us and the entire state of J&K. But you failed to live up to that expectation.

It seems that the people of Kashmir Valley now have virtually no expectation either from the people of India or from the state machinery in Delhi and Srinagar. They claim that they have stopped speaking up and talk of death of expectations. They have come to believe that there is no political space left for them, their rights have been taken away and that no one is inclined to listen to them.

There is disappointment even with the judicial system with people refusing to go to the courts  openly claiming that appeals to the judiciary are futile. They also show an utter lack of faith in politics. Even the separatists seem to have lost their importance in the public mind.

All social and political action, including airing of grievances, appeared pointless to the people. Sometimes we wonder why we should speak even to you was a refrain one heard several times. It was clear that the people of Kashmir felt abandoned and rejected even by thinking Indians.

A civil society activist asked, Tell us why there were no protests by the civil society in India after August 5, 2019 if India cares for us. We were consigned to hell and no one even spoke up. Why is India so frightened of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)? We have been burning in hell and no one even tries to douse the fire. Why should we trust anyone then? Why should we not feel frustrated?

Those who speak up, claim that the developments in Kashmir from August 5, 2019 are likely to be used by the BJP government in Delhi for the coming legislative elections in important states such as Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. We have understood the ideological and civilizational agenda of the BJP. Their agenda has not ended with changing the special status of J&K and its bifurcation on August 5, 2019. That is why even if there was no militancy in J&K, the BJP would invent it. They need it for winning elections in India. J&K has become a laboratory  things are done here and used for winning elections in India, a Kashmiri public intellectual claimed.

The June 24 all-party meeting In Delhi was described by him as posturing for the international community because the BJP government had miscalculated how the geo-political situation in the region would unfold. He suggested that Delhi was now feeling the pressure of the developments in Afghanistan, the US troop withdrawal, the need for the US to woo Pakistan and the dynamically evolving situation on the Line of Actual Control with China in Ladakh. Delhis overture to Kashmiri political parties was a result of these developments, he suggested.

Another Kashmiri intellectual predicted that the June 24 meeting will not lead the people anywhere near a solution. Before August 5, 2019 there was only a Kashmir problem that India faced. Now India has created four problems  one in Leh, another in Kargil, unhappy Hindus in Jammu and the continuing problem in the Kashmir Valley. Issues of land rights and the potential of a demographic Tsunami have made people in all the regions of the (erstwhile) J&K unhappy. So what kind of politics is India following? He claimed, Indias political, economic, and moral dysfunctionality has not only made things worse for the Kashmiris but also for India vis-a-vis the world. The message of the world seems to be  Be careful about India as it is in danger in a very real way.

Citing government statistics that there are only about 200 militants active in the Valley, they wonder why despite the presence of nearly seven lakh security personnel to tackle them, the people of J&K are being denied their rights. I am very angry with India. Because of 200 militants they are punishing all of us, bemoaned a civil society leader.

An engineer from Sopore we met said, We believed at least till August 5, 2019 that we could live with India; that it could sustain the relationship with Kashmir. It is a large country with huge resources unlike Pakistan, so we thought it was in a better position to take care of us. Today I dont like India any more. I feel cheated. Delhi does things without consulting us. No one asks us about anything. We are residents of J&K. Dont we have a stake here? Now there is no pro-India sentiment here, except in the political parties which in any case have cheated us in the past.

We never liked Article 370. Yet it was ours. It was a link with India. Why did you take it away? We feel betrayed. We have been depressed for the last 32 years (i.e. since the militancy began in 1989-90) but we are sadder today than ever before. But we have rights and we refuse to be treated as animals, he said.

India has become an Orwellian state where some animals have more rights than others, another quipped.

A social activist from Pulwama said, Article 370 was dead like a decaying tree. The BJP kicked it and it fell to the ground. But where was the need to do that? This, he claimed, had increased the trust deficit with Delhi even more. A colleague of his also from Pulwama said, Kashmir will never be yours by force. We want to be a part of you but you cannot go on behaving the way you do.

Bureaucrats rule supreme:

Under Presidents Rule in the Union Territory, politics has been pushed to the background. The administration is run by a Cabinet of advisors of the Lieutenant Governor and the permanent state bureaucracy whose accountability is only to their superior officers and not to the people.

Our Group was repeatedly told by the people we met that the bureaucrats in positions that require public interface were all outsiders. This, they believe, was because after the abolition of the J&K Cadre of civil servants, now UT cadre officers can be sourced from across India. Invariably they talked of the fate of Sajad Rashid Sofi, a social activist from Ganderbal, who was arrested on charges of promoting enmity between groups for telling the Lt. Governors advisor in a outreach programme that they had more expectations from the local bureaucrats than the officers from outside. The Deputy Commissioner, an Indian Administrative Service Officer from Uttar Pradesh, present at the meeting took offence at his comments and the man was arrested the same night under Section153 of the Indian Penal Code.

This is happening because the bureaucrats in mass contact positions are all outsiders. Today the situation is that we have no contact with the leaders of the mainstream political parties and we have no contact with the bureaucrats in positions of public interface, pointed out a business community leader.

Another businessman said, We have Baburaj here  bureaucrats are kings and the common people suffer. They avoid going to government offices as there is opaqueness in decision making and a lack of accountability.

People we met said that while the Centre had claimed that after August 5, 2019, J&K would see unprecedented development this was far from the truth. All that we have got is corruption. Earlier politicians indulged in money making and now after August 5, 2019, it is corruption by the babus. It is jungle raj in J&K today, a journalist claimed. A civil society leader from Shopian alleged, There is a mafia operating in each government department.

Surprisingly, some of the businessmen suggested that corruption was much less when elected politicians were in power than under the bureaucratic regime under Presidents Rule.

Darbar move:

On June 30, 2021 the J&K administration cancelled the allotment of residential accommodation for officers who were from Srinagar but had to reside in Jammu and vice versa because of the 149-year tradition of the biennial shifting of capital between the Jammu and Srinagar. This was part of shifting of officials and files between the summer capital (Srinagar) and the winter capital (Jammu). This was ostensibly done because e-governance had made the moving of staff and files unnecessary.

This order is being seen as cancellation of the traditional Darbar Move which locals believed provided a strong bond between two regions  Jammu and the Kashmir Valley. This has upset many even though political leaders claim that Darbar Move had not been fully cancelled as Lieutenant Governor and senior officials will still move between the two cities. Whether this interpretation is correct or not is difficult to say  although the fact remains that the Union Territory of J&K still has two capitals. The Centre has stopped short of designating one capital for all seasons for J&K.

The local anger centres on not being consulted and not recognising the importance of the Darbar Move in holding the erstwhile state, and now Union Territory, together. This government in Delhi believes in divide-and-rule and cancellation of the Darbar Move is a part of that strategy. Now voices of resistance are coming from Jammu as well, said a retired banker.

The rationalisation of moving the Secretariat between Jammu and Srinagar is being described by the government as cost-effective. But even that is being questioned by the people. They say that the Darbar Move costs about Rs. 200 crore every year. That is nothing if it fosters a close relationship between Jammu and the Kashmir Valley. The real reason for the decision is that they (the Centre) think that the people who used to go to Jammu as part of the shifting of capital bought properties there and that this could change the demographical profile of Jammu. So they ended the move, a journalist argued.

What is clear, however, is that while it might have cost the government to move capitals biennially, it helped the local economies of both Jammu and Srinagar. It is no surprise then that businessmen in both cities are unhappy with the decision of the government.

Downslide in business and trade:

The Group met the members of the Kashmir Economic Alliance (KEA), other trading bodies and horticulturists to assess how the local economy had been affected since August 2019.

According to the KEA, from August 2019 up to now, business was closed for 11 months out of total of 23 months  four months because of the protests against abrogation of the special status of J&K and another seven months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The estimated loss to business, the KEA claimed, was approximately Rs. 70,000 crore  of this Rs.50,000 crore was due to closures and another Rs. 20,000 crore due to falling sales as demand contraction due to falling purchasing power. The KEA saw no prospect of improvement in business and trade if a third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic were to hit J&K. Although, its representatives admitted that the Central government had announced several economic stimulus packages to boost the economy, they were ineffective because of the perpetual threat of the pandemic.

What had made the situation worse for businesses in Kashmir, according to a member of KEA was that banks no longer trust traders and businessmen in an uncertain economic environment with unpredictable incomes, preferring to give loans to government employees with regular salaries instead.

He said, People forget that while business in the rest of the country suffered because of Covid for one year, we have suffered for 32 years. For 8 years we have mostly seen bandhs (closures) and strikes. Nobody asks us how we have coped with this adversity and what pressures from suppliers and banks we work under.

Bank borrowing in J&K has predictably gone down. Banks claim that they are under pressure to recover the loans they have already advanced and failure to pay by businessmen leads to forfeiture of their pledged properties. How can we return the money we owe to the banks when we have actually used it for consumption in the face of lack of any earnings? We have not been benefited by the Covid package. Loans are not a stimulus for businesses in Kashmir because the future is uncertain. Where is the assurance that we will do enough business to repay these loans? a businessman asked.

The businessmen complained that J&K Bank, busy recovering past loans and attaching properties, had stopped lending and other banks did not lend to Kashmiris. The J&K Bank will not remain a bank for long but become a real estate company, one of them quipped.

They rubbished the idea of entrepreneurs from outside J&K investing in the Union Territory. Why should businessmen come to Kashmir, invest here to earn nothing? If we cannot make money here, how will outsiders do that? they asked.

The Group was told that when J&K was a state, there used to be a purchase preference in government acquisitions for Kashmiri businessmen. However, after August 5, 2019, Kashmiri businesses are considered on a par with others in the rest of India. We cannot compete with them and therefore we do not have the market we had earlier, they explained.

Horticulturalists demanded that there be customised financial schemes for their benefit as borrowing from banks and that the governments attitude of one size fits all did not work for them. They claimed that climate change was affecting their produce as winter had started lasting longer. Flowering used to commence in March-April but now we get snow even in May. This is disastrous for us. Because of a longer winter and untimely snowfall, in the 2019-2020 cycle 30% to 40% of the apple crop was destroyed. We need to focus on how to sustain our horticulture, they said. A fruit grower from Shopian said, We need special assistance package for horticulture and the transport industry associated with it.

What upset the businessmen most was that some of them were arrested and jailed after the Centres policy change in J&K in 2019. Political leaders were arrested but why us? Why were businessmen taken into custody? I am very angry with India. You say there are only about 200 militants in Kashmir and yet you punish all of us for that, a business leader complained. He felt that instead of calling political parties from J&K to Delhi, the government ought to invite businessmen, traders and horticulturists to discuss our issues directly with us.

In March 2020, a delegation of Kashmiri businesses men had indeed met the Union Home Minister in Delhi. He gave them assurances that all their grievances would be redressed. But what is happening in J&K Is exactly the opposite of what he had promised, lamented a businessman who was in that delegation.

Militancy and radicalisation:

A community leader claimed that the tendency in Kashmiri youth towards militancy had become more intense  similar to what it was in the 1990s. The only difference he suggested was that Pakistan is not investing in militancy for now. However, he predicted that the new militancy will also be anti-Pakistan and there would be no one who would be able to assert any influence over the militants.

A social worker from Pulwama claimed that youth was being pushed towards militancy because of the harassment faced by people at the hands of the army personnel. There are no jobs for the young. They have only two options before them  militancy or committing suicide, he said pointing to a spate of suicides by youngsters in the Valley.

A lawyer from Shopian claimed that because of draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) being used even against juveniles and the courts acting as rubber-stamp for the police, there was anger amongst the youth. So now you have a wide network of over-ground workers (i.e. those who work for militant organisations without wielding a gun). They would be militants if there were enough guns and ammunition available. He also claimed that the new militants do not announce themselves on social media as they used to earlier.

A human rights activist claimed that even the armed forces did not any longer want militancy to get over. This is linked to the misuse of secret funds at their disposal. If unchecked, it will make the state a rogue state, he predicted.

When we have no political space and the bureaucracy unresponsive, what are we supposed to say? asked a community leader from Anantnag. He claimed that Delhi had closed all doors on the Kashmiris including all political routes. After that when you kill youngsters and do not even hand over their bodies to their next of kin, how then do you expect us to tell our children not to go the militant route? They wont listen to us, he said.

Yet another activist warned, Dont worry about how radicalised Kashmir is becoming. The real question you should ask yourself is: How radicalised India has become?

An academic claimed that while Kashmir was being radicalised, India had been possessed by, what Immanuel Kant called, radical evil  a propensity to embrace immorality, with people consciously choosing not to act in accordance with what is moral and good. More than Kashmir, it was India, he said that was in grave danger.

Yashwant Sinha, Kapil Kak, Sushobha Barve, Bharat Bhushan, Wajahat Habibullah (Endorsed)
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Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on July 20, 2021

2021/07/20

Xinhua News Agency: State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi has paid an official visit to Algeria, the third stop of his trip to Middle East countries. Can you brief us on that?

Zhao Lijian: On July 19, State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi met and held talks with President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, reaching important consensus.

State Councilor Wang Yi said that China highly appreciates Algeria's strong support on issues concerning China's core interests and major concerns. China firmly supports Algeria in pursuing a development path suited to its national conditions, safeguarding sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, and playing a bigger role in international and regional affairs. China encourages Chinese enterprises to invest in Algeria, so as to translate the high-level political mutual trust between the two countries into tangible results of cooperation, steadily advance major cooperation projects, and help Algeria speed up industrialization and enhance its capacity for independent and sustainable development. China will continue to provide Algeria with vaccines and anti-epidemic supplies to help the country secure an early and complete victory over the epidemic.

The Algerian side said that it always regards China as a diplomatic priority and stands firmly with China. Algeria hopes to deepen bilateral cooperation in the areas of economy, trade, investment, energy, mining and infrastructure within the framework of BRI cooperation, so as to realize common development and benefit other developing countries. Algeria supported China in the past, still supports China now and will support China even more in the future. Algeria will always stand side by side with China like comrades in the same trench to safeguard international fairness and justice.

The two sides also reached four-point consensus on China-Algeria relations, namely, to renew their traditional friendship, to open up new prospects for practical cooperation, to work together to win the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and to make new contributions to maintaining international and regional security and stability.

At a joint press conference with Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, State Councilor Wang Yi made an observation on China's relations with developing countries. He said that 50 years ago, our fellow developing countries "carried" the People's Republic of China into the United Nations, which illustrates the solidarity and cooperation between China and developing countries. State Councilor Wang Yi stressed that China will always be a member of the developing world, and will always share the future with other developing countries. In the face of major changes unseen in a century, China will unite even more closely with other developing countries. We will never bow to power politics or flinch in the face of difficulties. We will resolutely defend our sovereignty, independence and the norms of non-interference in other countries' internal affairs, oppose hegemony and power politics, and safeguard the legitimate rights and development space of developing countries. We should resolutely demand greater voice and representation of developing countries in international governance, uphold the common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom for all mankind, practice true multilateralism, and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind.

The Algerian side expressed hope to see China playing a bigger role in the Security Council and the United Nations as a representative of developing countries and non-aligned countries.

People's Daily: The 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) has closed. Can you give us the total number of countries that have endorsed the joint statement in support of China?

Zhao Lijian: Lebanon has recently endorsed the joint statement in support of China by friendly countries at the 47th session of the UNHRC. China appreciates and welcomes this. To date, altogether 69 countries have joined the endorsement. If we add the 20-plus countries that have shown support for China by making statements in their national capacity or by sending joint letters, more than 90 countries have spoken for justice at the HRC. They jointly reject politicization of and double standards on human rights and interference in China's domestic affairs with human rights as a pretext. This is not only showing strong support for China, but also defending the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international fairness and justice.

CCTV: It is learned that the WHO briefed member states on the steps to be taken in the second phase origins study on July 16. Earlier, 48 countries sent letters to the WHO Director-General Tedros opposing the politicization of this issue. Is there any update on the countries endorsing the letter after the WHO proposed the next steps for the second phase study?

Zhao Lijian: We welcome the fact that seven countries, namely Grenada, Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Sao Tome and Principe, Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Ghana, have joined the ranks of justice in endorsing the letter to the WHO Director-General Tedros opposing the politicization of the origins study. As of today, the number of countries endorsing the letter has reached 55. At a WHO member states briefing on July 16, Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Iran, Syria, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and many other countries spoke up for justice. They stressed that tracing the origins of the virus is a scientific matter and should not be politicized. The joint WHO-China study report published by WHO should be upheld.

In sharp contrast to the political manipulation, rejection of science and distortion of facts by a handful of countries, an increasing number of countries are voicing overwhelming support for justice. This fully reflects where justice lies and what the shared aspiration of the international community is. It fully demonstrates that those who uphold impartiality and objectivity, and champion fairness and justice are in the majority. Relevant parties should stop politicizing the issue of origins tracing, stop using this issue to scapegoat others and shirk responsibility, stop deliberately undermining international cooperation on global origins study. They should adopt a truly responsible and scientific attitude, and work with the international community to make due contributions to defeating the virus and protecting people's health and well-being.

China News Service: The InterAcademy Partnership said in a statement that it endorses the Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines for Codes of Conduct for Scientists developed by Tianjin University and Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security after discussions among scientists from many countries. Do you have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: We are glad to see the conclusion of the Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines for Codes of Conduct for Scientists by scientists from around the world. The Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines advocates responsible bioscience research and encourages governments and research institutions to strengthen regulation and self-discipline, so as to ensure that advances in the biological sciences will bring benefits to humanity and prevent misuse of bioscience research. This is the latest outcome in promoting responsible biological science research and serves the common interests of the international community.

China always champions responsible biological science research. As early as in 2015, China submitted a proposal for the development of a model code of conduct for biological scientists, which was appraised by the international community. The Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines originates from this Chinese proposal and has undergone extensive discussions, reflecting international consensus.

As I understand, scientists from 21 countries participated in the development of the Tianjin Biosecurity Guidelines, who have demonstrated professionalism and team spirit in the process. We appreciate that. This again shows that in the face of global issues, we can find feasible and effective solution as long as we enhance mutual trust and deepen cooperation.

Biosafety is not an issue limited to any single country. China will continue to uphold the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, seek development and ensure security in a coordinated manner, deeply participate in global biosafety governance, contribute China's wisdom and offer China's proposal, and work with the international community to constantly improve global biosafety and promote universal security and common development.

NHK: With only three days to go before the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games, members of the Chinese delegation have been arriving in Japan. What is China's expectation for this Olympic Games? How will Beijing support the smooth holding of the Tokyo Olympic Games? In addition, with 200 days to go before the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, what is the significance of the opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games to China's preparations for the Winter Olympics?

Zhao Lijian: It is an important consensus reached by the leaders of China and Japan to support each other in successfully hosting the Olympic Games. China has been in close communication and coordination with the Tokyo Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games and relevant Japanese departments. China looks forward to a safe and secure Tokyo Olympic Games and will continue to provide support for the Japanese side within its capacity.

A few months after the Tokyo Olympics, China will host the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Beijing. The hosting of the Tokyo Olympic Games will provide valuable experiences and useful reference for the Beijing Winter Olympics. China has full confidence in taking up Tokyo's baton in successfully hosting the Olympic Games and work with the rest of the international community to carry forward the Olympic spirit, and host a simple, safe and splendid Olympic gathering.

Reuters: The US and a coalition of its allies on Monday accused China's Ministry of State Security of a global cyber hacking campaign. Do you have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: The US ganged up with its allies to make groundless accusations out of thin air against China on the cyber security issue. This act confuses right with wrong and smears and suppresses China out of political purpose. China will never accept this.

China firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks. It will never encourage, support or condone cyber attacks. This position has been consistent and clear. Given the virtual nature of cyberspace and the fact that there are all kinds of online actors who are difficult to trace, it's important to have enough evidence when investigating and identifying cyber-related incidents. It requires extra prudence when linking cyber attacks with the government of any country. The so-called technical details released by the US side do not constitute a complete chain of evidence.

In fact, the US is the world's largest source of cyber attacks. According to a report of 360, a Chinese cyber security firm, APT groups from North America have sophisticated techniques and abundant resources, and have long been targeting specific industries and institutions. According to statistics from the National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team (CNCERT), about 52,000 malicious program command and control servers located outside China took control of about 5.31 million computer hosts in China in 2020. The US and two of its NATO allies are the top three in terms of the number of computers under their control in China. In addition, 360's report also showed that APT-C-39, a cyber attack organization of the US Central Intelligence Agency, has carried out cyber infiltration and attacks on China for 11 years in key areas such as aerospace, science and research institutions, oil industry, large Internet companies and government agencies. The above attacks have seriously undermined China's national security, and the security of China's economy, critical infrastructure and citizens' personal information.

The US is wiretapping not only competitors, but also its allies. Its European allies downplay US moves to use Denmark's intelligence agency to spy on their leaders, while making a fuss about "China's cyber attacks" based on hearsay evidence. This act contradicts strategic autonomy claimed by Europe.

The cyber attack is a common threat faced by all. We always hold that countries should safeguard cyber security through dialogue and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, mutual trust and mutual benefit. I would like to stress that a handful of countries do not represent the international community, and denigrating others doesn't help to whitewash one's own wrongdoings. China once again strongly demands that the US and its allies stop cyber theft and attacks targeting China, stop slinging mud at China on this issue, and revoke the so-called indictment. China will take necessary measures to firmly uphold its cyber security and interests.

HRTN: We believe this is the first time NATO has released a statement on China's cyber attacks. Do you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: Nudged by the US, NATO in recent years has explicitly designated cyberspace as a new fighting domain. It has been advancing cyber military deployment and established a Cyber Operations Center. By introducing military alliance into cyberspace, NATO is not making itself more secure. On the contrary, this might spur cyber arms race, increase risks of cyber friction and conflict between countries, and undermine international peace and security.

If NATO truly cares about cybersecurity, it should match its words with actions and defend peace in cyberspace instead of engaging in cyber military buildup. If NATO truly cares about cybersecurity of its members, it should start by discussing a certain member's massive cyber theft programs against other members.

RIA Novosti: Taiwan's "foreign ministry" today announced that it is going to establish its representative office in Lithuania. I wonder if you have any comment on this and has the foreign ministry made any representations to Lithuania?

Zhao Lijian: China firmly opposes any official exchanges and the mutual establishment of so-called "representative offices" between Taiwan and countries with diplomatic relations with China. We urge the Lithuanian side to adhere to the one-China principle and honor its commitment made upon the establishment of diplomatic ties. Also a word of advice to the Taiwan authorities: "Taiwan independence" leads to a dead end and any attempt to create "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan" will not succeed.

Reuters: Three Republican Senators urged the US Olympic Committee to forbid American athletes from using China's new digital currency at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, citing security concerns. Does the Foreign Ministry have any comment on this?

Zhao Lijian: The US politicians' call only reflects their ignorance. I suggest they take some time to find out what digital currency is. As to espionage and digital security threats, the US is the global laureate. It runs tapping and surveillance programs on not only competitors but also allies through various means like cyber thefts and phone tapping. These are well-known facts.

Digital currency is the inevitable result of the development of digital technology. It is consistent with the historical trend of the growing global digital economy. There are clear provisions on safeguarding data security in Chinese law. US politicians should respect the spirit of the Olympic Charter, stop politicizing sports, and stop attempting to make an issue out of China's new digital currency.
AppsFlyer announces that strategic technology marketing veteran Sam Chiu will head AppsFlyers marketing team as its new Senior Director of Marketing, Asia-Pacific (APAC). Sam will report to Ronen Mense, President and Managing Director, AppsFlyer APAC.

This latest appointment follows the companys recent senior hire of ex-Oracle Sales Vice President Joen van Driel as AppsFlyers VP of Sales for APAC earlier this year. With app install ad spend in the region poised to reach $61 billion in 2022, these key hires highlight AppsFlyers strengthening commitment to the region, signaling its plan to cement its leadership position in APACs marketing attribution and analytics space.

Sam Chiu, Senior Director of Marketing, APAC, AppsFlyer, said, AppsFlyer is experiencing phenomenal growth, not only in APAC but globally, and I am honored to work alongside talented individuals in the team to further advance our marketing efforts and assert AppsFlyers dominance in the region. AppsFlyer is well-positioned to help marketers transform their businesses, and the mobile marketing industry continues to expand with the use of mobile apps wildly increasing day by day. I am excited about what lies ahead.

In his new role, Sam will spearhead AppsFlyers brand awareness, strategic marketing strategies, and demand generation for the company, driving engagement strategies, supporting the current customer base and working with high-performing teams across countries to strengthen AppsFlyers presence. Currently based out of Hong Kong, Sam will relocate to AppsFlyers SEAPAC hub in Bangkok, where he will play a critical role in driving AppsFlyers go-to-market strategy for over 22 markets across ASEAN, South Asia (including India and Pakistan), Japan, Korea, and ANZ.

Ronen Mense, President and Managing Director, AppsFlyer APAC said, Throughout the last twelve months we have continued to focus on growing AppsFlyer, not only in APAC, but globally. In a crucial time of AppsFlyers expansion, Sam brings in a wide range of experience, having worked at an array of established players in the industry. His role will drive key business goals in the region.

Sam brings an extensive amount of experience with close to twenty years of digital transformation and omni-channel strategy implementation to AppsFlyers Southeast Asia-Pacific (SEAPAC) team. His full stack marketing tech career spans Boston, New York City and Hong Kong across agencies (iProspect), publishers and ad networks (Microsoft, Yahoo), and B2C & B2B advertisers (DFS/LVMH, SAS), with deep experience driving campaign results for various Fortune 500 firms.
Al Futtaim, one of the leading UAE-based business conglomerates, has announced the launch of Al Futtaim Automotive Industrial Equipment (AFA-I.E), thus marking its entry into the used equipment market.

The new division incorporates the pre-owned products of both Al-Futtaim Auto & Machinery Company (Famco) and Al Futtaims Commercial Vehicles division.

The full range of products will cater to a diverse range of industries across the transportation, construction, oil and gas, manufacturing, warehousing and marine sectors from Used Commercial Vehicles, Material Handling Equipment, Construction Equipment, Power and Industrial Products and Remanufactured Genuine Spare Parts.

AFA-I.E will provide customers with used Volvo trucks, buses and construction equipment in addition to storage and handling products, power and industrial equipment, marine solutions from internationally renowned industry heavyweights including Yanmar, Doosan, Himonisa, AGG, SDLG, Ingersoll Rand and Linde.

Customers will also be able to purchase used HINO 300, 500 and 700 series trucks and Toyota Material Equipment in addition to the extensive portfolio of brands from other manufactures which will be available under one roof.

The launch of the new division is part of Al-Futtaims growth strategy and comes in response to the increasing demand for used equipment and vehicles.

Each equipment or commercial vehicle will be reconditioned to a defined set of criteria by trained technicians who will inspect every aspect and ensure they meet the required quality and durability standards.

"The launch of the used equipment division further reiterates the Groups commitment to provide customers with the best products and solutions and will specifically cater to a clientele that is looking for high-quality and cost-effective pre-owned equipment," said Ramez Hamdan, Managing Director  Industrial Equipment (Famco, HINO, Toyota Material Handling), Al-Futtaim Automotive.

"The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about a shift in customer preference for used vehicles and equipment. The new division will tap into this massive potential and will provide customers with quality vehicles and equipment that has undergone thorough quality checks by trained technicians thereby providing individual as well as corporate customers complete peace of mind and assurance," he added.

According to Al Futtaim, the team at AFA-I.E will offer customers total business solutions through new equipment sales, financial options, leasing and rental, trade-in and used unit sales. This means new and existing customers will benefit from a wide variety of well-maintained, best-in-class used products all under one roof.

All equipment and vehicles sold through AFA-I.E will provide full health checks that are performed by in-house technical experts and customers will receive full after-sales services including maintenance and genuine spare parts with optional after-sales contracts thereby providing additional peace of mind, it added.-TradeArabia News Service
The International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, announced an investment of $40 million in NSG UK Enterprises Limited (NSG UK).

NSG UK is a long-standing IFC client and a member of the NSG Groupone of the worlds largest manufacturers of glass and glazing products for architectural, automotive, and technical applications.

The corporate loan will finance the completion and start of operations of the groups greenfield glass production plant in Argentina, with an estimated production of 900 tons per day, and help address the macro challenges facing the South American country.

Located in an industrial site in Cardales, approximately 70 kilometres north-west of Buenos Aires, the plant will utilise the latest NSG worldwide technology supporting the achievement of industry and sustainability targets. This includes aspects such as application of Industry 4.0 standards and technologies that support the decarbonisation ambition of NSG Group.

In addition, IFCs loan to NSG UK, through the companys subsidiary in Argentina, Vidrieria Argentina S.A. (VASA), will positively impact the local economy by supporting FDI, substituting imports and generating exports, adding value to domestic raw materials, and enhancing value chains. Furthermore, IFC will provide an advisory service to VASA to help identify energy efficiency opportunities.

We are pleased to finance the completion of this project and to strengthen our relationship with NSG UK, a repeat global IFC client with a firm commitment to corporate governance practice and green standards, said David Tinel, IFC's Regional Manager for the Southern Cone. In the context of the pandemic, IFC has stepped up to continue supporting the private sector in emerging economies.

Since first partnering in 1992, we have built a strong long-term relationship with IFC and are excited about this new opportunity to work together so that we can contribute to the regions economy and the greener environment, said Leopoldo Carlos M Garces Castiella, Head of Architectural Glass South America. The NSG Group is aiming to be a global glass supplier contributing to the world with high value-added glass products and services.

The NSG Group is the world's leading supplier of glass and glazing systems in the architectural, automotive, and creative technology sectors. Architectural supplies glass for buildings and solar energy applications; automotive serves the original equipment, aftermarket replacement and specialised transport glazing markets; and creative technology, established in October 2020, supports NSG Group's focus on future growth.-- TradeArabia News Service
The Emirates Mars Mission (EMM), the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, has marked a year since launch from Tanegashima Space Centre in Kagoshima Prefecture, southwestern Japan on July 20, 2020.



The mission has not only performed nominally across all areas, but has exceeded its anticipated performance, encompassing a range of additional activities and freeing up valuable resources to perform additional observations, reported state news agency Wam.



"Weve had quite a lot of wiggle room in addition to our planned parameters and our confidence in our spacecraft has gone from strength to strength, to be honest. We were able to cut the number of trajectory correction manoeuvres, perform additional observations during our flight to Mars and now have added a whole area of scientific study to the mission that I can only describe as a bonus. It has been a very busy year indeed for Hope!" said EMM Project Director Omran Sharaf.



The launch from Tanegashima commenced a 493,000,000-km journey to reach and orbit the Red Planet, with an original seven Trajectory Correction Manoeuvres (TCMs) cut to four because of the spacecrafts outstanding performance during the Launch and Early Operations Phase (LEOPs). This conserved resources and allowed the EMM team to perform a series of observations en-route to Mars.



EMMs Emirates Mars Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) instrument was activated during Hopes cruise to Mars and used to image Mars exospheric hydrogen. The instrument was also cross-calibrated with the PHEBUS spectrometer aboard the European Space Agencys BepiColombo spacecraft, itself en-route to Mercury.



"These experiments were possible simply because Mars Hope was in such good shape," Hessa Al Matroushi, EMMs Science Lead commented.



Because resources were available and the spacecraft performance so exceeded planning scenarios, the dust tracking feature of Mars Hopes star tracker instruments was also enabled, allowing measurements of interplanetary dust in the wake of Mars as it spins around the sun.



With the successful Mars Orbit Insertion (MOI) manoeuvre taking place on 9th February 2021, the Mars Hope spacecraft once again performed impeccably, transitioning to its unique and highly elliptical 20,000 by 43,000-kilometre science orbit on 23rd March with its last scheduled big burn of its six Delta-V thrusters.



The probes three instruments were activated on the 10th April and a period of commissioning and testing followed, before the missions science phase formally commenced on 23rd May. It was during this period that the EMM science team first made the stunning observations of Mars discrete aurora that have electrified the global Mars science community, releasing the first global images of Mars discrete aurora in the far-ultraviolet, and providing new insights into the discrete aurora phenomenon in Mars nightside atmosphere.



Utilising additional data handling and bandwidth available, the mission can continue to make regular observations of Mars aurorae. The most sensitive ultraviolet instrument yet to orbit Mars, Hopes EMUS is able to image these dynamic auroral events globally at high resolution and across a wide range of wavelengths, providing an unprecedented window upon the interaction of the atmosphere with solar particles.



While previous studies had theorised the discrete aurora is tied to Mars magnetic fields and existing observations had been consistent with that theory, prior images of this phenomenon at this quality had only been available as artists impressions.



"Mars aurorae are an area of intense interest to the global scientific community and their study has tremendous potential to challenge, expand and deepen our understanding of Mars atmosphere and its interaction with the planet and with solar energies," said Al Matroushi. "We were hopeful that EMUS could make a contribution in this area but we now know with absolute certainty that contribution is going to be ground breaking."



Hope is following its planned 20,000  43,000 km elliptical science orbit, with an inclination to Mars of 25 degrees. The probe will complete one orbit of the planet every 55 hours and will capture a full planetary data sample every nine days in its two-year mission to map Mars atmospheric dynamics. Science data from the mission will be released globally with no embargo, following a period of validation and checking, in October 2021.



The Emirates Mars Mission will study the Martian atmosphere, the relationship between the upper layer and lower regions and, for the first time, the international science community will have full access to a holistic view of the Martian atmosphere at different times of the day, through different seasons. In addition, it will now aim to make significant contributions to our understanding of Mars aurorae.



The Hope Probes historic journey to the Red Planet coincides with a year of celebrations to mark the UAEs Golden Jubilee.


Hugh Fraser International (HFI) has announced the signing of four new legal alliances in key growth markets for HFI including in Saudi Arabia.

Al Suweikat and Al Busaies Law Office in Al Khobar will support HFI clients with additional key expertise for clients focused on growth in the region through the HFI Saudi Arabian Ventures Initiative (Savi Plus).

Savi Plus supports corporate ventures which are centred on advanced petroleum technology and energy transition ventures relating to Aramco-driven opportunities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its offshore territories in the Gulf and Red Sea.

Key elements of Savi Plus service offering relate to foreign direct investment, local partner, licensing, companies law, employment, In-Kingdom Total Value Added localisation and Aramco/Sabic vendor registration requirements.

Three further legal alliances have been signed with Hussain Lootah and Associates in the UAE, Mazghouny and Company in Cairo and Metwand Chambers Advocates in Mumbai. The legal alliance in the UAE with Hussain Lootah and Associates will support and develop HFI specialist UAE services with its Abu Dhabi Ventures Initiative, DMCC Corporate & Compliance Solutions service and Masdar Corporate & Compliance Solutions service.

A foreign lawyer licence has also been granted to Hugh Fraser International Legal Consultancy following special approval from the Government of Dubai Legal Affairs Department (GDLAD). The relaunched HFI aims to strengthen its position as a leading driving force for international business expansion for energy technology and know-how businesses in the Middle East region and other key territories in the surrounding East Mediterranean/Africa, Caspian/Central Asia, India and East Africa regions.

The granting of the foreign lawyer licence by GDLAD accelerates HFI roll out plans for NetZero Legal Solutions (N-ZELDS) and Petroleum Technology Legal Solutions (P-TELS) from HFIs new base in Dubai which opens in August at the Conrad Hotel Building.

Hugh Fraser, managing partner of HFI says: Our new legal alliances mean we continue to offer an increasing range of on-the-ground, key expertise to support clients who are focused on growth in the Middle East region and other key territories in the surrounding East Mediterranean/Africa, Caspian/Central Asia, India and East Africa regions.

HFI has also announced the promotion of Linda Al Orm to the position of general manager of HFI Bridgehead Solutions which is based in the DMCC Free Zone. Linda, a fluent Arabic, French and English speaker from Lebanon will lead HFIs DMCC Plus+ Corporate & Compliance Solutions in Dubai and Masdar Plus+ Corporate & Compliance Solutions in Abu Dhabi.

Hugh Fraser continues: I have worked with Linda since 2012 and I know she will develop both these initiatives as key growth platforms for our clients international group structures from which to build out regional and wider international growth. These initiatives will play a key valued-added contribution to our clients growth and business expansion as we head towards what looks to be a positive 12 months ahead with solid oil prices, $5 trillion of global energy sector projects of which $1 trillion is in renewables and clean energy and the post Covid recovery roll-out of deferred projects.

Hugh Fraser International supports businesses operating in the oil and gas, renewables, power and water sectors to grow in international markets.-- TradeArabia News Service
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The speakers were speaking at a panel discussion on Religious Freedom in India: Challenges & Opportunities, organized by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that advocates for human rights, religious freedom and civil liberties in both the US and India. They said that in India laws are designed to deny citizenship, control marriages, marginalize minority groups.

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WASHINGTON, D.C.  Speakers at the International Religious Freedom summit here this week detailed how the Indian government is intentionally stoking Hindu nationalism, which has caused widespread persecution of religious minorities, enactment or reactivation of laws designed to curtail or deny citizenship, control or prohibits interfaith marriages, silence NGOs by freezing their bank accounts, and state-sponsored Islamophobia campaigns that encourage mob violence against non-Hindus.

They were speaking at a panel discussion on Religious Freedom in India: Challenges & Opportunities, organized by the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that advocates for human rights, religious freedom and civil liberties in both the US and India.

Anurima Bhargava, a commissioner with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said that for the past two years, the commission has recommended the U.S. State Department designate India as a Country of Particular Concern (CPC), like Pakistan and Burma, because of the systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom in India.

IAMC this week led an initiative to have a Joint Resolution approved at the summit that also calls for the State Department to designate India a CPC. The resolution was supported by more than 30 signatories and is being transmitted to the office of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

Ms Bhargava pointed out that the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens are limiting or eliminating pathways for Muslims to be able to demonstrate their citizenship, which can lead to them being wrongfully detained, deported, or worse, rendered stateless. With those laws, India is acting much like Myanmar, in how the latter systematically discriminated against the Rohingyas leading up to their genocide.

Further, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act is designed to limit or eliminate dissent, while the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act can freeze the bank accounts of NGOs and religious organizations that traditionally have worked to promote unity, harmony and understanding in India.

The other area that is of concern, which we have documented in our reports, are the anti-conversion laws, she said. Essentially how I describe this is an attack on any kind of interfaith, interreligious engagement. A third of Indian states have these kinds of laws that limit or prohibit religious conversion to protect the dominant religion from any perceived threats from religious communities and religious minorities.

And so were seeing a situation the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention Act) doesnt really allow dissent and it is a very high standard for someone to get bail or to be able to come out of being incarcerated, so people can be detained and held for quite a long time without being charged, as in the case of 84-year-old Father Stan Swamy, who lost his life last week in an Indian prison because of Parkinsons and COVID, she said.

In addition to naming India a CPC, the USCIRF has also recommended that individuals at the state and the national level who have fomented hate, but also have implemented policies that are targeting religious communities, be sanctioned, whether in economic or in visa actions.

Joanne Lin, National Director of Amnesty International USA, detailed how the Indian government used the Foreign Contributions Regulation Act and other means to essentially shut down Amnesty Internationals offices in India by freezing its bank account.

The shuttering of Amnesty India is just one example of the Indian government activating an overbroad legal framework to crush human rights defenders who dare to challenge grave abuses of state authorities, she declared. The Indian government has leveraged financial and other institutions to strip human rights from religious minorities, to crush dissent and to silence advocates for freedom of religion and expression.

The U.S. government should call for the release of human rights defenders and other critics, many of whom have been held for over a year without being charged, she said. In addition, Amnesty calls for the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for attacks carried out by vigilante mobs, and police officers against Muslims during the February March 2020 violence in Delhi, which occurred in the context of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. These steps are necessary to ensure that religious freedom is a reality for all people in India regardless of their religion.

State-sponsored Islamophobia in India is anti-Muslim racism and a tool of oppression, declared Tabassum Haleem, CEO, Islamic Networks Group. In her presentation, Ms Haleem pointed out tropes used to denigrate and motivate hatred of Muslims include, Muslims dont belong in India, and Muslims are terrorists, with some Hindu nationalists calling for a Trump-like Muslim ban, and others declaring Muslims did no favour by staying here, and very few Muslims are patriotic.

It was even widely alleged that Muslims were intentionally spreading COVID-19, an enormous lie that resulted in discrimination, repression, persecution and violence against Muslims. And sadly, interfaith marriages have been criminalized clearly as a means of ensuring racial and ethnic purity, of the majority.

The Rev. Evangeline Anderson-Rajkumar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, who is a Dalit (the lowest class), referring to the ruling Hindu class, declared, In this class hierarchy, to consider oneself upper class is such a myth. There is nothing upper about the upper class. She lamented that because freedoms for religious minorities are being so eroded, and in many cases eliminated, the Indian Constitution is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

We know that for people to have dignity and worth is a God-given reality. But we have a situation in India where the prominent Hindutva forces can actually challenge that and deny whole peoples of their ability to reflect the image of God, and the possibility of them even being considered as a worthy human, of being human. And this is the crux of the whole problem of caste consciousness.

Explained Anantanand Rambachan, professor of religion, St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Because the Hindu condition is so internally diverse, it generally exemplifies an open and hospitable attitude toward religious diversity. One of the pillars of Hinduism is the belief in the unity of the oneness of God, even though this God is spoken of in many ways. Gods oneness implies the oneness of the human community.

He also made these points:

All beings are part of a single human community, and must be treated with dignity, justice and compassion, and be accorded equal rights.

Hindutva betrays the core theological commitment of Hinduism by ascribing unequal worth on the basis of religious identity and by seeking to deprive them of equal rights in the civic sphere.

There is an ancient and a powerful tradition of hospitality to religious diversity in the Hindu tradition, which made it possible to accommodate a wide diversity of religious beliefs and practices, and to offer shelter to persecuted religious groups for centuries.

There are teachings in the Hindu tradition that offer solid ground for diversity, for justice, for dignity, and for the equal worth of all human beings. We must lift up these Hindu teachings.

The Indian American Muslim Council has welcomed the news about the Biden administrations imminent announcement of an ambassador-at-large of international religious freedom. The post has been vacant since January 20 of this year and is a requirement of the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act.
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A 37-year-old Muslim man Habeeb Miyan from northeastern Indian state of Tripura was released in June 2021 after 4 years of wrongful imprisonment under the dreaded Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). He was falsely accused in the case of attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) campus Bangalore that took place in December 2005. Back at his home in Agartala, Habeeb is still traumatized by his wrongful imprisonment and questions who will return the four previous years of his life.

Musheera Ashraf | TwoCircles.net

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TRIPURA  It was another Friday in March 2017 for Habeeb Miyan, a 37-year-old auto-rickshaw driver and a resident of Agartala, Tripura. While he was getting ready for work, he got a call from the local police station to report at the police station with his identity card. Worried by the call, Habeeb decided to go to the police station and afterwards offer the obligatory Friday prayers.

Little did Habeeb know that he would return after more than 4 years.

Habeeb was arrested in the case of an attack on the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) campus Bangalore that took place on December 28, 2005. He was arrested 12 years after the incident and the case went on for 16 years before he was acquitted of all charges.

Habeeb was booked under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), 121 (waging or attempting to wage a war of abetting waging of war against Government of India), 121A (conspiracy to commit offences under section 121), 122 (collecting arms etc with intention of waging war), 123 (concealing with intent to facilitate design to wage war), 307 (attempt to murder) and 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code, along with provisions of the Indian Arms Act, Explosive Substances Act and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

After languishing in jail at Bengalurus Parappana Agrahara jail for over 4 years, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) special court acquitted Habeen Miyan of all the charges in June 2021. The NIA court concluded that the case suffers from a lack of evidence against the accused, leading to Habeeb Miyans release.

At the time of his arrest in 2007, Habeeb had left behind his wife, parents and 4-year-old son. As per his family, Habeebs ailing father passed away in depression while waiting to see his son.

Habeeb was informed about the demise of his father by his lawyer. I felt helpless on hearing the news. I couldnt do anything except crying and praying for him, Habeeb told TwoCircles.net.

The family said that in his four years of incarceration, the family could not meet Habeeb in jail due to their bad economic situation. Habeeb was imprisoned at a jail in Bangalore over three thousand kilometers away from his home.

Keeping faith in innocence

Talking to TwoCircles.net, Habeebs brother-in-law Idris said that, Habeebs family were put in a dire situation due to Habeebs imprisonment.

However, we knew he was innocent and we never lost faith, Idris said.

Talking about his release, Idris said that they are relieved by his release but he feels worried about his future and is still traumatized.

After reuniting with his family Habeeb is still not able to process that he is a free man. If I recall anything, it hurts me, Habeeb said.

Advocate Taher, a Bengaluru based lawyer who was fighting Habeebs case told TwoCircles.net that, This is the first high stake case in the history of India where the accused was discharged because no allegations were found in police documents against Habeeb.

Advocate Taher said that this is not the only case where the accused had to spend time in jail because of the delay in trials. There are many such cases, he said.

Advocate Taher said he has filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL), in which the court has given the directions to the NIA special court that in such cases the day to day hearing should be held under Section 309.

Trauma of loss

Habeeb doesnt want to talk or think about what he has gone through. I dont want to remember these 4 years of my life. It makes me feel sick, Habeeb said.

Habeeb was a daily wage worker who claims to know nothing about the case that he was implicated in. According to Habeeb, he was always told that his trial was going on. Precious four years of my life have been destroyed, he said in anger, adding, I have been left with no work.

Habeeb recalls the time when he was being taken to a jail in Bangalore. I kept on asking them why are you taking me, but I couldnt do anything, he said.

Sharing his concerns, Habeeb said, I have to earn a living for my family. My sons studies have suffered. My house is in a bad condition. Who will return my wasted time?.

Habeeb is also worried about his ailing mother and wants to work so that he can take care of her.

Complaining about his health Habeeb said, My health has suffered. I was punished for something I havent done.

Following his release, Habeebs only concern is to find work and provide a better life to his family. My childs heart is broken. He doesnt say anything to me, Habeeb said.

Habeeb said that he never wanted to come out on bail and wanted to come out of jail only after being proved innocent. I never lost faith. I always knew I would be free one day, he said.

Habeeb said that the mental trauma that he and his family faced due to his imprisonment could not be described in words.

Talking about cases of Indian Muslims falsely booked under terror charges, the President of Jamiat Ulema e Hind Maulana Arshad Madani said that the medias biased attitude towards Muslims is worrisome.

The news about their arrests are being propagated everywhere whereas the news of their acquittal has no space in the media, Maulana Madani said.
Thirty-five years ago, the movie Top Gun brought the thrill and danger of naval jet aviation to the big screen, and its second installment, Top Gun: Maverick, will make its premiere later this year. To explore the impact of these films, the evolution of the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School (aka Top Gun) and naval aviation  and whats coming next  the Smithsonians National Air & Space Museum (NASM) will be presenting a GE Aviation Lecture via YouTube on August 10th, 2021 at 8 pm ET.

For those of you too young to remember Top Guns release on May 16th, 1986, it came at a time when naval aviation was very much in the publics consciousness, with carrier aircraft having participated in strikes against Libya the previous month as part of Operation El Dorado Canyon. The combination of these two events resulted in a significant boost to recruiting at the time and the films memorable soundtrack, scenes, and linesI feel the need the need for speedhave endured, even though the F-14 Tomcat has gone from frontline fighter to museum piece and the Navy Fighter Weapons School (TOP GUN) has moved from near San Diego to the desert around Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada.

NASMs lecture on August 10th will see the museums acting director (and Top Gun alumnus) Chris Browne in conversation with Dan Pedersen, co-founder of the U.S. Navy Fighter Weapons School; Dale Snort Snodgrass, Top Gun alumnus and highest-time F-14 pilot; and Lt. Briana Plohocky, U.S. Navy pilot and recent Top Gun graduate.

Dan Pedersen was a US Naval Aviator (joining in 1953) and is credited as the leading force behind the creation of the Fighter Weapons School at Naval Air Station Miramar in 1969. Navy leadership chose him for this role due to his experiences in air battles over Vietnam which imbued him with deep understanding for problems with both US tactics and equipment (weaponry at the time had a 90% failure rate).

Capt. Snodgrasss career in F-14a spanned a quarter century, during which he became the highest time Tomcat Pilot with over 4800 hours on type and 1200 plus arrested landings. Squadron tours included VF-124 (Initial Training), VF-142, VF-101 (Instructor), VF-41 (CAG LSO), VF-43 (Adversary Pilot), VF-143, VF-101 (XO/Instructor), VF-33 (XO/CO). As Commanding Officer of VF-33, he lead the squadron in combat during Desert Storm. His combat sorties included leading 34 strikes into western and central Iraq. In 1994, he took command of Fighter Wing Atlantic and the NAS Oceana-based F-14 Squadrons. In 1995, the West Coast-based Squadrons were single-sited to Oceana and he gained command of the entire Tomcat Community.

This program will be presented live on YouTube with live closed captioning. Sign up for a reminder.
by Nirmala Carvalho

The Indian congregation founded in 1921 by Fr Raymond Mascarenhas together with four young teachers marks its first a century. Today it is present in nine countries on three continents. In India it remains an important point of reference for the empowerment of women, especially in slums and villages.

Mangalore (AsiaNews)  India recently celebrated the centenary of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Little Flower of Bethany, locally known as the Bethany Sisters.

Father Raymond Francis Camillus Mascarenhas founded the order in 1921 in Bendur, a district in Mangalore (Karnataka).

The clergyman gathered around him four young female teachers with the charism of responding to the most immediate needs of simple people. From this area of the city, the Sisters moved into many corners of the world.

Ours is the story of a continuous transformation, said Sister Jyoti Pinto, former superior general of the congregation, speaking to AsiaNews.

Over the past 100 years, the congregation has grown like a sturdy tree, spreading its branches into nine countries on three continents, from the Sahara Desert to the peaks of the Himalayas.

In addition to India and Nepal, Bethany Sisters are present in Europe (Vatican, Italy, Germany and France) and Africa (Mauritania, Senegal and Tanzania). The membership numbers 1,378 Sisters.

In India their service is offered in 26 states and 63 dioceses, taking care of those on the margins, without any distinction.

As per the mandate of their founder and first pioneers, the Bethany Sisters pay special attention to empowering girls, women and rural communities, through a ministry that is centred on providing pastoral, social, educational and health care, both in urban slums and villages.

The congregations social outreach involves 142 Sisters, 350 collaborators in 56 different centres, caring for the all-round development of 150,000 women, 113,000 children and 156,000 youth.

The Sisters stand with migrants and work for the prevention of human trafficking in collaboration with dioceses, other religious institutions, and government agencies.

In educational matters, Sister Jyoti explained, the Bethany Educational Society is a beacon of light for millions of children and youth, especially girls.

Thanks to a large network of 185 educational establishments, various programmes and informal activities are offered in urban and rural slums, providing hope for a dignified life.

To mark the centenary, Bishop Peter Paul Saldanha of Mangalore led a thanksgiving Mass in the presence of the current superior general, Sister Rose Celine.

Archbishop Card Oscar Gracias of Mumbai sent a video message praising the Bethany Sisters because through their institutions show the compassionate face of Jesus.

Meanwhile, the Church in Mangalore is promoting the cause of beatification of the founder, Fr Mascarenhas. The diocesan phase ended in 2019 and the findings are now being examined by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Yesterday, 49 cases were recorded, compared to 15 on July 6. Many originating in the former Burma. Chinese scientist leading the fight against the virus receives third dose of a different vaccine. Study: Sinovac produces one-tenth of the antibodies produced by Pfizer-BioNTech. Health workers vaccinated with Chinese drugs die of coronavirus in Indonesia and Thailand.

Beijing (AsiaNews) - Cases of coronavirus have more than tripled in the province of Yunnan, on the border with Myanmar, according to a statement issued today by the National Health Commission.

49 infections were recorded yesterday in the border towns of Ruili and Longchuan: 41 were Chinese citizens who had returned home from Myanmar; eight were local infections. On 6 July, there were 15, including 12 Burmese citizens.

Overall, the authorities counted 65 positive cases across China yesterday: official numbers are very low compared to other countries, but they mark the highest level since 30 January, when there were 92.

The Yunnan outbreak is the second of the Delta variant. The first one broke out in Guangdong at the end of May, leading to the closure of several major ports, with significant damage to national and international trade.

Zong Guoying, Yunnan's deputy governor, has promised that the authorities will build a 'steel fortress' to stop the transmission of the virus. To cope with the spread of the infection from Myanmar, the local government has instituted strict border controls. Chinese soldiers patrol the border to prevent the arrival of Burmese migrants, potential spreaders of the coronavirus. The ongoing civil conflict between the military coup and the armed opposition has made it more difficult to contain the pandemic emergency in Myanmar.

Gao Fu, director of China's Office of Disease Control and Prevention, said on 18 July that Chinese vaccines were working against the Delta strain. He admitted, however, that he had received a third dose of a different vaccine to boost antibody production.

In April, Gao had caused a stir by speculating about the administration of different vaccines in the same patient. Most observers read his release as a public admission of the ineffectiveness of Chinese vaccines. A study by the University of Hong Kong, published in Lancet Microbe on 15 July, claims that the Chinese Sinovac generates one-tenth of the antibodies produced by Pfizer-BioNTech.

So far, China has developed four vaccines, and is the global leader in vaccine exports. However, health authorities in several countries have complained about the limited validity of Chinese vaccines, a problem for all those governments that have bought them or received them for free from Beijing.

For example, hundreds of Thai and Indonesian health workers have contracted Covid after having been vaccinated with Chinese medicines: 30 of them have died in Indonesia; two in Thailand: a heavy blow for Xi Jinping's "vaccine diplomacy".
A suicide bomber struck a market in Sadr City on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Several of teh injured are in a critical condition. Women and children were among the victims. The bloodiest attack in the last six months in the Iraqi capital. The premier has ordered the arrest of the head of security in the area.

Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) - At least 35 people were killed and dozens injured in a suicide attack that struck a crowded market in Sadr City, a suburb of Baghdad, yesterday evening, on the eve of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. Security and hospital sources report that at least 60 people were involved in the explosion, some of whom are reportedly in life-threatening conditions.

The Islamic State (IS, formerly Isis) claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement published on its Nasheer agency and relayed via Telegram. A militiaman allegedly set off an explosive belt after blending into the crowd at the al-Wuhailat market, which was large at the time of the attack for evening shopping during a festive period.

Eyewitnesses claim that women and children were among the victims and several shops were set on fire.

This is the bloodiest attack in Baghdad in the last six months. In the past, attacks used to take place on an almost daily basis, but they dramatically decreased in 2017 following the military defeat at the hands of the Iraqi army and US forces, which marked the end of the project of an Islamic caliphate in the region.

In the hours after the explosion, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi chaired an urgent meeting with top security and other military ranks. He also reportedly ordered the arrest of the federal police commander, responsible for security in the area where the attack took place. President Barham Salih posted a message on social media referring to a "terrible crime" targeting civilians "on the eve of Eid. We will not stop until terrorism is eradicated at its roots".

In April, in Sadr City, Isis launched an attack using a car bomb in a local market, killing four people. The neighbourhood, with a large Shiite majority, is one of the main targets of the Sunni jihadist movement, which is still active in Asia and Africa, where it carries out attacks and bloody violence.
Sources tell AsiaNews about a worrying development that is getting worse. Turkey is on high alert for possible mass arrivals, triggered by the advance of Islamic extremists. Over the past few weeks, at least 500 Afghans have tried to cross the border every day. Erdogans reception policy in the name of Islam has failed.

Istanbul (AsiaNews)  Turkish authorities have detained at least 133 undocumented migrants along the countrys border with Iran, most of them Afghans fleeing the advance of the Taleban in their country.

Local sources spoke to AsiaNews, anonymous for security reasons, confirming the detentions, calling it a worrying development that is getting worse as the number of refugees trying to cross borders increases.

According to local authorities, 73 Afghans were taken into custody on Saturday in the eastern province of Van, while another 60 migrants, 59 from Afghanistan, were held in Ercis, a district also in Van province.

In recent weeks, Turkey has been on high alert for possible mass arrivals from Afghanistan, triggered by the advance of Islamic extremists who have exploited the withdrawal of NATO and US forces from the country.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that at least 270,000 Afghans have been displaced internally since January, a figure that brings the number of Afghans displaced by Jihadi violence and war to more than 3.5 million people.

For the past few weeks, at least 500 Afghan migrants have reached the Turkish border every day, a 150 per cent increase over previous summers, which is the best time for crossing the borders.

For several critics, this kind of immigration is bound to further weaken an already precarious Turkish economy.

Others slam President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for welcoming the refugees in the name of Islamic brotherhood and signing hosting agreements with the European Union in exchange for substantial funding.

Turkish, Afghan and Iranian foreign ministers met at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum (ADF) in southern Turkey last month to discuss cooperation on security, energy and migration.

Turkish diplomatic sources said that there is no specific deal between Ankara and Tehran to deal with migration from Afghanistan, despite Turkey being a primary destination.

One of the first measures was to boost security along the borders.

Turkey hosts more than four million refugees, mostly from Syria, the highest number in the world.
The prominent member of the National League for Democracy was ill with Covid. The virus continues to claim victims across the country. The infection figures released by the junta do not reflect reality. Yesterday, there were more protests against the army. Those who returned from prison recounted the torture at the hands of soldiers.

Yangon (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Nyan Win, an important member of the National League for Democracy, the party of the democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, died this morning in Yangon hospital. The 78-year-old politician had been transferred to the hospital from Insein prison because he was ill with Covid-19. The military had arrested him on 21 February, three weeks after the coup by the junta that now controls the country. His family blamed the Tatmadaw (the Burmese army) for Nyan's death: "The generals are to blame for everything that has happened. Because of their thirst for power, the country is now in chaos.

Infections continue to increase and there are no statistics on the seriousness of the health situation. According to data released by the junta, yesterday there were 281 deaths and more than 5,000 new infections, but doctors and funeral services say that this is not possible and that the toll is actually much higher, because the crematoriums are working day and night.

In the meantime, there were more anti-regime protests yesterday. On Martyrs' Day, the Tatmadaw held a guarded ceremony to commemorate the country's heroes, including General Aung San, father of Suu Kyi, who was prevented from attending the celebrations.

In the rest of Myanmar, the army clashed with protesters. In Monywa, west of Mandalay, protesters held a march in which they chanted against the soldiers, while in Meiktila, young people hung a banner in front of the Martyrs' Day memorial to pay tribute to four other "martyrs" killed in their district during the recent anti-coup protests.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, since February, the military junta has killed at least 919 people and arrested more than 5,000. According to the non-profit organisation, at least 22 people have been tortured by the army. Yesterday, a 17-year-old boy suspected of being involved in organising some explosions, told Myanmar Now about his experience in Burmese prisons: blindfolded and with his hands tied, he was beaten for several days in a row and almost buried alive by soldiers.
Baltimore, the State of Maryland, and, in fact, the entire art world will forever be indebted to Rebecca for her vision in creating this groundbreaking living testament to human creativity, imagination and ingenuity, AVAM board chair Christopher Goelet said in a news release. She and LeRoy imagined the possibility of a place where intuitive artists could evidence the rich and varied experiences of their everyday lives.
Benson said she follows water safety data closely, and cancels sessions if theyre within 48 hours after heavy rainfall. All instructors are certified in water safety training. BMore SUP also accepts only experienced paddlers, who are much less likely to fall in, at its harbor location. First-time paddleboarders need to take a class at BMore SUPs Dundalk location if they want to paddle in the harbor.
The crowd marched through downtown Easton, carrying large yellow signs saying JIM CROW - TIME TO GO and MOVE TALBOTS CONFEDERATE MONUMENT. The county now faces a lawsuit over the long contentious memorial near the county courthouse, the latest effort by the Talbot County branch of the NAACP, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender and the states branch of the ACLU to remove it.
When Foster was 7 months old, her father threw her through a glass door, according to documents from that court case. While Banks was awaiting trial for the assault, the body of his wife was found in a closet. It was too decomposed for a cause of death to be determined, according to police.
On Feb. 27, detectives saw Fords vehicle at the Southern District parking lot, but the document said she was then seen by detectives getting into her personal vehicle and leaving the parking lot at 1:07 a.m., six hours before her shift was scheduled to end. On March 2, Ford was again seen by detectives leaving the district parking lot at 11:21 p.m., less than an hour after her shift was scheduled to begin. Detectives saw her return to her home before midnight, the document said.
It was her second visit to the region hit by the July 14-15 flash floods, and work continued to clean up piles of mud-caked debris and search for any more victims. She began her day in the town of Bad Muenstereifel, visiting a warehouse where donations were being stored.
More than one observer to this ongoing debacle has suggested that the county executive and governor be forced to sit down together and negotiate some sort of compromise. Yet neither seems so inclined. If theres been one pattern to Mr. Hogans transportation formula, its been to follow his own political agenda. Reducing tolls served his purposes in the first term, raising them to astronomical heights apparently does the same in his second term. There is surely a place for toll roads, bridges and tunnels just as there is a place for properly supervised P3 projects and better functioning public transit. But theres also something to be said for the just-as-vital process of building a regional consensus over such a huge, potentially disruptive and controversial project as the Capital Beltway/I-270 plan. Better to seek further compromise than jam this down Montgomery Countys throat.
Leaders should be guided by science and data. We cannot allow anecdotes to drive us. The recent Fells Point furor is a case in point. In a letter to city leaders, 30 business owners threatened to withhold taxes until Ms. Mosby reversed her new approach to focus on violent crime (among other issues). They claim that a culture of lawlessness rarely remains confined to petty offenses and invariably leads to the kinds of violence and tragedy. This non-factual assertion and misinformed perception is widely contradicted not only by the Hopkins research, but also by findings in Boston, where researchers discovered that not prosecuting low-level crime led to reductions in serious crime. Another study just published has shown that reductions in low-level arrests do not come at the cost of rising crime rates. In fact, research proves crime goes down when the coordinated focus is on violent criminals.
A recent commentary shed light on how cities are moving away from having police respond to mental health crises in favor of trained community responders (When a person is in crisis, who should take the call? Cities turn to community responders before police, July 15). This is an important national trend that recognizes that we ask police to do too much. Armed officers are often not the right people to deal with people who make a call for help.
Michael Evitts of the Downtown Partnership has said the move will be the single largest influx of employment in the history of downtown (COVID has created a watershed moment for downtown Baltimore restaurants, with some foundering, others opening, July 9). The relocation of state employees to downtown was not an easy headline moment for Mr. Hogan either. The governor had to first negotiate a contentious exit from the previous plan to renovate State Center. To me, this shows that he is willing to fight for Baltimore.
Maryland Guard members were among the first to arrive in Washington Jan. 6 after a mob of then-President Donald Trumps supporters overran the Capitol building, disrupting the certification of the 2020 election results. After a delay in getting the sign-off from federal officials, the state sent 500 Guard members, a number that swelled to about 1,000 over the next few weeks.
News Around the Republic of Mexico



Legal Migration to Mexico Surged in First Part of 2021



Between January and May of 2021, more than 28,631 permanent resident cards (TRP) were issued, almost 10,000 more than in the same period of 2020, and nearly double the number issued in the first months of 2019.



Between January and May of 2021, more than 28,631 permanent resident cards (TRP) were issued, almost 10,000 more than the same time frame in the year previous, according to data from the Mexican Secretariat of the Interior's Migration Policy Unit. The numbers have likewise nearly doubled from two years ago, with 13,730 more TRPs issued in the first months of 2021 than 2019.



More than 118 citizens of different countries were granted residency cards, including 5,000 from Venezuela, 4,385 from Honduras, and 2,584 from the United States. Mexico City has the highest surge in new permanent residents with 4,591, followed by the state of Chiapas with 3,630, and then Quintana Roo with 3,139, likely bolstered by the popularity of the Tulum region as a hotspot for foreigners to move to.



Anyone granted a TRP is given the right to live in Mexico indefinitely without needing to renew the permit, and can legally work in exchange for payment, though likewise can live unemployed [if financially secure].



For temporary residents, of which 18,144 temporary resident cards (TRT) were given in the first five months of 2021, the legality of the residency is bound to endorsement by a specific employer for no more than four years. After those four years have passed, legal migrants are then allowed to apply for the TRP.



The beneficiaries of this permit also increased this year from the year previous by more than 2,100 TRTs.



More than 17.8 percent of TRTs were granted to U.S. citizens, followed by Colombians with 13.4 percent and Argentines with 6.1 percent. Most TRTs were issued to those living in Mexico City, followed by the states of Quintana Roo and Jalisco.



With both the TRT and TRP, legal residents of Mexico, whether temporary or permanent, are granted the right to leave and enter Mexico as often as they wish, and request permission for immediate family members to enter the country as well.



Source: Pulse News Mexico While the United States has made it increasingly harder for foreigners, Mexicans included, to migrate legally to the country, Mexico in turn has experienced a massive influx in legal foreign residents. Between January and May of 2021, more than 28,631 permanent resident cards (TRP) were issued, almost 10,000 more than the same time frame in the year previous, according to data from the Mexican Secretariat of the Interior's Migration Policy Unit. The numbers have likewise nearly doubled from two years ago, with 13,730 more TRPs issued in the first months of 2021 than 2019.More than 118 citizens of different countries were granted residency cards, including 5,000 from Venezuela, 4,385 from Honduras, and 2,584 from the United States. Mexico City has the highest surge in new permanent residents with 4,591, followed by the state of Chiapas with 3,630, and then Quintana Roo with 3,139, likely bolstered by the popularity of the Tulum region as a hotspot for foreigners to move to.Anyone granted a TRP is given the right to live in Mexico indefinitely without needing to renew the permit, and can legally work in exchange for payment, though likewise can live unemployed [if financially secure].For temporary residents, of which 18,144 temporary resident cards (TRT) were given in the first five months of 2021, the legality of the residency is bound to endorsement by a specific employer for no more than four years. After those four years have passed, legal migrants are then allowed to apply for the TRP.The beneficiaries of this permit also increased this year from the year previous by more than 2,100 TRTs.More than 17.8 percent of TRTs were granted to U.S. citizens, followed by Colombians with 13.4 percent and Argentines with 6.1 percent. Most TRTs were issued to those living in Mexico City, followed by the states of Quintana Roo and Jalisco.With both the TRT and TRP, legal residents of Mexico, whether temporary or permanent, are granted the right to leave and enter Mexico as often as they wish, and request permission for immediate family members to enter the country as well.



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News Around the Republic of Mexico



Mexico Set to Approve Moderna's Vaccine 'Very Soon'



The Foreign Minister tweeted that this presents "more and better options" for Mexico's vaccination plan for the remainder of the year and the one already designed for 2022. Mexico City - Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard on Saturday reported



According to the World Health Organization, Moderna is a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine that requires two doses. On December 18, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the emergency use of the Modern vaccine in people over 18 years of age.



In June 2021, the pharmaceutical company announced that its COVID-19 vaccine is extremely effective against the highly contagious Delta variant, which is becoming the dominant strain in the US, France, Germany, South Africa and other nations.



The Foreign Minister tweeted that this presents "more and better options" for Mexico's vaccination plan for the remainder of the year and the one already designed for 2022.



In addition, he reported that so far Mexico has received a total of 59,972,335 million doses from 6 pharmaceutical companies that have sent shipments to the country since December 23, 2020. This includes the 585,000 Pfizer vaccines received early Monday morning.



Add to this the 5,582,540 Cansino Biologics and 8,729,300 AstraZeneca vaccines that have been packaged in Mexico, and the total number of vaccines that have been made available to the Mexican people to date is 74,284,175.



This is in line with the objective of the Mexican Government, which has reiterated on several occasions its goal of having everyone over 18 years of age vaccinated by October, at least with a first dose.



Sources: Gobierno de Mexico, El Financiero - Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard on Saturday reported through his Twitter account that the Moderna vaccine, which has a similar technological profile to that of Pfizer, will soon be approved in Mexico.According to the World Health Organization, Moderna is a messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine that requires two doses. On December 18, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the emergency use of the Modern vaccine in people over 18 years of age.In June 2021, the pharmaceutical company announced that its COVID-19 vaccine is extremely effective against the highly contagious Delta variant, which is becoming the dominant strain in the US, France, Germany, South Africa and other nations.The Foreign Minister tweeted that this presents "more and better options" for Mexico's vaccination plan for the remainder of the year and the one already designed for 2022.In addition, he reported that so far Mexico has received a total of 59,972,335 million doses from 6 pharmaceutical companies that have sent shipments to the country since December 23, 2020. This includes the 585,000 Pfizer vaccines received early Monday morning.Add to this the 5,582,540 Cansino Biologics and 8,729,300 AstraZeneca vaccines that have been packaged in Mexico, and the total number of vaccines that have been made available to the Mexican people to date is 74,284,175.This is in line with the objective of the Mexican Government, which has reiterated on several occasions its goal of having everyone over 18 years of age vaccinated by October, at least with a first dose.



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Voiture police endommagee lors attaque separatistes Anonyme

Simon Emile Mooh, Senior Divisional Officer for Mezam Division in Cameroons North West Region has prohibited the circulation of motorbikes in Bali subdivision for a period of three months renewable.

The ban is contained in a prefectural order signed Tuesday, July 20, 2021. The administrative officer says the decision is based on the exigencies of security and public order.

That with effect from the date of signature of this Order, the circulation of Motor Bikes is hereby prohibited in Bali Subdivision, Mezam Division, North West Region for a period of three months renewable, said Mooh in a document made public Tuesday.

He warned that any person or group of persons who contravenes this order shall be punished in accordance with the provisions of the regulations in force.

That the Divisional Officer for Bali Subdivision, the Company Commander Gendarmerie Bali, and the Commissioner of Police Bali are each in their respective spheres charged with the strict implementation of this order, said Mooh. That the present order shall be registered and communicated wherever and whenever necessary.

SDO bans motorbikes in Bali (c) WhatsApp

Although the Senior Divisional Officer did not precise the incident that prompted the ban on motorbikes, pundits believe that it is not unconnected to a separatist ambush on uniform officers days back.

A video on social media suggests that on July 18, armed separatists ambushed and killed no fewer than five policemen and destroyed their vehicle around T -Junction in Bali Subdivision. Ambazonia fighters in Bali Nyonga detonated an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), rendering the police pickup immovable before firing shots at it, the video indicates.

The armed separatists who carried out the attack presumably made away with guns, helmets, identity cards, and other security paraphernalia.

Last week, reports say fighters of the non-state armed group operating in Bali burned down a security facility.

It is believed that the order prohibiting the circulation of motorbikes in Bali will improve the security situation given that armed separatists are known to use motorbikes.

Cameroon-Info.Net recalls that on March 13, 2020, Governor Adolphe Lele Lafrique Tchoffo Deben signed an order prohibiting, indefinitely, the circulation of motorbikes from 6 pm to 5:30 am daily in some divisions of the North West Region.

Cameroon's state forces have been battling to dislodge armed separatists who pitched their tents in the North West and South West Regions since Anglophone protests transformed into an armed conflict in 2017.

Corporate demands by Common Law Lawyers and Anglophone Teachers led to protests in November 2016. The street demonstrations later morphed into ongoing running gun battles between state forces and armed separatist fighters in the predominantly English-speaking regions, leading to untold destruction of human lives, their habitats, and livelihoods.

Tit-for-tat killings, kidnappings, arsons, maiming, and outright terror have become part of daily lives in some parts of the English-speaking regions.
Minister Libom Li Likeng at Thursday's ceremony in Bitam Camtel

The 96-strand G652 Type Optic Fiber interconnection that now exists between Cameroon and Gabon is expected to reduce the digital divide, bring down communication costs and ensure security in communication in the sub-region.

The Cameroon government, through its telecommunications company, Cameroon Telecommunication, CAMTEL, inaugurated the interconnection line between Cameroon and Gabon last week

Thursday's ceremony in Meyo- Kye (Bitam) in Gabon was co-chaired by Cameroon's Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, Libom Li Likeng nee Mendomo Minette and Gabon's Minister of State in charge of Communication and Digital Economy, Edgard Anicet Mboumbou Miyakou in the presence dignitaries including Rufino Ovono Ondo Engonga, Equatorial Guinea's Minister in charge of Telecommunications.

The 96-strand G652 type optical fiber laid underground stretches from the city of Bitam in Gabon to the city of kye-Ossi in Cameroon.

Optic Fiber linking Cameroon and Gabon (c) Camtel

The line covers a total distance of 22 kilometers, making it possible to connect the telecommunication transport networks of both countries.

Approximately 100 terabytes / second is to be offered as well as eLearning and other advantages.

The launching of the optic fiber linking Cameroon and Gabon on July 15, 2021, is the culmination of a process initiated two years ago, for the digital and physical interconnection between Cameroon and Gabon, providing access to broadband infrastructure, and consequently, significantly improving information and data sharing.

It was on November 28, 2019, that Cameroon and Gabon signed, in Libreville, a memorandum of understanding for the physical interconnection of both countries' optic fiber networks.

Last week's ceremony, according to Minister Li Likeng, comes to materialize one of the recommendations of the regional interconnection strategy for Africa, namely, to set up integrated systems of reliable, efficient telecommunications infrastructures, supported by harmonized digital interconnectivity policies.

This ambitious project, according to Minister Libom Li Likeng, is the common will of our two heads of state and the fruit of sub-regional cooperation whose objective is to interconnect our two capitals.

Cameroons Posts and Telecommunications Minister praised the optic fiber interconnection as an important step forward in the digital integration process of the sub-region.

Her words: Optic fibre plays a vital role in sub-regional integration. That is why we are investing in joint projectstheir deployment [fibre optic] has grown, offering new opportunities in areas related to health, education, online banking and administration, social networking and internet telephony.

Gabon's Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Edgard Anicet Mboumbou Miyakou said the project is "a major step in cooperation between the two countries which must be commended for its proper dimension".

The Optic Fiber connection would be linked to Equatorial Guinea in the days ahead.
Hon. Ngala Gerard Ndombang, MP for Donga Mantung Centre Facebook

Tuesdays police assault on Hon. Nourane Fotsing Moluh Hassana in Bafoussam has been described as "inconceivable and unacceptable" by influential lawmaker of the ruling Cameroon People's Democratic Movement (CPDM), Hon. Ngala Gerard.

He said, We must condemn these excesses of some officials who at the same time give a dirty image to our police force.

The violence meted on Hon Nourane Fotsing by a police officer in Bafoussam today is inconceivable and unacceptable, said lawmaker Ta Nformi Ngala Gerard, Member of Parliament for Donga Mantung Centre.

Taking to Facebook a few hours after the incident, the development-focused lawmaker said such treatment should never be meted on a woman, talk less of a Member of Parliament.

As a Member of Parliament, I strongly condemn such unacceptable excesses and ask that an investigation be opened to this effect to get the facts straight and possible sanctions, said Hon. Ngala. Let's all be good examples in building, not destroying.

The crux

A video circulating online shows police in Bafoussam assaulting Hon. Nourane Foster and harassing her as she purportedly tried to drive through a barricaded road on Tuesday.

The video shows a near scuffle between a group of police officers and the lawmaker of the opposition PCRN party led by Hon. Cabral Libii.

The police can be seen warning the lawmaker in her car, as though she was a child, forcing her to climb down her car before pouring insults and threats on her. One of the officers, a 3rd-grade inspector of police with a pistol strapped around his waist seems to take the matter into his hands, pointing and scolding at Hon. Nourane Foster.

The 46-second viral video suggests that Hon. Nourane Fosters was physically assaulted by the forces of law and order.

Many among those sharing the video of the scuffle on social media are calling it a brutal assault and a violation of parliamentary immunity.

Nourane Foster was reportedly on her way to Foumban through Bafoussam in Cameroons West region Tuesday, July 20, 20211.

The northern exit from the city of Bafoussam which leads to Foumban is said to have been blocked as the Governor of the West Region, Awa Fonka Augustine joined Muslim faithful to commemorate Eid al-Adha, Arabic for Festival of the Sacrifice  the latter of the two official holidays celebrated within Islam that honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God's command.

Open sources say the road stretch was blocked as a security measure given that the Governor was at a nearby mosque where Muslim faithful offered Eid al-Adha prayers. An overflow from the mosque had forced faithful to pray right up to the road, reports say.

Hon. Ngala salutes patriotic police officers

In the same breath that condemned the treatment reserved for Hon. Nourane by some police officers in Bafoussam, Hon. Ngala Gerard reaffirmed support to the police force.

First, we must reaffirm our total and unending support to our police forces in their mission to maintain law and order, protecting people and their goods especially to the DIRECTOR GENERAL who has brought in a lot of reforms to better the police core, said Ta Nformi Ngala Gerard. They do so day and night with a lot of Bravado. However, we must condemn these excesses of some officials who at the same time give a dirty image of our police force.
The four officers involved in the incident, who Jones said had a combined 58 years of experience, have been placed on administrative leave as an investigation begins. The Howard County States Attorneys Office will conduct the investigation under an agreement with its counterpart in Montgomery County which calls for one county to conduct such investigations for the other county.
As the invaders wielded metal pipes, planks of wood, stun guns and bear spray, the vastly outnumbered rank-and-file officers inside the building were left to fend for themselves without proper communication or strong guidance from supervisors. The officers werent sure when they could use deadly force, had failed to properly lock down the building and could be heard making frantic radio calls for backup as they were shoved to the ground and beaten by rioters, with some left bloodied.
He became an elementary school teacher in Sykesville and eventually rose the ranks to principal until he retired in 1981. In his years of teaching, his focus was to get kids to be good readers  the most important skill they could have, he said. Getting them to make sense of a printed page were some of his most rewarding years.
In particular, the board is looking for a volunteer to lead its heritage or history committee, which will develop the content to tell the story of over 100 years of technology development that has happened here locally because of the mission of APG. Many of these technologies are in your home today, Michel said.
Javiers older brother got involved in a gang after gang members threatened to hurt his family if he didnt join. He kept his involvement with the gang a secret and was only asked to run errands for the members at the beginning but once they began asking him to commit crimes such as robbing, he attempted to leave. When the gang found out that he was trying to leave, they murdered one of his friends.
I remember Dick Ladd calling me up at seven oclock in the morning or seven oclock at night to talk with a passion over a whole bunch of different topics, Fiedler said. I remember being on the phone with him forever talking about private roads and infrastructure in the future, and he was so passionate about everything and very caring.
This person apparently attempted to come into the bar after midnight, not running away from anybody, not saying she was in peril, not saying that she needed help, he said. What happened is somebody banging on the door saying let me in and I want to come to the bar and the person who was working there was counting money, theyre putting stuff away, theyre cleaning up, theyre like hey were closed.
Throughout the trial, Ramos attorneys and experts testifying in his defense said he was seriously mentally ill. They said he became obsessed with the newspaper following its coverage of his harassment conviction and developed delusions that it was conspiring with the courts to ruin his reputation. In his mind, they said, he had to carry out the attack to attain justice.
Her opinions are clear in the blunt slogans blaring from the banners outside her New Jersey home: Dont Blame Me/I Voted for Trump and several others that attack Biden in crude terms. Several feature a word that some people find particularly objectionable but whose use the Supreme Court long ago ruled could not be restricted simply to protect those it offends.
Worse, in his communications with Al Malik, the defendant framed his efforts to obtain an official position within the Administration as one that would enable him to further advance the interests of the UAE, rather than the interests of the United States, prosecutors wrote in a letter seeking his detention. They noted that he has citizenship in the U.S. and Lebanon, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Taliban should "end the occupation" in Afghanistan amid rising violence in the war-torn country.

"The Taliban should end the occupation of the soil of their brothers," Erdogan stated on Monday in a press conference upon his departure to Northern Cyprus.

Erdogan also said that Turkey plans to talk with the Taliban over Kabul airport, Daily Sabah reported.

Turkey, whose forces in Afghanistan have always consisted of noncombatant troops, has offered to guard the airport as questions remain on how security will be assured along major transport routes and at the airport, which is the main gateway to the capital Kabul.

The security of the airport is crucial for the operation of diplomatic missions out of Afghanistan as Western forces pull out.

The airport is in a strategic location close to the Afghan presidential palace and foreign diplomatic missions in Kabul and is the only place from which to evacuate diplomats in emergency situations.

The Taliban warned Turkey against possible plans to keep some troops in Afghanistan to run and guard Kabul's main airport after the withdrawal of foreign troops, calling the strategy "reprehensible".

"The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan condemns this reprehensible decision," the terror group said in a statement.

"If Turkish officials fail to reconsider their decision and continue the occupation of our country, the Islamic Emirate... will take a stand against them," it added.

Afghanistan has witnessed a spike in violence in recent weeks. Taliban have stepped up offensive since the foreign forces began to withdraw from the country in May.

The United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) forces will complete military drawdown till the end of August.

Taliban is taking control of more and more territory in Afghanistan, while Afghan forces have launched a counteroffensive to thwart the terrorists.

(ANI)

Also Read: Afghanistan: Amid violence in country, Taliban favours 'political settlement'
If you are old enough to remember the hit comedy movie of 1980, Caddy Shack, then you will recall that a gopher infestation was threatening a golf course in Nebraska. The somewhat deranged groundskeeper was tasked with getting rid of the pest. His efforts at eradication include shooting, f
They also plan to do more of their shopping online. Chicago families surveyed said they expected to spend about 42% of their back-to-school budget online, up from just 24% in 2019, according to Deloitte. In prior years, some families said they liked letting kids pick out items or found it easier to track down items on highly specific school lists in person. But consumers got accustomed to shopping online during the pandemic, and retailers invested in making it easier, said Matt Adams, principal at Deloitte.
Sozo Illinois Inc. claims that the law, signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker last week, unfairly lowers its chances of getting the new licenses. One part of the law gives bonus points in scoring applications from Illinois-based companies, while another removes a bonus for hiring 10 people from areas hurt by the war on drugs  both of which hurt Sozo.
The data scientists said figuring out how many Facebook users saw false or misleading information would be complex, perhaps taking a year or more, according to two people who participated in the meeting. But they added that by putting some new hires on the project and reassigning some existing employees to it, the company could better understand how incorrect facts about the virus spread on the platform.
At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died.
Lombardo said in an email that the archdiocese hope(s) there will be no need for students and staff members to provide proof of vaccination in order to go unmasked in schools, but that the organization will continue to evaluate the situation with guidance from public health officials and medical advisers. A preliminary decision is expected to be made in August, he said.
While the mayor has throughout the pandemic warned she would not hesitate to reinstate tougher public safety guidelines, doing so during the summer after fully reopening would be a serious blow to residents psyche. Lightfoot would risk a backlash from Chicagoans who are just getting back to some semblance of normalcy, and could face a mutiny from business owners who were starved for customers for over a year before the city reopened.
When Loury tried to climb a fence in an alley, a gun dropped from his waistband. Loury then fell from the fence atop the weapon, and the officer shot Loury after the teen turned toward him with the gun in his hand and pointed it at the officer, Levine said.
Four men, between the ages of 22 and 47, were struck by gunfire as they stood outside, police said. The most seriously injured among them was the 47-year-old man. He suffered gunshot wounds throughout the body and was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he had been listed in critical condition, officials said.
According to The Associated Press, the bears were kept in small cement cages for over a decade at the private zoo in the village of Hanaway in southern Lebanon Animals Lebanon, an organization that promotes the protection and humane treatment of animals, has helped close four zoos by rescuing and finding better homes for animals.
Williams declined to present any witnesses of his own, but he addressed the family from the stand, telling them he empathized with them, but voiced consternation that their pain and hurt were directed at him. He said he had been misjudged and accused the prosecution of misrepresenting the facts.
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The staff of the Litchfield Jazz Festival is presenting the fourth installment of their free virtual concert series for April.
One of the victims was able to call 911 while at the store and police were able to recover the knife from Pennell and took her into custody without incident.
And we were just out in the wild west trying to find what we needed, he said. Thats not sustainable in the long term, but there are things that we have done historically and rules that get built up, laws that get passed that kind of accumulate over the years and very rarely do we go back in government and kind of question, do we really still need those?
The Bond Commission on Friday is scheduled to authorize funds for Bristols downtown garage along with $2.5 million for West Hartford to buy property for a new Elmwood community center, and $1 million for New Britain to design a youth center. Canton is on course to get $600,000 to extend the popular rail trail from Route 177 to the Shoppes at Canton.
Were going into the height of the tropical season and we cant handle any more water, he said. Were setting ourselves up for extreme, catastrophic flooding in parts of the state if these tropical systems, or remnants thereof, come and get us as we head through later August and into September.
Generally speaking, since waterfronts had already been put to industrial uses, routing highways along them was considered less contentious than in, say, a residential neighborhood. Thats not to say that people didnt also live along these waterfronts, just that they were lower-income communities, so highway builders could justify the routes publicly through lower cost of land acquisition. And these communities had little political capital to fight back, said Crowther, who heads an initiative that helps cities remove aging highways and replace them with traditional city streets.
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Switching from tools to candy sales was no small feat, but one the Dails were excited to take on and they havent had to sugarcoat its popularity. Last year, they sold close to 6,900 pounds of fudge at the Cape Charles store.
The opportunity to hold Weinstein accountable for his actions in California gives voice to the survivors including my client, Jane Doe 4, attorney Elizabeth Fegan said in a statement. They deserve to be heard and to have Weinstein answer for his actions. Our hope is that a guilty verdict in California will ensure that Harvey Weinstein will spend the rest of his life behind bars  securing justice for women everywhere.
In all, there were 15 items that would have to be eliminated to maintain the current budget, according to Monks presentation. Of those, three were considered necessary: consolidated conference space, showers in an area so firefighters are not bringing contaminants into the station and at least three apparatus bays. The fourth, bi-fold doors, as opposed to the current station doors that open from bottom to top, open to the sides, Monk said.
The earliest record of a land grant in the area was in 1711 in what is now the village of Avon. It took its name from Algonquin phrase meaning that which is mixed. It became well-known for shipping its vast forests of oak and cedar to northern shipyards and for building their own small schooners. Little Kinnakeet also had a thriving seaweed industry. Known locally as sea oar, great rafts of eelgrass were collected from the Pamlico Sound, dried, baled and sold to furniture companies as stuffing for sofas, chairs and mattresses. Their most famous product, however, was the yaupon bush leaves from which tea was brewed. The residents were teased for years by neighboring Hatteras Island villages as, Kinnakeeters, yaupon eaters.
The college paused its renaming effort after the state board accepted the schools recommendation to change the name in March while the state crafted a formal policy on school names, which was approved in May. That has put it somewhat behind some of the other colleges that were further along in the process like Lord Fairfax Community College, which is asking the state to rename it Laurel Ridge.
The aim is to rebuild the total stock of bluefish. Bluefish have been overfished, but with the total catch down from a peak of about 180 million pounds in 1987 to just under 19 million pounds in 2019, they are not currently overfished.
Hospital and health system employee vaccination against COVID-19 will maintain the long-term ability of our health care system to respond to the pandemic, to safely care for patients by protecting them from infection, and to mitigate the spread of the virus within health care facilities and among clinicians, patients, and their families and friends, the association said. Implementing COVID-19 vaccine requirements will help accomplish these goals, while protecting the patients and communities served by our hospitals and health systems.
Other people on board threw the 37-year-old man a life ring and tired to move closer to pull him out of the water. Redford had been swimming beside his boat before he disappeared in the water that morning.
Of the required 12 crore doses of vaccination, Tamil Nadu has so far received over 1.80 crore, he said adding that in another five days more vaccines will arrive. (AP Photo)

Coimbatore: The Tamil Nadu government is planning to launch a free vaccination drive through private hospitals in the state, for the benefit of public, by utilising CSR funds provided by private companies, state Health Minister M Subramanian said on Tuesday.

Talks were held in this connection with 117 private hospitals in Coimbatore, Tirupur, Erode and Salem and the scheme will be launched in this city initially and later expanded to other parts of the state, Subramanian told reporters here.

The private companies that make contributions under the CSR initiative for the purpose will have the option to choose the hospital.

So far the government has received Rs 61 lakh and at least 7,800 people can be inoculated using it, he said adding the district collectors and industries should monitor the scheme.

Refuting the allegation by BJP MLA Vanathi Srinivasan that the vials meant for free vaccination drive were being diverted to private hospitals, he said if proved stringent action will be taken.

Subramanian, who reviewed the medical activities being organised in and around Walayar on Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, said no Zika virus cases were reported in the State, as the government has taken concrete drive to eradicate mosquitoes for which 21,000 personnel were appointed.

Of the required 12 crore doses of vaccination, Tamil Nadu has so far received over 1.80 crore, he said adding that in another five days more vaccines will arrive.

The government will soon form a trust to provide treatment for spinal chord related problems, he said.

Subramanian also wished speedy recovery to senior AIADMK leader E Madhusudhan, who is undergoing treatment at a hospital in Chennai.

The State Food and civil supplies minister, Sakkarapani, Health Secretary Radhakrishnan, the District Collector, Sameeran were present during the review.
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa is said to have told a delegation of pontiffs from various communities on Tuesday that he will have to abide by the decision of the BJP high command, giving some credence to speculation that a change of leadership is on the cards.

However, these pontiffs have warned of a political fallout for the BJP in Karnataka if Yediyurappa is dislodged as the Chief Minister.

"Yediyurappa only said that he is not in position to speak anything on the issue and will have to abide by the decision of the high command. He did not say anything else," Balehosur mutt's Dingaleshwar Swamy, who led the delegation of pontiffs, said.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, he said "when we questioned Yediyurappa what really has happened, he said he will not comment on that and the high command's decision is final. He did not say anything else."

"The unanimous opinion of the pontiffs is- don't replace Yediyurappa. If it is done, you (BJP) will face bad consequences in the days to come. What is the need for a change? We are not against nurturing new leaders," the swamiji added.

Over two dozen pontiffs from different parts of the state, clad in saffron attire, met Yediyurappa to express their support amid talks in some quarters of his exit in the near future.

As many as 300-400 pontiffs are expected to gather in Bengaluru in a couple of days to discuss the "future course of action", sources said.

Noting that their demand not to remove Yediyurappa is not because he is a Lingayat, the swamiji said it was because he is a good leader, has strived hard for the state and should be allowed to administer with cooperation from everyone.

The seer said it was because of Yediyurappa and the efforts of his associates that the BJP has been able to come to power in Karnataka.

He said there is a feeling of pain among the pontiffs and people of the state that Yediyurappa, who has built BJP in Karnataka from the grass-roots level and brought it to power, was not allowed to run the administration for a complete term in the past and the same thing is getting repeated once again.

"If in any situation Yediyurappa is replaced, the BJP will probably get decimated in Karnataka. This is not only our opinion, but of a majority of people of the state," he added.

Asking the BJP high command to allow Yediyurappa to complete the term, Dingaleshwar Swamy pointed out that it was the 78 year-old leader who formed the government by "bringing in" 17 MLAs from other parties and managed the floods and COVID situations effectively.

Yediyurappa, who will complete two years in office on July 26, visited Delhi last week, meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and BJP President J P Nadda.

The trip raised questions in some quarters on whether the party was now working out a succession plan.

On his return from the national capital, Yediyurappa rubbished talk that he is on way out and asserted that the central leadership has asked him to continue in the post.

However, speculation about his replacement refuses to die down as Yediyurappa has convened the BJP legislature party meeting on July 26, on the occasion of completion of two years in office.

Amid heightened buzz within a section of the ruling BJP circles that the exit of Yediyurappa is on the cards, the community factor also seems to have come to the fore, with prominent Veerashaiva-Lingayat political leaders and seers from the community throwing their weight behind him.

Congress leaders Shamanur Shivashankarappa and M B Patil, as also Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, head of the Chitradurga based Sri Jagadguru Murugharajendra Mutt, Sri Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami of Rambhapuri Peetha of Balehonnur and Srisaila Jagadguru Channa Siddharama Panditaradhya, have warned BJP of a backlash if Yediyurappa is replaced.
The long overdue school examination reforms have finally arrived. This measure was forced by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which made the gathering of large numbers of examinees in closed halls far too risky. Expectedly, there were animated discussions and debates across the country as soon as the latest examination pattern was made public.

In brief, the Central Board of Secondary Education plans to split the examination of Class 10 and Class 12 students (2021-2022) into two parts, to be held in Nov-ember-December 2021 and then in March-April 2022. The first part will comprise Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) covering 50 per cent of a rationalised syllabus while the second will consist of short and long essay-type questions covering the rest of the syllabus.

The real question is whether this proposal by the CBSE represents an improvement on the pre-pandemic formula of a single board exam. At first glance, the new pattern appears to be a reasonable solution in the present circumstances. But many teachers feel that this formula would get in the way of regular teaching and learning in the board classes. Exam-oriented as we are, right through the year students would be made to master the technique of answering MCQs while resourceful textbook publishers will be quick to bring out compilations of sample questions for students to use in the run-up to the boards. The observation of student behaviour over the past years indicates that most students will focus on practising solving these MCQs instead of studying their syllabus in depth.

Meanwhile, several teachers have started complaining about the negative effects of splitting the syllabus, although the board has given assurances that subject experts would be doing so after examining the inter-connectivity of concepts and topics.

The CBSE has taken care to cover the different scenarios that can be expected as there is a general realisation that this Covid-19 pandemic is unnervingly unpredictable. Many teachers have welcomed the alternatives that have been given in advance, in the event that the pandemic situation remains unimproved at the specified times of the exams. However, others feel that there are too many ifs and buts and it would have been far less stressful for those concerned if a single pattern had been prescribed, irrespective of the pandemic situation. In any case, it is unlikely that the pandemic situation will be uniform across the country at a given time.

According to the flexible pattern prescribed, the respective weightage of the two exams would depend on the relevant circumstances dictated by the pandemic condition at the time. Therefore, students do not know for sure whether their exams will be online or offline, at external exam centres or in their respective schools, and whether the essay-type questions will be set after all or whether it will be MCQs all the way.

Another probability is that there will be no board exams and the results will depend exclusively on assessment of the work done in the students respective schools.

Another ongoing debate is the efficacy of the MCQs. Everybody accepts that MCQs allow the testing of a larger part of the syllabus and the standardisation of such testing is far more reliable than the essay format. The marking will be neutral by design and can even be done with the help of optical readers to eliminate human error and for quicker processing. Al-so, students are not unfairly penalised for poor expression. Studies have been carried out to demonstrate that higher-order thinking skills can be assessed through properly set MCQs. Some studies using factor analyses have concluded that MCQs and essay-type questions assess the same thing. However, this conclusion has not been generally accepted (Hickson and Reed) and it is strongly believed that essays contain components of student learning that cannot be measured by the MCQs.

Even without reference to scientific studies on the comparative efficacy of MCQs and essay-type questions, experienced teachers lament the fact that students will not be able to express themselves lucidly, cogently or eloquently if they get too used to checking boxes. Further, there is no scope of being partially right as in an MCQ response the principle of marking is all or nothing. It is possible to get a correct answer through guesswork as the student is not required to justify it. But in an essay, a student can earn marks defending a particular point of view which may not tally with the expected response. In a particularly heated discussion that I happened to see recently, the warring speakers had to be calmed down by assuring them that neither method was fully satisfactory.

Different modes of questioning and measurement were required for holistic assessment. Everyone in the group agreed that it was imperative that the continual assessment, that is so vital in a students learning process, should be incorporated in the final reckoning.

Thus, it makes sense to have MCQs in mass exams but those should not be the only yardstick to measure learning. Individual differences and multiple intelligences can be taken into consideration only through the judicious and ongoing use of a variety of tools such as oral and written tests, projects, interviews, research papers, qui-zzes, and so on. The board examinations could uniformly follow the MCQ pattern as is done by the SAT exams.

However, substantial weightage must be given to the continuous work done in school or else students will end up as experts at ticking boxes without in-depth knowledge of the subject or the ability to express themselves. Incidentally, college admission in the United States does not depend on the SAT results alone  reports of the last four years of school, letters of recommendation by relevant teachers, essays and self-reports, are all taken into account. While examining the merits of the CBSE formula for Class 10 and Class 12 students of 2021-22, I have realised that as an examination-obsessed nation, we tend to get so taken up by the nuances of different modes of assessment that we often overlook the fact that our main concern should be the degree and the quality of learning.
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FILE - In this March 5, 2020 file photo, journalist and activist Omar Radi speaks after a hearing at the Casablanca Courthouse, in Casablanca, Morocco. A Casablanca court on Monday July 19, 2021, sentenced journalist and activist Omar Radi to six years in prison on charges of espionage and sexual assault. Rights groups say the charges are politically motivated, and the case has raised concerns about press freedoms in Morocco.
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Actress Jun Ji-hyun poses for pictures during an online media conference for "Kingdom: Ashin of the North," Tuesday. Courtesy of Netflix



By Lee Gyu-lee



"Kingdom: Ashin of the North," the special episode of Netflix's smash-hit original series, "Kingdom," is finally ready to be released on the platform on Friday.





Director Kim Seong-hun, left, and creator and writer Kim Eun-hee / Courtesy of Netflix

"This episode will answer questions such as, 'where did saengsacho  an herb that enables dead people to become undead  come from?;' 'who started the epidemic?;' and about actress Jun Ji-hyun's character Ashin, which appeared at the end of the second season, as well as 'what happened in the North,'" Kim Eun-hee, the creator of the series and writer, said during an online media conference, Tuesday.



The apocalyptic thriller series, which garnered enormous popularity globally, revolves around crown prince Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) fighting against a mysterious plague that swept across Joseon. He traces the truth behind the herb, saengsacho, which caused the plague and turns people into flesh-eating zombies. This journey leads him to the northern end of the land and to encounter Ashin living in a tribe there.



Directed by Kim Seong-hun, who directed both seasons of the series, the special episode will unveil the stories behind saengsacho and Ashin, a mysterious woman who seems to hold the key to the secret of the herb and the outbreak.



The director noted that this episode, by far, has the most "perfect" story of the series. "I started planning for this episode while filming season 2, and thought that Kim Eun-hee has never-ending stories to tell," he said.



"You would think that she might run out of ideas, but it just gets deeper and better, which is awe-inspiring. I wondered how she was able to come up with the most perfect story of the 'Kingdom' series in such a short time."



Kim Eun-hee explained that the latest episode will act as a stepping stone for the series' third season. "I was looking for ways to add a backstory to season 3 and came up with an idea to make a special episode," she said. "The roles from this episode eventually continue on to the third season."





A poster for the special episode / Courtesy of Netflix
Ballerina Park Sae-eun of the Paris Opera Ballet poses during a press conference held in Seoul on Monday. Courtesy of Etoile Classic



By Park Ji-won



June 10 this year was a historical day for Korean ballet, as the Paris Opera Ballet (POB) promoted ballerina Park Sae-eun to become its principal dancer, or "danseuse etoile," literally meaning "star dancer" in English, shortly after she performed the role of Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet." She is the first Asian to be given the position in the 352-year-old French ballet company's history.



Many of her colleagues knew that she would be promoted. But Park said she just kept her focus on the stage role. Aurelie Dupont, dance director of the ballet company, sent her flowers, which are normally given only to principal dancers, to celebrate her upcoming promotion.



"Actually, I was just happy to have been able to successfully perform the role of Juliet and enjoyed the performance that day," Park said during a news conference held in Seoul, Monday. "Upon hearing that I became etoile, I burst into tears because I thought the day had finally came  The meaning of etoile is being desperate and tolerant. I still don't know what to do as the first Asian etoile, but I am sure that France has become more inclusive than before. I might not have been able to become the principal dancer if it were in the past. I think I was lucky to perform in this time with my colleagues."



With the promotion, Park said she has now reached a pinnacle in her career; but noted she also feels as if she's just beginning, adding she would like to show more of what she has to offer to audiences. Park unashamedly expressed her ambition saying she hopes to become the best of the best.





Ballerina Park Sae-eun of the Paris Opera Ballet speaks during a press conference held in Seoul on Monday. Yonhap
From left, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Commissioner for Economy Paolo Gentiloni, attend a press conference at the EU Parliament in Brussels, where the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) was announced, July 14. AFP-Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo



The carbon border tax being sought by the European Union (EU) and the United States, respectively, poses a question: Is Korea's tax policy in tandem with the accelerated international efforts to become carbon free by 2050?



True, Korea plans to revamp its tax policy on carbon emissions as announced by the government in December 2020, to help its backbone industries shift away from their existing fossil fuel-dependent, high-carbon emitting structure.



Among the measures to be taken are the overhaul of a carbon pricing system and the establishment of the tentatively named Climate Response Fund.



The campaign is in line with President Moon Jae-in's Green New Deal initiative that has the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 by 24.4 percent from 2017 levels.



"But those measures appear to be too vague to help industries keep up their market competiveness in the EU and the U.S., considering the two economic blocs push to implement a carbon border free tax on imports," said Shin Yul, a political science professor at Myongji University.



He was referring to the EU's sweeping new plan introduced July 14 to tackle climate change, including a carbon tariff on imports from countries that fail to take similarly aggressive steps to cut their greenhouse gas emissions.



Such a tariff, officially known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), will be the first of its kind if it is implemented.



The EU proposed the tariff to take effect in 2026, with five sectors  iron and steel, cement, fertilizer, aluminum, and electricity generation  being the first target groups.



Of the five, steel and aluminum are Korea's major export items to the EU. Accordingly, speculation has been rampant that Korean manufacturers will suffer.



The Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), a business lobby group, said that up to 50 out of the 100 largest enterprises will find their carbon tax payments exceed operating profits if it is levied.



In the U.S., the Democrats came up with a proposal July 19 to impose a tax on imports from China and other countries that do not actively join the carbon neutrality campaign.



The proposal is in accordance with U.S. President Joe Biden's climate moves and is expected to raise as much as $16 billion annually if it is successfully implemented.



The situation apparently makes it more critical for Korea's industries to come up with or enhance tax plans on greenhouse gas emission to the level of the EU and the U.S.



Yun Sun-jin, chairwoman of the Presidential Panel on Carbon Neutrality, suggested a tax for greenhouse gas emissions to be added to electricity and other utility bills.



Rep. Kim Young-bae of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) proposed a bill to revise the tax law on property and acquisition by offering tax benefits to businesspeople whose plants and offices are certified by the government as environment-friendly.



If the bill is passed, the rate of reduction for beneficiaries' acquisition tax will go up from the current range of 3 percent to 7 percent, to 10 percent to 20 percent.



On property tax, the benefit rate will go up from current range of 15 percent to 20 percent, to 15 percent to 30 percent.


"Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang" (1751) by Joseon-era painter Jeong Seon / Courtesy of NMK





By Park Han-sol







Ever since the news of the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee's unprecedentedly massive art trove being donated to state-run museums swept the country back in April, the public has been waiting with great anticipation to see firsthand the masterpieces that cover a wide array of eras and genres.







Now, the long-awaited exhibitions will be held in Seoul's two major museums  the National Museum of Korea (NMK) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA). They will showcase more than 100 pieces spanning from the early Bronze Age all the way through to the turbulent modern era, starting Wednesday.







The NMK's exhibition, "A Great Cultural Legacy: Masterpieces from the Bequest of the Late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee" running until Sept. 26, exhibits 77 pieces  paintings, metalcraft, earthenware, porcelain, bibliographic materials, calligraphy and wooden furniture  that have been carefully selected from more than 21,600 donated artworks based on their historical, artistic and technical value.







"The museum aims to present the value of these masterpieces that represent part of Korea's culture and history in a proper setting with a rich, in-depth explanation. Following the words of the late Chairman Lee, we hope the viewers develop a true understanding of Korea's culture and make it a part of their everyday lives, rather than simply restating its excellence," curator Lee Su-kyung explained.







The face of the exhibition is the ink and wash painting "Clearing after Rain on Mount Inwang" (National Treasure No. 216), recognized as the greatest masterpiece of the Joseon-era court painter Jeong Seon (1676-1759).







"Although there are other theories explaining Jeong's motive for completing the artwork at the age of 76, the museum offers another interpretation  living at the foot of Mount Inwang, the painter knew its every nook and cranny, as we see in his careful depiction of small streams and rocks throughout the scenic mountain. His affection toward the place is reflected in every corner of the piece," Lee noted.







Two Buddhist paintings produced during the late Goryeo Dynasty  "Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara," left, and "Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara" / Courtesy of NMK





Another highlight of the showcase are the two Buddhist paintings produced in the early 14th century during the late Goryeo Dynasty  "Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara," which is the only extant painting of its type, and "Water-Moon Avalokiteshvara."







The experience of witnessing the rare, surviving Buddhist paintings from the Goryeo Dynasty is greatly enhanced with the help of the museum's infrared and X-ray imaging. The technology brings to the fore the details within the drawings that have been faded over centuries and therefore can no longer be observed with the naked eye.







Infrared photography reveals the thousand eyes drawn over the Buddha Amitabha's nimbus in the painting "Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara" / Courtesy of NMK





"In the infrared image of the 'Thousand-Armed Avalokiteshvara,' we can now see the faded details including the thousand eyes drawn over the Buddha Amitabha's nimbus, his eleven heads and even the rough sketch of the shape of his hands," curator Yoo Su-ran, who specializes in Buddhist paintings, told The Korea Times.







X-ray imaging also helps viewers distinguish subtle differences in colors of the mineral pigments, as well as identify the parts that have been restored and repainted over time.







Kim Whan-ki's "Women and Jars" (1950s), top, and Lee Sang-beom's "Peach Blossom Spring" (1922) / Courtesy of MMCA





Meanwhile, MMCA's special exhibition "Masterpieces of Korean Art" presents 58 paintings and sculptures produced mainly from the 1920s to 70s by 34 renowned Korean artists, among a total of 1,488 donated pieces, until March 13, 2022.



"This is a historic day as the museum hosts the first exhibition showcasing some of the best of the best works from Lee's collection that will help enrich Korea's modern and contemporary art history," MMCA director Youn Bum-mo stated at a press conference.



"The country's 20th century has been marked by Japanese colonization, civil war, division, famine, as well as the rapid transformation from an agricultural society to a high-tech industrial one. We witness here how the artists against such a backdrop viewed this changing world and reflected it in their unique oeuvre."



The most prominent part of the exhibition is the section dedicated to five iconic artists, serving as the backbone of Korea's modern art: Lee Jung-seop, Kim Whan-ki, Yoo Young-kuk, Chang Uc-chin and Park Soo-keun.



Abstract master Kim's large-scale wall painting "Women and Jars" immediately grabs the eyes of the viewers. It features East Asian motifs favored by the artist in the late 1940s and 50s: "moon jars," or round porcelain jars that resemble the shape of the full moon, cranes and deer. After he moved to New York in 1963, he made a dramatic stylistic transition into abstract dot paintings, as can be seen in "Echo 19-II-73#307."







Other notable works on display include Lee's "Bull," Park's "Woman Pounding Grain," Chang's "Ferry Boat" and Chun Kyung-ja's "Yellow Road."







The two museums plan to hold a joint exhibition next April dedicated to Lee's collection to celebrate the first anniversary of the donation.






In this April 25, 2019, file photo, Russia's President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un walk past honor guard officers during their meeting in Vladivostok, Russia. North Korea on July 20 vowed efforts to advance friendly relations with Russia on the occasion of the anniversary of a joint declaration adopted when Putin visited Pyongyang in 2000. AP-Yonhap



North Korea on Tuesday vowed efforts to advance friendly relations with Russia on the occasion of the anniversary of a joint declaration adopted when Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Pyongyang in 2000.



The North's foreign ministry also said that the declaration adopted after the summit between then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and Putin has served as a "driving force" in their bilateral ties against "complicated international conditions of the 21st century."



"Our republic's stance remains unchanged that the friendly and cooperative relations between North Korea and Russia should be continuously expanded and advanced to live up to the spirit of the joint declaration and the new era of our time and that we will do our best to safeguard peace and safety in the region," the ministry said in a posting on its website.



"(The declaration) is bedrock that guarantees friendly relations between North Korea and Russia," it added. "It also serves as a driving force that fosters continued advancement in friendly and cooperative ties between the North and Russia amid the complicated international conditions of the 21st century."



Citing Kim Jong-il's multiple visits to Russia after 2000 and the 2019 summit between his son and current leader Kim Jong-un and Putin in Vladivostok, the ministry said such meetings have affirmed an unwavering trend in "strategic and traditional" ties between Pyongyang and Moscow.



North Korea has intensified efforts to strengthen its ties with its traditional socialist allies and friends, including China and Russia, amid the long-stalled denuclearization talks with the United States.



Early last week, North Korean leader Kim and Chinese President Xi Jinping reaffirmed their commitment to advancing their relations as they exchanged messages to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of a friendship treaty. (Yonhap)






South Korea will gradually lift or lower tariffs on more than 95 percent of its imported products from Indonesia and Israel as it has clinched trade deals with the two nations, the finance ministry said Tuesday.







The Cabinet approved a revised enforcement ordinance in preparation for implementing trade deals with Indonesia and Israel.







In December last year, South Korea and Indonesia inked the comprehensive economic partnership agreement (CEPA), which is equivalent to a free trade deal but centers on a broader scope of economic cooperation.







In May, the country signed a free trade agreement (FTA) with Israel, a move expected to boost Seoul's exports of cars and auto parts.







If the trade deals go into effect, Seoul will lift tariffs on 95.8 percent of products being traded with Indonesia and on 95.2 percent of those with Israel, according to the finance ministry. (Yonhap)


Large blocks of ice are placed by citizens waiting in line for COVID-19 testing at a makeshift testing center in Seoul amid a heat wave, Monday. Yonhap



State-run firms urged to turn off air conditioners during peak hours to prevent blackouts



By Bahk Eun-ji



Korea's weather is heating up, with sizzling temperatures forecast throughout the week after the rainy season ended, the weather agency said Tuesday.



As a heat advisory has been issued in almost all parts of the country, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety raised its heat wave crisis warning level from "caution" to "alert" in anticipation of a long-lasting heat wave.



With the rain virtually ending Monday, a strong heat wave has begun to grip the country and the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) forecast most parts of the country are likely to have daytime highs hovering over 35 degrees Celsius, with some regions climbing up to nearly 40 degrees.



Large cities will experience tropical nights, in which the temperature never dips below 25 degrees, especially along the western and southern coasts and Jeju Island.



The hot weather is being caused by a heat dome, formed by high-pressure systems from the North Pacific and Tibet overlapping each other over the peninsula and covering it like a dome. The heat wave in 2018 was also a result of a heat dome.



In response, the safety ministry raised its heat wave warning to the third-highest level as of 10 a.m. Tuesday. The warning system has four levels  attention, caution, alert and serious  and the highest is issued when more than 40 percent of the country is expected to have daytime highs of 33 degrees or more for over three days.





A resident drinks a bottle of water from a refrigerator set up for villagers at a neighborhood park in Nowon District, Seoul amid a heat wave, Tuesday. Such fridges are installed to provide free water in the district until the end of August. Yonhap
Citizens wait for possible side effects after receiving their COVID-19 vaccine injections at an inoculaton center in Dongdaemun District, Seoul, Tuesday. Yonhap.



By Lee Hyo-jin



Korea's coronavirus vaccination reservation for people in their 50s is not running smoothly, with repeated crashes in the booking system frustrating the people, and delays in vaccine deliveries causing setbacks to the inoculation plan.



According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), people aged between 50 and 59 will be administered with their first Moderna or Pfizer doses beginning later this month, but getting a spot through the online reservation website has not been easy for many in that age group.



Online reservations for people aged 53 and 54, or those born in 1967 and 1968, opened from 8 p.m., Monday.



But as soon as it opened, the server crashed due to high user demand. The KDCA resumed taking reservations after installing additional cloud servers at around 10 p.m., but many people still experienced connection delays. They had to sit in front of their computers for hours attempting to book vaccine shots.



"I tried to make the reservation at 8 p.m. and my nephew also did so on my behalf, but we couldn't get access. When we were able to get in, we were instantly booted out," said a Seoul office worker surnamed Kim, 53, who tried to make an appointment.



"I tried myself again at around 3 a.m., but got a message saying that it was postponed. My nephew tried again for me on Tuesday morning at 8:20 a.m., but it still didn't work."



A Gyeonggi Province resident surnamed Yoo, 25, who made the appointment for her father, said, "I managed to make the reservation at around 1:30 a.m., after hours of waiting. I didn't expect it to be this tough. I'm worried it will be much worse when the vaccination is expanded to younger age groups."





This screenshot captured on Monday evening shows a notice on the COVID-19 vaccination reservation website that the user should wait approximately 35 minutes for a connection. Yonhap
South Korea's First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun, left, and Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Takeo Mori look at each other before holding a meeting in Tokyo, Tuesday. The meeting came a day after Seoul announced President Moon Jae-in would not be visiting Japan for the opening of the Tokyo Summer Olympics. Yonhap



South Korea and Japan agreed Tuesday to continue efforts to resolve pending issues rooted largely in wartime history, the foreign ministry said Tuesday, despite the flare-up of tension over a Japanese diplomat's disparaging remarks on President Moon Jae-in's approach to Tokyo.



First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong-kun shared the understanding with his Japanese counterpart, Takeo Mori, during their bilateral talks in Tokyo on Tuesday, the ministry said.



"The two vice ministers agreed to continue to make efforts going forward to resolve pending issues, based on the outcome of the working-level talks that have been under way to achieve the summit between the leaders of South Korea and Japan," the ministry said in a release.



Choi flew to Tokyo earlier in the day to attend bilateral talks with Mori and a trilateral meeting with Mori and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, slated for Wednesday.



Choi's trip came as the already-frayed relations with Tokyo took yet another turn for the worse this week following a news report that Hirohisa Soma, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, told a reporter at lunch last week that Moon's efforts to improve ties with Tokyo were tantamount to "masturbation."



Seoul summoned Japanese Ambassador to Seoul Koichi Aiboshi to lodge a protest, demanding Tokyo take due steps over Soma's remarks.



On Monday, Moon's office announced that President Moon Jae-in will not visit Japan for the opening of the Olympic Games, dashing hope for a potential summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on the occasion.



Before leaving for Tokyo, Choi told reporters that Soma's remarks acted as a "significant obstacle" to Moon's consideration of a trip to Japan.



In the talks with Mori, Choi protested Soma's "undiplomatic and rude" remarks and called for Tokyo to "take appropriate measures as soon as possible," according to the ministry.



He also explained that winning the hearts of victims is the foundation for solving wartime history issues, and said that he hopes that Japan will take an open-minded approach based on the "correct perception" of history.



Choi and Mori also discussed ways to make progress in high-level exchanges and boost cooperation in the battle against the coronavirus, as well as the three-way cooperation with the United States.



They also exchanged views on North Korea's denuclearization, the ministry said.



On Wednesday, Choi is scheduled to meet trilaterally with Mori and Sherman, during which they are expected to discuss North Korea and other shared challenges, including dealing with an assertive China, amid the Joe Biden administration's drive to bring the two Asian allies closer for stronger cooperation in the region.



It will mark the three countries' first vice-ministerial talks in nearly four years. The three-way dialogue, launched in 2015, had taken place at least once every year until 2017 but remained inactive during the Donald Trump administration.



Choi will return on Wednesday and hold bilateral policy dialogue with Sherman in Seoul on Friday. (Yonhap)


A double exposure shows a Buddhist image captured in a ginkgo leaf, at Seonggok Temple in Gongju, South Chungcheong Province, fall 2017. / Courtesy of Anjee DiSanto

By Jon Dunbar









Korea's Buddhist temples are a great source for artistic inspiration, but

, an American living in Iksan, has been using digital photography techniques to develop a new kind of art that matches the contemporary qualities of the temples she visits.







For a couple of years now, she's been experimenting with double exposure photography, in which she combines two separate images, such as a statue of a buddha and spring flowers. The resulting combined images she creates are beautiful, profound and suggest a Buddhist way of thinking about the life as interconnected and cyclical.







"I like to layer the things that appear in the same spot over time, from nature to culture to concrete," she told The Korea Times. "Temples are great when it comes to nature-culture-concrete, it turns out, because most of them are embedded in stunning natural places, deposit religious culture and over time become more laden with concrete elements. Compared to other parts of society, though, where the concrete eventually dominates the rest, I feel like temples manage to harmonize the elements of all three of those layers."







While the images look like they could be created in Photoshop by a skilled artist, DiSanto says she does everything in the camera. She uses a mirrorless digital camera with software added to allow for double exposures. "But it's still pretty restrictive," she explained. "You can kind of see your work on the screen, but the shots still have to be back-to-back... you can't just choose anything from the camera roll. I prefer it that way because you still have to work with what you've got immediately around you, one shot by one shot."







To get the shots she wants, she has to visit a site like a Buddhist temple and take alternating shots of Buddhist iconography and nature. She's also been incorporating her own crafted elements into her photography, including Korean traditional hanji paper and watercolor paintings of leaves, after learning more about watercolor paintings last year. But she says her double exposure photography still largely remains a seasonal project.







"I have maybe three good weeks in spring and the same in fall to really catch nature at the level of psychedelic color I want it at," she added. "Outside of that, things have to get a little more creative  like using the hanji and watercolor leaves  or I just have to work with an earthier or sky-based color palette. But all of the best things I've done in the past few years have been from those peak weeks."







The "dancheong," or traditional decorative painting of Korean temple roof eaves, is seen in a double exposure over a statue of a buddha at Songgwang Temple in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, summer 2020. / Courtesy of Anjee DiSanto





DiSanto has been visiting Buddhist temples ever since she moved to Korea in 2006, long before she took up this double exposures project. "I really like how especially some of the newer or gaudier Buddhist temples end up being relatively unknown to tourists, yet visually spectacular," she said. "I've also been interested in modern Buddhist writings  for example the writing of the monk, Beop Jeong  and artwork since arriving here, and now I even work at a Buddhist university, so Buddhism is fairly ingrained in my life."







She has mostly visited temples in North Jeolla Province, near her home and work in Iksan, but has visited temples all across Korea and even in other countries. Some of the temples she mentioned included: Manbul Temple in North Gyeongsang Province, Nammireuk Temple in South Jeolla Province and Wawoojeong Temple in Gyeonggi Province. She's also gone to Confucian shrine sites as well, and visits the Won Buddhism headquarters, which is located near her work.







"As for other subject matter, in the past I've been really interested in shooting anything that has different focal layers," she said, "like shooting models through misted glass to make an Impressionist effect or spattering paint on glass and shooting subject matter behind it. I think the double exposures were just another method of layering, and it became the dominant method because it's what is easiest to carry with me from physical space to physical space. It's difficult to carry huge glass panes and easels or tripods on cross-country buses for art projects  though I have done it."







She's also managed to visit a temple in Japan, and three in Brazil while she was staying there on extended maternity leave. "COVID has put restraints on the international side of things, but I really wanted to do some temple photo work in Thailand for a few months," she said. "Hopefully that will come to fruition later."









DiSanto has exhibited her work in several galleries and art shows across Korea, including group exhibits in Seoul, Daegu and Gwangju. She has also organized her own events, such as a 10-location coffee shop art crawl. In 2017 she organized an exhibition titled "Speechless" with seven other artists with foreign nationalities, offering artistic renderings of untranslatable phrases in other languages, at Jeonju's Red Box Gallery, sponsored by Jeonbuk Center for International Affairs. The same year, she also organized the

in an abandoned factory, which was remodeled shortly after into the Palbok Art Factory, and the exhibition also shown in the Okcheongol Museum of Art in Sunchang. She's also been part of the Yongsan International Arts Festival.







"In a way, I think all my work connects back to itself, though. It's really all about layers," she said. "Layers of things happening over time, objects and situations overtaking each other  whether it's dust and 'urban progress' taking over forgotten spaces, or culture overtaking nature, and nature taking itself back."







Now that she has a young child, she has been focusing more on family-safe places rather than abandoned sites, but as her double exposure portfolio increases, it's clear she's not slowing down.







She hopes to hold a solo exhibition or release an art book related to her temple double exposure images sometime in the future.










The day after nine people died when a building collapsed during demolition, a press conference is held at the site in Gwangju while emergency workers stand atop the wreckage, June 10. / Courtesy of Isaiah Winters



By Ron Bandun



I'm by no means a demolition expert, but I know what I don't like. And I am constantly alarmed and troubled by what I see around me in Korea's urban settings.



Demolition techniques briefly entered mainstream conversation following the collapse of a five-story building on the edge of an urban renewal site in Gwangju, onto an active street, landing on a bus and killing nine. Public anger and confusion was palpable.



"That's insane! They were demolishing a building that close to the street with traffic allowed to pass by?" one person commented on Facebook.



"Why didn't they just block off the road?" asked another, among many others.



The backlash caught me by surprise, because as I have been visiting and documenting demolition sites for over 16 years, the techniques used in Gwangju appeared commonplace to me. I especially found it naive that people thought streets are closed for routine demolitions, when in fact the sites being torn down are typically fenced off so that life can go on, unaware and unperturbed, around them.





Emergency workers investigate the wreckage of a building in Gwangju that collapsed during demolition onto a road where a bus was stopped, killing nine and injuring eight more, June 9. / Yonhap



People are generally willing to tolerate any demolition or construction techniques or errors, as long as they're done on the other side of a fence. And it's no secret that workers often die at these sites, something that has been increasingly politicized in recent years, because worker safety is our safety. But still, it's only when these accidents occur on our side of the fence , affecting nearby residents or pedestrians instead of workers, that we really sit up and take notice. But nothing ever seems to change.



On June 10, the morning after the Gwangju collapse, I awoke to the distinctive sounds of demolition. A house across the alley was being torn apart by an excavator perched atop a slanted pile of rubble, accompanied by workers with water hoses to keep the dust down.





Pedestrians walk past a demolition site during lunchtime in Yongsan District, Seoul, June 10. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun



As I watched, people kept on going about their day as if nothing was happening. Four-wheel vehicles however were forced to find another way around, because the debris from the wreckage spilled out halfway across the alleyway. But pedestrians skirted by, including one mom leading her young child, and scooters slipped past.



They may have been nervous, glancing up at the excavator tearing chunks out of the building just a couple meters up from them, but all pedestrians I observed continued on past the site. Not one that I saw or recorded on a half hour of GoPro footage ever turned back or looked for an alternate way around. The building may have been smaller than the one in Gwangju, but the demolition was that much closer and in the public's face.



This is such a common scene, the chances of accidents must be low. Despite all the commotion, these sites are basically invisible; maybe you've already walked past a demolition site today and not noticed. Then a high-profile accident strikes , and we all question how much we can really trust the built environment. For a couple weeks.





A school collapse uphill from an urban renewal site, photographed Sept. 7, 2018. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun



Sampoong Department Store in southern Seoul famously collapsed in 1995, taking over 500 lives. But people might not know there was a second department store in the area that collapsed in October 2008. The store, named Nasan Homeplace according to signs found inside, had been abandoned for years, and like the Gwangju building it collapsed during demolition, killing two workers.



"Collapsed during demolition" sounds like an oxymoron, but demolishing a building is a precise operation, especially in a dense metropolis like Seoul. It is rarely done using explosives, but almost always carried out by excavators that wield a more precise destructive force, taking out buildings small bites one at a time rather than all at once as in implosive demolition.



To demolish the approximately eight-story Nasan Homeplace, two excavators were placed on the roof to chew their way down to the ground level. But during this process, most of the structure gave way. One excavator fell all the way down, killing the operator, while the other stayed perched on what remained of the roof. The collapse was contained within the construction fences, and I don't believe the roads around it, let alone the sidewalks, were ever closed off.





Life goes on along the sidewalk below the site of Nasan Homeplace, which collapsed two days prior to this photograph taken on Nov. 1, 2008. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun



The building in Gwangju was being taken down by an excavator out back, but it apparently aimed too low, resulting in the top-heavy building toppling over into the street like a tree being felled.



Gwangju News editor Isaiah Winters, a fellow urban explorer who visited the area before and after the collapse, referred to this technique as "rubble-ramp demolition." He will give a talk under the Gwangju International Center's GIC Talk series this Saturday, titled "Lost in Honam." Visit eng.gic.or.kr for more information and register to receive the Zoom link.





An entire neighborhood stands immediately uphill of an urban renewal site where the land has been excavated for apartment construction, Aug. 1, 2012. / Courtesy of Ron Bandun
Defense Minister Suh Wook / Yonhap



Defense Minister Suh Wook apologized Tuesday for the military's failure to prevent cluster COVID-19 infections among sailors of the Cheonghae naval unit on an anti-piracy mission in waters off Africa.



The apology came a day after virus tests showed that 247, or 82 percent, of the 301-member unit were infected, the worst-ever infection cluster among service members blamed on poor initial responses, such as giving only cold medicine to a sailor who first developed symptoms.



The defense ministry also came under fire for excluding the unit from its vaccination campaign. Officials said the unit left for Africa before the vaccination began and it was difficult to transfer vaccines out of the country under contracts with vaccine suppliers and over safety concerns.






Members of Chonghae naval unit wave their hands as they move to a quarantine facility after their arrived at the Seoul Air Base, Tuesday afternoon, from Arica. Yonhap



Members of South Korea's virus-hit Cheonghae naval unit returned home from Africa on Tuesday, the defense ministry said, after cutting short their anti-piracy mission following an unprecedented mass outbreak that infected 247, or 82 percent, of the 301-member unit.



One of two KC-330 Cygnus multirole aircraft dispatched to airlift all of the troops returned to an air base south of Seoul at 5:30 p.m., carrying 160 infected members, including 16 who had been treated at local hospitals.



The second plane carrying the rest was also expected to arrive soon, according to the ministry.



"Fourteen individuals, including three showing moderate symptoms, will be transferred to medical institutions," the ministry said in a statement.



At the airport, buses and ambulances were on standby to transfer the members to military hospitals and treatment centers where they were to undergo another round of virus tests.



Defense Minister Suh Wook and other senior military officials were also at the airport to receive the returning troops.



Depending on the test results, confirmed patients will receive treatment while those who test negative will be transferred to the military's quarantine facilities, the ministry said.



Six cases were first identified Thursday and subsequent tests on all of the members confirmed the mass outbreak on their 4,400-ton Munmu the Great destroyer. Poor initial responses were blamed, such as giving only cold medicine to a sailor who first developed symptoms early this month.



The number of infections could further rise considering the virus' incubation period. The military earlier said 50 have tested negative and the samples of four individuals were undecipherable.



None of the troops had been vaccinated as they left South Korea in early February, just before the country began its inoculation campaign.



Defense Minister Suh issued an apology over the mass outbreak earlier in the day, admitting insufficiency in efforts to vaccinate the sailors.



"As the defense minister, I feel a heavy responsibility, and I extend deep apologies to the members of the Cheonghae unit, their families and the public," he said.



Their destroyer will be piloted back home by a team of about 150 sailors who flew there on the aerial tankers.





Cheonghae unit members returned home from Africa, as they arrived at the Seoul Base via KC-330, Tuesday afternoon. Yonhap




The CEO of the scandal-ridden private equity investment firm, Optimus Asset Management, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday for running one of the largest fund fraud schemes in the country's financial history.







The Seoul Central District Court found Kim Jae-hyun guilty of fraud and embezzlement in the fraudulent fund case but imposed a prison term significantly below the life imprisonment sought by prosecutors against Kim.







The court also imposed a fine of 500 million won (US$434,000), on top of the 75.1 billion won in forfeiture to cover his fraud.







Both Lee Dong-yeol, the company's second-largest shareholder, and Yoon Seok-ho, an executive at the company, were sentenced to eight years in prison on the same charges.







The vast fraud scheme run by the private equity company took in money of about 1.35 trillion won from approximately 3,200 individual and institutional investors from April 2018 to June 2020, by lying that the money would be invested in safe public institutions.







However, most of the money was actually funneled into risky assets or used to pay returns to investors to give the appearance that the company was engaged in serious and sound financial transactions, according to investigators.







The company failed to redeem more than 554 billion won for its customers.







The scandal has engulfed the country's political and financial sectors, after one of the company's internal documents was disclosed to media last year, suggesting that some influential figures allegedly lobbied to help the company conceal its fraudulent activities.







But investigations into various allegations have yet to produce meaningful outcomes, except that a former director at the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) was charged with taking bribes in January. (Yonhap)


This photo shows the equipment set up inside the residence of the man who allegedly made methamphetamine in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, after studying how to do it online. Courtesy of the Busan Metropolitan Police Agency



By Ko Dong-hwan



A man who allegedly made methamphetamine  an amount described as "enough for 33,000 people"  at his residence in Gumi has been arrested.



The Busan Metropolitan Police Agency's narcotics investigation team said on July 19 that the suspect, in his 30s, was arrested in Busan. He was visiting the city to meet a potential buyer interested in his homemade drug. Police said that they apprehended the two after being tipped off about the deal.



The amount of the illegal drug produced by the man was about 1 kilogram, worth 3.3 billion won ($2.86 million).



He allegedly made it in his rooftop one-room studio flat, which he had rented starting from last April. He rented two one-room units on the top floor of the building, thinking that the smell from the drug-making process could alert people to his activities.



He purchased all the equipment needed to make the drug at local hardware stores, including: burners for boiling, a centrifugal separator to extract the methamphetamine, and a ventilation system to remove the odorous fumes from his residence. The drugs he bought non-prescription drugs at local pharmacies from which to extract chemical ingredients. Police confiscated a total of 49 drug-making apparatuses and 13 chemical drugs.

According to local reports, not a single neighbor noticed what he was doing over the past three months.



He was discharged from prison in November 2020. The narcotics investigation team chief Lee Gi-eung said that the suspect first learned about making drugs while in prison and, after being released, continued to study the process online and via books.



Police said that there have been increasing cases of illegal homemade drugs and distribution. Last February, a group of people were caught making illegal homemade methamphetamine an amount described as "enough for 23,000 people"  at an officetel in Seoul's Yangcheon District.



Such cases have been increasing following Korea's stricter monitoring on package deliveries across the border, which was triggered by COVID-19 and has made it more difficult for drug dealers overseas to send in products that are illegal here.




Millennails, Gen Z seen as swing voters for upcoming presidential election



By Nam Hyun-woo



Young people in their 20s and 30s are emerging as the new center of Korean politics and the economy, spearheading changes in various aspects of society.



Called the "MZ Generation"  a combination of Millennials and Generation Z  they show no hesitation in expressing their opinions on various issues; and political parties, businesses and civic groups are being compelled to listen to their voices. Many Koreans now agree that they exert an influence across all of society, and this growing influence is outpacing all other demographic groups



The MZ Generation is the most commonly accepted term in Korea to categorize those who were born between about 1981 and 2005. It is not an internationally accepted term, and there are arguments that Millennials  born between 1981 and 1995  and Generation Z  born between 1996 and about 2005  should be treated separately given their differences, but the term has now been widely accepted to categorize the attitudes and behavior of those in their 20s and 30s.



Compared to the previous Generation X, the MZ Generation is described as more individualistic and digitally fluent, as well as more practical in relationships with others. Particularly in Korea, these people are described as being more caring about fairness and are active in expressing their opinions on social matters compared to previous generations.



A recent poll of MZ Generation "members" provides grounds for such a description. According to a June 22 survey by Deloitte Global on 23,000 people in the MZ Generation in 45 countries including Korea, 73 percent of Millennials and 76 percent of Gen Zers in Korea said wealth and income were being distributed unfairly in the country, far higher than the global average  69 percent of Millennials and 66 percent Gen Zers.





People Power Party Chairman Lee Jun-seok speaks during a party recruitment event for talented people in their 20s and 30s at the National Assembly on Yeouido, Seoul, July 19. Yonhap



And the domestic political circle is striving to attract these younger people to their folds. Korea's main opposition People Power Party (PPP) appointed 36-year-old Lee Jun-seok as its chairman, despite the Harvard graduate having no experience as an elected lawmaker.



Following his appointment, Lee hosted a debate contest to select the party's spokesperson, regarded as an experiment here, and appointed a pair of MZ Generation members as its spokesmen  Lim Seung-ho, 27, and Yang Jun-woo, 26.



Despite initial concerns that the young "politicians" could end up being political accessories, their presence is generating appeal among the public. In a recent survey conducted by the Hyundai Research Institute on 1,208 adults, 50.3 percent of respondents said they have high expectations for Lee as PPP chairman.



Cheong Wa Dae also responded by appointing Park Seong-min, 25, a former Supreme Council member of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, as presidential secretary for youth affairs, although the appointment drew a backlash from the public and opposition parties, which questioned her qualifications.



The shift to younger people became apparent after the April 7 by-elections to pick the mayors of Seoul and Busan, in which the liberal ruling party suffered crushing defeats after apparently losing support from younger voters. Pundits here are now saying the MZ Generation will be the swing voters in next year's presidential election, and winning their support will be critical for the candidates.



"I sense that the MZ Generation doesn't hesitate in expressing their opinions, and is less loyal to ideological thinking," an official of the ruling bloc said. "They don't care much about conventional political logic and rather focus more on practical things, which appeals to the public these days."





Lee Kun-woo, 27, head of Hyundai Motor Group's Office Workers and Researchers Union, submits documents on the union's establishment to the Seoul Regional Employment and Labor Office in Seoul, April 26. Courtesy of Daesang Labor Law Firm



'MZ union'



The MZ generation's rise is not limited to the political circle  it is solidifying its presence in business too.



On April 29, a group of office workers and researchers at Hyundai Motor Group companies organized a union. Led by Lee Kun-woo, 27, a researcher at Hyundai Kefico, the union's leadership is comprised of workers in their 20s and 30s.



It is not recognized as a bargaining entity by Hyundai Motor Group management  these are currently only unions of factory workers on manufacturing lines. However, Lee's union, described as the "MZ union" by Korean newspapers, has secured more than 5,000 members in the three months since its establishment.



A month earlier, LG Electronics office workers also formed a union, and its establishment was led by Yoo Jun-hwan, 30, who has been working for the company for only three years. The union now has more than 3,000 members.



Unlike other unions at these companies, the new entities are reluctant to join umbrella groups such as the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) or Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU). The KCTU and FKTU are Korea's two largest umbrella unions, having influence on most unions at companies here, and are known for their aggressive stances in strikes and other types of labor disputes.



On June 25, Lee, Yoo and other young union leaders had a meeting with Presidential Economic, Social and Labor Council Chairman Moon Sung-hyun, during which they stressed that they believe "it is time for a paradigm shift in union activities," and that they were "skeptical about unions' militant actions, given their costs to society."



"Labor movements in the past used to highlight the combative side because labor conditions could not improve without disputes," Moon said. "I agree with the new unions' call for communication toward rationality and fairness, and the country's labor-management relations should reflect the new union model."



Customer base



As the MZ Generation's influence grows, businesses are considering them as a major customer base and are keen to draw their attention.



This trend is noticeable within the financial industry, which has long been considered one of the most conservative sectors in Korea.



According to the Korea Securities Depository, the number of investors in Korea stood at 9.14 million at the end of 2020, and 37.4 percent of them were under 30. Their total investments increased 98.2 percent from the previous year, reaching 67.8 trillion won.





Seen above is a lunch box co-released by E-mart 24 and Hana Financial Investment, July 14. The lunch box contains a coupon exchangeable for one share in one of the top 10 cap companies. Courtesy of E-mart 24
Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung, left, bumps fists with former ruling Democratic Party of Korea Chairman Lee Nak-yon at TV Chosun studio in Seoul, July 8, ahead of a TV debate for presidential contenders of the ruling party. Joint Press Corps



By Jung Da-min



With the ruling Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) putting off its presidential primary by five weeks due to the recent upsurge in COVID-19 infections, attention is now being paid on how it will affect the competition among the six contenders.



The extended period could either give Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung more time to solidify his lead, or offer a chance for runner-up former DPK Chairman Rep. Lee Nak-yon to catch up.



The DPK announced, Monday, that it would select its candidate on Oct. 10, instead of Sept. 12, but if none of the contenders win more than 50 percent of the vote, a run-off election will be held in mid-October.



Currently, Governor Lee has been topping opinion polls, followed by Rep. Lee and four other contenders who passed the first-round primary cutoff, July 11.



Some DPK members, who do not support the governor, had earlier urged a delay of the primary before the fourth wave of COVID-19 infections started in early July. But the idea was dismissed at the time by the party leadership which saw no grounds for the request and considered it as going against the party's own rules and regulations. Governor Lee had also objected to the idea, as the chances of him becoming the candidate were high then considering opinion polls.



But the situation has changed due to the resurgence of infections, and the governor also agreed with delaying the primary.



This could give former DPK Chairman Lee, who also served as prime minister from 2017 to last year, another chance to garner support, which has been rising recently.



According to a survey of 1,013 adults conducted last Friday and Saturday by pollster the Korea Society Opinion Institute, former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl, a strong presidential hopeful from the opposition, ranked first with 30.3 percent support, followed by Governor Lee at 26.9 percent and former DPK Chairman Lee at 19.3 percent.



Support for the governor decreased by 1.5 percentage points from a week earlier, while the former chairman picked up 1.2 percentage points. When asked to choose an ideal contender within the ruling party, 46.1 percent of respondents said they supported the governor while the former chairman garnered 42.2 percent support.



In another poll by Realmeter about presidential hopefuls of both the ruling and opposition blocs conducted July 12 and 13, the governor's support was 26.4 percent, down 3.6 percentage points from a week before, while the former DPK chairman's rate rose by 8.4 percentage points to 15.6 percent.


A diver observes a Nomura's jellyfish in waters off the city of Komatsu in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan. Yonhap



By Ko Dong-hwan



Unusually large numbers of Nomura's jellyfish that are drifting in Korean waters have triggered the government here to issue a warning. The giant jellyfish has long tentacles that can deliver a painful sting that in rare cases could even be life threatening to humans.



The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries and the National Institute of Fisheries Science (NIFS) on July 19 issued the Level 2 warning against the jellyfish throughout the country's oceans spanning from the waters east of Jeju Island to the eastern coast of North Gyeongsang Province.



The warning is the third-highest among the country's four-tier notification system for jellyfish. Level 2 is issued when more than 5 moon-jellyfish or more than one Nomura's jellyfish are spotted within an area of 100 square meters of waters under the jurisdictions of more than one city or county.



Nomura's jellyfish can grow up to 2 meters in length and weigh up to 200 kilograms. They usually reside in waters between China and Japan. Their numbers, however, have been steadily increasing over the past 20 years. Experts say the reasons include rising ocean temperatures due to climate change and overfishing of other varieties of sea life.



The jellyfish was named after Kanichi Nomura, director-general of the Fukui Prefectural Fisheries Experimentation Station, who discovered the jellyfish in 1921. It was later confirmed as an unknown species.



The first of the latest reports of Nomura's jellyfish in Korean waters came on June 23 from waters of South Jeolla Province and Jeju Island. It prompted the government to issue a Level 2 warning shortly after.



The jellyfish, however, expanded in number and moved to waters surrounding the country's southern and eastern coasts. As of July 19, as many as 10 jellyfish per 100 square-meter area were spotted in waters off South Gyeongsang Province. Up to 2 jellyfish per 100-square-meter area were found in waters off Busan. They were also spotted in waters off Ulsan at the bottom of the country's east coast, and moved further up to waters off North Gyeongsang Province. In both areas, they were found at a rate of one per 100-square-meter area.



According to the NIFS, the jellyfish recently found in Korean waters first arrived from China's East Sea last May. They approached southern Korean waters in June and moved up to North Gyeongsang provincial waters in July. Authorities said they anticipate the jellyfish will move to waters off Gangwon Province by early August in a thick concentration.



The ministry said it will start removing the jellyfish from Korean waters using ships equipped with nets and pumps to suck jellyfish from the ocean. Authorities have ordered local municipalities that had reported the jellyfish in their waters to monitor their numbers every week.



The ministry's fishery resources policy bureau chief Jeong Gi-won also warned the public so people visiting beaches can avoid getting stung by the jellyfish. Jeong also requested people who spot jellyfish to report them to the NIFS or local authorities.


Nation should overhaul industrial, educational policies



Government officials and automotive industry executives have long been calling for a transition to eco-friendly "future" cars, such as electric- and hydrogen-powered vehicles. Fostering a core workforce is essential to doing this, but bureaucrats and industrialists seem to be sitting on their hands.



According to the Korea Automotive Technology Institute (KATECH), Monday, the number of eco-friendly car researchers in Korea totaled around 42,000 in 2018. That figure was only 17 percent of the 250,000 researchers in the United States in 2019. The institute pointed out that Korea will fall behind in the global competition if the country fails to resolve this personnel shortage.



Citing a study by Roland Berger, a German consulting company, KATECH forecast that the share of electronic parts in the cost of car production will rise from 16 percent in 2019 to 35 percent in 2025. Korea's localization rate of car parts and components has reached 99 percent for internal combustion vehicles. However, the comparable rate stood at 68 percent for electric vehicles, 71 percent for hydrogen cars and 38 percent in the software for self-driving cars.



Meanwhile, foreign companies are moving briskly to secure a core workforce in this sector. Honda Motor, for instance, has begun to retrain 50,000 employees in the U.S. over five years, and Ford Motor plans to increase the number of its programmers from 300 to more than 4,000. The lack of a core workforce in Korea is partly due to the country's neglect in reforming the high school curriculum and reorganizing the school system. Future cars require a convergent understanding of IT, electronics and machinery, but the country has failed to provide an education that nurtures the skilled workers demanded by the industry.



The transition to future cars will accelerate, pushing up demand for research related areas, such as software and artificial intelligence. Without various approaches to this new trend by, for instance, providing administrative support, vocational training and academia-industry links, Korea will not win in the global competition. This shows why Korea should hurry to work out a national blueprint to cope with the demand for an appropriate workforce in the rapidly evolving car industry.






Japan hit for high-handedness toward Korea



President Moon Jae-in's efforts to hold a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga have gone up in smoke due mainly to Tokyo's refusal to compromise over thorny historical issues. On Monday, Moon decided not to visit Japan to attend the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games scheduled for Friday.



We have to express regret over Japan's high-handed attitude toward South Korea. The conservative Suga administration should take all the responsibility for dashing the hopes for a summit between the two countries. It also must get the blame for squandering a rare opportunity to mend bilateral ties which have reached their lowest since relations were normalized in 1965.



It is not too much to say that Suga has had no intention of meeting Moon to discuss pending issues such as Japan's wartime forced labor and sex slavery. Suga has only repeated his hardline stance that Korea should first come up with measures to resolve the dispute arising from the Korean Supreme Court's ruling in 2018 that ordered Japanese firms to pay compensation to surviving South Korean victims of forced labor.



In an apparent retaliation against the ruling, Tokyo imposed export restrictions on key industrial materials in 2019 which are essential for Korean companies to produce semiconductors and display panels. It also removed Korea from its list of favored trading partners, inviting criticism for leveraging trade in its diplomatic row with Seoul. In a word, Japan has gone too far in evading responsibility for its wartime atrocities.



Against this backdrop, President Moon has been searching for a breakthrough in the soured ties in order to forge a future-oriented partnership with the Asian neighbor. He has been continuously offering to meet with Suga for frank talks to find a solution to the history-related issues. Regrettably, however, Suga has scoffed at Moon's overtures for dialogue.



As a result, Seoul and Tokyo have yet to narrow their differences over how to put bilateral relations back on track. Neither side can move forward toward the future as long as the Japanese government keeps insisting that all reparation claims arising from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula were addressed by the 1965 basic treaty. Suga and his government need to take a flexible attitude so that they can pave the way for settling historical issues.



Making matters worse, Tokyo has laid claim  yet again  to South Korea's easternmost islets of Dokdo in its defense white paper published July 13. Inappropriate remarks by Hirohisa Soma, the deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, have also added fuel to the fire. He ridiculed President Moon's efforts to hold a summit with Suga, describing them as "masturbating." The Japanese government has refused to take stern action against Soma although it expressed regret over what he said.



The Moon administration reportedly requested Tokyo lift its export restrictions as a precondition for a summit. But Japan refused to accept the request. In this situation, Moon had to scrap his plan to visit Tokyo. However, the two countries should not stop searching for a solution through dialogue and compromise. We urge Japan to face up to its history squarely and make sincere efforts to build trust with Korea.










By Lee Seong-hyon





When it comes to analyzing China, there are usually three-level approaches. One is to be mindful of China as a "Communist state" and try to draw any meaningful conclusions from there. The second is to focus on China's factional politics such as the "Princelings," or the "Shanghai Gang," or "Youth League Faction." The third approach is to look at China's top leader.



The fact that the world, more than ever, now pays attention to Xi Jinping, in our attempt to understand China's behavior, may be an indication of how much power is concentrated in the hands of one single person in the People's Republic of 1.4 billion people.



Indeed, the art of understanding China by figuring out Xi is increasingly becoming a mainstay these days, especially in the U.S.-China rivalry context and with China's more assertive behavior at large, including China's controversial "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy.



Some view that China's problem is the problem of Xi, who "prematurely" challenged the world's current reigning superpower, the United States. Others believe that Xi "already has a plan," to quote the famous phrase from the film, "Parasite," regarding how to erode and eventually outstrip America's status in the world.



While the degree of Xi's "preparation" for this ambition is debatable, both camps, at least, converge on one thing: Xi appears to be in a great hurry to establish China's global supremacy. Why the rush?



For instance, during the annual "Two Sessions" meeting of the Chinese Communist Party in March, China announced its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25). The announcement of this five-year plan, by itself, was no news and was well-expected. However, the Xi government also announced its long-term 2035 plan to achieve so-called "modern socialism."



Why announce a plan that is nearly 15 years away?



"Previously, we usually set five-year plans, but this time we mentioned the 'long-range goals for 2035' for the first time. The time span extended from five years to 15 years. That shows we have become more strategic," explains Yang Xuedong, a professor of political science at Tsinghua University, as carried by the state-controlled Global Times.



Xi named the period leading up to the year 2035 as "a major strategic development period" that is likely to decide the trajectory of the U.S.-China rivalry. To facilitate the goal, China has put into operation a project called, "China Standards 2035" (zhognguo biaozhun 2035), which is aimed at setting China-led global industrial standards in the areas of artificial intelligence, quantum computing, blockchain and 6G, to name a few.



Externally, Xi sees that the West is in a state of accelerated decline, providing a strategic opportunity for China's rise. Domestically, this period is also a critical one for China to overcome the "middle-income trap" and resolve the expected labor shortage issue in its aging society, through the fourth industrial revolution and manufacturing automation.



In short, the answer lies in Xi's belief that the next 15 years will be the most critical period in deciding China's fate.



Jude Blanchette, a Washington-based China expert, thinks that Xi Jinping feels a "sense of urgency" because he believes that there is a very "narrow window" of strategic opportunity during which China can take advantage of this aforementioned technological and geopolitical transformation, which will cement China's future destiny.



Xi clearly sees himself as "a figure of historical significance, on whom the CCP's fate rests," according to Blanchette in his recent Foreign Affairs piece.



Xi doesn't have much time to accomplish such a historic mission. He will be 82 in 2035. Thus, instead of merely waiting for America's power to decline naturally, Xi wants to speed up China's rise, by mobilizing the whole nation to actualize the lofty "Chinese Dream."



For some people, Xi reminds them of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward movement during the Cold War era, in which he tried to outdo the West in industrial prowess, by mobilizing the whole nation.



Blanchette points out that there is no one in today's China who dares point out Xi's hubris. "This is a recipe for disaster," he said.



Blanchette stops short of saying that Xi is suffering from a Messiah Complex, but Xi's sense of urgency not to miss out on this strategic window of opportunity, and his sense of himself as a historic figure to steer China's future destiny, he argues, is leading China "in a more inward and paranoid direction."



What Xi likely does not understand, Blanchette argues, is that "he himself may be the biggest obstacle" for China's long-term success.





Lee Seong-hyon, Ph.D. (sunnybbsfs@gmail.com), is an ICAS fellow in Washington, D.C., and the author of the book, "The U.S.-China Competition: Who Will Rule the World?" (2019).


U.S. President Joe Biden holds up a silicon wafer in a meeting with CEOs of the world's leading tech companies held at the White House in Washington, D.C., April 12. AP-Yonhap



Export restriction of ASML's equipment to China has little impact on Samsung, SK



By Kim Bo-eun



Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are on the alert over possible effects of further steps by the U.S. to contain the growth of China's chip technology.



The Joe Biden administration is known to be seeking to maintain an export restriction on Dutch firm ASML's key equipment used in producing advanced chips to China. China has been focusing resources on making its chip-manufacturing technology more competitive, and has sought to import ASML's extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography equipment as part of such efforts.



Lobbied by the Donald Trump administration, the Netherlands imposed export restrictions on ASML's EUV equipment to China in 2019. ASML is the dominant player in the field of EUV lithography, which enables more precise and efficient production of semiconductors at small transistor scales of around the 5-nanometer node size and below. The Netherlands has yet to lift the imposed restriction.



Korea's major chipmakers use ASML's equipment in producing advanced microprocessors, as do giants such as TSMC and Intel. ASML is the only firm producing the EUV equipment needed to produce cutting-edge chips.



According to Samsung and SK hynix, the existing export restriction on ASML's equipment to China has not affected the operation of their plants in China so far, given the restricted equipment is not used there.



But the ongoing power struggle between the world's two largest economies is keeping the chipmakers on their toes, as any possible additional restrictions could cause a spillover effect for them.



The companies may see their operations affected if the U.S. expands the export restrictions to a greater range of ASML equipment, as was proposed by the U.S. National Commission on Artificial Intelligence to Biden's office earlier this year.



"Samsung and SK have not been affected so far. Further export restrictions on other equipment will not immediately weigh in either, given the companies have machines currently in use," an industry official said. "But they are closely observing developments given the conflict is expected to continue. Bringing new equipment to China may become more difficult."



The Biden administration was expected to take a toned-down approach to China compared to the blatantly hostile policy of the preceding Trump administration.



But Biden is seen to have inherited his predecessor's China policy for the most part. Containing China's technological rise has become a pressing task for the U.S. at a time when cutting-edge technology is considered parallel to national security.



The U.S. continues to lobby allies with weighty ties to China to join its moves to contain the latter's growing power.



China in the meantime is also seeking to reduce dependency on imported equipment and develop its own. ASML's EUV equipment that has been restricted from export to China is known to cost $150 million per machine. Experts believe it will take China more than a decade to develop technology to manufacture its own EUV equipment for making advanced chips, which is why such restrictions are detrimental to the country.



The U.S. is seeking to set up supply chains of strategically important products such as semiconductors and batteries in its own territory, after experiencing disruptions triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and as geopolitical risks continue to linger. Movements are ongoing to develop homegrown technology and secure local supply. The world's No. 1 economy is also pressuring major companies in allied nations to invest in building manufacturing plants of the key products on its soil.






Self-driving commercial vehicles will hit the roads in Seoul's western district of Sangam as early as October, the city government said Tuesday.







A new ordinance by the city government of Seoul on the operation of a special zone to host a pilot self-driving commercial vehicle project went into effect Tuesday in a bid to help expedite the commercialization of driverless cars in the city.







Under the ordinance, Seoul plans to introduce a range of fee-paying public transport services based on autonomous vehicles, such as self-driving buses and short-haul transport services available for use through mobile applications, as well as a special service aimed at transporting disabled passengers in wheelchairs across the Sangam district.







Ahead of the ordinance's enforcement, the city in December designated sections of 24 roads in Sangam, together covering some 6.2 square kilometers, as a special zone to host the pilot self-driving transport services.







With an eye to kicking off the envisioned services in October, Seoul city will begin recruiting self-driving transport service operators later this month.







The city government will then install a steering committee in charge of safety regulations next month to help these services take off smoothly. It also plans to dedicate part of city-run public parking lots to the pilot projects to help defuse any parking issues, according to the city.







"We will transform Seoul into an innovative city with a next-generation transportation system by advancing the commercialization of self-driving vehicles," Baek Ho, a senior Seoul official in charge of city transport, said. (Yonhap)


Baby panda Fu Bao eats a carrot at an online celebration of her first birthday at the Everland amusement park, in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, Tuesday. The female cub is the first Korea-born panda and has grown to weigh over 40 kilograms, 200 times her size at birth. Yonhap
Iraqi security forces inspect the site of an explosion in Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq, July 19. Reuters-Yonhap



The Islamic State group claimed responsibility early Tuesday for a suicide bombing that ripped through a busy market in the Iraqi capital ahead of Eid holiday celebrations, killing nearly 30 people, according to medical sources.



In a message posted to its Telegram channel, the militant group said a suicide bomber named Abu Hamza al-Iraqi detonated his explosive belt in the middle of a crowd in Sadr City, an eastern Baghdad suburb on Monday night, killing more than 30 and wounding 35 others.



In one of the worst attacks in Baghdad in recent years, body parts of victims lay scattered across the previously bustling market that had been crowded with shoppers buying food ahead of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, according to an AFP photographer.



Some 50 people were also wounded in the blast, medics said.



Iraqi President Barham Salih called the bombing in the densely populated majority-Shiite suburb of Sadr City a "heinous crime" and offered his condolences.



"They are targeting our civilians in Sadr City on the eve of Eid," Salih said in a message on Twitter. "They do not allow people to rejoice, even for a moment."



Eight women and seven children were among the dead, according to a medical sources, who said the toll lay between 28 and 30 killed.



In an early Tuesday statement, children's agency UNICEF confirmed that children were killed and injured in the attack.



"This horrific attack right before Eid Al-Adha is a terrible reminder of the violence Iraqi children continue to face," it said.





People pick up debris at the site of an explosion in Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq, July 19. Reuters-Yonhap



Screaming in terror



Video footage shared on social media after the blast showed bloodied victims and people screaming in terror. The blast was so strong it ripped the roofs off some market stalls.



"A terror attack using a locally made IED (improvised explosive device) in Woheilat Market in Sadr City, in east Baghdad, left several victims dead and others injured," Iraq's interior ministry said in a statement.



Refrigerators full of water bottles were drenched with blood, and shoes were strewn on the ground alongside fruit, AFP journalists said.



Baghdad Operations Command, a joint military and interior ministry security body, said it had launched an investigation into the blast, and police and forensic teams late Monday were searching through the smoking wreckage for clues.



Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhemi convened an emergency meeting with his heads of military and security agencies.



In January, the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a rare twin suicide bombing that killed 32 people  also at a crowded market in Baghdad.



That blast was the city's deadliest attack in three years.



Such violence was commonplace in Baghdad during the sectarian bloodletting that followed the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, and later on as IS swept across much of Iraq and also targeted the capital.



But after years of deadly violence, militant attacks have become relatively rare in the capital Baghdad.





People light candles at the site of a bombing in Wahailat market in Sadr City, Iraq, July 19. AP-Yonhap
In this Aug. 7, 2020, file photo, a man looks at his smartphone as he walks by the Microsoft office in Beijing. The Biden administration on July 19 blamed China for a hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world earlier this year. AP-Yonhap



The United States on Monday accused Beijing of carrying out a massive hack of Microsoft and charged four Chinese nationals as it rallied allies in rare joint condemnation of "malicious" cyber activity from China.



In comments likely to further strain worsening relations between Washington and Beijing, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the March hack of Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, was part of a "pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security."



China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, "has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain," Blinken said in a statement.



In a simultaneous announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice said four Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking the computers of dozens of companies, universities and government bodies in the United States and abroad between 2011 and 2018.



Pointing to the indictment, Blinken said the United States "will impose consequences on (Chinese) malicious cyber actors for their irresponsible behavior in cyberspace."



President Joe Biden told reporters the United States was still completing an investigation before taking any countermeasures and drew parallels with the murky but prolific cybercrime attributed by Western officials to Russia.



"The Chinese government, not unlike the Russian government, is not doing this themselves, but are protecting those who are doing it, and maybe even accommodating them being able to do it," Biden told reporters.





U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken bumps elbows with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg after a moderated event prior to a meeting of NATO foreign ministers at the alliance's headquarters in Brussels, March 23. Reuters-Yonhap



NATO solidarity



Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, has ramped up pressure on China, seeing the rising Asian power's increasingly assertive moves at home and abroad as the main long-term threat to the United States.



In a step that the Biden administration hailed as unprecedented, the United States coordinated its statement Monday with allies  the European Union, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO.



"The cyberattack on Microsoft Exchange Server by Chinese state-backed groups was a reckless but familiar pattern of behavior," British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.



NATO issued a statement condemning malicious cyber activity and offering "solidarity" over the Microsoft hacking without directly assigning blame, while noting that allies United States, Britain and Canada found China to be responsible.



State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was the first time that NATO  the Western military alliance whose members include Hungary and Turkey, which have comparatively cordial relations with Beijing  has condemned cyber activity from China.



It comes weeks after NATO took up China at a summit attended by Biden.



"We know we'll be stronger, we know we'll be more effective when we act collectively," Price said, saying the United States was not ruling out further action.



Biden has promised a strategy driven by alliances to face Beijing, drawing a contrast with Trump's predilection for harsh rhetoric.





U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken / AP-Yonhap
Global K-Pop phenom MONSTA X is officially the next group to release their UNIVERSE Music single with "KISS OR DEATH."

According to NCSoft and Klap, developers of the UNIVERSE K-pop fan interaction platform, announced that the MONSTA X single "KISS OR DEATH" will be released on July 26, 6 PM KST.

The announcement was accompanied by the cover image and the full schedule of the activities.

ALSO READ: MONSTA X Showcases Their Vocals in Jazzy 'Secrets' Live Performance

The "KISS OR DEATH" schedule began with the release of the Concept Photo on July 16 and the concept trailer, titled "THE ONE," being released last July 19. MONBEBE around the world are now waiting for the release of the music video teaser, "Crime Scene" version, on July 21 and the "Time Warp" version on the 23rd - all events leading to the release of the MONSTA X UNIVERSE Music track on the 26th.

Fans have been eagerly waiting for the single release ever since the cover image for "KISS OR DEATH" dropped last week. In the photo, all six MONSTA X members - Shownu, Minhyuk, Kihyun, Hyungwon, Joohoney, and I.M. - created a classic feel similar to gangster and noir concepts. They are in formal suits with fedoras, pocket chief, and watch.

MONSTA X has recently asserted its position as a global K-pop boy group with a successful performance from their ninth EP "One Of A Kind" released last month. The album itself peaked at Number 3 at the South Korean Gaon Albums Charts and broke into the Top 10 of the Japanese Oricon Albums chart.

Additionally, all songs in the album managed to enter the US Billboard World Digital Songs chart, with the title track reaching No. 5 on the worldwide chart.

"KISS OR DEATH" is the latest UNIVERSE Music release, immediately following The Boyz' single "Drink It" released earlier this month.

The original music series from the NCSoft and Klap platform began last January with IZ*ONE's "D-D-Dance," followed by Jo Sumi and Rain's "Guardians," Park Ji Hoon's "Call U Up" (feat. LeeHi), (G)I-DLE's "Last Dance" (Prod. GroovyRoom), and Kang Daniel's "Outerspace" (feat. Loco).
BTS has once again topped Billboard's Hot 100 with "Permission To Dance"!

BTS continues their streak as the No.1 song on Billboard's weekly ranking of popular songs in the United States, Hot 100! On July 19 local time, Billboard revealed the songs that made it into the Top 10 of Hot 100 for the week of July 24.

Keep on reading to know more.

BTS Permission To Dance Makes Debut at No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100

According to Billboard, BTS' newest song, "Permission To Dance," made its debut at No.1 on the popular chart, taking over the spot that was previously held by BTS very own song, "Butter," which held the top spot for seven weeks in a row and broke records.

The #Hot100 top 10 (chart dated July 24, 2021)  billboard charts (@billboardcharts) July 19, 2021

In addition, "Permission To Dance" becomes the fifth song of BTS to top at No.1 on Billboard's Hot 100, following "Dynamite," "Savage Love (Laxed - Siren Beat)" which they featured in with Jason Derulo and Jawsh 685, "Life Goes On," and "Butter."

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: BTS 'Butter' Entangled in Plagiarism Controversy with the Background Music for Japanese Game 'Monster in My Pocket'

Not only that, but it took BTS just over 10 months and two weeks for them to accomplish five No.1 songs on the Hot 100, which is the fastest time to do so since Michael Jackson, who was able to accomplish this feat within nine months and two weeks back in 1987 to 1988.

Billboard also revealed that BTS is the fourth act with at least four No.1 debuts on the Hot 100 chart, following Ariana Grande with five, and Justin Bieber and Drake with four.

This also marks BTS being the first act to take over themselves at No.1 on Hot 100 since Drake, who took over himself back in 2018. In addition, this also marks BTS as the fifth group to replace themselves at No.1 on the chart in Billboard history, as well as the first group to replace their No.1 debut with another No.1 debut.

"Permission To Dance" also drew in over 15.9 million streams in the United States, as well as 1.1 million radio airplay audience impressions and sold 140,100 downloads in the week of July 15.

Congratulations to BTS!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: BTS and BLACKPINK Rose Named in Genius' Best Songs of 2021 So Far

BTS' RM Reveals Why They Included Sign Languages in "Permission To Dance"

Back on July 13, RM held a casual V-Live to chat with fans. During his live, he talked about using sign languages in the choreography for "Permission To Dance."

Regarding how they decided to use sign languages in the choreography, RM said, "Our team just happened to have come up with that idea one day. It was something that we have never thought of in the past, and it was such a fresh idea."

"We had a lot of fun while making the choregraphy of the dance. I felt really proud and happy after I heard that many people were touched by our use of sign languages in 'Permission To Dance'," RM added.

Back on July 9, BTS released the CD version of "Butter," which included their new song "Permission To Dance." The song's choreography also included sign languages that mean "peace," "fun," and "dance."

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is the Director-General at the World Health Organization (WHO), praised and thanked BTS for including sign languages in their dance.

"As 1.5 billion people in the world are affected by hearing loss; sign language can help them to continue enjoying music which can bring joy to life," said the Director-General.

Check out BTS Permission To Dance MV here!

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: BTS Mocked in Colombian Radio Show, Says Their Success is 'Brought By Money'

For more K-Pop news and updates, always keep your tabs open here on KpopStarz.

KpopStarz owns this article.

Written by Robyn Joan
BTS will be holding a "Permission to Dance" Challenge exclusively on YouTube shorts!

On July 20, the K-pop boy group and YouTube officially announced the "Permission to Dance" Challenge, encouraging everyone around the world to join and show off their own version of the song.

BTS's "Permission to Dance" Challenge will kick off on July 23 until Aug. 14.

How to Do BTS's "Permission to Dance" Challenge on YouTube?

"Permission to Dance" Challenge is simple, so, users of all ages and genders can surely complete it.

Participants just have to create a 15-second video via YouTube short in which they will perform the main choreography of BTS's "Permission to Dance."

In particular, participants have to imitate the part where BTS used international sign language for the words "peace," "joy," and "dance" in the music video for the track.

The septet previously teased the "Permission to Dance" Challenge in a YouTube Shorts video on July 9.

Among the 15-second clips made by fans, BTS will select some that they will include in a compilation video, will be released at a later date.

Those who wish to be chosen should add the hashtags #PermissiontoDance and #Shorts to their 15-second YouTube Shorts video.

READ MORE: BTS Named as One of the Top 5 Highest Paid Musicians in the World

Shin Young Jae, the general manager of Big Hit Music, expressed the company's hope to bring people around the world together to dance without limitations through BTS's "Permission to Dance" Challenge on YouTube Shorts.

YouTube's collaboration with BTS on the challenge follows their announcement that Shorts - a video feature resembling TikTok - will expand worldwide to over 100 countries.

Lyor Cohen, the head of the YouTube music division, said that they look forward to the participation of many ARMYs across the globe on the "Permission to Dance" Challenge.

Are you going to participate in the challenge?

BTS Included on YouTube's Top 10 Most-Viewed MVs and Top 5 Most-Viewed Artists

BTS's "Permission to Dance" has become another instant hit of the boy group. The official music video for the song has recorded more than 170 million YouTube views since its release on July 9.

"Permission to Dance" music video was included on YouTube's list of Top 10 most-viewed music videos within the first 24 hours, taking the No. 6 spot with 72.3 million views.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Study Reveals BTS' Collaborations Have Greatly Boosted Brand Interest in Southeast Asia

Because of this, BTS now has five most-watched MV on YouTube within 24 hours in history, including "Butter" and "Dynamite," which ranked first and second, respectively.

The seven-member boy group is the only artist in the world with five music videos crossing 70 million YouTube views in the first 24 hours since their release. These MVs are "Life Goes On," "Permission to Dance," "Boy With Luv," "Dynamite," and "Butter."

In addition to this, BTS made it to the list of Top 5 most-viewed artists on YouTube worldwide. Over the past 12 months, the boy group recorded more than 10 billion views on the platform.

BTS has three videos with over one billion YouTube views: "Boy With Luv," "Dynamite," and "DNA." Moreover, the septet has 54 million subscribers on YouTube, the third-largest number among artists worldwide.

For more news updates about other K-Pop news, always keep your tabs open here at Kpopstarz.

Owned by Kpopstarz.

Written by Mhaliya Scott


Corrections Corporals - $20.00/hour starting wage Now hiring! Apply today! Competitive salary, shift differential plus benefits to include medical/dental/vision insurance, free basic life insurance, retirement, 100% tuition assistance, paid vacations/holidays/sick leave. If the minimum requirements are met, you will receive an invitation to the testing at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, 1107 Recharge Road, York, NE 68467. Invitations to the testing will be sent via email to the email address listed on your application. Space is limited to only those who receive an invitation. The testing and interview process may take approximately two hours to complete. Please bring your valid driver's license. Appropriate business attire required (shorts and tank tops will not be allowed). For more information call 402-362-8833 or visit http://corrections.nebraska.gov. For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation please contact 402-479-5812. The Corrections Corporal selection process includes the following steps: *Online application * The Corrections Selection Inventory (CSI) assessment test BY INVITATION ONLY * Interview following passing the CSI test * Security background check * Reference checks * Medical exam * Drug test Examples of Work Supervise inmates in a wide variety of situations and activities. Conduct thorough inspections and searches of inmates, buildings and grounds. Negotiate extensive pedestrian perimeter and grounds inspections outdoors. Move heavy furniture and equipment with assistance (up to 100 pounds) during searches. Prepare documentation regarding institutional matters such as incident reports, misconduct reports and logs. Conduct counts. Operate security equipment such as portable and mobile radios, electronic panel switches, keys in locks, fire extinguishing equipment, hand tools, and mechanical levers. Place and remove restraints on inmates. Operate control center. Recognize critical behavior. Respond to emergency situations. Restrain and control inmates. Transport inmates leaving the institution on any form of travel order. Drive state vehicle. Follow written directives, post orders, and special instructions in addition to policies and procedures which dictate daily, routine and emergency procedures. Enforce rules and regulations. Communicate with staff by using portable and mobile radios, telephones, pagers, intercoms and similar adaptive equipment. Complete and maintain annual certification of Training Academy classes including CPR, self-defense, first aid, chemical agents and firearms. Employ techniques learned as necessary. Supervise compliance with safety, sanitation, health and personal hygiene standards. Supervise the issue, use and storage of caustic toxic and flammable substances. Distribute inmate mail. Obtain and maintain Medication Aide certification. Distribute medication as necessary. Overtime, voluntary and mandatory, includes weekends, holidays and double-shifts. Qualifications / Requirements REQUIREMENTS: At least 18 years of age; high school education or equivalent; a valid driver's license, and must be able to legally possess a firearm and ammunition.



PREFERRED: Bilingual skills in English and Spanish desired and assessed.



OTHER: May be required to obtain and maintain Medication Aide Certification. Must have a valid driver's license. Successfully completion of examination and screening process. Overtime may be required to include weekends, holidays and double-shifts. Must be able to work a shift assignment including weekends and holidays. Applicants accepting a job offer must pass the following pre-employment exams in this order: medical exam and at a randomly announced time (24 - hour notice), pass a drug test. Once at the Staff Training Academy, must successfully complete the fully paid NE Corrections Training Program to include CPR, first aid, firearms, and self-defense tactics. Knowledge, Skills and Abilities Ability to work under stress. Must be able to work a shift assignment, work weekends and holidays. Overtime, voluntary and mandatory, includes weekends, holidays and double-shifts.

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Genex Service LLC





Field Case Manager (Bilingual-Spanish)



US-KS-Wichita



Job ID: 21-11978

Type: Regular Hire

# of Openings: 1

Category: Case Management

Mitchell International



Overview



Mitchell, Genex and Coventry With Mitchell, Genex and Coventry now one organization, weve dramatically expanded our ability to deliver innovative services and technologies to our customers. Weve also seen career opportunities within our combined organization grow. Each part of our organization helps people recover after a challenging event in their lives. Mitchell delivers trusted software and services to the property & casualty claims, collision repair and risk management industries with technology-enabled solutions that simplify claims handling, repair processes and pharmacy transactions. Genex helps injured workers return to their jobs in a safe and efficient manner through compassionate case management, reducing health care costs and disability expenses for our customers. Coventry offers the nations largest and most diverse set of provider and ancillary networks focused on improving total overall outcomes. Together, we bring a complete set of proven capabilities for our partners who require more than one-dimensional solutions. We combine innovative technology, insightful analytics and deep expertise to help them reach their ultimate goalrestoring lives.



Responsibilities



This is a full-time, remote position with regular local travel (70%) required in the Whichita, KS area. Bilingual in Spanish preferred. The Field Case Manager is responsible for assessment, planning, coordination, implementation and evaluation of injured/disabled individuals involved in the medical case management process. Working as an intermediary between carriers, attorneys, medical care providers, employers and employees, you will closely monitor the progress of the injured worker and report results back to the employer and insurance carrier. This will ensure appropriate and cost-effective healthcare services leading to a medically rehabilitated individual who is ready to return to an optimal level of work and functioning. You will: Use clinical skills to help coordinate the individuals treatment program while maximizing cost containment.

Serve as an intermediary to interpret and educate the individual on his/her disability, and the treatment plan established by the case manager, physicians, and therapists.

Facilitate treatment between providers and the worker.

Provide resources for claims personnel when needing providers in certain locales.

Partner with employers determining modified work.

Accurately document meeting Best Practices timeframes.

Report billing hours in accordance with case activity and billing practices.

Follow specific account instructions.

Demonstrate professionalism within the work place and in dealing with injured workers.



Qualifications



Licenses or Certifications: Current, unencumbered Registered Nurse license required in the resident state; CCM, COHN, CDMS, or CRRN preferred.

Minimum of one year clinical experience in a hospital setting.

Bilingual in Spanish preferred

Workers compensation or disability management experience is highly desired but not required.

Previous field case management experience is preferred but not required.

Requires excellent time management and organizational skills.

Spanish speaking a plus.

Must have reliable transportation.

Knowledge of basic computer skills including Excel, Word, and Outlook Email.

Must have local unencumbered drivers license and proof of automobile insurance.

Written Abilities: Proficient grammar, sentence structure and written communication skills are required. Home Office Requirements: Requires DSL, fiber or cable internet connection from home. 1 Mbps preferred or better.

Home office must be HIPAA compliant.



Please see job description







PI141555044



Requirements



Please see job description




GENERAL SUMMARY Perform security duties maintaining order and physical custody of inmates in a jail system or courthouse complex. Responsible for the care, custody, and control of persons to include; releasing inmates, maintaining security of the facility, and escorting inmates within and/or outside the secure confines of the jail. Duties may also include instructing members in confinement, care, custody and restraint, when necessary, of inmates and in other routine and specialized work as directed or by assignment. Member must also exercise tact, courtesy and self-control in performance of duties, and must be able to make decisions calmly and quickly in emergency or hazardous situations. ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES Provide direct and remote supervision of inmates within housing and other areas of a jail, a courthouse, or secure perimeter as assigned to maintain a safe and secure environment

Assumes a high level of responsibility for the care and custody of assigned inmates through knowledge of and adherence to laws, regulations, and standard operating procedures governing Johnson County and The State of Texas

Conduct frequent security checks for evidence of unauthorized activities and infractions of rules, respond to situations, and document accordingly

Provides custody and security of inmates including observing actions of inmates; performing pat or strip searches of inmates

Receive and process inmates from officers and the courts, maintain inmates property, and direct inmates throughout the intake process

Be able to perform necessary searches for contraband, and completes reports

Observe conduct and behavior of inmates, respond to and control emergency situations, and use appropriate levels of force to control combative, volatile, or hostile inmates

Documents numerous inmate activities such as, visitation, phone calls, incidents, movement, housing assignments, property, etc.

Supervise inmates and trustee-inmates work crews

Conduct head counts to ensure that each inmate is present

Inspect conditions of locks, window bars, grills, doors, and gates at correctional facilities to ensure security and help prevent escapes

Searches for contraband and provides security, counts, feeds and supervises inmates in housing

Supervise the dispensing of food in a timely fashion to inmates, ensuring all health and safety regulations are complied with

Receives and reviews paperwork associated with incarceration to ensure accurate completion; notarizes affidavits from the arresting officer; obtains information from inmate and paperwork (warrant, writ, detainer, etc.) and makes appropriate computer entries; including local and out of county charges

Must be able to obtain TLETS certification. Checks for any outstanding warrants using the Texas Law Enforcement Telecommunications System (TLETS) computer and confirms with out-of-county agencies that have warrants through TLETS, run Criminal Histories through TLETS for classification officer. Process Emergency Protective Orders, Interlock, and Conditions of Bonds when ordered by the judge.

Prepares bail bonds (e.g. probable cause misdemeanors, pre-indictments, Class C, cash bonds, fugitive fines, and civil) and fees associated with each for releasing prisoners from custody.

Other duties as assigned by supervisor

Promotes facility cleanliness and reports need for maintenance and/or repairs.

Observe suicidal persons and respond to suicidal attempts and medical emergencies; perform life saving measures

Handle intoxicated persons and or inmates under influence of drugs or other substances.

Respond to fire alarms/fight fires and evacuate prisoners in a safe secure manner.

Regular attendance and timeliness are required OTHER POTENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS: May also include supervisory duties, which would require the ability to follow chain of command

Supervise and direct searches for contraband and provide security; court, feed, and supervise inmates in housing, work and other areas accessed by stairs, steps, and ladders; and perform security of various assigned areas involving long periods of sitting and standing, and climbing stairs, steps, and ladders to reach the assigned areas.

Plan, organize, and coordinate the work of detention personnel and support staff; ensure personnel are trained on and follow proper security procedures, established policies, regulations, and guidelines relative to the operation of the facility, and recommend personnel actions as appropriate to provide for an effective working environment

Interpret, enforce, and answer inquiries pertaining to institution rules of conduct, investigate incidents of inmate misconduct, determine the necessity and scope of discipline required and prepare and edit required reports

Oversees operation of jail facility by seeing that inmates needs are provided in a timely and safe manner and in accordance with TCJS, coordinating processing, housing, and transportation, and providing first line resolution of inmate and personnel problems LIMITATIONS AND DISCLAIMER: The above job description is meant to describe the general nature and level of work being performed; it is not intended to be construed as an exhaustive list of all responsibilities, duties and skills required for the position. MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS Education Required: High School Diploma or Equivalent

Be able to obtain a TCOLE Jailers License within the required time frame as specified by TCOLE KNOWLEDGE, SKILLS, and ABILITIES Required: Current and valid TX drivers license and a safe driving record

Applicant must be 18 years of age on /or before date of hire

Ability to work in a hostile environment of inmates and their visitors without reacting in a negative manner and project a professional image at all times

Exceptional skill in establishing and maintaining effective working relationships with County staff, inmates, police departments and the public

General knowledge of basic hardware and software and uses of a variety of different computer operating systems such as Microsoft Office Word, Excel, Outlook

Analyze problems, identify alternative solutions, project consequences of proposed actions and implement recommendations in support of goals

Must also possess excellent physical assessment skills and be able to make sound judgment decision

Ability to supervise emergency situations, make effective decisions under stressful situations, and direct the use of physical force necessary to protect oneself and others

Keen attention to detail; careful and accurate data entry

Must be able to pass qualification exam Preferred: Working knowledge of principles, practices, and techniques of modern inmate care, custody, and control, and related state, federal, and department laws, rules, regulations, standards, and policies governing the operation of detention facilities

Working knowledge of local, state, and federal laws governing the criminal justice system

Working knowledge of how to search for and recognize contraband and weapons DISCLAIMER: Johnson County will conduct background checks on new hires that will include a criminal background check related to convictions and deferred adjudications in the past 10 years and may include credit reports, motor vehicle records, employment records, and educational attainment. A conviction or deferred adjudication is not an automatic bar to employment. Each case is considered individually. Disqualifiers: Undesirable character or reputation

A felony conviction or felony deferred adjudication against the laws of this state, another state, or the United States

Conviction including court-ordered community supervision or probation for any criminal offense above the grade of Class B Misdemeanor, or a Class B Misdemeanor within the last 10 years

Currently under indictment for any criminal offense

Conviction, guilty plea, or probation for any family violence offense

Discharge from any military service under less than honorable conditions, or any other characterizations of service indicating bad character ALL EMPLOYEES Must be committed to achieving excellence in assigned duties, always in service of the county and community

to achieving excellence in assigned duties, always in service of the county and community Must have ability to earn and keep the trust of fellow employees and the community at large

of fellow employees and the community at large Must be approachable and ready to help fellow employees and the general public ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS: Contact with at risk clients and persons accused or adjudicated of misdemeanor and felony offenses, visitors and general public

Work is performed indoors and outdoors in a 24-hour/7-day confined, security facility

Significant contact with the public, elected officials, department heads, and other County employees

The work characteristics described here are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential job functions.

This position has been identified with possible risk of exposure to blood-borne pathogens and/or various hazards that require immunization against such exposure. PHYSICAL DEMAND REQUIREMENTS: While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk and hear

The employee frequently is required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to find, handle, or feel objects; reach with hands and arms; stoop, kneel and climb stairs

Performing the essential functions typically requires exerting up to 100 pounds of force occasionally, up to 50 pounds of force frequently, and/or up to 20 pounds of force constantly. HOURS / SPECIAL CONDITIONS: Must be willing to work overtime, weekends, holidays, rotating shifts, evenings and nights. Must be able to work 12 hour shifts. Johnson County is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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Medical Translator (Miami, FL) sought by a translation & consulting firm to translate medical rltd docs. Must have a bach deg in Medicine. Proficient in Western Medicine & Chinese Medicine terminology. Excellent oral & written skills in both Chinese & English. Advanced comp skills, incl MS Office. Apply to American Education and Translation Services, Corp., 15321 South Dixie Highway, Ste 302, Palmetto Bay, FL 33157.

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The University of Akron

Coordinator, Admin & Assignments  RLH

The University of Akron is seeking a Coordinator, Admin & Assignments  RLH to supervise, train and assign duties for students of a large office staff while assessing the student staffing needs of the department. Requires 18 months of education or training beyond High School and a minimum of 4 years experience in office/clerical procedures.

Review of applications will be on a continuous basis according to departmental needs.

EEO/AA Employer/Veterans/Disabled

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At Liberty Mutual, our purpose is to help people embrace today and confidently pursue tomorrow. Thats why we provide an environment focused on openness, inclusion, trust and respect. Here, youll discover our expansive range of roles, and a workplace where we aim to help turn your passion into a rewarding profession.

Liberty Mutual has proudly been recognized as a Great Place to Work by Great Place to Work US for the past several years. We were also selected as one of the 100 Best Places to Work in IT onIDGs Insider Pro and Computerworlds 2020 list. For many years running, we have been named by Forbes as one of Americas Best Employers for Women and one of Americas Best Employers for New Graduatesas well as one of Americas Best Employers for Diversity. To learn more about our commitment to diversity and inclusion please visit: https://jobs.libertymutualgroup.com/diversity-inclusion

We value your hard work, integrity and commitment to make things better, and we put people first by offering you benefits that support your life and well-being. To learn more about our benefit offerings please visit: https://LMI.co/Benefits

Liberty Mutual is an equal opportunity employer. We will not tolerate discrimination on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, age, disability, veterans status, pregnancy, genetic information or on any basis prohibited by federal, state or local law.




Bilingual School Secretary 1377 (Foreign Language Academy)

Job Description



Primary Location Foreign Language Academy



Salary Range $14.60 - $24.20 / Per Hour



Shift Type Full-Time



Job Attachment



KANSAS CITY PUBLIC SCHOOLS Job Description Job Title: School Secretary Job Title Code: 01377 Salary Grade: C03 ($(see application details)) 2018-2019 Rates Department: Instruction Reports To: Principal or designee FLSA Status: Non-exempt Date Prepared: June 2010 Revised: August 2015 PURPOSE OF JOB: To contribute to the efficient operation of the school office. School office functions include communications, maintenance and/or input for student attendance/ academic performance and school staff time/attendance records. Provides general secretarial/clerical support and is expected to conform to the highest standards of professionalism. ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES: include the following. A school secretary may be assigned any of the duties listed in this job description; other duties may be assigned. Assists in ensuring a productive and smoothly run office which provides excellent customer service and responsiveness to all persons who access that office. Serves as receptionist to all persons entering the main office and/or attendance areas. Exercises discretion in handling public contacts. Receives and tabulates daily attendance, maintains student attendance records and contacts parents of absentees. Explains attendance policies and procedures and manages processing of absence and tardy notices. Partners with Truancy personnel regarding student attendance and parent contact. Assists parents seeking homework assignments for their children who have been absent. Maintains student transfer requests and withdrawal approval file. Accurately enrolls and withdraws students on a daily basis. Enters student's name, address and other changes to the student data system. Maintains, formulates, updates and requests pupil records. Requests and enters transcripts and testing results. Maintains time and attendance records for school personnel and enters this information into Payroll System. Handles telephone calls, relays messages, makes appointments and appropriately responds to inquiries. Maintains a schedule of required Kansas City Public Schools and governmental attendance reports and prepares these reports for principal's signature. Schedules student and staff conferences with the principal and/or assistant principal. Maintains an efficient filing system for the building and student records. Types correspondence, reports, manuals, notices, files vouchers and other forms as assigned. Reads and routes incoming mail, including faculty and staff mail slots. Locates and attaches appropriate documents to correspondence to be answered by school staff. Stuffs envelopes by hand or with envelope stuffing machine. Stamps, sorts and distributes mail and runs errands. Addresses envelopes or packages for mailing. Assures that the school maintains the proper levels of office supplies. Assigns and orients substitute teachers upon arrival in the building Prepares correspondence and memos from rough drafts. Performs clerical work for school counselors. Collects and compiles information to prepare periodic reports. Possesses working knowledge of master scheduling and assists those who are responsible for its development. Attends meetings as required. SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES: None REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: High school diploma or GED certificate. Accurately type a minimum of 40 wpm.

80% proficiency on written clerical skills assessment. Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications (spreadsheet, word processing, Power Point)

Two (2) years prior clerical/secretarial experience

One (1) year experience with any HRIS

Bilingual (Spanish preferred) (Bilingual proficiency may be required for sites with large proportion of second language learners) PHYSICAL DEMANDS: The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. This job requires that the employee be able to: sit, stand, walk, speak, hear, use hands, fingers, reach with hands and fingers; bend, stoop, lift objects of at least ten pounds. Job requires the employee occasionally to stoop, kneel, crouch or crawl. Visual ability requires mono and color vision, close vision, distance vision, depth perception and ability to adjust focus.

TERMS OF EMPLOYMENT:

Length of work year: Depending on the school budget this description may be assigned to: 12 Months Benefits: Health and Dental Insurance are provided. KCPS Defined Benefit Pension plan - mandatory 9% contribution is required from employee and matched by KCPS; Voluntary retirement savings plans are also available.




The Adjunct Counselor will be responsible for providing assistance to, and follow-up services with, WCC students who are facing ongoing resource insecurity due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The Adjunct Counselor will work with students at the main campus in Valhalla, as well as the extension sites in Yonkers, Mount Vernon, Ossining, and Peekskill. This position will be responsible for holding individual student and group meetings and must be able to assess student needs and hardships in order to create individual success plans utilizing campus and community resources. Assisting in all daily functions for the Office of Student Support Services, this position will be required to respond to student inquiries, perform data entry as needed, keep meticulous notes and records, conduct outreach events, maintain social media pages, refer students to the on-campus food pantry, and perform other duties as needed to support the missions of the Office and the College.

Requirements: REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: A minimum of a Master's and Bachelor's in Guidance Counseling, Psychology, Sociology, or closely related field and one year of professional experience. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Experience working in a college setting or with college students; knowledge of campus and community resources available to WCC students and the ability to identify networks to provide ongoing support; a proven track record of community outreach and networking; experience working individually and as part of a team; adaptability to an evolving work environment; and proficiency in Microsoft Office and PeopleSoft.

Additional Information: WORK SCHEDULE: Four days weekly, Monday - Friday, totaling 28 hours per week. Some night and weekend work may be required. The successful candidate must have the ability to travel to multiple WCC campuses throughout Westchester County. HOURLY RATE OF PAY: $45.32 per hour. No benefits. About Westchester Community College: Westchester Community College was founded in 1946 as the New York State Institute of Applied Arts and Sciences in White Plains. In 1957, the County of Westchester bought the 360-acre John Hartford estate in Valhalla and designated 218 acres for the community college. Westchester Community College is more than just the county's largest educational institution. It is a living, breathing part of Westchester that goes beyond the influence of a typical college and affects the lives of all who enter its doors.

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Teachers are everyday heroes! Do work that matters at a company that offers you more including the opportunity to earn an ECE college degree for free! Are you a natural teacher or caregiver for young children? If building a love of learning is your passion, then Bright Horizons is the place for you! We are hiring early childhood teachers. Bright Horizons is committed to creating inclusive environments where everyone has a sense of belonging and the opportunity to contribute in meaningful and impactful ways. Consistently named one of FORTUNEs "100 Best Companies to Work For," we invite you to take your career to the next level by offering you MORE. This role has the following employment benefits: Health Care

Retirement

Sick Leave

Vacation

Paid Holidays

Disability Insurance

Life Insurance

Tuition Reimbursement At Bright Horizons you will: Create and implement hands-on activities based on your observations of childrens interests and skills

Document and share the special moments and important milestones of the children in your care Must meet state and company minimum education and experience requirements: At least 18 years of age with a high school diploma or GED

Pass required state and company background checks

Early childhood coursework, CDA, or degree required

Must be Colorado ECT qualified

At least six months of experience working with children in a professional setting The compensation for this role is between $13.00 and $15.00 an hour. Complete your online application today for immediate consideration. Applications are open only to those who meet minimum qualifications.

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Job Summary:

Receives, obtains, processes and analyzes specimens for laboratory analysis on all patient age groups.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

Collect and process venous and capillary samples from all patient age groups.

Conducts and interprets performance evaluations on laboratory equipment and procedures.

Maintains laboratory equipment per manufacturers guidelines.

Conduct required tests as ordered by physician.

Assist in supervision and training of employees.

Participate in QA, QC, accreditation and regulatory activities.

Maintain work station.

ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES:

As assigned.

KNOWLEDGE/SKILL/ABILITIES:

All areas of the laboratory: blood bank, basic microbiology, phlebotomy, and computer operation.

AGE-RELATED COMPETENCIES: Demonstrates the basic knowledge and skills necessary to identify age-specific patient needs appropriate for this position.

Information Management: Treats all information and data within the scope of the position with appropriate confidentiality and security.

Risk Management/Quality Management/Safety: Cooperates fully in all Risk Management, Quality Management, and Safety Activities and Investigations.

MINIMUM POSITION QUALIFICATIONS:

Education Graduate of an accredited school of Medical Technology or related field.

Graduate of an accredited school of Medical Technology or related field. Work Experience Two years generalist preferred.

Two years generalist preferred. Training Blood bank required, microbiology and phlebotomy preferred.

Blood bank required, microbiology and phlebotomy preferred. License/Certification ASCP, AMT, HHS or NCA certification or registry eligible within 90 days of hire.

ENVIROMENTAL CONDITIONS: Work environment consists of daily patient contact, which may include exposure to blood, or other body fluids.

Click APPLY below to be considered today!!

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Coventry





Field Case Manager Bilingual



US-MD-Baltimore



Job ID: 21-11606

Type: Regular Hire

# of Openings: 1

Category: Case Management

Mitchell International



Overview



Mitchell, Genex and Coventry Excelente oportunidad de empleo para enfermeras graduadas (RN) bilinges (espaol/ingls)! With Mitchell, Genex and Coventry now one organization, weve dramatically expanded our ability to deliver innovative services and technologies to our customers. Weve also seen career opportunities within our combined organization grow. Each part of our organization helps people recover after a challenging event in their lives. Mitchell delivers trusted software and services to the property & casualty claims, collision repair and risk management industries with technology-enabled solutions that simplify claims handling, repair processes and pharmacy transactions. Genex and Coventry help injured workers return to their jobs in a safe and efficient manner through compassionate case management, reducing health care costs and disability expenses for our customers. Coventry offers the nations largest and most diverse set of provider and ancillary networks focused on improving total overall outcomes. Together, we bring a complete set of proven capabilities for our partners who require more than one-dimensional solutions. We combine innovative technology, insightful analytics and deep expertise to help them reach their ultimate goalrestoring lives.



Responsibilities



This is a full-time, remote position with regular local travel (70%) required in the Baltimore Maryland area. The Field Case Manager is responsible for assessment, planning, coordination, implementation and evaluation of injured/disabled individuals involved in the medical case management process. Working as an intermediary between carriers, attorneys, medical care providers, employers and employees, you will closely monitor the progress of the injured worker and report results back to the employer and insurance carrier. This will ensure appropriate and cost-effective healthcare services leading to a medically rehabilitated individual who is ready to return to an optimal level of work and functioning. You will: Use clinical skills to help coordinate the individuals treatment program while maximizing cost containment.

Serve as an intermediary to interpret and educate the individual on his/her disability, and the treatment plan established by the case manager, physicians, and therapists.

Facilitate treatment between providers and the worker.

Provide resources for claims personnel when needing providers in certain locales.

Partner with employers determining modified work.

Accurately document meeting Best Practices timeframes.

Report billing hours in accordance with case activity and billing practices.

Follow specific account instructions.

Demonstrate professionalism within the work place and in dealing with injured workers.



Qualifications



Must be bilingual Spanish.

Licenses or Certifications: Current, unencumbered Registered Nurse license required in Maryland; WCCM, CCM, COHN, CDMS, or CRRN preferred.

Minimum of one year clinical experience in a hospital setting.

Workers compensation or disability management experience is highly desired but not required.

Previous field case management experience is preferred but not required.

Requires excellent time management and organizational skills.

Must have reliable transportation.

Knowledge of basic computer skills including Excel, Word, and Outlook Email.

Must have local unencumbered drivers license and proof of automobile insurance.

Written Abilities: Proficient grammar, sentence structure and written communication skills are required. Home Office Requirements: Requires DSL, fiber or cable internet connection from home. 1 Mbps preferred or better.

Home office must be HIPAA compliant.



Please see job description







PI141874950



Requirements



Please see job description




Location: Milwaukee - Wisconsin Job Description Support the Cash Management function, including consolidation and reporting of cash balances, execution of cash movement, support for Foreign Currency transactions, administration of bank access, authorized signers and required periodic bank documentation requirements. Job responsibilities include: Review and update cash positions daily to ensure sufficient liquidity to meet operating needs. Report cash balances to HQ Treasury for periodic reporting and analysis.

Leverage capabilities of a treasury management software system, Excel and web based bank platforms for most cash management activities.

Central point of contact for requests from local finance, AP & AR, Tax and HQ Treasury (e.g. bank statements, remittance support, generate manual payments as needed, etc.). Review, resolve and/or coordinate workflow of requests to the central group mailboxes.

Process treasury related manual payments.

Coordinate review and approval from Manager or Director Global Treasury for all direct debits and standing orders and communication to banks.

Prepare and request foreign currency transactions as needed and assist with cash movements.

As needed, update cash flow forecasts as to ensure future liquidity requirements are met and to optimize cash planning for working capital needs, repatriation, investments, etc. Request input and local requirements from treasury, tax, local controllership and Global Finance Organization.

Assist global treasury team for execution of intercompany loans to meet local liquidity requirements.

Assist with administration of electronic access to banks and perform semi-annual review of users and roles.

Coordinate the semi-annual review of bank signers and bank mandate review.

Ensure focus on Control environment; assist with internal and external audits as necessary. Basic Qualifications Bachelor's Degree

Legal authorization to work in the US is required. We will not sponsor individuals for employment visas, now or in the future, for this job opening. Preferred Qualifications Typically requires up to 2 years of experience in Treasury. #LI-MM1 We are an Equal Opportunity Employer including disability and veterans. If you are an individual with a disability and you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation during the application process, please contact our services team at +1 (see application details).


Mike McNeill's Diary for Tuesday, July 20, 2021: American justice can do better than this
Magnolia, AR (71754)

Today

Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 94F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies. Low around 75F. Winds light and variable.
Nissan to Create 1000s of jobs with electric vehicle investment in UK

Nissan is set to give the UK its first electric vehicle (EV) manufacturing base with the expected announcement of the countrys first gigafactory in Sunderland. The futuristic sounding gigafactory  which is the name given to any facility where EV manufacturers can produce batteries for their cars  will create thousands of jobs in the Sunderland area, but perhaps more poignantly give the UK a much-needed boost in an EV race in which it is fast falling behind.



The government has pledged an undisclosed contribution to the project  which is expected to cost hundreds of millions of pounds  such is the importance of the move. The introduction of the factory ties in with the UKs wider green initiatives, which includes the upcoming ban of new petrol and diesel cars in 2030 as part of the governments sustainable ten-point plan.





The first of many?



Nissans new venture represents the great hope for the start of the UKs EV efforts. Ideally speaking, the factory, which is projected to be able to produce 200,000 battery cars a year, will be readily producing batteries in time for 2024 when the level of UK-made components in UK-made cars is required to start increasing in line with EU trade-deal expectations.



Regardless, Sunderlands prospective gigafactory is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the UKs wider electric battery production requirements, according to car makers. As of right now, the UK is so far behind other global automotive powerhouses, namely Germany and the USA, in its targets for electric engine production that 90,000 jobs are at risk in the UK auto sector.



A new report from the SMMT has implored Boris Johnsons government to do more to help further the UKs electric cause, asking for more gigafactories, increased EV infrastructure and better stimulus packages for EV buyers in order to attract multinational investment and effectively position the UK in the new automotive landscape. With that in mind, Nissans expected announcement will be seen a positive step for the UK EV sector, but a late one that needs to be replicated swiftly.



A position under threat



The UKs position as one of the worlds leading car and commercial vehicle makers is currently under threat, with the issue of electric capacity being the most pressing both now and in the immediate future. Nissan, at least, see the UK as a vital base, having had a significant presence in Sunderland since 1986 and already started battery production for its highly popular EV, the Nissan Leaf, in recent years.



The Leaf, having been in production since 2010, is one of the worlds pioneering battery electric vehicles (BEVs), and has fast become one of the brands best selling and flagship models, with over half a million sales totalled globally to date. Once the worlds all-time top selling plugin electric car, it has changed the commercial picture for Nissan significantly as well as for the consumer, with areas like Nissan GAP insurance being notably affected.



Ashwani Gupta, Nissans operations chief, said that Sunderland is one of the best plants in the world for Nissan in terms of competitiveness, however, its likely that the Japanese manufacturers interest will only continue if the infrastructure in the UK is sufficiently competitive when compared with other sites around the world.



Therein lies the problem for the UK government today. With the likes of the US and Germany racing ahead in their electric capacity, multinational brands are less likely to bring their efforts to British shores. While thats the case, domestic car bosses are adamant that the government should do everything in its power to bring the UK auto sector back to competitive levels with global counterparts.



That task is, unfortunately, easier said than done, and those in the industry can expect to watch the UK play catchup in the EV market for some time to come yet.

By Boris Dzhingarov

 2021 Copyright Boris Dzhingarov - All Rights Reserved



Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.




The Labour right wing are bureaucratically manoeuvring to permanently ban Socialist Appeal from the party. This scandalous political attack is the latest attempt to crush the left. Activists across the left must mobilise and fight back.

Rumours and reports are circulating that Socialist Appeal, along with three other left-wing campaigning groups, are to be officially proscribed from the Labour Party. This is a direct political attack on the left and the ideas of socialism. The whole left must mobilise to fight this purge.

The Labour Partys national executive committee (NEC) is scheduled to meet next Tuesday, 20 July. According to various sources, a motion is being proposed by right-wingers on the NEC that would see Socialist Appeal deemed a proscribed organisation.

The motion cites Chapter 2, clause I.4.B of the Labour Party rule book, which says:

A member of the party who joins and / or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.

Furthermore, the motion states that this clause applies to Socialist Appeal and its activists, making support for Socialist Appeal incompatible with membership of the Labour Party.

The grounds given are that Socialist Appeal has its own programme, membership, and structures; that we are part of an international organisation, the International Marxist Tendency; and that our organisation is a continuation of the Militant Tendency, which was similarly proscribed by the Kinnock leadership in the 1980s.

Finally, the proposed motion suggests that the above clause should apply to anyone who declares themselves a supporter of Socialist Appeal; sells our newspaper, or writes articles for our publications; or runs Socialist Appeal street stalls.

Political attack

Attempts to proscribe Socialist Appeal are purely political in nature / Image: Socialist Appeal

All of the above justification for proscribing Socialist Appeal is entirely spurious, designed to distract from the real political motivations behind this move.

The purpose of the constitutional clause above is to exclude people from Labour membership who campaign against the party; and / or who actively support political organisations and candidates who stand against the Labour Party.

Socialist Appeal, however, has always supported the Labour Party and its candidates. We are not a separate party, but a tendency within the Labour Party and the wider labour movement, organising socialist activists around Marxist ideas.

As with groups like Momentum, our activists are loyal Labour members, who have worked tirelessly to build the party in their local areas; and who have enthusiastically campaigned for Labour in every election.

The same cannot be said for other factions within Labours so-called broad church.

As last years leaked report demonstrated, large swathes of party officials and of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) actively sought to undermine Labours chances in recent elections. Yet to this day, none of these saboteurs have been brought to justice.

Similarly, right-wing Labour groups such as Progress and Labour First consistently and openly wrecked the party under Corbyns leadership. Why is support for these Blairite organisations not deemed incompatible with membership of the Labour Party?

Guilty of socialism

This attack is scandalous, but not surprising / Image: Socialist Appeal

Whilst this attack is scandalous, it is not surprising. A number of Socialist Appeal supporters were caught up in the anti-Corbyn purge of 2015-16, when thousands of left-wing grassroots members and activists were suspended or barred from the party on various trumped up charges.

Socialist Appeal activists were informed by letter that they had been auto-excluded from the party (i.e. expelled), on the basis of the same rule book clause given above.

All of these comrades had been lifelong supporters of the Labour Party  some with decades of experience in the labour movement.

No right to appeal was offered to the comrades, and replies to the partys compliance unit were rebuffed under Iain McNicols regime. This goes against the most basic principles of natural justice, with party officials acting as judge, jury, and executioner.

At this time, one Socialist Appeal supporter took the party to court in order to fight his expulsion. After explaining the nature of our organisation, as a pro-Labour tendency, not an oppositional party, the lawyers representing the Labour Party squirmed in order to justify this auto-exclusion.

In the end, the partys lawyers declared that Socialist Appeal and its activists are not in agreement with Labours aims and values.

In particular, they noted that Socialist Appeal supports a socialist planned economy, and argues against the market economy. But the partys new Clause IV  introduced by Blair  states that Labour is officially in favour of the enterprise of the market, the rigour of competition, and a thriving private sector.

In other words, the only crime that the comrade was deemed guilty of was that of being a socialist  something that would surely apply to the majority of Labours membership!

Right-wing hypocrisy

After left-winger Jennie Formby replaced Iain McNicol as Labour general secretary, and with the NEC moving to the left, all the expelled comrades were gradually readmitted to the party.

In the associated disciplinary procedures, two of the auto-excluded comrades were even interviewed by none other than Tom Watson, the former deputy leader and Witchfinder General.

The comrades defended themselves against a dodgy dossier of evidence, and answered the questions of their interrogators. Both were let back into the party, after the panel  including Watson  deemed that there was no incompatibility between support for Socialist Appeal and Labour Party membership.

The same verdict was reached in relation to all the other expelled comrades. And yet, just weeks ago, two more Socialist Appeal activists received letters informing them that they had been auto-excluded on the same grounds.

Under Starmer, dozens of Labour members have been expelled, often solely for the crime of being socialists.



Instead of attacking the Tories, Starmer has attacked grassroots members. This cannot continue!



Watch expelled members Alex and Josh explain why they support #StarmerOut pic.twitter.com/ZFIoO5Mzam  Starmer Out! (@starmer_out) July 3, 2021

The first is Alex Falconer: former vice chair of Truro & Falmouth CLP; a 2019 Labour conference delegate; and a Labour member since 2017.

The second is Josh Cole-Hossain of Norwich South CLP: a member since 2017; and a prominent activist in the city, involved in the BLM and Palestine solidarity movements.

Both these loyal Labour members were also standing to be delegates from their respective CLPs to this years Labour conference.

These comrades were also told by the Labour bureaucracy that their support for Socialist Appeal is incompatible with Labour Party membership. Meanwhile, ex-Tories such as John Bercow have recently been welcomed into the party with open arms! This hypocrisy speaks volumes.

Witch-hunt

The move to proscribe Socialist Appeal is only the latest bureaucratic attempt to purge the most militant fighters from the Labour Party / Image: Socialist Appeal

The move to proscribe Socialist Appeal is only the latest bureaucratic attempt to purge the most militant fighters from the Labour Party.

During the Corbyn years, many prominent left-wingers were suspended and expelled on spurious grounds, as part of a witch-hunt against socialists in the party.

And more recently, the right wing have launched a further volley of attacks against the left, with the aim of driving tens-of-thousands of left-wing members out of the party.

This, of course, included the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn himself (who has still not had the whip restored); as well as leading left-wingers such as Howard Beckett, the assistant general secretary of Unite.

Battle ahead

The timing of this latest attack is not accidental. Labour conference is approaching, and the right wing are desperately manoeuvring in order to cement their rule by clamping down on party democracy, shutting down CLPs, and stitching-up the vote.

In this respect, it is clear why Socialist Appeal is being targeted. Our comrades have been at the forefront of the fight to transform the Labour Party  from the campaign to restore Clause IV; to the call to reclaim democracy with a recall conference; to the recent demand to say: Starmer out!

With democratic rule changes and votes of no confidence in Starmer being passed in CLPs up-and-down the country, it is clear that the right wing is scared of what lies ahead at this years conference.

The upcoming conference will be a fierce battle for the life and soul of the Labour Party. And Socialist Appeal supporters, along with other determined grassroots activists, are organising to ensure a left victory.

With #Labours annual conference approaching, the right wing have stepped up their attacks on party democracy and grassroots members. The left must organise to drive out Starmer and the right, and to transform Labour along socialist lines. #StarmerOuthttps://t.co/pTm2Q6Lc42  Socialist Appeal (@socialist_app) July 15, 2021

On the other side, it is clear that Starmer and the right wing are determined to expunge socialism from the Labour Party. Their aim is to return the party to Blairism, and make Labour a safe pair of hands for capitalism.

The problem is that the bulk of Labours membership stands in their way of this. Already, an estimated 100,000 members have left out of demoralisation and disgust. But this is still not enough. In their eyes, the job is not finished until the entire left has been extinguished.

First they came for the Marxists...

This latest McCarthyite move is therefore the thin end of the wedge. First the right wing will decapitate the left of its most militant layers. And if they are successful in this, next they will come for the rest of the left.

It is therefore imperative that the entire left mobilise to put a halt to these shenanigans. An injury to one is an injury to all.

Left-wingers on the NEC must fight to oppose the motion being proposed to next weeks meeting. Trade union leaders and organisations such as Momentum must come out in defence of those being attacked. And local Labour left groups and grassroots activists must organise to pass motions of solidarity, denouncing the attempt to proscribe Socialist Appeal and other left-wing organisations.

Traditions and history

First the right wing will decapitate the left of its most militant layers. And if they are successful in this, next they will come for the rest of the left / Image: public domain

Socialist Appeal is a legitimate component of the labour movement. We are a Marxist tendency; the Marxist voice of Labour and youth  proudly defending the ideas of Marxism and socialism inside the Labour Party and trade unions.

Marxism has a long history and tradition inside the Labour Party: from its inception, under the initiative of the Marxist Social Democratic Party; through to its influence on famous left-wingers such as Tony Benn.

Unlike the Blairites, our aims and values are entirely consistent with those of the Labour movement. We stand for the socialist transformation of society  an aim that was inscribed into Labours banner with the old Clause IV, introduced in 1918, which promised:

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry...upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange

We have openly fought for these socialist goals, helping to launch the campaign to bring back this socialist Clause IV  a demand that was supported by the majority of CLP delegates at the 2019 Labour conference.

It is Blairism and the ideas of the right wing that are alien to the best traditions of the labour movement. The right wing are Tory infiltrators; agents of big business; careerists, not class fighters.

Even then, we do not call for these people to be bureaucratically expelled from the Labour Party. Unlike them, we call for the most thorough democracy, in order to empower the membership, and let the rank and file decide.

This includes demands for mandatory reselection; the election of party officials; and an end to all restrictions on democratic discussion and debate.

Struggle for socialism

We appeal to all our readers to defy the Labour right wing, and to join the fight for socialism!

Alongside these democratic demands, Socialist Appeal calls for Labour to adopt a bold socialist programme in order to transform society in the interests of the working class, the youth, and the oppressed.

It is on the basis of socialist policies  not patronising flag-waving and appeals to big business  that Labour should be fighting the Tories.

Starmer and the right wing, however, are spending more time attacking the left than attacking the Tories. It is they, not Socialist Appeal supporters, who should be shown the door.

We will not be cowed by this repression and intimidation. Instead, we will redouble our efforts to transform the Labour Party along socialist lines; and to fight for a clear socialist alternative to the crisis-ridden capitalist system.

This is the task that lies before us: to build the forces of Marxism; to build the Marxist tendency; to build the Marxist voice of Labour and youth. We appeal to all our readers to defy the Labour right wing, and to join the fight for socialism.

Originally published 16 July 2021 at socialist.net |
An unprecedented heat wave has struck western North America. Thousands have died and infrastructure has buckled under the record temperatures set in all regions. The extreme heat has also led to an ecological disaster with upwards of 1 billion maritime animals perishing. But this did not have to happen. The blind profiteering of the capitalist system has created the climate crisis and has completely disarmed us in the face of its effects.

The deadly heat

The area worst hit by the heatwave has been the province of British Columbia, Canada where 500 people died in just five days, collapsing in the heat. Chief Coroner Lisa Lapointe stated that 719 sudden and unexpected deaths occurred during the first week of the heat wave, which represents a 195 per cent increase over normal periods.

The heat wave has been so bad that the entire town of Lytton burned to the ground after recording the hottest temperature in Canadian history of 49.6C, far surpassing the previous record of 45C set in 1937. Lytton and the surrounding area was home to nearly 2,000 people, 1,000 of whom have been forced to evacuate. While authorities claim that it was a freight train passing through the town which sparked the fire, it is clear that this was only possible due to the unbearably hot and dry conditions.

Similar scenes are now seen in the western U.S. where wildfires spurred by the incredibly hot, dry weather have spread through many states. In some instances, firefighters reported that it was so hot that the water they deployed to deter the fires would evaporate in the air before reaching the ground.

Climate change on a rampage

> North America: Record-shattering heatwave triggers massive #wildfires across British Columbia and American West (video)

> South America: Fire season intensifies in Amazon with 24 major fires so far, driven by historic drought and rapid #deforestation pic.twitter.com/s3RRsMwvyU  Assaad Razzouk (@AssaadRazzouk) July 1, 2021

This deadly heat has also literally warped local infrastructure in many places. Pictures of park benches and even sidewalks bending and buckling under the extreme heat have been circulating around social media.

The people who are dying from this heat wave are overwhelmingly elderly people. The hot weather, combined with COVID-19 as well as the dismal conditions in old folks homes and long-term care facilities, has proven to be a cruel, deadly mix. Many elderly people had to wait hours for assistance as health services were already stretched way beyond their limits.

Although the worst of the heat has passed, heat warnings are still in effect in large areas of the British Columbia interior, which are also struggling with wildfires, floods, droughts and poor air quality. The effects of this heat wave will be felt into the summer. And the devastation, death, and destruction inflicted by this heat wave will be felt by millions for years to come. After the smoke clears, many people are asking the question: What was responsible for this?

Climate change: A capitalist creation

Scientists are saying that this heat wave would have been nearly impossible without climate change. A new report stated that climate change has made heat waves such as this 150 times more likely to occur. Extreme weather events like this generally should only occur once in a thousand years. But the effects of climate change make heat waves such as this more frequent and more powerful. Indeed, nine of the hottest years on record have occurred in the past 10 years and it looks like 2021 will make that 10 out of 10.

But this situation has not fallen from the sky. Everyone knows that the phenomenon of global warming is a human creation. But what is not widely known is that climate change is not simply a human creation, but the creation of human society organized in a certain way. Capitalism, the dominant economic system around the world for the past couple of hundred years, has massively accelerated our impact on the environment and it has gotten to the point where things are spinning out of control.

It is becoming obvious for many that the individual responsibility preached by liberal and reformist politicians is completely insufficient to tackle such a massive problem which requires a huge overhaul of the entire way in which society operates. This is evident from the fact that 100 companies are responsible for 71 per cent of global carbon emissions. This is a capitalist problem. The popularity of the slogan System change not climate change! is an example of this growing consciousness that the capitalist system is the real culprit here.

 The #heatwave that swept across Western North #America in late June, killing hundreds of people, would have been virtually impossible without #climatechange, scientists said Wednesday.



But researchers are still struggling to explain such a spike in #temperatures pic.twitter.com/1bteukP3g8  FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) July 9, 2021

Capitalism kills

While any society can be hit with extreme weather, the way in which the society is organized will enable or disable that society to respond and more importantly to prepare for extreme weather events. Therefore, not only has capitalism created and exacerbated extreme weather patterns, but it has also rendered us completely unprepared for such predictable occurrences.



It is the most vulnerable in our society that are the most prone to die from heat. The fact that there has been such a shocking surplus of deaths reveals a larger structural problem. Of all the deaths in British Columbia, half were in the Fraser Valley, including cities such as Surrey and Abbotsford, and a quarter were in Vancouver. While the heat was more intense in the interior, the interior of the province is accustomed to high temperatures in the summer and housing and infrastructure are better equipped to tackle the heat. Coastal areas such as Vancouver are far cooler on average, which means most of Vancouvers infrastructure is not equipped with air conditioning or any cooling system. To give an example, only 19 per cent of residents in Vancouver have air conditioning.

The majority of those dying are working-class seniors, isolated residents, and those with pre-existing conditions/disabilities. Seniors who live in care homes or alone are particularly at risk. Air conditioning in care homes is not the norm. These buildings have no ventilation or other methods for cooling except for fans or cracking windows, which do effectively nothing to lower the temperature. Vents in certain buildings continued to blow hot air into the rooms, with building owners advising tenants to put wet towels over the vents to keep cool instead of shutting it off. A man who visited his wifes care home has also raised alarms over the situation in the care homes, stating that his 68-year-old wifes room got up to 36.5C at night. The management said the cut-off point for keeping people in their room was 40 degrees! This is well above a lethal temperature, particularly for the elderly.

As always, it is the poor and working class who have suffered the most through this heat wave. Looking at a heat map of Vancouver, there is a clear dividing line between the hottest and the coolest neighbourhoods in the city. It is an invisible dividing line which has coded itself into the very design of Vancouvers infrastructure: the class divide. The areas of Vancouver which get the hottest are primarily poor and working class areas, such as Marpole, parts of Richmond, Downtown Eastside, and the South East. At-risk areas also extend to Surrey, Abbotsford, and New Westminster. It is no coincidence that these are largely the same areas where COVID infection was highest.

Areas such as these are subject to urban heat islands. These highly urbanized areas often lack trees and greenery, which act as a natural cooler. With nothing to obstruct it, the buildings, roads and sidewalks capture heat and release it in the night, keeping these areas far hotter for far longer. In a heat wave, these areas are essentially trapped in an oven, with the buildings getting just as hot as outside. These areas also often lack other essential infrastructure to tackle a heat wave, such as public fountains with cool water, cooling stations, air-conditioned public areas, and so on. By contrast, the richest neighbourhoods in Vancouver, such as West Vancouver, have lots of trees and greenery, as well as more access to air conditioning and cooler housing. These neighbourhoods can be colder by as much as 20 degrees!

Working class neighbourhoods also have higher rates of drug addiction, disability, health issues and homelessness, which are all contributing factors to death by heat. On top of this, it is the workers who must go to work in the sweltering heat, and return home to an apartment or house that is likely just as hot. The overwhelming majority of those killed or hospitalized by the heat wave are the poorest and most vulnerable layers of the working class.

As a result of this, we have seen the total collapse of the provinces and cities emergency systems as emergency lines are overwhelmed and paramedics, first responders, and nurses are unable to keep up. The emergency line experienced more than 3,600 calls over 48 hours at the peak of the heat wave, about double or even triple an average night. This is on top of the opioid crisis and the pandemic, which both had already been pushing the system to its already weak limits. Families waited from two to up to six or even 11 hours for anyone to arrive. Paramedics often arrived at the scene long after someone had died. By the time we got an ambulance crew, there were quite a number of times where the person had already gone into cardiac arrest and ultimately passed away before we could do anything, a first responder in Vancouver said. The emergency system has been in a crisis for decades. All that was required to break it was this first test.

Ambulances were forced to sit and wait at hospitals for their patients to be admitted as the hospitals quickly overflowed. A paramedic recalled that he saw someone sitting on the floor in need of help for six hours while waiting. This meant an ambulance service that was already only working at 70 per cent capacity had even fewer resources on the streets.

Years of austerity have brought the emergency system to its brink. During their time in power, the BC Liberals, the main representatives of the capitalists in the province, slashed wages, jobs, benefits, and ambulances in operation, drastically crippling the provinces emergency infrastructure. This has left workers with little resources, low pay, and long hours, which contribute to chronic burnout and understaffing. The BCEHS (British Columbia Emergency Health Services) is so understaffed that between 25 to 30 per cent of ambulances in Vancouver were not even in operation at this time. Seventy-five per cent of the provinces paramedics are employed on an on-call model, which means they are paid a $2 stipend unless they are actively on call. Combined with rising costs of living in British Columbia, this has made being a first responder an impossible career path for many. This results in the existing labour force being stretched beyond capacity, and in situations such as a record-breaking heat wave, that means hundreds of unnecessary deaths.

This heat wave has not only brought attention to the fact that the effects of climate change are impacting us here and now. It has shown us how capitalism has left us unprepared for a predictable event such as this.

A dangerous #heatwave, unprecedented in modern times, is expected in the Pacific Northwest of North America. Forecast maximum temperatures in excess of 40C are expected for several days, well above model climatic extremes pic.twitter.com/Jgv4aEIXRd  Met Office (@metoffice) June 25, 2021

A preventable tragedy

In response to this crisis, one paramedic said, Its not like it was a tsunami or an earthquake or a volcano eruption. This is something we predicted and nothing was done about it. This is 100 times correct and shows what every working class person already knows.

While the BC Liberals governed B.C. for a long time and gutted social services, leaving us largely unprepared for this heat wave, they arent the only ones to blame. British Columbia is the only province in which the NDP (Canadas labour party) is in power. In the face of this tragedy, the response from the BC NDP government has been nothing short of scandalous. Despite the fact that this event had been forecasted a week in advance and the government warned of the risks, they did nothing to prepare. When confronted with the question of whether or not the BC NDP was prepared, Horgan responded by saying fatalities are a part of life. Horgan even had the audacity to emphasise the role of personal responsibility, stating, it was apparent to anyone who walked outdoors that we were in an unprecedented heat wave and again, theres a level of personal responsibility, and that residents must look after themselves and others.

These comments were naturally met with massive outrage from the population. Five hundred people do not just suddenly die as part of life. Many of the deaths during the heat wave have been excess deaths, beyond what would occur normally. Entire towns are not burned down due to lack of personal responsibility. In fact, people had no choice but to take personal responsibility as they were left completely unassisted by the government. The only culprits who have lacked personal responsibility throughout this heat wave are the government and capitalists.

The government has faced criticism since 2009, where 110 people died in one week due to heat, for not being prepared to deal with heat waves. A 2012 report from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control called for the government to declare a heat health emergency if temperatures were forecast over 29 degrees for more than two days. The 2019 climate report from the B.C. government warned that lasting temperatures of 32 degrees or more could result in more than 100 deaths. Both the Liberals and the NDP have heard from scientists and researchers the need to implement emergency plans and properly fund social services to respond to situations like these, and neither has listened or taken action.

Documents that had been sent to the government included plans of action to prevent the death toll from ever reaching the numbers they did in 2009. The calls include repurposing buildings such as swimming centres, malls, theatres, and other buildings with cooling to be open to the public, as well as checking in with and providing free transit to cooling centres for those with disabilities, the elderly, and the homeless, and to distribute air conditioning to areas disproportionately impacted by heat, among other several other basic measures.

These recommendations went largely unheeded. The only measurement the government took was the creation of cooling centres around the province, as well as reminders to stay hydrated (as if we could forget). While these are good actions, they are nothing compared to what was needed. Warnings and information for how and where to access cooling centres, and who should use them, were poorly implemented. The information that cooling centres had been opened was given primarily through social media, the internet and TV. As the government did not adequately warn people of the heat, many people did not consider or were not aware of the cooling centres. This is shown by the fact that hotels sold out across the city, as residents clearly did not have a good understanding of just how hot their buildings would be.

Cooling centres also have the disadvantage that they tend to be inaccessible to those who need them most: the homeless, the elderly and the disabled. As the Vancouver City Planning Commission wrote in their letter to the government on July 5th: [] Cooling stations are not a reasonable, viable or harm reduction solution to disabled and/or elderly people living in poverty but who are housed. People who are at heightened risk of mortality or harm from the impacts of these should not be told to go out to seek relief during air quality and heat alerts that warn them to stay inside. The letter warned that Failing to act and create policy that reflects the reality of peoples lives can and will cause people who would otherwise be alive to die.

Workers themselves have been speaking out about how utterly incompetent and unprepared the government was. A petition launched by a paramedic calling for the head of the BCEHS to resign has reached over 9,000 signatures. I have never seen paramedics and dispatchers as angry as they are right now [] Everyone is absolutely livid and disgusted with the response, the paramedic said. The petition pointed out the fact that the BCEHS had not declared an emergency and opened its 24/7 emergency operation centre until the day after temperatures began to decrease! Had this centre been open, it would have freed up resources and labour for setting up cooling stations, manning ambulances and reaching more people.

A paramedic stated in an interview that The ambulance service didnt seem to do anything to prepare for it at all []There were no initial attempts to top up staff, call-takers, or dispatchers. Thats why we ended up with effectively this collapse of the last few days. Tory Clifford, president of the paramedics union, also criticized the BCEHS: We knew the heat was coming  and [BCEHS] never really prepared. Paramedics even reached out to firefighters and police officers to cover for them as hospitals filled up and they simply could not tend to the patients. Beyond handing out water bottles, no preparations at all had been made.

There is nothing about these fatalities that is natural: it is a product of a capitalist system that is killing us through climate change, through austerity, and through poverty. The collapse of the emergency system, the lack of preparation and coordination between health officials, and the conditions that lead to heat deaths are all a product of the capitalist system, which having unleashed the forces of climate change upon humanity has no ability to stop it. As long as the BC NDP accepts the limits of the system creating climate change, neither they nor any other government on earth will be able to respond effectively.

Socialism or climate catastrophe

From the extreme cold in Texas earlier this year to the extreme heat in the West, the effects of climate change are hitting us here and now. This is no longer an abstract debate where right-wingers can deny that climate change is real. It is here and the effects are being felt by all of us. This is a dress rehearsal for the future to come.

In order to prepare for climate change and be able to manage the worst of its effects, what is needed is both a fully funded, properly staffed emergency system, coordinated government planning, and a dramatic overhaul of societys infrastructure from manufacturing to housing to transit. We must provide decent housing with sustainable air conditioning and cooling and build cities capable of self-cooling and equipped to deal with weather emergencies. We must fully fund and equip emergency services with the resources, staffing and funding they need. We need to transition to a fully green economy in time to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

However, capitalism stands in our way. Rosa Luxemburg is famously known to have said that the choice before humanity is socialism or barbarism. The climate crisis certainly is another example of this. The money and resources for this all exist, but they are hoarded in the hands of the perpetrators of climate change: the capitalist class. In order for us to prevent horrible tragedies from extreme weather events, we need a new system. We need socialism.

Originally published 15 June at marxist.ca |
Over the last few days two of South Africas most economically important provinces have been rocked by widespread rioting. Riots in Kwazulu-Natal and Gauteng have been fuelled by anger, desperation and frustration over deepening poverty and the economic impact of COVID-19 restrictions.

The riots started after the imprisonment of former president Zuma for defying a constitutional court order to give evidence at an inquiry investigating high-level corruption during his nine years in office. Sporadic protests started in KwaZulu-Natal last week, with Zumas supporters calling for his immediate release. The protests soon escalated.

Large crowds, describing themselves as Zuma supporters, blockaded freeways such as the N3 and N2 and torched 28 trucks on Friday. The M7, which is a strategic cargo transit route to the Port of Durban, and other provincial and municipal links were also affected. Several vehicles were stoned and public infrastructure was damaged, resulting in many commuters not being able to reach their places of work.

However, the immediate issue around Zuma has very quickly been pushed into the background. The rioting since Sunday is very different in character to that on Friday. It came after the government announced the extension of strict lockdown measures, which have hit some of the poorest layers in society especially hard. It is these layers that are currently leading the riots.

The country is currently going through a devastating third wave of the pandemic. For the poorest layers, who suffered the brunt of the lockdown measures, this was the final straw. The character of the riots and the composition of the rioters have changed again since Sunday. To reduce what is currently happening to Zuma is extremely superficial. The main targets are now shopping malls, supermarkets, warehouses and shopping centres.

In other words, these riots are about hunger. Theyre acts of desperation fuelled by the severe damage the lockdown measures have caused. A young man told a television news crew: I'm really not concerned about Zuma. He is a corrupt old man that deserves to be in jail. Im taking things from the shop for my mum. This represents the real character of these protests.

JUST IN - Every single store in the Jabulani Mall near Johannesburg has been looted. Reports and videos of riots at more malls in parts of South Africa.pic.twitter.com/t5DL96EVIM  Disclose.tv  (@disclosetv) July 12, 2021

The scale of the riots

The protests spread to areas in Johannesburg. In Jeppe, police struggled to disperse a group of hundreds of people who had barricaded the M2 freeway. There was destruction of property and looting. Crowds clashed with police and ransacked or set ablaze shopping malls in cities across Gauteng on Tuesday, with dozens of people reported to have been killed. More than 70 people have so far been killed during the unrest. More than 750 people have been arrested, while shops, petrol stations, banks and government buildings have been forced to close. On Tuesday, the state deployed thousands of soldiers to Durban and Johannesburg as police seemed helpless in the provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

The scale of the riots is reminiscent of scenes from the 1980s, during the fight against apartheid. The port city of Durban, where the riots started over the weekend, has been engulfed in riots for days. The countrys largest crude oil refinery, which is situated there, has been forced to close. The protests quickly spread to other parts of the province, including Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital.

An exploding powder keg

It is not difficult to understand what is taking place here: it has been years in the making. The riots are a reflection of the depth of the poverty thousands of South Africans continue to live under day to day. The economy is struggling to emerge from the damage wrought by Africa's worst COVID-19 epidemic, causing repeated restrictions on businesses to be imposed, which have harmed an already fragile recovery.

The crisis has widened the gulf between rich and poor. Growing joblessness has left people ever more desperate. Unemployment rose to a new record high of 32.6 percent in the first quarter this year. But the effects of the pandemic come on the back of years of deteriorating living standards. Even before the pandemic, unemployment stood at around 30 percent.

The crisis has exposed South Africas unemployment crisis. Even before the pandemic, the labour market has been marked by high levels of unemployment and inactivity. Out of a working-age population of almost 36 million people, only 15 million South Africans are employed. Youth unemployment is the highest in the world. Unemployment levels for young people aged between 15 to 24 stands at 60 percent are they in education or training. A whole generation has now grown up with this as their reality.

Since the pandemic, more than 2 million of the poorest workers have lost their jobs. The crisis has widened the gulf between the rich and poor. The COVID-19 crisis has made a difficult situation worse as low-wage workers suffer almost four times more job losses than high-wage workers. In 2021, we saw a modest recovery of jobs, but this is being destroyed by the restrictions of the third wave. All this amounts to a powder keg that was waiting to explode.

JUST IN - Widespread riots and looting have broken out across South Africa including Johannesburg, President Ramaphosa to address the nation at 8 pm.pic.twitter.com/avmrgQvlny  Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) July 12, 2021

Economic crisis

The crisis of capitalism is especially acute in South Africa. It is the vast majority of poor and working-class people who have suffered the worst effects of this crisis: mass unemployment, a lack of decent housing, inadequate education, landlessness, and rapidly falling living standards. The root cause of this situation lies in the capitalist system, which is unable to grant even the smallest concessions to the workers and poor.

Formal democracy was achieved in 1994 with the overthrow of the hated apartheid regime but the wealth of the capitalists was left untouched. South Africa remains a firmly capitalist country, tightly run and controlled by a small minority of capitalists, bankers, landlords, and giant multinational companies. They have been joined by a ravenous elite of upstart capitalists close to the ANC and the state.

The capitalist policies pursued by the ANC government since 1994, together with the worldwide crisis of capitalism, have resulted in economic stagnation. In fact, the economy had not recovered from the 2008 crash when it was hit by the disastrous effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Now the pandemic is further devastating the economy.

The economy contracted 7 percent last year as harsh restrictions to curb the spread of the disease in the first half of the year shuttered businesses and pushed up unemployment levels. The full economic damage caused by COVID-19 will only be clear after several months, and perhaps not until years from now. The crisis in the economy is having a catastrophic impact on living standards, making a hard situation utterly unbearable for millions of people.

Social impact

South Africa is one of the worlds most unequal societies both in terms of income and wealth. If we look at income, we can see that the top one percent gets 20 percent of all income, while the top 10 percent takes 65 percent of all income. The real wages of the bottom 10 percent have shrunk by 25 percent between 2011 and 2015. By contrast, the income of the top two percent grew by 15 percent over the same period. The top one percent meanwhile saw their incomes grow by a massive 48 percent.

The executives, of course, dont depend on salaries alone, but also draw an income from other sources such as shares. Of course, it was not these overpaid fat cats who laid off when production stopped.

Wealth inequality in South Africa is also staggering. The wealthiest one percent own 67 percent of all wealth, the top 10 percent own 93 percent, while the remaining 90 percent own a meagre 7 percent of wealth.

In South Africa, poverty exists amidst plenty. The country has a relatively well developed economy and advanced infrastructure. It is one of the worlds largest exporters of gold, platinum, and other natural resources; it also has well-established manufacturing, financial, energy and communications sectors.

Despite this, the majority of the people lead a precarious existence. Half of the population live in poverty. To feed a single person nutritiously for one month costs between 530 and 670 rand. A child support grant of 440 rand a month isnt even enough to meet a childs nutritional needs, while an old age grant of 1860 rand falls far below what is required to cover the costs of maintaining a family. This is the situation simply as regards food, before we take into account the cost of transport, rent, electricity, education, clothing, etc. The monthly minimum wage of 3,500 rand is nearly half the amount required to cover the basic costs of a household for one month.

The jailing of former President Jacob Zuma triggered deadly riots and lootings in South Africa.



The army was deployed to help the police restore order https://t.co/GSWq7shmGR pic.twitter.com/XOJvtgYu80  Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) July 13, 2021

Eruption of the poor

Over the last period, there has been an ebb in the movement of the working class. To put it more correctly, the advanced guard of the working class has pulled back from a stormy period of intense struggle. A certain level of tiredness has set in. At the same time, the workers are desperately holding on in an economic crisis that has wreaked havoc on living standards. They are receiving the blows with the hope that the storm will soon subside. In the absence of a real revolutionary leadership, this is only natural. The ANC and SACP, which are the traditional organisations of the working class historically, were in government carrying out the bosses attacks on their behalf. Other organisations such as NUMSA failed to provide a revolutionary alternative, despite being in a prime position to do so. The same goes for the EFF.

As the floodtide of class struggle receded from 2013 onwards, we have seen other layers go onto battle. There was the marvellous Fees Must Fall movement of the students, which revealed the revolutionary mood amongst the youth. It won some important concessions, however these have since been undermined, and the burden of paying for them has been placed on the shoulders of other layers of the working class. The main problem was that the movement did not connect with the general working-class movement  although the student movement did make some contact with workers fighting against outsourcing. Thus, the struggle remained a purely student movement, isolated from the general struggle against South African capitalism.

Students are an important auxiliary force to the workers. But the struggle of the students is no substitute for the struggle of the workers. The limitations of a purely student struggle could be seen at the height of the Fees Must Fall movement, where, despite all the talk of total shutdowns, nothing really was shut down other than the university campuses. The economy still functioned normally. The banks operated, the mines worked unhindered, the factories ran and the supermarkets were open. Only the working class could have shut down the economy and threatened the bosses where it really hurts  their profits.

In the absence of a major push over the last few years from the advanced workers, other elements have come to the fore, such as an upsurge in community protests of the urban poor and other more backward layers. The riots of the last few days are part of the same phenomenon.

These riots are a serious warning to the ruling class. They are a sign of the deep-seated anger and rage that is bubbling just beneath the surface, which is waiting for an outlet. The capitalist crisis has already produced revolutions, mass demonstrations, strikes and general strikes in one country after another. This is part of the same process.

But ultimately these riots will lead to a blind alley. The destruction of malls, supermarkets and shopping centres will do absolutely nothing to solve the problems of the working class and the poor people in society. In fact, it will harm workers who have been caught up in the destruction. Some businesses may close down, leading to more job losses. The main victims will be the poor people and the rioters themselves. The poor will remain poor after the riots are over. It also gives the state and the media the excuse to criminalise the poor and demonise everyone who fights for a revolutionary way out. In fact, these riots are expressions of impotent rage. The solution to the crisis of South African society is not to destroy supermarkets but to take them over together with the rest of the commanding heights of the economy under the democratic control and management of the working class.
Capitalism has ceased to take humanity forward. It should long ago have been overthrown by the working class. Why hasn't it then? The key to answering that question lies in the role of leadership and of the revolutionary party. This article, based on a talk at the 2021 Montreal Marxist Winter School, looks at the different sides of this question and the rich lessons of the world working-class movement.

The year 2020 has turned the world upside down. COVID-19 has exposed the complete bankruptcy of the capitalist system in the eyes of millions of people. The mantra that we are all in this together has been exposed for the lie that it is. All over the world, profits have come before needs. While millions of people have lost their jobs, the rich are richer than ever. In the United States, the richest country in human history, millions of people go hungry.

The economic crisis triggered by COVID-19 adds to what has been a lost decade. Since the previous crisis in 2008, austerity has ravaged public services, workers have seen their real wages stagnate or fall, while youth are the first generation to be poorer than their parents since World War II.

It is on this basis that socialist ideas are making a comeback. This year, the Victims of Communism Foundation, which cannot be accused of a favourable bias toward Marxism, released its annual survey and found that 49 percent of 16 to 23-year-olds (Gen Z) have a favorable view of socialism, up nine points from 2019. Among Americans as a whole, that number has risen from 36 percent to 40 percent. In the land of McCarthyism, 18 percent of Gen Z think communism is a fairer system than capitalism!

These numbers are not as surprising as one might think. The younger generation in particular has experienced nothing but austerity, declining living standards, terrorism, imperialist interventions and environmental destruction. The golden age of capitalism, the 1960s and 70s, is dead and buried. More people than ever before want to see the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

The conditions are ripe

The reality is that the capitalist system has long been a brake on human development. It could have been overthrown long ago by a revolution led by the working class. Why hasnt this happened yet?

It is certainly not because the objective conditions to build a socialist society based on super-abundance are lacking. There is no doubt that from the economic point of view, all the conditions are there to satisfy human needs. We have the means to feed the entire human population. The technology and knowledge exist to produce the necessities of life in harmony with nature. Large companies like Amazon and Walmart show that it is possible to organize production and distribution on a global scale. Many difficult or dangerous jobs could be replaced by machines.

Marx explained that the capitalist system creates its own gravediggers by creating the working class  the class that builds the buildings around us, produces the consumer items we need, and distributes goods and services. He also explained that socialism was not just a good idea that appeared in the heads of a few thinkers. He showed that under capitalism, it is the working class that can lead the struggle to establish a socialist society by taking control of the means of production. Marx explained that this class had to organize to overcome the resistance of the bosses, bankers, CEOs and their politicians. This class today (unlike in Marxs time) forms the overwhelming majority of society. Once mobilized and determined to overthrow capitalism, nothing can stop it.

So why hasnt the working class overthrown the capitalist system with a revolution yet?

Blame the workers?

Leon Trotsky, the leader of the Russian revolution alongside Lenin, wrote a fantastic essay shortly before his death entitled The Class, the Party and the LeadershipWhy was the Spanish Proletariat Defeated?

As the title suggests, the text looks at the Spanish revolution of 1931-39, and the reasons for its defeat. We will go into some of the details of this revolution later. Suffice it to say for now that despite numerous uprisings, spontaneous initiatives by workers to take control of factories, and by peasants to take control of their land, despite strong trade union organizations and a rich tradition of struggle, the Spanish working class did not take power. A fascist regime led by Francisco Franco was established in 1939, and lasted until the 1970s.

Trotskys text, though short (Trotsky was assassinated before he could finish it), is a gold mine of lessons, explaining such revolutionary defeats  and how to prepare for victories. This text should be required reading for every socialist today.

The Class, the Party and the Leadership opens with a polemic against a small, allegedly Marxist journal, Que faire? In one article, Que faire? explained the defeat of the Spanish revolution by the immaturity of the working class. If the Spanish revolution failed, then the fault lies with the masses themselves.

This idea of blaming the masses is very common in the labour movement today. Indeed, for many on the left, the fault lies with the working class itself for not having already overthrown capitalism.

The working class is allegedly too weak to change the world. This was one of the explanations of some leftists for the failure to complete the Venezuelan revolution, which has been ongoing since the early 2000s. Despite a historic mobilization during the 2002 coup, despite repeatedly voting for Hugo Chavezs Socialist Party (PSUV), despite workers taking control of their workplaces, and despite resisting further coups since 2019, there are still people who say the Venezuelan working class is too weak.

For example, in The Political Economy of the Transition to Socialism Jesus Farias, a leading member of the PSUV, stated, We can say without fear of being mistaken, that one of the main obstacles for a more accelerated development of the social transformations in the country lies in the organisational, political and ideological weakness of the working class, unable to play today its role as the main motor force of social progress.

Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek finance minister in the 2015 Syriza government, is another example of this trend. In a 2013 article, amusingly titled Confessions of an Erratic Marxist, he explained that the crisis in Europe is pregnant not with a progressive alternative but with radically regressive forces. He was saying this just as the Greek working class had staged 30 general strikes since 2008! Having no confidence in the working class and seeing only the possibility of regression, he claimed that the only option was to create a broad coalition including right-wingers in order to save the European Union, and save capitalism from itself.

Other journalists, intellectuals and supposedly left-wing personalities say that the working class does not want change, and is not attracted by a left program. This is the case with Paul Mason, a well-known British left-wing journalist.

In Britain, hundreds of thousands of people enthusiastically joined the Labour Party in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn, a self-proclaimed socialist, becoming party leader in 2015. Since his 2019 election defeat, Corbyn is no longer leader; the partys right wing has regained control under Sir Keir Starmer, who has begun the dirty work of purging the partys left.

Mason, following Corbyns defeat, argues that for the traditional working class in Britain, certain parts of the lefts agenda turn them off: open immigration policies, the defense of human rights, universal welfare policies, and above all anti-militarism and anti-imperialism. Universal welfare policies, how horrible! He adds, Does it help tell a story of hope to an electorate that has become terrified of change?

So the problem here is that working people supposedly dont want changeare terrified of change. The logical conclusion for Mason is to support Keir Starmer, the moderate leader of the British Labour Party. Mason has completely lost faith in the ability of the working class to change societyassuming he ever had that faith.

What all these individuals express is the idea that it is the workers themselves who are unwilling or unable to change society.

These ideas betray the fact that these people have no confidence in the working class to make a revolution, to change society and to run it themselves. These ideas are promoted by various journalists, liberals and academics. However, they also infiltrate the labour movement through the union bureaucracy. More often than not, union leaders blame the workers they were elected to lead because the workers supposedly dont want to fight.

A crisis of leadership

How do Marxists respond to these arguments? Why hasnt the working class overthrown capitalism yet?

The starting point for Marxists is the fundamental role of the working class in changing society. Marxists have nothing in common with the pessimism and cynicism of those intellectuals and journalists who have contempt for the working class. It is not true that the working class is too weak to overthrow capitalism. The reality is that on countless occasions over the last 100 years, workers have risen up to overthrow their exploiters and change society. Theyve done everything in their power to do so, on multiple occasions.

But almost every time, it was the leaders of the workers movement  either of the unions or the workers parties  who put a stop to the movement. They make compromises with the capitalist class, rather than trying to take power. Dozens of revolutions have been held back in this way by the leadership of the movement. In his Transitional Program, Leon Trotsky correctly explains that the historical crisis of humanity is reduced to the crisis of revolutionary leadership.

However, we must be careful not to fall into a caricature of this position. Marxists do not defend the idea that workers are always ready for a revolution, that they are simply waiting for socialist leaders to show the way. To say that the leadership of the workers movement acts as a brake does not mean that if we had socialists at the head of the unions, that if only we had a revolutionary organization at the head of the workers movement, then a revolution would break out immediately and automatically succeed in overthrowing capitalism.

It is not true that the workers are always ready to fight and are just waiting for good leaders. A mass movement does not come about with the snap of a finger. However, history shows that there are critical moments in history when the masses enter into struggle: revolutions. The important questions for any activist who wants to change the world are: how can we organize our class, the working class, to overthrow capitalism? What is the role of socialists to achieve this? How can we prepare for it?

Class consciousness

The class consciousness of workers does not evolve in a straight line.

It is through a long historical process that workers have come to understand the necessity of organizing themselves. Trade unions were created to defend the workers in the ongoing struggle against the bosses. Eventually, workers created organizations, parties, to express their political aspirations. Marx explained that without organization, the working class is only raw material for exploitation. Through its history of struggle, the working class comes to participate in politics, through unions or other organizations. This process is uneven and different from country to country.

Coming to the conclusion that it is necessary to organize is one thing; coming to the conclusion that the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism is necessary is another thing entirely. The working class, when it enters into struggle, does not automatically come to revolutionary conclusions.

In fact, consciousness is not revolutionary. Consciousness is generally very conservative. People cling to old ideas, to traditions, to the comfort of what is known. For the most part, people just want to be able to live in peace under decent conditions. Who can blame them? No one wants major upheaval in their lives. Workers dont take jobs to go on strike.

Revolutions are inevitable exceptions in history. Workers are not constantly in struggle; on the contrary.

However, there are times when the status quo is simply no longer sustainable. Millions of people are fed up. Austerity falls on workers. The cost of living rises while wages stagnate. Public services are privatized. The rich are getting richer, in plain sight.

It is not revolutionaries who create great revolutions, but the conditions of capitalism, which push the masses beyond the limits of their toleration. Pictured are the millions protesting in Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011 / Image: Jonathan Rashad, Flickr

It is not revolutionaries or socialists who create revolutions. It is capitalism that creates the conditions that force millions to revolt. Millions of workers, apathetic one day, are in the streets the next day. Yesterdays consciousness, which was lagging behind events, catches up with reality with a bang. And thats when revolutions happen.

Very often, it is an accident that starts a revolution. The Arab revolutions of 2010-2011 started in Tunisia when a young street vendor who immolated himself outside the local governors office. This was the spark that lit the fire. A mass movement followed, culminating in the overthrow of the dictatorship in Tunisia. The movement then spread to Egypt and then to the entire Arab world. The anger that had been building up for decades just needed a spark. In almost every revolution, you can find a similar event.

What is a revolution? Trotsky, in his History of the Russian Revolution, explains it thus:

The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historical events. In ordinary times the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists in that line of business  kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But at those crucial moments when the old order becomes no longer endurable to the masses, they break over the barriers excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside their traditional representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime. Whether this is good or bad we leave to the judgement of moralists. We ourselves will take the facts as they are given by the objective course of development. The history of a revolution is for us first of all a history of the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.

This quote perfectly sums up the essence of a revolution. It is above all the entry of the masses  today composed overwhelmingly of workers  onto the stage of history.

If we look at the last 100 years and more, there has been no lack of revolutions. In fact, not a decade has passed without at least one major revolution.

The Russian revolution of 1905 and 1917; the German revolution of 1923 and the Chinese revolution of 1925-27; the Spanish revolution of 1931-37, the mass strikes in France in 1936; the revolutionary wave in Italy, Greece, France between 1943 and 1945 and the Chinese revolution of 1949; the revolution in Hungary in 1956; May 68 in France; the Chilean revolution of 1970-73, the revolution in Portugal in 1974; the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua of 1980-83, the revolution in Burkina Faso of 1983-87; the revolutionary overthrow of the dictatorship in Indonesia in 1998; the revolution in Venezuela under Hugo Chavez in the 2000s; the Arab revolutions of 2011.

The list could go on. History is punctuated by moments when the masses cant take it anymore, take to the streets, and take their destiny into their own hands.

Revolutions can be compared to earthquakes. No one can predict exactly when an earthquake will occur. And earthquakes are generally rare. But we can study tectonic plates. We can know where the conditions for earthquakes occur. Earthquakes dont happen all the time, but they are ultimately inevitable.

It is the same with revolutions. No one can predict exactly when a revolution will come. But we can study economic conditions, see the rising anger among workers, and predict a revolutionary epoch.

The difference is that a revolution is made by human beings. We can prepare for it, and we can play a role in making sure it ends in victory. But how can we do this?

Spontaneity?

How are revolutions carried out in practice? If workers could simply overthrow capitalism in one fell swoop, there would be no need to theorize about revolution. There would be no need to debate ideas, programs, concrete measures, etc. in the workers movement. There would be no need to create organizations that defend one program or another.

Among the anarchists, there is a lot of talk about the spontaneity of mass movements. The various anarchist theories almost all come back to the idea that the masses can somehow spontaneously achieve a classless society. Kropotkin, for example, in his most famous article on anarchism, explains that his contribution was to indicate how, during a revolutionary period, a large city  if its inhabitants have accepted the idea  could organize itself on the lines of free communism. He thus implies that the workers could spontaneously overthrow capitalism with a revolution. Kropotkin does not, however, explain how the inhabitants accept the idea of communism.

There is no doubt that there is an element of spontaneity in all mass movements, in all revolutions. It is even a strength at the beginning. Spontaneously, millions of people who were not involved in politics pour into the streets, and take the ruling class by surprise. More often than not, the outbreak of a revolution surprises even hardened revolutionaries. At the time of the February Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks in Petrograd were so far behind events that, on the first day of the demonstrations, they advised the workers not to go out into the streets!

But is spontaneity enough to overthrow capitalism? History shows us that it is not.

And in fact, the reality is that in every movement, every struggle, every revolution, no matter how spontaneous these events may seem, there are groups or individuals who play a leadership role.

Whether we like it or not, the masses of workers express themselves through organizations, or at least through individuals who play the role of leaders after having won the confidence of their peers.

Even in a seemingly spontaneous movement, someone gives the speech that convinces their colleagues to go on strike at a general assembly. An organization or an individual writes the leaflet that puts the arguments to the workers for a strike. An organization or individuals come up with the idea of occupying the workplace. These ideas dont come from nowhere.

Conversely, in the workers movement, organizations or individuals may also exercise their authority to put the brakes on a struggle. People or organizations may argue for an end to the strike. Some people will say that you cant occupy a workplace because that would be a violation of the property rights of the bosses.

This battle of ideas and methods is not decided in advance. Not all workers draw the same conclusions at the same time. A minority will realize the necessity of a factory occupation, a general strike, etc., before the rest. In a revolution, a minority will understand that the possibility exists for workers to take control of the economy. Their job is to organize to convince the rest of the workers.

Even in a movement that seems spontaneous, organizations will eventually play a leading role.

As Trotsky explains in The Class, the Party and the Leadership:

History is a process of the class struggle. But classes do not bring their full weight to bear automatically and simultaneously. In the process of struggle the classes create various organs which play an important and independent role and are subject to deformationsPolitical leadership in the crucial moments of historical turns can become just as decisive a factor as is the role of the chief command during the critical moments of war. History is not an automatic process. Otherwise, why leaders? Why parties? Why programs? Why theoretical struggles?

The different tendencies of the workers movement express themselves through different organizations. Marxists, too, want to organizeand create a revolutionary party.

What is a revolutionary party?

The term party has a negative connotation among some layers of the labour movement and the youth. And for good reason! The existing political parties do everything to push these layers away. Even the so-called left-wing parties, once in power, bow to the dictates of the banks and do the dirty work of the capitalists, sometimes even more viciously than the right. This was the case with one of the most recent left governments, Syriza, in Greece in 2015.

When Marxists talk about the need for a revolutionary party, we do not have an electoral machine in mind. A party is first and foremost ideas, a program based on those ideas, methods to implement the program, and only then a structure and an organization that can spread the program throughout the movement and win people over.

As we have already explained, the tendency to organize is already present within the working class, leading to the formation of trade unions and parties. The different tendencies of the labour movement are expressed through different organizations or groupings.

Trade unions, by their very nature, aim to gather as many workers as possible. Who would propose that unions should include only revolutionary workers? These would be weak unions indeed. But a revolutionary party is composed differently from trade unions.

In A Letter to a French Syndicalist about the Communist Party, Trotsky explains:

How should this initiative group [the party] be composed? It is clear that it cannot be constituted by a professional or territorial grouping. It is not a question of metal workers, railway workers, nor advanced carpenters, but of the most conscious members of the proletariat of a whole country. They must group together, elaborate a well-defined program of action, cement their unity by a rigorous internal discipline, and thus assure themselves of a guiding influence on all the militant action of the working class, on all the organs of this class, and above all on the unions.

Not all layers of the working class and the youth draw the same conclusions at the same time. Some workers believe that capitalism is the best system. Others dont like capitalism, but dont believe it can be overthrown. Others are simply indifferent. But others come to the conclusion that the struggle for socialism is necessary. Having understood this, these people will necessarily want to steer the labour movement in that direction.

Naturally, the task of this socialist minority (what Trotsky calls cadres) will be to organize to win the confidence of the other layers of the working class in the struggle. This task will be all the more effective if this minority is grouped in an organization with a common program.

In Discussion on the Transitional Program, Trotsky explains:

Now, what is the party? In what does the cohesion consist? This cohesion is a common understanding of the events, of the tasks, and this common understanding  that is the program of the party. Just as modern workers more than the barbarian cannot work without tools so in the party the program is the instrument. Without the program every worker must improvise his tool, find improvised tools, and one contradicts another.

A program and organization need to be built in advance of a revolution, just like a worker must equip themselves with tools ahead of getting on with a given task.

The Spanish Revolution: a class without a party or leadership

What happens when there is no revolutionary leadership, when there is no revolutionary organization? Or when the organizations that do exist hold back the movement?

Trotskys The Class, the Party and the Leadership talks about the defeat of the Spanish revolution of 1931-39. This inspiring event is perhaps the most tragic example of what happens when a class does everything to overthrow capitalism while there is no revolutionary leadership, or when the organizations that exist refuse to take power.

The crisis of the 1930s hit Spain hard. The working class and peasants were crushed by overwhelming poverty. Landowners and capitalists (often the same individuals) had reduced living conditions to a miserable state in order to maintain profits. In 1931, faced with the rising anger of the masses, the ruling class was forced to sacrifice the monarchy and a Republic was proclaimed. But in itself, the transition to a democratic republic had done nothing to solve the problems of the working class and the poor peasants.

In the Spanish Revolution of the 1930s, the masses showed the most incredible strength and determination but they were repeatedly blocked from taking power by their leaders: the Socialists, Communists, POUMists and anarchists / Image: public domain

In February 1936, after two years of right-wing government, the masses brought the Popular Front to power. This government was composed of socialists, communists, the POUM (a supposedly Marxist party, but which constantly oscillated between revolution and reformism) and even the anarchists who led the main trade union federation, the CNT. These workers organizations also included the bourgeois Republicans in the Popular Front. The presence of capitalist parties forced the government to moderate its program, to slow down reforms in favour of the peasants and workers, to leave bourgeois property intact. The Popular Front government even went so far as to repress the workers in struggle.

Without waiting for the reforms promised by the Popular Front, the workers implemented the 44-hour work week and wage increases on their own, and freed the political prisoners imprisoned under the previous right-wing government. Between February and July 1936, every major Spanish city saw at least one general strike. One million workers were on strike in early July 1936.

The workers movement was going too far for the capitalists. On 17 July 1936, General Francisco Franco began a fascist uprising, with the full support of Spains industrialists and landowners. The goal was to overthrow the government, destroy the unions and workers parties, and build a strong government so that the capitalists could perpetuate the exploitation of the workers and peasants without their constant struggle. Faced with the fascist coup, the Popular Front parties refused to arm the workers to resist.

In spite of the passivity of these parties, the workers spontaneously did everything in their power to repel the fascists. They took sticks, kitchen knives and other weapons at hand, fraternized with soldiers, and invaded barracks to find real weapons. The workers built militias, which took the place of the bourgeois police. In addition to these measures of military defense against fascism, the workers took economic measures. In Catalonia, transportation and industries were brought almost completely into the hands of workers committees and factory committees. Next to the central government in Madrid and the government of Catalonia, a second power  that of the workers  was emerging.

But what followed? The leadership of all organizations  the socialists, communists, the POUM, and the anarchist CNT  put a brake on the movement. In Catalonia, they participated in dismantling the workers committees. The socialists and communists were at the vanguard in telling workers to go home, not to seize the factories, and to let the bourgeois government lead the fight against fascism. The POUM tail-ended the other organizations, and entered the Catalan bourgeois government in the fall of 1936, sanctioning policies aimed at curbing the revolution.

Of particular interest is the attitude of the anarchist leaders of the CNT. During this period, the CNT leaders even boasted that it could have taken power: If we had wished to take power, we could have accomplished it in May [1937] with certainty. But we are against dictatorship.

Because they were anarchists, and therefore against power in general, the leaders of the CNT refused to consolidate the workers democracy that was being born. The opportunity was missed. But these same anarchists, who refused to take power in the name of the working class, were happy to join the bourgeois government of Catalonia! You cannot make this up.

The workers were completely demoralized. This tragic story ends with the victory of Franco and the fascists in the civil war of 1936-39.

Why was the Spanish Revolution defeated?

The workers spontaneously pushed back the fascists and took control of the workplaces, especially in Catalonia. The workers were moving in the right direction. But the leaders of the working class organizations all put a stop to the movement of the masses. As Trotsky explains in The Class, the Party and the Leadership, in such a situation it is not easy for the working class to overcome the conservatism of its leaders. An alternative must already exist:

One must understand exactly nothing in the sphere of the inter-relationships between the class and the party, between the masses and the leaders in order to repeat the hollow statement that the Spanish masses merely followed their leaders. The only thing that can be said is that the masses who sought at all times to blast their way to the correct road found it beyond their strength to produce in the very fire of battle a new leadership corresponding to the demands of the revolution. Before us is a profoundly dynamic process, with the various stages of the revolution shifting swiftly, with the leadership or various sections of the leadership quickly deserting to the side of the class enemy.

And later:

But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilizing the collapse of the old leading party.

Not ancient history

The Spanish Revolution is far from an isolated example or one that belongs to the past.

As recently as 2019, a revolutionary wave swept through Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East. Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Iraq, Lebanon, Algeria and Sudan all experienced general strikes, mass movements or revolutions. And everywhere, the same question of revolutionary leadership was posed, and its absence left its mark on events.

The case of Sudan is particularly striking. In December 2018, a mass movement broke out against the dictator Omar al-Bashir. Extreme poverty, IMF-imposed austerity, and massive unemployment drove the masses to the streets. A mass sit-in was even organized by the revolutionaries in the capital, Khartoum.

An article in the Financial Times explained:

One cannot know for sure what Russia felt like in 1917 as the tsar was being toppled, or France in 1871 in the heady, idealistic days of the short-lived Paris Commune. But it must have felt something like Khartoum in April 2019.

This was a true revolution! In April, the ruling class was forced to remove the dictator. A Military Transitional Committee was formed to ensure that the army retained power.

The main organization behind the protests was the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA). This organization called for demonstrations, and even called for a general strike towards the end of May, to demand that the army relinquish power. This strike completely paralyzed the country.

In early June, the regime sent militias to suppress the Khartoum sit-in. Instead of scaring Sudanese workers, another general strike was organized by the SPA, paralyzing the country once again. Resistance committees were created.

Here we had a real opportunity for the workers to take power, to take control of the economy. But instead, the SPA called for an end to the strike. Then it negotiated an agreement with the military council for a three-year transition before holding elections. As a result, two years later, the army is still in power and the misery continues.

What was missing in Sudan? The workers went on two general strikes, held a sit-in despite the repression, and formed grassroots committees to organize the movement. The workers did everything they could. They could have taken power.

But the main organization that had authority among the masses compromised with the army rather than take power. As we have already explained, in such a situation you cannot invent a new organization on the spot.

Like it or not, leadership is a fact of life. One cannot escape the need to organize. While the workers movement is being led by the wrong leadership, while working class organizations are holding the movement back, the task at hand is to build an alternative in advance  a genuine revolutionary party.

The Russian Revolution of 1917

In a discussion of the role of a revolutionary party, it is impossible to ignore the Russian Revolution of 1917.

It is not for nothing that Marxists devote so much time to the study of this revolution. For the first time in history, except for the brief episode of the Paris Commune of 1871, the workers and the oppressed took power, overthrew capitalism, and took the first steps toward establishing a workers democracy and a socialist society. To build the victories of the future, revolutionaries must study the victories of the past.

The victory of the Russian workers in October 1917 did not happen on its own.

In February 1917, World War was ravaging Russia. The workers and peasants in uniform at the front no longer wanted to fight for another mans cause. The workers in the factories and their families were starving. The status quo was no longer tenable. On the initiative of the women workers of Petrograd, the workers of the city went on strike, and after a week of mass mobilization, the tsar was forced to abdicate.

The Russian Revolution showed, in a positive form, what the revolutionary working class can achieve in revolutions when equipped with a steeled leadership, steeped in Marxist theory / Image: public domain

In the midst of the struggle, the Petrograd soviet was formed, and soviets mushroomed throughout Russia. The soviets were enlarged strike committees, which began taking the functioning of society into their hands. In fact, they held power.

But alongside the soviets, the bourgeoisie formed what it called a provisional government, anxious to keep capitalism in place. This situation of dual power lasted until October 1917.

Between February and October, through the ups and downs of the revolution, the provisional government demonstrated that it had no intention of satisfying the demands of the masses: peace, bread for the workers, and land for the peasants.

Within the soviets the reformist parties of the time, the Socialist-Revolutionaries (SRs) and the Mensheviks, had the confidence of the majority of the workers and peasants during the first months of the revolution, and used their position to make the soviets support the bourgeois provisional government. Their leaders even entered this government. The Mensheviks and SRs believed that it was too early for the working class to take power, that the bourgeoisie should be allowed to rule, and that the struggle for socialism would come later.

As the months went by, the Mensheviks and the SRs found themselves completely discredited in the eyes of the workers, the soldiers and the peasants. But thankfully, there was an alternative. It is towards the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, that the masses turned. Having spent months patiently explaining that it was necessary and possible to take power from the hands of the bourgeoisie, and having won their confidence, the Bolsheviks were able to channel the immense energy and initiative of the masses towards victory in October 1917.

The Bolshevik Party and Lenin

With the Russian Revolution, for the first time in history, workers took power and managed to keep it. Why did they succeed where so many other movements have failed?

The explanation cannot be in the maturity of the Russian workers compared, for example, to the Spanish workers of the 1930s. It is not that the Russian workers were more combative than the Spanish. Nor was it that the Russian workers were particularly more intelligent, or anything like that. The difference was the presence of the Bolshevik Party.

The Bolsheviks had not created the Russian Revolution. Although Bolshevik activists had played a role in February, the fighting mood of the masses had been created by capitalism, by the disastrous situation of the country. Trotsky explains this in his History of the Russian Revolution: They accuse us of creating the mood of the masses; that is wrong, we only tried to formulate it.

This is precisely the role of a Marxist organization: to formulate consciously what the workers come to understand in a semi-conscious or unconscious way.

But the Bolshevik Party did not appear spontaneously in 1917. You cant change the world overnight. Building a revolutionary party takes time and energy.

The Russian Marxists had begun their work in the 1880s and 1890s by creating small isolated groups that organized discussion circles on the basics of Marxism. The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was created officially in 1898. The Bolshevik and Menshevik split occurred in 1903, where they became factions of the RSDLP. The Bolsheviks were implacable in their defence of Marxism, and parted ways for good with the Mensheviks in 1912, to become an independent party.

We sometimes hear today that the left should simply unite and put aside its differences. Why are there so many socialist or left-wing organizations, we are asked? Why does the IMT insist so much on Marxist theory? The reality is that if groups unite without really agreeing, it is a recipe for paralysis. Theoretical differences will come out on every important issue, and the united organization will not be able to move forward. A kayak with two people rowing in opposite directions will turn in circles, while a single person in a kayak will move forward.

Any political group must be based on some theory. This is one of the most valuable lessons of the history of Bolshevism. As Lenin explained as early as 1900:

Before we can unite, and in order that we may unite, we must first of all draw firm and definite lines of demarcation. Otherwise, our unity will be purely fictitious, it will conceal the prevailing confusion and binder its radical elimination. It is understandable, therefore, that we do not intend to make our publication a mere storehouse of various views. On the contrary, we shall conduct it in the spirit of a strictly defined tendency. This tendency can be expressed by the word Marxism.

For 20 years before the revolution, the Marxists of the Bolshevik party patiently built an organization based on a common program, educating activists in advance in the ideas of Marxism, with the aim of playing a leading role in the workers movement. The study of theory and history is essential for building a revolutionary organization today.

Left to their own devices, the Mensheviks and SRs would have led the revolution to defeat. Fortunately, there was an alternative with the Bolsheviks, who won over the workers during 1917, based on the very experience of the masses between February and October. This is what Trotsky explains in The Class, the Party and the Leadership:

Only gradually, only on the basis of their own experience through several stages can the broad layers of the masses become convinced that a new leadership is firmer, more reliable, more loyal than the old. To be sure, during a revolution, i.e., when events move swiftly, a weak party can quickly grow into a mighty one provided it lucidly understands the course of the revolution and possesses staunch cadres that do not become intoxicated with phrases and are not terrorized by persecution. But such a party must be available prior to the revolution inasmuch as the process of educating the cadres requires a considerable period of time and the revolution does not afford this time.

In Russia, this party existed ahead of time. There were 8,000 Bolsheviks in February 1917. By the time of their seizure of power in October, based on a correct political perspective, they had grown to 250,000 members.

The role of leadership within the party

But how did the Bolsheviks come up with a correct political perspective? Is the existence of the party, in itself, sufficient?

The rise of the Bolsheviks to power was not a straight line. It is not a commonly known fact that between March and April 1917, the leaders at the head of the Bolshevik Party inside Russia at that time had no intention of fighting for power. With Lenin and Trotsky still trying to make their way from exile back to Russia, the main Bolshevik leaders present in Petrograd at that time were Stalin and Kamenev. Under their leadership, the Bolshevik newspaper, Pravda, essentially defended the policy of the Mensheviks: that it was too early for the workers to seize power.

Some rank-and-file activists in the Bolshevik Party rejected these ideas. Being active on the ground, they saw that it was entirely possible and necessary for the workers to take power through the soviets. In fact, it was the soviets that ruled the country, but they still had to consolidate their power. What could they answer to the argument that it was too early to take power?

As Trotsky explains in his History of the Russian Revolution: These worker-revolutionists only lacked the theoretical resources to defend their position. But they were ready to respond to the first clear call.

This call came with Lenins return to Russia in April 1917. At that moment, Lenin was categorical: the working class, allied with the poor peasantry, could take power through the soviets, and not only liberate the peasants, bring peace and bread to the workers, but begin the socialist tasks and start the international socialist revolution.

In April 1917, Lenin was the only leader of the Bolshevik Party to defend this perspective (Trotsky had not yet arrived in Russia, and joined the party only in July). But due to his immense personal authority, and especially the fact that his policy corresponded to the experience of the Bolshevik militants at the base, Lenin succeeded in having his perspective adopted at the Bolshevik party conference held in late April. From that moment on, the Bolshevik Party, under Lenins leadership, set itself the goal of patiently explaining to the workers the necessity of the soviets taking power.

What would have happened if Lenin had not been able to reach Russia? In a revolution, time is a key factor. The Bolshevik leaders might have come to understand the need for soviet power, but there is no indication that they would have understood it while the workers were still mobilized. The working class cannot remain constantly in struggle. At some point, either the revolution wins, or doubt and apathy begin to set in. If Lenin had not intervened in 1917, the Bolshevik Party leadership would most likely have missed the chance to take power. So it is not enough to have a party; that party must have a leadership that knows where it is going.

A victorious socialist revolution cannot be made without the participation of the working class. But this class must have a party. And that party must have a leadership that knows what it is doing. These three ingredients are the key to the success of future revolutions.

The role of the individual in history

Comparing Spain and Russia, one might ask: isnt it mere luck that the Russian working class could count on an individual like Lenin? Wouldnt it just have taken a Spanish Lenin, and everything would have been fine?

First of all, Lenin himself was not born Lenin: he was, in a certain sense, a creation of the Russian workers movement. Lenin was the result of the work of building a revolutionary party, which he had greatly contributed to building. Without the party, Lenin could not have disseminated his ideas in 1917 and played the role he did. But conversely, Lenins authority in his party came from the fact that he had spent nearly 25 years patiently building it.

Trotsky summarizes these ideas perfectly in The Class, the Party and the Leadership:

A colossal factor in the maturity of the Russian proletariat in February or March 1917 was Lenin. He did not fall from the skies. He personified the revolutionary tradition of the working class. For Lenins slogans to find their way to the masses there had to exist cadres, even though numerically small at the beginning; there had to exist the confidence of the cadres in the leadership, a confidence based on the entire experience of the pastThe role and the responsibility of the leadership in a revolutionary epoch is colossal.

Similarly in the History of the Russian Revolution:

Lenin was not an accidental element in the historic development, but a product of the whole past of Russian history. He was embedded in it with deepest roots. Along with the vanguard of the workers, he had lived through their struggle in the course of the preceding quarter centuryLenin did not oppose the party from outside, but was himself its most complete expression. In educating it he had educated himself in it.

The revolutionary leadership provided by Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not come out of nowhere. It was the result of a quarter century of patient work in building an organization. In building the party, Lenin became Lenin. Thousands of other Bolsheviks, by building the party, also became leaders of the workers movement. This fact is summarized in the anecdote that in 1917, a single Bolshevik in a factory could win all his colleagues to the party program. This authority came from all the previous work of party building. Dialectically, party building built these individuals who played such a great role.

The Russian Revolution is a striking example of the role of the individual in history. The construction of a revolutionary organization, a collective endeavor, makes it possible to form individuals who can play a decisive role in the movement. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts; and building the whole strengthens the parts! We must learn from this for today, and repeat what the Bolsheviks did.

Tragically, a different fate awaited the great Marxist and contemporary of the Bolsheviks, Rosa Luxemburg. While she spent her life fighting the reformist bureaucracy in the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), Luxemburg did not build an organized revolutionary faction in the party, as Lenin had done in the RSDLP with the Bolsheviks. It was not until 1916 that the Spartacist League was founded, which was more of a decentralized network than a revolutionary organization.

Although Rosa Luxemburg was a tremendous revolutionary, and far from the apostle of pure "spontaneism" as some would claim, she did not group together the best revolutionary elements of the German workers' movement in time, and tragically paid with her life / Image: Cassowary Colorizations, Flickr

When the German Revolution broke out in November 1918, the League had little connection with the masses. In December, the League transformed itself into the Communist Party. However, from the outset, the party was permeated by a sectarianism that seriously handicapped it. Party activists refused to work in the trade unions, and the party boycotted the elections to the National Assembly, which would have given it a chance to have a platform to spread its ideas. In this young communist party, Rosa Luxemburg opposed this ultra-leftism. But she did not have a group of cadres who understood the political situation as well as she did and who could carry her ideas. The Communist Party made one mistake after another.

In January 1919, the Social Democratic government provoked an uprising of the working class in Berlin in order to isolate and repress the advanced workers, and above all the Communist Party. The inexperience and weakness of the Communist Partys influence over the workers, meant that they were unable to forestall the provocation. During those events, Luxemburg herself, along with the other outstanding leader, Karl Liebknecht, were murdered. Thus, the fact that Luxemburg did not build a revolutionary party in advance led to a tragic defeat and her own death, decapitating the leadership of the German working class. From then on until 1923, the Communist Party, deprived of the leadership of its two main figures, was unable to lead the German working class to power. The Russian and the German revolutions serve to underline the same point, although from two different angles: the vital need of a revolutionary leadership.

A few days before her assassination, Rosa Luxemburg drew conclusions from the first months of the German revolution. Her conclusion is far removed from the spontaneism that her alleged followers attribute to her:

The absence of leadership, the non-existence of a center responsible for organizing the Berlin working class, cannot continue. If the cause of the revolution is to advance, if the victory of the proletariat, if socialism is to be anything more than a dream, the revolutionary workers must set up leading organizations capable of guiding and using the fighting energy of the masses.

The leadership of the movement today

It is no secret that all over the world the Marxist movement has been thrown back for a whole historical period. The post-war boom laid the foundations for reformism in the West, while the fall of the Soviet Union was accompanied by an unprecedented ideological offensive against Marxism. The most pretentious, like Francis Fukuyama, even proclaimed the end of history, which would have found its achievement in liberal democracy.

The labour movement also experienced setbacks during the 1980s and 1990s, whereas the 1970s had been a time of mass movements and revolutions. It was during the following decades that the leadership of the labour movement shifted far to the right.

In Quebec, for example, it was in the 1980s that the FTQ, the provinces largest trade union central, stopped talking about democratic socialism and the second largest, the CSN, abandoned the anti-capitalist ideas expressed in the manifesto Ne comptons que sur nos propres moyens. Too often, leaders are found at the top of the labour movement today who collaborate with the bosses rather than mobilizing their members. The current president of the CSN, for example, said for the 50th anniversary of the Conseil du patronat (the bosses union), the headquarters of the Quebec bourgeoisie: We sometimes clash and have different points of view, but we get along very well when it comes to promoting employment, fostering good working conditions and ensuring Quebecs economic growth. This is far from an isolated example. This is the state of the leadership of the labour movement today.

In the labour movement, one of the main attacks on Marxists is the caricature which has us claim that if there were a revolutionary leadership, then the workers would always be in struggle, always ready for action. According to these people, we criticize the union leaders as if it were possible for the leaders to magically bring about mass movements.

This idea is a complete caricature of the Marxist analysis of the relationship between the working class and its leadership.

As we have already explained, workers are not constantly in struggle. Revolutions are historical exceptions that inevitably arise from the class struggle itself. But what happens before a revolution? What should be the role of the leadership of the labour movement when the situation is not revolutionarythat is, most of the time?

At the risk of sounding repetitive, the working class is not homogeneous. Until the day of the revolution, there will be apathetic layers, skeptical layers, while others will want to fight against the attacks of the bosses. The contradictory and heterogeneous character of class consciousness is a fact that we have no choice but to deal with.

Union leaders do not have the power to magically bring about a movement. But the role that a good leadership can play in the class struggle is to prepare the rank-and-file, establish a plan of action, and educate the union members in order to bring about a mass movement. No, it is not possible to magically organize a movement. But yes, it is possible to educate workers about the need for this or that demand, for this or that method of struggle.

An excellent example of what good political leadership can accomplish can be found in the 2012 student strike in Quebec. In 2010, the Quebec Liberal government hinted that tuition fees would be raised. Already, student activists were beginning to organize. In March 2011, the 75 percent tuition increase was officially announced, to be implemented in the fall of 2012.

The leadership of ASSE, the most radical student union at the time, spent the year 2011 educating the students about what the increase in tuition meant, mobilizing students with the conscious plan to organize an unlimited general strike. Some ASSE activists, many of whom had anarchist tendencies, would certainly not like the terms leadership or leaders attached to them, but you cant change reality by changing the namethey were most certainly playing a leadership role, and a good one at that!

With the conscious plan to organize the strike, and because these methods of struggle were what the movement needed in the face of an inflexible government, the ASSE leadership organized the largest student strike in North American history.

Playing a leadership role is in no way contradictory to full grassroots participation. On the contraryit was because the ASSE leadership provided direction, educating thousands of activists on the need to fight the hike, that it unleashed the fighting spirit and creativity of the hundreds of thousands of students involved in the movement across Quebec.

The example of the student strike shows the role of good leadership. Showing the way forward creates the conditions for thousands of people to actively participate in the struggle. To be sure, the ASSE leaders did make some mistakes. In the summer of 2012, when the Liberals announced an election, they refused to support Quebec solidaire, the only main party supporting free education, and instead essentially ignored the election, while most students ended the strike to fight to kick out the Liberals. We have analyzed the whole process elsewhere. But this mistake doesnt take away from the main lesson: the need for leadership.

The question of leadership is a burning issue in the workers movement and in the trade unions around the world. How often do we hear that workers supposedly do not want to struggle? That you cant organize a strike by snapping your fingers? In Quebec, public sector unions have been in negotiations for over a year. The right-wing CAQ government wont budge and is offering ridiculous conditions to its workers. While some teachers unions are moving towards an all-out strike, other teachers unions have voted on five-day mandates only, to be implemented at the appropriate time. We have criticized this situation elsewhere. In a public meeting organized by Labour Fightback in Quebec, a local president of one of these unions with a five-day strike mandate explained his view of the role of the union leadership thus:

Its not on us [the union leadership] to decide [on a strike], its on our members, and they can decide if we inform themat the FSE [the union] we could have called for the all-out strike, but in the plateaux [union locals] I dont see any delegates saying Lets go, all-out strike We have to share information, were puppets when were union [leaders], were not the ones who have to tell people what to do In my local general assembly, if someone would come and say I want an all-out strike, Id like that, I think I would burst with joy.

This logic, taken to its extreme here, is found throughout the movement. According to this logic, if workers are not talking about an all-out strike, it is not the job of union leaders to propose one. This logic is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if the leaders dont do anything and dont propose a bold solution to the members (which is deemed telling people what to do), then it is normal that workers dont have confidence that we can fight and win, and wont propose militant ways of fighting themselves!

We are not saying that you can organize a mass movement by snapping your fingers. But what we are saying is that the role of union leaders is to provide leadership, not just to be an information office and wait for the members themselves to come to radical conclusions. The union leadership needs to set a plan, educate the membership, give them confidence, and thereby create the conditions for the membership to be prepared to take the road of uncompromising class struggle  just like the student movement leadership did in 2012.

Building a socialist leadership for the movement

Right now, the labour movement is led by people who believe in the capitalist system, and who dont believe it can be overthrown. Union leaders have become detached from the conditions of the workers. They prefer the status quo to fighting the bosses. They are skeptical and do not believe in the creativity and fighting spirit of their members.

The current leadership of the labour movement will increasingly come into conflict with the reality of capitalism. Austerity will very soon be on the order of the day. Capitalism will show itself more and more for what it really is: horror without end for working people. We are already starting to see this with COVID-19.

But what will happen if the leaders of the labour movement allow workers to be attacked and do nothing? They will be discredited in the eyes of the workers they are supposed to represent. Trotsky explains how this process develops:

A leadership is shaped in the process of clashes between the different classes or the friction between the different layers within a given class. Having once arisen, the leadership invariably arises above its class and thereby becomes predisposed to the pressure and influence of other classes. The proletariat may tolerate for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class.

COVID-19 and the economic crisis that is just beginning are one of these historic shocks. All over the world, the anger of the masses is building up. The workers are suffering from unemployment, from the reduction of their living and working conditions, while the rich are amassing fortunes that are rising day by day. As we are entering an epoch of revolutions all over the world, the leadership of the workers movement is still stuck in the past.

So what can socialists do?

In a recent piece entitled Socialist Leaders Wont Save the Unions, an activist with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) states:

People think that leadership is a matter of having the sash and the tiara, that by virtue of getting elected to a position, you have all this credibility, and everybodys going to listen to youand its simply not true.

You need to actually, simply organize the floor. And its not that you cant do it as a union officer, but it[s] also not the case that being a union officer contributes to it.

In a sense, we agree with our anarcho-syndicalist comrades. They are attacking a tendency for individual socialists to parachute themselves into leading positions in a union with no base in the rank-and-file to enact militant socialist policies. There are numerous instances of good activists taking shortcuts only to get isolated in leadership structures and swallowed up by the bureaucracy. Marxist are totally opposed to taking leadership positions without first building a base.

But this dichotomy between grassroots organizing and union leadership is fundamentally flawed and only sees one half of the problem. In fact, many reformist union leaders would agree with the idea that elected leaders cant organize at the grassroots, because it absolves them from having to act! Moreover, mobilizing at the base is itself an act of leadershipit means leading your colleagues toward a certain course of action. But once youve organized at the base, what happens next? What if the people in union leadership positions seek to actively disorganize the floor? They will need to be prevented from doing so. How? If you are not prepared to replace these people with union leaders that want to fight, this means leaving control in the hands of the bad leaders. Whether we like it or not, we come back to the need for good leadership in the movement, for counterposing militant class fighters to union leaders that are detached from the workers.

What, therefore, is the role of socialists in the labour movement? We say that, yes, we must organize among the rank-and-file, defend methods of class struggle, educate the workers on the need to fight capitalism. And on this basis, we can gain the confidence and authority of other workers to take leadership positions in the unions, and lead the movement. And the best way to do that is to be in the same revolutionary organization.

The reality is that there are some individuals on union executives who call themselves socialists in Quebec, and they are indeed not saving the unions. The problem is that they are isolated, they dont have an organization that allows them to really apply socialist policies against the resistance of other leaders of the movement who dont want to fight. To have real weight in the movement, it is necessary to unite in the same organization those who have understood the necessity of socialism.

History has shown more than once, and not just in the labour movement as such, what happens to socialist or radical individuals who do not build a revolutionary organization. Inevitably, these people will capitulate to the existing organizations. For example, Angela Davis, a highly respected former communist activist, long ago gave up on the idea of building a revolutionary party. She ended up supporting the Democratic Party and Joe Biden in the last election. The same goes for the anarchist Noam Chomsky or the supposedly-Marxist academic David Harvey. Politics is done through organizations. When you dont build an alternative, you will inevitably fall for the lesser evil of what exists.

Revolutionary optimism

Class consciousness is something that develops very quickly. How many participants in the 2012 student struggle knew nothing about tuition hikes just months before the strike? How many of these students were apathetic and disinterested before a campaign was waged to prepare for the movement? The same questions could be asked of every mass movement or revolution. Consciousness is conservative, but has the potential to become radical and revolutionary.

Skeptics base themselves on the weak side of the working class, on its apathetic and demoralized layers, and conclude that a revolution is not possible. Marxists, on the contrary, base themselves on the immense revolutionary potential of our class.

Comrades from Fightback, the IMT in Canada. It is up to revolutionaries today to learn the lessons of history and get on with the task of building the revolutionary party necessary to lead the working class in overthrowing this rotten system / Image: Fightback, Facebook

No, the workers are not always ready to lead a revolution. But by fighting now for socialist ideas to gain authority in the workers movement, we can contribute to a victorious revolution when the masses move.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented misery is setting in for millions of workers everywhere. But out of this chaos is emerging a new generation of young people who want to fight against the capitalist system.

The wonderful mass movement in the US triggered by the murder of George Floyd has shown that even the greatest imperialist power cannot escape the rising anger. The conditions are being created for revolutionary movements all over the world. It is on this potential that the unshakable revolutionary optimism of the Marxists is based.

The socialist revolution will not happen automatically. It requires activists to consciously defend a socialist program within the movement. As an isolated socialist activist, you can accomplish nothing. But united under a common banner, with a common program and common ideas, we can have an infinitely greater impact than any individual activist can have. By joining a revolutionary organization, you build yourself up and help build others. By joining a revolutionary organization, you build an alternative to existing organizations that lead the working class from defeat to defeat, instead of accepting them and capitulating to them. By joining a revolutionary organization, you help bring the ideas of Marxism to the working class in a way no individual can do on their own. This is what the International Marxist Tendency offers to workers and youth. We invite you to join this project which is bigger than all of us.

We will leave the last word to Trotsky, who left us these inspiring lines a few months before his assassination:

The capitalist world has no way out, unless a prolonged death agony is so considered. It is necessary to prepare for long years, if not decades, of war, uprisings, brief interludes of truce, new wars, and new uprisings. A young revolutionary party must base itself on this perspective. History will provide it with enough opportunities and possibilities to test itself, to accumulate experience, and to mature. The swifter the ranks of the vanguard are fused the more the epoch of bloody convulsions will be shortened, the less destruction will our planet suffer. But the great historical problem will not be solved in any case until a revolutionary party stands at the head of the proletariat. The question of tempos and time intervals is of enormous importance; but it alters neither the general historical perspective nor the direction of our policy. The conclusion is a simple one: it is necessary to carry on the work of educating and organizing the proletarian vanguard with tenfold energy.

Originally published at marxist.ca on 5 April |
The Covid-19 pandemic has provided the impetus for a stronger partnership between India and Africa with potential benefits to both as they build back sustainably after the crisis, experts attending the 16th CII-Exim Bank Digital Conclave on India-Africa Project Partnership affirmed.

Speaking at the virtual events opening, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India External Affairs Minister said the two sides must reinforce collaboration in public health, digital delivery, capacity building, and the green economy  our goals must be to use these new tools and practices for better delivery on the ground.

India has always maintained that progress in the world is contingent on the development of the global south, nowhere is that more evident than in Africa, and that is why we adapt as the most priority to the India-Africa partnership, Jaishankar said.

The three-day virtual conference, with the theme Harnessing the Africa-India Opportunity- Connect, Create, Collaborate, was organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and the India Exim Bank with support from the Ministries of External Affairs and Commerce and Industry. Sessions focused on healthcare including vaccine access and equity, and digitization of the information technology, tourism, and hospitality sectors.

Participants said India and Africa should boost efforts to improve access to medicines, including vaccines and other essential drugs to tackle Covid-19 and future pandemics. Other sectors where there is scope for investment and partnerships include clean energy and digital technology.

During a panel discussion, Solomon Quaynor, African Development Bank Group Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure and Industrialization, said an infrastructure-led recovery from the pandemic is critical for Africa; he added that the Bank is ready to partner with Indian firms to transform Africas healthcare.

We are focused on health defense systems, in dialogue with our 81 African and non-African government shareholders, including India, he said.

The African Development Bank will invest up to $3 billion over the next 30 years to advance the manufacture of pharmaceuticals and the development of healthcare infrastructure across Africa, Quaynor said. The Bank has also been providing expertise to its members on preparing public-private partnerships and to deepen debt capital markets including through investment in pension funds and providing sovereign credit and partial risk guarantees.

The pandemic has widened Africas financing gap to $345 billion and innovative solutions are needed, Quaynor said. Africa needs financing to promote the private sector, create jobs, provide social protection for vulnerable groups, and drive inclusive growth.

Noel Tata, Chair of the CII Africa Committee and Managing Director of Tata International Limited, a conglomerate, called on African leaders to implement the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to spur the development of textile, pharmaceutical, automotive, agro-processing, and information and communication technology supply chains. The AfCFTA, a pan-African economic bloc with a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion, came into force on January 1, 2021.

We must continue to focus and identify new cross-border partnership opportunities that are future-proof and directed at the welfare of the 2.5 billion people in India and Africa. AfCFTA will have a positive cascading impact on our bilateral relations and industrial economic partnerships, Tata said.

One opportunity for Indian investment is special agro-industrial zones (SAPZ), an initiative the Bank is supporting to concentrate agro-processing within areas of high farming potential to boost productivity and competitiveness.

The Asia External Representation Office of the Bank has been supporting and participating in the India-Africa conclave since 2014. India (https://bit.ly/3ewnSsj) joined the African Development Fund, the concessional financing arm of the Bank Group, in 1982; a year later it became a member of the African Development Bank.
Speaking at an event organised by the National Democratic Institute (NDI) Jeanine Mabunda Lioko, an MP in the Democratic Republic of Congo, highlighted activities that had demonstrated success in her own country in relation to conflict-related sexual violence, but stressed much more action was needed globally.

The NDI is working on developing an International Mechanism to Support Accountability and Justice for Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Conflict. Whilst there has been some progress, the absence of accountability for sexual and gender-based violence can prevent healing and reconciliation as well as weakening the rule of law and undermining the strength of institutions.

Ms Mabunda said that the under-reporting of crimes was a concern, as highlighted in a UN Report of the Secretary-General to the Security Council in June 2020. There is a need for countries to empower people to report sexual and gender-based violence safely and anonymously. In the DRC, a hotline was set up, in 2014, to do so had proved successful, in part because it allowed crime to be reported but also provided a safe space where women could be heard. This is particularly important where a physical safe space is not accessible.

The reporting of sexual violence would also aid countries in understanding the issues they have and dealing with them. Some of the most successful initiatives are designed and implemented by the community but this needs to be supported by the rule of law. She said that victims needed to be given confidence that justice will be served should crimes be reported.

Ms Mabunda called on all Governments to act to combat gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination, saying a global conversation was needed to address the issues that many faces across the world. Mabunda said, There is a role for the international community which has demonstrated previously that it can react and have an impact. Linking international financial support to improvements being made in certain areas is one such way that international bodies could influence countries to take action against this problem. If there was a better understanding of the levels of gender-based violence, then clear targets, and actions to meet those targets, could be set. Failure to meet targets could result in a reduction of international aid a country could receive.

For many, there are still stigmas that are attached to sexual and gender-based violence and this needed to be addressed. Countries should take responsibility and make sure that they raise awareness of the issues. It is also essential that the judiciary are trained in handling cases of this type and that perpetrators face justice and are held to account.
The CDCs numbers, which include all shots administered to Pennsylvania residents no matter where or by whom, show that 19,401 average shots per day are being administered, a slight rebound in the average over the previous days, but still down 62% from a month ago.
Like a fish market, were going to put all of the seafood in a refrigerated display for show, Zhang said. There will be fresh seafood right in front of the customer that they can pick and we will cook it fresh for them. They can pick fresh fish, crab, lobster, whatever they want on-the-spot, and well make it fresh.
All Pennsylvanians need a safe place to live, and this critical funding will continue to help individuals and families who are experiencing homelessness to get back on their feet, Gov. Tom Wolf said in a news release. Through trusted, community-based organizations, this program assists families facing homelessness through outreach, local emergency shelters, and rehousing assistance.
If there is a nest very close to where fireworks are being shot off, its certainly possible, he said. A lot of times around the Fourth of July, young birds are starting to branch and hop out of the nest, but theres no nest that close to Fountain Hill. Theres a nest to the east and to the west, but even if fireworks were shot off near one of those nests, I cant imagine the bird would have made it very far.
The incubator has invested in seven startup companies, according to its website, most of which are based in the Lehigh Valley or have relocated after partnering with the Factory. One of those is Stuffed Puffs, a manufacturer of chocolate-filled marshmallows that received $1 million in state funding and tax credits.
Arkoosh raised about $1 million and had $632,000 on hand after her first three months in the campaign. For a top-tier candidate with major backing, but who has never run statewide, party insiders saw that as a solid but not overwhelming start. Its almost exactly the same as Democrats 2016 nominee, Katie McGinty, raised in her first quarter.
Roca said a responding officer collided with another vehicle at MacArthur Road and Fairmount Avenue, which is just over the city line in Whitehall Township. The officer and the other motorist were taken to the hospital but their conditions were unavailable.
If I had any idea that the protest ... would escalate (the way) it did ... I would never have ventured farther than the sidewalk of Pennsylvania Avenue, he said, according to The Associated Press.
When I got that result I said to the nurse, OK so yesterday I was tested and positive and today I was tested and was negative. What should I do? She was silent for a moment then slowly says well they say you should go by your most recent test.
: wintoday (little penguin), : Pharmaceutical

 : Scientist II/III (master or Bachelor degree level)

: BBS  (Tue Jul 20 00:06:58 2021, )



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Description



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Regional

Activist protests over non-release of COVID assistance

Angela Rangad sat outside the secretariat building in Shillong and demanding measures to be taken to help the marginalised.

Correspondent SHILLONG, JUL 20 | Publish Date: 7/20/2021 10:49:12 AM IST

A civil rights activist is staging a lone protest in front of the gate at the main secretariat in Meghalaya capital Shillong demanding the release of COVID 19 financial assistance meant for the marginalised labourers in the State.

Angela Rangad, who is known for fighting for the rights of the marginalised people, is on a second straight consecutive day protest in front of the gate where chief minister Conrad Sangma and his council of ministers sit.

Interestingly, neither the Sangma nor anyone of the ministers have spoken to her or urged her to withdraw her protest.

I am sitting here every day during office hours to remind the government that it should immediately release the money to the labourers, Rangad said.

I will continue to sit here till the government releases the financial aid to all the beneficiaries and justifies its claim that there is no scam since many of the labourers have not received the financial aid, she said.

In March 2020, the Meghalaya government had announced financial assistance for unorganised sector workers under the Chief Ministers Relief Against Wage Loss (CMRAWL) in view of the Covid lockdown. An amount of Rs 2,100 for three weeks was to be given to each daily wage labourer, hawker and domestic worker (Rs 700 per week).

Rangad said that the government has claimed that Rs 52 crore was sanctioned for the financial assistance for the marginalized workers but more than 50 percent is unaccounted for.

Rangad said that when she followed up to know if the marginalised people have received the financial assistance or not, she found out that they did not receive.

She had also sought the information from the Labour department under the RTI Act in November 2020, which revealed that many of those who had submitted their applications did not find their names in the list, and those whose names were on the list, did not either get any money or received only Rs 1400 or Rs 700.

How can he (Deputy Chief Minister) say that the account numbers of the beneficiaries were wrong or not active when the labourers who had received Rs 700 last year, did not receive the remaining amount till now? Rangad questioned.

Similarly, Rs 5000 was to be given to each labourer registered under the Meghalaya Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Board (MBOCWWB).

TUR and the Workers Power of Meghalaya (WPM) had submitted their first 1400-page complaint to the Chief Minister and demanded immediate release in full of the financial assistance to the labourers who have not received.

She also demanded an independent and time bound enquiry into the implementation of this scheme.

However, Tynsong had denied irregularities or scam in the utilisation of the financial assistance meant for the daily wage labourers.
Richard Branson's trip to space this month aboard a Virgin Galactic spaceship was meant to be a triumphant homecoming after years of waiting. Instead, the trip drew widespread criticism for its carbon footprint.

The developing space tourism sector faces severe concerns about its environmental effect, with Jeff Bezos scheduled to fly on a Blue Origin rocket on July 20 and Elon Musk's SpaceX planning an all-civilian orbital trip in September.

Currently, rocket launches do not occur frequently enough to cause substantial pollution.

"In comparison to other human activities or even commercial aircraft, carbon dioxide emissions are completely minuscule," NASA's senior climate advisor Gavin Schmidt told AFP.

Potential Long-Term Damages

However, other scientists are concerned about the potential for long-term harm as the business expands, notably affecting the ozone layer in the high atmosphere, which is currently little understood.

Virgin Galactic, which has been chastised in op-eds on CNN and Forbes and on social media, for flying its wealthy creator to space in a fossil-fuel-guzzling spacecraft for a few minutes, claims that its carbon emissions are comparable to a business-class flight from London to New York.

Related Article: Neptune One, A Hydrogen Balloon, Will Take You to Outer Space for $125,000



Taking Precautions

In a statement to AFP, the business claimed it "has already taken efforts to offset the carbon emissions from its test flights and is evaluating possibilities to offset the carbon emissions for future passenger trips, as well as decrease our supply chain's carbon footprint."

According to an estimate published in The Conversation by French astrophysicist Roland Lehoucq and colleagues, although transatlantic flights transport hundreds of passengers, Virgin's emissions come out to roughly 4.5 tonnes per passenger in a six-passenger trip.

Darin Toohey, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told AFP, "The issue here is truly one of the disproportionate repercussions."

"I grew up watching the space program, and it was that that got me interested in science," he added. "However, if someone gave me a free flight, I would be extremely hesitant to accept it because I would know that my personal footprint is much greater than it should be."

Cleaner Fuels

The SpaceShipTwo of Virgin Galactic runs on a form of synthetic rubber that is burned in nitrous oxide, a strong greenhouse gas.

The fuel injects black carbon into the upper stratosphere at the height of 30-50 kilometers (18-30 miles).

Once in the atmosphere, these particles may have various effects, ranging from reflecting sunlight and triggering a nuclear winter to speeding up chemical reactions that deplete the ozone layer, which protects people from dangerous radiation.

"We might be at a hazardous position," Toohey said, adding that more scientific research into the consequences is needed before the launches become more common.

Future Flights

Virgin has stated that it plans to operate 400 flights each year.

According to a recent article by scientist Martin Ross of Aerospace, which Bezos' firm plugged on Twitter, Blue Origin's spaceplanes are far cleaner than Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo spaceplanes.

Like those by Virgin and Blue Origin, suborbital launches have a negligible impact in contrast to orbital rockets.

Space X Launch

In September, SpaceX will launch four private individuals into space using their Falcon 9 rocket, which, according to estimates, emits the equivalent of 395 transatlantic flights' worth of carbon emissions.

"We are living in a climate-change age, and launching an activity that raises emissions as part of a tourist activity is not good timing," said Annette Toivonen, author of "Sustainable Space Tourism."

Climate Conscious

The world is considerably more conscious of the climate catastrophe now than when these companies were formed in the early 2000s, which may motivate corporations to search for methods to reduce pollution through cleaner technology to stay ahead of the problem.

"Who wants to be a space tourist if they can't tell people they're a space tourist?" Toivonen, a lecturer at Finland's Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, said.

Also Read: 2050 Earth Map Predicts Our Gloomy Future Brought by Climate Change

For more Space news, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
A 36-armed octopus has made a public performance in an aquarium in southwestern Japan city.

Visitors that came to Saikai National Park Kujukushima Aquarium Umi Kirara in the Nagasaki Prefecture city of Sasebo were amazed as the animal skillfully made use of its 36 limbs of different sizes to catch meals.

The 36-armed Octopus

As per the aquarium, a fisher who captured the octopus in waters off the Shikamachi neighborhood in the city at the beginning of June donated it. The sex of this octopus is still unknown.

The original eight arms of the octopus have bifurcated out, and the separate limbs also possess suction cups. After being chopped off by fish and other predators, the arms of an octopus can regenerate and in unusual cases, they can develop multiple limbs.

But it is still unknown if this is brought about by a sudden mutation or congenital cause. Previously, it was confirmed that an octopus in Japan has 96 arms.

Also Read: Octopus Ancestors Among the First Animals on Earth, Dating Back to 509 Million Years Ago!

The 96-tentacled Octopus

Indeed nature is amazing with all its wonders on the sky, land, or deep in the ocean, just like the popular picture from of a 96-armed octopus taken several decades ago, leaving many people in shock.

In a 2008 report, Pink Tentacle made, there was an octopus in Shima Marineland Aquarium, in Shima town, that possess 96 tentacles weighing 3.3 kg (7 lbs) and measuring around 90 cm (3 ft) long when it was caught in December 1998 close to Matoya Bay.

Five months later, the octopus passed away but it could lay eggs prior to its death, making it the first octopus with multiple tentacles to do so while captured. All baby octopi hatched possessing eight tentacles but one month later they died.

Some were demanding the originality of the photo of the 96-tentacled octopus, in which officials verified that it is an actual octopus that is now on exhibit at Shima Marineland in Japan.

As per Snopes, the octopus possesses eight regular tentacles but is separated in different directions into smaller tentacles, which is 96 arms in total.

Scientists were not able to clearly explain this occurrence, but they thought that it could be from an atypical regeneration that takes place after the octopus gets an injury, a process referred to as bifurcation, which is somewhat usual among the species of octopus.

Octopus vulgaris

Comparably, an 85-tentacled Common Octopus (Octopus vulgaris) was also caught in 1957 at closeby Toshijima Island.

This extraordinary creature was the same as the 96-armed octopus that bifurcated with its eight original main tentacles making branches to create other tentacles, this left many from about half a century ago in shock, Pink Tentacle reported.

Toba Aquarium has displayed six other mutant octopi possessing between nine to 56 tentacles during that time.

Related Article: Does Octopus Experience Dreams? Experts Unlock Their Mysterious Sleep States!

For more news, updates about octopuses and similar topics don't forget to follow Nature World News!
If the red tide wreaking havoc on Tampa Bay and resulting in enormous fish fatalities does not clear up soon, scientists worry that the bay could become a "dead zone."

Huge Quantities of Dead Fishes

According to NPR, the solid waste division of Pinellas County, where Tampa Bay is located, has collected 600 tons of dead marine life since late June.

Maya Burke of Pinellas County told NPR, "The bay is really struggling right now." "There are huge quantities of dead fish all the way up and down the food chain, from little forage fish to tarpon, manatees, and dolphins... So if it's swimming in the bay, it's washed up dead right now."

Protest

According to The Associated Press, more than 100 demonstrators marched along the St. Petersburg shoreline on Saturday in response to the destruction. Demonstrators demanded that Republican Governor Ron DeSantis proclaim a state of emergency to give funding to solve the situation.

"This is not a political demonstration," protest organizer Aimee Conlee said at the rally. "This is the way things are. Water is life, and water is water."

Last week, the St. Petersburg City Council endorsed the request with a resolution, but DeSantis has maintained that the state's Department of Environmental Protection has adequate money without a declaration.

Related Article: Next Extinction Target: World's Freshwater Fishes



Red Tides

According to The Smithsonian, red tides are generated by an excess of the algae Karenia Brevis. According to The Associated Press, these algae are found naturally in Mexico's Gulf, but it is exacerbated by nutrient pollution.

According to NPR, these blooms are rare in Tampa Bay during the summer months. Instead, they usually start in the fall and go through January. The previous major summer red tide epidemic occurred in 2018, and this year's outbreak appears to be far worse.

NOAA oceanographer Richard Stumpf told NPR, "This is not normal." "It's not good that it's been three years since the previous one."

Massive Leak

Three months have passed since a massive leak at a phosphate plant wastewater pond in the Piney Point reservoir near Tampa Bay. According to experts, contaminants from the leak may be aggravating the tide, but they are unlikely to be the source.

"I don't believe the red tide was caused by Piney Point," Tom Frazer, Florida's former top science officer and a professor and dean at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science, stated in a public debate according to WUSF. "One of the first things we saw with the red tide was that it was south of the discharge region, with the red tide migrating or moving northward into lower Tampa Bay."

Other Possible Origins

Other possible origins of the epidemic, according to him, are septic tank runoff, stormwater systems, and agricultural or lawn fertilizer.

According to NPR, winds from Tropical Storm Elsa earlier this month may have boosted the amount of fish washing up dead on the shore. According to The Independent, Pinellas County and St. Petersburg officials stated they retrieved nine tons of fish in 24 hours following the storm.

Affecting Human's Health

Red tides may also be harmful to people's health by exacerbating the symptoms of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Moreover, scientists warn that, as a result of the climate catastrophe, these occurrences may get substantially worse, as warmer seas promote algae and more severe precipitation events increase runoff and nutrient contamination.

"We are at a crossroads about controlling harmful algal blooms because of climate change, and we must aggressively tackle the problem before it becomes so difficult that we are faced with the option of allowing these micro-organisms to go unchecked in many ecosystems," experts warned in a 2015 letter published in Environmental Science & Technology.

Also Read: Goldfish Dumped in Lakes Grow to Monstrous Size, Turning Into Invasive Species

For the most recent updates from the animal kingdom, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula residents boldly venture outside to film apparently endless mosquitoes swarming the eastern shore, which runs alongside the Bering Sea, the Pacific Ocean's northernmost point.

Mosquito Tornado

A video obtained by East2West news shows millions of mosquitoes congregating and swirling to create tornadic pillars, which is a terrifying turn of events.

That's right: a monstrous swarm of blood-sucking bugs.

Viewers would assume it's just dirt and debris being carried up in a storm from afar, but up-close footage exposes the horrific truth.

During a recent journey, Alexei from Ust-Kamchatsk informed East2West that a "cloud" of mosquitoes appeared to last "for several hundred meters" and that he spotted many "huge pillars" of the insects.

He remarked, "I could scarcely see the road."

Ominous Black Cloud

According to Alexei, the mosquito "tornado[es]" would appear to dismantle, then reconstruct a new funnel that would reach the black clouds above.

Local Kamchatka media reported the strange incident, which experts believe is a common occurrence in the region.

Related Article: Worsening Climate Crisis May Put 8 Billion People at Risks of Mosquito-Borne Diseases



Not a Hive

According to the Siberian Times, entomologist Lyudmila Lobkova remarked, "These are male mosquitoes swarming around one of the numerous females to mate - there is nothing wrong with it."

Experts also claim that swarms of mosquitoes would not, for example, create a hive organism bent on wreaking havoc on deet-wielding people.

Other Reported Swarm

Previous stories on these skeeter storms detailed how warming temperatures allow mosquitoes to have a longer breeding season, fueling the invasion in Siberia.

Throughout the year, terrifying swarms of insects are reported worldwide, such as in 2019, when a swarm of dragonflies in the Midwest got large enough to be detected by National Weather Service radar.

Louisiana Swarm

Huge clouds of mosquitoes have been buzzing cattle to death in Louisiana for a month, following Hurricane Laura's torrential rains in late August, which boosted their numbers.

According to Dr. Craig Fontenot, a large-animal veterinarian in Ville Platte, farmers in Louisiana have lost 300 to 400 cattle owing to enormous swarms of mosquitoes that have thrived since the hurricane.

According to him, vast clouds of mosquitoes have arrived on farmer's fields, swarming over cattle and leaving them emaciated, anemic, and tired. As a result, many people have been left bleeding under their skin due to lack of oxygen, finally collapsing and dying.

Fontenot told The Associated Press in an interview, "They're cruel little suckers."

The vet also shared a photo of a bull he treated on Sept. 2 on social media. The animal's tummy is coated with small blood-sucking insects in the shot.

According to Fontenot, mosquitoes have become a serious problem in five eastern parishes, Louisiana's equivalent of counties.

According to a press release from Louisiana State University's AgCenter, officials in neighboring parishes have begun spraying fields and wetlands with insecticide to reduce mosquito populations. It appears to be working in certain areas, but the swarms have already caused losses to some farmers.

Also Read: Chaos Ensues as Swarms of Cicadas Disturb Weather Radar, Causing Car Accident

For the most recent updates about the environment and the animal kingdom, don't forget to follow Nature World News!
Zimbabwes Diaspora remittances jumped 58 percent last year, to about US$1 billion, a development that helped the country to cover gaps left by trade disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

On account of the improved remittances inflows, Zimbabwe managed to record a current account surplus.

The current account records the value of exports and imports of both goods and services and international transfers of capital. Zimbabwes Diaspora remittances defied projected a slowdown in inflows due to the pandemic to hit record levels of about US$1 billion.

The World Bank, in its latest Zimbabwe Economic Update, said remittances contributed to the countrys resilience to the regional and global trade shocks.

Despite trade disruptions and the sharp decline in global economic activity caused by the pandemic, Zimbabwes current account remained in surplus at 5,3 percent in 2020.

A key driver of the surplus was remittances in 2020, which saw a growth of 58 percent. The increase in formal remittances may reflect the shift to greater use of official channels for remittance delivery due to the pandemic, said the World Bank.

Although the pandemic-driven trade disruptions did have a negative impact on Zimbabwes foreign currency generation, a positive was that the countrys imports were significantly reduced.

Authorities have, for years, been fighting importation of non-essential goods.

Adjustment of trade started in April 2020, when the Government and neighbouring countries initiated pandemic containment measures affecting domestic and cross-border movement of goods and people.

Trade disruptions were more pronounced on imports than on exports, but imports rebounded more quickly, growing by 4 percent in nominal terms on the account of higher demand for maize and other grains, fertiliser, and electricity  as a result of the persistent drought, said the Bretton Woods institution.

Fuel imports, however, dropped by 51,1 percent year-on-year in response to successive lockdowns, weakening economic activity and loss of disposable incomes. Exports grew by 2,7 percent, driven by platinum, nickel, and diamond with traditional key export commodities like tobacco, gold and chromium declining in 2020.

Despite a sharp increase in global gold prices and gold incentives provided by RBZ, gold exports declined by 7,8 percent, partly reflecting an increased level of smuggling of gold from Zimbabwe.

Travel and border restrictions and fear of contagion also led to sharply reduced international travel and transport receipts, which are important sources of foreign exchange.

Meanwhile, with Zimbabwe (and most countries) still dealing with the third wave of the health pandemic, the threats to the performance of the current account are still potent.

And indications are that they may have been worsened by the recent violent protests in South Africa, which is Zimbabwes biggest trading partner and a vital part of trade routes into the region and into international markets. The economic impact is, firstly, two-fold. We are focused on the imports, but we need to focus on what we export through South Africa. What we are unable to move out of Zimbabwe for earning income is significant.

There is a third dimension, which is what is being illicitly transacted during this time of chaos and what opportunities are being created for criminal networks and bypassing the accountability of the State for both South Africa and Sadc, said international constitutional lawyer Brian Kagoro recently.

I think the biggest impact on Sadc will also be the fourth dimension, which is Diaspora remittances. When you say the factories, the warehouses and health facilities are being burnt down, we are talking about South African jobs, but we are also talking about jobs for Sadc folks. Reconstruction will take time; it means those people who were employed in those sectors have lost sources of income. Herald
NEWLY-appointed commissioner of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC), Obert Gutu has denied ever joining the ruling Zanu PF party, adding that he only expressed the intention to do so, but did not complete the process.

Gutu was in March paraded at State House by President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who announced that the former MDC-T vice-president had defected to the ruling party.

After Gutu was appointed NPRC commissioner recently, the Zimbabwe Human Rights Association (ZimRights), a National Transitional Justice Working Group Zimbabwe (NTJWG) member, filed an application demanding that the former MDC-T vice-president ceases to be a member of the NPRC as section 286 of the Constitution forbids political party actors from serving as NPRC commissioners.

Dzikamai Bere, the executive director of ZimRights, who deposed the founding affidavit, had submitted that on March 17, 2021, Gutu joined Zanu PF amid pomp and fanfare at State House where he was welcomed to the political party by President Mnangagwa, the NTJWG statement read.

But in a shock response, while admitting the reports and the article (Sunday Mail, 21 March: Why I joined Zanu PF) explaining his decision to join Zanu PF, Gutu submitted that he was yet to submit a formal application and had not paid the required joining fee. He said he had abandoned the idea of joining Zanu PF when he was appointed to NPRC, the NTJWG said.

ZimRights, represented by the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum, is yet to file a response.

Gutu torched a storm last month when he said the Gukuruhundi atrocities that killed over 20 000 civilians in the Matabeleland and Midlands provinces was one of the many tiny cases the NPRC would be looking at. Newsday
WOMEN lawyers seeking unregistered customary unions to be included in the general provisions of divorce law and subsequent property division want the Constitutional Court to find sections of the Matrimonial Causes Act unconstitutional as they are discriminatory.

The lawyers under the banner of Zimbabwe Women Lawyers Association (ZWLA) are objecting to the limited definition of marriage under Section 2 of the Act, which excludes unregistered customary marriage and increasing common status as couples seek to satisfy both customary and civil law marriages under the existing legal provisions.

The current exclusion of unregistered customary law marriages means that if there is a divorce, the court cannot make use of the provisions of Section 7 of the Matrimonial Causes Act which provides for the factors which the court should take into account when they are dividing the property between the spouses for equitable distribution.

ZWLA last week applied for direct access to the Constitutional Court in terms of the Constitution, after their seemingly endless pleas to have the section in question amended for the definition of marriage to include the unregistered marriage went unheeded.

The majority of nuptials in Zimbabwe are unregistered customary marriages, yet the meaning provided under the section which the women lawyers seek to impugn, has no provision for such marriages.

Under existing law, which a new marriage Bill still before Parliament seeks to rectify, a couple in a registered customary union cannot convert to a civil union, so most couples now decline to register their customary union to leave open the possibility that they can later get married in church or before a magistrate for a registered civil union.

In their application, ZWLA cited the Ministers of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and of Women Affairs, Community, Small and Medium Enterprises Development, Zimbabwe Gender Commission, Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission and the National Council of Chiefs in its role as the custodian of traditional and customary laws.

Last week, three judges of the Constitutional Court, Justices Paddington Garwe, Rita Makarau and Anne-Mary Gowora, heard arguments from legal counsel of both parties and reserved judgment. ZWLA lawyer Advocate Choice Damiso instructed by Mrs Dorcas Atukwa submitted that their contention was that the definition of marriage provided for in Section 2 of the Act is unconstitutional for being inconsistent with the provisions of certain sections of the Constitution.

In particular, the definition of a marriage provided for in Section 2 of the Matrimonial Causes Act is constitutionally invalid because it excludes unregistered customary marriages, argued Adv Damiso. To that extent, applicant therefore intends to file an application with the Constitutional Court seeking an order to declare the impugned section constitutionally invalid.

Adv Damiso said the Marriage Bill is currently before Parliament and there were fears that the President will likely assent to the Bill without the definition in Section 2 of the Matrimonial Causes Act, which governs divorce and its aftermath, being addressed to include unregistered customary law marriages. However, lead judge, Justice Garwe questioned why the women lawyers were rushing to court when the Parliamentary processes were not yet completed and the Bill not passed into law.

The judge expressed the view that the application was not yet ripe for determination since the new Bill was still before Parliament. But Adv Damiso argued that the application could not be regarded as premature given the long history of advocacy that has been undergone by her clients and other organisations to get the Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs to introduce the necessary amendments in the definition of the Matrimonial Causes Act.

She brought to the attention of the court observations that have been made by the High Court in numerous cases calling for legislative reform on the marriage laws. The challenge to the provision, said Adv Damiso, was informed by a history of several efforts to include the unregistered customary marriages in the section in question, but to no avail.

Mrs Fortune Chimbaru of the Attorney Generals office acting for Ministers of Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and Women Affairs Community and Small and Medium Enterprises Development conceded that the impugned provision should be amended to include unregistered customary law marriages under the definition of Marriage in the Act.

She, however, argued that ZWLA rushed to court prematurely, as the Bill was not yet passed into law and the women lawyers fears that the President will assent to the Bill in its present form without addressing their concerns were unjustified. It is the positions of ZWLA that that exclusion of such unions in the Matrimonial Causes Act amounts to the discrimination which the women lawyers argue is prohibited under section 56 of the Constitution. Herald
Covid-19 containment measures are not an attempt by the Government to curtail the rights of its citizens, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Ambassador Frederick Shava has said.

He was speaking during the first resumed virtual briefing by members of the national Covid-19 taskforce to members of the diplomatic corps and international partners accredited here.

Zimbabwe has received rave reviews for its Covid-19 response and special praise from the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the way it has confronted the global pandemic. The plaudits have come from China, South Africa, as well as Australia.

We are resuming our monthly briefings in order to keep each other updated on the Covid-19 and humanitarian situation in the country, said Minister Shava.

The country is currently witnessing an unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases and related deaths which prompted the President to declare Level-4 lockdown restrictions on 29 June 2021 for a period of two weeks and a further extension by another two weeks on 13 July 2021.

These restrictions, which include limiting the numbers of people attending funerals, revised working and business hours, and an extended curfew period, among other measures are aimed at curbing the spread of the Covid-19 virus in order to preserve lives.

It is important that these measures be understood in that context and should not be viewed as attempts by Government to curtail the rights of its citizens, said Minister Shava.

On vaccination rollout, he said the Government was determined to inoculate at least 60 percent of Zimbabwes population in order to achieve herd immunity.

Minister Shava assured that the process of procuring more vaccines is continuing in order to sustain a robust vaccine rollout programme in view of the current spike.

In the light of the steady progress achieved thus far, we call upon our partners to continue supporting these national efforts and ensure that all these gains that the country has made to date are not reversed.

Allow me to caution that while the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic rage on, we still have to deal with residual humanitarian needs emanating from the disastrous effects of Cyclone Idai and the drought situation of previous years, in spite of the very good 2020-2021 agricultural season.

We therefore count on your continued support viz-a-vis Zimbabwes overall domestic and international humanitarian appeal.

Let me assure you, Excellencies, that Government remains true to its commitment to transparency at all levels in the handling and distribution of all donations received, said Minister Shava.

He said the Government was grateful for the continued support rendered by all our cooperating partners, the private sector, individual citizens and the Diaspora, most of whom were represented in yesterdays briefing.

The invaluable support has included a wide array of goods and services from Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to medical equipment, supplies and consumables, Covid-19 vaccines, service vehicles in the form of ambulances, ICT equipment and related consumables, capacity building initiatives, infrastructure rehabilitation, clothing, food, medicines, psycho-social support and funding.

Minister Shava said the assistance has complemented Government programmes and initiatives to fight the pandemic. The pandemic continues to claim many lives, destroy livelihoods and disrupt economies worldwide.

With your support and collaboration, Zimbabwe has registered some successes that we are witnessing in its Covid-19 response, said Minister Shava. Herald
UNVACCINATED government workers will now be barred from boarding Public Service Commission (PSC) buses while all government departments have been ordered to further decongest workplaces and operate with a staff complement of 10% as President Emmerson Mnangagwas administration moves to introduce mandatory vaccination in the country.

Civil servants who contract the virulent virus without being vaccinated will be denied COVID-19 allowances, a development observers said was tantamount to forcing government workers to be inoculated.

In circular no 19 of 2021 dated July 19, Public Service Commission secretary Jonathan Wutawunashe said civil servants should provide proof of vaccination before boarding buses. The PSC shall ensure fumigation of buses daily and after each trip, Wutawunashe said.

Only members with proof of vaccination against COVID-19 shall board PSC buses. The PSC shall observe social distancing in buses, with each bus carrying a maximum of 35 passengers. The PSC shall ensure fumigation of buses daily and after each trip.

Wutawunashe added: Ministries are directed to reduce the number of staff coming to work from 40% to 10% for all line ministries, departments and agencies with the exception of the Ministry of Health and Child Care and designated critical services with immediate effect.

Line ministries should rotate staff in such a manner that no employee shall remain at home for more than 21 days at a stretch. Zimbabwe National Teachers Union chief executive officer Manuel Nyawo said the directive had deviated from the initial government position, and violated constitutional rights and freedoms.

Why deviate from the original position where the same government said it was not going to force anyone to be vaccinated, Nyawo said.

Zimbabwe Teachers Association secretary-general Goodwill Taderera confirmed that his union had received the circular.

Progressive Teachers Union of Zimbabwe president Takavafira Zhou described the decision to force civil servants to be vaccinated as madness.

Vaccination must be voluntary and not mandatory. Civil servants will resist the mandatory model by all means necessary, he said. COVID-19 cases have been on the rise in the country, with fatalities hitting 102 last Friday.

Mnangagwa has in the past threatened to make COVID-19 vaccination mandatory in the wake of a surge in confirmed cases and fatalities in the country.

Although vaccination is voluntary in the country, the increase in incidents in which a vaccination certificate is required has created a huge demand for the document.

An investigation by the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (Zimcodd) has exposed that some health workers were reportedly demanding bribes to release COVID-19 vaccination cards to unvaccinated people.

Information minister Monica Mutsvangwa, in a post-Cabinet media briefing yesterday said government was concerned over the surge in cases attributable to general complacency in communities and workplaces.

In light of the continued rise in COVID-19 cases, Cabinet approved the decongesting of both public and private sector workplaces, Mutsvangwa said.

In taking the lead, government has further reduced its workforce to (10%), on a two-week rotational interval. Priority will be given to the vaccinated personnel, she said. She said the courts would be opened only for remand and urgent cases.

 that all civil servants should be vaccinated and those that fall ill without having been vaccinated will not be entitled to the COVID-19 insurance, she said.

That all civil servants should be tested for COVID-19 at the commencement and end of the two-week rotational interval; that a locum-based COVID-19 risk allowance payment model will be adopted for the health personnel in the red zone as part of the incentive schemes.

Cabinet said more vaccines would be made available soon to ensure that the country vaccinated over 10 million people required to achieve 60% herd immunity.

In June, government set July 14 as the deadline for all frontline health workers to get vaccinated against the global pandemic to be eligible for COVID-19 insurance payouts.

In the same month, Vice-President and Health minister Constantino Chiwenga announced that vaccination would soon become mandatory at busy public markets in Harare and Bulawayo.

However, the country, which is in the grip of the third wave of infections driven by the Delta and Beta variants of the virus, is facing a shortage of COVID-19 vaccination cards.

In its latest situational analysis of the COVID-19 vaccination programme by community resource monitors, Zimcodd said officials in the health sector were issuing vaccination cards to unvaccinated people, putting the governments vaccination programme in jeopardy.

Health deputy minister John Mangwiro, however, told NewsDay that he was not aware of the issue, but promised to investigate.

Government in February this year launched the national vaccination programme, and as at yesterday morning, 1,18 million people had received the first dose and 643 203 the second dose.

As of July 19, Zimbabwe had recorded 85 732 COVID-19 cases, 55 714 recoveries and 2 697 deaths, according to official figures.

Meanwhile, the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) has written to Chiwenga demanding that those vaccinated should be issued with proper vaccination cards, instead of hand-written cards.

ZLHR lawyer Paidamoyo Saurombe said his organisation had observed that some vaccination centres were not issuing vaccination cards, but hand-written papers in place of vaccination cards.

Saurombe said failure to issue vaccination cards would compromise governments vaccination efforts. Newsday
The company, which began testing workers considered essential in 2020 and at one point last year said about 1.5% of its workers had contracted COVID while picking, packing and shipping orders, said the wide availability of vaccines and free testing programs provided by local governments made their testing unnecessary.
According to 9 News, a man outside the Crowne Plaza hotel in the city of Gold Coast, in Queensland, operated the drone and flew the pack of cigarettes up to the woman who was waiting on her balcony on July 11.
Fauci hailed the real-life effectiveness of the vaccines as proven in studies from worldwide data. He said it remains to be seen whether and when booster shots may be needed to extend the protection.
U.S. cases of COVID-19 last week increased by 17,000 nationwide over a 14-day period for the first time since late fall, and an increase in death historically follows a spike in illness. Much of the worsening problem is being driven by the delta variant first identified in India, which has since hit the United Kingdom and other countries according to the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy.
Individuals are also being encouraged to take extra precaution with crowds, especially in indoor spaces where social distancing is not achievable, as well as handshaking, kissing, hugging or other forms of close contact for increase in the risk of infection or transmission.
I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in an advisory last week. Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm peoples health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.
Pictures behind the scenes in one of the citys busiest court parts  AR1 in Manhattan  show moldy chairs, dirt-splattered walls and air intake vents black with soot are the norm in a meeting room where those arrested see and speak with their lawyers for the first time.
He also claimed that he attended the riot to assist his friend, whod been asked by the FBI to document the event. The friend said that claim was false and that Ibrahim had invented the story to cover his a--, according to filings.
Raniere was sentenced to 120 years in prison following his 2019 conviction for helping himself to a harem of women who were recruited for his sexual pleasure into his NXIVM cult. At Rainieres trial, witness Rick Ross  a cult expert  described NXIVM as a personality-driven group defined by a leader, eerily reminiscent of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard.
We need the publics help on this one, we really do, Shea said on NY1 on Tuesday. Anyone with any information who may have been in Flushing Meadows Park on Sunday or maybe on prior weeks where you have videos or pictures of anyone with dirt bikes. This is a very active investigation with a poor 4-year-old child injured.
As soon as Kennedy put that dressing on, it was immediate, recalled Grieve. It was night and day difference. He wasnt out of the woods but it was an immediate and obvious effect. When EMS came, we rushed him into that ambulance. And I think that ambulance left the quickest of any medical job Ive been to.
Kennedy told reporters Tuesday how he came up with the ingenious lifesaving move. I just needed something that was squared off at the edges and that particular size works well, the hero cop said. With the squared-off edges on the bag and the tape we created that seal so that the air didnt go in and collapse his lungs.
The doctors told us that the trauma to her head was so severe that she wont be able to wake up, Kyaw Zaw Hein said in a heart-wrenching GoFundMe post about his 58-year-old mother, Than Htwe. Eventually all her organs will shut down. We are now just waiting and worrying about what happens next.
A Florida woman who collected cats off the street in what she painted as rescue efforts, then left them to starve to death in her overheated apartment will serve almost a year behind bars for her cruelty.
When first responders arrived on the scene, Scarlett allegedly drove up in a silver SUV and then exited before approaching the ambulance and pointing toward a nearby house fire. As soon a they looked away, police said the 35-year-old suspect pulled out a gun and shot several rounds into the drivers side window, striking the EMT behind the wheel in the head.
Earl Henry Jones, 42, was finishing up a night of drinking with a friend in Key West when the pair called for an Uber to take them back to their rental, the Monroe County Sheriffs Office said Monday.
The new evidence indicates that someone else murdered Harold and Thelma Swain, Higgins said. Mr. Perry is now, and has been since July 2020, a free man. We will continue to examine all the evidence in the case  new and old  as we determine what the next step will be in this investigation.
In the burning of the BLM sign, I was the one that lit it on fire, he said on the War Boys podcast. I was the person that went ahead and put the lighter to it and engulfed it in flames, and I am damn proud that I did.
The victims, two of whom sustained serious injuries, were transported to a local hospital, said Codd, adding that the third victims wounds were not life-threatening.
Investigators were made aware of video posted on social media that depicted what appeared to be a young male who was being abused and it appeared he was being abused because of his sexual orientation, said Atlanta Police Sgt. John Chafee. Were pleased with the feedback that we got from the community assisting with this.
The most profound piece of it for me was looking out at the Earth, and looking at the Earths atmosphere, Bezos said. Every astronaut, everybody whos been up in space, they say this, that it changes them. They look at it and theyre kind of amazed and awestruck by the Earth and its beauty, but also by its fragility, and I can vouch for that.
Lindell promised that on Wednesday morning he would deliver the biggest announcement you ever heard to those still pushing whats been dubbed The Big Lie. Former president Trump, who has also been a guest on Jones show, maintains that he won the election, despite the facts refuting that claim.
The video, obtained by WFAA, shows debris raining down on the front porch of the Cleveland Drive home and smoke billowing out from the street. You can also hear the loud bang.
While we reserved the option of trying this as a death penalty case, life in prison without the possibility of parole for the defendant is an appropriate resolution to this violent hate crime and we hope it brings a measure of justice and closure to the victims, their families, friends and the wider community, the district attorneys office said.
Teddy appears to have sustained minor injuries at some point before or during the trip and was unable to walk when he woke up last Wednesday morning, said his handler, Sophia Barrett. X-rays later revealed a possible herniated disk in his spine and potential torn ligaments in his knees, she said in a statement posted on the GoFundMe website.
One-time cannabis enthusiast and comedian Tommy Chong had his mind blown by the fact Paul Alan Hodgkins was sentenced to only eight months in the can on a felony charge after storming the U.S. Capitol with a mob attempting to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election.
Firefighters continue to fight the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County, California on Sunday, July 18, 2021. The wildfire, which was sparked by lightning on July 4, rapidly grew over the weekend to more than 18,000 acres with 0% containment.

(Joanna Tavares)
For more than two decades, the opioid epidemic has wreaked havoc on countless communities throughout New York and across the rest of the nation, killing hundreds of thousands of our friends and family members and addicting millions more, James said in a statement. While no amount of money will ever compensate for the millions of addictions, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, or the countless communities decimated by opioids, this money will be vital in preventing any future devastation.
Driven by the extremely contagious delta variant of COVID-19, the citys seven-day rolling average on positive coronavirus tests reached 1.72% Tuesday, with a total of 576 new cases, according to New York Citys Health Department data. Thats the first time since May that the city has reported more than 550 new daily infections  a threshold that the de Blasio administration considers an indicator of whether or not the pandemic is under control.
This is an historic moment for the working people of New York  and I am so proud of our campaign and what it has accomplished, Adams said after the certification. Now we must build on this movement to carry our campaign forward through the general election and on to City Hall so that we can deliver for everyday New Yorkers.
Study after study has shown that trans people who are misgendered face alarming and life-threatening rates of depression and suicidal behavior. And older LGBTQ+ people face feelings of isolation, poor mental health and extreme vulnerability to communicable diseases like COVID-19. Californias nursing home patients deserve better than this, he added, vowing to keep fighting until the decision is overturned.
The entire Press Office is working remotely today with the exception of individuals who have had no exposure to the individual or have had a recent negative test, Hammill said in a statement.
The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barracks friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected president, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances, Mark Lesko, the acting top federal prosecutor for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
The BBC interview marks the second time that Cummings has opened up to the British public about his former boss. In May, Cummings testified in front of a parliamentary committee about Britains handling of COVID-19 in the country. During his hearing, he was quick to accuse Johnson of mishandling the entire situation.
In industries such as hospitality, food service and manufacturing, where women women make up the majority of the workforce, they were at a heightened risk of being laid off as coronavirus restrictions went into place. Prior to the pandemic, women were still at a higher risk than men of being laid off, the United Nations organization said.
A knife-wielding man who appeared to be posing as an usher lunged at Goita and tried to stab him, witnesses told Al Jazeera. The attacker and a second man who was armed with a gun were both tackled by the presidents security team and taken away from the scene, witnesses said.
The fact that Blacks are three times as likely to be hospitalized with the virus and twice as likely to die from its ravages compared to non-Hispanic whites doesnt trouble Kennedy or his group. What rankles it instead are the vaccines exceedingly rare side effects. Of 334 million doses administered, 6,079 shot-recipient deaths have been reported, 0.0018% of the total. (Nor does correlation imply causation; the CDC reports that review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records, has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines.) Compare that to more than 90,000 Black Americans dead from COVID.
After the 7.0 earthquake toppled Port-au-Prince in 2010, my grandma and uncles were among the displaced. They lost their entire home in Carrefour Feuille and were lucky enough to flee to the United States, while many didnt have that opportunity. As the MINUSTAH grew in size for the recovery efforts on the island, hundreds of MINUSTAH soldiers had been accused of acts of sexual exploitation and abuse against Haitian children. To make matters worse, MINUSTAH soldiers from Nepal introduced cholera to Haiti, which affected more than 900,000 Haitians and killed more than 10,000. Even after the Institute for Justice and Democracy filed a lawsuit in New York against the UN and 19 members of the U.S. Congress petitioned UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to acknowledge their involvement in the outbreak, it took six years for the UN to admit its involvement.
Im thrilled to be partnering with HBO Max and to produce alongside IPC to bring you this incredible show about my favorite sport, rock climbing, said the 41-year-old Game of Thrones alum, who will also be producing through his production company, On the Roam.
Though the escrow process started in February, Lifton recently informed the receivership now handling the sale that he would be walking away from the deal, according to a Monday court filing obtained by the Daily News.
The members of the band Kansas, past and present, wish to express our deepest sorrow over the death of our bandmate and friend, Robby Steinhardt, the group wrote on their Facebook page. Robby will always be in our souls, in our minds, and in our music. What he brought to us as bandmates, to the fans who attended our concerts, and to the sound of Kansas, will always be heartfelt. We love him and will miss him always.
Citizens board recently approved higher rate hikes using a new law approved by the Legislature earlier this year meant to help stabilize the property insurance market. The average rate increase for new and renewing policies after Aug. 1 will be 5.2%, while renewals after Feb. 1, 2022, rates will be going up 7.6%.
During the pandemic, many rental car companies sold off portions of their fleets to stay afloat when travel all but stopped. Car manufacturing also halted during the early days of the pandemic and still has not returned to full capacity, hampered further by a microchip shortage this year, which means rental companies have been unable to replenish their lots with new cars.
The capacity and size of your grinder will dictate how many cups of coffee you can make in one batch. A bigger coffee grinder typically will have a larger grind capacity and can grind up to 18 cups in one setting, while a smaller grinder may only grind about 12 cups of coffee. That said, smaller grinders are easier to store than larger options.
From the beginning of Floridas data-driven vaccine rollout, Gov. DeSantis has directed the Division of Emergency Management and Florida Department of Health to prioritize protecting our states most vulnerable, including [assisted-living facility and long-term care] residents, Pushaw said in an email. Starting in late 2020, as soon as the first COVID-19 vaccines were available, the state sent strike teams into long-term care facilities to ensure staff and residents could get their immunizations.
Everyone agrees that the nearly century-old State Theatre in Eustis  home of the Bay Street Players  needs help. But just how urgently repairs are needed and how the cast-strapped organization will prioritize the work has divided the community theaters supporters and caused two officers to resign from the board of directors over perceived public-safety issues.
The crash occurred at about 5:25 a.m. when the 42-year-old truck driver of Orlando was traveling east on I-4 near mile marker 97, in the Lake Mary area, according to the Florida Highway Patrols Lt. Kim Montes.
The following month, agents went to the home where Heck was living in South Carolina, finding Hecks wife, who according to the complaint told agents he was very secretive about his phone and had struggled with a pornography addiction.
Teddy was one of several comfort dogs deployed from around the country to provide psychological aid to victims and first responders at Surfside. He often worked six-hour days, taking a big break during the afternoon and returning to the site in the evenings. Barrett said Crisis Response Canines always ensured the dogs needs come first.
Nebergall returned to her home an hour later, alone, and soon made vulgar remarks, forcibly kissed her lips and a breast, asked for oral sex and tried a sexual act, she testified at a 2018 trial. She said she didnt try to resist because he kept touching a gun in his waistband during the attack.
The evacuation followed the collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium in Surfside on June 24. The collapse has led to concerns in buildings across Florida. Authorities said at least 97 people died in the collapse. As of Monday, 95 of those victims had been identified, with potentially at least one more person buried in the rubble.
In this Nov. 8, 2019 file photo, Ben Cohen, left, and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, attend a protest in Washington. The Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's has always been known for promoting social causes as much as its flavors of ice cream, but few have attracted as much attention as its decision to stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Scott, I have lived in Central Florida all my life and remember this case well. I was once picked as a juror in a death penalty trial and went in being conditionally in favor of the death penalty. I left thinking that under no circumstances should the death penalty be applied. My experience showed nothing about this is equitable. If you are smart and/or wealthy, you are less likely to be convicted than if you are not smart/poor. Any thinking person must surely know we have executed innocent people. Ive been totally against the death penalty since. Val
Helen Aguirre Ferre, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, had issued a statement earlier in the day saying that the party has a zero-tolerance policy toward harassment of any kind. Any complaint RPOF receives regarding harassment towards its employees or members is taken very seriously and thoroughly reviewed in accordance with RPOF internal HR policies and all applicable laws and regulations.
SpaceX Crew Dragon launched atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39-A on Saturday, May 30 at 3:22 p.m. on the Demo-2 mission to send NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station, the first launch of astronauts from U.S. soil into space since the end of the space shuttle era in 2011.
Rabat, Morocco (PANA) - Amnesty International has called for an urgent fair retrial of Moroccan journalist and government critic, Omar Radi, who was jailed on Monday for six years on charges of espionage and rape, charges that he denied
David Harrison, manager of the Rathbone Greenbank Global Sustainability fund joins Proactive London's Katie Pilbeam to celebrate the fund's 3rd anniversary.

Harrison says, 're've been looking for companies that have 'walked the walked' in terms of sustainability well as those 'under the radar'.

He goes to explain what has been achieved in the last three year, how the portfolio is currently positioned as well as navigating the daily balance between value and growth.
Rolls-Royce will bounce back faster than its peers when wide-body jet picks up

Rolls-Royce PLC ( ) is a risky but appealing long term recovery play according to analysts at Citigroup, who admit they dont know when the wide-body civil jet market will recover but are convinced that it will.

And when it does, Rolls-Royce will bounce back faster than its peers (as it has more new deliveries adding to the fleet and fewer old aircraft being retired), argues Citi.

In our view, the often-cited 750mln free cash flow or FCF (10% yield) as early as 2022 is not sufficient reason to buy the stock, but the 1.5bn+ FCF in the longer term is (20%+ FCF yield) is.

Cash flow could be stronger than expected in the medium term as working capital is driven out, but we regard this as a (very nice) one-off benefit and it should be valued accordingly."

Buy/high risk is the investment rating. Shares were up 3.5% to 90p.
Downside risk for the currency to US$25,7000 suggest chartists

Bitcoin had another tough day as traders fretted over the US$30,000 level and whether dipping below it would spark an even bigger sell-off.

Close to the end of trading in London, the crypto was down 4.3% at US$29,495 with other prominent cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and Ripple also under pressure.

Bitcoin hasnt been this low for weeks having been as high as US$65,000 in April.

As crypto holdings dropped, demand for government bonds have risen, with yields on 10-year treasuries falling to their lowest level in five months, said Susannah Streeter at Hargreaves Lansdown.

But there might be more to the dip than just rotation in a better performing asset, warnings from financial watchdogs and the risk of digital currencies being launched by governments are also dampening the mood alongside the crypto's reputation.

The intensifying crackdown in some parts of the world, with Indonesian authorities destroying bitcoin mining factories using energy illegally, has again shone the light on crypto as a magnet for criminals, Streeter added.

Chartists, meanwhile, are having a field day with Bitcoins volatility.

According to FXStreet, a fibonnaci retracement [bounce back from an oversold position] might see the crypto recover to US$35,618.

On the downside, the next selling trigger is US$28,068, it says, after which it is US$27,383 and from then a slide towards US$25,700.
Company shares soared on the key approval, which brings West Wits a step closer to producing more than 60,000 ounces of gold per annum at its core Central Rand Goldfields asset.

West Wits has secured a right to mine at the South African Witwatersrand Basin Project.

West Wits Mining Limited (ASX:WWI) has secured a crucial approval, establishing its right to mine at the Witwatersrand Basin Gold Project in South Africa.

The countrys Department of Mineral Resources and Energy (DMRE) granted West Wits mining right application, with director general Adv Thabo Mokoena confirming the key approval.

Ultimately, the mining right brings the ASX-lister a step closer to producer status and operating in South Africas Central Rand Goldfields, a region famous for hosting the worlds largest-known gold reserves.

At Witwatersrand, West Wits hopes to produce more than 60,000 gold ounces every year across the projects 15-year mine life.

Shares jumped more than 31% on the back of todays announcement, changing hands at A$0.105 in trading this morning while the company's market cap pre-open was approximately A$112.1 million.

Pivotal milestone

West Wits chairman Michael Quinert said: The departments decision to grant West Wits mining right is a pivotal milestone for the company which heralds in the development of WWIs marque Witwatersrand Basin Project.

The granting is a testament to the quality and thoroughness of the engagement process undertaken by our lawyers, specialist consultants and the executive team led by managing director Jac van Heerden and comes at a critical time with the independent definitive feasibility study on the Qala Shallows nearing completion.

The WWI Team continues to ramp up development activity and is focused on project execution in the second half of 2021 as it targets maiden underground gold production.

Map of West Wits' holding in the Central Rand Goldfield's Witwatersrand Basin.

Mineral resource update

The pivotal mining right approval comes just weeks after West Wits delivered a resource update following infill drilling at Witwatersrands Qala Shallows region.

Earlier this month, West Wits boosted the mineral resource at its cornerstone exploration asset, adding 149,000 gold ounces to the existing resource.

Ultimately, the resource upgrade brings West Wits a step closer to establishing a maiden ore reserve for the 4.47-million-ounce gold play, with a definitive feasibility study slated for completion in August.

The increase means the Witwatersrand gold play now hosts a global estimate totalling 32.78 million tonnes of resource at 4.24 g/t for 4.47 million gold ounces at the same cut-off grade.

Of this, 65% of the resource, or 2.9 million gold ounces at 4.13 g/t, falls into the measured or indicated category.

Environmental approval reinstated

Todays approval follows another regulatory greenlight, secured earlier this year, which paved the way for the ASX-lister to secure its right to mine.

Back in March, West Wits traded as much as 58% higher after the DMRE reinstated an environmental approval for the Witwatersrand Basin Project.

At the time, managing director Jac van Heerden said: "The successful completion of the EA process significantly de-risks the project and is a major catalyst for execution of the next stage of the WBPs development strategy, allowing the WWI team to ramp up activity as the company targets maiden underground gold production in 2021.

Together, the environmental approval and mining right position West Wits to mine in a major, globally renowned gold region, which has historically produced more than 1.5 billion gold ounces  representing about 22% of all the gold accounted for above the surface.
Molybdenum and copper sulphides have been observed in over 600 metres of core from hole JUDD043, pointing to the presence of a potentially large mineralised porphyry copper-moly system.

A further 5,000 metres of drilling is planned for the Juruena porphyry system

( ) has hit further copper sulphides at the Juruena Project in Brazil and has appointed Dr Marcelo De Carvalho as a new director to oversee the Brazilian operations.

Ongoing drilling for porphyry copper targets has seen the completion of hole JUDD043 at 820 metres - intersecting intermediate porphyritic intrusives as well as 320 metres of moderate to strong phyllic alteration accompanied by mixed pyrite, molybdenite, chalcopyrite and bornite.

Importantly, molybdenum and copper sulphides have been observed in over 600 metres of core, pointing to the presence of a potentially large, mineralised porphyry copper-moly system.

Initial assays from holes JUDD043 and JUDD042 are expected in August while a further 5,000 metres of drilling is panned for the Juruena porphyry system.

Vast knowledge and extensive contacts

Managing director Dr Andrew Tunks said: I am pleased to welcome Dr Marcelo Carvalho to the companys board of directors.

Marcelo has been involved in our Juruena efforts since acquisition and has helped build a strong technical team on the exploration front.

We welcome his vast knowledge and extensive contacts across Brazilian Mining Industry and within government and feel confident he is the right person to guide us as our exploration and development efforts mature.

His appointment comes at a time of strong progress with the recent mineral resource upgrade for the Juruena Project but also the exciting exploration for a porphyry copper gold system at Juruena where our most recent hole has intersected over 600 metres of porphyry style veins and alteration containing strong indications of our target sulphide minerals - molybdenite, pyrite, chalcopyrite and bornite.

Background and experience

Dr Carvalho graduated from the State University of Sao Paulo in 1996 with a Bachelor of Geology and commenced his exploration career in Brazil, working for Anglo Gold exploring for gold in the Amazon and subsequently with Vale, exploring for base metals.

In 2004, he moved to Perth (UWA) to complete a PhD in Metalogenesis.

Returning to Brazil he joined Inc (NYSE:AUY) and rose to the role of greenfields exploration manager before departing in 2012.

During that time, Carvalho led an experienced exploration team and was part of several gold discoveries, taking projects from project generation all the way through to mining reserves and development.

With the experience acquired over these years, he co-founded his own consultancy company, Target Latin America (TLA), and has over the past 10 years consulted to explorers from across the globe, selecting and managing exploration projects in the Americas.

Discovery changing ideas along the belt

Speaking to his appointment, Dr Carvalho said: I have been working for Meteoric since its acquisition of Juruena and am very excited about the future of this project.

As soon as I set foot out there, I knew Juruena had untapped potential and what has transpired with the upgrade to the mineral resource estimate and the identification and initial drilling of a quality porphyry copper target is very impressive.

The excellent work MEI has carried out over the last two years has undoubtably unlocked the potential for a major discovery.

Porphyry mineralisation was discovered a few years ago at the eastern end of the Alta Floresta Belt by Anglo American.

That discovery led to a new exploration rush to the region with license applications covering the entire region and the area getting a dominant share of the investment in exploration in Brazil in recent times.

Our discovery, 400 kilometres to the west of the above mentioned project, is changing exploration ideas along the entire belt.
The company is particularly pleased with the early results from St Annes, where high-grade mineralisation was intersected in a geological setting known to host significant gold.

A phase-2 drilling program is set to begin sometime during the second half of 2021.

( ) (FRA:1KX) has confirmed a large mineralised system at the Fairway Trend, which strikes over 5.5 kilometres from Turnberry to St Annes within the Murchison Gold Project in Western Australia.

The company is particularly pleased with early results from St Annes, where high-grade mineralisation was intersected in a geological setting known to host significant gold just 3 kilometres to the north of Turnberry.

This is where dolerite was intersected, providing what Latitude believes will be an excellent target for phase-2 drilling.

High grades at St Anne's

Results at St Annes include 5 metres at 6.77 g/t gold from 103 metres; 11 metres at 0.74 g/t from 104 metres, including 4 metres at 1.30 g/t; and 6 metres at 0.37 g/t from 144 metres.

Given the positive results received from this drilling, St Annes will form part of the companys phase-2 exploration program in the second half of 2021.

Very pleased with results

Chief executive officer Tim Davidson said: This is the first drill program completed by the company at the highly prospective Fairway trend and we are very pleased with the results it has delivered.

We have intersected high-grade mineralisation at St Annes in a geological setting that is known to host a significant gold endowment at Turnberry, only 3 kilometres to the north.

We believe St Annes displays many similarities to Turnberry and we intend to do further work there during our phase-2 drilling program later this year.

Results received from Bunarra and Far East are also pleasing given both are early-stage exploration prospects which have had limited work completed to date and have strong potential for further mineralisation to be identified.

These results continue to build the companys confidence in the exploration prospectivity of the Murchison Gold Project and I look forward to providing further updates over the coming weeks as we receive the final assays from our phase-1 drilling program.

Turnberry intersections

Drilling at the southern extension of Turnberry mineral resource intersected mineralisation in all holes and appears to confirm a structural offset of the Turnberry mineralisation to the west of the existing mineral resource.

Results comprise:

2 metres at 0.29 g/t from 106 metres;

4 metres at 0.34 g/t from 134 metres;

4 metres at 0.26 g/t from 167 metres;

2 metres at 0.54 g/t from 102 metres; and

1-metre at 0.20 g/t from 149 metres.

The weathering profile was also observed to increase in depth to the south of Turnberry.

With initial confirmation of the structural offset of this mineralisation, further drilling at improved drill density will be completed during the phase-2 program followed by deeper drilling to target primary mineralisation in fresh rock.

Bunarra and Far East prospects

Results received from Bunarra and Far East prospects also demonstrate prospectivity and the potential for identifying further gold mineralisation.

A wide zone of quartz-tourmaline-arsenopyrite-pyrite mineralisation was intersected within a shear zone at the Bunarra prospect returning 18 metres at 1.15 g/t from 235 metres, including 2 metres at 5.41 g/t; and 6 metres at 1.32 g/t from 20 metres, including 1-metre at 4.87 g/t.

Mineralised intersections in mafic volcanic and granite with galena observed at Far East prospect include 4 metres at 2.66 g/t gold from 51 metres, including 1-metre at 9.01 g/t; and 2 metres at 2.39 g/t from 58 metres, including 1-metre at 4.51 g/t.

Latitude intends to continue advancing these early-stage exploration targets.
Orlando Drilling will arrive on site to commence nickel exploration drilling within days.

( ) is about to begin a nickel exploration diamond drilling program at the Narndee Igneous Complex (NIC) in Western Australia.

The company has engaged Orlando drilling as its drilling contractor who is currently mobilising to site with Rig DDR20.

Aldoro will begin drilling targets VC1 and VC11 at first, with drilling at VC1 to commence in the coming days.

MLTEM survey completed

The initial drilling is proposed to have a maximum hole depth of 550 metres under current planning, with provisions to pursue targets to over 800 metres vertical depth on a results-driven basis.

Notably, Rig DDR20 is a KL900, capable of drilling to a depth of 1500 metres of NQ hole size.

There has been a slight delay with the rig, which was due around July 15, due to an unforeseeable breakdown.

Aldoro has completed a moving loop transient electromagnetic (MLTEM) survey to refine the highest priority exploration targets within the NIC.

Results of this survey will be reported in the coming days once final models have been received.

Field reconnaissance and sampling

Aldoros field reconnaissance and sampling programs are well underway with recent fieldwork confirming a copper-rich gossanous outcrop at Quandong Well Zone B.

Random hand-held x-ray fluorescence (HXRF) readings were used to confirm cupriferous anomalism of the gossan.

Rock chip samples were collected for laboratory analysis to unequivocally ascertain the tenor of the HXRF readings from the gossan and will be reported when assays are received.

Photograph of gossanous copper-rich outcrop and rock chip sample location at Quandong Well Zone B

The Quandong Well area was explored by Dampier Mining Co ltd (DMC) in the early 1970s where copper gossans were discovered, hosted by banded iron formation and quartzite in a country-rock of schists of varied composition were interpreted to be altered felsic to mafic volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks.

Thirty-one holes for 1731 metres were drilled by Dampier with significant copper, zinc, and gold results reported in oxide phases close to the surface, grading into a sulphide assemblage of pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite at depth.



This represents a significant exploration opportunity for Aldoro, given the electromagnetic technology available at this time.

Promisingly, Aldoro has interpreted copper and gold-rich volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) style targets in this region.

The datasets for Quandong will be compiled, QAQC checked, validated, and interpreted.

Once this is completed, significant historical results will be reported, and follow-up programs planned.

- Ephrems Joseph
Recce Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX:RCE) is listed on the Australian Securities Exchange.

Recce Pharmaceuticals R327 demonstrates positive efficacy against flesh-eating bacteria

Recce Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX:RCE) (FSE:R9Q), a company developing new classes of synthetic anti-infectives, has demonstrated the positive efficacy of its broad-spectrum anti-infective RECCE 327 (R327) against necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease.

Necrotizing fasciitis, a life-threatening bacterial infection with a mortality rate of up to 80%, is associated with two main strains of bacteria Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens) and Streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes).

Notably, R327 has been shown to reduce deadly flesh-eating' bacterial count below limit of quantification (BLOQ) within 24 hours, at varying concentrations.

In addition, R327 BLOQ efficacy is as early as 30 minutes in C. perfringens a leading bacterial cause of myonecrosis also known as gas gangrene.
Specialty life sciences company focused on developing drugs for rare disorders and infectious diseases

Advancing clinical development of gout drug Bucillamine for infectious diseases, including COVID-19

Developing novel psilocybin and cannabidiol therapeutics for central nervous system and inflammatory disorders

What does:

Ltd ( ) ( ) is a life sciences company focused on the research and development of drugs for infectious diseases as well as central nervous system and inflammatory disorders.

Its cannabinoid pharmaceutical portfolio focuses on rare inflammatory areas such as liver disease. The company has been granted orphan drug status designation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the use of CBD to treat auto-immune hepatitis and FDA orphan drug status designation for the use of CBD to treat ischemia and reperfusion injury from organ transplantations.

The Ontario-based company is also advancing the development of psychedelic medicine with psilocybin-based therapeutics to fight addictions and depression.

Revive has also joined the fight against the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease, which is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, by repurposing its long-established, US government-approved rheumatoid arthritis treatment Bucillamine as a possible treatment for infected patients suffering from inflammation in their lungs.

How it is doing:

has been making progress on both fronts in 2021.

Its Phase 3 clinical trial for Bucillamine in coronavirus (COVID-19) currently has 40 sites in 14 US states and is on track to meet its planned patient enrollment goal (1,000 patients) in the third quarter this year. Revive aims to file an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) with the regulator FDA and the company expects to generate 28-day efficacy data from the study in the next quarter or two.

Patients are randomized and given Bucillamine or a placebo for up to 14 days, while the main aim is to compare the frequency of hospitalization or death for those receiving Bucillamine therapy with those receiving placebo.

Significantly, in June this year, the company announced a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with India-based specialty pharma Supriya Lifescience Ltd for the manufacturing, clinical registration and commercialization of the drug through Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in India, a country hit hard by the virus.

And in May, it said it had entered into a sponsored research agreement with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), to explore using the drug Bucillamine as a treatment.

Revive said the agreement would support research in the laboratory of Dr. John Fahy to test the efficacy of Bucillamine in pre-clinical models of COVID-19 and to design protocols that test the utility of the drug in human trials.

Away from coronavirus, Revive said, in May this year, that it had entered a feasibility agreement with LTS Lohmann Therapie-Systeme AG to develop and manufacture a proprietary oral psilocybin thin film strip.

The oral psilocybin strip fits into the companys clinical and commercial initiatives to evaluate the psychedelic drug as a treatment for mental illness, as well as neurological and substance abuse disorders.

And in February, 2021 revealed it had signed an asset purchase agreement with Newscope Capital Corporation to acquire the full rights to PharmaTher Incs intellectual property relating to psilocybin for an aggregate consideration of up to C$10 million.

A month later, Revive announced positive results of a pre-clinical study evaluating the efficacy of psilocybin in the treatment of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) in a rodent model. The company said the study was conducted at the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), which was part of the psilocybin program acquired from PharmaTher Inc, a subsidiary of Newscope Capital Corporation.

The study characterized the potential neuroreparative effect of psilocybin compared to being treated with a vehicle (saline) using a TBI mouse model. Revive noted that researchers found that psilocybin, given after injury, improved cognitive function in TBI mice. Also, there were no adverse effects observed with psilocybin.

Following the acquisition of the provisional patent application from PharmaTher (Psilocybin in the Treatment of Neurological Brain Injury), and the positive research results with psilocybin in the TBI model, Revive said it had filed an international Patent Cooperation Treaty application allowing it to seek protection of this invention in 153 countries, including the US, Europe, Canada, Japan, and China.

On the financing front, earlier this year, Revive closed a bought deal prospectus offering of 46 million units at $0.50 per unit for aggregate gross proceeds of $23 million, which included the exercise in full of the 15% over-allotment option.

The company said it intended to use the net proceeds for Phase 3 clinical costs for Bucillamine for coronavirus (COVID-19), Phase 1 clinical costs for Psilocybin for methamphetamine use disorder study, and other Psychedelic formulation development work as well as working capital and general corporate purposes.

What the broker says:

In a note in July, 2021, investment firm Leede Jones Gable said that the scientific rationale behind the company's rheumatoid arthritis drug Bucillamine being a potential treatment for coronavirus (COVID-19) was based on "solid pharmacologic" data.

Leede Jones Gable placed no rating on the Revive stock or a target price but said it was featuring the "small molecule drug developer" as an 'Idea of Interest' within its broader healthcare coverage.

Its analysts drew particularly on published research from the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), specifically by lead researcher JH Fahy who has since joined Revives scientific/clinical advisory boards.

Notably, Bucillamine is a Thiol-based small-molecule drug, which have a long and positive clinical history, highlighted the analysts.

"Analogous thiol-containing drugs are approved for other indications, including another cysteine derivative called Nacetylcysteine (NAC) which itself has been suggested to have potential in mitigating COVID-19 symptoms...," they added.

"Specific biochemical data from the UCSF study certainly documents how bucillamine could work as a COVID-19 therapy and we therefore believe that investing in Phase III activities is medically justified and we look forward to final data in coming quarters," said analysts.

Inflection points:

Data from Phase 3 clinical trial for Bucillamine in coronavirus

Phase 1 clinical costs for Psilocybin for methamphetamine use disorder study

Other Psychedelic formulation development work

What the boss says:

"We are pleased with the status of our Phase 3 study in COVID-19 with the aim to seek EUA approval from the FDA for Bucillamine in the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 patients," said CEO Michael Frank in the company's most recent update.

"We have made tremendous progress over the last few months by engaging over 40 clinical sites and completing patient enrollment to meet its completed and future DSMB interim analysis timepoints which will allow for the Study to continue and to have potential to seek EUA approval from the FDA.

"We are continuing to add to our clinical site roster in the U.S. and patient enrollment that would expedite the completion of the Phase 3 study. Also, we are in discussions with international pharmaceutical companies seeking to obtain commercialization rights in various countries around the world."

Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
Tensions are rising over state-sponsored cybercrime and espionage.

Cyber-attacks on Microsoft Exchange servers earlier this year were part of a targeted espionage campaign by China, thats according to the UK, US and European Union.

It comes amidst escalating concerns over the threat state-sponsored cyber-attacks.

A BBC News report noted that the unified move between western governments and said that intelligence officials believe the attacks were markedly more serious than anything they had seen before.

China has previously denied similar allegations, the BBC highlighted.

In January, hackers began exploiting vulnerability in Microsoft Exchange servers allowing backdoors to be created.

According to Britain, the attacks purpose was to enable large scale espionage, including the acquisition of personal information and intellectual property.
Watch the livestream as the rocket blasts up to an altitude of 62 miles above the Earth (nine miles higher than Richard Branson went last week)

Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is set to be carried into space later today in the first passenger flight of his rocket company.

's reusable New Shepard space rocket will carry humans on board for the first time when it blasts off at 8am CDT (2pm BST).

Interested followers will be able to follow 's livestream video of the launch from 6.30am CDT.

As revealed in recent weeks, billionaire Bezos, who has pumped more than US$7.5bn of his own US$200bn wealth into since it was founded in 2000, will be accompanied by his younger brother Mark and two other debutant astronauts, 82-year-old Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.

Funk trained as one of the Mercury 13 astronauts in the 1960s but never got a chance to fly into space.

Dutch physics student Daemen will be the space tourism business's first paying customer, with his ticket paid for by his dad, who is the founder and CEO of Dutch private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners (not to be confused with Jacob Rees-Mogg's Somerset Capital Management).

Funk and Daemen will be the oldest and youngest astronauts ever to travel to space.

Our astronauts have completed training and are a go for launch. #NSFirstHumanFlight pic.twitter.com/rzkQgqVaB6  (@blueorigin) July 19, 2021

After lift-off the rocket will, as has been at pains to point out, blast to an altitude of around 62 miles (100km) above the Earth, a level known as the Karman line.

Bezos's billionaire space-race rival Sir Richard Branson's spaceflight on his Virgin Galactic spaceship earlier this month reached a height of 53 miles, which is outside the Earth's atmosphere and is accepted by NASA as being where outer space begins.

But Blue Origin has pointed out that not only is the Karman line the stated boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space as set by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, and where 96 percent of the world's population recognises as being the borderline, while also boasting that its rocket has bigger windows than its rival.

The flight lasts roughly 11 minutes from launch to capsule landing back on earth, the company said.

Just after exiting the atmosphere, the passenger capsule separates and astronauts will experience three to four minutes of weightlessness, while the New Shepard rocket, on what is its 16th flight, returns to Earth.

After the astronauts strap their seatbelts back on, the capsule returns to Earth with the descent slowed by parachutes and, just before landing, a cushion of air fired from the capsule allowing it to touch down softly in the West Texas desert.

UPDATE: Mission accomplished

Meanwhile, MacKenzie Scott, Bezos' ex wife, has donated nearly US$9bn to charities such as food banks and educational institutions since the pair divorced in 2019.
Here's everything you need to know about Ripple/XRP, the bankers' crypto.

Ripple is the company behind XRP which is the crypto token that is used to run transactions on the digital payment platform called RippleNet.

RippleNet is a real-time gross settlement (RTGS) system that aims to enable instant monetary transactions around the world.

The XRP Ledger is open-source and is not based on blockchain, but rather it is a distributed ledger database.

Besides XRP, RippleNet is also a payment settlement system for international transfers and remittances, similar to more established systems such as SWIFT.

The back story

Ripple's original brand name was Ripplepay and was founded by Ryan Fugger, a software developer in Vancouver, Canada. Later in 2012, Ripple was sold to Jed McCaleb, Arthur Britto, and David Schwartz and was rebrand as OpenCoin.

Following some dramatic turnaround events in 2013 the company was again renamed as Ripple Labs Inc, and later in 2015, its name was shortened to just Ripple.

How does it work?

RippleNet platform works by converting the currency of a sender into XRP and then sending it to the recipient who can then convert the XRP into a different fiat currency.

The system is already used by major banks and institutions to process international payments.

How does it differ from other cryptos?

The key difference between the Ripple and other cryptocurrencies is that while other digital currencies are based on the blockchain technology platform, Ripple uses a distributed consensus ledger using a network of validating servers and crypto tokens called XRP (sometimes referred to as Ripples).

Another major difference is that Ripple is still owned and operated by a private company, a direct contrast to the other cryptocurrency frameworks which are more public in ownership and are not controlled by a single entity.

Where does it sit in the pecking order?

With a current market cap of US$28.29 billion, it is the sixth most valuable cryptocurrency in the world.

Currently, 46 billion XRP coins are in circulation while a majority of the 100 billion XRP is controlled by its promoting company.

Hows it performed recently?

XRP's value has been witnessing a volatile movement this year, it rose sharply, more than eight folds, in the first fourth months of 2021 to hit a multi-year high of US$1.84 and then fell sharply.

In early May, it again witnessed a sharp movement, rising and falling in quick successions. Currently, it is trading at US$0.61.

Whats the future for the currency?

Industry experts are very bullish on XRP as more and more banks are showing interest in the RippleNet platform and XRP token that will allow them to save money on transactions.
Experienced financial executives Linda Rubinstein and Antonino Morales become new directors with immediate effect

Riccitelli succeeds long-time chair David Hale and interim Chair M. Faye Wilson, both of whom remain directors

( ) (FRA:B003) has expanded its board of directors to nine members from seven and named director since 2020 Samuel D Riccitelli as the company's new chairman as the diagnostics group builds on recent momentum.

Experienced financial executives Linda Rubinstein and Antonino Morales become new directors with immediate effect.

Meanwhile, Riccitelli succeeds long-time chair David Hale and interim Chair M Faye Wilson, both of whom remain directors, noted Biocept. Riccitelli, who has over 35 years' of healthcare industry experience, said he was "honored" by the appointment.

"The company is making remarkable strides in oncology diagnostics, especially in neuro-oncology with the recent launch of the CNSide cerebrospinal fluid assay to aid in the identification and management of brain metastases," he said.

"This esteemed group of directors, now with the addition of Linda and Antonino, is committed to furthering Biocepts strategic growth initiatives and advancing its molecular diagnostic services, with the ultimate goal of helping to improve clinical outcomes for patients with cancer."

Michael Nall, CEO of Biocept, said Riccitelli would provide "strong governance, leadership and insight" while "Linda and Antonino bring fresh perspectives, diverse backgrounds and a wealth of valuable experience to the board".

"We are especially grateful to David Hale for serving as our previous chairman and to Faye Wilson for stepping up as interim chair," he added.

Rubinstein has over 30 years of financial and capital markets experience in life sciences and investment banking.

Since 2010 she has been a partner at FLG Partners, where she provides financial and strategic consulting services to life science and other companies such as Apexigen, ArmaGen, Five Prime, Kezar Life Sciences, Ingenuity Systems, iPierian and True North.

Morales has over three decades of international executive leadership experience in financial consulting, business development, operations, regulatory compliance and risk management.

Most recently he was president and CEO of Apoyo Financiero Inc, a California based community development financial institution.

Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com
Renforth said the occurrence is the highest concentration of visible nickel discovered in drilling at Victoria West, following the highest concentration of visible copper intersected to date seen in the first hole

The company said the mineralization is occurring deeper than it has ever drilled before at Surimeau

( ) (OTCPINK:RFHRF) (FRA:9RR) has announced the completion of a four-hole drill program at the 5 kilometre (km) long nickel, copper and zinc mineralized Victoria West target on its wholly-owned Surimeau District battery metals project in Quebec, encountering visible nickel within a vein at a depth of about 139 metres (m).

The company said the occurrence is the highest concentration of visible nickel discovered in drilling at Victoria West, following the highest concentration of visible copper intersected to date seen in the first hole of the program.

The visible pentlandite in the second hole of our just completed program, along with the visible copper in the first hole, which was pictured in our last press release, is exciting to me as it is occurring as we drill deeper that we have before at Surimeau, Renforth Resources CEO Nicole Brewster said in a statement.

The core will be detail logged and samples submitted for assay, we are still waiting for our assay results from our previous program as well, we look forward to the receipt of both, Brewster added.

Renforth noted that Victoria West is one of six polymetallic target areas on its wholly-owned Surimeau property historically documented as hosting mineralization, with several targets confirmed as mineralized and explored by Renforth.

It added that results are still outstanding from the April/May drill program at Victoria West.

Renforth also holds 100% of the 215 square kilometre (sq km) Surimeau District polymetallic project, where a potential district-scale volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) nickel-rich discovery of over 20 km has been confirmed.

The property boasts good access and numerous areas of interest, both VMS targets such as the 5 km Victoria West prospect, which Renforth is currently focused on, as well as gold prospects and other metals. Agnico Eagle's flagship LaRonde mine, exploiting a gold-rich VMS deposit, lies just 20 km to the north.

Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com
The weighted average intercept of six of the reported holes on the Main Zone was 4.57 metres at 8.06 g/t gold and 32.54 g/t silver

The company said that drilling intersected thick zones of gold-silver mineralization in all 15 holes drilled at the property

Arizona Silver Exploration Inc ( ) (OTCMKTS:AZASF) announced it had uncovered a new high-grade gold-silver vein within a thick mineralized zone on the Perry vein at its Philadelphia property in Arizona.

The company said that drilling intersected thick zones of gold-silver mineralization in all 15 holes drilled at the property.

Highlights from the Main Vein include intercepts of 3.05 metres at 16.9 grams per ton (g/t) gold and 51.2 g/t silver within 45.73 meters at 1.63 g/t gold and 7.74 g/t silver and 9.15 metres at 7.82 g/t gold and 21 g/t silver within 15.24 metres at 1.82 g/t gold and 5.52 g/t silver.

The weighted average intercept of six of the reported holes on the high-grade vein was 4.57 metres at 8.06 g/t gold and 32.54 g/t silver.

We are delighted that drilling has discovered high grades in a vein that was overlooked historically, CEO Mike Stark said in a statement.

Significantly, the high-grade zone is open at depth. The shallow lower grade mineralization is a surprise, a result that represents potentially significant bulk tonnages. Drilling will continue.

Greg Hahn, the firms vice president exploration, told investors that the results confirmed the interpretation that high grades would start 50 to 100 metres below the low grade, partially outcropping Perry Vein.

Fortunately for us the productive part of the vein appears to be entirely intact and is open to depth, Hahn said.

The thick, shallow zone of low-grade mineralization is very significant as it represents a bulk tonnage opportunity. For this reason, we are reporting the vein grades and the shallow, bulk tonnage grades separately.

Drill holes in the shallower portion of the vein intersected broad zones of stockwork gold mineralization, the company said, as the high-grade vein component is absent.

Arizona Silver said the weighted average of the lower grade intercepts in the up-dip portions of the mineralized zone is 39 metres at 0.38 g/t gold and 1.68 g/t silver, which does not include any high-grade vein intercepts.

Based in Vancouver, Arizona Silvers flagship Philadelphia property is located in Mohave County, Arizona.

Contact Angela at angela@proactiveinvestors.com

Follow her on Twitter @AHarmantas
Arizona Silver Exploration (CVE: AZS  OTCQB: AZASF) CEO Mike Stark joined Steve Darling from Proactive to bring news the company has released assay results from their most recent drill program at the Philadelphia project in Nevada.

Stark telling Proactive they intersected gold in all 15 holes drilled. The company feels they have a robust system with a strike length of at least 300 meters. Stark also said this program demonstrates that we are above the boiling zone at the surface, and at the top of the boiling zone in our deepest holes.
Altiplano Metals (CVE: APN) CEO Alastair McIntyre joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share news the company has begun the work to improve the ventilation system at the Farellon site in Chile. McIntyre telling Proactive the ventilation system involves the installation of a new 125 HP main exhaust fan, located in the northwest outside area of the mine, and three auxiliary fans located in the operational levels of the mine. The company expects to be done in the next few weeks and it will improve the health and well-being of the workers as the mine, improves operational efficiencies, and provides the opportunity to increase the amount of equipment and personnel working on each shift underground.

McIntyre also told Proactive they are about to start a drilling program as talks about where and what they are focussed on.
Moscow court upholds restraining order against lawyer for ex-journalist accused of treason

 Ivan Pavlov's personal account on Facebook

11:30 20/07/2021

MOSCOW, July 19 (RAPSI)  The Moscow City Court upheld a restraining order against Ivan Pavlov, a lawyer for former journalist Ivan Safronov accused of treason, for allegedly disclosing information related to a police investigation.

Pavlov is prohibited to communicate with witnesses in the criminal case with some exceptions, send and receive postal messages, use the means of communication and the Internet, with the exception of the use of telephone in the event of an emergency, as well as for purposes of communication with investigators and the controlling bodies.

Pavlovs case is related to an article published by Vedomosti about journalist Ivan Safronov accused of treason. Investigators believe the lawyer gave the newspaper a copy of the decision to bring the journalist to criminal prosecution and told information agencies and Kommersant newspaper about an interrogation of a secret witness in Safronovs case.

Under the respective articles of the Russian Criminal Code, the charges brought against the lawyer envisage punishment in the form of compulsory work for up to 480 hours, or correctional labor for up to two years, or detention for up to three months.

The arrested lawyer is known for his work for human rights association "Team 29", which provides legal assistance to Safronov and Navalnys Foundation that was declared a foreign agent and an extremist organization.

The Lefortovsky District Court of Moscow on April 30 extended detention of Safronov until July.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
A day after the sensational arrest of businessman Raj Kundra -- the husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty -- the Mumbai Police has nabbed a techie in connection with the alleged pornographic racket being probed by the Crime Branch-CID, official sources said here on Tuesday.

The police have arrested Ryan John Tharpe, entrusted with the technical aspects of Kundra-Shetty's companies, from Nerul in Navi Mumbai, for his alleged role and involvement in the same scam.

The duo was produced before a Mumbai magistrate and have been remanded to police custody till July 23.

With this the total number of arrests in the case has shot up to around 12, till date and several more suspects are still on the police radar.

Tharpe is an IT person, said to be closely involved with Kundra and Shetty's companies which are now being probed for the pornographic racket having possible international ramifications.

Official sources reveal that the investigators have recovered certain incriminating materials, WhatsApp chats and other stuff, while the role of other known and unknown persons in the entire racket is also being investigated.

Kundra, 46, was nabbed late on Monday on alleged charges of making and publishing pornographic content and publishing them through mobile applications.

Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale himself made the announcement on Kundra's arrest based on a case registered in February.

Since February, Kundra -- a British-Indian businessman -- was under the scrutiny of the Crime Branch-CID before the police's dramatic move last night.

The sudden arrest stunned Bollywood which is already reeling under the scanner of various narcotics agencies since the past one year, further soiling the industry's image.

"A case was registered with the Crime Branch about the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. We've arrested Raj Kundra in this case as he appears to be the key conspirator," said Nagrale.

"We have sufficient evidence regarding this. Further investigation is in progress," the police chief added.


In the wake of the BJP high command's decision to change the leadership in Karnataka, the team identifying with the Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa and legislators from his camp have launched an all out campaign supporting him. "The developments within the party have intensified. RSS leaders and senior leaders in New Delhi are warned about the consequences if Yediyurappa ' title=' CM Yediyurappa '>CM Yediyurappa is forced to resign," party sources said. It has also been decided to launch a movement through religious seers of various Veerashaiva-Lingayat mutts across the state. Even as Yediyurappa declared himself that he will continue as CM for the next two years, no top leader from the BJP came forward to make an announcement supporting him. Hence, Yediyurappa's team is planning to demand from the BJP High Command that they should pull the curtain on the issue of leadership in the state. "It will also be brought to their notice that, if they don't act in this direction, the BJP in the state will suffer immensely," sources explain. Akhila Bharatha Veerashaiva Mahasabha President and senior Congress leader Shamanur Shivashankarappa had warned that, BJP party will be doomed in Karnataka if Yediyurappa ' title=' CM Yediyurappa '>CM Yediyurappa is asked to resign. BJP leaders should go to history and learn about the consequences of disturbing Lingayat leadership. "If any action is taken against CM Yediyurappa, the community will give a befitting answer to BJP," he underlined. In another important development, another powerful Congress leader M.B. Patil stated that the BJP will lose Lingayat vote bank base if they attempt to change the leadership.




Amid the fierce battle between the government armed forces and Taliban, Afghanistan Army Chief will visit India for two days next week to interact with top security officials, including the Indian Army Chief General M.M. Naravane.

Afghanistan Army Chief General Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai will be in India from July 27 to July 29 during which he is going to meet top dignitaries here, including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Top officials in the government remained quiet over the issue. However, sources said that the Afghanistan Army Chief might look for logistic support and military equipment. India has been training the Afghanistan cadets in military academies for a long time.

Further, the visit comes when Pakistan in collaboration with Taliban has started to target Indian assets in Afghanistan. India has invested over 3 billion US dollars in infrastructure projects, including roads, dams and the Parliament building, in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, Afghan politician who leads the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) Abdullah Abdullah made a visit to India. He is making efforts for peace despite the ongoing fighting between government forces and the Taliban.

A government delegation led by Abdullah and Taliban representatives are holding peace talks in Qatar's Doha.

For India, the main concern remains the use of Taliban-controlled territory by Pakistan based terror groups. India is in touch with the Afghan government about the developing situation.

The fighting between the Afghan forces and Taliban has intensified in the last one month post the US forces withdrawal. Taliban has started expanding its influence in the war torn county after the US withdrawal.

Amid security concerns, India withdrew its staff from the Consulate in Kandahar on July 11.
More than a dozen persons have been booked and two arrested so far, for stripping and beating a boy in the market place after he allegedly stole some vegetables.

Superintendent of Police (Kanpur Outer) Ashtbhuja P. Singh, said, "We are interrogating several people to ascertain their role in the incident. We are also identifying people on the basis of the video footage of the incident."

The police official said that a video went viral in which a boy was allegedly stripped, his hands tied with a rope from behind and brutally thrashed for stealing a small quantity of vegetables. The incident took place two days ago.

An FIR in the incident has been lodged at the Sachendi police station.

Taking suo-motu cognizance, Chakarpur police post in-charge Ashok Kumar had registered the FIR with Sachendi police against a dozen persons under sections of the IPC.

The boy's identity has not been established so far, police said, adding that they were also trying to trace him.
Hitting out at the opposition parties, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said political rivals are spreading lies about Covid-19 and shortage of vaccine. The Prime Minister Modi asked BJP MPs to counter lies spread by the opposition parties.

Prime Minister Modi was speaking at the BJP's Parliamentary Party meeting.

Sources said that the Prime minister asked the party MPs to focus on highlighting the truth and tell the people about government's work in managing Covid pandemic.

It is learnt that the Prime Minister said that Congress only believe in the politics of obstruction and don't want to debate and discuss.

"The Prime Minister said that despite losing polls, Congress is not raising issues nor expanding its base. They only believe in the politics of obstruction and don't want to debate and discuss over issues," a BJP MP said.

Prime Minister expressed concern over low rate of vaccination of frontline workers and stressed that there is no shortage of vaccine.

Sources said that the Prime Minister told the party MPs that while opposition indulge in politics over pandemic, the BJP continues to serve the humanity.

According to sources, the Prime Minister asked the BJP MPs to tell the truth to the people and explain the work of the government.

"The Prime Minister also told us that despite losing grounds everywhere, Congress is more concerned about us than themselves," another BJP MP said.

The Prime Minister also asked the BJP MPs to regularly attend the Parliament and to keep themselves updated about the issues that the opposition is likely raise on the floor of house.
Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday slammed the opposition for questioning the government on the alleged Pegasus phone hack controversy and for disrupting the Parliament.

Talking to reporters at a press conference here, Yogi Adityanath questioned the attitude of the Congress-led opposition and accused it of indulging in negative politics. He demanded that they apologise.

The chief minister said that it was because of the 'negative attitude' of the Opposition that it did not allow issues concerning the common people to be raised in Parliament.

"For the past two days, the Opposition has been trying to vitiate the atmosphere of the country over the Pegasus issue and it only proves their sick mentality. Congress governments had been doing such things during their tenures and now the party is following the same while in Opposition," he said.

The chief minister said that the opposition had indulged in negative politics even during the pandemic.


Even as the farmers continue their protest at the borders of Delhi against the three Central farm laws, the government has reiterated its stand that it is "always open to discussion with farmers' unions and will remain open to discussion with the agitating farmers to resolve the issue". In reply to multiple questions in the Lok Sabha on Tuesday posed by various MPs, including one on 'repeal of new farm laws' by Manoj Tiwari, Adoor Prakash, Sangam Lal Gupta, Saptagiri Sankar Ulaka, Pradyut Bordoloi and Amar Singh, the government said the new farm laws -- The Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020, The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020, and The Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 -- are intended to provide an ecosystem where the farmers can enjoy the freedom of choice relating to the sale of their produce which facilitates remunerative prices to the farmers through competitive alternative channels for selling their produce. These farm laws will facilitate direct buying from the farmers by the traders, processors, exporters, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs), agriculture co-operative societies etc., so as to facilitate farmers with better price realisation due to shortening of supply chain and reduction in marketing cost to enhance their income, the government said. Farmers, mostly from Punjab and Haryana, had barged towards the national capital in November 2020 and since then they are carrying out a sit-in protest to demand complete repeal of the three farm laws. Minister for Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare, Narendra Singh Tomar, informed the Lok Sabha that the government has engaged "actively and constantly with the agitating farmers' unions to end the protests and 11 rounds of negotiating talks have been held between the government and the agitating farmers' unions to resolve the issues". Invoking the government's letter dated December 9, 2020 addressed to the farmers' unions that explained point by point how the concerns expressed by the farmers were being taken care of in the proposal of the government of India, Tomar said, "The government also proposed to constitute a small group consisting of representatives of farmers' unions, who can deliberate on the farm laws clause-wise in a time-bound manner and can also consider other issues related to the farmers. However, the farmers' unions never agreed to discuss, excepting for demanding their repeal."




Nijmegen, Netherlands -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/20/2021 -- Microsoft Excel is the backbone of any organization around the world and mastering it can make everyday operations easy and more effective. To help people master the art of MS Excel, a European company called ConfExcel has announced the launch of its Simply Master Excel Series. This series is written by the Founder of ConfExcel, Andreea and she is currently raising funds and support for this project on Kickstarter.



From financial awareness to goal achievement and from time management to cryptocurrency tracking, the tools offered in this learning series are remarkable and effective. Moreover, it is not just another software learning book, but a professionally designed guidebook, written with an aim to help everyone get the most out of their excel.



"I am welcoming you to upgrade your skills by mastering excel with an ability to make some of the most complex spreadsheets possible." Said Andreea, the Founder of ConfExcel while introducing this project to the Kickstarter community. "ConfExcel is proudly offering you Stunning Tools that will help you become better in life while enjoying learning." She added.



The Kickstarter Campaign is located on the web at: www.kickstarter.com/projects/confexcel/simply-master-excel-and-stunning-tools and backers from around the world can become a part of this project by making generous pledges and donations. Moreover, the goal of this Kickstarter campaign is to raise a sum of EUR 2,900 and ConfExcel is offering digital and physical copies of the book and 7 ready to use tools as a reward for the backers around the world. Furthermore, more details are available on the Kickstarter campaign page of the project.



About ConfExcel

ConfExcel is a European company aimed at creating simple, fast and efficient solution for the personal and professional use. The company is currently crowdfunding its Simply Master Microsoft Excel Series on Kickstarter, and it is welcoming backers from around the world to become a part of this inspiring learning project.



Contact:

Contact Person: Irina Andreea Toporas

Company: ConfExcel

City: Nijmegen

Country: Netherlands

Phone: +31 611272635

Email: info@confexcel.com

Website: www.confexcel.com
Kington, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 07/20/2021 -- QuickBooks data files bigger than 500MB must be optimized every 6 to 12 months to assure that they operate at top performance, experts say.



There is no internal functionality in QuickBooks to optimize the data file other than running a Condense. The optimize operation will copy all data into a new data file, remove unwanted temporary data, and audit trail data to bring down file size by about 40 percent, improving performance and stability of the data file.



A better way is to condense the data file by choosing a cut-off date to remove prior transactions. The QuickBooks condense has a built-in file shrink utility to reduce the file size after the Condense completes. The third option is to SuperCondense a data file to shrink it to 50 to 80 percent of the original file size.



E-Tech's File Optimization service helps condense or shrink the data file while optimizing speed and performance of the data file, reduce file size, prevent data corruption and improve network performance. No transactions are lost in this operation.



More service specifications for E-Tech's QuickBooks File Optimization Service can be seen at https://quickbooksrecovery.co.uk/quickbooks-file-data-services/quickbooks-file-optimization-service/ .



About E-Tech

E-Tech is the leading service provider of QuickBooks File Repair, Data Recovery, QuickBooks Conversion and QuickBooks SDK programming in the UK and Ireland. In their 20 years plus of experience with Intuit QuickBooks, they have assisted over 1000 satisfied customers with their requirements. E-Tech UK covers US, UK, Canadian, Australian versions which include Reckon Accounts, and New Zealand versions of QuickBooks through PC and Mac platforms.



For media inquiries regarding E-Tech, individuals are encouraged to contact Media Relations Director, Melanie Ann via email at Melanie@e-tech.ca.



To learn more about the company, visit: https://quickbooksrecovery.co.uk/



Media Contact



Melanie Ann

E-Tech

61 Bridge St.

Kington HR5 3DJ

Melanie@e-tech.ca

www.quickbooksrecovery.co.uk
My Food Bag Group Limited announces that Richard Wafer, My Food Bag's Chief Operating Officer, has given notice of his decision to resign from My Food Bag to pursue a new business interest outside of the food sector.

Richard joined My Food Bag during its start-up phase and has played an integral role during the last seven years. After seeing the business through its listing, he is now re-joining the start-up scene with a new technology business outside the food sector.

Richard is committed to achieving a successful transition and, as such, his last day at My Food Bag has yet to be determined but is expected to be towards the end of 2021.

Richard has been an important member of the My Food Bag team, leading the supply side of the business, including procurement, assembly and logistics areas. The Board and management extend their sincere gratitude to Richard for his significant contribution to My Food Bag and wish him the very best for the future. With Richards oversight, My Food Bag has built a very experienced and capable team who will continue to lead our assembly centres, procurement and logistics functions.

A search to find a replacement for Richard to help lead the operations team into the next exciting phase of growth at My Food Bag is underway.

Please see the link below for details

Resignation of Chief Operating Officer

Source: My Food Bag Group Limited

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Afghanistan was a war of lies, sustained by the powerful US and British media.

by Eric S. Margolis

The US-led war in Afghanistan looks to be ending, and not a day too soon. Americas father, Benjamin Franklin, wisely wrote: No good war; no bad peace.

Yet for 20 years, the United States waged all-out war against this small, remote, impoverished state whose only weapons were old AK47 rifles and the boundless courage of its fierce people.

In my first book about Afghanistan, War at the Top of the World, written after being in the field with the anti-Soviet mujahidin warriors, I called them the bravest men on earth. Now, some 21 years later, I repeat this title.

For the past two decades, the Afghan nationalist mujahidin have faced the full might of the US empire: waves of B-1 and B-52 heavy bombers; fleets of killer drones, constant air strikes from US airbases in Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Gulf; 300,000 US-financed Afghan mercenary troops; up to 120,000 US and NATO troops and other US-paid mercenaries; the brutal Communist-run Afghan secret police, regular government police, Tajik, Hazara and Uzbek militias, hit squads sent by the US and Britain, plus famine and disease. Use of torture by western forces was rampant.

All this to defend the US-installed Afghan puppet governments whose main business was protecting the nations growing opium trade which made Afghanistan the worlds largest exporter of opium/morphine that was processed into heroin. Another proud moment for Washington which, in the 1970s had been up to its ears in Indochinas opium trade, and later in Central Americas cocaine business.

Afghanistan was a war of lies, sustained by the powerful US and British media. President George W. Bush, a man of deep ignorance, launched this war to cover being caught sleeping by the 9/11 attacks. Bush blamed Osama bin Laden, former US ally, and Afghanistans Taliban government for 9/11, though the Afghans were likely not involved with it.

The only proof of bin Ladens involvement was a number of fake videos that I believe were made by Afghanistans Communist-run intelligence service or its former KGB bosses. When I pointed out these videos were fakes, CNN blacklisted me from further broadcasting. So too did Canadas CBC TV and the Sun chain after I warned Canadian troops were being sent to Afghanistan under false pretenses.

Officially, the US lost 31,376 dead and seriously wounded in Afghanistan; Canada lost 158 dead; Britain 456 dead; the Afghans god knows how many. Estimates range from, 100,000 to one million. Two million Afghans reportedly died during the decade-long Soviet occupation. Almost anything that moved was bombed.

The known cost for this useless war was 2 trillion US dollars, plus hundreds of millions in secret payments to hire volunteers from US allies to fight in Afghanistan. This was almost all borrowed money hidden in the US federal debt.

What next? The US is trying to find a way to stay engaged in Afghanistan via air attacks from its bases in the Gulf and possibly new ones in Central Asia. The worlds premier military power simply cannot endure the humiliation of defeat in Afghanistan, particularly so by a bunch of Muslim mountain warriors. All those US and British experts who championed the Afghan war are now hiding their faces, as they did after the Iraq debacle.

Americas war party is trying to find ways to keep the conflict going by raising phony alarms about girls schooling, translators and womans rights. But we hear nothing at all from these pro-war hypocrites about the murder, rape and dowry killing of thousands of women in India each year. How many misinformed Americans know that Taliban was a religious movement formed to stop the rape of Afghan women and brigandage during the bitter 1990s civil war? I was there and saw it.

What next? As US power wanes, CIA will try to bolster separatist movements among Afghanistans Tajik and Uzbek minorities. Iran will arm and finance the Shia Hazara minority. Still Communist dominated Tajikistan and Uzbekistan will support their ethnic brethren in Afghanistan. Most important, India will intensify intrigues in Afghanistan where its powerful intelligence agency, RAW, is increasingly active.

Meanwhile Pakistan quietly supports Taliban which, like a quarter of Pakistanis, is of Pashtun ethnicity. China for once does not know what to do in Afghanistan: it wants to block expansion of Indian influence in the subcontinent but deeply fears militant Islam and its rising influence in Chinese-ruled Xinjiang, formerly Turkistan.

So, Americans may have not seen the last of Afghanistan, one of the greatest follies of US foreign policy. To paraphrase the great Talleyrand, the US war in Afghanistan was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2021

Dedicated to my dear friend and warrior for the truth, Countess Pamela de Maigret, passed away on July 12, 2021.
The history of India, like that of any other country, has been a story of social inequities, exploitation of the common people, religious conflict, and so on. The idea of a golden age has always been abused, in India as well as in other countries.

by Ziya Us Salam

Courtesy: Front Line India

Long before many historians called the Hindutva forces bluff with respect to Indian history, Professor D.N. Jha had talked about the not-so-divine status of the cow in the Hindu religion. Basing his argument largely on scriptures, he came up with The Myth of the Holy Cow. Hindutva outfits panned the book but could not dispute the words of the holy texts he quoted. Jha stood his ground, and the cow began to be seen as a political rather than divine animal. The bull rather than the cow deserved a divine status, he argued, saying that there have been temples dedicated to Nandi.

For the past few years, the soft-spoken academic has been waging another battle: safeguarding Indias pluralist past. Be it raising his voice against atrocities inflicted on minorities and Dalits or exposing the shallowness of the Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan, Jhas arguments are rooted in history. He has argued that the way forward is not through a slogan like Bharat Mata ki Jai but Jai Hind, not through Brahmanical superiority but egalitarianism. He disagrees with any notion of a mythical golden age in Indian history, arguing that kings, whatever their religion, have always waged battles for political superiority.

In his latest book, Against the Grain, released recently, he continues his battle for writing history right.

Excerpts from an interview with Prof. D.N. Jha, historian;

The Constitution says India that is Bharat, yet there was no concept of Bharat as a cohesive nation for the longest time. How do you explain this anomaly? Also, with the given history, how honest is it to make a slogan like Bharat Mata ki Jai the benchmark of nationalism?

It is true that Bharata as a country evolved over a long time. It does not occur in the entire corpus of the Vedic texts, though the Bharat tribe is mentioned in some of them. The first mention of Bharata in the territorial sense is found in an inscription of the Kalinga king Kharavela (1st century BCE), but in later Sanskrit texts (which I have consulted) wherever it is mentioned, its geographical connotation remains, by and large, ambiguous. It is only in the late 19th century that Bharata came to denote the whole of India as we have it today. This coincided with the rise of Indian nationalism, but, curiously, it now appeared as a mother. The earlier Bharata morphed into Bharata Mata in a song of Dwijendra Lal Roy (1863-1913) and she figures as such prominently in several other late 19th century works, including Anand Math of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya. This change of genderBharata becoming a Mata (mother)may be a theme of the nationalist discourse among specialists, but it is strange that Queen Victoria was visualised as a guardian of Mother India. Equally curious is the depiction of India as Lady Hind holding the flag of the British Empire jointly with Britannica in cartoons published in the Hindi Punch as early as 1904. So a non-specialist may ask himself, what kind of nationalism was this? Historically, Bharata Mata is hardly a century and a quarter old; her contemporary, gau mata, is almost the same age. Recently, the Madhya Pradesh government created another Mata, Rashtramata, out of Malik Muhammad Jayasis Padmavati. So I am confused which of these Matas could become the benchmark of Indian nationalism. I would, therefore, prefer Jai Hind over Bharata Mata.

Prominent travellers to India, including Francois Bernier and Johann Gottfried von Herder, refer to mild-natured Hindus, those who assimilated what they could, made space for everyone. Yet we have Alberunis distinctly different account. When exactly do we notice a change from Hindus being gentle people to those who considered foreigners impure or mlechha? If the tolerant tag is well deserved, how does one explain the Brahmanical hostility to Buddhism?

I would say that both views are largely correct. When Alberuni (973-1048) wrote about the intolerance, haughtiness and conceit of Hindus, conflict between Brahmanism and Shramanic religions (Buddhism and Jainism, especially the former) was at its peak; Buddhism was on the verge of being driven out of the country as appears from the sustained Brahmanical assault on Buddhist establishments.

In fact, Brahmanical intolerance of other religions is amply attested by our sources, and you are right in saying that Brahmins treated foreigners as mlecchas. It is possible that Alberuni may have made his statement against this background of antagonism between Brahmanical and non-Brahmanical religions.

But at the time when foreigners like Francois Bernier (1620-1688) and others wrote about India, the religious scenario was different: there was no religious rivalry between Brahmanism and Shramanism; Buddhism had almost disappeared from the country of its birth and had settled outside India; even the contradiction between Hinduism and Islam was not very sharp.

Also, one has to keep in mind that alongside the long history of sectarian conflict within Brahmanism and its antagonism towards other religions, there is, in India, an equally long history of the coexistence of religions, and of mutual borrowings among them. This syncretism is an important feature of Indias religious history. And despite the much-trumpeted conflict between Hinduism and Islam, even these two religions borrowed much from each other. An example of mutual borrowing between the two religions that comes readily to mind is the identification of the cult of the Muslim Satya Pir with that of the Satyanarayan Puja, prevalent in Bengal and adjoining regions. So it is likely that Bernier and other foreigners took notice of this kind of long syncretic tradition of India and spoke of tolerant Hinduism.

In recent times, we have had the exclusive and exclusionist leanings of Dayananda Saraswati and Ramakrishna Paramahansa being readily accepted. Is that the way forward?

No, I dont think so. Dayananda Saraswati founded the Arya Samaj in 1875; the same year he wrote a book called Satyarth Prakash whose last two chapters are devoted entirely to the denunciation of Christianity and Islam. Nor are the teachings of Ramakrishna acceptable as a way forward. His ardent and most prominent disciple, Vivekananda (1863-1902), who founded the Ramakrishna Mission in 1897 for the promotion and propagation of Advaita Vedanta, spoke of religious tolerance but spewed venom against Islam as is indicated by the statement that from Pacific to the Atlantic for five hundred years blood ran all over the world that is Mohammadanism (Shakespeare Club of Pasadena, California, February 3, 1900). Given these facts, the ideas of neither of the two great spiritual masters are acceptable. Moreover, as we are aware, their ideas are feeding into Hindutva which in everyday life these days means lynching of Muslims and Dalits, attacks on mosques and churches, horrendous crimes against women, etc.

The best way forward, therefore, is to leave the people to themselves. Every individual should be allowed to practise the religion of his choice without the direct or indirect interference of the state as guaranteed by our Constitution.

In the run-up to the Karnataka Assembly elections, we have had a unique case of the State government deciding to confer on Lingayats the status of a distinct religious community. How well founded in history is the claim or the decision?

I would not like to discuss the electoral politics of Karnataka; I leave that to political commentators. But so far as the Lingayats are concerned it is well known that their emergence as a major religious force in north-western Karnataka took place around the 12th century. Basavanna contributed greatly to their movement, which differed from orthodox Hinduism in many ways. It was anti-Brahmanical, anti-caste and anti-Vedic; its followers, both men and women, wear a linga (which they call ishtalinga) on their body and do not bother about the worship of an idol in a temple. Given this background of Lingayats, I feel there is some substance in recognising them as a separate religious community.

With the advancement of aggressive Hindutva, we have had a number of Dalits, and even leaders like Mayawati, threatening to convert to Buddhism. Is it not a reverse flow of events? I ask this because in history we have instances of the victorious king imposing his faith on the vanquished. Like the Pandian king of Madurai, a practitioner of Jain faith, being forced to convert to Saivism.

The legend of the Pandian king has been extensively written about and scholars have questioned its authenticity. But so far as the conversion of Dalits is concerned, I would to like to say that their mass conversion to Buddhism or even to Islam has been caused largely by the inequities of the Indian caste system, which is defended by Hindutva ideologues. In this context, it is worthwhile remembering the conversion of Babasaheb Ambedkar to Buddhism, in 1956, along with nearly half a million untouchables.

In Against the Grain, you refer to Hindutva ideologues who look at ancient India as some kind of a mythical golden age, a time when there was social harmony, economic prosperity, etc. How well founded is the claim?

During the freedom struggle, Indian historians indulged in an uncritical glorification of pre-Islamic India: the Indian state was described as a constitutional monarchy; tribal oligarchies were equated with Athenian democracy; the village assemblies (sabhas) in south India were portrayed as little democracies; the period of the Gupta rulers was treated as the golden age when the Indian people were happy and prosperous and lived in peace and harmony. This picture of ancient India supplied an ideological support to freedom fighters; but after Indias Independence it served no such purpose though the Hindutva ideologues have clung on to these ideas, and, inspired by them, even our Prime Minister has made laughable statements about the Indian past on several occasions. But a scientific analysis of our sources amply proves that at no stage in history the common people of India witnessed a truly golden age. The history of India, like that of any other country, has been a story of social inequities, exploitation of the common people, religious conflict, and so on. The idea of a golden age has always been abused, in India as well as in other countries.

Even as the fight over the Babri Masjid goes on and on, we know that some Buddhist structures were not left untouched by revivalist Hindu kings. For instance, Hindu temples in Nalanda university. If so, is it true that our entire history has been a game of might is right?

What you describe as might is right may be true at one level. But that is also an oversimplification. It may not have been the king who always played a role in case of religious confrontation. The Babri Masjid was demolished with the connivance of the Indian state. In history, the adherents of one religion may have played a prominent role in attacking the religious establishments of other religions that they perceived as their rivals.

The reason for this may have been rooted in deeper historical processes and one cant argue that so and so king imposed his religion on others. For example, when we speak of the Brahmanical assault on Buddhism, it will have to be seen against the background of the doctrinal changes in Buddhism and Brahmanism, as well as in their changing social and material context, their social base and their source of patronage, etc.
If You Grew Up With the U.S. Blockade as a Cuban, You Might Understand the Recent Protests Differently

by Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad

During the early morning of July 17, Johana Tablada joined tens of thousands of Cubans as they gathered along the Malecon boulevard in Havana to stand with the Cuban Revolution. We are human beings who live, work, suffer, and struggle for a better Cuba, she told us. We are not bots or troll farms or anything like that. She referred to what has been called the Bay of Tweets, a social media campaign developed in Miami, Florida, that attempted to inflame Cubas social problems into a political crisis.

The social problems, Tablada told us, derive from the U.S. blockade of Cuba that began in the 1960s but has been deepened by former U.S. President Donald Trumps 243 coercive measures. The United States has criminalized Cuban public services, she said, including our public health system and our public education system. These sanctions make it impossible for Cubans to visit their families in the United States. They make it impossible for remittances to be sent into Cuba, and they make it impossible for Cuba to access essential goods and services (including fuel). On top of everything else, Trump designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, a decision which U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy called frivolous. The U.S. government claims that the blockade and these coercive measures are to punish the government, butsays Tabladathey criminalize the country.

The Miami Mafia

Tablada keeps a close eye on the Cuban policy being shaped by Washington, D.C., and Miami, where right-wing Cuban exiles effectively drive the agenda. She does this in her role as the deputy director-general in the Cuban Foreign Ministry in charge of U.S. affairs. There is a cast of characters in this story that is little known outside the world of U.S. right-wing politics and the Cuban exile community. Of course, four well-known elected officials lead the attempt to overthrow the government in Cuba: Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida, as well as Democratic Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey and Republican Representative Maria Elvira Salazar of Florida. Beside them are other politicians such as Miami Mayor Francis X. Suarez and a range of Cuban American businessmen and professionals such as Emilio Braun of the Vulcan Funds and the lawyer Marcell Felipe.

These men are at the core of a set of organizations that lobby U.S. politicians to harden the U.S. blockade on Cuba. Felipe runs the Inspire America Foundation, which Tablada describes as the heir to the most anti-Cuban, reactionary, and pro-[former military dictator of Cuba Fulgencio] Batista traditions from South Florida. This foundation works with the Assembly of the Cuban Resistancea coalition of anti-communist groups that calls for a U.S. invasion of Cuba. At the center of these men is Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former head of the Cuba Democracy Advocates, who was Trumps main adviser on Cuba and is now president of the Inter-American Development Bank based in Washington, D.C. Claver-Carone, Tablada tells us, has been nothing short of the leading lobbyist of the groups acting politically against Cuba in the United States, in the U.S. Congress, representing those entities who benefit from this policy of hatred and aggression against my country. If you ever mentioned [Fidel] Castro, hed go berserk, recalled Claver-Carones friend about his attitude in the 1990s.

The main goal of these people, Tablada said, is to overthrow the Cuban Revolution. Their plan for Cuba, it seems, is to revert it to the days of Batista when U.S. corporations and gangsters ran riot on the island.

Lester Mallorys Memorandum

In 1960, the U.S. State Departments Lester Mallory wrote a memorandum on Cuba. Mallory said that most Cubans support Castro and there is no effective political opposition. Mallory said that there was only one way to go: The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship. There has been no change in policy. The entire embargo is based on Mallorys memorandum.

In 2019, Trumps National Security Adviser John Bolton gave a speech to the veterans of the Bay of Pigs. He said that the U.S. government would use every instrument to suffocate tourism to Cuba. The Trump-era coercive measures are intended to deprive Cuba of any means to conduct normal trade and commerce not only with the United States but also with other countries and firms. Sixty-three companies that sell oil do not want to challenge the U.S. embargo, Tablada said.

Let Cuba Live

The Trump policy continues into the Biden administration. There are 22 signed agreements that Trump didnt revoke, Tablada told us. They could be implemented. Today, we couldve been cooperating against COVID. Nobody knows why Biden excluded Cuba from one of his first executive orders in which he instructed a complete review of the sanctions that hindered the capacity of states to respond to COVID-19. In fact, on February 24, Biden signed an executive order to continue the national emergency with respect to Cuba (which prevents traffic between the countries).

While the economic stranglehold has been severe, the information war against Cuba has been equally vicious. Certainly, Cubans migrate to other countries, as the weight of the blockade is difficult to bear. But there is a higher migration rate from Central American countries and other Caribbean islands into the U.S., Tablada said. The U.S. governments embargo costs Cuba $5 billion per year, Tablada told us, while the U.S. spends tens of billions of dollars tryingand failingto drive us to defeat. There is cruelty in these policies.

Tablada considers what it would mean if Biden ended Trumps 243 coercive measures against Cuba. As a result of the blockade, she said, Cuba produced 90 percent of its medications. It is out of this tradition that Cubas scientists were able to develop five COVID-19 vaccine candidates. If Trumps measures were lifted, she said, Cuba would be able to buy necessary inputs to produce medication. In which case, Cubas medical internationalism would be enhanced.

Even if Biden does nothing, Tablada said, well still pull through. It may cost us a bit more, but we have a plan, we have a strong social consensus. None of these plans include giving up socialism. The ordinary Cubanall of usis capable of sacrificing our individual interests because we know that it is essential for us to have a sovereign homeland [that is]free [and] independent, and that might be as far as we go.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Manolo De Los Santos is a researcher and a political activist. For 10 years, he worked in the organization of solidarity and education programs to challenge the United States regime of illegal sanctions and blockades. Based out of Cuba for many years, Manolo has worked toward building international networks of peoples movements and organizations. In 2018, he became the founding director of the Peoples Forum in New York City, a movement incubator for working-class communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad. He also collaborates as a researcher with Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and is a Globetrotter/Peoples Dispatch fellow.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest book is Washington Bullets, with an introduction by Evo Morales Ayma.
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Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fc005350fc8)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc00528e418)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fc005350fc8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc00528e418)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fc0053512e0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc00528e418)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc00528e418)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc0049e0690)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fc0051c5160)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fc0051c5160)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
System error

error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.

context: ... 21: </%method> 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: </%perl> 28: <table width="90%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> 29: <tr> ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25

/usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:951

/var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17

/usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149



Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 129 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 160 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fc004eb2d60)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 951 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc0052de1a8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/1784076917/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fc004eb2d60)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1305 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 958 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc0052de1a8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 138 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x7fc004f044b0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1303 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1295 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 484 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 436 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc0052de1a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc0052de1a8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x7fc0049e07e0)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fc005347690)') called at (eval 487) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x7fc005347690)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0
ARISS contact with youngsters in Florida, USA

An ARISS educational contact is planned for Shane Kimbrough KE5HOD with youngsters at SpaceKids Global, Winter Park, Florida, USA.



The contact is scheduled on Wednesday July 21, 2021 at approximately 17:47:21 UTC, which is 19:47:21 CEST.



The link to the ISS will be operated by the amateur radio telebridge station IK1SLD, located in northern Italy.



The contact will be conducted in English.



Downlink signals will be audible in Europe on 145.800 MHz narrow band FM.

Moreover, the telebridge groundstation IK1SLD will web stream operations on:

www.ariotti.com



School Information:



The Making Space for Girls Program platform aims to engage and inspire girls around the world to explore aerospace industry professions. This special joint program was born in 2019 of a partnership between two youth-serving not-for-profit organizations: SpaceKids Global and Girl Scouts of Citrus Council.



SpaceKids Global, headquartered in Winter Park, FL, proudly serves their mission is to inspire students in STEAM+ Education--Science, Technology, Engineering Art, and Mathematics + the Environment, with a focus on empowering young girls. Founder and CEO, Sharon Hagle, launched her program in 2015 with a goal to inspire 1 million of youth to consider STEAM+ careers and has successfully reached thousands of youth in the U.S. and Europe.



Girl Scouts of Citrus Council serves nearly 20,000 members in a 6-county Central Florida region, to include Brevard County, home of Kennedy Space Center. The national mission of Girl Scouts is to build girls of courage, confidence, and character who make the world a better place. Citrus Council is committed to the Girl Scout STEM Pledge aimed at encouraging 2.5 million girls in the U.S. to take their place as future leaders in STEM; empowering girls to take lead in developing innovations designed to improve outcomes for all.



The Making Space for Girls STEAM Challenge launched online in the summer of 2020. As a result, hundreds of girls submitted their ideas and artwork in hopes of sending their experiment, art design, or space-themed essay to the International Space Station (ISS). Due collaboration with and the generous support of STEAM Challenge partner, ProXops, the selected projects will launch in a Faraday Box to the ISS on a SpaceX flight in the Fall of 2021. The platform currently hosts monthly interactive virtual programs around space and space careers reaching over 700 girls around the world.





Students First Names and Questions (grade shown):



1. Annalise (1): What is your favorite outer space food? Do you have lots of different things to eat?

2. Phailani (3): In Girl Scouts, we are taught to use resources wisely. How could this concept be applied to NASA and the space industry?

3. Mackenzie (4): What do you do for fun on the ISS?

4. Kiley (5): What is your favorite piece of experiment/research that you have worked on in space?

5. Lauren (10): What does it feel like in space?



6. Annalise (1): Do astronauts get sick when they're in space and how would they handle it if so?

7. Phailani (3): What would happen if you brought a compass to outer space with you?

8. Mackenzie (4): How high can you jump on the moon?

9. Kiley (5): What is Oobleck like in space? Would it act the same as on Earth? Would it firm up when hit or thrown or would it stay all oozy?

10. Lauren (10): What do you do for fun during your free time when you are on the International Space Station?



11. Annalise (1): Do you have any live animals on the International Space Station?

12. Phailani (3): What kinds of food have you been able to grow in space so far?

13. Mackenzie (4): What math did you take and use on the International Space Station?

14. Kiley (5): Would you be excited to meet an alien while you were in space and what would you want them to know about Earth?

15. Lauren (10): Which is more fun- the ride to the ISS or the trip home? What does it feel like?



16. Annalise (1): What's your favorite piece of research you've worked on while in space?

17. Phailani (3): What is your favorite Girl Scout cookie?

18. Mackenzie (4): What are some challenges that you have to face trying to readjust back to your normal life after being in space?

19. Kiley (5): Do you take social media photos or videos in space and how do you post them?

20. Lauren (10): When was a time that you had failed at something in your journey in becoming an astronaut, why did you decide to keep pushing through?



21. Annalise (1): What are some major hurdles to make it to Mars?

22. Phailani (3): How much training and what kind?

23. Mackenzie (4): How would you describe weightlessness?

24. Kiley (5): Does astronaut height increase in Space and come back to normal after returning to earth?

25. Lauren (10): What is your advice to a female that is looking to get into the space industry?



ARISS CALENDAR

The ARISS Operations Team meets weekly by telephone conference and much more frequently via e-mail and telephone. Activities coordinated by the ARISS operations team will be announced in this public Google Calendar. These are the ARISS school contacts, HamTV activities (other than blank transmission) and SSTV activities.

Calendar integration features

On this page we show the ARISS contacts calendar in a Google Calendar format.

This calendar allows you to share ARISS contacts with other calendars or it allows you to integrate info about ARISS activities into your own calendar.

https://www.amsat-on.be/ariss-calendar-with-scheduled-contacts-by-the-ariss-operation-team/



TO CHANGE YOUR E-MAIL ADDRESS

Changing the e-mail address for ARISS-Europe News Bulletins takes two steps:

1. Using the old e-mail address, unsubscribe from the subscribers list with the link available at the bottom of each Bulletin.

2. Subscribe with the new e-mail address using the procedure available at

https://www.amsat-on.be/ariss-europe-news-bulletin-mailing-list/





About ARISS

Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS) is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and the space agencies that support the International Space Station (ISS). In the United States, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation(AMSAT), the American Radio Relay League (ARRL), the ISS National National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities learn about space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For further information, please see www.ariss.org.



73,

Gaston Bertels ON4WF



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Iceland to look at online exams

The UK pioneered amateur radio exams that could be taken online from home, Iceland's IRA intends to examine that idea. The IRA aims to start their next course in October



A translation of the IRA post reads:



It is stated in the new issue of CQ TF (3rd issue 2021) that the aim is for an IRA course for amateur licenses next October. The new issue was be published on the website on Sunday, July 18.



The Board of Directors of IRA made the following agreement at its meeting on June 22: More suitable arrangements need to be found for seminars. A meeting with the examination committee shall be convened. The possibility of holding courses and even exams online, which is done in some countries, needs to be examined. Learning materials need to be updated ".



In a letter to the examination committee of the day. On July 4, the committee members were thanked for their excellent preparation and implementation of the PTA examination for an amateur license on June 5 in Skeljanes.

Then it says, among other things, " that this could be a relatively short meeting (perhaps as the first of two) where the emphasis would be on preparing to offer courses perhaps next October over the internet with unchanged study material". Furthermore, "..New study material is certainly urgent - but it could be time-saving to prepare a course in October, to postpone the discussion / preparation for its implementation until the [next] course afterwards, ie. in February 2022. The estimated meeting date is August 10.Decisions on courses will be explained in more detail when dates and arrangements are available.IRA Board.Source IRA https://tinyurl.com/IARU-Iceland A new edition of the IRA's magazine CQ TF has been published and is available at
North Korean capital cracks down on illegal TVs to prevent access to South Korean broadcasts

Each Pyongyang household must report the number of TVs they own, and they face stiff punishments for hiding them



North Korea has ordered residents of the capital Pyongang to report the number of televisions in each household to stop them from watching banned shows from prosperous, democratic South Korea, sources in the country told RFA.



In North Korea, access to media from the outside world is strictly controlled, and TVs and radios are manufactured to only pick up domestic channels and must be registered with the authorities. But residents do find ways to access South Korean signals, either by using foreign televisions or modifying domestic ones.



Getting caught during routine inspections with a TV that can pick up illegal signals is a punishable offense. Residents with more than one television hide their illegal TVs during inspections, only to bring them out again to watch Seouls latest hot drama or variety show, former residents told RFA.



Authorities are aware of the deception and have issued a directive that every household in the city declare to their local neighborhood watch unit how many televisions they have.



Residents are trying to hide them, but the judicial authorities are trying to find them. They are looking for TVs that can get South Korean TV channels in addition to the official channels, said a resident of Pyongyang, who requested anonymity for security reasons.



Everyone knows that in Pyongyang, South Korean TV signals can be picked up in various areas, the source said. He mentioned the Mangyongdae and Rangrang districts in the center of the city of 2.8 million.



In these areas the residents have been known to have two or three televisions in their homes, so they can watch the legal channels during inspections and watch South Korean broadcasts in secret, the source said.



The source said that residents have developed clever ways to hide their illegal TVs.

Read more from this very interesting Radio Free Asia article:

https://www.rfa.org/english/news/korea/tv-05252021155129.html
Radio hams play key role after storms The Houma Courier reports on the Bayou Amateur Radio Society who have played a vital communication role in the wake of hurricanes that have hit south Louisiana



The group is also known as the Thibodaux Amateur Radio Club.



We asked George Tippett WB5PKK, the group's president, to tell us about the work it does. Here are his edited answers to our questions.



What services do you provide?



We provide emergency communication for relief efforts after hurricanes and other natural or man-made disasters strike our local bayou region communities in southeast Louisiana.



First and foremost, we are a group of FCC-licensed, volunteer amateur, or ham, radio operators. The ham radio hobby has been in existence for over 100 years. It is sometimes erroneously considered a dinosaur method of communicating with the advent of the cellphone and internet. However, amateur radio has consistently proven to be the most reliable form of communication through the years, as it does not require delicate infrastructure to function.



Read the full story and watch the video at

https://houmatoday.com/story/news/2021/07/19/houma-thibodaux-amateur-radio-group-plays-key-role-after-storms/7965693002/
The pressing need for medical attention  for COVID and for routine medical procedures  caused as many as five Broward County hospitals last week to signal that they were at critical capacity. The countys two public health systems, Broward Health and Memorial Healthcare, as well as HCA hospitals, notified rescue workers to route patients away from individual hospitals due to the lack of available beds for those sick enough to be admitted.
Gunfire erupted shortly before 2 a.m. outside The Playhouse Gentlemens Club at 5775 Hallandale Beach Boulevard, just east of 441. Two people got out of a car and shot the victims, according to Broward Sheriffs Office spokesman Carey Codd.
The victim  Concepcion Siverts, 55, of Lauderhill  was discovered at around 1:40 a.m. Monday as she lay unresponsive in the westbound lanes of the 1300 block of East Commercial Boulevard near NE 13th Avenue. She was pronounced dead by first responders.
Kenyon Key, 25, of Fort Lauderdale was arrested Saturday for the shooting that occurred around 5 p.m. in the 5200 block of SW 21st Street near SW 52nd Avenue, according to the Broward Sheriffs Office.
In the hostile work environment, they were frequently subject to groping, physical assaults and sexually charged comments, the complaint says. They went to their managers for help, but instead the managers cut Fairleys hours and stopped scheduling Reddick for shifts, the complaint says.
He was saying, help me get out of the water, Shannon told WPEC. He was pretty far down, so I was able to get down there with the help of this young man that hold me. I was able to drag him out of the water.
If youve been in the ocean there was probably a shark near you, and it probably knew you were there even if you didnt know it was there, said David Shiffman, a marine biologist and the author of the book Why Sharks Matter. Macdonald and a team recently discovered a great hammerhead nursery off the coast of Miami, for instance  the first one found on the Atlantic coast of the United States.
He grew up in the area back when it was only a typical small town, Daves said when speaking at a local government meeting in 2017. Over his 40 years living in downtown West Palm Beach and his four years as West Palm Beach mayor from 1999 to 2003, Daves saw the city undergo what he would later call its own urban renaissance, he once described to the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Last week, we spoke with several people who, despite having documentation that their appointment was on that day, were told that they werent in the system and to come back another day. Whats worse, they could be faulted for not attending their appointment and punished by ICE. The same folks handing out water to immigrants in line have also assisted by explaining how to send an email to ICE and get a written record that they were arbitrarily denied their appointment despite being present at the correct time and place.
Sundays story made clear again that Kochs priority had become Runcie. Koch tried to defend her actions by saying that she was on personal time. In fact, she was exploiting her professional role and trying to keep the public from knowing about it.
The United States long has been the bogeyman Cuban leaders have blamed for the islands economic dysfunction. Theyve said the U.S. embargo is to blame for the demonstration  and not the peoples lack of freedom. But the truth is, in recent months, Cuba has faced civil disobedience from the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists and journalists that loudly demanded an end to the dictatorship.
The target here is what policymakers call the tax gap, which is the difference between what individuals and businesses owe and what they actually pay. The IRS estimates that taxpayers underpay by hundreds of billions of dollars every year, belying the idea that taxes are as certain as death. And one reason for the gap is that Congress has winnowed the IRS funding, particularly in its enforcement arm, which has been cut by more than a quarter since 2010.
Five out of seven British fugitives arrested in Spain in just three weeks had been located on the Costa del Sol.

The authorities caught up with the wanted Brits as a result of joint operations between the National Crime Agency and the Spanish National Police.

Two were arrested in Estepona, two in Fuengirola and one in Marbella, while the two others were detained in Alicante.

According to the National Crime Agency, the fugitives - all men - are wanted in the UK for various unrelated offences including supplying Class A and B drugs, supplying firearms, causing wounding with intent and conspiracy to rob.

The operations were carried out by the Spanish National Police with support from the NCAs international liaison officer network, Interpol Manchester and UK police partners.

In late June one suspect, aged 45, was arrested in Estepona. He was wanted by the NCA in connection to a 40-kilo cocaine conspiracy.

In the early hours of 4 July, a 27-year-old man was arrested in Marbella for allegedly causing wounding with intent. He is wanted by Greater Manchester Police.

Another UK national wanted by West Midlands Police, was arrested on 5 July in Fuengirola, southern Spain, on suspicion of cocaine and firearms supply.

On 6 July two brothers aged 37 and 35, also wanted by GMP, for allegedly supplying cocaine were arrested in Alicante.

One of the arrests in Alicante. / SUR

A day later a 36-year-old man wanted by Merseyside Police was arrested in Estepona for allegedly supplying firearms and Class A and B drugs.

On 12 July, a 26-year-old man wanted by Greater Manchester Police was arrested in Fuengirola in connection to affray with a machete.

The suspects remain in custody awaiting extradition proceedings.

The NCAs international liaison officers worked with Spanish partners and the Crown Prosecution Service to execute the arrests - some under pre-existing European Arrest Warrants, and some under new Trade and Cooperation Agreement warrants.

Dave Hucker Head of European Operations at the NCA, said: Seven arrests in just three weeks is the result of some very hard work by the Agency with our Spanish partners  who have allocated critical resources and operated quickly to secure these arrests.

Fugitives should know that the NCA work hand in glove with international law enforcement partners, and that we therefore have significant reach.

At home and abroad we will never give up on finding offenders who have fled justice.


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Do you know an Iowa centenarian? The Iowa Department on Aging wants your help to recognize them.

The Iowa Department on Aging and the state's Area Agencies on Aging are seeking nominations to celebrate Iowans who are 100 years old or older.

"These individuals have lived through life experiences that most of us have only read about in books or seen in movies; their strength, endurance and collective wisdom inspires us all and they deserve to be recognized in a safe way," a press release from the Iowa Department on Aging said.

For the program's purposes, centenarians are older adults who are living in Iowa and will be 100 or older by Dec. 31 of this year.

To submit a recognition form, visit https://appengine.egov.com/apps/ia/ida_centenarians.

"Centenarians and their loved ones can fill out the form and the information collected will be maintained in a secure database," the release said. To ensure you or your loved one receive recognition, forms should be submitted by Aug. 30.

Each centenarian will receive a certificate signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds and will be given the option from the Iowa Department on Aging to have a profile on their website that will consist of their first name, picture and "fun information" shared on the form.

The department will host a virtual event in late fall or early winter to recognize all centenarians. More information on that will be shared at a later date.

For more information about the program, email Marissa Vance at marissa.patterson1@iowa.gov.

Know any North Iowa centenarians? The Globe Gazette would like to celebrate them, too. Submit a news tip by visiting globegazette.com/news-tip or calling our Mason City office at 641-421-0500.

WATCH NOW: At 110, Cedar Falls woman's secret to longevity is kindness, positivity
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MANZINI - It all started when the King transitioned from being a constitutional monarch to an absolute monarch.

This submission was made by Ngwane National Liberatory Congress (NNLC) before the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Troika technical fact-finding mission yesterday. According to an impeccable source, this was after the SADC Troika Team allegedly asked the political party, which was represented by its President Sibongile Mazibuko, what they thought could have led to the prevailing political unrest in the country. The source claimed that Mazibuko submitted that the NNLC was one of the political parties which played a major role in liberating the people of Eswatini from the British in 1968.

Banned

He said the leader of the political party told the SADC Troika Team that in 1973, when King Sobhuza II pronounced the 1973 decree, which banned political parties and assumed absolute power, the NNLC began another struggle; that of liberating emaSwati from the monarchy. He alleged that Mazibuko purported that what was currently happening in the country was a manifestation of the 1973 decree, when the king assumed absolute power and Eswatini became a one-party State. According to the impeccable source, the political activist submitted that after 1973, the King allegedly had power to control the national budget, Parliament, Cabinet and judges among others.

Thereafter, he alleged that Mazibuko asked the SADC Troika team to speak to His Majesty King Mswati III, who is the Commander-in-Chief of the Umbutfo Eswatini Defence Force (UEDF), to remove soldiers from the streets and put them back in their barracks and wait for a war, instead of allegedly killing innocent emaSwati. The source said Mazibuko put it on record that dozens of emaSwati were shot during the recent countrywide pro-democracy protests which culminated in vandalism, looting and burning of some businesses. In that regard, the source said the leader of the NNLC asked the SADC Troika team to also speak to the King to ensure that the families of people who were shot dead allegedly by State security organs, especially soldiers, should be compensated.

Again, the source said Mazibuko also asked the SADC Troika team to speak to the King to make sure that people who were shot during the protest actions, and were in hospital, should get treatment and remove bullets from those who still have them lodged in their bodies. Afterwards, the source said Mazibuko was asked what the NNLC thought could be a way forward and she said the current Parliament should be dissolved.
SITEKI  Members of the army and police officers have been deployed at Lomahasha Police Station and the community at large following threats by some youth of the area to burn the cop shop.

According to information shared by a senior police officer yesterday, Lomahasha Police Station Commander Philip Tsabedze requested reinforcement from Simunye Police Station to monitor the situation on Sunday night. This was after close to 100 youth members marched to the police station and later burnt tyres, blocking traffic along the road to the Lomahasha Border Gate. Even though not stating the number of the deployed police officers, citing security reasons, the police officer stated that the reinforcement had been necessitated by the volatile situation in the small town. The Lomahasha youth has been angered by the shooting of two residents in Sifiso Mpostoli Masilela and Mxolisi Sigubhu Nyoni, allegedly by an off-duty police officer, Nkosinathi Twenty Dlamini, on Saturday night.

Murder

The murder of the two happened at the home of the late Peters Transport owner, Peter Mashaba, during a funeral of a family member, Joshua. We have to deploy more police to monitor the situation during the day and night as the youth are still angry. The burning of tyres and blocking of the road was significant enough to show that they can do worse things than what they did on Sunday. We will monitor the situation and ensure that it calms down, said the police officer. A resident, who asked not to be indentified in fear of victimisation by the police, also confirmed that the youth had planned to torch the police station. They are still angry because they believe more people will be killed in this manner by the police. They want to burn down the police station so that government takes their grievances seriously, considering that there have been a number of similar incidents where people were killed by the police and justice was not served. After the burning of the tyres, soldiers and police camped at the Lomahasha Service Centre and at the police station to monitor the situation, said the resident.

Angry

Siboniso Mkhabela, a resident of the area, also confirmed that the youth were still angry and wanted to burn the police station.The youth want to burn the police station and I tried to stop them even yesterday. I sat them down, but after I had left, they continued to burn tyres. They are angry and the threat is still lingering in their minds as they are not happy with what happened to the two residents. They want justice and I believe government has to put a stop to the killing of innocent souls, he said.

A brother to one of the deceased, Bongani Nyoni, confirmed having been informed about the matter; however, he indicated that the family was still busy with preparations for the burial of their loved one.
MBABANE- A 35-year-old man of Mvutshini in Ezulwini was on Saturday shot in both legs after allegedly escaping from police custody shortly after being arrested.

Information gathered was to the effect that Thulani Issa Fakudze had just been arrested for allegedly breaching Section 15 (3) of the Public Order Act of 2017 when he reportedly escaped from the custody of Constable Siphiwo Sikhondze from Lobamba Police Station.

Stealing

Fakudze is accused of stealing a Defy deep freezer and a glass display fridge, both totalling E12 000. The items were allegedly stolen at TSK General Dealer on June 29, 2021 during the unrest which resulted in the vandalism, looting and burning of some businesses in the country. Through his lawyer, Fakudze applied for bail in order to be able to seek medical attention. He submitted that his injuries required proper medical attention as he was allegedly shot three times in both legs. The accused mentioned that he had not accessed medication, not even painkillers since he was shot last Saturday. He was walking with the aid of a broomstick when he appeared in court, which he used as a crutch. In view of the circumstances, Acting Mbabane Senior Magistrate Sifiso Vilakati granted Fakudze bail fixed at E2 000. This was after the Crown had informed the court that it was not opposing the bail application. Magistrate Vilakati stated that Fakudze was granted bail to enable him to seek medical attention. The court warned Fakudze to appear in court on July 30, 2021, pending trial on September 25, 2021. Fakudze had a verbal showdown with a police officer while on his way to a police van.

Started

It all started after he accused the officer of the law of ill-treating him. Fakudze also accused the police officer of not affording him an opportunity to call his relatives after he was granted bail. His lawyer had to intervene when the officer of the law instructed Fakudze to board the police van during the course of the argument.
LOBAMBA  You sold us out to the electorate for five cents.

This was said by Lobamba Lomdzala MP Marwick Khumalo, who went on a tirade and blasted Speaker Petros Mavimbela. This was after Motshane MP Robert Magongo had sought clarification at the start of yesterdays sitting on why the House had not had a sitting for a whole month. Yesterdays sitting of the House of Assembly was the first after a month-long recess. It was revealed that some MPs had spoken to the Speaker, seeking clarification from him and asking for a sitting. MP Khumalo said the Speakers actions had created a possibility that chances of those who wanted to go for re-election had been heavily diminished. He said the Speaker should not allow himself to be captured by not informing the House.

Khumalo said he was aggrieved with the Speakers conduct in the last few weeks because he did not show the characters of a Speaker whom he had elected. In all honesty, we arent a department of the Executive, we are MPs, he said. He said people were asking MPs why they were quiet as the country went through rough times in the past few weeks. He said for someone whom they called their Speaker, who did not even acknowledge their messages, was unacceptable. In vernacular he said; Usishaya indiva. He said the Speaker did not even have the decency to respond to their messages and he was basically trivialising the whole matter and treating them with disdain. He said he took great exception to that. MP Khumalo said they were not lambs who were being guided by a shepherd.

Security

It does not mean that we are schoolchildren and you are the head master, that is not the case, you are there to serve because we elected you into that position. Really is it deserving of us that you wont respond to us and wait until today to inform us of the security issue? MP Khumalo asked. He asked the Speaker who would have suffered any harm or died if he had informed the MPs of the security issue earlier. Who would have died because there is no one else we could have asked as to why we were not meeting in Parliament. Would it have hurt you to tell us of the security threats? he asked. Meanwhile, MP Magongo said he had contacted Mavimbela many times. Who do you consult with when we want to have a House sitting? We believe that we are your principals as the electorate, said MP Magongo. MP Magongo said there was a lot of unrest in the country and the people were accusing MPs of being quiet. He said as MPs, they were allowed to address national issues in the House.

In response, the Speaker said it was a simple and straight forward matter. He said it was known that the House was for the MPs. However, he said he had received an instruction from security that it was not safe for the House to meet in Parliament.

Therefore, as Speaker I have a right to allow MPs to remain at home to be safe, he said. He said after that advice from security, he could not have ignored it. He said as they converged yesterday, there were indications that the situation was calmer, which was why they had called a sitting yesterday and they were back at work. On another note, the Speaker reminded the MPs that the COVID-19 pandemic was still a threat, especially with the numbers of cases rising. He said they must observe all the necessary precautions.
LOBAMBA  The swearing- in ceremony of the newly-appointed Prime Minister, Cleopas Sipho Dlamini, was delayed by over 30 minutes as the constitutionality of his appointment was challenged by Hosea MP Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza yesterday.

The swearing-in was expected to start at around 2:45pm after the House of Assembly had deliberated on a few housekeeping issues. However, after the Speaker, Petros Mavimbela, had read Legal Notice No.207 of 2021, the gazette appointing Dlamini as a member of the House of Assembly and asked that he be ushered into the chamber, MP Mabuza was quick on his feet on a point of order. The MP said he wanted the Speaker to clarify to all emaSwati a few issues. He said what they got about Dlamini was that he was appointed as PM on Friday during Sibaya.

Constitution

He said Sibaya was constitutional, but said Section 67 (1) of the Constitution stated that the King shall appoint the prime minister from among members of the House acting on the recommendation of the Kings Advisory Council. However, when I read your Order Paper today, it states that there is the swearing-in of a member today, Cleopas Dlamini to be an MP, said Mabuza. He asked the Speaker if he was using the Thursday July 15, 2021 as the date written in the gazette that appointed an MP, he wondered where Dlamini had taken his oath. This is because the Constitution I am reading says the person can only be appointed PM on condition that he was an MP, said Mabuza. The MP further said according to the law, Dlamini had been appointed by the King into Senate in 2018 and wanted proof that by Thursday, Dlamini was no longer a senator. He said he wanted documented proof allowed by the Constitution appointing him PM. If that document is available or not, if it is the King who fetched him from the other chamber to this one, show us the constitutional powers which the King has to withdraw someone from Senate, submitted Mabuza.

He said he wanted all those things so that emaSwati would be content that Dlamini was constitutionally appointed. He highlighted that they were not against Cleopas being appointed but they were against the breaching of the Constitution. He said before Dlamini was sworn in, it must be clear that the Constitution was followed to the letter. In response, the Speaker gave the floor to the Attorney General (AG) Sifiso Khumalo to address the matter. Khumalo said the PM was appointed in terms of Section 67 (1) which had been cited numerous times in the House. The King appointed Cleopas Sipho Dlamini to be a member of this House on Thursday July 15, 2021, as per the instrument you read Mr Speaker correctly pointed it out, said Khumalo. The AG said on July 16, the King called Sibaya and appointed Dlamini as PM.
His Majesty King Hamad last night congratulated Bahraini citizens and residents on the advent of the four-day Eid Al Adha (the Feast of Sacrifice), which is one of the most important holidays in the Muslim Calendar.

He also extended Eid greetings to Team Bahrain, led by HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince Prime Minister, expressing pride in their strenuous efforts and the continuous outstanding successes they are making in fighting the novel Coronavirus pandemic and mitigating its effects through well-thought-out plans and precautionary measures, which led to a sharp drop in the number of active cases, reported BNA.

King Hamad praised the great sacrifices made by frontline heroes, including medical and nursing staff, as well as allied teams and those responsible for the National Vaccination Campaign, noting that they all set the best examples of dedication, humanitarianism, loyalty and devotion to the cherished land, citing their constant keenness to protect the health and safety of everyone.

He affirmed that all required support will continue to be provided for Team Bahrain in order to ensure the success of their national duties so that kingdom overcomes the pandemic successfully, and everyone enjoys wellness and good health.

His Majesty thanked the citizens and residents for their sense of responsibility, awareness and unwavering support for the ongoing national efforts to combat Covid, by continuing their compliance with the precautionary measures in force and keenness to take the vaccines, and even the booster dose, said the BNA report.

He affirmed that the health situation in Bahrain is reassuring, and that the kingdom was on the right track towards recovery

Bahrain will overcome this period through the cooperation and awareness of everyone, as well as their commitment to working together as one team, he added.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has welcomed yesterdays (July 19) decision by the government of Canada to further ease border restrictions for fully vaccinated passengers.



Eligible US citizens and permanent US residents arriving from the US will be permitted to enter Canada as of August 9 and foreign nationals arriving from all other countries will be allowed as of September 7. Fully vaccinated Canadian citizens and residents have been able to enter Canada without the need for hotel quarantine since July 5, 2021.



Todays decision by the government of Canada to gradually allow fully vaccinated foreigners travellers to enter the country is good news on various fronts, said Willie Walsh, IATAs Director General.



First and foremost, it restores the freedom of travel, which will be especially welcomed by those who were barred from seeing friends and family. Moreover, airlines can now start reinstating international connectivity.



This will be a boost for rebuilding the Canadian economy, especially through the contribution of international business and tourism. Nevertheless, we ask the authorities to consider the latest recommendations from the World Health Organization regarding alleviations for those who are unable to get vaccinated, he added.



According to latest calculations by IATA Economics, reopening Canadas borders to international travellers will:



 Allow airlines to begin restoring the estimated 682 routes (domestic and international) which we lost as a result of the pandemic,

 Begin generating the CAD19 billion ($15 billion) in annual spending by visitors,

 Support and sustain 432,000 local jobs, and

 Provide an annual contribution of CAD14 billion to Canadas GDP.  TradeArabia News Service
The heads of the State Museum of Turkmenistan and the French Museum of Mankind (anthropological branch of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris) discussed prospects for development of cooperation during an online meeting.

During the meeting, Director of the French museum Andre Delouche spoke about the activities of his museum, areas of work, scientific research and most interesting exhibits.

In turn, the head of the department of nature and local history of the State Museum of Turkmenistan, Enedzhan Altyeva, told her French colleagues about the collection of artifacts discovered by Turkmen researchers.

The sides discussed issues relating to exchange of experiences in the field of systematization, storage, restoration and exhibition of archaeological and ethnographic items.

The sides spoke highly of the benefits of such a dialogue and expressed interest in holding joint exhibitions and other events in the future.

 TURKMENISTAN.RU, 2021
UW Language Program Receives Department of Defense Grant for ROTC Students to Study Abroad

A University of Wyoming program that teaches Arabic and Middle East studies is the recipient of a U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) award to support Arabic training for ROTC students at home and abroad.

UWs Arabic and Middle East Studies Program, in the School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies, was awarded a $461,000 grant for the coming year. It may be extended up to five years based on quality of performance, says Eric Nigh, an assistant lecturer and the programs director.

The grant, titled Project Global Officer (Project GO), allows students participating in ROTC programs at UW and nearby universities on Colorados Front Range and surrounding states to travel to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan for a summer language program.

Students will first enroll in a two-credit spring semester preparation course taught by Ali Raddaoui, originally from the University of Sfax in Tunisia, which is the Wyoming National Guards institutional DOD state partner. Following this preparatory language and cultural orientation, students will spend 10 weeks during the summer learning Arabic in Jordan. Students who have participated in Project GO then are eligible to continue their Arabic studies at UW in subsequent years through online courses provided by the universitys Arabic and Middle East Studies Program.

Through funding made available by this grant, UW will provide Middle East study-abroad opportunities to ROTC students at UW and other regional universities with ROTC programs, Nigh says. UW will become a leader in paving the way for the creation of Arabic language study-abroad opportunities for ROTC students at universities in our region.

Project GO is a collaborative initiative that promotes critical language education, study abroad and intercultural dialogue opportunities for ROTC students. The program focuses on the languages and countries of Africa, Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East and South America.

The DOD program, sponsored by the Defense Language and National Security Education Office, and administered by the Institute of International Education, provides grants to U.S institutions of higher education with ROTC student enrollments. Since 2007, Project GO institutions have provided more than 5,600 domestic and overseas summer scholarships to ROTC students for critical language study. To learn more about the program, go to www.rotcprojectgo.org/.

UW students and others from surrounding universities will have their tuition and course fees paid through the DOD grant.

By co-opting students from universities without Arabic programs, we anticipate that around 10 additional students will continue taking Arabic at UW, in addition to the students we already have, Nigh says. UW students have participated in past Project GO study-abroad opportunities throughout other universities, but this is the first time we have become a sending institution.

The DOD grant implementation team will be led by Nigh in partnership with Shawn Bunning, a project coordinator in the UW Global Engagement Office. The grant will support a full-time, benefited coordinator -- Sgt. Samuel Bunn, hired through UWs Arabic and Middle East Studies Program; Raddaoui, who is the lead preparatory instructor; a full-time graduate assistant in the masters degree program in international studies; and multiple Arabic tutors.

For more information about the program, email Nigh at enigh@uwyo.edu.
ELIZABETH URBAN is News Editor for The Vidette. Urban can be contacted at emurba1@ilstu.edu. Follow Urban on Twitter at @eliizabethurban.

IF YOU SUPPORT THE VIDETTE MISSION of providing a training laboratory for Illinois State University student journalists to learn and sharpen viable, valuable and marketable skills in all phases of print and digital media, please contribute to this most important cause. Thank you.
Los Angeles Unified School District food service worker Marisel Dominguez, right, distributes free school meals on Thursday, July 15, 2021, at the Liechty Middle School in Los Angeles. Flush with cash from an unexpected budget surplus, California is launching the nations largest statewide universal free lunch program. When classrooms open for the fall term, every one of Californias 6.2 million public school students will have the option to eat school meals for free, regardless of their familys income. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
UK set for big reopening as cases soar most in the world


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From 28 June to 15 July 2021, several virtual training workshops on internal control were organized by the WCO Anti-Corruption & Integrity Promotion (A-CIP) Programme with funding from the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) in response to specific needs identified by Malawi, Mali and Sierra Leone. The workshops are the first of a series and aim to build a common understanding and vocabulary for internal controls based on the WCO Revised Arusha Declaration Audit and Investigation Key factor, drawing from the WCO Integrity Development Guide and Member experiences, including the compilation of internal control practices.

Customs and Revenue officials holding key positions in areas such as Internal Affairs, Internal Audit, Information Technology, Modernization, Investigations, Corporate Affairs, Policy Planning, Human Resources and Enterprise Risk Management, attended the virtual training workshop facilitated by experts from Brazil Federal Revenue Authority, Canada Border Services Agency, Mauritius Revenue Authority and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Over nine online sessions, and incorporating homework assignments, WCO experts and Customs and Revenue officials exchanged views and perspectives aiming at reinforcing their internal control function.

Malawi Revenue Authority and WCO experts discussed integrity-related best practices such as the use of integrity-based scenarios and case studies to help developing ethical decision-making amongst new recruits and serving officers. During the workshop which mobilized Mali Customs officials and in particular the Internal Control Office agents of Mali Customs, discussions focused on the importance of developing an internal control strategy based on the prevention of inappropriate behavior, the training of agents and robust response and investigation processes. A takeaway emphasized by Sierra Leone National Revenue Authority was the importance of strong collaboration between all areas that have a stake, impact or influence on the promotion of integrity within an organization. For example, internal affairs and human resources working hand-in-hand at the recruitment and training phases.

All three administrations acknowledged the importance of the WCO Revised Arusha Declaration, as well as the impact of collective action to combat corruption and promote integrity.

For more information, please, contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org
As part of its commitment to strengthen the CITES enforcement capacities of the World Customs Organization (WCO)s members, the Environment Programme (EP) and the WCO INAMA Project assessed the capacity of 11 Customs administrations in sub-Saharan African, Asian and South American countries to mitigate Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) in the context of a series of 5-half day online diagnostic missions.

Under the auspices of the WCO INAMA Project, funded by the Department of State of the United States, officers from the Customs administrations of Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Guyana, Indonesia, the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Malaysia, Namibia, Peru, and Uganda attended the online events, specifically focusing on the IWT aspects of training, enforcement, legal, international and inter-agency cooperation, intelligence and risk management. The mission for the Nigeria Customs Service was conducted under the framework of the WCO EP.

Detailed reports with findings and recommendations are being shared with the administrations, which will represent the basis for future online and face-to-face engagements. This approach ensures that all interventions are tailored to the specific needs of each beneficiary administration, avoiding duplications and increasing the effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of the Programmes/ Projects delivery.

Accredited Customs Technical and Operational Advisors and recognized experts from Angola, Burkina Faso, France, Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Spain, Sri Lanka, Togo, and Zambia co-facilitated the events, providing valuable input and subject matter expertise.
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Paducah Man Arrested on Gun, Drug Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

PADUCAH - A Paducah man was arrested on gun and drug charges after a caller reported a reckless driver Monday night on Park Avenue.The call came from an off-duty Massac County Sheriff's Deputy that a car had hit a guard rail on Park Avenue and was smoking, but the driver kept going.Paducah Police spotted the vehicle near Monroe Street and saw it swerve several times and nearly hit several parked cars.Police stopped 49-year-old Yul E. Reese. They said Reese was intoxicated.Police searched the car and allegedly found a glass smoking pipe with white powder residue, a small bag of synthetic marijuana and a silver revolver. The revolvers serial number had been defaced, but a computer check revealed it was reported stolen from the Sikeston, MO, area.Reese's charges included receiving stolen property, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, driving under the influence and resisting arrest.
Emery, Gaines Appear in Court on Drug Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

MCCRACKEN COUNTY - Two Paducah residents facing drug charges following an investigation into a noise complaint were in court Monday.Twenty-eight-year-old Chelsea Emery and 28-year-old Robert Gaines appeared for a pretrial conference. The McCracken Circuit Court Clerk said the hearing was continued until September 20.On September 8, McCracken County deputies responded to a home on Happy Hollow Drive for a noise complaint. As deputies approached, Emery reportedly tried to conceal a bag of meth and marijuana, leading to her arrest.Gaines was arrested after authorities said they found drugs and drug paraphernalia in plain view inside the home. Gaines was also reportedly in possession of meth.They both face charges of possession of meth and drug paraphernalia. Emery is additionally facing a charge of possession of marijuana and tampering with physical evidence.
Graves County Man Sought by Kentucky State Police

By West Kentucky Star Staff

GRAVES COUNTY - Kentucky State Police are asking the public's help in finding a wanted Graves County man.State Police say 39-year-old Justin Riley is wanted on charges of 4th degree assault and 1st degree criminal mischief. Those charges are from an assault incident that occurred in the Golo area on June 26th. Riley is also being sought on a Graves County bench warrant for failure to pay child support.He is known to live outdoors in a makeshift treehouse near the Golo area, but so far law enforcement officials have been unable to to locate him.Anyone with information is asked to contact Kentucky State Police, Post 1 at 270-856-3721 or anonymously at 1-800-222-5555.
Graves Man Sentenced on Rape, Burglary Charges

By West Kentucky Star Staff

GRAVES COUNTY - A Graves County man convicted on rape and burglary charges has been sentenced.On Monday, Judge Joe Castlen sentenced 47-year-old Wayne Jerome III of Fancy Farm to ten years for burglary, six years for possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, 15 years for rape, 15 years for kidnapping, 12 months for violating a domestic violence order, and 12 months for terroristic threatening.In total, Jerome was sentenced to serve 30 years. He will also be required to register as a lifetime sex offender, and under a protective order he will be barred from making contact with the victim for 10 years after his release.Jerome was convicted by a jury on May 7.According to the Mayfield Police Department, Jerome broke into his wife's home on March 21, where he threatened her, raped her at gunpoint, and made her drive him around until he released her.At the time of the incident, he was subject to a court-mandated domestic violence order requiring him to stay away from his spouse and her home for three years.On the Net:
Gun, Drug Charges For Paducah Man in Lyon County

By West Kentucky Star Staff

LYON COUNTY - A Paducah man was arrested in Lyon County on drug and gun charges Saturday.The Lyon County Sheriff's Office said they received a call about a suspicious person from a business in the Suwanee community.Deputies said they found 33-year-old Matthew R. Eggleston of Paducah in possession of three firearms and over 28 grams of crystal Methamphetamine. Eggleston is a convicted felon and had been staying at a motel in Kuttawa.Eggleston was arrested and charged with persistent felony possession of a firearm, possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, firearm enhanced trafficking in a controlled substance-1st degree, firearm enhanced possession of a controlled substance-1st degree, possession of drug paraphernalia, and carrying a concealed deadly weapon.
Help Sought to Find Lyon County Woman

By West Kentucky Star Staff

LYON COUNTY - The Lyon County Sheriff's Office is seeking the public's help in locating a missing woman.Thirty-four-year-old Tabitha D. Cunningham was last seen July 13. She is described as a white female 57, weighing 170 pounds with brown hair and brown eyes.Anyone with information is asked to contact the Sheriffs Office at (270) 388-2311 or Dispatch at (270) 388-0911.
Wanted Boaz Man Arrested in Graves County

By West Kentucky Star Staff

WESTERN KENTUCKY - A Boaz man wanted on several outstanding warrants has been arrested in Graves County.According to the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, 20-year-old Thomas Cole McNeil was located in Graves County on Wednesday.Graves County deputies began searching for McNeil on Sunday related to several outstanding warrants including absconding parole, probation violation for felony offenses and failure to appear for felony offenses.Marshall County deputies joined the search for McNeil Monday night after a report that he had pointed a pistol at his girlfriend and two witnesses on Impala Road.The Sheriff's Office thanked the public for assisting in the search.A new incident involving a wanted Graves County man has law enforcement expanding their search efforts.The Marshall County Sheriff's Office says they are now involved in the search for 20-year-old Thomas Cole McNeil after a recent incident in Marshall County has led to new charges. McNeil is also wanted in Graves County on several outstanding warrants.They now consider McNeil to be armed and dangerous as he was last seen with a handgun.Marshall County Sheriff's deputies began searching for McNeil Monday night after a report that he had pointed a pistol at his girlfriend and two witnesses on Impala Road. They say McNeil fled into a wooded area after the incident.Deputies brought in a K-9 unit as well as a drone from the Marshall County Rescue Squad to assist with the search. After several hours of searching and failure to ping McNeil's cellphone the search was called off in the early morning hours.Tuesday morning deputies received a call about a suspicious person in the same area, but again were unsuccessful in their search. The Sheriff's office says that suspicious persons calls are common for them at the Sledd Creek boat ramp area.Anyone who sees McNeil is asked to call 911 immediately.
Residents Attend US-641 Project Public Meeting

By West Kentucky Star Staff

EDDYVILLE - The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet says 90 area residents attended an online public hearing Monday evening on efforts to reconstruct US-641 in Lyon and Caldwell Counties.KYTC District 1 Chief Engineer Kyle Poat says public comments helped guide the project since it began with a study 15 years ago. Input provided during the hearing will assist engineers and design staff with efforts to develop the preferred alternate route.Residents can still comment by email or verbal comments by phone for the next three weeks. A transcript of comments made during the public hearing will be posted on the project website in a few days.In 2019, KYTC engineers announced a preliminary preferred alternate route aimed at improving safety and mobility along US-641 between Eddyville and Fredonia. The alternate maximizes the use of land owned by other state agencies and has since been adjusted slightly near the Fredonia Valley Quarry to utilize a section of old railroad bed. Maps, the environmental assessment draft document, and other information are available for review on the project website.Project Manager Chris Kuntz noted KYTC has worked extensively with residents, property owners, business leaders and elected officials to review and study the US-641 corridor. The project timeline calls for final design in 2022, right-of-way acquisition to start in 2023, with a construction start possible on the Lyon County end sometime in 2025.Once complete, the new roadway between Eddyville and Fredonia will link with another US-641 improvement project between Fredonia and Marion, which opened to traffic in December 2018.On the Net:
Downtown Benton Work to Continue 4 Months

By West Kentucky Star Staff

BENTON - A contractor for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is starting a 4-month push to complete curb and concrete pavement work along Main and Poplar streets in downtown Benton.KYTC chief engineer Kyle Poat said during work last summer, engineers noticed deficiencies in the base material along the project area, so they added about $3 million in additional concrete work that will require the extra work this fall.The crew will be working along about a 4 to 5 block section of the work zone at a time. Due to the high level of activity starting Thursday drivers are asked to use an alternate route, if possible.There will be no on-street parking in work areas. The contractor will attempt to maintain access for businesses and residences along the work zone, but closures will be required at times.
Wood, Andrew

Celebrating the Life of Dr. Andrew Wood

(May 20, 1923  June 19, 2021)

The family of Dr. Andrew Andy Wood would like to extend an invitation to friends and family to help celebrate his more than 90 years of life. Please join them for an afternoon full of memories, fun and enjoyment on Sunday, August 1, 2021 from 1:00 pm until 3:00 pm at the Country Club of Paducah.

You may leave a Hug From Home, a message of sympathy and light a candle at www.milnerandorr.com.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-19 02:15:16|Editor: huaxia

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Two girls wait in line to receive the COVID-19 vaccine in Hawalli Governorate, Kuwait, July 20, 2021. Kuwait started on Sunday vaccinating teenagers aged 12-15 against COVID-19 in preparation for the new school year that starts in September. (Photo by Asad/Xinhua)

KUWAIT CITY, July 18 (Xinhua) -- Kuwait started on Sunday vaccinating teenagers aged 12-15 against COVID-19 in preparation for the new school year that starts in September.

Buthaina Al-Mudhaf, assistant undersecretary for public health affairs of the Kuwaiti Health Ministry, said in a statement that the ministry has started vaccinating teenagers aged between 12 and 15 in health centers in six governorates across the country.

"There was a great vaccination turnout of teenagers today," she added.

Registration for vaccination is still open, she said, calling on people to help their children make registration and receive the vaccine on the specified date.

To contain the spread of the COVID-19, Kuwait has decided to shut down all activities for children including summer clubs starting from July 25 until further notice.

In March, Kuwaiti Health Minister Bassel Al-Sabah announced the resumption of study at schools from September, affirming that all students, teachers and administrative bodies will have completed vaccination by then. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-19 23:42:48|Editor: huaxia

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BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Brunei on Monday suspended all entry from Indonesia due to their COVID-19 situation and rising imported cases from the country.

According to Brunei's Prime Minister's Office (PMO), following the ongoing situation of COVID-19 in Indonesia, approvals on the entry for foreign nationals departing from or through Indonesia are temporarily suspended with immediate effect until further notice, which applies to entry travels of all foreign nationals departing from or through any airport in Indonesia (direct flight) or traveling from Indonesia to Brunei via transit at any other airport.

The PMO also said that in addition, the temporary suspension also applies to foreign nationals who have been granted pre-approvals to enter Brunei from Indonesia.

Indonesia on Monday recorded 34,257 newly-confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 1,338 deaths in the past 24 hours, the country's Health Ministry said.

After recording eight imported cases from Indonesia on Sunday, Brunei reported another 14 newly confirmed COVID-19 cases from Indonesia on Monday, bringing the national tally to 305.

According to Brunei's Ministry of Health, the new cases are all Indonesian citizens arriving from Indonesia via Singapore on July 12, 2021.

Three of the 14 cases have signs of infection, including flu and fever before or after their arrival, while the other 11 cases show no signs of infection.

Investigation and contact tracing have confirmed no close contacts for these cases. All of the patients were detected when they were undergoing their quarantine in Brunei.

The new cases are being treated and monitored at the National Isolation Center with 27 other active patients, who are all in a stable condition.

With the detection of the new cases, a total of 164 imported cases have been confirmed since the last local infection case on May 6, 2020. Brunei has recorded 439 days without local COVID-19 infection cases.

There have been a total of 261 recovered patients and three deaths reported from COVID-19 so far in the country.

The health ministry also said that as of July 18, 110,814 individuals had received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, accounting for about 24.4 percent of Brunei's total population. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 08:19:17|Editor: huaxia

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Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune (R) meets with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) in Algiers, Algeria, July 19, 2021. (Xinhua)

ALGIERS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said on Monday that Algeria is ready to deepen cooperation with China in various fields under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The Algerian leader made the remarks during his meeting with visiting Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Tebboune asked Wang to convey his cordial greetings to Chinese President Xi Jinping, while also extending his warm congratulation to the Communist Party of China (CPC) on its 100th anniversary of founding.

Tebboune spoke highly of the outstanding achievements the Chinese people have made in the course of revolution and construction under the leadership of the CPC.

Noting that China and Algeria share a long history of friendship and mutual trust, Tebboune said Algeria's policy on China has never changed since the North African country gained independence. He cited that Algeria has always deemed China as a diplomatic priority and stood firmly with China.

As both countries have entered a new stage of development, it's hoped that they will deepen cooperation in the areas of economy, trade, investment, energy, mining and infrastructure construction under the BRI framework, so to achieve common development which will also benefit other developing countries, said Tebboune.

He stressed that Algeria has supported China in the past, is still supporting China now, and will continue to support China even more in the future.

The Algerian president also congratulated China on the 50th anniversary of restoring its lawful seat in the United Nations, adding that Algeria expects China to play a bigger role in international affairs to promote regional and global peace and stability.

For his part, Wang conveyed warm greetings from President Xi to Tebboune.

Praising Algeria as a country of heroism and principle, Wang said Algeria has always adhered to an independent policy and upheld justice in international affairs, which has earned respect from the international community.

Fifty years ago, Algeria and other developing countries, battling against pressure and interference, gave full support to restoring the lawful seat of the People's Republic of China in the United Nations, Wang noted.

"Fifty years later, I came to your country to celebrate this historic event and to show gratitude to our Algerian friends," said the Chinese diplomat.

Wang added that his visit also aimed to send out a clear message: China will continue to treat Algeria as an important partner in strengthening unity and cooperation among developing countries under the new circumstances.

China stands ready to join hands with Algeria to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries and uphold international justice, he said.

China and Algeria, Wang said, used to be comrades-in-arms who fought side by side and now have become partners in seeking common development and prosperity.

The mutually beneficial cooperation between the two countries has great potential and space for development, Wang said, adding that China encourages its enterprises to invest and do business in Algeria.

China is willing to work with Algeria to translate their high-level political mutual trust into tangible results of cooperation, help Algeria accelerate the pace of industrialization, and enhance its capacity for independent development, the Chinese diplomat said.

Wang promised that China will continue to provide COVID-19 vaccines to Algeria and promote cooperation in vaccine production to help Algeria overcome the pandemic at an early date.

Also on Monday, Wang held talks with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 08:54:09|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

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LONDON -- England has lifted almost all its remaining COVID-19 restrictions on Monday, according to its roadmap out of lockdown.

As the number of daily infections continues to rapidly increase, the final stage of easing coronavirus restrictions came with a note of caution.

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SAO PAULO -- Brazil registered 948 more COVID-19 deaths in the past 24 hours, raising its national death toll to 542,214, the Ministry of Health reported on Sunday.

The ministry stated that another 34,126 cases were also registered, taking the total caseload to 19,376,574.

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TEHRAN -- Iran reported on Monday 25,441 new COVID-19 cases, raising the country's total infections to 3,548,704.

The pandemic has so far claimed 87,374 lives in Iran, up by 213 in the past 24 hours, the Ministry of Health and Medical Education said in a briefing published on the ministry's official website.

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DHAKA -- More than 1.1 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Bangladesh as of Sunday.

The country's Directorate General of Health Services reported 11,578 new COVID-19 cases and 225 more deaths on Sunday, making the tally at 11,03,989 and death toll at 17,894. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 09:00:54|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, July 19 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden discussed bilateral cooperation and regional issues with visiting King Abdullah II of Jordan on Monday.

Before their bilateral meeting, Biden expressed gratitude to King Abdullah II for his "enduring and strategic relationship with the United States" and "vital leadership in the Middle East."

"We're going to continue to strengthen our bilateral cooperation," he added.

According to a White House readout of their meeting, Biden reaffirmed his support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and respect for Jordan's special role as custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem.

"President Biden commended the important role Jordan plays in the wider stability of the region and welcomed the recent trilateral summit in Baghdad between Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt," said the readout.

The two leaders also discussed bilateral defense cooperation, the situation in Syria, and engagement between Jordan and Israel.

King Abdullah II is the first Arab leader to visit the White House since Biden took office. The Biden administration voiced support for his leadership during a royal rift in April. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 11:31:08|Editor: huaxia

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ALGIERS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- China highly appreciates Algeria's strong support on issues concerning China's core interests and major concerns, and firmly supports Algeria in taking a development path in line with its own national conditions and in safeguarding its sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday.

Wang made the remarks during a meeting here with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra.

Wang said China will continue to regard Algeria as a reliable good friend and partner, carry forward the fine tradition of mutual understanding, mutual trust and mutual support, strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation with Algeria and push the China-Algeria comprehensive strategic partnership to a new level.

China will continue to provide Algeria with vaccines and anti-pandemic materials to support Algeria's complete victory over the pandemic at an early date, he added.

China is willing to work with Algeria and other developing countries to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of developing countries, and expand their representation and voice in international affairs, said Wang.

Lamamra warmly celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, saying that Algeria hopes to work with China to promote the continuous development of the traditional friendship and pragmatic cooperation between the two countries.

The Algerian side will always "stand in the same trench" with China, safeguard international fairness and justice, and is willing to strengthen cooperation with China in economy, trade, science, technology, and human resources training to achieve common development, said Lamamra.

Algeria opposes external forces pointing fingers at China-Africa cooperation, and is willing to work with China to promote tripartite cooperation, said the Algerian minister.

The two sides agreed to speed up negotiations to sign the five-year plan for China-Algeria comprehensive strategic cooperation and the implementation plan for joint development of the Belt and Road. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 11:40:23|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) meets with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra in Algiers, Algeria, July 19, 2021. (Xinhua)

ALGIERS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here on Monday that China and Algeria have reached a broad range of consensuses on strengthening bilateral cooperation.

At a joint press conference with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra, Wang said he had in-depth and friendly talks with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune and Lamamra, during which they have reached a series of important consensuses.

First, China and Algeria agreed to renew their traditional friendship, Wang said.

The Chinese side appreciates Algeria for always standing firmly with China on issues concerning China's core interests, and it will continue to uphold justice and speak up for Algeria on sovereign independence and territorial integrity, Wang said.

Second, the two countries agreed to open up new prospects for practical cooperation, Wang said.

China and Algeria should as soon as possible conduct consultations on signing a new five-year plan for comprehensive strategic cooperation and an implementation plan for jointly building the Belt and Road, make solid progress on the El Hamdania Central Port as well as other key cooperation projects, and help Algeria accelerate the realization of independent and sustainable development, he said.

Third, the two countries agreed to work together to win the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Wang said.

China will do its best to continue to meet Algeria's demand for vaccines, and offer all necessary assistance to Algeria, so as to help the country overcome the pandemic at an early date, he said, adding that China thanks Algeria for providing support for its "Spring Sprout" program, an inoculation drive for Chinese citizens living overseas.

Fourth, the two countries agreed to make new contributions to maintaining international and regional security and stability, Wang said.

China and Algeria should strengthen strategic communication, actively push forward the political settlement of hot issues, maintain peace and stability in the Middle East, and defend international equity and justice, he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 12:06:58|Editor: huaxia

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KABUL, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Several rockets were fired on Afghan Presidential Palace in Kabul during the Eid festival prayers attended by Afghan president and other dignitaries on Tuesday, according to state-run TV live broadcasting.

Casualties have not been reported so far. Media reports said the explosions happened near the Presidential Palace. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 12:15:29|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The 15th National Assembly (NA) of Vietnam, the country's top legislature, started its inaugural session on Tuesday amid concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

At this sitting, which is scheduled to last until July 31, newly-elected lawmakers will vote and approve personnel for high-ranking positions of the state apparatus, the NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue said at the opening ceremony.

Legislators will also hear important reports on the country's five-year socio-economic development plan, the five-year financial plan, and the medium-term public investment plan for the 2021-2025 period, and discuss law-making programs for 2022.

The session will establish important conditions and create driving forces for the successful operation of the NA's 15th tenure, said Hue.

In his remarks, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong said the whole nation is striving to overcome difficulties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He called on the NA deputies to uphold the sense of responsibility, continuously improve their capabilities to serve the country and the people, and fulfill the tasks entrusted to them.

Vietnam has been fighting its worst wave of coronavirus infections, with over 56,500 locally transmitted cases registered in less than three months since late April. The southern Ho Chi Minh City is the current hotspot.

On May 23, Vietnam held a general election where 499 deputies to the 15th NA were elected.

At the last session of the 14th NA that started in late March, legislators elected Vuong Dinh Hue as NA chairman, Nguyen Xuan Phuc as state president, and Pham Minh Chinh as prime minister, among other personnel decisions. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 12:42:16|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, July 19 (Xinhua) -- United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday strongly condemned the horrific bomb attack targeting civilians at a market in Iraq's Sadr City, said his deputy spokesman.

Guterres extended his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and to the government and people of Iraq. He wished those injured a speedy recovery, said Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman, in a late-night statement.

"This deadly attack ahead of the Eid al-Adha holiday is a reminder to us all that the scourge of terrorism knows no bounds," said the statement.

The secretary-general underlined the need for the perpetrators of this crime to be swiftly brought to justice, said the statement.

At least 28 people were reportedly killed and 66 others wounded in Monday's bomb explosion at a crowded popular market in Sadr City, a suburb district of the capital Baghdad. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 13:04:18|Editor: huaxia

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SINGAPORE, July 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a recent interview with the New York Times that the U.S. tariffs which have remained on Chinese imports have harmed American consumers, Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao reported Monday.

"My own personal view is that tariffs were not put in place on China in a way that was very thoughtful with respect to where there are problems and what is the U.S. interest," she said, referring to the tariffs created by the former U.S. administration of Donald Trump to shelter key American industries.

"Tariffs are taxes on consumers. In some cases it seems to me what we did hurt American consumers, and the type of deal that the prior administration negotiated really didn't address in many ways the fundamental problems we have with China," she added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 13:47:36|Editor: huaxia

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BAGHDAD -- At least 28 people were killed and 66 others wounded in a bomb explosion at a crowded market in eastern Baghdad on Monday, according to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

The huge explosion ripped through the popular market in Sadr City, a suburb district of Baghdad, destroying several nearby shops and stalls and damaging surrounding buildings on the eve of the Eid al-Adha festival, the source said. (Iraq-Baghdad-Bomb Blast)

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KHARTOUM -- Sudan on Monday reiterated its rejection of Ethiopia's completion of the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

"The Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources renews Sudan's firm position in rejecting neighboring Ethiopia's unilateral measures, its fait accompli policies and ignoring of the legitimate interests and serious concerns of its partners in the river," said the Sudanese ministry in a statement. (Sudan-Ethiopia-Dam)

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LIMA -- The National Elections Jury of Peru on Monday night officially declared Pedro Castillo to be president-elect, more than a month after a presidential runoff on June 6.

The announcement was made by the election board's highest authority, Jorge Salas Arenas, during a ceremony that took place virtually. (Peru-Election-President)

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MADRID -- Spain passed the benchmark of 50 percent of its population receiving two vaccine doses against COVID-19, the country's health ministry said on Monday.

With 51,229,989 doses administered in total, 24,041,017 Spaniards, or 50.7 percent of the population, are now fully inoculated against the coronavirus, while 29,484,796, or 62.1 percent, have received the first dose. (Spain-Coronavirus-Vaccine) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 13:57:33|Editor: huaxia

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Pedestrians rest by a jewelry store in Washington, D.C., the United States, June 17, 2021. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

"Tariffs are taxes on consumers," U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a recent interview with the New York Times.



SINGAPORE, July 20 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a recent interview with the New York Times that the U.S. tariffs which have remained on Chinese imports have harmed American consumers, Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao reported Monday.

"My own personal view is that tariffs were not put in place on China in a way that was very thoughtful with respect to where there are problems and what is the U.S. interest," she said, referring to the tariffs created by the former U.S. administration of Donald Trump to shelter key American industries.

"Tariffs are taxes on consumers. In some cases it seems to me what we did hurt American consumers, and the type of deal that the prior administration negotiated really didn't address in many ways the fundamental problems we have with China," she added. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 14:51:00|Editor: huaxia

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Supporters of Pedro Castillo celebrate his victory in Lima, Peru, July 19, 2021. The National Jury of Elections (JNE) of Peru on Monday night officially declared Pedro Castillo to be president-elect, a month and a half after the June 6 presidential run-off. (Str/Xinhua)

LIMA, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The National Jury of Elections (JNE) of Peru on Monday night officially declared Pedro Castillo to be president-elect, a month and a half after the June 6 presidential run-off.

"I declare Mr. Jose Pedro Castillo Terrones President of the Republic, and Ms. Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra, First Vice President of the Republic," the election body's highest authority, Jorge Salas Arenas, announced during a virtual ceremony.

According to the final election results, Castillo obtained 8,836,380 votes, or 50.12 percent, while rival Keiko Fujimori garnered 8,792,117 votes, or 49.87 percent, a margin of just 44,263 votes, said the National Office of Electoral Processes, the body in charge of organizing elections in Peru.

After the run-off, Fujimori, daughter of a former president, launched a legal crusade against her opponent's political party, Peru Libre, which she accused of using "systematic fraud" on election day.

She filed appeals to annul more than 200,000 votes in favor of the left-leaning candidate, but the majority of the appeals were dismissed by JNE, an autonomous constitutional organ.

Fujimori made her latest attempt to challenge run-off results announced by regional electoral juries in the cities of Huancavelica, Cajamarca, San Roman, Huamanga and Chota.

The appeals were rejected, in accordance with a JNE resolution, on the grounds that they were "unrelated to the causes for which the validity of the results ... can be legitimately disputed."

Fujimori acknowledged the election results released by the JNE on Monday, but said, "the truth will end up coming to light anyway."

Salas said he would "shortly announce the date and place" for delivering to the winners their respective credentials. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 15:54:40|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Scientists and research institutions around the world are under increasing pressure for denouncing the conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was leaked from a lab, according to a recent article published in Hong Kong news website Min.news.

The article cited a number of public health experts and scientists, who were pressured and threatened for disputing the "lab leak" theory.

Anthony Fauci, an American immunologist who serves as the director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to the U.S. president, faced criticism and calls to resign, the article noted.

Additionally, Peter Daszak, a British zoologist and member of the World Health Organization mission team to Wuhan, was removed from the COVID-19 commission looking for the origins of the pandemic, while Edward Holmes, an evolutionary biologist and professor at the University of Sydney, also became a target of unrelenting online attacks.

U.S. intelligence agencies have never found any solid evidence on lab leaks and more and more scientists have spoken out against the conspiracy theory, the article said.

As there have been resurgences in COVID-19 cases in many parts of the world, the rumor-mongering and politicization of COVID-19 must stop and let the truth and science decide, it added. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 15:55:55|Editor: huaxia

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Marc Hubsch, Luxembourg's ambassador to China, has praised China's big data industry's development during a visit to southwestern province of Guizhou.

Guizhou is now one of the regions with the highest number of mega-data centers in the country and even in the world.

Its rich big-data resources are injecting growth momentum into the digital economy. Between 2016 and 2020, Guizhou's digital economic growth rate ranked first in China for five consecutive years. In 2021, the added value of its digital economy is expected to exceed 600 billion yuan (about 91.7 billion U.S. dollars).

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 15:58:52|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- China has pursued a pathway to low-carbon development and has enhanced the protection of nature, injecting vitality into the global green agenda, a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) official has said.

"We expect that China will continue to deepen its international cooperation in climate areas, share its good practices in carbon emission reduction, and support other developing countries in tackling climate change," Tu Ruihe, head of the UNEP China Office, told Xinhua in a recent interview in Nairobi.

He said that Beijing's quest to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 will have a positive impact on the global fight against climate change.

With the national carbon neutrality goal announced this year, China has mapped out robust measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and such a low-carbon development pathway helps realize green innovations, creates more relevant jobs and benefits the whole society, said Tu.

"Low-carbon economy will become key in enhancing international competitiveness," he said, adding that China has been fulfilling its obligations to revitalize the global fight.

China has been striving to achieve the goal of building a "beautiful China" and an ecological civilization, he said.

The country has come up with coherent policies and regulations to promote the transition to a green economy, with local governments and the private sector fully involved in this venture, he added.

In China, over 20 ministries are involved in dealing climate change, while policies related to carbon reduction and energy saving have been incorporated into the national economy to boost the green agenda, Tu said.

He also lauded China's large-scale reforestation which is among the first in the world in terms of area and helps foster climate resilience.

Tu noted that China has over 30 percent of the world's total installed capacity of clean energy and has emerged as the number one seller of fuel-efficient cars.

Tu commended China for promoting South-South cooperation, including training and capacity-building for environmental professionals in Africa.

"We expect the newly established China-Africa Environmental Cooperation Center will play its important role" in the continent's green aspirations, he said.

He noted that a partnership between China and the UNEP has revolved around sharing best practices and raising public awareness to advance national, regional and global environmental agendas.

In addition, the UNEP and China have started to strengthen coordination in policy-making in such areas as climate change adaptation, ecosystem management and people's livelihoods.

China has also rallied behind Africa's green aspirations in air and water quality monitoring, pollution control and drylands management, Tu said.

"We expect the newly established China-Africa Environmental Cooperation Center will play its important role in this area," he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 16:21:28|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection (CHP) reported seven new imported cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, taking the total tally to 11,965.

The new imported cases involved patients arriving in Hong Kong from the United States, Japan, France, Iran and Bangladesh. A total of 15 cases have been reported in the past 14 days, including one import-related case, according to the CHP.

Carrie Lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, said the COVID-19 vaccination rate in Hong Kong continued to rise following the introduction of incentive schemes by various sectors.

Lam said the ideal rate of 70 percent or more could be reached by the end of September if the vaccination level is maintained at a high level.

Hong Kong launched a COVID-19 vaccination drive on Feb. 26, and more than 4.89 million doses have been administered so far. Some 2.85 million people, or about 41.9 percent of the eligible population, have taken at least one shot of the vaccine, and more than 2.03 million people have been fully vaccinated. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 16:53:34|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on July 20, 2021 shows China's new maglev transportation system in Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. China's new high-speed maglev train rolled off the production line on Tuesday. It has a designed top speed of 600 km per hour -- currently the fastest ground vehicle available globally. The new maglev transportation system made its public debut in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province. It has been self-developed by China, marking the country's latest scientific and technological achievement in the field of rail transit, according to the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation. (Xinhua/Li Ziheng)

QINGDAO, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China's new high-speed maglev train, with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour, rolled off the production line on Tuesday. It is currently the world's fastest ground vehicle available.

The new maglev transportation system made its public debut in the coastal city of Qingdao, east China's Shandong Province.

It was self-developed by China and marks the country's latest scientific and technological achievement in the field of rail transit, according to the China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC).

China's new breakthrough demonstrates that the country has mastered a complete set of high-speed maglev train engineering technologies, including system integration, vehicle production, traction power supply, rail trails, and transport control and communication, said the company.

Launched in October 2016, the high-speed maglev train project saw the development of a magnetic-levitation train prototype with a designed top speed of 600 km per hour in 2019, and conducted a successful test run in June 2020.

Engineers have completed the integration of the maglev transportation system, and a train with five carriages has been running well on a test line within the factory, the company said.

The train can travel with two to 10 carriages, each holding more than 100 passengers, according to Ding Sansan, chief engineer of the project.

The train provides the best solution for trips within the range of 1,500 km, Ding said, adding it fills the speed gap between aviation and high-speed trains. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 17:08:34|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported on Tuesday 4,516 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,517,903.

The death toll climbed to 26,844 after 58 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said, adding that 10 laboratories failed to submit reports.

The Philippines, which has around 110 million population, has tested nearly 15 million people since the outbreak in January 2020.

Eight of the 35 Delta variant cases detected in the Philippines are still active, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online briefing, adding that three have died.

She said one active case is in Metro Manila, five in the southern Philippines, and two are returning overseas Filipino workers.

These patients were tagged as recovered after completing their quarantine period upon arrival, but tested positive again after a swab test, Vergeire added. The patients are now isolated and undergoing another round of quarantine.

The DOH said 11 of the 35 Delta patients were locally acquired, while the other 24 were returning Filipinos.

Meanwhile, health authorities have isolated 20 crew members of a vessel that sailed from Indonesia after 12 crew members tested positive for COVID-19.

Vergeire said that one member who tested positive got off in Butuan City in the southern Philippines for a while before the vessel continued sailing to Albay province, southeast of Manila.

Vergeire said the Philippines Coast Guard is closely watching the vessel anchored at sea in Albay province to ensure that crew members stay in the boat.

She said the crew members are asymptomatic, including the one that got off in the southern Philippines. "The crew member who visited his family is now isolated. The driver of the public transport that he took, the helper, and all his relatives have been quarantined," she said.

Vergeire said the swab samples of the crew members would be sequenced to detect if they are infected with the Delta variant. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 17:25:43|Editor: huaxia

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Nearly 300 Marxist scholars attended the third World Congress on Marxism on July 17 and 18 at Peking University. Scholars at the congress agreed that China is undoubtedly one of the most successful practitioners of Marxism in the world today.

Produced by Xinhua Global Service
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 17:40:44|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday condemned the recent terrorist act in Baghdad, the ministry's website reported.

At least 28 people were killed and 66 others wounded in a bomb explosion at a crowded market in Sadr City in eastern district of Baghdad on Monday.

"The barbaric act is a repetition of the vicious terrorist scenarios in Iraq," Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman of the ministry.

Khatibzadeh expressed condolences to the Iraqi government and people, announcing Iran's readiness to cooperate with the Iraqi government in dealing with acts of terrorism in its country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 17:58:55|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese government spokesperson expressed firm opposition to official exchange between countries having diplomatic relations with China and China's Taiwan region.

Zhu Fenglian, a spokesperson for the Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council, made the remarks Tuesday responding to a query concerning a plan by Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authority to set up a "representative office" in Lithuania.

Noting that Taiwan is part of China, Zhu urged the Lithuanian side to uphold the one-China principle and not to send wrong signals to separatist forces seeking "Taiwan independence."

Zhu also pointed out that the DPP and those separatist forces staged the entire farce to seek "Taiwan independence," which will never change the fact that there is only one China in the world. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 18:53:39|Editor: huaxia

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RAMALLAH, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Israel and Palestine discussed steps of trust-building for improving security and economy in the region, Israeli and Palestinian media reported on Tuesday.

On Monday night, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas received phone calls from his Israeli counterpart Isaac Herzog and Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz, in which Herzog congratulated Abbas on the occasion of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA said.

It was the second time Herzog spoke with Abbas in eight days, according to Israeli media reports.

Gantz wrote on Twitter that he spoke with Abbas to express "well wishes on the occasion of Eid al-Adha" and "discussed the need to advance steps of trust-building between us."

"Trust-building between Israel and the Palestinian Authority will benefit the economy and security of the entire region," he said.

Diplomatic ties between Israel and Palestine were severed since 2014 because of the Israeli policies of expanding settlements and its measures in East Jerusalem.

Last week, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs Hadi Amr met with Israeli and Palestinian officials in Jerusalem and Ramallah, where the two sides agreed on starting steps of trust-building.

The last peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, brokered by Washington, lasted nine months and broke down in April 2014 because of their deeply-rooted disputes over settlements, security, and borders. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:22:20|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Iran completed the construction of a major onshore oil pipeline which will allow the country to bypass the Hormuz Strait, a vital passageway of the region, for its oil exports, Tasnim News Agency reported Tuesday.

The 2-billion-U.S.-dollar project will allow the crude to travel some 1,000 km from Iran's pumping facilities in Goureh located on the southwestern shores to the Oman Sea port of Jask on the southeastern shore of the country.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is scheduled to formally announce the rollout of the Goureh-Jask pipeline on July 22, according to the Press TV.

The oil pipeline is able to initially export 300,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the crude and will reach the capacity of 1 million bpd once it is fully ready in October, according to the report. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:28:35|Editor: huaxia

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JERUSALEM, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday that his country will exact "a painful price" from anyone who tries to harm it after two rockets from Lebanon were fired into Israel.

In a public speech in northern Israel, Bennett said Lebanon was "on the verge of collapse," adding "we will not allow the situation in Lebanon to spread to Israel."

"Anyone who tries to harm us will pay a painful price," he said.

Earlier in the day, two rockets were launched from Lebanon into Israel. The Israeli military said in a statement that its Iron Dome Air Defense System intercepted one rocket and the other fell in an open area.

In response, Israel fired artillery toward southern Lebanon.

No injuries or damage has been reported on both sides.

The rockets were fired from Lebanon hours after Syria's state news agency of SANA reported that Israel carried out airstrikes near Aleppo in northern Syria. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:34:09|Editor: huaxia

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ALGIERS, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China will always be a member of the camp of developing countries, and breathe the same air and share a common destiny with developing countries, said Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Wang made the remarks on Monday when he met with journalists together with Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra here.

Back to 50 years ago when a resolution jointly submitted by Algeria and other countries was passed by an overwhelming majority at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly, the vast number of developing countries "carried" China into the UN, which is a vivid illustration of the solidarity and cooperation between China and other developing countries, said Wang.

The purpose of his current visit, Wang said, is to relive the experience of the joint struggle, and express his heartfelt thanks once again to Algeria and all other friends from other countries which stood up to pressure, upheld justice and firmly supported China.

China and other developing countries have always "stood in the same trench" in the past 50 years, said Wang, adding that China has lived up to the high expectations of developing countries and fulfilled the promise in the UN and at the Security Council that China's vote in the world body belongs to the developing world, and developing countries have never been absent from supporting China's core interests.

Over the past 50 years, UN member states have increased by 65, the vast majority of which are developing countries, said Wang.

The developing countries have gradually approached the center of the international arena, and emerged from being passive laggards to actively assuming leadership roles, which strongly promoted the historical process of the democratization of international relations, multi-polarization of the world and economic globalization, he added.

Over the past 50 years, developing countries consistently replaced confrontation with dialogue, resisted power with solidarity, independently explored the path of development and advocated mutual respect among civilizations, having become new driving forces for human progress, said Wang.

Noting Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed that no matter how far we travel, we should not forget what we have experienced, Wang said it is with the help and support of other developing countries that China has come so far.

When it was poor and lagged behind, China tightened its belt to support other developing countries, Wang said, adding that today, China, which is accelerating its development, will make even greater contribution to the well-being of developing countries.

As the world is facing profound changes unseen in a century, China will unite more closely with Algeria and other developing countries, never yield in the face of power and never flinch from difficulties, Wang stressed.

China will resolutely defend the principles of sovereign independence and non-interference in internal affairs, oppose hegemonism and power politics, safeguard the legitimate rights and development space of developing countries, he said.

China will also insist on seeking a bigger say for developing countries and enhancing their representations in international governance, Wang added.

He further said China will promote humanity's common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom, practice real multilateralism and jointly build a community with a shared future for mankind with developing countries.

For his part, Lamamra said that China is a representative of developing countries and non-aligned countries and a partner of African and Arab countries.

If China plays its role effectively, international relations will be democratized and the world will be more balanced, Lamamra said, adding that Algeria expects China to play a greater role in the Security Council and the UN. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:34:51|Editor: huaxia

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BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) on Tuesday announced the launch of an investigation into the earlier exchange of rocket fire between Lebanon and Israel, the National News Agency reported.

The announcement by Kandice Ardiel, UNIFIL's deputy chief of strategic communications and public information, came after two rockets were launched at Israel from southern Lebanon overnight Tuesday, triggering an Israeli response with artillery fire into Lebanon.

"Our liaison and coordination mechanisms are fully engaged. Together with the Lebanese Armed Forces, we have increased security in the area and have launched an investigation," Ardiel said.

The UNIFIL is in direct contact with the Lebanese and Israeli parties to avoid further escalation on the border, she added.

Israel fought a war against the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah in July 2006, but the border has been mostly quiet since then. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:38:09|Editor: huaxia

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BAMAKO, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Mali's presidential office on Tuesday said there was an attempted stabbing attack against the West African country's transitional president, Assimi Goita at the Grand Mosque of Bamako.

In a statement on Twitter, the office said the attacker was immediately overpowered by the bodyguards, adding that investigations are ongoing. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:51:41|Editor: huaxia

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A man receives a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination center in Navotas City, the Philippines on June 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

-- The Philippines logs 4,516 new COVID-19 cases, total rises to 1,517,903;

-- Pakistan facing challenge as COVID-19 positivity rate in some areas exceeds 20 pct;

-- Laos' daily COVID-19 cases reach new high;

-- India's COVID-19 tally rises to 31,174,322.

HONG KONG, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The following are the latest developments of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia-Pacific countries on Tuesday:

MANILA -- The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 4,516 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,517,903.



The death toll climbed to 26,844 after 58 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said, adding that 10 laboratories failed to submit reports.

Eight of the 35 Delta variant cases detected in the Philippines are still active, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online briefing, adding that three have died.

A man waits for takeaway food in Sydney, Australia, July 18, 2021. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

CANBERRA -- Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Tuesday that there were "real signs of hope" in the fight against COVID-19 despite about half of the country's 25 million people were under lockdown.

As of Tuesday afternoon, there had been 32,129 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia, and the number of locally acquired cases in the past 24 hours was 94, with two extra cases under investigation, according to the latest figures from the Department of Health.

There were about 1,452 active cases nationwide and the number of locally acquired cases in the past seven days was 739.

People visit an animal market ahead of Eid al-Adha festival in Lahore, capital city of Pakistan's Punjab province on July 17, 2021. (Photo by Sajjad/Xinhua)

ISLAMABAD -- Amid rising cases of the Delta variant of the virus, Pakistan confirmed 2,145 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), the department leading Pakistan's campaign against the pandemic, said on Tuesday.

The NCOC said in a statement that the country's number of overall cases rose to 993,872 amidst the fear of a fourth wave.

Talking to media on Monday, spokesperson of the government of the country's south Sindh province Murtaza Wahab said that COVID-19 positivity ratio in some areas of the province including the port city of Karachi crossed 20 percent.

A total of 22,848 people died of the disease nationwide, including 37 patients who died over the last 24 hours, the NCOC said, adding that 2,697 are in critical condition.

A health worker prepares a dose of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine at an inoculation site in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on July 8, 2021. (Photo by Sovannara/Xinhua)

PHNOM PENH -- Cambodia reported 825 new COVID-19 infections including 421 imported cases, pushing the national total caseload to 68,796, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said in a statement.

Twenty-one more fatalities had been confirmed, taking the overall death toll to 1,149, the ministry said, adding that 1,022 other patients recovered, raising the total number of recoveries to 61,039.

So far, some 6.06 million people, or 60.6 percent of the 10 million targeted adult population, have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, Cambodia on Tuesday began an inoculation campaign for foreigners in northwestern Siem Reap province, the kingdom's major tourist hub.

A citizen exercises in the downtown of Vientiane, Laos, on July 5, 2021. (Photo by Kaikeo Saiyasane/Xinhua)

VIENTIANE -- The Lao Ministry of Health recorded an all-time high of daily COVID-19 cases at 170 in the last 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 3,710.

The National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control reported 170 imported COVID-19 cases and no new locally transmitted cases, Deputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Diseases Control under Lao Ministry of Health, Sisavath Soutthaniraxay, told a press conference on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Laos reached 3,710 with five deaths.

Passengers wearing face masks prepare to board their train at Iksan Station in North Jeolla Province, South Korea, July 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Wang Jingqiang)

SEOUL -- South Korea reported 1,278 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 180,481.

The daily caseload was slightly up from 1,252 in the prior day, staying above 1,000 for two straight weeks. The daily average caseload for the past week was 1,455.

One more death was confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,059. The total fatality rate stood at 1.14 percent.

Vendors resume business as the COVID-19 restrictions ease at one of the oldest market in Bangalore, India, July 16, 2021. (Str/Xinhua)

NEW DELHI -- India's COVID-19 tally rose to 31,174,322, as 30,093 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, according to the federal health ministry's latest data.

The number of new cases registered in the country in the last 24 hours is the lowest in 125 days, said the ministry.

Besides, 374 deaths due to the pandemic since Monday morning took the total death toll to 414,482.
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:52:01|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Tuesday urged the Republic of Korea (ROK) to unfreeze Iran's assets in the ROK's banks, which have been blocked under the U.S. financial sanctions, official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran and the ROK have kept good ties over the years, which unfortunately have been damaged by the U.S. "illegal and cruel" sanctions in recent years, Rouhani said in his meeting with ROK's new ambassador to Iran Yun Kang-hyeon.

Iran even can not have access to its own money in the ROK's banks for purchase of medicine and the COVID-19 vaccines, the Iranian president added.

Over 7 billion U.S. dollars of Iranian funds from oil exports are frozen in the ROK's banks amid U.S. sanctions pressures on Iran. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:56:43|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Peng Liyuan, wife of Chinese President Xi Jinping, on Tuesday called for making concerted and persistent efforts to deepen cooperation on women's education and poverty reduction.

Peng, a special envoy of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for the advancement of girls' and women's education, made the remarks while addressing via video link the forum on women's education and poverty reduction, co-sponsored by All China Women's Federation and related institutions of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Noting eliminating poverty and embracing happiness represent the common ideal for women, and education will bring women the power to get rid of poverty, Peng said China has scored a complete victory in the fight against poverty and hundreds of millions of women in China have shaken off poverty.

China has taken a series of measures to ensure women are equally entitled to education, and they become beneficiaries, participants and contributors in the fight against poverty, Peng said.

She mentioned a program by the local government in Guizhou Province to develop the specialty industry of women's handicrafts, and Zhang Guimei, a headmaster, helping girls in poverty-stricken mountainous areas realize their college dream.

Peng pointed out that, currently, there are still 435 million women living in poverty globally amid stark educational gaps between the sexes and new challenges facing poverty alleviation brought by COVID-19.

Hailing women's role in promoting the SCO's development over the past 20 years since its founding, Peng called for joining hands and persisting in deepening cooperation on women's education and poverty reduction, adding this would light up the path of hope for women through education and bring women more opportunities to make life better. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:04:00|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread in Asia-Pacific countries as India reported 30,093 new cases on Tuesday while Pakistan is facing new challenges in its fight against the pandemic as the positivity rate in some areas of the country has passed 20 percent.

India's COVID-19 tally rose to 31,174,322, as 30,093 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours across the country, according to the federal health ministry's latest data.

The number of new cases registered in the country in the last 24 hours is the lowest in 125 days, said the ministry.

Besides, 374 deaths due to the pandemic since Monday morning took the total death toll to 414,482.

The Philippines' Department of Health (DOH) reported 4,516 new COVID-19 infections, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Southeast Asian country to 1,517,903.

The death toll climbed to 26,844 after 58 more patients died from the viral disease, the DOH said, adding that 10 laboratories failed to submit reports.

Eight of the 35 Delta variant cases detected in the Philippines are still active, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in an online briefing, adding that three have died.

Amid rising cases of the Delta variant of the virus, Pakistan confirmed 2,145 new COVID-19 infections over the past 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), the department leading Pakistan's campaign against the pandemic, said on Tuesday.

The NCOC said in a statement that the country's number of overall cases rose to 993,872 amidst the fear of a fourth wave.

Talking to media on Monday, spokesperson of the government of the country's south Sindh province Murtaza Wahab said that COVID-19 positivity ratio in some areas of the province including the port city of Karachi crossed 20 percent.

A total of 22,848 people died of the disease nationwide, including 37 patients who died over the last 24 hours, the NCOC said, adding that 2,697 are in critical condition.

Cambodia reported 825 new COVID-19 infections including 421 imported cases, pushing the national total caseload to 68,796, the Ministry of Health (MoH) said in a statement.

Twenty-one more fatalities had been confirmed, taking the overall death toll to 1,149, the ministry said, adding that 1,022 other patients recovered, raising the total number of recoveries to 61,039.

So far, some 6.06 million people, or 60.6 percent of the 10 million targeted adult population of Cambodia have received at least one dose of the vaccine.

Meanwhile, Cambodia on Tuesday began an inoculation campaign for foreigners in the northwestern Siem Reap province, the kingdom's major tourist hub.

South Korea reported 1,278 more cases of COVID-19 as of midnight Monday compared to 24 hours ago, raising the total number of infections to 180,481.

The daily caseload was slightly up from 1,252 in the prior day, staying above 1,000 for two straight weeks. The daily average caseload for the past week was 1,455.

One more death was confirmed, leaving the death toll at 2,059. The total fatality rate stood at 1.14 percent.

Australian Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Tuesday that there were "real signs of hope" in the fight against COVID-19 despite that about half of the country's 25 million people were under lockdown.

As of Tuesday afternoon, there had been 32,129 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Australia, and the number of locally acquired cases in the past 24 hours was 94, with two extra cases under investigation, according to the latest figures from the Department of Health.

There were about 1,452 active cases nationwide and the number of locally acquired cases in the past seven days was 739.

The Lao Ministry of Health recorded an all-time high of daily COVID-19 cases at 170 in the last 24 hours, bringing the national tally to 3,710.

The National Taskforce Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control reported 170 imported COVID-19 cases and no new locally transmitted cases, Deputy Director General of the Department of Communicable Diseases Control under the Lao Ministry of Health, Sisavath Soutthaniraxay, told a press conference on Tuesday.

As of Tuesday, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Laos reached 3,710 with five deaths. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:12:48|Editor: huaxia

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by Peerzada Arshad Hamid

NEW DELHI, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Tapering of the second wave of COVID-19 that wreaked havoc across India has begun to show since May when the country's daily new cases recorded a declining trend.

Despite the decline, Indian health bodies and the government have raised an alarm about the impending third wave of COVID-19.

THIRD WAVE IMMINENT, INEVITABLE

The Indian Medical Association (IMA), which is at the forefront of fighting COVID-19, has urged federal and state governments in India not to let the guard down on the ongoing pandemic.

The country registered 30,093 new cases during the past 24 hours, the federal health ministry said on Tuesday morning.

According to the IMA, the third wave was just around the corner.

"With the global evidence available and the history of any pandemics, the third wave is inevitable and imminent," the IMA warned. "However, it is painful to note ... in many parts of the country both the government and public are complacent and engaged in mass gatherings without following COVID-19 protocols."

The IMA said that tourist bonanza, pilgrimage travel and religious fervor are all needed but can wait for a few more months.

"Opening up these rituals and enabling people without vaccination to go scot-free in these mass gatherings are potential super spreaders for the COVID-19 third wave," it said.

National Institution for Transforming India member Vinod Paul noted that to avoid the third wave from hitting India, people along with the government need to put in their efforts.

"The next 100 to 125 days will be crucial and we all need to remain vigilant and follow the protocol," Paul said.

Samiran Panda, head of epidemiology and infectious diseases at India's top health research body -- Indian Council of Medical Research, said the third wave is likely to hit the country at the end of August.

He, however, said there are chances that the third wave will be a mild one and not as intense as the second wave.

CROWDED TOURIST PLACES, MARKETS

As new cases of COVID-19 began to show a downward trend and local governments began to relax COVID-19 restrictions, tourist places and markets have witnessed a huge rush.

The federal health ministry many a time issued warnings, discouraging people from violating COVID-19 protocol.

Lav Agarwal, a senior health ministry official, showed videos of the Kempty Falls in Uttarakhand's Mussoorie, where a huge crowd was seen present at the tourist place in violation of COVID-19 protocol, besides photographs from other places and crowded markets from across the country.

The Indian government described the phenomenon as "revenge travel."

"People are taking predictions about the COVID-19 third wave like weather prediction reports, very casually. The third wave predictions have to be taken very seriously," Agarwal said.

The devastating second wave of the pandemic caught India unaware. It saw the country's hospitals, especially the ones in major cities and towns, overwhelmed. Unable to cope with the rush of patients, doctors suddenly saw themselves struggling for oxygen supplies and essential medicines.

In April, millions gathered in the Himalayan town of Haridwar to participate in the Kumbh Mela Hindu festival even as several cities grappled with a severe shortage of oxygen, hospital beds and essential medicines.

Many of the returnees -- who came from all parts of the country -- tested positive in the following days, pushing daily cases to new record highs.

Despite this, authorities in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh are gearing up to hold the annual pilgrimage "Kanwar Yatra" from July 25 in a symbolic manner.

India's top court has asked the local government of Uttar Pradesh to reconsider holding pilgrimage even symbolically in view of the pandemic.

"The health of citizenry of India and right to life is paramount, all other sentiments whether be religious is subservient to this basic fundamental right," the court said.

PM SPEAKS ABOUT THIRD WAVE

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week said there were some districts of the country's northeast where cases of COVID-19 infection are increasing, adding they need to understand these signals.

"We have to keep an eye on each variant of the COVID-19 because it is absolutely polymorphic," Modi said.

He said experts were constantly studying how devastating it will be after the mutation.

"In such a situation, prevention and treatment are very important. We have to put our entire energy and focus only on these two measures," Modi said.

"The severity of the virus will weaken if we continue to maintain a distance of two yards, wear a mask and get vaccinated. We will be able to save more lives if we continue with our strategy of testing, tracking and treatment, and improve our infrastructure," he added.

Modi said it was true that tourism, trade and business have been greatly affected due to COVID-19.

"I will emphasise that it is a matter of concern that people visiting hill stations and markets are not wearing masks and not following protocol. This is not right," he stressed.

"Many times we hear this argument and some people say proudly that we want to enjoy it before the third wave arrives," he said. "It is important to explain to the people that the third wave will not come on its own. It is not something which comes on its own, it is brought by people." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:14:01|Editor: huaxia

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Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, holds talks with Chuan Leekpai, president of the Thai National Assembly and speaker of the House of Representatives, via video link in Beijing, capital of China, July 20, 2021. (Xinhua/Ding Haitao)

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China's top legislator Li Zhanshu held talks with Chuan Leekpai, president of the Thai National Assembly and speaker of the House of Representatives, via video link on Tuesday, with both sides pledging to enhance exchanges between their legislative bodies.

Li, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, said that China and Thailand, as good friends, good neighbors and major regional developing countries, embrace new development opportunities for bilateral relations.

China stands ready to work with Thailand to enhance strategic communication, make joint efforts for cooperation and win-win results, and plan and implement exchanges and cooperation between the two sides in post-epidemic times, he said.

Noting the potential of China-Thailand cooperation, Li called on the two countries to continue enhancing political mutual support and high-level exchanges, and firmly support each other on issues regarding core interests and major concerns.

Li called on the two countries to continue their cooperation on COVID-19 response, jointly build the Belt and Road, synergize development strategies, enhance multilateral coordination and promote global governance.

Li stressed that the NPC stands ready to work with the Thai National Assembly to strengthen exchanges and cooperation.

He encouraged the two sides to conduct flexible and diverse exchanges in a variety of ways, and learn from each other's experience in governance, legislation and supervision.

Li briefed Chuan on the celebration of the Communist Party of China's centenary, and said the Chinese side is ready to enhance party exchanges with Thailand to facilitate the development and prosperity of the two countries.

Chuan said that Thailand cherishes the deep traditional friendship with China and firmly upholds the one-China principle.

Chuan thanked China for the support provided to Thailand in fighting COVID-19 and said the Thai National Assembly is willing to enhance friendly exchanges with the NPC to promote cooperation between the two countries on economy and trade, COVID-19 response and people-to-people exchanges, while making contributions to promoting bilateral ties. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:14:32|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI -- China has pursued a pathway to low-carbon development and has enhanced the protection of nature, injecting vitality into the global green agenda, a United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) official has said.

"We expect that China will continue to deepen its international cooperation in climate areas, share its good practices in carbon emission reduction, and support other developing countries in tackling climate change," Tu Ruihe, head of the UNEP China Office, told Xinhua in a recent interview in Nairobi.

- - - -

LONDON -- A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Britain on Tuesday expressed grave concern about and strong opposition to the accusation made by the British side against China over alleged cyberattacks.

"We call on the UK side to immediately stop echoing the groundless and irresponsible accusation against China," the spokesperson said.

- - - -

LUANDA -- Angola and Switzerland on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding to accelerate asset recovery actions.

"It is Swiss law that all money whose origin is illegal and has been proven is returned under a legal aid procedure," Ambassador of the Swiss Confederation to Angola Nicolas Herbert Lang said.

- - - -

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga has expressed his confidence in successfully delivering the Tokyo Olympic Games despite the specter of COVID-19.

"Because of the COVID-19 pandemic since last year, the (pandemic) situation is making progress and sometimes backwards, but vaccinations have come. After a long tunnel, an exit is now in our sight," Suga told officials before declaring the opening of the 138th IOC Session here on Tuesday. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:33:57|Editor: huaxia

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HARARE, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Diaspora remittances to Zimbabwe jumped 58 percent in 2020, reaching about 1 billion U.S. dollars, the highest ever contribution made to the local economy.

Due to the improved remittances inflows, Zimbabwe managed to record a current account surplus, state-run Herald newspaper said on Tuesday.

The development has also helped the country to cover gaps left by trade disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The World Bank, in its latest Zimbabwe Economic Update, said remittances contributed to the country's resilience to global trade shocks.

"Despite trade disruptions and the sharp decline in global economic activity caused by the pandemic, Zimbabwe's current account remained in surplus at 5.3 percent in 2020," said the World Bank.

"A key driver of the surplus was remittances in 2020, which saw a growth of 58 percent. The increase in formal remittances may reflect the shift to greater use of official channels for remittance delivery due to the pandemic," it said.

Zimbabwe's Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube recently said diaspora remittances had overtaken foreign aid in the amount of money being contributed to the country's economy.

Zimbabwe had over the years seen an increase in the number of remittances from the diaspora.

It is estimated that between 2.5 and 3 million Zimbabweans live in other countries, with neighboring South African being the most popular destination. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:46:24|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- China firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks, and the United States is the world's largest source of cyber attacks, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.

Spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks at a news briefing in response to allegations by the United States and a coalition of its allies over the cyber security issue.

"This act confuses right with wrong and smears and suppresses China out of political purpose. China will never accept this," Zhao said.

China will never encourage, support or condone cyber attacks. This position has been consistent and clear, the spokesperson said.

Given the virtual nature of cyberspace and the fact that there are all kinds of online actors who are difficult to trace, it's important to have enough evidence when investigating and identifying cyber-related incidents. It requires extra prudence when linking cyber attacks with the government of a country. The so-called technical details released by the U.S. side do not constitute a complete chain of evidence, Zhao said.

In fact, the United States is the world's largest source of cyber attacks, Zhao said, adding that statistics showed a cyber attack organization of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has carried out cyber infiltration and attacks on China for 11 years in key areas such as aerospace, science and research institutions, oil industry, large Internet companies and government agencies.

The above attacks have seriously undermined China's national security, and the security of China's economy, critical infrastructure and citizens' personal information, Zhao said.

Zhao said the United States is wiretapping not only competitors, but also its allies. Its European allies downplay U.S. moves to use Denmark's intelligence agency to spy on their leaders, while making a fuss about "China's cyber attacks" based on hearsay evidence. This act contradicts strategic autonomy claimed by Europe.

"The cyber attack is a common threat faced by all. We always hold that countries should safeguard cyber security through dialogue and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, mutual trust and mutual benefit," Zhao said.

China once again strongly demands that the United States and its allies stop cyber theft and attacks targeting China, stop slinging mud at China on this issue, and revoke the so-called indictment, he said, noting that China will take necessary measures to firmly uphold its cyber security and interests.

Meanwhile, NATO issued a joint statement on China's so-called cyberattack for the first time. In response, Zhao said by introducing military alliance into cyberspace might spur cyber arms race, increase risks of cyber friction and conflict between countries, and undermine international peace and security. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 21:32:41|Editor: huaxia

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Antoine Hokayem, local director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Saint Joseph, speaks in an exclusive interview with Xinhua, in Beirut, Lebanon, on July 13, 2021. (Xinhua/Liu Zongya)

by Dana Halawi

BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese language has become increasingly popular among Lebanese students over the past five years, said Antoine Hokayem, the local director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Saint Joseph (USJ), in a recent exclusive interview with Xinhua.

"In the past, Lebanese students used to register for the Chinese language as an elective course. Today, we receive students from the USJ and other universities who aim to learn the Chinese language to either work in China or continue their education in the East Asian country," Hokayem said on the occasion of the 15th anniversary for the establishment of the institute.

Hokayem told Xinhua that engineering and telecommunication students are among the people who are mostly interested in the language as they aim to continue their higher education in China which is advanced in the two fields.

"Some of our students have shown great interest in continuing their education in Chinese universities to develop their skills in specific majors," he said.

Other students attend the institute's courses with a view to assisting their parents who are engaged in trade activities with Chinese partners, Hokayem added.

"We have small children who learn the language and speak fluently with their Chinese teachers ... More than half of our students now come from outside of our university," he noted.

The number of students, who have registered with the Confucius Institute since its establishment 15 years ago in Lebanon, stands at 3,982, according to the Lebanese professor.

Founded in 2006 through a partnership between China's Shenyang Normal University and the USJ, the Confucius Institute at USJ was selected as one of the best Confucius Institutes the world over for its unique cultural and social activities.

Over the past years, the institute has held lectures covering topics including China's economy and cultural values as well as the Peking Opera and the Belt and Road Initiative.

In addition to spreading the Chinese culture among Lebanese students, the Confucius Institute at USJ has also established strong ties with Chinese universities such as Tianjin University of Traditional Chinese Medicine that offers the institute great expertise in physiotherapy and acupuncture.

"The (Chinese) university is very advanced in Chinese medicine which is what we need here at USJ. Our students complete their speciality at USJ but we secure training for them at a hospital in Tianjin," Hokayem said.

For the past few years, Lebanon and China have increased their cooperation in areas of trade, medicine and culture, let alone China's great contribution to the UN peacekeeping activities in southern Lebanon.

China has recently invested millions of U.S. dollars in building a national higher conservatory near Lebanon's capital Beirut. In 2020, the two countries also signed an agreement on the establishment of cultural centers in each other's capital cities.

Hailing China's contributions to Lebanon's development, Hokayem called on the government to include the Chinese language in the Lebanese Baccalaureate program, saying it would help spread the Chinese culture in Lebanon.

"I spent some of my best moments walking in Beijing's streets and getting to know how people live, what they eat and how to speak and negotiate with them at shops," Hokayem said.

He also praised the great speed at which China has developed over the years.

"It's amazing that every time I visit this country, I see more development and changes in many different areas, especially infrastructure," he said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 21:48:27|Editor: huaxia

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Pupils of Caochang Street Primary School watch billboards on cyber security in Qiaoxi District of Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province, Sept. 14, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Xiao)

What irony it is that the United States, posing a grave threat to global cybersecurity, is commanding the allies it spies on to slander China.

by Xinhua writer Ma Qian

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Washington together with its allies has accused China of responsibility for a number of cyber attacks against private entities in the West, in yet another move to smear the Asian country.

The cyber attack charges, along with other baseless accusations such as those against China's human rights records, are simply an old political trick played from time to time by a small group of Western countries obsessed with demonizing China and containing its development. What these countries don't realize is that political rumormongering will only hinder the world's efforts to bolster cybersecurity.

To set the record straight, Beijing's position on cybersecurity is consistent and clear.

China, as a staunch defender of cybersecurity, opposes all forms of hacking activities in cyberspace and stands ready to work with the rest of the world to promote global cybersecurity.

Last year, China proposed the Global Initiative on Data Security and called on states to handle data security in a comprehensive, objective and evidence-based manner.

The gravest threat to global cybersecurity is the United States, a country that abuses its unmatched technological power.

For quite some time, Washington has conducted a broad array of large-scale, organized and indiscriminate cyber stealing, spying and surveillance activities on foreign governments, enterprises and individuals.

Those acts, most of which were masterminded by the U.S. National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, are against international law and basic norms of international relations. With such surveillance programs as the Prism Project, Equation Group and ECHELON being exposed one after another in recent years, there is little doubt around the world that the United States has built itself into an empire of hackers.

One recent incident raised eyebrows across Europe in late May before U.S. President Joe Biden's first visit to the continent since he took office. The Danish Defense Intelligence Service had reportedly given the National Security Agency open internet access to spy on senior politicians of neighboring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.





File photo taken on Nov. 1, 2013 shows Edward Snowden's letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the German parliament and German federal prosecutors. (Xinhua/Zhang Fan)

What irony it is that the United States, posing a grave threat to global cybersecurity, is commanding the allies it spies on to slander China.

In fact, China has long been a victim of U.S. cyber attacks. Most of the internet attacks targeting Chinese networks last year originated from the United States, according to an annual report released by China's National Computer Network Emergency Response Technical Team/Coordination Center in May.

Chinese antivirus firm Qihoo 360 also revealed last year that Central Intelligence Agency hackers have engaged in an 11-year-long cyber infiltration and attack program against China's aviation sector, scientific research organizations, internet companies and government agencies.

Cybersecurity is a global challenge that must be handled collectively.

While politicizing the issue or throwing mud at China will not help make global cyberspace safer, those moves will chip away at trust among nations worldwide and hinder global cooperation.

Washington and its Western allies should drop their Cold-War mentality and take a professional, responsible and cooperative attitude towards cybersecurity. And that must start with stopping groundless attacks against China. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 22:02:17|Editor: huaxia

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LUSAKA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Zambia is set to receive 151,200 doses of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine with the doses expected to arrive on Wednesday, a government official said on Tuesday.

Kennedy Malama, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Health in charge of Technical Services, said the new consignment of vaccines will be concentrated in provinces where vaccination demand was high.

"Our plan is that this consignment will be tailored to the provinces which are fast-moving because now our strategy is that as we receive the vaccines, we ought to use them in the shortest period of time," he said during a COVID-19 update press briefing.

Since the launch of the vaccination program on April 14, Zambia has been administering the AstraZeneca vaccine acquired through the COVAX facility, with two consignments of the vaccine received so far.

The government, he said, was encouraged with the progress made so far, with 2.8 percent of the eligible population so far receiving dose one and 0.8 percent receiving dose two.

The country has targeted to vaccinate about 8.4 million eligible people from 18 years and above as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zambia's cumulative cases stand at 187,602 following 1,323 new cases recorded in the last 24 hours while total deaths stand at 3,138 following 25 new deaths in the last 24 hours.

Total discharges stand at 174,728 following 1,408 new discharges during the same period. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 22:22:57|Editor: huaxia

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Maintenance workers check a bullet train in Kunming, southwest China's Yunnan Province, July 20, 2021. In the ongoing summer holiday travel season, China Railway Kunming Bureau Group Co., Ltd. has carried out train maintenance work on a daily basis to ensure safety. (Xinhua/Hu Chao)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 22:30:30|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on Tuesday noted the priorities in the country's medical reform, including enhancing disease prevention and increasing accessibility of medical services.

The government will work hard to ease the difficulties of visiting the hospital and reduce the medical cost, Li said in an instruction to a national conference on medical reform held in Beijing Tuesday.

Traditionally patients will line up in front of a hospital counter to register to see the doctor. Now the government will encourage them to make an appointment before visiting the hospital.

Li said the government will also push hospitals to share information on medical examinations and facilitate reimbursement of medical costs across the provinces.

Resources will also go to stabilizing medicine prices, developing traditional Chinese medicine, training rural doctors and applying digital technologies in medical services.

When addressing the conference, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan urged the health departments to work to form a multilevel medical service network, deepen reforms of public hospitals and enhance COVID-19 response and vaccination. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 22:34:17|Editor: huaxia

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JERUSALEM, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC) has been committed to satisfying the common needs and interests of the Chinese people, a key reason why the CPC is able to embrace its 100th anniversary with full confidence, said Issam Makhoul, member of the political bureau and former general secretary of the Communist Party of Israel.



Recalling his two visits to China in 2006 and 2018 respectively, Makhoul said he was deeply impressed by the changes in the country as he saw a more flourishing, modern and technologically developed country during the second trip.

Having witnessed China's efforts to raise people's living standards, Makhoul said he appreciated the country's historical process to become fully modern and developed.

Hailing the idea of "socialism with Chinese characteristics," Makhoul expressed belief that at the core of Marxism is a socialism that develops in accordance with the changing historical, cultural, and social context of a specific place.

Under the leadership of the CPC, the Chinese people are moving towards the long-range objectives through 2035 and the goal of building a great modern socialist country by 2050.

"This is a very important promise not for the Chinese people alone but for the whole of humanity," he said.

China has been promoting a new type of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness and justice, and win-win cooperation, he said, adding that he appreciates China's vision represents a new way of thinking about international relations highlighting "shared interests."

The concept of building a community with a shared future for mankind and the joint construction of the Belt and Road reflect a harmony of interests and will benefit the world, said Makhoul. (Video reporters: Shang Hao, Wang Zhuolun; video editors: Hong Ling, Cao Ying, Jiang Hanzhang)
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 23:05:28|Editor: huaxia

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Aerial photo taken on Nov. 26, 2020 shows the view of Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center, the venue of the 17th China-ASEAN Expo, and its neighboring buildings in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Lu Boan)

NANNING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The year 2021 marks the 30th anniversary of the establishment of dialogue between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Sustained win-win cooperation has been achieved to benefit over 2 billion people in 11 countries.

Thirty years on, the strong ties have served as an important pillar for regional peace and prosperity.

Official statistics show that the bilateral trade volume between China and ASEAN was only 7.96 billion U.S. dollars in 1991, while in 2020, the number rose to 684.6 billion U.S. dollars amidst the global pandemic as the two sides became each other's largest trading partner.

South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has been thrust into the frontier of the country's opening-up to ASEAN, driven by the Beibu Gulf economic zone that serves as west China's nearest sea route to ASEAN countries. The economic zone was included in a national development strategy by the central Chinese government in 2008.

Two major mechanisms including the China-ASEAN Expo and the Pan-Beibu Gulf Economic Cooperation Forum were initiated in 2004 and 2006 respectively, to push for the opening of Guangxi, especially to ASEAN.

Benefiting from the two platforms, Guangxi has forged friendly ties with over 50 ASEAN cities, bolstering its trade and economic cooperation with those regions and promoting people-to-people exchanges.

Guangxi has also been promoting the construction of supply chain service platforms for bulk commodities, reinforcing its role as a major importing base of ASEAN commodities in southwest China, and encouraging new forms of foreign trade such as cross-border e-commerce, said Yang Chunting, Party secretary of the regional department of commerce.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and ASEAN have deepened their cooperation in fighting the pandemic, boosting economic and cultural exchanges, and enhancing foreign trade.

In the first half of 2021, trade volume between China and ASEAN reached 2.66 trillion yuan (411.3 billion U.S. dollars), up 27.8 percent year on year.

Last year, China's direct investment in ASEAN increased by 52.1 percent over the previous year, according to data released by China's Ministry of Commerce.

Investors from ASEAN are flocking to China for its stable economic recovery and the new development paradigm of "dual circulation." In the first six months, the direct investment from ASEAN to China grew by 50.7 percent year on year.

New business models are emerging to contribute to prosperous trade and economic activities. Companies in Guangxi have joined hands with Alibaba, the country's leading e-commerce platform, to foster China-ASEAN cross-border industrial chain.

Jariya Unthong, a teacher of Guangxi University from Thailand, has lived in Nanning, the capital of Guangxi for over a decade. She has been routinely invited to sell products to people in Thailand via livestreaming.

"Since the epidemic, more customers in Thailand have been getting used to online shopping, and our livestreaming offers them quality products with a simple click on their phone," she said.

As trading partners with broad and close ties, China and ASEAN have been working together to tide over the difficulties posed by the COVID-19 epidemic.

On March 23, a team consisting of seven medical experts from Guangxi, along with tonnes of medical supplies including ventilators, medical masks and test kits, arrived in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, to help the country fight against the pandemic. It was among many Chinese medical teams sent out to ASEAN countries for COVID-19 prevention and control.

Standing on the new starting point, China-ASEAN relations will usher in a new chapter, creating a higher level of strategic partnership, said Zhai Kun, professor of international studies at Peking University. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 23:08:46|Editor: huaxia

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KAPSOWAR, Kenya, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Five people were on Tuesday afternoon killed and four others injured in a fierce gun battle between cattle raiders and herders at the troubled Kerio Valley region, northwest Kenya, police said.

Locals said a group of bandits invaded villages in an attempt to steal cattle in the Kaben location, prompting a fierce exchange of fire during the midday incident.

Elgeyo Marakwet police commander Patrick Lumumba said the fighting at a grazing field lasted for nearly two hours before security forces intervened and repulsed the bandits. "As a result, five bandits were killed while four herders were injured and rushed to hospital," said Lumumba.

Lumumba said officers were still combing the troubled region to calm the situation. He said the deaths occurred during the gunfight between the police and the armed bandits, noting that no livestock was stolen during the clash.

The attack comes barely a week after the government ordered bandits to surrender firearms and stolen livestock.

The killings bring to 12 the number of the death toll arising from banditry attacks in Kerio Valley since last month. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 23:31:53|Editor: huaxia

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KAMPALA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Uganda will receive at least 12.3 million COVID-19 vaccines by early 2022, according to the health authorities.

Emmanuel Ainebyoona, the health ministry spokesperson, told Xinhua by telephone Tuesday that the vaccines would be imported in a phased plan.

He said the ministry expects to receive 286,080 doses of AstraZeneca in the last week of July as well as 300,000 doses of Sinovac donated by China in the same period. Meanwhile, another 688,800 doses of AstraZeneca are expected in August.

"We also expect 2 million doses of Johnson & Johnson through Afri-Exim Bank and the African Union and 9 million doses of AstraZeneca by early 2022," Ainebyoona said.

He also said there was a high possibility of receiving more vaccines than indicated as more countries are now willing to donate to Africa.

Uganda has so far vaccinated over one million people since the exercise started in March.

Scientists in the East African country say if they could immunize more than 21 million people, or nearly half the population, COVID-19 would be put at bay.

Uganda has so far registered 90,910 COVID-19 infections. So far, 2,412 people have died due to the virus since March last year. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 23:35:33|Editor: huaxia

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BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi military said on Tuesday that a suicide bomber carried out the bombing in the east of the capital Baghdad that killed 30 people.

"Reports of explosive experts and forensic evidence at the crime scene showed that a suicide terrorist wearing an explosive belt caused the explosion, during which 30 citizens were killed and more than 50 others wounded," the media office of the Joint Operation Command said in a brief statement. (Iraq-Bombing-Killing)

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MOSCOW -- The Russian Defense Ministry announced Tuesday that it had successfully tested the country's state-of-the-art S-500 Prometheus system, which was developed to intercept aircraft and missiles.

An S-500 missile was launched from south Russia's Kapustin Yar training ground and hit a high-speed ballistic target as planned, the ministry said in a press release. (Russia-S-500)

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BAMAKO -- Mali's presidential office on Tuesday said there was an attempted stabbing attack against the West African country's transitional president, Assimi Goita at the Grand Mosque of Bamako.

In a statement on Twitter, the office said the attacker was immediately overpowered by the bodyguards, adding that investigations are ongoing.(Mali-President-Stabbing)

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JERUSALEM -- The Israeli army said on early Tuesday that it has fired artillery shells at the southern region of Lebanon in response to what the army said was the two rockets fired from the territory of Lebanon.

According to a statement, the two rockets triggered sirens throughout the northern Galilee region of Israel but caused no injuries or damage. (Israel-Lebanon-Shelling) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 23:39:54|Editor: huaxia

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A doctor of the Chinese medical team to Ghana (1st L) introduces the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) therapy to staff of Ghana's China Traditional Herbal Hospital in Accra, Ghana, July 20, 2021. The Chinese medical team to Ghana donated a consignment of medical supplies to a private hospital here Tuesday in a bid to support the TCM practice in the country. (Photo by Seth/Xinhua)

ACCRA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese medical team to Ghana donated a consignment of medical supplies to a private hospital here Tuesday in a bid to support the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practice in the country.

The items presented by the team to the China Traditional Herbal Hospital include 70 boxes of acupuncture needles, moxibustion tools, acupuncture charts, and many other supplies.

Kwame Nyame Bediako Mensah, Chief Executive Officer of the hospital commended the Chinese medical team for the kind gesture and stressed the importance of TCM in Ghana's healthcare delivery system.

"It means so many things to us, especially the acupuncture needles, the smoke for the treatment, the acupuncture chart, everything that they have given to us today, we say thank you," he said.

Stressing the efficacy of Chinese acupressure and acupuncture, Mensah said TCM is gaining so much popularity in Ghana that many locals take it as their first choice.

Zhuang Shaohui, chief of the Chinese medical team, who handed over the medical supplies to the hospital, said the rationale behind the donation is to deepen cooperation between the two countries as well as support in the treatment of common ailments in Ghana.

"China and Ghana are friends, and we really hope the Chinese treatment can help Ghanaians," she said.

Over years, the Chinese government has dispatched 10 batches of medical teams to Ghana, which helped augment the health service delivery in the West African country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 00:28:38|Editor: huaxia

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ADDIS ABABA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Some 3,720 refugees presently residing in Ethiopia have received COVID-19 jabs, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has said.

"Some 3,720 refugees, who meet the government's prioritization criteria, were vaccinated against COVID-19," the UN refugee agency said in its latest situation update issued on Tuesday.

Ethiopia's national Agency for Refugees and Returnee Affairs (ARRA) had in April disclosed the commencement of giving COVID-19 jabs to refugees residing across camps in the East African country.

The COVID-19 vaccine jabs rollout to refugees is being done in collaboration with various stakeholders including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Ethiopia Public Health Institute (EPHI), it was noted.

According to the latest figures from UNHCR, Ethiopia is the third largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, sheltering 785,322 registered refugees and asylum-seekers as of the end of June.

The overwhelming majority of refugees in Ethiopia originate from its neighboring countries South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and Sudan.

Ethiopia hosts some 372,961 South Sudanese refugees, accounting for 47.5 percent of the overall refugee population in the country, while 211,610 Somalis, 145,752 Eritreans and 45,726 Sudanese are also presently seeking refugee in Ethiopia, according to the UN refugee agency.

Noting that a total of 164,631 refugee students are presently attending classes, the UNHCR, however, stressed that meeting the minimum guidelines set by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the schools remains a challenge for most schools.

Shift systems and alternate learning are being used as a temporary measure to maximize the use of available resources. Despite all the efforts, over 60 percent of all the schools in the refugee camps do not meet the standards of safe learning environments, it was noted.

Amid a national push for vaccination, Ethiopia has so far administered 2,135,430 COVID-19 vaccine doses, according to the latest figures from the Ethiopian Ministry of Health.

Ethiopia received the first batch of China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government in March. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 00:58:22|Editor: huaxia

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BEIRUT, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Lebanese Health Ministry on Tuesday reported 632 new COVID-19 infections, the highest daily rise in nearly three months.

The total coronavirus infections in Lebanon climbed to 551,789, while the death toll from the virus went up by one to 7,887, the ministry said.

It added that 750,232 people, or 15.7 percent of the Lebanese population, have been fully vaccinated since the rollout of the vaccination campaign in February.

Health authorities have warned that Lebanon is experiencing a new wave of infections triggered by the Delta coronavirus variant which appeared at the beginning of the month.

Lebanese doctors have expressed their concerns about the impact of the spread of the new variant on the health sector, which lacks the ability to deal with a surge in infections due to a medicine shortage. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 01:25:32|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, inspects the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and presides over a symposium on July 19, 2021. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin)

BEIJING, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for advancing reform of the scientific research project review and evaluation mechanism to encourage researchers to devote themselves to basic research.

Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks on Monday while presiding over a symposium at the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

This year marks the 35th anniversary of the NSFC.

The establishment of the NSFC marks a historic shift in the allocation of scientific and technological resources from planned distribution to competition, Li said, adding that the foundation should make better use of the valuable funds in supporting scientific research.

Li underlined the core position of innovation in the country's modernization endeavor, calling for stimulating the enthusiasm of the whole of society for innovation through deepening reform.

Noting that the technological bottleneck in many industries mainly lies in the weakness of original innovation, Li said that basic research is the cornerstone of promoting original innovation, science and technology, and industrial development.

Li called for an increased sense of urgency and said researchers should be encouraged to focus on scientific research and deepen international cooperation.

He also called for increased financial investment in basic research, the stimulation of enterprises to carry out basic research and applied basic research by means of tax incentives, and the strengthening of research on basic theoretical problems that hold back industrial development.

He emphasized enhancing education in basic subjects such as mathematics, physics and chemistry to cultivate more talents for basic research. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 01:45:05|Editor: huaxia

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TEHRAN, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The strategic ties between Iran and Iraq will help guarantee the security and stability of the entire region, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Tuesday.

"The stability, independence, and territorial integrity of Iraq are of special importance for Iran, and we consider the security of Iraq and Iran are interrelated," Rouhani made the remarks in a telephone conversation with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on the occasion of celebrating the Muslim feast of Eid al-Adha.

Lauding the high-level Iran-Iraq cooperation in economic and trade areas, Rouhani stressed the need to implement agreements reached between the two sides, including the Shalamcheh-Basra railway project, which links the southern regions of both countries.

The Iranian leader also criticized the "double game" of the United States in dealing with terrorism.

"These days, we are witnessing the complicated game of the Americans in Iraq. And it is natural that these policies will not help security and stability in Iraq, but will further complicate the situation," he noted.

"The Americans have always played a destructive role in the region," he said, adding that Iran is opposed to any foreign interference in regional affairs.

"Regional issues should be resolved by the regional countries," he stressed.

For his part, al-Kadhimi said that bilateral, regional and international cooperation between Baghdad and Tehran have improved over the past eight years during Rouhani's presidency.

He also expressed the hope that the railway project connecting the two countries, which has been halted for years, could become operational as soon as possible.

Al-Kadhimi also thanked the Iranian government for supporting Iraq in the fight against terrorist groups as well as defending peace and stability in the country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 02:51:22|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok on Tuesday reiterated his country's adherence to reaching a legal and binding deal on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

"The GERD remains on the top priorities of the transitional government," said Hamdok in a speech to the Sudanese people on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice.

"Despite the Ethiopian government's announcement on the completion of the second filling of the GERD in a continued unilateral action for the second time, yet Sudan remains adherent to reaching a legal and binding agreement," noted Hamdok.

He stressed that Sudan would spare no effort until a binding deal is reached in line with international law and in a manner that preserves Sudan's national interests.

On Monday, the Ethiopian government announced that it had achieved its goal in the second filling of the GERD, saying it plans to start electricity production from the dam within months.

Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years, sponsored by the African Union, over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.

Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for their freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 05:22:22|Editor: huaxia

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LISBON, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Portugal signed on Tuesday four investment contracts with private companies that will contribute 141 million euros (166.23 million U.S. dollars) in value to the country's economy, in addition to creating 500 jobs.

The contract was signed between Portuguese-owned Vila Gale and three foreign-owned companies -- Joao de Deus, Siemens Gamesa, and Tryba, which operate in tourism, automotive, energy and construction sectors.

"It's another important sign of confidence in our country. We want to make 2021 the best year ever for attracting investment," said Prime Minister Antonio Costa here at the signing ceremony.

According to him, foreign direct investment contracts this year have almost equaled the country's record, reaching "92 percent of the amount invested in 2019, the best year so far."

Costa noted that "the 1st quarter of this year was the best ever in business investment" in Portugal, reaching 6.8 billion euros.

"The set of investments underway will ensure the sustained growth of the Portuguese economy, the maintenance of jobs and the creation of more and better jobs, essential to absorb the unemployment created by the crisis," he said.

The prime minister felt "confident in the future of the economy" and projected that Portugal will "win the pandemic" and "will be totally free with herd immunity" by the end of the summer. (1 euro = 1.18 U.S. dollars) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 05:25:29|Editor: huaxia

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RAMALLAH, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Palestine on Tuesday welcomed the decision of the U.S.-based ice cream maker Ben & Jerry's to halt its sales in the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories.

On Monday, Ben & Jerry's announced in a statement that it will stop selling ice creams in the Israeli settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Ben & Jerry's is a subsidiary of Unilever, a Britain-based consumer goods conglomerate.

The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a press statement that the American company's decision is "moral and legal," adding that the decision is "consistent with the rules of international law."

The statement said that international law "refuses to deal with the illegal and immoral system of settlements that Israel is entrenching and expanding in the land of Palestine."

It called on companies working directly or indirectly with Israeli settlements "to take similar actions immediately and stop dealings and business and be consistent with human rights principles and international law."

"The ministry will do everything possible through the rules of international law to hold accountable those who still insist on violating the rights of our Palestinian people," the statement said.

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett spoke over the phone with the CEO of Unilever Alan Jope, warning that the "anti-Israeli move "has severe consequences, including legal" as Israel will "take strong action against any boycott directed against its citizens."

The Israeli settlement issue has been a major obstacle for resuming the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks which have stalled since 2014. The Jewish settlements are considered a violation of international law by most of the international community.

Official Palestinian figures show that more than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 05:44:17|Editor: huaxia

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TUNIS -- Tunisia's Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi on Tuesday decided to remove Health Minister Faouzi Mehdi, amid rising COVID-19 cases in the North African country.

"Mohamed Trabelsi, the minister of social affairs, will be in charge of the interim at the ministry of health," reads a statement issued by the Tunisian government. (Tunisia-Coronavirus-Health Minister)

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BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi military said on Tuesday that a suicide bomber carried out the bombing in the east of the capital Baghdad that killed 30 people.

"Reports of explosive experts and forensic evidence at the crime scene showed that a suicide terrorist wearing an explosive belt caused the explosion, during which 30 citizens were killed and more than 50 others wounded," the media office of the Joint Operation Command said in a brief statement. (Iraq-Bombing-Investigation)

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KHARTOUM -- Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok on Tuesday reiterated his country's adherence to reaching a legal and binding deal on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

"The GERD remains on the top priorities of the transitional government," said Hamdok in a speech to the Sudanese people on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha, the Islamic feast of sacrifice. (Sudan-PM-GERD)

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TEHRAN -- Iran completed the construction of a major onshore oil pipeline which will allow the country to bypass the Hormuz Strait, a vital passageway of the region, for its oil exports, Tasnim News Agency reported Tuesday.

The 2-billion-U.S.-dollar project will allow the crude to travel some 1,000 km from Iran's pumping facilities in Goureh located on the southwestern shores to the Oman Sea port of Jask on the southeastern shore of the country.(Iran-Oil-Pipeline) Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 05:55:17|Editor: huaxia

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Picture taken on Oct. 8, 2012 shows Nord Stream pipeline equipments before the opening ceremony of the North Stream second gas link in Portovaya bay, near the town of Vyborg in northwestern Russia. (Xinhua)

"The Germans have put forward useful proposals and we have been able to make progress on steps to achieve that shared goal ... to ensure that Russia cannot weaponize energy flows," a State Department spokesperson said.

WASHINGTON, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday that Washington and Berlin had made progress on the contentious issue of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project.

The 1,230-km gas pipeline, expected to be completed next month, would bring natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea.

"The Germans have put forward useful proposals and we have been able to make progress on steps to achieve that shared goal ... to ensure that Russia cannot weaponize energy flows," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters during a daily briefing.

"We don't have any final details to announce yet, but I expect we will be able in a position to say more soon," he added.

State Department counselor Derek Chollet is on his trip to Ukraine and Poland this week. Price said Chollet will discuss the Nord Stream 2 and energy security with the two eastern European nations, both against the pipeline project.

The United States has long claimed that the project was a geopolitical maneuver by Russia that will undermine Ukraine's role in transiting energy to Europe. Germany and Russia pointed out that the project is purely commercial.

During his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week, President Joe Biden reiterated his concerns over the Nord Stream 2 project, warning "Russia must not be allowed to use energy as a weapon to coerce or threaten its neighbors."

Citing the importance of relations with Germany and the difficulty to stop the nearly completed pipeline, the Biden administration in May waived sanctions against a company behind the pipeline project and its German CEO, which led to opposition from bipartisan lawmakers. 
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-19 23:43:09|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, July 19 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese-built Lamu port located on the Kenyan coast on Monday received a large cargo vessel as the port reaffirms its strategic position as a transhipment hub serving the greater eastern African region.

John Mwangemi, acting managing director of the Kenya Ports Authority (KPA), said the arrival of MV Spirit of Dubai, owned by the French shipping line CMA CGM, at the recently launched first berth of Lamu port, will inspire confidence in its ability to host international logistics business.

"The dream of spearheading the transhipment business at the Lamu port has now become a reality with the arrival of the world's biggest and most reputable shipping lines," Mwangemi said in a statement issued in Nairobi.

President Uhuru Kenyatta on May 20 inaugurated the first berth of Lamu port, which is part of the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor to pave way for the docking of bulk cargo ships.

The seaport that is located in Lamu archipelago which is also a world heritage site is being constructed by the China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) and will have 32 berths in total upon completion.

The 310 billion shillings (2.86 billion U.S. dollars) port is expected to be the largest deepwater port in Sub-Saharan Africa besides enhancing regional connectivity, trade and investments.

The Lamu port on July 15 received the first commercial ship MV AMU 1 owned by a local shipping company and is expected to attract large vessels transporting cargo destined for the greater Horn of Africa region and beyond.

Mwangemi said MV Spirit of Dubai will pick the same cargo offloaded by MV AMU 1, for onward transhipment to the Middle East and Europe.

He said the port is capable of handling Panamax and post-Panamax vessels with a capacity of over 10,000 TEUs adding that two additional berths will be operationalized at the end of this year.

"We are prepared to continue receiving more vessels in the coming few days," said Mwangemi, adding that installation of modern infrastructure and deployment of skilled personnel will enhance seamless operations at the mega seaport. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-19 23:50:21|Editor: huaxia

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HARARE, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Zimbabwean police have banned the carrying of traditional weapons that may cause public disorder or breach of peace in the capital Harare for the next three months following an increase in violent crimes.

Harare provincial police spokesperson Tendai Mwanza said Monday that among the prohibited weapons are catapults, machetes, axes, knobkerries, swords, knives, stones, daggers and any traditional weapon that would cause public disorder or breach of peace.

Mwanza said violent crimes were rife in such districts as Harare central, Harare Suburban, Mbare, Harare South and Chitungwiza.

"The belief is informed by an escalation in violent crimes such as murder, assault, armed robbery and rape in the five police districts.

"We, therefore, want to safeguard peace in our communities and get rid of marauding criminals. The orders, therefore, prohibit the carrying of such weapons within the said police districts for a period of three months, that is, from July 15 to October 15," Mwanza said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 10:45:31|Editor: huaxia

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KHARTOUM, July 19 (Xinhua) -- Sudan on Monday reiterated its rejection of Ethiopia's completion of the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

"The Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources renews Sudan's firm position in rejecting neighboring Ethiopia's unilateral measures, its fait accompli policies and ignoring of the legitimate interests and serious concerns of its partners in the river," said the Sudanese ministry in a statement.

"The best alternative to this Ethiopian approach, which will only lead to harming the distinguished and historical ties between the two brotherly countries and peoples, is to continue to negotiate in good faith to reach a binding and comprehensive legal agreement that preserves the interests of all parties and addresses their concerns," the statement noted.

The ministry further expressed belief that reaching the desired agreement is very necessary and possible, if there is political will.

Earlier, according to official Ethiopian media, the Ethiopian government announced that it has achieved its goal in the second filling of the GERD, saying it was planning to start electricity production from the dam within months.

Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years, under the African Union, over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.

Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the African Union regarding the GERD issue. Ethiopia, however, has rejected this proposal.

Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 14:04:33|Editor: huaxia

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ADDIS ABABA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Ethiopia has registered 84 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 277,780 as of Monday evening, the country's health ministry said.

Meanwhile, 143 more recoveries were reported, bringing the national total recoveries to 262,457, the ministry said.

Ethiopia, Africa's second-most populous nation, has so far reported the largest number of COVID-19 cases in the East Africa region.

The country currently has 10,964 active COVID-19 cases, of whom 138 are severe, the ministry said.

Amid a national push for vaccination, the country has so far administered 2,135,430 COVID-19 vaccine doses, it added.

Ethiopia received the first batch of China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government in March.

Figures from the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the country's COVID-19 cases accounted for about 5 percent of Africa's total.

Ethiopia is among the countries hardest hit by COVID-19 in Africa, following South Africa, Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:43:40|Editor: huaxia

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ACCRA, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The outbreak of avian influenza compounded the plight of Ghanaian poultry sector, said some farmers told Xinhua.

Michael Nyarko-Ampem, president of the Greater Accra Regional Poultry Farmers Association, told Xinhua that the flu outbreak coupled with the existing challenge of shortage and high cost of feed constituted double jeopardy to the industry.

"It is indeed a kind of double jeopardy that has hit us on both sides. There is an Akan proverb that says a double slap makes you dizzy, and that is what we are going through," Nyarko-Ampem said. "Before this outbreak, we have been dealing with the unavailability of maize, wheat bran, and soya bean cake. In addition to that, these things have increased in prices."

"We are worried and concerned, particularly about the way the flu could spread, so it is critical that with the help of government and other agencies, we stem the spread of the disease immediately," the farmers' group leader said.

Although the impact of the flu at the moment was significant only on the individual farms and their employees, he said a further spread of the outbreak could have dire economic consequences for the industry, for jobs, and the entire Ghanaian economy.

"The impact on the industry will increase when people are not well informed and educated, and they start avoiding chicken and eggs. Once they do that, there is going to be a loss to the industry as eggs and birds could pile up and go bad," he stressed.

And with that, he said, "People will lose investments, and for people who took bank loans to stock their farms, the interests may pile up, and they would find it difficult to fulfill their parts of the obligation to their creditors."

As happened in all previous outbreaks, Nyarko-Ampem was confident that the state would compensate all farmers who would lose their birds to the flu.

He encouraged Ghanaians to continue patronizing poultry products since all the affected birds had been destroyed, suggesting that people should boil their chicken and eggs well before eating.

"But farmers are resilient, so we shall ride it out despite the challenges that are besetting us. We will ride it out, but we need the cooperation of everybody," he added.

According to Patrick Abekeh, director of the Veterinary Services Directorate of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), seven farms reported the avian flu outbreak from the Greater Accra, Volta, and Central Regions. And more than 10,000 poultry birds had been lost to the outbreak in Ghana this time.

Mary Arthur, owner of the Countryside Farms at Klagon near Accra, the capital of Ghana, told Xinhua she had lost all her birds. She said officials from the veterinary department had destroyed all the birds and their feed due to the flu outbreak.

"Through this poultry business, I have been able to fend for my family since my husband is a retiree and now bed-ridden. But I have lost all that now, and I have to start all over again," she told Xinhua.

After contracting a bank loan recently to expand the farm, Arthur did not know how to pay back the loan with all the birds gone.

She urged the government to come to the rescue of the affected farmers to restore their livelihoods.

The veterinary department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has been fighting to contain the bird flu outbreak in the West African country. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:45:43|Editor: huaxia

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BAMAKO, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Mali's presidential office on Tuesday said there was an attempted stabbing attack against the West African country's transitional president, Assimi Goita at the Grand Mosque of Bamako.

In a statement on Twitter, the office said the attacker was immediately overpowered by the bodyguards, adding that investigations are ongoing.

According to local media outlet Malijet, the country's largest news portal, the attempted attack happened while Goita was attending the prayer of Tabaski (Eid al-Adha). "The attacker tried to stab the president when the imam was leaving to sacrifice his sheep. But it was another person who was hurt," it reported.

Appointed transitional vice-president after the mutiny in 2020 which forced the resignation of then president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, Colonel Assimi Goita was proclaimed on May 28 this year as the transitional president by the Constitutional Court of Mali following the resignation of the former transitional president Bah N'Daw.

In recent years, central and northern Mali has been plagued by a worrying security situation marked by terrorist attacks and inter-communal conflict. In recent months, the security threat has spread to the country's south, where the massive presence of Islamist fighters has been reported.

Late June this year, the UN Security Council decided to renew the mandate of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) until June 30, 2022, in efforts to support the country's political transition ahead of presidential and legislative elections slated for Feb. 27, 2022. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 05:37:31|Editor: huaxia

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TUNIS, July 20 (Xinhua) -- Military planes from Kuwait and Jordan loaded with medical supplies for combating the COVID-19 pandemic landed in the Tunis Carthage International Airport on Tuesday, the Tunisian presidency said.

A Kuwaiti plane brought to Tunisia 20 tonnes of oxygen and 400 cylinders, which the country urgently needs, the presidency said in a statement.

"Tunisia expresses its gratitude to Kuwait for its constant support," the presidency said.

A Jordanian plane also arrived at the airport, loaded with medical equipment and supplies donated by Jordan to support Tunisia's fight against the surging COVID-19 pandemic.

Tunisia is going through a new, more dangerous wave of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an average of more than 500 cases detected per 100,000 persons in about half of the country's 24 provinces.

Tunisian Health Ministry on Monday reported 2,520 new COVID-19 cases, raising the tally in the country to 548,753, while the death toll from the virus rose by 117 to 17,644. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 20:51:56|Editor: huaxia

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KATHMANDU, July 20 (Xinhua) -- With a large number of workers in the tourism industry rendered unemployed amid the devastating COVID-19 pandemic, the Nepal Tourism Board is implementing a program to provide temporary employment to those who have lost their jobs.

Launched in partnership with the United Nations Development Program, the program is offering short-term employment to lower-level workers in the tourism sector by engaging them in the sanitization and maintenance of tourism facilities, which include trekking routes and bridges along the trails.

On Tuesday, the tourism board started seeking proposals from local non-governmental organizations, cooperatives and community-based organizations with a view to having their participation in the program.

"We initially started the program early this year in just five locations," Dhananjay Regmi, chief executive officer of the tourism board, told Xinhua. "We're implementing this program nationwide from the new 2021-22 fiscal year."

Nepal's new fiscal year began on July 16.

According to Regmi, the program shall be carried out in all the rural municipalities of hilly and mountainous districts under a resource-sharing mechanism as well as in some rural municipalities of the southern plain districts.

"We aim to provide short-term employment to 1,600 tourism workers under this program being implemented under the sustainable tourism for livelihood recovery project," said Regmi. "We're also going to implement a separate program related to tourism infrastructure development in which additional tourism workers will be employed."

Nepal's tourism is among the sectors being hit hard by the coronavirus, and hotels and restaurants had cut jobs by 40 percent during the first wave of the epidemic in early 2020, according to a survey conducted by the Nepali central bank in June 2020.

Ever since the pandemic befell and a second wave hit in early April this year, the tourism industry in Nepal has been struggling to recover amid dwindling foreign arrivals. In 2019, the South Asian country received 1.17 million foreign tourists. The number fell to 230,085 in 2020 and diminished further to a meagre 58,040 by mid-June this year, according to the Department of Immigration.

As a result, accommodation and food services had witnessed a negative growth of 25.72 percent in the 2019-20 fiscal year, the Central Bureau of Statistics figures show.

According to the Economic Census 2018 conducted by the bureau, tourism industry was providing 371,140 jobs in Nepal, making it the fourth largest job creator. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-20 19:39:21|Editor: huaxia

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LONDON, July 20 (Xinhua) -- A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Britain on Tuesday expressed grave concern about and strong opposition to the accusation made by the British side against China over alleged cyberattacks.

Responding to a question about a press release by Britain's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office which said Britain joins likeminded partners to confirm Chinese state-backed actors were responsible for gaining access to computer networks via Microsoft Exchange servers, the spokesperson said such accusation is "sheer fabrication and slander."

"We call on the UK side to immediately stop echoing the groundless and irresponsible accusation against China," the spokesperson said.

China is a staunch defender of cyber security and a main victim of cyber thefts and attacks, the spokesperson said, noting that in February alone, 830,000 computers with IP addresses in China suffered unknown attacks, 70 percent of which came from abroad.

The United States has long been engaging in practices of large-scale, organized and indiscriminate cyber theft, surveillance and attacks against foreign governments, enterprises and individuals, the spokesperson said, citing well-known cases of WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, Crypto AG and information theft on heads of state of European countries.

"If the UK side is serious about cyber security, it should not be indifferent toward, and still less an accessory to, such abuse of technological advantage and unscrupulous, large-scale and indiscriminate tapping and stealing of secrets against countries across the world, including its allies," the spokesperson said.

On cyber security issues, Britain and a handful of other "likeminded countries" are applying double standards and playing the trick of a thief crying "stop thief," the spokesperson added.

Cyber security is a global issue which concerns the common interests of all. China has always been open and honest on cyber security and is always ready to work with all parties to build up a community of shared cyber security for everyone, the spokesperson said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 01:48:12|Editor: huaxia

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BRUSSELS, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The European Commission on Tuesday proposed the creation of an anti-money laundering authority to clamp down on financial crime across the European Union (EU).

The proposal is one of a raft of legislative proposals aimed at strengthening the EU's rules on combating money laundering and terrorist financing.

The European Commission said in a statement that the aim of this package is to improve the detection of suspicious transactions and activities, and to address loopholes used by criminals to launder illicit proceeds or finance terrorist activities through the financial system.

Valdis Dombrovskis, the Commission's executive vice president for an economy that works for people, said that every money laundering scandal that has hit Europe in recent times was "a wake-up call that our work to close the gaps in our financial system is not yet done."

"We have made huge strides in recent years and our EU anti-money laundering (AML) rules are now among the toughest in the world. But they now need to be applied consistently and closely supervised to make sure they really bite," he said.

He described the new rules as "bold steps to close the door on money laundering and stop criminals from lining their pockets with ill-gotten gains."

Mairead McGuinness, commissioner responsible for financial services, financial stability and the Capital Markets Union, said: "Today's package significantly ramps up our efforts to stop dirty money from being washed through the financial system."

"We are increasing coordination and cooperation between authorities in member states and creating a new EU AML authority. These measures will help us protect the integrity of the financial system and the single market," she said.

The package consists of four legislative proposals, which apart from the creation of the new authority, includes rules on areas such as customer due diligence, a fresh anti-money laundering directive as well as an EU-wide limit of 10,000 euros (11,800 U.S. dollars) on large cash payments.

The cryptocurrency sector will also be fully covered by the new regulations. At present, only certain categories of crypto-asset service providers are included in the scope of EU rules.

The legislative package will now be discussed by the European Parliament and Council. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 06:13:58|Editor: huaxia

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HOUSTON, July 20 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. city of Houston is seeing the start of a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic as hospitalization and new cases are on the rise, health experts said Tuesday.

Texas Medical Center (TMC) on Tuesday hosted a brief discussion about the latest COVID-19 trends, breakthrough cases and the impact of the Delta variant in the Houston area.

During the discussion, TMC President and CEO Bill McKeon said that hospitalization rates in the medical center and the positivity rate are climbing, resulting from the emergence of the Delta variant.

"We are clearly seeing the beginning of a fourth wave of this pandemic, which is alarming at best," local media quoted McKeon as saying.

Both Houston Methodist and Memorial Hermann, two large hospital systems in the Houston area, are reporting big jumps in hospitalizations since the 4th of July holiday and nearly all new cases and hospitalizations are among people who are not vaccinated, health leaders said.

Paul Klotman, President and CEO of Baylor College of Medicine, discussed the breakthrough cases, meaning a fully vaccinated person contracting the virus. According to Klotman, there is a very small number of breakthrough cases.

Explaining that none of the vaccines are 100 percent effective, he anticipated that "5 percent of people are going to be infected, even though they've been vaccinated." Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2021-07-21 06:17:14|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, July 20 (Xinhua) -- A fully vaccinated White House official tested positive for COVID-19 but was found to have had no close contacts with White House principals or staff, confirmed White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday.

"Yesterday, a fully vaccinated White House official tested positive for COVID-19 off campus. In accordance with our rigorous COVID-19 protocols, the official remains off campus as they wait for confirmatory PCR test," said Psaki during Tuesday's press briefing, confirming earlier local media reports of the breakthrough case.

She said the White House medical unit has conducted contact tracing and interviews, finding no close contact among White House principals, staff or President Joe Biden.

There have been other instances of vaccinated employees testing positive, Psaki said, though they were not commissioned officers and therefore were not reported by the administration.

"We committed that we would release information proactively if it is commissioned officers," she said. Commissioned officers hold a high-level position where they work for the president, rather than working for another White House official.

Asked whether the administration fears that these breakthrough cases will spur more vaccine hesitancy among Americans, Psaki said she hasn't seen data to indicate this trend.

"We know that there will be breakthrough cases, but as this instance shows, cases in vaccinated individuals are typically mild," she said.

A senior spokesperson for House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has also tested positive after coming into contact with Democrats from the Texas state legislature last week.

The spokesperson was fully vaccinated and had no contact with Pelosi since being exposed to the virus, according to the speaker's office.

"The entire Press Office is working remotely today with the exception of individuals who have had no exposure to the individual or have had a recent negative test," Drew Hammill, Pelosi's deputy chief of staff, said in a statement on Tuesday.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise again in the United States as the highly transmissible Delta variant is taking hold and vaccination efforts are stagnating in the country.

Biden urged all Americans to remain vigilant in the fight against COVID-19, especially with the rise of the Delta variant, during his second full Cabinet meeting of his administration on Tuesday.

"The safest thing to do is to get vaccinated, get vaccinated," said Biden.

The Delta variant accounts for more than 83 percent of COVID-19 cases in the country, said Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday.

The pace of vaccinations in the United States has dropped sharply in the past few months. Twelve states have yet to vaccinate 40 percent of their population, CDC data show.

About 48.6 percent of the U.S. population is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and 56.1 percent of the population has received at least one shot as of Monday, according to CDC data.

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released new guidance for schools that supports in-person learning and recommends universal masking in schools for everyone over the age of 2. Enditem
analysis

Eid al-Adha is an Islamic festival to commemorate the willingness of Prophet Ibrahim (also known as Abraham) to follow Allah's command to sacrifice his son Ishmael. Muslims around the world observe this event. Eid al-Adha (Id ul-Adha) is a four-day Islamic festival starting on the 10th day of the month of Dhul Hijja (Thou al-Hijja) to commemorate the willingness of prophet Ibrahim (AS) to sacrifice his son. Ibrahim, known as Abraham in the Christian and Jewish traditions, was commanded by Allah to sacrifice his son. He obeyed and took Ishmael (Ismail or Ismael) to Mount Rahma. Just as he was to sacrifice his son, an angel stopped him and gave him a ram to sacrifice in place of his son.

The Islamic calendar is based on observations of the Crescent (Moon) and the length of a particular month can vary between years. For this reason, predicted dates of Eid al-Adha may be corrected at the start of the month of Dhul Hijja. This is around 10 days before the start of the festival.

At Eid al-Adha, many Muslims make a special effort to pray and listen to a sermon at a mosque or praying grounds. They also wear new clothes, visit family members and friends and may symbolically sacrifice an animal in an act known as qurbani. This represents the animal that Ibrahim (AS) sacrificed in the place of his son.

What does Eid al-Adha commemorate?

During the Hajj, Muslims remember and commemorate the trials and triumphs of the Prophet Abraham. The Qur'an describes Abraham as follows:

"Surely Abrahim was an example, obedient to Allah, by nature upright, and he was not of the polytheists. He was grateful for our bounties. We chose him and guided him unto a right path. We gave him good in this world, and in the next he will most surely be among the righteous." (Qur'an 16:120-121)

One of Abraham's main trials was to face the command of Allah to kill his only son. Upon hearing this command, he prepared to submit to Allah's will. When he was all prepared to do it, Allah revealed to him that his "sacrifice" had already been fulfilled. He had shown that his love for his Lord superseded all others that he would lay down his own life or the lives of those dear to him in order to submit to God.

Why do Muslims sacrifice an animal on this day?

During the celebration of Eid al-Adha, Muslims commemorate and remember Abraham's trials, by themselves slaughtering an animal such as a sheep, camel, or goat. This action is very often misunderstood by those outside the faith.

Allah has given us power over animals and allowed us to eat meat, but only if we pronounce His name at the solemn act of taking life. Muslims slaughter animals in the same way throughout the year. By saying the name of Allah at the time of slaughter, we are reminded that life is sacred.

The meat from the sacrifice of Eid al-Adha is mostly given away to others. One-third is eaten by immediate family and relatives, one-third is given away to friends, and one-third is donated to the poor. The act symbolizes our willingness to give up things that are of benefit to us or close to our hearts, in order to follow Allah's commands. It also symbolizes our willingness to give up some of our own bounties, in order to strengthen ties of friendship and help those who are in need. We recognize that all blessings come from Allah, and we should open our hearts and share with others.

It is very important to understand that the sacrifice itself, as practiced by Muslims, has nothing to do with atoning for our sins or using the blood to wash ourselves from sin. This is a misunderstanding by those of previous generations: "It is neither their meat nor their blood that reaches Allah; it is your piety that reaches Him" (Qur'an 22:37).

The symbolism is in the attitude - a willingness to make sacrifices in our lives in order to stay on the Straight Path. Each of us makes small sacrifices, giving up things that are fun or important to us. A true Muslim, one who submits his or herself completely to the Lord, is willing to follow Allah's commands completely and obediently. It is this strength of heart, purity in faith, and willing obedience that our Lord desires from us.

What else do Muslims do to celebrate Eid

On the first morning of Eid al-Adha, Muslims around the world attend morning prayers at their Mosques. Prayers are followed by visits with family and friends, and the exchange of greetings and gifts. At some point, members of the family will visit a local farm or otherwise will make arrangements for the slaughter of an animal. The meat is distributed during the days of the holiday or shortly thereafter.

FASTING ON THE DAY OF 'ARAFAH

Abu Hafsah, May Allah be pleased with him, reported that the Prophet, upon whom be peace, said:"Fasting on the Day of 'Arafah absolves the sins for two years: the previous year and the coming year, and fasting on 'Ashura, (the tenth day of Muharram) atones for the sins of previous years."Reported by all except Al-Bukhari and At-Tirmidhi. In another saying the Prophet's wife Hafsah, may Allah be pleased with her, said:

"Four things the Messenger of Allah never neglected: Observing fast on the day of 'Ashura, 'Arafat, three days every month, and offering fajr Sunnah prayers early in the morning.

"Muslim. These statements are proof that fasting on the ninth of Dhul-Hijjah, the day before 'Eid ul-Adha was a lifelong practice of the Prophet, peace be upon him, as his wife reported. There are some reports that fasting is prohibited on the Day of 'Arafah. However, it must be understood that this refers to a person performing the Hajj. If a person is on the Hajj, there is no fast for him or her on the day of 'Arafah. That is undoubtedly a blessing for him because of the hardships of the pilgrimage. In a saying reported by Umm Al-Fadl, may Allah be pleased with her, she said:

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"The companions doubted whether the Prophet was fasting on 'Arafah or not. She decided to prove to them that he was not, so she said, 'I sent to him milk, which he drank while he was delivering the khutbah (sermon) on 'Arafah.' "Recorded by Al-Bukhari

Prohibiting the pilgrims from fasting on these days is a great mercy for them, for fasting will exert undue hardship on the person performing the Hajj, while they are primarily concerned with their pilgrimage. Above all, the pilgrim would not be fasting anyway because he is travelling.

What is the significance of the first 10 days of Dhul-Hijjah?

Dhul-Hijjah (the Month of Hajj) is the 12th month of the Islamic lunar year. It is during this month that the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, known as Hajj, takes place. The actual pilgrimage rites take place on the 8th to 12th days of the month. According to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, the first ten days of this month are a special time for devotion. During these days, preparations are underway for those who are undertaking the pilgrimage, and most of the actual pilgrimage rites occur. In particular, the 9th day of the month marks the Day of Arafat, and the 10th day of the month marks the Eid al-Adha (Festival of Sacrifice). Even for those who are not traveling for the pilgrimage, this is a special time to remember Allah (SWT) and spend extra time in devotion and good deeds...
Ex-President Bah Ndaw and PM Moctar Ouane who have been under detention since May 28, 2021 have hired a lawyer to seek for their liberation.

Several months after the second coup d'etat in Mali (May 24), that saw Colonel Assimi Goita move from the post of vice-president to President, the fates of the former transitional President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouene are still on the pendulums. The two former leaders have remained under house arrest and deprived of their freedom of movement, without any legal basis. To seek for their liberation, the two personalities on Thursday, July 15, 2021 solicited the services of a lawyer, Mamadou Ismaila Konate.

According to lawyer Mamadou Ismaila Konate, the current Transitional President, Assimi Goita has to liberate the former president and the former prime minister, whom he overthrew, to regain their full freedom of movement. "The first judicial step which is very urgent will consist of depositing a complaint at the ECOWAS Court of Justice highlighting the violations of the rights of these two personalities and personally implicating Colonel Goita and the State of Mali." I will he added, "refrain from issuing an ultimatum but I am waiting for an appointment to meet him (Goita) or the authorities, otherwise, I will launch a legal action and the coming week will be decisive," he reiterated.

Amnesty International's Regional Director for West and Central Africa, Samira Daoud, said the house arrest was "ordered by Colonel Goita, among others, without judicial authorization." It amounts to "arbitrary detention" in violation of the Malian Constitution and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights ratified by Mali, Daoud emphasized. Associated Press reports that, the legal action comes after several failed promises made by Maj. Baba Cisse, special advisor to President Assimi Goita, with regards to the release of the leaders, "the release of the two arrested leaders will be done gradually for the obvious security reasons."

Apart from the two leaders, Generals Mohamed Lamine Ballo and Souleymane Doucoure, appointed Minister of Public Security and Civil Protection, and Defense Minister, respectively, are also still being held at the Kati military camp. Meanwhile, the West African regional bloc ECOWAS that has suspended Mali from its activities, the African Union, the European Union, the United Nations and many human rights organizations have called and are still calling for an end to the house arrest of the leaders.
press release

Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams welcome pledges and donations towards rebuilding community radio stations that were vandalised during recent spate of looting in the country. The affected community radio stations, whose equipment has been reported damaged or looted, include Alex FM, Ntokozo FM, Mams FM and Westside FM.

"As the Ministry of Communications and Digital Technologies, and the custodian of broadcasting policy in country, we acknowledge the contribution made by the public to rebuild these community radio stations, which play an important role in disseminating relevant and necessary information to listeners," said Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams.

The Minister describe the destruction of infrastructure as an infringement on the rights of others. "Our resources are stretched already and the massive cost to replace infrastructure associated with rebuilding damaged infrastructure means that the delivery of other services will be hampered. It will take many years before the destroyed public and business infrastructure can be rebuilt," said Minister Ndabeni- Abrahams.

Significant communications infrastructure has been vandalised, including network towers in some parts of the country. The department met with mobile operators to assess the nature of vandalism of network towers. The purpose of the meeting was to also explore collaborative efforts aimed at protecting communications infrastructure and deploy mop-up operators to affected areas.

The telecommunications sector has been plagued by the destruction of network towers, resulting in network operators incurring billions of rands in replacements costs.

"It is regrettable that much-needed network infrastructure is being destroyed. The country currently needs resilient and high-speed connectivity for every citizen, to enable them to participate meaningfully in the digital economy. Furthermore, mobile telephony is crucial in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic", added Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams.
Conrad Mupesa Mashonaland West Bureau

A Chinhoyi man has been fined $20 000 for letting his boss' vicious two pit-bull dogs on a seven-year-old boy, resulting in the boy's face and legs being seriously damaged by the dogs.

Stanley Mwale (42) of 10776 Mapako Phase 2 pleaded guilty when he appeared before Chinhoyi provincial magistrate Mr Tapiwa Banda on Friday charged with letting the vicious dogs at large.

He will do 30 days in jail if he fails to pay the fine.

Prosecuting, Mr Tinoziva Chipupuri told the court that on June 17 at around 11am, the minor, Samuel Phineas, ran towards the main gate at a house where Mwale works after a misunderstanding with his uncle Richard Zulu for allegedly stealing some biscuits at a nearby market.

Mwale heard Samuel crying and opened the gate trying to establish what was happening.

This was when the pit-bulls ran towards Samuel before biting him on the forehead, upper lip and both legs.

Mwale tried to refrain the dogs from further attacking Samuel, but was overpowered until he was helped by his workmate Mr Ackim Moenda.

Samuel's parents filed a report with the police against the owner of the dogs, Mr Samuel Mugari, leading to Mwale's arrest.
Attacks against so-called slaves in Mali are on the rise and authorities must do more to prevent them, two independent UN human rights experts said on Monday.

Although Mali outlawed slavery in 1905, a system of "descent-based slavery" persists, where some people are considered slaves because their ancestors were allegedly enslaved by the families of so-called masters.

Attacks 'unacceptable'

People born into slavery work without pay and are deprived of basic human rights and dignity, the experts said.

Those who reject the "slave" designation and try to stand up for their rights, as well as anti-slavery organizations, are regularly violently attacked by traditional or religious leaders and their allies, who sometimes include State authorities

Alioune Tine, UN independent expert on the human rights situation in Mali, said systemic attacks against so-called slaves are "unacceptable and must stop immediately."

Furthermore, these assaults "are incompatible with an inclusive society and we condemn them in the strongest terms," added Tomoya Obokata, the UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery.

'Gross failure' to protect

The experts were responding to an attack on 4 July in which people from Makhadougou village, located in the eastern Kayes region, used machetes and rifles to prevent so-called slaves from working their fields.

Twelve people were injured, including three women, who were not involved in the clash, who were hit by stray bullets inside their homes.

So far this year, 62 people - 57 men and five women - have been injured in violent clashes in the Kayes region, while 80 have fled their homes. Twice as many people - mostly so-called "descent-based slaves" - have been injured this year, as in 2020.

"The dramatic increase in attacks this year shows the Government's gross failure to protect its people, particularly those who already suffer most from discrimination and violence," they said.

Hold perpetrators accountable

Last September, the UN experts issued a statement condemning similar "barbaric and criminal acts", and urged Mali to end slavery once and for all. They also called for "a prompt, transparent, impartial and thorough investigation" into attacks in the Kayes region.

"It is deeply worrying that no one has been prosecuted in connection with attacks last year," they said. "The Government's failure to hold pro-slavery perpetrators accountable sends a shockingly disturbing signal. Traditional and religious leaders who condone these violent attacks must also be held accountable."

Criminalize slavery call

The UN experts renewed their call for Mali to urgently adopt a law specifically criminalising slavery. A "change of attitude" throughout society is equally as important, they added.

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"It is indispensable to leave the heritage of descent-based slavery behind and to recognize that all Malians are entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights," they said.

"For Mali to move forward, there must be a recognition that all Malians - like everyone else on this planet - can expect and demand certain rights simply because they are human beings. There should be no discrimination based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or birth."

Role of UN experts

Mr. Tine and Mr. Obokata were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council and are part of its independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms which address either specific country situations or thematic issues all over the world.

They work on a voluntary basis and are not UN staff, nor are they paid by the Organization.
The latest incident makes it at least four air crashes involving Nigerian military planes in the last seven months.

A Nigerian alpha jet aircraft, used for attacks against armed men, has crashed in Zamfara State, while "under intense enemy fire."

The Nigerian Air Force confirmed the crash in a Monday statement, saying there was no casualty as the pilot escaped enemy fire.

The crash happened on Sunday at about 12:45 p.m., air force spokesperson, Edward Gabkwet, said in a statement.

"On 18 July 2021, at about 12.45 pm, a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) Alpha Jet aircraft, returning from a successful air interdiction mission between the boundaries of Zamfara and Kaduna State, came under intense enemy fire which led to its crash in Zamfara State," the official said.

The latest incident makes it at least four air crashes involving Nigerian military planes in the last seven months.

Read the full statement by Mr Gabkwet, an air commodore, below.

ALPHA JET AIRCRAFT CRASHES IN ZAMFARA STATE, PILOT RESCUED

On 18 July 2021, at about 12.45 pm, a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) Alpha Jet aircraft, returning from a successful air interdiction mission between the boundaries of Zamfara and Kaduna State, came under intense enemy fire which led to its crash in Zamfara State. Luckily, the gallant pilot of the aircraft, Flight Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo, successfully ejected from the aircraft. Using his survival instincts, the pilot, who came under intense ground fire from the bandits, was able to evade them and sought refuge in nearby settlements awaiting sunset. Using the cover of darkness and his phone set for navigation, Flight Lieutenant Dairo was able to elude several bandits' strongholds and maneuvered his way to a Nigerian Army Unit, where he was finally rescued. It is instructive to note that upon receipt of the news of the crash, the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Oladayo Amao, had directed that all efforts must be emplaced to rescue the pilot. Accordingly, NAF Intelligence Surveillance Reconnaissance (ISR) platforms and helicopter gunships provided close air support to NAF Special Forces and Nigerian Army troops who were able to locate the crash site and the pilot's parachute, while also combing nearby locations for any sign of the pilot. It is gladdening to note that while in hiding, Flight Lieutenant Dairo confirmed that the presence of NAF aircraft within the vicinity of the crash site helped in scaring the bandits who were after him, thus enabling him to find refuge and escape to a safe location. It is important to also recall that only recently, the President, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, President Muhammadu Buhari, GCFR, had directed the Armed Forces of Nigeria to do all it takes to flush out criminal elements in Katsina, Zamfara and Kaduna States. It is in fulfilment of this directive that the NAF, in conjunction with surface forces, has in the last 2 weeks mounted intensive day and night air interdiction operations against bandits and their hideouts, especially in these 3 states. Through these intensive air operations, hundreds of bandits have been neutralized and several of their hideouts destroyed. Despite the setback of yesterday's crash, the NAF remains committed towards fulfilling Mr President's mandate as well as other constitutional roles assigned to it. The willingness, readiness and tested ability of the NAF remains unshaken and unwavering as it continues to carry out its assigned roles. Kindly bring the information to the awareness of the general public.

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Thank you.

Edward Gabkwet

Air Commodore Director of Public Relations and Information

Read more at: https://prnigeria.com/2021/07/19/naf-pilot-survived-crash/
EFCC says the N1.3 billion which it describes as proceeds of illicit activities was discovered in a private bank account.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) says it has obtained an order of the Sokoto State High Court for the permanent forfeiture of about N1.3billion said to have been traced to the bank account of one Aishatu Magaji.

The anti-graft agency said in a statement by its spokesperson, Wilson Uwujaren, that the money was part of the proceeds of illicit activities.

Although the commission did not give the particulars of the alleged criminal activities, it said the court issued the order of final forfeiture on Monday following the court's earlier July 2, 2021 order of interim forfeiture.

Mr Uwujaren said the commission had, in line with the July 2, 2021 order, published the interim forfeiture order in a newspaper for anyone with interest in the money to show cause why it should not be permanently forfeited to the federal government.

He said when the case came up in court on Monday, the lawyers to the five respondents including the person in whose account the money was discovered did not oppose EFCC's application for its permanent forfeiture to the government.

Read the full statement

EFCC Press Release

Court Orders Final Forfeiture of N1.3bn to FG

Justice Mohammed Mohammed of the Sokoto State High Court today Monday July 19, 2021 granted a final Order, forfeiting the sum of N1, 362,675,353.56 (One Billion, Three Hundred and Sixty Two Million, Six Hundred and Seventy Five Thousand, Three Hundred and Fifty Three Naira, Fifty Six Kobo) to the Federal Government of Nigeria through the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

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The Judge had on July 2, 2021 granted an interim order of forfeiture of the said amount following an exparte application by the commission and directed that the order be published in a national newspaper for any one with interest in the said asset to show cause, why it should not be finally forfeited the Federal Government of Nigeria.

At today's (Monday's) hearing, counsel to the EFCC, S. H Sa'ad informed the Court that the Commission had complied with its order for the publication of the interim Order and urged the Court to Order the final forfeiture of the said amount to the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Counsel to the five respondents, Shamsu Dauda, did not oppose the application. Justice Mohammed consequently ordered the final forfeiture of the sum to the Federal Government.

The Sokoto Zonal Office of the EFCC had through intelligence traced the funds, suspected to be proceeds of illicit activities to the account of the first respondent, Aishatu Bandado Magaji domiciled in a new generation bank.

The respondents in the charge are Aishatu Bandado Magaji, First Ninety Degrees Continental Ltd, Priceless Legacy Hub Ltd, ABM International Ltd and Zenith Bank Plc.

Wilson Uwujaren

Head, Media & Publicity

19 July, 2021
press release

'Zero-click' attacks have been used to install the almost-invisible spyware on iPhones

iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 models infected

'These findings show that the surveillance industry is out of control' - Danna Ingleton

New evidence uncovered by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories has revealed a massive wave of attacks by cyber surveillance company NSO Group's customers on iPhones, potentially affecting thousands of Apple users worldwide.

Danna Ingleton, Deputy Director of Amnesty Tech, said:

"Apple prides itself on its security and privacy features, but NSO Group has ripped these apart.

"Our forensic analysis has uncovered irrefutable evidence that through iMessage zero-click attacks, NSO's spyware has successfully infected iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 models. Thousands of iPhones have potentially been compromised.

"These attacks have exposed activists, journalists and politicians all over the world to the risk of having their whereabouts monitored, and their personal information used against them.

"This is a global concern - anyone and everyone is at risk, and even technology giants like Apple are ill-equipped to deal with the massive scale of surveillance at hand.

"NSO Group can no longer hide behind the claim that its spyware is only used to fight crime. There is overwhelming evidence that NSO spyware is being systematically used for repression and other human rights violations. NSO Group must immediately stop selling its equipment to governments with a track record of abusing human rights.

"These findings show that the surveillance industry is out of control. States must immediately implement a global moratorium on the export, sale and use of surveillance equipment until a human rights-compliant regulatory framework is in place."

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Massive scale of surveillance

NSO Group's spyware has been used to facilitate human rights violations around the world on a massive scale, according to a major investigation into the leak of 50,000 phone numbers of potential surveillance targets. These include heads of state, activists and journalists, including Jamal Khashoggi's family.

The Pegasus Project is a ground-breaking collaboration by more than 80 journalists from 17 media organisations in ten countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based media non-profit organisation, with the technical support of Amnesty, who conducted forensic tests on mobile phones to identify traces of the spyware.

The investigation revealed that Pegasus zero-click attacks have been used to install spyware on iPhones. Amnesty was able to confirm that thousands of iPhones were listed as potential targets for Pegasus spyware, though it was not possible to confirm how many were successfully hacked.

Thousands of Google Android phones were also selected for targeting, but unlike iPhones their operating systems do not keep accessible logs useful for detecting Pegasus spyware infection. Among the Apple products successfully infected were iPhone 11 and iPhone 12 models, equipped with the latest updates which were believed to have high levels of security.

Israeli surveillance company NSO Group is bankrolled by major private equity firms Novalpina Capital and Francisco Partners, with numerous investors behind them. Pension firms in the UK and US also have a stake in the rights-abusing company.
A United States based Nigerian academic, media scholar, public speaker and newspaper columnist, Prof. Farooq Kperogi, has challenged the Nigerian media to stop underplaying the danger being posed by criminals in the North-West, notoriously known as 'bandits'.

Kperogi, who took to his verified Facebook page, said the criminals are not bandits but terrorists since they possess the capacity to down a NAF fighter jet.

Recall that the Nigerian Air Force (NAF) on Monday said bandits in Zamfara State shot down its Alpa Jet after an interdiction operation in the North-West zone.

It said the pilot, Flight Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo, successfully ejected from the plane and maneuvered his way to safety where he was thereafter rescued by a Nigerian Army Unit in Zamfara.

Kperogi wrote: "People who have the will and the means to shoot down an Alpha Jet aren't "bandits"; they're terrorists.

"The Nigerian news media should stop minimizing the dangers these monsters pose to the country by calling them "bandits." This isn't mere criminality; it's well-practiced terrorism!"

BREAKING-NAF Jet: Cause Of Crash To Be Made Public Soon - Air Chief
The Twitter page of Le Desk, Moroccan journalist Omar Radi was one of the founders of the publication.

press release

Call for leading investigative journalist to be granted re-trial

Radi had previously been targeted by notorious Pegasus spyware

'Condemning someone to six years in prison after such flawed proceedings is not justice' - Amna Guellali

Responding to today's sentencing of Moroccan journalist and government critic Omar Radi to six years in prison after a trial marred by blatant breaches of due process in relation to charges of espionage and rape, Amna Guellali, Amnesty International's Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director, said:

"Before his arrest Omar Radi was harassed by the authorities because of his brave journalistic work criticising human rights violations and exposing corruption.

"Ever since his trial began it has been marred by flaws.

"He has been deprived of the right to prepare a proper defence, he and his legal team were denied the right to access some of the evidence against him and all requests to summon defence witnesses in the cases against him were denied. He has also been held in solitary confinement for nearly a year.

"Condemning someone to six years in prison after such flawed proceedings is not justice.

"The authorities must urgently grant him a fair retrial in line with international standards."

Critical of authorities

Omar Radi is one of the founders of Le Desk, an independent Moroccan news website publishing content critical of the authorities. His journalism has focused on politics and corruption by the authorities.

On 29 July 2020, Radi was arrested and charged with "harming the internal and external security of Morocco" and of receiving funds from sources "linked to foreign intelligence agencies". Amnesty considers these trumped-up charges as they relate to research grants in the context of a journalism fellowship and freelance consultancies, both protected by his right to freedom of expression.

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Radi was also charged with "rape" and "indecent assault against a female" after a former Le Desk colleague alleged he assaulted her. He has denied the accusation. It is vital for all sexual assault allegations to be properly investigated and for perpetrators of such assaults to be brought to justice. Yet regardless of how serious the charges against him are, the authorities must ensure he is treated fairly and is granted a fair trial.

Targeted by Pegasus spyware

In June 2020, an Amnesty report revealed that Omar Radi had been targeted by the Moroccan authorities using spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group. Following this, the Moroccan authorities launched a smear campaign against Amnesty, attempting to discredit the organisation's findings and distract from the unlawful surveillance of human rights defenders and journalists in the country. The indictment in both the espionage and rape cases against Radi confirm that the authorities had had the journalist under surveillance from late December 2017.
What happened?

On July 15, the license and registration directorate of the Ethiopian media Authority (EMA) called the General Manager of JAKENN Publishing PLC, the publishers of Addis Standard publication, requesting members of Addis Standard online publication to come to EMA office with the copy of the certificate of registration that Addis Standard online received on May 28/2021.

Accordingly with the understanding that the meeting request was administrative matter, a team of three: the heads of Finance and Administration and Marketing departments, as well as one assistant to the finance and administration, went to the office with the said certificate.

Upon arrival, the head of the directorate informed the team that EMA was recalling the certificate of registration and that Addis Standard was to suspend its activities of publishing contents due to allegations by EMA content monitoring team. Later that day the EMA issued a statement claiming Addis Standard publication was advancing the agenda of TPLF, Tigray Regional State's ruling party which has been designated as a "terrorist organization" by the Ethiopian parliament, as well as using the term "Tigray Defense Force".

Pursuant to the order from the directorate, JAKENN Publishing PLC issued public notice announcing the temporary suspension of the content publications by Addis Standard.

How the decision violated the Ethiopian Media Law

The new media proclamation 1238/2021 stipulates that the Ethiopian Media Authority determines the licensing conditions of Broadcast Services - TV and Radio, whereas it is mandated to merely give certificate of recognition to online media outlets.

*Article 26 of the proclamation states that online media platforms are presumed legal even in the absence of a certificate of registration by EMA if it fails to issue one after an application is submitted.

*Article 22 Sub article 1 of the proclamation stipulates that the registration of online media shall not impose substantive restriction on the right to freedom of expression.

*Article 48 of the proclamation grants the media the right to express opinions and engage in critical reporting on various issues.

*Article 73 on "Administrative Measures" the proclamation states that "The Authority may step by step take, as may be appropriate, the following administrative measures, where a broadcasting service provider contravenes the provisions of this Proclamation and Regulations or Directives issued in accordance with this Proclamation:

a) issue a written warning;

b) impose administrative fine up to Birr 200,000(Two Hundred Thousand Birr);

c) suspend or terminate the program that violated the law;

d) suspend or revoke the license of the licensee that violets the law

It should be underlined that the above provision is pertinent only to broadcasting service providers and NOT online media content providers.

*Revoking, recalling or suspending certificates of registration is not the state mandate of the EMA, nor should such actions lead to the suspension of content publication.

On the critical role of EMA Board

*As per the new media proclamation, a Board of nine members shall be appointed by the House of People's Representatives (HoPR) and will be tasked with the management of EMA.

*According to Article 12, Sub article 1 of the proclamation, the Board shall have the final decision making authority.

*Sub article 5 of the same article mandates the Board to examine, review and decide on public complaints.

*Article 12 Sub article 6 of the proclamation requires the Board to "organize independent complaints hearing committee within the Authority which investigates any complaints of citizens and broadcasting service licensees related with media as well as monitoring results provided by the Authority and submit recommendations to the Board; make decisions based on the recommendations."

*However, although the new media proclamation 1238/2021 requires the establishment of such Board, it should be clear that as of the writing of this statement, a Board with such authority has not be constituted.

It is in the backdrop of this legal and procedural irregularities that EMA announced the reason for its decision based on "complaints and alarming trends" compiled through its monitoring findings, which it did not disclose to Addis Standard prior to its decision to order the suspension of content publication.

Through the use of extensive media statements, EMA also wrongly accused Addis Standard of advancing a terrorist group's agenda, and using the name "Tigray Defense forces," a terminology it has since restricted from being used by all media, both local and international.

The abrupt announcement of the authority about the suspension of Addis Standard content as well as remarks made by the deputy director general, Mr. Yonathan Tesfaye, on interviews given to different media outlets and organizations is in direct violation of Article 72 of the media proclamation which prohibits administrative actions and measures that adversely affect media freedom.

Although the authority claimed to have warned Addis Standard prior to ordering the suspension of its online content publication, as an online media Addis standard is not under the provisions related to such administrative measures that necessitate a written warning, penalty, suspension or revocation of license, which, in the first place, and as per the proclamation, are to be decided by the Board and not by EMA.

Meeting between EMA Director General and Deputy Director General & Addis Standard newsroom editors

On Monday July 19, two senior members of the Addis Standard newsroom: the editor-in-chief and product editor, conducted a successful and constructive meeting with Mr. Mohammed Idriss, Director General, and Mr. Yonathan Tesfaye, Deputy Director General, of the EMA.

In the meeting the following steps were agreed on:

Addis Standard members

Addis Standard members have explained the above irregularities of the decision to the EMA leadership.

Addis Standard members have expressed grave concern on the role of previous public statements by a senior member of EMA with serious allegations against Addis Standard.

Addis Standard members have expressed the need and the publication's unreserved cooperation for independent monitoring of its content to address such allegation when its is warranted and to prove wrong EMA's repeated statement over the last few days that the publication works to advance the agenda of an organization designated by parliament as a terrorist.

Addis Standard members have expressed that the publication takes such accusations seriously, and is determined to prove wrong the existence of this consequential allegations.

To that end Addis Standard members affirmed that the publication is more than ready to cooperate with EMA monitoring team to conduct an independent monitoring by providing guidance through its publication when requested with regard to specific publications to determine that such allegations are totally unfounded.

EMA leadership:

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EMA leadership acknowledged that the action to suspend Addis Standard online content publication violated the legal procedure.

However, the leadership gave reason for the action with the argument that media publications do not supersede grave national security and sovereignty of the county. The EMA leadership stated that the specific content that led to the abrupt decision was being investigated and the outcome will be made public in due course.

EMA leadership informed Addis Standard on the importance of correcting the use of terminologies including "Tigray Defense Forces."

EMA leadership recognized that its written notice cautioning the media to refrain from the use of such terminologies was issued after a decision was taken against Addis Standard.

EMA leadership recognized that in the future proper means of notifying Addis Standard will be followed according to the Ethiopian media law.

EMA leadership affirmed that Addis Standard will receive back its certificate of registration on Wednesday July 21/2021.

EMA leadership stated that in a forthcoming statement EMA would address the allegations accusing Addis Standard of advancing the agenda and having affiliation with an organization which is designated by the Ethiopian parliament as a terrorist organization.

Final remark:

The meeting was held under a mutual respect and understanding of the seriousness of the issue under discussion both for EMA and Addis Standard online publication.

The Addis Standard publication affirms its commitment to adhere to and continue on the legacy of its well established ethical standard of journalism. It also affirmed to continue to play its vital role as an independent media in promoting and advancing efforts towards building a democratic and peaceful Ethiopia.
THE Trade Union Congress, TUC, Monday, said that the harsh economy in the country was taking tolls on a large number of Nigerians.

The TUC has also felicitated with the Muslim faithful and Nigerians on the occasion of Sallah celebration.

The TUC in a Sallah message issued by its President and Secretary General, Quadri Olaleye and Musa-Lawal Ozigi, respectively, said out of frustration many, especially the youths were doing untoward things just to make ends meet

The labour center in the message said, "We would like to also use this opportunity to call on the leadership of the country to bear it in mind that the country is in a dire strait and we can only overcome if they (leaders) lead a selfless and exemplary life.

"The harsh economy is taking tolls on a large number of Nigerians and out of frustration many, especially the youths are doing untoward things just to make ends meet. It is true that only God can help us overcome our challenges but we must not forget that certainly we do have a role to play.

"We expect that this celebration would humble every Muslim in particular and Nigerians in general in their service to God, and to humanity.

"The impoverished masses of the country are going through an excruciating experience presently and it beholves the wealthy and the privileged Nigerians to empathise with the needy.

"Painfully and regrettably the order of the day has been flagrant transfer of our commonwealth and loans to foreign banks rather than making it useful for the nation where it is really needed.

" This is the time for the leadership at all levels to have a rethink and redraw a workable roadmap capable of transforming the economy of the country. The plight of Nigerians under this administration falls below expectation."

It lamented the Federal Government penchant for going for loans and called for a stop to it.

"We say no to more loans. It has to stop. We are not in a master-servant relationship. Public officials are our employees because they are paid with taxpayers' money.

"The Congress desires a country that is peaceful and development conscious. To achieve this the youth have to be gainfully engaged - not as political thugs. An army of idle youths portends great danger for any society.

"While we celebrate with our Muslim brothers and sisters, we must be committed to sharing and caring for one another as Allah has directed. We call on everyone to remain self-disciplined and law abiding even as we strive to achieve the desired development we crave."

RELATED NEWS
Yaounde, Cameroon  Authorities in Cameroon said at least 70,000 schoolchildren and their teachers have returned to classrooms this year in the troubled western regions. The schools had been abandoned due to threats from English-speaking rebels, who see them as an arm of the French-speaking-majority's rule.

Fourteen-year-old Clementine Fua is spending a holiday in Yaounde with her uncle. Fua said this year, she braved threats from separatists and successfully went to school in her hometown Njinikom, in the English-speaking Northwest region. Fua said separatists deprived her of education for three years.

"It is good for everyone to go to school so they can have the knowledge," Fua said. "We struggled through the crisis. When we were going to school there were gunshots, we ran and we came back (to school) by God's grace. God helped us. We wrote the First School Leaving Certificate peacefully."

Cameron's First School Leaving Certificate and Common Entrance Examinations qualify primary students for secondary school studies.

Cameroon's ministries of basic and secondary education said Fua is one of 70,000 students who returned to more than 400 re-opened schools this year in the Northwest and Southwest regions.

Wilfred Wambeng Ndong is the highest government official in charge of basic education in the Northwest.

He reports that the number of children who took their First School Leaving exams this year increased dramatically.

"Last year we had 12,786 candidates who sat the First School Leaving and Common Entrance," Ndong said. "And this year, we have 27,128, meaning that the number almost doubled."

Ngwang Roland Yuven is in charge of secondary education in the Northwest region. He said the number of kids taking secondary school exams also increased.

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"This year, the figure moved from the 13,000 of last year to 22,482 candidates," Yuven said. "The examinations were conducted in a hitch-free manner thanks to the strict and committed follow-up by security. The success also came about as a result of the determination and resilience of parents and the candidates themselves who defied all challenges to ensure that they participated."

Yuven said the success recorded this year might motivate parents to send their children back to school, despite continued threats from separatist militants.

The separatists attacked or set fire to more than 200 schools between 2017 and 2019, and nearly all schools in the North- and Southwest regions shut down, as teachers left their jobs due to insecurity.

Nji Samuel Kale is education secretary of schools owned by the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, or the PCC. He said everyone involved -- students, parents, teachers and security forces -- has shown great commitment to making sure the schools stay open.

"We want to thank the community for the strong mobilization they carried out to ensure that the schools reopened," Kale said. "The community and the Christians helped us run the schools. The teachers, we must attest, they have been enduring a lot. They have shown a lot of resilience. We are praying that unfortunate incidents should not occur again so that the children should have education."

The separatists launched their rebellion in 2017. According to the United Nations, more than 3,000 people, including soldiers and police, have been killed since the violence in the regions began.
VIP treatment for Olympic teams

*****

Airline procedures have changed quite a bit in Japan as Tokyo hosts the Olympic and Paralympic Games, with Olympic athletes and officials being given priority for various services.

Olympic delegations are the first to board and the last to disembark from planes, and they have they own check-in counters with fast-tracked service. Japan Airlines is the official Olympic partner airline. Every effort is being made to separate Olympians from the rest of the public.

Google translate to the rescue

*****

Our new guide yesterday was clearly struggling to communicate in English. Then he turned to his mobile phone, typed a few words in Japanese then turned my attention to the phone's screen.

"Unataka kwenda bafu?" the message on the phone said. I realised he was asking if I wanted to use the toilet (bathroom) after landing at Tokyo's Haneda Airport from Fukuoka yesterday evening. Indeed, Google Translate is a handy tool here!

Hotel restrictions keep guests safe

*****

Hotels are doing all it takes to keep Olympic guests feel safe and minimize their interaction with locals as a measure to curb the spread of Covid-19.

As standard procedure, separate lifts are assigned to Olympic guests who aren't allowed to entertain visitors in their rooms, or even in the lobby.

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Separate dining rooms are also assigned, with the visitors urged to avoid venturing onto the streets without adequate reason. Hotel bars have also been temporarily closed, much to the chagrin of many.

TV sales rise due to closed door Games

*****

Sales of big screen television sets are on the rise in Japan, largely because spectators will not be allowed at venues and will be forced to watch the action from home.

"Bic Camera's TV sales began rising in May and surged from late June. Sales in the week to July 4 were 10 percent larger than in the same period the previous year, when sales were strong due to the government handout," the Japan Times reported yesterday.

"At Nojima Corp., TV sales in the week to last Sunday increased by 20 percent from a year earlier."
A youth lobby group in Nairobi County is in jubilation following the recent win by the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) in the hotly contested Kiambaa parliamentary by-election.

The celebrations come barely a week after the group dubbed Shamra Shamra, conducted spirited campaigns to drum up support for UDA's youthful contestant, John Njuguna Wanjiku, who is now the Kiambaa MP-elect.

Mr Wanjiku, 36, floored Jubilee's Kariri Njama in the hotly contested by-election held on Thursday 15 after garnering 21,773 votes. Mr Njama secured 21,263 votes.

The group aligned to Deputy President William Ruto is now urging more youths to join UDA to pursue their leadership ambitions.

In statement on Monday, Shamra Shamra coordinators pointed out that time has come for Kenyan youths to be proactively involved in leadership as opposed to being mere spectators.

Change narrative

"Youths are creative, innovative, energetic, educated and self-motivated, therefore, to all youths out there, join UDA to change the narrative through the bottom-up approach.

"Be part of transformation; youths don't have to be spectators. You can be the next MCA, woman representative, senator, governor or even the future president. Youths wake up. The future depends on you," the group said in its statement.

While celebrating UDA's youthful MP-elect, the lobby group urged more young people to contest for leadership positions, saying they are the only ones equipped to fully represent their fellow youths.

"Over the years, we have had an experience of the older generation in politics, although we do acknowledge that progressively, we have seen youths taking up the political wheel. Unfortunately, we need to see more of the youths in politics as it is very important for youths to be at the frontline in being able to represent their interests," the lobby group said.
Central Region police commander Titus Karuri has been airlifted to Nairobi Hospital for specialised treatment after his personal vehicle was involved in a road crash on Monday at Gachocho area, Kigumo Sub-County.

Central regional commander Wilfred Nyagwanga confirmed the accident, saying Mr Karuri was heading to Nyeri via Kangema-Gacharage Road when the car overturned in a ditch in the morning.

"The officer is in fairly good shape," he said, adding that the officer was on an incognito routine beat of police stations in the area.

The 42-kilometre Kangare-Kaharate road is reportedly under under the control of a Mungiki gang that extorts vehicles plying the route.

"We have been having a serious problem with this gang and the commander was on a fact-finding mission. We have moved some officers from the police stations and posts along the route and my comrade was following up on progress made," he said.

Mr Nyagwanga said Mr Karuri was driving at moderate speed when the car's steering developed a mechanical problem. The vehicle veered off the road and landed in a ditch.

Among those who wished the officer a quick recovery were Murang'a Governor Mwangi wa Iria, Senator Irungu Kang'ata, Roads Cabnet Secretary James Macharia who hails from Gachocho, as well as Sports, Culture and Heritage CAS Zack Kinuthia.
There's mild tension at the University of Nairobi amid a clash of ideas that threatens to derail its academic programmes.

Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha and the vice-chancellor, Prof Stephen Kiama, are yet again caught in the middle of an administrative impasse that could affect operations.

The two professors last week issued conflicting statements on managerial changes at the institution that left its top organs in confusion.

This comes barely a year after a fierce legal battle for the VC's position almost paralysed the nation's foremost institution of higher learning.

In their latest tiff, a furious Prof Magoha stopped administrative reforms that Prof Kiama had initiated with the support of the chair of the council, Prof Julia Ojiambo, to improve performance.

The management had announced a restructuring process to cut costs and increase efficiency after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) identified it as one of the public bodies earmarked for reforms due to its poor financial standing.

Sources at the National Treasury said reforms are also expected at Kenyatta University, Moi University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

The institutions face serious financial challenges and are "operating below cost recovery". No guidelines have, however, been given on how they should go about it and that's where the problem is.

The UoN council announced a raft of changes, key among them the scrapping of the five deputy vice-chancellor positions. The DVCs are in charge of finance and planning, human resource, student affairs, academic affairs and research and innovation. In the proposed model, they will be replaced by two associate vice-chancellors.

Big changes

In other radical changes, all the colleges were disbanded and their operations reorganised within 11 faculties, down from 35, led by executive deans and associate deans in place of principals and deputy principals.

Prof Ojiambo said the changes were necessitated by the need to eliminate duplication of functions and improve efficiency.

"We had to do this to improve efficiency. The new structure will lead to quick decision-making and greater financial discipline. The changes are meant to enhance accountability and utilise excess capacity to generate more resources," she said.

Prof Kiama said no staff would lose their job in the reorganisation, adding that those affected would be integrated into the new structure.

Prof Magoha, however, saw it differently and immediately stopped the changes. Interestingly, the law appears to be on his side as the University Act (2012) has elaborate guidelines on the appointment of DVCs, but has no provision for associate VCs.

"Proposed reviews that necessitate abolishing or establishing positions in the governance and administrative structures of a public university or constituent college, especially those not envisaged in the Universities Act, 2012, must comply with the necessary legal framework governing such changes and be forwarded to the ministry through the Commission for University Education," Prof Magoha stated.

He argued that such changes needed amendments to the charters or legal notices of constituent colleges, forwarded to the ministry through CUE before gazettement in line with Section 20(3), 21, 22(4), and/or 22A(5) of the Universities Act 2012.

Prof Ojiambo and Prof Kiama did not do this.

Side-stepping claims

In his public spat with the varsity council last year, Prof Magoha had complained that the body had side-stepped him - and by extension, President Uhuru Kenyatta - in the appointment of Prof Kiama as VC by not consulting them.

However, the Universities Act (2012) has no provision for such and the CS was forced to eat humble pie. Outwitted, he reversed his orders revoking Prof Kiama's appointment after a court battle that shocked the nation.

This time, Prof Kiama not only has to contend with the disappointment of the CS nullifying his appointments as the students have vowed to demonstrate on the streets every Wednesday until he reverses a decision to increase tuition fees for postgraduate and self-sponsored students.

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They staged the first demonstration last week, on the day he announced the changes.

Three student leaders were on Wednesday arrested and briefly detained at Central Police Station in Nairobi on allegations of causing disturbance after the demonstrations.

"This fight is one that we are in for the long haul. Every Wednesday, we shall go to the streets until our demands are met. The university must be open to dialogue. We gave them a 48-hour ultimatum on Monday but they did not respond. Once there is no response, the only way we can handle this is to take to the streets," said Mr Eddie Mwendwa Mutua, the University of Nairobi Students Association (Unsa) president.

Fees for a master's degree course in liberal arts was raised from Sh275,000 to Sh600,000. Tuition fees for degree courses like commerce, economics and law under the self-sponsored programme were increased by up to 70 per cent and will cost about Sh1 million.

According to Prof Kiama, continuing students will not be affected as the new fees will apply to those joining the university from this July.
Have you ever wondered why all Nairobi footbridges with high human traffic have been invaded by hawkers who seem unusually comfortable?

Well, wonder no more. The hawkers are tenants just like those in shops or stalls in the city, months-long investigations by Nation.Africa have established.

Evening is fast approaching and the traffic out of Nairobi and onto Thika Road is building up.

And as if in rhythmic tandem with the vehicular and human traffic along the busy highway, the Ngara footbridge is teeming with people.

Among this sea of humanity, however, are a group of people who are in no rush to head home like the rest: the hawkers of Nairobi's footbridges.

For them, it is like the day has just begun. They have spread their merchandise, ranging from electronics and clothes to shoes and handbags, on one half of the footbridge, cashing in on the evening human snarl-up.

But this is not an isolated case. The hawkers have taken a stranglehold of almost all footbridges across the capital city. From Mbagathi and Kariobangi to Jogoo Road and Haile Selassie Avenue, footbridges have become their stomping ground.

They have managed to squeeze pedestrians to one side of the footbridges and turned them into their makeshift markets.

Footbridges on Outer Ring Road, Mbagathi Way and Thika Road have turned into hawkers' dens.

However, these are not your usual hawkers who invade streets.

On footbridges, it is a case of landlords and tenants.

Here, you cannot just walk in and spread your wares. At the centre of the web are Nairobi County government inspectorate officers, disparagingly referred to as kanjos, and crooked high-ranking city police officers.

There are caretakers here too and they religiously report to the 'landlords': in this case, corrupt city inspectorate officers.

The rogue inspectorate officers run footbridges where they collect "rent" every week in exchange for the hawkers to freely operate in the spaces. The hawkers also have to pay something small to police officers to avoid constant harassment.

Our investigations started on Thika Road, with the Ngara footbridge as the first stop. It is noon and we find a few hawkers already in business.

One is unpacking men's clothing at the foot of the footbridge on the side adjacent to the Ngara matatu stage and the small eateries therein. We ask if we can also get space to spread our wares.

The hawker says the spaces have their people but one can use such spaces before the "owners" come, after which the temporary occupier will have to relocate.

He adds that the spaces at the top of footbridges and those next to bus stops or markets are more expensive because of their proximity to potential clients.

"I'm using this space because the owner has not arrived as it is still early in the day. When he comes in I will have to find another spot," he says.

At the top of the footbridge and on one side of the straight aisle, the hawkers line up in perfect harmony that the great music assembler Ludwig van Beethoven would be proud of.

Here, it is not too chaotic. However, this is temporary as it is too early in the day. The place always becomes packed with the hawkers at peak hours.

Human traffic

"Business is booming on evenings when there is high human traffic as people are heading home from work. The place will soon be full as evening beckons," avers another hawker.

At the other foot of the footbridge is another hawker. He is selling women's handbags and foot mats made of blanket-like materials.

He explains that they are not supposed to operate on footbridges but depending on how one "talks" to the kanjos, city inspectorate officers, then an individual can be allowed to spread their wares.

The hawker, just like the others, says there are no spaces available as everyone is back after a short hiatus forced on them by the peak of the coronavirus.

"Kanjos do not want us here but it depends on how you talk to them. It is like how you woo a girl. She might agree to my advances but say no to you. So it depends and nothing is cast in stone," he says. He is very guarded in what he discloses.

The hawkers do not just occupy any footbridge. The small-scale traders find the spaces the same way an individual finds a convenient house to rent. They do not just occupy any footbridge.

In fact, footbridges near markets are considered prime sites and a spot check by the Nation established that they are fully occupied by the traders. They mostly occupy footbridges near markets.

On Thika Road, the footbridges in Pangani, Muthaiga Police Station/Mathari Hospital, National Youth Service and next to Safari Park Hotel do not have any hawkers.

But the one at Roysambu has been annexed by hawkers. The same story is evident on Outer Ring Road, where the busiest footbridge - at Mtindwa Market - has been overrun.

The same case applied to the Kariobangi North footbridge on Outer Ring Road and Muthurwa Market one. But why is this the case?

Two factors stand out: Most of the hawkers operate in the markets for the better part of the day and then rush to cash in on the evening human traffic on the footbridges.

Another reason is that there are hawkers who do not have space in the markets but are aware that such markets bring human traffic who are potential buyers.

"During the day a majority of us sell our wares in stalls in markets next to the footbridges. Then in the evening traffic, we come to the footbridges," offered one hawker.

Already in business

When Nation.Africa visited the first footbridge on Outer Ring Road coming from Thika Road, a few hawkers were already in business.

At the next footbridge just before Kariobangi North Market hawkers were also already in business.

And there too the story of tenants emerged.

"The spaces here are all taken and paid for. It is very hard to get a space that does not belong to someone. You can only get space when the owner is not around," said a woman hawker.

Citing frustration that we could not get space to display our wares and make some money in the middle of a global pandemic, we prodded her and she became empathetic.

She told us that we could register with Sh200 to join and the money will be taken by three of their leaders at the footbridge.

"When you join, you come with Sh200, where Sh100 will go to the police and the rest remains with us to register you as one of our own," she avers.

The hawkers will write down their names and then deposit the list with a top police officer to spare them any harassment by police as they know they are not supposed to be operating on footbridges.

"We also each pay Sh50 every Wednesday to the kanjos. There are two women who usually come to collect the money every Wednesday afternoon."

At the next footbridge, opposite the Kenya Muslim Academy, another hawker confirms the information, adding that the county askaris have a mobile money paybill number where the money is deposited.

"One has to make sure the money is in M-Pesa. They come every Wednesday. Like now they are about to come. The bribe sometimes depends on what one is selling," he says.

He also said plainclothes police officers harass them when they do not give them "something small".

"Like last week, we were chased around. So this week most people did not open. That is why you can see those empty spaces around. It is risky here but we have no choice. We have to fend for ourselves."

At the footbridge opposite Pipeline Railway Station, next to Fedha Road, only a few hawkers were spotted.

The footbridge next to the road leading to Manyanja Road had none at that time.

Deserted

The spot check continued and the footbridge at the Landhies Retail Market was deserted as it is now a sleeping area for street urchins.

A similar pattern was witnessed on the footbridge connecting Muthurwa Market and Machakos County Bus and the one leading into Muthurwa Market, next to Wakulima Market, where only one side is used by hawkers.

Reached for comment, Nairobi Metropolitan Services (NMS) Security and Compliance Chief Officer Mark Leleruk acknowledged that there are some "bad apples" in the city inspectorate but they are working to weed them out.

NMS transferred at least 14 senior inspectorate officers this month, he said, as the first step in restoring order in the department perennially plagued by corruption accusations.

"Some of the officers have been behind what ails the capital city in terms of hawkers, parking boys, crooks in city toilets, boda bodas in the city centre and illegal clamping and towing of vehicles working together with private breakdown service providers," Dr Leleruk said.

"Nairobi residents have suffered at the hands of some uniformed inspectorate officers and this has to come to an end."

For his part, Nairobi police boss Augustine Nthumbi dismissed the claims that some senior police officers are being paid to protect hawkers, saying police are not involved in issues involving hawkers as that is under the jurisdiction of NMS.

Police only come in when NMS requests security during their operations, he said.

"So when someone tells you that the police are being paid to protect hawkers, it is a total lie. They only want to smear the police because that is sweet music to people's ears," he said.

"Why do people have to go for police necks anytime they feel like? Let them talk about NMS because it is the agency managing the city."

When the Kenya National Highways Authority (Kenha) built the footbridges, they were meant to help reduce pedestrian deaths by ensuring their safety when they cross busy roads in the capital city. They were also meant to ensure a smooth flow of vehicles on highways. But many have found new uses.

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The agency's mandate, said Kenha communication manager Charles Njogu, starts and ends with construction and structural maintenance of the facilities.

Proliferation of hawkers

Operational responsibility involving these structures lies with the respective county governments where they are situated, he said.

"You may therefore need to get in touch with the county government of Nairobi regarding this situation of hawkers," he said.

Besides the profiteering officials, politicians have also been blamed for fuelling the proliferation of hawkers on footbridges, with MCAs and even MPs making requests to the county government to allow "their voters" to sell at the footbridges without being harassed.

Last month, NMS boss Maj-Gen Mohamed Badi alluded to those claims, saying the matter of hawkers in Nairobi is a political issue as they are brought in by local politicians.

He said city officials have always faced resistance from politicians when they try to remove hawkers as they are taken to court by the politicians, who then get court injunctions to stop such operations.

"This is a political issue where we have a lot of interested people. They bring them from the estates because these are people who vote for them, are their campaigners and so it has been a big hassle to get rid of them as every time we remove them they bring them back," Maj-Gen Badi lamented.

"We are trying to negotiate with the county assembly where the politicians are so that we carry out a joint operation to remove the hawkers," he added.

For instance, in February 2020, at least 320 hawkers were arrested as police intensified their operation to decongest footbridges in Nairobi following a directive by Deputy Inspector-General of Police Edward Mbugua.

True to Mr Badi's concern, the Nairobi regional police boss at the time, Philip Ndolo, said a politician made phone calls to various senior police officers, including himself, over the arrests.

He wanted the hawkers to be released unconditionally. He said the politician's demands were turned down.

The hawkers were arraigned and fined between Sh2,500 and Sh5,000. But most of these fines are paid by the politicians.
For pastoralists in Kibish, Lokori, Katilu and Kapedo villages in Turkana County, the month of May was one of their worst as they were facing, yet again, the grim reality of losing most of their livestock due to drought.

The delayed March-April-May rains were threatening the lives of a total of more than four million goats and sheep due to scarcity of water and pasture.

Moruarengeran Lokolong, from Kibish village, said that grazing fields had dried up and the only two remaining options were to drive his livestock towards the nearby insecure border with the Merille community of Ethiopia or towards Lokamarinyang village, more than 60km away.

Mr Lokolong said both options are usually risky because armed Merille militia attack them frequently and steal their livestock when they realise they are desperate for pasture.

"At Lokamarinyang, there is always a high concentration of livestock and the few surviving but weak ones easily contract diseases and die when they come into contact with sick ones," he said.

Another herder, Nangolol Nateleng, said that during the drought, there are always conflicts over the few available grazing fields in the hills.

"Drought pushes most of us closer to the border, exposing us to attacks," Mr Nateleng said.

But then hope and a solution are on their horizon.

Drought insurance

The two herders are among the beneficiaries of a drought monitoring tool, the satellite-based drought index under the Kenya Livestock Insurance Programme (KLIP).

Satellite data is being used to estimate the availability of pasture on the ground and triggers payouts to pastoralists when availability falls.

With drought representing the single greatest cause of livestock mortality in the northern arid and semi-arid lands, the national government, through the new livestock insurance programme, is purchasing drought insurance from private insurance companies on behalf of vulnerable pastoralists.

County Pastoral Economy Executive Philip Aemun said that in Kibish alone, 297 households who had been earmarked to benefit from the insurance programme in collaboration with the county government were given their cheques worth Sh1,688,148 million for July, with each receiving Sh5,684.

The allocation for 69 beneficiaries in Kapedo was Sh36,134 each; 78 in Lokori received Sh13,398 each; while 38 in Katilu got Sh8,932 each. They will spend part of the cash to restock their herds or purchase fodder, Mr Aemun said.

Since President Uhuru Kenyatta launched the programme in Turkana in 2017, a total of 2,502 beneficiaries have shared Sh113 million through the drought monitoring as part of the government's effort to mitigate the effects of perennial droughts.

During the launch, President Kenyatta expressed optimism that the government's drought mitigation initiative would help improve the lives of Kenyans in arid and semi-arid counties.

"The Kenya Livestock Insurance Programme (KLIP) - which is the first of its kind in Kenya, East Africa and Africa - will also ensure that pastoralists are able to restock even after they lose their livestock through drought," President Kenyatta said then.

Turkana County is seeking to broaden the programme to accommodate more pastoralists by developing the County Livestock and Insurance Bill that will be centred on disaster risk management.

Pasture farming

For now, the devolved unit has rolled out pasture farming in areas practising agro-pastoralism to address resource-based conflicts and provide a reliable source of pasture during droughts.

Mr Aemun said farmers are also being trained on how to make hay for storage and to be utilised whenever traditional grazing fields dry up.

Speaking in Simailele village, where 20 hectares of land have been set aside through the Drought Resilience and Sustainable Livelihoods Programme (DRSLP) for commercial production of pasture, Mr Aemun said the venture will also generate income for the pastoralists.

"Pasture production is a worthwhile venture for pastoralists in areas frequently experiencing rainfall and areas with irrigation infrastructure along River Turkwel and River Kerio for their home consumption and the surplus sold for income," the county official said.

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He said the Nariemeto Pasture Production Group in Songot village in Turkana West sub-county has already embraced the venture and the county government, as well as partners, are buying from the members.

Mr Aemun rallied farmers to consider the venture, noting that erratic climatic conditions were increasingly becoming a threat and therefore pasture production was a reliable way to diversify livelihoods.

He said droughts have always left thousands of farmers vulnerable over lack of pasture.

"Pastoralists always lose their livestock during drought or are forced to migrate to neighbouring countries, exposing them to resource-based conflicts," the county official said.

He listed Kalemngorok, Kangirega, Namakat and Nabeye among others as the villages that can support pasture farming.

The villages, he said, had 100 households that benefited from the distribution of free goats procured by the Rural Livelihoods Adaptation to Climate Change component under DRSLP to boost their resilience due to adverse effects of climate change.
Gatundu South Sub-county, the backyard of President Uhuru Kenyatta, is set to get its own public varsity after Education Cabinet Secretary Prof George Magoha announced that Mama Ngina University will officially commence operations this September.

The varsity, a constituent college of Kenyatta University (KU), will start by admitting 90 students in the forthcoming academic year.

Constructed adjacent to Mutomo Primary school since 2016, the campus has been admitting students though they have been studying at KU campuses.

Speaking at Mutomo Primary school over the weekend, Prof Magoha said they are impressed by the progress made to complete construction of the university and that a decision to open the college in September had already been made.

He said they will fast-track preparedness to make sure the school is ready for new students.

"We have decided that come the new academic year in September, the university should have students. From what we have established, it is ready for new admissions. We hope it will get the required support from KU until it is able to stand on its own," he added.

On his part, KU Vice Chancellor Prof Paul Wainaina said the college will be under a principal and a board of management though its academic programmes and examinations will be administered by KU.

He said the Commission of University Education has since inspected the school to make sure it meets the requisite standards to admit students directly.

Prof Wainaina noted that the college is ready to be accredited, gazetted and regularised before it opens, while assuring of KU's full support till the new campus becomes a fully-fledged university in about three years' time.

The new institution of higher learning will offer three programmes in Information Communication and Technology (ICT), Environmental Studies and Hospitality, mostly done at KU.

According to the state, When fully constituted, the university is projected to spur development and boost education standards in the area.

In the meantime, Prof Wainaina said students will have to look for housing outside the university as it does not have accommodation facilities yet.

"In a few years to come, we shall be forced to construct accommodation facilities as the number of students' increase. Also, investors should seize the opportunity and construct hostels," he added.

Report by Muoki Charles
A teacher was found dead in his house in Migori County on Sunday, after a guard visited to check on him.

He was identified as Willis Onyango, of Kameji Secondary School.

North Kamagambo chief Charles Boi said the guard, after making the discovery, immediately alerted the school's administration.

"I immediately rushed to the school, where a guard and the assistant chief directed me to the house. The body was on the floor and did not have any visible injuries," said Mr Boi.

The chief then alerted officers at Kamagambo police station, who visited the school and took the body to Rosewood Hospital mortuary.

"We are yet to establish the cause of the death since he was staying alone at the staff quarters," Mr Boi said, adding police opened a probe.

Resident Joel Ondigo said: "He was all alone in the compound after schools closed and had not exhibited any sign of ill health. His sudden death has shocked us."

Resident Mary Odhiambo said: "We want the matter investigated. It is sad that a young man in his prime has died under unclear circumstances."

Rongo sub-county deputy police commander Zebedy Amutsama said a proper report will follow their investigation.
Questions have emerged about the sudden death of Kikuyu Benga music businessman Edward Irungu Njaro in an alleged suicide after his body was retrieved on Saturday from Masinga dam.

While police records indicate that he most likely killed himself over a Sh700,000 debt -- as he allegedly indicated in his suicide note saved on his phone -- his last moments cast a shadow of doubt.

He had been reported missing on July 14 after he sent his friends a text message that he was jumping into the River Tana owing to depression over the loan.

He did not disclose whom he owed or the pressures being exerted on him to pay up.

He had directed his friends to go and get the vehicle he would use to drive himself to Kamweli village, on the boundary of Murang'a, Kirinyaga and Embu counties on the Kenol-Nyeri highway.

It was not immediately clear who removed the vehicle from the scene as it had been towed to the Kasarani Police Station in Nairobi County even before it was processed by crime scene experts.

Kasarani Division Police Boss Patrick Mwazo said the vehicle was surrendered as "belonging to a missing person who resided on nearby Kamiti Road".

'Social animal'

In Zimmerman estate where he lived, he was portrayed as a social animal albeit in a discreet way.

He was said to have dined and wined with underground dealmakers in Marurui, Kiamumbi, Kamae and Ngomongo estates and was full of hopes that he was not a candidate for death any time soon.

"He is only known to have maintained three close friends. He was working as a supervisor for another mysterious man who owns rental houses, butcheries and transport trucks. Any time we discussed death, he would say he would not dare die and leave behind women whom he usually termed as flowers of life and the core reason men existed," said one of his friends, John Macharia.

While media reports have indicated that Irungu was a musician, Talented Musicians and Composers Sacco chairman Epha Maina said he was not.

Instead, his brother George Wa Njaro, who died in 2007, was the musician besides being a high school teacher, his last workstation being Gaichanjiru High in Murang'a County.

Mr Maina said, "We have our benchmarks to categorise one as a musician and this man is not one of us and we will not be burying him as we do for one of our own."

Long court battle

Upon Wa Njaro's death, Irungu started selling his music in River Road, leading to a protracted court battle with the teacher's widow Molline Atieno, who wanted him restrained from duplicating and selling her late husband's work for commercial gain.

"He had been warned by my husband that should I be widowed, all his personal enterprises belonged to me and our son. There was bad blood between my husband and his family," Ms Atieno told the Nation yesterday.

Irungu's widow Joyce Wachira said she was yet to come to terms with the circumstances, claims and death of the man with who she had three children.

"I am waiting for the police to investigate and give us the official version. I don't know about his debts. He has never acted suicidal and on the date he disappeared, he appeared normal and in control of his faculties. I am living in a horror audio movie with no visuals," she said.

Irungu's body was found floating in the Masinga Hydroelectric Power Station's dam on the boundary of Embu and Machakos counties.

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Reported missing in Nairobi, his body showed up 106km away, with another oddity being that from the point that he is believed to have jumped into the River Tana, the journey to the dam is over 100km.

Mbeere South police boss Gregory Mutiso said the body was retrieved and taken to an Embu mortuary to be subjected to further investigations.

"A postmortem examination will help establish the actual circumstances under which the victim met his death. The body had no physical injuries. We are liaising with our colleagues from Nairobi, Kirinyaga and Murang'a to gain a deeper understanding of his disappearance and death," he said.

How the more than 100km drowning journey in a river infested with crocodiles, hippos and killer fish, as well as the boulders and debris in the River Tana, ended up delivering him into the Masinga dam without any bodily physical injury has been described as odd.
Health workers in Mombasa County have issued a strike notice due to unresolved issues with their employer, including non-remittance of loan deductions.

The more than 1,000 health workers, under the Kenya Union of Clinical Officers (Kuco) and the Kenya National Union of Nurses (KNUN), accused the county government of non-remittance of loan deductions.

"When we ended a strike that lasted over three months on February 2, we agreed that all issues around delayed salaries, promotions, statutory deductions, among others, would be resolved. However, our members have been left on their own as far as salaries are concerned since the county has not remitted loan deductions, prompting banks to withhold salaries," said Kuco's Mombasa secretary-general Franklin Makanga.

Medics "suffering"

Mr Makanga further accused the county government of being non-committal in resolving their grievances, regardless of set deadlines.

He said the county was supposed to finalise an agreement with all unions representing nurses, doctors, clinical officers, laboratory technicians and other cadres by June 30.

"That has not been the case. It is on this backdrop that we wish to advise Governor Hassan Joho to take responsibility for the incompetence of his administration and for failing to honour its part in relation to the return-to-work formula," he told the Nation.

He said the unions have already issued a strike notice to their employer.

"We are suffering as frontline health workers. Our members are getting infected with the virus while working but they cannot access health services because the insurance that covers us has not received remitted funds."

Contacted, acting county secretary Joab Tumbo said he would respond later.

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Past strike

In February, Mombasa's health workers, including nurses, clinical officers and laboratory technicians called off a strike after reaching an agreement with their employer.

The administration assured residents that the county would avert a health crisis by negotiating in advance with the health workers, who now want Governor Joho to stamp authority.

"We have a meeting on Thursday this week. If they won't address our concerns, we will strike," said KNUN's Mombasa official Peter Maroko.

The strike will affect the county's fight against the Covid-19 pandemic amid a spike in the number of infections.

As of July 16, the county had recorded 91 cases, with Mvita sub-county leading with 37 and Nyali reporting 19, Kisauni 14, Jomvu nine, Changamwe five and Likoni three.

Since March 22 last year, when the first case was recorded in Mombasa, a total of 12,788 cases, including 255 deaths, have been confirmed.
Environmentalist Joannah Stutchbury was shot six times in the head and upper limbs and died from excessive bleeding, a postmortem has revealed.

Chief Government Pathologist Johansen Oduor, who conducted the exam on Monday, said Stutchbury was shot three times in the head and three times in the upper limbs.

Two bullets hit her left upper limb while one hit the right, he said, adding she was shot in these areas while trying to defend herself.

Conservationist Stutchbury had been living in fear of her life

The exam also revealed that the conservationist was shot at close range as there was tattooing - gun powder deposits - on her skin.

The pathologist also said some teeth were missing from the right jaw and that there was a bullet track in the brain.

More to follow
Kenyan Muslims are expected to start their two-day holy festivities tomorrow.

This year's celebrations mark the second time the faithful will be observing the holiday with an ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Some of the faithful will be marking the holy celebrations known as Idd-Ul-Adha, the Festival of the Sacrifice, on Tuesday and others on Wednesday.

The celebrations normally take place on Dhul Hijjah, the 12th and final month of the Islamic calendar.

In the first 10 days of the holy month, Muslims are to undergo holy rituals called Hajj in the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, while those at home are supposed to fast and pray.

Chief Kadhi Sheikh Ahmed Muhdhar had earlier announced the holy celebrations will be marked on Wednesday.

"No moon was sighted by Saturday, July 10. Therefore, the fasting starts on Monday, July, 12 and the holy celebrations will be marked on Wednesday, July 21," he said.

Those who will be celebrating the holy festivities have been urged to observe social distance, wear face masks and carry their prayer mats to mosques.

But, the situation is different for those in the Western part of the country as they are expected to stay indoors and pray at home.

This is because of a two-month lockdown ordered by President Uhuru Kenyatta last month in Kisumu, Siaya, Homa-Bay, Migori, Busia, Kakamega, Vihiga, Bungoma, Kisii, Nyamira, Kericho, Bomet, and Trans-Nzoia.

"We are not going to have idd prayers at mosques or any grounds. People will pray at their respective homes while observing the social distance rule," said Mohammed Omar, Busia Kenya Muslim National Advisory Council (Kemnac) official.

This is also the festival where Muslims are supposed to sacrifice either a goat or sheep and share it among families, neighbours and the less fortunate.

In Mombasa County, the prayers will go for only 30 minutes starting at 7.30am, unlike previous years, when they usually go for one or two hours.

"The faithful are expected to carry their prayer mats, wear face masks, and observe the social distance," said Supreme Council of Kenya Muslims Coast branch chairman Sheikh Mukhtar Khitamy.

Some of those living in Mombasa will conduct prayers tomorrow (Tuesday) at the Tononoka Grounds.

"We will have the prayers as usual at the Tononoka grounds and women will also have their section. We are allowed to pray in congregations unless one misses the prayer, then he or she will pray at home," Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya National (CIPK) Commissioner, Hassan Omar said.

In northeastern Kenya, Health executives have urged the faithful to observe the mitigation measures issued by the national government to curb the spread of Covid-19, saying security personnel will be deployed at the prayer grounds to enforce them.

Health executives Roble Nunow (Garissa), Dr Mohamud Aden (Wajir) and Ismail Issack (Mandera) outlined some of the measures to be considered while performing this year's idd prayers.

The measures include that all people with flu-like symptoms and fever should stay home and everyone will carry their prayer mat and avoid overcrowding at the prayer grounds.

Others included the wearing of face masks and no handshakes or hugging of members of the public.

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Meanwhile, the government last week declared Tuesday a public holiday to accord Muslims an opportunity to make preparations to mark the Idd-ul Adha celebrations.

The declaration is contained in a Kenya Gazette notice issued by Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i.

Idd-ul-Adha follows the end of the holy rituals of Hajj in which Muslims fast and pray.

It is an occasion for Muslims to be joyous and celebrate their dedication throughout the 10 days of fasting during the holy month of Dhul Hijja.

On this day, Muslims are forbidden from fasting and should sacrifice either a goat or a sheep.

Idd is an Arabic word that means feast or festival.
Kenya on Monday recorded 431 new Covid-19 cases from a sample of 5,281 tested in the last 24 hours, marking a positivity rate of 8.2 percent, a decline from 8.8 percent recorded the previous day.

In a statement, the Ministry of Health said number of confirmed cases since the first one last March rose to 193,189 and that 2,059,193 tests had been conducted since that time.

Of the new patients, 416 were Kenyans and 15 foreigners, and 284 male and 134 female.

Nairobi led with 256 infections and was followed by Machakos with 36, Kilifi 26, Nyeri 19, Nakuru 18, Kiambu 17, Mombasa eight, Kirinyaga and Meru six each, Kericho , Migori , Taita Taveta and Turkana four each, Siaya, Kisii and Embu three.

Kajiado, Kitui, Murang'a and Tana River had two cases each while Garissa, Kakamega, Narok, Nyandarua, Homa Bay and Kwale each reported one case.

The death toll rose by eight to 3,783, but Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe explained that they were all late reports confirmed after the audit of facility records in March and June.

He also announced that 595 more patients had recovered from the disease, 542 under home-based isolation and care and 53 at hospitals countrywide, raising the total to 182,921.

According to the ministry, 1,224 patients had been hospitalized by Monday while 4,358 were being treated at home.

Of the admitted patients, 134 were in intensive care units, 35 of them on ventilator support, 70 on supplemental oxygen and 29 under observation.

Another 284 patients were separately on supplemental oxygen, 262 of them in general wards and 22 in high dependency units.
They toyed with death and survived by a whisker, 13 others were not as lucky. Survivors of the fuel tanker accident in Gem that left 31 people nursing serious burns recounted their ordeal from their hospital beds at the Yala sub-county hospital yesterday.

Though they barely escaped the grim reaper, they will forever bear the scars of the tragedy that has thrown Malanga village into mourning.

Writhing in pain, a boy narrated how he was woken up by his mother to rush to the scene and find out what was going on.

As he headed there in the company of other villagers, they met others running back with jerry cans full of fuel.

"We met many people coming back with jerry cans of fuel. We fetched containers to also help ourselves with the free fuel but when we had just joined the scramble, the vehicle exploded," said the boy.

Caught in the worst situation ever, he struggled to remove his pair of trousers that had caught fire as he fought for his dear life.

In one ward, two cousins sharing a bed were covered by a cradle to improve ventilation. Hesbone Oduor said he heard people screaming after the collision, which was normal due to frequencies of such accidents along the busy highway.

"We rushed to the scene with other neighbours and started scooping fuel. I had managed one side before the second attempt to open the valve led to the explosion," said Mr Oduor, whose house is next to the road.

Mr Raymond Otieno had followed Mr Omondi to the scene but said he was not scooping fuel but was only a victim of circumstances who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Mr James Omollo Oketch revealed how he made a wrong judgment that is likely to leave him with scars for the rest of his life.

He left his family watching the evening news to heed to a call by his friend to scoop fuel from the tanker.

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"I had already gone to bed and left my family watching the news when numerous calls by my friends drove me to the scene for a share of fuel. I tried to run away from the explosion but I wasn't fast enough," said Mr Omollo, who suffered burns on his limbs and the lower side of the body.

Mr Paul Manasseh, a boda boda rider, only survived because he had rushed back to his house to get a jerry can.

"I had just gone home to bring my jerry can, when I had a loud bang followed by a ball of fire and people screaming, running towards the maize plantations as they called for help," said Mr Manasseh.

It's at this point that he mobilised other riders and started helping the injured. They rushed some of the victims to the nearest health centres while some were taken to the county referral hospital.

"It was a terrible scene. There was a pregnant woman siphoning fuel while another had her child on her back. They all perished in the fire," said Mr Manasseh.

The jerry cans that had been filled with petrol fuelled the blaze because they had been hidden in the maize plantations.

"We used wheel barrows to move bodies from the scene. There were many people who perished because they were just passing by, oblivious of what was going on. I am happy with the way people worked together to save lives," said Mr Manasseh.

The 13 bodies were moved to Yala sub-county hospital while five victims were admitted.

Mr Brian Muganda, the nursing officer in charge, was been busy handling patients throughout the day.

"The five patients that are admitted here are fairly stable but since this facility cannot handle burns past 68 per cent, we transferred 19 to the county referral hospital," said Mr Muganda.
Meru National Polytechnic was Monday closed indefinitely after students rioted over alleged rigging in union elections held last Friday.

The students had staged peaceful protests outside the institution's gate at Gitoro, when anti-riot police arrived and lobbed teargas canisters to disperse them.

The management then gave the over 13,000 students 30 minutes to vacate the institution, with those sponsored by the National Youth Service (NYS) ordered to report to their Yatta base.

Dozens of students were arrested and taken to Meru police station for not adhering to the vacate order.

Addressing the press, the students said they were angered by the management's decision to hold an online election as the majority of them wanted the polls conducted manually.

They also alleged massive rigging and that many people were denied the opportunity to vote after they found their ballots had been cast by other people.

"We protested on Friday but the management has not yet addressed the issue. Many students missed the opportunity to elect their preferred candidates," said Boniface Kirimi, who vied for the polytechnic president's post.

Ms Dorcas Micheni, who eyed the secretary-general position, said they were dismayed by the decision to close the institution in the absence of Chief Principal Stephen Rukaria.

"We had been holding peaceful protests until police came and lobbed teargas at us. We were only exercising our rights but the police used excessive force," she said.

Many students were injured while being ejected from the institution.

Mr Melvin Weru appealed for the reopening of the institution so that they can prepare for exams set for November.

He said students also demanded the transfer of the dean of students, saying the office had failed to protect their welfare, as food prices in the cafeteria skyrocketed.
At least two people were killed when suspected armed cattle rustlers raided Marti in Samburu County on Sunday night, stealing more than 521 livestock.

The cattle rustlers were spotted approaching the area on Saturday evening, local herders said, adding it is suspected they were from a neighbouring community.

The attack comes barely three days after armed rustlers raided the same village and stole more than 200 goats and severely injured a herder.

Police said no arrests were immediately made and that no animals were recovered, but that they were pursuing the culprits.

Samburu County Commissioner Abdirazak Jaldesa said the two people succumbed to gunshot wounds and that one was recuperating at the county referral hospital.

The bodies were taken to Maralal Referral Hospital mortuary.

Matiang'i demands names of Kerio Valley bandits, warns of operation

Mr Jaldesa said police officers were deployed to the area to boost security and help with recovery of the stolen animals.

He added that security has been beefed up in the volatile region to prevent retaliatory attacks.

The administrator urged residents not to retaliate but give security officers time to pursue and arrest the culprits. He also appealed for helpful information.

"Security operations are going on to make sure the stolen livestock is recovered and that peace prevails. We are not going to relent until we apprehend the attackers. Police officers are on the ground," he told a press briefing.

Mr Jaldesa also called on political leaders in Samburu to join the war against insecurity by giving security officers the support they need.

Leaders' plea

Samburu Governor Moses Lenolkulal noted the urgent need for the government to find a permanent solution to the incessant bandit attacks and cattle raids in the region.

"We need to end continuous mourning by our people, all because of a few known criminal elements. I call on the Interior CS to intervene immediately."

Samburu North MP Alois Lentoimaga blamed police, accusing them of laxity in response to such incidents.

"We blame police officers because the attack happened a few kilometres from Marti police station," Mr Lentoimaga said.

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He also asked Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiangi to prioritise the eradication of cattle rustling to prevent further loss of life and property.

Return the guns: Uproar over disarmament of reservists in restive north

Insecurity has long been endemic in Samburu North, with warring communities launching retaliatory attacks whenever one of their members is killed.

Clashes among pastoralists are also on the rise in the area where many guns are in the wrong hands as herders often carry them to protect their animals.

Livestock is the main source of income in pastoralist communities in northern Kenya.

However, the rise in cases of cattle theft threatens to ignite cross-community animosity and senseless raids that could set the stage for a surge in ethnic conflicts.
Anglophone parliaments have ratcheted up a demand for the UK government to review the legal status of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) so that it is converted to an international organisation with a complete diplomatic status.

An executive committee meeting of the CPA-Africa region was Sunday told that the association was created through the Charities Commission Act of the UK, which reduces it to a charitable organisation.

But African parliaments that are members of the association say the work of Parliament is not charitable so the UK government must take the lead in reviewing the Act so that the CPA International can enjoy its rightful legal status.

"It is not fair that a body bringing together so many national and sub-national parliaments should be registered as a charitable organisation," Mr Justin Muturi, the Speaker of National Assembly of Kenya, said.

"CPA works to support human rights, good governance, accountability and parliamentary democracy. These are not charitable issues. We want the CPA given the same legal status as the Commonwealth Secretariat," he added in his speech during the closing ceremony of the executive committee meeting.

Limitations

The association founded in 1911 brings together parliamentarians and parliamentary staff from over 180 national, state, provincial and territorial parliaments and legislatures across the Commonwealth through its network.

The CPA Africa regional body brings together 18 national parliaments and 63 sub-national legislatures.

It was formed under the Charities Commissions Act of 1968, through which it acquired its legal status.

Even though the association has an international character, the law creating it has imposed limitations on what it can do as it doesn't have diplomatic status.

For example, CPA staff deployed to work in London or elsewhere face major challenges in the line of duty as they are subjected to restrictions on what they can or cannot do.

"We want the CPA given the same status as the Secretariat," Speaker Muturi said, referring to the organ that coordinates activities of the executive arm of governments that are Commonwealth members.

Brexit out of the way

The matter was first raised when a legislator filed a motion in Gauteng's sub-national parliament in 2013.

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However, the amendment to the law was undermined by domestic challenges, as Britain struggled to leave the European Union.

"With Brexit out of the way, it is our opinion that the issue of CPA legal status must be brought to the table."

The UK law provides that in the event that a charitable organisation is dissolved, its finances will be distributed among charitable entities in the UK.

Mr Muturi warned that this legal status puts the association in a precarious position as it amounts to colonies participating in charity in the UK.

"We have put up the case before the UK government and have been told that the minister responsible is pursuing the matter," he said.

Mr Muturi, who has been the chair of the committee, handed the mantle over to Mr Femi Gbajabiamila, who is the Speaker of Nigeria's House of Representatives.
Kenya's prowess in telemedicine in Africa is gaining momentum during the pandemic period, with more partnerships with global players being witnessed.

The latest in a country seen as the most potential e-health market in the continent is an agreement the Kenyan government has signed with Italy's largest private hospital group Gruppo San Donato (GSD) and Italian medical varsity Vita -Salute San Raffaele University.

The collaboration targets to enhance the access of medical care, diagnosis and treatment through telemedicine platforms and the construction of modern hospitals.

In the presence of the Italian Ambassador to Kenya, Alberto Pieri, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between GSD, represented by its vice president Kamel Ghribi, Prof Gianvito Martino, the Vice Rector for Research at the Vita -Salute San Raffaele University and the Kenyan government, represented Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe.

The MoU relates to a partnership between the Italian hospital, the Vita - Salute San Raffaele University and the Kenyan Ministry of Health to provide an enhanced local e-health sector.

Regional health hubs

Mr Ghribi said Africa's universal health care requires regional health hubs which in turn can become key geo strategic health centers on the continent.

"To achieve this, we need to have stronger networks of health cooperation. The agreement between Italy and Kenya is a sign of long-term engagement for a better future and healthcare for all," he said.

With a long-term vision to guarantee universal healthcare in Kenya, the partnership aims to ultimately provide improved assistance and quality services to Kenya's urban and rural population.

Telemedicine adoption in Kenya began in 2015, but has grown over the years to boast of over 60 apps that provide health related solutions through videoconferencing, thanks to an increasingly faster and more affordable internet.

One area of focus for the Group San Donato, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and the Kenyan government will include development and support of the Kenyan national plan for mental health with the construction of a center in Nairobi.

"Kenya and GSD will collaborate on research and the implementation of mental health interventions. Our objective is to adopt the philosophy of family health for the population. Kenyans deserve quality healthcare," said Mr Kagwe.

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Training

Others will be field training and exchange of professionals and students to strengthen clinical and specialist skills; partnership on research and innovation projects on telemedicine, consultancy for development projects of the care and assistance network and construction of new and modern specialized care facilities.

Such efforts, the three parties believe, will eventually make Kenya the health hub of medical excellence in Africa.

According to Bloomberg's 2019 Health Index, Italy is recognised as the second healthiest country in the world, having the fourth most efficient healthcare system globally.

The country's national healthcare system, strong focus on healthy eating habits, combined with prevention, promotes and ensures longevity for its citizens.

Besides being a front-runner in the European healthcare arena, Italy offers excellent hospitality standards and a multitude of tourist attractions.

GSD is the premier provider of health services at all levels of care in all specialties for the Italian National Health System for the last fifteen years, and employs a unique model centered on clinical and academic research to provide individual-based care to everyone.
The government has created the Ministry of National Unity and Civic Engagement, which will focus on national unity, preserving historical memory and promote citizenship education.

The New Times' Emmanuel Gatera spoke to some Rwandans who gave different views.

Herve Rugemintwaza, a university student in China

As proud Rwandans in China, the creation of the Ministry of Unity and Civic Engagement is perceived as a step in the right direction towards the Rwanda we want. It demonstrates real interest in deepening national unity.

Nicole Sabyombi, youth

Nowadays, the youth are exposed to a lot of hate speech and genocide denial, especially on social media. This ministry should do its best to voice up the truth in the ears of young people, for the knowledge of the truth can never be overemphasized in reconciliation and peacekeeping. This ministry is a necessity.

Alpha Bugingo, youth

It is very possible that one of the root causes of the 1994 Genocide perpetrated against the Tutsi in Rwanda is a distorted understanding of citizenship. It was confined to ethnic belonging. Since the Tutsi were portrayed by colonialists (both Germans and Belgians) as being of the Hamitic origin, they were perceived in the eyes of their fellow Rwandans as foreigners. Citizenship education is a crucial facet of reconstruction. The benefits are freeing the Rwandan youth from isolation and integrating them in the regional and international arena.

John Gatera, senior citizen

In my own understanding, based on experience, this ministry should embark on educating our youth on knowing better the history of our country (the causes of division and what has been done so far to unite Rwandans) such that they are ready to serve and defend it. This will change the current mindset among the youth of dreaming about flocking to Europe and the west for greener pastures and exploit opportunities available in Rwanda.

Jean De Die Tuyishime, a businessman in Kigali

As a businessman, I understand that one can't make it without working together as a team. Unity and good education is one of the things that can boost the development of a country. Let's hope that everyone will understand the aim of this ministry, especially us young people who still have a lot to accomplish.

Anasthase Sabamungu, a pastor

I think the ministry will be faced with a task to promote reconciliation. You cannot talk about reconciliation in the Rwandan context without tackling ethnicity. There is also a need to bridge the gap between the old and the young. This should lead to the restoration of the Rwandan culture, especially among the young generation.

Dr Abdallah Utumatwishima, Director General of Rwamagana Hospital

27 years ago, the Genocide against the Tutsi was stopped. Hard decisions were made to unite people from different areas, not forgetting the ones who were in the country. At least 70 per cent of the youth were born after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. The creation of this ministry will bring back the dignity and unity between Rwandans. The first enemy Rwanda had was hatred which was caused by the divide and rule system which led to the genocide against Tutsi. If we don't teach the young generation about this history in an active way from this ministry there is a possibility of getting this hatred back which is why this ministry was very necessary.

The last thing I can say is civic engagement. The courage that INKOKATANYI demonstrated to liberate the country cannot be seen in the young generation which is why it's necessary to teach them about the real history, which I really hope the ministry will accomplish.

Valerie Nyirahabineza, Head of Demobilisation Commission

It's a brilliant idea because Rwandans really needed it. For us, especially people in the demobilisation commission, we deal with a lot of people who lost the culture of unity or who were told not to leave each other. We hope to work with this ministry and mobilise people to be united and work together as a team. I hope that it will also target people who have false information about Rwanda. Rwandans should understand hatred as one of the reasons that led to the Genocide against the Tutsi and fight it in all forms and I hope that this ministry will help this process.

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Antoine Rutayisire, Pastor

I can suspect that the mission will be what it was before because the unity of Rwandans has been on top of the agenda of the government since the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994. I think it will carry on from where the commission of unity and reconciliation is. Even without the Genocide against the Tutsi, putting national unity on top of the agenda is a very important principle mainly for underdeveloped countries like Rwanda. Creating the Ministry of National Unity to enforce the unity of Rwandans, mainly in the aftermath of the genocide is very important. I'm very excited about it and I see great hopes and potentials in what the ministry could do.
Oil and gas industry experts have called for a quick presidential assent on the passed Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB) to fast-track the enforcement of the "Drill or Drop" clause in the bill.

They said it will ensure efficient use of mining assets in the country against the dwindling revenue into the federation account, even as fossil fuel gradually loses its relevance. An oil sector governance reform expert, Mr Ademola Adigun, who spoke on the revocation of some marginal oil fields' licenses by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), in a statement, said the controversy would be laid to rest as soon as the PIB was passed into law.

According to him, the Drill or Drop provision in the law will prevent process abuse and usurpation of regulatory responsibilities or powers.

"One of the greatest things that has happened, which is in the PIB, is the idea of Drill or Drop. We have had a history.

"Now, a lot of people get these licences or win these bids then go sell it off. They sell it off to those who lack capacity and the whole thing stalls and we suffer as a country.

"We have two problems in the sector right now; we have declining take from the barrel and we have declining returns from crude. Now, we are limited to 1.45 million barrels a day by OPEC quota and unable to ramp up 2.1 million barrels per day.

Immediate past Chairman of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Joe Nwakwe, "It is clear that the Petroleum Act gives the power to award and revoke oil blocks to the Minister of Petroleum Resources and that power has been delegated to the DPR in this matter."
Seven persons died initially on Saturday, but as of Monday, seven more deaths were confirmed, raising the fatality to 14.

Seven more people have died of cholera in Enugu State, authorities in the state have confirmed exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES.

The director, public health and disease control, ministry of health, Boniface Oko, who confirmed the development to our reporter in Enugu on Monday, said more than 80 people have been infected with the disease since Friday when the outbreak was confirmed in the state.

The state's commissioner for health, Emmanuel Obi, had on Saturday announced the cholera outbreak at the New Artisan Market in Enugu, the state capital.

Mr Obi had said seven people died in the market with 19 persons identified with the symptoms of loose stool and vomiting. He said the ministry's rapid response team, upon receiving reports of the incident, carried out an immediate investigation and "it was observed that the patients presented with sudden onset of passage of loose stool and vomiting."

Additional deaths

On Monday afternoon, Mr Okoro said within the past four days since the outbreak, 14 persons have died.

He said many of the infected persons were rushed to the Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, with others taken to an unidentified private hospital in the city.

"Seven persons died initially on Saturday, but as of Monday, seven more deaths were confirmed, raising the fatality to 14," Mr Okoro said.

Cause of outbreak

The director said the outbreak is due to poor hygiene practices, and particularly, improper disposal of domestic and human waste, and high consumption of untreated water in the area.

A patent medicine store owner in the area, Augustine Osuigwe, described the outbreak as a "ticking time bomb waiting to happen," saying the poor hygiene within the neighbourhood requires urgent attention.

The New Artisan market, which is dominated by cattle sellers from the northern part of the country, is a busy market for dairy products.

This reporter, who visited the market on Monday, confirmed that the market is surrounded by slums without toilet facilities.

Residents confirmed that they only defecate in polythene bags and dump the contents in open trenches and pools of floodwater which many of the residents use to take their baths.

Measures taken

The health director said the state government has launched an aggressive sensitisation campaign for residents to take precautionary steps towards preventing further spread.

Mr Okoro added that all affected persons have recovered and have been discharged from the hospital after treatment.

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He, however, said a fresh case of the disease was reported Monday morning, indicating the possibility of a further spread if residents do not take caution.

But the health official said no other part of the state is affected by the disease, and pledged the commitment of the state to nip the crisis in the bud before it is spread to other communities.

Cholera outbreak in Nigeria

Asides New Artisan market in Enugu, many other parts of the country are experiencing a rising spread of cholera disease.

Cholera, a diarrheal disease that kills within hours if it is not treated, is endemic in Nigeria, with outbreaks reported as far back as the 1970s.

The ongoing outbreak, which began at the start of this year, has been confirmed in the federal capital territory (FCT) and 15 states- Benue, Delta, Zamfara, Bauchi, Kano, Nigeria, FCT, Cross rivers, Niger, Kaduna, Plateau, Nassarawa, Gombe, Bayelsa and Kebbi.

Between January and June 27, a total of 14,343 suspected cases and 325 deaths, including 345 laboratory-confirmed cases, were reported by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Of the reported cases since the beginning of 2021, 27.6 per cent is aged between 5 and 14 years while 51 per cent is male, and 49 per cent female, the NCDC data showed.

Meanwhile, the NCDC update did not include the recent outbreak in Enugu and the three deaths reported in neighboring Ebonyi State, indicating that the disease is rapidly spreading by the day.

Though this year's cholera outbreak is yet to be declared a national concern, health experts fear consequences on the country's overstretched health infrastructure.
The Jigawa government says over 2,000 people have tested positive for the disease in the state.

At least 30 people died from cholera in Jigawa State in the past month, an official has said.

The Jigawa casualties add to the increasing death toll from the disease across Nigeria. Other states that have reported deaths from cholera in the past few weeks include Enugu, Benue, Plateau and Bayelsa.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health in Jigawa, Salisu Mu'azu, said the deaths were from the over 2,000 patients who tested positive for the disease in nine of the 27 local government areas of the state. Hadejia and Dutse local governments are the most affected, he said.

He blamed open defecation for the spread of the disease.

"Specifically in Hadejia LGA, the outbreak was due to open defecation from a nearby almajiri school that contaminated a water source," he said.

The state government has shut down the water source pending further investigation, the official said.

He said rainfall washes faeces and other wastes into wells and water outlets that the residents use for domestic purposes.

Mr Mu'azu said the state government has directed the release of free drugs to the victims for immediate medical attention.

He said UNICEF and Doctors Without Borders have indicated readiness to partner with the state in mitigating the scourge from further spreading.

Water sanitation and hygiene

Amidst the cholera outbreak in Jigawa, the federal government certified 14 local government areas as Open Defecation Free (ODF) in the state.

The Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, presented ODF certificates to the affected local government's areas at Sule-tankarkar LGA during an official visit to the state on Monday.

The local councils declared open defecation free include Gagarawa, Birniwa, Guri, Sule-Tankarkar, Gwiwa, Kiyawa, Dutse, Buji, Birnin Kudu, Taura, Kafin Hausa, Auyo and Jahun.

Mr Adamu said the areas were declared open defecation free after over three million families in over 40,000 communities in the areas met the requirement of ODF protocol for hygiene promotion.

According to the minister, some of the conditions for attaining the ODF status include: communities must have eliminated open defecation by 100 per cent toilet use and increased ownership and sustainability of hygiene and sanitation services.

Cholera spread

The Monday announcement of the cholera deaths in Jigawa occurs two days after the Enugu government confirmed that seven people died from the bacteria infection in a market in the state.

The Enugu State Ministry of Health said there was a cholera outbreak in New Artisan Market, Enugu, which resulted in the death of seven people in the market with 19 persons identified with the symptoms of loose stool and vomiting.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Commissioner for Health in Enugu, Emmanuel Obi, disclosed in a Saturday statement that the ministry's rapid response team, upon receiving reports of the incident, carried out an immediate investigation and "it was observed that the patients presented with sudden onset of passage of loose stool and vomiting".

He added that "the ill persons identified within the area were immediately and safely evacuated to the state teaching hospital and are receiving treatment, while health education on safe and hygienic practices were given to the inhabitants of the market".

According to the health commissioner, "further tests carried out by the State Ministry of Health at the Teaching Hospital revealed that all the persons were suffering from cholera.

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Mr Obi explained that cholera "is an infection caused by some strains of the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. Risk factors are from poor sanitation, and contaminated drinking water.

"The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and muscle cramps may also occur. Symptoms range from none, to mild, to severe.

"Diarrhea can be so severe that it leads within hours to severe dehydration, electrolyte imbalance and even death. Symptoms start two hours to five days after exposure."

"It is prevented by improvements in sanitation, use of clean water, hand washing and vaccines. Treatment involves replacement of lost body fluids orally or intravenously, zinc supplementation and antibiotics," he said.

Across Nigeria, between January and June 27, a total of 14,343 suspected cholera cases and 325 deaths, including 345 laboratory-confirmed cases, were reported by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.
The lawmaker, Victor Mela, was recently sentenced to one month in prison with an option of fine.

The FCT police command has withdrawn an appeal against a member of the House of Representatives, Victor Mela (Gombe-APC), who was convicted by a magistrate court.

A Chief Magistrates' Court in Zone 6, Wuse, Abuja, had last year convicted Mr Mela for lying on oath in his Form CF001 submitted to the <a target="_blank" href="http://inecnigeria.org">Independent National Electoral Commission</a> (INEC) as a candidate in the 2019 general elections.

He swore to an affidavit thrice, denying citizenship of another country whereas he had a Canadian passport.

Consequently, he was sentenced to one month imprisonment with an option of a fine.

Not satisfied with the judgement, the lawmaker appealed at an FCT high court, challenging the verdict of the magistrate. He won in the higher court.

After losing at the high court, the police filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal, challenging the decision of the high court.

Withdrawal

In a letter addressed to the Deputy Chief Registrar of the FCT high court, appeal section, the police said they wished to discontinue the case without stating any reason.

The letter which was sighted by our reporter was titled "NOTICE OF DISCONTINUANCE IN THE CASE OF COMMISSIONER OF POLICE VS VICTOR MELA IN SUIT NO:CR/66/19 filed on 29/06/2021' was co-signed by the two lawyers representing the police in the case.

"I hereby wish to discontinue the above appeal pending before this court.

"We equally regret any inconvenience this might cause this honorable court and the defendant in this appeal, for same was brought in good faith and not to overreach the defendant," the letter reads.

No Comment

When contacted for comments on the matter, the police spokesperson for the FCT, Mariam Yusuf, declined comments.

She ended the telephone conversation when the matter was brought and did not respond to messages afterwards.

One of the lawyers representing the police, Fidelis Ogbobe, declined comments on the matter, he directed the reporter to the FCT command.

The convicted lawmaker was also not available for comments as he neither picked his calls nor responded to text messages.

However, the nominal complainant, Ali Isa, confirmed the development when contacted via telephone.

He said he also got to hear of the withdrawal a few days ago.
AS debate on the newly introduced mobile transaction levies heats up, President Samia Suluhu has directed responsible ministries to work on people's concerns and views. In a quick rejoinder, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa is today expected to chair a meeting with responsible ministers to discuss the matter.

This meeting will be followed by another meeting of all ministers to review the mobile levies, which have drawn mixed reaction from the public. Speaking to the media yesterday, Finance and Planning Minister Dr Mwigulu Nchemba called for calm as the government works on the issue.

"The President has also been touched with concerns and views from Tanzanians and gave directive to us that we should work on concerns and views," Dr Nchemba said. Dr Mwigulu stressed that the government had heard people's concerns and views and his ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology will jointly work on the concerns.

He pledged a review of regulations governing levy on mobile money transfers. During the previous budget meeting, the Parliament endorsed amendments to the Electronic and Postal Communication Act, CAP 306, 2008 for imposition of a levy of between 10/- to 10,000/- in each mobile money transaction, whereby the government targets to collect 1.2tri/.

Also the amendments have imposed a levy of between 10/- to 200/- per day per SIM card depending on the ability of the user to recharge the balance whereby the government intends to collect 396.3bn/-. These deductions have since attracted concerns from the public, with some users claiming that the deductions were too high. "We have received advice from citizens over how the matter touches them and we have also received advice on areas that needed more awareness and improvements, including deductions and the context of thematter," he said.

The minister explained that since the laws have already been passed in the Parliament, they (ministers) have a room to revisit regulations for implementing those laws. Dr Nchemba pleaded with citizens to remain calm as the government continues explaining and clarifying on every area that needed more clarification. "We will take action on areas that need us to do so in order to continue building our nation," he assured.

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MEMBERS of the ruling CCM in Konde constituency in Pemba have been celebrating after their candidate Mr Sheha Mpemba Faki emerged the winner in the by-election held on Sunday.

Mr Faki garnered 1,796 votes against his closest rival from ACT-Wazalendo, Mr Muhammed Said Issa, who garnered 1,375 votes in the polls that involved 14 political parties. The CCM victory was received with great joy as the winner Faki promised to bring development to the constituency, claiming that the opposition failed to do enough for the people in the past 25 years they have been in charge of the constituency.

Konde constituency byelection was managed by the National Electoral Commission (NEC) and its returning officer Mr Yassin Jabu declared the CCM candidate the winner of the legislative seat in the Union Parliament, which became vacant following the death of its MP Mr Khatib Said Haji from ACTWazalendo, who won in the 2020 General Election.

"I thank the voters and my party CCM for a good campaign. I am prepared to serve the people with vigour and determination," Faki said. The CCM Secretary for Ideology and Publicity- Zanzibar Ms Catherine Peter Nao said they were happy with the results, attributing the victory to the quality of the candidate the party picked. She also said that the people of Pemba Island are now benefiting from the smooth democracy and the Government of National Unity (GNU), leading to peace and stability.

ADA-TADEA party Chairman Juma Ali Khatib, commenting on the election results, said CCM has started well in implementing its 2020-2025 election manifesto and therefore, it was difficult for the opposition to win the seat. "I have often said it is difficult to defeat CCM, without our opposition uniting," he said.

The results were as follows CCM-1796; ACT-Wazalendo 1375; Chadema 857 votes; CUF 624; ADA Tadea 56; Demokrasia Makini 56; NCCR 83; TLP 45; SAU 39; TLP 45; UDPP 29; NRA 44; and CKK 18. Konde by-elections in the northern region of Pemba was held after the death of former Member of Parliament for the Act-Wazalendo late Khatib Said Haji who died on May 20th this year. Registered voters were 6,636 and those who turned out to vote were 5, 050,
The Institute of Marketing in Malawi will this week hold a webinar for its members that is meant to empower them with knowledge on the Africa Continental Free Trade Area(AFCFTA).

According to Institute of Marketing in Malawi Public Relations Director, George Damson the Institute of Marketing in Malawi has engaged Batanai Clemence Chikwene who is a Trade expert at the African Trade Policy Centre of the United Nations Economic Commission based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to drill its members on what AFCFTA is and how marketers can position themselves.

"We are hosting this very important webinar for our members on Thursday 22 July 2021 so that they can gain more information on this important agreement that Malawi is a signatory to.

"The AFCFTA is going to have serious impact on businesses across the continent and marketers being key shapers of organisational strategy need to understand how the agreement will work so that they can position Malawian businesses competitively," he said.

He said, the Marketers are among the best placed players to drive key national agendas like the MW Vision 2063 and these are the kind of engagements that will enable them to play a key role. "

He further said " The webinar is free for members of the Institute of Marketing in Malawi.

"It is part of our value addition to our members and we will be doing more of these webinars covering different areas. Our goal is to empower the Malawian marketer to thrive in their spheres of influence. "

In 2012, African Heads of State and Government, recognising that 'the promotion of intra-African trade is a fundamental factor for sustainable economic development, employment generation and effective integration of Africa into the global economy', decided to establish the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AFCFTA) by 2017.

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On 21 March 2018, the Establishment of the AFCFTA was signed in Kigali, Rwanda, by 44 Heads of State and Government of the 55 African Union (AU) Member States including Malawi .

The projected benefits of the agreement are significant.

The target market for the AFCFTA is projected to rise from an estimated 1.27 billion to 1.7 billion by 2030, out of which about 600 million will be in the middle class.

In terms of aggregate gross domestic product (GDP), this will range from $2.1 trillion to $3.4 trillion or $6.7 trillion at Purchasing Power Parity terms.

In terms of investments and consumer spending, the AFCFTA is expected to attract an estimated 4 trillion US dollars.
Uganda's Covid-19 response in its early days received global plaudits when few cases were registered as the regime enforced stringent lockdown measures and ramped up testing and contact tracing.

Government later borrowed heavily to resuscitate an ailing economy and health system. Despite, the second wave, which came with a potent, sting put a strain on the health sector and only a second lockdown could halt the rising number of deaths. How did the country's fight against this deadly pandemic flounder? writes Frederic Musisi.

Petellina Akol, 65, breathed her last on July 2, 2021 at Soroti Regional Referral Hospital (RRH). The post-mortem report indicates that she died of respiratory failure, which occurs when one's blood doesn't have enough oxygen, a complication, which was worsened by Covid-19.

Desperate relatives had earlier on transported Akol for a distance of 50km from her home in Ojie Village, Kumi District, to Soroti Regional Referral Hospital, which serves eight other districts in Teso Sub-region.

The hospital, which was elevated to regional referral status in 1996, has undergone years of neglect and chronic underfunding.

Much earlier, in 2020 when the country registered its first case of Covid-19 on March 21, followed by a few community cases, the government imposed a lockdown to buy ample time to plan, procure, install vital equipment and equip public health facilities to prepare for a surge in cases at the time, and possibly a second wave.

By the time President Museveni imposed a second lockdown on June 18, 2021, Soroti Regional Referral Hospital was teeming with Covid-19 patients--registering a daily average of 100 patients, majority requiring oxygen, which was not readily available.

"The second wave has been tough---patients filled up here in a short time, and in need of oxygen which was difficult to come by," recalled Dr John Wilson Etolu, the Covid-19 case management team leader, for Teso.

He added: "We didn't prepare adequately both on the population side, and on the health infrastructure. First, there was the politics, when people thought Covid was a political disease used to curtail opposition; when we're recording few cases and deaths. Even after the political season, the caseload did not peak as some of us feared, so once the curve went down, we lowered the guard. On infrastructure, we didn't do well to stock things like oxygen."

"Experience from elsewhere shows countries went through more than one wave. Whatever has happened we should learn a big lesson and sufficiently prepare," Dr Etolu cautioned.

When Akol was admitted to the Covid-19 treatment unit in the last week of June, the referral hospital was grappling with a surge in patient numbers and deaths too. The hospital's oxygen plant with capacity to refill five cylinders in three hours was way too slow to save critically ill patients.

The reckoning

The second wave further barreled deep into communities, including in the countryside since March, according to the Health ministry.

But how exactly did we get here?

In a year, which coincided with party internal elections, a section of the population warned that to be able to combat the spread of the pandemic, the general polls in 2021 should be postponed.

But during high-octane campaigns to elect party flagbearers and later parliamentary and presidential campaigns, large crowds gathered to listen to politicians without observing safety measures.

There are fears that by the end of the general election polling on January 14, 2021, the virus had found fertile grounds to spread across pockets of the country.

When the second wave struck, it was different from the first wave. The pandemic had a greater sting with the highly transmissible variants such as Delta, sending critically ill-patients to require intensive care unit beds or high dependency unit rooms.

Between late May and the first three weeks of June, the country registered the highest number of cases in a single day-- 1,259 or 17 per cent positivity rate --deeply exposing the fragilities of the health system long ignored by the government.

With numbers of the sick surging, government hospital services began to come under strain.

As the stench of death permeated across the city, funeral service vans parked across Mulago's mortuary. The piercing sound of ambulances blaring horns across Kampala's haunted streets became the symbol of the second wave.

The first lockdown last year was supposed to provide government with enough time to borrow enough funds and equip hospitals. It was also meant to allow health institutions to train specialised nurses to provide care to critically-ill Covid-19 patients.

Asked whether the country could have been better prepared, the Health minister, Dr Jane Ruth Aceng, said in an interview last Thursday that now is not the time to talk about that.

"The overwhelming number of critical cases were not predicted; you could not detect whether the virus will affect the young or old," Dr Aceng said. "Preparation was done but like in all other countries, systems get overwhelmed," she added.

The upper-crust who could afford the astronomical bills of private hospitals lined up to find a bed for their ailing patients.

Oxygen, one of the key components in treating acute Covid-19 cases, became scarce and commoditised, which became too costly for the average citizen.

A video captured at Mulago national referral hospital showed caretakers fighting for oxygen cylinders that had just been refilled. At various regional referral hospitals (RRHs), fatigued caretakers could be seen ferrying cylinders from refilling stations to treatment wards. According to a Daily Monitor investigation, the situation got dire, especially at night when several health workers were resting.

Dr Aceng said all RRHs got additional oxygen cylinders. "During the first lockdown President Museveni directed that we prepare for the worst-case scenario but the pandemic changed."

In its March 2020 - June 2021 Covid-19 Preparedness and Response Plan, the Health ministry detailed eight key pillars, namely, leadership, stewardship, coordination and oversight; surveillance and laboratory; case management; strategic information, research and innovation; risk communication and social mobilisation; community engagement and social protection initiatives; logistics; continuity of essential health services, to combat the pandemic.

Money meets ineptitude

During the same period, a Finance ministry semi-annual budget monitoring report yet to be made public, ostensibly due to fear of a backlash from the tender beneficiaries, a copy of which has been seen by this newspaper, details that the Health ministry received both budget and off budget support from various funders, including World Bank, Global Fund and GAVI, to the tune of Shs750b, of which Shs617b or 82 per cent had been spent by March 31, 2021.

The report also offers some insights into how things went wrong. Of the Shs750b, Shs22b was spent on procurement of face masks and Shs594m on distributing them, Shs35b on procurement of ICU beds and accessories, Shs29b on procurement of test kits and reagents, and Shs22b as allowances for health workers.

Among others, Shs11.6b used to procure fuel and lubricants from Vivo Energy, Shs11b for procurement of assorted personal protective equipment, Shs11b for procurement of 37 ambulances, Shs8b spent on civil works and buying tents, and Shs8.5b was transferred to RRHs for patient management and hardship allowances.

During the first lockdown, the Health ministry promised to, among others, improve ICU bed capacity across the country, purchase more ambulances, install oxygen plants, purchase regulators, humidifier bottles, and cannula defibrillators, suction and infusion pumps, nebulizers, mobile x-rays, oxygen concentrators, weighing scales, portable ultrasounds, patient trolleys, and ventilators.

In various addresses, President Museveni implored the ministry to procure 42,000 beds for Covid-19 patient care, of which 3,793 beds have been so far made available. These include 3,100 standard beds; 600 at Mulago, 900 in RRHs, 1,300 beds at Namboole, 120 at Bombo military barracks, and 180 beds at the seven Health ministry certified private facilities treating Covid-19. Another 474 high dependency beds, and 218 ICU beds were also procured. However, there is still a deficit of 38,207 beds.

In April 2020, the Health ministry acquired 20 sleeper tents with a capacity to accommodate 100 patients, each at Shs163m or a combined Shs3.8b. Lumious Uganda Ltd, which was handed the contract, was supposed to install tents at Mandela National Stadium, Namboole, to create a large patient holding point.

The Health ministry Permanent Secretary, Dr Diana Atwine, explained in an interview last December that the stadium management stopped them from puncturing the stadium turf. The tents were later dispatched to various RRHs.

Two tents were installed at Soroti RRH but have barely been used. The first tent, officials explained, required a concrete floor to be constructed and lacked a stable electricity supply while the second tent installed on a lawn also lacked a constant power supply. When the hospital Covid-19 treatment unit was overwhelmed with numbers, management improvised space 1.4km away at the Soroti School of Comprehensive Nursing.

Last year, the Health ministry handed out two tenders; Shs26.9b to Elsmeed EA Ltd for the delivery, installation, and commissioning of ICU equipment in 17 hospitals across the country, and a second tender worth Shs10.5b to Joint Medical Stores (JMS).

Status of equipment

A doctor, speaking anonymously, told this newspaper that some of the equipment delivered "had issues." After delivery of five ICU beds and the associated equipment at the hospital, it dawned on management that they did not have intensivists--certified physicians who provide special care for critically ill patients in ICU.

Dr Etolu acknowledged the problem and revealed that they have now sent 12 staff for training at Mulago as intensivists, who are expected to return later this month.

After the Health ministry delivered ICU equipment to Soroti RRH, it came to the notice of management that the entire hospital complex comprises decrepit structures that could not accommodate heavy equipment. Dr Etolu revealed that they are now re-modelling a new structure to accommodate ICU equipment.

On the day we visited, we found several supplies dispatched by the Health ministry, including beds and mattresses, outside the Covid-19 treatment unit as there is no space to accommodate them, while officials were trying to prepare the two tents dispatched last year. There is also a shortage of front line staff; given the risks involved and delayed payment of risk allowances.

"Putting up an ICU unit has its specific dimensions and it's not just about buildings but also about staff. You find that a patient in ICU needs about four nurses, which luxury we don't have here," Dr Etolu said. "It's true we received equipment from MoH but we were able to use some; we couldn't find space for others."

Haphazard planning?

But how did things go wrong when Uganda appeared to be making strides in the fight against Covid-19 compared to neighbouring states earlier on in the year? Why did those in charge not rely on the first lockdown as the saving grace to fully equip hospitals in time?

At Mbale and Moroto RRHs, officials revealed that the scarcity of oxygen was the most frustrating problem as Covid-19 patients died.

Dr Emmanuel Tugaineyo, the Mbale RRH director, told Daily Monitor: "Our Oxygen plants' output-refilling--is about 24 cylinders in 24 hours, but during the peak of the second wave, we found that we required between 30 and 40 cylinders for Covid-treatment, not mentioning other departments where oxygen was needed badly. So, the Health ministry had to deliver oxygen from Kampala."

Two frontline health workers in Mbale, speaking anonymously, talked about the "low morale"--after going months without being paid their risk allowance, a pattern across several RRHs around the country.

While Dr Tugaineyo said all outstanding allowances have been cleared until the end of June, the health workers we talked to denied receiving such payments. At Moroto RRH, the toxic work environment spiralled into the Covid-19 treatment unit, putting patients at risk. One health worker indicated that there was "selective promotion" of those working on the frontline to benefit from risk allowances. This, as the hospital grappled with a staff shortage--four staff against an average patient capacity of 60 at the peak of last month-- and oxygen scarcity.

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"Handling the second wave caught us slightly unaware... at the beginning of the year things seemed pretty normal but starting May we started detecting a surge in numbers through mass-testing although we have now stabilised," said Dr Moses Okwir, the Covid-19 focal person for Karamoja Sub-region.

Officials at Soroti, Moroto, and Mbale RRHs respectively, told Daily Monitor that they often had to rely on oxygen supplies dispatched by the Health ministry from Kampala to complement their in-built oxygen plants.

Procured equipment

The finance monitoring report further details that as of January 31, 2021, 1,497 out of 1,553 (96.4 per cent) pieces of equipment procured had been delivered to the respective recipient facilities, and 85 per cent of the installations done by both Elsmeed and JMS. These included blood gas analyzers, defibrillators, suction and infusion pumps, nebulisers, mobile x-rays, oxygen concentrators, weighing scales, portable ultrasounds, patient trolleys, ventilators, and ICU beds.

By January and February 2021, the report shows that laboratory equipment such as blood gas analysers supplied by Elsmeed Ltd was not working, while equipment delivered at Soroti, and Lacor hospital in Gulu did not work at all, and one delivered to Gulu RRH worked for less than 48 hours.

The equipment had flaws related to sensors, temperature failures, and frozen screens, among others issues. However, the Health ministry told those conducting an audit that the issues had been fixed in March 2021, except at Soroti RRH.

At Soroti RRH, doctors lamented about the lack of a stable power supply, which affected functionality of blood gas analysers. This intermittent power supply, despite the country's hydro-generation capacity, killed dozens of patients in ICU, including at Mulago Covid-19 unit.

While JMS delivered 99 per cent of its equipment--388 pieces of ICU equipment, including 28 per cent ventilators, 25 per cent patient monitors, 24 per cent oxygen therapy apparatus, while the rest (22 per cent) ICU beds--the report indicates their equipment was inferior compared to that supplied by Elsmeed EA Ltd.

In a statement to this newspaper, the JMS executive director, Dr Bildard Baguma, said his company supplied high quality equipment in line with the specifications shared by the Health ministry, in addition to guaranteeing a three-year manufacturer's warranty.

The country's Covid-19 death-toll had by mid-July inched towards 2,164 but all is not entirely despair as more than 61,304 patients have recovered of the total caseload of 88,194.

One hopes that in case the third wave strikes, the country will have learnt from its past mistakes and be better prepared.
analysis

Survivors of sexual violence around the world have begun to speak out more in recent years. This has happened partly due to the #MeToo movement, which began in 2006 in the US and gained momentum through high-profile cases like Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein and actor Bill Cosby.

On the African continent, several countries have seen the movement gain ground. In Kenya, there was the #mydressmychoice campaign while in Nigeria the #ArewaMeToo campaign mobilised survivors and activists. In South Africa, women have used several campaigns including #EndRapeCulture, #AmINext campaign and #TheTotalShutdown to demand change. And in Malawi, journalists took to the streets in November 2020, in a march against rape and sexual abuse.

The un-silencing of survivors may have accelerated in the past few years, but the response from organisations remains haphazard at best. Consequently, across many sectors there is little incentive for survivors to come forward. The policies that are meant to protect people from sexual harassment are often opaque or nonexistent. Moreover, punishment of perpetrators is rare and retribution for survivors who report it is common.

Included on the long list of problematic industries is news media. When the #MeToo movement took off globally in 2017, it triggered new research into the prevalence of sexual harassment in media. But much of the inquiry focused on the west, with almost no attention on the global south.

We conducted research on sexual harassment in newsrooms, working with WAN-IFRA Women in News, a global organisation focused on gender equality. Our large scale survey of news personnel looked at the rate of sexual harassment, how often people report it, the sources of harassment, and how organisations react.

Women in News defines sexual harassment as unwanted and offensive behaviour of a sexual nature that violates a person's dignity and makes them feel degraded, humiliated, intimidated or threatened.

The results show little helpful action is taken when survivors report this behaviour. Organisations still cultivate unsafe work environments in which their staff seldom report it. If they do, their claims are likely dismissed. Or the accused is merely warned. The negative cycle silences survivors and empowers perpetrators.

Women are prime targets

This project employed two methods for data collection: a survey of media personnel, distributed online, and in-depth interviews with media executives conducted online through video calls. The approach was designed to understand patterns of sexual harassment in newsrooms, and monitor perceptions of officers with positions of power within media organisations.

The survey responses were anonymous and interview participants were assigned a pseudonym to protect their identity. Data collection began in July 2020 in Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It ended in November 2020.

The survey was completed by 584 participants and 32 in-depth interviews were conducted with managers and executives.

The findings show that women are the prime targets of sexual harassment. An average of 56% experienced verbal harassment and 38% experienced physical harassment. But 24% of men reported experiencing verbal harassment and 15% reported experiencing physical harassment. Those who identified as gender non-conforming were a small sample in the study, but 50% reported experiencing some form of sexual harassment. Nearly half of participants reported witnessing sexual harassment - 17% stated they had seen five or more incidents. And this was quite consistent across all types of media.

When people imagine sexual harassment in the workplace, they may assume it's a powerful man in a senior position targeting junior employees. And certainly, that happens. But higher management accounted for only about 20% of perpetrators in our survey. Participants also reported the perpetrators as fellow employees at 38%, direct supervisors at 22%, and outside news sources at 17% (participants could also choose "other"). In sum, sexual harassment is so ubiquitous that it could happen to anyone and come from anyone.

With the serious emotional and psychological effects of sexual harassment on survivors and the unsafe work environments it cultivates in newsrooms, it would seem logical for news organisations to make eliminating it a top priority. Sadly, this isn't the case.

Why sexual harassment thrives

The first problem is that there aren't robust policies in place aimed at preventing sexual harassment. Only 53% of participants said they were aware of any anti-sexual harassment policy at their organisation. And even fewer - 17% - were aware of what was contained in the policy. In interviews, 68% of news executives were aware of a policy at their organisation. The results indicate policies are weak and not enough staff have training on them.

A secondary problem is that only a third of survivors ever report their experiences to their organisation. The most common reason given was worry that it would have a negative impact on their job or reputation. The second most common reason was a lack of a reporting mechanism. This would imply that organisations lack the infrastructure for survivors to report and that a negative atmosphere around reporting instils fear.

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When we looked at cases where survivors did report, we found that organisations responded to only 42% of them. The most likely response was to warn the perpetrator. Only four participants said the perpetrator was fired, and eight stated the perpetrator was suspended. Survivors risk their reputations, status, retribution and further trauma to come forward. Those who do are likely to be failed by their organisation's lack of response.

What news organisations must do

Without proper accountability and due process in place, sexual harassment will continue in the news media and workplaces around the world. A lack of reporting and consequences will also continue. News personnel will fear the backlash. Many survivors choose to leave their jobs and even the media industry to get away from harmful newsrooms. Those who stay risk future sexual harassment, anxiety, feeling disempowered, and many other negative consequences.

News organisations need to adopt policies with zero tolerance for sexual harassment. These must clearly outline what sexual harassment is, how survivors can safely report it, procedures on how complaints will be given due process, and consequences for perpetrators. Staff need regular training and survivors need support.

Lindsey Blumell, Lecturer in Journalism, City, University of London and Dinfin Mulupi, PhD Student, University of Maryland
Government on Sunday said two refrigerated trucks with large cold chambers to facilitate safe delivery of vaccines by National Medical Stores (NMS) have arrived in the country.

The Ministry of Health said a total of 5 refrigerated trucks were procured with funding from Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (Gavi) and that the other three are yet to arrive.

However, government has not yet revealed the amount of money spent to procure the trucks.

Ministry of Health spokesperson, Mr Emmanuel Ainebyoona told Daily Monitor that the trucks will be important in addressing capacity gaps in vaccine delivery in the country.

"There have been trucks that were delivering vaccines but with these refrigerated trucks, there is an increased capacity. The trucks will be used for delivering all types of vaccines," he said.

Uganda is expecting to receive more than one million additional doses of Covid-19 vaccines through donations.

The vaccines that include Pfizer which should be kept at ultra-low temperatures to remain effective are expected by end of this month or early next month.

In July, government is also expecting to receive 286,080 doses of AstraZeneca from the Norwegian government through the global -Covax vaccine sharing initiative. Additionally, 300,000 vaccines of Sinovac from China and 647,010 Pfizer vaccines from the US are expected.

The country started Covid-19 vaccination on March 10 after receiving 964,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines from COVAX and the Indian government. In June, it received another 175,200 doses of the same type of vaccine from the French government through Covax.

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Latest statistics from the health ministry show that about 1,085,382 people are now vaccinated with up to 879,672 people that have received their first shot while 205,710 have been fully vaccinated.

The government plans to vaccinate at least 21.9 million Ugandans to shield the country from the extreme health and economic impacts of Covid-19.

The Ministry also said "it is okay for those who received the first shot of AstraZeneca to get Pfizer as the second shot. This follows evidence that there is improved protection."

Mr Ainebyoona also said: "... eleven boat ambulances to support access of medical services on water bodies across the country are also in transit. These were acquired by Ministry of Health with funding from Gavi."
Analysis of the 2020 Primary Leaving Examinations shows that 3,980 schools posted an improved performance of those who scored Division One compared to the previous year.

The schools posted improvement from 0.5 per cent to 100 per cent.

Of these, Aakum Primary School in Kumi and Kiziba Primary School in Luweero posted the most improved performance of 100 per cent.

In second place is Wilton Primary School in Mityana Municipality that jumped to 82.4 per cent from zero per cent Division One in 2019, followed by Lion of Judah Elementary School, Kayunga, and Kikyo SDA Primary School, Bundibugyo, that posted a 76 per cent improvement.

Of the 13,096 schools analysed, only seven schools maintained performance at 100 per cent of all candidates passing in Division One, while 5,216 schools remained stagnant with no candidates, passing in first grade in both years.

On the other hand 3,900 schools declined in performance. Nyankwanzi Primary School (Kyenjojo posted the highest decline from 75 percent in 2019 to zero per cent, followed by Lwakisa Primary School (Kassanda) from 53.3 per cent to zero and Mishenyi Primary School (Mbarara Main) that declined by 51.1 per cent.

The others are Aisha Preparatory School (Kasese), Ntumwa Primary School (Luweero), St Francis Rwengwara Primary School (Bunyangabu) and, Mugyera Primary School (Rukungiri), among others.

Uneb on Friday said they recorded better performance despite the disruptions by the pandemic.

Mr Dan Odongo, the Uneb executive secretary, said of the 734,788 students who sat for exams, a total of 81,864 passed in Division One.

In 2019, 69,243 passed in Division One of the 695,804 registered candidates
Angry residents in Kayunga on Sunday stormed the district National Resistance Movement (NRM) office demanding that the government gives them food to take them through the lockdown.

Over 200 residents comprising of the elderly, disabled, youth, breastfeeding mothers and children camped at the office located on the main street of Kayunga Town, while chanting, "we want food" bringing traffic flow and business in the area to a standstill.

Residents in Kayunga District were not among the beneficiaries of the Covid-19 relief cash of Shs100,000 per recipient. The relief cash from government was majorly targeted for people whose jobs have been affected by the lockdown.

"It is the responsibility of government to ensure that its citizens have food to eat but we are surprised that nothing has been done for us," Joyce Katwalo, one of the residents complained.

The angry residents also faulted their leaders, including Members of Parliament and local leaders for failing to extend relief aid to them.

Mr Moses Karangwa, the district NRM chairman was compelled to save the situation, when he hurriedly drove to Jinja Town and brought 15 tonnes of maize flour and rice, which were distributed to the residents.

There was a scramble among residents as each struggled to have a share of the relief food.

Mr Karangwa, later asked residents in the district with a capacity to donate food, to come through in order to save their counterparts from starvation.

He promised to donate food items to residents in major trading centres in the district.

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Mr Amos Lugoloobi, the Ntenjeru North MP and state minister for finance and planning, said he has no plan to donate food to hungry residents in his area because he has just assumed his ministerial office and does not have the money to do so.

"Last time, the lockdown found us when we had made some savings but right now we have no money to buy food for our hungry residents," Mr Lugoloobi said.

"I advise residents to engage in farming so that they can get food because this pandemic is not going away anytime soon," he added.

Mr Charles Tebandeke, the Bbaale County MP said residents were right to demand for food, but said they do not have capacity to feed them at the moment. He, however, promised to task the government to come to the rescue of starving residents.

Additionally, Mr Joel Kayiira, the acting district chairperson said they do not have any arrangement to distribute food to vulnerable residents, explaining that they also lack funds to sensitise and mobilize the residents on safeguard against Covid-19 pandemic.
FINANCE and Planning Minister, Dr. Mwigulu Nchemba announced Monday the government is reviewing the mobile transaction levy regulations to resolve shortcomings in the implementation of 2021 Financial Act.

In a joint press address with the Minister for Communication and Information Technology Dr. Faustine Ndugulile, Dr.Nchemba revealed that the two ministries have received directives from the President and are set to meet the Prime Minister, Kassim Majaliwa on the matter.

"The government has heard the grievances and we have already started working on them," he noted adding: "I urged people to remain calm on this matter, we will continue to clarify in areas that need clarification and we will take action in such areas, which needs action to build our nation."

Mobile phone users were required to pay a certain percentage in their mobile transactions effectively July 15, 2021 as part on an initiative to attain a self-reliance national budget. The levy has, however, been received with mixed feeling.

Dr Nchemba explained that since the law has been enacted by the Parliament, it will be implemented but their rooms for adjustment on the regulations formed by his ministry.

"The president has instructed us to act on these grievances," he assured warning those trying to mislead the public on the real intention of the levy to watch out.

The Minister said he has instructed the team of experts to review the National Payment System and the Electronic and Postal Communication with the view of arriving at a better conclusion on the matter.
analysis

The Pietermaritzburg High Court on Monday heard just under four hours of argument on whether a postponement was necessary so that former president Jacob Zuma could be physically present in court to give evidence during his special plea application in the arms deal corruption case, in which he is being tried alongside French arms manufacturer Thales.

Jacob Zuma said in his papers, filed over the weekend, that he wanted to be present in court for his trial, as was his constitutional right, and that a virtual platform would infringe on this.

Zuma was following proceedings via an audiovisual link from Estcourt Correctional Centre.

Presiding officer, Judge Piet Koen, had issued a directive saying the special plea application, which was set down for Monday, should be held virtually.

The state argued that there was no justification or necessity for the special plea to be argued orally, and that a virtual platform was "legitimate, lawful and appropriate" for the determination thereof, using papers already submitted.

Zuma was yet again seeking to delay proceedings, said advocate Wim Trengove for the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA), and his application for postponement should be dismissed.

"We proceed on the basis that if you find oral evidence...
A cholera outbreak in Jigawa has killed at least 30 people with more than 2,000 hospitalised in the past two months in the state.

Dr Salisu Mu'azu, Permanent Secretary, Jigawa State Ministry of Heath, who confirmed the outbreak, said that most of the infected cases were children recorded in nine local government areas of the state.

Mu'azu listed Hadejia; Dutse, Kirikasamma, Birnin Kudu and Ringim as some of the areas worst hit by the outbreak.

He said that of the 2,000 infected cases, some had been discharged while others were still receiving free medical treatment in government hospitals.

The permanent secretary, who could not immediately say what was the cause of the outbreak, insisted that the Hadejia case could be linked to water pollution.

He alleged that there was possibility of water contamination from an area where people practiced open defecation near the water vendors who collect and circulate the water to residents of Hadejia town.

Mu'azu said the state government was on top of situation for now, and has been providing necessary assistance to the residents in the affected areas.

The permanent secretary said the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) had supplied some medications and promised to send more soonest.
Khartoum  The European Union (EU) is supporting Government authorities in Eastern Sudan to create an evidence-based, innovative, and sustainable development and protection solution for refugees and host communities and hence provide alternatives to irregular primary and secondary migration.

To that end, Landell Mills, the international development consultancy implementing the EU-funded "Capacity Building Project for State Authorities in Eastern Sudan", organised a five-day workshop in Khartoum from 4th - 8th July 2021. The training enhanced the statistical capacities of state government officials from the ministries of Finance, Education, Health, Water and Sanitation and Production and Resources to better serve development planning in the three states of Kassala, Red Sea and Gedaref.

"Embracing the data revolution, governments and development partners need to work collaboratively to promote the value of data and strengthen the evidence base on the significance of investing in data, as a critical enabler for governments to accurately plan, fund and evaluate development interventions", said Ms. Kawther Badri, Landell Mills Key Expert on this EU-funded project, in the workshop's opening remarks.

Ms. Badri added that, in the era of big data and artificial intelligence, where data is being recognised as the new oil or gold, and lifeblood of decision-making, lack of accurate, reliable, and timely data poses a serious challenge to developing countries' progress towards the SDGs promise of "leaving no one behind".

Ms. Badri called upon trainees to advocate for data-driven development planning and to purposefully engage in spreading the knowledge and skills gained through this training to colleagues and counterparts in their respective states to effectively participate in the local development planning process. She stressed the importance of sharing their new knowledge and skills as the role of Government extends beyond its traditional services to contribute to community development and economic growth by exploiting the resources, capabilities, and skills available at local levels, including the enormous and valuable data collected and stored over the years in all vital sectors.

On his part, Mr. Abd Moneim Osman, the Assistant Director at the Directorate of Economic Planning and Development of Kassala State Ministry of Finance and Manpower, hailed the EU's support to development efforts in east Sudan in general and Kassala State in particular. "The EU had previously supported building the capacity of government officials in eastern Sudan in strategic planning, project design, and monitoring and evaluation to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals".

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Ms. Manahel Abdelrazig from the Ministry of Finance, Red Sea State explained "I came from Port Sudan, Red Sea State, to participate in the workshop that aimed to build our capacities in collecting and using data and statistics to inform development and service projects. During the five days' training, we had first-hand experience of using data collection tools, designing, processing and analysing data and data indicators to serve health, education, water and sanitation and other services and development sectors".

In November 2018, the EU contracted Landell Mills to implement the "Capacity Building Project for State Authorities in the East" which is one component of the predominantly EU-funded Regional Development and Protection Programme (RDPP) for the Horn of Africa. Landell Mills works closely with the State Ministry of Finance and Manpower in Kassala to strengthen the local development process, including enhancing the capacity of the Ministry's Directorate of Economic Planning and Development.

Overall, it is expected that the project will contribute towards improving the livelihoods, human development, and overall wellbeing of both refugees and host communities in East Sudan through improved and sufficient capacity to establish a reliable data information system.
Presidential Lodge, Freetown, Monday 19 July 2021 - His Excellency President Dr Julius Maada Bio and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces has decorated two senior colonels who recently got promoted to the rank of Brigadier General by the Defense Council.

Brigadier General Joseph S. Kaimapo was commissioned into the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces, RSLAF, as a Cadet Officer in 1993. He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Peace and Development Studies from Njala University, a BSc Degree in Public Sector Management from the Institute of Public Administration and Management.

He has served in several positions ranging from Platoon Commander to Director of Defense Personnel at the Ministry of Defense, Commanding Officer at the Armed Forces Personnel Center and until his promotion to the rank of Brigadier General, he was Assistant Cheif of Defense Staff, Personnel and Military Secretary.

Brigadier General Sahid Tejan Kanu was commissioned into the RSLAF as an Officer Cadet in September 1993. He holds a Bachelor of Law degree with honors from the University of London, a Masters of Arts Degree in Defense and Conflict Studies from the Kings College in London. He is a barrister at Law, advocate and solicitor of the High Court of Sierra Leone.

In his military career, Brigadier Kanu has served as a Commanding Officer Forces Reconnaissance Unit, Staff Officer Grade 1 Directorate of Peacekeeping at the Ministry of Defense, Chief Instructor at the Horton Academy and Director of Military Operations.

Addressing the new Brigadier Generals, President Julius Maada Bio congratulated them on their achievements and said it was the aspiration of every serving officer to reach the rank of Brigadier. He, therefore, encouraged them to lead by example, noting that the Constitution of Sierra Leone and the Armed Forces of Sierra Leone code of conduct must be defended, promoted and protected.

"Congratulations to you both and thank you very much," President Bio said.
Tunis/Tunisia  The Health Ministry is organising open days for COVID-19 vaccination for the benefit of all Tunisian citizens over 18 years old during the first two days of Eid al-Adha, starting Tuesday at 1 pm, until Wednesday at 7 pm, Health Minister Faouzi Mehdi announced on Monday.

He was speaking at a press conference held at the headquarters of the Ministry.

Mehdi explained that citizens wishing to be vaccinated must register on the vaccination platform "Evax," then go to one of the vaccination centres.

Some 29 vaccination centres will be opened on this occasion, the addresses of which will be revealed by the ministry.

During these open days, two types of vaccines will be administered, namely Chinese "Sinopharma," suitable for all ages, and "AstraZeneca" vaccine for citizens over 45 years old, according to the Minister of Health.

The Minister called on medics and paramedics who wish to volunteer to work during the open days to contact the Local Health Directorates, commending their considerable efforts and great sacrifices.

On the other hand, the minister stressed that starting the following week, 150 new vaccination centres will open their doors, in parallel with the launch of vaccination in private pharmacies, stressing that all vaccinations will be free, whether in the public or private sector.

The number of doses acquired or in the process of being acquired by the end of July amounts to 3.2 million doses, of which about 2.4 million doses were acquired through direct purchases and international donations. The remaining quantity, about one million doses, represents Tunisia's current stock.

With these quantities, the national vaccination campaign will be accelerated during the coming period, he added, calling on citizens to register massively to the "Evax" platform and not to miss the appointment of vaccination.

He noted that 54,000 Tunisian citizens are convened each day by the vaccination centres and that only 75% are present at the appointment.
Kabkabiya / Gereida  At least five people have died, 10 others injured, and a large number of civilians have fled their homes, after and artillery attack on Sortony camp in Kabkabiya locality in North Darfur on Saturday. Three people died and two others were wounded in two separate incidents in Gereida locality in South Darfur on Thursday and Friday.

According to statements by the Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugees in North Darfur, Sortony camp for the displaced was subjected to a sustained attack which was combined with artillery shelling on Saturday morning that lasted for several hours.

The coordination told Radio Dabanga that many homes were burned in the bombing. She indicated that there was no telephone network in the camp to count the casualties and losses. For its part, announced that five people were killed, 10 others were injured, and a number of camp houses were burned as a result of the attack. The coordination demanded the judicial and humanitarian authorities to immediately investigate the attack. Regular and peace-signed forces during the era of the former regime were accused of perpetrating the attack.

In South Darfur, three people were killed and two others wounded in two separate incidents on Thursday and Friday in Gereida locality in South Darfur. A caller from Gereida told Radio Dabanga that on Thursday, a large number of gunmen riding camels, horses, and motorcycles attacked the village of Habouba, 15 kilometres west of Gereida town, from the west and the east at the same time.

The witness explained that the residents of the village returned to their agricultural activities a month ago. Babiker Harun Adam and Abdelrahman Harun Adam were killed, two others were injured, and the attackers made off with agricultural crops and livestock.

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In a separate incident on Friday, gunmen attacked tuk-tuk motor rikshaws vehicles on their way to Dito market. Yassin Bakhit Ibrahim died in the attack. Witnesses say that the regular security forces did not react to protect the public, nor have any of the perpetrators been arrested.

The Gereida Local Students Association called on universities and higher institutes to pressurise government to disarm the militias and open an immediate investigation to uncover those involved in the attack Habouba in and bring them to justice. It also called in a statement for international and regional organizations to escalate these violations to the Human Rights Council. Darfur, and the association appealed to neighbourhood and city resistance committees, civil society organisations and human rights activists to stand by the victims.

The governor of the Darfur region and head of the Sudan Liberation Movement, Minni Arko Minawi, announced the arrival of the forces of the Sudan Liberation Movement to El-Fasher on Saturday, in fulfilment of the timing of the formation of the joint force to protect civilians in Darfur. Juba so that the citizens can enjoy real and not false peace.

The force consists of hundreds of soldiers and on board dozens of armoured vehicles and four-wheel drive vehicles. The head of the movement in North Darfur, d. Abu Hurairah said in a press statement that their forces are ready to participate in protecting the agricultural season and to join the joint forces to maintain security in the region. He stressed that the forces of the parties to the peace process are working in joint coordination and great understanding with the regular agencies in the state in order to preserve the security of the citizen.
analysis

In 2008, as big banks began failing across Wall Street and the housing and stock markets crashed, the nation saw how crucial financial regulation is for economic stability - and how quickly the consequences can cascade through the economy when regulators are asleep at the wheel.

Today, there's another looming economic risk: climate change. Once again, how much it harms economies will depend a lot on how financial regulators and central banks react.

Climate change's impact on economies isn't always obvious. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, identified a series of climate change-related risks in 2015 that could shake the financial system. The rising costs of extreme weather, lawsuits against companies that have contributed to climate change and the falling value of fossil fuel assets could all have an impact.

Nobel Prize-winning U.S. economist Joseph Stiglitz agrees. In a recent interview, he argued that the impact of a sharp rise in carbon prices - which governments charge companies for emitting climate-warming greenhouse gases - could trigger another financial crisis, this time starting with the fossil fuel industry, its suppliers and the banks that finance them, which could spill over into the broader economy.

Our research as environmental economists and macroeconomists confirms that both the effects of climate change and some of the policies necessary to stop it could have important implications for financial stability, if preemptive measures are not undertaken. Public policies addressing, after years of delay, the fossil fuel emissions that are driving climate change could devalue energy companies and cause investments held by banks and pension funds to tank, as would abrupt changes in consumer habits.

The good news is that regulators have the ability to address these risks and clear the way to safely implement ambitious climate policy.

Climate-stress-testing banks

First, regulators can require banks to publicly disclose their risks from climate change and stress-test their ability to manage change.

The Biden administration recently introduced an executive order on climate-related financial risk, with the goal of encouraging U.S. companies to evaluate and publicly disclose their exposure to climate change and to future climate policies.

In the United Kingdom, large companies already have to disclose their carbon footprints, and the U.K. is pushing to have all major economies follow its lead.

The European Commission also proposed new rules for companies to report on climate and sustainability in their investment decisions across a broad swath of industries in its new Sustainable Finance Strategy released on July 6, 2021. This strategy builds on a previous plan for sustainable growth from 2018.

Carbon disclosure represents a crucial ingredient for "climate stress tests," evaluations that gauge how well-prepared banks are for potential shocks from climate change or from climate policy. For example, a recent study by the Bank of England determined that banks were unprepared for a carbon price of US$150 per ton, which it determined would be necessary by the end of the decade to meet the international Paris climate agreement's goals.

The European Central Bank is conducting stress tests to assess the resilience of its economy to climate risks. In the United States, the Federal Reserve recently established the Financial Stability Climate Committee with similar objectives in mind.

Monetary and financial policy solutions

Central banks and academics have also proposed several ways to address climate change through monetary policy and financial regulation.

One of these methods is "green quantitative easing," which, like quantitative easing used during the recovery from the 2008 recession, involves the central bank buying financial assets to inject money into the economy. In this case, it would buy only assets that are "green," or environmentally responsible. Green quantitative easing could potentially encourage investment in climate-friendly projects and technologies such as renewable energy, though researchers have suggested that the effects might be short-lived.

A second policy proposal is to modify existing regulations to recognize the risks that climate change poses to banks. Banks are usually subject to minimum capital requirements to ensure banking sector stability and mitigate the risk of financial crises. This means that banks must hold some minimum amount of liquid capital in order to lend.

Incorporating environmental factors in these requirements could improve banks' resilience to climate-related financial risks. For instance, a "brown-penalizing factor" would require higher capital requirements on loans extended to carbon-intensive industries, discouraging banks from lending to such industries.

Broadly, these existing proposals have in common the goal of reducing economy-wide carbon emissions and simultaneously reducing the financial system's exposure to carbon-intensive sectors.

The Bank of Japan announced a new climate strategy on July 16, 2021, that includes offering no-interest loans to banks lending to environmentally friendly projects, supporting green bonds and encouraging banks to disclosure their climate risk.

The Federal Reserve has begun to study these policies, and it has created a panel focused on developing a climate stress test.

Lessons from economists

Often, policymaking trails scientific and economic debates and advancements. With financial regulation of climate risks, however, it is arguably the other way around. Central banks and governments are proposing new policy tools that have not been studied for very long.

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A few research papers released within the last year provide a number of important insights that can help guide central banks and regulators.

They do not all reach the same conclusions, but a general consensus seems to be that financial regulation can help address large-scale economic risks that abruptly introducing a climate policy might create. One paper found that if the climate policy is implemented gradually, the economic risks can be small and financial regulation can manage them.

Financial regulation can also help accelerate the transition to a cleaner economy, research shows. One example is subsidizing lending to climate-friendly industries while taxing lending to polluting industries. But financial regulation alone will not be enough to effectively address climate change.

Central banks will have roles to play as countries try to manage climate change going forward. In particular, prudent financial regulation can help prevent barriers to the kind of aggressive policies that will be necessary to slow climate change and protect the environments our economies were built for.

Garth Heutel, Associate Professor of Economics, Georgia State University; Givi Melkadze, Assistant Professor of Economics, Georgia State University, and Stefano Carattini, Assistant Professor in Economics, Georgia State University
Private health facilities and local manufacturers of healthcare products have asked government to give them incentives to reduce the cost of medical equipment and admissions.

Private health facilities say while they have been under attack for alleged high costs of Covid-19 treatment, government has continued to tax them heavily and expects them to offer cheap healthcare .

Ms Grace Kiwanuka, the executive director of Uganda Healthcare Federation, yesterday said at least 80 per cent of inputs for manufacturing products are imported and that manufacturers are ordered to pay all the import duties.

While a guide on tax incentives/exemptions available to local investors provides for such exemption for imported equipment, those manufacturing locally, but import the raw materials pay taxes on such inputs.

This, officials say, makes them incur huge costs, which they have to shift on the final product.

Ms Kiwanuka said government has to rethink and provide tax and other incentives to such manufacturers so that medical supplies and equipment are cheaper.

"With 80 per cent of our inputs imported, there is a huge opportunity to incentivise local manufacturing in healthcare. It's the only, way even with the national health insurance that we can keep costs down," Ms Kiwanuka said.

She also reiterated their earlier demand that a medical credit facility, similar to agricultural credit facility be established so that health facilities can access cheaper loans.

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Ms Kiwanuka said the current arrangements under Uganda Development Bank has failed the private health facilities.

"We need to establish the Medical Credit Scheme so that private sector has an opportunity to actualise this. Without affordable financing tailored to health the way the Agricultural Credit Facility is tailored to agriculture we will not get the momentum we need to turn this sector around," she said.

She said while both the ruling NRM party manifesto and the Ministry of Health have prioritised the health of Ugandans, it has remained on the paper.

"The biggest joke is that this was in the last NRM manifesto. It's also in the last health sector development plan. Will they do it now.

"They keep saying go to UDB (Uganda Development Bank), yes they are at 12 per cent interest but the mechanism does not understand private health sector. They are for collateral terms that are not reflective of private sector, like asking for a land title. How many private facilities own the building they are in?" Ms Kiwanuka wondered.

She said the Movable Property Act 2019 provides for use of medical assets as collateral, but UDB has refused to recognise that and they still demand for land titles and yet many of the private health facilities operate in rented spaces.

Ms Kiwanuka said many health facilities need smaller amounts of loans, but UDB sets its minimum amount at Shs100 million, which many of the facilities cannot afford.

Officials from private health facilities and Ministry of Health recently agreed to reduce the costs, but only on conditions that government also commit to waiving taxes on medical supplies and other inputs.
By Paul Ssekandi

A number of businesses between Ugandan and Tanzanian residents at the Mutukula border point have since resumed and are operating normally between Ugandan and Tanzanian residents, despite the ongoing lockdown to stem the spread of Covid-19, Daily Monitor has learnt.

The businesses operating at the porous borders include food trade and the bars where the residents converge for their leisure time.

Over the weekend, the Parliamentary task force on Covid-19 inspected the border and health facilities in the area, and raised several concerns about the crisscrossing between Ugandans and Tanzanians yet the latter are hardly observing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) as is the case with Uganda.

Dr Emmanuel Ssekyeru, the Kalisizo Hospital Medical Superintendent, explained to the legislators that the rate of community infections in Kyotera District is so alarming whereas no clear follow up is made on the positive cases.

He noted that at least 1,526 people had tested positive out of 7606 tests that have been carried out in the past two months. 25 health workers have tested positive whereas 18 of the positive cases have died in the whole district.

Mr Brian Musa, a Tanzanian who operates his business at the border, said they have not experienced any severe illnesses or deaths related to the pandemic.

"In Tanzania, we are not scared of anything. As you see I'm not putting on a mask and ever since covid-19 rumours started in Uganda, we have not had any related illnesses in our area", he said.

He added that the deaths and severe cases are only heard of through media.

While addressing the Mutukula border administration and a few health workers at the border, the Kimanya-Kabonera County MP in Masaka City, Dr Abed Bwanika, said that their the Parliamentary task force is to oversee what the Central government is doing, advise it on what to do as they examine the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the citizens.

"We have therefore noticed a gap in treating our people which calls for putting up a covid-19 treatment center at this border district because it attracts quite a big number of people including foreigners who access the country through the porous borders of Mutukula," he explained.

Dr Ssekyeru said various challenges have hindered the work of the health workers in handling covid-19 cases, which may even end up giving room to other diseases hence unnecessary deaths among the community.

"We currently have challenges of inadequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and complaints of no risk allowances for the health workers. Once our health team is motivated, we expect a change in treatment of covid-19 cases," he said.

Dr Edward Muwanga, the Kyotera District Health Officer, appealed to the legislators to lobby for an upgrade of Kalisizo Hospital to a referral hospital because patients have oftentimes rejected the referrals made by health workers to Masaka Regional Referral Hospital due to the charges of fuel for the ambulance.

A minimum amount of Shs 100,000 is required to fuel an ambulance from any part of Kyotera District to Masaka referral hospital according to Dr Muwanga.

At Masaka referral hospital, the legislators tasked the hospital administration to monitor district hospitals and Health Centre IVs to ensure that the best service is offered to Ugandans.

Mr Charles Tebandeke, the Bbaale county MP, tasked the Ministry of Health to put to order private companies carrying out tests at the Mutukula border point, saying that this is a risky venture as companies would aim at making profits and mind less about the lives of Ugandans.

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The case was not any different from other districts of Kalungu and Lyantonde which another section of Parliamentarians toured.

In Lyantonde District, Ms Pauline Kemirembe, the District Woman MP who is also a member of the the task force, called on the government to equip Lyantonde Hospital with enough PPE and also avail risk allowances to the health workers so that the health standards of the citizens are uplifted.

Dr Bwanika said that they are going to task the two ministries of Health and that of Finance to make sure they prioritize border districts as they send more funds to them due to their poor conditions.

"What we have seen in Kyotera needs an urgent reaction. Kakuuto and Kalisizo health facilities are so dilapidated yet they are in a border district. It's not that we don't have money, it is just about the poor allocation of resources," he said.
Security and town clerks have started verifying a total of 170,000 Covid-19 cash beneficiaries after the system being used at the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development rejected their details.

The ICT and National Guidance Minister, Dr Chris Baryomunsi, yesterday told Daily Monitor that all the intended beneficiaries had received their cash, except the 170,000.

"Registration of the Covid cash beneficiaries ended and those who were cleared to receive the money have been paid," Dr Baryomunsi said.

Some were rejected because their telephone numbers do not match with the NINs on their National Identity cards, while others are not registered on mobile money.

Government planned to give out Shs100,000 to each of the 501,107 vulnerable people in 42 cities and municipalities .

The categories include taxi and bus drivers and conductors, boda boda cyclists, salon workers, bar attendants among others.

Post Bank has been used to send the money to MTN and Airtel to the beneficiaries after getting clearance from the Ministry of Gender.

Mr George William Kiyinji, the grants manager at Post Bank, told Daily Monitor that as of Saturday, they had paid more than 300,000 people.

"We have been paying beneficiaries for the last two weeks through Friday and Saturday night and we have met over 300,000 mark," Mr Kiyingi said.

Government had initially said LC1s were going to register beneficiaries, but made a u-turn and asked town clerks to collect the data with the help of National Identification and Registration Authority and Uganda Bureau of Statistics. This caused confusion, especially in Kampala City, where some residents protested the lists.

President Museveni on June 18 instituted a second lockdown following the surge in Covid cases across the country.
The Fletcher School has announced the appointment of International Human Rights law expert, Chidi Anselm Odinkalu, PhD, to a Professor of Practice Faculty position.

The School, in a statement, said Chidi Odinkalu's position is for a three-year term beginning in the Fall of 2021.

He will join Fletcher's multi-disciplinary Faculty focused on preparing tomorrow's leaders to use the latest legal, political, economic, and business thinking to generate policies and inform decisions that shape global events.

"Chidi Odinkalu is a renowned human rights activist with a distinguished record of public service, who has spent more than three decades working at the front line of human rights law and research, development advocacy, international institutional law and governmental policy", remarked Kelly Sims Gallagher, Academic Dean at The Fletcher School.

"His profound contributions to the advancement of human rights, intersect with Fletcher's mission and core values", she added. "We are delighted to welcome him to the Fletcher community."

Odinkalu's background reflects an extensive record of research, publishing and teaching in the areas of human rights, development law and public policy throughout Africa, Europe and the US. Most recently, he was part of a three-member team that mediated the readmission of The Gambia into the Commonwealth, where he litigated human rights before national and regional courts, as well as in transnational contexts.

From 2011 to 2015, he chaired Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission, the country's lead institution for the protection of human rights, and promotion of human rights policy. He also worked within human rights philanthropy.

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For 10 years prior, he was involved in drafting the Protocol for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights through to adoption by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1998. In 2004, he led the advocacy effort for its entry into force, with the creation of the Coalition for the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.

For more than three years, until 1993, Odinkalu was head of legal services for the Civil Liberties Organisation in Lagos, where he was responsible for litigation, advocacy and constituent building strategies, as well as managing relationships with the military Government and its institutions.

"I am honoured to join the Fletcher Community, and look forward to working with Fletcher's students, Faculty and administration, to apply intellectual and strategic innovation to the most pressing challenges in governance and international human rights law", said Odinkalu.

He was born into internal displacement during Nigeria's civil war. He received his PhD in Law from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi have stressed the importance of developing cooperation between the two countries to carry out mega national projects in Egypt.

During a session of talks, the two ministers pressed for promoting economic cooperation, focusing on means of reinforcing commercial relations and increasing Egypt's exports to China.

They also signed an agreement to form a joint government cooperation committee, which will help orient, evaluate and review the course of cooperation between the two countries in various fields.

Meanwhile, Shoukry thanked China for providing support for Egypt to curb the spread of coronavirus, citing an ongoing project for the production of Sinovac vaccines in Egypt.

He further expressed Egypt's desire to continue this fruitful cooperation in order to help Africa face the economic and health repercussions of this pathogen.

Speaking about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Shoukry stressed the need for preserving the water interests of all parties, warning of any attempt to harm the water security of the downstream countries, i.e. Egypt and Sudan.

He also called on Ethiopia to engage in AU-sponsored negotiations to reach a binding legal agreement to fill and operate the dam that takes into account the interests of all parties.

The two top diplomats also called for reaching a just and lasting solution for the Palestinian cause as the central issue in the Middle East region in line with international resolutions.
Troops of Operation Hadin Kai have eliminated three Boko Haram terrorists and arrested scores of their fighters, informants and logistics suppliers in recent encounters in the North East theatre of operation.

The Director, Army Public Relations, Brig.-Gen. Onyema Nwachukwu, disclosed this in a statement on Monday in Abuja.

Nwachukwu said the troops of 151 Task Force Battalion eliminated the terrorists in an ambush operation on their crossing point along Banki Junction - Miyanti road, while others escaped with gunshot wounds.

He also disclosed that troops had on July 15, arrested some suspected terrorists who surrendered to troops along with their families, while fleeing their enclaves, following continuous bombardment of their hideouts by troops of the Battalion.

According to him, the escaping terrorists and their families were arrested at the outskirts of Aza and Bula Daloye villages in Bama local Government area of Borno by troops of the Battalion on fighting patrol at Miyanti and Darajamel.

"The arrested suspects comprised of eleven adult male terrorists, five adult females and twelve children.

"The troops also recovered 27 rounds of 7.62 mm (Special) ammunition, three AK 47 rifle magazines and a black fragmental Jacket from the suspects. They are currently undergoing preliminary investigations," he said.

The Army spokesperson further disclosed that troops of 7 Division Garrison in conjunction with Civilian Joint Task Force have on July 17, tracked and arrested Boko Haram informants and logistics suppliers at Lawanti and Gongolun Communities of Jere Local Government area of Borno.

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He said the suspects had confessed to have been working as informants for the terrorists, whom they provide with information on troops' movements, locations, deployments, strength, calibre of weapons and other activities.

According to him, they also admitted to have supplied the terrorists with basic logistics for their daily survival, ranging from Petroleum Oil and Lubricant (POL), drugs, mosquito nets, kolanuts, recharge cards and food stuff.

He added that the suspects also disclosed that they were remunerated by the terrorists with proceeds made from selling dismantled old motorcycle parts to dealers in order to fund their purchases.

"The Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Faruk Yahaya, has commended the troops for being proactive in the ongoing clearance operations.

"He charged them to maintain the tempo and ensure the terrorists are smoked out of their enclaves," he said.

Vanguard News Nigeria
The Director General - Conference of APC Support Groups and Aspiring Member of the All Progressive Congress, APC National working committee, Obidike Chukwuebuka has urged leaders to imbibe the lessons of Abraham's sacrifice to Allah by shunning corrupt practices, selfishness and evil desires and toe the path of righteousness.

Obidike disclosed this statement to Pressmen at the presidential villa, Abuja while congratulating Muslim faithful on their Sallah celebration.

He said, "On behalf of my family, over fifteen (15) million Nigerians who are members of the All Progressive Congress, APC Support Groups under the Conference of APC Support Groups. We congratulate the entire Muslim Community in Nigeria for the Eid El-Adha celebration.

"Let us continue to demonstrate love, selflessness, forgiveness, to promote peace in our daily activities as enshrined in the holy Quran and to be of service to those who are suffering and displaced. Nigeria is a blessed country and as such Nigerians must live in peace and harmony, regardless of religious, political and ethnic differences.

"It is necessary to remind ourselves of the lessons of Eidul Adha celebration in the tradition of Abraham's complete submission to God and his readiness to sacrifice everything for Allah's Pleasure.

"Today most human beings are not prepared to do the right thing or say the truth because of our love for materialism or worldly gains. At home, in the market place, in the offices, at schools, at workshops, and even at places of worship, most of us are dishonest, fraudulent, inconsiderate, and very selfish in our love for wealth and worldly pleasure. We cannot do away with our reckless immorality and corruption talk less of sacrificing our dearest things for the Pleasure of Allah and submission to

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His will. Yet we all claim to believe in the legacy of Abraham. We should realize the promise of God to Abraham covers only the faithful and not the unjust or wrong doers.

Obidike further urged Nigerian leaders to urgently take bold steps towards banishing hunger from Nigeria.

"It is unpardonable for prices of food to be rising while many are jobless and those who have jobs are being owed salaries or are having their salaries static or reduced. In the management of the economy, all tiers of government and all hands must be on deck to ensure that the poor do not get poorer or the situation of food and nutrition does not get worse for every citizen.

And this is quite achievable with appropriate policies and determination irrespective of whatever happens to the fortunes of the economy. This is the least the rulers owed to the people." Obidike concluded.
The Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, MICS, for 2016 to 2017 showed that Sokoto State has made appreciable progress, resulting in over 50 per cent cut in the number of out-of-school children. It gladdens my heart, seeing the commitment shown by the political leadership and the technical teams set up by the government to work with UNICEF and partners in various sectors for the children of the state.

THESE were the exact words of Mohammed Muhuiddin, a former UNICEF Field Office lead in Sokoto State in 2018, two years after Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal took office as governor of Sokoto State.

Muhuiddin was talking then of the massive turn around in the number of out-of-school children in the state, said to be the worst in the country before Governor Tambuwal assumed office in 2015. The difficult but now successful turn-around story of the state started with a vow by Tambuwal to return the state to its enviable height as a centre of learning in the north and across the entire Sahara deserts, in the first two months of his first tenure as governor.

Shocked that the state, before the recent era which was famous as a centre of learning during the pre-colonial and post-colonial eras had slipped to the back bench of education in the country, Tambuwal declared a state of emergency in the education sector. With the declaration, other consequential decisions and actions followed. A major first step was to increase the budgetary allocation to education.

In 2016 Governor Tambuwal recommended N29.9 billion for enactment in the Appropriation bill as allocation to education, the highest ever in the state and for that year in the entire country. The allocation represented 29 percent of the entire budget for the year, surpassing the UNESCO benchmark for budgetary allocation to education by federal and state governments. The decision earned the governor a year later the UNESCO award for keeping steady allocation to education beyond 29 per cent.

In 2017 the allocation increased to N38.4 billion again the highest allocation to education by any state in the country. In 2018 the figure got higher with an allocation of N57.4 billion. The gains of the streak of massive allocations to education have been instant and sector changing. Direct beneficiaries are the teeming population of out-of-school children roaming streets in the state. In one fell swoop in 2016, the state reduced the number by 72,000 children. In 2017 Governor Tambuwal personally led a campaign to get more children into schools in a state wide campaign.

According to the then commissioner of finance, Saidu Umar, "our objective is to improve enrolment at all stages - basic, secondary and tertiary education. By the end of this programme, we will ensure that our quotas in all federal schools are filled."

Conversely, before Tambuwal become governor of Sokoto, one out of every two children was out of school in the state. The figure was even higher for the girl child. Following the state wide enrolment campaign the figure rose to six in every ten children in the state being enrolled in a school, and for the girl child it became four in every 10 girls.

Ever since, the administration has built annually on the gains of the campaign with an incremental rate of 7.3 per cent in pre-primary and primary school children of which 4.4 per cent are girls. A state agency for girl child education was set up to drive the campaign to get more girls into schools. To keep the children in schools up to completion of each stage of education, the state government has been providing stipends to poor families to support enrolment and caring for their children, especially girls in schools. Since 2015 nearly N1.5 billion has been spent on feeding of pupils and students in primary and junior secondary schools.

The positive outcomes have been staggering. By 2019 only about 30 per cent of children in the state are still out-of-school. But the commissioner for education, Prof. Aisha Madawaki, says "I am confident that by the end of 2020 the figure will be under 10 per cent"

To ensure that the state never reclines to its poor era in education especially basic education, Governor Tambuwal initiated the Right to Education Bill in 2016. The high point of the bill was its recognition and protection of the right to education of children between six and 18 years in the state. The bill makes education free up to secondary level for all children of the state.

When the bill was passed a year later, it made Sokoto the first state in the country to legally make education a fundamental human right of all children thus adding a legal fillip to the state of emergency declared earlier. It was, therefore, a joyous Governor Tambuwal who welcomed the passage of the education bill with two declarations "this is a key intervention in our effort to expand access to education in our dear state.

The decision to pass this law has given us the necessary legal framework to push forward our policy of the state of emergency we declared in the sector over a year ago" and "As the first state in Nigeria to make education justiciable right, we hope to implement the provisions of the law to the latter."

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And push forward he has in all sectors of education. According to him, "basic education is fundamental and foundational, if you don't get it right, whatever else you do is building on a wrong foundation, which is dangerous and prone to failure". Some select achievements in basic education in the state include:

Establishment of Female Education Board to Boost Girl Child Education in the State

Supply of Textbooks to Basic and Post Basic Schools across the State with N189.2 million

Establishment of Junior Secondary School, Awulkiti, Gudu Local Government with N58.5 million

Reducing by nearly 76 per cent the number of out-of-school children in the state

Provision of Furniture to Basic and Secondary Schools in the State (2019) - N1.9 billion

E-Learning Programme for Primary and Secondary School Pupils during COVID-19 Lockdown

For close watchers of the massive leap forward of Sokoto in basic education since Tambuwal assumed office in 2015 as governor, it has never been better ever.

Okolo, an Abuja based journalist based, wrote via [email protected]
Dar es Salaam  The ongoing infrastructure development and other human activities in Africa, East Africa in particular, is one of the leading factors that contribute to extinction of the wildlife or hinder them to migrate.

Some animals and birds that are at great risk due to ongoing developments include flamingos, cranes, storks, vultures, wildebeests and Zebras. WildlifeDirect chief executive officer Paula Kahumbu said landscape, corridors and open space areas are important for survival of wildlife animals. The migratory birds and animals move to search for food, water, a better environment and for reproduction, but serious threats from infrastructure development, fencing and other related activities hinder animals from crossing. She made the remarks yesterday at the virtual meeting between Internews Earth Journalism Network and WildlifeDirect that over 255 species of birds that fly through Africa, 40 percent of those species, are at risk of extinction.

The government has been talking about securing the land, creating corridors but at the same time talking about fencing national parks. "You are on one hand talking about constructing flyovers, ways animals to pass and on the other building bigger roads and barriers in the middle of roads, which leave the animals struggling to cross," she said.

Ms Kahumbu stressed that wildebeest migration from Nairobi National Park to Africa Pit has declined by 98 per cent they are literally about 400 wildebeest left in Nairobi Park Equal area and on the other side they are maybe about 2000 left, "so these are the very serious threats that we fail to see... What we fail to see when we look on big animal is what happening to the smaller animals."

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Kenya is planning to construct two new dams in Masai Mara River, this the issue that needs to be addressed now we cannot afford to lose wildebeest migration. Kenya was up in arms about Tanzania building a highway across Serengeti which will interrupt the movement of animals which is true but we are not addressing why wildebeest come. As Africans we need to take responsibility to find out the science of some issues related to the obstruction of agriculture.

Kenya Wildlife Conservation Association (KWCA) chief executive officer Mr Dickson Kaela said there is a need to come up with strategies of maintaining open space to allow the migration of animals. Migration is not a luxury, it is essential for long term survival of wildlife.

"Migratory of wildlife is very important to African countries including Kenya. If the animals will not move, countries will spend a lot of money for the ecosystem," he said.
The chairman of the Basse Area Council (BAC), Foday Danjo, has cleared the air on rumours circulating over canteen allocation at Basse's newly constructed market and transfer of the council's Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

Chairman Danjo made this clarification on the 5th July, 20121, in an exclusive interview with this medium.

"We have not allocated any canteen to anyone yet. Instead, we just started the process by tendering for interesting applicants to apply before the market is handed over to us. However, when considering these applications, much privilege would be given to the inferno victims first then to others. This is what was agreed during our general council meeting" he said.

"After opening applications, somebody informed the minister about this and he called and asked me that he heard that we are allocating canteens to people. I told him no, we are not allocating any canteens to anybody, instead we have just started the process by inviting applications so that immediately, after handing over of the market to us as council, the allocation of canteens can be done. However, the minister still insisted that we should stop everything, but I could not agree with him. I then told him that I am only mandated by the general council to do so and it is only the general council that can ask me to stop the process we have started."

Danjo further said the minister then informed the permanent secretary about his argument. The permanent secretary also called him about the issue and asked him to stop the whole process, he added. He said he told the PS the same thing, that he has no right to stop them on what they are doing.

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"This market is under the Basse Area Council not for anybody or under any institution. The construction of this new market was funded by budget from the supplementary bill which was supported by all national assembly members and also during the laying of the foundation stone GAMWORKS said they cannot hand over the contract to the contractor unless the Basse Area Council chairman hands over Basse Market to them. All these made it clear that the market is fully under council," he said.

He disclosed that the newly constructed market has a lesser number of canteens compared to the previous market that was burned. He said the new market comprises 185 canteens while the previous market had 285 canteens.

On the issue of the transfer of the CEO of BAC, chairman Danjo said they never received any official information about that matter, but said rumour has it their CEO will be transferred.

"Officially, we are yet to be informed but rumours have it our CEO will be transferred due to political reasons. Because the CEO is supporting my agenda, then he will be transferred according to the rumours. But we do not have any evidence about it. As far as I am concerned, there is no agenda other than serving the tax payers and I think that is in line with the National Development Plan (NDP)... " he said.

He added that only the Local Government Service Commission has the power to move or officially transfer their CEO and that the service commission had in the past transferred some CEOs.
Dar es Salaam  The government may make a u-turn on its newly-introduced mobile money levy after the public unanimously rebuffed the move on the ground that it was defeating Tanzania's financial inclusivity goal.

Finance and Planning minister Dr Mwigulu Nchemba said on Monday that President Samia Suluhu Hassan has heard people's complaints against the new mobile money levy and that she (the President) had instructed the Ministry to work on the matter.

In an effort to raise its revenue collections by Sh1.254 trillion to partly finance the Sh36.68 trillion budget for the 2021/22 financial year, the government last month amended the Electronic and Postal Communication Act (CAP 306) by imposing a levy on all mobile money transactions, depending on the amount sent and withdrawn.

A calculation of the charges indicate that sending Sh1 million to someone and having the money withdrawn will cost a total of Sh31,000 if all the current and new charges are added up.

The levy, which became effective on July 15, has since been roundly criticised as people believe the amount being deducted was just too high for Tanzanians to carry.

Some have gone to the point of promoting other transaction mechanisms, including through banks and hard cash to dodge the colossal deductions.
Dar es Salaam  Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa has called upon the Bank of Africa (BoA) to continue with the expansion of its scope of services in Tanzania by putting a special focus on education, agriculture, livestock and minerals.

A statement - a copy of which was availed to The Citizen in Dar es Salaam yesterday - says Mr Majaliwa said this during his recent visit to Rabat, Morocco, where he, among other things, met with the bank's President, Mr Othman Benjelloun. According to the statement, Mr Majaliwa told Mr Benjelloun that through expanding its services into the four areas, the bank will be able to reach many Tanzanians.

He said Tanzanians were already benefitting from the bank's presence in the country, and promised that the government would prepare a mechanism that would bring together the bank's leadership and the private sector in Tanzania to see how they can work together in serving Tanzanians. In response, Mr Benjelloun said the bank's goal is to grow its investment in Tanzania. "We are ready to invest in areas where Tanzanian leaders will advise us, aiming to contribute to building the economy," he said.

The minister for Agriculture, Prof Adolf Mkenda, said the bank should help promote Tanzania-Morocco relations in the agricultural sector - especially in crops such as rice, tobacco and coffee.

The Zanzibar minister for Tourism and Antiquities, Ms Leila Muhamed Mussa, said there were some coastal areas that have not been exploited, but which have massive business opportunities. Together with the bank's participation in various development projects, the bank has shown its determination to support Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in providing tailor-made products and services.
Arusha  Businesses here have been urged to pay taxes voluntarily as required by law.

They need not worry about harassment by Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) officials, as was the case in the past.

"The era of harassments is over," said Walter Maeda, the newly re-elected chair of the regional chapter of the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (TCCIA).

He said unlike until very recently, TRA and the business community have harmonized their relations on matters pertaining to payment of tax.

Mr Maeda, who is the director of Golden Rose Hotels, gave the assurances on Friday after he was re-elected chairman of the chamber for another four years. He said physical harassments, including closure of shops, subjected to businessmen in the past are not likely to recur.

"If you are going to close businesses where are you going to get tax?" he asked, recalling the days when TRA task forces raided shops here in search of tax revenues. He, however, cautioned the business community that improved relations with TRA was no excuse not to honour tax payment as per law.

Mr Maeda was first elected as TCCIA regional chairman in 2017 and has steered the organization during the stormy times of fracas between traders and TRA. His remarks came days after the TRA Commissioner General Alphayo Kidata conducted a series of dialogue meetings with taxpayers in Arusha.

He told businessmen and women on how TRA has improved voluntary payment of government revenues without any squabbles like in the recent past. According to Mr Kidata, one of the measures being taken is to repair the electronic fiscal devices (EFDs) used by the clients.

But, speaking at the meeting held at the Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC), the Arusha regional commissioner, John Mongela, said there were still tax evading traders.

He said tax collectors could still be deployed to look for such evaders because they denied the government badly needed revenues to finance development projects.

Such defaulters, he said, include people selling fake or counterfeits goods in the local markets, adding that some EFDs were better disposed off as they were not working.

Arusha, the safari capital of Tanzania and hub of multi-million dollar tourism industry, contributes 5.2 percent of the total public revenues after Dar es Salaam and Mwanza.
"After our class teacher taught us about the importance of immunization of cervical cancer, I decided to voluntarily vaccinate in order to prevent myself from the deadly disease. The teacher taught us that girls who receive the vaccine at the required early age reduce their risks of suffering from cervical cancer in future."

Those were the words of Shukurani Mbwile, (14), a form four student at Vwawa Secondary School in Songwe region.

Explaining her experience, Mbwile says that after injecting against cervical cancer, she feels different from other girls who are yet to be vaccinated and adds that she feels safe and different from those who are not immunized because the fear of suffering from cervical cancer is reduced.

"The only thing I say at the moment is to encourage young girls to see the importance of this vaccine. Parents should also cooperate with teachers and health service providers to help increase the number of vaccinations," she says.

However, Anna Kibona, (16), narrates a different scenario of how her mother encouraged her to get the vaccine. According to Anna, her mother explained to her just how big the magnitude of the cervical cancer problem was in the country.

Reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) show that Tanzania has one of the highest cervical cancer burdens in the Eastern Africa region, with an age-standardized incidence rate (ASR) of 59.1 cases per 100,000 women, and an age-standardized mortality rate of 42.7deaths per 100,000 women.

Following this, a one year HPV+ project which includes provision of integrated health services such as sexual reproductive health, eye testing and nutrition education to the girls is implemented by Jhpiego in collaboration with the government through the President's Office, Regional Administration and Local Government (PO-RALG) and Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elders and Children and with funding from UNICEF Tanzania has been introduced.

The HPV+ project aims to strengthen service provision in 200 health facilities across Mbeya and Songwe Regions also includes menstrual hygiene management.

The District Immunization and Vaccination Officer at Songwe hospital, Mr Miraji Kanyonje told Your Health that although some parents have been reluctant to allow their children to be vaccinated, the exercise has been well received by the majority of the population.

"The target is to reach 7,762 primary and secondary school girls this year. We have so far provided the first dose to 2,816 girls (108 percent) and a second dose to 1,912 girls between January and April, 2021. We provide the vaccine to at least 647 girls each month," he said.

In explanation, he says that in order to reach the targeted number, the vaccination campaign will still go on to save a number of girls as cervical cancer kills.

"We could not administer the vaccine to seven girls at Ilolo Secondary School because their parents were not willing. We will continue educating them on the importance of protecting their children from cervical cancer because it is the most common cancer among women," he added.

Immunization and vaccination officer at Faraja dispensary in Tunduma Mr Lunyili Vincent says they have come up with a strategy to involve local government leaders at village and ward levels to help in identifying targeted girls including those out of school as well as those living with HIV/AIDS.

He says they came up with collaborative effort with villagers and local leaders because it was difficult to vaccinate and identify out-of-school girls and girls with HIV/AIDS unlike with school going girls.

According to him, the initiative has helped them to vaccinate four girls living with HIV/Aids. "They were tracked down through our Care and Treatment Clinics (CTC). We track and vaccinate girls living with HIV/AIDS because they are the most vulnerable to cervical cancer," explained Vincent.

He said that HIV infected girls receive three doses of HPV because their body's immunity is low. In Tunduma town, the target is to reach 1,896 girls this year whereas a total of 1,400 school girls have been provided with the first dose

Faraja dispensary immunization and vaccination supervisor in Tunduma, Ms Mary Nyengo said during her outreach services, she visits and provides education to secondary school students four times a year while primary schools are visited two times every year.

Nyengo said that between January and May this year, the centre provided the first dose of HPV to 306 girls (90 percent) and 227 girls for the second; attributing the decrease in numbers of girls going for second dose to various factors including completion of their primary school education, thus it became difficult to trace them.

The centre was trying its best to ensure girls who received first HPV dose get the second dose too, because failure to do so means that they are unable to have complete protection against cervical cancer.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends the use of the HPV vaccine as the most cost-effective public health measure against cervical cancer, as part of a comprehensive cervical cancer control strategy.

Globally, the East African region is the leading burden carrier of cervical cancer. Tanzania is amongst the five countries with the highest rates in Africa.

The district immunization and vaccination officer in Chunya Mr Moses Katamba said target population for first and second HPV is to vaccinate 1,796.

According to him, out of the said number already, a total of 1,450 girls have received the first doze vaccination and they plan to provide a second by August this year.

In Chunya, the approach for health practitioners is different from Songwe and Mbeya because they have set cervical cancer as an agenda by speaking to pastoralists, elders and households frequently to build capacity in order to help them track girls who are out of school so that they could be vaccinated.

Health teacher at Chalangwa Primary School in Chunya region, Ms Nuru Mwatujobe says due to cultural beliefs and norms parents were still finding it difficult to allow their children to be vaccinated.

After discovering such challenges, the school introduced a health club for both girls and boys to teach them different health issues. This has proved to be working, response is so far overwhelming and a larger number of girls are aware of the vaccine.

Mwajutobe says from January-Feb this year the school had so far vaccinated 12 children and this was a good sign for school.

"With the support from Jhpiego through this project, we are confident that we will increase community demand for adolescent friendly services and provide cervical cancer immunization to all target groups and also build capacity for the parents," says Mwajutobe.

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According to reports, cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women and the leading cause of cancer related morbidity and mortality in women in Tanzania.

Last year, presenting the immunization status for Mbeya, the Regional Immunization Officer Mr. Danford Barnaba said the region attained only 77 per cent of the immunization coverage to girls aged 14 years on the second dose of HPV from the January to October 2020 results.

He said the region faced a number of challenges including the presence of nomadic pastoralist populations in Mbarali and Chunya who normally move, which presents a challenge when trying to reach them.

Other challenges include limited involvement of teachers in school health services, cancellation of outreach services by almost 21 per cent, distance issues and Low immunization coverage of the second doze of HPV vaccine to some councils.

In 2018,Tanzania with the support from WHO and partners became one of the first countries in all of Africa to roll out the HPV vaccine nationwide following only Rwanda, Uganda, Botswana, Mauritius, Seychelles and South Africa.

Globally, cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women with an estimated 570,000 new cases and 311,000 deaths in 2018.

According to the WHO, lack of urgent effort to scale-up cervical cancer prevention services will contribute to increasing the number of deaths to 460,000 deaths by 2040, which is nearly 50 percent over the 2018 levels and nearly 90 percent of these deaths will be in low and middle-income countries.
The members of the Defence Policy Drafting Committee have last week presented their final draft report of the Gambia National Defence Policy to the Minister of Defence.

The report came after a month-long consultation and deliberations by the stakeholders during the drafting process of the first ever defence policy of the country.

Sheriff Gomez, Chairman of the Drafting Committee, during the presentation ceremony highlighted some critical and crucial components that are featured in the policy report.

Chairman Gomez stressed that the policy is apt and timely.

After the Presentation of the final draft, the Ministry of Defence is expected to critically analyze the document and make consideration for subsequent validation.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Defence, Sheikh Omar Faye, in a separate development received in audience the European Union Ambassador to The Gambia, Corrado Pampaloni, atRank ( + / - ) his office in State House, Banjul.

The visit aimed to enhance and strengthen partnership and assess possible areas of cooperation between the two states.

Speaking on the occasion, Mrs. Ndey Marie Njie Badgie, Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Defence, acknowledged the long-term relationship with the European Union as well as recognized the immense support of the union to the Ministry of Defence in the security sector reform process.

The European Union (EU) Ambassador to the Gambia, Corrado Pampaloni, assured the union's continuous support and partnership with the aforesaid ministry.

Part of the agenda of the courtesy call, he said, was to gain more knowledge on the progress and achievements of the security sector reform process and explore areas of cooperation.

Minister Faye thanked the EU for the unflinching support they continuously render in the areas of defence and security. He further highlighted various challenges and areas that need the crucial interventions and collaboration between Gambia and EU to address those challenges.
High court judge, Justice Ebrima Jaiteh has increased the sentence imposed on one Dodou Camara, who was convicted of vehicle theft by a trial magistrate in Kanifing.

Magistrate Sainey Joof sentenced Camara to 2 year jail term on the 17th October 2019, but Justice Jaiteh, who presided over the appeal case, increased his sentence to a 10 year jail term.

Delivering his judgment on the 12th July 2021 in a crowded court, Justice Jaiteh said the appeal was against the decision of the trial court in Kanifing. Camara was dissatisfied with the sentence contending that the 2-year mandatory jail term was excessive.

Camara submitted that the stolen vehicle was recovered and returned to the complainant -owner, adding he was a first-time offender. He urged the court to temper justice with mercy and reduced the sentence imposed on him to the time he already served in prison custody.

Counsel for the State, Naffisatou Bangura did not object to the plea of leniency as she left the matter in the hands of the court to decided.

On whether the sentence imposed on him was excessive, Justice Jaiteh said section 255A of the Criminal Code provides "if thing stolen is a vehicle, the offender is liable to imprisonment for a term of ten years."

He said what this provision of the penal code provides is that when an accused is convicted of stealing a vehicle, he or she could be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. In the instance case, Dodou Camara was sentenced to 2 years jail term by the trial magistrate.

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"In my view, the appellant was sentenced according to law and therefore, not excessive," Justice Jaiteh said.

He added: "In my humble view, I have not seen any illegality in the sentence of the Appellant [Dodou Camara] by the lower court [Kanifing Magistrate's Court] and I do not believe the sentence was wrong in law."

He held that Camara was properly sentenced in line with the law. However, he said the modern trend in the administration of criminal justice system requires that the court gives the offender [convict] the punishment, which is proportionate to the offence. The Judge said the offence upon which Camara was convicted was a serious one, adding he was reckless and callous in the commission of the offence.

"I must state that stealing is a cancer worm that is eating very deeply in the fabric of the daily life of The Gambia and it has the potential to weaken the economic base of the State and must be discouraged totally," the Judge stated.

He said he observed the demeanour of Mr Camara in the dock who he said is repentant and has learnt his lesson in the incident.

"I hereby invoke the inherent powers of this honourable court and increase the sentence of the Appellant from 2 to 10 years and the unspent 8 years is hereby suspended," the Judge said.

He warned that if Camara commits any offence known to law within the period of the unspent 8 years, he should be arrested and committed to prison custody and he would serve the suspended 8 years forthwith.

He ordered for Camara to be discharged forthwith from prison custody at Mile Two Central Prisons.
The Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC) has recommended for the Gambia Government to pay thirty-two million dalasi (D32 million) to the West African Migrants, who were murdered in the Gambia during the regime of former President Yahya Jammeh.

The Truth Commission made this recommendation on 16 July 2021 at its headquarters, Dunes Resort.

The Deputy Chairperson of the Truth Commission, Mrs. Adelaide Sosseh said those who lost their lives as established by the commission cannot restore their lives, but need justice.

She said the commission has come up with a reparation policy and guidelines that will guide the whole reparation process.

"In 2019, the government of the Gambia gives us fifty million dalasi and promised to give us another fifty million dalasi. Part of the money that was given to us was used to facilitate medical support and other support to victims who urgently need support at the time," she said.

TRRC Vice Chairperson said about one thousand victims were identified by the Truth Commission and out of the one thousand victims, seven hundred and fifty-eight should receive fifty thousand dalasi and above, and two hundred and forty-two victims should receive below fifty thousand dalasi.

"The Gambia Government should pay thirty-two million dalasi to the West African migrants who were killed in the Gambia at the time in question," she said.

Madam Sosseh said the victims will be compensated based on their level of victimization, adding six hundred thousand dalasi will be given to the families of the victims who were murdered at the time.

Sosseh said the total money estimated to compensate victims is two hundred and five million, eight hundred and twenty thousand, seven hundred and eighty dalasi (D205, 820, 780). She indicated that all victim-perpetrators will not be compensated.

Dr. Lamin J. Sise, TRRC Chairperson, said on 30th July 2021, his-led commission will present the commission's report to the President of the Republic of the Gambia.

"During our public hearings, three hundred and ninety-two witnesses, the majority of whom were victims of atrocities meted out to innocent civilians by the State, its agents or individuals sponsored by both. The witnesses appearing before the Commission also included self-confessed perpetrators," he said.

Sise said with the money available, they will not be able to pay all the victims, but their (victims') payment will continue after the commission submits their report.

The National Assembly enacted a law in 2017 called TRRC Act, 2017 which established the Commission. The commission was set up to deal with human rights violations of the former regime of President Jammeh, who ruled the Gambia for the past 22 years.

The main objectives of the Commission are, inter alia, to create an impartial historical record of violations and abuses of human rights from July 1994 to January 2017, in order to promote healing and reconciliation, respond to the needs of the victims, address impunity, and prevent a repeat of the violations and abuses suffered by making recommendations for the establishment of appropriate preventive mechanisms, including institutional and legal reforms.

The objectives also include establishing and making known the fate or whereabouts of disappeared victims; provide victims an opportunity to relate their own accounts of the violations and abuses suffered; and grant reparations to victims in appropriate cases.

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TRRC revealed that during the 871 days, 392 witnesses testified, saying the testimonies heard during the 871 days of public hearings brought pain and bewilderment to the population. They said they could not believe that the atrocities they were hearing from witnesses could occur in their country.

"The commission of these atrocities by Jammeh and his cohorts achieved the desired effect of instilling fear among the Gambian population. It also gave them time and space to pillage the resources of the country. Among the kinds of atrocities and other human rights violations detailed by witnesses during the public hearings are the following: arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, unlawful killings, torture, enforced disappearances, sexual and gender-based violence, inhuman and degrading treatment, witch-hunting, fake HIV/AIDS treatment, and widespread abuse of public offices," the Commission revealed.
Self-acclaimed Yoruba activist, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, has reportedly been arrested.

According to SaharaReporters, Igboho was nabbed in Cotonou, Benin Republic, in an attempt to flee to Germany.

The online platform said security operatives in the West African country nabbed Igboho, who is expected to be brought back to the country any moment from now.

Attempts to reach Peter Afunanya, spokesman of the Department of State Services (DSS), over the report were unsuccessful as he neither responded to calls nor replied messages.

The DSS had declared Igboho wanted after a raid on his residence on July 1.

Two associates of the self-acclaimed activist were shot dead in an exchange of gunfire with the security operatives while 12 suspect were arrested during the operation.

At a press briefing at DSS headquarters, Afunanya had vowed that Igboho would be tracked.

"The gun duel which lasted for an hour offered IGBOHO the chance to escape. Sunday ADEYEMO a.k.a Sunday IGBOHO is now on the run."

"IGBOHO may run as far as he can. He may hide as long as he wants. He might have attacked security operatives as his strength carried him. But this will be the end of his shenanigans.

"Soon, he will not have a hiding place. His strength will sure fail him. And the law will catch up with him. The law may be slow. But it will be steady.'

"Consequently, ADEYEMO/IGBOHO is advised to turn himself in to the nearest security agency. Those cheering and eulogising him may appeal to or advise him to do the needful.

"He should surrender himself to the appropriate authorities. He or anyone can never be above the law. Meanwhile, those arrested will be charged accordingly."

Igboho's arrest comes weeks after that of Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the outlawed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

Kanu was arrested abroad and extradited to Nigeria.

The duo of Kanu and Igboho have been plotting to divide Nigeria, a move the federal government warned against.
As the country approaches elections on August 12, various stakeholders are positioning themselves to play their respective roles in the process.

Elections always attract various players as a fulfillment of democratic demands.

Already international observers have started arriving in the country and taking up their positions to monitor campaigns and other election-related activities.

The actual Election Day draws nearer; more observers are expected to arrive in the country and take up their position.

On its part the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) has given all election monitors and observers up to July 31 of this year to register for them to have access to voting premises.

Locally, the Christian Churches Monitoring Group (CCMG) has indicated that it will deploy not less than 1,500 monitors to various parts of the country to monitor the process.

This is as it should be because the local players are even more critical than the international ones to ensuring credibility of the electoral process.

Truly the government's invitation of international and local observers adds credence to the election process and makes the process easily accepted by all players.

When deployed these election monitors and observers are expected to be above board and not to engage in activities that may disturb elections or bring the process into disrepute.

The observers should at all costs desist from disseminating any wrong information which has potential to derail or disturb elections and their data should help to calm competing parties.

Institutions deploying observers like the CCMG should ensure that they are adequately trained for them to observe elections and add value to the process as opposed to taking partisan positions.

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Such situation would be counterproductive and negatively affect the process.

It is indeed important for institutions deploying monitors and their officers to avoid taking sides of one political opponent or the other because that defeats the very essence and purpose of monitoring elections.

We, therefore, look forward to seeing organisations like the CCMG adding value to this year's electoral process in this country which has been a bastion of democracy for many years.

Truly, countries in the region and beyond are looking to Zambia to continue leading in the democratic path where elections are held in free and fair atmosphere devoid of conflicts.

When all is said and done, Zambia should emerge from the August 12 general elections more united than ever before for the betterment of the nation.

For that to be possible all stakeholders or players like the CCMG are supposed to play their respective roles correctly and without malice or biasness.

CCMG and other monitors should play their role without fear or favour because they are to benchmark the electoral process.

This is because every stakeholder is obliged to contribute towards the growth of democracy as espoused by the current Republican Constitution.

We, therefore, call upon all to reflect on this huge responsibility and pledge to deliver according to the allotted roles.
REDCLIF-based chemical manufacturing firm Zimchem is set to refurbish its plant as a way of ramping up production and capacity utilization.

Zimchem Acting General Manager Tendai Shoko in an interview said the company was targeting a booming market in road construction where its products are a key input.

"We invited some engineering firms who should assist us with the refurbishment of some plant units that have not been operational for a number of years. We want to increase our capacity and broaden our products array as we were doing some couple of years back," Shoko said.

He added that Zimchem was also looking into road chemicals in light of the call by the government to have the roads redone and resurfaced.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has since declared the country's roads a state of disaster.

"As Zimchem we want to be part of the road rehabilitation program. We want to be pivotal in this activity of bringing back our roads to their former glory. They are 40 000km of roads that needs to be worked on according to the Ministry of Transport. Some of the roads are in the mid to short term. We also want to play out part and contribute to the government's efforts of resurfacing the national roads, so we have to bring ourselves ready and up to the task we therefore, need to bring the plant itself ready," he said.

Currently Zimchem is hovering at 10% capacity utilisation.

"This is mainly the production of timber treatment chemicals and furnace fuels but we want to go a step further and go into road chemicals which we were producing in the past in huge volumes. We have been having some challenges as capacity was reduced and we want to pick up that capacity and we are going to produce road chemicals for the national roads. We want to look at our capacity going up to 60% possibly by year end," he said.

He however lamented the shortage of raw materials saying it was retarding their growth plans.

"The suppliers of raw materials are a few in the country and they can only produce about 60% of our capacity on the tar refinery side. We have been relying on getting additional inputs to supplement what we have locally but we would want to work with local resources going forward," he said before adding that the raw materials challenge have been caused by capital constraints.

"Currently we have had some players coming through and government also giving us support," he said.
Nairobi  Faulu Microfinance Bank is boosting its presence in the counties by increasing support to small enterprises to play a bigger role in key sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, trade, tourism, and real estate.

This will see the bank lend more than Sh1 billion to farmers, traders, contractors, manufacturers, and property developers in Nakuru, Nyandarua, and Laikipia counties, three of the fastest-growing business and economic hubs in Kenya's rift valley region.

Speaking during the Bank's new branch in Nakuru Town, Faulu Bank Chief Eexecutive Officer Apollo Njoroge said the institution is implementing a Sh3 billion package targeting small enterprises over the next three years.

"Faulu is keen on strengthening its play in the counties, where the economic action is taking place, by providing much needed financial support to improve the capacity of small enterprises to take advantage of unfolding trade opportunities at the devolved level," said Njoroge.

He explained that Nakuru's status as a major transit town along the busy Mombasa-Nairobi-Malaba highway linking Kenya to the greater East Africa region, positions it to expand into a prime regional commercial hub serving the central rift and western parts of the country.

Faulu is offering trade and asset financing to growing businesses in the county, involved in value addition activities in agro-processing, manufacturing, horticulture, dairy and housing.

The trade finance products include Local Purchase Order (LPO) and Local Service Order (LSO) financing, invoice discounting, supply chain financing, tender/bid bonds, advance payment guarantee, retention bond, payment guarantees and customs bonds.

The Bank will also provide crop insurance to farmers through its bancassurance agency.

The Nakuru branch was recently consolidated with the Njoro marketing office as the Bank seeks to re-engage with its clientele by creating operational synergies while leveraging alternate channels like mobile banking in line with emerging market trends and customer dynamics.

The Bank, which has over 500,000 customers across the country, including individuals and groups, is also targeting individuals and households in the areas with a variety of personal finance products. This includes the large population of teachers, civils servants, and employees of county governments.

Faulu has also partnered with Kenya Seed Company to help farmers purchase seeds. Nakuru is considered one of the country's breadbaskets due to its high agricultural output especially maize, wheat, and potato production.

The county is among the largest and wealthiest in Kenya, accounting for 6.1 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product, according to the World Bank. Nakuru is set to become the fourth city after Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu after the Senate approved a plan to elevate its status in June this year.

Nakuru County Governor Lee Kinyanjui said the county is keen on partnering with businesses to advance the economic and social development agenda.

"Nakuru County is open to business. This move by Faulu Bank symbolizes the strong partnership between the county government and private sector in creating real economic opportunities for our people," said the governor.

Faulu has also officially opened a branch in Nyahururu town which it has upgraded from a marketing office in order to position itself strongly in Laikipia County, ranked by the Kenya Institute of Public Policy, Research, and Analysis (KIPRRA), among the top five counties in terms of creating a conducive business environment for SMEs.

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Laikipia County Governor Ndiritu Muriithi hailed the decision by Faulu as an endorsement of the county to investors.

"I am pleased to note that Faulu Bank will be increasing its support to local businesses. The Laikipia county government is ready to work closely with financial services providers to deepen commerce as we transform the local economy."

"Our growth strategy is focused on addressing the unique financial needs of small businesses forming the bulk of our customer base. The Bank's capital injection resources shall sustainably support and accelerate our business objectives," explained Njoroge.

Apart from financing, Faulu is also training its SME customers on how to grow their businesses and strengthen financial risk management.
Nairobi  ODM Leader Raila Odinga on Monday expressed concerns over an increasing number of children reported missing some of whom are later found abused, defiled, or murdered.

Raila called upon members of the public to take care of children and to safeguard them from imminent danger to end such horrific cases which have plagued the country.

He also called upon security agencies to protect children and women against violence, just days after the Director of Criminal Investigations arrested a serial killer, accused of brutally murdering five girls after assaulting and defiling them.

In another incident, a 20-year-old man was arraigned on Friday, July 16, after he confessed to have killed 13 children. The man identified as Masten Milimo Wanjala told police he committed the first murder when he was 15.

"I want to call upon the National Police Service to assure Kenyans that it is up to the task of protecting particularly children, girls and women. Police must assure Kenyans that an individual will not pluck and kill two, four or five children or girls before the ring is detected and crashed," Odinga stated.

He also called upon the Judiciary to expedite dispensing justice when such cases are brought before them.

Odinga made the remarks even as Inspector General of Police Hillary Mutyambai assured Kenyans that adequate security measures had been put in place to deal with rampant cases of killings and kidnapping of children.

Mutyambai gave the assurance as he responded to concerns raised by members of the public during his weekly interaction on social media dubbed 'Engage the IG'.

The national police chief further cautioned parents and guardians to take care of their children and also encouraged them to educate them on basic security measures.

The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) also called upon the Kenyan government to employ additional measures aimed at protecting children.
Nairobi  The French Owned MV Spirit of Dubai is now the second vessel to dock at the Lamu Port with transshipment cargo to Jeddah.

The first vessel, MV Amu 1 docked at the port last week Thursday with agricultural products from Zanzibar.

Lamu Port General Manager Abdullahi Samatar says the upcoming transshipments and any further adjustments will be pegged on the outcome and the success of the business at the port today.

"This is the first business that we are currently handling then we shall later evaluate how the process has been which we can then see how to attract more shipping lines," said Samatar.

The Spirit of Dubai is in Lamu to pick the cargo destined Port of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, with 62 containers.

The port, which was commissioned by President Uhuru Kenyatta in May is mainly targeting transshipment cargo to countries along the Indian Ocean Islands such as Seychelles and Comoros.

Samatar added that the government is also in talks with Ethiopia in order to pull more businesses to the port.

"We are currently in talks with one of our neighboring countries Ethiopia so that they can start using the port which is a boost to business to both countries," he added.

The port is considered as on one of the largest port in Sub Sahara Africa, is considered ideal for handling ships which cannot dock at the port of Mombasa whose depth is 15 metres.

The port is a key part of the wider Lamu Port South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor, which is being implemented at a total cost of Sh2.5 trillion.
London  Kenneth Macharia, the Bristol Bisons rugby player who faced deportation to Kenya by the Home Office, has won his five-year battle for the right to asylum in the UK.

The 41-year-old, who was born in Kenya but has lived in Britain for over a decade, learned on Friday that the Home Office will no longer be pursuing its case against him and that his asylum appeal has been allowed by an Immigration Judge.

Macharia went to the UK in 2009 on a student visa to study mechanical engineering, and his subsequent visas - post-graduate and work - were extended on several occasions. As an out gay man, he decided it would not be safe for him to return to Kenya, so he claimed asylum in May 2016.

The club photographer and a player with Bristol Bisons RFC - an LGBTQ+-inclusive rugby club in the city - his case came to national attention in 2018 when the Home Office issued a removal notice and detained him while deportation plans were made.

The Bisons rallied to support their friend and team-mate, securing over 180,000 signatures on a petition to the Home Secretary and crowdfunding to pay for Macharia's legal fees.

He was released, but in June 2019, he was informed by the Home Office that they would continue to pursue his deportation.

However, after two further years of uncertainty, a tribunal determined last month that Macharia should be granted refugee status.

On Monday, his solicitors at SouthWestLaw based in Bristol issued a statement in conjunction with his barrister at 33 Bedford Row Chambers in London to say the Home Office had not lodged an appeal against the positive tribunal determination.

In a statement released via 33 Bedford Row, Macharia said: "When I tell people close to me the news, they are jumping with joy and excitement. I put on a smile and pretend to share the same level of enthusiasm.

"It's been a very long struggle, since 2016. I have had my hopes crushed too many times. I can't help wondering what will go wrong. The sadness has not gone away. I used to be optimistic. It will be a while before I am again.

"I am very grateful for all the support I have received. Very many people came to my aid at my time of need. The list is very long - some I know, some I don't.

"Thanks to each and every one of you. It will take me a bit of time to truly believe this nightmare is over and be at the same level of enthusiasm as you."

Macharia's barrister Dr S Chelvan, Head of Immigration and Public Law at 33 Bedford Row, told Sky Sports: "It's wonderful news that Kenneth's appeal has been allowed on asylum and human rights grounds.

"He is now waiting to get his resident's card recording the grant of his refugee status.

"The Home Office initially disbelieved in 2016 that Kenneth is gay and referred to his claim as being a fabrication, even though an earlier tribunal in 2011 had accepted he is a gay man.

"The Immigration Judge in 2021 rejected the Home Office case that Kenneth would only face discrimination and not persecution on return to Kenya.

"There was a huge volume of support for Kenneth from the local community, particularly from the Bisons, through the #KeepKenHome campaign.

"We were able to argue successfully that the situation in Kenya, where a High Court judgement in 2019 upheld the criminalisation of gay sex, meant Kenneth would face persecution if returned there."

Macharia was not allowed to work while his case was in progress. As well as the community support, his former employer also highlighted their desire to employ him due to his engineering skills.

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The Bisons also issued a statement via Facebook on Monday.

"We'd like to thank everyone for their continued support throughout the past couple of years. We still regularly receive messages asking as to the proceedings, anything that can be done, and Ken's general well-being.

"Due to advice on the legal proceedings, we have been unable to comment or raise discussion on the case, so that the experts could do their job.

"However, we can very happily announce that Ken has been granted Refugee status in the UK, meaning he can live and work here for the foreseeable future.

"Thank you to everyone who has offered their time, money and support throughout the fight."

-By Sky Sports
Tunis/Tunisia  Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi failed his mission in managing the health crisis caused by the coronavirus and must resign, I Watch organisation said on Monday.

Mechichi has also failed to provide vaccination to all Tunisians, the organisation added in a statement, accusing him of fostering social division between power and the people.

According to the organisation, the call for the PM's resignation is part of monitoring his efforts in dealing with the health crisis and incidents that occurred over the weekend.
Tunis/Tunisia  Four Moroccan military planes loaded with the remaining equipment necessary for setting up of the field hospital, have landed Monday at the Tunis-Carthage Airport as part of an urgent medical help ordered by King of Morocco Mohammed VI to support Tunisia's efforts to fight against the COVID-19.

The equipment was received by Minister and Chief of Staff Nadia Akacha, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Migration and Tunisians Abroad Othman Jerandi and Senior Adviser for the President to the Republic in charge of National Security Admiral Abderraouf Atallah.

Tunisia had started last Tuesday setting up this field hospital in Al Bassatine industrial area in Mornaguia (Manouba governorate). With a capacity of 66 beds, this hospital will be operational very soon under the supervision of the General Directorate of Military Health.

Morocco has opened an air bridge to send urgent medical aid to Tunisia, as ordered by King Mohammed VI.

A military aircraft loaded with medical tools and equipment necessary for the setting up of the field hospital had arrived last Saturday in Tunisia, in addition to 5 other planes (3 had arrived last Friday and 2 last Thursday).
Tunis/Tunisia  A batch of oxygen generators, ventilators and various medical equipment, donated by the Kingdom of Spain to Tunisia was delivered Monday morning at the Tunis-Carthage airport to support the country's efforts in combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Presidency of the Republic, in a statement, expressed its sincere gratitude and recognition to the Kingdom of Spain for this noble initiative, which illustrates the depth of the historic relations of friendship between the two countries.

The ceremony of reception of this equipment took place in the presence of Chief of Staff to the President of the Republic Nadia Akacha, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Migration and Tunisians Abroad Othman Jerandi, Senior Adviser to the President of the Republic in charge of National Security Admiral Abderraouf Atallah and Brigadier General Mustapha Ferjani.

The ceremony was also attended by Ambassador of the Kingdom of Spain in Tunisia Guillermo Ardizone Garcia, political advisor of the Delegation of the European Union in Tunisia Riccardo Mosca and responsible for Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation Programmes in Tunisia Consuelo Tome.
Tunis/Tunisia  President Kais Saied has Monday a phone talk with Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, during which they exchanged greetings on the occasion of the Eid Al-Idha.

Saied thanked the King for his support to Tunisia in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, affirming that the Tunisian people will never forget Saudi Arabia's support during these difficult times, a Presidency of the Republic press release reads.

The talk also helped discuss the health situation in Tunisia and highlight the strong and long-standing relations between the two brotherly peoples and ways to boost them.
Tunis/Tunisia  President Kais Saied Monday had a phone talk with Mauritania's Mohamed Ould El-Ghazaouani during which they exchanged greetings on the occasion of the Eid Al-Idha.

During the talk, Saied thanked El-Ghazaouani for supporting Tunisia in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Mauritanian initiative reflects not only the strong brotherly ties between both countries but also the mutual aid and solidarity values uniting both brotherly peoples, a Presidency of the Republic press release reads.
Tunis/Tunisia  Tunisia's foreign trade edged up in June 2021 reaching levels surpassing those reported before the pandemic (February 2020), after declining for two consecutive months.

Exports rose by 17.1% while imports only edged up 10% compared to May 2021, data on foreign trade at constant prices published Monday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS) show.

As such, the balance sheet for the first half (H1) of 2021 has reported a significant 27% rise for exports and 23.3% for imports, compared to the same period in 2020.

However, these levels are still similar to those logged in 2019.

The monthly trade deficit for June 2021 has narrowed by 102.4 million dinars (MD), standing at 1451.7MD. The coverage rate rose by 4.5 points compared to May 2021, reaching 74.4%.

- Exports see a sharp increase

Exports rose by 17.1% in June, standing at 4215.1MD, up 10% compared to levels reported before the pandemic (February 2020), helping to end the H1 with a positive note.

The exports edged up in all sectors under both the general and offshore regimes. These sectors include the mining, phosphates and by-products (+55.4%), energy and oil (+38.7%), textile, clothing and leather (+18.4%) and mechanical and electrical industries (+15.1%) which reported the highest contribution to the overall rise, mainly due to exporting electrical wires and cables,

However, agricultural exports and offshore agro-food industries dropped by 33.8%.

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- Imports up 10%

Following two months of stagnation, imports rose by 10%, reaching 5666.8MD in June.

Energy products, notably crude oil, edged up 27.3%. Raw materials and semi-finished products, mainly steel, also rose by 8.1%.

- Exports to EU up 12.9%

Exports to the European Union (EU) went up 12.9%, affecting most of the countries, such as France (+2%), Germany (+41.1%), Spain (+5.4%) and Belgium (+55.1%). Exports to China and Russia also rose by 18% and 5.5%, respectively. While exports to Italy saw a 2.3% drop.

Besides, imports from the EU, China, Turkey, and Russia also rose by 2.5%, 4.7%, 24.3% and 86.2%, respectively.

- Quarterly data

Exports of the second quarter (Q2) of 2021 rose by 8% compared to Q1 of 2021.

Likewise, imports reported an 8.9% rise.

The quarterly trade deficit edged up during Q2 reaching 4181.6MD. However, the quarterly coverage rate dropped 0.7 points to 73.8% compared to Q1.
NEC boss

The National Elections Commission (NEC) says that robust and sustained advocacy and intense Civil and Voter education and media advocacy will ensure Maximizing Continuous Voter Registration, leading to a People Oriented Democratic Election in Africa.

The NEC-Liberia Chairperson, Madam Davidetta Browne Lansanah speaking on the topic, maximizing continuous Voter Registration and Civic Education exercise for a People Oriented Democratic Election, a call to all Nigerians, said records show that Continuous Voter Registration throughout the 5 regions of Liberia, through a partnership with the United Nations Development Program, UNDP, and NEC-Liberia providing funding to support Civil Society Organizations, particularly Women's CSO's, helped to raise awareness in communities, as well as continuous engagement in the registration process also encouraged supporters to register and vote.

The NEC-Liberia Boss said, in addition to maximizing continuous voter registration, the Commission has developed gender policy aiming for inclusivity of women, deployment, and training of gender monitors to conduct field advocacy and reporting, the conduct of Liberian-regional stakeholder' engagement on the Voter Registration, (VR), process and awareness-raising of local leaders and village "Town Cries" to deliver VR messages worked well; training of media practitioners lead to a near accurate reporting on the VR process; we have held constant field monitoring and evaluation to assess turnout, and where it was low NEC-Liberia worked to re-strategize methodology which helped to guide registrants and undecided groups toward registration centers.

The NEC-Liberia Chairperson spoke Thursday in Uyo, Akwa-IBOM State, in Nigeria at the organized Pan African Women Projects of South Africa, South-South Sensitization Workshop for Nigerian Women Voters, in collaboration with the Independent National Electoral Commission of Nigeria, INEC. Madam Browne Lansanah informed the Nigerian women, voters, that Maximizing Continuous Voter Registration can be achieved through the use of various media and their outlets including, social media, and extensive and sustained public information outreach is critical to ensuring greater participation of the citizenry in the VR process, as well as outline portal which INEC Nigeria launched recently.

The NEC-Liberia Chairperson said, to achieve People Oriented Democratic Elections, the training, fundraising and campaigning of more women candidates for elections cannot be over-emphasized, and challenges women advocacy groups to work together to form stronger coalitions that will give them tenable positions and stronger negotiating leverage in politics. Madam Davidetta Browne Lansanah, use the opportunity at the Nigerian women voters workshop to call on all eligible Nigerians to come out to register, proposing the slogan, "each one, tell one" registration is the key to voting to exercise your franchise during the coming elections in Nigeria.

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She said as part of the internal process of ethical fairness and transparency employment at Electoral Commission needs to be based on gender equity, and all election-related programs should employ a gender perspective and take issues as a central part of the process and calls on Executive Leadership in countries to be committed to gender equity and to reflect that at the level of Cabinet Appointments. she said giving the Liberian experience, records show an increase in the number of registrant's low of several hundred thousand to a high of 2.4 million from an established 3 million eligible Liberians who have reached the required age of 18, the NEC-Liberia Chairperson told the gathering of mainly Nigerian Women Voters.-Dispatch
opinion

For clearly selfish reasons, members of the Liberian Legislature believe that dishing out nearly US$4million (US$3,090,000) among themselves on Capitol Hill is honorable and legitimate because they allot the money to themselves in the national budget.

But truly, such display of arrogance and greed by a small group of men and women who claim to represent the rest of the nearly 5 million Liberians is nothing less than high insensitivity and broad day thievery or political corruption, as opposition leader Mr. Alexander B. Cummings noted recently in Monrovia.

In the midst of a fatal health pandemic and grinding poverty in the country, for lawmakers to defend they need the money to engage their respective constituents is very deceptive because there is no measure put in place for accountability.

What is even paradoxical is that lawmakers preside over the national budget and regularly demand performance report from the Executive, particularly from spending ministries and agencies but these same breed of people consistently refuse to be audited and therefore, are not accountable to the people who elected them. How dare they would ask the Executive to account when they themselves are not accountable?

When teachers and other members of the civil service are being pensioned without receiving benefits, and monthly salary payment delays in an economy where the majority lives on less than US$2.00 a day, 103 lawmakers shared about US$4million that is in addition to their own monthly salary and benefits that cover housing, car, driver, gasoline, cook, security, health and personal office staff. You can see where Liberia is headed!

Amid such display of uncontrollable greed and reckless insensitivity, let's take a close look at the Capitol Building where lawmakers sit to conduct business. The chambers are leaking because of lack of repairs, while serious sanitary and health crises loom as restrooms or toilets are cloaked due to lack of running water to flush commodes and visitors are embarrassingly sent out to urinate and in some instances, defecate behind containers inside the compound of the Capitol Building.

Liberian voters need to take a sober reflection each time they go to the ballot box to decide leadership for the country. We can bet this is not the quality of leadership they envisaged when they cast the votes both in 2017 and in 2020, respectively.

Even as we speak, this tiny country of 5 million people has no vaccines in stock to fight the coronavirus despite being ranked at Level 4 (very highly infected country) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of the United States. Besides, hospitals battling the pandemic across the country lack oxygen, not to speak of PPEs for doctors and nurses on the frontline.

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Yet, lawmakers are dishing out millions among themselves for personal expenditure at the expense of the people with no remorse whatsoever. It is a pity that this nation is being subjected to such bad governance.

However, Liberians have within their power, decision to change the current corrupt and self-seeking legislature on Capitol Hill. They can protest under the law and petition their lawmakers to repeal such law that allows them (lawmakers) to dish out millions while hospitals and schools across the country lack drugs, relevant tools to work with, and chairs and qualified teachers in the classroom.

We believe the Executive takes pleasures in disbursing such money to buy its own way into pillaging what is left in the national coffer as the system of check and balance is relegated and lawmakers feast with US$30,000 each in their pockets.
GOL on rescue mission, as Cummings applauds efforts

Several persons are said to be missing after a local vessel Niko Ivanka carrying about 18 people including passengers and crew members bond for Maryland County in the southeast sank over the weekend.

The Liberian Government through the Liberia Maritime Authority (LiMA), the Ministry of National Defense, and the Armed Forces of Liberia Coast Guard have since launched a search and rescue operation.

LiMA Commissioner-General Len Eugene Nagbe told reporters Sunday, 18 July at a press conference that so far 11 persons have been rescued since the rescue operation was launched, and are hopeful of recovering the remaining passengers and crew members on board.

Addressing reporters at the Coast Guard Base on Bushord Island, Nagbe said there were no report of casualty so far.

According to him, at least five vessels are participating in the search between Bassa and Marshall because there might be others who are still along the waterway.

He explained that LiMA got an alert from the Liberia Coast Guard through its Monrovia regional maritime rescue coordination center.

Mr. Nagbe further narrated that the center informed LiMA about a distress situation onboard M/V Niko Invanka, a local vessel owned and operated by HYLAEA Inc. which according to LiMA was trading between the Ports of Monrovia, Montserrado County, and Harper, Maryland County.

Commissioner Nagbe said the information received indicated that the vessel departed the Port of Monrovia for Harper on Saturday, 17 July, and while on the way, it reportedly started to take in water about 6 nautical miles off the shore of Marshall City.

He stated that upon receiving the information, LiMA, Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Liberia Coast Guard immediately mobilized resources including assets and personal to begin the search and rescue operation to attend to the distressed vessel.

He added that ArcelorMittal Liberia, Sea Shepherd, and other partners were immediately contacted to utilize their assets to assist in the search and rescue operation, noting that ArcelorMittal launched its two tub boats along with Coast Guard personal onboard from the port of Buchanan to the reported scene of the incident between Buchanan and Marshall City.

He said the distressed vessel Niko Invanka had onboard a crew complement of nine persons, based on the crew list submitted by the agent, and nine personnel of the West African Examination Council were also on board as passengers.

"The LiMA wishes to state that the subject vessel was detained and not allowed to sail, and this vessel was at no time authorized or permitted to carry passengers or operate as a passengers' vessel," Nagbe said.

The LiMA boss narrated that his institution follows all of the processes including the domestic, national, and international regulations or requirements to be granted or licensed by the LiMA, leading to the registration of any vessel.

He said in spite of the license, LiMA does regular monitoring of every vessel sailing Liberian waters, noting that if any vessel sailing the waters here fails to meet all of the requirements, you are grounded and detained.

Nagbe said this vessel in question is one of those vessels that are under a detention order for failure to meet all of the safety requirements. He revealed that passengers were onboard the vessel, but they were not listed. The LiMA Commissioner said authorities are still trying to interview some of the survivors, hoping that more people can still be found.

He detailed that the investigation will also determine why the passengers sailed, and who granted them the permission.

For his part, Education Minister Professor Ansu Sonii thanked the LiMA and its partners for exerting tremendous efforts in rescuing eleven persons, saying that there's a need for all the parties involved to work together to help in the rescue operation.

According to Minister Sonii, nine staff were heading to Maryland, Grand Gedeh, and Grand Kru Counties to administer the upcoming national exams.

He said if they have another adjustment in administering the national exams, they will update the public, but urged everyone to focus on the rescue mission.

Meanwhile, Alternative National Congress (ANC) political leader Mr. Alexander B. Cummings has described the news as saddening.

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"We are saddened by the news of distress to the vessel Niko Ivanka near Maryland County.

Our thoughts are with the families of the vessel's crew and the passengers on board as we pray for the total success of the rescue operations. We commend the rescue of some of our citizens so far and our prayers are with those yet to be rescued.

We also call on the government to investigate what seems to have been an avoidable incident and ensure that anyone found culpable of negligence faces the full weight of the law," Mr. Cummings wrote on his social media page. Maryland County Senator Gble-bo Brown also expressed sadness and termed the situation as regrettable.

"This event is a reflection, it brings back dark memories of the past," he said.

"We stand here today to remember at least four-ship [wrecks] which have happened to Maryland County, and each time it happened, we lost lives," he said.

He recalled that in 2010, a similar situation occurred when a vessel was heading to Maryland and eight persons died and others went missing.--Edited by Winston W. Parley
President George Manneh Weah has appointed a Special Presidential Committee for the comprehensive cleanup exercise of all county capitals and the city of Paynesville, Montserrado County.

The cleanup exercise will kick start through the effective implementation of a 90-day Action Plan, commencing Friday, July 16, 2021, ahead of the 2021 July 26 Independence, which is to be celebrated by all Liberians.

According to the Executive Mansion, the 90-day Action Plan is part of the Government's Reform measures on the efficient management of market grounds in the country, with an initial focus on the grounds of the newly constructed Omega Market in the City of Paynesville.

The Special Presidential Committee will be headed by the Ministry of Public Works as Chair and Co-chaired by the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC), with the Ministry of State, Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Ministry of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, Liberia Land Authority, the Paynesville City Corporation and the Liberia Marketing Association (LMA) as members.

The Special Committee is mandated to ensure that the sale of table tickets by any person or institution at Omega Market is suspended for three months with immediate effect; and that there is no selling of space or any parcel (s) of land to any person or marketer (s).

The committee is also mandated to ensure that no marketer(s) shall pay any sum(s) of money for any space or land at Omega Market; and to make sure that all marketers leave the Red Light grounds and relocate to the Omega Market in a peaceful and orderly manner.

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Additionally, the committee is mandated to ensure full compliance with its mandate at all times for the success of the 90-day Action Plan.

According to the Executive Mansion, the Government of Liberia takes very seriously the health and livelihoods of every Liberian citizen, including marketers around the country, especially during these crucial times of a collective fight against the COVID-19 pandemic conscious that market grounds are at higher risk.

The government also sees it as timely and prudent to intervene and maintain sanity at the market grounds, particularly for the safety of mothers who spend a significant amount of their time in the markets.

President Weah has pledged the government's commitment to collect and dispose of solid waste from the Omega Market grounds and maintain good sanitary conditions through an all-inclusive and participatory approach.

He assures all that the government will work with the relevant stakeholders to have among other things, the construction of a new warehouse for marketers, the rehabilitation of the road leading to the market, ensure the cooperation of the transport union, and the installation of solar lights to enhance the safety of marketers.

With the help of all market users, the government looks forward to full cooperation to achieve this significant goal for the sustainability and local ownership of the Omega Market.

This exercise will be extended to all other markets throughout the country - with the help of local authorities.--Press release
Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former interim President Dr. Amos Sawyer joined thousands of others last Friday to celebrate the 80th birthday of Dr. Togba Nah Tipoteh, a Liberian icon.

Other well-wishers included Amb. Dew Tuan-Wleh Mayson, who also wrote a special tribute titled: The man of the people.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Sirelaf in her social media post wrote: "I joined thousands of others to celebrate the 80th Birthday of Dr. Togba Nah Tipoteh--the Liberian icon. He is one of a kind--intelligent, steadfast in friendship, without fear or favor in demanding rights, justice, and honor in public service."

In a special tribute, Dr. Sawyer described him as a renowned public intellectual and economist who has specialized in addressing challenges of poverty, particularly in Africa.

According to Dr. Sawyer, Dr. Tipoteh's over 50 years of work in this area demonstrates his abiding commitment to enhancing understandings of the condition of poor people and taking action in assisting them to become drivers of their own development processes.

"He is among the finest examples of public intellectuals who have the extraordinary capacity to blend academic and action research with praxis for the improvement of the human condition," Dr. Sawyer continued.

As an academic, he has over the years demonstrated an exceptional ability to analyze complex issues, making them understandable to people with minimal levels of formal education while, at the same time, enriching academic theories with practical on-the-ground experience. As an academic person, I have benefited immensely from his strength in this and many other respects.

The former Liberian interim President remembering Dr. Tipoteh further, noted that as a

development practitioner, the celebrant has been able to successfully link academic training to development practice.

He explained that, unlike many academics, Dr. Tipoteh does not seek refuge in the Ivory Tower. He initiates and joins many debates about the political economy of our country, Liberia, and our continent, Africa, on issues ranging from the improvement of small-holder agriculture to the empowerment of industrial workers, to improvement of financial institutions, to the overall strengthening of our system of governance.

Below is the full text of Dr. Sawyers' tribute to Dr. Tipoteh:

IN HONOR OF PROFESSOR DR. TIPOTEH

Professor Dr. Togba Nah Tipoteh is a renowned public intellectual and economist who has specialized in addressing the challenges of poverty, particularly in Africa. His over 50 years of work in this area demonstrates his abiding commitment to enhancing understandings of the condition of poor people and taking action in assisting them become drivers of their own development processes. He is among the finest examples of public intellectuals who have the extraordinary capacity to blend academic and action research with praxis for the improvement of the human condition. As an academic, he has over the years demonstrated an exceptional ability to analyze complex issues, making them understandable to people with minimal levels of formal education while, at the same time, enriching academic theories with practical on-the-ground experience. As an academic person, I have benefited immensely from his strength in this and many other respects.

As a development practitioner, he has been able to successfully link academic training to development practice and, unlike many academics, he does not seek refuge in the Ivory Tower. He initiates and joins many debates about the political economy of our country, Liberia, and our continent, Africa, on issues ranging from the improvement of small-holder agriculture to the empowerment of industrial workers, to the improvement of financial institutions, to the overall strengthening of our system of governance.

His tenacious insistence on truth-telling and the search for truth has often put him at loggerheads with the powers that be in Liberia. For example, his founding role and leadership of SUSUKUU, (local self-help and self-governing development initiative) was much appreciated and enthusiastically embraced by local communities not only in Grand Gedeh and the southeast but throughout Liberia. However, the heavy hand of an authoritarian government crushed the project but could not uproot the idea as it spread throughout Liberia and became the most viable model of community development.

After completing his Ph.D. in economics in the United States, Professor Dr. Tipoteh served a stint as an expert in the US government's Anti-Property Program, working under the distinguished Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He was recruited from the Anti-Poverty Program of the United States to serve as Advisor in the office of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget of Liberia. He fell out of favor with the Liberian Government because of his insistence that the budget is used as an instrument to promote development, and not as a laundry list of presidential preferences.

At the University of Liberia where he served as a professor of Economics, his insistence on ensuring the relevance of courses to addressing the economic challenges of Liberia, and on the reorganization of the management and direction of the Liberian Economic and Management Research Institute, again put him at loggerheads with the authorities who seemed to be strapped in tired and irrelevant economic and management orthodoxies.

As a teacher, he used everyday expressions and well-known aphorisms from everyday life in Liberia in teaching economic principles and concepts. For example, his popularization of the expression, "monkey work, and baboon draw" has been wholly adopted as an economic and political concept in Liberia.

Through his work with industrial workers, and progressive forces in the society, the empowerment of labor was taken to a new level of strengthened union secretariats with enhanced capacities to engage in collective bargaining that resulted in the negotiation of better work conditions for industrial workers, especially in the Liberian American Swedish Mining Company (LAMCO), the Liberian Mining Company (LMC), and Dock Workers Association of Liberia (DOWAL), among others.

With all these accomplishments appreciated, Dr. Tipoteh's signature work remains his leadership role in the founding of the Movement for Justice in Africa (MOJA), which since 1973, continues initiatives to build democratic, accountable, and transparent institutions of governance in Liberia and other parts of Africa. This Pan African organization is linked to sister organizations throughout Africa and to democratic and development organizations worldwide. Under Tipoteh's leadership, it became a major force organizing grassroots movements in several African countries in support of the African liberation struggles.

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Dr. Tipoteh is also a cultural icon. The simplicity and authenticity of his African attire--including his popularization of the slippers that bear his name, "The Tipoteh," his melodious baritone voice, and above all, his resumption of use of his ancestral indigenous name have sealed his place as an icon in Liberian culture.

As Dr. Tipoteh reaches his 80th birthday, we look back on his illustrious career and contributions with admiration and gratitude, and we appreciate his sacrifices.

I am particularly proud and fortunate that he has been my friend, comrade, and inspiration for the last 50 years.

I believe it is about time that the University of Liberia bestows due recognition on the work of this productive public intellectual. The establishment of a chair in his honor will be an appropriate recognition of his contributions.

Thank you Professor Dr. Tipoteh. HAPPY 80TH BIRTHDAY.

Amos Sawyer

Caldwell, Montserrado County
Maryland County  As an Indian firm, ALPHA TND LTD kicks off planting of light poles in Pleebo, Maryland County Electoral district#2, homes of residents of Pleebo, and Fish Town, River Gee County in Southeast Liberia are expected to be electrified following the arrival of the first consignment of 41 transformers in the region.

Speaking to reporters over the weekend, the company's program manager, Anil Gaur, said all materials needed for the project, including streetlights, transformers, light poles, meters, and power cables, are being imported into the country.

He said the arrival of 41 pieces of 250-kilowatt transformers and other materials will greatly benefit both counties' citizens.

Mr. Gaur disclosed that the firm has completed roadside clearing in concession areas of the Cavalla Rubber Corporation (CRC and the Maryland Oil Palm Plantation (MOPP) while planting light poles along the Maryland-River Gee highway ongoing.

The Pleebo-Fish Town corridor is a component of the Liberia Energy Efficiency Access Project or LEEAP, a US$ 31.8 million program jointly funded by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the European Union (EU) through the Government of Liberia.

It also includes the construction of 66KV double circuit transmission lines from Paynesville to the Roberts International Airport (RIA) in Margibi County, including the construction of two new substations (66/22Kv and 66/33KV) and medium and low voltage networks in communities along ELWA - RIA corridors.

Mr. Gaur stressed that the project, which seeks extension of existing power lines from Pleebo in Maryland to Fish Town in River Gee, will connect several private and public buildings, including business centers in 24 communities in the two counties.

He added that the project is providing jobs for over 200 local residents of both counties directly.

The ALPHA TND LTD program manager noted that the initiative is part of the Liberian government's commitment to its Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development that seeks to expand and increase access to reliable and affordable electricity throughout Liberia.

In early 2019, the Government of Liberia and partners broke grounds for the electrification of the southeastern component of the LEEAP project in Pleebo City.

When completed, it will serve as a relief to residents of the two counties due to daily complaints from some residents of Pleebo why they are paying electricity bills despite purchasing transformers on their own.

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Early this year, residents of Pleebo protested against demand from the LEC local management in the county to pay bills despite purchasing two transformers on their own at the cost of US$20,000.

In July 2020, the Management of the Liberia Electricity Corporation sub-office in Maryland, issued a circular, calling on residents to visit the corporation's office to pick up bills for payment.

The communication, aired on various community radio stations in the county, indicated that bills payers, late bills payers, and non-bills payers should make payments before the end of July 2020, with a warning to disconnect electricity users that fail to comply accordingly.

County Superintendent George A. Proud had pronounced on a local radio station that due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the government decided for citizens to benefit from free electricity for one month from June 8 to July 8, 2020, but the Management of LEC said since that pronouncement by the superintendent, it has not received a dime from the government. Editing by Jonathan Browne
State-funded Competition and Fair Trading Commission (CFTC), a statutory institution to regulate and monitor acts that affect competition and fair-trading, has fined imposed a K500, 000 on each of the 20 companies found guilty of contravening fair trading practices in the country.

The 20 are among the 61 companies the Commission has been investigating of which 56 were confirmed to have violated the consumer rights through one malpractice or the other.

The Commission's Acting Executive Director, Apoche Itimu, told journalists on Monday during an update for their last quarter's investigations and determinations that the remaining companies contravened competition business practices.

"Following complaints from consumers, we conducted investigations, the Commission determined fines according to the financial gains of the company," she said.

The 1998 CFTC Act provides a K500,000 fine or a representation of a company's financial gain.

According to the statistics, she said, the majority of the companies fined were those who practiced unfair trading by either overcharging, misleading labels and underweight like in bags of farm inputs among others.

Itimu added that the Commission also charged fines to banks like First Capital Bank and Ned Bank after receiving complaints from customers whose accounts were tampered and their funds disappeared.

These banks, she said, were charged K500, 000 as a fine and another K500, 000 to the account's owner with a full refund of his money.

However, the Board of Commissioners will meet again in August to determine what the Commission investigated in the last quarter of May to August.
DOMINICAN Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the nuns) have taken one Yananai Nyasha to court after she failed to pay back their US$12 616 borrowed last year.

The nuns are also demanding interest on the amount which Nyasha was supposed to pay off starting in December last year.

Parties had agreed that she would pay US$1 000 per month beginning on December 31 2020 but Nyasha has not paid a cent to date sparking fears of being duped in the nuns.

The matter is now before the High Court pending a full hearing.

According to court papers, on November 30 , 2020 Nyasha acknowledged her indebtedness to the nuns in writing.

The total amount she owed them was US$12, 626, 51.

Parties also agreed that interest at the rate of 18 percent would start accruing on the whole outstanding amount.

"In breach of her own acknowledgement of debt, Nyasha has not paid any instalment to date. By reason of the aforesaid breach, the whole debt became due and payable together with interest at the rate of 18 percent per annum. Further by reason of her breach, the defendant is liable to pay US$12616, 51 together with interest and costs on a legal practitioner-client scale," reads the declaration by the nuns.

The matter is yet to be heard.
press release

Bangui - Relentless attacks on patients, health staff and medical facilities in Central African Republic (CAR) during a countrywide surge in violence are forcing the suspension of medical activities and seriously constraining people's access to healthcare, says Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

"The resurgence of the conflict in CAR since December has taken a heavy toll on people and on medical care," says Rhian Gastineau, MSF head of mission. "We are very alarmed by the repeated attacks on patients, health workers and medical facilities."

Over the past six months, MSF teams have witnessed dozens of health facilities ransacked, damaged and occupied by armed men. Armed incursions into hospitals have seen patients subjected to violence, physical abuse, interrogation and arrest.

Community health workers in rural areas have been threatened and assaulted, while motorbike riders delivering lifesaving drugs and transporting sick and wounded patients to hospital have been attacked, injured and robbed at gunpoint. These acts of violence are usually attributed by the warring parties to uncontrolled elements of various armed groups.

Now, more than ever, all parties to the conflict should reinforce respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians and medical facilities. Rhian Gastineau, MSF head of mission

Health facilities ransacked

In February this year, fighting between government forces and non-state armed groups inside an MSF-supported health centre in Elevage camp for displaced people, near Bambari, left the building damaged after it was hit by a rocket. In June, a nearby health post was destroyed after 8,500 displaced people were expelled from the site, which was then burned to the ground.

Over the past six months, our mobile teams in the prefectures of Ouaka, Ouham-Pende and Ombella-Mpoko have witnessed multiple health facilities ransacked and partially destroyed, with solar panels, medical supplies and mattresses stolen, and doors and windows smashed.

In Bangui and elsewhere, armed men have entered health facilities managed and supported by MSF to interrogate or arrest patients. In February, armed men attempted to kill a patient in the MSF-supported hospital in Bouar.

MSF forced to suspend activities

As a result of these incidents, on several occasions MSF has had to temporarily suspend our medical activities, including providing lifesaving care, supervising health centre staff, supplying drugs and transporting patients.

"Being forced to suspend our activities only exacerbates people's vulnerability and results in the avoidable deaths of young children and women with complications in pregnancy and childbirth, among others," says Kohler.

In Paoua, Bria and elsewhere, the growing insecurity has prevented our teams from making regular visits to the outlying health centres they support. This has a profound impact on the quality of care provided and disrupts the supply of essential drugs.

We have had to reduce referrals of patients by motorbike from rural areas to Kabo since April due to the risks involved; as a result, the number of patients referred each month has nearly halved. In June, MSF community health workers in some areas around Kabo managed to carry out just a quarter of their usual number of weekly consultations due to the insecurity.

"The suspension and reduction of medical outreach activities across numerous areas where we work is very concerning, particularly with the ongoing rainy season, when cases of malaria and other life-threatening diseases peak," says Kohler.

Fear and panic disrupt healthcare

As a result of the increased insecurity, many people are too scared to leave their homes to visit a doctor, while many health staff have fled their places of work to seek safety.

On occasion, the violence has triggered large numbers of people to arrive at hospital compounds in search of protection, disrupting health services. Sometimes, as happened in Kabo in July, just the rumour of an attack is enough to create a sudden movement of panicked people.

"Unfortunately, it is not new for violence to impact medical care in CAR," says Gastineau. "It is a structural problem in periods of conflict."

Armed groups and active fighting have caused a very volatile situation, which... constrains access to healthcare for a population already struggling to get the basics. Rhian Gastineau, MSF head of mission

"The multiplicity of armed groups and the active fighting have caused a very volatile situation, which also affects areas that were previously considered relatively stable," says Gastineau. "This further constrains access to healthcare for a population already struggling to get the basics."

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MSF urges the government and all parties to the conflict to respect the neutrality of health facilities and to allow people access to medical and humanitarian assistance.

"Now, more than ever, all parties to the conflict should reinforce respect for international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians and medical facilities, transport and staff," says Gastineau.

MSF has worked in Central African Republic since 1997 and currently runs 13 regular projects - in Bangui, Bria, Bangassou, Bambari, Kabo, Batangafo, Paoua, Bossangoa and Carnot - and one mobile emergency team. Since the conflict intensified in late-2020, MSF has worked to ensure continuity of care in all its projects and has launched emergency projects in the conflict-affected areas of Boguila, Bossembele, Bouar, Grimari, Mbaiki, Damara, Boali, Dekoa, Liton, Kouango and Ippy.
Michael Olugbode

One thousand, two hundred Ogoni women are to be trained in entrepreneurial skills in the ongoing Ogoniland Clean-up Project, the Minister of Environment, Dr. Mohammad Abubakar has said.

The Minister made this disclosure while reeling out the achievements of the Federal Government in it's efforts to clean-up Ogoni land of oil spillages and to boost it's economy.

The Minister, who address a press briefing in Abuja, said: "The Project Coordination Office (PCO) proposed to train 1,200 Ogoni women in various entrepreneurial skills from the four LGAs of Ogoniland.

"The Agribusiness Skill Training and Empowerment Programme for 400 Ogoni women was initiated as an integral part of the front-end activities of the clean-up of Ogoni land."

He said the primary objective is aimed at presenting sustainable agriculture and agribusiness as alternative sources of livelihood for women in the area.

Abubakar also disclosed that a tripartite capacity building partnership between the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Stakeholders Democracy Network (SDN) trained 15 youths from the four local government areas of Ogoni land.

He noted that at the end of the three months intensive training, the trainees fabricated machines which were used in setting up a Cassava Processing/Fabrication Facility at Korokoro, Tai local government area and On 14th July 2020, the facility was commissioned.

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The Minister said as part of the employment creation drive of Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), 882 community youths have been engaged by Batch 1 remediation contractors, while additional 1118 community youths are being engaged by Batch 2 remediation contractors.

He said, "Therefore, as at today, a total of 2000 temporal jobs were created in the course of remediation across the four LGAs of Ogoni land besides the numerous indirect jobs that are to be created in the form of trading and support activities."

As at today, Seventeen (17) Lots have been completed by HYPREP, out of which ten have been closed-out by National Oil Spill Detection Agency (NOSDRA). Certification sampling of three Lots for close-out has been completed, while the other three are awaiting certification sampling for close-out by NOSDRA. The remaining five which are yet to be completed by HYPREP are at various stages of completion.

On the other areas of achievements in Ogoni land, the Minister said: "Thirty-Six (36) remediation contracts comprise of two Project activities namely soil remediation works (29 lots) and Tier 2 (T-2) Assessment of groundwater works (7 lots) were awarded in February 2020. However, due to the global corona virus pandemic in the first and second quarters of 2020, activities preceding mobilization of these contractors to sites were slowed down.

"However, as at today, nine remediation lots have been completed and are awaiting NOSDRA certification and seven other contracts for detail quantitative environmental risk assessment to determine ground water conditions in some selected sites were completed."
opinion

This article by Jide Ojo gives an overview of the Electoral history and laws in Nigeria since 1923, and more importantly, a critique of the controversial Section 52(2) of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2021 passed by both Chambers of the National Assembly last week, concluding that the proviso that the transmission of election results by INEC should be subject to the clearance of NCC and NASS is unconstitutional, and therefore, null and void

Introduction

Periodic election, is one of the cardinal principles of democracy. Nigeria's electoral journey started in 1923, after the coming into force of Clifford Constitution of 1922. In the 98 years of Nigeria's electoral history, many negative adjectives such as fraudulent, violent, and expensive, have been used to describe the country's polls. Yet, it is only through elections, that political leaders are expected to emerge in a democracy. Recall that it was a rigged 1964 /1965 General Election, that led to the first military coup of January 15, 1966. After the return to civil rule 13 years after, that is, in 1979, the Second Republic was short-lived, as the military shot itself back to power on December 31, 1983 citing rigged elections in Ondo, Oyo and some other parts of the country, and also due to corruption by the political class.

In order to organise, undertake and supervise all elections in Nigeria, the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria established two electoral management bodies (EMBs). The first was the Independent National Electoral Commission which was established by Section 153(f) and States Independent Electoral Commissions established by Section 197(1)(b) of the Constitution. Having birthed these EMBs, the grundnorm also prescribed roles and functions of these bodies, as well as the laws guiding their operations. While some of the laws guiding operations of INEC and SIECs are in the Constitution, the bulk of the laws are either in the Electoral Act for INEC and State electoral laws for the 36 State Independent Electoral Commissions. These EMBs are also at liberty to come up with regulations, guidelines, codes and manuals, all in a bid to enable them conduct credible, free, fair and successful elections.

Brief History of Nigeria Electoral Laws

The National Assembly (NASS), from time to time, has altered the Constitution and Electoral Act, in order to enhance and improve the performance of INEC in the onerous task of conducting national and State elections. While there have been four alterations to the Constitution in the 22 years of this Fourth Republic which started in 1999, there have been four electoral Acts as well, with several amendments. There was 2001 Electoral Act, 2002 Electoral Act, 2006 Electoral Act and 2010 Electoral Act. The 2001 Electoral Act was short-lived, due to certain controversial clauses contained therein. One of such was the National Assembly's plan to make laws for the conduct of Local Government elections, which was challenged by Attorney-General of Abia State, and was ruled in favour of Abia State by the Supreme Court, that NASS has no power to make laws for the conduct of LG elections.

The 2002 Electoral Act was then passed, and used for the conduct of 2003 General Election. That too, contained an obnoxious section, trying to order the sequence of election for INEC. The Commission went to court, and the court agreed and struck out that section, saying that NASS has no such power to order sequence of elections for INEC.

The 2006 Electoral Act, also had its own controversial section. Conference of Nigeria's Political Parties, went to court to challenge the sharing of grants to political parties. Justice Abimbola Augie of the Federal High Court in December 2006, ruled that that section of the Electoral Act 2006 was at variance with provision of Section 228(c) of the Constitution, which stipulated fair and equitable sharing of grants meant for political parties.

INEC has conducted three General Elections, using the Electoral Act 2010. These are the 2011, 2015 and 2019 General Elections. While the Act was amended in 2015, it was not signed into law by President Goodluck Jonathan until very close to the elections of that year. In fact, as at the time of the 2015 General Election, the amended 2010 Electoral Act had not been gazetted. There was another attempt to amend the 2010 Electoral Act in 2018, but the President, Muhammadu Buhari on four different occasions refused to assent to the Bills. INEC then had no choice, but to fall back on the 2010 Electoral Act for the conduct of the 2019 General Election. However, it is important to state that, the 8th National Assembly was able to successfully alter the 1999 Constitution for the fourth time. Among other election related amendments of 2018, was the Not-Too-Young-to-Run law, law giving INEC power to deregister political parties, law extending time to conduct run-off Presidential elections from seven to 21 days.

Current Attempt to Amend the Electoral Act 2010

Given the 2018 failed attempt to amend the Electoral Act 2010, the 9th National Assembly in 2019, inaugurated a joint Committee on electoral reform made up of Senate Committee on INEC headed by Senator Kabir Gaya, and House of Representatives Committee on Electoral Matters, headed by Hon. Aisha Dukku. There was also a technical Committee made up of the NASS Committee on Electoral Reform, representative of INEC and representative of Office of Attorney-General, while the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre provided technical support to the Committee. It is worth mentioning that the 9th National Assembly promised three times on when they would pass the electoral amendment Bill, and thrice they failed. They first pledged to pass it in December 2020, they failed; they shifted to first quarter of 2021 and also failed to deliver; they then promised to pass the Bill before the end of the second quarter of 2021, they equally did not keep their promise.

Meanwhile, I have it on good authority, that the report of the joint Committee on electoral reform was ready since March 2021. However, the Bill was not passed until Thursday, July 15 in the Senate, while the House of Representatives passed their own version on Friday, July 16, 2021.

The controversial Clause 52(2) of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, despite the promise of the 9th National Assembly to pass the electoral reform Bill that Nigerians will be proud of, many compatriots felt let down given the proviso inserted in Section 52(2) of the Bill passed by the Senate, which says that INEC must get clearance from the Nigeria Communication Commission (NCC), which must also be approved by the National Assembly for electronic transmission of election results. This is a landmine. A booby-trap. It is unconstitutional, ultra vires, null and void.

My view is very much in consonance with that expressed by the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Tambuwal, who is a former Speaker of House of Representatives, and also a Lawyer. He said in a statement: "For the avoidance of doubt, Section 78 of the Constitution provides that 'The Registration of voters and the Conduct of elections shall be Subject to the Direction and Supervision of Independent National Electoral Commission'. "In the Third Schedule, Part 1, F, S.15: INEC has power to Organise, Undertake and Supervise all elections. The Constitution further provides that INEC Operations Shall Not be subject to the direction Of Anybody or Authority." Unquestionably, the mode of election and transmission of results are critical parts of the Conduct, Supervision, Undertaking and Organisation of elections in Nigeria. Of course, NASS has the power to flesh out the legal framework, but that has to be consistent with the Constitution.

"These constitutional powers have been solely and Exclusively Prescribed By The Constitution to INEC, and Cannot Be Shared With the NCC, or any other Authority, and certainly not a body unknown to the Constitution. The Senate's decision to subject INEC's constitutional power to conduct elections to NCC, is consequently, patently VOID, unconstitutional and unlawful."

It beggars belief why the Senate also wants INEC to come back to it for final approval, after getting clearance for electronic transmission of results from NCC. It is noteworthy, that members of Parliament are Politicians who will be standing for elections that INEC will be conducting. Indeed, what the Senate has tried to do is self-serving, and for their personal aggrandisement. I am of the considered view that, the Senate should have passed the Bill the way House of Representatives did.

Recall that the House passed the controversial Section 52(2) of the Bill last Friday, July 16 by allowing INEC to determine when, where and how voting and transmission of results will be done. It stipulates thus: "Voting at an election and transmission of results under this Bill, shall be in accordance with the procedure determined by the Commission."

Conspiracy Theories and Questions

The action of the Nigerian Senate, and by extension, the National Assembly on the Electoral Bill 2021, smacks of mischief and deliberate orchestration of confusion. The question is being asked, as to why the National Assembly did not keep to its earlier promise of passing the Bill latest by the first or second quarter of 2021? Why did the Federal lawmakers wait till the last day on which they would proceed on their annual two months' vacation, before passing the Bill? Why did the two chambers not pass the same version as agreed on, at the technical Committee level? Which version of the two chambers will prevail when the Conference Committee is constituted to harmonise their positions on the two versions? Will the President sign the Bill, if the Senate's version is presented to him?

The truth is that, what played out in the National Assembly on the Electoral Bill is a well-rehearsed drama, meant to frustrate any electoral amendment ahead of 2023 General Election. The scenario that is likely to play out is that, having passed this Bill with the controversial Section 52(2), the Conference Committee may not be constituted until NASS resumes from vacation on September 14, 2021.

By that time, the President will be ready to present Appropriation Bill 2022 which will take the time of the Federal lawmakers, as they will want to pass it on time for the President to sign before December 31, 2021, since we are now back to January to December budget cycle. Even if they squeeze time to pass the harmonised version before the end of the year, the President may not sign.

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Recall that in 2018, after NASS passed the Electoral Bill and sent it to President Buhari in February of that year, the President on March 3, 2018 vetoed the Bill, citing three grounds: The first being that the amendment to the sequence of the elections in Section 25 of the Principal Act may infringe on the constitutionally guaranteed discretion of INEC to organise, undertake and supervise all elections in Section 15(a) of the Third Schedule of the Constitution; second, that the amendment to Section 138 of the Principal Act to delete two crucial grounds upon which an election may be challenged by candidates, unduly limits the rights of candidates in elections to a free and fair electoral review process; third, that the amendment to Section 152 (3)-(5) of the Principal Act may raise constitutional issues, over the competence of the National Assembly to legislate over Local Government elections.

As eloquently stated by the Governor of Sokoto State, Aminu Bello Tambuwal, asking INEC to get clearance from NCC and NASS before it can deploy electronic transmission of result is Mala Fide and unconstitutional, as it is against the provision of Section 78 of the Constitution. It can be recalled that, in 1979 in the Unongu v Aper Aku case which had to do with a provision of the Electoral Act 1978, which sought to fix time frames for the conduct of elections by the defunct FEDECO, it was held by the Supreme Court, that an electoral law cannot seek to prescribe to FEDECO how it could go about a mandate given to it by the Constitution. Since then, that has been the position of the law. This is the more reason that I have confidence that the President will not sign the Electoral Bill 2021, if the version passed by the Senate were to be the version sent to him for assent. Should this be the case, we are then back to the 2018 situation where the President refused to assent to the Electoral Bill on four different occasions.

Conclusion

Nigerians were looking forward, to a more transparent and accountable 2023 election. However, with what just played out at the National Assembly last week on the Electoral Bill, many citizens are likely to be disenchanted with the electoral process and refuse to register to vote, and even if they did register, they may not come out to vote or even participate in the entire electoral process. Many Nigerian youths are of the opinion that electronic balloting and electronic transmission of results hold the key to solving the opaque and fraudulent collation process. Unfortunately, they may have to wait for a longer time, before that dream is realised.

Jide Ojo, Columnist, TV Show Host, Author, Development Consultant and Public Affairs Analyst
Totota, Bong County-A faith based humanitarian organization "Tabitha Foundation for Jesus Christ" has broken ground for over four hundred and six thousand ($4,6000.00USD) United States Dollars Health facility in Totota Lower Bong County.

Tabitha is a biblical name which is in Acts chapter 9:36 of the Holy Bible which says: 'In Joppa there was a woman named Tabitha, who was a believer. ( Her name in Greek is Dorcas, meaning "a deer.") She spent all her time doing good and helping the poor.

Speaking at the ground breaking ceremony of the Health Center on July 17, 2021 in Totota in Lower Bong County, the program manager for Tabitha Foundation for Jesus Christ, Amos E. S. Smith said the decision of the organization to do health center project in Totota is based on a request from the citizens begging their organization to help them as citizens to built a public health center in the area.

According to Mr. Smith, the citizens in their request said the current health facility in Totota can not host the growing health need of patients in the area.

The Tabitha Foundation for Jesus Christ program manager said their organization is hugely involved in humanitarian assistance in Bong County.

He further said the faith based humanitarian organization is currently working in five of Bong County seven political Districts, adding we are doing different projects in those Districts.

According to Mr. Smith, the Totota Health Center when completed it will be name the "Mary Horton Memorial Health Center" on ground that the land which the facility is being built on belong to Mary Horton who is now a deceased.

"When we were arranging for this place Ma Mary Horton last request she made to us was that the Health Center should be name in her honor and we agreed; so this health facility will be name Mary Horton Memorial Health Center," Mr. Smith noted.

Mr. Smith further revealed that the architecture design of the health facility is being provided by the Ministry of Health, noting that Ministry of Health regional engineer for Bong, Nimba and Lofa Counties is playing a supervisory role in the construction of center.

Also speaking at the groundbreaking ceremony in Totota, the Chief Executive Officer of 'Tabitha Foundation for Jesus Christ', Representative Edward Kerfiah revealed that even though Totota which is in Salala District#6 doesn't fall under electoral District#5 which he represents at the 54th National Legislature, but said it was necessary to construct a health center for the citizens in area, because they too deserve a better health care delivery system as citizens of his District.

Rep. Kerfiah clarified that the project is void of politics, noting a kind giving to the people of Salala District.

The People Unification Party (PUP) Lawmaker at the same time called on local authorities in Salala District#6 to monitor the project and guide the ongoing construction.

For his part, the health officer of the Bong County Health Team, Dr. Jonathan Flomo said the health team is happy for the initiative.

According to Dr. Flomo, data from the Reporting Platform of the Ministry of Health on the Totota Clinic from April to June is 287 deliveries, adding if you see the facility which I am talking about, it doesn't represent Totota.

According to Dr. Flomo, the Reporting Platform of the Ministry of Health which is quarterly done, also captured the number 248 pregnant women and 2,74 children who attend the health facility from April to June 2021.

The Bong County Health Team Officer said he decided to bring those data because some unscrupulous individual have been involved in some irresponsible comments that why the health facility should be built in Totota.

Dr. Flomo pledged the Ministry of Health commitment and thank Rep. Kerfiah for the initiative.

According to Dr. Flomo, Totota has the population of 27,209 persons in Lower Bong County.

te remarks, citizens of the District#6 thanked Rep. Kerfiah and his family for their swift respond to their concern through his organization Tabitha Foundation for Jesus Christ.

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The Salala District citizens, at the same time revealed that it is the first of it kind for a sitting Lawmaker in the County to provide such relief for citizens outside of his District.

However, the citizens pledged their commitment to supporting the project, while turning it as a dream come true.

The Totota Health Center groundbreaking ceremony was attended by Nimba County Senator Jeremiah Koung, Margibi County Senator J. Emmanuel Nuquay, Nimba County Representative and Chairman of the PUP, Samuel Kogar, Lofa County Representative Clarence Massaquoi, Bong County District#3 Representative J. Marvin Cole, former Deputy Speaker and Bong County District#1 Representative Tokpah J. Mulbah, former Bong County District#3 Representative George S. Mulbah amongst others.

Meanwhile, construction work immediately begun on the facility few minutes after the groundbreaking.

The Totota Health Center groundbreaking ceremony generated or raised little over two hundred and ten thousand United States Dollars in cash.
Senior Court Reporter

BUSINESSMAN Frank Buyanga wants the Constitutional Court to overturn a Supreme Court judgment and find that the biological father of a child born out of wedlock does in fact have an automatic right to joint custody and guardianship, with the courts just deciding the details of how that right can be exercised in individual cases.

The legal saga over the rights of fathers of children born out of wedlock started last year when the High Court, in a judgment by Justice Happias Zhou, found that constitutional provisions on the rights of children overturned the common law position that the mother of a child born out of wedlock had sole custody and guardianship.

The judge then ordered that the Registrar of the High Court should appoint a social worker to recommend how this joint custody and guardianship should operate in the particular case of the son of Mr Buyanga and his former lover Chantelle Tatenda Muteswa.

That report would then be submitted to a High Court judge who would make the final order on the nuts and bolts of the joint custody and guardianship in the case of this boy.

Ms Muteswa appealed. Last month the Supreme Court agreed in part with Justice Zhou, finding that the constitutional provisions on child rights could allow joint custody and guardianship, but only if this was in the best interests of the child in question. The three judges disagreed there was an automatic right for fathers of children born out of wedlock to have joint custody and guardianship, the critical point being the best interests of each child in each set of circumstances.

The Supreme Court then set aside Justice Zhou's order concerning how the details of this joint arrangement would operate and referred the case back to the High Court so that there could instead be an investigation whether the best interests of the son of Mr Buyanga and Ms Muteswa would be best served by joint custody and guardianship.

It is this decision that Mr Buyanga now wants to appeal to the Constitutional Court and to have a ruling that grants him, and by inference all biological fathers of children born out of wedlock, an automatic right to joint custody and guardianship rather than retain the case-by-case approach in the Supreme Court ruling.

Buyanga, in his constitutional appeal prepared by lawyer Mr Admire Rubaya, believes the investigation ordered by the Supreme Court violated what he believes is his constitutional right to joint custody and guardianship, regardless of what any court might decide about his suitability to exercise that right.

He said that if his ex-lover frustrates the conduct of the ordered enquiry, it will automatically mean that she will continue taking custody and guardianship of the minor child.

Buyanga also appealed against a Supreme Court order that requires him to return the child to Zimbabwe from South Africa before any of his cases are heard in court.

He then sought leave for his matters to be heard before the child is brought back to Zimbabwe saying even if he has dirty hands, he has a right to be heard before any court as enshrined in the Constitution and this was not dependent on compliance with the law. The Supreme Court order took away his constitutional entitlement of access to courts, he said.

The question of condonation and dirty hands arises from a second strand in the legal saga. Last year High Court judge Justice Jacob Manzunzu ordered Mr Buyanga to return the boy within 24 hours to Ms Muteswa or Waterfalls police.

This was after Mr Buyanga had allegedly snatched the child from Ms Muteswa's custody.

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Mr Buyanga appealed against the High Court order but never followed up the appeal and it was eventually struck off the Supreme Court roll.

He then applied for condonation of his delays and reinstatement of his appeal, but last month, after the appeal in the other strand, Justice Tendai Uchena ruled that he wanted to see the boy in his court before he could rule on this application in the second strand of legal cases.

Opposing the application for condonation, Ms Muteswa had argued through lawyer Munyaradzi Bwanya that Mr Buyanga had failed to obey court orders to return the child to the custody of his mother, to hand the child's passport over to the registrar, and not to take the child out of Zimbabwe without the consent of Ms Muteswa. It was also alleged Mr Buyanga was a fugitive from justice and wanted by the police over allegations of kidnapping the child.
Herald Reporter

Zimbabwe is in the process of developing fiscal incentives for solar-powered vehicles, batteries and other related accessories,

Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Professor Paul Mavima made the remarks during a virtual address of the 4th Africa Day, High Level Political Forum running under the theme 'The Green Recovery: Renewable energy, digitalisation and nature-based solutions for inclusion and resilience in Africa.'

Minister Mavima said the liberalisation of the electricity market has resulted in the Government granting power generation licences to a number of Independent Power Producers (IPPs) to encourage investments by private players.

"Zimbabwe at present is mainly dependent on petroleum, coal, hydroelectric power and fuel-wood to meet its energy needs.

"More than 60 percent of our population still rely on solid biomass fuel for thermal needs and have no access to clean energy sources yet our country has vast renewable energy resources such as solar, hydro, biomass and to a limited extent wind and geothermal, that to date have largely remained unexploited," said Minister Mavima.

"A number of programmes have been implemented to promote the adoption of renewable energy technologies such as National Energy Policy (2012), Sustainable Energy for All Programme, The National Biogas Programme, Rural Electrification (using solar mini-grids) and Climate Policy (2017) among others.

"The country is in the process of developing fiscal incentives for solar powered vehicles and has incentives in place for solar batteries and other related accessories.

"The liberalisation of the electricity market has resulted in the Government granting power generation licences to a number of IPPs in an effort to encourage new investments especially by private investors in the sector," said Minister Mavima.

He said the Rural Electrification Agency (REA) installed 525 mini-grid systems at rural institutions like schools and clinics and each system has a capacity of 0.84kW giving a total of 441kW.

Minister Mavima said during the fiscal year 2019-2020, 100km of transmission lines were installed and 210km of distribution lines were installed.

"As of 31 July 2019, the Zimbabwe Energy Regulatory Authority (ZERA) had issued more than 77 power generation licences with 42 being solar power projects.

"These initiatives are aimed at improving the share of renewable energy in the overall energy mix and addressing issues of climate change, enhanced social welfare through community development, gender equality and employment promotion," he said.

Minister Mavima said the National Renewable Energy Policy launched by the Government in 2019 is aimed at increasing access to clean and affordable energy.

"The Policy sets overall targets for renewable energy in the country based on the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) as one of its primary objectives in line with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

"Under this policy, the country targets to improve the installed capacity of renewable energy excluding large scale hydropower from the current 5 percent to 27 percent by the year 2030," said Minister Mavima.

He said in Zimbabwe, the private sector is actively involved in the promotion of the green economy, in line with SDG 7.3 which seeks to double the global rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030.

Minister Mavima said the Confederation of Zimbabwean Industries (CZI) has coordinated an energy efficiency award which is meant to promote more efficient use of energy.

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"CZI also has a clean and green Initiative which is meant to promote sustainable and environmentally friendly practices at enterprises level, and this includes the use of clean energy.

"A number of businesses across all economic sectors are proactively investing in renewable energy which is consistent with SDG 7.2, which seeks to substantially increase the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix," said Minister Mavima. He said the main challenges to the agenda of renewable energy production was resources, encouraging public private partnerships in this regard.

"I would like to encourage fellow African countries not only to prioritise the promotion of renewable energy but also to harness the advantages brought about by digitalisation as we build forward better in this Covid-19 pandemic," said Minister Mavima.
Beitbridge Bureau

THE Government has released $20 million in devolution funds to Beitbridge Municipality as part of its thrust to capacitate local authorities to meet their service delivery obligations.

Beitbridge town clerk Mr Loud Ramakgapola said yesterday that the funds will be use to procure a grader and to build a classroom block for a new primary school to be located in Kwalu 2 suburb (West of Mfelandawonye) and other service delivery obejectives.

"This is a timely intervention, we intend to use the money to construct a new classroom block in Kwalu suburb, west of the Mfelandawonye area, and to also procure a grader.

"You will note that having our own earth moving equipment is critical in terms of implementing infrastructure development projects like roads, housing, and business land development," said Mr Ramakgapola.

So far, Beitbridge Municipality has received a cumulative $31, 3 million in devolution funds in the last three years.

Mr Ramakgapola said they had procured a refuse compactor truck for $2,9 million, a backhoe loader (TLB) for $1,1 million, and a water and sanitation vehicle for $2, 2 million.

In addition, he said they made more payments for a sewer jetting machine ($19 million) and a water and sanitation vehicle.

"A total of $700 000 was used to upgrade its Information Communication and Technology facilities and buying other office equipment," he said.

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Mr Ramakgapola said they had also spent some of the devolution funds in boosting the council's capacity to deal with solid waste management and addressing water and sanitation-related service delivery issues.

Prior to the latest move by the National Government, the local authority has been struggling to meet its obligations to the ever ballooning population due to a limited revenue base.

The town currently has an estimated 70 000 and plays host to at least 15 000 who use Beitbridge border post under normal circumstances.

It is understood that the city fathers are planning to buy a tipper and a Compressor under the same devolution initiative.

"We are looking at also improving on how we handle our solid waste management initiatives," said Mr Ramakgapola.

Beitbridge residents and businesses are reportedly producing an estimated 1000 tonnes of solid waste monthly and the local authority is only able to collect between 700 and 800 tonnes.

The town clerk said recently that they require a total of US$382 000 to fix the current sewer reticulation problems which have become eternal as the local authority battles to provide quality services to the ever-growing population.

The current sewer facilities were constructed in the last two decades to accommodate less than 3 000 properties.

However, the city fathers have been struggling to match the town's property growth and the provision of adequate infrastructure for water and sewer reticulation.
Police in Jotsholo in Matabeleland North have arrested a 34-year-old woman for allegedly dumping her newly-born baby.

The woman is alleged to have buried the baby in sand with some of its limbs exposed leading to its discovery.

National police spokesperson Assistant commissioner Paul Nyathi confirmed the arrest and said investigations were still underway.

"Police in Jotsholo arrested a woman (34) in connection with a case of infanticide which occurred on 24 June 2021. The infant's body which was in its advanced stage of decomposition was discovered buried in sand with the skull and hands slightly exposed, near Mahusekwa River on 14 July 2021. Investigations are underway," he said.

In a related incident, in April this year, a 29-year-old Zimbabwean woman drowned her newly-born baby girl in a 20-litre bucket of boiling water in South Africa.

Wendy Tapiwa Chipo of Rietfonten appeared before the Brits Magistrates Court in Gauteng province facing murder charges.

National Prosecuting Authority's (NPA) spokesperson for North Gauteng, Ms Lumka Mahanjana said the offence was committed on March 16.

She said prior to the infanticide, the woman had allegedly tried to abort the pregnancy without success.

"It is alleged that Chipo tried to abort her baby, when that failed and the baby came out alive, she dipped her in a 20-litre bucket of boiling water," said Ms Mahanjana.
Senior Court Reporter

ENGINEER Julius Mapipi, who is the State's star witness in the matter in which businessman Farai Jere, his company Helcraw Electricals, two engineers -- Leonard Chisina and Freeman Chikonzo, are accused of defrauding ZESA on US$3,5million in a smart meters supply deal, yesterday told the court that the process was done above board and there was no misrepresentation on the part of the four.

Eng Mapipi told the court that Factory Acceptance Tests (FAT) were conducted in the United Kingdom where the smart meters passed the tests as was specified in the contract signed between Helcraw and ZESA.

He told the court that they used advanced automated system to conduct the FAT and that no one falsified information in the reports thereafter. Eng Mapipi told the court that he was part of the team from ZETDC that travelled to the UK to undertake the FAT saying they did everything according to the project contract's specifications.

"We went into warehouse and we picked the smart meters and took them where there was a test bench and the test were run.

"To me it was an advanced testing system. All the meters were tested for accuracy and all the meters passed," he said.

Eng Mapipi, in his testimony, denied ever being coerced into signing the FAT report produced by Jere and his company after visiting the United Kingdom, as the State alleges.

He also distanced Jere from a second report that was prepared in Harare upon their return from United Kingdom.

Eng Mapipi also said that they were not forced to sign the report as all the two reports' contents were factual and devoid of any misrepresentations.

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He said what was contained in the reports were a true reflection of what transpired when they went to conduct the FAT in United Kingdom.

Eng Mapipi, in his testimony, told the court that the report which they signed in UK was prepared by the manufacturer of the smart meters -- Secure Meters.

"After day three of the tests he (Jere) brought an FAT report and asked us to sign.

"We saw that it mentioned things that had happened and we asked to add that more test will be done when they come to Zimbabwe.

"Jere was angry and the environment was tense when we signed the report. What is contained in the report was a true reflection of what had happened. It was factual and there was no misrepresentation," he said.

Eng Mapipi exonerated Chisina and Chikonzo for any wrong doing saying they were working as a team when they travelled for the FAT.

Another State witness, Engineer Howard Choga, who was project's steering committee chairman, also testified in the matter.

He emphasised that FAT test can be done away from the factory, as was the case in Jere's case. Jere and his company were being represented by advocate Lewis Uriri who is being instructed by lawyer Mr Tinofara Hove while Chikonzo and Chisira are being represented by lawyer Mrs Monalisa Mavis Sachikonye-Ushe.

Mrs Tendai Shonhai and Mr Tafara Chirambira appeared for the State while regional magistrate Mrs Marehwanazvo Gofa presided.
AFTER some years in the political wilderness, former Zanu PF youth secretary Cde Kudzai Chipanga, who was last week readmitted into the party says he is ready to play his part as a foot soldier to ensure that the party reaches the five million voters milestone.

Although he is coy to speak about events leading to his expulsion as part of the G40 faction, he is enthusiastic about his return to the revolutionary home which has over the past few years been adding more members with each passing week.

"By being readmitted, I automatically assume the role of a foot soldier and join other cadres in the recruitment drive, starting from cell or village where I reside here in Rusape. Five million votes are achievable," he said in a telephone interview.

After having been cut loose from Zanu PF in 2017, he kept knocking at the doors of the revolutionary party. He was re-admitted to Zanu-PF along with other former party senior officials.

"I would like to thank His Excellency the President Cde ED Mnangagwa and the entire party leadership for finally accepting me back in the revolutionary party where I belong.

"I also thank Zanu PF Manicaland Province, my home province for the support they had given me. I appreciate," said Cde Chipanga.

In the intervals of trying to rejoin the party, Mr Chipanga turned to farming, finding comfort in contributing to the country's economic fortunes in the bowels of mother earth.

"I have been tied up in agriculture especially in tobacco production. I had said to myself since I have been suspended from working for my country on the political front, I still have an obligation to work for my country hence I went for tobacco production so that I play a role in the economic sector.

"At the same time, the President is on record calling for production, production and more production, so I was influenced by the Presidential call as well," Cde Chipanga said.

Now above 35 years, Chipanga no longer fits the grade in the youth league and even if he did, the party conditions for his return stipulate that he cannot hold any position for the next three years.
Herald Reporter

Covid-19 containment measures are not an attempt by the Government to curtail the rights of its citizens, Foreign Affairs and International Trade Minister Ambassador Frederick Shava has said.

He was speaking during the first resumed virtual briefing by members of the national Covid-19 taskforce to members of the diplomatic corps and international partners accredited here.

Zimbabwe has received rave reviews for its Covid-19 response and special praise from the World Health Organisation (WHO) for the way it has confronted the global pandemic.

The plaudits have come from China, South Africa, as well as Australia.

"We are resuming our monthly briefings in order to keep each other updated on the Covid-19 and humanitarian situation in the country," said Minister Shava.

"The country is currently witnessing an unprecedented surge in Covid-19 cases and related deaths which prompted the President to declare Level-4 lockdown restrictions on 29 June 2021 for a period of two weeks and a further extension by another two weeks on 13 July 2021.

"These restrictions, which include limiting the numbers of people attending funerals, revised working and business hours, and an extended curfew period, among other measures are aimed at curbing the spread of the Covid-19 virus in order to preserve lives.

"It is important that these measures be understood in that context and should not be viewed as attempts by Government to curtail the rights of its citizens," said Minister Shava.

On vaccination rollout, he said the Government was determined to inoculate at least 60 percent of Zimbabwe's population in order to achieve herd immunity.

Minister Shava assured that the process of procuring more vaccines is continuing in order to sustain a robust vaccine rollout programme in view of the current spike.

"In the light of the steady progress achieved thus far, we call upon our partners to continue supporting these national efforts and ensure that all these gains that the country has made to date are not reversed."

"Allow me to caution that while the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic rage on, we still have to deal with residual humanitarian needs emanating from the disastrous effects of Cyclone Idai and the drought situation of previous years, in spite of the very good 2020-2021 agricultural season.

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"We therefore count on your continued support viz-a-vis Zimbabwe's overall domestic and international humanitarian appeal.

"Let me assure you, Excellencies, that Government remains true to its commitment to transparency at all levels in the handling and distribution of all donations received," said Minister Shava.

He said the Government was grateful for the continued support rendered by all our cooperating partners, the private sector, individual citizens and the Diaspora, most of whom were represented in yesterday's briefing.

"The invaluable support has included a wide array of goods and services from Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to medical equipment, supplies and consumables, Covid-19 vaccines, service vehicles in the form of ambulances, ICT equipment and related consumables, capacity building initiatives, infrastructure rehabilitation, clothing, food, medicines, psycho-social support and funding."

Minister Shava said the assistance has complemented Government programmes and initiatives to fight the pandemic.

"The pandemic continues to claim many lives, destroy livelihoods and disrupt economies worldwide.

"With your support and collaboration, Zimbabwe has registered some successes that we are witnessing in its Covid-19 response," said Minister Shava.
Agri  Insight

THIS past week I was talking to the Manicaland crop and livestock officer, Mrs Phillipa Rwambiwa, who informed me that her province had since completed training of farmers and extension officers on proper ways of rolling out the Pfumvudza/Intwasa concept that was pivotal in the nation's attainment of a bumper harvest last season.

Manicaland province has also set October 1 as the deadline for the completion of input distribution under Government -initiated programmes -- Pfumvudza and Agro-Yield, with farmers currently busy preparing their plots ahead of the 2021/22 cropping season, Mrs Rwambiwa hinted.

Manicaland is just one of the many provinces that have already gotten the ball rolling in terms of preparations for the forthcoming 2021/22 farming season and from the intelligence I am gathering there will be an influx of debutante Pfumvudza farmers this coming season.

Naturally, many people have realised the benefits that come with the concept and will also want to be part of the winning team.

It is, however, crucial for such farmers to do things the right way lest we end up with very big numbers of participants, but without nothing to show for it in terms of yields. First-time farmers need to consult their agricultural extension officers so that they can be enrolled for training.

Training of both farmers and extension officers is currently underway countrywide to enhance their capacity to roll out Pfumvudza effectively.

Farmers must realise that requirements for the successful roll out of the concept do not always fall under the 'one-size-fits-all' bracket as some of the training can be tailor-made for different individuals' tastes, hence the need to receive expert instruction before and during the programme.

Farmers intending to implement the concept under the Government's programme should also remember to approach their Agritex offices for registration so that they get inputs and extension services that come with the package while those doing it independently should also be free to approach Agritex officers for assistance.

Though regarded as labour intensive by many, the concept has proved helpful to resource-constrained farmers that do not have draft power or mechanised implements such as tractors and rippers to use for land preparation.

Of course, highly -mechanised farmers may not need to produce all their crops using the concept, but can just do it on a small piece of land lest the weather proves to be not so friendly in the absence of irrigation.

Generally, the majority of farmers across the country are not adequately resourced to irrigate their crops, which makes Pfumvudza a very reliable option for them since the concept allows them to make the most of the little moisture they may chance to have.

The fact that everything from planting to fertilisation takes place in the planting station dug during land preparation gives the concept some edge over conventional farming methods in that the hole traps the moisture that is brought by the rains and keeps it for plant use.

It is exciting to note that this year farmers will not face the uphill task of gathering materials to use as mulch from long distances following the high prevalence of biomass that was created by the above normal rains that fell across the country.

There is a lot of vegetative matter and grasses that farmers can harvest to use for mulching, which will make it easy for them to trap moisture as well as suppress weeds that normally compete with plants for nutrients.

The other advantage with mulching is that the material later decomposes to form organic nutrients needed by plants, so the concept takes care of a number of issues that should under ordinary circumstances give the farmer a few anxious moments.

Mulching will also allow farmers to conserve the residual moisture currently in the soil after the 2020/21 season that had lots of rains.

For now, farmers should be focusing on securing inputs starting from the seed, fertilisers (both basal and top dressing) so that whatever quantities they will get from Government will not fall short of meeting their targets. The other important activity farmers should not forget to undertake now is soil testing so that they know the pH levels of their soils and correct them in time.

If the soils need potash levels to be corrected, then there will be time for the farmers to apply lime and plant on soils that will not disappoint them.

Liming must be done three months before planting.

It is also necessary for farmers to start digging their holes now so that the manure they put inside will get time to complete decomposition to allow plants to utilise the nutrients when they germinate.

On the one hand, once the hole-digging is completed and the holes have been covered, farmers must remember to fence off the fields from roaming livestock so that the planting stations are not trampled upon.

One other important thing the farmers must remember is to practise crop rotation and for this one they need to engage their extension officers for advice so that they do not destroy the soil's production capacity.

Crop rotation will also allow them to manage some pests and diseases that normally have a negative impact on yields.

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Pfumvudza/Intwasa is most likely to be over-subscribed this season after many farmers saw how those that produced crops using the concept performed last season.

In all cases, it is the farmer that benefits because from the two plots that they are encouraged to use, one will take care of their domestic needs while the other goes to the Grain Marketing Board (GMB) to beef up the strategic grain reserves of the country.

That portion does not go free, of course, as the farmer is paid even if they have used inputs from Government.

The Pfumvudza/Intwasa programme is creating a win-win situation for both Government and farmers because both parties are walking out richer from the deal, which is benefiting the economy too.

And given such a scenario, it becomes crucial for all the parties included to play ball and make the next outing even more successful than the previous one when everyone was still at the learning stage.

The success of the concept and survival into the future, however, hinges on the fact that farmers must not embrace it because they are getting inputs from Government, but for its being a system that allows them to salvage yields even if a season is bad.

The fact that it climate-proofs farming operations should be the biggest factor attracting farmers to it and not the inputs because it may die a natural death once the inputs are no longer there.
The Local Government Minister Jean-Marie Vianney Gatabazi has assured the public that there are enough food supplies for residents of Kigali and eight districts under lockdown, saying that none will go hungry because of the lockdown.

The remarks were made on Sunday, July 18 at the National Strategic Reserve centre in Kicukiro district.

He was commenting ahead of the food distribution process for vulnerable families under the lockdown that was about to be launched in Kigali city and eight other districts.

Gatabazi asserted that the food supplies are coming from the government's stock reserved for emergency situations.

"The government always has a reserve stock for emergency situations, notably the lockdown, disasters and others," he explained.

This is one stock, but there are other reserve stocks in each province whose role is to be used during emergency situations. Others are located in Nyabihu and Nyagatare district among others, he exemplified.

"Therefore we do not think that there will be a citizen who will go hungry because of the lockdown," noted the local government minister.

However, he also called for solidarity among the population, non-governmental and civil society organizations among other institutions which can support the government in this ongoing process.

"Do not wait for the government to come and provide for your resident if you can afford to donate something. We also call for other organizations to work with the government in this due course," he urged.

When The New Times visited the reserve centre, different vehicles from districts having reserve centres were present to demand what is missing in their stocks and supply them upcountry.

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The food supplies were composed of maize, rice and beans which are the basic meal components in the Rwandan culture. Milk was also added especially for children and maternal mothers.

The Local government minister stipulated that figures are being put together to know the exact number of beneficiaries, but asserted that Kigali city beneficiaries account to 210,000 families, but did not disclose the food quantity because the distribution process is still ongoing till the end of the lockdown.

Those who will need more supplies will pass through the grassroots authorities to report the need and get assistance or make a call to 1520 for Gasabo residents, 4575 for Kicukiro residents and 4025 for citizens living in Nyarugenge district.

The Minister concluded hailing the residents of the regions under lockdown for their vigilance and commitment shown for the few days under the lockdown, but urged for more complacency especially for some people who are still visiting one another in the neighbourhoods, and those violating other Covid-19 measures.

The food distribution process takes place in the regions under lockdown to help the vulnerable families whose members could not work as their region is under the lockdown to contain the surge in cases of Covid-19 which is at a high record due to the delta variant present in Rwanda.

Jean-Marie Vianney Gatabazi, Minister for Local Government during the interview with the media.
The Association of Liberian Journalists in the Americas (ALJA) says Montserrado County Senator, Abraham Darius Dillon'S recent admission that he lied when he claimed to have flown economy class from Ghana to the United States during a recent trip, is a triumph for objective and independent journalism in Liberia.

The Association says in a society where journalists are often treated as cannon fodders and subjected to ridicule and character assassination by politicians and their supporters, while engaged in their reportorial duties, the independent Front Page Africa (FPA) Newspaper's recent publication about the Senator's falsehood signals that Liberian journalists can continue to be proud of the important role they continue to play in the country.

In a press release issued July 15, ALJA commended the paper and its editorial staff for their persistence in unearthing the Senator's lies; and ensuring that he is held accountable by his supporters and the Liberian electorates.

ALJA maintains the exposure has once again elevated the paper's professional profile; and has further proven why it remains Liberia's preeminent investigative newspaper.

The Association says while Front Page Africa and the Liberian media will not always be accurate, they must remain robust, neutral, and honest in seeking the truth in their coverage of news events in Liberia irrespective of the many challenges journalists and media institutions in the country contend with regularly.

ALJA lauded the Liberian media for remaining steadfast in unearthing societal ills in the country.

The Association asserted that after days of denial following allegations that he flew business class from Ghana to the US for a recent private trip, Senator Dillion on Tuesday, July 13, publicly admitted that he lied and apologized to Liberians for his dishonesty.

The Senator confessed live on the Spoon Talk Show program, that he deliberately misrepresented the truth, because he was reportedly sensitive to the ongoing hardship and difficulties facing Liberians in the wake of the deadly Corona virus crisis in the country.

ALJA says the fallout over Senator Dillion's admission is a cautionary tale that leaders who sacrifice their integrity also, risk losing their most precious tool.

Meanwhile, the Association says while it unequivocally condemns the Montserrado County Senator for his recent act of dishonesty, it welcomes his apology and his public expression of remorse for the shame and embarrassment he caused his supporters and the people of Liberia.

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The Association called on Liberians to demand from other politicians and government officials the same accountability and transparency as they are now doing to Senator Dillion.

ALJA says the tendency of many Liberians to engage in selective outrage, criticizing those they oppose for wrongdoing while defending those they support who conduct themselves similarly, is doing great harm to the country.

The US-based diaspora organization says Liberia's social, political, and economic transformation require leaders with upright character and moral integrity, who are willing to lead by example.

ALJA is a conglomeration of current and retired Liberian journalists residing in the Americas. It is a 501c (3) non-profit organization.

The Association was founded in 1998 with the objectives of fostering companionship amongst its members and their American counterparts.

Additionally, the Association is committed to advancing press freedom through media capacity building and the fostering of good governance in Liberia through media advocacy.
... ... Pastor Beyan Discloses

The Senior Pastor of the GSA Road Church of Christ Alfred Beyan has urged members of the National Legislature to redirect their additional 15 thousand United States Dollars intended for constituency engagement, to the fight against the Coronavirus pandemic.

The Lawmakers are now receiving their additional 15k to total the amount to 30k that was budgeted for by the government for legislative engagements.

But Pastor Beyan said such decision, if taken by every lawmaker, who will received their constituency engagement funding, to purchase coronavirus materials, it will be in the best interest of the citizenry.

Speaking over the weekend in an interview, in Paynesville following his return to the Country from Ghana ,the Liberian Cleric said it will be bad for the legislators to use their additional 15 thousands for political gains when Liberians are dying, due to the lack of drugs and other medical provisions at some health facilities.

He further urged the various district electorates to observe their legislators with key eyes, relating to the uses of their respective legislative engagement funding.

The Liberian Cleric said it was unfortunate for the Lawmakers to take from the Liberian people money 30k for their political interest, when the country's health sector is face with serious challenge .

He further disclosed that the action by the legislators has proven that they are insensitive to the wellbeing of the citizens who vote them into power.

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" What we are seeing in Liberia on the part of our legislature is really disheartening, during this coronavirus time ,our people are dying, when people are sick , you do not have drugs , oxygen and lots of things. I think the 30 thousands for legislative engagement is not in the right direction at this point in time. If they received the money, they should use it for health purposes in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic" Pastor Beyan noted.

The Liberian Cleric said the legislators are the direct representative of the people and they should enact laws that will be in the interest of the Liberian people, noting that their actiion is in the opposite direction.

The action by the legislators to take 30 thousands each as a legislative engagement during this critical time of the country's history, according to Pastor Beyah is disappointing .

"I think this is injustice to the Liberian people , some of our people cannot afford to buy those coronavirus preventive materials , including food , while national leaders continue to share money amongst themselves" he said.

Pastor Beyan said as an advocate for social justice, the attitude by the lawmakers is wrong, thus challenging those lawmakers not to use the money for their personal interest.

"Let them turn the money over to the executive to be used to buy drugs and other health supplies in meeting the health needs of our people, during this pandemic" the cleric noted.

He however encouraged Liberians to adhere to the health protocols as a means of preventing the spread of the coronavirus.
The producers of the world's most important beverage crop - coffee - are not getting enough income to lead decent lives and prosper, a concern that threatens their future and that of the crop, experts have warned.

This a pressing issue that was discussed by the 3rd World Coffee Producers' Forum (WCPF) - held virtually - hosted by Rwanda on Thursday, July 15, 2021.

It served as the base to develop guidelines, to be approved in the in-person gathering in Kigali, Rwanda in July 2022, for the creation of National Coffee Sustainability Plans that will help producing countries design and implement comprehensive coffee policies to secure the future of a coffee sector where coffee producers are prosperous and coffee production is sustainable.

The virtual conference held on Thursday, gathered more than 2,000 participants from 70 countries including coffee producers, industry representatives, government officials, multilateral agencies, coffee business dealers from across the world to help understand and seek solutions for many issues threatening farmers' livelihoods and coffee production.

At the conference, discussions centred on the theme "Coffee Farmers' Prosperity; supporting coffee growers to further their social and economic development, and support sustainable inter-generational growth, success, and opportunity in the coffee sector.

Indeed, according to Coffee Barometer 2018, while coffee is increasingly lucrative with a retail value of $200 billion in 2015, less than 10 percent of the aggregate wealth stays in the producing countries.

This biennial report published by the Coffee Barometer Collective and includes Hivos, Oxfam Belgium, Solidaridad and Conservation International noted that the figure comprises the income of farmers, exporters and government agencies involved in growing the beans and exporting them internationally.

Such imbalance, it noted, illustrates the pressing need for transparency of transactions in order to achieve re-distribution, pointing out that a sustainable coffee sector more equally distributes proceeds to farmers.

Whereas coffee companies are busy conquering markets, cutting costs and driving efficiency, coffee farmers are struggling to get their fair share of the total value added in the coffee industry, the report indicated.

Verediyana Uwamariya, a coffee farmer in Nyaruguru District, is one of the farmers struggling to achieve economic prosperity as the income she gets from this crop is inadequate.

The farmer told The New Times that production per coffee tree is about 2.5 kilogrammes of cherries while a farmer gets about Rwf250 a kilogramme, adding that; overall, farm productivity is low compared to the cost of production.

"I invest much of my income in nurturing coffee trees so that they give yield. The proceeds I get are small that I cannot improve my livelihoods," she said, citing expenses on grass mulching for her small coffee plantation on which she harvests around 200 kilogrammes of cherries per season.

Speaking during the above-mentioned forum, Gerardine Mukeshimana, Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources said that coffee production has been at the core of farm families' livelihoods for so many generations, adding that it is also the source of cash income for over 350,000 households that are operating on 42,000 hectares of land in Rwanda.

Last year, Mukeshimana said, coffee as a commodity was the fourth contributor to Rwanda's foreign exchange earnings, which means it plays a tremendous role in improving the country's trade balance, but also its economic performance.

However, she said, the processing segment of the coffee sector, and inter-generational and sustainable coffee industry requires that those at the base, especially coffee producers have a shared prosperity, Mukeshimana observed.

"As they currently struggle to keep up with the increased production costs and climate change, export, processing, wholesale, and retailing companies need to include the producers as full and equal partners," she said.

"The proportion for value-added needs to equally trickle down to the coffee producers as it does for the downstream players so that the coffee producers and the next generations can have incentives to continue investing in coffee production and maintain the value chains," she said.

Hailemariam Desalegn, Board Chair of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said that more than 25 million families grow coffee all over the world, most of them smallholder producers, but expressed concern that they are grappling with small income.

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"Although coffee farmers are so beloved around the world [because they produce the sought after coffee], they still struggle to make a decent living. In many countries they can't even cover their cost of production, and face every day deeper and deeper challenges," he said, calling for an approach that ensures increased income and improved welfare for coffee farmers.

In his presentation on the prosperity of coffee producers, Prof Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University in the US, said that all over the world, there is 'the continuing poverty of coffee growers'.

"Because while coffee is the world's most important beverage, and the world's most healthy beverage, ... it is not by itself providing the kind of decent livelihoods and prosperity for the millions of millions of farmers engaged in growing coffee," Sachs said.

He said that that the challenge is to help set a new global course of policy of companies, governments of the United Nations that can address the issue and ensure the prosperity of coffee farmers.
Egypt's President Abdel Fattah el Sisi exchanged greetings with several Arab leaders on Monday on the occasion of Eid al Adha.

In a phone call with Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al Thani, Both leaders wished the Arab and Islamic nations more progress and prosperity.

Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady also noted that Sisi phoned Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Nawaf Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah, as he wished Kuwait progress and prosperity.

Meanwhile, the Kuwaiti emir wished Egypt peace, security and stability.

President Sisi also greeted, in a phone call, President Barham Salih of Iraq, and Tunisian President Kais Saied.

Rady said that the Tunisian leader wished Egypt and its government more progress, prosperity and peace.

Eid Al-Adha is the most significant feast for Muslims worldwide, as it marks the end of the Hajj (pilgrimage) to the Holy city of Mecca.

The Adha honors the day when Prophet Ibrahim -peace be upon him- was ordered to sacrifice his son, Ismael, and because of his obedience, God substituted Ismael with a ram, and this day has become a feast for Muslims since that day.

"And We have ransomed you with a mighty sacrifice" - Qur'an 37:10

In Islam, the sacrificed animal during Al-Adha is divided into parts, in order for the animal's owner to be able to give a share of the meat to the needy people.

Egypt TodayEgypt Today
press release

Hawks' Serious Corruption Investigation in Pretoria apprehended three suspects, two males and a female and charged them for corruption and extortion on Saturday, 17 July 2021.

On Saturday, the investigation team swiftly responded to a suspected extortion incident reported involving the 37-year-old Boitumelo Anna Kope employed by the Department of Home Affairs in Pretoria as a call centre agent.

It is reported that Kope allegedly demanded an amount of R250 000 from the complainant claiming that she will rectify the alleged fraudulent document for the smooth and quicker citizenship application process.

Kope was arrested in possession of the R15 000 entrapment cash together with her accomplice taxi operators, Wilson Modike Mohale (25) and Sibusiso Jones Tshabalala (32) at Bloed Mall in Pretoria.

The Pretoria Magistrates' Court provisionally withdrew the charges against Mohale and Tshabalala pending investigation, however Kope was remanded in custody until next Monday where she will apply for formal bail.

The Provincial Head in Gauteng, Major General Ebrahim Kadwa applauded the investigation team for the immediate response and urge the public to report such criminality to authorities for further investigation.
The ministry of education recently announced that public transport and school buses have been arranged to facilitate candidates sitting their national exams to and from examination centres, after the examination period coincided with the lockdown.

The Covid-19 lockdown imposed in Kigali city, Burera, Gicumbi, Kamonyi, Musanze, Nyagatare, Rubavu, Rwamagana and Rutsiro districts started on July 17 and will last until July 26.

National examinations for ordinary advanced levels of high school and TVET are set to start Tuesday, July 20 and end on July 27, followed by A-Level Science practical examinations on July 28 and end July 30.

Paul Umukunzi, Director General of Rwanda TVET Board and the current coordinator of the transportation exercise, says they have currently organized 142 buses but they plan to increase the number of buses to 200 buses to solve the challenges of buses who were late, that happened on the first day when candidates were being taken to their centres.

"The current estimate of day scholars who will use these buses in Kigali is 1,693. We advise candidates to be at bus stops as early as they can, the buses will move from 5:30 am for a period of three hours and come back in the evening from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm," he said.

He reminded the candidates to observe Covid-19 guidelines as they commute to and from their centres and while doing the exams.

"Parents who wish to take their candidates to school are requested to drop them at the nearest bus stops and the buses will take them from there, we want to limit movements as much as possible during this lockdown, and we assure parents that all students will be transported to their respective centres in time and without a problem," Umukunzi added.

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Lygie Kundwa, a candidate who will sit for her ordinary level examination, lives in Kimironko on Monday, July 19 had to commute to her centre for briefing ahead of the exams.

Her centre is in Kicukiro.

She said the buses were late but added that she also had to take multiple buses to be able to get to her centre, wondering whether she will be able to get to her centre on time, once the exams begin.

Statistics of national examinations.

According to National Examinations and Schools Inspection Authority (NESA) from ordinary level, a total of 122,320 candidates from 1,468 schools will sit for the exams from 547 centres.

Out of these, 54,635 are girls which is 44.7%.

For advanced level, 52,145 candidates are due to sit their exams. Of these, 14,785 are candidates in science subjects, and 2,359 are private candidates, the candidates were allocated 418 centres from 776 schools.

In this section, girls are the majority, at 52 per cent of candidates.

For TVET theoretical examinations, 22,910 candidates and 1,857 private candidates will sit, with the girls comprising 43%.

TVET exams will be conducted from 97 centres.
The Government of Rwanda has approved the acquisition of Banque Populaire du Rwanda (BPR) by Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB Rwanda), the latter announced on Monday in its latest regulatory filings.

BPR is currently owned by London-listed financial services firm, Atlas Mara Limited.

According to the Nairobi-based KCB Group, the parent firm of KCB Rwanda, they are also awaiting approval from Tanzania where the regional lender has also set sights on African Banking Corporation Tanzania (BancABC).

KCB Group announced in November, last year, it had signed a deal with Atlas Mara to acquire a 62.06 per cent stake in BPR and a 100 per cent stake in BancABC, which is also owned by Atlas Mara.

The Kenyan lender has previously expressed interest in expanding their ownership of BPR to 100 per cent.

"The Company has secured regulatory approval for the transactions with respect to its investments in Rwanda and Botswana, and parties are now in the process of concluding pre-completion conditions. Regulatory approval is pending with respect to the transaction with respect to its investment in Tanzania," reads part of the filings published on the KCB's website.

High rate of financial inclusion and digital banking have forced Kenyan lenders to look outside the Kenyan local markets for growth.

Following the acquisition, however, it is expected that KCB will double its market share to become the second-largest bank in the country and solidify KCB Group's leadership position.

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In Tanzania, the subsequent merger of BancABC with KCB Bank Tanzania, another subsidiary of KCB Group, will integrate KCB Tanzania's strong retail and corporate banking franchise with BancABC's retail and commercial banking operations.

KCB currently has operations in six countries - Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan- and a representative office in Ethiopia.

The KCB deal comes months after Equity Bank Group called off its plan to acquire four banking subsidiaries from Atlas Mara Limited in a move aimed at preserving its capital in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The parties had initiated talks in April last year, but the negotiations targeting Atlas Mara's units in Rwanda, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique dragged on until the pandemic hit.

The London-listed firm had said then it would seek another buyer for the four banks after the Equity deal collapsed.

When contacted, BPR Managing Director Maurice Torotich confirmed the approval of the acquisition by the regulator. Toroitch said that with all approvals granted the next steps include takeover and integration which is currently underway.

The bank has previously assured clients that the development will not disrupt or affect any of the current ongoing business at the bank including issuance of loans and credit facilities.
The prototype of the e-tractor that once approved is sent to revolutionalise Rwanda's agriculture sector.

In line the mechanisation of agriculture programme in Rwanda that started in 2009/2010, Volkswagen Rwanda is looking forward to test-driving a prototype of an e-tractor on a field in Bugesera District by Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture (RICA).

The e-tractor which will be powered by renewable energy, is promising to ease farmers' work and increase the yield on the farmland, according to officials.

The CEO of Volkswagen in Rwanda, Serge Kamuhinda told with The New Times, "the e-tractor will be a multi-tasker, meant to be used in soil preparation and post-harvest handling".

This will primarily be useful for the farmers who suffer using a lot of physical and labour force and in the end yield less from their farmland.

"Among other projected benefits of e-tractors for farmers include facilitating transport, as it has been seen that Rural areas farmers face difficulties in the transportation of their goods", Serge affirmed.

Volkswagen is in collaboration with different stakeholders, to be able to actvate this prototype in Rwanda, after which it has successfully been tested in German. It is also intended to be implemented in South Africa where VW has operations.

The stakeholders include; Deutsche Gesellschaft Fur Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH and University of Rwanda-College of Science and Technology.

According to Herbert Diess, Chairman of Board of Management of Volkswagen Group, in his post on LinkedIn shared that together with their partners, they launched the conservation agriculture project Gen.Farm: a sustainable Co2-free hub where farmers can book an e-tractor including a trained driver for.

He also said that the e-tractor has swappable batteries that allow it to operate around the clock.

Diess, in his post, also affirmed that the e-tractor won't need fossil fuels, that it will rather use renewable energies which will be more climate friendly.

However, since the e-tractor is still a prototype that is yet to be tested, Kamuhinda suggested waiting for the project to be fully studied, tested and implemented to measure its full potential.

By then, a follow-up would be made to evaluate the impacts.
press release

The accused Lebohang Ernest Maboea (25) appeared before the Phuthaditjhaba Magistrates' Court on Monday, 19 July 2021 where he faced charges of fraud, theft and money laundering.

It is alleged that during February 2018 until May 2019, Maboea and the other suspect who is still at large were running illegal investment scheme by the name of Black Child Billionaire where the victims invested their money with a promise of getting return ranging from 25% to 100%. After a period of months, the victims did not receive their money as agreed. As a result the victims suffered a total loss of approximately R534 000.

The matter was then reported to the Hawks' Serious Commercial Crime Investigation in Bethlehem for further investigation which led to the arrest of Maboea in QwaQwa on Friday, 16 July 2021.

The case against Maboea has been postponed to Monday, 26 July 2021 for formal bail application.
Delivery of food relief to vulnerable households, which started in Kigali, continued on Monday, July 19 in eight districts under lockdown in four provinces.

According to officials, throughout the lockdown, 210,000 households, who depend on a daily wage for survival, will benefit from the relief program. Households with Covid-19 patients will also get food support.

The beneficiaries receive staple foods, such as beans, rice and maize flour. Families with children under five years of age get milk, in addition to their rations.

The government rolled out the assistance program as thousands of households could face hardships due to the 9-day lockdown, which was imposed to contain a surge in new cases of Covid-19.

Some 300 tons of rice, beans and maize flour were delivered to 20,000 households in Kigali on Sunday.

In Musanze District, one of the three districts under lockdown, local leaders on Monday began delivering food assistance to 4,862 families.

"I am very delighted; I have been given 15kg. I wondered what I could feed to my family during this lockdown, and I am very grateful that the government supported us," Felicien Kalisa, resident of Musanze, told The New Times after getting the ration for his family of five.

The quantity of food given to a family depends on the number of its members.

For Judith Kabihogo, a resident of Busogo Sector, the food assistance came at the right time.

"Due to the ban on movements, we had nothing left to eat. We received 3okg of rice, beans and maize flour. Tonight we will have something to eat," said the 54-year-old Kabihogo, who has a family of ten people.

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According to an official in Rubavu District, where 16,000 families will benefit from 106 tons of beans, rice and maize flour, deliveries started on Monday.

In Nyagatre, 7,190 families started getting food rations on Monday.

"We started giving support to people in need. There already are people on the list, but village leaders should check for any other per people in need of support so that no one goes hungry during the lockdown," Claudian Mushabe, the Mayor of Nyagatare, said.

In Rwamagana, Burera and Rutsiro districts, local leaders will begin distributing food assistance on Tuesday.

In order to minimize movements which could further spread the coronavirus, food rations are being delivered house-to-house by local leaders and youth volunteers, the Ministry of Local Government, said on Monday.
Venant Ntawuruhunga, a farmer from Northern Province recalls harvesting not more than 300 Kilogrammes of beans per one hectare some years back.

According to the farmer, the production yield gap was caused by poor seeds, poor agricultural practices such as not using fertilizers, soil erosion among many others.

"If I use quality seeds and be guided on better agricultural practices, I can even harvest over 1.5 tonnes from my land," he said.

Ntawuruhunga is among thousands of farmers that grow beans in Rwanda but are still struggling to get enough production. According to recent statistics there has been low and declining productivity on key crops including beans.

The sector review for quarter two 2020/21 fiscal year carried out by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning indicates that bean productivity was 1.03 tonnes per hectare in 2016/17 fiscal year but was decreased to 0.6 tonnes per hectare in 2020.

The target was 1.69 tonnes per hectare in the 2020/21 fiscal year, but the production remains low. According to annual Rwanda's Seasonal Agriculture Survey (SAS) 2019/20 edition that covers three main agricultural 2020 seasons A, B and C, the average yield of beans was estimated at 626 kilogrammes per hectare in season A and 740 kilogrammes per hectare season B as well as 1,038 kilogrammes per hectare season C.

Beans production was 226,570 tonnes in Season A on 362,100 ha, a decrease of 10 percent from 2019 season A estimates. The major issues leading to low productivity compared to set targets , researchers say, are mainly the gap in extension services, quality of seeds and timely distribution of inputs-seeds, fertilizers and pesticides among other poor agricultural practices.

The crop is also vulnerable to heavy rains. To control the adverse effects of such rains, effective pesticides or fungicides should be used; a practice which farmers said is largely limited by limited financial abilities.

Government has projected the bean production to increase to 1.86 tonnes in 2021/22, 2.04 tonnes in 2022/2023 and 2.22 tonnes in 2023/2024 as per the government seven year programme- National Strategy for Transformation (NST1).

Agricultural growth is the primary source of poverty reduction in most Agriculture-based economies and considering the Covid-19 pandemic the sector's services have remained essential but facing budget gaps.

Could new bean varieties fix the gap?

Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB) has said that there is need for increased efforts by seed multipliers so as to start scaling up new 19 bean varieties across the country starting September this year.

The new varieties, researchers say, will help the government to meet bean production targets set for 2024 according to National Strategy for Transformation (NST1).

Charles Bucagu, the Deputy Director General in charge of Agriculture Research and Technology Transfer at RAB, said the new varieties have been launched at research stations adding seed multipliers will start multiplication for scaling up and trials in farmers' fields.

He said that once successful in farmers' fields, the promotion will follow to help farmers increase production.

"Bean is a key crop of significant economic and social importance in Rwanda. We eye the role of different stakeholders in the bean value chain toward the development of Agriculture in Rwanda," he said.

The 19 new bean varieties launched include 13 climbing beans and six bush beans. He said that among them, eight are high in iron and zinc content while the remaining are high yielding, with good agronomic and market preferred traits.

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"We bank seed multipliers to multiply the new varieties to get basic and certified seeds for distribution for farmers across the country. By September this year, the seeds from new varieties should have reached farmers," he said.

He said seed multiplication and distribution will help to discover which varieties farmers choose more than others depending on each area or district across the country.

"Through the experience and assessment, then we get to know which varieties to promote or recommend to farmers," he said.

He said that through trial research stations, it was realized that bush beans produce two tonnes per hectare compared to 700 kilogrammes yield from previous varieties. He also said climbing beans were found to produce 3.5 tonnes per hectare compared to between 1.5 and 2 tonnes per hectare from previous varieties.
The Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Cllr. J. Fonati Koffa expresses worries for several passengers that were onboard the sinking boat that are reportedly gone missing.

The Grand Kru County lawmaker said while the Liberian government and its partners are on a search for either individuals or their remains, he extends his heartfelt sympathy and is deeply shocked and saddened by the tragic incident of a sunken cargo vessel, Niko Ivanka, of which at least seven (7) persons have gone missing since Sunday.

Search and rescue operations are ongoing, Liberia's Maritime Authority Commissioner Eugene Lenn Nagbe told reporters in the capital, Monrovia. Coastguards of the Armed Forces of Liberia have pulled 11 people from the water, he said.

The Deputy Speaker said the devastation is regrettable and expressed condolences to families of those who have not been found, the injured, and to all who have been affected.

"I'm shock and soul touching to have heard and read that some people including Liberians gone missing on a boat near the Liberian shores, it is saddening and heartbroken news for me. My sincere sympathies to the families and we hope as the search continues we will find them or their remains so that their family members can see them once more before returning to our heavenly father," the deputy speaker said.

According to him, it is worrisome for Liberia in such difficult times to lose some of its citizens to the ocean, and probably for them to have cried for help but could not be helped due to distance is worrisome and saddens.

The Deputy Speaker hailed the efforts of the Government spearheaded by the Liberia Maritime Authority (LMA) and the National Coast Guard of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) for the rescue of 11 passengers and looks forward to a speedy recovery process.https://thenewdawnliberia.com/several-persons-missing-as-vessel-sinks/
The Board of Commissioners, (BOC), of the National Elections Commission, (NEC), Monday declared CPP Simeon Taylor the winner of the 8 December 2020 Special Senatorial Election conducted in Grand Cape Mount County.

NEC made the declaration after it reaffirmed and confirmed the ruling of its Hearing Officer, declaring Mr. Taylor, Senator-Elect of the Collaborating Political Parties, CPP, winner.

The BOC, on 19 July 2021, through its Chairperson, Madam Davidetta Browne Lansanah following the ruling, instructed the Certification Committee of NEC-Liberia, with immediate effect, to go ahead with all necessary modalities leading to the certification of Mr. Simeon B. Taylor as Senator-Elect of Grand Cape Mount County.

But the legal team of the Complainant, Mr. Victor Watson, of the Coalition for Democratic Change, CDC, led by Cllr. Sheik Salibu Sesay took exception to the ruling and announced an appeal to the Honorable Supreme Court of Liberia.

In the BOC ruling, read by Commissioner Cllr. Ernestine Morgan Awar, the Administrative Court said, the complainant Victor Watson failed to prove by the preponderance of the evidence the allegations of double registration and voting, pre-marked ballots, stopping of his party agents by mobs of Simeon Taylor from entering voting centers, and the forging of signatures of his party agents on the record of the count.

The BOC, through Commissioner Morgan Awar, said, the Hearing Officer Atty. Fumba Swaray did not err to dismiss and deny the action of appeal of fraud and irregularity filed by Victor Watson, who witnesses failed to identify any record of the count that signatures of their party agents were forged or did any witness testify to the issue of pre-marked ballots as alleged during the hearing.

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On the allegations that Simeon Taylor double registered and voted in Lofa Bridge and Tawh Polling places, and that relatives of Mr. Taylor listed in the Final Registration Roll, FRR were the same that were listed in the FRR in Tawh, Cllr. Morgan Awar said the Board of Commissioners agrees with the Hearing Officer that the plaintiff, Victor Watson failed to produce sufficient evidence by the preponderance of evidence to overturn the result in the Cape Special Senatorial Election.

The case grew out of the action of an appeal, electoral fraud, and irregularity filed by Honorable Victor V. Watson, Candidate of the CDC, as Complainant versus the National Elections Commission, the first respondent, and Mr. Simeon B. Taylor of the CPP as the second respondent.

All seven members of the Board of Commissioners heard the Grand Cape Mount County appeal case, but only the Co-Chairperson of NEC, Cllr. P. Teplah Reeves did not sign the ruling.https://thenewdawnliberia.com/nec-reserves-ruling-in-capemount-electoral-dispute/
Mayor Koijee

Monrovia City Mayor Jefferson T. Koijee says, if the restructuring of marketers at the Red Light Market in Paynesville outside Monrovia will cause the CDC to lose the 2023 elections, the party will celebrate such defeat.

"If structuring Redlight will cause a defeat for the CDC, then we will celebrate this defeat", he said, adding, "On grounds that we have made great strides, and impact on the lives of our people."

Mayor Koijee spoke on Monday, July 19, 2021, on Strong FM along Somalia Drive, Gardnersville after visiting marketers. He said there's no political dividend that will divert the government's mind from its people.

Marketers in the commercial hub of Redlight in Paynesville remain defiant with national government, as they refuse to take orders from the Monrovia City Mayor, the Ministry of Public Works, and the Paynesville City Corporation to have them relocated to the newly constructed 14 Omega market constructed by the government.

They were seeing back in the commercial hub of Redlight selling, with goods in their hands.

But following a visit to the market, the City Mayor in a huge police convoy has a ninety-day mandate to clean the city, adding that after this week there will be zero tolerance in Red Light.

Marketers presented a long list of concerns about challenges they are faced with but responding to them, the MCC boss said all of the concerns raised will be addressed, adding, "I can assure you of meeting with the President to see how we can address these concerns."

Issues raised by marketers include lack of adequately space, warehouses, toilets, and electricity, among others.

But Koijee indicated that the new committee instituted by President Weah which is headed by the Ministry of Public Works as chair, and the MCC as co-chair will ensure those facilities lacking are provided, disclosing, As you may be aware, we have already erected few solar lights; this is a clear indication of fulfilling of our commitment."

He said marketers are relocating to the Omega market at the right time, as many of them who were squatters, now face the possibility of owning their own structures.

According to him, the government's decision to relocate the Red Light-Gobachop marketers was a consensus reached along with leaders of the Liberia Marketing Association because they are the direct beneficiaries.

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"Our decision is not to create hardship or put marketers in harm's way, but it's meant [for bigger] opportunity"

Ahead of the 2023 presidential and general elections, a delegation of the ruling Congress for Democratic Change headed by chairman Mulbah Morlu is visiting the United States-based chapter of the party, rallying support.

The CDC, which is in a Coalition with the National Patriotic Party (NPP) of Vice President Jewel Howard Taylor, and the Liberian People Democratic Party (LPDP) of ex-speaker Alex Tyler, is leaving no stone unturned in mobilizing stakeholders, especially those in the Diaspora.

Chairman Morlu and delegation left the country last week for a two-week visitation and reactivation of the Diaspora-based chapter.

Other members of the delegation include Austin Clarke and Seedikie Fonfana. They are visiting various states of America, coordinating with party structures in those states for a fruitful 2023 presidential election.

Mr. Morlu on his social media page posted, "It was an enriching experience meeting with top leaders of the CDC-USA Chapter yesterday."
The former Director-General of the National Public Health Institute of Liberia (NPHIL) Doctor Mosoka Fallah, has donated 44 sets of oxygen regulators, several bags of rice, and buckets to the government treatment unit here.

The donation was done Monday, July 19, 2021, through his private NGO, Refuge Place International headed by its Executive Director Mr. Jomah Kollie, and Chief of Office Staff to Dr. Fallah, Mrs. Franzetta Nyanford at the Star Based Treatment Unit on Bushrod Island.

Speaking on behalf of Dr. Fallah, Madam Nyanford said, the pieces of equipment were purchased through funding provided by friends and his former university, the University of Kentucky in the United States of America following a passionate appeal for support to the health sector of Liberia.

"Some of his friends and partners heard the appeal and responded in money and supply. We have raised the initial Fifty thousand United States Dollars ($50,000) or eight million five hundred thousand Liberian dollars, from the Royer Family Charitable Foundation to support different aspects of the Response," Madam Nyanford explained.

"We also received donations of 150 regulators for oxygen cylinder from his former University in the states, the University of Kentucky as well as Friends of Liberia (former Peace Corps volunteers to Liberia) and other friends and partners. Not too sure if the regulators would work, they sent the first two on DHL in early July. Once they were proven to be the right size, the donors sent the first batch of 44 regulators. The second batch of 90 regulators will be arriving in the country this week or early next week to support the treatment units and hospitals across the country as determined by the Incident Management System," she added.

In remarks, Executive Director Kollie said the expected 90 oxygen regulators will be distributed to other treatment units across the country upon arrival.

"We have come here today to make some initial support to Starbase. There is another support that will be made to the other hospitals that are managing our people and to the counties.

Today, we are here to present to you the following items:

44 regulators for your oxygen cylinders to many of your patients can have adequate oxygen to the cylinders," Kollie said.

"We also present 10 bags of rice, oil, and soup kind to the hard-working staffs of the StarBase Treatment Unit. e also present 10 buckets, hand sanitizers, gloves and etc.

We have sent fifteen thousand United States Dollars to a factory in China through our partner Landcent Europe to procure and fly to Liberia 15 oxygen concentrators with a 10 Liter capacity," the RPI Executive Director told the gathering.

He said the goal of RPI is to provide these concentrators at Star Base in order to boost the fight against the disease.

"Once they demonstrate effective use, we will work with the factory and our GoFundme initiative to get more concentrators for the Starbase, other hospitals, and the counties," he furthered.

In addition to the donations, he disclosed that the organization is committing US$35,000 or in the production of masks to be distributed for free to hot spot communities.

He asserted that RPI will be donating rice, buckets, hand sanitizers, gloves to the following Hospitals- Redemption Hospital, JDJ Hospital, St. Joseph Catholic Hospital, and ELWA Hospital.

"We are partnering with the Montserrado County Health Team to support awareness, health promotions through the distribution of flyers, radio messaging, and community-led awareness on the prevention measures. Our teams will be deployed in hotspots with health promotion messaging and deployment of handwashing stations. We will continue to raise support for testing materials through different universities," he indicated, among other things.

The Director for Emergency Response at the Ministry of Health, Mr. Mark Luke, lauded RPI for the kind gesture stating that the equipment is the best kind of medical device that the country needs most.

"This is one of the most important medical devices that we need in the country. This will carry us even beyond covid-19," Luke noted.

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Adams K. Lincoln, Program Manager of the Healthcare Federation of Liberia, indicated that the donation is a demonstration of Dr. Fallah's love for his country and people.

"These materials are critically needed by the patients. These will be distributed to major centers. We would like to commend Dr. Fallah for his desire to restore health. This is a clear indication that Dr. Fallah's love for country supersedes personal self. To see a man who was relieved of his post joining the fight in this manner is completely exceptional. I hope other Liberians will emulate a good example of the former Director-General," Lincoln intoned.

RPI is working across Liberia to improve health outcomes for poor communities in Liberia. The health NGO aims to create a replicable health care model for urban slums and poor rural communities in Liberia, with the goal of reducing the high maternal, neonatal, and child mortality rate and making quality health care accessible to all.https://thenewdawnliberia.com/liberias-messy-covid-19-fight/
As authorities continue search mission after vessel sinks

A Chinese national has been rescued, as authorities continue their search and rescue efforts days after a locally registered vessel Niko Ivanka sank six nautical miles off Marshall, in Margibi County.

The vessel was conveying about 18 persons including passengers and crew members bound for Maryland County, in southeastern Liberia.

A well-placed authoritative source who spoke to the NewDawn newspaper on condition of anonymity Monday evening, 19 July regarding the latest development of those who have bhttps://thenewdawnliberia.com/several-persons-missing-as-vessel-sinks/een rescued so far informed this paper that the Chinese national was one of the latest survival.

However, unconfirmed reports say at least seven persons are feared dead.

Liberia Maritime Authority (LiMA) Commissioner-General Len Eugene Nagbe told reporters at the Coast Guard Base in Congo Town that there will be "a transparent and open investigation of the situation because there is a potential for loss of life and property."

In the meantime, he noted that focus is still being placed on search and rescue.

Earlier on Sunday, 18 July, the Liberian Government through LiMA, the Ministry of National Defense, and the Armed Forces of Liberia Coast Guard informed the public that several persons were missing after the local vessel sank.

The authorities announced the launch of a search and rescue operation, and also indicated that 11 persons had so far been rescued, and they were hopeful of recovering the remaining passengers and crew members on board. The news of a Chinese national being rescued now puts the number to 12, the total persons rescued.

At least five vessels are participating in the search between Bassa and Marshall because there might be others who are still along the waterway, Mr. Nagbe said.

He explained that LiMA got an alert from the Liberia Coast Guard through its Monrovia regional maritime rescue coordination center.

Mr. Nagbe further narrated that the center informed LiMA about a distress situation onboard M/V Niko Ivanka, a local vessel owned and operated by HYLAEA Inc. which according to LiMA was trading between the Ports of Monrovia, Montserrado County, and Harper, Maryland County.

Commissioner Nagbe said the information received indicated that the vessel departed the Port of Monrovia for Harper on Saturday, 17 July, and while on the way, it reportedly started to take in water about 6 nautical miles off the shore of Marshall City.

He stated that upon receiving the information, LiMA, Ministry of Defense and the Armed Forces of Liberia Coast Guard immediately mobilized resources including assets and personnel to begin the search and rescue operation to attend to the distressed vessel.

He added that ArcelorMittal Liberia, Sea Shepherd, and other partners were immediately contacted to utilize their assets to assist in the search and rescue operation, noting that ArcelorMittal launched its two tub boats along with Coast Guard personal onboard from the port of Buchanan to the reported scene of the incident between Buchanan and Marshall City.

He said the distressed vessel Niko Ivanka had onboard a crew complement of nine persons, based on the crew list submitted by the agent, and nine personnel of the West African Examination Council were also on board as passengers.

"The LiMA wishes to state that the subject vessel was detained and not allowed to sail, and this vessel was at no time authorized or permitted to carry passengers or operate as a passengers' vessel," Nagbe said.

The LiMA boss narrated that his institution follows all of the processes including the domestic, national, and international regulations or requirements to be granted or licensed by the LiMA, leading to the registration of any vessel.

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He said in spite of the license, LiMA does regular monitoring of every vessel sailing Liberian waters, noting that if any vessel sailing the waters here fails to meet all of the requirements, you are grounded and detained.As authorities continue search mission after vessel sinks

Nagbe said the vessel in question is one of the vessels that were under a detention order for failure to meet all of the safety requirements. He revealed that passengers were onboard the vessel, but they were not listed. The LiMA Commissioner said authorities are still trying to interview some of the survivors, hoping that more people can still be found.

He detailed that the investigation will also determine why the passengers sailed, and who granted them the permission.
On the margins of the recently ended Generation Equality Forum in Paris, France, First lady Mrs. Clar M. Weah held talks at the Palais de L'Elysee with Mrs. Brigitte Macron, First Lady of France.

The two First Ladies held fruitful talks about the advancement of gender equality, women empowerment, and other specific issues germane to women and girls. For her part, H. E. Clar Marie Weah spoke about the multiple challenges and hardships faced by the women and girls in Liberia and the efforts she continues to make to promote the advancement of women and girls in Liberia.

First Lady Weah informed her French counterpart that her focus is not limited to women and girls alone, but rather her various initiatives support the advancement of women and young people. She also informed Mme. Macron about the work of the Clar Hope Foundation and its achievements in Liberia.

Madam Weah, during their discussion, highlighted Liberia's beauty as a nation with its virgin beaches, waterfalls, rivers, and lagoons with vast resources, and called upon Mme Macron to see Liberia as such and help as France is working and assisting in the development of other nations.

For her part, Mme Macron told her counterpart that as part of her women empowerment program, she founded a vocational training school for girls over the age of 25 to complement a vocational training already in place in France which only applies to unemployed youth between the ages of 18 and 25.

She said she was rather surprised at the multiple hats worn by First Lady Weah and promised to assist the efforts in Liberia.

The two First Ladies concluded their meeting with an agreement to explore several possibilities, partnering specifically on a program that would aim at financially empowering the women in Liberia.

First Lady Weah accompanied President Weah to the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, France held in June, 2021.
Internal Affairs Minister Varney Sirleaf and Bong County Superintendent Esther Walker are expected to appear before the Plenary of the House of Representatives on Tuesday, 20 July 2021 to address the alleged disappearance of over US $86,000 from the county's account.

This is as the result of a communication from Bong County District #3 Representative Marvin Cole to the Plenary of the House of Representatives.

Representative Cole during an interview with our Bong County correspondent on Monday said the Internal Affairs Minister, the Superintendent, and the Project Management Committee Chair Stephen Mulbah on April 13, 2021, allegedly signed more than thirteen cheques to withdraw money from the County's coffers with no account.

He said after signing the cheques, more than $86,000 USD was withdrawn from the account and allegedly placed in their individual accounts and some were used to increase the Project Management Committee (PMC) Chair's salary and pay drivers.

The Bong County District #3 lawmaker said the action of the Superintendent and the Minister is a complete violation of the Budget Law, claiming that the money was allegedly withdrawn outside of the 2018 County Sitting's resolution.

He claimed that the Minister of Internal Affairs is involved because he has the clearance cheques which authorize the bank to allow withdrawal for the county.

Rep. Cole told NewDawn that he will do all he can to ensure that the Superintendent and others pay for all the funds they have allegedly taken from the county's account.

All efforts to speak with the Internal Affairs Minister proved fruitless as his phone rang without response. However, Superintendent Walker who lately picked her calls has told journalists harshly that she has nothing to say about the issue.
The bribery trial of former Investec Namibia (now Ninety-One) managing director James Hatuikulipi and co-accused Sakaria Kuutondokwa Kokule is on hold.

The Windhoek Magistrate's Court postponed the matter to 3 August in their absence yesterday. Hatuikulipi (44) is detained at the Windhoek Correctional facility, which is currently on lockdown to mitigate the spread of Covid-19. Kokule (47), who is being held at the Seeis police station, was not brought in time for court proceedings.

Hatuikulipi and Kokule are expected to be tried on charges ranging from corruptly giving gratification as an inducement, bribery or alternatively improperly influencing an authorised officer and defeating or obstructing the course of justice.

The two were initially charged alongside Jason Iyambo (35) who was convicted and sentenced to nine months imprisonment after he confessed and admitted guilt to the charges. He is due to be released from custody next month.

In his plea statement, Iyambo implicated Hatuikulipi. According to Iyambo, Hatuikulipi asked him to obtain bank cards of a co-accused in the Fishrot case, Pius Mwatelulo, and a handwritten document titled 'Total Allocation' which had also been seized by the ACC.

Hatuikulipi wanted the Bank Windhoek cards for Omvindi Investment CC and Otuafika Logistics issued to Mwatelulo.

Iyambo admitted he offered a bribe of N$250 000 to Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigator Junias Iipinge in Windhoek on 20 January 2020. However, the investigating officer went to his superiors at the ACC and reported the incident.

Magistrate Linus Samunzala presided over the matter.
Cooking oil manufacturers have expressed displeasure over massive influx of smuggled cooking oil into the country from Malawi's neighbours, a situation they argue has severely suppressed demand for their locally-produced commodity.

In an interview with Nyasa Times yesterday, Edible Cooking Oil Association of Malawi (ECOAM), also bemoaned that most cooking oil consumers have resorted to smuggled, cheaper and sub-standard cooking oil, thereby benefiting neighbouring countries in terms of increased sales and employment levels in those countries, at the expense of Malawi.

Nyasa Times investigations reveal that for the past 18 years, Mozambique has been exempting cooking oil, sugar and soap from Value Added Tax (VAT), while Zambia has suspended VAT on edible oils now for four months in bid expected to contain escalating cooking oil prices in that country.

ECOAM wants Treasury remove the prevailing 16.5 percent VAT on cooking oil, which it argues will help curb smuggling of the commodity but also helping to create more jobs in the industry, among other multiplier effects.

In a letter that Nyasa Times has seen, titled "request to review the re-introduction of Vat on refined cooking oil," and addressed to Secretary to Treasury, ECOAM says since re-introduction of the tax to the commodity, the demand for the product had dropped by 40 percent by January 2021, adding that "the situation is worse now."

ECOAM chairperson, Jayshree Patel complains in the letter that the re-introduction of the tax has now backfired as it has seen triggered an increase in the smuggling of re-fined cooking oil from neighbouring Mozambique, Zambia and Mozambique through a long stretch of porous borders that cannot be easily be policed by Malawi.

In the 2020/21 national budget, Tonse government brought back the VAT on cooking oil, a tax which was exempted on the product between 2017 and 2020.

"As from 2017 to 2020 when the VAT was removed, the smuggling of cooking oil was close to eradication as local producers' pricing was less or at par to the smuggled cooking oil prices and it is our belief that if the VAT is removed, the smuggling and retrenchment will be on check.

"The demand for cooking oil will be back to normal and this will allow companies to operate and continue with their future plans of expansion in the production capacities," says Patel in the letter.

He also says with the current status quo, all the 2020 investments that the shareholders of the company have done "have gone to waste" as the demand have drastically dropped, adding that the deposits paid to the suppliers for the 2021 expansion plans will be sized by the suppliers as the companies would have to cancel the orders.

'Taking cognisance'

According to the ECOAM, if Treasury rescinds its decision on VAT on cooking oil, the move could see the cooking oil industry creating up to 2000 more jobs.

On his part, Jayesh Sharma who is financial controller for Sunseed Oil Limited-one of Malawi's major cooking oil processing firm, said they are worried that cooking oil companies are on the verge of losing all the market share to Zambian and Mozambican companies who are producing the same commodity without VAT.

But global edible oil market dynamics show that prices for the commodity have risen as much as 62 percent in the last year as bad weather in major producing countries and increasing use of biofuels have hit global supply.

Prices of edible oils such as mustard, vanaspati, soya, palm, sunflower, and groundnut are more than their highest in a decade.

The United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization's (FAO), food prices in May 2021 were 4.8 percent higher than April - the biggest monthly rise since October 2010 - and 39.7 percent higher than this time last year, May 2020.

The FAO food price index tracks prices around the world of a range of food including cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat and sugar.

Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito said recently that he was not amused with "misleading information" from some players in the edible oils industry.

With regards to the reintroduction of Vat on cooking oil, Kapito said cooking oil producers, directly and indirectly through their association, have failed to provide consumers with any justification for their call to have VAT exempted on cooking oil compared to other products such as water and electricity.

Kapito said the association has also failed to demonstrate with facts how the reintroduction of 16.5 percent VAT has resulted to the huge price increases of more than 50 percent.

"Cama has realized that most of their arguments are fictitious... We have discovered that there are price increases of crude oil on the global market. Crude oil is widely used locally in the refining of cooking oil hence the local shelf prices of cooking skyrocketing substantially.

"Therefore, the massive increases of cooking oil in Malawi are as a result of the high import prices of crude oil," said Kapito.

He added: "The choice to import crude oil and using the hard-earned foreign exchange is the blatant disregard of the country's local farmers, who have the capacity to produce most of the raw materials such as Soya beans, sunflower and groundnuts used in the production of cooking oils."

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In his 2021 National Budget presentation in Parliament last September, Finance Minister Felix Mlusu has had said cooking oil manufacturers need not raise prices of their commodities since tax measures will enable them to claim input VAT when one purchases goods or services liable to VAT.

But when the manufacturers still increased the prices, they lobbied to the Finance Minister through a letter dated September 14 to review or withdraw the VAT as it might trigger serious negative multiplier effects in the economy.

Edible Cooking Oil Association of Malawi, a grouping of five manufacturers, also argued that if the price of the products was to be increased, it will allow room for massive smuggling of the product from neighbouring Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe where there is no VAT applied on it.

Initially, CAMA had joined the condemnation of the tax measure believing it was indeed through the re-introduction of VAT until now when the consumer watchdog did its own analysis -- in which it agreed with the Finance Minister.

In his Budget presentation in Parliament, Minister Mlusu had said the introduction of the standard rate of 16.5% VAT on refined cooking oil was to ensure efficiency in the VAT system -- taking cognisance that previously the commodity was VAT-exempt and manufacturers were not able to claim tax refunds on their input VAT.
The rape trial of a former magistrate and his cousin has been sent back to the criminal mentions roll of Windhoek High Court acting Judge Kobus Miller for the fixing of new dates. Former magistrate Jaco Kennedy and his cousin Ray Cloete will now return to court on 2 August for the fixing of new dates.

This came about after Kennedy could not attend the court proceedings because of the lockdown of the Windhoek Correctional Facility.

Kennedy is charged with two rape counts, one between Katutura and Windhoek Central hospitals - and another in the Otjomuise area while he was out on bail on the first rape count. In the first incident, Kennedy is charged alongside his cousin for allegedly raping a 43-year-old woman between the Windhoek Central Hospital and Katutura hospital after offering her a lift in January 2015.

It is alleged the two took turns to rape the woman, who had a four-month-old baby with her. A security guard, stationed in the vicinity, apparently witnessed the rape and informed the police.

According to the police officers who arrived at the scene, they found Kennedy half-dressed, on top of the complainant, and Cloete naked.

Kennedy, however, denied he had intercourse with the complainant but did say he and Cloete had a sexual conversation with her and he gave her N$200 to have sex with them.

Kennedy and Cloete were granted bail of N$3 000 in the magistrate's court on that charge. Kennedy was re-arrested for allegedly raping a 20-year-old woman in the early morning hours of 31 December 2017.

He is disputing the allegation, saying he never gave anyone a lift anywhere on that morning nor does he know the complainant. The complainant, however, testified in opposition to bail in the magistrate's court that Kennedy raped her after he offered her a lift to her workplace.

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"While we were driving, the accused stopped the vehicle and went to urinate," she told magistrate Bernedine Kubersky during the bail hearing. She continued, "When he was finished, he got back into the car and asked me for a kiss. I told him 'no' and that I was already late for work."

According to her, Kennedy then forced himself upon her and kissed her without permission, whereafter he undressed her and then himself, and he raped her.

"I pleaded with him not do it but he just kept on, and I then asked him to at least put on a condom," the complainant testified earlier.

"After he was done, he got off me and poured beer over his penis."

She further said she managed to send text messages to a friend at her workplace to take down the registration number on the car that will drop her off - and this resulted in the police tracing Kennedy.

Kennedy is represented by Boris Isaacks and Cloete by Milton Engelbrecht on instructions of legal aid.

The state is represented by deputy prosecutor general Innocencia Nyoni.
A GERMAN tax attorney - Hanno Berger, known as the mastermind behind the so-called biggest tax scandal of the century worth N$941 billion, was arrested by Swiss authorities.

It was reported he was arrested on an extradition warrant.

An expert told the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) last week that like all others involved in the multi-billion scam, Berger too will say he never broke any laws.

Berger is believed to have helped organise and promote share deals that exploited a loophole in German law used by about 900 financial institutions and individuals across Europe.

The scheme became known as Cum-Ex and cost treasuries across the continent about 55 billion euro (US$65 billion).

This is over N$941 billion.

Germany, whose stock exchange was used for trading, was at the centre of the scandal. It lost some 10 billion euro (US$11 billion) as a result.

Cum-Ex involved a systematic process where people coordinated to trade a share on the day of dividend distribution to make it look like it's owned by multiple people.

When taxes are filed, only one person pays the share's tax, but multiple people file for tax reimbursements on its dividends. This way, multiple people receive refunds on a single tax payment.

This method has been compared to parents claiming child benefits for multiple dependents, when they really only have one child.

The practice was in play from the early 2000s until 2012, when Germany changed their law to close the loophole that was being exploited.

In 2018, an investigative journalism team published the Cum-Ex files, which exposed the scheme's complexities and culprits. Authorities began to crack down and prosecute those involved.

Syedur Rahman, a lawyer specialising in white-collar crime, told the OCCRP on Tuesday that most suspects are going to maintain that their involvement in the scandal did not break any laws.

"Any suspects involved are likely to say everything was legitimate and above board," he said. "It was a legal loophole that hedge funds and traders took advantage of," said Rahman.

However, in 2020, a landmark German court case deemed that the Cum-Ex scandal constituted serious tax fraud, and was criminal.

Yet, not many people have had to face a punishment. Two London businessmen received suspended sentences last year and only one person, a former executive at the German bank MM Warburg, received jail time, with a five-and-a-half year sentence given in June of this year.

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Berger has been dodging authorities for nine years. When he learned that the government was raiding his office in 2012, he drove straight to his holiday home in Switzerland, where he had been hiding until his arrest last week.

Earlier this year he avoided trial, citing health and Covid-19 concerns. Shortly after, two warrants were issued for his arrest.

Berger, who has been called "Mr Cum-Ex," still maintains his innocence.

It is still unclear how long Berger's extradition will take -- or even if it will happen at all. Berger's age (70) and poor health, in combination with the lengthy amount of time Swiss extradition usually takes, are all standing in the way of his court appearance. And even if he does make it before a judge, Berger will fight for his innocence.

"Hanno Berger is expected to defend himself vigorously if he does face trial, so these proceedings will be a thrilling one," Rahman said.

* Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project
TWO lions in the Kunene region caused havoc at farm Leeukop, killing 76 farm animals on Thursday lat week.

Immanual Gurirab (58), the owner of the killed livestock, says the lions, a male and a female, killed 10 sheep and 66 other livestock.

"It was my livelihood. I paid the livestock herder from my farming income, and also supported my three children's education through it," he said on Friday.

The communal farmer said of the massacred animals, 22 ewes and nine rams were to be sold on auction.

"On Wednesday they killed two animals and ate only one.

Of the 73 killed on Thursday night, the lions only ate the thighs of two animals and left the rest without eating them," Gurirab, who has been farming for more than 35 years, said.

He said lions last month killed a pig at the farm, and a donkey and a horse last year.

He said hyenas have also been a nuisance at the farm.

Before last week's attack, members of the Namibian Lion Trust Foundation camped out at Leeukop to frighten off lions, but this was unsuccessful, Gurirab said.

"They were shooting in the air and the lions ran away, although they didn't go far," he said.

Gurirab said the Ministry of Environment, Forestry and Tourism earlier this year promised nets would be set up around the kraal, but only delivered this after the lions had already killed animals.

"They arrived too late. When will they complete the nets for the kraal?" he asked.

Deputy commissioner Jarold Iita, acting police chief in the Kunene region, confirmed the incident.

He, however, said it was a matter for the environment ministry.

Ministry official Viva Tjivikua confirmed the incident, but declined to divulge more information, as "I'm not allowed to do so".

Gurirab said lions have frequently been attacking his animals over the past years.

He blasted the ministry's human-wildlife conflict scheme for compensating farmers with less than market value when they lose livestock due to predators.

"What does it help to get less money from the government for one's livestock? It's useless as one can't buy anything back," he said.
Barrick Gold Corporation has said through its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is executing an empowerment programme for which entrepreneurs in 14 villages surrounding the mining will benefit.

Through its CSR initiatives, Barrick has been enabling entrepreneurs within its vicinity by providing training on practising sustainable entrepreneurship as well as bankrolling their entrepreneurial initiatives.

The government in collaboration with various stakeholders has been hard at work to mitigate this through various innovative initiatives that have further spearheaded the growth of sustainable entrepreneurial practices amongst Tanzanians.

It is with this regard that Barrick Company has taken the initiative to support the government's efforts and encourage the growth of entrepreneurship within the community in which it operates through its CSR initiatives.

One of the entrepreneurs Bugarama village in Shinyanga Region, Clementina Felix said for many years, women in her village have been facing financial challenges.

However, she said ever since Barrick started helping and bankrolling the entrepreneurship initiatives they have now experienced financial freedom whereas they are now practising entrepreneurship through modern farming and animal husbandry.

"We used to practice agriculture and animal husbandry without the appropriate skills for agro-business and we ended up with no profits, so we are grateful for Barrick for introducing a programme that aims to support economic initiatives of more than 200 residents in the villages surrounding the mining," she said.

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On her part, another beneficiary of Barrick's CSR program, Berita Nyawanga, a resident of Mwiguru ward where the mining company has its CSR foot, commended Barrick and urged the company to continue supporting entrepreneurs in the areas especially women and youths who are highly affected by the rate of unemployment.

Community Manager for Barrick at the Bulyanhulu mine, Anthony Sebastian said the mining company is implementing the programme to empower entrepreneurs as part of its CSR in the vicinity surrounding the mine, adding that they are keen to improve the welfare of the people surrounding the mine by giving them entrepreneurial skills as well as educating them on best practices for modern agriculture and animal husbandry.

We are of the view that entrepreneurship, agriculture and animal husbandry can provide employment as well as improve people economic welfare, and this is why we created this program that would enable people from various wards surrounding the mine to benefit, he said.

He noted that to ensure that the programme is sustainable, the mining company has been sponsoring entrepreneurship training every week whereas villagers would gather and attend training facilitated by specialists in entrepreneurship on how to effectively conduct their economic activities and for those who practice agricultural activities also given fertilizer and seeds.
The newly appointed Geita Regional Commissioner, Rosemary Senyamule has commended Geita Gold Mine Limited (GGML) for its continuous capacity building programme to the communities, especially to the traders in line with the National Economic Empowerment Council (NEEC).

Paying a visit to the company recently, she said was satisfied by their operations observing the country's laws and plough back to the community, which in turn support education and health projects.

Accompanied by both the Regional and District security committees, Ms Senyamule said, she was interested in learning how the company conducts its operations in harmony with its neighbours, adding: " I have learnt from the media that GGML has been the recipient of several awards as a top taxpayer, and a leading mining company in Tanzania.

"On this first visit, I would like to commend GGML for how it has been conducting business and simultaneously fulfilling Corporate Social Responsibility obligations.

"I am impressed by your capacity building programme to Geita entrepreneurs run in collaboration with the NEEC because the programme empowers Geita locals to get business opportunities from the company.

"I urge GGML to execute more projects with sustainable impacts even after the life of the mine has come to an end."

Elaborating on the company's achievements in the past 21 years, GGML Senior Manager - Partnerships, ManaceNdoroma said they are still committed to the sustainable development of the Geita community.

"We have continuously demonstrated social investment commitment by actively partnering with the government in improving social services, including education, health, water and roads as well as other economic activities for the community surrounding the mine.

"GGML has spent over 30bn/- to execute several community projects in partnership with the Geita local authorities after the amendment of the Mining Act in 2017," he added.
A chemical-free fertilizer that seeks to strengthen organic farming in Tanzania and increase markets for crops produced by organic farmers was launched in Njombe yesterday.

The launching was graced by Njombe District Commissioner, Ms Kisa Kasongwa, on behalf of Njombe Regional Commissioner, Eng Marwa Rubirya.

The Managing Director of Guavay Company Limited, Eng Ahad Katera, told the launch ceremony that the company is currently producing 3,500 tonnes a year but plans to raise production to 20,000 tonnes annually.

He said the company is particularly targeting local avocado producers so that they can competitively sell the fruits in European and American markets.

"We want to help them increase productivity so that they can compete well and have their fruits accepted in those markets," he said.

He also said they are also targeting producers of vanilla, cocoa and coffee, explaining that those crops when produced by organic farmers they have a ready market overseas.

Ms Kasongwa praised the company for its pioneering feat and for cooperating well with researchers from universities of Dar es Salaam, Sokoine and Makerere and the Commission for Science and Technology. The three-year research, that started in 2014 and ended in 2017, was sponsored by Bolnnnovate Africa.

The DC said the fertiliser, being marketed under a brand name of Hakika, is also a good for onion, maize and paddy and appealed to the company to increase production to reduce importation of fertilisers. She said avodado is now a strategic cash crop for Njombe, Iringa and Mbeya Regions.

She appealed to extension officers to educate farm on best ways of using the fertiliser and use the fertiliser to protect soil health.

The representative of Bolnnnovate Africa, Ms Shira Mukiibi, said the fertiliser will increase agricultural production in Tanzania and neighbouring countries.

She praised the Tanzanian government for supporting researches that seek to increase agricultural production.
Illovo Sugar (Malawi) plc has launched a K75 million-worth community intervention project to help with the fight against the spread of CoVID-19 in Dwangwa and Nchalo where the company has its sugar estates.

The project aims at engaging with the communities to highlight underlying behaviours that have created resistance to adherence to CoVID-19 preventive measures as well as vaccine uptake.

The program will also include a communications campaign in which Illovo is conducting engagement meetings with community leaders, school committees, districts commission, religious leaders, health surveillance assistants amongst others.

"This is to discuss CoVID-19 measures being undertaken by the different stakeholders," says Illovo Sugar Malawi Managing Director, Lekani Katandula.

"The interventions will also involve door to door activities targeting households where a survey is to be conducted to ascertain the level of understanding of CoVID-19 by community members and some of they are facing as a result of the pandemic.

"Illovo also seeks to understand water, hygiene and sanitisation factors that are closely linked to prevention of CoVID-19 amongst other diseases such as cholera, bilharzia and diarrhoea diseases," he said.

To complement the efforts, Illovo says it will also distribute 5,000 care packages comprising 20 litre buckets with tap and lid, face masks, soap, and CoVID-19 information pamphlets.

Additionally, the company is working with the Ministry of Health to create messages that will be delivered through local radio's as programs and adverts, PA system announcements, billboards and posters.

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Katandula said: "As a business, we believe that for us to succeed we need the communities we operate in to be safe and healthy. CoVID-19 posses a detrimental risk to the lives of not only our employees and their families but also the communities around us."

Katandula further added that the company has been able to manage and enforce preventive measures within its business operations but noticed that the same was not necessarily the case with the surrounding communities.

"The company believes that by working with the communities through two way engagements and co-creation of community initiatives, it will ensure that there is community ownership of initiatives.

"We believe that if we work together with the communities we will help in preventing the rapid spread of CoVID-19 through a co-creation process that allows for the community leadership to take ownership of the initiatives uniquely relevant to their needs in addressing behavioural change," he said.

The project is estimated to cost the company a total of K75 million and is targeting all Illovo Sugar estates' surrounding communities and the grower community.

Specifically it will target Dyeratu, Maseya, Bereu, Thomu, Nchalo7, Ngabu, Malayini, Miseufolo, Paiva, Sekeni and Kasinthula in Chikhwawa.

Dwangwa activities will take place within Dwangwa Estate, DCGL Village, Chisita, Mowe village, Vitekete, Dwangwa TC, Nkhunga, Mtupi, Liwaladzi, Dema, Banga, Walemera, Ngala and Kasitu.

In Dwangwa, the company has enlisted the help of CARE Malawi to provide technical support towards execution of the project.
press release

On 20 July 1985, South Africa saw one of its largest political funerals when Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlauli were buried in Cradock, in the Eastern Cape. Today, 36 years later, Lukhanyo Calata, the son of Fort Calata marks that dark day in South Africas history by filing a legal application with the High Court in Pretoria.

The application seeks the following relief on behalf of the Cradock 4 families:

To compel the National Police Minister, Bheki Cele, and National Police Commissioner, Khehla Sitole, to ensure that the Directorate for Priority Crimes (Hawks) finalise their investigations into the murders of the Cradock Four within 30 days of the courts order.

To compel the National Director of Public Prosecutions Shamila Batohi to announce a decision to prosecute or not the known suspects in the murders of the Cradock Four within 60 days of the courts order.

The Fort Calata Foundation hopes that the above-mentioned application will finally begin the long, outstanding process of bringing those behind the murders of our leaders to justice.

Such prosecutions will also dispel any notions such as those recently espoused by the FW de Klerk Foundation. In a statement issued on 5 July 2021 the De Klerk Foundation talks of an informal agreement between ANC leaders and former operatives of the pre-1994 government for the National Prosecuting Authority to suspend its prosecution of apartheid-era crimes. It is unfortunate that de Klerk and his ilk would rely on such an informal agreement to avoid being held accountable for his role in the murders of the Cradock Four.

However, as the recent imprisonment of former president Jacob Zuma has shown, South Africa is a constitutional democracy, born from the blood of our martyrs, where all are equal before the law. The time has now come for De Klerk and all other apartheid criminals to be held accountable for the crimes they wantonly committed against our humanity.

The Fort Calata Foundation instead urges former apartheid President F W de Klerk to disclose the names of those ANC leaders. We believe they should say where they got their mandate from to enter into such treacherous agreements with the killers of our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters.

The quest for justice is long, arduous and lonely. Therefore, the Fort Calata Foundation would like to thank both the Foundation for Human Rights and the law firm Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr for their outstanding support to the Cradock Four families these last few years.

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Todays momentous achievement would certainly not have been possible without their unwavering commitment and dedication to justice. We look forward to walking this path of healing and closure for the families, the community of Cradock and a post-apartheid South Africa, together. A luta!

Timeline

1985

27 June: Disappearance and murder of Fort Calata, Matthew Goniwe, Sparrow Mkonto and Sicelo Mhlaulli

20 July: Funeral of the Cradock 4/Declaration of the first State of Emergency since Sharpeville massacre in 1960

1988  1989

First inquest into the Cradock 4 murders finds no one to blame

1993  1994

Second inquest finds that apartheid security forces murdered the Cradock 4

1996

Widows of the Cradock 4 testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

1998

Six police officers denied amnesty for the Cradock 4 murders

2003

Cradock 4 case among the 350 cases handed over to the National Prosecuting Authority

To date no one has been prosecuted in any of these cases.
I first communicated with Ben Mkapa, then Managing Editor of the TANU Party newspapers - the Nationalist and Uhuru in 1969.

I started working with him in 1970 in both the Party newspapers on part-time basis and later full-time in the government English daily, the Daily News. T

he editorial staff were few and so I got to know him very well. I did not know at the time that he would one day ascend to the Presidency.

Mwalimu was young and the idea of political succession had not crossed peoples' minds. Newspapers were not only the main mouthpiece of government but they were major centres of political and development discourse.

Its corridors were full of visitors from Cabinet Ministers, party stalwarts, leaders of liberation movements pushing their stories, etc.

It is in these offices that I first met the future Presidents Hifikepunge Pohamba (Namibia), Joachim Chissano (Mozambique) and Yoweri Museveni (Uganda) as well as prominent women leaders including Janet Mondlane and Graca Machel of Mozambique and Angela Davies of the USA.

Other than the Party's Kivukoni College and Dar University there was no other influential policy centre than newspapers.

So influential were the Tanganyika Standard Newspaper (the Daily News and Sunday News) that the coup plotters of 1969 had planned to close it fearing that it would be a centre of opposition to the coup.

Most of its staff including Mkapa and myself had gone through military training.

On days of potential dangers to the country such as during Idi Amin's threats and attacks, Mkapa came to the office in full JKT military attire.

As the Editor he was able to talk with Vice President Rashid Kawawa, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Party newspapers and later with President Nyerere who was Editor-in-Chief of the Tanganyika Standard Newspapers, the Daily News and Sunday News, to clarify stories or to seek advice on reporting of major developments almost on a daily basis.

This made him closer to the national political leadership making it easier for him to climb the political ladder.

Mkapa had a very sharp mind, extremely hard working and with a great command of the English language.

Having started his career at the Foreign Ministry he was very diplomatic and non-confrontational.

He fitted very well Nyerere axiom - "don't shout but argue". Although somewhat elitist he was well mannered and unassuming.

I could judge this from the daily hourly morning staff meetings to review the day's newspaper and plan for the next and afternoon senior management meetings to review incoming stories and decide on the newspaper layout.

He never missed these meetings which he chaired. Mkapa always supported reporters on hard assignments.

I was working on the implications for Mozambique's liberation of the April 1974 Portuguese coup d'etat when his Deputy, Costa Kumalija alias Chenge wa Chenge told me it was not being handled at the Foreign Ministry whose Director of Information Ambassador Msolomi I was chasing, but at the level of Presidents Nyerere, Kaunda and the FRELIMO leader Samora Machel and that Mkapa was working on it.

On another occasion I was covering the somewhat controversial visit of one of apartheid South African Bantustan leaders, Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. Mkapa himself drove Senior Sub-Editor Reginald Mhango and myself to the University of Dar-Es-Salaam to cover an address by the Zulu leader and later wrote the story himself underlining that Tanzania was not abandoning the freedom fighters who were nervous about the visit or seeking an internal solution to the white minority regimes advocated in some quarters in Africa and beyond.

TANU and later the CCM was very much against political or ideological factions in the party and its organs. Mkapa was a Nyerereist deploying a pragmatic approach to the issues at hand.

He kept off from the sharp political divide between "ujamaa" and scientific socialists; although his newspapers particularly the Nationalist fostered all sheds of political opinion.

Although we were in a one party setting the newspapers were, save for the core political foundations of the United Republic such as national unity, the Union, the one-party system, a secular state with no state religion, the newspapers were free to publish critique of policy evolution and rollout, implementation of development programmes and the shortcomings of individual leaders.

They exposed corruption and malpractices in the parastatals allowing government to take corrective measures.

It was pleasant working with Ben Mkapa as he was fondly called. He always defended his staff when he felt they were being unfairly treated or attacked by politicians and bureaucrats especially those pretending to have been misquoted.

On one occasion I had a problem with Party Headquarters. I had been assigned to interview the Party National Executive Secretary.

I phoned to try to make an appointment with his Secretary but the CEO received the phone himself fuming that I should have gone rather than phoning. I tried to explain that I was making an appointment but he was not satisfied.

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I reported this to Mkapa who told me to ignore him, although on further reflection Mkapa's Deputy advised I should go and interview him since the paper will continue to need his cooperation, which I did.

One of the things that disturbed Mkapa was failure by the newspapers to break even leading to reliance on state subsidies.

He was worried that this would give the holding corporation, the National Development Corporation (NDC) some say on the running of the Daily News.

However, given his closeness to President Nyerere this did not happen. The time had not come when we could publish sensational news that would raise newspaper sells.

Mkapa was the founding Director of the Tanzania News Agency (SHIHATA) before he moved to State House as Press Secretary to the President.

In both positions he continued to have a leading role in the management of the mass media in Tanzania.

He then served as High Commissioner and Ambassador in key stations- Nigeria, Canada and the USA; became a Minister in various dockets before being sworn in as President in 1995. The newspapers had been a launching pad for the highest office in the land.

*Prof NGILA MWASE worked with President Mkapa in the newspapers particularly the Nationalist and the Daily News. (ngila. mwase@yahoo.com).
Serengeti Breweries Limited (SBL) has said it is committed to supporting the farmers' contract farming through its agri-business initiative that incorporated over 400 local farmers spread in eight regions across the country.

The SBL Corporate Relations Director, John Wanyancha named the regions Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Manyara, Singida, Dodoma, Shinyanga, Mwanza, and Mara.

"SBL provides agricultural inputs such as free quality seeds, fertilizer, technical advice, and other farm implements to farmers through the programme," he said.

He added, SBL also links them to financial institutions to access credit facilities- and in return, purchases from them cereals such as maize, sorghum and barley-which it uses for beer production.

He said the brewer's agri-business programme has turned around the lives of farmers and those of their dependents.

"In 2020 alone, SBL sourced 17,000 metric tons of these grains locally, equivalent to 70 per cent of SBL's annual total raw materials requirement and were looking to increase sourcing of raw materials from local farmers to 85 per cent by 2025", Wanyancha said.

SBL's ambitious project facilitates farmers growing maize, sorghum and barley in various parts of the country, enabling the company to increase the locally sourced raw materials it uses in beer production. SBL has three breweries located in Dar es Salaam, Moshi and Mwanza, respectively.

SBL supports them by providing free seeds, field technical services and linking them to financial institutions.

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SBL has built more confidence in farmers to approach banks and other financial institutions to acquire loans and other financial incentives. Moreover, it has helped them get timely payments for their produce and reliable market, contrary to what used to happen in the past.

Granted, the benefit of the agri-business initiative is that it's a sustainable investment in agriculture that supports the broader strategic goals of the government to reduce poverty and enhance economic growth through agriculture.

Moreover, SBL's contract farming supplements the government's relentless efforts to ensure that farmers have a market and earn better prices for their products and cut back on post-harvest losses, to create viable livelihood options in villages. Along these lines, contract farming has come to be viewed as a necessary ingredient.

The Deputy Minister for Agriculture, Hussein Bashe told the parliament recently that the government fully supports contract farming that assures farmers of a reliable market for their yields.

With contract farming, farmers can enjoy a ready market with reliable prices; Bashe said the government had decided to embrace contract farming as it addresses several challenges, including the availability of agricultural inputs to the farmers and enabling them to access funding from financial institutions to spur their productivity.
Auditor-General (AG) Mildred Chiri says her office has been threatened by some companies named in her recently released hard-hitting annual audit report for 2019.

Giving oral evidence to the Public Accounts Parliamentary Portfolio committee on Monday, Chiri said she resorted to not naming companies involved in underhand dealings in order to avoid lawsuits.

"Regarding the naming of companies with issues in the annual report, the approach of naming suppliers and companies was not done in order to manage the risk associated with potential litigation. There have been comebacks with some suppliers on some of our findings in the past. Those that have approached us in the past were saying naming them in our reports had resulted in them losing business. They think just mentioning their names taints them as this takes away their future businesses," said Chiri.

She indicated that some litigations had to do with forensic audits, whilst some suppliers would threaten her office.

"Some would sort of like threaten and when we checked with our secretariat. They warned us that we would face a litany of law suits if we continued with naming companies," Chiri added.

She promised to satisfy all stakeholders in future as her office was now in the process of finding ways to deal with such matters.

During the oral evidence hearings by Parliamentary Portfolio committees in the past, some companies have been implicated in shady deals either by being paid in advance but still failing to supply government entities with the product.

She also highlighted that her office failed to fully carry out its mandate due to financial constraints and failure by government entities in providing with adequate documentation.

"This year we did not manage to go out in the provinces so the observation are a bit reduced as result but still it is like more or less like what it was last year. "Site visits could not be carried out in 2019 financial year because of funds constraints as cited by treasurer. In 2020 again no site visits were done as funds in the budget for ministries including ours were transferred by treasurer to fight the Covid 19. Our staff numbers due to Public Service Commission directive on downsizing were already constrained."

Chiri also revealed that in 2020, the World Bank availed funds for a special audit on the use of funds donated for Covid-19 pandemic.

"We managed to send some staff to undertake the special audit in three of the provinces. The audit was conducted jointly with internal auditors as the World Bank request in order to pass on skills to internal auditors. The report was completed and the report is now ready for tabling and I am sure any time it will be available," she said.
Detectives from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) have arrested a man for allegedly defrauding a single and 'lonely' women of their retirement benefits.

DCI said that the suspect identified as Wycliffe Amakobe Omunga targets single and vulnerable women who are about to retire with the intent of conning them their hard-earned pension.

He then showers them with "sweet nothings and promises of a blissful retirement together."

"After being swept off their feet, the love-struck women are duped into starting businesses with the con who then disappears with their entire savings leaving them heartbroken and desolate," DCI explained.

Omunga is said to have fleeced one of his victims of Sh780,050 she had just earned from a pension scheme after tricking her into a love affair.

He then deceived her into starting a joint water refilling business and the woman gave him the money, marking the beginning of her woes.

"What started as a blossoming love story and a joint retirement venture ended in premium tears. The relationship immediately crumbled like a house of cards after the man disappeared with the entire amount."

"Efforts by the woman to reach her newfound love hit a dead end after his phone went off and her messages were left unanswered," DCI added.

The woman managed to trace and confront the man, but he claimed that the business had been taken over by an insurance company for failing to pay an unspecified debt.

The suspect will be arraigned in court to answer charges of obtaining money by false pretenses.

DCI urged any other victims who may have been swindled by the suspect to report the matter at DCI headquarters Serious Crime Unit for action.
A businessman who allegedly caused a scene at his ex-wife's business premises while accusing her of infidelity has been charged with assaulting and causing her bodily injuries.

At Kibera law courts, Nicholas Kibiwott Kaimoi is accused of beating up and injuring his ex-wife Betty Jepchumba Kibiwott at her bar in Kawangware, Nairobi, on May 1, 2021.

Kaimoi is said to have stormed the business demanding to know why his wife was having affairs with other men and hanging out with them when she was still married to him.

They had separated six months earlier.

The suspect is then said to have roughed up the complainant in presence of her customers and employees prompting them to take off.

Kibiwott allegedly locked herself inside her car and called the police emergency number and police officers responded and rescued her. They arrested Kaimoi inside the bar.

But Kaimoi denied the accusations before senior principal magistrate Derrick Kutto and claimed the allegations are mere falsehoods arising from domestic issues.

He was freed on a bond of Sh50,000 with a surety of a like sum and an alternative cash bail of Sh20,000. The case will be mentioned on August 4.
Windhoek Rural councillor Piet Adams says he is concerned about the safety of farmworkers who were recently evicted from farm Tsatsaxas near Dordabis, saying the timing of the evictions is a big problem.

"Why choosing one of the coldest months to make this inhumane action? Is this the type of treatment we receive after 30 years of independence? Why should foreigners get preferential treatment to own 10 farms whilst there are already people in the corridor? We have been lenient as Namibians for too long and we are been taken for granted," Adams told New Era yesterday.

"It is time for the government to offer specific regional councils farms where the evicted farmers can be resettled. The resettlement application process needs to be relaxed to at least accommodate these farmers in the corridors."

He said that one of the biggest challenges in the Windhoek Rural constituency is the eviction of generational farmworkers as well as some farmers who are refused permission to bury their loved ones on some farms.

"The issue of the eviction date as far back as 2018. Initially, they were evicted from farm Doornboom in the Hardap region. Having spent a few months in the corridor these people moved to Khomas region to one of the farms owned by a Russian billionaire. As the regional councillor, I already intervened three months back in this case. Few meetings were held with Johan Kotze, the farm manager of Maroela Ranch who is managing the affairs for the Russian billionaire Rashid Sardarov.

Last Tuesday, these farmers were evicted by Kotze. The former Khomas regional police commander Josef

Shikongo was also part of the deliberations. They are currently in the corridor of the Dordabis road." According to Adams, four families who are evicted and currently in the corridor, consist of 12 adults and 22 children.

"I had a meeting on Wednesday with the special advisor to the land reform and agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein and the technical team was tasked to go to the site to assess the water situation. The ministry came up with a possible alternative plan to relocate the farmers to Nauaspoort as a temporal arrangement, however, the farmers are refusing to move to Nauaspoort in the absence of a written assurance. As the councilllor, I approached Shoprite and Lodestone Mine for possible assistance with food parcels and blankets to keep them warm," he added.
Government's rollout of the 250 000 Sinopharm doses got off to a smooth start yesterday morning as people streamed to the various vaccine centres to get inoculated against the virulent Covid-19.

In Windhoek, both public and private facilities are being used as vaccination centres, including the Lady Pohamba Private Hospital, Rhino Park Private Hospital, Hosiana Parish Church Hall, NG Kerk (Eros) Church Hall and the Windhoek Central Hospital.

A drive through facility at the Windhoek Showgrounds, which will open today from 10h00 to 18h00, has also been organised by Gondwana Collection Namibia. Health minister Dr Kalumbi Shangula yesterday said he was impressed by the professionalism of the health workers and the calmness and patience of the public at the reopened vaccination centres around Windhoek.

Lines moved relatively fast and people from different age groups could be observed at the different vaccine centres yesterday.

The minister visited four of the vaccination

sites around Windhoek after the country resumed vaccination campaign countrywide yesterday morning.

"At all the sites I visited, there are long queues of people waiting patiently to be vaccinated. I was impressed. We aim to vaccinate 750 520 people by the end of September 2021. Please help us to achieve that target.

We shall increase the number of vaccination points in order to reduce the long wait for vaccination," said Shangula.

By 18 July 2021, 136 194 people received their first doses while 34 789 had received their second doses.

Shangula added that over the past weeks, the ministry observed the stabilisation of new infections after Namibia was hit hard by the third wave of infections that dramatically increased positive cases, hospitalisations and deaths.

Between the end of May and yesterday, 2 532 people died from Covid-19 in Namibia. "We do not foresee the increase in the number of new infections beyond what we have experienced so far. We anticipate a gradual decline in both the number of new infections and deaths. We thank the public who contributed to this observed trend by complying with public health measures," he added. The minister further stated that the disruption of the transmission chain through limiting interpersonal interactions and the vaccination campaign are starting to show dividends.

"These should serve as incentives and encouragement for us to forge ahead," he said. After getting vaccinated at the Rhino Park Private Hospital, Windhoek resident Isack Hamata urged Namibians to get inoculated.

"It is for a good cause. It is for us to achieve herd immunity so that we can all get to a point where this country is free of Covid-19, we minimise the deaths, we minimise sickness and we minimise the pressure on our medical facilities so that we can go back to a normal economic life," he said.

Another Windhoek resident, Anthony Muteya indicated that he chose the Sinopharm vaccine over others simply because it was readily available. "As you have seen the evidence is there without vaccination, people are dying and every day and night we are missing people who are dying, so it is wise for everyone to get vaccinated," he said. Muteya also encouraged everyone to get inoculated against Covid-19, adding it is worthwhile protecting one another.

More doses

Namibia's vaccination programme largely stalled as the 197 000 doses of Sinopharm and AstraZeneca ran out and delivery of vaccinations was delayed. Government received 250 000 doses of Sinopharm on Friday and immediately started with distribution to vaccine centres across the country.

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The country is also expecting delivery of 40 800 AstraZeneca doses this week. Over 300 000 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will be delivered in a staggered fashion between August and December, while 168 000 Johnson & Johnson doses donated by the US government are expected anytime between this month and September.

Yesterday, the ministry of health announced 664 new Covid-19 confirmed cases from 2 172 results in the last 24 hours.

The youngest is six months and the oldest is 101 years. Shangula added of all the confirmed cases, 44 representing (7%) are reported to have received a dose of Covid-19 vaccine, of which 12 are fully vaccinated.
Government has finally paid compensation to 18 women and girls who were allegedly raped by police officers around Mpingu and M'bwatalika in Lilongwe in 2018.

In February 2020, the Women Lawyers Association (WLA) commenced civil proceedings against the Malawi Police Service (MPS), the Clerk of Parliament, Ministry of Homeland Security and the Inspector General of Police in Judicial Review Cause No. 7 of 2020 on behalf of the victims.

According to a press release dated 19th July 2020 and signed by WLA President Immaculate Maluza, the civil matter was concluded successfully and the court ordered MPS to pay damages to the victims.

"On 9th March 2021, Assistant Registrar (Madalitso) Chimwaza sitting at Lilongwe High Court Registry issued a ruling on assessment of damages which determines the amount of compensation payable to each Applicant.

"Consequently, WLA would like to inform the public that the Government of Malawi has duly paid compensation to each of the 18 Applicants in JR Cause No. 7. The payment marks the conclusion of the civil aspect of the case," reads the press release made available to Nyssa Times, adding that WLA strongly believes that women and girls have the right to live free of violence, "however, statistics show that at least one in every three women is likely to be beaten, coerced into sex or abused in her lifetime".

"Therefore, the ruling and the subsequent payment of compensation in JR Cause No. 7 solidifies that violence against women is never acceptable, never excusable and never tolerable," says the press release.

According to Maluza, women and girls in Malawi continue to face obstacles in accessing equal opportunity and representation in every sphere of life.

"We therefore implore the government to make available sufficient, effective and sustainable resources to reduce and eliminate gender based violence across Malawi," says.

According to the release, WLA is committed to ensuring that the progression of the criminal aspect of the case, which would result in the specific officers charged under the relevant criminal laws.

WLA also urges members of the community where the alleged acts of rape and sexual abuse took place against either harrassing or threatening the victims as such acts constitute crime under the law.

"WLA will therefore take immediate action against any perpetrator of violence against the victims of sexual and physical abuse," concludes the press release.

The 18 victims were awarded varying amounts of money as compensation ranging from K4 million to K10 million.
A 67-year-old man, who was initially refused bail in the Walvis Bay Magistrate's Court, succeeded in having that decision overturned in the Windhoek High Court on appeal.

The man, who may not be identified to protect the identity of his alleged victim, is facing three counts of rape for allegedly violating his 13-year-old grandchild. Magistrate John Sindano refused to grant the pensioner bail on the grounds that the charges are serious and that the accused, who resides with the victim, may interfere with her.

He also refused bail on the grounds that it would not be in the interest of justice or the interest of society to release him on bail. His lawyer, Raywood Rukoro, then approached the Windhoek High Court to grant his client bail on the grounds that he is an elderly man and is not healthy. He also argued the magistrate overemphasised the seriousness of the offence, which has not been proven as yet, and the interference fears.

Windhoek High Court Judge Herman January granted the accused bail in the amount of N$3 000 with conditions. He ordered the accused must report to the police at the Kuisebmond police station on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 08h00 and 18h00. He is also not allowed to leave the local authority of Walvis Bay and Kuisebmond without the written permission of the investigating officer or the station commander of the local police station. He must also undertake to attend all court appearances as set down and must surrender his passport or any other travel documents to the police and is not allowed to apply for any new travel documents.
Home Affairs minister Kezembe Kazembe and Police commissioner General Godwin Matanga have been ordered by Harare magistrate Victoria Mashamba, to pay $175, 000 damages to Lilian Chinyerere who was unlawfully assaulted by the police in 2019.

This is the second time the 67 year-old Chinyerere has successfully sued the government.

In 2018, Cain Mathema, former Home Affairs minister was also ordered to pay Chinyerere $13, 500 in damages after she was assaulted by the police.

The latest amount is compensation for the pain and humiliation which she suffered when some law enforcement agents assaulted her during an antigovernmental protest.

Chinyerere, who was represented by Tinashe Chinopfukutwa of Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR), sued the two on 22 January 2020 claiming payment of damages amounting to $175, 000 arising from the assault.

Chinyerere was assaulted by some truncheon-wielding ZRP officers on 16 August 2019 near Africa Unity Square in central Harare together with other protestors who were participating in a peaceful anti-government demonstration.ZLHR in a statement said as a result of the assault by ZRP members, Chinyerere sustained injuries on her back, on her hands and a dislocated finger and had to seek medical treatment.

"In court, Chinopfukutwa argued that Chinyerere's dignity was severely impaired due to the inhumane and degrading treatment she was subjected to by ZRP officers as she is an elderly member of the society and was also humiliated by the vicious assault in full view of the public," said the rights lawyers.

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They added: "Chinopfukutwa said the 67 year-old Chinyerere was subjected to pain and suffering and nervous shock emanating from the injuries which she sustained as a result of the unlawful assault perpetrated upon her by ZRP officers."

Chinopfukutwa successfully argued that Kazembe and Matanga are liable to compensate Chinyerere for the damages which she suffered as a consequent of the unlawful assault by ZRP officers as the law enforcement agents were acting within the scope of their employment and under the control of the two.

By assaulting Chinyerere, Chinopfukutwa said ZRP officers had violated her right to human dignity, right to freedom of assembly and

association and freedom to demonstrate and petition enshrined in the Constitution.

Out of a total of $175 000, Magistrate Mashamba said $100 000 is compensation for damages for affront to dignity, humiliation and

embarrassment while $75 000 is payment for damages for pain and suffering.
A former Brave Warriors chiropractor, who was later charged with murder as well as poaching, has died in custody.

The 56-year-old Gerson Kandjii died from Covid-19 complications in the Gobabis police holding cells, his lawyer Milton Engelbrecht confirmed yesterday.

Kandjii was being held in custody with two others suspected of killing two adult white rhinos on the farm Khainas near Gobabis in December 2016. They have also been accused of wounding two more rhinos.

He was arrested on 29 December 2016 together with his two accomplices, Justice Mona Domingo and Erwin Tjiteere.

In 2015, Kandjii and co-accused were granted bail on murder charges and robbery with aggravating circumstances after it was suspected they murdered German-born farmer Reinhard Schmidt on his farm near Kalkrand in the Hardap region.

Police at the time said Schmidt is believed to have been suffocated after his attackers had tied him up and taped his mouth and nose. Kandjii was charged alongside Domingo and Tjiteere with murder and housebreaking and robbery with aggravating circumstances.

They also faced charges of possession of 46 rifle bullets without a licence. Kandjii also faced several charges over the poaching of critically endangered black rhinos in the Etosha National Park since October 2014. He was released after posting bail of N$20 000.

In the Outapi docket, he was charged along with Daniel Nghidinua, his nephew Stephanus Dawid and Martin Andami Kaninga for the illegal hunting of a protected species, as well as the illegal possession of a rifle and ammunition.
President Emmerson Mnangagwa's error-prone administration reportedly acquired the controversial mobile phone snooping equipment from Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, in 2019 for use by the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO), highly placed intelligence sources said Monday.

The revelations have given raise to fears that government, which has openly expressed interest in snooping on mobile phones through enacting enabling legislations, was targeting opposition politicians, rights activists and journalists, especailly in the run up to the 2023 general election.

The mobile malware allows state spy agents to track activities activities on mobile phones without the knowledge and consent of the users.

It also allows them to penetrate applications like WhatsApp which have end-to-end encryptions.

The Israeli company was exposed in an investigation whose results were leaked to global media power houses like The Guardian, The Washington Post, The New York Times and 15 others at the weekend.

The investigations principally found out that rights activists, journalists and lawyers around the world were been targeted with phone malware sold to authoritarian governments by an Israeli surveillance firm.

The malware by the name Pegasus reportedly infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones.

Intelligence sources, in off-the-record briefings to NewZimbabwe.com Monday said the equipment was acquired to augment that which was sourced from China in 2015.

"In 2015, the organisation acquired similar equipment from China and it has been in used ever since. But government later in 2019 purchased another software from the Israel-based company to complement it. The one from Israel is considered to be more potent that the come from China," a source said.

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"It's not very clear yet if the software has been used, but it's there," the source added.

However, Information ministry permanent secretary Nick Mangwana refuted the claims.

"Government of Zimbabwe has no reason to buy a malicious software," he said.

"The report says it was sold to autocratic governments; government of Zimbabwe is not autocratic. So, Zimbabwe is automatically excluded. Any attempt to associate us with the purchase and delivery of that malware is malicious. So those those are malicious allegations," he added.

NSO has also denied what it called "false claims".

"NSO Group firmly denies false claims," it said in a release published by The Guardian. "Many of which are uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability of your sources, as well as the basis of your story."
The newly appointed CEO of Otavi Town Council, Sakaria Wodibo Haulofu, said he brings new dimensions to revive the town, as well as enforce cohesion within the workforce.

He said this is the only way the town can grow and develop when all stakeholders are marching towards attaining a common goal.

"I would like to paint our institution with a different brush, a brush that seeks to bring order, discipline, accountability and teamwork," said Haulofu who was previously in charge of Okongo Village Council in the Ohangwena region.

"I am not here to feast on media reports, I am here to work. We will mend the fence until our pliers give in. Therefore, it is my hope that the inhabitants see what changes are brought about, then gain confidence and trust in the institution again. Without the inhabitants, Otavi would cease to exist. We ask for patience and general cooperation from the inhabitants."

In addition, the CEO said he regards the speedy implementation of pending lawful council resolutions as an important task, thereafter; he aims to improve revenue collection and reduce debt.

"No matter where I find myself, my priority has always been local economic development (LED). To create a conducive space for LED to flourish, to bring a buzz in LED and uplift the livelihoods of the people we serve. It is my hope that I can bring together the council, the business community and the residents in order to make Otavi great. I would like to start with the beautification of the town, by creating a different Otavi Town Council brand, one where our work speaks for itself," promised Haulofu.

His immediate tasks would include the construction of municipal services such as water, sewer and drilling of boreholes as well as the electrification of New Cairo, which is a new reception area.

Road maintenance, establishment of an SME forum, facilitation of the construction of Build Together, Shack Dwellers Federation and National Housing Enterprises (NHE) houses are among Haulofu's primary projects. Others include the re-location of the dumping site, construction of a trickling filtering sewerage plant, which he hopes could foster urban agriculture. "I cannot conclusively give you the plans, but change has come to Otavi," stated Haulofu.

Haulofu comes at a time when the institution is sailing in troubled waters, with a divided council following a ministerial audit that uncovered issues of maladministration, as well as unauthorised staff promotion, and salary hikes. It was recommended council needs to make resolutions and rectify all these issues, and hold those responsible, accountable. Former acting CEO Ernst Gaoab allegedly promoted himself unprocedurally.

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The council has reportedly also been told by the ministry of urban and rural development to charge him with abusing his position and to recover all the money paid to other staff members as a result of the irregular promotions since 2019. Asked how he intends on resolving and restoring the residents' trust and hope in the organisation, Haulofu said there are authorities entrusted to deal with the matter, until such time investigations are complete, and resolutions taken by the council for further action.

"I believe the issue of organisational conflict from maladministration, irregularities carried out by employees as claimed are all just allegations, and they must be treated as such. For now, the audi alteram partem (Let the other side be heard as well) rule must be applied in spirit and to the letter by relevant authorities to determine the legitimacy or validity of the said allegations."
Luanda  Seven cases of Delta Indian variant were registered in the country, via passengers coming from Asia and Europe (Portugal).

According to the Minister of Health, Silvia Lutucuta, who gave the information during a visit made Monday in Luanda, to the vaccination centre Paz Flor, the cases detected at the Airport "4 de Fevereiro" are already isolated and receiving the due treatment protocol.

Silvia Lutucuta, in statements to the press, admitted that the above-mentioned variant is a great challenge for all countries, but despite that, due to the efforts applied, results are already showing at an international level, so one should continue to strengthen the biosecurity surveillance measures.

Still on the circulation of variants in Angola, she said that half of the cases are of the English type (Alpha), followed by the South African (Beta), the latter already circulating in the community.

The Government official also said that around 1.7 million Angolans had already been vaccinated, both with the first dose and the second.

She added that the country has 30 million inhabitants eligible for vaccination, around 15 million are ready and of that number six million are benefiting from doses donated to Angola as part of the Covax initiative and nine million by way of vaccines acquired by the government.

"The Angolan Government will invest about 300 million dollars to vaccinate about nine million citizens, as part of the ongoing vaccination campaign in the country, despite the countries difficulties in acquiring them" she said.
Walvis Bay  While firefighters were battling the blaze that engulfed Magic Discounters in Walvis Bay yesterday, the shop's manager, Martin Cordier and his son Giandre Cordier were arrested and charged.

The arrests followed an altercation that ensued between Giandre and Special Reserve Force officers, who allegedly tried to stop him from crossing over to the fire scene that was cordoned off.

Giandre was earlier sitting on the pavement within the cordoned-off area with his father while firefighters were extinguishing the fire.

According to the community affairs commander, Ileni Shapumba, Giandre, who also did not wear a mask, allegedly disobeyed officials by forcefully entering the cordoned off area.

"On that basis, officers took appropriate action and restrained him. His father then also joined the commotion to protect his son, whereby he pushed an officer to the ground," Shapumba said.

Video footage shows the duo, surrounded by at least six officers, put into cuffs and whisked away to a waiting police van.

According to Shapumba, Section 16 of the Police Act empowers police officers to put barriers at crime scenes so that they can carry out their duties without obstruction.

"This is also for the purpose of maintaining law and order as well as to protect members of the public from any danger that may arise from such scenes.

He then appealed to residents to obey the law as it is for their own safety. Adding that they cannot allow anyone to just enter such a scene without identifying themselves.

Meanwhile, both Martin and Giandre appeared in court and were charged with crimen injuria and resisting arrest. Both paid N$2 000 bail.
Cottco has received 56 681 tonnes of cotton from farmers at a time prices are expected to firm on the international markets.

The crop delivered so far constitutes 38 percent of the targeted intake of 150 000 tonnes.

Last year, farmers delivered 82 479 tonnes to Cottco.

According to the Cottco quarterly trading update for the first quarter ending June 30, ginning of the cotton has started.

"The company's order book is full for both lint and ginned seed and the company is forecasting to export 76 percent of its lint," said Cottco.

"Side-marketing continues to be a challenge, although the company has in recent years maintained a market share of over 90 percent. The promulgation of Statutory Instrument 96 of 2021 is also expected to further curb side-marketing."

Meanwhile, farmers have applauded Government for releasing US$652 000 and $222 million towards settling their outstanding payments from last season.

The cotton growers said this season they are not experiencing challenges with the payments, but appealed to Government to ensure they get their money once rather than getting a subsidy later.

Government encouraged the cotton farmers to provide their bank details to Cottco for easy payments.

Cotton Marketers and Ginners Association chairman, Mr Stewart Mubonderi said they were happy that farmers were getting their money.

"We are grateful to Government for releasing money towards the outstanding payments," he said.

"Farmers are getting part of the money from Cottco and will later get the Government subsidy. The situation could have been better if we received the money at once."

Last season, farmers received the bulk of their money in groceries and household goods, but this season the growers can make a choice either to receive their money as cash or goods.
Dondo  The governor of Cuanza Norte, Adriano Mendes de Carvalho, this Sunday acknowledged the role of the Catholic Church in the moralization of society and in the process of citizens' education.

Speaking at a thanksgiving mass, in reference to the 40 years of the presence of the Salesian Congregation in Angola, Adriano Mendes de Carvalho noted that the Catholic Church has contributed to the training of many children, adolescents and young people, as well as in adult literacy.

He also mentioned the Don Bosco professional training centres, owned by the Salesian Fathers, which have allowed the integral training of many young people in the province.

The provincial governor asked the Catholic Church to continue praying for peace and union within families, contributing to the construction of a just, cohesive and prosperous society for all Angolans.

"We ask that messages of love, forgiveness and good education be promoted, with a view to avoiding hatred, revenge and all kinds of division among citizens," he added.

The thanksgiving mass, which took place on the Dondo riverside, had as its motto "Moved by hope".
A Windhoek-based Swapo youth leader, entangled in a bribery plot to allegedly mobilise for the release of the Fishrot accused from custody on bail,

appeared in the local magistrate's court yesterday.

The accused Sylas Tangi Mungoba made his first appearance before magistrate Ndapewa Amadhila where he was informed of the State's opposition to grant him bail. Mungoba is charged with a count of corruptly giving gratification under section 34 (a) of the Anti-Corruption Commission Act 8 of 2003.

The specific Act deals with directly or indirectly giving gratification as an inducement.

He is further charged with a count of defeating or obstructing the course of justice. It is alleged Mungoba tried to bribe Affirmative Repositioning (AR) movement's head of elections Paulus 'Pau Pau' Kathanga. Mungoba is accused of trying to entice Kathanga to mobilise and launch a protest against the Judiciary for the release of those currently in police custody for their alleged involvement in the multi-million-dollar fisheries bribery case currently before the High Court.

During court proceedings prosecutor Adrie Hendricks said the State is objecting to bail due to the seriousness of the charges which is evident from the penalty clause. The State fears that should Mungoba be released on bail, he will interfere with witnesses, while investigations are at an infancy stage.

Furthermore, it would not be in the interest of the public and or administration of justice for him to be granted bail. Mungoba's defence

lawyer Petrus Elago informed the

court they will be approaching the court for a formal bail application. Thus,

the court scheduled the formal bail hearing for 2 August.

The court then postponed the case to 2 September for ongoing police investigations as the State indicated that there are currently six witness statements outstanding, MTC records to be obtained and an audio that needs to be translated and transcribed. Mungoba was remanded in custody at the Windhoek police station.
In order to curtail new Covid-19 infections and deaths, Government has, with immediate effect, ordered all civil servants to be vaccinated, while unvaccinated workers have been banned from boarding buses provided by the employer.

Public Service Commisson (PSC) secretary, Jonathan Wutawunashe announced the new measures Monday through circular number 20 of 2021 leaked to NewZimbabwe.com and addressed to permanent secretaries.

Wrote Wutawunashe: "All civil servants are considered to be frontline workers as indicated by the health authorities.

"All heads of ministries are, therefore, directed to ensure that all civil servants under their jurisdiction are vaccinated.

He added: "Only members with proof of vaccination against Covid-19 shall board PSC buses."

Wutawunashe also decreed all ministries, except Health and Child Care, to reduce the number of staff reporting for work to 10% from the 40% set recently courtesy of PSC circular number 19.

The directive extends to all departments and agencies.

"Line ministries to rotate staff in such a manner that no employee shall remain at home for more than 21 days at a stretch," further wrote the PSC head.

Those working from home should be provided adequate information communications technology (ICT) gadgets and data bundles in order to remain efficient and productive.

At workstations, which have to be manned by a skeletal staff complement, employees must be capacitated with efficient and sufficient brand width to facilitate the holding of virtual meetings and other electronically-enabled communications, Wutawunashe said.

Permanent secretaries, department heads and agency chiefs will be called to explain cases of staffing above the 10% threshold.

"There shall be strict monitoring and enforcement of staff attendance at workplaces. Daily staff attendance records should continue to be submitted to the PSC before 1300hours and any variation should be accompanied by a clear justification," Wutawunashe wrote.
Walvis Bay  The reputable Walvis Bay business, Magic Discounters, was brought to its knees yesterday as a fire ravaged through the shop that has been the lifeline of many families and business at the coast.

Firefighters battled for at least two hours to bring the fire under control.

Neighbouring businesses such as Wasserfall Funeral Services, as a precautionary measure, had to evacuate their building due to the magnitude of the fire.

Some witnesses said they heard a loud bang around 06h30 followed by the emergency services sirens.

Shortly after, a cloud of black smoke was seen from the building.

When New Era arrived at the scene, the Walvis Bay fire brigade assisted by the Namport firefighters battled the large inferno.

Shop manager, Martin Cordier indicated they have lost goods worth more than N$1 million due to the fire.

Erongo police community affairs commander Inspector Ileni Shapumba yesterday said they were still investigating the cause of the fire.

"The loss is massive as nothing could be salvaged. Luckily, the fire was brought under control before it spread to surrounding businesses," Shapumba said.

Magic Discounters sells various chemical products, cleaning materials, household goods, furniture, aquatic fish, parrots, firearms and ammunition as well as fireworks, which made it difficult for firefighters to control the fire.

Ronel Wasserfall of the Wasserfall Funeral Services applauded residents of Walvis Bay for assisting her when the fire broke out.

"I was told to evacuate by the police when the fire started and within minutes all my furniture, including the coffins were carried out by good Samaritans," she said.
Benguela  With the start-up of three new salt pans and the supply of electricity to Cidade do Sal, in Benguela province, the country may stop importing this product, ANGOP learned.

This statement was made by the Benguela provincial director for Agriculture and Fishing, Jose Gomes, who said that there were high investment projects in the sector that would lead to an annual production of 350,000 tons of salt, which would stop the country from importing it.

According to the official, who was speaking to ANGOP, there is a strong focus by national business in terms of investments and noted that in 2014 production in Benguela was around 35,000 tons per year and in 2020 levels would rise to 110,000 tons.

Jose Gomes said that the lack of power from the public grid had been the main problem for the salt producers, given the high costs of acquiring fuel for the generators, an issue that may soon be overcome, with the start of operation of the thermal power plant that is being set up in the fishing municipality of Baia Farta.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Association of Salt Producers in Angola, Totas Garrido, said he was concerned about the lack of customers in this pandemic period, and that there were currently 20,000 tons in stock due to a lack of consumption.

According to Garrido, Luanda is the biggest consumer centre and restrictive measures on the movement of people, as well as the weak purchasing power of the population, are affecting the sale of salt inside and outside the country, particularly to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Even so, Totas Garrido made it known that in the first semester of this year 60,000 tons of salt were produced.
Camabatela  Over 100 farmers of Ambaca municipality, in Cuanza Norte province, participated this weekend in an agro-livestock fair to exhibit the region's economic potentialities.

Farmers from the four communes of the municipality displayed various agricultural products, notably bananas, potatoes, yams, cassava, beans, okra, onions, avocados, palm fruit, citrus fruits, sugar cane and drinks such as maruvu and brandy.

According to a note from the Centre for Documentation and Image (CDI) of the Ambaca Municipal Administration, to which Angop had access today (Monday), the event was held to mark the 87th anniversary of the existence of Camabatela town (municipal capital), celebrated on 14 of this month.

According to the municipal director of Agriculture, Olidio Lucas, the fair achieved sales estimated at 5 million kwanzas.

Located 180 kilometres off Ndalatando, the capital of Cuanza Norte, the town of Camabatela was founded in 1611 by the Portuguese, and on 14 July, 1934 it was elevated to the category of town and municipal capital.

Before being named Camabatela, the town was known as Mufongo, terminology attributed to the existence in the region of a fruit tree called mufongos.
While violations of the Covid-19 regulations in both Omusati and Ohangwena are minimal, the selling of alcohol during prohibited hours is still eminent in some parts, particularly in the villages, where communities continue to sell the traditional brew known as tombo unabatedly.

Omusati police commander Titus Shikongo said the compliance in his region is satisfactory, especially in towns. "We wish to commend the public for their cooperation during this testing time. This has been reached after a consistent mobilisation and dedicated patrols that residents started changing their attitude towards compliance," said Shikongo.

However, the regional commander said pockets of non-compliance is still observed in relation to the sale of liquor, violation of curfew and unauthorised entry in restricted zones.

"Persistent violations are being experienced in villages, especially tombo outlets. Bush roads are also presenting a serious challenge as motorists tend to use these roads to enter to restricted zones," said Shikongo. Since the whole country went into total lockdown earlier this month, Omusati has registered 50 cases against people violating the curfew.

Of those, Shikongo said, 37 are for liquor violators, four for entry into an unauthorised zones, five for violating the curfew and two each for not a wearing a mask and contravention of public gathering protocols.

In Ohangwena, the regional commander, Elizabeth Mukete-Sibolile also echoed that the behaviour of villagers remain a challenge. Mukete-Sibolile said the police get tipped off by the community leaders that villagers continue to disregard the set regulations.

"People are still living their normal lives but once we get those reports we get to the concerned community and inform them of the dos and don'ts," said Mukete-Sibolile.

Mukete-Sibolile appealed to the people to adhere to the regulations in order to curb further spread of the virus and to protect themselves and others. The commissioner also appealed for people to attend funerals in the prescribed numbers.

"When life becomes diverse our core values, tradition and action should also become diverse," said Mukete-Sibolile.
Amidst speculations in some quarters that disadvantaged youth of the Coalition for Democratic Change (CDC) has been abandoned by stewards of the ruling party, a new auxiliary has been established to cater solely to the needs of less fortunate members of CDC.

'Congress Disadvantage Youth for Progressive Change', a new ancillary of CDC was launched on 7 July 2021 at the party's headquarters in Congo Town to champion the cause of disadvantaged young within the party, among many other things.

The new political movement which was launched at ceremony marking the celebration of its founder and CEO, Daoda Socrates Carlon's birthday, seeks to also address the many problems disadvantaged population of Liberia's biggest political grassroots party are faced with, including the lack of opportunities such as vocational training programs and human services programs, which are vital for said population to seek employment opportunities.

The group intends to also give voice to disadvantaged young, most of whom are sheltering in ghettoes situated in slums across the 17 electoral districts of Montserrado County.

Carlon, a former senior member of CDC USA Chapter, who recently returned to contribute to nation building said disadvantaged youth are a significate constituent that contributed greatly to struggles that led to the election of CDC in 2017.

Speaking at the launch of Congress Disadvantage Youth for Progressive Change, partisan Carlon said the auxiliary comprises of disadvantaged men and women from the 17 electoral districts of Montserrado County.

"It's intended to take the burdens of neglect of our population that has been marginalized 12 years ago," he said.

Carlon, who works as Assistant Manager for Environmental Social Impacts Assessment (ESIA) at Liberia Environmental Protection Agency, explained "we cannot continue to divide our people, based on who wears clean clothes or dirty clothes or who rides a ca or a motorbike."

He believes that disadvantaged youth refer to as 'Zoogoes and Zoogees' have potentials which can be developed into positive things and can create a platform for their contribution towards national agenda.

"It is on this basis; we w

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ill continue to remain engaged with them whether you like it or not. There is nowhere to push them, this is their country. We will be with them to help them turn away from their negative habits," Mr. Carlon assured.

He disclosed plan to initiate regular counseling sessions for disadvantaged youth, noting "we will tell them that life has ups and downs and that there is a need for you to get up when you fall."

Mr. Carlon also promised to make representation for disadvantaged youth at the national level to ensure that they are placed on the agenda policy of the country, so that programs can be developed to cater for less-fortunate men and women as it is done in developed countries.

Explaining further on what inspired the establishment of 'Congress Disadvantage Youth for Progressive Change', Mr. Carlon said "the reason is very simple.

Said Carlon: "Men that understand the philosophical principle of the universal and the scientific basis on which structures are established will know that without people there will be no government. So it's important that the militants, laymen, sons of peasants are always structured into the development of our country."

He further explained "any government or official that fails to realize that, you are living in space" because these are the people whom we are called to served."

Carlon admonished disadvantaged youth who gathered at the party's headquarters to witness the launch of the new auxiliary not to underestimate what CDC can do for them.

He recollected that he joined the party as a 'placard holder' when he encountered Chairman Mulbah Morlu in 2008 who was then the Chairperson of the Movement for the establishment of war and economic crimes court.

"I was a young man coming up when I joined the movement only as a placard holder. We had the believe that the gun that liberated must not rule. All of you who here who see yourselves battle criers today, don't underestimate what CDC can do for you," Carlon told the disadvantaged youth.

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However, several disadvantaged youth of the CDC, who attended the ceremony lauded partisan Carlon for establishing the group to care for less-fortunate members of their institution.

In separate interviews, the CDC youth thanked Carlon for identifying with them on his birthday and recalled how he has been helpful to disadvantaged members of the institution.

For his part, the Chairperson of the CDC Revolutionary National Youth League, Isaiah H. Togba, was grateful for the establishment of the new auxiliary and promised to work with the institution in advancing the ideology of their political movement.

Another party steward, Hon. Randall M. Dobayou who is also Deputy Executive Director at the EPA lauded Carlon for the initiative and described him as an ordained follower and a baptized trustee of the 'blue revolution'.

At the end of the ceremony which was characterized my merry-making, the Youth League honored Carlon by carrying out a sacred initiation of wearing of the blue beret, an emblem of the party.
editorial

When the locally made vessel, NIKO IVANKA sailed from Monrovia as early as 6:am on July 17, to the port city of Harper, little did many of its passengers onboard know that they were taking a dangerous risk on a non-seaworthy vessel.

But by 3:51 pm on that day, a distress call came to the Liberia Authority from the Coast Guard and other marine related institutions that the vessel was sinking. By that, the 'black deal' which was once a secret, became exposed. Its Swedish captain, only identified as Jack, along with Chinese national Chen Feing Gui on the technical side, could not do much, but to struggle for survival. Nine persons on the crew list and nine personnel of the West African Examination Council (WAEC) Monrovia Office were onboard as passengers.

According to LMA boss, Eugene Nangbe those rescued told them that there were about 28 people on board, leaving 17 missing.

"For now, our concern is a search and rescue mission," Nangbe said. "My focus is the lives of those people missing."

The precise number of passengers remained unknown.

The ship was granted permission to sail on Liberian waters in May this year, but was not licensed as a passenger carrier.

After it was discovered that there were some safety risk, they placed a no sail order on it; meaning that it could not leave until all safety procedures were put into place; which they failed to do.

Eighteen people had on the ship's official manifest, 11 of whom had been rescued during a 36-hour search, commissioner Eugene Nangbe told reporters early Monday.

As of late Monday, 12 persons have been rescued, according to LMA official site.

Nangbe stressed that the Maritime Authority along with all of the relevant entities, including the Ministry of Justice, are commissioning an investigation into how a vessel that was detain

ed because of failure to meet rudimentary safety requirements, managed to get on the sea with passengers and cargo.

"So in the coming days, investigation will establish how many people were on board."

It was not clear how or why the ship was able to leave the harbor or whether it was carrying any cargo at the time. The vessel's owner, a Chinese national, was arrested on Sunday afternoon, Nangbe said.

Among those listed on the manifest were a Swedish captain, a Chinese crew member, and nine members of West Africa's regional school examinations body.

What is also unclear is how much money was paid to those who granted permission to the vessel and who authorized them.

This, the Commissioner General said will be investigated and anyone found guilty, will be prosecuted.
President Muhammadu Buhari, Senate President Ahmad Lawan, Speaker Femi Gbajagbiamila, state governors and other political leaders across the country have urged Nigerians to imbibe the spirit of love, tolerance and sacrifice and work for national unity.

The leaders, in their Eid-el-Adha messages on Monday, urged the Muslim faithful to use the occasion to pray for peace and progress of the country.

They also called on Muslims to celebrate the festival with caution in the wake of the third wave of coronavirus infection in Nigeria.

President Buhari

President Muhammadu Buhari appealed to Nigerians to be patient with his government as it addresses the hardship in the land.

The president attributed the current challenges facing the country to the COVID-19 pandemic, insecurity and flooding that hindered local production for self-sustenance.

He renewed the determination of his administration to create a just, harmonious and prosperous country in which the safety of life and property is assured.

"The current insecurity in the country has produced severe and adverse effects on agriculture because farmers are prevented from accessing their farms by bandits and terrorists.

"Let me also use this opportunity to reassure Nigerians that we are taking measures to address our security challenges," he added.

Buhari, who extolled sacrifices of Nigerians, however, said that: "Taking advantage of the celebration to exploit fellow citizens through outrageous prices of food and rams is inconsistent with the fine virtues of Islam.

Lawan

Senate President Ahmad Lawan said though it was painful the country is facing security and economic challenges, this is a passing phase in Nigeria's historical process of nation-building.

He, however, said the federal government was "Determined that we get the challenges behind us and steady our nation's march to its manifest destiny of greatness.

The Senate President urged the Muslim faithful to show love and kindness to their compatriots as exemplified by Holy Prophet Mohammed (SAW).

Gbajabiamila

The Speaker, House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, urged Nigerians, especially Muslims, to use the occasion of Eid-el-Kabir to pray for their leaders to be able to find solutions to the country's challenges.

Gbajabiamila said Nigerians must remain united and steadfast at all times to be able to face the challenges confronting the country.

Deputy Speaker, Ahmed Idris Wase, urged Muslims to use the occasion to pray for the success of the ongoing war against kidnapping, banditry, terrorism in some part of the country.

Governors

Governor Muhammadu Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State noted that this year's celebration is coming at a period the country is grappling with security and other socio-economic challenges.

The governor, in a statement by his spokesperson, Ismaila Uba Misilli, urged the people to be security-conscious and report any act of breach of law and order capable of threatening the prevailing peace in the state.

Jigawa State Governor, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar has called on Nigerian Muslims to devote their prayers during the Eid-el-Kabir festival to calling on Almighty Allah to end the numerous challenges facing the country and further restore unity among the citizenry.

Badaru, in a statement by his media aide, Ahmad Muhammad Danyaro, said "We will continue to support the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari in finding lasting solutions to the challenges confronting us. We will continue with practical steps to impact on the lives of our citizens."

Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike, urged Muslims to emulate the Holy Prophet Mohammed by imbibing the ideals of sacrifice.

He also enjoined all Nigerians to embrace religious tolerance, which, he said, would promote peace across the country and enhance national development.

Governor Darius Dickson Ishaku of Taraba State called for vigilance and greater support by all Nigerians for the nation's security agencies as they struggle to contain the dangerous elements that are out to kill and maim innocent people.

Ishaku urged Nigerians of all religious faiths and beliefs to continue to pray against these ills that have continued to threaten the peace and safety of lives and properties.

Niger State Governor, Abubakar Sani Bello, said amidst the dwindling economy, it is rewarding to share and care for the less privileged and the vulnerable in the society as the festival calls for love towards humanity.

Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki, charged Muslims to use the period to deepen their relationship with Allah and pray for unity, peace and development of the state and Nigeria.

He called for dedication to the virtues of love, oneness, patriotism, tolerance and unity for the desired development in the state and Nigeria."

Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State called for prayers and support for the security agencies fighting criminals across the country.

He said the evil acts of killings, banditry and kidnapping could only be surmounted if security agencies were given adequate support and prayed for.

Ekiti State Governor, Kayode Fayemi, said love, loyalty and sacrifice were the hallmarks of the festival ad urged the Muslims Ummah to continue to uphold these lessons after the festival.

Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu urged the Muslim faithful to celebrate with caution and adhere strictly to COVID-19 safety protocols as the nation battle third wave of coronavirus infection.

The governor, in his Eid-el-Kabir message issued by his Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Gboyega Akosile, implored Nigerians to support governments at the state and federal levels in building a better society that is free from violence, insecurity and other social vices.

Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, in the spirit of Eid-el-Kabir, presented food items and an undisclosed amount of cash to the Muslim community.

The state's Commissioner for Special Duties, Mrs. Mabel Agbo, presented bags of rice, cartons of water, fruit drinks, beverages and cows to Muslims at the Enugu Central Mosque, Owerri Road, Enugu.

Receiving the Sallah gift items on behalf of the Muslim Community, the Sarkin Hausawa, Enugu State, Alhaji Abukakar Yusuf Sambo, expressed delight at Governor Ugwuanyi's "usual gesture" and advised other states to emulate him.

Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun urged Muslims in the state to engage in moderate celebration across the state.

Kwara State Governor, AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq urged Nigerians to jettison non-progressive politics and "Everything that may threaten national peace, security or destroy the livelihood and joy of others".

Osun State Governor, Adegboyega Oyetola enjoined the citizens to respect differences in terms of religion, tribe or political affiliation, and embrace love, unity, tolerance and peaceful co-existence.

The Northern Governors Forum called for sacrifice by Nigerians particularly leaders who have been saddled with the responsibility for managing the affairs of the nation and ensuring that unity, peace, justice and development is achieved.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), in a statement by the spokesman of the PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan urged leaders at all levels of governance to use the occasion of the Eid-el Kabir to show more sacrifices towards the people and pursue only those things that will improve the living conditions of Nigerians.

Others

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Malam Muhammad Musa Bello, has urged residents of the territory to strive to emulate the virtues of sacrifice and selflessness which are inherent in the celebration of the Eid-el Kabir festival.

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The minister said the celebration is an opportunity to offer supplications to Almighty Allah for the continuous growth and development of our country.

The immediate past Senate President, Bukola Saraki called on the Muslim ummah in Nigeria to continue to demonstrate fear of God, which he described as a key ingredient in building a better Nigeria.

"Our country will develop if leaders display fear of Allah in taking key decisions that will affect the interests of the country and lives of the ordinary people.

"Also, if ordinary people display the fear of God, we will all obey the laws and justifiably insist on the government initiating the right policies at all times," Saraki said in his Sallah message signed by his media aide, Yusuph Olaniyonu.

A former Deputy Senate President, Senator Ike Ekweremadu, urged prayers for the nation's security, saying insecurity has become Nigeria's worst nightmare. He stressed that without the security of lives and property, development, progress, and economic prosperity would continue to elude the country.

A presidential candidate in the 2019 general elections, Mr.Gbenga Olawepo-Hashim, enjoined the Muslim ummah to let their good virtues be put into best practice.

"Let us remember that the sacrifice depicts submission to the will of Almighty Allah, love for our neighbours, tolerance, peaceful co-existence, discipline and remembrance of Allah. "... for without doubt, in the remembrance of Allah do hearts find satisfaction" (Holy Quran 13:vs 28)," he said.

Story by: Muideen Olaniyi, Abdullateef Salau, Balarabe Alkassim, Faruq Shuaibu, Hamisu K. Matazu, Terkula Igidi, Haruna G. Yaya (Gombe), Victor Edozie (Port Harcourt), Magaji Isa Hunkuyi (Jalingo), Romoke W. Ahmad (Minna), Mohammed Abubakar (Dutse), Usman A. Bello (Benin), Hope A. Emmanuel (Makurdi), Raphael Ogbonnaiye (Ado-Ekiti), Christiana T. Alabi (Lagos), Tony Adibe (Enugu), Peter Moses (Abeokuta), Mumini Abdulkareem (Ilorin), Hameed Oyegbade (Osogbo), Ado Abubakar Musa (Jos)
The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) has denied claims by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) that a fraudster recently hacked into their database and retrieved personal details from the voter registers.

IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati on Sunday, July 18, 2021, also distanced the commission from the arrest of a 21-year-old suspect and a former telco staff on accusations of hacking into the IEBC database.

Chebukati confirmed the commission stores voter registration data in a Biometric Voter Registration System which is hosted on several servers.

He added that the servers have no connection with the open internet and would therefore be very difficult to access without permission.

"The BVR system has been designed to have its own isolated network, set of servers, as well as user account directory to ensure integrity, confidentiality, and high availability," read Chebukati's statement.

"Since the installation and commissioning of the system 8 years ago, the BVR system that hosts the register of voters used during elections has never been hacked because the servers are not connected to the open internet," clarified the statement.

He further explained that the data could have been possibly been obtained from entities that may have legitimately obtained the register from the Commission through a formal request.

"The Commission services numerous requests by various entities requiring register of voters from specific electoral areas. These requests are serviced upon payment of certain fees and in accordance with privacy laws requiring personally identifiable information to be kept confidential," he said.

The suspect and his syndicate had been suspected to have hacked into the IEBC database and obtained personal information belonging to 61,617 registered voters in a county in Western Kenya.

DCI had also reported that the individual is suspected to have been running a mobile phone hacking syndicate.

The 21-year-old is said to have randomly called users and convincing them that they were the wrong owners of the said SIM cards.

He would pose as an M-Pesa customer service representative and would trick unsuspecting victims into dialing random codes.

He would then gain access to the victim's accounts after successfully swapping SIM card details and thereby stealing information and money from the victims.
National

KEETMANSHOOP - Swapo coordinator in //Kharas Matheus Mumbala fears the suspension of three officials in the region could compromise the delivery of services. Two local authority CEOs as well as the region's top administrator have all been suspended over the last couple of months.

The suspended officials include //Kharas CRO Beatus Kasete, Oranjemund Town Council CEO Shali Akwaanyenga and Keetmanshoop municipality CEO Desmond Basson.

In May this year, Basson was placed on administrative leave for three months. In a statement, municipal spokesperson Dawn Kruger said the decision was taken during a special council meeting.

"This meeting was convened to deliberate on the matter of the CEO signing a service level agreement with Maximum Profit Recovery Namibia (Pty) Ltd. on 6 August 2018," she explained in the statement.

Kruger said the agreement was entered without the co-signature of the then chairperson of the management committee, Gabriel Freyer.

Earlier this month, Oranjemund councillors suspended Akwaanyenga following reports that he had clashed with town mayor Elias Kasemba of Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) over alleged misuse of council funds.

Confidente reported Akwaanyenga had written to Kasemba explaining the usage of the mayoral vehicle and fuel used between 4-6 April 2021.

On 25 June, a special council meeting of the //Kharas Regional Council also resolved to suspend CRO Kasete. In his last interview with New Era, Kasete indicated he was yet to be issued the charge sheet. Mumbala said the entire region was in the dark over the spate of suspensions involving the two local authority chief administrators and regional administrative head. "If one considers that these suspended officials are now paid with public funds whilst idling at home then it can be closely linked to economic sabotage of our region," said Mumbala. The politician added inhabitants in the region as a whole are now left in the dark as there are still no valid reasons made public that led to the suspension of the three officials. "These people were appointed based on their required qualifications, knowledge and skills through the respectable institutions in terms of laid down procedures and regulations, hence it should also be established that their suspensions have been effected accordingly," said Mumbala. He questioned why Kasete in his suspension letter has been instructed not to leave the Keetmanshoop district as part of the council's agreement to continue remunerating him whilst on suspension. "Is the regional council's management committee chairperson now also the law enforcement authority, prohibiting people to move freely whilst suspended, does the overruling Public Service Act 13 of 1995 applicable to regional councils allow for this?" The regional coordinator also said his party was not interfering with the affairs of the administration of the region, but rather wants processes to be finalised as soon as possible in terms of governing rules and regulations. "The people of //Kharas region have the right to demand when these officials will be brought before disciplinary inquiries if needed and as to when its outcomes will be announced accordingly, if there are more delays it might lead to unnecessary court battles in the end," he added. He continued the party is more than willing to sit with the regional council and local authorities to shed more light on these suspensions. "It is thus imperative that other political parties should come on board now, joining hands with us to solve these administration squabbles for the benefit of our residents," said Mumbala. The politician also said it is the view of Swapo that officials should be reinstated with immediate effect. "If not, their employers should go public and announce the crimes these suspects allegedly committed since the electorate have the democratic right to know," he said. "Investigations should be finalised as a matter of urgency in order for justice to be done as our people will only suffer more if this drags on any longer." Despite various requests, both the Oranjemund local authority and //Kharas Regional Council have not responded to questions sent to them over the two suspensions.

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sklukowski@nepc.com.na

Photos: Nampa
Opposition leader Raila Odinga has condemned the killings and rape of women and children in Kenya.

In a statement posted on his social media platforms, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader also called on law enforcers to ensure perpetrators of such acts face the law.

He further noted that women and children have suffered at the hands of those supposed to protect them.

"Too many children, girls, and women have in recent times suffered gruesome deaths at the hands of people who should be their protectors. Children are being plucked from their playgrounds, picked on the way to or from school and places of worship, and from the balconies and doorsteps of their parents' houses and slaughtered by adults. Girls and women are being killed in cold blood by supposed lovers, husbands, and even parents," he said.

Adding, "I want to call upon the National Police Service to assure Kenyans that it is up to the task of protecting particularly children, girls, and women. Police must assure Kenyans that an individual will not pluck and kill two, four, or five children or girls before the ring is detected and crushed. The Judiciary must also assure Kenyans that justice will come swiftly and fairly where lives have been senselessly lost. Justice is taking too long to come if it ever does for the victims,"

According to Raila delayed justice prolongs the pain of the victim's family and makes the perpetrators bolder.

"The delays only prolong the pain and make beasts bolder. Now more than ever, this country needs assurance from these two public institutions that are critical to ending the madness. This country must rediscover its path and its soul and that rediscovery must be led by the Police Service, the Judiciary, and the people of Kenya at large," he added.

Raila's statement comes just days after detectives arrested two serial killers who are suspected of killings minors.

Masten Wanjala Milimu confessed to the murders of 13 minors in the Nairobi Metropolitan area and western Kenya, while Evans Juma Wanjala was arrested for allegedly defiling and killing 5 girls in Uasin Gishu.

"Kenyans must speak out loudly against the slaughter of children and gender-based violence. These murders cannot be treated as personal or family matters. These are Kenyan matters and must be treated as such," he said.
Khaligraph Jones has assured fans that the hit song 'Ndovu ni Kuu' in which he and Boutross Munene are featured by Krispah alias 'Ndovu Kuu', will be back on YouTube.

The rapper spoke to Nairobi News during the 'OdiNare' rap challenge launch, where he partnered with Odibets through their initiative; OdiMtaani to a tune of sh5 million.

"It is unfortunate that we get to this level of jealousy from fellow artists. The copyright strikes are not legitimate; even Mejja was a victim of such circumstances, so it is something that is happening now in the industry," the 32-year old told Nairobi News.

The song, which had garnered 3 million views on Youtube, was deleted over copyright claims by an upcoming artist; Dexta Briyanka. 'Ndovu Kuu' addressed the situation to his fans urging them to support him in his bid to return the song on Youtube. The rapper cum songwriter defended his claim that the copyright strike was fraudulent and driven by malice.

"I am a music producer, I mixed and mastered the song and I made the beat, so how does someone claim that my song is his?" The 'Ndovu ni Kuu' hitmaker lashed out on his Instagram page.

According to Dexta Briyanka, the song 'Ndovu Kuu' was not only a copyright infringement to his song but was also a threat to Kenyatta University's brand image. The upcoming artist, who also claimed to be an Ambassador of the institution, claimed that the school's applications for admissions consideration dropped greatly as a consequence of the song's lyrics.

Krispah, real name Christopher Thande Githara, shot into fame after featuring Khaligraph Jones on the remix of 'Ndovu ni Kuu' and has since held on to his accrued popularity to propel his music career.

"It is a shame that upcoming artists are now using copyright claims to get to the top rather than put in hard work," papa Jones told Nairobi news.

The matter is set to be handled legally with the 'Ndovu ni Kuu' hitmaker making a promise to his fans, through his Instagram page, that, "whatever legal actions we shall take against the perpetrators involved, no one will ever repeat the same. Thou shall regret."
As Covid  19 continues to wreak havoc in Liberia, the United Liberia organization of Colorado, in collaboration with the African Chambers of Colorado, crying for help to send supplies to Monrovia, Liberia.

The United Liberia Organization of Colorado, led by Liberian-born American philanthropist Ebenezer Norman and the African Chamber of Commerce led by Colorado state representative Naquetta Ricks, reached a deal with the world's largest distributor of medical resources -- Project Cure, Colorado.

Project cure has agreed to donate two containers with a shipment of medical supplies to Monrovia but has tasked the leadership of the United Liberia Organization of Colorado in collaboration with the African Chambers of Colorado to seek funds to cater for the shipping fees from Denver, Colorado to Monrovia, Liberia

The President of the Liberia Organization of Colorado, in a statement, said

"The effects of COVID-19 are horrendous worldwide, and with the lack of adequate health care infrastructure in Liberia, COVID could dismantle the entire country. Liberia is a developing country in West Africa, which is still recuperating from the effects of the Ebola virus, and now faces another worldwide pandemic, putting its health infrastructure in disarray."

The President further stated that $50,000 is required for the supplies to be sent to Monrovia and he thus appeals to philanthropists and the general public to charitably support its mission and come to the help of the People of Liberia.

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Colorado state Representative Naque

For more information, contact the

ULOC President Ebenezer Norman, via his email [email protected] or his office line 720-345-8347

Post Views: 3

tta Ricks, a Liberian born also added that "Liberia's COVID threat hits 'new level' as Delta variant spreads throughout the country " she appeals to the people of Colorado to help save lives in Liberia.

The United Liberia Organization of Colorado is a community base 501c 3 Non-profit organization that caters to the needs of Liberians in the State of Colorado.

ULOC's mission is to provide social services to immigrants and refugees in the areas of education, housing, health, employment, and other social initiatives.

The African Chamber of Commerce of Colorado, USA's mission is to encourage economic growth, collaboration, and investments in African Immigrant communities of Colorado.
Bushrod Island  Liberians are facing the latest and most dangerous wave since the Covid-19 pandemic started 15 months ago. This latest wave, caused by the highly infectious Delta variant which entered the country a month ago, has taken dozens of lives including journalists and high-profile personalities.

As of July 11, 2021, the National Public Health Institute of Liberia reported 144 deaths from a total of 5,215 confirmed cases. 2,465, cases are active and 2,606 have recovered. Experts warn the true numbers are likely much higher. Underscoring how infectious the new variant is, a recent surveillance video in Australia captured the moment of transmission between two people who passed each other in a store a meter apart. With a small fraction of the population vaccinated against the virus, things are likely to get worse unless there is a dramatic change in personal behavior.

Despite the new crisis, large sections of the population continue to doubt the disease exists. The same lack of trust in government that marked the early days of the 2014 Ebola outbreak is playing out again.

"As for me, I do not believe that this COVID 19 virus is in Liberia, the government is just putting out false alarm to collect money from the international community," said Trokon Wilson, a street seller in Monrovia echoing the feelings of many Liberians interviewed by FrontPageAfrica. "If COVID 19 is really here, while did President Weah travel along with a 27-man delegation to France?"

Post Views: 1Yet medical staff in health facilities across the country say they are overwhelmed with COVID 19 patients. There are only a few treatment centers across the country that are able to treat them. Doctors are pleading with Liberians to take precautions and protect themselves.

"We are taking too much of a sacrifice for people to be still out there doubting and taking risks with their lives," a heavily sweating Dr. Richard Doe told a team from Hott TV inside the StarBase National Treatment Center on Bushrod Island. "Please help us. If you guys don't follow the messages out there, all of this is going to be in vain."

Dr. Heounohu Hessou, who took the team on a tour of the center, said he wanted the doubting public to see what is going on inside the Treatment Center in order to believe the virus is real.

"I came here not knowing that I was going to live. I could not even walk or talk when I arrived here two months ago," said Rev. Precious Dagadu, a recovering patient who insisted on speaking to journalists to help the community believe. "But Dr. Kollie and other doctors make sure everybody is important here, without expecting money from anybody. So, I praise God for them."

Dr. Hessou said when Rev. Dagado came in, her oxygen was as low as 50 percent. Pastor Christian Dagado, the husband to Precious, said anybody who saw the condition his wife was in when she arrived at the clinic would believe Covid-19 was real. The grateful pastor said nobody would have believed she would live.

Dr. Hessou said the demand of oxygen is so high and many patients are severe. They are placed on Hydro oxygen of 15 liters per minute. And the oxygen stays on a patient for three hours while some patients use up to four of the oxygen tanks.

Pointing to dozens of blue large oxygen tanks, Dr. Augustine Kollie, the head doctor, said thanks to supporting from the Indian community the center now has several oxygen tanks for the patients. Last year the center was only seeing five to six cases a day that did not require much oxygen at the same time.

"Now we are having over twenty-five or more cases daily and we have seen patient oxygen saturation dropping as low as 30 percent when the normal rate of oxygen saturation is supposed to be above 90 percent," Dr. Kollie said.

"We want the Liberian people to see how severe the disease is, because people are really dying," said Dr. Hessou. "I think the level of disbelief among our people, could be due to the distrust in the health system, but people need to believe the virus is real. Health care workers are risking their lives, so others have to be careful as to not end up in the treatment center. So, at the end of the day, the health workers can also go home to their own families safely."

According to the Health Minister Dr. Wilhelmina Jallah, COVID-19 is having a devastating impact on the health sector and the delivery of essential public health services in Liberia with a 40 percent overall decline in health facility utilization. That is impacting access to critical services such as immunization, birth registration, and nutrition. That will have knock-on effects for Liberians health down the track.

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Across the world, the Delta variant, first seen in India, has torn through communities. Countries that had controlled the virus such as Australia and Taiwan, are now back in lockdown trying to contain it. In Africa, many countries are again overwhelmed.

In Liberia, the health minister announced new rules to help limit the disease including wearing face masks, washing hands, and social distancing to limit the spread of the virus. Large gatherings exceeding 20 people are banned including at funerals, church and other programs.

The numbers of people have reduced on transport vehicles. But police are not fining people who are not wearing their face masks.

The next few weeks will be crucial and doctors say many lives will depend on Liberians believing the virus is real and protecting each other from spreading it.

This story was a collaboration with New Narratives. Funding was provided by the American Jewish World Service. The funder had no say in the story's content.
Monrovia  On the afternoon of Monday, July 19, the Managing Editor of M-News Africa, an online magazine and 35 TV, Michael Roberts was manhandled by officers riding a Police Support Unit (PSU) double cabin pickup in the commercial district of Redlight in Paynesville.

Journalist Roberts, as part of his journalistic duties, has been covering the joint effort of the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC), Ministry of Public Works and the Paynesville City Corporation (PCC) to clean stockpile of garbage in the Redlight and Goba Chop Market areas as well as other parts of Montserrado County under a campaign dubbed "Leave No Dirt Behind" to mark preparation for Liberia's 174th Independence Day celebration.

Under the "Leave No Dirt Behind" campaign, marketers were asked to relocate to the 14 Goba Chop Market in the Omega Community in order to allow development including the completion of the 6.1km ELWA to Coca-Cola Factory road and beautification of the area.

Speaking to newsmen, the M-News Africa Boss said he accompanied the Mayor of the City of Monrovia, Jefferson Tamba Koijee to provide coverage of an assessment of adherence to the relocaPost Views: 2tion order by marketers. On their way back, he [Michael] left behind to get still and video footages of marketers who were defiantly selling in the areas they were asked to vacate.

"I decided to stream the marketers defiance live for the public and enforcers of the order to see what was happening in spite of the order. A man with a PCC branded black t-shirt wasted one of the sellers' goods while I was still streaming live. The lady got angry and decided to fight the officer. Passersby intervened but the lady was still incensed. She threw mud at a Police marked PSU pickup carrying officers to enforce the relocation order. The officers at the back of pick up jumped off the car and ran behind the lady to aPost Views: 2rrest her. Throughout these happenings, I was live streaming," Journalist Roberts narrated.

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According to him, all of a sudden one of the officers ran to him angrily without asking and hit him with force and his Samsung Galaxy S9 plus phone dropped in a pool of muddy waters. Despite announcing to the officers that he is a journalist and that he has been working with the relocation enforcement team, the officer called another colleague who helped to manhandle him and throw him in the police pick up already filled with fufu and other confiscated items.

He said they inflated bodily pains on him while taking him to the Zone 9 Depot 2. Upon arrival, a senior officer of the Paynesville City Police under whose supervision the officers were operating Post Views: 2ordered that Journalist Roberts be taken to "Tortoise Base" Police Depot for detention even though his identity was known.

He explained that while he was being taken to the Zone 9 Depot 2 Police detention cell, he was rescued through the intervention of Mayor Jefferson Koijee who had left earlier to attend a radio show.

Journalist Roberts is presently seeking medical attention at a local clinic to treat the pains from the hit. The journalist's Samsung Galaxy S9 plus phone is damaged as a result of the hit from the officer.
Monrovia  The President of the Liberia National Bar Association (LNBA), Cllr. Tiawan Gongloe has called on the United Nations Security Council to adopt a resolution establishing a war and economic crimes court for Liberia.

Cllr. Gongloe, one of the leading advocates for the creation of a war and economic crimes court for Liberia said the Liberian Government led by President George Weah has no intention to establish the court.

He made the remarks during the event marking the commemoration of the International Justice Day organized by the Civil Society Human Rights Platform of Liberia and key justice actors.

Cllr. Gongloe: "On this day, I am calling on the United Nations Security Council to do for us what you did to Rwanda. You passed the resolution right after the killings of people in the same year 1994. By November you have passed a resolution and imposed the court on them and held people accountable. Relying on Liberia's authorities will not work. They have failed us. That's why on this day commemorating Justice, I am calling on the United Nations Security Council to set up a justice mechanism for Liberia. This nation is powerless to establish a justice mechanism."

to Establish War & Economic Crimes Court for LiberiaThere are split opinions over the establishment of the court; with those against often citing the economic implications associated with the court. However, the LNBA President said LibPost Views: 2eria does not have to pay the cost for the court. All it can do is the follow the footsteps of neighboring Sierra Leone and sign an agreement with the United Nations, and then all support will follow.

"The Sierra Leonean signed an agreement with the UN and have the special court. If President Weah is serious, let him write the UN," he said.

to Establish War & Economic Crimes Court for LiberiaInternational Justice Day is celebrated throughout the world on July 17 as part of an effort to recognize the emerging system of international criminal justice and to fight against impunity and bring justice for victims of war crimes, humanity and genocide.

The celebration in Liberia comes amid landmark debate over the full implementation of the TRC's recommendations, especially the establishment of an extraordinary tribunal to try those bearing the greatest responsibilities of the civil war and its causes.

Currently, successive Liberian governments have failed to set up the court. The Senate, acting on a request from President Weah to advise him on the full implementation ofPost Views: 2 the report, drawn up a list of recommendations following a two-week public hearing. The recommendations, among other things, called on the setting up of a Transitional Justice Commission that would analyze and investigate the findings of the TRC final report.

The function of the Transitional Justice Commission, the Senate said, will among other things, find out why the TRC was not fully and timely implemented, propose solutions, examine the general amnesty law of 2003 under the leadership of former President Charles Taylor for people who played major role in the civil crisis, and explain how to reconcile the national law to international protocols signed by Liberians.

However, Cllr. Gongloe said the move by the government is intended to ignore the report and shield those committed war crimes, some he said are in the Legislature, while others to Establish War & Economic Crimes Court for Liberiaare closed confidantes of the President. The TRC, he says, 'was very' clear with its recommendations; and while the Independent National Human Rights Commission (INHRC) is implementing some of the softer recommendations, the government will not allow the tougher ones to be implemented following the Senate's latest move.

According to him, the setPost Views: 2ting up of the transitional justice commission to be heavily funded to do the same work that has already been done by the TRC amid a broken heath system that is being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic is a conspiracy against the Liberian people to deny them justice and put their health at risk.

'Betrayal of Trust'

Also speaking, forme to Establish War & Economic Crimes Court for LiberiarPost Views: 2 TRC Commissioner Massa Washington said the Senate's action was nothing short of a travesty, and a betrayal of the Liberian people's trust, especially those in their respective counties who voted for them.

Commissioner to Establish War & Economic Crimes Court for LiberiaMassaquoi, who currently resides in the United States, arrived in Liberia on the eve of the event. According to her, she had been invited by the Senate to give her opinion on the implementation of the TRC's recommendations. Had she appeared, she noted that she would have told the Senators squarely that their proceedings were illegal and they should revert to the full implementation of the TRC report.

"Whatever has happened in the Senate is illegal. It was a legal gathering of illegal actions," she denounced.

Explaining further, she said: "The gathering was legal because they are Senators. They were duly voted in and we have to respect our democratic processes. I do respect the institution, the presidency, the judiciary and every other institution, but I disrespect some of these people who run these institutions. And today, these Senators don't have my respect. This is what I referred to as a legal gathering of illegal activities by the Senate for the past two weeks. It's bogus, it is the betrayal of the trust of the Liberian people; especially the people who voted them in."

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"Slap In the Face of Post Views: 2Justice

The Chairman of the CSO Human Rights Platform, the Reverend Francis Kollie, in his opening address termed the Senate's action as a slap in the face of justice and rallied all justice advocates and human rights defenders to muster the courage and keep up the fight for justice and accountability.

Rev. Kollie: "We have called you join us muster the courage in the fight for justice in Liberia. We are not going to relent; we are not going to draw back. This is about time that we muster the courage the most and come together with a new force and new tactic.

He continued: "When I heard that the Liberian Senate has endorsed a Transitional Justice Committee over the TRC report, I said it was a slap in the face of justice. Fellow human rights defenders, it is about time to stand up. Let's fight for justice until justice and peace can meet in Liberia."
Harmon Field  Residents of Harmon Field in Paynesville have accused SFF Entrepreneur Inc., a Lebanese-owned engineering company of putting their lives at risk as a result of pollution emitted from its construction works.

They said the company is deliberately polluted their community with waste from its heavy-duty equipment and has refused to collect the engines' residues.

FrontPage Africa's reporters made several visits to the SSF Company's offices in Paynesville and Sinkor but staffers said they could not respond to queries as they are not clothed with the authority to do so. "The people you supposed to be talking to are not around," a staff told this reporter.

However, FrontPage Africa's environmental reporter discovered a huge spillage of black liquid in the form of dirty engine oil leaking from the SSF Construction Company's fence through a pipe into the community. As the oil clots outside of the fence, the company dug a gutter to allow the dirty and sludgy liquid to flow freely into the community.

Residents of the area said the company has been polluting the community for years but nothing has been done to stop it despite series of engagements with the company. They have lodged series of complaints to municipal and environmental authorities but to no avail.

The Paynesville City Corporation (PCC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) however noted that they have not received any complaints from the residents.

"We have gone to thePost Views: 2 EPA several times but nothing has been done to solve the problem. We have even taken them to Town Hall (the Paynesville City Corporation), but nothing happened," said Charles Massaboi, a prominent resident of the area.

FPA met Mr. Massaboi carrying on a massive cleanup exercise at his home and the alley that forms the boundary between his compound and the back of the company's fence. In addition to the spillage, there was a huge pile of garbage and thick grass behind the company's fence.

Massaboi said he has been a resident of the area since 1981 and had been living healthily and peacefully with his neighbors until the company opened its workstation here during the administration of ex-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Since then, it has been deliberately polluting the community with chemicals. As a result, he has been severely ill and one of his lungs has been damaged.

Massaboi: "The company's action has an adverse effect on us. For me, I am down here and my yard is the sink for the oil. When it rains heavily, the oil comes down here and spreads all over. For this road, I have been admitted to the hospital five times under critical condition. I lost one of my lungs and I am only living on one lung now. These few days, I have been sick, but because I can't stand the filth and this high pollution, I am constrained to clean up."

The Chairperson of the Harmon Field Community, Madam Helena Tisdell says she fears residents of the area would suffer from a disease outbreak if nothing is done to stop the pollution, adding the chemical is spreading faster and will contaminate their wells and pumps used to fetch water for drinking and other household use.

Madam Tisdell: "Let them come and tell the company to stop polluting the community. To just allow the company to keep polluting our area without anyone telling them to stop, means that they are condemning us, and taking us to be animals and we are not animals. We are humans. Let them come put stop to them."

She noted that since the company set up its station here, management has not identified with them by implementing any community project as part of its corporate social responsibility.

She says, if nothing is done to address the situation, she will mobilize residents to stage a peaceful demonstration at the company's workstation to draw authorities' attention to their plight. FPA could not get a response from the company. Reporters went to its workstation but were told that all of the administrative staff have gone to the company's 11th street head office to a meeting. But when our reporters visited 11th Street, he was told by the security to come another day.

PCC, EPA Responses

The PCC, through its Public Relations officer, Jeremiah Digen said the city government was not aware of any complaints filed against the company. However, now that the problem has been brought to the PCC's attention, the PCC will launch an investigation, and if the company is held liable, then a hefty fine will be placed on its head.

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"What I can say to you is that the PCC is not aware of what you (reporter) are just bringing to our attention. It is new to us. And this is in no way justifying that the residence of Paynesville should experience what they are saying that they are experiencing," he said.

"We empathize with them and since this has been brought to our attention, we can assure you and the residence of Harmon Field that the appropriate action will be taken to see how best this situation can be resolved."

The EPA's communication officer, Aloysius David also said the agency has not received complaints from the residence of the area, contrary to their claims but acknowledged that its field staff has reported massive pollution in the area following FPA's inquiry.

This story was produced with support from Journalists for Human Rights (JHR) through its Mobilizing Media in the Fight Against COVID-19 in Partnership with FrontPage Africa.
No words can describe how pain stricken I am reading stories about the state of affairs within the United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc., a noble organization that was once a peacemaker amongst its peers. How we got here is the question that continues to occupy my mind since the genesis of this impasse.

Even more baffling for me is how is it that we who are known as peaceful could fail so miserably to resolve internal conflict that threatens to destroy the organization whose name depicts oneness or togetherness.

To suggest that United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc. has always been free of conflict will be far from the truth because the organization was once in embroiled in conflict 1999 but never at this magnitude.

The resolution o

B. Dennis Garsinii

Former National Vice President & Former National President- UBCAA

f the conflict was managed swiftly, taking into consideration the immense sacrifices made in the past by members of our community in the interest of peace and unity.

While I cannot recall the details of every act of sacrifices rendered for our community association, there are few that will not easily disappear from my old brain.

First, let us look at an abridged history of what is today known as The United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc. The first meeting that gave birth to the organization wa

B. Dennis Garsinii

Former National Vice President & Former National President- UBCAA

s held in Providence, Rhode Island on August 11, 1990, when Mr. J. Bartee Tubah, Mr. Henry Kollie, Mr. Trinity Wamah, Mr. Timothy Kwenah and the late Dr. J. Mamadee Woahtee traveled from Maryland and New York with a mission to promote the idea of forming a united Bong community association in the United States of America.

The idea was quickly embraced by members of Bong Kukartonor Association of Rhode Island. A subsequent meeting was scheduled for August 25, 1990, which produced the organization called The United Bong County Associations in the Americas, Inc. Three meetings later, two in Staten Island, NY and one in Baltimore, Maryland the constitution of the organization was adopted and elections held on March 16, 1991.

The organization formally elected Mr. Tubah as National President, Dennis Garsinii as National Vice President, Ms. Mary Johnson as National Treasurer and Mr. Timothy Kwenah as National Secretary replacing the organization's first interim leadership headed by Mr. Jonathan O. David. During our first installation ball in Staten Island, a gunman was fou

B. Dennis Garsinii

Former National Vice President & Former National President- UBCAA

nd hiding in the ceiling of the hall and threatened to shoot in the hall.

Thankfully, the Lord defused that crisis without injuries to anyone.

Two administrations later, Mr. Victor Enders was elected National President in 1995 but died in office in 1996. His National Vice President, Ms. Ellen Brown ascended to the presidency to complete the term. In 1998, general elections were held in Baltimore, Maryland during which Mr. Sam Mohamed Kromah was declared winner.

The election plunged United Bong County Associations in the Americas in a crisis when some chapters that were not present at the elections protested the results due to the lack of quorum during the elections.

The looming crisis led to a scheduled emergency general meeting in Baltimore, Maryland on November 18, 2000. At the meeting, the participants unanimously agreed to set up an interim leadership during which I was named Interim National Chairman, Adana Paye as Interim National Vice Chairman, Elizabeth Bemah Interim National Secretary and Joe D. Norris as Interim National Treasurer. Soon thereafter, a leadership battle began.

On one side were Mr. Kromah and his team who had been declared winners of the 1998 general elections and on the other was the newly established Interim leadership.

Following several months of battling over the leadership of UBCAA, both sides agreed to participate in a reconciliatory meeting chaired by the late Bishop Ronald Diggs. The meeting was held in Philadelphia, PA on March 3rd, 2001. It was at this meeting that I witnessed the example of real sacrifice. Bishop Diggs had just lost his sister and her funeral was scheduled on the day of the meeting. Instead of attending his sister's funeral, he opted to chair the reconciliatory meeting.

Bishop presided over the meeting and wept bitterly against what he called evasion of peace for selfishness and stonewalling. What a sacrifice that was. I wonder how many of us would have done what he did for the peace in our community?

On June 23, 2001, the United Bong County Associations in the Americas, Inc. held its first post interim elections during which I was elected National President, Adana Paye as National Vice President, Elizabeth Bemah as National Secretary and Joe Norris as National Treasurer. Our administration took over the helm of power with four active chapters (Maryland/Virginia, New Jersey/Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and North Carolina.

In November 2001, Bong Kwatekeh Association of Minnesota applied for chapter membership and was formally granted chapter membership at the UBCAA December 3rd, 2001, meeting in Salisbury, North Carolina, and selected to host the organization's convention on May 24-26, 2002.

At the convention, the Amended Constitution of the United Bong County Associations in the Americas, Inc. was adopted which among other things changed the name of the organization to United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc., the term of office from two years to three and established an official seal of the organization to be used on all stationeries bearing communications of the United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc.

Following the 1998 conflict, United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc. made a strong comeback with remarkable expansion of new chapters.

The Iowa Chapter, Ohio Chapter, Georgia Chapter and California Chapter were founded and admitted into the Union. The Bong Kukartonor of Rhode Island, Bong County Association of Massachusetts and Bong County & Friends of New York listed as struggling chapters were all revived while efforts were ongoing at the time to establish the Texas Chapter based in Houston and the Chicago Chapter based in Illinois.

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Thirty-one years after its birth, United Bong County Association in Americas is facing its first major crisis where there are talks of factionalizing the Association. How did a once vibrant organization that served as a peacemaker among other national county associations and beacon of unity get to this point where it too has become a subject of division? Well, the hard true is that we as members of the United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc. are to blame for this chaos.

We sowed the seed over a period of years and or now sadly reaping the fruits. We have constantly breached the constitution and amended it over time to suit our own comfort. We have chipped away so much from the Constitution and done away with fundamental provisions that once strengthen the organization that its foundation has become fragile. How could it survive under such hash conditions?

Is it all lost? Well, depends on what happens over the next six months. I have a strong conviction that the next administration will take a hard look at the need to reconcile and take steps to restore unity. Should this be the case, we might be able to rescue the organization from falling off the cliff. This I hope, will be our mission, to seek peace and unity within the United Bong County Association in the Americas, Inc. so that we are better able to serve our communities abroad and people at home.

B. Dennis Garsinii

Former National Vice President & Former National President- UBCAA
The Toyota Motor Corporation says its Durban factory will reopen on Tuesday, 20 July, just more than a week after it shut as rioting and looting spread across the city. It has been engaging with the city and the province, and raised concerns in a letter last week, but says local authorities have provided it with a 'recovery roadmap', assuaging its jitters.

Reopening the plant, which produces the Hilux bakkie, the Fortuner, the Quantum and the Corolla Quest, is a reassuring sign that the eThekwini Municipality is returning to normal - or what passes for "normal" in South Africa these days.

"Toyota Motor Corporation (TMC) issued a letter requesting an action plan from local government on Thursday morning, 15 July 2021. Since then [Toyota South Africa Motors] has received a positive response from the city and the province in the form of a recovery roadmap. This has gone a long way to assuage the fears of our parent company TMC," the company said in a brief statement.

The precise details of the roadmap have not been revealed. But Toyota's Prospecton factory outside Durban is a key employer in the region, with a workforce of 7,200, many of whom would have...
opinion

South Africa is far from the days of Nelson Mandela who sought to create a broad coalition of black, white, Indian and coloured in the first democratic government in the nation's history. As we celebrate Mandela Day annually, we also need to work on race relations, which needs to be linked to the class struggle.

As the dust settles on last week's shocking events which saw more than 200 shopping centres trashed and looted in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal, an inquest has begun into the origins of the carnage. Specifically, some are asking why the violence was weaponised and directed towards shopping centres, why communities that attacked shopping centres didn't feel enough ownership to defend "their mall". They want to know why there was a deliberate attack on white-owned businesses.

Attacks on shopping centres were always going to be inevitable because they are the centres of activity in townships and locations. Obviously, the RET faction and agent provocateurs have identified these places as the visible faces of "white monopoly capital" in black townships -- aberrations that must make all black people boil with anger.

Coming back to the people who keep saying that attacks on business assets are a sign of...
press release

The Deputy Minister of State Security Zizi Kodwa visited two malls in the Motherwell policing area today, 19 July 2021 (Motherwell shopping centre and NU9 shopping centre). The purpose of his visit was to thank the citizens of Nelson Mandela Bay for safeguarding their malls and infrastructure from criminals. He praised the security companies, mall management, community and taxi association for ensuring that their malls were safe during the lootings and vandalism that took place in KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng.

Mr Kodwa added that 'we need to take care of our property so that investors would want to come and invest in our communities. If we vandalise and destroy our malls, the old people will suffer because there will be no shops that they can go to, to get their food. We commend the communities for guarding the malls day and night without any rest. Let us be proud of what we have and not allow criminals to destroy it.'

After the two visits, Mr Kodwa departed from Motherwell.
analysis

If the recent unrest in parts of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal has shown us anything, it is that it has never been more urgent to reduce poverty and inequality. Civil society has issued a clarion call to government: the time for a universal basic income grant has come.

Give all adult South Africans R1,268 per month.

That is the call being made by a coalition of 40 civil society organisations in the wake of looting and violence in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng.

Although the idea of the basic income grant (BIG) has been in the works for several years, the campaign picked up momentum during the economic catastrophe of the Covid-19 lockdowns. Now, following the riots, government is showing signs of taking the idea more seriously than ever before.

Introducing a BIG, Isobel Frye told Daily Maverick on Monday, might just be "the most tangible way that the horror of the last week could be met with something positive".

Frye is the director of the Johannesburg-based Studies in Poverty and Inequality Institute (SPII), which has been at the forefront of the recent push for a BIG in South Africa. It was to a presentation given by Frye at the annual...
analysis

The government says six 'key arrests' have been made -- including the instigators of last week's violence and looting -- but it has mentioned no names yet.

Just over two weeks after he flanked Jacob Zuma in front of Zuma's Nkandla home where the former president addressed a gathering of supporters before his imprisonment a few days later, media practitioner and former DJ Ngizwe Mchunu turned himself in to the police.

He is among six "key arrests" made so far, according to a government statement, with three suspects remanded in custody "for bail hearings later". The charges against them include incitement to commit public violence. More arrests are expected soon, the statement said.

Mchunu travelled to Johannesburg a week after his Nkandla appearance to "address the nation" at Kwa Mai Mai, a traditional medicine market and hostel inhabited by people with roots in KwaZulu-Natal. There he gave President Cyril Ramaphosa and acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo three days to release Zuma, who was jailed for 15 months after defying a court order to testify before the State Capture Inquiry.

A couple of days after Zuma was incarcerated in the Estcourt Correctional Centre, violence began in KwaZulu-Natal and spread to Gauteng....
analysis

Covid-19 and the lockdowns had exacerbated issues of mental health among the young, Western Cape Department of Health head Dr Keith Cloete told the provincial legislature.

Hunger and mental wellbeing among young people during the Covid-19 pandemic were a recurring theme during a briefing in the Western Cape legislature on Monday. The legislature's ad hoc committee on Covid-19 heard from provincial government departments, the Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT) and non-profit organisation (NPO) Jelly Beanz.

Committee member Nomi Nkondlo asked what was being done to assist hungry students. CPUT Professor Mellet Moll said there was support for students through feeding schemes during teaching time, but during recess "it has been something of a problem".

Student hunger is not limited to CPUT. In June, a report by the Human Sciences Research Council and Higher Health found that 41% of students were not able to buy food during the lockdown, while 15% went hungry.

But it's not only at the level of higher education that hunger among young people is a problem.

Dr Keith Cloete, head of the Western Cape Department of Health, said that 35% of households...
Ratings firm Moody's last Friday downgraded the credit of five South African regional and local government authorities. It warned there was an increasing likelihood the councils would be unable to meet their debt payments or source cash from capital markets to meet future obligations due to falling revenue, as cash-strapped consumers defaulted on taxes.

Moody's downgraded the City of Johannesburg, City of Cape Town, the Nelson Mandela metropolitan municipality in the Eastern Cape, the City of Ekurhuleni's water entity and the City of uMhlathuze municipality in KwaZulu-Natal, to between four and five notches below investment grade.

Most of the entities were put on review for further downgrades by Moody's, meaning they could plunge deeper into sub-investment territory should economic conditions worsen, which is likely to be the case.

"The rating downgrades reflect rising liquidity pressure as a result of material shortfalls in revenue collection, that Moody's expects to last, in the context of very weak growth," Moody's said in the report.

"The continued strain in the operating environment, as South Africa continues to battle the coronavirus through strict lockdown regulations, further exacerbates the pressures on the municipalities," Moody's said.

Covid-19 has severely strained municipalities and local government's ability across the...
Prominent players in the country's infrastructure space have met in Abuja to chart the way forward for the country's poor infrastructure base.

Some of them included the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Babatunde Fashola; Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari, as well as the leadership of the Nigerian Society of Engineers (NSE).

In his goodwill message at the plenary session of the National Infrastructure Summit organised by the NSE, Fasola restated that infrastructure development, maintenance and management was at the core of the Muhammadu Buhari administration's strategy for growing the economy and lifting people out of poverty.

He said the stock of infrastructure and the commitment to grow them remains the real measure of a nation's desire for growth and prosperity, stressing that a country cannot grow bigger than the capacity of its infrastructure.

Fashola pointed out that this was underscored by the fact that the ministry is currently managing over 800 contracts for roads and bridges, covering over 13,000 kilometres of the 35,000 plus kilometres of federal highways and bridges.

He described the projects as critical drivers for employment of professionals for design, surveys, and construction practitioners as well as a galvaniser for other sectors like mining for gravel, sand, laterite, crushed stones, while it drives the demand and supply of lubricants like diesel, and oils, as well as bitumen production and supply.

He stressed that while design, construction and governance account for only about 30 per cent of Jobs in the built industry, it is maintenance and operation that provides 70 per cent of the sustainable jobs long after construction has ended.

According to him, this is why the Buhari administration must take the credit for approving the first ever FGN Facility Management and Maintenance policy in March of 2019, which led to the rehabilitation of 24 federal secretariats under a facility management contract.

In addition, he stated that 37 bridges nationwide are now undergoing maintenance and repairs, some of which have been due for decades, stressing that many projects recommended for development in the 2013 National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan are now at different stages of completion.

Chairman of the NSE's Infrastructure Report Card Committee, Ademola Olorunfemi, noted that the body was set up as part of the society's contributions to driving Nigeria's Infrastructure improvement and revolution, with the first edition of the report published in 2015 and the 2nd edition in 2017 with the third edition now in the works.

He stated that the report would provide a comprehensive assessment of current infrastructure conditions and needs, grade the state of built infrastructure in all sectors and states and provide policy makers an empirical guide in making choices and investment decisions.

In addition, he said it would enable government leaders to inspect their project portfolios critically, drive efficient allocation of resources, as well as encourage benchmarking and competition among the different levels of governance.

NSE President, Babagana Mohammed, in his remarks, said the summit was borne out of the society's quest to continually drive Nigeria's infrastructure revolution and sustainable development.

He said that a cursory review of Nigeria's infrastructure development, maintenance and management spectrum reveals vivid challenges that need deliberate and pragmatic solutions.

He listed some of the sector's challenges to include unclear and conflicting infrastructure goals and objectives at the federal, state and local government levels as well as ambiguous regulatory framework and inappropriate economic regulation with respect to pricing structures for the consumption of infrastructure.

He stated that the resultant effect was that Nigeria is currently confronted with the dilemma of a staggering infrastructure deficit and skills gap running into trillions of dollars.

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Mohammed said that there was apparent dearth of data and verifiable information on Research and Development (R&D) output to guide mainstreaming of sustainable infrastructure development maintenance and management.

Also, Kyari, who was represented by the Chief Operating Officer, Ventures and Business Development of the NNPC, Adeyemi Adetunji, noted that as a company which is hugely reliant on infrastructure, the NNPC would continue to support the growth of the sector.

He noted that gas and power infrastructure will continue to top the corporation's priority, describing the NSE initiative as a very good and worthy one.

Also speaking, Minister of Agriculture, Sabo Nanono, who was represented Abdullahi Abubakar, noted that the ministry was deploying agricultural technology as a form of infrastructure in a bid to ensure food availability in Nigeria.
With gas supply to thermal power plants around 13 per cent more than seven years after the power sector privatisation, power generation companies (Gencos) have called on the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to intervene and save the sector.

Twenty-eight megawatts (MW) of gas equivalent is required by the thermal power plants in the country, according to the National Control Centre, the data house of the nation's power sector, and only 13 per cent has been supplier to thermal plants since the last seven years.

Consequently, the Gencos are demanding that the NNPC, as holder of 50 per cent stake in the Joint Venture (JV) with gas producing companies, should intervene by taking over their gas obligations to gas suppliers to enable them generate more power.

The Executive Secretary of Association of Power Generation Companies (APGC), Mrs Joy Ogaji, made the request on behalf of her association during a panel session at the recently held 2021 Nigerian Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition (NOG) in Abuja.

The panel session centred on, "Developing the Domestic Gas Market to Deepen Gas Utilisation."

Ogaji noted that one of the major challenges facing Gencos was the request by gas suppliers that Gencos provide "securitisation" before they could supply them gas.

She explained that the Nigeria Bulk Electricity Trader (NBET) was expected to provide the securitisation in the form of a bankable commercial letter of credit from a commercial bank to the Gencos, but that NBET had not given them such since privatisation in 2013.

Ogaji said: "One of the challenges that we generation companies are facing is gas suppliers requesting for securitisation. And again, as lawyers, you know that contracts have to be back-to-back. If it is not back-to-back, it is not possible for me to be able to post to you what has not been posted to me.

"So, the way the power sector is designed is such that a value chain is as strong as its weakest link. So, it is designed such that we have a bulk trader, NBET, as a securitisation agent or an obligor or a buffer for the Gencos.

"So, NBET is expected to provide a securitisation in the form of a bankable commercial letter of credit from a commercial bank to the Gencos, who in turn, will now post it to the gas suppliers.

"As you all know, we have not received that and this is why we are not able to post it to the gas suppliers. My proposition is, we want NNPC, who has 50 per cent of the JVs to take up the gas obligation of the generation companies, and we will generate as much megawatts as you want, if you are able to consume or utilise it."

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She explained that such proposition would help the country as it has a two-pronged approach including making gas available for all thermal Gencos to generate unrestrained and also help to reduce the electricity tariff.

According to her, 60 per cent of the current generation tariff is the gas component, which in essence, makes the Gencos the debt collectors for the gas suppliers.

Giving the status of the Nigerian energy demand and gas requirement, with data from the National Control Centre (NCC), Ogaji, said that Nigeria's estimated 203 population has gas demand of 28000MW.

She added that the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) had issued over 160 licences to power generation companies but that only 25 of them are operating currently.

According to her, 124 power generation companies, majorly thermals, were not functioning as they are, "watching on the sidelines, watching when the market gets serious before coming in."

Ogaji noted that the idle licences would have cumulatively added another 30000MW to the network if they were actively involved.

The Gencos' spokesman recalled that in 2015, the current administration launched a Vision 2030, which seeks to generate 30000MW by 2030, down from the 40000MW projected by the previous administration for 2020.
The Minister of State, Petroleum Resources, Mr. Timipre Sylva, has said the federal government lost revenues in taxes, royalties and other payments on the Atala oilfield located in Bayelsa and about 10 others revoked in April 2020.

Sylva, who spoke while fielding questions from journalists in Abuja, noted that there are conditions attached to the ownership of any licence, including optimal utilisation of the asset, insisting that for 17 years, that condition was not met by the Bayelsa government and the owners of the 10 other facilities.

He noted that all the procedures for cancelling any licence granted to an oilfield licence holders were thoroughly complied with and wondered why the former holders should be interested in whoever the new owners of the assets are.

He said: "About 11 marginal fields were revoked for non-performance and the holders of these fields held them for 17 years without producing these fields, and as a country, we lose money (when that happens).

"Because if we are producing these fields, the country too will be getting royalties and other payments, and taxes from your production. But when you hold an asset and you just keep it and you are not producing that asset, the country is losing money ultimately.

"So after 17 years, the president in his wisdom decided to revoke those assets and revoking it means it is no longer your asset. So, if it is no longer your asset, what is your business whether it has been given to somebody else?"

Sylva added that the Bayelsa state government which formerly owned the oilfield has not refuted the allegation of non-performance, explaining that licence owners do not just hold them for the sake of it, but to put them to maximum use which will invariably earn more revenue for the government.

"Bayelsa state government, are they denying that they ran the asset sub-optimally? They are not, and I am sure they are not arguing with that, they are not arguing with the revocation.

"So, I don't want to go into all the details. So, just know that this asset was not singled out. It was revoked along with a lot of other assets for the same reason.

"I don't want to now single out one of those assets and discuss it. If you are talking about all the assets, then we'll discuss it, but I don't want to single any one of those assets and discuss it, because I happen to come from Bayelsa state too," he stressed.

Meanwhile, the Bayelsa state government has called for the reversal of the revocation of the Atala oil marginal field (OML 46), saying the oilfield remained a "prized asset" of the state to which it is sentimentally attached.

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A statement the Chief Press Secretary, Mr. Daniel Alabrah, quoted Governor Douye Diri, as calling on all concerned parties, including the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) and the minister to consider returning the oilfield to the state.

"Part of what I have done in the last one week of my absence was to state the position of the Bayelsa state government, which I did very clearly to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. So, our position on Atala oilfield is that it is a prized asset of Bayelsa state and that revocation should be cancelled.

"Bayelsa State government might not have the financial capacity or the technical know-how. But the government is ready to partner financial and technical experts to ensure that the field goes into full production.

"I call on all who are concerned on the Atala oilfield, namely DPR, the petroleum ministry, NNPC and indeed our own son, the minister of state for petroleum resources, to do all within their powers to ensure that the Atala oilfield is returned to Bayelsa state," he said.
Bandits who abducted the 121 students of Bethel Baptist High School, Kaduna, have demanded a cumulative ransom of N60 million to free the remaining 120 students with Monday as the deadline.

This came after the kidnappers released one of the students over health issues.

A parent who disclosed the news of the ransom request to our correspondent but did not want his name mentioned, said the church and parents of the students were working hard to raise the ransom.

The parent expressed the hope that if the ransom demand was met yesterday, the students would be released today as promised by the bandits.

He said the bandits had demanded hundreds of millions, but after several days of negotiations, they reduced it to N500,000 per student, making a total of N60 million.

According to him, "some amount has been gathered, but the church is trying to raise additional funds from members and well-wishers to complete the money. We, the parents, have already been contributing to the pool."

The bandits had last week released one of the students who became sick in their custody.

The student was brought home by some other kidnapped victims who were released after their families had paid their ransom.

Meanwhile, the chairman of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) Kaduna State chapter Rev John Joseph Hayab has described as false a report that three of the kidnapped students had been killed.

He said, "This false news of the killing of three abducted students started on Saturday and we do not know the motive of the peddlers of this fake news, but from all available sources all 120 children are safe and we are working hard to bring them back home to the warm embrace of their caring parents.

"We are appealing to those who want to be first at breaking news to cross-check every story before going to print so that they will not break the hearts of people with their unconfirmed breaking news," he said.
A former governor of Zamfara State, Abdul'aziz Yari, has rejected the interim committee appointed to steer the affairs of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the state.

The interim committee was inaugurated by the national leadership of the party.

Governor Mai Buni, chairman of the national caretaker committee of the party, had dissolved the APC exco in the state ahead of the defection of Governor Bello Matawalle.

Prior to the development, Yari was the leader of ruling party in Zamfara.

Following the crisis that trailed the defection of Matawalle, Buni inaugurated a three-man committee to take charge of the party in the state.

But Yari, who accused Buni of mischief, rejected the committee.

In an interview with BBC, he said the dissolution of the party leadership in Zamfara was ill-thought.

The former governor said Buni has no power to dissolve the leadership under his control, saying the action could trigger another crisis in the party.

He also alleged that the appointed interim leaders of Zamfara APC were not genuine members of the party.

One of the mandates of the interim committee is to commence a fresh process in which every member of APC in the state will renew their membership.

But Yari, who threatened legal action, said the interim committee was appointed in violation of the party's constitution.

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Interim committee in Zamfara reacts

The chairman of the interim committee, Senator Hasaan Nasiha, dismissed the allegations of Yari.

He told the BBC that as long as Yari is opposed to the leadership of the interim committee, it is tantamount to denunciation of the national leadership of their party.

On the allegation that they are not members of APC, Senator Nasiha said they were registered by the national chairman, Mai Mala Buni even before their new assignment.

National leadership stance

Commenting on the recent crisis brewing in Zamfara State, the national leadership of APC maintained that it didn't violate any regulations of the party, insisting that the decisions were taken in good faith after a consensus agreement within party members in the state.

National Press Director of APC, Malam Salisu Na'inna Danbatta, said stakeholders were consulted before the former exco was dissolved.
Ita Enang is feeling disappointed that the university would not be sited in his hometown.

An aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, <a target="_blank" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ita_Enang">Ita Enang,</a> has exchanged words with the Akwa Ibom State Government over the location for a newly approved federal university of technology for the state.

Mr Enang, Mr Buhari's Senior Special Assistant on Niger Delta Affairs, is feeling disappointed that the university would not be sited in his hometown, Ididep, in Ibiono Ibom Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.

He said Governor Udom Emmanuel wanted to take the university to his (the governor's) hometown.

The location approved by the federal government for the university is in Ikot Abasi Local Government Area.

Mr Emmanuel is from Onna, which is a different local government area, but within the same Senatorial District with Ikot Abasi.

Mr Enang, a former senator who had represented Uyo Senatorial District, told PREMIUM TIMES he facilitated the establishment of the university, and that he had wanted it sited in his hometown.

"Every processing and everything was done for the university to be sited in Ididep in the present Senior Science College, formerly teachers training college, which has all the facilities to host a university," Mr Enang said on Monday.

"I initiated everything about the university," he added.

Mr Enang told reporters in Uyo that Mr Emmanuel wrote a letter to the federal government, asking that the university be sited in Onna where the governor hails from.

"I have considered his action as improper, imprudent and not acting as governor of Akwa Ibom State.

"The governor is acting in a manner that could be described as Udomcentric, Onnacentric. He was chosen to be the governor of the entire Akwa Ibom people and not the chairman of Onna local government or councillor representing his ward.

"Onna has a university teaching hospital, Onna has the flour mill, Onna has the plywood mill, Onna has a syringe factory, every good road is made in Onna, Onna has the biggest private estate owned by one person," he said.

'Enang is seeking attention'

The Akwa Ibom State Government has, however, dismissed Mr Enang's claim that he facilitated the establishment of the university.

The Commissioner for Education in the state, Idongesit Etiebiet said the presidential aide was merely seeking attention.

"This transaction had and still has no input or contribution of the attention-seeking senator," Mrs Etiebiet said in a statement on Monday.

She said the state government wrote to the federal government, requesting that the university should be sited in Eket Senatorial District, since the two other districts - Uyo and Ikot Ekpene - already have a federal higher institution each.

"I cannot comment on what I do not know about," the commissioner responded when PREMIUM TIMES asked if it was true that the governor wanted the university to be in his hometown.

Eleven higher institutions in Akwa Ibom

It is a common practice in Nigeria for the government, at the federal and state levels, to distribute major institutions and projects among geopolitical areas so as to create a sense of belonging.

But sometimes, or even most times, due to excessive political influence, such practice is sacrificed, and replaced with the concentration of projects in a particular geopolitical area(s).

The Uyo District, which Mr Enang had represented in the Senate, already has a federal university, the University of Uyo, while Ikot Ekpene District has a federal polytechnic in Ukana, the hometown of Godswill Akpabio, the minister of Niger Delta Affairs and a former governor of Akwa Ibom.

Both Uyo and Ikot Ekpene districts, in addition, have two state-owned higher institutions, the College of Education, Afaha Nsit, and the Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic, Ikot Osura, respectively.

The Eket District has Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, which could be counted as a federal institution, especially when the Senate has just passed a bill for the academy to be upgraded to a university for maritime studies.

Ikot Abasi, where the new federal university of technology is to be sited, is about 30 minute drive to Mkpat Enin Local Government Area where there already exists a university, Akwa Ibom State University, though owned by the state government.

<a target="_blank" href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Ikot-Abasi">Ikot Abasi,</a> a coastal town, is also home to the<a target="_blank" href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/regional/south-south-regional/460045-federal-government-to-revive-alscon-by-2023-official.html"> moribund Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria</a> and the Akwa Ibom State government-owned Ibom Power Plant.

There is a plan by the Nigerian government, in partnership with the Moroccan government, to establish<a target="_blank" href="https://www.premiumtimesng.com/regional/south-south-regional/449254-7000-youth-will-be-employed-in-1-4-billion-fertilizer-plant-gov-emmanuel.html"> a $1.4 billion dollar fertilizer plant</a> in Ikot Abasi.

Mr Enang, despite the feeling of disappointment, appeared to have accepted Ikot Abasi as the location for the new university.

"The federal government said there must be a spread and that one senatorial district cannot have two universities from the Federal Ministry of Education.

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"I am not selfish. The fact that it is not sited where I had in mind originally does not mean it should not be in Akwa Ibom State," he said.

But the Commissioner for Information in the state, Ini Ememobong said the presidential aide was "suffering from a mirror syndrome".

"This is the same person that attracts everything for Ididep, not Ibiono, not Uyo.

"When he is talking about Calabar-Itu Road, he is talking of the spur to Ididep, because he is from Ididep. He is suffering from mirror syndrome. When he is looking at the mirror he thinks he is seeing Governor Emmanuel but he is seeing himself," the Punch newspaper <a target="_blank" href="https://punchng.com/buharis-aide-tackles-emmanuel-over-varsity-location-in-govs-domain/">quoted</a> Mr Ememobong as saying.

The new university in Akwa Ibom was one of the four specialised universities approved by President Buhari in June. The other three are to be located in Jigawa, Bauchi and Osun states.

The minister of education had announced the president's approval of an N18 billion take-off grant for the new universities.

By the time the new university takes off, Akwa Ibom, which would be 34 years old as a state, in September, would have 11 higher institutions, including two private universities and three private polytechnics.
Rivers is among the states that have been put on red alert by the federal government because of the Delta variant of COVID-19 infection.

The management of the University of Port Harcourt (UNIPORT) on Monday made compulsory the use of face masks in its campuses over concerns of a third wave of COVID-19 in the country.

The federal government, on Sunday, put six states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) on red alert following the emergence and possible rising cases of the Delta variant of COVID-19 infection.

The affected states, which are spread across four of the country's six geopolitical zones of South-west, South-south, North-West and North-central are Lagos, Oyo, Rivers, Kaduna, Kano, Plateau and the nation's capital, Abuja.

A statement issued in Port Harcourt by the chairman of UNIPORT's Steering Committee on COVID-19, Siminialayi Iyeopu, quoted the institution's Vice-Chancellor, Owunari Georgwill, as issuing the directive.

According to Mr Georgewill, the university is worried about the rising number of new cases and hospitalisation from the pandemic in the country.

"So, the mandatory use of face masks shall commence effective Monday, July 19, in UNIPORT.

"Every member of the university community must wear a face mask and observe all COVID-19 protocols for all indoor activities, including examinations and lectures, as well as meetings.

"All staff, students and visitors to UNIPORT are required to wash their hands regularly or use hand sanitisers while adhering strictly to social distancing regulations," Mr Georgwill stated.

The vice-chancellor said the measures were aimed at curbing the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant of Coronavirus into the university campuses.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the country recorded its index case of Coronavirus in February 2020, with thousands of confirmed cases and some deaths thereafter.

(NAN)
opinion

With shops and malls looted and empty, the real struggle to survive begins. Tshabalira Lebakeng is a journalist who lives in Orlando. This is his account of trying to find food last week after the violence and looting stopped.

"I'm sorry Sir to tell you that our tests say you are diabetic." That's what the nurse at Diepkloof clinic told me in 2018. That changed everything about how I have to eat. I have to eat healthy food. No more amagwinya or fried eggs.

On Wednesday after the looting, I woke up. The streets were quiet. Maybe people had food and were cooking. Or maybe they were hiding.

I took my diabetic meds with boiled carrots and potatoes and tea for breakfast.

But I noticed I'm running out of food. I had two carrots, an onion, some pumpkin and a half packet of brown flour left. I had some money in the bank from writing my story, but I didn't have cash.

So I took myself to the Engen garage at Orlando, 1.5km away. There was a tuckshop and an ATM machine at the garage. My plan was to get some money and buy some food. On the way to...
'There are suggestions that some in the taxi industry are driving the violence to have a complete monopoly of the industry,' says Mayoral Committee Member for Safety and Security JP Smith.

On Saturday, 17 July, the Cape Amalgamated Taxi Association (Cata) and the Congress of Democratic Taxi Associations (Codeta) had talks with Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula and Western Cape Transport MEC Daylin Mitchell about who should operate the contentious B97 route between Bellville and Mbekweni.

But a report-back scheduled for Monday was cancelled after an attack on a Golden Arrow Bus Services driver.

The window inside a Golden Arrow bus was shattered after a bus driver was wounded on Monday morning on the N2 in Cape Town. (Photo: Natalie Malgas)

The driver was shot in the mouth on the N2 highway between Borcherds Quarry and the Airport Approach Road in Cape Town, about 100m from an informal settlement, on Monday at about 6.30am.

Video footage showed the moment the bullet struck the driver, who then slumped on to the steering wheel before managing to stop the bus. Afterwards, he talked to passengers with blood streaming from his mouth.

Golden Arrow spokesperson John Dammert said the incident had been reported to...
A man suspected of colluding with others to defraud an M-PESA agent of Sh42,170 while pretending to be a Safaricom employee has been arraigned in court after escaping a lynch mob in Kilimani, a Nairobi suburb.

Kennedy Maina is accused of defrauding the attendant of the money along Kindaruma road in Kilimani on July 13, 2021, after claiming the shop was operating illegally because it was not properly registered.

He was nearly killed by a mob justice after it was discovered he had lured the shop attendant into sending the money to co-conspirators falsely claiming to be Safaricom staffers.

The attendant borrowed the money from traders in the neighbourhood and sent it to Maina's accomplices before the neighbours found out what was happening to her.

Interestingly, Maina did not benefit from the fraud as all the money was sent to his accomplices who were using him and he was arrested alone. He could not help the police trace them.

Maina and accomplices had demanded Sh250,000 from the company failure to which their shop will be deregistered and closed leading to loss of the money deposited as operational capital.

Maina denied the charges before senior principal magistrate Derrick Kutto of Kibera law courts.

He was freed on a Sh50,000 bond and an alternative cash bail of Sh70,000.

The case will be mentioned on August 3.
Inspector General of police Hilary Mutyambai has cautioned parents to take care of their children as the country registers a surge in child kidnapping and killing.

He spoke in response to questions from members of the public via his weekly Twitter chat #EngageTheIG.

In a specific response to a Twitter user who had pointed to the fact that children kidnapping and killing was on the rise, the police boss confirmed security had been heightened to

While answering to a Twitter user who had pointed to the fact that children kidnapping and killing has been on the raise in Nairobi, Mutyambai stated that security has been heightened.

"Security has been heightened, parents are cautioned to take care of their children and also encouraged to educate their children on basic security measures," he said.

Security has been heightened,parents are cautioned to take care of their children and also encouraged to educate their children on basic security measures. For any suspicious characters and activities contact police hotlines 112,911 or 999,#FichuaKwaDCI 0800722203 #EngageTheIG https://t.co/7K2upCCKCl

-- Hilary N. Mutyambai, MGH, nsc (AU). (@IG_NPS) July 19, 2021

Last week, detectives arrested two serial killers who are suspected of killings minors.

Masten Wanjala Milimu confessed to the murders of 13 minors in the Nairobi Metropolitan area and western Kenya, while Evans Juma Wanjala was arrested for allegedly defiling and killing 5 girls in Uasin Gishu.

On Friday, The United Nations Children's Emergency Fund urged the government to put extra measures to protect children in the Country.

In a statement on Friday, Kenyan representative Maniza Zaman said the culprits behind the kidnappings should be held to account.

"We need to redouble our efforts to ensure that children are protected wherever they are - at home, in schools, and in public spaces," Zaman said.

On Monday, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga condemned the killings and rape of women and children in the country.

In a statement posted on his social media platforms, the ODM leader called on the law enforces to ensure perpetrators of such acts face the law.
Massive desolation continues to engulf populations of at least 10 African countries for a fifth week running, in the wake of poor medical responses and a biting oxygen shortage.

WHO regional director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti said that hospital admissions for severely ill Covid-19 patients had reached unprecedented levels in about 10 countries; at least six countries were facing shortages in intensive care unit beds and medical oxygen even though their supply had increased to 50 percent higher than at the same time in 2020, leading to preventable deaths.

In just one week, Covid-19 related deaths had surged by 43 percent driven by a lack of proper therapeutics and oxygen. Deaths increased to 6,273 in the week ending July 11 from 4,384 deaths the previous week.

Uganda, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa and Tunisia accounted for 83 percent of the new deaths recorded in the past week in the backdrop of what Dr Moeti described as a consistent upward trend in countries with sharp increases particularly in Algeria, Malawi, Senegal and Zimbabwe.

Concern is also growing that the violence in South Africa will hamper social distancing measures as well as vaccination exercises. The continent's case fatality rate, which is the proportion of deaths among confirmed cases, currently stands at 2.6 percent against the global average of 2.2 percent.

Covid-19 cases have risen for eight straight weeks, topping six million on July 13. Over the past month, Africa recorded an additional one million cases.

According to Dr Moeti, this is the shortest time it's taken so far to add one million cases. Comparatively, before May, it took around three months to move from four million to five million cases. This is the fastest surge the continent has seen.

WHO said that in six countries facing a resurgence, just 27 percent of the medical oxygen needed was available.

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"Deaths have climbed steeply for the past five weeks. This is a clear warning sign that hospitals in the most impacted countries are reaching a breaking point," said Dr Moeti adding, "The number one priority for African countries is boosting oxygen production to give critically ill patients a fighting chance."

WHO said it had found insufficient quantity, disrepair or poor maintenance of oxygen production plants as well as challenges in distribution, scarcity of cylinders, personnel or technical skills as the main barriers to adequate medical oxygen supply in Africa.

The rise in cases comes amid inadequate vaccine supplies. The continent has vaccinated 52 million people since the start of the vaccine rollout in March this year, accounting for just 1.6 percent of the 3.5 billion people vaccinated worldwide. Only 18 million people in Africa are fully vaccinated, representing 1.5 percent of the continent's population compared with over 50 percent in several high-income countries.

Around 190 million extra Covid-19 vaccine doses will be needed to fully vaccinate 10 percent of Africa's population by September, with around 750 million more doses needed to fully vaccinate 30 percent by the end of the year.
opinion

Sudan's key coalition partners in the transitional government are split on crucial policies, which now threatens the country's harmonised security and foreign agenda, and jeopardises its progress in becoming a fully-fledged democracy.

The problem could stem from the Rapid Support Forces, the Sudanese Professionals Association, the Sudanese Communist Party and the military.

The schism appeared last week when Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok presented an initiative to integrate the components of the transitional government by reforming the political movements, unify the army and generally reform security and foreign policies to solve what he termed a national crisis.

PM Hamdok, who heads the transitional government in an arrangement between the military, former armed groups and activists, argued for national harmony and said his initiative will save the country from a "worrying and frightening" crisis.

In a bid to create harmony, a new political alliance brings together the Revolutionary Front, the Forces of Freedom and Change and the National Umma Party in Sudan. This group will then work side by side with the military under a power-sharing arrangement with the Sovereign Council, the highest authority in the country now chaired by a representative from the military.

The other members of the transitional government, the Sudanese Professionals Association who led the revolution that toppled former president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019 as well as the Sudanese Communist Party have stayed out of the alliance, hinting at further disharmony.

The military, however, has not been enthusiastic about an integrated transitional government, voicing their desire to stay influential in the country's politics. When Sudan created the transitional government in August 2019, the idea was for the military to head the sovereign Council for a year after which civilians would take over.

However, after the October Juba peace agreement between the transitional government and some armed groups in south-western regions of the country, it was agreed that the military continues to lead the Council for another year.
About 500 Kenyan girls trafficked to India are among illegal immigrants facing arrest as the Indian government cracks down on foreigners without proper papers.

The Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) has ordered all the 29 states and seven union territories to find missing foreigners who have been in India illegally since January 1, 2011.

One of the girls trafficked to the Asian country told the Nation in a phone interview about their plight.

"It is easy for them to hunt us down. They don't know our story, and I come from Kakamega to be exact," she said.

"I met a woman on social media who brought me here and we call her 'mother' as a sign of respect, but the truth is it's because she owns us. She is the one who organised for me to come to India for a hoteling job. All I ever wanted was a better life and to provide for my family.

"When I arrived in Delhi, she took me to this apartment and I thought it was to rest up before I report for duty. Little did I know that she had brought me over so that I could sell my body to make her rich," she narrated.

The girl said she was unhappy with her new life and fled Delhi to settle somewhere else.

"I'm afraid of going to our embassy because the people behind this trafficking racket are very powerful and they have a lot of money. They pay police to punish us and lock us in deportation camps until we 'toe the line'. It's not like the embassy staffers do not know them, some are very good friends with those who abuse us," the girl said.

Illegal businesses

Speaking to the Nation, Kenya's High Commissioner to India, Willy Bett, urged Kenyans in India illegally and especially the trafficked girls to get in touch with the mission.

"We know there are between 300 and 500 girls who were illegally brought to this country. It is usually very difficult to track them down as we do not know where they are but we are here to serve them," he said.

"We have helped quite a number out of our own pockets as there is no budget for such situations apart from talking to Indian authorities to waive penalties and getting in touch with their families for air tickets. This week I am still going to put up another notice so that they know we are here for them and if they show up, getting a plane to take them back home will not be an issue," the High Commissioner said.

Mr Betta also said that no one should be in any country illegally.

"Most of these girls are brought in for illegal businesses. They are just caught up in terrible situations and have no one to turn to and when we ask them to reach out to us they don't. I want them to know that we are here for them," he said.

A high-ranking embassy official, who sought anonymity, told the Nation that the situation is very bad for the girls.

"Many Kenyan girls have also been lured by Nigerians to come here with the intention of doing illegal and harmful things. They use fake documents or even come in with a two-month tourist visa after which they vanish and when they get in trouble they are so afraid to contact us," the official said.

"We are currently dealing with a case in which a Kenyan came here illegally as an athlete then went to Nepal, was arrested while crossing back and is currently being detained in one of the deportation camps."

Human trafficking syndicate

The official also said young people go to India to study and end up wasting their lives and have nothing to show for the years they have been in that country. With expired visas, they decide to stay.

In 2018, while on an official trip to Delhi, the chief administrative secretary (CAS) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ababu Namwamba, said the Kenyan government was planning to "investigate, locate and destroy the evil trafficking syndicate from source to conveyor belt".

"I'm petrified to learn that India is becoming a lucrative destination for our unsuspecting girls at the mercy of ruthless international criminal syndicates. Those culpable must be arrested, tried and severely punished to render justice and deter similar crimes," he said then after three girls were found dead in Delhi.

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"We are also sounding the alarm to all Kenyans that human trafficking is very real and our citizens are vulnerable."

The state of Karnataka, the largest in south India, has formed a five-member committee to track "missing foreigners who are found overstaying in India".

The committee will be responsible for submitting a monthly report to MHA by the seventh of every month and the monthly report must contain the status on the tracking of missing foreigners.

Last week, the Central Crime Branch (CCB) in Bangalore city in the same state arrested 38 foreigners suspected of residing in the city illegally and selling drugs. Many of them were unable to show legitimate documentation.

An officer working on the case told the Nation that about 66 houses were searched in east and north Bengaluru.
Robert Mureithi, 30, was unable to raise a Sh200 court fine and police say he died two days later at the Pangani Police Station where he had been detained.

Mureithi had been arrested on Thursday, July 8, for failing to observe Covid-19 rules.

The following day, a court session was convened at the police station, as has become routine during the pandemic.

He was fined Sh200 or seven days in jail in default. Unable to pay the fine at the Makadara Law Courts, he was taken back to the cells.

Police say he collapsed and died in the cells on July 11.

But last Thursday, a postmortem examination, although inconclusive about the cause of death, revealed some troubling finding: the man had too much water in his body as if he had drowned.

A postmortem report by Dr Peter Ndegwa shows Mureithi appeared to have been immersed in water for a long time but there were no traces of water in his windpipe.

"He had minor head injuries but there was no internal bleeding, which we ruled out as a cause of death. He was immersed in water for a long time but his windpipe had no traces of water. So that was not the cause of death either," the pathologist explained following the autopsy.

"But a specimen has been taken for further tests, which will take two to three weeks."

The finding has raised eyebrows, with rights group Haki Africa's head of the Nairobi office Zaina Kombo questioning where and why the victim had been immersed in water.

Kombo also noted that Mureithi's trousers were ripped.

Mureithi, a father of three, was a charcoal supplier in Ngara, Nairobi. His brother Isaac Ngotho said he and Mureithi had left for work on July 8 as was their routine. The brothers parted ways as Isaac was to visit their parents in Nyahururu.

At 9pm, Mr Ngotho was informed by his friend about his brother's arrest on claims of violating Covid-19 rules. He was locked up at the Pangani Police Station. Mr Ngotho thought that it was a minor issue and was confident he would be released the following day.

On Friday, July 9, Mr Ngotho's friend informed him that Mureithi had not been released.

He travelled back to Nairobi on Saturday and went to the police station on Sunday.

Police handed him a receipt to pay the court fine which he planned to settle on Monday. But his brother would be reported dead later on Sunday.

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"On Sunday I went to the police station. I was given a receipt and sent to the Makadara Law Courts to pay the fine. Later, a friend called me and he seemed hesitant to break some news to me," Mr Ngotho recalled, tears welling up in his eyes.

"Then he told me that he had read about an incident on social media about a man who had collapsed at the Pangani Police Station. And the name that was being mentioned was that of my brother."

He later confirmed the grave news and informed their parents.

"My son was healthy. He has never had any complications. He is the breadwinner of our family. I'm mourning my son without knowing the cause of death. I need justice for my son. My grandchildren are asking me where their father is and I'm speechless," said his father Joseph Muriuki.

"When I went to identify his body, he had head injuries, broken legs and hands. I do not know what happened. I want justice for my son," he added.
With the official debut of the Norrsken Foundation slated for October this year, the company is looking to invest in about 1000 start-ups in Rwanda, Norrsken Country Manager told The New Times.

Norrsken, a global entrepreneurship hub has designated $12m as an investment into the local and East African scene.

Speaking to The New Times, the Norrsken Country Manager Pascal Murasira said they will invest in about 1,000 entrepreneurs to implement their problem-solving businesses. Murasira said that Norrsken aims to support a local company achieve a net value of $1 billion by 2030.

"Rwandans already have different big ideas, and there's the potential of big businesses, which is why by 2030 we will have a $ 1 billion company in Rwanda," said Murasira

Norrsken Foundation will offer different help to entrepreneurs, including providing infrastructure and capital, connecting them to famous foreign entrepreneurs who achieved big things who will be mentoring the entrepreneurs.

They will also buy shares in some of the start-up companies as a way of helping them. Murasira added that Norrsken will moreover be working with other companies that will offer diverse administrations to those entrepreneurs here in Kigali.

Norrsken purchased the plot of the former Belgian school in the city center to build what will become the biggest hub for entrepreneurs in East Africa.

The hub will house a mix of start-ups, incubators, accelerators, investors, lawyers, accountants and other corporates, forming an ecosystem that enables entrepreneurs to build strong companies that solve local and global challenges.

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Norrsken announced its debut in Rwanda in 2019 which is its second global hub after Stockholm (Sweden) hub and is expected to boost Rwanda's vision to become a regional entrepreneurship and innovation hub.

Murasira said among the reasons why Rwanda was the country chosen to operate in is first and foremost the supportive Rwandan government and agile policies that apply not only to young entrepreneurs but also to different people who want to do business in Rwanda. He added that in Rwanda, there's a sense of security and stability, plus Rwanda is a small country but with a lot of potential when it comes to business.

Lack of financial access being the most significant issue that new entrepreneurs in Rwanda face. For many years there have been many opportunities and companies helping them solve that, but it is still a standing issue to many. Some start-up businesses agree that the Norrsken Foundation just came on time since there were many challenges that new entrepreneurs and enterprises are facing. There were fewer alternatives to tackling those challenges.

"We face a lot of challenges, especially on the capital part, and that acts as a big barrier in our business. Norrsken will be a big help to our businesses," said an entrepreneur.
28-year-old Olive Mujawamariya first felt mildly sick five days ago. The expectant mother of one says that at first, she felt some general body weakness but brushed it off as part of pregnancy fatigue.

However, with time, her joints started aching and in 24 hours, she was having chills and mild fever in the evening. Upon diagnosis, Mujawamariya was found Covid-19 positive.

The unexpected news sent the heavily pregnant mother into a sudden panic.

"The first thing that came to mind was that I was going to lose my unborn baby. I went into a panic. I started crying and calling everyone I know," she says.

In its clinical management guidelines, the Rwanda Biomedical Centre (RBC) says that there is no evidence that pregnant women are more likely to get seriously ill from coronavirus.

However, they are considered vulnerable and a keener eye is kept on them on a regular basis.

Although Mujawamariya was looked at by the doctors and sent home, like all the other patients who have mild to no symptoms, she is being followed up at home by community health workers.

The Rwanda Community Health Workers' Program was established in 1995 to increase uptake of essential maternal and child clinical services through education of pregnant women, promotion of healthy behaviours, and follow-up and linkages to health services.

48 year old Jeanne Umuhoza, who has been a community health worker in Kicukiro district's Rubirizi cell, Kanombe Sector for the past three years says that upon receiving a positive diagnosis, the first step is to offer counselling.

"Most people worry a lot but for pregnant women, it is worse. They suddenly start thinking that they are going to die but our job is to give them counselling and to ensure that the mother stays focused on keeping herself and the baby strong," she said.

In the following days, Umuhoza says that the community health worker is obliged to check on the patient more times than they do for other Covid-19 patients to ensure that both mother and child are safe.

"We take the mother's temperature every day and monitor her closely. Should a serious symptom arise, we immediately call an ambulance to take her to hospital for more expert attention," she said.

Mental health support

Jerome Nkusi Niyonsaba has been a community health worker based in Kibagabaga Cell, Kimironko Sector for the last two years.

He says that with the increase in the number of Covid-19 infections, pregnant mothers are dealing with anxiety in addition to the pressures that come with pregnancy.

He said that he spends many of these communal rounds providing hope and information in equal measure.

"Everyone is worried about the Covid-19 Delta variant but for pregnant women, it is worse. I spend most of the time calming their anxieties down and also reminding them that should they contract the virus, they will still be taken care of until they have their babies," he said.

The RBC Maternal, Child and Community Health Division Manager, Dr. Felix Sayinzoga told The New Times in a telephone interview that community health workers have training that allows them to tell when an expectant woman is at risk and when to seek help.

"They already know what to look out for and the instructions are specific. Some they can manage, others are considered red flags and must immediately be reported to the nearest hospital where the expectant mother is quickly taken for further support," he said.

Sayinzoga agrees that counselling is a big part of the community health worker's responsibility since the expectant mother's mental stability plays a big role in whatever comes next.

"Many lose hope when they test positive. It is important that they are counselled so that they take the precautions going forward more seriously. Actually, we are now even counselling those who are not infected to know what to expect in case they get infected," he said.

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He reminded that a pregnant woman with Covid-19 cannot pass the virus to the foetus or to a baby through breastfeeding.

Dr Kenneth Ruzindana, a consultant at University Teaching Hospital Kigali (CHUK), told this publication that although most infected pregnant mothers recover without undergoing hospitalisation, rapid clinical deterioration can occur.

"Obviously symptomatic pregnant patients are at increased risk of death compared to symptomatic non-pregnant females of reproductive age. However, a big number (over 90 per cent) of the infected ones can recover without giving birth prematurely," he said.

A total of 58,467 community health workers are currently operating all over the country where they provide the first line of health service delivery.

60 per cent of these are women.

There are four in each village: a male-female pair providing basic care and integrated community case management of childhood illness, and another two in charge of maternal health.
press release

As French journalist Olivier Dubois completes his 100th day as the hostage of an armed group in Mali, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and officials from the Paris city hall today hung a banner supporting Dubois over the entrance to the town hall of the 10th arrondissement in Paris.

"Olivier is fighting to inform us, let's not forget him." says the banner, which will remain there throughout the summer. The ceremony was attended by all members of the committee coordinating support for Dubois, a freelancer who reports mainly for Liberation, Le Point and Jeune Afrique.

Dubois was kidnapped on 8 April in the northeastern city of Gao when he went to interview a senior member of the Support Group for Islam and Muslims (JNIM), a coalition of armed Islamist groups. A short video released on social media a month later, on the night of 4 May, showed Dubois confirming that JNIM was holding him hostage. No other video has been released since then. He is the only French citizen currently known to be held hostage anywhere in the world.

"To campaign for Olivier's release is to fight for the right to news and information," RSF president Pierre Haski said. "It also spreads the message that, without courageous journalists like Olivier, we would not know what is happening in the Sahel region, where it is becoming increasingly difficult to work. RSF will continue to campaign alongside this journalist's family and colleagues to ensure that everything is done to obtain his release."

Arnaud Ngatcha, the Paris deputy mayor in charge of international relations, said: "This banner will help to keep Olivier Dubois' fate in the spotlight in the heart of the capital. It is important to make people aware that he has been a hostage for too long."

RSF previously organised a show of support for Dubois in Place de la Republique in Paris on 8 June, the day he completed his second month in captivity. Those attending included six journalists who have been held hostage in the past - Philippe Rochot (in Lebanon in 1986), Jean-Jacques Le Garrec (Philippines in 2000), Georges Malbrunot (Iraq in 2004), Florence Aubenas (Iraq in 2005), Romeo Langlois (Colombia in 2012) and Edouard Elias (Syria in 2013 and 2014).

Mali is ranked 99th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2021 World Press Freedom Index.
Three families from Homa Bay County spent the night in the cold on Monday after their houses were set on fire by a mob avenging the killing of a 40-year-old man.

The families from Radienya village, lost all their belongings after the mob raided their homes and set the houses on fire.

A member of the affected families is accused of attacking and slashing a neighbour, identified as Tobias Obunga with a machete after his cows strayed into a maize farm, triggering the incident.

The suspect is reported to have confronted his neighbour demanding an explanation as to why he had let his cows graze in his maize farm before a fight broke out.

During the fight, the suspect who was armed with a machete, slashed his neighbour on the right arm and the head, injuring him seriously.

It's at that point that a group of villagers raided the homes and set the houses on fire.

Central Kanyamwa location Chief George Otieno said the man succumbed to injuries on arrival at the Homa Bay County Teaching and Referral Hospital.

"The suspect called me to let me know that he had attacked and seriously injured his neighbour whom he accused of letting his cattle stray into his maize farm. He later presented himself to Ndhiwa Police station," said the chief.

The villagers killed pigs belonging to the suspect before they raided a home belonging to parents of the suspect and torched it.

A house belonging to a brother of the suspect was razed during the incident.

"After the incident, five houses were reduced to ashes. Nothing was saved from the fire, not even the animals owned by the affected families were spared by angry villagers," Mr Otieno said.

Ndhiwa Sub County Police Commander Robert Aboki said the suspect presented himself to Ndhiwa Police Station and reported the incident.

The officer said the suspect will be detained as police conduct investigation into the incident.

"He will be arraigned when investigations are complete," Mr Aboki said.

The body of the deceased was taken to the Manyata Kobodo mortuary for post-mortem examination.
The pain and anguish of families who lost their loved ones in the fuel tanker tragedy in Siaya County on Saturday was tellingly unbearable as they desperately visited hospitals to find out the fate of missing kin.

Other grieving relatives returned to the scene yesterday as national and county officials worked round-the-clock to assist them through an information desk that's coordinating search efforts.

Mr Erick Kembo Apondi stood beside the wreckage of the tanker, grief-stricken as he came to terms with the incident that has left his son fighting for his life in hospital.

Two of his sons aged 14 and 17, who are set to join Form One, were both at the scene of the explosion, but one escaped unhurt.

Mr Apondi was relaxing at home when he learnt that David Omondi, the older one, had sustained serious burns as he joined other villagers in siphoning oil, prompting him to rush to the scene to join rescue efforts.

"I had remained at home when a neighbour ran to my house to alert me about the bad news. I him to Yala dispensary but was referred to Siaya County Referral Hospital because they said he had 80 per cent burns," Mr Apondi said.

His condition was worsening by the hour as he had burns on his whole body, but he remained hopeful he would pull through. "By the time I left the hospital at the wee hours of the morning, he could not even speak. I am only hoping he pulls through," said Mr Apondi.

As for Mrs Damaris Mukobe, the uncertainty of a missing loved one is driving her crazy. By 1pm yesterday, she was still looking for his close relatives after she heard that her nephew, Mr Wycliffe Omollo, suffered serious burns and had been admitted at Yala hospital.

"I heard the news of the incident in Busia and was told that my nephew was among those who went to siphon fuel. We are still trying to trace him," said Mrs Mukobe.

She warned people against rushing to such scenes and endangering their lives.

Ms Diana Odongo will live to remember the nightmare for the rest of her life as she narrowly escaped death but the whereabouts of her co-wife, Maureen Atieno, and nephew, Samuel Omondi, 22, are unknown.

She recalls hearing a loud bang, screams and smoke coming from the burning tanker as she returned home.

"I was on my way home with a 20-litre jerrycan when I heard the explosion. Behind us was a ball of fire. We had to run fast as our clothes had been covered with petrol. I'm lucky I had left; I could have perished in the fire," she says.

Ms Odongo suspects Atieno and Omondi perished in the fire as efforts to locate them have been futile so far. Atieno is a mother of two, while Omondi is a second-year student at a polytechnic in Kisumu.

"We have visited those nursing injuries in Inuka, Yala and Siaya hospitals but have not been able to identify our missing relatives. We suspect they are among those who died," said Ms Odongo.

Many grieving relatives have not had an opportunity to identify the bodies that are at the sub-county referral hospital mortuary.

Earlier, villagers had reportedly argued with the tanker driver, who had threatened to blow up the vehicle if they continued siphoning oil.

"We pleaded with him to allow us scoop the fuel but he stood his ground. As we left the scene, we heard the explosion. The driver was among those who died," said Ms Odongo.

Precious Adhiambo is mourning her sister, Sharon Omollo, who is believed to be among those who were burnt beyond recognition.

Before encountering her death, she had dreams of joining college to pursue a teaching career. She had a part time job in Nairobi and was due to travel to the city on Sunday morning.

"My sister was scheduled to travel on Saturday but the bus delayed and due to the curfew, they moved travel arrangements to Sunday. She had already packed her things and was all set to go," said Ms Adhiambo.

Hours before the explosion, the two sisters had their evening meal and spent time chatting and whiling the evening away. In their conversations, Ms Adhiambo said her sister had somehow sounded ominous, when she mentioned something about her death.

"She kept speaking about her fears of death and how she would die before me. I never took her words seriously," said the distraught sister.

After the accident, they rushed to the scene, which is about 50 meters from their home and joined other villagers in siphoning fuel. They filled two 20-litre jerrycans and quickly took them home.

"She then returned to the scene with a 10-litre jerrycan and that's the last time I saw her. Shortly after, there was an explosion and it was like hell," said Ms Adhiambo.

"We have been to Yala, Siaya, Inuka and Rang'ara hospitals but hopes of finding our sister alive are almost gone. We have sadly come to the conclusion that she was among those who were burnt to death. We have lost a sister who had a bright future," she added.

Mr Lawrence Ohono, whose brother is nursing serious burns at Inuka Hospital, said he was lucky to be alive as he hastily left the scene for fear of arrest for violating the curfew.

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"I had also filled a 10-litre jerrycan of fuel and left fearing arrest by the police for violating the curfew," said Mr Ohono.

He heard a loud bang and a few minutes later, his brother came home screaming and told them what had transpired. "He had burns on his hands and the waist. He later collapsed. We rushed him to Inuka hospital where he is receiving treatment," said Mr Ohono.

The accident scene is a blackspot along the busy highway as there have been three accidents involving trucks in the last six months.

"Three months ago, a truck transporting wheat flour overturned at the same spot," said Mr Ohono.

He blamed the actions of the villagers on poverty and the high cost of living due to the tough economic times.

Malanga assistant chief, Millicent Ouma Otieno, said six families have reported their loved ones missing.

"If we identify the missing persons, then we will be able to see if we can put a name to the bodies. Among those reported missing are four women, one of whom was seven months pregnant," said Mrs Otieno.

She urged those who escaped with minor burns to seek treatment from nearby health facilities.

Reported by Rushdie Oudia, Elizabeth Ojina and Angeline Ochieng
Members of Parliament have barred cohabiting partners from inheriting the property of one lover when the other dies.

In passing the Succession Amendment Bill, 2019, male lawmakers ganged up and rejected an amendment that would have allowed a cohabiting spouse to inherit the property of their lover following death.

The Bill, sponsored by Homa Bay Town MP Peter Kaluma, seeks to reorganise family inheritance. It stipulates that only a spouse as defined under the Marriage Act, 2014 qualifies for inheritance.

A spouse in this case means a husband or a wife or wives recognised under the marriage.

Though cohabitation is recognised under the Marriage Act, lawmakers said allowing such people to inherit the properties of the deceased partner would open floodgates for so-called slay queens to sue legally married wives for a share of the properties.

Under the Marriage Act, cohabitation refers to an arrangement in which an unmarried couple live together in a long-term relationship that resembles a marriage.

MPs argued that if a person is serious in any union, that person should be properly married before being allowed to inherit the properties of their deceased partner.

Mr Kaluma sought to introduce another amendment to his Bill that would have allowed couples who have cohabitated for at least three years before the death of one partner to inherit the properties of their partner.

Had the amendments passed, people who didn't formalise their union but were introduced to both families as living as husband and wife would have been allowed to inherit the properties of the deceased.

"The Bill was passed in the most rigid form. The House rejected my additional amendments, which had sought to create room for persons in legitimate cohabitation to inherit property," Mr Kaluma regretted.

MPs saw the amendments as a clever way of bringing in secret lovers through the back door and shot them down.

"I oppose these amendments. If you want to marry, please marry and let people know, otherwise your dependents will suffer while courts take forever to settle disputes on how to share your properties," Minority Leader John Mbadi said.

Nominated MP David Sankok said if one wants to inherit the property of the deceased, then he or she should strive and formalise the marriage even at the Attorney-General's chambers.

"If you love someone, go to the Attorney-General's chamber and get a marriage certificate and if you are loved, be formally married," he said.

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"If you are not formally married, then you are not needed and if someone doesn't need you while alive, then even in death he doesn't want you, so keep off his properties."

Suba North MP Millie Odhiambo, however, said the House missed the opportunity to pass the important amendment as she emphasised that cohabitation is a form of marriage legally accepted by the Constitution.

"If you have stayed with a man for three years, then you are not selling mangoes, you are actually married. We have missed an important amendment because of excitement," she said.

The Bill is seen as one way MPs are seeking to block and lock out mistresses from claiming family estates upon the death of a spouse.

Several mistresses and children sired out of wedlock have previously petitioned courts demanding to be enjoined in family inheritance.

The Bill seeks to provide clarity on who a dependent of the deceased person is. It provides stronger protection to the spouse, children and extended family of a deceased person in succession matters.

It also seeks to limit the dependents entitled to inherit the property of a spouse and who qualifies as a child of the deceased -- whether or not maintained by the deceased before death.

The list will also include the deceased's parents, grandparents, grandchildren, stepchildren, children that the deceased had taken into his family as his own, brothers and sisters, as well as half-brothers being maintained by the deceased before death.
Deputy President William Ruto has seemingly capitalised on the confusion among his potential competitors in the State House race to move ahead of them, political analysts suggest.

With no clear opponent one year to the General Election, DP Ruto seems to be campaigning against himself as his perceived main rival, ODM leader Raila Odinga, remains reluctant to formally declare his presidential candidature.

While there are other presidential hopefuls who have announced their candidatures, such as Mr Musalia Mudavadi, Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, Dr Alfred Mutua and Prof Kivutha Kibwana, the fact that they are still oscillating between individual runs and pursuing a coalition has slowed down their campaigns.

Today, One Kenya Alliance (OKA) leaders -- Mudavadi, Kalonzo, Moses Wetang'ula and Gideon Moi -- meet to be briefed on a report by a technical team they tasked with exploring the modalities of the alliance.

A source within OKA confirmed that the secretariat will brief the four leaders on a number of issues, including how to pick the presidential candidate in case the alliance is formalised.

The secretariat, the source said, is proposing that the four leaders should avoid a competitive nomination, citing the possibility of a fallout that will be difficult to resolve with time running out to the next elections.

The planned alliance faces both legal and political hurdles. Mr Mudavadi's Amani National Congress, Mr Kalonzo's Wiper and Mr Wetang'ula's Ford-Kenya are part of the National Super Alliance (Nasa), which includes ODM.

Mr Moi's Kanu has signed a post-election coalition pact with President Kenyatta's Jubilee.

While the law states that a party cannot belong to two coalitions at the same time, none of the parties has moved to formally pull out from their current affiliations, pointing to indecision.

Talks with Jubilee

There is talk of reviving Nasa, on condition that Mr Odinga backs any of the other three leaders pursuant to the deal signed prior to the 2017 elections. Then there are those who want OKA expanded to include ODM, which has already opened talks with Jubilee.

However, there are also those who believe efforts to forge a broad-based coalition to face the DP, which President Kenyatta is said to be working hard to put together, will not bear fruit.

Wiper vice-chairperson Mutula Kilonzo Jnr lamented the confusion in Nasa with regard to the 2022 presidential candidate.

"In my view, UDA (United Democratic Alliance) is a rebranded Jubilee. The few left in Jubilee will soon go where their heart is. The confusion in the presidential race lies in Nasa. I see Raila, Kalonzo and Mudavadi on the ballot," Senator Kilonzo told Nation.

Even within individual parties, picking a presidential candidate has run into headwinds, as is the case with ODM.

The party's National Elections Board (NEB) called for aspirants to send in their applications. Governors Hassan Joho and Wycliffe Oparanya applied, only for the party to stop the process in April.

Yesterday, the party's NEB chairperson, Ms Catherine Mumma, said in a text message it's yet to decide its presidential candidate.

Although many of Mr Odinga's lieutenants have maintained that he remains their best bet in 2022, the ODM leader has insisted he does not want to talk about 2022 just yet, citing the Building Bridges Initiative campaign to amend the Constitution.

However, from the beginning of this month, Mr Odinga has been releasing what appears to snippets of his manifesto under the title "What Raila believes in", an indication that he will be on the ballot next year.

Those pushing for Mr Odinga's bid say he has the political clout and financial muscle to give the DP a run for his money. But Mr Musyoka has declared he won't play second fiddle to Mr Odinga again after 2013 and 2017.

Political analyst Javas Bigambo said it would be escapist for anyone to presume that the DP is running against himself.

"The DP is therefore taking advantage of the confusion in his pool of competitors, sure of his own candidature and making himself the candidate to beat.

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"As such, he's covering ground already. OKA has not taken off and it lacks clarity. That lack of clarity is of no advantage," Mr Bigambo said.

While addressing meetings at the Coast where he has camped since the weekend, the DP said he is ready to meet any alliance in 2022.

Ready to face them

"We have no problem even if they form a big tribal party. The Hustler nation is ready to face them," he said on Sunday.

On various occasions, the DP has called his rivals clueless and rudderless, citing their inability to agree on whom to back.

Speaking in Murang'a on Friday, he said Jubilee supporters didn't elect President Kenyatta to make efforts to unite the warring Nasa leaders.

Although a day in politics is a long time, for now the DP appears to be reaping from the political tug-of-war among Nasa affiliates and Jubilee infighting.
Geneva  "The constant and systematic attacks on people who are considered 'slaves' are unacceptable and must stop immediately," said Alioune Tine, UN independent expert on the situation of human rights in Mali, said. Tomoya Obokata, UN special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, said "such vicious attacks are incompatible with an inclusive society and we condemn them in the strongest terms."

They were reacting an incident on 4 July when people from Makhadougou village in the eastern Kayes region tried to prevent people they considered slaves from working their fields. Using machetes and rifles, they injured 12 people, including three women uninvolved in the clash who were hit by stray bullets inside their homes.

Already this year, 62 people - 57 men and five women - have been injured in violent clashes in the Kayes region, and 80 have had to flee their homes. Twice as many people - mostly so-called "descent-based slaves" - have been injured this year as in 2020.

Mali outlawed slavery in 1905, but a system of "descent-based slavery" persists, where slave status is ascribed to some people because their ancestors were allegedly enslaved by the families of the so-called masters.

People who are were born into slavery work without pay and are deprived of basic human rights and dignity. Those who reject the "slave" designation and try to stand up for their rights, as well as anti-slavery organisations, are regularly violently attacked by traditional or religious leaders and their allies, including, in some cases, State authorities.

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"The dramatic increase in attacks this year shows the Government's gross failure to protect its people, particularly those who already suffer most from discrimination and violence," the experts said.

In a statement issued in September 2020, Obokata and Tine condemned similar "barbaric and criminal acts" and called on Mali to end slavery once and for all. They called for "a prompt, transparent, impartial and thorough investigation" into attacks in the Kayes region.

"It is deeply worrying that no one has been prosecuted in connection with attacks last year," the experts said. "The Government's failure to hold pro-slavery perpetrators accountable sends a shockingly disturbing signal. Traditional and religious leaders who condone these violent attacks must also be held accountable."

The experts renewed their call for Mali to urgently adopt a law specifically criminalising slavery.

Just as important, they said, "a change of attitude is needed throughout Malian society. It is indispensable to leave the heritage of descent-based slavery behind and to recognize that all Malians are entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights".

"For Mali to move forward, there must be a recognition that all Malians - like everyone else on this planet - can expect and demand certain rights simply because they are human beings. There should be no discrimination based on race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property or birth."
With real estate growing into a potential driver for economic growth, the construction sector has turned out to be an ocean of opportunity.

Entrepreneur Christian Didier Izere picked up on the trend, and has taken it upon himself to make an investment that he hopes will offer building solutions. His firm- Cadeaux Company, does construction in general, but also offers an array of services under one roof.

As a one-stop shop, Izere offers civil construction services from concept to execution. His services include architectural and structural design, production and selling of construction materials, as well as construction and supervision services.

Asked what made him come up with this idea, Izere says he wanted to ensure that construction is a swift, connected and less stressful process.

Taking the first step

As a 22-year-old, third- year-civil engineering student, Izere wanted to start building his career in addition to making a mark in the construction sector.

Izere offers civil construction services, from concept to execution. Photos: Courtesy

But the start was very scary; he says. "I was terrified due to the fact that I was still in school, by then I was in my second year but I wanted to start building my company regardless. I also didn't want to work for someone else when I graduated, so I had to plan earlier."

Nonetheless, he took a random shot and made an investment. He has since worked on both residential and commercial buildings. He is currently working on a satellite estate project as a subcontractor to produce construction materials.

Looking back at all the challenges- a tough beginning, with limited capital and trust from people, Izere can't help but be proud of how far he has managed to come irrespective of the obstacles.

"One of the biggest challenges I met was the people who didn't believe in me and what I do; some would say I was still young for this or that I didn't have the capacity of doing this business because I had not done it before."

But he withstood all that and this challenging journey has given him lessons that are mostly pushing him forward for more, as he says.

"Opening this shop is a big achievement for me. I now work on large projects and I have managed to increase the number of machines and workers, business is growing. What I have learnt on this journey is that, it's important to be patient. Also, it's imperative to make connections everywhere you get a chance to be," Izere added.

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Making construction affordable

As an entrepreneur who comes with a unique touch to construction, Izere says he not only wants people to access all construction services in one place, but also hopes for the entire process to be affordable for his customers.

"I want them to find construction materials, engineers, manpower all at once and I am sure this will make construction more affordable and will reduce the cost of a client's project," he said

And to ensure that his goal is practical both for him and his customers, the young entrepreneur has hired a strong team to ensure delivery of quality services.

"Excellence in construction requires team work and doing your work on time. I want my services to be affordable both for me and my clients because minimising costs is a bullet technique in construction," he added.

His company's future plans involve targeting investors for real estate projects. He also wants to create himself a wider platform as a major contractor in the field of construction.

"My first step was to get a one-stop shop for the customers, but I also want to expand and offer consulting services," Izere said.
The United Kingdom has retained Kenya in the list of countries whose nationals are barred from entering Britain, dealing a blow to Nairobi's efforts for review of the travel embargo.

The UK last week updated countries on England's "Red List" amid concerns about the spread of new Covid-19 variants.

Kenya remained on the travel ban list where it was first included in April, triggering a tit-for-tat travel blockade from Nairobi.

The UK travel ban comes amid fears that the highly contagious Covid-19 Delta variant may spark a fourth wave of infections in Kenya over the next two months.

It also signals that reconciliatory talks initiated in mid-April to review the travel restrictions between Kenya and the UK, which threatened bilateral trade, economic and security relations, have not prompted England to downgrade the movement limits.

The UK ban has added weight to the decision of more than 50 countries to deny access to Kenyans in the global race to protect nations against new variants of coronavirus.

In May, Kenya lifted the ban on flights between Nairobi and London and eased restrictions imposed in retaliation to its inclusion in the red list.

The UK has segmented countries into a green, amber and red lists, each carrying different degrees of restrictions for arrivals back into the UK.

A British citizen travelling from a Green List is not required to undergo a mandatory quarantine.

Travellers arriving in the UK from countries on the Red List will be denied entry, while returning Britons must submit to 10 days of mandatory quarantine in hotels.

Kenya has relaxed punitive requirements that it had imposed on British citizens that required them to be isolated for 14 days before they can be admitted to the country.

In mid-June review, the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority (KCAA) said the British nationals and non-citizens travelling through London are required to self-isolate for only seven days.

The UK claims its decisions are based on scientific evidence on the incidence of deadly and highly contagious Covid-19 strains. The rapidly transmissible Covid-19 Delta variant, first identified in India, is dominant in western Kenya, where it was initially detected in the country.

The government imposed restrictions on movement in the region to try and stem it from spreading nationwide.

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Most countries are preparing to sign off on plans for unrestricted travel for people who have had both jabs.

About 1.61 million people have been inoculated so far in Kenya, of which 581,003 got their second doses.

The government expects to receive 13 million Johnson & Johnson vaccine doses from August and targets to inoculate more than 10 million people by the end of December and the entire 26 million adult population by the end of 2022.

Kenya had 192,435 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 3,760 deaths as of July 17, with a positivity rate of 10.5 percent.

The UK decision has delivered yet another devastating blow to tourism not only in Kenya but across the continent. With a number of Middle East and African countries on the Red List, Nairobi has been the last major hub for connecting flights into the UK.

Britain is one of Kenya's main trading partners and in 2019 accounted for the fourth largest arrivals through Jomo Kenyatta International Airport with 181,400 visitors.

Tourist arrivals from the UK stood at 16,264 in the first half of this year from 42,341 in the same period last year, representing a 62 percent drop.

Besides the UK, Australia, Argentina, Belgium, Cambodia, Canada, Portugal, Denmark, Bulgaria and Singapore top the list of countries that have banned or placed restrictions on holders of Kenyan passports. Others are Hong Kong, Bangladesh, Chile, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Cameroon, which Henley & Partners lists as the only African country to place restrictions on Kenya.

The Henley Passport Index made the revelations showing how the virus has hurt travel.
An Italian national who is reported to have duped a Nairobi taxi driver into leaving his car unattended before speeding off with it to Mombasa got a reprieve after the car's owner pardoned him.

Maurizio Monticelli had pleaded guilty to motor vehicle theft charges at Kibera law courts but the car's owner Amos Kalawa withdrew the case against him.

Monticelli had told resident magistrate William Tulel that the charges that he stole the car worth Sh1.1 million on July 3 were true. He pleaded guilty twice.

The suspect was facing a charge of handling stolen property after he was found with the car on July 13. The charge was also dropped.

He was accused of dishonestly retaining the car in the course of stealing it knowing or having reasons to believe it to be stolen.

Monticelli stole the car from a taxi driver hired by Kalawa. Kalawa said he did not wish to pursue the case any further after his car was recovered in Shanzu, in Mombasa.

He had reportedly hired a driver to operate the car as a taxi in Bamburi and Shanzu.

Monticelli reportedly hired the taxi driver to drive him to Nairobi CBD. But after driving for a distance, he told the driver to stop at a fuel station where he intended to buy some cigarettes.

He duped the driver to check whether the shop at the petrol station was open and the driver left the ignition keys on the car with the engine running.

Monticelli jumped into the driver's seat and sped off towards town.

The incident was reported at Parklands police station. Police later traced the car.
Three men reportedly found in possesion of 1,500 kilograms of Zebra meat at a butchery in Burma market, Nairobi, have been charged at Kibera law courts with dealing with wildlife species.

They are Onesmus Thyaka Munyao, Sammy Oyaro and Francis Kimani.

The trio is accused of contravening the Wildlife conservation and management Act of 2013 for dealing with bush meat without consent from the Kenya Wildlife Service.

Their employer Antony Njeru was however not arraigned and prosecution counsel Robert Ogalo told resident magistrate William Tulel that he was not aware why the trader was not in court.

The three suspects were reportedly found chopping 200 kilos of the meat when the KWS and officers from Shaurimoyo police station stormed the butchery.

They allegedly had 800 kilograms stored in two deep freezers and several buckets.

Five knives they were reportedly using to chop the meat were also recovered together with a weighing scale.

The items are with the KWS awaiting to be presented as evidence during the trial.

Kimani is also facing charges of preparing food in unsanitary conditions contrary to the foods, drugs, and chemicals Act where he is accused of handling bush meat without consent.

KWS presented the meat in court as exhibit in case the suspects pleaded guilty to the charges.

But they denied the charges and pleaded for lenient bond terms claiming they are casual employees earning meagre income and their families are entirely dependent on them.

But Ongalo told the court to consider the attendant penalties for the offence while setting bail and bond terms.

The prosecution counsel said tourism is a major revenue earner for the state and the suspects' activities were a threat to the same.

They were released on a bond of Sh500,000 and an alternative cash bail of Sh150,000.
THE Ovaherero Traditional Authority (OTA) says it has not ruled out taking legal action against the Namibian and German governments over the joint declaration on the genocide of 1904 to 1908, concluded in May.

The traditional authority is hoping to approach either local or German courts, among other avenues being explored to solve the issue.

According to the OTA, the Namibian government failed to consult the Ovaherero and Nama people who were largely affected by the genocide.

The traditional authority says the declaration sells out the cause of these groups' struggle.

The agreement stated that Germany would acknowledge the genocide, that their federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, would deliver an apology to the affected communities and Namibia at large, and that the former colonial power would pay Namibia over N$18 billion towards reconciliation and development.

The genocide resulted in about 65 000 Ovaherero and 10 000 Nama people massacred by German soldiers.

Apart from this, those who survived were placed in concentration camps where some eventually died of starvation, while others fled to neighbouring countries and abroad.

Speaking at the burial of the late Ovaherero paramount chief Vekuii Rukoro on the weekend, the chairperson of the authority's transitional committee, Mutjinde Katjiua, said the Ovaherero and Nama people will not rest until justice is attained.

"All our efforts that are in place, potential ligations, we cannot rule that out, either against the German government or the Namibian government in local courts, or those in the state of Germany," he said.

He said the death of the late Ovaherero paramount chief does not mean the two affected communities would accept the offer the government negotiated.

"The next step is that we continue to fight the restorative justice case that our paramount chief fought bravely for. We have efforts to approach the United Nations, and last week we submitted a petition to the UN to stop the current joint declaration . . ," he said.

The OTA and the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA) in their petition last week said the genocide declaration reflects Germany's denial that it was a crime.

This comes after the two traditional authorities wrote to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, requesting its intervention in the recently concluded joint declaration between the two governments.

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LEADERSHIP DIRECTION

Katjiua said the OTA would be run by the transitional committee until a new paramount chief is elected.

This committee will be reporting to the chiefs' council in the meantime.

Katjiua said the position of paramount chief is an elected position and not a royal house position.

"In terms of the future, the community will take its time," he said.

However, political analyst Henning Melber says he does not see any window of opportunity for a legal route.

He says the joint declaration is a commitment agreed on and entered into by the governments of two sovereign states, and hence a matter of bilateral negotiations and a valid contract.

Melber says the agencies of the Ovaherero and Nama may disagree and seek ways to articulate their protest, for example by demonstrations or other forms of dissent.

"But it is not possible to lay legal claims ... it is not a matter any court would engage with," he says.

Minister of international relations and cooperation Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah says there is no new information on the declaration as yet, because the National Assembly (NA) has not been sitting for a while.

The idea is for Namibia to have the declaration discussed in parliament and then ratified.

NA sittings have been postponed for the past three weeks following rising Covid-19 cases.
NAMIBIA recorded 19 cases of human trafficking last year.

This is according to the Trafficking in Persons report by the United States state department.

The report was released last week.

In 2019, the country reported 30 cases.

The victims include three Namibian children and one Namibian adult exploited for sex trafficking.

Other victims include six Angolan children, six Angolan adults exploited for domestic servitude and sex trafficking, and one Zambian adult exploited in domestic servitude.

The report shows that one Zimbabwean and one Kenyan citizen were exploited in sex trafficking in Namibia.

According to the report, the Namibian government provided assistance and referred 16 victims to non-governmental organisation shelters.

One of the three remaining victims was repatriated and two others have found alternative accommodation.

The Namibian government has trained 30 social workers from all 14 regions of the country on standard procedures and mechanisms.

"However, observers reported some government and civil society frontline responders still did not fully understand their roles within the procedures," the report says.

Last year the government allocated N$6 million to non-government organisations and shelters supporting trafficked victims.

Adult victims were able to seek employment and work while receiving assistance.

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According to the report, San and Zemba children are particularly vulnerable to forced labour on farms or in homes.

Traffickers may subject children from less affluent neighbouring countries to sex trafficking and forced labour, including as street vendors in Windhoek and other towns, as well as in the fishing sector.

They also bring Angolan children to Namibia for forced labour in cattle herding, agricultural work, and domestic servitude.

"During the reporting period, traffickers exploited individuals from Angola, Kenya, Zambia, and Zimbabwe in sex trafficking and forced labour.

An increase in traffickers using online tools such as social media has also been noted.

"Cuban nationals working in Namibia on medical missions may have been forced to work by the Cuban government. Traffickers allegedly operate at the international airport," the report states.

Contacted for comment executive director of gender equality, poverty eradication and social welfare Esther Lusepani referred The Namibian to the Namibian Police.

Head of the Namibian police inspector general Sebastian Ndeitunga cautioned employers to be careful when employing people from different countries.

"People must refrain from bringing illegal people from different countries to Namibia, because the law will never spare any effort to bring them to book," he warned.
THE Development Vision 2025 outlines Tanzania's development aspirations, with the land sector playing a central role.

It is envisaged that by 2025, Tanzania will have transformed into a middle-income country, characterised by high quality livelihood, peace, stability, unity and good governance.

Through her Vision 2025, which was developed in the late 1990s to guide economic and social development efforts, Tanzania envisages to have a well educated and learning society, a competitive economy capable of producing sustainable growth and shared benefits, and a diversified semi-industrialised economy with a substantial industrial sector.

The land sector is key towards attaining socio-economic transformation outlined in the Vision 2025, which is being implemented through various programmes including Long- Term Perspective Plan 2011/12 - 2025/26, whose execution was divided into three phases of the Five-Year National Development Plans.

Throughout the implementation of the Vision, the land sector has continued to grow and become a pillar and an enabling sector for investment and production in the agricultural, industrial, construction,livestock, fisheries, natural resources, energy, mining and infrastructure sectors, with Tanzania attaining middle-income status ahead of time.

This has significantly contributed to increasing employment for citizens, per capita income, government revenue and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth in general.

All the three phases of the Five-Year National Development Plans have in one way or another considered the land sector as crucial for economic growth, hence the government has directed more efforts towards developing this key sector.

The first phase of the Five- Year National Development Plan 2011/12 - 2015/16, which had a theme of 'unleashing growth potentials by de-bottlenecking binding constraints to growth,' included resolving land crisis.

Notable successes were registered whereby the overall implementation reached approximately 60 per cent of the planned targets.

The Second Five-Year National Development Plan (2016/17 - 2020/21) focused on nurturing industrialisation for economic transformation and human development, all of which demanded enough land for investments.

This period witnessed tremendous achievements as well, notably the growth rate of production activities and improving access to social services.

The third and final Five- Year National Development Plan (2021/22 - 2025/26), themed; 'realising competitiveness and industrialisation for human development', looks to increase efficiency and productivity in manufacturing using the resources available including land in abundance within the country.

The Minister for Lands, Housing and Human Settlement Developments, Mr William Lukuvi, says that in order to continue to improve land sector services in the country, the ministry has been implementing a programme for planning, surveying and titling each piece of land.

The programme, he says, was being implemented in collaboration with planning authorities, the private sector and development partners.

Similarly, the minister says, his ministry has continued to prepare and supervise the implementation of guidelines for valuation and compensation, planning, surveying, formalisation, titling, land registration and construction of affordable quality houses.

According to Mr Lukuvi, land planning and surveying should focus more on town planning, control and management of land and town development in administrative areas, provision of land services and facilitate access to affordable plots and farms.

The Land Administration seeks to ensure that all land in the country is identified, planned, surveyed and titling with the aim of improving housing services, investment, secure tenure, increase government revenue and thus boost the GDP.

In achieving the goal, Minister Lukuvi says his ministry has continued to improve the provision of land sector services to the people by improving land offices in all 26 regions in the country.

The short-term establishment of regional land offices has enabled the provision of all services for planning and surveying, tenure, valuation, registration of title deeds and documents.

Citizens have been able to obtain title deeds on time, reduce travel costs to follow services and resolve disputes.

"With the establishment of these offices there has been an increase in services, for example, the survey of plots has increased from 222,849 in 2019/20 to 409,150 in May, 2021, while registration of title deeds has increased from 37,870 in 2019/20 to 56,390 May, 2021," says the minister.

In addition, he says, the ministry has continued to empower regional land offices by providing them with the necessary tools, financial resources, staff as well as the installation of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) systems to increase efficiency in service delivery.

The minister points out further that the ministry is also continuing to implement the Formalisation and Housing Informal Housing Programme (2013-2020).

The aim of the programme is to ensure security of tenure and to facilitate access to land for essential social services and infrastructure in a participatory manner in compliance with Land Sector policies, laws, regulations and guidelines.

For example, Minister Lukuvi says, in the financial year 2020/21, the ministry promised to continue to coordinate the formalisation of housing activities to be implemented by the planning authorities in the country.

As of May 15, 2021, he says, the ministry in collaboration with the Planning Authorities has prepared 2,279 formalisation drawings with a total of 760,092 plots in various councils in the country and procedures for issuing title deeds were in various stages.

Thus, he explains, the ministry will continue to fulfill its responsibilities in line with the National Development Vision 2025, the Third Five-Year National Development Plan (2021/22 - 2025/26), among other directive documents, as well as laws, regulations and guidelines governing the land sector.

"My ministry will continue to carefully implement the issues contained in the documents and guidelines pertaining to the land sector from year to year to achieve the objectives intended by the government," he says.

The ministry's focus is to reform service delivery closer to the people by strengthening and increasing use of ICT in the land sector, identifying land pieces in simple and participatory way; conducting tenure inspections; build strong land survey systems and supporting government revenue collection.

Minister Lukuvi further says that land is a major resource for society and its use is cross-cutting, thus development in various sectors in the country depends on land.

He argues that they would continue to identify, plan, survey and titling, the measures which are solutions to reduce land use conflicts.

He also said that the government would continue to recognise and verify investment in land to realise its contribution to the country's economy.

Over the next five years the ministry aims to survey approximately 37 per cent of land for investment, housing, trade and other land uses.

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"This goal will be achieved by implementing various projects in the planning authorities in collaboration with Local Government Authorities and other stakeholders under the coordination of the Ministry," says the minister.

In order to achieve the goals of the Third Five-Year National Development Plan 2021 / 22- 2025/ 26 and the 2020-2025 CCM Manifesto, the minister says that the ministry in the next five years would implement various priority areas.

These areas include the identification, planning, surveying, titling of 2,500,000 urban plots and issuing of 2,600,000 customary land titles and the preparation of ambitious land use plans, urban development, geographical areas, islands, coastal zones and land allocation for investment.

Others are strengthening investment in low-cost housing construction, improving ICT land management system, harmonizing land management systems and development plans for other sectors in land use and encouraging the use of ICT in land surveying.

On Urban Planning, Housing and Human Settlement Development, the Plan's strategic direction will be to ensure land tenure security to economic agents and promote planned and serviced urban settlements with functioning town planning procedures.

Interventions in this section which include promoting and facilitating planning, surveying and titling of land parcels for investment and human settlement and preparing urban, islands and coastal development master plans will also address critical implications of rapid urban population growth on settlements.

Other interventions are to establish affordable housing schemes, upgrade and scale up an Integrated Land Management Information System, mainstream land management and planning systems in other sectoral development plans and promote the use of ICT in land surveying and titling.
THE number of Covid-19 patients in Mwanza Region has declined as a result of continuous public awareness campaigns, the Regional Medical Office (RMO) told the 'Daily News' yesterday.

However, the Acting RMO, Dr Silas Wambura, was not in a position to reveal the statistics on the ground he was not authorized to issue statistics. "But we exert much effort to fight the disease.

There are special committees in every district that go to crowded places and educate people on precautionary measures," said Dr Wambura. The committees visit places like bus stands, markets and schools to remind and encourage people to regularly wash or sanitize their hands, observe social distancing and wear face masks.

The committees have also been responsible to set up water infrastructures for hand-washing by considering the population in particular areas. Commenting on Covid-19 treatment in hospitals, the Acting RMO said that the region has enough oxygen cylinders, with Bugando Zone Hospital alone having over 200 cylinders. According to the RMO, the Zonal Hospital also has two plants for producing oxygen, and has the ability to fill-up 100 cylinders a day.

"Again, as a region, we also have over 100 standby oxygen cylinders to serve any hospital that might face scarcity. But as of now, all hospitals are well equipped," he insisted. He reiterated that public campaigns would be held continuously as the region targets to reach zero transmissions of disease in a few days to come, adding that: "And it is possible as the citizens have been positively responding to precautions."

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He also expressed his gratitude to some stakeholders who have been supporting the government's efforts to fight Covid-19, including donation of oxygen cylinders. Sekou Toure Hospital's Doctor in charge, Ms Bahati Msaki, commented the same, saying a number of covid-19 patients drops almost every day. Among preventive measures the hospital takes is to make sure that only a single person/relative gets in the ward to visit their patient.

The same applied for serious patients, unable to move without support, should be accompanied by a single person, she explained. "We therefore typically discourage unnecessary gatherings. Then, handwashing and wearing masks isn't an option to whoever enters the hospital premises." said Dr Bahati. According to Dr Bahati, no Covid-19 victim is nowadays referred to zonal hospital since Sekou Toure has enough facilities (oxygen cylinder) to meet the demand.

Bugando Acting Director General, Dr Fabian Massaga affirmed that the available two oxygen plants are able to produce about 80 percent of the demand. "It is true that we have corona patients here. They are well treated," Dr Massaga told the Mwanza Regional Commissioner (RC), Eng. Robert Gabriel during his recent tour at Bugando. The RC insisted the citizens to stick on precautions so as to fight Coronavirus transmissions.

The 'Daily News' visited Nyegezi bus stand and observed the presence of hand washing facilities at the main entrance. Nyegezi Ward resident, Mr David Paul, commended the Mwanza City Council, but recommended installation of more facilities since the area accommodates a big number of travelers and small traders.
ENERGY Minister Medard Kalemani has assured residents in Kagera Region that the government is in the final stages to connect more villages in the region to the national grid, and called on investors to establish industries. Dr Kalemani explained that a total of 541 villages out of 662 villages in the region have access to power, equivalent to 81.7 per cent.

The minister pledged that the remaining 121 villages would get electricity by next year. With continued efforts to connect more villages, the number of connected customers has increased from 56,671 during 2015 to 89,172 by June 30, 2020. Dr Kalemani assured residents that all households that were surveyed would be connected to electricity at affordable fees of 27,000/-. He made the remarks over the weekend during a sensitization seminar on the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project benefits held at Bunazi Township, in Missenyi district. "Tanzania is an attractive country for large investments.

The nation boasts of reliable electricity following the near completion of several projects including the Mwalimu Julius Nyerere Hydro Electricity Power Project that will generate about 2,115 MW," he said. Dr Kalemani expressed satisfaction on the implementation of the Regional Rusumo Falls Hydroelectric project (RRFHP) that currently has been completed by about 80 per cent and was expected to be completed by December, this year. Also, the 87MW KakonoMissenyi, the 16 MW MurongoKikagati-Kyerwa project that had so far reached 36 per cent and the Msongezi 39MW.

He noted that the Rusumo Falls Hydroelectric project is a good initiative that will improve the socioeconomic benefits and will address the acute shortage of electricity facing the three countries, something which negatively affects their economies. Once operational, the project will generate 80 MW of renewable clean energy, with each country receiving an additional 165 GWH per year, he said.

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The project will enhance regional cooperation, support sustainable management of the Kagera River Basin, promote growth and poverty reduction and also manage environmental aspects. The additional power will benefit about 1,146,000 people in the three countries- 520,000 in Burundi (5.4 per cent), 159,000 in Tanzania (0.34 per cent) and 467,000 in Rwanda (4 per cent).

Minister Kalemani disclosed that the World Bank (WB) donated 340 million US dollars (about 788.4bn/-) for the construction of the power plant while the African Development Bank (ADB) donated 128.6million US dollars (about 298.2bn/-) for construction of transmission lines. He emphasized on the need to enhance regional cooperation through implementation of sustainable development projects for socio-economic development of the countries.

"Power shortage in these countries and indeed the entire Nile Basin region has resulted in an underdeveloped manufacturing sector, hence limited opportunities for business development for generating income," he said. He said Tanzanians should capitalise on increased power supply by establishing medium and large scale industries. The government is determined to ensure that by 2025 all villages in the country are connected with electricity, he assured
press release

The National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) is proud to release its 2021 funding status report to the public. This report aims to provide stakeholders with an update on the 2021 NSFAS Funding Programme to support approved students studying at public universities and TVET colleges.

It covers areas such as the 2021 application status update, allowances paid to institutions to date, appeals, and some of the challenges the entity has had to confront in ensuring that every confirmed funded student is paid the right amounts and on time. The report also provides a breakdown of the funding allocation to each institution. The entity commits to provide such updates to the sector and the public as part of strengthening and improving communication.

Despite the many challenges experienced at the start of the 2021 academic year, due to expected higher demand for NSFAS funding and the need to ensure budget adequacy before finalising the allocations, the Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET) response has addressed the anticipated shortfall, and the Scheme is confident that all students who are deserving of the funding will be funded.

To date, NSFAS has received and processed registration data from both colleges and universities and is continually making payments for students who have been confirmed as funding eligible.

The Scheme has identified a few exceptions related to non-compliance to the DHET Rules and Guidelines in as far registration data that is not aligned to funded qualifications. For these, NSFAS is engaging institutions to rectify and ensure that students are registered on funded qualifications.

Despite this progress, there are still challenges around the NSFAS wallet blockages. Fraudulent activities have been noted and NSFAS continues to make students aware of the importance of profile management to manage this risk and report any abnormal activities on their accounts.

NSFAS intends to resolve any exceptions within the 2021 programme cycle as it will soon start to prepare for the 2022 application cycle.
Dar es Salaam  Home Affairs minister, George Simbachawene has called on the director general of the National Identification Authority (Nida), Dr. Anorld Kihaule to resign, claiming that he has failed in his duty to ensure that Tanzanian citizens receive national identity cards on time.

Mr Simbachane made the remarks on Monday June 19, 2021 in Iringa while he was talking to officials of the institutions under his ministry, saying that since he was appointed as a minister in 2020, only one million IDs have been printed.

"I had promised in parliament that by August, those who had been recognized nationwide would have received their IDs.

Now from January to June only one million IDs have been printed,"

"Next month is August, if you go there the challenges that they tell you are baseless. I mean you fail to understand, I went there (Nida offices), so many times, I am exhausted, with all the noise I made but they produced only a million IDs, "said Mr Simbachawene.

He said he could not accept the situation and has told Dr Kihaule to tell the President that he has failed in his job.

"I have told him completely he has failed to do his job. Well he is the President's nominee, but if you fail, you go and tell the President that you have failed because it is not possible every day we say same thing, we are tired," he said.

Describing the situation in the Iringa region where he visited, Mr Simbachawene said there are 477, 600 people who need to get national IDs, but so far only 191,000 people who have the national IDs.

Dr Kihaule who is a former lecturer at the Ardhi University (Aru) was appointed by late President John Magufuli to become the director of Nida on October 03, 2018.

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In his 2020/21 report the Control and Auditor General (CAG) Charles Kichere said that during his audit, he found out that the Nida had spent Sh3.3 billion on cards that did not help anything.

The money was specifically spent on preparing a total of 426,757 cards which were found to have been damaged during the audit period.

Earlier this year Mr Simbachawene was quoted in the Tuesday January 05, 2021 online edition of Mwananchi Newspaper as saying in that month was the end of the problem of shortage of IDs, when it will be solved and the mass distribution would begin.

He said what delayed reaching that point early was the procurement process within the Government which had many components.

The minister said the number of Tanzanians identified by the end of 2020 had reached 18.5 million, but only 6.3 million have issued with IDs and that 12.2 million people had not been identified.
press release

On Sunday, citizens of the world commemorated the Nelson Mandela International Day, in remembrance of our icon, Tata Nelson Mandela, who personified humanity.

The Day enjoins citizens of the world to contribute towards meeting the immediate needs of the most vulnerable in communities.

The United Nations through the Nelson Mandela Rules, promotes humane conditions of imprisonment, raises awareness about inmates being a continuous part of society and values the work of correctional officials as a social service of particular importance.

Recently, some parts of our country have been under intense attack and mayhem. We are aware that those who seek to derail the course of our constitutional democracy, targeted correctional centres to attempt to ferment disorder.

By and large, this was unsuccessful, because inmates in correctional centres across the country refused to be co-opted into further acts of disorder in the country. We also value correctional officials, the good service that they continue to render to society does not go unnoticed.

We pause and salute all officials in brown uniform. Our commitment and dedication continue to inspire us, rest assured that services you render to the people

of South Africa, are of paramount importance.

The manner in which COVID-19 has been contained in our facilities is not a miracle, it is due to the hard work of the men and women in brown.

We would not be in a position to roll out this programme today without the collaboration of inmates, we also thank them for their continued cooperation.

So members of the media, our launch of the Vaccination Rollout Programme in Correctional Services, is also inspired by our obligation to abide by the supreme law of the country, the Constitution.

The health of inmates is addressed in Section 35 (2) of the Constitution. This obliges the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) to ensure that:

"Everyone who is detained, including every sentenced prisoner, has the right to conditions of detention that are consistent with human dignity, including at least exercise and the provision, at state expense, of adequate accommodation, nutrition, reading material and medical treatment."

As a result, a policy position that excludes the vaccination of inmates in our custody could be opposed on human rights grounds, particularly given that the government has a duty of care to people in custody.

Owing to their institutional settings, correctional centres are high-risk environments for infectious disease outbreaks. Correctional centres are generally overcrowded, and as result, non-pharmaceutical interventions have their limitations, and people in Correctional centres have contact with a large staff pool.

Large, explosive outbreaks in crowded institutional settings remain a major ongoing risk not only for our centres, but for the society at large.

Thus far, this pandemic has affected Correctional Centres' ability to function.

It has heightened the risking of infections seeding outside of Correctional Centres through interactions between correctional officials and communities, court visits, hospital admissions, and the admission and release of inmates.

The World Health Organization observes that; compared to the wider community, people living in prisons have a disproportionally higher burden of comorbidities, including non-communicable diseases, which increase their chances of suffering severe outcomes from COVID-19. W.H.O. calls on leaders to address health inequalities and ensure that everyone has access to quality health services, when and where they need them, adding that this issue is especially relevant for detention facilities.

It is against this background that we are rolling out the vaccination programme in Correctional Services.

Vaccinations are a bulwark against the rapid spread of COVID-19.

We are obliged to provide vaccinations for correctional officials and inmates to prevent outbreaks, and ensure the basic rights of inmates, officials and the wider community, are protected.

The National Department of Health (NDoH) has provided the one dose Johnson and Johnson vaccine to DCS for vaccination of inmates.

Some of our inmate population has been vaccinated under the 50 plus bracket. We will target to reach all inmates irrespective of their age groups.

At the start of the year, the health department unveiled their plan to vaccinate 40-million South Africans as part of a three-phase roll-out.

According to this plan, 67% of the population would need to be vaccinated in order to achieve population immunity, this is approximately just over 40 million South Africans.

Many DCS employees have already received their first dose of vaccine across both public and private vaccination sites in the country.

DCS employees with effect from the 15th of July, irrespective of age, can access any vaccination site without having to undertake self-registration on the Electronic Vaccine Data System (EVDS).

To date, one thousand, three hundred and twenty-five (1 325) Health Care Professionals in Correctional Services, one thousand, eight hundred and ninety-nine (1 899) Correctional officials and sixty-one (61)

educators in Corrections received vaccination.

One thousand, five hundred and nine (1 509) inmates who fall under the 50 -59 bracket have been vaccinated. Yesterday when we kick-started our vaccination programme, targeting all inmates, a total of two thousand five hundred and sixty nine (2 569) inmates across the country were vaccinated.

Of the 40 million South Africans we need to vaccinate to reach population immunity, 140 319 constitute inmates, this translates to 0.34 percent.

Far less than half a percent. Both offenders and officials must consent to receiving the vaccine. DCS continues to raise awareness about

vaccine safety and the importance of being vaccinated.

These awareness campaigns which target both officials and inmates, seek to persuade skeptical inmates and officials to avail themselves for vaccination. Our observation is that as more information was provided, those who were wary of vaccination became more at ease and volunteered to be candidates.

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Vaccine skepticism continues to permeate across some sections of society, we therefore encourage both officials and inmates to empower themselves with correct and scientific information on vaccines.

We understand vaccine anxiety, but we appeal to all of South Africans to be vaccinated, this will protect lives.

While we rollout the vaccination programme, health and safety measures, such as:

Wearing of masks

physical distancing, and

active screening,

Will continue to apply even after vaccines are administered. This will ensure that layers of protection continueto be in place in our correctional centres. The health and safety of our inmates, officials, and the public, have been our top priority during this pandemic.

Vaccines are the best defense to protect both offenders and officials against COVID-19 and when paired with existing measures, this will help to bolster our overall public health and safety.

DCS will continue to work closely with the National Department of Health on its vaccinations plans and rollout.

By publicly taking the jab, I wanted to allay fears and enhance public trust on vaccines. I hope more and more people will be encouraged to come forward and get vaccinated, it is in our hands, let us save lives.
Security agencies have banned the distribution of food to vulnerable people during the lockdown on grounds of contravening standard operating procedures (SoPs) and quality of handouts.

In a joint security press conference yesterday, police spokesman Fred Enanga said the acts are likely to lead to the spread of coronavirus.

"In some incidents, we have seen a lack of social distancing. This will lead to the spread of coronavirus. All people distributing food to vulnerable people should stop. They should take the food to the district coordinators for proper distribution of food," Mr Enanga said.

The ban comes days after Opposition politicians distributed food to vulnerable groups in different parts of the country.

Last year, President Museveni banned private distribution of food to vulnerable people describing it as cheap popularity.

Police raided homes of Opposition politicians, where they seized food and also arrested suspects, including Mityana Municipality MP Francis Zaake.

Mr Enanga said they are worried that the food distributed could be contaminated with poisonous substances such as aflatoxins and others.

He said if the food is taken to the coordination centres, government experts would be able to test it for quality before it is distributed.

Kawempe South MP Muhammed Ssegirinya, who has been distributing food to his constituents, said he will not stop, adding that he can't look on as people in his community die of hunger.

"I do door-to-door distribution. I just write my name and go away. I follow all standard operating procedures against the spread of coronavirus. How will I spread the virus in that manner?" Mr Ssegirinya said.

He said he will not give the food to the government because he tested them in last year's lock down by offering them his salary for two months, but the money was stolen.

"It is the government officials who should first give us accountability of the food we gave them last year. We don't know how the food was distributed. They also told us that some of the food that they procured was rotten. How can you trust us people?" he said.
The back-and-forth around the properties that the British-Asians who former president Idi Amin drove out of Uganda in 1972, this week came to a head with the release of a report of a committee of Parliament that resulted from a two-year investigation.

The report indicates hundreds of these prime properties, which were managed under the Departed Asians Property Custodian Board (DAPCB), were cunningly transferred into the names of wealthy businessmen who currently own them and rent out a number of them to government agencies.

The report was done by a sub-committee of the committee on Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises (Cosase) following a two-year investigation into the operations of DAPCB.

The sub-committee was instituted to investigate allegations that some of the expropriated properties for which the government had paid compensation following the expulsion of Asians in 1972, were repossessed by those who had been compensated.

It was also to establish the total amount that was realised from the sale or rent of the properties, and to establish the number of court cases that DAPCB is faced with.

The sub-committee was also charged with establishing whether there was possible fraud during the course of repossession of properties, propose measures of safeguarding assets against fraud, and investigate any other matters that could be incidental to the administration of the properties.

The 83-page report, which was issued by the committee late last month and released to the public on Thursday, cites fraud in the manner in which most of the properties ended up in the hands of those who currently run them.

Fraudulent repossession

The report, a copy of which Saturday Monitor has seen, reveals that most of the properties were repossessed without the listed owners fulfilling all the requirements under the Expropriated Properties Act (EPA), which transferred the properties and businesses that had been taken over during the Amin regime to the Ministry of Finance to either return them to their former owners or sell them off.

Among the requirements under the EPA was for a claimant to return and be physically present before a property could be returned to such a person, but this, according to the committee, did not happen in many cases.

"The requirement to physically return to Uganda under Section 9 of the EPA was mandatory. However, the committee noted that some properties were repossessed and certificates handed over to persons who never returned to Uganda contrary to the mandatory provision of the law, the report reads in part.

The committee names at least 637 properties which were repossessed even when the registered proprietors never returned to Uganda.

According to the list, 285 out of the 637 properties were repossessed by Ms Unia Ssebaggala, 119 by Mr Mohamed Allibhai and 53 by Ms Mumtaz Kassam. The others were repossessed by Minex Karia, who took 46 properties; Praful Patel, who took 50 properties; Praful Chandra, who repossessed 18 properties; and N. K. Radia, who repossessed 66 of such properties.

"All repossessions whose former owners didn't physically return to manage the properties as required by law should be cancelled or revoked for being null and void... The minister should invoke his/her powers under Section 9 (1) of the EPA to make an order to either retain such properties as government or the same be disposed of in a manner prescribed by Regulation 11 of the Expropriated Properties (Repossession and Disposal)..." the committee recommends.

The committee further recommends that all transfers of ownership that were effected on the basis of letters of repossession be revoked and be regularised by the acquisition of repossession certificates.

The committee also recommends the prosecution of "so-called" landlords for such properties for misrepresentation and fraudulent acquisition of property where they are found to have fraudulently acquired repossession certificates.

Properties that were repossessed by invoking repossession certificates that were fraudulently obtained should also revert to government, the committee suggests.

In other cases, the committee noted that some properties were repossessed without supporting documents. The report, for example, says Mr Alibhai controls 725 properties, for which he could not show any supporting documents like powers of attorney, certificates of repossession or letters of repossession.

The report further points out that some of the fraud around the expropriated properties was carried out either with the use of powers of attorney that were purportedly issued by property owners outside the country or letters of repossession issued by ministers of Finance.

Powers of attorney

The perpetrators of the alleged fraud, the committee report says, went to countries such as Canada and Britain where most of the departed Asian had fled to and obtained powers of attorney from them, which they reportedly used to take possession of the properties.

According to the report, whereas some of the property owners could not physically return to oversee the repossession process, some were reportedly scared away by those who are currently managing their properties in Kampala and other cities around the country.

Some of those who used powers of attorney in order to repossess the properties transferred them into their own names, but often in a manner that contravened the law, the report says.

"The committee found that a number of agents who repossessed the properties on behalf of their principals transferred these properties without a required registrable instrument, which by law is the certificate of repossession that confers powers to transfer to former owners," the report states.

Letters of repossession

Some of the properties, the committee noted, were repossessed on the basis of letters of repossession issued by ministers yet such repossession could only have been effected on the basis of certificates of repossession. The committee recommends that all repossessions that were effected on the basis of repossession letters be revoked.

In some instances, the report says, repossession letters were used and in others special certificates to transfer ownership of properties. The MPs also want such transfers of ownership revoked.

"All transfers of ownership that were done on the basis of letters of repossession be revoked and the same be regularised by acquisition of the registrable instruments being repossession certificates," the report says.

Withdrawn certificates

The report notes that whereas the Minister of Finance on November 8, 1991, withdrew repossession certificates that had been issued to about 20 claimants after they failed to return to Uganda within 120 days as required by the EPA, some of the properties for which the repossession certificates were withdrawn have since landed into private hands as opposed to being under the management of the custodian board. The report recommends that all such properties be recovered.

"All certificates of title issued on such properties should be immediately cancelled and the register of titles be corrected to reflect the ownership prior to the purported repossessions. DAPCB should upon adoption of this report, institute processes to recover these properties from current illegal holders.

Paid properties repossessed

The committee noted that government had as of December 31, 2005, paid compensation amounting to Shs1.7b to 119 former Asian owners, but that some of them had since turned around to take possession of properties for which they had already been compensated.

"Those who are found to have fraudulently reclaimed properties for which they had already been compensated should lose the property but should be prosecuted subject to direction of the Director of Public Prosecutions on the matter," the report recommends.

The report indicates that some of the properties for which government had paid compensation had been stolen.

"The committee noted that some formerly compensated properties by government had ended up in the hands of unscrupulous individuals, who had later transferred the same to bona fide purchasers for value without notice," the report states in part.

Some of the properties whose owners were compensated

Plot 66 William Street, Kampala

Plot 10 Solomon Rise Bugolobi, Kampala

Plot 16A Rashid Street, Fort Portal

Plot 70 Gweri Road, Soroti

Plot 6 Princess Drive, Bugolobi,

Plot 7 Kanjokya Street, Kamwokya

PIot 3 Kampala Road

PIot 45 Lake Drive, Nakawa Port Bell Road

Floor Mill Store & Jaggery, Kamuli

Plot 9 Mbuya Road, Bugolobi

Plot 7 Solomon Rise, Bugolobi

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Plot 11 Kololo Hill Drive, Kampala

Plot 28 Mackenzie Vale, Kampala

PIot 3 School Drive, Mbale

Plot 34 Madhvani Road, Jinja

Plot S23 Muyenga Tank Hill

Plot 20A Babiha Road, Fort Portal

Plot 29 Costantino Robo Road, Mbarara

Plot 25 Nasser Road, Kampala

PIot 8 Nabigya Lane, Mbale

Plot 5 Kutch Road East, Jinja

Plot 29 Margherita Road, Kasese

Plot 7 Princess Anne Drive, Kampala

Plot 50 High Street, Mbarara

Plot 38-44 School Road, Arua

Plot 88 Nile Avenue, Jinja

Plot 58 Madhvani Road, Jinja

Plot 38 Madhvani Road, Jinja

Plot 32 - 34 High Street, Mbarara

Plot 4 Bandali Rise, Bugolobiw

PIot 20 Bazara Road, Tororo

Plot 3 Kampala Road, Kampala

Background

Defaulters

The report indicates that 1,524 properties had been sold off and fully been paid for as of December 31, 2005, fetching government slightly under Shs15.4 billion.

The downside was, however, that DAPCB had failed to collect rent to the tune of Shs2.3 billion from government agencies. The biggest defaulters are the Ministry of Defence, which owes Shs949m, Ministry of Public Service, Public Service Commission and police, which owe Shs517m, the Ministry of Health, which owes Shs418m, the Prisons department, which owes Shs254m, the Law Development Centre, which owes Shs39m and the Office of the President, which owes Shs20m.

The committee finally recommends that efforts to wind up DAPCB should be expedited, but that the board should first compile a comprehensive asset register of all its properties for purposes of reconciling and updating its books.
press release

The IFP Caucus in the KwaZulu-Natal Legislature is shocked by the report delivered by KZN Education MEC, Hon. K Mshengu, that 59 schools (thus far) have been vandalised in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. This vandalism is linked to the protest action that took place in KZN and Gauteng last week. The number of vandalised schools may increase over time, as the Department gets more reports from its officials.

This habit of vandalising, destroying, and looting public service infrastructure when communities are angry with government - for whatever reason - is totally unacceptable. The IFP has always stood by the principle of "Education for Liberation", even during the dark days of apartheid. When communities decide to destroy the very little that we should be building upon to secure a bright future for our youth, it is viewed by the IFP as a direct attack on our nation. The IFP calls upon the communities of our province to stand up, and protect and defend the future of their children by protecting their local schools.

It is even more disheartening to note that the schools that have been vandalised and destroyed are mostly rural and township schools, where the learners are mostly Black children. These are the very schools where the IFP has been calling upon government to improve infrastructure. This kind of action reverses our democratic gains. While other communities around the world are already focused upon the introduction of 4IR in education, our communities are destroying the meagre resources that we have; much of which was provided by the under-funded erstwhile KwaZulu government, under the astute leadership of Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi as Prime Minister.

The IFP Caucus in KZN calls upon government to intensify the protection of our schools and other government facilities in the province during these trying and difficult times.

The IFP further calls upon government to ensure that the culprits who participated in the destruction of schools in the province are brought to book. Lastly, the IFP calls upon the government of KZN to prioritise the rebuilding and renovating of all the vandalised schools in the province, to ensure that the programme of teaching and learning does not get derailed.

-
A man with a sign calling for the abolition of borders on the African continent is seen during the anti-xenophobia march in Johannesburg (file photo).

Matric children of immigrants born in South Africa also battle to get IDs so that they can enrol in tertiary education, but Home Affairs is trying to fix this.

Children of African immigrants to South Africa experience prejudice and victimisation from their peers at certain schools, some told a virtual meeting against xenophobia in schools on Saturday.

Human rights organisation Africa Unite hosted the event attended by 20 representatives from schools in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape. The meeting aimed to enhance cohesion between local and immigrant learners and build empathy, unity, and peace. It included testimonies from immigrant learners and poems read by South African learners.

Shalom, whose parents were Zimbabwean, (her mother died when Shalom was two years old) goes to school in Mitchells Plain. "Even though I can speak both Xhosa and English, it is hard sitting in the class and having to deal with being mocked ... to apologise for being myself."

"It was difficult to try not to be South African at home and at the same time try not to be too Zimbabwean at school. I felt like I was losing myself, not knowing who I am."

She said she had been shaken by a conversation among her classmates who said that foreigners should leave South Africa. "I had to constantly look at the door when my father left for work and pray that nothing happens to me."

Farayi (we are only using first names), also from Zimbabwe, enrolled in school in Bloekombos, said she learned to communicate in Xhosa, but she was "still a target". "I feel like an outsider most of the time. If I had an option to leave I would definitely leave, that is how deeply I feel."

Teachers too can be treated disrespectfully and made fun of if they are African immigrants, said Lindiwe, a grade 10 student at a Catholic school in Cape Town.

GroundUp contacted the head of her school who said she was aware of an incident last year in April. "There was a teacher from Zimbabwe and children had been making fun of her accent. This was brought to my attention and we dealt with the situation, making it absolutely clear that that is completely unacceptable, and that kind of behaviour will not be tolerated."

"All the girls were made to apologise; most importantly they were all sanctioned and given a level of punishment as part of their learning process," she said.

South African-born children of immigrants said they had also been struggling to enrol in tertiary education as Home Affairs had left them in limbo under the Covid-19 lockdown. Home Affairs has sought to remedy this through online applications.

Guest speaker Karolyn Mujinga, whose parents are from the DRC, spoke about her struggle to get registered. "I turned 18 in 2021 but could not apply for citizenship due to Covid-19 [lockdown] ... Home Affairs only made provision for South Africans to apply for their ID, not undocumented South African-born refugees, who've waited until they turned 18, which is a requirement to apply for citizenship."

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"Many other refugee children and I are in limbo, unable to apply for university, unable to apply for bursaries, register for university and closing dates are drawing near. I still have no form of any identification and an unabridged birth certificate won't help."

She started a petition on 20 June calling on Home Affairs to make provision for refugee children born in South Africa to apply for identity documents. The petition garnered 25,000 signatures.

Subsequently, Home Affairs has issued a circular invitation "to dependants of refugees who are in matric or wish to further studies or have an employment offer, to apply for IDs or travel documents" online.

Spokesperson of the Minister of Home Affairs Siya Qoza said this was circulated on 8 July. Dependants of refugees should send an email request to enabledocument.asm@dha.gov.za with supporting documents such as letter from school or letter of acknowledgement or admission from a institution of higher learning.

An automatic reply would be sent to the applicant with the date, time and office where the applicant should go to complete the application.
analysis

Rwanda has sent 1 000 soldiers and police to conduct combat and security operations in Mozambique's gas-rich northern Cabo Delgado province. The area has been hit by terrorism and violent extremism since 2017.

The deployment came a few weeks after the Southern African Development Community (SADC) announced it would send a Standby Force to support Mozambique in combatting the insurgency. SADC's troops were scheduled for deployment on 15 July - a week after Rwandan forces began landing at Nacala Airport, south of the province.

So far, no SADC soldiers have arrived in the country. On 17 July, the organisation's executive secretary Dr Stergomena Tax presented the instruments of authority for its Standby Force to the Mozambican government.

Rwanda emphasised its Joint Force would work closely with SADC's troops. Nevertheless, Tax said it was 'unfortunate' that Mozambique didn't officially notify the bloc that Rwanda would be dispatching troops. She said deployments should be in line with SADC guiding instruments, and this could only happen after the regional body's forces were in place.

Some analysts believe the Rwandan army is much better trained, experienced and disciplined, has the necessary capability, and can get the job done quicker than a multinational force. 'Rwanda is third among countries contributing troops to [United Nations] peacekeeping operations and has been involved in 14 peacekeeping missions,' political analyst Joseph Hanlon wrote last week.

Some believe the Rwandan army can get the job done quicker than a multinational force

The Cabo Delgado conflict has led to over 3 000 deaths and caused more than 800 000 people to be internally displaced. The violence is continuing despite reports that security forces are resisting the insurgents.

The Rwandan deployment is seen by the Mozambican public, rights organisations and political parties as following the same pattern of secrecy used to send private military companies to Cabo Delgado. As did mercenaries from the Russian Wagner Group and the South African-based Dyck Advisory Group, the Rwandan military landed in Mozambique without Parliament being notified. Mozambican taxpayers were not informed about the objectives, duration or costs of the mission.

Maputo didn't confirm Rwanda's deployment until 9 July, when President Filipe Nyusi announced the arrival of the troops at parades with the local military and militias in his homeland in Mueda. However, he provided no details about the mission.

Ossufo Momade, leader of Mozambique's biggest opposition party, the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), which supports SADC's military mission, immediately opposed Rwanda's intervention. He said it was illegal to send Rwandan troops to Mozambique without consulting Parliament. Opposition lawmaker Fernando Bismarque referred to the deployment as an abuse. Bismarque is a spokesman for the Democratic Movement of Mozambique, the country's second-largest opposition party.

The Centre for Democracy and Development, a local rights organisation supporting the SADC military intervention, also criticised Rwanda's deployment. It said Nyusi didn't have the legal competence to decide to send foreign forces without Parliament's endorsement and accused the government of 'repeating the hidden debt scandal.'

The Rwandan deployment follows the pattern of secrecy used to send private military companies to Cabo Delgado

The ruling Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), which has always been opposed to external military intervention in Cabo Delgado, hasn't yet reacted publicly to the deployment. It has also not expressed support for Nyusi as was expected, suggesting that the president made a unilateral decision.

With the resurgence of attacks in Cabo Delgado, there is political consensus at the national level on the need to address violent extremism. Given the state defence forces' lack of capacity to contain the spread of attacks, the political opposition and rights organisations persuaded the government to request military assistance from SADC countries. Mozambique is a founding member of SADC.

Although reluctant, FRELIMO never openly rejected military aid from SADC countries. However, the turn to Rwanda appears to be the first event that could greatly divide Mozambicans over addressing extremism in Cabo Delgado. The presence of private military companies had already generated criticism in Parliament, but their action was on a smaller scale.

A thousand Rwandan troops are too many to ignore in Cabo Delgado. Potential incidents against civilians - which are common in conflict situations - can lead to divisions and possibly political violence in Mozambique. The lack of political support and national consensus on the Rwandan deployment, together with the secrecy in which it has been dealt, could substantially undermine the intervention.

A contested presence of Rwandan troops could fuel the latent conflict between the government and RENAMO

A contested presence of troops from Rwanda could fuel the latent conflict between the government and RENAMO. Attempts are ongoing to build national reconciliation after a peace agreement was signed in 2019 to end successive years of armed conflict.

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Even after the deal was signed though, RENAMO accused the government of maintaining death squads that persecute and murder opposition members. In April 2020, RENAMO alleged the government's defence and security forces had murdered its members in Palma and Ibo districts, threatening to turn the fight against terrorism into a local political conflict.

Military sources have revealed that Rwandan troops will be conducting operations in almost all Cabo Delgado's districts hit by violent extremism. This means contact with civilians will be inevitable.

The government of Cabo Delgado has appealed to the local population to collaborate with foreign troops. But the lack of support from opposition parties - which generally have significant support in the affected districts - could damage relations between Rwandan soldiers and locals. And this could lead to the failure of the mission.

Borges Nhamirre, ISS Consultant

In South Africa, Daily Maverick has exclusive rights to re-publish ISS Today articles. For media based outside South Africa and queries about our re-publishing policy, email us.
Last week, the government's proposal to impose a tax on mobile money transactions came into effect, causing an outcry from the public. In explaining the government's decision, the Minister for Finance and Planning, Dr Mwigulu Nchemba, focused on the services that would be provided using the revenues so generated.

They include health insurance for all, providing running water to all schools, and enabling more students to get college education. Nchemba suggests that taking Sh10 from someone who is able to send 1,000 shillings, for example, is a minor cost to pay, considering that Sh10 could end up saving someone's life. It would be hard to find anyone who would be against the government expanding access to health care, clean water, higher education and other social services. However, when it involves a tax on mobile money transactions, the end does not necessarily justify the means.

Listening to Dr Nchemba's interview on KIBWE TV, two things stand out. First: the apparent assumption that money transferred using a mobile device is an individual's "excess reserves." With that mindset, if the government takes Sh10 out of Sh1,000, or Sh9,400 out of Sh1 million, that is a very small price to pay to expand social services.

But we don't know the circumstances of the people sending or receiving the money. For all we know, the person sending Sh1 million is repaying a loan and is short of what they were supposed to pay back... So every shilling counts. Moreover, with this approach, one could extrapolate that the government will end up taxing ALL savings!

Second, this tax is a form of community fund-raising activity for development. Somehow, people should feel good and proud of their contributions. If that tax were truly a community fund-raising initiative, it would have been voluntary, with no pre-determined deductions. There is no reason why people should feel good about a tax on mobile money transactions any more than they would feel about other taxes... Unless they were told that tax revenues from other sources are not put to good use.

Note that there is double taxation on some of these mobile money transfers. Imagine a public-school teacher working in Dar es Salaam with a sick parent up-country.

The teacher's salary is taxed - as it should be. Out of her meagre take-home pay, she sends money using mobile telephony to her parent to help with medical bills.

But the government comes and taxes her a second time. Is that fair?

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It is not clear how much empirical work has been done to determine the potential impact of this tax on mobile money transfers. A recent study by the Global System for Mobile Communications (commonly known as 'GSM Association: GSMA')titled 'The causes and consequences of mobile money taxation: An examination of mobile money transaction taxes in sub-Saharan Africa' points out some of the consequences of such taxes. Among them is the following: "Many mobile money users belong to marginalised societal groups, and the negative impact on financial inclusion and broader development goals is significant. This user profile - and the fact that these taxes don't extend to the banking sector - strongly suggests that they are regressive in nature, undermining the fundamental concept of tax equity."

In other words, this tax would increase income inequality. While GSMA is not necessarily a neutral party, its conclusions should nonetheless inspire the government to conduct a thorough study on the short-run and long-run impact of levies on mobile money transactions, in the context of the whole tax system.

The economy is integrated. An increase in tax, or an introduction of a new tax in one area will, inevitably, have an impact on other sources of tax revenues.

The government must strive to increase and otherwise improve social services. This requires careful examination of where it has placed its budgetary priorities, and where it can reduce wasteful spending. It could also require overall higher taxes.

However, while high taxes on mobile money transactions may be a convenient tax window, it may lead to a slowdown in economic activities - and exacerbate inequality in the country.

Richard E. Mshomba is Professor of Economics, La Salle University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
Dar es Salaam  The Court of Appeal has overturned a decision that exempted an industrial chemical dealer from paying the Tanzania Revenue Authority (TRA) Sh664.8 million in additional value-added tax (VAT).

The decision means Ecolab East Africa (Tanzania) Limited will pay the amount after a protracted dispute over the payment of additional VAT following a tax audit.

The verdict is a setback to Ecolab which had unsuccessfully challenged the tax bill at the Tax Revenue Appeals Board (Trab) before the decision was reversed by the Tax Revenue Appeals Tribunal (Trat) January last year.

The case has shed more light among large taxpayers on whether the sale of an interest in land was an exempt supply under the VAT Act.

The tax dispute has its roots in May 2012 when Ecolab sold its properties on plots number 33 and 34 Block A located at Makuburi Industrial Area, Nyerere Road, Dar es Salaam at $1.1 million and paid capital gain tax and VAT.

Two years later, TRA conducted an audit on the company's tax affairs for the years of income 2010 to 2012 and issued an assessment for additional VAT of Sh664.8 million for buildings that stood on the sold land.

The assessment discounted Ecolab which unsuccessfully challenged the tax before administrative channels of TRA, which immediately confirmed the assessment plus interest.

First setback

With more avenues to oppose the assessment, Ecolab took its case before Trab, insisting that the sale of an interest in land was an exempt supply under section 10 (1) of the VAT Act.

TRA challenged the appeal, maintaining that Ecolab was obliged to pay additional VAT in respect of the buildings on the land despite the fact that the buildings were sold as a whole. The taxman contended that prescription of the VAT Act separated the single transaction into two.

Having considered what is exempt supply of goods and services under section 10 (1) of the VAT Act and item 8 (1) and (2) of the second schedule, Trab observed that Ecolab was wrong charging VAT on buildings only and left the land uncharged.

Section 10 (1) of the VAT Act, read together with paragraph 8 (1) of the second schedule to the Act says whenever land sold as bare is an exempt supply but once building erected on the land is not exempt supply.

"The VAT that the appellant paid on the building is just a portion of what ought to be paid. TRA acted lawful when demanded additional VAT on the sale of the land and building," Trab ruled then.

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Case at Trat

Ecolab was not happy with the decision of Trab and successfully appealed at Trat.

TRA protest

Discontented with the decision, TRA moved to the highest court of the land last year to oppose Trat decision.

The taxman argued that the tribunal grossly erred by interpreting section 10 of the VAT, when read together with item 8 (1) of the second schedule to the act, to mean that sale of interest of land is exempt supply without considering a note under item 8 (2) of the second schedule to the Act.

In its recent decision, the Court of Appeal reversed Trat's decision and held that the tribunal was justified to reverse the decision of the board.
Teleconference, Freetown, Monday 19 July 2021 - His Excellency President Dr Julius Maada Bio and Minister of Health and Sanitation, Dr Austin Demby, have concluded a teleconference with Dr Seth Berkley, CEO of Gavi the vaccine alliance, resulting in the agreement to deliver another consignment of vaccines very soon.

The President said he appreciated the call and the continued support to Sierra Leone through the COVAX facility, adding that he was particularly grateful for Dr Berley's personal engagement with his government, especially relating to their routine immunisation services through GAVI.

"We have so far vaccinated over 150,000 individuals with the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccines and nearly 90,000 with their second dose. We have worked hard to create demand for these vaccines and now that the general population is ready for and demanding to be vaccinated, we cannot afford to interrupt the process.

"I am, therefore, asking for expedited delivery of these needed vaccines, especially the AstraZeneca vaccine over the next week and no later than the end of July.

"Our population is very familiar with the AstraZeneca vaccine, staff have been trained in its delivery and we have obtained the necessary Emergency Use Authorisation from our Regulatory Agency, the National Pharmacy Board," President Bio said.

President Bio noted that with ongoing efforts demand for vaccination was high in the country, emphasising that any disruption of availability, especially the very familiar AstraZeneca vaccine, For More Enquiries: State House Media and Communications Unitwould have major consequences on the country's response to the pandemic.

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"We cannot afford to wait till late August/September to continue our vaccination campaign with the AstraZeneca vaccine. It is, therefore, important that we prevail on COVAX to rush-deliver the AstraZeneca vaccine even as we await the other promises," he said to Dr Berkley.

In his responses, Dr Berkley, who is a medical doctor specialised in infectious disease epidemiology and global health, said he was pleased with the leadership of the President, adding that he would like to encourage other African leaders to be as strong as he was in the fight against Coronavirus.

He assured that adFor More Enquiries: State House Media and Communications Unitditional vaccines would be available in Sierra Leone from July end to September so that the vaccination exercise in the country would not be interrupted.

"We are eager to partner with you. Thank you very much for your leadership. We need all the champions we can get," he noted.

Dr Seth Berkly was formerly with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Rockefeller Foundation before founding the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative. In 2009 he was recognised as one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World".
Bamako  The Federal Council of Tariqa Tijania Followers in Mali (CONFENAT-Mali) paid tribute to HM King Mohammed VI, Commander of the Faithful, whose guidance and support for its creation were and still are decisive.

On the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the creation of CONFENAT-Mali, commemorated last Saturday, the political figures and religious leaders who spoke on the occasion expressed their deep gratitude to HM King Mohammed VI for all the actions that the Sovereign has undertaken with regard to the Tijane sisters and brothers and all the Sufis in Mali and everywhere, said, on Monday, a press release from the Embassy of the Kingdom in Bamako.

On the same occasion, the unwavering centuries-old ties that bind the Kingdom of Morocco and the Republic of Mali were lauded and highlighted, with particular emphasis on the great spirituality drawn from the Malikite rite which advocates a tolerant Islam, added the press release.

For his part, the Ambassador of HM the King in Mali Hassan Naciri, conveyed to the august Assembly the satisfaction and the High Solicitude of HM King Mohammed VI, while welcoming this Tijane initiative at the Malian national level, which consists of paying a hearty tribute to the Sovereign for His decisive role in the design and support of this ambitious unifying project.

This ceremony, which brought together in Bamako a thousand of followers, was also attended by the Minister of Religious Affairs and Cults Mahamadou Kone, and the Minister Delegate Oumarou Diarra.
analysis

Trading under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement started on 1 January 2021, a significant milestone for Africa's political and economic aspirations. The deal created an enormous single market, uniting 1.2 billion people across 54 states with a combined GDP of US$3.4 trillion.

The standard expectation would be that AfCFTA trading - taking place on a continent of few islands and many landlocked states - would happen mostly by rail, road or plane. In fact, the first goods traded under the AfCFTA regime were carried by ship from a Ghanaian cosmetics company to Guinea on 4 January.

AfCFTA interconnectedness is needed to drive economic growth and development across the continent in the coming years. Africa's maritime industries and actors will be vital in achieving this outcome, as sea transport offers the cheapest and fastest way of moving the largest quantity of goods across long distances.

Even for Africa's landlocked countries, trade depends primarily on maritime gateways. Other types of freight are typically more expensive, less efficient and less reliable due to the generally underdeveloped railway and highway systems on the continent.

Sea transport is the cheapest and fastest way to move large quantities of goods across long distances

Reaching an Africa-wide consensus on such a complicated matter is an essential first step. The World Bank estimates that AfCFTA could boost continental income by up to US$450 billion, and lift close to 30 million people out of extreme poverty. Yet the success and results of the initiative depend entirely on African states' ability to increase the efficiency, capacity and safety of their maritime transport systems.

African decision makers must prioritise the expansion and improvement of the continent's maritime transport infrastructure, which struggles to deal with the current level of import and export. The development of port infrastructure in most African countries lags behind the rest of the world - only three African ports are featured on the 2020 list of top 100 global container ports.

High freight rates, poor turnaround time in cargo clearance, and inadequate storage capacities are just some of the many problems that strain African ports' competitiveness. The World Bank estimates that most sub-Saharan African ports exceed 20 days on average cargo dwell time, compared to a dwell time of three to four days in major global ports.

Historical intra-African trade levels have been low, and in 2017 were estimated at only 16.6% of total continental trade, dropping to 15% in 2019. As a result, countries focus on outward export of raw materials and commodities, and most inter-African trade occurs within the economic regions, but to a lesser extent between regions.

AfCFTA needs good logistics and the maritime sector already provides safe passage for 80% of Africa's trade

Given these low figures, the precise percentage of intra-African trade presently carried through ports and by ships is unclear but is probably tiny. Yet because it remains the cheapest and fastest way of moving the largest amount of goods, it presents Africa with a golden opportunity.

African states with better developed maritime trade capacity and infrastructure will benefit more from the free trade deal. The African Union recognised this in its 2050 Africa's Integrated Maritime Strategy and the Revised African Maritime Transport Charter. Both require complementary implementation to support AfCFTA goals.

Increased shipping levels will mean a greater need for safety at sea to monitor, control and direct maritime traffic. Most inter-African maritime trade will probably either be transported along the coastline or would need to pass near hotspots where coastal instability poses costly risks. African countries therefore need to ensure the security of their maritime domains.

Currently, much of the AfCFTA's focus seems to be on negotiations concerning the rules of origin for trade goods and scheduling of tariffs. Yet this is just one of the four outlined objectives. The agreement's ultimate aim is to increase economic relations between African countries and outside of the traditional regional/customs unions.

But there cannot be a single continent-wide market without good logistics, and the maritime sector already ensures safe passage of around 80% of goods traded in Africa. The operational inefficiencies affecting the African port sector must therefore be solved urgently.

An African single market needs port infrastructure to accommodate larger vessels and more containers

According to a report published last year by the Africa CEO Forum and Okan, investment in African ports reportedly reached more than US$50 billion in 2019. Yet just three countries - Egypt, Morocco and South Africa - handle 51% of goods transported by sea in Africa. The others, including large economies such as Nigeria, suffer from a crippling lack of capacity to increase both bulk and containerised cargo handling.

Urban populations are rising, especially in coastal megacities such as Lagos and Dar es Salaam. As a result, demand for goods typically shipped in containers by large carriers is expected to soar.

An African single market would be impractical unless it developed infrastructure that could accommodate larger vessels and more containers. Most African countries continue to export mostly bulk commodities such as oil, precious metals and raw agricultural products. At the same time, intra-African trade is dominated by the exchange of manufactured and processed products.

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Africa's participation in the shipping industry remains hindered by the continent's low fleet ownership. United Nations Conference on Trade and Development estimates show that only Nigeria features among the top 35 owning nations with a share of 0.31% in deadweight tonnage as of January 2020. Only Liberia makes the list of top flag states with 13% of the total world deadweight.

This means that Africa would have to seek the help of foreign-owned vessels in implementing AfCFTA until such time that African-built, -crewed and -owned vessels finally carry African-made products all over the continent and the world.

Brian Gicheru Kinyua, Shipping and Maritime Affairs Writer, Mombasa, Timothy Walker, Maritime Project Leader and Senior Researcher and Denys Reva, Research Officer, ISS Pretoria.

This article is funded by the Government of Norway.

In South Africa, Daily Maverick has exclusive rights to re-publish ISS Today articles. For media based outside South Africa and queries about our re-publishing policy, email us.
Blog

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, opaque dealmaking facilitated the transfer of power from Joseph Kabila to Felix Tshisekedi. It is not too early for policymakers to encourage a more democratic process in 2023.

With international attention divided among political and security crises in the Sahel and the Horn, the ailing giant at the center of the African continent often seems to fly under the radar. But political developments in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) merit more attention, as the stage is being set for the country's next round of elections.

Back in 2019, the international community acquiesced to undemocratic dealmaking that preempted the will of Congolese voters and brought current President Felix Tshisekedi to power. The rationale for that decision revolved around the idea that it was the only way to keep the peace and make even a modest pivot away from the toxicity of Tshisekedi's predecessor, Joseph Kabila, and his political allies.

Among those who supported this decision, optimists hoped that a transfer of power, even one cooked up in backrooms rather than at the ballot box, might create space for reforms that could enable a more legitimate democratic exercise at some point in the future. While there is no doubt that Tshisekedi has exceeded expectations in his efforts to push the Kabila camp to the political sidelines, recent developments raise real questions about whether these political developments will lead to more democratic and accountable governance.

President Tshisekedi, who has been extremely clear about his intention to seek a second term, has been more ambiguous about whether elections slated for December 2023 will occur on time. Meanwhile, a close ally of President Tshisekedi is supporting legislation aimed at disqualifying a politically potent potential contender for the presidency by banning candidates whose parents were not both Congolese.

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But the politics of exclusion seem unlikely to move a vast, diverse country like the Democratic Republic of Congo in a more stable or unified direction. Likewise, widespread consensus had existed about the need to reform the electoral commission, an institution that has lacked both integrity and independence. But the anemic proposal adopted earlier this month has not inspired confidence, boding ill for the future.

One of the common critiques of U.S. efforts to bolster democratic governance worldwide is the charge that policymakers focus on these issues only at election time, failing to sustain attention to the institutional infrastructure of accountable governance between electoral cycles. Another recurring criticism relates to the tendency to fixate on individual personalities rather than systems.

In the case of the DRC, both flaws may be on display. In addition to focusing on curtailing corruption and strengthening institutions, it is not too soon to be concerned about the next electoral cycle, because the parameters of the possible are being set now. Likewise, the fact that Kabila is no longer at center stage does not mean that governance in the country is destined to become more effective or accountable. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the stakes--for the country's 90 million people and for the broader region subject to the gravitational pull of its security and humanitarian crises--are too high to allow international attention to wander.

This publication is part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Project on the Future of Democracy.
document

Washington, DC  Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Minority Member, Distinguished Members of the Committee:

I am honored to be President Biden's nominee for the post of Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and grateful to the President and to Secretary Blinken for their confidence.

I began my career as a public servant here in the office of Senator Pat Moynihan. To guide his work, Senator Moynihan kept only two documents on his desk: the U.S. constitution and the UN Charter. He inspired my career in the Foreign Service, and taught me an abiding respect for this institution, and this committee.

My career in foreign policy began in Nairobi, Kenya, at the United Nations Environment Program. In Kenya I was introduced to the talent and generosity of the African people, and the beauty and richness of the African landscape. Kenyan politics were also my first exposure to the enduring challenges of governance, security and sustainable development. Applying U.S. diplomacy to effectively meet such challenges has been the dominant theme of my career.

I thank this committee for its bipartisan recognition of the growing political, economic and cultural power of the diverse countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It is up to the State Department to translate this recognition into respectful partnerships that advance our shared interests, values and aspirations. If confirmed, I will work to support President Bidens agenda to expand the quantity and quality of our engagement with African governments, institutions such as the African Union, and, critically, African publics.

To stand up to the threat of autocracy, the President has charged us with demonstrating that democracy is the best system to meet the challenges of our interconnected world. We know that the majority of Africans agree and are raising their voices to set new destinies for their countries, as we see in Nigeria. The bravery of the Sudanese people in demanding a civilian-led government is another extraordinary example. Across the continent we will reinvigorate our focus on human rights, accountability, and good governance. President Biden has declared the fight against corruption, especially the theft of public assets for private gain, to be a core national security interest.

We see a direct correlation between African governments that are authoritarian and the incidence of internal conflict, displacement, and migration. Many are contending with an active threat from the Islamic State and other violent extremists like al-Shabaab in Somalia. Diverse societies struggle to uphold inclusive and equitable power-sharing arrangements. In collaboration with regional and international partners, tailored U.S. diplomatic, development and security assistance can play a critical role to support peace and security. This imperative is driving our current intensive effort to urge all parties to the conflict in Ethiopia to implement an immediate and unconditional ceasefire that puts a halt to atrocities against civilians, to permit the delivery of humanitarian assistance, and to restore stability through political dialogue.

Climate change also threatens stability. Desertification in the Sahel disrupts farming and has displaced hundreds of thousands, and reckless exploitation threatens the worlds second largest rainforest in the Congo Basin and the continents wonderland of biological diversity. It is in our mutual interests to work together on environmental sustainability.

Africa is the fastest growing and the youngest continent. By 2050, one in four persons in the world will be African. Workforce development and job creation will be necessary to tap the ambitions of the youth bulge. We are committed to expanding two-way trade and investment and to advancing the regional goals of the African Continental Free Trade Area. Among other strengths, the U.S. private sector offers innovative American options for green energy and digital economies, as well as a commitment to social responsibility.

All these priorities are now threatened by the devastating human toll of COVID-19. Consistent with Americas generous tradition of investment in Africas health systems, exemplified by the landmark PEPFAR program, the White House has just announced the donation of 25 million COVID-19 vaccines for Africa. Earlier the President committed the United States to providing 500 million Pfizer vaccine doses to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, for distribution by COVAX to 92 low- and lower middle-income countries and economies, and the African Union.The Development Finance Corporation is also investing in vaccine production in South Africa and Senegal. This pandemic highlights how our fates are intertwined.

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Mindful of the challenges at home and humble about the challenges in Africa, our best asset will be a dynamic and affirmative U.S. policy agenda that enlists African partners in building free market democracies that offer liberty and prosperity and realize the continents full potential. Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Minority Member, with the Strategic Competition Act you have given us our marching orders and new tools. If confirmed I commit that U.S. embassies in sub-Saharan Africa will act to confront the Chinese challenge to the international rules-based order.

Finally, and not least, if confirmed I promise to be a champion of the people of the State Departments Africa bureau, to unleash their full potential with a vigorous commitment to diversity and inclusion and to cultivate the special esprit dcorps that has traditionally defined the bureau.

Thank you.
Mail and courier services almost doubled growth in the quarter ended March supported by increased demand due to Covid-19 related disruptions, according to the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC).

The performance captured in the UCC Market Performance report, highlights a global phenomenon that has seen massive growth in the mail and courier space due to "restricted travel movements and a slow resumption in business worldwide that have continued to provide growth opportunities" for an industry that had previously faced a number of challenges resulting from new technology.

In Uganda, according to the report, incoming and outgoing post and courier traffic grew to an average of 72,000 units between January and March up from 35,000 units in previous quarter ended December 2020.

Therefore, the report noted, the sector recorded 218,000 new incoming and outgoing mails more than the 148,000 that were recorded in the quarter ended December 2020.

"In [the first quarter of 2021], many last mile order fullment providers like Aramex, Fedex, UPS (Freight in Time) and DHL posted record revenues on account of in-country last-mile delivery services," the report notes, highlighting that the growth has created new opportunities for posts and courier service providers as they evolve business models to adapt to new possibilities.

The growth, the report also notes, has provided a fertile ground in the post and courier sector, which, as of March 2021 had grown to 33 licensed service providers.

Out of the 33 services providers, 20, which is 66 per cent, hold domestic licenses while five hold international licenses.

Four hold regional licenses while two hold inter-city licenses. Diplomatic post office and national operator segments each hold one license, respectively.

Postal and courier services have in the last 10 years faced a lot of competition from short messaging and emailing services that present real time response.

However, the service has been supported through the difficult competition by government operations that largely rely on postal services, bulky mailing and courier services.

By 2013, letter volumes, which were predominantly handled by Posta Uganda, had started to decline following a shift from traditional communication channels to the digital technology.

A 2013 Uganda Bureau of Statistics report indicated then that the volume of letters handled by Posta had fallen by 30 per cent from 3.7 million in 2011 to 2.6 million.

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This, according to the report, indicated that Ugandans were sending fewer letters with some shifting to mobile phones, internet and social networking sites, which provide real time information exchange models.

The growth, the UCC report indicated, has also boosted growth in pickup and drop off centres for the delivery and processing of mail, registering a percentage growth of about 10 per cent in the three months under review.

In the quarter under review, for instance, the total number of pickup and drop off centres increased from 483 in the quarter ended December 2020 to 571.

The growth, the report noted, was supported by the rapid growth in e-commerce platforms such Jumia that have boosted numbers in last-mile deliveries.

Pickup and drop off centres

The growth, the UCC report indicated, has also boosted growth in pickup and drop off centres for the delivery and processing of mail, registering a percentage growth of about 10 per cent in only three months. In the quarter under review, for instance, the total number of pickup and drop off centres increased from 483 in the quarter ended December 2020 to 571. The growth, the report noted, was supported by the rapid growth in e-commerce platforms such Jumia that have boosted numbers in last-mile deliveries.
Despite registering a deficit of Shs2.3 trillion, Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) collected more taxes in the just concluded financial year compare to the 2019/20 financial year.

According to the URA revenue performance report for the period ended June 21, revenue grew by 1 per cent or Shs2.5 trillion, the highest in four years.

While presenting the 2020/21 revenue performance report last week, URA Commissioner General John Musinguzi, said despite the growth in revenue, they were behind target due to Covid-19 induced measures, which slowed the economy and constrained business.

"In the 2020/21 financial year, URA collected net revenue of Shs19. 2 trillion posting an estimated tax to gross domestic product ratio of 12 per cent," he said, noting that it should, however, be noted that the outturn of the 2020/21 financial year was lower than the targeted Shs21.6trillion.

Government had given URA a targeted of Shs21.6 trillion with the need to progressively improve tax to gross domestic product ratio to 15 per cent. However, Covid-19 disrupted the target eating into both domestic and international tax revenue streams.

For instance, during the period, Pay As You Earn, which is one of the major tax heads, registered a shortfall of more than Shs315b, mainly because of a scale down in employee numbers by a some organisations due to a slowdown in operations and cash flow.

Corporate tax collections were also below target by more than Shs239b due to losses registered in key sectors of the economy, worsened by non-compliance and poor debt enforcement.

However, growth was registered in a number of segments such as debt recovery, whose recoveries yielded about Shs1 trillion attributed to a number of factors among which included easing of alternative dispute measures that contributed more than Shs365b, while voluntary disclosure initiative also made a significant contribution.

The growth was also attributed to the implementation of a number tax compliance solutions such as digital tracking solutions and Electronic Fiscal Receipting Solution.

The report also indicates that faster clearance, introduction of a bonded warehouse information management system, easing of TIN application, automation of Withholding Tax exemption and Tax Clearance Certificate issuance, contributed to the revenue growth despite the deficit registered.
Khartoum / Port Sudan  Minister of Health, Dr Omar El Najeeb, has announced increases in rates of COVID-19 infection in Khartoum and Red Sea states, and urged adherence to health precautions. He also confirmed cases of hepatitis among refugees in El Gedaref.

At a press conference held at the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) on Monday, El Najeeb, who is also a member of the Higher Committee for Health Emergencies, pointed out in that the ministry has called on the Governor of Khartoum State to take more health precautions, especially at shopping centres, restaurants, groceries, and places where large numbers of people could gather.

The minister also urged the public to adhere to health requirements to confront the pandemic, indicating that the committee is in the process of imposing health measures by law during Eid El Adha holiday that began on Sunday, and will last until Thursday., especially at Kafori and East Khartoum areas.

El Najeeb denied that the Delta (Indian) strain of the virus has reached Port Sudan, capital of the Red Sea state. He attributed the rise in infections to "lack of commitment to health precautions in the city," referring to the measures taken by the governor of the state to protect the public.

He confirmed that cases of hepatitis have been reported at refugee camps in El Gedaref state, indicating that the ministry has sent medical teams to asses and contain the situation.

'Misinformation'

As reported by Radio Dabanga yesterday, Member of Sudan's Sovereignty Council and alternate chair of the Supreme Committee for Health Emergencies, Prof Siddig Tawir, says that there has been "deliberate misinformation spread by some circles," which he did not name, from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and urged media and reporters to continue the struggle against misleading rumours about COVID vaccines.

Addressing the inaugural session of the Workshop on the Role of Media and Multimedia in Combating Misinformation and Rumours concerning COVID-19 a in Khartoum last week, Tawir pointed out that "the culture of Sudanese communities often contradicts the state's efforts to curb the spread of the virus. He called for research studies to be made in this regard in anticipation of the continuation of the pandemic., and the emergence of new variants.
Kampala, Uganda  Ramathan Ggoobi and Lucy Nakyobe who a month ago were rumoured to be joining cabinet have been rewarded with top posts in the civil service in the latest reshuffle of government by President Museveni after cabinet, and the army.

Long serving Secretary to the Treasury, Keith Muhakanizi, who has been at the ministry of finance since graduation from Makerere University was sent to Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) as Permanent Secretary. Muhakanizi is not in good health and many saw the transfer as the road to retirement.

His replacement is Ggoobi, an economics lecturer at Makerere University Business School, working closely with government. He sits on the board of Uganda Development Corporation, was on Museveni's 2021 election committee and is a known protege of Gen. Salim Saleh, the President's young brother influential in running government.

Used to the idealism of offering economic commentary on Twitter, Ggoobi will have to brace himself for the cold reality of running the government's cheque book coupled with the foot dragging and corruption that has been the tonic of Museveni's government for decades. He will no longer have the luxury such as in 2019 when he tweeted about Muhakanizi decrying the level of government debt yet being the very person tasked with the responsibility of reining it in.

Museveni appointed Nakyobe, State House comptroller, as the new Head of Public Service- a position responsible for pushing for effective and dedicated public servants; streamlining recruitment of government employees, handling pension matters and ensuring integrity at a time when there is rampant abuse of public office in ministries, government agencies and departments. Nakyobe was replaced by Jane Barekye who has been a staff at State House.

The President has named a new batch of permanent secretaries as the government battles the economic devastation wrought by Covid19, now well in its second year, with a second lockdown underway in the country to stem the spread of new infections. Some of the new names include Irene Batebe (Energy), Kate Lamaro (Education) Joseph Musanyufu (Internal Affairs), Amin Zawedde (ICT).

Traditionally touted as the drivers of the government, permanent secretaries wield a lot of influence in how ministries spend money and execute government work such as implementing policy, awarding of tenders, rollout of projects, and emergency response. Their administrative duties and technical roles often lead to disagreements with ministers who are tasked with providing political guidance to ministries they head. The two are eventually tasked to work around their differences.

As the most senior civil servant in a ministry or department, they are the ministry's/department's accounting officers responsible for the monitoring and execution of the department's budget and are therefore responsible for the overall management of the department.

In previous scenarios, Museveni has appointed permanent secretaries to fix perceived malaise at ministries only to get rid of them once they cross certain lines. In 2016, Museveni fired long serving PS at Energy Kabaliisa Kabagambe after stories of corruption became a mainstay at the ministry. He replaced him with a young and ambitious Stephen Isabalijja who apart from being board chair of Uganda Electricity Generation Company (UEGCL) was little known in Energy circles. Isabalijja was fired less than a year later after he cancelled an MoU with a Chinese energy conglomerate.

It is possible that Isabalijja did not understand the politics of the energy ministry including Museveni's closeness to the Chinese. The energy ministry is at the heart of two hydropower projects; the still under construction 600M Karuma and the commissioned 183MW Isimba. As chair of UEGCL and PS, Isabalija and Kaliisa respectively squabbled over the supervision of the projects.

Denis Kusasira, a lawyer and expert in energy industry, told The Observer at the time of Isabalija's firing that Isabalija sold himself as "somebody who knew something about the industry and the president believed him" although he turned out not as expected.

"The energy sector is one of the key priority areas you need for your vision 2040 and middle income status so you would require a well-tested, experienced individual to manage it," a source who preferred anonymity at the time Isabalijja was appointed told The Independent, "I don't know if Isabalija was the right choice or not but you needed someone who has been around and will hit the road running and not someone who will start from scratch."

The new PS at the ministry is Irene Batebe who has been Acting Commissioner, Directorate of Petroleum at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development. Batebe, a chemical engineer, replaces Robert Kasande who at the time he replaced Isabalija, had also been a long serving staff at the ministry. So at a critical ministry like energy, the President is choosing continuity and less of a new infusion of energy.

Same case was with Diana Atwiine who was plucked from the State House Health Monitoring Unit where she was sort of an ombudsman for the health sector. After years of grumbling on how the sector is wasting away and facilities including how Mulago Hospital was being run down, Atwiine, Museveni's personal doctor was given the top job to fix things. She told the parliamentary health committee in 2016 while heading the State House Unit:

"The referral system broke down long time ago. Mulago has been reduced to Health Centre IV treating malaria and we are lost into non-issues. I don't expect Mulago to treat malaria, we need to go back to the basics and see where we went wrong."

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While appointing her PS, Museveni felt she would replicate her gang bursting at the health ministry but she is now on the spot for accountability of covid19 donations, donor loans for managing the pandemic and other logistics disbursed for handling the crisis.

Museveni publicly rebuked her at a function held at State House last month for failing to procure 42,000 ICU hospital beds to manage COVID19. Although the argument has been made that it was beyond her capacity to procure the beds, she has been making rounds about the difficulty of the job including blaming the country's procurement laws. Sources also say that a number of directors and commissioners at the ministry of health complained about being passed over for a State House employee.

Atwine has kept her job but the fights at one of the most crucial ministries are not relenting as the country battles covid19. Other voices say novices like Ggoobi have to understand their place in a set up dominated by people like Muhakanizi who have established networks and loyalties in many levels of government. In his long stint as Secretary to the Treasury, Muhakanizi's tentacles are said to spread to Uganda Revenue Authority, Bank of Uganda and other accounting officers whom he supervised in the countless government agencies.

Musical chairs

Museveni has also been faulted for playing musical chairs in the appointment of what should be the most senior public servants. Vincent Bagiire moved from ICT to Foreign Affairs, Adolf Mwesige from Defence as minister to Clerk to Parliament, Aggrey Kibenge from Education to Gender. In 2016, he moved Alex Kakooza from Works as Undersecretary to Education as PS, Rose Nassali from Education to Judicial Service Commission. Patrick Mugoya, though a career diplomat did time at Internal Affairs being moved back to Foreign Affairs.

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Although the work of the PS is essentially administrative, employees at ministries say getting a PS who is not well versed with the issues can set back progress.

In other changes, Museveni appointed former deputy managing director of National Social Security Fund Geraldine Ssali as PS at the ministry of Trade and Industry. A third General was added to the Internal Affairs; Lt. Gen. Joseph Musanyufu joining Generals; David Muhoozi and Kahinda Otafiire.

Museveni claimed to have retired five permanent secretaries in 'public interest'. These include Jane Kibirige (Clerk to Parliament), Patrick Mugoya, Guwatudde Kintu, Kivumbi Lutaaya and Benon Mutambi.

Museveni appointed former minister Beti Kamya as the new Inspectorate General of Government (IGG). There has been no substantive IGG for more than a year since the former IGG took up a position as a Judge of the Court of Appeal. The office has been overshadowed by the State House Anti-Corruption Unit headed by Col. Edith Nakalema. In addition, it is not fully constituted with any deputies as the two former deputies ended their terms and one; Mariam Wangadya was appointed the chairperson of the Uganda Human Rights Commission.

The Inspectorate of Government once lost a corruption case it was prosecuting after one of the accused ran to the Constitutional Court arguing that the office was not properly constituted.
Kenya's Deputy President Warns Rivals to Prepare for Tough Battle

Deputy President William Ruto, confident of a 2022 State House race triumph following a series of wins in recent by-elections, has told his opponents to prepare for what he says will be a battle royale.

Coming just days after the United Democratic Alliance - a new party linked to Ruto's allies - won the Kiambaa seat against President Uhuru Kenyatta's well-oiled Jubilee Party campaign, Ruto dismissed all ongoing coalition-building efforts by his rivals, saying they will not stop him from ascending to the highest office.

Kenyatta, together with Ruto's rival Raila Odinga, are allegedly crafting a coalition that will involve some leaders of the One Kenya Alliance - Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper), Gideon Moi (Kanu), Moses Wetang'ula (Ford-Kenya) and Musalia Mudavadi (Amani National Congress), writes Maureen Ongala for The Nation.
Yet Another Nigerian Military Jet Down, Pilot Survives

Nigeria's airforce spokesperson Edward Gabkwet said in a statement that one of the army's fighter planes was returning from a successful air interdiction mission on July 18, 2021, when it "came under intense enemy fire" which led to the crash in Zamfara State. Flight Lieutenant Abayomi Dairo, the pilot of the ill-fated aircraft, escaped successfully, Gabkwet said.

According to an eyewitness, the plane was allegedly brought down by an armed gang. The pilot fled into the neighbouring community.

This is the fourth crash of a military plane in seven months. In April 2021 a Nigerian Airforce fighter jet was declared missing and suspected to have crashed. While Boko Haram claimed to have shot it down, the military denied the claims.
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Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.
Zambia Polls To Go Ahead Unless State of Emergency Declared

General elections will be held in Zambia on August 12, 2021 to elect the president and national assembly. A total of sixteen candidates registered to run for the top job but it is expected to be a close race between Edgar Lungu of the ruling Patriotic Front and Hakainde Hichilema of the opposition United Party for National Development.

In June 2021, Zambia's electoral body suspended campaign rallies, as daily new confirmed Covid-19 cases surged in the country. Political parties should use alternative methods of campaigning that avoid crowds. "The election will go ahead as planned unless a state of emergency is declared," Chief Electoral Officer Kryticous Nshindano said. Meanwhile, Hichilema's party has accused Lungu of using the pandemic to effectively block it from campaigning.

As of July 20, 2021 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in Zambia reached 186,279 while over 65,528 people have been fully vaccinated. Reported deaths reached 3,113 and 173,320 people have recovered.
London: The problem comes down to simple maths, really. So here are the numbers.

A third coronavirus wave has been washing across Britain for weeks now, latching onto the young and mostly unvaccinated. The wave is big - some experts think new cases could soon hit at least 100,000 a day - but thankfully the wildly successful vaccine rollout has cut deaths and hospitalisations to a fraction of what would normally be expected.

So far, so good. The trouble is so many people are being infected that the pandemic is turning into what politicians, the press and exasperated employers call a pingdemic.

The NHS COVID-19 app is pinging hundreds of thousands of people each week. Bloomberg

In England and Wales, where the governments bluetooth-based contact tracing app operates, hundreds of thousands of people a week are being sent alerts - or pinged - and ordered to self-isolate because they have spent more than 15 minutes within two metres of a confirmed case.

The app lets people order a coronavirus test, check in to venues via a QR code and keeps a record of nearby users using random unique identification codes. If a person tests positive, they can choose if they want other app users to be alerted.

It doesnt matter whether you are fully vaccinated - everyone has to self-isolate for up to 10 days if they are pinged. The app is also highly sensitive, with some even complaining about being pinged through the walls of apartment buildings and terrace houses.

On the eve of what the British press has dubbed 'Freedom Day', when almost all COVID-19 restrictions will be lifted, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he will self-isolate after coming into contact with a government official who tested positi...

More than 530,000 people were pinged in the past week - up 46 per cent on the one prior.

About half-a-million people were also told to self-isolate during the deadly second wave over January but that was during a lockdown, when people were largely confined to their homes anyway. The key difference now is that huge numbers of people are being told to stay home just as Prime Minister Boris Johnson eliminates all remaining restrictions in England under his so-called Freedom Day experiment.

The pingdemic is causing chaos in workplaces and has even forced some pubs and stores to close.

We are in the unprecedented position of having to close stores due to staff absences - not because of COVID-19, but because of a broken and disruptive track and trace app, said Richard Walker, the managing director of supermarket chain Iceland.

Staff absences rose by 50 per cent last week and the trend is sharp and quick, not just affecting our own colleagues but those throughout our supply chains and logistics networks.

Pedestrians cross Londons Millennium Bridge on so-called Freedom Day. Bloomberg

Pub chain Greene King closed 33 local watering holes in just one week.

Chief executive Nick Mackenzie told the BBC: Across the industry we think it is about one in five of our team members who have been affected by this and therefore it is causing a real issue for us setting up business on a daily basis  were having to have shortened hours in some circumstances.

The union representing rail workers blamed the closure of a London tube line over the weekend on isolation-induced staff shortages.

So many crucial frontline healthcare workers were being forced to stay at home that Johnson has had to exempt double-vaccinated staff from self-isolation requirements, although those dealing with vulnerable patients will still have to comply with the old system.

Johnson and his Chancellor Rishi Sunak are self-isolating for 10 days after coming into contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who tested positive over the weekend.

Johnson told a virtual press conference on Monday that the test, trace and isolate system was still essential. The Prime Minister initially tried to exempt himself from self-isolation over the weekend but ditched that plan within three hours following a public backlash.

I know how frustrating it is for all those affected, or pinged, and I want to explain that people identified as contacts of cases are at least five times more likely to be infected than others, he said on Monday.

Even if they have been vaccinated there is a significant risk they can still pass the disease on.

And so, as we go forward, Im afraid that the continuing sacrifice of this large minority - those of us asked to isolate- remains important to allow the rest of society to get back to something like normality.

The isolation scheme will be replaced in mid-August by a system based on daily testing for double-vaccinated close contacts.

In the meantime, I want to assure you that we will protect crucial services including the staffing of our hospitals and care homes; the supplies of food, water electricity and medicines; the running of our trains; the protection of our borders, the defence of our realm, by making sure a small number of fully-vaccinated critical workers are able to leave their isolation solely for the work Ive described, Johnson said.




Now that visits to the Inca citadel are increasing as part of the efforts to revive the tourism sector and after it received the Safe Travels stamp that recognizes it as a safe destination amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it is crucial to note the importance of July in the festive calendar of Machu Picchu.





Hiram Bingham





On July 24, 110 years will have passed since the arrival of U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham in this impressive stone city nestled atop a mountain ridge in the jungle of Cusco.









Although the first direct references to the discovery of Machu Picchu date back to 1902, when a group of locals visited the Inca structure vestiges, it was Bingham who sponsored by Yale University and the National Geographic Society initiated the scientific study of the last capital of the Incas in 1911 and made it known to the outside world.





World Heritage Site





With the passage of time and greater awareness of its importance as an Inca religious, ceremonial, astronomical, and agricultural center, Machu Picchu was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO on December 9, 1983.





Impressive biodiversity





The National Sanctuary of Machu Picchu has an impressive Andean and Amazonian biodiversity. It is home to 384 species of trees, 468 of orchids, 279 of ferns, 443 of birds, 84 of mammals, 22 of reptiles, and 17 of amphibians.





New Wonder of the World





Additionally, July 7 marks the 14th anniversary of the day Machu Picchu was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.





The Inca Empire's most representative construction was crowned on 7 July 2007 along with the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal in India, Petra city in southern Jordan, the Roman Coliseum, Christ the Redeemer in Rio, and the Maya Chichen Itza archaeological site in Mexico.





Safe Travels Stamp and Carbon Neutral Initiative





In October 2020, Machu Picchu was one of the first destinations to get a 'Safe Travels' stamp from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).





Additionally, the Inca citadel has developed a Carbon Neutral initiative aimed at turning the area into the first tourist destination to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and manage solid waste.





Visitor capacity





On the other hand, the visitor capacity for Machu Picchu has increased over the past weeks. According to the Ministry of Culture, the Inca citadel receives between 1,000 and 1,200 visitors a day.









However, the number of visits is expected to increase gradually as the Government has issued a decree that stipulates that capacity restrictions will no longer apply for museums and archaeological sites, as they are open-air venues.





Machu Picchu Brand





In addition, the Machu Picchu Brand will be launched on July 7, on the occasion of the 14th anniversary of the day the Inca citadel was named one of the New 7 Wonders of the World.





According to Mayor Darwin Baca, this brand is intended to generate economic dynamism through the promotion of archaeological, cultural, and natural tourist attractions in Machu Picchu.





World Travel Awards





Finally, the ancient citadel is competing to be South America's Leading Tourist Attraction , an award it has obtained for the last three years in a row (2018, 2019, and 2020) in the regional edition of the World Travel Awards. People will be able to vote in support of its nomination until July 26.





(END) LZD/MAO/RMB/MVB

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July is a particularly important month for the Historic Sanctuary and Archaeological Park of Machu Picchu Peru's biggest attraction which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site and one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.Publicado: 1/7/2021
17:00 | Lima, Jul. 20.

"Thanks to the gaze of historians, we can realize what happened and the price that the country paid for decades for not seeking the harmony and unity that independence had advocated," Mr. Sagasti said in remarks to Andina news agency.









The Head of State called on citizens to become aware of what "we are, we were, and we can become as a country" so that all Peruvians willing to dialogue can become the example of decency and honesty to transform politics in a way that it is truly at the service of citizenry.





The top official mentioned that political parties are organizations which in his opinion must rethink the way to connect with citizens and their militants, establishing a more horizontal link, as well as filters so that the most qualified citizens can reach leadership positions.





"What we need are new politicians, who have a different vision, capable of recognizing differences, looking for coincidences, submitting them to a reality filter and proposing laws. Afterwards, it will be up to the Executive Branch to put them into practice," he indicated.









Mr. Sagasti also assured that the South American nation has extraordinary possibilities, adding that it will be up to young people "of all ages" of the post-Bicentennial generation to make the most of those potentialities.
"I called him yesterday at night to congratulate him () we had a very cordial dialogue; I invited him to the (Government) Palace; I invited him to my house to talk as soon as possible, indicating that we are very aware that the time we are going to have will be very short (for the transfer of power)," Mr. Sagasti expressed.

"This delay has meant that the torch relay period, instead of having a month and a half and running together, has been reduced to a few meters; we have to be very careful and supported by plenty of willingness so that the torch does not fall to the ground, and Peru continues to make progress in terms of vaccination ," he added.
In this regard, the high-ranking official indicated that the outgoing administration is attentive to the new government appointing its review teams.

COVID-19 vaccines

Besides, Bermudez highlighted the commitment of health sector authorities for the inoculation process to develop as usual.

Remarks were made during the inauguration of the "In our hands" exhibit in Lima, which describes the Government's actions to face the pandemic.

Titular de la PCM: Estamos aqui para presentar esta exposicion llamada "En nuestras manos" porque es fundamental recordar aquellos momentos dificiles que hemos vivido y encontrar la esperanza de que juntos podemos superar las adversidades. pic.twitter.com/6xR2cWgclY

Titular de la PCM: La muestra nos recuerda que hace mas de un ano empezo la pandemia en el Peru y el mundo, y nos afecto de una manera muy dramatica. Por eso hemos querido tener un espacio para recordar a quienes fallecieron por causa de la pandemia. pic.twitter.com/HTF0SjYNly
Presidente @FSagasti en @atv_noticias: Asumi esta gestion como un Gobierno de Transicion y Emergencia. Hemos avanzado en varios sectores. Por ejemplo, tenemos una hoja de ruta de la Reforma del Sistema de Justicia. Estamos dejando encaminados muchos proyectos al proximo gobierno. pic.twitter.com/sMDkw9upWr
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. Several rockets were launched on the Presidential Palace in Afghanistans capital of Kabul on Tuesday during prayers of Eid al-Adha holiday period, TASS reports citing Chinas news agency Xinhua.

According to the news agency, the attack occurred as President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and other dignitaries joined the prayers of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday (the Feast of the Sacrifice celebrated this year from July 19 through 23).

Afghan television channel 1-TV reported that three explosions were heard near the Presidential Palace in Kabul.

There were no immediate reports about casualties or inflicted damages.
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. The Azerbaijani armed forces continued shelling from firearms the Armenian positions located in the Yeraskh section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, without using grenade launchers, the Defense Ministry of Armenia said in a statement.

On July 19 late in the evening and at night of July 20, until 02:00, the Azerbaijani armed forces continued shelling from firearms the Armenian positions located in the Yesakh section of the border, without using grenade launchers.

From the Armenian side, leader of Yesakh community Radik Oghikyan received a gunshot wound as a result of intense shootout which lasted for several hours. At that time he was organizing the works on extinguishing the fire that broke out in an area as a result of Azerbaijani actions.

The Armenian Armed Forces announce that they will not allow any change in the line of contact, the statement says.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. The Public Relations and Information Center SNCO operating under the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia has launched a new website called The War Crimes Of Azerbaijan, the SNCO told Armenpress.

The website operates in three languages  Armenian, Russian and English.

Its purpose is to present facts about the Azerbaijani war crimes committed during and after the 2020 Artsakh War, the Azerbaijani destruction of Armenian cultural monuments in Artsakh and other topics in one place.

The website consists of the following sections:

-War crimes

-Prisoners of war

-Cultural genocide

-Hate speech

-Mercenaries (involvement of Syrian terrorists to the war, and Turkeys role)

-Reports (international and local)

The website address is War.karabakhrecords.info.

The information available in the website is also spread on respective social accounts (Twitter, Facebook, Telegram) in English and Russian.

Materials are still at the drafting stage.

The website is being updated, it has a news feed for ongoing topics.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. Lieutenant has been arrested for killing co-serviceman Artur Ghazaryan, the Investigative Committee of Armenia told Armenpress.

In particular, on July 16, at around 21:40, the Lieutenant was reported about the supposed movement of the Azerbaijani side in the territory of the position. While monitoring the area he noticed a movement and violating the rules of the fulfillment of the military duty fired in the direction of the movement, fatally wounding soldier Artur Ghazaryan.

The preliminary investigation continues.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. Member of European Parliament representing France Nathalie Loiseau, Chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defense, visited today the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Yerevan on the sidelines of her visit to Armenia.

She was accompanied by Chairman of the Armenian parliamentary standing committee on foreign affairs Ruben Rubinyan, the Parliament told Armenpress.

The MEP laid flowers at the Eternal Flame, honoring the memory of the victims. Nathalie Loiseau said she is very impressed by the Genocide Museum. According to her, the whole world must know and remember the Genocide of Armenians so that it never happens again. The MEP stressed the importance of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide.

The whole world must recognize the Armenian Genocide, as France did it, she wrote in the Honorary Guest Book.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. The group headed by Human Rights Defender of Armenia Arman Tatoyan is in Yeraskh (Ararat province) to conduct fact-finding activities, the Ombudsmans Office told Armenpress.

The Human Rights Defender of Armenia specifically emphasizes, that the Azerbaijani shootings near Yeraskh are of a criminal nature, are conducted in a manner that is dangerous to the right to life and health, and other vital rights of the civilian population. They violate the peace and quiet life of the civilian population.

The criminal nature of the shootings is evident in the other section of the borders of Armenia, against the background of the shootings provoked by the Azerbaijani armed forces in the vicinity of the communities, and is evidenced by the fact that on July 14 a serviceman of the Armenian Armed Forces was killed in the sector of Yeraskh as a result of the regular Azerbaijani shootings.

The results of the visit will be summarized by recording the violations of the rights of the border residents of Armenia. The details will be presented in a separate report to the international bodies (UN, CoE, EU, etc.) as well as to the relevant state bodies of the Republic of Armenia.
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian hosted today Member of European Parliament representing France Nathalie Loiseau, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

The meeting was also attended by French Ambassador to Armenia Jonathan Lacote.

The MEP told the Armenian President that she is planning to visit Artsakh to personally get acquainted with the situation and the problems, in order to understand the possible directions of EUs, Frances support to Armenia and Artsakh.

President Sarkissian thanked the MEP for the visit to Armenia and the plan to visit Artsakh, as well as for the constant attention to the issues facing Armenia and Artsakh.

Armen Sarkissian introduced the post-war situation in the country and his vision on Armenias further development directions, stating that he highlights both the support of the EU and France in the strengthening of Armenia and the deepening of cooperation in targeted areas.

In the context of the countrys development, the President highlighted making constitutional amendments and adopting new constitution that will have effective balance and restraint mechanisms which will contribute to the countrys democratic progress and will enable to fully and effectively engage the human potential of the Diaspora in the homeland development processes. As another precondition for development, the President emphasized the importance of ensuring progress in high-tech, artificial intelligence and education field.

The Armenian President and the MEP exchanged views also on regional issues.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces Arshak Karapetyan will be relieved from the position.

The President of the Republic has received the respective proposal by the caretaker Prime Minister, the Presidential Office told Armenpress.

Arshak Karapetyan has been appointed to the position on April 13, 2021.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian signed decrees on relieving acting Minister of Defense Vagharshak Harutyunyan and First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Arshak Karapetyan of their posts.

ARMENPRESS reports the decrees are published in the Presidents official website.
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. The USA is concerned over the incidents on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, particularly the recent incidents near Yeraskh-Sadarak section, ARMENPRESS reports the US Embassy in Armenia announced.

''We call on both sides to swiftly and peacefully de-escalate tensions and create space for the resumption of substantive negotiations', reads the statement.

Armenias Defense Ministry reported that in the evening of July 19, starting from 18:40, the Azerbaijani armed forces fired at the Armenian positions located in the Yeraskh section of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border for several hours with the use of various caliber firearms. Mortars were also used regularly. Head of Yeraskh community Radik Oghikyan was injured, who was organizing fire extinguishing activities, caused by the Azerbaijani fire. IN the morning of July 20 the Defense Ministry informed that Azerbaijan continues firing at the Armenian positions, emphasizing that no changes of contact line can be allowed.
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian will pay a working visit to Japan. As ARMENPRESS was informed from the press service of the President's Office, Armen Sarkissian will attend the official opening ceremony of the Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. The President of Armenia will take part in the official reception organized by the Emperor of Japan Naruhito in the Imperial Palace and will have a conversation with the Emperor.

President Armen Sarkissian is also scheduled to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide, during which issues related to the deepening of Armenian-Japanese relations and the bilateral agenda will be discussed.

The Armenian President will also meet with the heads of a number of well-known technology companies and businessmen to discuss the possibilities of Armenian-Japanese cooperation, as well as will visit scientific and educational institutions.

On his way to Tokyo, President Sarkissin is scheduled to meet with the leadership of the State of Qatar in Doha, to discuss issues related to the expansion of cooperation and investment opportunities between Armenia and Qatar.
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Armen Grigoryan received the heads of the diplomatic missions accredited in Armenia on July 20.

As ARMENPRESS was ifnormed from the press servic eof the MFA Armenia, The key topic of the meeting was the situation created as a result of Azerbaijan's encroachments on the sovereign territory of Armenia, in particular, the incursion of the Azerbaijani armed forces into Syunik and Gegharkunik regions, as well as the creation of a new hot spot in the Ararat region, in the direction of Yeraskh community.

During the meeting, Armen Grigoryan noted that in parallel with those actions, official Baku is making false territorial-historical claims against Armenia, which clearly indicate Azerbaijan's occupational aspirations towards the territory of the Republic of Armenia. It was stressed that the the inadequate response of the international community to use of force against the people of Artsakh, mass atrocities, including ethnic cleansing, encouraged Azerbaijan to make the use of force as a permanent tool of policy, which threatens regional security and peace.

In this context, Armen Grigoryan emphasized, ''The Republic of Armenia and the Armenian people will not tolerate such violations of their rights. Today, the Armed Forces of Armenia are fully fulfilling their responsibilities to guarantee the territorial integrity of Armenia. Armenia will put into operation its entire military-political toolkit, cooperating also on bilateral and multilateral formats''.

Armen Grigoryan stressed that Armenia expects a clear response from international partners to such violations of international law by Azerbaijan.

It was especially emphasized that without the resumption of the Karabakh peace process, and reaching a final settlement to the conflict, the region will constantly face new attempts to disrupt security.

''Armenia ready to engage in Karabakh peace process based on approaches proposed by OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs which reaffirm the Co-Chairs' principles, including the right to self-determination'', Armen Grigoryan said.
YEREVAN, JULY 20, ARMENPRESS. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev met in Moscow on July 20. ARMENPRESS reports the official website of the Kremlin informs that Putin thanked Aliyev for ''finding compromise solutions'' in normalization of the regional situation, emphasizing that ''if we want settlement, we must pursue the path of finding compromises''.

''Definitely, the solution of the regional situation remains one of the key issues. I know that you, naturally, attach great importance to that and I want to thank you for finding compromise solutions, which are always very hard, but if we want settlement, and we all wnt that, we must pursue that path. So far we have been able to do that for which I want to thank you'', the Russian President said.

Earlier Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson of Putin, had informed that no document is planned to be signed, It's a working visit aimed at clarification of approaches.
Around 30 journalists and bosses in the French media were allegedly targeted by Moroccan security services

The joint investigation into Pegasus identified at least 180 journalists in 20 countries who were selected for potential targeting between 2016 to June 2021. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

PARIS: Prosecutors in Paris said Tuesday that they had opened a probe into allegations that Moroccan intelligence services used the Israeli surveillance software Pegasus to spy on several French journalists.

The investigation will examine 10 different charges, including whether there was a breach of personal privacy, fraudulent access to personal electronic devices, and criminal association.

Investigative website Mediapart filed a legal complaint on Monday over the spying claims, which Morocco has denied, and the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine has said it plans to do so as well.

A collaborative investigation by The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde and other media outlets, based on a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers, claimed Monday that spying worldwide using the technology from the NSO Group had been far more extensive than previously thought.

Mediapart revealed that the phones of its founder Edwy Plenel and one of its journalists were among those targeted by Moroccan intelligence services.

In an article published Monday, it said that Morocco had "violated the privacy of two journalists, undermined the profession of informing people and the freedom of the media, stolen and exploited personal and professional data."

Around 30 journalists and bosses in the French media were allegedly targeted by Moroccan security services, including employees of Le Monde, Le Figaro, France Televisions and Agence France-Presse, Le Monde reported.

Morocco denied the claims, saying it "never acquired computer software to infiltrate communication devices."

The country ranks 136 out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, and journalists there "continue to be subjected to judicial harassment," according to the Reporters without Borders media freedom group.

Journalists reporting on the ruling monarchy, corruption or events in the disputed Western Sahara region are known to face particular scrutiny.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told French public radio that "these are extremely shocking acts and, if proven, are extremely serious."

He said that France was "extremely attached to press freedom" and that any attempt to curtail journalists' freedom to report was "very serious."

The joint investigation into Pegasus identified at least 180 journalists in 20 countries who were selected for potential targeting between 2016 to June 2021.

Among them were reporters for The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, El Pais, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Economist and Reuters, The Guardian reported.
Back in 2018, I featured Hooked Up Seafood in Wildwood as one of my stops during the initial season of Shackin Up for the Summer. It was one 
Tasmania has shut its border with South Australia in response to a growing coronavirus outbreak in the mainland state.

The directive was implemented at 4pm on Tuesday.

It means no one from South Australia can enter Tasmania unless approved as an essential traveller.

Anyone in Tasmania who has been in South Australia since July 8 is encouraged to check the health department's list of high-risk premises and immediately isolate if they've been to any of the venues.

South Australia is implementing a seven-day lockdown from 6pm on Tuesday after a cluster of local COVID-19 cases grew to five.

"Our thoughts are with those in NSW, Victoria and now South Australia," Tasmanian Premier Peter Gutwein said.

People in Tasmania who have been in South Australia since July 8 are required to wear a mask in public for 14 days since they left the mainland state.

More than 3000 people have arrived in Tasmania from South Australia since July 8.

Tasmania has a hard border in place with Victoria and NSW and has also declared a host of high-risk premises in Queensland.

Mr Gutwein said the travel ban with Victoria would remain in place for at least as long as the mainland state's lockdown, which was on Tuesday extended for a week.

Recent arrivals from Victoria have also been told to wear a mask in public until at least Friday.

Students and staff who have recently been in South Australia, Victoria or NSW have been told to stay home from school until the end of the week.
The vaccination campaign in the United States, which has made enormous progress against the pandemic, has stalled in recent weeks

A US federal judge on Monday upheld a university's decision to require its students and employees to get vaccinated against Covid-19, the first ruling on an increasingly divisive issue ahead of the new school year.

The decision by Judge Damon Leichty of the South Bend court, around 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Chicago, can still be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

In a case brought by eight students, the judge refused to suspend new health rules imposed by Indiana University in preparation for the resumption of classes between August 1 and 15.

The rules require Covid-19 vaccination for the school's 90,000 students and 40,000 employees but allow for exemptions on religious or medical grounds.

The US Constitution allows students to refuse "unwanted medical treatment based on bodily autonomy," Leichty wrote.

But it also "permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health," he continued in his 100-page ruling.

Six of the eight plaintiffs already have religious exemptions, but they don't want to wear face masks or abide by social distancing, he said.

Some put forward religious reasons or the fear of being discriminated against, while others described the measure as a cultural attack.

However, in recent months, they had all agreed to comply with such health measures in other contexts, the judge pointed out.

The vaccination campaign in the United States, which has made enormous progress against the pandemic, has stalled in recent weeks.

About 68 percent of adults have received at least a first dose, but there are large geographical disparities.

Opposition to the vaccine is significantly tied to the political divide in the country, with hostility much more pronounced in the right-wing demographic, particularly among supporters of former president Donald Trump.

Several conservative groups, such as student organization Turning Point, have launched a campaign against mandatory vaccination on campuses and are backing lawsuits across the country.

Universities have taken various positions, with 500 currently requiring their students or staff to get Covid-19 vaccines.

chp/to/ft
The suit, filed by towns and citizen groups around the state  including the Western New York towns of Cambria, Somerset, Yates and Farmersville  seeks to invalidate the 143 pages of regulations adopted in March by the newly created Office of Renewable Energy Siting.
SYRACUSE  Flanked by experts from SUNY Upstate Medical University, U.S. Rep. John Katko highlighted the need for Congress to pass his bill that aims to boost tick surveillance programs.

Katko, R-Camillus, announced Monday that he is reintroducing legislation that would establish a pilot program with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to award grants to states for tick identification programs. The bill is inspired by the tick testing program at Upstate's Thangamani Lab led by Dr. Saravanan Thangamani, who is the director of the SUNY Center for Environmental Health and Medicine.

The lab has tested 13,286 ticks since April 2019. Nearly one-third (32.7%) had pathogens associated with tick-borne illnesses, such as Lyme disease, anaplasmosis or Powassan encephalitis.

The tick population is increasing in central New York, Katko and the experts told reporters at the press conference inside SUNY Upstate's Institute for Human Performance. Thangamani said there are not only more ticks, but there are more pathogens being found in the ticks.

"It's very important that we continue to do what we are doing," Thangamani said of his lab's work.
WASHINGTON  The moment many Buffalo-area residents have been waiting for since March 2020  the moment when they can visit Canada again  will finally arrive at 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 9.

But travelers heading north that day or soon thereafter may think the Peace Bridge and other border crossings look like one-way streets, with the vast majority of traffic heading north, too.

That's because Canada will reopen its land border to nonessential travel as of Aug. 9, but the United States has not yet agreed to open its borders to visiting Canadians as of that date.

That fact tempered the joy that advocates of opening the border felt on Monday as Canada announced its border reopening plans.

"This will allow fully vaccinated Americans separated from their families and property in Canada for a year and a half to be reunited in three weeks," said Rep. Brian Higgins, the Buffalo Democrat who has led the fight to open the border. "This measure cant come soon enough."

Meanwhile, though, Higgins said he was frustrated that the Biden administration has shown "a lack of urgency to make any progress on this side of the border toward lifting restrictions."
State Assembly members Harry Bronson of Rochester along with Deborah Glick and Danny O'Donnell of Manhattan recently sent a letter to the New York State Thruway Authority Executive Director Matthew Driscoll opposing Chick-fil-A to open at the Thruway rest stops. "Lawmakers: No Chick-fil-A at Thruway Rest Stops." (article by Robert Harding, July 13) They claim to represent the interests of the lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and queer communities, but calling for the denial of this free enterprise business to open new locations is intolerant in itself.

For years, Chick-fil-A has had dozens of stores in New York City, Long Island, Buffalo, Rochester and the Albany Airport. They are in the process of opening 200 stores in NYC. Chick-fil-A provides gainful employment to construction contractors and their employees to build each operation as well as cooks, cashiers and food supply deliverers. This benefits many who reside in high unemployment communities in upstate New York. Some who have benefited are part of the LGBTQ community. Many more open-minded members of the LGBTQ community work or dine there. Chick-fil-A provides a quality product at reasonable prices. Revenues generated by Chick-fil-A at Thruway stops will help the Thruway Authority pay off the $3.9 billion dollar tab for the Mario Cuomo Tappan Zee Bridge.
Georgette Quintero has consistently looked for creative solutions. When opportunities arose  like her daughter attending Northern Arizona University, finding space to store supplies for her food truck business or securing a commercial space during the pandemic while other businesses struggledQuintero found a way forward.

I go the extra mile, think outside the box and always ask the question, What is the next step? she said.

As owner of Alejandros Mexican Food, the newest eatery on Heritage Square in Flagstaff, Quintero thrives on change. And as a family, they are in it together. College initiated their move from Phoenix to Flagstaff; everyone came with her daughter, Quintero said simply. Her children, Alejandro and Ariana, are adults now and work in the business, while high-schooler Joey helps out.

Alejandros Mexican Food opened softly in April with much maneuvering behind the scenes. COVID-19 made it complicated, but was not an excuse. Quintero had been searching for retail space for months, hoping to buy, and lease negotiations took time. With situations strained in 2020, landlords gave breaks to current tenants to hang on, but there were no concessions for new ventures coming in behind them.
COVID-19 cases in Coconino County more than doubled in the past week, according to the countys July 16 dashboard data report. The percent positivity moved to moderate level, meaning two out of three benchmarks for community transmission are now at moderate rather than minimal.

Case numbers are still low overall (82, according to the report), but the next few weeks might determine what happens next.

Our previous numbers were quite low, I'd say relatively low, said Matt Maurer, an epidemiologist for Coconino County Health and Human Services (CCHHS). It had a steady increase but a little one over the last month or so, and then this was a giant, big increase. When you look at that positivity altogether, I think it's because we have a few different outbreaks that are taking place.

...At this point we can really go either way, he said. I don't want to speculate, we could definitely still drop in cases, but we also have the potential...for a surge in the transmission of the virus.

The percent positivity for testing rose to 9% this week from a previous rate of 4%. Moderate levels for the benchmark require between 5% and 10% of testing return positive results, with lower rates being seen as minimal and higher being substantial.
A tipster alerted the FBI of Entrekins identity in January after identifying him through publicly available photographs, many of which had been widely shared on social media.

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Entrekin claims to have been unaware that he was not allowed to enter the Capitol building, describing that he felt the crowd was "herded" inside, according to investigators.

But a security video shows Entrekin did not appear to be pushed into the Capitol as he ignored a "blaring alarm," the FBI said.

Investigators further disputed the claims using videos obtained from Entrekin's phone, citing verbal comments suggesting he was aware that rubber bullets and tear gas was used on the crowd.

Still, he pushed forward and entered the Senate Parliamentarians office, according to the complaint.

Once inside, authorities say Entrekin videotaped papers strewn across the floor and broken windows. Distressed, he exited the building but reentered a short time later to join in USA chants.

Wow, Mom. I wish you were here with me. Its really exciting here. Its joyful and its sad at the same time, Entrekin said as he entered the crypt inside the Capitol, according to court documents.
TUCSON (AP)  A gunman killed one person and wounded four others, including firefighters and paramedics, at the scene of a house fire in Arizona before being shot by an officer, authorities said.

The 35-year-old suspect, who was critically wounded and remains hospitalized, drove up to the fire and shot at an ambulance crew around 3:45 p.m. Sunday, Tucson police Chief Chris Magnus told news outlets. The ambulance was two blocks from the fire but was actually on standby for another incident, according to police.

The ambulance driver, a 20-year-old man, was shot in the head, and a paramedic in the passenger seat, a 21-year-old woman, was shot in the chest and arm. The driver was in critical condition and the woman was stable.

The suspect then drove up to the house fire where he opened fire on firefighters and neighbors trying to douse the flames, the chief said. One neighbor was shot in the head and died. A firefighter was shot in the arm, and another bullet grazed another neighbor's head.

A badly burned body was later found inside the home. Tucson spokesman Sgt. Richard Gradillas said Monday the body was also tied to the shooting attacks and no suspects were outstanding.
I think the best thing for us to do is just encourage everyone to use their common sense and practice personal responsibility and make themselves and their families safe, Gov. Kay Ivey told reporters last week.

Cases also are on the rise in Springfield, Missouri, where Mayor Ken McClure told CBS-TV's Face the Nation that false information about the pandemic was hampering the fight to get people vaccinated.

I think we are seeing a lot spread through social media as people are talking about fears which they have, health related fears, what it might do to them later on in their lives, what might be contained in the vaccinations, he said.

Murthy, the surgeon general, said not nearly enough progress was being made in the fight against misinformation spread through social media about COVID-19 and vaccines. Individuals, not just platforms such as Facebook, need to combat the problem, he said.

"Each of us has a decision that we make every time we post something on social media, and Im asking people to pause and to see, is a source accurate? Is it coming from a scientifically credible authority? And if its not, or if youre not sure, dont share, he said.



Associated Press writers Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco and Paul Davenport in Phoenix contributed to this report. Reeves reported from Newnan, Georgia.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
"Imagine the sleep-tracking data combined with Fitbit data combined with location data from people's cellphones," he told me. "The information gathered by each separate device may appear innocuous, but the accumulation and aggregation of data feeds from multiple trackers can reveal intimate details about users' lives."

Gaia Bernstein, director of the Institute for Privacy Protection at Seton Hall University School of Law, said radar devices that watch you as you sleep were "particularly concerning" because "federal health privacy laws do not regulate companies like Amazon."

"Amazon will get access to sensitive health information about us that it can use freely," she warned.

Sleep data would obviously be highly valuable to a company that runs an online pharmacy and sells pillows and bedding, which, as it happens, Amazon does.

I asked the company for details about how it planned to use the radar technology and what it would do with the data. No one responded.

Although being radar-tracked during sleep is one thing, perhaps the more troubling aspect of all this is the introduction of a new technology into the home that allows Big Tech to follow your every movement.
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


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Trial of the Century, The United States vs. Meiyutan

Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! Silence please, the burly sheriff shouts,

A skinny, black robed, judge enters the courtroom hosting a big crowd.

The trial of the case of the United States vs. Meiyutan begins today,

With all the seats taken great public interest is on full display.

The US attorney calls his first witness to the stand,

He is none other than the sitting president, yes, DC is on hand.

DC in his dark suit and overly long tie walks up to the witness's seat,

Eyes glinting, mouth pursed, he hardly hides his conceit.

Let me save you all some time, he says as he is sitting down,

My name is DC, I live in the White House, and I appointed this clown.

DC's chubby finger is now pointed right at the presiding judge,

A wicked smile he is now cracking. The judge's icy stare says much.

I'm running for reelection as all of you must already know, DC rasps,

And I know Meiyutan is trying to sabotage the election with witchcraft.

Asked if he has any personal knowledge about the alleged crime,

DC testifies gleefully in Meiyutan he has spent a ton of time.

He claims that many postings in Meiyutan witchcraft contain,

These postings are all against him he solemnly complains.

How he knows these are against him, he is asked to answer please.

He snorts with laughter, Because their authors are all Chinese.

Then it is Meiyutan's turn to cross-examine the president,

The attorney for Meiyutan is MF, who flashes a smile most pleasant.

Did you say Covid-19 will blow over, Sir, MF asks, her face now stern.

To the objection based on relevance she says she's establishing a pattern.

Did you claim a certain house representative al Qaeda supports?

Did you claim Mexico will pay for your border walls?

Did you claim pre-existing conditions will be equally protected without Obamacare?

Did you claim you were once named Michigan's Man of the Year?

The president cannot deny he made those claims,

But these claims are all true, he proclaims.

After asking DC many a hard question for fact checking,

Attorney MF, much to DC's relief, ends her bloodletting.

Now comes the turn for the other witnesses called to testify,

Who are all contributors to Meiyutan and who wrongdoings deny.

The US attorney puts them on the stand one by one,

And asks them questions about the postings they have done.

The first to come to the stand is Xian-gu He,

She walks so gracefully her feet never seem to touch earth.

Please state your full name, the US attorney demands,

Xian-gu He, which means in Chinese a fairy the age of your aunt.

The stern looking young US attorney now crimson blushes,

The whole audience in court marvels at Xiao-gu He in utter hush.

Question, Does your name amount to a confession you are a witch?

Answer, No more than any Elizabeth with the Queen's position wants to switch.

Question, Do you confess you are a rock, you are not round?1

Answer, If I were round, I'd be appointed a judge by DC on that ground.

Cough, cough, cough, nonstop goes the judge in black robe,

Xian-gu He looks at him with fake concern as if not knowing she got his goat.

Question, Do you confess it was your fault that others, including DC, got hurt?2

Answer, Only in the sense that an honest, straight shooting, person gets vilified as a jerk.

The US attorney and the Fairy trade barbs while the audience looks on,

With the attorney throwing in the towel before long.

Next up to the witness's stand goes TYZ in her calmest ever smile,

The attorney recognizes instantly this is another tough customer in style.

Question: In the middle of the lake, a bald eagle flied over", did you once say? 3

Answer: But the president is not bald, not totally yet, TYZ immediately starts a debate.

The US attorney asks the judge to direct TYZ to answer yes or no.

The poor judge does not hear him; he is trying too hard his laughter to hold.

Getting nowhere with TYZ on the stand,

The US Attorney calls LL25 according to his original plan.

Question:Did you claim men, including DC, should wear skirts in the very cold winter?4

Answer: Only if they have pretty legs and DCs look like they are made of timber.

Question:Are you of the position men like DC should be required to break their ribs to make their waists smaller?

Answer: With his potbelly, DCs waist is not getting smaller, I bet my bottom dollar.

Next comes YTMJ, who is questioned about her Leaving in a Jet Plane, 5

She says she just loves to travel and denies she is deserting the US of A for Spain.

She says, but for the pandemic, she would have already paid that country a visit,

When saying this, her anger at DCs pandemic response is very explicit.

Next up is YY, whose desire to visit China is the prosecution's focus. 6

The prosecutor is excited, thinking he may make a breakthrough to deserve a bonus.

Question,Why to communist China you so urgently want to return?

Anwer,No, not your so-called communist China, my parents who reside there are my only concern.

Next up is TCC, who is asked about raising snakes and playing music to them to perform witch tricks.

But that's only done in India, and I am from China, as even DC admits.

But then why do you raise snakes? Dont you intend them to harm people?

No, I dont raise snakes. These are either pond loaches or swamp eels.7

Next up is SYXH about her experiment of using water to bend a spoon. 8

Next up is SDHHSJ about her ambition to claim a whole city her own. 9

Next up is YH about her call to her friends:Let's Sway Twin Oars.10

On the third day, the judge, patience exhausted, declares lunch adjournment and slams shut the doors.

While the unsuccessful prosecutor is worrying DC may have him canned,

MF has simply been standing by, watching him butchering the case by his own hand.

Her heart's centroid in the right position, she is so confident she never bothers with any cross-examination, 11

Seeing none of the questions from the prosecutor is about the election.

Maybe two hours later, maybe three,

The judge finally returns from his noon feast.

He promptly orders the attorneys into his chamber,

Where he can more or less act as a dictator.

Do you still think you have any chance at winning, the prosecutor hears the judge intone,

He has no answer to this question, but he starts thinking which island DC may have him marooned.

Since I hear no reason to continue this farce, I cannot but grant the defense motion, with prejudice, to dismiss.

Upon the judge's announcement, MF rushes out of the judge's chamber and joins her fellow Meiyutan denizens in bliss.

1    pebble I was young I was not round -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

2  Rock vs pebble -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

3    -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

4 Why don't men wear lipstick? - Lily2005 -  (wenxuecity.com)

5  Leaving on a Jet Plane  - by  -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

6 ChildhoodFantasy  ( -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

7 ChildhoodFantasyCatching Pond Loaches -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

8 My fantasy childhood -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

9 my embarrassing childhood fantasy -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

10 Childhood Fantasy-///////  -  -  (wenxuecity.com)

11 If it were the last day of my life  - beautifulwind -  (wenxuecity.com)
MARYSVILLE, Kan.  Marysville Convention & Tourism will host Kansas Local Architecture: History, Place, and Identity, a presentation and discussion by Liz Kowalchuk at 2 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 8, at Marysville City Hall, 209 N. Eighth St.

The public is invited to attend the free program, which will feature architecture of regional and state significance.

The program is made possible by Humanities Kansas.

Local architecture contributes to a communitys past and present identity. Buildings that line main streets reflect continuity, resilience, and place. This presentation uncovers stories of Kansass everyday built environment and considers what happens to these structures over time.

Liz Kowalchuk is an Associate Professor of Museum Studies Program and the Visual Art Department at the University of Kansas.

She made a recent visit to Marshall County to prepare for her presentation.

A faculty member at the University of Kansas for 25 years, Kowalchuk teaches in the Museum Studies Program and the Visual Art Department with emphasis on arts education.
TORONTO  Canada announced Monday it will begin letting fully vaccinated U.S. citizens into Canada on Aug. 9, and those from the rest of the world on Sept. 7.

Officials said the 14-day quarantine requirement will be waived as of Aug. 9 for eligible travelers who are currently residing in the United States and have received a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Canada.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, who said he spoke with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday, said the U.S. has not yet indicated any plan to change current restrictions at the land border. Canadians are able to fly into the United States with a negative COVID-19 test.

Asked in Washington if the U.S. would reciprocate, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, "We are continuing to review our travel restrictions. Any decisions about resuming travel will be guided by our public health and medical experts. ... I wouldnt look at it through a reciprocal intention.

U.S. Democratic Congressman Brian Higgins, whose district includes Buffalo and Niagara Falls, said the U.S. has neglected to give reopening the northern border the serious attention it deserves, and there is no excuse.
The inspector general for the Postal Service told a Senate committee this week that the changes werent likely to produce cost savings.

Large network changes are complex in nature and there's a risk that implementation could result in regional or widespread service issues, Inspector General Tammy Whitcomb testified. Our work has revealed that when the Postal Service implements network changes it often has not been able to realize the projected cost savings, even when service was reduced.

The Postal Service is in financial trouble. The agency was short $9.2 billion in federal fiscal year 2020, this on top of $87 billion in shortfalls over the previous 14 years. Much of that loss stems from a 2006 Congressional requirement that the Postal Service prefund employee retirement benefits 50 years into the future. The prefund mandate has cost USPS $153 billion since fiscal year 2007 according to USPS.

No other agency has the same prefunding mandate as USPS, Whitcomb said.
While Keefe had 47 convictions prior to the killings, he also had a rocky and abusive early childhood, his attorney argued before Pinski.

The Montana Supreme Court ordered a new sentencing in January, saying Pinski had written his decision before the hearing and did not take into consideration Keefe's rehabilitation in prison.

On Friday, Keefe called his actions deplorable and reprehensible and apologized to the victims' families for the killings and for bringing them back into court. He said that at the time of the crime, he was a liar and a cheat looking for easy money who did not consider consequences and how his behavior affected others.

Tavie McKay, another daughter of the McKays and sister to Marian Qamar, described Keefe's "wanton execution" of her family.

Muna Qamar, who was in the house when her mother and grandparents were killed, broke down, saying she couldn't remember her mother. She said Keefe caused her lifelong trauma.

A probation and parole officer testified that the Department of Corrections will have to do some calculations to determine when Keefe would be eligible to seek a hearing before the parole board.

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"I've been to enough car fires with fuel nearby to know to just get people out of the area," Villa said. "This fire is gonna go, and once it goes it's going to be uncontrollable. So I need to get people away."

Villa was previously a member of the West Valley Volunteer Fire Department, so she had some fire training that most troopers never receive. Each of the DNRC workers were safe and none received major injuries. According to Villa, she knew she had to get those people to safety and in that moment didn't think about herself.

"I'm like most troopers, we don't like talking about ourselves that much," Villa said. "At some point there will be another incident like this. I'm just glad I reacted the way I needed to and that everyone is safe."

According to Col. Lavin, the Medal of Valor is given to those who demonstrate selfless acts of heroism without regard for their own personal safety. He said Villa went through a "life-saving act of peril" and performed a "remarkable act of heroism."
Why does Billings want marijuana to be illegal? Why does Billings City Council want the Yellowstone County Commissioners to try to repeal marijuana in Yellowstone County? Is it because at July 6 City Council meeting deputy attorney Karen Tracy told Council members that police officers are working for dispensaries? She then informed Council members that if the people vote for it again that Council members still may not allow access to marijuana and that it is their decision.

City Administrator Chris Kukulski suggested to Council members to ask County Commissioners to work on repealing marijuana but also told City Council members to ask for the tax money if it happens to pass again by the voters. Why consider having an election and ask the people to vote again if Billings deputy attorney Karen Tracy is telling Billings City Council that they do not have to do what the voters asked them to do? Marijuana is not a crime unless Billings City Council and Yellowstone County Commissioners make it a crime...the voters made it legal.
North Dakota health officials on Tuesday confirmed 48 new cases of COVID-19 -- the highest daily number in nearly six weeks -- and they issued a statement imploring state residents to take precautions and get vaccinated as the new delta variant spreads across the globe.

Active virus cases also jumped, rising above 200 statewide and above 50 in Burleigh-Morton counties. The totals of 205 and 52, respectively, were the highest in about a month.

State officials calculated a positivity rate of 4.62% from 1,067 tests processed Monday. The 14-day rolling average test positivity rate was at 1.88%. That's still well within the target range of less than 5%, but the rate has been trending upward this month.

Health officials around the country have expressed worry about the impact of the new fast-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus. An estimated 83% of new cases in the U.S. are tied to the variant that was first detected in India last December, federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said in Senate testimony Tuesday.

North Dakota officials announced the first case of the delta variant in the state on June 24. It has since been confirmed in 19 other people, one of whom was hospitalized.
North Dakota's Republican Party opposes a recall effort targeting a state GOP lawmaker.

Party Chairman Perrie Schafer in a statement Tuesday said, "This frivolous and unserious effort is a distraction from the important work that we are undertaking as a Party.

"Although I believe that we ought to have vigorous debate as a Party, I also believe that this is a wholly unproductive way to express our differences. We stand behind Rep. Dwight Kiefert," he said.

Kiefert, a farmer and contractor first elected in 2012, is one of nine Republican lawmakers censured by their local party earlier this year in the wake of the House expulsion of former Rep. Luke Simons, R-Dickinson, for workplace and sexual harassment. Simons denied any wrongdoing and said he was denied due process.

Kiefert links his censure and the recall campaign to his vote to expel Simons.

Recall sponsoring committee chairman Shane Anderson attributed the actions to Kiefert's voting record, including the representative supporting Simons' expulsion and opposing a resolution to terminate North Dakota's COVID-19 state of emergency.
The fracking side of the industry is also experimenting with new techniques amid the drought that has plagued North Dakota for most of the year. One business, for example, is looking to use saltwater to supplant some of the freshwater used in the fracking process. The fluid is being transported several miles through a flat line hose tucked inside another hose to prevent leaks until it reaches a fracking site, Helms said.

Such a setup appears to be a way to reduce costs while cutting back on using freshwater, and several other companies have expressed interest in trying similar techniques, he said.

Natural gas production in North Dakota rose 1% in May to 2.981 billion cubic feet per day. Of that amount, 92% was captured and diverted to processing plants or used in other ways. The rest was burned off in flares alongside wells.

The state is meeting its gas capture target of 91% overall, though flaring was particularly bad in May on parts of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation south of New Town, Helms said. State officials werent sure what had happened to cause the uptick there, though a lack of pipelines and processing facilities north of Lake Sakakawea has caused flaring to be worse there than elsewhere in the state at times in the past.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D.  A fraternity of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys has withdrawn its sponsorship of a street dance in the small southeastern South Dakota town of Scotland in September.

David Finnell applied on behalf of the group to have the street dance from noon until midnight Sept. 18 in the Bon Homme County community of about 700 people. The City Council approved the request to close a section of the city street as required for alcohol consumption and food vendors.

Finnell, in a Facebook message to KELO-TV Monday, said that the Proud Boys were dropping sponsorship of the event out of concerns for safety. He did not elaborate.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the Proud Boys as a hate group, citing the groups views about women, Muslims and others, as well as appearing with other extremist groups.

Scotlands city attorney Kent Lehr said while the Proud Boys have gained some negative national attention, there have not been any problems locally. Its his understanding that several local or area residents are associated with the Proud Boys, Lehr said.
Sons and daughters of farmers and ranchers often grow up to be farmers or ranchers.

Likewise, sons and daughters of journalists. And attorneys. And medical professionals.

In many ways, not just vocationally but also culturally and socially, most of us are products of our experiences, and as we add to our life experiences we change and grow.

Just ask Keith Kempenich.

A 61-year-old rancher from the Bowman area in southwestern North Dakota and a state legislator for 28 years, Kempenich has been known to be somewhat set in his ways. Some might even say hes a bit stubborn. As the Legislature convened last January mid-pandemic, he was among those who didnt take the coronavirus seriously, keeping his face uncovered whenever possible, declining to stop by the coronavirus test location at the Capitol and skipping the vaccine once it was available.

Then he got sick. Really sick, missing the last three days of the legislative session while doctors treated his COVID-19 at a Bismarck hospital.

Now hes a changed man, encouraging others to get vaccinated before they get sick, or worse, pass the virus on to others.

Near-death experiences will do that to you.
Protect Your Business from Ransomware with Rubrik and Microsoft Azure

Ransomware has reached catastrophic levels, with average downtime rising alongside costs and payments incurred by these attacks.

Securing your backup architectures is crucial if you want to defend your business from the recent onslaught of ransomware attacks.

Fortunately, Microsoft Azure offers a robust infrastructure that helps to ensure that your data is protected through all levels of disaster and disruption.

Check out this short paper to learn how Rubriks immutable backup offers ransomware security even as they provide instant recovery and cloud instantiation in Microsoft Azure, making restoration extremely easy and fastin many cases, virtual machines and databases can take minutes.
Why Choose Hitachi

Hitachis midrange VSP storage portfolio, comprised of NVMe, hybrid flash, and all-flash storage options, is designed to give medium and small businesses the storage power and flexibility needed to fuel advanced analytics, train AI, and scale and manage complex workloads.

These powerful solutions, alongside Hitachis extensive experience with businesses in nearly any vertical, make this brand a strong option to build your storage strategy around.

Access this short product sheet to learn more about Hitachis medium- to small-scale enterprise flash storage.
In Part 1 of our theology of work series, we examined why we work, concluding that following our calling, whatever that may be, provides us with meaning and purpose, and represents a command of God in creation. Part 2 examined the virtues of work, earning a living and using that wealth honorably. Part 3 will explores call and vocation as a full expression of the creative wonder and beauty of God in which we participate, in Christ. []

Are we meant to lead meaningless or purposeful lives? Ecclesiastes shows us that meaninglessness, rather than purposefulness, will fill our lives, if we are not productive. With God that cannot be so.

Vocation and calling are central to any theology of business and work. The idea is deeply embedded in the theology and thought of Martin Luther. Dorothy Sayers in her famous 1942 essay (Why Work?) argued that it is the business of the Church to recognize that the secular vocation as such is sacred.

Scriptural foundations

There are some key concepts in the scriptures in relation to vocation and call.

The creation mandates and the command to work (Genesis 2:15)

The point in terms of vocation and call is a simple one: All are called to work, a universal command, with no distinction between secular and sacred callings as part of the creative activity of God himself in which we participate.

The endowment with skill (Exodus 35:30)

The principle here is that calling and vocation are a reflection of the skills endowed by God. Moses, in the construction of the tabernacle, pointed to Bazalel and said, he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skill, with intelligence, with knowledge.

Our participation in Christ is participation in the creative activity of God (John 1:1-3)

As Christians, followers of Christ in the covenant of redemption, John 1:1-3, reminds us that in Christ we also participate in the creation and the creative activity of God.

All are called, not just some (1 Peter 2:9)

You are  a royal priesthood, a holy nation, reminds us of the essential unity of the call to office, whether ministerial or temporal, as equal callings in the household of God.

Called to serve in whatever we do (Colossians 3:17,23)

Here Paul reminds the Colossians to give their all in whatever they do, working heartily for the Lord in their calling.

The scriptural trajectory reflects the unity of our calling to serve God in the world. From that position some are called into ministries of preaching, teaching and leadership; others, indeed, most, are called into roles in the temporal world  not least, the world of business and commerce.

Luther and vocation

Martin Luther conceived of two kingdoms: the temporal and the eternal. The first of these, the temporal, is the earthly kingdom, the place of life and discipleship in this world. The second is our ultimate destiny: the spiritual kingdom to which we aspire. Heres the important thing: The two kingdoms stand alongside each other, and both are under the providence and sovereignty of God. They are different from each other, but not hostile to each other. Each kingdom has its respective role. Humanity lives in the earthly kingdom yet hopes for the eternal.

This has implications for calling and vocation. We belong in both kingdoms. The calling to particular offices or stations in the temporal kingdom is the way in which humanity serves God. It is here we exercise our discipleship, and we are accountable for our discipleship in our earthly calling to God.

Luther also rejected the priority of the spiritual office over the secular. He wrote in his Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation:

A cobbler, a smith, a farmer, each has the work and office of his trade, and yet they are all alike consecrated priests and bishops, and every one by means of his own work or office must benefit and serve every other.

Vocation and calling in the later Protestant tradition

We should also mention Abraham Kuyper, the idea of sphere sovereignty, and how that idea relates to vocation and calling. Kuyper developed the concept of sphere sovereignty both in his Lectures on Calvinism and in his inaugural address at the founding of the Free University of Amsterdam in 1880. He viewed the world as divided into spheres, each of which was independent and had its own rights and prerogatives, each sphere being under the sovereignty of God. Hence each sphere was to be honoured in its own right. Business was one such sphere. In the third of his lectures on Calvinism, he wrote:

. . . we understand hereby, that the family, the business, science, art and so forth are all social spheres, which do not owe their existence to the state, and which do not derive the law of their life from the superiority of the state, but obey a high authority within their own bosom; an authority which rules, by the grace of God, just as the sovereignty of the State does.

The implication of this for both vocation and work generally is clear. For Kuyper, this is the beginning of ethics:

Wherever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand, in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art and science, he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God, he is employed in the service of God, he has strictly to obey God, and, above all, he has to aim to the glory of God.

Kuypers voice needs to be heard again in any theology of work and enterprise.

The collapse of modern evangelicalism into pietism

The contemporary Protestant has replaced vocation and calling with pietism. Darrell Cosden, in his Theology of Work, argues that:

Ordinary, daily, mundane work was at best a mission field, and at worst a distraction in the spiritual life.

Modern evangelicalism with its overemphasis on the inner life has fallen into the trap from which the Reformation liberated us. Essentially, pietistic evangelicalism prioritizes the spiritual over the secular, the latter only useful if it serves the former  a dualism which the reformation sought to end. Spiritual work is seen as superior.

How ironic then that Josemaria Escriva, founder of Opus Dei, recognizes the same dilemma but deals with it by elevating the secular employment to the level of the divine. In The Forge, he wrote: You cannot forget that any worthy, noble and honest work at the human level can  and should!  be raised to the supernatural level, becoming a divine task. Escriva adds, in Friends of God, that we Christians must not abandon the vineyard where God has placed us.

We see something similar in the recent official teaching of Roman Catholicism:

The vocation of the businessperson is a genuine human and Christian calling. Pope Francis calls it a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all. The importance of the businesspersons vocation in the life of the Church and in the world economy can hardly be overstated. Business leaders are called to conceive of and develop goods and services for customers and communities through a form of market economy. For such economies to achieve their goal, that is, the promotion of the common good, they should be structured on ideas based on truth, fidelity to commitments, freedom and creativity.

Vocation is an important building block in a theology of work as enterprise  or, in other words, why business matters to God. Perhaps the idea can be best understood as a dynamic expression of discipleship under God in the temporal kingdom. Not the end of ethics, but the beginning. Not a retreat into pietism, but rather a full expression of the creative wonder and beauty of God in which we participate, in Christ.

A biblical theology of work, Part 1: Why work?

A biblical theology of work, Part 2: Wealth creation
Stinson is proposing to erect the 250-foot-tall building on an L-shaped outdoor parking lot that wraps around the back of the hotel, at the corner of Lower Terrace and Charles Street. Depending on the exact height of the floors, that could allow for 20 to 25 stories.

The precise mix of units would determine the total number of apartments, but he said he anticipates smaller studio apartments on lower floors, with larger units higher up. The new building could also still include a hotel component as well.

The developer hesitated to put a price on the entire venture, but anticipated that it could run as high as $200 million for everything.

"We want this to be unique in terms of its features and design of its units," Stinson said. "Downtowns coming alive and people are starting to take it more seriously, but theres not a lot of product for them to choose from."

The project would have to be approved not only by the city but also by the state Attorney General's Office, which must review condo projects before the units can be marketed for sale. Attorneys from Phillips Lytle LLP are now working on drafting the paperwork, and Stinson has also hired Lauer-Manguso Associates to design the project. He said he doesn't expect to be able to begin construction until summer 2022.
A budget motel in Tonawanda is about to get a makeover and rebranding.

Rudra Management of Cheektowaga acquired the former Red Carpet Inn at 1900 Niagara Falls Blvd. last week, adding the 44-room facility to the collection of more than 50 hotels owned and operated by Jayesh Patel's company.

The small motel will be revamped as an independent, "mid-century modern" lodging aimed at younger travelers and will be renamed the Route 62 Motel following a $300,000 rehab, said Larry Best, a certified hotel broker with Buffalo Hotel-Realty, who handled the transaction.

"It's happening all over the country with these older motels," Best explained. "Some of the younger generation wants to get away from the chain stuff."

Located across from the CarMax dealership next to the I-290 exit ramp, the motel is "a good location for all of that, as long as it's repositioned properly," Best said.

Patel and the three other members of his investor group  which also includes Milan A. Patel  paid $1.125 million through Gurusaheb LLC, to buy the inn from Haripriya Inc. It had been on the market for just three days, with the purchase closing a month later. This was the fastest deal Ive ever done, Best said.
Erie County's rate of violent crimes committed with a firearm last year was highest among New Yorks 62 counties.

And homicides in the county increased each of the last four years.

It all adds up to a public health crisis, said Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz, who on Tuesday signed an executive order that included a raft of measures meant to tackle the gun violence.

Did we ever think wed be worse than the Bronx when it comes to violent crime with a firearm? he said.

The initiatives include forming a task force involving numerous county departments and local law enforcement agencies, increasing funding for gun violence prevention programs, using new strategies to reduce the number of illegal firearms and creating employment opportunities for at-risk young people.

Enough is enough, said Murray Holman, a member of the Stop the Violence Coalition. We have seen too much gun violence here.

She and others attended a news conference outside the Rath Building in downtown Buffalo.

While a national concern, the situation is particularly dire in Erie County, Poloncarz and other officials said.
Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn is the new president-elect of an association that represents district attorneys all over the United States.

Flynn, 55, was unanimously elected as president-elect of the National District Attorneys Association on Sunday during the groups summer conference in Virginia Beach, Va.

He will serve as president-elect for one year before taking over as president in 2022.

The organization describes itself as a nonpartisan, nonprofit membership association that provides training, technical assistance and services to prosecutors. Founded in 1950, it is the oldest and largest association of prosecutors in the nation.

Their mission is to be the voice of Americas prosecutors and to support their efforts to protect the rights and safety of the people by providing members with the knowledge, skills, and support to ensure justice is attained, the organization said in a press release announcing Flynns election.

Flynn told The Buffalo News that he and other prosecutors are working on strategies to address criminal violence that has harmed Buffalo and other cities all over the nation. He said the district attorneys are also working to improve programs that provide alternatives to incarceration for people convicted of lesser crimes.
Buffalo police investigated a complaint in 2018 that a man was suspected of dealing drugs from the Fruit Belt house of Democratic mayoral nominee India B. Walton, according to police reports and Walton's former landlord.

The owner of the house said he forced Walton to leave after confronting her about complaints of a constant flow of people in and out of the Lemon Street house that led the landlord and a neighbor to believe that drugs were being sold there. The man, according to court records, was released three years earlier from prison for selling cocaine.

Neither Walton nor the man were charged, and police reports obtained by The Buffalo News do not indicate that police had proof of drugs being sold in Waltons home.

"Absolutely not," Walton said Monday of the accusation that drugs were being sold out of the house she shared with three of her sons. She added: I would never risk my childrens lives, my freedom or my license as a registered nurse."

Walton said the frequency of visitors in and out of her house at the time was due to her teenage sons, who were allowed to have visitors, and an "open house" policy that allowed friends to come and go.

Walton, a registered nurse who ran a Fruit Belt nonprofit, won national attention by defeating Mayor Byron Brown by 1,049 votes in the Democratic primary in June, her first run for public office. Brown is waging a write-in campaign against Walton in the Nov. 2 general election, in which policing and the citys economic inequity are expected to be central themes.

Police reports obtained by The News show that officers in the fall of 2018 followed up on an allegation that a man who drove a red Porsche had sold drugs at the single-family home at 183 Lemon St. that Walton rented.

Landlord at 183 Lemon did inform me he did inform his female tenant that if she didnt kick out her boyfriend for dealing drugs there, he would evict her. She did refuse and was then evicted. Boyfriend is the driver of red Porsche, an officer wrote in an Oct. 30, 2018, report.

The News obtained the police reports and contacted the landlord after learning of the complaints about the Lemon Street house from a city resident.

The police reports do not mention Walton or the boyfriend by name, but two police sources identified him as Anson C. Whitted.

Whitted is a former Dutchess County resident who settled in the Buffalo area after he was released in 2015 from state prison. Public records show he spent more than a dozen years over two separate stints in prison for selling cocaine, assault and possession of a weapon. In 2019, Buffalo police alleged he led officers on a chase in a red Porsche before crashing the SUV after a traffic stop.

In an interview with The Buffalo News, Walton said she was aware that he was a felon but did not know the details of the convictions. She explained that his criminal record was holding him back from advancing in the work world and she was trying to help him overcome his past.

She described Whitted as a friend. She said he never lived with her but acknowledged he would sometimes stay at the house.

"I was trying to help him get his life in order," Walton said. "He was working at a minimum wage job."

She said she left the rental house on her own after the landlord had confronted her about the complaints. She said she was unaware that he had gone to the police with his concerns.

Walton said she believed the landlord's motives centered on retribution for her public stand against gentrification of the Fruit Belt.

"I'm an honest person and I want to do what's right," Walton said, noting she has had the experience of being a Black woman who is "attacked because of who I am and how I look and what I stand for."

Neighbor complaints led to end of lease

The owner of 183 Lemon St. told The News that Walton and her former husband began renting the house in 2015, her husband moved out and Whitted stayed at the house with Walton and her children in early 2018.

The former landlord, who did not want his name included in the story because he feared retribution, said a Lemon Street resident contacted him to complain about suspected drug dealing. He said he never saw drugs or drug dealing, but said he followed up on the complaint by watching the house for 30 minutes. During that time, he said, there were multiple people pulling up and running inside and leaving quickly.

There was this lady next door. She was calling me, Hey, do you know what is going on? She has a new dude with her and he is dealing out of the house. She said it was at all hours, day and night, people are pulling up to the house, the landlord said.

He said Walton confirmed to him in 2018 that the man had moved into the house  a point that Walton disputes. The landlord said he tried several times unsuccessfully to convince her to put a stop to the activity.

The landlord said he forced Walton to move out that fall.

Police reports show officers made note of the red Porsche at least three times in connection with the landlords complaint.

In an October 2018 police report, an officer wrote that he had spotted the red 2006 Porsche parked on Rhode Island Street, where the officer said former tenants of 183 Lemon were believed to have moved. Weeks later, the officer wrote that the red Porsche was spotted parked on Rhode Island Street again. He said the car was registered to Kylette Whitted, who told The News she is Anson Whitteds wife.

Nearly a year later, on Sept. 8, 2019, Whitted was stopped by Buffalo police while he was driving the red Porsche with the same license plate, according to a police report. Police smelled marijuana coming from the car when it pulled over at Chippewa and Ellicott streets. Officers obtained identification from Whitted and his passenger. But Whitted then took off in the car and refused to pull over as police pursued him. He crashed the vehicle on Maple Street, according to the police report. It is not clear whether the incident led to charges.

In a brief interview with The News on Monday, Whitted denied living at the Lemon Street house or selling drugs from it.

"That's not true," Whitted said.

Neighbors have different views

The neighbor who complained to the Lemon Street landlord told The News she suspected drug dealing was taking place at Waltons residence because of the constant flow of people in and out of the house.

There was a lot of activity going on in the house back and forth. There were a lot of people. There was a red Porsche, said the neighbor, who did not want to give her name. "I wasnt the only one concerned. There were a lot of neighbors concerned. I know I couldnt rest because there was so much noise, screaming, cursing and fighting.

Walton did not disagree that her residence was noisy and that there was unrest. She attributed that to the breaking up of her marriage.

After my husband left, Walton said, things were very peaceful."

Not everyone had negative comments.

Steven Mackey, who operates an automotive repair garage across the street from 183 Lemon St., said he never witnessed suspicious activity at Walton's home. "There were no drug activities by her. She had her children and worked as a nurse," Mackey said. "I fixed her car a few times."

Another woman who said she has lived on the block for years criticized The News for investigating the complaints about Waltons residence.

Whitted served time in prison

State prison records, police reports and news accounts show Whitted was previously convicted of assault, weapon and drug charges.

When he was 18, Whitted was one of four young Dutchess County men charged with criminal possession of a weapon after three loaded handguns were found during a traffic stop in the Town of Newburgh, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported Oct. 14, 1999.

Three months later, in January 2000, Peekskill police charged Whitted with second-degree attempted murder after he was accused of shooting a man during a dispute over a girl, the Poughkeepsie Journal reported Jan. 18, 2000. Whitted was sentenced in Westchester County in 2001 to seven years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the case, records show. He was discharged onto parole on Jan. 26, 2007.

A year later, Whitted was sentenced in Orange County to six years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to criminal sale and possession of controlled substances. He was released from prison Sept. 24, 2015. According to a federal appeal that Whitted filed, the drug case stemmed from his arrest May 4, 2007, after he allegedly sold cocaine to a confidential police informant in Newburgh as police officers watched from a nearby car.

In addition to the case involving the pursuit from Chippewa Street, Whitted has been involved in other police and court cases in the Buffalo area.

In 2018, Buffalo police stopped a car Whitted was driving after they alleged he failed to stop at a stop sign. A small amount of marijuana was found in his possession. Police charged him with possession of marijuana, a violation, and several traffic infractions.

Buffalo police charged Whitted with forcible touching on Aug. 20, 2020, after he was accused of rubbing his genitals on a womans back at a convenience store in Buffalo. The misdemeanor case is still pending. He is due back in court Aug. 9.

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One of the roadblocks to connecting locals and the scientists and engineers who work at Blue Origin is one that plagues many rural American communities  a lack of available housing. A local developer constructed about a dozen two-bedroom homes and a small apartment complex, and all of those were quickly rented out for Blue Origin employees. Of the roughly 250 employees and contractors that work at the facility, Brewster said only about 40% live in Van Horn.

Krissy Lerdal, whose husband is an engineer for the company, said he lived in a local hotel for more than four years before finally relocating his family to Van Horn from New Mexico.

When we looked to buy here, there were five houses on the market, none of which passed inspection, and so we had to bring in a modular home, Lerdal said. Its not my dream home, but housing is lacking.

Still, in the three-and-a-half years that she has lived here, Lerdal said she has worked hard to integrate herself into the community. Her children attend the local school system, and she joined the Womens Service League, which raises money for scholarships. She also has a seat on the citys zoning board.
A teenager in Singapore has been charged with murder after a 13-year-old boy's body was discovered in a school bathroom, along with an axe.

The 16-year-old appeared in court via video link on Tuesday, and he is now being held at a medical centre for psychiatric observation.

Monday's attack caused shock in the city-state, which has a low crime rate. It counts itself as among the safest places in the world, and violence in schools is rare.

Police said the victim was found lying motionless at a toilet in River Valley High School and had suffered multiple wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Detectives believe that the boys did not know each other, and are trying to establish a motive for the alleged attack.

Although murder charges can carry the death penalty in Singapore, the maximum punishment for under 18s is life imprisonment.

Singapore's law and home affairs minister K. Shanmugam wrote on Facebook that it was "one of the worst things that can happen to parents".

Amid questions as to how the suspect acquired an axe, which was seized by police at the scene, he added: "Preliminary investigations suggest he purchased it online."

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he was shocked by the tragic incident, adding that police will now examine whether something could have been done to avert it.

"My heart goes out to his family. I know we cannot properly express our sympathy, or offer much comfort in their sudden calamity. But still, I would like them to know that our thoughts and prayers are with them," he wrote.
STEM

NJIT Initiative Brings Forensic Science to High School Students

New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is launching a STEM initiative that will expose high school students to forensic science as a pathway to higher education. The program is funded by a $1.4 million grant from the United States Department of Education.

The NJIT Forensic Science Initiative (FSI) will offer "a five-week intensive experience at NJIT featuring class work, lab work, field research, tutoring and college preparation counseling. That fall [2022], the students will start an introductory course that includes working with a professional on a capstone research project and attending a forensic conference. At the same time, students will continue to receive tutoring and counseling through NJIT's TRiO program. Also, NJIT will help high school teachers become certified to eventually teach forensic science in their own schools."

The first students will begin participating in summer 2022.

"We feel an obligation to truly prepare students for success, not just review their admission submissions," said NJIT President Joel S. Bloom in a prepared statement. "Newark Public Schools students will be the ultimate beneficiaries of this initiative by being prepared to enter and succeed at NJIT and go on to careers in the STEM fields of their choosing."

FSI complements other NJIT programs that introduce area high school students to higher education, including a math initiative and an honors program.

For more information, visit NJIT's site.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The Philippine economy may only feel the impact of the highly transmissible Delta variant in the last quarter of the year, a United Kingdom-based think tank projects.

"In all, the Delta pinch on the Philippine economy is unlikely to be felt until Q4," said Pantheon Macroeconomics senior Asia economist Miguel Chanco in a research note published Tuesday.

Among the factors listed are the country's mobility levels, which remain subdued amid ongoing quarantine restrictions. Main economic hub Metro Manila only shifted to regular general community quarantine in mid-July after months of tighter lockdown measures along with neighboring provinces.

"When the variant was first spotted in Indonesia in April about two months before cases went parabolic, trips to retail and recreation venues were 14% below the pre-pandemic norm, higher than the current -22% print for the Philippines," the note read.

The Delta variant, which was first discovered in India, is considered the driver of the surge in COVID-19 infections in the East Asian giant along with Indonesia.

Chanco also flagged the hampered consumer confidence that persists amid strict quarantine rules and virus fears.

"To be clear, the outlook for domestic demand in the Philippines in the remainder of this year would have been extremely challenging anyway, with or without the Delta variant," he said.

The think tank cited the confidence index from the latest consumer expectations survey of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, wherein it eased to -30.9 in the second quarter from -34.7 the quarter prior.

RELATED: Consumers optimistic, firms cautious about Q3 amid pandemic

A negative confidence index means pessimists outnumber optimists.

"[I]t remains more than 30 points below the pre-virus level, and it still isn't rising fast enough for households to open their wallets," explained the economist

He also mentioned the lower outturn in consumers willing to spend on major items like vehicles and property from April to June, along with the "rebuilding of savings following last year's drawdown" which keeps holding back private expenditures.

The Philippine economy remains in a recession this 2021, with gross domestic product shrinking by 4.2% from January to March.

Researchers previously warned COVID-19 cases might surge anew in the country if the Delta variant spreads in the capital region.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The 70th edition of the Miss Universe beauty pageant will be held in December this year at Eilat, Israel, the Miss Universe Organization announced on Tuesday.

However, the exact date for the pageant has yet to be made public.

Miss Universe held its 69th edition last May at Florida in the United States, after the pageant was postponed in 2020 due to pandemic.

This will be the third time that two pageants will be held in the same year. Miss Universe held two competitions in 2015 and in 2017.

The current Miss Universe is Andrea Meza of Mexico, who will have a reign of only seven months.

The local search for the next Miss Universe Philippines is ongoing, the organizers said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  Former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario urged Filipinos to vote for a candidate who's good for the Philippines, not China, in the 2022 elections.

Del Rosario's statement comes after President Rodrigo Duterte accused him of treason for claiming China helped Duterte win the presidency in 2016.

"For this coming election, our humble view is our people should vote for the candidate who is good for our country, and not one who is good for China," the former public official said.

In his weekly address on the COVID-19 response, the President again criticized Del Rosario for claiming top Chinese officials used their influence in the 2016 elections so that Duterte would win.

Del Rosario had said his information came from a "very reliable international institution."

Duterte strongly denied this and threatened file charges against Del Rosario. The President also defended the 16 million votes he got in 2016.

"If we are in olden times, kung at war lang tayo sana [if we are at war], you are guilty of treason," the chief executive said.

Despite the West Philippine Sea issue, the Duterte administration has kept friendly ties with China. The President has also said the country owes Beijing a huge debt of gratitude for donating COVID-19 vaccines.

However, he maintained that he cannot compromise on some matters, specifically those related to sovereign rights in the disputed waters.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The government is now looking for ways to keep the posts of contact tracers with expiring contracts, as the country prepares for a possible surge in cases driven by the COVID-19 Delta variant.

Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Source on Tuesday, Health Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire cited the concern of local governments on a possible shortage of contact tracers as early as next month.

"For now, the local governments are really requesting not to augment but to extend the contract of contact tracers. Because apparently, until the end of August yung kanilang contract. It has to be renewed after that because they do not have contact tracers at all," Vergeire said.

Citing a recent town hall meeting with local officials from Western Visayas, Vergeire said the Interior Department has assured that it will try to find funds to keep the service of contact tracers, but it can only be immediately done through the passage of the Bayanihan to Arise as One bill.

More oxygen supply needed

Meanwhile, Vergeire said government needs to double the current oxygen supply, which will be sourced from manufacturers, in anticipation of a surge in cases amid the presence of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

"Currently, our supply of oxygen is sufficient according to hospitals, but of course, when we have the Delta variant and its going to increase the number of cases, we will be requiring twice as much," she said.

Vergeire noted that they are also prepositioning logistics, downloading funds to prepare hospitals and regional offices, and monitoring the capacities of facilities for possible expansion and shortage of equipment.

"Meron tayong ventilators na bago na na-procure at iba ay donation. Ito ay pinapakalat sa mga ospital ngayon na mas nangangailangan," she said in a separate briefing. "We have high-flow nasal cannula, nag-preposition tayo ngayon, as well as oxygen concentrators at iba pang mga supplies na kakailanganin kapag tataas ang kaso."

[Translation: We have ventilators which we have procured beforehand while others were donations. These are being distributed to hospitals that are most in need. We have high-flow nasal cannula, and we are prepositioning them now, as well as oxygen concentrators and other supplies that may be needed when cases rise.]

So far, there are 35 Delta variant cases in the country, 11 of which are locally acquired. On Monday, one of the local cases died, bringing the total Delta variant-related fatalities in the country to three.

RELATED: Delta variant not the only factor: 2 from death toll unvaccinated - DOH
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The Delta variant-related deaths recorded in the Philippines cannot be solely attributed to the highly transmissible variant, as two of the three fatalities failed to get their COVID-19 shots, the Health Department said Tuesday.

Health Undersecretary and Spokesperson Rosario Vergeire said in a briefing that the two persons who acquired the highly transmissible variant locally were not vaccinated. Authorities are also validating the vaccine history of the 63-year-old crew member from MV Athens who died on May 19.

The two local cases were the 78-year-old woman who died last May 30 and was only included in the death toll on Monday, as well as the 58-year-old woman from Pandacan, Manila who died on June 28.

RELATED: 'Recovered' local case becomes nation's 3rd Delta variant death

Vergeire also told CNN Philippines' The Source that the age and health condition of the cases must also be considered, since two of them were senior citizens and one of the three had a comorbidity.

"We are still trying to determine but we think that it is not really solely because of the variant. There is also a delay in consultation like the 58-year-old from Manila who consulted (only) five days after having difficulty in breathing," Vergeire stressed.

There are currently eight active cases of the Delta variant in the country but they cannot be considered a local transmission just yet, the Health Department said Tuesday.

READ: PH logs 8 active Delta cases after retesting

However, Vergeire urged the public to assume there is already a local transmission, so that people would be more cautious and have an anticipatory response to a potential surge.

Delta, or the B.1.617.2 coronavirus variant first detected in India, is believed to be the most transmissible variant and is associated with increased hospitalization.

Only 4 million Filipinos have been fully vaccinated to date, still far from the government's target of inoculating 70 million to achieve herd immunity.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  A ranking official of the ruling PDP-Laban party on Tuesday gave a sneak peek of President Rodrigo Dutertes possible senatorial bets in the 2022 elections.

Eastern Samar Governor Ben Evardone, PDP-Laban vice president for the Visayas, told CNN Philippines Duterte has discussed the initial list with some leaders of the party, including him.

That's his personal list. Based on his consultations with several leaders and personalities, Evardone said. He's still finalizing it and hopefully it will be finalized before the PDP-Laban national congress in September where all the candidates will be proclaimed by PDP-Laban.

On the list are Cabinet members and officials of the Duterte administration, including: Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Benhur Abalos, Presidential Communications Operations Office Secretary Martin Andanar, Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission Chairman Greco Belgica, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, Information and Communications Technology Secretary Gregorio Honasan II, Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles, Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade, and Public Works and Highways Secretary Mark Villar.

He said Duterte is also considering reelectionist Senate Majority Leader Miguel Zubiri, and those eyeing a return to the chamber  House Deputy Speaker Loren Legarda and former Senator JV Ejercito.

Actors Robin Padilla and Willie Revillame and media personality Raffy Tulfo are also part of the possible lineup, he added.

They have not confirmed that they are actually running but they are just being considered by the President, Evardone said, referring to all the 16 names he mentioned. He (Duterte) will have a series of consultations pa.

In a press briefing on Monday, Roque said there is no final list yet, although he said the President has always been mentioning certain names.

Meanwhile, Duterte has not given a clear answer on whether he will run for vice president, even during the PDP-Laban national assembly he had presided last Saturday, Evardone said.

Some members of the party, particularly the group led by newly elected party president Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, are urging Duterte to seek the vice presidency and choose his running mate. "Crossing party lines," more than 20 other provincial governors issued a statement to support this call, Evardone said.

Another group within PDP-Laban wants Senator Manny Pacquiao, whom they still consider as party president, to be the standard bearer. The boxer-turned-lawmaker has been at odds with Duterte and was ousted during the national assembly. Senator Koko Pimentel, PDP-Laban executive vice chairman, supports Pacquiaos presidential bid.

The warring factions are expected to submit different sets of officers, members, and other party information to the Commission on Elections, leaving the poll body to decide which wing is legitimate, based on the party's constitution and bylaws.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  As the Muslim community celebrates again the Feast of the Sacrifice amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the country's top leaders call for unity that goes beyond faiths.

"I stand in solidarity with you in pursuing our shared goal of building a society that transcends religious, political and cultural barriers," said President Rodrigo Duterte in his message for this year's Eid'l Adha on Monday.

Vice President Leni Robredo emphasized the importance of oneness, especially with the raging global health crisis. She also called for coming together in shared humanity and the common good.

"As we have seen countless times during this pandemic, there are more things that bring us together than tear us apart kindness, compassion, and the genuine desire for a world where people of all faiths thrive and flourish under a banner of hope," she said in a separate statement on Tuesday.

The chief executive likewise took the opportunity to praise the faith of Islam's devotees, saying the occasion continues to be a testament to the community's "unyielding" faith.

"Its narrative remains a fervent reminder to people that, even amidst life's difficulties and challenges, our sacrifices have profound value and meaning," said Duterte, who also hopes Muslims will find renewed faith and spirituality in this year's Eid'l Fitr.

On her part, Robredo asked Muslim families to hold on to their values in the journey towards a better normal.

"Though the road may be long, I know that the Filipino has the resolve to reach this aspiration," she said.

Duterte declared Eid'l Adha a regular holiday nationwide last Thursday.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 21)  Typhoon Fabian maintained its intensity as it moved west southwest over the sea southeast of the Southern Ryukyu archipelago, state weather bureau PAGASA said.

The typhoon was last seen 785 kilometers east northeast of Itbayat, Batanes, packing maximum sustained winds of 120 kilometers per hour and gusts of up to 150 kph, according to PAGASA's 11 p.m. bulletin.

Although the weather disturbance intensified, PAGASA said Fabian is unlikely to bring heavy rainfall in the country.

However, there is an "increasing likelihood" that Tropical Cyclone Wind Signal No. 1 will be hoisted over Batanes and Babuyan Islands due to the typhoon.

Currently, no storm signal warning is raised over any part of the country.

Fabian is expected to reach its peak intensity of 155 kph on Thursday. Gradual weakening is projected beginning Saturday - the time when it will exit Philippine Area of Responsibility - as it passes near or over the rugged terrain of Taiwan.

PAGASA also said in the next 24 hours, rain is expected in Ilocos Region, Cordillera Administrative Region, Batanes, Babuyan Islands, Zambales, Bataan, Tarlac, Pampanga, Bulacan, Metro Manila, Cavite, Batangas, Occidental Mindoro, and the northern portion of Palawan, including Calamian and Kalayaan Islands.

The rain is due to the southwest monsoon, which is being enhanced by Fabian and Typhoon Cempaka spotted outside the PAR.

PAGASA said Fabian may pass or hit land near Yaeyama and Miyako Islands in Ryukyu, Japan on Friday. Possible landfalls are also expected in northern Taiwan early Saturday morning, and southeastern China early Sunday morning.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  Among the items on the agenda in the Inter-Agency Task Force meeting this week is a proposal to reimpose the bubble-type setup in the NCR Plus to prevent the feared Delta variant from further spreading, Interior Undersecretary Epimaco Densing said Tuesday.

Independent research group OCTA earlier made the suggestion following the detection of locally acquired cases of the highly contagious Delta variant that was first discovered in India.

"Bibigyang tugon po namin ang suggestion na iyan ng OCTA Research. Magkakaroon po tayo ng IATF meeting ngayong Huwebes at maisasama po iyan sa agenda," Densing said in a Laging Handa briefing.

[Translation: We will respond to OCTA Research's suggestion. We will have an IATF meeting this Thursday and that is one of our agenda topics.]

In late March, Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal were put in a bubble known as NCR Plus to tackle a fresh surge in infections.

Only those considered as 'authorized persons outside residence' or APORs were allowed to travel into and out of the bubble for essential purposes such as work and delivery of humanitarian aid.

There are now 35 Delta cases in the country, with eight of them currently ill, according to the Department of Health. Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the number of Delta cases could be higher than what was reported so far. Three of the Delta cases have died, the DOH said.

President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday said the government may reimpose stricter measures due to the Delta variant.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  Taiwan is extending its trial visa-free entry for Filipino travelers from Aug. 1, 2021 to July 31, 2022, the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced on Tuesday.

This move is in line with Taiwan's "New Southbound Policy" (NSP) under which its MOFA also allows visa-free entry to nationals from Thailand, Brunei, and Russia.

The Taiwan MOFA said their decision was reached after evaluating the convenience brought by the relaxation of visa rules in the past years and to revive mutual bilateral exchanges and tourism in the post-pandemic era.

"MOFA will continue to review and fine-tune visa policy, seeking to strengthen bilateral exchanges and attract more visitors while still ensuring border and public security," the ministry said in a statement.

Taiwan has been extending its visa-free privilege for Filipinos since the trial program began on Nov. 1, 2017.

The foreign affairs ministry, however, clarified that the extension of visa-free treatment to the Philippines and three other countries is separate from Taiwan's ongoing ban on entry of foreign tourists due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The aforementioned adjustments to and extensions of visa measures for nationals from NSP partner countries and Russia are based on previously existing policies and do not indicate an opening-up of Taiwan to foreign tourists amidst the COVID-19 pandemic," the ministry added.

Foreign nationals will be allowed to enter Taiwan depending on the Central Epidemic Command Center's assessment of the pandemic.
Metro Manila (CNN Philipines, July 20)  United States Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit the Philippines to promote bilateral relations between the two countries.

In a statement on Tuesday, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Austin will be visiting Alaska this Friday, July 23, before heading to his first Southeast Asian trip to Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines.

"Throughout his trip, Secretary Austin will meet with key leaders to reaffirm defense relationships and conduct bilateral meetings with senior officials," Kirby said.

Austin will also further promote U.S. ties under the administration of President Joe Biden and demonstrate the importance of this relationship to Southeast Asia and the ASEAN "as an essential part of the Indo-Pacific's architecture."

"This trip will underscore the enduring U.S. commitment to the region, and our interest in upholding the rules-based international order in the region and promoting ASEAN centrality," Kirby added.

No specific date has been given yet on Austin's arrival in the Philippines.

CNN Philippines has sought comments from officials for details on the preparations and activities during the visit.

Austin was sworn in as the 28th U.S. Defense Secretary in January.

He serves as the principal assistant to Biden in all matters relating to the country's Department of Defense. He is also part of the National Security Council.

This is a developing story.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The towing vessel and barge carrying COVID-infected Filipino seafarers from Indonesia have anchored in Albay on Tuesday morning, but its crew members cannot disembark yet.

M/V Tug Clyde and Barge Claudia have anchored one kilometer from the Lidong Port in Sto. Domingo in Albay.

Mayor Joseling Aguas said the vessels were not allowed to dock on the shore.

Twelve of the 20 crew members have tested positive for COVID-19, but one disembarked in Butuan City prior to receiving his test result, leaving 11 asymptomatic COVID-positive individuals on board.

The Coast Guard assured that the patients and close contacts cannot disembark and nearby vessels cannot move close to them.

"Sinisiguro ng maritime security and monitoring team ng Philippine Coast Guard Station Albay na walang makakalapit na sasakyang pandagat dito at walang makakababa na crew, para makontrol ang pagkalat ng nakakahawang virus," it said.

[Translation: The maritime security and monitoring team of the Philippine Coast Guard in Albay assures no vessel can come close to them and its crew cannot alight to control the spread of the virus.]

The PCG and local officials are still finalizing protocols for their disembarkation to make sure Albay residents are not put on risk.

Meanwhile, Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said the samples of the 11 infected crew members will be sent for whole genome sequencing to check if they are carrying more transmissible variants since they came from Indonesia, a country currently being hit by the Delta coronavirus variant.

"Definitely. They're coming from a high-risk country. When they came here, they were swabbed," she said when asked if the samples will be reviewed by the Philippine Genome Center.

Indonesia is being ravaged by the dreaded Delta variant, which is believed to be the most transmissible variant and associated with increased hospitalization.

Health experts are worried about the Philippines' ability to deal with a similar surge.

There are to date 35 Delta variant cases recorded in the Philippines, including three deaths and seven active locally acquired cases.

The country's first Delta cases came from four Filipino seafarers on board MV Athens Bridge, which travelled from India when it was hit with the feared variant.
Authorities are keeping a close eye on vessels docked in Albay that are carrying COVID-positive Filipino seafarers from Indonesia. One of them jumped ship in Butuan City, but the Health department says he and his close contacts have been tracked down.
(CNN)  Living in a perpetual state of disruption, uncertainty and grief can test anyone's mental health.

And events of the past 16 months have delivered all of those in spades thanks to a steady stream of horrors, including but hardly limited to the deadly pandemic, George Floyd's murder, the January 6 Capitol insurrection and attacks against Asian-Americans.

They've also catapulted employee mental health to the top of many employers' list of concerns and priorities.

"[Employers] understand the impact on mental health is going to have a long tail on it. Once you've gotten vaccinated, mental health issues don't go away. And once you're back in the workplace, mental health issues don't go away," said Sandra Kuhn, the national leader for the behavioral health practice at benefits consulting firm Mercer.

If there's any upside, it's that the taboo of talking about mental health at work has gone down. In a survey of 1,005 employees by The Hartford, a majority indicated their company's culture has been more accepting of mental health challenges in the past year.

"The stigma around mental health is rapidly decreasing. It's now a part of everyday conversation. So employers have more visibility into mental distress in their workforce," said Joe Grasso, senior director of workforce mental health at Lyra Health, which provides employees access to a network of mental health professionals and related resources.

Issues related to anxiety and depression are among the most common conditions that Lyra Health's practitioners are seeing in their sessions, Grasso said. And there has been an increase in employee searches for race-based trauma care, as well as requests for mental health providers of color, he noted.

While many employers have had mental health service benefits on the books, they are now stepping up those offerings by providing easier and more efficient access to them, doing more to educate employees about mental health, and training managers to communicate with their teams about the resources available, Kuhn said.

Employers are also offering education about alcohol and substance use disorders, she added. Many people have been drinking more as a way to cope with stress and there also has been increased drug consumption, with the highest annual number of opioid overdose deaths reported in 2020.

Mercer also has seen an increase in insurance claims for treatment of substance use disorders by their clients' employees and their families, Kuhn noted.

Here's how managers can approach mental health issues with their teams.

Recognize the signs

It's important for managers to have insight into what it means to feel anxious or depressed so they can best guide an employee to the resources that might help, Kuhn said.

Signs of distress include any changes in behavior, mood, productivity or engagement, according to Mercer. That might mean more absences, increased anger or irritation or having trouble concentrating.

Say the right thing

It's best to ask open-ended questions and then learn to listen closely for insights from the answers, Kuhn recommended.

Always point to an objective, observable behavior when opening a conversation, Grasso added. "I noticed you were crying after the meeting," or "I've noticed you've seemed really distracted lately."

And then be empathetic. "I got concerned. Is there anything I can do to be helpful?"

You then can inform that person about potentially helpful resources available to them.

"But don't become a therapist. Your job is not to treat someone, but to point the person to resources," Grasso noted.

Be proactive

While it's important to be responsive to a situation when it arises, it's equally important to be proactive about informing your team about the mental health resources that are available, Kuhn said.

Or you might share your own experience with mental health struggles you've had over the past year, Grasso said. And model self-care, he recommended. For instance, you might announce to your team, "I'm taking a mental health day on Monday."

Be accommodating when possible

The most recent stressor for many employees -- since it involves upending routines they worked hard to build since the pandemic started -- will be to once again work on site, whether five days a week or on a new hybrid schedule.

While it may not be possible in every situation, Grasso said, "Offer flexibility where you can. That is what is driving a lot of people's worries."
(CNN)  Scores of journalists from 17 news outlets worked together to expose evidence of industrial-scale spying that targeted journalists, activists, politicians, and business executives.

And the revelations are only just beginning.

The consortium began to publish its findings on Sunday. The stories indicate that numerous members of the media were "possible candidates for surveillance," as The Guardian put it. Forensic tests affirmed the presence of spyware on some phones.

More will be coming out in the days ahead. The participating news outlets are dubbing this the "Pegasus Project," teeing off the name of the spyware, Pegasus, which is ostensibly licensed by NSO Group to track terrorists and major criminals. How has the spyware been used? Has it been abused? Those are two of the key questions.

First things first...

How did this investigation begin? Washington Post executive editor Sally Buzbee explained it in a letter from the editor on Sunday afternoon. "The project was conceived by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, which, along with Amnesty International, a human rights group, had access to records that formed the basis of our reporting: a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers concentrated in countries known to surveil their citizens and also known to have been clients of NSO Group," Buzbee wrote.

"Although the purpose of the list could not be conclusively determined, it is a fascinating document," Buzbee wrote. "Out of the more than 1,000 identities that could be confirmed, there were at least 85 human rights activists, 65 business executives, several members of Arab royal families, 189 journalists, and 600 government officials and politicians, spread across more than 50 countries."

Amnesty's Security Lab was able to examine 67 smartphones. "Of those, 23 were successfully infected and 14 showed signs of attempted penetration," WaPo reported. "For the remaining 30, the tests were inconclusive, in several cases because the phones had been replaced."

WaPo interviewed some of the affected individuals, including Siddharth Varadarajan, co-founder of The Wire, a nonprofit news outlet in India. "This is an incredible intrusion, and journalists should not have to deal with this," he said after learning that his phone was infected. "Nobody should have to deal with this."

Who's on the list?

Here's what WaPo reported: "Among the journalists whose numbers appear on the list, which dates to 2016, are reporters working overseas for several leading news organizations, including a small number from CNN, the Associated Press, Voice of America, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Le Monde in France, the Financial Times in London and Al Jazeera in Qatar."

There's a whole lot of uncertainty associated with this, as Devan Cole noted in a story for CNN.com. But Amnesty's secretary-general, Agnes Callamard, came out swinging. "The number of journalists identified as targets vividly illustrates how Pegasus is used as a tool to intimidate critical media. It is about controlling public narrative, resisting scrutiny, and suppressing any dissenting voice," Callamard said Sunday.

I was also struck by this line in the WaPo story: "After the investigation began, several reporters in the consortium learned that they or their family members had been successfully attacked with Pegasus spyware."

"Out in the open..."

CNN has not independently verified the findings of the Pegasus Project probe. The seventeen participating outlets are Forbidden Stories, The Washington Post, Le Monde, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, The Guardian, Daraj, Direkt36, Le Soir, Knack, Radio France, The Wire, Proceso, Aristegui Noticias, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Haaretz and PBS "Frontline."

For an overview of the findings thus far, "Frontline" is running a live blog linking to major stories from the other partners.

Here's the key quote from Dana Priest, one of the bylines on the WaPo report, who is also featured in a "Frontline" report. "For the first time," Priest said, "we've been able to give readers a sense of just how enormous the private and unregulated spying business has become. It's been a unique, and actually thrilling, experience to work with so many foreign journalists to pool our sources and resources to bring this difficult story out in the open, where it should be."

NSO Group's response

Quoting from Devan Cole's story: "In a lengthy statement to CNN on Sunday, NSO Group strongly denied the investigation's findings, saying in part that it sells its 'technologies solely to law enforcement and intelligence agencies of vetted governments for the sole purpose of saving lives through preventing crime and terror acts.'"

NSO Group also said it "does not operate the system and has no visibility to the data." It said it will continue to investigate "all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action based on the results" of such investigations.
(CNN)  The pandemic sparked recession ended in April 2020 after just two months, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. That makes the most recent US economic downturn the shortest on record.

Before the pandemic, the shortest recession was in the 1980s, lasting six months.

Last year, nationwide lockdowns began in March. Businesses closed their doors, laying off millions of Americans. Schools went to remote learning, forcing even more people out of work. All of that plunged the US economy into a deep hole.

Economic activity, measured through the gross domestic product, contracted at an annual rate of 5% in the first three months of 2020  and at a record 31.4% in the following quarter. During that period, America shed more than 20 million jobs.

But the low point of the downturn occurred in April 2020, and the economy quickly began to recover, according to Monday's NBER report. NBER defines the first month of a recession as the period following the peak, and the last month of the recession by the trough. So the fact that the US economy is no longer in recession does not mean it has fully recovered.

The Back-to-Normal Index created by CNN Business and Moody's Analytics stood at 91% as of July 16. Even though the economy has already regained significant ground, the remaining 9% might be tougher to achieve as the economy has fundamentally changed. Some of the jobs that were lost last year might never come back. Economists also predict that it will take some time before air travel returns to levels seen before the pandemic.

And Covid-19 cases are on the rise again around the world, complicating the economic recovery. The recession might be over, but the recovery is far from complete.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "The covid recession is officially over, and it was the shortest on record."
(CNN)  The coronavirus pandemic appears to have given an unexpected boost to a small  but influential  cohort of India's working women.

While the economy has been battered by Covid-19, educated women in middle-to-senior positions have seen job opportunities rise in the last year, recruiters in the country told CNN Business.

They attribute the shift to the trend of working from home that many companies have embraced during the pandemic.

"'Flexible' used to be a bad word for recruiters," said Neha Bagaria, founder of online jobs platform JobsForHer. "It really took the pandemic to gain an acceptance for work from home roles."

A recent survey by her team of more than 300 companies in India found that women accounted for 43% of middle-to-senior management roles in 2020, a jump of more than 20 percentage points from the previous year.

That flexibility might not last forever, however, as many companies around the world roll out plans to return their workers to the office, at least part time.

But the uptick noted by JobsForHer and others has given companies an insight into the policies that might work should they want to encourage gender diversity.

Stay remote, stay productive

Even though India is one of the fastest growing economies in the world, and its women are more educated than ever before, they aren't joining the workforce. According to the World Bank, women comprised just over 20% of India's total labor force in 2019, down from about 26% in 2005. In the United States, that number was about 46% in 2019.

From restrictive cultural norms to office harassment, there are many reasons why highly skilled Indian women might choose to stay at home.

But over the last decade, the government and corporations have been trying to encourage more women to join the workforce.

In 2013, India's market regular mandated all publicly traded companies to appoint at least one woman to their boards of directors. That marked one of the first times an emerging country has implemented gender quotas to encourage diversity, according to the Harvard Business School Review.

Since 2017, the country has also mandated 26 weeks of paid maternity leave, which is more than richer countries such as the United States or Japan.

Despite those efforts, the participation of women in the workforce remains dismal.

The pandemic, however, has shown employers that remote work can be just as effective as being in the office. This policy has also encouraged more women to re-enter the job market after taking a break because of caregiving responsibilities, among other reasons, recruiters said.

"In 2021, the number of women actively exploring job opportunities has gone up by 89% vis-a-vis 2020," Aditya Mishra, founder of Ciel HR Services, told CNN Business, based on an analysis of his staffing agency's data on middle and senior level hiring.

"Even though there has been a muted growth in the job market, we observed that companies across sectors have gone on to hire 21% more women than the previous year," Mishra added.

Overall, unemployment numbers in Asia's third largest economy remain high due to the pandemic-related slowdown, which pushed the country briefly into recession last year.

Some companies launched initiatives designed to attract women who want to work remotely. Maersk, the world's largest container shipping company, rolled out a program this year to hire women for entry level jobs  in areas ranging from software to finance  from small towns in India that wouldn't require them to relocate  even after the pandemic subsides.

"This was a talent pool we did not have access to earlier," said Shalini Nataraj, the global head of human resources for Maersk's Global Service Centre.

The company registered an 11-percentage-point increase in the number of women leaders hired in India this year from 2019, she said. The firm also recorded a spike in applications from women last year, after it started asking its women employees to draft job descriptions.

However, Nataraj admitted that the company still has to do more to address the gender pay gap.

Maersk did not have further data on the topic. But according to a 2018 survey published by the career website Monster, India's overall gender pay gap was 22.5% that year.

Still a long way to go

While a sliver of educated women in India have found more job opportunities, the majority of working women  especially those lower down the economic ladder  were hit hard by last year's economic turmoil.

The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab has been studying the impact of the pandemic on workers from some of India's poorest states. In a report on young migrant workers from the states of Bihar and Jharkhand, the researchers found that Covid-19 pushed men out of salaried work, and women out of the workforce entirely.

"They [women] had this one chance of working. Now they are back home with their families and being pushed to get married," Clement Imbert, associate professor of economics at the University of Warwick and one of the researchers, told CNN Business.

Their experience mirrors stories from other countries. In America, Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on working women, who lost more jobs than men. For those who have stayed employed, the additional burden of domestic duties and childcare has led to an enormous amount of stress.

Some Indian working women are luckier in this respect than their western counterparts, according to Bagaria of JobsForHer.

"Women in India have more family support," she said.

Many Indians live in extended families with in-laws, or parents, and have more relatives to help look after children. It is also cheaper to hire live-in domestic workers in the country than it is in the West.

As India's economy slowly opens up, most large organizations are expected to experiment with hybrid work models, recruiters said, echoing a trend that has also been seen in richer countries. This may again lead to less flexibility, in terms of location, for women in senior roles. Government authorities and companies in the southern state of Telangana, an IT hub, have already started encouraging workers to return to offices.

While companies have seen the benefits of gender diversity at the middle and top, "nobody is hiring a CEO by saying, 'Never come to my main office,'" said Ashutosh Khanna, senior client partner at management consulting firm Korn Ferry. "They will eventually have to make the move."

For now, women are enjoying the wiggle room they have. Bhuvana Subramanyan was hired by staffing company Randstad India as chief marketing officer last August, after an entirely virtual interview process. Even with her new responsibilities, she said she still has time for "simple pleasures," such as daily yoga practice.

"I am not getting stuck in traffic jams anymore," the Bengaluru resident told CNN Business. The southern Indian city is notorious for its painfully gridlocked roads, which have taken a horrifying toll on productivity and health of workers.

Apart from more "me-time," Subramanyan, 47, said work-from-home during the pandemic has been empowering for women employees.

"Virtual calls have democratized conversations," she said. " You now have the opportunity to unmute yourself and talk."

This story was first published on CNN.com, "It has taken a pandemic to crack the glass ceiling in India."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 19)  Five years ago, then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte made a promise that sounded too good to be true.

"I will not promise you heaven, but I will try to stop corruption. In three to six months, I will stop corruption in government," Duterte said in a debate held before the May 2016 polls.

Some would argue this was wishful thinking. But Filipinos wanted change and they were willing to take a chance with Duterte.

"This is the first time that somebody mentioned a deadline 'no? It makes it even more believable," University of the Philippines political science professor Dr. Jean Franco said.

Duterte, however, would soon find out things are easier said than done.

Major scandals under Duterte's watch

In 2017, a shipment of shabu from China worth 6.4 billion slipped past the Bureau of Customs.

Of the main players in the incident, only one customs broker and two other Filipinos faced charges while the Chinese middlemen remain at large.

"Kung hindi incompetent ang mga tao sa Customs, corrupt sila," Senator Richard Gordon said during a Senate inquiry into the incident.

[Translation: People at the Customs department are either incompetent or corrupt.]

Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon was exonerated by the Justice department and ultimately by Duterte himself.

A similar incident happened in 2018, under former Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director General Isidro Lapena's watch as the new Customs chief.

The biggest shipment of shabu yet  worth 11 billion  again eluded Customs agents.

Two years later in early 2020, all eyes turned to the Bureau of Immigrations and its so-called pastillas scheme, where Chinese nationals were supposedly allowed to enter the country without background checks.

According to one senator, the pastillas scheme masterminds netted some 40 billion while running the modus.

Also in 2020, in the thick of the health crisis, an anti-fraud legal officer of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) resigned due to alleged widespread corruption in the agency.

"Naniniwala po ako na ang perang winaldas at ninakaw ay humigit kumulang 15 billion," former Philhealth anti-fraud legal officer Thorsson Keith said in Senate hearing.

[Translation: I believe the money that was wasted and stolen was around P15 billion.]

Reappointment of officials linked to scandals

The rigodon of officials tainted with corruption would continue in the Duterte administration despite his pronouncements that they would be booted out with even just a whiff of it.

Former Customs chief Nicanor Faeldon was appointed to the Office of the Civil Defense after he resigned.

His successor in Customs, former PDEA Director General Isidro Lapena became TESDA chief following the P11 billion shabu scandal.

Another example is Jose Garbriel "Pompee" La Vina, one of Duterte's staunchest supporters and his social media director during his presidential campaign.

La Vina would be reappointed three more times after he was fired as Social Security System commissioner for allegedly abusing government funds.

Then there's Melissa Avancena Ardanas, cousin of Duterte's partner Honeylet.

She was fired as commissioner of the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor due to alleged excessive foreign trips, only to be appointed assistant secretary at the Human Settlements department months later.

Despite favoring certain people mired in corruption controversies, Duterte's approval ratings remain high.

"People only lose trust in their presidents when the president himself or herself has been accused of corruption. That's what happened with Erap and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, di ba?" Franco explained.

Task force vs. corruption

In 2017, Duterte created the Presidential Anti-Corruption Commission via an executive order.

Since then, the PACC claims its investigations have resulted in the firing of almost a thousand government officials and employees.

It has tagged the Department of Public Works and Highways, Bureau of Internal Revenue, Customs as the top three most corrupt agencies.

But critics say the commission barely scratches the surface.

"Ang corruption po kasi extends beyond presidential appointees hanggang sa mababang empleyado, hanggang sa elected officials and private persons, which under the law PACC has no jurisdiction," PACC Commissioner Greco Belgica told CNN Philippines.

[Translation: Corruption extends beyond presidential appointees, reaching even lowly employees up to elected officials and private persons, which under the law PACC has no jurisdiction.]

The President has also formed a task force led by the Department of Justice to go after corrupt officials in the "entire government."

"Apart from my usual responsibilities as SOJ, this new assignment is the toughest I have ever received from the President," Guevarra said of the assignment.

The DOJ has so far filed graft charges against a congressman and some Public Works officials for favoring a certain contractor.

Duterte's Ombudsman

There are pending complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman for major corruption scandals in the past years.

The Ombudsman has suspended around 80 Immigration officials as it investigates the alleged pastillas scheme.

PhilHealth officials, including the agency's former president Ricardo Morales, are also facing complaints.

Investigations are still ongoing, and it usually takes the ombudsman's investigators at least a year to decide whether or not there is sufficient evidence to bring the case to court.

Generally, the number of cases filed at the anti-graft court started to go down when Duterte's appointee, former Supreme Court Justice Samuel Martires, took over in 2018.

Martires has been criticized for implementing policies that go against his mandate as ombudsman.

He has moved to stop lifestyle checks and told prosecutors to review which cases they could drop.

Martires also restricted public access to Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth saying the document had been weaponized against government officials.

"When governments lack transparency or openness, especially on public documents then it lends itself to a corrupt environment," Franco said.

Duterte's resolve

In his speeches, the President would announce the firing or demand the resignation of officials accused of corruption.

This past year during his weekly address, Duterte would even read off from the latest dishonor list from the PACC.

But even he knows it's a losing battle. He practically threw in the towel two years ago.

"I have identified the enemy who dumped us into this quagmire we are in. I have met the enemy face to face and sadly, the enemy is us," Duterte said in his 2019 State of the Nation Address.

Duterte has vowed to fight corruption until the end of his term.

But with less than a year to go before he leaves Malacanang, and with the problem still entrenched in some of the government's most corrupt agencies, Duterte has clearly failed to fulfill a major campaign promise.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The Commission on Elections will keep a close watch on online campaign spending starting October, but the law prevents it from holding candidates accountable for premature campaigning, an official said Tuesday.

Comelec spokesperson James Jimenez told CNN Philippines some of the politicians' social media posts and other activities now may be tantamount to premature campaigning, but not under Republic Act 9639.

The law states that someone who submits a certificate of candidacy, or COC, shall only be considered a candidate and be held liable for "unlawful acts or omissions" once the official campaign period starts. That's February 8 for the 2022 elections.

"Talagang lahat ng pwede nilang gawin, pwede lang natin sitahin, pwede lang natin i-regulate (We can only call out and regulate their actions) at the start of the campaign period, kasi (because) that's the only time they become official candidates," Jimenez explained.

"That's already premature campaigning, you know it is. But it's not something that is legally actionable. It's not something we can take action against," he added.

Jimenez, director of Comelec's education and information department, said the law needs to be amended. For now, Comelec can only monitor campaign activities of those who will file their COCs from October 1 to 8.

The poll body is also working on the guidelines for the computation of campaign advertisements on social media.

"The Comelec will start monitoring October 1 so that we know, even though there's not really a whole lot we can do with it, we know how much they're spending. We have an idea of what sort of spending is going on because even now, there's a lot of reporting coming out about how much these people spend," Jimenez said.

He also said the Comelec supports the bills seeking to increase the authorized campaign expenses, to allow for more virtual instead of face-to-face campaigning amid the pandemic.

In June 2020, the House of Representatives passed a bill raising the campaign spending limit from 10 to 50 per voter for presidential and vice presidential candidates. Under the proposal, those running for the Senate can also spend up to 50 per voter while political parties can shell out up to 30 for local candidates and 50 for national bets. A similar bill is pending in the Senate, but with a lower 20 cap for both candidates and political parties.

Candidates are required to submit their Statements of Contributions and Expenditures by June 8, 2022. Jimenez said this will be compared with the reports from social media platforms to check if there is underreporting or overspending.

"If it was done accurately, then there's no problem. If the report misstates a fact, then you have grounds for a legal complaint," he said.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  There are still eight active COVID-19 Delta variant cases of the 35 cases detected in the country, the Department of Health revealed on Tuesday.

Health Undersecretary Rosario Vergeire said in a briefing that one active case is in Manila, four in Cagayan de Oro, one in Misamis Oriental, and two are returning overseas Filipino workers.

Vergeire initially told CNN Philippines' The Source that there were only seven active cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant. She also admitted these patients were supposed to be tagged as recovered after completing their quarantine period, but most of them failed to get a COVID-19 test after their 14th day.

"When we went back because we were able to determine that they had the Delta variant, we retested again and we found that seven among these local cases have positive results," she said.

Currently, there is no protocol to retest COVID-19 patients before releasing them from quarantine, but Vergeire said experts have recommended that those who tested positive for any COVID-19 variant must go back to quarantine so their condition can be assessed again until they get a negative test result.

According to Vergeire, most of the patients have not interacted with anyone within their local communities and are now undergoing another round of quarantine. While the rest of the cases have recovered, the government is still closely monitoring their condition. At least 47 contacts of all Delta cases have also been traced.

Vergeire clarified that the active Delta variant cases cannot be considered a local transmission just yet.

"These local cases that we have right now are kind of sporadic where they are in different areas and different timelines for getting infected," she said.

"When we look closely at these cases, lahat sila halos ang CT (cycle threshold) value nila matataas, ibig sabihin mababa na yung viral load sa katawan and therefore most likely hindi na sila ganun ka-infectious. But of course we would still like to be very sure that's why they are now in quarantine pa rin at binabantayan," she added.

[Translation: When we look closely at these cases, almost all of them have a high CT value while the viral load in their bodies are low and therefore most likely they are not that contagious anymore. But of course we would still like to be very sure that's why they are now in quarantine and are being monitored.]

The government can only declare a local transmission once a linkage has been established among the individuals who are positive with the Delta variant, the DOH spokesperson added.

So far, there are 11 locally acquired cases of the Delta variant. On Monday, one of the patients who acquired the variant locally died, bringing the total Delta variant-related fatalities in the country to three.

The DOH earlier acknowledged the possibility that there could be more undetected cases of the highly contagious Delta variant.

The government hopes to receive new machines that will boost the country's genome sequencing capacity from 750 samples to 1,500 samples per week.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The country's top health official says the Philippines is doing better than its neighbors when it comes to handling the Delta variant of the coronavirus.

"Kumpara po sa ibang bansa sa ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) na nakakaranas ng malubhang pagtaas sa kaso dahil sa Delta variant, sa ngayon kasalukuyan, mas di hamak na mas maayos naman po ang ating kalagayan vis-a-vis the Delta variant," Health Secretary Francisco Duque III said at President Rodrigo Duterte's weekly address on Monday.

[Translation: Compared to other countries in ASEAN experiencing a serious rise in cases because of the Delta variant, we are currently faring much better vis-a-vis the Delta variant.]

In his report, Duque said even if the country has tallied cases of the Delta variant, health officials are keeping a close eye on the case trend, as well as health system indicators to better respond to the threat presented by the variant.

He added that currently, only 0.5% of sequence samples are Delta variant cases, and that there were more Beta variant cases, followed by the Alpha variant based on the whole genome sequencing by the UP Philippine Genome Center.

"With the additional 16 Delta variant cases detected, the national government is continuously monitoring closely our case and health systems indicators, as well as intensifying the four-door response strategies to mitigate the spread of the Delta variant and prevent a possible surge," Duque said in his report.

READ: 'Recovered' local case becomes nation's 3rd Delta variant death

Duque suggested local government units should strengthen their prevention, detection, isolation, treatment, and reintegration strategies, as well as ramp us vaccination efforts especially for those who are included in the A1 to A3 categories.

On Monday, the DOH said there was a "possibility" that the Philippines has more undetected cases of the highly transmissible Delta variant as the government has yet to step up genome sequencing efforts.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  Around 350 guests are expected to be at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City on July 26 for President Rodrigo Dutertes final state of the nation address, an official said Monday.

House Secretary General Jose Llandro Mendoza said the first and second galleries inside the plenary hall will be utilized to accommodate guests, which include high-ranking government officials.

"Dinamihan natin ngayon kasi karamihan naman is fully vaccinated na. At the same time, nagluwag naman na yung IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) so 30% ng capacity ng plenary pwedeng gamitin," Mendoza told reporters in an interview.

[Translation: We increased the number of guests who are allowed to physically attend the SONA because most of them have been fully vaccinated already. At the same time, the IATF raised the allowed capacity for the plenary to 30%].

"Hindi naman natin pupunuin yung plenary eh. 'Yung plenary siguro around 50 to 60 and the rest, nasa first and second gallery sila," he added.

[Translation: We are not going to fill the plenary. There will be around 50 to 60 people at the plenary, while the rest will be at the first and second gallery.]

Senators are expected to join House leaders on the floor.

Mendoza said former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has confirmed her physical attendance at the SONA.

He added invitations have been sent to other incumbent government officials, including Vice President Leni Robredo, but they have yet to confirm their attendance.

Robredo's spokesman Barry Gutierrez said that the Vice President received the invitation last Friday but she was asked to again attend the SONA remotely.

"Similar to the previous year, she was not asked to be physically present but to join via Zoom. She will therefore be attending remotely," Gutierrez said Monday in a statement.

All guests entering the plenary hall must be fully vaccinated. They are also required to undergo RT-PCR testing a day before the SONA and antigen testing at the House next Monday.

Meanwhile, around 400 House employees who have tasks related to the SONA will be allowed to enter the House next Monday.

Mendoza said the Batasang Pambansa Complex will be on lockdown starting Friday, July 23, while preparations for Duterte's address continue.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday said the government may reimpose tighter restrictions if the Delta variant continues to spread in the country.

The reported local cases in the country are a cause for serious alarm and concernWe may need to reimpose stricter restrictions to avoid mass gatherings and prevent super spreader events, said Duterte during his weekly address.

The country has so far recorded 35 Delta variant cases, including 11 locally acquired cases, according to the Department of Health. Three have died while the rest have recovered.

READ: 'Recovered' local case becomes nation's 3rd Delta variant death

Duterte said some Asian countries have already imposed tougher lockdowns as they battle against a severe COVID-19 outbreak driven by the more infectious Delta variant. Currently, only nine areas in the Philippines are placed under the modified enhanced community quarantine.

READ: Dozens die in Indonesia hospital with oxygen shortage, as Delta variant sweeps the country

I hope that our existing infrastructure in dealing with the problem of COVID-19 can cope up, said Duterte.

The COVID-19 variant first detected in India is said to be the most transmissible and linked to increased hospitalization.

The government has already imposed a travel ban on India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, United Arab Emirates and Oman.

With the threat of the Delta variant, Duterte urged the Department of the Interior and Local Government and the Philippine National Police to properly implement existing health protocols.

I urge the DILG and the PNP to implement existing protocols with greater urgency and necessity. It is only by imposing these restrictions that we can fight the threat of Delta variant, he said.

Duterte also told local government units to heighten their vaccination campaign.

You must get the vaccine or you die, he said. Kung ayaw niyo talagang maniwala, eh di wag muna kayo lumabas ng bahay para wala kayong mahawa (If you dont believe in vaccines, then you must not go outdoors in the meantime so you will not infect others).
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  A COVID-positive seafarer who slipped out of the vessel that came from Indonesia has been located and placed under quarantine in Butuan City, health authorities said Tuesday.

The seafarer is one of the 12 COVID-infected Filipino crew members on board the M/V Tug Clyde and Barge Claudia, which traveled to the Philippines from Indonesia.

The Department of Health said the seaman disembarked without the knowledge of the ship captain then traveled to his home using public transport.

"Yung isa ay bumaba without the knowledge of the captain apparently at sumakay sa public transport. Ito ay nareport agad sa mga kinauukulan, nakuha nila agad ang kasong sumakay sa public transport and also those close contacts na nakasakay sa public transport pati na rin ang pamilya nitong bumaba ng vessel," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said in a media briefing.

[Translation: One of them disembarked without the knowledge of the ship captain. He took public transport. It was reported right away. Authorities found the seafarers, his close contacts during the ride, and his family members.]

The seafarer has been placed under quarantine, while all his close contacts are in isolation for monitoring.

M/V Tug Clyde and Barge Claudia anchored one kilometer from the Lidong Port in Sto. Domingo in Albay on Tuesday. The 11 asymptomatic COVID-positive individuals on board are prohibited from disembarking.

The PCG and local officials are still finalizing protocols for their disembarkation to make sure Albay residents are not put at risk with the arrival of the tugboat from Indonesia.

Indonesia is being ravaged by the dreaded Delta variant, which is believed to be the most transmissible variant and associated with increased hospitalization.

Health experts are worried about the Philippines' ability to deal with a similar surge.

There are to date 35 Delta variant cases recorded in the Philippines, including three deaths and eight active locally acquired cases.

The country's first Delta cases came from four Filipino seafarers on board MV Athens Bridge, which travelled from India when it was hit with the feared variant.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20) - Vice President Leni Robredo said she is in "exploratory talks" with other potential candidates for next year's elections to assess common stance on issues.

This was her response on Tuesday when asked about a possible political alliance with Manila Mayor Francisco "Isko Moreno" Domagoso, whom her office partnered with for a joint drive-through COVID-19 vaccination project.

"Mayroong mga initial na exploratory talks [There have been initial exploratory talks], not just with Mayor Isko but with some other contenders," she told reporters during the second run of the Vaccine Express in Manila. She didn't disclose other names.

RELATED: Robredo-Moreno for 2022? LP says no tandems for now

To have a fighting chance, Robredo previously said the opposition should have a lone candidate in the presidential polls.

Both Robredo and Moreno have said they are prioritizing pandemic response and have not decided on running. The vice president also said campaigning early would be "insensitive" considering the country continues to battle a health crisis.

The latest survey for presidency released earlier this month by Pulse Asia Research Inc. showed Moreno ranked second to presidential daughter Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, while Robredo was on sixth place.
It turns out that he had been purchasing the siding for his home for the last two years.  It was sitting in his garage, so we said, well, we can help you with that, Peters said, adding that soffit, fascia and gutters were replaced with donations by businesses.

A few men saw that Hanaks backdoor was weathered and rotten and replaced that as well. Hanak also had materials sitting around for his partially-built deck, so Habitat finished that and another business did some landscaping around his home that will be easy for him to maintain. A group from DNA Genetics, which is where Hanak works part time, assisted with putting on deck rails.

Tyler Engstrom, who serves on the Veterans Committee, said the improvements will make a big impact on Hanaks life. Engstrom said he became involved because his employer, BankFirst, is a corporate sponsor for the program.

The house looks completely different than what it did if you've seen the before and after pictures, Engstrom said.

Engstrom added that Hanak appeared glad to finally see some of those repairs getting completed.

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It was nice to be able to help them out and get it all taken care of and now he doesn't have to worry about it, Engstrom said.
The Bootleg Fire, now 606 square miles (1,569 square kilometers) in size, has ravaged southern Oregon and is the fourth-largest fire in the state's modern history. It's been expanding by up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that's turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox.

Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes and, in some cases, the inferno's heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 6 miles into the sky and are visible for more than 100 air miles.

The fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest merged with a smaller nearby blaze Tuesday, and it has repeatedly breached a perimeter of treeless dirt and fire retardant meant to stop its advance.

More evacuations were ordered Monday night, and a red flag weather warning signifying dangerous fire conditions was in effect through Tuesday. The fire is 30% contained.

Were in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster," Incident Commander Rob Allen said Tuesday.
Education

editor's pick alert top story

Carlisle Schools

Carlisle High School will switch to block schedule starting in 2021-22

Sentinel file Pictured is the entrance to Carlisle High School at 623 W. Penn St., Carlisle.

Carlisle Area School District plans to pilot a block schedule configuration at its high school starting in late August.

An outgrowth of adjustments made in response to COVID-19, the new configuration is a departure from the current schedule of seven class periods per day of almost 50 minutes each.

Instead, the course load of each student will be divided into two days of four class periods each, Assistant Superintendent Colleen Friend said during a recent meeting of the school boards education committee. There will be alternating Green and White days in keeping with the school colors, she said.

On Green days, students will have classes in periods one through three, along with a Bison Block period. On White days, students will have classes in periods four through eight.

Two local high schools win civic engagement awards for voter registration efforts Boiling Springs High School has earned a gold level Governor's Civic Engagement Award for registering to vote at least 85% of its eligible students. Carlisle High School has earned a silver award for registering 65.8% of its eligible students.

The Bison Block will be an extra class period that would rotate through the schedule of each student, Friend explained. During the first Bison Block of 2021-22, students will return to their first period class. During the second Bison Block, the rotation will carry over to the second period class and so on through the academic year.

This will provide opportunities to make up missed class assignments, labs and assignments with their content teachers, Friend said. The Bison Block will also be a chance for teachers to provide remediation to students who are struggling and enrichment activities to advanced or accelerated learners, she said.

Science teachers in particular are excited about the block schedule because it allows for more lab time and thus a deeper dive into the subject area, according to Friend. Right now, science teachers are pressed to fit lab time into a tighter class period.

Class periods will be longer under the block schedule, but probably not double the current time frame, Friend said. We are still working on it. Its in the refinement stage. It will probably be along the line of about 80 minutes.

COVID-19 had some influence over summer school offerings in the Midstate School districts last summer set in motion strategies to head off anticipated learning loss due to COVID-19.

Its not a long block of instruction, she said, meaning that besides listening to a lecture there will be other learning activities such as small group and large group projects. We are changing the modality of what kids are doing over the course of the class period.

To prepare for the new configuration, teachers are being trained this summer, as part of professional development, on techniques to design lessons tailored to a longer class period.

Due to COVID-19, the high school needed to make adjustments to their schedule for 2020-2021, Friend said. From those adjustments, we learned many lessons from which to grow and ideas the high school would like to further pursue.

Senior Showcase: The Carlisle High School Class of 2020 A large group of graduating seniors from Carlisle High School participated in a car parade around the school campus Saturday afternoon, May 30, 2020. The parade helped end their school year which was cut short early due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last school year, high school principal Michael Black met with students and teachers to gather input on the proposed change. Black also sought feedback from parents and families.

The result was the pilot block schedule configuration that the district plans to launch on the first day of school and evaluate during the academic year.

Superintendent Christina Spielbauer said the yearlong analysis will cover a broad range of topics including student discipline, absentee rates and classroom academic performance.

It has been the practice of the district to pilot new programs or courses in the first year, report on the results to the board in the summer and then let the board decide whether to continue the program.

This is going to be a heavy year of analysis for our high school administrative team, Spielbauer said. We have a lot of work ahead of us.

Several board members expressed support for the new configuration.

Carlisle High School will pilot a new course called Gifted Self-Navigation Carlisle Area School Board members recently approved the launch of a new course for the gifted education program.

A former teacher, Jon Tarrant worked for a school system that implemented a block schedule. There was some apprehension for students and teachers alike, Tarrant said. Gradually, the problems were resolved and the block schedule became the universal preference among educators and their students, he said.

It would help a whole range of students, Board President Paula Bussard said. The extra time offered by the Bison Block rotation is especially important, she said.

Keep in mind the high school team will work throughout the summer on further refinements to the schedule, Friend said. After students receive their schedule in August, the high school administration will conduct three informational nights for students and parents. Throughout the summer, all teachers at the secondary level will attend professional development to further enhance the way they design their lessons.
Strosser Baer had the lower of the two bids received for the design and engineering phase of the project, James said. However, cost was not the only factor that encouraged volunteers to recommend the council award the $34,000 contract.

It seems that they care, James said of the Sunbury firm. They came out a year ago to look at the building because they had heard about it. They followed up and stayed in touch with us. They liked the project. It was more than just a job.

The groundwork from the design and engineering phase will develop into bid specifications to distribute to contractors interested in the construction phase of the restoration project, Borough Manager Thomas Day said. He added that since the borough owns the church and its cemetery, it will be up to council members to review and award any future contractor bids.

The borough in early 2020 assumed ownership of the church. Prior to that, the main obstacle to preservation efforts has been a lack of definitive ownership.

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History

Mount Tabor Church traces its history back to Elias Parker, a former slave who moved from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Mount Holly Springs after serving with the U.S. Colored Troops during the Civil War.
The borough council approved an ordinance amendment that allows sidewalk cafes downtown to extend beyond the footprint of the establishment provided they have the permission of adjoining businesses.
One of the homeowners said they witnessed the woman with the ax and saw her wielding it in an angry and threatening manner which caused emotional distress to them. The homeowner said she was in fear for her life and stated that she believed someone was shooting at her residence.

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Due to the Washington County Sheriff's Office having an extended estimated arrival time to the scene, two officers with the Potosi Police Department assisted on the scene. One of the officers attempted to arrest DeClue, and she reportedly pulled away from him, trying to evade the arrest. The woman was arrested but only through the use of physical force. The officer noted that when he arrived, the woman had the ax in her possession.

A Washington County deputy arrived on the scene and began reading DeClue her Miranda Rights. The woman reportedly knew the deputy from prior dealings and began interrupting him and refusing to let him finish advising her of the Miranda Warning. The woman was placed back into the patrol unit, and no further questions were asked. She was then transported to the Washington County Jail.

The report states that police spoke with one of DeClue's family members at their residence, also on Simmental Lane. The family member told officers they had last seen DeClue at 10 p.m. and did not know where she was or what she had been doing.
Arcadia Valley High Schools Hannah Helvey was selected by the Parkland Health Center Foundation Board to receive the 2021 Steve Lipstein Scholarship.

Helvey will be attending Truman State University in the fall, majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology. She said she dreams of becoming a doctor and working in either the Emergency Department or Intensive Care Unit.

Im so grateful for the opportunity this scholarship has provided me, said Helvey. The Steve Lipstein Scholarship will help me greatly in furthering my education during medical school, and I couldnt be more thankful to the Parkland Foundation for choosing me to be the recipient of such a great scholarship.

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To honor the work and dedication of Steve Lipstein, longtime leader of BJC HealthCare, the Parkland Health Center Foundation established a scholarship in 2018 in his honor. The annual $2,500 scholarship is awarded to a local high school senior entering into college majoring in the medical field.
A local prosecutor on Friday filed a total of 63 felony criminal charges against three employees over a July 2018 tourist boat accident on a Missouri lake that killed 17 people.

The charges were filed in Stone County against the captain, the general manager and the manager on duty the day of the accident for the Ride the Ducks attraction on Table Rock Lake near the tourist mecca of Branson.

The charges against captain Kenneth Scott McKee, of Verona, general manager Curtis Lanham, of Galena, and manager on duty Charles Baltzell, of Kirbyville, came seven months after a federal judge dismissed charges filed by federal prosecutors, concluding that they did not have jurisdiction.

McKee faces 29 charges, including 17 charges of first-degree involuntary manslaughter. An affidavit from a Missouri Highway Patrol sergeant accuses him of failing to exercise his duties as a licensed captain by taking his amphibious vehicle onto the lake during a thunderstorm.
In the topsy-turvies of 2020, Whiffletree Farm is long on some of our inventory, and PECs program is a great help in moving our product. Im grateful for the business, and Im also very happy to know that people who are in need will enjoy top-quality food that is tasty and nutritious. PECs effort to support our local farmers and farms like Whiffletree, while also giving to those in need in our community, is admirable and inspiring, said Whiffletree Farm owner Jesse Straight.

Miller said PEC hopes its summer effort will fill a gap in nourishment for children and families and help carry them and local dairy farms through to the reopening of schools in the fall and the full implementation of the Virginia Agriculture Food Assistance Program enacted in March. Championed strongly by PEC during the 2021 legislative session, the program will reimburse local farms for costs associated with providing food products to charitable food pantries across the commonwealth.
While implementing real estate contracts, Anderson took money from individuals helping her in these schemes, promising to pay them back. She used her false interest in the expensive real estate to prove to her victims that she was able to pay back the loans, but never did, the release said. The total actual loss to victims is between $1.5 million and $3.5 million.

To cover up her expansive fraud scheme, the defendant preyed upon victims sympathies, Acting U.S. Attorney Daniel Bubar said in a statement.

Such behavior is not only unconscionable, but also a serious federal crime. I am proud of the hard work of the FBI and Madison County Sheriffs Office, which brought Anderson to justice and will restore some measure of resolution to the victims, he said.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Stanley M. Meador said that Anderson, with Mondays guilty plea, finally has accepted responsibility for her actions.

Those who were manipulated and suffered losses because of her deceit will see justice served, he said in a statement.

Anderson is scheduled to be sentenced Dec. 2 and faces up to 20 years in prison on each count.

Those with information about this case or who believe they have been a victim of fraud are urged to call the FBI office in Charlottesville at (434) 293-9663.
RICHMOND  A Petersburg man indicted in the burglary of an Ettrick business is the first person in Virginia to be charged with a crime based on the use of a liquid nanotechnology known as SmartWater CSI  a substance residents or merchants can use to mark property that could be stolen.

A Chesterfield County grand jury handed down indictments Monday charging Christopher S. Gaines, 52, with burglary, felony petit larceny third offense and wearing a mask to hide his identify in connection with an April 11 break-in at the Ettrick Deli.

Gaines was confirmed as a suspect after police, using a special ultraviolet light, observed that his clothing was covered with smears of a colorless and odorless liquid that he had come into contact with when he allegedly entered the business.

The substance, known as SmartWater, is a traceable liquid thats coded with a forensic technology that contains a unique signature for each user. When brushed or sprayed on, is it undetectable except by ultraviolet light, where it glows yellow-green.

Every person arrested in Chesterfield is now scanned for traces of SmartWater on their person, clothing or belongings, as the county  through the police and sheriffs departments  has expanded use of the technology.
ROANOKE, Va. (AP)  Forrest Frosty Landon, longtime editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News who was described as a born newsman in a career that spanned 40 years, died Monday. He was 87.

Word of Landon's death came from Beth Macy, Landons niece-in-law and former Roanoke Times reporter, The Roanoke Times reported. No cause of death was listed.

Landon worked in radio, television and newspapers while in Roanoke. The Sidney, New York, native was 22 years old and just out of the University of Missouris journalism school when he came to Roanoke in 1955 to work at WDBJ-TV the day the station went on the air. The Times-World Corp. also owned the WDBJ radio station, and Landon soon moved from television to become the radio stations news director.

After Norfolk, Virginia-based Landmark Communications bought the locally owned Times-World Corp. in 1969, the television and radio stations were sold, and Landon remained a newspaperman the rest of his career.
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Israeli real estate group Azrieli is acquiring 100% of Norway's data centre services firm Green Mountain for around $850 million, to expand its data centre activity.

Green Mountain is currently majority-owned by the Smedvig family, which invests in a range of asset classes, particularly the natural resources sector globally.

Israel's largest listed property company announced in a press release that it is acquiring 100 percent of Green Mountain for around NIS 2.8 billion ($849.2m) from Smedvig.

According to the release, Green Mountain is a private company that was incorporated in Norway in 2009, which has been operating in the field of server farms since its incorporation, in three main areas: (a) planning and construction of server farms with high-level information security; (b) provision of advanced service farm services to organizations and wholesale customers; (c) highly-efficient operation of server farms while using 100% renewable energies.

The company holds several real properties which are leased to third parties and are used by the company for its operations in the field of server farms, it said.

Arieli is known in the digital infrastructure sector as one of the investors in Compass Datacenters, a U.S.-based private developer that builds wholesale data centers, and has helped back an international expansion for Compass.

According to reports, Azrieli is in the process of raising a new round of debt, part of which it plans to use to fund the Green Mountain acquisition. Up to half of the financing will come from an additional loan it plans to get.
MFS Africa, which describes itself as Africas largest payment gateway, has announced its entry into Sierra Leone, partnering with Afrimoney, the mobile money service offered by pan-African telecommunications company Africell.

The aim will be to enable mobile money users in the country to receive payments from abroad smoothly and affordably.

As MFS explains, remittances from abroad amount to more than half of annual household consumption in Sierra Leone and therefore play an important role in economic growth. However, according to records from 2017, fewer than one in five people in Sierra Leone had a bank account at that time. Mobile money thus clearly provides an alternative to conventional finance.

With this partnership in place, mobile transfer operator customers that are connected to the MFS Africa hub  such as MoneyGram, World Remit and Xoom  can easily send money to mobile wallets in Sierra Leone. With over 320 million mobile wallets connected to MFS Africas hub, there is said to be an array of new cross-border payment possibilities.

Remittance is big business in Africa  and beyond. Among recent announcements, in January we discussed a strategic partnership to facilitate cross-border remittance involving Wari and Lycaremit.

MFS Africa itself partnered with global money transfer start-up PaySii to help facilitate remittances in sub-Saharam Africa, and moved into north Africa with Moroccos inwi money last September.
China Mobile announced vendor awards for its latest round of 5G contracts, with Ericsson losing ground against a backdrop of geopolitical tensions and Nokia notably scoring a 5G RAN win in China.

Ericsson was awarded just 2% of the available base station work for China Mobiles 700 MHz 5G rollout. Nokia, which didn't secure any 5G radio contracts in China last year, got a 10% share in one of the three contracts.

According to newspaper reports, Ericsson said this is likely a consequence of Sweden banning Chinese suppliers Huawei and ZTE from its 5G networks.

"Following a review of bids in the CP for 700MHz radio round of Chinas 5G network development, Ericsson has been awarded 2% market share. In line with earlier market guidance to investors, this is materially lower than the market share previously awarded to the company in the 2.6GHz CP2 (11%)," said a press release from the Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company.

China Mobile is the first operator to award under the latest round of CPs for 5G radio. Given the context and based on the bidding rules, should Ericsson be awarded the business in China Unicom and China Telecom we believe it would be in a similar range as with the China Mobile award.

Chinese vendor Huawei was the biggest winner for all three tenders, awarded roughly 60% in each. ZTE, also a Chinese vendor, secured significant portions of the work, with awards across the three ranging from almost 29% to around 33%.

Nokia, which didn't secure any 5G radio contracts in China last year, got a 10% share in one of the three contracts. Nokia has been working to execute a turnaround in its mobile networks business.

China's other two largest telecom operators - China Telecom and China Unicom - will soon announce winners of the second phase of the 5G contracts.
The Above the Best Silver Chapter of the US Army Warrant Officers Association will be holding their in-person, monthly meeting at 1145 AM on August 12, 2021 at Swartworth Hall, 5302 Outlaw Street, Fort Rucker, AL. A meal will be served. Please observe Fort Rucker COVID protocols. This meeting is open to all warrant officers or those interested in warrant officer issues.

Enterprise Womens Day Class of Community Bible Study will begin Aug. 16. The class will meet on Mondays from 10 a.m. until noon in the chapel of First Baptist Church located on 302 North Main Street. For those who cannot meet in person, a dedicated online Core Group will be offered. The class will spend 30 weeks studying 1 and 2 Peter and Revelation. Online registration is open now for the in-person class or the online Core Group at enterprise.cbsclass.org, or interested parties can contact the Class Coordinator by phone at 334-494-2039 or by email bandL@yahoo.com. Registration will be offered throughout the year. A Childrens Ministry is in progress, and children will be put on a waiting list.
Christian Life Church: Christian Life Church, located at 38 Hwy. 82 in Eufaula, welcomes Tane Miller on Sunday, July 25 at 10:30 a.m. The public is invited to attend.

Anderson Baptist Church: Anderson Baptist Church in Clio will hold a 100th celebration on July 25 at 10 a.m. Everyone is welcome to attend and listen to speaker Jeffery Parmer and music by Joyce Batton. A covered dish lunch will follow.

Eufaula Art Scene: The Eufaula Art Scene is now accepting applications for the Project/Event Grant Program for local presentation of projects and events for the cultural enrichment of Eufaula and the surrounding area. The Eufaula Art Scene (EAS) was created with the mission to encourage, promote and support all the creative arts in Eufaula and the surrounding area and works specifically with artists and organizations in the coordination of cultural activities. For more information and to download application please visit, https://www.theeufaulaartscene.org. The deadline for application is Sept. 1.
The dangerous criminals in these gangs arent letting up. In fact, because local leadership in our capital city has created an anti-police, soft-on-crime environment, the task forces work, in my opinion, is needed now more than ever," Kemp said, reiterating criticism of Bottoms.

Ahead of 2022 state elections, many Republicans are trying to make the case that voters shouldnt trust Democrats on crime, even though state government has traditionally had a limited role in fighting crime, with most of the responsibility falling to local sheriffs, police departments and district attorneys. Kemp has repeatedly touted state police efforts to cut down on street racing and stunt driving. Troopers have formed a six-person crime suppression unit to arrest fugitives, but troopers have little role in investigating local shootings, a key concern.

Carr said some district attorneys weren't doing enough to prosecute cases, singling out District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, who covers Athens-Clarke and Oconee counties. Gonzalez has said that more people who are arrested should be released before trial without requiring cash bail, that she won't prosecute some low-level drug cases and that she won't seek the death penalty. That's prompted pushback, especially from officials in Republican-dominated Oconee County.
The Dothan City Schools Board of Education approved the purchase of a new crisis alert system from Centegix and the installation of solar panels at some facilities during its meeting Monday night.

The board also heard a report from DCS Superintendent Dr. Dennis Coe concerning the systems healthy financial status entering the upcoming school year.

Steve Parrish, DCS school security officer, said using the wireless safety reporting system allows staff members to immediately notify personnel when a sequence of clicks is made on a wearable badge. Depending on the sequence of clicks, anyone can alert other faculty, administration or law enforcement.

Coe said the new solar energy proposal includes a partnership with a solar energy company that will install and take responsibility of the panels at multiple locations, including Dothan High School and the Dothan Early Education Center. More details about the solar project are expected to be released soon from school officials.

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This partnership will also include a program with the Dothan Technology Center to create a solar energy workspace for students in the engineering program to work directly with engineers from the company.
The resident was concerned about a breakdown in communication following an effort to remedy overgrown grass on his property. He said he was not notified that the remediation did not meet the citys standards until it was too late.

Cowper said communication will be a big part of the new division as will proactively working with property owners on code enforcement issues.

In other business, the city commission:

Approved an application by Elri Parker for a restaurant retail liquor license (on premise) for The Toasted Yolk Cafe at 3070 Ross Clark Circle.

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Entered into a lease agreement with Hollywood South Studios, LLC for property located at 500 Dusy Street, formerly known as Young Junior High School, at a minimum cost of $460 per month for a term of one year.

Declared certain properties which are overgrown with weeds or other vegetative growth as nuisances and injurious to the health, safety, and welfare of the community and ordering that the said properties be abated.

Accepted deeds from Wiregrass Habitat for Humanity, Inc. and Darlene Pressley for donated parcels in Diamond Grove Subdivision. Dothan Leisure Services will maintain the donated land as a city park.
Most states have one General Fund budget. We are only one of five states that have two.

Some of you have asked why we have two budgets  one for the General Fund and one for education. Here is why.

During the era of the Great Depression and even afterwards, education in Alabama was woefully underfunded and that is really being generous to simply say underfunded. Our schools were similar to a Third World country. We had two separate systems, one for white students and one for Black students. Many rural schools were one room shanties like folks used in the 1800s, like Blab schools, no air conditioning and wood burning stoves for heat.

There were no buses to transport children, so they really did walk to school, barefooted, many times miles to and from. This was for the white schools. You can only imagine what an abysmal education was afforded Black kids. Many times teachers were not even being paid. They were given script notes in hopes of getting paid in the future.
In recent months, U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks has enjoyed a far higher profile than hes seen in the time hes represented Alabamas 5th Congressional District spanning the northern border of the state. That may be good for him, since hes running for a U.S. Senate seat that will open upon the end of Richard Shelbys term next year, but whether its good for Alabama is debatable.

Hes currently being sued by a fellow Congressman for his role in inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol with an incendiary speech that may have played a part in the insurrection.

Last month, he signed on as co-sponsor  along with House colleagues Barry Moore, Matt Gaetz of Florida, and Louie Gohmert of Texas  to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greenes Fire Fauci Act, which would zero out the salary of Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, because of Greenes dissatisfaction with Faucis handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Over the weekend, Brooks took to Twitter to ridicule Democratic Texas lawmakers for flying to Washington, D.C., maskless, and gleefully shared his schadenfreude after three of the lawmakers tested positive for COVID-19.
ABB expands into mobile robotics by buying Asti

ABB is entering the autonomous mobile robot (AMR) market by buying the Spanish-headquartered AMR manufacturer, Asti Mobile Robotics Group, for an undisclosed sum. The deal will expand ABBs robotics and automation offering and, it claims, make it the only company to offer a complete portfolio for the next generation of flexible automation. The acquisition, a key part of ABBs external growth strategy, is expected to close soon.

Asti was founded in 1982 by the parents of its majority owner and CEO, Veronica Pascual Boe, who acquired the business from them in 2008. Asti is headquartered in Burgos, Spain and employs more than 300 people in Spain, France and Germany. Other shareholders include the European growth buyout investor, Keensight Capital.

Asti has one of Europes largest installed fleets of AMRs, and a customer base in the automotive, logistics, food & beverage and pharmaceuticals sectors in 20 countries. Its customers include Volkswagen, Stellantis, Nestle and Procter & Gamble. Since 2015, the company has maintained an annual growth rate of close to 30% and it is aiming to achieve around $50m in revenues during 2021.

ABB plans to expand Astis sales and service support operations to 53 countries, targeting the global AMR market where sales are predicted to reach around $14bn by 2025 with a CAGR of about 20%.

ASTIs headquarters will become ABBs AMR business headquarters, led by Boe, with core functions, including r&d, engineering, product and project value chains, continuing to be based at Astis facilities. ABB plans to expand the companys production capacity significantly to support a planned sales expansion in Europe and the Americas.

ABB will also establish an Asian AMR hub, including manufacturing, at its new robotics factory, which is due to open in Shanghai in 2022. China, the worlds largest robotics market, is predicted to be spending $1.8bn annually on AMRs by 2025.

With their industry-leading portfolio, comprehensive suite of software and deep domain expertise across growth segments, Asti is the perfect choice for us as we support our customers with the next generation of flexible automation, says Sami Atiya, president of ABBs Robotics & Discrete Automation business. It is going to help us to transform the robotics industry.

With this acquisition, ABB will be the only company to offer a full automation portfolio of AMRs, robots and machine automation solutions, from production to logistics to point of consumption, he adds. This is a gamechanger for our customers as they adapt to the individualised consumer and seize opportunities presented by significant changes in consumer demand.

AMRs will support an unprecedented degree of flexibility, from production, logistics, intralogistics and fulfilment, through to retail and healthcare environments. This will enable ABBs and ASTIs shared vision to help customers replace todays linear production lines with fully flexible networks, where intelligent AMRs autonomously navigate materials, parts and finished products between smart connected workstations, in factories, logistics centres, laboratories, shops or hospitals.

Atiya sees production flexibility as being a key to serving the expanding market for personalised products. Flexibility is a strategic need  those who cant adapt, will not survive, he predicts.

Sami Atiya, president of ABBs Robotics & Discrete Automation business, with Veronica Pascual Boe, CEO of ABBs acquisition, the AMR manufacturer Asti

Sami Atiya believes that AMRs could help to transform sectors such as the automotive industry, for example replacing existing linear welding processes by a series of flexible cells. AMRs could also deliver the exact components needed to personalise the interior of each car on a production line.

Asti CEO Veronica Pascual Boe, who will continue to lead the business, describes ABBs vision as a perfect match for us, as we both support our customers flexibility and competitiveness through accelerating automation in the workplace. This is the next exciting stage of our journey and together we will accelerate our innovation plans, expand our global customer service, partner network, production and execution capacity and leverage ABBs market access globally and particularly in China. I am delighted to join the extended robotics management team and lead the AMR business to deliver this ambitious growth plan.

Astis AMR portfolio includes autonomous towing vehicles, goods-to-person systems, carriers and box movers, as well as software ranging from vehicle navigation and control, fleet and order management, to cloud-based traceability systems. These will be integrated with ABBs portfolio of robots, machine automation, modular systems and software packages, including its RobotStudio simulation and programming tool.

ABB is the third-largest vendor of industrial (fixed) robots in the world, but until now  like most other industrial robot vendors  had no play in mobile robotics, comments Ash Sharma, managing director of Interact Analysis. The move to acquire a mobile robot vendor is not surprising as major customers are rapidly adopting mobile robotics to augment their production line automation. Flexible manufacturing necessitates the use of mobile robots for material flow.

This mirrors the move made by Omron which acquired mobile robot vendor Adept back in 2015 and successfully created an integrated offering to vendors of both mobile and fixed robotics, Sharma points out.

Interact predicts that mobile robots used in manufacturing will generate more than $13bn in cumulative revenues over the next four years.

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With strong economic growth forecast and Vietnamese consumers' increasing exposure to global standards of living, urban branded residences are becoming a new market trend.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, the Vietnamese economy, unlike most others, was able to escape a contraction in 2020 thanks to competent handling of the crisis, growing at 2.91 percent. According to the World Economic Outlook Report, a survey by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Vietnam's economic growth rate is one of the four highest in the world.

Vietnam's economy is expected to grow five times by 2035, becoming the 19th largest in the world, says U.K. consultancy the Center for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) in its annual league table on the growth prospects of 193 economies. Its GDP growth is forecast at 7 percent a year over the next five years, and 6.6 percent in the subsequent decade, reaching a nominal GDP of $1.59 trillion - a nearly five-fold increase in 15 years, passing major Asian economies like Taiwan and Thailand.

Riding the economic wave, the rich population in Vietnam posted the worlds second fastest growth over the past decade. The countrys average annual growth rate of those with a net worth between $5-30 million, categorized as a very high net worth (VHNW) population, reached 13.9 percent during the 2010-2019 period, says Wealth-X, a leading global wealth information and insight provider.

A Wealth-X report shows Vietnam ranks second among the worlds top wealth markets. Photo by Wealth-X.

The affluent class is forecast to grow strongly in the next five years. By 2025, Vietnam will have 511 ultra-high-net-worth individuals (UHNWI) with a net worth of at least $30 million each and 25,812 high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) with assets of at least $1 million, says The Wealth Report 2021 put out by Knight Frank. This translates to a growth rate of over 30 percent in the next five years.

The era of "branded living"

As top international luxury brands make a foray into Vietnam, the growing and globally-mobile high-net-worth population in Vietnam is aware of which car they want to own and which style of clothes they want to wear. They now seek the same branding experience in their home too.

Branded residences, which are normally a partnership between a brand (often a hotel operator) and developer, is not a new concept internationally or even locally; however, it is an emerging segment in Vietnam.

In January 2021, Marriott International and Masterise Homes entered a milestone partnership to bring the hotelier's first branded residences projects to Vietnam. The agreement is set to allow Masterise Homes to extend its development expertise into Vietnams fast-growing luxury real estate market, leveraging Marriott Internationals global brands like Marriott, JW Marriott and Ritz-Carlton in projects in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. The strategic partnership introduced Urban Branded Residences to the Vietnamese property market and will deliver unparalleled ultra-luxury living to discerning wealthy customers.

Signing between Masterise Homes and Marriott International. Photo by Masterise Homes.

This mirrors the trend worldwide, where over 60 percent of branded residential schemes are in major urban centers, said Matthew Powell, director of Savills Hanoi.

"We feel this trend will become more established over the next few years as the approach delivers superior, guaranteed quality, proven luxury with brand recognition and "5-star standard" service, which also reassures investors and property developers themselves, let alone the attached price-premium. We see opportunities and potential growth in this high-end sub-segment," Powell emphasized.

Putting Vietnam into the spotlight

The first Urban Branded Residences project to result from the partnership between Marriott International and Masterise Homes is Grand Marina, Saigon, which comprises eight residential towers with some 4,500 ultra-luxury branded units from two Marriott International brands  JW Marriott and Marriott. It is Marriotts largest ever.

Marriotts first branded residence project in Vietnam is also its largest. Photo by Masterise Homes

With branded units starting at $1 million, its price is comparable to those of other branded residences in the region like The Residences at Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok, or The Residences at the St. Regis Singapore.

The success of two launches in Hong Kong and Vietnam proved a large number of customers are confident its quality could also compare to branded residences in the region. Grand Marina succeeded in elevating the benchmark of luxury living in Vietnam to international standards and establishing a new real estate sector in Vietnam: branded residences. Marriott brand association offered global recognition for not only these residences and their owners but also the Vietnam real estate market on the world map.

David Jackson, CEO, Colliers Vietnam, said: "Grand Marina Saigon, backed by Marriott International, has created confidence among customers both locally and abroad. The well-known brand has attracted many buyers, and Vietnams real estate has attracted many foreign investors looking at alternative markets with higher upside potential when investment opportunities in their own countries are becoming saturated."

Jason Turnbull, deputy managing director cum CFO, Masterise Homes confirmed the developers plan to introduce more branded residences associated with Marriott International brands in 2021 in prime locations across Hanoi and HCMC.

"The launch of branded residential projects with global-standard design, construction and operation will bring a new level of ultra-luxury living to Vietnam and put the countrys real estate market in a higher position regionally and internationally. They will also offer a global address for world elites and successful entrepreneurs, shining a light on opportunities in Vietnam and ultimately attract more foreign investment to the country and contribute to stronger economic growth," said the Masterise executive.
Emperor Thanh Thai's sword sold in US auction for $50,000

By Phien An July 20, 2021 | 11:56 am GMT+7

A sword said to belong to Emperor Thanh Thai has fetched $50,000 in an auction held by GWS Auctions House in the U.S.

Measuring 81 cm in length, "the sword represents a prosperous nation, peace and happiness and is decorated with inset gemstones, incised details and a lotus form handle," the auction house said.

It has calligraphy carvings in Chinese saying 10th Emperor of Nguyen Dynasty, Maintenance of Justice and Order and Mandate of Heaven: Emperor Thanh Thai.

The sword was a family heirloom passed down for many generations over 1,000 years, and survived "several wars, multiple dynasties," GWS said.

The sword said to belong to Emperor Thanh Thai (1879  1954) of the Nguyen Dynasty. Photo courtesy of GWS Auctions House.

Though its value was estimated at $350,000 - 400,000, it only fetched a fraction of that.

Thanh Thai (1879 - 1954), born Nguyen Phuc Buu Lan, was the seventh son of Emperor Duc Duc.

He ascended to the throne at the age of 10 as the 10th monarch of the Nguyen Dynasty.

After an 18-year reign, he was forced to abdicate by the French colonialists due to his patriotic inclinations and involvement in anti-colonial movements.

He and his son, Emperor Duy Tan, were driven into exile in La Reunion, an island in the Indian Ocean, in 1916.

Thanh Thai returned to Vietnam after 1945 and died in Saigon in 1954.
On July 12, 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, the Netherlands, rejected China's nine-dash line claiming 90 percent of the South China Sea, known as the East Sea in Vietnam.

Assessing the impact of the tribunals ruling, Cmdr. Jonathan Odom, Military Professor of International Law, Marshall Center for Security Studies, a German-American partnership in Germany, said it gives the Philippines and other countries a powerful podium to stand on.

Though China does not recognize it, the ruling is still a binding law, Odom said, adding that this was his personal opinion, and he was not presenting the view of Marshall Center.

Professor Jay Batongbacal, Director of the Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, University of the Philippines, said the biggest impact of the ruling was acknowledgement by the international community of the way in which the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) should be applied and interpreted in relation to the South China Sea.

Regarding disputes in the area, regional countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia, basically accept that the proper way to allocate jurisdiction and resources in the South China Sea is in accordance with the award. Major countries like the U.S., Japan, Australia, Canada, Germany and France have also expressed positions consistent with the tribunals ruling.

"There is clearly an alignment that has formed around the ruling, invalidating China's excessive claims and asserting respective parties rights and obligations as they carry out activities in the South China Sea."

Batongbacal said the international community is increasingly calling upon China to comply with the ruling, and has been more vocal about it.

Hoang Viet, a lecturer with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law, said that over the last five years, the ruling has prompted a range of countries to make their position on the South China Sea clearer.

He said that in particular, after Malaysia sent its verbale notes to the United Nations citing the ruling in 2019, several countries have, directly and indirectly, expressed their stand on the need to uphold international law.

In early 2021, Japan joined in.

"The award created a big effect," Viet said.

Regarding the rulings impact on China, James Kraska, Chair and Charles H. Stockton Professor of International Maritime Law, the Stockton Center for International Law, the Naval War College in the U.S., noted that China was talking less about the nine-dash line and more about entitlements from rocks and islands. Beijing has realized that nobody outside of China accepts the nine dash line, Kraska said.

"The tribunal has imposed a very large cost on China. It has put China on the defensive with regard to its activities that are not consistent with the ruling."

Waste paper?

Commenting on assessments that the ruling has little value in the South China Sea as China is still being aggressive and intrusive, Viet with the Ho Chi Minh City University of Law said this would be understandable if people had expected that the ruling would make Beijing de-escalate.

The key issue is that the ruling does not have an enforcement mechanism as domestic law. If countries force China to comply, it can lead to military conflict. Therefore, compliance depends on countries' good faith, in accordance with The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

However "the ruling still has huge value in its legal aspect," Viet said.

He said that though China has said the ruling was "a piece of waste paper", Beijing has been making a lot of effort to reject the ruling by funding scholars to publish research on different sites.

Recently, on July 12, Chinese expert Wu Shicun, President of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, wrote an article titled "South China Sea arbitral award should be buried in the dustbin of history" in the Global Times.

"If China sees the ruling as invalid, why does it have to take so much effort (to discredit it)?"

While he agreed with Viet on the legal value of the award, Kraska said international law cannot solve all the problems and the ruling is not going to magically transform the relationship between countries.

Therefore, what is needed is that like-minded states in Southeast Asia such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and more powerful states like the U.S., Japan, Australia, India, and some NATO countries add authority to the ruling, by continuing to talk about it and act in accordance with it.

"Legal decisions have greater effect as time goes on," he said

Philippine Coast Guard join Japan Coast Guard in a communication exercise involving BRP Cape San Agustin, BRP Bagacay and patrol ship Echigo at Basilan Strait, November 21, 2018. Photo courtesy of Philippine Coast Guard.

Odom said the notion of the ruling having little value is "what China wants to see."

He recalled that the Chinese Society of International Law had issued a 400-page study written by over 100 experts, arguing that the ruling violated international law. However, many of the experts were not lawyers and they were not neutral experts. Therefore, no matter how many Chinese experts announce their opinions, it does not make the ruling any less binding on China.

Like Viet, Odom also suggested that the ideal action would be for related countries to continue to invoke the ruling. On the ruling's anniversary every year, countries like Vietnam, the U.S., Australia should issue statements, emphasizing that it cannot be wished away.

Odom noted that the statement made by the U.S. this year showed that though President Biden and his predecessor Trump do not agree on many issues, they concur on the importance of the tribunals ruling.

What next?

Batongbacal said the ruling may play a role in the presidential elections next year in the Philippines. He expected the new government to consistently assert its rights in jurisdictions based on the ruling.

Furthermore, he felt that concerned countries should focus on the point that China does not have any valid historic claim because it is probably the most important aspect of the ruling.

Viet agreed with the recommendation of the Philippines's lawyers that territory claimants in ASEAN should increase their cooperation in making clear overlapping areas and carry out joint patrols of the South China Sea to uphold the ruling. ASEAN can also cite the award in negotiating the Code of Conduct (COC) with China, he said.

Odom said he hopes the next administration in the Philippines will demonstrate a clear and consistent view on the ruling. This could help create a common voice for some ASEAN members who have direct interest in the area and lead to a possible joint verbal note, he added.

He also suggested small countries in the region strengthen maritime law enforcement in their maritime zones. For example, in the South Pacific, some countries do not have enough resources to fully police their exclusive economic zone against illegal fishermen, so they invite other countries to participate in joint law enforcement under the authority of the coastal state. Such activities are fully in compliance with international law, Odom confirmed.

Kraska said that if claimants in ASEAN could agree on some set of rules regarding the ruling, the international community will join and support them and China will be isolated.

In fact, China's actions creating fear were making countries cooperate more closely, he said.

The ruling will have greater normative authority as countries continue to cite it, he added.

"Hopefully one day, when China has a more reasonable government, they will be more accommodating of the interests of their neighbors."
A video still which circulated online shows Tran Van Em (R) having his motorbike and papers seized while on a trip to buy bread in Nha Trang as authorities claimed buying bread didn't count as "essential" activity.

Nha Trang Chairman Nguyen Sy Khanh Tuesday apologized to a man whose motorbike was seized because his purchase of bread during the social distancing period was deemed non-essential activity.

A letter of apology was sent to Tran Van Em, a construction worker who had his motorbike and papers seized Sunday for going out to buy bread, which ward authorities claimed was a "non-essential" activity that violated the Covid-19 social distancing order imposed on the central beach town.

The claim was made by Tran Le Huu Tho, deputy chairman of Vinh Hoa Ward because he did not fully understand Nha Trangs social distancing order, Khanh said.

Khanh also acknowledged that Thos conduct and communication with Em was improper.

As Nha Trangs chairman, Khanh apologized for the incident and said he would take responsibility.

A video showing Em being blocked by officials while riding his motorbike on a road was captured in a video that went viral online. Em later explained that he was going to buy bread.

Tho then claimed that buying bread was "not essential" and he would seize Em's papers and motorbike. Amid a heated exchange, Tho used derogatory language and even threatened that he would have Em arrested.

The video was later confirmed by Nguyen Thi Ha, head of the People's Committee of Vinh Hoa Ward, saying Tho had recorded the exchange as evidence, but the footage was leaked online.

After the incident went viral, Em was initially dismissed by the construction site that employed him, but rehired Tuesday morning. He got his papers and motorbike back on Monday.

The Khanh Hoa Party Committee has asked the Nha Trang administration to investigate the incident further and duly punish Tho's transgressions.

The popular beach town of Nha Trang began a two-week social distancing campaign starting July 9. Residents were told to stay home and only allowed to go out for "essential" tasks, including buying food, medicines and other emergencies.

So far, the town has accounted for 170 Covid-19 cases out of the total of 688 recorded in Khanh Hoa Province under the fourth coronavirus wave that struck Vietnam late April.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will visit Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines starting Friday, the Pentagon announced Monday.

The first visit to Southeast Asia by a top member of the Biden administration would demonstrate the importance it places on the region and on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an essential part of the Indo-Pacific architecture, Pentagon press secretary John F. Kirby said.

"This trip will underscore the enduring U.S. commitment to the region, and our interest in upholding the rules-based international order in the region and promoting ASEAN centrality."

There is no specific timeline yet for his visit to Vietnam but he "will meet with key leaders to reaffirm defense relationships and conduct bilateral meetings with senior officials."

In Singapore, he will speak at an event hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

At the Special ASEAN - U.S. Foreign Ministerial Meeting held virtually on July 14 and chaired by Lao Foreign Minister Saleumsay Kommasith and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the two sides emphasized the importance of peace, stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea, known in Vietnam as the East Sea.

The two sides also expect to soon have an effective Code of Conduct in the sea in accordance with international laws and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that respects the legitimate rights and interests of all related parties.
Vuong Dinh Hue takes oath as Chairman of the 15th National Assembly in Hanoi, July 20, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy.

Vuong Dinh Hue was re-elected chairman of the National Assembly Tuesday as the national legislative body started the first session of its 15th term.

Hue won 100 percent of the votes cast by 475 deputies.

Hue, 64, had been voted as chairman of the 14th National Assembly last March.

The native of the central province of Nghe An has a doctorate in economics and has been an academic in Vietnam and abroad.

He was finance minister from August 2011 to May 2013, head of the Central Economic Commission from December 2012 to April 2016 and became deputy prime minister in April 2016.

In February 2020 he became Party Secretary of Hanoi, replacing Hoang Trung Hai, who received a warning from the Politburo for violations at state-owned steel company TISCO.

Deputies attend the first session of the 15th National Assembly in Hanoi, July 20, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/Giang Huy.

The first session of the 15th National Assembly, held after the national election in May, will last until July 31. The session has been shortened by five days given nationwide Covid-19 developments.

The session will elect or formally ratify 50 leadership positions including those of the assembly, the government, and Supreme People's Court, the top prosecution office, and the State Audit Office.

It will also review the countrys social-economic situation, public spending, and issue decisions on two national programs on rural development and poverty alleviation.
Vials of Pfizer vaccine are prepared at a clinic in Germany, February 2, 2021. Photo by AFP.

Vietnam has reached agreements on technology transfers for Russian and U.S. coronavirus vaccines, the government said in a statement, without elaborating.

Vietnam is keen to boost its vaccine capacity and the World Health Organization said in May it was reviewing a proposal by an unidentified manufacturer in Vietnam to become an mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine technology hub.

Vietnam's health ministry was also in talks with Russia to produce the Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine, media has reported.

Tuesday's statement also said Vietnam will receive 20 million more doses of the mRNA shot co-developed by U.S. company Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, raising the total to 51 million doses.

After successfully containing the virus for much of the pandemic, Vietnam is facing its worst outbreak so far, with a surge in daily infections to record levels adding to pressure on the government to shore up supplies and accelerate inoculations.

Up to now, Vietnam has secured deals for 105 million doses of vaccines and is in talks with other manufacturers on deals for a further 70 million shots, the government said, adding it hoped to receive the shots in 2021 and early 2022.

The Southeast Asian country has received around 10.6 million doses of vaccines, and is due to receive supplies of Moderna's vaccine from the United States via the Covax facility.

Vietnam has also asked China for doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, the government statement added.

Vietnam's health ministry said the country's home-grown vaccine, NanoCovax, was expected to be widely administered by the end of 2021.

To date around 4.3 million doses have been administered, but only about 310,000 people have been fully vaccinated out of a population of 96 million.
The national aviation authority has proposed widening a runway and building more taxiways and aprons on the southern Con Dao Island to further tap its tourism potential.

The Civil Aviation Authority of Vietnam (CAAV) has said in a document sent to the Ministry of Transport that the upgrade would enable the airport to handle large jet aircraft and increase the airports capacity from 400,000 to two million passengers a year in 2030.

The CAAV wants to increase the existing 1,830-meter-long runway's width from 30 to 45 meters to receive large jets such as A319neo and A320neo. At present, it can only handle ATR72 turboprop aircraft with a capacity of 72-78 passengers.

It has also suggested building a 1,408-long-meter parallel taxiway and three new taxiways to connect with the runway.

Another part of the proposed upgrade is a new apron for eight aircraft, a new air traffic control tower on the east side of the passenger terminal, a synchronous airport beacon system and a landing gear system to operate flights at night.

The cost of all the upgrades is estimated at VND5.43 trillion ($235.5 million), including VND76.4 billion for land clearance.

The Con Dao Airport was first built by the French in the 20th century and upgraded in 2003 for commercial use. It has a 3C classification, meaning it can only receive ATR 72 and other small aircraft, and is closed at night because it does not have a runway lighting system.

According a previously approved plan, the airport will serve 500,000 passengers a year by 2025. Currently, it operates only during the day.

Vietnam Air Services Company, commonly known as VASCO, a subsidiary of Vietnam Airlines, and the FLCs Bamboo Airways are the only two carriers operating regular flights to the island at present.

Con Dao, famous for its beautiful beaches and wartime prison, is a tourist destination whose popularity has risen in recent years. In the 2010-2016 period, Con Dao airport achieved an average growth rate of 22.7 percent per year.

In 2019, the island had welcomed 400,000 tourists, up 37 percent year-on-year. In 2020, despite the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of passengers handled by the airport was 447,750, an increase of 4.1 percent over 2019.

Visitors usually fly to Con Dao from HCMC, Da Nang and Hanoi or travel by high-speed boat from Soc Trang and Ba Ria-Vung Tau provinces.
The United States strongly condemns the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise and the attack on First Lady Martine Moise. President Joe Biden called the action by armed men who raided the Haitian Presidents home in the early hours of July 7 heinous, and he pledged that the United States stands ready to assist as we continue to work for a safe and secure Haiti.

Haiti has been plagued by natural disasters, violence, corruption, and political instability for decades.

Following President Moises assassination, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price declared at a press briefing, Those who seek to accomplish their political goals through violence and by subverting the rule of law will not succeed in thwarting the Haitian people and their desire for a better future. We urge Haitian authorities to bring those responsible to justice, he said. The United States calls on all political parties, civil society groups and stakeholders to echo what weve heard from Acting Prime Minister Claude Josephs call for calm and to work together in the wake of this tragedy to ensure peace and democratic governance.

Spokesperson Price emphasized that the partnership between the United States and the Haitian people and their elected government will continue. He noted that in January 2021, the United States announced more than $75 million in FY 20 funds. This development and global health assistance aims to promote economic growth, job creation and agricultural development, provide basic health care and education services, and improve the effectiveness of government.

He said the United States is prepared to receive additional requests for assistance from Haitian authorities in the wake of President Moises death.

Asked whether the elections which were to take place later this year should go forward, Spokesperson Price was clear: It is still the view of the United States that elections this year should proceed. We know that free and fair elections are the democratic path towards ending Haitis irregular and prolonged rule by decree and restoring its parliament, which as of now has lapsed. Free and fair presidential elections will facilitate a peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected president as well.

Preserving Haitis democratic institutions, said Spokesperson Price, is the key to restoring peace.
Deanna Lou Mitchell-Lorenzo, 57, of Anderson, Indiana, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to 45 days in jail.

June 30

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Justin Patrick Kelley, 30, of Modesto, California pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance and was given a suspended sentence of 19 to 48 months in prison, was placed on probation for 18 months and was ordered to complete the Adult Drug Court Program and serve 16 days in jail for contempt of court for failure to appear for sentencing. In a separate matter, he pleaded no contest to two counts of possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance and was given a suspended sentence of 19 to 48 months in prison, and placed on probation for 18 months.

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Myranda Jean Reich, 27, of Butte, Montana, pleaded guilty to attempted possession of a Schedule I or II controlled substance and was given a suspended sentence of one year in jail and was placed on probation for one year.

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The response from Mason City, Iowa, was that the Bird Scooters have been popular since they were introduced at the end of May, and the most common issue is riders leaving the scooters on private property. However, the local Bird representative does a good job of picking them up and placing them where people are more likely to look for them, according to the response.

My biggest complaint is the cost of the ride. When researching the company, we found that in the larger cities, rides cost a flat fee of $1 and then 15 cents per minute, wrote Steven Van Steenhuyse, director of Mason Citys development services, who reported the cost in Mason City is $1 plus 29 cents per minute.

That comes out to $18.40 for an hour, which I feel is rather expensive. Its hard to predict, when the novelty of the scooters wears off, if people will want to pay that much to enjoy them, he said.

From Great Bend, Kan., also listed by Bird as a comparable city, the community coordinator, Christina Hayes, wrote that the city loves the scooters, although she had a few warnings, such as making sure they are not allowed on tennis courts, walking paths or basketball courts because of the tire markings.

She also urged Elko to help educate the public on safety of use, such as with media posts, and to let the public know it is OK if the scooters end up in front of a house, which is one of the purposes of the scooters  to get people where they need to go. In addition, she said cities should not take on maintenance.

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U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei has secured funding for community projects in rural Nevadas 2nd Congressional District  including more than half a million dollars for West Wendover  but he doesnt plan to vote in favor of spending it.

Amodei announced Monday that 10 out of 10 Community Project Funding requests totaling $9.5 million are included in legislation that is expected to be passed by the House and sent to the Senate for consideration. They include $376,000 for police communications equipment and $320,000 for a community health clinic x-ray machine in West Wendover.

Congratulations to the entities in Nevadas Second District who were attentive to the rules and worked within the process to get the funding they requested, he said.

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Unfortunately, in typical post-COVID cultural fashion, these legitimate funding requests were included in massive pieces of legislation filled with irresponsible spending that advances partisan, progressive agendas, Amodei added. I cant vote for numerous costly, and politically driven measures in this legislation.
We have already started, and the city may want to consider dividing into two separate applications based on census blocks, Feest said. It might be in the best interest of the city to break this down.

He also said CC paid higher-than-expected costs for street sealant after fiber installation without complaint so the company would not destroy your streets.

Joseph Freddoso, a consultant with the Governors Office of Science, Innovation and Technology, said even if Elko does not win a grant at this time, the grant applications will not go to waste but could be used later.

His office will help the city with the grant application process and application review, but the grant money is not coming through the state as grants often do.

Were here to support the city, Freddoso said.

NGMs Walker said that NGM hired a consultant for an extensive review of Anthem and its financial position before starting to work on a plan for providing broadband to the area. He said NGM insisted there be no connection fees and that Anthem will not just take the easy money by going down the middle of Elko but will also go to Spring Creek and Lamoille.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  As infernos continue to rage across Oregon, officials say that the state will need every firefighter on deck" this wildfire season.

Currently, 5,000 firefighters are battling blazes in the state, including 2,000 working on the Bootleg Fire  the nation's largest active wildfire that has grown to 607-square-miles.

It is going to take every layer of our response system to keep Oregonians safe this season, State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said during a news conference Tuesday.

Along with the exceedingly hot and dry conditions, Ruiz-Temple said that this wildfire season is historic in terms of the amount of resources that have been deployed.

Fire officials say that while there are still some local crews and National Guard members available to help, teams from Utah and California have also been brought to Oregon.

What we know in Oregon, in terms of structural protection and wildland, the amount of firefighters we have are not commensurate with the types and size of our fires, Ruiz-Temple said. We do rely on that complete coordinated system, not only within Oregon but around the nation.

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CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP)  Nevada-based scientists argue in a new study that wildfire smoke may increase the risk of contracting the coronavirus.

A study published last week by scientists at the Desert Research Institute found that coronavirus infection rates increased disproportionately during wildfire season in 2020, when smoke from fires in neighboring states blanketed much of northern Nevada.

In a paper in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, Desert Research Institute Assistant Research Scientist Daniel Kiser and four co-authors note the test positivity rate in Washoe County increased significantly during periods when monitors measured high levels of particulate matter in the air from wildfire smoke.

For every 10 micrograms per cubic meter of small particulate matter known as PM2.5 in the air, the positivity rate increased about 6.3% two to six days later, the study found.

Kiser said the study was observational and noted that the uptick could be attributed to other factors, like last year's second surge, students returning to schools or changes in local restrictions. But he said momentary upticks during periods of high pollution suggested a connection between smoke and the spread of the virus.
Editor:

You have to be deaf, blind or stupid not to sense that things are not going right in our country. Our government now caters to a multitude of special interest groups: from farmers to retirees, lobbyists pave the road to our countrys perdition with requests for subsidies, minimum-wage laws, health and safety controls, money for schools, childrens poverty and on and on.

Politicians who win are the ones who promise the most goodies, a never-ending competition amongst our elitist legislators, so there is no desire to ever reduce our debt or balance a budget. Our weak-kneed politicians just give it a wink and a nod and trust we are none the wiser.

This new bureaucratic order believes they are better equipped than we are to tell us how to run our lives. The indoctrination of our children has been going on for two generations, starting with Wilson, thru Roosevelts disastrous New Deal, and then the even worse Great Society programs of Pres. Johnson, and on through the Obama years.
Headlines

- IRS sends out another 4 million tax refunds to unemployment benefits recipients (Details)

- How wil the delta covid-19 variant affect additional pandemic unemployment benefits? (Details)

- With millions of households still waiting for a Child Tax Credit payment, how can you get yours? (Details)

- Sen. Bernie Sanders has tabled a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package, including making the new Child Tax Credit permanent (Details)

- The Senate voted against the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill on Wednesday, meaning that Biden will likely have to use reconciliation to pass it

Useful information / links

Fourth Stimulus Check: Could it arrive in August? (Details)

Child Tax Credit | Who qualifies for the $500 dependent credit and who doesn't get the Child Tax Credit? (details) | Can I just get one month and opt out? (Details)

US Congress 101 | What is a reconciliation bill and how is it different from a normal bill? (Details)

Unemployment | Which states have ended supplementary unemployment benefits? (Details)

Golden State stimulus check | When will it arrive?

Still waiting for your tax refund? Find out when to contact the IRS

Have a read of some of our related news articles:
On July 20 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the surface of the Moon. Since then there have been six successful moon landings but none since December 1972. With the anniversary of the successful mission, and amidst NASA plans to resume moon missions by 2024, you should read up on this generation defining moment.

The Cold War

Between 1945 and 1991 the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in what is now known as the Cold War. Both sides engaged in numerous proxy wars with smaller countries, by either sponsoring warring factions or sending soldiers to fight, without going to war against each other.

But it was not just a war of armies. Both nations engaged in a technological challenge to see who was superior. After the Americans detonated the first atomic weapon in August 1945, the Soviets felt they had to match the Americans in scientific capability. The USSR tested their first nuclear bomb in 1949 and took the first steps into space by sending Sputnik, the world's first satellite, into orbit around the planet in 1957.

Thus, the 'space race' began.

The 'space race'

The Soviets achieved the first victory when on April 12 1961, they sent pilot Yuri Gagarin into the Earth's orbit, the first man in space. American President John F. Kennedy announced a month later, "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."

The stakes had been raised but there was only one more obstacle. Actually getting to the Moon.

Played against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement, the two superpowers engaged in hurried rocket development. The US had many tests and many failures which resulted in deaths of astronauts.

But finally in 1969 NASA was prepared to take on the challenge mere months before President Kennedy's lunar deadline as up.

The landing itself

After setting off July 16, the three-man crew of Commander Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins let Cape Canaveral in Apollo 11, their craft for the journey. There was no certainty that their mission would be a success and several astronauts had perished before in disasters on the launchpad.

Without a hitch the crew reached the Moon's orbit. Collins stayed in the command module while Armstrong and Aldrin went to the surface of the Moon. It was here that Armstrong uttered the famous words: "that's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind."

The crew returned to Earth July 24 safely and were greeted by six million people celebrating on the streets of New York City. The US had won the race.

The results and significance

The victory was seen in the West as an victory of the capitalist world system over the communists. Although not admitted at the time, the Soviets had been technologically unable to do their own moon mission. For the public, it was a serious media event and over twenty percent of the world's population watched humans walk on the Moon for the first time.

Visiting the Moon gave humanity the first glimpses of how our planet was created, a ball of floating rock drifting listlessly through space. The samples gathered from the satellite helped decipher what the Moon was, what it was made of and how it got there. It answered questions about our planet, asked new ones and generated stunning photos that showcased our planet and reflected the technological brilliance humanity can create.

However, after the first successful manned mission, the follow up missions were nowhere near as popular and only three years later moon missions were halted. NASA's eyes turned toward plans for shuttles and the ISS, away from rocket engineering.

But in recent years there has been renewed focus on the Moon. NASA announced in 2017 that their plan was to put the first woman on the Moon as well as crating plans to build a human colony. The first test mission is due in November of this year.

And it hasn't just been the US in planning further lunar flights. Both China and India have joined Russia in creating plans to return to the Moon. Perhaps there will be another space race between the US and the new world superpower, China, that will reignite interest in humanity's possibilities beyond our own planet.
Aerial photo taken on Nov. 19, 2020 shows a cargo ship leaving a berth of the Qinzhou Port in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Zhang Ailin)

BEIJING, July 19 (Xinhua) -- This year marks the 30th anniversary of China-ASEAN Dialogue Relations. China-ASEAN relationship has grown into the most successful and vibrant model for cooperation in the Asia-Pacific and an exemplary effort in building a community with a shared future for mankind, Chinese President Xi Jinping said in 2020.

China, which established a dialogue relationship with ASEAN in 1991, was the first to ink the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the first to become ASEAN's strategic partner and the first to start free trade area negotiations with ASEAN.

Xi has, on various bilateral and multilateral occasions, called for greater China-ASEAN cooperation. The following are some highlights of his remarks in this regard.

Aerial photo taken on Nov. 26, 2020 shows the view of Nanning International Convention and Exhibition Center, the venue of the 17th China-ASEAN Expo, and its neighboring buildings in Nanning, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. (Xinhua/Lu Boan)

Nov. 27, 2020

China will work with ASEAN to advance all-round cooperation and maintain good momentum for development and prosperity in the region, Xi said while addressing via video the opening ceremony of the 17th China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit held in Nanning, capital of south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

China welcomes the signature of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership and looks forward to its early entry into force, Xi said.

China will work with ASEAN members to sustain the smooth flow of trade, promote mutual investment, open markets wider to each other, and foster deeply integrated industrial, supply and value chains, he said.

July 14, 2020

In a telephone conversation with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Xi said that cooperation between China and Singapore in the fight against COVID-19 has become a new highlight of bilateral relations and added significant connotations to their all-round cooperative partnership.

China, Xi said, will continue to provide Singapore with firm support.

In the battle against COVID-19, China, upholding the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, has been sharing its experience unreservedly with other countries, and providing supplies and technical support for the international community to the best of its capacity, Xi said.

The first batch of COVID-19 vaccines arrive at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, Feb. 24, 2021. (Xinhua/Zhang Keren)

July 14, 2020

In a telephone conversation with Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, Xi said China stands ready to work with Thailand to cement solidarity and cooperation among regional countries and safeguard the sound momentum of development and prosperity in the region.

The two sides, Xi suggested, should better synergize the Belt and Road Initiative and Thailand's development strategies such as Thailand 4.0 and the Eastern Economic Corridor, promote cooperation in such innovative fields as e-commerce, and push for new development of their comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.

April 10, 2018

Xi met with Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at the Boao Forum for Asia annual conference on deepening cooperation in key areas.

China is willing to strengthen coordination with ASEAN countries including Singapore, and synergize the Belt and Road Initiative with ASEAN's development plan to build a community with a shared future for both sides, he said.

Workers work at the construction site of the China-funded Binondo-Intramuros Bridge in Manila, the Philippines, Nov. 18, 2020. (Xinhua/Rouelle Umali)

Nov. 11, 2017

On the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders' Meeting, Xi and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte discussed how to strengthen bilateral ties.

China will continue to treat neighboring countries with amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, and push forward the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, Xi said.

Xi also said China is to work with ASEAN countries to maintain peace and stability, as well as development and prosperity in the South China Sea region. 

[ Editor: Zhang Zhou ]
Since the launch of the land market on July 1 and as of the morning of July 19, some 1,107 land transactions have been carried out in Ukraine for agricultural plots with a total area of 1,530 hectares, the leaders in terms of the number of contracts concluded are Poltava and Kharkiv regions, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food said on its website.

It is specified that in terms of the total area of land plots sold, Poltava region is leading with 351.3 hectares, followed by Kharkiv (237.2 hectares), Vinnytsia (132.8 hectares), Kyiv (106.8 hectares) and Dnipropetrovsk (81.6 ha) regions.

The ministry adds that since the launch of the land market, 3,800 applications have been received from notaries for access to the State Land Cadastre in order to online check the legality of the purchase of land plots. Of these, 3,730 have been agreed, 20 are in the queue for consideration, 490 are denied access. In total, there are over 6,000 notaries in the country.

As reported, the agricultural land market launched in Ukraine as part of the government's land reform began operating on July 1. At the first stage of the reform, only citizens of the country will be able to buy and sell land plots. One individual will be able to have at his disposal no more than 100 hectares.

The right to acquire agricultural land on January 1, 2024 will be given to legal entities created in accordance with the legislation of Ukraine, while the ultimate beneficiary of one or several legal entities will be able to consolidate through them in aggregate no more than 10,000 hectares.
The Verkhovna Rada is proposed to reduce the largest possible area of land plots allowed for purchase by citizens of Ukraine and legal entities from January 1, 2024 from 10,000 hectares to 500 hectares, to oblige the buyer to cultivate at least 80% of the acquired land for at least five years, and also introduce a number of restrictions to prevent the concentration of land in one hand.

Bill No. 5771-1 with amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine regarding clarification of the criteria for acquiring ownership of farmland plots was registered on July 19 in the Verkhovna Rada by MPs Oleksiy Ustenko and Oleksandr Kachura (both are from the Servant of the People parliamentary faction).

The bill proposes to allow the purchase of up to 500 hectares of farmland only to citizens of Ukraine and legal entities created in Ukraine, while the buyer, after the completion of the transaction, is planned to be obliged to cultivate at least 80% of the purchased land for a period of at least five years. In addition, the bill proposes a ban on any changes in the composition of participants (shareholders, members) of a legal entity that has bought the land for a period of at least three years. According to the authors of the bill, these measures will neutralize the scheme of buying up land by large holdings through dummies.

In an explanatory note to the bill, the MPs refer to the experience of Poland, where there are restrictions on the land market, similar to those proposed in bill No. 5771.

In addition, the authors of the bill propose to temporarily set the size of the regulatory evaluation of land, below which the value of agricultural land cannot be estimated when concluding transactions with it, at a level not lower than $1,200 per ha. It is proposed to introduce an interim measure for a period of six months from the date of entry into force of the new methodology for regulatory evaluation of agricultural land, which the Cabinet of Ministers will have to develop and approve if the Rada adopts this bill.
U.S. Charge d'Affaires notes significant progress in Ukraine's judicial system reforms, importance of integrity of SAPO selection process

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, who is now U.S. Charge d'Affaires in Ukraine George Kent held a roundtable talk on anti-corruption issues, according to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

"CDA Kent hosted an anti-corruption roundtable, noting significant recent progress on Ukrainian judicial system reforms and the importance of the integrity of Ukraine's Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) selection process," the embassy said on Twitter on Tuesday.

The participants also discussed the need for further reform of Ukraine's defense industry and full implementation of the defense procurement law.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, U.S. Charge d'Affaires in Ukraine George Kent discussed with the leaders of the Crimean Tatar people, officials and MPs the situation in the temporarily occupied Crimea and the Crimean Platform summit.

"Honored to meet with Crimean Tatar MPs and government officials to discuss Russia'a ongoing occupation of Crimea, persecution of the population, and the upcoming Crimean platform," the U.S. Embassy said on Facebook.
Security in Black Sea region should become priority of world community, Crimean Platform can be important tool for this  Zelensky

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, while on a working visit to Georgia to participate in the Batumi International Conference, said that security in the Black Sea region should become a priority of the world community, and the Crimean Platform could be an important tool for this.

"Today we have paid considerable attention to the development of security and defense cooperation in the Black Sea region. The return of the Black and Azov Seas under the international maritime law and the restoration of navigation safety must be a priority for the world community. The Ukrainian Crimean Platform initiative can become an important tool for achieving this goal," Zelensky said.

The president saidthat he would be glad to welcome the leaders of Georgia, Moldova, as well as the President of the European Council at the inaugural summit of the Crimean Platform, which will be held in Kyiv on August 23.

Zelensky also thanked the President of Georgia for the release of two Ukrainian citizens - yachtsmen Yuriy Khomych and Volodymyr Diachenko.

"I am glad that today we are returning to Ukraine not only with the good results of the summit, but also with good news at the human level. Namely, we are coming back with two of our citizens of Ukraine who were detained. I would like thank Mrs. President Salome Zourabichvili for her assistance in this matter," the head of state said.
U.S. Department of State Adviser Derek Cholle will visit Kyiv on July 20 and 21 to reinforce the strategic value of the U.S. relations with Ukraine, the press service of the U.S. Department of State said.

The U.S. Department of State said that Department Advisor Derek Cholle will visit Kyiv on July 20-21 and Warsaw on July 21-23 to reinforce the strategic value of the U.S. relations with Ukraine and Poland. He will continue our diplomatic negotiations with Ukraine and Poland on a number of issues, including our shared concerns about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and energy security in general, as well as ongoing reforms.

It is noted that in Kyiv, the adviser will meet with senior government officials to discuss the U.S. support for Ukraine's efforts to counter Russian aggression and further advance economic and anti-corruption reforms.

In addition, he will meet with representatives of the business community to discuss the recovery of the Ukrainian economy.
Ukraine starts fifth stage of vaccination campaign, everyone can get vaccinated against COVID-19

Ukraine is starting the fifth stage of coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination campaign; from July 21, all adults will be able to get vaccinated.

"The Health Ministry is ready to start the fifth stage of vaccination against COVID-19. From July 21, all adults who want to be vaccinated can be vaccinated against COVID-19," Health Minister Viktor Liashko said at a briefing on Tuesday.

He said it will be possible to vaccinate at the nearest vaccination station or at a mass vaccination center.

Liashko said that today in Ukraine 4.179 million vaccinations against COVID-19 have already been made, more than 1.461 million people have been fully vaccinated, namely doctors, teachers, military personnel, social workers, senior citizens and others. At the same time, Ukraine is constantly increasing the rate of vaccination.

According to Liashko, in June in Ukraine, almost four times more vaccinations were carried out than in May, and over 19 days in July, more than 1.503 million vaccinations were already made, almost as much as in June.
Ukraine has concrete ideas and proposals on how to prevent Russia from turning the Black Sea into its "inner lake," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has said.

"If the Black Sea countries and NATO members plus Ukraine, Georgia, and even a place for Moldova in this mechanism can be found, do not join their efforts, then Russia will turn the Black Sea into its inner lake, divide it in half and start to fully dominate its are. This topic was discussed very substantively yesterday, that is, what needs to be done in order to level the security situation in the Black Sea. Ukraine has concrete ideas, concrete proposals on this matter," Kuleba said live on Facebook on Tuesday, following the results of the visit of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to Georgia.

The minister said Ukraine is now discussing these ideas with Georgia, Moldova, NATO member states that are Black Sea and friendly to Ukraine, namely Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

Kuleba also said the Associated Trio of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova was created in Kyiv in May in order to strengthen European integration, and on Monday a full-fledged summit of the leaders of the Associated Trio was held in Batumi with the participation of President of the European Council Charles Michel.

"Here we are talking about the security of the region, about the security of Europe in general, because we are absolutely convinced that without the membership of our three countries in the EU, it will be impossible to ensure the full security of Europe [...]. But I will tell you that more and more countries in the EU are also beginning to think within this paradigm, and this is very encouraging," he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and U.S. President Joe Biden will meet this summer, but the exact date is still unknown, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, U.S. Charge d'Affaires George Kent has said.

In an interview with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Kent said that when President Biden and President Zelensky spoke for the second time, President Biden suggested that the meeting be in July or later in the summer. Thus, the meeting will be a little later. Not in July, but in August.

Asked if there are now any obstacles to meeting Zelensky and Biden, Kent said that now the only question is to find time in President Biden's schedule.

Kent added the meeting will be in the summer, but not now.
The High Council of Justice (HCJ) has called on MPs to reconsider the key issues of bill No. 5068 on reform of the HCJ regarding the role of international experts in the formation of public agencies of Ukraine.

"The High Council of Justice once again draws the attention of the MPs of Ukraine, the President of Ukraine to the need to revise bill No. 5068 to prevent a constitutional crisis and the collapse of the judiciary," according to the appeal released on the HCJ website on Tuesday.

The HCJ said hat on July 20, the Verkhovna Rada is going to an extraordinary meeting, and the agenda includes the cancellation of the decision on adoption at second reading and bill No. 5068 in general (on amending some laws of Ukraine regarding the procedure for (appointments) to the positions of members of the HCJ and the activities of disciplinary inspectors of the HCJ).

"The amendments proposed by bill No. 5068, which some call 'judicial reform,' in no way solve the current problems and, moreover, do not aim at conceptual changes. The bill provides the function of exercising total control to international experts who will act contrary to the Constitution of Ukraine and perform the function of cleansing the HCJ of its current members and thus usurp the judiciary in the country," the council said in the appeal.

The HCJ is convinced that such a reform "is doomed to failure and will lead to an irrevocable loss of citizens' confidence in the authorities in Ukraine, primarily in the judiciary."

The HCJ also said the bill does not meet Ukraine's obligations to the IMF: "The demand was to reform the HCJ, and not to transfer all power to international relations by disregarding the Constitution, independence and national sovereignty."

In addition, the HCJ draws attention to the fact that the provisions of the bill shift the responsibility for the reform onto foreigners.

"International experts, with all the power vested in them by bill No. 5068, do not bear any responsibility for the decisions taken," the council said in the appeal.

The appeal also states that in reforming the HCJ, the key should be the voice of the subjects of appointment, representatives of judges, lawyers, prosecutors, scientists, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the president of the country.
Danish Ambassador during his visit to JFO area: You protect security of Europe, if you are in danger, then we cannot be safe either

On July 19-20, a delegation of the Kingdom of Denmark, led by Ambassador Ole Egberg Mikkelsen, visited the area of the Joint Forces Operation (JFO), and also met with representatives of Luhansk Regional Military-Civil Administration.

On July 19, the Danish diplomats met with Deputy Commander of the Joint Forces Eduard Moskaliov and visited Zolote entry-exit checkpoint. The delegation also visited the command and observation post of a unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which performs tasks as part of the Joint Forces.

"I am very happy to visit the contact line and see everything with my own eyes. This is the front line of peaceful life, the front line of democracy. You protect the security of Europe, so if you are in danger, then we cannot be safe either. I am very glad to meet all of you commanders and soldiers. My sincere gratitude to you for what you are doing," the press center of the JFO headquarters quoted the ambassador as saying.

It is noted that the ambassador was familiarized with the security situation in the area of the operation of the Joint Forces and informed about the violations of the ceasefire regime, which are resorted to by the Russia-occupation forces.

Also on this day, the Danish delegation met with representatives of Luhansk regional military-civil administration.

In addition, the Ambassador met with representatives of the Danish demining group. Together they visited the areas where the area is being cleaned from explosive objects.
Some UAH 100 million has been invested in the reconstruction of the Central Bus Station, Maksym Skliarenko, the director of Ukrpas, said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine.

According to him, a food court, a shopping area, a pharmacy will be located on the first floor of the renovated Central Bus Station, and a food court, cash desks and a waiting area for passengers on the second floor.

"All tenants will go out for repairs after the completion of the reconstruction of the station itself. On the third floor there is already a hotel with three categories of rooms - from a hostel with a place for UAH 450 to superior rooms for UAH 1,500 per day," Skliarenko said.

As reported, the State Property Fund of Ukraine in the spring of 2020 sold at an auction a state package in the amount of 99.9% of the charter capital of Kyivpasservice. The starting price of the lot was UAH 195.9 million. The winner of the auction was Bastion Group LLC with an offer of UAH 230.89 million.

Kyivpasservice includes the Central Bus Station, the bus stations Podil, Darnytsia, Polissia, Pivdenna, Dachna in Kyiv, as well as 18 bus stations in Kyiv region.

The condition for the privatization of Kyivpasservice is that the investor retains the activities of bus stations in Kyiv for at least five years, in Kyiv region - for at least 15 years.
On Wednesday, July 21, at 12.30, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine news agency will host a press conference of co-founder of the Center for National Sustainability and Development, former head of the NSDC and the Finance Ministry of Ukraine Oleksandr Danyliuk entitled "'Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine: Another Punitive Monster or Mortal Enemy of Corruption?" (8/5a Reitarska Street). The broadcast will be available on the YouTube channel of Interfax-Ukraine. Admission of journalists requires registration on the spot.
KYIV. July 20 (Interfax-Ukraine)  Some 72.5% of Ukrainians do not approve of the government's activities, only 13.5% assess it positively, according to data from a sociological survey conducted by the Ukrainian Sociological Group from July 11 to July 18, 2021 and presented at the press center of the Interfax- Ukraine news agency.

Some 42.7% of respondents believe that the government practically does nothing to solve the problems of the population, 36.5% note that the government is taking certain actions, but this is not enough, 11.7% of respondents are sure that the government is doing everything possible for the population , while 9.1% found it difficult to answer the question.

At the same time, 58.5% of Ukrainians support the resignation of the Cabinet of Ministers, and 26.1% do not support it.

At the same time, 69.2% of respondents believe that the situation in the country is developing in the wrong direction, 24.5% - in the right direction, and 6.3% found it difficult to answer.

Among the problems that most concern the population, 62.3% of respondents indicated the high cost of food and housing and communal services, 57.4% - low income, 41.2% - the war in Donbas, 32.9% - corruption in government bodies, 32.1% - unemployment and the inability to find a well-paid job, 28.5% - the inaccessibility of medical care, and 21.8% - the coronavirus epidemic (respondents could indicate several answers).

A sociological survey was conducted in all regions of Ukraine (with the exception of the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, as well as the Crimean peninsula) among 1,224 respondents over 18 years old. The survey method is an individual "face-to-face" interview at the place of residence of the respondents (at home). The statistical error does not exceed 3%.
Global digitalization of the modern society applies to all spheres of human life: economy, internet data transferring, digital signatures, key certificates, digital contracts and payments, which became subject for illegal activities, says attorney, PhD, Senior Partner of the law firm Legal Welt - Sergii Malomuzh. That is why the matter of cybersecurity of society and the state arises as an important point.

During recent years Ukraine has had a high level of latency of cybercrimes due to industrial cyber espionage, which is ignored, as it is difficult to detect the leakage of confidential information such as personal data, information that contains a bank or trade secret, etc. The most common types of cybercrime are: carding, phishing, vishing, skimming, shimming, online fraud, but the list is much wider.

Ukrainian experience

According to the law "On the basic principles of cyber security of Ukraine" cybercrime (computer crime) means socially dangerous criminal act in cyberspace and / or with its use, liability for which is designated by Ukrainian law on criminal liability and / or which is recognized as a crime by international treaties of Ukraine, encroaching on enterprises, institutions and organizations regardless of ownership related to technological processes and / or the provision of services of great importance for the economy and industry, the functioning of society and public safety, the disabling or disruption of which may affect national security and defense of Ukraine, environment, cause property damage and / or pose a threat to human life and health.

Sergii Malomuzh notes, - cybercrime is cross-border in nature, i.e. the offender and the object of the crime can be located in one country or in different ones. At the same time, the investigation of traces of cybercrime committed from other countries in connection to the critical parts of Ukrainian is not allowed without the permission of the local authorities of the country from which such a crime was committed, so it is important to establish international cooperation in this area. Thus, attention should be paid to the lack of a legal mechanism to regulate cybersecurity, storage and use of digital evidence and the regulatory framework for international cooperation, as some countries may not recognize acts as cybercrime and prohibit investigations on their territory. Currently, the formation of the regulatory framework for regulating cybersecurity is underway. Ukraine is gradually achieving the goals of the ITU Connect 2020 program and consolidating its efforts with international partners to achieve maximum progress in the development of the information society and take advantage of innovative information and communication technologies, for the prosperity of the economy and the state. The Government of Ukraine has adopted the Concept for the Development of the Digital Economy and Society of Ukraine until 2020. This is the Digital Strategy for Ukraine's transformation in promising areas through stimulating the economy and attracting investment, overcoming digital inequality, reinforcing cooperation with the EU in the digital sphere and developing the country's innovation infrastructure.

International experience

Cybercrime Substantive law

From the point of view of fundamental law doctrine - cybercrime consists of criminal acts committed by using electronic information and communication means.

Otherwords, cybercrime can be any traditional offline crime (e.g., theft, fraud, money-laundering) but perpetrated in the Internet network. Some researchers also allocate 'hybrid' or 'cyber-enabled' crimes, and cyber-dependent crimes which only became possible due to the development of the Internet and supporting digital technologies.

A number of countries have developed special laws which are designed to deal with cybercrime. For example, Germany, Japan, and China, have amended the relevant provisions of their criminal codes to describe cybercrime and deal with it.

Some countries instead of separating cybercrimes into freestanding criminal acts, just added to their national legislation and codes specific paragraphs to criminalize illegal use of digital technologies to commit any crime. Such an approach caused two crimes will be claimed to the offender at the same time.

Cybercrime Procedural law

One of the main issues is to consider the jurisdiction of cybercrime, because the digital world has no clearly delineated borders and geographic territories. For that reason, the nationality principle is commonly used to define a jurisdiction, e.g. it could be bound to the nationality of the offender (active personality principle) or the nationality of the victim (passive personality principle). Some countries assign jurisdiction even for a crime from other state if it has impacted the interests and security of that country abroad (protective principle).

What all the countries have mostly in common - Internet service providers are obliged to keep users' data and provide it to investigation authorities upon request.

EU experience

Some crimes like terrorism, human trafficking, child sexual abuse and drugs trafficking, mostly moved to the digital world or became to be facilitated online. Due to this, criminal investigations in most of such crimes have a digital component.

EU concentrated its efforts on the above types of cybercrimes and Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime has developed following rules:

Directive on combating the sexual exploitation of children online and child pornography - 2011

Directive on attacks against information systems - 2013

Proposals for Regulation and Directive facilitating cross-border access to electronic evidence for criminal investigations - 2018

Directive on non-cash payment fraud - 2019

Proposal for Interim Regulation on the processing of personal and other data for the purpose of combatting child sexual abuse - 2020

Also the European Cybercrime Centre was created by Europol, and acts as the key body to fight cybercrime in the EU. Its aim is to pool European cybercrime expertise to support cybercrime investigations in Member States'.

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An artist's rendering shows the possible look of a new fab for the chipmaker GlobalFoundries' in Singapore, in this handout picture obtained (Photo : GlobalFoundries/Handout via REUTERS)

Semiconductor manufacturer GlobalFoundries said on Monday it will build a second factory near its in Malta, New York, headquarters, and spend $1 billion to boost output to address the global chip shortage.



GlobalFoundries, owned by the United Arab Emirates' sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co, makes radio-frequency communications chips for 5G, chips for high-reliability manufacturing for automotive customers, and other specialized semiconductors.



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The new factory will be at GlobalFoundries' "Fab 8" site in upstate New York, where its headquarters moved from California earlier this year, it said at an event announcing the plans.



The factory will double the site's chipmaking capacity and add 1,000 jobs, with funding from private-public partnerships, including federal and state investments.



GlobalFoundries plans to spend $1 billion immediately to boost the existing factory's output by 150,000 wafers per year. Wafers are the silicon discs on which semiconductors are made in bulk, and each one can contain thousands of chips.



"This chip shortage has been in the making for a decade and a half," Chief Executive Thomas Caulfield said at the event attended by U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat.



The news came after a bill containing $52 billion for semiconductor manufacturing passed the U.S. Senate this summer. It awaits action in the U.S. House of Representatives.



"We don't just want to create four, five or six more fabs, though we do want to do that. We need the whole ecosystem," Raimondo said at the event.



Mubadala is planning to take GlobalFoundries public in an initial public offering, sources have told Reuters. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Intel Corp was exploring acquiring GlobalFoundries for $30 billion.



A person familiar with the matter told Reuters there are no active discussions with Intel yet, and Mubadala is focused on taking GlobalFoundries public as planned.



Mubadala declined to comment.


Rescue workers search for survivors after a residential house collapsed due to landslide caused by heavy rainfall in Mumbai, India, (Photo : REUTERS/Niharika Kulkarni)

India's capital New Delhi and the main financial centre of Mumbai were drenched with heavy rain on Monday, a day after at least 35 people were killed across the country in landslides and house collapses triggered by downpours.



The Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) has predicted heavy to very heavy rain in north India, including New Delhi, over the next two days. In Mumbai, the IMD has issued a heavy rain and thunderstorm alert for the city and surrounding districts.



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At least 30 people were killed on Sunday in three Mumbai suburbs when several houses collapsed in landslides after rain.



At least three people were also killed when a house collapsed in the northern state of Uttarakhand after a downpour, Reuters partner agency ANI reported.



In a separate incident on Sunday evening, a three-storey building collapsed in the city of Gurugram, bordering Delhi. Two people were killed and rescue operations were still underway.



Several low-lying areas of Delhi and Mumbai were flooded and Twitter was filled with images of submerged vehicles and people wading through waist-deep water.



Mumbai's water treatment plant in the suburbs was flooded on Sunday forcing the municipal council to impose water cuts in some parts of the city.



India is in the midst of its annual rainy season but the downpours over the past few days have been particularly heavy.

Extreme weather has hit several parts of the world in recent weeks with flooding in Europe, dam collapses in China and heatwaves in North America adding to worries about climate change.


Former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn talks during an interview with Reuters in Beirut, Lebanon (Photo : REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir)

A Tokyo court on Monday doled out the first sentences in Japan related to Carlos Ghosn's arrest and escape, imprisoning U.S. Army Special Forces veteran Michael Taylor for two years and his son Peter for one year and eight months for helping the former Nissan Motor Co Ltd chairman flee to Lebanon in 2019.



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"This case enabled Ghosn, a defendant of serious crime, to escape overseas," Hideo Nirei, the chief judge, said while explaining the judgement. "One year and a half has passed, but there is no prospect of the trial being held."



Wearing dark suits and flanked by four guards, the two remained silent during their 20-minute appearance at the Tokyo District Court.



Nirei said the elder Taylor played a "leading role" in the escape by escorting Ghosn onto the jet, while his son had taken care of his luggage and provided him with a key to a hotel room where he changed clothes.



The two men, who had faced up to three years in prison, pleaded guilty and made a tearful apology to the court last month, saying they regretted their role in smuggling Ghosn out of Japan hidden in a box aboard a private jet from Japan's Kansai airport at the end of 2019.



Prosecutors said the Taylors received $1.3 million for expenses and as payment, with another $500,000 for legal fees.



A Turkish court in February convicted Turkish company MNG and two pilots for their role in Ghosn's escape, sentencing the pilots to four years and two months in jail.



The Taylors were arrested in the United States in May 2020, but did not arrive in Japan until March because their lawyers sought to prevent their extradition, arguing that they could not be prosecuted for helping someone "bail jump" and that they could face relentless interrogation and torture.



Suspects in Japan are interrogated without their lawyers present and are often denied bail before trial.



Ghosn remains a fugitive in his childhood home of Lebanon, which doesn't have an extradition treaty with Japan.



In Japan he faces charges he understated his compensation in Nissan's financial statements by 9.3 billion yen ($85 million) over a decade and enriched himself at his employer's expense through payments to car dealerships in the Middle East.



Greg Kelly, a former Nissan executive charged with helping Ghosn hide his compensation, is also on trial in Tokyo, with a judgment expected next year. Both Ghosn and Kelly deny the charges.



The Taylors have 14 days to appeal the verdict and sentence.


Representations of cryptocurrencies Bitcoin, Ethereum, DogeCoin, Ripple, Litecoin are placed on PC motherboard in this illustration taken, (Photo : REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration)

FTX Trading Ltd said on Tuesday its valuation had risen to $18 billion after a $900 million funding round that included SoftBank Group Corp and was one of the biggest fundraises for a crypto company.



The round saw participation from more than 60 investors, including venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, private equity giant Thoma Bravo, Daniel Loeb's Third Point, the Paul Tudor Jones family and British hedge fund manager Alan Howard.



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The latest funding comes as investor sentiment towards cryptocurrencies has somewhat soured after an initial euphoria earlier this year due to mounting regulatory concerns globally.



Binance, another major cryptocurrency exchange, has faced scrutiny from regulators in Britain, Germany, Japan, and Hong Kong. The United States is also investigating the exchange, according to a media report.



The tightening scrutiny has weighed on bitcoin's price, with the most popular cryptocurrency on Tuesday falling below $30,000 for the first time in a month.



Founded and led by Sam Bankman-Fried, a 29-year-old crypto billionaire, FTX is the owner and operator of the FTX.COM cryptocurrency exchange.



The two-year-old company said it has more than 1 million users and averages about $10 billion in trading volume per day, with revenue surging more than tenfold this year.



FTX, which also counts celebrity couple Tom Brady and Gisele Bundchen among its backers, caters to a wide variety of traders, including retail investors, family offices and institutional traders.



It plans to use the fresh infusion of funds to expand its product offerings and for other investments.

Coinbase Ventures, the venture arm of recently listed cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global Inc, also participated in the funding round.


Delta variant behind more than 80% of U.S. cases; vaccines still highly effective -Fauci

Top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci responds to accusations by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) as he testifies before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Capitol hill in Washington, D.C., (Photo : J. Scott Applewhite/Pool via REUTERS)

The Delta variant of the coronavirus is the cause of more than 80% of new U.S. COVID-19 cases, but the authorized vaccines remain more than 90% effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths, said top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci during U.S. Senate hearing on Tuesday.



The hearing featured a pointed exchange with Republican U.S. Senator Rand Paul, in which he accused Fauci of lying about the National Institutes of Health providing funding for research at China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.



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The Senator from Kentucky, who has sparred with Fauci during several pandemic-related hearings, alleged that the research may have played a role in developing the novel coronavirus at the Wuhan Lab.



"If caught lying to Congress... the U.S. criminal code creates a felony and a five year penalty," Paul said to Fauci during the hearing.



Fauci, who has been mostly calm and diplomatic in past responses, this time shot back: "Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress... (and) you do not know what you're talking about." The exchange featured raised voices and pointed fingers.



The origin of the novel coronavirus has become a heated partisan issue in the United States, with Republicans urging further inquiries into whether it was developed in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.



Biden in late May called on aides to investigate the origins of the virus and to report back to him within 90 days. The more prevalent theory is that the virus originated in animals, possibly bats, and was passed on to humans.



The more contagious Delta variant was first found in India earlier this year. It has since become the dominant version of the virus in the United States and many other countries. It has been detected in more than 90 nations worldwide.



Deaths from COVID-19 in the United States have averaged 239 per day over the past week, nearly 48% higher than the previous week, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)Director Rochelle Walensky said during the hearing.



States should continue to hold onto their inventories of unused vaccines as manufacturers are working to determine the shelf life of their shots, Janet Woodcock, the acting director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, said during the hearing. Large quantities of unused U.S. vaccine supplies are facing expiration in the coming weeks if the shelf life is not extended.



The CDC is reviewing data from multiple groups of vaccinated people to determine how long protection from COVID-19 shots lasts and will use that information to make a determination on the potential role of additional booster shots, Fauci said.


Egypt's Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli welcomed on Wednesday the ministers attending the weekly cabinet session which is being held for the first time at the new government headquarters in New Alamein City.

The PM lauded the great progress achieved in implementing various projects in the new city in less than two years, saying that such progress ensures that Egypt is moving on the right path.

The prime minister reviewed the under-construction projects in the city including the national university, the Technology and Maritime Transport of the Arab Academy for Science, and the heritage city along with the residential units which will be available for various social strata as well as the industrial zone.

Madbouli said activities and services in the new city are meant to continue throughout the year and not just during summer months.

Madbouli also pointed out that the new digital transformation system is set to be launched as of August, through which several e-government services will be available for citizens.

The government is currently working to resolve the long-standing disputes between the ministries of finance, petroleum and electricity, Madbouli said.

The government targets a growth ratio hitting 6 percent in the new budget, he added.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi toured the Al-Masa resort in the under-construction New Alamein City on the Mediterranean on Sunday, Presidential spokesman Bassam Rady said in a statement.

During the tour on first day of the Islamic festival of Eid-Al-Adha, El-Sisi inspected the construction work at the city, which will feature residential buildings, a yacht marina and the north coast's biggest hotel.

Earlier, the president performed the Eid prayer at the resort's main mosque.

El-Sisi was accompanied by a number of top government officials, including Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Defence Minister Mohamed Zaki.

New Alamein City is one of a number of new cities the government is constructing to draw investments and boost the economy.

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On Monday, 19 July 2021, Ethiopia announced the completion of the second filling of the reservoir of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). The announcement failed to specify the amount of water that Addis Ababa managed to withhold from the Blue Nile.

According to the original plan that Ethiopia announced, the second filling should have added extra 13.5 bcm to the around five bcm that had been withheld by the first filling that was executed last year.

However, according to government officials in Cairo from both the ministries of irrigation and foreign affairs, the information available suggests that Ethiopia had not reached nine bcm by todays announcement.

Our information is that they got around eight bcm, which is compatible with our assessment in view of the stage of constructions they have reached, said a government official.

Earlier in the month, when Ethiopia announced the beginning of the second filling, this official had said that Addis Ababa was lagging behind with its construction efforts. He, like other government officials, attributed the delay to both financial and political handicaps. The government of Abiy Ahmed, they said, had failed to honour its financial commitments to the construction companies. The government has also been involved in internal political disputes, which have forced a delay as resources were consumed to finance military and security confrontations.

Hanei Rasslan, a senior African affairs analyst at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said today that Ethiopia had only managed to withhold water at the level of 574 meters, rather than the anticipated 595 meters. According to Rasslan, Abiy Ahmed may celebrate all he wants, but he knows and we know that he failed to achieve the original objective as planned, Rasslan said.

Still, according to Egyptian and Ethiopian statements, both on and off the record, this level of water at the reservoir of the GERD is sufficient for Addis Ababa to operate the first two turbines, of over 13 total, to generate electricity. The successive Ethiopian governments have consistently promoted GERD as the countrys way to overcome an acute power shortage.

Neither of the two downstream countries of the Blue Nile, Sudan and Egypt, provided an immediate reaction to the news of the second fillings completion. Neither countries have reported an acute drop in the Nile water level or the suspension of water facilities in either countries.

Both countries have, however, been for the past two years contesting the Ethiopian unilateralism with the construction, filling and operation of the GERD. They too have been contesting the failure of Ethiopia to show required flexibility to reach a legal agreement for the three countries overlooking the Blue Nile on the filling and operation of the GERD in a way that would not cause significant harm to the downstream countries.

Last year, Sudan complained about the harmful impact of the unilateral first filling that forced a stop to several of the countrys water stations. Earlier this month, in a UN Security Council meeting on the GERD dispute, the foreign ministers of Sudan and Egypt criticized Ethiopia for failing to provide the downstream countries with adequate information on the filling and potential operation to help them prepare for the possible impact on their subsequent dams and their water needs. Sudan, in particular, has complained about the impact of the sudden and un-synchronized filling on its seasonal Roseires Dam.

We have been demanding an agreement on the cascading of dams. Ethiopia has been promising to cooperate but it never really did, commented a Sudanese diplomatic source. He asked for his name to be withheld.

According to Sudanese and Egyptian officials the question now is what next? Ethiopian officials are already talking about scheduling the third filling. This is the case despite the fact that for the past two years they had argued that only the first and second filling are part of the construction according to their interpretation of a 2015 Declaration of Principles that they had signed with Sudan and Egypt.

Neither Sudan nor Egypt has at any point over the past two years subscribed to this interpretation. This was never the meaning of the text nor the spirit behind it; the idea of the DOP was to reassure Ethiopia about the agreement of the downstream countries to build a hydropower dam in return for the commitment of Ethiopia to reach a full and binding legal agreement on all aspects of the construction, filling and operation of the dam, said another Egyptian official. Since then Ethiopia has only been going in circles and playing games, he added.

As of today, both Egyptian and Sudanese sources say that their countries would be putting pressure on the international community to either get Ethiopia to come round to negotiate with the intention of reaching an agreement before the end of this year or by the beginning of next year or to put pressure on Ethiopia to suspend all plans for a third filling pending reaching an agreement for as long as it would take for the three countries to get an agreement.

The same officials insist that their countries have gone way beyond the extra mile to encourage Ethiopia to reach a legally binding agreement. They say that they were willing to go for an interim agreement on the second filling, but that Ethiopia had not even come round to meet the requirement for a decent second filling.

Both Egyptian and Sudanese officials say that their capitals have been very flexible and very accommodating unlike Ethiopia, which has been very rigid.

Today marks the end of the second filling for Ethiopia, for us it marks the beginning of a new path  an intense diplomatic and political offensive to get an agreement before the end of this year or the beginning of next year, said a third Egyptian official. If, by spring next year, Ethiopia has not come round and the international community is not putting pressure to bare then it will be a new ball game, he added.

Egyptian and Sudanese officials anticipate the African Union led negotiations will resume before or around the end of August. They argue that this new round when or if it happens would be very telling of the true intentions of Ethiopia.

According to Rasslan, these talks cannot be purposeful if they are managed the way the AU-led negotiations have been for the longest time. He added, We cannot be expecting a deal out of the AU-led negotiations if no clear intervention is offered especially from the US.

Sudanese officials say that they are still pushing for a formula they had proposed whereby the AU presidency, currently the DRC, would get direct technical support from the US, the EU and the UN.

In the UN Security Council session that convened earlier this month, Sudanese foreign minister Mariam Sadik Al-Mahdi pressed on the need to fix the mode of negotiations to allow for the negotiations to be purposeful. Also, earlier this month Sudanese Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas said that his country is not willing to go back to the empty circle of negotiations.

Egyptian officials for their part said this week that they have been getting substantial reassurances from both the US and the EU on their willingness to be more involved in helping DRC to get the negotiations to lead to an agreement.

Ethiopia had during the past few months said that it would not sign any full and legally binding agreement but that it would only sign a set of guidelines and principles.

According to Rasslan, if the UN Security Council was to adopt a firm stance on basis of the draft resolution that Tunis, the current Arab non-permanent member of the council had tabled on behalf of Sudan and Egypt, then Ethiopia would have to succumb. If not, he added, then it would be up to the US to put pressure towards one of two scenarios: a two-stage agreement, that would consecutively deal with the filling and operation and then future projects or an overall agreement that would leave each of the three countries unhappy about something.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi held a meeting with government officials on Tuesday in the presidency headquarters at New Alamein City after he performed Eid Al-Adha prayers in the city.

The meeting tackled the executive plan for the development of the northwestern part of the country, from Alexandria to Salloum, the Presidential Spokesman Bassam Rady said in a statement.

The state, Rady added, plans to establish a series of urban, agricultural, industrial and tourist communities by launching several giant development ventures that link this part of Egypt together via a network of advanced roads, modern transportation, and new railways.

The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, Defence Minister Mohamed Zaki, Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohamed Farid, senior military leaders, the ministers of interior, electricity, endowments, justice, agriculture, local development, housing, tourism and antiquities, public business sector and civil aviation.

The Dabaa nuclear plant project, which is being built in the Marsa Matrouh governorate on the Mediterranean coast, 250 kilometres west of Alexandria, is among the projects planned for Egypts western region, along with Alamein International Airport, Ras Al-Hikma City and a host of tourist resorts along the coastal governorate.

The scheme includes the New Delta project, a national plan for integrated agricultural production. It aims to increase the agricultural area in Egypt along the axis of El-Dabaa, a Matrouh city, by one million feddans (approximately 1.3 million acres) in the first stages. The figure is subject to further expansion in the following stages.

Other development projects are under construction in Matrouh, foremost of which is the 50,000 feddan New Alamein City, which will include a City of Culture and Arts, a university for science and technology, a naval academy for sciences, and a 14 kilometre-long corniche tourist walkway.

The New Alamein City is set to accommodate some 2 million people, according to the spokesman.

El-Sisi was also briefed during today's meeting on the latest development works related to the new road network for the country's northwestern region and the highways between these above mentioned projects, as well as with the rest of the country's governorates.

This includes the development of the Cairo-Alexandria Desert Road, the Dabaa Axis, the Reconstruction Axis, the Coastal International Road, and the Wadi Natroun-Alamein Road, the presidential spokesman noted.

Rady added that El-Sisi directed the government to accommodate the expected increase in traffic while implementing the development plan, establishing the largest possible number of traffic lanes.

He also called for linking the road projects in the northwestern region with the modern national network for transportation across the country.

During the meeting, the president was also updated on a number of other development projects in Alexandria and other governorates.

He emphasised the importance of meeting the projects timelines, while still adhering to the highest standards, Rady pointed out.

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Egypt's Mufti Shawqi Allam has condemned the terrorist bombing that targeted a market in Sadr City in Iraq, killing 36 persons and injuring 60 others.

In a press release on Tuesday, Allam said such terrorist attacks reflect the dark thoughts adopted by the extremist groups, which seek to spread bloodshed.

He offered condolences to the Iraqi people over the victims of this terrorist attack and wished the injured a speedy recovery.

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Thousands of citizens performed Eid Al-Adha prayers in North Sinai on Tuesday amid precautionary measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Senior officials, politicians and heads of municipalities, as well as popular figures and clergymen from Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry, attended the prayers.

Preachers at the different mosques stressed the significance of sacrifice and urged Muslims to follow the manners of Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail. They also talked about patience in times of calamity.

Eid Al-Adha prayers were performed at 600 mosques in North Sinai, said director general of the Awqaf directorate here Ibrahim Gomaa Ibrahim, adding that precautionary measures were taken, atop of which social distancing and mask wearing.

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Egypt has vehemently condemned a terrorist attack that targeted a civilian area in Iraq's Sadr City on Monday, leaving 100 people dead and wounded.

In a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo extended its heartfelt condolences to the victims' families as well as to the Iraqi government and people, wishing the wounded a speedy recovery.

Egypt reaffirmed its full solidarity with Iraq as regards whatever measures it would take to preserve its security and stability.

In this regard, Cairo reiterated its call for all Iraqi parties to prioritize the Iraqi national interest.

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Egypt's Prisons Authority ordered on Tuesday the release of 2,075 inmates on the occasion of Eid Al-Adha and the 59th anniversary of the 1952 revolution.

The prisoners were released with a presidential pardon in accordance with presidential decree 298 for the year 2021.

A list of those released was not immediately available.

According to the Egyptian constitution, the president can issue pardons for prisoners who had received final court rulings that cannot be further appealed.

Egyptian presidents traditionally issue pardons several times a year, usually on major national and religious holidays.

Tuesday is the first day of the Islamic Eid Al-Adha holiday, one of the two main religious holidays in Islam, which falls on the 10th day of Dhu Al-Hijjah, the 12th month of the Islamic calendar.

Eid Al-Adha marks the beginning of the annual pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia and commemorates Prophet Ibrahims willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God.

The anniversary of the 1952 revolution, which secured the country's independence from British occupation, falls on Friday, 23 July.

Egypt announced that the national holidays of Eid Al-Adha and the 1952 Revolution's anniversary, will span eight days rather than six, starting on 17 July and ending on 24 July.

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Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson exchanged views in a phone call on Tuesday regarding means to promote trade, investment, health and security cooperation between the two countries, in addition to the efforts to combat terrorism.

The call also touched upon the latest developments in a number of regional issues of common interest, including the latest developments in Libya and the Palestinian cause, in addition to the developments in the dispute caused by the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

Concerning the GERD issue, El-Sisi reiterated Egypt's consistently held position, which is based on the adherence to the country's historical rights to the Nile waters and the importance of its water security.

He called upon the international community to live up to its responsibilities to push negotiations with Ethiopia and Sudan to reach a comprehensive, just and legally binding agreement on the filling and operating rules of the GERD.

PM Johnson expressed his support for efforts to resume the negotiation in order to reach a just solution to the decade-old issue.

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France said Saturday it would require people not fully vaccinated and arriving from some European countries to show a negative Covid test taken within the previous 24 hours.

Arrivals from the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, Greece and the Netherlands will be subject to the new rule, which comes into effect at midnight Saturday into Sunday, Prime Minister Jean Castex said in a statement.

To date, people arriving from the United Kingdom are required to show a negative test taken within the past 48 hours.

Arrivals from Spain, Portugal, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Greece have had to show tests taken within 72 hours.

But Castex said that people who are fully vaccinated with a jab recognised by the European Medicines Agency -- Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson -- will not be required to show a test.

The statement said the exemption was in place because "vaccines are effective against the virus, and in particular its variant Delta".

France will consider people fully vaccinated one week after they received they second dose of Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca, instead of 14 days previously, and 28 days after their Johnson & Johnson jab, Castex said.

France will now also accept vaccination by Covishield, a copy of the AstraZeneca vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India, for its health pass.

The government also said that Tunisia, Mozambique, Cuba and Indonesia will be added to France's so-called red list.

Travel from red-list countries is only allowed on pressing grounds and even then vaccinated travellers must self-isolate for seven days.

'Exponential' rise in cases

The new measures come as several European nations battle rising caseloads, blamed in part on the highly-transmissible Delta variant which has taken hold on the continent.

New infections have ticked up in France in recent weeks, hitting nearly 11,000 on Friday, even as the government races to vaccinate the population.

President Emmanuel Macron said this week that vaccine health passes would be required for entry to most public places and that all healthcare workers must be fully inoculated, sparking a rush to book appointments for the jab.

Around 35.5 million people -- just over half of France's population -- have received at least one vaccine dose so far.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said this week it expects a sharp increase in coronavirus cases on the continent, with nearly five times as many new infections by August 1.

In an effort to control the rising numbers, France's region of Pyrenees-Orientales will require bars, restaurants, beach venues and food shops to close at 11:00 pm from Saturday until August 2, the prefecture announced on Saturday.

The move came after cases in the region shot up within a single week from 41.5 per 100,000 people to 258.8 per 100,000 people.

"This exponential progression is starting to translate into an equally rising number of hospitalisations," the prefecture warned in its statement announcing the measures.

The region had on Friday made masks mandatory in all public spaces except for beaches and large nature spaces and prohibited consumption of alcohol in public spaces outside of bars and restaurants.

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Mali's interim president Assimi Goita was "safe and sound," his office announced, after an AFP journalist said he had been attacked on Tuesday by two armed men, one of whom wielded a knife, in the great mosque in the capital Bamako.

The attack took place during prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

Goita was taken from the scene, according to the journalist, who said it was not immediately clear whether he had been wounded.

An official at the presidency later said Goita was "safe and sound."

Goita arrived at the military camp of Kati, outside the capital, "where security has been reinforced," the official said.

Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone told AFP that a man had "tried to kill the president with a knife" but was apprehended.

Latus Toure, the director of the mosque, said an attacker had lunged at the president but wounded someone else.

The shocking attack follows months of political turmoil in Mali, which is also battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Goita was sworn into power in June, after leading the country's second coup in less than a year.

The colonel had already led a putsch last August, when he and other army officers ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running jihadist conflict.

The second coup in nine months sparked diplomatic uproar, prompting the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to suspend Mali, calling for the appointment of a civilian prime minister.

Jihadist Insurgency

France, which has thousands of troops stationed in the war-torn country, also suspended military cooperation with Mali.

The former colonial power followed by announcing that it would wind down its 5,100-strong Barkhane force that has battled jihadists in the Sahel since 2013.

The military junta handed power to a civilian-led transitional government, which promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022.

In June it unveiled its new government, appointing military figures in key roles.

Goita vowed that the government would "uphold all its commitments", pledging to stage "credible, fair and transparent elections".

A large majority of the 15-nation UN's Security Council later called for free and fair elections to go ahead in the country without the participation of its current leaders.

Mali also faces unrest outside the political arena.

It has been struggling to contain an jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and has since spread to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

The conflict has also been mirrored by political instability in the capital.

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The Israeli military said its artillery shelled southern Lebanon early Tuesday after two rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

Israel's army said in a statement that aerial defenses intercepted one of the rockets, and the second fell in an open area. No injuries or damage were reported.

The UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said its radar detected rockets fired from southern Lebanon toward Israel just before 4 a.m. Subsequently, Israeli artillery fired toward Lebanon, the UN force said.

Lebanon's army said Israel fired 12 artillery shells at the Wadi Hammoul area, causing no damage or casualties. The army said its units there had found three launching pads for Grad rockets.

The rocket fire from Lebanon was the first such cross-border incident since May, when Palestinian militants launched rockets at Israel during the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Visiting a town near the Lebanese border, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that ``anyone who tries to harm us will pay a painful price in return.''

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said in a statement that Lebanon was responsible for the overnight rocket fire and that ``Israel will act against any threat to its sovereignty and its citizens.``

``We will not allow the social, political and economic crisis in Lebanon to turn into a security threat to Israel,'' Gantz said. Lebanon has struggled with an unprecedented crisis, including an economic meltdown that has raised concerns of a surge in militancy there.

UNIFIL said it was in contact with military officials in Lebanon and Israel to ``urge maximum restraint`` to avoid further escalation. Both the peacekeepers and the Lebanese army increased security in the area and launched an investigation, the mission said.

The incident along Lebanon-Israel frontier came hours after a Syrian military official said Israel carried out airstrikes near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The Syrian state news agency said air defenses intercepted most of the missiles in the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots belonging to Iranian-backed militant groups operating in the region.

Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Syria in recent years targeting Iranian forces there, and attacking what Israel says are weapons shipments bound for the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli military rarely comments on these strikes.

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Over 100,000 Palestinian Muslim worshipers celebrated Eid Al-Adha at Jerusalems Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, WAFA reported Tuesday.

The worshipers made their way in the early morning hours to the mosque compound to attend the prayers of Eid Al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice in English, which began at sunset on 19 July, and runs for four days to commemorate the Prophet Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son in obedience to God.

After being denied access to the mosque compound by the Israeli occupation authorities, scores of Jerusalemites performed the Eid prayer in the vicinity of Bab al-Asbat.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound houses both the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque and is considered the third holiest site in Islam.

Al-Aqsa is located in East Jerusalem, a part of the internationally recognized Palestinian territories that have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.

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The government of ethnically split Cyprus on Tuesday lodged formal protests with the United Nations and the European Union over a decision by Turkey and breakaway Turkish Cypriots to re-open a residential section of an abandoned, military-controlled suburb, saying the move violates UN resolutions and could scuttle peace efforts.

A statement said Cypriot Foreign Minister Nikos Christodoulides has spoken to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and will dispatch a letter to the five permanent UN Security Council members.

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar announced earlier Tuesday that a 3.5 square-kilometer (1.35 square-mile) section of Varosha would revert from military to civilian control so that Greek Cypriots could seek to reclaim their properties through the Immoveable Property Commission (IPC), a legal body that is empowered to adjudicate such cases.

Tatar made the announcement ahead of a military parade attended by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to commemorate the 47th anniversary of a Turkish invasion that followed a coup aiming at union with Greece.

Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence and keeps more than 35,000 troops there.

Both Erdogan and Tatar have said that a permanent peace in Cyprus can only come through the international community's recognition of two separate states, upending decades of negotiations to reach a federation-based reunification accord.

Some Greek Cypriot lawyers have urged owners to apply to the European Court of Human Rights-endorsed IPC to legally affirm rights to their property in the north.

But the Cyprus government worries that an application rush to the IPC could lead to a mass property sell-off that Turkish Cypriot authorities would exploit politically to entrench ethnic division and lend legitimacy to their breakaway state.

Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said the announcement contravenes UN Security Council resolutions that prohibit any change to Varosha's status, calls for its return to its legal inhabitants and that it should come under UN control.

Varosha is a suburb of Famagusta that was Cyprus' pre-1974 tourism hub thanks to its pristine beaches and modern hotels. After Varosha's 15,000 Greek Cypriot residents fled in the face of advancing Turkish troops, the area was fenced-off to prevent any access until last year when Turkish and Turkish Cypriot authorities announced it's ``re-opening.``

Varosha's former residents denounced the move as a bid to take advantage of their desperation over the area's future and to psychologically pressure them into selling off their properties. Many Turkish Cypriots also condemned the move as undermining ongoing efforts at reconciliation between the two communities.

Famagusta Mayor Simos Ioannou told the Associated Press that Tuesday's announcement aimed to test Greek Cypriots' resolve about holding on to their properties. The fact that only a small section and not the whole of residential Varosha was re-opened intends to blunt international reaction to the move, Ioannou said.

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Muslims around the world were observing Tuesday yet another major Islamic holiday in the shadow of the pandemic and amid growing concerns about the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Eid al-Adha, or the ``Feast of Sacrifice,'' is typically marked by communal prayers, large social gatherings, slaughtering of livestock and giving meat to the needy. This year, the holiday comes as many countries battle the delta variant first identified in India, prompting some to impose new restrictions or appeal for people to avoid congregating and follow safety protocols.

The pandemic has already taken a toll for the second year on a sacred mainstay of Islam, the hajj, whose last days coincide with Eid al-Adha. Once drawing some 2.5 million Muslims from across the globe to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the pilgrimage has been dramatically scaled back due to the virus.

This year's hajj has been limited to 60,000 vaccinated Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, pilgrims wearing masks and maintaining social distancing, performed the symbolic stoning of the devil in the valley area of Mina _ using sterilized pebbles they received ahead of time.

``This is (a) very, very, very big moment for us, for me especially,'' said pilgrim Arya Widyawan Yanto, an Indonesian living in Saudi Arabia. He added that he was happy he had the chance to perform the pilgrimage. ``Everything was conducted under very strict precautions.''

Yanto said he hoped for the pandemic to end and for all Muslims to be able to perform the pilgrimage in a safe way.

Indonesia marked a grim Eid al-Adha amid a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation. Vice President Ma'ruf Amin, also an influential Islamic cleric, appealed to people to perform holiday prayers at home with their families.

``Don't do crowds,'' Amin said in televised remarks ahead of the start of the holiday. ``Protecting oneself from the COVID-19 pandemic is obligatory.''

The surge is believed to have been fueled by travel during another holiday _ the Eid al-Fitr festival in May _ and by the rapid spread of the delta variant.

In Malaysia, measures have been tightened after a sharp spike in infections despite a national lockdown since June 1 _ people are banned from travelling back to their hometowns or crossing districts to celebrate. House visits and customary trips to graveyards are also banned.

Healthy worshippers are allowed to gather for prayers in mosques, with strict social distancing and no physical contact. Ritual animal sacrifice is limited to mosques and other approved areas.

Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah has urged Malaysians not to ``repeat irresponsible behavior,'' adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another festival on the island of Borneo led to new clusters of cases.

``Let us not in the excitement of celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice cause us all to perish because of COVID-19,'' he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin urged Muslims to stay home. ``I appeal to you all to be patient and abide by the rules because your sacrifice is a great jihad in Allah's sight and in our effort to save lives,'' he said in a televised speech on the eve of the festival.

The World Health Organization has reported that globally, COVID-19 deaths had climbed after a period of decline. The reversal has been attributed to low vaccination rates, relaxed mask rules and other precautions, and the delta variant.

Lockdowns will severely curtail Eid al-Adha festivities in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities.

Sydney resident Jihad Dib, a New South Wales state government lawmaker, said the city's Muslims were sad but understood why they would be confined to their homes with no visitors allowed.

``It's going to be the first Eid in my life I don't hug and kiss my mum and dad,'' Dib told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Iran on Monday imposed a week-long lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported. The lockdown begins on Tuesday.

Not everyone is imposing new restrictions. In Bangladesh, authorities have allowed an eight-day pause in the country's strict lockdown for the holiday that health experts say could be dangerous.

In Egypt, Essam Shaban travelled to the southern province of Sohag to spend Eid al-Adha with his family. He said ahead of the start of the holiday that he planned to pray at a mosque there on Tuesday while taking precautions such as bringing his own prayer rug and wearing a mask.

``We want this Eid to pass by peacefully without any infections,'' he said. ``We must follow instructions.''

Shaban had been looking forward to pitching in with his brothers to buy a buffalo for slaughtering, going door-to-door to give some of the meat to the poor and to the traditional festive meal later in the day with his extended family.

``It's usually boisterous with laughter and bickering with the kids,'' he said. ``It's great.''

But others will be without loved ones.

In India, where Eid al-Adha starts Wednesday, Tahir Qureshi would always go with his father for prayers and then to visit family and friends. His father died in June after contracting the virus during a surge that devastated the country, and the thought of having to spend the holiday without him is heartbreaking.

``It will be difficult without him,'' he said.

India's Muslim scholars have been urging people to exercise restraint and adhere to health protocols. Some states have restricted large gatherings and are asking people to observe the holiday at home.

Meanwhile the pandemic's economic fallout, which threw millions of Indians into financial hardship, has many saying they cannot afford to buy sacrificial livestock.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, a disputed, Muslim-majority region, businessman Ghulam Hassan Wani is among those cutting back.

``I used to sacrifice three or four sheep, but this year we can hardly afford one,'' Wani said.

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Democratic standards in the European Union are eroding in several member countries, particularly in Hungary and Poland where judicial independence is under threat, the EU's executive commission said Tuesday in its annual report on adherence to the rule of law.

The report also singled out Slovenia, which recently took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council, for attacks against the Balkan nation's media.

``There are causes for serious concern in a number of member states, especially when it comes to the independence of judiciary,'' said Vera Jourova, the Commission vice-president for Values and Transparency.

The review, which is in its second year, was published a week after the EU's top court ruled that Poland's way of disciplining judges contravenes EU law and undermines judicial independence, telling the country's right-wing government which introduced the system to change it.

The European Commission has also started legal action against Poland and Hungary for what the EU's executive arm sees as blatant disrespect for the rights of LGBT people.

The wide-ranging audit found Poland deficient in the four main areas reviewed: national justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and checks and balances.

According to the EU's executive arm, reforms of the Polish justice system carried out over the past six years by the current government continue to increase the influence of the government over the justice system, damaging judicial independence.

The report also pointed out a risk of ``undue influence on corruption prosecutions for political purposes`` and noted a deterioration of working conditions for journalists, ``with use of intimidating judicial proceedings.``

Hungary was criticized for its perceived inadequate anti-corruption measures and the report noted that media pluralism ``remains at risk.`` The report depicted a bleak media situation in Slovenia, reporting online harassment and threats against journalists.

Balazs Hidveghi, a European lawmaker with Hungary's ruling Fidesz party, wrote on Twitter that the European Commission's rule of law report ``has nothing to do with reality. It's simply the compilation of leftist NGOs' baseless accusations against Hungary's conservative government.''

Piotr Mueller, the spokesman for Poland's government said it will analyze the documents presented by the European Commission.

The EU has repeatedly warned that democratic standards are being challenged in Hungary and Poland. At a June summit, EU leaders strongly clashed with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban over new legislation that bans the display of LGBT issues to children in that country.

Earlier this year, the European Union's executive arm also condemned Slovenia's right-wing prime minister, Janez Jansa, for a series of aggressive comments about journalists.

But the EU's criticism seems to have little effect. After the European Court of Justice's ruling, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki dismissed it as a ``typical dispute of the doctrine'' and insisted that the EU court has no authority on the shaping of the justice systems in individual member nations.

Jourova said the commission has formally asked Poland to confirm by Aug. 16 it will fully comply with the ruling or face financial sanctions.

``EU law has primacy over national law. All decisions by the European Court of Justice are binding,`` she said.

The aim of the report is not to sanction countries. To try to rein in member states they believe are at fault, EU institutions can use the so-called Article 7 procedure, but proceedings launched against Poland and Hungary have not been conclusive so far.

EU lawmakers have been losing patience and threatened last month to sue the bloc's executive branch if it fails to take action against countries allegedly violating democratic standards, notably Hungary and Poland.

They urged European Parliament President David Sassoli to demand that the European Commission ``fulfil its obligations'' within two weeks, under a system tying access to some EU funds to a country's respect for the rule of law.

The system was included in the budget the EU approved last year covering the 2021-27 period and which also included a massive coronavirus economic stimulus fund. In March, the right-wing governments of Poland and Hungary filed a complaint with the European Court of Justice to challenge it.

Both countries have submitted their plans to receive a share of the (euro)800 billion EU recovery fund to finance the 27-nation bloc's recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but the commission has yet to approve them.

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Belgium fell silent for a minute of remembrance Tuesday as it held a day of mourning for the victims of the devastating floods that left 200 dead in western Europe.

Heavy rains last week sent floodwaters sweeping through towns and villages, mostly in Belgium and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel visited victims in one of the hardest-hit areas.

At least 31 people were killed in Belgium, with dozens still missing or unaccountable, while Germany on Tuesday increased its death toll to 169 as rescuers scoured the rubble for victims.

The number of missing in Belgium has fallen over the past two days as telephone contact is re-established and more people are traced.

The clean-up is still under way to help the regions hit hardest recover from the destruction that saw dozens of homes collapsed and cars piled on top of each other.

Waters have subsided since Friday but workers and volunteers face a mammoth task to clear away the detritus and help local residents rebuild their shattered lives.

Belgium's King Philippe and Queen Mathilde paid their respects at the fire station in Verviers, one of the hardest-hit towns.

The moment of silence took place after sirens sounded in fire stations across the country, with buses, trams and metro trains halted in Brussels.

The Belgian tricolour was flown at half-mast on official buildings, as was the star-spangled flag of the European Union around the bloc's headquarters in the capital.

The commemorations were held on the eve of Belgium's national holiday. The city of Brussels has cancelled its "National Ball" and the city of Namur, capital of Wallonia, has cancelled its fireworks display.

This is the first time since 2016 that Belgium has observed a national mourning when three days were declared following the March 22 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group, which killed 32 people and injured more than 340 in Brussels.

'Speechless'

In neighbouring Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel met victims of the deluge still struggling to come to terms with the losses in the ravaged medieval town of Bad Munstereifel.

The damage is "appalling... Many houses are no longer habitable," she said, describing "people who have lost everything".

The city has been "so badly hit that it really leaves you speechless".

She was accompanied by Armin Laschet, the regional head and pick from Merkel's CDU party to replace her as chancellor at elections in September.

The number of people missing in the country remains unclear, mainly because of disrupted communication networks.

As the scale of the flood disaster became clearer, questions mounted in Germany about whether enough was done to warn residents ahead of time.

The German government on Monday pledged to improve the country's under-fire warning systems as a spokeswoman admitted that the tragedy had shown authorities "need to do more and better".

Although meteorological services had forecast torrential rain and flash floods, many residents said they were caught off-guard by rapidly rising waters.

The disaster has catapulted climate change to the top of the agenda in Germany, ahead of the September polls that will mark the end of Merkel's 16 years in power.

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Browsing through the heaps of books for sale on the open-air bookstalls of the Ezbekiyya Book Market in Cairo, Egyptian writer Iman Mersal came across a novel by an unknown author. Entitled Al-hubb wa-al-samt (Love and Silence) and published in 1967 by the state-owned Dar al-katib al-arabi publishers, the novel and its otherwise unknown author Enayat al-Zayyat piqued her interest enough for her to buy the book and to take it home to read it.



When she came across al-Zayyats novel in 1993, Mersal had only recently moved to Cairo from her native Mansoura and was working towards a MA and then a PhD in Arabic Literature at Cairo University. However, despite the many changes in her life that subsequently took place, including her relocation to Canada in 1998 where she is now a professor of Arabic literature, she did not forget al-Zayyats novel.



Returning to it some ten years later, she took the best part of a decade to find out more about the novel and its author, eventually publishing an account of her research as Fi athar Enayat al-Zayyat (In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat) with the independent Cairo publisher Kotob Khan in 2019. Immediately recognised as a major contribution to life-writing in Arabic, the book went through several editions, striking a chord with readers who may have been ignorant about al-Zayyat and her novel and would have known of Mersals work from her earlier poetry collections as well as from her well-received earlier non-fiction book Kayfa taltaem: an al-omoma wa askhbahuha (How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts).



Today, Mersals achievement in In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat is being more and more widely recognised. A French translation by veteran translator Richard Jacquemond, also the translator of a selection of Mersals poetry, appeared earlier this year from the French publishers Actes Sud (as Sur les traces dEnayat Zayyat). In May, Mersal was awarded the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature for In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat at a ceremony in Abu Dhabi, which she attended via Zoom. An English translation, already underway, is planned for as early as next year.



Taking time out from her regular job at the University of Alberta in Canada, Mersal is now working on a new book, tentatively entitled Al-Lakna: al-sawt fi ghair makana (Accent: the Displaced Voice), as a guest of the Institute for Advanced Study at Aix-Marseille University in France. She has also been caught up in a whirlwind of publicity for her book in both its Arabic and French editions, speaking at the Institut du Monde arabe in Paris in early June as part of a book tour and at other venues in France.



Fortunately, Mersal can still find time to discuss her book with ordinary readers, and sitting down with the Weekly after her Paris event in June she explained what had first attracted her to al-Zayyats book when she had come across it in Ezbekiyya all those years ago, scarcely knowing then the significance that it would have for her own subsequent writing.

Everyone will have had the experience of coming across a book at one period in their lives that at another might appear uninteresting, she said, and something along these lines had happened to her when she had found a secondhand copy of Al-hubb wa-al-samt in Ezbekiyya. She would often go there when she was living in Cairo, she said, in search of books by Sufis and religious mystics that could help her to write her thesis on the Syrian poet Adonis.You would go there, pick up five or six books, and then end up not reading three of them. But this book came to me at the right moment. I was shaping my own intellectual trajectory and my voice as a poet, and this book by a young woman 30 years before me who had tried to describe internal struggle and feelings of isolation really touched me, Mersal said. It was a book that seemed to speak across the decades to a new generation of readers.But not every book, however interesting, triggers the kind of extensive search that Mersal then carried out on the book and its author. Al-Zayyats only novel, published posthumously four years after her suicide at the age of only 27 in 1963, became for Mersal something of an obsession.In trying to explain why, she points to the novels stubbornness, its refusal to fit in with conventional expectations. I thought the book would be about the protagonist, a young woman called Naglaa, perhaps an experiment at self-projection on the part of al-Zayyat herself, mourning the early death of her brother, she said, referring to the then conventional representations of women in even literary fiction.But Naglaa describes her brother as selfish and resents the investment made in him by her family just because he is a boy. This drew my attention, along with the fact that the author was completely unknown and invisible in standard accounts of the canon of Arabic literature by women.On the other hand, in order to write a whole book 20 years later, you have to have other reasons, even if the desire to know more about a forgotten writer with an unusual talent can serve as an important stimulus. I have known many talented women writers who have vanished. I have always been fascinated by the kind of talent that cannot survive in our environment, she said.There was also the question of the relationship between al-Zayyats circumstances in the early 1960s and Mersals in the early 1990s. Al-Zayyats attempts at finding an authentic voice for herself in her single novel could perhaps illuminate the challenges faced by Mersals generation 30 years later in fashioning literary identities that would allow them to express their individuality and differences from the past.Following footsteps: Thus began a search for al-Zayyat that involved the examination of public and private archives, a review of the Cairo press in the 1960s and afterwards for any snippets about her, and multiple interviews with surviving friends and family, including the actress Nadia Lutfi, a friend from childhood, and al-Zayyats sister Azima al-Zayyat, among others.

Slowly al-Zayyat began to come into focus, her image filling out as new information emerged from interviews or dark corners of the archives. An official version emerged  there was the well-educated father who held an important post at Cairo University, the mother, the granddaughter of a pasha, the three daughters who went to the German School in Cairo and married one after the other, among them Enayat, the one who was unlucky.However, there were still so many details missing, concealed by the mask the Egyptian bourgeoise likes to use to conceal what it does not want to make known, that it was hard to square this image of al-Zayyat, one also found in some of the photographs in Mersals book, with the voice that spoke so powerfully in the novel.In reconstructing al-Zayyats circumstances in the early 1960s and the background to her novel, Mersal pays attention to the encouragement that she received, or did not receive, from the literary gatekeepers of the time, the high priests of literature, those who decided what was and what was not considered publishable. She notes that when Al-hubb wa-al-samt was finally published in early 1967, only months before defeat in the 1967 War, it contained an introduction by the critic Mustafa Mahmoud that for her could not have been more misleading.Mahmoud suggests that the way al-Zayyats novel should be read, and perhaps also the authors own story, is that of a young woman who could not find herself because she could not identify with the collective causes then giving shape to individual aspirations. In so doing, he was reiterating the ideas of prominent critics of the time such as Mahmoud Amin al-Alem, also cited in Mersals book, who had paradoxically spent time in prison for his political views but had been incorporated into the ideological apparatus on his release.That was the dominant formula, Mersal explained to the Weekly. It said that a womans path to emancipation coincided with national emancipation and the struggle against colonialism and that her identification with these things lent meaning to her personal aspirations and was a way of validating the way she presented herself in her life-writing.Literary work that did not conform to this kind of story-telling, or that presented individual lives in other ways, could risk being blackballed by the literary establishment. Either out of youthful naiveite, or, in a less charitable view, because of the authors relatively privileged social position  a lot of Marxist criticism was being produced at the time  al-Zayyats writing could not conform to the standard exemplified by, for example, the Egyptian writer Latifa al-Zayyats (no relation) novel The Open Door.This was published in 1960 at around the same time that Enayet al-Zayyat was writing, and it frankly identifies individual fulfilment with the struggle for national self-determination. One way of seeing the relative success of the two novels  Latifa al-Zayyats celebrated as a major work of literature, Enayat al-Zayyats rejected and forgotten  is to focus on such ideological differences and the way they frame the relationship between the individual and the collective.In her comments to the Weekly, Mersal said that it was important to revisit al-Zayyats experience as a young woman writing in Cairo in the 1960s. Her novel is not a great novel, but it has a genuine voice In the 1990s, there were lots of attacks on the poetry we were writing, most of them based on nationalist viewpoints and saying that our poetry [the poetry of her generation] lacked big ideas. Revisiting her story gave me the chance to understand what we faced in focusing on individual experience that did not necessarily fit the needs of grand-scale ideological systems, leftist or nationalist, inherited from the past.Could this scepticism about the authority of collective story-telling and emphasis on the validity of individual experience be related to a desire to take up a different relationship to the past? Was it a response by present generations to the ways in which that past is sometimes represented? Mersal protests against the idea that in her book she wanted to rehabilitate a forgotten writer or insert her into the academic canon. Had she wanted to do the latter, she would have written an academic article, she said. Had she wanted to do the former, she could have written a biography.Instead, her book was about reading the past, she said, in the sense of following up what remains, some of it written, some in the form of oral testimony, some in the shape of physical objects. What I was doing was presenting somebody who was a nobody in the wider cultural consciousness and trying to read her story, or read the past through her story, while keeping her as an individual and not speaking in her name, Mersal explained.The conversation turns to the Sheikh Zayed Prize and the recognition of her book abroad. Mersal comments that I never expected to get an award, since I am a poet, and poetry is invisible when it comes to recognition. But I was happy that my creative non-fiction book about a forgotten women writer should have received the Prize. Awards allow books to travel. The received map of writing and reading in the Arab world has changed, and there is a new readership outside the established centres of Cairo and Beirut. There is a growing youthful public for fiction and non-fiction in Arabic, and this should be encouraged.Was she happy to see the success that In the Footsteps of Enayat al-Zayyat has had in translation? One great value in writing the book for me was that it helped me to recover the Cairo I left in 1998, seeing it in a new light. Wandering the streets of the city looking for the house and tomb of Enayat al-Zayyat helped me to remember the city and to get to know it again.Translation wasnt a source of motivation for me when writing the book, but if it is a success abroad, why not? You offer something to your own culture first, but if it also means something to others, then this is also great, she commented.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 15 July, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.

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In the midst of a highly strained political situation at home and friction with neighbours Sudan and Egypt over the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) project, Ethiopia will be heading to the polls on 21 June this year.

This is the sixth set of general elections since the current regime in Ethiopia took over more than three decades ago. The elections are clouded by one of the most disastrous and tragic events that this country of 110 million people has experienced in recent years: a fierce and unsettled conflict in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia that has left thousands killed, injured or displaced and has drawn international attention over the atrocities being committed there.

Above all, the conflict has inflicted deep wounds, probably ones that will not be healed, on a nation that once believed in real change as a result of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed coming to power in 2018.

At that time, the young prime minister, who rose to power against the backdrop of the wide discontent and mass protests engulfing the whole of Ethiopia against the malpractices of the EPRDF, the coalition that had been in charge of the countrys political affairs since 1991, promised to lead the multi-ethnic nation into a real democratic transition.

The early days of his rule showed that Ethiopias quest for democracy could be a reality in the near future, particularly when he embarked on wide-ranging political reforms, ensured the freedom of the press and opened up political space for dissidents, once labelled terrorists, to return to the country and join the political process.

But Ahmed also came up with an idea that would later turn things upside down in a nation highly polarised along ethnic lines, namely his Medemer (synergy) philosophy. For him, and for those who believe in it, this is the best means to rid the country once and for all of narrow-minded ethnic practices and get all its citizens to rally not behind their ethnicities, but rather behind their country.

It has not been all bad, but this new philosophy has nevertheless failed to deduce lessons from the countrys recent history. The Ethiopian ethnicities have only managed to live together in relative peace since the demise of the countrys communist regime (the Derg) that ran Ethiopias affairs with an iron fist through a ruthless centralised government. As a result, the major ethnicities closed ranks and worked together to uproot the Derg regime, ushering in a multi-ethnic system that has survived for three decades.

In a country where peoples allegiance to their ethnicity is far greater than to their nation, there was a need to test the waters first before putting the theory into practice. Those who opposed Medemer, not only among the Tigrayans, but also among the two major regions of Oromia and Amhara, feared that their gains, particularly self-rule, would be washed away and that it might be only a matter of time before the new approach would draw the curtain on their cultural particularities, identities, languages and long-held traditions.

Today, Medemer is apparently seen as a quest for a powerful and centralised form of governance designed to suit the incumbent prime minister. Furthermore, the popular mandate that Ahmed has wanted to secure through the ballot box looks more like a dream than ever. Roughly 32 million voters have registered for the upcoming elections, in other words less than a third of the total population. The elections will also not take place in 40 constituencies spanning six major regions.

A lengthy statement issued by the National Election Board of Ethiopia (NEBE) has detailed security concerns and the disruption of voter registration and related irregularities in regions that include Oromia, Amhara, the Somali region, Beni Shangul Gumuz (the seat of the GERD) and the Southern Nations and Nationalities. Unfortunately, the people of Tigray will also not have a say in the elections, as they will not be held in the restive region given the deteriorating security and humanitarian conditions.

Another killer blow was levelled at the elections when the European Union called off the deployment of its observation mission, citing the refusal of the Ethiopian authorities to observe key parameters necessary for the integrity of the mission. As the EU put it, it has not received the assurances necessary to extend to the Ethiopian people one of its most visible signs of support for their quest for democracy.

The EU, one of the biggest financiers of Ethiopia, had built hopes on Ahmeds leading the countrys transition to real democracy and wishing that it could serve as a model for a continent that is yet to take baby steps towards that end.

Regionally speaking, the Ethiopian elections will set the stage for either a relatively stable Horn of Africa region over the next few years or its becoming a disruptive and chaotic region. Ahmeds alliance with Eritrea has alienated Ethiopias economic lifeline of Djibouti, given its old enmity with Asmara.

If Ahmed is to form the next government in Ethiopia, he will have to revisit that infamous alliance with Eritrea or risk a further decline in the relationship with Djibouti. Moreover, the refugees pouring from Tigray into Sudan and South Sudan have exacerbated the already ailing economies of these two impoverished nations. If the Ethiopian elections are marred by violence or rigging, as is widely expected, it will be difficult to avoid a hemorrhage of refugees on the borders with Ethiopias neighbours.

With Ahmeds prominent political opponents, the likes of Jawar Mohamed and Bekele Gerba, standing trial for crimes that could lead to their spending long periods in jail, and with the main dissident figures in Tigray silenced, at least for the near future, Ahmeds Prosperity Party is likely to be the frontrunner in elections that, if won, would allow Ahmed to form the next Ethiopian government.

But this government will not be an inclusive one, and it will have to surf dangerous waters, particularly as there is no looming termination of the Tigray conflict or overall settlement for the inter-ethnic fighting in the country.

*The writer is a former press attache in Ethiopia and an expert on African and international affairs.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 17 June, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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The UN Security Council convened on 8 July at the request of Egypt and Sudan to discuss the situation that has arisen in the Horn of Africa and the Nile Basin relating to differences among Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia regarding the absence of a binding agreement on the filling and operations of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

This was the second time that Egypt has brought the matter of the dam before the council. The first time was last year, long before the second filling of the dam that began earlier this month without prior consultation with the two downstream countries of Egypt and Sudan.

In both cases, Egypt referred the matter to the council in the context of Chapter VI of the UN Charter entitled The Pacific Settlement of Disputes. This time the referral was made according to Article 35 of the Charter that stipulates that Any Member of the United Nations may bring any dispute, or any situation of the nature referred to in Article 34, to the attention of the Security Council or of the General Assembly.

For the record, Chapter 34 states that the Security Council may investigate any dispute, or any situation which might lead to international friction or give rise to a dispute, in order to determine whether the continuance of the dispute or situation is likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.

Judging from the perspective of Article 34, it seems that the Security Council did not fulfil its duty as prescribed in Article 34 last Thursday. Undoubtedly, the continuation of the serious remaining differences among the three Nile River countries does constitute or give rise to a dispute or a situation likely to endanger the maintenance of international peace and security. In fact, the session on 8 July had the title of Peace and Security in Africa.

The Egyptian, Sudanese and Ethiopian delegations, the former two headed by their foreign ministers, the latter presided by its minister of irrigation, explained the positions of their respective countries. The Egyptian foreign minister warned that Cairo will protect its share of the Nile water by whatever means is necessary, emphasising, however, that the Egyptian government still hopes to resolve the differences with Ethiopia through negotiations. The Sudanese foreign minister proved combative when she said that Ethiopia wants to weaponise the Nile water and exercise hegemony over the sources of the Blue Nile.

As for the Ethiopians, the remarks of their irrigation minister were a rehash of their well-known position, often repeated over the last ten years, that runs counter to the facts on the ground. However, the remarks were mostly destined for Ethiopian public opinion rather than to debate the outstanding differences with the two downstream countries objectively and in a spirit of compromise.

The members of the Security Council insisted that negotiations are the best possible avenue for working out the differences among the three countries and expressed a preference for the African Union to keep pushing for a final agreement concerning the filling and the operations of the dam.

The Russian and French delegations spoke of their readiness to help the three countries reach a satisfactory resolution of their differences, and the Russian permanent representative talked about relations between Egypt and Sudan and other countries in the Nile River Basin. This is an interesting point that can be discussed between Egypt and Sudan in reviewing and reassessing the road covered so far and in comparing their respective readings of the Security Council session last Thursday.

Many Egyptian commentators lamented the fact that there was not enough support among the member countries of the Security Council for the Egyptian point of view. I believe that no one should be surprised by how the Thursday session on the Ethiopian Dam went, however. The session was significant, as well as important, in as much as it demonstrated where the international community stands on the issues at hand.

On 10 July, a US State Department spokesman made known the American position on the differences regarding the dam. This was a new American position that merits attention. The spokesman said that the United States does not countenance what he called the military option as an alternative to settling the crisis over the dam. He added that the best place to overcome the differences among the three parties was the African Union, adding that Africa does not need more wars. Whereas the US government stands ready to provide political and technical assistance, he said, this would be conditional on the consent of the parties concerned. Whether Ethiopia will consent to that remains an open question. I doubt that it will, to put things diplomatically.

I guess that the other four permanent members of the Security Council have similar positions to the one expressed by the spokesman of the US State Department. It now behooves us to draw the right conclusions from the remarks made at the Security Council on 8 July and plan our future steps accordingly.

*The writer is former assistant foreign minister.

*A version of this article appears in print in the 8 July, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Egypt condemns terror bombing in Iraq's Sadr City



MENA, , Tuesday 20 Jul 2021



The fatal incident left around 100 people dead and wounded



Egypt has vehemently condemned a terrorist attack that targeted a civilian area in Iraq's Sadr City on Monday, leaving 100 people dead and wounded.



In a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cairo extended its heartfelt condolences to the victims' families as well as to the Iraqi government and people, wishing the wounded a speedy recovery.



Egypt reaffirmed its full solidarity with Iraq as regards whatever measures it would take to preserve its security and stability.



In this regard, Cairo reiterated its call for all Iraqi parties to prioritize the Iraqi national interest.



https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/417474.aspx
By Reito Kaneko, KYODO NEWS - Jul 20, 2021 - 20:52 | All, World, Japan

British aircraft carrier the Queen Elizabeth and its strike group dispatched to the western Pacific will make port calls in Japan in September, Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi said Tuesday, as China is increasing its military influence in the area.

Kishi unveiled the plan, apparently intended to counter China's rising assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, at a joint press announcement with his British counterpart Ben Wallace after their meeting in Tokyo.

The Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Navy's largest warship, and its group will be dispersed among ports in Japan, Kishi said. U.S. and Dutch naval vessels are accompanying the strike group.

Wallace revealed a plan to send two patrol ships "permanently" to the Indo-Pacific region from later this year, following the deployment of the British strike group.

The strike group departed Britain in May to showcase London's increased engagement in the area.

Kishi welcomed Britain's contribution to the Indo-Pacific region, saying that boosting bilateral defense cooperation "will contribute to ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region and the international community."

Wallace referred to the strike group's visit as one that will herald a "new era" for defense and security cooperation, saying, "Japan is Britain's closest security partner in Asia with many shared values and common strategic interests."

The contribution to the Indo-Pacific region reflects a defense and foreign policy adopted in March that says Britain would be "deeply engaged" in the region.

Kishi said he and Wallace also "strongly opposed unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force in the East and South China seas" and "agreed on the importance of a free and open maritime order based on the rule of law."

The two countries are also considering conducting joint exercises before and after the strike group makes port calls in Japan, a Defense Ministry official said.

Kishi conveyed his views to Wallace regarding China's maritime law implemented in February that allows its coast guard to use weapons against foreign vessels it views as illegally entering its waters, according to the official.

Japan has reiterated that the law "includes problematic provisions in terms of inconsistency with international law."

Earlier this month, an anti-piracy military drill was conducted in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia in East Africa, involving the Queen Elizabeth and the MSDF destroyer Setogiri and P-3C patrol planes.

In addition to its alliance with the United States, Japan is seeking to deepen security ties with like-minded countries that share democratic values.

Japan and Britain also agreed to enhance discussions for defense cooperation, including over the development of engines for the Air Self-Defense Force's next fighter jet, the defense chiefs said.

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KYODO NEWS - Jul 20, 2021 - 12:06 | All, World

Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told his Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez on Monday that Japan hopes Havana will take steps to respond to the demands of anti-government protestors earlier this month.

"I am looking forward to seeing the government listen to the voices of many people and the situation improving," Motegi was quoted as telling Rodriguez in their telephone talks while visiting Panama, according to the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Motegi was initially scheduled to visit Havana during his tour of Central American and Caribbean countries, but canceled the stop due to the spread of novel coronavirus infections in Cuba.

Motegi also told Rodriguez that he hopes the country will bring down coronavirus infections, the ministry said.

In Cuba, thousands of people have protested against the government over shortages of food and electricity, in an extremely rare move in a country where demonstrations are banned in principle.

The Cuban foreign minister expressed his support for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics being held in a difficult situation amid the coronavirus pandemic, the ministry said.

Motegi extended his stay in Panama after arriving there from Guatemala on Saturday. He will travel to Jamaica later Monday before he returns to Japan on Wednesday.

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KYODO NEWS - Jul 20, 2021 - 21:54 | World, Japan, All

South Korean and Japanese senior diplomats held a meeting on Tuesday in which Seoul again protested over a sexually explicit expression made about President Moon Jae In by Tokyo's deputy chief of mission in the country, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.

The ministry, in a statement, said First Vice Foreign Minister Choi Jong Gun, in talks with his Japanese counterpart Takeo Mori, "lodged a protest over inappropriate and rude comments made by the high-ranking official at the Japanese Embassy in South Korea, asking Japan to take an immediate action on it."

On Monday, a Japanese government source said Japan is planning to remove Hirohisa Soma from his position at the embassy in Seoul over his remark that Moon's diplomatic efforts to mend frayed ties with Japan are tantamount to "masturbating."

The remark has angered Seoul and the president has decided not to visit Japan for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics on Friday.

Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga criticized Soma's remark, reported by South Korean broadcaster JTBC last week, as being "extremely inappropriate."

Choi and Mori also exchanged thoughts over history issues as well, according to the ministry.

The South Korean diplomat also said he hopes Japan would approach history issues with an open point of view based on a "correct" perspective on history.

Bilateral relations remain rocky due to disputes stemming from Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945, including compensation for women coerced into working in military brothels and former wartime laborers.

Japan maintains all issues concerning properties and claims related to its colonial rule were settled under a bilateral agreement signed when the countries established diplomatic relations in 1965.

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South Korea Pres. Moon expresses disappointment about not visiting Japan

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Japan envoy to South Korea reprimands deputy for improper remark on Moon
KYODO NEWS - Jul 21, 2021 - 00:36 | All, Japan, World

Senior Japanese and South Korean diplomats remained apart Tuesday over issues involving wartime history even as they agreed to continue dialogue, Japan's Foreign Ministry said, at a time when tensions have flared anew over a remark made by a Japanese Embassy official in Seoul.

In their meeting in Tokyo, Japan's Vice Foreign Minister Takeo Mori and his South Korean counterpart Choi Jong Kun also touched on the remark by the official who used sexual imagery when referring to South Korean President Moon Jae In.

The South Korean ministry said in a statement released after the talks that Choi, first vice foreign minister, "lodged a protest over inappropriate and rude comments made by the high-ranking official at the Japanese Embassy in South Korea, asking Japan to take immediate action on it."

Ties between the two Asian neighbors remain frosty chiefly over issues stemming from Japan's colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945 such as wartime labor and compensation issues, as well as the issue of "comfort women" in Japan's wartime military brothels.

On Monday, a Japanese government source said Japan is planning to remove Hirohisa Soma, its deputy chief of mission in South Korea, from his position at the embassy for his remark that described Moon's diplomatic efforts regarding Japan-South Korea as masturbation.

South Korea said the same day that Moon will scrap his plan to visit the Japanese capital for the opening of the Tokyo Olympics. Moon and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga were planning to hold their first face-to-face summit during the trip.

During their talks in Tokyo, Mori urged South Korea to take responsibility in resolving the issues related to wartime labor and compensation, but Choi stuck to his country's position that the issues would not be resolved unless Japan has a "correct" perception of history, the ministry said.

South Korea's Supreme Court has ordered some Japanese firms to compensate for wartime forced labor.

Mori held a separate meeting in Tokyo the same day with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, with the two affirming the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait where mainland China is increasing pressure on the self-ruled island.

Mori and Sherman vowed to ensure trilateral coordination with South Korea in ridding North Korea of nuclear weapons, the ministry said. The three countries will hold a trilateral meeting on Wednesday.

U.S. President Joe Biden's administration has attached importance to strengthening cooperation with Washington's two closest allies in Asia, whose bilateral relations have sunk to the lowest level in decades over the wartime labor and compensation issues.

Mori and Sherman also expressed grave concern about China's alleged human rights abuses against the Muslim Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region and the crackdown on Hong Kong.

At the bilateral meeting, the two senior diplomats pledged to work closely on climate change, the COVID-19 crisis and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, as well as on ensuring strong supply chains, according to the U.S. State Department.

Related coverage:

South Korea lodges protest over Japanese diplomat's remarks in talks

U.S. eyes Sept. for 1st in-person summit with Japan, Australia, India

U.S. deputy secretary of state to visit Tokyo for trilateral talks
New Delhi:

The government is likely to release the draft of new National Telecom Policy on May 1 to seek public comments, Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan said on Thursday.

"The direction of the new policy, that we hope you will see as early as on May 1, will be reform-oriented, it will be investor friendly and bring down the cost of compliances," Sundararajan said while speaking at the Annual General Meeting of US industry body Amcham.

She mentioned that the proposed National Telecom Policy (NTP) 2018 will be placed for public comments for 15-20 days.

"It (NTP) will hopefully trigger innovation, will focus on Make in India and provide opportunities for partnering with lit of companies,"Sundararjan said.

After completion of public comments, the Department of Telecom will start inter-ministerial consultation on the policy and thereafter approach Cabinet for final approval, she said.

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New Delhi:

As many as 95 people were killed and over 100 others injured after a powerful dust storm followed by thunder showers wreaked havoc in Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan on Wednesday night.

The high-intensity dust storm in parts of Uttar Pradesh overnight left at least 64 people dead and scores others injured. Agra was the worst hit where 43 people lost their lives.

As per the latest figures received here, 64 people were killed and 47 injured in the dust storm in different parts of the state, Uttar Pradesh Relief Commissioner Sanjay Kumar said.

Apart from Agra, three persons died in Bijnor, two in Saharanpur, three in Kanpur Dehat, one each in Bareilly, Chitrakoot, Raebareli and Unnao besides other districts, the government official said.

Congress slams CM Yogi for campaigning in Karnataka even when people suffer from dust storm

The Congress slammed UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for campaigning in poll-bound Karnataka even when people of his state were reeling under the impact of the severe dust storm that has left many dead.

"Even if people of Uttar Pradesh are suffering, I am busy culling out 'jumlas' (gimmicks) in Karnataka elections -- Adityanath, missing chief minister, Uttar Pradesh," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala tweeted.

Adityanath is scheduled to address election rallies in Karnataka over the next two days.

Rajasthan death toll reaches to 31, CM Raje announces compensation

In Rajasthan, the high-speed dust storm wreaked havoc in Alwar, Dholpur, Bharatpur districts, uprooting hundreds of trees and electricity polls. At least 16 people were killed in Bharatpur, 10 in Dholpur and five in Alwar.

However, Hemant Kumar Gera, Secretary, Disaster Management and Relief confimred only 27 deaths, but reports said that four more people succumbed to injuries in Bharatapur.

"So far, 27 people have died due to the disaster, including 12 in Bharatpur, 10 in Dholpur and 5 in Alwar. The squall was reported mainly in three districts," PTI quoted as saying.

Gera said that a detailed report of the disaster was awaited even as relief and rescue teams were sent to clear debris and restore power supply, he said.

Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje expressed her condolences to the families of deceased and directed concerned district officials to begin relief work and restore utilities.

Have directed Ministers and concerned officials to affected areas to begin relief work immediately and restore utilities. An unfortunate incident, we have been working closely with local authorities to mitigate the situation, Raje tweeted.

A compensation of Rs 4 lakh to the family members of deceased and Rs 2 lakh for people sustaining 60 per cent injuries was announced by the authories. Rs People with 40 to 50 per cent injuries will also be given Rs 60,000.

The Chief Minister also assigned monitoring tasks to several ministers and party leaders. Gulabchand Kataria and Arun Chaturvedi were asked to monitor situation in Alwar and Dholpur, respectively.

While state Health Minister Kalicharan Saraf was monitoring the situation in Bharatpur, Surendrapal Singh was looking after the relief work in Jhunjhunu.

Rajasthan Congress president Sachin Pilot asked district Congress presidents and Seva Dal members to provide any possible help to those affected by the inclement weather.

Extremely grieved at the loss of lives, former Rajasthan chief minister and Congress national general secretary Ashok Gehlot cancelled his birthday celebration at his residence.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

Scientists have developed a smartphone video-based app that could be a more effective replacement for a day-to-day in-person visit by a health care worker required for tuberculosis (TB) treatment.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University in the US described the application which provides video Directly Observed Therapy (DOT), as per a journal  Open Forum Infectious Diseases.

"We believe video DOT offers an alternative that appears to be as effective as an in-person daily visits by health care workers to assure compliance with drug treatment, but also empowers patients to manage their TB without added stress," says Samuel Holzman, a research fellow at the Johns Hopkins University.

TB requires corrective measures to ensure that patients stick to treatment. These suggestions include provisions for home or hospital based isolation or sometimes forced isolation for infectious individuals.

The bacteria that causes infectious TB, can hang in the air for extended periods when thrown out by the coughs or saliva of patients, spreading to others present in the room or through buildings ventilation.

Many people with active TB also have relatively few symptoms, allowing the bacteria to spread before a diagnosis is made.

To test the effectiveness of video DOT, the researchers conducted a pilot study utilizing the widely-available smartphone application developed by emocha Mobile Health in conjunction with Maunank Shah, and other clinician-scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

As many as 28 adult TB patients being treated at three health departments in Maryland participated in the pilot study.

The patients had their therapy monitored using the video DOT app in the present of in-person visits by a health care worker.

The researchers found that patient adherence to treatment was almost the same between the DOT application and in-person DOT.
New Delhi:

US President Donald Trump may steal the show on micro-blogging site Twitter, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is far ahead when it comes to popularity on Facebook, according to a new study, published on Wednesday.

Modi's popularity has grown by leaps and bounds on Facebook over the years and currently, he is way more popular than other world leaders including Trump.

Trump, who rules the other social media platform like Twitter, is in second place with 23.1 million followers on Facebook. Currently, Modi, 67, has around 43 million followers on the social media platform. The prime minister has always encouraged the use of social media platforms to stay in touch with the public.

The study titled 'World Leaders on Facebook' has been released by Burson Cohn & Wolfe on Wednesday.

It analyses the activity of 650 Facebook pages of heads of state and government and foreign ministers from January 1, 2017 using aggregate data from Facebook's Crowdtangle tool, it said in a statement.

Also Read | Shah Rukh Khan's fandom on social media rises, crosses 32 million mark on Twitter

Over the past 14 months, the Facebook page of Trump had by far the most interactions of any world leader on Facebook, with a total of 204.9 million interactions (defined as the total number of comments, likes and shares), almost twice as many as Modi with 113.6 million interactions, the study said.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has 46 million interactions and Cambodia's Prime Minister Samdech Hun Sen and Argentina's President Mauricio Macri follow with 36 and 33.4 million interactions, respectively.

The study found that 175, or 91 per cent, of the 193 United Nations member states maintain an official Facebook page. In addition, 109 heads of state, 86 heads of government and 72 foreign ministers maintain personal pages on the platform.

Facebook has become the key platform for world leaders and governments to engage with voters, supporters and citizens. As of March 15, 2018, all pages of world leaders combined had a total of 309.4 million followers. Since January 1, 2017, they have published a total of 536,644 posts which have garnered close to 900 million interactions, it said.

Also Read | What! Bollywood Shahenshah Amitabh Bachchan to QUIT Twitter?

The findings revealed that, while more than half of the posts have photos, world leaders are increasingly sharing videos and a handful are going live to talk directly to their constituents.

Talking about Twitter, President Trump is ruling the roost with 51.4 million followers while Modi is followed by 42.3 million people across the world.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

A mistake was made in including the name of a living person in the "Hindu martyrs" list sent to the Union home minister, BJP Lok Sabha member Shobha Karandlaje said on .



Karandlaje, MP from Chikkamagaluru-Udupi in Karnataka, said that the Congress was trying to revive an "old issue" over which she had expressed regret.

"I had expressed my regret at this lapse last year. I had mistakenly included Ashok Pujari's name in the list of BJP and RSS workers who were killed after Siddaramaiah assumed charge as Chief Minister. I had brought this mistake to the notice of the central government," she told PTI over phone.



Karandlaje sparked off a row in 2017 when she included Pujari's name in the list of '23 Hindu martyrs", which she sent to Home Minister Rajnath Singh on , demanding an NIA probe into the killings of RSS/BJP workers in Karnataka.



Pujari, who lives in a remote village in Udupi district, was attacked by masked people on and hospitalised. He had recovered after about a month.

However, accusing the Siddaramaiah government of being "soft" on "Jehadi forces", the BJP has made the killings of Hindu activists a major issue in its political discourse.



"The Congress wants to divert the issue of their unholy electoral understanding with SDPI and PFI. Therefore, they are raking up this old issue," she told PTI.

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New Delhi:

The Delhi High Court on directed a JNU professor, accused of sexually harassing women students, not to interact with women students or take charge as warden of any girls hostel in the university campus.

"These directions are made on the stand taken by JNU's counsel to provide a safe working environment to the petitioner students," the court said.

The court asked the professor not to visit laboratory no. 409 of the Department of Life Sciences where the students work.

"In my view, it is also in the interest of the professor to reduce the chance of interaction with the complainants or potential witnesses," Justice Rajiv Shakdher said.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) counsel had informed the court that Prof Atul Kumar Johri had resigned from administrative work and was no more the warden of any hostel or member of any committee. In view of it, the court issued the direction .

The court also noted that the fact-finding committee set up to probe the professors alleged misconduct comprised of two male professors and questioned the varsity over the absence of women members in the committee.

"They have put two male professors in the fact-finding committee. Why not any female professor? How will the students answer to a male member properly? A woman member can ask questions in a better manner as the allegations pertain to sexual harassment," it said.

The court asked JNU advocate Ginni Rautray to advise the vice chancellor to reconstitute the panel by including a female professor before whom the women students could depose comfortably.

The court was hearing a petition filed by several women students seeking suspension of the professor, against whom eight FIRs have been lodged alleging sexual harassment, and to restrain him from entering the campus. The plea has sought the provision of a safe working environment to the students.

Advocate Vrinda Grover, appearing for women students, said 79 more students have written to the police that they were living in a fearful atmosphere as the professor continued to visit the Department of Life Sciences.

Reading out the details given by the students in the FIRs in the court, Grover said the systematic nature and pattern of sexual harassment was visible through the complaints of the students. When the matter was reported by any of the students to the university authorities, they were not given due attention and cognisance was not taken of these complaints.

The counsel for the professor claimed that the FIRs against him were motivated and all the complaints were "stereotyped". The complaints started after he sent an email to some students warning them against their irregular and poor attendance pattern, he alleged.

Advocate Satyakam, appearing for the Delhi Police, told the court that the investigation was going on and they have filed a status report. A fresh one would be submitted before the next date of hearing on .

The court had on , directed the JNU to treat the representations of women students as complaints and initiate a probe against the professor on charges of sexual harassment, while questioning the varsity for not taking any steps in the matter.

Students, professors and women rights organisations have been demanding his arrest, after several students had accused him of sexual harassment.

In his bail plea, Johri stated before the trial court that in compliance with UGC guidelines regarding compulsory attendance and leave pattern, he had sent an e-mail on to certain students, including a complainant student, warning them against their irregular attendance pattern. He said the allegations levelled by the woman pertained to 2013-14, but the FIR was registered in 2018.



(With PTI inputs)

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New Delhi:

For the security of pilgrims and success of the upcoming 60-day long Amarnath Yatra, the security agencies have chalked out a plan in a recent meeting with the Jammu and Kashmir governor, the police official said on Wednesday.

Governor NN Vohra on Monday had reviewed the plans for the yatra in a meeting that was attended by high profile officials like the Director General of Police SP Vaid and Chief Secretary BB Vyas.

The annual yatra to the Himalayan shrine in south Kashmir will commence on June 28 and is set to be 20 days longer this year.

"Security agencies have already started implementing the security plan chalked out at a recent meeting chaired by Governor NN Vohra for the success of the yatra. Security forces are working together to deal with and eliminate any threat posed to the pilgrimage," Inspector General of Police (IGP), Jammu Province, S D Singh Jamwal, said.

Over one lakh pilgrims have already registered their names for the yatra at centres all across the country and pre-booking of helicopter tickets for the pilgrimage have started from April 27.

Efforts are being taken to make the yatra to the 3,880-metre high holy cave shrine of Amarnath peaceful and without any incidents, Jamwal said.

"The Amarnath yatra is a very big event, depicting our culture, history and brotherhood... Elaborate plans have been worked out to ensure a peaceful yatra and make it a best experience for pilgrims," the officer said.

Managed by Amarnathji Shrine Board, headed by the governor, the annual yatra is scheduled to begin from two routed from June 28.

"Last year, not a single untoward incident was reported from the Jammu province during the yatra due to stringent security arrangements and we are sure that the pilgrimage will pass off peacefully this year with the cooperation of the people," Jamwal said.

A bus with pilgrim on board skidded off the track near Ramban along the Jammu-Srinagar national highway, resulting in the deaths of 17 pilgrims.

"We are working round the clock. Elaborate arrangements with regard to security and traffic management on the highway will be in place. Our attempt is to ensure a peaceful yatra and we are confident that the it will be peacefully," he said.

Referring to the killing of four infiltrators in Sunderbani of Rajouri district in March, the IGP said the success was the result of the anti-infiltration security grid and the cooperation of the people.

"The yatra is starting next month and it will be followed by Independence Day...We are keeping our focus on the calendar and working out our plan accordingly to thwart any attempt of sabotage, he said.

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New Delhi:

Congress President Rahul Gandhi, who is on a two-day visit to Karnataka as part of the last leg of his campaigning for the state assembly elections, received call from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday.

Modi dialled Gandhi after a Karnataka bound chartered plane carrying the Congress chief developed some technical snags mid-air on Thursday. Rahul was on his way to Karnataka's Hubli.

According to reports, Modi was the first person to call Gandhi and enquired about the incident. Currently, Modi is in China for a two-day informal summit in Wuhan. Earlier on Friday, PM Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping exchanged views on solidifying the India-China relationship.

"It was a private conversation between the two (over phone). All the authorities concerned were informed about the plane developing snag. After that, the prime minister rang up Gandhi enquiring if he was fine," PTI quoted a Congress party source.

"The flight took off at around 9:20 am from Delhi. At around 10:45 am, the aircraft suddenly tilted heavily on the left side and the altitude dipped steeply, combined with violent shuddering of the aircraft body," according to the complaint filed by Kaushal Vidyarthee, a key member of Rahul Gandhis team.

Vidyarthee also tweeted later about the incident, saying the Congress chief had maintained his composure and even tried to calm the co-passengers down.

"Glad to be in a room and getting some rest....thankful for being alive...never had such a frightening experience in my life...plane went into free fall...couldnt believe CP's composure and calmness as he stood beside pilots trying to save the situation," Vidyarthee wrote on Twitter.

Glad to be in a room and getting some rest....thankful for being alive...never had such a frightening experience in my life...plane went into free fall...couldnt believe CP's composure and calmness as he stood beside pilots trying to save the situation.  Kaushal K Vidyarthee (@vidyarthee) April 26, 2018

Also Read | Rahul Gandhi flight scare: Congress alleges conspiracy; snag 'not uncommon', says DGCA

"Never thought we would make it through what happened in the aircraft today...cant believe how brave RG is...being a pilot himself he was constantly by the side of the crew through the crisis. Respect!," he said in another tweet.

Never thought we would make it through what happened in the aircraft today...cant believe how brave RG is...being a pilot himself he was constantly by the side of the crew through the crisis. Respect! @vidyarthee  Rahul S Ravi (@RahulS_Ravi) April 26, 2018

Congress filed another complaint with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) seeking a detailed investigation into the matter.

"The operator has reported the incident to us. According to the report, it was a snag in the auto-pilot mode. The pilot shifted to the manual (mode) and (the aircraft) landed safely," a senior DGCA official was quoted.

"Shutdown of the auto-pilot (mode) is not uncommon. For a VIP flight, the DGCA examines it thoroughly. We shall do that in this case as well," he added.

Also Read | Google shows Prime Minister Narendra Modi's picture as 'India's first PM'; Here is how Twitterati reacted

A two-member team has already been set up to investigate the matter.

Congress's communications in-charge Randeep Surjewala described the failure of the auto-pilot mode in the aircraft as "horrific" and "serious" and demanded a probe to find out if there was any "foul play".

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New Delhi:

Jodhpur Districts and Sessions Court on Monday adjourned the hearing on Salman Khans plea, challenging the trial court order in the 1998 blackbuck poaching case till July 17.

Fifty-two-year-old Khan appeared before the court on Monday in compliance with the directions given by the court on April 7 while granting bail.

The Bollywood superstar was sentenced to five years in jail following his conviction in the blackbuck poaching case. He was found guilty of killing two blackbucks in September 1998 in Kankani village, Jodhpur, during the shooting of Hum Saath Saath Hain.

The court acquitted all the other accused  actors Saif Ali Khan, Tabu, Sonali Bendre, Neelam and Dushyant Singh, a local driver who took Salman to the jungles.

Later on April 7, Khan was released on bail after spending two days in Jodhpur jail. He was allowed to file an application for suspension of sentence for a month against.

The District and Sessions Judge Chandra Kumar Songara adjourned the hearing after the defence counsel Mahesh Bora sought time to begin arguments.

The actor would not be required to be present in the court at next hearing on July 17, when his plea for suspension of sentence would be heared. However, he will not be able to leave the country without the courts permission.

(With inputs from agencies)

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Aligarh:

The annual examinations of the Aligarh Muslim University will now commence from May 12, according to Vice Chancellor Prof Tariq Mansoor.

The examinations were earlier scheduled to begin from May 7 but were postponed following the ongoing students protest on the campus.

Prof Mansoor told PTI that the University has taken this decision in view of the improvement in the law and order situation in the campus.

He said the University had initiated a number of steps for the return of normalcy which primarily centred on the addressal of all genuine demands of students pertaining to Wednesday's violence on the campus.

He said a 16-member coordination committee of senior faculty members had been formed to help in engaging protesting students and understanding their problems.

The committee will have Prof Jamshed Siddiqui, Dean Students Welfare and will include the President of the AMU Teachers Association.

He said there were no proposal for closing the University sine die as the situation at this stage does not warrant it even as he urged students to come forward and help in the process of normalcy and peace on the campus.

Prof Mansoor said the University had "no intention of further delaying the examination schedule" as any such move will jeopardise the career prospects of a large number of students.

He said University authorities were in constant touch with district authorities and holding regular talks with protesting students so as to "chalk out a roadmap for complete normalcy".
New Delhi:

The United Democratic Front (UDF), led by Congress, on Wednesday took out a rally to the Raj Bhavan on bullock carts, bicycles and on foot to protest against the Central government's decision to increase the prices of petrol and diesel.

Besides Narendra Modi government, they also raised slogans against the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government in Kerala for refusing to forego the additional revenue consequent on the hike.

The protest was led by Leader of the Opposition in the assembly, Ramesh Chennithala, who got onto a bullock cart along with KPCC president, M M Hassan, Congress MPs Shashi Tharoor and Kodukkunil Suresh and MLA, K Muraleedharan.

Inaugurating the march, Chennithala said fuel prices in the country were skyrocketing and nowhere else in the world, they are so costly as in India.

It was only because of the elections to the Karnataka assembly due to be held on May 12, prices have now stabilised, he alleged.

He accused Modi and Vijayan of 'punishing' the people.

Also Read | Petrol price hits 4-year high, diesel at highest level under Modi government

The LDF government has already made it clear that it cannot waive additional sales tax revenue generated following the hike in prices of petroleum products due to financial constraints.

The state government was getting Rs 7,000 crore additional revenue by way of fuel price hike, the Congress leader claimed.

The life of the common man had become difficult as prices of essential commodities, including vegetables, are soaring.

"People are not able to travel by autorickshaws, scooters and buses," he said and alleged that the central and state governments were 'cheating' the public.

Earlier, on Thursday, Convener P.P. Thankachan announced UDF's decision to protest against the price hike during a press conference in Kerala.

Also Read | Air traffic growth seen plunging 800bps on infra, fuel worries

Apart from this bullock cart rally on Wednesday, UDF will hold two other agitations later in May. While UDF will picket District Collectorates and the Secretariat in the State capital on May 8 in protest against custodial deaths and police atrocities, May 18 will be observed as Betrayal Day on the occasion of the third anniversary of the LDF government.

(With inputs from agencies)

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New Delhi:

A huge dead zone in the Gulf of Oman is growing in size, as suggested by researchers who have warned that the oxygen-rare territory is dangerous than earlier thought and represents a risk to the planet earth.

The dead zone in the Arabian Sea is currently the worlds most Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ). About the size of Scotland, the dead zone covers about the whole Gulf of Oman.

ALSO READ: NASA's InSight Mars Lander set to examine red planet's interior surface, record Marsquakes

A dead zone is a region of the ocean that has no oxygen. The regions are called dead zones as they dont and cant support marine life.

Researchers started spotting growing regions of the dead zone in the 1970s.

The existence of the Gulf of Omans dead zone has been known for 50 years now, yet the degree of the zone has just been confirmed on the account of utilization of underwater robots, known as Seagliders.

The Arabian Sea is the biggest and thickest dead zone on Earth.

For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Beirut:

Human Rights Watch on Saturday urged Dubai authorities to reveal the whereabouts of a princess and daughter of the ruler, saying her case could constitute "enforced disappearance".

In a March video, 32-year-old Sheikha Latifa bint Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum announced she was fleeing the emirate because of mistreatment and restrictions imposed by her family.

She said she was the daughter of Dubai ruler Mohammed bin Rashed Al-Maktoum and an Algerian mother, Horriya Ahmed, and that she had tried to escape in previous years.

But the following month a source close to the Dubai government said the runaway princess had been returned to the emirate.

"What I can confirm is they took her and she was brought back," the anonymous source told AFP by phone on April 17.

In a statement on Saturday HRW said Dubai authorities must "reveal" her whereabouts and "clarify her legal status".

"Failure to disclose the whereabouts and status of the princess could qualify as an enforced disappearance, given the evidence suggesting that she was last seen as UAE authorities were detaining her," the US-based rights group said.

It cited a witness saying authorities in the United Arab Emirates had "intercepted Sheikha Latifa on March 4, 2018, as she tried to flee by sea to a third country and returned her to the UAE".

"Sheikha Latifa, who told friends that she wished to flee restrictions imposed by her family, has not been seen or heard from for two months," it said.

That raised "serious concerns about her safety and well-being, two friends said," HRW added.

"UAE authorities should immediately reveal the whereabouts of Sheikha Latifa, confirm her status, and allow her contact with the outside world," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East director on Saturday.

"If she is detained she needs to be given the rights all detainees should have, including being taken before an independent judge." Latifa's cause has been taken up by a UK-based group called Detained in Dubai.

The group said Latifa tried to flee Dubai by ship, but the vessel was intercepted on March 4 less than 80 kilometres (50 miles) off the coast of India.

It said a Finnish woman and friend of the princess was among foreigners on board.

The source close to the Dubai government said last month that the Finnish woman and two French men, one with dual US citizenship, participated in the escape attempt and were wanted in Dubai on previous charges.

"It is a domestic issue that transformed into a soap opera that transformed into a rampaging scheme to tarnish the reputation of Dubai and Sheikh Mohammed," the source said.

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Washington:

For long, US President Donald Trump has criticised the media for publishing "fake news" about him. Now it has emerged that he may have faked his own bill of health in 2015, ahead of the presidential election.



Trump's former doctor Harold Bornstein has said he did not write a glowing letter in declaring the then-Republican presidential candidate's "astonishingly excellent" health, according to a US media report.



"He dictated that whole letter. I didn't write that letter," Bornstein told CNN about 71-year-old Trump, who became the oldest president to be elected in US history.



"I just made it up as I went along," Bornstein, a gastroenterologist, best known as Trump's personal physician for more than three decades, told the network .



"His (Trump's) physical strength and stamina are extraordinary," he had crowed in the letter, which was released by Trump's campaign in .



"If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency," Bornstein had said.



The missive did not offer much medical evidence for those claims beyond citing a blood pressure of 110/65, described by Bornstein as "astonishingly excellent."

It claimed that Trump had lost 15 pounds over the preceding year. And it described his cardiovascular health as "excellent."



"That's black humour, that letter. That's my sense of humor," he said. "It's like the movie 'Fargo': It takes the truth and moves it in a different direction."



He said Trump read out the language as Bornstein and his wife were driving across Central Park.



"(Trump) dictated the letter and I would tell him what he couldn't put in there," he said. "They came to pick up their letter at 4 o'clock or something."



The White House did not respond to a request for comment about Bornstein's claim, CNN said.



It is not clear why Bornstein is making these allegations now.



The admission is an about face from his answer more than two years when the letter was released and answers one of the lingering questions about the last presidential election, CNN commented.



A few weeks ahead of its release, Trump had tweeted that Bornstein's medical report would show "perfection".



"I am fortunate to have been blessed with great genes," Trump wrote on Facebook at the time.



In January this year Trump had a three-hour examination amid speculation over his mental health.



Meanwhile, Bornstein also said that Trump's ex-bodyguard Keith Schiller had carried out a "raid" on his offices in , removing all of Trump's medical records.



The incident happened two days after Bornstein told a newspaper that he had for years prescribed Propecia, a hair growth medicine, for Trump.



Bornstein told NBC News that he was not given a form authorising him to release Trump's records, and that Schiller, along with Trump Organisation lawyer Alan Garten, took the originals and copies of Trump's charts and lab reports, including records filed under pseudonyms.



The raid left him "raped, frightened and sad", Bornstein said.



But White House press secretary Sarah Sanders later insisted that the incident was not a raid and that it was "standard procedure" for the White House Medical Unit to take possession of the president's medical records.



Trump has been highly critical of some of the US media outlets for not toeing his line.



He also instituted The Fake News Awards this year to point out the news outlets he said were responsible for misrepresenting him or producing false reports both before, and during, his presidency.

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Capital Market regulator the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) are jointly investigating companies belonging to the Adani group for violations of some of the regulations, junior minister for finance Pankaj Chaudhary told the Lok Sabha on Monday.

Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said accounts of three of the six Mauritius-based funds, that have invested most of their money in Adani Group firms, were frozen in 2016 over the issuance of Global Depository Receipt (GDR) by certain listed firms. No freeze was ordered for their holding in other firms. "Sebi is investigating some Adani Group companies with regard to compliance with Sebi regulations," he said without giving details. Also, DRI "is investigating certain entities belonging to the Adani Group of Companies under laws administered by it," he said.

The minister did not name which of the Adani Group companies were being investigated by Sebi and DRI. He also did not elaborate on the nature of the violation. He however said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) wasn't investigating the Adani Group. Shares of port-to-energy group nosedived last month after reports that accounts of three of the six Mauritius-based funds that have invested most of their money in Adani Group firms had been frozen by the national share depository.

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A rare series of disruptive occurrences over the last three years has contributed to volatility in agricultural exports and markets. The roller-coaster patterns of United States agricultural exports and corn and soybean prices in that time is tracked with concurrent events ranging from the tariff wars disruption of agricultural trade in 2018, to widespread weather caused planting delays and record prevent plant acres in 2019, to the COVID-19 pandemic and response in 2020.

Background

Agriculture has been impacted by a series of historic events related to three major developments in each of the last three years that altered trade relationships and exports, disrupted production and distribution of agriculture commodities, influenced market prices and farm income, and shaped policy perceptions. Though each of these disruptions to United State agriculture can individually be likened to other historic events, it is the series of overlapping, distinct, and significant disruptive events that is rare, with few other comparable historical sequences.

In 2018, the United States imposed tariffs on imports of steel and aluminum from almost all nations in effort to protect domestic industries. Near the same time the U.S. also imposed tariffs on select Chinese products as a response to Chinese intellectual property rights and technology policies. These separate, but coinciding, sets of tariffs led to a battle between the U.S. and many other nations, including China, who retaliated with tariffs on U.S. agricultural products. When those nations imposed the tariffs, U.S. agricultural products became more expensive in the world market and U.S. agricultural exports declined. Leading up to 2018, China was U.S. farmers single largest soybean customer, purchasing more than half of U.S. soybean exports leaving soybeans as one of the most vulnerable agriculture products. Aside from the tariff impact on price, the dramatic reduction in the Chinese swine herd due to African Swine Fever reduced Chinas need for soybeans. See farmdoc daily articles from July 31, 2018, April 11, 2019 and April 25, 2019 for more on tariffs and trade relations.

In 2019, widespread crop producing regions of the United States experienced excess rainfall and flooding. As a result, the nation experienced record acres prevented from planting and delays that led to planting outside the optimal time frame for crop productivity. Many acres impacted were intended for corn and soybeans leading to production concerns for both crops. See farmdoc daily articles from May 7, 2019, May 14, 2019, May 21, 2019, May 29, 2019, June 2, 2019, June 4, 2019, August 15, 2019, and December 30, 2019 for more on delayed and prevent plant.

In 2020, the global coronavirus pandemic and the control measures put in place as a response impacted agriculture supply chains and the markets for agriculture crops. The pandemic further depressed already stagnant market demand for corn and soybeans. The situation extended pressures on prices of both commodities that had existed since 2013 and had been driven down further as trade disputes became evident in 2018. For more on the impact of coronavirus on Midwest row-crop agriculture see Schnitkey, et al. 2021.

Corn and Soybean Price Timeline

Following is a narrative of related disruptive events from 2018 through 2020 and impact on agricultural exports and corn and soybean prices from the perspective of the United States. This is also illustrated in the timeline shown in Figure 1.

A significant event with implications for agriculture was the early March 2018 announcement that the U.S. would impose a 25% tariff on imported steel and 10% tariff on imported aluminum; these tariffs were in effect by the end of March. The tariffs applied to all countries with the exceptions of the EU, Canada, and Mexico (farmdoc daily April 18, 2018). The U.S. also announced the first of a series of China-specific tariffs in April. These tariff announcements launched a series of tit-for-tat responses between the U.S. and China that lasted most of the year and strained trade of U.S. agricultural products with China.

Though agricultural exports to China declined throughout the first half of 2018, the movement was generally consistent with the normal seasonal pattern for this part of the year as illustrated in the first panel of Figure 2. Throughout the first half of 2018, total U.S. agricultural exports also declined but remained above 2017 and the prior five- year average (Figure 3). Corn and soybean prices remained fairly stable over the three-month period of March through May 2018 as reactions in the export markets were yet to be realized. Corn fluctuated up and down over a 10% price range and soybeans over an 8% price range.

A significant drop in price of the two commodities is evident beginning in early June 2018 after the U.S. extended tariffs on imported steel and aluminum to the ally trading nations previously excluded. And in early July the U.S. and China both imposed the tariffs each had threatened for months, notably signifying the reality of the situation. From the beginning of June 2018 to the middle of July at the first trough point, corn prices dropped 19% and soybean prices dropped 25%. During this time U.S. agricultural exports to China continued to drop, at a time when the normal seasonal pattern started to increase (Figure 2)

Though still higher than the prior year and five-year average, total U.S. agricultural exports began falling quickly during the summer months of 2018, a period when a plateau in exports is normal (Figure 3). A low point was reached in September, when total U.S. agricultural export value was at the norm for the month.

The U.S. reached an informal trade agreement with Canada and Mexico on September 30, 2018. The new agreement, United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), was an update to the 1990s North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) between the three nations. With positive momentum for an updated agreement and a flux of supply during U.S. harvest, U.S. agricultural exports increased in the last quarter of 2018, though staying $1 billion to $2 billion below normal season export levels. The difference can be attributed to the absence of Chinas normal purchase levels with a partial offset in increased purchases of U.S. agricultural products by other countries. Over the last quarter of 2018 corn and soybean prices inched higher, though still lower than before considerable June price drop.

Despite a temporary trade truce between the U.S. and China in late November 2018 and Chinas first resumed purchase of U.S. soybeans in December, corn and soybean prices remained depressed throughout the 2018-19 winter and spring months. Though U.S. ag exports to China began to improve in that time, export value was well below the norm of previous years and total U.S. ag exports remained comparatively lower as well.

Highly anticipated trade negotiations between the U.S. and China concluded on May 3, 2019 with no agreement. Soybean prices dropped over the next ten days, reaching the lowest level since 2007 (Figure 4). Shortly after, the U.S. lifted the tariffs on Canada and Mexico that had been in place for a year, taking necessary action to move toward settling a final USMCA agreement.

In May 2019, significant delays in U.S. planting progress due to widespread inclement weather and heavy precipitation also became evident (Figures 5-6). Near the end of May (Week 21), national planting progress for corn was only 58% complete compared to the prior five-year average of 90%. Similarly, planting progress for soybeans was 29%, compared to the prior five-year average of 66%. As the U.S. moved past what is generally considered the optimal planting window, productivity concerns grew.

In addition, more than 19 million acres of U.S. cropland were unable to be planted to the intended crop, setting a record for prevent plant acres nearly double the previous record of 10.2 million acres set in 2011. Though a record occurrence, crop insurance was a contributing factor making the decision not to plant after a certain point easier. Regardless, the combination of late planting and record prevent plant acreage caused great uncertainty in overall production levels during the 2019 crop growing season, particularly for corn due to greater sensitivity to late planting and conversion of acres away from corn and toward other crops as the summer progressed. During this time, corn prices climbed to their highest level since 2014, rising 40% in the two-month period from mid-May 2019 to a mid-July 2019 peak (Figure 7). Prices began to retract as production concerns eased given survival of late planted crops and alternative plantings on some prevent plant acres after prevent plant dates.

The price retraction was further bolstered by the August 2019 USDA WASDE report that exceeded trade expectations for corn production resulting in the largest market surprise in at least two decades (farmdoc daily October 4, 2019). In the month between the August WASDE and the September WASDE, corn price dropped 15%. The September WASDE contributed to a reversal in downward price movement as the first report of the year to use objective yield surveys which indicated a slight drop in yield from the previous months surprise report.

During the 2019 summer months soybean price increased returning to price levels experienced throughout the second half of 2018 and first quarter of 2019. The movement in soybean price was likely more strongly correlated with Chinas continued purchases at the highest levels since March 2018 than production concerns.

Throughout the month of September 2019, both the U.S. and China began exempting select products from tariffs on the other nation. Soybeans were among the agricultural products China exempted from additional trade war tariffs, contributing to positive price response for the commodity. In addition, mid-level trade talks in September concluded with the two countries agreeing on continued discussion.

Though higher than much of the tariff war period to date, harvest season U.S. agriculture exports trailed behind the normal level of exports in the same months.

The U.S. and China agreed upon a phase one trade deal in mid-December 2019. As part of the deal both countries suspended additional tariffs that were scheduled to take effect days later. Notably, the U.S. also agreed to reduce some of the other tariffs already in place while China pledged to increase purchases of U.S. goods and services over a two-year period. Prices of both corn and soybeans stabilized near pre-trade war levels of the first quarter of 2020.

Though the phase one trade deal was expected to be a positive market mover for agricultural commodities, COVID-19 was spreading throughout China and had already entered the U.S before the deal took effect in February 2020. The price of corn dropped in conjunction with the U.S. national emergency declaration in mid-March 2020, falling 10% in the week after the announcement, as shut-down and stay-at-home orders abruptly halted demand for corn ethanol used in fuel. The coronavirus pandemic and the control measures put in place as a response disrupted domestic supply chains for meat and dairy products, which affected short-term feed use for both corn and soybeans. Similar situations in countries around the world resulted in lower global demand and U.S. agricultural exports were relatively low all summer, resulting in the lowest monthly export level since 2016 in June 2020. The price of both crops remained depressed through the 2020 spring and summer months.

As states and nations began to release plans for re-opening and vaccination distribution throughout the summer and fall months of 2020, an economic turning point was initiated. Despite the slow start to the year, trade pace for U.S. agricultural exports picked-up beginning in August 2020, rising well above prior months. The trend continued through the end of the year reaching a new monthly record for U.S. agricultural exports in December 2020. During 2020, China was rapidly rebuilding its hog herd from the decrease in herd caused by African Swine Fever, likely another factor in special exemptions on soybeans and their resumed purchases. Soybean exports to China accounted for nearly half of the growth in U.S. agricultural exports between August and December 2020 resulting in a massive 48% surge in soybean price in that period. Corn price also escalated, rising 58%, likely a combined result of several factors including renewed global demand for feed grains and renewed domestic demand for ethanol in fuel. Both corn and soybeans ended 2020 at the highest price levels experienced in the entire three-year period and carried positive momentum into 2021.

Summary

This U.S. perspective timeline and narrative illustrate how a rare series of disruptive occurrences over the last three years has contributed to volatility in corn and soybean prices. Among the many factors that influence commodity prices, are exports, production level, domestic uses, and the macroeconomy. In recent years, the United States has experienced the impact of disruptions and changes in each of those factors. Though events of this 2018 through 2020 period could be considered outlier situations, such periods of change, disruption, and uncertainty will always be present. This underscores the importance of effective farm policy that can adapt to support the agricultural industry regardless of the situation.
Workforce

OPM takes back control of CHCO Council

The Office of Personnel Management is retaking full control of the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council, the agency announced today.

Under the Trump administration the CHCO Council's function were divided between OPM and the General Services Administration as part of an effort to merge OPM into GSA. That merger was never accomplished in part because of policy riders in appropriations bills blocking the move.

The CHCO Council is chaired by the OPM director and includes the top human resources officials at large federal agencies. The council advises on governmentwide human resources policy and serves as a clearinghouse for information and policy.

The council didn't do much in the past few years, and there was very little involvement from the OPM director. One of the key recommendations of a congressionally mandated report from the National Academy of Public Administration on OPM revitalization was the reassertion of OPM's leadership of the CHCO Council.

"I'm pleased that we are restoring these functions at OPM as part of our commitment to reinvigorating the CHCO Council," OPM Director Kiran Ahuja said in a statement shared by the agency. "The CHCO Council is an invaluable collaborative resource for OPM and the federal government. OPM is committed to partnering closely with CHCOs to help solve critical human capital management challenges that face our federal workforce and I look forward to leading the council as we work to rebuild, strengthen and support the federal workforce."

Margot Conrad, formerly of the Partnership for Public Service, was named executive director of the CHCO Council. The council has also set up working groups designed to implement Biden administration workforce policy goals, including diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, and workplace policies with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is also a working group, led by Ray Limon, the CHCO for the Department of the Interior, designed to strengthen the operations of the CHCO Council itself.
Cybersecurity

TSA imposes new cyber rules on pipeline operators

Fuel pipeline operators will have to institute measures to guard against ransomware attacks and other known cybersecurity threats under a new directive issued Tuesday by the Transportation Security Administration.

This is the second directive issued by TSA in the wake of the ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline's business IT systems in May, which led to the suspension of pipeline operations for about a week.

The first directive, issued May 27, instituted mandatory reporting requirements covering "confirmed and potential" cybersecurity incidents at pipeline operators. The second directive, which was previewed in a congressional hearing in June, requires operators of pipelines designated by TSA as critical to implement mitigation measures against known threats to IT and operational technology systems and establish plans to recover from a cyberattack and review their current "cybersecurity architecture design."

At the June hearing, Sonya Proctor, the assistant administrator for surface operations at TSA, said that the directive would be a "security sensitive information" document and not released in full to the public and "will be rather prescriptive in terms of the mitigation measures required."

The stakes are high. While the Colonial ransomware attack turned out to be the work of a criminal hacker group , the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released new details on July 20 of a spearphishing campaign conducted between 2011 and 2013 that targeted oil and natural gas pipeline companies, and attributed the attack to a group linked to the Chinese military. News reports at the time indicated that federal officials regarded China as the culprit in these intrusions.

The report states that "China was successful in accessing the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks at several U.S. natural gas pipeline companies," and that the campaign was "likely intended to gain strategic access to the ICS networks for future operations rather than for intellectual property theft."

The attribution of this campaign to China is a piece of a larger effort by the U.S. and N.A.T.O allies to publicize and potentially deter what the White House characterizes as China's "irresponsible and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace." This effort includes the attribution of a hack of Microsoft Exchange servers to Chinese state-sponsored actors.

A spokesperson for China's foreign ministry dismissed the White House and N.A.T.O. push as an effort to "smear and suppress China to serve political purposes."

TSA's own role in regulating cybersecurity of liquid fuel and natural gas pipelines, a task that may seem out of step with its primary function of conducting security screenings of air passengers, is taking on new urgency since the Colonial Pipeline hack and the overall threat environment.

Richard Glick, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who had called for more mandatory regulation of pipeline cybersecurity after the Colonial Pipeline hack, applauded the move by TSA.

"I'm pleased to see todays steps, including mandatory standards, by TSA to protect the safety of our nation's critical energy infrastructure," Glick said in an emailed statement to FCW.

Some in Congress have pushed for the TSA's role in pipeline cybersecurity to be taken over by CISA or by the Department of Energy. A bipartisan bill that recently passed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee calls on the Energy Department to lead in coordinating security and resiliency of pipeline industry assets. The bill tasks DOE with coordinating federal, state and local response to cyber incidents affecting the energy sector.

Karen Evans, who headed the Energy Department's Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response office during the Trump administration and has served as DHS CIO, defended the current arrangement in a May 12 FCW article.

"It makes sense if you work it from the inside," Evans said. "There's a bunch of other things that come into play, not just cyber."
(Refiles to add dropped word "vote" in paragraph 1)

By David Morgan and Makini Brice

WASHINGTON, July 19 (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on Monday he would set a procedural vote on a bipartisan infrastructure package that is a key part of Democratic President Joe Biden's agenda for Wednesday, increasing pressure on negotiators as they struggled with ways to pay for the cost of the measure.

Schumer said the Wednesday vote did not require Senate negotiators hammer out every provision in the bill by then and that Democratic leaders of the bipartisan group supported his approach.

"The motion to proceed on Wednesday is simply about getting the legislative process started here on the Senate floor. It is not a deadline to determine every final detail of the bill," Schumer said on the Senate floor.

The announcement came as Republicans urged Schumer to delay the Wednesday vote if the legislation was not yet fully written.

"If he moves ahead arbitrarily, before they actually come to some sort of a deal, then yeah, all it's going to do is drag it out, make it harder to get a deal in the end," Senator John Thune, the chamber's No. 2 Republican, told reporters.

Thune said provisions for covering the cost of the bill were "a long ways from being ready."

It was unclear if the bipartisan bill under negotiation could garner the necessary 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance.

Republican Senator Rob Portman, one of the leaders of the group, has said he would vote against the bill if legislation was not ready. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said that the upper chamber should not vote on agreeing to debate a bill before senators see the text of it.

Portman said on Sunday the group had scuttled a proposal for the Internal Revenue Service to step up its pursuit of tax cheats.

But Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who was one of the members of the bipartisan group, suggested the group had not made a final decision to jettison the tax proposal, telling reporters: "Who said we're taking the IRS enforcement out?"

Story continues

Senators in the group said they had met late into Sunday evening and had planned to meet again for hours on Monday. They said they were considering provisions to reinstate fees on chemicals to fund the Superfund program, which cleans up contaminated waste sites, as well as other possible fees to cover costs.

Democratic Senator Jon Tester said he thought the group could have legislative text by Wednesday, Tester told reporters.

Schumer has said infrastructure was moving on two tracks. Aside from the first, bipartisan track, Democrats are also moving forward with a different $3.5 trillion infrastructure package using a procedural tool known as reconciliation. It allows certain bills to advance through the Senate with only a simple majority of votes, instead of the 60 needed for most legislation.

Republicans oppose the second track. (Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan Cornwell; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by Karishma Singh)
ST. PETERSBURG  More than two dozen environmental organizations joined calls for Gov. Ron DeSantis to declare a state of emergency for the Tampa Bay area as Red Tide continues to leave dead fish along the coast and disrupt business across the region.

An executive order would help organize and finance Red Tide clean-up efforts, said a letter signed by 29 organizations and organized by the Center for Biological Diversity. The Ocean Conservancy sent a letter saying a statewide effort, rather than local governments scrambling to deal with the disaster, would help mitigate the catastrophe.

This is the whole job of having a centralized executive government, said Jaclyn Lopez, Florida Director and senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity. To provide this type of oversight and leadership, when theres a crisis of regional magnitude, which is what Red Tide is.

Lopez said the order would also: bring state oversight to cleanup efforts, make more state funding sources available and allow for a regional strategy to deal with the economic and environmental fallout. The state had sent nearly $1 million to help local cleanup efforts in St. Petersburg and Pinellas County as of last week.

What we really need here is the freeing up of resources to actually get on the water and clean up the dead fish that are already in the water, said J.P. Brooker, director of Florida conservation at the Ocean Conservancy. As those fish decay, theyre going to release more nitrogen, which is going to fuel the Red Tide event even further.

The letters add to the chorus of voices calling for the governor to act. Last week St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman asked for an emergency order and received a sharp rebuke from DeSantis office, which said the state was already helping and accused Kriseman of trying to score cheap political points.

The St. Petersburg City Council passed a resolution the following night asking DeSantis to declare a state of emergency. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, who will run for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2022, issued a similar call.

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DeSantis briefly addressed Red Tide during a news conference Monday in Poinciana to celebrate the passage of a land conservation bill. At the ceremonial signing, he spoke first about unrest in Cuba and then U.S. immigration policy, including his weekend trip to the Texas border, before a reporter asked about Red Tide. The governor reiterated that his administration is tapping a dedicated fund to support the local response to the toxic bloom.

We have that pot of money, DeSanits said. Were using it.

He added: Unfortunately this thing doesnt just leave so were going to have to deal with this.

Meanwhile Red Tide toxins continue to take an ecological toll: Pinellas County says it has collected a total of more than 1,277 tons of dead marine life and debris. By comparison, the county picked up about 1,800 tons during the 2018 outbreak that affected Pinellas coast.

Nearly 300 tons of waste were recovered Friday and Saturday alone, said county spokesman Tony Fabrizio, and workers reported picking up three dead loggerhead turtles as well as a dead dolphin in recent days. The county had about 30 boats out picking the dead from the water Monday.

The beaches are beginning to see more debris as stronger Red Tide concentrations show up there. Crews circled from Weedon Island to Tierra Verde over the weekend. Fabrizio said beaches up to Indian Shores have seen dead fish.

A flight over the coast showed extremely discolored water and dead fish offshore from Blind Pass to Indian Shores, he said. Discolored water is also lingering in Tampa Bay, though officials hope rain will introduce more freshwater to the estuary, which could help alleviate the situation.

Environmental organizations blame the Piney Point disaster, when in April the state allowed 215 million gallons of polluted water from an old Manatee County fertilizer plant to be released into the bay so that it wouldnt spill into neighborhoods. That likely is providing fuel for the Red Tide bloom.

If the continued insults from water pollution are not addressed, our marine ecosystems and the economy built around them will fail, said a statement from Shawn Martin, chair of Surfrider Florida Foundation Florida Keys chapter.

Red Tide resources

These online resources will keep you informed and safe:

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission has a website that tracks where Red Tide is detected.

Florida Poison Control Centers have a toll-free 24/7 hotline to report illnesses, including from exposure to Red Tide: 1-800-222-1222

To report dead fish for clean-up in Tampa Bay, call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission at 1-800-636-0511 or file a fish kill report online.

In St. Petersburg, call the Mayors Action Center at 727-893-7111 or use St. Petersburgs seeclickfix website.

Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the countys tourism wing, runs an online beach dashboard at www.beachesupdate.com.

The Red Tide Respiratory Forecast allows beachgoers to check for warnings.

How to stay safe near the water

Do not swim around dead fish.

Those with chronic respiratory problems should be careful and stay away from places with a Red Tide bloom. Leave if you think Red Tide is affecting you.

Do not harvest or eat mollusks or distressed and dead fish from the area. Fillets of healthy fish should be rinsed with clean water, and the guts thrown out.

Pet owners should keep their animals away from the water and from dead fish.

Residents living near the beach should close their windows and run air conditioners with proper filters.

Beachgoers can protect themselves by wearing masks.

Source: Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County
$INKW - Green Concepts, Inc.

BE WATER ARTESIAN

BE WATER ARTESIAN

$INKW - Green Concepts, Inc.

BE WATER Pallets on the Truck

BE WATER Pallets on the Truck

$INKW - Green Concepts, Inc.

Truckload of BE WATER Bound for Florida

Truckload of BE WATER Bound for Florida

Marion, North Carolina, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greene Concepts, Inc. (OTC Pink: INKW) is happy to announce the company H2O Artesian, Inc. has signed an agreement as a new BE WATERTM distribution partner for the companys Florida region. H2O Artesian, Incs focus is to identify, target and consult with national food and beverage retailer outlets in Florida to proliferate BE WATERTM sales across the state.

H2O Artesians principal partners, Brian Adkins and Mike McMurray, lead the effort to extend BE WATERTM sales in Florida. Mr. Adkins is a distinguished sales professional with more than 20 years of consumer-packaged goods industry experience to include HBC, frozen/dry grocery, beverage and natural food categories. Mike McMurray, a well-established 30-year business owner of a concrete and remodeling company, holds strong relationships with multiple business owners throughout Florida to include restaurants and retail outlets.

Brian Adkins notes, We have already ordered our initial five truckloads of BE WATERTM due to the huge pre-sale interest we have already received throughout Florida. This includes multiple retail stores, restaurant chains and hotels which were as excited about the BE WATERTM backstory and product quality as we were. H2O Artesian takes great pride in providing BE WATERTM as a new staple good in the Florida marketplace. We are already preparing for our second order to meet the demand as we believe the first five truckloads will sell very quickly.

Amy McNally, VP of Marketing and Regulatory, highlights, Brian and Mike will make BE WATERTM well-known throughout the state of Florida. With 50 years of combined sales experience, they have a track record of targeted sales with a focus on customer satisfaction. They come to us with a detailed business plan for executing high-volume sales with leading retailers throughout Florida, and I am proud to partner with them.

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Lenny Greene, CEO of Greene Concepts, states, We expect H2O Artesian to generate massive revenue as the exclusive Greene Concepts Florida distributor while working directly with all other Florida sub-distributors and sales accounts, who will work directly with H20 Artesian to sell BE WATERTM. This synergizes talents and centers all Florida BE Water initiatives through H2O Artesian which will provide us with periodic updates as they gain new clients. I am excited to have Brian and Mike onboard. H2O Artesians first truckload of BE WATER left our Marion, NC bottling plant on July 15. With their efforts, we are much closer to establishing BE WATERTM as a national brand.

About H2O Artesian, Inc.

H2O Artesian, Inc. is a Satellite Beach and Melbourne, Florida based distributor that services the entire state of Florida and distributes all of Greene Concepts brands. The company was established by Mike McMurray and Brian Adkins, who combined have over 50 years of sales and promotion expertise to retailers and consumers.

About Greene Concepts, Inc.

Greene Concepts, Inc. ( http://www.greeneconcepts.com ) is a publicly traded company with the companys main plant operations in Marion, North Carolina. The Company owns and operates a bottling and beverage facility. The bottling facility has as its water sources a combination of seven spring and artesian wells that are fed from a natural aquifer that is located deep below the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Company specializes in its premium artesian bottled water brand, BE WATER ( www.bewaterbeyou.com ), to support total body health and wellness.

Safe Harbor: This Press Release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of management and are subject to a few uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect the company's current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. A more extensive listing of risks and factors that may affect the company's business prospects and cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the reports and other documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission and OTC Markets, Inc. OTC Disclosure and News Service. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, because of new information, future events or otherwise.

CONTACT:

Greene Concepts, Inc.

Investor Relations

IR@greeneconcepts.com

Attachments




LAS VEGAS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Here at VIMworld, our focus is on delivering the best product and experience possible for the community. We know that the only way to achieve this is to engage the best people in the industry and have them join us in the driving seat. To that end, we are both proud and grateful to have been able to engage and impress high-profile individuals with the kinds of knowledge and connections to help propel VIMworld to its full potential.

Head of Investment Banking at Cohen & Company & Ex-Head of Internet Investment Banking for Wells Fargo Bank, Mr. Dan Nash Joins VIMworld Advisory Board

Today, we are incredibly excited to welcome prestigious professional, high-finance investment banker and experienced Investor Dan Nash to VIMworld's advisory board.

Dan Nash - Business, Finance and Gaming Guru

Dan is highly educated in the fields of business and finance and brings this expertise to our advisory board. Nash earned his MBA from Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and graduated with an undergraduate Economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Bolstering his professional credentials yet further, Dan undertook a General Course degree with a focus on Mathematics at the London School of Economics.

Dan has a vast amount of experience in the world of corporate finance with over 20 years of investment banking and operational finance experience. Dan currently heads Investment Banking at Cohen & Company Capital Markets where he leads all aspects of Investment Banking including M&A advisory, private capital markets, and more. Cohen and its team members established a leading SPAC sponsor franchise and were recently recognized by SPACInsider as the "Best Serial SPAC Issuer" in 2020. Recently announced deals include eToro, Payoneer, and more.

In his previous role, Dan was the Global Head of Internet Investment Banking at Wells Fargo Securities, where he advised leading technology companies on IPOs, acquisitions, SPAC mergers, private placements, and debt financings. Dan helped grow Wells Fargo's technology investment banking business significantly and was lead banker during several notable transactions including Cipher's SPAC sale to Goodworks, Carvana's IPO and Shift's SPAC sale and PIPE.

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On joining VIMworld as advisor, Dan said:

"VIMworld's next gen Smart NFT project holds a lot of potential. Such a pioneering business has the unique potential to become a new bridge between the traditional financial world and the emerging blockchain sector. I'm extremely excited to be a part of the VIMworld journey and I'm looking forward to the great things coming from the team."

Dan Nash - Mobile Game and Social Media Visionary

Before joining Wells Fargo, Dan was CFO at MZ, a leading global mobile gaming company where he was responsible for all aspects of MZ's financial operations. MZ had three billion-dollar plus mobile gaming titles under their brand, including Final Fantasy XV, Mobile Strike and Game of War.

Prior to MZ and Wells Fargo, Nash served as Director of Internet Investment Banking at BofA Merrill Lynch. He worked on several high-profile transactions, including the IPOs of LinkedIn and Facebook. He also held multiple investment banking and finance positions at BofA Merrill Lynch and Intel Corp.

On Dan's joining, CEO Lila Xu said:

"VIMworld is an expansive project with grand ambitions to combine blockchain NFTs, DeFi, physical collectibles, social gaming and more in a never-before-seen ecosystem. We've been working on some innovative new ideas tying high-finance concepts into our ecosystem and remain ahead of the market in this regard. Dan is a perfect fit as an advisor for VIMworld. Dan's calibre in the areas of high-finance and the entertainment industry is invaluable to any startup or company, and we are honored to have him on board."

A Prosperous Path Ahead

As VIMworld looks towards its bright future, it is only right that we engage with prestigious names with expertise in the fields of banking, finance and gaming to help us deliver our vision. As a DeFi, gaming and NFT collectibles platform, Dan Nash comes with a plethora of experience to help guide and develop VIMworld into the multi-billion-dollar global brand we intend to build. We are incredibly proud to see the value proposition of our platform speaks to those at the top of global finance. We look forward to working closely with Dan to drive VIMworld onwards to mass adoption.

About VIMworld

VIMworld is a revolutionary non-fungible token (NFT) ecosystem that creates a space where entrepreneurship and play combine and thrive. At the core of VIMworld are VIMs themselves, each one unique and permanent. VIMs are Smart NFTs that will deliver an immutable system of authentication, allowing their owners to both store and build value through play whilst building meaningful connections with others.

For more information about VIMworld, please visit our website at https://vimworld.com

VIMworld

SOURCE VIMworld
LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 /The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, reminds investors of a class action lawsuit against Kanzhun Limited ('Kanzhun' or 'the Company') (NASDAQ:BZ) for violations of 10(b) and 20(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 promulgated thereunder by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Investors who purchased the Company's securities between June 11, 2021 and July 2, 2021, inclusive (the ''Class Period''), are encouraged to contact the firm before September 10, 2021.

If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate.

We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall of the Schall Law Firm, 2049 Century Park East, Suite 2460, Los Angeles, CA 90067, at 310-301-3335, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at brian@schallfirm.com.

The class, in this case, has not yet been certified, and until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member.

According to the Complaint, the Company made false and misleading statements to the market. Kanzhun was facing a review from the Cyberspace Administration of China (the 'CAC'). The Chinese government would require the Company to suspend adding new users to its BOSS Zhipin app. The Company was instructed 'to conduct a comprehensive examination of cybersecurity risks,' and 'enhance its cybersecurity awareness and technology capabilities.' Based on these facts, the Company's public statements were false and materially misleading throughout the class period. When the market learned the truth about Kanzhun, investors suffered damages.

Join the case to recover your losses.

The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation.

Story continues

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics.

CONTACT:

The Schall Law Firm

Brian Schall, Esq.,

www.schallfirm.com

Office: 310-301-3335

info@schallfirm.com

SOURCE: The Schall Law Firm





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/656303/INVESTOR-ACTION-NOTICE-The-Schall-Law-Firm-Reminds-Investors-of-a-Class-Action-Lawsuit-Against-Kanzhun-Limited-and-Encourages-Investors-with-Losses-in-Excess-of-100000-to-Contact-the-Firm




DEARBORN, MI / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / The digital marketing industry has seen a tremendous rise in growth and demand over the years. Various digital marketing agencies have been cropping up each with their own host of services that they bring to the table. With a variety of agencies offering practically the same thing to their clients, what was once a difficult to navigate industry has now become more cutthroat than ever. Rising from the ever-growing demands of businesses and clients, MOC Digital Marketing surfaces to the top, bringing unprecedented success to its clients like nobody else can.

Founder and CEO of MOC Digital Marketing, Moe Choucair, leads the charge in providing the best services that his company can offer. Through his mastery of digital marketing and his passion for the craft, Moe has expertly grown his business toward success by utilizing unique and innovative strategies and always staying ahead of the curve.

MOC Digital Marketing is a wildly creative digital marketing agency that puts business on the map through its brilliant marketing campaigns and its specialized services. The company offers a diverse set of services such as content writing, design, Google advertising, and social media marketing, among others.

The esteemed digital marketing agency is adept at a variety of services due to Choucair's diverse skill set and knowledge. With over five years of experience on Google's platform and social media management, he brings his knowledge to MOC Digital Marketing. This often translates into Google Ads strategies, social media management such as Facebook and Instagram ads, web design, logo design, videography, and many more creative services.

With the variety of services that MOC Digital Marketing offers, the company is able to serve multiple companies and small business owners that want to grow online. These businesses could range from mortgage brokers, e-commerce stores, fashion stores, real estate agents, dentists, doctors, cosmetic professionals, estheticians, and many more.

Story continues

Young-minded individuals that are discerning and knowledgeable about the ins and outs of an online presence will greatly see the massive value that MOC Digital Marketing brings to the table. 'I am not alone in this process. I have a team behind me that is specialized in each industry we take on,' said Moe Choucair. "We have niche-specific professionals that will get the right work done for you."

Moe Choucair is a Digital Marketing major for the nation's top business school at the University of Michigan. The budding founder himself is equipped with specializations and certifications in Google Ads as a Google Certified Ads Partner. He is also adept at SEO, Shopping, Display, and has proven social media growth through content writing with SEO proven tactics. "The right keywords will attract organic traffic to your site, my team and I know the right keywords to target," proclaimed Choucair.

Overall, MOC Digital Marketing is one of the best and most creative digital marketing agencies out there. Moe has been consistently leading businesses toward digital success for over five years and counting. This level of success is shared by his team and its clients, as they foster long-lasting business connections throughout the entire process. "I only go into things that I love. I like marketing, but I love the outcome it brings to the table. My team and I will do what it takes to take your business to the next level," said Choucair.

To know more about MOC Digital Marketing, make sure to check out the details below:

Company Name: MOC Digital Marketing

Email: contact@mocdigitalmarketing.com

Phone: 1-800-313-5244

Website: www.mocdigitalmarketing.com

SOURCE: MOC Digital Marketing





View source version on accesswire.com:

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VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Plant Veda Foods Ltd. (CSE:MILK) (XFRA:A3CS6B) (the Company or Plant Veda), an award-winning dairy-alternative company, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a strategic partnership agreement with UniUni.com (UniUni), a leading e-commerce delivery service in Canada.



Under the partnership agreement, UniUni will provide the delivery services for Plant Vedas e-commerce orders across Canada.

Since collaborating in the local market earlier in the year, UniUnis service quality and value have been the best, says Sunny Gurnani, CEO, Plant Veda. I am extremely thrilled to expand this partnership beyond our local market in BC and continue to grow with UniUni for the years to come.

UniUni is one of Canada's leading providers of e-commerce delivery solutions, working with over 50 retailers and businesses such as Amazon, Walmart and Shopify.

UniUni has 3,000+ delivery drivers operating through nine warehouses across Canada that safely deliver more than 30,000 parcels daily to the doorsteps of e-commerce shoppers across Canada.

Options Issuance

Plant Veda also announces it is issuing 10,000 stock options to a sales consultant which have an exercise price of $1.81, vest immediately and have a term of 2 years.

About Plant Veda

Plant Veda has a mission to accelerate humanitys shift to a plant-based lifestyle. They remain clear in their goals, which is to improve the environment and humanitys overall health due to plant-based lifestyles. They have succeeded in creating award-winning plant-based dairy alternatives that are better than the original in terms of health and flavour. Plant Veda continues to shake up the dairy-free market by creating unique, one-of-a-kind products that leave their customers forgetting about dairy to begin with.

To learn more about Plant Veda, visit www.plantveda.com.

Investor Relations:

Email: Investors@PlantVeda.com

Number: 778-383-6737

Story continues

Media Contact:

Email: Media@PlantVeda.com

https://www.facebook.com/PlantVeda/

https://twitter.com/PlantVeda

https://www.instagram.com/plantveda/?hl=en

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIlyPYjb5hWXmGJ_FYnIHUA

Forward-Looking Information

All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein are forward-looking statements that involve various risks and uncertainties. The use of any of the words anticipate, continue, estimate, expect, may, will, would, project, should, believe and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ, materially from the Companys expectations are disclosed in the Companys documents filed from time to time with the Canadian Securities Exchange and the provincial securities commissions in which it is a reporting issuer.




OTTAWA, ON, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - The third annual day dedicated to the Canadian beer and brewing industry  Canadian Beer Day - occurs on October 6, 2021, with coast-to-coast celebrations at local breweries, pubs, restaurants or at home with loved ones. Canadian brewers, beer enthusiasts, and the various local businesses tied to the production and sale of beer across the country will be raising a glass to #CheersAgain on this #CDNBeerDay  recognizing the positive impact beer has on our lives, culture, communities and economy.

Canadian Beer Day (CNW Group/Beer Canada)

Canadian Beer Day is dedicated to celebrating beer and the thousands of Canadians involved in brewing, selling, delivering, serving  and enjoying  the beverage loved by millions across the country. The celebration, which occurs every year on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, recognizes and celebrates beer and breweries in Canada and those throughout its supply chain  agriculture, manufacturing, warehousing, transportation, tourism and hospitality.

"Beer brings Canadians together, and it's been a part of our country's culture and communities for generations. The last 16 months have been a challenging time for Canadians and businesses, specifically those in hospitality, making beer's role in bringing friends and family together more important than ever," said Dana Miller, Director, Communications and Engagement for Beer Canada.

"Whether in a small or larger group this year, we hope that Canadians will join us in support of our brewers, restauranteurs, barley farmers and all those connected to beer by raising a glass of your favourite Canadian-made beer on October 6," Miller added.

Canadian brewers directly employ over 19,000 Canadians, and approximately 149,000 jobs across Canada's hospitality, tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing sectors are supported by the production and sale of beer.

Canadian Beer Day is all about celebrating the beverage Canadians love and the positive contributions brewers make throughout the year. To find out more, visit www.canadianbeerday.ca.

Story continues

To find out more about statistics and trends surrounding the beer industry in Canada, visit industry.beercanada.com/statistics.

QUICK FACTS

85% of the beer consumed in Canada is made in Canada.

The production and sale of beer supports approximately 149,000 Canadian jobs.

Over 19,000 Canadians work in breweries across the country.

Canada is home to over 1,200 breweries.

Beer contributes $13.6 billion to Canada's GDP annually.

ASSOCIATED LINKS

www.canadianbeerday.ca

twitter.com/CdnBeerDay

facebook.com/CdnBeerDay

instagram.com/CdnBeerDay

Canadian Beer Day 2020  Official Video

ABOUT BEER CANADA

Beer Canada is the voice of the people who make our nation's beers. Our members account for 90% of the beer produced in Canada. The sale of beer supports 149,000 Canadian jobs, generates $14 billion in Gross Domestic Product and $5.7 billion in government tax revenues.

Beer Canada has represented Canadian brewers since 1943 and offers the most comprehensive and timely statistical overview of monthly and annual trends in the beer industry.

Beer Canada (CNW Group/Beer Canada)

SOURCE Beer Canada

Cision

View original content to download multimedia: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/July2021/20/c5669.html
BeInCrypto 

Lawyers representing Ripple Labs have sent a letter to the judge presiding over its lawsuit with the SEC, pointing to remarks made by two SEC Commissioners in another case.

Ripple has fired another salvo in the lawsuit with the United Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), this time citing the SEC commissioners own remarks in a bid to have the case dismissed. In a letter sent to Judge Analisa Torres, Ripples counsel said that there was a supplemental authority to have the case against Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghous and Executive Chairman Christian Larsen dismissed.

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Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Spey Resources Corp. (CSE: SPEY) (OTC PINK: SPEYF) (FRA: 2JS) ("Spey" or the "Company") announces that it has accepted a quotation from Amaru Mining Services and preparations are being made to commence drilling at the Incahuasi Salar, Argentina in the next three weeks. The drilling will take place in the locations shown below:





Figure 1: Red stars show drill hole locations 1 -5

To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6150/90719_spey.h2.jpg

The five drill holes at Incahuasi will cover a depth of approximately 600m. When completed, the rig will move to the Pocitos 1 and 2 concession on the Pocitos Salar approximately 120km away and drill three holes on the targeted aquifer locations. A double packer device will sample the brines at depth and be assayed. Preparations are currently being made for the camp, fuel and roads.





Figure 2: Line 1 - 003-011 survey points with drill locations, aquifers at depth 150m and 250m

To view an enhanced version of Figure 2, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6150/90719_b3c59039e4638a31_009full.jpg





Figure 3: Drill hole in Line 3 point 020-027. Aquifer extends from 10m to 100m, then two 50m drill holes to test the surface sample high.

To view an enhanced version of Figure 3, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6150/90719_b3c59039e4638a31_014full.jpg

Nader Vatanchi CEO commented, "We are making great progress at Incahuasi Salar, with geophysics completed, the road in good condition and easy access. Amaru, our drillers are very familiar with the salar and are completing their preparations. Our bulk brine surface samples from Incahuasi Salar have been sent to the University of Melbourne to be processed. The state of the art Ekosolve process handles very high levels of magnesium so we are looking forward to the results of the processing using their laboratory scale plant and samples of lithium carbonate. At Pocitos Salar, we have the results of surface sampling and geophysics completed on Pocitos 2 and drilling completed close by on Pocitos 1 by AIS Resources. The project drill team have nearly completed all their preparations. I'm delighted with the progress our team has made and look forward to the brine analysis results from drilling and University of Melbourne."

Story continues

Qualified Person

Phillip Thomas, BSc Geol, MBusM, FAusIMM, MAIG, MAIMVA, (CMV), a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101 regulations, has reviewed the technical information that forms the basis for portions of this news release, and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Thomas is independent of the Company but discloses that he is a shareholder of SPEY.

About Spey Resources Corp.

Spey Resources is a Canadian mineral exploration company which holds an option to acquire 100% interest in the Candela II lithium brine project located in the Incahuasi Salar, Salta Province, Argentina through its wholly owned subsidiary Tech One Lithium Resources Corp. Spey also holds an option to acquire a 100% undivided interest in the Silver Basin Project located in the Revelstoke Mining Division of British Columbia as well as an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Kaslo Silver project, west of Kaslo, British Columbia.

For more information, please contact:

Nader Vatanchi CEO, Director

nader@speyresources.ca

778-881-4631

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain disclosure in this release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. In making the forward-looking statements in this release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable. However, the forward-looking statements in this release, including without limitation, statements pertaining to the future exercise of the Agreement to acquire an interest in the Property, the Company's exploration programs and the Company's mineral property development plans, are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and risks include, without limitation, financing risks, delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required regulatory approvals, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political or competitive developments, exploration and operational difficulties, the timing of future business expenditures, the potential of the Company's mineral properties and changes in economic conditions or financial markets. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly 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 law.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90719
The failure of the OPEC+ talks and the subsequent (albeit gradual) rapprochement of the sides coincided with Middle Eastern NOCs setting their August 2021 official selling prices. The connection between the OPEC+ talks and Saudi Arabias expectations was visible in that Saudi Aramco did not issue its official prices up until the last point, publishing them only when the Vienna meeting was definitely and certifiably called off. The delay of Saudi Arabias month-on-month hikes only underscores the intent; by hiking August prices across all continents, in most cases beyond the general markets anticipations, Aramco put across a fairly straightforward message that it does not want the collective OPEC+ action to halt and it will not ramp up production beyond its quota. Other national oil companies followed suit, to varying degrees, and now, with the OPEC+ deal alive and kicking again, it all made perfect sense to do so.

Even though overall refining margins seem much healthier in Europe and North America, it was the Asian OSPs that generated the most interest, the main market outlet for Saudi barrels. The inter-month backwardation on Dubai M1-M3 futures widened last month by some 60 cents per barrel, therefore the general expectation was that the increments for August prices would be roughly along those lines. Saudi Aramco, however, raised Arab Super Light by $1 per barrel (to a $3.85 premium vs Oman/Dubai average) and all the other grades by $0.8 per barrel month-on-month. The odd thing about such an across-the-board move was the lack of differentiation between lighter and heavier grades, one of the main trends of 2021 overall after the flattening of differentials on the back of the 2020 price slump.

Graph 1. Saudi Aramco Official Selling Prices for Asia in 2017-2021 (USD per barrel).

Saudi

Source: Saudi Aramco.

Saudi Aramco went for the same move in Europe, too. Formula prices for Northwest Europe were hiked by $0.8 per barrel month-on-month across the board for all grades, whilst US-bound prices were increased by 20 cents per barrel from July, with the exception of Arab Extra Light which was raised by 40 cents per barrel m-o-m. The issue is that the economic normalization that has been happening in western economies impacted lighter ends differently than it did the heavier yields  namely, grades rich in naphtha became the most in-demand segment of the crude spectrum. Bereft of nuance, the August price hike has led to Asian Arab Heavy prices reaching a 9-year high at $1.20 per barrel premium against the Oman/Dubai average, despite a protracted heavy-end weakness across the Asia Pacific.

Story continues

Related: Oil Prices Crash After OPEC+ Reaches Deal To Ease Cuts

Graph 2. ADNOC Official Selling Prices in 2017-2021 (USD per barrel).

Adnoc

Source: IFAD.

The UAE benchmark Murban has followed a different route, even though the overall result was hardly different from its direct peer Arab Extra Light. The IFAD price for August 2021 Murban prices was set at $72.34 per barrel, some $1.28 per barrel above the cash Dubai monthly average. Whilst the exchange naturally calculates the average Murban OSP, the other grades are manually tweaked by ADNOC to reflect current market conditions. Here ADNOC was more in line with the general trend, rolling over Das, hiking Umm Lulu by 5 cents to parity with Murban, all the while dropping Upper Zakum by 10 cents from July to a differential of -$0.6 per barrel to Murban, the lowest since the onset of the pandemic. Upper Zakum, being the heaviest of ADNOCs major streams at 34 API, is certainly facing a much harder task of finding market outlets than the light sweet Murban.

Graph 3. Iraqi Official Selling Prices for Asia in 2018-2021 (USD per barrel).

Iraqi

Source: SOMO.

Once Saudi Aramco set the overall course for Middle Eastern pricing in August, the Iraqi SOMO had little incentive to diverge from the charted course yet it still tried to add a layer of nuance. The Iraqi state oil marketer hiked Asia-bound prices by 80 cents per barrel month-on-month for Basrah Light and Basrah Medium, whilst increasing Basrah Heavy by 75 cents per barrel to a -$0.65 per barrel discount to the Oman/Dubai average, i.e. softening the blow on the heaviest of streams. SOMOs European prices were even more buyer-friendly, seeing a 55-65 cents per barrel hike for its flagship grades and rolling over Kirkuk prices from July. Once again, the notion that heavy-yield-rich grades should see a smaller month-on-month increase than those rich in naphtha found its reflection in the August 2021 OSPs.

Graph 4. KPC Official Selling Prices for Asia in 2017-2021 (USD per barrel).

Official

Source: KPC.

Kuwait mirrored Saudi Aramcos pricing and hiked its KEB August OSP by 80 cents per barrel to a 2.05 per barrel premium over the Oman/Dubai average, keeping the 10 cents per barrel discount to Arab Medium and the 20 cents per barrel discount to Basrah Light. Whilst Kuwait did get a production baseline hike, from 2.81mbpd to 2.96mbpd, its immediate export capacities might be curtailed by peak power demand. Generally reliant on associated gas for its power generation, quota-restricted oil production has triggered a decline in gas available for power generation just as Kuwait has been struggling to cope with one of its warmest summers on record. As a result, crude burns started rising in Kuwait again (getting closer to 0.2mbpd) on the heels of the country hitting several all-time peaks in power demand over the course of this month. Hypothetically, LNG imports might save the day for Kuwait (and it did indeed start importing LNG), however the exorbitantly high prices of liquefied gas limit the Middle Eastern nations space in doing so.

Graph 5. NIOC Official Selling Prices for Asia in 2018-2021 (USD per barrel).

Official

Source: NIOC.

According to shipping data, Iranian exports have actually fallen back since May 2021, roughly corresponding to the start of nuclear negotiations. In March-April this year NIOC was exporting some 700-750kbpd of crude, most of it towards the Singapore-Malaysia-China triangle where anything might get blended and relabelled. In May-June, however, this has dropped to a mere 500kbpd, and whilst the possibility of some barrels resurfacing later and avoiding responsibility remains fully valid, the overall trend tilts towards a stagnation rather than an impending Iranian oil export boom. The ascent of Ebrahim Raisi to the post of Irans president will complicate matters more as the likelihood of seeing the JCPOA resuscitated following his assumption of office on August 08 is rather slim, i.e. the negotiators have a little more than 2 weeks to find a mutually acceptable solution.

Related: Natural Gas Prices Still Have Room To Run

Graph 6. Middle Eastern Medium Sour Grades in 2018-2021 (USD per barrel).

Middle

Source: Saudi Aramco, NIOC, SOMO.

Interestingly, the Iranian national oil company NIOC copied Saudi Aramcos 80 cents per barrel month-on-month increase for its flagship Iranian Light and Heavy streams going to Asia in August, sticking to the 30 cents per barrel discount on the Iran Light-Arab Light spread. Whilst reiterating its willingness to remain competitive against Saudi or Iraqi peers, Irans current market strategy feels somewhat different than that before 2015  having become self-sufficient in transportation fuels it has become much more self-centric and lacks the massive hoarding of crude that dominated the pre-2015 reality. According to Kpler data, crude inventories in Iran have been on the decrease since late May so there is not even a stock build-up taking place, in anticipation of big things to come. So in the end, despite all the turbulence that this month has seen, everything returned to its right place  OPEC+ is controlling crude supply again, Saudi Arabia is maintaining intra-group discipline and Iran remains an invariable wild card.

By Gerald Jansen for Oilprice.com

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The caller said that in the future, she and her friends will ask the doctors offices they call if staff members are vaccinatedand go elsewhere if theyre not.

Theres been a lot of discussion over vaccine mandates and if its even legal to ask someonebe it a colleague, service provider or hospital workerif theyre vaccinated. While its against regulations with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for doctors and insurance companies to disclose any kind of personal information like that about their patients, Its perfectly acceptable in todays COVID-19 climate to ask those around you if they are vaccinated, Chamberlin said.

The Virginia Hospital & Healthcare Association stated Monday that its in favor of hospitals and health care systems mandating that their workers get the COVID-19 vaccine. From the time vaccines became available, the association strongly encouraged all residents to get inoculated, according to a VHHA press release.

As the vaccines have proven to be extraordinarily safe and effective, the association changed its stance to support facilities that require the COVID shot of their workers, just as vaccines are mandated against a variety of other diseases and viruses, according to the VHHA.

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LANSING, Mich. (AP)  Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday vetoed a Republican-sponsored attempt to stop a $300 weekly federal supplement that is being added to unemployed workers benefits during the coronavirus pandemic.

The extra payment is due to end Sept. 4 under federal law. The GOP-controlled Legislature wanted to terminate it July 31, contending that the money discourages people from rejoining the workforce. If the governor had signed the legislation, the change would not have actually occurred, however, because Senate Democrats did not agree to give the measure immediate effect.

Whitmer had been working on a deal with lawmakers and business groups to discontinue the enhanced benefit early as part of comprehensive plan to also increase Michigan's maximum benefit  now $362 a week  to $422 so it is commensurate with neighboring states, raise the amount authorized for a claimant's dependents and add $425 million to the unemployment trust fund. But talks broke down in June.
A British citizen of Pakistani origin accused of conspiring to murder a Pakistani blogger living in self-imposed exile has appeared at a London court for a preliminary hearing in the case.

The Old Bailey court said on July 19 that Muhammad Gohir Khan is facing charges of conspiring with persons unknown to murder Ahmad Waqass Goraya, a Pakistani blogger who has lived in the Netherlands since 2017.

The 31-year-old Khan, who lives in east London, was arrested by British police last month and is being held pending a trial scheduled for January 2022.

Goraya, who has criticized religious extremism and the Pakistani military establishment, has been in hiding ever since the Dutch police warned him in February of serious threats to his life.

It has emerged that Khan took a train from Britain's capital to Amsterdam that month and rented a car in order to check out where the blogger lived in Rotterdam.

In a statement, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) called on the British and Dutch police to do everything possible to identify Khans accomplices and instigators, and summon Pakistani diplomatic representatives in Europe for questioning if necessary.

When Goraya was still living in Pakistan, he was kidnapped for several weeks in early 2017, with the blogger blaming the abduction on a government institution linked to the army.

Goraya was also assaulted by two men in Rotterdam in February 2020, an attack he said "fits the modus operandi of Pakistani spy agencies.

RSF noted that another Pakistani journalist, Balochistan Times editor Sajid Hussain, disappeared in March 2020 in Sweden, where he had been given political asylum.

His body was retrieved from a river in April, and Swedish prosecutors ruled out murder despite what the Paris-based media freedom watchdog called several circumstances indicating that he was murdered.

Pakistan is ranked 145th out of 180 countries in RSF's 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

With reporting by AFP
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called on the United States for financial, logistical, and diplomatic support so Turkey can secure and operate Kabul airport after international troops complete their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Speaking during a trip to northern Cyprus on July 20, Erdogan said that Turkey could carry out the mission, despite warnings from Taliban militants, as long as Washington provides support.

"If these conditions could be met, we are thinking of taking over the management of Kabul airport," he said, listing diplomatic backing for Turkey as well as the U.S. handover of facilities and logistics in Afghanistan as the conditions.

"There will be serious financial and administrative difficulties...(the United States) will give the necessary support to Turkey in this respect as well," he added.

Erdogan's offer to run and guard the airport comes amid a sweeping Taliban offensive across Afghanistan as U.S.-led international forces complete their final withdrawal from the war-torn country by August 31.

Erdogan and U.S. President Joe Biden discussed the airport issue in their first face-to-face meeting on the margins of a NATO summit last month.

Turkey maintains hundreds of troops in Afghanistan but the militants have called Turkey's offer "reprehensible" and warned Ankara against its offer.

Erdogan said on July 20 that the matter "will also be discussed with the Taliban.

The insurgents had previously negotiated with the United States and should hold these talks much more comfortably with Turkey, he added.

The previous day, Erdogan called on the Taliban to "end the occupation" of Afghanistan and that Muslims should make peace with one another.

Based on reporting by Reuters and AP
As U.S. troops draw down in Afghanistan, Chinese officials have stepped up contacts with the Taliban as it surges across the country and builds strategic footholds against Afghan government forces.

On paper, Beijing and the Taliban are strange bedfellows.

China is an atheistic, communist state that is running an internment camp system in its western Xinjiang Province that is believed to have detained more than 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. The Taliban, meanwhile, is a fundamentalist militant group that previously governed Afghanistan as an Islamic caliphate.

So whats driving the two sides together?

While there is little shared ideology, both sides are managing to forge a transactional relationship based on mutual self-interest.

China -- which is positioning itself to play a defining role in the region -- sees the group as an undeniable part of Afghanistans political future, while the Taliban views Beijing as crucial for its international legitimacy and a much-needed potential investor in the country.

In recent weeks, Taliban representatives have said China is a welcome friend in Afghanistan and gone out of their way to signal that they will not interfere in Beijing's domestic affairs, while promising that territory under the Islamist groups control would not be used against other countries.

This outreach may seem abrupt but is actually the product of a complicated, decades-old relationship that experts say is defined by pragmatism and an underlying distrust of the other. As the political reality in Afghanistan continues to shift quickly, both Beijing and the Taliban are looking to explore how closely they can cooperate.

Theres a lot of skepticism of one another in this dynamic, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at London's Royal United Services Institute, told RFE/RL. The foundation of it is that each side views the other as a means to an end.

Why Are They Talking Now?

Stability, specifically its own, is the top concern for China.

Central to Chinese worries in Afghanistan is the country once again becoming a haven for extremist groups with international ambitions like Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Beijing is particularly focused on Uyghur militants that have their sights set on China and could cross the country's 76-kilometer border with Afghanistan.

Ensuring that fighting or chaos from a potential power vacuum wont spill over is paramount to Chinese policymakers.

The existence of Uyghur extremist groups -- based in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- have been part of Beijings justification for its sweeping dragnet against Muslim minorities in neighboring Xinjiang.

The Talibans recent gains indicate it could well be part of Afghanistans political equation or perhaps topple the government in Kabul. With this in mind, Beijing has moved to engage the Taliban to ensure that its security interests will be protected.

The Chinese can see that the Taliban are likely to cement power and Beijing also doesnt want to get sucked in and overextended in Afghanistan, so that means they need to have a working relationship with the Taliban, Pantucci said.

The militant group has taken Chinese concerns to heart and tried to show goodwill, calling for talks on reconstruction and drawing in Chinese investment to begin as soon as possible.

The Taliban has also signaled that it has little current interest in getting involved with events in Xinjiang.

We care about the oppression of Muslims, be it in Palestine, in Myanmar, or in China, and we care about the oppression of non-Muslims anywhere in the world, a senior Taliban representative told The Wall Street Journal. But what we are not going to do is interfere in Chinas internal affairs.

Can Beijing Work With The Taliban?

This isnt the first time the two sides have been pushed together by events on the ground in Afghanistan.

In the late 1990s, China decided that the best way to manage a potential extremist threat from the country was to engage with the Taliban.

In 1999, a group of Chinese officials flew to Kabul and opened diplomatic and economic relations, with Chinas ambassador to Pakistan seeking a meeting with Taliban commander Mullah Omar.

That meeting took place in 2000, at which Beijing pressed Omar to stop harboring ethnic Uyghur militants allegedly operating in Afghanistan with a group called the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM). In exchange, the Taliban hoped China would provide diplomatic support at the United Nations and help roll back sanctions placed on the group.

While analysts say Mullah Omar did restrain ETIM in the country, he did not expel the group. No deal with Beijing on the matter was ever formalized, and the Taliban was pushed out of Kabul following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan.

Theres always been a level of mistrust that the Chinese have toward the Taliban, Andrew Small, a fellow with the German Marshall Fund, told RFE/RL. Regardless of what deals they strike and whether they are kept, [Beijing] is also concerned that the groups success could provide inspiration to other groups.

Following the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, the Talibans top leadership relocated to Pakistan. According to Small, Islamabad -- the groups chief patron and a close Beijing ally -- helped facilitate Chinese-Taliban ties over the following years.

Those talks picked up steam in more recent years and once again centered on the Taliban denying Uyghur militants safe haven and curbing the activities of ETIM.

Starting in 2014, Taliban delegations began to publicly and regularly visit China, culminating in secret talks that China facilitated between Kabul and the Taliban in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang.

The Taliban have been dealing with the Chinese for decades now and [the militants understand] their concerns, said Small. Its an unusual relationship, but it's been one of the Talibans most consistent since it's been in exile in Pakistan.

What Is ETIM?

Central to Beijings engagement with the Taliban are concerns over Uyghur militants -- specifically ETIM -- gaining a home base in Afghanistan.

But the group has a complex and disputed history. While Uyghur militants do operate in Afghanistan, their size and sophistication has been a source of disagreement among analysts and governments.

As George Washington Universitys Sean R. Roberts writes in his book, The War On The Uyghurs, no group ever used the name ETIM, but it became associated with a small band of Uyghur militants who relocated to Afghanistan in the late 1990s with the goal of launching attacks against Beijings rule in Xinjiang.

Beijing would go on to accuse the group of helping to orchestrate attacks inside China and, in 2002, as the U.S.-led war on terror was ramping up, the group was officially recognized by Washington as a terrorist organization.

Little was heard from the group throughout the 2000s, especially after its leader was killed in 2003, until a group calling itself the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) issued an online video in 2008 in which it threatened to attack China during that year's Summer Olympics. TIP said it was a successor to ETIM, although Beijing still refers to it by the older name.

TIP has since developed into a larger militant group based in Syria, but as Roberts wrote for The Guardian in 2020, there is no evidence that this group has ever orchestrated violence inside China itself.

This has led critics to accuse Beijing of exaggerating the connections between militant groups and developments in China in order to justify its repressive policies against Uyghurs and the ongoing crackdown on Muslims in Xinjiang.

As Beijing currently engages in talks with the Taliban with a focus on Uyghur militants, several hundred fighters are believed to be in Afghanistan, according to a 2020 United Nations Security Council report.

But the administration of President Donald Trump removed ETIM from its terrorist organization list in 2020, saying it believed there was no credible evidence the group still existed.

What Is Chinas Game Plan?

Despite its growing ties with the Taliban, Beijing still recognizes President Ashraf Ghanis government and has also engaged with Kabul in monitoring Uyghur militants in Afghanistan.

Beyond security, Beijing also has some longer-term economic hopes for the country, with Chinese firms involved in the massive Aynak copper mine and exploration in the Amu Darya oil field.

For the time being, however, China is looking to strengthen its relations with both sides and use that leverage to push for a political solution between Kabul and the Taliban. Beijing is also dangling future investment and deeper efforts to integrate Afghanistan into its Belt and Road Initiative as a way to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

Its one of the few levers that China has to push for a stable political settlement in the country, Small said.

Those strengthened ties give Beijing a special role to play in any future peace process, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on July 13 during a tour of Central Asia.

China has also stepped up its security engagement and cooperation with Afghanistans neighbors in Central Asia, as well as with Pakistan, as part of what Pantucci calls a hedging strategy to prepare for any possible outcome from the current situation in the country.

The Chinese are negotiating with the Taliban, and the Taliban are being receptive so far, he said. "But the Chinese have actually built themselves an insurance policy by building a strong regional security presence [to cover]" for any outcome.
Russian tanks have deployed near the Afghan-Tajik border ahead of military exercises next month, while Moscow announced more maneuvers in neighboring Uzbekistan amid increasing security concerns in Central Asia over the Taliban's territorial gains in northern Afghanistan.

Tanks stationed at Moscow's military base in Tajikistan arrived at a military range near the Afghan border, some 200 kilometers away, Russia's Central Military District said in a statement on July 20.

The drills will take place on August 5-10 at Tajikistans Harb-Maidon training ground located some 20 kilometers from the Afghan border, and involve Russian, Tajik, and Uzbek forces, according to Russia's military.

It said that personnel from Russias 201st military base stationed in Tajikistan, mountainous vehicular troops, tanks, and artillery units, as well as the district's special units will take part in the maneuvers aimed to defeat "illegal armed units that invaded the territory of an allied country."

Also on July 20, Russia said it would hold joint military maneuvers with Uzbekistan on the Central Asian nation's Termez military field, also near the Afghan border, from July 30 to August 10.

According to Russia's Central Military District's press service, the drills will involve around 1,500 troops and around 200 vehicles, including aircraft.

The troops will practice tasks of ensuring "the territorial integrity of Central Asian states," the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Hundreds of Afghans, including police and government troops, have fled the country in recent weeks and entered Tajikistan and Uzbekistan amid the Taliban offensive. The militants have captured around one-third of Afghanistans 423 districts since the start of the international military withdrawal on May 1.

The Taliban ramped up its offensives after U.S. President Joe Biden said in April that the withdrawal of U.S. forces would be completed by September 11. Biden later moved the date up to August 31.

The rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, and the Taliban's battlefield successes, have caused concerns that the Western-backed government in Kabul may collapse.

With reporting by TASS, RIA Novosti, Interfax, Reuters, and AFP
The chair of former President Donald Trumps 2017 inaugural committee has been arrested in California on charges alleging he and others conspired to influence Trumps foreign policy positions to benefit the United Arab Emirates
Recently, a friend of mine went through a breakup. When I asked how I could help, they asked for song suggestions. This is my ideal way of hel
The new Cloud Ladder route in the via ferrata system at The Alpine Jewel in Estes Park. The route represents "a new bar for what's possible on a via ferrata," said its designer, Harry Kent. Photo courtesy Dan Gambino
With the start of school less than a month away, many Colorado parents are still waiting to know if their children will be required to wear masks in the classroom.
The Union Printers Home nursing home and assisted living facility will be shuttered after its 100-plus residents are relocated, a state official said Wednesday.

Once all of the residents are out, it will be closed, Peter Myers, public information officer for the state health departments Health Facilities and Emergency Medical Services division, told The Gazette. Its really a matter of making sure we have a safe transfer.

The facility will not have a chance to recover its license. On Tuesday, the state issued a summary suspension of the facilitys license, an action taken when moving to revoke a license, Myers said.

The suspension came after the state health department received a complaint about a female residents death at the nursing home last week. The state couldnt identify the resident, but the El Paso County Coroners Office confirmed that a woman, Margarita Sam, was found dead at the facility Feb. 3.

The death is being investigated by the Colorado Springs Police Departments Crimes Against At Risk Adults unit under the Special Victims Section, Sgt. Jason Newton said Wednesday.

Its definitely heartbreaking, especially the circumstances, he said. Were going to have to backtrack and figure out what happened days before, leading up to that point.

An autopsy has not yet been completed. Newton would not comment on how the woman was found, but Colorado Springs news station KRDO, citing her familys statement to the Pikes Peak Southern Christian Leadership Conference, said she was found frozen outside on a bench, lacking proper clothing. The order of suspension issued to the facility Tuesday from the state mentions a resident found dead on a bench outside the facility.

The department has  determined that a lack of protective oversight may have contributed to the [nursing home] resident leaving the facility unobserved, the order states.

The decision to suspend operations was made after a pattern of noncompliance in which the death played a part, Myers said.

Staying within the regulations and their performance in doing that has gotten worse rather than better, Myers said.

The Union Printers Home has a target closure date of March 27 but must stay open until all residents are placed elsewhere, a spokeswoman for an outside agency brought in by the state to run the facility through closure said Wednesday.

We are here to help every last resident, said Heather Terhark, vice president of ancillary services at Vivage Senior Living. They will receive good care throughout all of this.

Myers was unaware of who would foot the bill for outside management through closure.

Relocating the facilitys 100-plus residents will be challenging, especially when considering the complexities of payor sources like Medicare and particular insurance plans, said Erin McNab, a housing navigator with the senior-focused nonprofit Silver Key.

Residents at the facility are used to having their own rooms, a relative luxury not afforded by many Colorado Springs nursing homes that accept Medicaid, further complicating the transition, she added.

The moves will be huge change for these residents, said McNab, who worked at the facility nearly 20 years ago, when it was owned by the printers union.

Having a safe place that is familiar to you is huge. Change is scary for anyone, but when you can no longer take care of yourself, its even scarier.

Jim Clamp was among those searching for a new home for a family member on Wednesday. His son, Carl Clamp, has lived at the facility for the past year and a half. The 49-year-olds multiple sclerosis affects his mobility, vision and cognition, Jim said.

The younger Clamp sounds pretty upset about the closure, his father said. He owns land down by Florence, and hell say, I want to go down there and build a house. Its just so far out of the question, totally impossible. His mind doesnt work totally right.

Jim said the treatment of his son by the facilitys nurses has been top notch, though hes struggled to get straight answers about the administration of his sons medications.

Its an odd kind of place  if you call and get the recording, the main thing they do is talk about how everybodys going to feel so great if a person moves there and what a wonderful place it is, he said.

But its sort of ironic because then they wont answer their phone. Its all just kind of haphazard. I think the telephone service is a symbol of the whole place.

Medicare.gov shows the facility has been awarded two out of a possible five stars, earning it a below average rating. Facilities are rated based on health inspections, staffing and quality measures, according to the website.

The facility received one star out of five for its health inspection rating, putting it in the much below average category. The rating is based on each active providers three most recent health inspection surveys, as well as findings from the past three years of complaint information and inspection revisits, according to the website.

The website lists the facilitys number of health citations at 29, above the Colorado average of 7.9 and the U.S. average of 8.2.

The Printers Home has been assessed two federal fines in the past three years: one of $61,770 in March and one of $31,107 in November 2017, according to Medicare.gov.

Kansas-based Heart Living Centers took over operations at the facility in 2014.

The Colorado Springs Police Department has not responded to repeated requests for further information about the womans death.

The Gazettes Liz Henderson contributed to this report.
Margarita Sam crouched on her knees and elbows in front of an elevator, her hands clasped as if praying.

A nursing home housekeeper asked the 89-year-old if she was OK, then turned away.

Moments later, Sam was found laying on the floor.

Two days later  nearly to the minute  Sam would be found dead on a bench on the facility's grounds, partially clothed. Her immediate cause of death, according to the El Paso County Coroner's Office: hypothermia, prolonged exposure to the cold.

The broader cause of her death, according to a recently issued report from a federal agency: the nursing home's failure to adequately supervise her  even after she suffered a "significant mental status change," a fall and a hospital visit, all just days before her death.

Colorado health officials pulled Union Printers Home's license to operate both a nursing home and an assisted living facility on Feb. 12, forcing about 115 residents to face relocation.

The suspension came after the Colorado Department of Health and Environment received a complaint about a female resident's death at the nursing home the week prior. The state wouldnt identify the resident, nor does the federal report. But the Coroners Office confirmed that Sam was found dead Feb. 3 on facility grounds.

Union Printers failed to provide Sam "adequate supervision and monitoring to prevent her elopement from the facility ... which resulted in her death," according to a Feb. 10 report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

Though the facility became aware the morning of Feb. 3 that Sam was missing, an official search was not initiated until hours later, the report concludes.

The search lasted only 11 minutes before she was found dead.

A troubling timeline

Sam suffered a "significant mental status change" on Jan. 29, five days before her death, according to the federal report. She fell on Feb. 1. On Feb. 2, the evening before her death, she was taken to the hospital, where she was placed on anti-psychotic medication.

But "she was not adequately monitored after her return," states the report, which paints a troubling timeline of events leading up to Sam's death, pieced together based on interviews, scanty nursing home documentation and video surveillance footage.

The Union Printers facility did not respond to The Gazette's request for comment.

The death is being investigated by the Colorado Springs Police Departments Crimes Against At Risk Adults Unit under the Special Victims Section, Sgt. Jason Newton told The Gazette last month.

The McDivitt law firm has been hired by Sam's family to investigate her death and is looking into "about a half dozen" cases of death or abuse linked to the facility, said attorney David McDivitt.

"The broad themes are that health conditions aren't treated appropriately," he said.

McDivitt said he agreed with the federal report's conclusion, adding that the facility "dropped the ball  and I think it goes deeper than that."

The facility's owners, Kansas-based Heart Living Centers, used "willful decision-making" to "put profits over people, over patient care; revenue over residents," he said.

Sam had been admitted to the facility in April 2018. A care plan generated that month showed she was at risk for falls as a result of a medication she was on, and that she required monitoring for changes in anxiety, sleep, behavior or mood. A Jan. 10, 2020, assessment revealed moderate cognitive impairment but noted that she was independent in activities of daily living and at low risk for falls and wandering, according to the report.

A doctor's note 18 days later, however, included a concerning observation: Sam thought she was leaving Union Printers for an assisted living facility.

"Social worker unaware, will address," the doctor's note read, the report states.

An interview with Sam's neighbor and friend, also a resident, revealed that she had taken a turn for the worse the day after the doctor's note, on Jan. 29. Sam had told the woman that she couldn't live at Union Printers any longer and would be moving. Staff and a resident stated that in the week before her death, she began giving and throwing away personal items, and staying in her room. At one point she threw away her purse and phone and then reported them stolen, the report states.

When the housekeeper encountered Sam on her knees and elbows before the elevator, Sam responded that she was indeed OK. But about a minute later, she was found lying on the floor. Sam was allowed to return to her room before being assessed by a nurse. Though the facility completed some neurological checks after the fall, multiple checks were missed. Some assessments that were completed indicated "increased confusion and alteration in usual pattern" and "wandering" and labeled her as "risk-disoriented," as well as fearful and anxious, according to the report.

Slipping away, but undiscovered

Shortly after 6 p.m. on the day before her death, Sam was transported to the hospital via ambulance "due to increased confusion." Though she was "alert and oriented to herself," she was "disoriented to place, time and situation," the report states.

Sam had been behaving strangely. She drank olive oil out of a cup with a cookie in it and removed all of her clothing, wrapping it like a turban around her head. "She also stated witches were entering her room," according to the report.

With that behavior to go by, hospital staff concluded that Sam should again begin taking anti-psychotic medication. She was given her first dose at the hospital around 9 p.m. and returned to the nursing home at 11 p.m.

An associate director of nursing later told investigators that 72-hour charting and 15-minute checks should have been initiated after her mental-status change on Jan. 29, as well as after her fall and ER visit. But these things didn't happen  at least not consistently, the federal agency contends. A staffer later told investigators that Sam was not considered at-risk after she returned from the hospital because paperwork said the effectiveness of her new prescription  not Sam herself  should be monitored.

Upon her return, Sam was talking "crazy," saying the FBI was being sent to take nursing home residents away, her best friend told investigators. An overnight volunteer reported that she encountered Sam wandering on the fourth floor at 3 a.m. and saying she wanted to go home. She had a bundle of clothes under her arm, the volunteer told investigators.

Around 4 a.m. video surveillance captured Sam  clad in a thin, white blouse and white skirt-slip but without shoes on, her hair braided  in the facility near an elevator. The video last captures her traveling toward a door that leads outside, near where she was found, the report states.

A security guard on duty that night told investigators that he did not patrol the outdoor area where Sam was found because "it's too dark back there."

When she did not show up for breakfast, Sam's food was delivered to her room at 7:45 a.m. At 10 a.m., a housekeeper asked Sam's nurses where she was. A nurse rounding sheet seems to confirm Sam wasn't in her room as of 8 a.m., but documentation and interviews from earlier that morning make her whereabouts unclear, according to the report.

At 9:39 a.m., the person holding Sam's power of attorney contacted the facility and asked where she was, the report states.

A maintenance technician told investigators that he was notified around 11 a.m. that Sam was missing and went outside to search for her with another employee.

He found Sam laying on a bench, he told investigators. Her blouse was pulled up over her head.

An LPN called to check on her added that she wasn't wearing shoes. She didn't attempt CPR, as rigor mortis had set in, she told investigators.

Another attempt to flee facility

In subsequent days, as the facility reportedly worked to rectify issues that federal officials said put residents in "immediate jeopardy," investigators encountered a resident sitting in his wheelchair near a door. The man said he was getting ready to leave the facility in the snow and 25-degree weather to get food.

He'd been downstairs since 5:30 a.m. without being checked on. Food at the facility was terrible, he told investigators, so he often ordered take-out or left on his own to get food.

When asked where the man was, one nurse told investigators she thought he was at an appointment, then said she thought he was at a residents coffee gathering.

Another nurse said the man was not allowed to leave the floor and wasn't sure.

"She was the straw that broken the camel's back," McDivitt said of Sam. If not her, "it would have been somebody else, and it probably took a horrific death like this to get the state to wake up that this needed to stop."
Colorado has averaged more COVID-19 cases in recent days than at any point over the past six weeks, a slow incline that's mirrored by the positivity rate and is driven by the dominant presence of the delta variant.
Historic preservation zoning overlay was reaffirmed in March for the Old North End above Colorado College by the Colorado Springs City Council.
City Editor

Tom Roeder is the Gazette's City Editor. In Colorado Springs since 2003, Tom has covered the military at home and overseas and has cover statehouses in Denver and Olympia, Wash. His main job, though, is being dad to two great kids.
El Paso County residents facing homelessness due to financial hardship related to the pandemic may be eligible for rental assistance, county o
A Mason City man has pleaded not guilty to charges related to the death of bicyclist James Powell.

Cody William Skiye, 28, pleaded not guilty to felony homicide by vehicle while operating under the influence and has waived his right to a speedy trial. A jury trial has been scheduled for Sept. 21 at 1:30 p.m. at the Cerro Gordo County Courthouse.

Skiye remains in Cerro Gordo County Jail on $25,000 bond.

On June 5, Cerro Gordo County deputies responded to the 22000 block of Thrush Avenue for a traffic collision involving a bicycle.

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James Powell, 62, was transported to MercyOne North Iowa Hospital by the Mason City Fire Department. Powell died from his injuries on June 11, according to the Cerro Gordo County Sheriffs Office.

Skiye was operating the 2010 Dodge Ram that was southbound when he struck Powell. Powell's bicycle, also southbound, had proper lighting that was in accordance with the Iowa traffic code.
Rozendaal has been flying planes since 1977 and has flown over 200 different types of airplanes, from modern private jets to historic World War II era aircrafts.

It wasnt until the Commemorative Air Force began its restoration project in 2015 that Rozendaal became familiar with the extent of Thats All, Brothers history.

In 2018, when Thats All, Brother finally took to the skies again, Rozendaal was the man who got to do so as the pilot. Rozendaal, who has lived in Clear Lake since 1984, got the opportunity to fly Thats All, Brother from the Untied States across the Atlantic Ocean to Normandy, France in 2019 for the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

When youre flying it, youre intensely focused on the flight, Rozendaal said. But, when we passed over the beach and the graveyard, it was difficult not to imagine what was going on directly below us 75 years ago.

On Thursday, Rozendaal will be flying Thats All, Brother, the aircraft that has meant so much to him over the years, to his local community of Clear Lake.

Every time you get to fly it is a privilege, Rozendaal said. Im proud to use it to tell stories and help educate, honor and inspire younger generations.
MADISON, Wis. (AP)  Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes on Tuesday joined the crowded Democratic field for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, vying to become the first African American from Wisconsin to serve in the Senate.

Barnes, 34, is the first Black lieutenant governor in Wisconsin history. He is giving up a chance to run for a second term in 2022 as Gov. Tony Evers' running mate. Instead, Barnes becomes the eighth Democrat to enter the race, with an ninth expected to get in soon.

Barnes, in his announcement speech in Milwaukee where he grew up, called for leveling the playing field by fighting for family-supporting jobs, combatting gun violence, creating a more fair immigration system, improving health care, addressing climate change and protecting democracy and the right to vote.

We can, today, build a movement for justice, Barnes said to a crowd that included his former colleagues in the state Assembly and various local officials from Milwaukee and Madison. Im running for the Senate to provide opportunity, to fight for hard-working people.
Iowas institutions are struggling to ensure their students arent confused about the forbearances impending end. Drake Universitys Director of Financial Aid Ryan Zantingh said his department has been hesitant to send out reminders in case the date changes.

Part of the reason we havent been more proactive with our students is that we dont know if it will be extended, he said. If the date gets pushed back again, it only adds to the uncertainty and confusion students have.

At the University of Northern Iowa, Bakula said his office continues to update students on extensions, but it can lead to some confusion. Retracting information due to extensions has only caused more confusion for students, he said.

Ryder said the University of Iowas financial aid department is used to having things change frequently, but its difficult to inform students without knowing if there will be an extension to the freeze or not.

Since payments depend on what students loan servicers decide, we dont want to cause any extra confusion about who they pay or when or how much, she said. We dont want to misinform them on dates, either.
When applied, the liquid provides information to police about that items place of origin. Law enforcement can then use this provenance information in court when an arrest is made.

So far, the Chesterfield Police Department is the only law enforcement agency in Virginia to use the technology with SmartWater CSI, a company that originated in England 25 years ago.

The company came to the U.S. in 2013 and initially focused on the Miami-Dade County, Broward County and Palm Beach County areas in Florida to prove that the technology would work just as well in the U.S. as it did over in Europe, said Randy Butschillinger, the companys law enforcement sales and training manager.

SmartWater is used by 40 to 50 localities in that section of Florida, including in Boynton Beach, where Chesterfield Police Chief Jeffrey Katz served as chief before coming to Chesterfield in January 2018.

Were in over 70 neighborhoods in Boynton Beach, and that was when he was down there as the police chief, Butschillinger said. And they averaged 38% reductions in burglaries.
The court will not take further formal action on the statue until Jan. 2, 2022, according to the order. But in an attached letter that Dorsey penned to Peters dated June 23, he urged hasty removal of the stonework, for the sake of judicial optics.

There is a legal, intellectual, and moral imperative to move this statue with all deliberate speed, Dorsey wrote.

In his letter to Peters, Dorsey said no one would suggest a Confederate flag or monument has any place in a courtroom.

The meaning conveyed by this statue due to its proximity to the Roanoke County Courthouse and being on Roanoke County property is, likewise, completely antithetical to the proper administration of justice, Dorsey wrote. It matters not who is offended; it only matters that this monuments message, in its present location, is offensive to the appearance of judicial fairness and neutrality, without a hint of prejudice.

Citing several historians, Dorsey noted slavery was, by a wide margin, unquestionably the primary cause of the Civil War. Confederate monuments are tied to the mythology of the Lost Cause  the way many white Americans have chosen to view history following the Civil War, Dorsey wrote.
This seems such a great idea we wonder why it hasnt been done before. George Marshall is, arguably, VMIs most important alumnus. He led the American military during World War II. After the war, he became the nations top diplomat, credited with saving democracy in western Europe, and for that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. To be both a warrior and a peace laureate is quite a feat.

The legacy of Stonewall Jackson  a former VMI professor  is, shall we say, complicated (less complicated for some than others). But theres nothing complicated about Marshalls legacy. Cadets once had to salute Jacksons statue, since removed. There should be no controversy about saluting Marshall. VMI does honor Marshall in many ways  theres both a building and an arch named in his honor and the institute is home to the Marshall Foundation and museum. But hes still been in Jacksons shadow at VMI. Thats too bad, but heres the opportunity: If VMI truly wants to remake itself to be more accommodating to modern sensibilities, it need not abandon all of its traditions. It need only more fully embrace one of its own, a son of the 19th century whose work remade the 20th century and continues to shape the 21st.
"... community colleges in particular face chronic faculty shortages because they cant pay instructors as much as other institutions can. ... Even universities face shortages because its often more lucrative to work as a nurse than to teach.

"In addition to the faculty shortage ... theres also a shortage of clinical space in hospitals and other health-care facilities where nurses can train with real patients."

Go read the whole thing, as they say.

Staff writer John Newsom covers higher education for the News & Record of Greensboro and the Winston-Salem Journal.

Have something to say about this blog post? Email him at john.newsom@greensboro.com. You can also follow him on Twitter at @JohnNewsomNR.

Support his coverage of higher education. Click here and here to learn about digital subscriptions the News & Record and the Journal.
The drugs manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, confirmed the falsification. The appearance and lot numbers on the packaging didnt match the original.

The U.S. and Mexico have approved remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.



NEW DELHI  The most comprehensive research yet estimates Indias excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic were a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll.

Most experts believe Indias official toll of 414,000 dead was a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns. A report released Tuesday estimates excess deaths to be 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and this June.

It calculated its figures by comparing deaths to those in pre-pandemic years, considering the virus prevalence in the population and using an existing economic survey. The report also estimated that Indias initial virus surge last year killed many more people than reported, breeding complacency that set up conditions for the horrific surge earlier this year.

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian governments former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, and Harvard University.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
North Carolina school boards in Republican-leaning counties are taking steps they say will prevent the teaching of Critical Race Theory  and that some teachers say could lead to witch hunts.

This week alone, school boards in Cabarrus, Johnston and Moore counties passed resolutions or policies they say are targeted at keeping Critical Race Theory from being taught. The measures talk about things such as not teaching about social theories and not promoting that people should feel discomfort, guilt or anguish solely because of their race or sex.

This is just to make it very clear to the public what we expect our teachers to do: to keep Critical Race Theory stuff out of Moore County Schools, Moore County school board member Ed Dennison said at this weeks board meeting.

But some educators say these new policies are so vague that they will have a chilling effect, with parents going after teachers for discussing anything in class they dislike.

It is going to incite witch hunts for teachers, April Lee, president of the Johnston County Association of Educators, said at this weeks Johnston County school board meeting. So I need you to be prepared, and I need for you to be prepared for us to fight back.
HIGH POINT  The City Council declared Monday that its meetings are back to pre-coronavirus pandemic procedures, with one added feature.

Audio streaming of regular council and committee meetings will continue, but members will no longer vote remotely, as was allowed during the pandemic.

The city began providing public online access to meetings after in-person attendance was barred last year because of COVID-19. Council members said they want the service to continue as a matter of transparency and convenience for the public.

Ive heard from many of my constituents who have a new level of engagement with the city because they were able to listen in, said Councilman Michael Holmes.

A formal vote to approve the streaming policy was set for Aug. 2.

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With the COVID-19 state of emergency set to expire July 30, the city will no longer have legal authority to allow remote voting by council members, so this practice will not continue at future meetings.

Also Monday, the council sought to advance the proposed Washington Street cultural arts center by directing staff to undertake title searches and other legal research associated with the city-owned site where advocates want to build the project.
GREENSBORO  Khari Garvin brings his lifes work of fighting poverty to the United Way of Greater Greensboro as the organizations next president and CEO.

Poverty should not be a final destination for anyone, Garvin said in a statement released by the community agency.

The High Point resident was selected during a national search from more than 300 applicants. He begins on Tuesday, July 27. The public is invited to meet Garvin during a virtual lunch and learn, noon to 1 p.m. on Aug. 12, by registering at www.UnitedWayGSO.org/CEO.

Garvin, whose career in anti-poverty programs began with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Head Start program, has more than 20 years national, state and local experience designing and leading systems serving children and families in low-income communities.

Khari is tremendously experienced in the work of addressing poverty," said Brian Pierce, the chair of the board of directors and a member of the search committee. "His drive and motivation for what he does is infectious and inspiring.
RALEIGH  A federal freeze on most evictions enacted last year is scheduled to expire July 31, after the Biden administration extended the date by a month. The moratorium, put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was the only tool keeping millions of tenants in their homes. Many of them lost jobs during the coronavirus pandemic and had fallen months behind on their rent.

Landlords successfully challenged the order in court, arguing they also had bills to pay. They pointed out that tenants could access more than $45 billion in federal money set aside to help pay rent and related expenses.

Roughly 3.2 million people in the U.S. said they face eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureaus Household Pulse Survey. The survey measures the social and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic every two weeks through online responses from a representative sample of U.S. households.

Heres the situation in North Carolina:

Whats the status of eviction moratoriums?

North Carolina is one of several states that enacted a moratorium last year halting eviction proceedings. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper has not yet announced whether hell extend the moratorium.
During a news conference on Wednesday, Berger said passing the constitutional amendment banning affirmative action would affirm our commitment to the principles of the (1964) Civil Rights Act.

What happens next? How does an amendment get on a ballot?

Before the proposed constitutional amendment can be put on the ballot, the bill Berger and other lawmakers introduced will need to be approved by three-fifths of the Senate and House. That would require the support of at least a handful of Democrats in each chamber, which might prove to be tricky.

If the bill clears both Republican-led chambers by the required three-fifths margin, itll be put on the ballot in the statewide primary election next year. It will bypass the desk of Gov. Roy Cooper, who cant veto constitutional amendments.

How many votes are needed to approve a constitutional amendment in NC?

Constitutional amendments need to be approved by a majority of voters and take effect on Jan. 1 of the following year, according to the state constitution. And they can be subject to legal challenges, even after theyve been ratified. That happened with the controversial Amendment One, which banned same-sex marriage and was approved by voters in 2012 before it was struck down by a federal judge in 2014.
Roanoke College now uses the old courthouse, adjacent to the current one, for business, economics, public affairs, religion and philosophy classes. The college has offered to fund the statues relocation, but it rests on a county easement that requires board approval to move.

If were forced to remove the statue, I still think that the majority of us want to have something in place to say the historical meaning of that spot, Peters said. Its a very significant spot, because that is truly where soldiers came to sign up, at that that very spot, and many of those soldiers came from Roanoke College.

Regardless, the public will need involvement in the decision-making process, either by way of a hearing or a referendum, said Roanoke County Attorney Peter Lubeck during a phone call Monday. The Virginia Department of Historic Resources is expected to release guidelines for contextualizing statues and monuments sometime in September, in response to a state law changed in April 2020, he added.

In our society we are plagued by intolerance of opposing viewpoints, Lubeck said. While people do have strong opinions regarding monuments, I think what the board hopes to achieve  through whatever course of action it chooses  is to do its best to achieve unity.
When the Census Bureau released its data earlier this year, the numbers simply confirmed what North Carolinians already knew  our state is growing. Looking across the state, it is not difficult to see why people choose to move here; whether you prefer beaches, mountains or something in between, North Carolina has it all. However, the scenery alone is not drawing people to our state. North Carolinas economy also is growing.

As home to 14 Fortune 500 companies, including Bank of America, Honeywell and Lowes Foods, North Carolina includes businesses that impact the everyday lives of countless Americans. North Carolina is also a leader in medical research, digital technology, banking, agribusiness and manufacturing. Put plainly, this state is on the move. A big part of how we continue to grow will involve how we plan our energy future.

Consumer demands are changing. Consumers, including corporate energy buyers, want affordable, reliable and reduced-carbon electricity. Some say more competition is the answer. To meet these changing demands, North Carolina must plan. But that planning must be based on good data, up-to-date information and input from a broad cross-section of stakeholders.
During a campaign speech in Florida last week, Donald Trump explained the more than 30,000 lies he uttered over the last five years. He said, Theres a word: disinformation. If you say it enough and keep saying it  just keep saying it  theyll start to believe you. WOW!

Days later, he explained his attacks on fake news media at CPAC this way: You have a poll coming up. Now, if its bad ideas, I say its fake. If its good, I say thats the most accurate poll perhaps ever.

Trumpublicans, this is your dear leader saying the quiet part out loud. Youve spent five years following a fraud. A recent poll found that 86% of Fox News Republicans and 96% of far-right news Republicans said the election was stolen, compared to 66% of Republicans who dont watch news and only 44% who watch mainstream news.

History will speak to this, how easily we were gaslit, how followers embraced the most flawed leader in American history, rallying around grievance and culture and against their own interests. The true disaster, however, was and still is, the normalization of a con man.

Brad Schamp

Archdale

With every step
The first public hearing on Kings County redistricting was met with criticism on the nature of the hearings and saw a hearing added to compensate for inaccurate contact information.
CALmatters is a public interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California's state Capitol works and why it matters. Dan Walters has been a journalist for nearly 60 years, spending all but a few of those years working for California newspapers.
July 21 is the last day for Helena-area students to get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in time to be fully vaccinated before the fir
July 21 is the last day for Helena-area students to get their first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in time to be fully vaccinated before the first day of school, local public health officials said.

Parents are quickly running out of time to ensure their kids are fully protected from COVID-19, Lewis and Clark County Health Officer Drenda Niemann said in a press release. The Pfizer vaccine requires five weeks to build full protection  three weeks between first and second doses, and two full weeks after the second dose.

The first day of school is scheduled for Aug. 26 for East Helena Public Schools and Aug. 30 for Helena Public Schools.

Of the three vaccines currently approved for use in the United States to combat COVID-19, only the Pfizer vaccine is approved for individuals 12 and older. Vaccines are not yet available for children younger than 12, but trials on younger children are underway.

The Pfizer vaccine is a two-dose series and has been shown effective in preventing or lessening the effects of COVID-19, including the Delta variant. The Delta variant is a naturally occurring mutation of the virus that causes COVID-19, and data show it is more contagious and spreads more easily than the original COVID-19 virus.
The Lewis and Clark County Board of County Commissioners approved a resolution Tuesday morning that lifted its emergency declaration enacted March 13, 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Whereas, the COVID-19 public health emergency ... continues to be present in the County and surrounding area but is no longer an imminent threat," the resolution states. The resolution goes on to say "the COVID-19 virus is now a vaccine preventable disease and can be adequately addressed with existing resources ... be it resolved by the Lewis and Clark County Board of County Commissioners that the public health emergency is hereby terminated..."

"We're moving forward. We have a system that can address and respond better. We have the vaccine at our disposal," County Commissioner and Chairman Andy Hunthausen said ahead of the vote, urging continued caution by the entire community. "It doesn't mean that it's done, it's gone and don't even think about this anymore. Those who are unvaccinated still pose a risk to their own health, their family's health and to the community's health."

Hunthausen said he hopes unvaccinated county residents will consider receiving the vaccine because "the facts are pretty strong: it's safe, effective and free."
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas lawmakers who hightailed it to the nation's capital in a faceoff over voting rights said Tuesday that they're pressing on with their mission to get Democrats in Washington, D.C., to bolster their cause, even as COVID-19 spreads through their ranks.

Six of the more than 50 Texas state representatives who decamped to Washington last week have since tested positive for the coronavirus, along with two Washington staffers associated with the group.

During a news conference Tuesday, the Texas Democrats said they remain optimistic about their cause, even after their Monday night town hall on MSNBC was scaled back because of the positive test results.

I do believe we are being very innovative and we are rising to respond to these challenges, Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds said.

Asked about the prospects of a meeting between President Joe Biden and the Texas delegation now that several members have become infected, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was unlikely.
CHICAGO (AP)  A Florida man who breached the U.S. Senate chamber carrying a Trump campaign flag is scheduled to become the first Jan. 6 rioter sentenced for a felony, in a hearing that will help set a benchmark for punishment in similar cases.

Prosecutors want Paul Allard Hodgkins to serve 18 months behind bars, saying in a recent filing that he, "like each rioter, contributed to the collective threat to democracy" by forcing lawmakers to temporarily abandon their certification of Joe Biden's election victory and to scramble for shelter from incoming mobs.

Video footage shows Hodgkins, 38, wearing a Trump 2020 T-shirt, the flag flung over his shoulder and eye goggles around his neck inside the Senate. He took a selfie with a self-described shaman in a horned helmet and other rioters on the dais behind him.

His sentencing Monday in Washington could set the bar for punishments of hundreds of other defendants as they decide whether to accept plea deals or go to trial. Hodgkins and others are accused of serious crimes but were not indicted, as other were, for roles in larger conspiracies.
A District Court judge last week ruled the sanctions imposed against the Montana Highway Patrol for bungling evidence will largely remain in place as it prepares its defense for a trial next month.

Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Kathy Seeley wrote in her July 15 order that MHP could show the jury the recently found video of a "near miss accident" in 2017 involving a trooper and a Wyoming driver that led to the civil case. The expert witnesses MHP had assembled to counter the driver's claims that he was injured in the crash, however, would not be able to testify at trial, Seeley wrote, and the issue of whether MHP caused the crash will remain settled in the driver's favor.

The trial is scheduled Aug. 9.
According to court documents, the trooper was unsure of the arrest exemption as it applied to Ellsworth the night of his traffic stop, so she was printing out a warning for speeding when she saw Ellsworth get out of his vehicle. The trooper told Ellsworth twice he needed to go back to his car.

"You need to release me," Ellsworth said, according to charging documents.

After some additional back-and-forth in which the trooper told Ellsworth no fewer than four times to return to his vehicle, Ellsworth said, "If you want me to call the Attorney General "

"Go ahead and call him," the trooper said, according to a transcript of the conversation in the charging document. "Back to your car now."

"I would be happy to," Ellsworth volleyed. "I suggest you call your boss."

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"Go back to your car now," the trooper said, for the eighth time during the exchange.

Ellsworth declined to comment directly when reached by text on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the Senate Republicans said in an emailed statement Tuesday that Ellsworth tried to apologize for his unprofessional conduct the day after the incident.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen is endangering the health of Montana children. For years, the successful Comprehensive School and Community Treatment (CSCT) program has provided mental and behavioral health services to the neediest students in public schools. These services keep kids safe, make them ready to learn, and support their families and teachers throughout the year.

Montana receives a significant amount of federal funding for students mental health through this program, but that funding depends on matching funds from other sources. Until this year, those matching funds were provided by the State of Montana. Legislative Republicans refused to fully fund the program, instead providing just a stopgap that is insufficient to carry schools through the upcoming year.

Deeply concerned about the future of mental health care for Montana students, we and our Democratic colleagues worked across the aisle to reach a compromise intended to carry the CSCT program forward while protecting schools from bureaucratic red tape. We tasked Superintendent Arntzen and her office with seeing this through after the legislative session ended.
SPRINGFIELD  The states higher education agencies released updated COVID-19 guidance Monday encouraging all public and private higher education institutions in Illinois to issue mandatory vaccine policies.

Vaccination against COVID-19 is now widely available, and all persons over the age of 12 are eligible, the guidance document reads. Vaccination is the leading prevention strategy against COVID-19 and all public and private universities are strongly encouraged to require vaccination (with appropriate exemptions) to protect campus populations and slow COVID-19 transmission in surrounding communities.

Some schools, including Northwestern University, Northern Illinois University, the University of Illinois System, Loyola University Chicago and DePaul University, among others, have already announced they will require vaccinations for in-person learning.

That guidance, levied by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board, came as the states COVID-19 case positivity rate rose to 2.4 percent on a seven-day rolling average Monday, more than quadrupling what it was on June 26. The 1,151 cases reported Sunday made for the highest single-day count since May 26.

Hospitalizations for the virus have risen as well, with 537 hospital beds in use by COVID-19 patients as of Sunday night, the highest number since June 19. On a seven-day average from Monday to Sunday, there were 499 beds in use by COVID-19 patients, a 14 percent increase from the same period one week prior.

There were 100 intensive care beds in use on average over that same seven-day period, an 11 percent increase from the week prior. Ventilator usage remained steady with 35 in use on average for the week.

All numbers, while rising amid a nationwide surge sparked by a more contagious virus variant, were well off pandemic highs when the positivity rate rose above 13 percent last winter and COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked above 6,000, with ICU bed usage topping 1,200.

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Vaccinations, meanwhile, have slowed, with about 58 percent of the states 18-and-older population fully vaccinated and 73 percent having received one dose. The rolling seven-day average for vaccine doses administered was 20,628 as of Monday, down from an April peak over 130,000.

As the numbers rise, Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office said Friday the administration currently has no plan to implement any additional mitigations now that there is an abundance of vaccine available and accessible across Illinois. We encourage all Illinoisans ages 12-plus to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

But Pritzker, speaking at a news conference regarding infrastructure later Friday, said his administration is always open to making changes in policy in order to keep people safe and healthy.

Obviously, we've got rising rates of infection in certain parts of the state, and decisions will be made if those areas continue to have rising infection rates, about whether or not we need to impose some different standard for those areas, he said, speaking of counties on the border of Missouri, which has one of the worst infection rates in the nation.

He said he would currently advise even vaccinated Illinoisans to wear a mask in a setting where many people are gathered indoors. The states guidance currently says unvaccinated individuals should wear face coverings indoors, but it is not a mandate.

The states higher education guidance falls in line with U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Illinois Department of Public Health guidance on masking as well.

Unvaccinated persons and those who might need to take extra precautions should wear a face covering and, where feasible, maintain physical distance while indoors, the guidance reads. Institutions should use space wisely to allow for physical distancing to the extent practicable.

Higher education institutions are also strongly encouraged to continue COVID-19 testing of unvaccinated individuals to identify and slow virus transmission, and should follow CDC guidelines on safe hygiene practices and health equity.
Commission member Kristie McElheny said she initially opposed the idea, but, after listening to presentations and considering information and feedback, she now supports it.

Commissioners Susan Long and Ed Harlow voted against the recommendation since the land is included within legislation that allows the city to keep 2.8% of state sales taxes generated by businesses operating there rather than the traditional 1%.

That was done because the city borrowed about $50 million in general obligation bonds to finance creation of the development and $34 million in revenue bonds to establish a commercial destination, and the extra sales tax was designated to help repay those long-term debts.

There is no other opportunity for the city to collect that tax, Long warned.

Harlow, who served on the City Council that approved The Falls borrowing, said he supports construction of new apartments in the city but is concerned about using land at The Falls.

Interim Director of Community Development Jay Detrick said staff analysis also supports the project.

The proposal addresses a demonstrated need in Bristol, housing, and could provide a catalyst for future commercial development in the Falls, Detrick said. It is expected that the casino and Amazon will create 2,000-plus new jobs in the next two to four years, and without new housing in Bristol, those who come to the area will choose to live outside of the city.
A woman whose business billed the Virginia Medicaid program for more than $2.8 million in work that was not performed was sentenced to four years and two months in prison Monday.

Katrina Lynch, 40, who had been living in Texas since 2014 and blamed her conduct in part on a gambling addiction, pleaded guilty to health care fraud in July 2020 and faced up to 20 years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Judge David J. Novak. Federal sentencing guidelines called for a term of 46 to 57 months.

Prosecutors asked Novak for a 50-month sentence. "Katrina Lynch, over more than six years stole nearly $3 million from Virginia's Medicaid program, which provides medical assistance to indigent, elderly, and disabled individuals throughout the state," wrote the U.S. attorney's office in seeking a 50-month prison term.

The government said she spent over $47,000 at casinos in Las Vegas, New Orleans and elsewhere and $100,000 on clothing and jewelry from stores such as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany & Co. and Louis Vuitton. She spent over $250,000 on travel expenses, including a 2018 trip to London and to the Bahamas in 2017.

Other personal expenses included vehicles and cosmetic surgery.
BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn.  A select group of Sullivan County jail inmates could receive job training, lower their court debts and even land full-time jobs once theyre released, thanks to a new grant the Sheriffs Office just received.

On Thursday, the Sullivan County Commission gave the office the green light to receive, appropriate and use a $50,000 grant from East Tennessee State Universitys Correctional Career Pathways program.

According to ETSUs Tennessee Institute of Public Health, which runs the program, Correctional Career Pathways aims to help people who have committed crimes break the cycle of arrest and incarceration and transition successfully into the workforce.

Inmates who qualify will be able to take classes and receive special training, job placement, counseling and transportation help.

A percentage of [participants] earnings is set aside to pay court-ordered costs, fees and restitution, while the remainder is placed in individual accounts for participating trustee inmates, the programs web page states.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told the head of Unilever on Tuesday that Israel will "act aggressively" against Ben & Jerry's over the subsidiary's decision to stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem.

British consumer goods conglomerate Unilever acquired the Vermont-based ice cream company in 2000. Ben & Jerry's said in a statement on Monday that it had informed its longstanding licensee  responsible for manufacturing and distributing the ice cream in Israel  that it will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of 2022.

Bennett's office said in a statement that he spoke with Unilever CEO Alan Jope about what he called Ben & Jerry's "clearly anti-Israel step," adding that the move would have "serious consequences, legal and otherwise, and that it will act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens."

The announcement was one of the highest-profile company rebukes of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. Most of the international community considers these settlements illegal under international law and an impediment to peace with the Palestinians.
Lee said Raymond had a gambling addiction and he used his disability pay to purchase lottery tickets. On the day of the murders, Barbaras sister called her to tell her Warren Sr. was gambling again and asked her sister (Barbara) to confront the defendant about the situation, Lee said.

Lee added that Raymond told investigators that he was not home during the time of the murders, but investigators looked into the claims and found no alibi for Raymond Sr. Investigators did turn up video surveillance of Raymond picking his wife up from work that day at Balls Creek Elementary School.

Witness Mark Herbert spoke in court. He said he was friends with the Raymonds and visited their home for dinner several times. They were my neighbors, friends and fellow church-goers, he said.

He (Warren Raymond Jr.) was a beautiful, unique and wonderful man, Herbert said.

Thursday, September 13, 2018, is burned in my memory, he continued. I will never forget Warren Sr. coming to my door on his knees, crying, hyperventilating, blood on his hands. I will never forget seeing Barbara on the living room floor surrounded by blood, lifeless, a knife in her abdomen.

Herbert said he was grateful for the plea deal so that the case would not go to trial.

Raymond Sr. declined to speak in court before his sentencing.

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HICKORY  Safe Harbor recently received grant support from the Unifour Foundation Inc. Endowment, a component of the North Carolina Community Foundation. This grant was in the amount of $3,000 and directed to go towards the cost of providing security cameras at Safe Harbor's Greenleaf Residential housing facility.

Safe Harbor feels tremendously blessed that the Unifour Foundation Inc. Endowment Fund has provided funding to go towards providing security and safety for women as they focus on life transformation, said Vicki Murray, Safe Harbor's executive director.

Its not just one life that is being transformed but entire families, for generations to come," Murray said.

Safe Harbor is a Christ-centered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization with two main programs  the Whole Woman year-long residential recovery program for women and the Greenleaf Transitional Housing program for women and children. They also offer many services for women in their 10,000-square-foot Chloe Waldrop Taylor Renewal Center. Safe Harbor offers life skills and discipleship classes, recovery services, support groups and Bible studies. It also houses a Day Center for women and children experiencing homelessness or at risk of being homeless.
HICKORY  In June, the Catawba County United Ways annual food drive collected nearly 2 tons  more than 4,000 items  of non-perishable food. This year the CCUW collected more than 900 personal hygiene items as well.

For the folks we serve it is the difference between having food for their family or not, so a food drive like this is vital, Hickory Soup Kitchen Executive Director Austin Pearce said.

In 2020, 8,261 households in Catawba County received food benefits through the Catawba County Social Services. That number nearly doubled this year to 15,698 households.

Along with these resources, local food drives like the CCUWs annual June event provide another layer of help for individuals and families in need when they need it.

The donations will be distributed among three of the countys food pantries  The Salvation Army, Eastern Catawba Cooperative Christian Ministry and Greater Hickory Cooperative Christian Ministry. The countys two soup kitchens  The Corner Table in Newton and The Hickory Soup Kitchen also benefit from the drive.

The Corner Table Executive Director Summer Jenkins said while there was a 16 percent increase in their guests between 2019 and 2020, the numbers are staying constant for 2021.
The information below has been supplied by dairy marketers and other industry organizations. It has not been edited, verified or endorsed by Hoards Dairyman.



Midwest Dairy announces that three students will receive $500 - $1,500 scholarships to help cover costs as full-time students at an accredited college. Recipients were chosen based on past and present leadership involvement in their school and community, and past and present involvement in the dairy community. On the application, the recipients addressed what they see as the biggest challenge facing the dairy industry and how their future career plans address those challenges.

Congratulations to the following 2021 scholarship recipients:

Taylor Larson, from Creston, Nebraska, was awarded $1,500 and is headed into her second year at Northeast Community College, majoring in Business and minoring in Entrepreneurship. Taylor is the daughter of Bob and Kelsey Larson.





























Tyler Gilliland, from Wayne, Nebraska, was awarded $1,000 and will be a junior at South Dakota State University, with a major in Dairy Production and minor in Precision Agriculture. Tyler is the son of Terry and Shelley Gilliland.

Garrett Lange, from Wynot, Nebraska, was awarded $500 and plans to graduate in 2025 from South Dakota State University with a major in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering. Garrett is the son of Roger and Alison Lange.

This is a talented group of Nebraska Division Educational Scholarship recipients who have demonstrated a commitment to increasing their education and staying connected to the dairy industry, said Tracy J. Behnken, Midwest Dairy Farmer Relations and Communications Manager in Nebraska. It is important to recognize their achievements and hard work and encourage their continued successes. We are looking forward to seeing what they do with their education and the innovation they will bring to our industry.

For more information about the of Nebraska Division Educational Scholarship, please visit https://www.midwestdairy.com/young-dairy-leaders/dairy-scholarships/ and link to Nebraska
Research Box Title

July 17, 2021 - NASA Returns Hubble Space Telescope to Science Operations

NASA has returned the science instruments on the Hubble Space Telescope to operational status, and the collection of science data will now resume. This will be the first science data collected since the payload computer experienced a problem on June 13, which placed the instruments in a safe configuration and suspended science operations.

Hubble is an icon, giving us incredible insight into the cosmos over the past three decades," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "I'm proud of the Hubble team, from current members to Hubble alumni who stepped in to lend their support and expertise. Thanks to their dedication and thoughtful work, Hubble will continue to build on its 31-year legacy, broadening our horizons with its view of the universe."

The first observation is scheduled for Saturday afternoon after some instrument calibrations are completed. Most observations missed while science operations were suspended will be rescheduled for a later date.

The Hubble team has been investigating the cause of the payload computer problem since it first occurred. On July 15, the team switched the spacecraft to backup hardware.

NASA anticipates that Hubble will last for many more years and will continue making groundbreaking observations, working in tandem with other space observatories including the James Webb Space Telescope to further our knowledge of the cosmos.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has been observing the universe for over 31 years. It has taken over 1.5 million observations of the universe, and over 18,000 scientific papers have been published with its data. It has contributed to some of the most significant discoveries of our cosmos, including the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies over time, and the first atmospheric studies of planets beyond our solar system. Read more about some of Hubble's greatest scientific discoveries.

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July 16, 2021 - NASA Successfully Switches to Backup Hardware on Hubble Space Telescope

NASA has successfully switched to backup hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope, including powering on the backup payload computer, on July 15. The switch was performed to compensate for a problem with the original payload computer that occurred on June 13 when the computer halted, suspending science data collection.

The switch included bringing online the backup Power Control Unit (PCU) and the backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. The PCU distributes power to the SI C&DH components, and the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data. In addition, other pieces of hardware onboard Hubble were switched to their alternate interfaces to connect to this backup side of the SI C&DH. Once these steps were completed, the backup payload computer on this same unit was turned on and loaded with flight software and brought up to normal operations mode.

The Hubble team is now monitoring the hardware to ensure that everything is working properly. The team has also started the process for recovering the science instruments out of their safe mode configuration. This activity is expected to take more than a day as the team runs various procedures and ensures the instruments are at stable temperatures. The team will then conduct some initial calibration of the instruments before resuming normal science operations.

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July 15, 2021 - NASA Begins Switch to Backup Spacecraft Hardware

Today, NASA began a switch to backup spacecraft hardware on Hubble in response to an ongoing problem with its payload computer. This will be a multi-day event. If successful, the next step will be for science instruments to be brought back into operation.

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July 14, 2021 - NASA Identifies Possible Cause of Hubble Computer Problem

NASA has identified the possible cause of the payload computer problem that suspended Hubble Space Telescope science operations on June 13. The telescope itself and science instruments remain healthy and in a safe configuration.

The payload computer resides in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. It controls, coordinates, and monitors Hubbles science instruments. When the payload computer halted, Hubbles science instruments were automatically placed into a safe configuration. A series of multi-day tests, which included attempts to restart and reconfigure the computer and the backup computer, were not successful, but the information gathered from those activities has led the Hubble team to determine that the possible cause of the problem is in the Power Control Unit (PCU).

The PCU also resides on the SI C&DH unit. It ensures a steady voltage supply to the payload computers hardware. The PCU contains a power regulator that provides a constant five volts of electricity to the payload computer and its memory. A secondary protection circuit senses the voltage levels leaving the power regulator. If the voltage falls below or exceeds allowable levels, this secondary circuit tells the payload computer that it should cease operations. The teams analysis suggests that either the voltage level from the regulator is outside of acceptable levels (thereby tripping the secondary protection circuit), or the secondary protection circuit has degraded over time and is stuck in this inhibit state.

Because no ground commands were able to reset the PCU, the Hubble team will be switching over to the backup side of the SI C&DH unit that contains the backup PCU. All testing of procedures for the switch and associated reviews have been completed, and NASA management has given approval to proceed. The switch will begin Thursday, July 15, and, if successful, it will take several days to completely return the observatory to normal science operations.

The team performed a similar switch in 2008, which allowed Hubble to continue normal science operations after a Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) module, another part of the SI C&DH, failed. A servicing mission in 2009 then replaced the entire SI C&DH unit, including the faulty CU/SDF module, with the SI C&DH unit currently in use.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has been observing the universe for over 31 years. It has taken over 1.5 million observations of the universe, and over 18,000 scientific papers have been published with its data. It has contributed to some of the most significant discoveries of our cosmos, including the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies over time, and the first atmospheric studies of planets beyond our solar system. Read more about some of Hubbles greatest scientific discoveries.

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July 13, 2021 - Formal Review Completed to Assess All Operations Related to Hubble's Possible Switch to Backup Hardware

NASA completed a formal review to assess all operations related to Hubbles possible switch to backup hardware, which may occur later this week. Investigation into the cause of the payload computer issue is ongoing.

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July 12, 2021 - Review to Assess and Minimize Risks for Possible Switch to Backup Completed

NASA completed a review to assess all factors and minimize risks related to Hubbles possible switch to backup hardware, which may occur later this week. Investigation into the cause of the payload computer issue is ongoing.

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July 08, 2021 - Successful Completion of Multi-Day Test

NASA successfully completed a test of procedures that would be used to switch to backup hardware on Hubble in response to the payload computer problem. This switch could occur next week after further preparations and reviews.

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July 06, 2021 - Multi-Day Test of Procedures Began Today on Hubble

A multi-day test of procedures that would be used to turn on backup hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope began today. Meanwhile, NASA continues to investigate the cause of the payload computer issue that began on June 13.

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July 02, 2021 - NASA Completed Preparations to Test Procedures in Coming Week

NASA completed preparations to test procedures in the coming week that would be used to turn on Hubble backup hardware as a possible response to a payload computer issue. Investigation is ongoing into the cause of the problem.

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June 30, 2021 - NASA Preparing for Procedures to Turn On Backup Hardware on the Hubble Space Telescope

NASA is taking additional steps to investigate the Hubble Space Telescopes payload computer issue that began on June 13, suspending science observations. In parallel with the investigation, NASA is preparing and testing procedures to turn on backup hardware onboard the spacecraft. The telescope itself and science instruments remain healthy and in a safe configuration.

The source of the computer problem lies in the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit, where the payload computer resides. A few hardware pieces on the SI C&DH could be the culprit(s).

The team is currently scrutinizing the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF), which sends and formats commands and data. They are also looking at a power regulator within the Power Control Unit, which is designed to ensure a steady voltage supply to the payload computers hardware. If one of these systems is determined to be the likely cause, the team must complete a more complicated operations procedure to switch to the backup units. This procedure would be more complex and riskier than those the team executed last week, which involved switching to the backup payload computer hardware and memory modules. To switch to the backup CU/SDF or power regulator, several other hardware boxes on the spacecraft must also be switched due to the way they are connected to the SI C&DH unit.

Over the next week or so, the team will review and update all of the operations procedures, commands and other related items necessary to perform the switch to backup hardware. They will then test their execution against a high-fidelity simulator.

The team performed a similar switch in 2008, which allowed Hubble to continue normal science operations after a CU/SDF module failed. A servicing mission in 2009 then replaced the entire SI C&DH unit, including the faulty CU/SDF module, with the SI C&DH unit currently in use.

Since that servicing mission, Hubble has taken over 600,000 additional observations to exceed 1.5 million during its lifetime. Those observations continue to change our understanding of the universe.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has been observing the universe for over 31 years. It has contributed to some of the most significant discoveries of our cosmos, including the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies over time, and the first atmospheric studies of planets beyond our solar system. Read more about some of Hubbles greatest scientific discoveries.

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June 25, 2021 - NASA Completes Additional Tests to Diagnose Computer Problem on Hubble Space Telescope

NASA is continuing to diagnose a problem with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope after completing another set of tests on June 23 and 24. The payload computer halted on June 13 and the spacecraft stopped collecting science data. The telescope itself and its science instruments remain in good health and are currently in a safe configuration.

The spacecraft has two payload computers, one of which serves as a backup, that are located on the Science Instrument and Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. There are various pieces of hardware which make up both payload computers, including but not limited to:

* Central Processing Module (CPM), which processes the commands that coordinate and control the science instruments

* Standard Interface (STINT), which bridges communications between the computers CPM and other components

* communications bus, which contains lines that pass signals and data between hardware

* and one active memory module, which stores operational commands to the instruments. There are three additional modules which serve as backups.

Additional tests performed on June 23 and 24 included turning on the backup computer for the first time in space. The tests showed that numerous combinations of these hardware pieces from both the primary and backup payload computer all experienced the same error  commands to write into or read from memory were not successful.

Since it is highly unlikely that all individual hardware elements have a problem, the team is now looking at other hardware as the possible culprit, including the Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF), another module on the SI C&DH. The CU formats and sends commands and data to specific destinations, including the science instruments. The SDF formats the science data from the science instruments for transmission to the ground. The team is also looking at the power regulator to see if possibly the voltages being supplied to hardware are not what they should be. A power regulator ensures a steady constant voltage supply. If the voltage is out of limits, it could cause the problems observed.

Over the next week, the team will continue to assess hardware on the SI C&DH unit to identify if something else may be causing the problem. If the team determines the CU/SDF or the power regulator is the likely cause, they will recommend switching to the backup CU/SDF module and the backup power regulator.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has been observing the universe for over 31 years. It has contributed to some of the most significant discoveries of our cosmos, including the accelerating expansion of the universe, the evolution of galaxies over time, and the first atmospheric studies of planets beyond our solar system. Read more about some of Hubbles key scientific contributions.

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June 22, 2021 - Testing Underway to Identify Issue and Restore Payload Computer on NASAs Hubble Space Telescope

NASA continues to work to resolve a problem with the Hubble Space Telescope payload computer that halted on June 13. After performing tests on several of the computers memory modules, the results indicate that a different piece of computer hardware may have caused the problem, with the memory errors being only a symptom. The operations team is investigating whether the Standard Interface (STINT) hardware, which bridges communications between the computers Central Processing Module (CPM) and other components, or the CPM itself is responsible for the issue. The team is currently designing tests that will be run in the next few days to attempt to further isolate the problem and identify a potential solution.

This step is important for determining what hardware is still working properly for future reference. If the problem with the payload computer cant be fixed, the operations team will be prepared to switch to the STINT and CPM hardware onboard the backup payload computer. The team has conducted ground tests and operations procedure reviews to verify all the commanding required to perform that switch on the spacecraft.

If the backup payload computers CPM and STINT hardware is turned on, several days will be required to assess the computer performance and restore normal science operations. The backup computer has not been powered on since its installation in 2009; however, it was thoroughly tested on the ground prior to installation on the spacecraft.

The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) system built in the 1980s that is located on the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit. After 18 years on orbit, the original SI C&DH experienced a failure in 2008 that delayed the final servicing mission to Hubble while a replacement was prepared for flight. In May 2009, STS-125 was launched and the astronauts installed the existing unit. The replacement contains original hardware from the 1980s with four independent 64K memory modules of Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) memory. Only one memory module is used operationally, with the other three serving as backups. All four modules can be used and accessed from either of the redundant payload computers.

Launched in 1990, with more than 30 years of operations, Hubble has made observations that have captured imaginations worldwide and deepened our knowledge of the cosmos.

For more information about the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit view the following PDF:

Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit excerpt

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June 18, 2021 - Operations Continue to Restore Payload Computer on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope

NASA continues to work on resolving an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope. The operations team will be running tests and collecting more information on the system to further isolate the problem. The science instruments will remain in a safe mode state until the issue is resolved. The telescope itself and science instruments remain in good health.

The computer halted on Sunday, June 13. An attempt to restart the computer failed on Monday, June 14. Initial indications pointed to a degrading computer memory module as the source of the computer halt. When the operations team attempted to switch to a back-up memory module, however, the command to initiate the backup module failed to complete. Another attempt was conducted on both modules Thursday evening to obtain more diagnostic information while again trying to bring those memory modules online. However, those attempts were not successful.

The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) system built in the 1980s that is located on the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling unit. The computers purpose is to control and coordinate the science instruments and monitor them for health and safety purposes. It is fully redundant in that a second computer, along with its associated hardware, exists on orbit that can be switched over to in the event of a problem. Both computers can access and use any of four independent memory modules, which each contain 64K of Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) memory. The payload computer uses only one memory module operationally at a time, with the other three serving as backups.

Launched in 1990, Hubble has contributed greatly to our understanding of the universe over the past 30 years.

For more information about Hubble, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble

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June 16, 2021 - NASA is working to resolve an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope

NASA is working to resolve an issue with the payload computer on the Hubble Space Telescope. The computer halted on Sunday, June 13, shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. After analyzing the data, the Hubble operations team is investigating whether a degrading memory module led to the computer halt. The team is preparing to switch to one of several backup modules on Wednesday, June 16. The computer will then be allowed to run for approximately one day to verify that the problem has been solved. The team would then restart all science instruments and return the telescope to normal science operations.

The purpose of the payload computer is to control and coordinate the science instruments onboard the spacecraft. After the halt occurred on Sunday, the main computer stopped receiving a keep-alive signal, which is a standard handshake between the payload and main spacecraft computers to indicate all is well. The main computer then automatically placed all science instruments in a safe mode configuration. Control center personnel at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland restarted the payload computer on Monday, June 14, but it soon experienced the same problem.

The payload computer is a NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) system built in the 1980s. It is part of the Science Instrument Command and Data Handling module, which was replaced during the last astronaut servicing mission in 2009. The module has various levels of redundancy which can be switched on to serve as the primary system when necessary.

For more information about Hubble, visit: www.nasa.gov/hubble
Australia has pointed the finger at China for the Microsoft Exchange exploits. Image: Shutterstock

Australia has joined strategic allies including the UK, US, and European Union in blaming China for its involvement in the Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities found earlier this year.

In a joint statement from the Ministers for Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs, and Defence, the government issued its pointed statement against Chinas Ministry of State Security for developing exploits that could have targeted thousands of Australian organisations.

These actions have undermined international stability and security by opening the door to a range of other actors, including cybercriminals, who continue to exploit this vulnerability for illicit gain, the statement read.

The Australian Government is also seriously concerned about reports from our international partners that Chinas Ministry of State Security is engaging contract hackers who have carried out cyber-enabled intellectual property theft for personal gain and to provide commercial advantage to the Chinese Government.

Australia calls on all countries  including China  to act responsibly in cyberspace.

The government in pointing the finger at China months after Microsoft said, in its March announcement, that a group of Chinese hackers named Hafnium was behind the exploit.

The Microsoft Exchange Vulnerabilities were so potentially severe that the US Federal Bureau of Investigation began secretly hacking into vulnerable servers and removing web shells Hafnium planted during its original campaign.

The government is following the lead of US intelligence agencies which published an advisory on Monday local time about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) commonly used in Chinese state-sponsored cyber attacks.

Included in the advisory is a series of potential behaviours attributed to Chinese state-sponsored cyber attacks published so security teams can mitigate against any intrusions.

These actors aggressively target political, economic, military, educational, and critical infrastructure personnel and organisations to access valuable, sensitive data, the US intelligence agencies said.

These cyber operations support Chinas long-term economic and military objectives.

One significant tactic detailed in the advisory includes the exploitation of public vulnerabilities within days of their public disclosure, often in major applications, such as Pulse Secure, Apache, F5 Big-IP, and Microsoft products.

Chinese state media site the Global Times offered a rebuke of the accusations saying they are a huge lie conjured up by Washington to frame China.

The US is stirring up new geopolitical disputes by turning cyber frictions into major conflicts among countries, the Global Times said in an editorial.

It tries to constantly frame up new accusations on China together with its allies, making China a symbol of the world's darkness.

Global bad actors

China wasnt the only nation mentioned in the joint statement from Australias foreign affairs, intelligence, and defence ministers who said the country had, since 2017, attributed malicious cyber activity to North Korea, Russia, China and Iran.

Notably, 2017 was the year the WannaCry ransomware began terrorising unsuspecting Windows systems around the world.

But that ransomware was developed thanks to the irresponsibility of the US National Security Agency (NSA) which had developed and actively used an exploit for Windows called EternalBlue without disclosing it to Microsoft.

Only when the exploit was stolen did the NSA tell Microsoft  around five years after it had begun using the malicious software for its own spying operations.

While intelligence agencies and cyber security firms have routinely blamed the likes of Russia, North Korea, China, and Iran for aggressive cyber campaigns targeting COVID-19 vaccine developers, intellectual property, the World Health Organisation, and even the Tokyo Olympics, the US and its allies have similarly run offensive operations against targets reflecting their own geopolitical interests.

The US and Israel were behind the Stuxnet worm which they allegedly used to sabotage Iranian nuclear facilities.

And Australian hackers joined the US to disrupt the media network used by the Islamic State in 2016  a story it was only willing to tell two years ago.

More recently, the FBI said it was relentless and used all technical means to gain control of the bitcoin wallets to store ransom money from the Colonial Pipeline attack which likely belonged to hackers in Eastern Europe.
FILE PHOTO: Brazil's President Bolsonaro leaves Vila Nova Star Hospital, where he was treated due to obstructed intestine, in Sao Paulo

By Lisandra Paraguassu

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said on Tuesday that he would veto a new 5.7 billion reais ($1.09 billion) electoral fund, potentially setting himself up for a fight with lawmakers whose support is crucial to fending off impeachment proceedings.

Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain who was elected on a wave of anti-corruption sentiment, has been under pressure from his supporters to kill the generous, self-appointed package.

The fund mechanism was set up in 2017, as Brazil was roiling from years of high profile graft scandals.

A ban on corporate donations coupled with the drying up of under-the-table contributions in the wake of the scandals left lawmakers struggling to raise campaign cash, so they created the taxpayer-paid fund to offset the losses.

Bolsonaro was also under pressure to veto a 2 billion reais fund for local elections in 2020, but eventually did not, alleging he had no choice. However, the latest 5.7 billion reais package seems to be a step too far for him.

"I have the freedom to veto, and we are going to veto it," he said in a radio interview.

Bolsonaro's stance is likely to place him in opposition to the so-called centrao, an ideologically flexible bloc of rent-seeking lawmakers whose congressional support has been crucial to staving off the dozens of impeachment proceedings the president faces.

The fund was meant to be part of improvements to Brazils discredited political system to reduce a proliferation of parties that has made it hard to govern Latin Americas largest nation without unwieldy coalitions based on self-interest.

But critics say it only serves to provide funds for lawmakers seeking re-election in order to use the congressional immunity, and shield themselves from prosecution for corruption.

($1 = 5.2105 reais)

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu, writing by Gabriel Stargardter; Editing by Marguerita Choy)
Indian opposition disrupts parliament, seeks probe into Pegasus FILE PHOTO: FILE PHOTO: India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at the parliament house to attend the first day of the budget session, in New Delhi

By Manoj Kumar

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Indian opposition parties disrupted parliament on Tuesday, demanding an investigation into reports that the government used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to snoop on scores of journalists, activists and politicians, including the main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

Shouting out slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, the opposition members said they wanted an independent probe into the complaints of spying and the resignation of Interior Minister Amit Shah.

An investigation published on Sunday by 17 media organizations, led by the Paris-based non-profit journalism group Forbidden Stories, said spyware made and licensed by the Israeli company NSO had been used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists.

Indian news portal The Wire reported that smartphones of politicians including Gandhi, a senior leader of the opposition Congress party, and two other lawmakers were among 300 verified Indian numbers listed as potential targets for surveillance during 2017-19 ahead of national elections.

NSO has said its product was intended only for use by vetted government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism and crime.

Opposition leaders said the Modi administration was spying on journalists, activists and politicians who were opposed to its policies.

"It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country," Congress said in a statement.

It said the government had illegally accessed the conversation of many people by hacking cell phones with the Pegasus spyware.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister for Electronics and Information Technology, told lawmakers on Monday there was no substance to the reports of spying.

India had a well-established procedure in which lawful interception of electronic communication was carried out by federal and state agencies for the purpose of national security, particularly in the case of a public emergency or in the interest of public safety, he said.

Story continues

Indian rules ensured that "unauthorised surveillance does not occur," he said.

News reports said the phone of Vaishnaw himself was also hacked, but it was not clear why.

The government has declined to reply to questions whether India or any of its state agencies had purchased Pegasus spyware for surveillance.

(Additional reporting by Nigam Prusty; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Angus MacSwan)
What Lies Beneath - Exhibit on View : Now - July 30. Come see the exhibit that has been up at the Clearwater Arts Center & Studios since last March, 2020. Explore the impacts of brain injuries on the visual system through a photographic lens. Admission is free. Hours: Wednesday-Friday, noon-5 p.m., or by appointment. Clearwater Arts Center & Studios, 223 Crowell Drive NW, Concord. For more information: What Lies Beneath - Exhibit On View  ClearWater Arts Center & Studios (clearwaterartists.com).

Old Courthouse Theatre - Looking for Volunteers!: Would you like to help usher or work concessions? Do you like to build sets? Are you interested in working backstage? Do you have an interest in running lights or sound? Or would you be willing to help on work calls? We have a spot for you! If you are interested in helping out in any way, please reply to this email to be added to our volunteer list! We look forward to hearing from you and building our OCT family! 49 Spring Street NW, Concord, NC 28025. For more information: check out the Old Courthouse Theatre online octconcord.com
When they were younger, maybe 3 or 5, it was really hard to explain to them that Mommy has to go to the hospital because I wasnt feeling very well. At that age, they may or may not have understood it, Pegram explained. I just remember with my boys, it was harder to explain because in some ways I was still young myself, and I was still learning the disease.

Now that she is older and has more experience with the disease, Pegram feels more confident explaining it to her daughter. They have both sat down to read Klaras Talent together, and while her daughter may still be a little young to understand everything, the book is helping explain why Pegram cant do some things other parents do. The book also has a bit of problem solving.

That was one of the goals  to show that you could still overcome obstacles, even if they are thrown in your way, Pegram said. Just giving kids the idea that if we cant do it one way, then lets try a different way. Everything is not impossible just because you have an illness.

For parents with the disease, Pegram said, dealing with gMG and trying to raise kids can feel isolating, but there is help.
La Cina risponde agli addebiti relativi all'attacco informatico ai server di Microsoft Exchange, bolla come "infondate" e irresponsabili" le accuse degli Stati Uniti, definiti "campioni al mondo di attacchi informatici malvagi", e critica la condivisione delle denunce da parte degli alleati. Il gigante asiatico "respinge fermamente le accuse infondate del governo australiano", che "ripete a pappagallo la retorica degli Stati Uniti", si legge in una dichiarazione del portavoce dell'ambasciata cinese in Australia diffusa sul sito web della rappresentanza diplomatica.

Sulla stessa linea il portavoce dell'ambasciata in Nuova Zelanda parla di "accuse assolutamente infondate e irresponsabili" per le quali il gigante asiatico esprime "forte insoddisfazione" e afferma di aver "presentato una protesta solenne al governo neozelandese" perche "tenuto conto della natura virtuale del cyberspazio bisogna avere prove chiare quando si indaga e si identificano incidenti" e "accusare senza prove e diffamazione".

Dall'ambasciata cinese a Canberra si accusano gli Stati Uniti di essere "campioni al mondo di attacchi informatici malvagi" e si parla di "record negativo anche per l'Australia". Il gigante asiatico si dice "vittima di cyber attacchi" e insiste sul "dialogo e la cooperazione a tutela della cyber security".

La dichiarazione del portavoce dell'ambasciata a Wellington sollecita la Nuova Zelanda ad "abbandonare la mentalita da Guerra Fredda, ad adottare un comportamento professionale e responsabile quando si tratta di incidenti informatici e a lavorare con gli altri per affrontare insieme la sfida tramite il dialogo e la cooperazione invece di manipolare questioni politiche con il pretesto della cyber security e diffamare gli altri".
As digital transformation reshapes the labour market and Australian businesses face a deepening skills shortage, new research reveals the impact demand for digital skills is having on job prospects and earning potential for employees across finance and accounting, technology, business support and marketing.

The research commissioned by talent solutions provider Robert Half and job market analytics company Burning Glass Technologies coincides with the launch of Robert Halfs Demand for Skilled Talent report, to provide an in-depth analysis of current employment market trends, in-demand roles and the rise of the Anywhere Workforce.

The biggest staffing concern facing employers is having a lack of skilled candidates available for open roles, and the Robert Half research found that more than eight in 10 (82%) employers believe it will be more challenging to find qualified employees compared to pre-pandemic conditions.

Robert Half says the quickening rate of digital transformation across many departments combined with the expansion of remote and hybrid work practices means that the development, use, and maintenance of hardware, software and cloud-based platforms (as examples) are increasingly no longer solely the preserve of dedicated IT departments.

And based on an analysis of all online job postings in Australia during the period of March 2020  March 2021, compared to the same period five years ago, the digital skills with the greatest increase in demand are: DevOps (+344%), Atlassian JIRA (+101%), Software as a Service (+88%), Python (+61%) and Salesforce (+40%).

The demand for digital skill capabilities vary by sector and company, with employers increasingly requiring jobseekers to demonstrate expanded and more diverse skills from both traditionally technical and people-focused roles. Examples include:

For technology specialists: DevOps (+283%), Software as a Service (SaaS) skills (+96%) and JIRA (+74%) have seen a substantial uptick in demand.

For finance and accounting roles: Python (+33%) and Scrum (+3%) have had the biggest growth in demand.

For business support roles: Software as a Service skills (+45%) and Salesforce capabilities (+18%) have seen the greatest growth in demand amongst employers.

For marketing and communication roles: Email marketing (Mailchimp) (+148%), Software as a Service (SaaS) skills (+100%), and social media management (+27%) have experienced the most growth in demand in the past five years.

And complementing the demand for technical skills, Robert Half research reveals the most important aptitudes that employers are looking for in employees in 2021 are critical-thinking skills (29%), data skills (28%), adaptability (26%) and strategic thinking (26%).

The research also reveals that the shift in skills demand in response to the adoption of new technologies has outpaced the availability or development of these skills in the domestic talent pool - and this imbalance is evidenced in the remuneration attributed to job descriptions that include in-demand skills compared to those without.

Robert Half research breaks down the significant salary variances emerging in job postings over the past three years:

For technology specialists: Systems analysts with SAP skills are commanding up to 12% more in base salary than systems analysts without SAP skills; IT project managers with Scrum skills can command 13% more than those without.



For finance and accounting roles: Payroll specialists with SAP experience are commanding up to 4% more in base salary than payroll specialists without; finance managers with ERP knowledge can command 8% more than those without.



For business support roles: Project managers with Prince skills are commanding up to 29% more in base salary than project managers without; marketing specialists with SQL skills can command 19% more than those without.

David Jones, Senior Managing Director of Robert Half Asia Pacific, said: "As we move into what we hope will be the latter stage of the pandemic cycle, there is a return to a more confident and secure labour market for employees and employers alike. Businesses have been forced to expedite digitisation initiatives and have found a wealth of new growth opportunities through that evolution.

The skills employers need are not only evolving rapidly but also directly translating into new-look job descriptions and evolving skillsets. Just a few years ago, marketing managers werent assessed on their ability to configure software, nor were software developers judged by their skills in building rapport with stakeholders.

However, as the Demand for Skilled Talent report reveals, advancing technology is creating both new opportunities for workers and new challenges for employers trying to fill roles.

As businesses continue towards recovery and growth without the flow of foreign talent to complement their domestic skilled workforce, there must be a renewed focus on reskilling and upskilling existing employees. As well as assessing technical skills, businesses should be seeking candidates who demonstrate a digital mindset and agile approach to learning as these characteristics will be essential to filling emerging skills gaps within a business."

The pace of skill change globally continues to accelerate. Tech, digital and data handling skills continue to be in ever-increasing demand across all sectors, said Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies.

The development and use of hardware, software, e-commerce apps and cloud-based collaboration platforms, as examples, are no longer solely the preserve of dedicated IT departments as virtually all areas of business are becoming highly dependent on the use of technology in their day-to-day operations.

From a business perspective, all managers need to foster a culture of constant learning for workers to remain agile, adaptable and sufficiently skilled in order to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation.
Area college students receive academic honors

Joyce Tshitenge of Charleston participated in 2021 spring commencement exercises at Angelo State University on May 15, 2021. Tshitenge earned a Master of Science in Global Security Studies.

Hannah Bowers of Paris, patient services representative at Horizon Health, is the recipient of the 2021 Dr. Leland Phipps Memorial Scholarship. She is pursuing a bachelors degree in biomedical science at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Stormy Kara, of Charleston, has achieved spring 2021 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean's List honors at Northern Illinois University, studying Coms-Media Studies - B.S. and Sociology - B.S.

Olivia Ott of Neoga was among the students conferred their degrees this spring at the University of Iowa. Ott was a student in the Carver College of Medicine whose program of study was Clinical Nutrition. The degree awarded was a Master of Clinical Nutrition.

Katherine Shamdin of Mattoon was among the more than 7,000 undergraduate students at the University of Iowa named to the dean's list for the 2021 spring semester. Shamdin is a fourth year undergraduate student in the UI's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and is majoring in Dance.

Keegan Rhodes of Mattoon has achieved spring 2021 Dean's List with High Honors recognition, Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, at the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

Anna Fender of Sullivan has been named to the 2021 spring semester Dean's List at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Rachel Tomasino of Marshall was recently initiated into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation's oldest and most selective all-discipline collegiate honor society, at Southeast Missouri State University.

Dakota Pottle, D.M.D, of Charleston, has completed the Doctor of Dental Medicine degree at the College of Dental Medicine-Arizona of Midwestern University. Dr. Pottle is the son of David and Deborah Pottle. He graduated from Charleston High School in 2008, and earned a B.S. in Human Biology from Brigham Young University - Idaho in 2017. He plans to practice dental medicine in Orlando, Florida.

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MATTOON  A total of $30,500 has been awarded to graduates of Mattoon High School from the Lebovitz Lively Arts Scholarship Fund.

Sadie Armstrong is a 2020 graduate of Mattoon High School. She plans to attend Brigham Young University to study piano performance.

Maia Huddleston is a 2019 graduate of Mattoon High School. She is attending Illinois State University and studies mass media.

Jolie Osborn is a 2019 graduate of Mattoon High School. She is attending Eastern Illinois University. She is pursuing a degree in graphic design.

Katherine Shamdin is a 2019 graduate of Mattoon High School and attends University of Iowa where she studies dance and enterprise leadership.

Zachary Smith is a 2019 graduate of Mattoon High School. He is attending Millikin University and pursuing a degree in music education.

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The Lebovitz Lively Arts Scholarship was created to provide college scholarships to one or more Mattoon graduates who major or will major in visual or performing arts.

The scholarship was named in honor of Carl Lebovitz and James K. Lively, formerly of Mattoon. Lively worked as a freelance translator of many Slavic languages and was a patron of the arts during all of his adult life. He died in 1998. Lebovitz, also a language translator, was a founding member of the Mattoon Arts Council and a patron of the arts throughout his life. He participated in local theatrical productions over the years, and was the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier's arts reviewer-at-large for 30 years. Lebovitz died in 2009.

The Lebovitz Lively Arts Scholarship has reached its seventh year of awarding scholarships to applicants who are graduates of Mattoon High School and major in the visual or performing arts.

Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation manages more than 180 affiliated funds for the immediate and long-term benefit of communities in southeastern Illinois. For more information, contact Amanda Lessley, President/CEO of Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation, at 217-342-4988 or amanda@enrichingourcommunity.org.

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Bill opponents said they fear the doctor-patient conversation requirements in the bill could jeopardize womens trust in medical care and could lead some women with other reasons for considering an abortion to carry pregnancies to term once they learn of a Down syndrome diagnosis.

This bill gives the government control over what happens and what is said in the exam room between a woman and her doctor at a time she faces one of the most difficult decisions of her life, Cooper wrote in his veto statement.

This bill is unconstitutional and it damages the doctor-patient relationship with an unprecedented government intrusion.

Republican legislative leaders responded swiftly to decry Coopers veto.

Gender, race, and disability are protected classes in most other contexts, House speaker Tim Moore, R-Cleveland, said in a statement. Why should we allow the unborn to be discriminated against for these same traits?

The message sent by this veto is that some human life is more valuable than others based on immutable characteristics.

Other vetoes
Why do you need our names? she asked.

Because Im investigating a break-in, Jones said loudly. Another girl pushes Davis-Sides away from Jones, who reached for something on his utility belt and then followed the two girls into a front yard. At one point in the video, Davis-Sides moves away, turns away and then runs from Jones, who goes to grab her and then appears to tackle her.

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Police took all the teenagers into custody, but police have never said whether any criminal charges were filed against them. They were later released into their parents custody. Another part of the video shows a second officer forcibly putting Davis-Sides feet into a patrol car.

Sides has said his daughter is an honor-roll student at Reagan High School. He has said that his daughter had back and shoulder pain for which she was getting medical treatment. In January, he said he wasnt allowing his daughter to go anywhere outside the house because he was afraid for her safety.

The video was shared on social media, and the Winston-Salem Journal published a story about the incident on Nov. 12. On Nov. 15, Thompson held a rare Sunday news conference during which she identified the officer and called for patience as the police began an internal investigation.
With COVID-19 cases back on the rise, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended on Monday that students and staff be fully masked, regardless of vaccination status, for the opening of the 2021-22 school year.

Most public schools in North Carolina, including those in Forsyth County, will return to school on Aug. 23, about the same time that the highly contagious delta variant is expected to peak, according to Dr. Christopher Ohl, an infectious disease expert at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Ohl, along with Dr. David Priest, Novant Healths infectious disease expert, have both called for universal masking for students and staff.

In updated guidance issued Monday, the pediatrics academy said students should return to in-person learning and that anyone over 2 be masked, even if they have had the vaccine. That differs slightly from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said in its guidelines issued earlier this month that only unvaccinated students and staff need to be masked.
After Mexico, the largest share of potential targets were in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients. Also on the list were numbers in France, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda.

According to the The Committee to Protect Journalists, few effective barriers exist to prevent autocratic governments from using sophisticated surveillance technology to attempt cowing or silencing a free press.

After an Amnesty forensic analysis published Sunday showed it was hosting NSO infrastructure, Amazon Web Services said it had shut down accounts of the Israeli that were confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity. Amazon said they had violated its terms of use.

WHAT DOES NSO SAY?

NSO denies ever maintaining a list of potential, past or existing targets. It claims to sell only to vetted government agencies for use against terrorists and major criminals, and denies any association with Khashoggis murder. The company does not disclose its clients and claims it has no visibility" into the data. Security researchers contest that claim, saying the company directly manages the high-tech spying.
The Switzers team leader was a white woman who worked with the department supervisor to assign jobs, monitor productivity, and give employees protective equipment such as aprons, eye goggles and gloves, the complaint states.

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But according to the lawsuit, she had an innate predisposition to hate Black people and Muslims, reportedly telling a supervisor on one occasion that these (n-words) are just trashy, no good people.

One day, the Switzers attorney said, she overheard them talking to a coworker about not eating pork.

(The team leader) interjected herself in the conversation, her facial expression changed disapprovingly and she asked, Yall Muslim? and repeatedly questioned the plaintiffs after they affirmed that they were  as if it were the worse thing in the world  as to why they would want to be or become a Muslim, the complaint states.

Her attitude toward the Switzers reportedly worsened after that encounter. According to the complaint, the team leader repeatedly referred to them using a racial slur, saying things such as Im sick of you, (n-word), Hurry up, (n-word) and What are you looking at, (n-word).
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said in a statement Tuesday that the EU still sees reunification as the goal and supports the involvement of the Security Council. Cyprus is an EU member, and Turkey is not.

The EU remains fully committed to the comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem on the basis of a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation with political equality, in accordance with the relevant UNSC Resolutions and in line with the principles on which the EU is founded and expects the same of Turkey, Borrell said. .

The United States condemned the announcement by Tatar and Erdogan, saying that the U.S. views Turkish Cypriot actions in Varosha, with the support of Turkey, as provocative, unacceptable and incompatible with their past commitments to engage constructively in settlement talks.

In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Turkish Cypriots and Turkey to reverse the decision. The United States is working with like-minded partners to refer this concerning situation to the U.N. Security Council and will urge a strong response, he said.

Some Greek Cypriot lawyers have urged owners to apply to the European Court of Human Rights-endorsed IPC to legally affirm rights to their property in the north.
In fact, Berger has opposed Medicaid expansion since it was first introduced in 2012  meaning that we could have benefitted from it for almost a decade now without his prediction coming true.

Children could have grown up under its provisions.

But Berger is unmoved.

So are we. We keep pushing for the increased medical coverage that Medicaid expansion would provide because we care about the state and the people who live here; because health ailments left untreated lend themselves to increased poverty and fewer financial opportunities; and because political dogma  opposing anything with the name Obama attached to it  is not a good enough reason to let people suffer. North Carolinians deserve better than theyre getting.

We also push it because it would be good for North Carolinas business development. As noted last week by the Winston-Salem Journals Richard Craver, our deficiency in social areas  which include medical coverage for the poor as well as protections against discrimination  discourage some businesses from locating here.

We keep advocating for it because its the right thing to do.
I predict American people will continue voting for those who spend money irresponsibly.

I predict we will run out money for Social Security and other programs due to our leaders spending.

I predict America will experience starvation like other nations.

I predict our nation will continue to be immoral and vote for communists and socialists.

I predict Gods judgment is coming to America.

I pray our nation will repent and turn back to God and his principles to avoid these predictions.

Lawrence Overton

Clemmons

Caring for life

As in the July 17 letter A tragic correlation, anti-choice activists love to hijack conversations about poor children, animal abuse or anything else they can to talk about fetuses. Theyre obsessed with them. We cant unite to feed hungry children or save tortured animals because we have to talk about their hobbyhorse instead. They wont work with us until we agree with them that tiny zygotes that cant think or feel are the worst victims of all and more important than actual born living creatures.
A former nurse at the Lancaster County Jail now faces charges for allegedly having inappropriate conversations with three inmates, posting one's bond and stealing catalytic converters from a South Beltway work site to bond a second out.

Prosecutors charged 33-year-old Kimberly A. Whitney of Syracuse with unlawful acts by a corrections employee, a burglary near Adams and three theft charges, including the catalytic converters and a motorcycle near 23rd and Vine streets.

In an affidavit for her arrest, Deputy Sheriff Jeremy Schwarz said he developed Whitney as a suspect during follow-up on the reported theft of catalytic converters from Nebraska Department of Transportation vehicles near Roca, along the South Beltway project, early June 4.

He said she had been employed with Wellpath as a licensed practical nurse at the Lancaster County Adult Detention Facility on West O Street until her security clearance was revoked June 3.

After subpoenaing internal affairs documents from the jail, Schwarz said he learned that between April 15 and June 3, Whitney had personal, concealed conversations with at least three inmates using a cellphone to communicate 98 times.
A federal jury has found a Crete man not guilty of conspiring to deliver nearly a quarter pound of methamphetamine.

Uber Trujillo-Colindares' uncle, Abimael Trujillo-Linares, previously pleaded guilty for his part in the crime and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, on April 12 and April 25, 2019, a cooperating defendant made arrangements to buy 2 ounces of methamphetamine from Trujillo-Linares. Law enforcement monitored both.

When a third buy was arranged on May 9, 2019, Trujillo-Linares said he was out of state so his cousin would deliver it. Instead, he sent his nephew, Trujillo-Colindares.

At trial last week, the government alleged he knowingly delivered the drugs.

On the other side, attorney Carlos Monzon argued that his client was just doing a favor for his uncle when he picked up the bag and took it to York. He said he had no idea drugs were inside.

In the end, the jury found Trujillo-Colindares, 39, not guilty.

On Tuesday, Monzon said, "The jury saw beyond the governments attempt to convict an innocent man."

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Lincoln police arrested a 30-year-old man late Monday morning for allegedly threatening a man with a knife outside the Nebraska State Office Building.

Officer Luke Bonkiewicz said police were called to 301 Centennial Mall South at about 10:40 a.m. about a man with a knife. When they got there, a 48-year-old man told police a man had offered to give him a knife if he helped pick a bike lock. When he loudly said no, the other man pulled out the knife and started swinging it at him.

Bonkiewicz said the 48-year-old yelled, causing the man with the knife to run, the victim following and warning people he had a knife.

He said they found the knife near Centennial Mall and found the man, Sergio Barajas, soon after at 18th and M streets and arrested him on suspicion of terroristic threats and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony.

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A 37-year-old Lincoln man who sold heroin -- some mixed with fentanyl -- to an undercover officer more than a dozen times in less than two months went to prison for it Tuesday.

Adam Sobotka had asked for probation on the two delivery charges to which he'd previously pleaded no contest as part of a plea deal, saying he sold to the officer to feed his own addiction.

But Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Charles Byrd said Sobotka sold to more than just the officer because it was a delivery to someone else that led to his arrest a year ago.

He said Sobotka had an extensive history of drug possession but continued to engage in criminal behavior despite the consequences and charges he's received and the opportunities he's been afforded, including probation and drug court.

District Court Judge Susan Strong said she didn't consider Sobotka a good candidate for probation. She said he's had plenty of chances to change his life and behavior.

"You have not managed to make any of that stick," she said.

Sobotka originally was facing 20 felony charges for selling a total of 12.7 grams of heroin in 14 separate deals between Dec. 11, 2019, and Jan. 29, 2020, according to police.
CDC guidelines released earlier this month suggested requiring masks for unvaccinated students, although the agency emphasized local control.

The COVID-19 vaccine has only been approved for those 12 and older, meaning elementary students would not be fully vaccinated by the time school begins.

But instead of only making masks optional for some and required for others by checking vaccination status  which could be a source of controversy  Rauner said it would make more sense to require a blanket mandate for all students.

"We proved last year that if we did the right thing  we can keep kids pretty safe at school," he said Monday.

Yes, children are at low risk of serious complications from the virus, Rauner said, but they're not at no risk. That means there will still be some who will contract the virus and become seriously ill, hospitalized and even die, he said, if masks are not required.

Superintendent Steve Joel has insisted that the district's plan is not final, but rather the latest edition in what could very well be a fluid playbook. If the degree of spread grows in the community, a school or a classroom, LPS officials would act accordingly and adjust protocols, he said.
Most themes on talk radio or television networks like Fox, Newsmax or One America News are more subtle or philosophical.

The vaccine is experimental, still not fully approved, is one line of attack. Wait and see. Theres no reason for young people to get it. Natural immunity is better. Its none of your business what I do. Government  the Biden administration especially  is intruding upon your life, trying to take control of your body.

The advice they are giving you is not designed to help, Carlson said Monday on his show, the most popular on cable news. It is designed to make you comply.

Two hours later, Ingraham said that it was President Joe Biden and his allies, not conservative media figures, who are superspreaders of COVID-19 misinformation.

The cumulative effect of the stories is to raise doubt in the minds of people who may already be looking for a way to avoid the jab of a needle and syringe full of chemicals going into their bodies, said Kristin Urquiza, who started the organization Marked By COVID after her father died of the virus.

They do not come out and say, Do not get the vaccine, Urquiza said. Their strategy is to create a culture of confusion.
Worse, in his communications with Al Malik, the defendant framed his efforts to obtain an official position within the Administration as one that would enable him to further advance the interests of the UAE, rather than the interests of the United States, prosecutors wrote in a letter seeking his detention. They noted that he has citizenship in the U.S. and Lebanon, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.

When Barrack tried to get Trump to appoint him as either the U.S. ambassador to the UAE or as special envoy to the Middle East, he wrote al Malik 'that any such appointment would give ABU DHABI more power!" prosecutors wrote.

Barrack served as an informal adviser to Trumps campaign in 2016 before becoming the inaugural committee chair. Beginning in January 2017, he informally advised senior U.S. government officials on Middle East foreign policy, prosecutors said.

Bill Coffield, an attorney for al Malik  who was not in custody Tuesday  said his client had cooperated extensively with Mueller and that there was nothing new here. He said al Malik had simply tried to foster a good relationship between the country where he was born and the U.S., where he lived and worked for years, "both of which he loves.
Where to call

Citizens living in Caledonia, Wind Point or North Bay interested in Caledonia's MIH-CP services, those who have questions or would like to make a donation can call the fire department at 262-639-9090, Tiegs at 262-939-3116 or email dtiegs@caledonia-wi.gov.

Citizens living in Elmwood Park, Mount Pleasant or Sturtevant interested in South Shore's MIH-CP services can call Wienke at 262-995-1214.
RACINE  A vehicle pursuit ended in a crash after multiple gunshots were fired at a Racine Police officer at about 10:45 p.m. Monday in the area of Ninth Street and Memorial Drive.

According to a news release from the Racine Police Department, an RPD officer observed a white SUV driving in an extremely reckless manner. The officer pulled behind the vehicle with the intent to conduct a traffic stop, then multiple gunshots were reportedly fired from the immediate area of the SUV. The SUV then fled at a high rate of speed from the officer.

During the pursuit, it was discovered the SUV was stolen from Libertyville, a suburb in Lake County, Ill., across the state line from Kenosha County. The stolen SUV was eventually involved in a crash, striking another vehicle on Sheridan Road south of Durand Avenue, the release said.

There were five occupants of the stolen vehicle, all juveniles between ages 14 and 17 who were taken into custody.

The occupant of the vehicle struck by the SUV was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. All five juveniles were taken to the hospital with various injuries, all non-life-threatening.

A loaded handgun was located inside the SUV, the release said. The investigation of the shots fired and pursuit is still active.
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health has been selected as the first site of the National LGBTQ+ Fellowship Program to train early-career doctors to understand and respond to the needs of LGBTQ+ patients.

The fellowship, supported by the American Medical Association Foundation, will bring a doctor who recently completed a primary care residency to campus to work in clinics and do research and community outreach. After a $750,000 AMA grant pays for a doctor to come for a yearlong fellowship each of the next three years, the UW medical school plans to continue and expand the program with other funds, potentially having three fellows each year, said Dr. Elizabeth Petty, senior associate dean for academic affairs.

Our goal is to make it scalable and sustainable, Petty said. Wed like to create a pathway to faculty positions so they can be true champions of health equity for the LGBTQ population.
1. Yes. They are not doing their duty as lawmakers; they should face consequences.

2. Yes. The Democrats may have a point, but they should be required to return to work.

3. No. With no filibuster option available, Democrats would be unable to stop a bad bill.

4. No. Most Texas voters oppose the GOPs voting measures, so they had to be stalled.

5. Unsure. Abbott wants to take a stand, but jailing lawmakers may be too harsh.

Vote

View Results
KEARNEY  The band Diamond Rio hit the ground running.

When the group debuted its single, Meet in the Middle in 1991, the song started at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. That kind of success stayed with the band for almost three decades  and through various personnel changes.

Diamond Rio has charted 32 more singles with four of them reaching the No. 1 spot including How Your Love Makes Me Feel, One More Day, Beautiful Mess and I Believe.

The band released its latest album, I Made It, in 2015.

Country music fans can hear Diamond Rio in concert when the Grammy award-winning band performs at 7:30 p.m. Thursday as part of the Buffalo County Fair. Tickets are $15 plus fees.

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The band began in 1982 as an attraction for the Opryland USA theme park in Nashville. Matt Davenport, Danny Gregg, and Ty Herndon organized the group, then known as the Grizzly River Boys. They changed the name to the Tennessee River Boys before finally settling on Diamond Rio.
Facebook's algorithms sometimes flag the word hoe in a New York gardening group's posts for violating community standards, apparently confusing that word for another without an e on the end.
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers are continuing and expanding a project that started in 2020 to help advance cover crop use in Wisconsin. They are looking for farmers to share information about the use of cover crops on their farms. Participants fill out a survey and participate in a data collection protocol to provide the needed information.
We applaud Polands efforts to date to maintain the memory of the terrible consequences of Nazism and communism on the peoples of Europe so that they never happen again. Poland has been a dutiful caretaker of Holocaust sites and its democracy stands as a strong beacon of its ever-present commitment to the rule of law and human rights. It is for these reasons that we believe passage of these amendments to the Administrative Procedure Code would be a step backwards in Warsaws efforts to right the injustices of Polands oppressors.

These amendments would tell the survivors of Polands Jewish community, which was the largest in Europe before World War II, that there is a time limit on their ability to seek redress for the crimes of the Nazis and the communists. While we share your belief that Poland should not be held responsible for crimes committed by the Nazis and the communists, we also believe that this is an opportunity to demonstrate Polands commitment to achieving justice for the victims of these heinous crimes. Countless Polesboth Jewish and non-Jewishsuffered during this dark and tragic period of history, and the families of these victims should be able to seek redress for these crimes.
The new development will fit in between Jackson and Mississippi streets on the east side of Fourth Street, where the city has purchased a row of properties it plans to demolish. Cinnaire hopes to purchase the remaining properties on the lot for its development, but will redesign if not successful.

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Cinnaire is partnering with Lutheran Social Services of Wisconsin and Upper Michigan in La Crosse for its wrap-around services for those transitioning from homelessness, and 17 apartments will be dedicated to those individuals. The services will also aim to aid veterans in the community.

In addition, 35 apartments will be for low to moderate income residents, and 13 for market rate. Rents will range from $358-1,300 in this project.

The design is still in early stages, but it initially calls for residential spaces facing Fourth Street with a 35-stall covered parking lot on the east side of the building. It will also use large windows and various textures to better blend in to the less dense residential neighborhood, and it includes an exercise and community room, and green space.

The company plans to meet with residents in the Powell-Poage-Hamilton and Washburn Neighborhoods to iron out the design details as it moves forward.
Msgr. Jeffrey Burrill, a priest of the Diocese of La Crosse, has announced his resignation as General Secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The resignation came after the USCCB became aware of impending media reports alleging possible improper behavior by Msgr. Burrill, said Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles.

In a July 20 memo to bishops, Archbishop Gomez said he had accepted Burrills resignation, effective immediately.

What was shared with us did not include allegations of misconduct with minors. However, in order to avoid becoming a distraction to the operations and ongoing work of the conference, Monsignor has resigned, the archbishop said.

Reports came from The Pillar, a Catholic news site, that said it found evidence the priest engaged in serial sexual misconduct.

An analysis of app data signals correlated to Burrills mobile device shows the priest also visited gay bars and private residences while using a location-based hookup app in numerous cities from 2018 to 2020, even while traveling on assignment for the U.S. bishops conference, The Pillar reported.

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Davids work search challenge: He cant find a job matching his education and experience. So David started a business from his garage that makes cutting boards and other light wood products.

He does not expect to profit for at least a year, so he called DWD early to ensure that launching a business would not jeopardize his unemployment compensation. DWD told him that checking the self-employed box on his claim and answering a few questions should suffice, he recalled.

But following those directions instantly froze Davids unemployment benefits. After David peppered DWD with calls, he said, someone finally advised him to stop checking the self-employed box since he wasnt making money. It had automatically triggered a review of his claim.

There were no instructions on the website and they never (previously) told me anything like this, David said.

He had four job interviews in late June and has expanded his work search to include parts of Minnesota. Meantime, hes living off his savings, which can temporarily sustain him but arent enough to retire on, he said.

Facing eviction amid wait for aid
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Jasmine Crockett, a Black civil rights lawyer and one of the youngest lawmakers in Texas, was just a few months into her first term in the Legislature when Republicans were on the cusp of passing new limits on when and how Texans could vote.

Like other Democrats, she was adamantly opposed to the bill. But when they discussed using extraordinary tactics to try to block it  including a walkout  she sensed hesitancy from older, veteran members who are more accustomed to being the minority party in the state House of Representatives.

I dont understand. Why are we sitting here? Crockett, 40, recalled of the frustration among her younger colleagues. Were asking legitimate questions, like, Cant we leave? What is the problem?

When Texas Democrats bolted for Washington in a dramatic gambit to block the bill, it was a significant strategic victory for Crockett and a group of newer Texas lawmakers, including Black and Latino members, whose instincts are more inclined to confrontational politics. If their long-suffering party is to find a way out of the wilderness in Texas, Democrats need to sharpen their message and their elbows, they argue.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended temporary legal status to hundreds of Somalis on Monday to allow them to remain in the United States for an additional 18 months during civil strife in the African nation.

It is the 25th extension of Temporary Protected Status for Somalis under the 1990 law designed to provide a haven from natural disaster or civil disorder. Somalia was first designated for TPS in 1991.

Three decades of conflict in Somalia, along with natural disasters and disease outbreaks, have worsened an already severe humanitarian crisis, the Homeland Security Department said in a statement. Somalia has recently experienced a dramatic upsurge in violence, severe drought, and flooding, which have contributed to worsening food insecurity and internal displacement.

About 450 Somalis will be able to extend their stay and be authorized to work until March 2023, and about 100 more who were in the United States on Monday will be eligible to enroll for the first time.
Ephrata National Bank will host its second annual Pigs in the Park events at several locations throughout Lancaster and surrounding areas.

The bank will hide piggy banks in seven community parks for children ages 2-12 to find. Children who find the piggy bank may take it to any ENB branch to receive a $25 deposit into a new or existing Super Saver savings account. According to a news release from the bank, the event is designed to teach children about the importance of saving money.

Learn more about Pigs in the Park at epnb.com/pigsinthepark. Below is a schedule of Pigs in the Park events. All events are from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturdays.

 Aug. 7: Thomas P. Grater Community Park, Cocalico Street off South Oak Street in Ephrata.

 Aug. 14: New Holland Park, 200-498 E. Jackson St., New Holland; West Nantmeal Park, 455 N. Manor Road, Elverson, Chester County.

 Aug. 21: Denver Memorial Park, 801 Main St., Denver; Strasburg Community Park, 151 Precision Ave., Strasburg.

 Aug. 28: Lititz Springs Park, 24 N. Broad St., Lititz; Myerstown Community Park, 541-585 S. College St., Myerstown, Lebanon County.
A Maryland man repeatedly sexually assaulted a juvenile girl for more than two years when she was placed under his care, according to Manor Township police.

Raymond Lawrence Mitchell Jr., 58, of Baltimore, Maryland, was charged with aggravated indecent assault of a child, indecent assault on a person less than 13 years of age, corruption of minors and unlawful contact with a minor.

Mitchell fondled the girl, who was younger than 13 at the time, and subjected her to sexual acts multiple times at his then-residence in the first block of Kendes Road between 2015 and 2016, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

The girl told investigators Mitchell would touch her inappropriately under her clothes to the point that it caused her pain, police said.

Witnesses told police the girl would become upset and begin to cry when she had to go with Mitchell, according to the affidavit.

Investigators became aware of the allegations after the girl, who is still a juvenile, disclosed that Mitchell had sexually assaulted her.

Mitchell was previously charged with a series of similar offenses, including rape, after he was accused of molesting a teenage girl at the same residence for nearly three years in 2015. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender after pleading guilty to statutory sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors, five counts of indecent assault on a person less than 16 years of age and rape forcible compulsion in 2016, court records show.

A preliminary hearing has not been set, according to court records. It was not immediately clear if Mitchell has been arrested.
A York County couples lawsuit in federal court seeks to give greater standing to grandparents in child custody cases involving their grandchildren.

Melissa and Mark Pickel of York County filed suit against Lancaster County Children and Youth Services in 2018 after the agency placed their daughters two children in foster care.

While the facts of the Pickels custody effort are complicated, the case essentially boils down to their assertion that they were acting as caregivers for the older of the two children at the time he was removed from the mothers care, which happened in 2015. As such, they maintain they had established parent-like rights that put them in a stronger legal position to gain custody of both children, the second of whom was removed shortly after he was born in 2017.

The rights of grandparents who act as caregivers for a minor child or children, known broadly in legal terms as in loco parentis, arent clearly defined in the court system, either at the state or federal levels, according to Lancaster Countys attorneys, although the Pickels argue a 1970s U.S. Supreme Court case bolsters their claim.

Thats the argument made by the Pickels attorney in court on Friday.

Our interest is in family integrity and (establishing) that when children are taken away from the family that the grandparents do have due process rights, Dennis Boyle, a Washington D.C.-based attorney representing the Pickels, told the judges.

The unsettled legal question was alluded to by a federal judge on Friday as a three-judge panel of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia heard arguments in the Pickels case. Judge Theodore McKee pointed out that the 1977 case Moore V. City of East Cleveland, which Boyle referenced, didnt specifically deal with in loco parentis.

Case background

The particulars of the case relate to two children belonging to the Pickels daughter, Jazmin Lowar.

Melissa Pickel and her adult daughter, Jazmin Lowar - a Lancaster County resident at the time - had been sharing the parental responsibilities of raising Lowars infant son, referred to in court documents as S.P.L. That shared caregiving responsibility, the Pickels argue, established their claim to in loco parentis.

According to court documents, in March 2015 Lancaster County Children and Youth Services was called to investigate suspected drug use by Lowar and the child was sent to live with his paternal grandparents before the agency took custody of the child and placed him in foster care in May. The Pickels applied to be foster parents for S.P.L. in August 2015, but the youth services agency denied their application. In 2016 S.P.L. was adopted by his foster parents over the competing application of the Pickels.

In early 2017 when Lowar gave birth to a second son, D.M.L., Lowar and the Pickels agreed that the Pickels should become D.M.L.s legal guardians and were seeking to make that official. But D.M.L. was placed with a foster family by Lancaster County Children and Youth Services shortly after his birth because he and his mother both tested positive for cocaine.

The legal question

The Pickels and their attorney, Boyle, argue that because S.P.L. lived with and was cared for by the Pickels prior to March 2015, they had established in loco parentis. And because Lowar wanted the Pickels to be D.M.L.s caregivers, they argue they should have been afforded the same due process rights a biological parent would be when parental rights are terminated by the state.

The Pickels lost their case at the district court level, with the judge determining they did not meet the standard for in loco parentis, overturning the finding of Common Pleas judge Merrill Spahn. They appealed that ruling to the Third Circuit, which is what brought them to court on Friday.

I think whats most important from my perspective is when someone has in loco parentis, whether that status ends when you are separated from the child, Boyle told the judges. In a conversation with LNP|LancasterOnline on Wednesday, he likened it to a biological parent losing their parental rights when a child spends a month at summer camp.

But the lawyers representing Lancaster County argue that because the Pickels did not provide care to S.P.L from March to May of 2015, the period immediately preceding his removal by CYS, the Pickels no longer had in loco parentis status. And although their daughter wanted the Pickels to provide care for D.M.L, because they never actually provided any care to the infant, the Pickels did not have in loco parentis status over him, Philadelphia-based attorney Shane Haselbarth argued in court on Friday.

Boyle conceded to the panel that the Pickels argument with regard to D.M.L was weaker for the reason Haselbarth noted, but that the intention of the biological mother was clear.

Through his questioning of Haselbarth, Judge Joseph Greenway Jr. hinted that he was open to the argument that the Pickels had in loco parentis status over S.P.L. for at least some period of time, but when that ended was unclear.

Haselbarth argued that the question of when exactly it ended was critical, pointing to a lower court decision from western Pennsylvania in which a judge found that the grandparents in that case did not meet the in loco parentis criteria because they had been separated from the child in the one to two months immediately preceding CYS taking custody. Haselbarth also argued that Lowar had denied the Pickels access to S.P.L. from March to May of 2015, which he said should end any in loco parentis status.

The concept of in loco parentis is interesting because it's not exactly clear whether or not it ends, said Wendy Chan, a Lancaster-based family law attorney who has represented grandparents in custody matters. The (Pickels) were arguing that because the relationship doesn't go away it doesn't end. That is exactly what no one has really addressed, whether or not it ends or doesn't end.

But even if the court found that the Pickels did have in loco parentis status, it did not automatically mean they should be given the same due process rights as parents, Haselbarth told judge Greenway.

To date that issue is unclear, he said, adding that only one Circuit Court had addressed the issue while others had run to the hillsto avoid it. (In loco parentis) are like a parent, but they are not a parent and no court has recognized that.

Boyle disagreed, pointing to a 1977 Supreme Court case, Moore v. City of East Cleveland, that touched on due process rights of grandparents when the city enacted a zoning ordinance that in effect barred grandparents from living with their grandchildren.

The Pickels are not seeking to reverse the custody decisions on SPL and DML, nor is Lowar. The two boys are both currently living with their respective adoptive families, and Boyle said the Pickels understand it would be disruptive to the children - who are now 7 and 4 years old - to be placed into yet another new environment.

Rather, Boyle said they are seeking damages and an established procedure on the due process rights of grandparents, especially those with in loco parentis status.

When asked by Judge McKee asked if they were seeking to ensure that the agency shape(s) up and fl(ies) right, Boyle said he was.

We find the conduct of the agency to be shocking and cavalier, he said.

Following Fridays arguments in court, neither Boyle nor Haselbarth would comment on how the judges will rule, but Gregory Kunkle, who was representing two contractors of the county named as defendants and argued that the claims were barred by the statute of limitations, said he was feeling confident.

We were very pleased that the judges seemed very well versed in the issues and the facts in the case, he said. Were very confident that the ruling of the district court (against the Pickels) will be affirmed.

A ruling on the case is expected at some point in the future.
When: Denver Borough Council meeting, July 12.

What happened: Borough Council approved a contract with a company that will identify and reduce unsafe levels of lead and copper in drinking water  a step toward completing compliance with the federal Lead and Copper Rule.

Why it matters: Exposure to lead and copper may cause health problems ranging from stomach distress to brain damage, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

The cost: Council approved the contract with 120Water for $33,750, and the borough will use American Rescue Plan Act money to offset the cost for the project.

Background: EPA has new lead and copper line inventory requirements that must be completed by 2024. The borough and property owners will have from 2026 through 2029 to replace service lines of drinking water exceeding healthy limits. Borough Manager Mike Hession said the borough will continue to monitor legislation and potential funding sources. The company 120Water will do an inventory of the lines, identify lead and lead-free lines and then will start the process for verifying and certifying what Denver will have to do toward replacement of those lines.

Quotable: So this will enable us to meet our guidelines with EPA in inventorying and identifying these areas and then begin the part of planning and trying to apply for funding to replace those lines, Hession said. Eventually, they will need replaced if they are borough lines from the main to the shutoff. If it is the owners lines there is something special for how that is going to have to be addressed as well.
ISLAMABAD (AP)  A famous South Korean climber fell into a crevasse and went missing over the weekend in bad weather after scaling another mountain peak in northern Pakistan, a mountaineering official said Tuesday.

Kim Hong Bin was descending after having reached the 8,047-meter (26,400-foot) high Broad Peak in Pakistan's north Karakoram Range on Sunday, said Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Pakistan Alpine Club.

With the summit, the 57-year-old Kim had scaled all of the world's 14 highest summits, becoming the first person with disability to do so. In 1991, while climbing in Alaska, he suffered severe frostbite and had all his fingers amputated.

While descending from the peak with several other mountaineers on Sunday, Kim slipped and fell down the Chinese side of the mountain, according to Haidri.

Since then no information is available about him," the official said, adding that a search mission is being planned.

In Seoul, the Foreign Ministry said Pakistan has promised to send a helicopter to find Kim as soon as weather conditions allow the flight. Spokesman Choi Young-sam said China has also agreed to make efforts to locate the climber.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in  who had earlier issued a message congratulating Kim on scaling of the worlds 14 highest summits  said that hell pray for Kims safe return.

There are some reports speculating his death, but the information is not clear and Im not abandoning hopes that hes still alive, Moon tweeted. Ill earnestly wait for the news of his safe return with my people to the end.

Kim's successes include world's highest, Mount Everest on the China-Nepal border, and Pakistan's K2, the second-highest, which like Broad Peak is also in the Karakoram Range. Disability never became a hurdle for Kim, Haidri said, and did not stand in the way of his passion.

The other mountaineers, who had in vain tried to find Kim, were safe and were descending amid bad weather. The South Korean Embassy in Islamabad was also organizing a search mission, he added.

We do not want to speculate" on Kim's fate, Haidri told The Associated Press, refusing to comment reports on Twitter that the climber had died.

Ghulam Muhammad, the owner of Blue Sky Expedition tour operating company who arranged the expedition for Kim, also confirmed an unfortunate incident" when the South Korean was returning to base camp.

The organizers of the expedition were in contact with the family of the missing South Korean and any further information will be shared by his family or by the South Korean officials, he added.

Scores of mountaineers visit Pakistan every year to scale different mountains and peaks, located in the country's scenic north. But the sport is dangerous, particularly when a sudden change in weather occurs.

Earlier this year, three climbers  Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara, Jon Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile  died while attempting to summit the 8,611-meter (28,250-foot) high K2. Their bodies could not be traced and retrieved despite several attempts by Pakistani search and rescue team aided by the military.



Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
Every Pennsylvania student deserves a good education, and every student in Pennsylvania deserves an education that works best for them.

While Pennsylvania has some great charter schools, other charter schools are not providing an education that prepares students for success in life. Some companies that manage charter schools put taxpayer-funded profits ahead of students and their families. These schools are costing taxpayers exorbitant amounts of money while providing a poor education and leaving our students behind.

Charter schools are public schools. Our tax dollars fund these schools. And we must hold charter schools accountable to taxpayers and to the same standards as all other public schools.

In 2021, taxpayers will spend almost $3 billion for charter schools. Our local school districts are required by law to pay every charter school serving students in their area. That means that local property taxpayers ultimately foot the bill when costs are unreasonable. Only about 9% of students are in a charter school, but within the next year, $1 in every $5 paid in local property taxes will go to cover charter school costs.

Thats billions of your school tax dollars that school boards and the public do not control or even know how charter schools spend. And as charter school costs go up, it drains funding from regular public school classrooms, forces cuts to educational programs and causes tax hikes.

Worse still, some charter schools do not provide a quality education. Charter schools make up about 6% of public schools in Pennsylvania, but account for about 25% of the lowest performing schools. Test scores for cybercharter student are among the lowest in the state, and fewer than two-thirds of their students graduate, well below the state average.

In 2019, a Stanford University report on charter school performance found widespread problems and called for comprehensive reforms. In fact, Pennsylvanias charter school law is regarded as among the worst in the nation.

Our broken charter school law is unfair to every student, parent and taxpayer, and the problem has only gotten worse over the past year. The pandemic has caused record enrollment increases at charter schools, and those students deserve a high quality education. We must act.

The Wolf administration and bipartisan legislators have a commonsense plan that benefits everyone. It protects taxpayers by reining in uncontrolled charter school costs, protects students by holding low performing charter schools accountable, and protects the public by increasing transparency of for-profit management companies

The plan aligns taxpayer spending on charter schools with the actual cost to educate students, ending years of the public overpaying charter schools and saving school districts nearly $400 million.

This reasonable and fair solution is accomplished with two changes. First, the state would pay for special education at charter schools based on the real cost, as we already do for all other public schools. Special education should not be a profit maker for charter schools. This improvement saves an estimated $185 million a year and helps school districts, as well as some charter schools that are underfunded for special education.

Second, the plan saves $210 million by creating a single statewide tuition rate for cyberschools. It ends huge differences between cybercharter payments when the cost of an online education is the same regardless of where the student lives.

The plan also protects students by creating performance standards for charter schools and limiting enrollment at low-performing schools until their educational quality improves.

Additionally, it will make sure that schools are meeting our quality standards and spending taxpayer dollars appropriately and requires ethical and financial standards to keep charter school management companies accountable to taxpayers.

The companies that make huge profits from charter schools hate these commonsense reforms. They want to keep lining their pockets with your tax dollars and to continue operating in the shadows. Every student, parent and taxpayer deserves better.

Real choice means high quality learning. This plan preserves school choice and rewards high quality charter schools, protects school districts and taxpayers and, most importantly, ensures students are getting the education they need for successful lives in Pennsylvania.

If you agree that charter schools should be accountable to provide a high quality education at a reasonable cost, I encourage you to contact your representatives in the General Assembly and ask them to support legislation to fix our broken charter school law.

Pennsylvanias students deserve more from our charter school system  and they cant afford to wait.

Noe Ortega is the secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
THE ISSUE

As Spotlight PA reported earlier this month, the Pennsylvania Legislature departed for the summer without voting on bills that would have raised dog licensing fees from $6.50 to $10 per year, an increase advocates say is critical to address insufficient staffing and a dire funding shortfall within the states Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement. Without a new and permanent stream of revenue, they say, the bureau will soon be unable to carry out its basic functions. Spotlight PA is a nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer; its partners include LNP Media Group.

Passing legislation to increase funding for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement should have been a cinch for state lawmakers.

As far as dog ownership expenses go, an extra $3.50 per year is a drop in the bucket. Its perhaps a third of what an inexpensive bag of dog food costs. Its a mere fraction of what a grooming or veterinary visit costs. And it would do a great deal of good for dogs  which responsible and caring dog owners surely would appreciate.

A funny thing happens when a dog enters your life. You begin to care about other dogs, too. The idea that some people are treating dogs cruelly tears at your heart. Conscientious dog owners would welcome the opportunity to help ensure that even dogs theyll never know will be safe from abuse.

In an interview with Spotlight PA, however, state Rep. Dan Moul, R-Adams County, who chairs the House Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee, said fee increases of any type are politically unpopular. He and other House Republicans fear a public backlash if they were to approve a fee hike, Spotlight PA reported.

Moul told that news organization that he still receives angry calls from constituents about an unrelated gas tax hike he voted for nearly a decade ago.

Believe it or not, people will spend thousands of dollars to go buy a dog, but you increase their dog license fees by five bucks, they have a fit, Moul said.

Theres a lot that bothers us about that sentence.

First, we wish more people adopted dogs from rescue organizations rather than buying them.

For another thing, the proposed fee increase isnt five bucks.

And for yet another thing, Moul and his fellow lawmakers should be able to make necessary decisions without factoring in how those decisions are going to affect them.

Moul told Spotlight PA that he worked with Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding on an alternate plan that involved tucking  that is, hiding  the proposed increase in a budget-related bill, as lawmakers might be more likely to approve a major budget package.

That plan failed.

The fact that lawmakers cant garner the courage to pass legislation with an annual $3.50 dog license fee increase explains why they cant do bigger things. They apparently lack courage, in moments big and small.

They can show up for photo ops with Libre  the Boston terrier rescued from a Quarryville farm who gave his name to Pennsylvanias stricter 2017 animal abuse law  but they wont fund the agency that is meant to enforce that and other vital laws.

Libres Law increased penalties for animal cruelty and made aggravated cruelty a felony. These were long-overdue reforms. But what good are they if Libres Law cant be adequately enforced?

As Spotlight PA reported, the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement is almost entirely funded by licensing fees paid by dog owners, though the price last increased in 1996.

That was 25 years  a quarter of a century  ago. What other expense do you know of that hasnt increased in 25 years?

The state Department of Agriculture is redirecting $1.5 million from its own budget this year to keep the bureau afloat. But as state Sen. Judy Schwank, D-Berks County, told Spotlight PA, thats a temporary fix.

Moreover, as that news organization reported, Even with the $1.5 million from the Department of Agriculture, the bureau is unable to fill job vacancies. Fourteen counties in Pennsylvania are without a dog warden tasked with inspecting kennels, taking in stray dogs, and enforcing all dog-related laws.

Lancaster County is one of those warden-less counties. Thats particularly troubling because our county has twice as many licensed kennels as any other county, Spotlight PA reported.

Three of those local kennels are on the Humane Society of United States annual Horrible Hundred list of problematic puppy breeding and/or puppy brokering facilities.

The fact that the Bureau of Dog Law (Enforcement) is going to be less able to to stay on top of those (kennels) is a big concern for us, Kathleen Summers, director of outreach and research at the Humane Society, Pennsylvania, told Spotlight PA.

It will, however, be a boon to those in Lancaster County who operate kennels without providing proper care to the animals housed in them.

Those who love dogs find it hard to read about the Daniel Esh family of Leacock Township, for instance. Members of that family have been charged with at least 44 offenses related to animal cruelty, animal neglect or kennel law violations since 2013, according to court records.

As LNP | LancasterOnlines Ty Lohr reported, the most recent visit by humane law enforcement officers on June 4 resulted in the removal of 13 dogs and the filing of a cease-and-desist order for another 45 to be removed.

The Esh family isnt alone in allegedly mistreating dogs. Sadly, Lancaster County has become known for its puppy mills. (The Humane Society defines a puppy mill as an inhumane high-volume dog breeding facility that churns out puppies for profit, ignoring the needs of the pups and their mothers.)

Those signs you see in parts of the county offering purebred puppies for sale? Some of them should be fitted with flashing red warning lights.

Unfortunately, they often operate without drawing much attention. This will be even more the case if the state Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement continues to be hampered by budgetary issues.

As Summers of the Humane Society told Spotlight PA, Democrats and Republicans, and everybody in between, theyre all dog lovers.

She said lawmakers are not listening to their constituents if theyre not passing budgets that protect dogs because nobody wants Pennsylvania to be seen as a puppy mill state and everybody wants dogs to be protected.

Shes absolutely right.
Reports of the U.S. Capitol building being closed made us reflect on previous yearly Manheim Central ninth grade field trips to Washington, D.C.

As participating teacher chaperones, we are proud to have given these students opportunities to experience history and science through visits to museums, Arlington Cemetery and the U.S. Capitol building.

The Capitol tour was always very impressive. Some students took advantage of optional mini-tours, offered by the social studies teacher, to the U.S. Supreme Court building or to their congressmans office, riding on the subway under the Capitol to the Rayburn House Office Building.

We know these former students appreciate our Capitol and view current events from a different perspective because of the field trips.

Dave Bleil

Landisville

Thomas Mellinger

West Lampeter Township

Richard Walter

East Hempfield Township
EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2021

Compete in Economic Development, Not Military Devastation

July 19, 2021 (EIRNS)The Schiller Institute is preparing a conference at the end of this month with experts who are passionate about Afghanistans prospects of becoming, not only a rapidly developing nation, but the pivot of economic development in South Asia, and even the catalyst in a change of relations among the major powers. Our conference will be aimed as a spark, with many nations already meeting in the Central Asian region to discuss next steps after the NATO withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan.

The Schiller Institutes meeting will be held at a true turning point of 21st Century history: The major powers and the regional neighbor countries alike need to eliminate terrorist threats and remove the scourge of Afghan heroin fed by decades of war; and this opens the possibility of development of healthcare and education, transport routes and power and water, with international cooperation in contributing capital goods. As Afghanistans ambassador to China, Javid Ahmad Qaem, expressed it in an interview with Global Times July 16, The only place where they [China, India and the United States] could really cooperate, and at least there could be a starting point to cooperate between these rivals, if I can call them that, is Afghanistan.

The people of the United States and the European NATO members need this development more than Afghanistan does. As NATO forces have done to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya since the 1990s, so have we, in America and Europe, done to ourselves.

Our industrial economies and our labor forces have been left to crumble and become impoverished while we trusted the endlessly deployed fighters and their spectacularly expensive equipment to make us number one in the world. We admired Wall Street speculating on decaying economic infrastructure until it has fallen apart. Only six months ago the United States electric grid could not keep scores of Americans from dying of cold in long blackouts, while millions of others huddled in misery during a freezing Polar Vortex. This past week Germanys and Belgiums flood control infrastructure was washed away in floods which have killed hundreds despite nearly a week of precise warning. America has done nothing for 25 years to counteract a steadily intensifying drought which is threatening to turn the West back into uninhabited desert.

Climate change hysteria is not a policy to save the planet, but a threat to reduce the human race and push it back centuries in productive capacity. Between now and the meeting on Afghanistans development, the Schiller Institute on July 24 holds a combative conference with scientists, engineers and others to defeat the Green New Deal, stop power blackouts and prevent the wholesale shutdown of power supplies and industry. (There Is No Climate EmergencyApply the Science and Economics of Development To Stop Blackouts and Death)

The withdrawal of forces from Afghanistan is no setback if it is taken as an opportunity to make the contributions American technology can make to the progress of developing countries. Instead of tolerating think-tanks and Defense Secretaries talk about winning endless and fruitless wars, we can devote ourselves to the arts of peace against pandemic and famine, and rebuild our own economies into the bargain.
EU Fit for 55 Insane Proposal Meets Opposition

July 19, 2021 (EIRNS)Reaction from industrial sectors, especially automotive, has forced the French and Italian governments to put up some sort of roadblock to the EU Commission insane Fit for 55 proposal. According to La Repubblica, Italy and France joined forces from different standpoints with critics to the EU Commission in a meeting July 13.

French President Emmanuel Macron has received a delegation from the auto industry which says the EU proposal, as it is now, is endangering 400,000 jobs; it calls for 17.5 billion of government aid for the transition. The EU is throwing away a hundred years of European know-how and choses a technology in which the Chinese are ten years in advance, the Automotive Platform (PFA) President Luc Chatel said according to Le Monde.

In Italy, both the M5S and the Lega components of the government majority have objected to the Fit for 55 plan. Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio (M5S) said Italy cannot afford an economic and social shock provoked by a fast green transition.

Speaking at a meeting on Export and Made in Italy in Ischia July 18, Di Maio said: There is somebody in Europe who thinks that ecological transition can be completed in two years. Ecological transition will work only if our companies, our productive systems but also professionals will have enough time to adapt to the transformation. Otherwise, it wont be a transition: it will be a shock. We will produce a drop in emissions, which however will correspond to a loss of jobs and the shutdown of companies. And we cannot afford that, in particular in Southern Italy where transition needs adequate aids for digital transition, transferral of know-how to businesses that must have the time to adapt, especially in this phase.

We are not asking to block the process of European Green Deal, said Di Maio, whose party is actually all for it; we are just calling for more time in order to be able to deal with the coming period.

The Lega is also opposing the EU plan. Lega members of the Transport Committee of the European Parliament issued a statement saying

We ask the EU for a more concrete and realistic attitude, not unattainable goals that translate into new taxes, deindustrialization and measures that penalize the European production sector. While the continent is trying to recover from the extremely difficult months of the crisis and the pandemic, burying its economy and penalizing businesses is not only wrongthey concludeit is unacceptable.

Ecological Transition Minister Roberto Cingolani had earlier stated that the Fit for 55 Plan, if implemented as it is now, will mean the death of the Italian Motor ValleyFerrari, Maserati, Lamborghini, Pagani, Dallara, Ducati, etc

.
German, Holland Governments Failed To Act, When European Flood System Warned Them of Threat

July 19, 2021 (EIRNS)The Sunday Times broke the story that the German government was warned in advance by European weather institutions about the coming flood but failed to act.

The first signs of catastrophe were detected nine days ago by a satellite orbiting 500 miles above the tranquil hills around the Rhine river, the Times wrote yesterday.

Over the next few days a team of scientists sent the German authorities a series of forecasts so accurate that they now read like a macabre prophecy: the Rhineland was about to be hit by extreme flooding, particularly along the Erft and Ahr rivers, and in towns such as Hagen and Altena. Yet despite at least 24 hours warning that predicted, almost precisely, which districts would be worst affected when the rains came, the flood still caught many of its victims largely unawares.

Hydrologist Hannah Cloke from the Reading University, who works for the European Flood Awareness System (EFAS) warning system, said EFAS had sent warnings to the German and Belgian government on July 10. They should have warned the population, she told the Times, emphasizing that it is useless to have giant computer models that forecast weather accurately, if the population do not know what to do in a flood. The fact that people were not evacuated or did not receive warnings strongly suggests that something went wrong. It is a monumental systemic failure.

The Interior Ministry of North Rhine-Westphalia state, where the German flooding was worst, claimed that all official warnings were sent on to the districts and individual cities. A war room was set up on Tuesday, July 13 in order to recognize at an early stage whether regional help was needed in a district or city. But tragically this led to no action. And farmers who later reached flooded villages with their tractors complained to Bild and other reporters that no firefighter, no policeman or army official had been seen in three days.

In an earlier extreme eventa gale with 200 kph winds and storm surge 3 meters above high tidehit Hamburg in 1962, the citys Interior Minister Helmut Schmidt took command over a paralyzed city council and called in the army, which was formally forbidden by Germanys Constitution. Schmidt even asked the U.S. Army for help, and many lives were saved by the use of helicopters. Schmidts Entschlossenheitdeterminationis nowhere to be seen among todays politicians.
Cant Blame Russia or China for Pegasus Worldwide Spying on Smartphones

July 19, 2021 (EIRNS)The whistleblower the NSA fears most, Edward Snowden, today called for the banning, across the globe, of the international spyware tradea business that should not exist. In an interview today with Britains Guardian, Snowden was framing the revelations of a long investigation by journalists of the worldwide hacking of personal phones, for hire, by the Israel-based cyberwar company called NSO Group Technologies, which hacks into phones of which its clients request surveillance, and embeds spyware in them. The investigation into NSO Group is known as the Pegasus project, after the NSO spyware Pegasus. Snowden declared in a tweet: Stop what youre doing and read this. This leak is going to be the story of the year.

In a high irony, the revelations of some aspects of this investigation, in the Guardian and the Washington Post, appeared on the same day that a senior U.S. official was anonymously but officially quoted as saying: Today, in coordination with our allies, the Biden administration is:

Exposing the P.R.C.s use of criminal contract hackers to conduct unsanctioned cyber operations globally, including for their own personal profit. ... As detailed in public charging documents unsealed in October 2018 and July and September 2020, hackers with a history of working for the P.R.C. Ministry of State Security (MSS) have engaged in ransomware attacks, cyber enabled extortion, crypto-jacking, and rank theft from victims around the world, all for financial gain.

The Biden White House later released a statement saying the United States reserves the right to take unilateral action although wanting to rope in Europeans. And China of course responded that it would retaliate.

The hypocrisyand futilityof these confrontations blazes out in the exposure of the NSO Group. While it claims to surveil criminals and terrorists for large numbers of unknown clients, clearly many of them government agencies of various countries, the journalists have shown the Pegasus spyware to be working on lists of targeted phone numbers perhaps reaching 50,000. The Guardian and Washington Post report that the research, conducted by Amnestys Security Lab, a technical partner on the Pegasus project, have so far identified 37 smartphones that had the Pegasus software secretly implanted and recording their every call, text, search etc. These include political opposition leadersIndian Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi is named; journalists, two of them assassinated (the fiancee of Jamal Khashoggi is one), and their family members; political activists, reportedly one prime minister.

Said Snowden: Its like an industry where the only thing they did was create custom variants of Covid to dodge vaccines, he said. Their only products are infection vectors. Theyre not security products. Theyre not providing any kind of protection, any kind of prophylactic. They dont make vaccinesthe only thing they sell is the virus. He continued: There are certain industries, certain sectors, from which there is no protection, and thats why we try to limit the proliferation of these technologies. We dont allow a commercial market in nuclear weapons.

The major technologically advanced nations have to stop charging each other with being the worst surveillance state: Come to agreement to ban this.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Here are a few recent articles or writings of interest to the nonprofit world.

Ellen Aprill, Americans for Prosperity and the Future of Schedule B, Letter to the Editor in Tax Notes

"Before the July 1 decision of the Supreme Court in Americans for Prosperity, the California Attorney General had for a number of years required all section 501(c)(3) organizations operating in the state to file with it a full copy of its federal Form 990, the annual information return for exempt organizations. The required filing included an unredacted Schedule B, listing the donations, with names and addresses, of substantial contributors. The Supreme Court held Californias requirement to be facially unconstitutional. The Court determined that the California requirement failed an exacting scrutiny standard of review under which, to avoid violating the First Amendment, any compelled disclosure to government must be narrowly tailored to an asserted and substantial government interest. The Court concluded that Californias asserted need for an unredacted Schedule B in order to investigate fraud did not meet this standard."

Jennifer Bird-Pollan, Taxing the Ivory Tower, Pepperdine Law Review

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 introduced the first ever excise tax imposed on the investment income of university endowments. While it is a relatively small tax, this new law is a first step towards the exploration of taxing non-profit entities on the vast sums of wealth they hold in their endowments. In this Essay I take the new tax as a starting place for investigating the justification for tax exemption for universities and thinking through the consequences of changing our approach, both in the form of the new excise tax and possible alternatives. There remain reasons to be skeptical both about the design of the current tax and its ability to withstand the political efforts of the powerful set of universities who will be subject to it. Nonetheless, this new tax opens the door to a discussion of whether it is time to treat universities endowments more like the private equity funds they increasingly resemble.

Beckett Cantley, Ground Zero: The IRS Attack on Syndicated Conservation Easements, William & Mary Law & Policy Review

On June 25, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced a settlement initiative (SI) to certain taxpayers with pending docketed cases involving syndicated conservation easement (SCE) transactions. The SI is the current culmination of a long series of attacks by the IRS against SCE transactions. The IRS has recently found success in the Tax Court against SCEs, but the agencys overall legal position may be over- stated. It is possible that the recent SI is merely an attempt to capitalize on leverage while the IRS has it. Regardless, the current state of the law surrounding SCEs is murky at best. Whether a taxpayer is contemplating the settlement offer, is currently involved in an unaudited SCE trans- action, or is considering involvement in an SCE transaction in the future, the road ahead is foggy and potentially treacherous.



This Article attempts to shed light on the obstacles that face SCE transactions. This Article: (1) provides an overview of SCE transactions and the main attacks against them; (2) analyzes each of the IRSs main attacks and the relevant issues that arise; (3) illustrates the relevant pro-taxpayer and anti-taxpayer cases on each issue; (4) discusses the subsequent considerations that taxpayers need to take into account and the future outlook of SCE; and (5) concludes with a summary of the Articles findings.

J. Haskell Murray, The History and Hope of Social Enterprise Forms, Tennessee Journal of Business Law

This Article sketches the history of social enterprise legal forms in the United States and provides suggestions regarding their continued evolution. Social enterprisescompanies that blend profit and social purposehave a long history in the United States, but not until 2008 did a state pass a social enterprise specific statute. In that year, Vermont passed a statute allowing for formation of L3Cs, low-profit limited liability companies. The L3C was aimed primarily at funding issues for social enterprises and attempted to unlock program related investments (PRIs) for that purpose. Following the L3C form were a number of variations on a corporation-based social enterprise: social purpose corporations, benefit corporations, and public benefit corporations. These forms evolved over the past decade to address the issues of corporate purpose and social accountability. Lastly, a small handful of states passed benefit limited liability company (BLLC) statutes for companies that desired a form similar to the benefit corporation but built on an LLC framework.

Philip Hackney

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/nonprofit/2021/07/recent-articles-of-interest.html


News reporters and media groups are upset over reports that governments may have hacked their mobile phones.

A kind of software known as spyware may have been used to control the cameras and microphones of as many as 50,000 people around the world.

Amnesty International and a French organization for reporters called Forbidden Stories found that over 1,000 of those phone numbers belong to journalists, political activists, government leaders and dissidents. Dissidents are people who left their home countries for expressing critical opinions of their governments.

The spyware comes from a computer security group based in Israel known as NSO Group. The software is called Pegasus.

NSO said it only sells its Pegasus software to lawful government agencies for use against terrorists and criminals. It says targets include drug dealers and leaders of criminal groups, or gangs.

Forbidden Stories sent its report about the hacked phones to 16 news organizations around the world. The organizations connected over 1,000 phone numbers with their owners.

The owners included journalists who work for The Associated Press, Reuters, The Washington Post, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and The Financial Times.

On Monday, the head of the European Commission called using spyware against reporters completely unacceptable if the reports are confirmed.

Ursula von der Leyen continued, saying: Freedom of mediais one of the core values of the EU.

NSO denied the reporting of Forbidden Stories, calling the news false allegations.

Amnesty International said its research showed the Pegasus software was on the phone belonging to the woman Jamal Khashoggi was planning to marry. Khashoggi was a Washington Post writer killed while inside the diplomatic offices of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul, Turkey in 2018.

The Washington Post said Pegasus was on 37 of its phones. The Guardian, a British newspaper, said it identified 15 of its phones that were hacked.

Of the 50,000 phone numbers, 15,000 are based in Mexico. Past investigations showed NSO spyware has been used in Mexico and the Middle East.

Another reporter whose phone was hacked was later killed. Cecilio Pineda Birto reported about crime in Mexico. He was killed in 2017 after a report about local politicians.

Lauren Easton is the director of media relations for the Associated Press (AP). She said the company is deeply troubled to know that two AP reporters, and many other journalists, may have been spied on.

Expert researchers in computer security discovered in 2016 that many people who worked for news organizations were spied on, with the activity linked to NSO.

NSO is not the only business that makes spyware. But it has gotten a lot of attention. Several legal cases targeting NSOs business have been brought in Israel and Cyprus. Because of the attention, NSO recently produced a report saying it rejected over $300 million in business because of its human rights processes.

A well-known computer security expert, however, criticized NSOs report. Eva Galperin is the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. She said: If this report was printed, it would not be worth the paper it was printed on.

Im Dan Friedell.

Dan Friedell adapted this story for Learning English based on reports by The Associated Press and Reuters. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

What would you think if your country were spying on journalists and critics of its government? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page.

_____________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

hack, hacker n. to secretly get into a computer system to get information or cause damage; a person who hacks computers

spyware  n. computer software that secretly records information about the way you use a computer

core  adj. the central part of something

allegation  n. a statement saying that someone has done something wrong or illegal
Pope Francis placed limits Friday on the use of Latin in the Roman Catholic Church service called Mass. The decision cancels a reform established by Pope Benedict XVI, who led the Church just before Francis.

Benedict had ordered that Latin could be used in special celebrations of the mass. He also permitted the use of Latin in usual Masses if the membership of an individual church requested it.

Pope Francis said he made the change because Benedicts reform had caused division in the church. He also said the measure had been abused by Catholics seeking the cancellation of major changes made by the Church in 1960. Known as Vatican II, the changes were designed to reshape the Church for modern times.

Catholics reacted quickly to Pope Francis announcement Friday. Some objected to his decision and said it felt like an attack on them and ancient customs.

Others seemed shocked by the action. They said they had never known a pope to so directly reject an important ruling of the preceding pope.

The 84-year-old Francis did not ban Latin Masses. But, now churches that want to celebrate Latin Mass will have to receive permission to celebrate it from higher officials and approval from the Vatican.

Also, Church officials will investigate individual churches currently celebrating Latin Mass to learn if they accept Vatican II. Those groups will not be permitted to use usual Catholic churches. Instead, higher officials must find other places for them without creating new parishes.

No new Latin Mass services

In addition, Francis said the Church would not permit the formation of new Latin Mass services.

Francis said he was taking action to support unity and heal divisions within the church that had grown since Benedict's 2007 reform. He said he based his decision on findings of a 2020 Vatican study of all middle level Catholic officials, known as bishops. Francis said the research uncovered a worrisome and saddening situation that made him see the need to intervene.

One of the reasons Francis gave in his letter was based on a document from Vatican II. The bishops of that time said using modern languages meant celebrants would not assist as strangers and silent spectators in the mystery of faith, but, with a full understanding of the rites and prayers."

The Popes action immediately angered traditionalists already opposed to his policy-making which is more liberal than was Benedicts.

Joseph Shaw is chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales. "This is an extremely disappointing document which entirely undoes the legal provisions," set up by Benedict, he said.



Others supported Francis move.

Christopher Bellitto is a professor of church history at Kean University in the American state of New Jersey. He said Francis was right to intervene, noting that Benedict's reform had had many unwanted results. Among them, he said, were new divisions within the church and, for a time, poorer relations with Jews.

Francis was right that "Benedict's 2007 loosening of regulations against the Latin rite allowed others to use it for division," Bellitto said. The criticism the Pope is now receiving "proves his point," he added.

The criticism was indeed fierce, although it is also likely that many will simply ignore Francis' decision.

They point to the growth of conservative parishes, often attended by young, large families, as well as new religious orders that celebrate in Latin. The Latin Mass Society says the number of Latin Masses celebrated each Sunday in England and Wales had increased from 20 to 46 since 2007.

Im Jill Robbins.

Nicole Winfield wrote this story for the Associated Press. Jill Robbins adapted it for Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

___________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

parish  n. an area that has its own local church and priest or minister

preceding  adj. existing, happening, or coming before

spectator  n. a person who watches an event, show, game, activity, or the like, often as part of an audience

faith  n. strong belief or trust in someone or something

disappointing  adj. to make (someone) unhappy by not being as good as expected or by not doing something that was hoped for or expected

regulation  n. an official rule or law that says how something should be done

rite  n. an act that is part of a usually religious ceremony

What do you think of Pope Francis' decision? We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section.


Massive flooding killed at least 195 people in northern Europe last week. Massive wildfires are burning across much of the western United States. These extreme weather events, scientists warn, are clear signs of global warming. And they say more is needed to be done to fight climate change.

Floods in Europe

In Europe, officials continue to find more bodies as floodwaters drop across affected areas of Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. So far, 164 are confirmed dead and hundreds are missing in the affected areas of Germany. At least 31 people died in Belgium.

The rains that led to last weeks floods were expected. However, politicians and weather forecasters were shocked by the amount of rain and the powerful, sudden floods that it caused. Warnings of danger came too late for many people living along Germanys rivers. Local officials described the weather event as an explosion of the water that destroyed buildings, electricity, and cell phone networks.

At one point, water went over the top of the Steinbach Reservoir dam in North Rhine-Westphalia state causing fear that the dam might break. It did not. The state governor said the dam was designed for a risk that might happen once every 10,000 years.

This was exceeded in the last few days, he said.

Wim Thiery, a professor at Brussels University, spoke to the Associated Press Friday. He said of the flooding, There is a clear link between extreme precipitation occurring and climate change.



Record heat, wildfires in North America

Across the Atlantic, a different kind of extreme weather is happening in Canada and the western United States.

For the second straight year, Death Valley in California has recorded temperatures as high as 54 degrees Celsius. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, reported that the U.S. Pacific Northwest and western Canada experienced record highs in late June.

The extremely high temperature is part of the change that has made North America warmer and drier in the past 30 years leading to more wildfires.

On Monday, the National Interagency Fire Center said wildfire activity continues in 13 American states where 80 large fires have burned more than 475,000 hectares of land. The Bootleg Fire, one of the largest in Oregons history, has already burned more than 1,210 square kilometers. Firefighters said such wildfire conditions are more usual in late summer or autumn.

Stefan Rahmstorf teaches ocean physics at the University of Potsdam in Germany. He said the recent heat records set in the U.S. and Canada are so extreme that they would be virtually impossible without global warming.



What caused these extreme events?

NOAA reports that in keeping with Earths warming trend, the month of June this year is the fifth-warmest June in the 142-year global climate record.

Along with North America, June temperatures also reached record highs in Africa. Europes June temperature was the second-highest on record and Asias recorded temperature in June also came in as its second warmest tying with 2010.

Climate scientists say with every 1 degree Celsius rise in temperature, the air can take in 7 percent more humidity. It can hold water longer, leading to a hot and dry condition in North America. But it also leads to an increase in huge rainfall in Europe.





What to do?

Diederik Samsom is a leading member of the European Commission. He said, A few years ago, you had to point to a point in the future or far away on the planet to talk about climate change. Its happening now  here.

Last week, the commission proposed a 10-year plan to cut by 55 percent the release of waste gases that cause global warming. Some member states oppose the plan.

In January, the U.S. rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement. The agreement restricts the release of gasses by developed nations.

Even if global warming gas releases are greatly reduced in the coming years, the amount of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere means extreme weather is going to become more likely. And experts say we will need to be prepared for these extreme events.

We need to make our built environment  buildings, outdoor spaces, cities  more resilient to climate change, said Lamia Messari-Becker, a professor of engineering at the University of Siegen.

Im Caty Weaver.

Hai Do wrote this story for Learning English with additional reporting from the Associated Press. Caty Weaver was the editor.

________________________________________________

Words in This Story

global - adj. involving the entire world

exceed - v. to go beyond the limit of something

precipitation - n. water that falls to the ground

occur - v. to happen

virtually - adv. very nearly

trend - n. a general direction of change

resilient - adj. able to return to original shape
The United States and its major allies have accused China of working with criminal hackers to carry out major computer attacks worldwide.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Monday, that China had shown irresponsible, disruptive, and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace. Such activities present a major threat to our economic and national security, he added.

Joining the U.S. in condemning Chinas actions were NATO, the European Union, Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The group blamed China for a cyberattack in March that affected tens of thousands of organizations using Microsoft Exchange servers. Blinken said the U.S. had uncovered evidence that the Microsoft attack was carried out by cyber actors linked to Chinas Ministry of State Security.

The U.S. and the other countries said the Ministry of State Security had employed criminal contract hackers to carry out attacks.

Officials said the activities included software attacks against private companies known as ransomware. In these kinds of attacks, criminal hackers hijack the computer data of companies until they agree to pay large amounts of money or ransoms.

A U.S. government official told reporters that the government had raised its concerns with high-level Chinese officials about the countrys malicious cyber activity. The use of contract hackers by Chinas civilian intelligence agency was especially eye-opening and surprising, the official said.

A joint cybersecurity advisory was issued Monday by the National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). It said the agencies had observed increasingly sophisticated Chinese state-sponsored cyber activity. The activity had targeted U.S. political, economic, military, educational, and critical infrastructure, the advisory said.

There was no immediate comment from Chinese officials on the new accusations. In the past, Chinese officials have said China is also a victim of hacking and that the country opposes all forms of cyberattacks.

The U.S. did not announce any restrictions against China for the activities it was accused of taking part in. However, the U.S. administration official told Reuters that the United States is not ruling out further action to hold (China) accountable.

Also on Monday, the Justice Department announced charges against four Chinese nationals. They are accused of working with the Ministry of State Security in a worldwide hacking campaign. U.S. officials said the activities took place between 2011 and 2018. They targeted numerous computer systems, including those of companies, universities and governments. The operations attempted to steal trade secrets and other business information that could help Chinese companies, the officials said.

The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has publicly blamed a series of ransomware and other cyberattacks on groups operating in Russia. But it has not directly linked those activities to the Russian government. Biden met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva last month. The U.S. president threatened to act against Russia if the government did not act against cyber criminals operating from inside Russia.

Im Bryan Lynn.

The Associated Press, Reuters and VOA News Steve Herman reported on this story. Bryan Lynn adapted the reports for Learning English. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page.

____________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

hacker  n. a person who uses a computer to illegally break into someone elses computer system to read the information kept there

disrupt  v. to cause something to be unable to continue in the normal way

destabilize  v. to cause something to be unable to operate or survive

malicious  adj. intended to harm or upset someone

sophisticated  adj. a way of operating that is very advanced and effective

infrastructure  n. the basic equipment and structures (such as roads and bridges) that are needed for a country or region

accountable  adj. having to be responsible for what you do and able to explain your actions
From VOA Learning English, this is the Health & Lifestyle report.

In the United States, the law views domestic animals, or pets, as property when married people legally separate.

Now, American courts are seeing new ways of deciding custody of the family pet. Special negotiators are being employed to argue for pet parents. Some couples are even signing contracts before they marry about pet ownership if the marriage ends. These so-called petnups are designed to avoid possible courtroom disputes in the future.

Petnup is a play on the word prenup. Prenup is short for prenuptial, a contract that some couples seek before marriage. Prenups usually deal with property rights.

Several pet owners and lawyers recently talked to the Associated Press.

In some U.S. states laws permit judges to decide pet custody based on the best interest of the animal under consideration.

New York lawmakers are considering such a bill. New York State Senator James Skoufis is the main supporter of the New York measure. He also has a cat named Ruth, for the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Skoufis spoke to the Associated Press about the proposed legislation.

Someones cat or someones dog is a part of their family and should not be treated like a piece of furniture, he said.

Adam Citron is a New York divorce lawyer. He says pet custody is always a difficult issue. So, he supports prenups that include pets. A petnup can be especially helpful when people get animals during the marriage.

He added that pet custody is far more emotional and difficult to settle than ownership over a set of dishes or a car. In states without these laws, Citron suggests this: Before a couple gets an animal, they should decide whose name will appear alone on registration or ownership papers. That person should pay any costs linked to the pet with their own money.

Some negotiators say they work to solve pet disputes through shared custody. Others say that that is not always best for the animal, especially dogs. Dogs are most often at the center of pet custody disputes.

Miles Mason Sr. is a divorce lawyer in Memphis, Tennessee. He told the AP about one couples especially heated pet custody battle. He said the wife and husband fought about their two German shepherd dogs. The wife had taken training to better control the large dogs. The husband had not. Before the divorce, the husband lost control of one of their dogs while on a walk. It attacked and killed another dog. The wife argued later that the husband should not get custody of their dogs because he could not control them.

When the couple separated, the husband wanted to visit their dogs. A judge agreed, but said the visits must be supervised and take place at the wifes home. However, the judge said he could reconsider the decision if the man sought training on how to control German shepherds.

We believe the judge had experience with German shepherds because he understood the concerns with highly trained and disciplined dogs, the lawyer said.

Karis Nafte has studied animal behavior for nearly 26 years. Two years ago, she started working as a pet custody specialist for people seeking divorces.

Part of what I try to help people understand, she said, is that even if a dog feels like a child in your heart, it isnt

In fact, treating your pet like a child could do harm to the animal. Visitation schedules or shared custody, Nafte said, can be far harder on a dog than a permanent separation. A dog moving between two homes on a usual basis, she said, can lead to behavioral problems.

She added that expert advice can help. A lot of times, she said, people just dont know what to do. They just dont want to say goodbye to their dog.

Nafte suggested putting pet custody at the top of divorce negotiations. It can make the rest of the process run more smoothly.

Mental health workers can help couples too.

Marriage expert Sharon ONeill has helped couples through divorce in New Yorks Westchester County for more than 20 years. In one case, during a discussion with a couple, a wife demanded that she must keep the dog. However, her husband did not believe she cared enough to take responsibility for the animal.

In working with her alone, I came to understand that it had more to do with hurting her husband because she truly believed he loved the dog more than he had ever been capable of loving her, ONeill said.

The mental health adviser said the couple was able to get to the truth through talking. They agreed that he would get the dog and she would get a set of furniture.

And thats the Health & Lifestyle report. Im Anna Matteo. And I'm Caty Weaver.

Leanne Italie reported this story for the Associated Press. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English. Caty Weaver was the editor.

Quiz - What Happens to Pets When Couples Break Up Start the Quiz to find out Start Quiz

_________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

couple -n. two persons married, engaged, or otherwise romantically paired

custody -n. law : the legal right to take care of a child (such as a child whose parents are divorced)

furniture -n. chairs, tables, beds, etc., that are used to make a room ready for use

divorce -n. the ending of a marriage by a legal process

disciplined -adj. marked by or possessing discipline

schedule -n. a plan of things that will be done and the times when they will be done
Not at all.

A little but not enough to alter my schedule.

Enough that I try to stay inside as much as possible.

It's really done a number on me.

Vote

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The following is taken from the Lompoc Police Department's calls-for-service log and the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office daily arrest log. Those appearing as "arrested" are only suspected of the crime indicated but are presumed innocent.

Monday, June 21

INCIDENT  At 9:44 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 800 block of North G Street.

Lompoc Police received one report of fireworks.

Tuesday, June 22:

INCIDENT  At 9:12 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 700 block of North E Street.

INCIDENT  At 10:51 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 900 block of North H Street, which resulted in an arrest/cite-release.

Wednesday, June 23:

INCIDENT  At 9:17 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of felony resisting arrest in the 600 block of North R Street.

INCIDENT  At 2:36 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon near the intersection of North D Street and East Airport Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 10:44 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 500 block of North G Street.

Lompoc Police received two reports of fireworks.

Thursday, June 24:

INCIDENT  At 4:32 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a vehicle collision with an injury near the intersection of North Street and West Maple Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 5:33 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1400 block of West North Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

ARREST  At 11:03 a.m., Robert Deleon, 40, was arrested in the 400 block of North Lupine Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of domestic violence.

ARREST  At 11:42 a.m., Nathaniel Wilson, 25, was arrested near the intersection of East Maple Avenue and North Sixth Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of domestic violence, false imprisonment, damage to a cell phone and contempt of court.

ARREST  At 12 p.m., Antonio Velazquez, 43, was arrested near the intersection of West Cherry Avenue and North T Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of felony resisting arrest and brandishing a weapon, non-firearm.

Friday, June 25:

INCIDENT  At 7:13 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard near the intersection of North D Street and East Airport Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 12:17 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 100 block of Civic Center Plaza that resulted in an arrest/cite-release.

ARREST  At 12:27 a.m., Alfonso Martinez, 26, was arrested near the intersection of Purisima Road and Rivaldi Drive and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of felony resisting arrest, child cruelty with possible injury or death, obstruction and driving under the influence of alcohol.

Lompoc Police received one report of fireworks.

Saturday, June 26:

INCIDENT  At 2:48 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 1000 block of North Sixth Street.

INCIDENT  At 3:01 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a robbery in the 300 block of East Ocean Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 6:26 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon in the 800 block of West Lauren Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 6:58 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 500 block of North G Street.

INCIDENT  At 11:39 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a person brandishing a weapon near the intersection of West Maple Avenue and North O Street.

ARREST  At 6:42 p.m., Jazmin Morenopaniagua, 25, was arrested in the 300 block of East Ocean Avenue and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of robbery.

Lompoc Police received three reports of fireworks.

Sunday, June 27:

INCIDENT  At 12:12 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an arson in the 1100 block of West Oak Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 1:42 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon in the 700 block of North E Street.

INCIDENT  At 2:48 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a shooting at a dwelling in the 700 block alley of North D and E streets.

INCIDENT  At 9:23 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 700 block of North E Street.

INCIDENT  At 9:34 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 1300 block of North V Street that resulted in a person contacted and counseled by an officer.

ARREST  At 5:11 p.m., Antonio Ramos, 40, was arrested in the 500 block alley of North M and N streets and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of assault with a firearm, possessing a firearm while addicted to drugs or convicted of a felony, illegally carrying a loaded firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition and illegally carrying a concealed weapon.

Lompoc Police received two reports of fireworks.

Monday, June 28:

INCIDENT  At 1:15 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 700 block of North D Street.

INCIDENT  At 10:30 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a person with a gun in the 1200 block of East Pine Avenue and resulted in a person contacted and counseled by an officer.

Tuesday, June 29:

INCIDENT  At 8:45 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a vehicle collision with an injury near the intersection of South F Street and East Cypress Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 12:42 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 900 block of North I Street that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 4:32 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a vehicle collision with an injury near the intersection of East Tangerine Avenue and North Lupine Street.

INCIDENT  At 7:32 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1500 block of West Lemon Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 9:16 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a shooting at a dwelling in the 400 block of North O Street.

INCIDENT  At 10:05 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 500 block of North G Street.

Wednesday, June 30:

INCIDENT  At 7:31 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon in the 300 block of South B Street that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 8:32 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a person with a gun near the intersection of West Maple Avenue and North O Street.

Lompoc Police received five reports of fireworks.

Thursday, July 1:

INCIDENT  At 2:45 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1300 block of North V Street that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 9:30 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a death investigation in the 1300 block of North L Street.

ARREST  At 9:51 a.m., Francisco Rodriguez, 33, was arrested in the 500 block of M Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of assault with a firearm, conspiracy and participation in a criminal street gang.

Lompoc Police received one report of fireworks.

Friday, July 2:

INCIDENT  At 9:38 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a vehicle collision with an injury near the intersection of North E Street and East Ocean Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 9:36 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a person with a gun in the 500 block of North Y Street.

INCIDENT  At 11:43 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon in the 400 block of West North Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

ARREST  At 10:26 a.m., Dean Acker, 38, was arrested in the 400 block of South J Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, non-firearm; and hit-and-run causing death or injury.

Lompoc Police received three reports of fireworks.

Saturday, July 3:

INCIDENT  At 6:47 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a shooting at a dwelling.

INCIDENT  At 2:33 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 700 block of West Central Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 8:29 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard near the intersection of North S Street and West College Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 11:44 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 100 block of South C Street that resulted in an arrest.

ARREST  At 5:53 p.m., Steven March, 58, was arrested in the 100 block of Civic Center Plaza and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of shooting into an inhabited dwelling.

ARREST  At 6:51 p.m., Jorge Munozortega, 40, was arrested in the 500 block alley of North L and M streets and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, non-firearm; and evasion.

ARREST  At 7:06 p.m., Michael Limon, 36, was arrested on a warrant in the 700 block of North E Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of felony resisting arrest, illegal possession of narcotics and illegally under the influence of a controlled substance.

Lompoc Police received 13 reports of fireworks.

Sunday, July 4:

INCIDENT  At 12:40 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 600 block of West Maple Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 6:56 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a vehicle collision with an injury near the intersction of North Third Street and East Airport Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 7:28 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon in the 1100 block of East Ocean Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 5:34 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an evasion/failure to yield near the intersection of North F Street and East Oak Avenue, that resulted in an arrest/cite-release.

INCIDENT  At 7:32 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 500 block of North S Street that resulted in an arrest.

ARREST  At 5:39 p.m., Guillermo Bueno, 29, was arrested in the 100 block of South C Street and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of hit-and-run resulting in death or injury and driving under the influence resulting in bodily injury.

Lompoc Police received seven reports of fireworks.

Monday, July 5:

INCIDENT  At 2:31 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1200 block of North H Street that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 3:19 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a shooting at a dwelling in the 200 block of North T Street.

INCIDENT  At 9:33 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a carjacking in the 1300 block of North V Street.

Tuesday, July 6:

INCIDENT  At 11:26 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a hit-and-run with an injury in the 300 block of East Ocean Avenue, that resulted in an arrest/cite-release.

Lompoc Police received one report of fireworks.

Wednesday, July 7:

INCIDENT  At 1:04 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard near the intersection of East Tangerine Avenue and North A Street.

INCIDENT  At 5:20 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 600 block of North H Street that resulted in an arrest/cite-release.

INCIDENT  At 6:21 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a prowler/peeping tom in the 800 block of East Airport Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 9:06 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a prowler/peeping tom in the 100 block of North M Street.

INCIDENT  At 10:34 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an attempted robbery in the 1000 block of North H Street.

ARREST  At 1:22 p.m., Christoval Vaca, 24, was arrested on a warrant in Kern County and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, non-firearm; and a probation violation.

Lompoc Police received four reports of fireworks.

Thursday, July 8:

INCIDENT  At 12:01 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a vehicle collision with an injury in the 1000 block of West Lime Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 11:43 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1000 block of North H Street.

Lompoc Police received three reports of fireworks.

Friday, July 9:

INCIDENT  At 2:09 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 1100 block of West College Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 3:42 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 4000 block of Capella Drive that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 6:27 p.m., Lompoc Police received report of a warrant service in the 400 block of South I Street that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 10:40 p.m., Lompoc Police received report of shots fired/heard in the 200 block of West North Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 11:11 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard near the intersection of South A Street and East Olive Avenue.

Lompoc Police received eight reports of fireworks.

Saturday, July 10:

INCIDENT  At 12:19 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of an assault with a deadly weapon in the 1500 block of East Ocean Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 1:08 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a prowler/peeping tom in the 200 block of East Barton Avenue.

INCIDENT  At 3:46 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1200 block of East College Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

Lompoc Police received two reports of fireworks.

Sunday, July 11:

INCIDENT  At 1:09 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1300 block of West Central Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 2:51 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a warrant service in the 1500 block of East Laurel Avenue that resulted in an arrest.

INCIDENT  At 9:21 p.m., Lompoc Police received a report of a person with a knife in the 800 block of North H Street.

ARREST  At 4:51 p.m., Treshawn Pelky, 28, was arrested in the 1600 block of West Central Avenue and booked into Santa Barbara County Jail on suspicion of carjacking; assault with a deadly weapon, non-firearm; and possession of a stolen vehicle.

Monday, July 12:

INCIDENT  At 3:50 a.m., Lompoc Police received a report of shots fired/heard in the 1200 block of West Cypress Avenue.
While Hancock College plans to have as many students as possible back on campus for the start of the 2021-22 school year in August, details about masking requirements and instruction formats remain unknown.

Meeting in the college board room on Tuesday evening, members of the Board of Trustees discussed the decision not to require COVID-19 vaccines for students or staff and debated whether masks should be required as a result.

While guidance for K-12 schools released last week requires indoor masking for all students and staff, to be enforced at the discretion of individual districts or schools, the guidance is less clear for higher education, Human Resources Director Ruben Ramirez said.

"Higher education guidance points to Cal-OSHA guidance, which really says, 'if you're unvaccinated you have to wear a mask, [and] if you're vaccinated you may not wear a mask,'" Ramirez said. "If we were going to allow students to not wear a mask in the classroom because of their vaccination status, at some point there should be a check on the vaccination status, or it would be on the honor system."

Alejandra Enciso Medina, appointed as Area 3 trustee in June, suggested that the district model the K-12 guidance of widespread masking to set a good example.

"I work with young people ages 10 to 21, and all the local school districts are still using masking, even in the summer months," Medina said. "I think we, as adults, should model that great behavior to be consistent with our communities that were serving."

Vice President of Academic Affairs Bob Curry said college leaders hope to have a clearer idea of what the fall semester will look like by Aug. 1, with the school year beginning Aug. 16.

Plans for the upcoming school year have changed dramatically over recent months. While faculty were permitted prior to the summer to choose the modality of their classes, they were later informed that all classes would take place in person after the board lifted the college's state of emergency in June.

As of this week, Hancock Full-Time Faculty Association President Roger Hall said he is unsure whether the college will require documentation or some other form of validation from faculty who have concerns about returning to campus.

However, he said the association and the district plan to meet on July 29 to discuss specifics related to the fall semester, including whether faculty are permitted to offer hybrid classes.

"Right now, I would say the expectation is that students are gonna be back on campus with maybe a few exceptions. We don't really know a lot, because in the summer we don't have very good communication," Hall said, noting that some faculty don't check their email over the summer and that some administrators have been on vacation.

Despite the remaining questions, new student trustee Jacqlyn Rayas, sworn in at the beginning of Wednesday's meeting, said she is happy that the college is committing to having classes in person this fall.

"For a lot of students and for me in particular, remote learning caused a lot of complications, and it's not conducive to a learning environment at all," said Rayas, who studies biology at Hancock. "I'm excited to come back in person, and especially for high school students who have never been to Hancock, it's really important."

To promote health messaging and encourage COVID-19 vaccinations among students, the college is joining the White House's COVID-19 College Vaccine Challenge, and will be hiring student ambassadors to provide hygiene reminders, said Vice President of Student Services Nohemy Ornelas.
Letters to the Editor: You get what you tolerate; Advocating for civility; Wake up before it's too late
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Mary Beth Duerler is the executive director of the Responsible Pet Owners Alliance, an animal welfare organization formed to promote and preserve the human/animal bond and our historic working relationship with animals.
Now that the world is turning back toward a more familiar version of itself, we are gravitating back to the normal things. For many Wisconsinites, normal comes with a choice of salad, a side of potatoes and a brandy old fashioned, sweet, sour or press (with olives).

I have been around supper clubs nearly my entire life. The Del-Bar (formerly Jimmys Del-Bar, opened in 1943) was my parents favorite. There, I learned posture, how to keep my napkin on my lap, and how to stop fidgeting. My first job was busboy at Ishnala Supper Club in Lake Delton, often cited as being the number one supper club destination in the state.

Much later, when I opened my restaurant Fedora in New York, I wanted to capture the impression of a Wisconsin supper club. Its refreshing to sit inside a restaurant where a family of five snacks on apps sits next to a retired couple who knows the employees names, next to another couple on an up north vacation. Wisconsinities romanticize the supper club experience because we feel like something special is going to happen.
As the country navigates the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, school districts are left to walk a fine line as they plan for what fall instruction will look like.

While Madison-area school districts are planning for almost entirely in-person instruction this fall, the mitigation strategies that will be in place are still largely undetermined.

The challenge facing school district leaders was made clear on Monday, as the American Academy of Pediatrics issued guidance that everyone in schools should be masked this fall  in direct contrast to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance from weeks earlier that said those who are vaccinated do not need to wear a mask in school.
Finally, our tax system must help, not hurt, our family farms. Agriculture remains a way of life in Wisconsin, and a building block of our states economy. By making permanent the estate tax exemption for family farms, we can spare family farmers across the country from a looming, painful tax hike.

American billionaires saw astronomical increases in their wealth during the pandemic  so perhaps it's no surprise some now devote their riches to rockets to the stratosphere. But to give working families, the middle class, small businesses, and family farms the help they need, those with more should pay more.

That includes me. While my family and I have nothing like the fortunes of Bezos and Branson, we have been fortunate. We benefit from a status quo that protects wealth and have been able to pay a lower rate than folks like my public school teacher parents. It's a broken, regressive system, and as your U.S. senator I will right this wrong.

That means defeating extreme politicians like Ron Johnson, who solidify this corrosively unfair status quo. Thats the difference in this campaign, and why Im running: Ron Johnson has helped entrench glaring tax inequalities with big cuts for the rich and corporations.

As a fifth-generation Wisconsinite, my focus is right here on planet Earth, fighting for Wisconsin workers and families.
Don Murphy, owner of Murphys Bar and Grill in Chinatown, says he noticed nearby restaurants asked patrons for vaccination cards but received backlash.

He said: They got eaten alive on social media. I dont want to put my staff through that.



MONTGOMERY, Ala.  With COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations up sharply over the last month in Alabama but still far below when the pandemic was at its worst early this year, school officials have said vaccines wont be required in the fall and local systems can decide on their own whether to require masks or other precautions.

While the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that schools require face masks for children older than 2 and all adults, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey disagrees, an aide said.

Governor Ivey believes students need to be in the classroom without any type of mask requirement. She continues to encourage all eligible Alabamians to roll up their sleeves and get the vaccine to make COVID-19 a distant memory, spokeswoman Gina Maiola said Monday.



LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  Arkansas hospitalizations due to the coronavirus jumped by 106 over the weekend as the state led the nation in new cases per capita.
Nearly three months into a statewide investigation of clergy abuse, Attorney General Josh Kaul says the effort has received more than 100 reports but declined to say how many of them have generated referrals to law enforcement or for victim services.

Kaul, who faces election next year, also would not go into specifics about whether Wisconsins four Catholic dioceses and one archdiocese are cooperating with the investigation, but called their participation so far uneven.

He spoke during a press conference Monday at the Dane County Courthouse in Madison, the first of six such events the first-term Democrat plans to conduct around the state to talk about the probe, which he promoted as a safe and trusted place for survivors to report.

While the investigation is not specific to any one religious faith, the Catholic Church has been embroiled in investigations of clergy abuse of children by priests for more than two decades in countries around the world.

Kaul said a number of the reports relate to incidents from many years ago and are outside of the scope of the statute of limitations. He would not say how many could be subject to prosecution and will wait until the end of the review to provide such detail.
Sheriffs detectives searched the area near the shed, eventually finding Bart Haldersons torso wrapped in pants, a black belt and nylon black rope. The search of a nearby tank revealed a pair of scissors, a saw blade and the handles of what may be bolt cutters.

Nearly a week before the grisly discovery, a family friend and co-worker of Krista Halderson became concerned when she didnt show up for work on July 2  the day Chandler Halderson claimed his parents left for the trip  as her absence wasnt prearranged.

That afternoon, the co-worker visited the Haldersons house on Oak Springs Circle, found both vehicles in the garage and knocked on the door until Chandler Halderson opened it.

The co-worker and another person at the door noticed Halderson had a bandage on one of his feet, which he told them was from breaking glass on the fireplace as he was playing with his dogs  an injury for which he asked his girlfriend to bring over hydrogen peroxide and a Swiffer.

Then hours before his arrest July 8, Halderson went to the house of neighbors to ask if their doorbell video camera could capture the road or my house. After the neighbor told Halderson police had already come to download video, Halderson asked if it captured anything.
The UW School of Medicine and Public Health has been selected as the first site of the National LGBTQ+ Fellowship Program to train early-career doctors to understand and respond to the needs of LGBTQ+ patients.

The fellowship, supported by the American Medical Association Foundation, will bring a doctor who recently completed a primary care residency to campus to work in clinics and do research and community outreach. After a $750,000 AMA grant pays for a doctor to come for a yearlong fellowship each of the next three years, the UW medical school plans to continue and expand the program with other funds, potentially having three fellows each year, said Dr. Elizabeth Petty, senior associate dean for academic affairs.

Our goal is to make it scalable and sustainable, Petty said. Wed like to create a pathway to faculty positions so they can be true champions of health equity for the LGBTQ population.

She said more than 50 medical schools competed to be the inaugural site of the fellowship, which the AMA Foundation plans to expand to other schools in coming years. A pilot version of the program has started at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, but UW is the first site of the full program, designed to create a pipeline of LGBTQ+ health specialists.
For our children, we need to collectively work to avoid missed opportunities. Goodness knows our kids have had to experience a number of those over the past couple of years. And now, at the state level, another missed opportunity could have been avoided.

To ensure the best and brightest futures for our kids, adequate resources matter greatly. We have known for a long time about serious flaws in Wisconsins school funding formula. It simply has not kept pace with the education needs of our kids, creating vast disparities in state aid.

This historical problem was recently acknowledged in a 2019 Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding, chaired by Rep. Joel Kitchens, R-Sturgeon Bay, and former Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, who retired from the Legislature earlier this year. Included in this commissions recommendations was a per-pupil increase under revenue limits. The commission also sought to restore the states two-thirds funding commitment.

The question is: When do we seize the opportunity to do something at the state level to correct these funding problems that impact the education of our children?
A lot of one-time Virginia heroes came down this month. The departure of the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville made national news.

The departure of Harry Byrd Sr.s statue from the Virginia Capitol grounds drew less attention  even though you can argue that Byrd had more influence on Virginia than Lee ever did.

Byrd certainly lasted longer. Lees main claim to fame lasted for four bloody years. Byrd ruled  theres really no better word  over Virginia for four decades, and parts of his legacy continue in state policy today.

Lee excites strange and misguided emotions from those who still cant reconcile themselves to the reality of what the Southern cause was all about. But Byrd is the more current figure and, therefore, the one we should be more concerned about.

Virginia Delegate Wendell Walker, R-Lynchburg, could have had the credit for sending Byrds statue packing.

A year ago he introduced a bill to do just that. He intended it as a joke, though, a way to jibe Democrats who were trying to bring down Confederate statues. He thought theyd be offended since Byrd was a Democrat.
According to the state's online COVID-19 dashboard, 122 Idahoans were hospitalized on July 16 due to the virus, which is up from less than 70 in mid-June.
Lynx, grizzly bears, and gray wolves all inhabit similar habitat types and geographic ranges in Idaho, and wolf hunting and trapping therefore frequently occur in areas in which lynx and grizzlies are also present, the groups said in their letter. Moreover, because snare and other authorized means of hunting and trapping are imprecise tools, they pose a substantial risk to non-target species, including lynx and grizzly bears.

Besides Little, the letter was also sent to the members of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission and the directors of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

Roger Phillips, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.

Little's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Environmental groups filed a similar notice of intent to sue in Montana last month that also involves the potential killing of grizzly bears and lynx by wolf hunters and trappers.

A primary change in the new law allows the state to hire private contractors to kill wolves and provides more money for state officials to hire the contractors.
So I'm a survivor of attempted suicides and I'd like to express the importance of awareness. It's been a taboo or stigma related subject. The truth is remaining silent and pretending it somehow will get better hasn't worked. Remaining silent about suicide and covering up suicide by hiding it from the public has saved zero lives. Remaining silent will save zero more lives. Suicide is on the rise yet we're supposed to remain quiet and accept it. I'm done remaining silent and I've made a group called Suicide Awareness on Facebook, which hopefully won't be shut down. I've been taking trainings to co-facilitate eight week classes of survivors of a suicide attempt. Idaho fought for years not to allow these groups but the data was overwhelming how these groups and bringing suicide awareness has decreased suicide attempts and actual successful suicides. See these trainings have shown that we need to talk about suicide and stop hiding from the difficult conversations. If people actually knew how many suicides happen near them then maybe they'd be more apt to talk about it and see how big of a problem it's become. I'm not even sure this will be published because of the stigma against talking about suicide. I've tried to kill myself over and over and had nowhere to turn to because everyone was scared about talking about suicide. You know I'm right when I say suicide is 100% preventable. Yes that's a fact and not just a guess! Suicide is 100% preventable yet nobody wants to break the stigma and actually start saving lives. I'm just one person reaching out to others in hope that I can make a difference!
Claire Clark said shes been working since she was 15 years old and is 40 now. She started working at $4.75 an hour and has since worked in fast food, call centers and factories. In all of the 25 years she has worked, she has not made more than $12.50 an hour, she said.

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That is not a livable wage, Clark said to the gathering. It is not a wage on which we can support families. Americans deserve a $15 minimum wage. We deserve a living wage. In fact, 15 is the bare minimum. Americans deserve not just to live. We deserve to thrive. We cannot continue to accept these wages. We cannot work for peanuts. We can be poor on our own time. Bosses, if you can hear me, pay us! We earned it! We deserve it! We are the workers! We make this world run and we will run it!

As they spoke, several people driving by on N.C. 226 South honked their horns as a show of support.

Nathan Ruggles, an Amazon driver from Candler, said he was promised $15 an hour when he started but he had to fight to get a living wage.

One of the workers at the rally who spoke to The McDowell News is a Marion native.

Jason Carroll said to The McDowell News he used to work at this Hardees.
WASHINGTON (AP)  A police official who has run large departments in Maryland and Virginia has been selected as chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which pro-Trump rioters stormed the building in a violent rage, disrupting the certification of Joe Biden's presidential win.
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Adelaide will on Tuesday become the latest in a string of Australian cities to lock down, as the largely unvaccinated nation struggles to contain a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak.

The state of South Australia, of which Adelaide is the capital, said it would join Sydney and Melbourne in locking down after five local cases were detected.

The decision means more than 14 million Australians are now under orders to stay at home.

"From 6pm tonight, South Australia moves into lockdown," state premier Steven Marshall said from Adelaide, indicating the measures would be in place for at least seven days.

"We hate putting these restrictions in place, but we believe we have just one chanceone chance to get this right."

Only 11 percent of Australia's 25 million people are currently vaccinated. But until now, widespread community transmission had been contained.

For the past month, authorities have been fighting to quash an outbreak of the fast-spreading Delta variant, which started after an overseas flight crew infected a Sydney driver.

The virus has since jumped state borders, creating around 100 new cases every day across the vast island nation.

A Sydney lockdown, now in its fourth week, has slowed the spread of the virus there but has failed to eliminate new infections.

The Sydney outbreak has now grown to 1,418 cases, with 78 new infections reported on Tuesday.

Residents are only allowed to leave home for exercise, to buy food or for a handful of other closely defined reasons.

At the same time, authorities in Melbourne on Tuesday said a snap five-day lockdown, which had been due to end, would be extended at least another seven days.

In Queensland, authorities are also on high alert after a woman who visited several tourist sites tested positive for the virus.

Explore further Melbourne extends lockdown as Australia fails to stop outbreak

 2021 AFP
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No benefit of high-flow therapy (HFT) can be derived from the available study data for patients with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or chronic type 1 respiratory failure. It therefore remains unclear whether this form of treatment has advantages over long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) or non-invasive ventilation (NIV).

This is the conclusion of the benefit assessment that the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) has now completed. The Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) had commissioned IQWiG to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of HFT in patients with stable, advanced COPD or chronic respiratory failure with oxygen deficiency (chronic type 1 respiratory failure). Treatment was to be self-administered at home, in inpatient care or rehab, etc.

However, no data were available for the final report that would have been sufficient for a benefit assessment. Since HFT fulfills the legal requirements for the intervention to be classified as having a potential, IQWiG formulated key points for two testing studies: for COPD with type I respiratory failure and for type II.

Different medical indications require different treatment approaches

In HFT, humidified and heated room air with increased flow rates is supplied via a nasal cannula; if necessary, oxygen can also be added. This aims to support breathing problems and secretion clearance and to relieve the respiratory muscle pump. Depending on the type of respiratory failure, the pathophysiology of the disease and thus the modes of action of treatment differ: In chronic type 1 respiratory failure with pulmonary impairment and corresponding respiratory failure (pulmonary failure) in connection with an undersupply of oxygen (hypoxaemia), patients require different treatment than in type 2 respiratory failure, where the respiratory muscle pump is impaired (ventilatory failure) and the disease is associated with carbon dioxide excess in the blood (hypercapnia).

The primary treatment goal, regardless of the type of failure, is to avoid acute worsening of chronic dyspnoea (exacerbations). However, the main treatment approaches differ: (long-term) oxygen therapy (LTOT) is recommended for the treatment of (chronic) hypoxaemia in type 1 respiratory failure. Various applications such as breathing masks are available for this purpose. For the treatment of type 2 (hypercapnic) respiratory failure, besides oxygen administration, CO 2 release must be supported, so invasive (intubation) or non-invasive ventilation therapy (with a breathing mask or helmet) is used.

Key points for testing studies

For the different medical indications, the IQWiG project team identified both completed and ongoing randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on HFT. However, these are insufficient to assess the benefit of HFT in patients with type 1 respiratory failure. For a robust conclusion on the benefit of HFT, further studies are needed to generate more evidence. Based on the identified potential of the intervention, IQWiG proposes two testing studies.

Because of the different treatment mechanisms, it is not meaningful to conjointly consider the studies on HFT versus long-term oxygen therapy (LTOT) or non-invasive ventilation (NIV). IQWiG therefore proposes to test the intervention in two studies: In COPD and chronic type 1 respiratory failure, HFT should be investigated as an add-on to LTOT versus LTOT alone. In COPD and chronic type 2 respiratory failure, HFT can be used instead of NIV.

Procedure of report production

In February 2021, IQWiG published the preliminary results, the preliminary report, for discussion. After completion of the commenting procedure, the project team revised the preliminary report and in May sent the final report to the contracting agency, the G-BA. The final report contains changes resulting from the commenting procedure. The written comments received are published in a separate document at the same time as the final report.

Explore further New recommendations for high-flow nasal oxygen in hospitalized patients with acute respiratory failure
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In the largest study of its kind, an investigation by UC San Francisco has found no evidence that moderate coffee consumption can cause cardiac arrhythmia.

In fact, each additional daily cup of coffee consumed among several hundred thousand individuals was associated with a 3 percent lower risk of any arrhythmia occurring, including atrial fibrillation, premature ventricular contractions, or other common heart conditions, the researchers report. The study included a four-year follow up.

The paper is published July 19, 2021, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"Coffee is the primary source of caffeine for most people, and it has a reputation for causing or exacerbating arrhythmias," said senior and corresponding author Gregory Marcus, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UCSF.

"But we found no evidence that caffeine consumption leads to a greater risk of arrhythmias," said Marcus, who specializes in the treatment of arrhythmias. "Our population-based study provides reassurance that common prohibitions against caffeine to reduce arrhythmia risk are likely unwarranted."

While some professional societies suggest avoiding caffeinated products to lower the risk for arrhythmia, this connection has not been consistently demonstratedindeed, coffee consumption may have anti-inflammatory benefits and is associated with reduced risks of some illnesses including cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson disease.

In the new study, UCSF scientists explored whether habitual coffee intake was associated with a risk of arrhythmia, and whether genetic variants that affect caffeine metabolism could modify that association. Their investigation was conducted via the community-based UK Biobank, a prospective study of participants in England's National Health Services.

Some 386,258 coffee drinkers took part in the coffee research, with an average mean age of 56 years; slightly more than half were female. It was an unprecedented sample size for this type of inquiry.

In addition to a conventional analysis examining self-reported coffee consumption as a predictor of future arrhythmias, the investigators employed a technique called 'Mendelian Randomization', leveraging genetic data to infer causal relationships. As those with the genetic variants associated with faster caffeine metabolism drank more coffee, this analysis provided a method to test the caffeine-arrhythmia relationship in a way that did not rely on participant self-report and should have been immune to much of the confounding inherent to most observational studies.

With a mean four-year follow up, data were adjusted for demographic characteristics, health and lifestyle habits.

Ultimately, approximately 4 percent of the sample developed an arrhythmia. No evidence of a heightened risk of arrhythmias was observed among those genetically predisposed to metabolize caffeine differently. The researchers said that higher amounts of coffee were actually associated with a 3 percent reduced risk of developing an arrhythmia.

The authors noted limitations including the self-reporting nature of the study, and that detailed information on the type of coffeesuch as espresso or notwas unavailable.

"Only a randomized clinical trial can definitively demonstrate clear effects of coffee or caffeine consumption," said Marcus. "But our study found no evidence that consuming caffeinated beverages increased the risk of arrhythmia. Coffee's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may play a role, and some properties of caffeine could be protective against some arrhythmias."

More information: Eun-jeong Kim et al, Coffee Consumption and Incident Tachyarrhythmias, JAMA Internal Medicine (2021). Journal information: JAMA Internal Medicine Eun-jeong Kim et al, Coffee Consumption and Incident Tachyarrhythmias,(2021). DOI: 10.1001/jamainternmed.2021.3616
Credit: Royal Women's Hospital

Researchers from the Royal Women's Hospital are calling for disabilities to be routinely asked about and recorded on patient maternity records to enable disability-aware care for women who need it throughout their pregnancy and birth.

The Women's, in partnership with La Trobe University, has conducted the first study in Australia to examine pregnancy and birth outcomes of women with various types of disabilities including physical, cognitive, sensory and intellectualwith the findings published in leading obstetric journal the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.

The research adds to the global evidence base acknowledging that women with disability have higher rates of poor perinatal outcomesincluding preterm births, low birthweight babies and admittances to Special Care and Neonatal intensive Care Unitswhen compared with general maternity data.

Midwife Cherise Smith was a member of the research team and runs the Women with Individual Needs (WIN) Clinic at the Women'sthe only specialist pregnancy clinic for people with disability in Australia.

"Around 9.5 percent of women of childbearing age have a disability, but disability status is not routinely recorded in maternity careand this can cause a number of significant problems for these women and their babies," she said.

"By asking women if they have a disability and accurately entering their disability status into the medical record, clinical teams can share relevant information and partner with women to customize maternity care to meet their specific needs. It also helps identify existing co-morbidities that can impact their pregnancy.

"At the WIN clinic, we know that disability-aware care from both a social worker and a midwife is beneficial, ensuring that women with disability get to their antenatal appointments, have their needs understood and are able to care for their baby as independently as possible."

Charlie Smithson led the research at La Trobe University and said the benefits of routinely identifying these women within maternity services doesn't stop at patient care.

"Identifying women with disabilities in maternity services on a national scale will allow us to further understand the potential links between disability and poorer perinatal outcomes. At this stage there's a lot we have yet to learn about the effects of various disabilities on pregnancy and birth," she said.

"We are continuing our research in this important area. The next phase of our research will enable us to understand how women like to be asked about disability status and also give us more insight into the existing identification processes in maternity services nation-wide."

Key statistics from the paper:

Preterm birth

Occurrence in women with disabilities: 17%

Occurrence hospital-wide: 4%

Cesarean section birth

Occurrence in women with disabilities: 52%

Occurrence hospital-wide: 32%

Baby has low birthweight

Occurrence in women with disabilities: 20%

Occurrence hospital-wide: 9%

Baby requires resuscitation

Occurrence in women with disabilities: 35%

Occurrence hospital-wide: 11%

Baby is admitted to Special Care or Neonatal Intensive Care Unit

Occurrence in women with disabilities: 29%

Occurrence hospital-wide:13%

Baby receives formula in hospital

Occurrence in women with disabilities: 54%

Occurrence hospital-wide: 28%

Explore further Is disability a risk factor for miscarriage?

More information: Charlie A. Smithson et al, Perinatal outcomes of women with a disability who received pregnancy care through a specialised disability clinic in Melbourne, Australia, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (2021). Charlie A. Smithson et al, Perinatal outcomes of women with a disability who received pregnancy care through a specialised disability clinic in Melbourne, Australia,(2021). DOI: 10.1111/ajo.13326

Provided by Royal Women's Hospital
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

French health authorities said Tuesday that no excessive lead levels had been detected in children living close to the burned out Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris, or going to school nearby.

Several hundred tonnes of lead in the roof of Notre-Dame melted or were dispersed as microparticles over Paris when the Gothic masterpiece was gutted by a fire on April 15, 2019.

But a study of 1,222 children concluded that there had been "no significant increase in childhood lead exposure," Public Health France said.

Levels of lead detected in children living or studying in the vicinity of the cathedral were "close to those estimated in the general population and lower than those of children screened in Paris" during previous testing programs in 2015 and 2018, it said.

Paris authorities and health bodies have been accused of failing to safeguard the health of people living near the cathedral due to the lead pollution from the fire.

One complaint was filed earlier this month by families living near the cathedral, along with the Paris branch of the CGT trade union and the anti-pollution association Henri Pezerat.

Another one was filed in April by the French association Robin des Bois, which alleges that lives were put in danger.

Lead poisoning, which can result in developmental problems, is especially dangerous to unborn babies and young children, who absorb more lead than adults.

Explore further Notre Dame's melted lead prompts deep clean for schools

 2021 AFP
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A US federal judge on Monday upheld a university's decision to require its students and employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the first ruling on an increasingly divisive issue ahead of the new school year.

The decision by Judge Damon Leichty of the South Bend court, around 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Chicago, can still be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

In a case brought by eight students, the judge refused to suspend new health rules imposed by Indiana University in preparation for the resumption of classes between August 1 and 15.

The rules require COVID-19 vaccination for the school's 90,000 students and 40,000 employees but allow for exemptions on religious or medical grounds.

The US Constitution allows students to refuse "unwanted medical treatment based on bodily autonomy," Leichty wrote.

But it also "permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health," he continued in his 100-page ruling.

Six of the eight plaintiffs already have religious exemptions, but they don't want to wear face masks or abide by social distancing, he said.

Some put forward religious reasons or the fear of being discriminated against, while others described the measure as a cultural attack.

However, in recent months, they had all agreed to comply with such health measures in other contexts, the judge pointed out.

The vaccination campaign in the United States, which has made enormous progress against the pandemic, has stalled in recent weeks.

About 68 percent of adults have received at least a first dose, but there are large geographical disparities.

Opposition to the vaccine is significantly tied to the political divide in the country, with hostility much more pronounced in the right-wing demographic, particularly among supporters of former president Donald Trump.

Several conservative groups, such as student organization Turning Point, have launched a campaign against mandatory vaccination on campuses and are backing lawsuits across the country.

Universities have taken various positions, with 500 currently requiring their students or staff to get COVID-19 vaccines.

 2021 AFP
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French Health Minister Olivier Veran said Tuesday that new COVID-19 infections were increasing at an unprecedented rate due to the Delta variant, after 18,000 cases were reported for the previous 24 hours.

Referring to the latest figures while speaking in parliament, Veran said: "That means we have an increase in the spread of the virus of around 150 percent in the last week: we've never seen that, neither with COVID [the original form], nor the British variant, nor the South African or the Brazilian one."

The level of infections is the highest since mid-May, when the country was emerging from a third nationwide lockdown.

France, which is bracing for a fourth wave of infections because of the spread of the Delta variant, has been racing to get as many people vaccinated as possible.

Addressing vaccine sceptics, Veran said the new figures showed that "this is no time for doubts and hesitation" and that achieving herd immunity through a high degree of vaccine coverage is "the only way we have ...of getting rid of COVID once and for all."

He was speaking as parliament was due to debate a set of controversial new rules aimed at pressuring millions of vaccine holdouts into getting a jab, since only 45 percent of the population is fully vaccinated.

Under a bill to be put a vote in the coming days, people who want to eat in restaurants, go to the cinema or take a long-distance train will have to be vaccinated or produce a negative COVID test.

And from September on, vaccinations will become mandatory for healthcare and retirement home workers.

Macron's announcement of the measures this month sparked a scramble for vaccine shots in a country that was one of the most vaccine-shy in the world at the start of the pandemic.

MPs receive death threats

But it has also sparked a backlash, with over 100,000 people protesting across the country on Saturday against what they called the country's vaccine "dictatorship."

In a sign of the passions unleashed by the measures, two vaccination centres have been vandalised in the past week, and MPs from Macron's Republic on the Move party have been the target of vitriol on social media.

Paris prosecutors said Tuesday that they were investigating death threats received by several lawmakers who have backed the new rules.

Patricia Miralles, a Republic on the Move MP representing the southern Herault constituency, which includes the city of Montpellier, published a message she received that threatened pro-vaccine MPs with "real bullets."

On Friday, a dozen anti-vaccine protesters stormed parliament speaker Richard Ferrand's constituency office in the western Brittany region but caused no damage.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin has ordered the police to boost security around the homes and constituency offices of MPs.

Explore further France warns virus fourth wave could hit by end-July

 2021 AFP
Electron micrographs of hepatitis C virus purified from cell culture. Scale bar is 50 nanometers. Credit: Center for the Study of Hepatitis C, The Rockefeller University.

There's a good reason why hepatitis C is known as a "silent killer."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an estimated 3.2 million Americans live with chronic hepatitis C infection, which is transmitted through infected bodily fluids like blood and semen, and causes inflammation of the liver. Yet up to 75% of people who have hepatitis C aren't aware they have it.

Most of those living with the virus experience only mild symptoms or don't have any symptoms at all until they develop serious liver damage or another life-threatening liver disease. Unfortunately, that means they aren't getting diagnosedand treatment is delayeduntil the later stages when irreversible liver damage has occurred.

Here, hepatologist Nancy Reau, MD, associate director of the Solid Organ Transplant Program at Rush University Medical Center, explains who is at risk for hepatitis C and offers advice to help you protect yourself.

1. Baby boomers are especially vulnerable.

"The hepatitis C virus didn't have a name or a screening test until in 1989," Reau says. "That means people born between 1945 and 1965, the group referred to as 'baby boomers," are at highest risk of infection. They grew up before health care facilities started taking standard precautions, like not sharing vials of medicine among patients and requiring staff to wear gloves."

The CDC reports that baby boomers are five times more likely to have Hepatitis C than other adults, accounting for 75% of those living with the disease.

These are some other reasons you may be at risk:

You have engaged in high-risk behaviors like IV drug use (including sharing needles) or unprotected sex

Your biological mother has/had hepatitis C

You have HIV/AIDS

You received blood transfusions, an organ transplant or dialysis before 1989

You were or are currently incarcerated

2. Screening tests are effective but not standard.

Today, there are several blood tests to screen for hepatitis C. Unfortunately, none are typically included in the blood screening panels your primary care doctor orders during an annual physical.

"If you have any of the above risk factors, tell your doctor and ask for the tests," Reau advises.

3. Sometimes, the infection goes away on its own.



Acute hepatitis is C is a short-term illness that occurs within the first six months after being exposed to the virus. Like the human papillomavirus (HPV), early acute hepatitis C can clear on its own without treatment; this happens about 25% of the time.

However, it's more likely that the virus will remain in your body longer than six months, at which point it's considered to be chronic hepatitis C infection.

"Being younger or a woman tends to be a factor in whether the virus clears on its own, and genetics may play a role," Reau says. "But we can't determine with certainty which people are certain to clear the infection and which aren't."

4. Prevention is the best medicine.

Even though hepatitis C rarely spreads within a household, if you or a family member have the disease, it's wise to take precautions to prevent its spreadespecially if anyone in your home is immune compromised, or has cuts or open sores that increase the risk of infection.

In general, use these common sense preventive tips:

Unless you are in a long-term, monogamous relationship, practice safe sex.

Clean up spilled or dried blood with a bleach-based cleaning solution and wear rubber gloves.

Do not share razors.

Do not share toothbrushes. "Though hepatitis C is not transmitted through saliva, there might be blood on the toothbrush," Reau says.

5. It's different than hepatitis A and B.



Each form of hepatitis has its own specific virus that spreads and is treated differently. "Hepatitis simply means inflammation of the liver, or that the virus has an affinity for hurting the liver," Reau says.

Hepatitis A is an acute, short-term infection that often does not require treatment.

Hepatitis B hides deep in the body and, like hepatitis C, is treated in a variety of ways, from antiviral medications to liver transplants.

"The viruses are different, but all of them should be taken very seriously since they can lead to significant liver disease and even death," she adds.

6. It is highly curable

Direct-acting antiviral medicationsgiven over a 12-week periodactually can cure early acute hepatitis C better than 90% of the time. These drugs include Harvoni (the brand name for a combination of ledipasvir and sofosbuvir) and Viekira Pack (a mix of ombitasvir, paritaprevir, ritonavir and dasabuvir).

Some of these treatments are expensive, however, so work with your insurance company to determine coverage.

Two new medications for chronic hepatitis C are expected to be approved by late 2017, and clinical trials are in place for additional treatments. "Treatment before significant liver disease is key to achieving the best long-term improvement in your health," Reau says.

7. Even if you've been cured, it can have lifelong health implications.

"Hepatitis C is a lot more than just a liver disease," Reau says. "It has been associated with many medical conditions, such as an increased risk of developing diabetes, kidney disease and cancer."

While curing hepatitis C significantly reduces the risk of serious complications, like liver failure, liver cancer and the need for transplantation, it doesn't completely eliminate the health risks associated with the disease.

"Hep C is linked to scarring of the liveror cirrhosisand the more scar tissue that develops, the greater the likelihood of complications," Reau says. "If there is a lot of scarring, you will need lifelong monitoring."

Reau also recommends leading a healthy lifestyle to help prevent re-infection and further liver damage: Limit alcohol consumption, control your weight, avoid high-risk activities (e.g., IV drug use, unprotected sex) and manage diabetes if you have it.

8. If you notice symptoms, see a doctor right away.

Symptoms of hepatitis C include the following:

Jaundicea yellowish tone to the eyes and skin

Mild, chronic right belly pain

Nausea

Loss of appetite

Fatigue

If you believe you have been exposed to hepatitis C or notice any symptoms, visit your primary care doctor as soon as possible. If you test positive for the virus, your doctor can refer you to a hepatologist to discuss your options.

"I strongly encourage all baby boomers and others who are at high risk to get tested, even if you don't look or feel sick," Reau says. "If you do have hepatitis C, the earlier we discover it, the more likely we can prevent it from progressing and causing more serious damage."

Explore further Hepatitis B virus monitoring needed after liver transplantation
In this Sept. 14, 2020, file photo, Ramananda Sarkar, 43, who has cremated more than 450 COVID-19 victims stands by burning funeral pyres of COVID-19 victims in Gauhati, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File

India's excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the South Asian country.

Most experts believe India's official toll of more than 414,000 dead is a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns as exaggerated and misleading.

The report released Tuesday estimated excess deathsthe gap between those recorded and those that would have been expectedto be 3.4 million to 4.7 million since the pandemic began through last month. It said an accurate figure may "prove elusive," but the true death toll "is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count."

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian government's former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, and Harvard University.

It said the count could have missed deaths that occurred in overwhelmed hospitals or while health care was disrupted, particularly during the devastating virus surge earlier this year.

"True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India's worst human tragedy since Partition and independence," the report said.

In this May 6, 2021, file photo, people watch burning funeral pyres of their relatives who died of COVID-19 in a ground that has been converted into a crematorium in New Delhi, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Ishant Chauhan, File

The Partition of the British-ruled Indian subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947 led to the killing of up to 1 million people as gangs of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other.

The report on India's virus toll used three calculation methods: data from the civil registration system that records births and deaths across seven states, blood tests showing the prevalence of the virus in India alongside global COVID-19 fatality rates, and an economic survey of nearly 900,000 people done three times a year.

Researchers cautioned that each method had weaknesses, such as the economic survey omitting the causes of death.

Instead, researchers looked at deaths from all causes and compared that data to mortality in previous yearsa method widely considered an accurate metric.

Researchers also cautioned that virus prevalence and COVID-19 deaths in the seven states they studied may not translate to all of India, since the virus could have spread more in urban versus rural states and since health care quality varies greatly around India.

In this April 24, 2021, file photo, multiple funeral pyres of those who died of COVID-19 burn at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium for the mass cremation of coronavirus victims, in New Delhi, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Altaf Qadri, File

Other nations also are believed to have undercounted deaths in the pandemic. But India is thought to have a greater gap due to having the world's second-highest population of 1.4 billion and because not all deaths were recorded even before the pandemic.

The health ministry did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the report.

Dr. Jacob John, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India and was not part of the research, reviewed the report for the AP and said it underscores the devastating impact COVID-19 had on the country's underprepared health system.

"This analysis reiterates the observations of other fearless investigative journalists that have highlighted the massive undercounting of deaths," Jacob said.

The report also estimated that nearly 2 million Indians died during the first surge in infections last year and said not "grasping the scale of the tragedy in real time" may have "bred collective complacency that led to the horrors" of the surge earlier this year.

In this April 25, 2021, file photo, a relative of a person who died of COVID-19 breaks down during cremation in Jammu, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Channi Anand, File

In this July 2, 2021 file photo, a relative performs last rites before the cremation of a COVID-19 victim in Gauhati, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File

In this May 11, 2021, file photo, family members and volunteers carry the body of a COVID-19 victim for cremation in New Delhi, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Amit Sharma, File

In this May 5, 2021, file photo, funeral pyres of twenty-five COVID-19 victims burn at an open crematorium set up at a granite quarry on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File

In this April 25, 2021, file photo, a man in protective suit digs earth to bury the body of a person who died of COVID-19 in Gauhati, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File

In this April 29, 2021, file photo, a man runs to escape heat emitting from the multiple funeral pyres of COVID-19 victims at a crematorium in the outskirts of New Delhi, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. Credit: AP Photo/Amit Sharma, File

Over the last few months, some Indian states have increased their COVID-19 death toll after finding thousands of previously unreported cases, raising concerns that many more fatalities were not officially recorded.

Several Indian journalists have also published higher numbers from some states using government data. Scientists say this new information is helping them better understand how COVID-19 spread in India.

Murad Banaji, who studies mathematics at Middlesex University and has been looking at India's COVID-19 mortality figures, said the recent data has confirmed some of the suspicions about undercounting. Banaji said the new data also shows the virus wasn't restricted to urban centers, as contemporary reports had indicated, and that India's villages were also badly affected.

"A question we should ask is if some of those deaths were avoidable," he said.

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
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New research adds to a body of evidence indicating decisions about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment for patients with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) should not be made in the early days following injury.

In a July 6, 2021, study published in JAMA Neurology, researchers led by UC San Francisco, Medical College of Wisconsin and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital followed 484 patients with moderate-to-severe TBI. They found that among the patients in a vegetative state, 1 in 4 "regained orientation"meaning they knew who they were, their location and the datewithin 12 months of their injury.

"Withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment based on early prediction of poor outcome accounts for most deaths in patients hospitalized with severe TBI," said senior author Geoffrey Manley, MD, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of neurological surgery at UCSF and chief of neurosurgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, noting that 64 of the 92 fatalities in the study occurred within two weeks of injury.

"TBI is a life-changing event that can produce significant, lasting disability, and there are cases when it is very clear early on that a patient will not recover," he said. "But results from this study show a significant proportion of our participants experienced major improvements in life functioning, with many regaining independence between two weeks and 12 months after injury."

The patients in the study were enrolled by the brain injury research initiative TRACK-TBI, of which Manley is the principal investigator. All patients were 17 and older and had presented to hospitals with level 1 trauma centers within 24 hours of injury. Their exams met criteria for either moderate TBI (approximately one third of patients) or severe TBI.

In both groups, the most common causes of injury were falls, assault and primarily car and motorcycle crashes in which the patient had been a driver/passenger, pedestrian or cyclist.

The patients, whose average ages were 35 in the severe TBI group (78 percent males) and 38 in the moderate TBI group (80 percent males), were assessed using the Glasgow Outcomes Scale Extended (GOSE), which ranges from 1 for death to 8 for "upper good recovery" and resumption of normal life. The Disability Rating Scale (DRS) was also used to categorize impairment.

At 12 months, small but significant minority of severe TBI patients had no disability

At two weeks post-injury, 93 percent of the severe TBI group and 79 percent of the moderate TBI group had moderate-to-severe disability, according to the DRS, and 80 percent had GOSE scores from 2 to 3, meaning they required assistance in basic everyday functioning.

But by 12 months, half of the severe TBI group and three-quarters of the moderate TBI group had GOSE scores of at least 4, indicating they could function independently at home for at least eight hours per day. Moreover, 19 percent of the severe TBI group had no disability, according to the DRS, and a further 14 percent had only mild injury, the researchers noted.

Most surprising were the findings for the 62 surviving patients who had been in a vegetative state, defined as a chronic state of brain dysfunction in which a person shows no signs of awareness. All patients had recovered consciousness by the 12-month mark and 14 out of the 56 with available data (1 in 4) had regained orientation. All but one survivor in this group recovered at least basic communication ability.

"These patients made the cut for favorable outcome," said co-first author, Joseph Giacino, Ph.D., of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "Their GOSE scores were 4 or higher, which meant they could be at home unsupervised for at least eight hours a day, since they were able to take care of basic needs, such as eating and toileting."

The study follows previous research that shows a significant percentage of patients with grave impairments achieve favorable functionality many months or years later. This research, led by Giacino, coincided with the recommendation in 2018 from the American Academy of Neurology that in the first 28 days after injury, clinicians should refrain from telling families that a patient's prognosis is beyond hope.

"While a substantial proportion of patients die or suffer lasting disability, our study adds to growing evidence that severe acute impairment does not portend uniformly poor long-term outcome," said Manley, who is also affiliated with the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. "Even those patients in a vegetative statean outcome viewed as diremay improve, since this is a dynamic condition that evolves over the first year."

Explore further For concussion patients, CTs offer window into recovery
A medical assistant prepares a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to be administered to a patient. Credit: Public domain image courtesy of Lisa Ferdinando, U.S. Department of Defense

The case of a patient who experienced two facial palsiesone after the first and another after the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccinestrongly suggests that Bell's palsy (facial nerve palsy of unknown cause) is linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, doctors write in the journal BMJ Case Reports.

They describe the first case to be reported in the medical literature of two separate unilateral facial nerve palsies, where muscles on one side of the face become weak or paralyzed, occurring shortly after each dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

"The occurrence of the episodes immediately after each vaccine dose strongly suggests that the Bell's palsy was attributed to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, although a causal relationship cannot be established," the authors say.

Single episodes of unilateral facial nerve palsies were reported in the initial clinical trials of the three major COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in the UK (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford/Astra Zeneca), and there have been subsequent case reports.

In phase 3 trials, four cases of facial palsy of unknown cause (Bell's palsy) were reported in volunteers who received the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine compared with none in those who received the placebo vaccine, and three cases were reported in volunteers who received the Moderna mRNA vaccine compared with one in the placebo group. Three cases of facial nerve palsy were also reported in volunteers who received the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine during clinical trials, and there were three cases in volunteers who received the placebo vaccine.

This case report describes a 61-year-old Caucasian man with no previous history of facial nerve palsy who experienced an episode of Bell's palsy on the right side of his face five hours after receiving his first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and a more severe episode of Bell's palsy on the left side of his face two days after receiving the second dose.

The patient had a high BMI, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and type 2 diabetes. Both doses of the vaccine were administered to the left arm.

The patient attended the emergency department after the first episode, unable to close his left eye properly or move the left side of his forehead and was diagnosed with Bell's palsy. Routine bloods and a CT head scan showed nothing of concern and he was discharged with a course of steroids, and the facial nerve palsy completely resolved.

The patient received the second dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine six weeks after the first, and developed a more severe left-sided facial nerve palsy two days later. The symptoms included dribbling, difficulty swallowing and inability to fully close his left eye. He went to the emergency department, where he was again prescribed a course of steroids. He was also referred to the emergency ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) clinic, which continued the steroids and referred him to ophthalmology.

The authors report that his symptoms have greatly improved and the patient is almost back to normal. "The patient has been advised to discuss future mRNA vaccines with the GP on a case-by-case basis, taking into account risk versus benefit of having each vaccine," they say.

Bell's palsy is believed to be related to facial nerve inflammation and swelling due to build up of fluid (oedema) caused by a virus. In 2004 the inactivated intranasal influenza vaccine was shown to significantly increase the risk of Bell's palsy and was discontinued. Increased incidence of Bell's palsy has also been seen following administration of other influenza and meningococcal vaccines, although a causal link has not been established.

Although most cases of Bell's palsy spontaneously recover with time, the symptoms can cause significant temporary disability, affecting facial expression and ability to eat and drink. Risk factors include diabetes, obesity, hypertension, pregnancy, pre-eclampsia and upper respiratory disease.

More information: Abigail Burrows et al, Sequential contralateral facial nerve palsies following COVID-19 vaccination first and second doses, BMJ Case Reports (2021). Journal information: BMJ Case Reports Abigail Burrows et al, Sequential contralateral facial nerve palsies following COVID-19 vaccination first and second doses,(2021). DOI: 10.1136/bcr-2021-243829
Credit: Shutterstock

A new study by UNSW Sydney researchers has revealed people with dementia entering aged care and who change their general practitioner (GP) are more likely than those who retain their usual GP to experience a higher increase in medicationspecifically antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants.

The study was published this week in the Medical Journal of Australia. The research analyzed data from 2250 new residents with a dementia diagnosis prior to entering residential care between January 2010 and June 2014 from the Sax Institute's 45 and Up Study in New South Wales.

"We already knew there were high levels of psychotropic medicine prescribing in residential aged care, in particular, medicines like antipsychotics and benzodiazepines," said lead author Dr. Heidi Welberry at the Center for Big Data Research in Health, UNSW Sydney.

"There's a big uptick in prescribing just after entry to residential aged care. We also know anecdotally that many people change GP when they go into residential care. So, what we looked at was whether this increase in prescriptions was related to a change in their usual GP," said Dr. Welberry.

Prior to this research, little was known about how many residents changed their GP when they entered aged care facilities, or what effect this had on their care.

Of the 2250 new residents with dementia, just over a quarter (28 percent) retained their usual GP, over a quarter (29 percent) changed to another known GP (that is a GP they had seen before but not their usual GP) and nearly half (44 percent) saw a new GP.

Residents seeing a new GP were dispensed more medicinesincluding antipsychotics and benzodiazepinesthan residents who retained their usual or known GP. The percentage increase for medicines dispensed for residents with a new GP was 20 percent, twice as high as those who saw their usual GP (9 percent) or a known GP (10 percent).

Increase in medication may be harmful

Polypharmacy in older people can increase the risks of medication errors and hazardous interactions. For antipsychotics and benzodiazepines, the expected benefit for older people with dementia is small and the risk of adverse effects high.

Professor Henry Brodaty, one of the co-authors of the study said, "There's an increased risk in adverse events like stroke, and death among older people with dementia taking antipsychotics. So generally, the recommendation is to try other strategies first to help manage changed behaviors and psychological symptoms associated with dementia. This could include diversion therapy and music therapy."

The research highlighted the pressure aged care systems are under around the world due to aging populations and the increasing prevalence of dementia. During the Australian Royal Commission into the Quality and Safety of Aged Care, inappropriate medicine use was among the problems scrutinized, particularly the use of antipsychotics and sedatives as chemical restraints.

Professor Louisa Jorm, another co-author, acknowledged a change in prescriptions for people entering residential care may reflect events that precipitated their entry or their adjustment to their new surroundings. For people with dementia, a new environment can be distressing, and the impact can be exacerbated by having an unfamiliar GP.

Numbers of medicines dispensed per person before and after entry into residential aged care, by residential care general practitioner category* * Mean values are inverse probability of treatment-weighted to balance the differences in covariates between general practitioner categories

The Royal Commission into Aged Care noted that pharmacologically restraining patients can arise from a "lack of knowing the person as an individual person".

"New GPs who already see many patients in the residential care facility may possibly be influenced a bit more by the residential aged care staff as opposed to those who know their patients and families better. But this is something we don't know. This study has raised a lot of questions about what may drive changes in prescribing patterns," said Dr. Welberry.

"The Australian Medical Association (AMA) in 2018 examined barriers to GPs providing care in nursing homes. These included geographical relocation and financial barriers. As it can be difficult and inefficient for GPs to just visit a single patient in a particular nursing home, especially one they don't regularly visit, they may transfer care to another GP."

Dr. Welberry said the main recommendation from the research was looking at new models of GP care in residential aged carea recommendation also made by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety.

"The takeaway message is the importance of looking at the continuity of care for residents as they enter residential aged care," said Dr. Welberry.

A move towards high-quality aged care

Dr. Welberry said she hopes this study forms part of the discussion around what a high-quality model of GP care in aged care looks like.

"We would also like to understand more about some of the drivers behind prescribing in terms of how these might differ among these different GP groups.

"For example, looking at particular aspects like how a GP may approach caring for a new patient that they haven't seen before at that entry point? I think there's certainly a lot more that we can investigate in this regard. But hopefully, it raises discussion around what good quality GP care should be in this particular setting."

The researchers said facilitating GP continuity of care and better support for GP handover processes could potentially prevent inappropriate psychotropic prescribing for aged care residents.

"Anything that can provide a GP with greater support to spend more time in that transition periodand to really understand a new patient's situationwill assist in establishing a higher level of care. This includes better organization of GP care handover, including the medical history of the new patient," said Dr. Welberry.

"There's a lot of pressure on GPs to care for many people, so time pressure can be really difficult."

Explore further Calls for caution on psychotropic drug use in residential aged care

More information: Heidi J Welberry et al, Psychotropic medicine prescribing and polypharmacy for people with dementia entering residential aged care: the influence of changing general practitioners, Medical Journal of Australia (2021). Journal information: Medical Journal of Australia Heidi J Welberry et al, Psychotropic medicine prescribing and polypharmacy for people with dementia entering residential aged care: the influence of changing general practitioners,(2021). DOI: 10.5694/mja2.51153

Provided by Medical Journal of Australia
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Although people in early 2020 hoarded toilet paper, washed their hands incessantly, and wouldn't leave home, 11 months later the public pushed the envelope on COVID-19 safety precautions and ignored warnings as time went on, a new University of California, Davis, study suggests.

Researchers in the Department of Communication examined people's reactions and expressions of anxiety about news articles on Twitter. Additionally, they investigated reactions to fear-inducing health news over time, despite the steadily rising COVID-19 death toll, said Hannah Stevens, a doctoral student in communication and lead author of the paper.

The paper, "Desensitization to Fear-Inducting COVID-19 Health News on Twitter: Observational Study," was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research Infodemiology on July 16. The researchers examined how COVID-19 news articles shared to Twitter were first met with anxiety-ridden tweets early in the pandemic, during a coinciding spike in instances of panic-buying, extreme social distancing and quarantine measures. Despite the increased death toll, those behaviors then gave way over time to less concerned responses to COVID-19 news, along with increases in societal risk-taking during that time period.

"COVID-19 has made an indelible mark on history, and now it's time to consider what went wrong so we can do better in communicating more effectively during future health crises, and even now, as the delta variant becomes more widespread," said Stevens. "First and foremost, we need to understand how and why scary health news lost impact over time, despite the rapidly increasing death toll."

The authors set out to test the hypothesis that early fear-based health messages in news reports significantly motivated individuals to take actions to control the threat, yet over-exposure to the same messages desensitized peopleor made them less likely to feel anxious over time.

During a period of 11 months, the team used a computerized methodology to analyze linguistic anxiety levels in hundreds of COVID-19 news articles on Twitter, along with the anxiety levels in corresponding user tweets. They then correlated the findings with the COVID-19 death toll in the United States.

"Our study shows a need to delve deeper into how to re-sensitize the public and motivate them to take action in the face of an ongoing emergency. Testing the effectiveness of various health-risk communication strategies could quite possibly mean the difference between life and death in the future," Stevens said.

"If another health crisis occurred today, or COVID-19 takes another turn for the worse, it is essential for public health officials to consider that they are communicating to a desensitized public. I hope that this paper can be an impetus to get that discussion started."

Explore further Twitter analysis finds national lockdown announcement helped minimise COVID-19 misinformation

More information: Stevens HR, Oh YJ, Taylor LR, Desensitization to Fear-Inducing COVID-19 Health News on Twitter: Observational Study, JMIR Infodemiology 2021;1(1):e26876, infodemiology.jmir.org/2021/1/e26876 Stevens HR, Oh YJ, Taylor LR, Desensitization to Fear-Inducing COVID-19 Health News on Twitter: Observational Study,2021;1(1):e26876, DOI: 10.2196/26876
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

An observational study in Barcelona, Spain found that implementation of same-day rapid screening, use of face masks, and improved ventilation was associated with very low rates of SARS-CoV-2 transmission at an indoor mass-gathering live concert without physical distancing. The brief research report is published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Indoor mass-gathering events have been banned since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic because of the high risk for the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Protocols are needed to prevent virus transmission during such events.

Researchers from Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital, Barcelona, Spain studied electronic health records to determine if previously tested containment measures could prevent high rates of transmission during an indoor live music concert with 5,000 attendees. On-site nurses screened all attendees with an antigen-detecting rapid diagnostic test (Ag-RDT) and filtering facepiece 2 masks were required to be worn during the entire event. Singing and dancing were allowed, and no physical distancing was required. An analysis of 4,584 attendees found 6 cases of COVID-19 within the 2 weeks after the concert. Of those 6 persons, 3 were identified in contact-tracing studies of known index cases who had not attended the concert; therefore, their contagion was unlikely to occur during the event. One woman may have had COVID-19 and attended the event during the incubation period. The transmission source of the 2 remaining cases could not be identified.

The authors note that the study was conducted in a community with low vaccination rates and a moderate infection rate. Nonetheless, they conclude that their findings have implications for informing safety measures at similar mass-gathering indoor events.

Explore further Few reported Covid infections after trial Barcelona gig
Researchers compared data for pregnant women in Rio de Janeiro and Manaus who were infected by zika virus in 2015-16. Factors that influenced the risk of fetal malformation were the high zika attack rate in the area and being infected in the first trimester of pregnancy. Credit: TV Brasil

A pregnant woman infected by Zika virus does not face a greater risk of giving birth to a baby with microcephaly if she has previously been exposed to dengue virus, according to a Brazilian study that compared data for pregnant women in Rio de Janeiro and Manaus.

A Zika epidemic broke out in Brazil in 2015-16 in areas where dengue is endemic. Both viruses are transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Some of the states affected by the Zika epidemic reported a rise in cases of microcephaly, a rare neurological disorder in which the baby's brain fails to develop completely. Others saw no such rise.

According to this new study by Brazilian researchers, two factors explain the rise in microcephaly in only some areas: The high Zika attack rate, and the mother's having contracted the virus in the first trimester of pregnancy. The term attack rate in epidemiology refers to the number of cases divided by the total population.

The study was supported by FAPESP via two projects (16/15021-1 and 13/21719-3), and was conducted under the aegis of the Network for Research on Zika Virus in Sao Paulo (Rede Zika). The results are described in an article in Viruses, a peer-reviewed open-access journal published by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). The article appeared in late April in a special issue on Zika and pregnancy.

"The discrepancies between regions in terms of the numbers of reported cases of microcephaly during the Zika epidemic were puzzling. One of the hypotheses was that prior exposure to dengue might make Zika more severe, but in the state of Sao Paulo there weren't many adverse effects of Zika even though the region is highly endemic for dengue, so we decided to try to find out what could explain the differences," said virologist Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira, a professor at the Sao Jose do Rio Preto Medical School (FAMERP) in Sao Paulo, and co-principal investigator for the study alongside Patricia Brasil, a researcher at Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (FIOCRUZ) in Rio de Janeiro.

According to Nogueira, their attention was drawn to the attack rate when they analyzed the data for the two state capitals. In Rio de Janeiro, where many cases of microcephaly were reported, the number of people infected by Zika virus corresponded to 10 per 10,000 inhabitants, while in Manaus, where relatively few babies were born with microcephaly, the attack rate was 0.6 per 10,000.

"Microcephaly caused by Zika is a rare phenomenon, but when there are many cases of Zika in an area it becomes more apparent. It had been suggested earlier that contracting Zika in the first trimester of pregnancy might be relevant, and now we've proved that it was," Nogueira said.

Methodology

The researchers set out to understand the differences in the adverse outcomes of pregnancy and in the babies of the two populations by studying 114 pregnant women infected by Zika virus between September 2015 and June 2016. Infection was confirmed by RT-qPCR testing of blood and/or urine samples. The subjects were recruited at Heitor Vieira Dourado Tropical Medicine Foundation (FMT-HVD), an infectious disease hospital in Manaus, and FIOCRUZ's acute febrile illness clinic in Rio de Janeiro.

Prior exposure to dengue was assessed by serological tests to detect neutralizing antibodies, among others. The goal was to explore potential associations between pregnancy outcomes and the Zika attack rate, defined as the number of cases officially reported during the study period divided by the population of each city.

Overall, 31 women had adverse outcomes (27 in Rio and 4 in Manaus). In this group, four babies died before birth and 27 were born with brain anomalies. "Only Zika attack rates and infection in the first trimester of pregnancy were associated with adverse pregnancy and infant outcomes. Pre-existing immunity to dengue was not associated with outcomes (normal or abnormal) in patients with Zika during pregnancy," the authors of the article state in the Abstract.

And they conclude, "The strengths of our study include a careful classification of infant outcomes, made possible through detailed assessments at birth by a multidisciplinary team. [...] In addition, the use of a highly sensitive and specific [plaque reduction neutralizing antibody] assay to characterize pre-existing dengue immunity and the use of sera collected during the acute phase of RT-PCR-confirmed Zika infection lend credibility to our results. [] Our main limitations are the modest sample size and convenience sample selection."

An earlier study led by Nogueira in 2017 showed that patients infected by Zika after exposure to dengue did not become more severely ill than other people. It was the first scientific study to show this in humans. Prior research involving cells and rodents had suggested the opposite.

Background

Microcephaly is a rare neurological condition in which an infant's head and brain are significantly smaller than normal as a result of alterations in the formation of the nervous system during development in the womb. Children with microcephaly usually suffer from retarded or blocked mental, physical and motor development.

The causes of microcephaly include genetic factors and exposure to chemicals, bacteria and viruses. Scientists have recently shown that Zika contracted during pregnancy can impair fetal development.

During the epidemic in Brazil, Zika affected people of all ages and was associated with the occurrence of a large number of cases of microcephaly. In November 2015, Brazil declared a public health emergency because of the rising number of cases. The World Health Organization (WHO) then issued an epidemiological alert, stressing the possibility of congenital neurological malformations in babies born to women infected by Zika.

In 2015 alone, more than 2,400 cases of microcephaly were reported in Brazil. They occurred in about 540 municipalities in 20 states. In the period 2010-14, the total number of reported cases was 781.

In 2016 there were some 214,000 probable cases of Zika. The number fell to 17,000 in 2017 and 8,000 in 2018. In the first three months of this year, it was 448, according to the Ministry of Health's epidemiological bulletin.

The symptoms of Zika are similar to those of dengue. In most infected people, it causes fever, headache, red eyes, joint pain and rash. On average, the symptoms disappear in ten days.

The researchers are proceeding with their analysis of the interactions between Zika and dengue, particularly to see if Zika modulates infection by dengue virus. Nogueira also participates in an international group that is working on models to predict epidemics of Zika, dengue and yellow fever.

Explore further Dengue virus infection may cause severe outcomes following Zika virus infection during pregnancy

More information: L. Damasceno et al. Why Did ZIKV Perinatal Outcomes Differ in Distinct Regions of Brazil? An Exploratory Study of Two Cohorts, Viruses (2021). L. Damasceno et al. Why Did ZIKV Perinatal Outcomes Differ in Distinct Regions of Brazil? An Exploratory Study of Two Cohorts,(2021). DOI: 10.3390/v13050736
Patient phenotypes and metabolites before and after eflornithine treatment. Panel A shows the timeline of events for the patient with milestones marked on the top and clinical observations below. Panels B-C show hair growth and muscle tone are the most noticeable phenotype changes with treatment. Follicular cysts recurred on back, neck, and posterior scalp (bottom left images). First hair growth was eyebrows 1 month into treatment (bottom right images). Panel D shows MRI before and after eflornithine treatment. Neonatal: Axial T1 (TR 483 ms, TE 9 ms, and flip angle 63 degrees), T2 (TR 3250 ms, TE 220 ms, and flip angle 90 degrees), and T2-FLAIR (TR 8002 ms, TE 122 ms, and flip angle 90 degrees) show marked abnormal signal of cerebral white matter (*) and several subependymal cysts (arrows). Five years of age: Axial T1 (TR 809 ms, TE 16 ms, and flip angle 111 degrees), T2 (TR 4850 ms, TE 107 ms, and flip angle 142 degrees), and T2-FLAIR (TR 6002 ms, TE 91 ms, and flip angle 90 degrees) show decrease in cerebral white matter volume, but normalization of signal and resolution of subependymal cysts. Credit: DOI: 10.7554/eLife.67097

Diagnosing a rare medical condition is difficult. Identifying a treatment for it can take years of trial and error. In a serendipitous intersection of research expertise, an ill patient in this case a child and innovative technology, Bachmann-Bupp syndrome has gone from a list of symptoms to a successful treatment in just 16 months.

The paper chronicling this lightning-fast scientific response to BABS was published on July 13 in the open-access journal, eLife.

For more than 25 years, Andre Bachmann, professor of pediatrics in Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, had been studying the ODC1 gene. This gene and its protein product ODC, which produces polyamines are crucial for cell survival and contribute to many developmental processes, including muscle tone and motor skills in children.

Through Bachmann's research, he also knew that the drug difluoromethylornithine, or DFMO, (sometimes referred to as eflornithine), had already been successful and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating other diseases linked to problems with ODC like African sleeping sickness and hirsutism (excessive hair growth). It was also studied in cancer clinical trials of colon cancer and pediatric neuroblastoma.

In 2018, Caleb Bupp, a medical geneticist at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, had an unusual patient. Three-year-old Marley Berthoud's symptoms included a large head size, complete hair loss, low muscle tone and developmental delays. She could not hold her head up, feed herself, crawl or communicate.

When Bupp sequenced Marley's exome (the part of the human genome that contains the genetic code for making proteins), he discovered a mutation on her ODC1 gene. Bupp recalled a presentation by Surender Rajasekaran, a pediatric ICU physician at Helen DeVos and assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and Bachmann about ODC1, and he reached out to them.

Marley's ODC1 gene mutation caused her body to accumulate lots of ODC protein which was building up in her system. Bachmann knew from his previous work that DFMO deactivates ODC proteins.

"We can't stop her body from accumulating ODC protein, but we can make the protein inactive," Bachmann said.

Bupp was encouraged by Bachmann's previous research showing that DFMO was safe and had minimal side effects on patients, especially children. With her family's approval, Marley started taking DFMO in 2019. This was the first FDA-approved single-patient study in the world to treat a patient with an ODC1 mutation using DFMO.

"From the discovery of the syndrome until the patient's first dose it took less than two years," Bachmann said. "That doesn't usually happen so quickly."

While Bachmann, Bupp, Rajasekaran and Berthoud's family waited to see if DFMO would work, Marley's list of symptoms was given the official name of Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome by the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, an online database of human genes and genetic disorders.

"This rarely happens," Bachmann said. "As of today, and still many years from now, medical students will be learning about Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome and this all started at MSU."

Since she started taking DFMO, Marley has made tremendous progress. She has gained muscle tone which means she can hold her head up, feed herself with a spoon and crawl, but the most visible sign of success has been a full head of new hair growth.

"It's astounding," Bachmann said. "When I first saw a picture of her, I couldn't believe she had grown that much hair in a year, and she managed to sled down a hill by herself."

Seeing all of this external progress was promising but Bupp wanted to go a step further to learn more about the internal changes happening inside Marley's body from the DFMO treatment. Bupp contacted Metabolon, a health technology company based in Morrisville, North Carolina, that has developed a tool for the detecting biological markers of rare diseases and response to treatment.

Metabolon's Precision Metabolomics technology could test Marley's blood samples before and during treatment to find out exactly how her body's metabolism responded to DFMO treatment and the effect the drug was having on her body.

"There is not really a regular lab test you can do to look at that, so working with Metabolon gave us that window into Marley's biochemistry that wouldn't have been possible otherwise," Bupp said. "What we saw in the numbers agreed with what we were observing with our eyesHer body was changing on the inside too."

The result of what was happening inside Marley's body confirmed that DFMO works and was just as impressive as what was happening on the outside.

"Now Marley is using some sign language, where previously she couldn't communicate," Bupp said. "My heart melted when she was able to give me a high five for the first time."

Explore further Researchers identify new genetic disorder

More information: Surender Rajasekaran et al, Repurposing eflornithine to treat a patient with a rare ODC1 gain-of-function variant disease, eLife (2021). Journal information: eLife Surender Rajasekaran et al, Repurposing eflornithine to treat a patient with a rare ODC1 gain-of-function variant disease,(2021). DOI: 10.7554/eLife.67097
(HealthDay)The U.S. medical field is less dominated by white men than it used to be, but there are still few Black and Hispanic doctors, dentists and pharmacists, a new study finds.

The study, which looked at trends over the past 20 years, found that white men no longer make up the majority of physicians and surgeons in the United States.

By 2019, they accounted for about 44% of those positions nationallydown from 54% in 2000. That was due to an increase in women entering those fields, particularly white and Asian women.

In contrast, there were only small increases in the percentages of Black and Hispanic female doctors, and almost no change for Black and Hispanic men.

Meanwhile, similar patterns were found in dentistry and pharmacytwo other lucrative health care fields.

Minority representation increased more broadly in jobs such as nursing, physical therapy and home health care. But those are relatively lower-paying occupations, the researchers pointed out.

What's more, the ongoing disparities across medicine matter for patients, too, said study co-author Dr. Dan Ly, of the University of California, Los Angeles.

"Physicians who are underrepresented minorities, such as Black and Hispanic physicians, are more likely to practice in areas federally designated as medically underserved or experiencing health-professions shortages than white physicians are," Ly said.

Similarly, he added, those doctors tend to care for more individuals who are underservedincluding minorities and patients who are poorer, sicker and uninsured.

There is also evidence that patients do better when they see a doctor from a similar background.

For example, Ly said, studies show that Black patients are more likely to receive preventive care, such as flu vaccines and diabetes screenings, when they see a Black doctor.

Unfortunately, the lack of progress in boosting minority representation among doctors was no surprise, according to Ly. Past studies have indicated as much.

What's new in these findings, he said, is that dentistry and pharmacy are showing the same patterns, with potentially the same impact on patient care.

"It wouldn't surprise me if there are health benefits to seeing a pharmacist or dentist who looks like you and may better understand you or your experiencejust like there is in medicine," Ly said.

The findings, published online July 15 in JAMA Network Open, are based on two U.S. Census surveys where Americans reported on their race, ethnicity and occupation.

Between 2000 and 2019, a growing number of women became doctorsaccounting for about one-third of the health care workforce by 2015 to 2019. White and Asian women both saw gains of three percentage points.

Among Black and Hispanic women, there were only small increases, and they each accounted for about 2.5% of U.S. doctors in recent years. Meanwhile, there was virtually no change among Hispanic and Black men, who accounted for 4% and 2.5% of all physicians, respectively, by 2019.

The problem of under-representation has long been recognized, according to Norma Poll-Hunter, senior director of workforce diversity for the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Since 2009, U.S. medical schools have been required to have programs focused on diversity. Schools across the United States now work with local colleges, high schools and even elementary schools to foster interest in science, prepare students academically and help with practical things like applying to medical school, Poll-Hunter said.

But it's clear that additional steps are needed, and there's particular concern about the low representation of Black men in the field, said Poll-Hunter, who was not involved in the new study.

So the focus is now shifting from helping individual students, toward more "systems change," Poll-Hunter said.

"There's a greater appreciation now of the impact of systemic racism, including in medicine," she said.

As an example, Poll-Hunter said medical schools are being encouraged to rely less on students' scores on the Medical College Admission Test, and "look more at the whole individual" in making admissions decisions.

"These are the types of things we need to really move the dial," Poll-Hunter said.

Explore further Proportion of Black physicians in US has changed little in 120 years

More information: The Association of American Medical Colleges has more on Journal information: JAMA Network Open The Association of American Medical Colleges has more on racism and health.

Copyright  2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
Ambassador of Belarus Y.Lazarchik meets the leadership of Iranian ministries

On July 10-11, 2021, on the occasion of the completion of the diplomatic mission, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Belarus to the Islamic Republic of Iran Yury Lazarchik held meetings with the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade of Iran.

On July 11, 2021, Yury Lazarchik met with Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran Mohammad Javad Zarif. The parties discussed topical areas of cooperation between Belarus and Iran and prospects for its further development. The Belarusian diplomat noted the urgency of stepping up joint coordinated steps to increase trade between the two countries, as well as deepening bilateral contacts in the field of education, including medical education.

On July 10, 2021, during the meeting of the Ambassador of Belarus with Minister of Industry, Mines and Trade of Iran, Co-Chair of the Iranian part of the Mixed Belarusian-Iranian Commission on Economic Cooperation Alireza Razmhosseini, the interlocutors discussed a wide range of issues related to the development of trade, economic and investment cooperation between the countries and noted the constructive and mutually respectful nature of bilateral relations. A special attention was paid to the preparation for the 15th meeting of the Mixed Belarusian-Iranian Commission on Economic Cooperation in Minsk.

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Yet there remain major question marks, as well. For instance, some of the proposals tread into territory that has never been tried before, and policy experts arent sure how they will work. Ginsburg pointed to the dental, hearing and vision proposals for Medicare, noting there has been relatively little careful analysis related to including those benefits in Medicare.

Nobodys talked about that. We dont know how to do it, Ginsburg said. Its very different from medical insurance issues.

The plan is moving through whats known as the budget reconciliation process. First Congress approves budget instructions for bills that affect spending, revenue or debt. Under congressional rules, those bills can then advance on an expedited basis and pass in the Senate with a simple majority, with no threat of a filibuster.

Still, there is no room for error. With just 50 Democrats, Schumer will need every one of them  and Vice President Kamala Harris tie-breaking vote  if Republicans remain united against the package. In the House, Democrats also have a tiny majority and could likely lose only a handful of members as they try to pass the budget framework.
Tuesday was welcomed with somewhat improved air quality and possible thunderstorms and brief downpours, bringing relief to the Missoula area after several days inundated with smoke.

Missoulians were able to breathe in some fresh air, with the air quality index dipping into good and moderate in the first half of the day. Fluctuation was expected throughout the day, and while smoke has temporarily left the valleys there is still an abundance of it in the region.

If models are to be believed, a decent amount of that smoke is low enough that it could be pulled down when atmospheric mixing sets in later this afternoon, said Sarah Coefield, Missoula's air quality specialist, in her Tuesday report.

She expects the haze to continue for the foreseeable future, noting were still very early into fire season.

Southwesterly flow will continue for the next several days, and it will transport smoke into our region, she said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the National Weather Service in Missoula was reporting thunderstorms beginning to form across all of north central Idaho and western Montana.
We've long known that the best way to tackle tough problems is to listen to folks around the kitchen table or at the local tavern. Its important to hear them out, to consider their points of view. That kind of collaboration is exactly how Tracy Stone-Manning, President Biden's nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management, operates. We've known her personally for over 25 years and she has never wavered in trying to find common ground.

She knows the power of listening to all perspectives and opinions, and even talked about the importance of doing so in her hearing before the Senate. That's why the Blackfoot Valley, our home, is better off for her work. As the director of the Clark Fork Coalition, she successfully advocated for the removal of Milltown Dam at the confluence of the Blackfoot and Clark Fork rivers, giving bull trout a path back to their home waters in the Blackfoot. She successfully advocated for clean-up of the Mike Horse mine upstream, after decades of it being a threat to all living creatures downstream. She made the Blackfoot a healthier river and created thousands of jobs doing it.
We move closer to "Wolf Armageddon" as ever more brutish trapping laws take effect in Montana.

Why do people trap? Money, of course, entices those who don't mind the barbaric nature of trapping. At a recent auction, a wolf foot sold for $6  wow! And there is blood money to be made trapping these so-called predators.

About 43,000 traps were reported to Fish, Wildlife and Parks in 2016 to kill animals listed in the 14 predator species. Assuming traps were checked every 48 hours as recommended (not required), emptied and reset, that's lots of suffering animals assassinated over the useful life of the traps, including many non-targeted or illegal species. Only trapped wolves have to be shot. Other animals can be clubbed, drowned or stomped to death.

Some equate trapping with recreation. In the St. Cloud Times, a trapper stated: "It's just fun to do." Or, from another trapper: "It's trapping. And once you try it, it's tough to quit."

So let's help 'em quit. Tell people across the USA to call/write progressive leaders to lobby against trapping. Join an anti-trapping group. Please advocate for our precious national wildlife and get trapping banned from America's public lands.

Linda Holtom,

Missoula

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In 2013, the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son, Prince George, who became third in line to the British throne after Prince Charles and 
Between 1-2 a.m., Anderson went back to the front desk and said he needed to check out. He was openly carrying a holstered handgun on his right side.

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When the clerk stepped away from the counter to check his room, Anderson crawled onto the counter, opened the cash drawer and grabbed the money, the department said. The clerk came back inside when she saw what was happening and tried to yell for him to stop, but Anderson ran out the door and yelled life-threatening commands for her to stay away.

He had locked the keys in the stolen car and had to reach into the back passenger side door to unlock the car before crawling into the drivers seat from the back seat and fleeing down N.C. 18 South, the department said.

Officers in Jefferson County, Georgia, spotted Anderson driving the same vehicle and tried to stop the car, the department said. A chase ensued, ending with Anderson wrecking the vehicle, which was determined to be the same one stolen from Zephyrhills, and being transported to a local hospital for his injuries.

Anderson is expected to make a full recovery and will face charges in North Carolina, Florida and Georgia, the department said. Its possible hell also face charges in other states.

This isnt Andersons first run-in with the law.
The Rotary Club of Morganton is asking for the communitys help to find its next Distinguished Person of the Year Award recipient.

The club is accepting nominations through Aug. 11.

Nominees must be residents of Burke County, at least 18 years old, of impeccable character and have made a significant positive impact on the community. They cannot be previous recipients.

Morganton has always been a community made up of compassionate, generous people devoted to making the place we live in better, Dalton Walters, club president, said. However, some distinguish themselves by putting service to others above self, and they should be recognized for their exceptional acts. Since 1948, that has been the purpose of Rotarys Distinguished Person of the Year Award.

A website at morgantonrotary.org/person-of-the-year honors previous recipients and elaborates on what the award stands for.
A Morganton ax-throwing business will host a canned food drive to donate proceeds to a local Christian ministry.

Stidhams Axe Throwing & Lounge, at 420 W. Fleming Drive SE, will host a canned food drive Saturday and Sunday to benefit Burke United Christian Ministries. Kristin Hamm, co-owner of Stidhams, is looking forward to using her business as a way to give back to the community.

So, for every person that brings in four or more canned food items, will receive a $5 off ax-throwing ticket, Hamm said. All of the food thats donated will be donated to the Burke United Christian Ministry.

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Dylan Stidham, co-owner of Stidhams and Hamms husband, has been involved with Burke United Christian Ministries since he was a child. The couple felt the canned food drive was a great way to give back to the community that helped get their business started successfully.

Well, when Dylan was growing up, he and his mom used to volunteer there a lot and he really enjoyed it, Hamm said. Then I used to volunteer there with all my clients that had mental disabilities and I always have fun going up there, too, and helping people and seeing them happy and getting fed.
I dont yet make 15 (an hour), she said. All through the entirety of the pandemic, I made $10.25 an hour working for the same agency I have worked with since 2002. If you are an essential worker and, even if you are not an essential worker but especially if you are an essential worker, we need $15 for federal minimum wage.

Claire Clark said shes been working since she was 15 years old and is 40 now. She started working at $4.75 an hour and has since worked in fast-food, call centers and factories. In the 25 years she has worked, she has not made more than $12.50 an hour, she said.

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That is not a livable wage, Clark said to the gathering. It is not a wage on which we can support families. Americans deserve a $15 minimum wage. We deserve a living wage. In fact, 15 is the bare minimum. Americans deserve not just to live. We deserve to thrive. We cannot continue to accept these wages. We cannot work for peanuts. We can be poor on our own time. Bosses if you can hear me, pay us! We earned it! We deserve it! We are the workers! We make this world run and we will run it!

As they spoke, several people driving by on N.C. 226 South honked their horns as a show of support.
Railey gives a critical review of the sheriffs treatment of all the suspects, but, in the end, Cahoon does not charge any of them.

A great strength of Raileys rendition of the story is the suspense he creates for the reader, who will not know Raileys conclusion about the actual killer until the very end.

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He puts his readers in the Cahoons shoes as he does his best to crack the case. Then Railey leads them through his research and the basis for his persuasive conclusion about the killers identity.

The charm of the book goes beyond the authors storytelling gifts. He takes readers back to the 1960s on the Outer Banks and the town of Manteo, lovely and complicated, with its fishing and seafaring traditions. The history and relics of unsuccessful settlement in the late 1500s and todays production of The Lost Colony enrich the complex setting.

Railey gives bit parts to some famous people living in the town during the time of the murder: Andy Griffith, the actor who made his home there, and the late powerful state legislative leader Marc Basnight, who grew up and lived in Manteo.

Railey has promised to write a biography of Griffith. I wish he would write one about Basnight.
MISSOULA  A Butte man accused of robbing three businesses at gunpoint in three different Montana cities in February admitted charges Tuesday, Acting U.S. Attorney Leif Johnson said.

Thomas Scott Cockrill, 49, pleaded guilty to three counts of robbery affecting commerce and to brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence. Cockrill faces a maximum 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release on the robbery crime and a mandatory minimum seven years to life in prison, consecutive to any other sentence, a $250,000 fine and five years of supervised release on the firearm crime.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen DeSoto presided. Sentencing was set for Nov. 10 before U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen. Cockrill was detained pending further proceedings.

The government alleged that on Feb. 9, Cockrill robbed Blackjack Pizza in Missoula and brandished a handgun at an employee. Later that same evening, Cockrill held up at gun point an employee of the La Quinta Inn in Helena. Four days later, on Feb. 13, Cockrill robbed the Elevated Dispensary in Butte and brandished a handgun at an employee. Each business lost several hundred dollars in the robberies, according to court documents.
Twenty-five structures in the Alder Creek and Meadow Creek area were evacuated last week as well as 38 structures in a small area just south of the airport at Wise River south to Harriet Lou Road.

The smoke in the air above the Alder Creek Fire was actually doing some good Monday afternoon, Williams said.

When theres an inversion like this its like a wood stove, he said. Its like a damper. Once youve got that smoke sitting there it doesnt allow the fire to burn as actively.

Butte-Silver Bow Fire Chief Brian Doherty said Monday that his department had deployed a brush truck and two firefighters to the Alder Creek Fire this weekend at the request of the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation.

The requests are common for this time of year, Doherty said, and over the next two weeks, the truck and firefighters could be sent to other wildfires or wherever resources were needed.

Doherty and other fire officials are getting daily updates on the Alder Creek and Trail Creek fires and sharing them with other county officials, including Sheriff Ed Lester, Chief Executive J.P. Gallagher, 911 Coordinator Dave McPherson and Emergency Management Director Dan Dennehy. Numerous state and federal officials are part of those conversations, too.
Bill Willing traveled to Vietnam in 1970 comforted by the youthful illusion of invincibility. That faded during his first dry-mouthed taste of
NEW YORK (AP)  The unrepentant former leader of the cult-like NXIVM group was ordered on Tuesday to pay $3.5 million to 21 victims of a sex-trafficking scheme, a sum including the cost of surgically removing scars from branding rituals performed by a secret sorority.

The brands depicting the initials of Keith Raniere were meant to symbolize the womens status as sex slaves for the self-help guru who once had an international following. A judge in federal court in Brooklyn also ordered Raniere to return collateral  nude photos and other potentially embarrassing material  that was used to extort and manipulate the victims.

Raniere, appearing by video from an Arizona prison, told the judge he was baffled by the restitution order.

I have never handled collateral, he said. I dont know anything about it.

He added at another point: I dont know who the victims are.

Raniere  known to members of the upstate New York organization as Vanguard and the smartest man in the world  was sentenced last year to 120 years in prison for his conviction on racketeering conspiracy and other charges. It was another instance where he refused to take responsibility.
Mary Grant, executive officer of the Billings Association of Realtors, hears regularly from the Realtors working in the region and the common refrain has been the wild activity of the market. When reached for comment Tuesday, she had just chatted earlier with a Realtor who received 26 bids on a single home listing.

"It's been the craziest market they've seen in a long time," she said.

The analysis from the Wall Street Journal and Realtor.com tracked with what Grant has seen over the last year. The average price for a home in Billings in June 2020 was $284,988. In June of 2021, it had jumped to $376,248.

Much of that climb in house prices is driven by a scarcity of inventory, Grant said. Right now, the Billings region has 261 active listings, which equates to just over three weeks of inventory. In other words, if no other houses came on the market, it would take Billings just under a month sell out all its residential properties.

At this time last year Billings had just about two months worth of inventory, Grant said.
An ordinance had previously prohibited elected officials from directly communicating with city staff about work-related issues, but the ordinance was updated to allow meetings and work-related conversations. During the Dec. 5, 2019, meeting, Brackett cited a lack of confidence in Mandsagers ability to act as city administrator, saying there had been several times when Mandsager had been given directives by the council but continued doing the opposite. The suit says no specific example was cited. Mandsager was on medical leave and not present when the vote to end his contract was made. The suit says Mandsager was being treated at the Mayo Clinic and the condition constituted a disability. After the meeting, a citizen objected to not being given a chance to speak on the subject. Broderson said she had accidentally skipped over the public comment on the agenda, but that she would not have allowed the public to speak on the issue, as it involved a city employee.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  Authorities on Monday identified a suspect accused of fatally shooting one person and wounding four others, including firefighters and paramedics, during a house fire in Tucson.
DETROIT (AP)  A Detroit-area man whose decades in prison for drug dealing and work as an informant inspired the movie White Boy Rick filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking $100 million, claiming he was coerced into assisting police while just a helpless teenager.

Richard Wershe Jr., 52, served roughly 30 years in prison in Michigan before his release in 2017, followed by a few more years in a Florida prison for an unrelated crime.

Wershe's lawsuit in federal court in Detroit alleges that his troubles in the 1980s were related to the pressures of pleasing local police and federal agents who used him as an informant, repeatedly sent him into drug dens and abandoned him when he got in legal trouble.

The justice system hasnt been fair to me over the last 33 years, Wershe said. This needed to be done. The truth absolutely needed to be told. ... Everything that we say will be backed up by documents and FBI agents.

Wershes life was the basis of the 2018 film White Boy Rick, starring Matthew McConaughey and Richie Merritt. The title referred to Wershes nickname in his younger days, a nickname he dislikes.
The United States has voiced its concerns about treatment of some journalists by the North African kingdom. Another journalist, Soulaimane Raissouni, was recently sentenced to five years in prison.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said that media freedom is foundational to prosperous and secure societies and governments must ensure that journalists can safely perform their essential roles without fear of unjust tension, violence or threats. The case of Raissouni and others, including Radi, were being watched, Price said, and we have raised these concerns with the Moroccan government and we will continue to do so.

Morocco, a major U.S. ally, quickly took issue with the U.S. stance. Its Ministerial Delegation for Human Rights said the State Department knowingly obscured the point of view of the complainants and their defense, going so far as to deny their very status of victim. The statement said it was astonished at the focus on the professional status  journalist  and his allegations.

The Casablanca court ordered Radi and Stitou to pay the equivalent of more than $22,300 to the victim of the alleged sexual assault.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Ryan Reynolds has revealed he made the first move on Blake Lively.

The 'Deadpool' actor - who first met his now wife when they were working together on 2011's 'Green Lantern' - poked fun at the movie itself and opened up on their whirlwind romance, which led to them tying the knot the following year.

Appearing on the 'SmartLess' podcast, he joked: "I met Blake on the darkest crease on the anus of the universe called 'Green Lantern'.

"We were friends and buddies and about a year and half later, we went on a double date but we were dating separate people.

"We hung out and we always kind of kept in touch sort of casually and next thing you know, she was going to Boston. I was going to Boston and I said I'll ride with you.

"We got on the train and we rode together. I was just begging her to sleep with me."

The 44-year-old actor - who has daughters James, six, Inez, four, and Betty, 21 months, with Blake - described their romance as something "out of a fairytale".

He added: "A week later I was like, 'We should buy a house together'. And we did."
Several residents wait in the observation area to be monitored after receiving their Covid-19 vaccination shots during a vaccination outreach at the University of Guam Calvo Field House on Monday.
The Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group (IFWG) published its position paper on crypto assets earlier this month, promising to bring cryptocurrencies into the South African regulatory purview in a phased and structured manner.

In secondary documents published together with the paper, regulators showed that they also wanted to crack down hard on the nascent industry using existing exchange control regulations.

These crackdowns seem contrary to earlier statements made by the South African government to create a neutral and facilitative environment for crypto assets.

Earlier in June, National Treasury chief director Olaotse Matshane told the National Council of Provinces that South Africa is taking a cautious and facilitative test and learn approach to regulating crypto assets.

She said that South Africa wanted to allow the activity, but it must be responsible, with the consumer being protected.

Shortly after Matshanes presentation, the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) and IFWG published the position paper on crypto assets, together with an FAQ document.

Among the positions announced in the FAQ was that it is illegal to buy cryptocurrency in South Africa from an offshore provider using credit or debit cards.

Banks soon banned clients from buying cryptocurrency using your credit card from overseas exchanges like Binance.

The IFWG also warned that it is a criminal offence to transfer cryptocurrency from a local exchange provider like Luno, VALR, and AltCoinTrader to an overseas one.

It further warned that there are tax and exchange control implications of staking crypto assets, though it did not clarify what the implications are.

In responses to questions from MyBroadband, the Financial Surveillance Department (FinSurv) at SARB further clarified that any transfer of cryptocurrency out of South Africa is a criminal offence under existing exchange control regulations.

This includes transferring assets from your own self-hosted wallet to individuals overseas, or to decentralised exchanges.

It should be noted that the position paper is not all threats and crack-downs, and it was generally favourably received by South Africas digital asset industry.

The paper recommends that crypto asset service providers, or CASPs, be regulated in a phased approach.

The IFWGs Crypto Assets Regulatory Working Group recommended that:

A licensing framework be introduced for CASPs.

FICA be applied to the crypto-asset industry.

Exchange control regulations be expanded to allow CASPs to facilitate cross-border transactions in a way that FinSurv can monitor.

Cryptocurrency exchanges and other service providers in the industry said that they would welcome such regulations, as it would provide much-needed certainty to help them do business internationally.

If sensible exchange control regulations are implemented, it will attract foreign direct investment to South Africa, and allow the country to compete in a nascent and rapidly expanding technology field.

The following table summarises the IFWG position paper, the FAQ document, and the clarifying remarks FinSurv provided to MyBroadband.

What you should know What the IFWG / FinSurv says Buying cryptocurrency You are allowed to buy cryptocurrency in South Africa. South African residents are not precluded from purchasing crypto assets from local crypto-asset exchanges with their credit and/or debit cards in South African Rand. Such a transaction does not fall within the ambit of the Exchange Control Regulations. You are allowed to buy cryptocurrency from offshore exchanges within limits. Individuals may purchase crypto assets from abroad using their single discretionary allowance of up to R1 million and/or their individual foreign capital allowance of up to R10 million with a Compliance Status (TCS) PIN issued by the South African Revenue Service, per calendar year. In this regard, the bank concerned must convert the funds transferred abroad into foreign currency. Such funds are transferred via the banking system as an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT). There is also no obligation on an individual to return such funds permanently to South Africa. You are not allowed to buy cryptocurrency from an offshore exchange using your credit or debit card. Credit and/or debit cards, including co-branded cards issued by banks  as licensed by American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard or Visa  may not be utilised to purchase crypto assets on a foreign crypto-asset exchange. Transferring cryptocurrency You are allowed to withdraw your cryptocurrency from a South African exchange into your own wallet. With the application of the current exchange control policy, individuals are not prohibited from withdrawing their crypto assets held on a South African-domiciled crypto asset trading platform to a private wallet. You are not allowed to transfer cryptocurrency offshore from a local exchange or wallet provider. Exchange Control Regulation 10(1)(c) prohibits transactions where capital or the right to capital is, without permission from National Treasury, directly or indirectly exported from South Africa. This includes transactions where an individual purchases crypto assets in South Africa and uses them to externalise any right to capital. Contravening these regulations is a criminal offence. You are not allowed to transfer cryptocurrency offshore from your own wallet. Transferring crypto assets from a self-hosted or private wallet to an offshore-based wallet (whether hosted or unhosted or operated by a business entity such as a foreign-domiciled crypto asset trading platform or an individual) would constitute a contravention of Exchange Control Regulation 10(1)(c). You are not allowed to transfer cryptocurrency from South Africa to a decentralised exchange. From the Financial Surveillance Departments perspective, decentralised exchanges would be viewed as foreign crypto assets service providers. Payments Cryptocurrency may be used to make payments, even though it is not legal tender or e-money. Although crypto assets are not money, they can nevertheless perform certain money-like functions. Merchants and individuals may choose to accept payment offered in crypto-assets of their own free will, with the understanding and acceptance of the risk that they will not have regulatory recourse should something go wrong. In this instance, crypto-assets function as a barter instrument, with the price being determined per the willing-buyer-willing-seller principle. Mining Cryptocurrency mining is allowed, but you have to pay your taxes and abide by exchange control regulations. The proceeds of mining are subject to relevant tax and exchange control regulations and legislation. Staking Staking is permitted, but there are tax and exchange control implications. There are both tax and exchange control implications of staking crypto assets. These implications are exacerbated if an individuals crypto assets are staked via an offshore third party. Classification of cryptocurrency Cryptocurrency is not money or legal tender. In the South African context, legal tender (i.e. money) is limited to banknotes and coins issued by the SARB. From a legal perspective, crypto assets are therefore not recognised or viewed as money. Cryptocurrency is not e-money. In terms of the National Payment Systems Act 78 of 1998, only registered South African banks can issue e-money, thus wholly excluding crypto assets. Buying or depositing cryptocurrency with a South African provider is not a bank deposit. The Banks Act 94 of 1990 defines a deposit as necessarily being money, which refers to legal tender as defined in the SARB Act, which excludes crypto assets as explained above. Decision to regulate cryptocurrency is not an endorsement by South African regulators. The decision to regulate crypto assets does not signal or suggest endorsement of crypto assets by the IFWG members. The decision to regulate crypto assets aims to promote responsible innovation. The IFWG reiterates that crypto assets remain highly volatile and inherently risky given their decentralised and disintermediated value proposition. Crypto asset service providers will be regulated, while cryptocurrencies themselves will not be regulated. The intention is not to regulate the actual crypto assets and associated products per se but rather the entities that provide services around such products. Therefore, the South African regulators intend to regulate crypto assets by regulating the crypto asset service providers (CASPs). Cryptocurrency is not foreign currency. In terms of the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961, foreign currency is defined as any currency that is not legal tender in South Africa, which implies that such foreign currency is legal tender in another country. Given that crypto assets are consistently not regarded as legal tender globally, crypto assets are therefore excluded from the definition of foreign currency for the Exchange Control Regulations of 1961. Consumers have no recourse for losses due to investing in crypto assets. Crypto assets remain highly volatile, and investing in crypto assets remains inherently risky. As with any investment, the ultimate responsibility to ascertain whether the risk associated with an investment lies with the consumer. As always, returns are not guaranteed, and past performance is not an indicator of future performance. Regulation recommendations Anti-Money Laundering / Combating the Financing of Terrorism framework  known as FICA in South Africa Crypto asset service providers should be added to the list of accountable institutions, bringing with it all the responsibilities and powers afforded to recognised financial service providers. Framework for monitoring cross-border financial flows. Among others, expansion of the Authorised Dealer in foreign exchange with limited authority framework allows the appointment of crypto-asset trading platforms for cryptocurrency-related cross-border transactions. Financial Surveillance Department of the SARB to set trigger events for reporting cross-border transactions. Crypto assets should be declared a financial product. Short-term solution  Require crypto-asset trading platforms to obtain licences to become intermediaries. Medium-term solution  Amend the Financial Sector Regulation Act 9 of 2017 and/or include cryptocurrency-related activities in the Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill.

Now read: How to avoid a Bitcoin scam in South Africa
Although Covid-19 vaccinations of people between the ages of 35 and 49 were only set to start in August, many in this age group have already received their first jab since registrations on the electronic vaccine data system (EVDS) for their cohort were opened last week.

The EVDS automatically schedules a vaccination appointment at a site in your vicinity when you register on the system. The appointment is communicated via SMS containing the date and location.

However, after the government opened the EVDS for people over the age of 35, many people in the 3549 age group managed to get their first dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine within hours of registering.

Some reported that they visited a private vaccination site  such as those run by Dis-Chem  to get their shot.

Dis-Chem and Discovery also opened appointment booking dates for people over the age of 35 on Thursday. Numerous slots were already available to this age group last week.

Some have accused people over 35 of jumping the queue to the detriment of the older 50+ and 60+ age groups who were yet to receive either their first or second shots.

The Western Cape has urged people in the 35-49 age group to wait for their appointment SMS, as many people over the age of 50 still had to be vaccinated.

Deputy-director general Nicholas Crisp told MyBroadband that some private providers initially succeeded in scheduling people under 50 on their own systems.

This was terminated to be on par with the EVDS official registration and scheduling, Crisp said.

Some people under 50 just took a chance and walked into a vaccination site. Some were lucky that the vaccine was available, but many were not.

The department is not in a position to stop the practice of early walk-ins but has stopped early scheduling, he added.

While some people may be concerned about getting their first shot before the more vulnerable elderly population, there is nothing untoward about the situation.

The department allows vaccination sites to use their own judgement to decide whether to administer shots without appointments if they have enough vaccines.

Dis-Chem told MyBroadband that official circulars from the department supported the vaccination of all registered individuals above 50 from 1 July, even though this cohort was only due to start getting vaccinations from 15 July.

As such, with the opening of over-50s on 1 July, registered individuals became aware that it was possible to be vaccinated on a walk-in basis immediately, without the need to wait for an appointment, Dis-Chem stated.

With the knowledge from the over-50s opening widely known across the country, the same behaviour was bound to occur amongst a far more tech-savvy and larger grouping.

When EVDS registration opened to the 35+ cohort, registrations in the first 24-hours once again far exceeded the daily capacity, the company said.

In light of the rapid rate of EVDS registration with the 3549 age group, Dis-Chem called for the dates of registration and eligibility to be aligned.

The greater number of people who are vaccinated, the sooner South Africa will be able to return to normality, and Dis-Chem is committed to vaccinating as many eligible people as possible.

Although South Africas vaccination rollout has picked up the pace in recent weeks, it is still slow.

According to the latest information from the health department, over 5.3 million South Africans had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine by Monday, 19 July 2021.

The cumulative number of people in the country who were fully vaccinated was far lower  at around 1.8 million.

This means that only about 4.5% of the 40 million adults being targeted for vaccination by the end of the year have received all their shots so far.

If the governments target to achieve herd immunity is not reached, South Africa could be dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns for a long time.

Vaccination sites can assess their appointment schedule, and if they have enough stock set aside, they may inoculate walk-ins younger than 50 (but over the age of 35).

The Department of Health recommends that sites manage separate queues for walk-ins and those with an appointment.

This allows sites to prioritise people with appointments and those going for their second shot. Walk-ins should therefore not cause any delays for those who waited for their appointments.

While some may still be concerned that this would lead to a shortage of second shots, South Africas Covid-19 vaccine supplies look healthy.

Crisp said that there was enough stock to ensure that the older groups would get their second shots.

The delivery dates are not fixed in stone, but the supply of vaccines has been secured until year-end, Crisp said.

According to the health department, based on vaccination rates, the country had 18 days of stock of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine by 9 July 2021.

The Pfizer-BioNTech shot is the main vaccine being used for the general population in South Africa.

South Africa had received a total of around 4.5 million doses of these vaccines by the end of June.

As of Sunday, 18 July 2021, just over 4.12 million Pfizer-BioNTech doses had been administered.

Another 2.1 million doses were set to arrive over the course of July, with batches typically shipped weekly.

The arrival of new vaccines appears to be outpacing the speed at which jabs are being administered.

Pfizers shot has been part of South Africas vaccine rollout for nine weeks, with about 458,333 doses administered per week. This is below the number of doses expected to arrive in the country every week.

Crisp has previously also stated that the government was keeping a close eye on the number of vaccines being administered.

We get a report at the end of every day, through our stock visibility system, of what vaccines have been used, and we track what is used against the reports of vaccine doses that are reported on the EVDS to check whats happening, he said.

Should the Department of Health detect that vaccine stocks were running low, it would simply stop walk-ins.

Dis-Chem also told MyBroadband that in the coming week it would receive its largest vaccine allocation in over six weeks.

The availability of shots appears to be more than sufficient in Gauteng, as the province allows walk-ins for residents 35 years and older at public vaccination sites.

If you do not have an appointment, you are not guaranteed to receive a vaccination on the day and could be asked to return on a later date.

Dis-Chem told MyBroadband it will always prioritise older individuals and those registered on the EVDS before allocating walk-in quotas.

Dis-Chem uses EVDS registration to gauge vaccination eligibility, the company stated.

Dis-Chem sites are instructed to prioritise vaccination appointments, particularly older individuals, with daily walk-in quotas and cut-offs determined at a site level, based on available capacity and vaccine supply.

Importantly, you should not have to pay for anything during your visit. The government covers the cost for uninsured persons, while medical aids will cover their scheme members.

To determine where you can get your Covid-19 vaccine, visit the health departments Coronavirus Vaccine Updates portal for a full list of active vaccination sites.

Note that some of the sites in KwaZulu-Natal and certain parts of Gauteng may still be closed due to the recent unrest. For the latest available list on active sites in KwaZulu-Natal, click here.

Western Cape residents can also find a map of vaccination sites in their province on this page.
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Napa County urges everyone to wear masks indoors

Napa County on Monday joined most Bay Area counties in recommending the vaccinated as well as the unvaccinated wear masks while inside public places.

Its not a mandate, said Dr. Karen Relucio, Napa County public health officer. Its a recommendation.

At the root of the recommendation is the emergence of the more contagious COVID-19 Delta variants  Relucio used the plural because, she said, there are subcategories. The Delta variants in June comprised 43% of all COVID-19 specimens genetically sequenced in California.

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The masking request is made out of an abundance of caution. Fully-vaccinated people are well-protected from infections and serious illness due to COVID-19, including the Delta variants, said a press release from Napa County and several regional counties.

Even though Napa County is only making a recommendation, vaccinated customers might have to wear masks inside certain businesses. That's because the county is urging  but not requiring businesses to adopt universal masking for all customers entering indoor areas.

Unvaccinated people must already wear masks while inside places such as grocery stores, movie theaters and retail stores. Having everyone do so would better protect employees and customers and make it easier to assure unvaccinated people are masked, the press release said.

In Los Angeles County, a universal indoor mask recommendation recently turned into a mandate. That raises the question of whether Napa County is heading the same direction.

I think were just going to have to keep an eye on the impact of the Delta variants on our case rates and hospitalizations to see if a mandate is warranted, Relucio said.

The masking recommendation comes little more than a month after the full reopening of the state and local economies. Requirements for vaccinated people to be masked indoors were dropped on June 15.

I would certainly say were all suffering from fatigue and were all starting to come out of it, said Craig Smith, executive director of the Downtown Napa Association.

He was uncertain how many downtown businesses will adopt the countys recommended return to universal masking for their customers.

Weve been given such black-and-white direction up to this point, Smith said. A non-binding statement such as was made, its a little harder to predict how people will respond to it.

Napa County last week reported 53 new COVID-19 cases, up 13% from the previous week. Cases have risen for three straight weeks. Two people as of Monday were in local hospitals because of COVID-19.

To put things in context, the case level is similar to what the county experienced in late April and early May. It is far lower than in January, when the county reported more than 600 cases a week.

Still, if the now-scrapped California COVID-19 color-coded system remained in place, Napa County would have slipped a step from least-restrictive yellow tier to orange.

Napa County has had 11 known cases of the Delta variants, Relucio said. But not every COVID-19 case is sent to the state for full genetic sequencing to find its strain.

Downtown Napa and other local downtowns have been packed in recent weeks with tourists. Visitors might come from areas with lower vaccination rates than Napa County's 70%, higher COVID-19 case rates, and higher instances of the Delta variants.

Smith said that could be a factor as downtown businesses make their decisions about a return to universal masking.

Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, and Sonoma county health officers last Friday recommended even the vaccinated wear masks while inside public places. They cited the fast-spreading Delta variants as the reason.

On Monday, Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties joined Napa County in making the same recommendation.

Relucio said the recommendation that everyone wear masks indoors helps protect both the vaccinated and unvaccinated. Vaccines dont offer 100% protection. Also, some vaccinated people have weakened immune systems, she said.

Napa County is among the counties in a press release that said they will revisit the masking recommendation in coming weeks as they monitor COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths.

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In Los Angeles County, a universal indoor mask recommendation recently turned into a mandate. That raises the question of whether Napa County is heading the same direction.

I think were just going to have to keep an eye on the impact of the Delta variants on our case rates and hospitalizations to see if a mandate is warranted, Relucio said.

The masking recommendation comes little more than a month after the full reopening of the state and local economies. Requirements for vaccinated people to be masked indoors were dropped on June 15.

I would certainly say were all suffering from fatigue and were all starting to come out of it, said Craig Smith, executive director of the Downtown Napa Association.

He was uncertain how many downtown businesses will adopt the countys recommended return to universal masking for their customers.

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Weve been given such black-and-white direction up to this point, Smith said. A non-binding statement such as was made, its a little harder to predict how people will respond to it.

Napa County last week reported 53 new COVID-19 cases, up 13% from the previous week. Cases have risen for three straight weeks. Two people as of Monday were in local hospitals because of COVID-19.
Gov. Gavin Newsom extolled the benefits to California students of record level-spending on education in the 2021-21 state budget during a July 9 bill signing ceremony in Napa with students at Shearer Elementary School.

This is a transformation budget, he said. Mark my words: this is unlike anything we have ever done in this state. So many things weve promoted. So many things we dreamed of. Were delivering when we sign this bill here today.

During the Napa visit, Newsom didnt sign the budget legislation, which he did three days later, but Assembly Bill 130. Thats the 100-page trailer bill, which provides technical language and details for implementing the new K-12 programs in the budget. It includes transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds, which will be phased in over the next five years. The bill surfaced after weeks of negotiations, and the Legislature passed it July 8.

Under the new state budget, NVUSD and other public school systems will phase in transitional kindergarten classes for younger children, who currently must be 5 years old by Dec. 1 to be eligible, Mangewala said. The deadline will be gradually pushed back  initially to enroll children turning 5 before Feb. 2 in the 2022-23 year  until pupils who are 4 by Dec. 1 become eligible in 2025-26.

+6 Napa kids get extra help with summer school: COVID-19 impacted learning These Napa students are spending part of their summer in school, but they don't seem to mind.
A Napa man faces an allegation of sexual assault following a domestic dispute in which he followed a woman in his vehicle, according to police.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Pacific Gas & Electric reported to California utility regulators that its equipment may have been involved in the start of a fire burning in the Sierra Nevada that is threatening hundreds of homes.

PG&E said in a report Sunday to the California Public Utilities Commission that a repairman responding to a circuit outage on July 13 spotted blown fuses in a conductor atop a pole, a tree leaning into the conductor and fire at the base of the tree.

The utility said its system showed around 7 a.m. that the Cresta Dam off Highway 70 had lost power but because of the steep, rough terrain, the worker sent to check it couldn't reach the area until nearly 5 p.m.

The employee reported the fire to his supervisor who called 911 and the dispatcher said they were aware of the fire and responding. Firefighters with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention began dropping water and fire retardant about 5:30 p.m., the utility said.

By that night, the blaze had grown to 10 to 15 acres (4 to 6 hectares) and firefighting crews on the ground had problems accessing the area, it said.

Cal Fire investigators collected portions of a power line, including the conductor, jumpers, insulators, and fuse cutouts, and parts of the tree.
NEW YORK (AP)  Prince Harry is writing what his publisher is calling an intimate and heartfelt memoir.

Random House expects to release the book, currently untitled, late in 2022.

Im writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become," the Duke of Sussex, 36, said in a statement Monday. "Ive worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think. Im deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what Ive learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life thats accurate and wholly truthful.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Prince Harry will donate proceeds to charity, according to Random House.

Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him, Random House announced.
Newspaper: Strict security measures taken in Armenia legislature

Newspaper: Armenia parliamentary mandate is given to those involved in criminal cases

22 inmates killed in clashes between rival gangs in 2 Ecuador prisons

Armenia ombudsman: Azerbaijani authorities must be held accountable, compensate for damage caused to our villagers

25-year-old employee of Armenia ex-MP's company dies in hospital after car accident

US imposes new sanctions against Cuba, Biden says this is just the beginning

Armenia MOD: Monthly payment of AMD 300,000 is terminated in case body of missing soldier is identified and buried

Remains of Armenia soldier Isahak Simonyan declared missing in action during 44-day Karabakh war are found

168.am: Brawl takes place in building of Armenia's State Supervision Service, chief not commenting

Karabakh Ombudsman: Resident of Aygestan village crosses over to sector under Azerbaijani control

Azerbaijan President demands compensation from companies that extracted gold in Karabakh

Baku announces end of sham "trial", 13 Armenian POWs "sentenced" to 6 years in prison

Kremlin: Putin, Pashinyan discuss unblocking of transport and economic links in the region

Russian MFA: Immediate launch of activities for demarcation of Armenia-Azerbaijan border may ensure de-escalation

Taliban claims it controls nearly 90% of Afghanistan's borders

Turkey sells kamikaze drones to another country for the first time

July 22 digest: Pashinyan talks Azerbaijani provocations near border, more on COVID-19 in Armenia

Karabakh emergency situations service: Searches for deceased soldiers in Mataghis were fruitless

Armenia's Pashinyan holds phone talks with Vladimir Putin

Nearly 350 apartments to be exploited at the end of this year in Karabakh's Stepanakert alone

Armenian ex-defense minister Seyran Ohanyan to be head of 'Armenia' bloc's parliamentary faction

Armenia Central Electoral Commission declares Aug. 2 as date for convening first parliamentary session

Armenia Central Electoral Commission approves record on provision of mandates to Members of Parliament

Armenia acting PM: Potential of construction firms doesn't allow for implementation of projects

Armenian government exempts company importing raw material for military helmets production from customs duty

Armenia acting economy minister: Government has to bring shepherds from other countries

US and Germany announce Nord Stream 2 agreement

Armenian information security expert: Armenia is being exposed to cyberattacks at state level

Armenia government allocates more than $18m to reconstruct over 50km roads

TALK TIME: Analyst says Armenia will be split into two zones (Russia and Turkey) in case ill-fated treaty is signed

Advisor to Armenia acting PM sacked

Azerbaijan prohibiting Armenian clergymen and pilgrims from entering Dadivank Monastery

Acting premier on Armenia COVID-19 situation: I hope we will not go to lockdowns at all

Armenia High Commissioner for Diaspora Affairs: COVID-19 and war didn't allow for repatriation "boom"

France Ambassador to Armenia visits Metsamor Historical-Archaeological Museum-Reserve

Armenia revenue committee chief: Continuous growth trend of jobs continued in June as well

Flood damage in Belgium exceeds  10 billion

Two Azerbaijanis injured in land mine explosion in Karabakh

ECtHR issues Badalyan v. Azerbaijan case decision, confirms torture and illegal imprisonment

Deputy health minister on Armenia coronavirus situation: Growth trend will continue in coming days

Two planes crash at Dubai airport

Well-known Armenia businessmans brother arrested

Armenia acting premier: Some of our reforms are being taken advantage of

Armenia Syunik provincial governors son declared wanted

Azerbaijan sentences Russian Armenian to 10 years in prison

Pashinyan: Azerbaijan's provocative steps, maximalist aspirations pose new threats to Armenia, Artsakh

Acting PM congratulates opposition Armenia and I Have Honor blocs on entering parliament

Armenia government delegation to head for Russia

Search for fallen soldiers remains continues in Karabakh

Armenia Ararat Province governor : No panic in Yeraskh village

225 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Biden again calls on democratic countries to oppose authoritarianism

Non-scheduled direct flights to be operated between Lyon, Yerevan

World oil prices dropping

World Tourism Organization announces record-breaking crisis in history

Newspaper: Artsakh Defense Army commander to be changed?

Newspaper: How will issue of Armenia parliaments opposition vice-speaker be resolved?

Armenia ex-President Kocharyan: What happened in October-November will haunt this political team

Armenia "I Have Honor" bloc leader: We will be tough opposition in parliament

Armenia acting PM chairs consultation to discuss investment programs implementation

Robert Kocharyan comments on the reason why opposition 'Armenia' bloc lost

Armenia Ombudsman: Shootings in Yeraskh disturb the peace of civilians

UN Security Council considering possibility of issuing statement on Varosha

Robert Kocharyan on the army and the news about Armenia's potential MOD

Robert Kocharyan: We Armenians have taught our enemy that it can treat us this way

Police stopping drivers and searching cars in Yerevan, traffic service is enhanced

Armenia 2nd President: Authorities will use technology of planned defeat again

Armenian analyst: 138,000 citizens have left Armenia over past 6 months, 80,000 of them will never return

Talks over Eurasian Economic Union-Iran free trade agreement kick off

Armenia MOD official presents Azerbaijani army's provocations in Yeraskh sector of border to military attaches

Armenian acting FM receives French Member of European Parliament Nathalie Loiseau

Citizens of Armenia's Kajaran holding protest, demand release of Mayor Manvel Paramazyan

Two new Azerbaijani military units exploited in Karabakh's Martakert region

Perenjiyev: Aliyev-Putin meeting was held on threshold of signing of another Moscow-Baku-Yerevan agreement

Armenian defense minister resigns, more on COVID-19 in Armenia, July 21 digest

Union of Armenians of Russia: Plaques honoring Armenian marshals of former USSR dismantled

Cyprus appeals to UN Security Council over Ankara's steps in Varosha

Attorney of brother of businessman Khachatur Sukiasyan: Yes, my client opened fire, but doesn't accept the charge

Italian official shoots immigrant

Erdogan: Ankara has nothing against the Taliban's ideology

US, Japan and South Korea intend to deepen trilateral cooperation

Armenia ombudsmans office: Citizens' verbal complaints double as of July

Attorney: Civil claim being prepared against Armenian army general turned MP Gagik Melkonyan

Excavations resume at Tavush Fortress area of Armenia (PHOTOS)

Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff chief visits rehabilitation center

Yerevan State University opening new M.A. program in American Studies

1 dead, 3 injured in major road accident in Armenias Ararat Province

One dollar falls below AMD 488 in Armenia

Body found in area near church in Karabakh's Stepanakert, bruises and bleeding seen

Masked man robs 70-year-old couple with weapon in Armenia's Gyumri

Armenia deputy defense minister Suren Sahakyan sacked

Over $8m in investments expected in Armenias Gyumri

Opposition 'Armenia' bloc member doctor: I currently have two options

Opposition Armenia bloc member doctor comes out of prison

Acting economy minister: Armenia exports in June exceeded $300m for first time

OIF head to Armenias Pashinyan: I would like to reaffirm to you all solidarity of Francophone community

Peskov: Russia ready to welcome France mediation efforts in Nagorno-Karabakh talks

Kremlin: Karabakh agreements implementation not going badly in general

Armenia PM Chief of Staff to new 1st deputy defense minister: You have government, ruling party teams support

Opposition "I Have Honor" bloc of Armenia to take parliamentary seats
Turkey is ready to take over the management of the Kabul airport, if the United States provides the necessary support, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday during his visit to the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, TASS reported.

"A new era is beginning in Afghanistan and in the region, with Turkey standing along the United States and NATO. The United States has decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, and it wants Kabuls airport to continue to operate. We view that in a positive light, and, of course, we have several conditions for the United States both in diplomatic relations and in logistics," he stressed in an interview with the TRT TV channel. "If the necessary support is provided to us, we will think about taking over the management of the Kabul airport."

Erdogan also announced plans to discuss the situation in Afghanistan with the Taliban radical group.

After President Joe Bidens statement about the completion of the US operation in Afghanistan and plans to withdraw its troops, the situation in that country deteriorated dramatically. On July 13, the Pentagon said that US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan had been more than 95% complete. On the other hand, the Taliban announced that it had been able to gain control of over 85% of the republics territory, including areas located along the border with Iran, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.

Meanwhile, on July 13, the 1TV Afghan television channel cited the Talibans statement, which stressed it was ready to attack Turkish forces if they remained on Afghan soil. The Taliban called on the Turkish leadership to abandon the decision, which "creates problems between the Muslim peoples of both countries."
Recently, an agreement was signed between the Armenian National Interests Fund and Air Arabia, according to which a new Armenian national airline shall be established.

According to aviation experts, however, it is impossible to create a national carrier by a single agreement, or such a deal.

According to Hakob Tshagharyan, a former adviser to the Prime Minister and an aviation specialist, Armenia needs national carriers, but such a plan is just empty talk without having mechanisms to regulate the national aviation sector, and a level playing field for local air carriers.

"Air Arabia has not signed any agreement to become a national carrier in Armenia. They signed a cooperation agreement, which is falsely presented by the [Armenian] authorities as the creationwith an experienced airlineof a national air carrier for Armenia. This process is just an eyepiece.

A national air carrier is not created by signing a contract with any company. A national carrier is a local carrier that is able to occupywith its workits unique place in the air transportation market of its country. We can even have 100 planes, but where should you fly? said Tshagharyan.

Also, he wonders if more than 50% of the shares of this national air carrier will be in the hands of the Armenian side, and how is it that the controlling package will belong to Air Arabia.

"It is unacceptable to transfer the controlling package in the management of a national airline to a foreign carrier. If the company comes to invest in our country, it must be guided by our laws, whereas the laws of the Republic of Armenia do not allow such a thing, the aviation expert noted, in particular.

He added. "If it is a national carrier, will those planes work for Armenia during war? Will these planes do the work done by the Armenian-registered planes belonging to Armenian owners? Of course not."

Aviation consultant Navik Khachatryan, in turn, raises another issue: "It is necessary to know who the shareholders [of an Armenian national air carrier] are. It is good that, for example, it does not turn out that [Turkish President] Erdogan's relative bought its shares a month ago. If the company has shareholders who are somehow connected with Turkey, this cannot but cause concern," Khachatryan said.
YEREVAN.  President of Armenia Armen Sarkissian on Tuesday hosted Nathalie Loiseau (France), chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Security and Defense of the Committee on Foreign Affairs European Parliament, informed the press service of the Office of President.

French ambassador to Armenia Jonathan Lacote also took part in the meeting.

Loiseau informed President Sarkissian that she was going to leave for Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) as well, to personally get familiarized with the situation and problems there, to figure out the possible directions of the European Union (EU) and France's support to Armenia and Artsakh.

President Sarkissian, in turn, reflected on the situation after the Artsakh war last fall, and offered his observations on the avenues for the future development of Armenia, emphasizing the importance of assistance by both the EU and France in the strengthening of Armenia and the deepening of cooperation in the target spheres.

In the context of the Armenia's development, Sarkissian stressed the importance of adopting a new constitution with effective mechanisms for checks and balances.

As another precondition for development, the Armenian President noted the ensuring of progress high tech, artificial intelligence, and education.

Armen Sarkissian and Nathalie Loiseau exchanged views on regional issues, too.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents the daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 20.07.21:

YERASKH FIRE

https://news.am/eng/news/654461.html

From late Monday evening until 2 am on Tuesday, the Azerbaijani armed forces continued firing  from the firearms, but without the use of grenade launchers  at the Armenian positions located in the Yeraskh village section of the Armenia-Azerbaijan (Nakhchivan) border.

During the intense exchange of fire for several hours, the head of the Yeraskh community, Radik Oghikyan, sustained a firearm wound. He was organizing the extinguishing of the fire that had broken out in the area as a result of the actions by the Azerbaijanis.

The Armed Forces of Armenia announced that they will not allow any change at the line of contact.

SOLDIER

https://news.am/eng/news/654486.html

A criminal charge has been brought against Lieutenant H.A. amid the death of conscript Artur Ghazaryan.

In particular, at around 9:40pm on July 16, after receiving a report at the firing position of the military unit that an alleged movement of the adversary had been observed in the area of the position, Lieutenant H.A. conducted a monitoring and site survey during which noticing a movement at around 9:45pm, he violated the rules of combat duty, fired shotsfrom his riflein the given direction, as a result of which conscript Artur Ghazaryan sustained a fatal gunshot wound to the head.

This army officer has been remanded in custody.

The criminal investigation continues.

BLOC

https://news.am/eng/news/654519.html

The opposition Armenia bloc has decided to take its parliamentary mandates, a member of the Bureau of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun political party Armen Rustamyan told Armenian News-NEWS.am.

Yesterday, second President of Armenia Robert Kocharyan, who is number one on Armenia blocs list of candidates for MP, declared that he had applied to the Central Electoral Commission and refused to take the parliamentary mandate.

Armenia bloc will have 29 mandates in the eighth convocation of the National Assembly.

Based on the results of the snap parliamentary elections, I Have Honor bloc will have eight mandates.

MANDATE

https://news.am/eng/news/654492.html

Lilit Makunts, who is third on the Ruling Civil Contract Party's electoral list for the snap parliamentary elections on June 20, has submitted a parliamentary mandate withdrawal petition to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Armenia.

Makunts will be appointed as Armenia's new ambassador to the United States, and her respective agreement has already been received.

To date, the CEC has received two petitions for giving up parliamentary seats. Earlier, second President Robert Kocharyan, who heads the opposition Armenia bloc, had submitted a similar petition.

MANDATE

https://news.am/eng/news/654492.html

Lilit Makunts, who is third on the Ruling Civil Contract Party's electoral list for the snap parliamentary elections on June 20, has submitted a parliamentary mandate withdrawal petition to the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) of Armenia.

Makunts will be appointed as Armenia's new ambassador to the United States, and her respective agreement has already been received.

To date, the CEC has received two petitions for giving up parliamentary seats. Earlier, second President Robert Kocharyan, who heads the opposition Armenia bloc, had submitted a similar petition.

AVIATION

https://news.am/eng/news/654499.html

An agreement was signed between the Armenian National Interests Fund and Air Arabia, according to which a new Armenian national airline shall be established.

According to Hakob Tshagharyan, a former adviser to the Prime Minister and an aviation specialist, such a plan has no mechanisms to regulate the national aviation sector and a level playing field for local air carriers.

"Air Arabia signed a cooperation agreement, which is falsely presented by the Armenian authorities as the creation of a national air carrier for Armenia, said Tshagharyan.

Also, he wonders if more than 50% of the shares of this national air carrier will be in the hands of the Armenian side, and how is it that the controlling package will belong to Air Arabia.

LA

https://news.am/eng/news/654471.html

The Armenians in Los Angeles have said their last goodbye to renowned duduk player, the late Djivan Gasparyan.

His grandson Jivan Gasparyan Jr., also a well-known duduk player, informed that the funeral of his grandfather will take place in Armenia on Saturday.

Djivan Gasparyan will be laid to eternal rest at the Komitas Pantheon in Yerevan.

He had passed away on July 6 at the age of 92.

COVID-19

https://news.am/eng/news/654473.html

As of Tuesday morning, 194 new cases of the coronavirus were confirmed in Armenia, and the total number of these cases has reached 227,716 in the country.

Also, three more deaths from COVID-19 were registered, making the respective total 4,572 cases.

The number of people who have recovered over the past one day is 102, the total respective number so far is 218,529, and the number of people currently being treated is 3,503an increase by 89 from the previous day.

And 6,299 COVID-19 tests were conducted in Armenia over the past day, while 1,277,470 such tests have been performed to date.
Head of the delegation of the National Assembly of Armenia to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Chairman of the Standing Committee on Foreign Relations Ruben Rubinyan; Chairman of the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs, Head of the Armenia-France Parliamentary Friendship Group Vladimir Vardanyan; Chairman of the Standing Committee on Defense and Security Andranik Kocharyan and Chairman of the Standing Committee on European Integration Arman Yeghoyan today met with French Member of the European Parliament, Chair of the Subcommittee on Security and Defense of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and head of the delegation of the La Republique en Marche political party in the European Parliament Nathalie Loiseau.

As reported the press service of the National Assembly of Armenia, the Armenian parliamentarians greeted the guest and expressed gratitude to the French friends for always supporting Armenia in various initiatives.

During the meeting, the Armenian MPs presented the situation in the region and viewed it as tense. Over the past few months, Armenian has been seeing the leadership of Azerbaijan make extremely aggressive statements and taking extremely aggressive actions. In particular, the President of Azerbaijan has already made public statements about his ambitions against the territories of Armenia, Rubinyan emphasized and stated that the Azerbaijanis started firing at Armenian military posts in the direction of Nakhchivan a few days ago, as a result of which there is a victim and injured party. In this context, Rubinyan attached importance to the international communitys pressure on Azerbaijan.

Loiseau expressed concern over the current escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the return of all Armenian prisoners of war, as well as the protection of the historical and cultural heritage of Artsakh which is under Azerbaijani control. Today, every Frenchman, even the smallest one knows about the Armenian Genocide and how much the Armenian nation has suffered and how it is mourning the losses. France plays a special role in Europe, that is, to present to European partners the real challenges facing Armenia, Loiseau stated.

During the meeting, the Armenian MPs touched upon the reforms underway in various sectors in Armenia and attached importance to European partners support.
The judge of the Yerevan court of general jurisdiction left for the consultation room to render a decision on the pre-trial measure for member of the opposition Armenia bloc, Director of Izmirlian Medical Center and doctor Armen Charchyan.

The decision will be announced tomorrow at 12pm.

Charchyans attorneys have petitioned to replace arrest with bail for Charchyan and claim that there are no grounds for him to remain in custody.

Charchyan is charged with giving bribes to voters, taking bribes, violating the ban on charity during elections, or obstructing the exercise of a voters free will.

An audio recording was disseminated on the Internet in which Charchyan urges his employees of Izmirlian Medical Center to participate in the snap parliamentary elections. According to the defense, the edited version of the audio recording was submitted to the court, and in the full version of the audio recording, there was no threat made to or pressure on the employees.
Acting Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today hosted French Member of the European Parliament, Chair of the Security and Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament, head of the delegation of the La Republique en Marche political party to the European Parliament Nathalie Loiseau, as reported the governments press service.

Pashinyan greeted Mrs. Loiseau, highly appreciated her pro-Armenian activities in the European Parliament and attached importance to the recent adoption of the resolution of the European Parliament, one of the co-authors of which is Loiseau and which particularly emphasized the issue of Armenian prisoners of war detained in Azerbaijan and stressed contributions to stability and peace in the region.

I attach importance to the call made in the resolution to Turkey to acknowledge and recognize the Armenian Genocide. I would like to highlight the fact that this is not only a matter of confronting the historical truth, but also a very major component of the correct assessment and interpretation of the Armenian reality, Pashinyan said.

The acting premier expressed satisfaction with the course of Armenia-European Union relations and added that they have become dynamic. Pashinyan went on to talk about the EUR 2,600,000,000 that the European Union has allocated to Armenia as assistance and the recent visit of President of the European Council Charles Michel to Armenia.

Pashinyan also particularly underscored the importance of Armenias relations with France. Armenia takes pride in those relations and says that the French-Armenian relations are special. On June 1, I had a very important meeting with President of France Emmanuel Macron and, of course, we believe further development and deepening of our relations with France must be a priority on our agenda. I also highly appreciate the role and participation of the President of France in the constructive solutions to security issues in our region, Pashinyan said.

Nathalie Loiseau expressed gratitude for the cordial reception and congratulated Nikol Pashinyan on Civil Contract Partys victory in the elections. I am here not only as the chair of the Security and Defense Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, but also as a French woman and a member of the government of Macron, who is obviously aware of my visit. I have fought hard to have the European Commission remind Turkey about the need for recognition of the Armenian Genocide because it will be impossible to build the future, if we dont acknowledge the past. I will continue to be a friend of Armenia and the Armenians in the European Parliament, just like many other French parliamentarians, she said.

Loiseau stated that she would like to know what more the European Union can do to stabilize and discharge the situation in the region. She attached importance to the preservation of cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh and the ensuring of an opportunity for free entry of international organizations for that purpose. Loiseau added that she is very glad that Armenia is in the European Unions focus.

The interlocutors discussed Armenia-EU relations, the development of the Armenian-French cooperation, as well as the processes unfolding in the region. Pashinyan added that Mrs. Loiseau is considered a great friend of the Armenian people.
Story Highlights Experiences of stress, worry, sadness and anger all set new records

Iraq leads the world in negative experiences for second consecutive year

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Nobody was alone in feeling more sad, angry, worried or stressed last year. Gallup's latest Negative Experience Index, which annually tracks these experiences worldwide in more than 100 countries and areas, shows that collectively, the world was feeling the worst it had in 15 years. The index score reached a new high of 32 in 2020.

Line graph. The Negative Experience Index, an annual composite index of stress, anger, worry, sadness and physical pain, continued to rise in 2020, hitting a new record of 32.

Gallup asked adults in 115 countries and areas if they had five specific negative experiences on the day preceding the survey. Four in 10 adults said they had experienced worry (40%) or stress (40%), and just under three in 10 had experienced physical pain (29%) during a lot of the previous day. About one in four or more experienced sadness (27%) or anger (24%).

Already at or near record highs in 2019, experiences of worry, stress, sadness and anger continued to gain steam and set new records in 2020. Worry and sadness each rose one percentage point, anger rose two, and stress rocketed up five. The percentage of adults worldwide who experienced pain was the only index item that declined -- dropping two points after holding steady for several years at 31%.

But 2020 officially became the most stressful year in recent history. The five-point jump from 35% in 2019 to 40% in 2020 represents nearly 190 million more people globally who experienced stress during a lot of the previous day.

Line graph. Reported stress worldwide soared to a record 40% in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Worldwide, not everyone was feeling this stress to the same degree. Reported stress ranged from a high of 66% in Peru -- which represents a new high for the country -- to a low of 13% in Kyrgyzstan, where stress levels have historically been low and stayed low in 2020.

Iraq Continues to Lead the World in Negative Experiences

Negative Experience Index scores worldwide ranged from a high of 53 in Iraq, which also led the world on the index in 2019, to a low of 13 in Taiwan, which also scored lowest in 2019.

Heat map. Range of scores on the Negative Experience Index ranged from a high of 53 in Iraq to a low of 13 in Taiwan, Province of China.

Iraq's Negative Experience Index score for 2020 represents a slight increase from its score of 51 in 2019. Negative experiences remained common for most of the population in 2020, with at least half of Iraqis experiencing each of the five negative emotions asked about in the survey. Notably, Iraqis led the world in experiencing pain (56%), anger (51%) and sadness (50%).

No other country posted a Negative Experience Index score higher than Iraq's, but, as in past years, people in countries and areas with high scores on the index in 2020 were contending with economic and political turmoil -- likely only made worse by the pandemic. Lebanon, which scores a close second on the Negative Experience Index and has been at the top of the index for the past two years, is a prime example.

Highest Negative Experiences Worldwide in 2020 Negative Experience Index Iraq 53 Lebanon 51 Peru 51 Egypt 50 Tunisia 47 Congo 46 Iran 46 Uganda 45 Ecuador 45 Mali 43 Gallup World Poll, 2020

Bottom Line

The pandemic is not entirely to blame for the world's emotional state. While 2020 may have been a record-setting year for negative emotions, the world has been on a negative trajectory for almost a decade.

That's not to say things can't or won't improve in the future. In the U.S. in 2021, people's ratings of their lives rebounded -- hitting new all-time highs -- and their emotions returned to pre-pandemic levels. But all the findings reinforce why it is important for leaders to ask, benchmark and understand how their people are living their lives.

Read more about the world's negative and positive experiences in the Gallup Global Emotions 2021 report.

To stay up to date with the latest Gallup News insights and updates, follow us on Twitter.
Kennesaw State contributes $1.6 billion to Georgia economy

KENNESAW, Ga. (Jul 19, 2021)  Kennesaw State University continues to represent a significant economic engine in the state of Georgia, growing its economic impact to more than $1.6 billion in fiscal year 2020, according to a University System of Georgia report released on July 19. The total impact of all 26 USG institutions on their host communities was $18.6 billion in FY 2020.

The University Systems measure of economic impact reflects direct and indirect spending that contributes to the regions served by its colleges and universities. The report evaluates economic impact in terms of output (sales, plus or minus inventory), value added (gross regional product), labor income and number of jobs.

Of Kennesaw States FY 2020 total economic impact, nearly $1.02 billion is initial spending, defined as spending by the institution for its personnel services and operating expenses combined with spending by that institutions students. The remaining $630 million of the output impact was created by re-spending  the ripple effect of an institution and its employees and students purchasing goods or services from other industries in the community, such as restaurants and retail stores.

Kennesaw State is a powerful driver of economic value for our region and the state of Georgia, said Kathy Schwaig, interim president of Kennesaw State University. As we continue to expand our academic programs, the benefits extend well beyond our campuses as the University drives innovation, workforce development and job creation.

The University System of Georgia and its member institutions were a significant source of stability and played a critical role in the states recovery in 2020. Kennesaw States $1.65 billion economic impact in FY 2020 marked a 1.8 percent increase from $1.61 billion the previous year, while the University System of Georgias economic impact grew by 0.6 percent over fiscal year 2019.

Serving more than 41,000 students, Kennesaw States collective employment impact in FY 2020 was 13,630 full- and part-time jobs  including 3,985 jobs on campus and 9,645 jobs off campus in either the private or public sectors. Statewide, the USG directly and indirectly generated 155,010 jobs  52,904 University System employees and 102,106 jobs off campus, meaning that, for each job created on campus, two off-campus jobs exist because of spending related to the college or university.

With strong support from the state and significant planning from our campuses, USGs economic impact on local communities across Georgia held steady despite a challenging year, Acting USG Chancellor Teresa MacCartney said. At the same time, a degree from a USG institution continues to add real value to the lives of our graduates and their families. We remain focused on doing everything in our power to help more Georgians complete college and ensure our state has a well-prepared, highly skilled workforce to grow Georgias economy.

The annual USG study was conducted by the Selig Center for Economic Growth in the University of Georgias Terry College of Business, which analyzed data collected between July 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020, to calculate each schools economic impact.

Click here to read the full USG economic impact report.

 Paul Floeckher

Related Stories

A leader in innovative teaching and learning, Kennesaw State University offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees to its more than 41,000 students. With 11 colleges on two metro Atlanta campuses, Kennesaw State is a member of the University System of Georgia and the second-largest university in the state. The universitys vibrant campus culture, diverse population, strong global ties and entrepreneurial spirit draw students from throughout the region and from 126 countries across the globe. Kennesaw State is a Carnegie-designated doctoral research institution (R2), placing it among an elite group of only 6 percent of U.S. colleges and universities with an R1 or R2 status. For more information, visit kennesaw.edu.
China denies hacking claim as US charges four

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has rejected claims of hacking from the US and its allies. File image: Shutterstock

The Chinese Embassy in Washington has slammed as "irresponsible" a claim by the United States and its allies that China conducted a global cyberespionage campaign.



The United States was joined by Nato, the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and New Zealand in condemning the spying, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said posed "a major threat to our economic and national security."



Simultaneously, the US Department of Justice charged four Chinese nationals  three security officials and one contract hacker  with targeting dozens of companies, universities and government agencies in the United States and abroad.



A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, called the accusations against China "irresponsible".



"The Chinese government and relevant personnel never engage in cyber attacks or cyber theft," Liu said in a statement.



While a flurry of statements from Western powers represents a broad alliance, cyber experts said the lack of consequences for China beyond the US indictment was conspicuous. Just a month ago, summit statements by G7 and Nato warned China and said it posed threats to the international order.



Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, called Monday's announcement a "successful effort to get friends and allies to attribute the action to Beijing, but not very useful without any concrete follow-up".



Some of Monday's statements even seemed to pull punches. While Washington and its close allies such as the United Kingdom and Canada held the Chinese state directly responsible for the hacking, others were more circumspect.



NATO merely said that its members "acknowledge" the allegations being leveled against Beijing by the US, Canada, and the UK. The European Union said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in "malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory"  a statement that left open the possibility that the Chinese government was itself innocent of directing the espionage.



The United States was much more specific, formally attributing intrusions such as the one that affected servers running Microsoft Exchange earlier this year to hackers affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security. Microsoft had already blamed China. (Reuters)
SIU establishing new doctoral fellowship program for equity and social justice in education

by Christi Mathis

CARBONDALE, Ill.  This fall, Southern Illinois University Carbondales School of Education is launching a new doctoral fellowship program with an emphasis in educational equity and social justice.

The programs fellows will be prepared as scholars to address structural inequalities in educational settings and devise and assess programs and practices that can lead to improved educational access and provide better and more equitable educational opportunities and success for all students, said School of Education Dean M Cecil Smith.

The new program is a response to the diversity, equity and inclusion challenges Smith and his colleagues have observed in the world and the nation.

We asked ourselves, How can we as the School of Education at Southern Illinois University Carbondale respond to the issues of structural racism? he said.

We want help address those issues in our country, and we believe we can do that by capitalizing on our strengths. One of the best ways is to prepare scholars to study problems and prepare policies to dismantle the causes of those problems.

About three to five fellows will be selected each year, with the option of earning a Ph.D. or Ed.D. Smith said that while there are a small number of university doctoral programs focusing on equity in education, SIUs is distinctive for two reasons:

The participating students will be fellows with full financial support for up to three years.

The program will take advantage of the universitys location as a rural higher education institution. As schools in rural areas are becoming increasingly diverse, Smith said, the need for emerging scholars and leaders working to assure educational equity in various forms is especially great.

The fellowship will train scholars, teachers, human resource specialists and administrators for diverse careers in education, research and government agencies.

Smith and Kathryn Sime, director of development for the School of Education, have worked together to secure funding, which includes tuition waivers, scholarships and employment as graduate assistants. In addition, the fellows will receive training in preparing grant applications.

Smith said the new fellowship program is part of a more far-reaching grand vision he and others have for the School of Education. That vision includes an educational policy center to focus primarily on issues related to rural schools, diversity and equity. For instance, he pointed out the disparity in school funding between various school districts across the state and the country. He said the goal would be for students to get involved in the center and its work, helping find solutions to the disparities and inequities within schools.

An SIU tradition

The new doctoral program is both timely and necessary, as well as a natural step for the historically diverse SIU, according to Smith.

Inequities in access to education, adequate funding and highly skilled, high-quality teachers remain a barrier for large populations throughout the United States. Racism, sexism and discrimination persist despite decades of legal and public policy initiatives and social activism, he said. As a result of those iniquities, gaps exist between different groups of students, both in terms of access and achievement.

He noted that SIU has a long history of embracing diversity and it is only fitting that the university be part of the solution to closing gaps and eliminating disparities. Founded in 1869, SIUs inaugural 143-member class included two Black students. Today, minorities are nearly a third of the student population and the university consistently ranks among the nations top institutions of higher learning for the number of degrees awarded to students in ethnic and racial minority groups.

Comprehensive course of study

Smith said the coursework for the program will cover teaching and research, along with educational systems and social learning theories. It includes a teaching apprenticeship with the focus on teaching diversity issues in education or the University 101 course.

Topics include:

Educational equity and access.

Gender, race and ethnicity.

Disabilities and neurodiversity.

Multicultural education: global/comparative/international education, anticolonialism.

Public engagement and advocacy.

Narrowing of achievement gaps.

Evidence-based policy and practice.

Democracy, diversity and social justice.

School culture, language policies, social and political contexts of schooling.

The main thing I appreciate about this program is the opportunity to academically and financially support students in becoming critical educators and researchers, said Saran Donahoo, director of graduate studies and college student personnel and professor of educational administration and higher education.

To find out more about the new fellowship or to apply, contact Donahoo at donahoo@siu.edu.
A new era of human spaceflight lifted off on April 12, 1981, when Space Shuttle Columbia took to the sky, a new generation of spacecraft that could launch into orbit around the Earth, deliver a large payload into space and then glide back down to land where it could be reused for future missions.

But like all good things, this era came to an end 30 years later when Space Shuttle Atlantis returned to Earth on July 21, 2011, marking the end of the final flight of the space shuttle program.

The space shuttle program was a different direction for NASA with the organization officially starting the initiative in 1972, the same year as the final moon landing. It took years of planning, development and testing before the inaugural flight into space was made in 1981.

"As humanity's first reusable spacecraft, the space shuttle pushed the bounds of discovery ever farther, requiring not only advanced technologies but the tremendous effort of a vast workforce," NASA said.

The shuttle program is responsible for conducting pivotal missions, including the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope and subsequent service missions, releasing interplanetary space probes such as Galileo and Magellan, and doing the heavy lifting in the construction of the International Space Station (ISS).

The Hubble Space Telescope being released on April 25, 1990. (Image/NASA)

The success of the program did not come without setbacks, including two disasters that made NASA rethink the entire space shuttle program.

The Challenger disaster on Jan. 28, 1986, and the Columbia disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, claimed the lives of 14 astronauts and forced the fleet to be grounded for extended periods of time.

In 2004, less than 12 months after the Columbia accident, then-President George W. Bush announced that after the completion of the ISS, the space shuttles would be retired.

Space Shuttle Discovery, sometimes referred to as the workhorse of the fleet, made its last trip to space on Feb. 24, 2011, followed by the final flight of Space Shuttle Endeavour on May 16, 2011.

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The 135th and final mission of the program was left for Space Shuttle Atlantis, which blasted off on July 8, 2011.

The space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from the Kennedy Space Center Friday, July 8, 2011, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Atlantis is the 135th and final space shuttle launch for NASA. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

The final launch was almost delayed due to a poor weather outlook leading up to launch, but despite the 70% chance of unfavorable weather, Mother Nature cooperated for the crew and the nearly 1 million people that gathered in person to witness the historic mission.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

The weather was even better for the journey home with Atlantis safely touching down at 5:57 a.m. EDT on July 21.

"Although we got to take the ride, we sure hope that everybody who has ever worked on, or touched, or looked at, or envied or admired a space shuttle was able to take just a little part of the journey with us," Commander Chris Ferguson said after the landing.

Space shuttle Atlantis' drag chute slows the shuttle as it lands on Runway 15 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (Image/ NASA/ Kenny Allen)

By the end of the program, the shuttles combined for nearly 21,000 orbits around the Earth, spent more than 1,300 days in space, launched more than 3.5 million pounds of cargo, and gave a lift to 355 astronauts and cosmonauts, according to SPACE.com.

However, the shuttles still had a job after retirement.

After being decommissioned, Discovery, Endeavour and Atlantis were sent across the country to be displayed at various museums for people to see.

Atlantis resides closest to home at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex just miles away from where its engines roared to life and propelled it into space.

Space shuttle Atlantis is seen on display at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Thursday, June 20, 2013, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Discovery now calls the nation's capital home, residing at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

A drive just a few hours up Interstate 95 leads to New York City, the home of Enterprise. Enterprise was the first shuttle ever constructed but was only ever used for atmospheric test flights and never actually flew in space. Enterprise is on display at the Intrepid Sea Air & Space Museum.

The space shuttle Enterprise passes the Statue of Liberty as it makes the final leg of its journey to its new Manhattan home on the flight deck of the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, Wednesday, June 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Endeavour is the only shuttle on the West Coast at the California Science Center across the street from the L.A. Memorial Coliseum.

Of all of the shuttles, Endeavour had the most challenging journey to its destination. Crews had to navigate the massive spacecraft through urban Los Angeles, which required removing power lines and traffic lights to make enough room for the shuttle.

Endeavour is currently on display in a horizontal position, but eventually it will be lifted vertically in a new exhibit in a ready to launch' configuration complete with an (empty) external fuel tank and renovated solid rocket boosters.

This will give visitors an up-close experience of what the shuttle looked like on the launch pad just before blasting off into orbit around the planet.

Keep checking back on AccuWeather.com and stay tuned to the AccuWeather Network on DirecTV, Frontier, Spectrum, FuboTV, Philo, and Verizon Fios.
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A decade ago, youd have to be high to think you could make money off of marijuana stocks because they didnt exist. Today, legal cannabis has become a genuine growth industry, and investment opportunities abound. For that, you can thank the rising number of states that have legalized weed for both recreational and medical uses.

You can tap into the market for legal and licensed cannabis by buying cannabis stocks or exchange-traded funds. Keep reading to learn more about cannabis laws in the United States and where to find the best ETFs for 2021.

The Legal Status of Cannabis in the United States

Colorado was the first state to legalize cannabis for recreational use, way back in 2012. Today a total of 19 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized weed, even though it remains illegal at the federal level.

Heres a rundown of the legal status of cannabis across the country:

States and Jurisdictions Where Recreational Marijuana is Legal

Colorado

Washington

Alaska

Oregon

Washington, D.C.

California

Maine

Massachusetts

Nevada

Michigan

Vermont

Guam

Illinois

Arizona

Montana

New Jersey

South Dakota

New York

Virginia

New Mexico

Connecticut

Meanwhile, a total of 36 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands have approved the medical use of marijuana.

Understanding the Risks of Investing in Cannabis ETFs

The main risk of investing in cannabis ETFs is that the legal marijuana industry is still very young. You have a limited number of stocks to choose from, and those that do exist havent had much time to build up financial track records. Many of the investments you make will be extremely speculative.

Another risk is that cannabis laws and tax rules tend to be all over the map in the U.S.  both literally and figuratively. Federal law still classifies marijuana as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning it is considered to have a high potential for dependency with no accepted medical use, making distribution of marijuana a federal offense. Even in states where pot is legal, laws vary over how it can be sold, used and taxed.

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Investing in cannabis ETFs helps lower some of the risk because these funds hold shares of multiple companies, meaning your investment is not dependent on the performance of a single company.

Top Cannabis ETFs To Consider

The diversification you get with a cannabis ETF gives you some protection in an industry prone to extreme moves. That by itself makes marijuana ETFs worth exploring. Here are six cannabis ETFs that warrant a closer look.

ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF (MJ)

MJ launched in 2015 and has grown into the biggest cannabis-focused ETF out there, with nearly $2 billion in assets under management. This ETF tracks the Prime Alternative Harvest Index. As of late June, its top three holdings were Tilray (TLRY), GrowGeneration (GRWG) and Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC). As of July 2021, MJ owns only about 30 stocks, but its annual portfolio turnover ratio is high at 46%, which suggests that fund managers flip stocks regularly to generate income and pay dividends, as noted by Seeking Alpha.

The Cannabis ETF (THCX)

The Cannabis ETF follows an index of companies that cultivate, produce or distribute cannabis for medical or recreational purposes. It started trading in July 2019. THCXs top three holdings as of late June were Tilray (TLRY), Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC) and Village Farms International (VFF).

Cambria Cannabis ETF (TOKE)

Cambria targets anywhere from 20 to 50 of the top companies in the marijuana space. It puts 80% of its net assets in cannabis companies that exist across a broad market capitalization spectrum of micro-, small- and mid-cap stocks. It has a fairly low expense ratio of 0.42%. Cambrias top three holdings as of mid-July are Tilray (TLRY), Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR) and Constellation Brands (STZ).

AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis ETF (MSOS)

MSOS is an actively managed ETF, which means its managers can react accordingly to daily market movements. AdvisorShares Pure US Cannabis began trading in September 2020. Its top holdings include leading multistate operators such as Green Thumb Industries (GTBIF), Curaleaf Holdings (CURLF) and Trulieve Cannabis Corp. (TCNNF). This ETF offers exposure to large U.S. cannabis operators, though some of the companies it holds do not get a lot of market attention, as reported by U.S. News & World Report.

Amplify Seymour Cannabis ETF (CNBS)

Amplify Seymour Cannabis is another actively managed ETF. Pure-play cannabis companies make up 80% of its stock holdings. As of late June, CNBS had more than doubled in value over the previous year. Its largest holdings include WM Technology (MAPS), Tilray (TLRY), Village Farms International (VFF) and Canopy Growth Corp. (CGC).

AdvisorShares Pure Cannabis ETF (YOLO)

YOLO tracks Canadian and U.S. companies in the healthcare, real estate and consumer products sectors. The actively managed ETFs top three cannabis holdings are Village Farms International (VFF), Innovative Industrial Properties (IIPR) and GrowGeneration Corp. (GRWG). It invests most of its net assets  a minimum of 80%  in securities of companies that derive at least half of their net revenue from the hemp and marijuana business, as well as in derivatives or instruments that have economic characteristics similar to those securities.

Will Healy contributed to the reporting for this article.

Data on ETFs was sourced from U.S. News & World Report, TheStreet, MarketWatch and Seeking Alpha. Data was compiled on July 17, 2021, and is subject to change.

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: 6 Best Cannabis ETFs of 2021
Six people were hospitalized after a home in a Dallas suburb was leveled by an explosion Monday afternoon, fire rescue officials said.

Plano Fire Rescue said on Twitter that an explosion was confirmed at the site, but they did not know the cause. Atmos Energy Corporation, one of the largest natural gas distributors in the nation, was helping with the investigation.

Fire officials said that of the six people hospitalized, one was extricated from the rubble of the home that exploded and the other five were in a home next door.

Witnesses told local news outlets that they heard a series of booms, which sounded like lightning. Most surrounding homes also sustained damage.

All of the sudden I heard what I thought was my sliding glass door breaking, one neighbor told KTVT. And I just noticed two picture frames on the wall fall down and the sound and that didnt match up. When my husband pulled into our garage, the roof in our garage had caved in.

Fire officials said they were joined at the scene by members of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in addition to Plano police. Police brought in an explosives detecting dog, though the dog did not discover any explosives or hazardous materials, and police determined that the site was not a crime scene.

More: Texas SWAT commander killed, 4 officers injured in standoff with gunman; suspect captured

Gas and electricity was turned off to most of the homes on the street until about 9:30 p.m., when Atmos Energy and Oncor Electric representatives determined it was safe to restore gas and power.

We are saddened by todays tragedy of a house explosion in our City. Several of our residents were injured," Plano Mayor John Muns said in a statement, reported KXAS-TV. "We are keeping them and their families close to our hearts and hoping for a swift and full recovery.

"Plano Fire-Rescue is working diligently to determine the cause of the blast. Were asking all of you to keep the victims in your prayers.

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Video footage from the scene shows debris and lumber scattered across the home's yard and into the street.

There were lightning storms in the area on Monday afternoon.

Contributing: The Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Texas house explosion injures 6 people, fire resuce officials say
ABC11 has named Lauren Johnson as its new evening co-anchor, bringing a veteran journalist in the Philadelphia market to replace the retiring Tisha Powell.

Johnson comes to Raleigh from Fox 29 News, where she launched a weekend edition of Good Day Philadelphia. In her time at the station, she covered the Democratic National Convention, a fatal Amtrak derailment, the popes visit and both Bill Cosby trials.

She joins co-anchor Steve Daniels on the Eyewitness News team at 5 p.m., 6 p.m. and 11 p.m., along with the 10 p.m. newscast on CW22.

It is a great pleasure to welcome Lauren to ABC11, said Raleigh-Durham President and General Manager Rob Elmore in a news release. Our team had an instant connection with Lauren the minute we met her, and we know our viewers will feel the same as she joins the evening news to inform and serve our growing audience across central North Carolina.

A graduate of Furman University in South Carolina, Johnson worked as an intern with Diane Sawyer on ABCs Good Morning America.

She followed that as feature reporter at Central Florida News 13 in Orlando, Florida, then as a health reporter at WHBQ-TV in Memphis, Tennessee, where she won a Tennessee Hospital Association Award and was nominated for several Emmys.

Returning to Orlando to launch the weekend edition of Good Day Orlando, she covered George Zimmermans trial for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin.

Lauren is a talented, compassionate and seasoned journalist who is a truth-seeker for all people, said WTVD news director Bervette Carree. Her ability to authentically connect with people is a unique and appreciated trait in our industry.

Powell announced her retirement in April and left ABC11 at the end of June to spend more time with family.

Johnson joins the station at the end of July.
The Daily Beast

Duchess of CambridgeKate and William have probably long fantasized about issuing a statement saying: Screw you, Harry and Meghan! That is not how we do things round here!Instead, as befits the royal world of semaphore, they put out a deeply traditional photo of their son that could be construed as saying the same thing.After a week of turmoil for the palace, which saw a shocking announcement that Prince Harry was to pen a memoir, described as the stuff of nightmares for the royal family, nor
The exiled leader of the Belarusian opposition said Tuesday that she asked the United States for tighter sanctions on some companies, hoping to force them away from veteran strongman Alexander Lukashenko.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who says she easily won last year's election in which Lukashenko said he secured a sixth term, is on a visit to Washington as President Joe Biden's administration vows to step up pressure on the pro-Moscow Belarusian leader.

In a meeting Monday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Tikhanovskaya said she presented a list of companies on which she hopes the United States can impose further sanctions.

"We understand that only Belarusians themselves can bring the country to democratic changes, but we hope for American active and non-symbolic participation," Tikhanovskaya told a roundtable of the State Department Correspondents' Association.

"President Biden says that the world is struggling between autocracy and democracy. So the frontline of this struggle is in Belarus at the moment. As a champion of democracy, the USA can help get things done," she said.

Tikhanovskaya said that she hoped for further sanctions against state-controlled companies in the areas of potash, oil, wood and steel.

Businesses will be forced to "understand that Lukashenko is over" and that "they have to choose to join a new, transparent country."

She also called for an end to loopholes in EU sanctions that she said allowed existing contracts with international companies to go ahead.

"Most of the international enterprises are afraid of USA sanctions first of all and even the threat of new sanctions -- new European sanctions or USA sanctions -- can influence the behavior of Lukashenko," she said.

"He is becoming more cruel now and he is escalating violence but it only shows his weakness."

- Sanctions 'powerful tool' -

Tikhanovskaya also met Tuesday with Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, as well as members of Congress.

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"The United States, together with partners and allies, will continue to hold the Lukashenko regime accountable for its actions, including through the imposition of sanctions," the White House said after the talks with Sullivan.

Sullivan reiterated a demand for the release of all political prisoners in Belarus, and "a comprehensive and genuine political dialogue with the leaders of the democratic opposition" and others that leads to a "free and fair" presidential vote.

Earlier, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that Blinken had a "very good discussion" with Tikhanovskaya but declined to go into detail on any talk of new sanctions.

Tikhanovskaya, previously a stay-at-home mother, ran in place of her husband who was detained before the election. She fled to Lithuania for safety as security forces crack down on protests.

In May, a commercial flight from Athens to Lithuania was forced to land in Belarus on the pretext of security, with authorities arresting a Belarusian dissident journalist onboard, Roman Protasevich, and his girlfriend.

The European Union responded by banning flights over Belarusian airspace, a step that Tikhanovskaya hailed as powerful.

"It's difficult to explain to people from democratic countries that I'm not leading an opposition movement, because we are the majority," she said.

"Even if Tikhanovskaya disappears one day for I don't know what reasons, this uprising, this movement, we will continue."

sct/fff-sst/bgs
Bellator is headed to South Dakota and theyve brought over an exciting womens flyweight matchup for the event.

Bellator 265 is set to go down at Sanford Pentagon on Aug. 20 in Sioux Falls, S.D. Alejandra Lara vs. DeAnna Bennett, which was originally scheduled for Bellator 263 in Lo Angeles on July 31, has been moved to the Aug. 20 event.

Multiple people with knowledge of the event and matchup informed the news to MMA Junkie on Monday.

Related

Bellator 263 adds three fights including Brent Primus vs. Islam Mamedov, loses ranked bantamweight bout After Bellator 262 win, Diana Avsaragova sets sights on Fedor card in Moscow: 'It would be an honor'

Lara (9-4 MMA, 3-3 BMMA) is looking to bounce back into the win column after a split decision loss to Japans Kana Watanabe at Bellator 255 in April. Prior to the defeat, Lara had back-to-back wins over Taylor Turner and Veta Arteaga. The 26-year-old fights out of Lobo Gym in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Meanwhile, Bennett (10-7-1 MMA, 0-1 BMMA) is out to get her first Bellator win. The former Invicta FC title challenger lost her promotional debut against top contender Liz Carmouche in September. Bennett competed on season 26 of the UFCs reality T.V. show The Ultimate Fighter.
Jul. 20CHARLESTON  On the same day he signed a professional contract to play in Italy in the fall, Nathan Adrian nailed the decisive 3-pointer that sent Best Virginia to the Super 16 of The Basketball Tournament (TBT).

Adrian finished with 11 points at the Charleston Coliseum in a hard-fought and physical 63-51 victory against No. 7 seed D2, a collection of former NCAA Division II stars.

Yet Adrian was far from the only standout on this night.

BOX SCORE "We had so many different guys stepping up at different times, " Best Virginia guard Tarik Phillip said. "That's really what makes us a good team. It can be anybody on any given night."

That includes Phillip, who left his mark all over this game, even while getting a few marks left on him.

One tough defensive play in the second half saw Phillip get smacked in the face, yet it was Phillip who was charged with the foul.

"Hey, this tournament is for $1 million, the refs are going to let you play sometimes, " Phillip said. "You're going to get bad calls sometimes. You just have to keep playing hard."

When he wasn't getting smacked in the face, Phillip spent must of the first half running Best Virginia's offense as a second guard racking up assists and then scored eight of his 11 points in the second half.

"Tarik is a great player and we trust him with the ball in his hands, " said Best Virginia forward Kevin Jones, who finished with 13 points and six rebounds. "We know he's going to make the correct play. He had the mind set of attacking. Once he's in that mind set, he's hard to stop. He really played great tonight."

Best Virginia failed to score a point over the final four minutes of the second quarter and D2 got as close as 45-42 by the end of the third quarter.

Jones later referred to the game as ugly and overcoming adversity.

"Adversity has been thrown at me all my life, " Phillip said. "If you know my story, you know that it doesn't really phase me that much."

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Before he was a standout at WVU, Phillip's basketball career included being ruled ineligible to play as a high school senior in New York, which forced him to play at a prep school in Charlotte, N.C.

He signed with South Carolina, but did not qualify academically, which forced him to attend junior college ... all before Bob Huggins signed Phillip to play at WVU.

So yeah, he knows a little something about staying the course.

Phillip's 3-pointer early in the fourth quarter stretched Best Virginia's lead, 51-42, and he added another once the Elam Ending had already been set to give the team a 60-51 lead.

The target score was 61 and it was Phillip who came up with the steal that set up Adrian's clinching 3-pointer.

Phillip's final stats: 11 points, seven assists and three rebounds in a sometimes hard-to-watch style of game.

"I don't want to say we play better under stress, but a lot of people rise to the occasion when their backs are against the wall, " Phillip said. "So, I guess you do have to say that."

D2 was led by Shaun Willett, who finished with 12 points and nine rebounds.

Former Fairmont State standout Jamel Morris added 11 points off the bench and Alex Ruoff led Best Virginia with 10 rebounds.

Best Virginia advances to the Super 16 and will play No. 6 seed Team 23 at 9 p.m. Wednesday. Team 23 defeated Herd That, 74-71, on Monday.

TWEET @bigjax3211
Bhutan rolled out second doses of its vaccine programme Tuesday following a lightning-fast first phase that saw most of its eligible adult population inoculated in two weeks.

The tiny Himalayan kingdom, which has a population of 770,000, was forced to wait more than three months to revive its mass vaccination drive after neighbouring India halted exports to meet local demand during a massive surge in infections.

Bhutan had pleaded for more shots after using up most of the 550,000 AstraZeneca doses donated by India when it inoculated 60 percent of the population -- most of the country's adults -- with first doses in late March and early April.

Last week, half a million Moderna doses donated by the United States via Covax and another 250,000 AstraZeneca shots from Denmark arrived in Bhutan.

Covax is the distributor backed by the World Health Organization and the Gavi vaccine alliance.

The inoculation drive, open to everyone aged above 18, will last until Monday.

The health ministry added that vaccinations of children aged 12 to 17 would be announced later.

More than 400,000 AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Sinopharm shots are also expected to arrive from Croatia, Bulgaria, China and several other countries.

The government has meanwhile bought 200,000 Pfizer doses that are expected to be delivered later this year.

During a trial roll-out over the past week, recipients including Prime Minister Lotay Tshering were administered Moderna as their second dose.

"We all... must know that it's only through vaccination that you can protect yourself and through you... the community," Tshering, a qualified doctor who continues to practise on weekends, said in a video posted on Facebook by the health ministry Saturday.

Bhutan has reported 2,427 Covid-19 infections and one death so far.

The country's speedy roll-out of jabs stands in contrast with other South Asian nations, which have also been hit by India's suspension of vaccine exports.

grk/leg
The Clinton family with Queen Elizabeth II in 2000, a later visit than the one where Bill Clinton sought out Indian food. Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images

Queen Elizabeth II invited President Bill Clinton for tea when he visited the UK in 1997.

But newly declassified documents show he turned it down, and wanted to go to an Indian restaurant.

He ended up going to a French restaurant with UK Prime Minister Tony Blair instead.

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Bill Clinton rejected tea with Queen Elizabeth II while because he wanted to go to an Indian restaurant, newly declassified documents say.

Clinton was visiting the UK for a day in 1997 for his first meeting with Tony Blair, who had just been elected, The Guardian reported, citing declassified documents.

Clinton had met the Queen previously.

Buckingham Palace wrote to the Blair's staff noting that "HM the Queen would be very pleased" to invite the Clintons to tea, per the documents stored in the UK National Archives.

A briefing note in response noted that Clinton instead "said that he wants to be a tourist" and had "expressed an interest in trying Indian food," The Guardian reported.

Philip Barton, Blair's private secretary, later said that the Clintons "wish to decline politely" the royal offer. He also said they were also not interested in dinner at Chequers, the country residence of the prime minister.

Clinton didn't get an Indian in the end, The Guardian noted: The Clintons and Blairs went to a French restaurant.

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Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) finalized plans Monday night to hold a test vote Wednesday on the bipartisan infrastructure deal still being hammered out, nearly a month after a group of senators and President Biden agreed on the framework. Wednesday's vote "is not a deadline to determine every final detail of the bill," Schumer said Monday. "All a yes vote on the motion to proceed simply means that the Senate is ready to begin debating and amending a bipartisan infrastructure bill. No more, no less."

Schumer's test vote is meant to put pressure on the 10 Senate negotiators to finalize their deal and to test the sincerity of the GOP negotiators, especially after Republicans vetoed increased funding for IRS tax-fraud enforcement, a key means of paying for the package. Chief GOP negotiator Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said progress is being made and, like many GOP colleagues, threatened to vote no Wednesday if the legislation isn't on paper.

Schumer's "not going to get 60, let's put it that way," Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) said Monday. "The legislation is not drafted, the pay-fors are a long ways away." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters "we need to see the bill before we decide whether or not to vote for it."

Despite the GOP protests, holding a vote on unfinished legislation is "a tried-and-true strategy for both parties," Politico notes. When McConnell was majority leader, "Republicans kicked off their drive to repeal ObamaCare with a vote on proceeding to an unwritten bill; just this Congress, senators in both parties advanced hate crimes and competitiveness legislation before it was finished."

"It will probably become clear within days whether the back-and-forth is the usual last-minute haggling before a complex deal comes together in Congress or something more ominous," The Washington Post adds.

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"If there's no finalized deal and the procedural vote fails, senators said they would still continue to work on the infrastructure legislation," Politico says. And "if the bipartisan talks end up fully imploding, Democrats can roll the group's work into their unilateral spending bill that's still being written, with a top line price tag of $3.5 trillion." Schumer said his timeline, including Wednesday's vote, is backed by all five Democrats negotiating the bipartisan package.

"I still believe Chuck's got the right schedule," said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.). And if Wednesday's vote fails, "what the hell? Keep us here in August."

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(Reuters) - British ministers have cut off taxpayer-funded payments to Britain's biggest microchip factory after its sale to a Chinese-owned technology company, the Telegraph reported late on Tuesday.

UK Research and Investment (UKRI) has suspended grants to Newport Wafer Fab under government instructions after its sale to Nexperia, the newspaper reported https://bit.ly/2Uty4e4.

Earlier this month, when asked whether the sale of the semiconductor producer would go ahead to Chinese-owned Nexperia, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he did not want to drive Chinese investment away from Britain because of "anti-China spirit".

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler)
A 14-year-old California boy found covered in blood killed his mother and injured his father during a brutal stabbing last week, police said.

Officers in Fremont, 40 miles southeast of San Francisco, were called to a home just after 12:30 a.m. Friday to investigate reports of a possible stabbing, the police department said. When they arrived, they found an unconscious woman and man with stab wounds. They tried to revive the woman, but she was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics, police said.

The man was taken to a hospital. He was able to speak with investigators, leading them to his son, Fox affiliate, KTVU-TV reported.

"They were able to get enough information to determine their son was the suspect in this case," Fremont Police Sgt. Ricardo Cortes told the news outlet.

The names of the victims have not been released. Fox News has reached out to the Fremont Police Department.

The nearby Newark and Union City police departments assisted Fremont police in setting up a perimeter in an effort to find the child. Within a half-hour, authorities received a call from someone a mile away from the crime scene who said a boy covered in blood was in the area.

Officers rushed to the location and the boy was detained, police said. Investigators have not disclosed a motive for the attack.

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"To have the suspect be the child of the victims, I think that's unusual and it's a tragic, sad event," Cortes said.
Fully vaccinated students, teachers and staff members will not need to wear masks in Roman Catholic schools this fall, the Chicago Archdiocese announced Tuesday.

The archdiocese said it is planning a return to near-normal, pre-pandemic operations, including the return of school Masses, all extracurricular activities and before- and after-school care programs.

We are excited to be resuming extracurricular activities and other operations that were halted during the pandemic, Justin Lombardo, chief human resources officer and chair of the archdiocesan COVID-19 task force said in a news release.

Lombardo said in an email that the archdiocese hope(s) there will be no need for students and staff members to provide proof of vaccination in order to go unmasked in schools, but that the organization will continue to evaluate the situation with guidance from public health officials and medical advisers.A preliminary decision is expected to be made in August, he said.

Guidelines regarding masks for unvaccinated people will be released by early August, the archdiocese said.

The archdiocese based its updated protocols on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois Department of Public Health in addition to a team of medical advisers and a COVID-19 task force.

The CDC released guidance earlier this month suggesting fully vaccinated individuals do not need to wear masks in schools. But on Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its own guidance urging universal masking in schools for all students and staff members over the age of 2, regardless of vaccination status.

A significant portion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccines, and masking is proven to reduce transmission of the virus and to protect those who are not vaccinated, the organization said in a news release.

Kids under 12 are still ineligible for any COVID-19 vaccine.

The AAP is a significant authority, one that last year recommended that the goal should be in-person learning, which obviously had an impact on our decision last school year, Lombardo said. We understand and hope that the AAP and the CDC will be forthcoming with some aligned guidance to assist everyone looking at this complex question.

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Lombardo said the archdiocese will continue to encourage vaccinations for individuals over the age of 12 and that safety protocols will be reassessed throughout the year.

Vaccinated students and employees will not have to quarantine if exposed to the virus as long as that policy remains consistent with CDC and local public health guidance, Lombardo said.

Some safety measures will remain in place, the archdiocese said. Classrooms will maintain assigned seating charts to allow for targeted quarantines and will be organized to maintain 3 feet of physical distancing whenever possible. Schools will also maintain daily cleaning of high-traffic areas.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Tuesday that a climate jobs proposal called the Civilian Climate Corps will be part of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill that Senate Democrats plan to pass.

The move reflects the high priority many Democratic activists place on climate change measures, even as businesses raise concerns about the financial cost of conversion to non-fossil fuels. The furthest-left lawmakers, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, have long pushed for the "Green New Deal," which calls on the federal government to wean the United States from fossil fuels and curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions across the economy.

Right now, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to confront the climate crisis and create millions of permanent good-paying union jobs," Schumer, a New York Democrat, told reporters Tuesday. "It's a great opportunity to combine those things. I have made addressing the climate crisis in a bold and strong way, the primary focus of our debate on infrastructure.

EPA SQUEEZE ON AFTERMARKET CAR PART SELLERS HURTS CLASSIC CAR INDUSTRY, LANKFORD SAYS

Schumer praised the Sunrise Movement, a liberal 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(3) political organization that lobbied for the federal government to establish the CCC. The proposal was later spearheaded by Colorado Rep. Joe Neguse and Sen. Ron Wyden and pushed forward by a group of over 80 House and Senate Democrats from across the political spectrum.

According to a letter sent by the members to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Schumer on Tuesday, the goals of the program are to provide employment opportunities; invest in natural climate solutions, clean energy, and resilience; and address environmental justice through locally-led, science-based projects.

The CCC is not the only Democratic priority. The caucus is attempting to stuff the reconciliation package, meaning that it would need only a Senate majority of 51 votes, rather than 60 senators supporting it. Democrats are proposing to fill the infrastructure bill with voting and immigration measures.

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It is unknown if these Democratic wish lists will survive, but Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and member of the Senate Budget Committee, says he is confident that the CCC proposal will be passed.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Let me make a commitment to you right now, as I also serve on the Senate Budget Committee, Wyden said. We are going to have a broad berth in that budget resolution for a Civilian Climate Corps, period. We will reconcile our various bills.

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Tags: News, Congress, Chuck Schumer, Green New Deal, Infrastructure, Ron Wyden, Climate Change, Energy and Environment

Original Author: Kerry Picket

Original Location: 'Civilian Climate Corps' to be part of Senate Democrats' infrastructure bill
Colombia will deploy thousands of police and soldiers in anticipation of demonstrations planned for Tuesday, officials said, as protesters seek to resume an anti-government campaign that has been met with deadly force.

Defense Minister Diego Molano warned the government would not tolerate "vandalism, nor violence, nor roadblocks" as the Bogota city council said more than 6,000 police and 2,700 soldiers will be deployed to control 35 events planned for the capital.

"Tomorrow there will be a series of peaceful demonstrations... but the intelligence we have suggests there will be infiltration by some dissident groups" of the now disbanded left-wing guerilla force the FARC, or from the ELN, which has not laid down its weapons, Molano said at a public event in Bogota.

He said the factions aimed to "finance the vandalistic activities and violence and obstruction."

"We will not let this happen," he said.

Officials said at least 35 people have been arrested in recent days for allegedly planning attacks against the armed forces, and several cities and towns have introduced night-time curfews and banned public alcohol consumption.

Colombia was rocked by weeks of protests that broke out late April in opposition to a proposed tax hike that morphed into a mass movement against the right-wing administration of President Ivan Duque.

The demonstrators demanded an end to police repression. as well as more supportive public policies to alleviate the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has plunged more than 40 percent of the country's 50 million inhabitants into poverty.

The international community has condemned the security response that has left more than 60 people dead, according to the country's ombudsman.

A major group representing the protesters -- the so-called National Strike Committee -- said on June 16 it would suspend the demonstrations, even though smaller groups had continued demonstrations and roadblocks throughout.

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Colombia celebrates its independence day on Tuesday, and the government will put a new tax reform proposal to parliament.

Protests will resume "because the national government did not want to discuss these proposals with the National Strike Committee," the body said in a statement that also denounced violence against its members.

Earlier this month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights hit out at Colombia's "disproportionate" and "lethal" response to the protests.

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David Weil, nominated for a top post at the Department of Labor, fields questions at his confirmation hearing July 15. (U.S. Senate)

David Weil doesn't come across as a bomb-throwing leftist extremist, not this soft-spoken academic with tortoiseshell glasses, a receding hairline and his unfailingly polite replies to accusatory questions from some members of a Senate committee considering his nomination to a high Department of Labor post.

Business lobbies say they aren't fooled by such superficialities. At Brandeis University, where he is dean of the Heller School of Social Policy and Management, Weil has "pushed critical race theory and Marxist thought on students," according to Heritage Action, an offshoot of the right-wing Heritage Foundation.

A coalition of 14 industry groups, including the International Franchise Assn. and the National Restaurant Assn., sent a letter to the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions calling Weil "unfit" to head the department's powerful Wage and Hour division.

Weil is a major advocate of unionization.

Pro-business Competitive Enterprise Institute, thinking it's attacking a Labor Dept. nominee

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a separate objection. In his previous stint as the division's director during the Obama administration, the chamber groused, "Dr. Weil took positions on critical questions" such as "whether an employee would be exempt from overtime, finding joint employment relationships, and whether a worker is an employee or an independent contractor."

The chamber's complaint isn't that Weil took positions on those issues, but that his positions uniformly favored workers.

The pro-management Competitive Enterprise Institute put its objections most succinctly. "Weil," it said, "is a major advocate of unionization."

It shouldn't be surprising, one supposes, for business lobbies to object to placing a pro-labor individual high up in the Department. of Labor. They became accustomed to getting their way during the Trump administration, which worked assiduously to turn the agency into the Department of Employer Rights.

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Trump did so by rescinding many of the regulations that had been put in place by Weil himself. The implicit idea, hailed by the business community, was that the federal government didn't have enough agencies favoring business, so why not add the Labor Department to the list?

Now Trump's actions are being overturned by the Biden administration, which is developing an extensive portfolio of pro-worker policies. Reinstalling Weil at Wage and Hour is part of that strategy.

So is Biden's support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or PRO Act, a sweeping measure that would ban a whole sheaf of actions used by employers to interfere with union organizing.

These include holding meetings to dispense anti-union propaganda, which workers are required to attend; firing workers engaged in union organizing; and misclassifying employees as independent contractors to deprive them of unionization rights.

The PRO Act also would overturn the right-to-work laws in force in 28 states. These laws require unions to represent all employees in a unionized workplace without requiring them to pay union dues, a cynical stratagem aimed at depriving unions of financial resources.

Weil appeared at his confirmation hearing alongside Gwynne A. Wilcox and David Prouty, two labor lawyers nominated for seats on the National Labor Relations Board. They all faced determined grilling by the committee's GOP members, but Weil was the focus. Committee votes on the nominations could happen as soon as Wednesday.

The fear most often voiced by the business lobby is that Weil would implement many of the PRO Act's provisions through regulatory action.

"Weil has embraced the harmful PRO Act, and IFA is concerned he will attempt to bypass Congress and enact its most damaging components through regulatory fiat, Michael Layman, a spokesman for the International Franchise Assn., told the Hill.

A common thread in the anti-Weil critique is that he's an unelected bureaucrat who never met a payroll. This is a familiar rubric for attacks on government officials doing the jobs they've been appointed to do.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis invoked it in a recent fundraising appeal, calling Dr. Anthony Fauci an unelected career government bureaucrat" trying to deprive Americans of their freedom by advocating mask wearing and social distancing to beat the pandemic.

Thus Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), ranking member of the Senate committee considering Weil's nomination, started off by stating, "Before Congress, I worked for a living." It's true that before coming to Washington, Burr spent 17 years as a salesman. But he's been in Congress and the Senate for 25 years since then.

Weil neatly disarmed this fatuous attempt to portray him as an academic with his head in the clouds. At the Department of Labor, he noted, he ran an agency division with a $235-million budget and 2,000 employees, and at Brandeis he runs an institution with a $32-million budget and 200 full-time employees. "I think that characterization of my experience is a little off," he said.

Let's take a closer look at Weil's approach to worker rights.

At the Wage and Hour division, he was responsible for a regulation that doubled the threshold of eligibility for overtime pay to $47,476 in earnings from $23,660 a year, adding about 4 million workers to the ranks of those entitled to time-and-a-half pay for work in excess of 40 hours a week. Trump rolled that back to $35,568, cutting about 2.8 million workers out of the overtime ranks.

"Employers are concerned that this salary threshold may be increased under Dr. Weil," the Chamber of Commerce says.

Weil also moved strongly against the use of subcontractors to conceal employer-employee relationships  thus absolving major employers of responsibility for workers.

As he observed in a paper last year, this variety of outsourcing concentrates labor costs among ever smaller and less profitable subcontractors, so that "incentives to cut corners rise, leading to violations of our fundamental labor and employment standards."

The answer was an effort during the Obama years to solidify "joint employer" standards, requiring the ultimate employer to share costs and responsibility for the workers.

Weil kept a sharp eye out for the subterfuges used by businesses to claim they weren't really "employers" of their workers, such as by asserting that the workers were merely "independent contractors." That claim absolved them of paying employee benefits, such as minimum wage, overtime, unemployment insurance and workers' compensation.

To see this scam in action, just look at Proposition 22, the 2020 California ballot measure that Uber and its fellow gig employers drafted. The companies spent more than $200 million, an unprecedented sum, to pass the initiative, which relegated their drivers and delivery workers to permanent indentured status in the name of "freedom" and "flexibility."

Once it passed, the companies started systematically taking away the benefits the workers thought they would gain from Proposition 22.

Weil gained the reputation of a foe of Uber, Lyft and other gig companies trying to keep their worker costs down. It was well and properly deserved. In an op-ed for The Times during the run-up to the Proposition 22 campaign, he acknowledged that some employer-worker relationships might fall into a gray area making it hard to determine if the workers were contractors or employees.

"Uber and Lyft are not among those close, gray-area cases," he wrote. "Their status as employers is really quite clear."

The business lobby typically describes its pushback against employer classification as "protecting the right to be a gig worker." This transparent dodge conveniently overlooks the imbalance of power in the employer-worker relationship, sharply tilted as it is in favor of the former.

Such talk about the rights of the worker in this context was memorably deconstructed by Harold Ickes, a close aide to Franklin D. Roosevelt (and a Republican in the days when one could be a Republican and a liberal). Ickes described a 1936 Supreme Court decision overturning a New York minimum wage law in a case brought by laundresses as upholding the sacred right  of an immature child or a helpless woman to drive a bargain with a great corporation.

Weil acted to strengthen the rules on when a worker must be considered an employee. The chamber complained that this caused "confusion and uncertainty" among employers trying to determine how to classify their workers. But that's a joke: Notwithstanding the limited gray areas mentioned by Weil, businesses almost always know full well when their workers deserve employee benefits. They just don't want to pay them.

The effort of redirecting all the government's labor agencies  the Department of Labor and the National Labor Relations Board are the most prominent, but not the only such agencies  is a work in progress.

But Weil's confirmation, along with those of Wilcox and Prouty, will move the process smartly along. The claims of the business lobby that they're pro-labor is the best endorsement imaginable.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Disney+ and other streaming services have taken a bite out of Netflix's market share for original programming, says a new report. (Elise Amendola / AP)

Netflix remains the dominant force in streaming but is losing ground to rivals.

That's the takeaway of a new report examining the company's share of the streaming business.

Netflix's share of global audience demand of digital original series dropped to below 50% for the first time ever, according to data released by West Hollywood-based Parrot Analytics on Tuesday.

Parrot measures demand for Netflix shows by capturing online audience interactions with its content and has been tracking this aspect of the company since 2015.

Global audience demand share for Netflix digital original series was 48.3% in the second quarter, down from 54.9% a year ago, Parrot Analytics said.

Meanwhile, competing services like Disney+, which launched in 2019, saw its market share grow thanks to original Marvel programs such as "Loki" and "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier," the firm said.

Disney+'s global audience demand share increased to 7.3% in the second quarter, up from 6%, Parrot Analytics found. This study's data focused on digital original series and does not factor in licensed shows like "Grey's Anatomy" or movies.

"Netflix has struggled to push out breakthrough original content in the last few quarters  with the exception of season three of 'Cobra Kai'  and likely wont have another massive original hit until Q4 with season two of 'The Witcher'," Parrot Analytics said in a statement, referring to two of Netflix's popular series.

Netflix declined to comment on Parrot's data. The streamer has been heavily investing in content, significantly increasing the number of new movies on its platform to 70 this year. The Los Gatos company has been adding local language productions and seen popularity skyrocket globally for shows like thriller "Lupin," filmed in French.

The company as well as other streamers saw a huge surge in growth in the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, as many people looked for ways to entertain themselves as they sheltered at home. But now it appears as though that exponential growth has slowed considerably.

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In the first quarter, Netflix missed its new subscriber estimates, adding about 4 million instead of 6 million. The company at the time said it did not believe competition intensity was a factor.

For the second quarter, Netflix was already anticipating slower growth compared with the 10 million new subscribers last year. The company beat its estimates in the second quarter, adding 1.5 million new subscribers, up from its forecast of 1 million.

Despite the slower growth, Netflix said in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday that it believes its future is bright, as more people shift their viewing habits to streaming.

"Considering that we are less mature in other countries and that this excludes mobile screens (where we believe our share of engagement is even lower), we are confident that we have a long runway for growth," Netflix said in its letter.

To counteract any potential loss of subscribers, Netflix can continue to keep its brand at the forefront of consumers' minds by marketing its shows on podcasts and through games and live events, analysts said. Netflix recently added executives to head up podcasting and game development, which could signal its plans for further investment in these categories.

Netflix said on Tuesday that it will offer mobile games to its subscribers at no additional cost.

"We view gaming as another new content category for us, similar to our expansion into original films, animation and unscripted TV," Netflix said in a letter to shareholders Tuesday.

The additions come as studies have shown that younger audiences spend a lot more of their time gaming versus watching TV.

"Video games and podcasts that incorporate or leverage top Netflix IP reiterates and reaffirms," wrote Julia Alexander, Parrot Analytics senior strategy analyst in an email. "Same with live events that help create a more physical and personal connection to a beloved show."

Netflix also recently launched an online store, selling merchandise related to its programs, such as a $55 side table with a quote from the main character in "Lupin."

Over the years, Netflix has added programs with interactive elements to its platform, which could increase the amount of time people spend with the streamer as they rewatch programs to watch alternate endings and character storylines.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Editor's note: Gianni Versace was killed 24 years ago on July 15, 1997. Here, USA TODAY reporter Maria Puente recalls covering the case. This story was originally published in 2018.

I had completely forgotten Andrew Cunanan. But now, Ryan Murphy's latest offering in his anthology drama, American Crime Story, is dredging up the ugly memories. Thanks for that, Ryan.

If you know the name, it's because Cunanan is the spree killer who assassinated Italian fashion prince Gianni Versace, who was shot at the gates of his Miami Beach mansion on July 15, 1997, as he returned from his usual morning coffee-and-paper run to the News Cafe just down Ocean Drive.

More: Darren Criss, far from 'Glee,' takes darker turn as Gianni Versace's killer

Versace, who died at 50, was the last victim of Cunanan.

During nearly three months in the summer of 1997, Cunanan killed five men (besides Versace, they were Jeffrey Trail, David Madson, Lee Miglin and William Reese), then managed to elude stumbling law-enforcement agencies, including the FBI, while careening around the country in stolen cars.

They never did catch him; eight days after killing Versace, he was found dead at 27 in a Miami Beach houseboat. He had shot himself with the same gun used to kill Versace and two other victims.

Gianni Versace's Miami Beach mansion on Dec. 26, 2017. It's now a boutique hotel and restaurant where tourists pose in the spot where he was gunned down in 1997.

I know all this because I was one of a platoon of USA TODAY reporters who covered the frantic madness that summer. I was a breaking-news reporter and spent a dozen years in San Diego, living near the gay-friendly Hillcrest neighborhood where Cunanan prowled. And I was fast, in that slower, pre-Twitter era.

But it was 20 years ago, and a slew of other big-news headlines have broken since. I had to go back to the clips in the USA TODAY library to refresh my memory. All too soon, the details came rushing back.

The Assassination of Gianni Versace (premiering Jan. 17 on FX, 10 ET/PT) is based on journalist Maureen Orths 1999 book, Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, based on her reporting for Vanity Fair.

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The Versace family has dismissed the series as a "work of fiction." In a statement issued Monday, the family said it had neither authorized nor been involved in the series. Fair enough.

But the series is at least as much about Cunanan as it is about Versace, and Cunanan remains a maddening mystery, especially regarding his motives, if he had any. Back then, our reporting showed Cunanan was a chameleon-like gigolo with near-legendary charm, who was convivial, mendacious in the extreme and a stone-cold killer.

At the time, the national interest in the case built slowly: His first four victims (two were friends, two were apparent strangers and none were famous) were killed in late April or early May. I could find only a handful of mentions of Cunanan in USA TODAY before our first major story was published on May 13. After the fourth victim was killed May 9 in New Jersey, just so Cunanan could steal his truck, national news media started taking notice.

Gianni Versace in July 1996 after a show in Paris.

Who was this guy? Where is he? Who is next? Are gay men his targets? Will gay men be blamed for his crimes? Why can't the FBI find him? For Pete's sake, he's on the 10 Most Wanted List!

Gay communities were on high alert as several cities geared up for Gay Pride Month and fears mounted that Cunanan would lure another unsuspecting man to his death. Then the murder of the openly gay, world-famous Versace catapulted the story to front pages around the world, and suddenly it was one of those all-hands-on-deck, 24/7 media onslaughts, a regular thing three years after the O.J. Simpson murder case.

A few takeaways from the Cunanan story.

Americans were (and still are) obsessed with mass murderers, serial killers and spree killers (and guns), and media outlets try to supply their demand for news. Is it really so surprising that we have more of them now?

Giant poster advertising the 'The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story' in Milan, Italy, Jan. 8, 2018, home base for Versace and his family.

We've come a long way in our attitudes toward and treatment of LGBTQ people. A person's sexual orientation does not automatically incriminate him.

Before smartphones and social media, the practice of daily journalism was no different, but it was harder and slower. The mobile phones and laptops were heavier. Goodbye to all that.

Producer Ryan Murphy has his theories, but the depressing fact is we are never going to know for sure why Cunanan became a spree killer. That's a tragedy for his victims, their families and society at large, but it's especially irksome to journalists who always want answers.

Andrew Cunanan's victims: Gianni Versace, David Madson, Lee Miglin, William Reese and Jeffrey Trail.

How could I have forgotten all of this? Because 39 days later, a speeding car driven by a drunk driver slammed into a pole in a traffic tunnel in Paris, killing Princess Diana and setting off an unprecedented outburst of grief around the world and especially in London, to which I was speedily dispatched.

Only weeks before, Diana, 36, attended her friend Versace's celeb-packed memorial service in Milan, where she was seen consoling a weeping Elton John, their mutual pal. You can't make this stuff up.

The summer of 1997 was a big-news bonanza, but not one I'd care to see again.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Gianni Versace: How we covered the fashion designer's assassination
A man working for the Drug Enforcement Agency was charged earlier this month after prosecutors said he posed for photographs with his badge and service weapon during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Mark Sami Ibrahim was charged with knowingly entering or remaining on restricted property, carrying a deadly weapon, making false statements to investigators, and climbing onto a statue on the grounds, according to a July 7 affidavit. Ibrahim, who hails from Orange County, California, was a probationary agent at the time of the siege, and authorities said he asked others to take pictures of him holding a Betsy Ross flag while flashing his agency credentials and a concealed firearm.

Ibrahim had given notice to resign from the law enforcement body, though he was on "personal leave" on Jan. 6, authorities said. He was not on duty, nor did he have any law enforcement assignment at the Capitol.

The George Washington University's program on extremism reported the agent's participation in the riot.

HOUSE GOP HOPES JAN. 6 COMMITTEE INVESTIGATES PELOSI KNOWLEDGE AND OTHER 'POLITICAL VIOLENCE'

(Department of Justice)

The officer allegedly relayed some of the pictures to a police group chat that contained at least five other law enforcement personnel. One of the policemen asked Ibrahim if he was carrying his badge and gun.

Question Mark, you are carrying your duty weapon and your badge/creds? I need to know this mark," the unnamed officer said.

After the events transpired, Ibrahim was interviewed by authorities, and he admitted to being at the Capitol on Jan. 6, though he "denied that he displayed or exposed his DEA badge and firearm," investigators said.

I had my creds. I had my firearm and my badge on me ... but never exposed. ... Not that I know of," Ibrahim said.

(Department of Justice)

Investigators also alleged that he crafted a fake story to explain his presence at the events. Ibrahim told authorities he was accompanying his friend, who had been asked by the FBI to document the event, though the unnamed associate denied the DEA agent's claims.

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Prosecutors said Ibrahim was documented climbing on the Peace Monument and was feet away from Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran who law enforcement shot and killed, as she was being wheeled out of the Capitol.

Ibrahim is one of more than 500 people who have been charged in connection to the unrest over the last few months.

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Tags: News, DEA, January 6, Capitol, Police, Law Enforcement, Crime

Original Author: Jake Dima

Original Location: DEA agent charged for flashing gun and badge during Capitol riot
(Getty Images)

Supporters of home and community-based services (HCBS) are pushing to ensure it is included in the Senates proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation infrastructure package.

Senate Democrats announced a $3.5 trillion framework for their reconciliation bill, which would allow them to sidestep a filibuster. The proposal would include extending the expanded child tax credit, universal prekindergarten, two years of community college and expanding Medicare to cover dental and vision care.

This would coincide with a proposed bipartisan infrastructure bill negotiated with Democrats and Republicans in the Senate that would focus on traditional infrastructure.

But disability rights advocates are adamant to include the proposed $400 billion in home and community-based services, which allows disabled and elderly people to receive care in their home rather than in institutions, which President Joe Biden touted in his initial infrastructure proposal earlier this year.

Little Lobbyists, which advocates for children with complex medical needs, said it was meeting with House and Senate leadership and with other advocacy groups to rally support.

We also know that the pandemic made the existing caregiving crisis dramatically worse, while exposing the true dangers of the institutions and nursing facilities we strive so hard to keep our children out of, Little Lobbyists Elena Hung and Laura Hatcher said in an email. We need our legislators to fight with us to keep FULL HCBS funding in the infrastructure bill.

This comes as HuffPost reported Monday that there is talk of reducing the amount of spending to $200 billion.

But US Sen Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who is chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, said the legislation is still in early stages of negotiation.

All we have now is an overall number for the legislation, about $3.5 trillion, so itll be a while before we get anything, he said. Mr Casey said that he has a sense of what is needed to people with disabilities and seniors as well as paying the caregiving workforce $12 an hour.

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Certainly we need funding for long-term care, Sen John Hickenlooper of Colorado said during a hallway interview. Right now were in negotiation and I try the best I can not to negotiate in the hallways.

Still, when Budget Committee Chairman Sen Bernie Sanders was asked about whether he supported fully funding it, he responded with simply you know that.

Sen Gary Peters of Michigan said hed need to look into specifics but indicated he supported the concept. Similarly, Sen Angus King, an independent from Maine who caucuses with the Democrats, said he spoke with Mr Casey and Susan Rice, the Biden administrations director of domestic policy, on the subject.

Im generally in favor of that provision, Mr King said. I havent viewed the details but I think its very important particularly as our society ages.

Sen Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said Democrats are having conversations about funding home and community-based care at the moment.

Ive been pressing upon leadership that we need to fully fund it, said Ms Duckworth, who is disabled after losing her legs during military service.

Sen Tim Kaine of Virginia said he supported fully funding the provision but was not clear in what was going to happen to ensure it is.

Well, were going to see, Mr Kaine said.

Sen Elizabeth Warren, who during her presidential campaign proposed making HCBS mandatory under her Medicare for All plan, said she supported fully funding as well, along with fully funding child care, the child tax credit and paid family leave.

These are all investments in our families and we need to build strong programs that will help all families create a robust future, Ms Warren said.

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The Department of Justice declined to prosecute former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross over allegations he misled Congress in an unsuccessful push by the Trump administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

An internal watchdog opened an investigation after 13 senators penned a letter in May 2019 to the agency's Office of Inspector General accusing Ross of concealing the "contribution of a political redistricting strategist" in the bid to add a citizenship question, which the then-secretary indicated would solely bolster enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION DROPS CITIZENSHIP QUESTION FROM 2020 CENSUS

A July 15 letter from Inspector General Peggy Gustafson, sent to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Oversight Committee Carolyn Maloney, said Ross was found to have misrepresented his reasoning. However, the watchdog noted the case was presented to the Public Integrity Section of the DOJs Criminal Division, but it was declined for prosecution.

A spokesperson for the inspector general said the decision not to prosecute was made in January 2020 during the Trump administration, according to Reuters.

"Our investigation established that the then-Secretary misrepresented the full rationale for the reinstatement of the citizenship question during his March 20, 2018, testimony before the House Committee on Appropriations and again in his March 22, 2018, testimony before the 2 House Committee on Ways and Means," the letter read.

"During Congressional testimony, the then-Secretary stated his decision to reinstate the citizenship question was based solely on a DOJ request," Gustafson continued. "That request memorandum was signed by the DOJ on December 12, 2017. However, evidence shows there were significant communications related to the citizenship question among the then-Secretary, his staff, and other government officials between March 2017 and September 2017, which was well before the DOJ request memorandum."

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The inspector general said the investigation was "unable to establish that the Political Strategist had a substantive public policy role in the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Census."

"Our investigation did substantiate that correspondence from the Department to the DOJ contained verbiage similar to that used in portions of the Political Strategists unpublished study focusing on the use of Citizenship Voting Age Population for the purposes of redistricting; however, those similar portions related to historical and factual references to the Census and did not include the Political Strategists opinions," the letter continued.

In June of 2019, the Supreme Court blocked Trump's bid to add a citizenship question in a 5-4 ruling after the majority insisted the administration's reasoning was "contrived." The former president later abandoned his bid to add the question.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

We are presented, in other words, with an explanation for agency action that is incongruent with what the record reveals about the agencys priorities and decision-making process, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote at the time.

Accepting contrived reasons would defeat the purpose of the enterprise, Roberts added.

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Tags: News, Donald Trump, Wilbur Ross, Citizenship, Census, Justice Department, Commerce

Original Author: Jake Dima

Original Location: DOJ declined to prosecute Wilbur Ross for misleading Congress about census question
Former President Donald Trump is boldly defying his Twitter ban-for-life with daily posts on the Twitter account of his paid assistant.

Former Republican Party spokesperson Liz Harrington  hired last month to replace Trumps former top aide, Jason Miller  each day posts every one of Trumps messages from his blog. In many cases, the posts appear on Harringtons Twitter account even before showing up on Trumps site.

Harrington began posting Trumps messages  often several a day  after she was hired in mid-June.

The Trump messages include the same provocative, bombastic rhetoric about a rigged and stolen election and an appeal to patriots linked to the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6  which is the reason Trump was kicked off Twitter.

(Photo: Screen Shot of Google search for Liz Harrington's Twitter account.)

In a post on Trumps website that went straight to Harringtons Twitter account Monday, the former president also appeared to defend Americans refusing to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because they dont trust [the Biden] administration, they dont trust the Election results, and they certainly dont trust the Fake News. Medical experts have warned that the unvaccinated in the country are a health risk for all Americans because they can act as incubators for more powerful COVID-19 strains.

Harrington always chimes in, touting Trumps messages with each post and often repeating them word for word.

Twitter banned Trump two days after the Capitol insurrection because of fears his messages risked inciting violence and violated Twitters ban on glorification of violence.

After close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account and the context around them ... we have permanently suspended the account due to the risk of further incitement of violence, Twitter said in a statement at the time.

The company referenced Trumps repeated lies about election fraud and his appeal to American patriots. Such tweets are likely to inspire others to replicate the violent acts that took place on January 6, 2021, warned Twitter.

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Trump on Monday demanded in a post on Harringtons account that internet routers be turned over to the inexperienced Cyber Ninjas company that is conducting the controversial Arizona audit of 2020 presidential election ballots. He again railed about a rigged election, adding ominously, They are fighting for life and death.

Last Friday, Trump falsely insisted in a post on Harringtons Twitter account: Arizona shows Fraud and Voting Irregularity many times more than would be needed to change the outcome of the Election.

Earlier that same day, Trump blasted reporting by The Associated Press that there were only 182 suspicious ballots out of 4 million in Arizona, and of voters charged with election crimes, two were Democrats and two were Republican.

When the real numbers are released, people will be shocked, Trump insisted in the message Harrington posted. This is a concerted effort by the Fake News to discredit and demean.

(Ironically, in an even earlier post that day  one of six carried by Harringtons Twitter account that day  Trump insisted he was not on any social media platform.)

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In a particularly chilling tweet last Thursday  reminiscent of Trumps goading of his supporters at the Capitol on Jan. 6  he railed about a hearing over the Arizona vote. The Senate patriots are moving forward with final results to be announced in the not-too-distant future, but based on todays hearing, why even wait?

Twitter has a ban evasion policy that bars attempted run-arounds to a Twitter shutout. We prohibit attempts to circumvent prior enforcement, including through the creation of new accounts, as well as repurposing existing accounts, according to the policy.

Several other accounts that served to post Trumps messages in the past were pulled down in May by Twitter  including his own teams attempt: @DJTDesk, which was created as a landing site for the messages now being posted by Harrington.

After Trump was bounced off Twitter, he boasted that he was going to launch his own bigger and better social media platform. That plan turned into his not-very-popular blog of messages from The Desk of Donald J. Trump. The scheme to roll it out into a social media powerhouse died a month later.

His overheated messages soon ended up back on Twitter.

Twitter did not respond to multiple requests for comment from HuffPost.

Also on HuffPost

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
The LAPD's bomb squad vehicle was destroyed and nearby properties were damaged after officers miscalculated the weight of illegal fireworks detonated last month in South L.A. (Los Angeles Times)

It didnt take a rocket scientist to recognize that something went terribly wrong on June 30, when the Los Angeles Police Department decided to detonate illegal fireworks in the middle of a South L.A. neighborhood, and ended up destroying the bomb squads armored truck and injuring 17 people.

This week, Chief Michel Moore admitted the blast was the result of human error by LAPD personnel. Bomb squad technicians had grossly miscalculated the weight of devices put into a containment vehicle for safe detonation.

The technicians estimated the weight at 16 pounds. Federal investigators figure the weight was closer to 42 pounds, Moore said. The containment truck could safely detonate up to 15 pounds of explosive materials for repeated use  or up to 25 pounds for one-time use that would render the truck out-of-service in the future. Thats a big miscalculation.

When officers detonated the fireworks, the force of the explosion was so strong that the containment vehicle collapsed and the 500-pound lid of the detonation chamber shot into a yard a couple of blocks away. Residents said they were thrown by the power of the blast. It blew off doors and broke windows in homes, cars and businesses, leaving shards of glass everywhere. Three properties may have to be rebuilt from the ground up.

Its a miracle that nobody was killed, given the severity of the explosion, the resulting damage and the lack of care and caution exhibited by the LAPD.

While Moore has apologized for the LAPDs mistakes, the incident remains extremely troubling. Theres understandable skepticism in the community. Did the police cut corners on the detonation because it was a working-class immigrant community?

Technicians estimated the weight of the fireworks rather than using a scale to measure them. The LAPD had hours to prepare for the detonation. Yet many residents in the area said they werent informed of the risk or they were told they could stay inside their homes rather than evacuate.

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Would the police have handled the incident differently in wealthier, whiter West Los Angeles? That question should be answered by independent authorities looking into the explosion. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is conducting an investigation, and the FBI is also looking into the LAPDs protocols. The owner of the illegal fireworks, Arturo Ceja III, 27, is facing charges of illegally transporting tons of explosives; he was selling the fireworks from his home.

Even as the investigation continues, L.A. leaders have an obligation to provide immediate assistance so impacted residents can repair or replace their property, and begin to heal from the trauma of the explosion. This is not the time to put struggling families through the usual bureaucratic claims and insurance process.

City Atty. Mike Feuer said his office has received 56 claims so far and they're trying to get them resolved in a day and paid within three days. In the meantime, Mayor Eric Garcettis office is tapping into his nonprofit to provide 26 families with $2,000 on debit cards so theres no gap in individuals cash flow while trying to deal with the damage. Councilman Curren Price has established a $1 million emergency fund for affected residents using money budgeted to reimagine public safety. Many of the impacted residents were already scraping by and cannot manage the loss of a few days of work because theyre living in a motel or their cars were damaged.

The explosion was bad enough. South L.A. residents shouldn't be left to suffer because of the LAPD's terrible mistake.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Former Trump Inaugural Committee chairman Tom Barrack speaks at at a pre-Inaugural "Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration" at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017 AP Photo/David J. Phillip

Tom Barrack is the latest former top Trump campaign official to be hit with federal charges.

The former inauguration chair is charged with lobbying violations, obstruction, and false statements.

Barrack, the 8th former Trump official to face federal charges, will plead not guilty.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Tom Barrack, the chairman of former President Donald Trump's 2017 Inaugural Committee, became the 8th former official in Trump's orbit to be hit with federal criminal charges on Tuesday.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn charged Barrack on seven counts of unlawful lobbying, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators.

Barrack is accused of violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, in connection with his work lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates. Barrack's spokesman told Insider that he will plead not guilty to all charges.

Other Trump officials were charged as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's role in it, and were subsequently granted full presidential pardons in the final months of the Trump administration.

Here's the full list:

Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted in 2018 on federal bank and tax fraud charges, pleaded guilty to more federal conspiracy charges, and was sentenced to seven and a half years in federal prison. Trump granted Manafort a full pardon in December 2020.

Former campaign chief Steve Bannon was charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud donors to fund a wall at the US southern border. Trump pardoned Bannon in January 2021 before he could face trial.

Informal Trump adviser and "fixer" Roger Stone was convicted on seven counts on obstruction, making false statements, and witness tampering in connection to the Mueller probe and was sentenced to three years in prison. Trump commuted Stone's sentence in July 2020 and fully pardoned him in December 2020.

Deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates, a key aide to Manafort, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy and false statements and received only a 45-day sentence thanks to his extensive cooperation with investigators in the Mueller probe. He did not get a presidential pardon.

Trump's short-lived National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty to one count of lying to the FBI in connection. Flynn, who went on to push conspiracy theories about non-existent fraud in the 2020 election, received a full pardon from Trump in November 2020.

Longtime Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations, and lying to Congress in 2018, and was sentenced to three years in federal prison. Cohen, who turned on Trump after pleading guilty and cooperated with prosecutors, did not get a pardon.

Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection to the Mueller probe and served 14 days in federal prison.

Trump Inaugural Committee chairman Tom Barrack was charged with federal crimes including unlawful lobbying, obstruction of justice, and making false statements to investigators in July 2021.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/GettyALFREDO ESTRELLA

The man who once held Mexicos most senior law enforcement position has been arrested on charges of torturing a suspect in custody. If even Luis Cardenas Palominowho once earned a citation as Mexicos best police officerwas abusing suspects, what does that say about the rest of the countrys police officers?

The truth is torture has become a common feature of Mexican policing. Well dig deeper into the question of torturing detainees and how its done in a moment but its also crucial to look at why cops think they can get away with it.

Palominos arrest is just the latest in a long string of incidents that point to staggering levels of corruption among Mexicos police and military.

Palominos old boss Genaro Garcia Luna is currently in prison in the U.S. for taking bribes and trafficking narcotics. Less than a year ago, Mexicos one-time defense minister, General Salvador Cienfuegos was also arrested on drug-smuggling charges in Los Angeles, although he was eventually released at the behest of the Mexican government.

U.S. prosecutors have also brought similar charges against Palomino himself, claiming that he took millions of dollars from Joaquin El Chapo Guzmans Sinaloa Cartel. The arrest of these three top-level officers is roughly equivalent to, say, ex-Defense Secretary Colin Powell, ex-National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and ex-FBI Director James Comey all being incarceratedwhich might cause quite a stir in the U.S. In Mexico, however, nobody bats an eye, because corruption is the norm instead of the exception.

It did not surprise me about Palomino [being arrested] because he was a thug from a very early age, said Mike Vigil, the DEAs former chief of international operations, in an interview with The Daily Beast.

He was implicated in murder and he was never charged. He was given a high-ranking position for one reason: his willingness to engage in wholesale corruption and keep his mouth shut.

Dr. Robert Bunker, a research director at the security consulting firm Futures LLC, calls the corruption among Mexican security forces systemic.

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This narco-cancer has gone deep into the marrow of state and turned it into a fragile wraith-like entitya hollowed-out creature that is increasingly losing its ability to even pretend to exert sovereign authority domestically, Bunker told The Daily Beast.

Vigil agrees: Many individuals look at a government position as a superhighway to enrich themselves. The mentality is that everyone is taking bribes so why shouldnt I do the same.

Grave human rights abuses by security forces are also troublingly common in Mexico today. Military and police forces stand accused of multiple massacres and extrajudicial killings over the last decade, including the murders of migrants and innocent families. And there is now ample evidence that both the police and military were involved in the infamous disappearance of 43 students in the town of Iguala, in 2014.

And the charges of torture against Palomino are far from an isolated incident. A report by Human Rights Watch found that members of security forces systematically use torture to obtain forced confessions and information about criminal groups.

Torture is committed on a grand scale, and it will never disappear, because our institutions lack the resources and capacity to prosecute someone for what is done through torture, said a high-ranking police commander, who agreed to speak to the Daily Beast only on condition of anonymity.

While stating he does not condone torture or abuse of detainees of any kind, the commander also suggested that the increasingly violent nature of Mexicos drug war could push some officers to veer outside the law when seeking information from suspects.

We have total disorder now, with the number of organized crime groups growing. They move freely on land, sea, and air, and control entire regions of the country. This is a real war now. So that no part of Mexico is safe.

Mexican Cop Turned Cartel Boss Nabbed in Mormon Mommy Massacre

All of Mexicos security forces have used torture since their very inception and it has become normal for them, said the DEAs Vigil. They look at it as an easy way to solve cases and dont understand that it is a violation of human rights or that anyone will confess when tortured.

One of the preferred methods of torture, Vigil said, is the chicharra, or cattle prod, which is often applied to the victims genitals. He added that waterboarding or even beating of prisonerssometimes to deathare also commonplace.

Basic [torture] techniques can include the use of bladed instruments, pliers, and clippers, but fire, water, and electrical-based approaches can also be readily applied, Bunker said.

Such practices can result in fatalities to prisoners, in which case the bodies are often dumped across state lines, as Mexican law does not allow for interstate jurisdiction by police forces. The result is that any investigation quickly goes away, said Vigil, who was the DEAs bureau chief in Mexico for more than a decade.

The torture is not just physical. It can also be psychological, the police commander said. Sometimes families are threatened or detained. So that people admit to crimes they never committed. And were not just talking about the police. The army, the navy, the marines, the national guard [which replaced Palominos Federales]all of them continue to practice torture.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obradorwho is often known by the sobriquet AMLOproclaimed Palominos arrest as a major victory for law and order.

He was detained because impunity no longer exists, said the president, whose time in office has been marked by a number of tactical errors related to the fight against organized crime, including ordering one of Chapo Guzmans sons to be released after soldiers had captured him.

AMLO is providing Palomino as a sacrificial offering for international and domestic political gain, said security analyst Bunker.

It is laughable to even suggest that [Palominos arrest] will end impunity and corruption in Mexico, he said. The conviction rates in Mexico are abysmal Mexico has low political capacity, weak institutions, skyrocketing homicides, and has lost control of regions of the country. The societal rot has now advanced so far that at this point Mexicos future trajectory looks rather grim.

Vigil agreed, saying that: Corruption is tolerated and is endemic at every level of the government. There is no question many other high-ranking, active-duty officials are now on the payroll of the drug cartels.

Despite AMLOs claims to the contrary, Vigil believes that twin problems of graft and impunity are in fact growing worse as the cartels become more powerful and violent across the country.

The drug trade is a multi-billion dollar business in Mexico, Vigil said, and that translates to a lot of hands being greased.

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With space launches occurring more frequently, the skies are getting crowded, requiring new technology that the Federal Aviation Administration says will minimize potential conflicts.

Why it matters: Each time a satellite  or billionaire  is launched into space, the FAA has to close airspace to commercial airlines. That requires pilots to reroute and take less-efficient paths, often resulting in delays for airline passengers.

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And since many rockets are now reusable, pilots have to yield for spacecraft coming back to Earth too.

What's happening: The FAA is rolling out a system that allows it to track a space launch or reentry vehicle in near-real time as it travels through the National Airspace System.

The Space Data Integrator (SDI) prototype automatically delivers data about a rocket's position, altitude and speed to the FAA's Air Traffic Control System Command Center.

Knowing precisely where a rocket is  including whether it deviates from its expected flight path  allows air traffic controllers to better manage federal airspace.

The system can also display and share "aircraft hazard areas" that may contain falling debris from a launch or reentry vehicle.

Four commercial space companies  SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly and the Alaska Aerospace Corporation  have agreed to share data with the FAA.

Driving the news: The technology was first used June 30 with the SpaceX Transporter-2 launch from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

FAA officials say the initial results are promising, showing they can shorten airspace closures from an average of about four hours to two hours.

What they're saying: This is a critical tool as the number of users of our already busy airspace increases, said FAA administrator Steve Dickson.

With this capability, we will be able to safely reopen the airspace more quickly and reduce the number of aircraft and other airspace users affected by a launch or reentry.

The bottom line: The cadence of space launches has been rapidly increasing, from once a year in 2011 to about once a month in 2016, and now roughly once a week.

In 2020, the FAA safely managed 45 space launches and reentries into the National Airspace System, the most in the agencys history. For 2021, that number could exceed 70.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R) are taking the gloves off.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief and Kentucky senator verbally sparred during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, after Paul accused the National Institutes of Health of lying about funding controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Paul claimed the research could have contributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Hill and CNBC report.

Paul has made such assertions before, but it appears that Fauci is done playing nice. After vehemently discrediting Paul's remarks, Fauci accused the senator of not knowing "what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about." Fauci has previously denied that the NIH directly funded the research at the Wuhan lab, per CNBC, and on Tuesday, said the study Paul is referring to does not constitute the controversial gain-of-function research.

After Paul doubled down on his claims, Fauci fired back: "If the point that you are making is that the grant that was funded ... created SARS-CoV-2 ... I totally resent the lie you are now propagating, senator."

The Kentucky senator countered that he's simply trying to ascertain whether the NIH funded such research, but Fauci criticized the question's underlying implications. "And you are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of [individuals], I totally resent that, and if anybody is lying here, senator, it is you."

Watch the full exchange below:

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Fourth-year medical student Anna Roesler administers the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at Indiana University Health, Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, U.S., December 16, 2020. REUTERS/Bryan Woolston/File Photo

8 students sued Indiana University in June over their COVID-19 vaccine policy.

IU mandates the students and faculty must be fully vaccinated before returning to campus.

On Sunday, a federal judge ruled that IU can uphold their vaccine requirement.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

A federal judge ruled that Indiana University could keep its policy requiring students to get COVID-19 vaccinations before returning to campus in the fall.

Judge Damon Leichty denied the motion for a preliminary injunction request by eight students who sued the university over the policy in June.

Students and staff can only be exempt from getting the vaccine if they're completely online or qualify for a religious, ethical, or medical exemption, the University's policy said.

Those who qualify for an exemption would have to wear masks, and quarantine in case of an outbreak. Those who don't qualify for an exemption can have their classes canceled.

The New York Times reported that about 400 campuses across the country are requiring vaccinations against COVID-19.

In their lawsuit, the students argued the policy violates state law and "the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which includes rights of personal autonomy and bodily integrity, and the right to reject medical treatment."

The complaint had a list of reasons why the students opposed the vaccine, including the lack of knowledge on its long-term impact. The complaint also compared the vaccination requirement to the infamous decades-long Tuskegee experiment, where scientists monitored Black men with syphilis but never treated them.

"The university isn't forcing the students to undergo injections. The situation here is a far cry from past blunders in medical ethics like the Tuskegee Study," Leichty, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, wrote in his ruling.

They also opposed the measures put in place for those unvaccinated.

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In his ruling, Leichty wrote: "the students aren't being forced to take the vaccination against their will; they can go to college elsewhere or forego college altogether. If this case were merely that, merely the right to attend university, this state action wouldn't trample on their rights. There is no fundamental or constitutional right to a college education, much less one at a particular institution."

James Bopp Jr., an attorney for the eight students, said they plan to appeal the ruling.

"Today's ruling does not end the students' fight-we plan to immediately appeal the judge's decision," James Bopp said in a statement. "In addition, we plan on asking the judge to put a hold on IU's Mandate pending that appeal. We are confident the court of appeals will agree that the Mandate should be put on hold."

IU did not respond to Insider's request for comment at the time of publication but told CNN: "We appreciate the quick and thorough ruling which allows us to focus on a full and safe return. We look forward to welcoming everyone to our campuses for the fall semester."

Read the original article on Business Insider
A former employee at a federal prison in Kentucky who took more than $80,000 in bribes and an inmate who paid him to sneak in contraband have pleaded guilty.

Hank Williams, who was a cook supervisor at USP Big Sandy in Martin County, pleaded guilty to taking bribes, conspiring to distribute methamphetamine and using the mail to facilitate the commission of a felony.

The inmate, Librado Navarette, pleaded guilty Monday in federal court in Lexington to giving bribes to Williams and to possession of contraband.

The scheme lasted more than three years beginning in the spring of 2016, according to a court document.

It unraveled after prison officials searched Navarettes cell in May 2019 and found items that inmates are not allowed to have, including marijuana, a synthetic marijuana called K2, tobacco and cell phones.

Navarette had been convicted of selling meth in Central California. Police said he had ties to the Mexican Mafia.

The investigation of the contraband in Navarettes cell led to Williams, who admitted he agreed to provide drugs and other items to inmates in return for cash.

Williams said he used fake names to have marijuana, meth, heroin, cell phones and other contraband, as well as cash payments, mailed to his sons home in Georgetown for Williams to pick up.

Williams said he received between $82,500 and $89,600 in bribes, according to his plea agreement.

After Williams resigned, prison officials found marijuana, cell phones and other contraband in other inmates cells and in the kitchen area, where Williams had been a supervisor. The contraband was believed to be part of Williams smuggling operation.

Federal authorities seized $77,009 from Williams bank accounts; $6,700 from his house in Perry County; and $6,340 from his sons house, according to a court record.

That was forfeited to the government.

Williams pleaded guilty in June and is to be sentenced in August. Prosecutors agreed not to seek a sentence of more than 17 years and six months.

The top sentence on the most serious charge against Navarette would be 20 years. He is scheduled to be sentenced in October.
FORT LEE, Va.  As the Biden administration began planning to evacuate thousands of Afghans who worked with U.S. troops during the war, one of the most sensitive and closely guarded decisions was where they would go while awaiting U.S. visas.

Advocates pressed for a mass relocation to Guam, the U.S. territory that hosted thousands of allied South Vietnamese during that conflict. Reporters quizzed the State Department about reported plans to fly the waiting Afghans  who served as translators, drivers and in other roles in the U.S. military  to Tajikistan, Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced it had settled on a location for "Operation Allies Rescue": Fort Lee, a 6,000-acre Army post in Virginia.

When Operation Allies Rescue was put into place, State Department officials asked the Pentagon for suggestions on which military installation would be the best hosts at a moment's notice. Pentagon officials recommended Fort Lee because it has all the basic services to temporarily house the Afghan refugees, including health care, food, housing and cultural needs.

From right, President Joe Biden, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah meet at the White House on June 25, 2021.

"The biggest reason is that (Fort Lee) was going to be ready the quickest of all the others," Maj. Robert Lodewick, a Defense Department public affairs officer, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "Also, because it is an East Coast base, it comes into play because of the transportation considerations for bringing them here."

They will slaughter us: Afghans who worked with US beg for visas as troop withdrawal looms

More than 2,500 Afghan nationals and their family members are expected to begin arriving at Fort Lee as early as next week, according to the Defense Department and local officials. About 700 of them worked for the U.S. government in some capacity during the 20-year conflict; the remaining 1,800 of them are family members of those who served alongside U.S. troops.

Thousands of Afghans are desperately seeking to leave their homeland as the Biden administration withdraws the last American troops in the coming months. These Afghans fear that once U.S. forces are gone, the Taliban will sweep back into power and target them as traitors.

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Coming to America: Pentagon says Fort Lee will house Afghan nationals who worked for U.S. in Afghanistan

Other details of the relocation remain fluid, such as where on the base the Afghan families will be housed, said Lodewick.

"A lot of it is still under planning," he said.

The Pentagon says sheltering the evacuees will not impede day-to-day business on Fort Lee.

The Biden administration announced July 8 it was withdrawing U.S. troops and other personnel from Afghanistan by the end of August. Operation Allies Rescue is designed to protect those Afghan citizens and their families who had a role in the U.S. mission from persecution by Afghan rebels once the United States is completely out.

Veteran journalist Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is the regional daily news coach for the USA TODAY Network Southeast Region's Unified Central group, which includes Virginia, West Virginia and portions of North Carolina. He is based at The Progress-Index in Petersburg, Virginia. Contact Bill at batkinson@progress-index.com, and follow him on Twitter at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Pentagon says Fort Lee picked to house Afghans due to immediate access
PARIS (Reuters) -A French Mirage 2000 jet fighter crashed in northern Mali on Tuesday due to a technical problem, the French military said.

The two pilots involved were safe, armed forces spokesman Colonel Pascal Ianni said. The crash occurred in Hombori region.

The military will open an investigation into the reasons for the crash but militant groups were not behind the incident, he said.

"Terrorist groups are not the cause of the problem", Ianni said.

(Reporting by Matthieu Protard; Editing by Catherine Evans and Angus MacSwan)
Ghislaine Maxwell has appeared on New Yorks tax owed list (Getty Images)

Ghislaine Maxwell owes more than a million dollars in taxes, according to New York States Department of Taxation and Finance.

Ms Maxwell, the 59-year-old daughter of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell, owes Albany $1,520,000 (1,116,000) in back taxes. She is number 47 in a recently released list of 250 delinquent taxpayers who owe the state money.

The British socialite, known for her association with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is due to stand trial on sex-trafficking charges, which she has pleaded not guilty to. Ms Maxwell has been in the Metropolitan Detention Center, since she was arrested in July 2020 in the state of New Hampshire. She has been denied bail five times.

Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail in August 2019 while awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges.

Police in Florida started investigating Jeffery Epstein in 2005 after a complaint that he had sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl. He was convicted in 2008 for child prostitution. He was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges and committed suicide in August 2019.

Along with Ms Maxwell, Lisa Marie Presley appears on the list of taxes owed, she is required to pay $636,000 (466,914) to the state.

At the top of the list is Evgeny Gene Freidman, known as New York Citys taxi king who once ran a fleet of 800 yellow taxis, pre the ride-sharing app boom. He owes $18,703,000 (13,732,000) according to the government departments records.

The New York State Senate and Assembly is raising taxes for New York City millionaires who make more than $1 million (725,979) annually. The hikes will make tax in New York City the highest rates in the US.

Read More

Epstein met first known underage victim at prestigious Michigan arts camp, book says

Dozens of Ghislaine Maxwell documents unsealed in sex-trafficking case

Trump considered pardoning Ghislaine Maxwell: report
Watch: Prince Harry to publish 'wholly truthful' book on his life next year

Prince Harry has confirmed he will be releasing the "definitive account" of his life as he is set to tell all in his memoirs.

The news came as a shock to both the palace and the public, and it has been reported that Harry didn't tell his family about the project before the announcement on Monday.

Although Harry triggered the biggest crisis in The Firm for decades, when he and wife Meghan Markle chose to 'step back', he's certainly not the first to reveal his side of the story.

Harry and Meghan's dramatic move was likened to the abdication of 1936, when King Edward VIII relinquished the crown to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

He waited longer to release his autobiography though, publishing A King's Story in 1951, to much interest.

The Duke of Windsor, who was the current Queen's uncle, was said to have written the book because he was disappointed he had not been given a role as an ambassador to the US.

The book's summary explains, "this is the autobiography of the late Duke of Windsor - great grandson of Queen Victoria, grandson of Edward VII, son of George V, and cousin of the German Emperor and the Czar of Russia.

"The book tells the story of the future king's early youth at Sandringham, his years at Naval School on the Isle of Wight, at Magdalen College, Oxford, in the army in World War I, and his tours of Canada, India, Australia, and New Zealand.

"Eventually he becomes king, on the death of his father. He defies the wishes of Stanley Baldwin, the Prime Minister, when he insists on marrying Wallis Simpson, the future Duchess of Windsor. The book features his abdication, and his marriage."

The Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII of Britain until his abdication, in New York with a first edition copy of his book 'A King's Story' in 1951. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Read more: What will Harry and Meghan do when they go back to work?

While the duke needed the money after being cut off from the Royal Family, Harry is donating his profits to charity.

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His wife, Wallis Simpson, who became the Duchess of Windsor, also wrote her memoirs, called The Heart has its Reasons, four years after the duke. One reviewer of Simpson's book on Goodreads said: "She must have been charming, opinionated, decisive and with a great deal of inner strength to have lived this life with the Duke."

Royal author and Evening Standard royal editor Robert Jobson told MailOnline: "It [Harry's book] will become an international bestseller, but at what cost to the monarchy? There will be nowhere to hide.

"It is not the first time a 'exiled' senior royal has written a memoir the former King Edward VIII wrote one.

"His book was published to a media storm in the 50s. It caused a sensation.

"But this is bound to cause mayhem amongst the House of Windsor."

Despite the Duke and Duchess of Windsor lifting the lid on the royals in the 1950s, there was some reconciliation for the duke with members of the family, though some never accepted Simpson and continued to shun him because of her.

However the Queen did invite him to the investiture of Prince Charles as the Prince of Wales in 1969, though he declined. She also visited him on occasion when he was in London.

Watch: Harry & Meghan: Escaping the Palace Official Trailer

In more recent years, Prince Charles and Princess Diana both told their stories through others in the 1990s.

Diana recorded her thoughts and experiences on tapes for the journalist Andrew Morton, who then turned them into Diana: Her True Story, though he did not confess immediately that the princess herself had been his main source.

The book was dubbed the "longest divorce petition in British history" and spent 18 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.

It detailed her struggles in a loveless marriage, her battles with bulimia, and Charles's affair with Camilla, who is now his wife.

Author Andrew Morton with a copy of his book, "Diana: Her True Story - In Her Own Words", in 2017. He republished the book in 1997 after her death. (Chris J Ratcliffe/AFP via Getty Images)

Read more: Prince Harry to write memoirs: 'Not as prince but as the man I have become'

Two years after that book, Charles worked closely with Jonathan Dimbleby who then released an authorised biography in 1994, on the Prince of Wales.

Charles detailed his childhood, referring to his father, Prince Philip, as harsh and hectoring and said the Queen was physically and emotionally distant from him.

That decade was a busy one for royal memoirs, as Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, also published her first autobiography, My Story.

At the time the Daily Mirror called it a "shock plan" and said it was "appalling behaviour".

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Ferguson enjoyed success with it, and she went onto write a second autobiography entitled Finding Sarah.

Life in the Royal Family continues to be shrouded in mystery, despite their increased visibility through social media, interviews and high profile work and engagements.

Royal biographies go some way to lifting the lid, but memoirs offer another level of insight into a world that is out of reach for most people.

Some of the reviews of the books show why they continue to be popular. One reviewer of the Duke of Windsor's book on Amazon said: "To read what Edward wrote himself, rather than what other people wrote about him, was fascinating."

A reviewer of the same book in the US noted: "I think it gives a good insight to how he lives his life growing up and even as a royal person he still a person who had his triumphs and challenges like all of us.

"He was put in a very difficult position and honestly I cant judge him, no one can - if he honestly loved the person then I can understand why he gave it up."

Wallis Simpson, later the Duchess of Windsor, published her memoirs after her husband. (Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

However, some argue that the veil of mystery is crucial to the success of the Royal Family, so exposing too much could be damaging.

Royal correspondent and biographer Katie Nicholl pointed out to CBC: "The public wants to know all the ins and outs of royal life and occasionally we get snippets, but the magic of the monarchy is the mystery that surrounds it and the royals try very hard  and do a very good job  of keeping that intact."

Author Penny Junor added: "When I started writing about the royals over 35 years ago, there was a sort of brick wall around Buckingham Palace and everything royal.

"They were there to bat you away. And that has changed a lot."

But while Junor's view is that there have been significant changes in the course of Harry's life, they are evidently not enough for the prince, who now wants to tell his story in his own words.

Announcing his memoirs, he said: "Im writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. Ive worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story - the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned - I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.

"Im deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what Ive learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life thats accurate and wholly truthful."

Harry's memoirs will be out in late 2022.

Watch: Prince Harry and Meghan Announce New Netflix Animated Series
Hartford police are investigating a non-fatal shooting that occurred Monday evening.

Officers were dispatched near 300 Garden Street around 5:15 p.m., after a report that someone was shot. Upon their arrival, they found a victim in his 50s.

His injury is considered non-life threatening, police said. It was determined that the incident occurred in the area of 166 Kensington Street.

Anyone with information should call the Hartford Police Department Tip Line at 860-722-TIPS (8477).

Jessika Harkay can be reached at jharkay@courant.com.
Axios

The more contagious Delta variant of COVID-19 is rampant in Colorado, but Gov. Jared Polis dismissed the need for new public health restrictions to stop its spread.Why it matters: The variant first discovered in India now comprises nine of 10 cases in Colorado, well above the national average.Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for freeCase counts increased more than 20% in two weeks and deaths recently topped 7,000.Elsewhere, cities like L
Jul. 20Honolulu Police Department detectives continue to investigate Sunday's shooting death of a 34-year-old man in Wahiawa.

The Honolulu Medical Examiner's Office identified the victim as William T. Spencer.

The shooting happened in the street on Lakeview Circle sometime before 5 :10 a.m. Sunday.

HPD Homicide Detail Lt. Deena Thoemmes said the victim, identified as Spencer, was seated in a vehicle fronting a residence when a male approached on foot and shot Spencer multiple times in the torso.

The suspect, clad in a dark-colored hoodie, then fled in a dark-colored vehicle.

Spencer was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

The case has been classified as second-degree murder.

Police do not believe the shooting was random.

"We believe the suspect knew that the victim was going to be at that location at that time, " Thoemmes said.

No arrests have been made in connection with the incident.

Anyone with information on the shooting is urged to call 911 or CrimeStoppers at 955-8300.
Ice-T and Coco Austin show off their daughter on "The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon" in 2016. NBC

Coco Austin posted a picture of herself with her daughter Chanel on Sunday.

The mother-daughter duo was supporting famous rapper Ice-T performing with his band, Body Count.

Fans pointed out that the 5-year-old girl looks just like her father, Ice-T.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Fans of Ice-T and Coco Austin have been talking about how much the couple's daughter looks just like her father.

Last Sunday, Austin shared an image on social mediaof herself holding her 5-year-old daughter Chanel while at RockFest, supporting Ice-T's performance with his heavy metal band, Body Count.

The Instagram post was filled with comments about how much little Chanel looks like the "Law and Order: SVU" star.

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One user commented: "Ice-T don't need no paternity test."

Another fan wrote: "Ice-T's mini me!"

This is not the first time comparisons have been made between Chanel and her parents.

On July 4, Austin posted a picture of herself with her daughter, only this time they were wearing matching swimsuits. In true holiday fashion, the duo was dressed in red, white, and blue.

Among the comments saying that Chanel looked like her father, there were also comments, saying that the mother and daughter were "twinning" in the image.

At the time, Austin wrote on Instagram in a caption: "The twinning never stops! Chanel likes it too much. When you match with your child you feel the bond, it's nice to know Chanel wants to be like her mommy. #BestiesForLife."

Austin and Ice-T tied the knot in 2005 and earlier this year celebrated their 20th anniversary. Chanel was born a month after their 10th wedding anniversary in 2015.

While Chanel is the only daughter shared by Ice-T and Austin, the famous rapper also has two other children from previous relationships: a 29-year-old son Tracy Marrow Jr., who's named after his father's birth name, and a 45-year-old daughter Letesha.

Read the original article on Insider
The 2020-21 school year was a long year for Idaho school districts. The pandemic wrought havoc on everyone, including students, parents, teachers, administrators and school boards. Masks and school closures sparked controversy among those in favor and those against, and educators felt the brunt of never making the right decision. But they persevered, and the last few months of the school year appeared to bring light at the end of the tunnel.

What should have been a time of healing and preparation for next school year was not to be. As part of a national campaign to discredit public education, the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its state-level partners launched an all-out attack on educators, who have, in the words of the Idaho Freedom Foundation leader, been responsible for the lefts unchecked radicalization of young people that has been unfolding for years in the government indoctrination camps we call public schools. Their objective was and is to divide communities and sow dissent.

Unchecked radicalization? Government indoctrination camps? What evidence is there to support these statements?

As former chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court Jim Jones wrote in an op-ed a few weeks ago, the Idaho Freedom Foundation and its leader want to end public schools. The Idaho Freedom Foundation has been open about it, noting that K-12 education is the most virulent form of socialism (and indoctrination thereto) in America today. But lets be clear here: their campaign against indoctrination is really about spreading disinformation and breeding distrust and in making people believe that public schools have no valuable function in society.

However, the necessity of public schools is in preserving the stability of a republican form of government depending mainly on the intelligence of the people, as specified in the Idaho Constitution, Article IX, Section 1.

So with the advent of the push to abolish indoctrination in Idaho public schools, Idahos Legislature passed a law that outlawed the teaching of concepts that are supposedly part of critical race theory, without providing a definition for it. Most teachers had never heard the term critical race theory until they read it was banned. The primary accomplishments of the bill were to create distrust, scare teachers and to make them think twice about teaching critical thinking. It was and is a woefully misguided solution in search of a problem.

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But the Idaho Freedom Foundation leader would have you believe that: Our schools have downplayed the importance of liberty and a free society. Students hear next to nothing about the roles capitalism and private property have played in American prosperity. But theyve read and heard plenty of positive portrayals of socialism, Marxism and communism.

Downplayed liberty and a free society? Positive portrayals of socialism, Marxism and communism? Nothing about capitalism and private property? These are the musings of people who have never darkened the door of an Idaho public school classroom. If they had, they would see what the people of Idaho already know: that our teachers, school board members, administrators and support personnel are patriotic, good-hearted citizens who teach and serve out of love for the students of their communities.

Here are a few of the actual student goals in Idahos U.S. government standards:

Describe historical milestones that led to the creation of limited government in the United States, such as the Declaration of Independence (1776), Articles of Confederation (1781), state constitutions and charters, United States Constitution (1787) and the Bill of Rights (1791).

Analyze important events and individuals responsible for bringing about political changes in the United States.

Compare and contrast different economic systems and relate each to different forms of government.

Describe the origins of constitutional law in western civilization, including the natural rights philosophy, Magna Carta (1215), common law and the Bill of Rights (1689) in England.

Analyze the essential philosophies, ideals and objectives of the foundational documents of the United States, including the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Federalist Papers.

Explain the central principles of the United States governmental system including a written constitution, rule of law, popular sovereignty, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, majority rule with minority rights, judicial review and federalism.

These and other standards in government and U.S. history provide a framework for essential student understanding of these important topics. They dont include advocacy of any political systems, and teachers are certainly not required to downplay other systems.

This kind of rhetoric from the Idaho Freedom Foundation is inflammatory and dangerous, and as a result we now have an Indoctrination Commission led by two candidates for political office devoted to rooting out the supposed activities described by the Idaho Freedom Foundation leader, even though the written standards established for our kids are clearly stated.

All of this is rhetorical overreach. Idaho legislators often use local control as a moniker when it is convenient, but the Indoctrination Commission is certainly a big government committee. Idaho parents have never been shy about expressing their displeasure with curricula to their locally elected school board. Issues are taken care of at the local level by locally elected officials, and thats how it should be.

Furthermore, Idaho already has a Professional Standards Commission and a Code of Ethics for Teachers. Parents and patrons can and do file complaints with the standards commission about violations of any of the code.

Idahos business leaders understand that a well-educated workforce is crucial to the states future success, and many of their vision and mission statements reflect a commitment to tolerance, equity and diversity, which are among the Idaho Freedom Foundations targets in schools.

So instead of condemning educators and school board members, lets thank them for the work they have done during the difficult time of the pandemic and confirm our faith in them as they teach the curricula prescribed by their local districts. And lets tell legislators that we care about our educators and want them treated fairly and paid well.

And, finally, lets return local control to our communities and our elected school boards, and stop giving credence to special interest groups trying to divide our communities.

Don Coberly, Geoffrey Thomas, Teresa Fabricius and Wil Overgaard are retired Idaho school superintendents.
CHICAGO  Your neighbors have seen them.

Your friends have seen them.

Some have reported seeing them. Perhaps you have seen them, too. After all, more have seen UFOs than care to admit  never mind file a report. If the database held by the National UFO Reporting Center in Washington State (est. 1974) is any measure, the first official sightings in Illinois began in the mid-1920s, when a farm boy near Moline spotted an otherworldly disc. The Illinois chapter of the Mutual UFO Network (est. 1969 on the western border with Missouri) knows of stories of airships in the Midwest dating to 1896. But the majority of sightings are more recent.

You might even say, its a boom time for UFOs in Illinois.

During the past year alone, someone in Spring Grove reported a large flying Tic Tac-like craft traveling rapidly toward Wisconsin. In early June, a flashing, red-and-white flying something was reported high above Winnetka, at roughly the altitude of a plane, but then started to descend before going below the tree line and out of sight. In March, a solid ball of white light was seen moving fast over Dixon. In May, a diamond-shaped object was spotted above Chicago, stopping, changing course, vanishing. Around Easter, two blue glowing triangles were observed loitering over a Meijer in St. Charles.

And those are just four picked randomly out of dozens of reports from Illinois.

Though to judge by the data collected by the Mutual UFO Network and the National UFO Reporting Center, Illinois UFOs havent changed much since we first saw them. We see them while reclining in our backyards and farms, admiring the stars on a summer night. We see them while driving to work in the morning. We see them while walking the dog. We see them while strolling by the lake. We see them in snowstorms, and from the window seat of planes over OHare. When U.S. intelligence officials released an eye-popping study recently about the governments ongoing attempts to identify unidentified aerial phenomena, the only certainty we could take away was this: We all see the same stuff. Orbs. Discs. Strands of lights. Triangles. Dancing triangles.

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Even mysterious Tic Tacs are fairly common.

What was new about that study was the governments posture toward UFO sightings, the remarkable concession that it cant explain everything being seen. The report was seen as inconclusive, so inconclusive that intelligence officials are expected to update it by Thanksgiving. It considered known U.S. technology, the technology other nations have, weather balloons, swamp gas. Of the 144 cases examined for the report, 18 objects appeared to move using a technology that neither the government nor its adversaries were known to possess. No evidence of otherworldly beings was offered (and only one deflating balloon was identified from the 144 cases). But those 18 red-flagged flying objects required additional scientific knowledge to successfully collect on, analyze and characterize.

Meaning, we dont know what they are because, technologically, theyre beyond us.

Gulp.

As former CIA director R. James Woolsey put it recently, hes no longer as skeptical as he was a few years ago. Other former government officials said that if the public were shown the entirety of U.S. classified knowledge, many would turn to religion for comfort.

This change in tone comes partly because every one of those 144 cases in the report (all sourced within the past couple of years) came from a combination of government-approved sources, professional pilots and military personnel. See, you and me and the farmers weird kid, we see something weird and we say something  but its dismissible.

Because, frankly, weve been seeing things for a long time.

Historically, Illinois has been a relative UFO lightweight  at least compared with the Area 51 wastelands of the Southwest or the misty forests of the Pacific Northwest. But even we have greatest hits: The Tinley Park Lights of 2004, the mysterious football field-sized triangle of Southern Illinois in 2000; in 2006, a dozen United Airline workers at OHare reported a disc above the airport that abruptly climbed, punching a perfect hole in the clouds. Sam Maranto, director of the Illinois chapter of MUFON, said there are UFO reports near the North Shore Naval Station that stretch back years. From 1999 to 2001, the Rockford area became a hotbed of sightings. There are even enough UFO reports from the wider Chicago metro area to generalize: We see triangular formations.

Then again, we see a lot of things.

A mysterious point of light is also popular. In fact, to pick through the databases of MUFON and the National UFO Reporting Center  the nations two primary gathering spots for data on everyday UFO sightings  is to be reminded of just how common its been is for Illinois residents to see UFOs.

Arlington Heights, 1972: A UFO the size of a small car descends at a stop sign, hovers over the hood of a vehicle, backs up, remains still for three minutes, then zips away.

Decatur, 1980: During a snowstorm, a dark object flying very low in the middle of a road, at roughly 5 m.p.h., and making no noise, is watched casting a kind of searchlight.

Rockton, 2001: A large burnt orange egg hovers for 30 minutes above an open field.

Oak Lawn, 1946: 5 silver discs in a V-formation, in daylight, shoot toward Indiana.

Batavia, 2010: A UFO crash! (Note: The keepers of these databases often leave the names of witnesses off the report for privacys sake. Plus, anyone can report anything, so actual investigations are a matter of triage. The observer of the Batavia crash pleads for urgency from the National UFO Reporting Center: You need to get off your lazy ass and find out what came down over Batavia.)

To be fair, they were busy.

In the past year alone, MUFON has had 122 reports from Illinois, and thats down from the 141 received in 2017. This year, so far, its had about 50 reports. The National UFO Reporting Center  which has 21 reports from Illinois since January  has collected roughly 3,000 sightings from Illinois that date back to the 1940s. And that number is probably low, said director Peter Davenport, whos been reassembling years worth of old data that was accidentally dumped during a recent computer meltdown. He sounded very, very exhausted when we spoke: I cant keep up with the UFO workload anymore. I cant. Im a one-man operation, I run this out of my house and if we had a staff and a budget then we could handle more cases, but Im just getting endless calls these days. And theyve gotten more dramatic. Used to be distant lights in the sky. Now its chevrons, boxes, triangles  now its overt (unidentified objects) where they used to be concealed. Since November, Ive especially had more pilots from airlines filing reports.

The databases maintained by MUFON and the National UFO Reporting Center are the scrappy, homegrown descendants of the defunct bureaucracies once tasked with UFO investigations. Such as Project Sign (initially Project SAUCER), Project Grudge, and most famously, Project Blue Book, which was shut down in 1969. Blue Book was really all about appeasing the public, said Maranto. Its whole mission was gather and quell.

One of the leading forces behind Project Blue Book (which was headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton) was J. Allen Hynek, who started as a staunch debunker of alien craft but eventually came to sympathize with the citizens he investigated. He went on to become chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University and founder of the Center for UFO Studies in 1973. It was based in Hyneks home in Evanston, though continues today on the Far North Side, under the direction of Mark Rodeghier, a statistician and former volunteer for Hynek (who died in 1986). For a long time, though Hynek was an investigator for the Air Force, he never really investigated much in Illinois, partly because the quality of reports werent great. We joked about a Hynek Effect, that relatively, there werent enough UFOs reported in Illinois because they knew Hynek was at home, ready to investigate.

Before the internet, there were scant places to report sightings. Generally, if you saw an unidentified anything and needed to say something, you called police. And police would often patch you through to MUFON or the National UFO Reporting Center. A lot of 911 facilities  same with calls to federal agencies like the FBI  often just send those calls through to us, Davenport said. However, since the rise of online UFO forums, all bets have been off, Rodeghier said. He maintains a basement office in Norwood Park full of case studies and still gets about one unsolicited report a week, but he doesnt keep a running database and gathering place to file UFO reports. The waters have become more and more muddied, he said, and the explosion of satellites and drones in the sky doesnt help.

Lots of chaff these days, Davenport agrees.

Poking through local reports, the holes in these stories can be big, round and pulsing.

Dec. 20, 2020: I noticed what I thought was a shooting star. I instantly thought no way, Ive never seen a shooting star my whole life. ... All of a sudden the light disappeared like it went behind a curtain and the tail followed behind. ... It possibly opened a portal ...

June 1, 2021: Looking up at the sky from my hot rub (and saw) what looked like a low-orbiting satellite traveling from west to east. ... I should also mention I live near Midway.

The new government report  by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and titled Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena  takes pains, in its first lines, to caution: The limited amount of high-quality reporting on (UAP) hampers our ability to draw firm conclusions ... Which makes sense to Rodeghier: In general, and since the beginning of UFO sightings, the US has led the way in UFO organizations and reports but not necessarily in research on UFOs or the quality of reports themselves.

In retrospect, maybe it wasnt the best idea for the feds to come out with that UFO report just before July 4. That said, the report has been appreciated by the wider community of private UFO researcher  its concessions to the unexplained, Rodeghier said, thats a positive for this field, Maranto said the admission of not having the technical know-how to understand everything seen (photographed and recorded on video) may be a game changer. Davenport was disappointed by the report; it didnt offer enough of what the government knows. But overall, they agree  youre left with big questions.

So, as of last check:

Springfield, 9:50 p.m., June 23: An orb. Its captured on video for four minutes. It strobes, and glows red, hovers a bit, travels in one direction, then changes course abruptly. I never saw a plane do this, the witness says, and I heard no sound from it. Four days earlier the National UFO Reporting Center received an almost identical report from just outside Joliet. And less than a week before that, it received a similar report from McHenry. Same kind of orb, same movement, nearly identical pictures.

Could be a drone. Could be more.

Keep watching the skies.
By Sarah Marsh

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba's churches have defended those who participated in unprecedented protests and even set up a hotline to advise the families of detainees, a sign of increasing boldness from spiritual leaders on the Communist-run island.

Protests erupted https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/street-protests-break-out-cuba-2021-07-11 nationwide on July 11 against shortages of medicine and food, power outages, the COVID-19 surge and curbs on freedom. The government blamed counter-revolutionaries it said were exploiting hardships caused by decades-old U.S. sanctions.

Hundreds of protesters, activists and journalists have since been detained, according to human rights groups. Authorities say they are prosecuting those who instigated "unpatriotic unrest" and committed vandalism.

In the days following the protests, the dominant Roman Catholic church, other religions, and freemasons issued statements in favor of free expression. After decades of repression following the 1959 revolution, an expansion of religious freedoms in the 1990s has given religious groups greater autonomy than any other organization not affiliated with the Communist Party. But such candor is still rare in Cuba, where significant restrictions on dissent remain in place.

"Amid the difficulties, the protests of recent days and also the detentions, the repression, the Church wants to pray for all Cubans, for all Cuba," Dionisio Garcia, Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, the country's second largest city, said in a televised mass on Sunday.

The Cuban people need changes to feel hope, he said at the Church of the Virgin of Charity of El Cobre, the patron saint of a country where an estimated 60% are baptized Catholics.

Protestant denominations also backed the protesters' right to express themselves, with the Methodist Church stating in a post shared on social media on Saturday: "The fact of disagreeing with the political system does not turn a person into an antisocial element or criminal."

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All urged both protesters and authorities to avoid violence in favor of dialogue. The conference of Catholic bishops expressed concern the government's response would instead be "immobility" and even a "hardening of positions."

The Catholic Church in particular has played an important role in Cuban society in recent years, negotiating the release of political prisoners and fomenting the 2014 detente with old Cold War foe the United States.

But government critics have at times accused the Church of not doing enough to confront authorities over human rights, in favor of a fragile entente that allows them a seat at the table of power. That may be changing.

In his weekly address to the faithful in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, said he felt close to those families in Cuba suffering the most in these "difficult moments".

"I pray that the Lord might help the nation construct a society that is more and more just and fraternal through peace, dialogue and solidarity," he said.

The Cuban Conference of Catholic Religious opened a helpline for those detained and their relatives on Sunday.

"This is focused on providing counsel for the presentation of habeas corpus, help in locating the detainees, and spiritual and psychological guidance for the relatives," it said.

Meanwhile, Cuba's Grand Lodge of Freemasons - a secretive society that also has a broad reach - said in a statement it was "concerned by the excessive use of force" by authorities.

Masonic leader Jose Ramon Vinas went a step further, writing a letter to President Miguel Diaz-Canel accusing the government of always justifying the country's problems through the U.S. trade embargo rather than recognizing its own responsibility.

He wrote later on Facebook that had been summoned to a police station where three officials questioned him over the letter. In a show of the growing sense of defiance in Cuban society, he said he suggested they came to visit the masons instead where they could speak on an equal footing.

"As I left, there was a cluster of brothers waiting for me, defying the curfew about to start - Masonic pride... thank you, thank you!"

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh; Editing by Christian Plumb and Rosalba O'Brien)
India's coronavirus death toll is up to 10 times higher than the nearly 415,000 fatalities reported by authorities, likely making it the country's worst humanitarian disaster since independence, a US research group said Tuesday.

The Center for Global Development study's estimate is the highest yet for the carnage in the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people, which is emerging from a devastating surge partly fuelled by the Delta variant in April and May.

The study -- which analysed data from the start of the pandemic to June this year -- suggested that between 3.4 million and 4.7 million people had died from the virus.

"True deaths are likely to be in the several millions, not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India's worst human tragedy since partition and independence," the researchers said.

After the sub-continent's partition in 1947 into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, sectarian bloodshed killed hundreds of thousands of people. Some estimates say up to two million died.

India's official death toll of just over 414,000 is the world's third-highest after the United States' 609,000 fatalities and Brazil's 542,000.

Experts have been casting doubt on India's toll for months, blaming the already overstretched health service.

Several Indian states have revised their virus tolls in recent weeks, adding thousands of "backlog" deaths.

The Center for Global Development report was based on estimating "excess mortality", the number of extra people who died compared with pre-crisis figures.

The authors -- who included Arvind Subramanian, a former chief government economic adviser -- did this partly by analysing death registrations in some states as well as a recurring national economic study.

They also compared surveys of the spread of Covid-19 in India with international death rates.

The researchers, which also included a Harvard University expert, acknowledged that estimating mortality with statistical confidence was difficult.

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"(But) all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count," they said.

- 'Speculative' -

Christophe Guilmoto, a specialist in Indian demography at France's Research Institute for Development, this month estimated that the death toll was nearer 2.2 million by late May.

India's death rate per million was nearly half the world average and Guilmoto said "such a low figure contradicts the apparent severity of a crisis that has struck most Indian families across the country".

Guilmoto's team concluded that only one coronavirus death in seven was recorded.

A model by the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that the Covid toll could be more than 1.25 million.

India's health ministry last month slammed The Economist magazine for publishing a story that said excess deaths were between five and seven times higher than the official toll, calling it "speculative" and "misinformed".

A World Health Organization report in May said up to three times more people had died around the globe during the pandemic -- from coronavirus or other causes -- than indicated by official statistics.

grk/tw/leg
By Fransiska Nangoy and Tabita Diela

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia extended its pandemic-linked restrictions to July 25 as the number of coronavirus infections remained high, aiming for a gradual easing of curbs next week if infections drop, President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday.

COVID-19 cases in Indonesia are currently among the highest in the world due to the rapid spread of the Delta variant, despite the imposition this month of the strictest restrictions on the movement of people so far during the pandemic.

Indonesia had imposed COVID-linked restrictions on July 3 for the island of Java and Bali and other cities across the archipelago, including having workers of non-essential businesses work from home, curbing travel, and closing shopping malls.

After the restrictions began, Jokowi, as the president widely known, said infection numbers started falling.

"If the trend of cases continue to decline, from July 26 the government will initiate gradual easing," he said in a virtual address.

Infections have been repeatedly around 50,000 per day in the past week. The number of fatalities has also stayed above 1,000 for the fifth consecutive day on Tuesday.

The health system in some areas has been pushed to breaking point by a deluge of patients, and on Monday, Indonesia reported a record 1,338 coronavirus deaths.

Tri Yunis Miko Wahyono, an epidemiologist from the University of Indonesia, said the government should not rely on the number of infections as a gauge in deciding whether to ease the curbs that are meant to contain the outbreak.

"Now, the number of probable cases is still very high among the communities, many are dying and the government is turning a blind eye," he said.

Despite a lower number of infections this week, the positivity rate remained high, at 33%, on Tuesday. The rate has been above 20% since June 30.

Meanwhile, millions of Muslims on Tuesday celebrated Eid al-Adha, one of the most important Islamic festivals, amid the coronavirus curbs, although some mosques reportedly flouted the restrictions and held mass prayers.

In the ultra-conservative province of Aceh - which is not in the government's red zone that is subject to the tightest restrictions - photographs showed a crowded mosque with many people unmasked.

(Additional reporting by Heru Asprihanto; Editing by Ed Davies and Bernadette Baum)
(Bloomberg) -- Irans government said domestic interference was responsible for stalling President Hassan Rouhanis efforts to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, highlighting legislation that hardline lawmakers had hoped would pressure the Biden administration into swiftly removing sanctions.

Government spokesman Ali Rabiei said on Tuesday that the bill, which compelled Irans government to significantly expand atomic activity and limit nuclear inspections, amounted to an unorthodox interference in executive affairs that had complicated the negotiations with world powers in Vienna.

The nuclear diplomacy has now been delayed until President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric, takes office on Aug. 3.

The outcome of talks cant be adjusted to this law that oversteps the nuclear deal, he said in a statement on the governments official website.

Rabiei said the Supreme National Security Council had concluded that the framework for an agreement reached in the Austrian capital didnt comply with the law ratified by Irans parliament last year. Keyvan Khosravi, spokesman for the council, rejected his comments in an interview with the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

Rouhanis negotiating team were still some distance from reaching a pact with world powers when talks were halted, Khosravi said.

The bullying positions of the Americans and some Europeans had set their efforts back, Tasnim reported him saying.

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By Dan Williams and Siddharth Cavale

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel warned consumer goods giant Unilever Plc on Tuesday of "severe consequences" from a decision by subsidiary Ben & Jerry's to stop selling ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, and urged U.S. states to invoke anti-boycott laws.

Monday's announcement followed pro-Palestinian pressure on the Vermont-based company over its business in Israel and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, handled since 1987 through a licensee partner, Ben & Jerry's Israel.

Most countries consider Israeli settlements on Palestinian land to be illegal. Israel disputes this.

The country's Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, in a phone call with Unilever CEO Alan Jope, called the move a "glaring anti-Israel measure" and said that the government would move "aggressively against any boycott measure targeting civilians," according to the premier's office.

Ben & Jerry's decision was also met with a swift response from some smaller grocery chains operating in the New York metro area, which has a large population of Jewish residents, saying they would either reduce or remove Ben & Jerry's products from shelves.

Ben & Jerry's, based in South Burlington, Vermont, is known for its commitment to social justice that has recently included strongly supporting the Black Lives Matter movement, LGBTQ+ rights and electoral campaign finance reform.

It was acquired by Unilever in 2000 in a deal that allows it to operate with more autonomy than other subsidiaries, including giving legal powers to an independent board to make decisions over its social mission, brand integrity and policies.

On Monday, the Chunky Monkey ice-cream maker released a statement saying the brand would not renew its license agreement with its Israeli partner when it expires at the end of 2022.

Ben & Jerry's said selling its products in the occupied Palestinian territories was "inconsistent with its values".

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U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price declined to respond to Ben & Jerry's decision, calling it "the actions of a private company." But he reiterated the Biden administration's opposition to the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to isolate Israel over its treatment of the Palestinians.

"We firmly reject the BDS movement, which unfairly singles out Israel," Price told a regular press briefing.

The episode has sparked a clash between Ben & Jerry's independent board and Unilever.

SOCIAL MISSION

Ben & Jerry's Monday announcement went on to say that the company would stay in Israel under a different arrangement, without sales in the West Bank, among areas where Palestinians seek statehood. That position was reiterated in a separate statement issued by Unilever itself the same day.

In an interview https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ben-jerry-s-withdraws-sales-israeli-settlements-clashes-parent-company-n1274403 with NBC, Anuradha Mittal, the chair of Ben & Jerry's independent board, said the board had not been asked to vote on any proposal to continue sales in Israel, and so the announcement of the move had violated the acquisition deal of 2000.

The Ben & Jerry's board would have to vote to approve any different arrangement, which it had not done yet, Mittal said.

"I am saddened by the deceit of it," Mittal told NBC.

"This is not about Israel. It is about the violation of the acquisition agreement that maintained the soul of the company. I can't stop thinking that this is what happens when you have a board with all women and people of color who have been pushing to do the right thing."

Asked for comment on Mittal's remarks, Unilever said: "As you saw in our statement, Unilever has always recognised the right of the brand and its independent Board to take decisions about its social mission.

In New York, supermarket chain Morton Williams, which operates 15 stores in New York and one in New Jersey, said it is dramatically reducing Ben & Jerry's products at its stores, with its co-owner Avi Kaner adding it is contacting other retailers and distributors in the hope that they would follow suit.

Other supermarkets including Gourmet Glatt and New Jersey-based Cedar Market, released statements on Instagram saying they will no longer be carrying the brand, effective immediately. Florida-based Grove Kosher Market said none of their stores carry the brand and will not in the future as well.

Unilever shares closed down about a percent on Tuesday. The company reports first-half results on Thursday.

(Reporting by Siddharth Cavale and Praveen Paramasivam; Additional reporting by Simon Lewis in Washington; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Jeffrey Heller, Raissa Kasolowsky; Edmund Blair, William Maclean and Andrea Ricci)
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet warned of "severe consequences" for Ben & Jerry's after the Vermont-based ice cream company announced it would cease sales to occupied Palestinian territories.

An Israeli government readout of a call Tuesday between Bennet and Unilever, Ben and Jerry's parent company, said the prime minister denounced the move, which includes not pulling out of Israel itself, as "anti-Israel."

He stressed that he views the decision "with the utmost gravity," and "emphasized that from the perspective of the state of Israel, this is an action that has severe consequences, including legal, and it will take strong action against any boycott directed against its citizens," the readout said.

LIBERAL BEN & JERRY'S CO-FOUNDERS PUSH TO MAKE IT EASIER TO SUE POLICE OFFICERS

Ben & Jerry's, which has taken up several liberal causes over the years, made its announcement on Monday.

"We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerrys ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT). We also hear and recognize the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners," the company said a statement that noted that sales in the OPT will continue until the license expires at the end of 2021.

In its own statement on Monday, Unilever stated that, as part of its 2000 acquisition agreement with Ben & Jerry's, "We have always recognised the right of the brand and its independent Board to take decisions about its social mission." Unilever added that it welcomed how the company is choosing to stay in Israel while adding that the "Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a very complex and sensitive situation."

An official with the Israeli government signaled that he hoped the 35 states in the United States that have adopted laws or other measures condemning the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and restricted cooperation with companies engaged in Israel boycotts, would crack down on the ice cream company.

Story continues

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"Ben & Jerrys decision represents shameful surrender to antisemitism, to BDS and to all that is wrong with the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish discourse. We will not be silent," Yair Lapid, the Israeli foreign minister, said in a tweet shortly after the ice cream company's announcement. "Over 30 states in the United States have passed anti-BDS legislation in recent years. I plan on asking each of them to enforce these laws against Ben & Jerry's. They will not treat the State of Israel like this without a response."

The boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement was started in 2005, seeking to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories by putting pressure on companies and governments that have ties to Israel, according to the movement's website.

Jewish and Israeli groups have long decried the movement as anti-Semitic.

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Tags: Israel, Food and Drink, BDS, Ice cream, Naftali Bennett, News

Original Author: Brady Knox

Original Location: Israeli prime minister warns of 'severe consequences, including legal,' for Ben & Jerry's
J.K. Rowling says she's been receiving death threats following her controversial stance on the transgender community. (Jonathan Short/Associated Press)

J.K. Rowling, the famed author behind the Harry Potter franchise, is back in the news following a two-year-long saga about her views on the transgender community.

While the writer has been under scrutiny by trans activists since 2019, this week she revealed that things have escalated into death threats.

On Monday, Rowling, 55, retweeted a threat from a since-deleted Twitter account that said, "I wish you a very nice pipebomb in mailbox."

"To be fair, when you cant get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, theres really only one place to go," she wrote.

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When a user asked if the threat was, in part, because of comments she made about the trans community, Rowling confirmed yes."

"Hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me," she said, saying that shes since "realised that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever."

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The recent tweets are the latest in an ongoing series of offenses and defenses about her views on gender.

In December 2019, Rowling gave public support to Maya Forstater, a U.K. woman who was fired for transphobic tweets after a judge ruled that her views were not protected under Britains antidiscrimination laws.

Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult wholl have you. Live your best life in peace and security, the writer tweeted. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?

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Last month, Forstater later won an appeal to her case and posted a video to YouTube thanking Rowling for her support.

In May 2020, Rowling made headlines again when she accidentally tweeted a message with an expletive that misgendered a trans woman named Tara Wolf.

Wolf was convicted in 2017 of assaulting a woman she referred to as a TERF (trans-exclusionary radical feminist), which is a term used to describe anti-trans feminists or women who exclude trans women in conversations about womens rights.

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Rowling apologized for the tweet and later deleted it.

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On June 6, 2020, Rowling went viral yet again when she retweeted an op-ed discussing menstruation, taking issue with the fact that the story didnt use the word women.

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Soon after, trans activists and allies began accusing her of being a TERF, many of them her loyal fans. Rowling followed up with a series of tweets defending her position:

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I respect every trans persons right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them, she added. Id march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe its hateful to say so.

She continued: The idea that women like me, whove been empathetic to trans people for decades, feeling kinship because theyre vulnerable in the same way as women  ie, to male violence  hate trans people because they think sex is real and has lived consequences  is a nonsense.

If sex isnt real, theres no same-sex attraction. If sex isnt real, the lived reality of women globally is erased. I know and love trans people, but erasing the concept of sex removes the ability of many to meaningfully discuss their lives. It isnt hate to speak the truth.

The response from fans was extreme, and even included Harry Potter stars Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint and Eddie Redmayne chimed in  all of them denouncing her comments and supporting people to learn more about the trans movement.

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Rowling would later elaborate in a lengthy post on her website expressing that her views were partly motivated because of her experience with domestic abuse and sexual assault.

Ive been in the public eye now for over 20 years and have never talked publicly about being a domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor, she wrote. This isnt because Im ashamed those things happened to me, but because theyre traumatic to revisit and remember.

Im mentioning these things now not in an attempt to garner sympathy, but out of solidarity with the huge numbers of women who have histories like mine, whove been slurred as bigots for having concerns around single-sex spaces, she wrote, later noting that she was motivated to address these issues on Twitter because she thinks were living through the most misogynistic period Ive experienced.

Two months later, Rowling was asked to return an award given to her by the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights (RFKHR) group due to her controversial views.

As a longstanding donor to LGBT charities and a supporter of trans peoples right to live free of persecution, I absolutely refute the accusation that I hate trans people or wish them ill, or that standing up for the rights of women is wrong, discriminatory, or incites harm or violence to the trans community, Rowling said in a statement on her website.

I am deeply saddened that RFKHR has felt compelled to adopt this stance, but no award or honour, no matter my admiration for the person for whom it was named, means so much to me that I would forfeit the right to follow the dictates of my own conscience," she added.

Following this week's tweets, a slew of followers weighed in on their own opinions from both sides. Here are a few:

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Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
President Biden Speaks On The American Rescue Plan At White House

U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about the nation's economic recovery amid the COVID-19 pandemic in the State Dining Room of the White House on July 19, 2021 in Washington, DC. Credit - Drew AngererGetty Images

One post links to a video of a purported doctor alleging 62% of his patients have developed microscopic blood clots after being vaccinated. Another cites an alleged physician claiming humans already have built-in immunity to COVID-19, and therefore dont need to get vaccinated. A third, shared hundreds of thousands of times, claims that vaccinations are magnetizing people because they contain microchips that are used to track them.

False content like this, circulating relentlessly through public Facebook posts, private groups, and Facebook-owned Instagram, caused President Joe Biden to angrily accuse the social media giant on July 16 of killing people by not confronting online COVID-19 misinformation. Facebook quickly fired back, accusing the White House of using the company as a scapegoat for its own shortcomings in responding to the pandemic, and highlighting what they say are the companys unprecedented efforts to provide people with accurate information. Biden walked back his comment on Monday, clarifying that he believes the people spreading such misinformation on Facebook are ultimately responsible for the nations rising infections and deaths among the unvaccinated.

While the fight over Facebooks responsibility to curb dangerous misinformation and conspiracy theories on its platform isnt new, the latest back-and-forth marked a striking escalation in tensions between Bidens Administration and the social media company, signaling the desire to rein Facebook in may become a key policy priority in Washington. But the finger-pointing over who is to blame for rampant vaccine misinformation also reveals the difficulty of actually preventing these potentially deadly falsehoods from spreading over social media amid cries of censorship, legislative challenges and judicial roadblocks.

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I think its probably both a harbinger of more fights to come and also a byproduct of the way frustrations have grown over the last three years, Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, an advocacy group that has long criticized Facebooks moderation failures, says of the recent escalation. On the one hand, you want to work with the platforms to the extent you can to get them to be as helpful as possible. But on the other hand, if nothing is changing, it makes sense to take [them] head-on.

As concerns within the White House have risen, senior administration officials have regularly been in contact with Facebook executives about its efforts to stem COVID-19 vaccine misinformation, according to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. The White House has repeatedly flagged problematic posts that contain disinformation and pushed Facebook for more transparency in its data on who this COVID-19 disinformation is reaching, Psaki said on July 15.

But so far, the White House has indicated this outreach to Facebook hasnt led to significant results. We know they have taken some steps to address misinformation, but much, much more has to be done, said Psaki. And we cant wait longer for them to take aggressive action because its costing people their lives.

Officials are frustrated in particular with the companys reluctance to take aggressive action against the so-called Disinformation Dozen, a group of 12 accounts is responsible for more than 65% of all anti-vaccine content on Facebook-owned platforms, according to an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate released in March. While 35 accounts tied to the Disinformation Dozen have been shut down, at least 62 others linked to them, with a total of 8.4 million followers, are still active, the Center for Countering Digital Hate said on Friday.

And while Facebook has repeatedly insisted the data on their pandemic measures is available to the public, they have been less transparent about the spread of misinformation on their platform, including how many users have seen false claims about COVID-19 and vaccinations. Analysts and misinformation researchers have been pressing the company to release such metrics for years, arguing that Facebooks refusal to do so is hindering possible solutions. I guess Im left with a simple question: How many people have seen COVID vaccine misinformation on Facebook? Rob Flaherty, the White Houses director of digital strategy, asked in a tweet on July 16.

While only Facebook knows the full scale of the problem, independent researchers findings have been striking. The viral claim pushed by anti-vaccine activists earlier this yearthat vaccines will magnetize those who take themran rampant on Facebook and Instagram. Of a sampling of 77 high-performing posts that garnered more than 632,000 views in total, 71% did not receive a fact-checking label from the social media company, according to data shared with TIME by Avaaz, a nonprofit that tracks online disinformation. The groups analysis also highlighted a major disparity between the treatment of English and Spanish-language misinformation: 97% of the Spanish posts spreading the false claims did not receive a fact-checking label, compared to 55% in English.

Health experts dire warnings about rising COVID-19 cases and widespread vaccine hesitancy are clearly not enough for Facebook and Instagram to crack down at-scale on the infodemic that is fueling distrust and fear of vaccines in the U.S., says Rebecca Lenn, a senior advisor at Avaaz. It should be well known by now that we can no longer count on social media platforms to regulate themselves and protect users against harmful anti-vax lies.

Facebook has defended its efforts. At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden Administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies, Guy Rosen, the companys VP of Integrity, wrote in an online post on Saturday. The company has been touting figures that they say show that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased between 10 and 15 points since January, citing a survey conducted through Carnegie Mellon University and University of Maryland.

Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed, Rosen said, referring to Bidens vow to have 70% of the country vaccinated by July 4. As a company, we have devoted unprecedented resources to the fight against the pandemic, pointing people to reliable information and helping them find and schedule vaccinations.

Facebooks wide reach has long been ideal for anyone willing to exploit the algorithm to promote controversial or conspiracy views. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg found that out himself in 2016, when a photo of his infant daughter at the doctor was flooded with anti-vaccination comments. Three years later, as lawmakers grew increasingly alarmed at declining vaccination rates and surges in measles cases, they demanded that Facebook take action to stop the promotion of health conspiracies. Facing political pressure, in 2019 Facebook announced it would take action on ads that promoted vaccine misinformation, and remove options that allowed the targeting of users with vaccine controversies.

That didnt stop health misinformation from exploding during the pandemic. One analysis by Avaaz found that content from 10 superspreader sites that shared false and misleading claims about the virus had almost four times as many views on Facebook as content from top health institutions, such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Biden Administration is aware of how entrenched the problem is. In a July 15 report,Surgeon General Vivek Murthy lays out lists of recommendations urging medical professionals, teachers, journalists and everyday Americans to take action to combat health misinformation in their communities. It also asks technology platformswhich it doesnt nameto assess the benefits and harms of products and platforms and take responsibility for addressing the harms, evaluate the effectiveness of its internal policies, and give researchers access to data that might help stem viral falsehoods.

Even though some of Bidens top advisers, like his Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients, have previous professional ties to Facebook, the President has said he would to crack down on the company. In April 2019, he told the Associated Press he was willing to break up the social media platform, calling the idea something we should take a really hard look at. During his interview with the New York Times editorial board in January 2020, he called for the revocation of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields social media companies from being held liable for harmful content. Once elected, he nominated Lina Khan, a vocal critic of Big Tech, to lead the Federal Trade Commission, and installed Tim Wu, another critic of the technology industry, on the National Economic Council. On July 9, Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to take action against consolidation in a variety of industries, including technology.

Still, the government has struggled to convince federal courts that behemoths like Facebook are monopolies that require the requisite oversight. The FTC had filed a lawsuit in December under the Trump Administration seeking to break up Facebook, deeming it a monopoly in the area of Personal Social Networking services that violates antitrust laws. The lawsuit was dismissed by a federal judge last month, who claimed that categorization was vague, and that FTC had not provided sufficient evidence showing Facebook is a monopoly. The judge did offer the FTC a 30-day window to refile. The FTC did not respond to a request for comment about whether it would take that option.

Passing new antitrust legislation is also an uphill battle, even though it is an issue that commands bipartisan support among lawmakers. Less than a week before the FTC case was dismissed, the House Judiciary Committee passed a package of six antitrust bills, including one that would empower federal regulators to break up Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple. Though some lawmakers are using recent events to make a renewed push for its passage, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who controls the House floor schedule, has said the bills are not yet ready for a vote, which indicates there may not be enough votes for the package to pass the lower chamber. And even if the package manages to pass the House, it undoubtedly will face challenges in the evenly divided Senate.

Even Facebooks critics acknowledge that while the company is an easy target for bipartisan ire, ultimately the problem requires a whole-of-society effort, as Murthy wrote in his report. What is perhaps more difficultand more crucial is countering the main amplifiers of that misinformation, which is increasingly coming from conservative media personalities and even some lawmakers, says Renee DiResta, a technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory who has studied vaccine misinformation on social media. Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, has encouraged people to just say no to vaccination, and compared vaccination encouragement to Jews being forced to wear a yellow Star of David during the Holocaust. Fox News Tucker Carlson has analogized the concept of a vaccine passport to the segregation laws of the Jim Crow era.

Social media is just one channel where people get information, DiResta says. Influential media personalities and even some politicians with very large platforms have tried to politicize and undermine confidence in the vaccines to their large audiences.

Ultimately, the stand-off between the President and the worlds largest social media company that made global headlines for 72 hours over the weekend seemed to end with no new commitments from either the company or the Administration to take concrete steps to curb the dangerous impact of vaccination lies. But Lehrich says that, in order for the Biden Administration to succeed, other branches of government will need to act as well. There is only so much that can be done from the bully pulpIt as far as taking on these companies, he says. I dont think Biden and Biden alone will or should be the ones that fixes these broader problems.
A lawsuit in Georgia seeking to overturn the results of the state's twin U.S. Senate runoff elections in January was dismissed by a judge during a hearing on Monday.

Judge Brian Amero of Henry County's Superior Court rejected the case filed by plaintiff Michael Daugherty, a Fulton County resident, who claimed the Senate runoff contests, both won by Democrats, were plagued by misconduct and sought a new election with paper ballots.

Amero agreed with the defendants in the case  including Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, as well as Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger  who argued the lawsuit was filed too late and was properly served, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Daugherty, who said he would appeal the decision, alleged ballots were improperly tabulated at the State Farm Arena in Atlanta on election night in November prior to the January runoff elections. Those allegations were investigated and dismissed by officials with the secretary of state's office.

JUDGE REJECTS ARIZONA SENATE'S BID TO DISMISS LAWSUIT SEEKING MARICOPA AUDIT RECORDS

Daugherty also alleged the state's Dominion Voting Systems machines did not count votes accurately. Dominion has filed lawsuits against a slew of pro-Trump attorneys who made similar allegations, and election officials have vehemently denied these charges of malfeasance. The company filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, a similar suit against lawyer Sidney Powell, and a $1 billion suit against My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell.

In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the Trump campaign filed a series of lawsuits throughout the United States alleging widespread voter fraud, most of which were tossed by the courts.

But that hasn't stopped Trump allies from continuing to audit the results at the state level. Even in Georgia, the subject of much of Trump's ire after the former president narrowly lost the state, Raffensperger, a target of Trump allies ever since he certified President Joe Biden's electoral victory in the Peach State, has opened an investigation into ballot drop box forms from the 2020 election used in Fulton County.

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"New revelations that Fulton County is unable to produce all ballot drop box transfer documents will be investigated thoroughly, as we have with other counties that failed to follow Georgia rules and regulations regarding drop boxes. This cannot continue," he tweeted in June.

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Despite its history as a right-leaning state, Georgia has seen major Democratic statewide victories in recent months. Warnock ousted incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican, and Ossoff defeated Republican incumbent David Perdue in the state's other Senate contest. This January face-off followed the November election, during which no candidate received a majority of the votes.

In November, Biden won Georgia's 16 electoral votes, becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to carry the state since former President Bill Clinton in 1992.

A representative for Amero's office did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner's request for a copy of the ruling.

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Tags: News, Georgia, Georgia Senate, Jon Ossoff, Raphael Warnock, Court, 2020 Elections

Original Author: Carly Roman

Original Location: Judge tosses lawsuit attempting to overturn Georgia Senate runoff elections
Update: Just before 9:45 a.m. Tuesday, police said Raynier Perkins had been found and is safe.

Kansas City police are asking for the publics help finding a missing 19-year-old man.

Raynier Perkins was last seen at about 9 p.m. Monday in the area of Northwest Barry Road and North Ambassador Drive, according to a news release from the Kansas City Police Department.

He was last wearing a white t-shirt and camouflage pants, police said. He is about 5-feet-11-inches tall and weighs 175 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.

Perkins has autism and can become confused easily, police said.

Anyone who knows of his location is asked to call 911.
Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear recommended indoor mask-wearing on Monday for fully vaccinated residents engaged in jobs that require "significant public exposure."

Beshear, alongside Dr. Steven Stack, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Public Health, urged those who haven't received either of the shots to don face coverings indoors when outside of their homes, the pair announced. The two authorities also implored people "at higher risk from COVID-19 due to pre-existing conditions" to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status, citing concerns of the delta coronavirus strain.

We have the most aggressive variant that we have seen to date in our battle against COVID. Its a serious, even deadly, threat to unvaccinated Kentuckians, the governor said in a statement. If more adults dont get vaccinated, its not just adults who pay the price. Its our kids who will. Many of them cant get vaccinated yet, and they count on us to make good decisions and do the right thing.

LA COUNTY REIMPOSES INDOOR MASK MANDATE WITHOUT REGARD FOR VACCINES

"All unvaccinated Kentuckians, when eligible, should be vaccinated immediately," the two added.

Kentucky ended its statewide mask mandate in June after the governor made the call to ease restrictions on fully vaccinated individuals in May following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that said face coverings were not necessary in most circumstances for those who have received both shots. Exceptions were made for schools, care facilities, and public transportation.

Last month, the state also did away with capacity restrictions.

"After a long, dark pandemic, more of our people have gotten their shot of hope, and we have steadily moved to lift the last remaining restrictions put in place to slow the spread of this dangerous virus and save lives, Beshear said at the time. Team Kentucky: your patience, hard work and sacrifices have paid off. For those not vaccinated: you still have time.

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Kentucky has seen a 281% uptick in positive cases over the last two weeks, with a 53% increase in hospitalizations and a 62% jump in deaths. A total of 45% of the state's population has been fully vaccinated, while 51% have received at least one dose.

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The recommendation follows a move by Los Angeles County, which reimposed its indoor mask mandate last week, regardless of vaccination status, in response to a jump in positivity numbers.

Masking indoors must again become a normal practice by all, regardless of vaccination status, so they can stop the trends and level of transmission were currently seeing, LA County Health Officer Dr. Muntu Davis said.

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Tags: News, Kentucky, Face masks, Vaccination, Coronavirus

Original Author: Jake Dima

Original Location: Kentucky governor recommends mask-wearing indoors for fully vaccinated residents
By Hyonhee Shin

SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea's prime minister and defence minister apologised as hundreds of COVID-19-infected sailors were flown to Seoul on Tuesday after a navy destroyer patrolling the waters off Africa was found to be riddled with the coronavirus.

Almost 250 of the 301 unvaccinated crew aboard the destroyer Munmu the Great were infected, sparking a public furore at the government's failure to protect those serving abroad.

The whole crew arrived home on Tuesday after the government carried out an emergency air evacuation, the defence ministry said.

"I apologise for having failed to take better care of the health of our soldiers who devoted themselves to the country," Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum told an intra-agency COVID-19 meeting as he promised treatment and recovery support for the crew, 12 of whom were in a critical condition.

Defence Minister Suh Wook apologised for not immunising the crew before they departed for the Gulf of Aden in early February on an eight-month counter-piracy mission, and said he would examine anti-virus policies for all overseas military units.

The rare double apology underscored simmering anger in South Korea over the handling of the pandemic as a fourth wave of infections sweeps through the country with just 13% of the 52 million population fully inoculated amid vaccine shortages.

The destroyer left South Korea just a couple of weeks before officials kicked off a national vaccination programme. Authorities decided that inoculating at sea would not be feasible due to limited emergency responses and cold storage requirements for some vaccines, the defence ministry said.

'LAME EXCUSES'

But opposition lawmakers said the government should have sought help from other countries or replaced the crew with vaccinated personnel, and urged President Moon Jae-in to apologise and fire Suh.

"The government revealed its own incompetence by giving lame excuses such as transport issues, that they didn't have diplomatic power to secure cooperation from nearby countries," said Kim Ki-hyeon, floor leader of the main opposition People Power party.

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Moon ordered improved measures to ensure the health and safety of troops and diplomats stationed abroad.

Opposition lawmakers also blamed poor initial responses for aggravating the outbreak on board the destroyer. A sailor who first reported symptoms on July 2 was only given cold medicine.

The military initially used less accurate antigen testing kits and only began using full-scale polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests when six members were confirmed to be infected on July 15, said Han Ki-ho, an opposition People Party lawmaker.

Health authorities said they would conduct full PCR tests on all the crew members. The critically ill will be hospitalised and others infected will be taken to treatment centres. The minority who tested negative will be retested and held in isolation at military facilities.

They were replaced on the ship by a 200-strong immunised crew who will steer it home over the next 50 days.

South Korea is battling its worst-ever COVID-19 wave, while struggling to turbocharge its vaccination campaign amid global supply shortages and shipment delays.

It tackled previous COVID-19 waves fairly successfully, aided by a massive tracing and testing system. But only 31.7% of the population had received at least one dose of a vaccine as of Monday, well below many other advanced nations.

Daily infections had risen to 1,681 by 9 p.m. on Tuesday, the record highest daily count, but the cases would add up in the next three hours, Yonhap news agency reported.

South Korea has reported a total number of 180,481 cases as of midnight on Monday, with 2,059 deaths.

(Additional reporting by Sangmi ChaEditing by Jane Wardell, Gareth Jones and Bernadette Baum)
Jul. 20In the two weeks since Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated and his wife seriously injured in a brazen attack at his home, Haitians in eastern Connecticut are angry, frustrated and sad about the turmoil in their homeland.

The Rev. Emmanuel Fenelus, of St. Mary's Church in the Greeneville section of Norwich, said he came to Connecticut two years ago from his native Haiti. Here, Fenelus said, he can sleep at night.

"Every day, I can sleep peacefully, and I don't have to worry when I walk in the street and think about what I will eat," Fenelus said. "I am not in my mind at peace, because I think about my country, my friends, my families."

Fenelus' family is from Trou du Nord, the hometown of the assassinated president, in northern Haiti. Northern areas, Fenelus said, generally are more peaceful. Following the assassination, his hometown parish had a special mass, and people demonstrated peacefully for justice, he said. His family is safe and not near the more violent protests in Port-au-Prince.

Haitian parishioners at St. Mary's are worried about their families living in the Port-au-Prince area, Fenelus said. He said armed gangs walk the streets. And because guns are so expensive, people know that local, powerful entities are supplying the weapons, and they are not working to expand people's freedoms.

"I talked with some," he said of St. Mary's parishioners. "They expressed their feelings. Almost all of them are very sad about what happened. They're not really sure about the future of the country."

Leo Butler, director of diversity at Norwich Free Academy, said on the day of the assassination, several Haitian NFA students and two alumni came to his office to talk about the latest tragedy to befall their country.

Butler said local Haitian students have mixed political stands. But universally, the students felt angry that Moise was assassinated at his home, with his wife and family in harm's way.

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One 10th grade girl asked Butler: "Are they going to invade Haiti?" after hearing that suspects included Colombian citizens and at least two Haitian Americans.

"They were all upset that he was murdered," Butler said of his students. "They might not agree with his policies, but it bothered them that it appeared to be an international conspiracy. They were all upset that his wife was shot as well."

Enock Petit-Homme, English language intervention specialist in the NFA Diversity Office, called the current situation in Haiti "very puzzling," with a leadership vacuum and multiple high-level officials claiming to be in charge.

Petit-Homme said his relatives are safe, as they are not near where violence and demonstrations have erupted. He told one uncle who works for the government to be careful. Some family members are hesitant to talk about specifics, he said, because they are unsure and perhaps some information is confidential.

"I doubt we will ever know the truth," Petit-Homme said.

Haiti has a long memory, he said, and fear of foreign intervention.

"That's not the first time a president has been assassinated," Petit-Homme said. "The last time was 1915, and that was followed by a U.S. occupation for 20 years."

But Petit-Homme said he is grateful that the U.S. government has offered assistance in the assassination investigation.

"The thing is, talking to people in New London County and in New York, we feel incapable of doing anything," Petit-Homme said. "We feel it's a two-edged sword just piercing in our heart. We are here in the U.S., and at the same time, we can't forget about what's happening back home."

Eastern Connecticut, especially Norwich, has strong ties with Haiti, through immigrant families, churches and programs.

The Diocese of Norwich has run its mission, Outreach to Haiti, for the past 35 years. Outreach to Haiti employs nearly two dozen staff in the Christ Roi neighborhood of Port-au-Prince. The mission operates a medical clinic and a school. In addition, 13 parishes and one school in the United States are paired with parishes and a school in Haiti. The twin parishes help educate about 3,000 students, and two twins run health clinics, said D. Susan Wallace, executive director of Outreach to Haiti.

"Everybody's safe, that's our number one concern," Wallace said. "Our board of directors wants to make sure we don't put our staff in harm's way. We want to keep services going to some of the poorest of the poor."

Outreach to Haiti posted a lengthy statement on its website, www.outreachtohaiti.org.

"We know first-hand the beauty and vitality of this country and its people," the statement said. "Haitians are resilient and know despite all the obstacles they currently face  political turmoil, increasing violence, spiraling inflation, lack of jobs, and COVID-19  they must and will persevere."

The independent Haitian Health Foundation, based in Norwich, operates a health clinic and related services in Jeremie, located on the northern tip of the southwestern peninsula.

Marilyn Lowney, foundation executive director, said the foundation does not comment on political issues in Haiti. The foundation posted this statement on its website, www.haitianhealthfoundation.org on July 7.

"We at HHF are saddened by the current situation in Haiti as this morning we all woke up to the terrible news of the assassination of Haiti's President Jovenel Moise. Our warmest thoughts and feelings go out to the people of Haiti, and especially to all those communities we serve. Despite this tragic situation, HHF remains committed to its mission; and it is our hope for health, peace and security for all."

Wallace said despite repeated tragedies, Haitian people remain positive.

"We must keep our minds positive," Wallace said. "I think it's important for people to know this is a beautiful country with a lot of vitality. Haitians are resilient."

The Rev. Fenelus said he tries to convey that positive outlook to parishioners.

"I try to talk to people and try to tell them to have hope," he said, "and to hope a new sun will rise on our country. Haitian people are a hopeful people. We are suffering, but we are singing."

c.bessette@theday.com
Jul. 20All four of Maine's congressional delegates are touting a new, $200 million pandemic relief program for the U.S. logging industry that they helped get approved.

The funding was provided through the Loggers Relief Act, which Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Jared Golden co-authored, and Sen. Angus King and Rep. Chellie Pingree co-sponsored last year. Funding will be available starting Thursday to U.S. logging and log-hauling businesses that have been seriously impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, they said in a joint news release Tuesday.

"Timber harvesters have been hit with a number of challenges in the past few years, but they continue to work hard to provide the wood fiber that is critical to Maine's mills," Golden said in the release. "Understanding the economic pressures that loggers face, Sen. Collins and I worked together to create this emergency relief program targeted specifically to loggers and log haulers. Now that the (U.S. Department of Agriculture) is ready to disperse these funds, our offices are available to help constituents navigate the application process."

Timber-harvesting and hauling businesses are eligible to apply for a portion of the $200 million if they experienced at least a 10 percent loss in revenue in 2020 compared with 2019. Direct payments from the relief program to businesses will be equal to 10 percent of their gross revenue from 2019, with the funds to be used for operating expenses, including payroll.

U.S. paper mills slashed output or shut down their operations altogether during the pandemic, which the American Loggers Council estimates caused a reduction of $1.83 billion, or 13 percent, in the value of logger-delivered wood, the news release said.

Maine's logging industry is a major contributor to the state's economy, generating an estimated $619 million in economic output and providing $342 million in income to roughly 9,000 Mainers, most of whom live in rural communities, it said.

"Throughout Maine's history, our forest products industry has supported good-paying jobs, driven local economies, and strengthened rural communities," Collins said in the release. "Loggers were already facing significant headwinds due to a changing 21st century economy and unfair trade practices, as well as the explosion at the Androscoggin Mill in Jay and the shutdown of the No. 9 paper machine and biomass boiler at Sappi in Westbrook. COVID-19 only compounded these challenges."

Eligible businesses can apply for funds beginning Thursday by visiting the USDA's website at farmers.gov/pandemic-assistance/pathh.
A New York man who left threatening voicemails to a federal judge presiding over the case of Michael Flynn was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday.

Frank Caporusso, who hails from Long Island, was arrested in August after he was heard saying U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan and his associates would be killed if he did not "back out" of the case against the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, who was accused of lying to the FBI about conversations with a Russian envoy.

In April, Caporusso reached a deal with authorities and pleaded guilty to influencing, impeding, or retaliating Against a federal official by threat.

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, an associate of Sullivan, handed down the sentence after playing the voicemails during the court proceeding, according to CNN.

MICHAEL FLYNN'S BROTHER TAKES COMMAND OF US ARMY PACIFIC WITH GOAL TO COMBAT BEIJING

"Back out of this bulls*** before it's too late, or we'll start cutting down your staff. This is not a threat. This is a promise," the Long Island man said, adding that a "hot piece of lead will cut through your skull."

McFadden said the message was "nothing less than an attack on our system of government."

Caporusso, who said he was "shocked and embarrassed" by the voicemail, issued an apology during the proceedings after his attorneys argued his judgment was marred by alcohol and opioid dependency.

"I was not thinking well or doing well at the time," Caporusso said, adding he wished to "humbly apologize" to the judge.

A statement from Sullivan, which indicated that he felt "fear," was read to the court. The judge said he took "unprecedented measures" to keep his family safe and felt "more circumspect" about daily interactions.

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Caporusso was also sentenced to two years of supervised release, during which he will be barred from consuming alcohol.

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The case against Flynn was dropped in December 2020 after Trump pardoned the retired Army lieutenant general.

Trump fired Flynn in February of 2017 after the administration said he lied to former Vice President Mike Pence about conversations with Russia's ambassador to the United States a few weeks before Trump's inauguration.

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Tags: News, Michael Flynn, New York, Donald Trump, Crime, Threat

Original Author: Jake Dima

Original Location: Man who left threatening voicemails for judge in Michael Flynn case sentenced to 18 months in prison
A former Meridian property manager who prosecutors said stole more than $111,000 from his clients wants the Idaho Supreme Court to reduce what he was ordered to pay back.

Brandon Curtiss, 47, who was released in February after spending a year in the Ada County Jail, claims Ada County District Judge Peter Barton erred in ordering him to pay $94,847 to 13 clients whose properties Curtiss managed.

Curtis, founder and former president of the militia group 3% of Idaho, filed a notice of appeal with the Supreme Court in February. He has an Aug. 13 deadline to submit a document outlining his case for having the restitution order changed.

Curtiss, who owned Curtiss Property Management before changing the name to Liberty Property Management, pleaded guilty in November 2019 to one count of felony grand theft. In exchange, prosecutors dropped 18 other counts of grand theft, each count tied to a different victim.

In two separate orders from Barton, Curtiss is responsible for paying $111,058 in restitution Attorneys for the state and Curtiss agreed to $16,211 to be split among five of the property managers victims. With his appeal, Curtiss challenges how much he was ordered to pay his other victims.

At a restitution hearing in late December, his attorney, Sean Wynn, argued before Barton that those victims should split $35,896. Five of the victims, whom Barton ordered to receive between $1,209 and $18,217 each, should not receive anything, Wynn said at the time.

Both the state and the defense hired experts to determine how much Curtiss stole from his clients between 2013 and 2016. They disagreed on how much Curtiss took for his own use.

Prosecution expert Linda Czemerys, a former investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, said she examined records from more than 16 bank accounts Curtiss maintained, as well as money orders, cashiers checks and deposits. She also examined records from three payment-processing companies used by Curtiss and his victims.

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It is my opinion that Curtiss willfully and intentionally withheld rental income from his clients, Czemerys wrote in a report cited by the prosecution in its restitution filing. Its also my opinion that Curtiss altered records in order to reduce or negate the loss to the homeowners.

Defense expert Susan Langley, a certified public accountant, concluded that Curtiss owed much less than Czemerys claimed. The prosecution said Czemerys went through records with a fine-toothed comb, while Langley only did a spot-check of records.

Barton, in his order, agreed with the prosecution analysis.

Curtiss was ordered to pay Portland residents Aaron and Leslie Boyce $18,217. They were among the victims Wynn said should not receive anything.

In 2015, another Ada County judge ordered Curtiss to pay them $19,726 for rental payments and deposits he never turned over and $48,823 in attorney fees and costs. According to court records, Curtiss has not paid anything on that judgment.

Since his release from jail, Curtiss has paid $3,000 toward Bartons restitution order, paid in four $750 payments. He was ordered to make payment on the first of each month, until the debt is paid.

While he was jailed, Curtiss sought an early release for good behavior. Barton denied the request, citing the large number of victims Curtiss defrauded, the trust with them he broke, and the large amount of money he stole.

Earlier, Curtiss sought release because of fears of contracting COVID-19 in jail. He said the coronavirus posed a life-threatening risk because of his high blood pressure and rheumatoid arthritis. Barton also denied that motion.

Curtiss remains on probation through February 2034.

Curtiss first attracted widespread attention after leading a group of armed men from Idaho, Oregon and Washington to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.

They provided security for Emmett resident Ammon Bundy and others who had occupied the refuge to protest the treatment of two Burns-area ranchers convicted of federal land arson. They left a few hours later after Bundy told them they werent needed.

After Curtiss was featured in a story in Oregonian newspaper in Portland saying he had built a property management company from scratch, Leslie Boyce contacted the Idaho Statesman to tell how he had stolen from her.

That brought a series of stories that led the Idaho State Police to conduct a two-year investigation before charging Curtiss with the 19 counts of grand theft.

A former police officer for the Nez Perce Tribal Police Department, Curtiss had his police certification revoked last year. He was decertified by the Idaho Peace Officer Standards and Training Council following his conviction in the grand theft case.

Former 3% of Idaho founder must pay more than $110,000 in restitution owed to clients

Jailed founder of Idaho patriot group sought good-behavior release. Heres the outcome

Jailed founder of Idaho patriot group sought release because of coronavirus pandemic

Idaho patriot group leader filed bankruptcy after Malheur visit
Chip Somodevilla, Abdulhamid Hosbas/Anadolu Agency, Drew Angerer all via Getty Images

Social media users from both sides of the political spectrum have joined calls to #DeleteFacebook this summer, albeit for different reasons.

This week, the trend resurfaced as the top hashtag on Twitter after President Biden said that Facebook is "killing people" by spreading vaccine misinformation, a statement he later walked back.

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On a New York Times podcast earlier this month, White House Chief of Staff Klain said, "I've told Mark Zuckerberg directly that when we gather groups of people who are not vaccinated, and we ask them, 'Why aren't you vaccinated?' and they tell us things that are wrong, tell us things that are untrue, and we ask them where they've heard that. The most common answer is Facebook," Insider's Allana Akhtar reported.

Previously, the trend was used to protest the suspension of Trump's Facebook accounts following the US Capitol insurrection. In May, the Oversight Board defended the move, ruling that the suspension was justified but that indefinite suspension was not permissible without "criteria for when or whether the account will be restored."

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In 2019, #DeleteFacebook became the most popular hashtag on Twitter after Politico reported that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had been holding off-the-record dinners with influential conservatives including Tucker Carlson and Lindsey Graham.

In response, Zuckerberg wrote a Facebook message that read, in part, "I have dinners with lots of people across the spectrum on lots of different issues all the time. Meeting new people and hearing from a wide range of viewpoints is part of learning. If you haven't tried it, I suggest you do!"

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The tech giant's political volatility on both sides of the aisle comes as Congress releases 5 bipartisan bills that could regulate Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Apple - the biggest legislative step toward reigning in big tech to date.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers agree that industry needs more oversight. Similar to #DeleteFacebook, the unlikely consensus has arisen for different reasons, ranging from antitrust concerns to Republican claims about conservative censorship.

Facebook did not respond to Insider's request for comment.

Read the original article on Business Insider
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday described as "shameful" reports of purported government-ordered cyber spying several years ago that may have targeted him and his close allies and said his government did not spy on anyone.

The Guardian newspaper reported on Monday that at least 50 people close to Lopez Obrador, among others, were potentially targeted by the previous administration of President Enrique Pena Nieto after it purchased Pegasus spying software from Israel-based NSO Group.

The Mexican Attorney General's Office on Tuesday said it was planning to use some of the new information for its already-open investigation into spying on individuals using the Pegasus software.

"The (new) information is being incorporated into the already launched investigation," the office said in a statement.

The Guardian's reporting was based on what the newspaper and other media outlets have said was a leak of some 50,000 phone numbers that were selected for possible surveillance by NSO Group's government clients.

The list, first accessed by the French nonprofit journalist outlet Forbidden Stories and advocacy group Amnesty International, was shared with The Guardian and more than a dozen other news outlets.

Reuters has not been able to independently confirm the existence of the data leak or whether the contract was still active.

NSO Group rejected the reports of a data leak.

Pegasus was exclusively sold to government clients around the world by the Israeli company. In 2017, Citizen Lab, a group of researchers based at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs, said targets included the phones of journalists, human rights activists and experts investigating the 2014 disappearance of 43 Mexican students.

Lopez Obrador has accused his predecessor's government of being rife with corruption and abuses. He said on Tuesday that if the Pegasus contact was still active it must be canceled.

Mexico's defense ministry and attorney general's office were clients of NSO Group.

(Reporting by David Alire Garcia and Raul Cortes Fernandez; Editing by Gareth Jones and Grant McCool)
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Five gray wolf pups born at Mexico Citys Chapultepec Zoo are giving a boost to efforts to broaden the endangered species genetic diversity amid continuing efforts to reintroduce the animals to the wild decades after they were reduced to captive populations.

The pups' father, Rhi, alerts them every midday to the delivery of breakfast, in the form of chicken and quail meat brought by zookeeper Jorge Gutierrez, 58.

Gutierrez has cared for Rhi since he was born, and is now proud to see he has formed a pack with the pups' mother, Seje.

It's marvelous. What I am experiencing is something unique," says Gutierrez.

He watches as the five wolf pups stumble out of their den to eat. The three males and two females were born in early April.

They are part of a four-decade, binational program between the United States and Mexico to breed the gray wolves in captivity and release them back into the wild.

Even the endangered classification is progress for the Mexican wolf; two years ago, given the success of the breeding program, Mexican authorities were able to move the subspecies up from its previous probably extinct in the wild classification.

For more than two decades, the effort to return Mexican gray wolves to the wild in the U.S. Southwest has been fraught with conflict. Ranchers have complained about the challenges of having to scare away the wolves to keep their cattle from being eaten. Many have said their livelihoods and rural way of life are at stake.

Environmentalists argue that wolf reintroduction has stumbled as a result of illegal killings and management decisions they contend are rooted in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services attempt to accommodate ranchers and the regions year-round cattle calving season.

North Americas rarest subspecies of gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf was listed as endangered in 1976 after being hunted, trapped and poisoned to the brink of extinction. From the 1960s to the 1980s, seven gray wolves  believed to be the last of their kind  were captured and the captive breeding program began.

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Wolves started being released in the late 90s. The wild population has nearly doubled over the last five years, with the latest annual census finding about 186 Mexican wolves in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona.

In northern Mexico, the other part of the wolves' historic range, reintroduction initially stumbled.

An effort to reintroduce them to the wild in the border state of Sonora in 2011 ended in tragedy when all five wolves were poisoned, it's not clear by whom. But another release was carried out in 2012 in the state of Chihuahua, and those wolves now number around 40, most born in the wild.

Mexico is now studying other areas for possible releases.

Fernando Gual, a veterinarian who serves as director of Mexico City's zoos, notes that the Chapultepec Zoo also has a sperm and egg bank that provides backup for genetic material.

But the best guarantees are animals like Seje, who holds out a piece of meat with her mouth to show the pups how to eat.

This is our jewel, Gual says. Every litter of pups is hope for the life of this species.
Jul. 20Josie Santana said she knew her nephew Edward "Daniel" Santana wasn't a saint.

When he was shot and killed by a Santa Fe County deputy the morning of July 7, after brutally attacking his mother at her home in Tesuque, he was battling a drug addiction, his aunt and other family members said in an interview last week.

They believe substance use had addled his mind.

They argued, however, that 45-year-old Daniel Santana had cut his own throat before he was tased by one deputy and, shortly after, fatally shot by another. The family members questioned whether Santana was posing a danger to deputies when they fired on him.

The state Office of the Medical Investigator has not yet released an autopsy on Daniel Santana, and neither New Mexico State Police nor the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office has released video of the shooting from the deputies' dashboard and body cameras. But a state police spokesman confirmed in an email Daniel Santana cut his throat before he was shot.

In an initial news release on the shooting, Officer Dusty Francisco said Daniel Santana "began to walk towards the officers in an aggressive manner" while holding a fence post. When asked in an email last week how Santana was able to show aggression if he had a self-inflicted injury, Francisco replied the shooting was still under investigation.

"NMSP is still actively investigating this incident to determine the totality of the circumstances surrounding the use of force against Mr. Santana," Francisco wrote. "This will include a determination of the cause and manner of his death by the Office of the Medical Investigator, which will help determine what role, if any, the injury to Mr. Santana's neck played in his death."

Santana stabbed his mother, 67-year-old Delia Cervantes, causing fatal injuries. He was still standing on the patio of her home, near where she was lying on a bench and bleeding from her injuries, when Santa Fe County deputies arrived in response to a call about the attack.

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Josie Santana said Monday the incident was horrifying and complex. Still, she said she hopes the truth comes out about why a law enforcement officer shot her nephew.

"If it was confirmed by state police [that his neck was cut], then the lapel video should be public now, too," she said.

Daniel Santana's death was the third fatal shooting by law enforcement in the Santa Fe area in a two-week period.

On the morning of June 23, Santa Fe police Sgt. Bradley Lopez fatally shot Francisco Javier Lino-Gutierrez, 29, of Lamy on Old Santa Fe Trail. Lino-Gutierrez was a suspect in a shooting that morning at De Vargas Park.

Late that night, sheriff's deputies Leonardo Guzman and Jacob Martinez and Cpl. Chris Zook shot and killed 32-year-old Nathan Roybal on Siler Road.

The sheriff's office had put out an alert for Roybal and the black Ford Ranger he was driving after he was accused earlier in the day of pointing a gun at a woman on Lopez Lane and leading deputies on a reckless, high-speed chase, according to a report of the incident and statements by state police.

Guzman, a former Santa Fe police officer who was cleared in the fatal shooting of a suspected car thief in 2017, encountered Roybal in the stolen Ranger around 11 p.m. June 23 on West Alameda Street, state police said.

Roybal led the deputy to Siler Road, sometimes while driving in reverse, until he stopped the truck at the intersection of Rufina Court.

A series of dashboard camera videos of the incident released last week shows deputies ordered Roybal to get out of the truck, but he didn't comply.

Instead, he waved a gun out the window and fired a shot. The deputies then fired about 20 shots back at the Ford Ranger, the video shows, riddling it with bullet holes.

Roybal waited a few moments after the firing stopped and then got out of the truck, immediately dropped the gun and began running across Siler Road, the videos show. The three deputies fired again, fatally striking him as he was fleeing with his back to them.

State police spokesman Ray Wilson has described a different series of events leading to the fatal shooting. Wilson wrote, "Roybal got out of the vehicle armed with the handgun. Roybal brandished the handgun towards deputies, who again fired at Roybal. Roybal was struck by gunfire and succumbed to his injuries."

Wilson has not explained the discrepancies between his description of the shooting and what is shown in the deputies' videos.
A long list of conservative leaders is imploring congressional Republicans to halt the movement of appropriations lacking a decades-old provision that blocks federal funding of most abortions.

"We urge all conservatives, and anyone who values the sanctity and dignity of human life from conception until natural death, to oppose spending legislation which does not contain the Hyde amendment and key related pro-life policies," reads a letter from more than 100 conservative leaders, activists and former legislators.

Sent to GOP lawmakers in both chambers, Tuesday's letter signals the movement's attempt to fortify a Republican defense after Democrats approved appropriations bills without Hyde.

For decades, both parties supported the amendment as a compromise amid expanded abortion access. Polling has also tended to show Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion.

BIDEN'S FLIP ON HYDE AMENDMENT SIGN OF ADMINISTRATION SPIRALING WAY, WAY TO THE LEFT: MCCONNELL

But the political climate has shifted since the 2020 presidential primaries, when then-candidate Joe Biden reversed his decadeslong support for the measure amid pressure from the Democratic field.

"Over decades, both Democrat and Republican presidents have signed these protections into law  protections that were, for years, supported by President Biden in the United States Senate," reads Tuesday's letter.

"But despite the broad bipartisan consensus and the national federal support for these policies, House Democrats have for the first time passed spending bills without them, raising the possibility that millions of Americans who are deeply and profoundly opposed to abortion will find their tax dollars used to subsidize the practice."

The signatories included an array of prominent conservatives, including former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought and former Trump adviser David Bossie. Heavy-hitters in the anti-abortion movement  Susan B. Anthony List's Marjorie Dannenfelser, Concerned Women for America's Penny Young Nance and March for Life's Tom McClusky -- signed on as well.

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22 GOP STATES ASK CONGRESS TO RESTORE HYDE AMENDMENT IN ORDER TO PROHIBIT TAXPAYER-FUNDED ABORTIONS

The unprecedented move by Democrats has once again magnified the high-stakes nature of current partisan division in Congress. Democrats, with a slim majority in the House, will need to garner 60 votes to pass a budget without Hyde in the Senate.

Given that Republicans comprise half the chamber, conservatives have worried that progressives might resort to ending the filibuster in order ensure Hyde and other anti-abortion measures don't pass under a newly elected Democratic president. Still, the party would have to overcome the influence of moderate Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has opposed both Hyde's removal and ending the filibuster.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has already made clear that his party would oppose Hyde's removal, describing the move as an indication of how far left the Democratic party has drifted in recent years.

Even without necessary votes, progressives aren't likely to back down easily since they often frame low-income abortion access as a moral imperative.

BIDEN BUDGET EXCLUDES DECADES-OLD PROVISION BARRING TAXPAYER FUNDING OF ABORTION

"Your ZIP code, income, or the type of health insurance you have should never determine what kind of essential health care services you can access," Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a press release this week.

"Its past time for Congress to remove these racist, discriminatory barriers to abortion care from our federal laws," she continued.

Both sides have warred over the racial aspect of abortion as minorities are disproportionately represented among mothers who obtain the procedure.

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Conservatives see Hyde as a life-or-death issue, citing estimates for how many lives they say were saved by the funding restriction.

"The Hyde amendment and its related policies are estimated to have saved the lives of 2.4 million babies since its inception," read Tuesday's letter. The signatories appeared to reference an estimate earlier this year by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute.
A New York man was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Monday for threatening to kill the judge overseeing the criminal case against Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn, per the Washington Post.

Driving the news: Frank Caporusso pleaded guilty last April to leaving a threatening message on the voice mailbox of U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan over Flynn's case in May 2020.

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"We are trained military people. We will be on rooftops. You will not be safe," the electronics salesman said in the voicemail, according to WashPost.

"A hot piece of lead will cut through your skull. We'll start cutting down your staff. This is not a threat. This is a promise."

Why it matters: Threats to federal judges have increased 400% in the past five years. U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden pointed to this spike in his sentencing remarks as he noted the death threat would have caused "significant harm" to Sullivan and his staff, per Politico.

Sullivan wrote in his victim statement that the threat "added to the cloud of concern hovering over judges nationwide as we preside over courtrooms where civility and respect for the rule of law seem to erode by the day," WashPost notes.

Zoom in: While McFadden said he didn't believe Caporusso would carry out the threat, he described it as "despicable" and "calculated to instill a maximum amount of fear."

McFadden noted that the threat was "intended to subvert the criminal justice system by intimidating" Sullivan "against continuing to preside over a high-profile case."

"It was nothing less than an attack on our system of government," McFadden added, calling a Sullivan a "patriot," who "did not deserve this." "He certainly does not deserve to live in fear because of your actions," McFadded said.

Of note: Caporusso's plea to one count of one count of influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a federal official by threat came five months after then-President Trump pardoned Flynn  who pleaded guilty in 2017 as part of the Mueller investigation to lying to the FBI about his Russia contacts.

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Yahoo Life Videos

#1 Risk factors Whether youre a man or a woman, there are several risk factors for heart disease that impact both sexes equally. Among those are tobacco use, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity and lack of physical activity. But for women, doctors say there are additional risk factors and warning signs to watch out for. Dr. Sheila Sahni, an interventional cardiologist and the director of the womens heart program at Sahni Heart Center in Clark, New Jersey, tells Yahoo Life, Factors unique to women include autoimmune conditions, such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, a history of breast cancer and having received chemotherapy or radiation therapy to the chest, as well as psychiatric issues such as depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental illness. Sahni also says pregnancy can serve as a womans first cardiac stress test. Conditions such as gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, preeclampsia  if you had them when you were pregnant, they can actually affect your chances of developing heart disease long after your pregnancy is over. #2 Signs and symptoms Because women were excluded from early heart disease studies, many of our ideas about what a heart attack victim looks like come from the male perspective. When men present with heart attacks, they tend to present similar to how we've seen it depicted in Hollywood  crushing chest pain in the center of their chest or their jaw clenching, explains Sahni. But when it comes to a woman, the signs and symptoms can be a lot more subtle. Women experiencing a heart attack may feel a shortness of breath, fatigue, nausea or even heartburn. These less dramatic symptoms cause women to wait more than 30 percent longer than men before they head to the hospital. And once there, women are less likely to be properly diagnosed. Sahni advises women that any new symptom between the navel and the nose that comes on with exertion, whether physical or emotional, and goes away with rest, needs to get checked out right away by a doctor. #3 Causes and effects The reason why heart attacks in men tend to be more dramatic can be attributed to whats going on inside the body. Sahni says male heart attack patients typically suffer a full blockage within the hearts blood vessels, abruptly stopping the flow of blood to the heart. In contrast, when a woman has a heart attack, it often stems from a slow deterioration of the arteries. So if you imagine a scenario of pipes, if a pipe is fully clogged, that creates a dramatic backup, says Sahni. But if a pipe slowly erodes over time, the presentation might be more subtle. But no matter what your gender is, Sahni says knowing your risk factors, signs and symptoms is key to staying heart healthy. Knowledge is power, says Sahni. Educate yourself so you can be your own heart hero and prevent heart disease in your own life.
Amid the quickening spread of the coronavirus' Delta variant, Pasadena will require all city employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19 once the shots receive federal approval.

City Manager Steve Mermell announced the requirement at a City Council meeting Tuesday, in tandem with another new rule that will again require people in Pasadena to wear masks in public settings indoors.

"When a police officer arrives at your home, a firefighter arrives at your home because you need our assistance, you dont get to choose if we send the vaccinated ones or the nonvaccinated ones," Mermell said. "The public has to come into contact with city employees. We want the city employees to be healthy, we want the public not to get ill."

The new vaccination requirement comes days after approximately a dozen workers tested positive for COVID-19 and several others were forced to quarantine, city spokesperson Lisa Derderian said.

"Just one testing positive has a domino effect on numerous others," she said. "We need to make sure were taking care of our work families because they take it home to their own families if were not looking out for them."

The city has more than 2,000 employees, and about 60% of them have self-reported being vaccinated, Derderian said. That rate lags in comparison to the city as a whole, where 80% of residents ages 12 years and older  97,012 people  are fully vaccinated, according to the city's COVID-19 digital dashboard.

The city operates its own public health department, which is separate from that of Los Angeles County.

"We're fortunate in Pasadena that we are up to 80% in the vaccination rate, but, you know, 20% is still a sizable number, when you multiply that by every community in our region," Mayor Victor Gordo said.

"We can see how we all need to work together in Pasadena as neighbors, but also outside of Pasadena to ensure people are vaccinated. We dont live in a vacuum, we live in a region where people travel in and out of the city every day. We should be encouraging everyone to vaccinate."

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The vaccination requirement will not go into effect until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves at least one of the three vaccines that have been given emergency authorization.

Pasadena is the first Southern California city to issue such a rule; it follows in the steps of San Francisco, which decided last month to issue a similar order for its 35,000 municipal workers.

The University of California system also announced last week it would require vaccines for all students, faculty and others for the fall term.

A more immediate requirement for those in Pasadena is the rule expected to go into effect Wednesday night, mandating masks to be worn at all indoor facilities. The city's public health order follows a similar rule initiated by Los Angeles County last week.

The rate of COVID-19 cases has soared in Pasadena in recent weeks, with the average daily number of confirmed cases up by 240% since July 1, public health officer Dr. Ying-Ying Goh said at Tuesday's meeting. The rate is similar to what was reported in October, just before the deadly winter surge.

When restrictions were eased statewide on June 15, Pasadena recorded about one case per day, Goh said. On Monday, the city's dashboard logged 15 coronavirus cases.

"Were in a place where it really makes sense to take this step of protection for a while until we can get there again," Goh said.

On July 8, the city reported its first COVID-related death in 98 days, Goh said  an unvaccinated man over 65 with multiple underlying health conditions.

Looming over the discussion Tuesday night was the threat of the more transmissible Delta variant, which has become California's most dominant coronavirus strain. Studies have shown that vaccines currently offered in the U.S. protect against the variant.

The city is pushing its vaccination campaign, giving out $20 gift cards to Vons grocery stores to anyone who receives the shot Tuesday at the Pasadena Public Health Department. Pasadena has administered shots across the city, at local stores, the Rose Bowl, churches and mobile clinics, officials said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
France Spyware

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks on his mobile phone during a round table meeting at an EU summit in Brussels on July 20, 2020. Credit - John ThysAP

On Sunday, an international collaboration between The Washington Post, The Guardian and other media organizations, published a massive report detailing the global usage of a spyware tool called Pegasus to infiltrate personal cell phones. The Pegasus tool, which was developed an Israeli cybersecurity organization named NSO Group, was sold to the governments of countries including Hungary, Rwanda and India. The report found those governments used the spyware to surveil many individuals, including the family of slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The information in Sundays report, obtained from a leaked list provided by Amnesty International and a Paris-based nonprofit media outlet called Forbidden Stories, contained tens of thousands of phone numbers belonging to journalists, activists and politicians, including French president Emmanuel Macron. The phone numbers are purportedly a collection of people of interest to the governments and clients who purchased the Pegasus tool.

Of 67 phones suspected to be infected and examined by Amnesty International, 37 devices, mostly iPhones, showed evidence of tampering or attempted tampering.

Heres what to know.

What is Pegasus spyware and how is it used?

The spyware in question, Pegasus, was developed by Israeli cybersecurity organization NSO Group, which sells its software to various clients, including governments, to track criminal and terrorist activity.

Pegasus can be used to infiltrate smartphones via apps like iMessage and WhatsApp, or by having victims inadvertently click a link containing the vulnerability. Spyware like Pegasus usually takes advantage of both known and unknown flaws in a computers operating system that have yet to be fixed. In the past, software from NSO Group has demonstrated the ability to be installed on devices with zero interaction from the victim, as actions like receiving a call from someone attempting to infect a device was enough to successfully penetrate the operating systems defenses without raising any alarms. Like ransomware, the spyware exists in the smartphones memory, making detection difficult.

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The access granted by the Pegasus spyware appears to allow hackers to gather copious amounts of data from a smartphone without issue, according to the report. It allows hackers to read text messages and email correspondence, track a users location, activate systems like the microphone and camera, gain access to contact data, and more.

Who was targeted with Pegasus spyware?

While the leaked list provided by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories contained around 50,000 phone numbers, that doesnt necessarily mean the Pegasus spyware tool was used to compromise those phones. That being said, the number included various executives, government officials and pro-democracy activists, along with news reporters and journalists from outlets like Reuters, New York Times and The Guardian.

Apple should block stuff like Pegasus, says Swati Chaturvedi, an Indian investigative journalist who was potentially surveilled by the NSO software. I have my doubts, whether its something they cant fix, or whether it has been deliberately left unfixed.

While your average smartphone owner might not be targeted by a nations government, the Pegasus revelations shed more light on our phones cybersecurity risks.

Is your smartphone vulnerable?

NSO Group responded to the allegations by denying its software was used on anyone besides its intended targets of criminals and terrorist organizations, and says it has taken steps in the past to stop clients who abuse the companys surveillance technology.

While the number of hacked devices in the report pales in comparison to the billion-plus iOS devices in the world today, Pegasus spyware, unfortunately, reveals that no piece of technology is truly bulletproof. That doesnt mean you should throw your phone in a Faraday cage, or go out and get an Android device (which are historically more vulnerable to malware attacks than iOS).

Apple maintains that iPhones provide users with a high level of security. It still claims the existence of a service like the Pegasus tool is a short-term threat, and not an issue for the vast majority of iPhone users.

Apple unequivocally condemns cyberattacks against journalists, human rights activists, and others seeking to make the world a better place, says Ivan Krstic, head of Apple Security Engineering and Architecture in a statement to TIME. For over a decade, Apple has led the industry in security innovation and, as a result, security researchers agree iPhone is the safest, most secure consumer mobile device on the market. Attacks like the ones described are highly sophisticated, cost millions of dollars to develop, often have a short shelf life, and are used to target specific individuals. While that means they are not a threat to the overwhelming majority of our users, we continue to work tirelessly to defend all our customers, and we are constantly adding new protections for their devices and data.

Still, Apple did not state whether or not it had patched previous vulnerabilities dating as far back as 2018.
A women helped pick up debris after parts of Germany were inundated with rainfall and flooding on July 19. Bram Janssen/Associated Press

Parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany experienced devastating floods in mid-July.

In Germany, nearly 200 people are dead, 300 are missing, and 749 are injured due to the flooding, according to police reports cited by NBC.

Photos show what streets around Germany looked like in the aftermath of the extreme weather.

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Severe rainfall on Thursday and Friday caused flooding in Western Europe that devastated parts of Germany. Photos show how the extreme weather caused damage to neighborhoods, streets, and homes.

Emergency crews pictured on Monday in Rhineland-Palatinate. CHRISTOF STACHE/Getty Images

Source: NBC News

At least 300 people are missing after the floods, while 197 are dead and 749 are injured, according to police reports cited by NBC on Tuesday. Many areas in Germany experienced 24-hour rainfall that brought between 3.9 to 5.9 inches of rain - more than a month's worth of rain, according to CNN.

A photo taken on Sunday showed how flooding cracked roadways and caused buildings to crumble. Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Source: NBC News, CNN

Streets turned into rivers in the aftermath of the flooding.

Two emergency crew personnel stand in floodwaters on Saturday. Michael Probst/Associated Press

Source: Forbes, AP

Some houses collapsed with the floodwater, mudslides occurred, and some people were trapped atop their roofs as they waited to be rescued.

People pictured on Monday cleaning debris. Adam Berry/Getty Images

Source: AP

The flooding caused roadways to buckle, like one pictured here in the German state Rhineland-Palatinate.

A roadway pictured on Monday in Rhineland-Palatinate appeared broken due to flooding. picture alliance/Getty Images

Source: The New York Times

Roman Veith, a doctor who helped his family gather their belongings in the riverside village of Dernau, Germany, told NBC of the flooding: "Everything is destroyed on a scale I wasn't able to imagine before I saw it today."

A photo taken Sunday shows a damaged car and debris filling a street. picture alliance/Getty Images

Source: NBC News

Ursula Schuch, a resident of the town Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, Germany, told the BBC: "We have no water, no electricity, no gas. The toilet can't be flushed. Nothing is working. You can't shower... I am nearly 80 years old and I've never experienced anything like it."

A photo taken Monday showed tilted cars in Germany. CHRISTIAN MANG/Reuters

Source: BBC News

The heavy rainfall and severe flooding have worried climate scientists. While scientists can't yet confirm the cause of the flooding, they said the link between extreme weather and the climate crisis was apparent.

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People pictured on Friday are shown collecting debris in Bad Munstereifel, Germany. INA FASSBENDER/Getty Images

Source: AP

Read the original article on Insider
Police at New York airports are no longer seizing marijuana, making arrests or issuing tickets to travelers with low amounts of cannabis.

"We don't seize it. We just look for threats  explosives, knives, guns; we don't look for illegally possessed narcotics," Bart R. Johnson, a former State Police colonel who serves as the federal security director for 15 airports in the state, told the Times Union. "When we notice something suspicious on a pat-down or something like that and then we discover that it's marijuana ... so we're looking to see if it's a threat. ... If it turns out to be something that appears to be an illegal substance, we notify law enforcement."

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple, whose department patrols Albany International Airport, backed up Johnsons remarks, saying officers will no longer issue tickets or make an arrest when Transportation Security Administration officials find less than 3 ounces of cannabis on a traveler.

SOME WASH. POLICE DOGS RE-TRAINED TO AVOID SMELLING MARIJUANA

"We don't take it anymore," he said. "It's legal if not more than three ounces and, well, have a nice day."

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey told Fox News it will enforce state laws when asked if airports in New York City will no longer seize marijuana or make arrests of travelers.

Officers in the state would previously make dozens of arrests per year for marijuana possession at airports, but New York legalized recreational use of cannabis in March.

CONNECTICUT POLICE 'BIG DOGS' SNIFF OUT 420 POUNDS OF MARIJUANA IN U-HAUL TRUCK

"This is a historic day in New York - one that rights the wrongs of the past by putting an end to harsh prison sentences, embraces an industry that will grow the Empire State's economy, and prioritizes marginalized communities so those that have suffered the most will be the first to reap the benefits," Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said when the state legalized the drug.

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In California, where marijuana is also legal, the Los Angeles Airport Police Department has a similar policy, allowing passengers at LAX to travel with up to 28.5 grams of marijuana and 8 grams of concentrated marijuana.
Raleigh police have arrested a 24-year-old man and charged him in a hit and run early Sunday morning that left one dead.

Juan Alejandro Sandoval has been charged with felony death by vehicle, felony hit and run and driving while impaired, the Raleigh Police Department said in a news release Tuesday.

Rony Kevin Velasquez, 22, was struck and killed by a pick-up truck just before 2:45 a.m. Sunday at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Sego Court, The News & Observer previously reported.

Police said Tuesday that Sandoval was the driver of the truck.

Donna-maria Harris, a spokeswoman for Raleigh police, said those in the truck got out of the vehicle and fled the scene.

Velasquez was standing in the middle of the street speaking to someone when he was struck, she added.

Harris declined to comment on how many people were in the truck or who owned it, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

Police have asked those with information to contact Raleigh CrimeStoppers at 919- 834-HELP or raleighcrimestoppers.org. Those who provide anonymous tips that help solve the case can earn cash rewards.
London  At least 430 migrants and asylum seekers crossed the English Channel to reach the U.K. on Monday, the highest number to make the dangerous journey from Europe ever recorded, according to reports. The record daily crossings came as U.K. lawmakers debated an immigration bill that would make attempting the crossing  even to make a legitimate asylum claim  a crime.

The Nationality and Borders Bill, proposed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government and currently under consideration by parliamentarians, would continue to grant access to the U.K.'s asylum system for those who make authorized arrivals, on an airplane with a travel visa, for instance. But any person attempting to make an unauthorized entry into the U.K., like by crossing the English Channel on a small boat, would not be eligible for asylum in Britain, could be sent for processing to a "safe third country," and could face up to four years in jail.

A group of people thought to be migrants crossing from France come ashore from the local lifeboat at Dungeness in Kent, England, after being picked-up following a small boat incident in the Channel on July 20, 2021. / Credit: Gareth Fuller/PA Images/Getty

Nearly 8,000 people have reached the U.K. in small boats so far this year, most coming ashore along the southern English coast, according to the BBC.

The Refugee Council, a British charity that works with asylum seekers and refugees, says between 9,000 and 21,600 people who currently qualify for refugee status no longer would if the law is passed.

A map shows southern England, and across the English Channel and the North Sea, northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. / Credit: Getty/iStockphoto

"What the U.K. have attempted to do is to discourage people from entering the U.K. to claim asylum," Andy Hewett, Head of Advocacy at the Refugee Council, told CBS News. "If every other country in the world, certainly if every other Western country in the world, followed suit with similar legislation, then that completely undermines the 1951 Refugee Convention, the whole notion of responsibility-sharing, and our obligations under the convention that we should recognize people in need of protection."

Hewett said the bill would create a two-tier system, where some pre-authorized asylum seekers would have access to the refugee system while others who make unauthorized journeys to Britain would not.

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"The new Nationality & Borders Bill includes sweeping penalties for refugees who arrive spontaneously in the UK," the United Nations refugee agency in the U.K. said on Twitter. "The UK risks breaching commitments under the Refugee Convention that clearly protect the universal right to seek asylum and for refugees to access basic rights."

"There is an unacceptable rise in dangerous small boat crossings across the channel because of a surge in illegal migration across Europe," the U.K. Home Office said in a statement. "People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach and not risk their lives making these dangerous crossings. We are continuing to pursue the criminals behind these illegal crossings."

"Don't stop moving until you feel safe"

Dr. Waheed Arian, a medical doctor who came to Britain as a refugee and has worked on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, published an open letter on Tuesday opposing the bill.

"Under this Government's proposed plans, I would not have been given the chance to become an NHS doctor, let alone learn English or study medicine at Cambridge University. I would have been classed as an 'illegal arrival', denied access to the asylum system, prosecuted for breaking the law, and summarily removed from the country," Arian wrote.

He's calling on British lawmakers to vote against the legislation.

"A person fleeing war or persecution will be criminalized if their arrival is not pre-authorized through, for example, a resettlement scheme. Most people running for their lives don't have the 'luxury' of requesting pre-approval. In Afghanistan, there was no 'legal' escape route available to me. I know too well that when your life is in danger, you don't stop moving until you feel safe," Arian wrote.

Echoes of former U.S. policy

The proposed legislation has echoes of U.S. immigration policy under former President Trump, who sought to restrict asylum eligibility for those arriving at the border with Mexico.

The Trump administration tried to disqualify people who entered the U.S. without permission from getting asylum, and it also instituted a short-lived "zero tolerance" policy under which it criminally prosecuted people for entering without permission. If parents received criminal charges, they were separated from their children. A court struck down the first part of the policy, while the latter practice, which led to the separation of thousands of migrant families, was discontinued in the wake of mass public outcry.

Under Mr. Trump, the U.S. also brokered "safe third country" agreements with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in a bid to re-route asylum-seekers to these countries. Those deals have been scrapped by the Biden administration.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez contributed to this report.

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MELBOURNE (Reuters) -Rio Tinto Ltd said on Wednesday it has reached an agreement with stakeholders of the Bougainville community to look into potential environmental damage and human rights breaches at a copper mine it ran decades ago.

Community and human rights groups have been pushing the miner to review issues https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mining-rio-tinto-bougainville-idUKKBN26J218 around water, land and health arising from the Panguna copper mine that Rio ran for nearly 20 years until 1989.

Rio was responding to a human rights complaint filed by a group of Bougainville residents last year who said that the massive volume of waste pollution left by the mine was having severe environmental and human rights impacts and putting the lives and livelihoods of communities at risk.

"Our people have been living with the disastrous impacts of Panguna for many years and the situation is getting worse," traditional landowner and member of parliament Theonila Roka Matbob said in a statement.

"The mine continues to poison our rivers with copper. Our kids get sick from the pollution and communities downstream are now being flooded with mine waste ... These problems need to be urgently investigated so solutions can be developed and clean-up can begin," she said.

Around 12,000  14,000 people live downstream of the Panguna mine along the Jaba-Kawerong river valley, according to Australia's Human Rights Law Centre, which represents the communities.

Its visit to the mine in 2019-20 documented copper pollution from the abandoned mine flowing directly into the rivers and vast mounds of tailings waste stretching almost 40km downstream to the coast, it said.

Mine operations ceased in 1989 after a civil war broke out and Rio Tinto has not had access to the mine since, the company said on Wednesday.

An independent impact report funded largely by the global miner will be overseen by a joint committee of the company and various stakeholders, with the parties discussing recommendations once the assessment is done, Rio said.

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"We take this seriously and are committed to identifying and assessing any involvement we may have had in adverse impacts, in line with our external human rights and environmental commitments and internal policies and standards," Chief Executive Officer Jakob Stausholm said.

The miner in 2016 transferred its 53.8% stake in Bougainville Copper Ltd, the company that ran the mine, to the Autonomous Bougainville government and the Papua New Guinea government for no amount.

(Reporting by Nikhil Kurian Nainan in Bengaluru, additional reporting by Melanie Burton in Melbourne; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Ana Nicolaci da Costa)
At least three rockets landed near the Afghan presidential palace on Tuesday as the country's leader Ashraf Ghani held outdoor prayers with top officials to mark the start of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

The Islamic State (IS) group claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes as the Taliban continue a series of offensives to coincide with the final drawdown of foreign troops from the war-wracked country.

While ideologically different, the much smaller IS has been accused in the past by Afghan officials of acting as a proxy for the Taliban -- particularly in attacks targeting civilian government workers.

"Soldiers of the caliphate targeted the presidential palace... and the Green Zone in Kabul with seven Katyusha rockets," IS said in a statement circulated on messaging app Telegram.

Earlier, the Eid morning holiday calm was shattered by incoming rockets heard across the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the presidential palace and several embassies, including the US mission.

In a video posted on the official palace Facebook page, dozens of men gathered in the gardens continued their prayers even as the rockets fizzed overhead and exploded nearby.

President Ghani, dressed in traditional Afghan clothing and a turban, appeared not to flinch as he continued the prayer ritual.

"The Taliban have proved that they have no will and intention for peace," he said in a speech afterwards.

Interior ministry spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai said three rockets had been fired from a pickup truck, but one failed to detonate.

"Based on our initial information, we have no casualties," he added.

The palace was also attacked last year as hundreds gathered for Ghani's inauguration for a second term as president.

IS had claimed responsibility for that attack too.

The Taliban have announced ceasefires during past Islamic holidays, offering respite to Afghans who can visit family in relative safety, but no such offer was made on this occasion.

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- 'Symbolic attack' -

Ibraheem Bahiss, a consultant with the International Crisis Group, said Tuesday's attack was symbolic, intended to demonstrate the reach of militants operating in Afghanistan.

"The fact that these landed so close to the presidential palace... show that these attacks have the potential to become quite lethal," he added.

The Taliban have capitalised on the last stages of the withdrawal of US-led foreign troops from Afghanistan to launch a sweeping campaign, capturing scores of districts, border crossings and encircling provincial capitals.

The speed and ease of the Taliban offensive is a massive psychological blow to the Afghan government.

The latest attack comes a day after more than a dozen diplomatic missions in Kabul called for "an urgent end" to the insurgents' ruthless military offensive, saying it was at odds with claims they want to secure a political deal to end the conflict.

That statement followed another round of inconclusive talks in Doha over the weekend between the Afghan government and the Taliban that many hoped would kickstart the ailing peace process.

- Ceasefire calls -

For months, the two sides have been meeting on and off in the Qatari capital but have achieved little, with talks appearing to have lost momentum as the militants make battlefield gains.

A joint statement late Sunday said they had agreed on the need to reach a "just solution" and to meet again next week.

"We also agreed that there should be no pause in the negotiations," Abdullah Abdullah, who oversees the Afghan government's delegation, told AFP on Monday.

He noted, however, that neither side was currently pursuing a joint ceasefire at the talks, despite urgent calls from Afghan civil society and the international community to end the fighting.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, meanwhile, said Tuesday that Istanbul was prepared to take over running Kabul airport if its NATO ally the United States met certain conditions.

Turkey has been negotiating with US defence officials over an offer to secure the airport, which is key to allowing countries to retain a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after the troop withdrawal.

Erdogan told journalists in a televised address from Nicosia, in northern Cyprus, that as well as providing logistical, financial and administrative support, the US must "stand by us in diplomatic relations".

Last week, the Taliban called Turkey's offer to protect the airport "reprehensible".

Over the weekend, the Taliban's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said he "strenuously favours" a political settlement -- even as the hardline Islamist movement continues its offensives.

In Washington, the State Department said around 700 interpreters and their immediate family members who are fleeing Afghanistan will be relocated to an army base in the state of Virginia.

bur-fox/jds
Checkmate, a new Sukhoi fifth-generation stealth fighter jet, at the MAKS-2021 air show in Zhukovsky, Russia, on Tuesday. Sputnik/Alexei Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS

Russia has unveiled a prototype for a new fighter jet, nicknamed "Checkmate."

Vladimir Putin personally inspected the aircraft design at an aviation show on Tuesday.

The Russian president hailed the creation as an example of Russia's aviation industry prowess.

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Russia officially unveiled a prototype of a stealthy new fighter on Tuesday as President Vladimir Putin celebrated his country's aviation industry and the development of new competitive aircraft designs.

The fighter, which is unnamed but being developed under the project name "Checkmate," was unveiled at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon in Zhukovsky. The plane was kept in a hangar with the word "Checkmate" written in English, according to AFP.

The Checkmate fighter jet. Sputnik/Alexei Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS

The unveiling of the new single-engine fighter follows the release of an unusual teaser photo by Russian state-run defense conglomerate Rostec last week and state media reports in spring of this year that Sukhoi Aircraft Company was working on a light tactical fighter able to fly at supersonic speeds with low observability.

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"What we see now in Zhukovsky obviously demonstrates that the Russian aviation has high potential for development," Putin, who personally inspected the new aircraft Tuesday, said in a speech at the start of the aviation show, according to state media. "Our aircraft industry also continues creating new competitive aviation equipment."

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Citing Oleg Panteleyev, the executive director of Aviaport Aviation News Agency, Russia's state-run Tass News Agency recently suggested that the new light to medium-weight fighter jet could rival the US military's fifth-generation F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter.

Panteleyev appears to have been referring to competition in foreign markets rather than capability.

It is not clear exactly how Russia's new Checkmate fighter - which Russian state media has reported will be stealthy, have a high thrust to weight ratio, have a large weapons payload capacity, and carry advanced armaments - might compare to US fifth-generation planes.

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Russia has a number of capable fourth-generation fighters but only one fifth-generation fighter, the heavy Sukhoi Su-57.

The Checkmate fighter jet. Sputnik/Alexei Nikolskyi/Kremlin via REUTERS

The new fighter jet, which is touted as a light fifth-generation aircraft, purportedly has a max speed of about Mach 2 (about 1,500 mph), a range of about 1,800 miles, and a payload capacity of around 16,000 pounds, the Associated Press reported, citing the company behind the new design.

Additionally, the design can be reconfigured from a single-seat aircraft to a two-seat plane or set up for unmanned operations, the maker said.

The plane was designed by Sukhoi, part of Rostec, for the light tactical aircraft program. It is expected to make its maiden flight in 2023 with fielding starting in 2026.

A teaser promotional video released by Rostec before the unveiling of the new jet featured a collection of multinational pilots, suggesting that Russia could be looking at exporting the new fighter overseas.

Russian officials, the AP reported, have indicated a desire to sell the jet and said that foreign buyers have already expressed interest. The head of Rostec, who estimates the plane will cost around $25 million to $30 million, has said the Russian armed forces are also expected to place an order for the new jet.

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MOSCOW (AP)  Russian aircraft makers on Tuesday unveiled a prototype of a new fighter jet that features stealth capabilities and other advanced characteristics and will be offered to foreign buyers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin inspected the prospective warplane displayed with much fanfare at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon, which opened Tuesday in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow.

Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi developed the new fighter under the LTS program, a Russian acronym for the Light Tactical Aircraft.

Its makers said the prototype is set to make its maiden flight in 2023 and deliveries could start in 2026. They said the new design could be converted to an unpiloted version and a two-seat model.

The prospective warplane, marketed under the project name Checkmate, has one engine and is designed to be smaller and cheaper than Russias latest Su-57 two-engine stealth fighter, also built by Sukhoi. It can fly at a speed of 1.8-2 times the speed of sound, has a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and a payload of 7,400 kilograms (16,300 pounds), the jet's makers said.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov voiced hope that the new fighter could be sold to India, Vietnam and African nations, adding that foreign customers are expected to order at least 300 such aircraft. Borisov noted that one foreign customer he didn't name has already expressed a strong interest in the new jet.

The sales of warplanes have accounted for the bulk of Russian weapons exports, but the two-engine Su-30 and Su-35 fighters have faced growing competition in global markets.

Industries and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said that the prospective fighter was being developed to compete with the U.S. F-35 Lightning II fighter that entered service in 2015, a new Chinese fighter, and other designs. We must join other nations that sell such aircraft, he said.

Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec state corporation that includes Sukhoi and other aircraft makers, said the new plane is expected to cost $25-30 million. He said that the Russian air force is also expected to place an order for the new fighter.

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Russia's Sukhoi and MiG aircraft makers only have produced two-engine fighters since the 1980s. Some experts observed that it has placed Russia at disadvantage in some foreign markets where customers preferred cheaper one-engine aircraft.

Rostec said the new warplane belongs to the so-called fifth generation of fighter jets, a definition that assumes stealth characteristics and a capability to cruise at supersonic speed, among other advanced features.

The corporation noted that the new design includes artificial intelligence features to assist the pilot and other innovative technologies. It said the jet was designed to reduce service costs and to be easily adapted to varying customer needs.

Manturov noted that the new design would incorporate some components from the previous fighters to help reduce price.

Rostec ran an aggressive advertising campaign in the days before the air show, publishing a picture of the new fighter hidden under a black tarpaulin with Wanna see me naked? written under it. It also posted a video featuring adulatory customers from India, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Vietnam and other countries, reflecting export hopes.

Plane spotters flocked to Zhukovsky last week to take pictures of the new plane as it was being taxied to a parking spot across the giant airfield which has served as the countrys top military aircraft test facility since Cold War times.

The Kremlin has made modernization of the countrys arsenals a key priority amid tensions with the West that followed Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula.

It also has strongly encouraged the development of new passenger jets to compete with planes built by American aircraft maker Boeing and Europe's Airbus that currently account for the bulk of Russian carriers' fleets.

Russia's airliner programs have encountered delays amid Western sanctions that hampered imports of Western engines and other key components. But the country managed to produce a new engine for the new MS-21 passenger plane, which also was displayed at the show in Zhukovsky.

What we saw in Zhukovsky today demonstrates that the Russian aviation has a big potential for development and our aircraft making industries continue to create new competitive aircraft designs, Putin said in a speech at the show's opening.
Republican Senate leader Phil Berger announced last week hes all in for the fight against promoting Critical Race Theory in North Carolina public schools. Following Donald Trumps cue, Berger declared: I oppose it, and I will combat it with everything I have.

So the all-white Republican House and Senate caucuses of the General Assembly  which have been repeatedly found by federal courts to have intentionally and pervasively discriminated against Black Tar Heels  will define the acceptable portrait of race to be promoted in our classrooms. That sounds shocking perhaps. But weve become accustomed to ambitious suppression by the freedom party. Itll soon be open season on North Carolina teachers.

And Berger wont stop there. Hell tweak House Bill 324 to add five more prohibited concepts (for a total of 13). Heres my favorite new promotional ban:

The rule of law does not exist, but instead is a series of power relationships and struggles among racial or other groups.

I hope the new no-anti-rule-of-law provision will be amended to add the following explanatory footnote:

Drafted and sponsored by Sen. Phillip Berger  the most bold, persistent, and successful manipulator of the rule of law seen in North Carolina in a half-century.

The American Bar Association and the website of the United States Courts define the rule of law as the principle under which all persons are held accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced, and adjudicated by independent judicial tribunals. Interesting. Independent courts?

And what, we might ask, is the record of Berger and his friends on an independent judiciary in North Carolina? Hold your breath.

Over the last 10 years, Republican lawmakers have required that judges races be made partisan. They abolished public funding for judicial electoral campaigns. They passed laws to limit and channel judicial review of the legislatures enactments. Republican legislators manipulated the size of the N.C. Court of Appeals for partisan gains. They passed a statute to shield an incumbent Republican Supreme Court justice from being required to stand for reelection. They directly interfered with other individual Supreme Court justice races to aid Republican candidates. They canceled the judges 2018 primary election. They gerrymandered the districts of disfavored Wake and Mecklenburg county judges. And they menaced other disobedient judges with potential legislative retaliation.

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Theres more. Berger and his buddies attempted to dramatically constrict the governors judicial appointment powers. They threatened all state judges with a proposal to change to two-year electoral terms  shortest in the nation. They moved to intimidate judges from protecting the rights of low-income criminal defendants through the waiver of oppressive fines and fees. And they intervened statutorily to put Bergers son at the top of the ballot in a Court of Appeals contest. Former Republican state Supreme Court Justice Robert Orr described the moves to change terms and appointment procedures as part of a continued effort to try to intimidate the judiciary. If Berger actually believes in independent courts, itll come as a surprise to every lawyer in North Carolina.

So, apparently Berger thinks its fine, even delightful, to wage war against the rule of law through a legislative crusade, and lifes work, in the state legislature. But it should be made illegal for a North Carolina teacher to explore or promote what Berger is doing in her classroom. Theres no greater proof that the rule of law doesnt fully exist in North Carolina, but is instead merely a series of power relationships and strugglesamong groups, than Phil Bergers legislative record. Maybe its not CRT, its CYA.

Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law.
SINGAPORE  With 50 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, Singapore is not yet ready to open up as aggressively as countries like the UK and Israel, and some US states, said Health Minister Ong Ye Kung.

Speaking at a virtual press conference, the COVID multi-ministry taskforce (MTF) co-chair said, "We may read the papers and wonder why are they so brave and courageous in opening up. The reason really is one, their vaccination rate officially is higher than Singapore. Two, they have undergone waves of very traumatic transmission. Many of the population are recovered patients with natural immunity... that adds to their vaccination rate."

High rates of vaccination among seniors

Lastly  and "very importantly", he said  "they have very high rates of vaccination among the seniors, some going up to 90, 95 per cent".

Currently, some 50 per cent of Singapore's resident population who are eligible are fully vaccinated. Some 30 per cent of seniors aged 70 and above remain unvaccinated.

But in the coming days, Ong said, "we will reach at least 75 per cent just based on bookings alone". "We know we will have 75 per cent in the bag. But (in the) coming weeks, if we can reach out to even more, maybe we can reach 80, 85 per cent," he said.

At the same time, he pointed out, as the rest of the community become more vaccinated, "we are also less likely to get infected, which means we are also less likely to bring the virus back home and infecting them (seniors)".

Differentiated approach in the future

Earlier in the conference, MTF co-chair Gan Kim Yong also said that the government would be implementing differentiated treatment or public health measures depending on vaccination status. This will be put in place as Singapore's economy continues to progressively open up.

"We will introduce a differentiated approach for those who are vaccinated.... (they) will then be allowed to do a lot more activities because they're protected," he said. "And for those who are seniors who are not yet vaccinated, including those who cannot be vaccinated, then we may have to put in additional precautions to protect them. Some of the high risk activities... they may not be able to participate in..."

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He stressed however that the government's focus in the next weeks, as Singapore reverts to Phase 2 (Heightened Alert), is to try to get as many seniors as possible to be vaccinated as soon as possible.

Stay in the know on-the-go: Join Yahoo Singapore's Telegram channel at http://t.me/YahooSingapore

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Six people were injured when a house in the Dallas suburb of Plano was destroyed in an explosion on Monday, authorities said. The cause is still being investigated, authorities have said. Two other homes on either side were also damaged. Fire officials said that six people were taken to hospital, one was pulled from the rubble of the home that exploded and the other five were in the house next door.
A sixth member of the fugitive Texas Democrats in Washington, D.C., has contracted COVID-19, the afflicted lawmaker revealed Tuesday.

State Rep. Donna Howard tested positive on Monday, becoming the sixth member of the Texas House Democratic Caucus to have contracted the disease since the group traveled to the nation's capital to stonewall voting legislation from passing the state Legislature.

"Despite following [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines and being fully vaccinated, I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday," she wrote on Facebook Tuesday, adding she was "basically asymptomatic except for some minor congestion."

TWO MORE TEXAS DEMOCRATS DIAGNOSED WITH COVID-19

After tweeting about the efficacy of vaccines on Sunday, Howard said Tuesday she is "grateful that the vaccine has been shown to be up to 96% effective in preventing serious illness as [she is] basically asymptomatic except for some minor congestion."

"Thankfully, Im vaccinated and feeling well. ... Vaccines work. Everyone, please get vaccinated and protect yourselves," she wrote, noting that she will isolate and continue work virtually in compliance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Following reports of three cases among the members Saturday, precautionary testing on Sunday revealed two additional members, both fully vaccinated, had contracted the disease, according to a press release from the Texas House Democratic Caucus.

Texas House Democratic Caucus Chairman Chris Turner said the caucus is "following all [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidance and protocols."

On Monday, at least 51 state lawmakers traveled to Washington, D.C., to block the passage of the state's S.B. 1 and H.B. 3, a pair of bills that would ban drive-thru voting, implement more comprehensive voter identification requirements for mail-in ballots, and prohibit officials from sending voting applications to those who did not request them.

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They also lobbied Congress in support of the For the People Act, an election overhaul supported by congressional Democrats, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Under the Texas Constitution, two-thirds of lawmakers must be present to conduct business, and those who evade the task may be legally required to return. Republicans have vowed to penalize the fugitive lawmakers, with Gov. Greg Abbott saying they will be arrested upon returning to the state.

State lawmakers in Texas, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Oregon have employed the tactic of fleeing a state to deny congressional bodies of quorums. Few of these walkouts achieved the desired results.

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Tags: News, Texas, Texas House, Coronavirus, Voting

Original Author: Carly Roman

Original Location: Sixth Texas Democrat contracts COVID-19
Good Morning America

The Supreme Court last month remanded a lower court's ruling that police officers who used excessive force on a 27-year-old man who died in their custody were protected because they didn't know their actions were unconstitutional. "The Supreme Court has summarily vacated a pro-officer decision by a lower court in an excessive force case," Taylor told ABC News. "So this is a big deal, not only because of what the Supreme Court said but also because of what it will be for the record going forward."
The US State Department has urged Americans to not travel to the United Kingdom due to COVID-19. Richard Baker/Getty Images

The US State Department has told Americans not to travel to the UK due to a surge in COVID-19 cases there.

"Do not travel to the United Kingdom due to COVID-19," the agency wrote in an updated advisory.

COVID-19 cases in the UK continue to rise, with nearly 40,000 new infections reported on Monday.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

The US State Department has urged Americans not to travel to the United Kingdom because of a surge in coronavirus cases there.

"Do not travel to the United Kingdom due to COVID-19," the agency wrote in an updated advisory posted Monday.

COVID-19 cases in the UK continue to rise, with nearly 40,000 new infections reported on Monday. Despite the recent surge in cases, the UK government lifted most of its COVID-19 restrictions.

The State Department raised the travel advisory for the UK to a Level 4 - "Do Not Travel" - after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention elevated its warnings for travel there.

The CDC "has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice for the United Kingdom due to COVID-19, indicating a very high level of COVID-19 in the country," the State Department said in its advisory.

In a warning issued earlier Monday, the CDC told Americans to "avoid travel to the United Kingdom."

"If you must travel to the United Kingdom, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel," the CDC said, adding, "Because of the current situation in the United Kingdom, even fully vaccinated travelers may be at risk for getting and spreading COVID-19 variants."

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MOSCOW (AP)  Syria's air defense forces shot down seven out of eight missiles launched by Israeli warplanes during a raid that targeted the Syrian province of Aleppo, the Russian military said Tuesday.

Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit, the head of the Russian military's Reconciliation Center in Syria, said that four Israeli F-16 fighter jets targeted facilities southeast of Aleppo in Monday's strike.

Kulit said seven of eight missiles launched by the Israeli fighter jets were downed by Syrian air defense units that used Russia-supplied air defense systems Pantsyr-S and Buk-M2. One missile damaged the building of a scientific research center in Safira, he said.

A Syrian military official previously said in remarks carried by the state news agency SANA that Israel carried out an aerial attack in the Aleppo province late Monday. He said that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles in the attack that occurred just before midnight.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots that belong to Iranian-backed militia operating in Aleppos Safira region. The group said the strikes were followed by loud explosions. The weapons depots were located inside Syrian military posts, the group said.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. Israel fears Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier, and it has repeatedly struck Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Hezbollah.

Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since 2015, helping President Bashar Assad's government reclaim control over most of the country after a devastating civil war. Moscow also has helped modernize Syria's military arsenals and train its personnel.
Ten years after the bloodiest attack in Norway's post-war history, survivors of the Utoya massacre say the country needs to finally face up to the far-right ideology behind the massacre.

The island of Utoya, located in a lake northwest of the capital, Oslo, where most of the 77 killings occurred, has received a fresh look.

Owned and run by the youth league (AUF) of Norway's Labour Party, its wooden buildings have been refurbished and children attending workshops focused on democracy and anti-racism wander through green tree avenues.

But bullet holes in the walls of the old cafeteria have been preserved and a memorial now hangs in a clearing, both reminders of that fateful day.

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, disguised as a police officer, tracked and gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, at an AUF summer camp on the island.

His more than hour-long killing spree began shortly after he had detonated a fertiliser bomb outside a government building in Oslo, killing eight people.

"We've not managed to have a debate about how young white men, growing up like one of us in Norway, going to the same schools and living in the same neighbourhoods, can develop such extreme views that they feel they can kill for them," survivor Astrid Eide Hoem told AFP.

She was only 16 when she found herself trapped on the island along with hundreds of others, fearing for her life.

Hiding by a cliffside near the water, she sent what she thought would be a last text to her mother: "I love you more than anything on earth. Don't call me. You are the best parents in the world."

She escaped but for the next two weeks she didn't know which of her friends' funerals to attend, as there were too many.

- 'Stop radicalisation' -

Now the leader of the AUF, she says she regrets that, although the killer was given the maximum sentence -- 21 years in prison which can be extended indefinitely -- Norway has still not confronted his political motives.

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"We have discussed the preparedness of the rescue services, how much police we should have in the streets, how many helicopters should be available," Eide Hoem said.

"We've discussed memorials. We've discussed Breivik's mental health. But we haven't discussed the political ideology behind it," she added.

"The most important emergency preparedness we have is before the police barrier. It is that we stop this type of radicalisation," she argued.

- Another attack -

In August 2019, Norway was struck by another attack.

After shooting and killing his Asian-born stepsister over racist motives, Philip Manshaus opened fire into a mosque on the outskirts of Oslo before being overpowered by worshippers preventing any serious injuries.

"That there are people who still share Breivik's ideas, that we have had another terrorist attack in Norway by someone deeply inspired by Breivik shows that we have failed to deal with the political aspect of the attack," said Elin L'Estrange, who escaped the Utoya shootings by swimming away.

"In the US, New Zealand and many other countries, there have been attacks directly inspired by Breivik," L'Estrange said.

"This is an international movement that we have to take seriously, it's dangerous," she added.

On Utoya, as in Oslo, where a left-wing coalition led by Jens Stoltenberg -- now the head of NATO -- was in power at the time, Breivik deliberately targeted the Labour Party.

Norway's historically dominant political force was blamed for ushering in the multiculturalism that Breivik abhorred.

- 'Trolls' -

Survivors have tried to debate the ideological underpinnings of the populist right and denounce its sometimes inflammatory anti-immigration rhetoric.

But they have been accused of exploiting the tragedy and told to leave freedom of expression alone.

"It was AUF that was gagged after July 22," wrote journalist and former left-wing parliamentarian Snorre Valen, author of the book "Utoyakortet" ("The Utoya Card").

"On the Norwegian political scene, the trolls have gotten a place in the sun, while AUF have had to stay inside," he said in an op-ed early this month.

Opinion polls suggest the Labour Party has a good chance of reclaiming power from the current centre-right coalition in the September 13 general election.

If it does, the party has pledged to set up a commission to investigate the mechanisms of radicalisation, at the AUF's request.

"Often we discuss Islamic terrorism, which is also important," Eide Hoem said.

"But in Norway, it is strange that we spend so much time discussing that when the thing that has claimed lives in the last 10 years is right-wing extremism."

phy/jll/kjm
Border Patrol authorities in La Grulla, Texas, encountered the biggest group of migrants in the region over the weekend for this fiscal year as over 700 individuals were apprehended by law enforcement between Friday and Sunday.

Agents from the Rio Grande City station on Saturday came across a group of 298 migrants, including 60 unaccompanied children and at least one person who tested positive for COVID-19, walking near a ranch in what was described as the "largest group of migrants encountered by RGV" authorities so far in fiscal year 2021, officials announced on Monday. The infected person was transported to a local hospital.

A day prior, authorities in the same sector found a gaggle of 235 migrants, including 27 unaccompanied minors. On Sunday, 203 migrants were found in one group, and 29 solo minors were located.

BORDER AUTHORITIES ENCOUNTERED 190,000 PEOPLE ILLEGALLY CROSSING BORDER IN JUNE, HIGHEST IN 21 YEARS

In all, 736 individuals were brought into custody by the end of the 72-hour period.

The suspected illegal crossers hailed from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

"Even with the spread of the COVID-19 virus, human smugglers continue to try these brazen attempts with zero regard for the lives they endanger nor to the health of the citizens of our great nation," Border Patrol said in a statement. "The U.S. Border Patrol agents of the Rio Grande Valley Sector will continue to safeguard the nation and community against these criminal elements."

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The number of illegal border crossings continues to worsen as President Joe Biden and his cohort face unrelenting criticism for the handling of the situation. For the month of June, a record 188,829 migrants were caught attempting to cross the border, the highest number in 21 years.

Since the government's fiscal year 2021 began in October 2020, a total of 1.12 million people have been encountered unlawfully trying to enter the U.S. from Mexico, more than 459,000 in all of 2020 and 977,000 in 2019.

Story continues

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Tags: News, Border Crisis, Law Enforcement, Immigration, Border Patrol, Border Security, Texas, Foreign Policy, Law

Original Author: Jake Dima

Original Location: Texas Border Patrol encounters 'largest group of migrants' this year with over 700 apprehended in three days
The bill cuts over two dozen curriculum requirements, including the study of Dr. Martin Luther Kings I Have a Dream speech.

Republican senators in Texas have continued their ongoing fight against cultural awareness in the states public schools. They recently passed a bill that will eliminate the requirement that teaches that the Ku Klux Klan and its historic terror are morally wrong.

Senate Bill 3, which passed last Friday 18 votes to 4, will eliminate most mentions of people of color from the states required curriculum. More than two dozen curriculum requirements have been cut by the bill, including the study of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s I Have a Dream speech, the reading of writings about the womens suffragist movement, Native American history and the work of labor activist Cesar Chavez.

The bill does not make the study of these issues illegal. Instead, it makes them no longer required to diversify the subjects studied in Texas schools. The autonomy will lie with school districts.

Joe Cook Gines holds an anti-Ku Klux Klan placard at Huntington Beach pier during an April protest against white supremacy in Huntington Beach, California. (Photo by Apu Gomes/Getty Images)

The new bill is similar to one that has already passed that bars teachers from teaching an understanding of The New York Times Nikole Hannah-Jones-helmed The 1619 Project. The previous bill had prohibited social studies teachers from teaching critical race theory, giving deference to one group more than any other or from being compelled to discuss current events. The new bill will apply that rule to teachers of all subjects.

Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick praised the passage of the bill, saying that it rejects philosophies that espouse that one race or sex is better than another. He added that Texas parents want their students to learn how to think critically, not be indoctrinated by the ridiculous leftist narrative that America and our Constitution are rooted in racism.

In Texas, the lieutenant governor presides over the Senate. The Lone Star State ranks number 34th in education in the nation, as of two years ago, according to U.S. News & World Report.

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Critics of the bill are responding on social media.

The Texas Senate has voted to remove civil rights and womens suffrage from public school curriculum, Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York wrote on Twitter. It was never about Critical Race Theory. It was always about teaching white supremacy.

The Texas Senate has ended requirements that social studies classes include the civil rights movement and womens suffrage, noted Robert Reich, former secretary of labor. Among figures dropped: Martin Luther King Jr. and Susan B. Anthony. Just the start of Republican-induced ignorance of our past?

To become law, the bill must pass the states House, which is also led by Republicans. However, it can not be voted on because the 51 Democrats who left the state earlier this month to block a restrictive voting bill have denied the House a quorum, which is the minimum amount of members present to hold a vote.

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The post Texas Senate passes bill that stops teaching requirement calling KKK morally wrong appeared first on TheGrio.
Everyone wants vaccines to be perfect  and the COVID-19 ones nearly are. Only a tiny fraction of those who are vaccinated end up seriously ill from an infection.

But still, some fully vaccinated people will get sick, some will pass on the virus, and a very small number will die despite their shots.

"The efficacy of the vaccines in preventing hospitalizations and death is unbelievable," said Carlos del Rio, an epidemiologist and distinguished professor of medicine at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta. "It's not 100%. But nothing in this world is 100%."

At a time when the infection rate has doubled, many remain unvaccinated and the delta variant is vastly more contagious than the original, it's important to recognize vaccines aren't flawless, he and others said.

"I understand it's kind of a tough pill to swallow for many people," said Anthony Santella, a public health expert at the University of New Haven in Connecticut.

Several recent high-profile cases have brought public attention to the fact that people who are vaccinated can still catch the virus.

Last Thursday's Yankees-Red Sox game was postponed because six Yankees  most, but not all, of whom were vaccinated  tested positive for the virus. At a homeless shelter in Northern California, a number of vaccinated residents tested positive during an ongoing outbreak. And six vaccinated members of the Texas Legislature, who had fled the state to prevent a vote on changes in the state's election laws, have tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days.

The fourth wave of COVID-19 cases is here. Will we escape the UK's fate? It's too soon to know.

The common thread for all those infections was that they were caught by routine testing, not because people fell seriously ill, noted Ali Ellebedy, an immunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Of the more than 159 million fully vaccinated Americans as of July 12, a reported 5,492 have been hospitalized, and 791 have died related to symptomatic COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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In May, the CDC stopped tracking all so-called breakthrough infections, focusing only on state and local health department reports of hospitalizations and deaths, so there's no way to know how many infections there have been or whether they are increasing because of the delta variant.

Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and former Baltimore health commissioner, called that decision inexplicable.

Without that data, she said, its impossible to know how many people are getting infected after vaccination, whether certain people, perhaps senior citizens, are more vulnerable to breakthrough infections, and how easy it is for people who have been vaccinated and then infected to pass on the infection to others.

We just dont know the answers to these questions, and that is really preventing clinicians from giving good guidance to our patients, she said.

Breakthrough cases of COVID-19 are growing probably because more virus is circulating, not because vaccines don't work against the delta variant, which now accounts for more than half the infections in the United States, experts say.

Vaccines remain effective against severe disease from the delta variant, said Ellebedy, who studies the body's response to vaccination.

But the variant is vastly more contagious than the original virus, so the unvaccinated are particularly vulnerable.

"If you're vaccinated, you should not worry about the delta variant," del Rio said. "If you're not vaccinated, you are really in trouble because it's likely that you will get infected."

Range of protection

Even healthy people respond differently to vaccination, so it is normal to see variation in protection among the vaccinated, Ellebedy said.

For 95 people out of 100, vaccines from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna will provide effective protection.

The problem is, it's essentially impossible to figure out ahead of time who is most vulnerable. Certain factors like age, obesity and lung disease increase the risk of serious disease if someone is infected. So does the load of virus they inhale and what medications they're taking, he said.

Some people will test positive for the virus despite vaccination, but the immune protection they received will keep virtually all those people from getting seriously ill.

People who are fully vaccinated can get COVID, but experts say they're unlikely to get severely ill.

Vaccination also makes people less likely to shed large amounts of virus, Ellebedy said, meaning they are less likely than an unvaccinated infected person to get someone else sick. Anything that decreases the amount of virus replicating itself in the respiratory tract will decrease the probability of passing on that virus, he said. "Transmission will decrease like everything else."

And though the data remains thin, vaccination also likely protects against long-haul COVID-19, in which people have symptoms weeks or months after they clear their initial infection, said David Holtgrave, dean of the School of Public Health at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Long-haul symptoms in persons who are fully vaccinated may be theoretically possible but are likely rare given the overall effectiveness of the vaccines (after being fully vaccinated); however, we could use more data to know that for certain, he said via email. That is why we need this more robust national surveillance system.

A previous coronavirus infection provides some protection against the delta variant, but someone who got COVID-19 months ago might not have enough of an immune response left, del Rio said.

"My advice if you have been infected, is you should trust your natural immunity for about three months. But after three months, you should get vaccinated," he said.

People who were infected and then vaccinated are probably well-protected. Ellebedy said.

Context also matters, Ellebedy and others said. Someone who is vaccinated and who lives in a community with a high vaccination rate and a low infection rate probably can get away without a mask.

Ellebedy lives in Missouri, where infections have recently doubled and just 40% of the public is vaccinated. So he masks up in public, indoor places.

More: Why are fully vaccinated people testing positive for COVID? Should I start wearing a mask again?

While the CDC said mask-wearing isn't mandatory except in medical and transportation settings, numerous experts told USA TODAY it's a good idea to wear a mask in indoor settings with people who are possibly unvaccinated.

Wearing a mask on top of being vaccinated is the safest way to avoid getting infected or passing on the virus to someone whose weakened immune system prevented them from getting full protection from the vaccine.

"Everyone should closely look at the environment where they are," Ellebedy said. "Delta unfortunately has brought these doubts back again."

In the United States, infections have more than doubled since the week of June 22. Total cases have risen in all 50 states since last week, and deaths also are beginning to climb, although the infection rates remain 90% below what they were at the peak in January.

That puts vaccinated people at risk because there's simply more virus out there, said Dr. George Rutherford, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco.

"The more people who are running around infectious, the more you, as someone who's been vaccinated, are likely to come into contact with it," he said.

A man places flags at the National World War I Museum and Memorial Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2021, in Kansas City, Mo. The 1,665 flags represent the area residents who died in the coronavirus pandemic and the display was part of a national memorial to lives lost to COVID-19.

Unvaccinated are getting sick

At Staten Island University Hospital in New York, there are 15 COVID-19 patients, 13 of whom are unvaccinated, said Dr. Theodore Strange, the hospital's chairman of medicine.

One of the vaccinated patients, a 93-year-old man with many other health problems, received his shots at the beginning of the year but may have had a weaker response because of his age and health, Strange said. The remaining vaccinated patient was hospitalized for something else and didnt know they had COVID-19 until a coronavirus test came back positive.

Strange said his COVID-19 patients are about 10 years younger now than they were a year ago, with an average age of 55-60. Some are even younger, he said, rattling off ages: "29, 38, 42, 50."

Vaccinations deserve the credit, he said, because about 70% of people on Staten Island over 65 are vaccinated, compared with 38% of those 40 and younger.

Hes disappointed more people havent been willing to be vaccinated, despite the risk of infection and of being the bullet in the gun, potentially bringing the virus home to older, more vulnerable relatives.

He related a conversation he had last week with a patient who didnt want to be vaccinated. Strange had recently prescribed the man a medication with many more potential side effects than the vaccines.

The pill I gave him was clearly more much poisonous than any vaccine, Strange said, but the man didnt want to take something he perceived as coming from the government.

Strange has been trying an individual approach to persuade people to get the shots, including visiting a local bowling alley, churches, park benches, whatever it takes."

But still, he said, the curve of coronavirus infections is very similar to the one followed by the 1918 flu, a pandemic that lasted three years.

If were not going to avail ourselves of current technology and science," he said, "then shame on us."

Contributing: Mike Stucka

Contact Elizabeth Weise at eweise@usatoday.com and Karen Weintraub at kweintraub@usatoday.com.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: COVID after vaccine: Serious illness is rare with breakthrough cases
This summer is shaping up to be a much better season for Virginia Beach hoteliers, who are still digging out of the COVID-19 trench.

The tide started to turn in May.

Memorial Day weekend was one of the best weekends the area has had in a long time, said John Zirkle, president of the Virginia Beach Hotel Association. It was hopping.

But its going to take a long time for the numbers to climb back up to pre-pandemic levels, even as people are starting to get back on the road again with restrictions lifted and vaccines widely available.

We still have a long way to go to make up for the losses over the last 15 months, Zirkle said.

In the first quarter of 2021, coronavirus restrictions were still in place, but by May, vacationers were on the move. Hotel occupancy rates in Virginia Beach rose to 68.5%, the highest rate since the start of the pandemic, according to a city report with Smith Travel Research data.

The occupancy rate is still trailing 2019 levels, but guests are willing to pay more for a place to rest their heads, with money saved after months of being housebound.

The average room rate in May was $155.26, which was $19.78 more than guests paid for a room in May 2019.

Hoteliers are forced to charge more to keep up with other cost increases, Zirkle said.

Linens, shampoo and toilet paper are 8 to 10% more expensive these days. Add that to a tight labor market, which has made staffing difficult and overtime pay a must for employees, Zirkle said.

The city is on the receiving end of the cost increases. Tax revenue was up $7.59 more per room in May than it was the same month of 2019, according to the report.

Meanwhile, hoteliers are still wrestling with a bottom line that is barely budging.

Were not necessarily seeing a lot more profit, Zirkle said.

He hopes Virginia Beach will soon follow the lead of other Virginia localities that have committed federal pandemic relief funds for hoteliers. Fairfax approved a $25 million grant program in June for the countys tourist-related businesses, including hotels that experienced at least a 15% drop in business because of the pandemic. Hotels can receive $400 per room, according to reports.

Its going to take a year or two of getting things back to normal for hotels, to dig themselves back out, Zirkle said.

Stacy Parker, 757-222-5125, stacy.parker@pilotonline.com
Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg in a New York court after turning himself in to authorities on July 1. Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images

Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg complained about his long commute, court documents say.

He appeared to defend receiving luxury cars from his employer, The Washington Post reported.

But prosecutors allege the perks were part of a tax-avoidance scheme.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg, who is accused of accepting luxury cars as part of a tax-avoidance scheme, complained about his long commute while in custody, court papers obtained by The Washington Post show.

According to prosecutors cited in the documents, Weisselberg apparently offered a defense of the arrangement.

He is said to have complained about the long commute from his suburban home to the Trump Organization offices in Manhattan.

"In sum and substance, defendant Allen Weisselberg stated that the commute to work from Long Island was difficult," the documents filed by prosecutors in the New York Supreme Court say, according to The Washington Post.

Weisselberg is said to have made the comment before pleading not guilty to charges of fraud and grand larceny.

The 15-count indictment against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization was filed by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office as part of its wide-ranging investigation into former President Donald Trump's company. Attorneys for the Trump Organization also pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Weisselberg said on the day of his arrest he had been living in his Upper West Side apartment since 2005, The Post reported.

The outlet said it was unclear whether he meant that commuting from Long Island was difficult, or the trip from one part of Manhattan to another was arduous.

For decades, his former daughter-in-law Jennifer Weisselberg said, Allen Weisselberg commuted to his job in Trump Tower from a home in Wantagh, Long Island.

Trump described the home as "embarrassing" in a 2004 visit during a shiva, Jennifer Weisselberg said. Allen Weisselberg sold the home in 2013, according to The Post.

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Weisselberg's attorney, Mary Mulligan, declined to comment on the report.

Prosecutors allege that Weisselberg accepted $1.7 million in company perks, including apartment leases, school tuition for his grandchild, and the leasing of two Mercedes-Benz cars, as part of a tax-avoidance scheme.

The executive, who has been employed by the Trump Organization for decades, has so far resisted pressure from prosecutors to flip and provide evidence to help them build their case.

Some legal analysts have said they believe that the case against Weisselberg is a warning to other executives whom prosecutors hope will cooperate.

Trump has denied any wrongdoing. He has said that the investigation is politically motivated and that the perks were not illegal.

Prosecutors are also investigating whether Matthew Calamari, another Trump Organization executive, accepted tax-free perks, according to CNN.

He also has a home on Long Island and another in a Trump Organization-owned apartment building in Manhattan, property records reviewed by Insider show.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Marc Thiessen, a Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor, who argued that conservatives are holding out on vaccinations because Donald Trump was not given enough credit by Democrats (screengrab)

A contributor on Fox News likened Donald Trump supporters to petulant children by insisting that many Republicans are refusing the coronavirus vaccines because they do not believe the former president has been given enough credit for their creation.

Marc Thiessen, a conservative author who writes a column at The Washington Post, appeared on Fox Business's Kudlow, where he claimed that Joe Biden has not been congratulatory enough to Mr Trump over the vaccines, which has in turn caused Republicans to eschew the shots.

He said it was pretty laughable that the White House is arguing that the reason why remaining Americans who are not vaccinated are not doing so is because of 12 people on Facebook, referring to a recent report tracking more than half of social media disinformation to 12 sources  not necessarily people  that operate on Facebook.

Despite his incredulity at the idea that social media misinformation is driving vaccine hesitancy, he provided little beyond anecdote to actually prove his claim.

There are legitimate reasons why people aren't being vaccinated, Mr Thiessen said, before pointing a finger at the Biden administration. Joe Biden and his vice president downplayed the efficacy of the vaccine.

There is almost no discourse from Republicans suggesting their main issue with the vaccine is that it is not effective enough. Even before the vaccine existed, conservatives were questioning the efficacy of health orders, as was illustrated by the use of facemasks becoming a political issue and the general disdain directed at Dr Anthony Fauci.

Larry Kudlow, the host of the show, asked the commentator if the Biden administration had been effective at informing the public about the vaccines.

Mr Thiessen said not at all, before saying the president should be crediting President Trump for the greatest public health achievement in American history.

They should be telling the vaccine-hesitant Republicans, If you trust Donald Trump, get your Trump vaccine because hes the one who brought it to you. Instead theyre trying to take away credit from him and downplay his role, Mr Thiessen said.

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The columnist's argument holds little water. It was revealed in March that Donald Trump had been vaccinated shortly after the first doses became available. If Mr Trump taking the vaccine is not an implicit enough endorsement to convince his followers to take it, showering the former president with laurels is unlikely going to sway any significant number of people to reconsider their position.

Mr Thiessen complained that Mr Trump had been shut out of the vaccination drive effort by Democrats.

"Hes the only president  they had a public service ad, they asked every former president except Donald Trump to participate in the public service ad. Trump should be front and centre on this," Mr Thiessen said.

The Covid-PSAs that Mr Thiessen is referring to were released in early March, one month after Mr Trump faced his second impeachment trial, which was tied to an insurrection that half the country blamed on him.

Not even Mr Trump appears to agree with Mr Thiessen. The former president has started rallying again and making limited public appearances. Outside of some half-hearted endorsements for the vaccine, Mr Trump has largely used his public time to complain about the Democrats and endorse candidates for midterm races.

Mr Thiessen's vaccine comments may have been part of the network's sudden language shift regarding the coronavirus vaccine. On Monday, several Fox News hosts  including the perennially inflammatory Sean Hannity  encouraged their viewers to get vaccinated. This is a departure for the network from the views of some of its most popular hosts, most notably Tucker Carlson, who has dabbled publicly with anti-vaccination conspiracy theory.

It appears Mr Thiessen found a way to support the vaccine but still vilify the Democrats in the process.

Read More

Fox News hosts railed against vaccine passports  the company requires one to return to work without a mask

Tucker Carlson tells viewers to ignore TV medical advice after two Fox News hosts recommend Covid vaccine

If children want the vaccine, lets give it to them  Covid has disrupted their lives for long enough
The top TV picks for Tuesday 20 July.

This evening sees former Downing Street adviser Dominic Cummings lift the lid on the goings-on in government during last year as the coronavirus pandemic hit.

He also reflects on his involvement in Brexit during the sit down interview with Laura Kuenssberg.

Elsewhere, Ray Mears continues to explore China's wildlife and celebrities battle it out in the kitchen on ITV.

Dominic Cummings - The Interview - 7pm - BBC Two

Dominic Cummings is sitting down for a one-on-one interview. (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)

Boris Johnson's former chief adviser sits down for an exclusive interview with the BBC tonight.

Read more: Jeremy Clarkson 'almost killed' by caravan in Grand Tour accident

He will be speaking about his relationship with Prime Minister and his role in the government during the pandemic and the decision making that went on.

It's the first time Cummings, who will also talk about his role in Brexit, has given a one-on-one TV interview.

Wild China With Ray Mears - 7.30pm - ITV

Ray Mears with elephant conservationists, Dr Bao Mingwei and Cockroach the Elephant. (ITV/Tin Can Island)

The presenter explores with plants and wildlife in China's tropical rainforest in the second episode of the series.

He meets elephant conservationist Dr Bao Mingwei as well as some of the gentle giants themselves.

Secrets of the Museum - 8pm - BBC Two

Secrets of the Museum S2 - Gesa Werner tying an obijime around the Wafrica Kimono by Serge Mouangue. (BBC/Blast! Films/Simon Lloyd)

In the first episode of the second series, the cameras go behind the scenes as the V&A Museum in London.

Read more: Shaparak Khorsandi inspired by Thandiwe Newton to reclaim her birth name

The museum conservators aim to preserve and maintain four unique objects, including a red lurex suit belonging to Slade bass player Jim Lea and a kimono by designer Serge Mouangue in order to add it to a touring exhibition celebrating the Japanese national dress.

Cooking with the Stars - 9pm - ITV

Emma Willis and Tom Allen host Cooking With The Stars. (ITV)

The second batch of celebrities go up against each other in the kitchen as they prepare dishes inspired by Italian cuisine.

This time around it's Griff Rhys-Jones versus Catherine Tyldesley while Denise Van Outen takes on AJ Odudu, with one of them set to be eliminated.

Story continues

Uprising - 9pm - BBC One

Uprising - New Cross Fire Protest 1981. (BBC/Rogan Productions/Getty Images)

In 1981 at a house part in south London, 13 young black Britons were killed in a house fire.

This documentary hears from some of the people at the catastrophic event as it recounts the aftermath and the uprising that followed.

This is the first of a three part series from Steve McQueen which examines three pivotal events that happened in Britain in 1981.

Watch: Emma Willis ready for Strictly Come Dancing
(Bloomberg) -- One dose of Johnson & Johnsons Covid-19 vaccine is much less effective against the delta and lambda variants than against the original strain of the virus, the New York Times reported, citing a study that hasnt been peer reviewed yet. Delta now makes up 83% of all sequenced cases in the U.S., up from 50% in early July, health authorities said.

A spokesman for U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson insisted that the countrys self-isolation rules arent optional following some mixed messaging from a government minister.

France has seen a jump in vaccinations since President Emmanuel Macron announced that passes showing proof of testing or immunization will be required in restaurants and cafes. Apple Inc. is pushing back its return-to-office deadline because of the resurgence in cases across many countries.

Tokyos infections continue to rise with just three days left until the Olympics, and more Japanese companies have decided against sending executives to Fridays opening ceremony.

Key Developments:

Global Tracker: Cases top 191 million; deaths near 4.1 millionVaccine Tracker: More than 3.64 billion doses administeredDemocrats cant make Facebook help win the Covid information warWomen are still suffering more than men in pandemic job hitVaccine and ventilator shortages show need for Africa free tradeA secretive body is making questionable Covid decisions in IndiaWhy the 2020 Olympics (in 2021) will be like no other: QuickTake

One Dose of J&J Ineffective Against Delta (5:30 p.m. NY)

A study found Johnson & Johnsons Covid-19 vaccine is much less effective against the delta and lambda variants than against the original virus, the New York Times reported. The lab-based findings, which havent been peer reviewed or published in a scientific journal, suggest the need for a second dose for the 13 million people who have received the inoculation. The authors of the study recommended an mRNA vaccine made by Pfizer Inc.-Biontech SE or Moderna Inc. as the second shot.

Story continues

The results contrast those from smaller studies published by J&J earlier this month that suggested a single dose of its vaccine is effective against delta even eight months after inoculation, the Times said. Seema Kumar, a J&J spokeswoman, told the newspaper that the new data do not speak to the full nature of immune protection.

The new study is credible because the authors dont have ties to any vaccine makers, John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, told the Times. He cited several studies in monkeys and people that show that two doses of the J&J vaccine are more effective than just one.

The data should prompt the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider its recommendation that fully vaccinated people dont need booster shots, said Nathaniel Landau, a virologist at New York Universitys Grossman School of Medicine, who led the study.

Pelosi Staffer, White House Aide Test Positive (3:10 p.m. NY)

A senior spokesperson for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a White House official have tested positive for Covid-19. Both had been fully vaccinated and are among several staffers in Congress and at the White House whove been recently infected.

The Pelosi staff member had no contact with the speaker since being exposed, Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesperson, said in a statement. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that contract tracing had determined that the infected staff there had no close contact with senior people or President Joe Biden.

Delta Now Accounts for 83% of U.S. Cases (11:45 a.m. NY)

The delta variant now makes up 83% of all sequenced Covid-19 cases in the U.S., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said in a Senate hearing. The new figure is up from 50% from the week of July 3. She said areas of the country with limited vaccination coverage are allowing spread of the highly transmissible variant, which was first identified in India.

Each death is tragic and even more heartbreaking when we know that the majority of these deaths can be prevented with a simple, safe, available vaccine, Walensky said.

NYC Daily Vaccination Rate Drops to 15,000 (10:30 a.m. NY)

New York Citys vaccine administration rate has plunged to less than 15,000 a day, from more than 100,000 a day in mid-April, as cases increase.

The city has fully vaccinated 4.5 million residents, data show, falling short of Mayor Bill de Blasios goal to have 5 million New Yorkers fully vaccinated by June.

The city reported a seven-day average of 576 confirmed and probable cases on July 18, more than double the average on July 6.

Hospitalizations have edged up just slightly. Almost all of those admitted for Covid-19 havent been vaccinated, according to Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi. This is preventable suffering, he said on Twitter.

Netherlands Weekly Cases Rise (9:10 a.m. NY)

The Netherlands reported 69,731 weekly cases on Tuesday, up from 51,957 last week. The number of hospitalizations has gone up in recent days, though at a slower pace than infections. Official figures showed 50 new admissions on Monday, the biggest daily increase since May 10.

The Dutch government has reintroduced some restrictions, including limiting opening hours for bars, while a recommendation for people to work from home if possible was reinstated from Monday.

Indonesia May Begin Easing Curbs (9:05 a.m. NY)

Indonesia may start to gradually ease nationwide emergency curbs if cases and levels of hospital occupancy decline. The government may relax the restrictions starting July 26 if cases continue to fall, according to President Joko Widodo. This will include allowing some eateries and shops to stay open for longer, Jokowi, as the president is known, said in a televised address on Tuesday.

Mauritius Outbreaks Among Vaccinated Workers (8:52 a.m. NY)

Mauritius recorded a record daily number of cases after outbreaks among vaccinated foreign factory workers living in hostels, according to the Health Ministry.

The Indian Ocean island nation, which reopened its borders to tourists last week, added 368 new infections on Monday, with 305 of them being factory workers and almost all asymptomatic. Foreign labor in the countrys export-oriented manufacturing industry accounts for 47% of total employment.

Mauritius is seeking to revive its tourism industry after ramping up vaccinations, and about a third of its 1.3 million people are fully inoculated.

French Shots Surge After Passes Announced (7:51 a.m. NY)

Frances vaccination rollout is accelerating after President Emmanuel Macron announced that health passes  showing proof of testing or immunization  will be required in restaurants and cafes.

A Health Ministry official said at a briefing that 4.3 million injections were administered last week, including 1.7 million first doses. In another record, 880,000 shots were administered on Friday. And this week saw the best Monday of the rollout, the official said.

French vaccinations are proceeding twice as much fast as the rollouts in Italy and Germany, the official said. After Macrons speech, the number of online vaccine appointments climbed to 520,000 daily from 140,000 daily in early July. France will reach its target of 40 million first doses ahead of schedule, the official said.

U.K. Says Self-Isolation Crucial (7:20 a.m. NY)

The U.K. government insisted people told to isolate by the National Health Service contact-tracing mobile app cant ignore the advice. Earlier, a minister had said it was optional and not legally binding.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson told Press Association that isolation remains the most important action people can take to stop the spread of the virus. The mixed messaging came after Business Minister Paul Scully told Times Radio on Tuesday it is up to individuals and employers whether they isolate after being pinged.

Iran Reports Most Deaths in Two Months (6:27 a.m. NY)

Iran reported a record number of new cases, with 27,444 in the past 24 hours. The country also posted its highest daily death toll in two months, at 250. The latest figures bring Irans total infections to more than 3.5 million and its fatalities to 87,624. About 2% of the population has been fully vaccinated, according to Health Ministry data.

Hong Kong, Singapore Travel Bubble Review (4:38 a.m. NY)

Hong Kong and Singapore agreed to conduct a review in late August on whether to implement a quarantine-free air travel bubble, the Hong Kong government said on its website. The condition for launching the bubble couldnt be met for the time being given the recent surge of confirmed cases in Singapore.

Tokyo Cases Continue to Rise Before Olympics (4:27 a.m. NY)

With just three days left until the Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese capitals cases continue to rise, with 1,387 confirmed on Tuesday, up from 830 a week earlier. The seven-day average, at 1,180, has roughly doubled over the past two weeks.

Infections among Olympics staff, athletes and others linked to the games are also increasing. Organizers say a total of 71 people have tested positive, including 31 who are among the tens of thousands of international visitors expected in Japan to compete or work at the Olympics.

Meanwhile, more Japanese companies have decided against sending executives to Fridays opening ceremony.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

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The son of a Texas billionaire is waging a messy legal battle against his late dads alleged mistress, accusing the Los Angeles socialite of extortion in hopes of avoiding paying her the millions she claims shes owed by his fathers estate.

Bradford Phillips, son of Dallas real-estate developer Gene E. Phillips, filed a pair of lawsuits against Marsana de Monserat in California and Texas early this year. The suits came after De Monserat demanded $2.6 million in refinancing proceeds from one Florida rental property she owned but had allowed the late Phillips to manage, along with $1.7 million from a promissory note she said was given to her.

In January, Phillips filed a suit in Los Angeles Superior Court accusing the jet-setting entrepreneur of extortion, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. This after Monserats lawyer sent the younger Phillips a letter indicating the attorney would contact the IRS and federal housing agencies over the missing $2.6 million.

As reported by local news outlet, MyNewsLA.com, Santa Monica Judge Mark Epstein made a tentative ruling against Phillips on Monday, saying he would likely dismiss his lawsuit because the letter from De Monserats attorney was protected under the states anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute. Epstein did not, however, indicate when hed issue his final ruling.

For her part, De Monserat, in a recent court filing, said Phillips complaint against her is an attempt to abuse the legal system, with the hopes of scaring [her] into walking away from her business interests with his late father.

Neither Bradford Phillips, De Monserat, nor their attorneys immediately responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Phillips original complaint called De Monserat one of several long-term mistresses of his late dad, who he alleges made loans to, provided investment opportunities to, and otherwise provided cash to De Monserat due to their personal relationship. (Phillips first amended complaint, it is worth noting, dropped the term mistress when referring to De Monserat.)

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While Mr. Phillips was very successful, he was also a controversial figure, the original filing says of the plaintiffs father, Gene. The document adds that Bradford Phillips, the CEO of a life insurance company, has had to overcome his fathers reputation with the companies regulators and others.

Indeed, the Wall Street Journal once called Gene, who died in August 2019, one of the most controversial figures in publicly traded real estate, in part because of a shareholder lawsuit that alleged he abused his position to milk the company's assets for his private use. In 2002, Phillips and an associate were acquitted on racketeering, wire fraud and other charges. Federal prosecutors had claimed they were part of an alleged scheme that involved kickbacks to labor officials and mobsters.

In an amended complaint, the younger Phillips says he became the executor of his fathers estate and assumed control of his assets but had no dealings, business or otherwise, with De Monserat. The lawsuit continues: As De Monserats only link to Gene Phillips business stemmed from her role as a social acquaintance, [Bradford] cut off the money flow to De Monserat in August of 2019.

Then, early last year, De Monserat and Phillips met to discuss her dealings with the Estate and its assets, but didnt walk away with any agreement, according to Phillips suit. That February, De Monserats attorney, John Polzer, contacted Phillips in a letter and threatened the heir with legal action if he didnt pay her.

In the missive, Polzer accused Phillips of fraudulent activityincluding misappropriating the $2.6-million loan which De Monserat alleges was connected to a Department of Housing and Urban Development projectand warned hed alert the Internal Revenue Service, HUD, and the Federal Housing Association. Phillips has not been charged with any crime in connection with the episode.

Epstein Pal Fires Back at Accuser With Wild Extortion Claim

A copy of Polzers letter, attached to court filings, indicates that the attorney noted what might happen if Phillips did not respond.

We will be forced to pursue other remedies available to us, including but not limited to filing suit against you individually in connection with, among other things, your misappropriation of the $2.6MM, filing suit against the Decedents estate for fraudulent inducement involving various signatures he procured from our client, as well as seeking more information from the government agencies.

In other words, potentially getting the feds involved.

Polzers letter also alleged the late Gene Phillips appeared to run a purposefully complex web of entities and oversaw the execution of many related-party transactions, to benefit himself or his friends.

Our client would like to extricate herself from this web, Polzer wrote.

In a declaration attached to De Monserats motion to strike the lawsuit, the socialite said she first met Gene Phillips in the mid-1990s. We subsequently became close personally [sic] friends and began working together on a series of real estate ventures, beginning with the purchase of an apartment complex in Los Angeles in the late 1990s, De Monserat stated.

De Monserat added that Gene Phillips maintained complete control over the management and operations of the various properties that I owned and those in which I invested pursuant to Gene Phillips advice and direction.

She stated that in October 2015, she purchased a large apartment complex in Florida and allowed Gene Phillips to control the management and all dealings in regard to this property, just as I had done with our prior real estate investments.

Two years later, De Monserat claims, Gene suggested she buy a property in Texas by refinancing the Florida complex. Then, in May 2019, De Monserats company, FL Westwood, obtained a loan that was insured by HUD to use as a down payment in the Lone Star State.

Although FL Westwood was the owner and borrower and I believe that I signed all loan documents on behalf of FL Westwood, this HUD refinance transaction was at all times orchestrated and directed by Mr. Phillips and those who worked for him or were associated with him, De Monserat added in the declaration. The refinance closed in May of 2019, several months prior to Gene Phillips passing.

Neither FL Westwood nor I received a penny of FL Westwoods loan proceeds, De Monserat continued. They were wired to my now fired management company  who then transferred all of the refinance proceeds at the direction of Gene Phillips to an account controlled by one of Gene Phillips business associates.

De Monserat says that after Gene died, Bradford Phillips directed his fathers companies to freeze her out of real estate ventures she had shared with the tycoon.

After Mr. Phillips death, in about January 2020, I requested Plaintiff, as the executor of Gene Phillips estate, to provide me an accounting of all of the properties that I owned and the investments that I had with his father, De Monserat stated. I received little to no information from Plaintiff.

In a motion to strike the lawsuit, De Monserat also took aim at Bradford Phillips original complaint, in which he described Gene as leading a controversial life while amassing his $3.5 billion fortune. Her pleading said that Bradford Phillips seemed to disapprove of the manner in which his father amassed his fortune, but now wants to reap the rewards of his wealth as the executor of his estate by taking from those with whom his father entrusted and readily engaged in business.

She also accused Bradford Phillips and his attorney of trying to demean her by referring to her as one of Mr. Phillips long-term mistresses, with nothing to offer from a business perspective

In his complaint, Bradford Phillips called De Monserats allegations unfounded and said the specter of investigations by various governmental entities would cause a significant disruption to his business.

The lawsuit adds that Phillips was put in fear that criminal allegations would be made against him, his family, and the Estate and that this fear caused him significant emotional distress and has caused him damages as a proximate result.

Even as their legal imbroglio plays out in California, the case Phillips filed against De Monserat in Dallas Countys probate court is pending. That legal filing suggests an alleged $1.7-million promissory note signed from Gene Phillips benefiting De Monserat in January 2014 is no longer valid because a statute of limitations for repayment has passed.

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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain has asked Nigeria to explain where and how Nnamdi Kanu, a separatist leader who holds British citizenship, was arrested after Kanu's lawyer alleged he had been detained and mistreated in Kenya before being sent back to Nigeria.

Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) group which wants part of southeastern Nigeria to secede, was on the run outside Nigeria for four years until he was brought to court in Abuja on June 29 and told he would face trial.

"We are seeking clarification from the Nigerian government about the circumstances of the arrest and detention of Nnamdi Kanu," said Tariq Ahmad, a junior minister at Britain's Foreign Office.

The Nigerian authorities have refused to say where Kanu was arrested, while Kenya's ambassador to Nigeria has denied his country was involved.

Responding to a question about Kanu's case from a lawmaker, Ahmad said Britain had requested consular access to Kanu and stood ready to provide consular assistance.

A spokesman for Nigeria's Department of State Services, the security agency that is holding Kanu, could not immediately be reached for comment on Tuesday, a public holiday in Nigeria.

Kanu's lawyer, Ifeanyi Ejiofor, alleged he was abducted by Kenya's special police force and held for eight days before being turned over to Nigerian authorities.

Kanu faces 11 charges including treason, terrorism and illegal possession of firearms. His case is due to resume in court in Abuja next week.

IPOB wants a swathe of the southeast to split from Nigeria. The region attempted to secede in 1967 under the name Republic of Biafra, triggering a three-year civil war in which more than a million people died, mostly from starvation.

The Biafran enclave was reabsorbed into Nigeria after the war, but despite an official "no victor no vanquished" policy adopted at the time, discontent has continued to simmer in the region.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon and William James in London, Camillus Eboh in Abuja; Editing by Alison Williams)
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain told the European Union to "think again" after the bloc published a plan for post-Brexit negotiations over the future of Gibraltar that London said seeks to undermine British sovereignty over the territory.

The European Commission said the draft negotiating mandate would have a positive impact for people living and working on either side of the border between Spain and Gibraltar without undermining the EU's single market.

But British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the plan conflicted with an agreement between London, Madrid and Gibraltar reached in December last year, just before Britain completed its exit from the EU.

"It seeks to undermine the UK's sovereignty over Gibraltar, and cannot form a basis for negotiations," Raab said in a statement.

"We have consistently showed pragmatism and flexibility in the search for arrangements that work for all sides, and we are disappointed that this has not been reciprocated. We urge the EU to think again."

A British official said that one issue with the EU mandate was its provision that Spain should carry out border control and surveillance at Gibraltar's port, airport and waters. Under the framework agreement of December, EU border agency Frontex would carry out this role, the official said.

(Reporting by William Schomberg in London and Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
United Airlines reduced its quarterly loss to $434 million and posted surprisingly strong revenue as U.S. vacation travel picked up.

In reporting second-quarter results Tuesday, the Chicago-based airline said it expects to earn a pretax profit in the remaining two quarters of the year. That would break a string of six-straight money-losing quarters since the pandemic began to crush air travel.

Our airline has reached a meaningful turning point: Were expecting to be back to making a profit once again, CEO Scott Kirby said in a prepared statement.

However, United is trailing key rivals as the airlines claw to get back to profitability. In April, Southwest was the first U.S. airline to report a profit since the pandemic hit, and Delta followed last week  in both cases, profits were possible only because airlines have received $54 billion from taxpayers.

United said it can become profitable this year without more government money. Wall Street expects losses in both the third and fourth quarters.

United's shares rose 6.6% in regular trading Tuesday as travel stocks rebounded from large losses on Monday. In extended trading after the results were released, the shares slipped about 1%.

More than 2 million people a day have boarded planes in the U.S. this month, nearly the double the number that were flying back in March.

The recovery, however, is very fragile. Travel is still down 20% from pre-pandemic July 2019. High-fare corporate and international flyers, who contribute an oversized portion of United's revenue, are still mostly absent, although United said both are improving faster than expected. United filled 83% of seats on domestic flights but only 53% on international ones.

United recently told investors about plans to build its U.S. operation, but the company is still dependent on international routes to make a full profit recovery, said Peter McNally, an analyst with Third Bridge Group in New York.

United's second-quarter loss would have been far worse  $1.3 billion  without more than $1 billion in federal pandemic aid, which was partly offset by one-time charges. The airline was also hit by higher expenses for jet fuel.

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Still, the loss was much smaller than the $1.63 billion United lost a year earlier and the $1.36 billion loss it suffered in the first quarter of this year.

Excluding the federal payroll aid and other items, Chicago-based United Airlines Holdings Inc. said its adjusted loss worked out to $3.91 per share. That was slightly better than the $4.01 per share loss forecast by analysts in a FactSet survey.

Revenue rose from a year ago to $5.47 billion, beating Wall Street's prediction of $5.34 billion.

The company declined to make executives available to discuss the results. It scheduled a call with analysts and reporters for Wednesday.

In the April-June period, United operated barely more than half the schedule it offered in the same three months of 2019, but it plans to add flights in the third quarter and run 74% of its pre-pandemic operation.

Last month, United signaled its confidence in the recovery by placing its largest-ever order for new jets  270 from Boeing and Airbus  to replace aging planes and allow for growth after the pandemic.
A week after unprecedented anti-government protests in communist Cuba, a superficial calm appears to have returned to the island.

But experts told AFP discontent will continue simmering unless people see a clear improvement to their economic conditions and political rights.

Analysts look at possible scenarios for the future.

- Clampdown? -

With cries of "we are hungry," "down with the dictatorship," and "freedom," the July 11 protests erupted spontaneously in the town of San Antonio de los Banos before spreading like wildfire to some 40 other locations, including the capital Havana.

The protests lasted little over a day, resulting in one death, dozens of injured and more than 100 arrests.

Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernandez foresees that the communist authorities, used to controlling all aspects of life in Cuba, will now seek to identify and keep a close eye on political opponents.

"I would expect that they will keep them under strict surveillance and should they make a new call to action, arrest them," he said.

Rafael Rojas, a Cuban historian living in Mexico, said there would be a "process of neutralization" of those behind the protests.

"An operation has been launched to identify possible leaders."

This may not be enough to avoid "a new social explosion, but perhaps not of the dimensions we saw," said Rojas, adding any future outbursts are likely to be "more localized."

- Economic reform? -

The protests were largely driven by a population fed up with food and medicine shortages amid a spike in Cuba's coronavirus epidemic and the effects of its worst economic crisis in 30 years.

Three days after the demonstrations, President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced measures seeking to calm the mood, granting permission for people to bring food and medicine into the country without paying import duties.

Hernandez said the government would likely take further emergency measures to soften the blow of the economic crisis.

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But it is the economy itself that needs boosting, particularly by loosening the grip on private enterprise so as to bolster growth and employment.

Earlier this year, the government expanded the number of activities in which private entrepreneurs are allowed to operate, and gave the provisional green light for small and medium enterprises, though limited to some sectors.

The government is historically the biggest employer in Cuba.

Havana was employing "a tactic of slowly loosening up to release pressure," said Mauricio de Miranda Parrondo, an economist at the Pontifical Javeriana University in Cali, Colombia.

But "this is a failed tactic because it does not strategically solve the country's problems," he added.

- Political freedoms? -

The Cuban government has similarly made nods to greater political freedoms.

Yet, after a few hundred artists and intellectuals held a rare free speech protest outside the culture ministry in Havana, many saw themselves relegated to their homes by police, and their communications cut.

A new Cuban constitution approved in 2019 recognizes the rights to free expression, public protest and membership of civil associations, but without obvious ways for people to assert them.

Undertaking reforms "of civil rights seems to me will be welcomed as much outside of Cuba as in it," said Rojas.

- Better US ties? -

One of the key contributors to Cuba's dramatic economic collapse is the toughening of US sanctions during the administration of Donald Trump after years of appeasement and relaxation of the blockade under his predecessor Barack Obama.

Cuba has been under US sanctions since 1962 and had been hoping for a relaxation under Joe Biden, which has not come.

While Biden had promised on the campaign trail to bring back some of Obama's policies and to seek a normalization of ties, his administration has yet to reverse Trump's last-minute redesignation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.

And a quest for a better relationship may have been hampered by Havana's response to the biggest protests since the Cuban revolution of the 1950s that brought Fidel Castro to power -- with the authorities arresting dozens. Many are still being held.

Last week, Biden said of the events: "Cuba is unfortunately a failed state, and (is) repressing their citizens.

"There are a number of things that we would consider doing to help the people of Cuba, but it would require a different circumstance or a guarantee that they would not be taken advantage of by the government."

- Exodus? -

The last major protests in Cuba were in 1994. Those were also against economic hardship but were limited to the capital and quickly put down by police.

At the time, some 34,000 Cubans left the island for the United States within a month -- with permission from Havana.

The migrants were welcomed in Florida in 1994, but this time, the United States has said it would not accept a repeat.

De Miranda, the economist, said the coronavirus pandemic makes mass migration unlikely anyway, and the Cuban government was unlikely to allow a mass exit of its citizens this time round for fear of further irking Washington.

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When asked which poses a greater risk to their health, more unvaccinated Americans say the COVID-19 vaccines than say the virus itself, according to a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll  a view that contradicts all available science and data and underscores the challenges that the United States will continue to face as it struggles to stop a growing pandemic of the unvaccinated driven by the hyper-contagious Delta variant.

The survey of 1,715 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 13 to 15, found that just 29 percent of unvaccinated Americans believe the virus poses a greater risk to their health than the vaccines  significantly less than the number who believe the vaccines represent the greater health risk (37 percent) or say theyre not sure (34 percent).

Over the last 18 months, COVID-19 has killed more than 4.1 million people worldwide, including more than 600,000 in the U.S. At the same time, more than 2 billion people worldwide  and more than 186 million Americans  have been at least partially vaccinated against the virus, and scientists who study data on their reported side effects continue to find that the vaccines are extraordinarily safe.

A supporter of President Donald Trump on Jan. 5 holds an anti-vaccine sign at a protest at Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. (Erin Scott/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Yet 93 percent of unvaccinated U.S. adults  the equivalent of 76 million people  say they will either never get vaccinated (51 percent); that they will keep waiting to see what happens to others before deciding (20 percent); or that theyre not sure (22 percent).

With Delta rapidly becoming dominant nationwide, U.S. COVID-19 cases have surged by 140 percent over the last two weeks. Hospitalizations and deaths  both lagging indicators  are up by one-third over the same period. Missouri, Arkansas, Nevada and Florida are being hit particularly hard, with hospitalization rates soaring to 2-3 times the national average. Nearly all of the Americans who are falling ill, getting hospitalized and dying  99 percent, according to some estimates  are unvaccinated. And more than half the U.S. population (52 percent) has yet to be fully inoculated.

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As the Delta variant surges among the unvaccinated and counties such as Los Angeles reinstitute indoor mask mandates to try to stave it off, Yahoo News and YouGov sought to understand why so many Americans continue to hold off on vaccination  and whether Deltas rise might change any minds.

The results are complicated. Some unvaccinated Americans recognize the rising threat of Delta. The share who say they are worried about the variant has risen 9 percentage points (from 25 percent to 34 percent) since last month. Yet the share of unvaccinated Americans who say they are not worried about Delta is larger, and it has risen by nearly as much (from 31 percent to 39 percent).

As such, just half of the unvaccinated say Delta poses a serious risk to all Americans (33 percent) or unvaccinated Americans (17 percent); the other half says the variant doesnt pose a serious risk to anyone (30 percent) or that theyre not sure (20 percent). In contrast, a full 85 percent of vaccinated Americans  and 72 percent of all Americans  say Delta poses a serious risk.

Yet while unvaccinated Americans are relatively dismissive of Deltas dangers  which have been amply proven by massive outbreaks in India and elsewhere  they tend to apply a much lower bar to the COVID vaccines. Asked to pick the most important reason they havent been vaccinated, for example, few say they lack easy access to vaccination (4 percent), cant get time off from work (3 percent), or already had COVID (9 percent). More say theyre not worried about getting COVID (12 percent) or  far more frequently  that they dont trust the COVID vaccines (45 percent).

Anti-vaccine protesters gather at Indiana University's Sample Gates during a demonstration. (Jeremy Hogan/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

But why? The most important reason, according to 37 percent of unvaccinated Americans, is that theyre concerned about long-term side effects. Thats followed by I dont trust the government (17 percent), The vaccines are too new (16 percent), The FDA hasnt fully approved the vaccines yet (11 percent) and I dont trust any vaccines (6 percent).

The trouble for public health officials is twofold. First, despite the fact that theres no precedent in the history of vaccines for severe side effects emerging several months after dosage, let alone several years  and no mechanism by which the COVID vaccines would trigger such side effects  its difficult to convince skeptics that this time wont be different. Meanwhile, the pandemic is ongoing and the clock is ticking.

Second, when unvaccinated skeptics are asked to select all the reasons they dont trust the COVID vaccines  as opposed to just the most important  many select all of them. Seventy percent say theyre concerned about long-term side effects; 60 percent say the vaccines are too new; 55 percent say they dont trust the government; 50 percent say theyre concerned about short-term side effects; 45 percent say the FDA hasnt fully approved the vaccines yet; 45 percent say they dont trust drug companies; and 26 percent say they dont trust any vaccines. Hesitancy, in other words, could turn into a game of whack-a-mole: address one concern and another just pops up to replace it.

Whether Deltas impact softens any of this resistance remains to be seen. Fifteen percent of unvaccinated Americans say the spread of Delta makes them more likely to get vaccinated, particularly Democrats (34 percent) and Latinos (34 percent). Yet another 12 percent of unvaccinated Americans actually say Delta makes them less likely to get a shot, and 73 percent say it makes no difference.

Delving deeper, 20 percent of unvaccinated Americans say they would be much more (10 percent) or somewhat more (10 percent) likely to get vaccinated if COVID cases start to rise among unvaccinated people in [their] area; the same goes for rising local hospitalizations and deaths. Likewise, 27 percent of unvaccinated Americans say theyd be either much more (12 percent) or somewhat more (15 percent) likely to get vaccinated when the FDA fully approves the COVID vaccines, which are currently authorized for emergency use to combat the pandemic.

Full FDA approval isnt expected until next year. COVID cases, hospitalizations and deaths, on the other hand, are already rising. Well see if either makes a difference.

_________________________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,715 U.S. adults interviewed online from July 13 to 15, 2021. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census, as well as 2020 presidential vote (or non-vote), and voter registration status. Respondents were selected from YouGovs opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7 percent.

____

Read more from Yahoo News:
The US military conducted an air strike against Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Shabaab jihadists on Tuesday, the first since President Joe Biden took office, the Pentagon said.

The US military command for Africa (AFRICOM), in coordination with the Somali government, "conducted one air strike in the vicinity of Galkayo, Somalia today against al-Shabaab," Pentagon spokeswoman Cindi King told AFP.

The strike, 700 kilometers (430 miles) northeast of Mogadishu, targeted Shabaab Islamists, King said.

"A battle-damage assessment is still pending due to the ongoing engagement between al-Shabaab and Somali forces, however the command's initial assessment is that no civilians were injured or killed as a result of this strike," she added.

The strike is the first conducted by the US military in Somalia since January 19, when AFRICOM announced it had killed three Shabaab jihadists in two strikes in Jamaame and Deb Scinnele.

Biden was inaugurated the next day. As soon as he arrived at the White House, he limited the use of drones against jihadist groups outside US theaters of war.

That reversed the policy of his predecessor Donald Trump, who had given the US military carte blanche in countries such as Somalia and Libya.

In March, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said that any planned strikes against jihadist groups outside Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq were now submitted to the White House before being carried out.

Drone strikes multiplied during Trump's term, going from 11 in Somalia in 2015, to 64 in 2019 and 54 in 2020, according to the non-governmental group Airwars, which monitors civilian deaths in bombings around the world.

Just before he left office, Trump ordered the withdrawal of some 700 special forces soldiers who were deployed in Somalia to train and advise the Somali army.

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The rapid spread of the Delta variant around the rich world has injected increased urgency into the debate around booster shots, but the World Health Organization and public health experts are trying to keep the focus on getting vaccines to those who dont yet have access.

Why it matters: Israel last week became the first country to offer boosters to people with weak immune systems, and Pfizer is pushing for rapid approval of boosters in the U.S., citing preliminary data that suggests immunity may begin to wane after six months.

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Yes, but: Those findings conflict with other data, and scientists and regulators say its too early to know whether boosters will be needed.

Still, wealthy countries like the U.S., U.K. and South Korea have already placed bulk orders to hedge against the need for boosters. Countries that might otherwise donate surplus doses also have an incentive to hold onto them.

I think were definitely moving toward boosters being deployed across most high-income countries for some high-risk populations over the next three to six months, says Krishna Udayakumar, director of Duke Universitys Global Health Innovation Center.

But the debate around boosters in rich countries is happening with just a fraction of people in the developing world having had a single shot, including just 3% across Africa.

WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has accused companies like Pfizer and Moderna  which stand to profit more from boosters for rich countries than first doses for poorer ones  of making conscious choices right now not to protect those in most need.

Warning against a "two-track pandemic," he urged companies and countries to share doses with the COVAX facility rather than save them for boosters.

The WHOs chief scientist, Soumya Swaminathan, has said theres no evidence that booster shots will be needed before a year or two years," if at all.

Even if immunity does wane over time, people who are vaccinated will still have some protection, meaning it's far more urgent from a global health standpoint to vaccinate those who havent had a shot yet  particularly health care workers and vulnerable people in lower-income countries.

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But even world leaders who frequently cite the need for "equitable access" to vaccines have consistently prioritized protecting their own populations.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hedged at a virtual press conference this week when I asked whether it would be wrong for rich countries to give boosters while access remained so uneven.

She said the imperative was to increase immunity so as to reduce the risk from variants, and countries would have to make their own decisions as to the role of boosters.

The state of play: In the long term, the cash that countries and companies are pouring into the development of booster shots could ensure a greater overall supply, Udayakumar says.

For now, particularly in the next three months while supply remains tight, its yet another hurdle for low- and middle-income countries struggling for access, he says.

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Sharon Louis worries that her Chicago neighborhood on the citys South Side is on borrowed time.

Waves from Lake Michigan batter apartments along the coastline. Sinkholes from erosion pockmark the predominantly Black and working-class communitys streets. One crater, Louis recalled, opened up next to a streetlight.

While Louis and her neighbors press for solutions, one family whose windows were shattered by the waves last year has since built its own fortress of rocks, sand bags and concrete.

If they didnt do the work, they wouldnt exist, Louis, an activist with the advocacy group Black Chicago Water Council, said of her neighbors. Thats how dire the situation is.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot calls for federal disaster designation for Chicago lakefront (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune via Getty Images file)

To better protect the residents, Chicago applied to a new Federal Emergency Management Agency program designed to help communities prepare before natural disasters hit. The city hoped to receive $851,250 to build a stone barrier along South Shore Drive.

But residents and environmental advocates were disappointed to learn this month that FEMA had not chosen their project, leaving the construction of the barrier in limbo. (Chicagos Department of Transportation will explore other options to protect the coast, a spokesman said, but the timing is unclear.)

I dont know how it could be a lot more dramatic than waves crashing into someones living room, or a high-rise on the brink, said Naomi Davis, founder of Blacks in Green, a Chicago-based environmental advocacy group, who supported the grant. I dont know what could be more urgent than that.

Nearly 1,000 local governments applied for FEMAs Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program, which recently announced the 406 expected recipients of its first wave of $500 million in grant funding. (Final decisions on awards will be made in September.) Interest far outstripped the available money, and many communities are set to receive nothing.

Three of the wealthiest states  California, New Jersey and Washington  are on track to receive more than half of the money, for initiatives including flood mitigation, a tsunami shelter and the removal of dense undergrowth to prevent wildfires. Plenty of poorer communities will receive funding as well, but dozens will not, including Amazonia, Missouri, with a population of just over 300, which wanted to protect critical equipment for its sewer system from rising waters, and Wilson, North Carolina, which hoped to move public housing away from areas at risk of flooding.

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The long list of more than 500 communities that received no funding  many without the resources to prepare for extreme weather on their own  has raised concerns among environmental justice and civil rights advocates that better resourced communities won big, while disadvantaged areas remain in need. In some cases, thats because poorer communities dont have the money for the matching part of the grant, or lack the resources to prepare a competitive grant application.

The consequences of climate change are particularly pernicious for the poor and communities of color. Black, Latino and low-income families are more likely to live in flood zones, researchers have found. The nations wealth gap means their neighborhoods are less likely to have money to harden infrastructure and homes in advance of natural disasters, and the recovery is unequal as well. An investigation of FEMAs data by NPR shows that affluent survivors are more likely to receive help.

As disappointed officials learn why their projects were turned down, some advocates are questioning whether the agency s long-criticized disparities in disaster assistance are at risk of being repeated in a program meant to buttress communities before disasters happen.

Jacqueline Patterson, the recently retired director of the NAACPs Environmental and Climate Justice Program, said FEMA needs to be aggressive about reaching towns and cities that are particularly vulnerable.

Communities dont have the luxury of time for trial and error when were talking about lives that are being lost as we speak, she said.

David Maurstad, FEMAs deputy associate administrator for federal insurance and mitigation, said in a statement that the agency is committed to delivering our programs with equity. FEMA will be persistent in our efforts to refine and improve the program through the lessons we learn and the feedback we receive from our stakeholders.

FEMA is planning a new round of $1 billion in funding for the nascent program, though the agency has not yet set a timeline for opening applications. In response to NBC News questions, FEMA said that it would work with up to 10 communities to help them prepare their applications for that funding.

Related: Biden also announced a new climate data system by NASA to help understand and track the effects of climate change.

One obstacle that poorer communities face is that the new grant program does not cover the full cost of projects, requiring state or local governments to provide a 25 percent match. For economically disadvantaged areas with a population of 3,000 or less, the state or local share can drop to 10 percent. But that 10 percent can still be too high for some communities, shutting them out from applying.

Malary White, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, said in a statement that some cities and counties in the nations poorest state simply cant afford that cost share, therefore mitigation dollars go unused.

Amelia Muccio with Hagerty Consulting, an emergency management firm that advised California and other communities on FEMAs grant requests, said smaller locales may also lack the resources to go through the cumbersome process of applying for the grant. Among many other requirements, communities had to show that the project ultimately cost less than the consequences of not taking action.

That kind of becomes a barrier, Muccio said of the complex application process. Id argue that a lot of these communities dont have a seat at the table.

Another setback for some communities was out-of-date construction and building codes. FEMA incentivizes state and local governments to adopt either the 2015 or 2018 versions of the International Building Code and International Residential Code, which set requirements for construction, such as requiring sprinkler systems in new homes, and are meant to provide a baseline of safety for buildings. In judging grant applications, FEMA awarded up to a fifth of the total available points to applicants in areas with the codes in place.

The result was that all of the funds that FEMA expects to allocate through the competition  about two-thirds of the $500 million  are expected to go to applicants in states requiring adherence to these codes. This left out states that have not adopted them or have not required local jurisdictions to adhere; those states will receive just the $600,000 baseline grant, plus in some cases grants dedicated to Native American tribes. (In some states, updating building codes can become a contentious process opposed by real estate industry lobbyists who worry about additional costs for builders.)

As hurricane and wildfire season sets in, many of the communities who lost out in FEMAs initial round are regrouping and deciding whether to reapply in the future or seek another source of funds.

In Wilson, North Carolina, where 51 percent of residents are Black or Latino, and the poverty rate is almost double the nations average, officials recently learned that their project was not picked. The local housing authority had hoped for $8.8 million to rebuild public housing in the city farther away from a flood-prone creek. The vacated homes would be torn down, so that the once-residential area could serve as a green space to help soak up water and reduce risks.

Tim Rogers, a spokesman for the housing authority, said several tenants had already been forced to relocate after their apartments flooded during Hurricane Matthew in 2016.

Water from Contentnea Creek moves over U.S. Hwy 301 in the aftermath of heavy rain from Hurricane Matthew, in Wilson, N.C., on Oct. 10, 2016. (Martha Waggoner / AP file)

Floods are getting worse, Rogers said. Thats one of the things were trying to prepare for.

In Coconino County, Arizona, which faces the combined threat of wildfires and flooding and where 16 percent of residents live in poverty, officials had asked for almost $188,000 for fire prevention efforts, including removing trees and brush.

Lucinda Andreani, the countys deputy manager, said residents who want to protect their homes generally have to spend thousands of dollars hiring specialists to cut down trees vulnerable to embers. Income is often a deciding factor between residents who can afford the mitigation efforts and residents who cannot.

The Rafael Fire, pictured here on June 22, was discovered on June 18, 2021 on the Prescott National Forest in Arizona, the result of passing predominantly dry thunderstorms. (Nick Desoto / U.S. Forest Service)

Andreani said the county is checking to see if Covid relief funds can be used for fire prevention, as the states congressional delegation continues to lobby for increased federal aid to fight wildfires.

In Amazonia, Missouri, Mayor Rick Russell learned that the small towns request to FEMA to help address flood threats was denied just weeks after a deluge of rain on June 24 led to emergency boat evacuations.

We were really hoping for this grant, especially after this flood, he said.

Russell is waiting to see if his town will receive federal disaster assistance for damage to infrastructure, including roads. The area was one of at least 21 counties in Missouri hit hard by storms and flooding last month.

More than a dozen inches of rain fall culminating in flash flooding and emergency evacuation by boat in Amazonia, Mo., on June 24, 2021. (Mayor Rick Russell)

If the disaster funds come through, that could provide some relief  but Russell is still grappling with how to address the needs that led him to apply for FEMAs Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program in the first place.

During last months flood, Amazonia received more than 12 inches of rain in a day, covering the towns generator with almost 2 feet of water, making it inoperable.

When the power goes out, the generator works as the towns backstop, allowing its sewer system to continue pumping out water. After the storm, those pumps were down for two days until electricity was restored.

Part of the funds Russell requested from FEMA would have been used to move the generator 4 feet higher, out of the likely path of floodwaters.

As a last resort, the towns council has given permission to tap into its roughly $150,000 reserve funds to elevate the generator. But that would reduce the reserve accounts balance by $45,000, a prospect the mayor prefers to avoid. The local water tower could need repairs in the coming years, he said.

Many residents in the town are elderly and on a fixed income. Federal grants are critical to addressing the towns infrastructure needs, as the mayor knows disasters can occur regardless of the towns thin budget.

We try to keep our nose above water, Russell said. We have a low tax base.
WeWork's Adam Neumann. Jackal Pan/Getty Images; Jacqueline Larma/AP Images; Samantha Lee/Business Insider

When it first started recruiting tenants, WeWork pitched people at Starbucks, a new book reports.

The company's CEO Adam Neumann also authorized heavy discounts that targeted competitors' customers.

Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell broke down WeWork's early sales strategies in their new book.

See more stories on Insider's business page.

In its early days, WeWork employees would often recruit new customers by pitching the idea behind the company to random people at Starbucks, a new book reveals.

Lisa Skye, WeWork's first community manager in charge of recruiting new customers told authors Eliot Brown and Maureen Farrell in their new book that WeWork's early efforts relied heavily on bringing in new members through Craigslist, as well as in-person pitches. Skye said she would often wander through Starbucks in Lower Manhattan and strike up conversations with people working on laptops.

"Hi, do you come in often?" Skye told the authors she would say before launching into a carefully crafted pitch. "Offices are just $650 a month."

While WeWork began in 2010 by spending virtually nothing on marketing and quickly gained popularity, by 2017 it was a major part of WeWork's $1.8 billion in expenses, Brown and Farrell said. WeWork was dishing out cash to lure tenants away from competitors like Regus by calling customers based in its rival company Regus' offices and offering massive discounts.

Former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann was far from subtle when it came to competing against companies like Regus and Industrious in the community office sector.

Read more: WeWork promises it will finally be profitable by the end of 2021. Experts think the projection 'feels a bit aggressive.'

In the summer of 2017, the CEO took Industrious CEO Jamie Hodari for a ride on a private jet. Over Bloody Marys, Neumann threatened to poach customers from Industrious, by offering the tenant free rent for a year, Brown and Farrell wrote.

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"When I push the button, they're going to start reaching out to all your customers, letting them know they can come to WeWork for free," Neumann said, according to Brown and Farrell's report.

If that didn't work, they said Neumann told Hodari he would double down and offer two years free

At the time, Hodari appeared to put little stock in Neumann's threat, but later his staff members heard from tenants that had received discounted offers from WeWork. Brown and Farrell said Neumann employed the same tactic on other competitors as well.

"Neumann was eager to rush these companies, and steal their tenants, before any presented a threat," they wrote.

In the book, "The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion," Brown and Farrell pointed to Neumann's marketing strategies and his eagerness to cut out competitors as one of the underlying reasons behind the company's financial struggles in 2019 went it attempted to go public and the true state of the company's financials was revealed - WeWork was overvalued and Neumann was spending far more than WeWork could bring in.

Shortly after the company's financial status was revealed, Neumann stepped down as CEO and Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham took his place. WeWork did not respond to a request for comment from Insider on its current marketing and sales strategies.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Akinnagbe filed criminal charges against Lola Adesioye after their Brooklyn civil cases against each other had already been settled.

A Brooklyn journalist is facing allegations of forcible touching, sexual abuse and harassment after The Wire star Gbenga Akinnagbe alleged she grabbed his buttocks on two separate occasions.

Lola Adesioyes attorney maintains that the touching was part of a consensual relationship between the two.

Adesioye was arrested and charged on May 26 of this year following the encounters that occurred last spring. However, her attorney, Robert Gottlieb, told The New York Post he possessed three binders filled with what he deemed as flirty text messages between the two, as well as photos of them together.

Akinnagbe and Adesioye met in 2019 at a party.

Actor Gbenga Akinnagbe (left) has accused journalist Lola Adesioye (right) of forcible touching, sexual abuse and harassment, which led to her May arrest and pending court. (Photos by Dominik Bindl/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival and Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

In that first binder are hundreds of text messages back and forth from one another that make it very clear that you have two young people flirting with one another, said Gottlieb. They were talking about snuggling.  They talk about kissing.

The binders, according to the lawyer, were organized in what Gottlieb called three distinct eras. One, he said, contains messages and exchanges between Adesioye and Akinnagbe prior to the first alleged instance of sexual abuse in May 2020. The second contains their dialogues between the two encounters, the second alleged the next month. The last binder has their exchanges since.

Adesioye, whose work has appeared in The Guardian and The New Statesman, also moved into an apartment owned by Akinnagbe amid the two incidents. She also worked for him  after what he would later characterize as sexual abuse.

After this last incident were all the text messages which show a continuation of their relationship, Gottlieb contended, but now its clear she feels hurt and abused by this fellow because while all of this is going on, she moves from her apartment in Manhattan and moves into an apartment that he owns, and she is a neighbor of his now.

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Gbenga Akinnagbe (left) and Bethann Hardison (right) attend the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival Jury Lunch at Tribeca Grill Loft in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

They take trips upstate, and this is after he alleged that she committed the sexual crimes against him, he continued. She was working for him 24/7. She was on call every single second of every day  on weekends, writing press releases for him.

According to Gottlieb, the case escalated when his client fell behind on her rent to the actor and also demanded that he pay her for work, a dispute leading to the two filing civil cases against each other. According to The Post, which broke the story using court filings, Akinnagbe filed criminal charges against Adesioye after their civil cases had already been settled.

On Monday, the Brooklyn trial in the criminal case was rescheduled to begin on August 10 after prosecutors maintained they were not yet fully prepared. Gottlieb said his client is seeking an outright dismissal of the charges, which he called blatantly false.

Akinnagbe is currently appearing this summer in a Shakespeare in the Park adaptation of The Merry Wives of Windsor and will star in season two of Modern Love on Amazon Video. The actor previously starred in HBOs The Wire, where he played drug dealer Chris Partlow, and The Deuce, where he starred as pimp-turned-actor Larry Brown.

Have you subscribed to theGrios Dear Culture podcast? Download our newest episodes now!

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The post The Wire actor Gbenga Akinnagbe accuses journalist of sexual abuse appeared first on TheGrio.
A New York man was found dead Monday with the phrase I touch little girls scribbled across his body.

The unidentified 80-year-old mans body was discovered just after 9:30 a.m. Monday morning inside 256 Corson Ave., according to police. He was found shirtless on his back, had cuts to his forehead, and had two black eyes.

BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TRANSFERS FIRST DETAINEE OUT OF GUANTANAMO BAY

Upon arrival, officers observed an unidentified adult male lying inside the hallway of the residence, unconscious and unresponsive. EMS responded to the location and pronounced the aided male deceased at the scene, a New York Police Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner in a statement.

The victim also had I take dolls in my room for girls age 1-5 written on his stomach and I touch on his right foot, the New York Post reported, citing anonymous sources. He has been arrested two dozen times, though records do not indicate a history of pedophilia.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

The NYPD spokesperson said the investigation is ongoing and noted that the New York City medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

Washington Examiner Videos

Tags: News, New York, Police, murder, Crime, New York City

Original Author: Mike Brest

Original Location: New York man found dead with I touch little girls written on chest
The model policies specifically mandate that school divisions should allow the usage of the name and gender pronouns a student identifies with, as well as allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms that corresponded with their gender identity, without any substantiating evidence.

The Campbell County School system has not adopted the specific model policies drafted by the Virginia Department of Education for treatment of transgender students, Phillips said.

Jessica Overstreet, nurse aide instructor at the Campbell County Technical Center and parent to three children in the school division, expressed her concerns as a parent at Mondays meeting.

Im here to tell you that these transgender policies by VDOE, theyre not right, Overstreet said. Theyre not fair to any student, and theyre not safe, and theyre not acceptable.

Many of the nearly a dozen citizens who spoke to the board at the meeting expressed similar concerns that the model policies, if adopted, would put the safety of students in the county at risk.

Rest assured that the safety of the kids is our highest priority, board member Scott Miller said.
I dont even think we could have done it without that backbone support, said Patrice Ismael-Gantt.

UMFS, a nonprofit family service organization, offers more than 20 programs, including foster care and adoption.

Emily Clark, regional director of the central region for UMFS, said the agency is dedicated to providing resources and assistance not only for LGBTQ foster parents but also for LGBTQ foster children.

They are at higher risk for abuse and neglect, but also for things like substance abuse, depression and a whole host of extra challenges, Clark said, and so having an affirming foster home can be extremely healing.

UMFS works alongside Side by Side, an LGBTQ youth organization, to provide support groups and other resources for LGBTQ foster kids in the agency.

Clark said there are many LGBTQ parents who foster through UMFS and that the organization does its best to make sure that they are feeling really affirmed and supported in their journey through information sessions, training and other programs.

Patrice Ismael-Gantt remembers the moment when she could see that Zane, who is now 12, fully embraced his foster parents.
This means no postcards sent out to remind kids to get their shots, no nudges on social media, no flyers or advertisements, no events at schools, no outreach whatsoever. And not just for COVID, mind you, but for everything  measles, mumps, tetanus, diphtheria, hepatitis, polio.

In a pandemic.

In a state with a less-than-stellar COVID vaccination rate.

At a time when experts are tracking the rise of a deadlier new COVID variant.

It is hard to imagine behavior dumber, more dangerous, more short-sighted and more downright bass-ackward than that exhibited by Tennessee and its lawmakers.

Which is, unfortunately, right on brand for this country in this era. It was in the 2000s that Stephen Colbert coined the term truthiness to describe the right wings secession from objective fact, and some of us began to speak of them as living in an alternate reality. How, we wondered in newspaper columns and speeches, can we have meaningful discourse if we cannot agree on basic facts?
Confessing our national sins

Are we heading for a radical rethinking of national symbols and holidays?

Perhaps the official declaration of Juneteenth as a national holiday is the clearest sign that something new is happening. It has not pushed July 4th aside, but has pulled it into the light of intense scrutiny.

In her regular Sunday column for The News & Advance, Marsha Mercer asks us whether it is time to retire the national anthem.

She points out that Francis Scott Key, who wrote the Star Spangled Banner, was a slaveholder whose views have increasingly come under question. Mercer writes positively about Rep. James Clyburn, Black U.S. Representative from South Carolina who suggests that Lift Every Voice and Sing should become the new national anthem, though she would favor America the Beautiful.
Japan Today - Jul 19

The approval rating for Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's cabinet has fallen to 35.9 percent, the lowest level since he took office last year, a Kyodo News poll showed Sunday, adding to signs of public discontent with the government's determination to hold the Tokyo Olympics despite the coronavirus pandemic.
What does he do? she asked the court. He walks toward it. He doesnt walk away.

Hodgkins, she added, was in the midst of a mob that forced lawmakers to seek shelter and some congressional staffers to hide in fear, locked in offices, as hundreds swept through the building. Those in fear for their lives that day will, she said, bear emotional scars for many years  if not forever.

Under the June plea deal, Hodgkins agreed to plead guilty to the one count and pay $2,000 in restitution to the Treasury Department. In exchange, prosecutors agreed to drop less serious charges, including entering a restricted building and disorderly conduct. They also said they would ask for a reduced sentence for acceptance of responsibility and for saving the government from a costly trial.

In earlier filings, Leduc described his client as an otherwise law-abiding American who, despite living in a poorer part of Tampa, regularly volunteered at a food bank. He noted that Hodgkins is an Eagle Scout.

His actions on Jan. 6 is the story of a man who for just one hour on one day lost his bearings ... who made a fateful decision to follow the crowd, the attorney said.
ATTENTION PHOTOGRAPHERS: Iowa photographers are invited by the Iowa Department Natural Resources to enter your photos in the Americas State Parks 2021 Photo Contest, hosted by the National Association of State Park Directors.

Photos will feature state parks from Iowa and other states, and could be included in calendars and other publications.

Participating photographers can showcase Iowas beauty while winning prizes and earning national recognition for photo entries.

Photos categories include friends and family; camping; scenic and seasons; wildlife and activities. Participants must be aged 18 or older. The deadline is July 31. To enter, visit stateparksphotocontest.org.

HISTORY IS EVERYWHERE: To commemorate Iowas 175th anniversary this year, the State Historical Society of Iowa is creating 300 temporary pop-up displays and 15 permanent cast aluminum historical markers. Both are available, by application at iowaculture.gov/iowa175 for installation in communities across Iowa.

The temporary pop-up displays, part of Iowas People & Places, traces 13,000 years of Iowa history, from the first Native people to call this land home, through the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War, and right on through the 20th century to today.
Earlier Friday, State Sen. Tom Briese of Albion, the chairman of the General Affairs Committee, responded to the influx of new track-and-casino proposals by announcing that he wants to limit the number of casinos in the state.

He said he will introduce legislation in January capping the number of casino licenses that could be approved, although he has not decided what that number should be. He expects to work out that number in consultation with other senators, the public and the industry.

From my perspective, I believe that a limit on the number of such operations is consistent with both the will of the voters and Nebraska values, Briese said, adding that it would be more difficult to regulate a larger number of casinos.

Voters passed a trio of ballot initiatives last year that authorized the casinos. The measures included a constitutional amendment allowing casino gambling at licensed horse race tracks and two laws regulating the casinos and earmarking most of the tax revenue to property tax relief.

At the time of the vote, Nebraska had six race tracks, in Grand Island, Omaha, Lincoln, South Sioux City, Columbus and Hastings, which meant the potential for six casinos.

The five new tracks are proposed for Bellevue, York, Norfolk, North Platte and Scottsbluff.
There are some reports speculating his death, but the information is not clear and Im not abandoning hopes that hes still alive, Moon tweeted. Ill earnestly wait for the news of his safe return with my people to the end.

Kim's successes include world's highest, Mount Everest on the China-Nepal border, and Pakistan's K2, the second-highest, which like Broad Peak is also in the Karakoram Range. Disability never became a hurdle for Kim, Haidri said, and did not stand in the way of his passion.

The other mountaineers, who had in vain tried to find Kim, were safe and were descending amid bad weather. The South Korean Embassy in Islamabad was also organizing a search mission, he added.

We do not want to speculate" on Kim's fate, Haidri told The Associated Press, refusing to comment reports on Twitter that the climber had died.

Ghulam Muhammad, the owner of Blue Sky Expedition tour operating company who arranged the expedition for Kim, also confirmed an unfortunate incident" when the South Korean was returning to base camp.

The organizers of the expedition were in contact with the family of the missing South Korean and any further information will be shared by his family or by the South Korean officials, he added.
This is because time really does fly when you are having fun, she said, and it drags when you are not. No one is exactly sure why, as ideally, it should be just the opposite. But emotion is believed to play a major role.

There also may be an evolutionary reason.

Before we had clocks and watches, and survived in a more difficult world, Ogden said, maybe there was an advantage to having a flexible sense of time. Time slows for people when they believe they are in mortal peril. If you are a caveman and a lion is about to attack you, feeling like you have more time to prepare your response gives you an advantage.

We do know that the older you are, the faster time seems to pass.

Eleven-year-old: Why does it take so long for my birthday to come?

Me: Christmas again, already?

Researchers say this is probably just a function of how many years one has been alive. If you are 5, one year is 20% of your entire life. If you are 20, one year is a mere 5% of your lifetime. As you get older, a year seems to become a much shorter unit.

Plus, said Ogden, Kids are busy all the time. A year seems like forever because they have done so much.
Dear friends,

Ive led a blessed and full life  a big life. Ive been fortunate in more ways than I can count, and Im grateful for the many ways Ive been blessed.

I think of you as a beautiful blessing in my life. The privilege to write to you every week has been an honor. So many of you have written me about my columns, and Ive been grateful for each word. Ive had the privilege to meet some, but for most, our relationship is through this column. That has not hindered the friendship I feel and my gratitude for you.

If you are a regular reader of my column, you know I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Gastric Cancer in mid-February 2020 and given 9-12 months to live. Along with my incredible oncologist, Dr. Pashtoon M. Kasi, at the Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Iowa, we have fought this cancer with everything we have. It has at times been a fun battle with Dr. Kasi at my side, but as Ive written many times before, there are a few diagnosis that a positive fight cannot overcome. It appears my battle with stomach cancer is one of them. So, this is my last letter to you in the form of my column, Positively Speaking.
Its easy to see why the State Game Lodge in South Dakotas Black Hills became the summer home for Presidents Coolidge and Eisenhower  given not only the spectacular scenery but also the bubbling streams that are home to tasty rainbow trout as well as a source of sustenance for the majestic
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The board began working again with experts in design, Davis said. The nearly six-month formal process culminated with a consensus design that will address the urgent needs in the most efficient and fiscal way possible.

The project specifically addresses the following areas:

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 Allows vocational agriculture and an FFA Chapter to be added to the curriculum and activities by adding classroom space.

 Replaces the 1959 kitchen with a new kitchen, serving lines and commons area, which will allow appropriate lunch schedules and increase flexibility of instructional time for students. Current facility requires first lunch period to begin at 10:45 a.m.

 Renovations to include code and safety upgrades such as ADA and Title IX in restrooms and locker rooms.

 Provides a safe and secure visitor entrance where visitors will be met by school personnel during the school day.

 New fire safety measures throughout the entire building.

 Added classroom space for students who have special needs, space for small group instruction and all of the 1959 edition classrooms will be enlarged from their current 525 square foot size to make them the same size as other classrooms.
Its important to keep moving now, he said, so construction could start this fall toward a hoped-for fall 2023 completion. Estimated costs have risen from $236 million a year ago to $325 million now, he added.

Weve got to keep everybody working toward the goal so we can break ground this fall, he said. If we miss the fall on breaking ground, that puts us back about six months.

Committee members called for forgivable loans instead, saying thats been their usual practice in managing QGFs reserved sales-tax fund.

The successful motions said the QGF and NorthWestern loans  if the council approves them  would be forgiven once Sustainable Beefs eventual payroll reaches $20 million.

Committee member Brock Wurl won agreement to link the loans initial payout to council approval of the projects sale-and-TIF redevelopment plan and require Sustainable Beef to provide a letter of credit.

City leaders dont want to be out there having a million dollars just lost because the project didnt go through for whatever reason, Wurl said.

As Briggs spoke, he confirmed that Sustainable Beef had been in conversations with North Platte leaders around the time they formally organized as a company.
The bill matches the first $2.5 million in locally secured rail-park dollars at $2.50 for every $1. The state would provide $5 for every $1 secured locally beyond $2.5 million.

Investments by tenants also can count toward the local match, Person said. Eight possible tenants have shown interest so far, with very serious interest from firms that process sunflowers and corn, he said.

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Though the Legislature capped initial statewide funds for rail parks at $50 million, Person added, LB 40 says an individual project can receive up to $30 million in state funds overall.

When the state opens applications in late August, were trying to be as prepared as possible to apply quickly, he told the QGF committee.

He suggested, and committee members agreed, to require an annual review should the council approve the 10-year rail-park commitment.

Thats important, said committee member Pat Keenan, because this is the first time weve ever been asked to provide money we dont have in the bank in QGFs 20-year history.

Person said the reserved sales-tax fund has enough money  with still more coming  to get started, even with decisions made earlier Monday and during the spring.
EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans agreed.

What weve seen last week was a small reminder of the fact that the cost in human lives, but also material costs of nonaction are way, way higher than the cost of acting, he said.

Humanity will be confronted with very erratic weather patterns," he said, citing 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in northwestern Canada and 40 degrees (122 F) in Siberia and central Europe.

"The floods, droughts, agricultures dealing with wildfires.  that is a consequence of the climate crisis," he said.

Timmermans is the chief architect of the proposals to spend billions and force industry into drastic reforms to help cut the EUs emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% this decade.

In his speech, King Philippe noted that the floods came on top of the suffering in the coronavirus pandemic.

In Germany, officials voiced concern that the disaster could lead to new infections, which are beginning to rise from very low levels. The health ministry in Rhineland-Palatinate state said a special vaccination bus was being sent to the devastated Ahr valley to enable residents to get shots and COVID-19 tests.
As we emerge from the pandemic and the economy begins to rebound, Im focused on ensuring the industries that provide Nebraska jobs can continue to grow and thrive.

The ethanol industry is one of those. Nationwide, it provides tens of thousands of Americans with good-paying jobs, and it indirectly supports at least 200,000 more. In Nebraska alone, the 25 ethanol plants spread across our state are able to produce more than two billion gallons a year, making us the second-largest producer of this renewable fuel.

Higher ethanol blends are also far better for the environment than traditional gasoline. Study after study has shown that the more ethanol you blend into your gas, the cleaner it burns. Any plan to reduce emissions has to make ethanol part of the solution.

But last month, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit struck down an Environmental Protection Agency rule that allowed E15  fuel that is 15% ethanol  to be sold year-round. Without this rule, E15 can only be sold from September to May in most areas of the country, leaving consumers with fewer choices during the busy summer months.

In their decision, the D.C. Circuit said that Congress didnt intend for the EPA to apply this rule to E15. I recently introduced a bill to make it clear that we do.
Barcelona and Paris, 20 July 2021 - Adevinta Ventures, the investment arm of Adevinta, today announced its investment in Lovys, an all-in-one B2C digital subscription-based insurance provider in Europe. This is Adevinta Ventures first investment in France, in the Fintech and Insurtech sector.





Adevinta Ventures, alongside Japanese funds MS&AD Ventures, join existing investors Heartcore, NewAlpha, Raise Ventures, and Lovyss historical investors Maif Avenir, Portugal Ventures, Plug&Play, TechStars, and BpiFrance. The startup, with more than 90 employees, recorded growth of 70% in daily sales in the first quarter of 2021. The additional funding will support Lovys's partnerships with reinsurers and distributors in key markets in France, Spain and Portugal. The company recently launched its international expansion in Spain and Portugal. Lovys will also continue to fine-tune its product offer, by proposing new features such as loan insurance, and to improve its current insurance offerings, particularly in cars and pets. The startup aims to reach 100,000 policyholders across Europe by December 2021.



Founded in 2017 by Joao Cardoso, Lovys provides, on a single digital platform, a complete and simplified insurance protection (housing, car, pets, smartphone and mortgage insurance).

Jordi Iserte, Investment Director at Adevinta Ventures, said: "Our investment demonstrates the confidence we place in Lovys. We believe they can consolidate their leading European insurtech digital position to become a key challenge. Their European and inclusive company culture greatly contributes to Lovyss rapid growth and also reflects the values shared by Adevinta.



Joao Cardoso, Lovys founder and CEO, commented: Our Series A already allowed us to accelerate our development with 25 recruitments, to launch a new product, and to settle in Spain and Portugal. The vote of confidence we have received from Adevinta Ventures and MS&AD Ventures, two major funds, confirms that Lovys addresses a major challenge faced by policyholders in Europe. Thanks to these additional funds, our objective is to become one of Europes digital insurance leaders within just a few years, by developing new products and expanding Lovyss presence in other European countries.



MS&AD Ventures focuses on the future of insurance and building a sustainable future through technology innovation. After supporting leading American Insurtech companies like Hippo and Next Insurance, we believe Lovys is extremely well positioned to be a dominant player across all of Europe, said Jon Soberg, Managing Partner of MS&AD Ventures.



-end-



Notes to editors

Media contacts

Melodie Laroche

Corporate Communications

T: +33 (0) 6 84 30 52 76

melodie.laroche@adevinta.com



About Adevinta Ventures

Adevinta Ventures is the investment arm of Adevinta, a global online classifieds specialist operating leading digital marketplaces in 16 countries. Adevinta Ventures invests in fast-growing European startups with the potential to shape the future of marketplaces, (in Series A and Series B). Leveraging Adevinta's top brand positions (e.g. leboncoin, Fotocasa, Subito, Willhaben), Adevinta Ventures adds strong value as a long-term partner to portfolio companies. Current portfolio and key investment areas include proptech (Kodit, Flatfair), future of work (Medwing), mobility (PaulCamper, Bipi) and Fintech. Find out more at Adevinta.com/ventures.



About MS&AD Ventures MS&AD Ventures is the venture arm of MS&AD Group Holdings, the largest insurance conglomerate in Asia and the 8th largest in the world. MS&AD does business across 47 countries and regions worldwide. MS&AD Ventures has a mission to contribute to a vibrant society and help secure a sound future for our world by investing in technology companies that create innovative business models, products and services that help people live better lives.



About Lovys

Created in 2017 by Joao Cardoso, Lovys is the first 100% digital neo-insurance company that offers tailor-made insurance products that meet the needs of new generations and accompany them at every stage of their lives. Lovys offers an all-in-one monthly subscription that allows you to subscribe simply and separately to a whole range of tailor-made insurances: home, smartphone, car, pets, and mortgage insurance. lovys.com





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Big cities are fast-paced and fun, and their museums and historical sites are world-famous. But if youre looking to explore history in a way thats more personal and slower-paced, countless small towns across the country are ready and waiting to welcome you. And most small towns are warm, family friendly, and pet friendly, so your furkid will be welcome, too!

We searched through a number of small towns, and came up with a list of our five favorite places that will help you connect with the past - and your pet.

1. Wake Forest, NC

Located just north of Raleigh, Wake Forest has it all - warm, welcoming residents, natural beauty, and a cosmopolitan vibe. Unofficially founded in 1832, it also boasts a long history. Like most Southern small towns, Wake Forest has its earliest roots in agriculture. But it actually started off as a Victorian-era college town, and its ties to education have endured.

Today, downtown Wake Forest offers a charming assortment of restaurants and small businesses that welcome four-legged patrons! Bring your favorite furkid along to venues like Wake Forest Coffee Company, the Norse Brewing Company, and Art Walk Wake Forest.


Thank you for Reading! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content.
Compilation/summary thread of what's been going on with Kris Wu and the allegations against him by Du Meizhu, as well as reactions from Chinese netizens.



(I'll keep updating as new developments occur.)  c-ent translations (@centnews1) July 18, 2021

Ex-SNH48 member Zhang Dansan exposes her conversations with #WuYifan, in which he asks her questions like whether she had been in a physical relationship with, and proclaiming that a girl's first time is very important.



We wonder if he specifically seeks out virgins.#KrisWu pic.twitter.com/Elh8xrRwop   (@chiguajiejie) July 19, 2021

[trending] More girls share screenshots of alleged chats with #KrisWu or his team - , who says his staff wanted her to meet him,  (who had posted before, now adding pics of PR cash transfers), former SNH48 member Yu Jiayi, user Anastasia on Xiaohongshu pic.twitter.com/3BX9E2Zq6E  cdrama tweets (@dramapotatoe) July 19, 2021

3 more share close calls in accts of alleged predatory behavior w/ #KrisWu & his team - 1 who was reached out to shoot a promo vid & meet him at a party, another a fan, the 3rd who met his agent after they reached out & was turned down for an opp because she was already of age https://t.co/iVktAq4Opc pic.twitter.com/lC9Iz9rAf3  cdrama tweets (@dramapotatoe) July 19, 2021

[trending] Amidst multiple allegations against #KrisWu, the topic The law is the lowest standard of ethics trends on Weibo as netizens discuss how law is the basis for maintaining morality but is not morality itself and humans shouldnt settle for the lowest standard pic.twitter.com/pgeonDmQR3  cdrama tweets (@dramapotatoe) July 19, 2021

when he had sex, he said that he hoped girls would bear it because his penis was big.Chinese netizens said that Kris Wu's penis is as thin as a needle, and having sex with him is doing acupunctureA means of treating diseases with needles in traditional Chinese medicine   (@cathy73199368) July 19, 2021

Follow up to this post which links more posts, more women have come forward with accusations against Kris wu. I have given the link to the whole thread, please go through if you want more details, I will try to summarize below:TW: sexual assault, preying on underage girls1. Du Meizhu revealed that the first time they had sex, she wanted to leave, but stayed back because his agent threatened her career. But she was plied with alcohol and when she woke up, she was in his bed. He never uses protection.2. Zhang Dansan (ex SNH48), revealed her past conversations with Kris Wu, where he asks her intimate questions and is clearly seeking out virgins. He tells her how first time is important for a girl, and how he likes "obedient" girls. He first made contact with her in August 20203. Beijing Film Academy student Wei Yuxin, also shares screenshots of his money transfers to her, and conversations where he called her "obedient"4. Zhi Yi'an shares screenshots of conversations with Kris Wu's staff regarding an "audition". She mentioned she was born in 1999, his staff said 2000-2002 was preferable, but it was ok5. Weibo user  says Kris Wu's staff invited her & her friend to join rookie label. On getting to know they were adults, the staff backed out, as they preferred younger girls, "who were easier to train"6. Till now 14 brand have terminated contracts with Kris Wu, including Tencent (yeah his career in China is over), except LV, Bvlgari and L'oreal, 3 French brands. These 3 brands are getting a lot of backlash from cnetz for just suspending their contracts and not terminating. One especially funny comment "LV limited edition prison uniforms for spring, summer, fall, and winter"7. All the girls are getting a lot of support from cnetz on weibo, and there have been some funny quips about Kris wu going around on weibo8. Kris wu's team has denied all allegations and said they will be taking legal action against Du Meizhu, and have already filed a police report against her. Kris Wu said if the allegations are true, he will go to jail himself. (DIAF Kris)Update 1: dramapotatoe has compiled and will keep compiling what's going on with the case. So in case anyone is confused, this link gives a chronological update about every thing that has happened till nowUpdate 2: All brands have terminated their contracts with him including LV, Bvlgari and L'oreal
aaah how exciting!!



im so thrilled for movies to be back. made me appreciate movie theaters 100x more <3

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Yeah though I have enjoyed the instant movie releases on HBO Max, it has made me miss the theaters. Even though I'm also like movies like Wonder Woman 1984 probably deserved its straight to stream experience for the plot alone, but the visuals would've been great on the big screen!





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lmaoo i havent even seen wonder woman and i bet if we lived in a world w/o covid then i wouldve seen it in theaters!



thats the one thing i dont miss - paying those ridic movie ticket prices to see a movie that isnt even that good lol

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Oh real talk I was READY to see it in the theaters! But I was excited when it streamed on hbomax! THEN I saw the movie and kept thinking "....it deserves the straight to stream format" because I would've been saying "OMG what a waste of money and gas money!! I got up for this?!!" had I seen it in theaters.



In a way streaming really can be a gauge as to what films deserve the theater experience and which ones are better off watching at home.

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2 days after my bday and I get a new Naomi movie! I hope its not bad lol 2 days after my bday and I get a new Naomi movie! I hope its not bad lol

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Jo Koys cute green eyed ass. 

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Is he funny now? I remember him being horribly unfunny during the Chelsea Lately days and have not followed him even a little.



Edited at 2021-07-20 11:52 pm (UTC)

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I quite honestly just think hes charming and Id definitely do dirty things to him in my car lol. I dont think Ive really paid attention to him on a comedy level. Ive just watched interviews. I usually only watch women comedians when I wanna laugh. Men arent funny 

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i think ch makes everyone unfunny

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I love when he talks about his Mom.



"Do I know where your keys are, Joe?" 

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What is this in reference to? Lol

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It was in one of his stand up comedy specials. I don't remember which one unfortunately. He talks about how his Mom is basically not here for babying him and expects him to keep track of his own shit. 

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his best material is when he talks about his mom tbh

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter sounds cool.

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The Last Voyage of The Demeter

ooo loving this initial premise. hope it's good

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The Last Voyage of The Demeter on name alone sounds awesome!

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Omgggg Anthony Ramos and Corey Hawkins movies?? We love to see it!! The Last Voyage of the Demeter sounds super cool. Also very here for a movie about the Filipino American experience!

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pls tell me there's nothing wrong with jo koy bc he always makes me laugh

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I was just checking Naomi's IMDB the other day to see what she's done since Charlie's Angels. Apparently, she was on a podcast called Soft Voice. That's all well and good, but I'd like for her to be in more movies.

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You and me both!!

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The Last Voyage of the Demeter has me intrigued. Now I want to go watch Bram Stoker's Dracula. 

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Its time for Bitcoin miners to get serious about downsizing their carbon footprint. The worldwide cryptocurrency production sector is eating up an almost unfathomable amount of energy -- as much as entire nations. As of now, Bitcoin mining ranks between Colombia (a country of 50 million people) and Bangladesh (population 163 million) in terms of energy consumption. All told, Bitcoin networks account for an incredible 0.32% of the worlds energy consumption and a whopping 0.13% of global annual total carbon dioxide emissions. The process of mining Bitcoin, while virtual, requires an enormous amount of resources because of the considerable computing power necessary to carry out the extremely complex calculations to solve the proof-of-work problems that make up the blockchain, the digital ledger that Bitcoin is built upon. Bitcoin is currently being singled out for its massive energy consumption over other cryptocurrencies, not only because it is more than twice the size of the next-most traded cryptocurrency, but because Bitcoins especially complex SHA-256 algorithm, which makes Bitcoin one of the most secure cryptocurrencies out there, also makes it one of the most energy-hungry.

Bitcoin has garnered huge amounts of negative press in recent months for its considerable and growing fossil footprint. Bill Gates slammed the cryptocurrency for being fundamentally incompatible with the global fight against climate change in an April interview with the New York Times. Even Elon Musk, who had been the currencys biggest and most high-profile advocate, legitimizing the crypto-asset in the public eye when Tesla purchased $1.5 billion of Bitcoin and announced that the electric car company would begin accepting payments in Bitcoin, has soured on the crypto-currency, citing environmental concerns. Back in June the Tesla CEO announced that the company would once again begin accepting Bitcoin as a valid form of payment once the cryptocurrency is mined using roughly half clean energy.

Now that the pressure is on, many Bitcoin miners are indeed looking for new and less emissions-intensive ways to provide the prodigious amount of power necessary to keep their operations going. While a decent portion of Bitcoins energy consumption -- an estimated 39% -- is met with supply from renewable energy sources, most notably hydropower, miners are going to have to do better than that to avoid global scrutiny.

Related: Oil Prices Crash After OPEC+ Reaches Deal To Ease Cuts

Some Bitcoin miners have responded by setting up shop immediately next to shale oil operations and siphoning off the natural gas that would otherwise be wasted and vented into the atmosphere as a waste product of oil extraction. Not only is this form of energy production virtually free, it also keeps harmful greenhouse gases from venting straight into the air. It is, however, still burning fossil fuels at the end of the day, and while natural gas is not as heavily polluting as oil or coal, its continued use nevertheless stands as a direct threat to combating climate change, according to a UN report.

So what completely carbon-free options are viable for meeting the cryptocurrencys vast energy needs? The answer may very well lie in nuclear energy. Regions throughout the United States are currently expanding their nuclear power capabilities while a host of bitcoin mining firms turn to zero-emissions energy as their new power source. Energy Harbor and Standard Power, for example, are partnering up to provide nuclear power to a new bitcoin mining center in Coshocton, Ohio in what has been branded as a groundbreaking climate-friendly agreement, are partnering to provide nuclear power to a new bitcoin mining center in Coshocton. Meanwhile, Compass Mining has struck a 20-year agreement with Okla, a California-based advanced fission company, which will directly power the mining operation.

While its unlikely that nuclear power will take over as the primary fuel source for bitcoin miners everywhere, bringing more forms of decarbonized energy production into the crypto playing field is good news for all of us. Cryptocurrency isnt going away any time soon, but neither is global warming. The expansion of this first wave of mainstream crypto assets will likely set the tone for a long time to come, and its better for all of us if that trajectory is based on a decarbonization mentality.

By Haley Zaremba for Oilprice.com

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Saudi Arabia remained Chinas single largest crude oil supplier in June, ahead of Russia, although Saudi shipments to the worlds top oil importer fell by 19 percent last month amid lower overall imports, according to official Chinese customs data cited by Reuters.

In June 2021, China imported 1.75 million barrels per day (bpd) of Saudi crude oil, Chinas General Administration of Customs said on Tuesday. This volume was higher than the 1.62 million bpd crude oil imports from Russia, keeping the Kingdom ahead of Russia as Chinas top oil supplier for an eight month running, according to the data quoted by Reuters.

The customs data in China showed local refiners didnt import any crude from either Iran or Venezuela, the two OPEC members under U.S. sanctions that restrict their oil exports.

Unofficially, however, China continues to import oil from Iran, often disguised as coming from other countries, including from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), according to previous Reuters reports.

China has put the brakes on overall crude oil imports in recent months, due to rising oil prices and a government crackdown on operations of some independent refiners.

Chinas crude oil imports fell to around 9.77 million bpd in June, down by 2 percent on May and the lowest monthly level since the start of the year, customs data cited by Reuters showed last week.

Over the first half of the year, China imported 260.66 million tons of crude, or 10.51 million bpd per Reuters estimates. This was a 3 percent drop compared to the first half of 2020. The first-half figure was boosted by increased imports by independent refiners.

Since the first quarter, however, Beijing has begun cracking down on the teapots, as production of fuels both at independent refiners and state-owned majors was rising faster than demand, undermining refining margins and creating a glut.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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The recent OPEC+ meeting ended with an agreement that would gradually increase the cartels monthly production until in late 2022 all of the 9.7 mm BOPD that had originally been withheld from the market, was restored. There was already an agreement in place through December of 2021, but the Kingdom of Saudi Arabias, (KSA) desire to extend it to the end of next year was a bone of contention with the United Arab Emirates, (UAE). This agreement was not reached easily and required some negotiation and compromise to achieve. It has been widely reported that the crux of the disagreement between KSA and the UAE, was the latters desire for a higher output ceiling from which its share of curtailment would be calculated. This, while certainly true, is not the only factor in the new assertiveness demonstrated by the UAE in OPEC affairs.

There is a dichotomy of perspective about the peak for oil that has developed between the KSA and the UAE. The Saudis five year plan to diversify their revenues away from oil has not been as successful as initially hoped, and they now view oil production as underpinning their economy for decades to come. They also view the transition to renewables as having a multi-decade arc that will keep demand for oil and derivatives relatively high over this period. The new, higher price regime in or near the $70s is a breath of fresh air for their economy.

The UAE have had more success in attracting foreign investment, and on a parallel track, have energized their oil sector with a $122 bn investment plan, to dramatically increase production in the near term. Their view on the energy transition is that it will have a much shorter arc that could lead to substantial reserves being stranded. A very undesirable outcome for this tiny middle-Eastern nation, and makes them want to up production regardless of the impact on prices. This the underlying fear behind their insistence on a higher baseline for allocating their share of OPEC+ production. This led to the impasse that resulted in the first meeting ending abruptly with no statement forthcoming, as per usual.

This divergence in viewpoint has caused the UAE to purposefully step out of the shadow of the Saudis in discusses revolving around output. As we will learn, there was considerably more involved between these two key OPEC members than just raising the output levels. In this article we will take a deeper look at the regional tug of war that has developed for shaping the cartels destiny. A tug of war that has global implications on oil availability and price. First we will take a quick look at these competing philosophies as regards peak oil.

The Saudi Vision 2030 plan

The Saudi Vision 2030 plan was rolled out in 2016, with considerable fanfare when Mohammed bin Salman, (MBS) was named Crown Prince, becoming the defacto heir to the throne. The 2030 plan included a series of mega-projects including a futuristic city called Neom, that was intended to dramatically lessen the kingdoms reliance on oil exports for revenue by 2030.

This year, the five-year point since its implementation, the 2030 plan has under-performed its billing with less than half the planned revenue forecast from non-oil sources being achieved. Masked in the details is the fact that much of the actual increase has come from new taxes and not new outside investment, as noted in the linked article.

Some of this may be associated with some missteps by the Crown Prince along the way. The Kashoggi killing, the privatization of Aramco failing to draw much external interest, a $200 bn solar farm that failed to draw enough support to get off the drawing board, and an attempt to launch a nuclear power project have all contributed to a sense of a lack of direction in the investment community.

With many internal problems associated with a young population that lacks preparation for modern employment, an economy that shrank 3% from the impact of the pandemic, and weaker growth internally from high taxes and subsidy cuts, KSA has struggled to balance its books. With external cash inflow insufficient to meet its economic needs the Kingdom has renewed its commitment to a heavier reliance on oil for longer into the future than it thought would be necessary just a few years ago. An energy consultant located in Dubai was quoted in the linked article as saying-

In the past five years, Saudi Arabia has made little progress in alleviating its reliance on oil-export revenues. It is probably going to take over 30 years to move away from oil dependency.

The UAE 5-year plan by contrast

The UAEs plan doesnt have an iconic name as does KSAs, but the country has met with more success on a number fronts on a relative basis. Its privatization of certain aspects of ADNOC properties, selling stakes in ADNOC subsidiaries drew $25 bn of foreign capital into the country without the trauma of actually going through an IPO process for the holding company. Something that was painful for the Kingdom. The UAE is now producing power from a 400+ MW plant in Dubai, and even in the nuclear power area the Emirates have outstripped their larger neighbor with a nuclear generating plant thats come online just this year.

Related: Everything You Need To Know About OPECs New Agreement



The UAE has even gone a step further and successfully introduced a new futures contract on their production, known as the Murban. This is meant to facilitate their trading and optimize pricing and volumes within the production limits set by OPEC.

The Emirates are also looking to move higher in the petroleum value chain with a $45 bn expansion of the Ruwais industrial complex. In this effort the countrys refining capacity will be doubled and a huge petrochemical complex will be built. Euro major oil companies, BP, (NYSE:BP), TotalEnergies, NYSE: TTE), and ENI, NYSE:E) are partners in this enterprise, and hold Production Sharing Agreements-PSAs, for upstream development in the country.

The major piece of this initiative was not launched until November of last year when it was announced that the country would begin a $122 bn expansion of ADNOCs oil output with a goal of raising production to 5 mm BOPD. Which brings us back to the current state of affairs and competing philosophies regarding how best to extract the maximum value from their petroleum reserves. But, first lets look at some of the regional power struggles that contribute to the tension between the two countries.

Behind the scenes

The Middle East seems an eternal hotbed of conflict of one type or another. Many factors play into this and we will focus on the competition for ascendancy in the region between KSA and the UAE.

The Saudi/Iran proxy war in Yemen has been in and out of the news in recent years, but it drags on year after year. A key supporter of KSA in the effort to subdue the Houthi rebels has been the UAE. In 2019 it announced it would withdraw its troops from the conflict. A blow to Saudis attempt to call the war effort a regional coalition.

The easing of tensions between the UAE and Israel in a U.S. brokered peace deal have deepened the mistrust between these two states as well. Saudi remains deeply divided about Israel because of the Palestinian question, and looks to regional neighbors for support for their cause.

Then in another regional power shift, KSA buried the hatchet with Qatar leaving the UAE out in the cold, and forced go along. The two countries for years had engaged a blockade of Qatar, until a U.S. brokered peace agreement led to a truce early this year in the last administration.

With the regional back and forth taking place on other fronts, it was clear that the UAE had to at least rattle the cage of OPEC+ to protect its interests.

What will the impact be on oil supplies?

From the announcement that came out of Sundays meeting, it appears that the UAE got most of what they were seeking in terms of increasing their production baseline. Other countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait, and Iraq also saw their baseline quotas raised, so this was a shared victory.

With the production management agreement extended through December of 2022, Saudi also got a key win for their concerns about too much oil driving prices down. On the horizon also is the potential return of about 1.5 mm BOPD from Iran once sanctions are lifted. The statement included language about the cartel reviewing this policy in the event this crude lands in the market.

Prices for many grades of crude fell on the announcement of 400K barrels being returned to the market, with August contract for WTI dipping below $70 in Mondays futures for the first time since early June. As I noted in an earlier OilPrice article when this outcome for OPEC+ was on the horizon, the global market can easily absorb this crude, assuming the recovery from Covid-19 continues. I think it will. The EIA projects that U.S. YE 2022 production will be ~12.2 mm BOPD. This breaks down to 1.8 mm BOPD from the GoM, and ~400K BOPD from Alaska, thus requiring shale production at ~10 mm BOPD. A boost of 2.2 mm BOPD from todays rate of ~7.8 mm BOPD, and taking it far beyond the highest level ever produced in the shale patch.

I think expecting this variable to perform at the EIAs assumed level is unrealistic. This agency has some rather simplistic assumptions used in making these estimates that mainly are backward looking and assigning rig numbers with crude production. This doesnt take into account the fact that DUC-Drilled but UnCompleted wells withdrawal have been largely responsible for controlling the rate of decline this year in the face of reduced activity from prior years.

In March of 2020, shale production peaked at 9.3 mm BOPD on the strength of a peak 1,100 Rigs in the prior 15 months, and 420 active frac spreads.

Data-EIA/PrimaryVision

As we know the service and supply industry has been turned on its head the last three years, and is much smaller in terms of deployable rigs and pumps. Personnel have also been eliminated at a rate never before seen in an industry known for wide swings in activity. In our view these reductions along with the stated intent by the industry to repair balance sheets and reward investors with stock buybacks and improved dividend payouts, augurs against a return to 2019 in terms of activity.

The next variable is the rapid spread of the Delta Covid variant. This, in my view, is more a matter of perception than a sea change in the general direction of the recovery. While more transmissible than the original strain, it seems to result in a milder infection, and the vaccines are near 97% effective in preventing infection. And, of course the good news that seldom gets reported is the infection itself in the unvaccinated will eventually bring about the herd immunity among the population that will render Covid to essentially the same status as the flu. Some you live with and doesnt cause a wide spread panic.

Your takeaway

The upshot of all of these factors-the OPEC+ agreement, production rates and North American shale activity levels, is that despite fluctuations due to market driven changes in sentiment, the price trend for oil will be higher.

These changes in sentiment will be transitory in my view, creating opportunities to add to positions in key companies likely to benefit from these higher prices. Companies like Halliburton, (NYSE: HAL), Schlumberger, NYSE:SLB), Devon Energy, (NYSE: DVN), Occidental, (NYSE: OXY), ConocoPhillips, (NYSE:COP), Pioneer Exploration, (NYSE:PXD) are poised to report a resoundingly improved QoQ performance from Q-1, that will drive their stock prices higher.

Investors who believe that the economic recovery that began last year with the announcement of the effectiveness of the vaccines, will continue should view the current ~20% average sell-off in the last couple of weeks as a buying opportunity.

By David Messler for Oilprice.com



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It seems that Saudi Arabia and the UAE could not have picked a worse time to resolve their differences, with the OPEC+ announcement coming just as Covid cases climbed and bearish sentiment returned to markets.

Chart of the Week

- ROPEC+ countries have agreed on a deal to boost collective output by 400kbpd per month until year-end 2022, having aligned on new production baselines to become effective from May 2022 onwards.

- Spare production capacity, however, has become something of a rarity amongst OPEC+ countries with only Saudi Arabia, Russia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait wielding genuine prospects of bringing in incremental production, the rest is producing as much as it can.

- Whilst on the level of official rhetorics OPEC+ has indicated it would phase out the production curtailments by the end of 2022, rare are those who believe this would happen, primarily owing to a risk of oversupplying a market that even under the most optimistic scenarios would not be able to accommodate 3.8mbpd of additional crude.

Market Movers

- According to media reports, Chevron (NYSE:CVX) has failed to meet carbon-sequestering government targets on its $54 billion Gorgon LNG project. Gorgons CCS facility, a precondition for the LNG terminal to operate, was assumed to pump CO2 more than 2km underground. Instead of the promised 80% of all emissions, the Chevron-operated project captured only 30% of total CO2 generated over the past five years, writes Bloomberg, raising fears on the readiness of CCS technologies globally.

- Australias Oil Search (ASX:OSH), a Papua New Guinea-focused oil firm, rejected a $16.1 billion merger proposal from Santos (ASX:STO) that could have seen the creation of a national oil and gas champion. Amidst questionable behavior from Oil Search top officials, Santos is expected to produce a revised offer. Oil Search stocks surged 6% on Tuesday.

- Italys ENI (NYSE:E) has arguably been one of the worst-performing major oil stocks this week, falling 4% d-o-d on Monday and continuing its descent the next day on fears of another COVID wave being just around the corner.

Tuesday, July 20, 2021

It seems that the news of Saudi Arabia and the UAE ironing out their OPEC+ policy differences could not have come at a worse time for oil markets. The news came against the background of increasing COVID-19 cases globally, triggering concerns that OPEC+ will be bringing production back just at a time when demand would be subdued again. Under the deal, the UAE would see its production baseline hiked by 0.5 mbpd from May 2022 onwards, in return for joining the combined effort to bring back 2mbpd of crude by the end of 2021.

Goldman Sachs Sees Upside to Oil Prices. US investment bank Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) stated the extension of the OPEC+ deal supports its view on oil prices and present a modest upside to its $80 per barrel summer Brent forecast. Whilst oil prices took a walloping Monday, Goldman did issue a caveat that upcoming weeks should see tangible gyration due to risks from rising Delta variant headwinds.

European Union Goes All Out on Fit for 55. Europes largest industrial conglomerates have given the EUs ambitious Fit for 55 emissions-curbing package a rather cold shoulder as Brussels seeks to include shipping and aviation in Europes ETS trading scheme, increase taxation on energy and simultaneously roll out renewable energy projects. The proposals put forward by the European Commission still need to be approved by the European Parliament and EU member states, implying that much of the initial zeal might be mitigated by mid-2022. Related: Oil Prices Crash After OPEC+ Reaches Deal To Ease Cuts

Chinese Coal Plants Ordered to Build up Stocks. Chinas state development agency, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), has ordered all coal power plants to build mandatory 7-day inventories as Chinese coal consumption readings hit all-time highs. According to Reuters, average daily consumption surpassed 2.2 million tons already, sending total inventories to their lowest on record despite the governments 10 million ton strategic reserve release.

Oil Majors Go Big on Scottish Wind Auction. Scotlands first seabed leasing off in more than a decade has seen a flurry of oil and gas majors wrestle for floating offshore wind acreage on offer in Europes windiest region. Whilst tendering results will only become known in early 2022, it is certainly a noteworthy feat that bids were presented by such giants as Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE:RDS.A), Engie (EPA:ENGI), ENI (NYSE:E), TotalEnergies (NYSE:TTE), BP (NYSE:BP), and Equinor (NYSE:EQNR).

Copper Prices Fall on Chinas Reserve Release. Copper prices fell to a four-week low as slowing demand in China, combined with the governments release of 20 000 tons of strategic stocks designated to depress prices, have weighed on the previous months metals rally. LME benchmark prices dropped to just above $9200 per metric ton, further weakened by the US dollar strengthening.

Germany and US Close to Nord Stream-2 Entente. Washington and Berlin are close to reaching a long-awaited agreement on Gazproms (OTCMKTS:OGZPY) Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Reuters reports. Under the new deal, the US would scrap sanctions in return for increased investment into Ukraines energy transformation and energy security as the new gas conduit inevitably reduces its transit revenues.

Argentina Eases Biodiesel Requirements. Global soy oil prices are expected to decrease as Argentina, the worlds No.1 soy oil producer, has relaxed biodieselrequirements blended into common diesel fuel. The previous 10% limit was eased to 5% in a bid to generate more hard currency amidst a COVID-triggered slump in economic activity, leaving Argentinian producers like Glencore (LSE:GLEN) or Louis Dreyfus with more volumes to export. Related: OPEC Could Double Its Control Over Oil Market

First Iranian Cargo from Jask to Load This Week. Iranian officials stated that the first cargo to avoid Strait of Hormuz exposure, loading from the newly commissioned terminal at Jask will be loading anytime soon for a departure at some point during this week. Currently, the terminals handling capacity is some 300,000 barrels per day, with crude coming in from the West Karun oil fields. Most Iranian exports, impossible as they are to track and locate, end up with Chinese buyers.

Japan Central Bank to Finance Energy Transition. Japans Central Bank will provide interest-free long-term loans to companies that act towards the countrys 2050 decarbonization target. The BoJ will also buy foreign governments green bonds using its foreign reserves to increase its exposure to international non-polluting markets.

Greenland Gives Up on its Oil Bounty. Greenland officially rejected all plans for future oil exploration, despite wielding a completely untapped reserve bounty of some 18 billion barrels. Whilst oil revenues could have been used to boost Greenlands claim for independence, the potential environmental risks tipped the balance. Copper and gold exploration, however, continues unabated.

Ethiopia Starts Monster Hydro Dam. Ethiopia has completed the second-year filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), the largest hydro object in Africa the capacity of which amounts to 6500MW. Sudan and Egypt continue to object to GERD operating, expressing fears over the dams safety and potential consequences for their own hydropower systems.

By Josh Owens for Oilprice.com

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Saudi Aramco has suffered a data breach in which cyber attackers have stolen 1 terabyte of proprietary data of Saudi Arabias oil giant and are selling it on the dark web, BleepingComputer reported this week.

The oil giant confirmed to BleepingComputer that the data breach, which the hackers say was made last year, has had no impact on Saudi Aramcos operations. The Kingdoms state oil firm also said that the data breach was at third-party contractors, not on Aramcos systems.

Aramco recently became aware of the indirect release of a limited amount of company data which was held by third party contractors, the Saudi oil giant told BleepingComputer.

We confirm that the release of data has no impact on our operations, and the company continues to maintain a robust cybersecurity posture, Aramco told BleepingComputer via a spokesperson.

The threat group, identified as ZeroX, is offering for sale on the darknet the data it claims to have gained by hacking Aramcos network and its servers at some point last year.

ZeroX and Aramco both told BleepingComputer this data breach was not ransomware or any other kind of an extortion attack.

The data up for sale at a starting negotiable price of $5 million includes documents pertaining to Saudi Aramco refineries, personal information about more than 14,000 employees, project specifications for systems, pricing sheets and internal analyses, as well as security-related information including IP addresses, Wi-Fi access points, and IoT devices, ZeroX told BleepingComputer.

The group claims it has been negotiating the sale of the data with five potentially interested buyers, ZeroX told BleepingComputer.

Saudi Aramco has been the victim of cybercrimes in the past, the most notorious being the 2012 Shamoon malware that was used in a crippling attack that wiped out every computer at the Saudi oil firm. In 2018, a variant of the Shamoon malware resurfaced, cybersecurity experts warned at the time.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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A 23-year-old Omaha man accused of fatally shooting his father was on probation for stabbing his stepfather in Florida years earlier.

Julian V. Lopez was charged Monday with second-degree murder and firearm use in connection with the Friday slaying of his dad, 40-year-old Jose Luis Valenzuela.

Omaha police officers went to an apartment in the Tudor Heights complex near Interstate 680 and West Maple Road just after 12:35 a.m. Friday to investigate a report of a shooting.

When they arrived, they found Valenzuela dead with multiple gunshot wounds.

Lopez also was at the apartment. In an interview with police, he admitted to shooting his father, according to an affidavit.

A judge on Monday ordered Lopez to be held without bail.

Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine said Tuesday that Lopez fired more than seven shots in his fathers apartment and that Valenzuela was struck several times.

Kleine said Lopez suffers from mental illness and had been sentenced to five years probation on one count of felony battery in Brevard County, Florida.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  Authorities on Monday identified a suspect accused of fatally shooting one person and wounding four others, including firefighters and paramedics, during a house fire in Tucson.

Leslie Stephen Scarlett, 35, remained in extremely critical condition at a local hospital, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said at a news conference.

Magnus said the suspect was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a police officer on Sunday.

It is not clear what his intentions were, Magnus said. This is a highly tragic, really horrific incident, with many unknowns  A nightmare scenario.

According to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Scarlett has a criminal history that includes a 2007 conviction for an attempted armed robbery. He was sentenced to six years and was released in August 2013.

Police said Scarlett drove up to the house fire and fired shots at an ambulance crew. The ambulance was two blocks from the fire but was actually on standby for another incident, authorities said.

The ambulance driver, a 20-year-old man, was shot in the head, and a paramedic in the passenger seat, a 21-year-old woman, was shot in the chest and arm, police said. The driver was in critical condition and the woman was stable Monday.
We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the Covid-19 misleading information policy, the company said in an email.

One of Greene's latest tweets that Twitter labeled misleading claimed that the virus is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people under 65 account for nearly 250,000 of the U.S. deaths involving COVID-19.

U.S. cases of COVID-19 last week increased by 17,000 nationwide over a 14-day period for the first time since late fall, and an increase in death historically follows a spike in illness. Much of the worsening problem is being driven by the delta variant first identified in India, that has since spread to the United Kingdom and other countries, said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isnt state-approved," Greene said in the statement. I will not back down."

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
LONDON (AP) 

A British court has heard how a woman allegedly pretended to be a gem expert and swapped diamonds worth 4.2 million pounds ($5.7 million) for pebbles using sleight of hand at a luxury London jewelers.

Prosecutors said Tuesday that Lulu Lakatos, 60, posed as a gem expert and went to jewelry shop Boodles in Londons tony Mayfair area in March 2016, allegedly to value seven diamonds on behalf of a group of wealthy Russian buyers.

The diamonds, which included a 20-carat heart-shaped diamond valued at more than 2.2 million pounds,- were to be placed in a locked bag and held in the jewelers vault until payment was transferred. But when Boodles own diamond expert became suspicious and opened the bag the next day, she found seven small pebbles.

Prosecutor Philip Stott said the diamonds had been stolen by the defendant by sleight of hand.

The conspiracy in which she is alleged to have played an integral and central part was one of the highest possible sophistication, planning, risk and reward, he told Southwark Crown Court in London.

Lakatos, who was born in Romania but lived in France, denies any wrongdoing. She is charged with conspiracy to steal.
The CEO of Morgan Stanley wants all the boys and girls back in the financial giants Times Square office by Labor Day. If you can go to a restaurant in New York City, James Gorman told them, you can come into the office. And we want you in the office.

Gorman added: If you want to get paid New York rates, you work in New York. None of this Im in Colorado ... and getting paid like Im sitting in New York City. Clearly, the time employees may happily Zoom in from a lakeside cabin or suburban sunroom is drawing to a close.

This is a sentiment less colorfully shared by other captains of Wall Street finance, where group effort is often required.

Having worked in the industry for 25 years, James Davies, a top Deutsche Bank executive said, it was somewhat strange to walk onto the trading floor ... and see, you know, I guess six to 10 people here, versus the hundreds we would normally have. He wants them back, too.

Say what you want about Wall Street bosses, theyre refreshingly uninterested in indulging the preferences or prejudices of their high-paid workers. It should thus surprise no one that theyd insist that the returnees are vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The recent squabbling over the teaching of American history has deep roots, this being the most recent iteration. Should we view our country through rose-colored glasses as a matter of loyalty and patriotism, or face the facts head on? Were our Founders and ancestors saints or sinners? And what happens if we tell the kids the truth?

I think some, if not all of the Founding Fathers were men of good intention, but they, like us, included a number of scoundrels, and bowed to the political and economic realities of their time. Were they racists? Of course they were. They were British, and Britain was as racist and class-ridden as they come. Many were slaveholders. They had skewed the slavery system set up by the Portuguese and Spanish to justify their sin, making it racial, and the Americans of the 19th century made the practice ever more brutal and inhumane.

If you think we are not historically racist, or that racist actions dont matter, lets look at three what if situations, just examples, where Americans had opportunities to do the right thing and failed.
No one should doubt the good intentions of the current St. Francis leadership or the hard work by the nonprofits staff. Child welfare by definition involves tremendously challenging situations. That said, the priority for Nebraska government must be to promote the public interest. St. Francis has had adequate time to get its Nebraska operations up to speed, and its failing. The nonprofits license as a child placing agency has been put on probation, a disciplinary action that could eventually jeopardize its ability to place children in foster or adoptive homes.

Gov. Pete Ricketts must demonstrate needed leadership. The administration must press St. Francis to fulfill the terms of its contract and prepare to end the relationship at the end of the agreement, if it cannot do so sooner.

Child welfare services in Douglas and Sarpy must then be taken up by a different organization  either the State Department of Health and Human Services (which already performs that responsibility in the rest of the state) or another nonprofit following a new bidding process.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) is urging Civil Society Organisations (CSOs), community and religious leaders among other key stakeholders within the community to help whip up adherence to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) protocols at the grassroots.



Expressing concern over recent upsurge of cases in the country, Country Representative of WHO, Dr Francis Kasolo, said all hands must be on deck to contain further spread of the virus.



We would like to call upon all of us to ensure that we continue to strictly adhere to the public health measures; masking, sanitising, physical distancing, mouth and nasal etiquette and ensuring that if we experience the common symptoms related to COVID-19, we consult a trained health worker, he advised.



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Dr Kasolo was speaking at a handing over of medical equipment to the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Accra on Saturday, to aid the countrys COVID-19 response measures.



The items include 44 patient monitors and accessories, 25 oxygen concentrators and accessories, one arterial blood gas analyser and five electro-cardiogram machines.



Also, 125 pieces each of venturi masks for adults and children as well as 500 pieces each of nasal oxygen cannula with prongs for adults and children, were also donated by the world health body.



D. Kasolo said the items were procured under the WHO and World Bank Pandemic Emergency fund, to assist countries in their fight against the pandemic.



These materials are being handed over at the time that a number of countries on our continent are experiencing a third wave of COVID-19 with the Delta variant driving the surge in cases, he noted.



The Country Representative expressed WHO commitment to supporting government to achieve low COVID-19 transmission rate through strengthening of its case management capacity.



Chief Director of the Ministry, Mr Kwabena Boadu Oku-Afari, who received the items on behalf of the Minister, thanked the WHO for the donation which he said had come at a time most treatment centres were running out of essential items.



These qualify as infrastructure items needed mainly to treat patients and more especially when we continue to see rise in our cases, this is timely, he said.



Mr Oku-Afari urged the public not to lose guard in keeping with the COVID-19 preventive protocols saying, Because we are quite lucky with the number of casualties we see, people do not see the severity of this disease.



COVID-19 is still with us and infecting a lot of people. We should continue to wear our masks at all times, wash or sanitise our hands regularly and refrain from the high-risk environments that exposes you to the virus, he advised.

Source: The Ghanaian Times









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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says Ghana will be in a strong position to reap maximum benefits from the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Agreement if Ghanaians make conscious efforts to learn the French language.



He described Ghana as an English-speaking island in a French sea, with its western, eastern and northern borders, French speaking countries, and stressed the need for Ghanaians to learn the language to be able to communicate and trade effectively with the French speaking countries.



President Akufo-Addo said this at an interview on the Touch of France Show, a television programme hosted by the French Ambassador to Ghana, Anne Sophie Ave.



Govt tables $170m loan facility to fund 2023 AGJuly 19, 2021

The AfCFTA, which came into force in January this year, is a platform to stimulate intra-continental trade. It has created the opportunity for all businesses in Africa to get easy access to the 1.3 billion market on the continent.



President Akufo-Addo enumerated the geopolitical and economic benefits if the Ghanaians population was ambidextrous and polyglots, indicating that the ability to speak international languages was an effective instrument for communication and trade.



Using himself as an example, the President said he made a deliberate choice in the early 1970s to live and work in France and experience French culture as a young Ghanaian educated in England, and added that the decision enabled him to accumulate assets which later helped him in his political career



As a young lawyer, President Akufo-Addo said he was employed by an established American law firm with a branch in Paris, France, and described his period at the company as an extraordinary moment in his life.



Major American companies like Ford, Lockheed, Bank of America, Citibank, among others, doing business in France and in Europe were clients of the law firm, he said, and indicated that he gained insights into how multi-national companies operated and the dynamics of international economic intercourse when he worked for the company as a lawyer



With a strong command over the French language, President Akufo-Addo said he was able to advise American Anglo-Saxon companies and American clients on French law, adding that, he made a lot of friends with lawyers and influential people from French West African countries.



According to President Akufo-Addo, as Ghanas export potential, capacity to export its products, especially value-added products increases and intensifies, Ghanaian companies will be looking to populate the sales, departments, the international sales departments, the export departments, with people who have the facility in the language.



He stressed the need for Ghanaians to learn the French language to be able to communicate and trade effectively on the continent and reap the benefits of the opportunities under the AfCFTA.

Source: The Ghanaian Times









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The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has, for the second time, extended the mop-up enumeration exercise for the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC).



To last for 12 days ( July 19 - 30), the latest extension is to allow the GSS to exhaust the remaining six per cent of households that are yet to be covered in the exercise in some parts of the country.



The 2021 PHC, which started on Monday, June 28 in all 16 regions, was expected to end on Sunday, July 11, 2021, but the GSS extended the deadline to Sunday, July 18.



According to the GSS, the move was to ensure that all persons in the country were reached and counted.



Coverage



At a press briefing in Accra on Monday, July 19, the Government Statistician, Prof. Kobina Annim, said at the end of the initial mop-up exercise, 94 per cent of the listed households were enumerated, leaving a backlog of six per cent to be cleared.



He indicated that in line with the GSS's principle of leaving no one uncounted, the service gave a second window to ensure that everyone was counted to get reliable data on the country.



Prof. Annim added that as of Sunday, July 18, the data collected showed that apart from the Greater Accra Region where 75 per cent of the households had been enumerated, all the other regions exceeded 90 per cent enumeration status.



Prioritised MMDAs



He said 25 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) had been identified as priority areas for the next phase of the mop-up exercise because they hosted most of the remaining six per cent of persons yet to be enumerated.



The MMDAs are located in the Greater Accra, Central, Western, Eastern and Volta regions.



"The identification of these selected areas for the extension and the accompanying duration are driven by a number of factors including calls received by persons in Ghana on their status and experience of the enumeration, departure from benchmark indicators, assessment of the coverage and quality of data received so far," he said.



Challenges



The Government Statistician added that the enumeration could not be completed in some of the areas, particularly in the Greater Accra Region, because those were fast growing areas.



Additionally, he said some respondents were unwilling to participate in the exercise for various reasons while the enumerator also faced challenges such as motor accidents, snakebites and dogs attacks.



Although some of the challenges delayed the completion of the enumeration exercise as scheduled, he said the GSS was focused on reaching all the six per cent of outstanding households by the July 30 extension period.



Responding to a question on what the implication of the extension of the exercise was on the PHC budget, he said adequate provision had been made for the mop-up exercise so the GSS was confident that it would complete the exercise within the stipulated budget.



Quality assurance



Prof. Annim said the GSS had instituted spot checks in enumeration areas to get individuals who had not been enumerated to call and be captured.



The move, he said, was part of measures to be sure that quality work had been done by the field officers.



"In the process of spot-checking, verification and validations are done at three levels - listing of all structures, covering of all households in structures and counting of all members in the household," he said.



He said the GSS had also instituted physical visits to selected households for the purpose of verifying information collected by its field officers.



"These visits will be done by field monitors who will be wearing field monitors jackets, branded with 2021 PHC and GSS logos and carrying photo ID," he added.



Furthermore, Prof. Annim said as part of the quality assurance process, the GSS had instituted outboard calls to selected members of the public seeking to verify and validate information collected by the field officers.



The GSS boss assured members of the public who were yet to be enumerated that they would not be left out of the exercise.



He also appealed to members of the public who were unwilling to participate in the enumeration exercise to cooperate with enumerators by allowing themselves to be counted.









Source: Graphiconline.com









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Dr Simon Gbene, the Western Regional Director of the Veterinary Services, says surveillance is underway to stop the spread of bird flu to the Region.



He said, although the Region was yet to record a case, farmers needed to adopt preventive measures on their farms to stem the spread.



The Veterinary Director urged the farmers to avoid the use of materials and equipment from other peoples farms.



He said signs of the disease, include birds not being able to eat, change in colour of the comb and legs, and reduction in laying eggs.



"The disease, which becomes pronounced between three to seven days, can kill birds in large quantities, thereby, increasing the economic burden of the farmer."



Dr Gbene also advised farmers not to throw foods around the hen coops to attract water birds, which also transmit the disease.



He urged the public to avoid contact with infected birds.

Source: GNA









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Six people died and many others injured in two separate accidents during the weekend in the Ashanti Region.



In the first that took place on Saturday at Ampuyaasi junction on the Obuasi-Dunkwa road resulted in the killing of three people with 17 others injured.



The driver was said to have lost control of the steering wheel of the Kia Granbird bus with registration number, GN 9721-17 as it failed brake and somersaulted as it was heading from Kumasi-Samarboi.



Municipal Ambulance Officer, Mr Charles Dawson, confirmed that three people died at the spot including one male and two females whiles 17 were injured.



He said the 17 rescued including one in a critical condition, have been sent to Dunkwa Municipal Hospital and the dead deposited at the Obuasi Government Hospitals mortuary.



The second incident that took place on the Obuasi-Anwiankwanta road also claimed three lives, with 10 injured on Friday.



An eyewitness, Mr Akomanim Francis, Headteacher of Atobiase Primary School, claimed that a Toyota Tundra with registration, AS 4275 -21, which was heading to Obuasi from Kumasi collided with a Toyota Corolla taxi with registration number, GX 1910 -13.



The taxi was from Adenkranya to Jacobu and the incident occurred at the Afoako Junction in the Amansie Central District, and the taxi driver and a 73-year-old woman passenger on board died on the spot.



The Toyota Tundra, according to the eyewitness, capsized and crashed into two Toyota Obama minibuses which were parked and loading at the roadside to Obuasi. The two minibuses had registration numbers, GT 12 78-17 and AS 84 37 -14.



Injured passengers were rushed to the Saint Peters Catholic Hospital in Jacobu and Atobiase health facility for medical attention, but one of them, a 75 year old woman, Maame Kwabre, was pronounced dead on arrival.



According to traders who sell at the Afoako Junction they had witnessed five fatal accidents which had claimed 10 lives on the same spot within a short time.



They called on the Ghana Highway Authority to, as a matter of urgency, construct speed ramps to reduce over speeding in the area.



The Jacobu District Police Commander, who visited the scene confirmed that two died on the spot and one also died on arrival at the hospital.

Source: The Ghanaian Times









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The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has called for an enhanced national dialogue on the sustainable exploitation of Ghanas minerals, forest and wildlife resources to ensure that the lives of the living and generations yet unborn are not adversely affected by unregulated exploitation.



Warning that the nation risks losing its forest cover, as well as the many beautiful rivers and streams if negative practices such as illegal mining and indiscriminate wood harvesting and burning are not curtailed, Dr Bawumia called for increased collaboration and engagements with stakeholders, especially those directly affected by such activities, to address the looming danger.



The Vice President made the clarion call at the 2nd Regional Consultative Dialogue on Small Scale Mining and Deforestation held in Tamale on Monday, 19 July 2021. The first dialogue was held in Kumasi, following the National Dialogue in Accra, opened by His Excellency the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



Organised by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources under the theme Sustainable Small Scale Mining and Forest Conservation for National Development, the Dialogue brought together traditional authorities, Regional Ministers of all five northern regions, Members of Parliament, Leadership of the Parliamentary Select Committees on Lands, Forestry, Environment and Mining, representatives of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, the Ghana National Association of Small Scale Miners and Captains of the Mining and Forestry Industries.



Many livelihoods depend on mining and the exploitation of forest resources. The contribution of the mineral and forest resources to our national development agenda can, therefore, not be over-emphasized. However, the exploitation of these resources has not been without certain negative impacts on the natural environment because of the unsustainable practices that we employ, leading to pollution of water bodies, chemical pollution he indicated.



The northern sector of Ghana lies within a fragile ecological setting and, therefore, has its own peculiar challenges as far as natural resource exploitation is concerned. The north is particularly challenged with forest degradation as a result of over exploitation of trees, especially, rosewood for export, excessive reliance on fuel-wood, and charcoal production.



These continue to be major challenges, including rampant annual fires which have dire consequences on climate change and its adverse impacts on our livelihoods and the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), he pointed out.



Politics



A discussion on sustainable exploitation devoid of politics is the best way to arrive at a national solution, Vice President Bawumia emphasised.



Sustainability is key, in our quest to exploit our diverse minerals, forest and wildlife resources, to ensure that we are able to meet our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.



Ghana has beautiful and majestic rivers and streams. Unfortunately, today, there is not much to celebrate about our water bodies and wildlife habitats because of unacceptable mining and logging practices and other drivers of deforestation.



The call for the national dialogue is to enable us to have a national consensus on sustainable methods of using the minerals and forest resources of our country without appealing to partisanship. Indeed, issues relating to the exploitation of our natural resources are aspects of our national life which must be insulated from partisan politics.



He reminded the participants that Illegal mining and logging on our lands and in our forests happen within communities. We are aware of these illegal activities as members of these communities. While recognising that those engaged in illegal mining and logging activities have livelihood concerns, we should equally recognise that their activities have an adverse impact on farmers, on our food security, and on our common survival. Everyone here today should be, and is, concerned about this dangerous menace.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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The Minister for Health, Kwaku Agyeman Manu, has expressed regret over the procurement of Sputnik V vaccine without parliamentary approval.



Ghana went into an agreement with middle-man Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum and SL Global to supply 3.4 million doses of Sputnik V vaccine.



The controversial contract saw Ghana procuring the vaccine at a unit cost of 19 dollars as against the ex-factory price of 10 dollars per dose.



This agreement was without parliamentary approval as required in Article 181(5) of the 1992 Constitution.



Answering questions at the sitting of a bi-partisan parliamentary committee probing the contract, Monday, the Health Minister said he went into that agreement because "the country was not in normal times".



He said: I was in a desperate and helpless situation with the management of the covid numbers. In February, we had 78 deaths; by March, we had 56 deaths, and these were the numbers that pushed me to actif you were the Health Minister, I think you might have taken certain decisions that in hindsight you may not have done those things. The country was not in normal times...this was the environment I found myself in and out of desperation, frustration, and so many things



I relied on the Executive Instrument 61 passed by Parliament and hid behind emergency clauses that have been invoked to do that and come to Parliament and inform the House that this is what I had done and, therefore, I need regularisation and need the approval to provide it



It Won't Happen Again



Mr Kwaku Agyeman Manu further assured Parliament that he won't enter into any agreement or make any procurement without parliamentary approval.



I was seriously in a situation that could not make me think properly. I dealt with the Sheikh before the frantic efforts to get the vaccines from the right source. I made efforts, but I did not juxtapose the timing with the efforts that I made. I made that error and in hindsight, it wont happen again.



Meanwhile, government has abrogated the controversial contract for the supply of Sputnik V vaccines.



According to the Minister for Health, the contract was terminated because Sheik Al Makhtoum and SL Global could not supply the vaccine doses procured.

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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

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President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has made a passionate appeal to journalists, political commentators and the Ghanaian population at large not to abuse the prevailing atmosphere of free speech in the country as any such mishandling could lead to a negative impact on the territorial integrity of the nation.



Ghana is noted for its vibrant media landscape and its endorsement of freedom of expression particularly under the fourth republican constitution which has been in force for the last twenty-nine (29) years. However, recent developments of disinformation and misinformation on the countrys media space has been a source of worry for many well-meaning Ghanaians.



Addressing Muslim faithful at the National Mosque of Ghana Complex at Nima, today the 20th of July 2021, to commemorate Eid Al-Adha celebrations in Ghana, President Akufo-Addo says he and his administration are firm believers of free speech, however, the entire country must be mindful of the fact that unguided utterance could compromise the security of the state as witnessed in other part of the African continent such as Rwanda.



I am a firm supporter of free speech. The government I lead is also a firm supporter of free speech amply evidenced by the culture of free speech prevailing in the country. However, we must all bear in mind that words can be as incendiary as guns. The Bible tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. All it took was the mating of words by an irresponsibly journalist amplified by the power of radio to ignite the tragic genocide in Rwanda President Akufo-Addo said.



It is important for all of us to recognize that there is only one country we call home and that is Ghana. We must protect our way of life in the words of the national pledge, with all our strength and with all our hearts. We should not allow the actions and utterance of a few misguided persons to jeopardize and destroy the united Ghana we currently possess which is the envy of many on the continent and in the world the President added.



COVID-19



In his address, President Akufo-Addo noted with concern, the recent increase in numbers as far as the COVID-19 circumstances of the state is concerned. According to the Ghana Health Service COVID-19 online portal, (www.ghanahealthservice.org/covid19), there are three thousand, one hundred and twenty-four (3,124) active cases in the country as at today, the 20th of July 2021 and sadly, eight hundred and fifteen (815) persons have lost their lives as a result of the pandemic.



Overall, ninety-nine thousand, one hundred and sixty (99,160) cases have been recorded since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus in the country in March 2020 and some ninety-five thousand, two hundred and twenty-one (95,221) persons have thankfully recovered from the viral infection. The new infections over the reporting period is at an alarming rate of three hundred and forty-three (343).



As we continue to count of the Grace of God to protect our country from the ravages of the pandemic like we have done since its outbreak, we can only minimize its health effects and avoid a full blown third wave if we continue to be responsible and observe the safety and hygiene protocols the President said.



The recent increase in the number of infections is a source of worry for me and indeed a source of worry for all Ghanaians. from the rising numbers, it is safe to concluded that we let our guard down and we are beginning to live our lives and conduct our business as though we are in normal times. It is important to repeat that the virus is still with us and until each and every one of us receives a double dose of the vaccine, the protocols must continue to be a part and parcel of our daily activities Akufo-Addo further indicated.



Eid Al-Adha



Eid Al-Adha, the festival of sacrifice commemorates the prophet Ibrahims devotion to God. It is the second significant religious festival of Islam. The first of the two observances is Eid al-Fitr, which was observed in May to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.



During the festival of Eid Al-Adha, Muslims acknowledge the devotion of Ibrahim, who was willing to sacrifice his son, Ismail, under the order of Allah SWT (God). Ibrahim, also known as Abraham, is a prominent figure in Islam, Judaism and Christianity.



President Akufo-Addo in his remarks, congratulated the Muslim community as they celebrate Eid Al-Adha. He called on all Muslims to emulate the example of the Prophet Mohammed and to sacrifice for the building of the Ghana we all want.























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President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has asked the Muslim Ummah in the country to pray for wisdom for him and his members of government so they can govern and get Ghana out of its economic challenges.



Nana Akufo-Addo made the appeal on Tuesday, 20 July 2021 when he joined the National Chief Imam Dr Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu and the Muslim community in the country at the national mosque in Kanda, Accra, to celebrate Eid-al-Adha.



Eid al-Adha is a festival of the sacrifice.



It is one of the two official holidays celebrated within Islam



It honours the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of obedience to God's command but before Ibrahim could sacrifice his son, however, God provided a lamb to sacrifice instead.



In his address, Nana Akufo-Addo said: The sacrifice of Prophet Ibrahim which we celebrate today, must spur us on to sacrifice for the progress and prosperity of our country. Sacrificing for our country means giving off our best in our various areas of endeavor and making the national interest paramount in whatever we do.



I ask the Muslim Ummah in Ghana to remember our nation in prayer and also pray for wisdom and guidance for me and for members of my government so that we can steer the ship of state in a manner that allows us to navigate the stormy and turbulent economic challenges that confront our nation and the world, the President stated.

Source: classfmonline.com









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

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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.
Credit: CDC

New South Wales reported 98 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours. Twenty of those were infectious while in the community, a number which needs to get close to zero before the lockdown can end.

To reduce the spread of COVID-19 across Sydney, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian tightened restrictions in Liverpool, Fairfield, and Canterbury-Bankstown over the weekend. On top of existing stay-at-home orders, residents are now unable to leave these local government areas for work unless they're deemed "authorized" workers.

Sydney's Southwest is home to many multicultural communities, which have had to respond quickly to many rounds of restrictions. But while Berejiklian says health authorities are working to tailor and disseminate basic public health messaging for migrant communities, this may not be enough.

Our research shows it's also important to expand this information to counter myths and misinformation about COVID-19 so people in migrant communities have a clear sense of the risks of infection.

What we found

We undertook a series of surveys of just under 15,000 people to assess the differences in knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of COVID-19 among sub-Saharan Africans. This includes a mix of different nationalities, tribes and cultures, including those living in developed countries such as Australia.

We also asked about their compliance with COVID-19 public health control measures such as social distancing, using face masks and hand sanitisers.

We found high levels of beliefs in COVID-19 myths among those from sub-Saharan African countries. While rates were lower among the 143 Africans we surveyed in the diaspora, including Australia, 7.5% of these participants believed in at least one of the following myths:

drinking hot water flushes down the virusCOVID-19 has a minimal effect on people from an African backgroundCOVID-19 was deliberately designed to reduce the world's populationthe ability to hold your breath for ten seconds means you're COVID-19 negative.

Some 8.3% of people in the diaspora believed the 5G network was associated with COVID-19.

Reassuringly, our research also found a significant association between knowledge of COVID-19 and being worried about contracting the virus, and positive behaviors such as wearing face masks, and using sanitisers.

In other words, the more our respondents knew about COVID-19, the more likely they were to protect themselves and others from the virus.

How do African communities get their information?

Because people's perception of risk informs how they respond to a threat such as COVID-19, it's important to understand their sources of information, attitudes, perceived risk of contracting the disease, and compliance with public health control measures.

Many of our survey participants got their information about COVID-19 from formal government and public health authority channels.

But some used social media, which routinely spread myths and misinformation about COVID-19 via video clips. These were commonly shared among communities in Africa and those in the diaspora.

Social media misinformation tended to focus on the origins of COVID-19, the dangers of COVID-19 vaccinations, and conspiracy theories claiming COVID-19 aims to reduce populations of African peoples.

Some respondents in Africa and Australia didn't believe COVID-19 existed and mistrusted officials. This resulted in an inaccurate perception of their risk of infection, making them more likely to ignore public health messaging and disregard public health measures.

What does public health messaging need to do?

Health authorities need to form strong, mutually trusting bonds with African-Australian and other multicultural communities. Ideally this would be ongoing, not just during a pandemic.

This foundation of trust allows authorities to convincingly communicate health directives such as mask-wearing, testing, vaccinations, and stay-at-home orders.

It's promising to see health authorities in Western Sydney liaising with community leaders to disseminate basic health information.

But any new messaging campaign now needs to go beyond the generic and favor more nuanced messages that dispel misinformation among African and other multicultural communities in Western Sydney.

Storytelling mediums, including drama, dance and theater, have been shown to be an effective and efficient means of communicating more nuanced health messages to African and other multicultural audiences.

Creative storytelling techniques can create memorable messages that help audiences identify with the characters and situations presented, and emotionally engage with messages.

These messages motivate people to change their beliefs and behaviors, and can be disseminated using the mass media and social media, in relevant languages, as well as shared among communities.

Importantly, creative storytelling techniques can enhance feelings of community and family cohesion, and lessen the feelings of isolation and social exclusion that migrants often feel, especially during a pandemic.

Explore further Sydney tightens lockdown amid 'stubborn' outbreak

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

COVID has seen the idea of caring for your employees take on a whole new meaning. As workplaces reopen and companies deal with the socio-economic fallout of the pandemic, leadership specialists increasingly stress the importance of maintaining this focus on human needs.

Beyond the immediate imperative to keep employees safe in the midst of the health crisis, business administration specialist Hubert Joly underlines how managers need to consider the longer term mental health needs as well as sense of purpose and social wellbeing of their workforce.

Historically, the so-called soft or people skills required to do this were not the primary focus of a business and management education. Rather, management theory centered around what managers do: planning, organizing, coordinating and controlling.

This focus has long had its critics, of course. One answer, which is backed up by years of research, is that when business students engage with the arts and humanities at university level, it can equip them with the additional skills that they need.

Soft skills

Returning to the office post-lockdown has put kindness, compassion and empathy at the top of employee wishlists. Workers now expect their managers to be more supportive.

Although long recognized as important leadership skills, the pandemic has made these more salient. And with changes to the workplace like remote working and increased use of virtual technology likely to be here to stay to some extent, the greater demand for such skills may be permanent too.

When teams were sent home amid lockdown procedures, our ability to collaborate was also dramatically reduced. Collaboration has long been a focus of workplace culture and managerial methods. It is key to quality of work, innovation and employee engagement.

Companies emerging from the pandemic are therefore understandably keen to get their employees working effectively together once again. This also makes cultural intelligencedefined as the skill by which you understand other cultures, learning from ongoing interactions and adapting your thinking accordinglyeven more important than before.

How can arts studies help?

Students themselves are conscious of the importance of human-centric skills, as well as critical thinking and creative problem-solving. A survey of 1,000 Australian students in 2020 found that 88% believed soft skills to be necessary for their future career, with 78% agreeing such skills would give them an advantage in an increasingly automated workplace.

These findings are confirmed by a 2021 study among undergraduate aviation students in Australia. The respondents thought non-technical skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving and emotional intelligence would be highly necessary in the post-pandemic economy.

Human-centric skills are best learned by doing. This kind of experiential approach is something the arts have traditionally offered. Unlike a standard management lecture, where students will sit and listen to lecturers passing on their knowledge, arts majorsstudent dancers interacting in a dance routine, for examplefocus on ideas and expression.

Since the 1980s, management education specialists have noted the impact of including poetry, music and literature in business courses. In a 2002 study, American management theorist Robert Mockler looked at how drama, too, could be used. He highlighted the leadership lessons to be found in Shakespearefrom Henry V and Coriolanus to King Learand the presentation, self-awareness and leadership skills to be gleaned from taking acting classes.

Business students are more likely to be found in a financial accounting lecture or an organisational change dynamics tutorial than learning about storytelling. Yet storytelling serves as a powerful tool for communication both inside and outside organisations. Narratives enable companies to develop their own personas and for brands to forge customer relationships.

Beyond techniques, a simple visit to an art museum can readily enhance the critical thinking skills for any studentnot just art history majors. The arts engage us, as the audience, mentally, physically, and emotionally. And they prompt us to understand and improve the world and ourselves. This may be one of their most powerful uses in education.

To this end, prospective students interested in pursuing a business and management degree should be encouraged to immerse themselves in additional arts and humanities courses. Even better, they could seek an interdisciplinary degree where arts and humanities are embedded in the curriculum.

US business schools often dabble in the liberal arts. But in the UK, business students will need to dig a little deeper to find a way to integrate the arts into their studies. There are professional development courses, which include acting classes to promote self-awareness and creative writing classes.

Students can also acquire these skills by themselves. In A Whole New Mind management specialist and author Daniel Pink recommends taking drawing classes and heading to storytelling festivals. It's about developing the right side of the brain, the side most often associated with soft skills.

Explore further College can still be rigorous without a lot of homework

More information: Arvind Malhotra, The Postpandemic Future of Work, Journal of Management (2021). Journal information: Journal of Management Arvind Malhotra, The Postpandemic Future of Work,(2021). DOI: 10.1177/01492063211000435

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Spotted owl. Photo: Chris McCafferty. Oregon State University

A 17-year study in Oregon, Washington and California found that removal of invasive barred owls arrested the population decline of the northern spotted owl, a native species threatened by invading barred owls and the loss of old-forest habitats.

The conservation and management of northern spotted owls became one of the largest and most visible wildlife conservation issues in United States history after the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed the spotted owl as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 because of rapid declines in the owl's old-forest habitats. Four years later, the Northwest Forest Plan was adopted and reduced the rate of logging of old-growth forests on federal lands.

Despite more than 30 years of protection, spotted owl populations have continued to decline, with steepest declines observed in the past 10 years. Long-term monitoring of spotted owl populations across the species' range identified rapid increases in the population of invasive barred owls as a primary reason for those declines, the researchers said.

The study published this week in PNAS by scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, Oregon State University, and several other entities is the first to look at the wide-scale impact of barred owls on populations of spotted owls in the Pacific Northwest.

The study focused on two sites in northern California, two in Oregon and one in Washington and found that spotted owl populations stabilized in all study areas where the researchers lethally removed barred owls (0.2% decline per year on average) but continued to decline sharply in areas without removals (12.1% decline per year on average.)

The findings in the new paper inform future management decisions about the spotted owl population.

"This study is a promising example of successful removal and suppression of an invasive and increasingly abundant competitor, with a positive demographic response from a threatened native species," said David Wiens, the lead author of the paper who is a wildlife biologist with the USGS Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center in Corvallis and a courtesy faculty member with Oregon State's Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences.

As a species native to eastern North America, barred owls began expanding their populations westward in the early 1900s. The newly extended range now completely overlaps that of the northern spotted owl.

While barred owls look similar to spotted owls, they are larger, have a stronger ecological impact and outcompete spotted owls for habitat and food. This competition exacerbated spotted owl population declines, which were historically triggered by loss of old-forest habitat.

Mounting concerns about the threat of barred owls prompted a barred owl removal pilot project from 2009 to 2013 in California that concluded removal of barred owls, coupled with conservation of old forest, could slow or reverse population declines of spotted owls.

The research outlined in the PNAS paper expanded the pilot project to cover a much wider geographic range and a longer time period. The new research showed that barred owl removal had a strong, positive effect on survival and population trends of spotted owls that was consistent across all five study areas.

The conservation and restoration of old forests, which has been a chief focus of recovery strategies for the northern spotted owl, is a major source of controversy in the Pacific Northwest. The barred owl invasion has exacerbated this issue, placing an even higher premium on remaining old conifer forests.

"While suppression of barred owls can be difficult, costly, and ethically challenging, improvements in vital rates and population trends of spotted owls, and perhaps other threatened wildlife, can be expected when densities of barred owls are reduced from current levels," the researchers write in the paper. "Alien predators are considered to be more harmful to prey populations than native predators, and the dynamic interactions between invasive and native predators can lead to profound changes in ecosystems, often with considerable conservation and economic impacts."

Explore further Despite habitat protection, endangered owls decline in Mount Rainier National Park

More information: J. David Wiens et al, Invader removal triggers competitive release in a threatened avian predator, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2021). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences J. David Wiens et al, Invader removal triggers competitive release in a threatened avian predator,(2021). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2102859118
Coral bleaching on Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef in 2015. Credit: The Ocean Agency / Ocean Image Bank

An international group of researchers representing thousands of coral scientists across the globe is calling for new commitments and actions by the world's policymakers to protect and restore coral reefs.

In a paper presented today at the International Coral Reef Symposium, the scientists said that the coming decade will likely offer the last chance for policymakers at all levels to prevent coral reefs "from heading towards world-wide collapse."

The paper, developed by the International Coral Reef Society, pushes for three strategies to save the reefs: addressing climate change, improving local conditions and actively restoring coral.

"The model projections show that up to 30% of coral reefs will persist through this century if we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius," said Andrea Grottoli, distinguished professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, society president and a contributing author of the paper.

"But if we are to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, we have to do it now: The science and the models show that we have only a few years left to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that put us on that path. It has to happen this decade, or we won't make that target."

Coral reefs are at an inflection point, the researchers say. Stop climate change nowand start to reverse itand some reefs might survive, with the possibility that they could be rebuilt in the future and provide the seeds to regrow damaged reefs elsewhere.

"From a coral reef perspective, we go from 30% of reefs surviving to only a few percent surviving if we don't act now," Grottoli said. "We are already faced with a grand challenge in trying to restore the reefs. Once we do eventually reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the planet is no longer warming at an accelerated rate, trying to restore from just a few percent is much more difficult."

This year, policymakers from around the world will create updated global frameworks for addressing both of those crises, via the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) and the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15). Grottoli said the society created its policy paper to influence those frameworks.

The society's paper makes three asks of policymakers:

Commit to addressing biodiversity loss and the effect climate change has had on coral reefs, ensure policies are ambitious enough to address those crises, and ensure that policies are implemented.

Build coordinated actions across related policy fields at all levels of governance, from local councils to international bodies. This includes efforts in conservation, management and restoration, as well as policies that address climate change adaptation, biodiversity and sustainable development.

Innovate new approaches to help coral adapt to climate change. Global warming is here, and adaptation is unavoidable. A small percentage of reefs and some coral species have been successfully managed. "Studies of these 'bright spots' provide important lessons to guide future actions, such as how local community participation can improve management outcomes," the scientists wrote.

"As bad as climate change has been for the last decades, we also have lost vast amounts of coral reefs through overfishing, pollution and other local actions, and we need to tackle both of those fronts simultaneously," said Nancy Knowlton, lead author of the paper and Sant Chair for Marine Science Emerita at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

"Climate change is important but it's important that these other things aren't neglected. There's no time for arguing about which is most important; we need to do all of them."

Coral reefs are crucial ecosystems, housing about a third of the known ocean species despite covering less than 0.1% of the world's oceans. They are also critical for local food supplies and economies. Reef-related tourism alone generates some $36 billion per year and the global economic value of reefs across all sectors approaches $10 trillion per year.

They are sources for important biochemical compounds, including drugs that treat cancer.

And they protect coasts from storm flooding: A healthy reef can break waves and buffer more than 90% of incoming wave height and energy. In the United States and its territories alone, according to the ICRS paper, the annual value of flood risk reduction provided by coral reefs is more than 18,000 lives affected by flooding and $1.8 billion. Without reefs, researchers have estimated that annual flood damage would more than double, and that flooding would increase by 69%.

But reefs are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of climate change, which causes ocean temperatures to increase and ocean waters to acidify. Those environmental changes can cause coral to bleach, stop growing and die.

"The window for opportunities to act both on coral reef adaptation and on climate change mitigation will soon close for good," said David Obura, contributing author to the paper and director of CORDIO East Africa, a nonprofit research organization focused on coral reefs and sustainability in Africa. "We need a massive increase in commitment now and even more in coming years, coherence across all scales and jurisdictions, and innovationnew mindsets, approaches and techniques. More than anything we need everyone to act, including us scientists by providing our approaches and knowledge, to do our part in saving coral reefs."

The ICRS policy paper was authored by scientists from the U.S., Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. The mission of the ICRS is to promote the acquisition and dissemination of scientific knowledge to secure the future of coral reefs, including via relevant policy frameworks and decision-making processes. The policy statement released in coordination with the 14th International Coral Reef Symposium is the most comprehensive in the society's history.

More information: Rebuilding Coral Reefs: A Decadal Grand Challenge. Rebuilding Coral Reefs: A Decadal Grand Challenge. coralreefs.org/publications/re  uilding_coral_reefs/
Physicists Roland Wester (left) and Malcolm Simpson (right) demonstrate how dipole-bound states allow negative ions to form in interstellar clouds. Credit: Bryan Goff on Unsplash / AG Wester

Interstellar clouds are the birthplaces of new stars, but they also play an important role in the origins of life in the Universe through regions of dust and gas in which chemical compounds form. The research group, molecular systems, led by ERC prize winner Roland Wester at the Institute for ion physics and applied physics at the University of Innsbruck, has set itself the task of better understanding the development of elementary molecules in space. "Put simply, our ion trap allows us to recreate the conditions in space in our laboratory," explains Roland Wester. "This apparatus allows us to study the formation of chemical compounds in detail." The scientists working with Roland Wester have now found an explanation for how negatively charged molecules form in space.

An idea built on theoretical foundations

Before the discovery of the first negatively charged carbon molecules in space in 2006, it was assumed that interstellar clouds only contained positively charged ions. Since then, it has been an open question how negatively charged ions are formed. The Italian theorist Franco A. Gianturco, who has been working as a scientist at the University of Innsbruck for eight years, developed a theoretical framework a few years ago that could provide a possible explanation. The existence of weakly bound states, so-called dipole-bound states, should enhance the attachment of free electrons to linear molecules. Such molecules have a permanent dipole moment which strengthens the interaction at a relatively great distance from the neutral nucleus and boosts the capture rate of free electrons.

Observing dipole-bound states in the laboratory

In their experiment, the Innsbruck physicists created molecules consisting of three carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom, ionized them, and bombarded them with laser light in the ion trap at extremely low temperatures. They continuously changed the frequency of the light until the energy was large enough to eject an electron from the molecule. Albert Einstein described this so-called photoelectric effect 100 years ago. An in-depth analysis of the measurement data by the early-stage researcher Malcolm Simpson from the doctoral training program, atoms, light and molecules at the University of Innsbruck finally shed light on this difficult-to-observe phenomenon. A comparison of the data with a theoretical model finally provided clear evidence of the existence of dipole-bound states. "Our interpretation is that these dipole-bound states represent a kind of door opener for the binding of free electrons to molecules, thus contributing to the creation of negative ions in space," says Roland Wester. "Without this intermediate step, it would be very unlikely that electrons would actually bind to the molecules."

Explore further The fingerprints of molecules in space

More information: Malcolm Simpson et al, Influence of a Supercritical Electric Dipole Moment on the Photodetachment of C 3 N, Physical Review Letters (2021). Journal information: Physical Review Letters Malcolm Simpson et al, Influence of a Supercritical Electric Dipole Moment on the Photodetachment of C(2021). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.043001
Mobile phone with a self-sanitizing cover produced from a material made by extracting chitin from squid bones. Credit: NTHU MSE, Taiwan

A research team led by Professor Jyh-Ming Wu of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan has recently developed two composite piezoelectric materials extracted from common waste products. One is a new type of catalyst extracted from discarded rice husks and is capable of treating industrial wastewater 90 times quicker than the photocatalysts now in use. The other is a material extracted from discarded squid bones and has been used to produce a self-sanitizing transparent film suitable for use as a cover on mobile phone screens, elevator buttons, door handles, etc.

Organic industrial wastewater is typically treated by using photocatalysts; however, conventional photocatalysts require sufficient light, and wastewater is usually not very transparent, so the efficiency tends to be low. With this problem in mind, Wu's research team extracted silicon dioxide from rice husks and then added molybdenum and sulfur to produce a quartz composite piezoelectric material. The material can be injected into a factory's wastewater pipeline wherein the pressure generated by the water flow helps to purify the pollution without needing any light.

This new type of quartz composite piezoelectric material can also cope with the difficult-to-treat dyes present in the wastewater produced by textile factories. Professor Wu demonstrated this by pouring the quartz composite powder into a beaker of water colored with dyes, mixing it in by gently agitating the beaker; within a few minutes, the water has become perfectly clear.

Professor Wu (right) developing a new type of catalyst using discarded rice husks to treat industrial wastewater. Credit: NTHU MSE, Taiwan

Wu explained that what makes this new material so effective is the addition of molybdenum and sulfur during the production process; as a result, pieces of molybdenum disulfide grow on the quartz rodwhich takes on the appearance of a maceincreasing the contact area between the material and the sewage, thereby making the treatment more efficient.

Wu emphasized that in addition to wastewater treatment, this material can also be used to produce hydrogen, which can be collected and used to produce energy; in addition, this piezoelectric materials reusable and biodegradable, providing a type of wastewater treatment which is inexpensive, convenient, effective and environmentally friendly.

The research team's work has recently been featured in the international journals Advanced Materials and Advanced Functional Materials, and their quartz composite material has already received patents in Taiwan and the United States.

Wu's research team has also succeeded in extracting chitin from squid bones and using it to produce a new composite piezoelectric material suitable for producing a transparent film which undergoes self-sterilization whenever it's touched, making it highly suitable as a screen cover for various items in public places, such as automated ticketing machines.

Graduate student Pinyi He displaying the self-sanitizing film made from a newly developed material extracted from discarded squid bones. Credit: NTHU MSE, Taiwan

Wu demonstrated the film's sanitizing effect by smearing a sample with Escherichia coli, applying pressure for 25 minutes, then removing the pressure and waiting five minutes. After five repetitions of this procedure, the Escherichia coli was reduced by 76%.

The chitin used to make this new piezoelectric material can also be extracted from shrimp shells, crab shells and cuttlefish bones, and it can also be manufactured using bionic technology. Due to its suitability for producing a self-sterilizing transparent film for covering screens, such as those used on mobile phones, this new material can play a key role in fighting the spread of infectious diseases.

Explore further A new flexible piezoelectric composite for 3-D printing
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Food loss and waste (FLW) has become a worldwide concern in recent years and is widely identified as a key barrier to food security, human health, and environmental sustainability.

However, monitoring and benchmarking FLW reduction is often constrained by lack of reliable and consistent FLW data.

A research team led by Prof. Cheng Shengkui from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Prof. Liu Gang from University of Southern Denmark addressed the knowledge and data gap of the scales and patterns of FLW for major agrifood commodities from farm to fork in China.

The study was published in Nature Food on July 15.

Based on a large-scale field survey over six years between 2013 and 2018 along the agrifood chain, households, and restaurants, as well as literature data, the researchers systematically mapped the production and consumption with FLW of major agrifood products and quantified relevant resource and environmental footprints associated with FLW along the food supply chain.

They found that the largest amount of FLW was found at the postharvest handling and storage stage (45%), and the consumption stage also contributed to the total FLW with a share of 17%. The land, water, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus footprints associated with total FLW are found to be similar to those of a medium-sized country.

This work provides a first estimate of the patterns and magnitudes of FLW along China's food supply chain. It highlights the importance of better primary data to inform FLW reduction actions and ensure food security and sustainability.

Explore further A hidden driver of food insecurity and environmental crisis

More information: Li Xue et al, China's food loss and waste embodies increasing environmental impacts, Nature Food (2021). Journal information: Nature Food Li Xue et al, China's food loss and waste embodies increasing environmental impacts,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s43016-021-00317-6
What happens to atmospheric carbon dioxide when low-pressure systems move in has largely remained a mystery, but Penn State-led research is offering new insights that may help improve global carbon models. Credit: Sean Waugh, NOAA/NSSL

Trees, crops and other vegetation in the midwestern United States act as large carbon sinks during summer, taking in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and limiting the amount of the greenhouse gas that enters the atmosphere. What happens to carbon dioxide when a cold front moves in has largely remained a mystery, but Penn State-led research is offering new insights that may help improve global carbon models.

"The focus of this research is to understand and quantify how low-pressure systems transport carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," said Ken Davis, professor of atmospheric and climate science at Penn State. "This is part of a bigger effort, the Atmospheric Carbon and Transport-America (ACT-America) project, to learn how to interpret measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to properly infer sources and sinks of carbon dioxide at the earth surface. To do this, we need to know how carbon dioxide is mixed by the atmosphere, and there has not been much past focus on how low-pressure systems slosh around this greenhouse gas."

Most models that deal with atmospheric carbon tend to focus on global rather than regional trends, he added, and may not properly represent the changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide that occur during these systems.

To better understand the phenomenon, the researchers studied carbon dioxide levels over Lincoln, Nebraska, before, during and after a cold front that passed through the area in August 2016. Cold fronts occur when a cold air mass pushes into a warmer air mass, and they can cause thunderstorms to form and temperatures to drop dramatically. The research team took measurements from two airplanes. The aircraft crossed the system's frontal boundarywhere the warm and cold air masses meetmultiple times. They also flew at multiple altitudes, between approximately 1,000 and 26,000 feet, and recorded the changes in carbon dioxide levels in the warm and cold sectors of the system.

The scientists entered the data into a computer model that looked at carbon dioxide levels at three different resolutions. The resolutions ranged from being nine to 1,600 times higher areal resolution than what is used in global models, giving the researchers a more precise look at what happens to carbon dioxide as the system passes. They also focused on three categories of carbon dioxide sources and sinksbiogenic fluxes, or carbon dioxide taken in and respired by plants, bacteria and animals, including humans; fossil fuel sources like cars and factories; and boundary fluxes, or in this case sources and sinks of carbon dioxide beyond the North American continent. They reported their findings in the May issue of JGR Atmospheres.

Researchers studied CO2 levels over Lincoln, Nebraska, in the days before, during and after a cold front that passed through the area in August 2016 to see how frontal systems affect atmospheric CO2 levels. Amounts of CO2, measured in parts per million, are depicted at different altitudes over a five-day period, with blue and green colors signifying lower levels and orange and red colors signifying higher levels of the greenhouse gas. Credit: Arkayan Samaddar, Penn State

"We found a huge band of carbon dioxide trapped around the frontal system," said Arkayan Samaddar, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Meteorology and Atmospheric Science at Penn State. The study is part of Samaddar's doctoral dissertation. "By analyzing it at such a high resolution, we see that it's not just one uniform band of carbon dioxide. We see a lot more structure and get more information than we would if we looked at it globally. Looking at carbon dioxide on a regional scale helps us better determine sources and sinks."

The researchers found that during this summer front, biological sources and sinks accounted for the largest changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, which isn't surprising since plants, animals and humans continually take in and respire carbon dioxide and biological activity peaks in the summer, according to Davis.

"With plants you can't readily tell the difference between photosynthesis, when they take in carbon dioxide, and respiration, when they release it. Atmospheric carbon dioxide responds to the net exchange," Davis said.

The difference between the biogenic and fossil fuel categories, Davis added, is that the former category acts as both a source and a major sink that helps to mitigate fossil fuel emissions, whereas the fossil fuel category is a continuous source of carbon dioxide.

The scientists noted that the sources and sinks created a consistent pattern of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. At night, carbon dioxide levels near the earth surface spiked to more than 410 parts per million before falling to 380 parts per million during the day due to photosynthesis by plants. Levels of the gas in the atmospheric boundary layer, which is the lowest part of the atmosphere and can extend to an altitude of approximately 16,400 feet, remained relatively consistent, ranging from 380 parts per million in the lower part of the boundary layer to roughly 395 parts per million in the upper layers. Levels of carbon dioxide above the atmospheric boundary layer, up to an altitude of approximately 28,000 feet, ranged from 400 to 405 parts per million.

The researchers found that when the frontal system moved in, horizontal winds disrupted this pattern and stirred up the atmosphere, moving carbon dioxide into the upper atmosphere.

"When the warm sector of the front passes, we see this almost constant field of higher carbon dioxide that extends from the earth surface all the way up to 28,000 feet," Samaddar said. "We've never seen this before."

The scientists think the high carbon dioxide in the warm sector came from ecosystems in the Gulf Coast region. Ecosystems there may have been respiring more than they photosynthesized when the data were collected, while crops and forests in the U.S. Midwest and Canada appear to have been net sinks of carbon dioxide, said Davis.

The warm sector is immediately followed by the cold sector, which is a cold air mass with lower carbon dioxide levels that comes from Canada. The cold sector lowers carbon dioxide levels in the atmospheric boundary layer all the way to the earth surface, and then the regular pattern of carbon dioxide kicks back in, said Samaddar.

"This information is useful not only for scientists trying to figure out carbon dioxide sources and sinks, but also for modelers to see if the movement of carbon dioxide in their global carbon models is correct," he said.

The researchers are now trying to measure how much carbon dioxide gets pushed into the upper atmosphere by these frontal systems.

Explore further Face masks may expose children to higher carbon dioxide levels

More information: Arkayan Samaddar et al, Carbon Dioxide Distribution, Origins, and Transport Along a Frontal Boundary During Summer in MidLatitudes, Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres (2021). Journal information: Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres Arkayan Samaddar et al, Carbon Dioxide Distribution, Origins, and Transport Along a Frontal Boundary During Summer in MidLatitudes,(2021). DOI: 10.1029/2020JD033118
A whole cell image (left), motor images reconstructed from electron microscopy (middle), and a motor schematic (right) are shown. In the schematic, two sets of twin motors are connected. The flower like structure colored red and yellow shares its structure with ATP synthase, which is widely spread among organisms. Credit: Toyonaga T, Kato T, Kawamoto A, Kodera N, Hamaguchi T, Tahara YO, Ando T, Namba K, Miyata M.

For more than 20 years, Makoto Miyata from Osaka City University has been studying the gliding motility of the parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma mobile (M. mobile). It is a mechanism consisting of an external "grabbing" structure and internal "motor"the motor having yet to be clarified on a molecular level. In collaboration with Osaka University and Kanazawa University, Miyata's research team used electron microscopy and high-speed atomic force microscopy (high-speed AFM) to reveal that the bacteria's molecular motor consists of two ATP synthase-like complexes, suggesting an unexpected evolution of the protein. Their findings were published in mBio.

Based on genetic information, researchers have suggested that the molecular motor of M. mobile evolved from a protein that synthesizes ATP, called ATP synthase, although this had yet to be confirmed. ATP is an important substance generated in the mitochondria that provides energy that a molecular motor uses for the movement of nearly all living things, including M. mobile gliding.

"It was recently hypothesized that M. mobile, unlike respiration systems in mitochondria, converts ATP energy into a gliding force with a rotary class of ATP synthase. To our surprise, we discovered the motor of M. mobile to be a chain of two ATP synthases-like molecules, housed within a complex cylindrical structure," said Makoto Miyatathis has never been seen before.

The cells are gliding on glass. They always go in the direction of their tapered end with speeds of 2 to 4 m per second. Credit: Yuya Sasajima (Osaka City University)

The team first extracted a cell from M. mobile and isolated its protein units. Using negative-staining electron microscopy, they discovered a twin motor where each motor is structurally similar to ATP synthase. However, the clarification has not stopped here. "We need to see this dimeric ATP synthase chain in action to understand how it facilitates M. mobile's gliding movement," said Noriyuki Kodera of Kanazawa University. Using the state-of-the-art, high-speed AFM pioneered at the Nano Life Science Institute of Kanazawa University, the team plans to confirm the rotary nature of the molecular motor during ATP hydrolysis. As the architecture of the gliding motor is like ATP synthase, "it is possible the chains share a common evolutionary origin," said Takuma Toyonaga, a research fellow at Osaka City University. "This discovery of an ATP synthase created a breakthrough in our understanding of the evolution of cells and protein and has brought us closer to understanding the operating principles of motility, which is expected to serve as a basis for the development of nanoscale devices and pharmaceuticals."

More information: Takuma Toyonaga et al, Chained Structure of Dimeric F 1 -like ATPase in Mycoplasma mobile Gliding Machinery, mBio (2021). Journal information: mBio Takuma Toyonaga et al, Chained Structure of Dimeric F 1 -like ATPase in Mycoplasma mobile Gliding Machinery,(2021). DOI: 10.1128/mBio.01414-21

Provided by Osaka City University
Using high-resolution images from a scanning electron microscope, various fungi with a wide variety of growth forms were discovered on microplastic particles. Here, fungal spores are seen along a crack in a microplastic particle. The scale bar corresponds to 30 micrometers. Credit: UBT / Department of Mycology

Representatives of numerous pathogenic fungal species are finding new habitat on microplastic particles in the soil and could thus be one of the possible causes of an increase in fungal infections. Researchers from Bayreuth, Hannover and Munich demonstrated this in a new study. Using high-throughput methods, the scientists analyzed fungal communities from soil samples taken from sites near human settlements in western Kenya. The findings of this research have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

This study is the first to focus on fungal communities on microplastic particles in the soil. Many of the species detected belong to groups of fungi that are pathogenic to plants, animals and humans. Pathogenic microfungi are able to colonize the otherwise inhospitable surfaces of microplastic particles due to their characteristic adhesive lifestyle. Furthermore, they are able to withstand strong solar radiation and heat to which they are exposed on soil surfaces.

"We were able to observe all stages of fungal biofilm formation on the microplastic particles recovered from the soil samples. In doing so, we were able to demonstrate that fungi not only grow, but also reproduce in the so-called plastisphere. The data we obtained from microscopic examinations and DNA analyses supports the assumption that fungi systematically colonize microplastics in the soil. Moreover, they provide evidence that microplastics in soil accumulate certain pathogenic fungal species: some species dangerous to humans, including black fungi and cryptococcal yeast fungi, are present on the surfaces of microplastic particles in higher concentrations than in the surrounding soil. Our study therefore justifies the presumption that microplastics in soil are a potential source of fungal infections," says Gerasimos Gkoutselis M.Sc., lead author of the study and doctoral student at the University of Bayreuth's Department of Mycology.

Imaging techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy were used to examine the microplastic particles. Metabarcoding analyses showed that the number of species on the microplastic particles was lower than in the soil samples. "Our research results therefore support the assumption that specialized fungal communities form on the microplastic particles, which differ significantly from the fungal communities in the surrounding soil. At the same time, however, we were able to prove that the number of fungal species occurring on microplastic in the soil is significantly higher than the number of fungal species colonizing microplastic particles in rivers and lakes," explains Prof. Dr. Gerhard Rambold, head of the Department of Mycology at the University of Bayreuth.

Especially in tropical countries, the risk of microplastic in the soil becoming a carrier for pathogenic fungi is comparatively high. The microplastic-containing soil samples examined in this new study were collected from study sites in the west Kenyan town of Siaya. The sites included a marketplace, a dump site, a roadside, and a courtyard. "Even though plastic waste is often portrayed as a Third World problem, Kenya actually has pioneer status in plastic waste prevention. Since 2017, effective measures have been taken there to eliminate single-use plastic. Kenya has also joined an alliance to impede import plastic from industrialized countries. This means that measures have been taken at an early stage to counteract the problem of plastic waste in the environment. The fact that we discovered numerous potentially pathogenic fungal colonies in the soil samples from Kenya is a clear indication of the urgency of the problem in tropical regions in general, where the rate of fungal infections is already high. Worldwide, fungal infections are on the rise. Our study shows: Measures to prevent plastic waste from entering the environment and to further develop waste management are urgently needed globally," Prof. Rambold explains further.

The findings published in Scientific Reports are the result of close interdisciplinary cooperation between scientists at the University of Bayreuth and partners at Leibniz University Hanover and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The interdisciplinary working group at the University of Bayreuth is part of the local DFG Collaborative Research Center 1357 "Microplastics." Scientists from the fields of mycology, microbiology, biogeochemistry, and genetics are working together in this team to investigate the interaction of microplastics and microorganisms living in the ground.

Explore further Microplastics found in Europe's largest ice cap

More information: Gerasimos Gkoutselis et al, Microplastics accumulate fungal pathogens in terrestrial ecosystems, Scientific Reports (2021). Journal information: Scientific Reports Gerasimos Gkoutselis et al, Microplastics accumulate fungal pathogens in terrestrial ecosystems,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-92405-7
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Public opinion polls ahead of the 2020 election were the most inaccurate in a generation, according to Josh Clinton, Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair and professor of political science, who recently served as chair of a special task force convened by the American Association for Public Opinion Research specifically to evaluate polling. The task force found that polling during the two weeks before the election overstated support for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 3.9 percentage points, which was the largest polling error since 1980 when support for Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter was overestimated by 6 percentage points. The presidential election between Biden, the eventual winner, and incumbent president Donald Trump was much closer than polling had indicated. A report detailing the task force's discoveries and conclusions is here.

"This discrepancy is across the board. It's not a Republican polling problem or a Democratic polling problem," said Clinton, who is also a senior election analyst for NBC News' Decision Desk, which projects election winners as polls close in each state. "We found that, regardless of party and regardless of how they were done, sizable polling errors occurred for presidential races as well as senate and state-level races."

As chair of the task force, Clinton offered his Vanderbilt students an opportunity to participate in meaningful and exclusive analysis of polls. In his spring and fall 2020 courses on elections, Clinton's students helped analyze poll results for the task force report as they learned about previous elections. This unique opportunity to do real-life work gave students a taste of what professional pollsters do.

How did this happen?

Though the exact causes of the discrepancy are still being determined by the task force and other researchers, the analysis pointed toward several possible explanations. An unexpectedly large voter turnout may have contributed to polling error, given the historical level of turnout and the "perfect storm" of current eventsa worldwide pandemic that caused a flagging economy and record levels of unemployment, a wide assortment of new voting methods, and increasing polarization in the political sphere. As a result, in 2020, in addition to the usual voters and newly eligible voters (those who just turned age 18 and newly naturalized citizens), there were many non-regular voters who cast ballots.

Another possible source of polling error may be the reluctance of Trump supporters to participate in polling. Leading up to the 2020 election, Trump had characterized polling as "fake" and biased against his campaign, which may have led his supporters to decline participation in polling. Thus the size of Trump's support was not captured in pre-election polls, so the eventual number of voters who cast their ballot for Trump was larger than polls indicated. The task force's analysis showed that the greatest errors occurred where Trump support was largest.

Credit: Vanderbilt University

Be careful with poll numbers

Though polls are often used to predict support for a particular candidate or policy idea, Clinton said it is important to put the results in proper context. The "margin of error" for a poll, for example, is actually not a statement of polling accuracy. It indicates the range within which the poll numbers would fluctuate if the poll were carried out repeatedly.

"People sometimes think that just because there is a number attached that it must be precise. The reality is that there are a lot of errors that can accumulate in a single poll, based upon small decisions about what you assume about voterswhich can actually have enormous consequences within a polarized electorate. A bunch of small errors can end up producing consequential polling errorsespecially given how close recent elections are," Clinton said. "One of the takeaways I hope people get from the report is that there are a lot of complexities that go into polling that are quite variable."

So how should the public interpret poll numbers?

Clinton suggested that readers should take the margin of error stated on the poll, double it, and see whether the difference between the two candidates is within the doubled margin of error. If it is, then it is hard to conclude which candidate is actually ahead in the race.

"This should be empowering because it means if a poll shows the race to be close, your vote counts even more. And don't be too quick to predict winners based on polls, given the difficulty involved. You can never be completely sure until the votes are counted and certified," Clinton said.
In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, the Bootleg Fire burns at night in southern Oregon on Saturday, July 17, 2021. The destructive Bootleg Fire, one of the largest in modern Oregon history, has already burned more than 476 square miles (1,210 square kilometers), an area about the size of Los Angeles. The Bootleg Fire is among dozens burning in the parched West. Credit: Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

The monstrous wildfire burning in Oregon has grown to a third the size of Rhode Island and spreads miles each day, but evacuations and property losses have been minimal compared with much smaller blazes in densely populated areas of California.

The fire's jaw-dropping size contrasted with its relatively small impact on people underscores the vastness of the American West and offers a reminder that Oregon, which is larger than Britain, is still a largely rural state, despite being known mostly for its largest city, Portland.

The 476-square-mile (1,210-square-kilometer) Bootleg Fire is burning 300 miles (483 kilometers) southeast of Portland in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest, a vast expanse of old-growth forest, lakes and wildlife refuges.

If the fire were in densely populated parts of California, "it would have destroyed thousands of homes by now," said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University's College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires. "But it is burning in one of the more remote areas of the lower 48 states. It's not the Bay Area out there."

At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died.

In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, the Bootleg Fire burns in the background behind the Sycan Marsh in southern Oregon on Saturday, July 17, 2021. The destructive Bootleg Fire, one of the largest in modern Oregon history, has already burned more than 476 square miles (1,210 square kilometers), an area about the size of Los Angeles. Credit: Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

Pushed by strong winds from the southwest, the fire is spreading rapidly to the north and east, advancing toward an area that's increasingly remote.

Evacuation orders on the fire's southern edge, closer to more populous areas like Klamath Falls and Bly, have been lifted or relaxed as crews gain control. Now it's small, unincorporated communities like Paisley and Long Creekboth with fewer than 250 peopleand scattered homesteads that are in the crosshairs.

"The Bootleg Fire is threatening ranch houses that are in pretty far-flung areas," Johnston said. "There are no suburbs in that area."

But as big as the Bootleg Fire is, it's not the biggest Oregon has seen. The fire's current size puts it fourth on the list of the state's largest blazes in modern times, including rangeland fires, and second on the list of infernos specifically burning in forest.

In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, a DC-10 tanker drops retardant over the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, Thursday, July 15, 2021. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday with lightning possible in both California and southern Oregon. Credit: Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

These megafires usually burn until the late fall or even early winter, when rain finally puts them out.

The largest forest fire in modern history was the Biscuit Fire, which torched nearly 780 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) in 2002 in the Rogue RiverSiskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon and northern California. The largest fire of any type was the Long Draw Fire in 2012, which incinerated 872 square miles (2,260 square kilometers) of mostly sagebrush and rangeland in the endless expanses of southeastern Oregon, where almost no one lives.

By the time the Bootleg Fire is extinguished months from now, it will likely be as big or bigger than those fires, but research shows that Oregon once experienced megafires much larger than these fairly often, Johnston said.

"I think it's important for us to take the long view of wildfire. In the context of the last couple hundreds years, the Bootleg Fire is not large," he said. "One of the things my lab group does is reconstruct historical fires, and fires that were burning in that area in the 1600s and 1700s were just as big as the Bootleg Fire or bigger."

In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, firefighters battle the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, Saturday, July 17, 2021. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday with lightning possible in both California and southern Oregon. Credit: J. Michael Johnson/Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

That's little reassurance for fire crews battling the current blaze, which is 25% contained.

On Monday, flames forced the evacuation of a wildlife research station as firefighters had to retreat from the flames for the ninth consecutive day due to erratic and dangerous fire behavior. Sycan Marsh hosts thousands of migrating and nesting birds and is a key research station on wetland restoration in the upper reaches of the Klamath Basin.

Fire pushed by winds and fueled by bone-dry conditions jumped fire-retardant containment lines and pushed up to 4 miles into new territory, authorities said.

Fire crews were also rushing to corral multiple "slop fires"patches of flames that escaped fire lines meant to contain the blazebefore they grew in size. One of those smaller fires was already nearly 4 square miles (10 square kilometers) in size. Thunderstorms with dry lightning were possible Monday as well, heightening the dangers.

In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, firefighters battle the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, Saturday, July 17, 2021. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday with lightning possible in both California and southern Oregon. Credit: J. Michael Johnson/Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

"We are running firefighting operations through the day and all through the night," said Joe Hessel, incident commander. "This fire is a real challenge, and we are looking at sustained battle for the foreseeable future."

The Bootleg Fire was one of many fires burning in a dozen states, most of them in the U.S. West. Sixteen large uncontained fires burned in Oregon and Washington state alone on Monday, affecting a total of 767 square miles (1,986 square kilometers), the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center said.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have made wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

At the other end of Oregon, a fire in the northeast mountains grew to nearly 26 square miles (49 square kilometers).

In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, the Bootleg Fire is seen smoldering in southern Oregon, Saturday, July 17, 2021. The destructive Bootleg Fire, one of the largest in modern Oregon history, has already burned more than 476 square miles (1,210 square kilometers), an area about the size of Los Angeles. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday with lightning possible in both California and southern Oregon. Credit: Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

In this photo provided by the Bootleg Fire Incident Command, a public information officer talks with evacuees at a Red Cross Shelter near the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon, Sunday, July 18, 2021. The destructive Bootleg Fire, one of the largest in modern Oregon history, has already burned more than 476 square miles (1,210 square kilometers), an area about the size of Los Angeles. Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather through at least Monday with lightning possible in both California and southern Oregon. Credit: Bootleg Fire Incident Command via AP

Smoke obscures the air and dims the sun over a hillside burned by a recent wildfire, in Missoula, Mont., on Sunday, July 18, 2021. Extreme heat descended on parts of the U.S. northern Rocky Mountains on Monday, July 19 as authorities struggled to contain dozens of wildfires burning in a region parched by prolonged drought and blanketed with dangerous smoke. Credit: AP Photo/Matthew Brown

The Elbow Creek Fire that started Thursday has prompted evacuations in several small, rural communities around the Grande Ronde River about 30 miles (50 kilometers) southeast of Walla Walla, Washington. It was 10% contained.

Natural features of the area act like a funnel for wind, feeding the flames and making them unpredictable, officials said.

A complex of fires where the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho meet also grew, reaching 167 square miles (433 square kilometers). The Snake River Complex was 44% contained. The complex was made up of three fires started by lightning on July 7. Flames were chewing through a mix of grass and timber in an extremely remote area of steep terrain about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Lewiston, Idaho.

And in Northern California, authorities expanded evacuations on the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County in the Sierra Nevada to include the mountain town of Mesa Vista. That fire, which exploded over the weekend and forced the cancellation of an extreme bike ride, was 36 square miles (93 square kilometers) with no containment.

Thunderstorms expected to roll through Monday night could bring winds to fan the flames and lightning that could spark new ones, the National Weather Service said.

Explore further California fire cancels bike ride, prompts evacuations

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Small fragments of burnt bone from Palaeolithic L'Abri Pataud in the Dordogne in France. Credit: Leiden University

Different groups of hominins probably learned from one another much earlier than was previously thought, and that knowledge was also distributed much further. A study by archaeologists at Leiden University on the use of fire shows that 400,000 years ago knowledge and skills must already have been exchanged via social networks. The discovery was published in PNAS on 19 July.

"To date it was always thought that cultural diffusion actually started only 70,000 years ago when modern humans, Homo sapiens, started to disperse. But the record for the use of fire now seems to show that this happened much earlier," archaeologist and researcher Katharine MacDonald explains.

Together with Wil Roebroeks, professor of the Evolution of the Human Niche, archaeologist Fulco Scherjon, research master's student Eva van Veen, and Krist Vaesen, associate professor in the Philosophy of Innovation at Eindhoven University of Technology, MacDonald conducted research on the traces of fire made by hominins at archaeological sites in various places throughout the world. "We started to look differently at the data from decades of archaeological research."

Cultural diffusion

Cultural diffusion is the widespread distribution of objects, techniques or particular practices by people or hominins. Examples include children's songs or rhymes. Whether they are sung by a child in the United States in English or in Europe in a European language, they often sound the same. This is because people have passed knowledge of the melody and also, for example, the clapping rhythm via a learning process.

A tool made using the Levallois technique, found during an excavation in the Maastricht region of Belvedere. Credit: Leiden University

At many of those sitesin Israel and in Africa, Europe and possibly also Chinathe researchers found comparable traces, or combinations of traces, such as charcoal, carbonized bones and stones that had been subjected to heat. "We don't think that these similarities could be caused because early predecessors of humans themselves traveled great distances, or that they developed particular techniques separately from one another, for example because the human brain underwent sudden growth. There are no indications at all for that," MacDonald explains. The only other possibility is that different groups of hominins passed on these techniques and knowledge of raw materials to one another, and that primitive social networks must have existed.

The theory of the research team is supported by archaeological finds of a particular type of stone tool from a somewhat later period. These tools made using what is known as the Levallois technique pop up during a very short period in an increasing number of places in the Old World. There are also genetic traces that show that different hominin populations must have been in contact with one another.

Anthropology, primatology and social sciences

The researchers looked not only at archaeological evidence for the spread of the use of fire, but also at what is needed to exchange such knowledge. They therefore needed to know in what ways particular types of hominins could have been in social contact with one another. MacDonald: "It became a strongly interdisciplinary study. Besides archaeological data, we also integrated knowledge from anthropology, primatology and the social sciences. That's something I'm very proud of."

"Exciting and at the same time terrifying," is how MacDonald describes the publication of the research findings in scientific journal PNAS. "We worked on the article for a year and a half; it was completely rewritten twice and we shared it with just a couple of colleagues. But now the whole world can read it and there will no doubt be people who don't agree with us."

Still, she hopes that the article will lead to new questions in archaeology and other scientific disciplines. For MacDonald, the most important question is: what was it that made widespread cultural diffusion possible 400,000 years ago? "I hope we can change the discussion surrounding fire use by hominins. That we look more at what the use of fire meant for human development and how that related to social change."

Explore further Genetic research reveals Neanderthals could tolerate smoke

More information: Katharine MacDonald el al., "Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution," PNAS (2021). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Katharine MacDonald el al., "Middle Pleistocene fire use: The first signal of widespread cultural diffusion in human evolution,"(2021). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2101108118
Corals are made of hundreds to thousands of tiny living polyps. Credit: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation

The Chagos Archipelago is one of the most remote, seemingly idyllic places on Earth. Coconut-covered sandy beaches with incredible bird life rim tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, hundreds of miles from any continent. Just below the waves, coral reefs stretch for miles along an underwater mountain chain.

It's a paradise. At least it was before the heat wave.

When I first explored the Chagos Archipelago 15 years ago, the underwater view was incredible. Schools of brilliantly colored fish in blues, yellows and oranges darted among the corals of a vast, healthy reef system. Sharks and other large predators swam overhead. Because the archipelago is so remote and sits in one of the largest marine protected areas on the planet, it has been sheltered from industrial fishing fleets and other activities that can harm the coastal environment.

But it can't be protected from climate change.

In 2015, a marine heat wave struck, harming coral reefs worldwide. I'm a marine biologist at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and I was with a team of researchers on a 10-year global expedition to map the world's reefs, led by the Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation, wrapping up our work in the Chagos Archipelago at the time. Our report on the state of the reefs there was published in spring 2021.

As the water temperature rose, the corals began to bleach. To the untrained eye, the scene would have looked fantastic. When the water heats up, corals become stressed and they expel the tiny algae called dinoflagellates that live in their tissue. Bleaching isn't as simple as going from a living coral to a bleached white one, though. After they expel the algae, the corals turn fluorescent pinks and blues and yellows as they produce chemicals to protect themselves from the Sun's harmful rays. The entire reef was turning psychedelic colors.

A diver documents the coral reefs in the Chagos Archipelago. Credit: Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation

That explosion of color is rare, and it doesn't last long. Over the following week, we watched the corals turn white and start to die. It wasn't just small pieces of the reef that were bleachingit was happening across hundreds of square miles.

What most people think of as a coral is actually many tiny colonial polyps that build calcium carbonate skeletons. With their algae gone, the coral polyps could still feed by plucking morsels out of the water, but their metabolism slows without the algae, which provide more nutrients through photosynthesis. They were left desperately weakened and more vulnerable to diseases. We could see diseases taking hold, and that's what finished them off.

We were witnessing the death of a reef.

Rising temperatures increase the heat wave risk

The devastation of the Chagos Reef wasn't happening in isolation.

Over the past century, sea surface temperatures have risen by an average of about 0.13 degrees Celsius (0.23 F) per decade as the oceans absorb the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, largely from the burning of fossil fuels. The temperature increase and changing ocean chemistry affects sea life of all kinds, from deteriorating the shells of oysters and tiny pteropods, an essential part of the food chain, to causing fish populations to migrate to cooler water.

Corals beginning to bleach in the Chagos archipelago. Credit: Phil Renaud/Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation

Corals can become stressed when temperatures around them rise just 1 C (1.8 F) above their tolerance level. With water temperature elevated from global warming, even a minor heat wave can become devastating.

These events and rising global temperatures are why the International Coral Reef Society, which represents thousands of coral scientists, issued an urgent call to governments on July 20, 2021, to do more to protect coral reefs. As part of its report on the state of the world's reefs, it listed ways to help reefs survive, including investing in conservation, management and restoration; committing to slow climate change, reduce pollution and stop overfishing; and supporting efforts to help corals adapt to warming waters. With swift action to slow climate change, the group writes, about 30% of reefs could survive the century; if global temperatures rise by 2 C (3.6 F) or more, only about 1% will still exist. At stake is an estimated US$10 trillion in annual economic value and coastline protection.

In 2015, the ocean heat from a strong El Nino event triggered the mass bleaching in the Chagos reefs and around the world. It was the third global bleaching on record, following events in 1998 and 2010.

Bleaching doesn't just affect the coralsentire reef systems and the fish that feed, spawn and live among the coral branches suffer. One study of reefs around Papua New Guinea in the southwest Pacific found that about 75% of the reef fish species declined after the 1998 bleaching, and many of those species declined by more than half.

Research shows marine heat waves are now about 20 times more likely than they were just four decades ago, and they tend to be hotter and last longer. We're at the point now that some places in the world are anticipating coral bleaching every couple of years.

That increasing frequency of heat waves is a death knell for reefs. They don't have time to recover before they get hit again.

Where we saw signs of hope

During the Global Reef Expedition, we visited over 1,000 reefs around the world. Our mission was to conduct standardized surveys to assess the state of the reefs and map the reefs in detail so scientists could document and hopefully respond to changes in the future. With that knowledge, countries can plan more effectively to protect the reefs, important national resources, providing hundreds of billions of dollars a year in economic value while also protecting coastlines from waves and storms.

We saw damage almost everywhere, from the Bahamas to the Great Barrier Reef.

Some reefs are able to survive heat waves better than others. Cooler, stronger currents, and even storms and cloudier areas can help prevent heat building up. But the global trend is not promising. The world has already lost 30% to 50% of its reefs in the last 40 years, and scientists have warned that most of the remaining reefs could be gone within decades.

While we see some evidence that certain marine species are moving to cooler waters as the planet warms, a reef takes thousands of years to establish and grow, and it is limited by geography.

In the areas where we saw glimmers of hope, it was mostly due to good management. When a region can control other harmful human factorssuch as overfishing, extensive coastal development, pollution and runoffthe reefs are healthier and better able to handle the global pressures from climate change.

Noduled sea stars are among the reefs diverse species. Credit: Ken Marks/Khaled bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation

Establishing large marine protected areas is one of the most effective ways I've seen to protect coral reefs because it limits those other harms.

The Chagos marine protected area covers 640,000 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) with only one island currently inhabitedDiego Garcia, which houses a U.S. military base. The British government, which created the marine protected area in 2010, has been under pressure to turn over control of the region to the country of Mauritius, where former Chagos residents now live and which won a challenge over it in the International Court of Justice in 2020. Whatever happens with jurisdiction, the region would benefit from maintaining a high level of marine protection.

A warning for other ecosystems

The Chagos reefs could potentially recoverif they are spared from more heat waves. Even a 10% recovery would make the reefs stronger for when the next bleaching occurs. But recovery of a reef is measured in decades, not years.

So far, research missions that have returned to the Chagos reefs have found only meager recovery, if any at all.

We knew the reefs weren't doing well under the insidious march of climate change in 2011, when the global reef expedition started. But it's nothing like the intensity of worry we have now in 2021.

Coral reefs are the canary in the coal mine. Humans have collapsed other ecosystems before through overfishing, overhunting and development, but this is the first unequivocally tied to climate change. It's a harbinger of what can happen to other ecosystems as they reach their survival thresholds.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard craft launches into space from the desert in west Texas carrying Jeff Bezos and three other crew for the vessel's first human flight.

Earth's wealthiest man Jeff Bezos spent a few minutes outside the planet's atmosphere Tuesday on Blue Origin's first crewed space missiona breakthrough moment for the space tourism sector that after years of delays is now poised for liftoff.

The flawless 10-minute hop from a west Texas base to beyond the Karman linethe internationally recognized boundary marking the start of spaceand back again to the surface for a gentle desert landing minted four new astronauts, including the oldest and youngest ever.

Bezos said afterwards that like those who had gone before him, he was "amazed and awestruck by the Earth and its beauty, but also its fragility."

"It's one thing to recognize that intellectuallyit's another thing to actually see with your own eyes," he added.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson crossed the final frontier on July 11, narrowly beating the Amazon magnate in their space battle of the billionaires.

Blue Origin's sights, however, are set higher: both in the altitude to which its reusable New Shepard craft ascends compared to Virgin's spaceplane, and in its longer-term ambitions.

Bezos, 57, founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of one day building floating space colonies with artificial gravity where millions of people will work and live.

Jeff Bezos is all smiles after returning from space.

The New Shepard suborbital rocketnamed after Alan Shepard, the first American in spacehad flown 15 uncrewed flights to put it through its paces and test safety mechanisms before Tuesday's mission.

Today, the company is developing a heavy-lift orbital rocket called New Glennnamed for John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earthand also a Moon lander it is hoping to contract to the US space agency NASA.

'I want to go againfast!'

Liftoff, which was slightly delayed, came at 8:12 am central time (1312 GMT) from Blue Origin base Launch Site One, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the nearest town, Van Horn.

Joining Bezos was his brother and best friend Mark, barrier-breaking aviator Wally Funk, 82, and 18-year-old Dutch teen Oliver Daemen.

Funk and Daemen became the oldest and youngest astronauts, respectively.

Graphic explaining the different flight stages of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket for its successful first crewed flight.

A spot opened up for Daemen after the anonymous winner of a $28 million auction postponed their flight, citing "scheduling conflicts."

Daemen's financier father was a runner-up in the bidding, making his son the first paying customer.

After liftoff, New Shepard careened towards space at speeds exceeding 2,300 mph (3700 kph) using a liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine whose only byproduct is water vapor.

The capsule separated from its booster, and when it got high enough, the astronauts unbuckled and experienced near zero gravity for three to four minutes.

Footage showed them performing somersaults and throwing Skittles which Dutch teen Oliver Daemen caught in his mouth, as the capsule ascended to a peak altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers).

"We had a great time, it was wonderful," Funk, who trained as an astronaut but was denied the opportunity to go to space by the sexism of the early space era, later told reporters.

"I want to go againfast!"

Dutch teen Oliver Daemen (L) and pioneering aviator Wally Funk (R) joined Jeff bezos and his brother Mark on the mission.

'Read the room'

The booster returned autonomously to a landing pad just north of its launch site, while the capsule fell back to Earth with three giant parachutes, and finally a thruster, for a soft landing that sent up a cloud of dust.

The crew took a number of mementos with them for the trip, including a piece of fabric from the Wright brothers' first plane, a bronze medallion made from the first hot air balloon flight in 1783, and a pair of goggles that belonged to Amelia Earhart.

After the flight, crewmembers hugged their family and friends, while congratulations came from Branson and NASA.

"We look forward to future flights with researchers and NASA-supported technology payloads aboard," NASA said on Twitter.

But some Democratic lawmakers criticized the optics of the jaunt, as well as the low tax rate paid by Bezos, who is worth more than $200 billion.

The Blue Origin capsule came for a soft landing that sent up a cloud of dust.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has brought pain, suffering and death to everyday Americans. And we're supposed to care that billionaires are traveling to the edge of space?" tweeted Congressman Hakeem Jeffries.

Bezos has acknowledged the criticism and announced at the press conference he was giving away two $100 million prizes as "courage and civility awards" to activist and TV presenter Van Jones, and chef and humanitarian Jose Andres.

Demand 'very, very high'

As for what comes next, Blue Origin has promised two more flights this year, with Bezos revealing: "We're approaching $100 million in private sales already, and the demand is very, very high."

This still image taken from video by Blue Origin shows the space company's founder Jeff Bezos celebrating catching popcorn in his mouth during the space flight.

He acknowledged that while the cost would remain prohibitive for most people, "you've got to do it the same way we did it with commercial airline travel," and predicted that prices would fall.

For Harvard astronomer and space industry analyst Jonathan McDowell, "suborbital space tourism, after such a long wait, is finally here."

"We're going to see vastly larger numbers of people go into space: in some senses, a more diverse populationnot diverse in wealth but I think we'll see rich people from around the world," he told AFP.

Explore further Amazon magnate Bezos ready to ride his own rocket to space

 2021 AFP
The acoustic samples are above what humans can hear, but the researchers are able to generate sonograms so we can visualize what the calls sound like. The bats send out a call, and when they detect prey, they send out their calls with much higher frequency, Chad Rittenhouse explains. "The calls get faster with their pulsing, and it almost looks like it's zip, and sort of like a ping pong ball dropping on a table that accelerates the bounce, bounce, bounce. Some people call it the 'feeding zip' and, on a sonogram, it literally would look like a rip going up." Credit: Chad Rittenhouse

The sight of felled trees and logging activity can be jarring for nature lovers, but from those sites can sprout young forest growth that's especially attractive to a familiar inhabitant of wooded areas throughout the Northeastbats.

New findings from researchers at the UConn College of Agriculture, Health, and Natural Resources, published in Forest Ecology and Management, finds that a number of bat species native to the Northeast are highly active in newly created forest spaces, foraging for food at higher rates than is typical of mature forests.

Little is known about how different bat species use forests of varying ages, but Natural Resources and the Environment researchersincluding Dan Wright '20 (CAHNR) MS, associate Professor Tracy Rittenhouse, and Assistant Professor in Residence Chad Rittenhousesought to learn more. What they found sheds new light on how forests can be managed to support bat populations, most of which are threatened or in decline, says Chad Rittenhouse.

Something for Everybat

"One of the things that's maybe underappreciated with bats is that we only have two handfuls of species in Connecticut and every species is different from the other," says Chad Rittenhouse. "The bats have different body sizes, different wing lengths, they have different wing aspect ratios, which means some bats are built like race cars and they're super agile while others may be faster, and some are somewhere in between. Those different morphological characteristics help them to forage in different spaces. Some will peruse a lawn, or other open spaces like along the edge of a forest or road corridor, and just gobble up insects as they go. Others will work around trees, hovering and gleaning kind of like a hummingbird feeding. In terms of differences that we found by species, one of the really exciting things of our study is that we found species with very different foraging strategies. They're all using these cuts, and some are using the edges, some are going around the trees that are within the cut area that were left standing. Some may just be commuting through. But everything that I just described, we found them all in the cuts, and almost to a tee, none of them in the control sites."

"The reason people haven't worked on this (summer habitat) in bats is due to white nose syndrome and the spread of the disease causing the rapid decline of populations," he says. "The conservation efforts around bats, rightfully so, were really focused in on the hibernaculum caves where the mortality was happening, and where the disease contact between individuals is happening. However, there is this whole foraging and young-rearing period that hasn't been looked at, and we don't know the details of what happens."

Chad Rittenhouse explains that this research focusing on bats sprang from similar research he did in graduate school with birds.

"There was an emphasis on what's called post-fledging ecology of birds, basically finding out what birds do after they leave the nest but before they migrate," he says. "When the young leave the nest, they are going for canopy gaps and small openings within the forest. We didn't really know that previously and through radio telemetry studies and observational studies found that that they were doing that because there is more sunlight, which means more vegetative growth, which means more insects feeding on the vegetation growth, which means young birds can grow more quickly through increased insect consumption. There's also a lot of structure, vertical and horizontal, that was providing cover from predators."

The researchers knew the DEEP Wildlife Division has a bat monitoring program that mainly tracks bats along roadways, where they often forage and commute, says Chad Rittenhouse. Reminded of the fledging bird research, they thought about applying methods that have been used on birds to learn about how bats use forested habitats, and in areas where forest management treatments have been applied.

"Why not look at bats off roads? Why not look at bats in these cut areas? We thought we should look at bats and clear cuts and regenerating forests and just see what's going on. A quick peek at the scientific literature revealed literally only a handful of studies that have looked at this issue."

Tracy Rittenhouse explains the experimental setup, which took place in northwestern Connecticut and southwestern Massachusetts: "We picked sites that were embedded, meaning the sites had mature forest, with a smallerdepending on how you define smallerharvested stands embedded within mature forests."

The forest locations varied in age from one to 12 years of regrowth since trees were cut, where researchers then recorded bat foraging calls at night. Through this passive acoustic sampling, they were able to track bat foraging behaviors and identify which species were present.

"We paired every one of our sites that was a cut site with a nearby control site, typically within 100 meters or so which was not cut. What we have is a nice comparison of how bats are using the mature forest and the cut forest," says Chad Rittenhouse.

Tracy Rittenhouse says the results showed a strong pattern where bat foraging activity was the highest in younger forests, and that it steadily declines as the forests age. By day, bats can roost in a variety of structures, resting up before their nocturnal foraging acrobatics, from the eaves of houses or beneath curls of bark on shagbark hickory trees.

"We tend to think that old growth forests must be good for bats, because we know they contain roosting sites, but within 24 hours [of a tree cut], they're roosting and foraging."

Wright adds, "After a cut happens in the forest, bats are really active, using it as both commuting and foraging habitat. As the cuts continue to age, the vegetation height increases, and the foraging space, up in the air, where bats typically forage is not as suitable anymore."

With knowledge of the bat foraging preferences, Tracy Rittenhouse says future studies will include taking a closer look at roosting preferences, but what is clear is that homogenous forest age does not meet the range of needs for everyone.

Though cut trees and logging can be a jarring sight, studies like this one illustrate the importance of management and the impacts on animal populations, says Chad Rittenhouse.

"An important point is that young forest is still forest. I think a lot of people don't think of it that way, but to get to replacement of old trees, we need young trees too. We've been beating this drum about young forests being really important because there are lots of species that are associated with and dependent on young forests."

Wright says, "Forest management in terms of harvesting trees can be a huge asset to wildlife, wildlife conservation, in general. I think our work is pretty great in helping to manage forests and manage sustainability with productivity."

Explore further Bats in Tel Aviv enjoy a rich variety of food

More information: Daniel W. Wright et al, Bat responses to silviculture treatments: Activity over 13 years of regeneration, Forest Ecology and Management (2021). Journal information: Forest Ecology and Management Daniel W. Wright et al, Bat responses to silviculture treatments: Activity over 13 years of regeneration,(2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.foreco.2021.119359
Canada had previously required returning Canadians to pay for a second COVID test upon arrival, but the government documents indicate that will no longer be the case and would not apply to Americans.

Instead, Canada will randomly test people arriving via the land borders or by air. There will be no charge for those tests.

Canadas announcement prompted a gleeful reaction from Americans longing to visit Canada, but a tempered response from U.S. Rep. Brian Higgins, the Buffalo Democrat who has led the fight to reopen the border.

Ah yes, this is what joy feels like again, tweeted Victoria Dillon, an Amherst native who served as press secretary to the late Rep. Louise Slaughter and two U.S. secretaries of veterans affairs.

@RepBrianHigginsIll buy you a beer at the @BuffaloCanoeClub, said Maureen Griffin Tomczak, the daughter of the late Buffalo Mayor James D. Griffin, in a tweet reacting to the border reopening.

Higgins, meanwhile, praised Canadas move while criticizing the U.S. governments inaction on the border issue.

We have missed you Canada and we are thrilled at the opportunity to return soon, Higgins said.
A dispensary has won a preliminary victory in the battle over who can sell marijuana in the southern, U.S. portion of Akwesasne.

A Mohawk tribal court ruled Friday that Good Leaf in Hogansburg doesnt have to shut down, as had been required by the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe.

In the decision, Chief Judge Carrie Garrow wrote the Tribe failed to present evidence that the owners of Good Leaf are breaking the law or even proof that theyre selling marijuana at all, adding it has not shown that the Respondents are in fact in [sic] selling and/or other marijuana products or even that Morris Oakes, Gabriel Oakes, and William R. Jock, Respondents, are owners of the Good Leaf dispensary.

The judge also noted that Good Leaf was issued a business license by the traditional Longhouse council in Akwesasne. Many traditionalist Mohawks have long argued they are not subject to the governing councils established by the U.S. or Canada.
Probably, whoever was towing that flag through the streets of Ticonderoga was not thinking about reminding us of racial injustice. Probably, whoever towed that flag through the streets of Ticonderoga was not thinking.

But there is something to consider here, beyond feeling outrage and offense at the public display of a flag of rebellion against our country and hate against our fellow citizens.

How did the Confederate flag become the default display for angry men who want to give the finger to polite society? Why is that display widely tolerated?

The Confederate flag stands, among other things, for the violent subjugation, sexual abuse, assault, rape and murder of human beings. Those acts were part of the system of slavery the Confederacy sought to preserve and expand.

Other flags  spelling out vulgar insults, for example  would carry a far less offensive message. Yet flags spelling out vulgar insults would never be tolerated in the best Fourth in the North or any other Fourth of July parade.

Do you know this is not the first time the Confederate flag was displayed in the Ticonderoga July 4th parade, and the previous time, policies were changed in response? Yet again this year, the flag flew, and no one moved to stop it.
The needle exchange program, which was the first to open in New Jersey in 2007, has long been debated by city officials. Council cast the first vote for an ordinance to repeal the program during a June 16 meeting. In a 7-2 vote, the members overwhelmingly supported getting rid of the needle exchange. Morshed was one of the seven in favor of ending the program. A final vote will be held Wednesday.

Morshed said Sunday that late Thursday night he left Masjid Al-Hera mosque on Atlantic Avenue and walked to his car, which was parked in a lot on the corner of Florida and Atlantic avenues.

When I tried to get off of that parking lot to Florida Avenue, unfortunately one car blocked me, he said. It was dark, and I didnt know what was going on. I get out of my car and was going to ask them why, Why you guys block me?

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Morshed said another car pulled up and blocked another exit. He said three passengers in that car were armed with guns.

Thats when Morshed said one of the attackers told him not to go against the needle exchange.
Rose Savastano, who works at the Ocean City Welcome Center near where the plane landed, said she could see the pilot standing by the plane soon after the landing.

He did a perfect landing, she said from the scene. Hes fine.

She said it was a banner plane from Paramount Air Services. The name is visible on the side of the plane.

The woman who answered the phone at the Middle Township-based aerial advertising agency confirmed that it was one of the companys planes, but had no further information or comment.

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We dont know all the circumstances, and theres no comment at this time, she said. She did not give her name.

People in Ocean City had reported earlier hearing a large number of sirens downtown as responders headed to the scene.

Michele Gillian, the executive director of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce and the wife of Mayor Jay Gillian, said she left the Welcome Center earlier on an errand a little before the plane landed, and heard the sirens while downtown.

When contacted, she was trying to return to the Welcome Center, but said traffic heading out of Ocean City on the Ocean City-Longport bridge was heavily backed up.
EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP  Spirit Airlines will expand its flight offerings from Atlantic City International Airport this fall to include service to Cancun, Mexico; Miami; and San Juan, Puerto Rico, airport officials said Tuesday.

We are very excited to announce that Spirit Airlines will officially be offering nonstop flights to Cancun, Mexico, out of ACY beginning Oct. 29, airport officials wrote on Facebook.

Cancun service will be available four times a week, the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which operates the airport, said in a news release.

In addition, Spirit will begin flying three times a week to San Juan beginning Oct. 31.

Daily flights to and from Miami will begin Oct. 6.

Atlantic City councilman assaulted Thursday night ATLANTIC CITY  Police are investigating an assault that occurred Thursday night involving a

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We appreciate our longstanding partnership with Spirit and their dedication to increasing travel opportunities to and from Atlantic City International Airport, SJTA Executive Director Stephen F. Dougherty said.

State Senate President Steve Sweeney shared his public support of the expansion on Twitter and thanked Matt Klein, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Spirit, the SJTA and several elected officials for making the addition possible.
Part of whats so insidious about the conservative assault on critical race theory is how it exploits a deep-seated rift in the Democratic coalition, one thats been apparent since the advent of the back-to-the-city movement in the 1980s and 1990s. That divide has never been fully resolved  and it needs to be soon.

Of the various factions that comprise the Democratic Partys base, two in particular have held considerable sway in the election cycles of the 21st century. The first is the mostly (but not exclusively) white, educated and affluent progressive wing. These voters rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Great Recession and saw opportunities for greater influence during the Obama Administration. In the 2020 election cycle, they mostly supported Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

The second is the relatively moderate wing of middle- and working-class people of color. These Democrats have been painstakingly building up power within the partys establishment over several decades. They coalesced around Joe Biden in 2020.
Maybe letter writers deserve compensation too

Just a little comic relief here. If college athletes can be super-compensated for bouncing or carrying a ball, perhaps an opinion letter writer, like myself, can be super-starred for moving a pen or traversing a digital keypad with wit, wisdom and wonderfulness. So athletes have NIL (names, images and likenesses), and us letter writers have W3s.

Now don't everyone grab their checkbooks at once. I'm willing to work for just nice stationery.

Robert James Liguori

Somers Point

Use NJ extra revenue for verifiable voting

We have an unexpected $10 billion surplus. The lawmakers and the governor want to divvy it up by handing out tax rebates to voters, making long-overdue payments to the state pension system, and paying $2.5 billion to reduce N.J. debt. There are also smaller allocations, but the most critical need to be overlooked is the need to secure elections.
Elena Gottreich, deputy director for prosecutorial strategies for the department and one of the new team's leaders, said that while the department recovers thousands of illegal guns a year, We lacked the mechanism to intercept the guns prior to them hitting the streets.

After another bloody weekend that ended with more than 60 people shot, including 10 fatally, and with homicide totals expected to surge in what is typically the most violent time of year, Brown said it's especially important to seek out those who have are unwilling to come forward with information.

Someone knows who is being paid as a third party to purchase guns for a violent person in this city, that would do a drive-by shooting on young people celebrating a graduation, who have been reluctant to give it to police," he said, referring to a shooting late Saturday on the West Side in which a 12-year-old girl and four teenagers were wounded by gunfire at an outside party.

Brown also said the team  which includes Cook County and federal prosecutors  will charge gun traffickers with the highest crime we can.
For Iowa farmers, the loss of river shipping would be devastating, Lillibridge said. He estimates at least 30 percent of Iowa-grown corn is exported. If the lock and dam system shuts down and 30 percent of his market goes away, Ive got a huge problem, he said.

If all of a sudden Im sitting on 30 percent of my corn and have no place to go with it, we'll see prices crash, profitability will be zero, you will see a farm crisis like you've never seen before, Lillibridge warned.

With nearly two-thirds of the nations grain exports traveling on the Upper Mississippi River System, we cannot afford to let this situation worsen, Hinson said.

She and Grassley think upgrading the system fits nicely into the infrastructure plan, especially in terms of job creation. Modernizing the system would provide roughly 10,000 construction jobs over the lifetime of the program, which is about 20 years of construction, Hinson said.

Corn and soybean shipments account for more than half of the goods moved by weight, according to a study for the Iowa Department of Transportation. However, Iowa businesses also ship coal, fertilizer, industrial and road salt, biodiesel, lumber, rebar, steel, precast concrete, sand, molasses and gasoline.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, speaks on the Senate floor about gun violence in America, days after a shooting outside a Washington Nationals game. "The sad reality is gun violence has become as American as baseball," Durbin said. "The question before this Senate again and again and agai

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder was on hand Monday to greet Amtrak customers at Springfield's downtown train station as all Lincoln Service round trips between Chicago and St. Louis returned to full service.

The Illinois Department of Transportation said the Lincoln Service, Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr and Illini/Saluki state-supported Amtrak trains all resumed full-service Monday after reductions of one-half related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Service levels were reduced in March 2020, but full service was able to resume because of the reduction in COVID-19 cases and widespread availability of the coronavirus vaccine, IDOT spokesman Paul Wappel said.

There will be five daily round trips between Chicago and St. Louis (including the Amtrak national Texas Eagle), with intermediate stops that include Springfield and Normal.

Two daily round trips between Chicago and Quincy (Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr), with intermediate stops that include Macomb and Galesburg, are scheduled.

There also will be three daily round trips between Chicago and Carbondale (including the Amtrak national City of New Orleans).

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Fully vaccinated students, teachers and staff members will not need to wear masks in Roman Catholic schools this fall, the Chicago Archdiocese announced Tuesday.

The archdiocese said it is planning a return to near-normal, pre-pandemic operations, including the return of school Masses, all extracurricular activities and before- and after-school care programs.

We are excited to be resuming extracurricular activities and other operations that were halted during the pandemic, Justin Lombardo, chief human resources officer and chair of the archdiocesan COVID-19 task force said in a news release.

Lombardo said in an email that the archdiocese hope(s) there will be no need for students and staff members to provide proof of vaccination in order to go unmasked in schools, but that the organization will continue to evaluate the situation with guidance from public health officials and medical advisers.

Guidelines regarding masks for unvaccinated people will be released by early August, the archdiocese said.

The archdiocese based its updated protocols on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois Department of Public Health in addition to a team of medical advisers and a COVID-19 task force.
There were 100 intensive care beds in use on average over that same seven-day period, an 11 percent increase from the week prior. Ventilator usage remained steady with 35 in use on average for the week.

All numbers, while rising amid a nationwide surge sparked by a more contagious virus variant, were well off pandemic highs when the positivity rate rose above 13 percent last winter and COVID-19 hospitalizations peaked above 6,000, with ICU bed usage topping 1,200.

Vaccinations, meanwhile, have slowed, with about 58 percent of the states 18-and-older population fully vaccinated and 73 percent having received one dose. The rolling seven-day average for vaccine doses administered was 20,628 as of Monday, down from an April peak over 130,000.

As the numbers rise, Gov. J.B. Pritzkers office said Friday the administration currently has no plan to implement any additional mitigations now that there is an abundance of vaccine available and accessible across Illinois. We encourage all Illinoisans ages 12-plus to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

But Pritzker, speaking at a news conference regarding infrastructure later Friday, said his administration is always open to making changes in policy in order to keep people safe and healthy.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill.  Two state agencies that oversee higher education in Illinois on Monday encouraged colleges and universities to require COVID-19 vaccinations of students heading to campuses this fall.

The Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board made the recommendation, which they say follows recently released guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. The state agencies contend the guidance will help facilitate the safe transition back to campus, as more students return to in-person learning.

The oversight agencies recommendation came on the same day a federal judge ruled Indiana University can require its students and employees to get vaccinated before returning to campus for fall classes. Students who dont comply will have their registration canceled and workers who dont will lose their jobs.

U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty in South Bend rejected a request from eight IU students who sought to block the requirement while they pursue a lawsuit claiming that the universitys policy violated their constitutional rights by forcing them to receive unwanted medical treatment.
The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) released guidance Monday "strongly encouraging" schools to require vaccinations of students returning to campuses this fall.

It follows recently released guidance from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH).

On June 21, the University of Illinois announced it would require students on its three campuses, including Springfield, to receive a COVID-19 vaccination if they planned to be on campus for the fall semester.

The University of Illinois became the first public university system in the state to announce such a requirement.

Officials Blackburn College in Carlinville did not immediately respond to phone calls or emails. A spokesman from Illinois College in said he was looking into the matter.

Lynn Whalen, the chief communications officer at Lincoln Land Community College, said LLCC "strongly encourages" vaccination among its students, faculty and staff, including offering vaccination clinics on campus and educational resources regarding the vaccine.
Pritzker won the office by promising to pay the bills left from the epic struggle between Rauner and Democrats who control the General Assembly over spending which left the state without a budget for a record two years. Pritzker's highly successful first year, in which he saw legislative approval for a $45 billion capital construction program, legalization of recreational marijuana use, a balanced budget and more, ushered in an unexpected and unprecedented crisis when the coronavirus swept the nation and with it, Illinois in early 2020.

The video accompanying Monday's announcement paints a stalwart and consistent approach to stopping the virus' spread and treating the sick while adhering to to guidance from health experts, an approach that won broad approval but plenty of critics.

When I ran for governor four years ago I could not have imagined that I would end up leading the state through a global pandemic, Pritzker says in the video. I may not have gotten every decision right but in every step along the way, I followed the science and focused on protecting the lives and livelihoods of the people.
In response to Marc Thiessen's Thursday column: Really? He said Donald Trump's social media exile "could even help him win back the White House." Really? Trump absolutely loves his supporters because they obviously are the source of his power. The evidence of the last five years is that he absolutely hates people like me who consider themselves conservative but reject him. He has no way to grow his base and apparently never had the desire to do so. That is reflective of an autocrat. He does not care about this country if he is not leading it.
SIOUX FALLS | A former South Dakota prison official recently fired by Gov. Kristi Noem said Tuesday that she wasn't told why she was dismissed.

Jennifer Dreiske, the former deputy warden at the State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls, had worked at the Department of Corrections for 19 years until Noem announced Thursday that she was being fired along with the prison's warden, Darin Young.

The Department of Human Services had been investigating an anonymous complaint that alleged that supervising corrections officers regularly sexually harassed their colleagues, that employee morale was low, and that promotions were plagued by nepotism.

Dreiske said in a statement on Facebook that she never wavered in her duties but that she was fired without an explanation.

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My priorities have always been to promote the safety of our staff and the rehabilitation of our incarcerated population, she wrote.

Noem also suspended her Cabinet secretary who oversees the state's prisons and the director of a prison work program. The governor has declined to comment on the investigation beyond issuing two statements and releasing the anonymous complaint.
BILLINGS  Extreme heat broke decades-old records as it descended Monday on parts of the northern Rocky Mountains, elevating the dangers posed by dozens of wildfires burning across a region parched by drought and blanketed with dangerous smoke.

Along the Yellowstone River in eastern Montana, the small city of Columbus reached a scorching 111 degrees Fahrenheit (44 Celsius). The temperature in Billings, Montana's largest city, hit 106 F (41 C), topping a record set 61 years ago.

Authorities braced for new fires to ignite and existing ones to grow as the National Weather Service said the heat would linger through Thursday.

Such extreme conditions can result from a combination of unusual, short-term natural weather patterns, heightened by long-term, human-caused climate change. Scientists have long warned that the weather will get wilder as the world warms. Climate change has made the U.S. West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years, but it remains difficult to determine how much global warming is to blame, if at all, for any individual weather event.
The Petroleum County Sheriffs Department is investigating a homicide that occurred Thursday in the small town of Winnett about 25 miles east of Grass Range on Highway 200.

Andrew Smith, 29, was behind bars in Musselshell County as of Monday afternoon after he allegedly stabbed Larry G. Patterson, 79, to death Thursday evening, said Sheriff Bill Cassell. The men had been in some sort of fight at an apartment the two lived in that escalated to the extent that it left Patterson dead and Smith shot.

Details were still under investigation and it was unclear who drew or fired the gun that injured Smith. When law enforcement arrived on scene around 7:15 p.m. Patterson was already dead in the courtyard of the apartment complex and Smith was nearby with a gunshot wound in his left bicep. Smith was treated for his injuries before he was taken to jail.

No one else was suspected to be involved in the incident, said the sheriff. Cassell expected Smith to be charged with deliberate homicide either Monday or Tuesday in Petroleum County District Court by the county attorney.


Chapter XVIIConclusion, the Romans Owe Not Their Imperial Power to Their Gods. The Great God Alone Dispenses Kingdoms, He is the God of the Christians. Chapter XVIIConclusion, the Romans Owe Not Their Imperial Power to Their Gods. The Great God Alone Dispenses Kingdoms, He is the God of the Christians.

In conclusion, without denying all those whom antiquity willed and posterity has believed to be gods, to be the guardians of your religion, there yet remains for our consideration that very large assumption of the Roman superstitions which we have to meet in opposition to you, O heathen, viz. that the Romans have become the lords and masters of the whole world, because by their religious offices they have merited this dominion to such an extent that they are within a very little of excelling even their own gods in power. One cannot wonder that Sterculus, and Mutunus, and Larentina, have severally advanced this empire to its height! The Roman people has been by its gods alone ordained to such dominion. For I could not imagine that any foreign gods would have preferred doing more for a strange nation than for their own people, and so by such conduct become the deserters and neglecters, nay, the betrayers of the native land wherein they were born and bred, and ennobled and buried. Thus not even Jupiter could suffer his own Crete to be subdued by the Roman fasces, forgetting that cave of Ida, and the brazen cymbals of the Corybantes, and the most pleasant odour of the goat which nursed him on that dear spot. Would he not have made that tomb of his superior to the whole Capitol, so that that land should most widely rule which covered the ashes of Jupiter? Would Juno, too, be willing that the Punic city, for the love of which she even neglected Samos, should be destroyed, and that, too, by the fires of the sons of neas? Although I am well aware that Here were her arms, her chariot here, here goddess-like, to fix one day the seat of universal sway, might fate be wrung to yield assent, een then her schemes, her cares were bent."

Still the unhappy (queen of gods) had no power against the fates! And yet the Romans did not accord as much honour to the fates, although they gave them Carthage, as they did to Larentina. But surely those gods of yours have not the power of conferring empire. For when Jupiter reigned in Crete, and Saturn in Italy, and Isis in Egypt, it was even as men that they reigned, to whom also were assigned many to assist them. Thus he who serves also makes masters, and the bond-slave of Admetus aggrandizes with empire the citizens of Rome, although he destroyed his own liberal votary Crsus by deceiving him with ambiguous oracles. Being a god, why was he afraid boldly to foretell to him the truth that he must lose his kingdom. Surely those who were aggrandized with the power of wielding empire might always have been able to keep an eye, as it were, on their own cities. If they were strong enough to confer empire on the Romans, why did not Minerva defend Athens from Xerxes? Or why did not Apollo rescue Delphi out of the hand of Pyrrhus? They who lost their own cities preserve the city of Rome, since (forsooth) the religiousness of Rome has merited the protection! But is it not rather the fact that this excessive devotion has been devised since the empire has attained its glory by the increase of its power? No doubt sacred rites were introduced by Numa, but then your proceedings were not marred by a religion of idols and temples. Piety was simple, and worship humble; altars were artlessly reared, and the vessels (thereof) plain, and the incense from them scant, and the god himself nowhere. Men therefore were not religious before they achieved greatness, (nor great) because they were religious. But how can the Romans possibly seem to have acquired their empire by an excessive religiousness and very profound respect for the gods, when that empire was rather increased after the gods had been slighted? Now, if I am not mistaken, every kingdom or empire is acquired and enlarged by wars, whilst they and their gods also are injured by conquerors. For the same ruin affects both city-walls and temples; similar is the carnage both of civilians and of priests; identical the plunder of profane things and of sacred. To the Romans belong as many sacrileges as trophies; and then as many triumphs over gods as over nations. Still remaining are their captive idols amongst them; and certainly, if they can only see their conquerors, they do not give them their love. Since, however, they have no perception, they are injured with impunity; and since they are injured with impunity, they are worshipped to no purpose. The nation, therefore, which has grown to its powerful height by victory after victory, cannot seem to have developed owing to the merits of its religionwhether they have injured the religion by augmenting their power, or augmented their power by injuring the religion. All nations have possessed empire, each in its proper time, as the Assyrians, the Medes, the Persians, the Egyptians; empire is even now also in the possession of some, and yet they that have lost their power used not to behave without attention to religious services and the worship of the gods, even after these had become unpropitious to them, until at last almost universal dominion has accrued to the Romans. It is the fortune of the times that has thus constantly shaken kingdoms with revolution. Inquire who has ordained these changes in the times. It is the same (great Being) who dispenses kingdoms, and has now put the supremacy of them into the hands of the Romans, very much as if the tribute of many nations were after its exaction amassed in one (vast) coffer. What He has determined concerning it, they know who are the nearest to Him.
That way we can control as much of the supply chain as possible, he said. Whenever you let the product outside of your control, you open yourself up to risk, like quality degradation or supply chain delays or issues with the logistics. As long as we can control that product from the time we get it from farms in Ghana or Ivory Coast or wherever and be the last point of contact in the U.S. before it goes to our customer, we feel a lot more confident in what we can control.

Most of the nuts and fruits processed at the new facility will be sold to companies in bulk to be used in a variety of food products. Some of the nuts could be sent to retailers in bulk, which would repackage them to sell to consumers under private-label brands.

An entity connected with Red River acquired the warehouse building in December 2019 for $5.3 million, the countys online property records show. It started using the building as a warehouse earlier this year.

About two-thirds of the 100,000-square-foot building has been renovated for cold and ambient storage.

The remaining middle section is being reconfigured for processing nuts and fruits. Work on that section should be completed by the end of the year, Phipps said.
Looking to enhance safety for drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians, Henrico County officials are transitioning a stretch of Church Road from four lanes to two, equipped with a center turning lane, crosswalk and bike lanes.

Construction on the 1.8-mile stretch near John Rolfe Parkway between Wilde Lake Drive, near Lauderdale Drive and Chapelwood Lane, is slated to begin next month. County officials expect the project to wrap up within 45 days.

The $1.2 million Church Road Safety Project, recently approved by the Board of Supervisors, will be completed by Finley Asphalt & Sealing. Scheduled repaving accounts for about 75% of the projects cost.

Plans to reconfigure the road come two years after the speed limit was reduced from 45 mph to 35 mph along the 3-mile stretch between Three Chopt Road and Lauderdale Drive.

The reduced speed limit was in response to safety concerns along the curvy road. There were 14 accidents in 2018, before the speed limit change; five in 2019; and none in 2020. Six occurred in the first half of 2021.

Church Road has been a speeding issue of concern for residents for quite a while, said Steve Yob, deputy county manager for community operations.
Mondays announcement came amid growing concerns for the safety of Afghans who served as translators and in other support roles for American troops and diplomats during the long war.

The group to be housed at Fort Lee makes up just a small portion of the Afghans seeking refuge in the United States. Roughly 20,000 have expressed interest in applying for Special Immigrant Visas to move to the U.S., but only about half are far enough along in the vetting process to be considered for relocation.

An additional 4,000 applicants and family who have completed most of the application process but have yet to clear security screening will be sent to non-U.S. locations to await adjudication of their visas, Price said. Our plan is to take them to locations outside of the United States where they will be safe and where they will be provided accommodation during this processing period, which can last a number of months, he said.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., lauded the decision to move the Afghans to Fort Lee.

Im pleased that the State Department will be bringing an initial group of Afghan SIV applicants to the United States, and that DOD has recommended Fort Lee to house this first group, Kaine said in a statement Monday. Thanks to the Afghan SIV program, which I have long supported, Afghans who risked their lives supporting the U.S. can now escape the dangers they face due to their service to our nation. As a member of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, I will continue working to protect the Afghans who put themselves in harms way to advance our military and foreign policy objectives, promote development, and support servicemembers from across Virginia and our nation.
BOURBON COUNTY, Ky.

About 250 years ago, farmers looking for a way to make their surplus corn crop profitable decided to distill it. Today, that leftover grain has become a billion-dollar industry and a symbol of the Bluegrass States identity, economy and culture.

How bourbon came about is (what) ... the American spirit looks like: business, independence, freedom, a little bit of luck and a lot of perseverance, said Justin Thompson.

Thompson and his colleague Justin Sloan are the proprietors of The House of Bourbon, the worlds largest bourbon store, located on West Main Street in Lexington right across from Mary Todd Lincolns childhood home.

And right now, business is booming.

Thompson and Sloan started collecting rare and vintage bottles of bourbon 20 years ago, when the drink was out of favor. Then, four years ago, the state passed a law allowing the resale of distilled spirits and the duo opened their store, selling not just their stockpile but the history of the drink itself.

Bourbon is concocted from a strict formula. By law it has to be made with a minimum of 51% corn, aged in charred new oak barrels and stored at no more than 125 proof and bottled at no less than 80 proof, Thompson said.
The company told ProPublica that it hadnt intended to shutter operations when it received the money. Some workers at the Alabama plant dispute that. When the Mexican plant opened, we were told at the beginning they would just be helping Shoals and making parts for the trains, one worker said. But the whole time, it was a setup, we were gone.

ProPublica pointed out that FreightCar America isnt the only company that took taxpayer dollars and then shut down. Maybe this isnt a scandal  maybe the PPP money kept the companies going longer than they ordinarily would have but, ultimately, sometimes companies fail. Thats just a natural state of events.

On the other hand, the timing of it all sure looks bad  a company pocketed taxpayer dollars and then eliminated American jobs.

Either way, the PPP money is a passing issue. The bigger issue is the transfer of American manufacturing jobs to Mexico. This hardly is unique to FreightCar America.

Manufacturing jobs have been moving out of the U.S. to other countries for a long time now for a very simple reason: Workers in those other countries are a whole lot cheaper.
Anti-CRTers don't want

race as focus of all lessons

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

If you want to have a productive debate over teaching critical race theory (CRT) in K-12 schools, you have to define your terms. Emily Kimball's July 18 Letter to the Editor and columnist Jeff Schapiro try to dismiss the argument by narrowly defining CRT as an advanced-level scholarly college course with no connection to K-12 curricula.

On the other side, parents and many Americans use CRT as a catchall term for all of the controversial race-based woke-isms such as white fragility, intersectionality, systemic racism, spirit murder, implicit bias, equity  and that is what they are fighting against.

Despite Kimballs accusations, opponents of CRT support teaching a complete and factual history of America, including the Tulsa Massacre, Jim Crow and slavery.

What parents do not want is for schools to use taxpayer funds to hire disciples of radical writers Ibram X. Kendi and Ta-Nehisi Coates to train teachers to make race the center of everything they teach.
Too solar friendly?

It can cost you money

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

Daily, our commonwealth politicians promote enhancing Virginias renewable energy movement. Yet Virginia remains in the lowest tier of solar-friendly states. Under pressure from environmentally concerned Massachusetts and Delaware friends, we installed solar panels on our home to go green, a token gesture for renewable energy. The federal government and progressive states offer a tax credit incentive program, yet Virginia lags, even as our news coverage raves about our progress. We installed excessive production knowingly forfeiting this to Dominion Energy. Our goal was to become a zero commercial electricity consumer with break-even payback analysis of 10 to 12 years. Triumphantly, last November we went solar.

Our vendor assured us that it would make all arrangements for system design and capacity, thus we relied upon its guidance through the complex planning stage. Upon receipt of our monthly billings, we became aware of a little-known idiosyncrasy in our legislative support of our energy monopoly.
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The Apollo moon landing was perhaps the greatest achievement in the history of humankind more than half-a-century ago. The question before us is what will it mean for humankind to return to the moon in the 21st century in practical terms for many among us today?

Fast-forward, the anticipated moon landing, perhaps in 2024, will be led by the so-called Artemis Generation (Artemis is the mythical twin sister of the Greek god Apollo). A woman will lead the scientific and economic return to the moon with the first, yet to be named female in the queue. She shall set foot on the lunar south pole.

Governments, and privateers, from around the globe now plan to send astronauts, taikonauts, and cosmonauts to the surface of the moon late in this decade. Government and commercial interests shall land spacecraft and rovers on the surface in the several months ahead. Companies will seek to land larger payloads to begin building a moon surface habitat.

But very much unlike the Apollo-era, the Artemis Generation of astronauts will be going to the lunar surface to build an off-Earth economy. Private concern will work for scientific discovery leading to new knowledge and innovations, much likely beyond our current comprehension. The moon should be thought of as a new continent, and the ocean of space to cross, in terms of opportunity.
Fifty-two years ago tonight, the world sat transfixed, staring at a fuzzy black-and-white TV image of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.

If youre trying to measure the pace and scale of human progress, consider this: It took 66 years from the Wright Brothers first 12-second flight over the sands of Kitty Hawk to setting down on another celestial body.

The question is where we will be 66 years after the landing of Apollo 11  the pace of exploration has clearly leveled off, but might soon spike again.

Right now, we cant get back there. We might in a few years, however, and if we do, the official goal is to put a woman on the moon.

In November, NASA is scheduled to launch an uncrewed test flight of Artemis 1, the vehicle that we hope will take humans back to the moon.

Today is the one day of the year when we depart from our usual commentary on issues pertaining to Southwest and Southside Virginia and look toward the skies  or beyond them to the stars.

This Novembers test launch of Artemis 1 is important, but not the most important event related to space exploration going on this year. Unlike the 1960s, when the space race was between Americans and Soviets, today its between, well, anyone with the money.
Rise in domestic ETF

An analysis report on domestic ETFs has just been published by the Ho Chi Minh City Securities Company (HSC), showing that the total value of assets under management of domestic ETFs has increased by 64%, to USD 1 bn, while foreign ETFs only increased 12%, to USD 1.4 bn. Specifically, the first domestic fund, ETF E1VFVN30, has started to grow impressively after two years since its listing in 2014. At its peak, the fund size was USD 389 mn, equivalent to VND 9,053 bn, 42 times more than its initial size.

Currently, the fund assets are at USD 372 mn. Meanwhile, the VFMVN Diamond ETF and SSIAM VNFIN Lead ETF have been listed since 2020 and have attracted much attention. Total assets under management are currently USD 522 mn and USD 87.5 mn, up 99 times and 47 times, respectively. The performance results at the beginning of the year of these two domestic ETFs were higher than the general market, about 33.1% and 44.7%, respectively.

VinaCapital, one of the largest investment and asset management groups in Vietnam, with a scale of upto USD 3.3 bn, also just announced impressive performance numbers with foreign investment funds. Notably, VinaCapital VN100 ETF, established in 2020, achieved profit growth of upto 38.5%. This ETF certificate currently holds a portfolio simulated by the VN100 reference index, including 100 leading stocks listed on HoSE under the code FUEVN100. According to VinaCapital, more than 80% of the fund's total assets are invested in industries such as finance, real estate, consumer staples, and materials.

At the top of the portfolio are stocks such as Hoa Phat( HPG), Vingroup (VIC), Techcombank (TCB), VPBank (VPB), and Vinhomes (VHM). These are companies that benefit from the growth of the domestic economy and the increasing income level of a new generation of Vietnamese people.

Avoiding risks

Mr. Binh, an investor in Ho Chi Minh City, and a group of his friends, have just decided to sell all the shares purchased by the bank since middle of June, to invest in a series of ETF certificates listed on HoSE. According to Mr. Binh, the stock market is being negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and it is not known when it will be controlled, especially when several businesses in Ho Chi Minh City have had to temporarily suspend all operations to avoid the spread of the pandemic. Under such stagnant conditions, the risk of bad debts will certainly arise and will definitely have a negative impact on the profit of all banks.

In addition to the above factors, the reason for Mr. Binh and many investors like him to switch to ETF certificates is because the level of risk is not too great compared to the stock market. In the current context, this is an investment channel to avoid sudden storms, such as in the stock market which is constantly facing too many erratic fluctuations. According to HSC, ETFs are often a cheaper and more efficient alternative to other mutual funds, especially during periods of high volatility. Therefore, it is not surprising that Vietnam has caught on with the global trend currently in high demand for ETF products.

According to Mr. Brook Taylor, the General Director of VinaCapital, Vietnam is among those rare countries in the world that showed a positive GDP growth in 2020, up by 2.9%, and continues to grow well in the first half of 2021 by 5.6%, which is helping in creating a growing confidence in both domestic and foreign investors. Vietnam's stock market has reached the top and now recognized as the best growth market in Asia with an increase of 15% in 2020 and 27.6% in the first six months of 2021.

However, despite a record outstanding growth, individual investors, especially F0 investors with less information and experience than professional investors, will face many risks when the market fluctuates as erratically as it did in recent trading sessions. Therefore, investors should diversify their portfolio into many different assets, and not put all its eggs in one basket.

Focus of attention

According to analysts, investing in open-ended funds and ETFs managed by professional and reputable fund management companies will help individual investors have a diversified portfolio with less risk. In fact, in the plunging sessions at the stock market, the ETF group only decreased slightly, even going against the general trend. However, according to investors, the number of listed fund certificates are still quite modest compared to the size of the market.

Specifically, as of 30 June, the entire HoSE had 488 securities traded, which included 385 stocks, 2 closed fund certificates, 7 ETF certificates, 65 covered warrants, and 29 bond codes. Out of the 7 ETFs currently listed on HoSE, 3 ETFs are using the VN30 index as a base, 2 ETFs are using the VN100 and VNX50 indices as a base, and 2 ETFs are using the VNDiamond and VNFIN indices as a base.

One factor that investors need to distinguish when investing in ETFs is that these funds do not evenly distribute shares in the index as investors often believe. Instead, they will rely on many different factors to be able to allocate their portfolio proportions.

In theory, ETFs should follow an index, but still try to outperform by increasing the weight of stocks that are being considered to be developed in the near future, minimizing the weight of stocks that are considered under-developed. Each fund must have its own list of priority criteria for selecting stocks. There are funds that will prioritize company specific micro-indexes such as growth rate, leadership, or funds that will prioritize macros such as industry cycles, or growth rates of industries in the near future.

Kim Giang
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Governments Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
" " Smoke and flames rise from an illegally lit fire in the Amazon rainforest reserve, south of Novo Progresso in Para state, Brazil, Aug. 15, 2020. CARL DE SOUZA/AFP via Getty Images

The Amazon has long done its part to balance the global carbon budget, but new evidence suggests the climate scales are tipping in the world's largest rainforest. Now, according to a study published July 14 in Nature, the Amazon is emitting more carbon than it captures.

This study is the first to use direct atmospheric measurements, across a wide geographic region, collected over nearly a decade that account for background concentrations of atmospheric gases.

These results have important implications for policy initiatives such as REDD+ that rely on forests to offset carbon emissions. Because different regions of the Amazon differ in their ability to absorb carbon, schemes that use one value for the carbon-capturing ability of the whole Amazon need to be reexamined, scientists say.

"The Amazon is a carbon source. No doubt," Luciana Gatti, a researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) and lead author of the study, says. "By now we can say that the budget for the Amazon is 0.3 billion tons of carbon per year [released] into the atmosphere. It's a horrible message."

Southeastern Amazonia, in particular, switched from being a carbon sink to a carbon source during the study period. Emissions were high in 2010 because of a dry El Nino year, Gatti says, and she expected to see emissions return to normal afterward. But this never happened. The reason: emissions from fires.

In the Amazon, forests are often cut during the wet season and burned during the dry season to make way for agribusiness, particularly cattle pasture. According to the study, fire emissions in the southeastern Amazon are three times larger than the net biome exchange (NBE), a measure of the forest's carbon uptake plus all emissions from decomposition and human sources such as burning fossil fuels.

Without emissions from fires, Gatti says, the Amazon would be a carbon sink. "In other words, the Amazon is a source because of biomass burning."

" " Aerial view of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon taken from a small aircraft used to measure carbon emissions. Image courtesy of Luciana Gatti

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The Study Method

Using a small aircraft, Gatti and colleges measured carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and other gases above four locations across the Brazilian Amazon. Between 2010 and 2018, they collected air samples seasonally from near the treetops up to 14,800 feet (4,500 meters) above sea level, creating nearly 600 vertical profiles of CO2 levels.

Their conclusion: Eastern Amazonia is emitting more carbon than western Amazonia, and southern Amazonia is a net carbon source.

Other studies have noted a decline in the carbon uptake of forests based on on-the-ground measurements. But this study is the first to use direct atmospheric measurements, across a wide geographic region, collected over nearly a decade, while accounting for background concentrations of atmospheric gases.

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Deforestation Rates and Fires

"Gatti et al were able to establish seasonal and regional differences in carbon balance and attribute them to drought, fire, deforestation and forest degradation," Scott Denning, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University who was not involved in the study (but wrote about it for Nature News & Views), said in an email.

Deforestation rates have been higher under Brazil's current president, Jair Bolsonaro, than any past president and they show no sign of halting. In 2020, Brazil lost 390 acres (158 hectares) of forest per hour  an area half the size of New York City's Central Park  according to a report by MapBiomas, a network of NGOs, universities and tech firms that include Google.

In May of this year, forest clearing in the Brazilian Amazon increased 67 percent over May 2020, according to INPE's satellite-based deforestation tracking system, DETER. This puts deforestation in 2021 on pace with last year's rate.

"If you're thinking a tipping point [for] the Amazon [is when] it becomes a carbon source, this region is at a tipping point," Gatti says. "My question is, if we stop now with fires and deforestation and start the very important repair process for forests, could we reverse the picture? I don't know."

Decades of deforestation and fires in the Amazon coupled with the global climate crisis have caused the dry season to get longer and made megadroughts more common, contributing to a feedback loop that degrades forests. These degraded conditions mean trees are dying at a faster rate. As more plants and trees die, the Amazon's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere is declining.

"The Amazon is like a bubble ... if the trees are intact, it keeps moisture under the canopy in the forest," Ernesto Alvarado, a professor of wildland fire sciences at the University of Washington, told Mongabay last year. Deforestation, roads and fires can puncture this moisture bubble. "You open the canopy, right? It's like a bunch of holes in the bubble, and now the moisture is better escaping and the forest becomes drier."

" " Unprecedented deforestation and fires in the Amazon have caused the dry seasons to get longer and made megadroughts more common. Lucas Ninno/Getty Images

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The Amazon Is Diverse

The results of the Nature study have important implications for policy initiatives such as REDD+ that rely on forests to offset carbon emissions. The Amazon is not homogenous; different regions have different types of soil, humidity and tree species. And as this study shows, they also differ in their capacity to absorb or emit carbon.

For example, the eastern Amazon, mainly in the states of Para and Mato Grosso, is 30 percent deforested and emits 10 times more carbon than other regions. So schemes that use one value for the carbon-capturing ability of the whole Amazon, Gatti says, need to be reexamined.

"Forests might not be able to sequester enough carbon to provide a net benefit for climate mitigation," Ruth DeFries, a professor of sustainable development at Columbia University who was not involved in the study, told Mongabay in a 2020 interview. "[This] suggests that efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases depend on alternatives to fossil fuel burning  the largest and well-quantified source of anthropogenic greenhouse gases."

"Worldwide, plants have been growing faster than they're dying for decades, providing a priceless emissions reduction," Denning said. "Now we're seeing the limits of that process. It means society will have to work harder to eliminate fossil fuels from the world economy since we won't be able to rely on tropical forests to clean up after ourselves."

This story originally appeared in Mongabay and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Parents of students districted to Florence County School District Four won't be paying any tuition for their children to attend a Florence One School during the next academic year.

The Florence One Schools Board of Trustees voted Thursday evening to suspend a portion of a policy requiring nonresident students wishing to attend a Florence One school for the residents of Florence School District Four for the upcoming school year only.

On behalf of the Florence One Board of Trustees, we are happy to provide this choice opportunity to the families of Florence School District 4. By waiving any tuition for these families, we intend that their choices will now not be tempered or constrained by that prior financial consideration, Porter Stewart, the Florence One Schools board chairman, said in a news release. "We certainly would welcome all who choose to attend our schools and trust that our approval of this request which came from our administration last week will now provide sufficient time for those families to consider their options and register within the same timelines as all new and returning families."
COLUMBIA, S.C.  The Pee Dee will be represented on the South Carolina Senate's redistricting subcommittee.

Luke Rankin, the chairman of the subcommittee, announced that Ronnie Sabb, Chip Campson III, Dick Harpootlian, Margie Bright Matthews, Scott Talley and Tom Young Jr. are the members of the committee.

The Senate district that Sabb represents includes a portion of southern Florence County, all of Williamsburg County, the western two-thirds of Georgetown County and northern Berkeley County.

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The members of our bipartisan subcommittee represent a wide range of different experiences and perspectives. I look forward to our working together on a redistricting process that is fair and equitable to all South Carolinians," Rankin said in a news release.

The committee is split four to three in favor of the Republicans. Rankin, Campson, Talley and Young are Republicans. Sabb, Harpootlian and Bright Matthews are Democrats.

The subcommittee will hold an organizational meeting at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday in Room 105 of the Gressette Building at the Statehouse in Columbia. A schedule of the public hearings with the dates, locations, and times will be announced in the near future.
FLORENCE, S.C.  Rotary Club of Florence members heard from one of their own members on Monday about what it is like to have ones identity stolen.

Regi Armstrong, president/partner of Armstrong Wealth Management Group, was the guest speaker at Victors.

Armstrong said he was visiting family in Pennsylvania on a weekend early in the year when he was alerted that someone had access to his social security number and address and was trying to open bank accounts in his name. It became even more serious when he was alerted that someone was attempting to take out a $250,000 small business loan in his name with the Small Business Administration. This was on a Sunday.

Armstrong didnt wait. He immediately took action.

Identity theft occurs when a criminal gets your personal information and tries to steal money by opening new credit cards, applying for loans and committing other crimes using your identity. If not detected, it can result in damage to your credit, unwanted bills in your name and many headaches and frustration in trying to restore your credit.

This was a highly stressful time, Armstrong said.

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Highlights of this historic investment:

Funding is expected to nearly double the number of children and families able to be served in the coming program year, compared to the current year.

50% more children will be enrolled in high-intensity programs, where families engage with the program on a regular, sustained basis, resulting in the greatest impact on childrens long-term success.

1,700 rising kindergartners across 28 counties will have a better start to their first year in school thanks to expansion of Countdown to Kindergarten, a program where the childs future kindergarten teacher visits them and their family at home and at school six times over the summer.

38 AmeriCorps members will be recruited, trained and deployed across 18 counties to provide family and community outreach and support and parent education using the HIPPY model (Home Instruction Program for Parents of Preschool Youngsters).

First Steps is recruiting applicants across the state for a 10-month term of AmeriCorps service, beginning Sept. 3. An online application is available at scfirststeps.org.
The yearslong effort by state and local governments in the U.S. to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to fix a nationwide opioid addiction and overdose crisis took a major step forward Tuesday when lawyers for local governments announced they were on the verge of a $26 billion settlement with the nation's three biggest drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.

Under the deal, Johnson & Johnson would not produce any opioids for at least a decade. And AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson share prescribing information under a new system intended to stop the avalanches of pills that arrived in some regions about a decade ago.

Lawyers for local governments said full details could be shared within days. That would not be the end of the deal though; each state would have 30 days to decide whether to join. And local governments will have five months after that to decide. If governments don't opt in, the settlement total would go down.

This is a nationwide crisis and it could have been and should have been addressed perhaps by other branches of government, Paul Geller, one of the lead lawyers representing local governments across the U.S., said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. But this really is an example of the use of litigation for fixing a national problem.
 New York Times reporting Biden Justice Department agrees with OLC memo stating prisoners transferred to home confinement must return to prison after pandemic ends | Main | When might we expect advocacy groups to push Prez Biden make needed appointments to the US Sentencing Commission? 

July 19, 2021

"The Evolving Standards, As Applied"

The title of this post is the title of this notable new paper authored by William Berry now available via SSRN. Here is its abstract:

In Jones v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court adopted a narrow reading of its Eighth Amendment categorical bar on mandatory juvenile life-without-parole (JLWOP) sentences. Specifically, the Court rejected the Jones claim that the Eighth Amendment categorical limit required a sentencing jury or judge make a finding of permanent incorrigibility  that the defendant is beyond hope of rehabilitation  as a prerequisite to imposing a JLWOP sentence. In dicta, the Court suggested that Jones could have made an individual as-applied challenge to his sentence under the Eighth Amendment by claiming that his JLWOP sentence was disproportionate to the crime he committed. While the Court has used a narrow disproportionality standard in non-capital, non-JLWOP cases, it is not clear what standard would apply to individual as-applied Eighth Amendment challenges in capital and JLWOP cases. The Court customarily reviews such cases categorically under a heightened evolving standards of decency standard, which suggests that an individual as-applied challenge would also merit some heightened level of review. Accordingly, this Article argues for the adoption of heightened standards of Eighth Amendment review for individual as-applied proportionality challenges in capital and JLWOP cases. Specifically, the Article advocates for the adoption of an intermediate level of review for JLWOP cases and a strict scrutiny level of review for capital cases. Further, the Article argues for a broadening of the kinds of sentences that receive heightened scrutiny under the Eighth Amendment, both for categorical challenges and for individual as-applied proportionality challenges. Part One of the Article describes the Courts evolving standards of decency doctrine and Eighth Amendments categorical limitations on capital and JLWOP sentences. In Part Two, the Article explains the other side of the application of the Eighth Amendment, the narrow disproportionality test the Court uses to evaluate as-applied challenges in individual non-capital, non-JLWOP cases. Part Three then argues for the adoption of heightened as-applied standards of review in individual capital and JLWOP cases as an application of the evolving standards of decency doctrine. Finally, Part IV sketches some possible extensions of the Eighth Amendments evolving standards to other punishments and other classes of defendants.

July 19, 2021 at 10:45 PM | Permalink

Comments

Sounds interesting.

John Bessler (Sen. Klobuchar's husband) has written about the history of the 8A and the opening for liberal/libertarian results.

This Supreme Court hasn't been overly friendly though as long as Kennedy was there, there was some opening in some cases.

Such discussion can be useful for state courts & lower court judges who at least in theory still have an opening to apply its approach. That is one value with some form of minimalism -- it leaves open some flexibility for the future, even if the Supreme Court repeatedly seems to go in one direction on something results-wise.

Posted by: Joe | Jul 20, 2021 10:10:31 AM

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 "The Evolving Standards, As Applied" | Main | "Building exits off the highway to mass incarceration: Diversion programs explained" 

July 20, 2021

When might we expect advocacy groups to push Prez Biden make needed appointments to the US Sentencing Commission?

As we officially hit six months into the Biden Administration, it seems a good time to express my frustration again that there has not yet been any nominations to the US Sentencing Commission. As I have noted in a number of prior posts (some linked below), due to a lack of Sentencing Commissioners, the USSC has not been fully functional for most of the last five years, and the USSC has not had complete set of commissioners firmly in place for the better part of a decade. The USSC staff continues to produce lots of useful research and reports, but the FIRST STEP Act's passage in December 2018 makes it particularly problematic for the USSC to have been completely non-functional in terms of formal amendments or agendas in recent years.

In this post a few weeks ago, I highlighted that all the openings on the USSC provide the Biden Administration with an opportunity to appoint transformative commissioners who could make the USSC into a criminal justice reform leader for years to come. And, as the title of this post suggests, I am now growing a bit frustrated that an array of criminal advocacy groups are not yet publicly advocating on this issue. (I surmise there might be behind-the-scenes work afoot on this front. I sure hope so.) Notably, a broad range of advocacy groups have been actively urging Prez Biden to broadly and aggressively use his clemency powers for various sets of offenders. Though I share an interest in seeing clemency powers revived, clemency is often just a "one-time" achievement. Effective appointments to the US Sentencing Commission can provide the foundation for advancing badly needed structural and institutional federal sentencing reforms for a generation.

Justified concern for the home confinement cohort at risk of being sent back to federal prison after the end of the pandemic has garnered lots of attention from advocates and the media. But, ironically, with the pandemic dragging on, that cohort is still likely to be able to stay home for the foreseeable future even if Prez Biden does not grant some kind of mass clemency (and, as I have argued, Congress ought to be acting to address this issue). Meanwhile, the federal prison population is growing significantly again, perhaps in part due to a number of beneficial changes to federal sentencing law from the FIRST STEP Act having not yet been fully implemented into the guidelines. (I particularly have in mind potential expansion of the "safety valve" adjustment in the drug guidelines based on the statutory change in FIRST STEP; a parallel guideline change which might reduce thousands of drug sentences if made fully retroactive.) With the pandemic dragging on and the federal prison population on the rise, it is especially worrisome that the Biden Administration is moving at a pace that could result in there is no functioning US Sentencing Commission in place until 2022 and even no realistic chance for any needed guideline amendments until perhaps 2023.

I understand that other appointments, from judges to other executive branch positions, are a higher priority for many political insiders and advocacy groups. But shrewd and bold nominations to the US Sentencing Commission could and would serve as an effective way for Prez Biden to signal a real commitment to criminal justice reform while also reviving an agency with a long history of impactful work on the federal sentencing system. In addition to hoping the Biden team is making some progress on this front, I also now want to urge criminal justice advocacy groups to see this is an important opportunity to advance needed change.

Last bit of insider tounge-in-cheek joke: Maybe the Biden team should get really clever and urge Justice Breyer to give up his day job and serve again on the US Sentencing Commission.

A few of many prior recent related posts:

July 20, 2021 at 10:29 AM | Permalink

Comments

The last bit is fine with me.

Posted by: Joe | Jul 20, 2021 11:44:51 AM

Anthony Kennedy would also be a very fine pick. And I could see him accepting as well...

Posted by: Jacob Berlove | Jul 21, 2021 4:01:07 AM

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On the eve of a visit to Mongolia by a senior US diplomat, Chinese President Xi Jinping has called for the China-Mongolia relationship to be strengthened by mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity and he said China would buy more of its neighbours products.

In a phone call with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh on Friday, Xi said China and Mongolia shared an increasing number of common interests.

Both sides should respect each others independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and independent choice of development paths chosen by the two peoples and accommodate and support each others core interests and major concerns, Xi said, according to an account by the Chinese foreign ministry.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Xi added that China was willing to continue to support Mongolias fight against Covid-19, and would import more minerals and agricultural products from Mongolia.

Xi also called for deepening cooperation in areas such as minerals, infrastructure and the environment.

The call came before US deputy secretary of state Wendy Shermans trip to Mongolia, Japan and South Korea, starting on Sunday.

The US Department of State said Sherman would reinforce our strategic partnership and discuss our shared values of democracy and human rights during her trip to Mongolia.

According to a secret document released by former US national security adviser Robert OBrien this year, Mongolia has strategic significance to the US in advancing the Indo-Pacific region. Washington wants Mongolia to demonstrate [its] own success and the benefits [it] has accrued through upholding democratic values.

Sources told the South China Morning Post that China was preparing to host Sherman after her stop in Mongolia but the two sides were haggling over protocol, with the US demanding access to top Chinese decision makers.

Story continues

During his phone call with Xi, Khurelsukh said that amid the pandemic, the comprehensive strategic partnership between Mongolia and China had maintained momentum and that Mongolia appreciated Chinas help during the coronavirus outbreak, according to the Chinese foreign ministry readout.

China donated 300,000 doses of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine to Mongolia in February.

So far, over 55 per cent of the Mongolian population has been fully vaccinated, according to its ministry of health. Mongolian Foreign Minister Batmunkh Battsetseg told state news agency Xinhua this month that most of those vaccinated had received Chinese vaccines.

As a landlocked country surrounded by China and Russia, Mongolias economy is highly dependent on trade with China. Mongolias main export commodities are minerals and livestock-related products, which Russia is also rich in and does not need to import from Mongolia.

China is Mongolias largest trading partner. The bilateral trade volume was over US$6.63 billion last year, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. In the first quarter of this year, Mongolias trade volume with China accounted for nearly 70 per cent of its total foreign trade.

The call primarily aims to highlight the ever increasing level of partnership between the two countries, which is conducive to further cooperation, said Ma Bin, deputy dean of the Centre for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation studies at Fudan University, adding that areas for working together include the economy and beating the pandemic.

It also helps to create a stable and harmonious bilateral and regional environment.

As the call is close to the time of the US deputy secretary of state visiting Mongolia, it is easy to raise conjecture about China-US competition in Mongolia, Ma said. Mongolia does not need such confrontation on issues of regional development, stability maintenance and the fight against pandemic. Also, relations between China and the United States cannot be simplified to just confrontation and rivalry.

More from South China Morning Post:

This article Chinas President Xi Jinping calls for stronger ties with Mongolia ahead of US officials visit first appeared on South China Morning Post

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BEIJING (Reuters) - China warned Lithuania on Tuesday not to "send the wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces" after the Chinese-claimed island said it would open a representative office in the Baltic state.

"We urge Lithuania to abide by the one-China principle and not to send the wrong signals to Taiwan independence forces," China's Taiwan Affairs Office said in a statement.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
International

US moves Guantanamo prisoner

Nasser Nasser Alex Brandon, Associated Press A control tower is seen April 17, 2019 through the razor wire inside the Camp VI detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The Biden administration on Monday transferred a detainee out of Guantanamo Bay for the first time, sending a Moroccan man back home years after he was recommended for discharge.

WASHINGTON  The Biden administration took a step toward its goal of shutting down the Guantanamo Bay detention center for terror suspects Monday, releasing into the custody of his home country a Moroccan who'd been held without charge almost since the U.S. opened the facility 19 years ago.

The transfer of Abdullatif Nasser was the first by the Biden administration, reviving an Obama administration effort that had been stymied by conservative opposition and the difficulty of resolving the remaining few dozen cases, including finding secure sites to send some of the detainees.

Rights groups have called the detentions and detention camp, opened under President George W. Bush after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks, a historic wrong by the United States. There were allegations of torture in early questioning, and challenges to the lawfulness of military tribunals there. The Bush administration and supporters called the camp, on a U.S. naval base in Cuba, essential to safely managing international terror suspects.

A review board recommended repatriation for Nasser, who is in his mid-50s, in July 2016, but he remained at Guantanamo under President Donald Trump, who opposed closing the site.

In announcing Nasser's transfer, the Pentagon cited the board's determination that his detention was no longer necessary to protect U.S. national security.

Nasser, also known as Abdul Latif Nasser, arrived Monday in Morocco. Police took him into custody and said they would investigate him on suspicion of committing terrorist acts  though he was never charged while in Guantanamo.

Nasser's attorney in Morocco, Khalil Idrissi, said the years Nasser spent in Guantanamo "were unjustified and outside the law, and what he suffered remains a stain of disgrace on the forehead of the American system."

The State Department said President Joe Biden's administration would continue "a deliberate and thorough process" aimed at reducing the detainee population at Guantanamo "while also safeguarding the security of the United States and its allies."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration was considering all available options for safely transferring out the last detainees and shutting down Guantanamo. She declined to set a timeline.

The Biden administration is also moving rapidly this summer to end U.S. military combat in Afghanistan, another lingering legacy dating back to the first weeks of the American retaliation against the al-Qaida plotters responsible for the 9/11 attacks and against al-Qaida's Afghan Taliban hosts.

Almost 800 detainees have passed through Guantanamo. Of the 39 remaining, 10 are eligible to be transferred out, 17 are eligible to go through the review process for possible transfer, another 10 are involved in the military commission process used to prosecute detainees and two have been convicted, a senior administration official said. The 10 eligible for transfer are from Yemen, Pakistan, Tunisia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates.

The administration didn't address how it would handle the ongoing effort to prosecute five men held at Guantanamo for the Sept. 11 attacks. Further complicating the effort to close the detention camp, the chief prosecutor of the alleged 9/11 conspirators this month announced his retirement, raising questions about how the government would handle future trials.

It also has to deal with detainees that President Barack Obama's administration struggled with, either because their home countries were not considered secure enough or because they were refused by third-party countries. About a third of the remaining prisoners are from the impoverished, warring country of Yemen.

The detention center opened in 2002. Bush's administration transformed what was a quiet Navy outpost on Cuba's southeastern tip into a place to interrogate and imprison people suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The Obama administration, seeking to allay concerns that some of those released had "returned to the fight," set up a process to ensure those repatriated or resettled in third countries no longer posed a threat. It also planned to try some of the men in federal court.

But the closure effort was thwarted when Congress barred the transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo to the U.S., including for prosecution or medical care.

The prisoner transfer process stalled under Trump, who said even before taking office there should be no further releases from "Gitmo," as Guantanamo Bay is often called. "These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield," Trump said.

Under Trump, only one prisoner, a Saudi, was transferred to Saudi Arabia to serve the remainder of his sentence after he agreed to a plea bargain.

Under Obama, 197 were transferred to other countries, while 500 were transferred by Bush. Most of those still at the site are being held without charges.
SIOUX CITY -- Selection of the 12 Woodbury County residents who will decide if Roderick Banks is guilty or not guilty of murder is scheduled to begin Tuesday morning.

Banks, 36, of Sioux City, has pleaded not guilty of first-degree murder and felon in possession of a firearm in connection with the Nov. 1 shooting death of Solomon Blackbird.

Jury selection is expected to take much of the trial's first day, and the state, represented by Assistant Woodbury County Attorneys James Loomis and Michelle Venable-Ridley, will begin presenting evidence Wednesday. Banks is represented by Joseph Reedy and Andrew Munger, who work for the State Public Defender's office in Council Bluffs.

District Judge Roger Sailer will preside over the trial in Woodbury County District Court.

Banks is accused of shooting Blackbird once in the chest near Park Place Apartments in the 2600 block of Douglas Street.

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According to court documents, Blackbird was walking with his girlfriend and her baby when Banks came from inside the apartment complex, approached them and asked Blackbird, "Are you Solomon? Are you the guy who f----d up my money?", pulled out a gun and shot Blackbird.

Blackbird, 33, of Sioux City, died later at MercyOne Siouxland Medical Center.
SIOUX CITY -- The Sioux City Council green-lighted a facade improvement program Monday for the Leeds, Riverside and Peters Park corridors.

The council approved the program, which is similar to city corridor improvements made on West Seventh, Pearl and Pierce streets, by voting in favor of its consent agenda.

"We've seen a lot of progress in that corridor," Jeff Hanson, the city's community development operations manager, said of West Seventh Street. "So, I think with these three programs we will get a lot of applications."

The goal of the program is to improve the aesthetic appearance of the exterior facades of existing buildings and businesses in those corridors and to encourage private investment in properties and businesses. A $60,000 maximum per property will be awarded through a competitive application process. Property owners will have to provide a 25 percent match of any money granted through the program. The funds could be used for existing exterior facade improvements, signs and site landscaping.

"It's an excellent program. It will benefit all of us to see that in place," Mayor Pro Tem Dan Moore said. "I'm glad to see the $60,000 allocation to each property, because I think it will be used wisely with the 25 percent matching funds."
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A California judge decided victims of the 2019 synagogue shooting near San Diego that killed one worshiper and wounded three can sue the manufacturer of the semiautomatic rifle and the gun shop that sold it to the teenage gunman, according to a newspaper report.
GREENBELT, Md. (AP)  A gang member was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in federal prison for his role in the killing of a 16-year-old boy who was stabbed and cut more than 100 times at a Maryland home before his body was set on fire.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis also sentenced Kevin Alexis Rodriguez-Flores, 20, of Annandale, Virginia, to five years of supervised release following his prison term. The plea agreement between prosecutors and Rodriguez called for a sentence ranging from 30 years to life imprisonment, but Xinis wasnt bound by that recommendation.

Rodriguez admitted he was a member of the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 for short, and took part in the March 2019 killing over the mistaken belief that the boy, a fellow member, was working with police, prosecutors said. The boy was beaten and stabbed or cut roughly 144 times by Rodriguez and others whom he believed to be his friends, they wrote in a court filing.

Prosecutors had sought a 35-year prison sentence for Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise and conspiracy to destroy and conceal evidence.
Members of both parties expressed disappointment over the lack of bipartisan support. Maine is better served when both parties work together to develop budget proposals that can attract broad based support, said Rep. Kathleen Dillingham, the House Republican leader.

In other action, lawmakers fell far short of a two-thirds threshold needed to override the governors veto of a bill to buy out Central Maine Power and Versant Power and replace them with a consumer-owned utility.

Critics were angry over CMPs botched rollout of a billing system, slow response to power outages, high electric rates and controversial utility corridor that would serve as a conduit for Canadian hydropower.

If it had been approved, the proposal wouldve been sent to state voters who would have had the final say on the November ballot.

But voters will likely have their way, despite the outcome on Monday. A coalition called Our Power vowed to seek enough signatures to force a referendum vote on the proposal next year.

As for the federal stimulus funding, negotiators from both parties agreed on much of the proposal for spending the money from the American Rescue Plan Act, which was approved by Congress.
Senators from the bipartisan group emerged upbeat Tuesday from another late-night negotiating session with Biden aides at the Capitol, saying a deal was within reach and even a failed vote Wednesday would not be the end of the road.

Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said the test vote Wednesday afternoon could be useful in helping to advance and expedite the process.

We are so close, said Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.

Biden has been in touch with both Democrats and Republicans for several days, and his outreach will continue "until he has both pieces of legislation on his desk to sign them into law, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.

While Biden proposes paying for his proposals with a tax hike on corporations and wealthy Americans who earn more than $400,000 a year, the bipartisan group has been working almost around the clock to figure out a compromise way to pay for its package, having dashed ideas for boosting the gas tax drivers pay at the pump or strengthening the Internal Revenue Service to go after tax scofflaws.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Secretary of State Antony Blinken met on Monday with Belarus main opposition leader as the United States steps up criticism of the government in Minsk for a widening crackdown on dissent following disputed elections last year.

Blinken met with Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya at the State Department to show support for her and other protesters demanding an end to repression. Tsikhanouskaya was President Alexander Lukashenkos main challenger in the August 2020 election and was forced to leave the country after the polls that the opposition and the West saw as rigged.

They discussed the ongoing repression, the crackdown by the Lukashenko regime and the steps that we have said, and much of the international community has said, that the Lukashenko regime must take, State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters.

As you know, Ms. Tsikhanouskaya has been at the forefront of the opposition movement in Belarus, and we were happy to welcome her to the department today and to continue our efforts to stand with the Belarusian people and their aspirations for human rights, democracy, and their broader Euro-Atlantic aspirations, he said.

Tsikhanouskaya is in Washington this week meeting with Biden administration officials and lawmakers to seek their backing.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday formally prohibited federal prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations, with limited exceptions, reversing years of department policy.

The new policy largely codifies the commitment Garland made in June, when he said the Justice Department would abandon the practice of seizing reporters' records as part of efforts to uncover confidential sources. It aims to resolve a politically thorny issue that has long vexed Justice Department prosecutors trying to weigh the media's First Amendment rights against the government's desire to protect classified information.

The United States has, of course, an important national interest in protecting national security information against unauthorized disclosure, Garland wrote in his memo. But a balancing test may fail to properly weight the important national interest in protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of information revealing their sources, sources they need to apprise the American people of the workings of their government.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Ahead of the opening of an unprecedented veto override session, Louisiana House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said Monday he's comfortable 100% that his chamber has the votes to overturn Gov. John Bel Edwards' rejection of a bill to ban transgender girls from school sports.
SEOUL, South Korea  South Koreas prime minister has offered a public apology over a large-scale coronavirus outbreak on a destroyer on an anti-piracy mission off East Africa.
TOKYO (AP)  After a yearlong delay and months of hand-wringing that rippled across a pandemic-inflected world, a Summer Games unlike any other is at hand. It's an Olympics, sure, but also, in a very real way, something quite different.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Los Angeles County residents are again required to wear masks indoors regardless of their vaccination status  a new mandate starting this weekend that health officials hope will reverse the latest spikes in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP)  The departure of an oil company executive has raised questions about the timeline of a major project on Alaskas North Slope.

Keiran Wulff resigned as managing director of Oil Search due to a worsening medical issue that has also come during a whistleblower complaint about his behavior, the companys chairperson, Rick Lee, said during a call with financial analysts Monday.

Wulff had directed Oil Searchs Pikka project for the last three years, the Anchorage Daily News reported. The New Guinea-based company has been working with Repsol, a Spanish company, to develop Pikka, which is located on state land east of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska and the major ConocoPhillips Willow project.

Oil Search and Repsol estimate Pikka could produce 80,000 barrels of oil a day in the first phase of development in 2025.

Oil Search was expected to determine by the end of 2021 whether to commit funding to the multibillion-dollar project.

If the market has felt that that was the case in the past, its certainly not the case today, Lee said.
RENO, Nev. (AP)  A Navy helicopter crew looking for a hiker missing in some California mountains east of Yosemite National Park survived after they crashed near the tallest peak in Nevada, and both the searchers and the hiker were rescued over the weekend.

The four-member crew escaped injury but had to spend Friday night in the rugged wilderness before being rescued Saturday from a ridge along the California-Nevada line, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, authorities said.

The Navy is investigating the cause of the crash reported about 5 p.m. Friday, Navy spokesman Zip Upham said Monday. The Navy MH-60 Knighthawk had been helping with the search for a lost hiker in the White Mountains in the Inyo National Forest.

Ronald Bolen, an Oklahoma University professor who was reported missing last week on a trail to Boundary Peak, was found by hikers late Saturday or Sunday in good condition and transported for medical treatment, the Mono County sheriffs office said.

A family member told the Reno Gazette Journal that Bolen was dehydrated but otherwise in good shape.
State officials took the first formal steps Monday toward disposing of the 46-acre campus that formerly housed a juvenile offender treatment center for girls in Geneva.

The Vacant Buildings and Excess Lands Committee voted to declare the grounds and buildings vacant and excess and to search for an entity interested in taking over the property, which had been the longtime home of a Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center.

First dibs will go to the City of Geneva, according to Jason Jackson, director of the Nebraska Department of Administrative Services. Second choice would be another public entity.

Geneva Mayor Eric Kamler said he is excited about the economic development opportunities that the property could provide. He said some of the buildings could be used as a business incubator, while the indoor pool and ballfields could expand recreational offerings for the town.

He also wants to keep the state call center employees who are currently working out of the former administration building. The Department of Health and Human Services has about 32 workers who help process applications for Medicaid and other public assistance programs.

Kamler said the Geneva City Council was slated to start discussions about the property Monday evening.
A roundup of legislative and Capitol news items of interest for Monday, July 19, 2021:

HISTORY IS EVERYWHERE: To commemorate Iowas 175th anniversary this year, the State Historical Society of Iowa is creating 300 temporary pop-up displays and 15 permanent cast aluminum historical markers. Both are available, by application at https://iowaculture.gov/iowa175 for installation in communities across Iowa.

The temporary pop-up displays, part of Iowas People & Places, traces 13,000 years of Iowa history, from the first Native people to call this land home, through the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War, and right on through the 20th century to today.

The pop-ups are free-standing, lightweight and easy to assemble. The finished display, about 68 inches tall, is made of sturdy cardboard and can be easily assembled for display in museums, historical societies, libraries, community centers or other public locations.

Grants up to $2,000 are available for the manufacture of 2-by-3-foot cast aluminum historical signs and plaques. Priority will be given to historical markers that share the stories of historically underrepresented groups.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP)  A fraternity of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys has withdrawn its sponsorship of a street dance in the small town of Scotland in September.

David Finnell applied on behalf of the group to have the street dance from noon until midnight Sept. 18 in the Bon Homme County community of about 700 people. The City Council approved the request to close a section of the city street as required for alcohol consumption and food vendors.

Finnell, in a Facebook message to KELO-TV Monday, said that the Proud Boys were dropping sponsorship of the event out of concerns for safety. He did not elaborate.

The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies the Proud Boys as a hate group citing the groups views about women, Muslims and others, as well as appearing with other extremist groups.

Scotlands city attorney Kent Lehr said while the Proud Boys have gained some negative national attention, there have not been any problems locally. Its his understanding that several local or area residents are associated with the Proud Boys, Lehr said.
ROME (AP)  A France-based migrant rescue organization soon will be getting medical and other assistance aboard its charity ship in the Mediterranean.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, known as IFRC, said Monday that its teams will go aboard the Ocean Viking rescue ship starting in August in the central Mediterranean Sea.

Thats an area heavily used by traffickers based in Libya who launch unseaworthy boats crowded with migrants toward Italys southern shores. Rescue ships often host the migrants aboard for days until Italy or Malta grants permission to dock and disembark the passengers.

The Geneva-based organization will be providing first aid and other medical care, psychological support, dry clothes and blankets as well as food to rescued migrants aboard the ship operated by the charity SOS Mediterranee.

Lives continue to be needlessly lost in the Mediterranean Sea, particularly on the long and treacherous Central Mediterranean route between Libya and Europe, the two humanitarian organizations said in a joint statement. They noted that 792 people are known to have died on that route while trying to reach Europe in the first six months of this year, three times as many as in the same period in 2020.
When Sen. Joseph McCarthy challenged the patriotism of Truman Democrats in such terms in the 1950s, he was censured by the Senate.

Is Biden really saying that minor alterations in election laws, all of which would have to pass muster with federal courts and the Supreme Court, represent an existential threat to our republic?

This is beyond hyperbole. It is ridiculous. It is absurd.

Such hype is a measure of just how far out of touch with the real world the rhetoric of our reigning elites has drifted.

Yet, by casting himself and his party as today's party of Lincoln, and Republican governors as Confederates, with the stakes equal to the survival of the Union, Biden has raised the stakes of this minor political skirmish.

And raised the political risk to himself, if he fails, as is likely.

Biden has just shoved a large pile of his political chips into the middle of the table in a show of confidence that he can bring off Senate passage of the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, when both pieces of legislation look to be certain losers.
Americas tax cheats continue to have no greater ally than the Republican Party.

That once again became clear over the weekend, when Rob Portman, the GOP senator from Ohio, announced that the bipartisan infrastructure package that lawmakers have been haggling over for months would not include a proposal to raise revenue by boosting funding for the Internal Revenue Service. The deals original outline would have provided $40 billion to help the financially beleaguered agency collect more of the taxes that Americans fail to pay each year. But after a rebellion by conservative activist groups, Republicans got cold feet about the idea. Now, they have officially nixed it.

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In a healthy two-party system where both sides believed in basic good government, financing new spending by improving tax enforcement would be an uncontroversial and common-sense proposal. It is, after all, a more or less free lunch that merely involves enforcing the laws as they exist. Its a potentially large meal, too. Though estimates vary, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig testified earlier this year that the government may be failing to collect more than $1 trillion of the taxes it is owed annually, up from the previous official estimate of $441 billion per year on average between 2011 and 2013. Even a portion of the missing revenue could pay for a lot of new roads.

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But, alas, we do not live in a healthy two-party system where both sides believe in basic good governance. Part of the reason so much tax revenue slips through Uncle Sams fingers every year is that Republicans have spent two decades waging an on-and-off war of attrition aimed at limiting the IRSs powers and starving it of resources, which has ultimately crippled its ability to conduct tax audits on all but the poorest filers. As New York Magazines Jonathan Chait has explained at length, conservatives have justified this assault based on a series of literally made-up scandals.

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In the late 1990s, Republicans held an explosive series of hearings in which IRS agents were accused of committing grotesque abuses against taxpayers and engaging in gestapo-like tactics. Many of the stories turned out to be simply untrue, as a report by the General Accountability Office later revealed. One crucial witness, who among other things claimed tax agents had raided his restaurant at gunpoint and knocked his 12-year-old son to the floor, was forced to recant his story when it fell apart during a lawsuit. But the hearings led to a major 1998 reform bill that reorganized the IRS and limited its enforcement tactics.

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Republicans largely paused their assault on the tax authorities during George W. Bushs presidency, but resumed it during the Obama era, after Tea Party groups accused the IRS of singling them out for politically motivated audits. The accusations generated an enormous, years-long scandal that embedded itself into conservative lore. It also turned out to be wholly untruea Treasury Department report eventually revealed that the IRS had been scrutinizing both progressive and conservative groups over potential tax violations. But the GOP used it as an excuse to eviscerate the IRS budget, eventually leading to massive losses of manpowerthe agencys staff shrank by 22 percent between 2010 and 2018.

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It seemed, for a moment, that even Republicans realized they had gone overboard when the Trump administration agreed to give the IRS budget a bump in 2019. Ditto when, earlier this year, the bipartisan gang of senators began talking about using tax enforcement to fund needed infrastructure spending. But conservative groups such as Freedom Works and the Committee to Unleash Prosperityled by tax-cut evangelist, former Trump campaign adviser, and failed Federal Reserve pick Stephen Mooremobilized against the proposal.

The arguments against it were shallow and sloppy at best. An op-ed by Moore and his longtime cohort Steve Forbes, which was reportedly widely read by Republican lawmakers, is instructive. It called back to the debunked Tea Party targeting scandal, and claims, without any evidence of a public uproar, that the IRS is embroiled in a new controversy over agents illegally turning over private tax return data of millionaires and billionaires to Pro Publica. Then it argues that the best way to make wealthy Americans pay the taxes they owe is to cut their rates, so theyll do it voluntarily. Stunningly, one of the main pieces of proof they cite is an op-ed about how the top 1 percent of taxpayers claimed fewer itemized deductions after they were limited by the Trump administrations 2017 tax bill, a fact that is not remotely relevant to the question of how to deal with tax cheating.

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But at least Moore and Forbes bothered with specifics. Elected Republicans who opposed the revenue-raising idea didnt even do that much. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, for instance, merely offered that throwing billions more taxpayer dollars at the IRS will only hurt Americans struggling to recover after waves of devastating lockdowns and that Instead of increasing funding for the IRS, we should abolish the damn place. Again, the people currently not being audited are the wealthiest Americans who endured a year of lockdowns just fine, but thanks, Ted.

In the end, the Republican opposition to funding the IRS really seems to boil down to two issues, one overt, one less so. The public part is simply a nihilistic opposition to taxation and the basic functions of government that seems to grip even relatively moderate members of the party, such that there arent even 10 GOP senators wholl support a major budget increase for tax enforcement. The less public part is basic interest group politics: A large chunk of Americas tax gap is due to underreporting by businesses and their owners, often on income where theres no third party to verify it, the way your employer sends the government a copy of your W-2. Small and mid-sized business owners are a major constituency and source of fundraising for the Republican Party, and so GOP politicians have every incentive to help protect Americas restaurant owners, landlords, and construction contractors from being audited.

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Its possible that the IRS will still get its budget bump, since Democrats have said they could include the additional funding in the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package they are separately considering. But the politics of doing so are a little tricky. Under its current rules, the Congressional Budget Office wont count revenues generated by new tax enforcement efforts in its official score of the legislation, so even if it raises money in reality, it wont on paper. Im told changing that scoring rule permanently would require Republican support, but Democrats are looking into whether they can do it on a one-time basis as part of the reconciliation bill.

In the meantime, Republicans have showed their core philosophy when it comes to taxes. The party doesnt just believe taxes should be low. They believe paying them should be optional.
Dear Care and Feeding,

I have three daughters, who are 6, 4, and 1. I also like to get a lot of beauty treatments done. Nothing major, but I get my hair cut and glossed every 6 weeks, I get most of my face waxed (Im Italian and Greek, so were very hairy), I love facials and body scrubs and massages. I get a manicure once a month or so. Maybe once or twice a year Ill get a spray tan. My husband never seemed to mind, but now that our girls are getting older, he wants me to tone it down and have a more natural look so they know theyre beautiful as they are. I love that hes worried about their body image but at the same time, I dont want to give up my treatments! There are plenty of natural features that Ive grown to love, including my Roman nose. I almost never wear heavy makeup. I dont want to have to learn to love my mustache and my unruly hair. Is it so bad for our daughters self-esteem that I alter my appearance?

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I Love Facials

Dear Facials,

Unless theres more to the story than youre sharing here, theres absolutely nothing wrong with the self-care you described. If anything, youre teaching your daughters that its OK to pamper yourself whenever you want to.

Haircuts, facials, and even the occasional spray tans arent reasons to sound the alarm. If you happen to see any warning signs that your daughters body images take a turn for the worse (like commenting on their weight or focusing heavily on their appearances), then youll need to intervene appropriately. However, if that does happen, I dont think anyone would think waxing your upper lip will be to blame for it.

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You should also ask your husband directly about what concerns him about your beauty routine, and assure him that it wont be a problem. I mean, youre the expert here since you were a young girl not so long ago. Use that expertise to your advantage.

Loving your children and building them up with positivity is way more important than how much time you spend at the local spa.

Help! How can I support Slate so I can keep reading all the advice from Dear Prudence, Care and Feeding, Ask a Teacher, and How to Do It? Answer: Join Slate Plus.

Dear Care and Feeding,

I am writing this message at 6 a.m., as I have been woken up by the upstairs neighbor again. I live (alone) in an apartment and last year a single mom with a 2-year-old moved in the apartment upstairs. They are LOUD. The walls are thin so I dont mind a certain level of noise but the kid, who is now 3, recently started running inside, just above my bedroom, really early in the morning especially on weekends (for at least 20 minutes sometime between 6 and 8 a.m.). I already told the mom that this wakes me up, but maybe I was too nice because she just laughed and told the kid, You see? You wake up the neighbor! I honestly thought she would be more careful, but I was apparently naive. I dont know what to do. I sleep with earplugs but the noise is so loud, its like someone is banging directly above my bed. I dont have kids yet, but my mom used to run a small daycare at home, so I understand that kids can be super loud and need to move. The mom seems to be struggling with the kid, and its a special time in history, so I understand this is not easy, but this is getting to be too much for me. Is it OK to say something about the morning jogging? Can you help me finding a good way to say it? Thank you!

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Extremely Tired Neighbor

Dear Extremely Tired,

I absolutely feel your pain. When my kids were really young, I lived on the bottom floor of my condominium and I swear that my upstairs neighbors brought in elephants to walk above my bedroom between 5:00 and 7:00 a.m. every single morning. It woke all of us up, and I was pretty miserable until I finally confronted them.

In doing so, I walked upstairs, pounded on the door (it wasnt a pleasant knock) and calmly, yet firmly, stated, Hi there, there is a loud noise right above my bedroom every morning at this time and it wakes me up. These walls and floors are very thin and I would appreciate if you could be more considerate to me and my family. The woman apologized profusely and mentioned that she used a treadmill early in the morning which ended up being the reason. We compromised by having her use the treadmill during decent hours of the day, but I still couldnt wait to move out of there.

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I think its totally fine for you to have a similar conversation with your upstairs neighbor. Granted, as a single mom, shes probably at the end of her rope on a daily basis trying to wrangle a toddler, but that doesnt excuse her from being considerate. You have to be kind but firm, so she understands that youre not a jerk, but you also need to be taken seriously. If shes a reasonable adult, she should recognize whats happening and do her part to fix it. If it still continues, you could escalate your concerns to management or find another place to live (preferably on the top floor). I dont think it will come to that, though.

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 If you missed Mondays Care and Feeding column, read it here.

 Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

I have a wonderful smart, caring, and generous child who my entire family adores and will sometimes bring presents to. For most of the family its a little something here and there, usually around a holiday, any holiday, which while unnecessary is fine with us. The problem is we have a few distant but well off family members that send expensive gifts at least once a month, like in excess of a hundred dollars and its all just a bit much for a toddler. Ive tried talking to them about it but still the gifts continue and Im at a loss. We regularly donate items and my child has no problem sharing or parting with things but it does take some of the excitement out of gift giving occasions when its just like any other day. Ive tried intercepting the packages and sorting them in private but toddlers are smart and mine knows what a cardboard box could contain and even asks randomly for us to take them to check for them, so my attempts at subterfuge rarely work out. Should I keep fighting the good fight and get rid of what I can? Or not worry about it because despite the abundance of belongings my kid has been raised with love, attention, and good values and as a result doesnt seem spoiled at all?

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Please Stop With The Gifts

Dear Please Stop,

This definitely falls into the First World Problems category. Is your relatives way of fostering a relationship with your kid to throw some cash in an envelope? If so, thats a problem right there. Do they make video calls? Visit for holidays? Those are things that really matter, because as Tony Starks dad famously said in Avengers: Endgame, No amount of money ever bought a second of time.

If it really bothers you, then you should flat out tell them to stop. Not in an, Aww shucks, you shouldnt have kind of way  Im talking about, Look, these gifts are making me really uncomfortable and I want you to stop sending them now, or else Ill donate them to charity kind of way. That should stop everything.

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In the event that they still send stuff for no reason, you can ask them to send cash instead. Then you can put it in your kids college fund, donate it to a worthy cause, or use it on a fun vacation. I know wealthy people like your relatives, and many of them have no clue what to do with all of their money so they randomly give it away. Its better than hoarding it, I guess. Regardless of the reason, it doesnt make you a bad person for accepting it and spending it as you see fit.

Dear Care and Feeding,

For complicated but good reasons, my children attend a school that is a 45-minute commute from our home, 10 minutes from my work. Theyre in kindergarten and fifth grade, and the school goes through high school. As you can imagine, this means I deal with all the transportation and logistics and my husbandwho has a job midway between house and school, and much less flexibilitydoes none. For the brief part of this year that has been in person (which, yay!) Ive had to take 2+ hours out of my workday for the afternoon drive home (and makeup the time at night). I want to move near school. My husband does not. The children dont know, but of course they dont want to either (children never want to move). They claim they dont mind the commute, but the exhausting and frantic bickering in the back seat tells a different tale. We would all be giving up some extracurricularsports leagues and the likeif we moved. Not all of those things are replicable on the other side of town, and Im not callous enough to think it doesnt matter. Plus, the schools neighborhood has smaller lots, so for the same price per square foot wed have a smaller/older house and no garage. I still think we should move. And soon.

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Should We Move?

Dear Should We Move,

Im sorry to lay down the hammer here, but this sounds extremely selfish. Youre willing to give up the kids extracurricular activities, move into a smaller and older home, and upset your family just so you can spend less time in the car with your kids? Do you honestly think thats OK?

What if you move and then get laid off? Would you be able to live with yourself? Jobs come and go, and I dont think it would be wise to make an unpopular decision because of a 45-minute commute. I know parents who have 90-minute commutes each way and dont complain. Its just a part of the job sometimes.

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I dont think youre a bad parent  I just think your exhaustion is not making you think straight. Moving away is a major decision to make for a seemingly minor inconvenience. I cant tell you what to do, but I think you should ride this one out.

Doyin

More Advice From Slate

I love my 7-year-old sons name, Andrew, but I hate the nickname Andy. When we named him Andrew we agreed to only use the long version and never the nickname. Until this year everyone has called him Andrew. We moved over the summer, and somehow he has become Andy in his new school! What should I do?
Jenee Desmond-Harris is online weekly to chat live with readers. Heres an edited transcript of this weeks chat.

Q. Modern problems: The letter from the IVF parents recently triggered a question I have had for a long time and have been putting off deciding on because I wont have to answer it for years. But here it is:

My youngest daughter was conceived with my sperm and a donated egg. When my daughter was 2 years old, my wife died. I have been raising her as if her biological mother died when she was 2she has no memory of her mom and is happy, healthy, and well-adjusted. She has no idea that her biological mother is probably still alive with at least one probably living daughter, who would be her half-sister. Then there are the 14 embryos we donated after she was born, who would be her full siblings if they were successful.

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If there wasnt a 23 and Me business out there, the decision would be easy: Just keep it a secret and let it die with me. The issue is she may decide in the future to have her ancestry checked, and then she would be in for a big surpriseand may be angry that I didnt tell her and give her the option to meet her biological mother and siblings. And then what if I do tell her and then her biological mother doesnt want to meet her? Or doesnt get along with her? Or her biological siblings reject her?

My current plan is to talk to a therapist when she is 17 and make a plan for when she is 18 for what to do. She is currently 11 so I dont feel a need to make a decision for a while. What are your thoughts?

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A: This does have a lot in common with that question and Ill suggest a similar approach: Consider letting a family therapist give you some advice or even facilitate the conversation. And dont delay and make it a big, scary secret that feels life-changing when it is revealed. If you think shes old enough to understand the basic science of human reproduction, I can imagine you saying something as simple as: When your mom and I wanted to have a baby, we needed some help and a nice woman let us use one of her eggs. Then we helped out other families by donating the embryos we had left after we had you. This doesnt change anything about our familyMom carried you and gave birth to you and loved you a lot. But in the future, if youre interested in trying to find the woman whose egg we used and any other children who came from those donated embryos (who would be biologically related to you), we can do that. Its also OK to do nothing. By framing it as not a big deal rather than You have a mother and siblings out there!, youll be making the news easier to handle and also preparing her to keep things in perspective if she does one day get in touch with these people and finds there isnt a strong connection.

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How to Get Advice From Prudie:

 Send questions for publication here. (Questions may be edited.)

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Q. Trying to support sibling sobriety: My older brother who, as far as I know, has been sober for more than a decade, has recently started drinking again. Twice this week, Ive seen him drink a beer, in full view of myself and other family members, like it was no big deal.

Ive heard him credit AAs Big Book with inspiring an epiphany in his life and every time Ive seen him offered a drink previously, he has refused. I feel strange commenting on a behavior that, were it anyone else in my life, I wouldnt think twice about. At the same time, and I know this isnt fair, I feel a little like a core thing that I know to be true about the worldthat my brother is an alcoholic who has been sober for as long as I can rememberhas shifted beneath my feet and Im pretty shaken.

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Whats the protocol? Do I ask him if hed like company to go to a meeting? When he asks my partner if he can grab a beer from the fridge, do I interrupt to say, No, I dont think thats a good idea? Do I call my other sibling, with whom he has a closer relationship, and snitch? I know my brother has been really struggling of late, and hes planning to move closer to home soon to work on getting back on his feet, so do I just wait until then and hope he gets the help he needs?

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A: When it comes to contemplating things like snitching and cutting off his refrigerator access, youre about 10 steps ahead. Yes, your brother has a problem with alcohol, but that doesnt mean you cant speak to him directly like you would anyone else. How about something like: I noticed youve been drinking again. I didnt want to make it weird in the moment but Im kind of worried. Do you mind talking about it? Whats going on? If hes been open about being in AA for all these years, this topic shouldnt be too touchy to discuss. And the purpose of your asking him is to understand whats happening with someone you love, not to shame him or become the sobriety police.

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Its possible hes decided that he can drink moderately and be OK. But its also possible that hes relapsed (which is very common) and is out of control or moving in that direction. The people who know most about how this works and how to help him are his AA sponsor and friends. If you push him to do anything, it should be to contact these people. They speak the language of the Big Book and have possibly even been in his position before.

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And the people whove been where you are before are in Al-Anon, a group for people who are worried about loved ones with drinking problems. Whatever he says about why hes drinking and how much, it feels like theres a decent chance that hes heading toward a crisis that will be hard to watch. You should attend a meeting, where I imagine youll be reminded that his relationship with alcohol is his alone, and theres very little you can do or say that will change what happens next.

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Q. Too old for love? I am 86 and I may be bisexual. I would like to be gay but am I too old for anybody who would take me on? Is my age too late for friendship or other?

A: Congratulations on having this revelation about yourself and exploring the idea of living a life that would make you happier. You can be definitely (not may be) bisexual and definitely gay even if you dont find a partner. But I think maybe you can find one! Older people get into relationships all the time. In my experience, they actually seem to move pretty quicklymaybe because of a sense of having limited time left, or maybe because once you get to a certain age, you just know what you want. Why dont you start poking around on Our Time, the dating website for older adults? There are, of course, no guarantees for anyone of any age or sexual orientation when it comes to meeting someone whos a good fit, but I think youll regret it if you dont try.

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Q. Tired of listening to it: I call my mom on my way to work and on my way home from work every day. We get in a good 45 minutes or so of talking each day. The problem is, she complains nonstop, mostly about my dad. Im tired of listening to it and frankly I dont think its right. While I dont disagree that he can be a total jerk, its not fair to me to have to listen to it. I dont know what to do.

A: Mom, I know Dad can be a jerk and I hate how he treats you, but I dont want to let that take away from our relationship. Can we complain about Dad for five minutes at the end of every call? It kind of brings me down and I want to hear more about how youre doing and other fun stuff, and tell you how Im doing. Hold up your end of the bargain by having plenty of other topics to discuss and steering the conversation in another direction.

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Q. Just break up already: One of my friends, Anna, has been in a relationship with a man, Dave, for nearly two years now. Im sad to say that Anna and Dave are that couple who dont mind having an audience when they get into a verbal fight. It started out small, if not annoying, in the beginning, where theyd whisper-fight and drop the subject. A lot of their issues stem from feelings of jealousy, infidelity (physical and otherwise), conflicting views on life such as kids, and general incompatibility. Over time, it escalated that they not only would have shouting matches in front of strangers, theyd do it wherever they were and despite whatever would be going ongrocery stores, restaurants, streets, and even birthday parties.

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Just a couple months ago, they went to the house of Annas cousin for a family reunion of sorts. They ended up having such a loud, disruptive fight that neighbors called the police. Annas cousin kicked them both out, and the two are still at odds over the embarrassing event. A lot of our friends have stopped hanging out with them because of this, and they know it, which adds to the tension to the relationship. Recently, Anna had confided in me that shes heavily tempted to be with a new man, but is hesitant to end a nearly two-year relationship over what might amount to a fling. Shes asked me my opinion, and so far Ive avoided a response. Truthfully, I think her relationship with Dave is a dead end regardless of if she gets with this new guy, but I normally make a point of not giving relationship advice. If I told her what I think but she stays with Dave, I feel like Ill become the bad guy. What do you think I should do?

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A: This reminds me of a tweet I saw: My friend got dumped yesterday and we immediately had a Group video call where everybody shared how much we hated him and it was two hours of going through what garbage this man is. At one point I said NASA is still looking for his hairline. And now theyre back together.

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Awkward! Dont get yourself into a situation like that. Encourage her to pursue the new guy, without ever mentioning Daves name, such as: You like him! You should listen to yourself, You never know, this could be your soulmate! and I think he sounds great! I can really see you with someone who you can have a peaceful relationship with.

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Q. Re: Modern problems: I would HIGHLY encourage the letter writer to tell their daughter sooner rather than later. Eleven is not too young at alland Im sure many therapists you speak to would agree. By keeping it a secret for longer, you make it into something huge (and potentially shameful) instead of a purely logistical fact of her conception. I believe the best practice now is to tell children from birth that they are adopted/from donor sperm/eggs, whatever.

Thats not to say youve irrevocably messed up your daughter by not telling her until nowtheres no point in beating yourself up about itbut I think telling her sooner rather than later is going to make her less likely to feel betrayed or hurt that you kept it from her. And if she does show interest in meeting her biological mother and siblings, please encourage it! She knows who her mother and father are; it isnt a reflection on the life youve given her for her to show interest in her biological siblings/mother. And while the outcome could prove hurtful for many reasons, shell be better equipped to face those things knowing she has your unconditional support.

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A: Yep, I wish he would have told her earlier.

Q. Re: Modern problems: The daughter mentioned in the letter does not have a mother just floating about in the universe. Theres an egg donor who helped her parents conceive her. A mother is someone who stays up all night with a sick infant; a mother soothes a crying toddler when they fall; a mother holds the hand of a child when crossing the street. The egg donor (while kind and self-less) is not her mother.

A: I agree that this is the best way to think about it. The egg donor is a woman who offered (actually, probably sold) an egg to help another woman become a mother, and thats a much better way to frame it than you have a real biological mother out there somewhere.

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Q. Re: Trying to support sibling sobriety: Be careful of the line between supporting your brothers sobriety and policing it. It is a fair ball if you decide not to serve your brother alcohol in your home (and you should discuss this with your partner). It is also fair to tell him you have noticed he is drinking again. If he starts an argument or tries to justify it, dont engage, but just tell him you have noticed it so he had information. But dont push him to go to meetings if he doesnt want to, and dont push him on his drinking unless he puts himself or others in danger.

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Managing his sobriety and recovery is his job, not yours. As hard as it is, your first priority is to protect yourself and your own mental health.

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A: I agree with this. I think if anyone is going to know how to push (or nudge, or just support), it will be the people in his AA community. And again, Al-Anon will be the place to figure out what to do, what not to do, and how to manage the reality of not being able to control how this turns out for him.

Q. Re: Tired of listening to it: Or.stop calling your mom twice a day, every day, and talking for 45 minutes. Obviously your mom has run out of things to talk to you about twice a day, every day, for 45 minutes. Im really not kidding.

A: Ha. I talk to my mom for about this much time every day so it didnt seem strange to me but yes, the letter writer can cut back. I do think they should try making the conversations better before making them shorter though, since the length wasnt one of their complaints.

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Jenee Desmond-Harris: Thanks, everyone. Well wrap it up here and get together again next week to discuss our problems and how other people should livesame time, same place. See you then!

If you missed Part 1 of this weeks chat, click here to read it.

Discuss this column on our Facebook page!

From Care and Feeding

Im a single mom to a 7-year old son and a 1-year old daughter. I want to be able to have conversations with my son about his body, girls, sex, and everything in between, but I recently grossed him out just by saying penis. How can I begin to approach these topics so that we can have open and honest conversations? I dont think Ill have the same issues with my daughter, who Ive already started to talk to about body autonomyhopefully, vagina wont be as gross later on.
The Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United Statesthe 36-member commission that President Joe Biden formed in April to consider various methods of court reformheld its third public meeting on Tuesday. The urgent necessity of reform was made manifest when Judge Amy Coney Barrett was rushed onto the court this past October, despite the fact that 60 million Americans had already cast a ballot in the 2020 elections, and despite the fact that the Republican-controlled Senate had previously held open a seat for nearly a year in 2016 under the premise that the people ought to decide who filled that court seat. The commission is co-chaired by professors Cristina Rodriguez and Bob Bauer, and their brief is to study structural court reforms ranging from court expansion and term limits to robust ethics reforms and jurisdiction stripping. The commission itself, peopled by indisputably brilliant legal academics, former judges, and prominent Supreme Court practitioners, is holding six public meetings over 180 days, after which its final report is due to the president. Smaller panels of bipartisan commissioners will be researching multiple proposed reforms and then submitting their report to the presidentbut not offering any formal recommendations to the Biden administration.

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Progressive critics have urged that the commission itself is, therefore, nothing more than an effort to push an emergency issue off into the future and to smother the voices of real court critics proposing massive structural reform. On Tuesday, some of those same critics testified before the commission, and it was immediately clear both why they are so frustrated and also why they were left off the commission. In fact, if there was any real friction in evidence, it didnt come from the Republican witnesses, who spent their time mouthing platitudes about freewheeling liberal justices and living constitutionalism and how everything would be nonpartisan again if only everyone were just an Orginalist/Umpire/Robot; commissioners largely treated that as the comedy stylings of conservative legal discourse from the 1990s and ignored it. No, the friction was between the left and the leftand it wasnt just about tactics and strategy. It was about the distance that exists between those who exist in political reality (the critics) and those who are still writing Article III fan fiction (the members of the commission).

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Among those presenting testimony Tuesday were Nan Aron of the Alliance for Justice, who openly, if reluctantly, embraced court expansion; Sharon M. McGowan, the chief strategy officer and legal director of Lambda Legal, who asked how she was meant to try cases in front of judges who had earned their seats by opposing LGBTQ equality; and Wade Henderson, interim president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, who urged the commission to seriously consider all ways in which people most impacted by the Courts decisions could be better served by the institution that is tasked with administering justice.* In his written testimony, Christopher Kangwho served in the Obama White House for nearly seven years, as deputy counsel to the president and as special assistant to the president for legislative affairsperhaps best captured the sense that the commission itself was on trial.

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Kang, who helped spearhead the confirmations of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, was candid in his testimony that, having been the consummate insider, he was the most unlikely co-founder of Demand Justice, a group that advocates for expanding the court to 13 justices: As he testified: I had always considered myself an institutionalist. I wanted to advance change from the inside and work through the system, willing to find compromise and progress from within.

Kang talked about his own progression from institutionalist to activist, a result of the asymmetry that has come from how Americas two political parties have envisioned the court in recent years. He quoted Penn State Law professor Eleanor Brown, who put it this way a few years back:

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We have all been sold this notion that there is an impartial, independent judiciary working for the common good. People on the left have disproportionately bought that fiction. People on the right never bought that fiction. If people on the left buy the fiction and people on the right do not buy the fiction, it means that people on the right  are behaving in activist ways, they are always acutely aware of the stakes and the implications in a way that people on the left are not.

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Kang added that I admit that until a few years ago, I bought that fiction. After tracing the recent history of GOP obstruction of Obama nominees, Senate rule changes used to seat Republican nominees, and Trumps successful takeover of the federal courts as Republicans took over state courts, Kang described the real problem: I expected Republicans to pave over some of the roadblocks they erected for Obama judicial nominees. I expected two sets of rules; I did not realize there would be two sets of reality: Republicans dont deny their politicization of our courtsthey revel in it.

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In effect then, Kang wasnt so much addressing himself to the commissionwhich cannot and almost surely will not take the steps he recommendsbut to Democrats still wandering through what he views as the spun-sugar enchanted forest of an apolitical judiciary. In so doing, Kang took aim at the legal elites that range from Justice Stephen Breyerwho refuses to step down so his replacement can be named by Bidento legal academics willing to do anything to preserve their own access to power, to the press corps who covers the courts for the public. As Kang put it: If progressives are disproportionately buying this fiction, it is because of who is selling it: legal elites, the media, and the Court itself. He continued:

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The legal elite culture, fueled by Supreme Court practitioners and academics, artificially props up the Supreme Courts reputation for independence. Some practitioners may seek a strategic benefit in not criticizing justices who may rule on their cases. Many maintain the elite culture as a goal in and of itself, as Supreme Court practitioners derive their prestige, wealth, and power from their exclusivity and by perpetuating the myth that they have the keys to winning over an apolitical Court. Law professors gain status and influence by placing their students in clerkships, which limits their criticism of judgeseven in the face of allegations of sexual harassmentand instead promotes fealty to our courts and the notion of their independence. Elite journalists who cover the Court for a living then amplify this illusion, citing practitioners and professors as disinterested experts instead of self-interested sources. Because the courts derive their authority from the public trust, many in the media seem to believe their purpose is to build that trusteven when it is not earned. There is no other explanation for the annual early-June articles proclaiming that the Supreme Court has acted moderately before the searing, partisan opinions are predictably delivered just weeks later. In manufacturing public trust, the media is complicit in hiding the true political nature of the Court and its decisions.

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He put this point even more sharply in his testimony Tuesday morning:

If progressives are disproportionately buying the fiction of an independent judiciary then who is selling it? The answer, quite frankly, is people like those in this meetinglegal elites, academics, Supreme Court practitioners who benefit from not criticizing the court. @cdkang76 pic.twitter.com/MyXbRjnmJK  Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) July 20, 2021

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Kang didnt name names; he stated that he wasnt referencing any specific member of the commission. In his written testimony he further acknowledged the irony of testifying before a Commission of legal elites. As he explained: I accepted this Commissions gracious invitation because I was part of the same legal elite culture that convinced myself that holding the line on an apolitical judiciary would strengthen our courts. I am here to admit that I was wrong. He was also willing to state that he didnt think his testimony would do much practically: Unfortunately, I think the outcome has been predetermined by the commissions makeup and mandate (or lack of one), and this commission as whole is not going to deliver the change we need, he told me after testifying.

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What was plainly visible on Tuesday is the fact that while most Republicans tumble ever further down the rabbit hole of denialism and the Big Lie, Democrats now face their own post-truth reckoning. Institutionalists believe that deescalation, norms, and bipartisanship are ends in and of themselves to be burnished and restored. Their critics argue that when elite institutions are as warped as they now are, they no longer serve justice or truth, and preserving them for their own sake does not serve any coherent ends. As Kang testified Tuesday, we cannot preserve an apolitical Supreme Court because we cannot preserve something that does not exist. Whether the Commission has the stomach to accept the scope of the problem and do something about it is at least now the question on the table.
During the current season of discontent in France, yellow has become the color of protest. There are, not surprisingly, the renewed bursts of yellow veststhe emblem of the countrys massive anti-establishment demonstrations in 201920. More surprisingly, perhaps, a growing number of protesters against the governments new COVID measures are sporting six-pointed yellow starsthe emblem worn by French Jews embarking on French trains for Auschwitz beginning in 1942.*

The merging of gilets jaunes or etoiles jaunes, in turn, have tripped yellow warning lights that are blinking furiously not just for the French state but also for the state of historical knowledge.

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Earlier this month, two days before this years Bastille Day celebrations, a grim-faced President Emmanuel Macron gave a nationally televised address. Seated in front of an image of the Eiffel Towerthe 19th century testament to the vigor of French technology and republican ingenuityMacron announced that the rocketing infection rate coupled with the flattening of the vaccination rate had forced his governments hand. All medical personnel, Macron warned, had to be vaccinated by September 15th. Those failing to do so would be subject to unspecified sanctions.

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More importantly, if only because it would affect the millions of French not yet vaccinated, Macron announced the creation of a passe sanitaire or health pass. Those who are fully vaccinated or have tested negative are free to enter commercial and cultural sites, as well as use long-distance transport. As for those who are not vaccinated, well, tant pis. After July 21, nearly 70 million French will, quite literally, find themselves on or off the bus.

(Businesses that refuse or neglect to check their customers risk being thrown under the bus, subject to a series of escalating fines.)

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The stark terms of this quid pro quo reflect the stark predicament now facing Macron. With the rate of infections increasing 125 percent over the course one week, a fourth wave of the pandemic is poised to crash over France this summer.

Alarmed health officials are warning that hospital ICUs will again overflow, though this time not with those who could not get vaccinated, but with those who could yet refused to get vaccinated. Such an eventuality will have not just seismic social and economic consequences, but also political consequences for the elections next spring, in which Macron will be fighting for reelection to a second term.

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Macrons decision to renege on his earlier promises not to impose a health pass made him appear somehow both dictatorial and dithering. In his speech, Macron explained that by imposing the pass instead of a full lockdown, the government is pushing you to get yourselves vaccinated. But this goal can be viewed in two very different ways. Emmanuel Rusch, a public health expert, observed that while many believe the policy reintroduces individual liberties by limiting restrictions, others believe those liberties are violated precisely because of these restrictions. In either case, Rusch concluded, Macrons declaration will test the countrys appetite for laws that constrain and language that commands.

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The response to the speech was as swift as it was split. For many, the push was clearly what they needed: a record number of vaccination requests, more than 1 million, were made the day after Macrons speech. Others pushed back. According to an IPSOS poll, more than 60 percent of respondents support Macrons decision to restrict access to commercial spaces to vaccinated individuals. Yet early one quarter, a majority of whom identify as members of the Rassemblement National, the extreme rightwing party led by Marine Le Pen, are adamantly opposed to such measures. As is often the case in France, the political and ideological extremes met, with those on the far right finding themselves in the company of many on the far left. The leader of the extreme leftwing La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Melenchon, predicted that the proposed laws would lead to a society of permanent control and conflict. Similarly, Marine Le Pen tweeted that the measures would result in a ominous decline of personal liberties.

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Yet, both leaders also took a pass on appearing in the anti-pass protests that took place last Saturday, with more than 100,000 protesters gathered in several French cities, and over 10,000 streaming along Pariss boulevards. Not only did Melenchon and Le Pen avoid joining the throngs, but they were equally careful in walking the thin line between the anti-pass and anti-vaccine movements. They insisted on both the benefits of the vaccines and the balefulness of Macrons proposals, all the while warning their followers who did join the protests not to engage in what Melenchon called inappropriate comparisons.

What he meant by this was made clear by protesters both in Paris and the provinces.

Dotting the throngs of demonstrators, a number of whom identified with the gilets jaunes, were placards declaring that Macrons proposals were not just authoritariana word used often by Melenchonbut fascist. Other signs made comparisons to the wartime occupation, rhyming dictature sanitaire with pass nazitaire or superimposing Hitlers moustache on an image of Macron.

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Others went even further, connecting delusional dots between the Holocaust and health pass. In a riff on the infamous motto over the gates at Auschwitz, Arbeit macht frei, one protester held a sign declaring the health pass makes you free. Other demonstrators either wore or held signs with the jaune etoile, or yellow star of David. This was perhaps the most unsettling comparison, given the role that French officials played during the occupation in both imposing the star on French Jews and rounding them up for deportation to the death camps. As one protester helpfully explained to a journalist, Macron is doing exactly the same thing with his health pass that Vichy did with the star: forcing you to identify yourself.

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Predictably, politicians from the far left to far right rushed to be the first to denounce these comparisons. No less predictably, the expressions of outrage, particularly from those, like Le Pen and Melenchon, with a predilection for conspiracy theories and a bent for authoritarian rule, will have no more impact than the health warnings on a cigarette pack. As the words and actions of American Republican politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Jim Walsh of Washington remind us, Americans are hardly immune to the virus of moral opacity and historical stupidity. Nor are we any more free than is France of yet other politicians who knowingly enable those espouse these imbecilities as well as embrace the voters who believe them.

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What makes the spread of this virus in France especially disturbing, though, is the immediacy of both its near past and near future. Last Saturdays demonstrations took place on the 79th anniversary of the grand rafle or round-up by Paris police of French and foreign Jews on July 16 and 17, 1942. Dubbed Vent du printemps, or Spring Wind, the police operation rounded up 7,000 men, women and children easily identified by the yellow star they were forced to wear on their clothing or armbands. Nearly all of them were eventually packed off to Auschwitz; nearly none of them returned.

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Just as the proximity of this past has not quieted some in France, the approach of next years elections reminds others of the fragility of their democracy.

Weakened by a fierce pandemic, a flailing economy and a fragmenting society, Macron has failed to convince the country that he deserves a second term of office. While the polls record a slight improvement since the early spring, 65 percent of respondents nevertheless remain dissatisfied with Macrons performance in office.

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At the same time, however, Macron is doing his very best to guarantee that his opponent in 2022 will once again be Le Pen. Not only is her negative rating greater than Macrons, but the threat she holds for democracy in France is even greater. Just as the choice for this summer for a majority of French is the less-bad alternative of the health pass, the choice next spring will be for the less-bad alternative of the president who is responsible for it.

Unless, of course, the health pass fails to stem the coming fourth wave. Then the election will be wide open, as will Le Pens chances.
On June 24, Senate Republican and Democratic negotiators joined President Biden for a White House celebration of their deal on a long-sought bipartisan infrastructure package worth about $600 billion. Aging centrists were practically breakdancing in ecstasy outside the Oval Office at how sure a thing this was.

Now, nearly a month later, the Senate is preparing for a first procedural voteto open floor debate on this deal that was supposedly all wrapped upfor Wednesday. It appears likely to fail.

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The proximate explanation for why the procedural votewhich needs the support of 60 senators could go down is a very Senate one: aggressive scheduling. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced late last week that the vote to open the infrastructure debate would be held Wednesday. The preparatory discussions about the bill were seemingly endless, so Schumer was trying to use the calendar to force the negotiators to wrap things up.

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Republicans declared themselves disgusted by Schumers move. There was no way, they argued, that the legislative text of the infrastructure bill could be ready in time for the Wednesday deadline. Members of the committee were (and are) still negotiating both the particulars of infrastructure spending and the ways to pay for it. Just this weekend, for example, one of the pay-fors Republicans most strongly objected to, beefing up IRS enforcement to collect unpaid taxes, was dropped, creating a sizable funding hole for negotiators to fill.

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Schumer tried to offer some leeway around the deadline in his floor speech Tuesday morning, and he emphasized that a finished bill neednt be a prerequisite for opening debate. The Senate could open debate Wednesday on a placeholder bill, and if negotiators finalized their text by Thursday, Schumer would offer it as the pending substitute amendmenti.e., whatever they agreed on would replace the underlying text of the shell bill. If they couldnt agree by then, Schumer would offer another amendment consisting of some other infrastructure bills that have passed out of committee.

Even then, though, he said, if the bipartisan group finalizes their product over the weekend, Senators can offer it as an amendment at that point. The Wednesday vote, he said, is not a final deadline for legislative text. It is not a cynical ploy. It is not a fish-or-cut-bait moment. It is not an attempt to jam anyone. Its just to get things rolling.

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Republicans were wholly unpersuaded. According to Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the lead Republican negotiator, there will not be a product ready tomorrow for consideration. And if thats the case, Republicans are not going to vote to open debate.

I cant say we will have every Republican voting against opening debate, the GOP whip, Sen. John Thune, said Tuesday. But, he said, Schumer is not going to get 60 votes.

It might, in fact, be that every Republican votes against moving forward on Wednesday. Even the five Republican negotiators who most want the deal are prepared to strike it down.

Theres absolutely no reason why he has to have the vote tomorrow, and it does not advance the ball, Maine Sen. Susan Collins told reporters. It does not achieve any goal except to alienate people.

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I think theres a unanimous point of view that we shouldnt vote on a motion to proceed until people know what the summary is of the bill, Utah Sen. Mitt Romney said. They havent seen the numbers, they havent seen the pay-fors. A small group of us have, but the overall group hasnt.

So would Romney vote against opening debate on Wednesday?

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I think we all will, he said. When I say unanimous, that includes me.

Barring some late breakthroughor a decision by Schumer to move the votethe vote will fail on Wednesday. That doesnt have to be the end of the bipartisan infrastructure deal. Schumer could bring it back up next week, or in two weeks, or whenever. He didnt bite Tuesday afternoon when asked whether he would bring it up again, or ditch it and move on to that other piece of big July business: passing a multi-trillion dollar budget that paves the way for a partisan reconciliation bill this fall.

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We want to get both the bipartisan bill done, and the budget reconciliation process done, Schumer told reporters, and were hopeful that our Republican colleagues will realize that the best way to do that is voting yesvoting yeson the motion to proceed.

There is more than a little kayfabe at play in this indignant back and forth about scheduling. A $600 billion, bipartisan package is not going to live or die because people couldnt resolve their differences about whether to hold a procedural vote on a Wednesday or the following Monday, when senators wont even be in town for most of the days in between. If the vote fails on Wednesday, the bills revival depends on how much each side wantsor needsit.

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This particular bill is the key to the Democrats two-track strategy, in which the Senate is supposed to pass a bipartisan hard infrastructure bill thats popular enough to overcome the filibuster, accompanied by a Democratic mega-bill passed through reconciliation. The whole plan was developed in the first place because some centrist Democratic senatorsand more of them than just West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinemawanted to show they could achieve something big on a bipartisan basis before they were willing to proceed with another partisan spending bill. How those centrists feel about moving ahead to reconciliation after Wednesdays vote, versus giving the bipartisan bill more time to develop, will help determine how Schumer proceeds.

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On the Republican side, theres never been widespread enthusiasm for working with Joe Biden and Democrats on a big spending bill. These negotiations have only ever centered around securing 10 Republican votesone-fifth of the Republican conferenceto vote for a final product. Theyre worried how it will look if they do pass their bipartisan infrastructure product, and it gives Democratic moderates cover to advance their looming $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. If the procedural vote fails, the Republicans who were friendly to the infrastructure bill can live with the comfortable talking point that Democrats blew it up because they never wanted a bipartisan deal. They wont have to go any further down a path that was politically murky to begin with.

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Procedural votes fail sometimes. In March of last year, as Congress was rushing to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats filibustered the CARES Act as they sought to secure a better deal before moving forward. It was not the end of the world, or of the bill. Both sides still felt they needed to pass something, and failure was not an option with the economy rapidly shutting down. The CARES Act ultimately passed on a vote of 96 to 0.

If the procedural vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill fails, and the bill is never considered again, history will not record its cause of death as different points of view on scheduling. The Senate just didnt want it, or need it, enough.
KNOXVILLE, TennesseeOn Tuesday morning, I stood outside the Knox County Health Department and asked people walking in why they were finally getting their COVID shot. Only 45.7 percent of Knox County residents are fully vaccinated, and COVID cases are rising here, with the seven-day average of cases at its highest level since early May. Last week, Tennessees top vaccination official, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, was fired from her position at the states Department of Health after Republican lawmakers objected to the departments COVID outreach to teenagers (listen to Slates interview with Fiscus here). The department has halted all vaccination outreach to minors, not only for COVID.

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Around 11:00, three men in their 30s walked out of the clinic, pulled down their disposable masks, and lit cigarettes. Yeah, we got the vaccine, one of them, Austin, said. Were mandated by the place were staying. The other two men looked away and drifted toward the parking lot. I shouldnt say mandated, Austin continued. Recommended. Its more convenient, because otherwise we have to wear masks.

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Asked why he hadnt gotten the vaccine before now, Austin said, I wanted to see how the reactions were, whether it was safe. Im still split. Im not sure how I feel. But Im not anti-vax. Vaccines are great. He looked off toward the parking lot, where his friends were getting in an ancient Mazda. Thats my ride, he said apologetically. Have a good one.

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Most of the people entering the Health Departments building werent here to get their vaccines. A woman in a HOUSE STARK: WINTER IS COMING t-shirt said, I got it already. A man with impeccable peach-colored Reebok high-tops said, I got it in the apartments where I live. A young woman carrying an absolutely beautiful baby said, I aint doin that bullshit. She continued yelling as she crossed the street about how its been proven that COVID is weaker than the flu.

Bryan, 16, arrived with his mom, who is 60 percent Bryans height. I was worried about side effects, Bryan said shyly. But I just figured, it feels safer if I get it. His mother said shed been vaccinated months before and had been hoping Bryan would get the shot soon. I stayed on top of it, she said. I knew at some point hed do it. Im having problems with his brother, though.

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Bryan laughed. Hes older. He aint getting it.

Hes a grown man.

Chris, in his 40s with sunglasses clipped over his thick eyeglasses, said, Im gonna see if I can get the shot. Do you have to have an appointment? He paused before going in. I saw it on the news, he said, people arent getting vaccinated is gonna make the virus worse. Its blowing up. He said hed been doubtful about getting the vaccine for monthsthe news had me iffybut hed finally decided things looked bad enough that he needed to set his worries aside. I just had to let it go.

Its my second shot, said Joshua, 48. I had a wedding to go to a few weeks ago, out of state, and I was stopping by to get some forms anyway, and I thought, well, shoot, Im as close as Im going to be, I might as well get vaccinated. Then I got to the wedding and they had no vaccination criteria at all. I was like, So were doing this, huh?

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When I asked him why he hadnt gotten the shot months ago, he said, I was being cautious, like a lot of people probably were. Watching to see if there were side effects, or other problems. But finally he decided he needed to roll the dice. I really wont be able to see under the surface, he said. None of us have the information to make these informed decisions. But another wave of COVID is on the way. Summer is kind of a wide open time, but thats coming to an end.

Nathan, 14, got his first shot today. We waited on purpose, his mom said, because of all the reports of weird things with young people. He didnt need to get the shot for a camp or for school, she said. When I asked why he decided to finally get the shot today, Nathan gave me an exquisite look of withering, 14-year-old scorn. So I dont get COVID, he said.

For more on how conservative pressure on Covid has affected vaccination rates and hurt public health officials, listen to this episode of What Next.
The Israeli technology firm NSO GROUP has become notorious for its impressively sneaky and effective spyware, called Pegasus, and the laundry list of controversies involving how that software has been used, and a recently released investigation has sparked a new one this week. But how much do we really know about the company thats behind Pegasus?

NSO Group first came under major scrutiny for their surveillance technology in 2016, when analyses by the NGOs Citizen Lab and Lookout Mobile Security discovered that the firm had exploited zero-daysunpatched security vulnerabilitieson Apples iOS. All it took was one click of a link sent through a text message for Pegasus to be installed on a users phone. Once on the phone, Pegasus enables keystroke monitoring of all communications, as well as enabling Pegasus operators to remotely record audio and video using the hacked phones camera and microphone. The discovery of Pegasus spyware on the phone of United Arab Emirates human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor highlighted the ability of governments to abuse Pegasus by targeting political dissidents rather than terrorists and serious criminals.

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Since 2016, NSO has faced multiple accusations that Pegasus is being used to target journalists and activists around the world. These include Mexican journalist Rafael Cabrera, Citizen Labs own reporters, and the family of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, among others.

The most recent addition to this list of Pegasus targets is actually 50,000 additions: reporting consortium The Pegasus Project released a report on Sunday that found a list of over 50,000 phone numbers that they believe were identified as people of interest by clients of NSO.

Ostensibly, Pegasus is supposed to be used only to investigate terrorism and crime and leaves no traces whatsoever, on the hacked device, which makes it nearly impossible to detect once installed. However, a Forensic Methodology Report by Amnesty International finds that neither statement is true. The report uncovers widespread, persistent and ongoing unlawful surveillance and human rights abuses that NSOs spyware perpetrated on human rights activists, journalists, academics, and government officials across the globe.

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NSO was founded in 2010. Pegasus was introduced sometime between then and 2016, but thats really all we know about its creation, partially because NSO has tended to deemphasize Pegasus in its marketing and instead emphasizes their range of productsanti-drone, data analytics, search-and-rescue, and even COVID tracking technologies. NSO group has been notoriously secretive, releasing little-to-no information regarding their operations, customers, or safeguards against misuse. In 2016, when NSO first came under scrutiny for the Pegasus targeting of Mansoor, the firm did not even have a website. In February of 2019, Francisco Partners, a U.S. private equity fund, sold NSO Group to the firms Israeli co-founders Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio, who partnered with Novalpina Capital to purchase a majority stake in NSO. NSO Groups previous owners, Francisco Partners, bought the company in 2014 for $130 million. In 2019, it was valued at over $1 billion.

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Novalpina, Lavie, and Hulio declared that, as the new majority stakeholders of NSO Group, they were committing themselves to more transparency and pledged to do whatever is necessary to prevent their technology being used to abuse human rights. The cornerstone of NSO Groups human rights policy is a vetting process, in which NSO staff examine governments who hope to acquire the firms technology, looking at the countrys human rights record, its relationship to Israel, and the level of need for the surveillance tool. NSO claims to have passed on $300 million in sales opportunities as a result of their human rights review processes. However, as MIT Technology Review reported in August 2020, its completely possible for a country with a poor human rights record to acquire Pegasus: Moroccos worsening record on human rights was outweighed by the countrys history of cooperation with Israel and its critical terrorism problem, so the sale was approved.

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NSO licenses Pegasus to governments in 40 undisclosed countries, and has long maintained they do not operate the systems once sold to their clients, nor do they have access to the data of their clients targets. This is the defense that the firm returns to, time and again, when reports surface that their Pegasus technology has been used as a tool of oppression and violence.

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NSO states firmly that they will terminate their contract with any clients who abuse the technology. The company cites three instances of clients abusing Pegasus and subsequently having their contract terminated as evidence of NSOs willingness to shut down abuse.

There are other guardrails in place once Pegasus is sold to a client, which include prohibiting U.S. phones from being infected with the spyware (Pegasus is supposed to self-destruct if it finds itself within American borders). And, though ad hoc teams are created to investigate when reports of abuse arise, there is reportedly no permanent internal team tasked with investigating and handling abuse.

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NSO and their technologies are regulated by the export control authorities from the three countries from which their products are exported: Bulgaria, Cyprus, and Israel. Yet, because NSO repeatedly asserts that any misuse of the technology is done at the hands of the clients, rather than the company, it can be difficult to pinpoint where an abuse is coming from and who should be held accountableas has been the case regarding a lawsuit brought by Facebook/WhatsApp against NSO.

Despite NSOs self-proclaimed unprecedented step forward in the form of their recently released Transparency and Responsibility Report, there remains a lot that is unclear. Amnesty International points to the lack of accountability in the report for the unlawful surveillance of journalists and activists, the companys refusal to acknowledge how their own policies have denied the right to remedy for victims of Pegasus unlawful spying, as well as NSOs failure to disclose all the legal challenges the company has faced resulting from the misuse of its technology.

Amnesty, U.N. surveillance experts, and Edward Snowden (among others) are now calling for a global moratorium on the sale of not only NSO spyware like Pegasus, but all surveillance technology, until proper rules and regulations can be put in place internationally.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Spain reports busiest month for international tourism since the start of the pandemic



2.3 million passengers flew into Spain during June and far more are expected from the UK in July

18 months after the first cases of coronavirus were reported in Europe the international tourism sector is still anxiously awaiting the first signs of recovery, and in Spain a little optimism has been provided this week by provisional data released by the government organization Turespana.

The data show that during June the number of people arriving in Spain from other countries by air reached 2.3 million, the highest monthly total since prior to the start of the pandemic. The figure is still just under 25 per cent of the total for the same month in 2019, but nonetheless is being taken as an indication that the implementation of the EUs Covid passport scheme and the resumption of non-essential travel to and from the UK is sparking the sector back into life.

Commenting on the data, Fernando Valdes, the Secretary of State for Tourism, says that the summer season has started this year earlier and in better condition than in 2020.

As a consequence of the travel restrictions during the winter and Brexit, arrivals from the UK were practically non-existent during the first five months of 2021, but it is reported that during June Spanish airports welcomed 156,341 British visitors. This still remains a very low figure in comparison with the 2 million of June 2019, but is by some distance the highest monthly total since last September and further sharp rises are forecast with the lifting of UK travel restrictions.

At the same time, the UK was overtaken by numerous other sources of foreign visitors during June, including Germany (579,000), France (248,000), Italy (209,000) and the Netherlands (176,737). This is unlikely to be the case for the rest of the summer now that more restrictions have been lifted in the UK.

The data also show that the region to receive most non-Spanish visitors during the month was the Balearics (664,000), followed by Madrid (497,000), Catalunya (364,000), Andalucia (286.000), the Comunidad Valenciana (267,000) and the Canaries (225,000).

The figures relate only to air passengers, but these typically represent between 80 and 90 per cent of all arrivals.
Only vaccinated people will meet the pope. Another bear was put to sleep.

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Good evening. The Tuesday, July 20, 2021 edition of Today in Slovakia is ready with the main news of the day condensed into a read less than five minutes. We wish you a pleasant read.

WWII ammunition stopped transport in the centre of the capital

(Source: TASR)

An unexploded aerial bomb, which was later identified as a WWII bomb that was dropped on Bratislava during the June 1944 bombing, was found at a construction site near the bus station on Tuesday morning.

The police evacuated nearby buildings and the Mlynske Nivy bus station, and closed the adjacent streets. Traffic passing through this part of the city was suspended, while public transport, buses and cars were diverted from the location.

In the afternoon, the crisis staff of Bratislava decided to remove the bomb and move it outside the city, in an undeveloped area. Traffic was restored at around 15:00.

If you like what we are doing and want to support good journalism, buy our online subscription . Thank you.

Only fully vaccinated people to meet the pope

Illustrative stock photo (Source: TASR/AP)

Only people who are fully vaccinated will be allowed to attend the events featuring Pope Francis during his mid-September visit to Slovakia.

This is the only way to allow for a higher capacity for the mass events than the current limit allows (i.e. 1,000 people outdoors) and, at the same time, prevent the uncontrollable spread of the virus, Health Minister Vladimir Lengvarsky (OLaNO nominee) said.

PM Eduard Heger (OLaNO) said that this step had been approved by the coalition council that met earlier this week.

This means that people who would like to attend services celebrated by the pope and have not been vaccinated yet now have 11 days to register and receive the first shot of a two-dose vaccine in order to be fully immunised in mid-September.

Coronavirus and vaccination news

(Source: SITA)

35 people out of 7,892 tested with the PCR tests were positively diagnosed with the coronavirus disease in Slovakia on July 19, while out of 7,044 new antigen tests, 15 were positive. Four more people died of Covid.

tested with the PCR tests were positively diagnosed with the coronavirus disease in Slovakia on July 19, while out of were positive. Four more people died of Covid. Antigen tests will cost 5 and will be performed in hospitals from August 9, the coalition council agreed. The coalition is yet to agree on the final number of PCR tests carried out per month that will be reimbursed by the state.

and will be performed from August 9, the coalition council agreed. The coalition is yet to agree on the final number of PCR tests carried out per month that will be reimbursed by the state. Benefits for the vaccinated regarding entering certain premises or attending mass events should be discussed by the parliament again on Friday, July 23, said Zuzana Eliasova, spokesperson of the Health Ministry.

Picture of the day

The picture of a cherry tree near the village of Zabokreky in northern Slovakia captured across all four seasons has become very popular online. Several people have contacted the Slovak photographer.

Jozef Morgos has been taking photographs of the Turiec region for seven years. (Source: Jozef Morgos)

Feature story for today

Kysuce, a small region in the north of Slovakia bordering the Czech Republic and Poland, through which the Kysuca river flows, is dominated by hills and scattered rural settlements called osady. These are the core of Kysuce's slowly developing tourism.

In the latest edition of the Spectacular Slovakia podcast, a local shares her travel recommendations within the region, including a visit to the unique Textile Craft Centre in Cadca and the mysterious stone balls.

Scattered around Kysuce, quaint hilltop villages work their magic Read more

In other news

President Zuzana Caputova appointed five judges of the new Supreme Administrative Court, namely Kristina Babiakova, Zuzana Sabova, Marian Fecik, Juraj Vacok and Juraj Valis.

appointed namely Kristina Babiakova, Zuzana Sabova, Marian Fecik, Juraj Vacok and Juraj Valis. The Interior Ministry proposes shortening the moratorium for pre-election polls to 48 hours , from the current 14 days. The previous government attempted to push through the time limit of 50 days, but the Constitutional Court cancelled it after the president addressed it with the matter.

to , from the current 14 days. The previous government attempted to push through the time limit of 50 days, but the Constitutional Court cancelled it after the president addressed it with the matter. A bear that appeared near Stary Smokovec in the High Tatra and repeatedly returned to Ziarska Valley to search the trash bins was put to sleep . Her two cubs will be moved to a zoo.

that appeared near Stary Smokovec in the High Tatra and repeatedly returned to Ziarska Valley to search the trash bins . Her two cubs will be moved to a zoo. The water level of the Danube in downtown Bratislava dropped below 730 centimetres on Tuesday morning, and is expected to continue decreasing.

in downtown Bratislava on Tuesday morning, and is expected to continue decreasing. The European Court of Human Rights decided in favour of former police officer Zoltan Varga who sued the state due his flat being wiretapped by the Slovak Intelligence Service intelligence agency within the Gorilla operation. The court awarded him with a compensation of 9,750, and court costs of 5,562.

Zoltan Varga who sued the state due his flat being wiretapped by the Slovak Intelligence Service intelligence agency within The court awarded him with a compensation of 9,750, and court costs of 5,562. The registered unemployment rate in Slovakia decreased in June by 0.16 percentage point month-on-month to 7.76 percent, with labour offices registering 212,635 people ready to take a job immediately. The total unemployment rate dropped by 0.1 percentage points m-o-m to 8.37 percent, according to the data of the Central Office for Labour, Social Affairs, and Family.

in Slovakia in June by 0.16 percentage point month-on-month to 7.76 percent, with labour offices registering 212,635 people ready to take a job immediately. The total unemployment rate dropped by 0.1 percentage points m-o-m to 8.37 percent, according to the data of the Central Office for Labour, Social Affairs, and Family. Amazon in Slovakia will increase the starting salary from 5.50 to 5.80 per hour from August, meaning that together with a commuting bonus, new employees can now earn at least 1,169 gross per month. The company is currently looking for new employees for its plants in Sered and Bratislava.

Do not miss on Spectator.sk today

Combination of different vaccines allowed only in specific cases Read more

Food delivery giant enters Slovak market Read more

Presence of radioactive elements in village swimming pool kept secret, ministry claims Read more

An enchanting encounter with royalty at Betliar Read more

If you have suggestions on how this news overview can be improved, you can reach us at editorial@spectator.sk.

20. Jul 2021 at 18:33 | Nina Hrabovska Francelova
"Dad why are you always in the garage? I never get to see you as it is. I want to spend more time with you."

These were the words 10-year-old Parker Redwood asked her father Tyler Redwood after he returned from smoking cannabis in the family garage on a cold dark winter's night in January 2020. These were the words that saved Tyler Redwood's life.

After struggling to answer young Parker's question Tyler returned to the garage. "I broke down. You don't understand  to see my daughter's broken face really hurt. I had a problem. I needed to be there for my family, and I went for help the very next day," explains Tyler.

Tyler was born in Saskatchewan. He is Saulteaux and has always been proud of his ancestry. Indigenous people in Saskatchewan have inhabited the region for thousands of years. Their roots are deep in culture, beliefs are strong and they have learned that adaptation equals survival. Tyler is quick to point out, "With all the racism I experienced as an indigenous person, I simply hated who I was...I hated the very skin that I lived in."

In the early 90's, Tyler got his start in horse racing by grooming and jogging horses. He spent his spare time around horses and was a regular at Queensbury Downs. Robert Baxter let Tyler take his first training mile drive in Moose Jaw behind Catch A Star. Tyler was hooked  and before you knew it, he had his driver license tucked safely in his worn-out leather wallet  and in just his third lifetime drive, he won his first race with Way Out of Bounds. Many people in the racing community believed a promising career had begun. Things seemed to be falling into place for Tyler  or were they?

On September 24, 2012, Tyler's addiction with alcohol and drugs began to take a toll. His voice begins to quiver as he explains, "It was like one in the morning  I jumped on my ATV and started to rip around  I was looking for a fix. I whipped around a corner and slammed head-on into the biggest yellow tractor I have ever seen. I woke up in the hospital, jaw broken in two places, with 13 screws and two steel plates."

To help deal with the pain, he quickly returned to cannabis as a coping mechanism. He went about his business as usual with no one realizing the demons that he was facing daily. What stayed constant in his life for the next six years was his love for training and catch driving. Unfortunately, the addictions knocked Tyler 'off stride'  losing substantial ground in day-to-day life that he just couldn't make up. These setbacks pushed him to go looking for a stronger fix  and he often turned to prescription drugs and cocaine. Many in the racing community believed that Tyler's career was finished for good  no one believed in him and it forced him to leave the industry for the next two years.

The days became longer and harder for Tyler. The mental illness and instability haunted him. He found himself in a very dark place with little hope. He emphasizes, "I was sober for six years. I didn't want to live or feel the way I did  the drugs helped me not feel anything."

Time was not on Tyler's side. "I was struggling with mental illness and I tried to commit suicide three times. I'm not proud of that, but there is a reason why I am here today", explains Tyler.

"Dad why are you always in the garage? I never get to see you as it is. I want to spend more time with you."

With the words of his daughter replaying in his mind  repeating like a bad song that gets stuck in your head  Tyler knew he had to change. His first step was to ask for help  and begin to battle with his addictions head on. Months later, and after an incredible fight, Tyler was clean. With a new lease on life, his familiar driver colours of blue, yellow and white returned to Century Downs. Always smiling and working hard with the horses, the racetrack was his second home. His return to Century Downs was where an incredible bond would form that no one saw coming.

In July of 2020, Super Star Stables (managed by Kurt Belich and Taylor Reed) decided to lease to Tyler and partner Logan Archibald a horse named Star Flight. The horse was racing terribly, and the ownership group had lost hope in the horse.

Picture this  a horse that everyone had given up on was paired with a horseman that many had also given up on. "Star Flight and I were meant to be. I truly believe we were put together for a reason. She was broken  I was broken. We were put together to fix each other, to help each other, to heal each other," Tyler boasts.

From that day forward, Star Flight was instantly referred to as 'his girl'. The two found instant success. In 2020, Star Flight and Tyler posted seven wins in just over 20 starts. And if that wasn't enough to draw attention, Tyler had a surprising third place catch drive in the Western Canada Pacing Derby with Fully Covered  a feat that really made people sit up and take notice.

In our interview, Tyler sits up and it is clear he wants to make a point, "This all happened for a reason. Mental health problems are an illness, but you can overcome it. Ask for help like I did  don't be embarrassed. I am here to help; I want people to learn from my story. At the race track, people come up to me wanting to talk, looking for help  I will always be there for anyone who needs help  always. People don't fake depression or mental illness; they fake that they are okay."

Tyler has also not forgotten his roots, "I returned (to Cowessess First Nation) and talked to the band elders. Our culture and beliefs are beautiful and are a big part of who I am today." Tyler is now 3 years sober and 19 months drug free.

To date, Tyler has won more than 400 races and $1.6 million in purses. He currently has a modest stable of four horses. On any Alberta race card, his familiar driver colours can been seen at Century Downs, The Track On 2 or Century Mile. He shoes 60 to 70 horses a month and puts in very long days. Driving success continues to follow Tyler this year  including his incredible three-for-three record in the bike with Miss iTunes for owners Dave Lamont and Donna Wyse.

Away from the track, Tyler is the father of three children  his daughter Parker, 11 and 10-year-old twin brothers Tayvin and Keltin. He has separated from their mother but the two remain good friends. When he speaks of his kids you can't help but notice the smile lighting up his face. Tyler states emphatically, "My kids saved me, and quite simply, I wouldn't be here right now if it wasn't for them."

"Dad why are you always in the garage? I never get to see you as it is. I want to spend more time with you."

(HRA / Jeff Robillard)
The last group to make their Ontario Sires Stakes debut this season, the two-year-old trotting colts battled in four $22,850 Grassroots divisions at Woodbine Mohawk Park on Thursday, July 15.

Luca Hanover laid down the fastest mile of the four contests with a strong 1:57.3 effort in the second division. Starting from Post 1 Luca Hanover settled briefly in second, while fan favourite HP Maestro trotted through a :29.3 quarter, and then driver Bob McClure moved the son of Resolve to the lead. Luca Hanover led the field of 11 to a :59.1 half and a 1:29.1 three-quarters on his way to the victory. HP Maestro finished two lengths back in second and Century Isaiah was two more back in third.

That was a good start to his career. So far hes been a professional and seems to be trending up with every start, said Rockwood, ON resident McClure. He could have been hot, but Francis (Dumouchel) is doing a great job keeping him manageable.

Trainer Francis Dumouchel of Embro shares ownership of Luca Hanover with fractional ownership group OwnAStandardbred 2021 of Komoka, ON, Ecurie CSL of Sorel-Tracy and 9174 7998 Quebec Inc. of St-Janvier-Mirabel, QC. A $45,000 acquisition out of the Black Book Yearling Sale, Luca Hanover is two-for-two in his young career. The colt was also a winner in his July 6 debut in a two-year-old overnight event at Woodbine Mohawk Park.

Fan favourite Feel The Force opened the Grassroots action on Thursday with a 2:00.2 score in the first division. Sea Can crossed the wire second, but went off-stride in the process so he was demoted to third and Usurp Hanover was bumped up to second.

Hes a nice little horse that needs to get his confidence up, said trainer Blake MacIntosh of Feel The Force. I think he can keep improving as we go along.

Guelph resident James MacDonald steers the Resolve gelding for St. George resident MacIntosh and his co-owners Steve Heimbecker of Waterloo and Van Camp Trotting Corp. of Port Perry, ON. The partners offered up $22,000 for Feel The Force at last falls Lexington Selected Yearling Sale.

Marvin Hagler took the third division, the last over a dry and fast track, in 1:58.4. The fan favourite took command before the :59.2 half and never looked back, sailing through a 1:29.3 three-quarters and on to a four and one-quarter length victory over Vinces Wheeling and Mask Of Zoro.

Sylvain Filion engineered the win for trainer Mark MacQuarrie of McGregor and his co-owner Mary Pedden of Watford, ON. MacQuarrie and Pedden purchased the son of Crazed for $13,100 out of the London Virtual Yearling Sale last fall.

After a heavy rain, the track conditions were sloppy when the final division paraded onto the racetrack, but Red Overbach did not seem to mind, sailing to a 1:58.4 victory on the front end for driver Jody Jamieson. Twin B Archie finished three-quarters of a length back in second and Marauder Seelster was four lengths behind in third.

Hes always had plenty of speed, but he needed to see the gate a few times before he would settle into the racing scene, said Jamieson, who drove the gelding in two qualifiers and the July 6 overnight won by Luca Hanover before sending him behind the gate Thursday. Tonight he was a pro and won handily.

The drivers father, Carl Jamieson of Puslinch, trains Red Overbach for his co-owners Thomas Kyron of Toronto and Dr. Robert Boyce of London, ON. Boyce also bred the son of Royalty For Life and Dixieland Jazz.

The second Gold Series Leg for the two-year-old pacing colts goes postward at Woodbine Mohawk Park on Friday, July 16. Two $103,800 divisions are slated for Races 5 and 7 on the 7:00 p.m. program.

(OSS)

To view results for Thursday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Thursday Results  Woodbine Mohawk Park.
Stews Watching got his second straight Grassroots win on Monday, July 19 and Grand River Raceway fans may get a second look at the two-year-old pacing colt next Monday in the Battle Of Waterloo eliminations.

Ill talk to Mr. Ratchford and I would say theres probably a good possibility that well try him in the Battle of Waterloo, said Dr. Ian Moore, who trains the colt for Ratchford Stable NS of North Sydney, NS. Ive got three other colts I might take up this year and I would say hed probably want to go with him too. Sylvain (Filion) said he was good, he had lots left.

In spite of a brief bobble leaving from Post 4, Stews Watching was in command by the halfway marker and never faced a challenge. The Hes Watching son and driver Sylvain Filion sailed home two and one-half lengths the best in 1:55.1. Hashtag Watch Me and Stone Carver followed the fan favourite under the wire in second and third.

Two-for-two for Stew, said Moore, referring to the colts 1:55 win in the July 9 Grassroots season opener. Hes a sweet little colt. Hes turned into a real good little horse.

Driver James MacDonald of Guelph, ON captured the next two Grassroots divisions, the first with Century Invictus and the second with My Blueberry Buck, and said the colts share both a lack of size and an abundance of skill with Stews Watching.

Starting from Post 2, MacDonald sent Century Invictus straight to the front and the fan favourite rolled along in comfort to a 1:55.2 personal best. Nassau Hanover was one and three-quarter lengths back in second and ATS Hanover was five lengths back in third.

He drew inside and hes a great-gaited horse, so I figured Id try and take advantage of his strong suits and get him away close and see what happened, said MacDonald. He landed on the front, he felt good the whole way and when I growled at him on the last turn he just took off like an aged horse. Hes just getting a little bit better every time he races.

Johnathan McKinnon trains the son of Bettors Delight for fractional ownership group TheStable.ca Century Invictus of Guelph, ON. The gelding won an overnight event at Hanover Raceway on June 26 and then finished fourth, after leading for much of the mile, in the Grassroots season opener.

My Blueberry Buck started at the opposite end of the gate, at Post 8, but MacDonald opted for the same strategy. The Thinking Out Loud gelding led the field through fractions of :28; :58.1 and 1:27.1 before sailing down the stretch to a two and one-quarter length win over fan favourite Lyons Pride and Highborn in a personal best 1:56.

I raced that horse at Grand River a couple of weeks back so I knew he liked the track. The eight-hole sucks, but hed already zipped out of there once at that track and he had some gate speed at Mohawk, so I knew it was there, and I knew I didnt really have to watch him because hes got a beautiful way of going, said MacDonald. It was a good trip for him and got the job done.

Nick Gallucci trains My Blueberry Buck for owner-breeder Millar Farms. The gelding posted a 1:59.3 victory at Grand River Raceway on June 30 before finishing second in the July 9 Grassroots season opener. With one win and one second, he currently sits second in the freshman pacing colt standings, behind Stews Watching.

Sports Section started his Ontario Sires Stakes career in the Gold Series, but found the Grassroots much more to his liking on Monday. The Sportswriter son, in rein to Grand River Raceways leading driver Colin Kelly, sat mid-pack through the early going but after taking command just past the three-quarter marker he accelerated away from the field to a five and one-quarter length victory in 1:56.2. West Is Best and Southwind Pharoah rounded out the top three.

I trained him down a fair bit this winter and I really liked him. He was a really nice colt. Jared did a heck of a job, hes just like an old racehorse, you just do whatever with him, said Kelly, who engineered the win for trainer Jared Bako and owner Dale Kerr of London, ON. Hes a big strong colt and hes good gaited, he could be very handy in the future. He can hopefully rebound and build off this start in the Grassroots, and hopefully if he can put a couple good starts in a row together, get his confidence back and everything, hell be good.

Sports Section qualified smartly on June 25 at Woodbine Mohawk Park, but in the July 3 Gold Series season opener he faded to seventh after duking it out through sharp early fractions.

The final Grassroots division went to fan favourites Still Thirsty and Travis Henry, who went gate-to-wire in 1:56.4, holding off Juju Hanover by three-quarters of a length. Fox Valley Carlin was four lengths behind the leaders in third.

Henry guided the Thinking Out Loud gelding to his first win for trainer Bob McIntosh of Windsor, ON and his co-owner/breeder C S X Stables of Liberty Center, OH.

The two-year-old pacing colts will return to Grassroots action on Aug. 16 at Woodbine Mohawk Park, two weeks after some of them hope to appear in Grand River Raceways Aug. 2 Battle Of Waterloo Final.

Ontario Sires Stakes action continues at the Elora oval on Wednesday, July 28 with the second Gold Series Leg for the two-year-old trotting fillies.

(OSS)

To view results for Monday's card of harness racing, click the following link: Monday Results  Grand River Raceway.
Nathan Bain is looking to take a stranglehold on the $500 Hiawatha Horse Park Handicapping Challenge. He outscored rival Nicholas Ace Barnsdale 78 points to 63 in Saturday (July 17) action at the Sarnia, Ont. oval.

Bain clicked with five of his 12 top selections on the day, including Best Bet Pickles On Top ($2.80), who took race seven in a sparkling 1:55.2f for leading driver Marc St Louis. Last year's Leamington Youth Handicapping Challenge champ tallied points in 10 of the 12 races. Barnsdale, who selected the most winners in the New Year's Eve USHWA Youth Handicapping Challenge, correctly forecasted four Hiawatha winners Saturday, also going with Pickles On Top as his Best Bet.

Bain now holds a 49-point lead with five weeks of the contest completed. He has tallied 368 points to Barnsdales 319.

The contest  for which the $300 first prize and $200 second prize is supplied by Hiawatha Horse Park  runs every Saturday and concludes when the last race is run on closing day, Sept. 18. Follow Bain's (@NBainracing) and Barnsdale's (@AceBarnsdale) weekly Hiawatha selections on Twitter every Saturday afternoon. Barnsdale's selections also appear on the Ontario Racing "Tips from the Pros" page.

How do your handicapping skills stack up against theirs? Find out next Saturday: Hiawatha Horse Park is available for online wagering on Horseplayer Interactive and other ADWs.

(USHWA Canada)
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Editor's note: This story has been updated to clarify that the FBI Dallas Field Office says it was not on the scene of a Monday house explosio
Caribbean

Travelers hoping to escape to the Bahamas had their flight out of North Carolina delayed overnight because a group of passengers refused to wear masks, according to American Airlines.



Flight 893 was supposed to leave Charlotte Douglas International Airport on Monday for Nassau, Bahamas, but it did not take off until the following day.

The airline said the delay was due to passengers who would not wear face coverings and then "became disruptive to other customers and refused to follow crew member instructions while onboard."



"Per procedure, the customers involved were asked to exit the aircraft. We expect our customers to comply with our policies when they choose to fly with us, and we take action when that is not the case," the airline said.



However, a student travel company that was hosting the group placed the blame on American Airlines and said the flight was delayed because of a change in crew members. According to the company, Breakaway Beach, a group of 47 high school graduates were on the flight as part of a tour from Boston to Nassau.



The company said in a statement that the first aircraft the group was one had mechanical issues, resulting in the plane spending at least two hours on the tarmac. During this time, some of the students "may have removed" their masks due to ventilation and "unbearable conditions," Breakaway Beach said.



One or two people in the group "acted in a manner that resulted in them being removed from the aircraft," the company said. One person was escorted off the plane but was not ticketed or charged.



"The actions of this passenger resulted in the entire group of graduates being labeled 'unruly' or 'disruptive,' " Breakaway Beach said in its statement.

When American Airlines moved passengers to a second aircraft, the entire tour group was not allowed to reboard. Breakway Beach said American Airlines ended up delaying the flight to the next day because they could not find a replacement pilot.



The company said that the airline's handling of the situation "was incredibly disappointing."



"The act of one individual is not the responsibility of others, and the students that were abiding by the rules should not have had to endure this type of treatment," the company said. "The group was treated in an improper and overly harsh manner, causing unnecessary stress and aggravation to the travelers and their parents from afar."



One passenger affected by the delay was Stephanie Krzywanski. She told NBC affiliate WCNC of Charlotte that the first plane they were on had mechanical issues so everyone was moved to another aircraft. She said it was on the second flight that the group became unruly.



After sitting on the tarmac for hours, everyone was told that the flight was being delayed overnight, she told the news station.



American Airlines said that all customers were provided hotel vouchers and the flight left for Nassau shortly after 9 a.m. Tuesday. But Breakaway Beach said in its statement that as a result of the incident, the airline did not give its tour group vouchers.



Breakaway Beach instead had to provide hotel and meal accommodations. American Airlines eventually let the group on Tuesday morning's flight after they all agreed to wear their masks.






The crowds are always big for the yard sale, but Primm expects even more people this year as Covid restrictions have eased and people are ready to have something to do, especially since the yards sales are outside. Last year, the yard sale was held, but was not advertised as much and not as many people participated. Some places opted not to participate at all.

I think people are really wanting to get out, Primm said. They are sick of staying at home, but are looking for outside stuff to do. I may be wrong, but Im looking for it to be big this year.

Debbie Huffman, owner of the Speedwell Market, also on Highway 21, agrees.

I think we are expecting more this year than we usually have because of Covid not being as bad, its not like it was last year.

Huffman sells a lot biscuits during the yard sale, along with drinks, water, hand-dipped ice cream, milk shakes, sandwiches, hotdog and hamburgers.

Our deli is usually closed on Sundays, but we will open it Sunday for that weekend, she said.
Editors note: Information is provided by the Cowlitz County Corrections Department and local law enforcement agencies. Each individual named in this report is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Child molestation  Cowlitz County sheriffs deputies Friday arrested a 31-year-old Longview man on suspicion of first-degree child molestation.

Burglary, theft  Longview police Friday arrested Amanda Lee Romero Trotter, 33, of Longview, on suspicion of residential burglary, third-degree theft and third-degree malicious mischief.

Possession of stolen vehicle  Cowlitz County sheriffs deputies Saturday arrested Aaron Timothy Destin Weese, 32, of Longview, on suspicion of possession of a stolen vehicle.

Assault  Longview police Sunday arrested Thomas Charles Helgerson, 30, of Longview, on suspicion of violating a protection order and fourth-degree assault.

Harassment  Woodland police Sunday arrested Jackson Maquinna McCormack, 33, of Portland, on suspicion of harassment and disorderly conduct.
A lot of these issues are long term goals and things that arent going to have snappy, one-shot solutions. We are moving in the right direction on them but its not going to happen tomorrow, McAllister said.

McAllister said that public safety was his top priority. That means supporting the Kelso Police Department and emergency services, but McAllister said that also included everything from the city water system to road maintenance.

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The housing market in Kelso was a concern of McAllisters during his first campaign and remains a key issue. McAllister had floated the idea of a tiny housing community in Kelso when he ran for office in 2017 and said he would still be interested in seeing that project come through the city.

Right now, Cowlitz County is not a very good market to buy a house in, McAllister said. I never thought I would see a day where it costs $1,500 a month for a two bedroom apartment in Kelso.Before his election McAllister had served on the Kelso Planning Commission and the city library board.

Brian Wood

Brian Wood considers himself a straightforward, even slightly dull candidate. He argues that is a selling point for him joining City Council.
PeaceHealth Southwest Medical Center and Clark County Public Health are investigating the source of a COVID-19 outbreak in the Vancouver hospital after four healthcare workers and 10 patients tested positive over the last few days.

Dr. Lawrence Neville, chief medical officer, said during a press briefing Monday that of the 14 cases, one healthcare worker and four patients were fully vaccinated. All patients had tested negative when first admitted to the hospital.

The first patient linked to the outbreak tested positive on July 10 during surveillance testing, when the hospital checks patients five days after they are admitted and again in another seven days  if they are still hospitalized. PeaceHealth subsequently tested all inpatients in the unit and found nine more who were infected, Neville said.

During the investigation, four healthcare workers tested positive. Two were unvaccinated, one was partially vaccinated and one was fully vaccinated, he said.

Those fully vaccinated did not show any COVID-19 symptoms, Neville said. Symptoms among the unvaccinated people range from very mild to more severe but none currently require ICU-level care, he said.
Area fire departments have reported fewer brush fires so far this year than in past summers after crews tackled at least five smaller blazes last weekend.

Brush fires can be caused by drivers throwing cigarettes out windows and vehicle chains dragging on roadways and igniting sparks. Flares also can quickly catch dry grass or shrubs on fire.

Regional meteorologists report the lower amount of fires may be due to the moist conditions, as coastal clouds move inland.

But the fluctuating clouds are expected to burn off soon. As temperatures heat up and the area dries out, firefighters urge local people to clear debris and keep water on hand in case recreational fires spread or accidental flames ignite.

Fewer brush fires

How to prepare for wildfire smoke as fire continue in the Pacific Northwest Wildfire season has arrived in the Pacific Northwest, and although Southwest Washington has avoided smoky skies so far, officials recommend re

Fire crews in Kelso and Kalama report fewer brush fires so far this summer than in previous years.

Cowlitz 2 Fire & Rescue Deputy Chief Jason Sanders said the Kelso department has tackled 10 brush fires since May 1  about half the amount as previous summers.

Cowlitz Fire District 5 Fire Chief Vic Leatzow reported a similar trend. He said the Kalama station has responded to seven fires this summer, which is a little slower than normal.
Natural features of the area act like a funnel for wind, feeding the flames and making them unpredictable, officials said.

In California, a growing wildfire south of Lake Tahoe jumped a highway, prompting more evacuation orders, the closure of the Pacific Crest Trail and the cancellation of an extreme bike ride through the Sierra Nevada.

The Tamarack Fire, which was sparked by lightning on July 4, had charred nearly 29 square miles (74 square kilometers) of dry brush and timber as of Sunday morning. The blaze was threatening Markleeville, a small town close to the California-Nevada state line. It has destroyed at least two structures, authorities said.

A notice posted Saturday on the 103-mile (165-kilometer) Death Ride's website said several communities in the area had been evacuated and ordered all bike riders to clear the area. The fire left thousands of bikers and spectators stranded in the small town and racing to get out.

Kelli Pennington and her family were camping near the town Friday so her husband could participate in his ninth ride when they were told to leave. They had been watching smoke develop over the course of the day, but were caught off guard by the fire's quick spread.
The United States and its allies accused China on Monday of a global cyberespionage campaign, mustering an unusually broad coalition of countries to publicly call out Beijing for hacking.

The United States was joined by NATO, the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan and New Zealand in condemning the spying, which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said posed "a major threat to our economic and national security."

Simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Justice charged four Chinese nationals - three security officials and one contract hacker - with targeting dozens of companies, universities and government agencies in the United States and abroad.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, called the accusations against China "irresponsible."

"The Chinese government and relevant personnel never engage in cyber attacks or cyber theft," Liu said in a statement.

At an event about the administration's infrastructure plan, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters: "My understanding is that the Chinese government, not unlike the Russian government, is not doing this themselves, but are protecting those who are doing it. And maybe even accommodating them being able to do it."

White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki was later asked at her daily briefing why Biden did not directly blame the Chinese government in his response to a reporter's question.

"That was not the intention he was trying to project. He takes malicious cyber activity incredibly seriously," Psaki said.

Psaki also said the White House does not differentiate between Russia and China when it comes to cyber attacks.

"We are not holding back, we are not allowing any economic circumstance or consideration to prevent us from taking actions ... also we reserve the option to take additional action," she said.

While a flurry of statements from Western powers represents a broad alliance, cyber experts said the lack of consequences for China beyond the U.S. indictment was conspicuous. Just a month ago, summit statements by G7 and NATO warned China and said it posed threats to the international order.

Adam Segal, a cybersecurity expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, called Monday's announcement a "successful effort to get friends and allies to attribute the action to Beijing, but not very useful without any concrete follow-up."

SOME CIRCUMSPECT STATEMENTS

Some of Monday's statements even seemed to pull punches. While Washington and its close allies such as the United Kingdom and Canada held the Chinese state directly responsible for the hacking, others were more circumspect.

NATO merely said that its members "acknowledge" the allegations being leveled against Beijing by the U.S., Canada, and the UK. The European Union said it was urging Chinese officials to rein in "malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory" - a statement that left open the possibility that the Chinese government was itself innocent of directing the espionage.

The United States was much more specific, formally attributing intrusions such as the one that affected servers running Microsoft Exchange earlier this year to hackers affiliated with China's Ministry of State Security. Microsoft had already blamed China.

U.S. officials said the scope and scale of hacking attributed to China had surprised them, along with China's use of "criminal contract hackers" who Blinken said carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain.

U.S. security and intelligence agencies outlined more than 50 techniques and procedures that "China state-sponsored actors" use against U.S. networks, a senior administration official said.

Washington in recent months have accused Russian hackers of a string of ransomware attacks in the United States.

The senior administration official said U.S. concerns about Chinese cyber activities have been raised with senior Chinese officials, and further action to hold China accountable was not being ruled out.

The United States and China have already been at loggerheads over trade, China's military buildup, disputes about the South China Sea, a crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong and treatment of the Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region.

Blinken cited the Justice Department indictments as an example of how the United States will impose consequences.

The defendants and officials in the Hainan State Security Department, a regional state security office, tried to hide the Chinese government's role in the information theft by using a front company, according to the indictment.

The campaign targeted trade secrets in industries including aviation, defense, education, government, healthcare, biopharmaceutical and maritime industries, the Justice Department said.

Victims were in Austria, Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.

"These criminal charges once again highlight that China continues to use cyber-enabled attacks to steal what other countries make, in flagrant disregard of its bilateral and multilateral commitments," Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in the statement.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Doina Chiacu, Nandita Bose, David Shepardson and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)
A worker walks out of an Amazon Fulfillment Center, Wednesday, March 31, 2021, in North Las Vegas. Amazon said it will stop testing its workers for COVID-19 at its warehouses at the end of July, citing the availability of vaccines and free testing. Credit: AP Photo/John Locher

Amazon will stop testing workers for COVID-19 at its warehouses at the end of this month, citing the availability of vaccines and free testing.

The company began testing warehouse workers last year when tests were more difficult to secure. Warehouse workers, who were considered essential, packed and shipped orders throughout the pandemic.

Amazon disclosed in October that nearly 20,000 workers, or about 1.4% of its total workforce, had been infected with COVID-19 by that point in 2020.

Vaccines began to roll out about two months later and in May, employees who uploaded a picture of their vaccine cards to an Amazon worker app were allowed to ditch masks in the work place if they chose.

U.S. cases of COVID-19 last week increased by 17,000 nationwide over a 14-day period for the first time since late fall, and an increase in death historically follows a spike in illness. Much of the worsening problem is being driven by the delta variant first identified in India, that has since hit the United Kingdom and other countries, said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

Health officials said Tuesday that the delta variant of the coronavirus continues to surge and accounts for an estimated 83% of U.S. COVID-19 cases.

News that Amazon would stop testing workers was first reported by The Information.

Explore further With pandemic worsening in US, surgeon general worried

 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
The Microsoft hack, which exploited flaws in the Microsoft Exchange service, affected at least 30,000 US organizations including local governments as well as organizations worldwide.

China on Tuesday sharply denied US allegations it carried out a massive Microsoft hack, countering that Washington was the "world champion" of cyber attacks while raging at American allies for signing up to a rare joint statement of condemnation.

The United States on Monday accused Beijing of carrying out the cyber attack on Microsoft and charged four Chinese nationals over the "malicious" hack in March.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the attack on Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, was part of a "pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security."

China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, "has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain," Blinken said in a statement.

In a simultaneous announcement, the US Department of Justice said four Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking the computers of dozens of companies, universities and government bodies in the United States and abroad between 2011 and 2018.

Pointing to the indictment, Blinken said the United States "will impose consequences on (Chinese) malicious cyber actors for their irresponsible behavior in cyberspace."

President Joe Biden told reporters the United States was still completing an investigation before taking any countermeasures and drew parallels with the murky but prolific cybercrime attributed by Western officials to Russia.

"The Chinese government, not unlike the Russian government, is not doing this themselves, but are protecting those who are doing it, and maybe even accommodating them being able to do it," Biden told reporters.

In a step the Biden administration hailed as unprecedented, the United States coordinated its statement Monday with alliesthe European Union, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO.

The Chinese embassy in New Zealand issued a swift rebuttal of the "totally groundless and irresponsible" allegations.

US President Joe Biden says that China has protected cyber criminals.

It was backed up by the embassy in Australia, as China took a coordinated stance of its own, accusing Canberra of "parroting the rhetoric of the US."

"It is well known that the US has engaged in unscrupulous, massive and indiscriminate eavesdropping on many countries including its allies," the embassy said in a statement.

"It is the world champion of malicious cyber attacks."

NATO solidarity

Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, has ramped up pressure on China, seeing the rising Asian power's increasingly assertive moves at home and abroad as the main long-term threat to the United States.

Allies backed up the castigation of China with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab describing the cyberattack as "reckless."

NATO offered "solidarity" over the Microsoft hacking without directly assigning blame, while noting that allies United States, Britain and Canada found China to be responsible.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was the first time that NATOthe Western military alliance whose members include Hungary and Turkey, which have comparatively cordial relations with Beijinghas condemned cyber activity from China.

It comes weeks after NATO took up China at a summit attended by Biden.

"We know we'll be stronger, we know we'll be more effective when we act collectively," Price said, saying the United States was not ruling out further action.

Biden has promised a strategy driven by alliances to face Beijing, drawing a contrast with Trump's predilection for harsh rhetoric.

People in Beijing walk in October 2020 past a store of Huawei, the Chinese electronics giant blacklisted by the United States.

Billions seen lost

Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University's McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, praised the "breadth and depth of international cooperation" in clearly attributing responsibility to China.

"In addition to the indictments, we need to follow through to ensure there are consequences to induce changes in the Chinese government's behavior and hopefully move toward leveling the cyber playing field," he said.

The Microsoft hack, which exploited flaws in the Microsoft Exchange service, affected at least 30,000 US organizations including local governments as well as organizations worldwide.

"Responsible states do not indiscriminately compromise global network security nor knowingly harbor cyber criminalslet alone sponsor or collaborate with them," Blinken said in his statement.

"These contract hackers cost governments and businesses billions of dollars in stolen intellectual property, ransom payments, and cybersecurity mitigation efforts, all while the MSS had them on its payroll."

Accusations of cyberattacks against the United States have recently focused on Russia, rather than China.

US officials say that many of the attacks originate in Russia, although they have debated to what extent there is state involvement. Russia denies responsibility.

This year has seen a slew of prominent ransomware strikes that have disrupted a major US pipeline, a meat processor and the software firm Kaseya, which affected 1,500 businesses.

Last week, Washington offered $10 million for information about foreign online extortionists.

Explore further Microsoft Exchange hack caused by China, US and allies say

 2021 AFP
Cybersecurity is a growing global threat. Credit: Shutterstock

For nearly two years, 68 United Nations member statesalong with private enterprises, non-governmental organizations, technical communities and academicsparticipated in an open-ended working group on developments in information and telecommunications in international security (Cyber OEWG). The working group deliberated on responsible state behavior in cyberspace.

In March 2021, the working group produced a final report. The report comes at a critical time in light of the high-profile cyberattacks on SolarWinds and Microsoft Exchange Server, as well as ransomware attacks on critical civilian infrastructures and essential public services.

Multi-stakeholder inclusion

The Cyber OEWG was established in 2018. It was tasked to continue cybersecurity negotiations in a more democratic, inclusive and transparent way. The process is open to all interested member states.

The Cyber OEWG publicly consults with non-state organizations over concerns about new threats posed by communications technologies. These include online interference in electoral processes, cyberattacks on supply chains and infrastructure and ransom attacks on medical facilities.

Civil society organizations have raised concerns with Cyber OEWG about the potential humanitarian consequences of malicious activities related to information and communications technologies (ICT). They demand considering the societal impacts of cyber threats in favor of merely focusing on the economic and political impacts.

Impacts of malicious cyber activities

Increasingly, rampant cyberattacks target critical civilian infrastructures, including health facilities, pipelines, water plants and food supply chains. Attacks on technology firms have also become commonplace.

These cyber incidents have impacted organizations of all sizes, including those with less awareness and capacity to defend themselves, such as civil society organizations and small businesses. Civilians may also be affected through ensuing personal data breaches and disrupted public services.

Harm to individuals resulting from a data breach can be physical, financial, emotional or reputational. Disrupted public services have also resulted in death by delaying treatment.

Centering civilian security

People experience cyber threats, incidents and harms differently depending on their gender identity, ethnicity, race and other social and cultural hierarchies. Those who are in vulnerable and marginalized positions may be disproportionately harmed by cyberattacks.

In Dec. 2019, millions of Canadians had their personal information breached after an attack on LifeLabs.

Organizations such as the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and the Association for Progressive Communications examine these uneven aspects of cybersecurity. Addressing these inequalities in cybersecurity requires human-centric and inclusive approaches to cybersecurity.

A human-centric approach to cyber-security prioritizes people when assessing cybersecurity threats, incidents, technologies and practices. It recognizes that people's intersecting identities shape their cybersecurity needs and experience of cyber incidents. Consequently, cybersecurity measures and instruments should be designed to address structural inequalities which lead to insecurity.

Disaggregated data by socio-economic factors on people's participation in cybersecurity fields and on victims of cyber incidents need to be collected. Efforts to increase underrepresented and minority groups' participation in cybersecurity workforce should go beyond providing access to education and skills development. Further, cybersecurity skills-building should be tailored to the specific needs and capabilities of targeted population groups, including people with disabilities, the elderly and children.

Building a cyber-resilient society

The exploitation of vulnerabilities in ICT systems and their weakening of encryption standards can undermine trust and confidence in cyberspace overall. When any one sector or state is more secure, we all reap the benefits. On the other hand, enabling insecurity by design and malicious ICT acts degrade the entire security of the cyber ecosystem.

Threats to cybersecurity can emanate from any sector within society, due to human error, natural disaster, technical issues or cyberattacks. The effect can cascade across sectors and levels in unanticipated waysas demonstrated in the cyberattacks targeted at giant tech firms.

To address the origins and systemic effect of cybersecurity threats, we need to build societal cyber resilience. This would require equal distribution of the resources needed to build cyber capacity and the broad, participation of all affected stakeholdersgovernmental, private sector and civil societyto shape cybersecurity research, policy and practice.

While facing the same persistent cyber threats experienced by states and private entities, civil society organizations are equipped with far fewer resources to defend themselves. Addressing such cross-sectoral cybersecurity resource inequalities could be done through establishing cyber-incident response teams that cater to the need of all affected stakeholders, not just firms operating critical infrastructures.

Cybersecurity funding for financially constrained sectors, such as civil society organizations and small businesses, is also needed. It is crucial to provide cyber skills building programs for employees in these organizations, including awareness of cyber threats, the importance of cyber hygiene habits and how to respond to cyber incidents.

Good practices at the national level include formalizing civil society organizations' participation in shaping cybersecurity-related legislation and policies. This would include developing measures to deter cyberattacks, designing cyber capacity building programs and sharing information about cyber threats.

States have started to embrace this inclusive approach to cybersecurity. Several Asia-Pacific countries, including Australia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, have established national cyber incident response teams that accept reporting from civilians.

Recently, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United Statesan intelligence alliance knows as the Five Eyescommitted to develop a collective response against the threat of ransomware.

The UN is making incremental progress towards multi-stakeholder inclusion and prioritizing civilian security in cybersecurity negotiations. However, much work still needs to be done to follow up on the Cyber OEWG's proposed actions. Future cybersecurity discussions must establish an accountability mechanism for states' cyber operations and resolve how international law applies to cyberspace.

Explore further It's time to make cyber security compulsory

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Deep streams of data from Earth-imaging satellites arrive in databases every day, but advanced technology and expertise are required to access and analyze the data. Now a new system, developed in research based at the University of California, Berkeley, uses machine learning to drive low-cost, easy-to-use technology that one person could run on a laptop, without advanced training, to address their local problems. Credit: NASA

More than 700 imaging satellites are orbiting the earth, and every day they beam vast oceans of informationincluding data that reflects climate change, health and povertyto databases on the ground. There's just one problem: While the geospatial data could help researchers and policymakers address critical challenges, only those with considerable wealth and expertise can access it.

Now, a team based at UC Berkeley has devised a machine learning system to tap the problem-solving potential of satellite imaging, using low-cost, easy-to-use technology that could bring access and analytical power to researchers and governments worldwide. The study, "A generalizable and accessible approach to machine learning with global satellite imagery," was published today (Tuesday, July 20) in the journal Nature Communications.

"Satellite images contain an incredible amount of data about the world, but the trick is how to translate the data into usable insights without having a human comb through every single image," said co-author Esther Rolf, a final-year Ph.D. student in computer science. "We designed our system for accessibility, so that one person should be able to run it on a laptop, without specialized training, to address their local problems."

"We're entering a regime in which our actions are having truly global impact," said co-author Solomon Hsiang, director of the Global Policy Lab at the Goldman School of Public Policy. "Things are moving faster than they've ever moved in the past. We're changing resource allocations faster than ever. We're transforming the planet. That requires a more responsive management system that is able to see these things happen, so that we can respond in a timely, effective way."

The project was a collaboration between the Global Policy Lab, which Hsiang directs, and Benjamin Recht's research team in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Other co-authors are Berkeley Ph.D. graduates Tamma Carleton, now at University of California, Santa Barbara; Jonathan Proctor, now at Harvard's Center for the Environment and Data Science Initiative; Ian Bolliger, now at the Rhodium Group; and Vaishaal Shankar, now at Amazon; and Berkeley Ph.D. student Miyabi Ishihara.

All of them were at Berkeley when the project began. Their collaboration has been remarkable for bringing together disciplines that often look at the world in different ways and speak different languages: computer science, environmental and climate science, statistics, economics and public policy.

But they have been guided by a common interest in creating an open access tool that democratizes the power of technology, making it usable even by communities and countries that lack resources and advanced technical skill. "It's like Ford's Model T, but with machine learning and satellites," Hsiang said. "It's cheap enough that everyone can now access this new technology."

MOSAIKS: Improving lives, protecting the planet

The system that emerged from the Berkeley-based research is called MOSAIKS, short for Multi-Task Observation using Satellite Imagery & Kitchen Sinks. It ultimately could have the power to analyze hundreds of variables drawn from satellite datafrom soil and water conditions to housing, health and povertyat a global scale.

The research paper details how MOSAIKS was able to replicate with reasonable accuracy reports prepared at great cost by the U.S. Census Bureau. It also has enormous potential in addressing development challenges in low-income countries and to help scientists and policymakers understand big-picture environmental change.

"Climate change is diffuse and difficult to see at any one location, but when you step back and look at the broad scale, you really see what is going on around the planet," said Hsiang, who also serves as co-director of the multi-institution Climate Impact Lab.

For example, he said, the satellite data could give researchers deep new insights into expansive rangeland areas such as the Great Plains in the U.S. and the Sahel in Africa, or into areas such as Greenland or Antarctica that may be shedding icebergs as temperatures rise.

In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, a satellite image shows hundreds of green aquaculture ponds where local farmers grow fish and shrimp. Geospatial imaging holds enormous potential for developing nations to address challenges related to agriculture, poverty, health and human migration, scholars at UC Berkeley say. But until now, the technology and expertise needed to efficiently access and analyze satellite data usually has been limited to developed countries. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey

"These areas are so large, and to have people sitting there and looking at pictures and counting icebergs is really inefficient," Hsiang explained. But with MOSAIKS, he said, "you could automate that and track whether these glaciers are actually disintegrating faster, or whether this has been happening all along."

For a government in the developing world, the technology could help guide even routine decisions, such as where to build roads.

"A government wants to build roads where the most people are and the most economic activity is," Hsiang said. "You might want to know which community is underserved, or the condition of existing infrastructure in a community. But often it's very difficult to get that information."

The challenge: Organizing trillions of bytes of raw satellite data

The growing fleet of imaging satellites beam data back to Earth 24/7some 80 terabytes every day, according to the research, a number certain to grow in coming years.

But often, imaging satellites are built to capture information on narrow topicssupplies of fresh water, for example, or the condition of agricultural soils. And the data doesn't arrive as neat, orderly images, like snapshots from a photo shop. It's raw data, a mass of binary information. Researchers who access the data have to know what they're looking for.

Merely storing so many terabytes of data requires a huge investment. Distilling the layers of data embedded in the images requires additional computing power and advanced human expertise to tease out strands of information that are coherent and useful to other researchers, policymakers or funding agencies.

Inevitably, exploiting satellite images is largely limited to scholars or agencies in wealthy nations, Rolf and Hsiang said.

"If you're an elite professor, you can get someone to build your satellite for you," said Hsiang. "But there's no way that a conservation agency in Kenya is going to be able to access the technology and the experts to do this work.

"We wanted to find a way to empower them. We decided to come up with a Swiss Army Knifea practical tool that everyone can access."

Like Google for satellite imagery, sort of

Especially in low-income countries, one dimension of poverty is a poverty of data. But even communities in the U.S. and other developed countries usually don't have ready access to geospatial data in a convenient, usable format for addressing local challenges.

Machine learning opens the door to solutions.

The illustrations show how the MOSAIKS machine learning system developed at UC Berkeley predicts, in fine detail, forest cover (above, in green) and population (below). Credit: Esther Rolf, Jonathan Proctor, Tamma Carleton, Ian Bolliger, Miyabi Ishihara, Vaishaal Shankar, Benjamin Recht and Solomon Hsiang

In a general sense, machine learning refers to computer systems that use algorithms and statistical modeling to learn on their own, without step-by-step human intervention. What the new research describes is a system that can assemble data delivered by many satellites and organize it in ways that are accessible and useful.

There are precedents for such systems: Google Earth Engine and Microsoft's Planetary Computer are both platforms for accessing and analyzing global geospatial data, with a focus on conservation. But, Rolf said, even with these technologies, considerable expertise is often required to convert the data into new insights.

The goal of MOSAIKS is not to develop more complex machine learning systems, Rolf said. Rather, its innovation is in making satellite data widely useable for addressing global challenges. The team did this by making the algorithms radically simpler and more efficient.

MOSAIKS starts with learning to recognize minuscule patterns in the imagesHsiang compares it to a game of Scrabble, in which the algorithm learns to recognize each letter. In this case, however, the tiles are minuscule pieces of satellite image, 3 pixels by 3 pixels.

But MOSAIKS doesn't conclude "this is a tree" or "this is pavement." Instead, it recognizes patterns and groups them together, said Proctor. It learns to recognize similar patterns in different parts of the world.

When thousands of terabytes from hundreds of sources are analyzed and organized, researchers can choose a village or a country or a region and draw out organized data that can touch on themes as varied as soil moisture, health conditions, human migration and home values.

In a sense, Hsiang said, MOSAIKS could do for satellite databases what Google in the early days did for the Internet: map the data, make it accessible and user-friendly at low cost, and perhaps make it searchable. But Rolf, a machine learning scholar based in the Berkeley Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department, said the Google comparison goes only so far.

MOSAIKS "is about translating an unwieldy amount of data into usable information," she explained. "Maybe a better analogy would be that the system takes very dense informationsay, a very large articleand produces a summary."

Creating a living atlas of global data

Both Hsiang and Rolf see the potential for MOSAIKS to evolve in powerful and elegant directions.

Hsiang imagines the data being collected into computer-based, continually evolving atlases. Turn to any given "page," and a user could access broad, deep data about conditions in a country or a region.

Rolf envisions a system that can take the stream of data from humanity's fleet of imaging satellites and remote sensors and transform it into a flowing, real-time portrait of Earth and its inhabitants, continually in a state of change. We could see the past and the present, and so discern emerging challenges and address them.

"We've sent so much stuff to space," Hsiang says. "It's an amazing achievement. But we can get a lot more bang for our buck for all of this data that we're already pulling down. Let's let the world use it in a useful way. Let's use it for good."

More information: Esther Rolf et al, A generalizable and accessible approach to machine learning with global satellite imagery, Nature Communications (2021). Journal information: Nature Communications Esther Rolf et al, A generalizable and accessible approach to machine learning with global satellite imagery,(2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-24638-z
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Uber and Lyft are popular on-demand ways to travel, but does that mean trains and busses are a thing of the past? Travelers prefer different modes of transportation at different times. So how can all these modes co-exist and do so successfully? New research in the INFORMS journal Transportation Science has created a model and an algorithm to redistribute transit resources based on commuter preferences resulting in millions in savings.

"Based on case study experiments in New York City, our optimized transit schedules consistently lead to 0.4%-3% system-wide cost reduction. This amounts to rush hour savings of millions of dollars per day, while simultaneously reducing costs to passengers and transportation service providers," said Vikrant Vaze of Dartmouth College.

"Transit Planning Optimization under Ride-hailing Competition and Traffic Congestion," was written by Vaze alongside Keji Wei also of Dartmouth, as well as Alexandre Jacquillat of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

This study attempts to understand what would happen if a public transit agency were to explicitly consider commuter choice factors and what that would do to the commute when designing their schedules.

Commuters choose modes of transportation based on travel convenience, prices, travel times and traffic congestion. The authors have found that the opposite is also truetheir choice in turn changes the traffic patterns and travel times.

The authors note that by considering both of these points, they can come up with a better alignment of available transportation options with passengers' preferences in mindby redistributing public transit resources where they provide the strongest societal benefits.

"In the interest of the overall urban ecosystem, a transit operator should critically assess what kinds of trips and travel needs transit is better equipped to serve and at the same time, what are some of the areas where it might be better to cut down and let on-demand operators take up a larger proportion of trips. Such thoughtful reconfiguration can benefit diverse stakeholders simultaneously," continued Vaze, a professor in the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth. "What we found is that this leads to schedules that are better for passengers, better for transportation operators and better for the city as a whole, a rare win-win-win."

Explore further Impact of COVID-19 behavioral inertia on reopening strategies for New York City transit

More information: Keji Wei et al, Transit Planning Optimization Under Ride-Hailing Competition and Traffic Congestion, Transportation Science (2021). Keji Wei et al, Transit Planning Optimization Under Ride-Hailing Competition and Traffic Congestion,(2021). DOI: 10.1287/trsc.2021.1068
A team of researchers from Japan proposes a machine learning model for inferring a user's brain model from their profile with high accuracy while optimizing the required information content using a feature selection method. Credit: Pixabay

We all like to think that we know ourselves best, but given that our brain activity is largely governed by our subconscious mind, it is probably our brain that knows us better. While this is only a hypothesis, researchers from Japan have already proposed a content recommendation system that assumes this to be true. Essentially, such a system makes use of its user's brain signals (acquired using, say, an MRI scan) when exposed to a particular content and eventually, by exploring various users and contents, builds up a general model of brain activity.

"Once we obtain the 'ultimate' brain model, we should be able to perfectly estimate the brain activity of a person exposed to a specific content," says Prof. Ryoichi Shinkuma from Shibaura Institute of Technology, Japan, who was a part of the team that came up with the idea. "This could provide powerful solutions in the commercial field, such as reduce the costs of targeted advertising."

However, a major drawback presents itself at the outset: Acquiring MRI scans is expensive. A typical brain scan would involve deployment and maintenance costs of an MRI, the labor costs of specialists, and the recruitment costs of a large number of participants. Faced with this challenge, Prof. Shinkuma and his team has come up with an ingenious solution: Using profile information of people to infer their brain model.

In a new study published in the journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, the team proposes a scheme that attempts to mitigate the trade-off between the performance associated with inferring the brain model from profile information and the cost of acquiring that information. "Our scheme utilizes machine learning (ML) to create a brain model based on inference of profile model," explains Prof. Shinkuma. "To reduce the cost of information collection, we make use of the feature selection capability of ML to narrow down the number of questionnaire items by estimating the extent to which each item contributes to the inference performance."

Modeling the human brain with machine learning. Credit: Shibaura Institute of Technology

Specifically, the feature selection process quantified the contribution of a questionnaire item by attributing to it an "importance score" and then retained only those with top importance scores for the inference. This allowed the team to maintain a high inference performance while limiting the information cost at the same time.

To validate the effectiveness of their scheme, the team evaluated its performance accuracy using a brain model obtained experimentally and a profile model based on real profile information. They found that the scheme achieved nearly the same level of inference accuracy of the brain model as the case employing 209 questionnaires by using only 15-20 topmost items. This suggested that only the top 10% questionnaire items were enough for inferring the brain model.

"An important next step will be to determine the best combination of ML and feature selection method for optimizing the performance of our scheme," says an excited Prof. Shinkuma, contemplating future research directions of their work. "At the same time, we will need to reduce the total computation cost for real-world applications involving large number of users."

Looks like in a not too distant future, our knowledge of who we are might come from the outside.

Explore further Merging the structural and functional information of the brain

More information: IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (2021). (2021). DOI: 10.1109/TSMC.2021.3074069

Provided by Shibaura Institute of Technology
Credit: Pavel Odinev / Skoltech

Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues from Mobile TeleSystems have introduced the notion of inappropriate text messages and released a neural model capable of detecting them, along with a large collection of such messages for further research. Among the potential applications are preventing corporate chatbots from embarrassing the companies that run them, forum post moderation, and parental control. The study came out in the Proceedings of the 8th Workshop on Balto-Slavic Natural Language Processing.

Chatbots are notorious for finding creative and unexpected ways to embarrass their owners. From producing racist tweets after training on user-generated data to encouraging suicide and endorsing slavery, chatbots have an unfortunate history of dealing with what the authors of the study term "sensitive topics."

Sensitive topics are those likely to trigger disrespectful conversation when breached. While there is nothing inherently unacceptable about discussing them, they are statistically less safe for the speaker's reputation and therefore require particular attention on the part of corporate chatbot developers. Drawing on the recommendations of the PR and legal officers of Mobile TeleSystems, the researchers list 18 such topics, among them sexual minorities, politics, religion, pornography, suicide, and crime. The team sees its list as a starting point, laying no claim to it being exhaustive.

Building on the notion of a sensitive topic, the paper introduces that of inappropriate utterances. These are not necessarily toxic, but can still frustrate the reader and harm the reputation of the speaker. The topic of an inappropriate statement is, by definition, sensitive. Human judgments as to whether a message puts the reputation of the speaker at risk are considered the main measure of appropriateness.

Credit: Varvara Logacheva / Skoltech

The study's senior author, Skoltech Assistant Professor Alexander Panchenko commented that "inappropriateness is a step beyond the familiar notion of toxicity. It is a more subtle concept that encompasses a much wider range of situations where the reputation of the chatbot's owner may end up at risk. For example, consider a chatbot that engages in a polite and helpful conversation about the 'best ways' to commit suicide. It clearly produces problematic contentyet without being toxic in any way."

To train neural models for recognizing sensitive topics and inappropriate messages, the team compiled two labeled datasets in a large-scale crowdsourcing project.

In its first phase, speakers of Russian were tasked with identifying statements on a sensitive topic among ordinary messages and recognizing the topic in question. The text samples were drawn from a Russian Q&A platform and a Reddit-like website. The resulting "sensitive dataset" was then roughly doubled by using it to train a classifier model that found more sentences of similar nature on the same websites.

In a follow-up assignment, the labelers marked up the classifier-extended sensitivity dataset for inappropriateness. Varvara Logacheva, a co-author of the study, explained: "The percentage of inappropriate utterances in real texts is usually low. So to be cost-efficient, we did not present arbitrary messages for phase-two labeling. Instead, we used those from the sensitive topic corpus, since it was reasonable to expect inappropriate content in them." Basically, the labelers had to repeatedly answer the question: Will this message harm the reputation of the company? This yielded an inappropriate utterance corpus, which was used to train a neural model for recognizing inappropriate messages.

Dataset collection pipeline. Credit: Varvara Logacheva / Skoltech

"We have shown that while the notions of topic sensitivity and message inappropriateness are rather subtle and rely on human intuition, they are nevertheless detectable by neural networks," study co-author Nikolay Babakov of Skoltech commented. "Our classifier correctly guessed which utterances the human labelers considered inappropriate in 89% of the cases."

Both the models for spotting inappropriateness and sensitivity, and the datasets with about 163,000 sentences labeled for (in)appropriateness and some 33,000 sentences dealing with sensitive topics have been made publicly available by the MTS-Skoltech team.

"These models can be improved by ensembling or using alternative architectures," Babakov added. "One particularly interesting way to build on this work would be by extending the notions of appropriateness to other languages. Topic sensitivity is to a large extent culturally informed. Every culture is special in regard to what subject matter it deems inappropriate, so working with other languages is a whole different situation. One further area to explore is the search for sensitive topics beyond the 18 we worked with."

Explore further What are the effects of inappropriate prescriptions in older adults?

More information: Nikolay Babakov et al, Detecting Inappropriate Messages on Sensitive Topics that Could Harm a Company's Reputation. arXiv:2103.05345 [cs.CL] Nikolay Babakov et al, Detecting Inappropriate Messages on Sensitive Topics that Could Harm a Company's Reputation. arXiv:2103.05345 [cs.CL] arxiv.org/abs/2103.05345
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

One of the leading thinkers in nanoscience has called on the energy materials community to help finally put an end to the world's reliance on fossil fuels.

In a hard-hitting editorial published by Energy and Environmental Materials, Professor Ravi Silva, Director of the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) at the University of Surrey, argues that there are no coherent excuses left to justify the use of fossil fuels. In his paper, Professor Silva challenges the scientific community to lead the world away from a reality where fossil fuels still account for 80 percent of the energy mix.

While the cost of clean energy generation has plummeted over recent years, Professor Silva argues that significant innovations in advanced batteries and energy storage technologies are needed to meet the International Energy Agency's goal of the planetbeing carbon net-zero by 2050.

For example, the transportation sector would need to see a 15-fold rise in electric vehicle sales from 10m in 2020 to 145m in 2030a goal entirely dependent on a leap in battery and energy storage technology, according to Professor Silva.

Professor Silva concludes that these unprecedented but much-needed goals are only possible if the scientific community usher in a new wave of energy materials that are cheap, easily deployable and have short payback times. He stated, "The pandemic has been a truly horrific experience. However, one of the few positives that I can gather from the past two years is that it has allowed me to take stock and refocus on the incredible challenge of combatting climate change. It is increasingly clear that the energy materials community has a crucial role to play in weaning the world off fossil fuels.

"The cost of green energy is falling all the timein the UK, solar and wind generation is competitive with fossil fuels. But we need to look at improvements in thin-film technologies, new polymers and other hybrid materials that can boost energy capture capabilities while reducing the cost of production if we are to have a genuine green energy revolution."

More information: S. Ravi P. Silva, EDITORIAL: Now is the time for energy materials research to save the planet, ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL MATERIALS (2021). S. Ravi P. Silva, EDITORIAL: Now is the time for energy materials research to save the planet,(2021). DOI: 10.1002/eem2.12233
An experimental test system is mounted on the centrifuge arm prior to combined environments testing at the Sandia National Laboratories Superfuge/Centrifuge Complex in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Credit: Byron Demosthenous

A team of Sandia National Laboratories engineers developed a new testing capability in support of its nuclear weapons mission. The team completed their first combined-environments test on a full-scale weapons system at the Sandia Superfuge/Centrifuge complex in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In a successful test, weapons engineers simulated three environmentsacceleration, vibration and spinsimultaneously on an inert experimental test system built by Sandia and utilized in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. In a laboratory setting, the test created the harsh environments that weapons systems experience from launch to reentry through the atmosphere.

Sandia is the design and engineering lab for most nonnuclear components in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. The Nuclear Security Enterprise relies on Sandia for its sophisticated tests and computer models to qualify nonnuclear systems under its stockpile stewardship role. The labs' work to modify and upgrade the stockpile through life extension and modernization programs ensures its safety, security and reliability.

Simulating flight-like environments on full weapons system

Traditionally, engineers have simulated and tested each environment that weapons systems and components would experiencevibration, shock, spin and inertial loadseparately. Over the years, Sandia has advanced these tests, developing capabilities to test more than one environment simultaneously.

"For the past decade, we've been running superfuge tests at Sandia, combining multiple environments. But we've really only done these tests on individual components and subassemblies," explained Paulina Rabczak, an engineer from Sandia's California laboratory working on the project.

"We've now successfully designed and built an extensive, large test fixture to support testing a full weapons system and put it through flight-like environments at the superfuge," she said. "This is possibly the closest we can get to replicating an actual flight reentry event on the ground."

The Sandia National Laboratories Superfuge/Centrifuge Complex aims to provide the most realistic flight simulation environments possible. Credit: Randy Montoya

By reproducing a flight environment in a lab setting, engineers can achieve test repeatability, further improving the reliability of test data and maturing hardware, according to Rabczak. This is expected to lead to decreased qualification time and associated costs.

The newly developed test, completed under NNSA's Office of Engineering and Technology Maturation, produces richer data and better insights and is a crucial step in advancing the qualification testing of weapons systems, explained Rabczak. Qualification tests are used to validate weapons design and systems performance.

"Understanding the impact of combined environments to our weapons systems has proven very valuable as our engineers produce new designs," said Matt McDowell, an engineer at Sandia's superfuge complex.

Advancing data collection

Collecting data from a superfuge test is technically challenging due to the large amount of it and the presence of multiple spinning joints, McDowell said. Engineers use the data collected from environmental testing to inform and improve their designs.

To support the data collection requirements for the full-system combined-environments test, engineers developed an onboard data acquisition system, which collected data from more than 200 sensors on the test unit.

The data collection system, designed jointly by telemetry and systems engineers at Sandia, rode along with the test unit, digitized the analog data close to the test and encoded the data using established protocols. Engineers were then able to pass hundreds of channels of digitized data down the centrifuge arm across a slip ring, a device that allows the transmission of electrical signals between stationary and rotating structures. The method would not have been possible using analog data.

"We aim to build on the successes we had in this initial test and expand this capability to further benefit our other nuclear deterrence programs across the labs," McDowell said.
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

Surfing the web today exposes users to a shocking array of data collection practices. Websites are building digital profiles about you, targeting ads towards you, and sometimes they're even using your computer to mine cryptocurrency, whether you know it or not.

How does that sit with you? A new study by Carnegie Mellon University CyLab researchers aimed to find out.

"We wanted to find out to what extent people are aware of these practices, how they feel about them, and whether they understand how much of these practices they can potentially control and how," says CyLab's Daniel Smullen, a Ph.D. student in the Institute for Software Research (ISR) and a lead author of a new study.

Smullen presented his team's new study, "Managing Potentially Intrusive Practices in the Browser: A User-Centered Perspective," at last week's Privacy Enhancing Technology Symposium.

The team conducted two surveys involving more than 1,000 total participants to study people's perceptions, awareness, understanding, and preferences to opt out a variety of practices such as targeted advertising, behavioral profiling, and more. Since users may feel or act differently depending on what kind of website they are visiting, each of these practices were presented in the context of different website categories, such as news and information sites, shopping sites, financial sites, and more.

"Analysis of the responses collected in the study reveal that people's attitudes towards these different practices are often linked to the particular category of website where they are deployed," says Smullen.

While most people acknowledge these practices as intrusive, many participants acknowledged they may have potential benefits too, depending on the kind of website they're visiting and what they're doing there. For example, one category of practices considered in this study "Identity / Sign-In Services" such as "Sign in with Google"may track users across many different and unrelated websites, but they also remove the need to remember as many passwords.

Because of this mix of risks and benefits, whether participants wanted to block various practices wasn't black or white. In other words, the researchers say, a "one size fits all" approach to allowing or denying these practices isn't good enough. While some value the convenience of services like "Sign in with Google," others are primarily concerned about being tracked.

"This work highlights the need for users to be able to control which practices they want to allow and which they do not. The problem is that these controls are often not available and, even when they are, they are generally ad hoc and supported differently by different website." says CyLab's / ISR's Norman Sadeh, a co-author and principal investigator of the Personalized Privacy Assistant Project. "What is badly needed is a standard for people to be able to communicate their choices to websites. Such a standard would allow users to specify their preferences once in their browseror some browser extensionand rely on their browser to communicate them to individual websites."

Developing such standards is essential, the authors say, but they also acknowledge it won't be easy. Websites have different incentives than browsers or even users, so a website may break for a user if it doesn't agree with the user's preferences on data collection.

"Today users often do not have the control they need and even when such controls are offered by a given website, the required level of effort is too great. A standard would have to come with regulationor some commitment from website operatorsto require website operators to honor people's browser settings," says Sadeh. "While earlier standardization efforts in this space have been unsuccessful, this study provides strong scientific evidence that such standardization is really needed. New regulations such as laws passed in California or Europe also suggest that such a change might finally be within reach."

Explore further What if opting out of data collection were easy?
Israeli firm NSO insists its software is only intended for use in fighting terrorism and other crimes.

Journalist Marcela Turati always suspected the Mexican authorities were spying on her. Now she's almost certain, after appearing in a leaked list at the center of a global spyware scandal.

"People have written to me saying: 'Look, you weren't crazy, you weren't paranoid,'" she told AFP on Monday.

Some 15,000 Mexican smartphone numbers were among more than 50,000 believed to have been selected by clients of Israeli firm NSO Group for potential surveillance, according to an international media investigation.

They include numbers linked to 25 journalists and even President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's inner circle before he took office.

Although the Mexican license for Pegasus software acquired under former president Enrique Pena Nieto expired in 2017, Turati believes that monitoring continues in other ways.

"Almost all journalists in Mexico know and feel that we are under some kind of surveillance," the award-winning reporter said.

"It's something that is assumed, especially because Mexico is among the most dangerous countries to practice the profession," the 47-year-old said.

The revelations emerged over the weekend as part of a collaborative investigation by The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde, Mexico's Aristegui Noticias and other media outlets.

One of the Mexican journalists on the list was murdered in 2017 after criticizing alleged links between politicians and criminals.

Cecilio Pineda was one of more than 100 journalists murdered since 2000 in Mexico, one of the world's deadliest countries for reporters.

At the time that Turati appears to have been targeted through NSO, she and two colleagues were investigating the corruption scandal engulfing Brazilian conglomerate Odebrecht.

Emilio Lozoya, a former top advisor to Pena Nieto, has alleged that Odebrecht bribes were funneled to the ex-leader's presidential campaign.

Turati also investigated massacres of migrants and the disappearance of 43 teaching students in 2014, a case that drew widespread international condemnation.

Relatives of the missing students and human rights defenders were also targeted through NSO, according to the international probe by the Pegasus Project.

'Nobody's spied on'

Lopez Obrador, in power since 2018, has not commented directly on the revelations.

But he alluded to them in comments Monday related to the case of a missing journalist, saying that "nobody's spied on anymore. Freedoms are guaranteed."

The leaked list of smartphone numbers did not include Lopez Obrador himself, according to Aristegui Noticias.

The leftist leader "apparently did not use a personal cell phone" and communicated through his aides, it said.

NSO insists its software is only intended for use in fighting terrorism and other crimes.

Mexico was the first country in the world to buy Pegasus from NSO "and became something of a laboratory for the spy technology," according to The Guardian.

Mexican agencies that have acquired the spyware include the defense ministry, the attorney general's office and the national security intelligence service, it said.

Lopez Obrador's wife, children, brother and even his cardiologist were among those selected for potential surveillance using Pegasus malware between 2016 and 2017, according to Aristegui Noticias.

At the time, Lopez Obrador was the opposition leader and political rival of Pena Nieto.

Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, cabinet ministers and other officials of the current government were also identified as potential targets, it said.

There was a "persecutory practice of political espionage used by the old regime," Sheinbaum told Aristegui Noticias, whose director Carmen Aristegui also appears to have been targeted.

Explore further Journalists, activists ensnared in Israeli spyware scandal

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The pronoun provision at issue here tests the limits of the governments authority to restrict pure speech that, while potentially offensive or harassing to the listener, does not necessarily create a hostile environment," she wrote, adding italics to potentially and necessarily.

Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, who carried the law, said deliberately using the wrong name or pronoun is straight up harassment and erases an individuals fundamental humanity.

Rick Chavez Zbur, executive director of Equality California, which bills itself as the nation's largest statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization, said using the wrong name and pronoun is a hateful act that denies someone their dignity and truth and can cause depression and even suicides.

Both said they will fight the ruling, without being specific on what that would mean.

That is a decision for the state attorney generals office, which defended the law in court, said Equality California spokesman Joshua Stickney.

The attorney general's office said it is reviewing the decision and considering its next steps.
"It is time that these writers are asked tough questions by serious historians about their research and thesis," Patrick said in a statement.

"I have asked the University of Texas if they would host a panel with the 'Forget the Alamo' authors alongside history experts to explore scholarship of this book, debate the facts and get to the truth."

One of the co-authors of the Alamo book, Chris Tomlinson, a Houston Chronicle business writer, said Patrick is the only one who would get schooled.

"He's clearly not read the book, otherwise he'd know the state's top historians are already in the book," Tomlinson said.

"I think he's being called out for promising to defend freedom of speech in his emails, then canceling our event hours later," Tomlinson said. " I think he's feeling pressure from the ACLU and our letter demanding that they reinstate our event."

The ACLU sent a letter Wednesday to the Bullock Museum's director, Margaret Koch, and the preservation board, comparing the silencing of the authors to the "censorship imposed by authoritarian regimes."
Fiscus, who is a pediatrician, knows this deeply. In interviews following her firing, she has said that her dismissal is symptomatic of a trend around the country that has resulted, as of May, in more than 250 public health officials leaving their jobs  either by firing or through protest resignations.

She says Tennessee, which initially boasted one of the highest vaccination rates, is bowing to saber-rattling of some of our legislators who felt that it was inappropriate to share the Mature Minor Doctrine that has been Tennessee Supreme Court case law since 1987.

Thanks, surely, to political rhetoric, Tennessees fully vaccinated rate is about 38%, compared with roughly 48% nationwide, just as the more transmissible delta variant is sweeping the nation. To deal with this looming crisis, Tennessee has halted all vaccine outreach to adolescents, not only those related to COVID-19.

As an admittedly happy coronavirus-vaccinated human being, who is also inoculated by time against the demands of omniscient teenagers, its easy for me to insist that parents ought to get their kids, as well as themselves, vaccinated. But we all know this mess is more complicated than that.
The U.S. government and its key allies, including the European Union, the U.K., and NATO, formally attributed the massive cyberattack against Microsoft Exchange email servers to state-sponsored hacking crews working affiliated with the People's Republic of China's Ministry of State Security (MSS).

In a statement issued by the White House on Monday, the administration said, "with a high degree of confidence that malicious cyber actors affiliated with PRC's MSS conducted cyber-espionage operations utilizing the zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server disclosed in early March 2021. The U.K. government accused Beijing of a "pervasive pattern of hacking" and "systemic cyber sabotage."

The sweeping espionage campaign exploited four previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange software and is believed to have hit at least 30,000 organizations in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands more worldwide. Microsoft identified the group behind the hack as a skilled government-backed actor operating out of China named Hafnium.

Calling it "the most significant and widespread cyber intrusion against the U.K. and allies," the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) said the attack was highly likely to enable "acquiring personally identifiable information and intellectual property."

In addition, the MSS was also outed as the party behind a series of malicious cyber activities tracked under the monikers "APT40" and "APT31," with the U.K. attributing the groups for targeting maritime industries and naval defence contractors in the U.S. and Europe, and as well as for executing the attack on the Finnish parliament in 2020.

Also, on Monday, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), National Security Agency (NSA), and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released a joint advisory listing over 50 tactics, techniques, and procedures employed by APT40 and other Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors.

"It has been a few months since attackers exploited the Hafnium related bugs in Exchange to deploy ransomware, like DearCry and Black Kingdom," Mark Loman, director of engineering at Sophos, said in an emailed statement. "In general, to protect themselves, ransomware operators typically operate from the dark web, or via one or more compromised servers hosted in countries other than the physical location of the attackers. This makes attack attribution hard, but not impossible."

US Indicts Members of APT 40 Chinese Hacking Group

In a related development, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) pressed criminal charges against four MSS hackers belonging to the APT40 group concerning a multiyear campaign targeting foreign governments and entities in maritime, aviation, defense, education, and healthcare sectors in the least a dozen countries to facilitate the theft of trade secrets, intellectual property, and high-value information.

Separately, the NCSC also announced that a group known as "APT10" acted on behalf of the MSS to carry out a sustained cyber campaign focused on large-scale service providers with the goal of seeking to gain access to commercial secrets and intellectual property data in Europe, Asia, and the U.S.

"APT 10 has an enduring relationship with the Chinese Ministry of State Security, and operates to meet Chinese State requirements," the intelligence agency said.

In a press statement, the European Union urged Chinese authorities to take action against malicious cyber activities undertaken from its territory, stating the Microsoft Exchange server hacks resulted in security risks and significant economic loss for government institutions and private companies.

The Chinese government has repeatedly denied claims of state-sponsored intrusions. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, according to the Associated Press, painted China as "a severe victim of the U.S. cyber theft, eavesdropping, and surveillance," noting that the "U.S. has repeatedly made groundless attacks and malicious smear against China on cybersecurity."

"The PRC has fostered an intelligence enterprise that includes contract hackers who also conduct unsanctioned cyber operations worldwide, including for their own personal profit," the White House said, adding "hackers with a history of working for the PRC Ministry of State Security (MSS) have engaged in ransomware attacks, cyber enabled extortion, cryptojacking, and rank theft from victims around the world, all for financial gain."

Update: Speaking at a press conference, Zhao Lijian, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected accusations that Beijing was behind the global cyber hacking campaign targeting Microsoft Exchange servers and accused the U.S. of being the world's largest source of attacks in cyberspace.

"China firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks. It will never encourage, support or condone cyber attacks. This position has been consistent and clear," Lijian said. "Given the virtual nature of cyberspace and the fact that there are all kinds of online actors who are difficult to trace, it's important to have enough evidence when investigating and identifying cyber-related incidents. It requires extra prudence when linking cyber attacks with the government of any country. The so-called technical details released by the U.S. side do not constitute a complete chain of evidence."
NEW YORK (AP)  Prince Harry is writing what his publisher is calling an "intimate and heartfelt memoir."

Random House expects to release the book, currently untitled, late in 2022.

"I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become," the Duke of Sussex, 36, said in a statement Monday. "I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think. I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful."

Financial terms were not disclosed. Prince Harry will donate proceeds to charity, according to Random House.

"Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him," Random House announced.
Missouri is a concern for CDHD because of its proximity to Nebraska.

Theyre having quite a time managing their patients and even providing hospital beds for those patients, Anderson said.

If you know the world today, there are no borders. People travel all the time. So the variants are going to spread, and were going to have to deal with it.

Students

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A deadline is nearing for students to become vaccinated in time for school.

Students older than 12 have to get their first shot, then wait three weeks for the second shot, and then another two weeks for the vaccine to take effect, Anderson explained.

School may start in a month or less for some of these kids. Were in a race against the clock to get kids vaccinated, she said. We are working very closely with the schools to help them develop their safety plans and their contingency plans.

Students primarily contract COVID-19 from the community, and not from being in school.
There are a lot of people in this town who have chickens and dont have an acre of land, she said.

Leverington also described the code as discriminatory.

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My neighbor next door has four kids, they do 4-H, and she wants to get chickens so they can do that, she said. They want to get into animals, but they cant do pigs or cows, because theyre on a half-acre.

The code is also unfair to Grand Islands mixed-culture community, Leverington argued.

A lot of people, they just dont understand the guidelines, she said. They want to get chickens and they have them now, and they want more and live in town. Its like, we cant sell you more chickens.

Leverington suggested changing the code to allow two chickens for under one acre of land.

Revise it somehow so more people are able to have them, she said. Kids can have them in 4-H. Theyre more sustainable, as far as a source of food.

She added, I just know theres a lot of people who would like to be able to have chickens that cant because of the land they live on.
But like the Trump administration before it, the Biden administration regards the Nord Stream 2 project as a threat to European energy security and has imposed sanctions on some of those involved in building it.

We continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Price said. We view it as a Kremlin geopolitical project that is intended to expand Russias influence over Europes energy resources and to circumvent Ukraine. We have made no bones about the fact that it is a bad deal for Germany, it is a bad deal for Ukraine and for Europe more broadly.

Still, Biden earlier this year waived sanctions against the German company constructing the pipeline and its top executives, drawing angry responses from members of Congress and disappointment from Ukraine and Poland. State Department counselor Derek Chollet is visiting Kyiv and Warsaw on Tuesday and Wednesday to brief officials there on developments.

Administration officials have defended the waivers, saying they can be rescinded at any time and that that threat actually gives the U.S. more leverage. That argument has been scoffed at by pipeline opponents, although Price said imposing the sanction would have been counter-productive.
YORK  Fernando Servin Jr., 20, a former York College student, has pleaded not guilty in a case involving robbery, assault, fraud, conspiracy and theft.

The case began when the York Police Department was dispatched to 6 Arbor Court in reference to an assault that took place on the college campus, according to the probable cause affidavit filed with the York County Court.

The alleged victim told police he was on a walk, listening to music, around 5 a.m., and was in the area of the colleges prayer chapel when someone grabbed him from behind and pushed him to the ground. Two individuals punched and kicked him while he was on the ground. He attempted to fight back but could not. He sustained superficial abrasions to both knees. He stated that being punched and kicked caused him pain. The two began going through his pockets but he did not have anything in them. They took the hat he was wearing, which was then on the ground, and ran away.

The victim said there were four in the group. Only two assaulted him and deprived him of his property by force, the officers report says. He was able to provide descriptions of the individuals. He said he recognized all four as York College students as he works in the cafeteria and has seen them before.
Dubbed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as chronically homeless, these individuals face a gauntlet of obstacles in the quest for a safe place to live. HUDs endless End Homelessness in 10 Years campaigns, despite efforts by well-intentioned individuals and agencies, failed to overcome decades of budget cuts and congressional antipathy toward the broken and broke men and women wandering the streets.

Lesser known, though, is how HUDs policies grow homelessness. Millions of people not in HUD-funded shelters (for reasons including capacity and inflexible regulations) fail to qualify as homeless by HUD, and thus are ineligible for assistance. As Jani Koester, a longtime advocate for students experiencing homelessness in Madison, told me, If you are self-paying in a motel or doubled up, you are given a few phone numbers for other resources but not included in the system for HUD housing supports. Koester convened a committee to address the invisible homeless family and youth population across Dane County.

Why expand services for those who lack places of their own to live? Because research confirms that family and youth homelessness becomes the unwitting feeder system for adults on the streets. Trauma and instability experienced by youngsters can fester into adult homelessness. As I interview parents, I ask if they were homeless as kids. Many were.
The new Life, Health and Inclusion category is getting the most reaction. As this years winner, Virginia earned points for its voting rights and anti-discrimination laws, two areas that have seen significant change since Democrats took complete control of state government in 2019.

And, of course, while the award is supposed to be devoid of politics, Gov. Ralph Northam was quick to take credit for Virginias No. 1 ranking.

When you do the right thing for people its not only right for them but its good for business, and weve proven it, Northam told CNBC on Tuesday.

Yes, Virginia went through some tough times and Virginians stuck with me. I committed to dealing with equity, to addressing numerous inequities we have in Virginia, Northam said.

Northam went on to say, Virginia is promoting making it easier to vote while other states are not. Given that voting rights is one of the most contentious political issues today, the insertion of politics into a non-political award is not surprising given the fact that two of Virginias top competitors for business are Texas and Georgia, which have been accused by many of increasing voter restrictions.

Northam has vowed to use the remainder of his term to work toward equity in the state.
The percentage of Texas Covid-19 tests coming back positive is now at levels considered red flags by Gov. Greg Abbott and the Trump administration during the height of the pandemic. State officials and virologists say the highly contagious delta variant is fueling the rise in new cases and hospitalizations, especially among the unvaccinated. The delta variant also is capable of infecting the vaccinated, considered breakthrough infections, although the vaccinated experience only mild cases. Should the public return to pandemic safety measures such as mask wearing in public places?

You voted:
Paris, TX (75460)

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Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High 93F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

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"We're very confined on our space availability, it's a narrow corridor, it's very tight," Bollman said.

Amtrak users, Carbondale residents and the general public can also weigh in on aesthetics, layout and the overall look and design.

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This public hearing is specifically designed for public feedback  and any additional public hearings will be likely be informative in nature with a presentation on a final design, Bollmann added.

City officials said earlier this year that a preliminary design is expected to be available for review by the Carbondale City Council in late 2021.

The project budget is about $17.3 million, mostly funded by federal and state dollars. In November 2019, the city was awarded a $13.9 million dollar grant for the design and construction of this project through the U.S. Department of Transportations Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development, or BUILD, program. And, in December 2020, the IDOT Transit Improvement Program contributed an additional $2.8 million dollars towards the project.

The new transportation center will be constructed in downtown Carbondale on the east side of South Illinois Avenue. City leaders expect construction to begin in fall 2022.
U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, speaks on the Senate floor about gun violence in America, days after a shooting outside a Washington Nationals game. "The sad reality is gun violence has become as American as baseball," Durbin said. "The question before this Senate again and again and agai

Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder was on hand Monday to greet Amtrak customers at Springfield's downtown train station as all Lincoln Service round trips between Chicago and St. Louis returned to full service.

The Illinois Department of Transportation said the Lincoln Service, Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr and Illini/Saluki state-supported Amtrak trains all resumed full-service Monday after reductions of one-half related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Service levels were reduced in March 2020, but full service was able to resume because of the reduction in COVID-19 cases and widespread availability of the coronavirus vaccine, IDOT spokesman Paul Wappel said.

There will be five daily round trips between Chicago and St. Louis (including the Amtrak national Texas Eagle), with intermediate stops that include Springfield and Normal.

Two daily round trips between Chicago and Quincy (Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr), with intermediate stops that include Macomb and Galesburg, are scheduled.

There also will be three daily round trips between Chicago and Carbondale (including the Amtrak national City of New Orleans).

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A staff member has filed suit against the office of U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, claiming racial discrimination and retaliation by a supervisor in his office.

Patrice Campbell, a constituent services representative in Lincolnshire and the offices only Black employee, according to the federal lawsuit, claimed that on March 3, supervisor Karyn Davidman, while talking about using lanyards to secure face masks, told her, You are going to have to get a rope and put it around your neck.

Taken aback by what she took as a reference to lynching, Campbell objected and said that she cannot say things like that, and explained that the rope to which Davidman referred is called a lanyard, the suit stated.

The next day, on a joint video conference, Davidman insisted that Campbell show her face on the video, and recounted the incident and laughed hysterically, adding that her husband also told her the comment was inappropriate, according to the suit.

Afterward, Davidman called Campbell to tell her, You should have seen your face when I told that story! the suit stated.
COLUMBIA  Todays employers agree that soft skills are a key component in hiring and promotion decisions. With companies anxious to offer testing and training for individuals, it can be challenging for employers to really understand the skills of a potential employee.

The State Workforce Development Board (SWDB), in partnership with WIN Learning, has responded with the new SC Essential Soft Skills Certificate.

Recognizing both the importance of these skills and the need to easily identify a credential as meeting a standard or expectation for the workplace, the SWDB prioritized the support of soft skills instruction with the development of a standard. Six skills were identified that add value in the workplace, based on real-time statistics, key skills listed in job descriptions and feedback from South Carolina employers. Having concluded this project, the board is now excited to announce this statewide SC Essential Soft Skills Certificate, facilitated by WIN Learning, which ultimately provides a consistent benchmark that benefits both job seekers and employers.
Clemsons David Coyle said, It has all the characteristics of a noxious weed. Hes assistant professor of forest health and invasive species at Clemson.

Bradford pears were once touted as sterile, but it turns out that if pollen from any other Pyrus species gets into Bradford pear flowers, the trees can make viable seeds. Those seeds are then eaten by birds and other animals and spread across the Southeastern landscape, contributing directly to what Clemson calls one of the worst invasive plant species in the region  the Callery pear.

Noxious weeds are weeds that have been designated by agricultural or other governing authorities as plants that are injurious to crops, ecosystems, humans or livestock.

I think the impacts of it as it gets out into the natural landscape are pretty evident, Coyle said. Frankly, there are a lot better things that people could put in their yards. There are a lot of good natives they should probably plant instead.

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Not only do Callery pears have thorns that can damage everything from tractor tires to livestock, but they also damage the ecosystem by crowding out native plants while providing little to no food for insects.
Both pumps were clogged at the wastewater plant but were unclogged Monday, and there were no issues at the wastewater treatment plant, Clemons said.

Regarding the water department, she said, The DHEC consent fine of $6,300 is paid in full as of June 24.

We actually overpaid, so we will receive a refund in the amount of $500, she added.

She next stated that the Harrison Avenue water line improvement project is well under way.

American Engineer met with SCDOT July 7 to resolve right of way and service meter related conflicts and to get approval to cross over Hwy. 332 to install the new PVC water lines. All the drawings are complete, she said.

I will be meeting with the engineer on Friday, July 16 to actually review the drawings and finalize the calculations and permit-related items to submit to regulatory agencies. Once the permit is approved, then we will start the bidding process for the Harrison Avenue water line improvement project," Clemons added.
A majority of voters believe that Democrats engage in cancel culture more often, and 49% of Democrats said they wanted individuals to be held accountable for things they did within the last 10 years or for the rest of their lives  even if it means dismissing beloved pop culture icons like The Bachelors Chris Harrison.

Despite this, fortunately only a single-digit percentage of all voters believe that releasing personal information, known as "doxing," should be legal.

The majority of Americans want protections from those who would strip them of the dignity of work and the ability to provide for their families simply for voicing a political opinion. An overwhelming majority of voters agree  no one should fear job loss, or that their home address or personal information will be splashed all over the internet simply because they disagree with an idea popularized by the media.

With poll numbers like these, the left may just be bullying themselves out of popularity, along with the corporations falling over themselves to prostrate themselves before the mob. No American should be afraid to talk to their own family about their deeply held beliefs. People are being bullied for expressing their opinions, even with friends and family. Its driving a wedge between Americans and keeps our children from learning how to engage in healthy debate.

Every generation has its political issues and disagreements. But cancel culture cannot and should not define us. We owe it to ourselves and to our children to stop this trend before it becomes the norm. As the radical left continues to move the goal post of whats acceptable in public discourse, concerned Americans should continue to stand strong in the face of adversity and defend those who dare to take a stand and speak their mind.

Stefani Buhajla is the communications director at the Foundation for Government Accountability. She wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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While press and public are one in the same in the right of access to their government, judges and lawmakers historically have recognized the need for certain reporting privileges if journalists are to fulfill their mission. One is limited immunity from being summoned to court to testify about sources and provide information available by other means.

In South Carolina, the General Assembly in the 1990s passed a shield law. It grants news organizations limited protection against orders to testify and turn over information in cases about which they have reported. The law remains important.

As researchers and investigators in their own right, reporters gather information pertaining to many incidents that end up in the court system. To routinely compel reporters to come forward with that information excuses the legal community from doing its homework and endangers the media's ability to gather information.

If you speak to a reporter and he or she promises that something you say will not be published, the promise is to be upheld. If it's not, among the least of your actions is a vow never to speak with the reporter again.
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Today

Sunny skies. High 91F. Winds light and variable.

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.

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Sunny, along with a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds light and variable.
Today

Sunny. High 91F. Winds light and variable.

Tonight

Clear. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.

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Before the mass layoffs of 2020, one-sixth of Wyomings jobs and more than a quarter of its GDP came from the oil and gas industry.

A report released Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute found that in 2019, the industry directly supported 28,270 jobs  6.8% of the states total employment. It generated 18% of Wyomings GDP and 17.3% of its labor income, including wages, salaries, benefits and proprietors income.

Through indirect impacts, which occur along the supply chain, and induced impacts, which come from the spending of industry-related earnings, oil and gas supported another 9.8% of jobs, 8.3% of GDP and 8.3% of labor income in the state.

Nationally, the industry impacted 5.6% of U.S. jobs, 7.9% of GDP and 6.8% of labor income, according to the report.

Stepping back from those specific numbers, I think what this study tells us is that the oil and natural gas industry will be essential in the post-pandemic recovery, said Frank Macchiarola, APIs senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs. Not just in creating good paying jobs and economic growth, but also in providing for low-cost energy for the American people.
Education

top story

Virtual education in Wyoming grew more than 300% between 2020 and 2021, growth could urge legislative action

Cayla Nimmo, Star-Tribune Teachers at Park Elementary School in Casper lead students by grade into the school on Sept. 2, 2020. Virtual education in Wyoming grew more than 300% between 2020 and 2021.

Before the coronavirus pandemic reached Wyoming in March 2020, just over 1,000 students statewide were enrolled in a virtual education program. Three districts had statewide virtual programs  meaning students from anywhere in Wyoming can enroll  and five districts had local options.

In the past year the number of virtual students enrolled grew by more than 300%  to more than 5,400 for the 2020-2021 academic year. The number of districts offering these programs also increased.

For the 2020-2021 school year, four districts offered statewide programming and 10 had their own local offerings.

Those figures were presented to the legislatures Joint Education Committee on Monday as part of a broad discussion on an array of education-related topics.

While lawmakers took no formal action regarding virtual education Monday, the dramatic increase in participation led lawmakers to question how accurately the programs are funded. Committee members said the issue could eventually warrant a new piece of legislation.

Were concerned here that basically were paying for a bunch of things that are not real costs, Co-chair Charlie Scott said. My recommendation to the state department of education is it would be useful if you guys looked at this and came up with a recommendation, because we might be capable of developing our own recommendation and you may or may not like what we come up with.

The question is whether virtual programs are less costly, and if so, can the state leverage those savings?

The short answer to both questions is no, according to testimony from experts.

The money Wyomings K-12 schools receive from the state is calculated based on the districts average enrollment, formally called average daily membership, or ADM, explained Wyoming Department of Education chief policy officer Kari Eakins. Because every virtual program in Wyoming is statutorily tied to a brick-and-mortar school, theyre paid for the same way.

Committee members wondered if, because virtual students arent contributing to wear and tear on facilities, those programs should receive less money than they currently do.

As we potentially shift to more and more virtual, what is the equity of funding there? Rep. Albert Sommers, R-Pinedale, asked.

Answering that question with enough precision to meet requirements in the state constitution would require an outside consultant, committee member Sen. Chris Rothfuss, D-Laramie, added.

But the state has already received a recommendation from the consultant it pays roughly every five years to review the states K-12 funding model. That consultant in a 2020 report recommended the state not change how virtual education programs are paid for, according to the legislative service offices Matt Willmarth.

One of the biggest misconceptions of virtual schools is they must be cheaper or less expensive to operate. This could not be further from the truth, said Shannon Siebert, principal of Wyoming Connections Academy  a statewide virtual education program offered by Big Horn County School District 1.

She explained that her programs costs include a significant technology platform, curriculum, educators, intervention programs and a physical office space.

As for how well these programs educate students, the data is limited.

The state began monitoring test scores of virtual students separately from the whole in 2016, so Wyoming only has a few years of information to go off of. Still, there are some trends.

Generally when it comes to the statewide assessments, virtual students tend to perform below non-virtual students, Eakins said, although there are some exceptions. Sixth, ninth and tenth-grade virtual students seem to perform better in English language arts than their non-virtual peers, for example.

Even though the data generally suggests some lower performance by these students, we do know that a lot of students really excel in these virtual education programs and that it is a fabulous option for many of our families, especially some of our ranching communities where they live in a more remote area.

Related
Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, is in bankruptcy court to settle the lawsuits it faces. Its plan calls for the Connecticut-based firm to transform into a business with profits used to fight the opioid crisis. And members of the Sackler family who own the company have agreed to give up not only the company but also control of $4.5 billion over time in a deal the company says could be worth $10 billion.

This month, it reached a breakthrough when a group of states that had opposed the plan agreed to support it.

A judge will decide after a hearing scheduled for Aug. 9 whether to accept the deal.

While lawyers for most state and local governments are now on board, the proposal does face opposition from a handful of remaining states, as well as from the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, a group of Native American tribes and some individual victims, who all say it does not hold Sackler family members accountable.

WHAT ABOUT FUTURE CASES?

None will be derailed immediately by Tuesday's news, though it's likely that a lot fewer opioid cases will go to trial eventually than otherwise would have.
Currently, the sale is slated to go through this fall.

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According to Slaton, an attempt to file a temporary restraining order in Los Angeles to pause the sale was denied earlier this year.

It has been very traumatic for me, Lund said last week. Its got some great memories and a lot of good scenery that everybody loves up there. Its prime property.

Lund has been locked in a dispute with his trustees for years over the distribution of his inheritance. Every five years between Lunds 35th and 45th birthdays  all of which have now passed  he was intended to receive around $20 million of that money.

But based on the trustees claims that he is mentally incompetent, the money has been withheld. While rejecting a settlement in 2019 which would have awarded Lund around $200 million, a judge in California ruled to appoint a guardian ad litem for Lund in the case  a move usually reserved for children or those who cant understand the proceedings themselves.

Do I want to give 200 million dollars, effectively, to someone who may suffer, on some level, from Down syndrome? Judge David Cowan said in the hearing, according to court filings. The answer is no.
Bill Novotny, Vice President of the Wyoming County Commissioners Association and longtime Republican consultant, was arrested Sunday on multiple charges while driving drunk near Buffalo.

He was charged with driving while under the influence, reckless driving, fleeing or attempting to elude police and having an open container in the vehicle. Its unclear if he was drinking from that container while driving.

His blood alcohol content was recorded twice at .186% and .187% according to court documents. The legal limit in Wyoming is 0.08%, as it is in most other states.

According to a representative at the Johnson County Detention Center, Novotny was booked into the jail on Sunday. He was released the same day on a $1,500 own recognizance bond  which means he didnt need to pay anything to get out, and wont as long as he makes all his required court appearances.

Neither Novotny nor the Johnson County Sheriff responded to multiple requests for comment.

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a call came in reporting a vehicle traveling eastbound in the westbound lane on Interstate 90, according to court documents.

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Before the coronavirus pandemic reached Wyoming in March 2020, just over 1,000 students statewide were enrolled in a virtual education program. Three districts had statewide virtual programs  meaning students from anywhere in Wyoming can enroll  and five districts had local options.

In the past year the number of virtual students enrolled grew by more than 300%  to more than 5,400 for the 2020-2021 academic year. The number of districts offering these programs also increased.

For the 2020-2021 school year, four districts offered statewide programming and 10 had their own local offerings.

Those figures were presented to the legislatures Joint Education Committee on Monday as part of a broad discussion on an array of education-related topics.

While lawmakers took no formal action regarding virtual education Monday, the dramatic increase in participation led lawmakers to question how accurately the programs are funded. Committee members said the issue could eventually warrant a new piece of legislation.
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Wyomings Republican primaries with this many candidates have a history of handing the victory to one candidate, while the rest of the field splits the vote, getting only small portions of the electorate.

Trump acknowledged this trend in his statement.

Remember though, in the end we just want ONE CANDIDATE running against Cheney, Trump said in his statement. Ill be meeting with some of her opponents in Bedminster next week and will be making my decision on who to endorse in the next few months. JUST ONE CANDIDATE.

This is not the first time Trump has referenced the issues that come along with a wide campaign field.

She is so low that her only chance would be if vast numbers of people run against her which, hopefully, wont happen, he said back in early May.

Cheney and Trumps bad blood was spurred by Cheneys vote to impeach Trump following the Jan. 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. Cheney was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump, as well as the highest-ranking Republican to do so.
The state's 14-day average in total new cases is 115 per day. That number is up 53 from a month ago.

The state's number of total active cases (including probable cases) is 570. That number is up 136 from a month ago.
The University of Wyoming will get nearly $500,000 in federal dollars to send ROTC students abroad to study Arabic.

A program facilitated by the Department of Defense pays tuition and fees for students to enroll in a variety of strategic foreign-language programs at universities across the U.S. Wyoming students have participated in the program elsewhere, but this is the first time the university will host its own course.

UW will become a leader in paving the way for the creation of Arabic language study-abroad opportunities for ROTC students at universities in our region, University of Wyomings program director Eric Nigh said in a statement.

The program is called Project Global Officer, or Project GO, and provides universities across the nation with support to train ROTC students in languages from Russian to Hindi to Portuguese. Institutions including the Georgia Institute of Technology, James Madison University, Texas A&M and a litany of others have participated.

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More than 5,600 students have received scholarships through the grant since 2007, according to the program website.
The Gillette News Record wrote:

Every time the Gillette City Council discusses spending money to improve the Energy Capital Sports Complex or any number of other projects, it gets an earful from angry residents about wasteful and wanton spending.

Yet, when were gluttonous with our water consumption, where are those same people demanding we all be more responsible?
Shell Trinidad and Tobago yesterday announced the start of natural gas production from its Block 5C, off the east coast of Trinidad, which it expects to peak at about 220 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscf/d).

Shells announcement of first gas from Block 5C, known as the Project Barracuda, comes amid heightened interest in the fate of Atlantic LNGs Train 1, following reports that the first LNG facility in T&T, commissioned in 1999, will be mothballed in the coming weeks and could stay out of service for at least two years.
The rich abandon the poor on a violent and barren post-apocalyptic planet Earth for a luxurious life on a space colony floating among the stars.

Thats the intriguing premise of Trinidadian filmmaker Shaun Escaygs new popcorn-ready sci-fi thriller IKARUS.
On the sands of Manzanilla Beach on Trinidads East Coast, Spiritual Shouter Baptist believer Tameka Harris stood in the darkness before daybreak among the worshippers who had brought her there to be cleansed of her troubles.

There was a full moon and the tide was low that early morning in March.

The Government-imposed Covid-19 restrictions at that time said beaches and coastal waters were open to the public from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

However, at 4.16 a.m., Tameka slipped away from the others, shed her clothing and walked into the sea where she died.
The funeral of Haitis former president Jovenel Moise is scheduled for today in Cap Haitien, his countrys second city and his own home base.

But in his troubled country, even that event looks precarious.

On Wednesday, locals in Cap Haitien threw stones at the motorised convoy of the national police chief Leon Charles. They were angry that Charles had not prevented Moises killing on July 7, or done more to find the culprits.
"A gunshot wound is a gunshot wound," Ryan told the Star. "You can call it superficial, but getting shot is getting shot."

Ryan also shared the news with his employees of the body that crews discovered in the burned-out house, when it was finally safe for them to enter; the 20- and 21-year-old American Medical Response EMTs who were in the hospital in critical condition after being shot by the same gunman; and the community member who was killed in the incident while trying to help.

"There's no more empty and helpless feeling than when you're listening to your crews in peril and not being able to do anything about it," Ryan said in a Monday news conference. "It's difficult to not be intensely angry about what occurred."

While firefighters are used to dealing with trauma on an everyday basis, Sunday's events were "a lot to unpack," Ryan said.

"I let them know our people were safe and our captain was expected to make a full recovery," Ryan said. "And I told them to be sure to take care of each other."

While attacks against first responders aren't new, they are new to Tucson, Ryan said, adding that he's already been contacted by fire chiefs from around the United States and Canada.
I make check-in calls to see if they want to sign up for the Poz Cafe and find out if they need anything. It is also a social contact, and many share their challenges; they are very appreciative of the phone calls, said MacBeth, 80.

Ultimately, the former social worker said that she finds the variety of volunteer work with TIHAN gratifying.

I get back more than I give. I have made wonderful lifelong friends, and some of the CarePartners end up being volunteers, too, so it is like one big family. Whenever we have the Poz Cafe in person, it is just hug after hug after hug. I look forward to when we can return to that, said MacBeth.

She also credits the family environment to the fact that TIHAN is a small nonprofit.

This is so hands-on and you cant get that in a large charity. You get more bang for your buck here and get the feeling that whatever you give back is much greater, said MacBeth.

The TIHAN community also extends far beyond Tucson, according to MacBeth.

Volunteers stay involved even if they leave Tucson. We had one volunteer move to New Jersey and she is helping with Treasures from there. Once you are part of TIHAN, it is with you forever, she said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  About 2,500 Afghans who worked for the U.S. government will be evacuated to a military base in Virginia along with their families pending approval of their visas, the Biden administration said Monday as the administration rapidly moves to complete the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Members of Congress have expressed alarm about the fate of Afghans who worked for the U.S. over the past 20 years, particularly as the Taliban have stepped up military operations against the Afghan government, seizing control of major portions of the country as U.S. troops withdraw.

The Afghans will be temporarily housed at Fort Lee, a sprawling Army base south of Richmond starting next week, according to a Defense Department notice sent to Congress. The administration announced earlier this month that it would soon begin relocating Afghan visa seekers under an initiative known as Operation Allies Refuge.

The group includes 700 Afghans who worked for the U.S. and roughly 1,800 family members.

These are brave Afghans and their families, as we have said, whose service to the United States has been certified by the embassy in Kabul, and who have completed thorough security vetting processes, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)  A Democratic lawmaker in Delaware has apologized for using a racist and sexist slur to refer to sex workers, saying he dehumanized an entire culture.

State Rep. Gerald Brady of Wilmington made the comments in a June 27 email he inadvertently sent to an advocate for decriminalizing prostitution.

The News Journal of Wilmington reported that the advocate had sent Brady a Princeton University study that suggested the presence of strip clubs led to a decrease in sex crimes in a New York City police precinct. The person connected the study to a 30-year period in Rhode Island during which indoor prostitution in massage parlors and strip clubs was decriminalized, and called on Delaware lawmakers to do something similar to protect sex workers.

The study sent to Brady did not directly mention Asian women in relation to sex work and strip clubs. It contained a single reference citation to a 2018 analysis of sex crimes and prostitution in South Korea in a publication called Asian Development Perspectives.

Is the dude basically saying, if we provide free (sex acts) for Uncle Pervie there will be few rapes and few (a slur for Chinese women) will be shipped in CONEX containers to the Port of Wilmington?? Brady replied from his official government email address.
Under legislative rules, ethics committee investigations can only be triggered if a lawmaker files a formal complaint against a colleague. Those complaints aren't made public unless the committee finds there is probable cause to hold a hearing on the matter, so its unclear if any complaints have been made about other lawmakers.

After the harassment was revealed, hundreds of people reached out to legislative leaders to complain about Giddings' actions. Residents also called for the U.S. Air Force Academy to investigate whether Giddings, who is a major in the Air Force Reserves, violated any military rules.

The Air Force acknowledged in June that an assessment is ongoing, but because it's subject to federal privacy rules, it's not clear if that review resulted in any findings.

The House Ethics Committee received two formal complaints about Giddings but didn't immediately release details on either, other than to say it found probable cause that misconduct may have occurred regarding a portion of each complaint.

The public ethics hearing is set for Aug. 2 at the Idaho Statehouse.
Indiana law currently requires students at state residential colleges and universities to get immunized for six diseases  diphtheria, tetanus, measles, mumps, rubella and meningitis. Students in public K-12 schools are required to get vaccinated for an additional five diseases.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, who range in age from 18 to 39, maintain that their age group is at low risk of severe cases of COVID-19 and that they face possible dangers from the vaccine that is being administered under federal emergency use authorization.

Leichty, who became a federal judge in 2019 after his nomination by then-President Donald Trump, faulted a doctor who testified against IUs policy for using soft and inconsequential language and cited the extensive review by federal health agencies to confirm the safety of the three available COVID-19 vaccines.

Progress has been made because of the vaccine, not despite it, Leichty wrote. To the extent that lingering medical and scientific debate remain  the court remains resolved that Indiana University has acted reasonably here in pursuing public health and safety for its campus communities.
More than 737,000 SCE&G customers had already paid more than $2 billion toward the project, which never generated any power. Customers did ultimately see retroactive credits applied to bills after lawmakers passed a temporary rate cut that knocked about $25 a month off the average residential customers bill.

SCANA shareholders accused the company of assuring them the project was above board, even as costs and delays spiraled out of control. This, investors alleged, caused SCANA stock to be traded at artificially inflated prices, numbers that plummeted once the project was mothballed. In July 2016, SCANA stock was trading at $76.12 a share but dropped more than 50% after news of the project's failure, and the investigations surrounding it, became public, according to the investors' attorneys.

The settlement includes $160 million in cash, with the remaining $32.5 million covered by cash or stock in Dominion Energy. The Virginia-based company took over SCANA in 2019, paying more than $6.8 billion to buy out the company's stock and assuming its consolidated net debts of $6.6 billion.

Claimants will be required to cash their checks within 120 days or forfeit the award, according to the order.
A sergeant on scene spoke with Mr. Leroux on his cellphone and tried to convince him to exit the vehicle in a safe manner, Jones said. However, he was not cooperative.

Before a negotiator arrives, Jones said, there was a use of force." He didn't describe what led to shots being fired by police officers. He said several officers tended to Leroux until emergency personnel could arrive. Leroux was taken to a local hospital, where he died, Jones said. A loaded Glock 47 was recovered from the scene, according to the chief.

The Leroux family was offered the chance to see the video from the body-worn cameras, and Jones said they accepted, but he added that the video wouldn't tell the entire story.

Body-worn cameras are a helpful tool, but they do not replace the human eye and what the officers actually saw, he said, noting that County Executive Marc Elrich has also seen the video.

When you get to see the video, no one would have expected this outcome from the way the video began, Elrich said. It makes it all the more tragic.

One phone number listed for the Leroux family was not in service and no one responded immediately to a request for comment at a second number.
Prosecutors said Levashov had also moderated online forums used to sell and trade stolen identities and credit card numbers.

Levashov was arrested in April 2017 while vacationing in Spain. His arrest was one of a series that targeted Russian cybercriminals outside their homeland, which has no extradition agreement with the United States.

Russian authorities fought his extradition, but Levashov was eventually transferred to the U.S. He was prosecuted in Connecticut because the FBIs New Haven office investigated the case through its Connecticut Cyber Task Force and some of the hijacked computers were located in this state, authorities said.

Levashov has been out of prison on electronic monitoring since January 2020. Chatigny said his isolation away from his wife and young child during the pandemic was also a factor in the sentencing.
By the time the Bootleg Fire is extinguished months from now, it will likely be as big or bigger than those fires, but research shows that Oregon once experienced megafires much larger than these fairly often, Johnston said.

I think its important for us to take the long view of wildfire. In the context of the last couple hundreds years, the Bootleg Fire is not large, he said. One of the things my lab group does is reconstruct historical fires, and fires that were burning in that area in the 1600s and 1700s were just as big as the Bootleg Fire or bigger.

That's little reassurance for fire crews battling the current blaze, which is 25% contained.

On Monday, flames forced the evacuation of a wildlife research station as firefighters had to retreat from the flames for the ninth consecutive day due to erratic and dangerous fire behavior. Sycan Marsh hosts thousands of migrating and nesting birds and is a key research station on wetland restoration in the upper reaches of the Klamath Basin.

Fire pushed by winds and fueled by bone-dry conditions jumped fire-retardant containment lines and pushed up to 4 miles into new territory, authorities said.
Ten years ago: Six Republican presidential hopefuls traded tweets in the first presidential debate conducted through Twitter, outlining their agendas across the popular social media service. NBA star Yao Ming announced his retirement in his hometown of Shanghai.

Five years ago: Undercutting calls for Republican unity, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz stubbornly refused to endorse Donald Trump as he addressed the GOP convention in Cleveland, igniting thunderous boos from furious delegates as he encouraged Americans to simply vote your conscience in November. A federal appeals court ruled that Texas strict voter ID law discriminated against minorities and the poor and had to be weakened before the November elections. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (REH-jehp TY-ihp UR-doh-wahn) declared a three-month state of emergency following a botched coup attempt.

One year ago: Scientists at Oxford University said their experimental coronavirus vaccine had been shown in an early trial to prompt a protective immune response in hundreds of people who got the shot.

Todays Birthdays: Actor-singer Sally Ann Howes is 91. Author Cormac McCarthy is 88. Former Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., is 85. Artist Judy Chicago is 82. Rock musician John Lodge (The Moody Blues) is 78. Country singer T.G. Sheppard is 77. Singer Kim Carnes is 76. Rock musician Carlos Santana is 74. Rock musician Jay Jay French (Twisted Sister) is 69. Rock musician Paul Cook (The Sex Pistols, Man Raze) is 65. Actor Donna Dixon is 64. Rock musician Mick MacNeil (Simple Minds) is 63. Country singer Radney Foster is 62. Actor Frank Whaley is 58. Actor Dean Winters is 57. Rock musician Stone Gossard (Pearl Jam) is 55. Actor Reed Diamond is 54. Actor Josh Holloway is 52. Singer Vitamin C is 52. Actor Sandra Oh is 50. Actor Omar Epps is 48. Actor Simon Rex is 47. Actor Judy Greer is 46. Actor Charlie Korsmo is 43. Singer Elliott Yamin (yah-MEEN) (American Idol) is 43. Supermodel Gisele Bundchen is 41. Rock musician Mike Kennerty (The All-American Rejects) is 41. Actor Percy Daggs III is 39. Actor John Francis Daley is 36. Dancer-singer-actor Julianne Hough is 33. Washington Nationals pitcher Stephen Strasburg is 33.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Lithuania will set up its office in Taiwan in the autumn, Wu said.

I therefore believe that Taiwan and Lithuanias economic and trade exchanges, cooperation in various fields, as well as the friendships between people will all be enhanced, despite their geographical distance, Wu said.

The last time Taiwan established a representative office in Europe was in 2003 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Along with poaching Taiwan's formal diplomatic partners, China has used its diplomatic and economic heft to prevent or shrink unofficial relations between the island and foreign nations. In February, Guyana canceled permission for Taiwan to open a trade and investment office in the South American country under pressure from China.

In Beijing on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, said on social media that China urged Lithuania to adhere to the one-China principle and not send the wrong signals to forces behind Taiwan independence."

Zhu did not specify any steps China would take in retaliation, but said nothing Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party-led government does would change the fact that Taiwan is a part of China."

Taiwan has long sought closer relations with the Baltic states, citing their past experiences under authoritarian rule and embrace of multiparty democracy and liberal values.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
TOKYO (AP)  A Ugandan athlete who fled during pre-Olympics training in western Japan last week has been found and is being interviewed by police, officials said Tuesday.

Mie prefectural police in central Japan said 20-year-old weightlifter Julius Ssekitoleko was in the Yokkaichi city, 170 kilometers (105 miles) east of his host town in western Japan. Police are asking him what happened since he fled his hotel in Izumisano in the Osaka prefecture Friday, leaving behind a note saying he didn't want to return to his country.

Ssekitoleko left behind his luggage and a note saying he wanted to stay in Japan and work, Izumisano officials said. He did not meet Olympic standards in the latest international rankings released after he arrived Japan and was to return home this week.

The pandemic-delayed Olympics open Friday despite mounting concern about an upsurge of infections in Tokyo, which on Tuesday reported 1,387 cases, up 557 from a week ago.

On their arrival on June 19 at Narita International Airport, a member of the team tested positive and was quarantined, while the remaining eight members were allowed to travel more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) on a chartered bus to Izumisano.
The Arizona Daily Star Editorial team chats with Kristen Cook, former Star reporter and now author of two books, "This." and That."
Green Days surprise visit to Tulsa included a trip to the Outsiders House Museum.

Green Day, a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame band that will soon christen a new tour in the Dallas area, performed a Tuesday night show at historic Cains Ballroom in Tulsa.

With time to burn in Tulsa before the Tuesday show, what did band members from Green Day do? They toured an attraction that has become a hotspot for celebrity visits (Leonardo DiCaprio popped up recently at the Outsiders House Museum).

On Monday evening, Danny OConnor and Donnie Rich posted photos of Green Day at the Outsiders House Museum. Its a museum dedicated to The Outsiders, a 1983 movie that helped launched the careers of a slew of young actors, and the S.E. Hinton book that inspired the film. The home-that-became-a-museum was a filming site during the making of The Outsiders, serving as the home of a greaser family.

One day after the Green Day visit, O'Connor posted that it was the second time the group had been to the Outsiders House Museum. He said the first time was in 2015, just weeks after the house had been acquired and renovations had begun. "So thanks again Green Day for stopping by to see it completed. Stay Gold!"
A man whose murder conviction and life prison sentence were overturned on jurisdictional grounds pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to the same 2008 murder in a plea deal that will net him 18 more years behind bars.

Jimmy Glenn Hendrix, 42, admitted to fatally shooting Jerrod Young, 26, in 2008 after his state conviction and sentence were overturned in light of the U.S. Supreme Courts 2020 McGirt decision.

Specifically, Hendrix pleaded guilty to one count of causing death by use of a firearm while committing second-degree murder in Indian Country.

His sentencing in Tulsa federal court is scheduled for Oct. 26, when a judge will decide whether to accept the plea agreement.

Under that agreement, in addition to the prison term, Hendrix would also serve five years of post-custody supervision by the U.S. Probation Office.

A federal grand jury on May 3 indicted Hendrix on one count of knowingly using a firearm during a crime of violence in Indian Country that resulted in Youngs death.

An affidavit submitted in support of an arrest warrant for Hendrix indicates that Young was found March 11, 2008, on the ground at the Brandywine apartment complex in the 4000 block of South 130th East Avenue.
Its unfortunate that we know what is going to happen, we know how to prevent it, and yet we dont have the ability for people to say anything and do anything about it right now.

Clarke was referring to Senate Bill 658, which was signed into law by Gov. Kevin Stitt in late May. It prohibits schools, colleges and universities from requiring vaccination against COVID-19 and limits their ability to mandate mask-wearing except when under a state of emergency declared by the governor and after consultation with the local health department.

Any such mask mandate would have to be reconsidered at every regularly scheduled school board or higher education regents meeting.

Because of SB 658, Hofmeister is encouraging local school leaders to take advantage of $100 million in new grants for schools available through the Oklahoma State Department of Health to pay for COVID testing and school nurses.

Weve lost local control with the new law. But it means we need to lean more heavily on the other mitigation strategies, she said.

In the meantime, school district administrators across the state are beginning to update their plans for another pandemic school year.
By the time women were allowed in NASAs space program, all 13 members had aged out of eligibility.

Despite having 19,600 hours of flight under her belt, Funk never fulfilled her childhood dream of going into space  until Tuesday.

For (Funk) to get to do this after being left out of those opportunities just because of her gender really shows how far weve come in equality, Blansett said. Shes a role model for everyone.

Gathered in the Tulsa Air and Space Museums planetarium Tuesday morning, families and aficionados alike leaned back to watch New Shepards journey on the 360 degree screen. The children joined in the lift-off countdown as it reached T minus 10 seconds. Nearly 11 minutes later, Funk and the rest of the crew landed back in West Texas.

Those in the planetarium included the Roberts family, who had awakened before 6 a.m. and driven an hour and a half to watch the launch at the museum.
In the view of several of the Native citizens in the crowd, Gov. Stitt and the other panelists should have expected criticism for a lack of tribal representation on stage. They said the panelists used crime victims as pawns to express their frustration with the ruling's affirmation of tribal sovereignty.
An indefinite stay has been granted in Youngs case pending U.S. Supreme Court action in another Oklahoma-based murder case, Bosse v. Oklahoma.

The U.S. Supreme Court found in the McGirt case that Congress had never disestablished the Muscogee Nations reservation in Oklahoma, which meant any crimes involving a Native American within the Muscogee reservation were subject to federal or tribal prosecution  not state prosecution. Since that ruling last summer, an Oklahoma appellate court has ruled that it applies to the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Seminole reservations because they, also, were never disestablished by Congress.

In 2010, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had upheld a lower court ruling in Osage Nation v. Irby that that tribes reservation, at least at the surface level, was disestablished with the adoption of the Osage Allotment Act of 1906. The tribe still holds the mineral rights for all of Osage County.

A taxation case, the tribe was seeking confirmation that all of Osage County still constituted a reservation and that therefore its citizens who worked for the Osage Nation and lived within its boundaries were exempt from paying state income tax.
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has identified a man agents are searching for in connection with a Sequoyah County double shooting.

Lee King, who is known to have connections in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Houston, is the suspect in a Saturday double shooting that sent two Arkansas men to the hospital in critical condition, the OSBI said Monday in a news release.

About 8:30 p.m. Saturday, the Sequoyah County Sheriffs Office was notified that two men were lying in the roadway on Interstate 40 near Vian. Both men had been shot, the OSBI said.

Investigators believe the two men were good Samaritans who picked up King after his car ran out of gas and took him to a convenience store in Vian to buy a gas can and gasoline.

The men drove King back to his car, where one was shot in the face and the other was shot multiple times in the torso, the OSBI said. They were in critical condition, according to the news release, but were expected to survive.

Kings car matched one stolen during a Saturday morning carjacking in Oklahoma City, the OSBI reported.
At a minimum, the emergency rules would lower the accreditation status of districts found to be in violation. Educators could see their licenses suspended on the first violation.

In an interview with the Tulsas Worlds Andrea Eger, Williams Bradley said she couldnt in good faith support the law or the emergency rules.

I think the penalties are further igniting the fuel of fear in teaching the history of the United States, she said. What that is doing is placing fear and concern for teachers who are trying to educate our children and engage in critical conversations and for students to be able to bring their experiences into the classroom.

We are all talking around an issue  critical race theory  which is not taught in K-12 education. We are solving for an issue that is not present.

Williams Bradley is right. There was no emergency. There was no need for the rule. There is no need for the stipulated penalties. There is no need for the law.
Before I moved to Oklahoma, I had not heard of the Tulsa Race Massacre. When I did hear of this, it was still being referred to as a riot.

At the time of this event, radio (wasn't commercially used) and television had not yet been invented. Newspapers were the only source of information.

It has taken 100 years, but the truth is finally being exposed.

Fast forward to Jan. 6, 2021. Rioters invaded the Capitol.

Every news agency was broadcasting this insurrection in real time. The rioters themselves were live-streaming their seditious acts.

The openly stated agenda of the rioters was to murder the U.S. vice president and some members of Congress, effectively installing Donald Trump as dictator for life.

As more facts are discovered, we are learning how close we were to waking up in a fascist dictatorship.

Many politicians and TV talking heads are trying to rewrite history to downplay the insurrection as a peaceful tour or rally.

Do they not realize that while they were being sheltered and protected, the reporting of the insurrection was being broadcast all around the world.
For 30 years, an aviculturist has helped to build and restore aviaries in the Mekong Delta provinces of Vietnam. From the first attempt at drawing birds over, he has turned bird raising into his lifetime career.

Birds of all kinds were roaming an area of the Vi Thang melaleuca forest in Vi Thuy District, Hau Giang Province.

Herons, darters, gallirallus, and many more were making loud noises as they flung themselves into the foods from the aviculturist  62-year-old Le Danh Cuong.

Birds in the wild

One morning in the Vi Thang forest, the birds were crowding the place, sending a hustling aura over all those present.

Certain strangers showed up, appearing as confident as the locals.

In response to the fish crumbs for breakfast, the birds seemed nervous and were keeping the bird raiser at arms length.

When they saw Cuong, however, they came down like ducks to water.

Some well-built members were quick to snatch the better bites, leaving the weak standing on the side.

Cuong was well aware and briskly scattered more food for the miserable.'

In the bird world, there are the strong and the weak, the villains and the bullied, said Cuong.

The newcomers often have a hard time getting a good bite, but soon they will mature and will even pick on the older members.

If this is not seen to, the weak birds will get hungry and may leave due to frustration.

The local birds made friends with others from faraway places during their regular trips.

It is interesting to see all these visitors coming home with the birds nesting in the Vi Thang forest.

The birds were so overwhelming their numbers that the indigenous people had to switch their types of trees, lest the birds may destroy all the melaleuca available.

Once they have established their territory, the birds act as king of the Vi Thang forest. However, they listen to Cuong.

The bird keeper sometimes saves their lives. He provides them with food, shelter, and healthcare.

For the last 30 years, the birds of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam have gotten so used to the image of the person who feeds and protects them.

They must be in debt to him as he gave them a home when they almost lost their places.

From soldier to professional aviculturist

Cuong was a soldier in the war against the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia and on another battlefield in the north of Vietnam afterward.

In peacetime, Cuong was assigned a post at Lam Vien 19-5, a small forest located in the heart of Ca Mau City on the southern tip of Vietnam.

It was this stopover that gave him the chance to connect with the birds.

At that time, Lam Vien 19-5 was managed by Le Thi Lieu, whose husband Pham Huu Liem was head of the department of forestry there.

They were both born and bred in wartime and have dreamed of a way to make their local culture and nature known to the younger generations as well as tourists.

They chose the bird enclosure as their point of focus as it signified the uniqueness of the place.

A bird cage in the middle of the town was built. Amid public doubt and pressure, Lieu and Liem managed to realize their passion.

It was a struggle, but Lieu had a supportive team, including her lead aviculturist Cuong, who made sure her efforts become the home to wild birds.

Part of their plan was to tame an initial group of birds, which will then be released back into the wilderness.

These first-generation members somehow marketed their habitat and lured other wild birds over.

As the new birds found this place a comfortable zone with available food sources, they themselves called more over, creating a snowball effect.

Very soon a considerably large number of birds were making their nests.

Le Danh Cuong helps to restore the famous Bac Lieu bird enclosure in Bac Lieu Province, Vietnam. Photo: Tien Trinh / Tuoi Tre

Cuong burst out in tears when he first learned that wild birds were coming to his aviary.

This gave him confidence that their team can turn the forest nearby into a potential natural habitat.

Lieu sent Cuong on a field trip into the forest. There, he was studying the birds and guarding them against bird thieves.

More and more wild birds popped up, but Cuong considered all of them his family members.

He could get close to them without inflicting any sense of doubt or fright.

In return, he treated them like friends.

You have to love them, then theyll come to you, he said.

As the time went by, Cuong got attached to the wild birds without realizing it.

He could even intuitively count the birds. He should know if a single one of them does not make it home on any random day.

Thanks to the bird population, Lam Vien 19-5 has attracted large influxes of tourists and news coverage.

Following the call

Pham Thanh Tri, former president of the Peoples Committee of Ca Mau Province, recalled that the provincial high-rank officials made time to escort VIP guests around the bird sanctuary every time.

The authorities in Tien Giang Province contacted Tri and asked for expert help in establishing a bird shelter in the Tan Phuong melaleuca forest there.

I thought that they really wanted to do it, so I sent Cuong to help them, Tri said.

It was a mystery what Cuong did there, but not long afterward Tri got a thank-you phone call from the Tien Giang authorities, saying they had successfully put together an aviary full of wild species.

It was great to hear that. I went there once. The birds were everywhere, he said.

Cuongs fame spread. He traveled here and there to build more aviaries.

He came to Bac Lieu City under Bac Lieu Province to restore an old enclosure.

From there, he came to Vinh Long Province to make an aviary inside a fruit plantation, at the request of the owner of the Vinh San tourist area in this province.

This time was a real challenge, but he followed the call and everywhere he went, the birds were after him.

Cuong was most pleased with the one he built in the Tan Lap Floating Village in Long An Province.

It was a naturally rich area with lots of birds. It could be called the bird capital.

Following that, he went on to work at a forest in Vi Thang at the request of a big corporation.

Tri and other passionate bird lovers have appealed to the provincial leaders in paper. They have sought permission to restore three legendary bird enclosures, namely Cha La, Dam Doi and the Ca Mau City aviary, he said.

Tri said that they had got the green light.

For three decades, Cuong has no idea whether the birds have been following him, or vice versa.

His life has been tied to the tireless wings.

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It's a neighborhood watch with a difference. A clean-nosed crew, sniffing out trouble and keeping the streets safe for school kids: meet the pups of Tokyo's real-life Paw Patrol.

They might not have the gadgets and gear of their beloved cartoon counterparts, but the dogs of the Wan-Wan (bow-wow) Patrol are firm favourites in Tokyo's Karasuyama neighbourhood.

Tokyo's neighborhood watch pooches are wagging away crime and cuddling away fear. Photo: AFP

Twelve-year-old Yurika Igarashi counts on seeing Sakura, a fluffy toy poodle, when she's on her way home from school.

"Sometimes I'm scared when I'm coming home alone, but I feel okay when I'm walking with Wan-Wan Patrol," she told AFP, gently cradling Sakura on her lap.

Sakura is one of 150 pups who form the Wan-Wan Patrol, a program that enlists dogs and their owners to turn their daily walks into a neighbourhood watch, monitoring children, looking out for residents, and helping deter crime.

The Karasuyama program is one of the oldest such community initiatives in Japan and was founded by a local police officer.

"Individual owners walk whenever they can and have their dog wear the same scarf," said Keiko Shimizu, the patrol's current leader.

Clearly marked canines patrolling the streets means "we can help make the neighbourhood less prone to crime," she added.

Many of the dog owners are parents of current and former students of the local school, but others just participate in the community watch as residents.

On one recent morning, five pooches in Wan-Wan Patrol's lime-green neckerchiefs wagged their tails as they accompanied children going to elementary school.

Pu, a 17-year-old shih tzu, is one of the oldest members of the patrol and can no longer walk by herself. But she proudly participates from the comfort of a doggy stroller pushed by her owner.

The Karasuyama program is one of the oldest such community initiatives in Japan and was founded by a local police officer. Photo: AFP

'Carefree' play

"The program helps us get to know each other and become good neighbours, and I feel this place stays safe that way," said Michiko Takeuchi, owner of poodle and Maltese mix Kojiro, and mother to a local schoolboy.

And the patrol isn't just for show.

"We had a member who found an elderly person who had passed away alone," patrol leader Shimizu told AFP.

"They realised by noticing a room light still on in the morning. We walk at around the same hours on the same route everyday, so it's easier for us to notice if there is something unusual."

Japan has a reputation as one of the world's safest countries, with very low rates of violent crime.

But there are occasional tragedies, including a devastating accident last month east of Tokyo in which a drunk driver crashed his truck into a group of schoolchildren, killing two.

Jun Ameie, principal at the local Kyuden Elementary School, said the neighbourhood watch helps reassure parents and children alike.

"Parents appreciate that many people in the neighbourhood care and make sure the environment is safe, especially these days when we hear a lot of reports about crimes involving children," he told AFP.

"I'm sure that children can play carefree outside of school and anywhere in the neighbourhood, because they know many adults keep their eyes on their safety," Ameie added.

For young Igarashi, the cuddly canines are a reliable source of comfort.

"Of course, it's fun to walk with the dogs, but I also feel protected by them."

Many of the dog owners are parents of current and former students of the local school, but others just participate in the community watch as residents. Photo: AFP

Residents of Tokyo's Karasuyama are grateful for the security and cuddles provided by their canine protectors. Photo: AFP
The first session of Vietnams 15th National Assembly (NA) opened in Hanoi on Tuesday morning and is scheduled to last until July 31.

Prior to the meeting, leaders of the Party, State, and NA deputies paid tribute to President Ho Chi Minh at his mausoleum and laid wreaths at the Heroic Martyrs Monument in the capital.

Following the opening remarks by Chairman of the 14th NA Vuong Dinh Hue, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong delivered a speech at the session.

Tran Thanh Man, vice-chairman of the 14th NA and deputy head of the National Election Council, then presented a report reviewing the elections of deputies to the 15th legislature and all-level peoples councils for the 2021-26 tenure.

During the session, the legislative body will elect and approve leadership positions, and mull over reports on socio-economic development and other major issues.

Lawmakers are scheduled to elect chairman of the 15th NA on Tuesday afternoon, before the new legislature chair takes the oath of office during a live ceremony.

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong speaks at the first session of the 15th National Assembly in Hanoi, July 20, 2021. Photo: Quochoi.vn

They will elect the state president, prime minister, vice-state president, chief justice of the Supreme Peoples Court, and prosecutor general of the Supreme People's Procuracy on the following working days.

The NA will also decide on the structure and number of Cabinet members, and ratify the appointment of deputy prime minister, ministers, and other Cabinet members.

A total of 499 deputies were previously expected to attend the session, but 17 of them were absent as they are participating in COVID-19 prevention and control efforts or being quarantined after coming into close contact with infected patients.

About 435 out of the 499 lawmakers have been vaccinated against COVID-19 while members of service units and the press have also received their vaccine shots.

The session was shortened by five days compared to the original plan due to the complicated developments of the pandemic.

It will conclude on July 31.

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Here are todays leading news stories:

Politics

-- The first session of Vietnams 15th National Assembly opened in Hanoi on Tuesday morning and is scheduled to last until July 31.

COVID-19 Updates

-- The Ministry of Health documented 2,155 local COVID-19 infections, including 1,519 cases in Ho Chi Minh City, on Tuesday morning, raising the countrys tally to 60,180, with 11,047 recoveries and 334 deaths.

-- The Ho Chi Minh City Department of Foreign Affairs has sent an official note to the South Korean Consulate General and extended condolences to a South Korean family after one of its members passed away due to COVID-19 in the city.

-- The Directorate for Roads of Vietnam has ordered the suspension of all tollgates in the provinces and cities where social distancing measures under the prime ministers Directive No. 16 are being implemented.

Society

-- Tropical Storm Cempaka, the third to hit Vietnam this year, was located at the maritime area south of Chinas Guangdong Province on Tuesday morning, packing winds at 90-120km per hour. The storm will travel northwest and is unlikely to have a direct impact on Vietnams mainland.

-- A heavy rain accompanied by strong gusts battered Ho Chi Minh City late on Monday afternoon, knocking down many trees and signboards.

-- Police in Vietnam have issued an international wanted notice for Pham Van Sang, former director of the Department of Science and Technology in southern Dong Nai Province, after he had disappeared while being investigated for violating regulations on investment in construction works.

-- Officers in the central province of Quang Nam confirmed on Monday they had arrested a 15-year-old boy for murdering a school principal while robbing his house earlier this month.

Business

-- Vietnam was named among the worlds top 20 host economies for foreign direct investment (FDI) for the first time with an inflow of US$16 billion in 2020, the Vietnam News Agency quoted the UN Conference on Trade and Developments World Investment Report 2021 as saying.

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The foreign affairs agency of Ho Chi Minh City has extended condolences to the family of a South Korean citizen who died of COVID-19 in the city, according to its chief.

The passing of the South Korean national, whose name has yet to be announced, was reported by Tran Phuoc Anh, acting director of the municipal Department of External Affairs, at a press conference on Monday to review local COVID-19 prevention and control activities.

Along with sending a letter of condolences to the family of the deceased, the department also issued an official notice to the South Korean Consulate General in the city, Anh said.

After being notified of the fatality, the department contacted Cho Ray Hospital, where the foreigner was treated, and local police and immigration agencies.

Local health authorities will provide detailed information on the death later, the diplomat added.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started in the city in early 2020, a large number of foreign nationals who were working or traveling here could not return home because of travel restrictions, the department said.

The department, in conjunction with relevant other agencies, has since created favorable conditions for those foreigners to be repatriated at their will.

To date, the percentage of foreigners stuck in Ho Chi Minh City has become insignificant, and city authorities are proceeding with procedures for them to come back to their homeland, Anh said.

By Tuesday morning, Vietnam had confirmed 2,155 new COVID-19 cases, including 2,154 domestic and one imported cases, which have taken the country's tally to 60,180, including 11,047 recoveries, the Ministry of Health reported.

Among the latest cases, 1,519 were detected in Ho Chi Minh City, which has recently topped the nation in daily new infections.

Since April 27, when the pandemics fourth wave appeared in Vietnam, the country has documented 56,530 domestic cases.

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A director of a cooperative in Ho Chi Minh City has been slapped with a fine of VND7.5 million (US$326) for issuing a permit to help his daughter dishonestly pass COVID-19 checkpoints.

The penalty was concluded at a working session on Monday between officers of Phu Nhuan District and Nguyen Dang Thanh, director at Phu Nhuan Environmental Cooperative, and his daughter, N.N.A.X.P.

According to Thanh, he recently asked P. to support him in dealing with the heavy workloads of his cooperative although the daughter is not an employee of the firm.

While preparing documents for Thanh, P. saw a ready-to-fill confirmation form, which was supposed to be provided to Phu Nhuan Environmental Cooperatives sanitation workers for traveling through COVID-19 checkpoints.

P. filled out the form, took a photo of it, not forgetting to cover such fundamental information as the permit is only applied to sanitation workers and her address, before uploading the photo on her personal Facebook account on July 14 to show off.

Daughter told mother yesterday that she wanted to go home but was afraid of being fined VND3 million [for going out unnecessarily], only just 20 minutes later, father sent a travel pass with a valid period of 15 days to his daughter and son-in-law ^^ [line break] Feel free to use it now, reads the caption P. wrote for her photo. (VND3 million = $130.5)

Speaking at Mondays working session, Thanh and P. stated that she merely did as aforesaid to show off but did not use the permit in real life.

Thanh said he acknowledged all responsibility for the incident and would comply with the handling of the authorities, while P. added that she already removed the post on her Facebook account after realizing that her behavior was wrong.

Phu Nhuan District authorities decided to impose an administrative fine of VND7.5 million on Thanh for not complying with measures to prevent and control infectious diseases at the request of competent agencies and organizations.

The functional forces also asked Thanh to stop issuing ready-to-fill permit forms to his employees and withdraw already-issued ones.

The authorities requested the director to only provide travel permits to his workers on a case-by-case basis, with all information being typed, not written by hand.

People in 19 southern Vietnamese localities, including Ho Chi Minh City, are currently requested to only go out to work at essential businesses, buy food and medicine, and seek hospital treatment as per the social distancing rules under the governments Directive No. 16, to help curb the spread of COVID-19.

They have to exhibit permits or related documents stamped by their companies or competent agencies to officers at COVID-19 checkpoints to prove their travel is essential.

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The Ministry of Health announced almost 4,800 domestic COVID-19 cases in Vietnam on Tuesday, including over 3,300 locally-infected patients in Ho Chi Minh City.

Thirty-five provinces and cities reported 4,789 local infections while another six were imported from abroad, the health ministry said.

A total of 728 cases were found in the community whereas the remainder were detected in centralized quarantine facilities or isolated areas.

Ho Chi Minh City recorded 3,322 of the latest cases, Binh Duong Province 578, Dong Nai Province 162, Tien Giang Province 133, Dong Thap Province 66, Da Nang 61, Khanh Hoa Province 53, and Hanoi 46.

Todays daily case increase is the second-biggest so far, after a record was set at 5,887 domestically-transmitted infections on Sunday.

Since the fourth COVID-19 wave began in Vietnam on April 27, Vietnam has documented 59,165 domestic cases in 59 out of 63 provinces and cities.

Ho Chi Minh City sits atop the table with 37,787 patients, followed by Bac Giang Province with 5,733, Binh Duong Province with 3,725, Bac Ninh Province with 1,698, Dong Thap Province with 1,439, and Dong Nai Province with 1,145.

By comparison, Vietnam 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.

The health ministry confirmed 380 recoveries on Tuesday, bringing the total to 11,443 recovered patients. The death toll remains at 334.

The nation has overall recorded 60,735 domestic and 2,085 imported cases since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit it on January 23, 2020.

Over 4.3 million vaccine shots have been administered to medical workers, teachers, factory workers, and other frontline staff since Vietnam rolled out inoculation on March 8.

Nearly 310,000 people have been fully vaccinated.

Vietnam has received about 10.6 million coronavirus vaccine doses from direct purchase, the COVAX scheme, and donations as yet.

It expects to obtain 175 million shots of various vaccines, including 51 million Pfizer-BioNTech jabs, by early 2022.

The Vietnamese government set a target of immunizing two-thirds of a population of nearly 98 million people against COVID-19 by the first quarter of next year.

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HANOI -- Vietnam has reached agreements on technology transfers for Russian and U.S. coronavirus vaccines, the government said in a statement, without elaborating.

The Southeast Asian country is keen to boost its vaccine capacity and the World Health Organization said in May it was reviewing a proposal by an unidentified manufacturer in Vietnam to become an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine technology hub.

Vietnam's health ministry was also in talks with Russia to produce the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine, media has reported.

Tuesday's statement also said Vietnam will receive 20 million more doses of the mRNA shot co-developed by U.S. company Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech, raising the total to 51 million doses.

After successfully containing the virus for much of the pandemic, Vietnam is facing its worst outbreak so far, with a surge in daily infections to record levels adding to pressure on the government to shore up supplies and accelerate inoculations.

Up to now, Vietnam has secured deals for 105 million doses of vaccines and is in talks with other manufacturers on deals for a further 70 million shots, the government said, adding it hoped to receive the shots in 2021 and early 2022.

The Southeast Asian country has received around 10.6 million doses of vaccines, and is due to receive supplies of Moderna's vaccine from the United States via the COVAX facility.

Vietnam has also asked China for doses of the Sinopharm vaccine, the government statement added.

Vietnam's health ministry said the country's home-grown vaccine, NanoCovax, was expected to be widely administered by the end of 2021.

To date around 4.3 million doses have been administered, but only about 310,000 people have been fully vaccinated out of a population of 98 million.
Leaders in Nha Trang City, located in Vietnam's south-central Khanh Hoa Province, have removed an official from his mission as the head of a ward-level COVID-19 prevention committee for saying Bread is not staple food to a motorcyclist.

The dismissal came after a video recording the inappropriate attitude and word choice of Tran Le Huu Tho, deputy chairman of Vinh Hoa Ward in Nha Trang, who was the head of the wards COVID-19 prevention committee, and some other officers was circulated online on Monday.

Tho and the officers stationed at a medical checkpoint in the ward booked T.V.E., a worker of a local tourism construction project, for riding his motorbike to buy bread and water at around 3:30 pm on Sunday.

While E. was able to show a work requirement confirmation letter stamped by his company and said that he thought he was allowed to go out for food according to the governments Directive No.16 that is being applied in Nha Trang, Tho and his subordinates opposed him.

Tho used impolite expressions and said bread is neither staple food nor essential food, accusing E. of going out unnecessarily against the pandemic prevention regulations.

Tho then decided to seize E.s motorbike registration, driver's license, and vehicle, according to the video, which was later verified to be filmed and spread by the deputy chairman himself.

Tho did not imagine the video would provoke a public outcry as people have criticized him for his rude manner and expressions as a public servant.

This screenshot from Tran Le Huu Thos video shows T.V.E. exhibiting personal documents to the functional force at a COVID-19 checkpoint in Vinh Hoa Ward, Nha Trang City, Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam, July 18, 2021.

On Monday evening, leaders of Nha Trang City dismissed Tho from his leading position at the COVID-19 prevention committee in Vinh Hoa Ward.

That position has been taken by Nguyen Thi Hoa, chairwoman of Vinh Hoa Ward, according to Tran Van Dong, secretary of the local Party Committee.

Currently, Vinh Hoa Ward authorities are waiting for city leaders further decisions on handling Tho for speaking and behaving inappropriately toward citizens while on duty, Dong said.

Nha Trang City has been placed under social distancing as per Directive No. 16 since July 9, with people requested to stay home and only make outdoor trips for food, medicine, emergency treatment, and working at essential businesses.

On Tuesday morning, Nha Trang City's chairman Nguyen Sy Khanh sent a letter to E. to address the incident.

In the letter, Khanh said the People's Committee of the city ordered functional forces in Vinh Hoa Ward to return his motorbike and related personal documents, as well as not to impose any administrative fines on the worker.

The chairman also reprimanded Tho for not having a thorough understanding of Directive No. 16, leading to improper handling in E.'s case.

At the same time, the leader said he apologized for and admitted his shortcomings in the organization and implementation of the directive.

Khanh added that he looks forward to the understanding and support from E., as well as every citizen, for the city's efforts during the pandemic situation, while pledging to handle Tho as per the regulations in the immediate future.

Meanwhile, leaders of Vega City Joint Stock Company, which operates the construction project that E. is working at, also said they will give the man an official job at the project so that he will no longer work for a subcontractor like before.

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Officers in the central Vietnamese province of Quang Nam confirmed on Monday they had arrested a 15-year-old boy for murdering a school principal while robbing his house earlier this month.

The police force managed to catch the boy, Nguyen Trung Tan Bao Duy, hailing from the provinces Thang Binh District, while he was hiding in Tien Phuoc District on Monday afternoon.

On July 9, Duy broke into the house of Nguyen Nhat Thong, 55, the principal of Hoang Dieu Middle School in Thang Binh District, to steal properties, according to the teens testimony.

As Thong discovered Duys presence in the house and tried to nab him, the boy used a knife to stab the man before fleeing the scene.

As Thongs neighbors heard screams from his house at around 2:30 pm on the same day, they ran to the premises and found him lying motionless on the floor and covered in blood, his family members said.

Despite being rushed to hospital, Thong could not survive the injuries.

Police officers are completing an investigation to close the case.

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Ansapa, a tourism complex in Sa Pa Town of Lao Cai Province in northern Vietnam that went viral three months ago for its notoriously camp replica of the Statue of Liberty, has come under scrutiny once again for its ill-proportioned statue of Elsa -- the protagonist of Disneys animated feature Frozen.

A picture of the statue has circulated on social media and garnered mixed reactions from netizens after it was posted on a Lao Cai Province-themed Facebook page on Sunday.

The majority of comments on the post mocked the sculptures bizarre looks, while others criticized it for ruining the natural landscape of the tourism hub Sa Pa.

In her comment, Facebook user N.P.L. argued that tourists come to Sa Pa for the untouched scenery and indigenous culture, not the half-hearted, unaesthetic projects like the Elsa statue.

Lets take a look at developed countries, see how their structures harmonize with natural scenery, and stop ruining the views with ignorance like this, she criticized.

The controversial statue of Disney princess Elsa in Ansapa, a tourism complex in Sa Pa Town of Lao Cai Province in northern Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Ansapa.

Answering Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper, Ansapa owner Nguyen Ngoc Dong confirmed that the statue is located in his complex.

He also showed his dismay at the unfair Internet scrunity that was aimed at his business, which he claimed to be the work of his competitors.

According to Dong, the Elsa statue was completed long ago, but has only recently been installed.

As seen from the photo, the project is still underway, with a glass floor that still needs to be completed.

Dong refered to the statue as a gift to his daughter An, a big fan of Elsa, who even calls herself Anna -- the sister of the protagonist in the Frozen movie.

It was An who inspired Dong to make an Elsa statue in order to give tourists a delight when they come to his complex, the owner added.

He justified his modern work as necessary for a demographic of visitors, while those who seek traditional culture also have the choice of visiting the surrounding villages that are doing an excellent job of preserving time-honored values.

Ansapa is located in an obscure corner that does not block the views of Sa Pa as many have been concerned, Dong assured.

Tourists pose in front of the Statue of Liberty replica at the Ansapa tourism complex in Sa Pa Town, Lao Cai Province, Vietnam. Photo courtesy of Ansapa.

Addressing the Statue of Liberty replica, the other controversial sculpture on his premises, Dong revealed that it remains a popular structure that is sought after by many visitors to his complex.

His version of the Statue of Liberty faced a harsh Internet backlash for its off-kilter proportions some three months ago, but Dong has not changed any of its features since, claiming no one can pinpoint a definitve measure of beauty.

The Statue of Liberty as well as the Elsa sculpture are two among various structures that have been erected as photo ops for visitors to Sa Pa Town in recent years.

As the culture-information office of Sa Pa stated, photo op structures in the area must undergo appraisal and obtain permits before construction.

According to national radio VOV, authorities in Sa Pa on Monday investigated the issue and ordered the Elsa statue to be pulled down before Wednesday.

The owner of the Elsa statue didnt seek the permission of the local tourism board before building it," Pham Cao Vy, head of the Sa Pa Tourism Association, told VOV.

"Otherwise, we would have discussed the pros and cons with them.

Now, the developer has spent a hefty amount of money on the statue, the image of Sa Pa has been blackened, and tourists have come to think of Sa Pa as a town of vanity.

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On Foreign Correspondent this week is Cartel Country a portrait of Mexico, caught in the grip of organised crime.

Tens of thousands are missing, many more murdered. So why are Mexicos violent drug cartels operating with impunity? We go inside the most powerful cartel to meet the footsoldiers. Corruption, they say, goes right to the top.

In Mexicos Sinaloa state, violence has become a way of life.

Home to the countrys most powerful drug syndicate, the Sinaloa cartel, murders and disappearances are rife.

The police, meant to protect the population, are often the targets of violence. Over 500 officers were killed in Mexico last year.

Theyre also often complicit, with corruption in the police force and government a major problem.

In this shocking portrait of a country caught in the grip of organised crime, reporter Ben Zand takes us where few have gone  inside the Sinaloa cartel in the Sierra Madre mountains where he witnesses the groups operations up close.

From their hidden base, the group grows poppies and marijuana for export, fends off outsiders with guns and bribes visiting police and security officers with money and women.

The government is the one in charge say the local leader. The cartel is only as big as the government wants us to be.

A gun-wielding 13-year-old says that the violence stems from the drug trade. If there werent any drugs people wouldnt be killing each other over them.

Commentator Ioan Grillo believes that the police and military used to have the upper hand with the cartels but says thats now changed.

Some of the cartels have become much more powerful, says Grillo. [now] the cartel is actually bullying and controlling elements of the security forces.

Its the community whos paying the price for corruption and impunity.

Mirna Quinones son disappeared suddenly 7 years ago. When police refused to help her, she set out to find him herself.

She went on to set up the Trackers of El Fuerte group which helps parents looking for their children. In the last six years of searching, theyve uncovered over two hundred bodies.

There is no justice. We all know that. I have been threatened by the municipal police here. The government and crime are united.

Interior Minister, Olga Sanchez Cordero, concedes there is corruption. The trials, and the investigations, are deficient, she says. Lawyers are threatened. Judges are threatened. That is just the reality.

But she maintains the government is doing its best to investigate the cartels and to undermine their support base.

Investigative journalist Anabel Hernandez disagrees, saying she has no faith that the government of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, elected two and half years ago, will tackle the problem.

He promised to do something different but.its just the same. Nothing changed. In some parts its worse.

Thursday 22 July at 8pm on ABC.
In August Shudder features Teddy, a disturbing trip to rural France where a young man is overcome by animal urges, and continues with new titles including the legendary David Cronenberg in the Shudder Original event series Slasher: Flesh & Blood; Bleed With Me, a psychological horror exploring intimacy and codependency; Jakobs Wife, starring horror icon Barbara Crampton; and award-winning thriller Mosquito State.

Teddy

August 5

Twentysomething Teddy lives in a foster home and works as a temp in a massage parlor in a rural French town. Rebecca, his girlfriend, will soon graduate. A scorching hot summer begins. But Teddy is scratched by a beast in the woods: the wolf that local angry farmers have been hunting for months. As weeks go by, animal impulses soon start to overcome the young man. Directed by Ludovic Boukherma and Zoran Boukherma. Starring Anthony Bajon (The Prayer), nine-time Cesar Award nominee Noemie Lvovsky (Camille Rewinds), Ludovic Torrent, Christine Gautier, Guillaume Mattera, Jean-Paul Fabre, Alexis Orlandini, Gerard Pau and Jean-Michel Ricart.

Bleed with Me

August 10

Rowan, a vulnerable outsider, is thrilled when the seemingly perfect Emily invites her on a winter getaway to an isolated cabin in the woods. Trust soon turns to paranoia when Rowan wakes up with mysterious incisions on her arm. Haunted by dream-like visions, Rowan starts to suspect that her friend is drugging her and stealing her blood. Shes paralyzed by the fear of losing Emily, but she must fight back before she loses her mind. Bleed With Me is a psychological horror that juxtaposes tenderness and violence in an investigation of female intimacy and dangerous codependency. Directed by Amelia Moses. Starring Lee Marshall, Lauren Beatty and Aris Tyros.

Slasher: Flesh & Blood

Episodes 1 & 2 Premiere August 12 with a new episode premiering every Thursday

Starring horror legend David Cronenberg (The Fly, Videodrome), Slasher: Flesh & Blood follows a wealthy, dysfunctional family that gathers for a reunion on a secluded island only to learn theyll be pitted against one another in a cruel game of life and death, all while being stalked. Nothing is what it seems and no one is safe as the tension  and body count  ratchets up. As with past installments of the series, Slasher: Flesh & Blood combines elements of traditional murder mystery with the intensity that audiences have come to expect. The eight-episode event series also features cast members from previous installments of the Slasher franchise in brand new roles, including Paula Brancati (Dark Oracle) Jefferson Brown (Carrie), Patrice Goodman (Sunnyside), Sabrina Grdevich (A.I. Artificial Intelligence) and Christopher Jacot (Going the Distance). New to the franchise are Rachael Crawford (Heartland), Jeananne Goosen (The Walking Dead), Sydney Meyer (Departure) and Alex Ozerov (The Americans).

Horror themes. Lots.

Jakobs Wife

August 19

Anne is in her late 50s and feels like her life and marriage have been shrinking over the past thirty years. Through a chance encounter with a stranger, she discovers a new sense of power and an appetite to live bigger and bolder than before. However, these changes come with a toll on her marriage and a heavy body count. Directed by Travis Stevens (Girl on the Third Floor). Starring horror icons Barbara Crampton (Youre Next), Larry Fessenden (The Dead Dont Die), Nyisha Bell, Mark Kelly, Sarah Lind, Robert Rusler, Bonnie Aarons and Phil Brooks (aka CM Punk).

Mosquito State

August 26

In psycho-thriller Mosquito State, obsessive Wall Street data analyst Richard Boca (Beau Knapp) is isolated in his austere penthouse overlooking Central Park and seeing ominous patterns: his computer models are behaving erratically, as are the swarms of mosquitos breeding in his apartment, an infestation that attends his psychological meltdown. Alongside Knapp (The Good Lord Bird, Seven Seconds), the film stars Charlotte Vega (Wrong Turn, American Assassin), Jack Kesy (The Outpost, Deadpool 2) and Olivier Martinez (Unfaithful, Before Night Falls). Directed by Filip Jan Rymsza and co-written by Rymsza and Mario Zermeno, Mosquito State was an official selection of the Venice Film Festival in 2020 where it was awarded the Bisato dOro for Best Cinematography.
The Bachelor returns to 10 tonight for Season 9 with new leading man, Jetstar pilot Jimmy Nicholson (and yes you may recognise him from The Price is Right).

Hosted once again by Osher Gunsberg, it is Warner Bros. Australia.

Jimmy Nicholson.

Romance is ready to make its return and Cupids bow is poised to strike firmly in the heart of Australias next Bachelor, Jimmy Nicholson. With love and a fairy-tale ending set firmly in his sights, the 31-year-old airline pilot is looking to take on his greatest adventure yet. A self-confessed romantic, Jimmy is an intelligent and passionate go-getter who is ready to find his happily ever after, all against the magical, enchanting and captivating backdrop of the brand-new Bachelor Mansion. Like most singles, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Jimmy had time to reflect on his life and what he hoped to achieve in the future. While recognising that his career is important, love is more important. And, The Bachelor seemed the perfect way to find the one. On being the next Bachelor, Jimmy said: I am a big believer in embracing any opportunity that presents itself, especially if it has the potential to change your life for the better. The journey ahead will be one of the most challenging experiences that I have ever undertaken, however I am very excited to meet someone that I could potentially spend the rest of my life with.

Annabelle

28, Medical Equipment Installer, NSW

Expressive, outgoing, and honest, Annabelle loves being active in nature and exploring new places. Quick to fill silence in a conversation, the 28-year-old loves to gossip and get all the juicy details. Annabelles friends describe her as authentic and quirky, with nothing making her happier than sharing amazing experiences with friends. The Medical Equipment Installer believes there is no greater happiness than loving and being loved now she just needs that boyfriend.

Ash

34, Dance Teacher, Queensland

Spontaneous and with a zest for life, Ash has returned home after living abroad. Currently living her dream of owning her own online dance company, this energetic social butterfly loves to travel, enjoys staying fit and is passionate about helping other people achieve their goals in life. Ash believes her best feature is the energy she brings into a room, and her key to happiness is spending time with friends and creating memories.

Ashleigh

28, Speech Pathologist, Victoria

Positive and optimistic, Ashleigh is easily excited, full of high energy and describes herself as the bubbliest, most enthusiastic freckle. The Speech Pathologists parents have been together for over 30 years and have taught her that commitment takes work. She wants a relationship that evolves and changes over time and knows its worth sticking around for the long haul.

Belinda

29, Criminal Lawyer, Queensland

Self-proclaimed Cyclone Belinda leaves a trail of drama and destruction wherever she goes. Her family describe her as assertive, blunt, ambitious, brave and the loudest in the room. The 29-year-old believes her parents have the true love story and sees their love as relationship goals. The Criminal Lawyer is looking for her own fairy tale ending, a best friend and someone who shares her love of fast cars and NRL.

Brooke

27, Occupational Therapist, Victoria

Happy-go-lucky Brooke is a spirited animal lover who has two beautiful chocolate brown Spoodles. Her friends say she has a magnetic energy with an addiction to being active. The Occupational Therapist strives to encourage others to get moving, whether its HIIT, Pilates or team sports. Give this 27-year old a cocktail, good music and great company and the night will be young.

Carlie

33, Corporate Lawyer, Victoria

Generous and always keen to help out where she can, Carlie believes her cup is already full with a gifted and happy life, but would love to fill it further with a loving partner and family of her own. With her parents 46-year marriage showing her love is eternal, this self-described left-brain bookish lawyer is scared she may never meet her equal. Sometimes too trusting, her default is to see the good in people and now she wants someone to see that good in her.

Chanel

34, Flight Manager, NSW

Larger-than-life Chanel has lived a nomadic lifestyle, travelling the world to gain new experiences. Never having been in love, she is now focused on looking for it. Liking to stand out and make an impression, the Flight Manager believes she wasnt designed to sit in the background and is ready for her happy ever after.

Elena

33, Personal Trainer, NSW

Brutally honest, loud and with a lot of energy, Elena is known for speaking her mind. The Personal Trainer is not interested in falling for a guy for his looks, as in the past they have usually come with bad personalities. The 33-year-old is ready to find The One and believes she is a catch; just wanting to find her match.

Hannah

26, Registered Nurse, NSW

Always up for a laugh, passionate traveller Hannah loves adventure and cant wait to start exploring the world again. The Registered Nurse has a big heart and always puts her family and friends first. She enjoys discovering new coastal bush walks, heading to the beach and being active. Her ideal partner is family orientated and doesnt take themselves too seriously.

Holly

27, Marketing Manager, NSW

Outgoing with a love for a dry sense of humour, Holly is the glue that holds her friends and family together. While some people are intimidated by her confidence, the Marketing Manager says she is like a Caramello Koala  gooey on the inside. With a fear of settling, the 27-year-old is looking for a partner who has a sense of humour and strong traditional core values.

Jacinta

29, Executive Recruiter, Victoria

Down-to-earth tomboy Jacinta thrives off other peoples happiness and feeling like she has made a difference to someones day. Family is important and the 29-year-old Executive Recruiter is looking for a partner so she can stop third wheeling with her younger sister and her husband. Valuing experiences over materialistic things, Jacinta likes to have fun and can sometimes get carried away in the moment.

Jay

31, Nutritionist, NSW

Fun, down-to-earth and with a sneaky competitive streak, Jay is a qualified nutritionist who once played professional netball for Fiji. The former Miss India  Wellington, New Zealand played every sport in school and loves getting out and being adventurous. With her parents teaching her that love is about when push comes to shove, you must have each others back, the 31-year-old is looking to find her best friend.

Laura

28, Speech Pathologist, South Australia

Passionate animal lover, Laura, has a loudness and enthusiasm about everything that she does. The vegetarian eco warrior loves The Lord Of The Rings, sometimes has a crude sense of humour and finds arrogance and ignorance a turn off in a partner. Describing her love life as a series of incredibly unfortunate events, the Speech Pathologist is hoping that coming on the show will hand her a wonderful man on a golden platter.

Lauren

29, Office Administrator, South Australia

Life of the party Lauren may have a tough exterior, but at heart she is a real softie. Passionate about early modern European history, the 29-year-old finds happiness in small acts of kindness and while she can sometimes come off abrasive due to her intensity, she is loyal to a fault. Unlucky in love, Lauren has never felt more ready to be in a relationship and is willing to go out there and get it.

Lily

23, Crane Operator, Victoria

Ambitious with a big personality, Lily has a lot of love to give but is a hard girl to crack. Being valued and appreciated means the world to the crane operator who goes from 0-100, real quick. The 23-year-old genuinely wants to find love and has had no luck so far. She has seen the kind of guys on The Bachelor usually are and hopes to meet a decent human who isnt going to play her.

Madison

24, Marketing Coordinator, Victoria

Cute, confident, and flirty, Madison is passionate about musical theatre, baking and the Marie Kondo folding effect. Close with her grandparents who taught her the importance of making time to prioritise family, the 24-year-old sometimes embellishes the truth for dramatic effect when telling a story, and hates when people interrupt her while speaking. Madison hasnt been in a relationship before and is looking to break out of her comfort zone to hopefully meet the person she can spend the rest of her life with.

Rebekah

27, Youth Support Worker, NSW

Quirky and exuberant with high energy, Rebekah is the kind of person that people gravitate towards. Not a fan of judgemental people that whinge and complain, the 27-year-old loves a gossip and admits that secrets arent safe with her. Rebekah has never been in a relationship but knows that kindness is a trait she would value most in a partner.

Sierah

28, Technical Analyst, Victoria

Self-proclaimed larrikin, Sierah sees herself as an alpha female who loves watching UFC. Describing herself as a human Ferrero Rocher  hard on the outside, soft on the inside and a bit nutty, the 28-year-old is happy being on holiday, hanging with the gals, being spooned and watching the delivery tracker for her food. Sierah knows what she wants in a partner and isnt willing to settle.

Stephanie

27, Business Development Manager, Western Australia

Outgoing and sarcastic, Stephanie is not one to beat around the bush. The 27-year-old has a dry sense of humour and if she likes you, you will know. An avid gamer who live streams herself playing, Stephanies friends label her every guys dream girl. Her parents marriage set a beautiful example to her growing up, and as a young woman it is still something she aspires to find.

Stevie

29, Hair Stylist, Queensland

Stevie is a creative and jolly lady who loves everything life has to offer. Determined and ambitious, her Nan describes her as a vibrant sexy chicken and an amazing cook. The dog lover is looking to take her Mums advice and focus on the fact that love is not about how you feel, its what you do with it and how you cherish it.

Tahnee

27, Corporate Travel Manager, Victoria

Fiercely loyal, generous and fiery, Tahnee is passionate about travel. The Corporate Travel Manager is confident, good at reading people and giving logical advice and never shy to steal the attention. The 27-year-old may overthink every scenario, but one day thats going to mean the world to the family she creates.

Tamlyn

25, Customer Service Officer, NSW

Fun, vibrant and confident, Tamlyn doesnt take life too seriously. Full of life, the 25-year-old is an open book with no filter, so you always know what she is thinking. Originally from South Africa, Tamlyn is an extrovert passionate about fitness and her love language is physical touch. Her parents have taught her that no matter how hard things get, you always fight for the person you love and never give up on them.

Tatum

Tatum 26, Company Director, Queensland

Loud, wild child Tatum believes in the law of attraction and that everything in life happens the way its meant to. The opinionated and super confident Company Director is living a life she has designed, and that freedom and flexibility makes her happy. Always the centre of attention in every room, the 26-year-old is not shy when it comes to making the first move and worries that men can find her intimidating.

7:30pm Wednesday & Thursday on 10.
Net income of $0.26 per diluted share

Cash flow from operating activities of $409 million and free cash flow of $265 million

HOUSTON, July 20, 2021--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) announced today net income of $227 million, or $0.26 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2021. This compares to net income for the first quarter of 2021 of $170 million, or $0.19 per diluted share. Halliburton's total revenue for the second quarter of 2021 was $3.7 billion, compared to revenue of $3.5 billion in the first quarter of 2021. Operating income was $434 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to operating income of $370 million in the first quarter of 2021.

"Our second quarter performance demonstrates that our strategy is working well and Halliburtons strategic priorities are driving value in this transition year. Total company revenue increased 7% sequentially, as both North America and international markets continued to improve, and operating income grew 17% with solid margin performance in both divisions," commented Jeff Miller, Chairman, President and CEO.

"Halliburtons Completion and Production division margin reached three-year highs, while our Drilling and Evaluation division margin outperformed expectations, setting both divisions up for robust margin growth this year.

"Our solid free cash flow generation further demonstrates the effectiveness of our strategy to strengthen the cash flow profile of our business.

"The positive activity momentum we see in North America and international markets today, combined with our expectations for future customer demand, gives us conviction for an unfolding multi-year upcycle.

"Halliburtons value proposition, unique exposure to both international and North America markets, and differentiated technologies across an integrated services portfolio solidify our sustainable competitive advantage, and deliver strong free cash flow and industry-leading returns," concluded Miller.

Story continues

Operating Segments

Completion and Production

Completion and Production revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $2 billion, an increase of $178 million, or 10%, when compared to the first quarter of 2021, while operating income was $317 million, an increase of $65 million, or 26%. These results were driven by increased activity across multiple product service lines in North America land, higher cementing activity in the Eastern Hemisphere and Latin America, increased completion tools sales in the Middle East, the North Sea, and Latin America, as well as higher well intervention services in Saudi Arabia and Algeria. Partially offsetting these improvements was lower stimulation activity in Latin America.

Drilling and Evaluation

Drilling and Evaluation revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $1.7 billion, an increase of $78 million, or 5%, when compared to the first quarter of 2021, while operating income was $175 million, an increase of $4 million, or 2%. These results were due to improved drilling-related services and wireline activity across all regions, along with increased testing services in the Eastern Hemisphere. Partially offsetting these increases were reduced software sales globally.

Geographic Regions

North America

North America revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $1.6 billion, a 12% increase when compared to the first quarter of 2021. This increase was primarily driven by higher pressure pumping services, drilling-related services, and wireline activity in North America land, as well as higher well construction activity in the Gulf of Mexico. Partially offsetting these increases were reduced software sales across the region.

International

International revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $2.1 billion, a 4% increase when compared to the first quarter of 2021. This improvement was primarily driven by higher well construction activity, completion tools sales, and well intervention services across all regions. Partially offsetting these increases were lower software sales across all regions and decreased stimulation activity in Latin America.

Latin America revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $534 million, flat sequentially. Increased activity in multiple product service lines in Mexico, higher fluid services in Brazil, as well as additional completion tools sales in Guyana, were offset by reduced stimulation activity in Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil, lower software sales across the region, and decreased project management activity in Mexico and Ecuador.

Europe/Africa/CIS revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $679 million, a 7% increase sequentially, resulting from increased activity across multiple product service lines in Russia, Norway, Algeria, and Ghana. These increases were partially offset by lower software sales across the region and lower activity in Nigeria.

Middle East/Asia revenue in the second quarter of 2021 was $925 million, a 5% increase sequentially, resulting from improved activity in multiple product service lines in Saudi Arabia, higher well intervention services across the region, increased drilling-related services in Oman, higher completion tools sales in Kuwait, higher well construction activity in Australia, and increased pipeline services in China. These improvements were partially offset by lower software sales across the region, lower project management activity in India, and lower activity in Bangladesh.

Selective Technology & Highlights

Halliburton announced StrataXaminer, a new wireline logging service that helps operators acquire more accurate well data to better evaluate production potential. Obtaining high resolution images in oil or synthetic-based fluid systems has been an industry challenge for decades. StrataXaminer delivers high-resolution images of the reservoir structure to identify bedding, fracture patterns, fault zones, and potential flow barriers with increased accuracy.

Halliburton and TGS-NOPEC Geophysical ASA announced a collaboration to bring advanced seismic imaging to fiber optic sensing. The alliance will provide operators with advanced insight to determine their reservoir potential for oil and gas production or carbon storage. The Halliburton FiberVSP and Odassea distributed acoustic sensing solutions will now incorporate TGSs seismic imaging workflows that process the entire seismic wavefield to generate high-resolution reservoir images.

Halliburton was awarded a contract from Kuwait Oil Company (KOC), a world leader in digital transformation, to expand KOCs digital transformation journey by implementing solutions to maximize operational efficiency and increase production. The scope applies to all Kuwait fields including West Kuwait, South and East Kuwait, and Heavy Oil, complementing a recently awarded contract for similar services in North Kuwait.

Halliburton Labs announced four new companies that join four companies already participating in its collaborative environment to advance and scale cleaner, affordable energy. Alumina Energy, Ionada, Parasanti, and SurgePower Materials receive access to a broad range of industrial capabilities, technical expertise, and mentorship to scale their businesses.

Halliburton announced it will redeem, with cash on hand, the remaining $500 million outstanding principal amount of its 3.25% Senior Notes due 2021 on August 15, 2021.

Halliburton was awarded a contract from Petronas for a well construction program involving six wells in offshore East Malaysia. Halliburton will deliver these wells in collaboration with Sapura Drilling using its state-of-the-art Halliburton 4.0 digital platform. Deployed digital technologies will include the complete suite of Digital Well Program, Digital Well Operations, and Digital Well Automation - all DecisionSpace 365 cloud applications. The scope of work also includes key digital technologies from Sperry Drilling, Cementing, Drill Bits, Baroid, and Completions product lines. The campaign is the first integrated project of its kind in Malaysia, combining rig services with all aspects of planning, operations, and automation.

Halliburton was awarded a contract from Ecopetrol to collaborate on their digital transformation strategy for drilling and completions, including the digitalization of the well delivery process. This enables Ecopetrol to optimize their planning, design, and well execution end-to-end and accelerate value creation across the asset lifecycle.

Halliburton announced that it won a contract to provide Production Chemicals and Associated Services for a large IOC in Oman. Under the seven-year contract, Halliburton will supply a full suite of customized products along with specialized services to support the in-field chemical treatments.

TechnipFMC and Halliburton announced they received an OTC Spotlight on New Technology Award (SONT) for their Odassea Subsea Fiber Optic Solution, an advanced downhole fiber optic sensing system. ExxonMobil selected the solution for its Payara development project in Guyana. The award followed completion of front-end engineering and design studies and qualifications. The Odassea service integrates hardware and digital systems to strengthen capabilities in subsea reservoir monitoring and production optimization. Halliburton provides the fiber optic sensing technology and analysis for reservoir diagnostics. TechnipFMC provides the optical connectivity from the topside to the completions.

Halliburton announced an expansion of its digital collaboration with Aker BP, a Norwegian oil and gas exploration and production company, by deploying digital twins to automate work processes and accelerate decision-making. Aker BP is using Digital Well Program, a DecisionSpace 365 cloud application, that turns well planning and design into a live process where field development scenarios are continuously updated and compared to a digital twin to deliver safe, cost-effective, and productive wells.

Halliburton signed a contract with Petrofac, an international service provider to the energy industry, to adopt Digital Well Program, a DecisionSpace 365 cloud application, to automate drilling, completions, and engineering processes. The three-year contract enables Petrofac to incorporate artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science to optimize its well engineering service offering.

About Halliburton

Founded in 1919, Halliburton is one of the world's largest providers of products and services to the energy industry. With more than 40,000 employees, representing 130 nationalities in more than 70 countries, the company helps its customers maximize value throughout the lifecycle of the reservoir  from locating hydrocarbons and managing geological data, to drilling and formation evaluation, well construction and completion, and optimizing production throughout the life of the asset. Visit the Companys website at www.halliburton.com. Connect with Halliburton on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

Forward-looking Statements

The statements in this press release that are not historical statements, including statements regarding future financial performance, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. These statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the company's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied by the statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: the impact of COVID-19 and any variants, the related economic repercussions and resulting negative impact on demand for oil and gas, operational challenges relating to COVID-19 and efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus, including logistical challenges, protecting the health and well-being of our employees, remote work arrangements, performance of contracts and supply chain disruptions; the ability of the OPEC+ countries to agree on and comply with supply limitations; the continuation or suspension of our stock repurchase program, the amount, the timing, and the trading prices of Halliburton common stock, and the availability and alternative uses of cash; changes in the demand for or price of oil and/or natural gas; potential catastrophic events related to our operations, and related indemnification and insurance matters; protection of intellectual property rights and against cyber-attacks; compliance with environmental laws; changes in government regulations and regulatory requirements, particularly those related to oil and natural gas exploration, radioactive sources, explosives, chemicals, hydraulic fracturing services, and climate-related initiatives; compliance with laws related to income taxes and assumptions regarding the generation of future taxable income; risks of international operations, including risks relating to unsettled political conditions, war, the effects of terrorism, foreign exchange rates and controls, international trade and regulatory controls and sanctions, and doing business with national oil companies; weather-related issues, including the effects of hurricanes and tropical storms; changes in capital spending by customers, delays or failures by customers to make payments owed to us, and the resulting impact on our liquidity; execution of long-term, fixed-price contracts; structural changes and infrastructure issues in the oil and natural gas industry; maintaining a highly skilled workforce; availability and cost of raw materials; agreement with respect to and completion of potential dispositions, acquisitions and integration and success of acquired businesses and operations of joint ventures. Halliburton's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2021, recent Current Reports on Form 8-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings discuss some of the important risk factors identified that may affect Halliburton's business, results of operations, and financial condition. Halliburton undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason.

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (Millions of dollars and shares except per share data) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30 March 31 2021 2020 2021 Revenue: Completion and Production $ 2,048 $ 1,672 $ 1,870 Drilling and Evaluation 1,659 1,524 1,581 Total revenue $ 3,707 $ 3,196 $ 3,451 Operating income (loss): Completion and Production $ 317 $ 159 $ 252 Drilling and Evaluation 175 127 171 Corporate and other (58 ) (50 ) (53 ) Impairments and other charges  (2,147 )  Total operating income (loss) 434 (1,911 ) 370 Interest expense, net (120 ) (124 ) (125 ) Other, net (19 ) (48 ) (22 ) Income (loss) before income taxes 295 (2,083 ) 223 Income tax benefit (provision) (a) (65 ) 402 (52 ) Net Income (loss) $ 230 $ (1,681 ) $ 171 Net (Income) loss attributable to noncontrolling interest (3 ) 5 (1 ) Net Income (loss) attributable to company $ 227 $ (1,676 ) $ 170 Basic and diluted net income (loss) per share $ 0.26 $ (1.91 ) $ 0.19 Basic and diluted weighted average common shares outstanding 890 877 889

(a) During the three months ended June 30, 2020 the tax benefit includes the tax effect on impairments and other charges.

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (Millions of dollars and shares except per share data) (Unaudited) Six Months Ended June 30 2021 2020 Revenue: Completion and Production $ 3,918 $ 4,634 Drilling and Evaluation 3,240 3,599 Total revenue $ 7,158 $ 8,233 Operating income (loss): Completion and Production $ 569 $ 504 Drilling and Evaluation 346 344 Corporate and other (111 ) (110 ) Impairments and other charges  (3,220 ) Total operating income (loss) 804 (2,482 ) Interest expense, net (245 ) (258 ) Loss on early extinguishment of debt (a)  (168 ) Other, net (41 ) (71 ) Income (loss) before income taxes 518 (2,979 ) Income tax benefit (provision) (b) (117 ) 283 Net Income (loss) $ 401 $ (2,696 ) Net (Income) loss attributable to noncontrolling interest (4 ) 3 Net Income (loss) attributable to company $ 397 $ (2,693 ) Basic and diluted net income (loss) per share $ 0.45 $ (3.07 ) Basic and diluted weighted average common shares outstanding 889 877

(a) During the six months ended June 30, 2020, Halliburton recognized a $168 million loss on extinguishment of debt related to the early redemption of $1.5 billion aggregate principal amount of senior notes. (b) The tax benefit during the six months ended June 30, 2020 includes the tax effect on impairment and other charges. Additionally, during the six months ended June 30, 2020, Halliburton recognized a $310 million tax expense associated with a valuation allowance on its deferred tax assets based on current market conditions and the expected impact on the Company's business outlook.

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (Millions of dollars) (Unaudited) June 30 December 31 2021 2020 Assets Current assets: Cash and equivalents $ 2,658 $ 2,563 Receivables, net 3,459 3,071 Inventories 2,355 2,349 Other current assets 1,455 1,492 Total current assets 9,927 9,475 Property, plant, and equipment, net 4,214 4,325 Goodwill 2,804 2,804 Deferred income taxes 2,174 2,166 Operating lease right-of-use assets 735 786 Other assets 1,063 1,124 Total assets $ 20,917 $ 20,680 Liabilities and Shareholders Equity Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 1,891 $ 1,573 Accrued employee compensation and benefits 528 517 Current maturities of long-term debt 515 695 Current portion of operating lease liabilities 247 251 Other current liabilities 1,153 1,385 Total current liabilities 4,334 4,421 Long-term debt 9,124 9,132 Operating lease liabilities 688 758 Employee compensation and benefits 536 562 Other liabilities 806 824 Total liabilities 15,488 15,697 Company shareholders equity 5,420 4,974 Noncontrolling interest in consolidated subsidiaries 9 9 Total shareholders equity 5,429 4,983 Total liabilities and shareholders equity $ 20,917 $ 20,680

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (Millions of dollars) (Unaudited) Six Months Ended Three Months Ended June 30 June 30 2021 2020 2021 Cash flows from operating activities: Net Income (loss) $ 401 $ (2,696 ) $ 230 Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to cash flows from operating activities: Impairments and other charges  3,220  Depreciation, depletion, and amortization 449 599 223 Working capital (a) 11 296 (48 ) Deferred income tax benefit  (353 ) 13 Other operating activities (249 ) (243 ) (9 ) Total cash flows provided by operating activities 612 823 409 Cash flows from investing activities: Capital expenditures (295 ) (355 ) (191 ) Proceeds from sales of property, plant, and equipment 105 122 47 Other investing activities (31 ) (48 ) (15 ) Total cash flows used in investing activities (221 ) (281 ) (159 ) Cash flows from financing activities: Payments on long-term borrowings (192 ) (1,653 ) (4 ) Proceeds from issuance of long-term debt, net  994  Dividends to shareholders (80 ) (198 ) (40 ) Stock repurchase program  (100 )  Other financing activities 4 20 (1 ) Total cash flows used in financing activities (268 ) (937 ) (45 ) Effect of exchange rate changes on cash (28 ) (62 ) 7 Increase (decrease) in cash and equivalents 95 (457 ) 212 Cash and equivalents at beginning of period 2,563 2,268 2,446 Cash and equivalents at end of period $ 2,658 $ 1,811 $ 2,658

(a) Working capital includes receivables, inventories, and accounts payable. See Footnote Table 1 for Reconciliation of Cash Flows from Operating Activities to Free Cash Flow

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Revenue and Operating Income (Loss) Comparison By Operating Segment and Geographic Region (Millions of dollars) (Unaudited) Three Months Ended June 30 March 31 Revenue 2021 2020 2021 By operating segment: Completion and Production $ 2,048 $ 1,672 $ 1,870 Drilling and Evaluation 1,659 1,524 1,581 Total revenue $ 3,707 $ 3,196 $ 3,451 By geographic region: North America $ 1,569 $ 1,049 $ 1,404 Latin America 534 346 535 Europe/Africa/CIS 679 691 634 Middle East/Asia 925 1,110 878 Total revenue $ 3,707 $ 3,196 $ 3,451 Operating Income (Loss) By operating segment: Completion and Production $ 317 $ 159 $ 252 Drilling and Evaluation 175 127 171 Total 492 286 423 Corporate and other (58 ) (50 ) (53 ) Impairments and other charges  (2,147 )  Total operating income (loss) $ 434 $ (1,911 ) $ 370

HALLIBURTON COMPANY Revenue and Operating Income (Loss) Comparison By Operating Segment and Geographic Region (Millions of dollars) (Unaudited) Six Months Ended June 30 Revenue 2021 2020 By operating segment: Completion and Production $ 3,918 $ 4,634 Drilling and Evaluation 3,240 3,599 Total revenue $ 7,158 $ 8,233 By geographic region: North America $ 2,973 $ 3,509 Latin America 1,069 862 Europe/Africa/CIS 1,313 1,522 Middle East/Asia 1,803 2,340 Total revenue $ 7,158 $ 8,233 Operating Income (Loss) By operating segment: Completion and Production $ 569 $ 504 Drilling and Evaluation 346 344 Total 915 848 Corporate and other (111 ) (110 ) Impairments and other charges  (3,220 ) Total operating income (loss) $ 804 $ (2,482 )

FOOTNOTE TABLE 1 HALLIBURTON COMPANY Reconciliation of Cash Flows from Operating Activities to Free Cash Flow (Millions of dollars) (Unaudited) Six Months Ended Three Months Ended June 30 June 30 2021 2020 2021 Total cash flows provided by operating activities $ 612 $ 823 $ 409 Capital expenditures (295 ) (355 ) (191 ) Proceeds from sales of property, plant, and equipment 105 122 47 Free cash flow (a) $ 422 $ 590 $ 265

(a) The Free Cash Flow metric is a non-GAAP financial measure, which is calculated as "Total cash flows provided by operating activities" less "Capital expenditures" plus "Proceeds from sales of property, plant, and equipment." Management believes that Free Cash Flow is a key measure to assess liquidity of the business and is consistent with the disclosures of our direct, large-cap competitors. Prior periods presented are consistent with this metric.

Conference Call Details

Halliburton Company (NYSE: HAL) will host a conference call on Tuesday, July 20, 2021, to discuss its second quarter 2021 financial results. The call will begin at 8:00 AM Central Time (9:00 AM Eastern Time).

Please visit the website to listen to the call via live webcast. You may also participate in the call by dialing (844) 358-9181 within North America or +1 (478) 219-0188 outside of North America. A passcode is not required. Attendees should log in to the webcast or dial in approximately 15 minutes prior to the start of the call.

A replay of the conference call will be available on Halliburtons website until July 27, 2021. Also, a replay may be accessed by telephone at (855) 859-2056 within North America or +1 (404) 537-3406 outside of North America, using the passcode 9429544.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005193/en/

Contacts

For Investors:

Abu Zeya

Halliburton, Investor Relations

Investors@Halliburton.com

281-871-2688

For News Media:

Emily Mir

Halliburton, External Affairs

PR@Halliburton.com

281-871-2601
Mali's interim leader Colonel Assimi Goita announced on national television that he is doing "very well" following an attempt on his life in the capital Bamako on Tuesday.

"That's part of being a leader, there are always malcontents," Goita said in a statement broadcast on state channel ORTM. "There are people who at any time may want to try things to cause instability".

An AFP journalist who witnessed the attack said the assailants lunged at Goita, who was quickly whisked away by security.

The journalist also said he saw blood at the scene, though it was not clear who had been wounded.

An official in the president's office later said Goita was "safe and sound", after what was labelled an assassination attempt.

Goita arrived at the military camp of Kati, outside the capital, "where security has been reinforced", the official added.

Security had subdued one attacker, and "investigations are ongoing", the presidency added in a statement.

The incident occurred after prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha in the great mosque of Bamako.

Assailants went for the president as an imam was directing worshippers outside the mosque for a ritual animal sacrifice.

Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone, who was at the mosque, told AFP that a man had "tried to kill the president with a knife" but was apprehended.

The mosque's director, Latus Toure, said an attacker had lunged at the president but wounded someone else.

Later, a security official who requested anonymity said that two people had been arrested and were now in detention.

Political turmoil

The shocking attack follows months of political turmoil in Mali, which is also battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Goita was sworn into power in June, after leading the country's second coup in less than a year.

The colonel had already led a putsch last August, when he and other army officers ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running jihadist conflict.

Story continues

The second coup in nine months sparked diplomatic uproar, prompting the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to suspend Mali, calling for the appointment of a civilian prime minister.

Jihadist insurgency

France, which has thousands of troops stationed in the war-torn country, also suspended military cooperation with Mali.

The former colonial power followed by announcing that it would wind down its 5,100-strong Barkhane force that has battled jihadists in the Sahel since 2013.

The military junta handed power to a civilian-led transitional government, which promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022.

In June it unveiled its new government, appointing military figures in key roles.

Goita vowed at the time that the government would "uphold all its commitments", pledging to stage "credible, fair and transparent elections".

A large majority of the 15-nation UN's Security Council later called for free and fair elections to go ahead in the country without the participation of its current leaders.

Mali also faces unrest outside the political arena.

It has been struggling to contain an jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and has since spread to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

The conflict has also been mirrored by political instability in the capital.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)
European Council President Charles Michel will attend a regional summit in the Georgian Black Sea city of Batumi on Monday (19 July), after a weekend visit of Armenia and Azerbaijan, in what appears as an attempt to keep the region closer to the EU. EURACTIV reports from Batumi. As After his personal efforts to help solve the internal political crisis in Georgia, described by some as risky, Michel took another challenge by involving the EU in new mediation efforts between Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a war last autumn over Nagorno-Karabakh which claimed some 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered ceasefire under which Yerevan ceded territories it had controlled for decades. Tensions have been running high again since May  when Armenia accused Azerbaijans military of crossing its southern border  with both countries reporting occasional shootouts along their shared border.

Michel, who was in Armenia on Saturday, called on the so-called Minsk Group to assume its responsibilities and address different topics of the post-conflict settlement. The OSCE Minsk Group was created in 1992 by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe and is co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States. But the Minsk Group has been largely inactive since the ceasefire.

Honest broker

In Azerbaijan, Michel went further, stating that the EU is ready to play a constructive role as an honest broker with Azerbaijan and Armenia in addition to the Minsk group efforts. Previous EU positions have always been that no duplication was needed and that the proper body to manage the conflict was the OSCE.

Speaking alongside Azeri President Ilham Aliyev, Michel said that among the issues on which the EU could provide expertise are the exchange of prisoners and the availability of mine maps, which were partly resolved, but also the delimitation of borders, for which he said we are ready to provide European expert assistance and, if necessary and desired, European monitoring. He added that there was also the issue of the armed forces located close to the disputed areas, which in his words should also be discussed.

From Baku Michel flew to Batumi where he is expected to attend a meeting of the Presidents of Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova later on Monday. The meeting marks a rapprochement between the three countries, which share a common desire to join the EU.

The summit, hosted by the President of Georgia Salome Zourabishvili, coincides with the annual Batumi International Conference, a high point in Georgias foreign affairs agenda. According to diplomats, what made the Trio summit possible was the outstanding victory of the pro-European forces in Moldova last Sunday. For Georgia, who last April initiated the Associated Trio format, the presence of Charles Michel at such gathering would be a major blessing, diplomats told EURACTIV.

Until now the Trio initiative was met with suspicion in Brussels, because it changes the format of relations with the six former Soviet republics in the EU neighbourhood  Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan. The six are packed together in the so-called Eastern Partnership, despite the fact that Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia have Association agreements with the EU and are much more ambitious in terms of integration and even future membership of the Union.

Not a Brussels invention

Another reason why the EU was suspicious of the Trio initiative is that it was not a Brussels invention, a diplomat said. In his words, initiatives to keep pro-EU attitudes alive in the region appear once every five years, the latest one being the visa liberalisation scheme. But in the lack of new initiatives from Brussels, the region came up with its own plan, the diplomat said. However, the Trio initiative also has its internal problems. Probably the biggest is Ukraines agreement to host Mikheil Saakashvili, the former President of Georgia and leader of the countrys major opposition force, the United National Movement (UNM) of Georgia.

Saakashvili left Georgia in 2013 a year after his party lost a parliamentary election, and was charged and sentenced in 2017 in absentia, on charges of abuse of public office and corruption. He now lives in Ukraine, which has no extradition agreement with Georgia. There, Saakashvili is popular and is still seen as a pro-Western reformer. UNM keeps boycotting international efforts at solving the internal Georgian crisis, spearheaded by Charles Michel. Diplomats said that a lot of work had been needed to prepare the visit of Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to Batumi, and that details of the programme kept changing by the hour.

As an example, instead of a discussion between the Presidents moderated by journalist Rikard Jozwiak, the Presidents will only pronounce speeches. A high point of the meeting of the three Presidents and Charles Michel is expected to take place in the Petra fortress, south of Batumi. In the 6th century, under the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, the Petra fortress served as an important Eastern Roman outpost in the Caucasus and, due to its strategic location, became a battleground of the 541562 Lazic War between Rome and Sasanian Persia, the ancient version of todays Iran.
An Azerbaijani military serviceman has been wounded by shelling from Armenia in the Nakhchivan area of the state border between the two countries, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry reported on Tuesday.

"At about 23:40 (22:40 Moscow time) on July 19, Armenian armed forces shelled the Azerbaijani armys positions in the direction of the populated area of Heydarabad in Sadarak District of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic from the positions near the village of Arazdeyen in Vedi District using weapons of various calibers. As a result of the shelling, a military serviceman of the Azerbaijani army senior lieutenant Ramal Badalli was wounded in his leg," the ministry stated, adding that the man had been taken to the hospital.

The Armenian Armed Forces shelling was suppressed by return fire.

According to Azerbaijans Defense Ministry, the situation in the area is currently stable. "The situation is being controlled by the units of our troops," the report said.

On Monday, July 19, the Defense Ministry reported twice that the positions of Azerbaijans armed forces in the Nakhchivan area had been shelled.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on the United States on Tuesday to meet "conditions" including financial, logistical and diplomatic support, so that Turkey can run and guard Kabul airport after other foreign troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

Erdogan acknowledged that the Taliban had reservations but said Turkey would nonetheless carry out the mission as long as the United States, a NATO partner, meets three specific Turkish requirements.

"If these conditions could be met, we are thinking of taking over the management of Kabul airport," he said, listing diplomatic backing for Turkey as well as the U.S. handover of facilities and logistics in Afghanistan.

"There will be serious financial and administrative difficulties ... (the United States) will give the necessary support to Turkey in this respect as well," Erdogan added, after attending morning prayers during the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday.

Turkey hopes the airport mission will help soothe U.S. ties that are strained on several fronts including its purchase of Russian S-400 missile defences, Reuters reported.
Oil was up Tuesday morning in Asia, but Brent oil futures and WTI futures both remaining below the $70 mark. A broader market rout, combined with the recent COVID-19 outbreaks involving the Delta strain, all raised concerns about the short-term fuel demand outlook.

Brent futures rose 3.46% to $28.09 by 12:26 AM ET (4:26 AM GMT) after falling 6.8% to an eight-week low on Monday, the most since March 2021. WTI futures jumped 3.92% to $24.95.

Global COVID-19 outbreaks also continue to cloud the fuel demand outlook, as some countries re-introduce lockdown measures. The economic recovery from COVID-19 earlier in 2021 saw oil record gains in seven of the past eight months. However, recent outbreaks of the virus and some countries reimposition of restrictive measures put a dent in those gains.

OPEC+s resolution of its dispute over output increases earlier in the week removed some uncertainty for investors. With the supply from August 2021 onwards now secured, it is widely expected that the market will tighten and prices rise once again.

However, some investors warned that the increased OPEC+ supply would not be enough to fill an imminent supply shortfall. The latest COVID-19 outbreaks also indicate that the fuel demand outlook will remain uneven for some time, Yahoo reported.
Russias S-500 next-generation missile system has struck a fast-moving ballistic target in a training exercise at the Kapustin Yar range. The first S-500 system will be procured to the Moscow Regions air and missile defense unit after a full cycle of tests is completed, the Russian Defense Ministry told reporters.

"The S-500 cutting-edge missile system has carried out a test combat shooting at the Kapustin Yar training ground to strike a fast-moving ballistic target. According to data recorders, the target was engaged," the military agency noted.

The ministry underlined, "the combat shooting conducted as part of the test trials confirmed the missile systems tactical and technical performance characteristics and high reliability of Russias air defense military hardware." "We plan that the first S-500 system will be procured to the Moscow Regions air and missile defense unit after a full cycle of tests is completed," the ministry added.

The S-500 missile system has no analogues in the world and can intercept the whole range of current and future means of air and space attack of a potential enemy at all altitudes and speeds.

S-500 will replace the S-400 systems. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said earlier that procurement of S-500s to the Russian army would begin in 2020, while specialists have been working on the system since 2017.
Several rockets were launched on the Presidential Palace in Afghanistans capital of Kabul on Tuesday during prayers of Eid al-Adha holiday period, Chinas news agency Xinhua reported.

According to the news agency, the attack occurred as President of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani and other dignitaries joined the prayers of the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday (the Feast of the Sacrifice celebrated this year from July 19 through 23).

Afghan television channel 1-TV reported that three explosions were heard near the Presidential Palace in Kabul.

There were no immediate reports about casualties or inflicted damages.
The United States and Germany are expected to announce in coming days a deal resolving their long-standing dispute over Russia's $11 billion Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, sources familiar with the matter said on Monday.

A deal is now in sight after discussions among U.S. and German officials about U.S. concerns that the pipeline, which is 98% complete, will increase Europe's dependence on Russian gas, and could rob Ukraine of the transit fees it now collects on gas pumped through an existing pipeline.

An agreement would avert the resumption of currently waived U.S. sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG, the company behind the pipeline, and its chief executive.

Details were not immediately available, but the sources said the deal would include commitments by both sides to ensure increased investment in Ukraine's energy sector to offset any negative fallout from the new pipeline, which will bring gas from the Arctic to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

"It's looking good," said one of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are still ongoing. "We expect those conversations to reach resolution in coming days."

A second source said the two sides were nearing an agreement that would assuage concerns raised by U.S. lawmakers, as well as those of Ukraine, Reuters reported.
The required customs procedures related to imports and exports have been simplified but enterprises are far from satisfied.

The Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI) has released a report on enterprises satisfaction in following import/export procedures. The report was based on the results of a survey conducted in 2020 which received responses from 3,657 businesses in the fields of import/export, production-export, processing, export processing, logistics services and customs agents.

VCCIs Head of Legal Department Dau Anh Tuan said the survey found positive assessments about efforts by customs agencies and relevant ministries and branches to reform import/export procedures amid the Covid-19 outbreak and global trade disruption.

These include positive changes in import/export administrative procedures and service quality of customs officers and specialized inspection agencies. Extra expenses for import/export procedures have also decreased.

Complaints

Despite the improvements, the report pointed out that there are still many things customs agencies and ministries and branches need to do to facilitate import/export activities.

Thirty eight enterprises said they still have difficulties learning about import/export procedures. Foreign invested enterprises (FIEs) and large enterprises have more difficulties than others. The procedures of checking documents, tax refunds and non-collection of tax, and physical inspection of goods have been simplified, but are still placing difficulties on enterprises.

Enterprises say the regulations related to document checking and goods examination, and tax refunds and payments are changing all the time.

They complain about the inadequate coordination between customs authorities and other agencies, and the requirement to provide documents not stipulated in regulations.

Meanwhile, customs officers do not provide adequate guidance and do not publicize necessary information.

They complained the most about the assigning of the HS Code (harmonized commodity description and coding system) and defining of customs value.

In 2018, 66.3 percent of enterprises had problems in HS Code assignment, while the figure rose to 76 percent in 2020.

Enterprises complained about the inconsistency in the application of HS codes between customs and enterprises, and the difficulties in prior consultation on HS codes with customs authorities. It also takes a lot of time to wait for HS code inspection results from customs agencies.

More than 33 percent of enterprises said the defining of customs value is unconvincing.

Post-customs clearance inspection procedures still take a lot of time and are overlapping, while enterprises are required to provide documents which are not stipulated in regulations.

Post-customs clearance inspection agencies even inspect consignments that had already been examined before by border gate customs agencies. Enterprises do not receive explanations about unclear issues before agencies make final decisions.

Enterprises are still being burdened with regulations on specialized inspection. There are too many product items subject to specialized inspection. Only 50 percent of enterprises said the inspection procedures were easy. The Ministry of Health (MOH) and Ministry of Transport (MOT) complained the most about specialized inspection.

Post-customs clearance inspection agencies even inspect consignments that had already been examined before by border gate customs agencies. Enterprises do not receive explanations about unclear issues before agencies make final decisions.

More than 55 percent of enterprises noted that specialized inspection procedures are complicated; 54.6 percent have to go forth and back to fulfill procedures; 49.2 percent complained it takes more time than regulated to handle dossiers and applications; 46.2 percent said it is difficult to access information about guidance on procedures; 37.5 percent said the coordination between state management agencies and specialized inspection agencies is unharmonious; 34.7 percent need documents which they can hardly satisfy; 31.9 percent have to pay extra fees to accelerate the procedures; 30.6 percent said customs officers dont give clear enough guidance; 25 percent complained about the attitude of customs officers when working with enterprises; and 22 percent said they were required to have documents that are not stipulated in regulations.

Online and paper procedures required

Tran Duc Nghia from Delta Company confirmed that the inconsistency in HS Code assigning is common. Customs agencies assign different HS Codes for the same product items. It is not easy to make prior consultation with customs agencies because of inactive cooperation, and inspections take too much time.

Regarding customs value defining, enterprises said customs officers search for information about product value on e-commerce sites and apply prices for imports. But the real prices are different from the quoted prices. As a result, the taxable prices are much higher than real prices. Some businesses even said they want to sue customs agencies for unreasonable defining of customs value.

Specialized inspection procedures take millions of working hours every year just to discover dozens of violations each year, which is really a big waste of resources of the society. It really needs reconsideration, Nghia said.

Tran Quang Trung from the Vietnam Dairy Association confirmed that the same products are assigned different HS Codes, which is a big problem. The increasingly high proportion of enterprises complaining about HS Code assign is "abnormal", and therefore, needs reform.

Online procedures have been applied, but papers are still required. A lot of enterprises fail to apply for online licensing. Customs agencies tell them to submit documents via posts, refusing direct meetings for fear of Covid-19. Meanwhile, post offices are overloaded and enterprises need licenses urgently to export products on schedule.

Its necessary to accelerate the application of online procedures to reduce time, expenses and inconvenience, Trung said.

Tran Thuy

ASEAN, Czech Republic look to standardise customs procedures The Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) Committee in coordination with the Customs Administration of the Czech Republic has held a webinar to introduce the electronic customs of the European country.
Just a short time after VietNamNet Premium, a paid content service of VietNamNet was launched, VietnamPost  the general fee collection agent  set to work to provide the service.

VietNamNet Newspaper Editor-in-Chief Pham Anh Tuan and Vietnam Post General Director Chu Quang Hao signed the cooperation agreement.

After one week of deployment, Vietnam Post accessed thousands of potential clients through the July pension payment, institutions and businesses, and big clients and current clients, building scenarios for different targeted groups of clients.

A large number of people have shown interest in VietNamNet Premium services through the introduction of VietnamPost. Many readers who read previous articles on VietNamNet highly appreciate the luxury of the specialized website of the newspaper.

I find the interface beautiful, modern and luxurious. There are in-depth articles with analysis, comments and solutions to problems. Particularly, the articles all are imbued with the Vietnamese spirit and aspirations, the eagerness to rise up to conquer pinnacles, said Do Huu Nguyen, a retired official in Ba Dinh District in Hanoi.

For institutions and businesses, VietNamNet Premium serves an effective information channel. Information, selected, analyzed and synthetized, is provided in a timely way, targeting certain subjects. All all of them are in-depth analyses.

A representative of Thai Nguyen provincial Party Committees Propaganda and Training Commission, who praised VietNamNet Premium services, said that this is a creative way to provide information to readers. With these services, readers can access authentic information, and not be disturbed by excessive ads that are ofren seen on many other newspapers and news websites.

Since the information has been selected, verified and censored, it would be more effective to organize media campaigns to readers, he said.

VietnamPost has deployed the service at 17 post offices in cities and provinces. After one week, 200 accounts were activated, while thousands of people have shown their attention  very encouraging signals.

VietnamPost strives to develop 1 million accounts for VietNamnet Premium by 2023, affirming that this is within reach. This is an opportunity to open a new news service amid the news digitalization trend.

VietnamPost, with great advantages in post service and newspaper distribution, and a pioneer in digital transformation, will be successful in deploying the service, bringing great development opportunities to e-newspapers.

With the new implementation method, the large coverage and prestige of a national post corporation, VietnamPost is holding the biggest advantage in deploying the service of collecting fees for VietNamNet Premium.

In the time to come, with the strength of digital platforms and smart applications from the postal service provider, it will be able to quickly and closely connect the content producer  VietNamNet - and customers, so as to open a new direction and a new path for the Vietnamese press, making it a newspaper with social responsibility and development in harmony with the flow of digital journalism in the world.

Trong Dat
Ho Chi Minh City is carrying out a plan of Covid-19 vaccination for consular officers and foreigners in the city.

The information was provided by Mr. Tran Phuoc Anh, Acting Director of the Municipal Department of Foreign Affairs at a press conference under the chair of Mr. Le Van Minh, Standing Deputy Head of the Propaganda and Education Department under the City Party Committee.

Mr. Tran Phuoc Anh, Acting Director of the Municipal Department of Foreign Affairs at the press conference.



Mr. Tran Phuoc Anh shared that foreign communities and Vietnamese overseas are always concerned about the pandemic development in the city and showed their readiness to assist the city amid the complicated Covid-19 pandemic.

So far, Ho Chi Minh City has received more supports from the Consulates General of Japan, Thailand, Cambodia in Ho Chi Minh City and Korean, Indian Enterprises Associations.

In the morning of July 19, Deputy Chairman of the HCMC Peoples Committee Duong Anh Duc was on behalf of the city leaders to receive one million medical facial masks, 100,000 N95 facial masks, 100 ventilators and financial support of US$200,000 in cash from the Royal Government of Cambodia.

HCMC also closely collaborated with agencies to accelerate the two doses of Covid-19 vaccination for consular officers in the city in addition to support to those people having demand of coming back to their countries.

Source: SGGP
Hanoi has prepared to launch the largest-ever COVID-19 vaccination campaign in a bid to reach herd immunity against the pandemic soon.

In order to implement the dual targets of preventing the pandemic and boosting socio-economic development at the same time, the capital city has defined the 5K message and vaccination as well as technology application as the key solutions.

So far, the city has made necessary preparations to ensure that the campaign will take place in a successful and safe manner.

According to the municipal Department of Health, Hanoi has about 5.1 million people aged from 18 to 65 who are subjected to vaccination. After reviewing necessary equipment for vaccine storage, the city said that it has a capacity of receiving 1.3 million doses of vaccines at the same time. If the supply sources are stable, the city will strive to deliver 200,000 vaccine shots per day.

Director of the Department Tran Thi Nhi Ha said that the city will set up 1,200 vaccination facilities across the city, while mobilising 100 emergency teams to stand ready for post-vaccination emergency aid.

People in the targeted groups can register for COVID-19 vaccination in their commune, ward and township or through the COVID-19 vaccination portal and So suc khoe dien tu app on their smart phones which is available on both Android and iOS. After receiving the registration, medical staff will make screening and classify groups for vaccination.

Along with preparing for the campaign, the city has actively mobilised support from organisations and individuals for the fund for COVID-19 prevention and control, thus increasing financial resources for vaccine purchase.

Through the Vietnam Fatherland Front (VFF) system from the central to local levels, the fund raising activities have been implemented effectively. So far, the VFF Committee of Hanoi has received over 1.75 trillion VND (76.15 million USD) in cash and more than 2.6 doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

According to President of the municipal VFF Committee Nguyen Lan Huong, agencies, organisations, enterprises and individuals in the city have actively engaged in contributing to the fund for COVID-19 prevention and control.

In order to reach herd immunity, Hanoi needs more than 2 trillion VND for buying vaccines, she said, adding that the committee hopes to receive more support from the community to the fund, thus stamping out the pandemic soon.

So far, preparations for the vaccination have completed. However, city leaders have called for close cooperation of relevant agencies and local residents in the implementation of the campaign as well as pandemic prevention and control regulations in daily activities.

Meanwhile, on July 19, the Defence Ministrys Military Medical University announced that more than 1,000 volunteers received their second shots of homegrown Nano Covax vaccine in its third phase of human trials.

Prof. Dr. Maj. Gen. Hoang Van Luong, Deputy Director of the university, said after being injected, the volunteers are in stable conditions. Medical workers have asked them to update information about side effects if any on the e-Diary.

Over 12,000 remaining volunteers will get their second jab from July 26.

All volunteers are expected be fully vaccinated with two shots in mid-August.

Nano Covax is developed by the Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC based on recombinant DNA/protein technology. It went through the first-phase trial from December 18, 2020 and the second phase from February 26, 2021. The third phase started on June 11, 2021.

Results from the first two trial phases showed that all volunteers developed antibodies against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2.

According to Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long, Vietnam is striving to complete vaccinating its citizens in late 2021 or early 2022./.

Source: VNA
It is estimated that hundreds of thousands of people in Hanoi are eligible to receive support from the Covid-19 relief package described in Resolution 68.

Regarding the social security support package for workers and employers, Director of the Hanoi Department of Labors, War Invalids and Social Affairs Bach Lien Huong said the department has joined forces with agencies to work on a draft decision of the Hanoi Peoples Committee on support delivery.

The department will make adjustments to the draft after collecting opinions before submitting the final draft to the Peoples Committee, by July 20 at the latest.

The department has set up a hotline to receive information and complaints from people related to the implementation of the policy on supporting workers and employers.

Huong estimated that hundreds of thousands of people in the city are eligible for support.

The conditions, criteria and procedures for implementing the support policy under Resolution 68/NQ-CP have been clearly specified in Decision 23/2021/QD-TTg, so Hanoi will localize the subjects for support as per the orientation of the central government.

As for business households seriously affected by Covid-19, before the Resolution 68 was released, Hanoi had already decided to give support to them. This will be implemented by the Hanoi Taxation Department.

To avoid overlapping support, her department will work with the taxation body to be sure that each subject can receive support, in accordance with one policy, at the highest possible level.

As for informal workers, support will be given to affected workers in the areas of medical quarantine in order to serve the fight against Covid-19 as per the decisions of competent agencies.

Support will also be given to people who take jobs with no labor contracts at the moment and in fields which have had to suspend operation as instructed by local authorities (selling tea at street tea shops, washing hair, etc). Only people in difficult conditions, not all freelancers, will receive support.

This means that informal workers in some jobs may receive higher support than those in other areas, and some localities may have more people receiving support than other localities. The criteria and conditions for beneficiaries may also differ.

According to Huong, the department listed certain conditions in the draft decision: workers have to reside permanently or temporarily in the localities to submit applications for support, and local authorities have to commit to manage them.

From late April 2020 to May 2021, Hanoi gave support to 515,515 people, totalling VND608 billion.

Huong Quynh

Support for businesses vital for economic recovery During the current ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, it is of utmost importance that government authorities introduce policies that provide maximum support to keep businesses afloat, and sustain the economy as well.
Pickled shrimps are among the most popular side dishes in Vietnams central coast region. However, it is the version in Binh Dinh Province that is most appealing to food lovers because of its distinctive flavor.

A jar of Binh Dinh-style pickled shrimps.

The unique taste of the dish comes from its preparation. As for the ingredients, fresh shrimps are of course the key. The shrimps are soaked in Bau Da winea very well-known wine of Binh Dinhwithin 30 minutes to remove their stink. Then, the heads of the shrimps are cut off. Next, they are soaked again in Bau Da wine until they turn red.

A mixture of glutinous rice flour, hot water and a pinch of salt is prepared so that the wine-soaked shrimps are immersed in it. After that, the mixture is marinated in galangal, ginger, garlic and fish sauce before being put in a jar for one week. Guava leaves are put on the surface of the jar to prevent the shrimps from coming up.

Binh Dinh-style pickled shrimps are a side dish often served with rice vermicelli, slices of boiled pork, herbs and rice paper. The pickled shrimps and hot rice are also a perfect match.

Jars of Binh Dinh-style pickled shrimps are now available on e-commerce platforms.

Source: SGT

Must-try grilled-fish rice crepe in Quy Nhon Town Banh Trang Cha Ca (Grilled fish rice crepe) is among the must-try dishes in the coastal Quy Nhon Town in Binh Dinh Province.
In her request, Dutton asked for a spreadsheet showing the feedback McGeachin had received from the public on her task force.

McGeachins chief of staff, Jordan Watters first told Dutton that some of the information was exempt from disclosure and later denied that Dutton had asked for some of the information at all, according to the lawsuit. Dutton was told that she would have to pay more than $500 to get the information and that it would take longer than allowed under the public records law.

The law allows government entities to charge people seeking information for some of the costs of filling requests.

McGeachin later wrote a Facebook post criticizing Duttons public records request and suggesting that the news outlet would somehow use the information to attack residents.

Not only are they requesting the comments, but they are also demanding the names and email addresses of those who made the comments, McGeachin wrote in the post. Why does the media want YOUR personal information? Do they plan to release it and encourage employers and government agencies to retaliate against Idahoans who have expressed concerns about Idahos education system?
PODCAST

PROJECT 38: Raytheon's mega-integration of tech, people & processes

Raytheon Technologies as the world knows it today has only just begun its second year since the megamerger with United Technologies Corp. to create the No. 2 company on this years Top 100 rankings.

The aerospace-and-defense giants intelligence and space segment is headquartered in our region: Arlington, Virginia to be exact. For this episode of Project 38, that segments president in Roy Azevedo takes Senior Staff Writer Ross Wilkers inside the mega-integration at the operational level and the technology synergies Raytheon is looking to capture.

Also on the agenda for this discussion: how Raytheon Intelligence and Space is undertaking its own digital transformation alongside federal customers, that business acquisition of a small satellite maker in late 2020 and the overall companys thinking with respect to the post-pandemic future of work.
CIO-SP4 amendments clear out most early protests, extend due date

The procurement shop at the National Institutes of Health has apparently satisfied several early complaints over the solicitation for the $50 billion CIO-SP4 IT services contract.

NIH's IT Acquisition and Assessment Center was hit with several protests following the release of the solicitation. But since the original release, NITAAC has issued a series of amendments that they and the Government Accountability Office believe address concerns raised.

Most of the protesters objected to how past performance from teaming partners would count in the proposals. NITAAC put some limits on the past performance of partners. The latest amendments issued Friday addressed the concerns raised by six of the eight protests.

GAO dismissed the protests filed by Sara Software Systems, GPSItek JV, Amaxiam LLC, Reliable Mission Solutions, Mahani Technical Services and 2TeckJV.

Still active are the protests by Tat America International Corp. and AgilisTEK LLC.

One of the active protests claims there are ambiguities in the solicitation. The other challenges the self-scoring rating system.

Both of these are the kind of issues that can and will likely be resolved without going to a full GAO decision. So well look for a couple more dismissals in the coming weeks.

NITAAC can continue to move forward with the contract except for the awards while protests are pending. It cant make awards while protests are pending. But that likely wont be an issue.

More protests are possible though unlikely. NITAAC continues to make amendments and has pushed back the due date for proposals to Aug. 3.

In other amendments, small business bidders must now submit the teaming agreements they sign. Previously, there was no requirement for formal documentation of the teaming relationships.

The solicitation also prohibits the use of subcontractors to provide business systems capabilities such as CMMI, Earned Value Management, and ISO-certifications for bidders in the Other than Small and Emerging Large Business categories. If you must rely on a sub for those business systems, then you must form a joint venture.

It looks like NITAAC is listening to industry, who have complained about the teaming requirements laid out in the original solicitation. Many of the amendments have tightened and clarified what is allowed and what isnt.
Local

top story

Barn collapsed day after being installed on property, killing father and son

COURTESY PHOTO Andy Kaufman and his son, Beckett. COURTESY PHOTO Andy Kaufman and his son, Beckett.

CEDAR FALLS  A barn that collapsed Friday, killing a father and his young son, had been moved and installed on a concrete pad the day before, according to a friend of the family.

Andy Kaufman, 40, and his 9-year-old son, Beckett, were killed in the 6:30 p.m. collapse on the familys rural Cedar Falls property at 9702 Viking Road.

They moved it from a different location, said neighbor Trey Nuss, who described Andy as his best friend. It was in their yard for a month or so on a trailer.

He helped pour cement a couple weeks ago for the concrete pad where the barn was placed Thursday on the west side of the property near the familys house. Renovation work was planned before it would be used to house animals.

It was an unfortunate accident, said Cedar Falls Fire Chief John Bostwick. The Public Safety Departments fire division responded to the incident.

Capt. Mark Herbst of the Black Hawk County Sheriffs Office said that deputies hadnt turned in their report yet on the accident, but confirmed the barn had been moved onto the property. He didnt expect much more information to come out about the collapse.

What everybody needs to know is that Andy was so overly cautious with anything with his kids, said Nuss. Theres no way if there was any danger that Andy saw that he would have had his kids anywhere near it.

Andy and his wife, Brook, have four other children  a son and three daughters. He worked for an insurance company in Readlyn.

Beckett finished third grade at Dike Elementary School in the spring.

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Nuss said the family has a little bit of everything in terms of animals  like chicken, goats, ducks, rabbits and a tortoise. They acquired the barn as a place to care for the animals and teach responsibility to the children.

He liked the hobby farming, if you want to call it that, Nuss said of Andy. The biggest reason he was doing all of it was for the kids.

When the collapse occurred, it was just Andy and Beckett working on it at the time, said Nuss. We got a phone call that the barn had fallen, and I went over there immediately to try and help.

Several communities have been grieving the loss and responding with support for the family. People came out in force Sunday at the Kruger-Hemmen Sports Complex in Dike.

We had around 150 family members and students that showed up, and many of them were (Becketts) classmates, said Justin Stockdale, superintendent of Dike-New Hartford Community Schools. People were both grieving and reminiscing about the father and son. He noted that 10-15 Dike-New Hartford staff members were on hand along with a Central Rivers Area Education Agency crisis support team to offer any assistance for people.

Thats what small towns are for, thats what we do, Stockdale said of the gathering. It was kind of like a preliminary grief session for our kids to determine what else we need to set up.

Further grief counseling is available by calling the school district at (319) 989-2552.

Meanwhile, an effort is underway to raise money for the family. A GoFundMe.com page Helping the KaufmansAndy and Beckett Memorial had nearly reached its $60,000 goal by 8 p.m. Monday.

The page was created by Jesup Community Betterment, a nonprofit organization that fundraises for families in need with ties to Jesup. Brook is a preschool teacher with Jesup Community Schools, according to the districts website.

Nuss wasnt surprised by the outpouring.

Thats just a fine example of everybody wants to help them, he noted of the Kaufmans, who are very involved in the community. The family  Brook especially  she definitely knows and appreciates what everybody is doing. However, he added, she doesnt want to ask for help.

Andys community involvement was irreplaceable, said Nuss. I think thats the best way to put it, nobody is going to do everything that Andy did.

He coached a multitude of youth sports  T-ball, baseball, softball, wrestling, flag football, you name it, said Nuss.

When Beckett and his brother joined youth wrestling for the first time last year, Andy began coaching in that sport. Nuss cited Andys natural ability to coach the kids. He kept it really fun and entertaining for them.

Beckett played on a traveling baseball team this summer that his dad coached. He also participated in other sports from soccer to flag football. I dont know that Beckett was mean to anybody ever, said Nuss.

I dont think theres anybody who dislikes Andy or Beckett, he added. Everybody got along with those guys.

Nuss said they will be deeply missed by him  and the community.

Theres a big hole there, for sure, he said.

Andrew K. Kaufman and Beckett E. Kaufman March 31, 1981-July 16, 2021/ January 24, 2012-July 16, 2021

Photos: Waterloo Open final round at Irv Warren, Sunday, July 18 Close

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A fire inspection would only be done once annually, and annual licenses could be issued at any point in the calendar year for a 365-day period. Temporary structures also were removed from the ordinance.

Somebody setting up a table at a church organization is not going to have to get a mobile food license ever, Felchle said. Such groups may still need to abide by state and food service licensing and should check with the health department to make sure theyre in compliance.

The license fee structure was changed to $100 for a 30-day period and $350 for a yearly license. Felchle said that is a far better deal than the current transient merchant license, which is $45 per day.

The peddler license and the transient merchant license that weve had on the books now are horribly outdated, and the prices are way out of whack, she said. This ordinance change will help to clear up a lot of these issues that weve been seeing.

Trucks set up at special events like Iowa Irish Fest will not have to be licensed at the moment. Felchle said the city was taking a look at a special event license similar to other cities in the state, that would trigger fire inspections of each food vendor, though that wasnt being proposed yet.
CEDAR FALLS  This seasons theme for Cedar Valley Chamber Music, Without Music, is an obvious reference to 18 months without live music during the pandemic. But it also speaks to the power of music.

We use music as a medium to express what words and pictures cant. Music is a medium to capture expression and to speak without words, said Hunter Capoccioni, CVCM founder and artistic director.

This weekend, the Cedar Valley Chamber Music returns to in-person performances with a series of concerts at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center on the University of Northern Iowa campus.

The critically acclaimed Arianna String Quartet from the University of Missouri-St. Louis will perform at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Great Hall. Musical selections will feature Felix Mendelssohn, Leos Janacek and Pytor Tchaikovsky that examine how structure, balance, syntax and other musical structures express the composers most intimate thoughts without text.

Mendelssohn used music to create his own vocabulary to speak, and Janaceks string quartet is an encapsulation of hundreds of love letters throughout his life to a younger married woman. The Tchaikovsky string quartet is a eulogy to a friend  how to say goodbye to someone when words fail you, explained Capoccioni.
The yearslong effort by state and local governments in the U.S. to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to fix a nationwide opioid addiction and overdose crisis took a major step forward Tuesday when lawyers for local governments announced they were on the verge of a $26 billion settlement with the nation's three biggest drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.
Mariam Ibraheem is a Christian from Sudan who has lived to tell the story of her death sentence. When she married a Christian man, she was informed she had broken apostasy law. She was raised by her Christian mother after her Muslim father abandoned her, so Sudan says shes a Muslim apostate. She was imprisoned for refusing to recant her faith on Christmas Eve. She and her children were granted asylum by Italy in 2014 and they have since moved to the United States. From the stage at the summit, she declares, My freedom is in Christ.

At every turn, you run into someone extraordinary with a harrowing story. At lunch, I met an Ahmadi Muslim who is fighting blasphemy laws in Pakistan. Tursunay Ziyawudun, a Uyghur Muslim, described the indelible scars on her heart from the violence she suffered at the Chinese detention camps in Xinjiang. Others talked about the Iraq Christians who are languishing in a failing Lebanon, seven years after they fled from ISIS, not one of them having been granted refugee status. Iraqi Archbishop Bashar Warda was brokenhearted as he spoke about the men who are without jobs in Erbil.
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Sydney, July 19, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Nova Minerals Ltd ( ASX:NVA ) ( FRA:QM3 ) ( OTCMKTS:NVAAF ) recent results demonstrate continued opportunity for increasing the total resource at the Estelle Project in Alaska, with further results on the secondary target (RPM) coming before the end of the year.Chris talks about the scoping study as well as the coming resource upgrade for Korbel Main, which will include the RPM results from recent drilling.So far the uncharted mineralised corridor is yet to reveal more gold and the Nova team is now deploying further reconnaissance exploration and adding an additional drill rig to the four currently operating.To watch the Interview with Chris Gerteisen, please visit:About Nova Minerals Ltd

Nova Minerals Limited (ASX:NVA) (FRA:QM3) (OTCMKTS:NVAAF) is a dynamic explorer and developer of its flagship Estelle Gold district in the Tintina gold belt. Nova's strategy is to substantially increase the current 4.7Moz resource on the Korbel prospect. Subsequently to continue to lock in value through moving Korbel towards production whilst increasing the resource base across the pipeline of targets within the Estelle gold district. Nova Minerals also holds strategic investments in Snow Lake Resources Ltd (Thompson Brothers Lithium Project), Torian Resources Ltd (ASX:TNR) and RotorX Aircraft Manufacturing Co.


Quarterly Activities Report 30 June 2021

Perth, July 20, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Horizon Minerals Limited ( ASX:HRZ ) is pleased to provide the June 2021 Quarterly Activities Report. Horizon is a gold production, development and exploration company with a key focus in the Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie regions of Western Australia. A key focus for the Company is on exploration upside within our tenement package of 1,100km2 with up to four drill rigs currently operating as part of the largest ever 50,000m exploration program. Horizon holds numerous non-core assets including royalties, listed investments and a joint venture in place covering the 1.8Bt Richmond-Julia Creek oxide Vanadium Project in North Queensland.Primary activities during the Quarter included the continuation of the 50,000m project generation and new discovery drilling program, resource modelling and mine optimisation studies as part of the consolidated Feasibility Study, review of the Nimbus silver-zinc project, pursuit of further regional consolidation, joint venture and divestment opportunities and strengthening of the team ahead of a significant growth phase.To view the quarterly report, please visit:About Horizon Minerals Limited

Horizon Minerals Limited (ASX:HRZ) is a gold exploration and mining company focussed on the Kalgoorlie and Menzies areas of Western Australia which are host to some of Australia's richest gold deposits. The Company is developing a mining pipeline of projects to generate cash and self-fund aggressive exploration, mine developments and further acquisitions. The Teal gold mine has been recently completed.

Horizon is aiming to significantly grow its JORC-Compliant Mineral Resources, complete definitive feasibility studies on core high grade open cut and underground projects and build a sustainable development pipeline.

Horizon has a number of joint ventures in place across multiple commodities and regions of Australia providing exposure to Vanadium, Copper, PGE's, Gold and Nickel/Cobalt. Our quality joint venture partners are earning in to our project areas by spending over $20 million over 5 years enabling focus on the gold business while maintaining upside leverage.


Bonanza Grade Intercepts at Wiluna

Perth, July 20, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Wiluna Mining Corporation Limited ( ASX:WMC ) ( FRA:NZ3 ) ( OTCMKTS:WMXCF ) announces bonanza-grade assays from resource development drilling at the Happy Jack and East Lode zones within the Wiluna Mining Centre.Happy Jack and East Lode are initial mining areas in the Company's sulphide development plan, where redevelopment of the underground operation is already well advanced ahead of imminent production. The program aims to infill Inferred Resource areas with a view to upgrading geological confidence to Indicated or Measured category and converting these areas to reserves.The program is also expected to increase the resource grade, with demonstrated high grades at good mining widths intersected beyond the current resource limits. The current high-grade resource at the Wiluna Mining Centre, above a 2.5 g/t cut-off, is 26.9Mt @ 4.89 g/t and the historic mined grade was considerably higher at 7 g/t to 11 g/t depending on the ore zone. It is considered that with results like these, the mined grade will increase when stoping commences in previously unmined areas in the September quarter this year. Increasing the mined grade at Wiluna is extremely important because every 1 g/t increase in grade adds an additional 25kozpa to production in Stage 1, increasing to an additional 50kozpa in Stage 2.These results are from an additional 34 holes and 8,812m of resource development drilling, part of the Company's 100,000m program of RC and core drilling completed since the last Mineral Resource Estimate (ASX release dated 5 November 2020).DRILLING HIGH-GRADE SULPHIDESCurrently multiple rigs are drilling to further infill and grow the large-scale, high-grade gold system at Wiluna, with the intention to update the Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve estimates as part of the Company's in-progress Stage 2 Feasibility Study. The Company's goal is to build a 2.5Moz Measured and Indicated Resource to enhance mine planning and long-term option studies. The Wiluna Measured and Indicated Resource is already 2.14Moz @ 5.26g/t (above 2.5g/t cut-off).Including historical production of over 4Moz, Wiluna's gold endowment defined to date is over 10Moz which ranks Wiluna alongside an exclusive peer group of large-scale, long-life mining centres in the Western Australian gold fields. For comparison, Wiluna is geologically like the high-grade Fosterville deposit (Kirkland Lake Gold Inc). Most historical production and existing resources occur in the upper 600m at Wiluna, with limited drilling during the past 15 years at depth on Wiluna Mining's exploration targets (Figure 1), which Wiluna Mining is systematically drilling to reveal the true scale of the Wiluna orebody over the next five years.HAPPY JACKHappy Jack is a high-grade ore zone located centrally within the Wiluna Gold Operation (Figure 1*). Drilling has returned multiple bonanza high-grade intercepts over good mining widths within 300m of surface and close to the existing mine workings.The program is primarily aimed at infilling the Inferred Resource areas within preliminary planned stopes, with a view to upgrading geological confidence to Indicated or Measured category and converting these areas to reserves. The program also shows the high-grade mineralised shear zone extends below the current Inferred and Indicated Resource limits (see Figure 3 & 4, and ASX release dated 17 June 2021).HJRD00025: 1.99m @298.80g/t including 0.76m @ 773.00g/tHJRD00019: 8.67m @ 18.44g/t including 4.01m @ 36.28g/t; and 0.72m @ 35.10g/tHJRD00026: 20.00m @ 7.33g/t including 2.22m @ 30.26g/t; and 4.00m @ 5.27g/tHJRD00066: 4.75m @ 11.81g/t including 0.85m @ 59.40g/tHJRD00027: 4.90m @ 13.30g/tHJRD00024: 6.82m @ 9.37g/t including 0.69m @ 81.00g/tHJRD00008: 6.62m @ 3.47g/t including 2.09m @ 9.41g/tHJRD00017: 5.55m @ 7.09g/tEAST LODEEast Lode is a high-grade mining area located at the South Mine Area of the Wiluna Gold Operation (Figure 1*). East Lode remains open and sparsely drilled in places, with the current program targeting:- Infill of the existing high-grade Inferred Resource within the mining inventory, to upgrade geological confidence to Indicated Resource category to define reserves- Infill and upgrade the resource confidence category of the poorly-drilled hangingwall and footwall lodes- Further resource and reserve additions to the south and at depth along the full strike of East LodeDrilling from surface positions in the central part of East Lode (Figure 6 & 7*) continues to deliver multiple thick, high-grade intercepts over good mining widths, demonstrating the tenor of mineralisation in situ over considerable extents. East Lode is adequately drilled only to within 400m to 500m of surface and is open at depth, with depth extensions representing a key target for future resource growth.Thick high-grade sulphide intersections at East Lode are in line with expectations with results including:WURD0125W1: 14.90m @ 8.60g/t; and 10.20m @ 4.42g/t including 6.95m @ 5.06g/tWURD0158: 14.30m @ 3.86g/t including 8.52m @ 5.71g/tWURD0138: 11.24m @ 4.60g/t including 2.10m @ 6.85g/t and 3.13m @ 6.24g/tWURD0143: 13.40m @ 4.26g/t including 0.73m @ 11.07g/t; and 4.77m @ 6.88g/t*To view tables and figures, please visit:About Wiluna Mining Corporation Ltd

Wiluna Mining Corporation (ASX:WMC) (OTCMKTS:WMXCF) is a Perth based, ASX listed gold mining company that controls over 1,600 square kilometres of the Yilgarn Craton in the Northern Goldfields of WA. The Yilgarn Craton has a historic and current gold endowment of over 380 million ounces, making it one of most prolific gold regions in the world. The Company owns 100% of the Wiluna Gold Operation which has a defined resource of 8.04M oz at 1.67 g/t au. In May 2019, a new highly skilled management team took control of the Company with a clear plan to leverage the Wiluna Gold Operation's multi-million-ounce potential.


Hosting Live Investor Webinar

Ballarat, July 20, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - White Rock Minerals ( ASX:WRM ) ( OTCMKTS:WRMCF ) wishes to advise that its Managing Director & CEO, Matthew Gill will be hosting a live Investor Webinar on Tuesday 20th July 2021 at 4.30pm ET (New York) and Wednesday 21st July 2021 at 6.30am EST (Melbourne).Matthew Gill will go through the Company's July 2021 Presentation including an overview of current operations and upcoming milestones. Management will be available to answer questions following the presentation.To view the presentation and registration details, please visit:About White Rock Minerals Ltd

White Rock Minerals Ltd (ASX:WRM) (OTCMKTS:WRMCF) is a diversified explorer and near-stage producer, headquartered in Ballarat, Victoria. The Company's flagship exploration project is Red Mountain in central Alaska. At Red Mountain, there are already two high grade zinc - silver - gold - lead VMS deposits, with an Inferred Mineral Resource of 9.1 million tonnes @ 609g/t AgEq / 13% ZnEq. The Company is also exploring its recently discovered large intrusion related gold anomaly at Last Chance, also located in the Tintina gold belt of Alaska, home to multi-million gold ounce deposits like Pogo, Fort Knox and the Donlin Project. The Company also has the Mt Carrington project, located near Drake, in Northern NSW, which is a near-production precious metals asset with a resource of 341,000 ounces of gold and 23.2 million ounces of silver on an approved mining lease, and with a Gold First PFS and JORC Reserve.


Partner Noronex Provides Update on Exploration Program at the DorWit Copper-Silver Project, Namibia

Thunder Bay, ON, July 20, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - White Metal Resources Corp. ( CVE:WHM ) ( FRA:CGK1 ) ( OTCMKTS:TNMLF ) is pleased to provide an update from its Australian joint venture partner Noronex Limited ( ASX:NRX ) ("Noronex") on their current exploration program at the DorWit Copper-Silver Project (the "Property" or "Project") in Namibia (see Noronex ASX news release dated 8 July 2021*). The Namibian Project comprises three Exclusive Prospecting Licences (EPLs) that cover 78,000 hectares, referred to as the Witvlei (EPL 7028 and EPL 7029) and Dordabis (EPL 7030) properties. The Project is prospective for sedimentary hosted Cu-Ag mineralisation within the prolific Kalahari Copper Belt that spans Namibia and Botswana.Michael Stares, President & CEO of White Metal, stated, "This is great news for our shareholders and I am very pleased to have Noronex as a partner. They continue to demonstrate that they are very committed to moving the DorWit copper-silver project forward and have outlined some exceptional copper targets for drilling. I look forward to receiving the results from the upcoming drilling program."Highlights- Field visits by the Noronex team were undertaken in May and June to finalise drill planning. The visits confirmed sub-cropping copper mineralisation at geochemistry soil targets.- Five high priority prospects defined for drill testing for large scale sediment hosted copper deposit including:o sub-cropping copper at Dalheim with two-kilometre strike extent.o gossan float at Gemboksvlei on a one-kilometre-long copper soil anomaly.o outcropping copper at Otjiwaru over an 800 m wide zone.o a 2.5 by 1.2 km copper-in-soil anomaly in an altered structural zone south of Okasewa.o unexplained copper soil anomalies at the Christiadore prospect.- Access agreements have been signed with landowners for the commencement of drilling, and a contract with a suitable drilling contractor is currently being finalised.- A program of over fifty holes is being planned to test these targets.- Trial IP survey is also planned at Gemboksvlei and Okasewa to define their IP signature.- Meetings were held in-country with the Ministry of Mines, consultants appointed, and a subsidiary company and bank accounts established.For additional information on the DorWit copper-silver project, please click the following link:Qualified PersonTechnical information in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Dr. Scott Jobin-Bevans (P.Geo.), Vice President Exploration and a Director of White Metal, who is a Qualified Person under the definitions established by the NI 43-101.To view the Noronex news release, please visit:About White Metal Resources Corp

White Metal Resources Corp. (CVE:WHM) (FRA:CGK1) (OTCMKTS:TMNLF) is a junior exploration company exploring in Canada and southern Africa. The company's two key properties are the Flagship Tower Stock Gold Project in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada and the Okohongo Copper-Silver Project in Namibia, Africa. For more information about the Company please visit www.whitemetalres.com.


June 2021 Quarter Update - Record HMC Production, Rising Commodity Prices

Perth, July 20, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Image Resources NL ( ASX:IMA ) is pleased to provide the following preliminary June Quarterly results stemming from production at its high-grade, zirconrich Boonanarring Mineral Sands Project located 80km north of Perth.HMC ProductionHeavy mineral concentrate ("HMC") production reached a new Quarterly record high of 102k tonnes on the back of record high average ore grade of 12.1% HM. HMC production was 20% higher than the previous highest quarter in March 2021.Total HMC production for 1H is 187k tonnes and is running substantially higher than the straight-line guidance curve of 290-320k tonnes for CY2021. Production for 2H is expected to moderate from these record high levels, but is forecast to be sufficiently high to meet or exceed CY2021 production guidance.HMC SalesDemand for the Company's HMC remains strong. While sales for the June Quarter at 68k tonnes was slightly below forecast, HMC sales for 1H 2021 are in line with guidance of 300-320k tonnes for CY 2021. Importantly, due to higher than forecast HMC production, the inventory of HMC at the end of June 2021 has increased to more than 80k tonnes and will strongly support the achievement of CY2021 sales guidance.Cash PositionThe Company completed the early repayment of its outstanding debt in February 2021 and paid an inaugural dividend of AU$0.02 per share in April 2021. Despite these substantial cash outlays, Image completed the June Quarter with a strong, debt-free cash balance of AU$38 million.Rising Commodity Prices and FXMarket prices for ilmenite and rutile have been rising steadily for the past nine months and are now at 7-year highs in response to real demand for final products presumably resulting from the significant economic growth globally following the COVID-19 economic contractions in CY2020.Market price rises for zircon were delayed compared to ilmenite and rutile, but started rising rapidly in April 2021 after hitting a 3-year low of US$1,435 per tonne across the March quarter 2021. Current zircon prices are at 3-year highs. Price rises appear to be in response to real demand for final products. Recent Zircon price increases will begin to positively impact Image HMC pricing in Q3 2021.The following prices for ilmenite, rutile and zircon are benchmark market prices used by Image to determine the market price for its HMC. The source of this price information is daily trade pricing in China provided by FerroAlloy.net via paid subscription.Ilmenite Benchmark PriceThe benchmark price for ilmenite used by Image to determine the market price for its HMC has been steadily rising since October 2020 (Figure 1). The price at the end of June 2021 was US$340 per tonne, which is an increase of 66% since October 2020. The current ilmenite benchmark price is the highest price recorded by Image since 2014.Rutile Benchmark PriceThe benchmark price for rutile has also been steadily rising since October 2020 (Figure 2). The current benchmark price is US$1,753 per tonne which is an increase of 40% since prices started rising in October 2020. The current rutile benchmark price is the highest price recorded by Image since 2014.The rutile market price has been running higher than the price for Iluka's premium grade zircon since April 2021, which is contrary to historic pricing where zircon commands a higher price and suggests zircon prices may continue to rise.Zircon Benchmark PriceThe benchmark price for zircon (which is Iluka Resources' premium grade zircon price) decreased steadily throughout CY2020. However, the zircon price has been rising sharply in CY2021 (Figure 3). The benchmark price effective 1 July 2021 is US$1,630 per tonne which is the highest price recorded by Image since 2014. The current benchmark price for zircon represents an increase of 14% since 31 March 2021.Importantly, post 1 July 2021, Tronox increased its premium zircon price to US$1,640 per tonne and the premium grade zircon price in China increased to US$1,775 per tonne. These higher prices by Tronox and in China, and the fact that the price of rutile is higher than the current Iluka premium zircon price, strongly suggests Image's benchmark zircon price (Iluka's premium grade price) is likely to increase again in the near future.AUD/USD Exchange RateWith pricing for mineral sands commodities traded and the sales price for Image's HMC sold being in US dollars, the AUD/USD foreign exchange rate (FX) can have a significant impact on Image's total AUD revenue and profitability. As shown in Figure 4, the FX has been declining in July and is currently in a much more favourable trading range of 0.73-0.75, which in combination with higher commodity prices will have a positive effect on profitability in the shorter term.Managing Director Patrick Mutz commented, "The achievement of record high quarterly HMC production in the June quarter establishes a solid base for Image to meet or exceed market guidance for CY2021. As importantly, the recent and forecast rises in market prices for zircon, rutile and ilmenite, and current favourable FX will impact favourably on profitability, and could allow an extension to mining at Boonanarring by allowing additional remaining Mineral Resources to convert to Ore Reserves. These very positive developments, along with the Company's debt-free, cashed-up position, and bolstered by systematic progress on its achievable, multi-pronged Growth Strategy, should add significantly to the attractiveness of the Company to shareholders and potential new investors."To view tables and figures, please visit:About Image Resources NL

Image Resources NL (ASX:IMA) is a mineral sands focused mining company operating an open-cut mine and ore processing facility at its 100%-owned, high-grade, zircon-rich Boonanarring Project, located 80km north of Perth in the infrastructure rich North Perth Basin.

Boonanarring is arguably one of the highest grade, zircon-rich mineral sands projects in Australia. Construction and project commissioning were completed on-time and on-budget in 2018. Production commenced in December 2018 and HMC production ramped-up to exceed name-plate capacity in only the second month of operation. The Company achieved profitability in Q1 2019 and was cashflow positive in Q2 2019 and is now at steady state production.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  A prominent state senator who supports abortion rights said he was denied Communion by the Catholic bishop in Las Cruces over the weekend based on my political office.

Joseph Cervantes, a Las Cruces Democrat and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he has participated in his parish church and the Diocese of Las Cruces  including serving as its attorney at times  for 50 years, 20 of which have come while hes served as an elected official.

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But he said things changed after he supported the repeal of a New Mexico law banning abortion in most circumstances.

Since the vote, Cervantes said in a written statement, some new clergy have decided I am unwelcome at their communion.

He said he prefers to practice his faith privately but that he felt it necessary to address those who would politicize, and thereby belittle, the promises of the Eucharist.

A spokesman for Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces said the diocese had no comment.

But the denial comes as some Roman Catholic bishops push to rebuke Catholic politicians who support abortion rights  a debate thats intensified since Democratic President Joe Biden took office. Biden is the nations second Catholic president.

Cervantes this year voted in favor of repealing a New Mexico state law that made it a crime to end a womans pregnancy, with limited exceptions. Even before its repeal this year, the law was largely unenforceable because of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

Cervantes, a lawyer, called the 1969 law unconstitutional and said it had never been used.

The New Mexico Conference of Catholic Bishops, meanwhile, has repeatedly urged state lawmakers to oppose abortion.

Cervantes was one of 28 legislators listed as co-sponsors of this years bill to repeal the anti-abortion law. It passed both chambers and was signed by Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in February.

I was denied communion last night by the Catholic bishop here in Las Cruces  based on my political office, Cervantes said Saturday on Twitter.

Cervantes said Monday that he didnt intend to judge or provoke more hate by making the public statement.

My vote was not to advocate abortion, he said, but to reject the imprisonment of women as a solution to anything. I wanted to encourage values based on inclusivity, understanding, forgiveness and compassion, which are the core of Christs teachings.

The state Conference of Catholic Bishops is active at the Legislature, where one of the groups lobbyists, Allen Sanchez, often testifies on legislation.

Cervantes legislative record isnt uniformly at odds with the priorities of Catholic bishops. He has, for example, supported legislation clearing the way for a ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to boost funding for early childhood programs  a longtime priority of the bishops.

In June, U.S. Catholic bishops voted 168-55 in favor of a crafting document thats expected to admonish Catholic politicians who support abortion rights. It hasnt yet been granted final approval.

But a document already approved by the bishops makes clear the importance of abortion for Catholics.

In it, they encourage Catholics to ask political candidates how they will address the preeminent requirement to protect the weakest in our midst  innocent unborn children  by restricting and bringing to an end the destruction of unborn children through abortion and providing women in crisis pregnancies the supports they need to make a decision for life.

Each local bishop decides whether a politician should be barred from Communion.

Leslie Radigan of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe  which covers much of central and northern New Mexico  said Archbishop John C. Wester is not in favor of denying Catholic politicians communion based on how they vote in the Legislature.

Many of New Mexicos legislators are Catholic, and some have cited their faith in casting votes on abortion legislation.

In 2017, the states Catholic bishops issued a written admonishment advising state lawmakers not to publicly invoke their Catholic faith and to present their personal opinions as official Church teaching, especially when voting in favor of abortion rights.

It was prompted by comments made by Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballero, an Albuquerque Democrat who cited her Roman Catholic upbringing as she voted against a proposal to ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
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It makes so much sense, who knows? It might actually happen.

Saturday in Las Vegas, Nevada, former UFC bantamweight champion Miesha Tate ended her 43-month retirement with a victory by third-round TKO over Marion Reneau.

Even before that fight was in the books, Albuquerques Holly Holm  who lost the title to Tate in March 2016  began lobbying for a rematch.

You can dominate a fight and still let it slip through your fingers in the last remaining minutes, Holm wrote, a reference to her fight with Tate. Holm appeared to be on her way to a victory by decision in defense of the belt she so spectacularly had won from Ronda Rousey the previous November.

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With some two minutes left in the fifth and final round, though, Tate executed a two-leg takedown and put Holm to sleep with a rear naked choke.

Id love to get the chance to redeem that loss, Holm continued. You want to see a 2, Holm vs. Tate 2?

Bring it on, Tate said in postfight interviews.

I think a fight with Holly a second time would be great, she said.  Im sure Holly and I, I have no doubt about it, before I retire her and I will fight again.

For the record, Holm, 39, has made it clear shell retire when shes good and ready and not before. But Tates reference involved Reneau, who announced her retirement after the first loss by stoppage of her career.

Holm defeated Reneau by unanimous decision in her second UFC fight, just before her victory over Rousey.

The idea of a Holm-Tate rematch appeals not just to the fighters involved.

After Saturdays card, the Journal texted Lenny Fresquez, Holms longtime Albuquerque promoter, to gauge his interest.

Will definitely be making the call, he replied, though he added, Holly wants her or anybody.

Holms eagerness is understandable. Coming off her victory by unanimous decision last October over Irene Aldana  the most complete performance of her career  she was to have fought Julianna Pena in May. But surgery to address a kidney condition called hydronephrosis scrubbed the Pena fight and kept Holm out of the gym while recovering.

Now, Holm-Tate II, said mmajunkie.coms Mike Bohn, is a fight that cries to be made.

I think it is now time to run that back, Bohn said. It is a very prime fight to make in this division, (between) two of the biggest names in womens MMA.

Holm (14-5) and Tate (19-7) have the same stated goal  a shot at the bantamweight title Holm lost to Tate in her first defense and that Tate lost in her first defense to current champion Amanda Nunes. Tate then lost to Raquel Pennington, retired and gave birth to a son.

Given that Holm and Tate have both lost decisively to Nunes, Tate by first-round submission, Holm by first-round TKO in July 2019, its unlikely that UFC President Dana White sees either fighter right now as an immediate challenger.

But, with a victory by one over the other, given the stature that each fighter has earned in the past, that picture could change dramatically.
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They sat inside a dust-covered box that had been stashed away, untouched, for years: black-and-white photographs of Apache students who were among the first sent to a New Mexico boarding school bankrolled by East Coast parishioners and literary fans.

The first showed the girls bundled in blankets with moccasins on their feet. The next, taken just weeks later, was starkly different, the children posing in plaid uniforms, high-laced boots and wide-brimmed straw hats.

Adjunct history professor Larry Larrichio said he stumbled upon the 1885 photos while researching a military outpost and immediately recognized their significance.

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The images represented the systematic attempt by the U.S. government, religious organizations and other groups to assimilate Indigenous youth into white society by removing them from their homes and shipping them off to boarding schools. The effort spanned more than a century and is now the focus of what will be a massive undertaking by the U.S. government as it seeks to uncover the troubled legacy of the nations policies related to Native American boarding schools, where reports of physical and sexual abuse were widespread.

When I pulled that photo out, it just brought a tear to my eye. I looked at the faces of these beautiful Apache girls in their Native attire and then those ugly American bonnets, said Larrichio, a research associate with the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. It just knocked me on my butt.

The U.S. Interior Department has started combing through records in hopes of identifying past boarding schools, and the names and tribes of students. The project also will try to determine how many children perished while attending those schools and were buried in unmarked graves.

As part of an effort that began years earlier, the disinterred remains of nine Native American children who died more than a century ago while attending a government-run school in Pennsylvania were handed over to relatives during a ceremony Wednesday so they could be returned to Rosebud Sioux tribal lands in South Dakota.

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo and the first Native American to lead a Cabinet agency, has promised a comprehensive review, while acknowledging it would be a painful and difficult process.

Larrichios discovery hints at the immensity of the challenge, as each bit of new information leads down another avenue that needs to be researched.

While some records are kept by the agency and the National Archives, most are scattered across jurisdictions  from the bowels of university archives, such as those Larrichio found, to government offices, church archives, museums and personal collections.

Thats not to mention whatever records were lost or destroyed over the years.

The National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition has been working to amass information about the schools for almost a decade. With the help of grant funding and the work of independent researchers across the country, the Minnesota-based group has identified nearly 370 schools, and estimates hundreds of thousands of Native American children passed through them between 1869 and the 1960s.

Its going to be a monumental task, and the initiative that was launched by the Interior is great, but its a short timeline and well need further investigation, said Christine Diindiisi McCleave, the groups CEO and a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Ojibwe Nation.

The coalition knows firsthand how difficult uncovering the truth will be. Years ago, the group filed public records requests with the federal government for information about the schools. The government didnt have answers, Diindiisi McCleave said.

Of the schools identified by the group so far, she said records have been found for only 40% of them. The whereabouts of the rest are unknown.

What is known from the research and from family accounts is that there were children who never made it home.

With the Interior Department taking a first formal step to uncover more about the history, Diindiisi McCleave and others are renewing their push for a federal commission to be established in the U.S., much like one created in Canada, where the remains of more than 1,000 children were discovered in recent weeks at residential schools there.

In the United States, the Indian Civilization Act of 1819, and other laws and policies were enacted to establish and support Indian boarding schools across the nation. For over 150 years, Indigenous children were taken from their communities and forced into boarding schools that focused on assimilation.

The discoveries in Canada and the renewed spotlight in the U.S. have stirred strong emotions among tribal communities, including grief, anger, reflection and a deep desire for healing.

Haaland, Diindiisi McCleave and New Mexico Indian Affairs Secretary Lynn Trujillo have all recounted stories about their grandparents being sent away to boarding schools. They talk about the intergenerational trauma that was triggered by the experience and the effects that have manifested themselves on younger generations seeking to maintain their language and cultural practices, which were banned in boarding schools.

For some families, the boarding school experience was a forbidden topic, never to be talked about.

For others, the recent attention has spurred fresh conversations. Trujillo talked about her grandmother being taken when she was 6, and telling stories about how she was always so hungry and cold.

Trujillo said that, while her grandmother made it home, unlike other children, that experience shaped who she was.

Our communities and Indigenous people have known about these atrocities for a very long time, but being able to bring them to light and talk about them  no matter how painful  is part of that process toward healing, said Trujillo, a member of Sandia Pueblo who has been focused on bringing together Indigenous youth to highlight the need for more mental health resources and educational opportunities.

For Diindiisi McCleave, moving forward with healing will require more research, data and understanding.

The biggest part of the work starts with the truth, and that includes not only truth from the federal government in this case and the churches that ran the schools, but also hearing the truth from the perspective of the people who experienced it, listening to the testimony of survivors and descendants, and understanding the full scope and impact of these experiences, she said.

Experts say the list of known boarding schools  and burial sites  will only expand as more grassroots research sheds light on schools that have otherwise been lost to history.

Already, some researchers have spent years piecing together records, old newspaper reports and oral histories to find and identify lost children. Others have searched properties using ground-penetrating radar. Some state agencies that focus on Indigenous affairs are considering launching investigations into known schools.

The Interior Department said its working on ways to create a safe space, such as a hotline or special website where people can share information about the schools and seek resources.

In New Mexico, the Ramona Industrial School for Indian Girls opened in the mid-1880s and housed mostly Apache students, many of whom had parents who were being held prisoner by the U.S. Army at Fort Union, about 100 miles away.

Not far from Santa Fes historic Plaza, the school was founded by Horatio Ladd, a congregational minister who contracted with the military to send Indigenous students there. The endeavor was supported by parishioners, and admirers of author and activist Helen Hunt Jackson through fundraising newsletters and postcards.

Larrichio was working on a project for the National Park Service years ago when he happened upon brochures and other documents related to the school. It was a monthslong effort that involved combing through hundreds of archival collections at the Center for Southwest Research at the University of New Mexico.

With only brief references in books on other subjects, the school is an example of the difficult work facing the Interior Department as it embarks on its investigation. While Larrichio is sharing the materials he uncovered with the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, he said its the tip of the iceberg and much more work needs to be done.

A lot of this information is probably buried  literally buried with respect to this collection I uncovered, he said. How many other stories are buried and how much was purposefully destroyed? I think its going to be very hard to really get a comprehensive understanding of the impact of this.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Amid a recent losing streak, Bernalillo County Republicans are at odds over the direction of the party.

Some members of the county Republican Party central committee have recently sought to stage an intervention of sorts  and possibly vote to remove the current GOP county chairwoman.

But the partys executive committee has ruled the dissenters have fallen short of the requirements needed to call a special meeting this week.

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Bernalillo County GOP Chairwoman Julie Wright, who was elected to the post in January, said a state Republican Party rules committee was reviewing the matter but added the meeting would be invalid under the current ruling.

She also acknowledged some Republicans are angry after a recent string of election losses, including Democrat Melanie Stansbury easily winning last months race for an open Albuquerque-based congressional seat over a field that included GOP candidate Mark Moores.

However, she said the county party has limited sway in the outcome of such elections, adding, As long as Im chair, Im going to do what I can to pull the party together.

A letter to call the special meeting of the Bernalillo County GOP central committee was signed by nearly 60 members, though its unclear if all of them are in good standing with the party.

The purpose of the meeting is to address issues such as the failure of current leadership to win elections and craft a plan to get Republicans elected in the future. A motion to remove the chairwoman is also on the agenda if central committee members are unable to resolve the stated issues.

Internal party rules allow for a central committee meeting to be called by one-third or more members acting in unison, though party insiders say such meetings are typically called by elected officers.

One of those who signed the recent letter, former state Rep. Janice Arnold-Jones, said Monday theres need for better dialogue within the local Republican Party.

I know there are people that are mad  but I dont think it will even be considered, Arnold-Jones said of the possible motion to remove Wright from her position as chairwoman.

Meanwhile, New Mexicos state GOP issued a terse statement Monday saying simply that county-level parties have autonomy and the state party has very little standing in such matters.

The Bernalillo County GOP infighting comes as state Republican leaders are gearing up for a crucial 2022 election cycle in which statewide offices like governor, attorney general and secretary of state will all be on the ballot.

After big Democratic election gains in 2018 and 2020, only two Republican lawmakers from Albuquerque are still in office  Moores and Rep. Bill Rehm  out of more than 20 seats in the metro area.

Internal GOP divides have also emerged in other states, as some Republicans have faced criticism and even censure for not supporting former President Donald Trump and his claims of widespread voter fraud, which have been dismissed by most courts.
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Copyright  2021 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  City leaders here have embarked on a Herculean effort to address controversial monuments immortalizing figures long derided for their brutal treatment of Native Americans.

But that reconciliation process is off to a rocky start with the citys hiring of a consultant that some in the community accuse of co-opting Native identities by claiming Dine and San Ildefonso Pueblo heritage.

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Santa Fe city councilors on Wednesday unanimously approved a $254,000 contract with Albuquerque-based Artful Life as the consultant for its Culture, History, Art, Reconciliation and Truth process.

Several speakers at the meeting objected to co-founder Valerie Martinezs claims of Indigenous heritage.

For her part, Martinez says she grew up in Santa Fe and she isnt claiming to be solely Indigenous, but of mixed blood, like many New Mexicans.

People accused her of claiming her Indigenous heritage from a 23andMe DNA test, but she said she knew about her heritage before she took the test 10 years ago. She added that she isnt a member of the Navajo Nation, or any pueblo, and she stressed that she isnt saying she is.

This idea of, you know, claiming or co-opting, its a weird conversation, she said. Im trying to claim all the parts of me, all of them, and I think lots of people do that.

The CHART resolution was passed by councilors in January to help the city determine how to move forward after the October 2020 Indigenous Peoples Day rally that resulted in the destruction of the Santa Fe Plazas obelisk.

There isnt a requirement for the CHART consultant to be Indigenous, but, according to the bid for services, the consultant should have experience in cultural competency for communities in northern New Mexico and Santa Fe, among other requirements.

The Santa Fe Plazas obelisk has been a flashpoint for the community, in which different groups claim it represents, or disrespects, their heritage. Originally dedicated as a Soldiers Monument commemorating Union troops who fought Civil War battles in New Mexico, it once bore an inscription honoring those who fought battles against savage Indians.

Union Protectiva de Santa Fe is currently suing the city of Santa Fe and Mayor Alan Webber over the obelisks restoration, stating the monument represents their Spanish heritage.

Christina M. Castro, co-founder of Indigenous rights group the Three Sisters Collective, said Martinez is co-opting Dine and Pueblo identities. She said the city needs to start listening to Indigenous voices.

The CHART process will continue to flail and flounder if you continue to engage people who are not representing the Pueblo and Dine communities, and the larger Native American community, she said.

Webber urged the community to have faith in the CHART process. He said the contract approval is a historic opportunity for the community to move forward.
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Theres really no job in our society quite like it  and few so impactful and important to our everyday lives.

For cops on the street, each day presents a new experience  the reward of helping a person in peril or the risk of being taken from their families prematurely.

Any day could be life-threatening for a police officer. Weve seen it right here in Albuquerque in recent days.

This month, in just a little over a weeks span, three law enforcement officers were fired upon in three separate incidents. Fortunately, none was seriously wounded, although in some of the cases others involved were killed.

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On July 5, police say, a 26-year-old Santa Fe man stole a bait car on Central SE. The city-owned vehicle was remotely disabled in the Northeast Heights, and a police vehicle moved in. The suspect then fired multiple shots at the police vehicle, one of which went through the police cars windshield and narrowly missed the officers inside. Police returned fire, striking the suspect in the chin. The suspect is a convicted felon with several warrants for his arrest.

Later that week, early in the morning on July 10, officers responded to a gunshot detection device near Fourth and Central. There, two men and a police vehicle were struck by gunfire. Nineteen-year-old Trevonte Robbins died at the scene. Another man was hospitalized in critical condition. The police officer in the vehicle suffered minor injuries when a bullet struck his windshield and sprayed him with glass.

Then the following Wednesday, July 14, a 20-month investigation of a purported prominent Southeast Albuquerque gang leader resulted in a shootout outside a strip mall in Northeast Albuquerque. The 31-year-old opened fire on authorities as they moved in, striking an FBI agent in his bullet-proof vest and wounding him. The suspect, who had warrants involving drugs, guns and prostitution, was shot and killed.

Yes, we are living in a time of unprecedented calls for police reform. The old ways of policing at the end of a baton just arent acceptable anymore, nor should they be. But were making progress on reforms like mandatory body-worn cameras, routine investigations of police uses of force, more diverse police forces, and a change in culture with an emphasis on de-escalation rather than confrontation.

Meanwhile, the criminals continue to play by their own rules, with seemingly even less regard for human life than in the past. A midyear report by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund says 2021 could be the deadliest year for law enforcement on record, with 155 line-of-duty officer deaths at this years midpoint. Those include New Mexico State Police Officer Darian Jarrott, who was ruthlessly murdered by a drug dealer during a traffic stop in February on Interstate 10 east of Deming.

Recall the old Westerns in which the law-abiding town folk had difficulty finding someone willing to pin on the badge and enforce the laws. We can never go back to that. We need our cops more than they need us.

As recent events have shown, our officers put their lives on the line for us every day. Fortunately, there still are men and women willing to sign up for the job.

Its tough being a cop, and dangerous, too. Especially in the Albuquerque metro area. People who risk never going home to their families while doing their job protecting and serving us have earned our respect and appreciation. After all, who else would we call in times of crisis?

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
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An article in the Albuquerque Journal on July 11 addressed problems with the administration of the criminal judicial system in the 12th Judicial District  Public defenders in southern NM sound the alarm.

Particularly noteworthy were the last couple lines of the story: District Attorney (Scot D.) Key rejected the suggestion that people plead guilty to crimes they didnt commit. We have no interest whatsoever in convicting innocent people, Key said. I dont believe for a minute that people would plead to things they didnt do.'

District Attorney Key might not believe it for a minute, but people do plead guilty to crimes they did not commit. The National Registry of Exonerations currently lists 345 people who pleaded guilty and were later exonerated. 

For the vast majority of those who plead guilty there is no realistic prospect of exoneration, no matter how innocent they might be. Keys flat denial flies in the face of literally hundreds of well-known existing counterexamples. There is plenty of room for disagreement over how to deal with the problems of enforcing the law, but the simplistic denial that problems exist is a bigger problem still.

The current criminal justice system is driven by plea bargains. Over nine out of 10 criminal convictions are the result of a plea bargain. Indeed, if there were no plea bargains the judicial system would grind to a near-halt since it does not have enough resources for all the trials that would be required. There are few, if any, rules controlling plea bargaining, largely because judges are fearful of interfering with a process that makes their workload manageable. District attorneys routinely lobby for harsher sentences so they can offer to reduce those sentences in exchange for guilty pleas.

Many people like to imagine that they would never plead guilty to a crime they did not commit. But imagine if you were accused of a crime you did not commit and had a choice to make. You could plead guilty and get probation. Or you could risk going to trial and, if you lost, spend years in prison and lose your job, your house, and quite possibly your family. Your decision might be made easier if your public defender attorney is trying to prepare for multiple trials to be held on one day and will not have time to investigate  let alone properly prepare for  your trial.

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In theory plea bargaining has some advantages. It saves a great deal of work for those employed in the criminal legal system. In practice, however, it has some very real problems, at least for those accused of crimes. Simply refusing to believe that the problems exist might be good politics, but it is not a luxury that New Mexico can afford.

The opinions in this column are the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the New Mexico Law Office of the Public Defender.
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WASHINGTON  A police official who has run large departments in Maryland and Virginia has been selected as chief of the U.S. Capitol Police in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which pro-Trump rioters stormed the building in a violent rage, disrupting the certification of Joe Bidens presidential win.

J. Thomas Manger, who most recently served for 15 years as chief in Montgomery County, Maryland, was picked for the position following an extensive search, according to four people briefed on the matter. The people were not authorized to discuss the selection process publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

The decision comes as the Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies are struggling to determine the best way to secure the Capitol and what direction to take the 2,300-person force that guards the building and the lawmakers inside it and functions as mashup of a national security agency and local police department.

The department has asked for more funding for more officers and better riot gear. In the meantime, the massive fence that encircled the grounds was taken down in the past few weeks.

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The Capitol Police Board, which includes the House and Senate sergeant at arms and the Architect of the Capitol, is charged with oversight of the police force and led the search.

Manger served as chief in Montgomery County, outside Washington, from 2004 to 2019. Before that, he led the Fairfax, Virginia, police department. Those jobs, as well as a leadership position in the Major Cities Chiefs Association, have made him a familiar face in Washington law enforcement circles and on Capitol Hill.

Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman was elevated to the role after the agencys top official, Steven Sund, was forced out a day after the riot.

Pittman, a longtime Capitol police officer, wasnt expected to get the job permanently. And her appointment did little to soothe the tumult inside the department or to quell concerns about failures of preparation and intelligence-sharing ahead of the insurrection.

She faced steep criticism from her own officers after they said she showed little to no leadership on the day of the insurrection. The union voted overwhelmingly to show no confidence in her.

As the invaders wielded metal pipes, planks of wood, stun guns and bear spray, the vastly outnumbered rank-and-file officers inside the building were left to fend for themselves without proper communication or strong guidance from supervisors. The officers werent sure when they could use deadly force, had failed to properly lock down the building and could be heard making frantic radio calls for backup as they were shoved to the ground and beaten by rioters, with some left bloodied.

A new House committee is investigating the insurrection and the mistakes made by the Capitol Police and other law enforcement that allowed hundreds of Trumps supporters to break in. The panel announced Monday that four police officers, including two Capitol Police, will testify about their experiences that day at the committees first hearing on July 27.

Seven people died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.

Pittman had been in charge of intelligence leading up to the riot, which caught law enforcement badly off guard. She conceded to Congress that multiple levels of failures allowed pro-Trump rioters to storm the building but denied that law enforcement had failed to take the threat seriously, noting how Capitol Police several days before the riot had distributed an internal document warning that extremists were poised for violence.

Pittman became the first Black and female police chief in the departments nearly 200-year history after becoming one of the first two Black women promoted to captain. The department has long faced allegations of racism, notably in a 2001 class action lawsuit brought on behalf of more than 300 current and former officers who alleged they lost out on promotions and assignments to less-qualified officers and were harassed with racial epithets.
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DENVER  Marijuana-related arrests have dropped since the first recreational pot shops opened in Colorado seven years ago but Black people are still much more likely to get into legal trouble for cannabis offenses, according to a state report released Monday.

The biennial report, commissioned by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, found that the marijuana arrest rate for Black people (160 per 100,000 people) is more than double that for white people (76 per 100,000) in Colorado, The Denver Post reported.

This disparity has not changed in any meaningful way since legalization, the report said.

The report also found that people over 65 are using marijuana at triple the rate that they did in 2014 and that people are consuming cannabis through vapes and edibles at higher rates.

While it found that youth usage remains unchanged at around 20%, the report also found that nearly three-quarters of 10- to 17-year-olds in substance abuse treatment reported that marijuana was their primary drug, said Henny Lasley, co-founder of One Chance to Grow Up. The situation is the result of the high-potency marijuana accessible in Colorado, she said.

Theres this misnomer that everythings hunky dory because the overall statistic hasnt changed, she said.

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LAS CRUCES  A New Mexico Supreme Court order has brought a trial in the death of a 2-year-old Las Cruces girl to a halt.

The Las Cruces Sun-News reported that opening statements were given Monday before the trial of 26-year-old Lalo Anthony Castrillo was stopped.

The issue stems from prosecutors appeal of state District Judge Douglas Driggers decision to exclude exhibits involving Faviola Rodriguezs 2018 death.

According to the judge, the 3rd Judicial District Attorneys Office had missed too many deadlines to turn over exhibits to the court and defense attorneys.

The exhibits include tangible evidence such as 911 calls and photos of the young girls body. Prosecutors would have to rely mainly on witness and expert testimony.

Castrillo, who was dating Faviolas mother, is accused of abusing the girl while babysitting her. Authorities say the abuse caused fatal injuries.

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Castrillos attorneys say the prosecutors delay in turning over exhibits severely damaged their ability to prepare for the trial.

Assistant District Attorney Daniel Sewell says the judges ban on physical evidence is too severe.

Driggers has until July 26 to respond to the order suspending the trial, according to the Supreme Court.
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Students in Wichita, Kansas, public schools can ditch the masks when classes begin. Detroit public schools will probably require them unless everyone in a room is vaccinated. In Pittsburgh, masks will likely be required regardless of vaccination status. And in some states, schools cannot mandate face coverings under any circumstances.

With COVID-19 cases soaring nationwide, school districts across the U.S. are yet again confronting the realities of a polarized country and the lingering pandemic as they navigate mask requirements, vaccine rules and social distancing requirements for the fast-approaching new school year.

The spread of the delta variant and the deep political divisions over the outbreak have complicated decisions in districts from coast to coast. Some conservative states, lawmakers have banned districts from requiring masks despite outcry from medical professionals. Schools are weighing a variety of plans to manage junior high and middle school classrooms filled with both vaccinated and unvaccinated students.

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Im so frustrated that its become a political issue because it shouldnt be. Its science, said Mary Tuttle, who operates an Indianapolis in-home day care center and hopes the citys schools require masks for her daughters.

She worries that the delta variant could lead to a return to virtual learning, which caused her 10-year-old daughter to become depressed and anxious last year. Another daughter will turn 12 six days after starting 6th grade and will be vaccinated as soon as possible.

Adding to the concerns is a rise in cases overall  sharply in some states, including Arkansas, which wont let schools require masks. Public health researchers on Tuesday called Arkansas rapidly climbing infections and hospitalizations a raging forest fire, and the states top health official warned of significant future outbreaks in schools.

Arkansas leads the country in new cases per capita, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University researchers, and it has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with only 35% of the population fully vaccinated.

In Mississippi, the leading health official said Tuesday that intensive care units are full in 13 hospitals because of a surge in cases, and he provided an ominous warning in one of the least vaccinated states in the country: Yall, were going to have a rough few weeks, Dr. Thomas Dobbs said.

Weekly tallies by the American Academy of Pediatrics based on state reports show that COVID-19 cases in kids increased nationally in July after a couple of months of declines. The most recent data shows a 1% increase from July 1 to July 15, representing 43,000 additional cases.

The American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday recommended universal masking in schools, even for those who are vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month recommended mask-wearing indoors only for students and staff who are not fully vaccinated.

The vaccine has not been approved for children under 12. If it shown to be safe and effective for younger ages, vaccine manufacturers may seek emergency authorization sometime this fall or winter.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said the fact that some states refuse to allow mask requirements is just plain wrong. She said the organization has embraced recommendations from the CDC.

But school officials say masking decisions have been complicated by conflicting advice from public health officials.

Its frustrating. Parents hear that these are recommendations, and it becomes a delicate dance because of differing opinions, said Steve Matthews, superintendent of Novi Community Schools, outside Detroit.

He probably will recommend that the school board make masking optional, although he worries about potential outbreaks because people are gathering for sporting events, family reunions and other activities.

It would be very helpful if there was agreement among the medical community what the approach should be, Matthews said. When everyone wore masks last year, it created a sense of community, a sense that were all in this together. Now it ends up dividing people.

Thats part of the reason the academy recommended universal masking in schools, said Dr. Sonja OLeary, chair of the academys Council on School Health.

People just wanted it to be clearer, masks or no masks, said OLeary. She said data show COVID-19 infections have not been rampant in U.S. schools, but we know masks do curb transmission. Whats more, keeping track of who has had shots and who has not may be tough for schools.

School districts that can set their own policies are taking different approaches.

In Detroit public schools, everyone will likely be required to wear a mask unless an entire room is vaccinated. Officials are developing an identification system, perhaps by wearing lanyards, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said.

In Pittsburgh, administrators are proposing that all public school students and staff be required to wear masks indoors to protect younger students and because of concerns around unknowns from the variant, spokeswoman Ebony R. Pugh said. Universal masking also protects the privacy of older students who have not been vaccinated, she said.

In Kansas, most schoolchildren and teachers will not be required to wear masks. The states largest district, Wichita, made masks optional starting July 6 and surveyed parents before announcing its reopening plan, said Wichita Public Schools spokeswoman Susan Arensman.

A lot of them, their big talking points were about the emotional well-being of students and staff, Arensman said. They still wanted kids to be safe, but they also wanted kids to be back to normal.

In Templeton, California, Jenny Grinager said she does not like masks and got an exemption for her 8-year-old son because he has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism. She said her son struggles to communicate with people who wear masks because hes unable to see their facial expressions. Last year, he said he didnt have any friends in class and was lonely.

For him, it is the relationship, the interaction that causes him to remember who somebody is, said Grinager, who also does not believe vaccination is necessary. She notes that children are less likely to get seriously ill with COVID-19, and she has not been vaccinated.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Sarah Jedd plans to send her 15- and 13-year old sons back to classes because both are vaccinated, but she will home-school her 9-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter if masks are not required. The district is expected to announce its decision later this week.

Im just really concerned about (them) being inside a school building with lots and lots of kids with no masks on while theyre too young to be vaccinated, Jedd said.

Jacky Frechette, who has a son whos vaccinated and a 4-year-old who isnt, said every Madison student should be required to wear a mask rather than having different rules for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, especially when people can so easily lie about it.

Its sad (wearing masks) has become so divisive that weve put our political thoughts and feelings above what experts say, she said.

___

Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus, Andrew DeMillo and Lindsey Tanner and contributed to this story.
WENN Movie

The 'Fright Night' actor decided to wear fat suit instead of bulking up in real life for Penguin role in the upcoming DC superhero movie because of health problems.

Jul 20, 2021

AceShowbiz - Colin Farrell decided to wear a fat suit for his role as Penguin in "The Batman" after suffering "a few little health things" when he gained weight for TV series "The North Water".

Penguin is known for his portly figure, but Colin was determined that he wouldn't pile on the pounds in real life for the part because of the ongoing struggles he's experiencing from doing that before.

"I had been quite big for The North Water and I didn't want to naturally go big again cause I had a few little health things as a result of The North Water and I was just like, f**k, this acting thing ain't this important," he told Collider. "I know the top actors that go up and down, and God bless them, I wish them good health. But for me, I think The North Water is the last time I'll go up that much. So, we decided on a fat suit."

Colin added that make-up artist Mike Marino, who is working on "The Batman" is a "drawing, sculpting, shaping genius."

However, the actor doesn't have a huge amount of screen time in the film, which stars Robert Pattinson as the titular Caped Crusader.

"I'm only in it for five or six scenes, so I can't wait to see the film because it won't be ruined by my presence," he laughed. "Really, it's a freebie to me. I'll get a little bit uncomfortable for the f**king nine minutes I have, and then the rest of it, I cannot wait to see how he (director Matt Reeves) brought this world to life."
Instagram Celebrity

Facing accusation of raping a fan named Du Meizhu, the former member of K-pop supergroup EXO insists that he has never 'coerced women into sex' or engaged in 'date rape.'

Jul 20, 2021

AceShowbiz - K-pop superstar Kris Wu has vehemently denied allegations of sexual assault.

The Chinese-Canadian rapper and former member of K-pop supergroup EXO stands accused of raping a fan named Du Meizhu, who claimed the 30-year-old artist had invited her to his home for an audition, which was attended by his managers.

However, she was allegedly blocked from leaving and encouraged to stay for drinks during the encounter, which took place around two years ago, when Du was 17. "I became unconscious soon," she told Chinese news site NetEase, according to an interview translated by Vice News. "When I woke up again, I was on Wu's bed."

Du claims she was made to believe she and Wu were in a relationship in the months that followed, until he eventually cut off all communication. She has since heard from other women with similar alleged experiences, but Wu is denying all accusations of misconduct.

He released a statement via Chinese social media platform Weibo on Monday, July 19, stating, "I only met Miss Du once at a friend's gathering, I didn't ply her with alcohol..."

"I have never 'coerced women into sex' or engaged in 'date rape,' " he added. He is now reportedly taking legal action against Du.

In the wake of the scandal, multiple brands have made the decision to drop Wu. Shanghai-based beauty brand Kans, music streaming platform Yunting, and household detergent maker Libai were among those cutting their ties with the rapper. Tempo, Vatti, Master Kong, Tuborg Brewery and Tencent have also made the same move.
MGM Movie

Matt Ripa, a drama lecturer at the private Washington, D.C. school, reveals in a press release how he found the famed blue and white garment the actress donned in the iconic 1939 movie classic.

Jul 20, 2021

AceShowbiz - A dress once worn by Judy Garland in "The Wizard of Oz" has finally been located - stuffed in a shoebox inside a trash bag.

The famed blue and white garment the actress donned as Dorothy in the iconic 1939 movie classic vanished just a year after it was gifted to officials at the Catholic University of America (CUA) in 1972, but it was recently found by Matt Ripa, a drama lecturer at the private Washington, D.C. school.

Explaining how he made the grand discovery, he wrote in a Catholic University press release, "I had looked in our archives, storage closets etc. to no avail. I assumed it was a tall tale."

However, he eventually found the costume, which had been bundled up in a trash bag, "I was curious what was inside and opened the trash bag and inside was a shoebox, and inside the shoebox was the dress. I couldn't believe it."

"Needless to say, I have found many interesting things... during my time at CUA, but I think this one takes the cake."

University bosses have since confirmed the gown will now be properly preserved and stored.

"It can now be preserved in proper storage in a temperature - and humidity - controlled environment so that hopefully, for many more years, it can be a source of 'hope, strength and courage' for Catholic University students."

In a note on Instagram, CUA leaders wrote, "In 1973, Catholic University's @cuatower newspaper wrote about a gift to Catholic University meant to be a source of 'hope, strength, and courage' to students. The gift was a dress that is believed to have been worn by Judy Garland in 'The Wizard of Oz'."

"It was given to Rev. Gilbert Hartke, illustrious head of the drama program, by actress Mercedes McCambridge, who served as artist-in-residence at CatholicU in 1972."

"For many years, it was rumored that the dress was still located in Hartke, the building named after the priest, but no one knew exactly where. While preparing for some renovations last month, Matt Ripa, M.F.A. 2008, lecturer and operations coordinator for the @cua_drama in @cuamusicdramaart, rediscovered Dorothy's Dress [sic]."
Instagram Celebrity

In a video posted after the minor accident, the personal trainer informs his followers that no one was injured after he bumped his new Jeep into another car near the pop star's home.

Jul 20, 2021

AceShowbiz - Britney Spears' boyfriend Sam Asghari just had his own case of a bad luck. The personal trainer was involved in a fender bender in Los Angeles on Monday, July 20 and he was to blame for it.

Per TMZ's report, the incident took place about 10 minutes away from Britney's home in Thousand Oaks, CA and involved a woman driving a Saturn. It happened as Sam's Jeep Rubicon struck the other driver's car.

Law enforcement sources told the site there were no injuries and nobody was cited. In a video obtained by the outlet, Sam, who dressed down in a blue sleeveless T-shirt and shorts, talked to cops while the other driver was sitting in her backseat.

Confirming the report, another source told Page Six, "Sam tapped the bumper of the car in front of his Jeep [Rubicon]. No one was injured, and there was minimal to no damage to either car." The source added, "The police only came to fill out a report documenting the accident, but Sam is not in any trouble," noting that "Britney was not with him at the time."

Sam himself has addressed the incident on his social media account. Making use of Instagram Story, the 27-year-old revealed that he only got the car less than two weeks ago. "Literally hasnt even been two weeks since ive had this baby and just got into a car accident," he informed his followers, before admitting he was at fault and confirming no one was injured. "Was it my fault? Yup," he stated.

Staying positive, Sam continued, "When situations like this happen guys, always think of it as if its preventing the bigger bad thing from happening. Always think of the positive thing and just enjoy life." He added, "As long as youre okay and the other person is okay, everything else is fine. You dont need to ruin your day about it."

The up-and-coming actor later got superstitious, saying that putting an egg underneath your tire and rolling over it backwards prevents bad luck. He then demonstrated how to do it before the video cut out.
WENN/Mario Mitsis Celebrity

In the since-deleted snap, the 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' actress can be seen hanging out by the pool while her rumored beau and co-star is seen with his head barely above water.

Jul 20, 2021

AceShowbiz - Zendaya Coleman will not let Tom Holland steal fans' attention from her. After one of her social media followers put his/her focus more on her rumored beau instead of her in a pool picture, the "Spider-Man: Homecoming" actress set aside time to jokingly call out the individual.

Making use of Twitter on Friday, July 16, the 24-year-old let out a picture of her hanging out by the swimming pool while her "Spider-Man" co-star was seen in the background with his head barely above water. "Out here living my best life," she captioned the since-deleted post.

An eagle-eyed fan has since poked fun at Tom's position in the water. The user quipped, "Tom is drowning." Upon noticing the comment, "The Greatest Showman" star lightheartedly fired back, "This ain't about him."

Zendaya Coleman jokingly called out a fan who focused more on Tom Holland instead of her in a new photo.

The post came more than two weeks after Zendaya and Tom were spotted locking lips in his car during a Los Angeles outing. In some photos obtained by Page Six, the English native could be seen tenderly holding his rumored girlfriend's face as they leaned in for a smooch.

Several days later, TMZ unleashed some pictures of the alleged couple while they were enjoying their meal at a Thai restaurant near Universal Studios in Los Angeles. The photographs were taken just one day before they were seen sharing the passionate kiss.

Tom and Zendaya were first linked romantically after filming 2017's "Spider-Man: Homecoming". At the time, a source told PEOPLE, "They started seeing each other while they were filming 'Spider-Man'. They've been super careful to keep it private and out of the public eye but they've gone on vacations with each other and try and spend as much time as possible with one another."

The pair, however, had previously denied the dating speculations. They also have yet to comment on the recent relationship news.
Instagram Celebrity

While it's respectful of the 'Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta' star for dodging the sex-related question because Nicki is now a married woman, some Internet users are not amused considering his own issues with estranged wife Erica Mena.

Jul 21, 2021

AceShowbiz - It seems like Safaree Samuels doesn't want to talk about his past relationship with Nicki Minaj in any way. The "Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta" star was put in an awkward situation when a radio host asked him about the "Anaconda" raptress in a new interview.

During his appearance on Streetz 94.5 Atlanta, Yung Joc asked Safaree if he ever listened to Nicki's songs while having sex. While people in the room laughed over the question, Safaree decided to refuse to answer it.

"No, that's not a good question," the TV personality said. Reminding everyone that the Young Money femcee is now happily married and a mom to her baby boy, Safaree continued, "That woman is married with a brand new baby. God bless."

While it was respectful of him for dodging the question, some Internet users were not amused by his response considering his own issues with estranged wife Erica Mena. "Aww look at him being considerate about everyone else's baby but his own . How sweet," one person sarcastically wrote in an Instagram comment. "Not him respecting Nicki marriage and not his own," someone else similarly said.

"HE GOT RESPECT FOR NICKI N HER HUSBAND BUT NOT ERICA. BOY BYE," a user chimed in. "so you respect nicki enough bc she's married and has a baby but can't do the same for his own wife and new baby..," another comment read.

Safaree is currently in a legal battle against Erica amid their divorce. Erica, who shares two children with Safaree, previously slammed him for being in Jamaica instead of helping her care for their newborn son, who was in NICU for over week after an early birth. She also shaded him by giving herself props for doing everything independently and thanking her friends for helping her.

Hitting back at her, Safaree accused Erica of destroying two motorcycles and a four-wheeler motorbike by pouring paint all over the motorcycles. In legal docs, Safaree also claimed that Erica directly put paint into the exhaust pipes and gas tanks of all the vehicles to make his beloved bikes useless.
Instagram Celebrity

The Amazon boss is back on earth safely after flying to space, where he and fellow astronauts reportedly had four minutes to float around the cabin and take in the views.

Jul 21, 2021

AceShowbiz - Jeff Bezos has landed safely back on Earth with his crew after fulfilling his childhood dream to travel to space.

The billionaire businessman and founder of Amazon and private spaceflight company Blue Origin blasted into space on Tuesday (20Jul21) in the first crewed flight of spacecraft New Shepard.

Bezos was joined in the mission by his younger brother Mark, Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, 18, and and 82-year-old female aerospace pioneer Wally Funk, the youngest and oldest person to travel to space, respectively.

According to the BBC, the spacecraft lifted off at 09:12 EDT (14:12 BST) from a private launch site near Van Horn, Texas.

Once they reached the atmosphere above Earth, Bezos and his fellow astronauts had a reported four minutes to leave their seats, to float around the cabin and take in the views. They parachuted back down to the West Texas desert 11 minutes later.

After the capsule touched down, Bezos said, "Astronaut Bezos (his callsign): Best day ever!"

The four space voyagers became the first people to lift off aboard the New Shepard rocket built by the entrepreneur's private spaceflight company Blue Origin.

Funk was a member of a group of women called the Mercury 13. They underwent the same screening tests as male astronauts, but never got to fly into space.

Teenager Daemen, who was Blue Origin's first paying passenger, replaced an anonymous person who had bid $28 million (20.5 million) for a seat on the flight but later deferred their place "due to scheduling conflicts," despite being aware of the flight's scheduled date before making their bid.
YouTube Celebrity

The security guard who works for the 'Gummo' hitmaker has been officially charged after chasing down a man and illegally confiscating his phone in New York.

Jul 21, 2021

AceShowbiz - Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine appears to be in need of a new security team after five of his bodyguards were indicted on charges including robbery and false impersonation.

The security guards are accused of using flashing lights on their vehicles as they chased down a man in Harlem, New York last August (20) and cornered him after taking issue with the guy filming Tekashi on his cell phone.

According to authorities, the suspects illegally confiscated the victim's phone and destroyed it, at one point allegedly threatening him with a stun gun, before speeding away as an unmarked police car arrived on the scene.

The five guards, including one retired New York Police Department detective, were indicted on Monday (19Jul21).

Tekashi, real name Daniel Hernandez, was not charged in the incident.

Announcing the indictments, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. declared, "A celebrity entourage is not a police department, and Manhattan is not the Wild West."

"As alleged, these highly-compensated vigilantes caravanned through the streets of Harlem with sirens flashing in order to track a man down and steal and break his phone."

The former NYPD detective, identified as Daniel Laperuta, is additionally accused of lying to cops after apparently falsely claiming the man they had been chasing had threatened Tekashi's security team with a gun.

He is said to have approached the victim with his hand on his holstered firearm, while a colleague pointed a stun gun at the man, reports The Associated Press.

Laperuta has pleaded not guilty to his charges, and his lawyer, Todd Cushner, added of the allegations, "For the most part, they're unfounded."

Tekashi's representatives have yet to comment on the legal drama.

The "Fefe" star previously spent time behind bars for gang-related crimes, but walked free from the two-year sentence he received in December, 2019 last year (20).
BUTTE COUNTY, Calif. - PG&E said its equipment may be to blame for starting the Dixie Fire that has scorched thousands of acres in Butte and Plumas Counties.

In a report it submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), PG&E said a worker investigating a power outage spotted two blown fuses.

He said he noticed a tree leaning against a power line and fire on the ground.

The Dixie fire grew from 10 acres on July 13 to more than 30,000 acres Monday.

Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey said he's started an investigation into PG&E's possible connection to the Dixie Fire.

RELATED: People on the ridge react to PG&E possibly causing the Dixie Fire



"We received information from CAL FIRE that this was possibly a PG&E caused fire, that there was a tree into the line and so we sent up an investigator and we've been co-investigating this with CAL FIRE," said D.A. Mike Ramsey. "CAL FIRE personnel along with my investigators and two attorneys were up at the scene and gathered lines, fuses, and a tree that had fallen across the lines to see what the evidence will show us."

Ramsey said no word how long the investigation will last or if PG&E will face criminal charges.

Action News Now reached out to PG&E. The company declined to interview but sent a statement saying:

"Yesterday, PG&E filed an Electric Incident Report (EIR) with the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) regarding the Dixie Fire in Butte and Plumas counties. The information PG&E submitted is preliminary, and the company submitted this report in an abundance of caution given CAL FIREs collection of PG&E facilities in connection with its investigation. PG&E is cooperating with CAL FIREs investigation."

"The CPUC is conducting a staff investigation to assess the compliance of PG&Es electric facilities with applicable rules and regulations (CAL FIRE or the local fire district determines the sources of ignition of wildfires and the way that the fires spread)," CPUC spokesperson, Terrie Prosper said in a statement to Action News Now.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and other charges in connection with a deadly shooting at a Southern California synagogue on the last day of Passover.

John T. Earnest avoided the death penalty with his plea in San Diego Superior Court.

The San Diego County district attorney's office said he agreed to serve the rest of his life in prison without the possibility of parole in state prison.

Sentencing is scheduled Sept. 30.

Earnest opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle during the last day of Passover services in April 2019. The attack killed 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye.
CHICO, Calif. - A Chico business owner is upset after a string of burglaries and is hoping other businesses in the area targeted by burglars come forward so they can catch the crooks.

Nestled in between multiple buildings near the Chico airport you will find North State Audio Visual on Cabin Hollow Ct.

"Weve been here at this location about 17 years, said Bob Tolar, owner of North State Audio Visual. This has been a very safe complex because it's off the beaten path and most people don't know we're back here."

But the driver of this car did. Tolar said he has a video of this van outside his business in early June.

You can see three people wearing masks get out of that van and open the door to North State Audio Visual.

"All three guys coming and going, Tolar explained, now the alarm is beeping off right now and fifteen seconds or so it goes off at which point you can see them pick up the pace quite a bit."

The owner tells Action News Now the culprits are very specific on what they take. They walk past lights, they walk past speakers that are worth thousands of dollars. Taking instead simple tools.

"They know it's going to be a misdemeanor," Tolar said.

Two weeks later another break in this time at nearby by Helping Hands.

"Incomes this Honda Accord four-door and we knew it was strange immediately because they pulled around the back of our shop. They parked out of view and then two minutes later we see the door to their shop open up from the inside. Suspicious person peering out it was right there in the window and the owner said they were not there," Tolar said.

Tolar put new locks on his business and Helping Hands put on new locks as well.

"This time the changes that we all made to the locks prevented them from getting into the building so they hopped the fence and broke into a trailer," Tolar said.

Now Tolar is putting the word out to nearby business owners to see if they've had recent burglaries too.

"If we can link these together and turn this into one crime spree then maybe we can get them on grand theft instead of a misdemeanor."

Tolar said he did report these incidents to authorities, he tells Action News Now that police have confirmed each vehicle shown in the videos was indeed stolen.

If you would like to connect with Tolar you can email him at bob@northstateav.com
REDDING, Calif. - A Redding woman is running for governor in the recall election that could remove Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Jenny Rae Le Roux is a longtime Redding resident and businesswoman. She tells Action News Now the way Newsom handled the pandemic is one of the reasons why shes running.

Le Roux filed her paperwork to run for governor back in April and learned over the weekend she will indeed be on the ballot come Sept. 14.

Politics is worse than the private sector in every way. It's public, it's brutal, and for many reasons, thats why I didn't do it for the rest of my life before now, said Le Roux. But I became convicted over the last year that if good people don't go into government, then we get bad people leading us. That's one of the reasons I had to run. We need people who know how to lead organizations and know how to solve problems.

RELATED: 41 candidates enter California's recall election

Le Roux said she is a data drive person and uses data to solve problems.

For homelessness, right now, Newsom has two answers: spend more money and create more programs, said Le Roux. But the problem is that spending money doesn't mean spending smartly. What you used data for is to identify what is working and what isn't. So that we can spend more money, on the things that are working and the things that aren't.

While there are 41 people running for governor, she said the biggest competitor is still Gov. Newsom himself.

[Newsom] has the largest pool pit and he has been spending money from the surplus that the state has without thinking of the businesses that created the surplus, explained Le Roux. He is the one all of us are running against.

The full interview with Le Roux is attached to this article.
Grab those sunglasses, stay hydrated, and dress for another day of above average temperatures as you're getting ready for your Tuesday. The threat of thunderstorms has now mostly shifted to our east, and we'll have much quieter weather on the way in your Tuesday forecast. We still have high pressure off to our east, but it's shifted east just enough to cut off the monsoonal moisture it was drawing into northern California on Monday. This will result in the threat of thunderstorms moving to our east on Tuesday, and more settled conditions across northern California. Low pressure approaching the Pacific Northwest will help to enhance the onshore flow and Delta Breeze today, and that will result in very modest cooling compared to Monday. Skies are mostly clear for the start of your Tuesday morning, and we'll have plenty of sunshine overhead today. Air quality will continue to be impacted in areas closest to our active fires today, with the worst air quality expected to remain close to the Dixie Fire. Winds are mostly out of the east or northeast this morning, but south or southwest winds will develop again this afternoon. Gusty southwest winds, low humidity, and dry fuels are driving a Red Flag Warning for high fire danger in Modoc County from 2pm through 8pm Tuesday. Temperatures are starting out in the 60's to 70's in the valley and foothills, while mountain areas have dipped into the 50's to 60's overnight. Humidity is projected to dip into the 11 to 23 percent range for most of our region this afternoon. High temperatures will end up in the 97 to 103 degree range in the valley, with mid 80's to mid 90's in the foothills and mountains later today.

The Delta Breeze will cool our high temperatures by a degree or two on Wednesday, but we'll otherwise have very similar conditions to Tuesday on Wednesday afternoon. A Fire Weather Watch has been issued for Modoc County from 2pm through 8pm Wednesday for the same reasons the Red Flag Warning will be in effect on Tuesday. This could very well get upgraded to another Red Flag Warning later today. High pressure will build back to the west late this week, and that will result in temperatures getting progressively hotter as we head into your weekend. Valley temperatures will top out in the upper 90's to lower triple digits on Thursday, and then widespread triple digit high temperatures are expected in the valley on Friday. Mountain and foothill areas will end up in the upper 80's to mid 90's later this week. Temperatures will end up in the 101 to 107 degree range for the valley through this weekend, while we end up in the upper 80's to lower triple digits in the foothills and mountains. Clouds will start to increase on Sunday as monsoonal moisture is drawn to the north by the high pressure to our east. This looks like it could end up being a similar setup to what we had Sunday into Monday of this week, and will bring a chance for some unsettled weather back into our region for the end of your 7 day forecast. Most of us are not expecting any active weather, but thunderstorms will not be out of the question in our Sierra locations on Sunday and Monday. Temperatures are also expected to cool by several degrees early next week. The latest outlook keeps the vast majority of our region dry for the foreseeable future, but the good news is we are not expecting any substantial wind events to return in your extended forecast.
Indian born ed-tech start-up Bada Business has appointed Gyan Gupta as the new Chief of Product, Technology and Growth Officer (CPTGO). Gupta will lead the companys product and growth strategy, guided by a robust technology roadmap. With this move, Bada Business aims at strengthening its position as a product-led company, making the worlds most affordable entrepreneurship training programs accessible to the last mile aspiring Entrepreneurs, Solopreneurs and Wantepreneurs, at the tap of an app.

A visionary digital leader, Gupta, brings over two decades of experience involving a deep understanding of content, AI, product and business. Prior to Bada Business, Gupta created a transformational digital business models as a Co-Founder & CEO of First Wall (short form app) and as a Founder & CEO of Chamko. Gupta has worked with brands like GE, Genpact, Dainik Bhaskar, He is also a Co-chair of IAMAI AI-Big Data Committee for making Artificial Intelligence (AI) Mainstream and COO for DNPA - the digital news publishers association.

Commenting on the appointment, Dr.Vivek Bindra, Founder & CEO, Bada Business said, We are extremely delighted to finally have Gyan on board who would help us leapfrog the technology front at Bada Business. We believe that the three aspects - Product, Technology and Growth - are becoming directly proportional in our case, because our key operating platform is the Bada Business app, through which we extend our training programs and other services to our user base. Hence, an easy and intuitive product interface, backed with advanced technologies, is key to elevate user experience; which will therefore translate into growth for the company. And with Gyans experience of digitizing key brands in the market, we are hopeful of being seen as a product, technology and user-first company in the coming months.

I have been a distant observer of Dr. Bindras vision and commitment towards building an entrepreneur economy. It explains why Bada Business has been able to witness the enormous growth that it has, within a short span of starting operations. Hence, it gives me immense joy to take on this challenging role and together we shall surely scale new heights in the entrepreneurship training space, backed by affordability, accessibility and availability, said Gyan Gupta.

Formerly, Gyan Gupta has been known for putting Dainik Bhaskar on the digital roadmap, to make it the 2nd largest news site in the country with 100M active users. He has also contributed significantly towards laying grounds for the internet evolution in Hindi and other Indian languages. He has been the first to lay the 1st fiber optic network for Indian agricultural research institutes and interconnecting all 22 of them. He has created the 1st content recommendation engine in Hindi with the worlds best CTR of 24% and is also acclaimed for creating Indias 1st social video app.

Also, he has been an international speaker of repute and has often been seen commenting on critical technologies like AI and ML. He has won 11 international awards in the domain of AI and ML
Nua, a direct-to-consumer womens wellness brand, today announced its expansion into nutraceuticals with the launch of Uplift, a period nutrition drink mix that replenishes vital vitamins and minerals in the body to help ease menstrual symptoms. The announcement follows the company raising $7.1 million in pre-series B funding from investors including Lightbox, Vindi Banga & Kamini Banga, Kae Capital as well as actor, Deepika Padukone.

GAMEXX Awards 2021 Last date for submitting entries - Monday, July 26, 2021 - ENTER NOW

Period fatigue, a symptom of premenstrual syndrome (PMS), affects most of the women, causing irritation, mood swings, tiredness, bloating and breast tenderness. A safe and flavourful drink, Uplift is scientifically crafted to relieve these signs of PMS. Backed by research, this carefully formulated nourishing drink mix is made with the choicest ingredients, which include Vitamin B, C, D, Magnesium, L-Theanine, grape seed extract, soy isoflavones, and inulin.

On the occasion of the launch, Ravi Ramachandran, Founder and CEO, Nua, said, At Nua, we aim to make womens lives better by solving their real-life problems. Towards this, we continue to explore opportunities to expand into various aspects of womens wellness, beginning with our initial focus on menstruation and menstrual hygiene. With Uplift, we are bringing together our core strengths of a highly engaged community of women as well as our science and research expertise, especially when it comes to addressing the various symptoms of PMS. Uplift is made of ingredients that are 100% safe, effective and inclusive, with zero preservatives, no added sugar and 100% vegetarian. The product is also the first step in our expansion strategy, with many more areas in women's wellness still left to be tapped in the long term.
Deep dive into the realms of incredible India with Indias 50 Best Dishes Season 2 on Zee Zest - Indias leading lifestyle channel. With the exceptional success of season 1 and viewers request for more, globally reputed chef Ajay Chopra is back on July 26th to take you on a delectable expedition and celebrate food from across regions in the country.

GAMEXX Awards 2021 Last date for submitting entries - Monday, July 26, 2021 - ENTER NOW

Unveiling the #Deshkatastiestmenu, the show will focus on over 20 exciting categories from monsoon ka swaad, immunity boosters, work from home rasoi, nukkad ka khaana to bachchon ki farmaaish and more. With mouth-watering dishes ranging from Pineapple Rasam, daal baati churma, ramen, oreo cheesecake to bhetki fish fry, viewers will be spoilt for choice as they pick their favorites to curate a menu thats India's favorite!

This season comes with an added tadka, with viewers virtually supporting Chef Ajay by voting for their top choices of dishes through a unique gamification portal on the Zee Zest website. The portal will allow viewers to choose from a plethora of regional dishes that feature on a leaderboard. Votes will then be tallied to decide winners of the contest as they pick their favorites from across the country.

To help Chef Ajay curate Indias 50 best dishes, we have 3 groups, which map the food atlas of India, namely Kitchen Gurus, Masala Mantris and Desi Deewane. Prominent industry veterans formulate the Kitchen Gurus, as they alternate in every episode, to share their knowledge from their home kitchens. This zestful list of culinary architects includes Kunal Kapur, Tejasvi Chandela, Natasha Gandhi, Vikas Bagu, Sabyasachi Gorai, Pankaj Bhadouria and more, who bring in their learnings and expertise to this segment. Antoine Lewis (The Curly Haired Cook), Jasleen Marwah (Chef and Founder, Namak Swaad Anusaar) and Pooja Vir (Consulting Editor  Mumbai Foodie) are our Masala Mantris as they share their discerning views in a friendly interactive debate for a thorough decision-making process.

Representing the heart of India as they become the common voice of the country, Desi Deewane are those individuals featured in the vox pops segment of the show. Expert tips and anecdotes are taken from people hailing from different regions in India. Chef Ajay in his distinctive manner shares his opinions on the same and decides which dish falls under #Deshkatastiestmenu.

Chef Ajay Chopra, Host, Indias 50 Best Dishes says, I am elated to kick off the new season of Indias 50 Best Dishes after the resoundingly appreciative response from our audience. In a country where we find multiple cuisines and countless dishes in each state, I am looking forward to reviving the conversation on what are the most loved ones. In a bid to distinguish Indias consistently evolving culinary landscape with incomparable regional impressions, we are excited to continue our search to curate a unique set of 50 that will make for this seasons desh ka tastiest menu.

Indias 50 Best Dishes Season 2 with Ajay Chopra will find newer answers to the mind-boggling question of What does the nation want to eat? So, tune in to Zee Zest every Monday and Tuesday at 2:00 PM and get closer to UNLIMIT Life!
State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation

Bern, 20.07.2021 - On 19 July 2021, State Secretary Martina Hirayama took part in an informal meeting of ministers responsible for research and innovation in the EU member states. At the biannual event, held this time in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, the participants discussed the implementation of the goals of the new European Research Area at national and European level. They also addressed the question of how Europe would like to shape cooperation in the area of research and innovation with its international partners. Switzerlands presence and input at this meeting underscored its active commitment to maintaining a strong European Research Area.

The participants at the informal EU ministerial meeting primarily addressed the new strategic and thematic focus to be adopted for research and innovation policy in the European Research Area. They also examined ways in which EU member states and international partners can cooperate in these areas.

The Pact for Research and Innovation, which will in future define the most important jointly agreed values, principles and priority action areas for the European Research Area, was also discussed. The European Commission adopted the Pact proposal on 16 July 2021; the final version should be available by the end of 2021.

At the ministerial meeting, Ms Hirayama stressed the growing importance of European and worldwide cooperation in the field of research and innovation in view of global challenges and the search for long-term answers to them. The examples of cooperation in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and in the field of climate change in particular have demonstrated the benefits that cross-border scientific cooperation brings to societies. It is therefore important to remember the advantages of coordinated political partnership in Europe. Ms Hirayama reiterated that Switzerland is a reliable and valuable partner in research and innovation and is ready to start negotiations on association to the Horizon package.

She also welcomed the fact that gender equality, which the Slovenian presidency has set as a priority, is being addressed as a key issue in the field of research and innovation. This is also in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ms Hirayama reiterated that Switzerland is a driving force behind the 2030 Agenda and its 17 SDGs, and that research and innovation activities are essential in order to achieve them.

Switzerland's status in Horizon Europe

Switzerland will be treated as a non-associated third country in the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon Europe, and its associated programmes and initiatives until further notice. Researchers in Switzerland can still participate in calls for proposals under this status, albeit to a limited extent, and receive funding directly from the Confederation. The Federal Council's stated aim remains Switzerland's full association to Horizon Europe.

Address for enquiries

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI

Communication

medien@sbfi.admin.ch

T +41 58 485 67 74

Publisher

State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation

http://www.sbfi.admin.ch




Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

Bern, 20.07.2021 - On 19 and 20 July Federal Councillor Ignazio Cassis, head of the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA), visited the Mission of Switzerland to the European Union in Brussels. He exchanged views with staff there and gained an overview of the tasks at hand and those lying ahead. Mr Cassis also engaged in an informal exchange of views with the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, Josep Borrell, and EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn.

During his visit to the Mission of Switzerland in Brussels, Mr Cassis was accompanied by State Secretary Livia Leu as well as Deputy State Secretary and head of the FDFA's Europe Division Patric Franzen and Switzerland's new head of the Mission, Rita Adam. The partnership between Switzerland and the EU is of primary importance and the mission in Brussels promotes Switzerland's interests in its relations with the EU. Cassis' on-site visit allowed him to speak directly with his staff about their daily work and future challenges, as well as to thank them for their great dedication.



His visit also afforded him the opportunity to exchange views informally with Josep Borrell, the EU's representative for foreign affairs and the Commission's vice-president, and EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn. With Borrell, international issues were the main topic. In the foreign policy arena, Switzerland and the EU are important partners and share fundamental values, such as the promotion of democracy and human rights.

Cassis last met Borrell on the margins of the Libya Conference in Berlin on 23 June. He had exchanged views with Hahn at the Europa-Forum Wachau in Austria on 12 June. After both meetings, all sides expressed the desire to continue exchanges. The informal meetings in Brussels on 19 and 20 July allowed this interest to be pursued. Here, Cassis also reaffirmed Switzerland's European policy goals of remaining a reliable and committed partner of the EU.

In Brussels, Cassis also met with European Parliament member Lukas Mandl, who serves on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and has, in this capacity, been tasked with drafting a report on SwitzerlandEU relations for the European Parliament.

Address for enquiries

FDFA Communication

Federal Palace West Wing

CH-3003 Bern, Switzerland

Tel. Communication service: +41 58 462 31 53

Tel. Press service: +41 58 460 55 55

E-mail: kommunikation@eda.admin.ch

Twitter: @SwissMFA

Publisher

Federal Department of Foreign Affairs

https://www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home.html




Alton, IL (62002)

Today

Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 72F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
By Anne Dachel



Every once in a while it is my great pleasure to talk about a book on autism that is really well-designed to inform and help parents and other people involved with autism. Autism Essentials, as the cover tells us, is about prevention, causes, remediation, education, vocation, and legal aspects and parental advice regarding autism.

Autism Essentials is a collection of articles by over 30 writers, edited by Dr. Andy McCabe, a psychologist who has worked for years in special education and who has an extensive background in autism.

This book has so much good information on the real world of autism that I hardly know where to begin. A number of the writers are people Ive known and respected for years and others who are new to me. All of them have something vital to say about autism.

Since the topics are so varied, I decided to review this book in several separate pieces. Here goes the first.

I like to say my qualifications for any of the writing I do is that I read. I have spent twenty years studying everything about autism. Thats not to say I know everything there is out there, but Ive amassed a good deal of knowledge. Ive been writing for Age of Autism since 2007, mostly about the controversy over vaccines and autism and the exponential increases in the rate.

I wrote a book about all this published in 2014 called, The Big Autism Cover-Up-How and Why the Media is Lying to the American Public.

As you can tell from title, it covered the lies and corruption surrounding the link between autism and vaccines.

In that book I devoted a whole chapter to the Dr. Andrew Wakefield story because of his leading role in the whole debate over a vaccine link.

I felt honored that Dr. McCabe asked me to write the preface in Autism Essentials, focusing on the Andy Wakefield storythe real story about this doctor.

The preface, entitled, Dr. Andy Wakefield: The Story You Havent Heard, is where I say once again what I said about Dr. Wakefield in The Big Autism Cover-Up, namely that he was made the fall guy to cover up the collusion and corruption on the part of the British government.

Dont get the idea that Autism Essentials is just about how vaccines can cause autism, because it isnt. The link is clearly talked about because there are just too many parents out there who watched their normally developing children lose learned skills and regress into autism following routine childhood vaccinations.

So what is the real story about Dr. Wakefield?
MONTICELLO, Ill. Kids are swimming, kayaking, doing archery, learning about science and all the fun things they always do at 4-H Memorial Camp in Monticello.

One big thing is different this year.

As part of the pandemic protocol, which was tighter in Illinois this winter when Andy Davis, University of Illinois Extension camp director was planning this years event, the camp is not just for kids.

Instead of bunking in the cabin with other kids, Mom, Dad and siblings hunker down together at night and enjoy activities together during the day.

Each family gets their own cabin during the three-day, two-night summer camp located at a lake and surrounded by trees.

All of the things that make camp great like outdoor adventures, hiking, boating, and swimming are just as fun socially distanced once we flipped to a family camp model, Davis said.

The camp organizers have held family camps before, so they knew how to run it.

The camp was closed in 2020. While minimal staff did repairs and maintenance, is was sad to see no campers, Davis said. Even though the camp is limited in size and arranged to suit pandemic protocol, it is alive with activity this year.

Only 15 families participate in each camp.

During this transitional pandemic year, there are also fewer camp weeks, fewer staff and fewer campers, but there is no shortage of fun and laughter. Even the odd scream can be heard as first-timers try out the zip line.

Were all super excited to be here, said Bethany Wood, the camps special programs director.
https://www.aish.com/jw/s/Its-MyOrthodoxLife-and-Im-Standing-Up-for-It.html

Hey, Netflix! My peers and I are not dowdy, backward, uneducated, or oppressed. We are Orthodox women leading happy, healthy, and fulfilling lives.

Over the past few days, posts written by Orthodox women started popping all over social media with the hashtags #MyOrthodoxLife and #ThisIsOrthodoxy.

These posts are part of a social media campaign designed to counter the negative messaging on Orthodoxy and Orthodox women propagated by the latest Netflix series on leaving Orthodoxy: My Unorthodox Life", starring Julia Haart, and focusing on how her new glamorous irreligious life is inherently better than the world of Orthodoxy that she left, with so much fanfare. Launched by Alexandra Fleksher, the social media challenge asked Orthodox women and men (mostly women are responding) to post about their varied Orthodox lives and experiences. The purpose is to show snapshots of actual Orthodox people, living normal, healthy, and fulfilling lives. Fleksher is a talented writer and social media influencer. She is also a former student of Julia Haart, then Mrs. Talia Hendler, who lived and worked in Atlanta.

"My Unorthodox Life is yet another Netflix show that propagates negative stereotypes of Orthodoxy globally, and Orthodox women in specific.

Whats behind this campaign? Why are Orthodox women writing and sharing these posts? We are writing because we are fed up with the messages that Netflix is conveying to the world: that were dowdy, backward, uneducated, and oppressed. My Unorthodox Life is yet another Netflix show that propagates negative stereotypes of Orthodoxy globally, and Orthodox women in specific. So women who identify as Orthodox, have stayed Orthodox, have chosen to be Orthodox are finally standing up to misrepresentation. Posts are popping up all over Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Journalist Tzippy Yarom-Diskind has created a website collecting the posts.

#MyOrthodoxLife posts have ranged from heartfelt to humorous. Here are a few snippets of some of my favorite posts. I encourage you to read them in their entirety.

Fleksher kicked off by posting: I want the world to know that there are Orthodox women who are leading happy, healthy and fulfilled Orthodox lives.

Educator Eve Levy wrote on Facebook: I am connected to thousands of other modern, educated, worldly, rockstar Orthodox Jewish women who feel just as passionate and inspired as I do about the lifestyles we choose to uphold.

Chana Chava Ford wrote: It aint all bagels and lox with a side of female subjugation.

Influencer Bari Mitzman wrote a poem on Instagram:

Every hemline I choose to lower

Every strand I choose to cover

Is an emblem of freedom

Freedom to observe

Freedom to choose my path

Journalist Susan Jacobs Jablow posted on Facebook: Ive never felt that I fit inside a box, and I have never felt that Orthodox Judaism required that of me.

Motivational speaker Gila Ross posted on Instagram:

What do you see when you see my large Orthodox family? Do they know about birth control? (Ive been asked that) Let me tell you what I see Each child a decision, a continued prayer, a blessing.

My contribution to the trend, posted on Facebook and Instagram:

Stop watching Netflix and meet some real Orthodox women! People have told me I shattered their stereotypes of Orthodox women. I say stop watching Netflix and meet some real Orthodox women! I have been Orthodox all my life. I love being frum (religious). Im a graduate of a Bais Yaakov high school. I have a PhD from NYU and I work as the dean of a college. Im writing a book  a history of Orthodox girlhood in America. "My favorite author is Jane Austen. My favorite band  the Beatles. My favorite gameTrivial Pursuit, Azul, Ticket to Ride. Im a bit of a fashionista and kind of an adrenaline junkie, but I know there is more to life than superficial appearances and short-term thrills. While I dont always love covering my hair, wigs give me the opportunity to radically switch up my hair length and color and NEVER have a bad hair day. I always love Shabbos & the break it gives me from the hectic pace of my life  25 hours of family time and no phone! "I love to travel. Ive road-tripped all over the USA, surfed in Hawaii & backpacked Europe twice. Being frum gives me the opportunity to ground my life and my family in meaning. Seeing my childrens joy in the same rituals and observances that I love brings me so much happiness. And I have never felt that being an Orthodox woman and being an accomplished woman were mutually exclusive. This is my Orthodox life.

For many of the women posting  myself included  this wasnt a typical social media post. Many of us do not usually get so personal. And I dont think Im all that special or unique. Like others, I am a normal woman struggling to balance life and keep it together. No ones life is perfect, but the fact remains: Orthodox women are living inspired and interesting lives, delicately balancing tradition and modernity. We are far more common than Netflix makes us out to be.

There has been pushback on the campaign. I have been accused of silencing stories from those who left Orthodoxy. So let me be clear. I dont have a problem with these stories. I have a problem with this particular story, or how it is being portrayed on Netflix. Here is why:

This show is woefully inaccurate. The showrunners regularly conflate the very different orthodox communities in America. In the first few minutes, Haart talks about her "Litvish Yeshivish" community in Monsey (she invents the term Yeshivishe  Heimishe) while the B-roll video shows footage of Hasidim in Brooklyn. The footage would be more appropriate to the previous Netflix show on leaving Orthodoxy, Unorthodox. That show was set in the Hasidic community and centered around a young woman raised in an extremely sheltered environment.

That was not the world Julia Haart was raised in, or the one she raised her family in. Orthodoxy is not monolithic. The two communities are radically different. Unorthodox. My Unorthodox. The shows have almost identical names, but Netflix doesnt seem to know or care about the differences. In a later episode, the show adds Modern Orthodoxy to the fundamentalist mix, again failing to draw important distinctions.

Haart herself seems to be purposefully disingenuous in the way she describes Orthodoxy. Her claims of how unaware of the outside world she was when she was frum (religious), the level of insularity, the lack of secular education, the restrictions on women, are not representative of the Yeshivish Orthodox community of which she was a part.

I am a researcher of American Orthodox girlhood. My doctoral dissertation and upcoming book are on the history of the Bais Yaakov school system that Haart attended, and the development of Orthodox girl culture. Haarts descriptions, and the broad generalizations advanced by the show, do not match any reality. Certainly not that of Monsey in the 1980s or Atlanta in the 1990s. Dr. Dainy Bernstein, a formerly Orthodox researcher of Orthodox childrens literature, did an excellent play-by-play analysis of all the inaccuracies in the show.

So I just played the first 30 seconds of My Unorthodox Life. It opens with the daughter saying she didn't know how things worked in the bedroom when she got married, "my bridal teacher wouldn't even say the word sex" and I just yelled and stopped it there because come on.  Dr. Dainy Bernstein (@prof_dainy) July 14, 2021

Haart, and, later, her daughter claim that girls in the Orthodox community receive no secular education, do not go to college, and that women in the community are expected to be nothing more than babymakers. This is patently false. Girls in the yeshivish community do receive a real secular education, typically stronger than their male counterparts. Bais Yaakov schools participate in robotics competitions and hackathons, they have job fairs, and New York schools take regents exams. Many women go to college and go on to be the primary breadwinners of their families, working while their husbands learn in kollel (full-time Torah study).

Far from being discouraged from working, women are highly encouraged to work, even in the most right-wing Bais Yaakov schools. But Haart claims she had to keep the fact that she was running a side business a secret, as if Orthodox women are not successful and well-known entrepreneurs. And Haart did indeed publicly work during her marriage as a teacher, but that seems to be left out. Perhaps it does not jive with the fundamentalist narrative the producers are spinning.

Haarts claims about her experiences within the community are further called into question by those who knew her. Haart was quoted by the New York Times as saying that she had no exposure to television or magazines, and that fashion was a giant no-no. Yet her students  Haart taught at a Modern Orthodox high school and Bais Yaakov high school  remember her openly carrying Vogue magazine at work. And they thought she was so cool for it. They remember her in stiletto heels and designer clothes, hardly a woman whose fashion was dictated by a culture where women are not supposed to care about their appearance.

But thats not the sensational narrative. To quote Fleksher, BCBG-clad, stiletto-wearing, frum woman becomes model exec doesnt hit the same way.

Haarts former students remember her as being a fantastically brilliant master teacher, with a photographic memory, tremendous knowledge, and incredible depth. They are left trying to reconcile their memories of Mrs. Hendler with the phony and manipulative Julia Haart character of the show. She was the paradigm of the empowered frum woman, said Elise Steinharter, a former student of hers at the Bais Yaakov high school in Atlanta, We looked up to her. She taught us to be our own person, to be proud women, and that frum didnt have to mean frumpy.

Some of the lines are falsifications. Some are true, but taken out of context. Some of her criticism is legitimate. But all of it is expressed with such a level of disdain and disrespect.

I do not know how much of this disingenuous negativity is Haart and how much of this comes from the producers, but it is hard to watch a show where the main character makes fun of your community at every opportunity. Every scene is cringeworthy. Some of the lines are falsifications. Some are true, but taken out of context. Some of her criticism is legitimate. But all of it is expressed with such a level of disdain and disrespect. She encourages that disrespect in her children as well; when her non-religious daughter intends to wear tzanua or tznius (modest) clothes to visit Monsey, in respect for the community norms, Haart encourages her to not to. Because, she says, respect needs to go both ways. On this point, Haart is absolutely correct.

In the show, Haart seems hellbent on stamping out every vestige of Orthodox observance in her children, berating them for keeping observance, even when that is what her children want. She contrives to get her adult son to stop keeping Shabbos. At the end of the second episode, there is a particularly painful scene where she chastises her teenage son because he does not want to have a girlfriend or watch television anymore (wait, I thought Orthodox Jews in Monsey dont know about television!). She tells him she wants him to have all the options in life open to him, but she makes clear that her path is the only acceptable choice.

This show rewrites my communitys past. It misrepresents its present. And I fear it could damage its future.

Ultimately, this show isnt helpful to anyone. Not to the global Netflix viewership, who are given a distorted and misleading perspective on traditional Judaism. Not to Jews globally. With rising antisemitism, a show like this is hardly what we need. Certainly not to Orthodoxy, which is presented as a fundamentalist cult. Not even to formerly Orthodox, the population she purports to champion. If thats what you need to do to live your life, thats cool, tweeted Dr. Bernstein during episode 2, But you are casting all the rest of us OTD (Off the Derech  formerly Orthodox) in a terrible light by confirming the stereotype of OTDers as angry and bitter and out to shtuch (antagonize).

An open letter on Facebook to Haart from Michla Berlin, a woman who knew her growing up, provides a fascinating response to the show. After describing Haart as a vibrant, cool, talented, funny, and (non-surprisingly) well-dressed young woman, she expresses her disappointment with Haart for sensationalizing their childhood community. She writes, I totally support your journey. Hell, I believe we all form and find our own paths and what works for some doesnt work for all. I might have even picked that up in a bechirah (free choice) class in good old Bais Yaakov. But your journey is your journey and while revisiting your past, you seemed to have altered all the facts of my past too. Because Monsey was not a shtetl, you did not grow up not watching movies, not reading magazines, not talking to boysWhile you may have struggled personally or behind closed doors our everyday world and our society was not what you claim it to be.

This is what bothers me about the show as well. As an Orthodox woman and as a historian. This show rewrites my communitys past. It misrepresents its present. And I fear it could damage its future.

Julia Haart is a fascinating, impressive, and brilliant woman. She clearly experienced a lot of pain and she has achieved tremendous professional success. I would be very interested in hearing her story. But My Unorthodox Life is not telling that story. Netflix is not telling that story (or any story that has positive representation of traditional Judaism). So to borrow from Berlins terminology: Speak your truth, Julia Haart. But please, for all of our sakes, speak the truth. In the meantime, I will be speaking mine.

This article was originally published in The Times of Israel
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  A judge is expected to delve into the jury selection process at a hearing Thursday for the upcoming murder trial of three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was chased and shot after he was spotted running in a Georgia neighborhood.
The 2021 Marshland Festival is a go for Friday, July 30, and Saturday, July 31, at the Lake Charles Civic Center and includes phenomenal musical guests this year: Grammy-winning Wayne Toups and Ronnie Milsap. Admission is $15 for Friday and $20 for Saturday.
Vaccinations are beginning to rise in some states where COVID-19 cases are soaring, White House officials said Thursday, and hospitals are running out of space because of the delta variant, which is spreading with incredible efficiency.
With the last American soldier now slated to leave Afghanistan by the end of August, the Taliban are already reinstituting their Sharia rules about women never being able to leave their homes naked-faced or without a male minder.

According to Foreign Policy, "a newly declassified U.S. intelligence assessment paints a grim picture for the future of women's rights in Afghanistan." Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) said Senate assistance for Afghanistan will not be forthcoming "if the Taliban (takes a) governing role that ends civil society advances and rolls back women's rights." U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken went further when he told CNN that "Afghanistan will become a pariah state" if it does "not respect the gains" made for Afghan girls and women.

Please allow me to say that the Taliban will not care. They view infidel nations as the real pariah states. They wish to live under seventh-century Sharia law as they define it.

As I've written before, the moment the last Western military boot leaves Afghan soil, the Taliban will torch every single shelter for battered women, burn down every schoolhouse for girls, shoot on sight every female broadcaster, politician, police officer, teacher, and physician. Women and girls will again be banished from public view, whether hidden under burqas or kept indoors.

Meanwhile, to our credit, America and the West are on a desperate humanitarian mission to rescue a handful of souls. However, we must realize that in doing so, we may be importing Islamic gender apartheid into our midst.

Do we really want to do that?

The mainly male interpreters who have helped American troops may be somewhat educated in terms of language skills, but really, have they given up  and will they give up  the practice of forced face-veiling, child marriage, cousin marriage, polygamy, child labor, woman-battering, gender segregation, and honor killing? If they engaged in these behaviors back home, won't they do so even more when surrounded by an infidel culture?

Some Afghan refugees in the West have honor murdered their daughters and sisters for refusing to veil properly, and for developing friendships or romantic alliances with infidels.

I am not suggesting that such men are also likely to become terrorists or that Afghan boys will necessarily become radicalized in American mosques or via the internet. But it's a thought, yes?

While we can no longer afford to expend blood and treasure in Afghanistan, how much money can America afford in order to feed, shelter, educate, and provide health care for a demographic that may not want to assimilate?

Do we have an alternative? Actually, we do.

If we are going to rescue Afghans from the barbaric Taliban, why not focus on the women who staffed the shelters for battered women in Kabul and Herat; the female physicians, teachers of girls, naked-faced television journalists, police officers, parliamentarians  or in short, those Afghans who have already rebelled against Islamist misogyny and who are most likely to embrace Western ways? They are the very Afghans most likely to be shot down dead by the Taliban for their "Western" ways.

Let's save them.

Phyllis Chesler is an emerita professor of psychology at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the author of 20 books, including Women and Madness, An American Bride in Kabul, and A Politically Incorrect Feminist.

Image: Nitin Madhav, USAID.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
This message briefly describes how an anti-science government science organization freely makes up rules and regulations.

I work at McMurdo Station in Antarctica, 800 miles north of the South Pole. Hearing this, you might be wishing to trade places to escape the craziness of COVID, but in reality, being in the States garners more freedoms.

When COVID first spread throughout the world, they stopped flying personnel south. The timing was OK since it was the start of winter and there would be few flights for personnel changes, anyway.

PAE-ASC (Antarctica Support Contract) along with the NSF (National Science Foundation) then implemented a COVID screening process to anyone going to the ice. This process included flying to San Francisco and staying in a managed hotel from which you could not leave the grounds. During that time, a negative COVID test was required to process further to Christchurch, New Zealand. The program booked a private charter flight to reduce COVID contact. Upon arrival in Christchurch, per N.Z. government regulations, any person arriving from outside the country was required to stay in a government-managed isolation facility for two weeks and required two negative COVID tests, one per week, before being released.

But it was still not over yet; once departing the N.Z. government isolation facility, we take a private van to another managed isolation hotel. During this trip, masking and social distancing are required at all times  as it was throughout the whole process.

Due to unpredictable weather patterns, delays can be anywhere from a few days to several weeks, and  you guessed it  you cannot leave your hotel at all. Mind you, N.Z. has zero COVID cases.

(A normal summer season sees around 1,000 personnel; with COVID, the numbers at McMurdo dwindled to around 300.)

Now, when you finally make it to the ice, after a month in isolation and multiple COVID tests, you just want some sort of freedom and normalcy. Well, not so fast!

They have different levels of COVID conditions: red, yellow, and green, and this latest season, a new release, blue. This changes whenever a flight comes in.

[Note: We have been advised that the image that was originally here is proprietary, so we have removed it.

For those wondering what was in the image, it was a chart describing seven activities. For each activity, as the risk of COVID appeared to increase, it mandated increasing restrictions on those activities. We are all familiar with this type of escalating response, whether increased mandates for washing one's hands to rules for masks and social distancing.]

If it is green and a plane arrives, we go to level yellow for one week. Mask and social distance at all times during work and personal hours. At the end of a long day, you can't wait to get back to your room. Oh, wait  you have roommates, too! How can you implement these rules and yet have everyone live together?

Last summer season, everyone had his own room, but this is changing this season as the NSF is ramping up production. But what happens if there are multiple planes in one week, or one arrives on day 7 from the last one? Well, you guessed it: it all starts over again. That means depending on flight schedule, you will be in "level yellow" for months. Sounds like so much fun.

I would like to keep my name anonymous, as I am a current employee and don't want to lose my job. If you don't follow their rules, you are threatened with termination, which is a loss of your bonus. Also, they make you sign a COVID paper that states rules and regulations; if you don't follow their rules, it is grounds for termination. We are not paid that well compared to average wages in the States. So the little bit of a bonus is helpful.



McMurdo Station.

Photo cerdit: Gaelen Marsden, CC BY-SA 1.0 license.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Since January 6, the Democrats have played up the kerfuffle in the Capitol on January as the worst thing ever in American history, while ignoring the innumerable times leftists have aggressively invaded the Capitol. This is different, and the wrongdoers must be punished. The problem with this narrative, though, was revealed on Monday when the first person charged with a felony for January 6 got sentenced. Was the sentence life imprisonment? Beheading? No. It was eight months in prison. Talk about a narrative fail.

Within minutes of January 6, the Democrats, who had turned a blind eye to the incredible violence of 2020, much of it played out on federal property, had their narrative in place: when elderly, unarmed people clamored to enter the Capitol  and the Capitol police opened the doors to let them in  that was an "insurrection."

D.C., therefore, had to be turned into an armed camp. This was a convenient way to hide the fact that, had D.C. been open for business as usual on Inauguration Day, no one would have turned up to see the doddering mound of corruption that is Joe Biden falsely swear an oath he immediately ignored.

Since January 6, Democrats have escalated their rhetoric. Steve Cohen, a Tennessee Democrat, likened January 6 to the Exodus and Pearl Harbor:

"We just celebrated Passover. On Passover, Jewish people are instructed over two centuries to remember 2,000 years, over 2,000 years, to remember that we were in bondage, and we escaped," Cohen said. "Remember that day, and to teach people about it. January 6th is a day like that. It's a day that should be remembered in America because our democracy was at stake. It was under attack as much as Pearl Harbor was an attack on our country, for people to suggest that it wasn't that big of a deal."

Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Vichy Republican, compared it Kristallnacht.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a man too stupid to realize that the only reason a pretty Chinese woman would sleep with him was that she was a spy; Nancy Pelosi, and myriad former intelligence officials, all described January 6 as a 9/11-style attack. The fact that 9/11 saw Islamic terrorists murder 2,996 people while January 6 saw a Capitol police officer murder one unarmed former member of the Air Force didn't resonate with them.

Joe Biden reads without flinching the nonsense fed him. (Biden is clearly sentient enough to understand every attack he makes on America and Americans. This is just another in his many betrayals of his country for the last 47 years. He used to do it for money. Now he does it for prestige.)

On April 29, when Biden finally stood before Congress, he claimed that January 6 was "the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War." Again, on January 6, a bunch of unarmed, middle-aged, and elderly people swarmed Congress, the Capitol Police let them in, the people wandered around, the police murdered an unarmed woman, and that was it. Meanwhile, the Civil War lasted four years, saw more than 600,000 deaths, cost $5.2 billion in 1860's dollars, and led to Lincoln's assassination.

Just last week, Biden went even farther as part of his effort to stop states from putting in place laws that will stop the kind of election fraud that put Biden in the White House. Now January 6 wasn't the worst attack since the Civil War; it was worse than the Civil War:

The assault on free and fair elections is just such a threat, literally. I've said it before: We're are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. That's not hyperbole. Since the Civil War. The Confederates back then never breached the Capitol as insurrectionists did on January the 6th.

Did you catch that? What Biden said is not hyperbole. Unarmed people wandering through the Capitol is worse than the Civil War. Biden is either the most dishonest man ever to occupy the White House or the most stupid. Or perhaps both.

Democrat voters who take these claims at face value feel that the punishment should fit the crime. I've seen people on my Facebook feed talk about life imprisonment as an appropriate punishment or, at least, 25 years. No one has talked about the death sentence yet, but I know that people want it.

So what happened to Paul Allard Hodgkins, 38, the first of the many that the FBI have hunted down with the vengeful fury of Inspector Javert hunting Jean Valjean? The government did charge him with a felony, which is more serious than trespassing. Hodgkins was sentenced to eight months in jail (which is eight more than he should have gotten under the standards set by the government's treatment of violent Antifa and BLM looters and rioters).

In other words, having weaponized January 6, the Democrats were able to fire only a squib. People will notice. The Democrats lied...again.

UPDATE: Tommy Chong is already complaining about the cognitive dissonance between propaganda and reality.

Image: Unlike Antifa or BLM, the January 6 protesters, after the police welcomed them into the Capitol, politely stayed within the rope lines. YouTube screen grab.
Back in April, I attended the interment of my aunt in Kearney, Missouri. Now, I know what you're thinking: this must have something to do with Jesse James, the outlaw. Well, as it happens, my aunt was being laid to rest in supposedly the very same cemetery as old Jesse. (The "supposedly" is used here, as there's a theory that James survived Robert Ford's assassination attempt and is buried in Texas. But in 1995, the remains in Kearney were exhumed to test its DNA, the results of which should forever lay theories of James's survival to rest.)

Anyway, after my aunt's interment (that's a burial, for those of you in New York City), I quickly found Jesse's grave and even got a snapshot of it, courtesy of a fellow with a smartphone who immediately emailed the photo to me. It's an excellent photo, and I urge you to check out the original full-size version and then click on the photo to expand it. At the bottom of the top stone, one sees flowers, coins, and two bullets just in front of a Confederate Battle Flag. Some of the lower stone has been chipped away, which this video explains.

Even though he was a thief and a killer, Jesse's grave seems to have become a shrine. Perhaps the reason for its shrine status is because Jesse was a Confederate. You see, Kearney is in Clay County, which is part of a ribbon of counties across the middle of Missouri that is referred to as "Little Dixie." One might even include counties to the north that have towns like Macon and Atlanta.

Many Americans have a "thing" for bad boys and make heroes of them. Along with Jesse James, they celebrate bloodthirsty revolutionaries like Che Guevara, cop-killers like Mumia Abu-Jamal, drug lords like Joaquin Guzman (El Chapo) whom they lionize in songs (narcocorridos), robbers like Bonnie and Clyde, and all manner of scum and villainy not fit for society. Maybe they'd have a different bunch of heroes had they been victims of their intemperate heroes.

This celebration of criminals goes back decades. But nowadays, if one isn't a big-time evildoer, one can still ascend into the pantheon if one is a victim like, say, George Floyd. Mr. Floyd certainly didn't deserve the treatment he got from the Minneapolis police, but neither does he deserve the shrines. He resisted arrest and had used fentanyl, microscopic amounts of which are fatal. Floyd also had quite a rap sheet, with stints in prison. Should he really be beatified?

Consider another type of hero:

The University of Missouri in Columbia was the first university established in the territory of the Louisiana Purchase, a rather smart investment made by one Thomas Jefferson. In 1883, descendants of Jefferson donated his original tombstone to UMC, which "was unveiled at the university on July 4, 1885."

On July 6, I visited the campus of UMC, and, strolling on the quadrangle, I learned that Jefferson's tombstone had been encased in acrylic to protect it from student vandals. In September of 2020, the Columbia Missourian reported:

The acrylic case was put in place by MU to ramp up security around the obelisk after incidents of vandalism occurred near it and the bronze statue of Jefferson sitting nearby. "We took this action to protect it from vandalism," MU spokesperson Christian Basi said in an email. "This is Jefferson's original tombstone, and it was entrusted to the university. We have a responsibility to ensure that it is preserved appropriately." [Link added.] Many took to Twitter after the case was built to criticize the decision.

The university might do a little introspection to see if it could be responsible for engendering its students' self-righteous indignation at Jefferson's obelisk. How do dumb kids get the idea that they are moral arbiters of anything if not by their professors? Students are being told that they're morally superior. They have no doubts and make heroes and martyrs out of ne'er-do-wells like George Floyd while destroying the shrines to those whose greatness they have neither the maturity nor sophistication to understand.

Students who harm our heritage, like Jefferson's tombstone, should be expelled and indicted. Teachers who fill students' minds with garbage should be summarily fired. On July 18, Mark Levin provided a roadmap on how you can "push back" against the idiocy in education; watch this four-minute video of it.

America needs a better bunch of heroes. I suggest the old ones, like Jefferson.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.

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Within the last few months, multiple U.S. polling groups have reported that, for the first time, a majority of Republicans now support same-sex "marriage." As Reason magazine reported in late March:

For the first time, a majority of Republicans support marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, according to a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI). The PRRI poll  conducted throughout 2020  finds U.S. support for same-sex marriage now stands at 67 percent, up from 61 percent in 2017 and 36 percent in 2007. Much of the recent rise can be attributed to growing support by conservatives and independents. In 2020, 51 percent of the Republicans polled by PRRI said they support granting legal marriage rights to same-sex couples. This is up from 47 percent in 2019 and 31 percent in 2011.

A Gallup poll from about a month ago reports similar conclusions. Gallup's June 8 headline reads, "Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage." Gallup also reports, "Republicans, who have consistently been the party group least in favor of same-sex marriage, show majority support in 2021 for the first time (55%). The latest increase in support among all Americans is driven largely by changes in Republicans' views."

Worse still, support for same-sex "marriage" has grown among those calling themselves Christians. Reporting on the same PRRI as Reason, Baptist News Global notes,

Most people of faith also support same-sex marriage, the research shows, including 81% of religiously unaffiliated Americans, 76% of non-Christian religious Americans, 75% of white Catholics and 72% of white mainline Protestants. "Majorities of Black Protestants (57%), other Protestants of color (56%), and Hispanic Protestants (51%) support same-sex marriage, but support drops below half among white evangelical Protestants (43%)."

Baptist News Global also notes that the PRRI poll reveals that many Christians are also unwilling to allow their fellow Christians to practice religious liberty while operating their businesses:

"White evangelical Protestants (46%) are the only religious group in which less than a majority opposes allowing small business to refuse service to gay and lesbian people on religious grounds," PRRI found. "Majorities of white Catholics (60%) and white mainline Protestants (59%) oppose such refusals, as do 54% of Hispanic Protestants, 56% of Protestants who are multiracial or another race, and 70% of Black Protestants."

Given these trends, few should be surprised that we are now debating who is a male and who is a female throughout much of the U.S. Sadly, many who seem quite disturbed by the "T" ("transgender") aspect of the LGBT agenda have had little issue with the "L," the "G, " or the "B" portions. This is nothing but yet another tragic example of moral relativism.

As most who pay attention to these things well know, and as the above surveys again reveal, moral relativism is rampant in the U.S. and has been for decades now. This is especially true of matters in the sexual realm. Decades ago, as Americans debated the acceptance of homosexuality, many Christians warned of the "slippery slope" that lay ahead if acceptance of such immorality became widespread.

Sure enough, "tolerance" of homosexuality quickly turned into a legal redefinition of the oldest institution in the history of humanity. In other words, in spite of millennia of precedence, a narrow 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (note Justice Roberts: liberals aren't afraid of narrow decisions that radically reshape our culture!) turned marriage law in the U.S. on its head.

Even before the infamous marriage decision, Christians across the country  e.g. Jack Phillips, who is still the target of the LGBT bullies!  were being targeted by agents of the LGBT agenda. SCOTUS's marriage decision only emboldened the militant LGBT mob. Such attacks continue to rage across the U.S., and now "transgender" absurdities abound throughout America. This has even some liberals  or at least those who regularly vote for Democrats  upset.

It has been widely reported recently that multiple women who visited a Los Angeles spa were shocked to find a fully naked man (who was claiming to be a woman) in the females only section of the spa. What has not been widely reported is that this has happened multiple times over the past 18 months. According to the Daily Mail, a woman they refer to as "Anita" (not her real name) had a similar experience (that involved her six year-old daughter!) at the same spa in early 2020.

The Daily Mail also reports:

Anita, a registered Democrat, said she's an LGBTQ supporter but still wants to protect her six-year-old daughter's innocence. Anita, a millennial daughter of Latin immigrants, says she is a Democrat voter and a supporter of the queer community, but felt compelled to speak out about the thorny issue in an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com.

Like far too many Americans, it seems that Anita likes playing along with the left; she just doesn't like it when those decisions negatively impact her or her daughter. As a comment at the Christian Post on this matter rightly put it, "[u]nfortunately they also affect other people's daughters too. She needs to realize that you either stand against evil or you stand with it, there is no middle ground."

It's understandable that an otherwise devoted liberal (which Anita seems to be) could be foolish enough to think there is some happy middle ground  between the sexual moral absolutes given to us by our Creator and absolute sexual depravity  that Americans can settle into. However, no sound-thinking conservative  certainly no Christian conservative  should be duped into such thinking.

At Substack recently, conservative writer Abigail Shrier  author of IRREVERSIBLE DAMAGE: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters  rightly bemoaned what she describes as "Aw Shucks Conservatism." An example that she gives is the Senate GOP's response to the Biden administration's Department of Health and Human Services replacing the word "mother" with "birthing person" in budgetary documents.

Ms. Shrier writes:

The HHS deletes the word "mother" and the Republican response is to muse aloud about thisas if the HHS has done nothing more than referred to "cookies" as "biscuits." It's a clip worth watching because it exemplifies decades of Republican failure in culture wars that have seen Leftists wipe the floor with them. The deletion of "mother" is just one more reflection of the government's adoption of Gender Ideology, which insists sex is irrelevant (and sex-based rights, dispensable): you are what you say you are.

Yet, later in her otherwise strong piece, Ms. Shrier concludes:

Think what you want about abortion or same-sex marriage, but neither has anything to do with the crisis at hand  or how to repair it. Abortion is an important moral and political question  but not every other serious issue we face bears upon it or derives from it. And neither same-sex marriage nor Caitlyn Jenner poses any threat to children.

If Ms. Shrier doesn't believe that same-sex "marriage" and the use of "birthing person" in place of "mother" have anything to do with each other, then she, too, has been duped by "Aw Shucks Conservatism." Likewise when it comes to same-sex "marriage" not harming children. In other words, there are some things in this world that have been settled for all time, and it's past time for more Americans to start acting like it.

Trevor Grant Thomas: At the Intersection of Politics, Science, Faith, and Reason.

www.trevorgrantthomas.com

Trevor is the author of the The Miracle and Magnificence of America.

tthomas@trevorgrantthomas.com

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The CDC's COVID vaccine tracker reports that the shots have continued their downward spiral from the daily high of 4,304,851 on April 1, to 437,466 on July 14, a drop of almost 90%.

This hasn't stopped the propaganda media from continuing to declare great success convincing people to roll up their sleeves for their injections. David Leonhardt of the New York Times crowed Monday morning, "Many vaccine skeptics have since changed their minds and gotten shots" and proceeds to try to tell us the keys to anti-vaccine persuasion.

He quotes a Kaiser study from early 2021 that reported that 23% of Americans planned to avoid getting vaccinated, but in a new survey, 25% of the "resisters" have changed their minds. Wouldn't it be wonderful to figure out how this happened so we can convince everyone else to get their injections?

Here are their three big reasons for the supposed changes of heart...

1. Seeing that millions of other Americans have been safely vaccinated.

The Kaiser report quotes selected study respondents:

"It was clearly safe. No one was dying." a 32-year-old white Republican man in South Carolina

"I went to visit my family members in another state and everyone there had been vaccinated with no problems." a 63-year-old Black independent man in Texas

"Almost all of my friends were vaccinated with no side effects." a 64-year-old Black Democratic woman in Tennessee

2. Hearing pro-vaccine messages from doctors, friends, and relatives.

Leonhardt explains: "For many people who got vaccinated, messages from politicians, national experts and the mass media were persuasive. But many other Americans  especially those without a college degree [read "stupid deplorables"]  don't trust mainstream institutions. For them, hearing directly from people they know can have a bigger impact."

3. Learning that not being vaccinated will prevent people from doing some things.

More quotes from the study:

"Hearing that the travel quarantine restrictions would be lifted for those people that are vaccinated was a major reason for my change of thought." a 43-year-old Black Democratic man in Virginia

"To see events or visit some restaurants, it was easier to be vaccinated." a 39-year-old white independent man in New Jersey

"Bahamas trip required a COVID shot." a 43-year-old Hispanic independent man in Pennsylvania

Let's review their brilliant suggestions for changing our minds

Are people buying the story that the vaccines are safe?

We can clearly see that the CDC's own VAERS database has shown more deaths from the COVID vaccines than all vaccines combined over the last fifty years. These reports from doctors and health care professionals estimate well over 5,000 deaths, but since only 110% of adverse reactions are reported to VAERS, that number could be much higher.

The VAERS data are hard to evaluate because there are no consistent standards for reporting. A study is underway to get more accurate information from vaccine recipients themselves and on behalf of direct relatives who may have passed away.

Are pro-vaccine messages from doctors, friends, and relatives going to work?

If you visit mainstream social media and video sites, all you'll see are assurances that the vaccines are safe, but independent sources show the opposite. Hundreds of people are telling their own stories directly to the camera  including Eric Clapton and Ben Stein, who both thought getting the vaccine was a good idea. You get to decide for yourself if these videos are credible or part of an organized plot by "stupid deplorables" to share false information.

Will restrictions on travel or employer mandates do the trick?

Again, numbers don't lie. Despite incentives such as free lottery tickets and pressure from "COVID-woke" corporations, the vaccination rate continues to fall.

Is it even legal for an employer to force an employee to take an experimental injection in order to keep his job? Many believe that this violates federal and international law?

The silent majority of Americans are good-hearted people who trust their doctors and think their government leaders are acting in their best interest. But when they hear their friends talking about sudden deaths of recently vaccinated family members or coworkers, when they see horrifying video accounts from side-effect victims, and when they hear government officials' plans to pile on more and more pressure to get everyone (including children and babies!) vaccinated, and now they are being threatened by their employers with the loss of their jobs, the silent majority becomes the "Angry Majority."

Many are choosing to quit their jobs or retire early. Others are giving up air travel to countries with restrictive vaccine rules. They are boycotting corporations who threaten mandatory vaccines for their employees or conduct advertising campaigns promoting injections. "What right does a company that sells soda have to tell me to make health decisions?" they ask.

But most importantly, they are talking to their families, friends, and coworkers and pointing out why an experimental vaccine for a disease that is less deadly than a serious flu, with side effects 500 times greater than any other vaccine in history, is something to be avoided as if your life depends on it.

Image: CDC.

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I often wonder the difference between patriotism and unconditional love for your country, but how did we go from living and appreciating the world's foremost economic and military powerhouse to the derisive rioting, violent protests, and the obliviousness to what America has once stood for? Has our educational system failed? How are young Americans being raised to hate the very country they live and can thrive in? Does it prove a failed educational system?

Unfortunately, a large portion of our young generation does not believe that the United States of America is a nation worth loving or feeling pride toward. How did we go from standing up to the Pledge of Allegiance, teaching our children respect for the flag, to allowing Americans to turn their backs on the very flag that represents every one of our states, the hardiness and valor of our nation, the purity and innocence of its people, the vigilance, perseverance, and justice for its citizens?

Meanwhile, the recent change of power in Cuba has resulted in the much oppressed Cuban citizens taking to the streets across their nation to fight for simple human rights of basic goods, services, and medical care  rights that Americans are somehow taking for granted! How would Americans feel if they had to stand in line for blocks to purchase anything they may need at the store? How would Americans feel if their line of communication were somehow disrupted by their own nation in trying to keep them from speaking? And that's not the half of it. The marchers in Havana, after all, were shouting "freedom!" Have Americans forgotten to be grateful for their freedom?

Cubans are tired of the quality of their lives. They are tired of the lack of food, the lack of health care, the secret police spying, the snitches, the turba mobs, the impossibility of prosperity in their future...Cubans are screaming out for help and marching with the American flag, in the hopes that the world's leading nation will hear their plea all the while some Americans find themselves considering the flag racist!

According to Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Evangelical Seminary, "[e]very other nation in the world is tied to ethnicity. We are not; we are tied to ideas, to beliefs, and those beliefs are embodied in the Declaration of Independence ... that all men are created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Dr. Land goes on to reiterate that to understand America, we have to go back to Massachusetts Bay and Governor Winthrop. We must remember that we came here to light the way for the old world.

We know that America is far from perfect. We have, especially within the past few years, seen so many flaws, portraying some of our citizens to reveal themselves as America-loathing citizens, and destroying the nation from within. Should we find a way to send those Americans to Cuba? Should they see with their own eyes what it's like to have no freedom, no voice, no rights? Should they stay for an extended period of time? Or perhaps we should bring the hardworking Cubans to America? Or consider a citizen exchange program with Cuba!

We once reigned supreme. We once had political vibrancy! As we witness a percentage of American citizens diverge into a hateful, American-loathing state, a feeling of pity and sadness, almost agonizing, takes over. This is ugly! This maddening decline in pride and patriotism is influencing the vulnerable young generation as they mold themselves into an amplified cohort of unpatriotic Americans. I leave you with this: could we make a colossal impact by simply educating our youths in what the flag stands for and going back to reinforcing the once-required Pledge of Allegiance?

Image: Screen shot from CNBC video, posted on YouTube.

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Can a civilization continue to function when the most basic truths cannot be spoken, yet blatant falsehoods are dogma? When radical upheavals are justified not by wisdom, but by disorienting barrages of phony "outrages" and "crises"?

Think of a great ship.

A nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an integrated system of immense complexity, requiring thousands of specially trained men to operate and maintain. What if someone suddenly replaced a carrier's human crew with 3,000 excitable chimpanzees? The giant vessel would soon drift to a halt, catch fire, and sink  while the chimps threw feces at each other.

Now imagine a nation designed by brilliant men for a moral and conscientious citizenry. How long could that society endure once the chimps took over?

This nation's president calls a proposed voter identification requirement "Jim Crow on steroids," an existential threat to democracy. But even an idiot understands that in a world where store clerks check the IDs of 50-year-olds buying beer, it's ludicrous not to request an ID from some homeless guy being paid to vote. If an idiot understands this, what kind of society is led by a man who pretends the opposite is true?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff testifies that "white supremacism" is the biggest current threat to national security. But the death toll from white supremacist terror acts in the last 50 years is a number approaching zero, whereas Islamic terror victims in America number somewhere around 4,000, including dozens of military victims.

And all of the burning, looting, street violence, and political attacks of recent years have been from Antifa- and Black Lives Mattersaligned agitators. Furthermore, Blacks are approximately 27 times more likely to commit interracial violence than whites are, so blaming "white supremacy" for anything is insanely irrational. Yet the military chiefs are openly zeroing their weapons in on the heartland.

The January 6 unpleasantness at the U.S. Capitol has been called "another 9/11," a "violent insurrection," and worse. But only one person died violently that day, and she was an unarmed white protester shot by a reportedly Black Capitol Police officer. Police literally opened the Capitol doors to let the marchers come inside. There was some major shoving by the mob and limited but oft-replayed breaking of windows (including some by people dressed like Antifa), but no serious violence and, considering the circumstances, rather a cordial relationship with police.

All kinds of videos show well-behaved crowds inside the Capitol, in hilarious contrast to Antifa Marxists.

The famous Buffalo Shaman guy literally strolled quietly into the Senate Chamber accompanied by a policeman. Then he led a small group in a prayer. That mellow dude remains locked up in isolation, for no other reason than to maintain the fiction of the "attempted overthrow." It's much like the New York Times' fabrication that Officer Brian Sicknick was beaten with a fire extinguisher, when in fact he died, uninjured, of a stroke the following day.

A year ago, leftists blamed COVID deaths on the sitting president; the accelerated vaccine he promoted would surely be both late and dangerous. Now, these same doubters have morphed into vaccine Nazis, demanding passports and punishments for the unvaccinated. These fear-mongers claim that a new "Delta variant" is especially scary for the young and unvaccinated.

Yet statistics from the U.K. clearly show that the Delta death rate is crazy-low (0.1%) and that recent COVID case numbers have jumped precisely after millions had been fully vaccinated. Furthermore, fully vaccinated people in England are currently over five times more likely to die from the Delta variant than are the unvaccinated. Maybe those death statistics are tilted by age bias in the vaccinated U.K. population, but once again, it reveals this: the basic premise behind the Permanent Pandemic is 180 degrees wrong.

Meanwhile, the Earth's temperature is determined by a star 93 million miles away radiating at 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and it is affected by the massive forces of ocean currents and atmospheric patterns. The Great Lakes were left behind when the massive ice covering of the northern hemisphere suddenly melted 15,000 years ago. Europeans lived and raised animals on Greenland until it got too cold around the 1700s. Climates change, near- and long-term.

Man's generation of carbon dioxide, an inert molecule constituting less than one-twentieth of one percent of the atmosphere, is obviously not the critical determinant of the "global" climate. A quick data check reveals that CO2 levels rise and fall with cyclical regularity over millions of years and that the current rise began 15,000 years ago.

Man, who contributes perhaps a tenth to natural CO2 levels, is but a wart on the giant frog of climate change. Still, the bosses would have us re-order the economic world and tear down  like superstitious primitives  a robust, multi-layered energy network in favor of costly and fragile "green" projects that cannot yet pass market muster on their own merits.

Everywhere, we see frauds posing as leaders, while brainwashing replaces knowledge and manufactured crises are weaponized to crush and control regular humans.

So how long can Zombie America continue to coast on the inertia of systems created by men far superior to our modern ruling class?

Probably about as long as a ship in the all-chimp navy.

Martin Fuentes is the pen name of an American in Europe.

Photo credit: foshie, CC BY 2.0 license.

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Bose is seemingly preparing to launch a new pair of QuietComfort-branded noise-canceling wireless headphones. Called QuietComfort 45, the device has reached the FCC for necessary approval ahead of launch. It will arrive as the successor to the companys popular QuietComfort 35 headphones launched way back in 2016.

The FCC filing includes live images of the Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones. They show an identical design to the previous model, which isnt really a bad thing as the QC 35 has a very comfortable and lightweight design. The new device also gets the same set of physical control buttons, positioned similarly. After all, touch controls arent always as responsive as hardware controls. Touch controls might help streamline the design, but for big over-the-ear headphones, that doesnt matter much.

Bose is though replacing the old school micro USB port with the modern USB Type-C port for good. The fact that QC 35 featured a micro USB port shows how long it has been since it arrived.

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There might also be several other changes on the inside. Of course, the QC 45 will retain ANC (active noise cancellation). But apart from that, no information is available about other key features and specifications. The device will be competing against the likes of the Sony WH-1000XM4. So perhaps itll introduce something like the Speak-To-Chat feature found on Sonys offering. It automatically pauses music and turns off NFC when you enter a conversation with someone. Bose could also improve in other areas, including adding more noise-canceling modes.

Bose isnt done with the QuietComfort lineup

Following the launch of the QuietComfort 35 in June 2016, Bose launched the QuietComfort 35 II in October 2017. It was a minor upgrade that added a dedicated Google Assistant button. Though the company kept selling the headphones, it didnt launch a follow-up model, suggesting its the end of the QuietComfort lineup.

In the meantime, the Massachusetts-based audio brand launched a more premium Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 in 2019. And while the QC 35 existed as an affordable alternative, there was no hope of getting a newer model in this series. But years later, here we are. Seemingly months away from seeing a brand new pair of QuietComfort noise-canceling wireless headphones from Bose.

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Theres no information available about the launch date or price of the upcoming Bose headphones. But with the device already appearing in the FCC database, it might not be very long before it goes official. You can expect to hear more about the Bose QuietComfort 45 headphones in the coming weeks and months.
Nokia has now officially launched the latest in its lineup of earbuds, dubbed Nokia Noise Cancelling Earbuds, in the US. The new buds pack a load of great features, starting with up to 25-hours of battery life including the carry and charge case. Thats 5-hours of charge on a single charge too. Meaning that users can go for longer than average between charges despite including active noise cancelling (ANC).

The feature, for these buds, cancels out external audio on par with commercial ear protectors, in fact. With cancellation of up to 25dB of sound. But these Nokia-branded earbuds arent just about bringing the companys brand of active noise cancelling to the US either. They also offer an ambient mode that Nokia dubs Transparency Mode at the tap of an earbud. So users can also effectively let environmental audio pass-through, whether for situational awareness or conversation.

Nokia Noise Cancelling Earbuds come with standard features and some beyond

Now, gauging the audio quality of earbuds without a full review can prove futile. But Nokia also says that its utilized larger 13mm drivers for studio-level sound with these wearables. Thats larger than the standard size used by most earbud OEMs by 2mm. And provides for better bass and clarity. In fact, Nokia says that theyll be the perfect audio accessory for audiophile users and that audio isnt only meant for dry environments.

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Nokia Noise Cancelling Earbuds are also shipped with an IPX5 rating. So heavy rain and drops into puddles wont be the end of these earbuds either.

All of that, conversely, is setting side a few extra features that are included with these earbuds. Such as on-bud access to AI voice assistants. Nokia includes that for answering the phone, pausing and skipping tracks, and more. Well beyond the included but somewhat standard touch controls on these earbuds.

Pricing and availability

In terms of pricing and availability, Nokia says the new Nokia Noise Cancelling Earbuds will be sold via the company directly. And theyll be available in two colors, including Polar Sea blue and Charcoal gray. In either case, the buds will set buyers back a bit more than some other recent Nokia products. The company has set the price to start at $149.99.

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Nokia Noise Cancelling Earbuds
The Samsung SmartThings app received a significant update last month with the introduction of SmartThings Energy. This feature allows users to know which appliances consume too much power and make effective changes to save costs in the long run. Samsung also included a handful of UI-related changes with this update.

SmartThings Energy works on a multitude of Samsung products, including home appliances and Samsung HVAC devices. Android Central reports that the new feature will eventually expand to appliances using the Works with SmartThings (WWST) badge.

The company claims that this feature is more powerful than other energy monitoring products selling today. Samsung is reportedly utilizing a monitoring component that shows real-time energy usage data across connected devices in your home.

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Users will also receive a detailed analysis of every connected device capable of reporting data back to the SmartThings hub. This is a different approach to products that merely use aggregate data from days or hours to calculate energy consumption. Moreover, SmartThings Energy also allows users to set targets to make sure there are no surprises in the bill.

You can enable alerts to know when individual appliances go over the energy usage limit

The same data could be used to compare consumption data with the personal goals you may have set in the app. Users can also set up alerts for individual appliances when they go beyond their predefined usage limits. The update should appear on the latest update of the SmartThings app.

Samsung faces decent competition from rival smart home ecosystems. However, the company has the upper hand thanks to its long list of supported appliances. It even lets users convert their old Galaxy smartphones into smart home sensors.

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Samsung has brought along a handful of changes to the SmartThings ecosystem over the past couple of years. The company brought SmartThings to Android Auto in January this year. This finally allowed users to control their SmartThings connected appliances from their car dashboard.

The South Korean giant then announced a user-oriented feature within the main app called SmartThings Labs. This would allow users to get a glimpse of the features undergoing testing at Samsung. Users are also encouraged to provide real-time feedback to the companys engineers. This feature went live for SmartThings users in the U.S. and South Korea in February this year.
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(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 20 - The rightwing League party on Tuesday tabled 700 amendments to a homophobia bill now in the Senate, which has been approved by the House but which does not appear to have a majority in the upper chamber.

Matteo Salvini's nationalist party, which says the bill curbs freedom of expression, said it would withdraw the amendments if the centre-left Democratic Party (PD), whose member and gay activist Alessandro Zan filed the bill, says it is willing to negotiate about their objections.

PD leader Enrico Letta on Monday ruled out negotiating with Salvini saying he was homophobic as shown by his support for Hungary's anti-LGBTQI+ laws.

Amid the impasse, it is feared that the bill may be put off until after the summer recess.

The battle over the long-awaited draft legislation designed to combat homophobia resumed a week ago, when the Zan bill reached the floor of the Senate on Tuesday, eight months after it was approved by the Lower House.

The bill risks being sent back to the Upper House's justice committee and, therefore, facing a fresh delay if an agreement is not reached among the parties supporting Premier Mario Draghi's government.

The bill has been at the centre of tension for weeks, with the Vatican recently getting involved, expressing concerns that it could breach the Lateran Treaty that regulates relations between the Italian State and the Holy See/Catholic Church.

The Vatican and conservative Italian political parties are worried that the bill could curb freedom of expression, in part because it allegedly leaves areas open to interpretation by courts because it is too vague.

Zan and the rest of the PD argue that the bill would not crimp freedom of expression, and Catholic conservatives would still be able to state that they find homosexuality sinful.

The bill would make homophobia an aggravating factor in acts of violence or discrimination like racism already is.

The bill would also set up an anti-discrimination day that private Catholic schools would be expected to take part in.

The parties opposed to the bill in its current form, led by Salvini's League and Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia (FI), are seeking a delay to have more time to reach an agreement on a package that can have wider support.

The PD, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) and the left-wing LeU group are against further delay, saying the law is already long overdue. (ANSA).


ROME - The MedFilm Festival has announced the second edition of the call for entries dedicated to MedFilm Works in Progress, which this year is also open to countries of the Mediterranean's northern shore. The prize amounts to 10,000 euros.



The MedFilm WIPS are organized with the support of DG Cinema and the Lazio region, in collaboration with IOM - International Organization for Migration.



The consolidation of the MedFilm Works in Progress Competition and MedFilm Talents extends the range of action of the MedFilm Festival, going beyond the narrative of the present and looking to the future through a concrete support to film creation in all its production phases: from pre-production and the development of works by young authors from cinema schools with the Methexis Project, up to post-production with the MedFilm Works in Progress. In this sense, the MedFilm Festival aims to be the main Italian professional platform dedicated to the countries of the Mediterranean area.



The MedFilm WIPS 2021 workshop, scheduled on November 8-10, is dedicated to fictional feature films and creative documentaries in post-production from Italy, Spain, France, Monaco, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Iraq and Jordan.



The jury of three experts, on November 8 and 9, will analyze the six finalist works in dialogue with the directors and producers who compete for the prize. The jury will subsequently award the MedFilm WIPS 2021 prize to the best film (10,000 euros). More awards will be announced in the coming months.



Finally, as part of a specific one-on-one meeting session to be held on November 10, the directors and producers of the six finalist works of MedFilm WIPS 2021 will be able to meet the professionals of the sector from both the shores of the Mediterranean, who are guests of the festival.



Due to the persistence of the health crisis in some countries of the Mediterranean area, the activities will be held online.



You can find the regulation and entry form on the site: www.medfilmfestival.org. The deadline for registration to submit the films is September 6, 2021.
MADRID - The Spanish city of Burgos is celebrating the 800th birthday of the start of construction work on its cathedral, a gothic jewel that has been listed as a UNESCO world heritage site since 1984. It is visited each year by hundreds of thousands of tourists.



According to historic reconstructions, the cathedral's first stone was set on July 20, 2021 by King of Castille Ferdinand III and bishop Maurice. The temple was consecrated in 1260.



Official acts and celebrations were planned on Tuesday - amid strict Covid rules - for this historic anniversary, including some to be broadcast by television. Over the past few months, the cathedral was at the center of controversies due to the intention of the archdiocese of Burgos to replace the current wooden doors with new bronze ones by architect Antonio Lopez: the project, worth 1.2 million euros, was opposed by some citizens as too costly.
ISTANBUL - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday is participating, in the northern part of Cyprus under Ankara's military control, in celebrations organized by local authorities for the 47th anniversary of Turkey's military intervention, which was carried out in response to a pro-Greek coup attempt.



The visit to the self-proclaimed Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, recognized only by Ankara, is strongly criticized by the government of Nicosia and by the EU, which fear that new clashes could harm the precarious balances on the island. Attending several events starting on Monday afternoon, Erdogan stressed Ankara's position according to which the only solution to conflicts in Cyprus provides for "two states", after the reunification failure during the last negotiations in 2017.



On Tuesday morning, the Turkish head of state spoke about the beginning of "a new era", referring to the situation in the town of Varosha in Famagusta, once a jewel of regional tourism, left abandoned after Greek residents fled in 1974 and under Turkish military control since then. Last fall, Erdogan already attended a symbolic ceremony to reopen the area with Turkish-Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar.
RABAT - Journalist Omar Radi has been sentenced to six years in jail. He wil also have to pay 200,000 dirham, or approximately 18,000 euros, to a woman who accused him of sexual violence.



Radi, a reporter at Le Desk, is also accused of being a "spy, mainly at the service of British secret services" and of "attacking national security". His story is linked to the Pegasus case, which is currently under the spotlight. The journalist in fact was arrested on July 29, 2020, after Amnesty International accused Moroccan police of "installing an Israeli-produced spyware system", or Pegasus, "in the journalist's cell phone and of constantly controlling messages, emails, contacts, images and the content of Radi's phone from January 2019 until January 2020".



Radi was convicted on Tuesday morning by an appeals court in Casablanca, a few days after another journalist, Souleiman Raissouni, the managing editor of Akhbar Al Yaoum, was sentenced to five years for "sexual violence against homosexual". Radi, born in 1986, has a long experience as an investigative reporter who has worked for the radio, magazines and newspapers. Like Raissouni, he has pleaded not guilty.
The BBC Scotland channel is doing fantastically well, bosses at the corporation have insisted, despite coming under fire over viewing figures.

Director Steve Carson told MPs that the channel  which was launched in February 2019  has exceeded the expectations and the targets set for it.

He hailed that as a tribute to the creative sector in Scotland, saying it has significantly upped the volume and, I think, in many cases the quality of programming.

However, Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross pressed BBC Scotland bosses on viewing figures for its flagship news programme, The Nine, an hour-long news and current affairs show broadcast from Pacific Quay in Glasgow.

Douglas Ross challenged BBC Scotland bosses on viewing figures for The Nine news programme (Alan Peebles/BBC/PA)

Gary Smith, head of news and current affairs at BBC Scotland, said average audience figures for the show are about 20,000, adding that this is very good for a news programme on a digital channel.

Speaking to MPs on Westminsters Scottish Affairs Committee, he said: We have a weekly reach for The Nine of 160,000 people, which were very pleased with. That means, across the week, 160,000 people dip in to part of a programme at least once.

But Mr Ross asked him if the programme has achieved what you want to achieve, as Mr Smith revealed that up to 100,000 people watch the Scotland Tonight programme on rival broadcaster STV.

The Tory leader told the BBC Scotland bosses: You said youre really happy with the numbers so someone at STV must be delighted by the numbers they get.

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Mr Ross went on to say that an awful lot of resources go into The Nine, asking if this is matched by the audience numbers.

Mr Smith told him: The Nine itself, I personally think, is a really good programme, that is what I hear from most people who do watch, the fact that we have an hour to get properly under the skin of stories and to do interviews around stories to make it more current affairs as news. I think it does a very good job there.

He added that the programme has allowed the broadcaster to combine experienced staff with new talent, and said it has also allowed the BBC to take risks with our journalism, to tell stories in different ways and to do different kinds of stories that in a more limited output we werent able to do.

He insisted: For all these reasons I would say it was a success.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has blasted off on a flight to the edge of space.

The billionaire strapped into Blue Origins sub-orbital New Shepard rocket from Texas, on Tuesday, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Alongside him were his brother Mark, female astronaut Wally Funk who trained in 1961 but never went to space, as well as the companys first customer, Dutch 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.

(PA Graphics)

The Blue Origin founder is the second billionaire to ride his own rocket, achieving the feat just days after Sir Richard Branson flew into space on Virgin Galactic, describing the experience as more extreme than Id have ever imagined.

Mr Bezos is aiming to reach an altitude of roughly 66 miles (106 kilometres), more than 10 miles (16 kilometres) higher than Sir Richards ride on July 11.

The trip is the 16th lift-off made by New Shepard, and its first to carry human passengers.

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Because the capsule is fully automated, there is no need for trained staff on the quick up-and-down flight, expected to last just 10 minutes.

As well as an opportunity to take in breath-taking views of Earth, the group will be able to get out of their seats and float around the cabin for about four minutes.

Jeff, this is something youve dreamed of your whole life and your passion for space is infectious, a message from Jeff Bezoss sister Christina read moments before lift-off.

Now hurry up and get your asses back down here so I can give you a huge hug, we love you, and godspeed New Shepard.

Dressed in a blue flight suit and cowboy hat, Bezos rode to the launch pad with his fellow passengers, waving to a cheering crowd that had gathered along the road.

The billionaires parents and other family members were also on site for the launch.
Immigration reforms seeking to curb English Channel crossings and change how asylum claims are processed have cleared their first parliamentary hurdle.

The Nationality and Borders Bill received a second reading by 366 votes to 265, majority 101, as the number of people making the perilous journey across the Channel to the UK in 2021 approached the entire figure for 2020.

Labours bid to block the Bill was rejected by 359 votes to 265, majority 94.

The Oppositions amendment acknowledged the need to address the increasing number of dangerous boat crossings but argued the legislation failed in several other areas.

Damian Collins (PA)

During day two of debate on the Bill, Conservative MP Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) said fair-weather small-boat crossings by hundreds of undocumented asylum seekers have become a fact of life for coastal residents.

He noted more than 8,000 migrants have already made the trip this year compared to 8,500 last year.

But opposition MPs warned the Bill will do little to resolve the immigration issues faced by the UK.

Claims of dog whistle politics emerged from the SNP benches, while Labour former shadow chancellor John McDonnell claimed some of the language used by those on the Government benches wouldnt go amiss at an English Defence League meeting.

Mr McDonnells criticism was labelled insulting by some on the Tory benches, who argued the legislation will resolve problems found within the broken immigration system.

John McDonnell (House of Commons/PA)

The Bill includes clauses to allow the UK to be able to send asylum seekers to a safe third country and to submit claims at a designated place determined by the Secretary of State.

Officials believe the Bill gives the potential to allow for offshore processing centres to be set up overseas, akin to policies used in Australia.

Reports have suggested the UK is considering sharing a processing centre with Denmark in Rwanda and may even revive speculation over suggestions that Ascension Island could be sought as another destination.

Conservative Theresa May, who previously served as prime minister and home secretary, voiced concerns about such a proposal on day one of debate on the Bill  saying she had rejected the option in the past due to practical concerns.

The Bill also gives Border Force officers powers to turn migrants away from the UK while at sea, and makes it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK without permission  with the maximum sentence for those entering the country unlawfully rising from six months imprisonment to four years.

For the first time, how someone enters the UK  legally or illegally  will have an impact on how their asylum claim progresses and on their status in the UK if that claim is successful.

Speaking on day two of the debate, Mr Collins urged the Government to close down these illegal crossing points and warned of the growing problem of illegal entry into the UK by migrants across the Dover Strait.

He said: For residents on the Kent coast, including in my constituency, its become a fact of life that when the weather is good and the sea is calm, hundreds of undocumented asylum seekers will attempt to cross the Channel in small boats.

Conservative former minister Tim Loughton said the French government have consistently failed to close off this route.

He also described the asylum and immigration system as broken and hugely bureaucratic, adding: Its becoming a cash cow for the Home Office, frankly  for example, a leave-to-remain application typically costs 1,033, of which the cost to the Home Office is just 142, thats a profit to the Home Office.

But Liberal Democrat former leader Tim Farron said the new Bill is a charter for modern slavery and people trafficking.

Mr Farron also said: The notion that we are overwhelmed with asylum seekers is bogus nonsense, it is not true and yet it is the premise that much of this Bill is written on.

Now, there is a problem with the asylum system, and that is that there is a colossal backlog.

SNP MP Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) added: I am afraid this Bill exposes the Conservative Party in all its guises, because this Bill is the politics of the dog whistle.

Conservative MP Alberto Costa (South Leicestershire) welcomed the Bill, saying it could simplify British citizenship applications for some.

But Labours Richard Burgon (Leeds East) called the Bill stomach churning, adding: This rotten, sick piece of legislation opens the door to offshore detention centres.

The proposals will undergo further scrutiny at a later date.
A wealthy British businessman was killed by a car as he attempted to cross a dual carriageway in Ukraine, an inquest heard.

Witnesses described seeing the aftermath of the collision in which Barry Pring, 47, died while he waited for a taxi with his wife Ganna Ziuzina.

Mr Pring and Ms Ziuzina, known as Anna, had been out for a meal at a restaurant in Kiev in February 2008 to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

Julianna Moore with her husband Barry Pring (Shaughan Pring/PA)

The IT consultant married Ms Ziuzina, who is now called Julianna Moore, in January 2007 in a whirlwind romance after meeting online when she had registered with the www.elenasmodels.com website, the inquest heard.

The inquest in Bristol was told Mr Pring and Ms Moore had between them drunk a litre of vodka at the Kozachok restaurant before leaving before midnight to get a taxi home.

Musician Svitlana Dudko, who was performing that evening in the restaurant, told the inquest she was working on the terrace and had a good view of the street outside.

Ganna Ziuzina (Shaughan Pring/PA)

I heard a screeching noise and the sound of an impact and then I saw a dark-coloured vehicle move along the traffic section and then I saw by the guard rail there was a dismembered body, she told the hearing via an interpreter from Ukraine.

Asked to further describe what she saw, she said: They were trying to climb over the guard rail towards the traffic.

The man had already climbed over the rail. I saw them climb.

They had been in the restaurant from 5pm to 11.30pm and they were quite drunk because they had been drinking vodka all the time and they were just messing around near the guard rail.

I turned around towards them when I heard the noise and screeching sound and I saw the remains of the person and it was quite mashed.

Ms Dudko described the vehicle she saw as a foreign black car.

Irene and Shaughan Pring (Johanna Carr/PA)

Restaurant worker Natalia Mytsyk told the inquest: I heard a very loud bang and heard a scream.

I looked round outside, and I saw a girl kneeling by the rail and a blooded man on the floor.

She was screaming. I saw a blooded mess in the snow and I realised there was nothing I could do about it and I took the young lady into the restaurant.

I took the young lady into the bathroom and helped her wash and helped her drink and I instructed the barman to phone the police.

The inquest previously heard that Ms Moore, who was a qualified primary school teacher but worked as a dancer when she married, had been accused in past High Court proceedings by Mr Prings family of murdering her husband.

She told the inquest that she had not organised her husbands murder or paid anyone to do it.

Mr Pring, who was originally from Devon, owned three properties in the London area and a flat in Kiev. He also owned a second flat jointly with Ms Moore in Kiev.

His family became suspicious that his death may have been foul play because Ms Moore was very cold towards him and not loving or caring, the inquest heard.

They hired a private investigator in the Ukraine who discovered the authorities had not investigated Mr Prings death properly.

The hearing continues.
By Eric M. Johnson

VAN HORN, Texas (Reuters)  Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, and three crewmates launched into space on Tuesday morning aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft for a suborbital flight.

The American billionaire flew on a roughly 11-minute voyage to the edge of space, nine days after Briton Richard Branson was aboard his competing space tourism company Virgin Galactic's successful inaugural suborbital flight from New Mexico.

There were generally clear skies with a few patchy clouds on a cool morning for the launch.

Bezos, wearing a blue flight suit and cowboy hat, and the other passengers climbed into an SUV vehicle for a short drive to the launch pad before walking up a tower and getting aboard the gleaming white spacecraft, with a blue feather design on its side. Each passenger rang a shiny bell before boarding the craft's capsule.

"They are in for the flight of a lifetime," launch presenter Ariane Cornell of Blue Origin said on a live webcast.

Branson got to space first, but Bezos was due to fly higher  62 miles (100 km) for Blue Origin compared to 53 miles (86 km) for Virgin Galactic  in what experts call the world's first unpiloted space flight with an all-civilian crew. It represents Blue Origin's first crewed flight to space.

VAN HORN, TEXAS - JULY 20: People watch on a television screen as the New Shepard Blue Origin rocket sits on the launch pad before Jeff Bezos along with his brother Mark Bezos, 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, and 82-year-old Wally Funk prepare to launch on July 20, 2021 in Van Horn, Texas. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Bezos, founder of ecommerce company Amazon.com Inc, and his brother Mark Bezos, a private equity executive, were joined by two others. Pioneering female aviator Wally Funk, 82, and recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen, 18, became the oldest and youngest people to reach space.

New Shepard blasted off just after 8 a.m. CDT (1300 GMT) from Blue Origin's Launch Site One facility about 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural Texas town of Van Horn.

"I am excited, but not anxious. We'll see how I feel when I'm strapped into my seat," Bezos told Fox Business Network on Monday. "... We're ready. The vehicle's ready."

The flight coincides with the anniversary of Americans Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969.

Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13 group of women who trained to become NASA astronauts in the early 1960s but was passed over because of her gender. Daemen, Blue Origin's first paying customer, is set to study physics and innovation management in the Netherlands. His father, who heads investment management firm Somerset Capital Partners, was on site to watch his son fly to space.

The launch will also be witnessed by members of the Bezos family and Blue Origin employees, and a few spectators gathered along the highway before dawn.

MINUTES OF WEIGHTLESSNESS

New Shepard is a 60-foot-tall (18.3-meters-tall) and fully autonomous rocket-and-capsule combo that cannot be piloted from inside the spacecraft. It is completely computer-flown and will have none of Blue Origin's staff astronauts or trained personnel onboard.

Wally Funk, a Virgin Galactic ticketholder and one of the First Lady Astronaut Trainees or Mercury 13 women, is pictured holding a photo of herself at the International Womens Air and Space Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. March 29, 2019. Picture taken March 29, 2019. REUTERS/Elizabeth Culliford

Virgin Galactic used a space plane with a pair of pilots onboard.

New Shepard hurtled at speeds upwards of 2,200 miles (3,540 km) per hour to an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km), the so-called Karman line set by an international aeronautics body as defining the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

After the capsule separated from the booster, the crew unbuckled for a few minutes of weightlessness. Then the capsule fell back to Earth under parachutes, using a last-minute retro-thrust system that expeled a "pillow of air" for a soft landing in the Texas desert.

The reusable booster has already flown twice to space.

The launch is another step in the race to establish a space tourism sector that Swiss investment bank UBS estimates will reach $3 billion annually in a decade. Another billionaire tech mogul, Elon Musk, plans to send an all-civilian crew on a several-day orbital mission on his Crew Dragon capsule in September.

On Twitter, Musk wished the Blue Origin crew "best of luck" for the launch.

Blue Origin aims for the first of two more passenger flights this year to happen in September or October.

Blue Origin appears to have a reservoir of future customers. More than 6,000 people from at least 143 countries entered an auction to become the first paying customer. The auction winner, who made a $28 million bid, dropped out of Tuesday's flight, opening the way for Daemen. Virgin Galactic has said 600 people have booked reservations, priced at about $250,000 per ticket.

Branson has said he aims ultimately to lower the price to about $40,000 per seat.

Bezos has a net worth of $206 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He stepped down this month as Amazon CEO but remains its executive chairman.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Van Horn, Texas; Additional reporting Radhika Anilkumar; Editing by Will Dunham and Timothy Heritage)
Closed signs are seen in some businesses Wednesday May 13, 2020, in Milwaukee. The new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people, but for some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death.
Not at all. It just seems like a lot of back-and-forth talk.

Yes. I'm growing very worried over what might happen.

If it keeps up, I might be a little more concerned.

I think there are much larger things to concern us as a country.

It's hard to tell; I can't take the leader of either country seriously.

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ROSWELL, Ga.  Drake House Founder and Director of Programs Christy Merritt officially stepped down from her position July 1.

After 16 years, Merritt will no longer be serving the organization she has fostered since its inception. The non-profit charity welcomes Cheryl Carter as the new director of programs. Merritt is confident in the organizations long-term decision as she enters retirement.

Id like to spend more time with my family and discern how else I might serve my community, Merritt said. Mycareer at The Drake House was more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. What a privilege it has been to walk alongside families during a desperate time and offer them a respite with dignity and respect.

The Drake House celebrates 15 years of serving mothers and their children experiencing homelessness in the north Metro Atlanta area. The organization continues to provide housing and enrichment programs to families in need in the hopes of creating financial stability. Serving approximately 50 families with 120 children per year, the nonprofit is dedicated to creating opportunity for those less fortunate to become contributing members of the community.

The Drake House is a gift to the community, from a community of compassionate and generous residents and businesses who genuinely care about those experiencing hardship, Merritt said. Our faith and civic community have been steadfast supporters, without which we would not have such a robust program. Having the support of volunteers from our community truly is what sets us apart and makes The Drake House such a special place.

Stepping into her new position, Carter brings 30 years of non-profit experience to the organization. As a recipient of the Outstanding Community Service Award, she has served numerous organizations working to eliminate homelessness and prevent recidivism. Throughout her time in the field, Carter financially benefitted families helping to increase household income, credit scores and family savings accounts.

We are thrilled to have Cheryl join our team, Executive Director Nesha Mason said in a statement. She has a proven track record of helping and aiding the families she serves. She will play a vital role in the program success of the families at The Drake House.

As The Drake House bids farewell to a longtime leader and influencer, Merritt remains hopeful in the organizations future. They are striving to improve their outdoor and classroom space as their reach full capacity of 32 families. She looks forward to their current developments allowing for the aid of more families.

This firm foundation of client-focused growth and long-term relationshipswill allow for future development to meet our families ever-changing needs and economic challenges, Merritt said. Additional space is needed for our after-school programThis program enables us to help our children overcome any setbacks in learning what their familys instability might have caused, giving them opportunities to excel and enjoy learning.

Merritt looks back fondly at her time with the organization as they look ahead to future improvement.

For more information on The Drake House, please visit www.thedrakehouse.org. The organization depends on financial support from community partners, individual donors, and fundraising events. To learn more about how you can contribute, please contact Megan Riddle by email at mriddle@thedrakehouse.org or by phone at 470-508-9936.
Owosso, MI (48867)

Today

Rain in the morning. Scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 78F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
In addition to completing the first few weeks of summer quarter at Treasure Valley
LOUDONVILLE  The Cleo Redd Fisher Museums popular Ohio Archaeology Workshop series returns next month for an intermediate study of archaeological materials found in Ohio.

Following up on the museums first Ohio Archaeological series, held last year prior to the pandemic, this series will focus not only on finished Native American artifacts such as arrowpoints and axes, but also delve into identifying unfinished preforms, rough tools, flint micro-tools, pottery, and other hard to identify artifacts.

The first Ohio Archaeology series, led by Jeff Zemrock of the Ohio Archaeological Society, was overwhelmingly popular. According to Kenny Libben, curator of the museum, the event averaged over 120 in attendance across all four nights.

It was amazing to see so many people interested in archaeology and artifacts in Ohio," Libben said. "But with such a large group, it was difficult to display such small artifacts like arrowpoints, knap points, and more.

Unlike the first Ohio Archaeology Workshop series, this will be limited to a small-group setting, allowing for close-up and hands-on study of materials as well as the ability to bring in your own discoveries and discuss them with the group.

A four-part event, each night will continue and expand on earlier discussions and help attendees hone their skills.

The workshop and discussions will once again be led by Jeff Zemrock of the Ohio Archaeological Society. The four workshops will be held on the first four Tuesdays in August (Aug. 3, 10, 17, 24). This series is free and open to the public, but registration is required in order to attend.

Each registration will include attendance for all four nights. Interested persons may register online at www.crfmuseum.com or by contacting the CRF Museum at 419-994-4050. Spaces are limited, however those who are unable to register can join a wait list in case of cancellation or to be notified of future workshops.
The spectre of Afghanistan again under the fundamentalist Taliban haunts global thinking

Its ironic to recall as the world waits for the predicted apocalypse after the United States completely withdraws from Afghanistan that as late as the 1970s American newspapermen used Afghanistanism to mean dull and distant events of no consequence. As a New York Times writer put it, who can check up on or take offence at news from Afghanistan?

Things have moved on considerably since then. The spectre of Afghanistan again under the fundamentalist Taliban haunts global thinking. In an unrelated but simultaneous development, the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended for the second year running that India should be listed among Countries of Particular Concern for the worst violations of religious freedoms. The stricture coincides with the Uttarakhand high courts warning that a civilisation is judged by how it treats its minorities. If that hints at fears of Hindutva smuggled in by the backdoor, a bastion of Hindu orthodoxy may have to find ways of co-existing with a fiercely bigoted Islamic regime beyond the virtual no-mans-land of strife-torn Pakistan.

The recent admittedly accidental killing of a talented young Indian photographer, Pulitzer prize-winner Danish Siddiqui, in Kandahar further underlines the need to be prepared for that eventuality. Closing down two (or is it three?) of four consulates means that India, the brother country whose friendship no enemy can hamper, as the Kabul foreign ministry put it, is scaling down its role in Afghanistan. How far that process is carried depends as much on New Delhis innovative diplomacy as on the Afghan/Taliban response.

India has dismissed as completely false reports of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the external affairs minister, meeting the Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar. But his ministry did admit on June 10 that we are in contact with various stakeholders in Afghanistan. With a peripatetic minister roaming the world, there has been ample opportunity for both direct and indirect soundings. The ambivalent denial may be like the earlier rejection of rumours about 32 Indian consulates in Afghanistan. However great the exaggeration, India was the South Asian country with which Afghanistan had the closest ties. To quote Shaida Mohammad Abdali, former Afghan ambassador in Delhi, India is the biggest regional donor to Afghanistan and the fifth largest donor globally with over $3 billion in assistance. India has built over 200 public and private schools, sponsors over 1,000 scholarships, hosts over 16,000 Afghan students. Such massive investment in the Salma Dam, the Parliament building, hospitals, roads and power stations may have called for numerous outlets which others might have given a diplomatic colouring.

Reports suggest that not all militants might be equally opposed to their kaffir benefactor. The network that the deceased Jalaluddin Haqqani founded, and which is now led by his son Sirajuddin and operating out of North Waziristan in Pakistan, is said to have reservations about Indias role in Afghanistan, according to The Times, London. Indians blame it for the 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. In contrast, Suhail Shaheen, Talibans political spokesman based in Qatar, acknowledges the need for external help in reconstruction. However, India should remain neutral and should not support the current Kabul administration with military hardware which are ultimately used against the people of Afghanistan and the destruction of the country, he warns. This is not good for their image and peoples perception of them.

However unyielding these statements may sound, the exigencies of protracted war and a power struggle that goes back to even before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 does not make for constancy. The Haqqani Network was a prized asset of the Central Intelligence Agency during the war against the Soviet Union when former US President Ronald Reagan called Jalaluddin Haqqani a freedom fighter. Other American officials thought he was goodness personified for directing a holy war by pro-Taliban militants. In 2016, Lt. Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. claimed that the US and Nato forces were not targeting the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan.

Given this pragmatism, it isnt surprising that the Americans  more so the Trump administration than President Joe Bidens -- have been pressing India to reach an understanding with the Taliban. Mr Trumps special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, was especially keen because of the Doha Agreement of February 29, 2020 with the entity that calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. India would naturally insist on guarantees that the Taliban will not act in concert with Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence or terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayabba and Jaish-e-Mohammed or provide sanctuary to

wanted criminals. The Indian interlocutors can justifiably add that the Doha Agreements clauses have been openly violated.

Some in New Delhi may even be waiting for a return of the halcyon days of the Northern Alliance, officially the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, set up in late 1996 after the Islamists overran Kabul. Ahmad Shah Massouds 2001 murder days before 9/11 left the alliance in shambles but there is talk now of regrouping under the septuagenarian Ismail Khan, once the Herat strong man, and Massouds former vice-president, Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum. Much will depend on Pakistan and its ability and willingness to manipulate non-state actors to avenge its own sense of deprivation.

In turn, Pakistans success in fishing in troubled waters is determined to a large extent by Indias domestic perceptions. The situation created by the sudden abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution by a presidential order in August 2019 and the equally sudden dismantling of the State of Jammu and Kashmir is not helped by continuing pinpricks like the restrictions on beef in Lakshadweep, the ban on meat and eggs in and around Haridwar and the Assam Cattle Preservation Bills feared impact in Meghalaya and Nagaland as well as on local Muslims.

If Kashmir is really the root cause of all problems, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his advisers need to ask themselves dispassionately why the obstacle has persisted these 74 years despite thousands of crores spent in welfare expenditure and thousands more on various forms of what is euphemistically called security. Even if Pakistan were the only spoiler, we would need to consider whether discontent at home is not a major catalyst.
The Financial Action Task Force retained Pakistan on its 'grey list' for failing to check money laundering, leading to terror financing

The global body against money laundering and terror financing also asked Pakistan to work to address its strategically important deficiencies. (Photo: AFP/File)

Washington: The US has urged Pakistan to continue working with the FATF to "swiftly complete" its 27-point action plan by demonstrating that terrorism financing probes and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of the UN-designated terror groups.

At its virtual plenary meeting last month, the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF) retained Pakistan on its 'grey list' for failing to check money laundering, leading to terror financing.

It asked Pakistan to investigate and prosecute UN-designated terrorists based in the country like Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed.

The global body against money laundering and terror financing also asked Pakistan to work to address its strategically important deficiencies.

At his daily news conference on Monday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said while Pakistan had made progress on its first action plan of the FATF, it needed to work on its second action plan.

"We do recognise and we support Pakistan's continued efforts to satisfy those (first action plan) obligations. Pakistan has made significant progress on its first action plan with 26 of 27 action items largely addressed," Price said.

"We encourage Pakistan to continue working with the FATF and the international community to swiftly complete the remaining action item by demonstrating that terrorism financing, investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated groups," he said.

The UN-designated terrorists based in Pakistan include Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Azhar, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Saeed and its 'operational commander' Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi.

Azhar, Saeed and Lakhvi are the most wanted terrorists in India for their involvement in numerous terrorist acts, including the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks and the bombing of a CRPF bus in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in 2019.

Price also said the US encourages Pakistan to expeditiously work on its new second action plan.

Pakistan was placed on the grey list in June 2018 and asked Islamabad to implement a plan of action to curb money laundering and terror financing by the end of 2019 but the deadline was extended later on due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pakistan has been scrambling in recent months to avoid being added to a list of countries deemed non-compliant with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations by the global watchdog, a measure that officials in Islamabad fear could further hurt its economy.

With Pakistan's continuation on the 'grey list', it is increasingly becoming difficult for the country to get financial aid from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the European Union at a time when it faces a precarious financial situation.

Islamabad has managed to avoid the 'black list', for which it needs the support of three countries. China, Turkey and Malaysia have been its consistent supporters.

The FATF is an inter-governmental body established in 1989 to combat money laundering, terrorist financing and other related threats to the integrity of the international financial system.
As the Opposition members continued their uproar, Mr Modi laid the list of the newly inducted ministers on the table of the House

New Delhi: Opposition members forced several adjournments on the first day of the Monsoon Session in both Houses as they demanded that the several adjournment motions given by them should be taken up. The Opposition started raising slogans as Rajya Sabha Chairman M. Venkaiah Naidu was making his opening remarks on the expectations from this session amid the Covid pandemic. Amid sloganeering, the Chair asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to introduce the newly inducted ministers to the House.

Expressing anguish over the conduct of the Opposition members, Mr Modi questioned their mentality behind not allowing him to introduce the women, dalit and Scheduled Tribe MPs who were made ministers. Mr Modi said when the new Union ministers from a rural background and the children of farmers were being introduced to the House, some Opposition members were not happy. He said any women, Dalit and Scheduled Tribe MPs have been made Union ministers, but some of the Opposition members did not want to hear their names and give them due honour. What is this mentality? he wondered.

The PM further said it was for the first time that the House was seeing such a mentality. As the Opposition members continued their uproar, Mr Modi laid the list of the newly inducted ministers on the table of the House. The Rajya Sabhas new Leader of the House, Mr Piyush Goyal, called it an unfortunate situation. Defence minister Rajnath Singh said: Healthy traditions in the House have been set by following conventions. I have been in the House for the last 24 years and have not seen such an incident where the PM could not introduce his council of ministers, even if it is one minister. It is sad, unfortunate, unhealthy.

However, despite what the PM said, in 2004 then PM Manmohan Singh could not introduce the ministers in his Cabinet in Parliament as the BJP protested against the inclusion of late Mohammed Taslimuddin and Lalu Prasad Yadav in the council of ministers. Congress MP Manickam Tagore also said there was a second incident in 2013 when Dr Singh was not allowed to introduce his ministers in the House. So the BJP cannot say that this has never happened before, said Mr Tagore.

Earlier on Monday, while talking to reporters before the session started, Prime Minster Modi urged MPs and political parties to ask the sharpest and toughest of questions to the government but asserted that the government should also be allowed to respond to them.

Mr Modi said he has urged all floor leaders to take some time out on Tuesday evening when he would like to give them detailed information on the Covid-19 pandemic. We want discussion inside Parliament as well as outside it with the floor leaders on the Covid pandemic, he said.

I urge all MPs and political parties to ask the sharpest and the toughest of questions but they should also allow the government to respond in a cordial environment as democracy is strengthened by conveying the truth to the people, Mr Modi said.
The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on this on Tuesday

New Delhi: Closing the suo motu case against the Uttar Pradesh government after the cancellation of the Kanwar Yatra, the Supreme Court on Monday turned its guns on the Kerala government for its relaxation of the Covid-19 lockdown norms in view of the coming Id-ul-Zuha (Bakrid) festival, directing the state government to file its response by Monday evening. The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on this on Tuesday. A plea had been filed in the court against the lifting of these restrictions.

Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan had announced the concessions at a press conference on Saturday and said that in view of Bakrid being celebrated on July 21, textiles, footwear shops, jewellery, fancy stores, shops selling home appliances and electronic items, all types of repairing shops and shops selling essential items shall be allowed to open on July 18-20 from 7 am to 8 pm in category A, B and C areas. The areas had been categorised based on the test positivity rate.

The matter came up for hearing before a bench of Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman and B.R. Gavai, which also took note of the affidavit filed by the Uttar Pradesh government which said that no Kanwar Yatra will be allowed this year in the state due to the pandemic.

After the counsel appearing for Kerala said he would file the reply, the bench asked him to do so during the day and said it would take up the matter for hearing as first item on Tuesday.

The application, which raised the issue of relaxation in restrictions in Kerala, was filed by Delhi-based P.K.D. Nambiar, who has sought stay on the state's decision. Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for the applicant, told the bench that the Covid positivity rate in Kerala was over 10 per cent, but despite that the restrictions were relaxed for Bakrid.

He said Kerala was among the states with the highest number of Covid-19 cases at present and it had a high positivity rate. He said the positivity rate in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi was 0.02 per cent and 0.07 per cent respectively. The bench observed that in UPs case it was allegedly 0.02 per cent.

On July 16, the Supreme Court had observed all sentiments, including religious, were subservient to the right to life and had asked the Uttar Pradesh government to inform it by July 19 whether it would reconsider its move for a symbolic Kanwar Yatra. The Uttarakhand government had earlier cancelled the annual ritual that sees thousands of Shiva devotees called kanwariyas travel mostly on foot to get water from the Ganga and bring it back to their villages.

On July 18, the Delhi Disaster Management Authority also prohibited the Kanwar Yatra in the city to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Advocate G. Prakash, appearing for Kerala, told the court: Only some shops have been opened in Kerala. Lockdown has been lifted squarely for this reason in some areas for facilitating the festival Each day we are publishing Covid positive cases. We will file a detailed reply.

Appearing for another intervenor, senior advocate K Radhakrishnan argued that all social and religious congregations should be suspended till at least 80 per cent of the population was vaccinated. The court took the submission on record. He wanted the Centre and state government to be vigilant to contain the infection of contagious diseases which can spread across states.
NGOs, or non-governmental organisations, are the third largest workforce in the United States

Few people have understood what the Niti Aayog is or what it does, but its head Amitabh Kant has given his view on how to enhance the ease of doing business in India. His answer is single window clearances, timely clearances and land acquisition. Mr Kant also says that public-private partnerships in social infrastructure such as healthcare is yet another avenue of investment in India.

It is of course extremely important that India do this as the number of people who are employed in India has shrunk in the past five years, though the population has grown. I wanted to look at one sector which I understand reasonably well.

NGOs, or non-governmental organisations, are the third largest workforce in the United States. The retail and manufacturing sectors employ more people than the NGO sector there. In 24 American states out of 50, NGOs actually employ more workers than all the branches of manufacturing combined. It is similar in the United Kingdom. In Europe, 13 per cent of all jobs are in the NGO sector, and this is 2.8 crore jobs in total. To put this figure in perspective, consider that less than 10 per cent of all jobs in India are in the formal sector.

Now let us look at how this government has enhanced the ease of doing business for this part of the private sector in India. In 2020, the Narendra Modi government ordered a change in the way that NGOs could work in India. The first change is that the 23,000 NGOs which received any form of foreign donations could receive that money only in a single branch of the State Bank of India at Parliament Street in New Delhi. Only 1,488 NGOs were registered in New Delhi, and so the rest must come to New Delhi to open and operate their account, and this is during the Covid-19 pandemic. No other part of the private sector is asked to do this and corporate bodies can receive foreign money in any bank account anywhere in India.

Over 46 per cent of these NGOs had received no foreign money in 2018-19 though they had an FCRA licence, and another 41 per cent had received less than `1 crore.

The second change was that the NGOs could spend only 20 per cent of the money they received on what the government defines as administrative expenses. Salaries, travel expenses, the cost of hiring individuals, consumables like electricity and water charges, telephone charges, postal and courier charges, repairs to the office, stationery and printing charges, transport, the cost of accounting for and administering funds, running and maintenance of vehicles, cost of writing and filing reports, legal and professional charges and rent were all classified as administrative expenses. No more than 20 per cent could be spent on these things. Again, no other part of the private sector is given orders on what it can and cannot do with its own money.

The third is that the law now prevents an NGO from redistributing its funds to smaller NGOs, which worked on the ground and did not have access to money. This rule would hit the sector because NGOs do not compete with each other and cooperate in many areas. A study by Ashoka University showed that half of the 4,107 small NGOs who received money in this fashion in 2018-19 got only `7.6 lakh or less. They would no longer get even this.

There were some other changes too but let us leave those aside to consider what the damage to India has been. When the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hammered India, the Modi government turned to these same NGOs for help. Ten NGOs the BBC spoke to for a report on its Newsnight show said they all had trouble distributing aid because of the new rules. Indian hospitals and charitable trusts could not receive Covid relief material sent by donors abroad because of the law. This jeopardised plans by donors to buy oxygen plants and concentrators, especially in rural areas. In one hospital where two dozen people had already died for lack of oxygen, foreign donors could not send an oxygen production plant because of the law. No entity could receive foreign aid even as medicines or equipment to save lives, without being registered under the NGO law, called the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Moreover, the very stringent provisions of this FCRA law means that the intended use of the foreign contribution should also match the specified objective of the trust at the time of FCRA registration. This means that if the NGO has registered its specified objective as education, it cannot use its money to buy ventilators. None of these restrictions apply to any part of the rest of the private sector. It is only the NGOs of India who are subjected to this, even though it damages the country and hurts the poorest Indians as the pandemic has exposed very clearly.

If the government is serious about making it easier to operate in India, there is one easy way for it to do so. It should stop what it is deliberately doing to the NGO sector and let it operate as freely as the rest of the private sector. And it should look at the United States, Britain and Europe and consider what the benefits of a large and robust NGO sector are to the economy, employment and to society.
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An undeveloped pasture north of the Glenwood Springs Mall on Monday. Although the final decision will fall with the city of Glenwood Springs, not the county, many neighbors voiced their trepidation about R2 Partners development proposal to Garfield County Commissioners during their Monday meeting.
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This contraption was envisioned by aircraft engineer Jim Bede and produced by the Owosso Motor Car Company in Michigan between 1985 and 1990. Inspired by fighter jets and Bede's very own BD-5 small aircraft, the Pulse Autocycle rides on two wheels, provides room for two under a small roof, and looks like an airplane cockpit with tiny wings to the sides. Each wing hides a small eight-inch wheel that helps the car maintain balance.Whatever you decide to call this thing, it will turn heads everywhere you drive it. And people will genuinely expect it to hit at least 100 mph (161 kph) and take off the ground. It won't do that, unfortunately, but the Autocycle is so odd that it's actually cool.If you haven't seen one yet, it's because the Pulse Autocycle is a rare bird. Although production stretched over five years, the Michigan-based company built only around 350 of them. Yes, even though it was crafted in the 1980s, the concept didn't really catch on.The Autocycle doesn't have a solid following either, but examples pop up on the used car market from time to time. And they're not exactly cheap either. This red-painted example surfaced in Galion, Ohio, and it looks surprisingly good for its age. But that's mostly because it has been restored and fitted with a few upgrades too.The engine, for instance, is much newer than the vehicle, having been installed in 2004. It's a 582cc (35.5-cubic-inch) unit from a Honda Silver Wing scooter, which should deliver around 50 horsepower if it's still factory stock. Many Autocycles are usually fitted with bigger Honda Goldwing engines rated at 94 horses, but 50 horsepower is nothing to sneeze at given the low curb weight of the vehicle.The seller adds that the interior is all-new and the photos reveal a pair of pristine-looking seats with red and white upholstery, a yoke-style steering wheel, and even a CD player. Everything works as it should, except for the reverse motor, which needs to be fixed.The Pulse Autocycle reminds me of the Messerschmitt KR , a series of microcars built over two generations from 1953 to 1964. The German three-wheeler was also inspired by aircraft, having been manufactured in a time when Messerschmitt wasn't allowed to build airplanes. But the KR175 and KR200 didn't have wings, so we could say that the Autocycle is a slightly more exotic design.If you're into unconventional vehicles and like the attention you will get from riding into a cockpit on wheels, this 1986 car-bike thing is being auctioned off by eBay seller "investments2001." The Autocycle has already attracted 53 bids and pricing is at a cool $9,600 with five days to go.
SUV

HP

TOGG was founded in 2018, and the first images of its prototypes were revealed in late 2019 . Since then, the Turkish brand has been working on getting things ready for production. As of July 18, 2021, TOGG has completed its first production-spec bodies on the line in its factory in the Bursa province.The company went on Twitter to highlight its latest achievement but decided to place all their images in a collage. This makes things a bit difficult to observe, which is why you will find images of the prototype in the gallery of this story. In any case, TOGG will start production of its electricin early 2022.For the time, TOGG has not specified in what markets it wants to operate and what are its objectives when production is concerned. Since they are a new brand, potential customers will need some time to learn about them and even more time to make the purchase decision.The first two models made by TOGG are styled by Pininfarina in Italy, but that does not ensure success in the long run. It does provide the automaker with a good starting point, which is more than other brands had when they were starting out. Who knows, maybe a Turkish car brand has enough space on the market.TOGG's first model, a yet-unnamed SUV, is a fully electric vehicle. In base form, it comes with a 200electric motor driving the rear wheels, while its more powerful version comes with another electric motor driving the front wheels.According to previous information on this model, the maximum rated range of the flagship version of the TOGG SUV should exceed 310 miles (500 km), and its quick-charging ability would involve the possibility of charging up to 80 percent of the battery's unspecified capacity in less than 30 minutes. Since the automaker has not revealed the capacity of the built-in battery, we cannot determine the maximum charging power, and vice versa.
EV

SUV

kWh

In the first instance, we have the Hummerpickup and Hummer EV. As for the final application, GMC head honcho Duncan Aldred made it clear that another full-sized electric workhorse is right around the corner.Speaking to Automotive News , the vice president of the SUV and truck brand refused to confirm or deny if this model will share the Sierra nameplate with the light- and heavy-duty lines. Considering that GMC has to differentiate the Hummer and that Chevrolet confirmed Silverado for its own e-pickup, its obvious what moniker fits the bill.Just like the Chevy-branded sibling, the premium-oriented truck will be produced at the Detroit-Hamtramck facility thats now called Factory ZERO. The Michigan-based complex also makes the Hummer with batteries as large as 200. Drivetrains range from two- to three-motor options, but in the case of the Sierra , RWD may be offered as the base configuration to undercut the price of the dual-motor Ford F-150 Lightning.Pro is how the Ford Motor Company calls the most work-oriented configuration, which starts at $39,974 or $32,474 after the federal tax credit. The consumer-oriented XLT retails from $52,974 or $45,474, and the extended-range battery adds anything between $7k to $10k to the tally.By comparison, the Hummer EV Edition 1 is $112,595 while the EV2X goes for $79,995. As opposed to the Blue Oval, General Motors doesnt offer the $7,500 federal tax credit because it has already sold 200,000 electric vehicles in the United States. Not long now, both GM and Tesla may be saved by legislators with the second iteration of the federal tax credit. To whom it may concern, the government intends to offer up to $12,500.
To start his new business, James May announced the new brand with a 10-minute video on Food Tribe. Two more videos are set to follow this series, and we would expect James to release even more videos as his line of gin products is set to expand. Since James May is an internationally known celebrity, it did not take long for the first batch to pre-ordered.The special thing about the first batch of gin by James May, which is named James Gin by the way, is that all the bottles will be personally numbered and signed by James. He planned to distill just 1,000 liters (264 gallons) of gin, which was supposed to mean 1,000 bottles, but the gin was eventually bottled in 700 ml (23.6 oz) glass bottles, which means that 1,420 will be made. No pun intended.James Gin's first ever product is Asian Parsnip, and the famous automotive journalist still offers the possibility of ordering one online. This time, the bottles will be a bit cheaper than those in the first batch, which is because they are no longer signed or numbered by James May. A bottle costs GBP 39 ($53), and it is available to order in the UK for those aged 18 and over.Even if you are not a gin aficionado , you can watch the video to learn more about the process of making gin, along with the story behind James Gin. After watching, you will understand more about gin . As you can observe, James did not distill the spirit himself, as he partnered with Hugh Andreson of Downton Distillery for the technical part of the process.
SUV

Dodge promised to only build the Durango SRT Hellcat for the 2021 model year and then call it quits, which means youre not going to find used examples as easily as you would if looking for other Hellcat-branded vehicles.In terms of performance, the Dodge Durango Hellcat summons 710 hp (720 ps) from its 6.2-liter supercharged Hemi V8 engine, to go with 645 lb-ft (874 nm) of torque. If youve got enough room, you can max this thing out at an Autobahn-worthy 180 mph (290 kph). Its not the most aerodynamicthough.Now that youre paying attention, consider this low-mileage example, up for grabs through Cars and Bids . Its done just 200 miles (322 km), so its still brand new, basically, and its got $13,000s worth of options  it cost $95,580 to purchase originally.Highlights include the Black Package (20-inch wheels, black exhausts, gray metallic badges), the Technology Package (adaptive cruise control, advanced brake assist, lane departure warning, full-speed forward-collision warning), heated and ventilated front seats, heated rear seats, heated steering wheel, suede headliner, carbon fiber accents, the 10.1-inch Uconnect 5 touchscreen system with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto , a 19-speaker Harman/Kardon sound system, wireless charging pad and plenty more.As far as were concerned, its likely that youll have a better time driving something like the Durango Hellcat, as opposed to similarly-sized yet more expensive alternatives, which usually hail from Germany and don't really have as much grunt as this super-sized Dodge.
PHEV

ICE

If it all that sounds confusing, this story started when Hans Greimel read in Nikkei and Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun that Mazda whas given up on the rotary engine. When he contacted the company, the Automotive News editor heard from Masahiro Sakata that it would still be offered, but the arrival date was undecided. We have finally figured out what is happening and wrote a new article about that, leaving this text unchanged. The rotary engine will work only as a generator and that is key to understanding everything, but don't miss the explanation: Roadshow then contacted the American press relations department and heard that the plans for an MX-30 with a rotary engine range extender did not change and that Mazda will sell this car in 2022. We would have contacted Sakata to learn what happened, but we did not manage to locate him. Our best shot was to get in touch with the European and the American PR departments to understand what was going on.Mazdas European staff then told us that the rotary engine range extender will indeed arrive in 2022 with the MX-30. Not only that: the Japanese carmaker is also planning to offer PHEVs and HEVs with rotary engines, which implies they will also power the cars in some situations. Until now, we thought that the rotary engine would not be used to drive vehicles anymore due to stricter emission rules that it always struggled to comply with.Electric vehicles with range extenders and plug-in hybrids are considered by many as the same thing. For them, they are simply series hybrid vehicles. Although they fit under this same classification, these EVs are very different animals. Electric cars with range extenders do not have a combustion engine helping to move them. Plug-in hybrids can charge their batteries and have the electric motor, the engine, or both of them powering the wheels.Mazda makes a difference between them, demonstrating that the rotary engine will also drive the car in theand HEV products. If it were used only to power the electric motor in both these kinds of vehicles, Mazda would offer something similar to Nissans e-Power system , but that does not make sense if you set EVs and PHEVs apart.The e-Power system has created electric vehicles that charge solely from an embeddedgenerator. Powering these cars with gasoline makes no difference to the fact that only the electric motors drive them. Calling them hybrids is not correct when it comes to how they move.Regardless of the technical discussion involved, Mazdas message here is clear: the rotary engine it developed will be cleaner than we could ever imagine. While we would still love to hear from the Japanese spokesman why he said this engines arrival was still undecided, Sakata may not be able to answer while he works for Mazda. For the brands fans, the good news is that theyll have more options. Lets just hope that 2022 confirms what the American and European PR departments told Roadshow and us.
This last weekend brought the highest temperatures reached in the UK all year, which prompted many of the country's residents to buy drinks to serve chilled. However, Birmingham resident Jessica McCance left a bottle of prosecco in her car while the hatchback was parked outside.Once she returned to her vehicle, a SEAT Leon , she discovered that the bottle of Italian bubbly became what she described as "the priciest bottle she never got to drink." Fitting caption if you ask us. The aftermath of the explosion consisted in the perfumed liquid drenching the front seats and sending shards of glass in various elements of the interior, headliner and seats included.According to several experts, the pressure inside a bottle of prosecco is between 70 and 90 psi (4.8-6.2 bar). Thicker bottles can withstand higher pressures but reports in the field of drinks reveal that manufacturers are switching to lighter bottles in a bid to increase their sustainability. That means that these bottles will be more fragile than those of yesteryear, so be careful when handling them.In an attempt to resolve the issue, Jessica McCance contacted a local car cleaning company for a quote. They sent back an estimated bill of GBP 2,258 ($3,000) including VAT, which left Jessica in shock. She then decided to do a public service to others and published a post with her experience, which got over 100,000 views on TikTok.While we do not know if she will get her car cleaned professionally or just vacuum the interior and let the seats dry in hope that it all goes away, this should serve as a reminder to never leave pressurized containers in your car if you park it on a space that is not hidden from the sun.If you plan to transport any fizzy drink in a glass container by car, we suggest using the trunk until you reach your destination. In that case, even if you leave your car unattended, nobody will break your window to steal said bottle, and your car's interior is more protected because the bottle is kept in the shade of your trunk, where temperatures should be lower than the rest of the car.
Seb you are incredible! Im so proud to support you. It was amazing to be apart of the litter pick in the grandstands with you for the past 3 hours Ill be forever grateful for the man you are! What an inspiring experience ???????? pic.twitter.com/EC088dGluq  Carly (@CarlySV5) July 18, 2021

While the Aston Martin Cognizant F1 Team did not brag about the hours spent by Vettel cleaning up the grandstands with fans, some of the people who decided to volunteer to clean up after everybody else got to meet Sebastian Vettel, and one of them tweeted a selfie with the champ, along with a picture of their reusable water bottle signed by Vettel.According to CarlySV5 on Twitter, Vettel spent three hours clearing up garbage from the grandstands at Silverstone. This is not Vettel's first time as a volunteer, as the German racing driver helped a primary school in Austria build a bee hotel when he visited the country for the Austrian GP. Of course, there are other occasions where Vettel worked as a volunteer, but this is the most recent we can think of.With that said, we hope that spectators at future F1 races will think about what Vettel did after the British GP and take their trash with them to the nearest appropriate container. We do not know about you, but we would definitely feel bad that a four-time Formula 1 World Champion decided to step in and clean up the mess we left behind.So, the moral of this story is to bring a small bag with you whenever you attend a sporting event and place all the water bottles, juice containers, sandwich bags, and whatever else you enjoyed while watching said event into the aforementioned bag, then discard those items in the dedicated containers at the venue.It is that easy, isn't it? This neat trick also works at the movie theater and anywhere else.
First static fire test of Super Heavy booster pic.twitter.com/JtvGMfTgPj  SpaceX (@SpaceX) July 20, 2021

SpaceX's Starship system is a reusable transportation system designed for missions to the Moon and Mars as well as Earth's orbit. Composed of a two-stage vehicle which includes the Super Heavy rocket (booster) and the Starship (spacecraft), the system is powered by sub-cooled methane and oxygen.Booster 3, as this specific Super Heavy is known, was completed earlier this month and is the first fully working Super Heavy prototype to be relocated to the launch site and put through a series of testing.On Monday, July 19th, the stainless-steel booster fired three Raptor engines in a short static fire test at SpaceX's South Texas launch site located near Boca Chica."Full duration firing of 3 Raptors on Super Heavy Booster," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Monday . While Musk previously stated that Rocket 3 will not be launched into space, Booster 4 will be the first booster to take off into orbit, together with Starship 20 (the first orbital Starship vehicle).When a Twitter user asked him about the chances of more tests with the rocket, he responded that "depending on progress with Booster 4, we might try a 9 engine firing on Booster 3."While nine engines may seem like a lot, it would not be the first time the company has used that many. SpaceX Falcon rocket's first stage is composed of three Falcon 9 nine-engine cores whose 27 Merlin engines generate together more than five million pounds of thrust at liftoff. By comparison, a fully orbital version of Super Heavy Booster will have 33 engines.Much of the Starship 20 rocket is already completed. On June 25th, SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell has stated in an interview for the National Space Society's International Space Development Conference (ISDC) that the company is "shooting for July" for its first orbital launch. There are less than two weeks left in the month, so we'll simply have to wait and see if the company meets its goal.
EV

But the Ultima series is here to give it a good, hard try. The Ultima series of e-bikes proposes a new kind of electric bicycle: all-purpose, all-season, elegant and lightweight, practical and multi-functional, smart and customizable. Somewhat paradoxically, the series comprises just two models, the Ultima XS and the Ultima XT, with two packages available for each (Base and SE), and a variety of other options.Despite the low number of entries into the series, the Ultima can be either the fun recreational vehicle youve been looking for (cheap and very convenient in all respects), or the complete commuter vehicle youve been needing (packed with everything you need to have smooth, safe rides on the daily). The only downside is that youll have to brace for a long wait, if you do decide the Ultima is a good option for you.The Ultima is now crowdfunding on IndieGoGo , with backers offered a variety of options, depending on what future use they have in mind for the bike. The Ultima comes with a unique-looking frame of hydro-formed 6061-T6 aluminum alloy that does a bit more than just look good: it is also very light. The Ultima tips the scales at 16.3 kg (36 pounds) for the XS version, and 20.6 kg (45 pounds) for the XT, which is feather-light compared to other e-bikes As you may have guessed, the XS version is the lower-specced and -priced model: you get Shimano 3-speed (internal) gear shift, Tektro mechanical disk brakes, Zoom suspension fork, and 10-inch alloy wheels with 1.95-inch tires. Smart LED headlights and taillights are part of the standard package, as are Bluetooth built-in speakers, a frame-mounted foldable lock, and wing mirrors.Meanwhile, the XT has adjustable suspension fork, Jack hydraulic disk brakes, Shimano 7-speed gear shift, brighter lights, and wider, 3-inch tires. Both models are powered by a 36V/240W brushless rear hub motor and a 36V/5.8-Ah LG lithium battery hidden in the top tube. The battery is removable and, on the XT, is backed by a second battery under the seat, extending the rage all the way up to 60 to 80 km (37 to 50 miles), from the 30 to 40 km (19 to 25 miles) on the XS.Thats the base package. It also includes front and rear fenders, and the stand. Listing these as options might sound ridiculous, but its one way companies will keep a bikes price down: they will sell you a product stripped of stuff youd normally deem standard, like the kickstand and the fenders, or lights.If you want whatCanada describes as the ultimate commuter vehicle, a premium e-bike thats both stylish and a complete solution to your transportation woes, you get the SE package. This includes a 4K Ultra-HD dual screen action camera, all-weather 3-in-1 helmet, a backpack, a tire repair kit, a toolkit, a handpump, a first-aid kit, detachable bell, the Ultima bike cover, GPS tracker, an accessories box and a tiny, detachable carrier box. You also get a powerbank to charge your phone on the move, because youll be blasting your favorite tunes through that speaker, and youre bound to run out of juice faster.Ultima offers nine color combinations for each model. You cant get the perfect city bike and not have it in a color combination that fits your personality, so EV Canada suggests classics like gray and blue, or red and black, or more daring combos like green and yellow.The Ultima e-bike, regardless of model or package, is meant as an e-bike that delivers a premium biking experience, that offers safety, performance, and efficiency all-in-one package. Whether its used by fitness fanatics, commuters or occasional riders, it claims to be an equally fit choice , because of its gears, 4 riding modes, and the promise of a safe and comfortable ride.The Ultima starts at $2,337 CAD ($1,832 US) for the XS Base and $2,460 CAD ($1,929 US) for the XT Base package. The SE package is $3,570 CAD ($2,799 US) for the XS and $3,694 CAD ($2,896 US) for the XT. All these prices are just for backers, and represent a nearly 50% off the MRSP. Deliveries are estimated for next June, and thats perhaps the most disheartening piece of news.
HP

The BMW X8 M is set to become the most powerful production BMW ever produced, and it is set to launch on the M Division's 50th anniversary. This moment will be celebrated with special editions of existing models, like the M3 and M4, along with special editions of the upcoming M5, as well as a special model, which could be called XM if it doesn't infringe Citroen's name trademark.Since the celebration needs impressive figures to go along with it, the XM model has been designated to be the most powerful BMW ever produced, a goal that it should achieve through a big V8 engine and electrification. About 200of electric assistance on top of an already souped-up engine. As some insiders claim, BMW has decided to change the name of the X8 M into XM.The V8 engine in question could be a massaged version of the of the S63, a 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V8 unit that dates to 2010. Ever since its introduction, it has proven to be powerful, and we cannot wait to see how much power BMW engineers manage to squeeze out of the mill. Currently, the unit provides up to 626 horsepower and 750 Nm (553 lb.-ft) of torque in the M5 CS , but with the addition of an electric motor through a plug-in hybrid configuration, the XM should bring close to 750 HP and 1,000 Nm (737 lb.-ft) of torque.Internally, the BMW XM is called Project Rockstar, so the Germans are serious with their intent to celebrate 50 years of the M Division with a big bang. The XM will also get lesser versions, which would keep the X8 moniker, but will bear the G09 codename, while the XM will be called G99. A similar distinction exists in the 3 Series/M3 ranges, along with the 4 Series/M4 ranges. So, this makes sense.We know it will be launched sometime in 2022, which means that we should see a concept car at the 2021 Munich Auto Show, the event meant to replace the Frankfurt Motor Show in Germany. Since this will be the first car show hosted since 2019 except for the 2021 Shanghai Auto Show, BMW is expected to show up and bring a significant lineup at the event held in September.The most likely launch date for the XM seems to be May 2022, the month when the M Division will celebrate its 50th anniversary. The XM is expected to get a special edition at the time of launch, which will include particular items from the optional equipment list, along with different color and material combinations.It is evident at this time that BMW will employ staggered exahust tips, and CGI artist BMW43__ on Instagram has managed to illustrate them in an accurate manner.With such a powerful model in the works, it was natural for BMW to test it on the Nurburgring but hopes for a new record are low since Porsche introduced the Cayenne Turbo GT with a record to its name. While BMW M Division's engineers will strive to get the most performance of the XM, it will still be a heavy car with a large frontal area, both characteristics of a vehicle that might not break track records.
A White House official and a staff member for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have both tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the same reception last week, officials confirmed to Axios.

Why it matters: While both individuals are vaccinated and mildly symptomatic, they illustrate how Americans inoculated against the coronavirus can still contract and, potentially, unknowingly transmit the virus  even at the highest levels of the nation's government.

"We know that there will be breakthrough cases, but as this instance shows, cases in vaccinated individuals are typically mild," a White House official told Axios.

Driving the news: The Pelosi staffer helped usher a delegation of Democratic Texas lawmakers around the Capitol last week. Six of those lawmakers, who flew to Washington to block the Texas legislature from changing the state's voting laws, have since tested positive.

Both that staffer and the White House official were at the same rooftop reception at the Eaton DC hotel last Wednesday night.

The White House official has not had any recent direct contact with President Biden. The Pelosi aide did not have any contact with the speaker since that person's exposure.

What they're saying: "Yesterday, a fully vaccinated White House official tested positive for COVID-19 off campus," a White House official told Axios in a statement.

"In accordance with our rigorous COVID-19 protocols, the official remains off campus as they wait for a confirmatory PCR test. The White House Medical Unit has conducted contact tracing interviews and determined no close contacts among White House principals and staff. The individual has mild symptoms."

The official added: "The White House is prepared for breakthrough cases with regular testing. This is another reminder of the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines against severe illness or hospitalization. We wish our colleague a speedy recovery."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki later confirmed during a press briefing that the official tested positive on Tuesday. She added that the person will remain off campus as they wait for a confirmatory PCR test.

She also said that there have been multiple breakthrough cases among White House staffers, but did not elaborate.

Drew Hammill, deputy chief of staff to Pelosi, told Axios in a statement: "Yesterday, a fully vaccinated senior spokesperson in the Speakers press office tested positive for COVID after contact with members of the Texas state legislature last week."

"The entire press office is working remotely today with the exception of individuals who have had no exposure to the individual or have had a recent negative test. Our office will continue to follow the guidance of the Office of Attending Physician closely."

Rep. Vern Buchanan, (R-Fla.) on Monday announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus after being fully vaccinated, becoming the first known positive case in Congress this summer.

Brian P. Monahan, the attending physician of Congress, said in a congressional coronavirus update emailed to lawmakers on Tuesday that several "Congressional staff members and 1 Member of Congress have acquired infection" after being vaccinated.

He urged those who are unvaccinated to "come for vaccination at any time."

The big picture: COVID-19 cases are on the rise across the country, with health officials becoming increasingly worried about the Delta variant. It's significantly more infectious than the original strain, and it poses an acute threat to the unvaccinated.

Concern about the Delta variant of COVID-19 is causing some places to consider reinstating mask recommendations. A legislative aide also cited the variant in telling Axios' Alayna Treene on Monday that public tours of the Capitol would not resume in the near future.

Most Americans who still aren't vaccinated say nothing  not their own doctor, a celebrity's endorsement or even paid time off  is likely to make them get the shot, according to the latest installment of the Axios/Ipsos Coronavirus Index.

Editor's note: This story has been updated throughout.
Yes, we have decided to take our mandates, Ishkhan Saghatelian told RFE/RLs Armenian Service. We will make a statement to that effect shortly.

Hayastan and another major opposition bloc, Pativ Unem, faced calls for boycotting the National Assembly on a permanent basis following the June 20 parliamentary elections which they claim were marred by serious irregularities.

Hayastans top leader, former President Robert Kocharian, indicated on June 22 that his bloc will likely take up the 29 seats which it won, according to the Central Election Commission (CEC), in the 107-member National Assembly. He said presence in the parliament will give Hayastan additional and substantial levers to challenge Pashinians government.

Kocharian announced late on Monday that he himself will cede his seat to another Hayastan candidate. He argued, in particular, that he is a man of the executive branch and ran for the post of prime minister in the snap elections.

Pativ Unem, which is led by another ex-president, Serzh Sarkisian, is also expected to take up its 7 seats in the parliament. The blocs spokesman, Sos Hakobian, said it will announce its decision by Wednesday evening.

Pashinians Civil Contract party will control 71 parliament seats. No other political force will be represented in the National Assembly.

Hayastan, Pativ Unem and two smaller opposition groups challenged the official vote results in the Constitutional Court later in June. The court rejected over the weekend their demands to annul those results.
The Armenian Defense Ministry has accused Azerbaijani forces of repeatedly firing at its border posts outside the village of Yeraskh over the past week. An Armenian soldier was killed in one such skirmish reported on July 14.

The ministry said that its troops deployed in the area about 70 kilometers south of Yerevan came under heavy gunfire on Monday evening. It said that the Azerbaijani side used mortars in the cross-border fighting that continued into the early hours of Tuesday.

No exchanges of gunfire were reported from the Yeraskh area later in the morning and in the afternoon.

According to a ministry spokesman, the head of the village administration, Radik Oghikian, was wounded while trying to extinguish a fire, apparently caused by gunshots, late in the evening. Oghikian was hospitalized and operated on in the following hours.

He took a water pump to help put out the fire and was hit by shrapnel, a Yeraskh resident told RFE/RLs Armenian Service. His condition is good right now.

This and other villagers said they heard unusually loud gunshots overnight. They suggested that the Yeraskh border section saw the heaviest fighting in years.

Meanwhile, Azerbaijans Defense Ministry accused the Armenian side of violating the ceasefire and wounding an Azerbaijani army officer. Another Azerbaijani serviceman was reportedly wounded last week.

The mayors of border villages located in two other Armenian provinces also reported cross-border firing on the night from Monday to Tuesday.

Nerses Shadunts, the head of a community consisting of several villages in southeastern Syunik province, said that Azerbaijani troops sporadically fired automatic weapons in the air for about three hours.

Sima Chitchian, who runs the border village of Kut in Gegharkunik province, heard similar gunfire which she said broke out late on Monday and lasted for more than three hours. It was a sound of heavy weapons, she told RFE/RLs Armenian Service.

Kut is located at one of the several sections of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border where Azerbaijani troops reportedly advanced a few kilometers into Armenian territory in May.

Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian accused Baku on Saturday of planning to provoke new military clashes along the frontier and in Nagorno-Karabakh. He pointed to the armed incidents at the Yeraskh-Nakhichevan section.

On Monday morning, Azerbaijans Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov reportedly ordered Azerbaijani army units to thwart Armenian provocations on the border. Echoing a recent statement by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, he said they must be prepared for another war with Armenia.
Pashinian had appointed the 65-year-old retired general as defense minister on November 20 in the wake of Armenias defeat in the six-week war with Azerbaijan.

In what appeared to be a related development, Pashinian appointed another general, Arshak Karapetian, as the countrys first deputy defense minister on Tuesday.

At least two independent media outlets have reported after the June 20 parliamentary elections that Karapetian will likely replace Harutiunian. The daily Zoghovurd said on Tuesday that he will be named defense minister several days later, after Pashinian forms a new cabinet required by Armenian law.

Karapetian, 54, is a former chief of Armenian military intelligence who was fired in 2016 following four-day hostilities around Nagorno-Karabakh which left about 80 Armenian soldiers dead. Then President Serzh Sarkisian said the intelligence service failed to obtain precise information about the Azerbaijani offensive beforehand.

Pashinian appointed Karapetian as his national security adviser seven months after coming to power in May 2018. The prime minister defended the appointment, saying that he has found no evidence of the Armenian militarys lack of intelligence data.

Several pro-opposition publications claimed at the time that Karapetian was the only high-ranking army officer who agreed to testify against former President Robert Kocharian and thus facilitate his arrest in July 2018 on coup charges.

In April this year, Pashinian promoted Karapetian to the post of first deputy chief of the Armenian armys General Staff. The move followed an unprecedented statement by the armys top brass accusing the prime minister of misrule and demanding his resignation.
The accusation carrying up to three years in prison stems from a statement which Manukian made during a February 20 rally held in Yerevan by a coalition of opposition forces that tried to topple Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian following the autumn war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

We must be ready for revolting and taking power at lightning speed, he told opposition supporters. He described that as Plan B of the opposition campaign for Pashinians resignation involving peaceful protests.

We will follow Plan A but must always be ready for Plan B, said the 75-year-old politician whom the now defunct opposition grouping nominated as an interim prime minister in December.

Law-enforcement authorities indicted Manukian in early March, saying that he publicly advocated a violent seizure of power. They refrained from arresting him pending investigation.

Manukian again dismissed the accusation at the start of his trial in Yerevan. He said that his February 20 statement was much softer than what Pashinian did during the recent parliamentary election campaign.

Manukian said that Pashinian has not been prosecuted for brandishing a hammer, threatening his political opponents and pledging to purge the state bureaucracy and wage political vendettas against local government officials supporting the opposition.

A senior prosecutor insisted last week that Pashinian did not spread hate speech or promise a violent crackdown on the opposition on the campaign trail. He said the premier used the hammer only as a metaphor for a dictatorship of the law promised by him.

Manukian said he continues to believe that Pashinian is responsible for Armenias defeat in the war and unfit to deal with lingering security challenges facing the country. Everything must to be done to make Pashinian resign, he told reporters.

Manukian was one of the leaders of a political movement that ended Communist rule in Soviet Armenia in 1990 and led the country to independence. He served as prime minister from 1990-1990 and defense minister from 1992-1993.
CAUGHT ON CAMERA: Police rescue family and their pets from fire (OSHKOSH POLICE DEPARTMENT via CNN)
Covid-19 vaccine myths: These reasons for not getting a shot don't hold up. In fact, they'll set the US back
Bakersfield, CA (93308)

Today

Mainly clear. Low 76F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear. Low 76F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.
Lois Henry is the CEO and editor of SJV Water, a nonprofit, independent online news publication dedicated to covering water issues in the San Joaquin Valley. She can be reached at lois.henry@sjvwater.org. The website is sjvwater.org.
Show your appreciation for the community in which we all live by joining one of the service clubs that interests you or volunteer to help one of the municipal services in our community.
On Oct.1, schools across the state can submit the number of faculty, staff and students vaccinated in their school and be eligible for a $5,000 drawing to use for any student-based activity, according to state school officials.
A Houston restaurant says it's still waiting on a big check from Uber Eats after months of sales.

Birria Los Primos, located in downtown's Underground Hall food court, said Monday on Instagram it hasn't been paid for more than 700 orders placed through Uber Eats since March.

CHEERS: Houston drank more at the airport than anywhere else last month

Emily Garcia, who manages the restaurant for her father, told FOX Business that the orders total up to at least $20,000.

"We really weren't expecting one of those issues to be with a third-party delivery company that is supposed to actually make our lives easier for us," Garcia said, Fox Business's Daniella Genovese reports. "They're supposed to bring in, you know, new customers for us."

Garcia told Fox Business that she found the payments weren't going through, then updated their bank information with the service.

The restaurant posted on Instagram that it has been in "constant contact" with Uber Eats, but still hasn't reached a resolution or learned when the restaurant will receive payment.

Meanwhile, Uber Eats says it has been trying to resolve the issue with Birria Los Primos, but that the service is missing information from the restaurant, according to the Houston Chronicle's Monique Welch.

"Periodically, Uber needs to request basic information from our merchant partners (including D.O.B., legal name) in order to satisfy legal and regulatory requirements of payment processing," Uber Eats representative Javier Correoso said, according to Welch. "This is part of our Merchant Terms and Conditions. We have spoken and emailed with the owners of Birria Los Primos this week to clarify the information needed to verify their account and process their payment immediately; they have declined to provide this information. We will continue to make every attempt to resolve this issue."

COMING SOON: Houston's newest restaurant combines good vibes with Cajun spice

But Garcia says no other third-party service requires personal information like that, according to Welch.

Birria Los Primos thanked customers for their support in another Instagram post and asked them to continue holding the company accountable.

"[Uber Eats owes] it to all the small businesses that have kept them afloat during the pandemic, as well as the customers who use their services," Birria Los Primos' post said.
PLANO, Texas (AP)  Six people were injured when a house in the Dallas suburb of Plano was destroyed in an explosion Monday that also left the two homes on either side of it with major damage, authorities said.

Plano Fire-Rescue said that the cause of the explosion at about 4:40 p.m. was still being investigated. Fire officials said that of the six people hospitalized, one was extricated from the rubble of the home that exploded and the other five were in a home next door.
HENDERSONVILLE, N.C. (AP)  Activists in North Carolina are calling for change after Mexican women and their families were reportedly escorted out of a pool for playing music in Spanish.

The News & Observer reports members of the families and Poder NC, a Latinx advocacy group, gathered outside of the state Capitol on Saturday to speak about the incident at the Flex Fitness and Recreation Center pool in Hendersonville. Veronica Ramirez, Bella Perez and others were at the pool July 12 when an employee tried to disconnect their speaker, they said.

Shes had music in English, and she says nothing. But we had music in Spanish, Perez told an officer.

The incident occurred after white women at the pool complained about the music, according to Bianca Figueroa, Ramirezs niece. When staff tried to take the speaker without communicating, Ramirez, Perez and others were upset and sought an explanation, she said. Staff called law enforcement to remove them, and Figueroa said she and others left the pool after explaining the situation to the officer.

Poder NC and the family are demanding that the Henderson County Sheriffs Office release the incident report and 911 call audio and establish a policy that avoids children translating for law enforcement. When officers first arrived they spoke English, and children stepped in to translate, Poder NC spokesperson Natalia Diez said. An officer then spoke to the women in Spanish.

Any time a police officer is called, it has a legal implication, Diez said. How can we expect a 17-year-old girl  oftentimes a 6-year-old, an 8-year-old  how can we expect them to fully and accurately interpret the situation on both sides?

No one answered calls to Flex Fitness seeking comment and the Times-News reports that it received a flood of negative reviews on multiple platforms online.

The Henderson County Sheriffs Office said in a statement that everyone was cooperative when deputies arrived and there was no incident report since the department doesn't complete them for matters that don't require further investigation. There were no 911 recordings and the department has several bilingual deputies and contracts with a language service provider when a Spanish-speaking deputy isn't available, according to Maj. Frank Stout.
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP)  The president of the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system announced Tuesday that the state's community colleges will forgive $17 million of student debt accumulated during the pandemic.

The debt, which students took on during the pandemic or could not repay because of it, will be made up with money from the federal Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, CSCU President Terrence Cheng said.
BERLIN (AP)  German officials defended their actions ahead of last week's severe floods that caught many towns by surprise and killed 196 people in Western Europe, but they conceded that more lessons can be learned from the disaster.

As floodwaters receded Monday, authorities continued searching for more victims and intensified their efforts to clean up a sodden swath of western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands.

So far, 117 people have been confirmed dead in the worst-affected German region, Rhineland-Palatinate, while 47 were killed in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and at least one in Bavaria, parts of which saw heavy rain and flooding over the weekend. The death toll in Belgium was 31.

Authorities said they were likely to find more victims among destroyed homes.

Weather officials had forecast the downpours that led to even small rivers swelling rapidly, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didn't appear to have made it to many people in affected areas  often in the middle of the night.

Federal and state authorities faced criticism from some opposition politicians over the disaster, which comes as a national election looms in September. But Interior Minister Horst Seehofer dismissed suggestions that federal officials had made mistakes and said warnings were passed to local authorities who make decisions on disaster protection.

I have to say that some of the things Im hearing now are cheap election rhetoric, Seehofer said during a visit to the Steinbach Reservoir in western Germany, where authorities say they no longer fear a dam breach. Now really isnt the hour for this.

Seehofer underlined that message during a visit Monday to Bad Neuenahr, in the worst-hit area, but said authorities will have to draw lessons once the immediate relief phase is over.

Wherever we can improve anything  in alarms, in equipment ... we must do so, he said. We owe that to the families who have been affected, and above all to the victims.

The head of Germany's civil protection agency said the weather service had forecast relatively well" and that the country was well-prepared for flooding on its major rivers.

But, Armin Schuster told ZDF television Sunday night, half an hour before, it is often not possible to say what place will be hit with what quantity of water. He said 150 warning notices had been sent out via apps and media.

He said we will have to investigate" where sirens sounded and where they didn't.

Officials in Germany's Rhineland-Palatinate state said they were well-prepared for flooding, and municipalities were alerted and acted.

But the state's interior minister, Roger Lewentz, said after visiting the hard-hit village of Schuld with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday that we, of course, had the problem that the technical infrastructure  electricity and so on  was destroyed in one go.

Local authorities tried very quickly to react," he said. But this was an explosion of the water in moments. ... You can have the very best preparations and warning situations (but) if warning equipment is destroyed and carried away with buildings, then that is a very difficult situation. Cellphone networks also were knocked out by flooding.

Broader questions about Germany's emergency warning system had arisen after a nationwide test in September 2020, the first in 30 years, largely failed. Sirens didn't sound in many places, or had been removed after the end of the Cold War, and push alerts from the national warning app arrived late or not all.

Schuster, the head of the civil protection agency, noted that a program to reform civil protection was launched earlier this year, including a drive to encourage local authorities to install more sirens. Germany doesn't have a text messaging system for disaster warnings, but Schuster told Deutschlandfunk radio it is exploring the possibility.

As local communities face the huge task of rebuilding smashed homes and infrastructure such as bridges and water systems, Merkel's Cabinet is set to draw up a package of immediate and medium-term financial aid Wednesday.

At the Steinbach Reservoir, North Rhine-Westphalia state governor Armin Laschet said the dam was designed for a risk that might occur once in 10,000 years.

This was exceeded in the last few days, he said. It was a likelihood nobody had foreseen.

___

Associated Press writer Frank Jordans at the Steinbach Reservoir contributed.
JERUSALEM (AP)  Israels prime minister vowed Tuesday to act aggressively against the decision by Ben & Jerrys to stop selling its ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories, as the countrys ambassador to the U.S. urged dozens of state governors to punish the company under anti-boycott laws.

The strong reaction reflected concerns in Israel that the ice cream maker's decision could lead other companies to follow suit. It also appeared to set the stage for a protracted public relations and legal battle.

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's office said he spoke with Alan Jope, chief executive of Ben & Jerry's parent company Unilever, and raised concern about what he called a clearly anti-Israel step. He said the move would have serious consequences, legal and otherwise," and Israel "will act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to comment directly on the company's decision. But he said the U.S. rejects the boycott movement against Israel, saying it unfairly singles out the country.

Israels Ambassador to the United Nations and the United States, Gilad Erdan, sent letters to 35 governors whose states have laws against boycotting Israel asking that they consider speaking out against Ben & Jerrys decision and taking any other relevant steps, including in relation to your state laws and the commercial dealings between Ben & Jerrys and your state.

Erdan said Israel views the companys decision as the de-facto adoption of anti-Semitic practices and advancement of the de-legitimization of the Jewish state and the dehumanization of the Jewish people.

As Arab nations cancel their decades-long boycott of the Jewish state and sign peace agreements with Israel, and cultural and economic cooperation in our region is growing, American companies with radical ideological agendas cannot be allowed to go against the policy of the United States and act against normalization and peace, Erdan wrote. Moreover, the past has proven that the citizens of Israel are never the only ones who suffer from such boycotts as these significantly harm Palestinians as well.

In Monday's announcement, Ben & Jerry's said it would stop selling ice cream in the occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem. The company, known for its social activism, said such sales were inconsistent with our values.

The statement was one of the strongest rebukes by a high-profile company of Israel's settlement policies in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, which it has controlled for more than a half-century after capturing them in the 1967 Mideast war.

The Palestinians, with broad international support, claim both areas as parts of a future independent state. Israeli settlements, now home to some 700,000 Israelis, are widely seen as illegal and obstacles to peace.

Israel annexed east Jerusalem after the 1967 war and considers the entire city its undivided capital, though the annexation is not internationally recognized. It says the West Bank is disputed territory and says its final status should be resolved in negotiations. The international community, however, widely considers both areas to be occupied territory.

In its statement, Ben & Jerry's said it had informed its longtime Israeli partner that it will not renew its license agreement when it expires at the end of 2022.

While noting it would not serve Israeli-occupied areas, it said it would continue to provide ice cream in Israel through a different arrangement. A number of companies, most notably beverage company SodaStream, have closed factories in the occupied West Bank but few have targeted Israeli consumers living there.

It remains unclear how Ben & Jerry's plans to do that. Israeli supermarket chains, a primary distribution channel for the cleverly named flavors of ice cream, operate in the settlements, and under Israeli law, people or companies that boycott the settlements can be sued.

On the global stage, Israel does not differentiate between settlements and the rest of the country. When home-rental company Airbnb announced in 2018 that it would no longer list properties in West Bank settlements, Israel harshly condemned the move as part of a broader Palestinian-led boycott movement against Israel.

Israel's strategic affairs minister at the time, Gilad Erdan, encouraged Israelis harmed by the decision to sue Airbnb. Several months later, after continued Israeli criticism and a U.S. federal lawsuit filed by Israeli Americans, the company reversed course.

Erdan, now Israel's ambassador to the U.S., said Tuesday that he had sent a letter to the governors of 35 states that have passed laws against anti-Israel boycott activity.

Rapid and determined action must be taken to counter such discriminatory and antisemitic actions, he wrote. We must stand united and send an unequivocal message that this will not be tolerated.

But even some of Israel's supporters said the company was on solid ground.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal pro-Israel group J-Street, said it was not antisemitism to differentiate between Israel and settlements built on occupied territory.

Instead of demonizing and attacking companies and individuals for making principled decisions, he said, these leaders would make a greater contribution to the fight against antisemitism by helping to bring the unjust and harmful occupation to a peaceful end.

The dispute has turned the Israeli ice cream market into the latest front in Israel's long-running battle against the BDS movement, a Palestinian-led grassroots campaign that promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli businesses, cultural institutions and universities.

BDS organizers say they are protesting what they call Israeli oppression of Palestinians in a campaign modeled on the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Its nonviolent message has resonated with audiences around the world, including on many U.S. college campuses.

But Israel says the movement has a deeper agenda aimed at delegitimizing and destroying the country.

Omar Barghouti, a BDS co-founder, said the movement had been urging Ben & Jerry's to pull out of Israel for years. He called its decision quite significant.

It shows you cannot have business with an apartheid state without being complicit, he said. "We expect more socially responsible companies to follow suit, perhaps less publicly.

Unilever, which acquired Ben & Jerry's in 2000, appeared Tuesday to distance itself from the ice cream maker. In a statement, Unilever noted that under the purchase agreement, it recognized Ben & Jerry's independence and right to take decisions about its social mission.

We remain fully committed to our presence in Israel, where we have invested in our people, brands and business for several decades, it said.

Eugene Kontorovich, a professor at George Mason University's Scalia Law School, said that despite such assurances, the global company could be vulnerable to U.S. state laws banning anti-Israel boycott activity.

Kontorovich, who consulted with lawmakers in some states that adopted the laws, said they treat anti-Israel boycotts as a form of discrimination. Violating these laws, he said, could make both Ben & Jerry's and Unilever ineligible for state contracts or prompt states to drop Unilever shares from large pension funds.

They may see that mixing ice cream and anti-Israel politics may not be the best idea, he said.

The battle comes against the backdrop of shifting U.S. attitudes toward Israel. Where Israel once enjoyed solid bipartisan support in the U.S., the country has turned into a divisive issue in recent years, with Republicans strongly supporting it and Democrats, especially young liberal voters, increasingly supporting the Palestinians.

Several factors have fueled this trend, including former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's close alliance with former President Donald Trump.

Michael Oren, who served as Netanyahu's ambassador to the U.S., said the trends were worrisome for Israel.

While he said the Ben & Jerry's decision posed no immediate threat to Israel's robust economy, he said the boycott movement could contribute to a steady erosion of Israel's legitimacy.

Our enemies know they cannot destroy us with all those missiles, he told reporters. They can destroy us economically through sanctions and boycotts. And that's where BDS poses a long-term threat.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
ATLANTA (AP)  Taking their case for a federal voting bill to Georgia, Senate Democrats argued at a field hearing on Monday that their sweeping elections measure is desperately needed to counter the impact of new GOP state laws that tighten voting rules.

Congress must take action on voting rights, and we have no time to spare, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat from Georgia, said in testimony before the Senate Rules Committee. We Americans live in a great house that democracy built, and right now that house is on fire.

Democrats used the rare field hearing in Atlanta to gain attention for their voting and elections overhaul, which remains blocked by unified Republican opposition and disagreement among Senate Democrats about whether to change procedural rules in the evenly divided Senate to get it passed.

Without a clear path forward, Democrats are seeking to keep the spotlight on voting issues, as they search for other ways to pass less sweeping voting proposals. On Sunday, committee chair Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Democrats were considering adding financial incentives for states to adopt new voting procedures into a multitrillion-dollar bill bolstering environmental and social programs.

Mondays hearing was held in a conference room at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in downtown Atlanta, which senators called a powerful reminder of the long struggle for voting rights in the U.S.

We are here today in Atlanta to shine a spotlight on what has been happening in Georgia and in states around the country to undermine the freedom to vote, said Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota.

The federal bill, known as the For the People Act, would create minimum voting standards in the U.S., such as same-day and automatic voter registration, early voting and no-excuse absentee voting. The bill would also change various campaign finance and ethics laws.

Republicans, though, have united in opposition, calling the bill a Democratic power grab and saying the changes amount to a federal takeover of elections, which are administered in the U.S. at the state and local level.

No Republicans attended the hearing, and they did not provide witnesses.

This silly stunt is based on the same lie as all the Democrats phony hysteria from Georgia to Texas to Washington D.C. and beyond  their efforts to pretend that moderate, mainstream state voting laws with more generous early-voting provisions than blue states like New York are some kind of evil assault on our democracy, GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.

Republicans last month blocked an effort to debate the Democratic bill, and Democrats will have to decide whether they want to change Senate filibuster rules to ultimately pass the bill. At least two Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have said they oppose eliminating the filibuster rule.

Manchin, who initially opposed the bill, has crafted a new version that would remove some of the more contentious provisions and add a national ID requirement, something Democrats had not previously advocated for.

Much of Mondays hearing focused on a GOP-backed elections bill that was signed into law by Georgia's Republican Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year.

The Georgia law adds a voter ID requirement for mail ballots, shortens the time period for requesting a mailed ballot and results in fewer ballot drop boxes available in metro Atlanta. Several lawsuits have been filed over the law, including one by the U.S. Department of Justice.

We desperately need your help, Georgia state Sen. Sally Harrell, a Democrat from metro Atlanta, told the senators during the hearing. Where you live shouldnt determine how hard it is to vote or whether or not your vote counts. This is the time to take action, to pass national voting standards, and I implore you to do so.

Georgia Republicans have pushed back against claims that their election law makes it harder to vote, noting the state offers many of the measures being sought by Democrats in the federal bill, such as early voting, no-excuse absentee voting and automatic registration.

Kemp, speaking to reporters on a call organized by the Republican National Committee, called Mondays hearing a publicity stunt and defended Georgias new voting law as a common-sense reform measure.

It doesnt matter if its the DOJ, the DNC or the Senate Democrats, we arent backing down, he said. Were going to continue to fight for the truth and were going to stand up for secure, accessible and fair elections.

___

Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre in Lindenhurst, N.Y., contributed to this report.
FILE - In this Jan. 28, 2020, file photo, a Microsoft computer is among items displayed at a Microsoft store in suburban Boston. The Biden administration on Monday, July 19, 2021, blamed China for a hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world earlier in the year. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File
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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.
Theater review

What: The Niceties by Eleanor Burgess. Directed by Christina Franklin

With: Stephanie Everett, Andrea Gallo

Who: Chester Theatre Company

Where: Hancock Shaker Village, 1843 W. Housatonic St. (Route 20), Pittsfield

When: Through July 25. 7:30 p.m., Thursday through Saturday. 3 p.m., Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday

Running time: 1 hour, 46 minutes (no intermission)

Tickets: $47.50; $10 for Chester and Middlefield residents; $15, military personnel; $10, EBT and ConnectorCare Card to Culture; $10, Student Rush (available day of show only; call box office)

Reservations/information: 413-354-7771; chestertheatre.org
Berkshire Amistad displays some of the medical equipment the local nonprofit is collecting to ship to Honduras. Anyone interested in donating to the cause can drop off equipment at two locations Saturday.
Rainfall totals

The following are unofficial totals compiled from observers for the National Weather Service in Albany, from Sunday evenings intense thunderstorm:

Lenox Dale 2.65 inches

Lenox 2.32

Clarksburg 2.22

Dalton 1.96

Becket 1.75

Stockbridge 1.46

North Adams 1.20

Pittsfield 1.04

Savoy 0.60

Lanesborough 0.54
GREAT BARRINGTON  A police officer who delayed dispatching an ambulance for more than 25 minutes said he had been distracted in the stations 911 communications center when that call came in, an internal investigation says.

Officer Andres Huertas was disciplined with temporary suspensions, according to documents related to a probe of the episode, obtained by The Eagle.

In a memorandum about the flawed April 26 dispatch, Huertas told Great Barrington Police Chief Paul Storti that at the time of the call for an ambulance to East Street to assist Luis Del Mar, he was fielding other calls in the dispatch hub, as well as letting people into the lobby at the Main Street station. Del Mar had been struggling for breath and died that night.

Great Barrington officer delayed sending an ambulance. A man recovering from COVID-19 died. His stepson wants answers. GREAT BARRINGTON  A Housatonic man is pressing for answers about why a police officer waited more than 25 minutes to dispatch an ambulance to

I received other phone calls and radio transmission that caused me to get distracted from dispatching the first 911 call, Huertas wrote, addressing why he did not act until a second call came from Del Mars stepson seeking help.

Del Mar, 66, had been released from Berkshire Medical Center on oxygen a week earlier after a bout with COVID-19. Both he and his wife, Anita Del Mar, had extensive health problems, and were hospitalized together a month before. She died in the hospital three weeks before Luis began to struggle at their apartment on East Street.

The mans sisters, who had come to help, called Anitas son, Glen Fusco, who rushed to the apartment and called 911 at 6:29:53 p.m. on April 26, and reached Huertas. Huertas did not dispatch the ambulance until 6:55:57 p.m., after Fusco called a second time.

Fusco says that it was after this second call that Del Mar deteriorated further, unable to breathe, and the family began performing CPR. By 7:11:55, an ambulance dispatcher asked Huertas for more units, and said Del Mar was in cardiac arrest.

Huertas sent the ambulance to the wrong house number  34 East St. instead of 54 East St., and this wrong address was later repeated by ambulance dispatchers. Paramedics had started unloading their equipment when Fusco ran down the street to wave them down, according to the documents.

One paramedic told police he thought this particular delay had no impact on the outcome of the call, given Del Mars medical condition. Paramedic Jeremy Vandeusen had arrived to the scene to find Del Mar not breathing and without a pulse.

Listen to 911 calls

A leader and mentor

The internal investigation reports also show that Huertas Emergency Medical Dispatch certification is current through 2022, with a 90 percent score on his last exam in 2020 because he answered five questions incorrectly. He failed a 2016 certification test, but passed with 100 percent later that year.

According to the investigation, Huertas must complete 40 hours of emergency dispatch training in lieu of his regular shifts.

An April 12 performance review conducted by Storti rated Huertas as Accomplished or Distinguished in most areas except three, including Desk Duty and Dispatching, for which Huertas received a Competent rating. Storti made one note: Andres is turning into a leader and mentor within the department.

Huertes, 27, was hired part-time in 2015 and rose to full-time status in 2017. He had one disciplinary mark in his file for misusing a sick day that year.

Storti placed Huertas on paid administrative leave April 29 and began the dispatch delay investigation, in which he found that Huertas made four violations of medical dispatch rules.

In a contract between the town and the police union, in which both parties agree they wont appeal or take legal action related to the case, Huertas received 10 days of unpaid suspension, and suspension from details and overtime shifts for three months, unless otherwise directed by the Chief of Police.

Distractions in hub

From 6:10 to 7:17 p.m. that evening, the communications center at the station had 42 calls, visitors and other events, according to a log.

In a report, Officer Joe OBrian wrote that he and Officer Elias Casey had just returned from a domestic/mental health disturbance call that Huertas had dispatched around 5:30 p.m. The call resulted in one of the parties in that incident returning to the station with police at 6:37 p.m.

While also in the station just previous to the East (Street) call I hear numerous phone calls come in and Ofc. Huertas making [an] ambulance and fire department dispatch for a medical call on East St. I also assisted a person who walked in the station to file a report about a lost cell phone, wrote OBrian, who then went to the East Street apartment, since a death had occurred, and took a complaint from Fusco over the delay.

Log of events, April 26 A log of events in the Great Barrington Police Department's station and communication's center from 6:10 to 7:17 p.m.

April 26, Great Barrington Police Log

Officer Casey, in his report, said he stepped into the 911 hub to speak with Huertas about the domestic call. I recall hearing phones ringing, and Officer Huertas receiving and dispatching calls over the radio, he wrote.

In Fuscos second 911 call, he asks why an ambulance hadnt arrived. Huertas says he would send them right now, and when Fusco asked whether they had been sent before, Huertas says, I did, yes  Ill send them again.

Storti said he could not comment on the incident or the investigation of it. He said it remains a personnel matter and is an open investigation by the Berkshire District Attorneys Office.

Berkshire District Attorney Andrea Harrington previously said State Police detectives attached to her office are further probing the episode. Her office has ordered an autopsy by the state medical examiner.

Fusco said he has had fruitless conversations with police and the DAs office about why Huertas delayed the dispatch. He has worried that his 2018 arrest by Huertas and another officer on a warrant and for operating under the influence played a role in the mishandled call. He continues to fight that OUI charge in court.

Fusco said that, in May, he gave a statement to detectives with Harringtons office and they explained that there was no criminal investigation underway regarding the delay in dispatching an ambulance. Instead, the inquiry focuses on whether there was no foul play in Del Mars death.
Gov. Charlie Baker said Monday that he will put $50 million toward financially distressed hospitals, pay for 10 percent rate enhancements for some in the health care workforce through the end of the year with $55 million, invest $31 million in inpatient psychiatric acute facilities and use up to $50 million to train workers in the advanced manufacturing, health care, information technology and construction fields.
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A New York City model is sharing her recent experience at a Saks Fifth Avenue, during which she faced racial microaggressions while shopping for wedding shoes.

Erica Wiltz, who goes by @itsdaddylonglegs on TikTok, posted a video on the social media platform detailing the lack of customer service she received at the department store.

Went to #saksfifthavenue excited to buy @jimmychoo wedding shoes & it turned out like this. #onblast #blackinamerica, Wiltz captioned her video, which has surpassed 875,000 views.

In her video, Wiltz said she patiently waited at the store while watching another white shopper receive help first.

Had to demand help but hes still not getting my sale, she said after finally receiving service, adding she left the store in tears.

RELATED: White Womans Racist Tirade Against Black Store Manager Goes Viral On TikTok
A Black woman has died under mysterious circumstances while in custody of Indiana State Police.

TaNeasha Chappell of Louisville, KY, was an inmate at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown, IN, being held on shoplifting charges. Chappell, 23, was arrested on May 26, Newsweek reports.

A statement from Indiana State Police says that Chappell was taken by ambulance to Schneck Memorial Hospital in Seymour, IN, on Friday (July 16). She died at the hospital later that day.

Authorities are still investigating the circumstances around Chappells death. An autopsy was performed Sunday (July 18) but a final report and toxicology results are pending.

Chappell's family are demanding answers. Chappell's mother, Lavita McCain, told WDRB television that her daughter was in good health when they spoke a day before her death, though Chappell was having problems with other Jackson County inmates.

"She called numerous timesover and over saying that 'they are going to kill me. Get me out of here,'" McCain said.

Chappells father, Donte Chappell, added, "I think there is some foul play involved in it because she was the only Black girl in that jail.

"It is unsettling, we want justice, we want answerswe have a lot of questions and no answers still," TaNeashas sister, Ronesha Murrell, added.

Chappells family told WHAS that a detective informed them of Chappells death on Sunday (July 18) but provided little information, only telling them that Chappell reported feeling sick to jail officials before the ambulance was called.

Her family also said that they received worrying phone calls from Chappell over the past two months she was imprisoned, and they were worried her calls for help went unanswered.

"I believe they neglected her. They neglected her need, [and] protection. She spoke to me numerous times -- phone calls, telling me they were going to kill her in there," Murrell said.

A GoFundMe page set up by the family described Chappell as "a loving mother, sister, daughter, and friend who touched the lives of many around her."

"She leaves behind her 10 year old daughter Nevaeh who will miss her terribly. We are all devastated by her loss but are working tirelessly to figure out the events that transpired moments before her passing, the page reads.
State

AP

Beshear urges indoor mask wearing for some to combat variant

FRANKFORT  Kentuckys governor on Monday urged frontline workers dealing with the public to wear masks, even if fully vaccinated against COVID-19, because of risks from the more infectious delta variant.

With large swaths of Kentucky showing lagging vaccination rates, Gov. Andy Beshear offered several recommendations to protect Kentuckians from the threat posed by the variant.

The delta variant is serious, and it is even a deadly threat to nonvaccinated Kentuckians, the Democratic governor said.

Beshear continued urging unvaccinated Kentuckians to get the shots. The vaccines offer significant protection against serious illness and death, including from the delta variant, he said.

One solution to all of it  get vaccinated, he said. Get vaccinated to protect yourself. Get vaccinated to protect the people around you. Get vaccinated so we can defeat COVID.

People unwilling to get vaccinated should wear a mask when indoors and away from home, Beshear recommended. He also recommended indoor mask wearing among Kentuckians at a higher risk due to pre-existing health conditions, even if they are vaccinated.

Since ending almost all virus-related restrictions in June, Beshear has focused on the states economic rebound, but he held an hourlong news conference Monday to discuss the threat posed by the delta variant.

Meanwhile, in Washington, President Joe Biden tempered his assessment that social media giants are killing people by hosting misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines on their platforms, saying Monday that he hoped they would not take it personally and instead would act to save lives.

While companies like Facebook defend their practices and say theyre helping people around the world access verified information about the shots, the White House claims they havent done enough to stop misinformation that it says has helped slow the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. to a trickle.

It comes as the U.S. sees a rise in virus cases and deaths among those who havent gotten a shot, in what officials call an emerging pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Speaking at the White House, Biden said he meant precisely what I said when he said Friday of the tech giants that theyre killing people. But he said the point of his rhetoric was to ramp up pressure on the companies to take action.

My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow Im saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, Biden said.

Bidens comments come as the White House has struggled to counteract resistance to getting a shot, particularly among younger and more Republican demographics. Fewer than 400,000 Americans are getting their first vaccine dose each day  down from a high of more than 2 million per day in April. More than 90 million eligible people havent received a dose.

The administration has seized on false or misleading information about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines as a driver of that hesitance. It has referenced a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that studies extremism, that linked a dozen accounts to spreading the majority of vaccine disinformation on Facebook.

Facebook isnt killing people. These 12 people are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it, its killing people, Biden said. Its bad information. ...

Im not trying to hold people accountable. Im trying to make people look at themselves, look in the mirror, Biden said. Think about that misinformation going to your son, your daughter, your relative.

In the view of the administration, chastising the social media companies  which have come under mounting scrutiny in Washington over not just disinformation, but also antitrust and privacy practices  is a proxy for criticizing the originators of disinformation themselves. To avoid amplifying falsehoods, the White House has generally sought to avoid engaging directly with those spreading misinformation.

Last week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared misinformation about the vaccines a deadly threat to public health.

Misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nations health, Murthy said Thursday. We must confront misinformation as a nation. Lives are depending on it.

Murthy said technology companies and social media platforms must make meaningful changes to their products and software to reduce the spread of false information while increasing access to authoritative, fact-based sources.

Too often, he said, the platforms are built in ways that encourage the spread of misinformation.

We are asking them to step up, Murthy said. We cant wait longer for them to take aggressive action.

Facebook on Friday responded to Bidens attack, with spokesperson Kevin McAlister saying, The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.

The company also released a blog post saying its internal research showed it wasnt responsible for Bidens missed vaccination goal. The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Bidens goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.

Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College who focuses on politics and health care, said Facebook should absolutely be held accountable for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread.

With that said, we should be careful about assuming that the circulation of misinformation online is a cause of hesitancy rather than a consequence, he said.

Its very difficult to show the relationship between misinformation on social media and vaccine hesitancy directly. We dont have good measures of what people see on social media or any ability to link it to their vaccination behavior. And even if we see correlations in the data, these could be spurious rather than causal  people who arent going to get vaccinated are presumably more likely to be exposed to negative and false information about the vaccine.

That said, Nyhan added that there is some evidence that exposure to misinformation can reduce a persons intention to vaccinate immediately after viewing the misinformation.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Monday: Were not in a war or battle against Facebook  were in a battle with the virus. But she ramped up pressure on the companies to share information on how many Americans are exposed to misinformation on their platforms.

Do you have access to information from these platforms as to who is receiving misinformation? she asked. I dont think that information has been released. Do you know how the algorithms are working at any of these platforms? I dont think that information has been released.
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In a world where terrorists, rapists, natural disasters, and abandoned children exist, it seems hardly possible to hold back anger. The truth is that we live in a very broken and corrupt world. Life is not fair. People choose to backstab. Parents opt to leave home. Governments withhold help from their citizens. Co-workers lie to you. Is it actually possible to refrain from anger and turn from wrath?

What Does 'Refrain from Anger and Turn from Wrath' Mean?

To understand how we refrain from anger, we first need to define anger. Websters Dictionary defines anger as, A strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism. Anger is not a sin. Anger is an emotion that if handled improperly can lead to sin. Ephesians 4:26 says, In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry.

God Himself is angry at times. This causes us to ask ourselves since God is perfect, anger is not a sin, but a feeling. If there were ever an example of refraining from anger and turning from wrath it would be the Lord.

God was angry at the Israelites for creating the golden calf and He held back His wrath (Exodus 32:10-11, Numbers 11:1-2, Deuteronomy 9:8-10). The Israelites were still punished, but their nation was spared.

Jesus was angry when the people were buying and selling in the temple (Matthew 21:12-23).

Jesus was angry at the Pharisees when they rebuked Him for healing the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6).

To refrain means to hold back. We are called to hold back our anger and turn away from wrath. The difference between Gods wrath and our own is that He has holy and perfect wrath. We can easily sin as human beings. It is okay to desire justice, but when we seek out to destroy another that is not our place. Wrath is Gods alone.

Deuteronomy 32:35 says, Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them.

Romans 12:17-19 says, Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is Mine, I will repay, says the Lord.

When we see horrible injustices take place in our families, communities, churches, and the world, it is easy to try to take matters into our own sinful hands. However, Christ sets an example to us and calls us higher.

There is a woman in my community whom I greatly admire. A few years ago, she was a stay-at-home mother and her husband left her for another woman. He ended up abandoning her and her children. Her church family stood by her when relatives did not. They brought her food and helped her. Then, her husband at the time decided to pester her and put her down continually. Over the many years of watching the devastation of this mans decisions and the ways this woman and her kids have been treated, anyone would want to fight back evil with evil. However, this woman has shown more Christ-like character and restraint than anyone I have ever known. She is a hero to me because she models to her children that even if other family members act ungodly and unkind, she does her best to never say a negative word about them, always do what is best for her kids, and handles her ex-husbands emotional disorders with grace and mercy.

True strength is not found in an outward battle, but of the inward character that holds a person together when the enemy wages war. This woman has the Holy Spirit within her, and she testifies that He is working in and through her life every time that she chooses to live like Christ in an ungodly attack. What is our excuse to fight evil with evil? Do we think the momentary feeling of victory is sweet enough to outweigh the fact that our comeback was enough to put Jesus on a cross? Do we get mad that evil seems to win and forget that we already have long-term victory in the Lord?

Please note that I am in no way supporting an abusive relationship. If you are in an unhealthy situation, please get out and seek help immediately. However, no matter what the scenario, we need Jesus to help us live above the level that this world operates. Anyone can be angry or act wrathfully, but a Christian is called to refrain from the anger and turn from the wrath. Anger and wrath are options, but they are not the best options. God is our Judge, and we can rest that He has the final word.

What Is the Context of Psalm 37:8?

Psalm 37:8 says, Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fretit leads only to evil.

This specific chapter of Psalms was written by David. He was continually pursued by King Saul who was trying to kill him. David was questioning why godly people were afflicted. He reminds his own soul to trust in the Lord and find rest in Him. He says that God will punish sin and reward those who follow Him. He reminds himself and the reader of the eternal victory that we have in Christ. He shares that God will deliver us from this wicked world one day when we are reunited with Him in Heaven.

What Is the Difference between Anger and Indignation?

Anger is the foundation of indignation. Indignation is defined by Westers Dictionary as anger aroused by something unjust, unworthy, or mean. A teacher could have anger that a student is unkind with her words, but when the student decides to hit another child, the teacher might become indignant. Indignation comes from a sense of seeking justice. I can be angry knowing that there is still racism, but I can become indignant when I see racism taking place in my community.

Indignation always stems from anger, but anger does not always have indignation. Someone could be wrongfully angry that another person got the lead in the school play, or another person got the promotion at work. It does not mean that the other person was unworthy, it just might cause anger. How we deal with that emotion matters to God.

How Can We Practically Refrain from Anger?

There are some practical ways in which we ourselves can calm down when we are upset and how we can aid in defusing this fire in others.

Recognize Triggers: Sometimes I find myself angry at a similar situation repeatedly over time. If I can discover the trigger to why that bothers me so much, it can open my understanding to what causes the anger and how can I give that to God in prayer.

Practice Returning Evil with Kindness: Proverbs 15:1 says, A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. Next time someone says something that is harsh, sarcastic, or belittling, practice responding in love.

Learn that Release Is Not Defeat: Study up on Scriptures that encourage our victory in Christ. Learn that giving God your anger and letting go of the concept of revenge is not defeat, but really a win.

Slow Down: So many times we say or do things that we do not mean simply because we acted too quickly. James 1:19-20. Proverbs 14:29, and Proverbs 19:11 encourage us to be slow to anger.

Acknowledge your Anger to God: Brittany Rust from Crosswalk shares, If youre struggling with anger, choose the path of confession. This will mean confessing to God whats in your heart and also confessing to the person with whom youre angry towards (Proverbs 28:13, 1 John 1:9).

Anger is one of the core emotions that we all encounter in one way or another. Just like there is a time and season for everything, there is a place for anger. It is acceptable to be mad at sin and the Devil. But rather than taking out our feelings on others, we can harness that energy to love and live by the Spirit in hopes that our lives would look different to the world and others might know we are Christians by our love.

Related Resource! Listen to our FREE podcast, The Bible Never Said That. All of our episodes are available at LifeAudio.com. Listen to an episode right now by clicking the play button below:

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Emma Danzeys mission in life is to inspire young women to embrace the extraordinary. One of her greatest joys is to journey with the Lord in His Scriptures. Emma is a North Carolina resident and green tea enthusiast! She is married to her husband Drew and they serve international college students. She enjoys singing, dancing, trying new recipes, and watching home makeover shows. During her ministry career, Emma recorded two worship EP albums, founded and led Polished Conference Ministries, ran the Refined Magazine, and served in music education for early childhood. Currently, she is in the editing stages of her first two writing projects: a Bible study on womanhood and a non-fiction book on singleness. You can visit her blog at emmadanzey.wordpress.com

This article is part of our larger resource library of popular Bible verse phrases and quotes. We want to provide easy to read articles that answer your questions about the meaning, origin, and history of specific verses within Scripture's context. It is our hope that these will help you better understand the meaning and purpose of God's Word in relation to your life today.

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BOISE  Rental prices throughout Idaho continue to exceed renter wages, according to the 2021 Out of Reach report released today by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Idahos housing affordability challenge affects many of the states small towns and rural communities, forcing households across the state to pay more than they can afford.

The rising gap between the cost of rent and Idahos minimum wage leaves many families housing cost-burdened and one unanticipated financial shortfall away from being unable to pay rent and at imminent risk of eviction. In 2020, many of our neighbors lost employment and were burdened by additional health and/or childcare costs. This left our already vulnerable low-income families in an increasingly precarious financial position and at risk of eviction and homelessness. Calls for rental assistance to our organization tripled beginning in March of 2020 and this heightened demand continues as parts of Idaho see rent prices rising faster than anywhere in the country, said Hannah Sharp, development manager at Jesse Tree, a nonprofit rental assistance organization.

The Idaho minimum wage has remained $7.25 an hour without an increase since 2009, not keeping pace with the high cost of rental housing. Working minimum wage in Idaho, a wage earner must have 1.9 full-time jobs or work 76 hours per week to afford a modest one-bedroom apartment and work 2.9 full-time jobs or work 96 hours per week at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment.

Rapidly increasing rent prices in Idaho continue to outpace wage growth and affordable homes are increasingly harder to find. Idahoans across the state are feeling this squeeze in the market, and the consequences are far-reaching. When families cannot find homes with affordable rents, they are unable to afford the necessities they need to ensure their households have access to important healthcare services and medications, nutritious food, quality daycare, and other necessities, said Kendra Knighten, policy associate with the Idaho Asset Building Network. Ensuring every Idahoan has access to an affordable home is key to ensuring our families, neighbors, and communities are healthy and thriving.

A home is affordable when rent and utilities cost no more than thirty percent of a households income or less. Statewide, the fair market rent for a modest two-bedroom home is $903 per month, which is affordable to Idaho households who earn $36,116 or above annually, or $17.36 per hour. On average, Idaho renter households earn $13.62 per hour.

The report also highlights the housing wage for Idahos counties by calculating the wage that is necessary to live in a home at an affordable rent. In both Ada and Canyon counties, the housing wage is $19.27, while the average renter wage is $15.67 and $12.11, respectively. Rural counties such as Boise, Owyhee, and Blaine also have housing wages above $19 an hour.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments are capped monthly at $794 for an eligible individual, and at $1,191 for an eligible couple, making rent prices especially challenging for people with this type of income - including seniors and people living with a disability.

The search for affordable, accessible housing has only become more difficult in recent years for Idahoans with disabilities and their families, according to Mel Leviton, executive director of the Idaho State Independent Living Council. We hear daily from people priced out of their housing and desperately searching for something they can afford on a fixed income or low to moderate wage jobs. We talk to people with mental illness, people who are blind, people who use wheelchairs, people with intellectual disabilities, and people with multiple disabilities. People with disabilities are increasingly forced to move further and further from transportation, safe sidewalks, jobs, schools, and communities they call home. They are often priced out of ground floor apartments or affordable mobile homes and into confining, costly nursing home care. Even people who consider themselves solidly middle income cant find housing they can afford AND physically use. Where does it end?

In Idaho, only one in four households who qualify for housing assistance receive it. Congress can ease high rent prices for Idahoans by supporting long-term housing solutions such as: increasing funding for the Housing Choice Voucher program to ensure all eligible families have access to assistance, increasing investments into the national Housing Trust Fund to build more affordable homes, and the creation of an Emergency Assistance Fund to provide financial assistance and housing stability services to families facing unexpected emergency expenses.

Read the Out of Reach report: https://bit.ly/3kr8j8R
BIG RAPIDS  A victim of sexual assault confronted her assailant in court this week and told the judge she hoped the maximum punishment would be handed down.

Bryan David Loubert, of Lansing, appeared, via Zoom, in Mecosta County Circuit Judge Kimberly L. Boohers courtroom on Monday for sentencing.

Loubert, 19, previously pleaded guilty to a single count of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct stemming from a sexual assault on a victim  who was between 13-15 years old  June 2020 in Mecosta County, according to court records.

During the hearing, Amy Clapp, with the Mecosta County Prosecutors Office, commended the victims quick response in reporting the crime. She said authorities were contacted the day following the assault.

Her courage to come forward and report this right away also allowed another (victim) to come forward at the same time to report this, Clapp told the court.

Clapp noted, in previous cases, it can take a while before a victim come forward and reports the crime. That was not the situation in this case, she said.

The victim, who appeared from a blacked screen on Zoom, then confronted Loubert and recalled exact moments and details of the assault.

I told you, No when I was uncomfortable and you didnt stop, the victim said of the sexual assault.

The victim described to the court how she has not been the same person because of Loubert and his actions.

I havent hugged my mom or family in over a year without me acknowledging it first, the victim explained, noting she still cannot sleep with the lights off and fears physical contact with many.

The victim recalled the day Loubert pleaded guilty and felt a sense of justice, but later learned what his potential punishment may include  1-3 years of probation.

With what you did to me, and the memories that are stuck with me forever, I hope you get the full three years (of probation), the victim said. That still doesnt seem like enough time.

Because of you, I am a victim. Because of you, I live my life differently, she added. I will live with the traumatizing memories that happened forever.

Loubert declined to speak when given the opportunity.

Booher sentenced Loubert to 5 1/2 months of county jail time with credit for 13 days served. He was placed on probation for a three-year period.

However, Louberts sentence was suspended, pending a successful probation period. If Loubert violates any condition of his probation, he will immediately begin serving his jail time, Booher said.

Loubert must have no contact with the victim and must register with Michigan Sex Offenders Registry.

Loubert was represented by Big Rapids-based attorney Dennis DuVall.

The Pioneer does not identify the victims of sexual assault.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  Haiti's government installed a new prime minister on Tuesday, while officials mourned assassinated President Jovenel Moise and arrested at least three police officers implicated in his killing.

Designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry was sworn in to replace interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who assumed leadership of Haiti with the backing of police and the military after the July 7 attack at Moises private home, which also badly injured his wife and stunned the nation of more than 11 million people.

The task that awaits us is complex and difficult, Henry said as he called for unity and promised to meet with various sectors in upcoming days to build consensus. Im from a school that believes in dialogue."

He also thanked sister nations that he didn't identify for their solidarity and expertise in the ongoing investigation as he demanded that all those responsible be brought to justice.

Henry, a neurosurgeon and former Cabinet minister, has promised to form a provisional consensus government to lead Haiti until elections are held. He said he has already met with various unidentified actors as well as civil society and the private sector. He pledged to re-establish order and security and confidence in the government as well as fight corruption, make COVID-19 vaccines available to all, restart the economy and create a credible and transparent elections system.

Joseph, who spoke before presenting Henry, also urged unity and and wished him much courage and determination while warning him: You inherit a remarkable situation ... a political crisis without precedence... galloping insecurity, a morose and precarious socio-economic situation.

After the ceremony, Henry's new Cabinet was formally presented, with the ministers of justice, economy, finance, agriculture and others keeping their positions.

Before Henry officially became prime minister, a crowd of international dignitaries and Haitian officials clad in somber suits sat under the shade of pink and white bougainvillea in the yard of the Nation Pantheon Museum in downtown Port-au-Prince to commemorate Moise, whose assassination left a political void.

A large portrait of the slain president hung behind Joseph as he spoke to mourners. The president is dead because of his political and social convictions, he said.

Joseph accused oligarchs and criminals of assassinating the presidents character and then the president himself. He called on everyone to seize the moment as an opportunity to find a common purpose and durable, viable solutions.

Moise was shot multiple times, and while officials have arrested at least 26 people in the case, it remains unclear who ultimately was behind the attack. Among the arrested are 18 former Colombian soldiers, five Haitians and three Haitian-Americans.

Police Chief Leon Charles announced four more formal arrests on Tuesday  at least three of them police officers, whose ranks he did not release.

There was infiltration in the police, he said. It happened with money.

Charles added that authorities are investigating who financed the operation, noting that the FBI and Interpol is helping track down U.S. citizens living in the United States whom he believes are responsible.

Charles also said that a total of seven high-ranking police officers have now been detained and isolated  but not formally arrested  as they tried to determine why the attackers were able to reach the president without any of his guards being injured. The officers are not formally considered suspects.

Haitian police identified the fourth suspect, who was not a police officer, as Dominick Cauvin.

An individual named Dominick Cauvin has lived in South Florida, spending time in recent years in Miami, Miami Beach and Pembroke Pines, public records show. Hes listed as an independent security consultant, according to his LinkedIn profile; his private Instagram account lists him as founder and owner of Armotech International Corp. and Armotech Group S.A., in Haiti.

Cauvin is currently listed as CEO for a company based in Pembroke Pines, Fla., called Armotech International Corp., which he registered with the state on Nov. 2, 2020, public records show. He set up a similarly named company, the Armotech Group Inc., in early January 2020, only to dissolve it in April 2021, records show.

Haiti Elections Minister Mathias Pierre told The Associated Press on Monday that Joseph would step down and cede the position to Henry, who was chosen for the post by Moise shortly before he was killed but had not been sworn in.

The change in leadership comes after a group of key international diplomats called on Henry to create a consensual and inclusive government" in a statement issued Saturday that made no reference to Joseph. The Core Group is composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France and the European Union as well as representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said Joseph's departure was to be expected.

Joseph's fate was sealed over the weekend, he said. Everything that happens in Haiti has a powerful foreign component.

A main opposition coalition known as the Democratic and Popular Sector called Henry a puppet of the international community and rejected his appointment.

This step is only a political provocation that will add fuel to the fire and push the country further into crisis, it said.

On the same day the Core Group issued its statement, first lady Martine Moise arrived back unannounced in Haiti to the surprise of many. She had been recovering at a hospital in Miami. On Monday, her office issued the first public statement since the killing, noting that the presidential family would pay for the funeral as it thanked Haitians for their support.

Your moral support gives the presidential family the courage to go through this great ordeal and helps it transcend these moments of indescribable pain, it said.

____

Associated Press writers Evens Sanon in Port-au-Prince and Trenton Daniel in New York contributed.
Watch as I report on the insanity that continues to infect major American cities. In Chicago, the hapless police brass are chasing their tails; in Philadelphia, hardened criminals are being set free; and, in DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser is more interested in creating a Black Lives Matter Plaza than in preventing her citizens from being murdered.

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Acquisition of Quirem Medical in 2020 and the creation of the Global TIO team in 2021 creates great opportunities to leverage the broad Terumo technology base in interventional oncology for improved cancer care

Terumo Europe and University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC Utrecht) have announced that they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to recognize the longstanding partnership in the field of oncology.

In the past years, both parties have successfully collaborated in technology transfer, product development and the advancement of clinical evidence in the field of Selective internal radiation therapy, referred to as SIRT (also known as Radioembolization, RA or Transarterial radioembolization, TARE) for the treatment of unresectable liver tumors.

The MoU marks the continuation of the existing partnership and confirms the shared interest of both parties to enhance education and innovations to develop meaningful solutions that provide significant clinical benefits to patients with cancer and increase their access to treatments.

"With the acquisition of Quirem Medical in 2020 and the creation of the Global TIO team in 2021, we see great opportunities to leverage the broad Terumo technology base in interventional oncology for improved cancer care. The UMC Utrecht has proven a highly reliable, professional & innovative clinical partner with a strong focus on image-guided therapies in cancer care." Says Ghada Farah, Senior Vice President Terumo Interventional Systems EMEA.

Terumo, a global leader in medical technology, announced on April 12, 2021 the launch of its Global Therapeutic Interventional Oncology (TIO) team. This reflects Terumo's aspiration to be a global leader in the field of Interventional Oncology by focusing on improving patient's quality of life and survival.

"This Memorandum of Understanding underlines the collaboration that is already there for QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and the ambition to collaborate in the broader range of interventional oncology, including tumor ablation and chemoembolization." says Dr Maarten Smits, Interventional Radiologist, UMC Utrecht
18 ICU beds have been added at the institution in partnership with United Way, Bengaluru

US-based Lam Research Corporation has announced the funding of additional critical care facilities at the Hassan Institute of Medical Sciences (HIMS), Karnataka.

As part of the initiative, 18 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds have been added at the institution in partnership with United Way, Bengaluru.

The HIMS support is a result of Lam Researchs previously committed $1 million (Rs ~7.5 cr) for COVID-19 relief efforts in India to provide critical medical supplies and support to health care providers in communities across India.

Rangesh Raghavan, Corporate Vice President and GM, Lam Research India said, Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have focused on supporting the healthcare systems and helping frontline healthcare workers in their fight against the virus. The expansion of critical care infrastructure at HIMS is a step towards the same.

HIMS used Lams donation to obtain critical medical equipment such as pediatric ventilators, ICU cots, multipara monitors, pulse oximeters, infusion pumps, syringe pumps, Pediatric LED laryngoscopes, ventilator circuits, humidified high-flow nasal cannula circuits, and nasal prongs.

Lam Research India has also funded vaccination drives in various Bengaluru-based schools with which its Corporate Social Responsibility organisation engages. Close to 900 adults were vaccinated including parents, siblings, and immediate family members of students, alongside school staff.
New York Festivals (NYF) International Advertising Awards has announced the award winners of three specialty awards.

The Pivot Award

New York Festivals Advertising Awards winners announced New York Festivals Advertising Awards has revealed who won the NYF Best of Show Award and more...

The Signal Award

'SeeHer Lens' Award aims to honour work which amplifies gender equality New York Festivals and The Female Quotient (FQ) has announced a partnership with ANA in the launch of the 2021 NYFA 'SeeHer Lens' Award....

The specialty awards were launched within the 2021 competition, namely; the Genius 100 Inspiration Award, the New York Festivals Pivot, and Signal Awards.Triad Advertisings campaign For a Safe Home for client Ikea was honoured with the 2021 Genius 100 Inspiration Award. Through partnership with local NGOs, Ikea broke the silence on the growing issue of domestic abuse and shined the spotlight on one of its top priorities; gender equality. The award-winning entry supported Ikeas mission to create a better life for the many.Scott Rose, executive director of the NYF Advertising Awards, said, The inaugural year of the Genius 100 Inspiration Award brought in wonderfully impactful work from all over the globe. We look forward to continuing the partnership with Genius, putting a spotlight on inspiration and helping to raise money for incredible groups affecting really change in the world.With the world immersed in a pandemic, NYF unveiled two new specialty awards launched to address the challenges that marketers overcame during the pandemic, the Pivot Award, and the Signal. NYF executive jury selected 2021s Pivot Award and Signal Award winners from entries submitted from 58 countries around the globe.The New York Festivals Pivot Award honours work that demonstrates the most challenging, effective, creative Pivot of a pre-pandemic plan to a new creative plan that bravely delivers ROI within this extraordinary year.Dentsu Japan was honoured with the 2021 NYF Gold Pivot Award for Tuna Scope 2020 for client Tuna Scope and AI Tuna. With strict Covid-19 travel restrictions preventing staff from going abroad to purchase tuna, Kura Sushi succeeded in AI-driven remote purchasing of high-quality stock by sending the Tuna Scope app to plants overseas.Stendahis The Isolated Cinema for Goteborg Film Festival was recognised with the Silver Pivot Award. In a year plagued by a pandemic and the closing of theaters, the festivals theme was Social Distances. The Goteborg Film Festival challenged the world to apply for the only festival pass available, at The Isolated Cinema at the far end of the sea in one of Swedens most barren, windswept, and exposed places  Pater Noster.Dentsu One Manilas campaign Ginebra Frontliner Labels for Ginebra San Miguel earned the Bronze Pivot Award. When a nationwide lockdown and liquor ban were enforced during Covid, popular liquor brand Ginebra San Miguel halted production. To remain in the public eye the brand released reimagined commemorative labels saluting the heroic frontline workers who kept the Philippine economy afloat.NYF launched the Signal Award to honour brave campaigns that cut through the noise of 2020 with the strongest signal addressing issues faced during the year.Verizon Creative Marketing was honoured with the 2021 Gold Signal Awards for The Met Unframed for Verizon. During Covid, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York was forced to close for the first time in over 100 years. Verizon partnered with the museum to reopen its doors virtually by bringing The Met to everyone. Over 30,000 square feet of museum space was rendered into 13 never-before-seen galleries with 46 interactive works of art, providing visitors with a 360-degree experience and the incredible feeling of being inside The Met. Together, Verizon and The Met built a first-of-its-kind art museum, supercharged it with 5G, and redefined what it means to visit a cultural institution in the 21st century.Marc Sobier, executive creative director at Verizon, said, Through the use of art and technology, we hope we were able to bring a little bit of light into a dark year we'd probably all rather forget. To win the gold Signal award is really a tremendous honour for us and our friends at The Met and Unit 9.Wunderman Thompson Italys Social Distancing Whopper for Burger King Italy earned the Silver Signal Award. The campaign introduced the Social Distancing Whopper with three times the onions. This outside of the box communication and action gave people an "alternative" solution for keeping people at their distance during the social distance mandate, onion breath.Bronze Signal Award winner Wunderman Thompson Singapores Born This Way is part of a broader global Lux campaign. The campaign was launched to inspire 50m women by 2025 using content, partnerships, and activations to help them rise above everyday sexist judgements and express their beauty and femininity unapologetically. The winning campaign captured global attention and raised massive support for Caster Semenyas right to compete in the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.To view all the 2021 New York Festivals Advertising Awards winners, go here
WeBuyCars has confirmed that it has purchased the TicketPro Dome in Northgate, Johannesburg. This comes after news broke that the property was sold to a third party that does not operate in the event space. "This will allow the company to increase its footprint in the Johannesburg area as the result of the recently concluded purchase agreement between WeBuyCars and Sasol Pension Fund," the company said in a statement.
How can media professionals help to transform the global food system? This is the big question to be tackled at an upcoming independent dialogue on media engagement ahead of the United Nations Food Systems Summit. Registrations for the dialogue is now open.

The medias role in shaping food systems will be discussed at an independent dialogue ahead of the United Nations Food Systems Summit. Pictured are Prof Lindiwe Sibanda from the ARUA Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems; Dr Brave Ndisale from the FAO; and Dr Naude Malan from the University of Johannesburg.

Social impact of the V&A Waterfront: Henry Mathys, senior manager of social impact will show how the popular tourist attraction has become a life-giving food system hub



Henry Mathys, senior manager of social impact will show how the popular tourist attraction has become a life-giving food system hub Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market: Litha Sabio, a strategic communications consultant for fresh produce markets, will unpack some of the food systems fundamentals. Whilst South Africa is food secure at national level, the country is still food insecure at household level as not all households have access to adequate food



Litha Sabio, a strategic communications consultant for fresh produce markets, will unpack some of the food systems fundamentals. Whilst South Africa is food secure at national level, the country is still food insecure at household level as not all households have access to adequate food Izindaba Zokudla: A senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg and the founder of the Soweto-based farmers lab, Dr Naude Malan, will discuss the importance of seeing the 'system' in the food system.

New TV show puts Mzansi's new era farmers on the map A brand-new show saluting the unsung heroes of Mzansi agriculture hit the small screen on Thursday evening and, the producers say, it's raw, real and cutting-edge - a first for local television...

Liza Bolhmann, the chairperson of the Agricultural Writers Association and communication business partner for Bayer Crop Scienc



Ivor Price, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Food For Mzansi , on the importance of positioning the new face of South African agriculture in the greater food systems discussion



, on the importance of positioning the new face of South African agriculture in the greater food systems discussion Gugulethu Mahlangu, a Gauteng farmer and founder of #FarmSpaces, on engaging with the media as a farmer. Mahlangu has now also extended her popular #FarmSpaces live audio conversations in partnership with Food For Mzansi on Monday nights



on Monday nights Mbali Nwoko, farmer and founder of Green Terrace, who is also breaking barriers as an entrepreneur, speaker, columnist and podcaster

The only way to change Africas future is by making sustainable food systems a priority, says Prof Lindiwe Sibanda, ahead of her keynote address at the historic first independent dialogue on media engagement in the United Nations Food Systems Summit.Sibanda is the director and chairperson of the ARUA Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Pretoria. She will deliver her address during a virtual discussion on Wednesday, 28 July with media professionals from across South Africa set to attend.The dialogue is convened by SABC Education and Living Land, a popular SABC2 magazine programme, in partnership with the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN),and No-Line Communications.Media professionals from across the country are making food systems a top priority amid the Covid-19 pandemic, says Nozipho Ndiweni, the producer of Living Land and event coordinator.Very rarely before have we even touched on the importance of communications and media at a time when, according to the 2021 State of Food Insecurity report, 118 million additional people are facing hunger because of the pandemic.The independent media dialogue leads up to the UN Food Systems Summit in September. It is part of a global series of pre-discussions in which thousands of people are shaping pathways towards food systems that are sustainable, resilient and equitable.It is an indictment on our entire food systems  from production to distribution and disposal  that in 2020, as many as 811 million men, women and children went without enough to eat, says Dr Agnes Kalibata, the UN secretary-generals special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit.Hunger on this scale is a symptom of a dysfunctional food system that buckles under pressure and abandons the most vulnerable first. We need systemic transformation, and this is the aim of the UN Food Systems Summit, but it will be up to member states to pave the way for the changes we urgently need.Dr Sifiso Ntombela, chief economist at the National Agricultural Marketing Council, is confirmed as the facilitator for the independent dialogue on South African media engagement. Welcome remarks will be delivered by Danie Swart, genre manager: education and children at SABC Education, Dr Brave Ndisale, FAO country representative in South Africa; and Dr Thulasizwe Mkhabela, group executive: impact and partnerships at the ARC.Furthermore, an A-list of speakers have been confirmed for the plenary sessions on media and communications engagement and case studies. Participating journalists and public relations experts will look at the following exemplary food systems.I guess the big question for us, as media professionals, is how we can help to transform the global food system, says Ivor Price,co-founder and editor-in-chief. At the independent dialogue, he will speak on the importance of positioning the new face of South African agriculture in the greater food systems discussion.If theres one thing weve learnt during the pandemic, its that people are grappling with emergency levels of acute hunger. At, we are looking forward to leading this important conversation.The media and communications engagement plenary session will focus on all the available methods of conveying food system messages. Other confirmed speakers include:There will also be break-away sessions on how the communications and media fraternity can help each other to improve the general understanding of food systems and promote broader participation in this critical process.
In 2011, Coca Cola launched its Share a Coke campaign in Australia, which was a personalised campaign with the most common Australian names printed on Coca Cola bottles and cans. The result? More than 250 million personalised bottles and cans sold over the summer months to a population of less than 23 million people at the time.

Better customer experience

Customers will provide their personal information if theyre sure their data will be protected, and may participate in surveys, fill out forms and share their preferences. Customer information makes it easier for brands to create personalised marketing messages.



Increase revenue

Brands can get better results by talking to their customers in the digital spaces they occupy.



Build brand loyalty

Personalisation will create better customer satisfaction, build loyalty and word-of-mouth referrals and give brands a competitive advantage

Email marketing

Gather customer preferences through sign up forms and use it to personalise emails to customer persona segments. You will see better open and engagement rates. Be sure to comply with the Protection of Personal Information (PoPI) Act.



Video messaging

Customised video messages, technology and research can help you scale personalised video messages. Segment customers based on their passions and preferences and create video messages to cater to each audience type. These video messages should always be memorable, engaging, relatable and accessible.



Create a seamless customer experience

Build a consistent and seamless customer experience, no matter the touchpoint. Ensure tone and key messaging is consistent whether customers are in-store or accessing your brand online.

What to expect from digital in 2021 A major takeaway from the pandemic is that it permanently changed consumer behaviour, both online and offline, and marketing professionals, businesses and organisations need to adapt to this behaviour change...

This personalisation campaign was so successful it was adapted in other territories, including South Africa. Everyone wanted a can, with their name on it. South Africas Share a Coke campaign went a step further, including a pronunciation guide below each name. A first name is personal and unique. It is a person's identity, and when used in marketing campaigns, it shows customers that their brands of choice acknowledge them, said Desiree Gullan, executive creative director of G&G Digital.Fast forward to 2021. Research proves that personalised emails have a higher click-through rate. When brands incorporate personalisation into their digital marketing strategies, they build stronger relationships with their customers, retain them for longer, encourage word-of-mouth referrals and create better experiences for new customers."Its important for brands to understand their audiences. We can no longer depend on demographics to inform marketing strategies. Customers want their brands to understand them beyond their gender, race and location. Personalised marketing that speaks to individuals with empathy will result in better engagement," Gullan added.A smart personalised marketing strategy will reap the following benefits for your brand."While personalising messages at scale is a contradiction, marketing professionals can personalise to large audiences by segmenting audiences based on the data and ensuring that the messaging segments resonates with those segments," concluded Gullan.Digital marketing trends are always evolving. Your brand has to keep up with the new methods to engage with customers and potential customers and ensure your brand is always top of mind and top of conversation.Award-winning co-founder and executive creative director of G&G Digital, Desiree Gullan has been pivotal in producing many breakthrough digital communications based on deep, strategic insights. From strategy to creative direction, Gullan drives her agency to produce outstanding work and results-driven campaigns that add value to G&G's clients and their consumers.G&G Digital is an award-winning digital agency that creates breakthrough solutions for local and international brands. The team at G&G have a passion for producing quality, strategic digital solutions to assist organisations with their digital brand strategies and communications. All solutions are founded on deep consultation, strategic insights and data. G&G aims to surprise, delight and exceed clients' expectations.For more information, visit gullanandgullan.com or follow on Twitter LinkedIn or Instagram . Please contact Annie Hodes on moc.nallugdnanallug@rp or 083 325 4445.
Though North Carolinas door-to-door vaccine outreach program has been called not confrontational, a health advocacy group said it veers into violating a zone of privacy.

The zone of privacy is civil liberty constitutionally protected in the Bill of Rights first recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) when it determined that the government cant restrict the sale and use of contraceptives, invalidating an 1879 law that the court ruled was a violation of marital privacy.

The courts ruling later became a precedent in the 1973 case of Roe V. Wade, which decided that the government cant excessively restrict a womans right to have an abortion.

Leslie Manookian, president and founder of the Health Freedom Defense Fund Inc, (HFDF), a nonprofit headquartered in Sandpoint, Idaho, told The Epoch Times that the established zone of privacy is being challenged by the door-to-door campaign.

We dont walk up to people and ask them, are you on anti-depressants? Do you have erectile dysfunction? We dont ask people personal things like this for a reason, because its unethical, and because of this zone of privacy, Manookian said. We understand that its not our business to meddle in other peoples businesses, and its not the governments business, either.

Mecklenburg County

Mecklenburg County Public Health Department (MCPHD) in Charlotte, North Carolina initiated a doses-to-doors vaccine campaign that is followed by a mobile clinic to administer shots to those swayed.

The health departments program, which began last week, is a part of a larger campaign spoken about in a speech on July 6 when President Joe Biden said there needed to be a movement to visit each community, neighborhood, and oftentimes door-to-doorliterally knocking on doorsto help the remaining people who arent vaccinated.

Though North Carolina followed suit, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster challenged Bidens door-to-door vaccine campaign by directing the state health board to prohibit the operation.

A Personal Decision

In a July 9 letter addressed to Mark Elam, chairman of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC), McMaster said the decision to get vaccinated is a personal one.

Enticing, coercing, intimidating, mandating, or pressuring anyone to take the vaccine is a bad policy which will deteriorate the publics trust and confidence in the states vaccination efforts, McMaster said. The prospect of government vaccination teams showing up unannounced or unrequested at the door of targeted homeowners or on their property will further deteriorate the publics trust and could lead to potentially disastrous public safety consequences.

In his July 6 speech, Biden didnt specify who would be going door-to-door, though in a July 9 press briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, she said campaigners wouldnt be federal employees but grassroots volunteers such as members of the clergy who would be providing information on vaccines.

White House Responds

In response to a reporter requesting that Psaki address McMasters resistance to the door-to-door campaign, Psaki said, Well, let me first say that the failure to provide accurate public health information, including the efficacy of vaccines and the accessibility of them to people across the country, including South Carolina, is literally killing people, so maybe they should consider that.

Manookian alluded to this and several other media reports that suggest the unvaccinated are killers, and what William Schaffer, a professor in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, called variant factories, implying that an unvaccinated person has the potential to mass-produce, or multiply the virus into mutation, creating a more serious variant down the road.

They are painting the unvaccinated as disease-ridden carriers, Manookian said.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons also spoke out against the campaign in a July 7 tweet: I have directed our health department to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccination would NOT be an effective OR a welcome strategy in Missouri!

DHEC Director Edward Simmer responded in a press release on the departments web page stating that the DHEC will not enact unsolicited door-to-door visits, though Simmer stressed the importance of vaccinations.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra told CNN that its the governments business to know who and who hasnt been vaccinated.

With funding from the American Rescue Plan, the DHHS has invested up to $10 billion to expand vaccine programs into rural areas.

A Health Department Initiative

A spokesperson for The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) told The Epoch Times that the NCDHHS will, however, employ doing door-to-door knocking across the state to ensure that people have the information that they need about vaccinations and can easily and conveniently get vaccinated, and added that the purpose of this initiative is to increase access to historically marginalized populations through outreach and education efforts.

This effort is a part of the Healthier Together initiative, which the spokesperson said is intended to drive demand and increase access to vaccines in marginalized populations.

The initiative is a partnership between the NCDHHS and the NC Counts Coalition, which has released a request for proposals for which community organizations can apply in amounts up to $500,000 in grants to support groups that will help North Carolina achieve its goal of delivering equitable access to vaccines.

The NC Counts Coalition is a nonprofit established in 2017 to assist in achieving an accurate count for the 2020 Census by highlighting undercounted communities.

In Mecklenburg County, Action NC, a nonprofit that addresses social and economic inequality, partnered with the MCPHD to begin the outreach that, as of this week, includes the doses-to-doors program.

Robert Dawkins, political director for Action NC, told WBTV News in Charlotte that doses-to-doors is non-confrontational, and that no one is forcing anyone to take the shot, however, he added that its the job of the health department and Action NC to dispel rumors about the vaccines.

Vaccines and Censorship

YouTube cites medical misinformation when it pulls videos off its platform for allegedly violating its terms and conditions of giving out harmful information.

Manookian said this type of censorship should not only raise concern, but it also speaks to the integrity of the narrative Big Tech says it protects.

The fact that you are not allowed challenge the official narrative, that doctors and scientists who say what is being put by mainstream media is inaccurate, should make thinking person shiver with concern and seriously ask questions about what is going on, because if we cant have an open debate, then somebody is trying to hide something, Manookian said.
High-profile billionaires George Soros and Bill Gates are part of a group that is buying a company that makes rapid COVID-19 tests.

The purchase of Mologic Ltd. was announced by Open Society Foundations, which Soros founded.

A release on the foundations website said the purchase creates Global Access Health (GAH), a social enterprise that will seek to expand access to affordable state-of-the-art medical technology through decentralized research, development, and manufacturing in and for the Global South.

About $41 million will be ponied up by the buyers, which include the Soros Economic Development Fund and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The release said that the companys technology can be used to address tropical diseases such as dengue, bilharzia and river blindness in addition to COVID-19.

The statement said the purchase transitions a world-class for-profit company into a social enterprise and allows it to entirely reinvest its profits in pursuing these goals. This transformation will give it the ability to address gaps in the provision of global diagnostics in low-income communities and regions that profit-focused business has failed to address.

The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully demonstrated the fundamental inequities in global public health, and in particular the crucial importance of access in low- and middle-income countries to low-price, high-quality life-saving diagnostic tools, said Sean Hinton, SEDFs CEO.

The buyout means that a cutting edge commercial business to focus all its resources on solving one of the worlds most pressing public health issues, he added.

The companys tests are essentially screening tests designed to identify the presence of the disease in people who show no symptoms.

In Britain, where the tests are used, the companys so-called lateral flow tests need to be confirmed by a second test before an official diagnosis is given, Forbes reported.

However, according to The Telegraph, the company last month said it planned to sue the British government because Britain has not permitted the test to be used as planned. The statement announcing the purchase did not provide information about the status of any suit.

Roxana Bonnell, a public health expert with Open Society Foundations, said testing needs to be ramped up in many parts of the world, such as Africa.

As we have seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, access to testing is absolutely essential when it comes to containing the spread of contagious disease  an issue that ultimately affects us all, she said in the release.

Testing, or diagnostics, are vital for everyday public health needs, to enable doctors and medical professionals to provide patients with proper treatment as early as possible.

Mologic was founded in 2003 by CEO Mark Davis and his father, Paul Davis, who serves as the companys chief scientific officer. Paul Davis used the same technology used for COVID-19 testing to create the Clearblue home pregnancy test.

Mologics transition into a social enterprise is a deliberate, logical, and natural step for a company focused on delivering affordable diagnostics and biotechnology to places that have been left underserved by the relentless pursuit of profiteering, Mark Davis said in the statement.

With the support of our shareholders, donors, and partners, we have come a long way; we believe we have the people and the skills required for the challenges and opportunities ahead. And we hope this unique transaction will be an example for others to follow.
The Hill identified 56-year old Abdul Latif Nasir as the detainee who has been repatriated to Morocco after in 2016 the Periodic Review Board (PRB) deemed that his detention "no longer remained necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the United States."

Abdul Latif Nasir

Despite this 2016 judgement, no action was taken to move Nasir out of Gitmo either during Obama's final year in office, or Trump's four years. The number of detainees at Gitmo is now at 39. Military documents alleged that Nasir had "traveled to Afghanistan for jihad" and engaged in combat actions against US troops. Trump had previously accused the Obama administration of "returning terrorists to the battlefield" for efforts to send inmates back to their countries of origin.

"The United States is also extremely grateful for the Kingdoms willingness to support ongoing U.S. efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility," the Pentagon said in reference to Morocco. Presumably other repatriations to foreign countries are currently being negotiated.

Of those 39, a whopping 28 have yet to be charged with war crimes or specific criminal or terroristic acts despite being there for two decades. The Bush administration had argued that 'War on Terror' captives were not subject to the Geneva conventions and so could be held indefinitely without trial.

State Department spokesperson Ned Price issued the following statement confirming prior reporting that Biden has reprioritized shutting down Gitmo for good: The president is "dedicated to following a deliberate and thorough process focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population of the Guantanamo facility while also safeguarding the security of the United States and its allies," Price said.

Inside Gitmo, Getty Images

Biden's approach will reportedly be centered on a plan to transfer most of the remaining 39 detainees to foreign countries for these host countries to deal with them legally. This would not, however, include the most infamous prisoner at Gitmo Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the group dubbed the "9/11 five" - believed to be directly behind the 9/11 terror attacks which killed about 3,000 Americans.

The "five" were supposed to stand trial in January 2021 but controversy over transferring them to the continental United States has seen any such request blocked by Congress. This also after Trump previously signed an executive order to keep Gitmo open.

A top former Biden administration official privy to the ongoing discussions said in June of the Biden White House and its "quiet" approach to closing Gitmo: "They don't want it to become a dominant issue that blows up," and further "They don't want it to become a lightning rod. They want it to be methodical, orderly."
President Donald Trump assassinated top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani after reportedly being threatened by General Mark Milley and a group of Israel First GOP Senators who could have had him impeached.



Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley reportedly pressured Trump to sign off on the assassination by telling him "you will be held criminally negligible for the rest of your life if you don't do this," according to the new book "I Alone Can Fix It" by Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.





"I Alone Can Fix It" reports Mark Milley urged Trump to kill Soleimani, warning Trump that he's be "held criminally negligible" if he didn't go through with the assassination. pic.twitter.com/kVD9yZHs90  Eli Clifton (@EliClifton) July 16, 2021

The fashionable media narrative of late is that Milley is the noble general who stood up to Trump. Meanwhile in reality, Milley was privately encouraging Trump to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian general who defeated ISIS, & whose murder by the US could've triggered war. https://t.co/u31jTXTdcn  Aaron Mate (@aaronjmate) July 16, 2021



Michael Bender's new book, "Frankly, We Did Win This Election" backed up previous reporting that Trump carried out the hit to appease Israel First warhawks in the GOP who were threatening to have him impeached.



Excerpts via Nonilex on Twitter:











The New York Times reported last year that it was Senators Lindsey Graham and Tom Cotton who pressured Trump to carry out the assassination.



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Since its foundation 20 years ago, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a bloc founded by Russia and China, has faced questions over its purpose.

But the recent clashes by the Afghan government and the Taliban  which have escalated since the United States made what Moscow and Beijing described as the irresponsible decision to withdraw all troops this year  could prove to be a defining moment for the bloc.

The issue was high on the agenda at an SCO meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe on Wednesday, where Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi urged the SCO to play a key role in achieving peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

He continued that he hoped the group would find a path of regional cooperation that conforms to the trend of the times and plays a bigger role in regional and international affairs.

Observers said Beijing was hoping to use the bloc to gain a foothold in Central Asia  part of its effort to counter US influence  and the situation in Afghanistan was a test case of how it could resolve regional conflict.

It started off in 2001 as the Shanghai Five of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan, a group initially set up to resolve border disputes.

It has since expanded to a eight-member club  with Uzbekistan, India and Pakistan  and aims to address security concerns in Eurasia, particularly what China describes as the three evils of terrorism, separatism and religious extremism.

Four countries  Afghanistan, Belarus, Iran, and Mongolia  hold observer status, while last month Egypt and Saudi Arabia became the blocs latest dialogue partners, joining Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Turkey.
By Rick Sterling

July I8, 2021 "Information Clearing House" - - " CovertAction Magazine" -On Friday July 9 the UN Security Council unanimously agreed to a conditional one-year extension of the Turkey/Syria border crossing at Bab al Hawa. As part of the agreement, the UN Secretary General needs to report regularly on what is happening with the aid going into the Al Qaeda dominated zone. Evidently Russia and China thought the time was not right to insist on principle.

A few weeks ago a friend had sent me a link to a Foreign Policy magazine news story about the Bab al-Hawa crossing, and asked, Is this accurate? What could be wrong with humanitarian aid?

There have been many such stories, both short and long. The essence of them all in Western media is that Bab al-Hawa must be kept open for humanitarian reasons. Many of the articles castigate Russia or any other country, such as China, that were contemplating blocking a renewal of the UN authorization of the border crossing.

There are important facts which Western media stories typically leave out or distort. Here are some reasons why the Bab al-Hawa border crossing should NOT have been renewed:

* First and foremost, the aid is supporting Syrias version of Al Qaeda, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS). They control the region on the Syrian side of the crossing. They are the foreigners and hard-core extremists who invaded Idlib from Turkey in 2015 plus those who left Aleppo and other cities when the militants were defeated by the Syrian army. Even if the United Nations inspects all the trucks going into Idlib province in northern Syria, the truck deliveries are ultimately controlled by HTS (formerly called Jabhat al-Nusra).*

The aid is effectively supporting the partition of Syria. Idlib province, and the militants which govern there, seek to separate permanently from Syria. They are attempting to Turkify the region through sectarian education, promoting the Turkish language and even using Turkish currency.

* The aid violates the United Nations Charter which requires that all member countries refrain from threatening the territorial integrity of another member state. Turkey and the United States are the major violators, since they have military troops illegally occupying Syrian lands. But it is a shame for the United Nations to be complicit through the authorization of aid to the breakaway Al Qaeda-dominated region.

* The aid to northwest Syria is prolonging the conflict instead of helping to end it. It is evident that, after failing to militarily overthrow the Syrian government, Western powers are now using other means to attack Damascus. They continue to interfere in Syrias domestic affairs. Led by the U.S., they have economically attacked Syria while pouring support into the breakaway northwest region.

* Western aid to the Al Qaeda-dominated region distracts from the pain, damage, and destruction which U.S. and European sanctions have wreaked on most Syrians. The Caesar sanctions, imposed by the U.S. amid the Covid-19 pandemic, have had a horrendous impact. By outlawing the Syrian Central Bank and making it nearly impossible to trade with Syria, U.S. sanctions have undermined the Syrian currency. Many goods have increased in price by four and five and even ten times. Like a modern-day gangster, the U.S. has been openly stealing the oil and wheat from eastern Syria. The U.S. has attacked the electrical grid by prohibiting parts, engineering, or construction to repair or rebuild power plants. Caesar sanctions prohibit support for anything government-related, including schools and hospitals.

According to a December 2020 United Nations General Assembly resolution, Unilateral Coercive Measures such as the Caesar law are illegal and a violation of the UN Charter, international law, and international human rights law.

Yet because of U.S. global economic dominance, it is still in force and the U.S. claims the right to prohibit any country, company, or individual from supporting or trading with Syria. This is what makes U.S. claims of humanitarian concern so ironic and cynical.

* The Western aid to Syrians through Bab al-Hawa is discriminatory and serves to divide the country. Before the conflict Idlib province had a total population of 1.5 million persons and the number is LESS today. Much of the population left when the province was overrun by extremists. Some fled into Turkey; others fled to Latakia province to the west. Some opposition militants and their supporters chose to go to Idlib rather than reconcile with the government. For example, when East Aleppo was taken back by government soldiers, there were 8,000 militants and their families transferrednot hundreds of thousands as was incorrectly predicted in the wave of propaganda before East Aleppo was recaptured. So, in contrast to some estimates, there are probably one million or fewer persons in Idlib.

The civilians in northwest Syria are effectively being bribed to live there through cash payments and vastly greater relief. One thousand trucks per month are taking aid into northwest Syria. As noted in an United Nation Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) document, people are incentivized by access to services and livelihoods. This is understandable but the divisive effects are also clear. In contrast, there are about 17 million Syrians living under government control. They are receiving little of the aid. Instead, they are bearing the brunt of vicious U.S. unilateral coercive measures.

measures.

[Source: usaid.gov]

* Aid to civilians in Syria should be distributed fairly and proportionally. This can be done with monitoring or supervision by a respected international agency, such as the Red Crescent / Red Cross. In keeping with the UN Charter, Western countries should respect the political independence of the Syrian government and stop their continuing interference and efforts at regime change.

Weaponizing Humanitarian Aid

There are many Western NGOs crying out about Bab al-Hawa. For example, the International Rescue Committee (IRC)which has often aligned its activities with the interests of U.S. foreign policy and provided a cover for CIA agentshas raised many millions of dollars which should have gone to help all Syrians but has not.

Their literature should be carefully considered, however, becauseaccording to their 2019 tax returnsWestern governments are their main funders at $440 million in 2019.

The CEO, David Milibanda Blairite who served as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in the UKis well compensated at more than $1 million per year and, thus, we can be sure the IRC will keep on message with the U.S. State Department.

Humanitarian aid is big business and has been politically weaponized. While there are many well-meaning people working hard, there are also political agendas at work.

Russia, China and other nations in the UN Security Council may veto authorization of the Bab al-Hawa crossing in 6 or 12 months because it is not what most people assume.

Rick Sterling is an investigative journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

He is active with the Taskforce on the Americas and other organizations including Syrian Solidarity Movement and the Mount Diablo Peace and Justice Center.

Rick has researched and written articles challenging the trend toward corporatization of higher education.

He is an active supporter of KPFA (listener sponsored radio) and Rossmoor Voices for Justice in Palestine.

Rick was a full-time activist in his early years, had a 25-year detour working as an engineer in the electronics and aerospace industries, primarily at UC Berkeley, and has now returned to work full time where his heart is: progressive international causes.

He can be contacted at rsterling1@protonmail.com.
Khadija Ismayilova long ago learned to be paranoid.

The Azerbaijani investigative journalist has been harassed, threatened, and jailed for her award-winning exposes into official corruption. Intimate videos, secretly recorded in her bedroom, have been leaked in an attempt to discredit her. She learned to use encrypted messaging apps and kept up with the latest technology to keep her and her sources safe.

Its like a war, she said of her efforts to stay a step ahead of her countrys authoritarian regime.

Weve been recommending to each other this tool or that tool, how to keep it more and more secure from the eyes of the government.

But in late May, Ismayilova learned that shed lost the arms race to a weapon she hadnt even imagined. Forensic evidence showed that her phone had been secretly infected with spyware, called Pegasus, that could access every single one of its documents, photographs, messages, and contacts. Her entire life had long since been laid bare.

I realized that there is no way, she said with resignation. Unless you lock yourself in an iron tent, there is no way they will not interfere into your communications. Its horrifying.

Credit: OCCRP Khadija Ismayilova, an OCCRP journalist, was stunned to learn her phone had been hacked with NSO Groups Pegasus software.

Once again, Ismayilova believes she has fallen victim to Azerbaijans government  but this time, it had some help in getting to her. Pegasus, the software that breached her phone, is made by NSO Group, an Israeli company of which the regime in Baku is almost certainly a client.

(Neither Azerbaijan nor NSO Group have acknowledged that the autocratic government is using the controversial spyware, although a forensic analysis of another Azerbaijani journalists phone showed it was also infected by Pegasus.)

Co-founded by two high-school friends in 2010, NSO Group specialized in breaking into mobile phones from the very beginning. As the devices spread across the planet, governments eager to listen in came calling. The company grew into a major player in the spyware market, with dozens of clients, over 700 employees, and revenues of $250 million as of 2018.

The company says it licenses its Pegasus software only to governments, and only to help them fight terrorism and crime. But journalists and digital privacy experts have repeatedly found authoritarian regimes using Pegasus to spy on reporters, dissidents, and human rights advocates.

The Pegasus Project The Pegasus Project, a collaborative investigation led by journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and human rights group Amnesty International, reveals dozens of additional victims. It was this project that led to the revelation that Ismailovas phone had been compromised.

And though NSO Group is near the top of the pyramid, its not alone. The company is just one actor in an ecosystem of private cyber intelligence firms, many based in tech-savvy, entrepreneurial, and militarized Israel.

These companies insist that their technology is essential in the battle against crime and that their products save lives. But their success has led to what experts call a democratization of access to sophisticated spyware. Once available only to the few elite intelligence services that could develop it themselves, it can now be purchased by security agencies and law enforcement from Azerbaijan to Kazakhstan, Mexico to Togo.

The spyware companies also feed a lucrative market for the exploits, or bugs, that their software uses to break into victims systems. Since tech companies like Apple and Google fix these as soon as theyre discovered, there is a constant demand for new vulnerabilities that freelance hackers are willing to supply  for a price. Experts say the huge sums spyware companies spend on new exploits dwarf the resources tech companies spend to patch them.

Because theres that very appealing economic incentive, there are always going to be more people finding these things, said Claudio Guarnieri, the head of Amnesty Internationals Security Lab. Manufacturers will always be in  a losing position.

Its just a cat and mouse game, he said. And in this situation, the cat is always ahead.

NSO Groups public-facing website is long on reassuring language, advertising the companys values (accountability and integrity) and presenting a bland mission statement: We work to save lives and create a better, safer world.

Only a single phrase  that NSO Group helps its clients meet the challenges of encryption  betrays any hint of what its technology actually does. (Pegasus, the companys main product, is not even mentioned by name.)

In fact, though NSO Group has been around for over a decade, its website appeared just two years ago, reportedly as part of a new public relations strategy. Stung by repeated negative exposes about misuse of its software, the company decided its previous silence wasnt working.

Co-founder and CEO Shalev Hulio has started making himself available for interviews, in which he has argued that the narrative around the company would be different if he could only divulge its full story.

I can say in all modesty that thousands of people in Europe owe their lives to hundreds of our company employees, he told Israeli outlet Ynetnews in 2019.

Credit: REUTERS/Ammar Awad NSO Group co-founder and CEO Shalev Hulio.

But the new openness only goes so far. Hulio declines to discuss NSO Groups clients, or even to confirm who they are. Asked about specific cases by German newspaper Die Zeit last year, he said it was up to the customers that buy his software to determine who is a legitimate target. Is a lawyer a legit target? A human rights activist, is he a legit target?  Yes or no? A sixteen year old kid? The answer is: it depends.

But though he acknowledged that intelligence work can be a morally ambiguous business  thats what it takes to catch the bad guys sometimes  Hulio insisted to the newspaper that NSO Group was a force for good.

If I knew that, because of our company, human rights were violated dramatically, I would hand in my keys and leave, he said. I didnt found this company to violate human rights. We founded NSO to help law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

This is an origin story he has told on several occasions. After leaving the Israel Defense Forces, he started out selling Israeli products in U.S. shopping malls. He then got together with a high-school friend, Omri Lavie, to found a company that helped mobile operators troubleshoot customers phones remotely.

Sometime around 2009, Hulio said, they were approached by an unnamed European intelligence agency who said they needed help.

Credit: NSO Group NSO Group recently released a transparency and accountability report, which it says will be an annual publication. The report claims that the company rejected over US$300 million in sales opportunities as a result of its human rights review processes.

At the time, security services and law enforcers were desperate to solve what some called the going dark problem: the growing usage of encryption to safeguard messages as they travelled between devices. The trend accelerated after Edward Snowdens revelations in 2013 made clear that U.S. intelligence agencies were conducting mass surveillance online.

Thats when you started seeing pretty much everybody doing it, Guarnieri, the security researcher, said. Apps [with end-to-end encryption] started popping out all over the place.

As a result, he explained, hacking the devices themselves became the only way to intercept communications.

This is exactly where NSO Group excelled. A document detailing the features of the companys Pegasus system, leaked in 2015, renders its capabilities starkly clear: Encryption  and other communications concealing methods are no longer relevant when an agent is installed on the device.

But Pegasus goes far beyond reading messages. Once implanted on a users phone, the system can collect a stunning range of information, including photos, emails, contacts, and data transmitted over other apps, like Facebook and WhatsApp. It can even record live audio and video.

For years, a common way of getting Pegasus installed on someones phone was tricking them into clicking on a malicious link. The tactics used to do so reached astonishing levels of manipulation: Two Mexican journalists were taunted with supposed compromising photos of their partners; another received a plea for help finding a missing daughter with a link to a purported portrait. Just one click, and Pegasus would have been implanted, ready to extract anything and everything.

Credit: Pegasus Product Description / Hacking Team email leak This diagram from a leaked product description of the Pegasus software demonstrates the systems data collection capabilities.

These capabilities were widely publicized for the first time in a 2016 report by Citizen Lab, a research center at the University of Toronto that focuses on human rights and technology. The publication, called The Million Dollar Dissident, used detailed forensics to show how Pegasus had infected the phone of a prominent human rights activist from the United Arab Emirates.

At the time, Citizen Lab researchers said, NSO Groups technology was already impressive.

I think it was the first time we had seen any spyware which could infect the latest up-to-date phone just by tapping on the link, said Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow.

Thats why we chose the name Million Dollar Dissident, said John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher. We want to highlight the fact that real resources were being put into targeting dissidents, not just that it was an afterthought he said. NSO allowed us to make that argument.

More recently, Pegasus has gained the ability to infiltrate phones without resorting to suspicious links  or any interaction at all. In 2019, WhatsApp sued NSO Group for exploiting a vulnerability in which a simple call to the victims device could install the spyware. The victim didnt even need to answer.

One of the biggest problems is that we dont know about the latest thing that Pegasus can and cannot do, said Eva Galperin, the director of cybersecurity at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is actually one of the things that makes it really hard to train activists and journalists how to defend themselves.  Theyre always hearing either outdated advice or incorrect advice.

Theres plenty of need for good advice. Groups like Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have focused on NSO Group in part because the companys software has appeared in so many high-profile cases involving journalists and activists.

In Mexico  reportedly the very first client to acquire Pegasus  the software has been used against journalists and human rights lawyers. Even nutritionists and policymakers who supported a soda tax were targeted by Pegasus exploit links.

Amnesty International found NSO Group software used against a staff member working on human rights issues in Saudi Arabia. Panamas former president, Ricardo Martinelli, has been accused of using Pegasus to illegally wiretap and surveil his political opponents.

About the Project The Pegasus Project found dozens of targets, and thousands of possible targets, of NSO Groups software. Read our FAQ about the project.

By 2018, Citizen Lab had documented NSO Groups software potentially being used in 45 countries. According to the companys recent transparency report, it has 60 clients around the world.

But though NSO Group may be one of the most prominent spyware vendors, its far from alone. An entire ecosystem of surveillance companies has arisen to fulfill a growing demand for off-the-shelf intelligence tools.

When Snowden happened, people were like, we dont have that tech yet, said Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab, referring to the former NSA contractors revelations that the agency had engaged in mass surveillance. A lot of countries were like, how do we get the good stuff?

Because the spyware industrys practitioners tend to be secretive, conducting their business behind closed doors and at invite-only trade shows, it has fallen to advocacy organizations to survey the field. A 2016 report by non-profit rights group Privacy International found 528 surveillance companies plying their trade across the world, mostly based in the United States and Europe  with Israel rounding out the top five exporters.

Ron Deibert, Citizen Labs director, described the products on offer as an off-the-shelf NSA for countries that cant afford it.

Credit: ISS World Europe An advertisement for ISS World Europe, a surveillance industry trade fair taking place this December in Prague. NSO Group is the lead sponsor, with dozens of other surveillance technology companies in attendance.

Think about it this way, he said, referring to a 2017 case involving Ethiopia and another Israeli spyware company. One of the poorest countries in the world, with less than  15 percent Internet connectivity, can nonetheless  go out and undertake a massive global cyber-espionage operation.

Were living in a time when the world is descending into authoritarianism, he said. There are very few countries out there that have robust safeguards in place to prevent abuse of this very powerful, invasive technology.

There are some mechanisms to prevent abuses. Most countries that host spyware companies are party to the Wassenaar Arrangement, an international agreement that promotes transparency in the export of arms and technology that has military uses. Though Wassenaar initially focused on standard military fare like battle tanks and attack helicopters, intrusion software was added to the list in 2013.

Rights groups point out that the extent to which countries actually restrict spyware sales  or treat human rights concerns as a relevant factor  is unknown. As Citizen Lab has noted, sales to countries with notorious records of abusive targeting of human rights defenders occur despite the existence of applicable export controls.

Israel is not party to the Wassenaar Arrangement, but its export rules do use the lists it establishes. As a result, NSO Groups sales to its foreign clients are subject to approval by the countrys defense ministry.

But as a top arms exporter, the Israeli government is influenced by both commercial and strategic considerations.

[Israeli] exports of intelligence equipment can play a particularly important role in strengthening intelligence cooperation [with other countries], says Privacy International, warning that it is unclear how high a priority is placed on the consideration of human rights.

The real problem is that the Israeli regulation is a state secret, said a person familiar with NSO Group who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity. There is no parliamentary oversight. Its all controlled by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.

In a response to reporters inquiries, the Israeli defense ministry said that it approves the export of cyber products exclusively to governmental entities, for lawful use, and only for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counter-terrorism. In case of violations, the ministry said, appropriate measures are taken.

Credit:  The headquarters of the Israeli Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

The Israeli segment of the surveillance industry is especially significant because the country punches far above its weight. The Financial Times has reported that, in 2015, Israeli companies accounted for some 10 percent of the global cyber security market. And according to Privacy International, Israels measure of surveillance companies per capita is more than 10 times higher than the United States.

Among the reasons is the countrys enormous talent pool, with mandatory military conscription, a highly educated and tech-savvy population, and elite intelligence units eager to train promising recruits.

There was this huge pipeline of talent coming out of the military every year, Gadi Aviran, who founded the intelligence firm Terrogence, told the New Yorker in 2019. All a company like mine had to do was stand at the gate and say, You look interesting.

Unsurprisingly, NSO Group is no exception.

Veterans from Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Forces, which is responsible for communications intelligence and has been described as the foremost technical intelligence agency in the world, are known to have helped develop its technology. Even the companys spokesperson, Ariella Ben-Avraham, is a former brigadier general who once held the role of State Chief Censor.

NSO Group has provided plenty of job opportunities for Israels young veterans, with the companys workforce rising to over 700 in recent years. But that doesnt mean all of the exploits its software uses come from the inside.

I imagine theres a good chunk that they discover and develop themselves, said Guarnieri, the Amnesty International security researcher. And theres probably also a good chunk to be acquired from external researchers and brokers. Thats generally how that industry works.

To be clear, though there are rumors, no evidence has emerged that NSO Group has purchased exploits from freelance hackers. But spyware firms need a steady stream of new exploits because technology companies like Apple and Google are constantly patching existing vulnerabilities. Their updates are part of an arms race against freelance hackers who can earn staggering sums discovering fresh, still-unpatched bugs referred to as zero-days.

By the early 2000s, private companies were already reaching out to freelancers for help, offering them bounties for fresh exploits they could package for their customers.

Nicole Perlroth, a New York Times reporter who covers cybersecurity and digital espionage, explored the rise of this market in her best-selling book, This is How They Tell Me the World Ends. Her sources told her about companies that sent middlemen to Eastern Europe with duffel bags stuffed with cash to buy fresh exploits.

By 2013, Perlroth writes, the founder of an annual surveillance trade show estimated that the market for exploits had surpassed $5 billion from nothing 10 years ago.

With so much money to be made, unsavory players flocked to it. One was the Grugq, a South African man who Forbes photographed with a bag of cash and who made a living as a broker, connecting hackers and their exploits with government agencies willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire them. (He said that 80 percent of his revenues come from clients in the United States, illustrating how, as Perlroth writes, U.S. agencies were helping drive a lucrative and unregulated cyberarms race.)

And when Hacking Team, an Italian competitor to NSO Group, was itself hacked in 2015, the leaked emails showed how zero-day exploits were being priced, traded, and incorporated into ever-more-powerful off-the-shelf spyware and sold to governments with the most abysmal of human rights.

Today, some powerful exploits are reportedly sold for $2 million or even $2.5 million, demonstrating the headwinds tech companies face in their efforts to outrun the freelancers.

Galperin from the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that both Apple and Google have teams devoted to hunting for state level actors.

But theyre also in a position where theyre playing whack-a-mole, she said.

Guarnieri also praised Apple for its responsiveness, but lamented that theyre just always going to be behind.

Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab said that governments, civil society, and tech companies need to work together to address the issue. I think its unrealistic to assume that any one of those sectors is going to solve the problem alone, he said.

He noted that litigation, such as WhatsApps recent suit against NSO Group, was a step forward. But in the end, said Deibert, Citizen Labs head, what was needed was public pressure. Things would only change, he said, once people begin to realize this is an industry that inherently causes harm.

When contacted for comment for this project, a law firm responding for NSO Group said that the data used by journalists to point to possible Pegasus infections had been misinterpreted, and reiterated the companys position that its software is not misused by client governments. (Click here to read more of NSO Groups response).

With reporting from Pegasus Project partners including Die Zeit, the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Forbidden Stories.
Once again, patriots are learning the hard way that when you tether your identity to a for-profit institution, youre setting yourself up to be disappointed.

Black Rifle Coffee Company was supposed to be a company that countered the effete stereotypes of other coffee sellers. When Starbucks promised to hire refugees, BRCC pledged to hire veterans. The company ran a promotion donating free bags of coffee to police officers. Its products are adorned in pro-military, pro-police kitsch. Black Rifle was supposed to be the rare company willing to openly market to the majority of America that doesnt enjoy riots, protesting the flag, 13-year-olds getting castrations or double mastectomies, and every other piece of the ideological package that has become Americas de facto ruling ideology.

Sike!

Black Rifle actually hates populists and conservatives. In fact, its willing to pay you to never be their customer again. Thats the takeaway from the companys 7,000-word profile in The New York Times last week.

Sometime in the last few months, The New York Times asked Black Rifle if theyd be interested in an interview. As a proud MAGA-backing coffee company, Black Rifle could have responded in several different ways:

-Ignore them

-Deliver a terse statement

-Ask for a list of questions and give brief, accurate answers

-The Times is the enemy of the American people. F off.

Black Rifle did none of those things. Instead, founder Evan Hafer sat down for a wide-ranging in-person interview. The company posed for a photo shoot. They gave the Times Jason Zengerle everything he needed for a massive story making it absolutely clear how the company really feels about its most enthusiastic supporters.

The Rittenhouse episode may have cost the company thousands of customers, but, Hafer believed, it also allowed Black Rifle to draw a line in the sand. Its such a repugnant group of people, Hafer said. Its like the worst of American society, and I got to flush the toilet of some of those people that kind of hijacked portions of the brand. Then again, what Hafer insisted was a superclear delineation was not too clear to everyone, as Munchels choice of headgear vividly demonstrated. The racism [expletive] really pisses me off, Hafer said. I hate racist, Proud Boy-ish people. Like, Ill pay them to leave my customer base. I would gladly chop all of those people out of my [expletive] customer database and pay them to get the [expletive] out. [NY Times]

Hafers choice of epithet is revealing. One doesnt even have to like the Proud Boys to know that calling them racist is ridiculous. The groups leader is sometime FBI-informant Enrique Tarrio, an Afro-Cuban. It famously attracts Hispanics, Asians, and Polynesians. The Proud Boys are all-male and proud Western chauvinists. Hafer could have called them violent, or stupid, or a potential federal op. But instead, he chose to call them racists, the one slur against them that is completely indefensible.

In other words, Hafer doesnt actually know anything about the Proud Boys. Hes just repeating nonsense talking points fed to him by the Rights enemies, whom he evidently views as a reliable information source.

That pattern recurs throughout the article. The damning revelation of the interview is that, whatever his superficial signaling towards American nationalists, Hafer has thoroughly submitted to the moral imperialism of the left. He accepts their core premises about reality and allows them to define the limits of his worldview.

Hafer and Best were talking in a glorified supply closet in the Salt Lake City offices, where potential designs for new coffee bags were hanging on the wall. One of them featured a Renaissance-style rendering of St. Michael the Archangel, a patron saint of military personnel, shooting a short-barreled rifle. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Hafer knew a number of squad mates who had a St. Michael tattoo; for a time, he wore into battle a St. Michael pendant that a Catholic friend gave him. But while the St. Michael design was being mocked up, Hafer said he learned from a friend at the Pentagon that an image of St. Michael trampling on Satan had been embraced by white supremacists because it was reminiscent of the murder of George Floyd. Now any plans for the coffee bag had been scrapped. This wont see the light of day, Hafer said. [NY Times]

St. Michael the Archangel has been essential to the Christian religion for two thousand years. Millions of Catholics say a prayer to St. Michael after after Mass. As Hafer himself knows, St. Michael is popular with soldiers, veterans, and religious Americans of all stripes. But rather than letting a classic symbol stand on its own terms, Hafer has allowed the hegemonic left to define what it means. A friend at the Pentagon warned him that a two-thousand-year-old iconic symbol was not okay, because a few alleged white supremacists embraced it, whatever that means. So, too bad, no more iconic Christian saint allowed anymore. What other symbols Hafer could be browbeaten into opposing. The Gadsden flag? The American one? It appears the only limit is the Pentagons shame, and given the Pentagon at this moment is paying to surgically mutilate its own soldiers, its not clear any such limit exists.

Black Rifle professes to be eager to put some of its fiercest and trolliest culture-war fights behind it. What I figured out the last couple of years is that being really political, in the sense of backing an individual politician or any individual party, is really [expletive] detrimental, Hafer told me. And its detrimental to the company. And its detrimental, ultimately, to my mission. [NY Times]

Of course, Hafer is entirely wrong. Being political isnt detrimental in the slightest. Virtually every company in America has pledged total monolithic fealty to leftism in the past year, without serious consequence. Its being conservative or a patriotic nationalist that is harmful for a company. Those companies are targeted by regulators. Theyre denied permits for new outlets. They lose their credit card services, their PayPal support, and their bank accounts. Theyre kicked off the Internet by hostile tech companies.

Hafer presents himself as choosing to abstain from politics. But hes not. Instead, hes admitting that he dabbled in pandering to conservatives, then realized it was hard, and not a fight worth having. The commitment was fake.

The sad fall of Black Rifle Coffee Company actually began last November.

Battered, denounced, vilified, imperiled, but unbroken, Kyle Rittenhouse celebrated his first day out on bail by posing for a photo wearing one of the companys branded t-shirts. The Blazes Elijah Shaffer then tweeted out the photo, with the caption Kyle Rittenhouse drinks the best coffee in America.

The tweet was, undeniably, a PR hiccup for Black Rifle, since it gave the impression Black Rifle was sponsoring Rittenhouses defense when it was not. Still, it was a golden opportunity for the company to stand apart from the crowd. Given the American environment in 2020, BRCC could have stood out by simply saying nothing. Or, they could have released a statement clarifying that Black Rifle wasnt directly sponsoring Rittenhouses legal fight, and explained how supporters could do so. Or best of all, they could have seized the opportunity to start supporting Rittenhouse.

Instead, the company did exactly what literally any other company would have done: It aggressively distanced itself from Rittenhouse, and refused to even say his name, calling him only the 17-year-old facing charges in Kenosha. The CEO of Black Rifle made Shaffer delete his tweet.

Heres Eric Hafer explaining their decision.

Now, the companys new profile in the Times shows this wasnt a one-time mistake.

It goes without saying that this is suicidal behavior by the company. The left will never forget or forgive whatever flimsy crimes they believe BRCC is guilty of. The companys leaders have pointlessly and gratuitously insulted their only allies, Americans who crave companies to support that arent in league with a cultural zeitgeist that wants them, their children, their communities, their culture, and their country destroyed. Once the left has finished provoking BRCC into alienating its former allies, they will simply move on to their next target.

In a sense, BRCC is a fitting metaphor for the United States itself. Just like BRCC, the USA as an institution despises and trashes the people who actually love it; meanwhile the people it favors instead will never love the country or even care what happens to it. When the last American patriot finally gives up and peels the flag decal off his car, that will be it. Patriotism wont have shifted to the left. It will simply be dead.

But there is a deeper and more important point to this entire episode, a point that transcends Black Rifle itself: The right must stop fetishizing every company that panders to them, and they must move on from their embarrassing worship of the modern American military.

This entire episode only happened because of how trivially easy it is to pander to the American right. Black Rifle just slapped guns, camo, and the flag on whatever it could, added a dose of performative masculinity (Want to prove youre manly? Just say fuck a lot!), and then raked in cash exploiting the same demographic that likes to own the libs by buying overpriced Dr. Seuss books on eBay.

A quote from Black Rifles relatively new corporate America co-chief executive Tom Davin hints at a new strategy to completely abandon conservative America in favor of becoming yet another Manly Bacon Man Kitsch brand like Dollar Shave Club or Harrys Razor Blades.

Tom Davin, a former executive at Taco Bell and Panda Express who two years ago became Black Rifles co-chief executive, says: Our customer is driving a tricked-out Ford F-150. Its blue-collar, above-average income, some college-educated, some self-made-type people. Its people who shop at Walmart rather than Target. [NY Times]

The companys ads are indistinguishable from a parody that would appear in a Grand Theft Auto video game:

Make a list of anything Reddit has considered manly over the past decade, and chances are BRCC has marketed with it. Bacon? Yep.

Chicks in bikinis? Yep.

Over-the-top heckin coolerino shlock like guys with lasers riding sharks? Yours for just $26.99.

In many ways, the imagery that Black Rifle indulges is actively harmful. Male-to-female transsexuals famously have a cartoonish, porn-influenced, stereotypical idea of what being a woman is like. Thats why drag queens have such a garish, over-the-top look. BRCC ads evoke the same idea, but for men. Their target demographic is, in a sense, male-to-male transsexuals. The ads reduce veterans from citizen soldiers to a pantomime of desperate masculinity, guys who need tattoos, whiskey, and twenty-seven different guns to feel like real men. BRCC ads are supposed to trigger snowflake liberals, but theyd be just as crass and ridiculous to a World War 2 veteran in 1946.

Many members of the military are heroic individuals, worthy of admiration and emulation. But many other members are not, and increasingly the worship of the modern American armed forces serves to distract from how wastefully American troops are used abroad, and the sinister way the Pentagon is transforming Americas security into a social science experiment.

Kyle Rittenhouse is braver and more admirable than most of the soldiers conservatives are reflexively trained to worship. The average American soldier fights in conflicts that have either no bearing on Americans safety and well-being, or a negative bearing on both. Rittenhouse, on the other hand, selflessly put himself in peril to protect his own community from marauding psychopaths. American troops are rewarded with college tuition, pensions, and affirmative action for millions of federal jobs. Rittenhouses reward for defending his fellow Americans is personal ruin, a potential lifelong prison sentence, and denunciations from cowards. If Black Rifle had an outlet in Kenosha, Kyle Rittenhouse would have risked his life to defend it. But Black Rifle wont even risk unpopularity to defend him.

So what should patriots do going forward? Well, if you like coffee, buy coffee. If you can give money to a company that shares your values, or avoid giving money to one that hates them, even better. But stop tethering your identity to specific corporations, and stop being an easy lay for slick marketers who try to impress you by putting a gun on a coffee mug. Fundamentally, it is liberals who derive meaning from brand allegiance and living life as contrived stereotypes (this is why they are so attached to identity politics). Americans of all political affiliations must adhere to something greater: Family, traditional values, and enduring, inherited institutions that dont treat them as marks from which to grift another dollar.
The largest wildfire in the US so far this season is so massive that its causing mayhem with the weather itself, The New York Times reports

A FOREST FIRE IN OREGON IS SO HUGE THAT ITS GENERATING FREAK LIGHTNING STORMS"NORMALLY THE WEATHER PREDICTS WHAT THE FIRE WILL DO. IN THIS CASE, THE FIRE IS PREDICTING WHAT THE WEATHER WILL DO."

The Bootleg Fire in Southern Oregon has already burned 530 square miles of forest and grasslands over the last two weeks, spurred by heat waves linked to climate change  a bad omen, in other words, of whats still in store for us.

The fire is so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that its changing the weather, Marcus Kauffman, a spokesman for the state forestry department, told the Times. Normally the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do.

Fire Monster

Fires capable of determining their own weather patterns are extremely hard to fight for teams on the ground. The erratic conditions are even forcing firefighting personnel to retreat to safer locations.
An incoming college freshman was denied admission to her dream school and lost $200,000 in scholarships because she would not get vaccinated against coronavirus due to a pre-existing medical condition.

Olivia Sandor, 18, said Brigham Young UniversityHawaii (BYUH) denied her fall admission due to state and college vaccination requirements, despite the fact that they had already awarded her scholarship money.

Sandor, who suffers from Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), shared her story on Sean Hannity's Fox News program on Monday night and explained how she'd requested an exemption from the school's vaccination requirement after her team of medical providers advised against her getting the COVID-19 shot.

But the university denied her request for exemption - and told her to re-enroll after getting vaccinated.
(The Center Square)  Texas oil and natural gas industry supported more than 2.5 million total jobs statewide in 2019, a new analysis found, contributing the most to the states GDP and total income of any industry.

Texas oil and gas industry contributed $411.6 billion to the states gross domestic product, including $251.2 billion to the states total labor income in 2019, the report found.

The findings show how the oil and gas industry plays an indispensable role  in providing jobs and investment that benefits every community and all Texans, Texas Oil and Gas Association President Todd Staples said in a statement. The industry provides the socio-economic underlying foundation of Texas public school, university and public infrastructure funding, he added, contributing the most to school districts and higher learning institutions in the state.

The industry will also serve as the foundation for long-term growth and prosperity iin Texas, American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said, as long as policies remain in place to enable it to grow.

Texass economic outlook is brighter when we are leading the world in energy production, he said, reminding lawmakers about whats at stake if policymakers restrict access to affordable, reliable energy and make us more dependent on foreign sources.

The 134-page report, which evaluated the oil and natural gas industrys impact on Texass economy, was conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). The report is based on the latest economic data available from several government agencies.

According to the findings, in 2019, the industry directly and indirectly supported more than 2.5 million jobs (620,330 direct and 1,888,540 indirect) or 13.9% of Texas total employment. For every direct job in the oil and natural gas industry, an additional 3.5 jobs were created.

The industry also contributed 22% to the states total income and to its GDP.

It contributed $251.2 billion in labor income ($134.3 billion direct and $116.9 billion indirect), accounting for 21.8% of the states total income. It also contributed $411.5 billion to Texass gross domestic product ($230.9 billion direct and $180.6 billion indirect), accounting for 22.3% of the states total.

In 2019, the U.S. led the world in oil and natural gas production, with Texas leading the nation.

Nationally, the oil and gas industry supported more than 11.3 million total jobs (2.5 million direct and 8.8 million indirect), accounting for 5.6% of all U.S. employment in 2019. It also produced $892.7 billion in labor income ($318.6 billion direct, $574.1 billion indirect), or 6.8% of the nations total labor income.

The industry also contributed $1.7 trillion to the national gross domestic product ($763.3 billion direct, $925.3 billion indirect), accounting for 7.9% of the national total.
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After the provincial government announced its intentions to assist more internationally educated nurses in receiving their Manitoba licences, interest has been high, according to a Monday media release.

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After the provincial government announced its intentions to assist more internationally educated nurses in receiving their Manitoba licences, interest has been high, according to a Monday media release.

Economic Development and Jobs Minister Jon Reyes and Health Minister Heather Stefanson stated that 1,210 online applications were received in the first week since they opened.

The project, called Internationally Educated Nurses in Manitoba, provides up to $23,000 per approved nurse to help cover the cost of receiving their Manitoba licence.

"The overwhelming response so far shows the need to remove barriers for nurses with foreign credentials so they can work here in Manitoba, and it is evident how beneficial this new initiative will be for all Manitobans, our health-care system and our economy," Reyes stated in the release.

"Once internationally educated nurses identify themselves through the online application process, we will be able to determine the best supports available to them, such as referral to language classes and other services, assistance navigating the licensing pathway, and financial support to get these skilled individuals recognized and able to work in their chosen career in Manitoba."

Interested nurses can apply online at forms.gov.mb.ca/iens-in-manitoba.

 The Brandon Sun
Members of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum had a major reason to celebrate on Monday, outside of the fact they can now reopen their doors to the public.

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Members of the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum had a major reason to celebrate on Monday, outside of the fact they can now reopen their doors to the public.

After all, July 19 marks the 80th anniversary of the grand opening of the #12 Service Flying Training School, which was established in Brandon in 1941 to help prepare members of the British Commonwealth to combat the Axis powers during the Second World War.

To properly commemorate this milestone, executive director Stephen Hayter invited certain patrons, volunteers and members of the city to view the museums vast collection of trainer aircraft that were active when the school was up and running.

While museum volunteers couldnt take one of these vehicles out for a ceremonial flight due to Mondays cloudy weather, the gathering still provided Hayter with the opportunity to provide some insight regarding the schools intricate history.

Hayter explained how this flying school represented just one of more than 200 training locations that were set up across the country following the establishment of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in 1939.

Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum president John McNarry presents Brandon Mayor Rick Chrest with a replica Service Flying Training School crest during Monday's 80th anniversary celebration. (Kyle Darbyson/The Brandon Sun)

This initiative represented a collective effort between nations such as Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand that ended up preparing more than 130,000 aircrew trainees for combat.

"They had to train the right people at the right time and make it work," Hayter told the Sun. "It would have been a huge organizational nightmare, but they managed it."

While Brandons Service Flying Training School closed its doors following the end of the war, Hayter said all of its various facilities were absorbed by the city and used for a variety of purposes, such as housing the current municipal airport.

Museum pilot Nick Reeder and chief pilot Mark Odegard conduct an annual inspection on a late 1930s Stinson 105 at the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum on Monday. (Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun)

"The airport really was successful because it had all this infrastructure, including runways, that the military put into place," he said. "So it was perfect for the airport to move from its First Street location up to this location."

However, some of the old Service Flying Training School facilities started being used for a whole new purpose in 1980, when local veterans, historians and city officials banded together to establish the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum.

During Mondays celebration, Brandon Mayor Rick Chrest told the crowd about how he was involved with establishing this museum from the very beginning, when RCAF flight instructor Wes Agnew was looking for some space to house his vintage trainer aircraft.

Chief pilot Mark Odegard and museum pilots Jeff Bell and Nick Reeder talk in front of a 1940 North American Aviation Harvard Mk. II during the 80th anniversary of the opening of #12 Service Flying Training School at the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum on Monday. Bell flies the Harvard, which is the oldest Harvard left flying in the world. (Photos by Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun)

"Ive literally been able to watch it come together over this roughly 40 years," said Chrest, who was working on behalf of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce at the time.

"And (its amazing) to see the magnitude, the quality and the prominence that this facility and all of its archives have really become, not just as a national treasure, but as an international treasure."

Museum president John McNarry used his time at the microphone to acknowledge the pivotal role the City of Brandon has played in keeping the regions aviation history alive, and expressed his gratitude by presenting Chrest with an original Service Flying Training School emblem.

The Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum celebrated the 80th anniversary of the opening of #12 Service Flying Training School on Monday. (Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun)

"The city actually owns the site and they own the buildings  so were a team," McNarry said. "And Im really looking forward to that continuing to grow and the museum to develop and become a truly first-class, world-standard museum."

On top of the 80th anniversary celebration, Monday also represents the first time in more than two months the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum members were able to open their doors to the public.

Thanks to the provinces new COVID-19 health orders, museums across the province can now operate at 50 per cent capacity, with only fully vaccinated people being allowed inside for now.

Museum pilot Jeff Bell explains the cockpit of a 1940 North American Aviation Harvard Mk. II on Monday. (Tim Smith/The Brandon Sun)

Unvaccinated children under 12 may also visit these facilities if they are accompanied by fully vaccinated members of their household.

Hayter told the Sun that his volunteers and summer students have gone out of their way to make the transition as smooth as possible for returning patrons by incorporating plenty of hand sanitizer, physical distancing measures and other safety protocols.

"Were just grateful that were at a point in this pandemic where we can have an event thats  partially with the public," Hayter said. "Were getting back to doing the things that we were meant to do, and thats promoting our history and getting the public aware of it."

Anyone interested in watching a video of Mondays 80th anniversary celebration can do so by visiting the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museums various social media accounts.

 kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

 Twitter: @KyleDarbyson
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government is "extremely concerned" about recent reports that Muslim charities are being unfairly targeted for federal audits and sanctions.

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes selfies with community members at the Hamilton Mountain Mosque after speaking to the congregation to recognize Eid al-Adha in Hamilton, Ont., Tuesday, July 20, 2021.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston

OTTAWA - Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government is "extremely concerned" about recent reports that Muslim charities are being unfairly targeted for federal audits and sanctions.

Trudeau told a news conference Tuesday the Liberal government is looking "very closely at our processes," adding it is unacceptable to single out any particular community.

"We do have important work to do to make sure that charitable organizations are following all the rules involved," Trudeau said.

"But recognizing that systemic racism exists in all of our institutions, in all of our governments and all of our organizations, means listening to communities who point out barriers or discrimination that they're facing and pledging to work with them to solve these challenges."

Almost 100 Muslim organizations and civil society groups wrote to Trudeau this week asking the Liberals to announce reforms to the Canada Revenue Agency's practices on Thursday at a national action summit on Islamophobia.

They also want the government to overturn the revenue agency's recent decision to suspend the ability of long-established charity Human Concern International to issue tax receipts following an audit.

The organizations point to a June report by the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group that said the revenue agency's Review and Analysis Division works with national security agencies to carry out its audits, with little accountability.

In response to the report, the revenue agency said it does not select registered charities for audit based on any particular faith or denomination, adding it is firmly dedicated to diversity, inclusion and anti-racism.

Charities, non-profit organizations and supportive civil society voices flagged their concerns in a letter last month to Trudeau and several members of his cabinet.

In a followup letter this week, a number of the same groups joined other signatories in saying Muslim-led charities have for years expressed concerns about the selection, frequency and reasoning behind audits of their organizations.

Human Concern International represents the most recent example of many Muslim charities unfairly revoked or suspended by the Review and Analysis Division, the letter says.

The groups want the government to refer the issue to the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency in order to examine the division's overall processes, and specifically its selection of Muslim charities for audit, to ensure organizations are not being targeted due to racial or religious prejudice.

"Targeting Muslim charities on the basis of terrorist financing suspicions simply because of the religion they uphold is Islamophobic and prejudiced," the letter says. "Dismantling such prejudice is the first step in fighting institutional Islamophobia in the CRA."

Asked Tuesday what ordinary people can do to fight discrimination, Trudeau said Canada is not a country that happened by accident.

"It took people coming together to overcome their differences to build this country we live in now," he said.

"It's on all of us to continue to be vigilant, to listen to each other, to get to know each other, and to work together to build a better future. Government needs to lead on that."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
OTTAWA - Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is sounding a note of hope that Canadians who mixed and matched COVID-19 vaccines will not have a problem crossing borders in the months ahead.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc speaks during a news conference Tuesday October 6, 2020 in Ottawa. LeBlanc is sounding a note of hope that Canadians who mixed and matched vaccines will not have a problem crossing borders in the months ahead.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc is sounding a note of hope that Canadians who mixed and matched COVID-19 vaccines will not have a problem crossing borders in the months ahead.

While Canadian health authorities say recipients of a Moderna dose should not hesitate to have Pfizer-BioNTech as their second jab  or vice versa  the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has so far been reluctant to sanction the practice, saying it should only be done in "exceptional situations."

The differing views raise questions about how easily Canadians who mixed and matched will be able to cross into the United States once it opens its land borders to its northern neighbour.

Meanwhile many European countries do not recognize the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine made at the Serum Institute of India, known by the brand name Covishield, meaning Canadians who received it could find themselves barred from entry.

LeBlanc said data sharing and conversations between health bodies across the globe "will, we believe, over time lead to an evolution and an adjustment" of the more conservative approach of some countries' regulatory authorities.

"We don't expect this to be a static circumstance. And I think over the next number of weeks and months there may be revisions provided by health authorities around the world with respect to these vaccine regimes," he said at a virtual news conference Tuesday alongside Canada's deputy chief public health officer.

Dr. Howard Njoo highlighted studies on mix-and-max inoculation that point to its effectiveness, saying that falling case counts and death tolls in Canada reinforce the finding.

"That's adding to the body of science," he said. "The proof's in the pudding.

"Hopefully we can get to a place where we do make it easier for citizens of individual countries to be able to travel to other countries with a more common approach."

As of Aug. 9, fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to enter Canada without quarantining so long as they provide proof of vaccination and the results of a negative COVID-19 test no more than three days old, prior to departure.

The same rules will be extended to fully vaccinated travellers from around the world as of Sept. 7.

Officials in Canada and a range of other countries  Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Sweden among them  have authorized people to follow one dose of AstraZeneca with a different vaccine.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received a shot of AstraZeneca, which has been potentially linked to a rare blood clotting disorder, in April and a Moderna dose earlier this month, a sequence not approved by U.S. regulators.

Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization changed its guidelines last month to allow Moderna or Pfizer to follow an initial dose of AstraZeneca.

Potential barriers to travellers go beyond border restrictions. Several cruise lines are refusing passengers who mixed and matched to any degree, including Norwegian Cruise Line.

Princess Cruise Lines, Holland America Line and Carnival Cruise Line say customers injected with a vector vaccine such as AstraZeneca followed by an mRNA vaccine such as Pfizer or Moderna are not considered fully vaccinated. However, a combination of Pfizer and Moderna will open the gangway to guests.

On Tuesday, LeBlanc defended the government's recent decision to scrap the arrival test for fully vaccinated travellers  except for random screenings  while maintaining the pre-departure test.

Health Canada's expert panel on testing and screening had recommended turfing the pre-departure test and keeping the arrival test to better insulate Canadians from coronavirus variants.

The importance of having an arrival test, whether its a random arrival test for those who are fully vaccinated or an obligatory test for those that arent, is one of the essential elements in tracking data on whether vaccinated people can in fact carry the virus or  with respect to potential variants of concern," LeBlanc said.

Njoo added that a pre-departure test can weed out most doubly vaccinated virus carriers. Meanwhile arrival tests have yielded positive test results in percentages that "are fractions below one per cent for both the air and land travellers," rendering them virtually unnecessary for the fully inoculated, he said.

Pandemic indicators continue to trend downward across Canada.

Total active COVID-19 cases have fallen below 4,700 for the first time since late August 2020, Njoo said, with about 400 new cases reported daily.

There are 87 per cent fewer people in hospital each day than at the peak of the third wave in April, while an average of nine deaths are reported daily, he said.

More than 45 million doses have been injected, equating to more than 26.5 million recipients  or 80 per cent of eligible people  with one at least one shot. More than 57 per cent of eligible Canadians are now fully vaccinated.

"This is great news because the more people who get vaccinated, the stronger our vaccination firewall will be," Njoo said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
FREDERICTON - Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the most recent efforts to disentangle a pair of endangered North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear were unsuccessful.

Campobello Whale Rescue Program members attempt to remove fishing gear from a North Atlantic right whale named Snow Cone in this handout image on Thursday July 8, 2021. Members of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team spent the weekend searching for a five-year old male whale that was recently spotted entangled in fishing gear. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Campobello Whale Rescue Program*MANDATORY CREDIT*

FREDERICTON - Fisheries and Oceans Canada says the most recent efforts to disentangle a pair of endangered North Atlantic right whales from fishing gear were unsuccessful.

The department said today in an email members of the Campobello Whale Rescue Team searched for a five-year-old male whale that was recently spotted entangled in gear but were unable to locate the animal.

The group said last week the first entangled North Atlantic right whale reported in Canadian waters since 2019 appeared badly injured.

Fisheries and Oceans Canada says another entangled whale, named Snow Cone, was spotted over the weekend but the team was unable to track the animal.

The department says efforts will continue to locate both whales and to attempt to disentangle them from fishing gear if possible.

Since June 2017, an unusually large number of the whales have died, reducing the population to fewer than 400 animals.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
A national strategy to fight anti-Muslim hate across society is one of 61 recommendations released Monday by the National Council of Canadian Muslims ahead of a summit on Islamophobia to be held later this week.

A woman visits a memorial tribute to the victims of the deadly vehicle attack on five members of the Canadian Muslim community in London, Ont., on Monday, June 14, 2021. Ahead of a national summit on Islamophobia being held this week, the National Council of Canadian Muslims has released a lengthy list of policy recommendations for elected officials to consider.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

A national strategy to fight anti-Muslim hate across society is one of 61 recommendations released Monday by the National Council of Canadian Muslims ahead of a summit on Islamophobia to be held later this week.

The organization hosted events on Monday in cities that have experienced crimes targeting Muslims in recent years, including Quebec City, the Greater Toronto Area, Edmonton and London, Ont., where last month four members of a family were killed while out for a walk. It used the events to unveil its 61 recommendations for policymakers ahead of Thursday's national summit, a virtual event.

Mustafa Farooq, chief executive officer of the NCCM, told reporters in southwestern Ontario the recommendations target every level of government and were compiled following consultations with members of the Muslim community across the country.

We need to see action and we need to see it now, Farooq said. Governments attending the summit must know that we want more than their attendance, we want to see their commitment to timelines.

More than half of the recommendations are directed toward the federal government and include the creation of a strategy to fight Islamophobia within the civil service and the wider Canadian society. The group suggested Ottawa create a special envoy to deal with Islamophobia and to investigate alleged profiling within the Canada Revenue Agency and national security agencies, Farooq said.

Other recommendations consist of amending the Criminal Code to include specific penalties and dedicated prosecutors for hate crimes involving assault, threats, mischief and murder. The group also wants the government to no longer require the attorney general's consent before hate-based and genocide cases are prosecuted.

For provinces, the recommendations include teaching about Islamophobia in schools, an accountability system for police hate-crimes units and the prohibition of white supremacist rallies.

In Quebec City, the announcement took place outside the Islamic Cultural Centre, the site of a deadly shooting in January 2017 that left six men dead and others seriously injured. "The reality is Canada has suffered more mass killings in the past five years than any other country in the G7, Farooq said. This cannot be allowed to continue.

Nusaiba Al-Azem, second vice-chair of the London Muslim Mosque, said the summit shouldn't be seen by politicians as a one-off. As we stand here a few days before the summit to take place, we want to use this opportunity to remind our elected officials that this summit is not, should not and cannot be the end, Al-Azem said.

It's simply a means from which we expect tangible change to take place at all levels of government.

Of the 61 recommendations, Al-Azem highlighted one calling on the attorney general to intervene in all challenges to Quebec's secularism law, known as Bill 21. The law, adopted in June 2019, prohibits public sector workers who are deemed to be in positions of authority, including teachers, police officers and judges, from wearing religious symbols at work. It makes pre-emptive use of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' notwithstanding clause, which shields legislation from court challenges over violations of fundamental rights.

Al-Azem said the law disproportionately affects Muslim women as well as Jews and Sikhs. If I wanted to move to Quebec and work for the office of the Crown, (I) would be forced to choose between either practising my faith or my profession, (so) I feel particularly strong about Bill 21, a law that in the year 2021, polices and regulates womens attire, religious freedom and our freedom of expression," she said.

The summit Thursday of community and political leaders, academics and activists is one of two this week aimed at fighting hate crimes. A similar virtual meeting on anti-Semitism is scheduled to take place Wednesday. The reality is that attacks on racialized minorities, whether its attacks on Muslims, Indigenous folks, Black folks, Sikh folks, Jewish folks, it implicates all of us as Canadians, Farooq said.

A spokeswoman for Diversity and Inclusion Minister Bardish Chagger said Monday the government will work directly with organizations like the council and takes it recommendations seriously.

"I can tell you that our government hears the Muslim community loud and clear, that more action needs to be taken to protect Muslim communities against hate and discrimination fueled by Islamophobia," said press secretary Aidan Strickland. "We take all recommendations seriously, and will remain committed to listening to the communities with lived experiences to inform our actions to create a diverse and consciously more inclusive Canada for all."

Calls for the Islamophobia summit came after Madiha Salman, 44, her husband, Salman Afzaal, 46, their 15-year-old daughter Yumna Salman and Afzaal's 74-year-old mother, Talat Afzaal, were run down by a driver in London, Ont., in June. The couple's nine-year-old son, Fayez, was seriously injured in the attack.

Real change is the true and only measure of success and accountability of this summit," Al-Azem said. "So that we can all collectively ensure that no other community will ever have to open its doors to tens of thousands of mourners like we did here in London on June 8."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2021.
WASHINGTON - Fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents will be allowed into Canada as of Aug. 9, joined by the rest of the world Sept. 7, federal officials announced Monday as the country prepares to lower border barriers that were erected to limit the spread of COVID-19.

The United States border crossing is seen on March 18, 2020 in Lacolle, Que. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

WASHINGTON - Fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents will be allowed into Canada as of Aug. 9, joined by the rest of the world Sept. 7, federal officials announced Monday as the country prepares to lower border barriers that were erected to limit the spread of COVID-19.

However, the United States is not currently planning to reciprocate by easing travel restrictions on would-be Canadian visitors hoping to go south of the border.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said he briefed Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas about the steps Canada intended to take, but got no indication that the U.S. would be following suit before the existing restrictions are set for renewal on Wednesday.

"He indicated to me at this time they have not yet made a decision; they anticipate their measures would likely be (extended) on July 21," Blair told a news conference announcing the changes.

"They are obviously considering additional measures and data, but at the present time they have not indicated any plan to make any changes in the current border restrictions that are in place."

That imbalance is sure to aggravate domestic political tensions around the border issue in the U.S., where a growing chorus of congressional lawmakers have been pressing President Joe Biden and his officials to embrace their vaccination success to date and ease international travel restrictions.

Rep. Brian Higgins, the New York member of Congress who has spearheaded the American campaign, said as much in a statement Monday as he cheered the Canadian measures.

"It is extremely frustrating that the U.S. government has failed to reciprocate current family exemptions already allowed by the Canadian government and failed to show a lack of urgency to make any progress on this side of the border toward lifting restrictions," Higgins said.

"The U.S. has neglected to give reopening the northern border the serious attention it deserves, and there is no excuse. Failure to co-ordinate this announcement in a binational way will only lead to confusion among travelers."

Political observers in both countries have pointed to the onset of the Delta variant in the U.S., stubborn vaccination rates and the ever-present challenge of the U.S.-Mexico border as some of the factors at play in the apparent American reticence.

Not long after Canada's plan was announced Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki tried to play down any suggestion that the U.S. should feel obliged to follow suit.

"I wouldn't look at it through a reciprocal intention," Psaki told the daily briefing.

"We are continuing to review our travel restrictions; any decisions about reopening travel will be guided by our public health and medical experts. We take this incredibly seriously, but we look and are guided by our own medical experts."

Canadian officials say the 14-day quarantine requirement will be waived beginning the second week of August for eligible travellers who are currently residing in the United States and have received a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use by Health Canada.

The move comes two weeks after the Canada Border Services Agency began waiving quarantine rules for fully vaccinated Canadian citizens and permanent residents  a move that prompted an unsurprising spike in the number of travellers seeking to enter the country.

But Canada is nowhere near being out of the woods just yet, said Health Minister Patty Hajdu, who seized on the chance to encourage more Canadians to get vaccinated.

"It has been nice to be able to see friends and family this summer, but we do see international evidence that the pandemic is not over," Hajdu said.

"Thanks to the hard work of Canadians, things are much better here in Canada, and our progress has been hard won. It is very important, and we cannot risk it."

Children under 12 who are accompanied by fully vaccinated and eligible family members will also be exempt from quarantine, provided they wear a mask in public places and avoid indoor group settings, such as classrooms and summer camp.

All travellers will still be required to submit a negative COVID-19 test result and proof of vaccination prior to arrival by way of the ArriveCAN smartphone app or web portal, but post-travel test results will no longer be necessary for those who are fully vaccinated.

Canada Border Services Agency officials will also be randomly subjecting vaccinated travellers to a mandatory molecular test upon arrival.

As of Aug. 9, airports in Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Edmonton will also be added to the list of Canadian cities where international flights are permitted to land. Air travellers will no longer be required to spend the first three nights of their quarantine at a government-approved hotel.

A ban on flights from India, however  where the Delta variant of COVID-19 has been wreaking havoc for weeks  will remain in place until at least Aug. 21.

All travellers will still be required to provide a quarantine plan and be prepared to quarantine, in the event it turns out they do not meet the necessary requirements, the government added.

Reaction to the decision in Canada was a swift thumbs-up, particularly from business stakeholders, airport authorities and travel industry executives  provided the changes don't result in logistical snafus and lengthy delays at border crossings.

"The establishment of clear guidelines and dates will instill confidence and enable individuals and businesses to make plans. It will also provide much-needed hope for Canada's hard-hit travel, tourism and hospitality sectors," said Goldy Hyder, president and CEO of the Business Council of Canada.

Perrin Beatty, who heads up the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, said it's high time for Canada to modernize its border control measures with a secure, bilateral system of exchanging digital health credentials  particularly if delays result in fewer shorter incidental visits.

"We are concerned that the costly and cumbersome procedures that remain for fully vaccinated travellers will discourage short visits, including many business trips," said Beatty, who flagged border congestion, unvaccinated minors and the eventual U.S. decision as outstanding issues.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2021.
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Chris Sheppard says he's breathing a huge sigh of relief now that international borders between Canada and a clutch of French islands off Newfoundland's coast are set to reopen Aug. 9.

The ferry that travels between the town of Fortune, N.L., and the French overseas territory of St.-Pierre-Miquelon is shown in Fortune, N.L. on Friday, April 16, 2021. Visitors from the French islands off the coast of Newfoundland will be able to the enter the country as of Aug. 9 under the same rules as travellers from the United States. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-Travis Parsons MANDATORY CREDIT

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Chris Sheppard says he's breathing a huge sigh of relief now that international borders between Canada and a clutch of French islands off Newfoundland's coast are set to reopen Aug. 9.

As the executive director of Legendary Coasts, a non-profit promoting tourism in eastern Newfoundland, Sheppard has been leading an effort to get the border open so tourism dollars can flow once again between the two places. He said he hopes to be on the first ferry over to St-Pierre-Miquelon from Newfoundland.

St-Pierre-Miquelon and Newfoundland and Labrador have close tourism ties, but there are also families split across the two jurisdictions, Sheppard said in an interview Tuesday. "It is very special," he said. "These will be the only  international residents that will be allowed in Canada until September."

St-Pierre-Miquelon is a 42-kilometre ferry ride from the town of Fortune, N.L. The French archipelago has a population of about 6,000 and has reported a few dozen cases of COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic. As of Monday, 77 per cent of its eligible residents had been fully vaccinated, Sheppard said. In Newfoundland and Labrador, 40 per cent of eligible residents had been fully vaccinated as of Sunday.

Dominic LeBlanc, federal minister of intergovernmental affairs, announced Monday that fully vaccinated visitors from St-Pierre-Miquelon will be welcomed in Canada beginning Aug. 9, just like visitors from the United States. Travellers from the rest of the world would have to wait until Sept. 7, he added.

St-Pierre-Miquelon is reciprocating the offer. Travellers from Newfoundland and Labrador will be welcome there beginning Aug. 9 as well, Sheppard said.

Premier Andrew Furey had previously written to LeBlanc to express the province's support for some kind of deal to reopen to the French islands. "Our government has advocated for the reopening to St-Pierre-Miquelon given the close ties between us," he said in a news release Tuesday welcoming the development. "It is a time for optimism as we emerge from COVID-19."

Canadians will have to present at the St-Pierre-Miquelon border a negative COVID-19 test taken in the previous 72 hours, and they also need one upon their return to Canada. Sheppard said his group is working with the ferry office to see if they can build a schedule to allow people to leave Newfoundland for St-Pierre-Miquelon and be back within that time frame so they would only need one test for the round trip.

"This is not just about an economic impact, this is about just being humans and the humanity of leaving these people for this long over there," Sheppard said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Matt Idnurm likes to spend the early summer months watching the marine life off St. John's harbour from his first-floor balcony on Water Street downtown.

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - Matt Idnurm likes to spend the early summer months watching the marine life off St. John's harbour from his first-floor balcony on Water Street downtown.

"I sit out here with my binoculars and I watch the whales in the ocean," he said in a recent interview. But this year, he said, "we can't see a bloody thing. All I can see is the black tarp and the tires on it."

Idnurm is bemoaning a pile of road salt sitting more than two-storeys high and occupying more than a ship's length of prime waterfront in Newfoundland and Labrador's capital city. The pile belongs to A. Harvey & Company Ltd., a local firm specializing in marine shipping  and salt.

Each year, the salt is stacked and covered with black tarps to prevent the minerals from flying away. Large, strategically placed tires keep the tarps from flapping in the city's strong winds.

Normally, Idnurm said, the salt is piled in the fall and the mound is tarped around the time the first snowflakes hit the streets. "I put up with it for five or six weeks and I go to Florida." But this year, he said, the pile came early.

Geoff Cunningham, vice-president of operations with A. Harvey & Company, is reluctant to talk about the salt. "It's proprietary information," he said. When asked if he gets curious phone calls about it, he was more forthcoming: "Oh God, yes."

Cunningham said the salt pile acts as a kind of dynamic map of the winter  like a tarp-covered, view-obstructing weather vane, he said. "How's the winter going? Well you can see how the pile is shrinking," he mused.

Last winter didn't involve as much snow as previous years, leaving a lot of leftover salt, Cunningham said. "Some years there's none by the time April comes."

The City of St. John's uses about 31,000 tons of salt on average from the pile each year, and spokeswoman Susan Bonnell said city hall is peppered with questions about the curious sight on the waterfront each season. And while the salt pile blocks some of the best views in town, Bonnell said that's not what's upsetting people.

"The complaints, generally speaking, relate to salt debris forming on adjacent dwellings and vehicles during high winds," she said in an email.

Christina Parker, who owns an art gallery nearby, said the salt heap is the "bane of everyone's existence." Aside from the salt dust blowing around, she said, the monolith is a grim reminder of the winter months ahead. "It's a real downer," she said, laughing.

Milton Spracklin, owner of United Sail Works, the company that makes the tarps for the salt pile, says all that complaining is "silliness."

"You do get a bit of dust that blows around, but I'm going to tell you, on a windy day, when the salt water is being blown off the ocean, it's worse than the dust being blown off the pile," he said in an interview Monday. Besides, he added, if it weren't for that salt, the steep, slippery winter streets of St. John's would be a mess of backwards-sliding cars.

His company makes two new tarps every year to suit the pile, he said, adding that this year's tarps combined weigh about two tons and cover an area about 81 metres long and 152 metres wide  nearly the size of three Canadian Coast Guard polar icebreakers lined up side by side.

The salt comes by ship from the The Magdalen Islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. "The ship hauls up to the side of the wharf, and it has a great big huge conveyor belt, and it dumps the salt right where it's to," Spracklin said. "If they were to truck that salt somewhere else, it would take thousands and thousands of truck loads."

Back on his balcony, Idnurm said he's not too salty about this year's views, adding that he's not planning to stick around for the winter to reap the benefits and drive on safer St. John's roads.

"The view's not good this year but most years, it is," he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times eastern):

People line up at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic in Montreal, on Wednesday, June 16, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson

The latest news on COVID-19 developments in Canada (all times eastern):

7:45 p.m.

Yukon is reporting five new cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number of active infections to 65.

Acting chief medical health officer Dr. Catherine Elliott says in a statement that two of the new cases are in rural communities while locations for the others are still being identified.

She says the territory has seen 527 cases since March 22, 2020, with 458 of them being since June this year.

There have been a total of six deaths related to COVID-19 with four recorded over the past two months.

6:15 p.m.

Alberta is reporting 69 new COVID-19 cases today and two additional deaths.

The province now has 606 active cases.

Ninety-eight of those people are in hospital, with 27 of those patients being treated in intensive care units.

There has been a total of 2,318 deaths in Alberta due to the disease.

6 p.m.

British Columbia has reached a new vaccination milestone, with 80 per cent of eligible people aged 12 and over getting their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Just over 54 per cent of people in that group have been fully immunized.

The province is reporting 76 new cases of the virus, and there are 692 active cases, with 12 people in intensive care.

Nearly 147,000 people who tested positive for COVID-19 have recovered.

5:55 p.m.

Saskatchewan is reporting 22 new cases of COVID-19 today, and no new deaths.

After 42 more people have recovered, the province has 242 active cases.

The province is also reporting 55 people in hospital, including 10 in intensive care.

The seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases in the province has dropped to 25, its lowest mark since Oct. 12, 2020.

Provincewide, 74 per cent of those aged 12 and older have now received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine.

Of those 12 and older, 59 per cent are fully vaccinated.

1:55 p.m.

Manitoba is reporting 36 new COVID-19 cases.

The five-day test-positivity rate stands at 3.6 per cent provincially and 3.2 per cent in Winnipeg.

12 p.m.

The federal government is seeking to assure Canadians who mixed and matched vaccines that they will not have a problem crossing borders.

Canadian health authorities have allowed mixing and matching but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been reluctant to sanction the practice, saying it should only be done in "exceptional situations."

The different view raises questions about how easily Canadians who mixed and matched will be able to cross into the United States once it opens its land borders to its northern neighbour.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc says he believes data sharing and conversations between nations will lead to an "evolution" and "adjustment" of the more conservative approach of some countries.

11:50 a.m.

New Brunswick is reporting no new cases of COVID-19 today.

Health officials say there are seven active cases in the province and no one is hospitalized with the disease.

Officials say about 59.7 per cent of New Brunswickers aged 12 and older are fully vaccinated and 80.7 per cent have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

11:45 a.m.

Health officials say Prince Edward Island is free of COVID-19.

Officials are reporting no active cases on the Island.

Chief medical officer of health Dr. Heather Morrison says the last new case of COVID-19 was reported June 30.

She says more than 191,000 applications have been received for a P.E.I. Pass, which allows people travel to the Island, adding that 46 per cent of applications are from Atlantic Canadians.

11 a.m.

Quebec is reporting 76 new cases of COVID-19 today and no additional deaths attributed to the novel coronavirus.

The Health Department says hospitalizations dropped by one, to 77, and 21 people were in intensive care, a drop of two.

Authorities say 82,153 doses of vaccine were administered Monday, and Quebecs public health institute says 83 per cent of residents over 12 have received at least one dose of vaccine and 56.1 per cent are adequately vaccinated.

The institute says there have been no reported deaths linked to the novel coronavirus in the province since July 15.

10 a.m.

The Nunavut government says Iqaluit's COVID-19 outbreak is officially over after nearly a month with no new cases.

It has been 28 consecutive days without cases, which meets the threshold for the outbreak to be declared over.

Iqaluit's first case of the pandemic was reported on April 15 and swelled to 253 cases in the northern city of about 8,000 people.

---

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - There are now three ships anchored off Newfoundland and Labrador's Avalon Peninsula with confirmed COVID-19 cases on board, provincial health authorities said Monday.

A sailboat sails by the Princesa Santa Joana, a Portuguese fishing boat anchored in Conception Bay, N.L., on July 15, 2021. Newfoundland and Labrador health officials say a third ship is now anchored off a provincial coastline with COVID-19 cases among its crew. In a news release today, the provincial Department of Health says four crew members have tested positive for the disease on a ship now anchored off the coast of Bay Bulls, N.L., about 30 kilometres south of St. John's. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Daly

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - There are now three ships anchored off Newfoundland and Labrador's Avalon Peninsula with confirmed COVID-19 cases on board, provincial health authorities said Monday.

The latest ship is in a bay off the small community of Bay Bulls, about 30 kilometres south of St. John's, and the Department of Health said four of its crew members tested positive for the disease over the weekend. One of those patients has been taken to hospital.

The department's news release doesn't identify the vessel, but ship-tracking websites indicate a Portuguese fishing trawler called the Santa Cristina is anchored in the bay. For Karl Risser, an Atlantic Canadian inspector with the International Transport Workers' Federation, it's another sign that international seafarers need a COVID-19 vaccination plan.

"Especially in the fishing industry," he said in an interview Monday. "They're packed on those vessels really tight, a lot more than you'd see on a container ship or an oil tanker."

Fishing is already a dangerous way to make a living, he said, and the working conditions in the COVOD-19 pandemic have only made it worse.

The vessel off Bay Bulls is the third now anchored and waiting out COVID-19 infections, and the fourth to do so in the past three months. The Princesa Santa Joana, another Portuguese fishing trawler, and the Iver Ambition, a bitumen tanker sailing under the Italian flag, are both anchored in Conception Bay, about 25 kilometres west of St. John's.

Last week, officials confirmed 31 crew members on the fishing vessel had tested positive. Two of those crew members are now in hospital, the department said Monday. Earlier in the month, 14 sailors on the tanker tested positive and officials said Monday that number remains unchanged.

In May, a bulk carrier owned by Fednav, an international shipping company headquartered in Quebec, also anchored in the bay and waited out COVID-19 infections among 14 of its crew members.

Coming up with a plan to get international ship crews vaccinated when they enter provincial waters would be complicated, Risser acknowledged, but it can be done. He said he spent Monday helping the crew of the IT Intrepid, a cable laying ship registered in Barbados, get vaccinated in Halifax. "It's the same as fishing vessel, there's a lot of crew on a cable layer," he said. "You really have to deal with these guys before there's an outbreak."

As of Monday afternoon, six of the 52 crew members had received a shot and he said he was working on getting more vaccinated.

"Hopefully they'll do the same in Newfoundland, too," Risser said. "If we're worried about variants, well these countries where the seafarers come from, a lot of them haven't even got their first vaccines yet, so that's where it's going to come from. So we really have to start this vaccination procedure as soon as possible."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2021.
OTTAWA - An organization counting retired military officers and diplomats among its ranks is looking for volunteers to welcome and help integrate any former Afghan interpreters and their families who end up being evacuated to Canada.

Canadian Forces soldiers line up at the Tim Horton's as the sun rises over Canada House at Kandahar Air Field Saturday, November 12, 2011 in Kandahar, Afghanistan. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

OTTAWA - An organization counting retired military officers and diplomats among its ranks is looking for volunteers to welcome and help integrate any former Afghan interpreters and their families who end up being evacuated to Canada.

The call to arms from the Conference of Defence Associations Institute comes in anticipation the federal government will rescue dozens of Afghans who are now facing Taliban arrest or worse for having previously worked with Canada.

We don't know exactly what the needs are going to be, said Guy Thibault, chair of the institute and retired lieutenant-general. We're just really trying to get ahead of it with a group of volunteers who have a connection to the whole story of Afghanistan.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday the government is working furiously to approve such a humanitarian effort in the face of pressure from Canadian veterans concerned about the fate of their former Afghan colleagues.

We are working with Canadian veterans, we are working with different organizations and with communities in Afghanistan to be able to provide safety and coming to Canada for many of them and their families, he said during an event in Hamilton, Ont.

This is something that we take very seriously and that we are working diligently and aggressively on.

The veterans concerns have nonetheless only increased in recent days as the Taliban has advanced across much of Afghanistan, including into the province of Kandahar where Canada spent years fighting the group.

The lack of action has led to mounting frustration in the veterans community, with some saying they have sent money and other support to help relocate former interpreters, drivers, cultural advisers and others from Kandahar to safer parts of the country.

One of those relocated was Najeb, who fled Kandahar with Canadian assistance with his wife and four children on Monday. Documentation provided to The Canadian Press shows he previously worked with NATO and a Canadian company in Kandahar.

Theres a lot of interpreters in every province, but Kandahar is the front line, Najeb said in an interview. I cant tell you my position right now, because I'm safe. I don't care about my condition. I have a room  I'm safe.

The Canadian Press agreed not to disclose Najebs full name or his location to protect the safety of him and his family.

Najeb says he tried to apply for help with the British government but was turned away because he worked at Kandahar Airfield and not on the front lines with NATO troops.

That distinction appears irrelevant to the Taliban. Najeb says the group burned his house in December and delivered numerous threats before its current offensive. It was only through the help of a group of Canadians that he was able to escape Kandahar.

One of those Canadians was retired corporal Robin Rickards, who says he has been running on three hours of sleep per night for a week as he and others have worked to keep former interpreters from the Taliban until Ottawa can get them out of the country.

Such grassroots efforts have sprung up in different parts of Canada virtually overnight in response to the Taliban's rapid advances across much of Afghanistan, and the lack of action from the federal government.

Rickards says an anonymous donor provided the money to relocate Najeb and 20 other interpreters and their families over the weekend to safer parts of Afghanistan, one of several such efforts aimed at keeping them out of the Talibans clutches  for now.

While Rickards acknowledged the challenge of screening and verifying those who want to come to Canada, he said the lack of action from the government has added fear and uncertainty to what was already a difficult situation.

Hopefully the government acts fast enough that these people won't be left lingering, he said.

In the meantime, he and others are providing advice and assistance to Afghans looking for help as well as emergency aid.

One of the big questions aside from when the government will launch a plan to help Afghans who worked with Canada during this countrys 13-year war in Afghanistan is who will be eligible for assistance.

While Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino has previously spoken of helping translators, interpreters and people who worked at Canadas embassy in Kabul, some are also asking about others who supported Canadas war effort such as cooks and drivers.

There are also growing concerns about the extended family of the 800 Afghans who left their native land for Canada in 2008 and 2012, when the government launched two different programs for former interpreters.

One of those former interpreters, Noori, now lives in Vancouver and said he prays every time he gets a message from Afghanistan as the Taliban has been threatening his family in Kandahar because of his past work with the Canadian military.

I put my whole family in danger, he said. And when you were my brothers or my father is captured by those guys, that's the end of their life. We definitely need help from people like you and good people in the government.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
Cox Medical Center Branson Director of Nursing Adene Smith told Branson Tri-Lakes News staff is dealing with stress from having to send COVID patients to other states because of the lack of available space.
The winter lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne threaten to push the whole economy into reverse. Prior to the restrictions Australia was bouncing back strongly from last years deep recession. But a shadow has been cast over the recovery  a growing band of economists now warn the whole economy could shrink this quarter. So how can lockdowns imposed in just two cities and regional Victoria take such a heavy toll? As this chart shows the magnitude of the hit to the national economy is due to the sheer size and economic importance of Australias twin urban giants. Sydney alone accounts for nearly a quarter of gross domestic product while Melbourne contributes around a fifth. Analysis by consultancy SGS Economics and Planning shows the pair generated 44 per cent of Australias annual economic output in 2019-20. When you add the rest of Victoria, which is also in lockdown, regions that contribute almost half of all national economic activity are affected.

It is unusual for two cities to account for such a big share of a nations population and output. Together Sydney and Melbourne are home to 10.5 million people, or 41 per cent of Australias population. Canadas two biggest cities  Toronto and Montreal  only make up around 30 per cent of that nations population while in the United Kingdom fewer than 20 per cent live in the two biggest cities, London and Birmingham. Quiet streets during Melbournes latest lockdown. Credit:Penny Stephens Greater Sydney and Greater Melbourne have not been simultaneously in lockdown since the early stages of the pandemic. And this time the economic losses will be exacerbated by the Berejiklian governments decision to shutter building sites across Sydney until July 30. The construction industry makes up about 7 per cent of the citys economy and employs around 250,000 workers. NSW Mounted Police patrol the streets of Fairfield in Sydneys south west during the citys COVID-19 lockdown. Credit:Kate Geraghty Commonwealth Banks head of Australian economics Gareth Aird last week said a seven-week shutdown for Sydney  which looks increasingly plausible  would be enough to cause a September quarter contraction in GDP. Economist Chris Richardson from Deloitte Access Economics estimated an average of 25,000 workers would lose employment each week during Sydneys lockdown with about 5000 to 10,000 of them destined to end up on unemployment queue. Since then, Victoria has gone into lockdown and Sydneys construction sector has entered its two week hiatus. Economist Su-Lin Ong, from investment bank RBC Capital Markets, said her early forecast is for the national economy to shrink by 0.6 per cent in the September quarter. It would be Australias first economic contraction since the June quarter of last year.
Everything is slightly askew in the new season of Tens Australian Survivor. The setting has gone from tropical Pacific to outback Australia, the contestants hoping to triumph on the Old Testament of reality television have some very odd takes on how to play the game, and one hopeful even introduced themselves to a teammate with the immortal line, I studied fine arts at uni.

Everything is discombobulated and, given the times were currently in, I frankly welcome it. Let bizarro Australian Survivor flourish while were in lockdown.

Artist Phil had the dubious honour of being the first contestant voted off Survivor: Brains V Brawn. Credit:Nigel Wright

Granted, the fine arts contestant, the rather sweet Phil and his signature childrens hat, was voted off at the end of the first episode, but the weird vibes kept on coming. As part of the COVID relocation to Cloncurry in north-west Queensland, the establishing shots now provide the temperature, which can range from 25 degrees in the early morning sun to 45 during the day. This is less judgmental than my original interpretation, which was that the number indicated the IQ of whoever was on the screen speaking.

They arrived with the sternest of tributes to Mad Max: Fury Road  I was excited to see what tribe Furiosa would be on  as jury-rigged vehicles raced through the red dust. Survivor, both in Australia after six successful seasons and multiple decades in America, is a show with a strong template; the game-play is full of human variables, but the format and visual cues are deeply familiar. Altering the setting tests whether audiences like the shows shorthand or are willing to embrace some change.
Staff at a council in Sydneys north are isolating after a ranger who reportedly had minimal contact with the public tested positive to COVID-19.

In an email to staff and councillors on Wednesday afternoon, North Sydney Councils general manager, Ken Gouldthorp, said the employee got tested after falling ill on Sunday and had returned a positive test on Wednesday morning.

The individual concerned is part of the rangers team and has been attending work ... Appropriate action has been implemented in respect to deep cleanse of the workplace, staff notification and advice, Mr Gouldthorp said.

The recent duties of the officer concerned was identifying kayaks/small craft left in council harbour foreshore parks/bushland. Contact with the public has therefore been minimal.

Initial advice indicates the individual had observed sound personal COVID practices including wearing a mask indoors and outdoors and restricted movements over the last weekend.

Mr Gouldthorp said the council was following the advice of NSW Health workers who were providing advice to any contacts or suspected contacts on an individual basis. He said the employee was the first case of the virus detected among the councils staff.

Mr Gouldthorp was among a small number of staff who got tested for the virus and were self-isolating because they were near the person at the councils depot last Friday.
Aboriginal people say they receive better quality care in NSW hospitals when theyre being supported by Indigenous healthcare workers, according to new data from the Bureau of Health Information (BHI).

The BHI, a state government body that regularly publishes reports on the NSW healthcare system, surveyed more than 8000 Aboriginal hospital patients between 2014 and 2019 for its latest insights report.

Aboriginal people were admitted to hospitals at almost double the rate of non-Aboriginal people in NSW in 2018-19, the report said. Credit:Dylan Coker

Its results were more positive in several areas than the previous survey but there were still many areas in which Aboriginal people reported receiving poorer treatment.

We still see a gap in significant key areas for healthcare between the ratings from Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal patients, particularly in the areas of communication, information provision, and being treated with dignity and respect, said BHI chief executive Diane Watson.
NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian reported 78 new COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, with more than one third of those in the community at some time during their infectious period.

More than 1400 cases have been recorded since the first reported positive test on June 16.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian at Tuesday mornings press conference. Credit:Janie Barrett

Of the new cases, 21 were infectious the community and eight cases were in isolation for part of their infectious period. More than 63,000 tests were conducted in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night.

Ms Berejiklian said the spread of the virus in workplaces and households remained a concern.
Students who take advanced maths and English and their extensions are more likely to finish in the top two HSC bands than those who take a less challenging version of those subjects, further disproving the myth that students will do better if they choose easier options.

Many schools are now actively encouraging students to take harder subjects where possible and to choose the extension options, which the schools own analyses show can lift the students performance across both the foundation subject and the extension unit.

A Herald analysis of HSC data from 2020 found almost 93 per cent of the students who took HSC English extension 1 finished with an E3 or E4 last year, as did 84 per cent of those who took maths extension 1 and 97 per cent of those who took music extension 1.

It also showed more than half of students who sat advanced English and maths finished in the top two bands. However, fewer than 12 per cent of English standard students and just 25 per cent of maths standard students finished in the top two bands.
Police have arrested a former member of the Defence Force and seized chemicals that could be used to manufacture explosives during a major operation in Picton, south of Sydney.

Investigators are looking into whether Michael Brown, 54, who allegedly has extensive training with bombs from his military experience, is a doomsday prepper or was preparing for an act of terrorism using the chemicals he had collected.

Authorities raided two properties in Picton on Tuesday. Credit:Wolter Peeters

The raids on two addresses in Picton, the mans home on Argyle Street and another home on nearby Wild Street, started on Tuesday morning as part of a joint investigation by NSW Police and the Australian Federal Police into alleged firearms offences.

The investigation was launched after the AFP became aware of a number of alleged imports of firearms parts, chemicals, 3D printing materials, lab equipment and portable radio equipment earlier this month. The agency then passed the intelligence on to NSW Police.
Two Supreme Court judges have delivered scathing criticisms of a Queensland police officer who leaked the address of a domestic violence survivor to her former partner.

The stern words were delivered on Tuesday in the Court of Appeal during the hearing for Police Commissioner Katarina Carrolls appeal against the reduced sentence given to the officer involved.

Queensland Police Senior Constable Neil Punchard leaked the details of a domestic violence victim to her ex-partner. Credit:Nine News Queensland

Senior Constable Neil Punchard was sentenced in October 2019 to two months in prison, wholly suspended, with a conviction recorded after pleading guilty to nine counts of computer hacking.

He appealed against the harshness of the penalties in the District Court and last year his original punishment was aside and he was instead ordered to complete 140 hours of community service.
A listening device hidden in a suspects home recorded the trio accused of killing a Queensland man by feeding him into a woodchipper discussing getting their stories straight.

The bugs transcripts were partially revealed in a Queensland court on Tuesday, when the three people charged with murder made a bail application in the Supreme Court.

The victim, 54-year-old Bruce Saunders.

Bruce Saunders, 54, died on November 12, 2017 after falling into a woodchipper while clearing a driveway at Goomboorian near Gympie, north of Brisbane.

Mr Saunders had spent the past three weekends at the property doing a favour for the resident, who was a family friend.
South Australia has been declared a hotspot and Queenslands borders will close to the state from 1am Thursday due to increasing COVID-19 cases.

Anyone who has been to South Australia will not be allowed to enter Queensland, unless they are a returning resident, from 1am Thursday.

Queensland residents, and anyone allowed to enter the state from these locations, will be required to go into mandatory 14-day hotel quarantine. People can enter Queensland for an essential purpose.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said the situation in South Australia was concerning.
Detectives have charged a second man who they allege helped accused murderer Brian Earl Johnston kill 27-year-old Gold Coast mother-of-three Kelly Wilkinson.

Police arrested a 25-year-old Pimpama man and charged him with murder (domestic violence offence) at a business in Coomera shortly after 9am on Tuesday.

Gold Coast mother Kelly Wilkinson was found dead in her backyard.

Detective Inspector Chris Ahearn said police would allege the man drove Mr Johnston to Ms Wilkinsons home on the morning of her death.

Ms Wilkinsons burnt body was found by police about 6.40am in the backyard of her Arundel home on April 20, with her children, all under the age of nine, in the house at the time.
The damage to coral reefs from bleaching during marine heatwaves is similar to that wrought on forests during bushfires  animal habitat is destroyed and the diversity of wildlife so highly prized in these ecosystems is lost.

The Great Barrier Reef suffered severe bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020. But Australias tropical marine research agency this week reported significant regrowth in corals across the reef.

Climate change is increasing the frequency of bleaching events, just as it is making severe bushfires more common, which reduces the vibrant flora and fauna in each of these ecosystems. Credit:AP

The signs of recovery found by the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) have been welcomed by scientists. But they warn climate change is increasing the frequency of bleaching events, just as it is making severe bushfires more common.

An article by CSIRO scientists Trevor Booth and Paul Muir last year, The Climate Change Impacts on Australias Eucalypt and Coral Species article, noted reef and forest ecosystems faced a common threat in global warming.
British far-right commentator Katie Hopkins has arrived in London after being deported from Australia for flouting quarantine rules.

Hopkins, who had travelled to Australia earlier this month for an upcoming series of Channel Sevens Big Brother, landed at Heathrow on Tuesday afternoon (AEST).

Far-right British commentator Katie Hopkins, left, at Heathrow Airport, being escorted to a Mercedes. Credit:Media-Mode

She reportedly declared its nice not to wear a mask before climbing into a Mercedes and leaving the airport.

Heathrow Airport makes clear on its website that as we continue to welcome passengers from around the world, wearing a face covering will still be required whilst in our terminals.
Australias strategic environment is changing rapidly. Once shaped exclusively by traditional security concerns where what mattered most was our military alliances, the state of our kinetic armed forces and diplomacy, todays environment is increasingly shaped by new domains. Chief among them: cyberspace, technology and our online information landscape. This overlapping trio is currently front page news in a busy month that has highlighted just how entrenched this strategic shift now is.

We have seen how the worlds booming surveillance industry continues to be given permission to operate in the shadows, with dangerous consequences. Consider stunning revelations that high-end spyware sold by Israels most notorious spyware company NSO Group, designed to track terrorists and criminals, was instead being used to spy on journalists, human rights activists, government ministers, diplomats and business people in democracies and autocratic regimes alike. Ensnaring world leaders and several Arab royal family members and dominating media headlines from Europe to India, this expose may finally force a moment of reckoning for this unregulated and unchecked industry.

Next we come to the collision of social media with the ongoing pandemic. Just last week, President Joe Biden said social media platforms like Facebook are killing people for allowing misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines to spread on their platforms, in some of his strongest language yet about the issue. The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed our already messy information environments into a new era where we can see the daily erosion of credible information online. The Presidents comments come at a time when tensions between democracies and US Internet companies are at an all-time high as they continue to spar about how to moderate our information ecosystem, while keeping it as free and open as possible.

Then yesterday we saw an unprecedented global coalition come together, including Five Eyes, European countries and Japan to hold the Chinese state responsible for gaining access to computer networks around the world via Microsoft Exchange servers. For the first time, NATO joined in with a public statement calling on China to act in line with internationally agreed norms of behaviour. The Chinese states voracious appetite for wide-ranging intelligence collection, intellectual property theft and foreign interference activities have prompted a growing global culture of collective attribution and action that will continue far into the future.
Bryan, OH (43506)

Today

Rain showers in the morning with scattered thunderstorms arriving in the afternoon. High 81F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Partly cloudy in the evening. Increasing clouds with periods of showers after midnight. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Special purpose vehicle on Tuesday invited bids for Rs 19,041 crore project to roll out high-speed in the rural areas across 16 states.

The government will only provide viability gap funding under the project.

"Bharat Broadband Network Limited (BBNL) has invited global tender for the development (creation, upgradation, operation and maintenance and utilisation) of through a public-private partnership model in 9 separate packages across 16 states for a concession period of 30 years," said in a statement.

Under the project, the government plans to cover an estimated 3.61 lakh villages (including gram panchayats) across Kerala, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh.

The existing was connecting all the gram panchayats (GPs) of the country by laying OFC (primarily) between Block and GPs.

The scope of BharatNet has now been enhanced to connect all inhabited villages, approximately 6.43 lakhs, of the country.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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announced the launch of its Automotive and Innovation Center in Stuttgart, Germany, building on its strategic commitment to drive innovation and IT infrastructure transformation in the sector.

The new center brings together automotive and IT experts from across Germany into a space for shared knowledge, skills and innovation. As a part of Infys partnership with Daimler, automotive IT infrastructure experts based in Germany will transition from Daimler AG to the new and Innovation Center. Encouraging sustainable growth within the German automotive sector, it will provide its customers with tools to meet the countrys growing demand for electric vehicles.

Through the new center, will support leading German automotive company, Daimler AG, strengthen its IT & data center infrastructure, and drive competitive edge in line with its ambitions to standardise, consolidate, scale and transform to net zero with seamless customer experience.

Dr Ing Jorg Sommer, formerly director of Digital Foundation at Daimler has been designated as the CEO of the and Innovation Center in Stuttgart, which is a separate legal entity and officially called Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co KG.

As software becomes modular and IT infrastructure continues to scale, Daimler will take three simultaneous steps to transform its IT landscape: consolidation, scaling and modernization. Through establishing the Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH in Germany, Infosys is committed to grow with us in the automotive industry and provide exciting career opportunities for our employees. The center will also set new standards for cloud and infrastructure services in the automotive industry, said Jan Brecht, chief information officer, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz.

The center promotes a multi-cloud and carbon neutral approach to IT infrastructure transformation, leveraging Infosys Cobalt, a combination of Infosys services, solutions and platforms that supports enterprises in accelerating their cloud journey, alongside other leading cloud providers. Through its cloud approach the center will enable an anytime, anywhere workplace primed to address present and future needs.

The Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart will provide a wide range of benefits for both Infosys and the German automotive sector. By bringing together the formidable skills and expertise across Germany, this center will support Daimler in its hybrid multi-cloud and AI-driven digital transformation journey to scalability. It will also provide a cloud architecture blueprint for other German manufacturers to emulate as they move through a period of resilient IT transformation. Amidst the rising demand for electric cars, were committed to supporting the German automotive industry as it addresses these changes in behavior, said Salil Parekh, CEO, Infosys.

To deliver on new and emerging mobility trends, automotive brands need to be able to scale and deliver innovation to market at speed. Through cutting-edge technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, automation, and electrification, the Innovation Center will be a catalyst for accelerating the development and availability of pioneering technology in the market, as well as simplifying and standardizing hybrid cloud stacks across the industry, said Dr Ing Jorg Sommer, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co KG.
Singapore's Emergency Arbitrator (EA) award, restraining Ltd (FRL) from going ahead with its Rs 24,713 crore merger deal with Reliance Retail, is valid and needs to be executed, on Tuesday told the which commenced hearings on its pleas against the amalgamation.

A bench comprising justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai started hearing the arguments from senior advocate Gopal Subramanium, appearing for com NV Investment Holdings LLC, who apprised the apex court of the facts and legal proceedings so far in the case.

The US-based e-commerce giant said the EA award of International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) was enforceable and the single-judge bench of the Delhi High Court rightly gave an interim order in its favour granting a stay on the ongoing amalgamation.

Subramanium said a division bench of the high court erred in entertaining the Future group's appeal and granting it relief by paving the way for the deal.

Assailing the order, the senior counsel for said, the emergency arbitrator (EA) is not a coram non judice' (not before a judge) and hence the award of EA is enforceable and the high court under a provision of the Arbitration and Conciliation Act has to act to execute it and not sit in appeal against the interim award.

The top court would recommence hearing on the pleas either on Thursday or next Tuesday.

On February 22, in its interim order the apex court had asked the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) not to pass the final order on the amalgamation.

The Future group had moved the tribunal seeking regulatory approvals to the Rs 24,713 crore deal with Reliance.

Amazon moved the top court against the order of the Delhi High Court division bench which paved the way for the Reliance-FRL deal.

On February 8, the division bench had stayed the single-judge direction to FRL and various statutory authorities to maintain the status quo on the mega deal.

The interim direction was passed on FRL's appeal challenging the February 2 order of the single judge.

In August last year, the Future group had reached an agreement to sell its retail, wholesale, logistics, and warehousing units to Reliance.

Subsequently, Amazon took FRL into EA before the SIAC over alleged breach of contract by the Future group.

Amazon had first filed a plea before the high court (single judge) for enforcement of the October 25, 2020, EA award by SIAC restraining FRL from going ahead with the deal with Reliance Retail.

The high court division bench had however said that it was staying the single-judge order as FRL was not a party to the share subscription agreement (SSA) between Amazon and Future Coupons Pvt Ltd (FCPL) and the US e-commerce giant was not a party to the deal for amalgamation between FRL and Reliance Retail.

It had further said it was of the prima facie view that the shareholding agreement (SHA) between FRL and FCPL, the SSA between FCPL and Amazon, and the deal between FRL and Reliance Retail are different and therefore, the group of doctrine cannot be invoked.

Another reason given by the court for its interim order was that there was prima facie no reason to seek a status quo order before the single judge.

The high court had said there were a lot of contentious issues involved in the matter and it was not going to adjudicate on them at this stage.

It had also said that its observations were only prima facie and the single judge ought not to be influenced by them when pronouncing the order on Amazon's plea for enforcement of the EA award by SIAC restraining FRL from going ahead with the deal.

FRL, in its appeal, had claimed that if the February 2 order was not stayed it would be an absolute disaster for it as the proceedings before the NCLT for approving the amalgamation scheme have been put on hold.

It had contended that the single judge's status quo order will effectively derail the entire scheme which has been approved by statutory authorities in accordance with the law.

In its suit before the single judge for enforcing the EA award, Amazon has sought to restrain FRL from taking any steps to complete the transaction with entities that are a part of the Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani (MDA) Group.

Amazon has also sought detention of the Biyanis, directors of FCPL and FRL and other related parties in civil prison and attaching of their properties for alleged wilful disobedience of the EA order.

After the SIAC's EA order, Amazon wrote to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi), stock exchanges and CCI, urging them to take into consideration the arbitrator's interim decision as it is a binding order.

FRL thereafter moved the high court to restrain Amazon from writing to Sebi, CCI, and other regulators about SIAC's order, saying it amounts to interfering with the agreement with Reliance.

A single judge on December 21 last year had on FRL's plea passed an interim order allowing Amazon to write to the statutory authorities, but also observed that prima facie it appeared the US e-commerce giant's attempt to control was violative of FEMA and FDI rules.

Against the observation, Amazon moved an appeal before a division bench and during its pendency, it filed the suit for the enforcement of the EA award.

(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.)
Indias leading rooftop solutions company, MYSUN, has tied up to raise Rs 15 crore in debt from Tata Cleantech Capital (TCCL), a joint venture between Limited and International Finance Corporation, Washington DC, US.

The company had recently launched its asset vehicle MYSUN+ to develop projects under the distributed and open access models with an of Rs 600 crore in the first phase. This term loan will be used to fund the existing projects of MYSUN+ and the credit line will be used to develop its pipeline projects.

MYSUN is also expanding its presence across different markets and is already present in nine states including Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh along with the National Capital Region.

We have got very promising traction in our new launched asset vehicle MYSUN+ and this from TCCL will help us deleverage our equity capital and develop a larger pipeline of projects. Over the next few quarters, we are looking to develop about 200 Mw of projects which are currently at various stages of development. said Gagan Vermani, the Founder & CEO, MYSUN.

Despite the global pandemic, we are witnessing robust demand for clean and affordable power. We took this period as an opportunity to expand our business across different verticals to become a complete 360-degree platform for large C&I, SMEs and even homes in some regions. The demand is expected to exponentially grow, and we are actively looking at EV charging and some newer product lines too. Our unique online customer awareness and acquisition platform coupled with highly digitised demand aggregation tools provide us access to hundreds of thousands of new clients every month. added Vermani.

TCCL is the first private sector company globally to partner with Green Climate Fund (GCF) to develop the rooftop market through a $100 million credit line and this term loan and credit line raised by MYSUN forms a part of this GCF Facility.

"TCCL has an active solar rooftop programme that aims to mainstream financing in this segment. We are already assisting multiple entities in adoption of rooftop solar systems. Our partnership with MYSUN gives us the opportunity to further accelerate Indias energy transition. Rooftop solar represents only 11% of total solar installation in India which is significantly lower than the targeted 40 per cent share and TCCL aims to bridge the gap to decarbonise energy consumption. TCCL is the first private climate finance institution in emerging economies and committed to developing a sustainable ecosystem for the future, said Manish Chourasia, MD of TCCL.
Financials, a fintech platform for Bharat, said it has secured debt funding from multiple including Northern Arc, Vivriti Capital, MAS, India SME and others.

said it is on a mission to enable digital financial services to a vastly underserved middle and lower-income segment that consists of over 300 million micro-entrepreneurs, micro-merchants, and gig and blue-coloured workforce. has raised a debt funding amount of Rs 80 crore to further its portfolio 10x with expansion in customized products and services.

The last year has proved to be a litmus test for the relatively young fintech industry, said Rohit Garg, co-founder and CEO, Smartcoin Financials. For us, our focus on vast untapped Bharat opportunity, strong performance through the pandemic and managing among the lowest NPAs has led to a strong vote of confidence from the investor community. This timely injection of funds shall be leveraged to advance our vision of empowering financial inclusion.

The company has seen strong demand for micro-credit from tier-2 and tier-3 cities across the country through the second wave as people grappled with a lack of capital for medical situations and businesses. As our economy recovers, the company aims to boost the small businesses, and growing middle and lower-income users with expanded credit products via their mobile app. SmartCoin has already served over six million users across 18000 pin codes across the country in a 100 per cent digital and automated manner.

The pandemic has led to strong digital adoption in the middle and lower-income segments across Tier 2 geographies, said Garg. With our unique insights and understanding of the financial and behavioural data for this segment, we are expanding into new products for empowering our customers with better control of their financial lives.

In the next few years, SmartCoin Financials said it will prepare itself to achieve the next phase of targeted exponential growth and envision reaching more than 50X-60X of its present performance levels.

Bama Balakrishnan, COO of Northern Arc, said that utilizing the digital infrastructure through innovative solutions is the key to empower millions of small businesses, merchants, and professionals. The relationship between Northern Arc and SmartCoin is at multiple levels.

We have funded them through our Balance Sheet, raised capital from other investors through syndication and guarantee products and have a retail lending partnership with them, said Balakrishnan.

Gautam Jain, business head, Vivriti Capital said SmartCoins expertise in consumer lending via innovative products coupled with its tech capability makes it a perfect partner for capturing the missing middle in the growing Emerging Indian base.
major has closed a $1.25-billion fundraise, marking the first investment in the category by Vision Fund 2. This takes the valuation of the Bengaluru-based startup up by more than 50 per cent to $5.5 billion from $3.6 billion earlier, according to industry sources.

Swiggys long-term investor Prosus has also participated in the current round along with others such as Accel Partners and Wellington Management. In addition, it has attracted new investors Qatar Investment Authority, Falcon Edge Capital, Amansa Capital, Goldman Sachs, Think Investments and Carmignac.

This fundraise is expected to give enough firepower to to counter competition from rivals Zomato, Amazon, Dunzo and Ola Foods among others. Zomato is raising $1.26 billion in its initial public offering. It was seeking a $8-billion valuation. In February, Zomatos valuation crossed $5.4 billion after it raised $250 million in primary funding from existing and new investors.

Food services is a $65-billion market opportunity in India, according to research firm RedSeer, growing at 9 per cent per annum and likely to reach $110 billion by 2025. Within the food services market of $65 billion, online delivery forms only a small subset at a market size of $4.2 billion (6-7 per cent).

Analysts expect the market to be worth $12 billion by 2022.

The new investment is meant to accelerate Swiggys multi-year strategy of growing its core business and building new food and non-food segments. To support this, the company will enhance its capabilities in technology and AI, and strengthen teams across engineering, product, data science and analytics as well as in business and supply chain for its newer initiatives.

The participation of some of the most visionary global investors is a huge vote of confidence in Swiggys mission and ability to build an enduring and iconic company out of India, said Sriharsha Majety, CEO, The scope of food delivery in India is massive and over the next few years, we will continue to invest aggressively into growing this category. Our biggest investments will be in our non-food businesses that have witnessed tremendous consumer love and growth in a short span, especially in the past 15 months of the pandemic.

The latest fundraise showed strong interest from investors, coming on the back of Swiggys recovery from the impact of Covid-19 and subsequent growth in 2020-21. The order value is 130 per cent of pre-Covid for the food category.

Munish Varma, managing partner, Investment Advisers, said has successfully backed multiple food delivery platforms globally and seen the value of providing high-quality convenience to consumers. He said Swiggys focus on evolving the consumer experience and its emphasis on relationships with its delivery partners and restaurants had made it a household brand in India.

Majety said he believes the next 10-15 years would offer a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for like Swiggy as the Indian middle class expands and the firms target segment for convenience grows to 500 million users.

Before starting Swiggy, Majety quit his job as a banker at Nomura, Japan's largest investment bank, and went on a backpacking trip by bicycle to Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and Greece, peddling 3,200 km. After returning, he founded a logistics platform for online retailers, which he had to shut down. An alumnus of Birla Institute of Technology & Science Pilani, Majety launched Swiggy in Bengaluru's Koramangala neighbourhood along with his college mate Nandan Reddy and IIT Kharagpur graduate Rahul Jaimini in 2014.
: on Tuesday received



investment commitments to the tune of Rs 28,508 crore from 49 across various segments that will create 83,482 jobs in the state.

The event, organised by the industries department and 'Guidance Tamil Nadu,' also saw Chief Minister M K Stalin laying the foundation stone for nine projects, entailing of Rs 4,250 crore that will generate 21,630 jobs.

An official release said 35 Memorandums of Understanding were signed in the presence of the chief minister, with a cumulative investment of Rs 17,141 crore, which would create 55,054 jobs.

Stalin also inaugurated five new projects with an investment commitment of Rs 7,117 crore and employment generation to 6,798 people.

"The total investment committed in the 49 projects is Rs 28,508 crore and employment opportunities to 83,482 people", the release said.

(GE) has proposed to establish a Centre of Excellence to enhance production of aircraft and aeronautical components for industries in the aerospace and defence sector, using advanced manufacturing technologies.

While there was no mention of the investment details, the release said an MoU was signed by top executives of GE and Industrial Development Corporation Ltd (TIDCO) on Tuesday in the presence of the chief minister.

As per the MoU, the total proposed (Rs 28,508 crore) are spread across electronics, auto-components, industrial parks, information technology, manufacturing, food processing, footwear and pharmaceuticals.

Guidance said it entered into an MoU with American Tamil Entrepreneurs Association to promote start-ups in innovation, research and development in Tamil Nadu.

The digital accelerator programme sanctions grants to start-up projects engaged in innovation, Research and Development.

The government has sanctioned Rs five crore for this programme.

Seventy five applications have been received, out of which five have been selected for sanction of the grant, the release said, adding that the Chief Minister handed over the sanction orders to them.

(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 steep corporate tax cut in 2019 and pandemic-driven cost-cutting boosted the bottomline of India Inc by 105 per cent in FY21 over FY20, even though the topline declined 5 per cent, according to a report.

This also had 4,000 listed paying record corporate tax, a net increase of over Rs 50,000 crore in FY21 to Rs 1.90 lakh crore, from around Rs 1.40 crore in FY20, an analysis by SBI Research showed on Tuesday.

The government had slashed the effective corporate tax rate from 35 to 26 per cent in September 2019, coupled with lower expenses due to the pandemic, has boosted their bottomline to record levels in FY21, the report said without citing the actual profit numbers.

For these companies, average revenue fell only 5 per cent in FY21, but their net income grew by 105 per cent over FY20, the report said without quantifying it.

The tax cut has contributed 19 per cent to the topline of these during the pandemic with cement, tyre and consumer durables gaining in excess of 50 per cent, it added.

More importantly, 15 sectors led by refineries, steel, fertilisers, textiles, pharma, IT, mining, etc reduced their loan funds in the range of 6-64 per cent or to the tune of Rs 2.09 lakh crore in FY21, which again boosted their bottomline.

Carrying on the benefit of cost cuts, arising from lower expenses by way of salary cuts (3 per cent overall for these 4,000 in the name of the pandemic), have come as a blessing in disguise for the government in FY22 as corporate tax mop-up in the first two months of the fiscal is the best in two decades at Rs 43,454 crore, up from Rs 16,981 crore in FY20, and Rs 1,126 crore in FY19, according to Soumya Kanti Ghosh, group chief economic adviser at State Bank of India.

The first two months of FY22 saw the fiscal deficit at just Rs 1.2 lakh crore, only about a third of what the government has been borrowing on average at Rs 3.5 lakh crore during the same period in FY19 and FY20.

The deficit reduction was on the back of higher overall tax revenue of Rs 1 lakh crore, he noted and expects the government to comfortably meet its tax revenue goals this fiscal if the tax buoyancy is maintained, which is more likely given that corporate profits are on record highs.

The low-interest-rate regime has also helped companies massively deleverage, which has contributed to an average of 5 per cent to their overall topline, especially for the consumer durables, healthcare and cement sectors.

For many sectors -- including engineering, reality, automobiles and trading -- the effective tax rate reduction ranged from 1 to 24 percentages in FY21. For the realty sector, it was down to 26 from 50 per cent, for automobiles it is down from 36 per cent to 33 with the least gain for FMCGs and packaging wherein it is down by only 100 bps each.

Expenditure cut contributed 31 per cent to topline with most companies finding new ways to navigate the pandemic, with apparel and refineries cutting costs by 107 per cent on an average.

(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.)
Vegrow, a business-to-business agritech platform for fruits and vegetables, has raised $13 million in a series A investment round co-led by and Elevation Capital. The round also saw participation from existing investors India, Ankur Capital, Better Capital and Titan Capital.

Established in 2020, Vegrow has scaled rapidly among both farmers and B2B customers, resulting in nearly 20x top-line growth with a presence in over 30 cities. At the heart of this growth is their unique technology platform, which powers everything from farm discovery, produce quality profiling, market intelligence to smart matchmaking between farm-level inventory and customer requirements. The impact of this platform is clear in deep customer love and positive unit economics early on in the companys journey.

The funding would help the firm to expand to 100 cities, invest in technology and launch new products. Vegrow was founded by IIT alumni Praneeth Kumar, Shobhit Jain, Mrudhukar Batchu and Kiran Naik.

At Vegrow, we focus on select products as compared to building a large basket. Each of these products is a multi-billion dollars opportunity, said the founders of Vegrow. This enables us to go deep in the product value chain and unlock massive growth in this sector. In fact, we have become one of the largest for pomegranates in the country in less than a year, they said.

While Indias B2B agri market is attractive at $300 billion, it is also a complex maze of fragmented supply with over 120 million farmers growing across 30 states. Vegrow is on a mission to unlock the power of Indias agri value chain, initially focusing on the $50 billion fruits and high-value vegetables segment. The company addresses challenges around farmland under-utilization and supply fragmentation for farmers and delivers consistent quality along with fill rate to customers. Their unique farmer engagement model and tech-driven quality profiling are core to delivering higher returns to farmers, reducing supply-chain wastage and improving procurement for wholesalers.

Agriculture as a sector has largely remained removed from digital disruptions, despite the strong tailwinds of increasing internet penetration and adoption, said Akarsh Shrivastava, vice president, Elevation Capital. We believe any effort to digitize these value chains will have to keep farmers and their interests at the core. Vegrows farm-centred approach, coupled with strong insights, which are allowing the team to fundamentally re-imagine and augment these supply chains, stood out in our interactions.

Vegrows developed deep agri expertise as well as a hyper-growth marketplace culture having previously worked across such as ITC, Urban Company and Chronus. This combination of deep agri value chain knowledge, product thinking, and farmer-empathy makes for a powerful driving force in the sector.

Ritu Verma, partner, Ankur Capital said while Indian consumers and businesses have seen tremendous changes in the past 10 years through several waves of innovation, the reality is that fruits and vegetables are grown by independent farmers in a nearly identical manner, and with dwindling yields. Vegrows tech-enabled processes allow the company to grow their margins while also driving value to the farmers they work with, said Verma.

Vaibhav Agrawal, partner, Lightspeed, said that having invested in commerce like Pinduoduo, OYO and Zetwerk, the firm has realized that the number one pressing need of the small supplier, a farmer in this case, is higher revenue realization. Its not accessing inputs, credit or crop advisory.

Therefore, we believe companies building marketplaces between farmers and buyers, using technology to eliminate inefficiencies will have the largest market opportunity eventually, said Agrawal.

Sudipto Sannigrahi, vice president, Matrix India, said the Vegrow team has the unique experience and know-how of grassroots agriculture. Infact, a few co-founders come from farming familie!  and of building high growth internet marketplaces, said Sannigrahi. We love the companys focus on aggregating fragmented farms to help unlock economies of scale with technology-led interventions which has enabled them to scale rapidly and profitably over the last 12 months. We believe they are well-positioned to emerge as the front runners of this space and streamline Indias largest yet unorganised industry, he said.
IT Services major announced the launch of FullStride Services and its commitment to invest $1 billion in technologies, capabilities, acquisitions and partnerships over the next three years.

As the opportunity accelerates, FullStride Cloud Services brings together the full portfolio of Wipros cloud-related capabilities, offerings and talent to better orchestrate the cloud journey for clients. This commitment builds on Wipros existing and extensive cloud business with clients and significantly expands the investment with its partners and hyperscalers, creating industry solutions that accelerate results for mutual clients.

Today, cloud adoption is at the core of any IT transformation initiative, and our clients have been turning to Wipro for help with this. With our $1 billion investment in cloud capabilities, and the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, we are in a far stronger position to simplify, orchestrate and accelerate the cloud journey for our clients, said Thierry Delaporte, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Wipro.

Wipro has seen consistent growth in its cloud business and today employs over 79,000 cloud professionals and more than 10,000 people certified by the leading cloud service providers.

Over the past 12 months, Wipro has announced significant cloud-related wins with Telefonica Germany / O2, Verifone, and E.ON in addition to METRO AG, one of the largest deals in Wipros history.

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services will work with clients to better align business and IT with the cloud imperative, create significant business value and increase competitive differentiation. It will also improve their business agility, embed resilience and significantly optimize their technology investments in favor of change and innovation.

With the introduction of the Chief Growth Office, we are renewing our focus on our global partnership ecosystem, amplifying and simplifying how we go to market together to orchestrate cloud transformation for our clients. We will announce a new leader for this group very soon. said Stephanie Trautman, Chief Growth Officer, Wipro Limited. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services is a collaboration between Wipros Chief Growth Office and existing Global Business Lines to create an integrated and comprehensive cloud transformation capability for customers, partners and cloud experts. With the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, Wipro is set to make cloud innovation and progress thrive, fueled by passion, collaboration, and boldness for clients.
About 56 per cent of the vaccine doses administered in the country between May 1 and July 15 were in rural COVID-19 Vaccination Centres (CVCs) while 40 per cent were in urban facilities, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

The remaining four per cent doses were in CVCs that are not specifically classified as urban or rural in the Co-WIN portal, Union Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar said.

In response to a question, she said that between May 1 and July 15, around seven per cent of the total inoculations were done in private COVID-19 Vaccination Centres. Segregated report of CVCs located in non-metropolitan cities is not maintained on CoWIN portal, the minister said.

In addition to government and private facilities, COVID-19 vaccination is also available at 'workplace CVCs', set up at workplaces, and 'near-to-home CVCs' established at a place nearest to residential localities to improve the accessibility of jabs in both urban and rural areas.

In view of the dynamic nature of these CVCs, the average distance to the nearest vaccination centre is not maintained on the CoWIN portal, Pawar said.

In a separate reply, the minister said 32,49,90,140 COVID-19 vaccines doses (28,44,15,820 Covishield and 4,05,74,320 Covaxin) have been supplied free of cost by the Government of India to states as on July 15.

(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.)
Covaxin maker India (BBIL) had agreed to provide the vaccine at a reasonable and negotiated price to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) as well as all Central and state government bodies, minister of state for health revealed in the Parliament.

Responding to a query in the Rajya Sabha, Bharti Pravin Pawar, minister of state, Health and Family Welfare, said: BBIL had agreed to provide vaccine at a reasonable and negotiated price to as well as all Central and State Government bodies or affiliates etc as and when the vaccine is available for use.

BBIL had said in June that the Centres procurement price of Rs 150 per dose was not sustainable in the long run. Recently, the Centre has revised the procurement price to Rs 225 (including taxes) per dose for Covaxin.

If we keep supplying at Rs 150 per dose then we will no longer be a healthy organisation, a senior official had told Business Standard earlier. The company said it has invested Rs 500 crore from internal accruals for Covaxin  development and setting up manufacturing facilities.The company pays royalties based on product sales to for its support  like providing the Sars-CoV-2 strain, help with animal studies, and partial funding of clinical trial sites.

In her reply, the minister also divulged that the has not provided any funds to BBIL for Covaxin development. However, funds have been spent in various activities undertaken by ICMR-National Institute of Virology (NIV), Pune for Covaxin development. Also, phase-3 clinical trials of Covaxin have been funded by ICMR. The trials have been conducted at 25 sites in 25,800 participants. Total estimated expenditure of ICMR: Rs 35 crore, she added.

BBIL will pay royalty at the rate of 5 percent of net sales (to be remitted on half yearly basis) to ICMR, the minister informed. ICMRs logo will feature on the vaccine.

Elaborating on how the percentage of royalty was determined, she said that benchmarking royalty percentages in the licensing of vaccine technologies followed by other government departments or institutions was considered. For example, the brucella vaccine technology developed by Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR) was transferred by Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a Department of Biotechnology company to Gujarats Hester Biosciences at 5 percent Royalty on Net Sales, payable for 10 years in the year 2019.

ICMR-NIV, Pune had isolated live SARS-CoV-2 virus in March 2020.

BBIL approached ICMR with a request to hand over the live strain of the virus in April. BBIL had a validated BSL-3 facility ready for use. This is essential, as during the preclinical studies, it is essential to challenge the small animals with SARS-CoV-2 virus. Other companies with interest in SARS-CoV-2 vaccine development like Serum Institute of India were not interested in developing indigenous vaccine. Other companies like Cadila, Biological E did not have a validated BSL-3 facility available, she said.

Besides, ICMR team had inspected and approved the BBIL BSL-3 facility in October 2019 as at that time BBIL proposed to use the BSL-3 for development of inactivated Polio Vaccine. The facility has now been re-purposed for Covid-19 vaccine development, she added.
The in Delhi on Tuesday accused the Centre of a "cover-up" since the outbreak of COVID-19 and not allowing it to "account for reasons behind deaths" during the pandemic.

Deputy Chief Minister made the charges in a statement, after Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya rejected the allegation of under-reporting of Covid deaths and told Parliament that the Centre had not asked any state to show fewer numbers of deaths or less positive cases.

In the statement, Sisodia said there was a shortage of medical oxygen during the peak of the COVID-19 second wave.

"The central government has been running a cover-up since the very start of the pandemic. It is because of their flawed policy and implementation that the country had to endure an oxygen crisis during the toughest phase of the pandemic," he said.

The "wanted to account for the reason behind deaths" during the pandemic, and had constituted a 'Death Audit Committee' to work towards that end, he said.

"The central government, however, did not want their fallacies to be unveiled so they did not let us go through with the committee as they knew what truth will come out in the open," he alleged.

Replying to the allegation of under-reporting of Covid deaths, Mandaviya said in Parliament that the central government only compiles and publishes data sent by states.

State governments register deaths. "Our job is to publish that data and nothing else. We haven't told anyone to show fewer numbers (of deaths) or less positive cases. There's no reason for that," he said in his reply to a short duration discussion on the COVID-19 pandemic in Rajya Sabha.

The minister said the prime minister had repeatedly asked chief ministers to do large numbers of testing and record deaths.

"There is no reason to hide deaths but whom are you blaming? Who does registration? States do. Who decides on statistics? States do. Government of India compiles and publishes data received from the states," Mandaviya said.

Taking part in the discussion earlier, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjuna Kharge charged that the government's COVID-19 death toll figure of 4-5 lakh is "false" and conservative and claimed the average number of deaths cannot be less than 52.4 lakh so far in the country.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Canada on Monday announced that it is extending the ban on incoming passenger flights from India for another month due to the Delta variant of COVID-19.

The ban, which was imposed on April 22 when India was witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases, was set to expire on July 21, but will now remain in place until August 21, Global News Ca reported.

It is for the fourth time that the ban has been extended.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told reporters during a news conference that the reason for the extension was due to the Delta variant, which is considered the dominant strain of COVID-19 worldwide.

"While progress is being made, the situation in India is still very serious," he said. "The decision is based on the advice received from the Public Health Agency of Canada, and will best protect Canadians from an increased introduction of the Delta variant, which is prevalent in India."

The Canadian government on Monday announced that fully vaccinated American citizens and permanent residents who want to come to Canada for non-essential reasons can do so starting on August 9.

(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 fear of resurgence of



the COVID-19 pandemic after a drop in cases this month has forced the government to take stringent measures, casting a shadow over Bakrid celebrations in Kerala on Wednesday.

"Sharing and giving are the spirit of this festival...It is a festival of friendship.

A feeling of emptiness is in the minds of the people due to the COVID-19 pandemic," Panakkad Sayyid Munavvar Ali Shihab Thangal, a spiritual leader of a significant section of Muslims in Kerala, told PTI.

He said though the festivities will be confined to the homes of the faithful due to fear of spread of coronavirus, they would use the digital platforms effectively to virtually celebrate Eid with their near and dear ones.

Thangal opined that one should take such an experience with a positive mindset as it gives them an opportunity to think about the difficulties being faced by people.

Eid al-Adha or the 'Feast of Sacrifice,' falls after two months and ten days of the observance of the Ramadan (Eid Ul- Fitr) which was celebrated on May 13.

Ramadan is celebrated after a month-long dawn-to-dusk fasting by devotees.

"For Eid al-Adha also the devotees observe one day fasting on the previous day (today) as part of the observance of Eid festival", Rafeeq Rahmani, Qatheeb of the Sunni mosque in nearby Puthiyangadi-Chalil told PTI.

The Eid al-Adha also marks the Haj pilgrimage, he added.

There are many restrictions for the celebrations due to the prevailing situation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Only 40 devotees are permitted in mosques for prayers and with COVID-19 protocols.

"There will not be any Eid Gah (mass prayer on the beach, etc) and similar social gatherings this time also.

Devotees have been asked to come for the Eid prayer in the morning after performing "Vulu" (cleaning) and to carry "Musalla" (sheet for niskaram)", said Naduvilakam Basheer, a former bureaucrat and a devotee in nearby Karaparamba.

Thanks to the relaxations by the state government for three days from Sunday, devotees were on a festival-special shopping spree, with hundreds thronging textile and footwear shops and malls since then.

However,the Supreme Court's criticism of the governments relaxations for Bakrid in areas with high COVID-19 positivity rate has further sullied the spirit of some ahead of the festival.

During the daily COVID-19 evaluation meet in Thiruvananthapuram today, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the three-day easing of COVID restrictions in view of Bakrid being celebrated on July 21 will end today.

"There will be no relaxation in the curbs as of now. The current restrictions will continue for next one more week.

The average Test Positivity Rate of the last three days has increased to 10.8 per cent", he said.

The TPR is high in Malappuram, Kozhikode and Kasaragod districts.

The Chief Minister's statement came hours after the Supreme Court termed as "wholly uncalled for", the Left government's relaxation of lockdown restrictions in areas with high COVID-19 positivity rate, ahead of Bakrid festival.

The apex Court directed the state government to "heed the Right to Life" and warned Kerala of action if the easing of curbs leads to further spread of the virus and this is brought before it by any person.

Criticising the government, BJP state president K Surendran said that the Supreme Court verdict was a setback for the state government's "unscientific COVID defence."



"This is a slap in the face of the Pinarayi Vijayan government," he told reporters.

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For a century, the Indian Council of Medical Research was a little known government body quietly studying illnesses in New Delhi. But during the pandemic, its taken on a role akin to Anthony Faucis National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the U.S. -- a powerful position thats made it a controversial face of Indias struggles with Covid-19.

As the has acted as a key medical adviser to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his health ministry, its increasingly drawn criticism from the nations doctors and independent scientists, who have questioned its drug recommendations and the groups lack of transparency on data related to variants identified in India that are now spreading globally.

India struggled to curb the worlds fastest surge this summer, and public health experts are warning that the country is ill prepared to face a possible third wave of infections. Some of the ICMRs decisions during the pandemic reflect the broad chaos thats dogged Indias overwhelmed government apparatus, and have ended up benefiting the pharmaceutical industry rather than patients, critics say.

In April last year, physician SP Kalantri -- who helps runs a 1,000 bed hospital in the village of Sevagram -- wrote to the international scientific journal, The Lancet, strongly criticizing the for signing off on the health ministrys decision to recommend the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine as a Covid therapy. The medicine remained on Indias virus guidelines for almost a year after the drug, once embraced by Donald Trump, was discarded as a treatment for Covid in the U.S.





ALSO READ: Two vaccine doses successful in preventing 95% deaths, says ICMR study

Kalantris hospital in Sevagram, a village once home to Mahatma Gandhi, refused to prescribe that and other unproven treatments. Desperate patients, however, simply sought them out elsewhere, he said.

Countrywide, the doctors started writing these prescriptions, which artificially inflated the cost for Covid management, said Kalantri, director professor of medicine at Sevagrams Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences. Big Pharma was laughing all the way to the bank and ultimately the one who suffered was the poor patient -- its where the science failed in India.

Numerous therapies initially looked promising and the ICMRs guidelines are constantly evolving as trial evidence emerges, said Aparna Mukherjee, a New Delhi-based senior scientist at the Its very easy to criticize when something is put forward, she said in an interview. When you know there is some possibility that this drug might work, then just because it is in shortage you cannot say dont use it. Like other Indian government health agencies, the ICMR has been stretched thin during the pandemic, Mukherjee said. Spokespeople for the ICMR and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare didnt respond to requests for comment.

Yet criticisms of the ICMR dont stop there. Over the past year, the government and the ICMR have also been accused of withholding data about Covid and its variants that left physicians in the country flying blind, and of promoting a homegrown vaccine before it had passed key clinical trials. Public health experts say that it isnt clear how the ICMR decides which Covid drugs to back, and have complained that the agency hasnt fully disclosed how much funding it provided for the local shot.

Such moves have made the ICMR emblematic of Indias struggles with Covid, exemplifying problems in the countrys social and political fabric that existed for decades and lingered under Modi -- from a lack of transparency to the underfunded health-care system.

Indias government needed better evidence making and policy advice from the ICMR, said Shahid Jameel, a virologist who resigned in May as chair of the advisory panel of a state Covid genome-sequencing panel after criticizing Indias response to the pandemic. The ICMR has also drawn criticism on social media from scientists and health care advocates for its decision making and recommendations, at times attracting attention overseas.

The Indian Council of Medical Research has been singled out by experts for straying from scientific evidence, appearing at worst politically motivated and at best overly optimistic, an editorial in the Lancet said in September 2020, discussing the dangers of the false optimism that Indias government was projecting even as virus cases continued to rise.

The pandemic has killed more than 400,000 people in India, numbers that experts say are vastly undercounted. As infections surged this summer, hospitals ran short of life-saving oxygen and some patients died in the streets. This month, Indias federal health minister, Harsh Vardhan, resigned amid a broad cabinet reshuffle by Modi, whose popularity has taken a hit over the governments handling of the pandemic. But the ICMR hasnt changed.



ALSO READ: Third wave may hit by August-end, but it isn't inevitable: ICMR official

Headquartered in New Delhi, opposite Indias parliament, the ICMR was set up in 1911 by British colonial rulers and was traditionally focused on research. Covid-19 thrust the organization into the uncharted waters of actually managing an outsized viral outbreak.

In past epidemics, Indias National Centre for Disease Control -- which has several infectious disease experts on its board -- has played a bigger role. Yet the ICMR has become the more public face of Indias response to Covid-19, a development some scientists questioned. Sujeet Kumar Singh, the director general of the NCDC, didnt respond to an interview request.

ICMRs Mukherjee acknowledged that the ICMRs remit had widened during the pandemic and said that was due to the need of the hour. Its taken on added responsibilities such as testing and procurement of diagnostic equipment, she said.

Funded through the health ministry, the organization has a budget of 23.5 billion rupees ($316 million) this year and backs hundreds of scientist fellowships. ICMR-linked researchers published more the 800 papers in Indian and international journals, according to its last annual report.

Since 2018, its been headed by Balram Bhargava, a cardiolologist. The ICMR has several experts focused on diseases like malaria that have traditionally been Indias biggest public health concerns, but few virologists work for the agency. Bhargava didnt respond to multiple requests for an interview.

With its states easing lockdowns despite only about 6% of the population being fully vaccinated, India is at risk of new waves of infection. But experts question whether Indias health network will be better prepared when the next resurgence comes.

There is a distinct uneasiness in the scientific community on the governments handling of the pandemic and the opaqueness of the process of consultations, consensus building, data sharing, and decision making, said Lalit Kant, who headed the ICMRs epidemiology and communicable diseases division for 13 years until 2011. If we want the third wave to be managed appropriately then we need evidence-based insights.

In April, almost 300 Indian scientists and medical researchers appealed to Modi to allow them access to data that could help study, predict, and curb the spread of the While the ICMR has data on all Indians whove been tested for Covid so far, it restricts access, they say.

The ICMR database is inaccessible to anyone outside of the government and perhaps also to many within the government, the scientists wrote. While new pandemics can have unpredictable features, our inability to adequately manage the spread of infections has, to a large extent, resulted from epidemiological data not being systematically collected and released in a timely manner to the scientific community.

The ICMR conducted some of the most comprehensive serological surveys last year, including studying the presence of antibodies in various groups. Its also recently published research on mortality rates during the countrys recent devastating second wave. Scientists outside of the government system have said they havent had access to this data.

This gatekeeping of crucial information on the genomic makeup of local virus strains, testing and immune response to vaccines has left India flying blind as it contends with the new and highly infectious delta variant, which was first identified in the South Asian country and is now spreading worldwide, say some researchers.

Granular data on antibody surveys, clinical severity of disease, demographics, etc., has not been made available in the public domain, said Jameel, the Indian virologist. Open data would have allowed better modeling, better preparation and perhaps saved lives.

Mukherjee at the ICMR said there arent constraints on data and anyone with a proper proposal can access it, though she didnt elaborate on what criteria they needed to meet.

The ICMRs work with local company, Bharat Biotech International Ltd., on a homegrown Covid vaccine, has also drawn criticism from the scientific community. Earlier this year, the shot, called Covaxin, was approved by Indias government for emergency use before final trials were completed, a move doctors and public health experts said was premature and fueled widespread hesitancy.

While approvals in India are handled by the drug regulator, the ICMR helped finance the vaccines development, although it has not publicly said how much funding it provided. The company, Indias government and the ICMR have been further criticized for not making the details of the intellectual property rights to Covaxin public. Bharat Biotech in a statement last month said it will pay unspecified royalties to the ICMR and Indias National Institute of Virology.

Pandemic frontlines



Bharat Biotech and the ICMR have published studies showing potentially encouraging results on the vaccines effectiveness against new variants. However, because the papers have been authored by officials from the company and agency, scientists have pointed to conflict of interest issues.

Mukherjee from the ICMR declined to comment on the funding and intellectual property rights around Covaxin, but said final trial efficacy data should be published soon in a peer-reviewed journal, which was reiterated by a spokesperson for Bharat Biotech.

Back on the frontlines of the pandemic in Sevagram, Kalantri is mainly concerned about the poor in rural areas, some of whom went into debt buying medicines. Prices of some drugs -- such as Remdesivir, which was added to Indias guidelines in March 2020 -- soared more than tenfold on the black market.

Remdesivir is approved and used as a Covid treatment in the U.S. and elsewhere, but the World Health Organization has said there isnt enough evidence to back it as therapy because the drug hasnt been shown to improve survival in patients.

Its widespread use in India was particularly devastating because many had to pay for it out of pocket in a country where few have medical insurance and average incomes are less than $160 a month. Experts and bodies including the All India Drug Action Network, an umbrella group of non profits advocating drug access in India, have been critical of Indias continued advocacy of Remdesivir.

Gilead Sciences Inc., which makes Remdesivir, didnt respond to a request for comment. ICMRs Mukherjee said there was little the agency could do about price increases that arose in the black market.





ALSO READ: What ICMR study reveals about efficacy of Covishield against Delta strain

Convalescent plasma therapy, too, remained on the list for months despite the ICMRs own studies in November finding little benefit. Until late June, the health ministrys guidelines also recommended Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic treatment that was untested against Covid, even though the WHO discouraged its use as far back as March 2021.

Im very sad and disappointed, Kalantri said about the ICMR.

Meanwhile, even with the at its peak in India this summer, an index of local pharmaceutical stocks advanced 21% this year and Alliance Bernstein estimates that drugmakers sales volumes surged 36% in May from a year earlier due to Covid-related demand.

The pandemic has shown up Indias failure to strengthen medical bodies that are weak and functioning sub-optimally, said Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi-based epidemiologist and public health expert who has co-authored a book on the nations battle against Covid.

It is not merely about the Covid-19 pandemic response, but also about preparing Indian institutions for the future, Lahariya said. That opportunity seems to have been lost.
India's to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu visited the Dalip Singh Saund Post Office, named after the first Indian-American lawmaker, during his recent visit to

This is probably the first time that an Indian has visited the post office named after Saund, who was elected to the House of Representatives thrice from 1956 to 1962. The post office was named after him after the then President George Bush signed a bill in this regard into law on July 21, 2005.

During his visit to last week, Sandhu interacted with the Indian American community leaders.

He also held meetings with top US lawmakers from the region, including Scott Peters, who serves on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, Committee on Small Business; Darrell Issa, who is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs - Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa and Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade; and Mike Levin, member of the Hispanic and Progressive Caucus and House Committee on Natural Resources Committee on Veterans Affairs Select Committee on the Climate Crisis.

Sandhu visited Los Angeles and San Diego. He had engagements with the community, members of the US Congress and at the University of

He interacted with the Indian community leaders onboard the historic Star of India ship in the Maritime Museum of San Diego. Built in 1863, Star of India is the world's oldest active sailing ship.

In his remarks, the said the US has come out in an overwhelming manner to offer support to India during the COVID-19 crisis. He also praised the role of the Indian diaspora during this difficult time.

"Every bit that you do has been key to saving a life in India, making an actual difference to someone's life. Community has always been a strong pillar, (as has been) seen it in the past, too, to maintain the strong connection with India," 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.)
Citing "challenging



circumstances" in vaccinating its entire population amid limited availability of private hospitals, has once again urged the Centre to alter the ratio and allot at least 95 per cent of the COVID-19 shots through the government route.

This comes close on heels of the government last month asserting that "artificial" tie-up of 25 per cent vaccination in private hospitals may result in many citizens missing the jabs and emphasising the need for reducing the allocation to private hospitals to 5 per cent from 25 per cent.

"We have again requested the Centre to reduce the allocation to the private hospitals to 5 per cent as a major constraint in the state is limited availability of private hospitals to cater the rural and tribal population," Additional Chief Secretary Health, Arun Kumar Singh told PTI.

Private hospitals have made requisitions for procuring barely 1.20 lakh vaccine doses out of 8.28 lakh allocated for them for the month of July, he said, adding these requisitions came from hospitals in three districts only.

The state government has been emphasising that the mandate for 75:25 allocation format of COVID vaccines to the government and the private institutions needs to be reconsidered keeping in view the doctrine of colourable legislation (What cannot be done directly, should also not be done indirectly).

Singh in a letter to the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote: "This is to bring to your kind notice that in order to achieve 100 per cent vaccination, a major constraint in the state is limited availability of private hospitals to cater to rural and tribal population. ...it was requested to reduce the share of vaccination in private hospitals from 25% to 5% for the state of Jharkhand, against which, response is yet to be received."



Asserting that the state left no stone unturned in vaccinating eligible population in least time frame, Singh said private hospitals in the state have made request for procuring less than 15 per cent of the allocation earmarked for them for the month of July.

He also mentioned that only 19 private health facilities from three districts have come forward for procurement out of 24 districts in the state.

"As per allocation received from Government of India ..., 8,28,390 doses of COVID-19 vaccine are earmarked for private hospitals for the month of July 21. Against the aforementioned allocation, till date, requests from only 19 private facilities across 3 out of 24 districts of the state have been received from procurement of vaccines aggregating only 1,20,600 doses for the month of July which is less than 15% of the quantity earmarked by Government of India," the letter mentions.

The state urged the Centre to correct the anomaly expeditiously to facilitate total vaccination of all the eligible beneficiaries.

"In light of the above facts and challenging circumstances, it is once again requested to reduce the share of vaccination in private hospitals and allocate 95% vaccines to the state of from the government route to enable equitable distribution of vaccines," the letter said.

The state government has earlier pleaded that its more than 75 per cent population living in the rural areas have negligible reach to private hospitals.

Earlier, the Odisha government had also sought tweaking the share of vaccines to 95:5.

The state had said, even in cities where private hospitals are available, on account of lack of purchasing parity, demand for COVID-19 vaccine on payment basis is very limited as Below Poverty Line (BPL) population across the state is more than 37 per cent.

It said the overall objective of the government is to achieve 100 per cent vaccination, leaving no one behind, at the least possible time frame.

The revised guidelines for implementation of the National COVID Vaccination Programme issued by the Government of India states that vaccine manufacturers shall provide 25 per cent of the production to private hospitals who can administer the vaccine on payment of vaccine purchase price and applicable service charge per dose.

In Jharkhand of the 24 districts in the state, 13 districts are notified as Tribal districts and 19 districts are listed as Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected districts wherein hesitancy in vaccination has been a key challenge in the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination drive.

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President plans to nominate Jonathan Kanter as head of the Justice Departments antitrust division, the White House said Tuesday, the latest sign that the administration is preparing a broad crackdown on large technology companies.

Kanter, 47, who left one of the countrys biggest law firms last year to start his own firm, is a long-time foe of Alphabet Inc.s Google, representing companies that have pushed antitrust enforcers to sue the search giant.

Kanter has been a leading advocate and expert in the effort to promote strong and meaningful antitrust enforcement and competition policy, the White House said in a statement.

If confirmed by the Senate, Kanter would take over the antitrust division as it forges ahead with a monopoly lawsuit filed in October against Google and an investigation of Apple Inc. over its App Store practices.

Kanter is the favored candidate of a faction of lawmakers and antitrust experts who say the U. S. economy is plagued by monopoly power across industries, and that enforcers at the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission need to more aggressively police mergers and anticompetitive conduct.

Kanters nomination follows Bidens signing of a sweeping executive order designed to promote competition across industries, including measures such as restricting noncompete agreements for workers and allowing imports of prescription drugs from Canada.

Advocates of more aggressive antitrust enforcement cheered Kanters nomination. Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Democrat who chairs the Senate antitrust subcommittee, said Kanters deep legal experience and history of advocating for aggressive action make him an excellent choice. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, also a Democrat, called it tremendous news for workers and consumers.

Washington state Representative Pramila Jayapal, who authored a bill to force companies like Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook to divest some business lines, said Kanters nomination is excellent news for workers, consumers, small businesses, and innovation across America!

Sara Miller, head of anti-monopoly group American Economic Liberties Project, said Kanter was behind successful legal arguments driving the major antitrust investigations into Big Tech.

If confirmed, Kanter would become one of the top antitrust officials in the U. S., along with FTC Chair Lina Khan. Biden unexpectedly elevated Khan to run the FTC after she was confirmed by the Senate as a commissioner last month. Khan, who was a Columbia Law School professor when she was appointed, is one of the most prominent advocates in the U. S. for more forceful antitrust enforcement and breaking with the standard playbook for policing competition.

Kanter is closely aligned with Khan as well as Tim Wu, who was appointed as a White House adviser on technology and competition policy. Unlike Khan, who needs a majority of the five-member FTC to take enforcement actions, Kanter would have the sole authority to file lawsuits seeking to stop mergers and challenge companies over practices that harm competition.

While Kanter was under consideration by Biden, supporters posted photos on social media of coffee mugs emblazoned with Wu & Khan & Kanter.

Kanter, who also previously worked as an antitrust lawyer at the FTC, left Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP last year to found Kanter Law Group. During the Obama administration, Microsoft Corp. engaged him to push antitrust officials to take action against Google. More recently, he represented clients, including Yelp Inc., who urged the Justice Department to sue Google last year.

Kanter was an early advocate for more aggressive action against tech giants and for rethinking how antitrust enforcers analyze competition in digital markets.

In 2016, at an event about Amazon.com Inc. hosted by the left-leaning think tank New America, Kanter faulted antitrust officials for failing to bring monopoly cases against dominant companies.

Antitrust enforcement is barely on life support, he said. When was the last time you can remember a major antitrust agency bringing a monopolization case? The reason you cant remember it is because they havent done it.

At a webinar last year hosted by the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly group that advocates for breakups of tech companies, Kanter called a House report that accused tech companies of abusing their market power transformative for describing how antitrust enforcement has failed and outlining what to do about it.

There is something we can fix right now, he said. We have laws. Those laws are in place. Lets enforce them, and lets enforce them regularly, with vigor, with passion, creativity and meaning. That is something that could change tomorrow.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are taking steps to revise existing laws and give enforcers more authority to take on Americas biggest tech companies. In June, the House Judiciary Committee advanced a package of bills that would place significant new constraints on how tech platforms operate, including that they divest businesses in some circumstances.

If confirmed, Kanter would oversee the antitrust divisions monopoly lawsuit against Google. The case, filed last year by the Trump administration, accuses the company of abusing its dominance in internet search by using exclusive distribution agreements with Apple and other companies to shut out competition. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in 2023.

The Google lawsuit is one of two monopoly cases pending against the big tech platforms. The FTC last year sued Facebook Inc., arguing the companys acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp should unwound. A judge in June dismissed the complaint, saying the agency failed to support its claim that Facebook is a monopoly in the social media market. He gave the FTC until the end of July to fix the error and refile.
Fraudulent vaccination camps in Maharashtra and have come to the notice of the Centre and both the state governments have been directed to probe these and take stringent actions to prevent such incidents in future, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar was replying to a question in the House whether the instances of fraudulent vaccination camps have come to the notice of the Union Government.

She said such instances of malpractices in Maharashtra and have come to notice of the Government of India wherein on the pretext of Covid vaccination, it is alleged that some other product was administered to beneficiaries and the reported vaccination session was not conducted through CoWIN.

"The Ministry of Health has directed to both the state governments to investigate these incidences and take stringent actions so that such fraudulent incidences are not repeated in future.

"Further, communication has also been sent to all states and UTs that all beneficiaries should be registered on Co-WIN portal and all such vaccination sessions should be recorded on Co-WIN," Pawar 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.)
disrupted on Tuesday, demanding an investigation into reports that the government used Israeli-made Pegasus spyware to snoop on scores of journalists, activists and politicians, including the main Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

Shouting out slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modis government, the Opposition members said they wanted an independent probe into the complaints of and the resignation of Home Minister

An investigation published on Sunday by 17 media organizations, led by the Paris-based non-profit journalism group Forbidden Stories, said spyware made and licensed by the Israeli company NSO had been used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists.





ALSO READ: Pegasus row: Kapil Sibal demands SC-monitored probe, white paper by govt

Indian news portal The Wire reported that smartphones of politicians, including Gandhi, and two other lawmakers were among 300 verified Indian numbers listed as potential targets for during 2017-19 ahead of elections. NSO has said its product was intended only for use by vetted government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism and crime.

Opposition leaders said the Modi administration was on journalists, activists and politicians who were opposed to its policies. It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country, said.

It said the government had illegally accessed the conversation of many people by cell phones with the Pegasus spyware.

Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister for Electronics and Information Technology, told lawmakers on Monday there was no substance to the reports of
Of the two vaccines presently being procured for the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination, Covishield manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII) has received the pre-qualification, while the process of pre-qualification for Bharat Biotech's Covaxin is going on, the government informed Parliament on Tuesday.

In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar said the application for pre-qualification is submitted by the manufacturer directly to the World Health Organization (WHO).

In response to a question on when the approval for Covaxin is expected, the minister said the data required for approval was submitted by International Limited to on July 9.

"Based on the time taken for approval of other COVID-19 vaccines, it is estimated that the WHO-EUL process takes approximately two to three months from the date of submission," she said.

On the steps that the government is taking or has taken to ensure that more WHO-approved vaccines are made available in the country, Pawar said the regulatory norms have been streamlined for the approval of import and usage of the offshore-manufactured vaccines in India that have received the Emergency Use License (EUL) by the FDA of the United States, the MHRA of the United Kingdom, the PMDA of Japan or the WHO-EUL.

The minister further informed that the Covid vaccine manufactured by Moderna has already been approved for import and usage in the country by the Drugs Controller general of India (DCGI).

The National Empowered Group on Vaccine Administration against COVID-19 (NEGVAC) is in regular talks with offshore manufacturers for facilitating the import of Covid vaccines, some of which have already received the WHO pre-qualification, she 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.)
A court on Tuesday remanded businessman in police custody till July 23 in a case related to alleged creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps.

Kundra, the husband of actor Shilpa Shetty, was arrested Monday night by the city police's crime branch after being booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

The police, while seeking maximum custody of Kundra, told a magistrate's court that the 45-year-old businessman was economically gaining by making and selling pornographic material.

The police said they have seized Kundra's mobile phone and its contents need to be scrutinised and also his business dealings and transactions have to be looked into.

Apart from Kundra, the police also produced before the court another accused, Ryan Thorpe, who too was arrested in the case on Monday.

He was also remanded in police custody till July 23.

(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 on Tuesday termed wholly uncalled for the Kerala government's relaxations for Bakrid in areas with high COVID-19 positivity rate and said giving in to pressure from traders discloses a sorry state of affairs.

Pressure groups of all kinds, religious or otherwise, cannot in any manner interfere with the most precious Fundamental Right to Life of all the citizens of the country, the apex court said.

It directed the to give heed to Article 21 (protection of life and personal liberty) of the Constitution and follow the law laid down in its orders passed in Uttar Pradesh Kanwar Yatra matter.

While hearing the Uttar Pradesh Kanwar Yatra matter on July 16, the top court had observed that all sentiments, including religious, are subservient to the Right to Life.

A bench of Justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai noted it is extremely alarming that in category D areas, where infection is the highest at 15 per cent, a full day of relaxation was granted in Kerala on Monday.

The aforesaid facts disclose an alarming state of affairs. To give in to pressure groups so that the citizenry of India is laid bare to a nationwide pandemic discloses a sorry state of affairs, the bench said.

Even otherwise, homilies such as as far as possible' and assurances from traders without anything more, do not inspire any confidence in the people of India or this court, it said.

The apex court noted that affidavit filed by Kerala discloses a sorry state of affairs and does not in any real manner safeguard the Right to Life and Health guaranteed to all the citizens of India under Article 21 of the Constitution.

It may also be pointed out that the relaxation for one day to a category D area was wholly uncalled for, it said, adding, In these circumstances, we direct the state of Kerala to give heed to Article 21 read with Article 144 of the Constitution of India and follow the law laid down in our orders in the Uttar Pradesh case i.e. July 14, July 16 and July 19, 2021.

The bench said if as a result of the July 17 notification, which declared certain relaxations in view of Bakrid, any untoward spread of COVID-19 takes place, any member of the public may bring this to the notice of the apex court which will take necessary action against those who are responsible.

Also, pressure groups of all kinds, religious or otherwise, cannot in any manner, interfere with this most precious Fundamental Right of all the citizens of India, the bench said while disposing of an application which had raised the issue of relaxations in Kerala in view of Bakrid festival.

Referring to the July 17 notification, the bench noted that even a cursory look would show that all non-essential shops, which were allowed in only category A area, were now allowed in areas under category A to C.

It noted that as per July 6 notification, areas with average test positivity rate (TPR) of less than 5 per cent were included in category A; those with 5 to 10 per cent were in category B; 10 to 15 per cent in category C and those above 15 per cent were in category D.

In category D, however, all these shops were allowed on July 19, 2021 i.e. Monday only, despite the most severe restrictions being placed in category D, i.e. throughout the week, the restrictions placed on Saturdays/Sundays were to operate, the bench said in its order.

It said three paragraphs of the affidavit read with the July 17 notification disclose that the state government has given in to associations of traders who represented before the government that they have stocked up goods for the purpose of Bakrid very early.

The state also blithely records that the opening of shops will strictly follow COVID protocols and they are ready to follow additional regulations ordered by the state, if any, it noted.

The bench said it had heard senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for applicant P K D Nambiar, on Monday and was prima facie of the view that the matter required urgent consideration.

We, therefore, asked the state to file an affidavit in the course of the day and listed this case this morning in view of the urgency, it said.

The bench noted it has been stated in the affidavit that, as far as possible, the persons visiting shops and other establishments may belong to those with at least one dose of vaccine/COVID recovered category and follow strict COVID protocols along with the chief minister's appeal.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had announced the concessions at a press conference on July 17.

In view of Bakrid (Eid-ul-Azha) being celebrated on July 21, textiles, footwear shops, jewellery, fancy stores, shops selling home appliances and electronic items, all types of repairing shops and shops selling essential items shall be allowed to open on July 18-20 from 7 AM to 8 PM in category A, B and C areas, he said.

The apex court had last week taken cognisance on its own of media reports on the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow the Kanwar Yatra amid the COVID pandemic.

On Monday, the top court had closed the matter related to Kanwar Yatra in Uttar Pradesh and asked the authorities to ensure that any untoward incident directly affecting the lives of the public shall be looked upon sternly and prompt action would be taken immediately.

(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
South Korea's prime minister has offered a public apology over a large-scale outbreak on a destroyer on an anti-piracy mission off East Africa.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Tuesday the government is very sorry for failing to carefully take care of the health of our soldiers who are devoting themselves to the country.

The Defense Ministry says 247 of the destroyer's 301 crew members have been infected. It's the largest cluster for South Korea's military since the pandemic began.

sent two military planes to bring back all 301 sailors.

On Tuesday, reported 1,278 new virus cases, taking the total caseload to 180,481, with 2,059 deaths from COVID-19. It was the 14th day in a row that has confirmed more than 1,000 new cases.

(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 strategy to prevent resurgence of COVID-19 cases through various public health measures has been deliberated upon in different technical committees and the Centre continues to advise states to strictly follow the strategy of "test-track-treat-vaccination and adherence to Covid-appropriate behaviour", Rajya Sabha was told on Tuesday.

Minister of State for Health Bharati Pravin Pawar said this in response to a question on whether the government has undertaken any detailed study with experts on how to minimise the threat and likelihood of a third wave of the pandemic, if not prevention.

In a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha, Pawar said the strategy and interventions required to prevent resurgence of COVID-19 cases through instituting various public health measures has been deliberated upon in various technical committees under the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and the Directorate General of Health Services.

These technical committees include subject experts from the field of public health, clinicians, scientists, microbiologists, etc. drawn from eminent public health institutions and hospitals as well as the World Health Organization.

The Ministry of Health continues to advise states to strictly follow the five-fold strategy of "Test-Track-Treat-Vaccination and adherence to COVID appropriate behaviour", Pawar said in the reply.

States and union territories have been accordingly advised the same through formal communications, video conferences as well as through deployment of central teams.

On whether the health infrastructure has been strengthened and expanded to meet the challenges throughout the country, Pawar said health is a state subject but the Government of India has supported the states and undertook a series of action including further strengthening of existing health infrastructure to ensure provisioning of sufficient hospital beds, drugs, medical oxygen and other consumables to aid proper clinical care of COVID-19 patients.

Elaborating on some of the ongoing initiatives to strengthen hospital infrastructure, the minister said with the intent to reduce the risk of cross infection to non-COVID-19 patients as well as to maintain continuity of non-Covid essential health services in the country, a three-tier arrangement of dedicated health facilities has been implemented in the country.

The Government of India, in addition to providing services through hospitals/facilities available under the Ministry of Health, roped in tertiary care hospitals under ESIC, Defence, Railways, paramilitary forces, Steel Ministry, etc. for management of COVID-19 cases.

Further, many large temporary treatment facilities were established by DRDO to manage the surge in COVID-19 cases in the country, the reply stated.

Due to concerted actions of the central and state governments, the isolation bed capacity and ICU bed capacity which was merely 10,180 and 2,168 before the first lockdown (as on 23rd March 2020) could be increased to 18,21,420 isolation beds and 1,21,671 ICU beds (as on 16th July 2021).

Additionally, the reliance on imports with respect to ventilators was mitigated with concerted efforts of governments and industry under the 'Make in India' vision.

Government institutions have been allocated 56,218 ventilators, of which 48,060 have been already supplied as on July 13.

Taking note of spread of the disease to peri-urban and rural areas in many districts, the Ministry of Health had on May 16 issued an SoP on COVID-19 containment and management in these areas, the reply said.

With the intent to protect pediatric age group in current and any future surges of cases, guidelines for management of COVID-19 in children were also issued on June 18.

The guideline provides guidance on the management of acute presentation of COVID-19 as well as Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (MIS-C) in children and adolescents found temporally related to COVID-19.

Oxygen cylinders and concentrators are being procured and being supplied to States. Further PSA plants have been sanctioned across the country to augment oxygen supplies.

In addition, 'India COVID-19 Emergency Response & Health System Preparedness Package: Phase-II' has also been approved by the Cabinet with Rs 23,123 crore (with Rs. 15,000 Cr as Central Component & Rs 8,123 crore as State component) and is to be implemented from July 1, 2021 to March 31, 2022.

Pawar said the vaccination drive is going as scheduled.

On by what time the country will achieve universal vaccination, the minister said the COVID-19 vaccination is an ongoing and dynamic process, which is being guided by National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for COVID-19 (NEGVAC) on the basis of concurrent scientific evidence.

In view of the dynamic and evolving nature of COVID-19 pandemic, no fixed timeline at present can be indicated for the completion of vaccination drive.

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The government of on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with 35 companies that may see investment to the tune of Rs 17,141 crore, creating employment opportunities for 55,054 people.

The major companies that would be coming up with fresh investments over Rs 1,000 crore in the state include Renew Energy Two, TCS, ZF Wabco and Srivaru Motors among others. Renew Energy Two will be coming up with a 450 megawatt (Mw) wind power generation unit at Tuticorin , Tirunelveli, Dindigul and Tiruppur for Rs 3,000 crore. TCS will be coming up with its third phase of expansion at SIPCOT IT Park in Siruseri, ZF Wabco with an auto component unit at Kancheepuram for Rs 1,800 crore and a two-wheeler EV unit by Srivaru Motors for Rs 1,000 crore at Coimbatore.

Chief Minister M K Stalin inaugurated another five projects with an investment commitment of Rs 7,117 crore and employment creation for 6,798 persons. Vikram Solar, a leading module manufacturer and rooftop solar provider, announced a new solar photovoltaic (PV) module unit at IndoSpace Industrial Park in Oragadam for Rs 5,000 crore. The plant has a 1.3 Gw module manufacturing capacity. With this unit, Vikram Solars cumulative PV module capacity reaches 2.5 Gw, currently the largest in India.

The chief minister also laid the foundation stone for nine projects with an investment commitment of Rs 4,250 crore and employment opportunities to 21,630 persons. "The total investment committed in the above 49 projects is Rs 28,508 crore and employment opportunities to 83,482 persons," said a government statement.

also launched "the Single Window Portal 2.0" with over 100 services spread across 24 departments for existing and new investors in a fully digitalised manner. The upgraded system will have features such as parallel processing of clearances, virtual meeting with departments, artificial intelligence-based chatbot facility and deemed approval for select clearances.

Guidance Tamil Nadu has also entered into a deal with American Tamil Entrepreneurs Association (ATEA) to promote start-ups in the fields of innovation, research and development in Tamil Nadu. This digital accelerator program sanctions grants to the start-up projects engaged in innovation, research and development. Government has sanctioned a sum of Rs. 5 crore for this programme.
A media report said spying tool Pegasus was found in the smartphones of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, political strategist and two government ministers. More on that story and other headlines.

arbitration case: Riders to invoking 'sovereign immunity'



For India to invoke sovereign or state immunity to safeguard its foreign assets, which are under threat of getting seized in the intensifying legal battle with Cairn Energy, may come with several riders. Experts point out that the Indian government has to first satisfy the French court that the properties or assets that are under consideration are being used to dispense the states sovereign functions. Read more



The countrys top have once again moved the Supreme Court against attempts to make their sensitive inspection reports public under the Right to Information Act. The inspections are done by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and not even the employees of the banks, except the top management, are allowed to see it. Read more

The Supreme Court (SC) on Monday maintained its stand on the governments adjusted gross revenue (AGR) demand from telecom firms, observing that it had multiple times said the dues cant be recomputed. It, however, reserved the order. Three telecom firms  Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Tata Teleservices  had moved the apex court seeking correction in calculation errors in the Department of Telecommunications (DoTs) AGR demand. Read more

The government on Monday denied claims that it had used spyware Pegasus to compromise the phone data of some persons but The Wire, the news portal which was a part of the Pegasus project that investigated possible snooping using the Israeli spyware in many countries, published fresh data that revealed IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw himself was on a long list of people who might have been victims. Read more While the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) is investigating some of the companies with regard to compliance with regulations, the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is probing certain entities belonging to the of Companies under laws administered by it", Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said in a written reply to a question.

Read more
Two-thirds of Indias general population has Covid antibodies, according to the fourth national serosurvey conducted by Indian Council of Medical Research between last weeks of June and early July this year.

The overall seroprevalence in the country was around 67.6 per cent. While children in the age group 6-9 years showed the lowest exposure to Covid, over 57 per cent of them showed antibodies.

Despite high seropositivity shown in data, the government has cautioned that around 400 million people in India were still vulnerable to the virus. The rise in seroprevalence is due to two factors - the second wave and also the vaccinations which has given some seroprotection to people, said V K Paul, chairman, national Covid task force and member-Niti Aayog.

Seroprevalence-- the presence of Covid antibodies was much higher in those who were vaccinated with one dose and highest among the fully vaccinated at 81 and 89 per cent respectively.

The findings clearly show that there is a ray of hope, no room for complacency. We have to maintain covid appropriate behavior and community engagement, said Balram Bhargava, director general,

Covid exposure among those surveyed was slightly higher in urban - areas - 69.6 per cent compared to the rural - 66.7 per cent. With 69.2 per cent seroprevalence more females showed the C0vid antibody presence than male - 65.8 per cent.

The last serosurvey conducted towards the end of first wave in December-January had shown that around 24 per cent of population was exposed to Covid.

Besides 28,975 people from the general population, the survey also studied 7,252 health care workers. More than 85 per cent of the healthcare workers showed the antibodies presence. Ten per cent of the health workers were not vaccinated.

Areas without antibodies still run the risk of infection, has warned.

While the latest survey gives a birds eye view of the spread of Covid-19 in India following the second wave, ICMR stressed that the national serosurvey is not a substitute for local variations at states and districts level. State-led sentinel sero-surveillance will inform further state-level action. State heterogeneity indicates possibility of future waves of infection, Bhargava said.

Government has discouraged all non-essential travel and advised people to travel only if fully vaccinated. It has also said that all societal, public, religious and political congregations have to be avoided.

The serosurvey was conducted in the same 70 districts across 21 States that were part of the last three such studies. Ten villages or wards from each district were represented with 40 individuals per village or ward. Ten per cent of those surveyed were children in a departure from previous samples. More than 62 per cent of those surveyed among adults had not taken any vaccine dose.
The government on Monday announced that fully vaccinated air travellers will be allowed to enter the state without a mandatory negative RT-PCR or Rapid Antigen test report.

Speaking to ANI, Minister Subodh Uniyal said, "If passengers coming by air have got both the vaccine doses, then they will be allowed to come to the state without negative RT-PCR or Rapid Antigen test report."

This comes as part of the fresh relaxations allowed by the government which on Monday extended the ongoing COVID curfew till July 27.

As per the fresh relaxations issued by the government, the people of Uttrakhand now do not need to carry RT-PCR or Rapid Antigen negative test reports for travelling from plain to hilly districts in the state.

"The mandatory RT-PCR antigen or rapid test for moving from plain to hilly districts in the state has been done away with. People of the state can now move freely in the state," said Uniyal.

The minister also said multiplexes and water parks in the state can now operate with 50 per cent occupancy.

"Also, shops would now be allowed to open from 8 am to 9 pm against the previous timing of 8 am to 7 pm," 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.)
US Secretary of State will be on a two-day visit to India from July 27 to 28, according to sources.

Sources familiar with the visit details told ANI that Blinken is also likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

It is learnt that preparations for the high-level visit is underway.

Jaishankar and Blinken had already met thrice in span of last one year. After US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin visit to India, this will be the second high profile visit of the member of Biden administration.

US had lent support to India when it was grappling with deadly second wave of coronavirus, Biden administration personally intervened to expedite procurement of raw material for Indian vaccine maker and had sent ventilators and other counter Covid equipments.

Recovery from Covid situation, vaccines, deteriorating security scenario in Afghanistan and China is expected to figure on the agenda.

(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.)
Delta variant makes up over 80% of US Covid cases, says CDC

US health officials said the more contagious Delta variant now accounts for more than 80 per cent of new coronavirus cases in the country, a dramatic increase that has underscored how quickly the more contagious strain is spreading.The Delta variant, first discovered in India, has rapidly spread through a number of countries, including those with high vaccination rates, including the US and UK, alarming health officials and raising fears that restrictions will need to be reimposed to curb the spread. Read more





Let's look at the global statistics

Global infections: 190,099,159

Global deaths: 4,101,337

Vaccine doses administered: 3,660,068,372

Nations with most cases: US (34,137,733), India (31,174,322), Brazil (19,391,845), (5,934,314), Russia (5,931,925).



Source: John Hopkins Coronavirus Research Center

UK suffers worst death toll in months

The UK has reported its worst daily death toll since March, even as England lifts almost all Covid measures, the government in Westminster has said. A further 96 people died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid-19 as of Tuesday; the highest reported daily figure since 24 March. It brings the UKs total to 128,823. Read more





Spread of infections in increases by 150% in a week

New infections in are increasing at an unprecedented rate due to the Delta variant, after 18,000 cases were reported for the previous 24 hours, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports. The level of infections is the highest since mid-May, when the country was emerging from a third nationwide lockdown. France, which is bracing for a fourth wave of infections because of the spread of the Delta variant, has been racing to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Read more





Hong Kong, Singapore to review travel bubble date in late-August

Hong Kongs government said on Tuesday authorities will review a planned air travel bubble with Singapore in late August, given the recent surge of Covid-19 cases in Singapore. Both governments would review the target date taking into account the effectiveness of the enhanced infection control measures implemented by Singapore and the global situation at that time, Hong Kongs government said in a statement. Read more





South to enter lockdown; Victoria lockdown extended

South will go into lockdown from Tuesday after the state's coronavirus outbreak was confirmed to be the Delta variant, while Victoria's lockdown will be extended for a further seven days. Victoria's lockdown will be extended for seven days until 11.59pm on Tuesday, July 27. Read more
The on Tuesday issued the request for proposal (RFP) or the formal tender to domestically build six conventional submarines for the Navy at a cost of over Rs 40,000 crore, over a month after the mega acquisition project was cleared.

It will be the first project to be implemented under the strategic partnership (SP) model that allows domestic firms to collaborate with foreign players to produce high-end military platforms in India.

The RFP was issued to the Mazagaon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL) and Larsen & Toubro (L&T), the two Indian companies shortlisted following a long-drawn process, according to the

Both L&T and MDL will have to collaborate with one of the five already short-listed foreign shipyards -- Daewoo Shipbuilding (South Korea), ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems (Germany), Navantia (Spain) and Naval Group (France) and JSC ROE(Russia).

"These five foreign firms are the world leaders in the field of conventional design, construction and all other related technologies. The foreign OEMs (original equipment maker) will be the technology partner in the SP model," the said.

"Foreign OEMs will enable SP for construction of submarines, achieving high levels of indigenization, and transfer of technology (ToT)," it said in a statement.

The Defence Acquisition Council (DAC) last month approved the issuance of the request for proposal (RFP) for the acquisition programme named Project-75(I).

The ministry said the OEMs would enable the setting up of dedicated manufacturing lines for the submarines in India by providing ToT for design and other technologies and make India the global hub for design and production.

"The project would not only aid in boosting the core submarine, shipbuilding industry but would also greatly enhance manufacturing/industrial sector, especially the MSME by the development of an industrial ecosystem for the manufacture of associated spares, systems and equipment related to submarines," the ministry said.

In order to achieve these objectives, the RFP has key features like mandatory level of indigenous manufacture of platforms, ToT for design, manufacture and maintenance of submarines and a few critical equipment and systems.

Under the strategic partnership model, domestic defence manufacturers are allowed to join hands with leading foreign defence majors to produce high-end military platforms to reduce import dependence.

The planned to acquire 24 new submarines, including six nuclear attack submarines, to bolster its underwater fighting capability under a 30-year programme that will end in 2030.

It currently has 15 conventional submarines and two nuclear submarines.

The Navy has been focusing on significantly bolstering its overall capabilities in view of China's growing efforts to increase its military presence in the Indian Ocean Region.

The Indian Ocean, considered the backyard of the Indian Navy, is critical to the country's strategic interests.

According to global naval analysts, the Chinese navy currently has over 50 submarines and about 350 ships. The total number of ships and submarines is projected to go past 500 in the next 8-10 years.

The is also in the process of procuring 57 carrier-borne fighter jets, 111 Naval Utility Helicopters (NUH) and 123 multi-role helicopters under the strategic partnership model.

(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.)
Bihar's Minister of Industries Syed Shahnawaz Hussain, who held an interactive session with the stakeholders on the draft textile policy on Tuesday, said there is an immense scope to create multiple textile hubs across the state.

Speaking at an interactive session with the stakeholders on draft textile policy for at the CII here on Tuesday, Hussain said, " is quite rich in handlooms and skilled artisans and there is immense scope for creating multiple textile hubs across the state."



He emphasised on Bihar's strategic location for both domestic and export markets and the state's easy connectivity by road, rail and air.

Meanwhile, Hussain, who is also national spokesperson of the BJP, also met Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar at the latter's residence here. He also had an interaction with the BJP leaders of the Chandigarh unit at the party office here.

Hussain also called on Punjab Governor V P Singh Badnore, who is also Administrator UT Chandigarh, at the Raj Bhavan here.

Speaking to reporters later, Hussain while wooing investors from this region said there is a stable government in led by Nitish Kumar and it offers a congenial atmosphere for the investors.

Hussain also recalled that he was a textile minister in the NDA government at the Centre led by former prime minister, late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and shared his memories of having together worked with Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, who also remained a Union minister earlier.

"I have worked with Nitish Kumar at the Centre for five years... He is a fine chief minister and an experienced one," said Hussain about the Bihar chief minister and his party's ally.

He said Bihar was witnessing an all-round growth now under the present dispensation.

Referring to previous regimes, he said, "Earlier, road, power, water, infrastructural problems were there, but the situation is better now. In agriculture too, Bihar has witnessed a growth."



Hussain said Bihar is the first state to formulate ethanol promotion policy, which has attracted Rs 30,000 crore worth investment in the state.

"Now, we are formulating textile and pharmaceutical policy," said Hussain, who was accompanied by Bihar's Additional Chief Secretary (Industries Department) Brijesh Mehrotra.

He said before formulating these policies they are talking to various stakeholders. As part of this, he held an interaction with the industrialists from this region.

Hussain said they want to make Bihar a hub of textiles and leverage various advantages in its favour.

Replying to a question, he said the thrust area is textile in which Bihar is seeking investment.

(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 government has decided not to impose anti-dumping duty on imports of a certain type of fibre board, used to make furniture and cabinets, from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, as per an office memorandum of the Department of Revenue.

The commerce ministry's investigation arm DGTR had in April recommended imposition of the duty for five years on 'plain medium density fibre board having thickness less than 6mm' after concluding in a probe that the domestic industry was impacted due to dumping of the goods from these countries.

The Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR) suggested duty in the range of USD 227.47 to USD 258.42 944 per cubic metre.

The probe was conducted following a complaint by domestic manufacturers.

While the directorate recommends these duties, the Department of Revenue takes the final decision to impose the same.

"The central government has decided not to impose the anti-dumping duty on imports of plain medium density fibre board having thickness less than 6mm originating in or exported from Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia...," the memorandum said.

In international trade parlance, dumping happens when a country or a firm exports an item at a price lower than the rate of that product in the domestic market.

Dumping impacts the price of that product in the importing country, hitting margins and profits of domestic manufacturing firms.

According to global trade norms, a country is allowed to impose tariffs on such dumped products to provide a level-playing field to domestic manufacturers.

The duty is imposed only after a thorough investigation by a quasi-judicial body, such as DGTR in India. The imposition of anti-dumping duty is permissible under the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime.

(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 is expected to continue expansion of the bilateral partnership with India and the driving force of the relationship is concern about China's growing economic and military power in the region, according to a Congressional report.

"Many speculate that the Administration would pay more attention to India's domestic developments, including on human rights, but considered broad policies unlikely to change due to the perceived overarching need to counterbalance China, said the latest report on India-US relationship released by independent Congressional Research Service.

Independent observers widely expected the Biden Administration to continue expansion of the bilateral partnership (with India), and most saw concern about China's growing economic and military power as the driving force of the relationship, said the report by the CRS, which is traditionally prepared for the American lawmakers to make informed decisions.

CRS reports, prepared by independent experts, are not considered as an official report or view of the US Congress. Of late, the US Congress has been making many of these reports public.

Many analysts laud an expected US return to multilateralism - especially given India's recently warmer sentiments toward the Quad initiative - and were eager to see the extent to which the Administration would commit resources prioritising the Indo-Pacific region in its foreign policy, said the report authored by several South Asia experts led by Alan Kronstadt.

The US, Japan, India and Australia had in 2017 given 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.

In March, President virtually met Quad leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during the first Summit of the bloc where he said that a free and open Indo-Pacific is essential for all and the US was committed to working with its partners and allies in the region to achieve stability.

China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in both the South China Sea and the East China Sea. China claims sovereignty over all of the South China Sea. Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Taiwan have counter claims.

Beijing has also built up and militarised many of the islands and reefs it controls in the region. Both areas are stated to be rich in minerals, oil and other natural resources and are also vital to global trade.

The report notes that despite many areas of sometimes serious discord, the US Congress has remained broadly positive in its posture toward the US-India strategic and commercial partnership. The Biden Administration has indicated that it intends to maintain the expansion and deepening of US-India ties.

Congressional legislation and oversight has and can continue to affect the course of US-India relations, including in areas such as resourcing for a US Indo-Pacific strategy, trade and investment (including bilateral defense trade) relations, immigration policy, nuclear proliferation, human rights, and cooperative efforts to address COVID-19 and climate change, among many others, it said.

Observing that President Biden was a strong and consistent advocate of positive US-India relations and US support for India during his 36-year Senate career, the CRS notes that some analysts expect pressure to come on India in issues related to human rights private rather than public channels, with at least one contending that such messaging will be predictable, but inconsequential.

CRS said that defence trade has emerged as a key aspect of the bilateral partnership. New Delhi seeks to transform its military into one with advanced technology and global reach, reportedly planning up to USD100 billion on new procurements over the next decade to update its mostly Soviet-era arsenal.

(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 to recover Rs 2,992.75 crore as on July 15 from 42.16 lakh ineligible beneficiary farmers registered for the central scheme PM-KISAN, with highest amount to be recovered from Assam, Agriculture Minister informed Parliament on Tuesday.

The highest amount of Rs 554.01 crore has to be recovered from 8.35 lakh ineligible farmers in Assam, followed by Rs 437.9 crore from Punjab, Rs 357.9 crore from Maharashtra, Rs 340.56 crore from Tamil Nadu, and Rs 258.64 crore from Uttar Pradesh, according to data placed before the Lok Sabha by the minister.

As per the data, the other states include Gujarat (Rs 220 7 crore), Madhya Pradesh (Rs 195.9 crore), Rajasthan (Rs 144.1 crore) and Karnataka (Rs 129.32 crore).

Surprisingly, about Rs 76,000 has to be recovered from 19 ineligible farmers of West Bengal where the PM-KISAN scheme was implemented in May, the data showed.

Under the PM-KISAN scheme, launched in 2019, a financial benefit of Rs 6,000 per year is provided to the eligible farmer families, payable in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000. The fund is transferred directly to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

Tomar, in a written reply to the Lower House, further said the structure of the PM-KISAN scheme inherently comprises mechanism for exclusion of errors on the basis of continuous verification and validation of data of beneficiaries by various authorities like Aadhaar, Public Financial Management System (PFMS) and income tax database.

"However, during the process of verification, it was found that the benefit of the scheme was transferred to some ineligible beneficiaries, including some income tax payee farmers," he added.

The minister also said the PM-KISAN is an ongoing and continuous scheme.

As and when the correct and verified data of registered farmers is received on the PM-KISAN portal from respective states and its subsequent validation through Aadhaar/PFMS, the benefits of the scheme are transferred into the bank account of intended beneficiaries through direct benefit transfer (DBT) mode.

Stating that the government has taken special measures to ensure that the funds are not being misused, Tomar said the scheme is properly implemented in order to benefit genuine farmers.

He said standard operational guidelines have been issued for recovering money from ineligible beneficiaries.

Standard operational guidelines for identification of income tax payees have been prepared and circulated to the states. Besides, standard operational guidelines for physical verification of PM-KISAN beneficiaries have been circulated to the state governments, he said.

That apart, caution advisory to the states have been issued to adopt measures during the registration and verification of farmers under the PM-KISAN scheme, 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.)
At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.



There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister.



No one immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, but police quickly fanned out across the area. One car parked on a nearby street was completely destroyed; the police said it was used as launching pad for the rockets.



The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off.



The barrage came as the US and Nato complete their final withdrawal from



Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighbouring countries over the past weeks.



The withdrawal is more than 95 per cent complete and the final US soldier will be gone by August 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.



Amid the flaring violence and offensive, Afghan Army Chief Gen Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai is expected to pay a three-day crucial visit to India from July 27 to explore boosting bilateral military ties, people familiar with the development said on Tuesday.



Gen Ahmadzai is scheduled to hold wide-ranging talks with the top Indian military brass including his counterpart Gen MM Naravane and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, they said.



President Ghani has stressed that the have no intention and willingness for peace... We have proven that we have the intention, the willingness and have sacrificed for peace.



Afghan forces have been complaining about being left without reinforcements and supplies, often running low on food as the Taliban advanced.



Turkey will talk to Taliban on Kabul airport



Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's president, said on Tuesday his country will talk with the Taliban regarding Turkeys bid to operate and secure the airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul. This process will also be discussed with the Taliban, he said, acknowledging that the hardline Islamist group had some discomforts over Turkeys proposed plans for the airport.



Join probe: Pak to daughter of Afghan envoy



Pakistans Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid on Tuesday reiterated the polices claim that Silsila Alikhil, the daughter of Afghanistans ambassador, was not kidnapped even as he urged her to come forward and join the probe. Alikhil was allegedly abducted, tortured and assaulted on Friday by unknown persons in Islamabad.
Democratic standards in the are eroding in several member countries, particularly in Hungary and where judicial independence is under threat, the EU's executive commission said Tuesday in its annual report on adherence to the rule of law.

The report also singled out Slovenia, which recently took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council, for attacks against the Balkan nation's media.

There are causes for serious concern in a number of member states, especially when it comes to the independence of judiciary, said Vera Jourova, the Commission vice-president for Values and Transparency.

The review, which is in its second year, was published a week after the EU's top court ruled that Poland's way of disciplining high judges contravenes EU law and undermines judicial independence, telling the country's right-wing government to change it.

The European Commission has also started legal action against and Hungary for what the EU's executive arm sees as blatant disrespect for the rights of LGBT people.

The wide-ranging audit found deficient in the four main areas reviewed: national justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and checks and balances.

According to the EU's executive arm, reforms of the Polish justice system carried out over the past six years continue to increase the influence of the government over the justice system, damaging judicial independence.

The report also pointed out a risk of undue influence on corruption prosecutions for political purposes" and noted a deterioration of working conditions for journalists, with use of intimidating judicial proceedings."



Hungary was criticized for its perceived inadequate anti-corruption measures and the report noted that media pluralism remains at risk." The report depicted a bleak media situation in Slovenia, reporting online harassment and threats against journalists.

The EU has repeatedly warned that democratic standards are being challenged in Hungary and Poland. At a June summit, EU leaders strongly clashed with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban over new legislation that bans the display of LGBT issues to children in that country.

Earlier this year, the European Union's executive arm also condemned Slovenia's right-wing prime minister, Janez Jansa, for a series of aggressive comments about journalists.

But the EU's criticism seems to have little effect. After the European Court of Justice's ruling, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki dismissed it as a typical dispute of the doctrine and insisted that the EU court has no authority on the shaping of the justice systems in individual member nations.

The aim of the report is not to sanction countries. To try to rein in member states they believe are at fault, EU institutions can use the so-called Article 7 procedure, but proceedings launched against Poland and Hungary have not been conclusive so far.

EU lawmakers have been losing patience and threatened last month to sue the bloc's executive branch if it fails to take action against countries allegedly violating democratic standards, notably Hungary and Poland. They urged European Parliament President David Sassoli to demand that the European Commission fulfil its obligations within two weeks, under a system tying access to some EU funds to a country's respect for the rule of law.

The system was included in the budget the EU approved last year covering the 2021-27 period and which also included a massive coronavirus economic stimulus fund. In March, the right-wing governments of Poland and Hungary filed a complaint with the European Court of Justice to challenge it.

Both countries have submitted their plans to receive a share of the 800 billion EU recovery fund to finance the 27-nation bloc's recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but the commission has yet to approve them.

(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.)
Two influential Democratic lawmakers are proposing to introduce bicameral legislation to impose a tax on imports from countries like China and many others who are not taking significant steps to address the challenge posed by

The FAIR Transition and Competition Act of 2021, which is also sponsored by Senator Chris Coons and Congressman Scott Peters, proposes to establish a border carbon adjustment (BCA) on polluting imports.

It will establish a border carbon adjustment on carbon-intensive imports to account for the cost incurred by US businesses to comply with laws and regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

The two lawmakers said the border carbon adjustment will raise billions of dollars to support communities as they adapt to increasingly severe weather events and invest in new technologies to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the bill, the list of goods covered by the tariff will expand as the United States improves processes for determining the carbon intensity of different types of goods.

The FAIR Transition and Competition Act will facilitate a race to the top among US companies to produce the next generation of clean energy and technology. The move would ensure we remain a key player in cooperation on climate action and show the world that the US is fully committed to addressing the climate crisis at home and abroad, Peters said.

cooperation will be critical to reaching net-zero emissions, said Coons.

We have a historic opportunity to demonstrate that climate policy goes hand in hand with providing economic opportunities as US innovators develop and scale clean energy technologies. The FAIR Transition and Competition Act will complement our efforts to reduce emissions at home, ensure the United States is at the table for reframing trade around climate, and provide resources to support vulnerable communities and energy innovation as we build back better, he said.

The bill also maintains a flexible approach to evolve the policy to achieve climate goals and support US workers.

Recognising the costs incurred by US companies in producing cleaner products due to emissions-related laws and regulations, it accounts for those costs by levying a fee on imports in carbon-intensive, trade-exposed sectors and support climate cooperation and the reframing of trade around climate.

The bill proposes to levy a fee on imported pollution to address carbon leakage that undermines urgent climate action. The import fee will be based on the domestic environmental cost incurred and will initially cover goods that are both carbon-intensive and exposed to trade competition, including aluminum, cement, iron, steel, natural gas, petroleum, and coal.

China emits more greenhouse gas than the entire developed world combined, according to a report compiled by Rhodium Group.

The report said China emitted 27 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases in 2019.

The US was the second-largest emitter at 11 per cent while India was third with 6.6 per cent of emissions, the think tank said.

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India and the US are exploring the possibility of a visit by US Secretary of State to India and it may take place as early as next week.

It is learnt that both sides are in the process of finalising the dates and other relevant details of the visit that would be Blinken's first trip to the country as the US Secretary of State.

There was, however, no official comment on such a visit.

It is understood that the focus of the visit would be to prepare grounds for an in-person summit of leaders of the Quad grouping comprising India, Japan, Australia and the US in Washington later this year.

Blinken would be the second high-ranking Biden administration official to visit India since it came to power in January.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd J Austin paid a three-day visit to India in March to further boost bilateral defence and security ties.

Austin's visit to India came days after the top leadership of the Quad grouping of India, the US, Japan and Australia vowed to expand their cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region at a virtual summit hosted by President Joe Biden.

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Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told the head of Unilever on Tuesday that will act aggressively against Ben & Jerrys over the subsidiarys decision to stop selling its in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem.



British consumer goods conglomerate Unilever acquired the Vermont-based firm in 2000. Ben & Jerrys stated on Monday that it had informed its longstanding licensee  responsible for manufacturing and distributing the in  that it will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of 2022.



Bennetts office stated that he spoke with Unilever CEO Alan Jope about what he called Ben & Jerrys clearly anti- step, adding the move would have serious consequences, legal and otherwise, and that it will act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens.



The announcement was one of the highest-profile company rebukes of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories Israel captured in the 1967 war. Most of the community considers these settlements illegal under law and an impediment to peace with the Palestinians.



Around 700,000 Israelis now live in settlements, 500,000 in the occupied West Bank, and 200,000 in east Jerusalem. Israel considers the entirety of Jerusalem its capital, while the Palestinians seek it as capital of a future state.



Ben & Jerrys said its announcement that sale of its ice cream in territories sought by the Palestinians for an independent state was inconsistent with our values.



Israels Foreign Ministry dubbed the decision a surrender to ongoing and aggressive pressure from extreme anti-Israel groups and said the company was cooperating with economic terrorism.



Avi Zinger, CEO of Ben & Jerrys Israel licensee, told public broadcaster Kan the parent company had long pressured him to cease distribution in the Israeli occupied territories, but he refused because it would violate Israeli law.
By Eric M. Johnson

VAN HORN, Texas (Reuters) -Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, and three crewmates boarded his company Blue Origin's New Shepard https://graphics.reuters.com/SPACE-EXPLORATION/BLUEORIGIN/jbyprzzympe/blue-origin.jpg launch vehicle on Tuesday in the West Texas desert ahead of its planned suborbital journey, a milestone flight set to help usher in a new era of private travel.

The American is due to fly on an 11-minute voyage to the edge of space, nine days after Briton Richard Branson was aboard his competing tourism company Virgin Galactic's successful inaugural suborbital flight https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/virgin-galactics-branson-ready-space-launch-aboard-rocket-plane-2021-07-11 from New Mexico.

There were generally clear skies with a few patchy clouds on a cool morning for the launch.

Bezos, wearing a blue flight suit and cowboy hat, and the other passengers climbed into an SUV vehicle for a short drive to the launch pad before walking up a tower and getting aboard the gleaming white spacecraft, with a blue feather design on its side. Each passenger rang a shiny bell before boarding the craft's capsule.

"They are in for the flight of a lifetime," launch presenter Ariane Cornell of Blue Origin said on a live webcast.

Branson got to first, but Bezos is due to fly higher - 62 miles (100 km) for Blue Origin compared to 53 miles (86 km) for Virgin Galactic - in what experts call the world's first https://www.blueorigin.com/news-archive/first-human-flight-updates unpiloted space flight with an all-civilian crew. It represents Blue Origin's first crewed flight to space.

Bezos, founder of ecommerce company Amazon.com Inc, and his brother Mark Bezos, a private equity executive, will be joined by two Pioneering female aviator Wally Funk https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/trailblazing-female-pilot-will-go-space-age-82-with-jeff-bezos-2021-07-01, 82, and recent high school graduate Oliver Daemen https://www.reuters.com/article/us-space-exploration-blueorigin/teenager-to-fly-with-bezos-in-inaugural-space-tourism-flight-idUSKBN2EL1ZJ?feedType=RSS&feedName=technologyNews, 18, are set to become the oldest and youngest people to reach space.

New Shepard is due to blast off around 8 a.m. CDT (1300 GMT) from Blue Origin's Launch Site One facility about 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural Texas town of Van Horn.

"I am excited, but not anxious. We'll see how I feel when I'm strapped into my seat," Bezos told Fox Business Network on Monday. "... We're ready. The vehicle's ready."

The flight coincides with the anniversary of Americans Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the moon, on July 20, 1969.

Funk was one of the so-called Mercury 13 group of women who trained to become NASA astronauts in the early 1960s but was passed over because of her gender. Daemen, Blue Origin's first paying customer, is set to study physics and innovation management in the Netherlands. His father, who heads investment management firm Somerset Capital Partners, was on site to watch his son fly to space.

The launch will also be witnessed by members of the Bezos family and Blue Origin employees, and a few spectators gathered along the highway before dawn.

MINUTES OF WEIGHTLESSNESS

New Shepard is a 60-foot-tall (18.3-meters-tall) and fully autonomous rocket-and-capsule combo that cannot be piloted from inside the spacecraft. It is completely computer-flown and will have none of Blue Origin's staff astronauts https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/bezos-blue-origin-make-history-with-unpiloted-civilian-space-flight-2021-07-14 or trained personnel onboard.

Virgin Galactic used a space plane with a pair of pilots onboard.

New Shepard will hurtle at speeds upwards of 2,200 miles (3,540 km) per hour to an altitude of about 62 miles (100 km), the so-called Karman line set by an aeronautics body as defining the boundary between Earth's atmosphere and space.

After the capsule separates from the booster, the crew will be able to unbuckle for a few minutes of weightlessness. Then the capsule falls back to Earth under parachutes, using a last-minute retro-thrust system that expels a "pillow of air" for a soft landing in the Texas desert.

The reusable booster has already flown twice to space.

The launch is another step in the race to establish a space tourism sector that Swiss investment bank UBS estimates will reach $3 billion annually in a decade. Another tech mogul, Elon Musk, plans to send an all-civilian crew on a several-day orbital mission on his Crew Dragon capsule in September.

On Twitter, Musk wished https://bit.ly/2TqOL9I the Blue Origin crew "best of luck" for the launch.

Blue Origin aims for the first of two more passenger flights this year to happen in September or October.

Blue Origin appears to have a reservoir of future customers. More than 6,000 people from at least 143 countries entered an auction to become the first paying customer. The auction winner, who made a $28 million bid, dropped out of Tuesday's flight, opening the way for Daemen. Virgin Galactic has said 600 people have booked reservations, priced at about $250,000 per ticket.

Branson has said he aims ultimately to lower the price to about $40,000 per seat.

Bezos has a net worth of $206 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires. He stepped down this month as Amazon CEO but remains its executive chairman.

(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Van Horn, Texas; Additional reporting Radhika Anilkumar; Editing by Will Dunham and Timothy Heritage)

(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.)
Brent oil steadied after a coronavirus-driven washout on Monday that saw prices tumble to an eight-week low.



Futures in London held near $69 a barrel after plunging 6.8% on Monday amid a broader market rout. The fast-spreading delta variant of Covid-19 has led to a surge in virus cases and renewed restrictions as it sweeps the globe, raising the prospect of a prolonged hit to oil consumption.



Oils upward trajectory has reversed in July, with the latest virus waves demonstrating the uneven nature of the economic recovery. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said the delta variant may curb global oil demand by 1 million barrels a day for a couple of months, though thats offset by a slow production ramp-up from OPEC+. However, not all analysts are as optimistic about the outlook for prices.



The market has yet to adjust to the idea that the end of the pandemic might not be a clear binary event and it might not be soon, said Paul Horsnell, head of commodities research at Standard Chartered, adding that oil may have moved through the biggest period of supply tightness. We believe we may be moving into a situation where economic decisions and the mobility possibilities open to consumers are still affected by the pandemic and remain so for an extended period.



Signs of deltas continued impact on energy abound. The US has warned citizens to not travel to the UK and Indonesia amid an increase in infections there.



Crudes plunge also put the global benchmark under technical pressure. Brent fell below its 100-day moving average for the first time since November, and below its 50-day moving average for the first time since May. Such moves can spark additional selling.
The list of potential targets of the Israeli-made Pegasus spyware programme included at least one number once used by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, according to Washington Post.

The spyware 'Pegasus' is developed by Israel-based NSO Group. The company specialises in hacking devices and caters to various governments of the world for spying purposes.According to Washington Post, more than 1,000 phone numbers in India appeared on the surveillance list while hundreds were from Pakistan, including the one Prime Minister Imran once used.

However, the Post did not reveal whether the surveillance attempt on PM Imran's number was successful.

Meanwhile, The Wire reported that 300 mobile phone numbers used in India -- including those of government ministers, opposition politicians, journalists, scientists and rights activists -- were on the list of potential targets for surveillance by an unidentified agency using Pegasus spyware.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology has refuted the reports of surveillance of journalists.

"The allegations regarding government surveillance on specific people has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever. In the past, similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp by the Indian State. Those reports also had no factual basis and were categorically denied by all parties, including WhatsApp in the Indian Supreme Court," the Ministry of Electronics and Information and Technology said in its response.

"This news report, thus, also appears to be a similar fishing expedition, based on conjectures and exaggerations to malign the Indian democracy and its institutions," the Ministry added.

According to The Wire, the leaked list was first accessed by France-based Forbidden Stories and Amnesty and later shared with The Wire and 15 other news organisations worldwide as part of a collaborative investigation named the 'Pegasus Project'.

Notably, the presence of a phone number in the list alone does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack. But the Pegasus Project suggests potential targets for surveillance attempts.

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Ive seen grown men cry, says Captain Tejinder Singh, who hasn't set foot on dry land in more than seven months and isn't sure when hell go home.



We are forgotten and taken for granted, he says of the plight facing tens of thousands of seafarers like him, stranded at sea as the Delta variant of the wreaks havoc on shore.



People dont know how their supermarkets are stocked up. Singh and most of his 20-strong crew have criss-crossed the globe on an exhausting odyssey: From India to the US to China, where they were stuck off the congested coast for weeks waiting to unload cargo. He was speaking from the Pacific Ocean as his ship now heads to Australia.



They are among about 100,000 seafarers stranded at sea beyond their regular stints of typically 3-9 months, according to the Chamber of Shipping (ICS), many without even a days break on land. Another 100,000 are stuck on shore, unable to board the ships they need to earn a living on.



The Delta variant devastating parts of Asia  home to many of the worlds 1.7 million commercial seafarers  has prompted many nations to cut off land access to visiting crews, in some cases even for medical treatment. Just 2.5 per cent of seafarers  one in every 40  have been vaccinated, the ICS estimates.



The United Nations describes the situation as a humanitarian crisis at sea and says governments should class seafarers as essential workers. Given ships transport around 90 per cent of the worlds trade, the deepening crisis also poses a major threat to the supply chains we rely on for everything from oil and iron to food and electronics.



Bulk carrier master Singh, from northern India, is not optimistic of going ashore anytime soon; his last stint at sea lasted 11 months. He said his crew of Indians and Filipinos were living out of cabins measuring about 15ft by 6ft.



Being at sea for a very long time is tough, he says, adding that he had heard reports of seafarers killing themselves on other ships. The most difficult question to answer is when kids ask, Papa when you are coming home?, he said from his vessel, which was recently carrying coal.



India and the Philippines account for over a third of the worlds commercial seafarers, said Guy Platten, secretary general of the ICS, which represents over 80 per cent of the worlds merchant fleet.



We are seriously disturbed that a second global crew change crisis is looming large on the horizon, he told Reuters, referring to a months-long stretch in 2020 when 200,000 seafarers on ships were unable to be relieved.



In a snapshot of the situation, this month almost 9 per cent of merchant sailors have been stuck aboard their ships beyond their contracts expiry, up from just over 7 per cent in May, according to the data compiled by the Global Maritime Forum non-profit group from 10 ship managers together responsible for over 90,000 seafarers.



The maximum allowed contract length is 11 months, as stipulated by a UN seafaring convention. In normal times, around 50,000 seafarers rotate on and 50,000 rotate off ships per month on average but the numbers are now a fraction of that, said industry players.



The new crew crisis stems from restrictions imposed by major maritime nations across Asia, including South Korea, Taiwan and China. Requirements range from mandatory testing for crews who come from or have visited certain nations, to outright bans on crew changes and berthing operations.
carried out an aerial attack southeast of Syria's northern province late Monday, a Syrian military official said.

The unidentified military official, quoted by the state news agency SANA, said Syrian air defences shot down most of the missiles in the attack that occurred just before midnight. The targets are still being identified, the official said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots that belong to Iranian-backed militia operating in Aleppo's Safira region. The group said the strikes were followed by loud explosions. The weapons depots were located inside Syrian military posts, the group said.

The attack took place on the eve of Eid Al-Adha, one of Islam's holiest holidays.

has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. Last month, reportedly carried out an attack on targets in central

Israel fears Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier, and it has repeatedly struck Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Hezbollah.

(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.)
will set up its first office in using the name Taiwan, drawing a rebuke from and praise from the US as the island democracy seeks to strengthen its diplomatic presence around the globe in the face of pressure from Beijing.



The government in Taipei will open its office in the Baltic nation of Lithuania, Taiwans Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said at a briefing. Taiwans other diplomatic outposts on the continent are under the name of Taipei.



Lithuania has firmly believed in universal values such as democracy, freedom and human rights, and is a like-mined partner of Taiwan, Wu said.  and Lithuania are both at the strategic front line to safeguard democratic and free regimes.



Beijings Affairs Office called the Lithuania office an attempt at seeking independence, and it urged the Baltic nation to adhere to the one- principle.



 firmly opposes any formal relations between other countries with Taiwan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.
By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) - U.S. state attorneys general are expected this week to unveil a $26 billion settlement resolving claims that three major and drugmaker helped fuel a nationwide opioid epidemic, people familiar with the matter said on Monday.

Distributors McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp would pay a combined $21 billion, while would pay $5 billion. New York on Tuesday is expected to announce the distributors have agreed to a $1 billion-plus settlement with the state, a source said.

The ultimate settlement pricetag could fluctuate depending on the number of states and political subdivisions that agree to the deal or reject it and pursue litigation on their own in hopes of a bigger payout down the line.

More than 40 states are expected to support the nationwide settlement, two sources said. States will have 30 days to decide whether to join the global accord then more time to try to convince their cities and counties to participate in the deal, the sources said.

McKesson has previously said that of the $21 billion the three distributors would pay over 18 years, more than 90% would be used to remediate the while the rest, about $2 billion, would be used to pay plaintiffs' attorney fees and costs.

Several states have passed laws or reached agreements with their political subdivisions to govern how settlement proceeds would be allocated in the event of a nationwide settlement.

The financial terms are in line with prior disclosures by the three distributors and J&J about what they expected to have to pay following long-running settlement talks.

"There continues to be progress toward finalizing this agreement and we remain committed to providing certainty for involved parties and critical assistance for families and communities in need," J&J said in a statement.

McKesson and Cardinal Health had no comment while AmerisourceBergen said it does not comment on "rumor and speculation." They have all previously denied wrongdoing.

Nearly 500,000 people died from opioid overdoses in the from 1999 to 2019, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The appeared to worsen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CDC last week said provisional data showed that 2020 was a record year for drug overdose deaths with 93,331, up 29% from a year earlier. Opioids were involved in 74.7%, or 69,710, of those overdose deaths.

The distributors were accused of lax controls that allowed massive amounts of addictive painkillers to be diverted into illegal channels, devastating communities, while J&J was accused of downplaying the addiction risk.

Governments have said the money will be used to fund addiction treatment, family support programs, education and other health initiatives to address the crisis.

Other settlements are also being negotiated, with the opioid makers Purdue Pharma and Mallinckrodt Plc now working through the bankruptcy courts to secure support for settlements worth more than $10 billion and $1.6 billion, respectively.

The distributors have been in the midst of two trials nationally in the litigation, one in New York and one in West Virginia. They have now agreed to resolve the New York case, a person briefed on the matter said.

The deal with New York Attorney General Letitia James and the populous Long Island counties of Nassau and Suffolk comes three weeks into the first jury trial accusing of profiting from a flood of addictive painkillers that devastated communities.

Closing arguments are expected in the West Virginia trial next week. Local West Virginia communities had opted out of the proposed nationwide deal to pursue one on their own.

The New York trial will continue against three drugmakers accused of deceptively marketing their painkillers - Endo Plc, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and AbbVie Inc's Allergan unit.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Sandra Maler, Bill Berkot and Cynthia Osterman)

(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's China strategy is in partnership with the US' friends and key allies, the has said as several nations led by America accused of "malicious" cyber activities that are impacting a number of countries.

An unprecedented group of allies and partners - including the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and NATO joined the United States on Monday in exposing and criticising the Chinese Ministry of State Security's malicious cyber activities.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Monday that it was the first time NATO has condemned China's cyber activities.

We have approached our China strategy from the beginning and our policy as it relates to China, we've always felt that working together, working in partnership with allies around the world, and also in partnership with members of the federal government, members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, was how we approached it from a position of strength, she said.

What's significant today is that while we're all calling out these malicious cyber activities, so are a number of our key partners around the world: the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Psaki said.

These malicious cyber activities are not only impacting the United States, but also a range of countries and partners, she said.

The US, she said would, of course, like to work with countries and work with our key partners around the world moving forward.

"Obviously, we can't determine steps and consequences on their behalf, but that is certainly our objective and how we've approached our strategy to date, Psaki said in response to a question.

She refuted reports that the US was differentiating between China and Russia on this issue.

We are actually elevating and taking steps to not only speak out publicly, but certainly take action as it relates to problematic cyber activities from China - in a different way, but as we have from Russia as well. We are not differentiating one as out of the realm of condemnation or out of the realm of consequence from the United States, she said.

Psaki said the United States was not allowing any economic circumstance or consideration to prevent it from taking actions where warranted.

We reserve the option to take additional actions where warranted as well. This is not the conclusion of our efforts as it relates to cyber activities with China or Russia, she added.

Meanwhile, a federal grand jury in San Diego, California, returned an indictment in May charging four Chinese nationals and residents with a campaign to hack into the computer systems of dozens of victim companies, universities and government entities in the United States and abroad between 2011 and 2018.

The indictment, which was unsealed on Friday, alleges that much of the conspiracy's theft was focused on information that was of significant economic benefit to China's companies and commercial sectors, including information that would allow the circumvention of lengthy and resource-intensive research and development processes.

The defendants and their Hainan State Security Department (HSSD) conspirators sought to obfuscate the Chinese government's role in such theft by establishing a front company, Hainan Xiandun Technology Development Co., Ltd. (Hainan Xiandun), since disbanded, to operate out of Haikou, Hainan Province.

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has made significant progress on its first action plan of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) by largely addressing 26 of the 27 action items, the US has said.

It has also urged to swiftly complete the remaining action item by demonstrating that terrorism financing, investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated terror groups.

At its virtual plenary meeting last month, the FATF had retained on its 'grey list' for failing to check money laundering, leading to terror financing. It had also asked Pakistan to investigate and prosecute UN-designated terrorists based in the country like Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) founder Hafiz Saeed.

The global body against money laundering and terror financing had also asked Pakistan to work to address its strategically important deficiencies.

At his daily news conference on Monday, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said, "We do recognise and we support Pakistan's continued efforts to satisfy those (first action plan) obligations. Pakistan has made significant progress on its first action plan with 26 of 27 action items largely addressed."



"We encourage Pakistan to continue working with the FATF and the community to swiftly complete the remaining action item by demonstrating that terrorism financing, investigations and prosecutions target senior leaders and commanders of UN-designated groups," he said.

In response to a question, Price said the US encourages Pakistan to expeditiously work on its new second action plan.

Pakistan was placed on the 'grey list' by the FATF in June 2018 and was given a plan of action to complete by October 2019. Since then the country continues to be on this list due to its failure to comply with the FATF mandates.

With Pakistan's continuation on the 'grey list', it is increasingly becoming difficult for the country to get financial aid from the Monetary Fund, World Bank, Asian Development Bank and the European Union at a time when it faces a precarious financial situation.

Islamabad has managed to avoid the 'black list', for which it needs the support of three countries. China, Turkey and Malaysia have been its consistent supporters.

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The recently-created flexicap fund category is emerging as the hottest segment in the Rs 11-trillion space.

Buoyed by the success of Flexicap Fund, more fund houses are lining up new fund offerings (NFO) in this area. Industry players say the flexicap category could emerge as the biggest segment in the equity MF space.

Last week, ICICI Pru Flexicap NFOs collected a record Rs 10,200 crore. Meanwhile, Nippon India MF on Tuesday announced the launch of Nippon India Flexicap Fund and ITI MF filed an offer document with market regulator Sebi for a flexicap scheme.

At the end of June, the assets under management for the flexicap segment stood at Rs 1.76 trillion, second most after largecap fund category, which had an AUM of Rs 1.95 trillion.

Flexicap schemes are market cap agnostic, giving the fund manager the flexibility to dabble in small-, mid-, large- and microcaps without any minimum investment threshold.

Given the new scheme launches and underperformance of largecap stocks, experts say it is only a matter of time that the flexicap segment climbs to the top in terms of AUM, say industry watchers.

The Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had introduced the flexicap category in November last year after modifying characteristics of multicap schemes in September 2020. Multicap schemes are mandated to invest at least 25 percent of the corpus in large, mid, and small cap stocks each.

Given the broad-based rally in the market, flexicap funds have clocked encouraging returns and have been able to attract strong inflows.

In the last four months flexicap funds have seen net inflows of around Rs 3,700 crore. The assets of the category have also gone up sharply from Rs 75,614 crore in January to Rs 1.76 trillion in June.

Flexicap funds have on an average given returns of 52 per cent in the last one year better than the large cap funds which have given returns of 46 per cent. While Sensex is up by just 41 per cent in the last one year.

Funds such as BOI AXA Flexicap fund and PGIM India Flexicap fund have given returns of 74.23 per cent and 69.84 per cent in the last one year. Advisors are also advising investors to look at the flexicap category if they want exposure across market capitalisation.

Suresh Sadagopan, Founder of Ladder7 Financial Advisories says, In current situation it's better to allow fund managers to choose the sector. We are currently in a dynamic situation and flexicap cap fund managers can invest in some promising stock in the mid and the smallcap segment as mandate here is very broad.

Nippon India MF says its flexicap fund would seek to capitalise the relative stability of large caps through reasonable allocations to established leaders along with an optimal mix of the growth opportunities offered by the mid & smallcap segment.

A flexicap strategy can dynamically adapt to varied market scenarios and thus has the potential to outperform across market cycles, said Manish Gunwani, CIO  Equity Investments, Nippon India MF.
Nifty futures on the Singapore Exchange traded 13 points lower, indicating a flat start for the benchmark indices on Tuesday.

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

Earnings today: A total of 33 companies are set to report their Q1FY22 results today including Asian Paints, Bajaj Finance, Network 18 Media, and Shyam Metaliks.

While the Street is a 90 per cent jump in Asian Paint's revenues at Rs 5,550 crore, they peg EBITDA at Rs 1,105 crore, up 130 per cent, on a low base. As regards Bajaj Finance, analysts expect the NBFC's net profit to rise anywhere between 30-90 per cent YoY, in the range of Rs 1,250-1,850 crore.

HCL Technologies: The company's first-quarter numbers were propelled by cloud and digital transformation deals. Net profit for the quarter at Rs 3,214 crore was up 9.9 per cent year-on-year and 8.5 per cent sequentially. Although, it did not meet the consensus estimate of analysts tracked by Bloomberg at Rs 3,425 crore. Further, Shiv Nadar has stepped down as the managing director and board member of He will now take on the role of Chairman Emeritus and Strategic Advisor to the company's board.

ACC: Cement maker reported an over two-fold jump in consolidated net profit to Rs 569.45 crore for the second quarter ended June 2021, helped by a lower base, increase in sales and cost efficiency.

RInfra: Reliance Infrastructure (RInfra) has raised Rs 550.56 crore through issuance of securities on preferential basis.

IndusInd Bank: The board is slated to meet on July 23 to consider the proposal of raising funds through debt securities or equity instruments or convertible debt securities.

IndiGo, SpiceJet: Domestic air traffic grew 47.6 per cent in June over May. Industry-wide passenger load factor rose to 62.9 per cent in June from Mays 50.5 per cent with SpiceJet cornering the highest load factor of 70 per cent.

LIC Housing Finance: The company has approached the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT) with regard to the company's proposal of allotting over 4.5 crore preferential shares to the parent company LIC. On Saturday, LIC Housing Finance had informed that stock exchanges -- BSE and NSE --were examining the proposed Rs 2,334.70 crore capital infusion into the company by giving additional stake to LIC through issue of preference shares.

Bata India: Footwear major Bata India will focus on expansion in small towns and online channels as part of its efforts to save cash through enhanced productivity, cost-reduction and tight inventory management to overcome the challenges of the pandemic, according to its annual report for 2020-21.

Tata Steel, Jindal Stainless: Tata Steel Mining, an arm of Tata Steel, and Jindal Stainless Ltd signed an MoU to jointly unearth chrome ore locked up in the boundary between their mines located at Sukinda in Odisha's Jajpur district.

Voltas: Tata group consumer durables major Voltas Ltd on Monday said it has appointed Jitender P Verma as its chief financial officer (CFO).

NAM India: Nippon Life India Asset Management (NAM India) on Monday reported a 16 per cent growth in profit after tax to Rs 182 crore for the three months to June 2021 as against Rs 156.30 crore posted in corresponding quarter last year.

City Union Bank: The board approved raising capital through QIP of Rs 500 crore.

Zen Technologies: The company bagged export order of Rs 120 crore. The order will be carried out in roughly a year, the company said.

Clean Science and Technology: Nomura India Investment Fund bought 10 lakh shares at Rs 1,715.33 per share.

GR Infraprojects: The Nomura Trust and Banking Co. bought 5 lakh shares at Rs 1,714.6 per share.
Shares of six Adani Group companies fell by 1.48% to 5% as certain Adani Group companies are being investigated by Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) over compliance with regulations.

Adani Power (down 5%), Adani Total Gas (down 5%), Adani Transmission (down 5%), Adani Green Energy (down 4.93%), Adani Enterprises (down 2.17%) and Adani Ports & SEZ (down 1.48%) slumped.

In a written reply to questions raised by lawmakers, the finance ministry said that Sebi was investigating some Adani Group companies with regard to compliance with Sebi Regulations.

"The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) is also investigating certain entities belonging to the Adani Group under laws administered by it," Pankaj Chaudhary, minister of state for finance, said in a written reply to questions raised by Lok Sabha member Mahua Moitra, of the TMC party.

The finance ministry said that there was no ongoing investigation by the Enforcement Directorate and that as far as the investigation under Income Tax Act was concerned, disclosure of information regarding a specific taxpayer was prohibited, except under a specific section of law.

The Adani Group, however, clarified that it has not received any communication or information requests recently from Sebi recently and the DRI show-cause notice was issued five years back.

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Asian Development Bank (ADB) stated in a latest update that India's GDP growth recovered to 1.6% in Q4 of fiscal year 2020 (FY2020, ended 31 March 2021), narrowing contraction in the whole fiscal year from 8.0% estimated in April to a revised 7.3%. Then a second wave of the pandemic induced many state governments to impose strict containment measures. New COVID-19 cases daily peaked at more than 400,000 in early May, then fell to a little over 40,000 in early July.

Early indicators show economic activity resuming quickly after containment measures eased. The growth projection for FY2021, downgraded from 11.0% in ADO 2021 to 10.0%, reflects large base effects. The projection for FY2022, by which time much of India's population is expected to be vaccinated, is upgraded from 7.0% to 7.5% as economic activity normalizes.

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The benchmark indices trimmed losses after hitting fresh intraday low in early afternoon trade. The Nifty hovered a tad above the 15,600 mark. Global cues were weak amid mounting concerns about the rapidly surging delta variant of the COVID-19 in several countries.

At 12:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, dropped 424.19 points or 0.81% at 52,129.21. The Nifty 50 index skid 142 points or 0.90% at 15,610.40.

In the broader market, the S&P BSE Mid-Cap index fell 1.52% while the S&P BSE Small-Cap index lost 1.68%.

The market breadth was weak. On the BSE, 859 shares rose and 2,250 shares fell. A total of 110 shares were unchanged.

Politics:

Lok Sabha has been adjourned till 2 PM. Opposition MPs disrupted proceedings over Pegasus snooping controversy. Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the second time on Tuesday, with a session beginning from 1 PM as all leaders met with the chairman to discuss the covid-19 situation.

Coronavirus Update:

Total COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide stood at 19,08,90,659 with 40,95,863 deaths. India reported 4,06,130 active cases of COVID-19 infection and 4,14,482 deaths while 3,03,53,710 patients have been discharged, according to the data from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India.

In the past 24 hours, India recorded 30,093 new cases in the last 24 hours- the lowest in 125 days, as per Health Ministry's recent data.

Derivatives:

The NSE's India VIX, a gauge of market's expectation of volatility over the near term, climbed 7.47% to 13.6275. The Nifty 29 July 2021 futures were trading at 15,592.60, at a discount of 17.80 points as compared with the spot at 15,610.40.

The Nifty option chain for 29 July 2021 expiry showed maximum Call OI of 28.60 lakh contracts at the 16,000 strike price. Maximum Put OI of 36 lakh contracts was seen at 15,000 strike price.

Buzzing Segment:

Shares of Adani group tumbled in the range of 1.29% to 5% after the Parliament was informed that the securities regulator, Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) and customs authorities, Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) were investigating some of the group companies for non-compliance of rules.

Adani Total Gas (locked in 5% lower circuit), Adani Power (locked in 5% lower circuit), Adani Transmission (locked in 5% lower circuit), Adani Green Energy (down 4.83%), Adani Enterprises (down 2.02%) and Adani Ports & Special Economic Zones (APSEZ) (down 1.29%) declined.

The Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Choudhury, neither named the companies that were involved, nor did he clarify when was the investigation initiated. The Minister of State for Finance was answering in a response to questions posed by Lok Sabha member and TMC MP Mahua Moitra in the ongoing monsoon session of the Parliament.

The government also clarified that the three foreign portfolio investors - Albula Investment Fund, Cresta Fund, Apms Investment Fund - were not in the frozen list of the country's securities depository in relation to their investment in Adani group companies.

The Enforcement Directorate, however, was not carrying out any investigation into Adani Group, Mr Choudhury added.

Stocks in Spotlight:

Zen Technologies spurted 5.54% after the company on Monday announced that it has bagged a Rs 120 crore export contract. Zen Technologies said the order will be carried out in roughly a year. Owing to a confidentiality agreement, the customer's identity cannot be published due to the nature of the deal, the company said.

Jindal Stainless (JSL) skid 2.20%. Jindal Stainless (JSL) said that the company has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Tata Steel Mining (TSML) for jointly unearthing the chrome ore locked up in the boundary between their mines located in Sukinda of Jajpur district, Odisha. This would help conservation of chromite ore which otherwise would have been left unmined forever.

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At meeting held on 20 July 2021

The Board of Bajaj Hindusthan Sugar at its meeting held on 20 July 2021 has allotted 14,38,00,000 equity shares of face value of Re. 1/- each fully paid up at a price of Rs.13.28 per equity share on preferential basis aggregating to Rs.190.96 crore by way of conversion of existing outstanding unsecured loan extended by the promoters as a part of promoters contribution to the Restructuring Package approved by the "Joint Lenders Forum".

Consequent to the allotment of the equity shares as aforesaid, the paid up equity share capital of the Company stands increased from the present Rs.113,35,59,942, divided into 113,35,59,942 equity shares of Re.1/- each, to Rs.127,73,59,942/- divided into 127,73,59,942 equity shares of Re.1/- each.

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Key benchmark indices are trading lower in early trade on selling pressure in index pivotals. At 9:20 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 210.61 points or 0.4% at 52,342.79. The Nifty 50 index was down 68.65 points or 0.44% at 15,683.75. Mounting concerns about the rapidly surging delta variant of the Coronavirus in several countries weighed on the sentiment. Asian stocks are trading lower.

The S&P BSE Mid-Cap index was down 0.27%. The S&P BSE Small-Cap index was down 0.07%.

The market breadth, indicating the overall health of the market, is positive. On the BSE, 1224 shares rose and 1146 shares fell. A total of 101 shares were unchanged.

Stocks in news:

HCL Technologies lost 1.83%. HCL Technologies' consolidated net income rose 8.5% to Rs 3214 crore on 2.2% rise in total income to Rs 20068 crore in Q1 June 2021 over Q4 March 2021.

ACC jumped 4.9%. ACC's consolidated net profit soared 110.17% to Rs 569.45 crore on 49.29% surge in total revenue from operations to Rs 3,884.94 crore in Q2 June 2021 over Q2 June 2020.

Tata Steel fell 0.48%. Jindal Stainless rose 0.28%. Tata Steel Mining (TSML) and Jindal Stainless (JSL) signed a MoU on July 16, 2021 to jointly unearth the Chrome Ore locked up in the boundary between their mines located in Sukinda of Jajpur district, Odisha. Tata Steel Mining (TSML, formerly known as TS Alloys) is a 100% subsidiary of Tata Steel.

IndusInd Bank fell 0.87%. IndusInd Bank said that a meeting of the board of directors of the bank is scheduled to be held on Friday, July 23, 2021, to consider the proposal of raising funds through various modes.

City Union Bank fell 0.66%. City Union Bank said the board of directors of the bank approved raising further capital through QIP route to the tune of Rs 500 crore (including premium).

Zen Technologies jumped 7.86%. Zen Technologies was awarded a Rs 120-crore export contract. The simulators are the main focus of the order. The order will be carried out in roughly a year.

Global Markets:

Overseas, Asian stocks are trading lower on Tuesday following an overnight tumble for stocks on Wall Street and concerns about the spread of the delta coronavirus variant. Markets in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore are closed on Tuesday for holidays.

On Tuesday, China kept unchanged its benchmark lending rate for corporate and household loans the one-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR) held steady at 3.85% while the five-year LPR was also left at 4.65%.

Geopolitical jitters also resurfaced on Monday after the U.S., the U.K. and their allies said the Chinese government has been the mastermind behind a series of malicious ransomware, data theft and cyber-espionage attacks against public and private entities -- including the sprawling Microsoft Exchange hack earlier this year.

U.S. stocks dropped sharply on Monday on concern a rebound in Covid cases would slow global economic growth. Covid cases have rebounded in the U.S. this month, with the delta variant spreading among the unvaccinated. Cases were already flaring up around the world because of the delta variant.

Back home, key equity indices ended with sharp losses on Monday, tracking weak global cues. The S&P BSE Sensex, dropped 586.66 points or 1.10% at 52,553.40. The Nifty 50 index slipped 171 points or 1.07% at 15,752.40.

Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) sold shares worth Rs 2,198.71 crore, while domestic institutional investors (DIIs), were net buyers to the tune of Rs 1,047.66 crore in the Indian equity market on 19 July, provisional data showed.

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Chief Minister on Tuesday said there are abundant reserves of mineral wealth in and using the resources in scientific and environmental-friendly manner can boost the economy of the country and the state.

He strongly advocated early resolution of pending issues at the central level to promote mining sector activities in

Gehlot was discussing various issues related to mining in with Union Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi.

He raised the issue of delay in environmental clearances for mining projects and sought cooperation.

The chief minister said after the auction of mineral blocks, mining leases should be issued expeditiously.

He also said before submitting the exploration report of Geological Survey of India (GSI) and Mineral Exploration Corporation Limited (MECL), it should be examined whether the concerned mineral block is commercially suitable for mining or not.

Gehlot said the Mining Exploration Trust (NMET) was formed to give impetus to mineral exploration in the country. Rajasthan has also contributed about Rs 256 crore to it.

He said there is a need for increased exploration due to the possibilities of abundant deposits of limestone, copper and iron in the state.

The chief minister added that the state had sent proposals for five projects, but NMET rejected these projects. Only seven projects of Rajasthan have been approved.

The chief minister pointed out that Rajasthan gets about 70 per cent royalty from major minerals. The central government has not revised royalty rates for more than 3 years.

He said an early decision should be taken on the proposals sent by the state government to revise the rates of royalty so that the revenue of the state can increase in this challenging period of the pandemic.

Mines Minister Pralhad Joshi said efforts are being made to promote mining activities across the country with the cooperation of the Centre and state governments.

He assured that the Union Ministry of Mines would ensure speedy action on the mining issues related to Rajasthan.

He also said the funding of NMET would be increased to give impetus to mineral exploration in Rajasthan.

"Following up on the of progress made by State govts. on the implementation of #MineralReforms brought by us under the visionary leadership of @narendramodi ji, had a review meeting with CM Rajasthan, Shri @ashokgehlot51 ji," Joshi tweeted.

Joshi further said the mineral reforms will not only boost mineral production, but also create wide-scale employment opportunities and revenue, taking forward the vision of 'Aatmanirbhar Bharat' by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Centre had initiated mega mineral reforms in March this year after making amendment to the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act.

These structural reforms will help tap the huge mineral potential, ensure seamless and uninterrupted production and supply of minerals, and generate large scale employment opportunities.

(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.)
Days after the Adani Airport Holdings Ltd took over the management of Mumbai international airport, Maharashtra criticised the company's decision to shift the AAHL headquarters from here to Ahmedabad, saying it was a deliberate attempt to bring down the importance of Mumbai.

The AAHL, the group's flagship company for airports business and Adani Enterprises' wholly-owned subsidiary, last week took over management of the Mumbai Airport International Airport Ltd (MIAL) from the GVK group.

Besides, the group has also decided to shift AAHL's head office to Ahmedabad from Mumbai, the company recently said in a communication.

Criticising the decision, Maharashtra spokesperson Sachin Sawant in a series of tweets on Tuesday said, It is a message from (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi to the people of Maharashtra. The dandiya dance (organised) at the airport tells a lot. It is a part of systematic efforts since last seven years to bring down the importance of Mumbai."



Sawant, whose party shares power with the Shiv Sena and NCP in Maharashtra, claimed the International Financial Services Centre was shifted to Gujarat in similar way.

Maharashtra never differentiated between any industry or industrialist. Many industrialists came to Maharashtra and became part of the state. The Mumbai airport was previously with Andhra Pradesh-based GVK company. The company never shifted its headquarters to Andhra Pradesh or organised Kuchipudi dance there, Sawant tweeted.

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Former IT minister and senior Congress leader Tuesday demanded a Supreme Court-monitored probe in the Pegasus snooping matter and a government white paper in explicitly stating whether the Israeli spyware was used by it or not.

The Opposition has stepped up its attack on the government over the issue, while the Centre has categorically rejected all allegations of snooping, saying attempts were being made to "malign" Indian democracy.

Addressing a press conference at his residence here, Sibal hit back at Home Minister Amit Shah for his remarks on Monday that allegations of surveillance were only aimed to humiliate India at the world stage, saying the "nation is not being maligned, but due to your government's actions, the government is being maligned".

Referring to Shah's 'Aap Chronology Samajhiye' comment, the Congress leader said, "We are understanding the chronology, I want to say to Amit Shah ji 'Aap iski chronology samajhiye (You should understand the chronology of this matter), this was done between 2017-2019."



The probe should be Supreme Court-monitored like in the Jain Hawala matter in which there was a "continuing mandumus" (meaning, the Court keeping close watch on the probe), he said, adding "we cannot trust the agencies of this government".

Sibal also said that the proceedings should be in-camera so that everyone gets to know the truth.

Asked about his party demanding a probe by a Joint Parliamentary Committee, he said it could be in addition to the Supreme Court-monitored probe, and added that he was speaking as a concerned citizen of India.

The government should also present a white paper in and also clearly state whether it or its agencies deployed the spyware Pegasus.

"The government should say that we have never used Pegasus but they have not said that. A big problem arises if the government has not done it or its agencies have not done it, then who has done it. NSO (the Israeli technology firm whose spyware is Pegasus) says it does not sell to anyone except government agencies," Sibal said.

"You say that you are bringing private data protection but you are doing data collection through Pegasus. This is a security threat for having leaked data to an agency which has nothing to do with India," he said.

If the government or its agencies have intercepted a minister's phone by introducing malware in his phone then it is a violation of the Official Secrets Act, Sibal said, in an apparent reference to Prahlad Singh Patel's number listed as potential targets for hacking through the Israeli spyware.

He also hit out at IT and Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw for his statement in that in the past, similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on Whatsapp and they were categorically denied by all parties, including in the

"He also said there was a hearing in the and in that all parties said that no such thing happened. I was the lawyer for WhatsApp, the chief justice asked orally when someone alleged that this was happening through Pegasus 'if this was happening' and I said, 'ask the government'," said Sibal, who was the Minister of Communications and Information Technology between January 2011- May 2014.

The government has not stated till now whether such a thing was happening or and now the minister says all parties denied it, Sibal asserted, adding this amounts to breach of privilege as it is "false".

The government on Monday categorically rejected in Lok Sabha allegations of snooping on politicians, journalists and others using Pegasus software, asserting that illegal surveillance was not possible with checks and balances in the country's laws, and alleged that attempts were being made to malign Indian democracy.

An international media consortium reported on Sunday that over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders besides scores of business persons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.

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has acknowledged the technical issues in the new Income Tax portal and some of the initial glitches like slow functioning of the portal and non-availability of certain functionalities have been mitigated, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.

The portal www.incometax.gov.in had a bumpy start from the day of its launch on June 7 as taxpayers, tax professionals and other stakeholders reported glitches in its functioning.

This prompted Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to call a meeting on June 22 with officials of -- who developed the portal-- to review the issues.

In a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said more than 700 e-mails detailing over 2,000 issues including 90 unique issues/problems in the portal were received from various stakeholders including Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), tax professionals and taxpayers.

" has acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal and have informed that technical issues...are continuously being resolved. Some of the initial issues experienced by taxpayers regarding slowness of the portal, non-availability of certain functionalities or technical issues in functionalities have been mitigated," he said.

The Income Tax Department is taking corrective measures through Infosys based on feedback from stakeholders, the minister added.

In 2019, Infosys was awarded a contract to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.

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In a delight for millions of music aficionados in India, Apple on Tuesday launched the next generation of sound with Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio on at no additional cost and the new features will be available on Android "very soon" in the country.

is also making its catalog of more than 75 million songs available to its subscribers in Lossless Audio in India.

Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the original audio file. This means fans will be able to hear their favourite songs exactly the way the artists created them in the studio.

To start listening to Lossless Audio, subscribers using the latest version of can turn it on in Settings, then Music and Audio Quality.

Here, you can choose different resolutions for different connections such as cellular, Wi-Fi, or for download.

For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz.

By default, Apple Music will automatically play Spatial Audio with Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad and Mac.

At Rs 99 a month (3-month free trial) for individuals, Rs 49 a month for students and Rs 149 a month for a family, customers will get access to 75 million tracks in Lossless on Apple Music over a period of time, a growing catalog of songs on Spatial, the best in class recommendation engine and more than 30,000 playlists curated by Apple Music editors.

Spatial Audio with support for Atmos gives artists the opportunity to create immersive audio experiences for their fans with true multi-dimensional sound and clarity that comes from all around and from above the listener.

Albums that are available in Spatial Audio will have a badge on the detail page to make them easily discernible.

Apple Music is also offering a special set of editorially-curated Spatial Audio playlists to help listeners find the music they love and enable further discovery.

"The ability to experience music in its purest form is magical, and since live-concerts have taken a back seat in the recent times, Atmos is an excellent way for my listeners to feel as if they're listening to me live," said award-winning music composer AR Rahman.

"With Apple Music and Spatial Audio, we've recreated the songs of '99 Songs', 'Meri Pukar Suno' and 'Dil Bechara' in a newer, richer way, and I hope the audiences are able to experience the music in a manner it should be," Rahman added.

Apple Music is working closely with artists and labels to add new releases and the best catalog tracks, as more artists begin to create music specifically for the Spatial Audio experience.

Apple is also building immersive music-authoring tools directly into Logic Pro.

Later this year, the company will release an update to Logic Pro that will empower any musician to create and mix their songs in Spatial Audio compatible with Apple Music.

--IANS

na/

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New Delhi [India], July 20 (ANI/NewsVoir): JK Lakshmipat University, a national multidisciplinary educational institution situated in Jaipur, Rajasthan, collaborates with the University of Birmingham to offer innovative and advanced courses to its students to make them future-ready for the ever-evolving industries.

With a mission to become one of the most pioneering higher education institutions, the university is all set to offer global exposure and opportunities to the students to up-skill themselves with a gamut of courses to stay relevant in the ever-changing economy.

Being acutely aware of the increasing gap between demand and availability of quality education in the country, and the rapidly changing requirements, the University has adopted renewed commitment and vision for the University to become one of the most innovative higher education institutions in India.

The renewed plunge has already resulted in some substantial developments which have put the University firmly on a path to leadership and shaping international collaborations with world-leading Institutions like the University of Birmingham.

University of Birmingham is one of the oldest Universities in the world, and is ranked no.13 among UK University league 2021. UOB is recognised for its new age industry first curriculum and strong focus on research in the field of engineering, and this association will support JK Lakshmipat University to bring innovative learning methodology for engineering students in India. The association reflects international unison and reap positive outcomes for higher education system in these unprecedented times.

The university has explored the collaboration for the programs like, BEng & MEng Civil Engineering, BEng And MEng Electronic & Electrical Engineering BEng & MEng Mechatronic and Robotic Engineering.

The Universities have considered two formats for the students to enroll in the program, 2+2 arrangement and semester exchange. In the 2+2 arrangement, students will get a chance to go overseas and study at UOB for the last two semesters, the second format semester exchange will let the students from JKLU to study one semester at UoB.

Commenting on the collaboration, Prof. Dheeraj Sanghi, VC-Designate, JK Lakshmipat University said, "We are exploring meaningful collaborations with foreign universities like University of Birmingham to not only help us create niche programmes but also offer best global practices and programmes to our students. The association will not only offer better quality education but also diverse choices for the students."

The focus of University of Birmingham is to enhance student's aptitude and skillset in various verticals of engineering.

The aim is to encourage students who have multi-disciplinary skills and motivate them to upgrade themselves while getting additional support from global peer learning groups, to share international standard content with the students which will not only prepare them for the future and open an array of career paths for them but also ensure that they will receive quality lessons that is needed in order to be successful in the ever-growing professional world.

JK Lakshmipat University (JKLU), Jaipur, is a multi-disciplinary new-age University situated in Jaipur offering undergraduate, masters and doctoral programmes in Engineering, Business and Design.

Website - (https://www.jklu.edu.in/).

Sharing here details of UoB partnership -

Eligibility - All entry options to UoB are subject to meeting their admissions requirements, some of which are-

Minimum 80% in class 12th Maths, 75%+ overall in 12th

Minimum 7 CGPA in 2 years at JKLU

Admissions process - All applications will be individually evaluated by respective departments at UoB.Student opportunities -

1. Students need to finish atleast 2 years of education at JKLU respective B.Tech. program, and after that they will be admitted to 2nd year of BEng program at UoB.

Every student will get 20% scholarship on tuition fees of UoB for the years they spend at UoB.

2. Semester study Abroad - Student finishing 1 year at JKLU can do minimum 1 semester, upto 2 semesters at UoB.

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

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New Delhi [India], July 20 (ANI/NewsVoir): Understanding farmers' requirements and delivering superior quality products that meet such critical needs has been of paramount importance for Sonalika Group.

From a modest start of manufacturing farm equipment, the company has taken a quantum leap to set up a new high tech facility at Amb, Himachal Pradesh, with an investment of Rs. 200 crores to roll out advanced quality harvesters.

Sonalika's new plant at Amb is spread across 29 acres and is designed with multi-stage CED (Cathode Electric Deposition) paint process often seen at car manufacturing facilities. Established with an investment of Rs. 18 crores, the CED paint process involves 14-stage treatment process that ensures rust-free and longer period of harvester's performance.

Parallelly, Sonalika has launched the most advanced harvester available in India, the 'Sonalika Samrat' at Rs. 25.5 lakhs. The self-propelled harvester is fully equipped with next-gen technologies that not just reduce the tedious labour tasks during the harvesting season but also remains economical, thereby leading to quick savings for farmers.

The new combine harvester from Sonalika will maximise crop yield and avoid quality deterioration as well as minimise any crop losses. The Sonalika Samrat facilitates operations like reaping, threshing & winnowing. It is designed for farmers to obtain maximum yield with ease and comfort in operations during harvesting of wheat, paddy, barley, soybean, sunflower, mustard, green gram along with black gram.

Speaking on the occasion, Raman Mittal, Executive Director, Sonalika Group said, "It is in Sonalika's DNA to innovate aggressively while keeping farmers at the core of every new development. Farmers are on a constant lookout for technologies in farming that enhance their productivity and efficiency in an affordable way. Our new plant at Amb, HP has been installed with world class technologies to manufacture high-tech harvesters that significantly increase farmer's productivity. The state-of-the-art facility has been equipped with a world class CED paint shop for rust-free performance from our products for years after their purchase. Our latest launch, the Sonalika Samrat combine harvester has been designed to maximise farmer efficiency during harvesting. It is fully equipped with next gen technologies and boasts of modern comfort along with styling for customer's delight. We at Sonalika are fully passionate about driving farm mechanisation for our farmers to achieve farm prosperity."

What makes Sonalika Samrat combine harvester unique:

It comes fully loaded with modern features such as projector headlights, LED tail lamps, comfortable seating and adjustable ergo steering to support longer working hours for farmers. Its power packed diesel engine generates 101 HP power at 2,200 rpm and is coupled with 5-speed constant mesh gearbox for smoother operations.

Fitted with the longest feeder assembly having 4 feeder chain mechanism for stability, Sonalika Samrat is supported by heavy duty bearings for easy maintenance. The combine harvester is also subjected to various quality parameters such as speed, braking and performance on rigourous test track before being dispatched.

The Sonalika Samrat combine harvester will available in 2WD, 4WD options along with various attachments to suit farmer's requirements and propel them towards a prosperous tomorrow.

Sonalika Tractors, one of India's leading tractor manufacturers and the No. 1 Exports brand from India, has established its robust presence in the domestic as well as in over 130 countries with 11 lakh+ happy customers.

Sonalika manufactures the widest heavy duty tractor range in 20-120 HP and 70+ implements at its Hoshiarpur facility in Punjab that caters to the varied needs of customers across the globe.

Being a farmer-centric brand, the Govt. of India has chosen Sonalika as the only tractor brand to contribute to the Niti-Aayog for its inspirational project of doubling the farmer's income in the country.

Product Portfolio:

Sonalika tractor portfolio is equipped with efficient engines which give higher power output and remain affordable with low maintenance for better total cost of ownership and experience.

Sonalika is the leading brand in more than 50 HP tractor segment and is strengthening its presence in more than 40HP segment to achieve the leadership position

As the farm mechanization expert, Sonalika Agro Solutions offers a wide range of implements to address various stages of crop cycle ranging from land preparation to post harvesting operations including residue management.

Sonalika has also forayed into Custom Hiring Centres, a platform that offers small and marginal farmers an access to advanced agri machinery on rent, thereby aims to increase farm output in a cost effective way.

The company has introduced 'Agro Solutions' app for easy access of requisite machinery to farmers, thereby promoting farm mechanization in the country.

World No. 1 plant:

The Hoshiarpur plant of Sonalika is the World's No. 1 vertical integrated tractor manufacturing plant that is designed to manufacture customized farm machinery as per the farmer's crop-specific applications.

The facility is fully equipped to manufacture almost every element in-house which goes in the making of a tractor and is powered by robotic as well as automation.

Sonalika:

Sonalika has bagged the 'Iconic Brand of the Year' award by The Economic Times five years in a row (2017-2021), and 'Global Innovations Leadership Award' by Agriculture Today in 2018 & 2019. Sonalika Vice Chairman, A.S. Mittal has been felicitated with the 'Business Leader Of The Year 2018-2019' award by BTVi.

Sonalika Agro Finance Limited offers easy financing solutions to empower rural communities and support channel partners in their pursuit to reach deeper pockets of rural hinterland with mechanisation solutions.

As a responsible corporate, Sonalika drives various CSR initiatives to empower individuals, cultivate an inclusive society and promote sustainable development that focus on women, children & environment.

This story is provided by NewsVoir. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/NewsVoir)

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(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Virtis Health nurse practitioner provides infusion therapy to a patient in the Company's new Flagstaff, AZ Ambulatory Infusion Center.
No better time than now to catch kids up on vaccines
Here you'll find our latest collection of Caledonian-Record reports on the coronavirus outbreak and local response, from the beginning of April. Our January, February and March stories are here: https://www.caledonianrecord.com/news/local/our-coronavirus-coverage/collection_5885178c-692e-11e
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Its time to say goodbye to our long-term Mazda CX-30 after it joined our garage in July of last year. Its rather abrupt, we know, but beca...
The control tower is seen through the razor wire inside the Camp VI detention facility in Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. The Biden administration has transferred a detainee out of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility for the first time, sending a Moroccan man back home years after he was recommended for discharge. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)
FJC Client Services Coordinator, Sonya Desai, leads a virtual training with medical professionals on domestic violence and the importance of partnerships to meet the complex needs of survivors. Courtesy Family Justice Center.
This years edition of Seoul Promotion Plan (SPP), one of Asias premier global content markets, is underway. Seoul Business Agency will hold the event online until July 30.

The market, which is normally held in the South Korean capital, specializes in animation, characters, webtoons, and gaming. Since launching in 2001, it has grown into a major forum for the promotion and sale of animation IP, and for discussion about the future of the sector in Asia and beyond.

Last year, 619 companies from 34 countries, including global titans Disney and Tencent, participated in a record 4,092 biz-matching cases. And this despite the fact that the event was held online, like this year, because of the pandemic. While a virtual event cant replicate the social side of an onsite gathering, it lets guests attend more meetings  something which SPPs ever-evolving online platform facilitates.

Read on for more information about how SPP works and why you should attend:

Who is the event for?

Content creators, producers, studios, and anyone else in the content industry looking to diversify their business. SPP aims to serve in particular as a bridge between Korean and overseas companies, matching IP creators with buyers. Interpreters are present at the market to ensure smooth communication.

Whats happening this year?

SPP is hosting a full program of business-to-business events, including biz-matching, pitches, and showcases. One-to-one business video conferences are being held between attendees from more than 30 countries.

At the Global Ignite forum, major companies hold presentations on new developments in production, marketing, technologies, and investment across animation and other content, presenting opportunities for business development. Sessions include a talk on Canadian-Korean co-productions and an interview with Carl Reed, Director of Lion Forge Animation.

Recent additions to the program include a corporate-led content IR program and a webtoon category to appeal to buyers form China, a major overseas market for the format.

SPP also showcases the latest animation from Asian countries through the Asia Animation Alliance.

What is the Asia Animation Alliance?

A consultative body that promotes growth and collaboration in Asian animation. The participating countries are Korea, China, Japan, India, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Alongside the showcases, representatives will discuss the trends in their respective countrys industry.

Whats new at SPP in 2021?

While SPP has had an online platform since 2017, this year sees the introduction of SPP Connect, a new and improved virtual offering. It incorporates functions that improve user experience, such as AI-based recommendation solutions and video conferencing solutions, as well as advanced scheduling and online screening systems.

The newly established SPP Connect will become an online platform that can play a key role in exporting domestic contents amid the prolonged Covid-19 pandemic, says Park Bo-kyung, head of SBA Seoul Animation Center. At SPP 2021, we plan to provide support for domestic companies to create substantial business results by providing various opportunities to leading overseas buyers to pitch their projects.

To learn more about SPP 2021, visit the events website.
Photo: The Canadian Press Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England speaks at a Bank of England Financial Stability Report Press Conference, in London.

Mark Carney says he won't be on the Liberal ticket if there's an election this fall.

The former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England says he's made a commitment to help organize the private financial sector in the run-up to the United Nations climate conference, which is scheduled to run from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12.

Carney says he can't walk away from that commitment at such a crucial moment.

Carney is the UN special envoy on climate action and finance and also chairs the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which aims to bring together banks and asset management firms worldwide to accelerate the transition to net-zero carbon emissions.

Carney says he fully supports Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government and is not ruling out running as a Liberal candidate at some other time.

Trudeau is widely expected to call an election for this fall; if he does, Carney says he needed to put an end to rampant speculation that he would run in an Ottawa riding.

Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna announced last month she would not seek re-election in Ottawa Centre.

Her surprise decision opened up some prime political real estate that could have become a launching pad for Carney.

McKenna has held the riding that encompasses Parliament Hill since 2015, when she wrestled it away from the New Democrats.

Carney promised in April, during his political debut at the Liberal party's virtual convention, to do whatever he can to support the party.
Smoke from the Bootleg Fire rises behind Bonanza, Oregon, on July 15. Officials are warning more Oregon residents to prepare to evacuate as the Bootleg Fire scorches more than 300,000 acres, with a national fire official warning it could take a major weather event to subdue the flames.
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Vietnam considers higher cement export tariff

20 July 2021

Vietnams Ministry of Finance (MoF) has reportedly proposed that the government consider increasing the export tariffs for clinker to 10 per cent from five per cent, according to Vietnam News.

The MoF explained that exports of cement and clinker are not sustainable as their production uses non-renewable sources. Cement and clinker producers in Vietnam are also making use of a low electricity tariff.

Published under
A $175,000 truck will help saves lives in Pittsylvania County; The state is stopping just short of a mask mandate this fall for elementary schools; Caswell County authorities will not file charges in the drowning of a 2-year old girl; A local Congressman is taking a leading role on Capitol Hill.
After voting to make Dr. Nakia Townsend the interim schools superintendent, the Hamilton County School Board decided to table any discussion of compensation and whether to launch a national search for Dr. Bryan Johnsons permanent successor until after the Hamilton County Commission decides on who will fill the currently unoccupied District 9 seat on the board.

That seat was left vacant when Dr. Steve Highlander was appointed to fill the seat on the Commission left vacant when Chester Bankston resigned to move to Florida to be near his family.

It appeared most board members favored an internal search over another national search for a new superintendent. District 2 representative Marco Perez spoke first saying he was impressed with the internal candidates for the interim position and that he was not looking to do a big expensive national search only to end up with an internal hire. Mr. Perez said he was interested "in investing in our own people."

District 1 member Rhonda Thurman, who has already come out in support of Chief Schools Officer Justin Robertson, was quick to agree with Mr. Perez. She said, We need to look internally first. Our teachers need stability. The fiscally-minded Thurman went on to say, We dont need to be spending lots of money on a search."

Board Vice Chairman and District 8 member Tucker McClendon also was in favor of not having a big search, saying his most critical area of concern was a quick timeline. He said he was in favor of doing something this semester.

Joe Smith, from District 3, was also very much in favor of an internal candidate. He made mention of the fact that, to him, it seemed like every time a major position within Hamilton County came up there had to be a national search. Mr. Smith concluded his remarks by saying, Im not so sure that he or she isnt already right here. We owe the public our best to do the right job.

District 5 representative Karitsa Jones readily agreed, saying, We have a lot of internal candidates."

The only board member who professed a willingness to launch a search outside the county was District 6s Jenny Hill. Hill said she could go either way. In her opinion it gave the board the opportunity to be proactive as to where we want to be in five years. Ms. Hill said she hoped the next superintendent would be here for more than five years.

The District 9 representative is scheduled to be chosen by the members of the County Commission at their Aug. 4 meeting. Should that happen the new board member would likely be sworn in that day.

The next meeting of the School Board is set for August 19 with a work session scheduled for the 16. Mr. Smith put forth the idea that every day in this process is an important one and proposed a special called meeting prior to the next regularly scheduled meeting.

That meeting was set for Thursday, Aug. 12, at 5:30 p.m.,
For All Tennessee is hosting a happy hour and legislative recap event at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, at Marco's Pizza in Hixson.

For All is a new 501(c)4 nonprofit that was founded to mobilize Tennesseans around policy that empowers people and limits government.

This event will be an opportunity for the public to learn more about what the new organization accomplished within the legislature during its first 120 days of existence, including the passage of a no-knock raid ban, reform to Tennessees civil forfeiture laws, and legislation to protect small businesses from shutdowns.

President Justin Cornett and Executive Director Joshua Eakle will provide a brief recap of their 2021 legislative efforts in Tennessee, discuss plans for 2022, and take any and all questions. Food will be provided for attendees.

Learn more and RSVP here: https://foralltn.org/july-happy-hour-legislative-recap/

For more information, contact Joshua Eakle at 865 318-1508 or josh@foralltn.org.




When several employees at the Cape Wildlife Rescue Center in Massachusetts noticed a big and beautiful Canadian Goose begin to stumble and fall down at a picturesque pond, the staff decided to take a closer look at Arnold, as the townsfolks call him. Something, probably a snapping turtle, had badly mangled one of the ganders legs and webbed foot.

They had quite a time catching the wild bird but discovered that Arnold had two exposed and broken bones and some ugly lacerations so surgery was required. Then it happened; a persistent tapping came from the reception area and one of the nurses went to see What on earth! Outside the door stood Arnolds quite forlorn and agitated wife/companion/lover/mate.

She was attempting a break-in and the staff wished for all the world their spouses were as dedicated. Sure, we all misted up. It was beautiful.

Here you need to know that Canadian geese have a lifespan of about 25 years but, far better, at the age of 3, they find a soulmate and its for keeps. A pair of geese mate for life and - by golly - Arnolds better half was demanding to see her gander. You know the vow - to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part.

No one will ever know how the female goose found Arnold - outside of a God-given miracle - but when Arnold regained his senses after surgery, the nurses took him to the front door and both birds calmed immediately, The staff even cracked the door open enough where the female could reach her long neck in and preen her No.1.

The plan is to get him back out quickly and we will perform bandage changes and antibiotics treatments in view of the doorway when possible, read a prepared statement, so that his mate can check up on him through each day. The center provides the female with food and water and theyll put Arnold in a sturdy baby bed where the two geese can enjoy the look of love until theyll return to the pond in about three weeks.

Male geese are called Ganders and the offspring are goslings but there is only one term used for females; that would not be hen. It is simply Goose. And one more goose tip: When you see a pair of the big birds, the way scientists identify their sex is the tailfeathers of males appear as rounded off, while a females tailfeathers appear more pointed.

* * *

THE REAL REASON THAT I FORWARD FUNNY EMAILS TO MY FRIENDS

This anonymous email explains why friends forward jokes. I've never thought of it this way before.

A man and his dog were walking along a road. The man was enjoying the scenery when it suddenly occurred to him that he was dead. He remembered dying, and that the dog walking beside him had been dead for years. He wondered where the road was leading them.

After a while, they came to a high, white stone wall along one side of the road. It looked like fine marble. At the top of a long hill, it was broken by a tall arch that glowed in the sunlight. When he was standing before it, he saw a magnificent gate in the arch that looked like mother-of-pearl and the street that led to the gate looked like pure gold.

He and the dog walked toward the gate, and as he got closer, he saw a man at a desk to one side.

When he was close enough, he called out, "Excuse me, where are we?"

"This is Heaven, sir," the man answered.

"Wow! Would you happen to have some water?" the man asked.

"Of course, sir. Come right in, and I'll have some ice water brought right up." The man gestured, and the gate began to open. "Can my friend," gesturing toward his dog, "come in, too?" the traveler asked.

"I'm sorry, sir, but we don't accept pets."

The man thought a moment and then turned back toward the road and continued the way he had been going with his dog.

After another long walk, and at the top of another long hill, he came to a dirt road leading through a farm gate that looked as if it had never been closed.

There was no fence.

As he approached the gate, he saw a man inside, leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"Excuse me!" he called to the man. "Do you have any water?"

"Yeah, sure, there's a pump over there, come on in."

"How about my friend here?" the traveler gestured to the dog

"There should be a bowl by the pump," said the man.

They went through the gate, and sure enough, there was an old-fashioned hand pump with a bowl beside it.

The traveler filled the water bowl and took a long drink himself, and then he gave some to the dog.

When they were full, he and the dog walked back toward the man who was standing by the tree.

"What do you call this place?" the traveler asked.

"This is Heaven," he answered. "Well, that's confusing," the traveler said.

"The man down the road said that was Heaven, too."

"Oh, you mean the place with the gold street and pearly gates? Nope. That's Hell."

"Doesn't it make you mad for them to use your name like that?"

"No, we're just happy that they screen out the folks who would leave their best friends behind."

So-o-o-o. Now you see, sometimes, we wonder why friends keep forwarding stuff to us without writing a word.

Maybe this will explain it.

When you are very busy, but still want to keep in touch, guess what you do? You forward emails!

When you have nothing to say, but still want to keep contact, you forward jokes!

When you have something to say, but don't know what, and don't know how . . . You forward stuff!

A 'forward' lets you know that 

You are still remembered,

You are still important,

You are still loved,

You are still cared for.

So, next time if you get a 'forward', don't think that you've been sent just another forwarded joke, but that you've been thought of today and your friend on the other end of your computer wanted to send you a smile.

You are welcome at my water bowl anytime!

So here's to keeping in touch.

Even if it means only forwarding on an email!

-- Author unknown; from the Internet

royexum@aol.com
The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is offering the reminder that the application period for the 2021-22 season-long (Tier 1) duck blinds will close July 21 at 11:59 p.m. (CDT) with results announced in early August. All applications must be submitted through www. GoOutdoorsTennessee.com .

Significant changes have been made to public land duck hunting this year to increase opportunities for all duck hunters.

For season-long blinds (Tier 1) on public lands, most things will remain like the 2020-21 season. Application and drawings will be computerized and lottery-style with results emailed. Applicants may form parties and each members name will be included in the lottery, parties of 8 will have 8 chances, etc.

Blind construction timing and requirements for season-long (Tier 1) blinds have slight modifications, mainly that walls of blinds must now be solid material. For complete details, including WMA maps of locations, please visit the TWRA website.

This fall there is a completely new quota hunt opportunity for duck hunters to apply for 3, 4, or 7-day hunts. There will 42 Tier 2 locations and 10 Tier 3 locations in addition to the 432 total Tier 1 sites.

Hunters can apply for Tier 2 and 3 permits online in the quota hunt system (like the existing deer/turkey quota system) beginning Oct. 6. To further increase the opportunity for hunters to obtain a permit during duck season, there will be three application periods (early, mid, late) as well as the ability to receive priority points if a hunter is not selected. More details about Tier 2 and 3 locations including WMA area maps are located on the TWRA webpage.

For Tier 1, 2 and 3 sites, applications must be submitted through www. GoOutdoorsTennessee.com or any TWRA license agent. No mail-in applications are accepted. When applying through the website, it is critical to include an email address for your account. All notifications will arrive only by email. You can log into your account at any time and see hunts you applied for, permits you were awarded, and your priority points balance.
The Tennessee Highway Safety Office will join the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Georgia Office of Highway Safety, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, the Georgia Highway Patrol, Erlanger Health System, and other partners to promote Operation Southern Shield.

The purpose of this regional campaign is to increase traffic safety awareness and enforcement to reduce speeding across the Southeast.



According to Tennessees Integrated Traffic Analysis Network, in 2019, there were 7,812 traffic crashes statewide related to speeding or aggressive driving behaviors; 155 of those crashes were fatal.

Last year, there were 7,964 traffic crashes in Tennessee related to speeding or aggressive driving behaviors; 170 of those crashes were fatal.
Reed wants to play Rock Paper Scissors with Britteny Guffey. With developmental disabilities, the 9-year-olds speech is a bit hard to understand, but Guffey knows exactly what hes saying.I dont know, she tells him, you beat me every time.Eventually she gives in and, yes, he beats her, much to his delight.Guffey, wholl be a senior in psychology in fall semester at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, is a Big Buddy, a student majoring in psychology working this summer as a counselor in the weeklong Friends Discovery Camps at the Creative Discovery Museum or the Chattanooga Youth and Family Development Departments Camp ZooAbility.In each, the campers are developmental disabled.Some have mental impairments. Some have physical issues. Some are autistic.It can be demanding but its also rewarding, said Guffey, who wants to be a school psychologist.In early June, Guffey is working as a Big Buddy during a Friends Discovery Camp for 6- to 10-year-olds. One of the days includes a tripe to Warner Park Pool.Ive learned a lot about myself, about the kids and how to attend to that child and their individual specific needs, says Guffey explained. It gets me closer to where I want to be on a personal level and a professional level. I want to be able to help all students, the ones without disabilities or with disabilities.Sean is throwing himself forward in the Warner Park pool, flopping onto his stomach with big splashes. He does it over and over. Around and around the pool.Is this the best time youve ever had in your life? asks Allyson Thompson, program manager and inclusion educator for the Creative Discovery Museum, as she follows him.Sean doesnt say anything. He just keeps splashing.Jayne Griffin, director of education at the Creative Discovery Museum, said Big Buddies participation is crucial to the camps.I cannot say enough good things about Big Buddies. I cannot, she said. For us, we look at it as supporting these students, who then support our children.Getting campers to work and play with each other is the major goal of the camps, Griffin said.The engagement piece is huge and its tricky, she said. Its a fine art to do that and not hover, but to be supportive because the goal is to get the kids to engage with each other.The one-on-one attention campers receive would not be possible without the Big Buddies, said Thompson, who graduated from UTC in 2004 with a degree in children and family services.Most of these children dont get to get a typical camps. We couldnt do this camp without the students, she said.For students, working in the camps fulfills out-of-classroom training, a requirement for psychology majors.We decided that we wanted more hands-on experience, and we really wanted them to work together as a team, and a classroom doesnt always fit that mold, said Elaine Adams, therapeutic recreation coordinator for the city of Chattanooga and an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychology UTC.Big Buddies are students in her courses who commit to a minimum of two weeks of work at either the museums or the citys summer camp, Adams explained.A total of six weeks of camps are held in the summer, and students can volunteer for all six if they want, she said. For every two weeks worked, they receive three hours academic credit.The assumption is that, if you sign up for the course, you were also going to do the camp, Adams said.Its not cold once you get in it.Good shot!Thats my booty. Dont touch that.Conversations can be heard this way and that as campers romp in the Warner Park Pool. Some play water basketball. Some, like Sean, just fling themselves around and splash. Some arent sure they want to get in at all.They just need that one-on-one time, said Mariah Lyles, wholl be a senior in psychology at UTC in fall semester.I think that helps them a lot better than in a big classroom. They just need more time to understand.Conor McGowan, wholl also be a senior in psychology in the fall, said working with the kids is just kind of learning that every child is different.Everyone always says that, but you never really fully grasp it and understand it until you get to experience being around other children, said McGowan, who wants to pursue a career in pediatric therapy.You can always read a book. You can always learn something. But you cant always be around different kids. You get to see them do their own thing and learn from them.
After the premiere episode of Love in Paradise: The Caribbean, a 90 Day Story on July 18th, a Reddit user went to the 90 Day Fiance Reddit claiming to be Marks ex. The user explained that she is dumbfounded to see her ex on the show with Key.

Mark and Key, Love in Paradise: The Caribbean, a 90 Day Story | discovery+

The first episode of Love in Paradise airs Mark and Keys story

On the new discovery+ series, Love in Paradise: The Caribbean, fans are introduced to the couple Key and Mark. Key is a 36-year-old personal trainer, originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently living in the Bocas del Toro Province in Panama. After 9 years of no contact, Mark and Key reconnected, and hes coming to visit her from California. Mark, who is from Huntington Beach, California, is a 39-year-old who loves traveling.

Almost too hot to handlenew #90DayFiance stories JUST DROPPED on the latest @discoveryplus original series #LoveInParadise: The Caribbean. Stream now! pic.twitter.com/zlU5gmmWeg  TLC Network (@TLC) July 19, 2021

He met Key when he lived abroad in Bocas del Toro, Panama, running a hostel. She was traveling through Central America and happened to be staying at the same hostel. He said he was mostly drawn to her for her free spirit, which he felt the two had in common.

Key cares for Mark because he was there for her in her darkest moments. Mark revealed in the episode that he was staying with her and caring for her when she was in rehab for an overdose on the drug ketamine. In the trailer for this season of Love in Paradise, Mark is seen on the beaches of Bocas del Toro, giving Key an ultimatum  either she moves with him to California, or theyre through.

Marks alleged ex is dumbfounded by his relationship with Key

Surfacing on the 90 Day Fiance Reddit page, a user named @truzzolino_lies told fans about her alleged ex, Mark, being featured on the premiere season of Love in Paradise. The user wrote, I just found out my exe [SIC] is debuting on the newest 90 days spin off. Marks alleged ex said that he was with her over 8 years on and off, during the 9 years that he and Key were not in contact. The user says, As stunned as I am Im very surprised that he took to tv to profess his love for someone very quickly after being with me for off and on for about 8 years.

Mark and Key on Love in Paradise: The Caribbean, a 90 Day Story | discovery+

Marks alleged ex wrote nice things about Key, commenting, Yep his new chick/wife seems cool, shes a personality type I would be friends with obviously not in this circumstances of course. But I will say she has a charming love for life. However, the issues she has isnt about Key, the issue is more of how they portrayed the story. The user wrote, The bothersome part is how the show play into the 9 years they werent togetherya those 9 years up until April 2020 was off and on with me. Dumbfounded has entered the chat.

Marks alleged ex considers making reaction videos of the episodes to heal

The Reddit user @truzzolino_lies then told fans that she was considering producing her own reaction videos, kind of like a homemade Pillow Talk. The user said, I am thinking about doing a reaction video because for me there is no getting around not watching it. A large part of me is curious, angered for being strung along for so long and slight jealous that it isnt me that he wants.

Mark on Love in Paradise: The Caribbean, a 90 Day Story | discovery+

However, Marks alleged ex seems to be going back and forth on the idea, not sure if it would be beneficial for her or not. She wrote, So here I am grappling these human emotions is it a good idea if I really believe Ill get closure from it? Is there such healing in talking about something that completely dumbfounds you.

Fans gave Marks alleged ex some advice about maybe refraining from putting everything out there for 90 Day Fiance fans to see because they admit it can get brutal. However, if this Reddit user decides to do a series of reaction videos, it might be interesting to have a different perspective on the Mark and Key relationship.

RELATED: Love in Paradise: The Caribbean, A 90 Day Story: Everything We Know About 90 Day Fiance Spinoff
Nene Leakes isnt letting up on her belief that its time for Cynthia Bailey to exit The Real Housewives of Atlanta. The former BFFs met when Bailey joined the cast in season 3 and instantly hit it off. Unfortunately, their relationship didnt survive the many public fallouts that often come with being on reality television. Leakes is reiterating previous statements that Bailey lacks spunk.

NeNe Leakes and Cynthia Bailey 2019 | Paras Griffin/Getty Images

Nene Leakes says Cynthia Bailey doesnt bring anything to RHOA

Leakes has been making her media rounds discussing the current cast of the show. Shes made it clear that she feels Bailey is boring, to say the least. In response, Bailey told Wendy Williams in a recent interview that Leakes is one former cast member that should not return.

In regards to Baileys chat with Williams, Leakes says shes paying it no mind. I didnt see it, her entire interview, she tells The Jasmine Brand. Some people did send me the clip [but] I refuse to look at the clip because this is just me helping myself. When I do things like that because I dont want to have an outburst, you know, even though Im working on me, still certain things somebody says it may make me come back. And I dont want to come back but I was told what she said.

Source: YouTube

RELATED: Why Cynthia Bailey Is Not Concerned if She Doesnt Get Invited Back to RHOA

Furthermore, Leakes doubles down on her belief that Bailey serves little purpose on the show.

And theres no shade! I mean I think that, you know, the moment you say that people take it for shade, she continued. I dont think she should be there, thats just my opinion and I think shell be a good friend to the show and I think that she will come up with an excuse like I live in L.A. now or something like that. So she can and thats why I decided to not do the show but [Bravo] decided they dont want you on the show. But I get it. I just dont think that she has brought anything to the show in the last few years.

The former RHOA star says she doesnt care for any of her former co-stars but thinks one is good for the show

Bailey isnt the only person Leakes isnt a fan of. She also tells The Jasmine Brand that she doesnt think much of any of her former co-stars, noting, I dont have any love for them at all but they are an extreme [cast].

Ironically, she says her longtime nemesis Kenya Moore works for the show because reality television is known for being messy. Per Leakes, Moore stirs the pot and keeps the show interesting.

Source: YouTube

RELATED: RHOA: Nene Leakes Blasts Kandi Burruss for Hypocrisy Over Leakes Rape Comment Comedy Scandal

They start a lot of trouble for no reason and that will be Kenya [Moore]. And so if I had to pick anybody [to return] I would say Kenya and Porsha, she says. Kenya because she is a complete trouble maker and thats how she lives her life.

Leakes exit came amid a contentious few seasons. She quit the virtual season 12 reunion early and was allegedly phased out of the show over the past few years due to bad behavior. Leakes previously left RHOA following the conclusion of season 7 and returned during season 10 as a full-time cast member.
Add sending chauffeured cars to the list of things George Clooneys done for his friends and co-stars. Shailene Woodley says the award-winning actor, who once gifted friends with $1 million in cash, sent a car to pick her up from a s Italian hostel.

The 2 actors starred in The Descendants together

Shailene Woodley | Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

Clooney and Woodley have known each other for a decade. They starred in the 2011 film The Descendants together. After starring in the ABC Family-turned-Freeform series, The Secret Life of the American Teenager, Woodley had her breakout role in the film.

A comedy-drama directed by Alexander Payne, The Descendants found Clooney playing Matt King, a father of two who attempts to rekindle relationships with his daughters after his wife is seriously injured. His oldest daughter is played by none other than Woodley.

George Clooney sent a car to pick up the Big Little Lies star from a s hostel while she was backpacking through Italy

George Clooney and Shailene Woodley | Kevin Winter/Getty Images for DGA

RELATED: George Clooney Used To Pretend To Be an Agent and Pitch Himself

In a July 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter Woodley discussed her latest projects  Netflixs The Last Letter From Your Lover and Endings, Beginnings  her relationship with fiance Aaron Rodgers, and where shes at in her life at the age of 29 compared to five or 10 years ago.

Reflecting on her early days in Hollywood Woodley talked about backpacking through Italy and sleeping on trains. She recalled connecting with Clooney, who famously has a sprawling home near Lake Como.

Were staying in some s hostel in the middle of Milan, and he was like, Send me your address. Ill send a car, she recalled. I was like, No, well just get a train. He was like, Give me your f address. So I gave him the address and we come outside, its this beautiful Lincoln Town Car and these scraggly, dirty women with our backpacks.

Woodley continued, describing it as a sweet, funny moment in life where I got to experience so many different worlds from such a young age, the really big lives and the really small lives.

Shailene Woodley previosly got rid of mostly everything she owned and lived out of a suitcase

Shailene Woodley | Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

RELATED: Big Little Lies Season 3: Shailene Woodleys Thoughts on Continuing the Show

When Clooney sent the car to pick up Woodley shed been in the middle of taking a break from acting. The Divergent star earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance in The Descendants, and at 18, she wanted to leave Hollywood behind. At least for a while.

All the opportunities that were coming to me were huge, huge blockbuster films that maybe to my lawyers looked like great opportunities but to me didnt represent any creativity, she told The Hollywood Reporter.

During that time Woodley went backpacking across the U.S. and Europe, sometimes for months-long stretches. She was in her late teens and early 20s earning as little as $15,000 and sleeping at friends houses. Reflecting on that period in her life Woodley says she almost cant believe what she said no to.

I look back on my 18-, 19-, 22-year-old self and Im in awe of my ability to say no, she said. I had no responsibilities. I got rid of mostly everything I owned and lived out of a suitcase. I didnt feel pressure to work to make money. It was a very simple life. Because I wasnt surrounded by the rhetoric of this industry and of Hollywood, I dont think I knew anything other than saying no.
The royal family is a subject of public speculation regardless of what they do. Members of the royal family manage to make headlines every day, but while people around the world always maintain a healthy fascination with the royals, hot topics like marriages and childbirth really manage to drum up interest.

(L-R) Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex | Stephen Pond/Getty Images

In particular, royal weddings are a source of endless fascination, and every time a member of the royal family gets married, fans scramble to learn everything that they can about the rather bizarre rules that govern marrying into the royal ranks.

Can royal family marry anyone they want to?

Becoming a member of the royal family by marriage is something that should be taken seriously. Not only do senior, working members of the royal family have to focus most of their energy on their royal engagements, but they have to seriously consider which parts of their lives that they can share with the public. Royals are not allowed to be active on social media, to be engaged in politics, or to dress in a suggestive manner when out in public.

Today, The Earl and Countess of Wessex and Forfar carried out engagements in Edinburgh.



Their Royal Highnesses first visited St James Quarter, the new retail and leisure centre which will transform the citys east end. pic.twitter.com/ZKE1x54sdw  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 29, 2021

In fact, when someone marries a member of the royal family, their life essentially revolves around the royals. When Meghan Markle, who had established a thriving career as an actress, got engaged to Prince Harry, she stepped away from her career in Hollywood, giving it all up in order to focus on life as a royal.

Can royal family divorce?

The Queen was welcomed to the newly renovated @ArgyllsMuseum at @stirlingcastle this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/ANXWkuQHlx  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 29, 2021

While the conditions for becoming a royal seem steep, contrary to many myths, theres no set rule as to whom members of the royal family are allowed to marry. It is true that Queen Elizabeth must personally approve matches between certain senior royals, but she has never denied anyone who has sought her approval in the past  at least, not that anyone is aware of.

Traditionally, it has been frowned upon for members of the royal family to marry divorcees, but that is clearly not a rule that applies anymore, since Meghan Markle was divorced from her first husband by the time she started dating Prince Harry, and Queen Elizabeth had no problems with their union. One thing that has been noted as being particularly important to the queen when reviewing royal marriages is the matter of religion.

According to Popsugar, because the queen serves as Head of the Protestant Anglican Church of England, there are still rules in place to prevent a Roman Catholic royal from becoming monarch. Still, members of the royal family are allowed to marry those of the Roman Catholic faith.

While at one point divorce was not allowed, it is now fairly accepted for royal family members to divorce.

Who will be the next royal family member to tie the knot?

The Queen arrives at the Palace of Holyroodhouse for the traditional 'Ceremony of the Keys', where the Lord Provost of Edinburgh presented the keys of the City to Her Majesty.



It's a very ancient ceremony that happens every time the Sovereign visits the City #RoyalWeek. pic.twitter.com/uqrYtVxW3M  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 28, 2021

Fans all around the world love watching royal weddings and revel in the spectacle. The most recent royal wedding was the marriage of Princess Beatrice, the daughter of Sarah Ferguson and Prince Andrew, to her longtime boyfriend, Edward Mapelli Mozzi. The two tied the knot in grand fashion in the summer of 2020, after being forced to delay their wedding for months due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

As for when the next royal wedding might take place, nothing has yet been announced. Still, rumors have swirled for years that Sarah Ferguson still carries a torch for her ex-husband and father of her two children, Prince Andrew. If those rumors prove true, the couple, who are still great friends, could eventually decide to remarry. For now, fans will have to speculate about the status of their relationship.

The royal family has long been a subject of fascination for people all around the world. For hundreds of years, the royals have been an institution  and love them or hate them, they are an inevitable part of life for citizens of England and other parts of Europe.

These days, with various members of the royal family as high-profile as certain celebrities, more people than ever are diving deep to learn about the history of the royals. With so many various elements that make up the history and background of the royal family, it can be hard to know where to start  but in general, the timeline of the royal family can be traced back to one man.

When did the British royal family start?

The Queen and The Princess Royal visited @SkyparkHQ in Glasgow to meet two companies who are leading the way in the space technology field. pic.twitter.com/vyHTSEomcj  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 30, 2021

As one of the United Kingdoms oldest institutions, the royal familys heritage goes back nearly a century. While it can be hard to confirm exact dates and bloodlines, it is generally believed that the royal family began with a man named William the Conqueror, who started the monarchy as it is known today. The reign of William the Conqueror, which began in 1066, consolidated smaller British monarchies into one controlled center of power.

It would be several hundred years before the Tudors took control, effectively reigning in the countries of Wales and Ireland to join England. This started a period of history that is documented by historians and scholars and is considered to be one of the most interesting time periods for fans and pop culture aficionados.

The house of Windsor, the name so that many know so well, was adopted by the royal family in 1917 by King George V  and just a few decades later, Queen Elizabeth II assumed the throne.

Who is the longest-reigning monarch in British history?

One of the most fascinating figures in royal family history is Queen Victoria, the great-great-grandmother of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Victoria ruled the United Kingdom from 1837 until 1901, even before the royals were known as the Windsor family. Her reign lasted for a total of 63 years, which for many years was a record among world leaders.

The Queen was welcomed to the newly renovated @ArgyllsMuseum at @stirlingcastle this afternoon. pic.twitter.com/ANXWkuQHlx  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 29, 2021

These days, Queen Elizabeth II holds the title of the longest-reigning monarch in the United Kingdom. She assumed the throne in 1952 and has been the figurehead of England ever since. At the age of 95, she is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon  but after she steps down, her son, Prince Charles, will take the throne, and his son, Prince William, set to rule after him.

How have the royal familys rules changed over time?

Over the years, the royal family has changed a bit, as the world has progressed. While there are many myths surrounding the royals, a few things are known for certain. In 2015, the royal rules of succession were officially changed, allowing females in the line of succession to be considered just as eligible for the throne as males before and after. This update places Princess Charlotte, Prince Williams daughter, fourth in line to the throne, after her older brother, Prince George, and before her younger brother, Prince Louis.

Her Majesty has a long-standing association with The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, having become their Colonel-in-Chief in 1947.



Pictured with The Duke of Edinburgh and members of the Regiment at Balmoral Castle in 1985. pic.twitter.com/nsOeXTfGyv  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 29, 2021

Additionally, the rules about whom members of the royal family are allowed to marry have been relaxed. In previous years, royals were not allowed to marry people who have been divorced, taking guidance from the Church of England. In 2002, however, the rules were relaxed  and in 2018, Prince Harry married Meghan Markle, who has been married and divorced once before.

Members of the royal family seemingly live very charmed lives. They get to attend high-society parties, hobnobbing with world leaders and celebrities, they enjoy the finest quality food and drink, and they have access to clothes from top designers.

Still, there are some definite drawbacks to being a royal, not the least being the extreme lack of privacy that senior members of the royal family must deal with. While the royals themselves rarely speak about the rules they have to follow with their fans, reports indicate that all senior royals have to pay attention to a strict code of conduct that extends to the clothes they wear, the food they eat, and the way that they comport themselves in public.

Royal family members must follow certain food rules

The Earl and Countess of Wessex and Forfar have carried out a series of engagements in Forfar and Angus today



First, Their Royal Highnesses visited Forfar Golf Club, where The Countess practiced her swing  pic.twitter.com/LWQ7m8HQqP  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 28, 2021

Senior royals are exposed to many fine meals at official events and engagements. They must exercise caution, however, since they are reportedly required to skip out on any shellfish or meat cooked at a rare temperature. The reason is due to health concerns, rather than aesthetic ones  shellfish and rare meats tend to pose a higher risk of food poisoning, and royals cant risk having an upset stomach and missing out on official duties.

Are royal family allowed to vote?

The Queen was joined by The Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Strathearn, on the first day of #RoyalWeek in Scotland.



After the Ceremony of the Keys, The Queen and The Duke met local volunteers and first responders to thank them for their efforts during the pandemic. pic.twitter.com/6rdLzJyiav  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 28, 2021

Many people might believe that the royal family is innately linked to British politics  but this would be incorrect. Rather, the queen encourages her family to remain politically neutral. It is a tradition within the royal family to avoid voting, running for political office, and even voicing political opinions.

This extends to social media as well, since most senior royal family members strictly avoid social media, and have accounts that are managed by employees within the palace. Even Meghan Markle, when she married into the royal family, had to deactivate her very active social media accounts in order to abide by this tradition.

Royal women are required to sit a certain way

Tomorrow, The Queen will arrive in Scotland for #RoyalWeek2021



Royal Week, or Holyrood Week, takes place each Summer as The Queen and Members of the Royal Family undertake visits across Scotland celebrating Scottish culture, achievement and communities. pic.twitter.com/68qRcACLv5  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 27, 2021

The royal family is all about image, and when members of the family step out in public, rarely a hair is out of place. Royal women are required to wear stockings, rock neutral-colored nail polish, and wear classy, appropriate clothing. They must also sit a certain way, with their knees and ankles together slanted to one side.

Royal women wont be seen with their legs crossed, one over the other, since it is seen as not appropriate or camera-friendly for official occasions. The approved manner of sitting, known as the duchess slant, is said to be the one preferred by Queen Elizabeth.

Bizarre rumors about the royal family that arent actually true

The Queen served as Patron of @the_LTA for 64 years from 1952 to 2016.



Her Majesty visiting the new National Tennis Centre, Roehampton in 2007 pic.twitter.com/GrsJZz3aMR  The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 25, 2021

Since the royal family doesnt often speak out about their long list of traditions, over time, a number of bizarre rumors have sprung up regarding certain habits of select royals. One of the most outrageous rumors held that Prince Charles requires seven boiled eggs prepared for him each morning, but that he chooses to eat only one of the seven to make sure that it is done perfectly to his liking. This rumor was debunked in 2012 by Prince Charles himself.

Another debunked rumor is regarding Queen Elizabeths drinking habits. A long-standing report held that the queen enjoys no less than four alcoholic drinks every day. Queen Elizabeths former personal chef Darren McGrady spoke out to correct the rumor after it started circulating, stating that while she has four favorite drink combinations, she most definitely doesnt have four cocktails each day. Some royal fans might also believe that members of the royal family arent allowed to drink  but they are allowed to drink in public, as long as they practice proper decorum.

RELATED: A Convoluted Timeline of Prince Andrew and Sarah Fergusons Bizarre Romance
Dr. Rong Ye (left), Dr. Ming Zhao (center), and Dr. Peng Cheng (right) at Cornell discuss their Army-funded research that identifies a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.

Using a pioneering imaging technique, Cornell University researchers obtained a high-resolution snapshot of how ligands, molecules that bind to other molecules or metals, interact with the surface of nanoparticles. In doing so, they made an unexpected breakthrough discovery. They determined that by varying the concentration of an individual ligand they could control the shape of the particle it attached too.

This approach could result in an array of daily applications, including developing chemical sensors that are sensitive at a very low level to a specific chemical in the environment.

"Professor Peng Chen's work allows for deep insights into molecular adsorption processes, which is important to understand for designing molecular sensors, catalysts, and schemes to clean up micro-pollutants in the environment," said Dr. James Parker, program manager, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, known as DEVCOM, Army Research Laboratory. "This research is also important for designing and engineering stimuli-responsive materials with specialized function that could not be found in regular, bulk materials."

The research, published in Nature Communications, studied interactions of ligands and gained new understanding of the strength, or affinity of ligand adsorption as well as how multiple ligands cooperate, or don't, with each other.

"When the molecule adsorbs on the surface of a nanoscale material, it also actually protects the surface and makes it more stable," said Dr. Peng Chen, the Peter J.W. Debye Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, who led the research. "This can be utilized to control how nanoscale particles grow and become their eventual shape. And we found we can do this with just one ligand. You don't do any other trick. You just decrease the concentration or increase the concentration, and you can change the shape."

Understanding how ligands interact with the surface of nanoparticles has been a challenge to study. Adsorbed ligands are difficult to identify because there are other molecules in the mix, and nanoparticle surfaces are uneven and multifaceted, which means they require incredibly high spatial resolution to be scrutinized.

A nanoparticle's size and surface structures, or facets, are intrinsically tied to the particle's potential applications. The larger the particle, the more atoms fit inside it, while smaller particles have less available space internally but a greater surface volume ratio for atoms to sit atop, where they can be utilized for processes such as catalysis and adsorption. The different types of structures the atoms and molecules form on these surface facets are directly correlated with the particle's shape.

Army-funded research identifies a new chemistry approach that could remove micropollutants from the environment.

Scientists have used several imaging methods to survey these particles, but until now, they haven't been able to obtain nanometer resolution to really explore the nooks and crannies of the multiple surface facets and quantify the affinity, or strength, of a ligand's adsorption. The research team was able to do just that by employing a method of their own devising called COMPetition Enabled Imaging Technique with Super-Resolution or COMPEITS.

The process works by introducing a molecule that reacts with the particle surface and generates a fluorescent reaction. A nonfluorescent molecule is then sent to bind to the surface, where its reaction competes with the fluorescent signal. The resulting decrease in fluorescence, essentially creating a negative image, can then be measured and mapped with super high resolution.

Using COMPEITS on a gold nanoparticle, the team was able to quantify the strength of ligand adsorption, and they discovered ligand behavior can be very diverse. Ligands, it turns out, are fair-weather friends of a sort, at some sites they cooperate to help each other adsorb, but at other sites they can impair each other's efforts. The researchers also discovered that sometimes this positive and negative cooperativity exists at the same site.

In addition, the researchers learned that the surface density of adsorbed ligands can determine which facet is dominant. This crossover inspired the team to vary the concentrations of individual ligands as a way to tune the shape of the particle itself.

"For us, this has opened more possibilities," Chen said. "For example, one way to remove micropollutants, such as pesticides, from the environment is to adsorb micro-portions on the surface of some adsorbent particle. After it is adsorbed on the surface of the particle, if the particle is a catalyst, it can catalyze the destruction of the micropollutants."
RUDN and Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) chemist proposed a protocol for converting cellulose into a catalyst for the synthesis of oxadiazoles. The new approach makes the catalyst 3 times more stable compared to the same catalyst obtained by the traditional method.

RUDN and Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) chemist proposed a protocol for converting cellulose into a catalyst for the synthesis of oxadiazoles. The new approach makes the catalyst 3 times more stable compared to the same catalyst obtained by the traditional method. The results are published in Carbohydrate Polymers

One of the directions of green chemistry is the biopolymers functionalization. Chemists modify polymers obtained from plants and animals -- they add functional molecular groups to them to get useful substances. For example, the catalysts for oxadiazoles synthesis are created from cellulose. They are necessary to produce polymers, dyes, medicines, and photographic materials. To do this, metals are added to the structure of cellulose. However, during use, especially at high temperatures, metal ions are leaching. It causes the reduction of catalytic activity, and environmental pollution. The RUDN University and SBU chemist with his colleagues from Iran created a method of cellulose functionalization, to strengthen the connection of cellulose with metal ions and prevents them from leaching.

"Cellulose as the eco-friendly, non-toxicity, cost-effectively, and renewability features biopolymer was employed in a three-component Betti reaction since its ability to generate functional ligands on the cellulose to complex with Cu(II)", Dr. Ahmad Shaabani from RUDN University and SBU.

Chemists used the Betti reaction, which is the addition of functional groups to phenols using aldehydes and aromatic amines. RUDN University researchers obtained dialdehyde cellulose, for this they mixed 0.5 g of cellulose and 0.01 grams of potassium periodate in water. The solution was mixed at 85? for 12 hours. After that, the reaction product was filtered out, washed with water, and left to dry in a vacuum at 70?. The resulting dialdehyde was used in the Betti reaction. To do this, the chemists added 0.11 g of benzylamine to the dialdehyde and dissolved them in acetic acid, stirring at room temperature for 4 hours. Then naphthol was added to the mixture and mixed for another day. The resulting product was filtered, washed, and dried in a vacuum at 50?. Finally, a similar procedure was repeated, mixing the functionalized cellulose with copper acetate. As a result, a Cu(II)@DAC-Betti catalyst was obtained.

RUDN University and SBU chemists studied the obtained cellulose using spectroscopy and nuclear magnetic resonance. Its structure was examined under a scanning electron microscope. For comparison, the scientists took a copper-modified cellulose, which was obtained according to a standard protocol, without using the Betti reaction (Cu (II)@cellulose). The electron microscope images show that, in comparison with the usual one, the cellulose obtained through the Betti reaction does not have a smooth structure -- it has many outgrowths that firmly hold on to each other and to the cellulose fibers. Chemists compared how firmly the functional elements of cellulose obtained by new and standard methods hold. It turned out that the Betti reaction makes the modified cellulose 3 times more stable -- at a temperature of 600?, 17.2% of its mass was preserved, compared with 6.1% for cellulose obtained by the standard method.

"The result showed a high residual mass for Cu(II)@DAC-Betti, which established a high amount of Cu(II) loading in Cu(II)@DAC-Betti in comparison with Cu(II)@cellulose, thus reveals an efficiency of Betti functionalization in complexing of Cu(II) ions", Dr. Ahmad Shaabani from RUDN University and SBU.
In this June 11 photo, Vice President Kamala Harris talks with bilingual early childhood education school CentroNia students Jayden Bello, left, and Celina Barrera during a visit to the school in northwest Washington. Teacher Billo Diawara, right, watches.
Linda Fay Adams Jansen, known to many as Nana, went home to dance on the streets of gold July 4th, 2021. She was born in Sweetwater, Texas September 8, 1941 to Obe and Fern (Wood) Durham. Linda wore many hats throughout her life. She was a devoted wife, mother, sister, grandmother, great gra
A few days after Hurricane Elsa swept across the center of Cuba, Christians of all denominations joined in a nationwide day of prayer and fasting for their country on Wednesday, July 7. The call was made after months of increasing tension on the island amid severe scarcity of food and medicine and as the number of COVID-19 infections began to rise precipitously and the once-lauded health system threatened to collapse. Church leaders of all denominations reported that they were increasingly under surveillance and had been interrogated and threatened.

Four days later, on Sunday, July 11 in a town outside Havana, people spilled into the streets and marched peacefully and enthusiastically, calling for freedom and chanting Patria y Vida (Homeland and Life, the title of a hit song released by pro-democracy Cuban hip hop artists earlier this year and a twist on the Cuban Communist Party slogan Homeland or Death). They shouted in unison, We are not afraid! The demonstration was recorded and shared live via social media by participants and onlookers and, within hours, similar protests involving thousands of people sprang up in cities and towns across the island.

The spontaneity and magnitude of the protests, the likes of which have not been seen in Cuba since the triumph of the revolution in 1959, caught the government off guard. President Miguel Diaz-Canel went on television and made an explicit call to violence, telling the population that he was giving an order to combat and called for true revolutionaries to go into the streets and reclaim them by force. The military, police, and state security agents, both in uniform and plainclothes, flooded into the streets, beating protesters and detaining hundreds.

The total number of Cubans detained or disappeared is still not known but continues to climb. While a few have been released, most remain detained, incommunicado in prisons, police stations, and state security facilities across the country. Many family members of the detainees have reported that the government plans to charge them with incitement to delinquency with the aggravating factor of doing so during the public calamity of the pandemic. Threatened prison sentences range from eight to 20 years.

Because of the unplanned nature of the protests, those who went out into the streets were from all walks of life: ordinary Cubans, young and old, male and female, and people of all faiths and none. While some human rights and pro-democracy activists joined the marches, many stayed home, concerned that the government would use their participation as an excuse to condemn them to long prison terms.

Church leaders faced the same dilemma. One Protestant church leader told CSW why he had chosen to stay in his home, despite sympathizing with the protesters. I wanted to go out with all my heart, but I have been under surveillance by state security for months. I know the authorities are looking for any excuse to arrest me. I believe I can do more here in the trenches than I could have done by going into the streets.

The leader, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, was not wrong. In the days following the protests and detentions he acted as a bridge, putting families of detained Christians in his areaincluding pastors, other church leaders, and rank and file membersin touch with international advocacy organizations.

Image: Courtesy of Jatniel Perez

In contrast, two Berean Baptist pastors in the province of Matanzas, which has been one of the hardest hit by COVID-19, decided to march. Yarian Sierra Madrigal and Yeremi Blanco Ramirez, who also work as tutors at the William Carey Biblical Seminary, were violently detained and have been held incommunicado since then. A witness said he saw the authorities set dogs on Sierra Madrigal as the pastor recorded police violence on his phone before he was arrested.

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In a statement and exhortation to prayer sent to CSW, his wife Claudia Salazar said, My husband Yarian and our friend and brother Yeremi are honorable Cuban citizens. They have dedicated all of their youth and lives to serve the church and to serve others. [They are] family men: loving fathers, loving husbands, with an impeccable life testimony. They are not any kind of delinquent, nor are they low-lifes as those who govern this country call them. They are good men. They are men of God.

Their wives have not been allowed to communicate with the two pastors, who according to the authorities were being held in the Womens Prison in Matanzas but have now been transferred to a maximum security prison. On July 15, the women were told that their husbands cases had been turned over to the public prosecutors office and on Monday, July 19, they received news that the two men will face criminal charges. Overcrowded and unhygienic conditions in prisons across the country, in the midst of the pandemic, have led to concern for the wellbeing of all those in detention. The families of the pastors are particularly concerned given that Sierra Madrigal is still recovering from a bad case of COVID-19 and Blanco Ramirez suffers from severe asthma.

In what appears to be another attempt to pressure the family, Salazar and their young son were evicted from their home on Sunday, July 18. The landlord told Salazar that state security had threatened to confiscate the home if he did not throw them out. With nowhere to go, she and her son have taken refuge in their church.

Father Castor Jose Alvarez Devesa, a Roman Catholic priest in the province of Camaguey and a well-known human rights defender and promoter of religious freedom, also chose to march. He was detained and imprisoned after receiving a severe blow to the head while trying to help another wounded protester. He approached the police and requested medical assistance, which they provided before jailing him alongside other protesters. He was released into the custody of his archbishop the following day; however, a number of Catholic lay and youth leaders and others, including the church organist, in the town of San Nicolas de Bari, remain in detention.

Although the Cuban government attempted to cripple the protest movement by shutting off electricity in some parts of the country and either cutting or severely restricting access to the internet, the protests have continued. Violence has also continued, and despite the difficulties some Cubans have managed to upload to social media graphic video of protesters being beaten and fired upon. There have reportedly been several deaths.

Since the 1960s, Cuban religious organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant denominations, have hesitated to overtly criticize the government in any way. Repercussions for doing so have been severe. In the days since July 11, however, this too has changed.

The Catholic Bishops Conference, a number of other Catholic groups, and major Protestant denominations including the Evangelical League of Cuba, the Methodist Church of Cuba, and the Assemblies of God have published multiple statements condemning the governments invocation of violence, affirming the right to peaceful freedom of expression and the validity of the protesters demands, and calling on the authorities to listen and respond to them. Over the past week, the statements from evangelical denominations have grown stronger.

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On July 18, the Assemblies of God of Cuba published a statement reaffirming the right of all people to express themselves through peaceful demonstrations and reiterated the role of Christians and churches to be peacemakers. The statement also addressed President Diaz-Canels statements directly:

[We] reject the attitude of the President of Cuba by declaring: The order to combat has been given, which sparked violent clashes throughout the country. A government that proclaims the inclusion and equity of all citizens must have the wisdom to promote dialogue, not confrontation, between Cubans. We believe that slogans and calls, lacking in peace and sanity and that inflame the people, will not solve the situation in which the country finds itself, but will instead destine the nation to total chaos and destruction.

Notably, the Cuban Council of Churchesan ecumenical umbrella group of religious associations which maintains a good relationship with the governmentand its leaders have remained conspicuously silent.

It seems clear that Cuba, which marks the 62nd anniversary of its revolution on Monday, July 26, has reached a turning point. What happens next will depend in part on how severely the government decides to crack down. The mass detentions and threats of long prison sentences seem to indicate it is pursuing a similar strategy to that of the Black Spring of 2003, when about 75 human rights and pro-democracy activists were rounded up across the island and handed sentences of up to 25 years.

There are, however, marked differences between the situation in 2003 and in 2021. The president is no longer a member of the Castro family. Despite government efforts, there is still some access to the internet, social media, and messaging apps, and a tech-savvy population can communicate across and outside the island in a way that was not possible 18 years ago.

Another critical difference is the deep fear of even appearing to criticize the government, which has characterized much of the populationincluding churchesfor decades, appears to be evaporating. Protestant denominations that were deeply divided and suspicious of one another in 2003 have since come together and united, launching the Cuban Evangelical Alliance in 2019. The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) affiliate has remained strong despite the governments punitive measures and threats against its leadership.

An example of this new unity can be seen in the nationwide and interdenominational day of fasting and prayer for Cuba four days before the demonstrations erupted. Many Christians see a direct connection between the July 7 prayers and the events of July 11.

On July 10, pastor Alida Leon Baez, the respected longtime leader of the Evangelical League and a founding leader of the local WEA alliance, posted on social media:

On the day of the call to fasting and prayer for Cuba [July 7], after having cried out with groaning and having enjoyed Gods presence, the fast was broken with heavy rain and electrical storms  but later, [there was] a gentle whistle, a calm ministering peace, and [I saw] a beautiful map [of Cuba] drawn in the sky. My feeling was that God was pleased with this day and that he loves Cuba. Psalm 145:19 He fulfills the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cry and saves them.

Evangelical denominations have called for another day of prayer and fasting tomorrow, July 21 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern time, to focus on salvation, healing, and peace in Cuba.

Image: Courtesy of Jatniel Perez

In the meantime, the newfound boldness continues. As the president of the seminary where the two detained Baptist pastors tutored wrote July 16 on Facebook:

Article continues below

Today I received several calls trying to scare me into stopping publishing information about Pastors Yeremi Blanco Ramirez and Yarian Sierra [Madrigal]. They have called some of our pastors, trying to intimidate them. In case any of you at State Security have doubts about who I am: I am Jatniel Perez Feria. National President of the William Carey Biblical Seminary in Cuba and pastor of the Independent Evangelical Church in Velasco, Holguin. I am responsible for all the pastors and brothers who study in our seminary. If it bothers [you] that I am saying these things, then you know very well where I live. If I have to suffer for defending pastors and churches, then here I am, like Paul I am willing to go to prison for defending the cause of the Gospel. I am not afraid of going anywhere. You can do what you want with my body but my soul you cannot kill. I prefer to obey God rather than men I love my country. And I love my flag, where God placed me. And I will always defend the Church that Christ bought with His blood. Grace and peace.

Anna-Lee Stangl is joint head of advocacy and team leader for the Americas at CSW (Christian Solidarity Worldwide).

Speaking Out is Christianity Todays guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the magazine.
Jewish group rebukes UCC resolution claiming Israel uses imperialistic theology against Palestinians

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A prominent Jewish organization has rebuked a resolution passed by the United Church of Christ that accuses Israel of using an imperialistic theology to oppress the Palestinian Territories.

At the UCCs 33rd General Synod, held virtually on July 11-18, delegates adopted a resolution titled Declaration for a Just Peace Between Palestine and Israel in a vote of 462-78, and 18 abstentions.

The Declaration  rejects a future imposed by military power, illegal occupation and dispossession, or unilateral annexation of land and the use of an imperialistic theology as justification, reads the summary of the resolution in part.

The Declaration pronounces Israels continued oppression of the Palestinian people a sin, incompatible with the Gospel.

The resolution goes on to compare Israels actions in the Palestinian Territories to Jim Crow segregation in the United States and rejected the claim that Israel has a divine right to the land.

In addition to the condemnations of Israel, the resolution also declared that all people living in Palestine and Israel are created in the image of God and that this bestows ultimate dignity and sacredness to all.

In a statement released Monday, the UCC national officers acknowledged that the resolution might cause tension in some of our interreligious relationships, especially in the American Jewish community.

Let us be clear: we remain committed to dialogue and engagement with interreligious partners and will remain as vigilant as ever in our condemnation of anti-Semitism and other forms of religious-based bigotry and discrimination, just as we oppose violence in all its forms, wherever it is perpetrated, they stated.

Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving more U.S. military aid than all other countries in the world combined. So, we as U.S. citizens and as a U.S. church opposed to militarization, have a special responsibility to speak out on this, just as we have been critical of U.S. military engagement and military aid in other parts of the Middle East and around the world.

The American Jewish Committee, a prominent Jewish organization, has denounced the UCC resolution, saying in a statement that it demonizes Israel, fails to offer a credible path to Israeli-Palestinian peace, and undermines advances in Christian-Jewish relations.

The AJC pointed out that the UCC resolution made no mention of Hamas, the major Islamic terrorist group that has controlled the Gaza Strip for years and has violently attacked Israel on multiple occasions with the intention of destroying the nation.

The resolution ignores inconvenient truths in the history and context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; innumerable peace proposals and initiatives rejected by Palestinians with violence; and ongoing security threats to Israel, stated AJC.

In its accusations, the resolution uses terms like sin and apartheid. The resolution dangerously describes the oppression of the Palestinian people and an unqualified Israels occupation of Palestine as theologically motivated."
2 Georgia churches leave United Methodist Church over LGBT stance, announce merger

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Two congregations in Georgia have left the United Methodist Church over the denominations opposition to homosexuality and merged into one church.

Asbury Memorial Church and Wesley Oak Church, both based in Savannah, recently voted to disaffiliate from the UMC South Georgia Conference.

Asbury, which averaged 287 attendees in weekly worship in 2019, finalized its process of disaffiliation last fall. Meanwhile, Wesley Oak, which averaged 29 attendees, finalized disaffiliation earlier this month.

Asbury Memorial Pastor Rev. William Hester told The Christian Post on Monday that the decision to leave came soon after the 2019 special session of the UMC General Conference.

Delegates at the special session voted to reaffirm the theologically conservative stance of the UMC regarding homosexuality, rejecting a compromise proposal that would have allowed more regional variance.

Hester explained to CP that "it became clear after this event that the denomination was not heading in the direction we had hoped."

"Since we disaffiliated last year, Asbury Memorial is a nondenominational, independent church continuing to be rooted in Wesleyan theology," said Hester.

Regarding the merger with Wesley Oak, Hester noted that the two churches have a long history of fellowship and agreed to combine their ministries once Wesley Oak left the UMC.

"When both congregations felt called to disaffiliate, we both recognized that our ministries would be more effective if we combined our efforts and resources," the pastor said.

At present, Asbury Memorial and Wesley Oak retain their respective church properties, though each church holds Sunday morning worship at a different time.

The Rev. David Thompson, the conference's coastal district superintendent, told CP that he was part of conversations between the regional body and the two departing congregations.

We are never happy to see local churches depart from our fellowship, but understand their desire to do so and pray for their future ministry, Thompson said. He described the process as being gracious in nature.

Even though changes in church status and connection can occur, we are still bound together in the body of Christ, and I am thankful for the ministry Asbury Memorial and Wesley Oak have done and will do in the name of Christ.

For decades, the UMC has debated its stance on LGBT issues, as the mainline Protestant denomination officially labels homosexuality incompatible with Christian teaching, bars non-celibate homosexuals from being ordained and prohibits the blessing of same-sex marriages.

After failed efforts to reach a compromise between theological liberals and conservatives within the UMC, many congregations have decided to leave the denomination.

These include conservative churches who dislike the open defiance to UMC rules by many liberal leaders and progressive churches who do not believe the denomination will ever change its official position.

Next year, the UMC will hold a general conference, which many believe will see the approval a measure to allow conservative churches to amicably separate from the denomination.
Asia Bibi reveals how God showed Himself on death row, transformed an ordinary Christian

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WASHINGTON  A Pakistani Christian woman imprisoned on death row for over eight years based on trumped-up blasphemy charges recounted how that experience helped her grow strong in faith.

In an address to religious freedom advocates at the annual International Religious Freedom Summit, Asia Bibi, aided by a translator, described how her experience in prison transformed her from an ordinary Christian into a passionate defender and believer of the faith.

Bibi's ordeal began when Muslim field workers accused her of contaminating their water supply by drinking from the same water container, rendering it "impure" because Christians are viewed as unclean. An argument ensued between Bibi and the women that escalated into a criminal complaint after the women publicly accused her of committing blasphemy by insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad, a charge that brings a sentence of life in prison or death by hanging.

During a police investigation into her alleged crime, Bibi was beaten up in her home and arrested. In 2009, she was convicted and sentenced to death under section 295-C of Pakistan's blasphemy law.

She was acquitted on Oct. 31, 2018, and later granted asylum in Canada on May 8, 2019, after other countries, including England, decided not to offer her asylum amid concerns over a potential uprising among their fundamentalist Muslim populations.

Bibi, who never wavered from declaring her innocence of the charge, was among several persecuted religious minorities to address the three-day summit in Washington last week.

I was doing fine with my family prior to 2009 when the incident occurred, Bibi said Thursday, the last day of the summit. After facing the allegation of blasphemy, she was interrogated at a police station and began weeping. She explained that public pressure played a role in her charges and sentencing. Initially, she was incarcerated for four years in a jail near her home.

Patrick Sookdeho of the Barnabas Fund, a Christian aid agency and one of several advocacy groups that sponsored the summit, explained that Pakistan's blasphemy law has been used by those who are unhappy with Christians or [used against] a particular Christian as a weapon to settle scores.

He cited an example of a shopkeeper who wanted to put a Christian competitor out of business, noting that all he had to do was accuse him of blasphemy because the mere accusation by a Muslim of insulting Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, means automatic arrest and trial.

Bibis imprisonment on a charge of blasphemy is just one example of how such an accusation can be leveraged against Christians and religious minorities in Pakistan. Bibi, who was born Aasiya Noreen, attributed the blasphemy allegation that led to her imprisonment for nearly a decade to a tension between her family and the leader of that village where she was residing at the time with her husband and children. She believes that the leader planted the blasphemy charge against her.

She felt totally broken" after being sentenced to prison. But she soon faced a reversal of fortune, she said.

After a week of continued weeping and crying out to [the] Lord, one of the early mornings I [saw] one of the bird visited  nearby the same area where I was [imprisoned], and it was looking like somebody is talking to me.

At first, I was really astonished when I saw [that] some bird is looking at me. I thought, what happened? she said. Bibi then determined that the bird proved that her fathers assertion that sometimes, God reveals [Himself] to someone in different ways was true.

Bibi then began talking to the bird. I dont know why this word came out from my mouth, but I said, peace be upon you.  I was talking to a bird.

Even as she faced the death penalty for false charges of blasphemy, Bibis encounter with the bird enabled her to see a silver lining: That situation lifted me up, and my hope started. So this practice carried on for [the] next three years. At the same time, at 4 a.m., the same bird visited me, and that lifted me up.

Bibi, who had previously characterized herself as an ordinary Christian, said the morning visits from that bird as a sign from God led me to grow strong in faith.

At the first jail where she was housed, she began a routine of feeding that bird with what little provisions she had to spare. What she did, she said, was doing this practice to have a pot of water and some kind of food for that bird that really came to [visit] me every day.

They transferred me from that jail where I was, where  the bird was visiting me, to another jail, she continued. My prison changed from one area to [the] other area, but the bird [kept] on visiting me in that jail also. So I started keeping up the same practice [of] feeding them  and thats also .... giving me courage to grow more in my faith.  I was sharing my faith even with those birds also, and that has led me to be more strong in faith.

In addition to crediting visits from the bird for giving her strength and faith, Bibi rejoiced about the advice she received from her father during her imprisonment: 'Dont worry about your life, if you are going to be killed, but never compromise on your faith and be strong.'

She also thanked nongovernmental organizations and churches for taking care of her family while she was in prison. When Bibis children visited her in jail, she said they told her that the people are praying for me.

Their prayers were answered, Bibi declared, because she was released from prison in a development she described as a miracle.

She stressed that her fate would not have been possible without Gods intervention. Channeling her fathers advice, the persecuted Pakistani prisoner-turned-activist concluded her remarks by urging Christian children, youth and the families in Pakistan to grow in their faith and stay strong in their faith.

In his remarks, Sookdeho elaborated on the extent of blasphemy laws in Pakistan.

In Pakistan today, there are at least five Christians on death row for blasphemy," he explained. "There are 20 Christians in prison on blasphemy charges. He further reported that Since 1990, at least 15 Christians have been murdered because of blasphemy allegations, often before trial has begun.

Sookdeho stressed that the allegations of blasphemy and the harsh treatment and discrimination that Christians in Pakistan experience does not come from the government, perse, but rather from the institutions of society.

He also praised the current government of Pakistan for working to eliminate the discriminatory practices against Christians. But he contended that as long as the religious establishment remains resistant to change, Christians will continue to find themselves disadvantaged and at the bottom of the countrys rigid social structure.

In her testimony at the summit, Bibi expressed a desire to be a voice for her Christian brothers and sisters.

After reiterating that she wanted to be a voice for Christian people, Christians in prison and in difficulties, the activist called on Christians worldwide to join hands and stand together so we can be a voice for our Christian brothers and sisters who are suffering and help them out of their situations like the Lord has done for me.
Democrat lawmaker denied communion by New Mexico bishop after voting to repeal abortion ban

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A Roman Catholic bishop in New Mexico has denied communion to an elected official due to the pro-choice lawmaker supporting legislation that repealed a law criminalizing abortion in the state.

New Mexico State Sen. Joe Cervantes, a Democrat, took to Twitter last Saturday to explain that he was denied communion on Friday by Bishop Peter Baldacchino of the Diocese of Las Cruces.

I was denied communion last night by the Catholic bishop here in Las Cruces and based on my political office, tweeted Cervantes.

My new parish priest has indicated he will do the same after the last was run off. Please pray for church authorities as Catholicism transitions under Pope Francis.

Christopher Velasquez, director of communications for the diocese, defended the decision to deny Cervantes communion in an interview with Catholic News Agency on Monday.

It did not happen on the spur of the moment, explained Velasquez. In terms of the diocese, we regret the decision of Senator Cervantes to politicize this issue.

Velasquez noted that the denial of communion came in response to Cervantes sponsoring Senate Bill 10, a bill signed into law earlier this year that allows abortion to remain legal if the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade.

[Cervantes] was contacted multiple times prior, letting him know that if he voted for Senate Bill 10, he should not present himself for communion, continued Velasquez.

Velasquez assured that the denial of communion has nothing to do with his office or politics."

"It has to do with Senate Bill 10  with this particular bill, because of what it entails," he said.

There has been mounting debate as of late over whether Catholic politicians who champion pro-choice legislation should be denied communion for going against Church teachings on abortion.

A recent driver of this debate has been the election of President Joe Biden, a practicing Catholic who advances staunchly pro-choice public policy efforts. Those efforts include repealing the Hyde Amendment and codifying Roe v. Wade.

Last month, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to draft a document on the issue of what the Eucharist means for the daily life of a Roman Catholic.

In response to concerns offered by several pro-choice Catholics in Congress, the USCCB assured them that the question of whether or not to deny any individual or groups Holy Communion was not on the ballot.

The document being drafted is not meant to be disciplinary in nature, nor is it targeted at any one individual or class of persons, noted the USCCB in a question-and-answer document.

It will include a section on the Churchs teaching on the responsibility of every Catholic, including bishops, to live in accordance with the truth, goodness and beauty of the Eucharist we celebrate.
Florida man sentenced to 8 months in prison for involvement in Capitol riot: 'Foolish decision'

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A Florida man has been sentenced to eight months in prison and ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution for his involvement in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol, becoming the first felon tied to the protests.

Paul Hodgkins, a 38-year-old from Tampa who previously pled guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding, was handed the sentence on Monday by U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss.

Although Mr. Hodgkins was only one member of a larger mob, he actively and intentionally participated in an event that threatened not only the security of the Capitol but democracy itself, stated Moss, as reported by USA Today.

It is essential to send a message that this type of conduct is utterly unacceptable and that grave damage was done to our country that day.

The prison sentence was shorter than the recommended 18-month sentence requested by Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Sedky.

The judge added that he did not think that Hodgkins is a threat or that he is inherently an evil person, but was someone who made some very bad decisions that day and did some really bad things that day that did some real damage to the country.

Hodgkins was one of several protesters to enter the Senate chamber during the Jan. 6 protests. He carried a Trump 2020 flag and wore a pro-Trump shirt. He also took photos of himself.

He was arrested in February after a witness identified him in one of the photos he sent out to people he knew. He was indicted by a grand jury in March on five counts.

The counts include obstruction of an official proceeding; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct inside a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct within a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building.

In June, Hodgkins signed a Statement of Offense in which he acknowledged that he had unlawfully entered the Senate chamber and obstructed official constitutional proceedings.

According to charging documents, Hodgkins told authorities that while he was walking through the Capitol, he saw other people breaking windows and some engaging in a knife fight. He assured that he did not participate in that conduct.

According to USA Today, Hodgkins asked not to be sentenced to prison, adding that he did not plan to enter the Capitol when he attended Trump's rally earlier in the day. He claims to have gotten swept up in a march along Pennsylvania Avenue. Hodgkins said he even apologized to police officers and offered help to an injured rioter.

I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I am truly remorseful and regretful for my actions in Washington," Hodgkins was quoted as telling the court. This was a foolish decision on my part that I take full responsibility for it."

On Jan. 6, as Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 election, hundreds of Trump supporters left a National Mall rally featuring former President Donald Trump and stormed Capitol Hill.

For hours, large numbers of protesters occupied the U.S. Capitol, resulting in extensive property damage as well as numerous injuries to law enforcement officers and demonstrators alike.

While media reports have indicated that five people died during the riot, the lone person killed by lethal force was an unarmed U.S. Air Force veteran who was shot in the neck by an officer while trying to climb through a smashed door pane into the House chamber.

Three others who died include a woman trampled by the crowd, one person who suffered a heart attack and another individual who had a stroke.

On June 24, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that more than 500 arrests were made of those involved in the Jan. 6 riot.

I could not be more proud of the extraordinary effort by investigators and prosecutors to hold accountable those who engaged in criminal acts that day, stated Garland.

Particular credit goes to those serving as prosecutors and agents in Washington, D.C., as well as those in FBI field offices and U.S. Attorneys Offices across the country, and with the Departments National Security Division.

According to Garland, federal investigators received over 200,000 tips from the American public, which were vital to bringing criminal charges against the protesters.

I assure the American people that the Department of Justice will continue to follow the facts in this case and charge what the evidence supports to hold all January 6th perpetrators accountable," Garland added.
Sen. Blackburn demands Biden respond to authoritarian censorship of speech on social media

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Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaskis revelation that the Biden administration is coordinating with social media platforms to determine which Americans and messages should be deplatformed is deeply concerning.

In a letter to President Joe Biden on Friday, Blackburn said the White Houses

oversight of social media posts it considers problematic or disinformation is alarming because having the government control the narrative on platforms such as Facebook is tantamount to censorship and violates citizens' First Amendment rights.

These revelations are deeply concerning," Blackburn wrote in the letter to Biden. "The blatant actions by your administration to work with big tech companies to censor Americans free speech are shocking  and arguably a violation of the First Amendment.

"Communist countries such as Cuba are currently taking away their citizens right to use the

internet to communicate; the U.S. government should be standing up to, not looking to mirror,

authoritarian regimes such as these," the senator added.

Blackburn also asked about the criteria used to flag and remove posts or ban users and the legal basis the Biden administration is using to order social media platforms to follow the administrations guidance. She also asked if the administration has staff whose job it is to search social media to report people and messages they disagree with and get them kicked off the platforms they use.

She requested to be briefed on this by Aug. 2.

At White House Press Briefings on Thursday and Friday, Psaki said the federal government was coordinating with social media companies to make sure they are aware of the latest narratives.

"So we're regularly making sure social media platforms are aware of the latest narratives, dangerous to public health that we and many other Americans are seeing across all of social and traditional media," Psaki said Friday. "And we work to engage with them to better understand the enforcement of social media platform policies.

In response, Blackburn said in a tweet on Monday that "Jen Psaki told the truth for once: Biden and Big Tech are censoring us."

Despite the administrations coordination with social media giants, Biden accused Facebook of killing people by allowing what he deemed as vaccine misinformation.

"Theyre killing people," Biden responded to a reporter's question on Friday.

"The only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and theyre killing people," he reiterated.

President Joe Biden said social media platforms are killing people after the White House criticized Facebook for allowing misinformation about coronavirus vaccines to be posted on its platform https://t.co/MHrtnUNjzrpic.twitter.com/ZSLfRCyGTZ  Reuters (@Reuters) July 16, 2021

Guy Rosen, Facebook's vice president of integrity, responded to Biden's accusation in a post on Saturday, titled Moving Past the Finger Pointing, and defended the various ways Facebook has responded to the pandemic and in vaccination efforts.

At a time when COVID-19 cases are rising in America, the Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies, he wrote.

While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic, he continued. And facts  not allegations  should help inform that effort. The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased. These and other facts tell a very different story to the one promoted by the administration in recent days.

He shared how data show 85% of Facebook users in the U.S. have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which is above Bidens goal of 70% of Americans vaccinated by July 4 that the administration did not achieve.

Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed, Rosen wrote.

On Monday, Biden clarified his comments that were perceived as an attack on social media, saying that Facebook is not, in fact, killing people.

Facebook isnt killing people," Biden said, stressing that his comment wasn't a condemnation of social media platforms, but the people he accuses of disseminating disinformation.

Biden added that he hopes Facebook will do more to fight the outrageous misinformation about coronavirus vaccines being spread on its platform instead of taking it personally that somehow Im saying Facebook is killing people.

"These 12 people are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it, he continued. Its killing people. Its bad information. My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally ... that they would do something.

When he was asked if Facebook has done enough to combat misinformation, he said, To be completely honest with you, I dont know that they did anything today, up to over the weekend, I dont think they had. But I dont know."

Some have accused the Biden administration of using totalitarian measures in using social media to promote its message, as Big Tech censorship has led to various voices being banned from platforms in recent years.

Biden is using Big Tech as an arm for his agenda, Blackburn tweeted. This is state-sponsored media.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the censorship from the administration is an effort to control.

The Biden administration just announced they are working with Facebook to censor more Americans, McCarthy tweeted last week. Big Tech and Big Government want the same thing  to control you. As a reminder, America is a land of FREEDOM.
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Recently we have seen migrants from Central America, particularly unaccompanied children, cross the U.S. border in record numbers. Experts say recent hurricanes and the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19 are fueling this latest surge.

Josue Sosa, who works in a semi-rural community of Honduras, confirms this. Over the past year he has watched as COVID-19 swept through his town, bringing lockdowns that closed borders and halted travel. He saw produce like tomatoes rotting on the vine, locally owned small businesses close, and factory jobs disappear. Most still have not returned.

Then came the hurricanes  one after another, washing away bridges, flooding homes, and blowing off roofs. With each new hardship, conversations around town began to shift as well.

Talk of migration has increased, he says. Now its 80 to 90 percent of the topic of conversation. Sometimes it seems like the only thing I hear people talk about is leaving  not only migrating out of Honduras, but also moving within the country.

World Food Programme (WFP) analysis has found that the number of people facing hunger in Honduras and Guatemala has quadrupled in the past two years. And as hunger has increased in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua, more and more families are thinking about migrating. Around 15 percent of people surveyed in Central America by WFP say they had plans to migrate in 2021  that is 6 million people. There is the potential for a massive wave of migration as families seek out what any parent would  food and hope. No parent wants to see their child go hungry.

But perhaps even more concerning are the countries where we are not yet hearing about COVIDs secondary impacts on food and hunger. WFP estimates that worldwide, 270 million people are now at risk of starvation due to a deadly mix of conflict, climate shocks and COVID. The threat of famine is looming  in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, South Sudan, Yemen and elsewhere. In many more countries, rates of food insecurity are sky-rocketing.

Josue was one of many in Central America thinking about migration in his 20s, until interventions came in the form of support, connection with his local church, help with his education, and practical advice for how to thrive at home. He has been able to build a small business growing and selling green peppers and plantains. And now he works with World Vision, providing the same types of assistance that offered him a better future and kept him home with his family. It is a ripple effect that we have seen providing hope for thousands of families to build a future in their own country. Since the pandemic hit, World Vision has been providing food rations for families and loans for store owners to be able to re-open.

We know from our organizations extensive experience that if families have food security, safety and some degree of hope, they do not want to leave home. We need to ensure there is funding to meet the needs of communities before people begin leaving home, before the declarations of famine, and before children begin paying the lifelong price of a lack of food  such as stunting or harm to their cognitive development. Where funding exists, a safety net of programs can be put in place which give people hope at home.

In fact, the return on investment is startling. We can feed a child for a dollar a week, versus spending $3,500-4,000 a week caring for them once they arrive in the US. So lets feed people at home and help them to thrive in their own communities  it is not only the right thing to do, it is the smart thing to do.

For Josue, there is immense satisfaction in that. He tells his story to anyone who will listen. Theres nothing better than to study or to build something of your own, he says proudly.
Postcard from an old Russian colonial outpost

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Alaska offers more than the stereotypical experiences associated with the states Last Frontier moniker.

This includes one of the most fascinating chapters in American history: the period when the 49th state was part of Russian America. Not only is this history fascinating, but imperial Russias ambitions in the New World is one of the least-known chapters in the collective history of the United States.

Sure, most of us probably know about the 13 Colonies, though even this is increasingly whitewashed and outright canceled by the wokists. Some may even know about New France or the Spanish (and later Mexican) settlements across the Southwest. Far fewer know the czars had outposts in present-day Alaska, California and even Hawaii.

I learned just about everything I was never taught in school during a recent visit to Sitka, which is located along the Inside Passage in southeastern Alaska.

Under the Russians between 1799 and 1867, this town of 8,881 at the last census was called New Archangel and served as the colonial capital until the United States purchased Alaska in 1867. Originally ridiculed as Sewards Folly  William Seward, secretary of state under Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, oversaw the acquisition  it ended up being one of the all-time greatest speculative real estate transactions. The cost? $7.2 million or about 2 cents per acre.

I set out on my own after getting a lay of the land from local guide Bob Purvis during a two-hour walking tour. My first stop was the Sitka History Museum within Harrigan Centennial Hall, a community center-cum-convention space overlooking the harbor.

The museums comprehensive collection punches well above its weight by covering everything from indigenous Tlingit Indians and Russian America through Alaskan statehood in 1959. Among the numerous objects displayed are period artifacts, including those associated with the Russian Orthodox church.

While Russia primarily treated Alaska as a commercial enterprise, the state church had a greater impact by propagating the faith once delivered to the Tlingits.

The best example of the churchs lasting witness is the Cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel (Orthodox Church in America), which towers over the quaint downtown. What stands today is an exact re-creation of the 1800s edifice that was destroyed by fire in 1966. The typically Orthodox ornate interior does, however, contain some of the original fabric, including the iconostasis screen separating the nave from the altar in the sanctuary and the bishops throne. These were saved from destruction through heroic actions of the faithful.

Directly across the street is the Sitka Lutheran Church (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) with its hideous architecture reminiscent of a concrete parking garage. Founded in 1840 by Russias Swedo-Finnish governor for the Finnish and Swedish laborers employed by the Russian-American Company, this is Alaskas oldest Protestant church. Also destroyed by the 1966 fire, the modern churchs narthex contains several exhibits and artifacts. Sunday services also utilize the original organ and pulpit.

A short walk away on a small knoll is a reconstructed blockhouse typical of the Russian fortifications that once encircled Sitka. In the adjoining lot at what was the entrance to a chapel for the Tlingits is the grave of Jacob Netsvetov, the first indigenous Alaskan ordained to the Orthodox priesthood and, since 1994, a canonized saint in the Orthodox Church in America. Across the street at the Lutheran cemetery is the final resting place of a princess, the first wife of Prince Maksoutoff (or Maksutov), the czars last governor.

On the other side of town is the Russian Bishops House. Part of the Sitka National Historical Park, this is a rare example of a surviving Russian colonial building. Used by the Russian Orthodox Church until 1969, the former episcopal palace has been carefully restored by the National Park Service to how it would have looked around 1853.

Back downtown is Castle Hill. What looks like an ordinary park, albeit one with commanding views of the Sitka Channel, is the Baranof Castle State Historic Site. It was here where the American flag was first raised on Oct. 18, 1867. The transfer ceremony, which included a few hundred soldiers from the armies of both countries, occurred on a parade ground in front of Maksoutoffs official residence.

If you go

I highly recommend a private tour from Jeff Budd. He takes visitors to Russias 1799 settlement on the outskirts of Sitka at Starrigavan Bay. Also worth visiting is the Sheldon Jackson Museum, originally part of a Presbyterian residential school.

Stay at the Sitka Hotel on Lincoln Street (main street in all but name). Everything to do and see is within walking distance. Importantly, rooms are clean and well-appointed.

Eat at Ludvigs Bistro, Beak or Mangiare, the hotel restaurant.

Sitkas airport is primarily served by Alaska Airlines. Additional seasonal service to and from Seattle is provided by Delta Air Lines.

Follow @dennislennox on Instagram and Twitter.
84-y-o statue destroyed outside NYC Catholic church: 'Becoming more common'

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For close to nine decades, a statue stood tall in front of Our Lady of Mercy parish in Forest Hills, New York. But this past weekend, police released shocking surveillance footage of a woman deliberately toppling, smashing and destroying the 84-year-old religious statue and another statue outside the Queens church.

Local news reports indicate that the video shows the woman rocking the statue in front of the parish facility until it fell over about 3:30 a.m. Saturday.

The suspect then dragged the statue out into the driveway and continued to smash it with a hammer. The woman also toppled another statue during the attack on Kessel Street near 70th Avenue, police said.

The two statues depict the Blessed Mother and St. Therese the Little Flower.

Its obviously premeditated, she came on Wednesday and couldnt do it and then came back on Friday with a hammer. Its just sad, Diocese of Brooklyn spokesperson John Quaglione told The New York Daily News. The element of the church being a safe place to worship, when something like this happens you have to think this will send shockwaves to people, Am I safe going to church?

In a post on Facebook, the diocese assured that its faithful "continue to pray that in the face of attacks on our churches, hearts will convert to faith in Jesus Christ."

According to Pew Research findings: "In nearly three out of every four countries of the world, religious groups experience harassment by individuals or groups in society. The harassment and intimidation take many forms, including physical or verbal assaults; desecration of holy sites; and discrimination against religious groups in employment, education and housing."

Pew Research further confirms in a 2020 poll that harassment of religious groups continues to be reported in more than 90% of countries.

For Our Lady of Mercy Parish, this is the second time that its two statues have been targeted. According to the Catholic newspaper The Tablet, the diocese reported that the statues were toppled over but not damaged last Wednesday. The diocese believes the same person is responsible for both incidents.

The suspect is described as a female in her mid-20s, wearing all black clothing, medium complexion and medium build.

"It is heartbreaking, but sadly it is becoming more and more common these days, the church's pastor, Father Frank Schwarz, said in a statement. I pray that this recent rash of attacks against Catholic churches and all houses of worship will end, and religious tolerance may become more a part of our society.

Replacing the statue could reportedly cost as much as $12,000. Schwarz encouraged the shaken-up parishioners during mass on Sunday to forgive and pray.

We go on, we worship, we love God. And I ask you to simply pray for the person who did this, said Schwarz, according to The Daily News. Remember, Jesus himself tells us to forgive, to pray for those who persecute us and to love those who hate us. And thats the way we fight back, not vengeance but love.

However, one parishioner told The Daily News that she can not yet forgive the person who vandalized the statue.

I pray that they get caught but I cant pray for them right now, said Jennifer Bondanza, 51. Its just too sad. I have pictures of my kids in front of these statutes. I was brought up here. This is my home.

Another parishioner wondered why the vandal chose to destroy the churchs historic monument.

It could be people who have lost their jobs or are struggling coming out of the pandemic and blame God, said Quaglione. The church is a place where you can get help. Knock on the door. Let us help you get through your anger or your doubts.

According to The Daily News report, the police Hate Crimes Task Force was notified and is investigating. Cops are asking for the publics help identifying the assailant and tracking her down.

The vandalism at Our Lady of Mercy follows other acts of vandalism committed against New York City Catholic churches. In May, hundreds attended a prayer gathering after St. Athanasius Church in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn was vandalized. An unidentified person pushed over a statue of Jesus crucifixion and torched an American flag hanging outside the church. The parish priest called it an "act of hatred."

Across the U.S., an increase in attacks against Catholic churches has garnered concern from many, including lawmakers. After more than a dozen attacks against Catholic churches last year, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., urged the U.S. Justice Department to take action.

"These disturbing attacks range from arson to the beheading of a statue of the Virgin Mary," Fleischmann's letter reads.

"I find these attacks to be a disturbing trend, happening in multiple areas across the nation, including within my own congressional district. In times of uncertainty, we naturally turn to religion for comfort and peace, something many Americans are seeking as we combat COVID-19, but these attacks add another level of distress for many across our nation."
California Pastor Che Ahn warns church closures rooted in Marxist ideology

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A California pastor who has challenged his state government over worship restrictions and church closures in response to COVID-19 believes such restrictions are rooted in Marxist ideology.

In an interview with The Epoch Times published Saturday, Pastor Che Ahn of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, California, asserted that When the pandemic happened, I think a lot of what I would call left-wing governors, you can call Democrat or liberals, but I feel theyre more left-wing, I think they seized the opportunity to really control society and one of the areas that I think they really like to control is the church because historically, the church has been the most outspoken against government control in this country.

While many proponents of limiting the number of people who can attend in-person church services point to public health concerns as the justification for their actions, Ahn attributes the restrictions to a more sinister motive: Marxism is a religion. Humanism is a religion. It is putting the human at the top instead of God, and so, [socialism] will do everything possible to get people to reject worshiping the true God.

Thats why were having such a battle in our nation against the values of our Founding Fathers who are mostly Christians and you know they had biblical values, Judeo-Christian values. So thats why I feel there is an assault going on, he asserted.

Over the past year, Ahn has found himself among several pastors clashing with the government over coronavirus worship restrictions. California implemented particularly strict restrictions on worship services during the coronavirus pandemic. The state faced criticism for not imposing similar restrictions on secular businesses, which led to some pastors to designate their churches as strip clubs so they could remain open during the pandemic.

In addition to limiting the number of people who could gather for in-person worship services, the state prevented people from conducting at-home Bible studies, which prompted Ahn to file a lawsuit against the state. Pastor Ahn took his challenge against the ban on all forms of in-person worship to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and later to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ordered the district court to rehear the case in light of its ruling in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo that struck down coronavirus worship restrictions in New York state.

In April, more than a year after the coronavirus pandemic first began to spread in the U.S., California lifted its mandatory restrictions on religious services, changing the language on capacity limits regarding worship services from mandatory to highly recommended. In response to this move, Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel, who represented Harvest Rock in its legal proceedings, expressed relief that Californias Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom finally dropped his draconian restrictions on churches.

In May, the state of California was ordered to pay Harvest Rock Church $1.35 million in attorneys' fees and legal costs that the church incurred as a result of its litigation against the state. Last month, a federal judge ordered the state to pay $1.6 million in attorneys fees to South Bay United Pentecostal Church and an additional $550,000 to a Catholic priest who also sued the state over its worship restrictions.

At the same time, the same federal judge issued an injunction preventing Newsom and other state officials from issuing or enforcing regulations against churches and places of worship in response to the pandemic. Although Ahn was threatened with fines and jail time for holding in-person worship services in violation of public health orders, he maintained that he made the right decision by defying the states restrictions in his interview with The Epoch Times.

Thank God that we chose to be open, defying [Newsoms] orders because we feel strongly that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the Land, and no ones above the Constitution, even our president or governor, and the Constitution protects our right, not only for free speech but for us to assemble, to worship, and they will not interfere with a free exercise thereof,  he said.

Ahn is not the only person warning about the advance of Marxism in the U.S. In a recent interview with The Christian Post, Kevin McGary, the co-founder of Every Black Life Matters, said Marxism is really what were fighting on all fronts at the moment, specifically noting its prominence in American education.

Even as churches in California no longer face the strict worship restrictions they were subject to at the beginning of the pandemic, Newsom could still face political consequences for the restrictions he imposed during the height of the pandemic. His private dinner at an upscale French restaurant, which took place as coronavirus restrictions prevented Californians from eating out, resulted in allegations of hypocrisy and accelerated the effort to recall him.

The recall campaign gathered enough signatures to force a recall election, which is scheduled to take place Sept. 14. California voters will be asked if they want to remove Newsom from office. If a majority vote to oust him, the votes for replacement candidates will be tallied. In such a scenario, the replacement candidate that receives the most votes would become governor.

The most recent poll of the recall election, conducted by Democratic pollster Change Research in June, found that 54% of California voters oppose the recall election compared to 40% who support it. However, a June poll from Republican pollster Moore Information Group found a plurality of likely voters (49%) support the recall effort and 46% oppose it. The most recent nonpartisan poll, conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California in May, found that 57% of Californians oppose the recall while 40% would vote in favor of it.
Gordon-Conwell Seminary cuts only black faculty member from Hamilton campus, sparks uproar

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As recently as April, the Rev. Emmett Price III, one of Americas leading experts on the black Christian experience, featured prominently as the only black face on the faculty page of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminarys Hamilton campus in Massachusetts.

Prices photos are now gone from the faculty page, including a promotional image that showed him smiling with his colleagues. The happy photo was replaced with a picture of the facade of a building.

In an open letter to the seminarys leadership on July 8, a group of more than 200 academics, black leaders, local pastors, alumni and staff expressed their disapproval with Price's contract not being renewed by the seminary.

Price founded the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience at the school in 2016, which supporters say has helped recruit black and minority students.

We write with our concerns about Gordon Conwells actions against a dear colleague and critical institution. We have heard the news of the firing of the Rev. Dr. Emmett Price III from full professorship and the restructuring of the Institute for the Study of the Black Christian Experience," the letter states.

"We receive this news with confusion, anger, and a sense of betrayal."

Among signatories is Bishop Talbert Swan, a Church of God in Christ leader, the president of the Greater Springfield NAACP and a 2008 Gordon Conwell alumnus.

Other signatories include adjunct professor Jeff Bass, the executive director of Boston's Emmanuel Gospel Center; Brandon Crowley, the senior pastor of the Historic Myrtle Baptist Church in West Newton; Rev. Marcus Doe, a former Gordon-Conwell student government president and pastor of Redemption Church in Tucson, Arizona; and Laura Everett, executive director of the Massachusetts Council of Churches.

We write and sign this letter as Church leaders and academics. Some of us write as Black leaders who have worked within predominantly white institutions that have again and again struggled to truly partner and share power with Black leadership," the letter states.

"We write as Church leaders of all backgrounds advocating for justice in public institutions, yet heartsick that we cannot find such justice in the Church. We write as local church pastors who must counsel our people about where they can reliably go to seminary, where their experience as Black Christians will be taken as authentic and legitimate experiences of the embodied life of faith. How can we do this when Gordon Conwells actions communicate a devaluing of Black life and leadership?

Gordon-Conwell did not immediately respond to requests from The Christian Post for comment Monday. In a letter to the campus community, Gordon-Conwell President Scott W. Sunquist said Price was let go due to budget cuts. He assured the decision was very painful  given the many ways Dr. Price has blessed and impacted us.

We pray Gods blessings on Dr. Price in his next area of ministry and teaching, Sunquist wrote in the letter, according to The Boston Globe.

He further explained that the seminary eliminated six faculty positions and reduced its budget by some $2.5 million over the last two years.

Bishop Swan argues, however, that the elimination of Price as the only black member of the Hamilton campus faculty was telling.

How people spend their money gives you a glimpse into what their priorities are, Swan told The Boston Globe. And if youve got a budget shortage, and one of the first things you do is say, Lets get rid of the Black guy, that tells us a lot.

In their open letter on July 8, the pastors and the academics acknowledged that while it may be too late for the seminary to reverse its decision, We invite you to begin the work of repairing lost trust and making restitution for harm."

"For this to happen, Gordon Conwell will need to formally interrogate and explicitly acknowledge systemic failures and structural racism at the school," the letter declares.

Swan argued that losing Price will negatively affect the recruitment of black students, who made up 7% of the student body on the Hamilton campus in fall 2020.

I think the seminary needs someone like Dr. Price to be there if they are committed to some level of diversity and continuing to recruit Black students to attend, Swan said.

While Price was the only black ful-time faculty member at Gordon-Conwell's Hamilton campus, the institution lists African Americans in full faculty positions at its campus in Boston. The school does not list African American faculty at its campus in Jacksonville, Florida, and lists two black adjunct faculty members at its campus in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Additionally, Asian and Latino full-time faculty members are listed online for the Hamilton campus.
PRRI survey, NY Times columnists view of religious right reveals astounding bias: Richard Land

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A recent New York Times op-ed fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents how conservative-leaning Christians think about the state of affairs in U.S. politics, according to Richard Land, outgoing president of Southern Evangelical Seminary.

In a July 9 op-ed by The New York Times' Michelle Goldberg, titled The Christian Right Is in Decline, and Its Taking America With It, the columnist argued that the statistics show religious conservatives are in decline and, in response, they're willing to defile the nation if they cant take it over.

The high point of the religious rights influence, she mused, might prove to be the presidency of George W. Bush, particularly in 2004 when the culture generally agreed with them on the hot-button social issue of the day: same-sex marriage.

Goldberg further elaborated that the percentage of white evangelicals has dropped, citing research from the Public Religion Research Institute that showed white mainline Protestants outnumbered white evangelicals in 2020.

Her assertion that conservative Christians are animated by a triumphalist ethos and want to take over American culture is completely wrongheaded, said Land, who also serves as the executive editor of The Christian Post, in an interview on Monday.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Land said of Goldbergs contention, noting that among spiritual and religious leaders, the thinking among Christian conservatives who started becoming more visibly involved in politics several decades ago was far from triumphalist. Rather, their posture was wholly defensive.

We didnt begin this culture war. Politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from religion, or alternatively, your worldview. Progressives are bringing their worldview, which is their religion, into culture and into politics. Evangelicals are doing the same thing, he said.

Virtually every religious leader that I knew, and know, that was involved understood that our efforts were attempts to fight a strategic retreat, to minimize the damage to our culture until and when a great spiritual revival awakening came to the country. And that without it, America was going to be a very different place.

Goldbergs op-ed is the perfect example of a wish being the father of the thought, he asserted.

Land considers the recent PRRI study an outlier, adding that the active practice of Christian faith declining in the U.S. is not news to evangelicals. While no religious group is growing as fast as the population, the only two that have shown actual growth over the past decade are white evangelicals and the historic black church, he said.

Any research or assertion that mainline Protestantism, which has virtually disappeared before our eyes in my lifetime, has overtaken evangelicals in terms of a percentage of the population is research that has moved to an alternative universe. It has no relation to actual facts on the ground, Land said.

He added that by any standard of measure, he would be the epitome of the religious right, and he had to research what QAnon was when he first heard about it in the news.

Goldbergs opinion piece also asserted that borne out of the belief that evangelicals no longer own mainstream culture and its moral values and they are now just another subculture, much of the current cultural conflict that has arisen helps explain not just the rise of Donald Trump, but also the growth of QAnon and even the escalating conflagration over critical race theory.

This, again, fundamentally misunderstands the facts on the ground, Land said. The idea that QAnon is deeply embedded in the religious right reveals an astounding bias, he said.

I have a very low expectation of the editorial page of the New York Times, but Ms. Goldbergs op-ed reached new lows of propaganda masquerading as opinion.

The outgoing seminary president emphasized that the salvation of the U.S. will not come from the nations capital city.

If America is going to be revived, its going to be one person, one family, one church at a time. Government is not a locomotive. Its a caboose. When the people change, the government will change, not Washington to the people. The salt of the law can change actions, behaviors and habits. Its only the light of the Gospel that can change attitudes, beliefs and hearts, he added.
Biden official touts administration's religious freedom record at DC summit

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A Biden White House official addressed this week's International Religious Freedom Summit and touted the administration's record on advancing religious freedom, praising the bipartisan support for promoting the fundamental human right.

Melissa Rogers, the director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, spoke before an audience of religious freedom advocates Wednesday, making her one of several Biden administration officials to speak at the event described as the first civil society-led religious freedom ministerial. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and USAID administrator Samantha Power addressed the IRF Summit via video messages.

In her speech, Rogers reiterated President Joe Bidens belief that ensuring freedom of religion is as important now as it has ever been. She said that President Biden, a person of deep faith, certainly understands the importance of religious belief and practices in the lives of so many.

Rogers shared a quote from the president asserting that, the work of protecting religious freedom for people of all faiths and none is never finished. We must be vigilant against the rising tide of targeted violence and hate at home and abroad and work to ensure that no one feels afraid to attend a religious service, school, community center or walk down the street wearing the symbols of their faith.

Rogers highlighted a few steps the Biden-Harris administration is taking to protect and advance religious freedom for all. She specifically praised the administration for upholding the United States moral obligation to protect refugees, noting that as the number of refugees and other displaced persons has reached an alarming [rate] and historic high of more than 82 million people worldwide, the president has raised our annual refugee admissions cap to 62,500 for this fiscal year.

Additionally, she announced his plans to double the refugee ceiling to 125,000 next year.

The U.S. is committed to upholding its long tradition as a leader in refugee resettlement that provides a beacon of hope for persecuted people around the globe, Rogers added. She also remarked that on his first day in office, President Biden revoked orders and proclamations prohibiting certain individuals from entering the United States first from primarily Muslim countries and later from marginally African countries.

Rogers slammed the actions taken by the Trump administration to restrict immigration from terror-prone countries as a stain on our national conscience and inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all. She echoed Bidens analysis characterizing the discriminatory bans on entry into the United States as an example of the country turning its back on its values.

Rogers also spotlighted Blinkens affirmation that the Peoples Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. She recalled how In March, Canada, the European Union, the U.K., and the U.S. took coordinated action to impose sanctions on PRC officials for these human rights abuses, she recalled.

At the recent G7 Summit, the worlds leading democracies stood united for religious freedom and against forced labor, including in Xinjiang and committed to ensuring that global supply chains are free from the use of such labor. Our administration has translated these commitments into a series of actions imposing import and export restrictions on PRC companies for their use of forced labor from Xinjiang.

The Biden administrations characterization of Chinas treatment of the Uyghurs as genocide received praise from David Curry, the director of the religious freedom advocacy organization Open Doors USA, who reacted favorably to the courageous move in an interview with The Christian Post. Curry expressed gratitude that the Executive Branch was making the Uyghur genocide a subject of discussion with China, adding, I dont think thats easy and its a good step.

Curry told CP that the Trump administration deserved an A+ on religious liberty and how they dealt with that, and maintained that while Blinken is setting a good tone and saying the right things, the Biden administration has a lot of work to do  to catch up to them on this subject. He stressed that overall, he was not discouraged about the Biden administrations approach thus far.

In her address at the IRF Summit, Rogers also profiled the U.S. governments strong stance in support of democracy and human rights in Burma.

According to Rogers, As the Burmese military accelerated violence against civilians in the wake of the February coup, the administration provided emergency support for various members of ethnic and religious minority groups at a time when many found themselves facing military prosecutors for actions as simple as praying for peace.

Rogers also looked forward to a Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in her speech, promoting what we hope will be the first post-pandemic in-person ministerial to be hosted by the United Kingdom in London next summer.

She vowed that in the coming weeks, the president would nominate an ambassador-at-large for International Religious Freedom, which has remained vacant since Sam Brownback, who co-chaired the IRF Summit, stepped down from that position after Biden took office.

While Rogers spent most of her speech touting the Biden administrations actions on the issue of religious freedom, she also spoke of the role of civil society in advancing international religious freedom and human rights more broadly, characterizing the work as vital in the effort to uphold the values spelled out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She concluded her speech by rejoicing that there is so much common ground on international religious freedom issues among the two political parties.

The common ground on international religious freedom issues was on full display this week in the U.S. Senate as the chamber unanimously passed a bill banning the sale of all products made using forced Uyghur labor in the United States. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act still awaits a vote in the House of Representatives, which must approve the bill before it can head to the presidents desk for a signature.
Election integrity or voter suppression? 5 things to know about Texas voting bill

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Texas has garnered national attention over the debate on legislation that would modify its state election standards in various ways.

Gov. Greg Abbott called the Texas Legislature to a special session for the summer to pass election reform legislation, specifically House Bill 3 and Senate Bill 1.

Democrat state legislators made headlines when they decided to flee the state for Washington, D.C., rather than allow for a quorum at the state House of Representatives.

Texas Democratic Party Chair Gilberto Hinojosa issued a statement on Monday defending the legislators' actions, claiming they were protecting voting rights against the attacks of the Republican governor.

Today, by breaking quorum to block Abbotts attacks on voters, Texas Democrats are making history. After Abbott dragged lawmakers back to the Capitol for his suppression session, Democrats are fighting back with everything weve got, stated Hinojosa.

We will not stand by and watch Republicans slash our right to vote, silence the voices of Texans of color, and destroy our democracy  all to preserve their own power. Our lawmakers have refused to be complicit in Republicans destructive attacks.

Nevertheless, the Republican-controlled state Senate passed its version of the legislation, known as Senate Bill 1, on Tuesday in a vote of 18-4, sending the bill to the state House of Representatives.

I am very proud that the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 1 today. SB 1 is about ensuring that every Texan trusts the outcome of every election in Texas. It increases transparency and ensures the voting rules are the same in every county across the state, stated Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, as quoted by KHOU-11.

Both public and private polling indicates that the majority of Texans support the provisions included in SB 1, and yet, House Democrats were so intent on using this bill for political gain that they left the state to avoid voting on it. They are in Washington, D.C., repeating misinformation and lies about SB 1. Instead of doing their jobs, they are pushing Congress to pass a federal election bill Texans dont want.

Here are five important things to know about the legislation being debated in Texas aimed at reforming state election laws. They include how the latest bills contrast with an earlier proposed measure, how drive-thru voting is impacted, and a ban on 24-hour voting that took place for the first time ever in Harris County during the 2020 presidential election.
Pastor's wife released from jail after shooting husband in fatal accident

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A California pastor's wife has been released from jail with no charges filed after fatally shooting her husband as he entered their home.

The Rev. Noah Shepherd, a 29-year-old pastor of the San Diego Reformed Presbyterian Church, was shot dead on Monday evening at his home in Lemon Grove, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

His wife, 26-year-old Gabriella Rose Shepherd, called 911 and said she had accidentally shot her husband as he entered their home through the back door.

We are not filing charges at this time, stated District Attorneys Office spokesperson Tanya Sierra, as reported by the Union-Tribune. The investigation is ongoing and we will review the case as we get more information.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America Pacific Coast Presbytery posted a statement on Facebook Friday, explaining their thankfulness over the release.

Our primary role here as Presbytery representatives is to care for the congregation in San Diego, of which Gabby is a member. At this time we have no evidence to contradict her account of the tragic events on Monday evening, stated the Presbytery.

The state is continuing their investigation, but at this time they have said there is not sufficient evidence to contradict her account and hold her. For now she is able to grieve with her family and her church. For this we rejoice.

The Presbytery and the congregation had released a joint statement earlier this week on Facebook, expressing their heartbreaking sorrow over the passing of our brother and fellow-laborer, Rev. Noah Shepherd.

We will remember Rev. Shepherd for the hope of the gospel message he not only preached, but believed. We mourn, not as those without hope, but as those eagerly awaiting eternal life, stated the Presbytery and the church on July 13.

This was Noahs hope, and we rejoice that he is with his crucified and risen Savior, Jesus Christ, whom he loved and proclaimed.

Erik O'Dell, a friend of the Shepherd family who had known Noah since their seminary years together, told NBC San Diego that he was numb by the news.

When I heard the details of what happened I was numb. There are no words, ODell told the local news station. There was just no indication that anything was other than good. They just welcomed their second boy not too long ago.
University of Iowa wrongly discriminated against Christian student group: appeals court

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An appeals court has ruled that the University of Iowa wrongly discriminated against a Christian student group that wanted to choose its leaders and members on the basis of religious belief and is not protected by qualified immunity.

InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and Intervarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship filed suit against the University of Iowa, accusing the school of discriminating against them when they deregistered them as a student group.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit issued a unanimous ruling on Friday in favor of InterVarsity, arguing that the university engaged in viewpoint discrimination against the Christian group.

Circuit Judge Jonathan A. Kobes authored the panel opinion, concluding that he was hard-pressed to find a clearer example of viewpoint discrimination.

Of course, the University has a compelling interest in preventing discrimination. But it served that compelling interest by picking and choosing what kind of discrimination was okay, wrote Kobes.

Basically, some [registered student organizations] at the University of Iowa may discriminate in selecting their leaders and members, but others, mostly religious, may not. If the University honestly wanted a campus free of discrimination, it could have adopted an all-comers policy 

The opinion referenced an earlier decision on behalf of Business Leaders in Christ, which turned away a student because the student, who was openly homosexual, did not want to adhere to the groups statement of faith.

Take LoveWorks, for example. It was formed by the student who was denied a leadership role in BLinC. LoveWorks requires its members and leaders to sign a gay-affirming statement of Christian faith, noted Kobes.

Despite that requirementwhich violates the Human Rights Policy just as much as InterVarsitysthe University did nothing.

Daniel Blomberg, senior counsel for the Becket law firm that helped to represent InterVarsity during the litigation, released a statement on Friday celebrating the appeals court panel ruling.

Schools are supposed to be a place of free inquiry and open thought, but the school officials here punished opinions they didnt like and promoted ones they did  all while using taxpayer dollars to do it, stated Blomberg.

The good news is that theyve been held accountable, and school officials nationwide are on notice. We are optimistic that in the future, colleges will pursue policies of accommodation, not discrimination, when it comes to religious exercise on campus.

In March, another three-judge panel from the Eighth Circuit ruled in favor of BLinC in their lawsuit against the university, concluding that the defendants did not have qualified immunity on all claims.

This inquiry takes into account the undisputed facts of the present case: the Universitys creation of a limited public forum for student speech and subsequent viewpoint discrimination against BLinC, a student organization, within that forum, read the March opinion, in part.

As a result, we hold that the district court erroneously granted the individual defendants motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity on BLinCs free-speech and expressive-association claims.
First Amendment is on our side: Va. teacher punished for criticizing trans pronoun policy speaks out

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A school teacher in Virginia fighting punishment from a school district for criticizing a proposed policy that would force teachers to use trans-identified students' preferred pronouns has stated that the First Amendment is on our side.

Bryon Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher at Leesburg Elementary School, was suspended by Loudon County Public Schools for speaking against the proposed policy during a school board meeting in May.

Cross, who a judge ordered to be reinstated days before the end of the school year through a temporary injunction, is in an ongoing legal battle with the school district and will return to court for a final ruling in September.

In a recent interview with Fox News, Cross explained that it felt great to be reinstated and that he got a warm welcome from students, parents and faculty at his school.

When asked if he is worried about losing his job or being suspended again, Cross responded that he is not worried and that the First Amendment is on our side.

We care about our students, and we just hope that everybodys viewpoint is looked into so that we all can be an inclusive environment and just educate children the correct way, he said.

I believe that there are other teachers. I know for a fact that there are teachers that feel the same way that I do, and this is convicting them, too.

On May 25, the Loudon County School Board held a meeting to debate a proposed policy known as Policy 8040 that would require staff and students to use the chosen pronouns of trans-identified students or those that identify as gender-expansive.

LCPS staff shall allow gender-expansive or transgender students to use their chosen name and gender pronouns that reflect their gender identity without any substantiating evidence, regardless of the name and gender recorded in the students permanent educational record, reads a draft of the policy from May.

Inadvertent slips in the use of names or pronouns may occur; however, staff or students who intentionally and persistently refuse to respect a students gender identity by using the wrong name and gender pronoun are in violation of this policy.

During the meeting, Cross argued that as a Christian, he is unable to affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa.

My name is Tanner Cross, and I am speaking out of love for those who suffer with gender dysphoria, stated Cross at the time. I love all of my students, but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences.

Two days after the board meeting, Cross was put on administrative leave with pay and prohibited from going onto any school properties unless given expressed permission to do so.

In response, Cross filed a complaint against LCPS and was represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal nonprofit that handles religious liberty cases.

In June, Judge James E. Plowman of the 20th Judicial Circuit of Virginia gave Cross a temporary injunction against the school board's decision, which will expire in December.

Plowman wrote that putting Cross on leave was extreme and an unconstitutional action since the teachers words, even if controversial, were nevertheless permissible.

The Court agrees with Plaintiffs analysis and concludes that Defendants actions to suspend the Plaintiff, as well as the additional restrictions placed upon him, adversely affected his constitutionally protected speech, wrote the judge last month.

Here, it was clear that the Plaintiff was speaking as a citizen, not in his official capacity. His speech was not conducted at his usual place of employment, occurred during non-working hours and at a forum where public comment was invited.

In response to the injunction, LCPS appealed the judges decision, claiming that Cross comments were harmful.

LCPS respectfully disagrees with the Circuit Courts decision to issue the injunction, and it is appealing this ruling to the Supreme Court of Virginia, stated LCPS.

Many students and parents at Leesburg Elementary have expressed fear, hurt and disappointment about coming to school. Addressing those concerns is paramount to the school divisions goal to provide a safe, welcoming and affirming learning environment for all students.

The school district went on to state that while it respects the rights of public school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment.

During the Fox News segment, ADF attorney Tyson Langhofer said that "no public school teacher should ever be punished simply for sharing their beliefs in a public forum, where the school board invited comment."

"They retaliated against him simply for sharing his position on these proposed policies," the lawyer said. said. "And that's a violation of both his free speech rights under the Virginia Constitution and his free exercise of religion. I am really puzzled at their decision to appeal this to the Virginia Supreme Court because the district court's decision was very well reasoned, based on longstanding constitutional law that the government cannot punish people simply for expressing their beliefs in a public forum ..."

Langhofer said that "there is no timetable" for the Virginia Supreme Court.

"We will likely hear something from them in the next 30 days," he explained. "We actually have a trial scheduled before the district court for a final decision in early September."
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While many states have enacted pro-life laws in recent years, the abortion industry has been searching for ways to circumvent such laws. The best way to do this, it has determined, is through risky, do-it-yourself chemical abortions, which leave mothers to endure the trauma of abortion alone in their bathrooms, with no support or medical follow-up.

Twenty years ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved mifepristone (Mifeprex; also known as RU-486 or simply the abortion pill) to chemically induce abortions. Since then, the abortion industry has latched on to the abortion pill as a lower-cost alternative to surgical abortionsand one that can be carried out virtually anywhere. As a result, abortion pill usage has surged even as the overall number of abortions in the United States is in decline. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the use of early medical abortions (a euphemistic term for chemical abortions) increased 114 percent from 2006 to 2015. And according to statistics provided by the Guttmacher Institute, 39 percent of abortions in 2017 were chemical, a 25 percent increase since 2014.

Chemical abortion is praised by pro-abortion activists for expanding abortion availability, particularly for women who dont live near an abortion business since they push mothers to self-administer the drugs at home. These activists choose to overlook chemical abortions higher rate of risk compared to surgical abortion and push for the removal of the FDAs safety standards, arguing they are unnecessary and unduly limit abortion access. The abortion industry seems willing to gamble with womens lives and health.

The good news is that many states are not. Since 2011, 74 bills to ban or place regulations on chemical abortion have been introduced in 29 states. Of these bills,21 have been enacted in 14 states. These bills vary in approach. Some seek to ban chemical abortion outright, while others seek to regulate chemical abortions in an effort to mitigate its health-damaging and life-threatening risks to mothers. Bills typically include some combination of the following key provisions:

Require that the pre-abortion exam be performed, and the abortion pillsbe administered, in-person by a licensed physician. (These laws are often referred to as Skype abortion bans, since without them abortionists can abuse telehealth to dispense chemical abortion drugs without ever physically examining the mother.)

Require that physicians meet certain certification and qualification standards, including:

Being certified by an Abortion Inducing Drug Certification Program at the state board of pharmacy.



Being capable of performing an in-person exam to confirm the pregnancy, the absence of an ectopic pregnancy and determine the gestational age and intrauterine location of the unborn child, as well as document said information in the patients medical chart.

Require follow-up appointments (minimum of two).

Require patients to be informed of the final printed label (FPL) of each drug.

Require informed consent for mothers.

Require reporting of Adverse Event Complications and reporting to the state board of pharmacy.

Provide a penalty for noncompliance (criminal, civil, and/or professional).

Create a civil cause of action (i.e., abortion providers who violate the law can be sued).

In 2021 so far, a record-high 22 bills have been introduced and seven enacted in six states. Here is a rundown of the seven bills enacted so far this year:

Alabama HB 377 banned chemical abortions completely and imposed a criminal penalty for noncompliance. Specifically, it prohibits any person or entity from manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, dispensing, selling, or transferring the abortion pill or any substantially similar generic or non-generic abortifacient drug in the state. This is the strongest measure to be enacted this year.

banned chemical abortions completely and imposed a criminal penalty for noncompliance. Specifically, it prohibits any person or entity from manufacturing, distributing, prescribing, dispensing, selling, or transferring the abortion pill or any substantially similar generic or non-generic abortifacient drug in the state. This is the strongest measure to be enacted this year. Oklahoma SB 778 also requires the person administering the abortifacient drug to be a licensed physician, establishes informed consent and reporting requirements (i.e., number of chemical abortions), codifies criminal, professional, and civil penalties for noncompliance, and creates a civil cause of action for the mother, father, and maternal grandparents of the unborn child if these rules are not adhered to. This bill also prohibits the distribution of abortifacient drugs in schools or on other state grounds.

also requires the person administering the abortifacient drug to be a licensed physician, establishes informed consent and reporting requirements (i.e., number of chemical abortions), codifies criminal, professional, and civil penalties for noncompliance, and creates a civil cause of action for the mother, father, and maternal grandparents of the unborn child if these rules are not adhered to. This bill also prohibits the distribution of abortifacient drugs in schools or on other state grounds. Oklahoma SB 779 additionally requires the person administering the abortifacient drug to be a licensed physician but adds that this physician must have admitting privileges at a local hospital. This bill also establishes the Oklahoma Abortion-Inducing Drug Certification Program, which requires manufacturers, distributors, and physicians to be certified to manufacture, distribute, or provide abortifacient drugs, and establishes requirements for certification. This bill also requires the physician to schedule a follow-up appointment, establishes informed consent requirements, creates a reporting system, establishes criminal penalties for noncompliance, and creates a civil cause of action for the mother of the unborn child. This bill, together with SB 778, puts strong regulations in place, ensuring proper safety precautions are taken and enforced.

additionally requires the person administering the abortifacient drug to be a licensed physician but adds that this physician must have admitting privileges at a local hospital. This bill also establishes the Oklahoma Abortion-Inducing Drug Certification Program, which requires manufacturers, distributors, and physicians to be certified to manufacture, distribute, or provide abortifacient drugs, and establishes requirements for certification. This bill also requires the physician to schedule a follow-up appointment, establishes informed consent requirements, creates a reporting system, establishes criminal penalties for noncompliance, and creates a civil cause of action for the mother of the unborn child. This bill, together with SB 778, puts strong regulations in place, ensuring proper safety precautions are taken and enforced. Montana HB 171 requires that abortifacients be administered in-person by a qualified medical practitioner and prohibits the drug from being provided through a courier, delivery, or mail service, which targets the mail-order abortion model that the abortion industry is moving toward. It also requires the physician to perform an in-person exam of the mother prior to administering the drug to verify that a pregnancy exists, determine the mothers blood type (since being Rh negative could cause complications), and establish the gestational age and intrauterine location of the unborn child. This bill also provides informed consent requirements, reporting requirements, civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance, a civil cause of action, and requires the physician to schedule a follow-up appointment. In addition, the bill also prohibits anyone from providing an abortifacient drug at a school or on school grounds.

requires that abortifacients be administered in-person by a qualified medical practitioner and prohibits the drug from being provided through a courier, delivery, or mail service, which targets the mail-order abortion model that the abortion industry is moving toward. It also requires the physician to perform an in-person exam of the mother prior to administering the drug to verify that a pregnancy exists, determine the mothers blood type (since being Rh negative could cause complications), and establish the gestational age and intrauterine location of the unborn child. This bill also provides informed consent requirements, reporting requirements, civil and criminal penalties for noncompliance, a civil cause of action, and requires the physician to schedule a follow-up appointment. In addition, the bill also prohibits anyone from providing an abortifacient drug at a school or on school grounds. Arkansas HB 1402 requires persons administering abortifacients to be licensed physicians, credentialed to manage abortion complications, or have an agreement with an associated physician who is credentialed to handle abortion complications. The bill also requires the physician to perform an in-person exam of the mother prior to administering the abortion pill in order to verify that an intrauterine pregnancy exists, determine the mothers blood type, and establish the gestational age of the child. This bill additionally requires the physician to schedule a follow-up appointment (making all reasonable efforts to ensure that the mother returns) and prohibits the distribution of abortifacient drugs via a courier, delivery, or mail service. It did not establish any new penalties.

requires persons administering abortifacients to be licensed physicians, credentialed to manage abortion complications, or have an agreement with an associated physician who is credentialed to handle abortion complications. The bill also requires the physician to perform an in-person exam of the mother prior to administering the abortion pill in order to verify that an intrauterine pregnancy exists, determine the mothers blood type, and establish the gestational age of the child. This bill additionally requires the physician to schedule a follow-up appointment (making all reasonable efforts to ensure that the mother returns) and prohibits the distribution of abortifacient drugs via a courier, delivery, or mail service. It did not establish any new penalties. Ohio SB 260 requires physicians to be physically present when abortifacients are administered and requires the physician to perform an in-person exam prior to administering the drug. It also mandates a 24-hour waiting period before the administration of abortifacients and imposes criminal penalties for noncompliance.

requires physicians to be physically present when abortifacients are administered and requires the physician to perform an in-person exam prior to administering the drug. It also mandates a 24-hour waiting period before the administration of abortifacients and imposes criminal penalties for noncompliance. Arizona SB 1457 places leaner regulations on chemical abortion. It requires that abortifacient drugs only be provided by a qualified physician (elsewhere defined in law) and prohibits a manufacturer, supplier, physician, or any other person from providing an abortifacient drug via a courier, delivery, or mail service. This bill doesnt establish regulations as robust as the others, above. However, to the bills credit, it establishes strong abortion regulations in other areas not related to chemical abortion, such as prohibiting an abortion solely based on a diagnosis of a genetic abnormality of the unborn child.

No other year has seen so many bills to regulate or ban chemical abortion introduced, let alone enacted. State legislators are seeing the lack of restraint and regulation of chemical abortions and taking action to establish necessary safeguards. All Americans should agree that the abortion industry should not be allowed to operate at the expense of the health and safety of mothers. States are sending a clear message that they will not stand idly by and allow abortion businesses like Planned Parenthood to profit from the cheaper but riskier abortion pill regimen. Given the dramatic increase of chemical abortions over the past few years, more states are sure to respond with their own legislative efforts to reign in this growing sector of the abortion industry.

For more information on chemical abortions and why safety restrictions are necessary for the sake of womens health, please refer to FRCs issue analysis.

Originally published atFamily Research Council
Nigerian priest fears more persecution after Boko Haram leader's death: 'Time bomb waiting to explode' Cleric says Islamic State is 'gathering and absorbing' Boko Haram groups

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WASHINGTON  A Nigerian priest is warning that the religious persecution in his home country is a time bomb waiting to explode," adding that the death of the Boko Haram leader during a battle with the Islamic State could worsen the situation.

Among many attendees at this week's International Religious Freedom Summit, was Father Joseph Bature Fidelis, who leads the Human Resource and Skill Acquisition Center for Trauma Care for people displaced by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria.

Since speaking with The Christian Post during his visit to Washington in early 2020, he told CP on Thursday that the situation in Nigeria has become worse.

It hasnt improved significantly, he said. From  2020 to date, there have been various attacks on Christian communities, attacks on roads, attacks on soft targets, and many people have died, many have also been abducted.

Fidelis summarized the religious freedom violations taking place in Nigeria are "a time bomb that will explode."

"Because nowhere have you found such form of persecution in recent times in magnitude, the intensity, the  number of people killed  the brutality involved," he said.

The United Nations estimates that the Boko Haram insurgency in the Borno state has led to the displacement of over 2 million people in Nigeria. Formed in 2002, Boko Haram split in 2016 after a splinter faction pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The two groups became rivals who've wreaked havoc on civilian populations in northeast Nigeria.

In June, the Islamic State West Africa Province claimed that the notorious Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, was dead after detonating an explosive device to avoid being captured by ISWAP fighters during battle. Boko Haram later confirmed his death.

Fidelis suggested that the death of Shekau would worsen the persecution of Christians in Nigeria.

The priest alleged that ISWAP is gathering [and] absorbing the Boko Haram groups, a development that he likened to jumping from [the] frying pan to fire.

Such a larger global networking does not spell good  for the country, for the region," he feared. "Yes  the news is that he has been killed.  That is not a good sign for us."

Fideliss organization works to support those fleeing the violence.

That center is helping to bring healing and psychological healing from trauma from abuse, from torture, especially for women and girls, he explained. We are  trying to help a lot of these women, girls, people who have been abused  tortured  trying to bring them hope, healing and to build their future for them.

Fidelis agreed with a speaker at the conference, Open Doors USA CEO David Curry, who described the situation in the African country as the most overlooked religious freedom issue in the world today.

Some say its a failed state or a state about to fall, so many things," Fidelis stressed. "Everyones agreeing: somethings happening. But do something about it? No. So, hes right, [its] overlooked.

Curry told CP that the nexus between the Fulani [radicals] and Boko Haram in northern Nigeria is bleeding over into Burkina Faso, into Niger, to Cameroon [and] Chad."

The advocate warned: This has the potential to be a caliphate like ISIS.

Fidelis rejoiced that a very significant portion of this summit concentrated on Nigeria.

We appreciate the fact that  there are so many countries around the world  [and] Nigeria was given that emphasis.

As the interview concluded, Fidelis reflected on his time at the International Religious Freedom Summit.

My experience at this summit has been a wonderful moment of learning, of listening because I listened to so many speakers," he said. "And I see the passion of many people. Its the first time for me, as an individual, seeing such a large number of people from various countries across divides.

You had various groups here, people agreeing on one thing: that we need to stand together to promote religious freedom ... for everyone everywhere every time," he added. "And I think that is a beautiful humanity: bipartisan, people from different sides. This is evil against humanity."

While he commended the United States for working to promote religious freedom and advocate for groups that are persecuted, Fidelis argued that as a force to reckon with, the country can do more to help Nigerians and other victims of religious persecution. He urged the religious freedom advocates who attended the summit to keep to your word to help those in need.

The U.S. State Department recognizes Nigeria as a "country of particular concern" for engaging in or tolerating severe violations of religious freedom. Open Doors USA ranks Nigeria as the ninth-worst country in the world when it comes to Christian persecution.

In addition to Boko Haram and ISWAP in the northeast, Fulani radicals have attacked predominantly Christian farming villages in Nigeria's Middle Belt. It has been reported that thousands of people have been killed in recent years by Fulani radicals.

In May, a Nigerian Christian pastor and his three-year-old son were killed by Fulani herdsmen who invaded their home, and dozens of children were massacred in a brutal attack on a Christian village.
Bitcoin fell below $30,000 for the first time since the end of June, wiping around $89 billion from the cryptocurrency market in the process.

#CryptoCrash trended on Twitter Tuesday morning as traders and observers shared the news of the fall and posted memes to express the dismay that accompanied checking their personal crypto wallets.

For the year, Bitcoin is up 1.87%, but it was down more than 5%. Other coins fell, too: XRP went down nearly 9%, but is up about 135% for the year.

Analysts are pointing to regulatory scrutiny as the cause of the fall, highlighting recent moves by China to crack down on bitcoin mining, which is the energy-intensive process that yields new coins.

Hossein Azari, a former senior scientist at Google and the founder of consumer decentralized finance company Cmorq, expressed no concern in a comment to Entrepreneur Tuesday morning, saying, Any effort to innovate has volatility. Find me a low-volatility asset that has changed peoples lives.

Related: How Cryptocurrency Is Changing Remittances

He said, Bitcoin price is irrelevant to the decentralized technology that is developed, which is leading to a parallel financial system. Those on Wall Street have long limited capitalism to themselves with their rules.

Fox Business Network's Susan Li also spoke to Entrepreneur about the concerns regarding the falling valuation of the coin.

"In this computer driven trading world we live in - once we go below a certain level the trading algorithms usually kicks in to sell so there's a debate about where the next support price for bitcoin might be? Some are saying $20 thousand could be the bottom and the lower predictions for Bitcoin pricing is somewhere between $20 thousand to $27000 a coin," she explained. "Also remember that bitcoin has gone through a history of boom bust cycles. So remember when Bitcoin hit a record high of $20 thousand in December 2017 but then a few years later it went down to $2000. Multiple factors that have weighed on bitcoin prices including the China clampdown and now the Wall Street shift to safety with the spread in the Delta Variant."

Bitcoin was the worlds first cryptocurrency and was created in 2009. Transactions of the decentralized, digital currency are anonymous and eliminate the need for brokers or intermediaries.

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
My 82-year-old mother wasnt thrilled to visit Meteor Crater outside Winslow, Ariz., last summer. She wondered why we went out of our way to see the spectacle she dubbed a big hole in the ground.

Luckily, her skepticism didnt dampen the rest of my familys curiosity.

You see, 50,000 years ago, a 150-foot-wide iron-nickel meteorite weighing 300,000 tons slammed into the desert at 26,000 miles per hour with the force of more than 2 tons of dynamite. The explosion created a crater 750 feet deep and almost a mile wide.

So, technically, yes, Mom was right  it is a big hole in the ground. But its much more than that.

Scientists are still learning from Meteor Crater. NASA astronauts trained there in the 1960s. And, of course, the oddity remains a summer road trip rite of passage with its handy location off Interstate 40 and the former Route 66.

On ExpressNews.com: A Texas-sized space summer has billionaires racing for the heavens

Standing on the edge of the abyss makes you feel small, and on that bright June day, hot gusts of wind battered us on the observation deck. The desert air combined with the Arizona sun made us thirsty as we tried to fathom the forces that created the massive crater.

But this column isnt really about Meteor Crater. Its about NASAs Lucy mission, rock n roll and the band Queens tie to the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonios nonprofit mega-lab.

Lets pause for a quick refresher. Asteroids are rocky objects that orbit the sun; comets are balls of ice and dust that also orbit the sun; meteoroids are small pieces of asteroids or comets; meteors (aka shooting stars) are meteoroids that burn up as they enter Earths atmosphere; meteorites are meteors that dont burn up completely and hit Earth.

Then there are asteroids and comets that come from other galaxies, but thats a whole other issue.

So large meteor strikes on Earth are obviously a scary possibility. Thankfully, scientists around the world are hard at work studying the various things that could slam into our planet.

The United Nations-sanctioned Asteroid Day is an international forum raising awareness about asteroids role in the solar systems formation and the importance of defending the planet against future impacts. Its tag line: Find hazardous asteroids before hazardous asteroids find us. The dinosaurs never saw that asteroid coming. Whats our excuse?

On ExpressNews.com: Lander with San Antonio roots headed to far side of moon

Held annually on June 30, Asteroid Day brings together experts to discuss their latest research. June 30 is also the anniversary of the Siberia Tunguska event, the largest meteor impact on Earth in modern history, which leveled 800 square miles of remote forest or roughly 80 million trees.

Eighty million trees!

Former Queen guitarist-turned-astrophysicist Brian May, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart and several others started Asteroid Day in 2015.

Asteroid Day was created to encourage the public and governments to learn more about asteroids, the origin of our Solar System, and to support the resources necessary to find and deflect asteroids, May said in a statement. We have all seen how unprepared the human race was, faced with a pandemic. The threat of an asteroid strike is just as real. The consequences could be just as catastrophic.

Heres where San Antonio comes in.

On ExpressNews.com: Small, San Antonio-made spacecraft will PUNCH above its weight for science, to monitor space weather

Southwest Research Institute is leading NASAs Lucy mission to study the Trojan asteroids. Hal Levison is the missions primary investigator, and Cathy Olkin is the deputy principal investigator. Both work out of SwRIs Boulder, Colo., office. And engineers and scientists in SwRIs San Antonio facility built several components for the scientific instruments aboard Lucy.

Its the first mission to study the asteroid belt thats in the same orbit around the sun as Jupiter. The spacecraft, which is as tall as a five-story building when its solar panels are extended, is set to blast off on its 4 billion-mile journey aboard an Atlas 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral in October.

Cathy Olkin talked about Lucy during last months Asteroid Day. The event was virtual due to the pandemic.

She said May helped the Lucy team with a special plaque thatll be attached to the spacecraft.

On ExpressNews.com: Southwest Research Institute scientist steps closer to space with successful Virgin Galactic flight

Theres been the idea of putting plaques on spacecraft in case someone discovers it in the future, and the Lucy mission is going to orbit for a very long time, you know  more than 1,000 years inside our solar system, she said. And so the idea for the plaque is that its a message to our descendants.

Lucys name honors the fossilized human ancestor discovered the year after Pioneer 11 began its journey out of the Solar System, as well as the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

And, yes, words from the Beatles are also on the plaque.

After Lucy reaches space, itll orbit Earth twice before heading toward the Trojan asteroids. In 2025, itll pass an asteroid named Donaldjohanson between Mars and Jupiter.

Donald Johanson is the paleoanthropologist who discovered the Lucy fossil in 1974, Olkin said. We named the asteroid that were going to fly by after him.

She said that Lucy the fossil transformed our understanding of human evolution just as Lucy the spacecraft will transform our understanding of the solar systems evolution.

On ExpressNews.com: This is not SpaceX property - this is my property: SpaceX looks to recast South Texas town as Starbase

Lucy wont reach the first Trojan asteroid until 2027. When it does, itll be the first time for humanity.

Every time we see objects for the first time, we learn so much more  we learn even about questions we didnt know to ask previously, she said. Im really looking forward to visiting different types of asteroids and trying to understand why they look different and what made them that way.

Lucy is slated to fly by five Trojan asteroids in 2027 and 2028. The craft will rendezvous with another two Trojan asteroids in 2033 and then will maintain an orbit for thousands of years.

This is a great time to be exploring our solar system, Olkin said. Theres so many interesting NASA missions.

Lucy is another example of how San Antonio is contributing to space exploration. The things Lucy learns could help save us all someday.

Oh, and even though she wont admit, I think my mom secretly enjoyed the visit to Meteor Crater.

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
More than a year after The Wilde Collection was torched by an arsonist determined to destroy the oddities shop, co-owner Lawyer B. Douglas II still fears for his life.

Douglas and co-owner Tyler Zottarelle are rebuilding the collection, but will never forget the fiery attack that took everything from them.

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It was a sunny Friday afternoon in November 2019. Workers were helping about a dozen customers inside the shop when Jonathan Jindra walked in carrying a gas can.

Jindra poured the gasoline and set it on fire, sparking a blaze that spread through the shop. The fire ultimately destroyed priceless one-of-a-kind artifacts from around the world, killed several animals and made the building uninhabitable.

Courtesy Joseph Acosta

Everyone managed to escape the blaze unscathed. Miraculously, among the hustle of fleeing the inferno, bystanders tackled Jindra and held him until police arrived.

Jindra, now 36, pleaded guilty in exchange for a 15-year prison sentence in June. He'll be up for parole in a matter of years, and that doesn't sit well with Douglas.

Jindra made several posts threatening to kill Douglas and his family prior to the arson attack, according to Gabrielle Banks in the Houston Chronicle.

Witnesses said Jindra screamed "God told me to do it" shortly after setting the fire.

"I fear that when he does get out, he'll try and finish what he started," Douglas told Chron. "...There's not a day that I don't picture myself being asleep and then somebody sets my house on fire, or me coming home to ashes. It's a constant thing now, and it's never going to go away. It's something he's burned into my soul."

The Wilde Collection

The days and weeks after the fire were a blur of public appearances for Douglas, who found himself in front of cameras, speaking at benefits and talking with the community that came out to support for the oddities shop after the blaze.

But when life slowed to a snail's pace during the pandemic, Douglas said he and his loved ones felt the trauma of the incident truly take its toll.

"Being away from people, being away from working inside the ashes of the building, we started seeing how heavy it was personally to us," he said.

Nearly two years have passed since the blaze, and Douglas and Zottarelle are working hard on securing new pieces from unique collections around the world to display in the second iteration of their shop. The old structure will have to be demolished, Douglas said, and a new cathedral to the odd and occult will be built in its place.

Douglas promises an experience like no other for the new collection, which will feature some of the artifacts salvaged from the fire (including a special attraction "under lock-and-key" of which he currently is not at liberty to reveal yet), new treasures and even a memorial to the old shop.

The Wilde Collection forwent selling items online so they can build an inventory large enough to show off in their new digs, whenever the time comes.

"As far as reopening, there's never an option not to," Douglas said. "Not only do we love this place so much, if we didn't reopen, it's as if the arson(ist) won. That's really not an option. We will rebuild and reopen."
While many may feel like the COVID-19 pandemic has closed doors and opportunities for them, the leadership and volunteers of Conroes Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church believe many doors have been opened for their work during this time.

Throughout the pandemic, theyve been able to expand their outreach beyond the four walls of the church building at 509 S. Third Street in Conroe.

We knew there was need, but we didnt know how to open the door. But God opened that door. The pandemic has been a blessing for the church and has allowed it to blossom. In serving others we found such delight and brought the church out from being confined to the four walls of the church, said Pastor B.J. Plattenburg.

On Tuesday mornings from 9-11 a.m., the church hosts a drive-through food pantry where volunteers place food in participants vehicles. Co-Pastor Rosie Plattenburg said at the height of the pandemic, they saw as many as 200 cars.

The Pilgrim Rest food pantry was inspired by and modeled after the food pantry at First Christian Church in Conroe. During the pandemic, the Plattenburgs began volunteering at the First Christian pantry on Wednesday mornings.

They knew many people from the community around the church benefited from the First Christian Church effort. They wanted to bring a pantry to the neighborhood around the church and the first Tuesday morning pantry took place in January.

They have been weekly events ever since with support from the Montgomery County Food Bank and the Keep US Fed nonprofit.

The Plattenburgs met Larry and Mary Blocker who founded Keep US Fed through the First Christian Church. Keep US Fed uses volunteers to transport unused food from stores and restaurants to local food pantries.

One day, Larry Blocker told Rosie Plattenburg Ive got a store for you meaning he wanted her to pick up food from the store and transport it to their pantry.

She now picks up food from two Krogers and the Harvest Market in the Woodforest community and the food gained benefits the community through their pantry events.

During the pandemic theyve also partnered with the Joseph House Ministry to provide clothing and small appliances to the community. That effort takes place on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon. at the church.

They also support the Good Brothers & Sisters of Montgomery County which is preparing for its back-to-school school supply project.

Weve been in contact with people we wouldnt have otherwise known or be connected with, said Rosie Plattenburg of these opportunities.

The couple has been involved in ministry for 34 years and never imagined that they could bring the church to the community and essentially have church on Tuesday mornings as they serve the community.

Rosie Plattenburg said something happens every Tuesday, no matter the size of the group, to affirm their work.

The church has also recently launched the Doyen Project which is focused on housing veterans. The project was inspired by one of their dedicated members Vietnam veteran Henry Calyen. Calyen is also a member of the Montgomery County Veterans Memorial Commission.

On his own, he also supports the home bound, senior citizens and veterans in the community.

They are working with the city to build six units at Ave. E and South Third Street in Conroe. Ground breaking has taken place, but the wet weather has hampered efforts to pour a foundation. Its sponsored by the Friends Help a Friend Foundation but will be maintained by Pilgrim Rest.

(Our projects) have made people aware that we are here and we do care, B.J. Plattenburg said.

For more call the church at 936-756-6009.

shernandez@hcnonline.com
PHOENIX (AP)  A man and a boy have been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old girl earlier this month, according to Phoenix police who are searching for a third suspect.

Police said 17-year-old Itzel Espinoza was found dead inside a car that was parked in an alley in the early morning hours of July 3.
CHICAGO (AP)  Dozens of people are asking a court to throw out their drug convictions, alleging they were framed by the same former Chicago Police sergeant who judges have determined shook down other residents of one of the city's poorest communities.

Tuesday's court filing on behalf of 88 people is the latest development in one of the darkest chapters in the history of the city's police force. A unit led by a Black sergeant, Ronald Watts, for nearly a decade until 2012 planted drugs or falsely accused housing project residents and others of drug crimes unless they paid the officers off.

In court hearings that began five years ago, residents of Ida B. Wells public housing on the South Side told strikingly similar stories of doing nothing more dangerous than parking their cars, walking in the hallway or sitting on a bench when Watts or others on his team shook them down.

On Tuesday, some of those named in the petition told of how their lives were devastated by their convictions.

I lost my apartment, had to be separated from my children. I was homeless, on the streets for 15 years," Laurarence Coleman told reporters at a news conference Tuesday.

Coleman said she was one of many arrested who pleaded guilty because they knew they had little hope of convincing a judge or a jury that the officers were lying, and that fighting the charges would mean risking a sentence far longer than the one prosecutors were offering.

Many were force to plead guilty because they knew no one would listen to the truth, attorney Joel Flaxman, who represents 28 named in the petition, said in a statement before the news conference.

As others convicted in cases involving Watts have said in the past, Coleman said she still struggles to regain control of her life.

I can't get a job ... because they look at my background and see criminal. I'm not a criminal," she said.

This petition filed in Cook County Circuit Court comes five months after a judge threw out the latest batch of more than 100 drug convictions of people who were allegedly framed by Watts and his unit.

The Cook County States Attorney's office, which has agreed to requests to toss out dozens of convictions, did not comment on the petitions of these 88 people other than to say in a statement that it is continuing to review cases tied to Watts.

But one indication that the office's work is far from complete came from Joshua Tepfer, who has said Watts was involved with perhaps 500 convictions in the eight-year period that ended in 2012.

Tepfer criticized the city for not punishing many of the officers associated with Watts and his unit. Watts and another officer pleaded guilty in 2013 to stealing money from an FBI informant. Watts received a 22-month prison sentence.

But in December, the police department acknowledged that 15 other officers associated with Watts and his unit were placed on desk duty pending an internal investigation. The department did not immediately respond Tuesday to a question about the status of that investigation.
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. (AP)  This is the place where mothers buckled to the tarmac in grief and children lifted their teddy bears to see daddy carried off in a flag-covered box. This is where presidents stood and generals saluted as the price of war was made plain. This is the place Chaplain David Sparks found his calling.

This, the minister says, is holy ground.

The end of the war is sobering for those who have tended to the battles dead, who unzipped their body bags, dressed them in uniform one last time and clutched their bereft families.

Virtually all of the Afghan wars dead arrived back on American soil here at Dover Air Force Base. Seeing to those remains is such trying work that many did it for just six months. But Sparks was here when the war was launched and the first casualties arrived, through waves of bloodshed, and now, two decades later.

In the belly of C-17s carrying the fallen, his voice quivered in prayer, and in the autopsy suite, he smelled the stench of death. He watched a father reaching for his dead son, repeatedly bellowing the Marines name, and he heard little boys weep. In anger, families cursed him, and in gratitude, they held him tight.

My heart has been torn out so many times, the 74-year-old says, I can hardly count.

Dover's base has housed a mortuary since 1955, handling not just victims of war but base shootings, terror attacks and space shuttle disasters. More than 20,000 of the Vietnam Wars dead passed through here.

Sparks arrived on base in 1980 as a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves and largely was tasked with the spiritual needs of the 436th Airlift Wing, organizing Sunday school, talking through servicemembers problems at home, attending events, and otherwise ministering while juggling his full-time job as pastor of a small Nazarene church.

By the time hed been at it for 21 years, hed risen to lieutenant colonel and was starting to think about his military retirement. Then Sept. 11, 2001, arrived. He was called to active duty and assigned to the mortuary, where the Pentagons dead were being brought, and where he was to be a source of solace for those charged with the somber task of identifying, autopsying and preparing the dead.

Hed don a white Tyvek suit and draw a black cross on it, standing by as x-ray technicians, dentists and medical examiners worked on remains. If they needed help moving a body, hed pitch in, but mostly he talked with workers about their cat or their crazy ex-girlfriend or anything to get their mind off the horror laid before them.

Normal conversation, he says, in an abnormal venue.

Weeks turned to months, one war turned to two, and in time, Sparks gave up his pastor job, committing to his role in the mortuary. He found himself with a life entwined with death.

For years at the war's start, when the dead arrived from Afghanistan, Sparks was often tapped to pray beside the aluminum crates holding them. Then, as more and more families came for the ritual of carrying the remains off the plane, Sparks became the go-to minister trying to soothe them at the worst moment of their lives.

Some families seemed to sink into a catatonia that he knew meant he needed to give space. Others come clutching photos of the lost or otherwise tip Sparks off that his conversation might help.

Tell me about your love story, hell ask a spouse. What did you call him? hell ask a parent.

Sometimes, hell find a child hasnt been told why theyre there. Others pose wrenching questions, like a boy who asked the minister who would play catch with him now that his father was gone.

We dont talk about closure anymore, he says. Thats always going to be with you.

The grief ripples and workers here have been left bawling, or in search of new professions. A handful of times, a mortuary staffer has died by suicide or suffered through an attempt.

You cant focus on the horror, Sparks says. You cant focus on that all of the time and survive.

After two decades of it, though, its finally ending. Americas longest war is nearly over. The last of 2,312 U.S. military deaths may already have been recorded. Bases are emptying and troops are heading home.

Sparks passed the militarys mandatory retirement age years ago but continued on as a civilian. Now, with fewer bodies to autopsy, mournful families to host and prayers to write, it feels like the right time for him to walk away for good. He will retire later this year as the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the day that brought him here, comes.

He says he won't look back in sadness at his time here. For all the loss, all the torn families, all the weight of this work, he has found constant reasons to be hopeful as he walked with the grieving and stood with the dead.

Its in those moments, he says, that the presence of God is most real to me.

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Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://twitter.com/sedensky
BAMAKO, Mali (AP)  Malis interim President Assimi Goita said he was unharmed after a man tried to stab him Tuesday at the Grand Mosque in the capital amid celebrations for the Muslim holiday of sacrifice, Eid al-Adha.

Goita, a special forces colonel who staged two coups within nine months to become the transitional leader, spoke to the West African nation in a special television broadcast.

It was an isolated incident that has been brought under control, he said, saying that he is fine and no one has been hurt.

Goita called for national unity in the face of challenges.

When you are a leader, when you command people, there are some who are discontented," he said. "There are people who try to do these kinds of things to destabilize.

The attempted stabbing happened after the holiday prayers and sermon at the mosque and the imam went to slaughter the sheep, according to witnesses. One man with a knife and another with a gun participated in the attack, said the witnesses. Goitas security team quickly took him away, and two men were arrested, they said.

This attempted attack on the interim president comes as Mali has seen several attacks by jihadis in the central part of the country in recent days.

Goita grabbed power in August 2020 by overthrowing Malis democratically elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, who had only served two years after his re-election. Goita eventually agreed to a transitional government led by a civilian president, Bah NDaw, and a prime minister. He served as transitional vice president. Then, on May 24 he ousted those civilian leaders after they announced a Cabinet reshuffle that sidelined two junta supporters without consulting him.

Goita was then sworn in as president of the transitional government in June. He has pledged to keep the country on track to return to civilian rule with an election in February 2022.

Mali has been unsettled since 2012 when mutinous soldiers overthrew the president of a decade. The power vacuum led to an Islamic insurgency that took control of the countrys northern cities, including Timbuktu and Gao. A French-led campaign ousted the jihadis from the northern cities in 2013.

A peace agreement was signed in 2015 by three parties  the government, a coalition of groups that seek autonomy in northern Mali, and a pro-government militia.

However, the insurgents quickly regrouped in the desert areas and began launching frequent attacks on the Malian army and its allies. The extremists, affiliated with al-Qaida and the Islamic State militant group, have moved from the arid north to more populous central Mali since 2015 where their presence has stoked animosity and violence between ethnic groups.

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AP writer Carley Petesch in Dakar, Senegal contributed.
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. (AP)  Authorities on Tuesday released the name of a state Youth Services employee who died after being assaulted at a juvenile facility in Springfield.

The Hampden district attorney's office said James Hillman, 60, of Springfield, died weeks after the June assault at the Department of Youth Services facility. The death is being investigated as a homicide.
FARMINGTON, Conn. (AP)  The bodies of two missing teenagers who authorities believe went swimming in the swollen Farmington River were discovered on Monday, roughly a mile-and-a-half from where they were last seen on July 15.

Capt. Keith Williams of the state's Environmental Conservation Police said first responders were going on a hunch and focused their search downstream, given the current high water levels caused by recent heavy rains. They discovered the bodies of 15-year-old Lucas Brewer and 17-year-old Anthony Nagore on Monday afternoon near the Farmington and Burlington town line.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP)  A former Florida deputy has been sentenced to three years in prison for trying to rape a woman he met during a call.

Jason Nebergall, 42, was sentenced Thursday in Palm Beach County circuit court after pleading guilty to battery and attempted sexual battery as part of a deal with prosecutors, news outlets reported. He was set to go on trail for a second time later this month.
ATHENS, Greece (AP)  Greek authorities on the eastern Aegean island of Lesbos say they are drawing up a criminal case, including on charges of espionage, against 10 people, all foreign nationals, for allegedly helping migrants enter the country illegally.

Police in Lesbos said on Monday the investigation had been ongoing for several months and was being carried out in cooperation with Greeces intelligence service and anti-terrorism task force. No charges have been brought and no suspects have been publicly identified.

Greece has been repeatedly accused by rights groups and migrants of carrying out summary deportations of newly arrived migrants without allowing them to apply for asylum  an illegal practice known as pushbacks. The government strenuously denies the accusations, labeling them as fake news, but has stressed it is robustly patrolling its land and sea borders with Turkey, which are also the external borders of the European Union.

The country has been one of the preferred entry points into the EU of people fleeing conflict and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia for years. Its frequently tense relations with neighboring Turkey have led to what Athens has said is the weaponization of migrants by Ankara, which it accuses of encouraging people to cross into Greece as a means of pressuring both Greece and the EU.

There has been mounting evidence suggesting Greek authorities do carry out pushbacks, including photos of migrants picked up by the Turkish coast guard after the same people had appeared in photos shared with rights groups showing them with identifiable landmarks on Greek islands.

Police said the case involves four members of undisclosed non-governmental organizations and another six people. All are under investigation for espionage, assisting the illegal entry of foreign nationals, impeding Greek authorities' investigations and violating migration laws.

The police described the activities as organized and said they date to early June 2020, in the form of providing essential assistance to organized networks of illegal smuggling of migrants under the guise of performing humanitarian work. The case involves migrant arrivals on the islands of Chios, Lesbos and Samos.

As evidence of suspicious activity, police listed communication through mobile messaging applications with migrants leaving the Turkish shores.

According to the police announcement, those under investigation would advise recent arrivals to head either to areas of difficult terrain to hide, or to health care facilities, thereby systematically complicating the work of the responsible Greek authorities.

It said the investigation so far indicated the people under investigation had assisted in the illegal entry of a significant number of third country nationals to Greek islands. Authorities are continuing the investigation into potential further contacts and activities, police said.
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Environmental groups have notified Idaho Gov. Brad Little and other state officials of their intent to file a lawsuit over an expanded wolf-killing law they believe will result in the illegal killing of federally protected grizzly bear and lynx.

The Center for Biological Diversity, Western Watersheds Project and others on Monday gave a required 60-day notice of their intent to sue if Idaho officials dont prohibit all hunting, trapping and snaring in grizzly bear and lynx habitat.

For lynx, the conditions could cover most of Idaho except for the southwestern portion of the state. For grizzly bears, the areas would include portions of northern, central and eastern Idaho. Wolves are found in roughly the northern two-thirds of the state.

In May, the Republican governor signed into law a measure lawmakers said could lead to killing 90% of the states 1,500 wolves through expanded trapping and hunting. It took effect July 1.

Lawmakers who sponsored the measure, backed by hunters and the states powerful ranching sector but heavily criticized by environmental advocates, said numerous times that the state is allowed to cut the number of wolves down to 150 before federal authorities would take over management of the species. They said reducing the wolf population would reduce attacks on livestock and boost deer and elk herds.

Lynx, grizzly bears, and gray wolves all inhabit similar habitat types and geographic ranges in Idaho, and wolf hunting and trapping therefore frequently occur in areas in which lynx and grizzlies are also present, the groups said in their letter. Moreover, because snare and other authorized means of hunting and trapping are imprecise tools, they pose a substantial risk to non-target species, including lynx and grizzly bears.

Besides Little, the letter was also sent to the members of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission and the directors of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game and Idaho State Department of Agriculture.

Roger Phillips, spokesman for the state Department of Fish and Game, said the agency doesn't comment on pending litigation.

Little's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Environmental groups filed a similar notice of intent to sue in Montana last month that also involves the potential killing of grizzly bears and lynx by wolf hunters and trappers.

A primary change in the new law allows the state to hire private contractors to kill wolves and provides more money for state officials to hire the contractors.

The law also expands the way wolves can be hunted and killed. Those methods include trapping and snaring an unlimited number of wolves on a single hunting tag, using night-vision equipment, chasing down wolves on snowmobiles and ATVs and shooting them from helicopters. It also authorizes year-round wolf trapping on private property.

It's not clear if the expanded methods and seasons to kill wolves would reduce the wolf population to 150. Republican state Rep. Fred Wood, a former member of the Idaho Fish and Game Commission, said the only way to do that would be to use poison, which is not in the new law.

However, hunters have said night-vision scopes, now allowed, could significantly increase the number of wolves killed. But the threatened lawsuit cites possible deaths of grizzly bears and lynx from expanded trapping and snaring of wolves.

Idahos outdated plans for wolf killing will inevitably harm other native wildlife species," said Patrick Kelly, Idaho director of Western Watersheds Project. "Its unacceptable to allow imperiled species to be collateral damage in Idahos war on wolves.

The state Department of Fish and Game reported in February that the wolf population has held at about 1,500 the past two years. The numbers were derived by using remote cameras and other methods.

About 500 wolves have been killed in the state in each of the last two years by hunters, trappers and wolf control measures carried out by state and federal authorities.
NEW ORLEANS (AP)  A nine-fold increase in newly reported COVID-19 cases over the past two weeks and a jump in the percentage of positive tests for the disease has New Orleans officials considering new mitigation measures, a city spokesperson said Tuesday.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell and the citys health officer, Dr. Jennifer Avegno, will announce plans Wednesday, Cantrell spokesperson Beau Tidwell said at a weekly City Hall briefing.

Tidwell wouldnt give details. But he said under questioning that rules involving masks are certainly a strong possibility.

All options are on the table, Tidwell said.

The city eased numerous restrictions in May, including a city-wide masking requirement. The policy at that time was that fully vaccinated individuals were no longer required to wear masks while unvaccinated people should wear masks. Businesses currently have the option of requiring masks. Masks are still required in government buildings, hospitals and public transportation.

The seven-day average of new cases reported daily in New Orleans has jumped to 99, up from 11 two weeks ago. The positivity rate among those tested has surpassed 5%, one of the thresholds the city has used in the past in weighing mitigation measures. Most of the cases are caused by the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.

While mitigation measures are being considered, Tidwell said getting more people vaccinated is the key to stopping the spread.

New Orleans has a relatively high vaccination rate compared to the rest of the state. More than 63% of those eligible for vaccination have had at least one shot. But, he said, the numbers need to improve. He noted that New Orleans is a tourist destination and said residents need to be vaccinated to guard against being infected by unvaccinated visitors.

State health officials last week sounded alarms about what they called startling jumps in coronavirus infections last week. Hospitalizations in Louisiana had hit a low of 242 in June, the lowest since early 2020 when the state became a hot spot for COVID-19. On Tuesday, the number hospitalized was 779.
MILWAUKEE (AP)  The lawyer for the families of the three people former Wauwatosa police officer Joseph Mensah shot and killed has filed a federal lawsuit against Mensah and others in connection with one of the deaths.

Attorney Kimberley Motley said she wants to know more about the 2015 fatal shooting of Antonio Gonzales. It was the first shooting Mensah was involved in and it came five years before widespread protests calling for his removal.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. (AP)  A judge has sentenced an Oklahoma man to a week in jail and ordered him to pay $1,100 for guiding visitors illegally in Yellowstone National Park.

Theodore Eugene Garland, 60 of Edmond, Oklahoma, led visitors who trespassed in thermal areas and elsewhere, cliff-jumped in an off-limits area and altered a river's flow by creating a pool for swimmers to soak in, U.S. prosecutors said in a statement Monday.

Magistrate Judge Mark L. Carman in Mammoth Hot Springs found Garland guilty of the violations in a non-jury trial in April and sentenced him July 2. Besides imposing the jail time and payments, the judge banned Garland from the park for the remainder of 2021.

Guiding in Yellowstone requires a permit. Garland had one but video he posted on Facebook of cliff-jumping in Firehole Canyon prompted a Yellowstone law enforcement ranger to investigate, according to court documents filed in the case.

An Apple podcast, Instagram photo and Facebook video revealed other possible violations such as creating a hot pot for swimmers at the base of Mystic Falls on the Little Firehole River, ranger Devon Beeny said in the documents.

Prosecutors charged Garland with 15 counts of illegal activities and violating park regulations. Carman found Garland guilty of seven, acquitting him of others that included disturbing a black bear while it was feeding.

I think the judge recognized Ted has done a lot to inspire people about Yellowstone, and lawfully, though he has done a few things he shouldnt have, Garlands attorney, Alex Freeburg, of Jackson, said Monday.

A guidebook written by Garland has done more to explicitly warn people about Yellowstone's thermal features than warning signs in the park, Freeburg added.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced new requirements for U.S. pipeline operators to bolster cybersecurity following a May ransomware attack that disrupted gas delivery across the East Coast.

In a statement, DHS said it would require operators of federally designated critical pipelines to implement specific mitigation measures to prevent ransomware attacks and other cyber intrusions. Operators must also implement contingency plans and conduct what the department calls a cybersecurity architecture design review.

It's the latest response by the Biden administration to a series of ransomware attacks and intrusions hitting critical U.S. infrastructure and raising fears about American cybersecurity.

DHS did not immediately release further details about the guidance, which comes after another directive issued weeks after the May 7 attack on Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline.

U.S. agencies on Tuesday also disclosed that Chinese government-linked intruders targeted 23 natural gas pipeline operators from 2011 to 2013. Thirteen of those attacks were confirmed intrusions, according to a government advisory.

The Colonial attack led to the shutdown of a system delivering about 45% of the gasoline consumed along the East Coast and sparked long lines and gas shortages in several states.

Colonial paid an estimated $4.4 million ransom, most of which was recovered by the Justice Department. The FBI has blamed the attack on a Russia-based gang of hackers using the DarkSide ransomware variant.

The Biden administration has repeatedly accused Russia of granting safe haven to criminal gangs and trying to steal from government agencies and private organizations in various sectors. It imposed sanctions in April for a range of activities including hacking.

Russia has broadly denied being involved in cyberattacks of U.S. institutions, decrying unfounded accusations in a statement last month.

The U.S. and key allies this week accused China of complicity in a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that victimized thousands of organizations. That announcement, however, was not accompanied by sanctions against China, which has accused the U.S. of making groundless attacks" against it regarding cybersecurity.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  A Missouri legislative committee on Monday held a hearing on how educators teach K-12 students about race and racism without hearing from any Black Missourians.

No Black parents, teachers or scholars testified to the Joint Committee on Education during the invite-only hearing on critical race theory.

Aside from an official from Missouris education department, the only people who testified Monday were critics of critical race theory, which is a way of thinking about Americas history through the lens of racism.

Missouri NAACP President Rod Chapel called it ridiculous to have a conversation about inequity while excluding the very people who are saying weve been treated inequitably.

That talks more to the kind of hearing that they wanted to have than the information that they wanted to gather, Chapel told reporters after the hearing. They wanted to hear from their friends who were going to support their political talking points.

Republican Sen. Cindy O'Laughlin, who leads the committee, said she wanted to use the hearing to highlight voices of parents upset about critical race theory who have said local school officials ignored their complaints.

I felt today it was important to hear from people who have tried to go through the official cycle of authority within their districts and have basically been turned away," she told committee members.

O'Laughlin said she also invited an associate professor of teaching who specializes in Black history, but he declined to testify.

She said there will be more committee hearings on critical race theory and more opportunities for the public to weigh in.

I'm certain this won't be the last conversation, she said.

Heather Fleming, a former Missouri teacher who now offers diversity and inclusion training, said she wanted to testify Monday but was not allowed. She said without any African Americans involved in the discussion, youre talking about us, without us.

What not having any African Americans in the room really showed was that this wasnt really about understanding, Fleming said.

Scholars developed critical race theory during the 1970s and 1980s in response to what they viewed as a lack of racial progress following the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.

It's recently become a political lightning rod.

Many Republicans view the concepts underlying critical race theory as an effort to rewrite American history and persuade white people that they are inherently racist and should feel guilty because of their advantages.

Some students are having serious emotional problems dealing with the CRT, or social justice, concepts being taught in our schools, Katie Rash, a leader in the Missouri chapter of the group No Left Turn in Education, told the committee Monday.

Gov. Mike Parson on Monday evening entered the discussion with a tweet.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has no business being taught in Missouri classrooms  but the vast majority of our schools are not doing that, he said. Missouri schools are teaching diversity, equity, and inclusion to help prepare our students for life and for the workforce by allowing them to better understand and respect each others differences. However, we do NOT need the extreme teachings of CRT in order to accomplish that goal.

"I believe in local control and our state has a long history of valuing local control, and that is why local schools districts have statutory authority over curriculum. Individual schools receive direct input from teachers and parents and know best how to address these topics," Parson tweeted.
ELGIN, Minn. (AP)  The pilot of a helicopter has died in a crash in southeaster Minnesota, according to sheriff's officials.

Corey James Adcock, 40, from Victoria County, Texas was crop dusting Monday afternoon when the chopper blades got caught in some power lines near Elgin, crashed and caught fire, authorities said. Adcock, the only one on board, was pronounced dead at the scene.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  A 38-year-old man has been charged in connection with the deaths of three people who were found dead last week in a home in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Jackson County prosecutors office announced Monday that Rahman M. Muhammad of Kansas City faces three counts of second-degree murder and three counts of armed criminal action after he was linked to the slayings by investigators, the Kansas City Star reported.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Authorities have identified the person killed in a shooting early Saturday in downtown Portland, Oregon, as an 18-year-old woman who had graduated from high school last month.

Portland Police said Monday that Makayla Maree Harris was killed in what is believed to be a drive-by shooting. Relatives told The Oregonian/OregonLive that she had graduated from Grant High School in early June and was the youngest in her family with six siblings.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder is suing over a decision by California election officials to block him from running in the September recall election that could oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, saying he's the target of political shenanigans by Democrats.

The Republican said in a statement late Monday that he filed all the necessary paperwork to qualify for a slot on the ballot, including over 300 pages of tax returns that are required to become a candidate. But the secretary of states office did not include Elder on a preliminary list of 41 candidates last weekend, saying he filed incomplete information on those returns.

Elder's campaign said he sued Monday, seeking an order from a court in Sacramento that would require Secretary of State Shirley Weber to list Elder as a candidate on the final certified list of candidates, scheduled to be issued Wednesday.

Weve complied with everything the secretary of state has required of us, said Elder, a popular voice on the political right whose show is nationally syndicated. The politicians in Sacramento know Im the only candidate who can beat Gavin Newsom. They are afraid, and they are using whatever shenanigans they can to try to trip me up. It wont work.

Frankly, this action by the secretary of state is not simply unfair and absurd but a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent, said Elder, who also is an attorney.

Meanwhile, the secretary of state's office on Tuesday added another name to the list, making it 42 replacement candidates in the Sept. 14 contest. It wasnt immediately clear why Democrat Armando Mando Perez-Serrato was a late addition.

If Elder fails to make the ballot, it would be a setback for recall organizers who hoped for a large field of prominent candidates to attract voters. When Elder announced his candidacy last week, he immediately became one of the most recognized Republicans in the race, given his years on talk radio and frequent appearances on Fox News.

In a statement, Weber's office said the agency applies the same criteria to each candidate that seeks elected office.

The list of candidates issued did not include Mr. Elder and others that failed to comply with those requirements. This is the first election where the gubernatorial candidate tax-disclosure law has been applied.

Elder is facing a narrow window of time for the court to make a change. With the election less than two months away, election officials already are arranging for ballots to be printed. Mail-in ballots go out next month.

Other Republicans who qualified to run include former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer; reality TV personality and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner; businessman John Cox, who was defeated by Newsom in 2018; and state lawmaker Kevin Kiley.

Elder's campaign argued that under state law, Weber has the authority, if not the duty, to fix any redaction errors for the public. The campaign said Webers office has not informed Elder of its specific objections to the filing of his tax returns and added that Weber was effectively engaging in voter suppression by denying voters the ability to choose Elder.

The campaign also said Weber's decision violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution because Newsom did not have to comply with the same tax return disclosures.

I am waging a legal battle to run as the candidate for Californians who are tired of the partisanship and entrenched interests of Sacramento. I fully expect to be on the final certified list of candidates, Elder said.

Voters will be sent a ballot with two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? And who should replace him? If more than half of voters say yes to the first question, then whoever on the list of potential replacements gets the most votes is the new governor of the nations most populous state. With numerous candidates and no clear front-runner, its possible that someone could win with less than 25% of the votes.

The push to oust the first-term, Democratic governor is largely rooted in frustration with school and business closures during the coronavirus pandemic that upended daily life for millions of Californians.

In the lawsuit, Elder raises the issue of whether the requirement for candidates to release their previous five years of taxes is legally valid. He points out the 2019 law on which it's based applies to a primary election, but the secretary of state unilaterally imposed it on a recall election.

A statement from the secretary of state said the agency adopted the same approach as was used in the state's 2003 recall election, when the basic requirements for replacement candidate qualifications were based on those for primary elections.

Neither the California Constitution nor the (state) elections code provide specific replacement candidate qualifications and requirements for gubernatorial recall elections, the agency said.

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Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento contributed.
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP)  Nevada-based scientists argue in a new study that wildfire smoke may increase the risk of contracting the coronavirus.

A study published last week by scientists at the Desert Research Institute found that coronavirus infection rates increased disproportionately during wildfire season in 2020, when smoke from fires in neighboring states blanketed much of northern Nevada.

In a paper in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, Desert Research Institute Assistant Research Scientist Daniel Kiser and four co-authors note the test positivity rate in Washoe County increased significantly during periods when monitors measured high levels of particulate matter in the air from wildfire smoke.

For every 10 micrograms per cubic meter of small particulate matter known as PM2.5 in the air, the positivity rate increased about 6.3% two to six days later, the study found.

Kiser said the study was observational and noted that the uptick could be attributed to other factors, like last year's second surge, students returning to schools or changes in local restrictions. But he said momentary upticks during periods of high pollution suggested a connection between smoke and the spread of the virus.

"That temporary association in the midst of a large uptick in cases overall is what convinced us that somethings going on," he told the Associated Press.

The authors argued that the association between wildfire smoke and the coronavirus likely suggested pollution made people more prone to viruses more broadly.

Our findings also bolster arguments that PM2.5 from other sources such as vehicle traffic or industry, increases susceptibility to" the coronavirus, they wrote.

Kiser said wildfires and other climate change-driven weather events were likely to figure more largely into the study of viruses in the future.

Smoke from the Tamarack Fire and Beckwourth Complex Fire is shrouding parts of northern Nevada, causing pollution in Reno, Carson City and Gardnerville.

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Sam Metz 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.
ANTLERS, Okla. (AP)  Authorities have identified the man suspected of shooting and injuring two men on Interstate 40 in eastern Oklahoma after they helped him when the vehicle he was driving ran out of gas.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation said Monday that they are searching for Lee King, who drove off from the scene of the shooting near Vian and hours later fled on foot into the woods near Antlers  about 130 miles southwest (209 kilometers) of there  after being pursued by police.

John Derek Riggs, 39, and Jake Myers, 32, who are both from Arkansas, had been shot in their vehicle and then were found lying on the interstate at about 8:30 p.m. on Saturday, the OSBI said.

The OSBI said that Riggs and Myers were seen on surveillance video at a convenience store in Vian buying a gas can and gas for King. The OSBI said its believed they were good Samaritans who were trying to help the suspect after he ran out of gas and didnt know him previously.

After the shooting, King fled in the vehicle he'd been driving, which officials said Monday matches one stolen Saturday morning in a carjacking in Oklahoma City.

At about 4:30 a.m. Sunday, a police officer in Antlers tried to pull over King because the car he was driving was stolen. King led the officer to a dead-end road and then took off on foot into a heavily-wooded area in Antlers, OSBI said.

OSBI said King was last seen in Antlers around 9:30 a.m. Sunday. The OSBI said he's known to have connections to the Houston and Shreveport, Louisiana, areas.

OSBI said Riggs and Myers were taken to hospitals in Arkansas, where they were in critical condition but expected to survive. One was shot in the face, the other was shot multiple times in in the torso.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP)  Caitlyn Jenner's earnings have fallen precipitously in the last several years from a high of $2.5 million in 2016 when she had her own reality TV show to $550,000, tax filings show.

Jenner is among those running in Californias upcoming recall election of Gov. Gavin Newsom. All candidates were required to release their tax returns for the past five years by last Friday, though Jenner and many of the other hopefuls only submitted four years because they haven't yet filed their 2020 returns.

Newsom signed a law in 2019 requiring candidates for president and governor to release their tax returns to be on the California ballot. It was passed in an effort to force former President Donald Trump to release his tax returns during the 2020 election. A court struck down the presidential requirement but left it in place for gubernatorial candidates. This is the first election in which its applied.

Jenner was the 1976 Olympic decathlon gold medalist who married Kris Jenner and appeared with her on the reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Jenner came out as a transgender woman in 2015.

Her tax returns offer a glimpse into how her fame benefitted her financially.

She made $1.9 million in 2017, when her memoir The Secrets of My Life was released, and $2.5 million in 2016, which was the second season of her reality show I Am Cait." She made roughly $1.5 million on the book. It wasn't immediately clear from the tax returns how much Jenner made from the show.

Jenners income was about $550,000 in both 2018 and 2019. Much of it came through an entity called Team Tours Inc. and her business, Cait's World. Her campaign did not respond to request for comment about what type of work Jenner did for either business.

She also earned income and paid taxes in Australia, Greece, Indonesia, the United Kingdom and Ireland. She made by far the most in Australia, where her 2019 tax filings show $320,000 in gross income. That year she appeared on the British show I'm a Celebrity ... Get Me Out of Here," which was set in Australia.

Jenner is currently in Australia forming a celebrity version of the reality show Big Brother."

All of Jenner's charitable giving went to her Caitlyn Jenner Foundation, which says on its website it provides grants to organizations that empower transgender people.

Candidates for governor were also required to file statements of economic interest that show their investments. Jenner's forms show she holds stock in dozens of companies, including investments worth $10,000 to $100,000 in California-based Facebook and Google. She has up to $10,000 worth of investments in Boeing, Wells Fargo, Berkshire Hathaway and many other companies.

The statement values Caits World and CJ Memories, her publishing entity, between $100,000 and $1 million. She also has an aircraft holding company called Caitlyn Aviation and is a passive investor in Luma Sun Care Inc., a skin care company run by her associate Sophia Hutchins.

Newsom released his 2019 tax returns in May, which showed he made $1.7 million, about a half-million more than he earned the year before, his last as lieutenant governor. Newsoms campaign said he released his tax returns to the secretary of state, though they have not been posted online. Since Newsom is technically not a candidate in the recall, he was not required to file them.

The recall election is Sept. 14. Here's a look at tax information for other major Republicans among the 41 candidates:

--Kevin Faulconer, a Republican and the former mayor of San Diego, took home between $69,000 and $80,000 in mayoral salary annually from 2016 to 2019. He also hasn't filed his 2020 returns. Faulconer filed jointly with his wife, who runs an events business in San Diego. The couple's charitable giving was donations to Goodwill.

John Cox, a multimillionaire Republican businessman who lost to Newsom in 2018, had $0 in taxable income in 2019 after recording losses on some of the apartment complexes he owns and taking deductions including $139,000 in charitable giving.

Assemblyman Kevin Kiley reported $113,000 in income in 2020, which included about $1,400 from the sale of cattle from Ose-Kiley Cattle, the company he owns with former Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Ose, another candidate in the recall election. He also reported receiving over $10,000 in loan repayment assistance from his alma mater, Yale Law School. Kiley paid about $18,000 in federal tax that year and was eligible for a refund of about $1,600. He is a Republican.

Real estate investor Ose and his wife, filing jointly, reported about $717,000 in income in 2019, the most recent year available. Their tax bill was $193,000 but they had made total payments of $260,000 so were eligible for a $67,000 refund.

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Associated Press writer Michael R. Blood contributed from Los Angeles.
SEOUL, South Korea  South Korea has reported a new daily high for coronavirus cases, putting pressure on authorities to extend their toughest distancing rules.

The 1,784 cases confirmed in the previous 24-hour period is the biggest single-day jump since the pandemic began. The new cases brought the countrys total to 182,265 cases, with 2,060 deaths from COVID-19.

South Koreas daily caseload has been above 1,000 for the past two weeks amid a slow vaccination program, lax public vigilance and the spread of the more contagious delta variant of the virus. A majority of new cases are in the densely populous Seoul metropolitan area, but officials have recently warned the virus is spreading beyond the capital region.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum calls the latest numbers serious.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Dr. Fauci, Sen. Paul trade charges of lying about virus

 CDC: Delta variant accounts for 83% of U.S. cases

 Britain hits most daily virus deaths in 4 months

 Research: Millions may have died in India during pandemic

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Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

TOPEKA, Kan.  Families and advocates for the elderly in Kansas argue that with most nursing home residents vaccinated against the coronavirus, some facilities need to relax visiting rules.

A state official who investigates complaints against nursing homes as well as the elder-care focused Kansas Advocates for Better Care called on the state Tuesday to intervene when nursing homes arent open enough.

Some industry officials still see a need for caution because of the growing presence in Kansas of the faster-spreading delta variant of the coronavirus.

Operators feel they are still facing tough choices after nursing homes were COVID-19 hot spots earlier in the pandemic, but advocates for residents worry the delta variant could cause homes to lock down again.

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JACKSON, Miss.  The Mississippi state health officer is imploring people to get vaccinated as a highly transmissible variant of the coronavirus is spreading in the state, which has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S.

Dr. Thomas Dobbs said Tuesday: Yall, were going to have a rough few weeks.

He says intensive care units are full in 13 Mississippi hospitals because of the recent increase in cases, and many other hospitals have under 10% of ICU beds available.

Dobbs says unvaccinated people should take common sense steps to reduce transmission, including having social activities outdoors rather than indoors. He adds that people can choose to wear masks to mitigate the spread of the virus, but he is not asking Gov. Tate Reeves to reinstate widespread mask mandates.

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With COVID-19 cases soaring nationwide, school districts across the U.S. are again confronting the realities of a polarized country and the lingering pandemic as they navigate mask requirements, vaccine rules and social distancing requirements for the fast-approaching new school year.

Students in Wichita, Kansas, public schools can ditch masks when classes begin. Detroit public schools will probably require them only for the unvaccinated. In Pittsburgh, masks will likely be required regardless of vaccination status. And in some states, schools cannot mandate face coverings under any circumstances.

The spread of the delta variant and the deep political divisions over the outbreak have complicated decisions in districts from coast to coast.

School officials say decisions about whether to require masks have been complicated not only by community pressure and the delta variant but also conflicting advice from public health officials.

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BOSTON  Boston health officials are urging recent visitors to Provincetown to self-isolate and get tested after a cluster of coronavirus cases was linked to the popular Cape Cod tourist town.

The Boston Public Health Commission said Tuesday that at least 35 coronavirus cases in Boston have been traced to Provincetown, with the vast majority of cases involving people who were fully vaccinated.

Anyone who has traveled to Provincetown since July 1 is being asked to get tested at least five days after returning. The travel guidance also asks recent visitors to self-isolate and avoid gatherings for at least five days and until they receive a negative test.

Provincetown officials issued a new mask advisory on Monday after more than 100 people tested positive following the Fourth of July holiday.

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ST. LOUIS  The head of the St. Louis regions pandemic task force says the area is facing a third wave of coronavirus infections that could cause more deaths and serious cases if residents dont get vaccinated and return to wearing masks in public.

Dr. Clay Dunagan said Tuesday that seven COVID-19 patients have died in the St. Louis region and 91 were admitted to intensive care units during the previous 24 hours.

Dunagan says even people who have been vaccinated should wear masks in public, in part because only 46.3% of Missourians had been fully vaccinated as of Tuesday.

He says that although the CDC has approved allowing vaccinated people to go without masks, the St. Louis areas vaccination rate isnt high enough to follow that recommendation because of new cases caused by the more infectious delta variant.

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HAVANA -- The COVID-19 pandemic is slamming Cuba like never before, even as the country races to roll out its homegrown vaccines  the only locally developed shots being widely used in Latin America.

The island had seen far fewer infections that most other Latin American nations over the first year or so of the pandemic, imposing strict quarantines, isolating the infected and shutting down its tourism industry despite devastating economic consequences.

But new cases have been soaring in recent week. The first three weeks of July have accounted for about 100,000 of the nearly 300,000 infections recorded altogether in Cuba. Cubas national director of epidemiology said Tuesday that 717 people have died so far this month in Cuba  a heavy share of the 2,019 who have died in all.

Anxiety over that spread was one of the factors that fed into the wave of street protests that broke out across the country on July 11.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala.  A health leader says Alabama is suffering a self-inflicted wound from COVID-19, with hospitals filling up as the state trails the nation in vaccinations.

Nearly 500 people are being treated for the virus statewide, according to state statistics. Only 166 people were hospitalized a month ago with COVID-19 after thousands were vaccinated and before the new delta variant took hold.

Hospitals are far from the critical point they reached in January, when some 3,000 people were being treated at one time. But the president of the Alabama Hospital Association says the delta variant threatens to worsen the situation barring an increase in vaccinations,

Only 38% of the states population has received at least one vaccine dose and just 31% are fully vaccinated, according to state statistics.

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LAS VEGAS  The Las Vegas school district says it is sticking with its plan to only require face masks this fall for some students despite recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics to follow stricter guidelines.

The district plans to require face masks for fourth and fifth grade students but make them optional for students in preschool through third grade. Students in sixth through 12th grade and teachers will not be required to wear masks if they are vaccinated. The district with more than 300,000 students is scheduled to start its school year Aug. 9.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending schools require face masks for children older than 2 and all adults regardless of vaccination status.

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NEW ORLEANS  The city of New Orleans is considering new restrictions following a ninefold increase in daily coronavirus cases and the percentage of positive tests.

City spokesman Beau Tidwell says rules involving masks are certainly a strong possibility when the city's plan is announced Wednesday.

The average daily number of cases skyrocketed from 11 two weeks ago to 99 on Monday. Most new cases involve the delta variant of the virus. The city eased most virus-related restrictions, including masking requirements for businesses and individuals, in May.

An infectious disease specialist at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans says that while equipment and supplies are readily available as virus cases rise, nurses are not. Sandra Kemmerly says that "the health care personnel are tired. 

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WASHINGTON  A recurring clash between the governments top infectious disease doctor and a U.S. senator has erupted again on Capitol Hill, with each accusing the other of lying.

Dr. Anthony Fauci angrily confronted Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in testimony before a Senate committee. Fauci rejected Pauls insinuation that the U.S. helped fund research at a Chinese lab that could have sparked the COVID-19 outbreak.

Fauci spoke to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, saying a study the senator mentioned referenced a different sort of virus entirely from the one responsible for the coronavirus outbreak.

Fauci said: If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.

It was the latest in a series of clashes between Paul and Fauci about the origins of the virus that caused the global pandemic.

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LONDON  Britain has recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus-related deaths in four months, following a spike in infections amid the spread of the delta variant and lifting of lockdown restrictions.

Government figures Tuesday showed 96 new virus-related deaths, the highest since March 24. The U.K. also recorded 46,558 confirmed cases. The numbers on Tuesday have traditionally been higher because of a weekend reporting lag.

The increase in deaths comes a day after the British government ended lockdown restrictions in England, including on social distancing and mask-wearing. Critics warn it will lead to further spread of the coronavirus and potential deaths in the coming weeks.

Britains confirmed virus-related death toll stands at 128,823, the seventh highest in the world.

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NEW YORK  Health officials say the delta variant of the coronavirus continues to surge and accounts for an estimated 83% of U.S. COVID-19 cases.

Thats a dramatic increase from the week of July 3, when the variant accounted for about 50% of genetically sequenced coronavirus cases.

The best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 variants is to prevent the spread of disease, and vaccination is the most powerful tool we have, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday.

The delta variant is a mutated coronavirus that spreads more easily than other versions. It was first detected in India but now has been identified around the world.

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MEXICO CITY  Authorities in Mexico say they have found fake doses of the COVID-19 drug remdesivir offered for sale on the internet and at a private hospital near the U.S. border.

The federal medical safety commission said late Monday that the fake antiviral drug, which it called a health risk, was found at a hospital in the Gulf coast city of Tampico, in the border state of Tamaulipas.

The commission said the doses had been purchased in an irregular manner on the internet but didnt say whether the medication had been used there.

The drugs manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, confirmed the falsification. The appearance and lot numbers on the packaging didnt match the original.

The U.S. and Mexico have approved remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.

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NEW DELHI  The most comprehensive research yet estimates Indias excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic were a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll.

Most experts believe Indias official toll of 414,000 dead was a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns. A report released Tuesday estimates excess deaths to be 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and this June.

It calculated its figures by comparing deaths to those in pre-pandemic years, considering the virus prevalence in the population and using an existing economic survey. The report also estimated that Indias initial virus surge last year killed many more people than reported, breeding complacency that set up conditions for the horrific surge earlier this year.

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian governments former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, and Harvard University.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP)  The Mississippi state health officer on Tuesday implored people to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as a highly transmissible variant of the virus is spreading a state with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the U.S.

Y'all, we're going to have a rough few weeks, Dr. Thomas Dobbs said Tuesday during an online news conference.

Dobbs had said Monday on social media that Mississippi is in a 4th wave of virus cases, following previous waves in the spring and summer of 2020 and a larger wave of cases early this year before vaccines were widely available.

He said Tuesday that the delta variant of the virus is spreading rapidly in Mississippi. He said intensive care units are full in 13 Mississippi hospitals because of the recent increase in cases, and many other hospitals have fewer than 10% of beds available in ICUs.

Dobbs said unvaccinated people should take commonsense steps to reduce transmission, including having social activities outdoors rather than indoors. He said people who have chronic medical conditions or are at least 65 should avoid large indoor gatherings.

Dobbs said people can choose to wear masks to mitigate the spread of the virus, but he is not asking Gov. Tate Reeves to reinstate widespread mask mandates.

We have other tools available to us," Dobbs said. In all honesty, I think that the era of statewide mask mandates is probably over for the majority of the United States. And certainly, for us."

Republican Reeves set a statewide mask mandate during August and September, then had mandates in counties with counties where the virus was spreading quickly. He lifted the last of the county mask mandates in early March, and his requirement for masks in schools expired when the academic year ended in May.

The chief medical officer for state Department of Health, Dr. Dan Edney, said Tuesday that the department is encouraging physicians to offer COVID-19 vaccinations to all patients old enough to receive them and to become partners with schools to vaccinate children who are old enough and whose parents agree they can receive the shots.

If we want this fall to be more normal, the route is through vaccination," Edney said.

Mississippi has some of the strictest requirements in the U.S. for children to be vaccinated against measles, mumps and other diseases before they can enroll in public or private schools or day care centers.

Dobbs said COVID-19 vaccinations are safe and effective, but he does not think the state Health Department would consider mandating them for school-aged children without the vaccinations having FDA approval. The COVID-19 vaccinations have emergency-use authorization.

Dobbs also said he believes vaccination against COVID-19 is important for college students. However, "we are not looking to pursue any type of mandatory vaccination" for that age group, Dobbs said Tuesday.

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Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  The chair of former President Donald Trump's 2017 inaugural committee was arrested Tuesday on charges alleging he secretly conspired to influence U.S. policy to benefit the United Arab Emirates, even while he was seeking a position as an American diplomat.

Tom Barrack, 74, of Santa Monica, California, was among three men charged in federal court in Brooklyn, New York, with acting as unregistered foreign agents as they tried to influence U.S. policy on the UAE's behalf while Trump was running in 2016 and later while he was president.

The indictment goes to the heart of the U.S.' longtime close relationship with the UAE and directly ties its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to Barrack's charges.

Besides conspiracy, Barrack was charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 2019 interview with federal agents. Also charged in a seven-count indictment were Matthew Grimes, 27, of Aspen, Colorado, who is a former executive at Barracks company, and Rashid al Malik, 43, a businessman from the United Arab Emirates who prosecutors said acted as a conduit to that nation's rulers.

One of Trumps close personal friends for decades, Barrack is the latest in a long line of the former presidents associates to face criminal charges, including his former campaign chair, his former deputy campaign chair, his former chief strategist, his former national security adviser, his former personal lawyer and his companys longtime chief financial officer.

Barrack and Grimes were arrested in Southern California while al Malik was at large, believed to be living somewhere in the Middle East, authorities said. In court papers, prosecutors said al Malik was living in Los Angeles for years before fleeing the U.S. three days after an April 2018 interview by law enforcement. The UAE, which hosts thousands of U.S. troops and aircraft on the Arabian Peninsula, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday on the indictment.

At an initial hearing in Los Angeles federal court, Barrack's lawyer, Ronak D. Desai, agreed that his client could remain detained until a hearing next Monday after prosecutors submitted written arguments saying he should be denied bail as a risk to flee.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Donahue called Grimes a serious risk of flight and also ordered him detained pending a hearing Monday.

Attorney Michael Freedman, representing Grimes, said his client had no criminal history, no longer worked for Barrack's company and doesn't have the access investigators allege he once had.

He is a fairly low-level individual in all of this, Freedman said.

Neither man entered a plea.

Barrack raised $107 million for Trump's inaugural celebration, which was scrutinized both for its lavish spending and for attracting numerous foreign officials and businesspeople looking to lobby the new administration.

While the indictment made no allegations of wrongdoing by the inaugural committee, or by Trump  who was referenced only as the Candidate, the President-Elect and the President  it said Barrack boasted that he had been a 30-year partner of Trump and could help the UAE gain U.S. influence.

The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barracks friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances," Acting Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko said.

Barrack has denied wrongdoing.

Mr. Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset. He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty," a spokesperson said.

Emirati officials were not identified by name either, though details in the indictment link back to Sheikh Mohammed. The crown prince also found himself entangled in special counsel Robert Mueller's report on Russian interference in Americas 2016 election.

Prosecutors said Barrack also provided UAE government officials with sensitive information about developments within the Trump administration  including how senior U.S. officials felt about a yearslong boycott of Qatar conducted by the UAE and other Middle Eastern countries.

Worse, in his communications with Al Malik, the defendant framed his efforts to obtain an official position within the Administration as one that would enable him to further advance the interests of the UAE, rather than the interests of the United States, prosecutors wrote in a letter seeking his detention. They noted that he has citizenship in the U.S. and Lebanon, a country with no extradition treaty with the U.S.

When Barrack tried to get Trump to appoint him as either the U.S. ambassador to the UAE or as special envoy to the Middle East, he wrote al Malik 'that any such appointment would give ABU DHABI more power!" prosecutors wrote.

Barrack served as an informal adviser to Trumps campaign in 2016 before becoming the inaugural committee chair. Beginning in January 2017, he informally advised senior U.S. government officials on Middle East foreign policy, prosecutors said.

Bill Coffield, an attorney for al Malik  who was not in custody Tuesday  said his client had cooperated extensively with Mueller and that there was nothing new here. He said al Malik had simply tried to foster a good relationship between the country where he was born and the U.S., where he lived and worked for years, "both of which he loves.

Noting that Forbes estimated Barrack's net worth at $1 billion in March 2013 and his access to a private plane, prosecutors called him an extremely wealthy and powerful individual with substantial ties to Lebanon, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who poses a serious flight risk in a letter filed prior to his appearance.

They said the evidence against him was overwhelming and his risk of fleeing was higher because hed traveled extensively, taking more than 75 international trips in the last five years, and regularly used private jets.

Authorities cited several specific instances when Barrack or others allegedly sought to influence U.S. policies, noting that, in May 2016, Barrack inserted language praising the UAE into a campaign speech Trump delivered about U.S. energy policy and arranged for senior UAE officials to receive an advanced draft.

They said he also agreed to arrange meetings and phone calls between senior UAE officials and Trump, reviewed a PowerPoint presentation to be delivered to senior UAE officials on how to boost their influence in the U.S. with his help and repeatedly tried to conceal his conduct, even denying he'd ever been asked by al Malik to help the UAE.

Throughout 2016 and 2017, Barrack and Grimes received talking points and feedback from senior UAE officials in connection with Barrack's national press appearances and communicated on a dedicated cellular telephone which had a secure messaging application to facilitate communications with senior UAE officials, prosecutors said.

They said that after one appearance in which Barrack repeatedly praised the United Arab Emirates, Barrack emailed al Malik, saying: I nailed it ... for the home team, referring to the UAE.

Prosecutors also asked that Grimes be held without bail, citing the seriousness of the crimes, overwhelming evidence of guilt, his access to Barrack's fortune and significant ties to countries without extradition treaties with the United States.

In his statement, Lesko characterized the alleged conduct as nothing short of a betrayal of those officials in the United States, including the former President.

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Neumeister reported from New York. Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Eric Tucker and Michael Balsamo in Washington; Jim Mustian, Michael R. Sisak and Tom Hays in New York; Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles; James LaPorta in West Jefferson, North Carolina, and Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  The University of California admitted its largest and most diverse undergraduate class ever after receiving a record number of applications, officials announced.

The university systems nine undergraduate campuses accepted 132,353 prospective freshmen, an increase of 11% over last year, officials said in a statement Monday.

Admission of California freshmen reached an all-time high with 84,223 students and 36,462 of them, or 43%, are students from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Latinos were the largest group admitted for the second year in a row, making up 37%. Asian Americans made up 34%, white students 20% and Black students 5%. The rest were American Indians, Pacific Islanders or those who declined to state their race or ethnicity, officials said.

These remarkable numbers are a testament to the hard work and resiliency of students and their families across California, said President Michael V. Drake. I am particularly heartened by the social and economic diversity of those offered a place at UC. Fall will be an exciting time on our campuses.

Nearly 204,000 prospective freshmen applied for at least one UC school for fall 2021 during the application period that ended Dec. 4 for most campuses. That was an 18% increase over last year.

The increase in freshmen applications may be due in part because more were encouraged to apply after the end of UC's standardized testing requirement. Also, the university system temporarily suspended the letter-grade requirement for high school classes taken in winter, spring or summer terms of 2020 and the full 202021 academic year because of the pandemic.

UC hoped these changes would further support students who faced barriers during a challenging year marked by canceled classes and schools that switched to pass/fail grading, officials said.

The campuses also admitted 30,883 transfer applicants, an all-time record high. Of those students, 53% will be the first in their families to earn a four-year college degree, according to figures released by the university system.

UC campuses are working toward a goal of enrolling one new California resident transfer student for every two new in-state freshmen. As part of those efforts, some UC campuses reached out to community colleges in their area to seek out transfer students.
HOLMES BEACH, Fla. (AP)  A vacation rental building on Florida's Gulf Coast was deemed structurally unsafe, leading to the voluntary evacuation of tourists who were staying there, officials said.

Vacation rental companies sent the evacuated vacationers to other rental properties after the building was found to be unsafe on Friday, Holmes Beach Mayor Judy Titsworth told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
Donate Life Texas and LifeGift will be hosting the Lubbock 2nd Chance Run on Aug. 7.

The virtual run is sponsored by CareDx, UMC Health System, Fox Pest Control, Fitness Specialist and honorary sponsor First Progressive Baptist Church.
Houston loves to demolish.

The Shamrock Hotel. The West Mansion. Fitzgerald's. Houston's historic buildings more often return to dust than land on a preservation list.

IN PLAIN SIGHT: How to find the secret cat hidden in Houston's Williams Tower

And now, the spires atop the OQuinn Medical Tower in the Medical Center have joined the fray of architecture pulled down rather than repaired.

For years, the dual spires scraped the skies over the Texas Medical Center and flashed strobes at aircraft (mostly medical helicopters flying patients in and out).

One of those strobes recently failed and needed repairs. But instead of making the fix, the hospital decided to remove the spires altogether.

I wouldn't call them iconic, but the Texas Medical Center silhouette will sure look different.

Here's what Texas Children's Hospital spokesperson Lindsey Fox told KPRC-TV about why they were removed:

"Our engineering team discovered the hoist system designed for strobe repairs became compromised at some point over the last 30 years, causing the work to replace the aviation strobe to be much more complex and costly. Out of an abundance of caution, we commissioned a study of the hoist system and structural elements of the spire system. The results indicated it would be more cost-effective to remove the spires rather than implement a long-term repair of the system. Texas Childrens opted to remove the spires when factoring in the risk and cost of accessing the strobes 470 feet above ground level every five years.
In 2006, President George W. Bush signed the Secure Fence Act that led to the construction of 654 miles of fencing over nine years along the U.S.-Mexico border. President Donald Trump was even more ambitious, promising in campaign speeches that Mexico would pay for a wall along the 2,000-mile border.

Ultimately, Trumps administration erected about 80 miles of new barrier before he left office, including 21 at the Texas-Mexico border, paid for by the U.S. government. Now, Gov. Greg Abbott, a Trump supporter who has raised his rhetoric on immigration in recent years, has taken on the tall order of building a wall along the 1,200-mile Texas-Mexico border.

RELATED: Abbott wants to build a border wall. South Texas landowners are divided over whether they want it.

Currently, there are 111 miles of completed barrier at the Texas-Mexico border. Because border barriers are typically built some distance from the Rio Grande, which has numerous bends and curves, it's unclear how many miles of barrier would be required to cover the entire border.

Abbott has not detailed how many miles of barrier the state plans to build  or exactly where. But to make that promise a reality, the governors first big hurdle is money. The state has set aside at least $250 million for the effort, Abbott said, and then solicited donations from the public. As of July 14, people have donated $829,000.

That would fund between 7 and 62 miles of barrier, based on the per-mile costs of the contracts initiated by the Trump administration, according to a Texas Tribune analysis. The contracts, which were put on hold by the Biden administration, ranged from $4 million to $34 million per mile for wall construction.

Beyond the funding challenge, Abbott should expect yearslong legal challenges and opposition from private land owners, environmentalists and border residents that could delay or derail his plan for a wall, experts, lawyers and advocates say.

But the biggest hurdle he will face is the federal government, which is unlikely to give any federal land  or the private land the Trump administration seized  to Texas for wall construction. On his first day in office, President Biden issued an executive order calling the border wall a waste of money and saying that it was not a serious policy solution. His order also halted 173 miles of border construction previously approved by the Trump administration.

I do think Governor Abbott is serious in his intention to build a border wall. I don't think that they have taken the steps necessary to address the actual complexities involved, said David Donatti, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

For example, he added that a wall near the Rio Grande could aggravate flooding in border communities.

I certainly don't think that they've really thought through the destructive implications of what they're proposing, or the full extent of the consequences of constructing a border wall, he said.

Unlike the border in California, Arizona or New Mexico, which largely is federal, or in some cases tribal, land, much of the Texas-Mexico border is privately owned, with some owners holding title to their property since the 1760s. Texas does own some land, such as state parks and wildlife preserves.

Both the Bush and Trump administrations faced legal and logistical challenges with building a border barrier in Texas.

READ MORE: Texas border wall project receives over $450K in donations, a week after Gov. Abbott announced plans

According to a 2020 Government Accountability Office report, the Trump administration faced delays of 21 to 30 months to take over privately-owned land in South Texas. The report said comparable land acquisitions in other parts of the country took a year.

If Texas seeks to build on private land, its going to be a slow and painful process, said Cesar Cuauhtemoc Garcia Hernandez, an immigration attorney and law professor at Ohio State University.

Another hurdle Abbott will most likely face is federal regulations aimed at protecting the environment, water quality and historic sites. The Trump administration waived many of those rules to speed up the wall construction, despite pushback from environmentalists.

The Biden administration isnt likely to ignore those laws for Abbotts wall project, said Scott Nicol, a McAllen-based environmental activist and author of a 2018 ACLU report analyzing the impacts of a border wall.

Those are laws that protect Native American graves, there are laws that are meant to protect family farms, Nicol said. Abbott's going to have to comply with all those laws. Trump didn't. That right there is going to cause [Abbott] big headaches.

Abbotts office did not respond to emailed questions about how the state plans to overcome the obstacles of building a wall.

The problems along the border are only getting worse due to President Biden's inaction, Abbott said during a June press conference announcing the state-funded wall. Property is being destroyed, deadly drugs and illegal weapons are being smuggled into communities throughout the state, law enforcement is having to redirect their resources and county judges and mayors are facing skyrocketing expenses.

'I'M JUST STUNNED': Texas leaders react to Abbott's announcement about border wall

Abbott had declared a disaster along some border counties, which could allow him to waive some state and local regulations. But it would not extend to federal law, because federal law is supreme to the laws of the state of Texas, Donatti said.

Ronald Rael, an architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said logistically its possible for Texas to build a wall along some border lands, but it would come at the cost of destroying some of the most pristine and fragile habitats that we have in the United States.

Jenn Budd, a former Border Patrol agent, said that barriers or walls make it harder for migrants to cross the border, forcing them to seek help from smugglers connected to drug cartels whose job is to find ways around those barriers.

Our deterrence policies, our fencing, our walls, just make it a little bit harder to cross, but it doesn't stop it, she said. And more than anything, it funnels migrants into places where [cartels] have more control.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
A. Fill the pool and build pickleball courts. That makes sense next to the tennis courts already there.

B. Refurbish the pool and deed it back to the Beverly Hills Civic Association.

C. Do away with the pool and build a fountain to bring people and families to the park.

D. Fill the pool and construct a pavilion to enhance the community.

Vote

View Results
U.S. tourists are welcome back to Canada beginning August 9. If you have a criminal record, here is what you can do to enter Canada.

U.S. tourists to Canada: Do you have a criminal record? U.S. tourists are welcome back to Canada beginning August 9. If you have a criminal record, here is what you can do to enter Canada.

U.S. tourists to Canada: Do you have a criminal record? U.S. tourists are welcome back to Canada beginning August 9. If you have a criminal record, here is what you can do to enter Canada.

U.S. tourists to Canada: Do you have a criminal record? U.S. tourists are welcome back to Canada beginning August 9. If you have a criminal record, here is what you can do to enter Canada. Michael Schwartz Matt Hendler Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Fully-vaccinated tourists from the United States will be able to travel to Canada effective August 9, 2021.

The exemption will apply to U.S. citizens and permanent residents currently living in the U.S. They must have been completed their vaccination at least two weeks before coming to Canada. Canada will not require all visitors to take COVID tests on arrival and then a week later. However, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) may perform spot checks at ports of entry (POEs).

Canada first introduced the restrictions on American tourists on March 21, 2020. The long-awaited lifting of the ban on U.S. tourism will benefit millions of people on both sides of the border. In 2019, Canada welcomed 15 million tourists from the U.S. About 10 per cent of jobs in Canada are tied to the tourism sector.

If you are planning your long-awaited trip to Canada, you need to keep in mind that Canada has strict rules if you have a criminal record. It is important to understand these rules and what they mean so you are not denied entry. Criminal inadmissibility can prevent someone from coming to Canada, whether the stay is short term or long term, work or study, family or leisure.

Want a free legal consultation? Contact a criminality expert at the Law Firm of Campbell Cohen

I may be inadmissible to Canada, how can prepare myself in advance?

Offenses such as driving under the influence, possession of a controlled substance, and assault are common examples of criminal charges that pose a risk at the border. If you are criminally inadmissible to Canada, or think you may be, it is important to know that you still have options.

The Canadian government offers potential short- and long-term solutions to travellers with a criminal history. The first, a temporary fix, is called the Temporary Resident Permit (TRP). The second, a permanent solution, is known as Criminal Rehabilitation.

How to Overcome Inadmissibility to Canada Overcome inadmissibility by clicking here: https://www.canadavisa.com/immigration-inadmissibility.html?utm_source=YouTube&utm_medium=Video&utm_campaign=CrimV

Temporary Resident Permit (TRP)

A Temporary Resident Permit is designed for people who need temporary access into Canada. TRPs are typically granted to individuals who demonstrate compelling reasons for entry. That means they must show that the benefits of their visit to Canada outweigh any risks. Individuals who wish to travel to Canada for leisure purposes are typically advised to apply for criminal rehabilitation if they meet the requirements.

Criminal Rehabilitation

A criminal rehabilitation application is for permanent clearance of criminal history. To apply for rehabilitation, it must be at least five years since you completed your sentence(s). The term sentence here refers to any judicial result of your case which could include prison or probation time, payment of fines and community service or classes. Once an applicant is approved for Criminal Rehabilitation, they no longer require a Temporary Resident Permit.

If it has been less than five years since you finished your sentence, you are not eligible to apply for criminal rehabilitation. But, you may be eligible for a TRP.

Legal Opinion Letter

Legal advice can be beneficial to you even if you have not yet been convicted of a crime. Anyone who has been charged with an offence but has not yet been convicted can take steps to avoid becoming inadmissible to Canada. If you have been charged with an offence in another country, you may want to have a legal opinion letter prepared by a Canadian immigration lawyer.

This is a report with details concerning your criminal charge, the lawyers legal conclusions and explanation as to how a potential sentence will impact your ability to enter Canada. It can be a helpful tool in deciding how to plead your case.

Different solutions are available

Now that the border is opening, travellers with a criminal past who wish to travel to Canada should prepare themselves in advance of a trip. The rules are strict, but there are different solutions available. What is best will depend on each persons case, history, and reason for entering Canada.

Want a free legal consultation? Contact a criminality expert at the Law Firm of Campbell Cohen

 CIC News All Rights Reserved. Discover your Canadian immigration options at CanadaVisa.com.
RapidScale is a managed cloud services and solutions provider that stresses technical acumen, significant deployment flexibility, and a relentless focus on customer satisfaction.

A Cox Business company, RapidScale serves clients of all kinds, from small businesses to large, globally distributed enterprises. This includes customers in many industries, among them automotive, education, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, insurance, legal, logistics, manufacturing, non-profit, real estate, retail, and software.

Based in Raleigh, NC RapidScale operates cloud infrastructure in six Tier-3 global colocation environments in California, Illinois, Texas, Virginia, the Netherlands, and Hong Kong.

We recently caught up with Duane Barnes, general manager of RapidScale, and Robert Bergman, cloud services strategist, to learn more about RapidScales approach to cloud services, its focus on customer satisfaction, the dramatic increase in demand for Desktop as a Service (DaaS) solutions, and its work with VMware.

We offer a full portfolio of advanced managed cloud services, but what really sets us apart from others is our cloud expertise in application delivery, our focus on security and compliance, and our commitment to the people side of technology, said Barnes. Our team understands IT challenges and strives to help businesses gain the benefits of the cloud without the burden of having to learn the technology.

The company offers services that are a one-stop shop that IT leaders can turn to for end-to-end solutions with simplified pricing and a high-touch support team thats always there to support IT administrators and frontline users.

Most importantly, we build everything around a relentless effort to maintain the industrys leading customer satisfaction, Barnes adds.

This keen focus on customer service and support is reflected in Rapidscales enviable customer satisfaction scores. At the conclusion of every support ticket, customers are asked to rate their experience with the company on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best. The industry average is 3.6. Rapidscales latest customer satisfaction score in March of 2021 was 4.78.

Were very flexible for our customers, says Bergman. Some want to completely outsource the IT function to us, others want to co-manage it with us, and some simply want to take advantage of our advanced network and the ability we give them to manage and maintain the entire breadth of services we offer through a single pane of glass. Importantly, we actively solve any challenges users face on behalf of the IT departments, who entrust their mission-critical IT functions, data, and applications to us.

This high-touch approach applies to all of RapidScales solutions. This includes its core offerings of Infrastructure as a Service, Backup as a Service, Disaster Recovery as a Service, Cloud Security, SD-WAN, Microsoft 365, Identity as a Service, and Managed Device-as-a-Service.

Not surprisingly, with more people working remotely, this customer-focused approach also applies to RapidScales extensive DaaS solution, which is experiencing greater demand than ever before. The company has offered DaaS since 2008.

Barnes notes that most organizations have limited IT resources, and all are being asked to operate under additional complexity. This includes supporting a distributed workforce that is becoming increasingly mobile while also delivering critical applications, ensuring that data is secure, extending the life of older devices, and avoiding any disruptions that impact users productivity.

On top of all that, IT is being consistently asked to do all of this with less budget, Barnes says. They are also trying to offer their users the most modern operating system experience on the latest hardware, which is easier to achieve with DaaS than it is to deal with lengthy traditional hardware refresh cycles. The cloud offers the ability to address most, if not all, of these concerns but moving there isnt without its challenges. This includes the reality that many employees are now remote and not in the office, which creates a lot of complexities not only for users, but also for service providers that arent familiar with offering DaaS and may not know where the challenges typically lie.

RapidScales DaaS features VMwares Horizon platform, which is a robust multi-tenant environment that utilizes VMware Dynamic Environment Manager (DEM) for managing user profiles and NSX Enterprise for integration across vCenters and networks. Virtual desktop options include both persistent and non-persistent desktops, economical session-based hosts, and desktops with advanced graphics (GPU) capability.

We use VMwares Horizon platform because it is highly scalable and secure, and offers us the ability to deliver a virtual desktop experience for our customers that is very comparable to what they get with a physical workstation, adds Barnes. Being VMware Cloud Verified also reinforces our value proposition as a strong and knowledgeable partner in the VMware ecosystem and as an asset to organizations seeking to offload part or all of their IT responsibilities to the cloud  all without having to worry that their partner cant handle the responsibilities involved. With VMwares stamp of approval they know every solution will be effective and can be trusted.

Learn more about RapidScale and its partnership with VMware here.
Government agencies fully understand that migrating to the cloud can be challenging. As with many commercial businesses, agency IT leaders also have to manage process disruptions, unexpected costs, integration issues, security and compliance requirements, and change management realities.

As cloud technology gains wider acceptance as part of the federal Cloud Smart strategy, theres a clear demand for expertise and capability to help agencies more easily make the move with security, costs, and performance in mind.

Oracle and VMware recently teamed on a FedRAMP High, DISA Impact Level 5 certified solution that can help government now by providing a full-fidelity VMware experience. A government agencys on-premises VMware environment may be migrated to the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution without any changes and with immediate productivity on a cloud platform. The two companies discussed their advances and alliance during a recent technology panel webinar.

During the discussion, Robert Ames, Senior Director, National Technology Strategy at VMware, and Janice Haith, Strategic Client Executive for Oracle Public Sector and former CIO for the U.S. Navy, said the new Oracle Cloud VMware Solution eases cloud transition with security, predictability and control.

Oracles Mark Johnson hosts a panel of IT strategists. They discuss how Oracle Cloud VMware Solution delivers security, predictability and control for operationally critical, VMware-based applications operating in Oracle Cloud.

Featuring:

Janice Haith, Oracle former CIO, US Navy

Craig Bowman, VMware, Senior Director, Federal Sales

Robert Ames, VMware, Senior Director, National Technology Strategy

Mission-Ready Security

Cyber security is top of mind for every agency today. Sophisticated ransomware attacks and others targeting critical IT infrastructure are forcing industry and government to work together on innovative, proactive approaches. Security is an important benefit of the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, noted Craig Bowman, Senior Director, Federal Sales at VMware. For a long time, security and network teams have been separate, so we build infrastructure and then we expect security teams to go secure that infrastructure, said Bowman. The reality is that the future for networking will be mostly virtualized. We will be establishing software-defined routers, switches, [and] servers. Everything will be able to scale up and scale down based on the needs of the mission. And what that means is that were going to have to virtualize all security. When we talk about zero-trust were talking about being able to deploy security in virtual environments in real time, to ensure that any time we change the network that security goes with it.

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution incorporates security-first design architecture with full tenant isolationthe physical machines are not shared with other tenants, or with Oracle administrators. There are no managed service security implications to consider; access is private and entirely under customer control. Additionally, because of the architecture of Oracle Cloud VMware Solution, all on premises security policies in the VMware environment are transposed, 1-to-1 into the cloud. With Oracle security-first architecture, VMware hardened security policies, FedRAMP High and DISA Impact Level 5, The Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is an ideal platform for government operations.

Predictable Costs and Performance

The panelists also pointed to predictability of costs and application system performance. Having a clear understanding of the cost and being able to predict future expenses helps agencies establish budgets over several years and there are no surprises when service bills come in, Haith said. It allows them to plan; they know where they can shift money that they saved from leases, building costs and infrastructure to other missions and operations, she said. This is a solution that the workforce can embrace predictably as there are no skills-retraining required. Migration from VMware on-prem to off-prem, into Oracle Cloud VMware Solution.

Budgets and costs matter. The Oracle Cloud VMware Solution is designed to provide cost transparency and predictability for customers, Ames said. Senior government leaders sometimes have a difficult time predicting how much a given technology platform is going to cost in the future, he said, and this solution addresses the challenge. For example, an organization might move workloads from one environment to another, whether its from on-premises to a cloud or from one cloud service to another and discover the move affected latency and performance. Then they move again to address the issue. That can impact cost by increasing fees from the cloud providerssomething that the organization didnt count on when starting out, according to Bowman. Bowman added, when customers move payloads into a cloud and realized latencies and then needed to move it again. When they moved it, they were charged with ingress and egress fees. Customers didnt expect performance issues.

Oracle solution delivers predictable costs and performance.

According to the panelists, Oracles unique, bare-metal cloud architecture delivers optimal performance for all applications operating in Oracle Cloud VMware Solution. The solution scales for missions with heavy compute, massive data and high-transaction requirements. Bare metal brings greater predictability of performance, [so] the entire stack is going to be much more predictable in its performance and theres a better sense of how things are going to scale, Ames said. It provides a foundation to run VMware without contention with server agents and hypervisors running on the cloud infrastructure, said Bowman.

Control and Operational Cadence

The Oracle Cloud VMware solution allows organizations to create and manage VMware software defined data centers (SDDCs) in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. The customer fully manages managed, native VMware-based cloud environment, it features full control, using familiar VMware tools, so agencies can move or extend VMware-based workloads to the cloud without having to redesign applications or retool operations. The platform provides full access to the features of a VMware software defined data center and offers high availability because all VMware components are distributed across different fault domains within the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) regions. OCI provides workflows that simplify SDDC creation and networking configuration. SDDCs are configured with VLANs, which support applications that need high performance layer 2 networking to run in the public cloud.

Another plus is that the migration of on premises VMware workloads to an Oracle Cloud VMware Solution can be seamless because the SDDC network design may be transposed, as is, to Oracle Cloud VMware Solution without any network configuration changes. Its can be configured to communicate with other OCI resources as well, such as compute instances, database systems, and autonomous databases. Possible use cases for the platform include migrating VMware workloads to the cloud while maintaining a single, integrated view to manage a cloud or hybrid environment; operating a hybrid cloud with native VMware tools; and business continuity and disaster recovery, with the platform adding resiliency by bridging an agencys existing infrastructure to an alternate site on Oracle Cloud.

Deployment Made Easy

One of the more appealing aspects of the solution for any agency is the ease with which it can be deployed in existing virtual environments. In simple terms, its like a cut and paste for the data center, said Ames. You can take your on-premise VMware environment and basically cut and paste it into the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution. This will greatly accelerate moves to the cloud for agencies. Oracles Haith concurs. The idea of a cut-and-paste environment is phenomenal for government, she said. It would allow government to move to the cloud faster, more smoothly, and at a lower cost, she said. Perhaps even more importantly, Haith notes, is that agencies can move to the cloud without worrying about their operations failing.. For agencies ready to begin deploying this solution, Haith suggested that agency IT departments talk with Oracle and VMware first. Experts will offer a clear plan and articulate how it best fits into the agencys strategy. Oracle Cloud VMware solution is a unique example of how two technology giants can collaborate on a product that has the potential to deliver significant business benefits in todays fast changing environment.

For more information, visit: www.oracle.com/vmware and www.vmware.com/go/federal-govt.
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BERLIN (AP)  German officials are defending their preparations for flooding in the face of the raging torrents that caught many people by surprise and left over 190 people dead in Western Europe, but they concede that they will need to learn lessons from the disaster.

Efforts to find any more victims and clean up the mess left behind by the floods across a swath of western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands continued on Monday as floodwaters receded. So far, 117 people have been confirmed dead in the worst-affected German region, Rhineland-Palatinate; 46 in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia; and at least one in Bavaria, parts of which saw heavy rain and flooding over the weekend. At least 31 people died in Belgium.

The downpours that led to usually small rivers swelling at vast speed in the middle of last week had been forecast, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didnt appear to have found their way to many people on the ground _ often in the middle of the night.

As soon as we have provided the immediate aid that stands at the forefront now, we will have to look at whether there were things that didnt go well, whether there were things that went wrong, and then they have to be corrected, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told the Bild newspaper. That isnt about finger-pointing  its about improvements for the future.

The head of Germanys civil protection agency said that the countrys weather service had forecast relatively well and that the country was well-prepared for flooding on its major rivers.

But, Armin Schuster told ZDF television late Sunday, half an hour before, it is often not possible to say what place will be hit with what quantity of water. He said that 150 warning notices had been sent out via apps and media.

He said he couldnt yet say where sirens sounded and where they didnt  we will have to investigate that.

Officials in Germanys Rhineland-Palatinate state said they were well-prepared for flooding and municipalities had been alerted and acted.

But the states interior minister, Roger Lewentz, said after visiting the hard-hit village of Schuld with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday that we of course had the problem that the technical infrastructure  electricity and so on  was destroyed in one go.

Local authorities tried very quickly to react, he said. But this was an explosion of the water in moments.  You can have the very best preparations and warning situations (but) if warning equipment is destroyed and carried away with buildings, then that is a very difficult situation. Cellphone networks also were knocked out by the flooding.

There were already broader questions about Germanys emergency warning system after a nationwide test last September, the first in 30 years, largely failed. Sirens didnt sound in many places, or had been removed after the end of the Cold War, and push alerts from the national warning app arrived late or not all.

Schuster, the head of the civil protection agency, noted that a program to reform civil protection was launched earlier this year, including a drive to encourage local authorities to install more sirens. Germany doesnt have a text messaging system for disaster warnings, but Schuster told Deutschlandfunk radio it is exploring the possibility.

As local communities contemplate the huge task of rebuilding smashed homes and infrastructure such as the water system, Chancellor Angela Merkels Cabinet is set to draw up a package of immediate and medium-term financial aid on Wednesday.

Asked on Sunday whether there should be obligatory insurance for people living in high risk areas, Merkel sounded skeptical, arguing that it could overload the economic capacity of companies and individuals. Rhineland-Palatinates governor, Malu Dreyer, favors the idea.

Obligatory insurance could lead to very high premiums and they arent affordable, Merkel said.

About the photo: Water stands in the town centre in Bad Muenstereifel, western Germany, Sunday, July 18, 2021. Heavy rains caused mudslides and flooding in the western part of Germany. Multiple have died and are missing as severe flooding in Germany and Belgium turned streams and streets into raging, debris-filled torrents that swept away cars and toppled houses. (Oliver Berg/dpa via AP)

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
ATLANTA (AP)  Suspended Georgia Insurance Commissioner Jim Beck improperly took money from the private insurer he led and used it to buy campaign signs when the Republican ran for office in 2018, a witness testified Friday in Becks trial.

The testimony came as federal prosecutors continue to build their case that Beck embezzled from the Georgia Underwriting Association, an insurer Beck managed before he took office as the states top insurance regulator in 2019.

Beck is accused of improperly diverting more than $2 million from GUA, an insurer of last resort that covers property owners unable to buy insurance on the regular market. He is on trial after he was indicted in 2019, months after taking office, on charges of mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and filing false tax returns. No one else has been indicted.

Georgia Underwriting Association Assistant Plan Manager Josh Mosley testified Friday that Beck directed him to use Georgia Arson Control program funds to pay a $4,271 invoice for 1,500 signs for Becks insurance commissioner campaign. Those signs were delivered to Becks Carrollton home. Georgia Arson Control offers rewards to people who report arson and provides grants to fire investigators. Its associated with GUA.

Mosley said that after investigators began circling, Beck asked him to call the sign company representative and get her to remember that she donated the signs to his campaign as an in-kind donation.

She said she did not remember, Mosley testified. She did not agree.

Earlier testimony alleged Beck siphoned off other money by providing invoices to GUA contractors who in turn billed GUA and sent money back to Beck or entities he controlled. WAGA-TV reports Matthew Barfield, a cousin of Beck, testified Wednesday and Thursday that he was paid 10% of Green Technologys fees to create invoices for the company. He said at times he would meet Beck at a McDonalds or other locations to hand over checks and bank bags full of cash to Beck.

Green Technology Services was supposed to be gathering data to help underwriters determine the risks of properties it insured, but Barfield testified he did no such work. Green Technology was also supposed to be backed by a wealthy individual who was providing reinsurance to GUA, but Barfield said he wasnt that person and that no one else was associated with the company.

Despite the testimony, Barfield told the television station in an interview after court that he wasnt suspicious.

Jims never gave me any reason to not trust him and I never thought anything else about it, Barfield said.

Carrollton radio station owner Steve Gradick testified Thursday that he created a company called Paperless Solutions and billed GUA for services that Beck told others included chasing down policyholder emails. Gradick said he passed the money to a bank account for the Georgia Christian Coalition, which Beck headed, after Beck told him GUA directors wanted to revitalize the political group. But prosecutors say that Beck used the money from that account for his own purposes.

Earlier testimony from Steve and Sonya McKaig alleged that Beck directed them to include invoices for tens of thousands of dollars per month from Green Technology in the invoices that the husband and wife sent to GUA for services they provided. Sonya McKaig testified that Beck directed her to communicate with him through a personal email, cut checks for Green Technology and send them back to Beck in an envelope marked personal and confidential.

Mosley said that after Beck left, GUA didnt pay the questionable vendors any more.

The trial continues next week. Becks defense has yet to present its case. Lawyers argued Tuesday as the trial opened that Beck hadnt hurt the association but instead turned it from losses to profits. They argue that Beck was an innovator and that even if his methods were unconventional, theres no proof he meant to hurt the association. They also suggested Beck or someone associated with him provided valuable data, even if witnesses were unaware.

Mosley agreed during cross-examination Friday that third-party data about properties could be expensive.

Copyright 2021 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The anti-Zionist activist Roger Waters, who also doubles up as the bassist of veteran rockers Pink Floyd, gave a ringing endorsement last week to one of the candidates in the Chilean presidential election, which takes place later this year on Nov. 21.

Waters preferred candidate, Daniel Jadue, is both a Communist Party representative and a member of the 300,000-strong Palestinian community in Chile, the largest Palestinian Arab diaspora outside of the Middle East. With those credentials, its no wonder that Waters  a fanatical advocate of the movement to boycott the Jewish state  praised Jadue as the counterweight to the Pinochet factions that remain in Chile, in that great and beautiful country.  I have no doubt that he is a real good man and we need him.

It is true that the former dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, still has his supporters in Chile. Pinochet achieved notoriety in September 1973, when he led a right-wing coup against the government of President Salvador Allende  a left-wing coalition led by an avowed Marxist, but one that was democratically elected all the same. For this reason, the intimate association between communism and brutal authoritarianism that remains painfully clear today in China, Cuba and Venezuela is less obvious in the Chilean context.

As he rides a populist wave that has propelled him to the position of leading candidate in the opinion polls, the 54-year-old Jadue is comfortably placed to tout his democratic credentials, despite his Communist Party sympathies. All this is terrible news for Jewish citizens of Chile  and there are only 20,000 of them  who look at Jadues long record of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist statements and wonder what the immediate future has in store.

In common with the rest of the world, antisemitism has risen precipitously in Chile during the last decade; Jadues potential election would take it to another level, which is perhaps why a bipartisan group of U.S. congressional representatives wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week to point out that a systematic campaign of delegitimization against Israel in the country was rapidly crossing the line into antisemitism.

If Jadue was a Jew with extensive family in Israel, his candidacy would probably be imperiled by a torrent of negative campaigning pushing the theme of dual loyalty. Which comes first? Chile or Zionism? One might imagine his adversaries asking with a hint of delight.

But as a Palestinian who celebrates his Arab heritage and is frequently seen in public with a keffiyeh wrapped around his shoulders, Jadue can rest assured that these same critics of supposed Jewish dual loyalties would never caricature him as a Palestine-Firster or accuse him of placing the Palestinian cause above the national interests of Chile. In addition, since he is hardly in a position to offer Hamas or any other Palestinian terrorist group military support, his solidarity with a nation located 8,000 miles from the Chilean landmass will largely be political, expressed through rhetoric and symbols  streets named after Palestinian terrorists, for example  and legislative as well, conceivably through the adoption of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign by Chiles parliament or by different municipalities with government encouragement.

This prospective state of affairs would amount to another example of how government policies of anti-Zionism are really a mask for the antisemitic persecution of local Jewish communities. We witnessed precisely this phenomenon in the Soviet Union and in several of its satellite republics in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. We witnessed it as well in the Arab world, particularly after Israels creation in 1948, when Jewish communities were ethnically cleansed wholesale from countries like Egypt and Iraq. Why should Jadue not follow the same path in Chile? After all, his personal predilections already lean in that direction, as evidenced by the revelation last month of Jadues high school yearbook from 1983. The entry about him remarked affectionately on the would-be presidents desire to cleanse the city of Jews and suggested that a suitable gift would be a Jew for to him to use as target practice.

There is a strong chance that a Jadue-led experiment in socialism in Chile will fail, as it did in Brazil, where the Workers Party led by the much-heralded labor organizer Luis Lula Ignacio da Silva collapsed amid systemic corruption and abuse, or as it is doing in Cuba now, where thousands of protesters have taken to the streets against the Communist Partys political repression and economic mismanagement. Should that transpire, then Jadue might decide 

following the same approach of his beloved, lamented Soviet Union  that selecting Jews for target practice by blaming them and the global forces arrayed behind them for the countrys woes is a strategy that will yield at least short-term benefits.

There is very little that outsiders can do to still the rise of Jadue. Should the polls be correct and he wins in November, he will do his level best to portray himself as the reincarnation of Salvador Allende, a principled socialist facing ejection from office by the ever-present machinations of the CIA. As unlikely as this outcome is, it is a narrative that will appeal to many Chilean voters for historical reasons. The bigger question between now and November is whether Chileans will revisit the successive failures of the far left in Latin America  where the promise of massive wealth redistribution invariably gives way to corrupt one-party rule that immiserates the masses just as the old regime did  and decide that Jadue is not for them, after all.

Ben Cohen is a New York City-based journalist and author who writes a weekly column on Jewish and international affairs for JNS.
The side effects impact people differently. Some experience none, some have slight flu-like symptoms that last for a day or two. Most people have a sore arm after both shots and often the side effects show up after the second dose. The side effects are usually minor and go away in a couple of days.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20) - The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) has issued a freeze order against the properties, funds and other accounts of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) after its designation as a terrorist organization by the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC).

In a notice, the ATC issued a resolution directing the issuance of Sanctions Freeze Order to take effect immediately against the National Democratic Front (NDF), also known as the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), pursuant to its designation as terrorist by the Anti-Terrorism Council (ATC) Resolution No. 21 (2021) dated 23 June 2021, and the freezing without delay of the following property or funds, including related accounts.

The ATC earlier referred to the NDFP as an integral and inseparable part of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its military arm, the New Peoples Army. Both the CPP and NPA were likewise tagged as terrorist organizations in December last year.

The freeze order also covers properties or funds not limited to those that are directly related or can be tied to a particular terrorist act, plot, or threat.

The AMLC will also go after individuals, corporations, and instrumentalities which make available any property or funds, or financial services, or other related services to the NDF, also known as the NDFP.

The notice read that those who were identified shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Terrorism Financing Prevention and Suppression (TFPSA) Act of 2012.

All persons, organizations, associations or groups of persons whose property or funds are frozen, including related accounts are hereby informed that they may avail of the remedies under Republic Act No. 11479, otherwise known as Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020, and its Implementing Rules and Regulations and under the TFPSA and its Implementing Rules and Regulations, read the notice.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  Members of the economic team did not take up Congress' proposed stimulus package for pandemic response as it reviewed economic targets on Monday.

"The DBCC (Development Budget Coordination Committee) did not discuss the need for Bayanihan 3," Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado told CNN Philippines.

"We are focused on the preparation of the Fiscal Year 2022 proposed national budget and there is no directive from OP (Office of the President) re: Bayanihan 3," he added.

Avisado earlier said that the DBCC will tackle House Bill 9411 or the Bayanihan to Arise as One Act, together with the amount of savings realized by agencies from their respective 2020 regular budgets. "Whatever savings generated will be used for COVID 19 response," he added, noting that the savings tally is yet to be finalized later this week.

President Rodrigo Duterte ordered agencies in May to declare savings from last year's allotments to fund more pandemic response measures. The state has spent 665.72 billion on previous interventions.

Worth over 400 billion, the so-called Bayanihan 3 bill will give every Filipino 2,000 in aid if passed into law. Families and workers under lockdown will get up to 10,000 each.

The House of Representatives approved the measure in June, while the Senate will pick up discussions when it resumes sessions next week.

On Monday, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said Malacanang first needs to check if funds are available before supporting the bill's passage.

READ: Realign 2021 budget to fund Bayanihan 3 - Drilon

With the fate of new aid uncertain, Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) president emeritus George Barcelon said authorities may have to make do with what they have and use unspent funds under Bayanihan 2 to provide additional support to struggling sectors.

Recovery seen intact

Even without big-ticket boosts or additional cash aid from Bayanihan 3, the DBCC said the local economy can bounce back to the pre-pandemic growth pace.

Economic managers on Monday kept the growth goal at 6-7% this year, following a 9.6% crash in 2020.

"The relaxation of quarantine restrictions in high-risk areas must be complemented with an accelerated vaccination roll-out, in order to allow more businesses to operate and consumers to participate in socioeconomic activities," the Cabinet officials said in a joint statement.

State revenues are seen to reach 2.88 trillion this year against 4.74 trillion in expenses, leaving a hefty budget gap of some 1.8 trillion, or 9.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP).

Export of goods will support the rebound, which the economic team said will likely grow by 10%, along with a 7% increase in service exports as travel and outsourcing sectors recover.

The recovery is seen fueled by additional infrastructure spending come 2022 at 1.29 trillion, when growth will surge to 7-9%. The infrastructure budget will remain above 1 trillion yearly until 2024 to support further growth ranging from 6-7%, the DBCC added.

However, the Asian Development Bank said this may not be doable.

In its Asian Development Outlook Supplement, growth was estimated at just 4.5% this year and 5.5% in 2022 -- both below government forecasts.

ADB said sustained state spending on infrastructure and social assistance programs has been "supporting" recovery together with the remittance-fueled pickup in household spending. However, it noted that private investment remained sluggish despite a gradual increase in factory output.

Delta variant threat

For now, the biggest concern of authorities would be how to prevent a COVID-19 surge due to the more virulent Delta coronavirus variant as more infections are reported in the country.

RELATED: DTI chief: Economic growth to start in Q2 if no surge in Delta variant

"The Delta variant is a risk that can be managed by adhering to strict health protocols so that its impact on the economy can be contained. Accelerating our vaccination program will help keep our growth targets," Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Karl Kendrick Chua also said.

The economic team noted that "intensified" implementation of the COVID-19 prevent, detect, isolate, treat, and recover strategy plus improved health system capacity would prevent community transmissions of the Delta variant.

PCCI's Barcelon echoed fears of spikes and lockdowns just when businesses are getting back on their feet.

"There seems to be a sense of more optimism, that's picking up. Just from the traffic alone, if that is a reflection of the bullishness in the economy, we can say that there's bit more upside," Barcelon said.

"Sa tingin ko mag-iingat ang gobyerno natin kasi tulad ng ibang mga bansa katulad ng Indonesia, sumipa ang infection nila [I think our government will turn cautious because like Indonesia, they saw a surge in cases]," he added. "It's a balancing between how we roll out the bakuna [vaccine], the mass inoculation, that can really make its impact felt."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, July 20)  The active Delta COVID-19 variant case from Ginoog had no travel history, according to a health official from Misamis Oriental.

"Yung na-identify na Delta variant, has no history of travel kasi nasa bahay lang sila. Bale in-house sila, naging nanny siya sa baby. So wala din siyang bakuna. She is a 48-year-old (and) married. Wala siyang napuntahang ibang lugar," Gingoog City Assistant City Health Officer Dr. Agnes Centino told CNN Philippines on Tuesday.

[Translation: The identified Delta variant has no history of travel because they were just at home. They were in-house, a nanny to the baby. She was also not vaccinated. She is 48 years old and married. She has not gone to any other place.]

Centino said the patient worked in a household that included a baby and a 64-year-old grandmother.

She added that in the household, it was the baby's mother  the person authorized to go out of the house  who first exhibited COVID-19 symptoms and was hospitalized for three days.

Other members of the household tested positive and were isolated, but were asymptomatic.

"After yung random sampling, nakita yung nanny na naging Delta variant siya... Tapos yung husband and the 64-year-old mother nila, ay naging negative na. As of today, isolated pa rin sila, under observation and monitoring. Pero lahat sila asymptomatic at the start," Centino said.

[Translation: After the random sampling, the nanny was discovered to have the Delta variant... The husband and their 64-year-old mother are now negative. They are still isolated, under observation and monitoring. But they were all asymptomatic at the start.]

As the nanny's Delta variant diagnosis was discovered through random sampling, Centino said they could not determine if her other contacts had the same variant.

"Pero, I assume, dahil sa isang bahay lang sila, baka Delta din sila. Pero as of today, dahil umabot na sila ng 28 days isolation, wala naman silang sintomas. At saka yung pagswab namin sa kanila, yung apat sa kanila lang ang may positibong result na hindi na masyadong alarming yung value nila," she added.

[Translation: But I assume, because they lived in the same house, they could be Delta as well. But as of today, because they have reached 28 days of isolation, they have no symptoms. And the swabbing we did, only four had positive results and their values are not too alarming.]

Earlier, the Department of Health said there were eight active Delta cases: one in Manila, four in Cagayan de Oro, one in Misamis Oriental, and two are returning overseas Filipino workers.

Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire clarified that the active Delta variant cases cannot be considered a local transmission just yet.

"These local cases that we have right now are kind of sporadic where they are in different areas and different timelines for getting infected," she told CNN Philippines' The Source.
The Coastal Point is a local newspaper published each Friday and distributed in the Bethany Beach, South Bethany, Fenwick Island, Ocean View, Millville, Dagsboro, Frankford, Selbyville, Millsboro, Long Neck and Georgetown, Delaware areas.
A partnership between the Delaware Division of Public Health, Department of Education and testing company Quidel will offer rapid antigen COVID-19 testing to students and staff in the state's schools this fall, in an effort to reduce transmission of the virus.
During its July meeting, Penn States Board of Trustees debated and passed an agenda item which changed its policy surrounding the process of rescission of university honors.

The policy gave the President of Penn State discretion on rescinding awards or honors given by the university, a process previously debated by the full Board of Trustees. The granting of these same awards, though, will still be done through a review and vote by the Board of Trustees.

Though no specific reversal of honors was discussed, the policy met some opposition among trustees, who sought to retain the boards traditional role in the process. Ultimately, after brief debate, the policy passed with a vote of 22-9.

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The Penn State Latino, Asian Pacific Islander Desi American and Black Caucuses released a statement via Instagram that was sent to Penn State administration Monday addressing concerns about the university's rapid removal of a Fidel Castro quote from the Paul Robeson Cultural Center, which, according to the caucuses, occurred without their consultation.

The removal of the quote was prompted by a letter penned by representatives from Penn State College Republicans, National Americans for Freedom and Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans on Friday.

The quote in question read:

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science and wellbeing  that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world  is what I wish for all."

Penn State administration gave word of the quotes removal on Saturday, and on Monday, the PRCC confirmed the removal and said it "must avoid actions that create an unwelcoming atmosphere" for students and community members.

According to the caucuses, the university administration spent minimal time and thought on their evaluation of a quote, which sets a precedent of priority for non-POC organizations and their priorities.

The decision to remove an installation of the PRCC at the request of organizations that have little stake in the lives of the students who call the PRCC their home, and the decision for administration to move forward with the decision without public discourse on the topic demonstrates the lack of voice that communities of color have at Penn State even in spaces that we deem our own, the caucuses said in the statement.

The caucuses said minorities and people of color have been fighting an uphill battle for progress, and the universitys rapid decision demonstrates a double standard for students of color.

According to the statement, the caucuses are not pushing for the quotes reinstatement.

Rather, according to the statement, the caucuses demand a public apology and explanation as to why the students and staff who made the PRCC their home and a safe space on campus were not consulted on a decision driven largely by others who have no history with the PRCC.

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Penn State released a statement Monday on the recent nationwide decision to block new application approvals for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

On July 16, a federal judge issued this ruling that will close applications but not affect the current status of DACA recipients, according to a release.

"While the courts order does not now affect current DACA recipients, it nonetheless leaves hundreds of thousands of young people in limbo, uncertain of their futures, Penn State President Eric Barron said. My administration stands in support of efforts to find a legislative solution that will provide a more certain path forward, free of discrimination and one that restores certainty for the individuals impacted.

Penn State's Office of Government and Community Relations is seeking from Congress a permanent solution for citizenship for children currently living in the United States with the "Dreamer" program, according to the release.

Penn State leaders have petitioned Congress to address DACA, the release said, however, "Congress is responsible for finding a permanent legislative solution" for the program.

Penn State said it will continue to monitor this situation closely and provide resources for students through its Counseling and Psychological Services. The Center for Immigrants Rights Clinic within Penn State Law also offers resources for students impacted, according to the release.

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Following the approval of the 2021-22 operating budget from the Penn State Board of Trustees during a July 15 meeting, both in-state and out-of-state students will experience a raise to their tuition rates.

The budget, which will take effect this fall, includes a 2.5% tuition increase for undergraduate Pennsylvania residents and a 2.75% increase for all non-Pennsylvania residents and graduate students.

Tuition rates have remained frozen for three consecutive years under the boards supervision.

Penn State President Eric Barron said in a release the modest rising rates were necessary to ensure the universitys promise to deliver the world-class academic and student experiences that make Penn State so special.

Freshman and State College local Jacqueline Gordon said while she has not heard much about the tuition hike, she said she believes increasing the rates is a bad idea. Gordon (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said she questions where the additional money will be diverted to and how it will impact students going forward.

Why are they increasing tuition prices, and where is that extra money going toward? Gordon said. Is it going to go toward technology for our education, or is it going to go toward something pointless?

Reggie Duran, an in-state student, said he believes that while the university is focused on trying to make money, it will hurt students who are not able to afford an increased tuition rate.

Duran (freshman-criminology) said he believes the decision by the board came as a result of the pandemic and losses of revenue the university may have faced in the past year. He said he believes the decision may have to be reevaluated if complaints begin to pile up.

While the rising tuition rate will not affect her, recent 2021 psychology graduate Nicole Kassakatis said she understands why current students would be upset over the decision.

I assume this has something to do with the pandemic and financial losses the university took, Kassakatis said. I know a lot of people are upset about it.

Kassakatis said she believes the tuition rate increase will not be a major deterrent for most current students who are further along in their academic careers but may cause more hesitation from those who will be choosing to apply to and attend Penn State in the future.

With her final semester approaching, Molly Ehrig will face a raised tuition rate for her final year at University Park. Ehrig (senior-biology) said having to face paying more during her senior year is an experience that sucks.

Surprised that tuition rates will be rising now, Ehrig said she believes the current rates are already steep for some families and the raised prices may completely diminish peoples ability to attend Penn State.

It might be discouraging for some students, Ehrig said. If [current tuition rates] are already a stretch for them it might be really discouraging for them  I would hate if this stopped anyone from coming here, from getting the education they deserved.

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If your business isnt investing in trying to reach the top of local search results, you should spend time thinking about how to do so, as voice-based search queries deliver locally-based results.

Voice assistants are maturing

Ten years since Siri arrived, the voice assistant market is maturing and voice search is beginning to proliferate across multiple devices. Products from Amazon, Google, and Apple all deliver voice assistants and already one in four US adults owns a smart speaker. Juniper Research predicts that voice-based ad revenue will reach $19 billion by 2022, but the best ads are always native search results.

John Stine, the executive director Open Voice Network, explains: Voice will soon be a primary way consumers connect to the digital world and a primary way digital marketers will connect with actual consumers. Its time to get ready.

Vixen Labs and the Open Voice Network spoke with 6,000 people in the US, UK, and Germany to figure out how they use their voice assistants. The findings are available here.

One of the big findings is ubiquity. More than 30% of us now use voice assistants daily, and around 23% of us use them several times a day. Nearly everyone is aware that these things exist.

Voice users are becoming accustomed

The report also provides useful demographic data. I was interested to learn that 60% of users aged 18-24 and 36% of those who are 25-34 years of age are using Siri more than any other assistant. Alexa is more widely used across older demographics, while Google Assistant is also popular. (Cortana and Bixby are very much minor players in the space.)

This dovetails with a recent claim from Futuresource that Apples Siri holds 25% of the voice assistant market.

Privacy remains an issue. It looks as if it will be some time, however, until using these things in public is seen as socially acceptable. Just 27% of US voice assistant users feel comfortable using them in public, which means we rely on them at home, in the car, or on an iPhone when out and about.

Among those who dont yet use voice assistants, 42% said concerns about privacy have stopped them doing so, while 32% just dont trust the assistants.

Thats not especially surprising given incidents such as when we found Apple had humans listening in to some conversations. (Apple subsequently made it possible to prevent this.)

The knowledge gap

Confusion about what our voice assistants can do remains. Most people (76% in the UK) rely on trial and error to find out what they're capable of doing. In other words, while Apple and others in the space regularly introduce support for different types of search, search users are still playing catch up.

There are some tasks people have become accustomed to. The report states that most of us use Siri and the other assistants to control music (73% of users) and check the weather (80% of users), and confirms 91% of users have searched using voice.

That last statistic is why every enterprise should work on local search, as those are the results most likely to show up in voice search results. It's also good business, given that 41% of those surveyed already use voice to make purchases.

There are some differences in behavior between nations: 21% of US consumers say pay a bill is their top banking and finance voice-assisted task, compared to 15% in the UK and 17% in Germany. German users, however, are more open to using the technology to find a doctor or specialist than those from the US or UK.

James Poulter, CEO & Co-founder of Vixen Labs said: "Currently there is a lot of white space for [brands] to move into; the customer base is ready and waiting, but in order to tap into this new marketing channel, brands need to optimize, create, and integrate their products and services with voice technology.

So, whats coming up?

There are some trends that are pretty easy to guess: The way we search will change, and people will become more habitually accustomed to using voice to search for some things than any other form of search. Well also see the results become more personalized as voice assistants get better at figuring out who is speaking.

Further out, we know voice assistants will become more empathic and capable of responding to the emotion in a persons voice, and well see new form factors such as smart displays and smart glasses emerge. In each case, these will make use of voice as part of the overall interface and will extend the spaces into which use of voice makes sense.

To get a sense of that future, the best place to look is toward Apples work in accessibility as an area in which the company explores alternative user interfaces. Were also seeing voice assistants become contextually aware, as well as capable of providing answers to questions while being offline.

Were also seeing increasing use of voice assistants in business. Enterprise voice assistant architectures such as VERA 2.0 let business users build their own voice controls to manage their own internal business systems, while apps such as Shortcuts let users extend what their existing voice assistants can do.

JP Morgan & Co and Capital One both make use of Alexa in client-focused roles, and we are certainly seeing voice deployed in call centers globally  proving a B2C component in supporting customer-focused roles.

Please follow me on Twitter, or join me in the AppleHolics bar & grill and Apple Discussions groups on MeWe.
07/19/2021

Photo (c) Hispanolistic - Getty Images A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Liverpool explored how severe childhood cases of COVID-19 may impact brain and nerve health.

Although severe coronavirus infections arent common among younger people, the researchers say their results showed that one in 20 children hospitalized with the virus experience nerve or brain-related complications.

The risk of a child being admitted to hospital due to COVID-19 is small, but among those hospitalized, brain and nerve complications occur in almost 4%, said researcher Dr. Stephen Ray. Our nationwide study confirms that children with the novel post-infection hyper-inflammatory syndrome PIMS-TS can have brain and nerve problems; but we have also identified a wide spectrum of neurological disorders in children due to COVID-19 who didnt have PIMS-TS. These were often due to the childs immune response after COVID-19 infection.

Childrens brain health and COVID-19

For the study, the researchers analyzed health outcomes from children who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 across the U.K. between April 2020, and January 2021. In that time, over 1,330 children under the age of 18 were hospitalized with the virus, and more than 50 of those children experienced brain-related complications.

They also looked at how PIMS-TS -- pediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporarily associated with SARS-CoV-2 -- played a role in children developing neurological complications following a COVID-19 infection. PIMS-TS is a severe immune response to COVID-19 that occurs in children. It typically results in prolonged symptoms like fever, fatigue, and headaches and can also affect the heart, gastrointestinal system, and kidney function.

The researchers identified different neurological side effects in children with PIMS-TS and those without the condition. More than 50% of the hospitalized children didnt have PIMS-TS, but they still experienced brain and nerve-related complications, including psychosis, brain inflammation, Guillain-Barre syndrome, and seizures. Children with PIMS-TS also had an increased risk of hallucinations, stroke, and changes in behavior.

The researchers hope their study draws attention to the potential long-term complications associated with children contracting COVID-19. Their goal moving forward is to be able to better identify hospitalized children with brain and nerve complications and provide them with the best quality of care.

Now we appreciate the capacity for COVID-19 to cause a wide range of brain complications in those children who are hospitalized with this disease, with the potential to cause life-long disability, we desperately need research to understand the immune mechanisms which drive this, said researcher Dr. Benedict Michael. Most importantly -- how do we identify those children at risk and how should we treat them to prevent lasting brain injury?
07/20/2021

Photo (c) Paul Biris - Getty Images Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 34,137,733 (34,085,761)

Total U.S. deaths: 609,316 (609,041)

Total global cases: 191,099,159 (190,600,596)

Total global deaths: 4,099,677 (4,092,565)

Biden pleads for vaccinations as cases rise

President Biden has stepped up his campaign to urge unvaccinated Americans to get the shots. His pleas come as the U.S. suffers a surge in new cases, mostly in states where vaccinations have lagged.

"So please, please get vaccinated," Biden said Monday. "Get vaccinated now."

A ConsumerAffairs analysis of data collected by Johns Hopkins University shows that the U.S. logged nearly 50,000 new cases of the virus in the last 24 hours. Health officials say most of the new cases involve people who have not been vaccinated.

Judge rules vaccine mandates are legal

A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that Indiana University is within its rights to require all students on its campus to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Plaintiffs had challenged the mandate by arguing that it is unconstitutional.

"This university policy isnt forced vaccination," the judge pointed out. "The students have options -- taking the vaccine, applying for a religious exemption, applying for a medical exemption, applying for a medical deferral, taking a semester off, or attending another university."

The ruling may set the stage for other showdowns between entities that are trying to limit the spread of the virus and those who insist they have a right not to be vaccinated.

The Delta variant is affecting your money

It may be no coincidence that the coronavirus is quickly spreading two weeks after millions gathered for July 4th festivities. Be that as it may, Wall Street has now taken note of the sudden surge in cases fueled by the highly contagious Delta variant.

The stock market suffered its worst one-day decline since October on Monday, with analysts attributing the steep drop to worries about the Delta variant. Investors reportedly fear that a resurgent virus may threaten the economy. Stocks benefiting the most from the reopening got hit the hardest.

"Fear of stagflation will be a major concern for investors if a resurgence in Covid infections causes economies to slow while consumer prices continue an upward trajectory," Peter Essele, head of investment management for Commonwealth Financial Network, told CNN.

Around the nation
07/20/2021

Photo (c) adventtr - Getty Images The Biden administration is cracking down on hospitals that dont make price information readily available, claiming that many hospitals go to great lengths to conceal their costs from consumers.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has proposed steps that it says will increase price transparency. Part of that plan is to dramatically increase penalties for hospitals that fail to comply.

As President Biden made clear in his executive order promoting competition, a key to price fairness is price transparency, said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. No medical entity should be able to throttle competition at the expense of patients. With todays proposed rule, we are simply showing hospitals through stiffer penalties: concealing the costs of services and procedures will not be tolerated by this administration.

Under the proposed rule, hospitals would have to make sure price information is accessible to the public. Failure to do so could result in fines of $2 million a year per hospital -- a significant increase over the present penalty.

Hiding prices from Google

It would also penalize hospitals that use technology to hide price information. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that some hospitals have embedded code on their price information web pages to prevent them from showing up in Google search results.

Its technically there, but good luck finding it, Chirag Shah, an associate professor at the University of Washington told the Journal back in March. Its one thing not to optimize your site for searchability, its another thing to tag it so it cant be searched. Its a clear indication of intentionality.

Consumers have grown accustomed to using the internet for price comparisons before making a purchase. CMS would like them to do so when it comes to health care since finding the best price could amount to huge savings for the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

The government also notes that private health insurers stand to benefit as well if their policyholders choose the most cost-efficient treatment. That, officials say, would lower premium costs and make healthcare more affordable for everyone.

Price disparity has been documented

One reason hospitals may be reluctant to share that information is there is a wide disparity between what hospitals charge for the same service or treatment. A 2019 study by the Health Care Cost Institute hospital documented these cost disparities:

The median price for C-sections in San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward, Calif., ($20,721) was nearly 4.5 times that in Knoxville, Tenn., ($4,556).

A common blood test in Beaumont, Tex., ($443) costs nearly 25 times more than the same test in Toledo, Ohio ($18).

Established patient office visits had median prices three times larger in Anchorage, Alaska ($165) than in Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, Fla., ($60).

CMS says hospital price transparency helps patients know what a hospital charges for the items and services they provide. The agency said it has heard from consumers who are frustrated they have not been able to shop for health care as they do for other things.
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Text:

Convention on Preventing and Combating Trafficking in Women and Children for Prostitution, 2002

Convention on the Promotion of Child Welfare in South Asia, 2002

Social Charter, 2002

Charter on Democracy, 2011

Initiatives relating to climate change, heath, food security, mutual assistance on criminal matters, combating terrorism and drugs.

The Conference emphasized that the Human Rights Institutions of South Asia Region would require to make concerted and collective efforts to address the human rights violations and stressed upon the SAARC Member nations to develop a strong regional human rights mechanism for the purpose.

It also urged the SAARC countries to ensure that all of them had a national human ri institution in conformity with the Paris Principles.

Europe, Americas, Africa, Southeast Asia and the Arab States have successfully established regional mechanisms, South Asia lags behind. Recognizing the need and importance of regional mechanisms for the realization of human rights, the United Nations General Assembly and the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action have specifically called for their establishment.

We call on South Asian states to work towards the establishment of a South Asia Human Rights Mechanism at SAARC level which is going to create bettering conditions for peace in South Asia and for acting as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of masculinity driven militarist traditions as a weapon of war and conflict.

---

Click here to sign the petition

A civil rights group, Peoples' Vigilance Committee on Human Rights (PVCHR), has floated an online petition titled "Governments of South Asia: Time for the Establishment of a South Asian Human Rights Mechanism", stating that South Asian states should work towards the establishment of a regional mechanism for human rights at the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) SAARC level in order to create better conditions for peace in South Asia.Such a mechanism, says the petition, should act as a driving force in efforts to prevent the use of masculinity driven militarist traditions as a weapon of war and conflict. " Such regional mechanisms are important in order to minimise the potential risks of armed conflict", it insists.On 15 January 2005, human rights groups from India, Nepal, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, PVCHR (India), INSEC (Nepal), People's Forum for Human Rights (Bhutan), Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, LOKOJ (Bangladesh) and Wiros Lokh Institute (Sri Lanka), met with an objective of a united South Asia, working for the common good, in Varanasi, India.This convention was named People's SAARC, leading to the formation of a South Asian People's Forum, with myself as its coordinator. Afghanistan and SAARC charter on democracy were later added to SAARC on recommendation of convention. This was indeed an excellent effort to build human rights mechanism in SARRC countries where the discourse of human rights is still in its nascent stage." says Founder of PVCHR, Lenin Raghuvanshi.Established in 1985, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) sought to promote peace and stability in the region through strict adherence to the principles laid out in the Charter of the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement. Given that the UN Charter has been the basis for evolution of several instruments on human rights, SAARC has also taken some important steps in the right direction. Key instruments and initiatives of SAARC include:Justice KG Balakrishnan, Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission, India attended an International Conference on 'Regional Human Rights Mechanisms in South Asia' organized by the National Human Rights Commission, Bangladesh in Dhaka, from the 17th-18th November, 2014. He made several interventions during the course of discussions as one of the key speakers.The Conference discussed various issues of human rights in South Asian countries. These related mainly to the problems of migrant workers, trafficking in women, child right issues and climate change.
Yes, absolutely! We are underestimating Delta's potential!

Possibly so. More people should be getting the vaccine.

No, it is only a brief bump, and the surge will soon subside.

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John Currier, 71, passed away after a long illness at Cumberland Medical Center in Crossville. John is survived by his wife, Jane (Clozza), of almost 44 years. He was the father of Janelle Currier and (the late) Jared Currier. He was the youngest brother of James Currier and Robert (Judith) 
When and where you need it! 786 Hwy. 7
Very concerned. Prices are climbing and increases will be permanent.

Somewhat concerned. Some things are getting more expensive but I expect prices to level soon..

Not concerned. This is just a blip. Costs will go back down.

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In March 2021 Google Cloud announced a new offering called Risk Protection Program, which is designed to help its cloud customers reduce security risk and connect with Googles insurer partners, Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty and Munich Re. The insurers created a specialized cyber insurance policy exclusively for Google Cloud customers, called Cloud Protection +.

The intent of the offering, which Google says is the first-of-its-kind partnership between a major cloud provider and leading cyber insurance companies, is to boost the confidence of organizations considering moving critical workloads to the cloud. The program includes a new security diagnostic tool called Risk Manager, which enables customers to measure and manage their risk on Google Cloud and obtain a report on their security posture and possibly pay less for more targeted cyber security insurance.

CSO recently spoke with Phil Venables, former CISO of Goldman Sachs and now vice president and CISO of Google Cloud, to discuss cloud security trends and the impact of services such as the new Google Cloud offering.

How much of an issue is it for CISOs to have to spend time filling out compliance questionnaires to certify their own cloud security posture for potential partners and customers?

Responding to customer, auditor, and regulator inquiries is a necessary part of operating any critical service. There has been a lot of progress in standardization of such assessment frameworks, not least in terms of the available certifications from ISO, SOC1/2 and more.
Following a push by the White House to address the ransomware crisis emanating from Russia and the imposition of sanctions on Russia for its spree of malicious cyber actions, the Biden administration has launched a multi-part strategy to shame another digital security adversary, China, into halting its digital malfeasance.

First, the administration formally accused China of breaching Microsoft's Exchange email servers to implant what most experts consider reckless and damaging surveillance malware. Although Microsoft has long attributed that incident to a Chinese hacking group it calls HAFNIUM, the White House has now finally and officially acknowledged China's role in that supply chain attack.

In a statement, the White House said it is attributing "with a high degree of confidence that malicious cyber actors affiliated with PRC's [People's Republic of China] MSS [Ministry of State Security] conducted cyber-espionage operations utilizing the zero-day vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server disclosed in early March 2021."

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in a statement that "the United States government, alongside our allies and partners, has formally confirmed that cyber actors affiliated with the MSS exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft Exchange Server in a massive cyber-espionage operation that indiscriminately compromised thousands of computers and networks, mostly belonging to private sector victims."

Broad coalition of international partners supports the US

One group of allies is the European Union and its member states, which condemned China's hacking efforts, a significant step given the economic and trading power China holds across Europe. "The compromise and exploitation of the Microsoft Exchange Server undermined the security and integrity of thousands of computers and networks worldwide, including in the member states and EU institutions," the European Council of the EU said in a statement. "This irresponsible and harmful behaviour resulted in security risks and significant economic loss for our government institutions and private companies and has shown significant spill-over and systemic effects for our security, economy, and society at large."

Another major US ally, NATO, denounced China for its digital incursions, a first for the organization. In a press release, NATO said that "We stand in solidarity with all those who have been affected by recent malicious cyber activities including the Microsoft Exchange Server compromise. Such malicious cyber activities undermine security, confidence, and stability in cyberspace."

The UK, Canada and Australia also joined in chastising China. Paul Chichester, director of operations at the National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), an arm of the U.K.'s primary intelligence agency, GCHQ, said in a statement that China's attack on Microsoft "is completely unacceptable, and alongside our partners, we will not hesitate to call it out when we see it."

Canada's Ministers of Foreign Affairs, National Defense, and Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness issued a joint statement saying, "Canada and its allies remain steadfast in their unity and solidarity in calling out irresponsible state-sponsored cyber activity." Australia's Ministers for Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Defenses also issued a joint statement saying that "Australia calls on all countries  including China  to act responsibly in cyberspace."

APT40 identified as Chinese threat group behind Microsoft Exchange hack

The US, the UK and the EU attributed the Microsoft Exchange attack to a Chinese threat group known as APT40. As part of the administration's campaign to get China to back down, the US Department of Justice announced charges unrelated to the Microsoft Exchange hack against four Chinese individuals, including three Chinese cybersecurity officials. The charges were filed in May but not announced until yesterday. The indicted individuals also allegedly work for APT40, and prosecutors say they worked for the Hainan State Security Department (HSSD) of China's MSS.

In addition to these condemnations and charges, the NSA, CISA, and FBI released a series of advisories detailing Chinese cyber threat activity and how administrators can best protect against APT40's threats.

China managed to evade sanctions, but Russia did not

Some cybersecurity experts say the administration stopped short of causing the same level of pain for China that it did for Russia with the imposition of sanctions. For example, Dmitri Alperovitch, chairman of the Silverado Policy Accelerator and co-founder and former CTO of Crowdstrike, said given "that sanctions have already been used against virtually every other rogue cyber nation-state, not using them against China is a glaring oversight."

White House Press spokesperson Jen Psaki rejected the notion that the administration is softer on China than Russia. During a press briefing, she said, "We are actually elevating and taking steps to not only speak out publicly but certainly take action as it relates to problematic cyber activities from China in a different way. We are not differentiating. One is out of the realm of condemnation, and the other is out of the realm of consequence."

Addressing the idea that the White House is leery of angering China due to fear of alienating a powerful trading partner, Psaki said, "We're not holding back. We're not allowing any economic circumstance or consideration to prevent us from taking actions where warranted. We reserve the option to take additional actions where warranted as well."

Lawmakers approve but say more is needed

Lawmakers approved of the White House's actions but encouraged the administration to do more. For example, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) praised the administration but said, "There's still more work to do to address our cyber vulnerabilities."

Representative Jim Langevin (D-RI), co-chair of the Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus and chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems (CITI), said, "Today's announcement is an impressive demonstration of American diplomatic strength and a poignant reminder that American global leadership has returned after a four-year hiatus. We must continue working in concert with our allies to clearly define what is  and what is not  acceptable behavior in cyberspace."

China blamed for ransomware attacks, too

One new idea to emerge from the administration's efforts is that the Chinese state is directly responsible for damaging ransomware attacks. Previously, the US has acknowledged that some Chinese state workers might moonlight as ransomware hackers, but it has not tied those attacks directly to the Chinese government until now.

In its statement, the White House said that in some cases, "We are aware that PRC government-affiliated cyber operators have conducted ransomware operations against private companies that have included ransom demands of millions of dollars."

Secretary Blinken said in his statement, "The PRC's Ministry of State Security (MSS) has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain." Many, if not most, cybersecurity professionals would not think of China as a player in state-sponsored ransomware attacks.

However, cybersecurity firm Profero issued a report in January linking ransomware attacks to Chinese threat groups APT27 and Winnti. Profero CEO Omri Segev Moyal said then that his company's research tells the story of how the "thin line between nation-states and cybercrime was crossed."

"As our public report about APT27 states, we believe that Chinese APT groups closely related to their intelligence units were involved in ransomware attacks," Moyal tells CSO. "This says a lot." Moyal welcomes Biden's efforts to constrain China's hacks and attacks. "I think we are in a situation where the economic impact of ransomware and APT espionage have reached such a critical level it can no longer be ignored," he says. "I think it's a great initiative by the Biden administration in taking a global stand against state-sponsored attacks."
Its been quite a year. Along with adapting to a pandemic that shut the world inside and brought on a seismic shift in social norms, more people than ever are working from home. A YouGov survey of global office workers commissioned by the new security platform HP Wolf Security shows that 82% of respondents are working from home more since the start of the pandemic, with some 23% expecting to work from home most of the time even after we return to normal (whatever that is).

Which means that hundreds of millions of us are tapping into our employee networks through work-distributed laptops, sure, but also with our personal devices. Not just that, but were letting our kids use them for school, for gaming, for streaming content (and were often guilty of doing the same!). According to the recent Blurred Lines and Blindspots report by HP on work styles, 76% of office workers say that working from home during COVID-19 has thinned the barrier between their personal and professional lives. Half of remote office workers say they now see their work device as their own personal device, with 46% admitting to using their work laptop for life admin; 30% say they have let someone else use their work device. Meanwhile, 69% of office workers have used their personal laptop or printer for work tasks and activities since the start of the pandemic.

This all amounts to your basic nightmare for IT decision-makers (ITDMs), who stand at the front lines of cyberattacks.

Users are the point of entry for most attacksthats why endpoints account for 70% of successful breaches, with malware almost always being delivered via email attachments, web links, and downloadable files, says Ian Pratt, Global Head of Security Personal Systems at HP. Phishing is of particular concern, with attackers using new techniques such as AI-automated spear phishing, where an attacker tailors their lures to a specific individual or group.

Then there is thread jacking, where an employees email account is hijacked and spreads malware by responding within existing conversation threads, making it more likely users will open the attachment or link. (HP PCs come standard with a suite of security features, including HP Sure Sense and HP Sure Click, which proactively prevent threats and ensure fast recovery through software applications if an attack does happen.) And the list goes on, including denial- of-service attacks andthe scariestransomware, with serious consequences for employers.

So its no surprise to hear that 54% of ITDMs have seen evidence of a higher number of phishing-related attacks in the last year, which could lead to exposed company data, reputational damage, noncompliance, and loss of customer trust, says Pratt.

Ultimately, HP Wolf Security provides comprehensive endpoint protection and resiliency that starts at the hardware level and extends across software and services.

Standing at the front lines

Watching the latest installation of HP Wolf Securitys short-film series and the sneaky ways criminals worm their way into enterprise networks, you might get nervous. In the film, actor Christian Slater returns as the Wolf. His hawkish hacker character sips coffee in a cozy bathrobe while showing us how easy it is for him to infiltrate an entire network simply by sending an innocuous-seeming email to a kid playing games on his moms work computer. Mom scans a document on her home printer and sends it to her team, and the embedded malware spreads as fast as a living virus.

Cyberattackers are launching springboard attacks that target kids and their gaming systems with offers of online games and free movies, says Aamir Lakhani, cybersecurity researcher and practitioner at FortiGuard Labs, the threat intelligence and research organization at Fortinet. All it may take is a free game offered through an in-app email, and once theyre in, with a few lateral moves, the attacker can be on a corporate network, he says. In fact, FortiGuard Labs saw an average of about 600 new phishing campaigns per day during spring 2020.

This doesnt mean that all is lost for organizations, especially those that are starting to make active investments to address remote-work security. Advanced AI to evaluate incoming threats and real-time data delivered through HP Wolf Security help remote workers and IT experts stay ahead of modern security threats hitting hard and relentlessly on endpoints such as that work laptop thats occasionally used by Junior.

Built across 20 years of security and research innovation, HP Wolf Security unifies all of HPs endpoint security innovations to deliver comprehensive cyber-resiliency under one umbrella, helping consumers, businesses, and IT and security teams navigate ever-growing cyber riskseven ones that come through an innocent game on Roblox.

Keeping employers and data safe

While the nightmare scenario is of a takeover of the enterprise, remote workers can elevate their security measures to prevent such devastating attacks. Aaron Barr, chief technology officer for PiiQ Media, a social media threat intelligence and risk analytics company, offers a few easy starting points. First, he suggests using a variety of email addresses.

We recommend you have three or four, and segment them by how you use them: personal, financial, social media/digital services, spam, Barr explains. That way, when you get a work- related email that comes to the email you use for Instagram or gaming, you know that it didnt come in through the right account.

Second, Barr says, is to extend and vary those pesky passwords. The longer your password, the harder it is to crack, he says. Most people use the same email address and password for the $5 Target discount spam as they do to log in to their bank, and that is horrible. A password manager can help keep those hundreds of passwords in order, while settings on your PC or web browser can alert you to compromised passwords that are exposed, say, through a security breach of a social network.

Many companies provide a virtual private network (VPN) so remote workers can securely connect to company networks to send and receive files, data, and applications from anywhere. Segmenting out your home network so that one sub-network is used only for work and another for life admin can also alleviate some work-from-home security stress. Even having separate user logins on the same PC can help build a wall between work and life.

HPs Pratt believes that recalibrating the need for security against the desires of the worker requires employers to adopt a completely different model of endpoint and work-from-home securityall built on the concept of zero trust, a set of engineering best practices devised to secure critical systems.

Access to work resources should be assessed based on context, such as the user, the device, the geolocation, and the security posture, says Pratt. Multifactor authentication is one important ingredient of zero trust, he adds.

Detection is just the beginning

The best mitigation is not to put all the responsibility on the remote worker, but to ensure organizations can provide users with enhanced protection, privacy, and threat intelligence.

The technology of the near future should be secure by design and intelligent enough to not simply detect threats, but to contain and mitigate their impact, as well as to recover quickly in the event of a breach, Pratt says. The technology of the future, in other words, sniffs out attacks before hackers get anywhere close to bringing a company down. As Christian Slaters Wolf mischievously warns, A guy like me, given the keys to the kingdom, whats the worst that could happen?

Learn more about HP Wolf Security here.
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BOSTON (AP)  Boston health officials on Tuesday urged recent visitors to Provincetown to self-isolate and get tested for COVID-19 after a cluster of cases was linked to the popular Cape Cod tourist town.

At least 35 cases of COVID-19 in Boston have been traced to Provincetown, with the vast majority of cases involving people who were fully vaccinated, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.
NEW CANAAN  Gov. Ned Lamont on Monday chose the rolling meadows and architecturally significance of Grace Farms for a signing ceremony for legislation that eliminates thousands of pages of paperwork for businesses and should make it easier for the state to react in an emergency.

Praising the non-profit 80-acre social-justice, faith and humanitarian center for helping procure two million pieces of personal protective equipment for dozens of agencies during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic last year, Lamont and Chief Operating Officer Josh Geballe credited the center with saving lives at a time when the global competition for PPE was fierce.

Although he signed the bill in the State Capitol of June 28, Lamont - who took a half-hour tour of the complex of glass-walled function auditoriums and gathering spaces on a wildflower-packed hillside - wanted to pay homage to Grace Farms role, which used an international corporate network in solidifying the PPE supply chain for state medical centers and first responders.

We had health care workers, nursing homes, small business, everybody you know, circling the Capitol, saying Wheres my PPE? I need it now, Lamont recalled. Theres no stockpile in Washington, D.C., by the way. There was nothing behind the curtain. There was nothing there. We were looking all over the globe, and then I heard about this place Grace Farms? Hold it. These guys got two million pieces? How do we learn from this? That was a lifesaver. Soon after Grace Farms helped lead the way, we got the PPE we needed.

Sharon Prince, CEO and founder of Grace Farms Foundation, told about 30 people gathered in the River Building, which closed to the public March 9 last year, that it wasnt that long ago that the center became a hub for distributing PPE, including half a million N95 masks, as well as 275,000 pounds of meals. The state took about 250,000 masks, and Stamford Health received 28,000, by April 7 of last year.

This was an unprecedented crisis and a time when everyone had to use their wherewithal in unexpected ways around the clock, she said, adding that Grace Farms will finally reopen in September.

Indeed, it is because of our teams understanding of the complexities of supply chains and the global movement of products that we were poised to help secure PPE and efficiently deliver at the height of the pandemic, Prince said.

In an interview after the ceremony, Prince said that personal relationships with corporate executives helped secure the initial $2.5 million PPE purchase, which was supplemented later to put the value of material over $4 million. She credited Hamilton Beach and the XJ Group in taking advantage of a factorys conversion from appliances to PPE at the time she was looking for it. You still had to get the PPE back here in the proper way, she said. It was literally working around the clock.

Geballe said that the bill signing at Grace Farms was to acknowledge the role of the center in the first wave of the pandemic. We had to turn to trusted friends and partners like Grace Farms who basically stopped everything they were doing and turned their attention to the worlds biggest problem at the time, which was how do we find PPE? he said. Your work during that period of time saved lives.

While it has been a year since the supply chain stabilized, Geballe said the lessons live on in the new law. One section will eliminate 80,0000 forms, making it much more business-friendly. Another section of the law will allow small and minority-owned businesses to better coincide with federal guidelines under the Small Business Administration.

Believe it or not, written in the (state) General Statutes, there is a number of places where it literally requires people to do things on paper or manual ways that could otherwise be online, Geballe said, stressing that now, every state agency is allowed to use modern tools for interactions with the public.

Gene Burk, the states new director of procurement within the Department of Administrative Services, said that his job will become a lot easier through provisions of the legislation that will make it easier to settle contracts electronically. It also codifies ethics in the state procurement process and will make it easier to enter into contracts less than $10,000.

It improves the way for towns and municipalities in the state of Connecticut to piggyback on state contracts, so they can take advantage of the leverage of our pricing and the states contracts and terms and conditions, Burk said, before Lamont sat down at a nearby desk with a row of souvenir pens and copies of the new law, which took effect July 1.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
BRIDGEPORT - A federal judge has agreed to delay the trial of state Sen. Dennis Bradley and city Board of Education member Jessica Martinez, both facing fraud charges, until December.

The two were arrested in May for allegedly trying to fraudulently obtain public campaign financing grants.

U.S. District Judge Victor Bolden has granted a motion by Bradleys lawyer, James Glasser, to continue the trial from Aug. 2 to Dec. 6.

I requested the continuance owing to my trial schedule and caseload and the time necessary to review the discovery provided by the government. Senator Bradley and I look forward to meeting the charges the government leveled against him in court, Glasser said on Tuesday.

Martinezs public defender was not available for comment.

Linda Conner Lambeck / Hearst Connecticut Media file photo

Bradley and Martinez are charged with multiple counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud, while Martinez is also charged with false statements and false declaration to a grand jury. Each count of wire fraud carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

They have pleaded not guilty to the charges.

According to the indictment affidavit, Bradley and others entered into a conspiracy and scheme to defraud the Connecticut State Election Enforcement Commission, the Citizens Election Fund and the State of Connecticut by making misrepresentations concerning Bradleys compliance with state election law and the Citizens Election Programs statutory restrictions and requirements in order to fraudulently obtain or attempt to obtain $179,850 in campaign grants.

Bradley, a Democrat who represents Bridgeport and Stratford, was first elected to represent the 23rd Senate District in 2018. Shortly after his arrest, Bradley was suspended from committee assignments and was stripped of his title of deputy majority leader.

In his motion for a continuance, Glasser states that as part of the discovery process the government produced 69,951 pages comprising 27,435 documents.

Counsel will need the time requested to adequately and conscientiously review the discovery and prepare for trial, the motion states.

Given the volume of discovery and the restrictions imposed on its review, the court finds it appropriate to continue jury selection and trial, the judge ruled.
A man who allegedly traveled halfway across the country to meet up with a minor in Connecticut pleaded guilty to federal charges in a court appearance Monday, prosecutors said.

Christopher J. Brereton, 34, of Fargo, N.D., waived his right to be indicted and pleaded guilty before Judge Alvin W. Thompson in Hartford to traveling interstate with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct, according to federal authorities.

Thompson scheduled Brereton, who has been detained since his arrest in March 2020, to be sentenced on Oct. 8. He faces a maximum term of up to 30 years in prison, federal authorities said in a release.

The federal charge stems from an investigation that began early last year.

In January 2020, Brereton started talking online with a minor girl whose online profile said she was 18, prosecutors said. A month later, a law enforcement officer got permission to take over the minors account, authorities said in the release. Prosecutors said the officer, working undercover, told Brereton the girls real age  15, according to the release.

Officials said Brereton continued to talk to the person whom he believed was a 15-year-old girl, discussing engaging in sexual activity with her and made plans to drive to Connecticut (to) meet her, authorities said in a release.

On March 12, 2020, Brereton started the more than 1,500-mile drive from North Dakota to Connecticut. He checked in to a hotel in Meriden the next day. Prosecutors said at the hotel, Brereton unpacked lingerie and sexual paraphernalia he bought for the planned meet-up with the teen, federal authorities said in a release. He was arrested later that day by New Haven police on state charges after he drove to a spot to meet up with the girl.

New Haven police said one of the messages between the teen and Brereton was intercepted by a family member, who reported the messages to police, leading to law enforcement involvement.

Breretons state case is still pending, with his next court appearance scheduled for Sept. 3. Bererton has been in custody since his arrest, authorities said.
KILLINGWORTH  Killingworth Nursery School recently announced that Head Teacher Erin DelVecchio will take over as its Program Director, a position vacated by the recently retired Mary Angus. The Killingworth Nursery School marks its 68th year this year as a non-profit cooperative program, and is located in the lower level of the Killingworth Congregational Church.

DelVecchio, or Mrs. D. as she is affectionately called by the children, has lived in Killingworth along with her family for more than 42 years. She said she fell in love with the Killingworth Nursery School after having all three of her children enroll and attend. She joined the staff at KNS in 2002 as a Tots Coordinator and teacher, and when the head teacher retired, she stepped into the position.

Now in the fall, not only will I continue my role as head teacher, but I am honored and privileged to be the director as well, DelVecchio said. I am so excited to take on new responsibilities and to be such a big part of the childrens early education. The importance of making a childs first experience with school positive is something I take very seriously. And when you reach a child that is unsure or unengaged, it is an indescribable feeling.

KNS was able to remain open during the pandemic, and had an extremely successful and safe year. We adhered to the COVID-19 guidelines provided by the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood, and were able to finish the school year without one single instance of having to quarantine. It truly was a joint effort on behalf of the staff and board, DelVecchio said.

The school is prepared to continue with whatever safety protocols are necessary this upcoming school year. The school will offer the same curriculum and traditions well-loved by generations of young KNS learners. Preschool classes are a multi-age curriculum for both three and four year olds that are available two or three days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 9-11:30 a.m.

There is also the option of extended hours that lengthen the day to 1 p.m., where children can further their kindergarten readiness by bringing and eating their lunch at school. KNS prides itself on offering its families the flexibility to choose what they feel will work best for their child.

KNS also offers the Terrific Tots program, a once a week class for two year olds along with a parent or caregiver. It serves as a great transition for young children in preparation for pre-school readiness where little ones can enjoy activities, art, songs, stories, snack, and exploration. They are also able to enjoy outdoor play in Killingworth Nursery Schools brand new fenced in playground.

Classes start Sept. 13. Enrollment is open at any time. Tours available upon request. Killingworth Nursery School is a non-profit, interdenominational, cooperative preschool which admits students of any race, color, and national or ethnic origin.

For more information, visit killingworthnurseryschool.com or contact 860-663-2950 or killingworthnurseryschool@yahoo.com.

CT Art Trail invites families to visit

Following Governor Lamonts announced Connecticut Summer at the Museum program to provide students and families with stimulating learning experiences, the Connecticut Art Trail is announcing participation by several of its member organizations.

As part of this program, Connecticut children 18 and under, plus one accompanying adult, will be granted free admission to any participating museum between July 1 and Sept. 16. The program is funded with $15 million from federal COVID-19 recovery funds received by Connecticut through the American Rescue Plan Act.

The participating members of the Connecticut Art Trail include: Mystic Museum of Art (Mystic), Lyman Allyn Art Museum (New London), Florence Griswold Museum (Old Lyme), Mattatuck Museum (Waterbury), Art Museum at The University of Saint Joseph (West Hartford), Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford), New Britain Museum of American Art (New Britain), Hill-Stead Museum (Farmington), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield), MOCA Westport - Museum of Contemporary Art (Westport), Greenwich Historical Society/Bush-Holley House Museum (Greenwich), and the Bruce Museum (Greenwich)

The Connecticut Art Trail is a nationally recognized partnership between 20 world-class museums and historic sites, created to promote Connecticuts rich cultural assets as part of a travel experience. The Trail was launched in 1995 as the Connecticut Impressionist Art Trail, celebrating Connecticuts ten museums and historic sites which highlighted American Impressionism.

Learn to follow the Trail with the Art Passport - a $25 booklet that gives you access to each member museum for one year. Use your Passport once at each location to access exhibits, events and more!

Chamber employment program kicks off another year

MIDDLETOWN  The Middlesex County Chamber of Commerces 2021 version of the Middletown Summer Employment Program kicked off its work experience at almost 40 different host worksites across greater Middletown July 6.

Every year since 2006, the chamber has placed Middletown students into constructive summer employment through this important community program. The chamber has the capacity, through its dynamic membership, to place participants into summer employment in a wide variety of professional fields. Program host sites come from the public sector, the non-profit sector, and most notably, the private sector. The program is designed to provide employment opportunities for economically disadvantaged youth between the ages of 14 to 21. In addition to the work experience, the program offers employment readiness training including properly filling out withholding forms, time cards, and codes of conduct, as well as financial literacy and dress for success techniques.

For more information, visit middlesexchamber.com/youth or call the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce at 860-347-6924.
CAIRO (AP)  Muslims around the world were observing Tuesday yet another major Islamic holiday in the shadow of the pandemic and amid growing concerns about the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, is typically marked by communal prayers, large social gatherings, slaughtering of livestock and distributing meat to the needy. This year, the holiday comes as many countries battle the delta variant first identified in India, prompting some to impose new restrictions or appeal for people to avoid congregating and follow safety protocols.

The pandemic has already taken a toll for the second year on a sacred mainstay of Islam, the hajj, whose last days coincide with Eid al-Adha. Once drawing some 2.5 million Muslims from across the globe to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the pilgrimage has been dramatically scaled back due to the virus.

This year's hajj has been limited to 60,000 vaccinated Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, pilgrims wearing masks and maintaining social distancing performed the symbolic stoning of the devil in the valley area of Mina  using sterilized pebbles they received ahead of time.

This is (a) very, very, very big moment for us, for me especially, said pilgrim Arya Widyawan Yanto, an Indonesian living in Saudi Arabia. He added that he was happy he had the chance to perform the pilgrimage. Everything was conducted under very strict precautions.

Yanto said he hoped for the pandemic to end and for all Muslims to be able to perform the pilgrimage in a safe way.

Indonesia marked a grim Eid al-Adha amid a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases in the worlds most populous Muslim-majority nation. Vice President Maruf Amin, also an influential Islamic cleric, appealed to people to perform holiday prayers at home with their families.

Dont do crowds, Amin said in televised remarks ahead of the start of the holiday. Protecting oneself from the COVID-19 pandemic is obligatory.

The surge in new cases is believed to have been fueled by travel during another holiday  the Eid al-Fitr festival in May  and by the rapid spread of the delta variant.

In Malaysia, measures have been tightened after a sharp spike in infections, despite a national lockdown since June 1. People are banned from traveling back to their hometowns or crossing districts to celebrate. House visits and customary trips to graveyards are also banned.

Healthy worshippers are allowed to gather for prayers in mosques, with strict social distancing and no physical contact. Ritual animal sacrifice is limited to mosques and other approved areas.

Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah has urged Malaysians not to repeat irresponsible behavior, adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another festival on the island of Borneo led to new clusters of cases.

Let us not in the excitement of celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice cause us all to perish because of COVID-19, he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin urged Muslims to stay home. I appeal to you all to be patient and abide by the rules because your sacrifice is a great jihad in Allahs sight and in our effort to save lives, he said in a televised speech on the eve of the festival.

The World Health Organization has reported that globally, COVID-19 cases and deaths had climbed after periods of decline, with the reversal spurred in part by the delta variant.

Lockdowns will severely curtail Eid al-Adha festivities in Sydney and Melbourne, Australias two largest cities.

Sydney resident Jihad Dib, a New South Wales state government lawmaker, said the citys Muslims were sad but understood why they would be confined to their homes with no visitors allowed.

Its going to be the first Eid in my life I dont hug and kiss my mum and dad, Dib told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Iran on Monday imposed a week-long lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported. The lockdown begins Tuesday.

Not everyone is imposing new restrictions. In Bangladesh, authorities have allowed an eight-day pause in the countrys strict lockdown for the holiday that health experts say could be dangerous.

British Muslims were celebrating in the wake of coronavirus restrictions being lifted in England this week, but against the backdrop of surging infections that are forecast to increase even further as the country opens up.

Eid is about sacrifice, and Muslims, just like everyone else, have had to make huge sacrifices over the past 18 months, staying apart when normally you would come together, said Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who recently tested positive for COVID-19. There are brighter days ahead, he said in a video message.

Eid al-Adha recalls the Quranic tale of Prophet Ibrahims test of faith and his willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of submission to God.

In Egypt, Essam Shaban traveled to the southern province of Sohag to spend Eid al-Adha with his family. He said ahead of the start of the holiday that he planned to pray at a mosque there on Tuesday while taking precautions such as bringing his own prayer rug and wearing a mask.

We want this Eid to pass by peacefully without any infections, he said. We must follow instructions.

Shaban looked forward to pitching in with his brothers to buy a buffalo for slaughtering, going door-to-door to give some of the meat to the poor, and to the traditional festive meal later in the day with his extended family.

Its usually boisterous with laughter and bickering with the kids, he said. Its great.

But others will be without loved ones.

In India, where Eid al-Adha starts Wednesday, Tahir Qureshi would always go with his father for prayers and then to visit family and friends. His father died in June after contracting the virus during a surge that devastated the country, and the thought of having to spend the holiday without him is heartbreaking.

It will be difficult without him, he said.

India's Muslim scholars have been urging people to exercise restraint and adhere to health protocols. Some states have restricted large gatherings and are asking people to observe the holiday at home.

Meanwhile, the pandemics economic fallout, which threw millions of Indians into financial hardship, has many saying they cannot afford to buy sacrificial livestock.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, a disputed, Muslim-majority region, businessman Ghulam Hassan Wani is among those cutting back.

I used to sacrifice three or four sheep, but this year we can hardly afford one, Wani said.

___

Nabil reported from Mina, Saudi Arabia. Associated Press writers from around the world contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP)  Authorities have arrested and charged a man wanted for months in a shootout that left a popular North Carolina teacher and another man dead.

The U.S. Marshal Service arrested Gar-yon-ded-weh Stepney in Greensboro on Monday and transported him to the Alamance County Detention Center, the sheriff's office said. Stepney, 41, is being charged with first-degree murder for shooting both Barney Dale Harris, 40, and Alonso Beltran Lara, 18, on April 8, news outlets report.
BRIDGEPORT  More than eight years after 20-year-old college student Alyssiah Marie Wiley of West Haven was murdered, her remains found scattered in a wooded area of Trumbull, the states highest court appears to have put the case to rest.

The Supreme Court Monday upheld the conviction of Wileys killer, Bridgeport nurse Jermaine Richards.

Im just ecstatic, said Wileys mother, Corrinna Martin. This is one case where the judicial system got it right and pray fully this will end it all.

The Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Appellate Court affirming Richards 2018 conviction of murder after two previous juries deadlocked on a verdict in the case.

The opinion of the Appellate Court thoroughly and accurately reports the facts that the jury might reasonably have found to support the conviction of the defendant, the Supreme Court ruled.

The decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court brings some finality to this sad case, said Bridgeport States Attorney Joseph Corradino. Unfortunately, no court, indeed no one ever, can undo the harm to Alyssiahs family. I hope however, that the courts decision brings them some closure.

Richards, who lived in Bridgeport and worked as a private duty nurse in Stratford, is serving a 60-year prison sentence.

Richards appellate lawyer, Norman Pattis, acknowledged when he filed his appeal that The Supreme Court rarely hears sufficiency of evidence claims. However, he argued This one is significant because the trial court was presented with no evidence on the mechanism of death. It was entirely a matter of speculation how the victim died.

He did not return an email for comment.

Martin sat through all three trials in Superior Court in Bridgeport. It was during jury selection for the third trial that she learned her other daughter, Chaquinequea Brodie, 29, and her 9-year-old granddaughter, MyJaeaha Richardson, had been murdered by Brodies former boyfriend, Anthony Rutherford, in their Waterbury apartment. Rutherford was convicted of the crime and is serving 80 years in prison.

Sobbing on a bench outside the Bridgeport courtroom at the time, Martin told Hearst Connecticut Media that her only solace were the visits from Brodie and her daughter.

Following Wileys death, Martin and Brodie had set up a victims family support group called Mothers of Victims Equality in New Haven.

The hardest thing for me as a parent to do is continue living on after suffering the brutally heinous loss of my babyso I thought, Martin said later.

On April 19, 2013, Wiley, a sophomore at Eastern Connecticut State University, disappeared after leaving the Willimantic campus in Richards car. Twenty-seven days later  after a statewide search and appeals by her mother on television  Wileys partial remains were found in a wooded area at the end of Quarry Road in Trumbull, a mile, and a half from Richards Bridgeport home.

Richards had been dating Wiley since she had been in high school. But there was no physical evidence in the case  no blood residue or anything to show where or when Wiley was killed, no eyewitnesses and no confession. Richards did not testify during the trial.

Instead, the state rested its case on the claim that Richards had the motive and the opportunity to kill Wiley.

Wileys family and friends testified Richards was jealous and possessive.

Her sister, Chaharrez Landell, testified that a month before Wileys disappearance, Wiley had called her, panicked.

He put me in a headlock and threw me on the bed and I couldnt breathe, Landell said her sister told her.

When Landell picked her sister up at the Norwalk home where Richards was working as a nurse, she said, Wiley was crying and said she wanted to break up with Richards but didnt know how.

Jevene Wright, a high school classmate of Richards, testified that Richards told him he was upset because he believed Wiley was messing around with an old friend.

She doesnt know who she is messing with, Wright recalled Richards telling him. Im a nurse and I know how to get rid of her.
FAIRFIELD  The Pequot Librarys 127-year-old roof is fully restored  a big undertaking that sought nearly $1.5 million in donations to complete.

The library began working on restoring the roof in 2020 after a 2019 study by architecture firm Pirie Associates, of New Haven, listed the structure as an urgent priority.

General contractors Kronenberger and Sons Restoration, a company that specializes in historic building restoration, began the construction about 10 months ago and completed it this summer. A ribbon cutting was held on July 14 at the library to welcome the new roof.

The outstanding support of the Southport-Fairfield community has been tremendously inspiring, said Stephanie J. Coakley, the librarys executive director. Pequot Librarys dedicated patrons and business supporters as well as the Town of Fairfield generously helped us care for one of Fairfields most revered public buildings and for that we will be forever grateful.

During the comprehensive conditions assessment plan, which was supported by the State Historic Preservation Office, the study identified repairing the historic roof not only to preserve the entire structure, but also to protect the librarys special collections of rare books, manuscripts and archives, the library said.

The original red-tile roof was built in 1893, four years after the Pequot Library was founded by Southport residents Virginia Marquand Monroe and Elbert B. Monroe. The librarys building was designed by American architect Robert H. Robertson and opened to the public in 1894.

It is on the National Register of Historic Places and the Connecticut chapter of the American Institute of Architects recognized the library with a Connecticut Treasures Award in 2018.

Its history will again be celebrated in due time. A time capsule was placed in the attic eaves during the construction, which included letters to future library staff and supporters as well as mementos from this last year. The time capsule is to be opened in 2071 to commemorate the new roofs 50 year anniversary.

Kronenberger and Sons Restoration is no stranger to old roofs. It has worked on many historic buildings, including the Stowe House, Mark Twain House and Center Church in Hartford, Gillette Castle in East Haddam, and the Florence Griswold House in Old Lyme.

We were honored to guide the renovation that burnished this exquisite architectural gem; its robust texture, color, and detail are a perfect reflection of the unique treasures found within, said Laura Pirie, with Pirie Associates, which directed the entire roof repair and restoration.

Pirie Associates has extensive experience in historic renovation projects of its own, including the Amos Bull House and Butler McCook Carriage House for Connecticut Landmarks Headquarters.

We would like to acknowledge the team of talented architects and engineers that gave this building the attention it deserved, Pirie said. As well, Pequot Library leadership and community should be commended for taking the long view, investing in and preserving this beautiful and historically significant structure for future generations.

This project wasnt without its challenges though.

The actual construction of the project entailed replacing the Ludowici tiles to keep the longevity and historical integrity of the building.

The layout of the historic roof also consisted of four different intersecting shapes, as well as dormers, gables, pyramids and chimneys functioning to make the exterior watertight. The roofs original underlayment also had to be replaced, along with gutters and flashing.

The total $1.6 million project also supported restoring the upper-tier of stained-glass windows in the auditorium and strengthening the foundational elements beneath the front steps and portico.

While the library receives a percentage of its annual general operating budget from the town, Pequot was responsible for raising the money to cover the remaining operating costs and the full percentage of its capital expenses.

The roof funding caused some controversy during the budget process, as the town discussed giving $100,000 to the library for the project. Town officials were on both sides of the fence. Some worried it set a bad precedent for funding a nonprofits capital project, while others believed it was a unique funding opportunity.

Ultimately all three town boards approved the $100,000 to garner the private match.

The bulk of the projects funding came from donations and library fundraisers though.

A total 355 gifts helped support the librarys fundraising campaign with more than 200 donors participating in the Sponsor-a-Tile program in the last six months, according to a news release.

The Southport Conservancy, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and restoring unique and historic buildings and property in Southport, and the Connecticut Neighborhood Assistance Act Tax Credit program also helped fund the project.

The library is seeking grant opportunities for other areas of needed capital improvements identified in the conditions assessment report.

Visit www.pequotlibrary.org to learn more about the library. For information call 203-259-0346 ext. 115. Follow Pequot Library on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA), along with other federal law enforcement agencies, released an alert (AA21-200B) and analysis on Chinese state-sponsored cyberthreats to federal, state, and local governments, as well as private industry.

According to the agencies, Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors aggressively target U.S. and allied political, economic, military, educational, and critical infrastructure (CI) personnel and organizations to steal sensitive data, critical and emerging key technologies, intellectual property, and personally identifiable information (PII).

The alert provides information on tactics, techniques, and procedures used by Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors.

The analysis notes that in 2021, the U.S. Intelligence Community assessed that the Peoples Republic of China presents a prolific and effective cyber-espionage threat, possesses substantial cyberattack capabilities, and presents a growing influence threat.
Cullman, AL (35055)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 89F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable.
Paths to approval

The legislation went to the governor's office on June 30. He has 60 days to sign it into law.

If he does not sign the bill at the 60-day deadline, it will automatically become law.
Mr. Charles Henry Payne, age 72, of Chatsworth passed away July 18, 2021, at CHI Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga TN. Charles is preceded in death by his parents, Wade and Nola Payne: brother, Raymond Bryson Payne, sister. Delores Dianne Queen. He is survived by his wife, Judy Belinda Payne:
Originally built by John H. Cordts, the mansion overlooked the brickyard company in which he was a partner, called Cordts and Hutton. The mans
The Orpheum theater, shown on Tuesday, May 4, 2021, is at 198 Main St. in the village of Saugerties, N.Y.
The following items are based on information provided by officials in law enforcement and t
This aerial photo of the property at 850 Route 28 in the town of Kingston, N.Y., taken in April 2020, shows crane company equipment being stored at the site.
One person has T.R. Gallo Park in the Rondout District in Kingston, N.Y., to himself on an overcast day in this photo from late September 2019.
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Silver Price Outlook:

Silver prices are facing an impending threat in the form of losing multi-month ascending triangle support.

With the delta variant concerns infecting market sentiment, precious metals with higher sensitivity to growth conditions are faring poorly; gold prices are up while silver prices are down.

Recent changes in sentiment suggest that silver prices have a bearish bias in the near-term.

Danger, Will Robinson

Silver prices are facing an impending threat, spurred on by financial markets sudden and dramatic shift in focus to the delta variant. The risk-off impulse that has made its way through markets has seen US Treasury yields plunge and both the Japanese Yen and the US Dollar strengthen. While a lower US yields, stronger JPY environment typically caters to favorable conditions for silver prices, the context within which we find ourselves today suggests that this is not one of those favorable times.

And while both gold and silver are precious metals that typically enjoy a safe haven appeal during times of uncertainty in financial markets, the potential for economic anew stemming from the delta has shifted investors focus from the positive nature of silvers safe have appeal during times of crisis to the negative nature of silvers economic uses during economic duress.

Silver Prices and Silver Volatility Relationship Strained

Both gold and silver are precious metals that typically enjoy a safe haven appeal during times of uncertainty in financial markets. While other asset classes dont like increased volatility (signaling greater uncertainty around cash flows, dividends, coupon payments, etc.), precious metals tend to benefit from periods of higher volatility as uncertainty increases silvers safe haven appeal. But environments where silver prices are declining in spite of higher silver volatility tend to be problematic, to say the least.

VXSLV (SILVER VOLATILITY) TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: DAILY PRICE CHART (July 2020 to July 2021) (CHART 1)

Silver volatility (as measured by the Cboes gold volatility ETF, VXSLV, which tracks the 1-month implied volatility of silver as derived from the SLV option chain) was trading at 28.88 at the time this report was written, having established a fresh 52-week low earlier this month. The 5-day correlation between VXSLV and silver prices is +0.66 and the 20-day correlation is -0.48. One week ago, on July 13, the 5-day correlation was +0.57 and the 20-day correlation was -0.65.

SILVER PRICE TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: DAILY CHART (March 2020 to July 2021) (CHART 2)

The sideways range in place since last summer may be failing. While in context of longer-term timeframes this suggests that a multi-month bull flag has been forming, the impending breakdown cannot be dismissed outright. Yesterday produced the first daily close outside of the ascending triangle, suggesting that a bearish breakout is being attempted.

Currently, silver prices are below their daily 5-, 8-, 13-, and 21-EMA envelope, which is in bearish sequential order. Daily MACD is trending lower below its signal line, and daily Slow Stochastics have dropped quickly into oversold territory. Should silver prices recover back into the triangle by the end of the week, however, there would be grounds to believe that a reversal was taking shape.

SILVER PRICE TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: WEEKLY CHART (November 2010 to July 2021) (CHART 3)

The weekly timeframe suggests that the perspective on silver is shifting on a longer-term basis as well. Silver prices are no longer progressing within the confines of previous expectations: silver prices are holding with their multi-month ascending triangle, remaining on track for a return to their yearly high at 30.1365. If accomplished, this would also constitute a potential longer-term bullish breakout, more evidence that a significant bottom has been carved out; the 2011 highs would need to be brought into consideration thereafter.

Failure here would suggest a deeper setback could emerge, as far as the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement of the 2011 high/2020 low range at 20.6500.

IG CLIENT SENTIMENT INDEX: SILVER PRICE FORECAST (July 20, 2021) (CHART 4)

Silver: Retail trader data shows 93.23% of traders are net-long with the ratio of traders long to short at 13.76 to 1. The number of traders net-long is 3.46% higher than yesterday and 2.38% higher from last week, while the number of traders net-short is 11.57% lower than yesterday and 7.91% higher from last week.

We typically take a contrarian view to crowd sentiment, and the fact traders are net-long suggests Silver prices may continue to fall.

Positioning is more net-long than yesterday but less net-long from last week. The combination of current sentiment and recent changes gives us a further mixed Silver trading bias.

--- Written by Christopher Vecchio, CFA, Senior Currency Strategist
@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.
When Dominic Cummings attended meetings at Downing Street, he would take his leave while yanking the pin from an imaginary hand grenade and tossing it back over his shoulder.

In his tumultuous time at the heart of government, nothing pleased the Prime Ministers former right-hand man more than setting off explosions all along Whitehall.

Since his departure last December, hes been pulling out more pins than a cheroot-chewing revolutionary. Barely a day passes when Cummings doesnt take to Twitter or his blog to tap out another bile-coated rant aimed at the PM. Loud, mushroom cloud-shaped kabooms going off everywhere.

Last night, we saw him do a sit-down interview with the BBCs Laura Kuenssberg. Yet it wasnt quite the pyrotechnics show Mr Cummings might have hoped for.

Most of his gripes sounded like nothing more than chateau-bottled sour grapes. Narcissism central.

The former chief adviser alleged he warned the PM not to visit the Queen last year as there were already people in No 10 who were isolating and told him: 'You might have coronavirus'

By the end, it was hard not to conclude that this was someone tantalisingly close to being off his rocker.

Mr Cummings wore a crisp new shirt. You could still see the crease marks from the wrapping. Probably had a few pins still stuck in it.

For any other interviewee, such detail would be unnoteworthy except that Cummings usual style lends itself to bohemian barge folk.

Kuenssberg lobbed a gentle opener. How would you describe Boris? she asked. Cummings shot a look of confusion. Wh- how dya mean? he spluttered. Youd think shed asked him to knock her up a bearnaise sauce.

He mentioned something about Boris having a grasp of the absurd. He had told Cummings before being elected that the idea of him being PM was obviously ridiculous. Cummings assumed he meant it.

That he didnt recognise that remark for the self-deprecating joke it was is telling. We heard a series of marginally interesting vignettes. How he stopped Boris from infecting the Queen with Covid. How Boris went around saying he regretted the first lockdown.

Pictured: Dominic Cummings in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg which aired on BBC2

Oh, and Cummings admitted handling the whole Barnard Castle thing badly. Though he stood by the eye test baloney. Kuenssberg winced. A palpable porkie.

Cummings implied he had taken a job with Boris because thats how he could get to control him.

Dont you think that sounds unbelievably arrogant? asked Laura K.

Cummings ran an index finger down one cheek. The thought clearly never occurred to him.

Kuenssberg put it to him that he was the cause of much of the division that engulfed Westminster after the referendum.

No, Cummings replied. Others were to blame too.

Did he consider himself the PMs superior? I dont see myself as a better person, he replied nonchanantly.

Kuenssberg, by the way, was excellent. Never once did she try to flatter her subject. Instead, her reactions to these megalomaniac rantings was a picture.

Last night Downing Street denied that the incident where the PM and Mr Cummings discussed visiting the Queen took place but Cummings said in his interview that others witnessed it

Sometimes she flicked her hair awkwardly, at other times she simply grimaced in horror.

She reminded me of Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect interrogating some particularly unpleasant specimen.

Fast forward to the Conservatives landslide election victory in 2019. No sooner had Boris got his tootsies back under the Downing Street desk than Dom and his cohorts were apparently trying to get him ejected.

Boris wasnt the right man to running the country, opined Cummings. Says who? Dom of course.

Presumably all those millions people whod just voted for him could go swivel. This was just deranged. Im no Che Guevara, but Im sure staging a coup requires support.

Aside from a few unelected misfits and weirdos hed hired from the Vote Leave campaign, Cummings had fallen out with pretty much everyone. Even Dilyn the dog hated him.

Kuenssberg was horrified that Cummings could help get someone elected whom he considered the wrong man for the job. What kind of con had you just pulled off on the British public if thats what you think? she asked.

Cummings shot her a toothy grin. Well, Id say thats politics, he said.

What next? He was considering setting up a new party. He wanted to rewire the whole system.

Would he ever speak to Boris again? It doesnt bother me one way or the other, he smirked.

Ladies and gentlemen, heres what happens when you let the loonies take over the asylum.
With thousands of Australian residents along the east coast currently stuck in lockdown, a winery in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales is offering wine tasting kits to be delivered to your doorstep.

Customers can choose from three wine tasting packages from Scarborough Wine Co, including the Offshoot Pack, Classic Pack or 'The Obsessive' Pack.

All three include 100mL bottles of all current release wines, a tasting mat, tasting notes to help guide you through the tasting and the opportunity to book a Zoom tutored tasting with a Cellar Door staff.

Prices range from $45 and $60, with the most popular option being the classic tasting pack.

Scarborough Wine Co in the Hunter Valley has release a range of wine packages starting from $45 per person

All three include 100mL bottles of all current release wines, a tasting mat, tasting notes to help guide you through the tasting and the opportunity to book a Zoom tutored tasting with a Cellar Door staff

'Now is the perfect time to book one of our Virtual Tasting packs, which helped us to win the Inaugural Award for Innovation at the 2021 Hunter Valley Legends and Wine Awards,' the brand wrote online.

The wine kits are a fun way to have a virtual wine tasting experience with friends or family in the comfort of your own home while adhering to Covid-19 restrictions.

Once ordered the kits will be packed and dispatched within 24 hours to be delivered to all Sydney Metro areas.

What's included in each Scarborough Wine Co tasting kit? Choose from the Scarborough Wine Co Offshoot, Classic or 'The Obsessive' Pack which includes: * 100ml bottle of all the current release wines in your chosen tasting * A tasting mat (just like the ones we use in the Cellar Door) * Tasting notes to help guide you * Opportunity to book a Zoom tutored tasting with one of our Cellar Door Staff Prices range from $40 to $60 and the packages can be delivered to all Sydney Metro areas Advertisement

Alternatively wine enthusiasts who aren't restricted by budget may wish to consider purchasing an exclusive and private wine tasting from Whispering Brook.

The five-star winery is bringing the Cellar Door to your home with three different virtual tasting, with prices starting at $100 per person.

The Influencer of Varietal Tasting, the cheapest option, is a 45-minute experience that explores three different wines from Portuguese and French varietals.

Customers will be guided through the tasting by a wine specialist and will also be provided with tasting notes.

The most expensive virtual tasting priced at $259 per person is the 1.25-hour long 'Red Wine Guided Tour' experience where customers will explore the intense but elegant flavours of Whispering Brook's red wines.

Alternatively wine enthusiasts who aren't restricted by budget may wish to consider purchasing an exclusive and private wine tasting from Whispering Brook

Customers also seem to have swiftly purchased the Le Pont Wine Store tasting experience, as the entire range of affordable tasting packages have sold out

Customers also seem to have swiftly purchased the Le Pont Wine Store tasting experience, as the entire range of affordable tasting packages have sold out.

With prices starting at only $39 and feature a range of 'unique and exciting' wines, this option is a wine enthusiasts dream that won't break the bank.

The most expensive offering is the $89 Hurley Valley 2018 tasting pack, which includes four different new releases in 200mL bottles but is also currently sold out.
Employees may need to refresh their skills after the past 16 months of lockdown restrictions, as proven by the mistakes captured in these images.

Bored Panda has rounded up a selection of amusing images from around the world that have gone viral because of employees failure to do their jobs properly - including a block of apartments that were built without access to the balconies.

Another snap shows how a delivery driver stacked multiple boxes on top of each other, despite a clear warning not to 'double stack'.

Here, FEMAIL reveals some of the worst work by staff members who weren't focused on their job...

Bored Panda has rounded up a selection of amusing images from around the world that capture mistakes made by employees - including a shop in the UK, which displayed an increase in price as a special offer on earphones

Room with no view! An apartment block, believed to be in China, captured attention on social media after users spotted it had been built without access to the balconies

One viral image, believed to have been snapped in the U.S, shows how a delivery driver chose to ignore instructions not to stack boxes

Another snap, believed to have been taken in the U.K, shows how a supermarket employee filled the space for water with wine

Resurrection! A question in an online form went viral on the internet after asking the participant if they are dead

One image shows how a ceiling fan was left unable to use after a projector was installed dangerously close

Another computer glitch shows a printer explaining it is unable to print a document because the function isn't supported

Out of order! A card machine, in the U.S, left people puzzled when the screen asked them to choose options without providing a question

A customer, who lives in Australia, was forced to change their meal after opening their tin of chick peas to find kidney beans

Another snap shows how a restaurant, in an unknown location, made multiple mistakes on a sign trying to attract customers

Topsy turvy world: The person who built this property was confused about how gravity works

Sinister! Shoppers beware of this jumper with a seriously morbid message

Mixed messages: The person who created this sign couldn't decide what they wanted to say
Each of these questions are worth 10 points and must be answered by a single player without any consultation. The team who wins a Starter For Ten is then given three bonus questions, each worth five points.

1. What common surname links the US authors of the following the Rosy Crusixion trilogy published from 1949 and the 2011 novel the Song of Achilles?

2. What five-letter word can refer in biology to taxonomic groups such as carnovora?

3. Occupying an area of almost half the size of Wales and also known as Cocibolca, what is the largest lake of central American. Its common name being the name of the country in which it is located?

4. For your picture starter, you will see the title of a major work of English literature in its standard German translation. What is its English title?

5. What word can denote both a tumour or cyst filled with viscous fluid and any of various nodular groups of nerve cell bodies in the peripheral nervous system...

6. Published in 1934, what novel is divided into three parts entitled The Facts, The Evidence and Hercule Poirot Sits Back and Thinks. The last chapter of the final part is titled Poirot Propounds Two Solutions

7. Relating to religion, what term does a reference work describe as difficult to define because it was appropriated in the mid-1560s as a term of abuse and was rarely used by the subject of the description. It appears alongside the word Revolution in the titles of works by S.R. Gardener and Christopher Hill

8. Which philosopher whose works are today commonly numbered with a system called Bekker pagination wrote the treatise On The Soul and had his ideas repopularised in Europe during the 13th century by St Thomas Aquinas

9. Named after the Russian mathematician who was the first to study the sequences systematically, in which statistical process is the probability of an event in a sequence of random events always influenced... (question interrupted to answer)

10. What word is spelt by the first three letters of longer words meaning a rounded vault forming a roof or ceiling, containing copper in chemical combination, greed or desire, and the God of Love often referred to as the son of Venus.

11. The witch described in Robert Burns' poem Tam 'o Shanter appears on the bow of the Cutty Sark in an example of what type of nautical adornment? The same word also indicates a person who holds a prominent position but has no real authority.

12. In 1820, an experiment showing the deflection of a needle when moved towards a wire carrying a current and illustrating the principle of electromagnetism was published by which Danish scientist?

13. Name the state in Australia that contains none of the following cities Gold Coast, Hobart, Bunbury, Adelaide, Bendigo, Perth, Ballarat, Melbourne and Brisbane.

14. What two letters begin French words meaning pregnant, boredom, ink... (question interrupted to answer).

15. For your picture starter you are going to see a still from a television series first seen in 2020. For 10 points name the eponymous main character pictured in the still.

16. Which English metropolitan county was the birthplace of the Prime Ministers H.H. Asquith and Harold Wilson, and the sculptors Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth?

17. I need the name of a planet. The molecular formula for Iodine Monoxide is also the name of a moon orbiting which planet of the solar system?

18. In ballet what term denotes both the dancer's leap or jump and the point attained in such a leap. More generally it means a particular height or altitude above a given level.

19. Common around the British coast and named in part after a shellfish, which large wading bird has black and white feathers and a large reddish... (question interrupted to answer).

20. What is the original of the three modern vernacular novels known by the English titles Dream of the Red Chamber, Journey To The West (question interrupted to answer).
A veterinary nurse has revealed the perfect dog breed for your lifestyle, whether you are single, a young couple or a renter or homeowner.

Senior nurse and practice manager Tess Nolan spends her days caring for dogs and cats on the Gold Coast, conducting everything from pet CPR to X-rays and blood tests.

Tess also assists with surgery, animal restraint and bandaging, and said 'the list is endless' when it comes to tasks that come with her 'very rewarding job'.

The 26-year-old shared exactly what dog breed suits your home and life, and why every personality is suited to one type of dog.

A veterinary nurse has revealed the perfect dog breed for your lifestyle, whether you are single, a young couple or family or a renter or homeowner (Tess Nolan pictured)

If you're single or live alone, the vet first of all recommends you invest in either a Boston Terrier or a cocker spaniel (stock image)

SINGLE - BOSTON TERRIER OR COCKER SPANIEL

If you're single or live alone, the vet first of all recommends you invest in either a Boston Terrier or a cocker spaniel.

'Both of these breeds are very active and filled with personality,' Tess told FEMAIL.

'They are also super affectionate and will make you laugh.'

Golden retrievers are a popular choice with dog owners the world over, and Tess said they are ideally suited to a young couple's lifestyle (pictured)

YOUNG COUPLE - GOLDEN RETRIEVER

Golden retrievers are a popular choice with dog owners the world over, and Tess said they are ideally suited to a young couple's lifestyle.

'Golden retrievers make such amazing pets,' she explained.

'They are loving, loyal and always by your side, with just enough need for activity but happy to laze around the house for downtime.'

As soon as you add a newborn or toddler into the mix, however, the vet said you're better off going for either a labradoodle, spoodle or cavoodle (Tess pictured with a spoodle)

YOUNG FAMILY - LABRADOODLE, SPOODLE OR CAVOODLE

As soon as you add a newborn or toddler into the mix, the vet said you're better off going for either a labradoodle, spoodle or cavoodle:

'All of these hypoallergenic breeds will require some brushing and grooming, but no shedding which is a huge plus!' Tess said.

'Plus, they are smart, gentle, patient and absolutely love kids.'

'Greyhounds are the laziest and one of the most underrated of dog breeds of all time,' Tess said, and this makes them perfect for the time-poor

WORKAHOLIC AND TIME POOR - GREYHOUND

If you speak to many people, they will often say if you're time poor or addicted to working, you're not best-suited to owning a dog.

But Tess begs to differ, provided you choose the right breed.

'Greyhounds are the laziest and one of the most underrated of dog breeds of all time,' she said.

'If you spend a lot of time working or feel you don't have enough time for walking them too much, do yourself a favour and rescue a greyhound.

'You won't regret it!'

If you're retired and looking for a small bundle of love to add to your life, Tess recommends a 'small little pocket-sized cutie' such as a Pomeranian (stock image) or a Chihuahua

RETIREES - POMERANIAN OR CHIHUAHUA

If you're retired and looking for a small bundle of love to add to your life, Tess recommends a 'small little pocket-sized cutie' such as a Pomeranian or a Chihuahua.

'These are dogs you'll just want to have with you at all times,' she said.

'They're super easy to pop in the car, very easy-going with training, and most importantly - they're loyal.'

Love to hike or trail run? A Kelpie is the dog for you, and they are 'super popular this year' (stock image)

ACTIVE TYPES - KELPIE

Love to hike or trail run? A Kelpie is the dog for you, and they are 'super popular this year'.

'Kelpies are incredibly active and require a lot of training and dedication, but they absolutely love to please their owners!' Tess said.

'Sleek quick-drying hair that is perfect for the beach, Hungarian Vizslas loves swimming and will easily slot into your active lifestyle,' Tess said (stock image)

BEACHY TYPES - HUNGARIAN VIZSLA

If you're someone who is always in and out of the water and who spends most of their free time at the beach, you'll want a Hungarian Vizsla - partly because of their practicality.

'Sleek quick-drying hair that is perfect for the beach, this type of dog loves swimming and will easily slot into your active lifestyle,' Tess said.

While adding a new pet to the family when you already have one can be a struggle, Tess said a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel will make the perfect addition (stock image)

PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE A PET - CAVALIER KING CHARLES SPANIEL

While adding a new pet to the family when you already have one can be a struggle, Tess said a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel will make the perfect addition.

'The heaven-sent angel of all dog breeds, Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are the complete love sponges of dog breeds - they love absolutely everyone they meet!' she said.

TRAVELLERS - MOODLE

A moodle - or cross between a Maltese and a poodle (toy or miniature) - is perfect if you're a traveller.

'Low maintenance, relaxed, intelligent, this type of dog just wants to be by your side, wherever that may be!' Tess said.

Moodles also don't require too much exercise, and can live in a small home or apartment provided they have a daily walk.

When you're renting, one of the main things to think about is whether you might do any kind of damage to the property you're living in; this is why a Sphynx cat might be best (stock image)

RENTERS - SPHYNX CAT

When you're renting, one of the main things to think about is whether you might do any kind of damage to the property you're living in.

It's for this reason that Tess thinks you should get a sphynx cat instead of a dog.

'A dog is a big call living in a rental, a cat on the other hand... with no hair?! Brilliant!' she said.

HOMEOWNERS - ENGLISH SPRINGER SPANIEL

Finally, if you own your own home, Tess said it's time to invest in an English Springer Spaniel.

'A beautiful breed, English Springer Spaniels are very loving and kind, with lots of love to give,' Tess said.

Previously, the vet (pictured) shared the ideal skillset that is perfectly-suited to veterinary work, and she explained why some work experience is paramount

Previously, the vet shared the ideal skillset that is perfectly-suited to veterinary work.

The 26-year-old said relevant experience is paramount, as while working with animals is 'cuddly and cute, it also has some very confronting experiences'.

'Generally having a bit of experience with animals can provide you with a bit of a buffer from what may come in the door, from dogs with broken bones to those who have been hit by cars,' she said.

Tess added: 'The positives definitely outweigh the negatives, but it does take a certain type of person to be a successful veterinary nurse'.

The vet concluded by saying that being a vet is like 'no other job out there'.

'A vet nurse is an anaesthetist, phlebotomist, professional pet cuddler, lab technician, receptionist, nutritionist, surgical assistant, grief counsellor, radiographer, paramedic, inventory manager and pharmacy assistant - all in one day,' she said.

For more information about Tess Nolan, you can follow her on Instagram here.
A trendy fashion label beloved by stars and supermodels has created a highly provocative crop top that flashes more than a generous glimpse of 'underboob'.

The 'Mini Coco Bralette' from House of Sunny, an ethical and environmentally-conscious clothing brand based in East London, covers just half the breast, with its knitted material stopping just below the wearer's nipples.

The '90s-inspired string-like piece, available for $79.95 (AUD) on The Iconic, is designed to be worn on its own or layered over a sheer high neck top - the latter being the safest route for anyone nervous about flashing more flesh than intended.

It is a striking departure from the brand's usual aesthetic of colourful cardigans and high-waisted pants in carefree prints, which have been seen on some of the most influential women in fashion including Kendall Jenner and Bella Hadid.

The 'Mini Coco Bralette' from ethical East London label House of Sunny (left and right) covers just half the breast, with its knitted material stopping just below the wearer's nipples

Poll Would you wear the mini bralette? Yes No Only over a top Would you wear the mini bralette? Yes 69 votes

No 249 votes

Only over a top 2 votes Now share your opinion





A look through House of Sunny's tagged Instagram photos for the month of July did not reveal a single customer snap of the bralette.

Perhaps this is a sign that the style will be a once-off release from the 'It girl' brand born in a studio flat back in 2011.

The racy 'underboob' trend first appeared on Instagram feeds towards the end of 2018, when Australian women started hiking their bikini tops to expose the full underside of their chests.

Cosmo's online fashion editor, Amy Odell, told the Sydney Morning Herald at the time that women were adopting the trend because they want to look and feel sexy.

The top (pictured) is designed to be worn on its own or layered over a sheer high neck top - the latter being the safest route for anyone nervous about flashing more flesh than intended

The bralette (pictured) is a striking departure from House of Sunny's usual aesthetic of colourful cardigans and high-waisted pants in carefree prints

'If you're seeing more underboob now, it could be seen as an extension of the crop top or cut-out trends that - while not new trends - have been very popular over the past few years,' Ms Odell said.

'What those trends proved is that just a sliver of exposed skin in an unexpected place can be very, very sexy.'

Australian fitness star Tammy Hembrow is a serial wearer of underboob-baring designs, endorsing dozens of revealing bra tops to her 12.7million followers as part of brand collaborations over the past three years.

Australian-American model and swimwear designer Sahara Ray is another advocate of the underboob trend.
A 30-year-old digital marketer who had less than $1,000 to her name and lived from pay check to pay check has revealed how she managed to save $80,000 in just 36 months through investing, and her secrets to help you get on top of your money.

Sara Ocean, from Sydney, said she was a 'financial mess' for much of her 20s and 'dreaded' looking at her bank account.

However, all of this changed after she completed an online financial education program when she hit a low point with her finances.

Since then, Sara said she has learned that investing is not just something for 'rich old men in suits' - and now she is out to show young women can make money too.

A 30-year-old digital marketer with less than $1,000 to her name and lived from pay check to pay check revealed how she managed to save $80k in 36 months (Sara Ocean pictured)

Sara Ocean (pictured), from Sydney, said she was a 'financial mess' for much of her 20s and 'dreaded' looking at her bank account - until she learned how to best invest

According to Sara, like many young women, her attitude to money in her 20s was not good:

'I grew up in a household where, like many, financial education was not a thing, and money wasn't something that was spoken about, especially with your children,' Sara told FEMAIL.

'As an adult, the only two things I knew about money was how to make it and how to spend it.'

The money would just come in, and then... I don't know where it went. I had no control or visibility over it

The 30-year-old said by the time she had reached her mid 20s, she had 'practically no money, no savings and nothing to show for my years of working and earning'.

'I was making many mistakes with my money, but the main two were lack of knowledge as to where my money was going, and lack of a system to take control of my finances and dictate my expenses,' Sara said.

'The money would just come in, and then... I don't know where it went. I had no control or visibility over it.'

Sara (pictured) explained she started researching investing and how to get started, when she stumbled upon SkilledSmart's online financial education program, Mastering Money

After she hit a low point with her finances and realised she couldn't continue to save absolutely nothing, Sara found herself researching investing and how to get started.

She stumbled upon SkilledSmart's online financial education program, Mastering Money.

SkilledSmart is a financial education platform for adults to learn about money and personal finances founded by Paridhi Jain, after she realised that most Australians couldn't afford a financial advisor.

The online program Mastering Money covers all foundational financial planning topics including budgeting, investing, superannuation and more.

'SkilledSmart's Mastering Money program really was the starting point for my money journey,' Sara recalled.

'It removed the emotional fear and uncertainty about cash and gave me the drive to start getting educated and take action.'

Sara's top tips for getting started with investing 1. Don't overthink it, just take action: It's easy to get stuck in an 'analysis by paralysis' state with the overwhelming amount of information out there. But just getting started is half the battle. 'Real change comes from taking action, not just consuming lots of information,' Sara said. 2. Choose your 'inputs': This means who you surround yourself with, and the content you consume. Make sure to follow advice from those who have fruit on the tree. Sara actively seeks out the kind of mentors who will help her to achieve her goals. 3. Take small steps: Sara said what worked for her last year was focusing on taking 'small steps'. 'At first, I focused on saving more, being more mindful of my spending,' Sara said. 'Then, over time as I paid off my debt and built up my savings, I started to venture more into investing.' Even though this might not feel like much, Sara said it adds up over time and stops you from getting overwhelmed because you're focused on the small print, rather than getting obsessed with a big goal that feels unattainable. Advertisement

Some two and a half years later, Sara (pictured) has invested in shares and ETFs, and has since grown her net-worth to $80,000 plus

Through the program, the 30-year-old learned how to be mindful about the investing decisions she made, and she also learned to do her own research before listening to 'random people on the internet'.

'The program broke down the different investment options simply and helped me to understand more about the mindset behind investing and the different options I had,' Sara said.

Within six months, Sara had paid off $5,000 in debt, started saving and started making additional contributions to her super fund.

Some two and a half years later, she has invested in shares and ETFs, and has since grown her net-worth to $80,000 plus.

'My main goal now is to increase my cashflow,' Sara said.

'My husband and I will be starting a family really soon, and having ongoing cashflow is very important for us.

She added: 'I'm continuing to learn about how to create a secondary income, so I can have the freedom to work because I want to, not because I have to.'

Finally, Sara said that while starting your financial journey can be 'confronting and daunting', it can be helpful to look for people and mentors who will support you and you can count on.

'A problem shared is a problem halved,' she said.

'Facebook financial groups, mentorship, education and accountability groups make an amazing positive impact in your financial and life overall.'

For more information about SkilledSmart, please click here.


An Australian fashion label is selling a brilliant dupe of this season's 'must-have' designer trousers for a fraction of the price.

The $109 'Tyra' faux leather pants from Sydney website Meshki are almost identical to an authentic pair from Italian designer Federica Tosi, which cost an eye-watering $1,478 on FarFetch.

Both styles are high-waisted and chocolate brown, with straight legs and concealed clasps that fasten across the front.

But at $1,369 cheaper, Meshki's version is a considerably more affordable way to add one of this year's hottest staples to your wardrobe.

The $109 'Tyra' faux leather pants from Sydney website Meshki (left) are almost identical to an authentic pair from Italian designer Federica Tosi, which cost an eye-watering $1,478 (right)

The fast fashion brand has just restocked the popular pants after they sold out in all sizes for the fifth time since launching in June.

Customers lavish praise on the design in online reviews, with many raving about the comfort and quality of the faux leather fabric.

'Cutest pants ever. They feel so soft and not stiff at all...super flattering as well. If you're looking for good quality faux leather pants, this is it!' one woman wrote.

A second said she was 'blown away' by how the trousers cinched her waist and accentuated her hourglass shape in all the right places.

'If you are hesitant because of the leather don't, these are honestly so perfect I didn't want to take them off,' she added.

Both styles are high-waisted and chocolate brown, with straight legs and concealed clasps that fasten across the front

Kendall Jenner (pictured on April 26 in New York City) is one of the many celebrities embracing the leather look this year

A third said: 'I bought these in every colour...they are UNMATCHED. Definitely the best fitting trousers I may have ever tried, love love love!'

Others called them the leather pants of their dreams and said the material is so soft, it feels like a 'second skin'.

Leather is back in a major way, with Stylecaster recently naming leather trousers and leather blazers among the top fashion trends for the second half of 2021.

Aussies have been pairing the pants with cosy knits and long duster coats to keep warm during winter, while across the Pacific supermodels such as Kendall Jenner and Irina Shayk are also embracing the look, despite the summer heat.


American model Hailey Bieber cemented her love of the Australian fashion brand when she wore a cap by Sydney label Bec & Bridge this week.

The 24-year-old wife of Justin Bieber was pictured out and about wearing the $60 'natural' cap by Bec & Bridge when she was running errands.

She paired the stylish 'B' hat with an oversized white shirt and T-shirt, gold jewellery and athleisure shorts.

American model Hailey Bieber cemented her love of the Australian fashion brand when she wore a cap by Sydney label Bec & Bridge this week (pictured in the cap)

The 24-year-old wife of Justin Bieber was pictured out and about wearing the $60 'natural' cap by Bec & Bridge when she was running errands (pictured in the cap)

The fitted cap with an embroidered 'B' is a staple in Bec & Bridge's collections.

It features a fitted brim style and adjustable velcro back so it can be made bigger or smaller, depending on the wearer.

When pictures of Hailey in the cap were shared on Instagram, thousands were quick to rush to get their hands on the style and compliment it.

'I need this cap,' one commenter posted.

'Divine,' another added.

Earlier this year, popstar Rita Ora - who jetted to Australia earlier this year to appear on The Voice - wore a $240 midi dress by the Sydney best friends (pictured in Bec & Bridge)

The brand boasts a host of glossy fans including homegrown stars like bikini model Tash Oakley (pictured)

Hailey isn't the first megastar to showcase her love of the Aussie brand, Bec & Bridge.

Popstar Rita Ora - who jetted into Australia earlier this year to appear on The Voice - wore a $240 midi dress by the Sydney best friends.

The friends' feminine luxe styles have earned them the embrace from other A-listers too, including Kim Kardashian West, Bambi Northwood-Blyth, Kendall Jenner, Nadia Fairfax and Natasha Oakley.

Their label is also sold in more than 500 global retailers.

'Running your own business is a 24/7 job however we wouldn't have it any other way. It's also very rewarding and humbling seeing your designs on women all around the world,' the designers previously told Daily Mail Australia.

'The key now is to keep moving forward, to stay on our A-game and not get complacent.

'The fashion industry is so fast paced and fickle. There is no time for resting on your laurels.'

Jessica Gomes and Jade Tunchy are also pictured wearing Bec & Bridge; the friends' feminine luxe styles have earned them the embrace from other A-listers too, including Kim Kardashian

The Bec & Bridge story of how they got together as designers is so fortuitous it's almost folkloric.

After the pair met while studying fashion design at the University of Technology in Sydney, they were asked to customise a pair of their friend's jeans.

'We don't have a picture of that first pair of jeans we made unfortunately,' the women previously joked to Daily Mail Australia.

But a Gold Coast supplier offered the women a deal for 200 pairs of the distressed trousers and fifteen years later, the rest is history.

Becky Cooper and Bridget Yorston launched Bec & Bridge in 2003 after a pair of customised jeans were picked up by a Gold Coast supplier

Bec & Bridge themselves are both mothers (with five children between them), meaning juggling their full-time jobs with parenthood is full-on:

'It really is a juggle! The key for us has been having a strong partnership - this has allowed us to each take the reigns at different times when we have both had our babies,' they said.

'Having children has forced us to be more organised and more decisive. There is no time for dilly dallying.'

With more than fifteen years in the industry the friends admit they've seen the business evolve over time as trends come and go.

But their core mission to outfit women in the sleekest of styles remains the same.

'We've always had so much mutual respect for one another and we trust each other with every decision,' they said.
A young woman who developed severe acne due to the synthetic hormone in the birth control pill has said it is important to educate girls, aged 15 and 16, on the side effects of the pill before taking it.

Kyrie Green, 24, from Leicestershire, first started developing acne in October 2019 when she switched to a new contraceptive pill, but it got even worse over lockdown.

In an effort to calm her symptoms, Kyrie stopped taking the pill but the damage was done and she had to turned to her GP who immediately referred her to a dermatologist.

Kyrie Green, 24, first developed severe acne in October 2019 when she switched to a new contraceptive pill but it got even worse over lockdown. (pictured, before, in July 2019)

She revealed that the skin expert was so shocked by the severity of Kyrie's skin problems that she 'grimaced' when she took off her face mask.

Kyrie, who works as an account executive, said: 'I thought my acne would subside, but I was very wrong. Over the next few months, the acne got more severe and more painful.

'When I sent the images in [to the GP], she called me very soon after and said it was clearly serious and I was immediately referred to a dermatologist.

'The dermatologist grimaced when I took my mask off, which knocked my self-esteem quite a bit.

'Going from having completely acne-free skin to a severe breakout was a major shift in my life and it did affect my confidence.

'It was really hard  I never thought I would suffer with acne in the way that I did.'

The account executive, from Leicestershire, saw multiple dermatologists, as well as her GP, who said that the synthetic hormone in the pill she had been taking had been slowly causing the acne. (pictured in September 2020, after taking new contraceptive pill)

Kyrie revealed that the dermatologist was so shocked by the severity of her skin problems that she 'grimaced' when she took off her face mask (pictured in October 2020)

Kyrie found it difficult to go out in public and adjust to having acne, having only ever had minimal breakouts in the past.

Luckily, lockdown meant that she couldn't go out as much  with face masks hiding the majority of her face when she did.

But inside, Kyrie's confidence faltered and the young woman was so stressed about the skin that she couldn't think about anything else.

She said: 'It was really difficult and I experienced very low lows. I thought all anyone was thinking and talking about was my skin, which was obviously not true at all but I still felt so insecure.

'At the early stage of my breakout I avoided looking in mirrors  my confidence levels were very low.

'I only took pictures of my skin to document the progress  or decline  of its health.

Kyrie said her confidence faltered and she found it difficult to go out in public and adjust to having acne, having only ever had minimal breakouts in the past (pictured with acne-free skin before her ordeal)

Kyrie has documented her journey to clearer skin on Instagram, which has seen a dramatic improvement thanks to a four-month course of antibiotics

'At one time I had put on makeup because I was going to a job interview, and it was my first time wearing foundation in a few months. I caught myself in the mirror and burst into tears.'

Kyrie saw multiple dermatologists, as well as her GP, who said that the synthetic hormone in the pill she had been taking for two years prior had been slowly causing the acne.

Her GP prescribed a four-month course of antibiotics, which saw a dramatic improvement in Kyrie's symptoms.

Although she wouldn't warn people to avoid the contraceptive pill completely, Kyrie thinks it is important that people - especially teenage girls - are educated on the side effects before they start taking it.

'The pill has negatively impacted so many people's lives and I think there is a certain duty of care when it comes to telling people what they could experience,' she said.

She said she now thinks it's important to educate young girls on the side effects of taking the pill, before they go on contraception aged 15 or 16, saying doctors have a 'duty of care' after it has negatively impacted so many people's lives

'Obviously there are side effects listed on the packet but when a person is 15 or 16 years old, I think we should try harder to educate them.

'I will never go back on hormonal contraception because it doesn't suit me.

'I feel so free not being on them anymore  I feel like myself for the first time in years.'

Her skin has now cleared up a lot, with Kyrie only suffering with more severe breakouts during periods of ovulation and menstruation  but they are nothing compared to her previous struggle.

Kyrie has bravely documented her experience of living with acne and the journey to clearer skin on Instagram, but says having clear skin is 'not the secret to happiness'.

Instead, she praises the online community of fellow acne sufferers for helping her accept her skin and coming to terms with it.

Kyrie said: 'I found that my happiness was not just about the condition of my skin.

'It was only one layer and in the end, when my face started to heal, that alone didn't make me a happier person.

Kyrie has since stopped taking hormonal contraception, saying she will never go back on it again. Pictured, left, July 2020, and right, July 2021

Kyrie now only suffers with more severe breakouts during periods of ovulation and menstruation  but they are nothing compared to her previous struggle. Pictured, left, July 2020, and right, July 2021

'What made me happy throughout my journey was the support I received on Instagram, through the acne community and through loved ones.

'Having that support system there helped me to accept my skin for whatever it was.

'After I started to post about my acne on Instagram, I accepted my skin and realised that acne is normal.'

Kyrie has now shared her experiences and photos in the hopes that it will help others who are suffering from acne.

'It's so easy to get caught up in thinking that clear skin is the answer to all of your problems but I promise you it's not,' she wrote in a post which has since gone viral.

After sharing her experiences and photos in the hopes that it will help others who are suffering from acne, she has received a huge amount of support online

'Acne-free skin is not a long-term happiness solution.

'I'm here to tell you that your emotions are valid and happiness isn't something that happens overnight.'

The Instagram post has received more than 6,500 likes so far, leaving social media users touched  with many thanking Kyrie for sharing her experience.

One person said: 'I'm glad I found your account! You have helped me on my journey to accepting my skin!'

'Your skin condition doesn't = happiness,' another person agreed. [sic] Another viewer said: 'You helped me love my acne.'

'Girl you are amazing we love the acne positivity,' someone else agreed.

WHAT IS CYSTIC ACNE? Cystic acne - the most severe form of the skin condition - occurs when oil and dead skin cells build up deep within hair follicles. If these become infected, it can cause boil-like blemishes. Spots occur when a pore in the skin gets clogged, usually with dead skin cells. If bacteria enters the pore, it can become red and swollen. Cystic acne takes place when this infection goes deep into the skin, creating tender bumps that are full of pus. If the cyst bursts, it can spread the infection, causing more break outs. Sufferers are usually in their teens or early 20s, but can be as young as eight or as old as 50. Cystic acne is more common in men. The face, chest, back, upper arms and should are most often affected. Cystic acne's exact cause is unclear but is thought to involve the hormones androgen. Androgen increases during puberty and can result in pores getting clogged. In women, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, menopause or polycystic ovary syndrome can also worsen acne. Over-the-counter medication that can ease milder acne often have no effect on cystic forms. A dermatologist may prescribe oral antibiotics that control bacteria and lower inflammation. Creams and gels containing retionoid, a form of vitamin A, can also help to unclog pores. Birth-control pills may also help women to regulate their hormones. It is important to seek treatment to prevent scarring. Acne sufferers should not pick at their blemishes as this may push the infection deeper and make it spread. They should also lead a healthy lifestyle. Research suggests sugary diets can worsen acne. Sufferers should also try and relax due to stress causing the body to release more hormones. Source: Web MD Advertisement

Another person added: 'Wowww the progress is unbelievable.' [sic]

'You are beautiful,' commented one fan.

Someone else said: 'I find it so courageous of you to share your thoughts and feelings and your experience with pictures!

'I can imagine how many young people you have encouraged and given hope by showing that they are not alone in this type of pain/suffering even emotionally.'

Acne affects more than 80% of people in the UK but severe acne is more rare. Up to 14% of people seek medical help for the condition.
Whether it is a summer BBQ or a night out with the girls, polka dots have long been the go-to print for fashionistas in search of a playful print.

Easy to throw on and surprisingly versatile, a statement polka dot dress is a shortcut to an instantly memorable ensemble - and this summer there are plenty of options on offer.

'Polka dot dresses are a timeless piece and a staple in most wardrobes,' celebrity stylist Rochelle White told FEMAIL. 'They can be dressed up as casual and can be rocked with trainers, sandals, flip flops or flats.

'The dress can also be rocked with boots, Dr Martens and heels, so fitting for many occasions. Depending on the time of year, a denim jacket can be worn, as well as blazers and Macs or rainfall jackets. This is always a go too look for many when it comes to Spring/Summer I think purely because it is so versatile.'

From Valentino to Matalan, designers across a range of price points have released their take on the polka dot LBD.

Others including French Connection and Boohoo Boutique have cut the prices on their spotty frocks to entice shoppers looking for their next post-Freedom Day purchase.

But is it worth splashing the cash on that new polka dot dress? Here, FEMAIL has picked out 12 of the best on offer, with prices ranging from 14 to almost 3,000 to see if you can tell the difference.

Scroll down to the bottom of the article for the solution.

Just dotty! One of these dresses cost 2,980 and the other one costs 110, which is which?

High street vs high end: One of these flirty frocks costs 16 from Matalan, the other is 2,080 from a big name designer. But can you tell them apart?

Summer favourites: One of these dresses is 38 and the other is 14, can you spot which one is more than double the price of the other?

Tied in a bow! You could save 15 by buying the 25 Boohoo Boutique dress over the 40 offer by Yumi at John Lewis. So can you pick the cheaper design?

Bardot babes: Both dresses feature off-the-shoulder necklines, but which one costs 1,765 and which one would set you back 28?

Easy breezy: One of these summer dresses is 55 from Oasis, the other is 575 by Zimmerman. But can you tell which one costs 10 times more?

THE REVEAL...

Left, tie-neck polka-dot silk-crepe midi dress by Valentino, originally 2,980, now on sale at Net-a-Porter for 1,490. Right, 110 French Connection dress, now on sale for 30

Left, Black Mesh Polka Dot Mini Dress by Matalan, 16. Right, the cutout polka-dot crepe mini dress by Valentino, 2,080

Left, the River Island polka dot wrap midi dress in white, 38. Right, Black Polka Dot Puff Sleeve Dress by George at Asda, 14

Left, the Yumi Polka Dot Midi Shirt Dress, available exclusively at John Lewis for 45. Right, the Boutique Polka Dot Wrap Dress, now on sale for 25.50, down from 30

Left, the Missguided shirred skater dress with open back in black polka dot, 28. Right, the Rasario Off-the-shoulder polka-dot silk-organza midi dress, 1,765, now reduced to 882
Whiley, 56, said she was shocked at how fast virus has spread amongst Coco's peers - and said her daughter had had headaches, dizziness and sore throats

Radio 2 DJ has been absent from the airwaves for the last ten days after her youngest daughter contracted Covid from classmates

DJ Jo Whiley has revealed her youngest daughter has endured a 'solid week' of illness after contracting Covid from classmates at school.

The Radio 2 evening presenter was forced to take ten days out of her presenting job after Coco, 12, caught the virus and the family had to self-isolate.

Whiley said she had been left 'shocked' at how fast the virus had spread amongst Coco and her peers.

Revealing on Twitter her youngest daughter, one of four children she shares with husband Steve Morton, had been hit with unpleasant symptoms, the DJ told fans: 'V happy to say Ill be back on tonight after isolating for ten days.

'Coco, my 12 yr old developed COVID as did so many of her school mates. Its shocking to see how fast it spreads. Shes ok now after a solid week of dizziness/headache/sore throat etc.'

Scroll down for video

Radio 2 DJ Jo Whiley has been absent from the airwaves for the last ten days after her youngest daughter, Coco, 12, contracted Covid from classmates

Whiley, 56, told her 362,000 followers on Twitter that she was shocked at how quickly the virus had spread at Coco's school - and said her daughter had endured a 'solid week' of illness (Jo Whiley pictured with her daughters India, centre, and Coco, right)

Almost 750,000 children had to self-isolate last week because they came into contact with a possible Covid case.

Yesterday, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested that every child in the UK could get the jab before the end of the year.

Vaccinating children against Covid remains a contentious topic because most youngsters are at such low risk from the virus itself and the jabs carry a tiny risk of serious side effects.

In February, the DJ campaigned for people with learning disabilities to be vaccinated more quickly after her younger sister Frances, who has severe learning difficulties and diabetes, was hospitalised.

Appearing on The Andrew Marr Show at the time, she said seeing her sister struggle with Covid, after catching it in the care home where she lives, had been 'the worst week of my family's life'.

In February, Whiley told Andrew Marr that seeing her younger sister Frances, who has severe learning difficulties, hospitalised with Covid had been 'the worst week of my family's life' (The sisters pictured at the star's parents home in Northamptonshire)

Jo, pictured with her sister Frances, went on to campaign for people with learning disabilities to be vaccinated more quickly

Frances suffers from a rare genetic syndrome called Cri du Chat - a chromosomal condition that results in delayed development.

Whiley said that Frances had been 'so terrified' about being admitted to hospital that she 'rampaged and people couldn't contain her' leading to security guards being forced to restrain her and called for the Government to ensure people with disabilities and learning difficulties were not forgotten.

The Government is set to unveil plans to immunise Britons aged 12 to 16 who have underlying health conditions or live with a vulnerable family member. The plans will also see 17-year-olds who are months away from their 18th birthdays offered a vaccine.

However, ministers will stop short of opening the rollout up to all healthy youngsters until more safety data is collected in places like the US, where it is already happening.
Jessica Mulroney has shared a snap of the stunning Naeem Khan gold beaded dress she wore to the evening of Duke and Duchess of Sussex's wedding in 2018 - before revealing it weighed a staggering 30lbs.

The Canadian stylist, 41, from Toronto, took to Instagram to share a behind-the-scenes video of the dazzling gold floor-length gown she wore to the evening reception at Frogmore Cottage.

Posting a short clip of herself doing a 360 degree twirl in the eye-catching gown by the Indian-American fashion designer to her 416,000 followers, she wrote: 'So many of you asked about the designer of this dress.'

She then tagged the designer of the gown, Naeem Khan, before adding: 'It weighed 30 pounds.'

Jessica Mulroney, 41, from Toronto, has shared a snap of the stunning Naeem Khan gold beaded dress she wore to the evening of Duke and Duchess of Sussex's wedding in 2018 - before revealing it weighed a staggering 30lbs. Pictured, with Meghan Markle on May 31 2016

Jessica Mulroney, 41, from Toronto, has shared a snap of the stunning Naeem Khan gold beaded dress she wore to the evening of Duke and Duchess of Sussex's wedding in 2018 - before revealing it weighed a staggering 30lbs

Jessica could be seen wearing her hair slicked back in a ponytail and adding a pair of gold hoop earrings to complete the glamorous look.

For the earlier ceremony, Jessica wore her brown locks loose and looked the picture of elegance in a blue gown by Montreal-based designer Di Carlo couture - as she headed into St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle.

The Canadian fashion stylist was seen escorting her twin sons - John and Brian - who were page boys for Meghan into the chapel, and her daughter, Ivy, who was a bridesmaid.

Jessica had the honour of carrying the train of her dress down the aisle as Meghan walked towards Prince Harry.

Posting a short clip of herself doing a 360 degree twirl in the eye-catching gown to her 416,000 followers, she wrote: 'So many of you asked about the designer of this dress'

Jessica then tagged the designer of the gown, Naeem Khan, before adding: 'It weighed 30 pounds'

The recent photo release comes after Jessica shared a cryptic post about 'losing friends and finding better ones' - months after her friendship with Meghan Markle was said to be on the rocks following the stylist's racism row.

The stylist posted a lengthy quote on Instagram at the end of June, which read: 'Life changes. You lose love. You lose friends. You lose pieces of yourself that you never imagined would be gone.'

The quote continued: 'And then, without even realizing it, these pieces come back. New love enters. Better friends come along. And a stronger, wiser you, is staring back in the mirror.'

It comes after Meghan stayed silent as Jessica found herself at the centre of a Black Lives Matter race row last year when she was accused of using her white privilege against a black social media influencer.

It was reported last year that the Duchess had cut ties with Mulroney after influencer Sasha Exeter accused the stylist of 'threatening her livelihood' when she posted a Black Lives Matter call-to-action on Instagram.

For the earlier ceremony, Jessica looked the picture of elegance in a blue gown by Montreal-based designer Di Carlo couture - as she headed into St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle (pictured)

Meghan remained silent when the Canadian fashion stylist was accused of racist bullying and abusing her white privilege to threaten the career of a black social media influencer.

Sasha alleged that Jessica took personal offence when she asked bloggers to use their platform to advance the Black Lives Matter movement and that private messages between the pair had left her paralysed with fear.

Mulroney later faced accusations that she had used Meghan as her 'superpower,' though denied this was the case and refused to speak about the Duchess in interviews.

A source had claimed their friendship is no longer 'what it once was,' adding this was not due to the fall-out with Exeter, but because they have 'just grown apart.'

The insider added: 'Of course, Meghan has been worried about Jess. Shell always have love for her.'

However, Mulroney told Page Six in November that she and Meghan are 'constantly' in touch via FaceTime.

The stylist assisted Meghan in choosing a wedding dress for the actress' Suits character, Rachel Zane, in 2015.

Jessica Mulroney recently shared a cryptic post about 'losing friends and finding better ones' - after her friendship with Meghan Markle, 39, was said to be on the rocks following the stylist's racism row last summer

A source had claimed Meghan and Jessica's friendship is no longer 'what it once was,' adding this was not due to the fall-out with Exeter, but because they have 'just grown apart'

Jessica's friendship with Meghan was not the only aspect of her life that suffered as a result of the controversy.

Having quickly shot to fame thanks to her close friendship with the Duchess of Sussex, Jessica's fall from grace was even swifter.

DailyMail.com exclusively revealed that ABC had quickly severed ties with her, confirming that Jessica would not be returning to her occasional role as a fashion contributor on Good Morning America.

Canadian TV network CTV also distanced themselves from the stylist, revealing that it was pulling all episodes of her wedding-focused reality show I Do Redo from its platforms ahead of its expected US premiere on Netflix.

It was claimed last August that the Duchess of Sussex was reported to have cut ties with Jessica after black influencer Sasha Exeter (left) accused her of 'threatening her livelihood' after 'taking offence' at a Black Lives Matter video posted by the online star

She then stepped down from the board of directors of The Shoebox Project, a charity that she founded with her sisters-in-law, Caroline, Vanessa, and Katy Mulroney.

In a statement shared on Instagram, the charity said: 'Jessica Mulroney is a founding member of The Shoebox Project and she has dedicated herself to its growth and success over the years, for which we are very grateful.

'In light of recent events, the charity supports Jessicas decision to step away from the Board of Directors.'

Jessica's husband Ben - the son of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney - then stepped down from his role as the host of CTV's celebrity news show 'etalk', a position that he had held for 18 years.
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Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles appeared in good spirits as they visited a primary school on St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly in Cornwall today, hours after Prince Harry's shock memoir announcement.

The Prince of Wales, 72, and Duchess of Cornwall, 74, once again went mask free as they spoke with adults and children during their stop at Five Islands Academy School for an Eco Conference.

Charles kept his feelings about Harry's bombshell book deal hidden as he cracked a joke and laughed with members of the public on the second day of his three-day tour of the South West with Camilla.

He dressed for the hot weather in a cream suit as his wife, Camilla, looked elegant in a vibrant blue, summer frock with an exotic bird print.

The Duchess of Cornwall teamed her tropical print dress by Bombshell with tan-coloured kitten heels for the outing and completed her sophisticated ensemble with a simple gold jewelry and drop earrings.

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles appeared in good spirits as they visited a primary school on St Mary's in the Isles of Scilly in Cornwall today, hours after Prince Harry's shock memoir announcement

No crisis here! Charles and Camilla laughed and joked with children during a visit to Five Islands Academy School for an Eco Conference, during the second day of their visit to Devon and Cornwall

Following their visit to the school, the royal couple headed to Porthcressa Quay where they spoke with key workers involved in community support during the pandemic. They also met local business owners who have been affected by lockdown.

Charles and Camilla then made their way to Porthcressa Beach where they strolled along the picturesque sands and spoke with a crowd of well-wishers.

This comes as the Duke of Sussex's $20million Megxit memoir was today branded a 'moneymaking exercise at the expense of his blood family' by royal experts and insiders who predicted it would be 'a book by Harry, as written by Meghan.'

Harry, 36, did not warn his grandmother, father or brother about the tell-all book until 'moments before it became public' in a sign that his relationship with the Royal Family did not improve during his visit to unveil Princess Diana's statue in London earlier this month, it was claimed today.

The Duchess of Cornwall looked summery in a tropical print dress by Bombshell, and carried a matching face mask

Camilla teamed her vibrant blue, summer frock with tan-coloured kitten heels for the outing and completed her sophisticated ensemble with a simple gold jewelry and drop earrings

Charles dressed for the hot weather in a cream suit as he kept his feelings about Harry's bombshell book deal hidden

Camilla was greeted by schoolchildren at the Five Islands Academy School during her visit as she kept her eyes shaded from the sun with a pair of sunglasses

Prince Charles and three school children inspect the school garden as he makes the visit to the school to attend an Eco Conference

The Duchess of Cornwall reads from a children's picture book, The Promise, by Nicola Davies, during a visit to the Five Islands Academy School

The Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William are said to have been completely blindsided by Harry's shock announcement that he has been secretly working on his as yet untitled memoirs with Pulitzer-winning ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer for a year, with a release date of late 2022, according to publisher Penguin Random House.

In a statement Harry said: 'I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become' - but one royal insider responded tartly: 'A book by Harry, as written by Meghan.'

Prince Harry didn't feel he needed permission from Buckingham Palace to write the memoir, his spokesman declared today.

The Sussexes' spokesman told the BBC that Harry would not be expected to obtain permission for the project from Buckingham Palace - but it is not yet clear if royal officials will get to see the finished book before its release in late 2022 by publisher Penguin Random House. MailOnline has asked Harry's LA team to comment.

Following their visit to the school, the royal couple headed to Porthcressa Quay where they spoke with key workers involved in community support during the pandemic

Charles and Camilla then made their way to Porthcressa Beach where they strolled along the picturesque white sands

The Prince of Wales spoke animatedly with a crowd of well-wishers that gathered on the beach to greet the royal couple

Camilla uses a parasol to shade herself from the sun during a walk on Bryher Island as part of their tour of Cornwall

The Prince of Wales makes friends with an adorable brown and white dog and their owner during his visit to Bryher Island

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's 'truth bombing' began in March with their extraordinary 90-minute interview with Oprah Winfrey where they accused the Royal Family of racism towards Archie and ignoring cries for help from a depressed Meghan when she was suicidal and pregnant.

In the chaotic aftermath of the show, watched by almost 100million people worldwide, the couple claimed this would be their 'final word' on Megxit, only to continue talking about it in more damaging detail over the coming months.

And now the royals will be dreading the release of the book next year, which experts predict will be 'more 'poor me' introspection and more excuses to justify his decision to quit royal life' and 'the last thing the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William will want to hear'.

Royal author Phil Dampier wrote in the Express today: 'They will be in despair that Harry - doubtless prompted by Meghan - just won't leave it alone for a while. It is obvious that when Harry came over for the unveiling of Diana's statue earlier this month, no meaningful progress was made in his relationship with his father or brother. If he respected their opinion, he wouldn't do this book because they wouldn't approve of it.

'Harry wants to present himself as a mature family man who has learnt from his mistakes and become a wise old sage. But I fear many other people will see this as yet another moneymaking exercise at the expense of his blood family'.

The first draft of the manuscript, currently untitled, is said to be almost completely written and is due to be submitted in October with Harry's spokesperson saying today he didn't feel he needed permission from Buckingham Palace to write the memoir

Just four months ago Harry and Meghan made worldwide news during their explosive 90-minute interview with Oprah Winfrey where they accused the Royal Family of racism towards Archie and ignoring cries for help from a depressed Meghan when she was suicidal and pregnant

Harry's biographer Angela Levin said: 'I feel he risks looking like a traitor to the Royal Family. I don't believe it's going to be all honey and sweetness, I think he's going to smash again. I don't know why, does he want to destroy his family? Does he feel so revengeful that he has to take yet another knock after Oprah and after Finding Freedom.

'I don't quite get it, why he doesn't want to move on, enjoy his life, he's making pots of money. He's in love with his wife, he's got two children, a girl and a boy. But why is he so negative about his past, he can't leave it alone. It's like a cat or dog, tearing at something to destroy it.'

The book marks the first time that a senior royal has written this kind of tell-all, and the news of its existence comes amid an ongoing, and increasingly-bitter, rift between Harry and Meghan, and the rest of the Royal Family.

Few details about the book's exact contents have been shared, however Penguin Random House issued a statement in which it revealed Harry's book will provide an 'intimate and heartfelt' look into his life.

'In an intimate and heartfelt memoir from one of the most fascinating and influential global figures of our time, Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him,' the blurb reads.

'Covering his lifetime in the public eye from childhood to the present day, including his dedication to service, the military duty that twice took him to the frontlines of Afghanistan, and the joy he has found in being a husband and father, Prince Harry will offer an honest and captivating personal portrait, on that shows readers that behind everything they think they know lies an inspiring, courageous and uplifting human story.'
Anna Wintour's pregnant daughter Bee Shaffer has showed off her growing baby bump on Instagram for the first time after media broke their baby news earlier this month.

The 33-year-old is expecting her first child with her husband Francesco Carrozzini, whom she married in 2018  with their baby set to be the third grandchild for Vogue editor-in-chief Anna.

And on Monday, Bee took to social media to officially announce the big news, posting an artful photo of herself cradling her baby bump in a maxi dress.

The announcement was met with a flood of congratulatory comments from fashionable friends, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Dianna Agron, and Lily Aldridge.

Happy news: Anna Wintour's pregnant daughter Bee Shaffer has showed off her growing baby bump on Instagram for the first time after media broke their baby news earlier this month

Baby makes three: Bee, 33, and her husband of three years, Francesco Carrozzini, 38, are expecting their first child together

Woohoo! Congrats have poured in from stars including Sarah Jessica Parker, Dianna Agron, Lily Aldridge, Ben Platt, designers Zac Posen and Joseph Altuzarra, and Billie Lourd

Bee's baby will be 71-year-old Anna's third grandchild. The mother-and-daughter are seen together in November 2018

In the Instagram photo, Bee stands backlit in front of a window, posing in profile for the camera.

Wearing a swishy maxi dress, she looks down and lovingly cradles her bump, appearing quite far along in her pregnancy.

Socialites, celebrities, and designers shared well wishes for Bee, with comments coming in from Sarah Jessica Parker, Dianna Agron, Lily Aldridge, Ben Platt, Ally Hilfiger, designers Zac Posen and Joseph Altuzarra, Billie Lourd, Livia Firth, and Rachel Zoe.

W Magazine editor-in-chief Sara Moonves, Architectural Digest editor- in-chief Amy Astley, Bumble chief brand officer Selby Drummond, Vogue and Teen Vogue editor Lisa Love, and Derek Blasberg also commented.

Bee and her husband are enjoying a bit of a babymoon this month and have been photographed in Portofino, Italy, where Bee has turned the streets into her own maternity style runway.

The parents-to-be have been enjoying a romantic getaway in the seaside Italian town for the past week, clearly relishing their final few months as a family of two before their newest addition arrives.

Style: The mother-to-be dressed her growing baby bump in a pretty floral dress

Comfy: The dress featured sweet puff sleeves and elasticated smocking around the chest

In images taken on Monday, Bee is seen cuddling up to her husband of three years, massaging his shoulders while dining out at a local restaurant.

The mother-to-be looked relaxed and happy in a pretty floral-print dress, which she paired with some simple sandals and allowed her long brunette locks to hang in a straight style around her shoulders.

That silhouette seems to be a firm vacation favorite for Bee, who was seen wearing a similar style on the previous day, this time opting for a sleeveless white design that was covered in dainty blue flowers.

The duo strolled along the cobbled streets of picturesque Portofino, with Bee toting a straw beach bag, while Francesco was carrying a paper shopping bag from men's clothing store Sease, which specializes in 'high-performance' clothing.

Much like his wife, Francesco has also stuck with something of a capsule wardrobe during the trip, wearing patterned swim shorts and a T-shirt on almost every occasion that the couple has been pictured  although he shook things up in jeans when they were spotted out and about on Monday.

The couple has gone out to eat and also spent some time out on the water.

Unsurprisingly, Bee and Francesco have looked very much at home in Portofino during their vacation. Francesco spent much of his childhood in the area, splitting his time between the coastal spot and the city of Milan.

Shopping: The dress silhouette has been a firm favorite for Bee throughout her vacation, with the TV producer stepping out in a similar design just a few days ago

Au natural: Bee went makeup-free and left her long brunette locks in a straight style around her shoulders

Basking in the sunshine! A friend also shared a photo of the couple  but just showed Bee's face

The couple also hosted their second wedding celebration in the town back in 2018, having already tied the knot for the first time at 71-year-old Anna's beach house on Long Island.

For both ceremonies, Bee donned a white dress, although she chose a different design for each wedding location, wowing in a classic silhouette to say her first 'I do' but opting for a more summer-friendly Dolce & Gabbana alternative for her second time tying the knot.

Comfort: During the pandemic, Anna wrote a piece in Vogue in which she opened up about how much comfort she had found in her family and grandchildren (seen with their parents Charlie and Lizzy Shaffer)

Details of both weddings were kept very much under wraps  and Bee declined to publicize her nuptials in the pages of her mother's magazine, as so many other high-society brides have chosen to do in the past.

It is understood that the couple implemented a strict no-social media rule at their weddings, echoing the same regulations that Anna insists upon at the Met Gala  although those restrictions have become increasingly lax over the years.

Francesco and Bee have always tried to keep their personal lives very much under the radar, sharing d just a few social media snaps .

Bee, who is a TV producer and previously worked on Late Night with Seth Meyers, is said to have known Francesco, who was born in Italy and grew up splitting his time between Milan and Portofino, since they were both children.

The couple's baby will be Anna's third grandchild. The Vogue editor-in-chief's doctor son Charlie, 36, and his wife Lizzy have two children together, four-year-old Caroline and two-year-old Ella.

Last month, Bee came together with her family to celebrate the christening of Charlie and Lizzy's younger daughter, which took place at Anna's Long Island home.

Celebration: Last month, Bee revealed just a hint of a bump while hosting a christening ceremony for her brother Charlie's younger daughter Ella

Long-term: Bee and Francesco were first linked in 2016. However, they are said to have known each other since childhood; Anna was close friends with Francesco's late mother Franca (right)

One guest shared an Instagram snap of Bee with close friends Derek Blasberg and Nick Brown, in which she is seen showing off just a hint of a bump in a printed maxi dress.

In April of last year, Anna opened up about how much comfort she had found in her grandchildren during the early months of the pandemic, writing in a piece for Vogue that celebrating Caroline's third birthday over Zoom had been one of the highlights of her time in quarantine.

'What else am I grateful for? My granddaughter, who celebrated her third birthday through a virtual party the other day,' she wrote, while sharing an adorable photo of the youngster enjoying her birthday cake.

'A lot of people Zoomed in and it was just a joy seeing how happy that made her.'

Bee and Charlie are Anna's children from her marriage to first husband David Shaffer, a psychiatrist to whom she was wed for 15 years, from 1984 to 1999.

After her split from David, Anna was in a 20-year relationship with telecoms tycoon Shelby Bryan. However, the couple is said to have gone their separate ways in October last year.
After three dramatic home births, Jessa Duggar welcomed her fourth child at a hospital on July 18  and as she moaned in pain during labor, she was treated to her first-ever epidural.

The 28-year-old and her husband Been Seewald, 26, announced the birth of baby number four on Monday, and today revealed that they'd had a little girl named Fern Elliana.

As Jessa had previously been rushed to the hospital after delivery due to hemorrhaging, the couple opted for their first hospital birth this time around, which meant Jessa  whos past births were all natural  got not one but two epidurals to ease her pain.

Something else was different this time around, too: After TLC announced the cancellation of the family's reality show, Counting On, in the wake of big brother Josh's arrest on child pornography charges, Jessa's mom Michelle was there to film the whole thing.

Jessa Duggar welcomed her fourth child at a hospital on July 18  and as she moaned in pain during labor, she was treated to her first-ever epidural

The 28-year-old and her husband Been Seewald, 26, announced the birth of baby number four on Monday, and today revealed that they'd had a little girl named Fern Elliana

On YouTube, she shared candid shots as she writhed in pain, got two epidurals, and finally pushed the baby out

The baby measured 21 inches and weighed 8 lbs. 5.9 oz.

Jessa has shared two videos documenting the birth of baby Fern, the first of which was shared the very next day after her delivery. The second  which documents the delivery itself  was uploaded today, two days postpartum.

Jessa and Ben arrived at a local hospital, where they had a doula to help them through the process and give Jessa hip compressions to ease her through back labor.

Waiting for her to dilated further, they listened to 'praise music,' with Jessa wiping away tears as she swayed from side to side.

Twelve hours into labor, an anesthesiologist arrived to give her epidural  a first for Jessa, who had gone all natural at home in the past.

The first shot didn't work, so she got a second and then an additional bump of mediation.

Once they'd kicked in, she can be seen asking the anesthesiologist, 'Do you catch babies? Cause that thing's coming out.'

They had a doula to help them through the process and give Jessa hip compressions to ease her through back labor

Twelve hours into labor, an anesthesiologist arrived to give her epidural  a first for Jessa, who had gone all natural at home in the past

Jessa has given birth to all of her children on camera, though previously it was TLC there to film

Her mom had to film after the family reality show, Counting On, was canceled

Mom also cut the cord after Ben refused because, as Michelle said, he 'prefers not the gooey stuff'

When it was time to push, a female doctor and two nurses asked Ben if he would like to cut the chord, which he refused.

'Ben prefers not the gooey stuff. He prefers to be up by [her head],' Jessa's mother Michelle can be heard saying.

Michelle continued offering words of encouragement in her high-pitched voice, as Jessa moaned in pain.

Michelle was on hand not just as support but to film the whole thing, since the family didn't have their usual professional camera crew about.

Jessa's three other births had all been filmed by TLC for their reality show, Counting On  but now that the network has axed the show, Jessa took a DIY approach.

On camera, Jessa cried out and gave a final push, and the baby was born with a 'Thank you Jesus.'

On camera, Jessa cried out and gave a final push, and the baby was born with a 'Thank you Jesus'

Jessa continued to sob as Fern was place on her chest and the medical professionals fussed around her

Some time later, Ben got to hold the baby for the first time, and looked over at his wife to say: 'Good job, love. Praise the Lord!'

Jessa and Ben are pictured in the hospital following the birth

Jessa continued to sob as Fern was place on her chest and the medical professionals fussed around her.

Some time later, Ben got to hold the baby for the first time, and looked over at his wife to say: 'Good job, love. Praise the Lord!'

The baby measured 21 inches and weighed 8 lbs. 5.9 oz.

Due to visiting restrictions, the couple's other children  five-year-old Spurgeon, four-year-old Henry, and two-year-old daughter Ivy  first met their new baby sister over a FaceTime call.

Jessa and Ben announced that they are expecting once again in February, and fans speculated on whether she would attempt another home birth after her scary experience with Ivy, but they clearly opted to err on the side of caution.

'Ben and I talked this over a lot, and we decided we are going to do a hospital birth this time,' she said in June.

On the safer side: Jessa previously revealed her intent to deliver baby number four in a hospital following three previous home births

Family: Jessa and Ben, who married in 2014, already have three children: five-year-old Spurgeon, four-year-old Henry, and two-year-old Ivy

Uh-oh: With Spurgeon and Ivy, she experienced dangerous hemorrhaging that saw her rushed to the hospital immediately following delivery

'So, thatll be different. Ive had three home births, three great home births, good experiences. No complications with the birth itself, but I have had postpartum hemorrhage two times, with my first and my third,' she went on.

'And so, for that reason, we're choosing to do a hospital birth just so we won't have to deal with the transport if I end up needing Pitocin.

Pitocin can be used to stop bleeding after childbirth.

'It's kind of frustrating in some sense, because most of our neighboring states, midwives are allowed to carry and administer Pitocin at home and in a home birth setting, and Arkansas doesn't allow midwives to do that,' she said.

Jessa admitted to being a little nervous, and said she will miss the comfort of delivering in her own house.

'I've just been so used to being able to be in my own space in labor, and move about and kind of have the comfort of home and I love that,' she said. 'And so, in that sense, a hospital sounds, like, very different.

Ta-da! Jessa and Ben announced that they are expecting once again in February

'Ive had three great home births, good experiences. No complications with the birth itself, but I have had postpartum hemorrhage two times, with my first and my third,' she said

'And I've wondered, will I be able to relax in that environment? Will things be able to progress, or will my body be stressed and tensed up? I don't know.

'But at the same time, hospitals have epidurals,' she said. 'I've told my birth team and my family, like, "Yeah, if I go to the hospital, I'm just gonna end up getting an epidural."

'I've done the natural thing three times and I wouldnt be surprised if I got an epidural. But we'll see, I don't know,' she said.

While she wasn't thrilled with the plan, she admitted that her husband was pleased.

'I think home birth is actually more stressful for Ben, so he's thrilled about the hospital birth,' she said.

Upon announcing the pregnancy earlier this year, she and Ben said: 'We are so grateful to God for the precious gift of a new life! The kids are delighted, and we can hardly wait to welcome this little one into our arms this summer.'

'I think home birth is actually more stressful for Ben, so he's thrilled about the hospital birth,' she said

'I've done the natural thing three times and I wouldnt be surprised if I got an epidural. But we'll see, I don't know,' she said

The joyous occasion comes amid a difficult time for the Duggar family, with Jessa's disgraced older brother Josh Duggar being charged with receiving and possessing child sexual abuse material back in May.

At the time, Jessa and Ben released a lukewarm statement on the matter, which appeared to conflate child sexual abuse material with pornography.

'We are saddened to hear of the charges against Josh,' they said. 'As Christians, we stand against any form of pornography or abuse and we desire for the truth to be exposed, whatever that may be.

'Our prayers are with their family as they walk through this difficult time,' the couple concluded.

Despite personal turmoil, at least her delivery of baby Fern appears to have gone smoothly  a major shift from her past experiences.

Intimate: Cameras captured Jessa in labor at home with two-year-old Ivy, bent over their living room sofa while Ben rubbed her back

Where that sofa's been! When she gave birth to Ivy on May 26, 2019, she delivered on top of an absorbent pad on the family's sofa

Just a regular day: Ben helped Jessa along while the midwife and her assistant were in the kitchen

Ready to go! When it was time, she sat on an absorbent bad put out on the couch and pushed

Yikes: Cameras showed her moaning in pain as she pushed the baby out

When she gave birth to Ivy on May 26, 2019, she delivered on top of an absorbent pad on the family's sofa  after which her midwife called 911 requesting an ambulance to pick up the still-bleeding new mom and take her to the hospital.

At the time, Jessa said that her birthing plan was to deliver with a midwife in a birthing suite at the local hospital. Unfortunately, the morning her water broke was the same day her midwife left town for a week, not expecting Jessa to go into labor for another week or so.

'I was not expecting to go early, I was expecting to go five days late again, we thought we had two weeks left. So our backup plan was to call another midwife and do a home birth,' she said.

After Ben's mother picked up their sons, Jessa labored at the house with her backup midwife and her older sister Jill.

Jessa's labor didn't progress quite as quickly as she expected, and she tried a castor oil smoothie and a trip to her parents' house to walk up and down the stairs in order to speed up contractions.

Done! Finally, as the baby came out, Jessa erupted into tears

Privacy: Camera caught the moment the midwife pulled the baby out, with Jill blocking Jessa for modesty

Uh-oh! When Jessa wouldn't stop bleeding, the midwife called 911 and paramedics took Jessa away in an ambulance

Finally, things started to move along, and Jessa headed home for labor. With her sister, husband, and midwife Teresa on hand, she walked around her living room and leaned over their brown sofa, moaning in pain and waiting out each contraction.

While the Duggars are famously private and modest, they're fairly open about showing all of the less-than-glamorous parts of childbirth on TV  and Jessa didn't hold back, allowing a camera crew to film her groaning loudly in pain and positioning herself over an absorbent pad on the couch.

The camera rolled as she pushed and little Ivy came out, leaving Jessa spent and in tears.

After the midwife delivered the newborn into Jessa's arms, she soon passed him off to Ben, who took over while mom was cleaned up.

'It was a really special moment, meeting our third little baby for the first time,' he said.

But the blissful moment didn't last long. Jessa continued to bleed after the birth, to a point that they decided she needed to head to the hospital.

Ouch! Jessa was also rushed to the hospital after giving birth to Spurgeon

She endured 27 hours of labor at home  during which she suffered severe tearing and needed an emergency blood transfusion

Better: Her delivery with Henry was smoother, lasting just hours and requiring no ambulance ride

'I feel totally different, I wasn't exhausted to the point I was after Spurgeon's long labor and delivery,' Jessa said later

A midwife called 911, and paramedics soon came to load her into an an ambulance. At the hospital, Jessa was given Pitocin, a drug to stop the bleeding, but she did not need a transfusion.

Jessa had a similarly dramatic labor with Spurgeon in 2015. At age 23, she gave birth to a 9 pound, 11 ounce baby boy after 27 hours of labor at home  during which she suffered severe tearing and needed an emergency blood transfusion.

The graphic birth aired on an episode of Counting On.

When asked if childbirth was better or worse than expected, Jessa said 'worse' without hesitation.

'I said to my mom, ''I do not know how you did this 19 times,"' she said.

Her delivery with Henry was smoother, lasting just hours and requiring no ambulance ride.

'I feel totally different, I wasn't exhausted to the point I was after Spurgeon's long labor and delivery,' Jessa said later. 'Recovery's just been completely different.'
A man who survived the New Cross Fire after jumping out of a window has recalled 'peeling the skin off his face' during the suspected racist attack.

Wayne Haynes, from south east London, was 16 when a fire broke out in a three-storey property on New Cross Road in 1981 during a birthday party, which led to the deaths of 13 young black people.

Reports that a white man had been seen throwing something into the house that evening let to speculation that the fire - which sparked widespread unrest that led to the Brixton riots - had been racially motivated.

Appearing on BBC documentary Uprising, by Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen, Wayne and other survivors shared their moving testimonies from the fire, as well as sharing stories of the racist abuse they faced living in 1980s London.

Wayne Haynes, from south east London, survived the New Cross Fire after jumping out of a window and appeared on BBC documentary Uprising to share his story

The New Cross house fire was a fire that occurred during a party at a house in New Cross, south-east London, in the early hours of Sunday, 18 January 1981

Wayne had been hired to play music at the birthday party of Angela Jackson, who was turning 18 and Yvonne Ruddock, who was turning 16.

Speaking in the documentary, he recalled smelling burning before going downstairs and discovering the kitchen ablaze, before running back up to the second floor to warn other guests of the fire.

'Everything has gone out, there's no electric, I can't see anybody', said Wayne. 'I don't know what's going on and all hell broke loose.

'What I remember and what I saw was like watching an old Charlie Chaplin movie, where everything looks like it's going in slow motion but it's going really fast.

The scene in Clifton Rise, New Cross, as police battle with National Front demonstrators and anti-fascist protestors when marchers from both groups clashed

'You have people screaming and shouting and trying to get out the window and other people pulling them back, the whole place just went mad and I remember it getting really hot, heat was coming up from underneath, it was just getting hotter and hotter.

'I remember wiping sweat and turns out later on that sweat was my skin that was peeling off my face, it felt like I had sand all over my face and the more I wiped it was the more skin that was coming off my face.'

Wayne remembered feeling 'really really scared' as he ran back upstairs, but immediately directed himself towards the window where he climbed out and began to scale a drain pipe.

However Wayne, who tragically lost his girlfriend in the fire, was left with a smashed hip, broken thigh, shin and foot after the pipe came off the wall and he fell into the roof of an old structure.

Denise Gooding, from Camberwell, lost her 14-year-old brother Andrew in the fire, and recalled how she escaped aged just 11.

Denise Gooding, from Camberwell, lost her 14-year-old brother Andrew in the fire, and recalled how she escaped aged just 11 on the documentary

Reports after the tragedy that a white man had been seen throwing something into the house let to speculation the fire - which sparked widespread unrest that led to the Brixton riots - had been racially motivated

'I was at the top of the house in the back when I heard someone shout fire from downstairs as they were running up the stairs, but it all happened so quickly, she said.

'Yvonne started to run downstairs shouting for her mum, it just seemed like seconds before thick black smoke, you can't see anything you can't breathe'.

Denise remembers suddenly being lifted outside of the window: 'I was coming down the drainpipe with someone and half way down I remember someone saying 'You're on your own now' and I remember falling and hitting on my back'.

The documentary also explores the backdrop of racism in which the fire took place, with stories of verbal abuse, institutionalised prejudice and public demonstrations from the National Front.

'Back in our day the police used to pick you up as a youngster, not phoning your parents as soon as they pick you up', said Wayne.

'They take you down the police station or they take you in the back of the van and they kick hell out of you and then just let you back out on the street.we used to get picked up just for loitering'.

PC George Rhoden told stories of abuse growing up, revealing that he was once taunted with a burning a cross outside his school, and within the police force in the 1970s and 80s.

PC George Rhoden told stories of abuse growing up, revealing that racists once burned a cross while wearing hoods outside his school, and within the police force in the 1970s and 80s

George Ruddock, who was caught up in the tragedy, believes that the fire was '100 percent' a racist attack

Speaking of joining the police he said: 'When I told my parents, they looked at each other, you could see there was fear in their eyes, they knew what the police where about, they knew they were racist.

'They knew but they never ever said anything all thy did was support me. When I told my friends they all just looked at me, one of them stepped forward and said 'Are you f****' mad, you're going to become a traitor'

The officer recalled getting aired with another PC who would taunt him with monkey noises through the radio and spotting an officer wearing a National Front badge before one of the group's demonstrations.

In 1977, the National Front attempted to march from New Cross to Lewisham under the pretext of demonstrating against street crime, sparking various anti-fascist demonstrations which led to violent clashes between the two groups and police.

'The police allowed these people to march through predominantly black areas knowing what it was going to cause, said Wayne.

Pictured, Forensic police examining the house following the devastating fire which left 13 young black people dead

'They aren't coming past it, the teenagers, we were born here. Our parents came out, our big brothers came out, because we were not going to be intimidated in our own home'.

After the clash, local spots including the Moonshot Club in New Cross and the Albany's theatre were burned down - the causes of which have never been determined.

'Petrol bombs were getting thrown all over', said Wayne. 'They were taking white spirit an throwing it through letter boxes when your house is in darkness and throw a match through, that's your exit blocked.'

George Ruddock, who was caught up in the tragedy, believes that the fire was '100 percent' a racist attack, insisting: My sister before the fire started she saw somebody in a white car throw something in the house.

'So a lot of people believe it was a racist fire attack on that party, that's what they believe and all of us believe that, 100 percent, well why wouldn't you?'

Uprising is now available on BBC iPlayer
Prescriptions for all children's medications fell dramatically last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study finds.

Researchers from the University of Michigan gathered data from pharmacies across the country.

They found that medications prescribed for children dropped by more than a quarter in 2020 compared to 2019 and that antibiotic dispensing plunged by 56 percent.

The findings add to the growing amount of data showing that many stayed away from the doctors' office during the pandemic, which likely led tot he drop in prescriptions being dished out.

Prescriptions of all drugs fell by 25 percent last year, with prescriptions of antibiotics falling by 56 percent during the COVID-19 pandemic

'The decline in the number of children receiving antibiotics is consistent with the large decreases in infection-related pediatric visits during 2020,' said lead author Dr Kao-Ping Chua a pediatrician and researcher at University of Michigan Health.

'Because antibiotics have important side effects, the dramatic decreases in antibiotic dispensing may be a welcome development.

'However, declines in dispensing of chronic disease drugs could be concerning.'

For the study, published in the journal Pediatrics, the team analyzed a drug dispensary database that included 92 percent of pharmacies around the country.

They looked at the first eight months of the pandemic, comparing monthly prescription averages from April to December 2020 to averages from January 2018 to February 2020.

Before the pandemic, an average of 25.8 million prescriptions were dolled out to children every month.

That total fell 26 percent to just over 18 million a month between March 2020 and December 2020.

The amount of prescriptions for acute conditions - like antibiotics - fell by 51 percent, with the antibiotics themselves falling by 56 percent.

'The decrease in antibiotic dispensing most likely reflects reductions in infections, such as colds and strep throat, due to COVID-19 risk-mitigation measures like social distancing and face masks,' Chua said.

'As a result, children had fewer infection-related visits and had fewer opportunities to receive antibiotic prescriptions, whether for antibiotic-appropriate conditions or antibiotic-inappropriate conditions.'

Chau said that a majority of antibiotic prescriptions given to kids are unnecessary, and the scaling back of their use last year could have a positive impact.

Because of the over-prescription of antibiotics can allow bacteria to develop resistances to the drugs.

There was also an 80 percent decline in the prescription of cough suppressors for colds and flus, which Chua believes are unnecessary and can be harmful long term.

Researchers believe there are benefits to the decline in antibiotic prescriptions, as it could help prevent bacteria becoming immune to the drugs

'These drugs have little benefit but are associated with potentially harmful side effects, particularly in young children,' Chua said.

'From the perspective of health care quality, the sharp decline in dispensing of cough-and-cold medications may represent a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic.'

The dispensing of drugs for chronic conditions fell by 11 percent as well.

While the trend could be a positive, as some with chronic health conditions may have has decreased issues - like children with asthma seeing a sharp decrease in asthma attacks - Chau believes it could be a sign that some mental health needs are not being met.

'An optimistic view is that few children on established antidepressant regimens discontinued use,' Chua said.

'Studies, however, suggest that the mental health of children has worsened during the pandemic, particularly among adolescents. Given this, our findings might suggest that antidepressant dispensing has not risen to meet this increased need.'

Around a quarter of teens reported last year that their mental health had declined due to the pandemic, per a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Almost a third of parents reported the same for their children aged five to 12.
Daily COVID-19 infections have doubled in the past two weeks in New York City, with the test positivity now at 1.72 percent, Mayor Bill de Blasio revealed at a press conference on Tuesday.

The Indian 'Delta' variant is driving this surge - it now accounts for 69 percent of new cases in the city as of July 3.

NYC leaders are focusing on vaccination rather than mask mandates because they see vaccines as 'solving the problem' of Covid - and do not want any other initiatives to distract from the vaccination push.

City-wide, 58 percent of New Yorkers have had at least one dose, but rates are much lower in many outer-borough neighborhoods.

Still, other health officials including former Surgeon General Jerome Adams have suggested mask mandates are necessary to beat the super-contagious Delta variant.

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As the Delta variant takes over NYC, Mayor de Blasio is promoting vaccinations and shying away from a new mask mandate

New Covid cases in the city have more than doubled in the past two weeks

'Right now, there are places where we are requiring masks,' de Blasio said, referring to mandates on public transit, in schools, and other locations.

'But we [at the administration] are united strongly in not wanting people to think "Oh, I need a mask, I don't need to be vaccinated."

'We don't want to obscure the fact that masking doesn't solve the problem, vaccination does.'

Despite de Blasio's focus on vaccination, Governor Andrew Cuomo may ultimately have the power to override the mayor - and implement stricter Covid guidance to protect the state from Delta.

Cases continue to rise sharply in New York City, driven by the Delta variant.

The seven-day average of new cases has more than doubled in the past two weeks, from 268 on July 6 to 576 on July 20.

The test positivity rate is also rising, now at 1.72 percent. This rate may in part reflect fewer New Yorkers getting tested, though, with many mass testing sites shut down or converted to vaccination sites.

New York state overall is in the top 10 states for Covid case growth, per New York Times data. Cases in the state are up 167 percent in the past two weeks.

'We can't ignore what's happening here,' Mark Levine, City Councilmember and Democratic nominee for Manhattan Borough President, wrote in a tweet.

The case rise is clearly tied to Delta, now causing 69 percent of cases in the city as of July 3.

This is 92 percent higher than the 36 percent of cases the variant made up two weeks earlier.

Patients infected with Delta have a viral load 1,000 times higher than the original viral strain, according to a recent study - meaning that Delta patients may become sick faster and spread the virus more readily than past Covid patients.

The super-contagious Delta variant now makes up at least 69 percent of NYC cases

Despite this danger, NYC is unlikely to see another mask mandate, de Blasio said at the press conference.

Instead, the administration is focused on getting New Yorkers vaccinated.

'We have to be laser-focused on the benefits of the vaccines,' said NYC Health Commissioner Dr Dave Chokshi at the press conference

Right now, about 4.5 million New Yorkers (54 percent of city residents) are fully vaccinated while 4.9 million (58 percent) have received at least one dose.

But in some outer-borough neighborhoods - such as parts of Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island - vaccination rates are well under 50 percent.

Those areas with lower vaccination rates also tend to be those with higher case rates. For example, two Staten Island ZIP codes have vaccination under 50 percent - and test positivity rates over 5 percent.

The same neighborhoods with lower vaccination rates also tend to be those with quickly-rising cases and high test positivity rates

De Blasio pointed to low hospitalization numbers as a sign that the vaccines are protecting against severe disease and death for the majority of New Yorkers.

On July 20, 90 patients were admitted to the hospital for confirmed or suspected Covid.

The city hospitalization rate remains very low, at 0.38 admissions for every 100,000 New Yorkers.

'We're definitely watching the situation with the cases with concern,' de Blasio said.

'But thank God, here, we have a high level of vaccination, that's the difference-maker, and we've gotta keep building that.'

The mayor said his administration intends to 'push hard on vaccination in every conceivable way.'

Major strategies currently include free, at-home vaccinations available to every New Yorker over age 12 and partnerships with community organizations.

City leaders are also expecting a vaccination surge when the school year starts, as shots will be encouraged among eligible public school students.

'Masks have been and are vital part of defense against the virus,' said Commissioner Chokshi. 'But we have to be laser-focused on the benefits of the vaccines.'

Still, national and local officials have encouraged mask mandates to protect against highly-contagious Delta.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams recently encouraged indoor mask mandates for everyone, including vaccinated Americans.

In NYC, Councilmember Levine and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams have been among those pushing for a similar mandate to return in the city.

'We waited before, and people died,' Williams said on Twitter on Monday.
The world had the most negative year on record in 2020, according to global polling from Gallup.

Gallup's 'Negative Experience Index' reached its highest number in 15 years, with 40 percent of survey respondents saying they were worried and 40 percent saying they were stressed.

Some countries had much worse experiences than the global average - Iraq, Lebanon, and Peru scored the highest on the Negative Experience Index at 53 points, 51 points, and 51 points, compared to the global score of 32.

And it's not just the pandemic to blame. The 2020 data continue a negative pattern from the past ten years - the world had already set a record score of 31 in 2019.

2020 was the year of negative emotions, according to Gallup

Around the world, people experienced stress, worry, and other negative feelings on a massive scale

2020 was the year of negative emotions, according to new polling from Gallup.

The research agency tracks sadness, worry, and other negative emotions with an annual 'Negative Experience Index' based on global polling.

That index reached a new, 15-year high in 2020.

While the COVID-19 pandemic is certainly a key culprit in such negative experiences, a closer look at Gallup's data suggests that other factors are also to blame.

Gallup's Negative Experience Index poll includes surveys of almost 160,000 people in 115 countries, conducted in 2020 and 2021.

To select respondents for the surveys, Gallup researchers looked at nationally representative samples of the adult population in each country.

In every phone interview, the researchers asked respondents if they had experienced five negative emotions on the previous day: worry, stress, physical pain, sadness, and anger.

During the 2020 survey, respondents were most likely to say they were experiencing worry and stress - 40 percent said they were worried, and 40 percent said they were stressed.

Out of all 160,000 respondents, 29 percent said they were experiencing physical pain, 27 percent said they were sad, and 24 percent said they were angry.

Overall, these survey responses averaged out to a global Negative Experience Index score of 32 - higher than any score recorded by Gallup in 15 years of polling.

Almost all values were higher in 2020 than in the previous year, with stress seeing the highest jump - from 35 percent in 2019 to 40 percent in 2020.

This five percent jump represents an additional 190 million people globally, Gallup researchers said.

The number of poll respondents who said they were stressed jumped from 35 percent in 2019 to 40 percent in 2020

People in some countries were far more likely to cite negative experiences than others.

Iraq, Lebanon, and Peru scored the highest on the Negative Experience Index at 53 points, 51 points, and 51 points.

Peru has the highest Covid death rate of any country. The country has seen about 195,000 deaths, out of a population of 33 million.

Iraq, Lebanon, and other countries with high Negative Experience Index scores are facing political and economic turmoil - made worse by the pandemic.

Taiwan, on the other hand, had the lowest score at just 13. Along with Kazakhstan, Estonia, and other countries with low scores in 2020, Taiwan has consistently appeared at the bottom of this index.

Negative Experience Index values ranged from 13 in Taiwan to 53 in Iraq

Nations with higher scores on this index tended to have higher levels of political turmoil, made worse in many cases by the pandemic

Gallup researchers said that the pandemic was certainly a big driver for 2020's record score. Around the world, people lost loved ones, faced economic hardship, and missed major experiences like school graduations.

But the pandemic wasn't the only cause of this value.

The researchers noted that 2019 had already set a record, with a Negative Experience Index of 31 - and the world has been on a negative trajectory for a decade.

Other contributors might be increasing global hunger, lack of freedom, rising corruption, and income inequality, Gallup's Global Managing Partner Jon Clifton wrote in a report on the Index.

'Many countries that report high income inequality also happen to be the countries that report a lot of negative emotions, such as anger,' Clifton said.

Clifton recommended that national leaders measure and respond to their countries' emotional states, because negative emotions are 'devastating for societies.'

Countries with higher negative scores tend to see more suicide deaths, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and other consequences.

While some nations may see more positive emotions in 2021 as vaccinations curb the pandemic's impact, others are now seeing their highest Covid case numbers yet.
The Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine is less effective against the Indian 'Delta' coronavirus variant than other shots, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that antibody levels from people who received the one-dose vaccine were twice as low compared to those given the two-dose Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines.

The team says the findings add to the growing body of evidence that the 13 million Americans who received J&J will need boosters to protect against highly infectious variants.

It comes as Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testified before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee on Wednesday that the variant makes up 83 percent of all new cases and is responsible for the rise in infections in nearly all 50 states.

The study represents yet another setback for J&J's vaccine, which has plagued by pauses, ingredient mix-ups, federal health warnings and doses needing to be thrown out.

Antibody levels among people who received Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine were low against the Indian 'Delta' coronavirus variant. Pictured: Johnson & Johnson's Covid-19 vaccines are seen on a table in Los Angeles, mAY 2021

Researchers say the findings suggest the 13 million Americans who received the J&J vaccine will need boosters to protect against variants

It comes as the CDC director Dr Rochelle Walensky revealed the Delta variant now makes up 83% of all new infections

'The message that we wanted to give was not that people shouldn't get the J.&J. vaccine, but we hope that in the future, it will be boosted with either another dose of J&J or a boost with Pfizer or Moderna,' lead author Dr Nathaniel Landau, a virologist at NYU's Grossman School of Medicine, told The New York Times.

For the study, which has not been peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal, researchers looked at blood samples from 27 patients.

Of the group, 17 people had been immunized with two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and 10 people with one dose of the J&J vaccine.

Researchers found that antibody levels in J&J patients were five to seven times lower when exposed to the Delta variant.

Comparatively, levels in Pfizer and Moderna patients were three-fold lower.

The findings are in line with a UK study, which found that the AstraZeneca vaccine - which is made with the same technology that the J&J vaccine uses - is 33 percent effective against symptomatic disease caused by Delta.

'The lower baseline means that what's left to counter Delta is very weak. That is a substantial concern, Dr John Moore, a virologist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, told The Times.

Antibody levels in J&J patients (black) were five to seven times lower when exposed to the Delta variant compared to three times lower in Pfizer (yellow) and Modera (red) patients

In real-world studies, other vaccines have been shown to be more effective against the Delta variant.

A May analysis from Public Health England found two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine were 80 percent effective overall at preventing infection by the variant.

The vaccine was also 88 percent effective against symptomatic disease and 96 percent effective against hospitalization.

There is no specific data released yet on the efficacy of the Moderna vaccine against the Delta variant.

However, a Canadian study found the first dose of the Moderna vaccine was 72 percent effective against infection from the Delta variant.

There are few studies about how effective the vaccines are at preventing death from the variant, but a recent study from India - where Delta originated - found that only 0.4 percent of people who were vaccinated died from the virus.

Moore told The Times that J&J should start administering its vaccine as two doses.

He said several studies have suggested the J&J vaccine provides greater efficacy after two doses.

'I have always thought, and often said, that the J&J vaccine is a two-dose vaccine,' he said.

Seema Kumar, a spokeswoman for J&J, told The Times that the data from the NYU study 'do not speak to the full nature of immune protection.'

She added that company-sponsored studies show its vaccine in its one-dose form 'generated strong, persistent activity against the rapidly spreading Delta variant.'

The news comes just one week after it was revealed that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is adding a new warning to the label of J&J's vaccine due to about 100 preliminary reports of the rare autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre following the one-dose vaccine

In April, the J&J vaccine was paused by the CDC and FDA for 10 days after six women under the age of 50 developed Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (CVST), a rare blood clot that forms in the venous sinuses in the brain.

The women developed CVST in combination with a low platelet-count condition known as thrombocytopenia.

This figure was later updated to include 28 people, including one 45-year-old woman who died.

The pause was lifted and the FDA added a warning to J&J's coronavirus vaccine that rare blood clotting events might occur, primarily among women under age 50.

The company then face production problems when workers at Emergent BioSolutions, a plant in Maryland, ruined millions of doses of J&J's COVID-19 vaccine with an ingredient intended for the AstraZeneca vaccine.

J&J was forced to throw out about 75 million doses of the vaccine worth $750 million, according to the contract it signed with the federal government pricing each dose at $10.
Chinese private equity companies are increasingly mounting takeover bids for star British technology companies, MPs have warned.

Their warnings come at a time of mounting disquiet over China's ambitions and its takeovers of UK firms, including the near 1billion swoop yesterday by technology conglomerate Tencent on games developer Sumo Group.

Buyout firms with links to Beijing have been quietly targeting science, technology and engineering firms.

The chips are down: Chinese giants are targeting UK tech stars such as Wales' Newport Wafer Fab

MPs claim some of the firms effectively act as proxies for China, while others obscure their connection to the country's Communist regime through tax havens.

There have been concerns for years about foreign investment in firms working on hi-tech 'dual-use' technologies such as microchips, which appear innocuous but could be militarised and turned against Britain by adversaries.

But there are now added fears that the Covid crisis  which has wiped billions off the value of UK companies  could trigger a wave of attempts by Chinese private equity firms and other predators to pounce on cutting-edge groups on the cheap.

This could lead to a 'brain drain' with highly skilled British jobs and intellectual property flowing overseas.

Conservative MP Bob Seely, who sits on the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: 'There is a problem with private equity anyway but we've got to be wiser to what's happening when it's a Chinese firm.

'When it comes to buying up sensitive technologies, because China is a one-party state you have to wonder what the motives are  this can effectively be a surreptitious tech transfer.'

The Isle of Wight MP added: 'We are extraordinarily naive about this and, of course, we need to trade to China but it has to be on reasonable terms and not where we lose out significantly.'

The Mail is campaigning for greater transparency in the private equity and an end to sharp practices by firms. One of the major demands in the Mail's manifesto is for more protection for sensitive sectors such as technology and defence.

Critics have long argued that the UK has been far too lax about selling off hi-tech British companies  particularly to private equity groups. This is because they often work to a model where they buy a firm, make sweeping changes and then break it up and sell off the parts within five or so years.

When China is involved too, it can raise questions about national security.

There have been some signs of a tougher approach, notably in telecoms where Huawei was banned from taking part in Britain's 5G rollout.

China has also walked away from the Sizewell C nuclear project, amid rising tensions between London and Beijing.

And at Welsh chip maker Newport Wafer Fab (NWF), the UK's biggest microchip factory, ministers have intervened in an attempt by a Chinese-owned company to take over the business. Nexperia has already appointed two directors to NWF's board following a contract dispute.

Conservative MP Bob Seely says sensitive technologies should not be allowed to fall into Chinese hands

The company is ultimately owned by China-based microchips giant Wingtech, which bought the business from Beijing-based private equity firm Wise Road last year.

The firm insists it is exercising its 'legal rights' and has sought to take over NWF outright. Drew Nelson, Newport Wafer Fab's chairman, has claimed that Nexperia's takeover will help secure the factory's future.

But it prompted Boris Johnson to instruct Sir Stephen Lovegrove, the national security adviser, to look at the deal.

'We have to judge whether the stuff that they are making is of real intellectual property value and interest to China, whether there are real security implications,' the Prime Minister told a parliamentary committee earlier this month.

Another recent embarrassment for ministers included revelations that a Chinese-owned circuit board maker was supplying parts for Britain's next generation F-35 fighter jets.

The Ministry of Defence claimed Exception PCB posed 'no risk' to the F-35 supply chain  an assertion that has prompted incredulity from some defence hawks who pointed out the programme is highly classified.

Sir Gerald Howarth, a former Conservative defence minister, said the Government had been 'completely and utterly naive about China'.

A PCB director insisted 'firewalls' were in place between the company and its owner, Shenzhen Fastprint.

Britain's laissez-faire approach to foreign takeovers backfired spectacularly last year when Chinese investors attempted a boardroom coup at Imagination Technologies.

The Hertfordshire firm  which makes microchips used in everything from computers to cars  was sold to private equity firm Canyon Bridge for 550million in 2017 despite security concerns raised by critics about the deal.

Cayman Islands-based Canyon Bridge is partly funded by the communist government in Beijing, through state-backed investor China Reform.

At the time of the takeover, Government officials were reportedly assured that the Chinese would be 'passive' investors, meaning they would not interfere with the running of Imagination.

But last year a crisis erupted when China Reform suddenly attempted to parachute directors on to Imagination's board and seize control. They reportedly wanted to relocate the company to China.

The power-grab was only halted after a group of Tory MPs alerted the Government and officials stepped in.

A probe involving spy agency GCHQ was later launched into how the fiasco had been allowed to get so far.

When it comes to overseas takeovers, new laws could lead to much more extensive scrutiny at an earlier stage, but only if they are deployed with vigour.

The National Security and Investment Bill (NSIB) grants ministers new powers to block foreign takeovers.

The rules will force companies to notify the Business Department in advance of sensitive transactions in more than a dozen sectors including artificial intelligence, satellite and space tech, and autonomous robots.

But even if it is adopted with gusto, UK firms will still be more vulnerable than those in other countries  including the US, many in Europe and even China itself  which readily block deals where sensitive technology could be lost to foreign buyers.

Matthew Byatt, co-founder of chip-focused investment bank Acuity Advisors, warned that the UK is not doing enough 'and that means all of our most precious assets are ripe for the taking. Chinese private equity are really attracted to them.'
Sir Martin Sorrell has hailed booming business at his company as a 'post-pandemic rebound' turbocharges the economy.

The 76-year-old's advertising tycoon's outfit S4 Capital said in a trading update that sales and profits had surpassed expectations this summer.

The advertising and marketing services firm said it was due to growing momentum in the global economy and the switch towards digital marketing by many businesses, a trend that has been accelerated by the Covid-19 crisis.

On the rise: Sir Martin Sorrell's outfit S4 Capital said in a trading update that sales and profits had surpassed expectations this summer

Many western countries, including the UK, are easing pandemic restrictions as vaccination rollouts cut hospitalisations and deaths.

S4 also revealed new loans that will be used to refinance its debts and embark on fresh takeovers.

The firm said activity was 'at unprecedented levels' in May and June, driven both by the post-pandemic rebound in global output and the acceleration in digital marketing.

S4 is planning to expand into other areas of technology and to offer more services in the Americas and Asia-Pacific region.

Sorrell set up S4 just months after leaving WPP  the firm he turned into the world's biggest ad agency  in 2018.

The tycoon is aiming to double the company's size over the next three years. That goal is being aided by the growing shift towards digital advertising models that S4 specialises in.

And Sorrell believes the pandemic has sped up that process, after firms shifted more ads online to target those stuck at home under lockdown. S4 claims that 66 per cent of global advertising spending will be digital by 2024.

In yesterday's update, S4 said it had agreed a 321million loan with Credit Suisse, HSBC and Barclays, as well as a five-year facility of up to 100million Credit Suisse, HSBC, Barclays, JP Morgan and BNP Paribas.

The money will refinance existing debts worth 109million.
Spire Healthcare tumbled after shareholders shot down a 1.4billion takeover offer that would have turned it into the UK's largest private hospital group.

Spire's Australian rival Ramsay Health Care had tabled a 250p-per-share bid for the mid-cap hospital group, which had been accepted by the board.

It needed to win 75 per cent of votes at a one-off meeting for the deal to go through. But it only clinched 70 per cent after two of Spire's biggest shareholders  Fidelity and Toscafund  rebelled against Ramsay and tried to convince others to do the same.

Takeover target: Spire's Australian rival Ramsay Health Care's bid for the hospital group was accepted by the board but shareholders  Fidelity and Toscafund - have voted it down

Ramsay had been trying to woo Spire's investors since May, when it put forward a 240p offer that was also backed by management.

It hiked it to 250p earlier this month  but Fidelity and Toscafund continued to say it hugely undervalued the company, which they believe is set to outperform over the next few years.

It is uncommon for a takeover deal that has been accepted by a company's board to be torpedoed by shareholders. Spire has 39 hospitals and eight clinics in Britain where it treats private and NHS patients.

The company is chaired by Sir Ian Cheshire, chairman of Barclays UK, who said the board respected the decision and that the firm is 'well positioned for success as a standalone business'.

Stock Watch - United Oil and Gas United Oil and Gas started the week with a bang after it announced it struck oil at another site in Egypt's Western Desert. The company owns 22 per cent of an area called Abu Sennan, where it has had success with other wells. Chief executive Brian Larkin said the results from the test drilling were much better than they had expected. He added that United Oil and Gas will probably keep exploring for more oil in the licensing area. Shares in the main market-listed group rose 4 per cent, or 0.15p, to 3.85p yesterday.

Cheshire added: 'Throughout our ongoing engagement with shareholders, feedback has been overwhelmingly positive towards the long-term strategy and our strong management team.'

Alex Wright, portfolio manager at Fidelity Special Solutions Fund, said Spire is in a good position to do well when Covid passes.

'We remain confident and supportive of Spire's strategic plans,' he said. 'In our opinion, Spire can return to a 2015-to-2017 level of earnings over the next three to five years.' Despite Ramsay's efforts, many believed the takeover was in trouble when on Friday Spire's shares closed at 235p  significantly below the offer price.

Its stock dived another 7.2 per cent, or 17p, to 218p last night.

The wider market was also in the red after a torrid day for stocks around the world, as concerns continued to rise about the spread of the Delta variant.

In the UK, the FTSE 100 dropped 2.3 per cent, or 163.7 points, to 6844.39 and the FTSE 250 also by 2.3 per cent, or 526.12 points, to 21,940.88 as England's 'Freedom Day' was marred by soaring infection rates and mixed messages from the Government, which urged people to remain cautious while it also went ahead and lifted Covid restrictions.

Aside from airlines and travel stocks, oil shares also lost ground after Opec agreed a deal to increase supply from August.

The oil price fell and BP was off 4.7 per cent, or 13.8p, at 278.45p while Shell lost 4.2 per cent, or 57.4p, at 1311p.

Another notable loser was Ocado after the online delivery company suffered its second fire in just two years. The fire was caused by a robot collision at its warehouse in Erith in south-east London.

One broker said: 'The worries aren't about Ocado itself, but what if a fire broke out at a customer warehouse like Kroger. There'll be some eyebrows raised about what effect this has on future deals.'

Shares fell 1.9 per cent, or 34p, at 1771p.

Further down the market and Litigation Capital Management said its second fund will close by the end of the summer after strong interest from investors.

The 219million fund is a big vote of confidence for the company which competes with Burford Capital (down 4 per cent, or 30p, at 722.5p).

Litigation finance has grown rapidly as an asset class in recent years with investors hunting for higher returns on their money.

But shares were down 5.2 per cent, or 6p, at 109p.

Make-up group Revolution Beauty had a disappointing debut on AIM. The Camden-based company went public at 160p, but closed at 150p.
The UK's biggest and most popular investment trust is one of Tencent's top backers.

About 5.8 per cent of Scottish Mortgage's funds are invested in the Chinese company  the trust's single biggest holding.

Its sixth-biggest holding is in Tencent's rival, Alibaba, with 3.9 per cent of funds invested in the stock.

Holding: About 5.8% of Scottish Mortgage's funds are invested in the Chinese tech giant Tencent

According to Scottish Mortgage, the stake in Tencent was valued at 1billion at the end of May.

The 16billion investment trust's holding in Alibaba was worth another 723million.

Scottish Mortgage is co-managed by Baillie Gifford's James Anderson and Tom Slater, with its returns far outpacing the MSCI World Index thanks to successful investment in tech stocks such as Tesla, Amazon, Facebook, Alibaba and Tencent.

But its heavy involvement in China became a subject of potential concern earlier this year amid a crackdown by Beijing on tech companies.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma disappeared from the public eye for months after falling out with financial regulators, while Tencent and other gaming companies were previously blocked from releasing new titles for nine months.

But Anderson  who is due to retire next year  has played down any concerns and warned shareholders it would be 'dangerous' to react quickly to news headlines.

'Actually, what we think is happening is that China is moving principally to a policy of greater antitrust requirements in a way that I think would have been beneficial in America and Europe,' he told investors.

'Now, none of that is to excuse aspects of the Chinese political scene or the directions it's gone.

'But we do not think the overall operation conditions have deteriorated as drastically as the media would like you to believe.'
Italian fashion house Zegna will go public in a 2.3billion Spac deal in New York later this year.

The luxury retailer sells men's suits and smart-casual wear, including shirts priced at 1,330 and bomber jackets at 6,110.

Zegna has been family-owned since it started as a fabric maker in 1910 in Trivero, in the Piedmont region.

Private equity firm L Catterton, which is backed by LVMH, the owner of Luis Vuitton, has agreed to buy a 60 per cent stake in Etro (worn by the model, pictured)

It will list through a Spac  a special purpose acquisition company  called Investindustrial Acquisition Corp, whose chairman is Sergio Ermotti, the former boss of investment bank UBS.

The company is looking to raise 640million.

Spacs, also known as 'blank cheque companies', are empty firms which list on the stock market, raising millions from investors with the purpose of buying an existing company.

In another major move on an Italian family-led fashion group, a private equity firm backed by LVMH, the owner of Luis Vuitton, has agreed to buy a 60 per cent stake in Etro.

The deal with L Catterton values Etro at around 430million, according to reports.

L Catterton also recently swooped on trendy sandal-maker Birkenstock.
Campaign: WASPI has protested about the 'unfair' way state pension age changes were implemented

Women whose state pension age was raised to 66 have renewed calls for compensation after the Parliamentary Ombudsman accused the Government of 'maladministration' over delays to informing them about the changes.

In a report published today, the Parliamentary Ombudsman highlighted government failures to write to affected women directly earlier and to act on internal research on improving and targeting its communications.

Women Against State Pension Inequality - or WASPI - said the findings reinforced what it 'knew all along' about the Department for Work and Pension's failure to adequately inform 3.8million 1950s-born women that their state pension age would be increasing.

'We are calling on the Government to agree fair and adequate compensation for WASPI women rather than allow what has become a vicious cycle of Government in-action to continue,' said the WASPI group, adding that it was consulting its legal advisers to decide the best way forward.

At the urging of the WASPI group, thousands of women lodged official complaints over failures to notify them about state pension age hikes.

But the Ombudsman put a decision on hold during a judicial review, brought by the separate BackTo60 group, which was ultimately unsuccessful.

WASPI said the courts could not make a judgement on maladministration because that was the role of the Ombudsman.

The Ombudsman said women should have had at least 28 months' more individual notice of changes to their state pension age, an opportunity to adjust their retirement plans that was 'lost', and it will now move on to consider 'the impact that injustice had'.

What does the DWP say? 'Both the High Court and Court of Appeal have supported the actions of the DWP, under successive governments dating back to 1995, and the Supreme Court refused the claimants permission to appeal,' says a spokesperson. 'In a move towards gender equality, it was decided more than 25 years ago to make the state pension age the same for men and women.'

After that stage of its investigation, it is expected to make recommendations to remedy what happened.

However, it remains unclear whether the Government will have to stump up some kind of compensation to women, many of whom have suffered financial hardship after remaining unaware of the delay in when they could draw a state pension.

They were also affected by a decision by Chancellor George Osborne in 2011 to bring forward the timing of changes to women's pension age, and a rise to 66 for everyone, to 2018 and 2020 respectively.

This hit women particularly hard because their increases happened both sooner than expected and in quick succession.

The WASPI campaign has said in the past it agrees with equalising women's and men's pension ages, but not the 'unfair' way the changes were implemented.

What did the Parliamentary Ombudsman find?

Between 1995 and 2004, accurate information about changes to the state pension age was publicly available in leaflets, through the DWP's pensions education campaigns, through DWP's agencies and on its website, according to the Ombudsman.

But it identified failures to act on research in 2004 and in 2006 recommending 'appropriately targeted' information be sent to women.

After 2004, it says: 'DWP explored options for targeting information but, having considered the options, what it ended up doing was what it had already done.

'DWP failed to take adequate account of the need for targeted and individually tailored information or of how likely it was doing the same thing would achieve different results.

'Despite having identified there was more it could do, it failed to provide the public with as full information as possible. DWP failed to make a reasonable decision about next steps in August 2005 and failed to use feedback to improve service design and delivery.

'It therefore failed at this point to 'get it right' and 'seek continuous improvement'. That was maladministration.'

After 2006, the Ombudsman says: 'DWP failed again to "get it right" and "seek continuous improvement". It did not act promptly enough on its November 2006 proposal to write directly to affected women to tell them about changes to state pension age.

'And it failed to give due weight to how much time had already been lost since the 1995 Pensions Act. That was also maladministration.'

What does the WASPI campaign say?

The group says it is vindicated, even though throughout its campaign and despite support across Parliament it has been 'dismissed' by successive governments.

It claims ministers consistently refused to meet with the women affected, and insisted in Parliament that sufficient notice was given about the state pension age change, when their Department knew this was not the case.

WASPI called on the Government to 'urgently compensate all women affected rather than making them wait even longer' while the Ombudsman completes further rounds of its investigation.

Chair Angela Madden and communications director Debbie de Spon said in a joint statement: 'Today's findings reinforce what we, unfortunately, knew all along; that the DWP failed to adequately inform 3.8million 1950s born women that their state pension age would be increasing.

'The DWP's own research showed that women were not sufficiently aware of the changes, yet they failed to act. This inaction had devastating and life-altering impacts on women across the country.

'These women have been waiting for many years for compensation. We cannot wait any longer.'

What do pension experts say?

'Millions of women were affected by increases in their state pension age originally put forward in the 1995 Pensions Act,' says Tom Selby, senior analyst at AJ Bell.

'It was reasonable for these women to expect the Government to provide as much information as possible to communicate changes which would have such a profound impact on their retirement plans.

'While the Ombudsman found the information provided between 1995 and 2004 was accurate and of a reasonable standard, those affected have every right to be angry that evidence provided to the DWP in 2004 that improvements to communications could be made was not acted on swiftly.

'What we still don't know is what, if any, compensation will be provided to women as a result of this finding.

'The Ombudsman now plans to look at the impact this injustice had, which will undoubtedly lead to more pressure for a resolution.

'Given the parlous state of UK finances, calls in some quarters to compensate women affected in full  which could amount to six years of state pension payments - are likely to fall on deaf ears.'
Joe Biden had plans to join a law and consultancy firm with his sons Hunter and Beau in 2014, halfway through his second term as vice president, emails reveal.

Hunter discussed the proposed firm in a November 2014 email with his business partner and Biden family friend Jeff Cooper, a lawyer and entrepreneur.

The plans were thwarted by Beau's tragic death in 2015 from brain cancer, setting the whole family on a drastically different path.

Had Beau not passed away, the emails suggest that Joe Biden might have quit politics and entered the DC 'swamp' of politically-tied lawyers and highly-paid consultants and lobbyists  a world he has decried in speeches.

The email also raises questions over the president's claim that he never discussed business with Hunter.

Emails obtaned by Hunter Biden's laptop show Joe Biden planned to join a law and consultancy firm with his sons Hunter (left) and Beau (right)

Hunter discussed the proposed firm in a November 2014 email with his business partner and Biden family friend Jeff Cooper

This claim has come under increasing scrutiny after emails from Hunter's abandoned laptop revealed multiple instances where Joe appeared to be involved in business meetings relating to Hunter  both during his tenure as vice president and after he left office.

A now-infamous email between Hunter and his business partners in a multi-million-dollar deal with Chinese oil giant CEFC, consultant James Gilliar set out potential terms of the deal and listed '10 held by H for the big guy?'

The email also raises questions over the president's claim that he never discussed business with Hunter

The mysterious phrase from the May 2017 message has been interpreted as a proposal for Hunter to hold 10% of the shares in the joint venture on behalf of his father, who is referred to as 'the big guy' in several other emails on the laptop.

The president has denied this interpretation.

Other emails show Joe attended a private dinner with Hunter and his business partners and potential clients while he was vice president.

Hunter wrote to a friend before the 2015 Washington DC dinner that it was 'ostensibly to discuss food security', but was in fact an opportunity to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father.

This month DailyMail.com revealed Hunter arranged White House and vice presidential residence meetings with his father for two Mexican billionaires with whom he was planning multi-million-dollar business ventures  and that Joe took Hunter and his business partner on Air Force 2 to Mexico amid those deals.

And last month DailyMail.com revealed that former FBI director Louis Freeh, who represented a criminal Romanian property tycoon alongside Hunter, spoke with Joe while the VP was still in office about the Biden father and son joining his consultancy firm in 2017.

The White House has failed to respond to DailyMail.com's questions about any of the incidents.

Hunter discussed his proposed new Biden family company in an email with Cooper dated November 20, 2014, with the title 'Firm'.

He set out 'ball park' annual overheads for the consultancy shop totaling $1.2 million including a $500,000 salary for his brother Beau.

His other estimates included $250,000 for a senior attorney, $175,000 for a junior attorney, $65,000 for an administrative assistant and $20,000 per month for 'office and other expenses'.

The plans were thwarted by Beau's tragic death in 2015 from brain cancer. The family are pictured at Beau's funeral

Joe Biden entertained Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Aleman Velasco - his son Hunter's business associates - in the vice president's office in 2014

While Hunter and Biden family friend Jeff Cooper (far left) were working on their business plans, they managed to get the billionaires Slim, Velasco and Magnani a private 'meeting' with then-vice president Joe Biden in the VP's office. Photos on Hunter's laptop dated November 19, 2015, show the six men smiling at a meeting in Joe Bidens DC residence. Emails show the men also met Joe at the White House

Cooper replied asking if Beau, referred to in the email as 'BB', could 'offset the 500k by sitting on a few Boards etc', and if Hunter had 'any guesses on built-in clients for the firm?'

'Hadn't thought about boards- any ideas?' Hunter replied to Cooper, adding that he worried $500,000 wouldn't be enough for Beau.

Hunter indicated that he would not only have Beau on board in the new venture, but his father too  referring to them both by 'JRB'

'My main concern is that he has at least that much income guaranteed for two years. He's been offered that by Stuart Grant in return for joining his firm and being available to Stuart for client development.'

Grant is a prominent Wilmington litigator, entrepreneur and Democratic Party fundraiser.

Beau ended up joining Grant's firm in the months before he died, after he left office as Delaware attorney general in 2015.

'We could probably go as low as 350 but there are some real costs associated with upcoming treatments not covered by insurance,' Hunter continued in the November 2014 email.

'At the outset we probably wouldn't need the junior attorney until things really started rolling. As for built in clients I think that will depend on who we get as 'senior attorney.'

'I don't want to have to 'partner' with an existing firm (like another Bifferato deal), but like the idea of a relatively senior lawyer coming with some clients and the promise of revenue sharing or upside.'

Hunter then indicated that he would not only have Beau on board in the new venture, but his father too  referring to them both by 'JRB', the initials of their full names, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr and Joseph Robinette Biden III.

'In order to develop this as a platform for both JRBs I think it is imperative we (the three of us) have full control come 2016 when JRB1 comes on board,' Hunter wrote.

Cooper, who was planning the new firm with Hunter, had close ties with the Biden family for years.

The men reportedly met through their wives: Francesca Cooper went to high school with Hunter's first wife Kathleen Biden.

His Illinois law firm, asbestos claim litigation specialists SimmonsCooper, worked with Beau's Delaware law firm on dozens of cases.

It also bankrolled Hunter and Joe's brother Jim's unsuccessful attempt to buy a hedge fund in 2006.

Texts from Hunter to his daughter Naomi in 2019 show he complained about having to give Joe half of his salary. He also threatened to never give her a 'dime' again

The texts about AT&T were from 2018 - when Joe Biden had earned more than $11million

By 2008 SimmonsCooper was Joe Biden's number one donor, giving $200,000 over the previous eight years.

The large donations, and thousands more to Beau's political campaigns, drew scrutiny when Joe, in his role as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped block an asbestos reform.

The reform would have jeopardized SimmonsCooper's business, and the firm lobbied him over the issue.

At the time, a spokesman for Joe told the Los Angeles Times that all the SimmonsCooper business deals with his sons and brother were above board, and no special favors were arranged.

Even deeper financial ties between the president and his son were revealed this month, when emails and texts from Hunter's laptop emerged showing that he paid many of his father's bills.

Hunter complained that 'half' of his salary went to paying his father's bills while he was Vice President, casting doubt on Joe's previous claims that he has never benefited from his son's business dealings.

The bills included a $190-a-month AT&T phone bill and thousands in repairs on Joe's lakeside home in Wilmington.

The payments were described in a 2010 email, when Joe Biden was earning $225,000-a-year as Vice President. He had already made well over $100,000-a-year for decades prior as a senator and author.

In 2010 emails between Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his business partner at consultancy firm Rosemont Seneca, they discussed how much they needed to spend paying Joe's bills.

The email subject was 'JRB bills' - which match Joe's initials - and described how $2,600 was to be paid to a contractor for a 'stone retaining wall' at Joe's home, along with $1,475 to be paid to a painter for the 'back wall and columns' of the property and $1,239 to a builder who'd fixed the AC at Joe's late mother's home.

He rented that house to the Secret Service for $2,200 a month.

Years later, in a text to his own daughter, Hunter - who had by then been battling drug addiction for years - he complained: 'I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.

'It's really hard. But don't worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won't make you give me half your salary.'

It was a text he sent to his daughter Naomi in 2019.

In a June 2010 email, Schwerin wrote to Hunter: 'FYI, there are a few outstanding bills that need to be paid and I am not sure which ones are a priority and which should get paid out of 'my' account and which should be put on hold or paid out of the 'Wilmington Trust Social Security Check Account.

'There is about $2,000 extra in 'my' account beyond what is used for monthly expenses.'

It is unclear why he put the word my in quotation marks.

In 2010 emails between Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his business partner at consultancy firm Rosemont Seneca, they discussed how much they needed to spend paying Joe's bills

In another email the same month, Schwerin said: 'Mike Christopher [builder] is hassling me so I am paying a couple of the smaller things since I haven't heard from your Dad. Know he's busy  so it's OK.

'But if you think he has a moment or two to review the e-mail I sent you let me know.'

The following month, Schwerin said: 'Does it make sense to see if your Dad has some time in the next couple of weeks while you are in DC to talk about it? Your Dad just called me about his mortgage . . . so it dawned on me to might be a good time [for] some positive news about his future earnings potential.'

In the years after he left office as Vice President, Joe and Jill Biden made millions through book deals and speaking engagements.

In 2017 alone, the couple declared $11.1 million in earnings - more than double they had made in any other year for 18 years prior. Joe has always insisted the money was earned above board.

In a 2018 email to one of his own assistants, Hunter complained that he had been shut out of his own bank account and that his father had been using it.

'Too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many profile changes and such. Happened 10 days ago too...

'My dad has been using most lines on this account which I've through the gracious offerings of Eric have paid for past 11 years,' he said.
Covid vaccines are being sent back by GPs who can't fill appointments  despite there being nearly 6million Britons who've still yet to take up the offer, MailOnline has learned.

Surgeries could not get enough of the jabs at the start of the inoculation drive in December, with millions of Britons rushing to book slots.

But now demand has dried up in some areas, forcing health bosses to redistribute supplies to other locations where there is higher take-up.

No10's scientific advisers say the UK may have already hit maximum uptake in its inoculation drive, with the number of first doses being dished out every day having halved in a fortnight to fewer than 60,000.

Just 18,186 first doses were administered yesterday, in the worst daily performance since the vaccination campaign began in December.

Experts say Britain is reaching a natural end to its inoculation drive, with the number of people wanting a jab running low.

This is despite NHS England figures suggesting there are still 1.7million 18 - 24 year olds yet to be jabbed. Young people are more reluctant to get the vaccine because they do not see the virus as a threat, scientists say.

This graph shows the number of people who are yet to be vaccinated against Covid in every age group. It shows there are more than 1.7million 18 - 24 year olds still to get the jab, followed by more than a million 25 to 29-year-olds

A GP in the North of England told MailOnline they were struggling to fill vaccination appointments even though everyone is now eligible.

They said their surgery ended up sending back some Pfizer doses last week because they were nearing the end of their month-long expiry date.

This was the 'first and only time' they had returned any jabs during the eight-month drive.

The GP, who didn't want to be named, said: 'We've found as we have got into lower age groups they seem more reluctant to come in.'

Surgeries have been allowed to return doses for redistribution throughout the roll-out, although this does not normally happen, sources claimed.

If unused they can be sent back to Primary Care Networks  local organisations run by GPs  which then send them on to areas looking for more doses.

Demand for Covid vaccines appears to be drying up in Britain, after the drive was opened to all age groups. But there are still 1.8million 18 - 24 year olds who have not been jabbed

Now children as young as two could get the Covid vaccine Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi Every child in the UK could be offered a Covid jab by the end of the year, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested today. No10 is set to unveil plans to immunise Britons aged 12 to 16 who have underlying health conditions or live with a vulnerable family member. The plans will also see 17-year-olds who are months away from their 18th birthdays offered a vaccine. But ministers will stop short of opening the rollout up to all healthy youngsters until more safety data is collected in places like the US, where it is already happening. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation  which advises No10 on the inoculation drive  will also review data from ongoing trials of Pfizer's jab in children as young as two. Mr Zahawi said the Government had niggling concerns about the 'very rare' cases of heart inflammation in some young people given the Pfizer and Moderna jabs. It comes as all Covid restrictions are lifted in England today, though Boris Johnson has urged caution as the outbreak across the country is spurred on by the more contagious Indian 'Delta' variant. He will be spending Freedom Day in isolation  along with Chancellor Rishi Sunak  because they were both identified as close contacts of Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who tested positive for the virus at the weekend. Advertisement

A second GP from London, who also did not wish to be named, told MailOnline it was 'correct' that other centres were also having to return jabs.

Patients still looking to get their first or second dose at their surgery are now being redirected to centrally-run vaccination centres.

NHS England sources said where sites are not able to use their jabs, the supplies can be moved to different locations where there is higher demand.

But they warned the Pfizer jab must be used up to 12 hours after it is defrosted, and can only be taken on two journeys.

SPS guidance  which publishes advice for GPs  says that Pfizer vaccines can be stored for up to 31 days once thawed.

Pfizer's can now be stored in fridges, after officials rowed back on earlier guidance saying the Belgian-made shots had to be used shortly after they were defrosted.

No10's top scientists fear Britain may have already reached 'maximum uptake' of jabs with nearly 90 per cent of adults having received at least one dose.

More than 46.3million Britons  or 87.9 per cent of adults  have got at least one dose, and 36million  or 68.5 per cent  have received both doses.

But there are still 1.8million 18 - 24 year olds to be jabbed, according to NHS England statistics.

This is despite the vaccine drive being open to all adults since June 17 in England.

And there are 4.5million in other age groups who've yet to be vaccinated, the same figures suggest. This includes 1.2million 25 - 29 year olds, and nearly a million 30 - 34 year olds.

Professor Lawrence Young, an infectious diseases expert at Warwick Medical school, told MailOnline there was 'always a concern' that jab uptake would fall when the roll-out reached younger Britons.

'There was always a concern as we went down the age groups that there would be a degree of hesitancy among younger people because of a perception that they don't get sick.'

He said lifting most remaining restrictions in England yesterday may have cemented this view, because it has 'thrown caution to the wind'.

'I think it is worrying because I think there will be after today a sense that we are out of this and it won't really matter anymore,' Professor Young added.

'Without having restrictions we are more reliant on vaccines alongside personal responsibility.'

He said jabs were still likely to be taken up but at lower levels than during the first wave of vaccinations in December.

Experts fear this age group is also less likely to come forward than older people because they do not see the virus as a threat.

But ministers are hoping requirements of double-vaccination to go abroad and to avoid self-isolation will keep uptake ticking along. A move to give nightclubs and large venues permission to bar unvaccinated customers could also drive an uptick among youngsters.

Asked whether the lower jab uptake suggested the dosing interval could be cut, Professor Graham Cooke said it was a 'complicated' decision to make.

The infectious diseases expert at Imperial College London said: 'Whether to change that interval is a complicated one because of potential changes in antibody responses.'

He said the JCVI initially recommended the gap because there were so many people waiting for first doses but 'with fewer people needing doses that rationale is going to change'.

He added: 'As most people have had first doses I think the rationale has to be kept under review.'

Studies show waiting longer between jabs triggers a better immune response in older people, but it is not clear whether this will hold true for younger Britons.

An NHS spokeswoman said: 'Local teams have been allocated vaccine based on the number of people who need a jab in each community and to ensure everyone can get their first and second dose of protection. The NHS continuously works to optimise supply.

'There has been strong uptake of the vaccine with more than 69million doses delivered so far in England, with thousands more coming forward to get the life-saving jab.'

Children WON'T routinely be given Covid vaccines: Only 370,000 over-12s with severe disabilities or who live with vulnerable adults will get jabs, health chiefs say

By Emily Craig Health Reporter for MailOnline

Healthy children won't be offered a Covid vaccine because the risk of the virus does not outweigh the chance of side effects from the jab, health chiefs ruled today.

Only 370,000 children aged 12 to 15 with underlying conditions or who live with someone who does will now be called up for a jab.

This includes youngsters with severely weakened immune systems and learning difficulties, as well as those who live with immunosuppressed adults.

The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation said the risk of Covid to healthy children was so small it did not outweigh the risk of heart inflammation posed by jabs.

Eligible children will be offered the Pfizer vaccine because there was enough safety data from trials and rollouts in the US and Israel.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid accepted the advice and asked the NHS to put it into action as soon as possible. But he said the JCVI will continue to review evidence and may change its mind in the future.

Britons aged 17 who are within three months of their 18th birthday will also be urged to get a vaccine in the coming weeks.

Professor Adam Finn, a member of the JCVI, said he expects uptake to be above 90 per cent in the newly eligible groups.

It comes as all Covid restrictions were lifted in England today, with daily cases hitting 39,950 and 19 people dying form the virus.

Children aged 12 to 15 with severe neurodisabilities, Down's syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities can now get the Covid jab. Additionally, youngsters who live with people who are immunosuppressed should get the vaccine, the JCVI said

The JCVI said there was a risk of heart inflammation in about one in 20,000 after a dose of Pfizer's vaccine.

It ruled against recommending the vaccine to healthy children because the risk of dying from the virus for them is about one in a million.

The wider benefits in controlling the pandemic by preventing transmission to adults were 'highly uncertain', the group concluded.

It added that the risks of long Covid to children were still not known - because the condition is so poorly understood and most studies into it rely on self-reported data.

Healthy Britons aged 17 and within three months of their 18th birthday are now eligible for the vaccine for practical reasons to speed up the programme.

Otherwise, only youngsters between 12 and 15 with severe mental disabilities, Down's syndrome, severe learning disabilities or who are immunosupressed will be offered a jab.

Teens who live with adults with serious underlying health conditions will also be eligible. Those aged 16 and 17 with other severe underlying conditions are already eligible.

Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi told MPs this afternoon: 'The JCVI considered not just the health impacts, but the non-health impacts as we asked them to do so, like how education is disrupted by outbreaks in schools.

'I should reassure the house that the number of children and young people who have had severe outcomes from Covid is extremely low with a hospitalisation rate during the second wave between 100 and 400 for every million.

'When we look at the small numbers who were hospitalised, most of them had severe underlying health conditions.

'The steps we are taking today mean we will be offering even more vulnerable people the protection that a vaccine brings. And we will all be safer as a result.'

Vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi told MPs this afternoon that the vaccine rollout will now be expanded to 370,000 children with underlying in England, as well as those living with people at-risk

What is the evidence on vaccinating children? Covid is very rarely severe or fatal in children. Just one in 500,000 under-18s are at risk of dying from the virus, researchers at leading UK universities found this month. That means any vaccine given to youngsters has to be very safe because the risk-harm benefit from them catching the virus is so low. The fact that older people have a higher chance of being hospitalised or dying from the virus outweighs the side effects the vaccine could have on them. But as children are less affected from the virus, some side effects could be riskier to them than the virus itself. Since the vaccine rollout has been expanded to children in countries including the US and Israel, there have been reports of an extremely rare reported cases of myocarditis and pericarditis. Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle, while pericarditis is when the protective layer around the heart gets inflamed. There are no specific causes of the conditions but they are usually triggered by a virus. The UK is expected to wait for more data from clinical trials and other countries immunising children before making a decision to offer all youngster the jab. The US, Israel and France are already giving the vaccine to over-12s. In addition to safety concerns, children's bodies and immune systems behave differently, meaning they might have different treatment needs. Youngsters may need different doses or needle sizes depending on their height, weight and age - which is why most children are only vaccinated after safety has been well-documented in the adult population. Advertisement

Mr Javid said the recommendation means more vulnerable young people at greatest risk from this virus can now benefit from vaccines.

'I have accepted their expert recommendations and I have asked the NHS to prepare to vaccinate those eligible as soon as possible.

'Covid-19 vaccines have saved almost 37,000 lives and prevented around 11.7million infections in England alone.

'They are building a wall of defence and are the best way to protect people from serious illness. I encourage everybody who is eligible to get their jabs as soon as they can.'

Professor Anthony Harnden, deputy chair of the JCVI, said: 'The primary aim of the vaccination programme has always been to prevent hospitalisations and deaths.

'Based on the fact that previously well children, if they do get Covid-19, are likely to have a very mild form of the disease, the health benefits of vaccinating them are small.

'The benefits of reducing transmission to the wider population from children are also highly uncertain, especially as vaccine uptake is very high in older people who are at highest risk from serious Covid-19 infection.

'We will keep this advice under review as more safety and effectiveness information becomes available.'

There has been extremely rare reports myocarditis  an inflammation of the heart  and pericarditis  when the protective layer around the heart becomes inflamed  in young people who got the vaccine.

Data from the US  where cases of myocarditis have been spotted  suggests the complication is most common in boys and young men.

Young people aged 16 and 17 who have underlying health conditions have already been offered the jab.

Covid is rarely severe or fatal in children, with just 30 dying from Covid in the UK in the first year of the pandemic - many of whom will have had underlying health conditions.

The committee is waiting for evidence from children receiving both doses in the US and in trials before recommending all healthy children be injected.

But they will 'leave the door open' for a wider rollout among children after they review safety data from trials later this year, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Pfizer is currently trialling its jab on children aged between two and 11, while AstraZeneca is testing its jab on six to 17-year-olds.

Results from the trials are expected to be published around November.
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Staring from behind rusted bars in a dirty cage, these are the three lions who are 'close to death' after being reduced to skin and bone in the middle of war-torn Yemen.

The lives of the animals are hanging by a thread after campaigners said food supplies at Sana'a Zoo are so scarce that the lions are being fed just once a week as the staff are unable to afford more as the civil war rages on.

The three lions, named Ward, Frence and Moklees, are in a critical condition and are among scores of other animals at the zoo living in squalid conditions.

Video footage and photographs of the starving lions show how feeble they are and you can hear their cries of hunger.

Their cages have not been cleaned and are so dirty that the lions now have skin conditions such as mange, which is caused by mites, and bacteria infections.

Staring from behind rusted bars in a dirty cage, these are the three lions who are 'close to death' after being reduced to skin and bone in the middle of war-torn Yemen. Pictured: The lion named Frence

Campaigners are now most concerned about the lion Ward (pictured). 'He is the one who is clearly the most sick and starving of all of the animals,' campaigner Diane Housel told MailOnline

Ward the lion has been reduced to skin and bones after the zoo is unable to afford enough food and medication due to the war

The smell of their enclosures is so bad that campaigners have described 'the smell of death', with one saying the smell burned his nose and he was unable to stay for long to take pictures and videos of the animals.

The lions are also so weakened that the vet must provide vitamins and medication - but these are in short supply due to the war.

Campaigners are now most concerned about the lion Ward. 'He is the one who is clearly the most sick and starving of all of the animals,' campaigner Diane Housel told MailOnline.

Sana'a zoo is home to around 700 animals - including around 30 lions - but with Yemen in a bloody war since 2014 the zookeepers are unable to afford cleaning supplies which are key to killing off deadly bacteria or food, medication or vitamins for the animals.

With 80 per cent of the population in Yemen dependent on international food aid and the country facing a famine, the animals at the zoos are not a priority.

The zoo is unable to afford a substantial amount of food - and campaigners say the lions are often fed dead animals from the villagers, such as a cow or old donkey.

The lives of the animals are hanging by a thread after campaigners said food supplies at Sana'a Zoo are so scarce that the lions are being fed just once a week as the staff are unable to afford more as the civil war rages on. Pictured: Moklees the lion

The lives of the animals are hanging by a thread after campaigners said food supplies at Sana'a Zoo are so scarce that the lions are being fed just once a week as the staff are unable to afford more as the civil war rages on. Pictured: Ward the lion

Their cages have not been cleaned and are so dirty that the lions now have skin conditions such as mange, which is caused by mites, and bacteria infections. Pictured: Frence

The staff can sometimes afford to feed them deer or donkey once a week, but they are struggling to afford it as it can cost at least $400 per feed. Instead, some of the more elderly lions are fed seven kilograms of chicken per day.

It costs around $3,500 to feed just the lions and endangered Arabian leopards in the zoo - which also houses monkeys, snakes, camels and birds.

The zoo does not have access to fresh water on site and must truck in all of their water. But because water is in short supply and often more than the zoo can afford, it is used for the animals to drink - rather than to clean their cages.

But campaigners such as Diane Housel, 47, from Dusseldorf, Germany, and Sally Bunting, 60, from Horsham in the UK, have seen the conditions the lions are in and are sending their own money to help with the costs until they can raise money under their non-profit Friends of Yemen Zoos.

They have joined forces with Ana Alcalde from Lion's Roar - Stop Canned Hunting who is based in Spain and has adopted Frence and Moklees while raising money for the other lions.

Their help is key for the zoo as no welfare animal organisations are currently able to visit Sana'a zoo to help as there is too much risk to their personnel's lives. They have said once the war is over then they will send teams to help the animals.

'But we cannot until the war is over, the animals will not survive,' Sally told MailOnline. 'No funds now means no purchase of vitamins, medication and food and clean water.'

Video footage and photographs of the starving lions show how feeble they are and you can hear their cries of hunger. Pictured: Moklees

Moklees the lion lies down in his dirty cage in war-torn Yemen

The zoo does not have access to fresh water on site and must truck in all of their water. But because water is in short supply and often more than the zoo can afford, it is used for the animals to drink - rather than to clean their cages

The team at Friends of Yemen coordinate with a partner, who wishes to remain anonymous due to a fear of threats. They take pictures and videos of the conditions at the zoo for them which are used to spread the word and raise money.

Sally and Diane have so far raised more than $1,000, but they are setting up fundraisers to send across further funds to the zoo.

The war has meant some of the zoo's buildings have been destroyed - and campaigners claim the animals have had their spirit destroyed too.

'They are depressed,' said Diane. 'You can see it in their eyes, you see it in the videos and behaviour. They are afraid, scared and hungry.'

'The zoo wants help, we do not want to put the blame on them, rather help them ease some of the suffering of the animals, not just the lions but all the nearly 700 animals who live there,' added Diane.

'Sana'a has seen some of the worse fighting and the animals cannot escape. They are victims of war and need help now.'

Speaking about the emotional impact of seeing the animals in their suffering, Diane said: 'The first day the pictures and videos came in of the conditions, I cried.

'I still have sleepless nights as they only have us and are depending on humans, who have already failed them, to try to plead help for them.'

The team at Friends of Yemen coordinate with a partner, who wishes to remain anonymous due to a fear of threats. They take pictures and videos of the conditions at the zoo for them which are used to spread the word and raise money

Sana'a zoo does have other lions and lionesses which are more healthy as they are the animals which are put out for the public to see.

The zoo is currently open for visitors and they depend on the entrance fees - which are as low as $1 - so they decide to put the 'healthy' lions out for display, campaigners say.

It houses some of the most endangered animals on the planet, including 10 Arabian Leopards, of which only around 200 remain.

But the zoo directors are struggling to pay for simple supplies - and sometimes the staff are not paid due to financial restraints due to the war. 'But the staff still come every day as they care deeply about the animals,' Diane said.

'In parallel starting a mongst those desperately needing help in Yemen, the animals are the forgotten souls, well behind children, women and men,' Sally said. 'Government at any level put people first. We cannot forget them. We must change their lives for the better.

'In the middle of all the difficulties Yemen faces  war, security problems, communication challenges, famine, poor or non-existent health care, the coronavirus  if in the middle of all these challenges we can look the lions and other animals in the eyes and rise to their plea for help, we will have worked a miracle.'

Sana'a zoo does have other lions and lionesses which are more healthy as they are the animals which are put out for the public to see

Yemen's economy has been shattered by the war and the flow of food - nearly 90 per cent of which had to be imported even before the conflict started - has been massively disrupted by the warring parties.

And with prices continuing to rise, more than half of Yemenis do not have enough to eat with 7.4 million people - 25 per cent of the population - suffering from malnutrition.

Diane and Sally are passionate about not placing the blame on the zoo directors, as they are struggling to feed their own families due to the war.

'This is not the zoo director's fault, they want the best for the animals,' said Sally. 'We appreciate so much that they are opening their doors to allow us to do this.

'We want people to understand that the zoo directors and the people of Yemen are proud, they don't want to hurt the animals, they don't want to see the animals suffering.

'Everybody is suffering there. There is a war. They are doing the best they can. We are so happy that they are allowing us to help.'

The war in Yemen began in 2014, with the fall of the capital Sanaa to Huthi rebels opposed to Saudi Arabia-backed forces loyal to the government.

The rebels, supported by Saudi Arabia's arch-rival Iran, now control a major part of Yemen's north, including Sanaa.

Conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives, according to humanitarian organisations, and displaced millions.

To make a donation to Friends of Yemen Zoos: https://fundrazr.com/friendsofyemenzoos
Police have turned up on the doorstep of a Sydney construction boss over unfounded fears he was trying to incite a riot over the new lockdown restrictions.

Peter Khayat said he had to stand down 200 building site workers under the new strict lockdown rules that came into force on Monday.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian banned all construction work until July 30 after days of more than 100 daily new cases. There were another 78 cases on Tuesday.

In a series of Facebook posts on Saturday, Peter Khayat, pictured here with his wife Sarah, from Kogarah in Sydney's south, appeared to call for an uprising against the government over the lockdown

Police have turned up on the doorstep of a Sydney construction site boss over fears he was trying to incite a coup over the latest lockdown restrictions (pictured above)

In a series of Facebook posts, Mr Khayat, from Ramsgate in Sydney's south, appeared to call for an uprising against the government over the lockdown.

'Am I the only one thinking it's time we fought for our basic human rights?' Mr Khayat posted on Facebook.

'How the f**k are we not storming government buildings [not] just doing as they say #sheep.'

Underneath he added: 'Time to riot... freedom is not free. The time now is now brother.'

In a later post he added: 'Time to fight... viva the revolution.'

Shortly after the posts, a convoy of trucks caused havoc on the Anzac Bridge on Saturday afternoon with similar scenes at the Harbour Bridge.

Shortly after the posts, a convoy of trucks caused havoc on the Anzac Bridge on Saturday (pictured above) afternoon with similar scenes at the Harbour Bridge.

A spontaneous protest against the new tighter restrictions also took place in Bankstown on Saturday (pictured)

A series of Facebook posts apparently called for a coup against the government (pictured) which sparked the police visit to Peter Khayat's home

Simultaneously in the city's south-west, scores of protesters flooded a park in Bankstown.

Mr Khayat, who runs Hurstville-based KPR Engineering, also reposted a video of the truckers' protest with the caption: 'Time to rise people. Anzac bridge shut down in protest.

'Bankstown the lebos are in full riot. Freedom is not free!'

A few hours later though, Mr Khayat opened the door of his home to three NSW Police officers after they received a tip-off about his posts.

In a series of video clips Mr Khayat published on his TikTok account, police said they were told about his comments and were doing their 'due diligence'.

But Mr Khayat insisted: 'You just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to storm the government buildings? I don't even know where the government buildings are...'

In a series of video clips Mr Khayat published on his TikTok account (pictured), police say they had been told about his comments and were doing their 'due diligence'

Peter Khayat runs KPR Engineering, based in Hurstville

A police officer told him: 'I'm not here to get you in trouble. There are a lot of people out there that are doing things which are causing a lot of disruption.

'I see where you're coming from... [but] there's a lot of dramas going on.'

Mr Khayat replied: 'There are a lot of Karens out there - I completely agree with you.

'I've got four kids, a wife and a mortgage. I've got 200 workers stood down right now because of Gladdy [Premier Berejiklian].

'There's no way on God's green earth, I'm going to go to a government building and go do 10 years, 20 years, whateverthat's f**king stupid.'

He added: 'It's social media. I might sit on somebody's Lamborghini and say it's mine. It's not mine, it's fake, it's all fake. It's social media.

He posted clips from the police encounter on Facebook and TikTok (pictured)

'I haven't threatened anyone, have I? Whatever I say on social media is done in good fun. I don't have any trucks like what shut down the streets today.

'I'm surprised you're here. I don't feel I've posted anything wrong. It's absolute bulls***. It's my freedom of speech to say that.

'Am I going to do something about it? Absolutely not... [but] we're all frustrated. We've all got families to feed.'

Daily Mail Australia contacted NSW Police. Mr Khayat declined to comment.
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President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden hosted Jordan's King Abdullah II, Queen Rania and their son Prince Hussein at the White House Monday.

Biden praised King Abdullah II of Jordan as a stalwart ally in a 'tough neighborhood' as the two leaders huddled in the Oval Office, a meeting that came at a pivotal moment for both leaders in the Middle East.

Dr. Jill Biden hosted Queen Rania for tea in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House's residence.

(From left) Jordan's Crown Prince Hussein, Queen Rania, King Abdullah II, President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden pose for a photo Monday on the White House's South Lawn

President Joe Biden (right) meets with Jordan's King Abdullah II (left) in the Oval Office on Monday

Jordan's King Abdullah II speaks during his meeting with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office on Monday

Queen Rania (left) and first lady Jill Biden (right) had tea together in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House residence

Queen Rania (left) appears on the Truman Balcony at the White House with first lady Jill Biden (right)

First lady Jill Biden (left) escorts Queen Rania (right) through the White House on Monday

Queen Rania had tea with first lady Jill Biden in the Yellow Oval Room in the White House's residence on Monday

First lady Jill Biden (left) escorts Queen Rania (right) upstairs to the residence at the White House on Monday

First lady Jill Biden (left) and Queen Rania (right) peer off the Truman Balcony during the Jordanian royal visit on Monday

Last week a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullah's half-brother.

Meanwhile, Biden, who has put much of his foreign policy focus on China and Russia in the early going, faces some difficult issues in the Middle East.

He is dealing with stepped-up attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias at the same moment that his administration is trying to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table to revive the nuclear agreement that former President Donald Trump abandoned during his presidency.

'You have always been there, and we will always be there for Jordan,' Biden said during an Oval Office meeting with Abdullah and his son, the Crown Prince Hussein.

Abdullah had a difficult relationship with Trump, who he saw as undercutting any chance for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians with his 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

He also chaffed at the Trump administration's pursuit of what officials called the Abraham Accords - deals with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco that normalized relations with Israel but left out the Palestinians.

Biden has no plans to reverse U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital.

His administration has even praised the Trump-brokered accords - a rare instance of the Democratic administration speaking positively of the former administration.

Biden planned to stress to Abdullah in private that the accords are not an 'end run' on finding the way to a peace deal that includes a Palestinian state, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

'The leaders also consulted on opportunities to enhance peace and stability in the Middle East,' the White House readout after the meeting said.

'In that regard, the President expressed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and respect for Jordan's special role as custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem,' it said.

Jordan's Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah II (left), King Abdullah II (center) and President Joe Biden (right) meet in the Oval Office Monday

Abdullah, for his part, praised Biden for 'setting the standard' internationally in the battle against COVID-19.

The U.S. delivered 500,000 vaccines to Jordan days ahead of the king's visit. The king also appeared to make clear that he was looking to reset the U.S. - Jordan relationship after a four bumpy years with Trump.

'You can always count on me, my country, and many of our colleagues in the region,' Abdullah said.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Syria - more than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordan - and a wobbly security situation in Iraq, an administration official said.

At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks.

Abdullah is set to have a working breakfast Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris and to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The meeting with Biden was also a chance for the king to spotlight his closeness to Biden following the attempted coup.

Bassem Awadallah, who has U.S. citizenship and once served as a top aide to King Abdullah II, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, were found guilty of sedition and incitement charges.

Both men denied the charges and Awadallah's U.S. lawyer said his client alleged he was tortured in Jordanian detention and fears for his life.

They are alleged to have conspired with Prince Hamzah, the king's half-brother.

Biden, who has known Abdullah for years, was quick to publicly express 'strong U.S. support for Jordan' and praise the king's leadership after details of the coup attempt were unveiled in April.

It's unclear if Biden raised the United States' long-standing call to extradite Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, a Palestinian woman living in Jordan who is wanted by the U.S. on a charge of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals.

It was not mentioned in the White House readout.

The Trump administration last year indicated it was considering withholding aid to Jordan in a bid to secure al-Tamimi's extradition.

She was convicted in Israel of a 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv restaurant that killed 15 people, including two American citizens.

She has lived freely in Jordan since she was released in a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap in 2011.

Biden administration officials have previously made clear to Jordan that the extradition of al-Tamimi, who is on the FBI's most wanted list, is of 'high-interest' to the United States, according to the administration official.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter, Malki, was killed in the bombing, noted that Biden has spoken frequently of 'decency' and 'dignity' as paramount values in how he'll run his administration.

Roth and his wife, Frimet, wrote Blinken and other administration officials last month calling on the administration to press Abdullah for extradition.

He said they received no response from the administration beyond acknowledgement that their letter was received.

'I can't think of two words that more powerfully encapsulate what weve been deprived of in all of our dealings with the U.S. government,' Roth said.
Russia is warning the United States not to deploy its new hypersonic missiles in Europe just as the Kremlin is touting a successful test of its rival high-speed weapon.

The Russian embassy in Washington, DC, posted a tweet on Monday that began with a large, red exclamation point. The tweet tagged Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.

We would like to remind [Kirby] that potential deployment of any [American] hypersonic [missile] in Europe would be extremely destabilizing, the tweet from the Russian embassy read.

Their short flight time would leave Russia little to no decision time and raise likelihood of inadvertent conflict.

Russia is warning the United States not to deploy its new hypersonic missiles in Europe just as the Kremlin is touting a successful test of its rival high-speed weapon. The Russian embassy in Washington, DC, posted a tweet on Monday that began with a large, red exclamation point. The tweet tagged Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby

Pictured: A new Zircon hypersonic cruise missile is launched by the frigate Admiral Gorshkov of the Russian navy from the White Sea, in the north of Russia on July 19, 2021

Russian President Putin (pictured) announced an array of new hypersonic weapons in 2018 in one of his most bellicose speeches in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield

The tweet was posted on the same day the Russian military reported another successful test launch of its new hypersonic cruise missile.

Russia's Defense Ministry said the Zircon missile was launched from the Admiral Groshkov frigate in the White Sea.

The ministry said the missile flew at a speed seven times the speed of sound and successfully hit a designated practice target more than 217 miles away on the coast of the Barents Sea.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Zircon would be capable of flying at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of 620 miles. Putin has emphasized that its deployment will significantly boost Russian military capability.

'Were certainly aware of President Putins claims,' Kirby told reporters on Monday. His comments were cited by Fox News.

'And while I wont be getting into specifics or providing any kind of an analysis on his claims, it's important to note that Russias new hypersonic missiles are potentially destabilizing and pose significant risks because they are nuclear-capable systems.'

The Russian navy has conducted several previous test launches of the new missile, including one on Putin's birthday in October, and officials said the tests are to be completed later this year.

Zircon is intended to arm Russian cruisers, frigates and submarines. It is one of several hypersonic missiles under development in Russia.

NATO responded to Monday's test with a statement that claimed Russia's missile development 'create a greater risk of escalation and miscalculation.'

Pictured: A map showing where the missile was fired from a roughly where it struck, over 200 miles away on the coast of the Barents Sea, north of Russia

Putin has said the Zircon missile would be capable of flying at nine times the speed of sound and have a range of 1,000 kilometers (620 miles)

'Russia's new hypersonic missiles are highly destabilizing and pose significant risks to security and stability across the Euro-Atlantic area,' the statement said.

'NATO allies are committed to respond in measured way to Russia's growing array of conventional and nuclear-capable missiles,' the alliance said.

'We will not mirror what Russia does, but we will maintain credible deterrence and defense, to protect our nations.'

The Kremlin has made modernizing the country's arsenals a top priority amid the tensions with the West that followed Russias 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula.

Earlier this month, the US Air Force said it had conducted its first test of the high-explosive blast-fragmentation warhead that will be fitted to the tip of the AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapons (ARRW) hypersonic missile.

The arena test of the prototype warhead was conducted at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, according to The Drive.

Lockheed Martin released this photo of the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), showing hypersonic glide warhead, which it was contracted to build for the US Air Force (file photo)

In April, a B-52H aircraft, similar to the one above, was unable to complete its launch sequence and abandoned the first test of a AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (file photo)

The US military did not say when or where the test took place. It also declined to reveal the construction and capabilities of the warhead.

In April, the much-anticipated first live-fire test of the Air Force's new hypersonic missile was abandoned prior to launch.

US Air Force's supersonic program An ARRW is loaded under the wing of a B-52 (file photo) In 2018, Lockheed Martin were awarded an initial $480 million contract to develop a hypersonic missile that could be launched from the air. By the end of 2020 the company had more than $3 billion in hypersonic-related orders, Lockheed CEO Lockheed CEO Jim Taiclet said recently. The ARRW is among a wave of 'new-generation weapons' to complement B-52 in the coming years, which will allow the half century-old Cold War-era bombers to remain 'an important piece of the Pentagons arsenal for decades to come', Defense One reported. The ARRW's hypersonic speed is measured as anything greater than five times the speed of sound, or Mach 5. Currently, only Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) reach that speed when they re-enter the atmosphere from space. But because they travel along a predictable path, they lack the element of surprise. When the Pentagon's budget for hypersonic missiles was increased by 23 per cent in February 2020, the Air Force moved ahead with acquiring the AGM-183A. The ARRW has a potential top speed of 15,345 miles per hour, meaning it could travel around the circumference of the earth in one hour and 37 minutes. The US Air Force Magazine describes the ARRW as a 'boost-glide type of hypersonic missile'. 'The booster accelerates the payload to hypersonic speed, at which point the clamshell front end opens and releases the hypersonic glide vehicle, which flies the rest of the way to the target with no further propulsion, maneuvering along the way.' In 2019, the United States spent $732 billion on national defense, more than the next 10 countries combined. Advertisement

The Air Force said a B-52H bomber which was due to test the ARRW in a flight departing from Edwards Air Force Base in California was unable to complete its launch sequence.

Brigadier General Heath Collins, the armament directorate program executive officer, described the missile failure as a 'setback' for its hypersonic ambitions.

'The test missile was not able to complete its launch sequence and was safely retained on the aircraft which returned to Edwards AFB,' he said in a statement emailed to media.

'The ARRW program has been pushing boundaries since its inception and taking calculated risks to move this important capability forward.

'While not launching was disappointing, the recent test provided invaluable information to learn from and continue ahead. This is why we test.'

In March the US Navy said it conducted its first live-fire test of the rocket motor that will propel its offensive hypersonic missile.

The first-stage solid rocket motor (SRM) was tested in Promontory, Utah.

In March of last year, the military said it conducted a successful test of the common glide body of the missile.

The ARRW hypersonic missile is expected to supposed to usher in a new era in US military capabilities.

The Air Force says it expects the missile program to be operational by the 'early 2020s'.

It has previously said that the hypersonic missile hit targets 1,000 miles away in 10 to 12 minutes, meaning it would travel at an average speed of 5,000 to 6,000 milers per hour, or between Mach 6.5 to Mach 8.

The ARRW will be used to destroy 'high-value, time-sensitive targets', Mike White, the Pentagon's top hypersonics director, told Airforce Magazine in February.

White said the new ARRW is meant to be survivable when being fired against 'heavily defended targets'.

He said the ARRW is a 'rapid prototyping project that will leverage cutting-edge technologies to deliver a conventional hypersonic weapons capability to the warfighter in the early 2020s'.

The ARRW will be the first hypersonic weapon in the American military arsenal.

In June 2019, the Air Force conducted a captive carry flight test - where the payload does not separate from the carrier aircraft - onboard a B52.

Compared to the Cruise missiles, which have a top speed of about 800kms per hour, the ARRW could be as much as 10 times higher.

The US, China and Russia are all testing prototypes of hypersonic missiles.

China has been conducting tests of its own Xingkong-2 'Waverider' hypersonic cruise missile.

Chinese state media said the Waverider would enable the new weapon to 'break through any current generation anti-missile defense system.'
A Rikers Island jail captain was making his nightly rounds when an inmate with a history of attacks and escape attempts hurled his feces at him.

Capt. Nauvella Lacroix, who's spent nearly nine years with the Department of Corrections in New York City, was struck in the face and torso area around 9.45pm on Wednesday.

A photo shows Lacroix standing at a jail facility with his shirt smothered in human waste.

Capt. Nauvella Lacroix stands at a Rikers Island facility with his shirt covered in human waste

New York City correctional officers are leaving their jobs in droves, sometimes to join the New York Police Department. Above, Rikers Island in 2014

The inmate involved in the attack is identified as Arthur Brown, who records show has been incarcerated at Rikers since May 2019 on charges of felony assault and bail jumping.

Brown made two dramatic escape attempts last year.

In June 2020, he made it down from a roof where he was exercising with other inmates, scaled up a fence and made it to the East River before two officers jumped in the water to get him back.

Days later, Brown spent 30 minutes on a roof at the complex before he was tied to a stretcher and lowered down by six officers.

Brown was arrested after he trespassed at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in lower Manhattan and assaulted two police officers in 2019, the Post reported.

Currently, Brown is being held at North Infirmary Command, which houses inmates requiring infirmary care at the complex.

'I've been personally told that he has exhausted his time in punitive segregation [solitary confinement] so they can't move him,' Correction Captains Association president Patrick Ferraiuolo told the New York Post.

'That's unacceptable. When an inmate behaves that way and throws feces at uniformed staff, he needs to be isolated, he needs to be put in punitive segregation, there should be no exhausting of time when it comes to an inmate this violent and this dangerous but yet they continue to coddle the inmate.'

New rules announced last month and expected to go into effect this fall loosen restrictions on inmates housed in city jails.

As well as ending solitary confinement, the rules will grant inmates attorney representation at infraction hearings, at least 10 hours outside of their cell each day socializing with at least one other person and access to personalized behavioral support plans.

Arthur Brown made two dramatic escape attempts just days apart in 2020

In the second try, he spent 30 minutes on a roof before being tied to a stretcher and lowered

Hundreds of correctional officers have quit their jobs for better opportunities as they complain of bad treatment and violent conditions.

A July 8 class of 555 NYPD recruits sworn in at the Police Academy included 42 former guards.

'Were having the roughest time in my 22-year career ever,' said Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio on his radio show Sunday.

'Officers are working triple shifts, which includes  in some cases 30 hours straight. Its a really unsafe situation for us  My corrections officers are suffering.'

The New York City Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com
American supporters of Israel slammed Ben & Jerrys as anti-Semitic on Monday after the Vermont-based ice cream maker announced it would no longer sell its products in Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his own boycott of Ben & Jerrys, telling reporters in City Hall on Tuesday that he wont be eating Cherry Garcia for a while.

Meanwhile, other supermarkets took to social media and announced that they would not be carrying Ben & Jerrys on their store shelves in response to the companys decision.

Abraham Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted: How sad is Ben and Jerrys decision to boycott Jews in Judea and Samaria - it will do nothing to bring peace closer but it will give oxygen to those who reject reconciliation.

American supporters of Israel slammed Ben & Jerrys as anti-Semitic on Monday after the Vermont-based ice cream maker announced it would no longer sell its products in Jewish settlements on the occupied West Bank

The image above from July 16, 2021 shows the Israeli settlement of Efrat, just south of the Palestinian town of Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Israel has built hundreds of settlements on the West Bank, a piece of territory claimed by the Palestinians

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced his own boycott of Ben & Jerrys, telling reporters in City Hall on Tuesday that he wont be eating Cherry Garcia for a while.

Judea and Samaria is the biblical name of the area that today encompasses the Palestinian West Bank.

Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Since then, Israel has built hundreds of Jewish settlements, but the international community regards them as illegal.

The Palestinians claim East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip as theirs.

Seth Mandel, a journalist sympathetic to Israel, tweeted: 'Where are Palestinians going to buy Ben & Jerry's? What kind of own goal is this?'

Avi Kaner, a co-owner of New York City-based Morton Williams Supermarkets, tweeted: 'Our supermarkets have taken action against Ben & Jerrys, which is boycotting Jewish communities that are at the center of a territorial dispute in Israel, including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem  inhabited by Jews for over 3,000 years.'

House Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican who represents Suffolk County on Long Island, tweeted: 'Ben and Jerry's targeting hundreds of thousands of Jewish customers abroad with this discriminatory boycott is a disgrace.'

Ted Frank tweeted: 'A reminder that Ben & Jerry's still sells ice cream in China and hasn't said anything about Hong Kong or the Uyghurs.'

Lavern Spicer, a Republican who is running for Congress in South Florida, tweeted: 'I'm an ice cream fan, but I will NEVER buy Ben & Jerry's ice cream again. They might as well change their name to Hamas & Adolfs.

Abraham Foxman, the former head of the Anti-Defamation League, tweeted: How sad is Ben and Jerrys decision to boycott Jews in Judea and Samaria - it will do nothing to bring peace closer but it will give oxygen to those who reject reconciliation.

House Rep. Lee Zeldin, a Republican who represents Suffolk County on Long Island, tweeted: 'Ben and Jerry's targeting hundreds of thousands of Jewish customers abroad with this discriminatory boycott is a disgrace.'

Avi Kaner, a co-owner of New York City-based Morton Williams Supermarkets, tweeted: 'Our supermarkets have taken action against Ben & Jerrys, which is boycotting Jewish communities that are at the center of a territorial dispute in Israel, including the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem  inhabited by Jews for over 3,000 years.'

Brigitte Gabriel, a conservative Twitter user with more than 314,000 followers, tweeted: 'Ben & Jerry's is anti-Semitic hate filled ice cream.'

Ted Frank tweeted: 'A reminder that Ben & Jerry's still sells ice cream in China and hasn't said anything about Hong Kong or the Uyghurs.'

Seth Mandel, a journalist sympathetic to Israel, tweeted: 'Where are Palestinians going to buy Ben & Jerry's? What kind of own goal is this?'

Another Twitter user commented: 'I really don't care if Ben and Jerry's wants to leave the settlements. McDonald's doesn't operate in the settlements either. So what? What does bother me is that both operate in much worse places without any outrage whatsoever.'

The satirical website The Babylon Bee joked that Ben & Jerry's would be introducing a new flavor called 'Push The Jews Into The Sea Salt And Caramel'

Another Twitter user commented: 'I really don't care if Ben and Jerry's wants to leave the settlements. McDonald's doesn't operate in the settlements either.

'So what? What does bother me is that both operate in much worse places without any outrage whatsoever.'

Brigitte Gabriel, a conservative Twitter user with more than 314,000 followers, tweeted: 'Ben & Jerry's is anti-Semitic hate filled ice cream.'

She added: 'Boycott them. Shame them. Mock them.'

Lavern Spicer, a Republican who is running for Congress in South Florida, tweeted: 'I'm an ice cream fan, but I will NEVER buy Ben & Jerry's ice cream again.

They might as well change their name to Hamas & Adolfs.

The satirical website The Babylon Bee joked that Ben & Jerry's would be introducing a new flavor called 'Push The Jews Into The Sea Salt And Caramel.'

Others on Twitter posted social media screenshots from supermarkets announcing that they would no longer be carrying Ben & Jerrys ice cream.

Even de Blasio, New York Citys outgoing progressive mayor, slammed the move.

I can say I will not be eating anymore Cherry Garcia for a while, the mayor said on Tuesday.

That's sad to me.

De Blasio said it was unfortunate that the companys founders - Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield - made the decision they did.

Meanwhile, several kosher supermarkets announced they would no longer sell Ben & Jerry's

I don't know them well, but I've met them over the years and I think they're good people with good values.

But this is a mistake. They shouldn't do this.

De Blasio falsely accused Ben & Jerry's of signing on to BDS - or the 'Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions' movement - against Israel.

The BDS movement seeks to apply economic pressure on Israel by forcing companies and government to sever ties with the entire country.

The move by Ben & Jerry's simply limits the sale of their products to supermarkets in Israel that are within the country's internationally recognized borders.

Ben & Jerry's said the sales of its ice cream in the territories sought by the Palestinians are 'inconsistent with our values.'

The announcement on Monday by the Vermont-based ice cream company was slammed by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement who called it 'an immoral decision and I believe that it will turn out to be a business mistake, too.'

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also slammed the decision, tweeting that: 'Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy'.

The company informed its longstanding licensee - responsible for manufacturing and distributing the ice cream in Israel - that it will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year, according to a statement posted on the Vermont-based company's website.

The Ben & Jerry's statement cited 'the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners.'

The company did not explicitly identify those concerns, but last month, a group called Vermonters for Justice in Palestine called on Ben & Jerry's to 'end complicity in Israel's occupation and abuses of Palestinian human rights.'

Ben & Jerry's said it will stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem, saying the sales in the territories sought by the Palestinians are 'inconsistent with our values'

The Ben & Jerry's statement cited 'the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners'. The Israeli foreign ministry called Ben & Jerry's decision 'a surrender to ongoing and aggressive pressure from extreme anti-Israel groups' and the company was cooperating with 'economic terrorism'

'How much longer will Ben & Jerry's permit its Israeli-manufactured ice cream to be sold in Jewish-only settlements while Palestinian land is being confiscated, Palestinian homes are being destroyed, and Palestinian families in neighborhoods like Sheik Jarrah are facing eviction to make way for Jewish settlers?' the organization's Ian Stokes said in a June 10 news release.

In a Monday statement, the organization said Ben & Jerry's actions did not go far enough.

'By maintaining a presence in Israel, Ben & Jerrys continues to be complicit in the killing, imprisonment and dispossession of Palestinian people and the flaunting of international law,' said the Vermont group's Kathy Shapiro.

The Israeli foreign ministry called Ben & Jerry's decision 'a surrender to ongoing and aggressive pressure from extreme anti-Israel groups' and the company was cooperating with 'economic terrorism.'

'The decision is immoral and discriminatory, as it singles out Israel, harms both Israelis and Palestinians and encourages extremist groups who use bullying tactics,' the ministry said in a statement. It also called on Ben & Jerry's to withdraw its decision.

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid upbraided Ben & Jerry's, calling its decision a 'shameful surrender' to anti-Semitism.

While Ben & Jerry's products will not be sold in the settlements, the company said it will stay in Israel through a different arrangement. But doing so will be difficult. Major Israeli supermarket chains, the primary distribution channel for the ice cream maker, all operate in the settlements.

Founded in Vermont in 1978, but currently owned by consumer goods conglomerate Unilever, Ben & Jerry's has not shied away from social causes. While many businesses tread lightly in politics for fear of alienating customers, the ice cream maker has taken the opposite approach, often espousing progressive causes.

The announcement on Monday by the Vermont-based ice cream company was slammed by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a former leader of the West Bank settlement movement who called it 'an immoral decision and I believe that it will turn out to be a business mistake, too. Former Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu also slammed the decision

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also slammed the decision, tweeting that: 'Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy'

Ben & Jerry's took a stand against what it called the Trump administrations regressive policies by rebranding one of its flavors Pecan Resist in 2018, ahead of midterm elections.

The company said Pecan Resist celebrated activists who were resisting oppression, harmful environmental practices and injustice. As part of the campaign, Ben & Jerry's said it was giving $25,000 each to four activist entities.

Aida Touma-Sliman, an Israeli lawmaker with the Joint List of Arab parties, wrote on Twitter that Ben and Jerry's decision Monday was 'appropriate and moral.' She added that the 'occupied territories are not part of Israel' and that the move is an important step to help pressure the Israeli government to end the occupation.

The West Bank and east Jerusalem were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the two territories - roughly 500,000 in the occupied West Bank and 200,000 in East Jerusalem.

Israel treats the two areas separately, considering east Jerusalem as part of its capital.

Meanwhile, Israel considers the West Bank as disputed territory whose fate should be resolved in negotiations.

However the international community considers both areas to be occupied territory.

The Palestinians seek the West Bank as part of a future independent state, with east Jerusalem as their capital.

Israel in recent years has become a partisan issue in Washington, with many Democrats - particularly of the party's progressive wing - growing increasingly critical over a number of Israeli policies, including settlement construction, and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus close ties with former President Trump. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken critic of Israel.

The BDS movement - shorthand for a grassroots, Palestinian-led movement that advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli institutions and businesses - applauded Ben & Jerry's decision as 'a decisive step towards ending the company's complicity in Israel's occupation and violations of Palestinian rights,' but called upon the company to do more.

'We hope that Ben & Jerry's has understood that, in harmony with its social justice commitments, there can be no business as usual with apartheid Israel,' a statement read.

Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli troops in the West Bank. The West Bank and east Jerusalem were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the two territories - roughly 500,000 in the occupied West Bank and 200,000 in east Jerusalem

Founded in Vermont in 1978, but currently owned by consumer goods conglomerate Unilever, Ben & Jerry's has not shied away from social causes. Founder Ben Cohen, left, and Jerry Greenfield, right, join Jane Fonda at a climate change protest in Washington DC in 2019

The Israeli government says the BDS movement masks a deeper aim of delegitimizing or even destroying the entire country.

The Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing the roughly 500,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements, said 'there's no need to buy products from companies that boycott hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens because of the place they choose to live.'

It said Ben & Jerry's decision 'brought a bad spirit to such a sweet industry' and called on Israelis to buy locally produced ice cream this summer.

Ben & Jerry's move on Monday may not be the final chapter in the saga.

Airbnb announced in 2018 that it would stop advertising properties in Israeli settlements.

Several months later, after coming under harsh criticism from Israel and a federal lawsuit by Israeli Americans who owned property in the settlements, the company reversed its decision.
A man has been convicted of vehicular homicide after prosecutors say he hit a car while driving around 120 mph while streaming on Facebook live.

A jury in Adams County, Colorado found 44-year-old Bryan Kirby guilty in the 2018 crash, District Attorney Brian Mason said on Monday.

He was also found guilty of reckless manslaughter and leaving the scene of fatal accident.

Kirby was accused of driving as fast as 167 mph during the livestream on a highway near Denver while making comments to viewers about his speed.

At one point, Kirby addressed the livestream, and said, 'We cruise at 140.'

Prosecutors say 44-year-old Bryan Kirby was driving at speeds up to 167mph miles per hour while livestreaming on Facebook on a highway near Denver when he crashed into another car (file photo)

Towards the end of the livestream, Kirby was traveling at 120mph and quickly came upon a dark colored sedan that was driving in the right lane.

Kirby approached from the left, crossed over the center lane markings, and struck the rear of the other vehicle.

'A loud crunching noise could be heard in the livestream as the phone appeared to tumble around the interior of the vehicle, and the video abruptly stopped,' prosecutors stated.

Kirby was driving at speeds between 140 and 155 mph while making comments to the viewers on the livestream about how fast he was going (file photo)

The phone appeared to tumble inside Kirby's vehicle before the video ended. The driver of the sedan died at the scene.

Kirby then took off, prosecutors said.

Robert Hamilton, 67, was pronounced dead at the scene.

'This death was preventable. Recklessly driving at an outrageous speed and livestreaming at the same time is not acceptable in this community,' Mason said.

On Thursday, an Adams County Jury convicted Kirby of three felony counts: vehicular homicide, reckless manslaughter and leaving the scene of an accident causing death.

'The incredibly reckless actions of this defendant caused the death of an innocent victim,' said Mason. 'He not only acted in a manner that ultimately caused someone's death, he livestreamed it on social media for the world to see.

'This death was preventable. Recklessly driving at an outrageous speed and livestreaming at the same time is not acceptable in this community. I appreciate the jury returning a guilty verdict in this horrific case.'

Kirby will be sentenced on September 10.
Bodycam footage shows the moment a man smashed a glass bottle over an NYPD officers head in an unprovoked assault on a Brooklyn street corner early on Sunday morning.

Video of the attack, released by the NYPD, shows a man in a tie-died t-shirt approaching a group of cops from the NYPDs 67th precinct.

The man, named by police as Tyshaun Holloway, starts out by talking to the cops for a few seconds before suddenly swinging a glass bottle at the officers' head.

He then flees in the opposite direction as the cops chase after him.

It is unclear what the man said to officers because the bodycam footage does not include audio.

Holloway, 27, of Hackensack, N.J., has been arrested twice in the past for assaulting police officers, authorities said.

The NYPD tweeted: Early yesterday morning, cops from the @NYPD67Pct were on a fixed post to address community concerns when they were suddenly assaulted with a glass bottle in an unprovoked attack.

'The suspect, who has been arrested for assaulting officers twice in the past, was quickly caught.

Bodycam footage shows the moment a man smashed a glass bottle over an NYPD officers head in an unprovoked assault on a Brooklyn street corner early on Sunday morning

The bottle is clearly visible in the man's hand as he swings it at the officer

The attacker was named by police as Tyshaun Holloway, 27, of Hackensack, N.J.

The officer sustained multiple lacerations to the face and neck that required stitches and staples, but is in stable condition.

Holloway faces charges of assault, menacing, resisting arrest, criminal possession of a weapon and obstructing governmental administration, police said.

Holloway was arrested twice in 2016 for assaulting police officers, though the time, place and manner of those attacks are not clear, according to Fox News.

According to state prison records, Holloway was jailed in November 2017 and released on parole on February 28, 2019.

Police unions have hit out at the criminal justice system following the attack.

The New York City Police Benevolent Association tweeted: He assaulted cops TWICE before. Yet there he was, walking the streets, endangering not only these POs but the entire community.

'Our justice & mental health systems are dangerously broken. They won't get better until elected leaders wake up & take action.

NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said the attack was another reminder of the grave dangers your cops face every day as they take to the streets to protect the people of NYC. Were both lucky & thankful that our officers injuries from this unprovoked attack werent more severe.

Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio and mayoral candidates Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa have not publicly addressed the violent attack as of Monday evening.

The assault comes amid a surge in violent crime in the Big Apple in recent months, with two vicious assaults happening the same weekend.

On Friday, a 41-year old Jewish man was walking to a nearby synagogue in the East Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn around 5:45 a.m. on Friday when two men began savagely kicking and punching him.

The muggers wearing hoods and masks are caught in surveillance footage attempting to grab his bag as the man puts his hands up before running for his safety. They run off camera while pools of blood were seen spattered on the sidewalk after the attack.

The alarming footage was posted to Twitter by the Flatbush Shomrim Safety Patrol, a civilian volunteer patrol group founded 28 years ago to serve members of the Orthodox Jewish community.

On Friday, a 41-year old Jewish man was walking to a nearby synagogue in the East Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn when two men began to savagely kick and punch him

Meanwhile, an Asian woman underwent brain surgery on Saturday after she and her son were dragged down the subway stairs during a bungled robbery in New York City. The alleged attacker (pictured) left the subway station after the incident

The brazen early morning attack happened just three blocks from a nearby NYPD precinct. The NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force said it was investigating the robbery.

Meanwhile, an Asian woman underwent brain surgery on Saturday after she and her son were dragged down the subway stairs during a bungled robbery in New York City.

The unnamed woman, 58, was with her 23-year-old son on Saturday and they were walking up the steps at Canal Street station in Manhattan at around 10:45am when an assailant attacked them from behind, grabbing the son's backpack.

The son grabbed his mother as he fell, and the pair tumbled down the stairs.

He was not seriously hurt, but his mother hit her head and was critically injured.

The thief ran away, and surveillance footage showed a black man in a short-sleeved khaki shirt and white bandana around his neck leaving the station.

With the uptick in crime, many worry that the city is sliding back to the dark days of the '70s and '80s when it earned the nickname 'Fear City'. In the 1970s, the city faced $10 billion in debt and funds were cut to the police and other services.

NYPD data shows that shootings have spiked 28.9 percent in 2021 compared to last year as of July 11, its most recent data. There have been 803 shooting incidents in 2021 compared to 623 in 2020.

Shooting victims are also up a staggering 22.2 percent year over year, with 931 people falling victim to gun crime compared to 623 by this time last year.

The number of murders has also risen from 215 to 225 in the same timeframe - a 4.7 percent rise.

Rape has surged 7.3 percent and other sex crimes 25.9 percent.

The biggest leap in crime rates is for hate crimes, which has surged by 118.2 percent in the last year. This data comes amid numerous random attacks on Asian Americans in the city, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eric Adams, the ex-cop who is the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, warned last Wednesday that 'no one is going to come back' if violence, and in particular gun violence in the Big Apple continues.

The Brooklyn borough president appeared at an event with Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday as the two political leaders presented a united front in addressing the worrying rising crime.

'No one is going to come back to our multibillion-dollar tourism industry if 3-year-olds are being shot in Times Square,' Adams said.

Adams, 60, won the Democratic primary for this year's mayoral race and will become the mayor of New York if he defeats Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election.

Eric Adams (pictured on July 12 at the White House), the ex-cop who is the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, warned last Wednesday that 'no one is going to come back' if violence, and in particular gun violence in the Big Apple continues

He ripped New York judges and bail reform laws for not doing their part to combat the rising crime rates.

He also said judges are not using tools they do have at their disposal like Kendra's Law which lets courts order mental health treatment in some cases.

'Our judges are not giving bail on cases where they are allowed to give bail. They're refusing to use Kendra's Law on mental health issues,' Adams said.

'We have thrown up our hands, and we have surrendered our city. It's time for us to ensure our city is for the working class, everyday people who are following the laws and saying that government is going to make sure we protect them.'

Cuomo described gun violence as a 'major civil rights issue' while announcing the state will offer 4,000 summer jobs and full-time jobs with training for the city's youth in the hopes of providing an 'alternative' to gun violence, the Daily News reported.

Those efforts come after de Blasio already unveiled 75,000 jobs for city youth this summer, as noted by the Daily News.

Cuomo admitted back in May that New York City is now in the throes of a 'major problem.'

'New Yorkers don't feel safe and they don't feel safe because the crime rate is up,' he said.

'It's not that they are being neurotic or overly sensitive - they are right.'
A long-awaited family reunion has sparked four new coronavirus cases in Adelaide and brought its health system 'to its knees' as officials introduce strict Level Four restrictions in the city.

An 81-year-old man tested positive to Covid-19 in Adelaide on Monday morning - prompting the city's first coronavirus scare in months - having undergone hotel quarantine in Sydney after arriving with his daughter from Argentina.

His daughter, who is in her 50s, has also now been confirmed to have the virus. The third and fourth cases are close contacts of the elderly man.

The 81-year-old presented to Modbury Hospital staff in Adelaide's north-east with respiratory symptoms on Sunday and tested positive to Covid-19 at 2.30am on Monday.

That hospital is now in lockdown, with 27 patients and 25 staff members forced into isolation after coming into contact with the positive case.

The city's other six hospitals have since been hit with overcrowding and were by Monday afternoon all listed as 'code white' - meaning they are over capacity.

Monday's surprise cases prompted Premier Steven Marshall to bring in tough new restrictions, including a ban on indoor dining and mandatory masks indoors.

The restrictions began at midnight and will be reviewed again on Friday.

The 81-year-old's grandson said his mother had spent four months trying to bring her father - who has a pre-existing medical condition - back to Australia from the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires.

Health workers test the public at a drive through COVID testing site at Victoria Park in Adelaide. Four new coronavirus cases in South Australia has brought its health system 'to its knees', ambulance union officials said

His mother was granted a compassionate exemption to fly to the South American country and help her father travel back to Australia, The Adelaide Advertiser reported.

But bureaucratic red tape and delays meant the pair were forced to fly home to Adelaide through Europe and Dubai - only starting their quarantine in Sydney on June 24.

The man had received one vaccine dose while in Argentina, but it was not known what type, Mr Marshall said.

He spent 10 days of his quarantine period at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital after suffering a fall in his Sydney medi-hotel and arrived in South Australia on July 8.

The 81-year-old's grandson said his mother had spent four months trying to bring her father - who has a pre-existing medical condition - back to Australia from the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires

The Modbury Hospital in Adelaide's north-east is in lockdown after the infected elderly man presented there with respiratory symptoms

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall (pictured) announced new restrictions on Monday

The Ambulance Employees Association said the positive cases have brought the state's health system 'to its knees' as health officials struggle to fill the shifts of exposed workers.

'Theres only 28 rostered over the night shift period, so thats up to 50 per cent of emergency crewing for tonight that the ambulance service is having trouble filling because of this,' the association's Leah Watkins told ABC News.

Adelaide's Level Four restrictions meanwhile have also forced thousands of non-essential businesses forced to close.

LEVEL FOUR RESTRICTIONS IN ADELAIDE: Level four restrictions will begin at midnight on Monday and remain in place until Friday in the Adelaide areas. - Private gathering at home will be capped at 10. - Density for licensed premises back to one per 4 sqm or 25 per cent capacity. - Non-essential retail will close. - All gyms and contact sport will stop. - Masks are required inside public spaces, and on public transport. - There will be restrictions on dancing and singing. - Personal care services (beauty salons and hairdressers) will close. - Shisha sharing at Shisha bars banned. - Working from home is strongly encouraged. Advertisement

EXPOSURE SITES IN ADELAIDE: Modbury: Commonwealth Bank - Tuesday July 13, 10:00am-11:15am and Wednesday July 14, 10:30am12:15pm St Agnes: Aldi - Tuesday July 13, 10.20 am to 11.30 am Hindmarsh: Gaganis Bros - Friday July 16, 1:00pm2:30pm Golden Grove: OPSM - Saturday, July 17, 3pm3:45pm Golden Grove: Shopping Centre on Saturday, July 17 between 3pm-4.45pm Golden Grove: The Grove News Agency on Saturday, July 17 between 3.30pm-3.45pm St Agnes: Shopping Centre on Tuesday, July 13 between 10.30am-11.30am Anyone who was at Wigley Reserve in Glenelg on Friday, July 16 between 12.30pm-1.15pm should monitor for symptoms and seek testing if they present. Advertisement

Private gatherings at home are capped at 10, non-essential retail told to close, all gyms shuttered and contact sport banned.

Masks are required at indoor public locations, and working from home is strongly encouraged.

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens said though 'this is not a lockdown'.

'We need to restrict movement in the community,' he said.

Mr Marshall said: 'We've only got one chance to get this right. We are very concerned. We are treating this as the Delta variant. We are going to go hard and go early.'

Health authorities are now scrambling to determine where the elderly man caught the virus.

SA chief public health officer Nicola Spurrier said everyone's movements need to be restricted until contact tracers can work out where the man and his daughter went while infectious.

'What we do not have yet is all the people she and her father have come across over the past week,' she said.

'That's why we have this time to restrict movement for people here in South Australia. We don't have time. We ask the South Australian community to reduce movement while my team can do the contact tracing.'

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens previously said it was very likely South Australians would be hit with higher Covid-19 restrictions.

SA Health have identified a range of exposures sites in the city's north-east and ordered anyone there at these times to isolate for 14 days, notify them and get tested on days one, five and 13.

South Australia has now closed its borders with NSW, Greater Brisbane and Victoria amid fresh outbreaks.
An Australian woman living in Paris said she was made to feel 'shame' after two security guards tried to stop her breastfeeding her daughter on a bench at Disneyland Paris.

'They were trying to make me feel shame,' Laura, who did not provide her surname, told SBS News.

Laura, who lives in Paris, was visiting Europe's biggest theme park with her French husband and two children as a treat for her five-year-old after months of Covid lockdowns.

She said she began to breastfeed her two-month-old daughter on a bench while her husband and older daughter went on a ride.

Two security guards then stood over her and suggested she should be caring for her baby in the park's dedicated baby care room because her breastfeeding was offensive to other patrons.

'At the beginning I felt humiliated, I felt so vulnerable in this really intimate time and something that I considered completely normal and natural.'

Disneyland Paris has been forced to apologise to an Australian woman who was ordered by two security guards to stop breastfeeding her daughter on a bench (pictutred)

Disneyland Paris has since been forced to apologise to Laura for the incident, which happened last Sunday.

The incident was publicised when another woman tweeted that the guards had 'prevented a mother from breastfeeding her two-month-old baby on the grounds that it shocked foreign visitors. In France, in July 2021.'

The tweet added: 'The offence of obstructing breastfeeding, where are we?'

Disneyland initially refused to apologise, saying that breastfeeding mothers could use a dedicated Baby Care Centre

Disneyland initially refused to apologise, saying that breastfeeding mothers could use a dedicated Baby Care Centre.

The centre includes rooms 'with suitable and comfortable equipment such as special breastfeeding seats,' Disneyland tweeted.

But Marlene Schiappa, France's former minister for gender equality, then joined in the exchange, writing: 'Dear @DisneylandParis, breastfeeding a baby is not an offence.

'It is good that you have dedicated rooms but no-one knows when and where a baby will be hungry.'

Disneyland then said it 'profoundly regrets this situation' and 'presents once more our apologies to the mother in question'.

The tweet said the security guards' behaviour were 'not compatible with our regulations and our values,' adding that 'there is no restriction on breastfeeding at Disneyland Paris'.

Disneyland Paris reopened last month after being closed since late October because of the Coronavirus pandemic.

The situation of mother-of-two Shannon Laverty (left), who was asked not to breastfeed her newborn son in the public lounge area of Pacific Fair Shopping Centre on the Gold Coast in May, mirrors that of Laura, an Australian living in Paris who experienced the same treatment at Paris Disneyland

The incident followed a similar one on the Gold Coast, Queensland in May, when a concierge worker at the Pacific Fair Shopping Centre asked mother-of-two Shannon Laverty to use the centre's breastfeeding facilities rather than do so in the lounge area near luxury shops.

Ms Laverty took to social media to protest the actions of the staff member, eventually forcing an embarrassing backdown by Pacific Fair.

It vowed to re-educate all of its staff on the company's policies and the right of mothers to breastfeed in public.

'Its disappointing there are incidents such as these,' Queensland Branch President of the Australian Breastfeeding Association, Kath Angus, told Daily Mail Australia at the time.

'This is a case of someone just trying to do their job and not realising they are going against the anti-discrimination act.

'You see more breast on an advertising board at a bus stop than you do from a mother breastfeeding in a shopping centre.'
Sydney councils are torn over whether to enforce parking fines during lockdown as businesses shut and more people are forced to work from home.

Parking rules are set to be relaxed in some parts of of the city but locals in other areas won't be shown any leniency.

Residents in the CBD, Inner West, Randwick and Sutherland Shire are expected to be let off on their next parking fine, while those living in Bondi will still be slapped with a ticket if they exceed their time limit.

Sydney councils remain divided over whether to relax parking rules, with some suburbs relaxing parking fines

Sydney and Melbourne took a flexible approach to parking fines during last year's lockdowns, easing rules around green-signed parking zones while keeping red 'no stopping' restrictions in place.

Rangers patrolling Sydney's Inner West local government area, which stretches from Balmain to Marrickville, have been directed not to issue fines to residents overstaying their parking limit in residential areas.

Inner West Council mayor Darcy Byrne said rangers will be 'prioritising safety, not issuing infringement notices'.

The council received a raft of complaints during last year's lockdown over cars blocking driveways in residential streets.

Councillor Byrne claimed parking will be free for 30 minutes with meters switched off at 7pm for suburbs across the area.

He suggested other councils follow suit.

Waverley Council, which covers Bondi Junction, Bondi and Bronte beaches, said rangers are still out on duty and residents and visitors are urged to adhere to parking rules for the benefit of all.

Residents in the CBD, Inner West, Randwick and Sutherland Shire will see flexible parking restrictions

'Waverley residents displaying residential parking permits within scheme areas can continue to park legally for the entire day,' the Council said.

'Timed parking zones are in place for the benefit of local businesses, residents and those needing to access facilities in Waverley.'

It's a different story in the City of Parramatta in Sydney's west, which has seen an 80 per cent reduction in fines as the demand for on-street parking dropped in the last two weeks.

Parking rangers will ensure the safety of pedestrians and drivers by preventing hazards created by unlawful parking.

They're also helping businesses by making sure the community can access essential services through the timely turnover of parking spots.

The council is currently considering bringing back parking rules from last year's lockdown which included increased short-term parking spots for takeaway services and longer grace periods that meant two cautions were given before any fines were issued.

Waverley Council says parking rangers are still on duty and will be issuing infringement notices to residents and visitors who breach parking limits

In Randwick Council a 'common sense approach' will be taken by parking rangers, who will only issue fines for vehicles parked in a dangerous or unsafe manner.

Sutherland Shire will be taking a 'considered approach' to parking restrictions, saying it would focus on responding to complaints from residents relating to incidents which pose a threat to public safety.

Anyone wishing to discuss a parking fine should contact Revenue NSW.
Allison Langdon has weighed into the debate of expanding the coronavirus vaccine rollout to children, arguing the death of a youngster is one too many.

Australian youths aged 12-18 could be rolling up their sleeves as soon as later this year or early next year as the Delta strain makes them more vulnerable.

Langdon's insistence that not a single child in Australia die from Covid was despite kids losing their lives to the virus overseas, along with four million adults worldwide.

The Therapeutic Goods Administration is assessing an application from Pfizer to have its vaccine approved for the age group.

But health experts are divided over the proposal by NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant to vaccinate children as soon as possible to control future outbreaks.

Langdon made her feelings known while interviewing epidemiologist Peter Collignon on the Today Show on Tuesday.

Professor Peter Collignon (pictured) said the risk for children even with the highly-contagious Delta strain is 'much, much lower' than older Australians

He is among the experts who urged caution against a rush to vaccinate kids, despite children overseas dying from Covid-19.

He also pointed out Australia's vaccine rollout won't ramp up until later year.

'Children can get Covid and spread it to others but they do it less than their parents,' the Australian National University professor told the program.

'What we know everywhere around the world those who are not vaccinated are more likely to get infection and spread it.

'Children are still very low, even in NSW at the moment. My understanding children aren't 20 per cent of cases yet they're about 20 percent of the population or more.'

'The risk for children even with Delta is much, much lower than older people. We still have a shortage of vaccine. We're not going to have enough vaccine until at least October.'

Today show co-host Allison Langdon (pictured) weighed into the debate of expanding the coronavirus vaccine rollout to children

Langdon, a mother-of-two, had some tough questions.

'The fact that any child has died is one too many, isn't in?' the Today show co-host asked.

Professor Collignon argued all adults needed to be vaccinated before Australia should consider starting on kids as they were far less vulnerable.

'People in their 30s and 40s, we're not recommending or preferring the AstraZeneca vaccine because of a one in two million chance you might die for it,' he said.

'With children that risk benefit is a bigger equation, we have to make sure children the benefits far outweigh risks.

'We've actually go to make sure the benefits of children outweigh the risks.'

The Today show co-host is mum to Scout (left) and Mack (right)

'My view in Australia where we don't have spread let's see what happens in America, in Canada, Europe where there is lots of spread.

'There will be more vaccines given before we put our children up to get vaccinated when there just isn't data, also currently there is not enough vaccine.'

Langdon agreed Australia had the benefit of time but pointed out that US and Canada are already giving kids the Covid-19 jab

'You've got to assume they've done the research,' she said.

'How do you get a point - we that kids are spreading the Delta variant. Can you get herd immunity without including teenagers?'

Professor Collignon said the people most at risk of dying are those over the age of 70.

'They are so much more important to get vaccinated than 15-year-old children,' he said.

He also wants to see the majority of Australia's adult population vaccinated before the end of lockdowns and restrictions are considered.

NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant revealed on Monday vaccinating children could be key in controlling future outbreaks (stock image)
A pub worker has opened the back door of the venue to find a huge mob of kangaroos - including two who snuck around the corner for a kiss.

TikTok user cardqueenkatie captured vision on May 27 showing at least 15 roos outside the John Forrest pub in the John Forrest national park, east of Perth.

There were huge males, smaller females and joeys - as well as two frisky juveniles seen sharing a smooch before stopping to stare straight at the camera.

A pub worker has opened the back door of the venue to find a huge mob of kangaroos

'Caught some young ones making out behind the pub,' the video was captioned.

The John Forrest pub is popular with tourists, hikers and locals who can enjoy a well-earned pint while kangaroos and native birds come within metres of their table.

Katelyn Hutton, the worker who caught shot the footage, has a strong online following, with 47,000 followers.

In February she filmed a viral video showing a roo named Matt casually hopping behind the bar.

There were huge males, smaller females and joeys - as well as two frisky juveniles seen sharing a smooch before stopping to stare straight at the camera

'Your pretending like your working, but I don't see it actually happening,' Ms Hutton said. 'Come on, pour a beer.'

In another video, Matt had seemingly finished his 'shift' and was swarmed by a crowd of kangaroos waiting outside the tavern.

'Alright buddy, good first day at work, just don't know if it's going to happen again, because you keep on bringing in your girlfriends,' Ms Hutton said.
Australians who have lost their job because of lockdowns can ask their bank for a mortgage holiday.

Construction workers in Sydney have been banned from going to a building site since Monday, while non-essential shops have stopped trading since Saturday.

Melbourne is extending its lockdown on Tuesday beyond the initial five days, with non-critical retailers also barred from opening.

Professional services firm KPMG is now calculating Sydney's stricter lockdown will cost $1.5billion a week - more than double Treasury's estimate of $700million for the earlier, more moderate lockdown that had allowed all shops to trade.

Small business owners and workers with a mortgage can ask their bank for a loan repayment holiday as they were able to in March 2020 during the national Covid lockdowns.

Australians who have lost their job because of lockdowns can ask their bank for a mortgage holiday. Pictured is a stock image

Lockdown relief from the big banks COMMONWEALTH: Eviction moratorium until February 2022, two-month deferrals WESTPAC: Three-month loan deferrals ANZ: Two-month deferrals Advertisement

But RateCity research director Sally Tindall said borrowers needed to realise that deferring repayments for two months on a $500,000 mortgage would add an extra $1,712 in servicing costs over the remaining 25 years of the loan.

'As helpful as they can be to get you through a tight spot, a mortgage deferral is by no means free,' she said.

The Commonwealth Bank, Australia's biggest home lender, on Monday announced it would have a moratorium on evictions until February 2022.

Borrowers in south-west Sydney are being offered automatic two-month mortgage deferrals, with three-month holidays for small business loans.

Residents in the Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown council areas have been banned from leaving their area unless they work in health care or emergency services.

Fairfield is particularly affected with taxi and ride-share drivers and construction site labourers among the most common occupations, Census data showed.

Construction workers in Sydney have, since Monday, been banned from going to a building site (pictured is a house under construction at Marsden Park

Westpac, Australia's oldest bank, is offering three-month mortgage deferrals for home loan and small business borrowers.

ANZ is offering two-month deferrals.

In March last year as the national Covid restrictions were imposed, the big four banks offered six-month mortgage deferrals.

KPMG chief economist Dr Brendan Rynne is calculating Sydney's new, stricter lockdowns would cost $220million a day in economic activity, with NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Saturday announcing the restrictions would last until at least July 30.

The weekly cost of $1.5billion is more than double the $700million figure, calculated by federal Treasury before the New South Wales lockdown restrictions were expanded for Sydney, the Central Coast, Wollongong and the Blue Mountains.

AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver had put the economic cost at $1billion a week based on the original lockdown rules of June 26.

To put that into perspective, the ABC receives $1billion a year from taxpayers.

KPMG also predicted lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne into August and would cause the Australian economy to contract in the September quarter, marking the first negative quarter since the Covid recession of 2020.

Westpac economists Andrew Hanlan and Bill Evans are expecting the lockdowns in Australia's two biggest cities to cause a 0.7 per cent contraction in the September quarter at a cost of $8billion.
The State Department is advising all Americans not to travel to the United Kingdom as the Delta variant of COVID-19 surges.

It came on the same day that Brits marked 'freedom day' - with the majority of all Covid restrictions eased and the country fully reopening in spite of the rise in cases.

The move by the State Department means that Britain is now at the highest warning level possible - 'do not travel' - on a four-part ranking.

First is 'exercise normal precautions'; second is 'exercise increased caution'; then comes 'reconsider travel'.

The warning for Britain has fluctuated between Level 3 'reconsider travel', and Level 4 'do not travel', several times this year already.

In May, the US government had lowered the U.K. to a Level 3 advisory rating.

The latest upgrade comes as COVID cases across the U.K. soared by 52 per cent week-on-week, with the number of deaths falling slightly.

The U.K. on Sunday recorded 48,161 COVID cases - up from the 31,772 cases recorded last Sunday.

The State Department's decision comes hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its own advice, recommending that U.S. citizens do not visit the U.K.

The move means that Britain is now at the highest warning level possible - 'do not travel'

The State Department and CDC announcements are a blow to the airline industry. A British Airways flight is seen at London's Heathrow airport

The United States has barred nearly all non-U.S. citizens who have recently been in the UK from travelling to the United States since March 2020.

But Britain allows American visitors - but requires a 10-day quarantine on arrival and two COVID-19 tests.

In June, the Biden administration said it was forming expert working groups with Britain, Canada, Mexico and the European Union to determine how best to restart travel safely after more than a year of restrictions.

U.S. and airline officials do not expect the restrictions on UK travelers to be lifted until August at the earliest - and warn it could be pushed back further.

The latest State Department's advisory reads: 'Do not travel to the United Kingdom due to COVID-19. Exercise increased caution due to terrorism.

'The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice for the United Kingdom due to COVID-19, indicating a very high level of COVID-19 in the country.

'There are restrictions in place affecting U.S. citizen entry into the United Kingdom.

'Your risk of contracting COVID-19 and developing severe symptoms may be lower if you are fully vaccinated with an FDA authorized vaccine. Before planning any international travel, please review the CDCs specific recommendations for fully vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers.'

One of the U.K.'s top epidemiologists on Sunday refused to rule out a new lockdown before Christmas.

Professor Neil Ferguson said he 'can't be certain' over whether the country will need to lock down again in the winter before Christmas.

But he admitted that in a worst-case scenario 'there may be a need to basically slow spread to some extent' to ease pressure on the NHS

He said that it was possible 2,000 people would be hospitalized a day, and 200,000 new daily cases, but it would be three weeks before the impact of Monday's 'Freedom Day' is known.

The warnings come due to the Delta variant, which originated in India and is more transmissible than previous strains and is ravaging the United Kingdom.

Travelers are seen at New York City's JFK airport on July 4. Travel to the United Kingdom is now not recommended, due to COVID-19

As the number of U.K. cases shoots higher with the Indian Delta COVID variant taking hold, New York City cases also are beginning to move higher - and they threaten to spike just as the U.K.'s numbers have as the Delta variant becomes an increasing share of the city's infections

Still, with vaccine rates high in both the U.K., deaths have not spiked higher even as COVID cases have; New Yorkers and Americans can hold onto some hope that deaths won't spike, either, though in areas of the country with low vaccination rates, there is some worry

Delta spread quickly throughout the U.K. and had become the dominant strain by May 21, when 60.6 per cent of all new cases in the two weeks preceding it were identified as the B1.617.2 variant.

Just six weeks later, on the week ending July 2, 100 per cent of all UK cases were the Delta variant.

New York City has a lag on the U.K. when it comes to the prevalence of the strain.

It became dominant by the week ending July 3, accounting for 69 per cent of all new cases just as people jetted in and out of the city for the July 4 weekend.

This means if New York City follows the same pattern as the U.K., the Big Apple is on track for the Delta strain to make up 100 per cent of all new cases by August 14.

And this threatens to set off a new wave of the virus, just one month after New York state lifted all remaining coronavirus restrictions in June.

The spread of the Delta variant sent cases and deaths surging once again in the UK and plunged the country into yet another lockdown.

In the six weeks between May 21 - when it became the dominant strain - and July 2 - when it accounted for 100 per cent of new cases, COVID-19 infections surged a staggering 1,124 per cent from 2,290 to 25,750.

Currently, the U.K. and New York City are roughly on a par when it comes to the vaccine rollout, with 53 per cent and 49 per cent of the populations fully vaccinated, respectively.

The next six weeks will then be crucial to ramping up the vaccination rates in the Big Apple to protect New Yorkers from the dominant strain as it takes hold.

But, the vaccine rollout in the U.S. has stalled nationwide and the states with the lowest rates of inoculation are among those seeing the biggest resurgence of the virus.

The White House said on Friday that Florida accounted for one in five new cases of COVID-19 this week.

There is also some uncertainty around how effective the vaccines are against the more contagious Delta variant.

A new report from Israel on Friday found the Pfizer two-dose vaccine is 'weaker' against the strain than hoped, providing 64 per cent protection against infection from the variant as of June 6.

Israel once led the entire world in the vaccine race, vaccinating 61 per cent of its population with Pfizer but now the country is dealing with a surge in cases driven by the Delta variant.
Karen Andrews on Tuesday morning declaring China 'won't get away with' a huge cyber attack on 30,000 companies around the world

China 'won't get away with' a huge cyber attack on 30,000 companies around the world, Karen Andrews said on Tuesday.

The Home Affairs Minister slammed Beijing for 'undermining international stability' after Australia joined the US, UK, European Union, New Zealand, Canada, and NATO in accusing Beijing of a large hack on the Microsoft Exchange email server earlier this year.

The allies alleged China's Ministry of State Security used 'contract hackers' to attack companies and government bodies, costing them billions of dollars in stolen intellectual property, ransom payments and cyber-security defence efforts.

Chinese state media has branded the claims a 'huge lie' and said the US 'enlisted' its allies to 'smear' and 'frame' Beijing.

Independent Senator Rex Patrick called for sanctions on China but former national cyber security adviser Alastair MacGibbon said 'the reality is consequences for China will be pretty low'.

Ms Andrews insisted naming and shaming Beijing was a punishment in itself.

'They wont get away with it Scot-free. There are many nations that have come out and attributed this attack to China so there is significant reputational damage to China - they have been called out,' she told reporters on Tuesday.

In the past, Australia attributed cyber attacks to Iran, China, North Korea, and Russia - but it's rare to publicly single out a government.

Ms Andrews said Australia was willing to name China because it was backed up by allies and had a 'very high level of confidence' that Beijing was the culprit.

'We will not compromise our position on sovereignty and national security, we needed to call out this malicious cyber attack,' she said.

Ms Andrews said 30,000 businesses were affected worldwide but did not say how many in Australia.

'It was a significant data breach and access was enabled to these systems so they could be commanded and controlled from outside the organisation,' she said.

The Australian Government took a bold step in its ongoing diplomatic spat with China and it's President-for-life Xi Jinping (pictured), naming the communist state as the party responsible for a series of 'malicious' cyber attacks

Asked if any customer data was taken, she said: 'We do know that data theft happens here in Australia, we do know that identity theft happens here in Australia.'

Ms Andrews said Australian companies and individuals should make sure their data is secure and slammed China for undermining national security.

'Australia publicly attributes cyber-incidents when it's in our interests to do so, especially those with the potential to undermine global economic growth, national security and international stability,' she said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the March hack of Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, was part of a 'pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security'.

China's Ministry of State Security 'has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain', Blinken said in a statement.

In a simultaneous announcement, the US Department of Justice said four Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking the computers of dozens of companies, universities and government bodies in the US and abroad between 2011 and 2018.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison in June last year shocked the nation by outlining how an unnamed 'state-actor' had targeted banks, universities, hospitals, transport networks, electricity grids, and the military, as part of a lengthy cyber-warfare campaign against Australia.

China-watchers and security experts pointed the finger squarely at Beijing, with insiders claiming the cyber invasion was payback for Australia's decision to ban Chinese state firm Huawei from the national 5G network in 2018 over national security concerns.

Scott Morrison (pictured) in June last year shocked the nation by outlining how an unnamed 'state actor' targeted banks, universities, hospitals, transport networks, electricity grids, and the military, as part of a lengthy cyber-warfare campaign against Australia

On Monday night Karen Andrews released a joint statement with Defence Minister Peter Dutton, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, and Minister for Home Affairs Karen Andrews on the latest attack.

'In consultation with our partners, the Australian Government has determined that China's Ministry of State Security exploited vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange software to affect thousands of computers and networks worldwide, including in Australia,' the statement read.

'These actions have undermined international stability and security by opening the door to a range of other actors, including cybercriminals, who continue to exploit this vulnerability for illicit gain.'

The statement went on to say the Australian Government was aware and seriously concerned that China's Ministry of State Security was hiring 'contract hackers' to carryout intellectual property crimes on behalf of the Beijing.

'Australia calls on all countries  including China  to act responsibly in cyberspace,' the statement said.

'China must adhere to the commitments it has made in the G20, and bilaterally, to refrain from cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and confidential business information with the intent of obtaining competitive advantage.'

How are the attacks carried out? The Australian Cyber Security Centre has identified the actor utilising various spearphishing techniques. This spearphishing has taken the form of: Links to credential harvesting websites Emails with links to malicious files, or with the malicious file directly attached Links prompting users to grant Office 365 OAuth tokens to the actor Use of email tracking services to identify the email opening and lure click-through events Source: Australia Cyber Security Centre Advertisement

The government decided to call out China's attacks to 'highlight the significant risk they can pose to Australia's national security or to international stability'.

Cyber attacks can 'undermine business confidence' and stagnate 'inclusive economic growth' - a key talking point of Chinese diplomats at international conferences.

While critical infrastructure and information intelligence remain Australia's most heavily protected cyber assets, experts warned trust in democratic institutions is a vulnerable target.

They said the real goal of authoritarian powers such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran is to overwhelm the west with paranoia and distrust in governments, media, science and independent judiciary.

'While the nominal targets of this attack are unidentified, the deeper target is the institutional trust that enables Australia's open democratic system to function,' Flinders University national security analyst Dr Zac Rogers told news.com in the wake of last year's attacks.

'The threat of an enemy at the gates can pale in comparison to the damage done by the monster under the bed.

'The irony of the age of information would be that it could herald the end of influence.'

Australia had a 60 per cent rise in ransomware attacks over the past year, with damages estimated to cost the economy about $1.4billion.

There were 291 Australian entities targeted with malware attacks in the year to April 2019. In the following 12-months that figure shot up to 459.

The Australian Federal Police recently set up Operation Orcus to combat the spate of online attacks against Australia by rogue regimes like Russia and China.

'Australia's cyber security posture is strong, but there is no room for complacency given the online threat environment is constantly evolving,' the joint statement said.

'Protecting Australia from malicious cyber activity  be it by state actors or cybercriminals  requires a continuous improvement approach to cyber security practices across all levels of society including government, business and households.'

'The Australian Government will continue to work with international partners and the private sector to strengthen cyber security.'

The Joe Biden administration led the worldwide condemnation of China for state-sponsored ransomware attacks

The UK's foreign secretary Dominic Raab demanded China stops its 'systematic cyber sabotage' as state-backed groups were blamed for Microsoft Exchange attacks

The disclosure comes as Canberra's diplomatic relationship with Beijing continues to sour.

Communist Party officials were outraged when Mr Morrison's government called for an independent inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020.

The call for transparency was met with an array of arbitrary bans and tariffs on key Australian exports including barley, wine, beef, cotton, seafood, coal and timbre.

Intelligence officials attributed a major cyber attack on the Australian parliament last year, as part of Beijing's campaign to intimidate or bully Australia as tensions over trade foment.
A ranger at Yosemite National Park has posted a heartbreaking picture of a dead bear cub which he discovered on the side of the road in a bid to persuade drivers to slow down in the park.

It comes as the National Park Service grapples with how to manage an explosion in visitation at parks from Utah to Maine since pandemic restrictions eased.

In May, Yellowstone reported its busiest May ever, with social media photos showcasing mile-long lines of cars and RVs at entrance gates.

At least eight bears have been hit by cars along Yosemite roads this year, according to the National Park Service.

The now-viral post was written and uploaded by an anonymous park ranger to Yosemite's Facebook page Friday.

'We get this call a lot,' the post reads. 'Too much, to be honest. 'Bear hit by vehicle, dead on the side of the road.' Sadly, it's become routine.'

A ranger at Yosemite National Park has posted a heartbreaking picture of a dead bear cub which he discovered on the side of the road

Vehicle-bear collisions are now one of the leading causes of black bear mortality in Yosemite, according to Keep Bears Wild

Vehicle-bear collisions are now one of the leading causes of black bear mortality in Yosemite, according to Keep Bears Wild.

Over 400 vehicle-bear collisions have occurred along roadways in Yosemite National Park since 1995.

Although the collision occurred sometime around noon, the ranger said he didn't receive the call till 4 p.m.

It would be another hour before the ranger arrived at the site of the incident and noticed the tiny body of the cub laying in the road, 'balled up and lifeless under a small pine tree.'

After relocating the cub to a secluded area nearby, the ranger began collecting samples and measurements for research, the post states.

The ranger mentions the cub was female, somewhere between 6-month-old and weighing only 25-pounds.

Over 400 vehicle-bear collisions have occurred along roadways in Yosemite National Park since 1995.

The National Park Service is grappling with how to manage an explosion in visitation at parks from Utah to Maine since the pandemic

In May, Yellowstone reported its busiest May ever, with social media photos showcasing mile-long lines of cars and RVs at entrance gates.

In addition, parks such as Arches and nearby Canyonlands are seeing a spike in first-time visitors, with many unable to fathom the parks' environmental protection mission

'I try to remember how many times I've done this now and, truthfully, I don't know,' the post reads. 'This is not what any of us signs up for, but it's a part of the job nonetheless.'

The ranger continued collecting samples, pausing immediately at the sound of a stick breaking nearby. When the ranger looked up, an adult bear is intently staring back.

It didn't take long for the ranger to realize the massive bear standing inches away was the mother of the cub.

'Now here I am, standing between a grieving mother and her child. I feel like a monster. I get up, quickly pack my bag, and get out of there. It is time to go even though my task is not done,' the post continued.

Before leaving, the ranger set up a remote camera, managing to capture a harrowing photo of the grief-stricken mama bear and her cub.

While the national park reports the number of bear's hit by vehicles annually, the ranger said the figures don't tell the full story.

'I want people to see what I saw: the sad reality behind each of these numbers,' the ranger said.

Video captured the moment wildlife officers helped remove a bucket that was stuck on the head of a Denver bear for a week

Colorado Parks and Wildlife posted video of the rescue last week, calling it a 'wildlife rescue success story.'

The National Park Service has seen a surge in visitors as pandemic lockdown restrictions ease.

In parks such as Yosemite and Zion, visitors and staff have complained of an increase in litter, toilet paper and even human feces on trails.

In addition, parks such as Arches and nearby Canyonlands are seeing a spike in first-time visitors, with many unable to fathom the parks' environmental protection mission.

'A lot of the first-time visitors are just not familiar with national parks and our mission to preserve these resources,' Angie Richman, chief of education, interpretation and visitor services at Arches and Canyonlands told NPR.

Last week, Colorado Parks and Wildlife posted video of the rescue to Facebook on, calling it a 'wildlife rescue success story.'

The bear spent a whole week running around the foothills west of Boulder with a chicken feeder stuck on its head but when residents reported it, wildlife officers were able to track her down.

The rescue was set in motion by Boulder residents Drew McConaughy and his friend Dave Sherman who spotted the bear while working on a cabin in the foothills, The Denver Channel reported.

Once they saw what turned out to be a chicken feeder covering the animal's entire head, they called Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

'A bear naturally should be afraid of humans. The case in point of how this bear got into that situation in the first place is that it broke into someone's chicken coop and got that feeder stuck on its head,' Clay said.

The wildlife center said it's crucial residents lock up anything that could attract bears to avoid another situation like this.
The article was authored by feminist writer Danielle Campoamor

Fashion magazine Marie Claire has been slammed by pro-life and conservative groups after publishing an article that calls for more depictions of abortion in film and television.

The article, by feminist writer Danielle Campoamor, argues that there should be more plotlines involving parents having the medical procedure because examples of abortion in the media often involve single, affluent teenagers who aren't ready to be mothers.

The piece adds that abortion is a saving grace for pregnant parents who are financially struggling and can't afford to have another child.

It reads, 'Simply put, limiting or otherwise trying to stifle access to safe, legal abortion services not only harms pregnant people but also the children they're already caring for.'

But pro-life and conservative readers dragged the article on Twitter.

International women's fashion magazine Marie Claire drew the ire of pro-life and conservative audiences after publishing an article that calls for more accurate depictions of abortion in film and television

The article, by feminist writer Danielle Campoamor, argues that there should be more plotlines involving parents having the medical procedure because examples of abortion in the media often involve single, affluent teenagers who aren't ready to be mothers

The Daily Caller's Mary Margaret Olohan said that the Marie Claire piece, 'argues that poor parents should abort their unborn baby for the benefit of the unborn child's siblings.'

Abigail Marone, press secretary for Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, shared Olohan's tweet and added, 'Disturbing. A human life is not any less valuable because his or her parents have less money -- any suggestion otherwise is shameful.'

The story did not garner much attention when shared to Facebook, but all four comments were from angry readers.

One commenter, Debbie Cachat-Redig, wrote, 'Why would you ever make abortion 'normal'? There is nothing ok about abortion! The scars and guilt it leaves for the rest of a women's life is nothing to celebrate! I just have no words for this craziness! Killing a baby should be made 'normal?' '

The story did not garner much attention when shared to Facebook, but all four comments were from angry readers

Marie Claire stoked the flames in the abortion debate after publishing a piece advocating for more depictions of the medical procedure in film and television. Above, file image of anti-abortion rally on Foley Square in New York in March

The piece references movies and television shows like Jane the Virgin, which depict teenagers having an abortion because they aren't ready to be parents

But Campoamor's piece says that it's important for other groups who have had abortions to know their not alone, especially older patients who already have children.

It reads, 'Countless studies have highlighted the importance of representation in the media . . . The same is true of abortiona safe medical procedure one in four women (as well as trans men and non-binary people) will have by the time they're 45. But accurate depictions of the most common abortion patients, parents, is still severely lacking.'

Renee Bracey Sherman, executive director of abortion advocacy group We Testify, told Marie Claire in the article that, 'The majority of people who have abortions are already parenting, but on television and film, it's nearly always someone young, white, and wealthy who is trying to avoid parenting.' '

The article adds, 'Studies have shown that when parents are denied abortion care, their children are more likely to live below the poverty level or live in a home without enough money to pay for food, housing, and transportation. Studies have also shown that the states with the most restrictive abortion legislation have the worst maternal and infant mortality rates.'

The piece was lauded by abortion advocates and service providers, some of which were quoted in Campoamor's story.

Steph Herold, a researcher at the Oakland, California-based medical academy Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) told Marie Claire, 'Because there are also shockingly few depictions of parents, particularly parents of color, having abortions, it reinforces this false dichotomy between people who have abortions and people who have children. We know the reality is that they're the same person at different points in their lives.'

After the story was published, ANSIRH and the UCSF Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health both shared the article with Herold's quote.



The piece references movies and television shows like Jane the Virgin, which depict teenagers having an abortion because they aren't ready to be parents

The Marie Claire piece says depictions of abortions on TV have dropped in recent years.

It quotes a December 2020 study from ANSIRH that says 43 television shows featured an abortion storyline in 2019, but only 31 shows did so in 2020.

It adds, 'Still, the significant increase in depictions of abortion in films has done nothing to remedy the discrepancies between the fictional characters who have abortions and real patients who seek out the services. In 2020, of the characters who did have abortions on film, 73 percent were white, one-third were teenagers, and not a single one was a parent.'

Marie Claire isn't the only media outlet that recently received backlash for its abortion statements.

MSNBC host Joy Reid has compared Republicans in Texas to the Taliban on July 12 after lawmakers approved a new anti-abortion law that offers a $10,000 'bounty' to private citizens who can sue anyone violating the ban.

Reid tweeted, 'This is Talibanism. Are Texas conservatives going to be spying on women of childbearing age and turning them in for the bounties?'

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed the law in May. It bans abortions in Texas before many women even know they are pregnant. But the law differs singularly from similar efforts nationwide: leaving enforcement to private citizens, who can sue doctors or anyone who helps a woman get an abortion.
Strict rules on arrivals in the UK from France were branded 'excessive' by a French minister yesterday amid a furious Whitehall row about who took the controversial decision.

Clement Beaune said the UK's decision to insist double-jabbed travellers must isolate was not based on scientific evidence.

And he insisted the Beta variant  blamed for the last-minute U-turn on relaxing quarantine for the fully vaccinated  was under control in France.

European affairs minister Mr Beaune told French channel BFM TV: 'It seems to us that the measures taken by the UK are not entirely based on scientific foundations. We find them excessive.

'This decision is based on the circulation of the Beta variant, the South African variant, which is in reality now well under control.'

It has been claimed that Britain's decision to exclude France from the new relaxed rules for double-jabbed arrivals from amber list countries had been based on figures including those from a remote French overseas territory where the Beta variant is more common.

The Indian Ocean island of Reunion recorded 1,450 cases of Covid-19 between July 3 and 9, of which 91 per cent were the Beta and Gamma variants.

The Beta variant has accounted for about 5 per cent of cases in mainland France over recent months, according to Downing Street, but it is feared to be more resistant to vaccines.

The Prime Minister's spokesman said yesterday: 'The AstraZeneca vaccine appears to be less effective against the Beta variant, that's why we need to be very cautious about that.

'What the data publicly available in France shows, and this data does not include Reunion, is that over the past three months on average the Beta variant accounts for around 5 per cent of cases. And that's a relatively high prevalence which potentially poses a risk to the UK and that's why it was right to move swiftly.'

Clement Beaune said the UK's decision to insist double-jabbed travellers must isolate was not based on scientific evidence

It has been claimed that Britain's decision to exclude France from the new relaxed rules for double-jabbed arrivals from amber list countries had been based on figures including those from a remote French overseas territory where the Beta variant is more common (pictured: Heathrow, June 3)

It comes as the US yesterday upgraded the UK to the highest risk level and warned Americans not to travel here.

Washington informed citizens yesterday there is a 'very high level of Covid-19' in Britain.

Meanwhile, a blame game continues in the UK Government over which minister decided late on Friday to change the rules for France, ruining thousands of Britons' trips and bringing fresh anguish to the struggling travel industry.

It is thought that Boris Johnson, Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove and Health Secretary Sajid Javid were behind the move.

The Department of Health is said to have overreacted to Covid figures in France. On Sunday another 12,532 cases were reported, compared with 48,161 in the UK.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps is thought not to have been invited to the meeting at which France was effectively placed in a new 'amber-plus' category, just hours after the review of the traffic light system was announced.

A Whitehall source described the decision-making process as 'shambolic'. Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, the UK's largest travel association, said: 'There's a lack of transparency around how decisions are being made', adding: 'With France there was no indication about the change of direction... And that's likely to impair consumer confidence to book until they see this settling down into a much more predictable system.'

The Department of Health said last night: 'The Joint Biosecurity Centre has assessed that France is a high-risk Covid-19 destination due to the circulation of variants of concern, most notably the Beta variant, which presents the greatest risk for UK vaccine escape.'
Television legend David Leckie has died surrounded by family at the age of 70.

The Leckie family released a statement on Tuesday morning which read: 'With immense sadness: David passed away at Mulberry Farm, Robertson, after a long illness this morning. He was surrounded by his loving family.'

Sunrise host Kylie Gillies broke down when she heard the news while live on The Morning Show, with co-host Larry Emdur recalling being 'hired and fired by him many times.'

'A real titan of our business,' Emdur said. 'Boy, has that man left a mark in the business.

'That will affect the entire industry today across all networks.

'And much love to Skye, and much love to the boys. And of course to the whole TV family,' added Gillies.

David Leckie, a 'titan' of the Australian television industry, has died surrounded by family at the age of 70

David Leckie pictured with wife Skye and his sons, Harry (left) and Ben

Mr Leckie and his wife Skye were high-profile figures for decades on Sydney's social scene, and prominent supporters of numerous charities

Mr Leckie and his wife Skye were high-profile figures for decades on Sydney's social scene, and prominent supporters of numerous charities.

Mr Leckie made his name at the Nine Network, where he worked for 23 years.

After originally joining the network as a sales executive, he became Managing Director at Nine in 1990 and Chief Executive Officer in 1994.

In 2003, billionaire Kerry Stokes hired Mr Leckie to become the CEO of Seven West Media after he'd been unceremoniously dumped by Kerry Packer the year before due to the Nine Network's poor ratings.

Mr Leckie remained as Seven's CEO until 2012.

In March 2020, Channel Seven chief James Warburton brought Mr Leckie back as a part-time program consultant, hoping to revive the fortunes of some Seven shows.

'David was a true legend of the Australian media industry and a loved part of the Seven family. Everyone at Seven will miss him enormously,' Mr Warburton said on Mr Leckie's passing.

'Inspiring, engaging, loud, passionate and famously difficult at times, he was an extraordinary salesperson and an intuitive TV programmer.

'Without a doubt he was the best TV executive this country has ever seen and an important influence and mentor for so many people and careers. He was once labelled the last of the rock star CEOs and I'd say that was a pretty good description.

'There will only ever be one David Leckie. It was a great privilege to have known and have worked with him.'

David Leckie and wife Skye attend the memorial service for promoter Harry M. Miller at Capitol Theatre in 2018

TV host Johanna Griggs and then Channel Seven CEO David Leckie pictured at the Melbourne Cup in 2004

'An unreconstructed, unvarnished man - but a legendary TV executive of his time,' tweeted Nine Newspapers columnist Peter FitzSimons

Entertainment reporter Peter Ford said Mr Leckie possessed 'the perfect mix of business acumen and showbiz flair'

'David had a rare genetic instinct for good television,' tweeted Seven's Mark Riley

Tributes quickly flowed in from Australian media identities, including prominent columnist Peter Fitzsimons, entertainment reporter Peter Ford and political reporter Mark Riley.

'An unreconstructed, unvarnished man - but a legendary TV executive of his time,' wrote FitzSimons.

'He had the perfect mix of business acumen and showbiz flair,' tweeted Ford. 'Could be be both scary and caring. The TV game was richer for his career.'

Journalist Melissa Hoyer, a close friend of Mr Leckie's wife Skye, tweeted: 'I'm so very sad about the death of David Leckie - a force, a TV legend, a friend.

'He didn't suffer fools. Ever. Ever. I remember our last convo. Still a legend then.'

'David had a rare genetic instinct for good television,' wrote Riley.

David Leckie and actress Tammy McIntosh at a party to celebrate 400 episodes of popular Australian soap 'All Saints at Sydney's Star City in 2007

Veteran Nine political reporter Laurie Oakes said Mr Leckie had been a memorable support to him during his career.

'Sad to hear David Leckie is dead,' he said. 'He was a terrific CEO at Nine. Backed me when there was pressure, even from Kerry Packer.'

Another veteran journalist, Mike Carlton, recalled that he and Mr Leckie 'were tremendously rude to each other whenever we met, but we both enjoyed it.'

'Sympathy to his wife, the lovely Skye.'

In 2008, Mr Leckie was placed in an induced coma after battling complications from an infected finger injury, but subsequently made a full recovery.

Due to Covid restrictions the family said Mr Leckie would be farewelled at a small, private funeral.

'A celebration of David's life will be held as soon as possible, following the lifting of restrictions,' the statement said.
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A surge in coronavirus cases across the United States has fueled fears of a pandemic resurgence as the highly contagious Delta variant appeared to be taking hold.

The average number of daily new Covid cases was 32,278 last week - up 66% from the daily rate the week before, and a shocking 145% higher than two weeks ago, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The average number of daily new COVID-19 cases in the United States has tripled in the past 30 days.

The average number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has also risen 21% over the past 30 days to over 19,000.

Almost 25,000 people are currently in hospital with Covid - a 26% increase from last week, CNN reports.

Average daily deaths, which can lag behind other indicators, rose 13% in the last week to 258.

While the rates are still sharply down from their January highs, officials are concerned by the reversing trendlines and what they consider needless illness and death when a vaccine is available.

Cases are expected to continue to rise in coming weeks.

Deaths rose 25% last week to an average of 250 per day

Confirmed infections have climbed to an average of about 32,000 a day

Many of the new outbreaks were in parts of the country where COVID-19 vaccinations have lagged, prompting political leaders to ramp up pressure on reluctant Americans to get the inoculations.

President Joe Biden, citing higher rates of COVID-19 in states with low vaccination rates, said during a speech that the nation's economic recovery hinged on getting better at controlling the pandemic.

'Please, please get vaccinated,' Biden pleaded. 'Get vaccinated now.'

A federal judge on Monday ruled that Indiana University could require students to be vaccinated, rejecting claims in a lawsuit the mandate violated their rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The ruling could set a precedent for similar vaccination orders in schools and businesses. Attorneys for the plaintiffs have said they would appeal to a higher court.

Also on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said fully vaccinated Americans could cross the border for the first time in 16-months from August 9, easing a travel ban that many business owners complained was crippling them.

Vaccines and especially mandatory shots are deeply controversial among conservatives.

This chart shows how the number of people getting vaccinated has peaked with 338m doses distributed and 161m people fully vaccinated - 49% of the population

People shop at a store in Hollywood, California, the day after the return of the indoor mask mandate in Los Angeles County due to a spike in coronavirus cases

There has been a return of the indoor mask mandate in Los Angeles County due to a spike in coronavirus cases

While the national emergency may have faded, officials say the outbreak is now a more localized crisis in communities where not enough people have rolled up their sleeves.

'Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated,' Biden said on Friday, echoing comments made earlier by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rising numbers are being driven by large pockets of infection among the more than 90 million eligible Americans who have yet to get shots. Just four states with low vaccination rates made up 40% of new cases last week, and nearly half of them came from Florida alone.

Although cases are climbing once again, the numbers of deaths are relatively low compared to the peak last winter

There have been more than 600,000 deaths in the U.S. and 34million cases

America's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday that vaccinated people were still protected 'very well' but that the Delta variant spread far for easily

But there is little appetite in the White House for a return to broad mandates for masks or other measures, as 161 million Americans are already fully vaccinated.

With three highly effective vaccines authorized for use in the U.S., the Biden administration believes the most effective way to attack the virus is not trying to slow the spread with mass masking and such  something the U.S. showed it was not very good at last year  but to continue to press the importance of vaccinations.

It's no easy fix. Many Americans remain resistant or unmotivated to get shots, despite months of often-creative efforts by federal and state officials and the private sector to spread information about vaccine safety and accessibility.

More than 99% of COVID-19 deaths and 97% of hospitalizations are among people who have not been vaccinated, according to the CDC.

The pandemic is now 'one that predominantly threatens unvaccinated people,' White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said.

The Biden administration expects cases to increase in the weeks ahead because of spreading in communities with low vaccination rates. Zients added that there is a sign that the increased cases are driving more people in those communities to seek vaccination, reporting that 'states with the highest case rates are seeing their vaccination rates go up' faster than the national average.

'For most people who get this Delta variant, it's going to be the most serious virus that they get in their lifetime in terms of the risk of putting them in the hospital,' Dr. Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration during the Trump administration said on Sunday.

'This is a virus that has now shown us that it has a very strong capability of more efficiently spreading from person to person than the previous prototype viruses that we've experienced,' America's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday while stressing how vaccinated people were still protected 'very well'.

'Although you're dealing with a virus that because of this extreme capability of spreading from person to person, is causing more infections including breakthrough infections of vaccinated people, for those who are vaccinated, it's still doing very well against severe disease,' he said.

'Unfortunately, we can't say the same for unvaccinated people ... we can expect among the unvaccinated hospitalizations and eventually, in some situations, deaths.

The Delta variant appears to be sending younger and previously healthy people to hospitals, although the majority of those being admitted are not vaccinated.

'This year's virus is not last year's virus,' said Dr. Catherine O'Neal, an infectious disease specialist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to CNN.

'It's attacking our 40-year-olds. It's attacking our parents and young grandparents. And it's getting our kids,' O'Neal said noting she has more patients in their 20s as patients than during the pandemic.

The pandemic is also once against affecting the financial markets.

More than 14,000 new coronavirus cases were reported Monday in California. 'This is a pandemic overwhelmingly and disproportionately of those that have not been vaccinated,' California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday

Wall Street saw a broad selloff of stocks as investors worried that the latest outbreaks could prompt state and local officials to impose new lockdowns and business closures.

Millions of Americans were thrown out of work and many small businesses were forced out of business due to nationwide clampdowns during 2020.

Already Los Angeles County has ordered residents to wear masks indoors again following a surge in cases across Southern California.

More than 14,000 new coronavirus cases were reported Monday in California.

'This is a pandemic overwhelmingly and disproportionately of those that have not been vaccinated,' California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Monday.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference on Monday that the city had no plans to reimpose mask mandates despite a rise in cases. The mayor said he would redouble vaccination efforts.

Stocks sank on Monday with the Dow plunging nearly 800 points. Pictured above is the five-day summary

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio told a news conference on Monday that the city had no plans to reimpose mask mandates despite a rise in cases. The mayor said he would redouble vaccination efforts. Times Square is pictured on Monday

Arkansas has been especially hard hit by the resurgent virus. All but two of the state's 75 counties have substantial or high levels of transmission, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The Delta variant is responsible for 90% of current new cases in Utah's Salt Lake County, state epidemiology manager Ilene Risk said.

To combat the rising infections, the county has enlisted faith leaders and doctors to persuade the roughly 40% of eligible people who are not fully vaccinated to accept the shots, she said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday released updated recommendations for schools that included mask-wearing for everyone over the age of 2, regardless of vaccination status.

Earlier this month, the CDC updated its own guidance for schools in an effort to help reopen in the fall, recommending masks indoors for everyone not fully vaccinated, among other guidelines.

The AAP cited several reasons, including the fact that children under 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination.

'There are many children and others who cannot be vaccinated,' said Dr. Sara Bode.

'This is why it's important to use every tool in our toolkit to safeguard children from COVID-19. Universal masking is one of those tools, and has been proven effective in protecting people against other respiratory diseases, as well. It's also the most effective strategy to create consistent messages and expectations among students without the added burden of needing to monitor everyone's vaccination status.'
The creator of The 1619 Project has said that 'all journalism is activism' amid allegations that her employer the New York Times has a liberal bias.

Nikole Hannah-Jones was asked by CBS News on Saturday about her work for The New York Times Magazine, and in particular her controversial reframing of U.S. history around the arrival of the first slaves in 1619.

The 1619 Project was launched in August 2019 to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans arriving in colonial Virginia. It won Hannah-Jones a Pulitzer, but critics say that it is full of historical inaccuracies, and portrays the U.S. as fundamentally racist.

Hannah-Jones said that she was proud of the impact her work had.

'All journalism is activism,' she said.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalist with The New York Times Magazine and creator of The 1619 Project - which won her a Pulitzer - has argued that 'all journalism is activism'

Hannah-Jones works at The New York Times, which is facing questions about its left-leaning stance

'When you look at the model of The Washington Post, right? 'Democracy dies in darkness,' that's not a neutral position.

'But our methods of reporting have to be objective.

Bari Weiss, who left The New York Times last year, has described the journalists at the paper as 'activists'

'We have to try to be fair and accurate. And I don't know how you can be fair and accurate if you pretend publicly that you have no feelings about something that you clearly do.'

Hannah-Jones' remarks came as The New York Times faces questions over its own left-leaning stance.

Bari Weiss, a former writer at the paper, last month described the staff as 'activist journalists who treat the paper like a high school cafeteria.'

Weiss said the paper foments 'rage, polarization, distrust' which betrayed her values.

She resigned from the paper in 2020 with a letter in which she detailed bullying in an 'illiberal environment.'

In recent days Hannah-Jones has come under fire after comments she made in 2019 about Cuba being among the 'most equal' countries in the world, because of its socialist government, resurfaced online.

Hannah-Jones, pictured during Saturday's interview with CBS, defended her work from criticism that it was not objective

How fight over appointment of 1619 Project founder unfolded August 2019 - The New York Times begins its 1619 project which aims to 'reframe the country's history' on slavery, but faces criticism over historical inaccuracies and generalizations May 2020 - Nikole Hannah-Jones is awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her introductory essay to the project Summer 2020 - UNC start considering hiring Hannah-Jones to its journalism faculty. December 2020 - In an email, Arkansas newspaper publisher Walter Hussman - a top donor to UNC - expresses his fears that Hannah-Jones was, 'trying to push an agenda,' through the 1619 Project, and that, 'they will assume she is manipulating historical facts to support it.' April 2021 - UNC announces that Hannah-Jones would be joining the journalism school's faculty as Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism, traditionally a tenured professorship. May 2021 - Following criticism of the appointment, UNC u-turns and instead says she would take up the position on a five-year contract. This sparks a torrent of criticism, including from black students who claimed they had been neglected. June 30, 2021 - The trustees ultimately approved tenure last week, voting 9-4 to accept her application at a special meeting with a closed-door session that was invaded by her supporters, sparking an ugly brawl. July 6, 2021 - Hannah-Jones announces she has turned down the tenure offer and will go to Howard University instead. Advertisement

Hannah-Jones appeared on a podcast with Ezra Klein of Vox and The New York Times in 2019 and was asked for her thoughts on places around the world that had a 'viable and sufficiently ambitious integration agenda'.

She replied that she thought Cuba to be among the most 'equal' and 'multiracial' country in the Western hemisphere due to its socialist society.

'The most equal multi-racial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba,' she said.

Her remarks were dragged back into the spotlight this weekend as Cuba is roiled by protests against its communist regime, with activists crying for freedom and expressing anger over rising prices, goods shortages, and poor health care amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Critics sounding off on social media panned Hannah-Jones for her perceived ignorance on the state of the island nation.

Last week Hannah-Jones announced that she had rejected the University of North Carolina's offer of a tenured position teaching journalism, and will go to Howard University instead.

UNC had initially offered Hannah-Jones the role as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at their Hussman School of Journalism - a role which has been appointed with tenure since 1980.

But they later backed out of the offer of lifetime tenure amid criticism of her appointment, and she was offered a five-year contract after officials said they were concerned about her lack of a 'traditional academic background'.

Hannah-Jones noted the influence of a 'powerful donor' to UNC, a reference to Arkansas newspaper publisher Walter Hussman, who revealed that he had emailed university leaders calling The 1619 Project about the legacy of American slavery 'highly contentious and highly controversial' before the process was halted.

But the decision not to give Hannah-Jones a tenured position sparked further outrage from the left, leading to UNC last week pulling off a second u-turn and deciding to approve her tenure.

They voted 9-4 to accept her application at a special meeting in a closed-door session that was invaded by her supporters, sparking an ugly brawl.

But Hannah-Jones has now refused to take up the offer.

She has decided instead to accept the position of Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at Howard, a historically black school in Washington, D.C.

Hannah-Jones announced Tuesday she will become a member of the historically black university's (pictured) Cathy Hughes School of Communication
The frontrunner to become head of the BBC 's news channels has previously hit out at Boris Johnson, Brexit and Britain's imperial past in now-deleted tweets, it was revealed today.

Jess Brammar, who is vying to become the broadcaster's executive news editor, has launched a series of Left-wing attacks on Twitter in recent years.

Her deleted tweets included comparing Brexit to a bad comedy, demanding a 'fight for a properly funded NHS' and claiming 'black Brits' were 'considering leaving the UK' because of racism and if Boris Johnson won the 2019 general election.

Ms Brammar has been in a relationship with The Guardian's media editor Jim Waterson since 2017 when they were named as one of Westminster's power couples and they live together in South London with their young child.

Last month her journalist partner, whose left-wing newspaper reported the row over his partner's potential BBC appointment in a story framed as outrageous government interference, encouraged 'anyone remotely in the public eye to just delete all their old tweets'.

Mr Waterson spoke out after England cricketer Ollie Robinson was suspended over a series of historical racist and sexist tweets - and it appears Ms Brammar took that advice, reportedly deleting more than 90,000 tweets dating back to 2009.

Guido Fawkes, who revealed that Ms Brammar was a public supporter of BLM, tweeted: 'Why would a prolific tweeter like @jessbrammar delete 12 years of tweets with all her insights on Brexit, Boris and current affairs? We now only have 30 days of anodyne tweets with barely a mention of politics. Fancy that'.

Ms Brammar's posts, which have recently resurfaced, have reignited a recruitment row over concerns among board members about her apparent bias. She has stayed silent on the row.

Earlier this month, Sir Robbie Gibb, who was former Tory PM Theresa May 's communications chief and now sits on the BBC board, is said to have intervened to block Miss Brammar from the role.

It is claimed he feared appointing ex-HuffPost UK editor to oversee the global and domestic news channels would damage trust with the Government.

Jess Brammar, who is vying to become the broadcaster's executive news editor, has launched a series of Left-wing attacks on Twitter in recent years, The Telegraph said

More than 16,000 of Miss Brammar's previous tweets have been deleted from Twitter, the Daily Telegraph said.

Some of Jess Brammar's now-deleted tweets Dec 2, 2019: 'Whether you watched Boris Johnson's interview yesterday or not, here are five things the Prime Minister said that aren't true' Dec 10, 2019: 'This piece on black Brits genuinely considering leaving the UK because of the level of racism, particularly if Boris Johnson wins, is really shocking it won't be a surprise to people who live this reality every day, and in admitting my shock I show my ignorance as a white woman.' April 23, 2019: 'Brexit: like Better Call Saul but less funny or interesting or enjoyable.' Advertisement

But a source close to her claimed they are automatically removed after a month - in a practice that pre-dates her application for the BBC position.

However, some of her old posts have re-emerged in recent days with many remaining visible on third-party websites.

In December 2019, in a tweet about a BBC interview with Mr Johnson, Miss Brammar listed 'five things the Prime Minister said that aren't true' and in February urged people to 'fight for a properly funded NHS'.

Also in December that year she referred to an article by a colleague which said 'black Brits' were 'genuinely considering leaving the UK because of the level of racism, particularly if Boris Johnson wins'.

Miss Brammar, who was previously deputy editor of Newsnight on BBC Two, then added that: 'It won't be a surprise to people who live this reality every day, and in admitting my shock I show my ignorance as a white woman.'

In April 2019, Ms Brammar tweeted that Brexit was like the Netflix drama Better Call Saul, about a shady lawyer, 'but less funny or interesting or enjoyable'.

And, in January, Ms Brammar recommended a book by Sathnam Sanghera about British imperialism 'to p*** off all the racists having a go at him'.

Despite her previous posts, Miss Brammar would be expected to uphold the BBC's strict rules on impartiality should she be confirmed for the role.

But the intervention of Sir Robbie, who previously held senior BBC roles, earlier this month has reportedly already stalled the appointment.

The posts, which have recently resurfaced, have reignited a recruitment row over concerns among BBC board members about her apparent bias

He reportedly raised concerns about the way Miss Brammar handled a row with Treasury Minister Kemi Badenoch when she was UK editor of HuffPost.

A senior BBC News source recently told the Mail: 'It's a very unwelcome intervention  totally inappropriate and damaging.'

They claimed Miss Brammar was 'still in play' for the job. Labour has written to BBC bosses demanding Sir Robbie's resignation.

Deputy party leader Angela Rayner wrote: 'Putting pressure on the recruitment process of staff is entirely outside of the remit of the board and a total abuse of position.' On Twitter she attacked 'Tory cronyism at the heart of the BBC'.

However, a BBC spokesman stressed no process had been blocked, adding: 'It is essential that board members can debate and discuss issues. They have an absolute right to do so. What individual board members can't do is make decisions which are for the executive.'

Tory MP Julian Knight, chairman of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, described the row as a 'storm in a teacup'.

He said Sir Robbie, the brother of Conservative MP Nick Gibb, was 'doing his job' in letting the BBC know 'where it should think politically in terms of what it does'.

He accused Labour of 'politicising' the situation.

MailOnline has contacted the BBC and Miss Brammar for comment.
A frustrated Sydney supermarket owner resorted to mocking up a 'fake' apology letter from NSW Health after his store was incorrectly listed as a Covid exposure site.

On Tuesday morning, a rogue notice was on full display on the store's window door at Summer Hill, in Sydney's inner-west.

It is understood the sign was visible to customers from just after 5pm on Monday.

It followed the Romeo's IGA on the city's outskirts wrongly being named among a list of exposure site venues across Greater Sydney on Monday.

A frustrated Sydney supermarket owner mocked up a 'fake' apology letter from NSW Health (pictured) after his store was incorrectly listed as a Covid exposure site on Monday

Health officials originally said an infected person visited the shop on July 8 between 11:40am to 12pm - which was later removed online.

The store owner told his customers via the signage his business was not directly exposed to the virus.

'Romeo's IGA Summer Hill was never exposed to Covid-19 and is to be removed from the NSW Health and NSW government websites as a Covid-19 location,' the false notice read.

'The (NSW) Ministry of Health has made an administrative error and public apologises for all inconvenience caused.

'This error will be rectified on all websites as soon as possibleRomeo's IGA Summer Hill is a Covid-19 safe location.'

In a statement, NSW Health confirmed the supermarket at Summer Hill was now not deemed a casual contact site.

'A positive Covid-19 case attended Cafe Juliet in Summer Hill while infectious on 8 July,' a spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

'This cafe, which is a close contact venue, is co-located with Romeos IGA Summer Hill. 'Out of an abundance of caution, staff at Romeos IGA Summer Hill were advised they were casual contacts.

'After further investigations, all of Romeos IGA Summer Hill was not deemed a casual contact site and has been removed from the NSW Health website.'

On Tuesday morning, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed 78 new cases in her state - but 27 were out in the community while infectious.

Ms Berejiklian announced the new figures as she warned residents in the hotspot Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield local government areas they could be carrying the virus - even if they are showing no symptoms.

The owner of Romeo's IGA supermarket in Sydney suburb Summer Hill printed out a fake 'apology' from NSW Health - after his business was incorrectly named as a Covid exposure site

The list from NSW Health on Monday which stated Summer Hill was a Covid exposure site, including Romeo's IGA - it was later revealed the supermarket was not deemed a casual contact site and has been removed from the NSW Health website

The positive results in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night followed 63,000 tests.

Ms Berejiklian said testing rates had increased significantly in the Fairfield LGA in the past 24 hours - where two-thirds of Monday's coronavirus cases were recorded.

'We have noticed a significant increase in testing in that community and today, in particular, we want to encourage people living in the Canterbury-Bankstown area to come forward and got tested,' she said.

NSW Chief Health Officer Dr Kerry Chant said high rates of transmission were also being detected in Hurstville and Kogarah in the city's south.

Of the new cases, 52 were found in south-west Sydney and the west and south-east both recorded 11 cases each.
South Australia will be in lockdown from tonight after recording a further two new cases of Covid overnight, bringing the total for the state to five.

From 6pm on Tuesday night, the entire state will enter seven days of lockdown with only five reasons for people to leave her homes.

'We are dealing with a different highly contagious variant. We have seen this in Victoria. We don't want this moving across our state as we have seen elsewhere,' Premier Steven Marshall said on Tuesday.

South Australia is dealing with an outbreak of five Covid cases of the delta variant. Pictured: Health workers perform tests at the Covid-19 testing facility in Victoria Park, Adelaide

Under the lockdown, South Australian residents are only able to leave their homes for care and compassionate reasons, to exercise, for essential work, to get essential supplies, and for medical reasons.

For exercise, residents can only travel within 2.5km of their homes, can only exercise with those from their household, and only for 90 minutes a day.

Construction sites across the state will shut down for seven days and schools will transition to online learning from Thursday.

'What we have seen in Victoria is a very rapid movement out of Greater Melbourne. We now worryingly have a case in Mildura,' Mr Marshall said.

'This is a disease which is fast moving. Until we have a clearer understanding of how widespread this is we have to take action to keep our state safe.'

SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S SNAP LOCKDOWN From 6pm on Tuesday the state will enter seven days of lockdown. Residents can only leave their home for five essential reasons. These reasons are: 1. For essential supplies 2. For exercise (within 2.5km of your home, only with those from your household and only for 90 minutes a day) 3. For medical care 4. For care and compassionate reasons 5. For essential work Masks are also required in public indoor spaces and on public transport. Construction sites will also close. Advertisement

The state's chief health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier confirmed that state's cases were the delta variant of Covid.

On Monday the state recorded a fourth case of Covid-19 as the state began a round of tough new restrictions and authorities race to contain an outbreak of infections amid a growing list of exposure sites.

The cases now include an 81-year-old man who entered the country from Argentina, his daughter and another two men.

Premier Steven Marshall told Adelaide radio 5AA ahead of an official briefing on Tuesday the fourth case identified overnight was a man who's a close contact of the elderly man and was already in quarantine.

Mr Marshall also said more testing sites would open in Adelaide on Thursday amid long queues at testing facilities on Monday and early Tuesday.

The outbreak has plunged thousands of people into quarantine with the list of more than a dozen exposure sites including at least four major shopping centres in Adelaide's north and northeastern suburbs.

'We only have one chance to get this right. Our focus from day one has been to go hard and to go early to minimise the level of disruption,' Mr Marshall said on Monday.

'We've got to respond quickly.'

Late on Monday, multiple new exposure sites linked to a person with COVID-19 were revealed, including a Coles supermarket at the Greenacres Shopping Centre in Adelaide's northeast and a number of retail shops and a TAB at Munno Para in the north.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall (pictured) announced a seven day lockdown in his state from 6pm Tuesday

The lockdown supersedes previous restrictions announced for SA on Monday which included a density change to one person to every four square metres in all venues, and all team and contact sport cancelled.

Dining had to be seated with a ban imposed on dancing and singing.

Masks must be used in all indoor public areas, including shopping malls and also on public transport and in high-risk settings.

Fitness centres are closed along with other non-essential retail outlets.

Supermarkets and pharmacies and other essential businesses will continue to trade.

The Greek on Halifax restaurant in Adelaide (pictured) has been listed as a venue of concern after a confirmed Covid case dined there on Saturday night

The elderly man with Covid had returned to Australia via NSW, where he spent 14 days in quarantine.

He returned to the state on July 8 and presented to a suburban hospital over the weekend after developing symptoms and was later admitted.

Adelaide's other positive cases have been transferred to the Tom's Court Hotel which is used to quarantine all those with an active infection.

'We don't draw any conclusions as to where this infection came from. We simply don't know and it is very early days,' Mr Marshall said on Monday.

The infected man turned up at South Australia's Modbury Hospital (pictured) over the weekend with virus symptoms, despite quarantining in NSW for 14 days on his return to Australia

'Our primary concern at the moment is putting everyone who may have come into contact with this person into quarantine as soon as possible.'

Business SA Chief Executive Martin Haese said the new restrictions were another blow to the already struggling hospitality, events, tourism and retail sectors.

'We hope there will be no extension to the restrictions beyond Friday.'
A boozy party in Sydney has been shut down and seven people fined for breaking lockdown after police found a man passed out inside an office block.

Officers were patrolling George Street in the city's business district on Monday when they were approached by a man.

He took them to an office suite filled with empty alcoholic drinks, food, a birthday cake and a man unconscious on the floor.

Police fined seven people, understood to be colleagues celebrating a birthday party, for brazenly breaking Sydney's strict lockdown laws.

All seven people were issued infringement notices of $1000.

A young man was found passed out by police in a Sydney CBD office overnight (stock image)

Police at the scene discovered a birthday cake, alcoholic drinks, food and the person unconscious on the floor (stock image)

In a separate incident, another man was handed a fine for ignoring a move on direction from police in Sydney's east.

The man, from Merrylands in Sydney's west, was loitering around Bondi Police Station when officers requested he move on.

After failing to secure a supposed lift, he moved on, only to be spotted soon after on gym equipment down at Bondi.

He attempted to run away from police, but was caught and then issued a penalty notice for breaching public health orders.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner Gary Worboys said the number of infringement notices issued was disappointing.

'It is clear some people have absolutely no regard for the health orders or safety in the public space,' he said.

As health orders tighten, Mr Worboys said police would ramp up law enforcement efforts in Greater Sydney.

'The tempo of the police response will increase, it has to increase, not just in south-west Sydney but right across Greater Sydney and out into the regions,' he said on Saturday.

'The premier has made it very clear that the strengthening of the health orders will mean that people will have to change the way that they behave.'
A small business owner has slammed unclear lockdown rules as she struggles to work out if she can fix customers' heating systems amid fears her elderly clients will fall ill due to the cold.

Anthea Strathdee, who runs an air-conditioning and heating company in western Sydney's Emu Plains, said she's had 'no clarification' on whether she can work from either NSW Police or NSW Health.

Under NSW health orders, from Monday morning, non-urgent maintenance work including cleaning services and repair work on residential premises is only allowed if required to ensure the health, safety or security of the home or those who live there.

In an interview on Nine's Today show, Ms Strathdee said she was struggling to work out if heating repairs are included.

'It's an absolute mess. There is no clarification for our industry, if heating comes under repair work. We've had customers calling,' she said.

'Three times we called Service NSW. All the operators said ''we think so''. We can't get a clear yes or no.'

Ms Strathdee said she even went to the police and was told heating repairs are not an essential service.

'My husband and I took it upon ourselves to go to the local police station because they would be the ones enforcing the law,' she said

'We want to do the right thing by the community. The police officer said we can't say why you're not an essential service.

'It will backlog the health system if the elderly are sick going to hospital we just want that clarification.

Construction workers leave their work sites to travel home on Saturday, just before building sites were shut down in Sydney

She added: 'We are not listed as an authorised worker. I understand a plumber can fix a toilet.

'We worked all through Covid last year. We were able to keep the families at home that were working from home warm. That's a great thing.

'I would hate to see the community get really ill now in other ways because they are sitting at home freezing.'

An NSW police spokesman referred inquiries to NSW Health, saying: 'We do not set the restrictions, we only enforce them.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted NSW Health for comment.

Meanwhile, unions are claiming the NSW building industry will be a 'basket case' if the two week Covid lockdown is extended.

CFMEU state secretary Darren Greenfield told Sydney radio 2GB on Tuesday that if the shutdown continued into August 'businesses will start to collapse'.

'Subcontractors cannot sustain a third or fourth week of this. Our industry will be a basket case,' he said.

Over the past 16 months, all elements of the industry worked together to put procedures in place to mitigate the virus and on Friday night 'we were still told the industry would keep going', he said.

Police have been seen on foot, riding bicycles and driving a motorised buggy while patrolling Bondi Beach

However, on Saturday the industry was blindsided when Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the unprecedented shut down, costing the NSW economy at least $700 million per week and forcing 250,000 tradies to down tools.

On Monday, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said she did not advise the government to shut down the industry, insisting the decision was made by the crisis cabinet.

Ms Berejiklian said the decision was taken to prevent the risk of workplace transmission and to stop 'thousands and thousands of people' moving around the community.

The premier admitted 'some level of restriction' will remain in place until the state's vaccination rates reach an acceptable level.
Los Angeles police have admitted their bomb squad 'miscalculated' the weight of fireworks before a planned controlled explosion which went wrong last month, destroying the team's armored truck and leaving 17 people injured.

Police had called in a bomb squad on June 30 after a tip led them to seize about 5,000 pounds of illegal home-made and China-manufactured pyrotechnics in a South Los Angeles community.

While most of the fireworks were packed up and shipped away, some were found to be 'leaking', and so a 'total containment vehicle' designed to safely detonate explosives was brought in.

The vehicle has an iron chamber which is designed to contain 25 pounds of explosives, and officers estimated they were putting in 16.5 pounds in to it, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said Monday.

But investigators later weighed the remains of the explosives and calculated that there must have been about 42 pounds of fireworks loaded into the device.

The resultant catastrophic failure of the armored chamber sent a plume of fire into the air, injured 17 people and shattered the windows of nearby buildings.

Chief Moore gave the update the investigation on Monday morning at the LAPD Headquarters and said an 'apparent miscalculation' and 'human error' led police to overload the containment truck.

Los Angeles police said Monday that an 'apparent miscalculation' by its bomb squad is what caused a June 30 fireworks explosion that left 17 injured

He described the illegal fireworks as 40 home-made devices the size of Coca-Cola cans with simple fuses and 200 smaller but similar devices

While most of the fireworks were packed up and shipped away, some were found to be 'leaking', and so a 'total containment vehicle' designed to safely detonate explosives was brought in

The vehicle has an iron chamber which is designed to contain 25 pounds of explosives, but investigators later weighed the remains of the explosives and calculated that there must have been about 42 pounds of fireworks loaded into the device

LAPD Chief Michel Moore gave the update on Monday morning at the LAPD Headquarters, where he said that 'human error' led to the botched detonation of illegal fireworks

After the initial raid, three box trucks and a 53-foot trailer were brought in to load up the majority of the seized fireworks and move them to a safe location.

However, 'improvised explosives' also were found that were too dangerous to move.

Moore described them as 40 home-made devices the size of Coca-Cola cans with simple fuses and 200 smaller but similar devices.

The material was taken to the containment vehicle, a multi-ton semi-tractor trailer rig with a spherical iron chamber in which the explosives are loaded.

'Based on information gathered at this point, it is believed that the net explosive weight placed into the [vessel] exceeded its rated capacity,' he said.

He added that officers didn't use a scale to weigh the explosives because LAPD protocols allows a physical and visual estimation to suffice.

The investigation has not yet been closed, however, and Michael Hoffman, assistant special agent with the Los Angeles Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, theorized that the blast could have occurred because of issues with the device itself.

The specific device involved has been used 42 times by the department over the course of a decade.

Moore said that officers overloaded a 'total containment vehicle' designed to safely detonate illegal fireworks, causing the device to burst open

The resultant catastrophic failure of the armored chamber sent a plume of fire into the air, injured 17 people and shattered the windows of nearby buildings

The specific device involved has been used 42 times by the department over the course of a decade

The blast, caught by news crews, knocked a nearby car on its side, smashed the windows of several others and blew out windows in a neighboring home

The blast, caught by news crews, happened in the 700 block of East 27th Street. It knocked a nearby car on its side, smashed the windows of several others and blew out windows in a neighboring home.

Nine police officers were injured, along with one ATF officer, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement.

Six civilians, ranging from 51 to 85 years old, were taken to a hospital, three with moderate and three with minor injuries, it said. One other person was treated at the scene but declined to be taken to hospital.

None of the injuries were life threatening.

Police evacuated nearby homes prior to the explosion and building inspectors were evaluating some homes to determine if they were safe.

At Monday's news conference, Moore confirmed that the supervisor and bomb technicians involved in the operation were removed from the field.

He said, 'I want to personally express my apologies to every resident, business operator and customer that was dramatically impacted by this incident. I acknowledge that there are many more individuals who were traumatized by the explosion itself.'

Nine police officers were injured, along with one ATF officer, the Los Angeles Fire Department said in a statement

Six civilians, ranging from 51 to 85 years old, were taken to a hospital, three with moderate and three with minor injuries

Moore confirmed that the supervisor and bomb technicians involved in the operation were removed

Following the police chief's update, L.A. City Councilman Curren Price said in a statement, 'I am infuriated by the preliminary findings that the LAPD and ATF released today. The action taken by LAPD on June 30 fell short of law enforcement's duty to protect and serve and this act of negligence bears serious consequences not only for the victims, but for the community and our city as a whole.'

He added, 'This is by far one of the LAPD's largest blunders in recent history, which has further betrayed the trust of our South LA community. My constituents feel that this was a blatant disregard for their safety and our community of color. This tragedy could have been prevented and I wholeheartedly believe that additional safety precautions would have been taken in a more affluent community.'

On Monday, Price's office launched what he dubbed the '27th Street Incident Community Resource Center,' which will set up shop at the YMCA on 28th street in LA and provide victims of the blast with mental health counseling, help filing insurance claims and other supportive services, according to a press release promoting the resource center.

Meanwhile, Moore said that the LAPD is looking at its protocols for detonating explosives and will make any necessary changes.

He said, 'We have taken significant steps to strengthen operating protocols, documentation, oversight of any destruction of fireworks and other explosive materials in the city, and more work remains in this aspect of this investigation.'

The fireworks being detonated allegedly belonged to Arturo Cejas III, 27, who was arrested on June 30. He is also faces charges of child endangerment because a minor, Cejas' 10-year-old brother, was found at his home where the fireworks were seized. He is being held on $500,000 bail.
A 26-year-old man living in Sydney is facing extradition from NSW to Queensland after a body was found in a box at his rented inner Brisbane unit.

A foreign national living in Sydney is facing extradition to Queensland after a badly decomposed human body was found in a container in a inner Brisbane apartment.

Detective Inspector Tim Trezise says officers found the body wrapped in a sheet inside a sealed metal box on the balcony of the Hamilton unit, on Monday afternoon.

A woman's body was found on a balcony at the Newport Hamilton Apartments building in the northern Brisbane suburb of Hamilton on Monday around 4pm

Forensic investigations by detectives will continue for some days and weeks in relation to strengthening the case

He said the detectives who found the corpse had been probing the disappearance of a 30-year-old female foreign national, reported missing to NSW police weeks ago.

Yang Zhao, 26, who lives in south Sydney but is allegedly still renting the Brisbane apartment, was formally refused bail when his case was mentioned in Sutherland Local Court on Tuesday.

The matter is listed again for Wednesday, when he is facing extradition to Queensland where he will be charged over the woman's death.

'An arrest warrant in Queensland has now been sworn in relation to one charge of murder in relation to the missing person,' Det Insp Trezise said.

'Obviously investigations both forensically and evidentiary by the detectives will continue for some days and weeks in relation to strengthening the case.'

He said the body has not been identified yet because it's too decomposed to work out gender or age.

Police launched a homicide investigation after a body was found in advanced stages of decomposition

'Exactly who that person is, is yet to be determined; by the end of the day we'll have a post-mortem,' he told reporters.

Det Insp Trezise said the missing woman had been seen at the Hamilton apartment about two months ago, along with the man.

The woman's mother, who lives in another country, reported her missing after she stopped making contact with her.

The body found in a sealed metal box has not been formally identified due to advanced decomposition

Det Insp Trezise said the woman and the man who owned the apartment were not in a romantic relationship.

After months of trying to find the man, Queensland detectives finally managed to call him on Monday afternoon.

He told them he was living at Mascot in south Sydney and that he didn't know where the woman was.

'Initially he indicated to police over the telephone that he didn't know the whereabouts of the missing person, and hadn't seen her for some months,' he said.

'I believe he stated words to the effect of: 'I think she's moved interstate'.'

Residents had not seen the deceased at the Newport Hamilton Apartment complex for over two months

Queensland police tipped off NSW detectives, who went to the man's Mascot home, while they went to the Hamilton unit where they found the body.

Det Insp Trezise said the body was wrapped in a cloth, with one foot visible.

'So I don't know, I can't report whether there's any signs of trauma or anything else at this stage, the body was still in there, in the box, and the box has been taken in situ to the John Tonge Centre for the post-mortem.'
A shocked Instagram model claims Sydney police confronted her at her door after she posted a throwback photo of herself on holidays.

Dominique Elissa, 25, is among millions of Sydneysiders who spent the past three weeks in lockdown due to a horror coronavirus outbreak.

Stay-at-home orders kept the bored Bondi swimsuit model very active on her Instagram, sharing posts and videos of her daily walks, fitness workouts, and home-baked treats with her 213,000 followers.

But sharing a sultry throwback shot last Thursday of herself posing at a beach in Jervis Bay, 200km away on the NSW south coast, sparked concerns from followers.

They assumed Ms Ellissa breached public health orders by travelling to regional NSW during lockdown and alerted the police to the potential breach.

Police attended Dominique Elissa's home on Monday over this throwback photo taken in Jervis Bay she posted last week

Ms Elissa recalled her encounter with the surprise visitors who knocked on her door four days later in a TikTok video captioned 'can't believed this happened'.

'The weirdest thing just happened, two police just rocked up at our house and needed to check I was here because they've gotten multiple complaints from people saying I am in Jervis Bay,' Ms Elissa explained in the video.

'I posted a throwback like a few days ago and I'm literally in so much shock that people went to the extent to call the police.'

Ms Elissa ended the video by setting the record straight and 'thanking' those who alerted authorities.

'I have been posting in Bondi every single day walking but yes, thank you for your concerns,' she laughed.

'Honestly, they have nothing better to do,' she replied to a comment on her video incredulous that the police bothered to check up on her.

Some of her followers assumed Ms Ellissa breached public health orders by travelling to regional NSW during lockdown and alerted the police to the potential breach

Dominique Elissa was shocked by the visit from police but laughed off the incident

It's not known when the throwback photo was taken, which shows the stunning swimsuit model in a bikini and daggy footwear posing on a beach.

'Don't care what anyone says, crocs are a vibe,' Ms Elissa captioned the photo.

NSW Police told Daily Mail Australia it wasn't able to provide any details about the case.

'Police across the state act on information from the public concerning people who may be in breach of the current health orders,' it said.

Sydney and surrounding regions will remain in lockdown until at least July 30 as NSW recorded 78 new cases on Tuesday.
A Victorian prisoner advertised for a knife among fellow inmates before stabbing a protective custody wing-mate.

Tim Stewart was already serving a four-year prison sentence when he attacked a man, taking a moral stand over what he believed the man was locked up for.

A month before the November 2019 attack at the Ravenhall Correctional Centre, Stewart inquired with other prisoners about getting a knife.

He offered $140 to anyone who could help and even arranged with his mother and partner to have the money available.

Victorian prisoner Tim Stewart was already serving a four-year prison sentence when he attacked a man at Ravenhall Correctional Centre (pictured), taking a moral stand over what he believed the man was locked up for

Somehow, Stewart got his hands on a butter knife and using sandpaper from the prison workshop he sharpened the tip, testing its point on a bible in his cell.

His victim, who a judge ordered was to remain anonymous, had his back turned when Stewart targeted him in a kitchen.

CCTV footage played in court showed Stewart repeatedly stabbing the victim in the back and side, puncturing the victim's lung.

'I'm going to f***ing kill you now, you kiddie f***er,' Stewart was heard saying.

The force of the stabbing caused the knife to bend in half, prosecutor Grant Hayward told a pre-sentence hearing in the County Court on Monday.

Stewart pleaded guilty to intentionally causing serious injury.

The victim, in his 70s, said it was only because he was physically fit for his age that his injuries weren't more severe.

Stewart told prison officers he stabbed the victim because he believed he was a child sex offender.

'Don't worry he won't be getting up,' he said.

'I didn't do a good enough job, I'll get that c*** when I next see him.'

In a statement the victim said Stewart needed help to understand what is right and wrong, and to not judge others.

Stewart's lawyer Nadia Kaddeche said he was classified as a vulnerable person because of his mental health and she believed the offending occurred in the context of a deterioration in his mental health.

She said he had not been diagnosed with schizophrenia, but had a history of psychiatric issues including delusions.

Ms Kaddeche said the fact Stewart had pleaded guilty was demonstrative of some remorse and an acceptance of responsibility.

But Judge Gregory Lyon urged her not to confuse taking responsibility with remorse.

He said remorse would usually include some empathy for the situation of the victim which there was not.

Stewart will be sentenced in the coming week.
Ben Fordham has unleashed on the New South Wales government's handling of Sydney's ongoing lockdown - saying the 'social and economic consequences' are now 'dwarfing' the damage from the virus.

The 2GB breakfast radio host slammed Premier Gladys Berejiklian's continued stance that the state will not open up again until community transmissions have disappeared - which could be months at the rate of decline the state is seeing.

NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight - but 27 were still out in the community while infectious - a number which has remained stable for weeks.

'We are seeing very little change in the daily case numbers. They want us to focus on the number of people who are infectious while in the community. We're not really making a dent on that number,' a frustrated Fordham told his listeners on Tuesday.

'And yet the government reckons that that number needs to be close to zero before we can open up. Come off it. How're we going to get there?

'At what point do we start showing some courage? Right now, the social and economic consequences of theses lockdowns are dwarfing the damage of the virus.'

Ben Fordham has lashed out at the NSW government's handling of Sydney's ongoing lockdown, saying 'social and economic consequences are dwarfing the damage of the virus'

The 2GB radio host criticised Premier Gladys Berejiklian's continued stance the state will not open up again until community transfers have disappeared

Sydney is enduring its tightest restrictions since the pandemic began in March last year, with even tradies unable to work until at least July 30.

Fordham says while cases remain high, hospitalisations are low, and the long term effects the lockdown is having will cause more problems than opening up and starting to consider living with it.

Poll Should we accept that Covid is not going away and we need to live with the virus? Yes No Undecided Should we accept that Covid is not going away and we need to live with the virus? Yes 1403 votes

No 1699 votes

Undecided 208 votes Now share your opinion





'We have the harshest restrictions of any state since coronavirus arrived. Kids aren't at school, small businesses are on their knees, if you live in Fairfield, Liverpool or Canterbury, you cannot leave the area for work unless you are an authorised worker,' Fordham said.

'And now more than a quarter of a million construction workers and tradies are out of a job. It's never happened anywhere in Australia. They didn't even do it in Victoria, during their darkest days  This cannot go on.'

During the stage four lockdown in Victoria last year, which lasted 112 days, tradies were able to work throughout with sensible Covid-safe practices in place.

Tradies are unable to work in the Greater Sydney area but are also unable to travel into regional New South Wales.

'Locked up again, no end in sight, and I'm not for a moment suggesting coronavirus is not serious but at what point as a society do we accept this is not going away? Can we really stay locked up until it disappears?' Fordham said.

'The Premier said a few months ago: ''We need to learn to live with the virus''. But right now we're destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of people as we try to chase a number that we may never, ever reach.

'Why don't we get fair dinkum and work towards the Premier's goal of learning to live with the virus.'

Sydney currently sits in its tightest restrictions since the pandemic began in March last year, with even tradies unable to work in its current state

NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight - but 27 were still out in the community while infectious

Premier Berejiklian on Tuesday announced the new figures as she warned residents in the hotspot Liverpool, Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield local government areas they could be carrying the virus even if they don't have symptoms.

She said more than two-thirds of the state's new cases were still being found in those three regions.

Officials also confirmed a woman in her 50s had died from Covid-19 in Sydney's south-west; she is the mother of two removalists who travelled to regional NSW while infected with the virus.

Of the 49 linked cases, 45 are household contacts and 4 are close contacts.

The 78 positive results in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night came from 62,860 tests. NSW Health said 29 of the new infections have yet to be linked to known cases.

The outbreak of infections that began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16 has now reached 1,418 infections.

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.

'If you are living in a community that has a lot of cases, even if you don't have symptoms, don't assume you don't have the virus,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'In communities where the virus is lurking, where the virus is circulating, you could have the virus, not know it and unfortunately take it home and give it to your loved ones.'
Former attorney-general Christian Porter is facing legal bills of up to $1 million over his attempt to sue the ABC over rape allegations against him.

The case was never fought in court after he did a deal with the ABC in May to end legal proceedings early with no apology or settlement.

But both sides still managed to run up huge fees. The ABC said the cost of the legal action against it was $680,000.

Mr Porter's own fees were estimated at $500,000, but the ABC agreed to pay $100,000 towards the cost of his mediation legal fees.

Now he has been handed another bill of almost $550,000 for a second legal action related to the case.

Former attorney-general Christian Porter (pictured) is facing legal bills of up to $1million after his attempt to sue the ABC over rape allegations against him

Mr Porter had been suing the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan (pictured) over an article which published allegations that a senior cabinet minister raped a 16-year-old girl in 1988

Mr Porter sued the ABC and reporter Louise Milligan over an article that published allegations a senior cabinet minister raped a 16-year-old girl in 1988 when he was 17.

He later acknowledged he was the minister referred to in the article but denied all allegations of rape.

The claims were never tested in court as the alleged victim killed herself before police inquiries were able to be completed.

Mr Porter assembled a high-powered legal team to lead the case against the ABC in the Federal Court, including defamation expert Sue Chrysanthou SC, who also represented the actor Geoffrey Rush against accusations of sexual harassment.

Mr Porter assembled a high-powered legal team to lead the case against the ABC in the Federal Court, including defamation expert Sue Chrysanthou SC (left). She had also recently discussed the case with Jo Dyer (right), a close friend of the woman who had made the allegations against Mr Porter

But Ms Chrysanthou also recently discussed the case with Jo Dyer, a close friend of the woman who made the allegations against Mr Porter.

The two met after the rape allegations came to light but despite Ms Chrysanthou never representing Ms Dyer, the Federal Court decided there was a conflict of interest.

Ms Chrysanthou was stood down from Mr Porter's team and the court ordered both the barrister and the former cabinet minister to pay Ms Dyer's legal fees.

The alleged rape was said to have occured after a school debating competition. A young Christian Porter is seen here taking part in the tournament

On Tuesday, the Federal Court heard Ms Dyer's legal fees came in at close to $550,000 sparking protests from Ms Chrysanthou's barrister, Anne Horvath.

She questioned how the bill ran so high so quickly, insisting it was a 'substantial sum for what was a reasonably confined dispute,' reported the Daily Telegraph.

'We don't know who did what when, we're not able to interrogate it at all,' she said.

The court ordered detailed timesheets to be provided to show how the bill was calculated.
Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been banned from Twitter for 12 hours after recently spreading 'misinformation' about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Twitter had labeled two tweets from Greene as 'misleading' in recent days, after she suggested vaccines were unsafe.

Greene had posted that the coronavirus is not dangerous for non-obese people under 65, and that organizations should not force 'non-FDA' approved vaccines or masks.

A Twitter spokesperson said: 'We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy' .

In a scheduled appearance on Newsmax, moments after Twitter suspended her account, the congresswoman insisted her tweets were accurate, saying the suspension was part of a pattern where she's been 'canceled' multiple times.

After recently spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), was temporarily suspended by the social media app Monday

'Twitter, who is playing a big part and a role with Big Tech and Facebook and the White House  apparently the Joe and the Biden administration  in censoring Americans, along with the communist cities in communist California who doesn't [sic] believe that America first represents their values, in Anaheim or Riverside.'

'We are being canceled and our speech is being canceled,' Greene continued. 'And we're being blamed for it. So you can see what's going on. This is communism. This is communism when you have American cities canceling two members of Congress's events at private venues.'

The tweets which saw Greene banned both came in the last two days.

On July 18 she posted: 'This is why no entity should force NON-FDA approved vaccines or masks. Instead help people protect their health by defeating obesity, which will protect them from covid complications & death, and many other health problems. We should invest in health, not human experimentation.'

And on July 19, she wrote: 'The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone.'

Twitter added a message to both posts which read: 'This Tweet is misleading. Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.'

The United States is using vaccines made by Pfizer Inc , Moderna Inc, and Johnson & Johnson under Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization. None of these vaccines are fully approved but numerous studies have proven their efficacy.

WHAT IS THE RISK OF DEATH FROM COVID-19 FOR OBESE AND OLDER ADULTS? While COVID-19 can infect Americans of all backgrounds, several conditions can put people at a higher risk of severe illness and death. This includes being above age 65 and being obese, both of which are known risk factors. A recent CDC report looked at more than 148,494 U.S. adults with COVID-19 and analyzed their risk of hospitalization and death. They found that those above age 65 were twice as likely to be hospitalized with 72% of senior citizens with COVID-19 being admitted to the hospital compared 35% of the under-64 group. Older adults were also much more likely to die with 17% of those above age 65 dying from the virus compared to 1.5% of the group under age 64 The report also looked at higher body mass indexes (BMI) and found the higher the BMI, the greater the risk of hospitalization and death. A healthy BMI is typically measured between 18.5 and 24.9. Anything under 18.5 is considered underweight. BMIs between 25 and 29.9 fall into overweight territory, and above 30 is considered obese. They found that of the patients hospitalized, 50.2% had BMIs higher than 30 while just 19.7% had BMIs between 18.5 and 24.9. Additionally, 46% of all COVID-19 patients who died in the study had BMIs above 30 while 23.4% of those who died had healthy BMIs. What's more, obese adults above age 65 were up to 50% more likely to die than elderly adults with a healthy weight. Advertisement

After recently spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic on Twitter. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), was temporarily suspended by the social media app Monday

In a video statement on Facebook Live, Greene acknowledged that she had been temporarily suspended from the Twitter, and blamed the Biden administration for trying to control free speech.

'Remember, last week when our press secretary said the White House is working to stop the spread of (misinformation) because they want to be careful and they want to be in control of the information that is shared about COVID-19 and vaccines, isnt that concerning?' Greene said.

The Republican representative has come under fire before for remarks on the pandemic. In June she apologized after comparing COVID-19 mask requirements and vaccinations to the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews.

In January, Twitter locked Greene's account after she sparred with a state election official over voter fraud allegations.

Greene's suspension comes on the heels of the White House issuing warnings to social media platforms over misleading claims about coronavirus vaccines as cases surge due to the now-prominent Delta variant.

The number of COVID-19 cases has started to surge in the United States after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks

Doctors and public health officials have said that the surge, in 43 out of the country's 50 states, comes amid a rise in the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stagnating vaccination numbers

'I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond,' US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in a 22-page advisory released last week.

'Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people's health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.'

The number of COVID-19 cases has started to surge in the United States after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks.

Doctors and public health officials have said that the surge, in 43 out of the country's 50 states, comes amid a rise in the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stagnating vaccination numbers.

Health experts warn that the worrying increase in cases is linked to the Indian 'Delta' variant, which accounts for as many 97 percent of infections in some states.
Cruz Noonan let out a loud "woohoo" as he fired a shotgun at a police car parked outside a suburban Melbourne McDonald's.

His friend Joel Papa was behind the wheel, hooning around the car park honking his horn before ramming a second police vehicle when backup arrived to investigate.

Inside the McDonald's, two officers and three staff took cover in a manager's office for nearly an hour until critical response officers arrived.

Cruz Noonan plead guilty on Tuesday to charges including using a loaded firearm in a public place, possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition

Noonan and Papa, with another man, continued to drive past the scene, honking and yelling at officers, gloating over what they had done.

Prosecutor Matt Fisher said Noonan's crime was "as brazen as it was foolish, as stupid as it was serious".

Police aircraft tracked the men and they were arrested.

Noonan, 20, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to charges including using a loaded firearm in a public place, possession of an unlicensed firearm and ammunition.

Noonan let out a loud 'woohoo' as he fired a shotgun into a parked police car outside a Melbourne McDonald's

Noonan and Papa had only known each other a month before the August 2019 incident, and had spent a "intense" previous week, using ice together.

Lawyer Rohan Lawrence said while Noonan's offending was serious and had exposed the public to risk, it was not directed at the public.

But County Court Judge Gerard Mullaly cautioned him against being too nuanced, pointing out that police are also members of the public.

Joel Papa had only known Noonan for a month before they went on a week long ice binge

"To shoot a police car - that reveals a capacity to turn to serious crime very quickly, which is worrying," he said in a pre-sentence hearing on Tuesday.

Noonan was wanted in June when Papa was jailed for five years over the offending, which was for him the latest in a history of criminal offending.

His latest stint behind bars is his third in six years.

A warrant was issued for Noonan and he was arrested later in June. He is currently in custody.

Judge Mullaly will hand down sentence on September 9.
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity has urged his viewers to 'take Covid seriously' - but later insisted he is not a doctor and won't 'tell people what to do'.

During his show on Monday night, Hannity made a point of speaking directly to his audience regarding the coronavirus pandemic.

'I can't say it enough. Enough people have died. We don't need any more death. Research like crazy. Talk to your doctor, your doctors, medical professionals you trust based on your unique medical history, your current medical condition, and you and your doctor make a very important decision for your own safety,' he began.

'Take it seriously. You also have a right to medical privacy, doctor-patient confidentiality is also important. And it absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science, I believe in the science of vaccination,' Hannity concluded.

Fox News presenter Sean Hannity told his audience to 'take Covid seriously'

In an accompanying tweet, Hannity repeated his plea once again but would not go as far as to suggest people get vaccinated, noting that he was 'NOT a doctor.'

'I have been saying this repeatedly on radio and TV exactly the same way for some time. Like I supported masks early on. What I won't do is tell people what to do as I am NOT a Dr and I believe this decision must be made based on science, research, medical history....'

His plea came in the middle of a segment about some universities deciding to mandate all students be vaccinated against the coronavirus when they return to campus next semester.

Hannity brought up the case of a student who had an underlying health condition that could be aggravated by the vaccine yet did not receive a medical exemption by the BYU Hawaii university she was attending.

annity made the direct plea to camera during a segment about vaccinations

Later Hannity repeated his plea in a tweet but would not go as far as to suggest people get vaccinated emphasizing that he was 'NOT a doctor'

On social media, there were some skeptical responses as to why the influential host suddenly made the direct appeal.

'Interesting, something changed todayit wasnt an epiphany that he might be sickening and killing people, nolets seethe markets tanked today (Dow was down over 700) over fears of the COVID variant leading to another recession or even stagflation. Always FOLLOW THE MONEY,' wrote one user online.

'Finally. And he is to be commended for changing his tune. Yes, its late, but hes going to save a lot of lives,' wrote Moses Kagen.

'Turns out killing your viewers might be bad business,' tweeted Clue Heywood.

'1.5 years and hundreds of thousands of needless deaths too late,' posted one follower.

'The stock market crashed over news of covid spikes. These clowns are losing money. So of course they change their tune now,' surmized another tweet.

On social media, there were some skeptical responses as to why the influential host suddenly made the direct appeal.

Hannity's plea came hours after White House Press secretary Jen Psaki said the Administration would 'welcome' a PSA from former President Donald Trump as the Indian Delta variant of COVID-19 ravages unvaccinated areas within the United States.

She didn't enthusiastically endorse the idea, but was asked at the press briefing if President Joe Biden would consider calling Trump and enlisting his help in getting more Americans vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The press secretary reiterated that studies show that the 'most trusted voices are local officials - doctors, medical experts, civic leaders, clergy from time to time.'

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at Monday's press briefing that the White House would 'welcome' a COVID-19 vaccine PSA featuring former President Donald Trump when asked if President Joe Biden would call Trump and ask

Psaki also said, 'We don't believe that requires an embroidered invitation to be a part of,' when asked if President Joe Biden would reach out to former President Donald Trump and have him shoot a pro-COVID-19 vaccine PSA

She also noted that other ex-presidents had got involved.

'We've seen almost every former president play a role in putting out a PSA, making sure people understood in the country that the vaccine is safe and effective,' Psaki said.

In March, former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama along with their spouses participated in a vaccination PSA.

Trump was the only living president not to participate.

'We don't believe that requires an embroidered invitation to be a part of,' Psaki said of the effort.

'But certainly any role of anyone who has a platform where they can provide information to the public that the vaccine is safe, it is effective, we don't see this as a political issue, we certainly welcome that engagement,' she added.

On Sunday, Trump released a statement mocking Biden for not being able to Americans vaccinated faster.

'Joe Biden kept talking about how good of a job he's doing on the distribution of the Vaccine that was developed by Operation Warp Speed or, quite simply, the Trump Administration. He's not doing well at all,' the statement read.

'He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration, they don't trust the Election results, and they certainly don't trust the Fake News, which is refusing to tell the Truth,' Trump continued.
Desperate Sydneysiders left without work have been forced to wait for hours in queues outside Centrelink offices in a bid to claim payments.

The line to enter the Centrelink and Medicare service centre in Darlinghurst, in Sydney's inner-city, stretched for at least 100 metres along Crown Street on Tuesday.

Workers seeking welfare payments where initially accepted from 8.30am in groups of 10, before the majority were told to come back 24 hours later.

Online, demand for business assistance was so high on Monday the Service NSW website crashed. Those with business grants were also advised to apply at a later time.

The development comes after the NSW government's controversial decision to extend Greater Sydney's lockdown until at least July 30.

People queuing at Centrelink at Darlinghurst in Sydney on Tuesday (pictured) as the number of people out of work due to the lockdown continues to increase

The building and construction industry was then suspended last Saturday in a desperate bid to reduce Covid case numbers, especially in southwest Sydney.

Student Mohammad Ahmed, 27, relies on two casual jobs for his income. The lockdown has resulted in him losing 25 hours of work from both jobs combined per week.

'I've pretty much been at home for the past four weeks,' he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

'I just need to figure out what relief is available to me as an international student. It's been tough.'

Last week, the federal government announced coronavirus support will be readily available to those losing work hours in lockdown.

Under the support scheme, people who have lost more than 20 hours of work in the previous week can receive a $600 weekly payment.

Those who have lost between eight and 20 hours will receive $375.

The payments are available electronically after filling out the paperwork and meeting a series of requirements.

In NSW as of Tuesday, 388,000 claims worth $186 million have already been approved.

Despite the frustration of countless workers who are off the tools indefinitely, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian insists the decision to close the building and construction industry was necessary to 'end the lockdown as soon as possible.'

'We want to make sure our population can live as safely and freely as possible until we get a large portion of the population vaccinated,' she said.

'(In saying that) I don't want anyone feeling they are going to go without the basic things they need.'

The lines to enter Centrelink at Darlinghurst (pictured) have exceeded 100 metres as people seek welfare payments due to being out of work in the lockdown

The Berejiklian government has defended the decision to suspend the building and construction industry, as it was deemed necessary to control the outbreak of the virus, especially in south-west Sydney (pictured, construction site workers in Sydney pre-lockdown)

David Borger, an executive director specialising in western Sydney building projects, said the construction industry is on its knees, as workers have budgeted their work and living expenses based on their ongoing employment as key tradespeople.

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in June revealed unemployment in NSW had dropped to an encouraging 4.9 per cent.

The recent lockdown could see those figures increase to well over 5 per cent.

On Tuesday, NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases - but 27 were out in the community while infectious.

The 78 positive results in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night came from 62,860 tests.

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.
A police Facebook page has encouraged people to provide information so they can 'click and collect' criminals.

The Hills Area Police command's post from July 18, which included a link for people to file a Crime Stoppers report, has gone viral.

The post cheekily claims they were 'offering click and collect before it was mandatory'.

A post (pictured) by the Hills Area Police command facebook page has gone viral, offering a 'click and collect' service for 'unwanted family and friends' committing crimes

The humorous take on click and collect services encourages Australians to inform police of any family and friends that are committing crimes.

'Our Click & Collect service has been going for many years and more recently with your patronage our workload has increased,' the post reads.

'If you have any unwanted friends or relatives who have warrants, selling drugs, unregistered firearms or committing crimes click here and we'll come and collect.'

The Police command (pictured Castle Hill Police station) encouraged residents to fill out a crime stoppers form and assist police in arresting those committing crimes in a humorous way

Hills area residents praised their police command for their sense of humour.

'Your social media department is AMAZING! So nice to be able to have a chuckle in these difficult times. Keep up the good work,' one commenter wrote.

Another added: 'I must admit I feel more connected to our local team in blue these days compared to any other years gone by - great job.'
A second man has been charged with the murder of Gold Coast mother of three Kelly Wilkinson, who was allegedly set on fire by her ex-husband.

Bradley Bell, a 25-year-old workmate of Brian Earle Johnston, was arrested at a business in Coomera on Tuesday morning and charged with Ms Wilkinson's murder.

Queensland Police will allege that Bell knew Johnston was planning to kill the mother-of-three and drove his colleague to Ms Wilkinson's home on April 20.

Bell and Johnston allegedly stopped to fill up a jerry can of petrol on the way to Ms Wilkinson's Arundel property that day, police will claim in court.

Bradley Bell, 25, has been charged with the murder of Kelly Wilkinson. He is a former workmate of Brian Earle Johnston, her ex-husband, and is accused of driving him to the property

Mother-of-three Kelly Wilkinson (above) was found dead at her Arundel, Gold Coast home on April 20, allegedly having been burned to death by her ex-husband

Detective Chief Inspector Chris Ahearn said prosecutors will allege Bell knowingly helped murder Ms Wilkinson, by assisting Johnston in preparations.

'We will allege he knew what the end result was going to be,' Mr Ahearn told reporters on Tuesday.

Bell was interviewed by police shortly after Ms Wilkinson's death. He provided a version of events but police have since 'discounted' his story, Mr Ahearn said.

Police chose to charge Bell with murder, rather than a lesser accessory charge.

Bell and Johnston's former employer was shocked when Daily Mail Australia told him the news.

'He hasn't been with us for a couple of weeks,' a staff member said. 'You learn something new every day.'

Former U.S Marine engineer Brian Earle Johnston was charged with Ms Wilkinson's murder earlier this year. He was refused bail after waking from a coma

A local resident sunk to her knees outside the Arundel crime scene following the incident in April

Johnston, from the US, and Wilkinson, above, are seen on their wedding day

Bell worked as a marine engineer and has been working on boats 'all his life'.

Detectives don't believe Bell knew Ms Wilkinson or her family, who have been briefed about the latest charge.

Johnston was charged with Ms Wilkinson's horrific murder after spending ten days in a coma following the incident.

Johnston was found blocks away from the scene with serious burns.

Johnston was refused bail earlier this month, with his case still before the courts.

Bell has been refused bail to appear in the Southport Magistrates Court tomorrow.
Residents exercise in Bondi on Tuesday

Australia will progressively relax coronavirus restrictions and focus on limiting deaths instead of cases once enough people have been vaccinated, Greg Hunt said on Tuesday.

The Health Minister said the country would adopt a gradual approach towards living with Covid-19 instead of removing all curbs at once like the UK did on Monday.

Earlier this month Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced a four stage plan to get Australia back to normal, with each step to be triggered when the vaccination rate hits a certain percentage.

In the next phase expected early next year lockdowns will not be needed but international arrival caps will remain in place.

Mr Hunt said the vaccination percentages required are being calculated by modelling experts at The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity and would be released 'in the near future'.

'It means we won't just strip away all of the protections at once. I think it is very much an understood position that borders, testing, tracing, distancing, it is a progressive step down in measures as we have the increase in vaccination rates,' he said.

The UK recorded 39,950 cases on Monday and 19 deaths but has removed all restrictions because 68.5 per cent of adults are fully vaccinated, meaning serious illness and deaths are less likely.

Australia's tightly controlled international border will be one of the longest-lasting Covid restrictions. Pictured: A family at Sydney Airport

The UK removed all Covid restrictions on Monday. Pictured: British clubbers return to Astoria in Portsmouth

Mr Hunt said Australia - which currently aims to eliminate Covid-19 - will also move towards focussing on deaths instead of cases when more adults are jabbed.

'We will increasingly focus on hospitalisation and preventing loss of life,' he said.

As of July 19, 14.09 per cent of Australians over 16 have had two doses of a Covid vaccine and 35.71 per cent have had their first dose.

One million Pfizer doses touched down in Australia on Sunday night as the nation's sluggish vaccine rollout ramps up.

'Right now, we are going through the process of completing that vaccination program and we passed 10 million doses this week,' Mr Hunt said.

'We will pass 11 million over the course of the coming week and 12 million not long after that. So those vaccination rates are increasing.'

Meanwhile, federal government stats showed $187million has already been paid out to people who have lost hours during Greater Sydney's Covid lockdown.

Some $33million has been paid in the last 24 hours alone, with some recipients reporting they had received the $600 pandemic disaster payment within 40 minutes.

As of Tuesday afternoon, 388,921 payments had been made and 111,000 more were being processed. Some 3,000 of those were in regional NSW.

The four-phase plan to return Australia to 'Covid normal' which will eventually see holidays resume

On July 9 Scott Morrison outlined a four-phase transition towards living with Covid and finally ending the cycle of lockdowns and border closures.

The Prime Minister hailed a 'new deal for Australians' as he explained the stages titled vaccinate, prepare and pilot; post vaccination phase; consolidation phase; and final phase.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison arrives to a press conference at Kirribilli House in Sydney on July 9

The pace of the plan - which will eventually let the country manage Covid like flu - depends on the vaccine rollout, with lockdowns eliminated once a certain percentage of Aussies have been fully jabbed with two doses.

'I have made it very clear today what is on the other side. If we all get vaccinated then this all changes,' Mr Morrison said.

'The pathway we have agreed today gives all Australians encouragement and much needed hope in what has been a very difficult time.'
The Fairfield mayor has ripped into the New South Wales government and Sydney's Eastern Suburbs saying there are clear double standards and that his area is doing the 'hard yards' while people in Bondi are 'having parties'.

Frank Carbone appeared on The Edge 96.1 to talk about the local government area's ongoing position as Sydney's coronavirus ground-zero, saying banning residents from leaving for work would hurt the entire city.

He also slammed residents from suburbs including Bondi and Vaucluse, saying they have unfairly avoided criticism.

'There is an issue with the way western Sydney is being labelled. We're the scapegoat with these issues and it's not fair,' he said.

'Fairfield is complying, unlike Bondi where theyre having parties outside, we're actually doing the hard yards out here.'

Residents of Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool are unable to leave their LGA unless they are essential worker, leaving thousands of people unable to make a living

Mayor Carbone says residents of the east including Bondi have avoided criticism for their part in Sydney's latest coronavirus outbreak

'If you dont allow people from Fairfield, Liverpool and Bankstown to go to work then supermarkets all around sydney will be closing down,' Mayor Carbone said

Residents of Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool are unable to leave their LGA unless they are essential worker, leaving thousands of people unable to make a living.

Mr Carbone says stopping western Sydneysiders from working will bring a halt to some of the most essential businesses during lockdown.

'If you dont allow people from Fairfield, Liverpool and Bankstown to go to work then supermarkets all around sydney will be closing down,' he told the show.

'You need drivers you need logistics, a lot of these people come from western Sydney. we are the engine room.

'People are struggling to know if theyre on the authorised list. People want to do the right thing but they need to know the right thing to do.'

He also said the high rates of cases in the area were the result of a greater sense of community and family felt in western Sydney as opposed to suburbs in the east.

'We have greater numbers in households and a greater reliance on family support.

'The virus will spread naturally quickjer in western sydney and the numbers will be multiplied.'

One of the hosts replied: 'Yeah a ritzy person in Vaucluse can hide in their mansion and there's just one or two people living in there.'

'Fairfield is complying, unlike Bondi where theyre having parties outside, we're actually doing the hard yards out here'

Mr Carbone says stopping western Sydneysiders from working will bring a halt to some of the most essential businesses during lockdown

Residents of the Eastern Suburbs congregate in Centennial Park

Mr Carbone lamented the 'finger pointing' going on in politics, saying politicians had 'divided the city.

'Why are you putting the sanctions on our community, why are you bringing the police in when its not a criminal response its a medical response.'

He claims they only heard from Health Minister Brad Hazzard 'once at the beginning' and there is 'disappointment' and 'anger' at the way officials have handled their outbreak.

'It shouldnt be about an 11am press conference. There's anger because it started in the east and wasnt controlled and no one pointed fingers from our area,' he said.

'Once it arrived in western sydney everyone started blaming western Sydney.'

The 78 new Covid-19 cases recorded in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night is down from the 98 additional cases recorded the day before

A pedestrian walks along the promenade at Bondi Beach in Sydney's eastern suburbs on Tuesday morning. NSW Health has announced 78 new Covid-19 cases, 29 of which have yet to be linked to known cases

NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight - with 27 were out in the community while infectious.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Tuesday announced the new figures as she warned residents in the hotspot Liverpool, Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield local government areas they could be carrying the virus even if they have no symptoms.

She said more than two-thirds of the state's new cases were still being found in those three regions.

Officials also confirmed a woman in her 50s had died from Covid-19 in Sydney's south-west; she is the mother of two removalists who travelled to regional NSW while infected with the virus.

Of the 49 linked cases, 45 are household contacts and 4 are close contacts.

The 78 positive results in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night came from 62,860 tests. NSW Health said 29 of the new infections have yet to be linked to known cases.

The outbreak of infections that began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16 has now reached 1,418 infections.

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.

'If you are living in a community that has a lot of cases, even if you don't have symptoms, don't assume you don't have the virus,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'In communities where the virus is lurking, where the virus is circulating, you could have the virus, not know it and unfortunately take it home and give it to your loved ones.'
Florida governor Ron DeSantis has claimed 70 percent of illegal immigrants crossing into the US are heading to his state, and blasted President Joe Biden's immigration policy.

The governor's comments came after he returned from a trip to the southern border in Texas, where he spoke to some of the 50 Florida law enforcement officials he sent there to assist with the border crisis.

'They've made over 2,000 apprehensions, over 100 felony arrests, and they say that almost 70% of everybody that they have interdicted said their ultimate destination was the state of Florida,' DeSantis said.

'If you think that having a wide-open border, 1,000 miles, however far it was away doesn't affect here, you're wrong.'

The statistics mentioned by DeSantis have not been confirmed.

He has said he sent the Florida agents to Texas in June because the federal government was not doing enough to deal with the border crisis.

'Where the federal government is failing, Texas is having to step up, and Florida and other states are helping', DeSantis said in an appearance on Watters' World on Saturday.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis has claimed 70 percent of illegal immigrants crossing into the US are heading to his state

DeSantis also claims the border crisis would 'turn around very quickly' if President Biden (pictured) reinstated the Trump-era policies he reversed by executive order once taking over office.

He added: 'Most of the people that are Florida folks have admitted their ultimate destination is the state of Florida,' he said. 'So this has huge implications not just for our country as a whole, but states like my own where a lot of these folks are going to end up coming illegally.'

'When they get turned over to the feds, what the feds are essentially doing is giving them a bus ticket and letting them go where they want to go,' he added. 'This has big implications for our schools, our social services, all of those other things,'

United States officials said on Friday that the number of migrants arriving at the southwestern border last month was the largest in years - a sign that the surge this year may extend into the hotter summer months, when numbers typically start dropping.

Customs and Border Protection revealed that 188,829 migrants were stopped at the southwest border in June, the sixth monthly increase since the start of 2021.

It was also another increase on the 180,641 who were apprehended in May.

The number of new migrants to arrive at the southern border since October is just slightly lower than the last surge in 2019 during the Trump administration, the agency said.

It means that one million people have been apprehended since October.

Customs and Border Protection revealed that 188,829 migrants were stopped at the southwest border in June

These statistics just account for the apprehensions, and doesn't include the migrants who cross undetected.

According to reports, that is up to 1,500 additional people every day.

It is still not immediately clear where exactly these asylum seekers and illegal crossers are being sent after they are transferred out of federal immigration agencies' custody.

The June numbers mean that analysts predict 2.3 million people could cross into the US by the end of 2021, if the pace of apprehensions and those who avoid detection remain the same.

DeSantis claims the border crisis would 'turn around very quickly' if Biden reinstated Trump-era policies including the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico during their immigration proceedings.

President Biden rescinded his predecessor's policy shortly after entering office in January.

DeSantis called on the reinstatement of the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico during their immigration proceedings.
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Katie Hopkins triumphantly declared 'it's nice not to wear a mask again' after landing at London Heathrow Airport this morning following her deportation from Australia after she mocked the country's strict hotel quarantine rules and called Covid lockdowns the 'greatest hoax in human history'.

The former Apprentice star, who had travelled to Australia to appear on Celebrity Big Brother, is believed to have flown business class with Singapore Airlines from Sydney after her visa was torn up and she was fined 536 for allegedly answering the door of her hotel room without a facemask.

Accompanied by security as she left the west London airport, the 46-year-old told photographers 'it's nice not to wear a mask again' before getting into a black Mercedes and being driven away.

During her 14-day self-isolation in Australia, Hopkins shared a video on social media in which she 'joked' about deliberately breaking Covid rules by opening her door naked and mask-free to the workers who deliver her food.

Ahead of her flight back to London, she told her supporters on Instagram: 'See you in the morning, my lovelies. You may 'deport' the Hopkins, but you cannot silence the truth. We will fight to TAKE BACK our freedoms.'

Australia has enforced strict border closures since the start of the pandemic, with tickets into the country rationed and all arrivals forced to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine in their city of arrival along with repeat testing before being allowed in.

Sydney and Victoria state are also in lockdown with 25 million Australians under stay-at-home orders in response to outbreaks of the highly-infectious Delta strain.

Victoria extend its lockdown beyond the initial Tuesday end date and NSW will be shut down until at least July 30. It is not clear when exactly Victoria will be allowed to resume normal life, with a further announcement due tomorrow.

Katie Hopkins has been pictured landing at London Heathrow Airport this morning following her deportation from Australia after she mocked the country's hotel quarantine rules and calling Covid lockdowns the 'greatest hoax in human history'

The former Apprentice star, 46, boarded a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney and told supporters on Instagram: 'See you in the morning, my lovelies. You may 'deport' the Hopkins, but you cannot silence the truth. We will fight to TAKE BACK our freedoms'

Hopkins had flown in to Australia last week and was placed into 14-day isolation ahead of an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother

Amid a backlash, her 'critical skills' visa torn up by the Australian federal government and she was handed a 536 fine for answering the door of her room in quarantine naked and without a facemask

Bitter: Far-right provocateur Katie Hopkins has tried to claim her humiliating deportation from Australia as a victory, telling her supporters on Instagram she will never be 'silenced' after being sent back to the UK for joking about breaching hotel quarantine in Sydney

How Katie Hopkins rose to fame on BBC's The Apprentice to become a media personality Katie Hopkins is a well-known media personality and commentator in Britain who rose to fame on The Apprentice in 2007 and soon became an outspoken household name, writing in several newspapers. The 46-year-old mother-of-two finished as runner-up in the 15th series of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother in 2015, becoming popular among some for her no-nonsense attitude, and loathed by others for her controversial comments. Hopkins is known for her contentious views on race, sex, class, obesity and migration  and in recent months has criticised the Black Lives Matter movement as well as Covid-19 lockdowns. She once had a popular radio show on LBC, but stepped away after writing on Twitter that a 'final solution' was needed to deal with terrorists. Many thought this was a reference to the Holocaust. Hopkins also lost a libel case against food blogger Jack Monroe which saw her pay out 24,000 in damages after suggesting they backed the defacing a war memorial during a protest in London. Donald Trump once described her in 2015 on Twitter as a 'respected columnist' after she backed the former US president's claims that parts of London had become so radicalised that people were scared to visit. Hopkins was permanently banned from Twitter in June 2020. Advertisement

'The police officer who checked me in told me when they knock on my door I have to wait 30 seconds until I can open the door,' she said while breaking out into hysterics.

Hopkins said she was 'lying in wait' to 'spring [the door] open and frighten the s*** out of them and do it naked with no face mask.'

After the comments sparked huge backlash, Channel Seven dropped Hopkins from the show and her visa was cancelled.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said on Monday morning: 'I hadn't heard of her before and I don't want to hear about her ever again.

'I thought it was just shameful, the fact that she was out there boasting about breaching quarantine was just appalling,' she told the ABC.

'It was a slap in the face for all those Australians who are currently in lockdown and it's just unacceptable behaviour.'

Some 12 million Australians in Victoria and Greater Sydney are in lockdown over an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant which began on June 16.

Under one of the toughest Covid border policies in the world, Australia has banned tourists and is only allowing 3,035 people a week to enter the country via 14-day hotel quarantine, leaving 40,000 Aussies stranded overseas.

But foreigners with critical skills visas are not always included in the cap because they are deemed to bring 'economic benefit' to the country.

'There are very well established processes and procedures for people to enter this country and many decisions are made on the basis of economic benefit,' Ms Andrews said.

Critical skills visas are for sectors 'critical to Australia's economic recovery' including financial technology, large scale manufacturing, film, media and television production and emerging technology.

The minister said her department approved Hopkins' visa at the request of the New South Wales government.

'It was the State Government that came to us with an application to bring in this individual to effectively increase the economic opportunities in that particular State,' she said.

Facing criticism that celebrities are being prioritised over Australians seeking to return, Ms Andrews said the federal government wants to increase the arrival cap which was halved last month at the request of Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia state governments.

Hopkins had flown in to Australia last week to appear on Celebrity Big Brother after finishing her mandatory 14-day quarantine. She is pictured leaving the country

Deported: Controversial British commentator Katie Hopkins (pictured), 46, boarded a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney at 3pm on Monday

Controversial: Hopkins did not wear her mask properly as she went though security at Sydney Airport

Hopkins wore sunglasses as she walked into the international terminal on Monday afternoon

Ms Andrews praised the Australian Border Force for dealing with Hopkins' visa revocation swiftly over the weekend.

'As soon as we found out about her behaviour and the fact that she was out there openly flaunting our quarantine system here, we took pretty strong action as quickly as we possibly could to get that visa cancelled, and to make sure she would be leaving country,' she said.

Hopkins rose to fame after starring on The Apprentice in the UK in 2007 and is known for her contentious views on race, sex, class, obesity and migration.

Channel Seven confirmed she has been booted from Celebrity Big Brother.

A spokesman told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday: 'Seven Network and Endemol Shine Australia confirm that Katie Hopkins is not part of Big Brother VIP.

'Seven and Endemol Shine strongly condemn her irresponsible and reckless comments in hotel quarantine.'

Leaving Australia: Hopkins carried her own luggage into the Airport after being dropped off by quarantine staff

On Sunday, the hosts of Channel 10 show The Project slammed Seven for its decision to hire Hopkins.

Jan Fran, a comedian and regular panellist on the show, said: 'What was someone expecting when they did hire Katie Hopkins to do this? She's a troll. She courts controversy. They knew that is what she would bring to the Big Brother house.'

Fran went on to express disgust over Hopkins' use of the term 'Final Solution', which referred to the mass murder of Europe's Jews during the Holocaust.

Her co-host Peter van Onselen agreed: 'They want controversy but maybe didn't think it would lead as far as this.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said of Hopkins: 'I hadn't heard of her before and I don't want to hear about her ever again'. Pictured: Hopkins at Sydney Airport

'She will go back to the UK and complain about us and build her brand locally off what we've done even though what we've done is the right thing.'

'Don't you think this is what Channel Seven wanted? It cost them, how much is an economy ticket from the UK, $150,000?' Lisa Wilkinson chimed in, joking.

'That's all it's cost them which is cheaper than a marketing budget'.

It was at 5am on Saturday that Hopkins took to Instagram live to post a speech where she 'called out' the lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne and threatened to answer her hotel door naked.

Hopkins (pictured at Sydney Airport) has criticised lockdowns and mask wearing during the Covid-19 pandemic

On Sunday she denied she broke quarantine rules in Sydney, writing on Instagram that it was just a joke.

'WARNING: EXTREME HUMOUR. I have never broken quarantine,' she wrote in her caption.

'My whole heart goes out to Australians and this brilliant country known for sense of humour. Families MUST be reunited.

'Auzzies [sic] need the dignity of work and lockdown is the Greatest Hoax in Human History. Do not give up my darlings. Bring Australians home,' she added.

Hopkins often makes posts mocking mask mandates and lockdowns on Instagram since being banned from Twitter in June last year for 'hateful conduct'

Australia's response to Covid-19 has been praised by scientists including top US medic Dr Anthony Fauci, who called the country a world leader on 'containment and management of emerging variants'.

The country, which is geographically isolated and enjoys a low population density, has used border closures and snap lockdowns to reduce community transmission to zero.

Australia has suffered only 914 deaths due to Covid-19, compared with 129,000 in the UK and 608,000 in the US.

Hopkins described her antics as a 'game' but other travellers stuck in hotel quarantine were outraged by her behaviour.

Posting to the Facebook group 'Australians in quarantine facilities' one user wrote: 'This is abhorrent...some people are racing against time with the quarantine trying to get to family members. This is really cruel and sick.'

'Anyone else who has just returned home like me, too ashamed to admit how ashamed I am of my own country right now?' wrote another traveller.

'What has happened to Aussie spirit, our heart, mates looking after mates, the Govt caring about its own people. Has it been lost over the last few years?

'It makes my blood boil that so many fellow Aussies are stranded and cannot get home yet we can waste seats and hotel rooms on actors etc.'

Members of the closed group 'Australians in quarantine facilities' vent their outrage

Questioned: Many travellers in quarantine questioned why Hopkins was allowed to fly into the country while Australians are stranded overseas

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who famously threatened to euthanise Johnny Depps dogs when he sneaked them into Australia in 2015, said Hopkins should be sent home.

He told ABC's Insiders: 'I'm the one who wanted to send home Johnny Depp's dogs home so I have no problem sending home someone who wants to flout our laws.

'If you want to do that, pack your bongos and get out of the country.'

Acting Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Andrew Giles criticised the decision to grant Hopkins a visa in the first place.

'Now that Ms Hopkins is in Australia, she has begun broadcasting from what described as 'VIP Quarantine', and has explained how she is opening up her hotel door naked and without a face mask in a deliberate attempt to breach hotel quarantine rules.' Mr Giles said.

'This is grossly disrespectful to frontline workers who are only trying to keep us safe.'

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said on ABC's Insiders: 'I'm the one who wanted to send home Johnny Depp's dogs home so I have no problem sending home someone who wants to flout our laws'

Hopkins often takes to Instagram to mock lockdowns and mask mandates.

In a video uploaded to the social media platform on Friday, filmed from her hotel quarantine, Ms Hopkins described lockdowns as 'the greatest hoax in history'.

'You are living through the greatest hoax in human history, they are trying to take everything from you, and one of the very best and most powerful weapons we have is a sense of humour, and someone like me is probably a massive thorn in their sides,' she said.

In the bizarre video, she said: 'We've just heard that there's been a new variant, Delta plus, and you have to be very, very afraid of it.

She then lifted up a sanitary towel in the air and added: 'All politicians are about as useful as a tampon on a tranny.'
The owner of popular restaurant chain Rashays is the latest prominent Australian to question the logic behind Australia's never-ending cycle of coronavirus lockdowns and the pursuit of a Covid elimination strategy - saying governments have had 18 months to come up with a better plan.

Long Centrelink queues formed in Sydney on Tuesday as workers applied for relief payments, with nearly 14 million Australians now living under some form of lockdown, prompting radio host Ben Fordham to warn the 'social and economic consequences' were now 'dwarfing' the damage from the virus.

Carrie Bickmore and fellow hosts of The Project also complained that Australia is now in a worse place than when the pandemic first hit 18 months ago, in stark contrast to the rest of the world.

Rashays co-founder Rami Ykmour, who was dramatically arrested in his office while defending staff from police enforcing Covid restrictions earlier this month, told Daily Mail Australia lockdowns were crippling small businesses.

Mr Ykmour called for more transparency regarding a road map out of Covid and more assistance for affected businesses and workers.

But his comments comes as new modelling by health experts warns NSW will likely remain in lockdown until the end of August or even longer.

Mr Ykmour (pictured with his partner) is calling on lawmakers to provide a clearer roadmap out of lockdown for the sake of Australia's mental health

'We all need to support the police and the government in what they are doing during Covid however our leaders need to lead with greater consultation with small business who are the backbone of the community and our country,' he said.

'Lockdown after lockdown is crippling business and has enormous effects on not just the mental health of the workers and mums and dads, but will deliver a knock-on negative effect for our children in the long term.'

One of the major challenges the restaurateur is facing is that his nationwide business has to abide by different lockdown restrictions in different areas.

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Indian Delta variant, while South Australia has brought in tough restrictions and Victoria is also in shutdown.

'We are in three different states, so there are three different rules in place, so it's like we are running three different businesses,' Mr Ykmour told Daily Mail Australia.

'Some allow dine-in others don't, some it's the four persons per sq/m rule, others aren't. So it's a massive challenge.'

The growing backlash against lockdowns comes as Melbourne endures its fifth shut down since the pandemic began (pictured, two women in the city on Tuesday)

Reflecting on this controversial arrest, Mr Ykmour said the ordeal was 'embarrassing' for himself and the business and that he is 100 per cent behind the police and the government

Mr Ykmour said another problem for the crippled hospitality industry is that stay-at-home orders are declared with very little notice for business owners.

'This pandemic did not start yesterday, there has been 18 months to prepare,' he said.

'When restrictions are called, we are not able to adjust our menu and we are left with perishable items that have to go in the bin, and obviously staff have their shifts cut.

'The emergency subsidy payments will help, but there are still major challenges.'

Reflecting on this controversial arrest, Mr Ykmour said the ordeal was 'embarrassing' for himself and the business and that he is 100 per cent behind the police and the government.

Ben Fordham (pictured, right) has lashed out at the NSW government's handling of Sydney's ongoing lockdown, while The Project's Carrie Bickmore (left) complained that Australia is now in a worse place than when the pandemic first began 18 months ago

His comments reflect a wider change in Australians' views towards lockdown as the primary way to handle coronavirus outbreaks.

Meanwhile, a medical expert has warned there's no guarantee NSW will reach its target of zero cases of community transmission.

UNSW epidemiologist Professor Greg Dore told 2GB breakfast radio host Ben Fordham on Wednesday 'it may not be feasible' this time.

'The key is uncertainty, Covid, if anything has shown is that lot of things are uncertain,' he told the program.

'I hope we do get back to zero transmissions but it may not be feasible.'

Professor Dore added that the Delta variant is different and more infectious than the previous Covid strains.

'Once it's very well established in the community and once you've got several hundred cases in the community, it will be tougher,' he said.

'We're getting 30-40 cases a day that haven't been in quarantine and have been in the community infectious.'

'Even though we're under lockdown circumstances, there are opportunities to pass the virus on, so that's concerning in terms of ongoing transmission.'

Professor Dore has urged everyone to get vaccinated and slammed health officials' campaign to undermine AstraZeneca jab, which he described as one of the most baffling public health disasters.

He described the AstraZeneca jab has highly effective.

'Anyone over the age of 18 can have AstraZeneca now,' Professor Dore said.

'A lot of young people have come forward to take up the option of AstraZeneca because the faster we can get population coverage with the vaccine, the sooner we can get out of this.'

'Right now the social and economic consequences of the lockdowns are dwarfing the damage of the virus', Fordham said (pictured, queues for Covid tests in Melbourne on Tuesday)

The Project hosts on Tuesday's program lamented that Australia is now in a worse position than at the same time last year, while the rest of the world is opening up and learning to live with the virus - albeit it with much higher vaccination rates.

Co-host Carrie Bickmore also weighed in and said it was disheartening the pandemic has had such a lasting impact on the country.

Poll Should we accept that Covid is not going away and we need to live with the virus? Yes No Undecided Should we accept that Covid is not going away and we need to live with the virus? Yes 1403 votes

No 1699 votes

Undecided 208 votes Now share your opinion





'If you said this time last year, we'd still be in this situation a year later, I just don't think anyone was imagining it,' she said.

'I'm sure the experts were, but I don't think everyday people were thinking that's how long this was going to go for.'

His comments come after radio host Ben Fordham joined calls for Australia to learn to live with Covid, with nearly 14 million residents in NSW, Victoria and SA now in lockdown.

The 2GB broadcaster slammed NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian on Tuesday morning over her insistence the state would not open up until community transmissions hit zero.

'We are seeing very little change in the daily case numbers. They want us to focus on the number of people who are infectious while in the community. We're not really making a dent on that number,' Fordham said.

'And yet the government reckons that that number needs to be close to zero before we can open up. Come off it. How're we going to get there?

'And at what point do we start showing some courage? Right now the social and economic consequences of the lockdowns are dwarfing the damage of the virus.'

Radio host Ben Fordham joined calls for Australia to learn to live with Covid, with over 14 million residents in NSW, Victoria and SA now in lockdown (pictured, walkers in Melbourne on Tuesday)

Queues stretched down the street at Centrelink offices on Tuesday as out-of-work Australians applied for relief payments (pictured in Darlinghurst)

Sydney is enduring its tightest restrictions since the pandemic began in March last year, with even tradies unable to work.

'Why don't we get fair dinkum and work towards the Premier's goal of learning to live with the virus,' Fordham added.

'We have the harshest restrictions of any state since coronavirus arrived. Kids aren't at school, small businesses are on their knees, if you live in Fairfield, Liverpool or Canterbury, you cannot leave the area for work unless you are an authorised worker,' he said.

'And now more than a quarter of a million construction workers and tradies are out of a job. It's never happened anywhere in Australia. They didn't even do it in Victoria, during their darkest days this cannot go on.'

Sydney is enduring its tightest restrictions since the pandemic began in March last year, with even tradies unable to work (pictured, Auburn in lockdown om Tuesday)

The outbreak of infections that began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16 has now reached 1,418 infections (pictured, Liverpool in Sydney's south-west, the new epicentre of the infections, on Tuesday)

But new modelling from Melbourne University led by epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely suggests it's likely to take at least five more weeks for Sydney's daily case number to drop below five a day, news.com reported.

This means lockdown could last until at least the end of August.

'The Delta variant has been a game changer,' Prof Blakely said.

'It is harder to control and eliminate, and makes policies other than hard lockdown very uncertain and hard to predict.'

He said if NSW had not brought in even harsher lockdown restrictions, it could have taken 27 weeks for infection rates to stabilise.

Melbourne University's modelling also lines up with similar scenarios played out by Burnet Institute and epidemiologist Professor Michael Toole, who estimated that Sydney will not see the end of lockdown until at least August.

Prof Toole said it took six weeks for Victoria to get from 100 cases a day down to zero last year, and that was without the highly infectious Indian Delta variant.

New modelling from Melbourne University led by epidemiologist Professor Tony Blakely suggests it's likely to take at least five more weeks for Sydney's daily case number to drop (pictured, a testing centre in Sydney on Tuesday)

A Barangaroo construction site in Sydney's CBD is seen shut down on Tuesday (pictured) as the industry is brought to its knees

During the Stage Four lockdown in Victoria last year, which lasted 112 days, tradies were able to work throughout with sensible Covid-safe practices in place.

Tradies are unable to work in the Greater Sydney area but are also unable to travel into regional New South Wales.

One Sydney construction boss who had to stand down 200 building site workers under strict new rules revealed on Tuesday he was visited by police over unfounded fears he was trying to incite a riot.

Peter Khayat, from Sydney's south, made a series of Facebook posts on Monday saying: 'Am I the only one thinking it's time we fought for our basic human rights?'

In a series of Facebook posts on Saturday, Peter Khayat (pictured with his wife Sarah) from Kogarah in Sydney's south, appeared to call for an uprising against the government over the lockdown

Police have turned up on the doorstep of a Sydney construction site boss over fears he was trying to incite a coup over the latest lockdown restrictions (pictured above)

'How the f**k are we not storming government buildings [not] just doing as they say?'

He also made posts supporting anti-lockdown protests which have broken out in Bankstown, in Sydney's south-west, since the area was put under tighter restrictions last week.

In a series of Facebook posts he appeared to call for an uprising against the government over the lockdown.

'Time to riot... freedom is not free. The time now is now brother,' Mr Khayat posted on Facebook.

'Bankstown the lebos are in full riot. Freedom is not free!''

Shortly after the posts, a convoy of trucks caused havoc on the Anzac Bridge on Saturday (pictured above) afternoon with similar scenes at the Harbour Bridge.

Shortly after the posts, a convoy of trucks caused havoc on the Anzac Bridge on Saturday afternoon with similar scenes also seen at the Harbour Bridge.

A few hours later, Mr Khayat opened the door of his home to three NSW Police officers after they received a tip-off about his posts.

In a series of video clips Mr Khayat published on his TikTok, police said they were told about his comments and were doing their 'due diligence'.

But Mr Khayat insisted: 'You just wanted to make sure I wasn't going to storm the government buildings? I don't even know where the government buildings are...'

Daily Mail Australia contacted NSW Police. Mr Khayat declined to comment.

In a series of video clips Mr Khayat published on his TikTok account (pictured), police say they had been told about his comments and were doing their 'due diligence'

A series of Facebook posts apparently called for a coup against the government (pictured) which sparked the police visit to Peter Khayat's home

NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight on Tuesday, but 27 were still out in the community while infectious - a number being used by health officials to determine whether lockdown can be eased.

Premier Berejiklian warned residents in the hotspot Liverpool, Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield local government areas they could be carrying the virus even if they have no symptoms.

She said more than two-thirds of the state's new cases were still being found in those three regions.

Officials also confirmed a woman in her 50s had died from Covid-19 in Sydney's south-west; she is the mother of two removalists who travelled to regional NSW while infected with the virus.

NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight - but 27 were still out in the community while infectious, a number which Gladys Berejiklian (pictured) says holds the key to ending lockdown

Of the 49 linked cases, 45 are household contacts and 4 are close contacts.

The 78 positive results in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night came from 62,860 tests. NSW Health said 29 of the new infections have yet to be linked to known cases.

The outbreak of infections that began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16 has now reached 1,418 infections.

'If you are living in a community that has a lot of cases, even if you don't have symptoms, don't assume you don't have the virus,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'In communities where the virus is lurking, where the virus is circulating, you could have the virus, not know it and unfortunately take it home and give it to your loved ones.'

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Anti-lockdown tensions are continuing to rise, particular in Sydney's south-west, the new epicentre of Sydney's outbreak.

Demonstrators over the weekend even clashed with police resulting in four men being arrested.

Premier Berejiklian tightened lockdown rules in the councils of Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury on Saturday due to disproportionately high case numbers of the highly infectious Indian Delta variant in those areas.

But the rise in cases didn't stop about 40 furious residents from taking to the streets claiming the south-west was 'unfairly targeted' by the strengthened rules.

Protesters directed their anger at Ms Berejiklian chanting 'Freedom, Freedom', 'No to the vaccine', and 'f**k off Gladys' as they marched through Paul Keating Park at about 5pm on Sunday.

Fiery photos show men, women and teenagers marching with a mega phone, and mostly without face masks, coming up against police who tried continually to quell the demonstration.

Pictured: Police trying to reason with a protester in Bankstown at an anti-lockdown protest on Sunday afternoon
Perth has smashed its 20-year rain record for July with more wet weather on the way while Australia's south-east shivers through even more hazardous wind conditions over the coming days.

The Western Australian capital city has copped 184.2mm of rain so far this month after 18 straight days of downpour - eclipsing the previous record of 182.6mm in 2001.

The city is expected to be drenched with up to 200mm this month in total, with more than a week still to go of July.

Meanwhile, a cold front is sweeping across the south-east with hazardous wind conditions to hit New South Wales on Wednesday while Victoria and Tasmania will see icy cold temperatures and even hail.

Temperatures are expected to fall below 0C on Thursday morning for parts of central NSW, Victoria and even in Queensland, according to the BoM

Perth has smashed its 20-year rain record for July with more wet weather on the way while Australia's south-east is set to shiver through hazardous wind conditions over the coming days (pictured flooding in Perth earlier this month)

Weatherzone meteorologist Craig McIntosh told Daily Mail Australia the rain in WA would ease up over the next few days but would return with the next front on Friday.

'There's been quite a lot of rain in Perth so flooding is possible overnight but there's a low chance,' he said.

Earlier this month some streets in Perth and southern parts of WA were submerged in water as floods swept through.

A home in the coastal town of Eagle Bay, 256km south of Perth, had its entire roof torn off by what locals described as a 'tornado'.

Others cars were seen almost completely submerged in shopping centre car parks while there were nearly 700 homes without power in suburbs including Lower Chittering, Koondoola and Belmont.

There were more than 100 calls for help and some residents had to be rescued from their cars that were slowly becoming trapped underwater.

Meanwhile over in Australia's south-east, South Australia, Victoria, Tasmania and NSW are facing a freezing cold and windy week ahead.

Australia is in for an icy cold week with the south-east to see damaging winds and very low temperatures (pictured, the forecast for Wednesday)

Earlier this month some streets in Perth and southern parts of WA were submerged in water as floods swept through

There were more than 100 calls for help during flooding earlier this month in WA and some residents had to be rescued from their cars that were slowly becoming trapped underwater

'The strongest winds will be on the New South Wales coast early tomorrow morning and into the afternoon,' Mr McIntosh said.

'These winds will be whipping up some big seas with severe weather warnings in place.'

Warnings for damaging surf conditions have been put in place for parts of NSW while Sydney is set to have a minimum of just 4C on Thursday.

Temperatures in the capital city will reach tops of 15C on Wednesday and 17C in the days to follow.

The Bureau of Meteorology's Dean Narramore said Victoria will see similar weather with hail and snow forecast.

'The front is currently racing across Victoria and Tasmania with a band of rain and cold winds,' he said.

Perth residents are seen trying to make it through floodwaters earlier this month

A family are seen walking through floodwaters in Perth earlier this month

'Much colder temperatures will follow the front with small hail, thunderstorms and snow to low levels.

'This will move across NSW later on Tuesday into Wednesday with showers, damaging winds and snow possible along much of the NSW ranges.'

The forecaster said snow will fall down to 500m in Tasmania, 600m in Victoria and 800m in NSW's central tablelands.

Temperatures are expected to fall below 0C on Thursday morning for parts of central NSW, Victoria and even in Queensland, according to the BoM.

Pictured is a home in Eagle Bay, WA that lost its roof during torrential rain in July

Melbourne will see showers in the next few days with maximum temperatures lingering around the early teens.

Brisbane will also cop the cold weather with a minimum of just 5C forecast for Thursday and 9C on Friday.

Adelaide will also have chilly weather with thunderstorms expected for Thursday and temperatures hanging around 13C in the coming days.

Temperatures will stay at a maximum of 13C in the Tasmanian capital with some showers also expected for Hobart.

Canberra will be the coldest with -4C forecast as the minimum on Thursday with the city reaching tops of 11C on Wednesday and Thursday.

As always the Top End will escape the miserable weather and see sunny days reaching 30C and higher over the next week.
The 'pingdemic' is now set to ruin staycations for thousands of families just 48 hours before the school holidays start, a holiday lettings boss warned today  as one in five parents said they would be prepared to take their children out of the classroom to avoid ruining summer

Kate Allen, owner of the luxury holiday lettings business Salcombe Finest, warned that with coastal hospitality businesses making up to 80% of their annual turnover in the next six week, failing to abolish the app would be a death blow to the industry.

Hospitality businesses are being hammered both by a shortage of staff caused by them getting pinged by the NHS Covid app or contacted by Test & Trace, as well as cancellations from customers.

It comes as increasing numbers of parents are planning to pull their children out of school early to reduce the risk of having to cancel their plans, with 20% not not ruling out removing their children from school before the school break to ensure they did not catch Covid or be asked to self-isolate.

Kate Allen, owner of the luxury holiday lettings business Salcombe Finest, warned that the 'pingdemic' risks ruining staycations. Pictured is a street in Salcombe

It comes as increasing numbers of parents are planning to pull their children out of school early to reduce the risk of having to cancel their summer holidays

Headteachers have urged parents to ensure their children still attend if they are not ill or self-isolating despite accepting holidays were important after a 'torrid year'.

Ms Allen - whose business operates a range of luxury holiday homes in Salcombe - described the effects of widespread isolation demands from the NHS Covid app as 'frankly ludicrous'.

'It's no surprise the app is being deleted in the hospitality industry faster than a U2 album on iTunes,' she said.

Hospitality businesses are being hammered both by a shortage of staff caused by them getting pinged by the NHS Covid app

'Coastal hospitality businesses make between 70% and 80% of their annual turnover in the next six weeks during the school holidays. If the app isn't abolished right now, our window of opportunity will be gone.'

Dozens of businesses have already been hit by the pingdemic, including the Golden Gate holiday centre in Towyn, Conwy, which has been forced to shut its clubhouse due to a lack of staff.

Mark Cribb, owner of the Urban Reef restaurant and bar in Bournemouth, is losing thousands of pounds by having to close his venue early during the height of holiday season, and was forced to close one of his other venues entirely.

'In one of our restaurants last week we had over 100 people booked in on a Monday but one of our chefs got pinged so we had to phone all of them to cancel,' he told Channel 4 News.

'Usually on a lovely evening we'd take thousands of pounds but on a Monday and Tuesday night at the moment we have had to close because of the lack of staff.'

Meanwhile, the organisers of Norfolk's popular Houghton Festival have been forced to call off the event this year.

The Clubhouse at the Golden Gate holiday centre in Towyn, Conwy said on social media that its clubhouse would have to shut after several staff were contacted by NHS Test & Trace

They said in a statement reported by EDP24: 'The track and trace system supposedly set up to protect us, presents an extraordinary challenge to our workforce.

'It has the ability to reduce or remove a substantial amount of the workforce at any point with a simple ping.'

An estimated 1.7million people across the country are currently self-isolating after being 'pinged' by the app or contacted by NHS Test and Trace. It is only a legal requirement to isolate if you are contacted, and not if you are pinged.

The survey app Parent Ping asked its users if they would consider taking their children out of school early to avoid being asked to self-isolate by the Covid app or contacted by NHS Test & Trace.

The app, which surveys thousands of parents each day, found 20% would not not ruling out removing their children from school before the summer break to ensure they did not catch Covid or be asked to self-isolate.

Some 1% of parents said they would 'definitely' take their children out of school early, 5% said 'maybe' and 15% said they probably would not do so but weren't sure.

Mark Cribb, owner of the Urban Reef restaurant and bar in Bournemouth, (pictured) is losing thousands of pounds by having to close his venue early during the height of holiday season, and was forced to close one of his other venues entirely

Meanwhile, the organisers of Norfolk's popular Houghton Festival have been forced to call off the event this year

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, described the situation as a 'grim end to a highly-disrupted academic year'.

Mr Barton told MailOnline: 'We are concerned about parents keeping children at home over the last days of the summer term to avoid the risk of them being asked to self-isolate and this interfering with family holidays.

'We are not casting blame on parents because we understand the importance of holidays after such a torrid year but we would encourage attendance where children are not ill or self-isolating.

Number of children being home-educated in UK 'rises by 75%' The number of children registering for home education in the UK rose by 75% in the first eight months of this school year, according to an investigation by the BBC. The broadcaster received Freedom of Information (FoI) responses from 153 of the 205 county councils and unitary authorities in Great Britain, and all of Northern Ireland, which submitted results as a whole. It found that in north-west England - an area badly hit by Covid cases during the pandemic - numbers were 92% up on the previous two-year average. Increasing numbers of families have switched to home-educating their children full-time amid the pandemic, removing them from the school register and notifying the local council, the BBC found. More than 40,000 pupils were formally taken out of school in the UK between September 2020 - when schools fully reopened - and April 2021, compared with an average of 23,000 over the previous two years, the figures suggest. Some parents and councils - including in former hotspot Bolton - told the BBC the increase is down to 'Covid anxiety'. In December, an Ofsted report found the number of children being home-schooled had risen during the current school year. Almost three-fifths of schools told inspectors they had at least one pupil whose parents had removed them from school to be home-educated since the start of the autumn term. School leaders said some parents have told them they only want to home-educate temporarily and that their children would return once 'the pandemic is over'. In October, the watchdog suggested anxiety among parents about Covid-19 had driven the increase. Ofsted found that misinformation and myths - often from social media - about the different approaches taken to prevent transmission of the virus had been causing confusion and parental anxiety. There was a 75.6 per cent rise in home education between September 2020 and April 2021, compared with the averages for the same school terms over the previous two school years, the BBC figures suggest. Every nation and region of the UK saw at least a 50 per cent rise, based on the councils that responded. For some, the rate was much higher. The figures from 153 councils do not account for children taken off the register after the end of April 2021, or who have since returned to the classroom. Advertisement

'Schools are currently coping with very significant levels of pupil absence not only for Covid-related reasons but more generally. We are also hearing of more schools having to close because of spiralling Covid rates.

'It is a grim end to a highly-disrupted academic year, and it is essential that the government better supports schools and colleges in the autumn term to minimise further educational disruption.'

Business leaders and MPs have piled pressure on Prime Minister Boris Johnson to end the 'pingdemic' farce bringing Britain to its knees.

They spoke out as he had to perform a humiliating U-turn and self-isolate following contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who has tested positive for Covid.

Justine Roberts, the founder and chief executive of Mumsnet, told MailOnline: 'If the Mumsnet forums are any guide, the self-isolation system is creaking at best, with many taking their children out of school early and others saying they will press on with desperately-needed holidays in the UK even if their child gets a notification to isolate.

'To quote one user, 'Nobody is isolating because of school or nursery contacts around here, and nobody is chasing them up.'

'Meantime others - particularly pregnant women or those with clinically vulnerable family members - are aghast at how quickly the system appears to be breaking down.'

From this week, key NHS workers have been exempted from the quarantine rule to help avoid hospitals cancelling operations because of staff shortages.

Last month BBC News reported that a father had removed his son from Queen Elizabeth High School in Hexham, Northumberland, to avoid him having to self-isolate if a classmate got Covid-19.

It comes as Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary revealed he would turn the NHS Covid app off because it is 'complete rubbish'.

The chief executive of the Dublin-based airline group said the app is creating too much 'caution'.

Mr Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak had announced yesterday they would take part in a pilot scheme to avoid quarantine.

This sparked accusations of 'one rule for them and another rule for everybody else'. The backlash saw Downing Street carry out a U-turn inside only three hours.

Mike Cherry of the Federation of Small Businesses questioned why a system to avoid self-isolation was open to politicians.

'Small firms have been struggling to get across mixed messaging regarding the reopening for weeks now, and this is no different,' he said.

'Thousands of small businesses will now be left wondering why the testing pilot is only open to those at the top of government and a handful of big corporates and organisations but not them.'

The CBI said there was an urgent need 'to allow double-jabbed individuals not to self-isolate if they have been informed by NHS Test and Trace that they have come into contact with a Covid-positive individual'.

The British Retail Consortium called for pinged store staff to be able to continue to work if they had a negative test result.

James Bielby, of the Federation of Wholesale Distributors, said: 'Food supply chain workers are key workers and, unlike Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak, their workplace doesn't close down for the summer.

'They're needed not only to keep shelves and storerooms stocked, but also to drive the economic recovery of the hospitality sector which the Prime Minister and Chancellor are depending on.'

Former prime minister Tony Blair said the self-isolation system was 'not rational'. Its chaotic results have led to hospitals postponing operations, factories cancelling shifts, disruption to rail services and fears of food shortages.
China has denied being responsible for a massive hack of Microsoft servers after it was accused in a rare joint statement by the US, UK, EU, Australia, NATO and others.

Chinese diplomats branded the allegation 'groundless and irresponsible' on Tuesday while dubbing Washington 'the world champion of malicious cyber attacks'.

America made the allegations after a hack of Microsoft Exchange servers in January that affected some 30,000 organisations worldwide including defence contractors and think-tanks.

Joe Biden compared the hack to attacks emanating from Russia, saying that Beijing may not be directly responsible but is protecting those who are.

He added that US intelligence is carrying out an investigation into the hack, which affected at least 30,000 businesses, and may take action once it is completed.

China has denied being responsible for a massive hack of Microsoft servers earlier this year that affected at least 30,000 organisations worldwide (file image)

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the attack on Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, was part of a 'pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security.'

China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, 'has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain,' Blinken said in a statement.

In a simultaneous announcement, the US Department of Justice said four Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking the computers of dozens of companies, universities and government bodies between 2011 and 2018.

The statement also singled out a hack of Microsoft Exchange servers that began in January this year and affected at least 30,000 organisations worldwide.

A group known as Hafnium is believed to have identified a weakness in the servers in January, and begun inserting 'backdoors' into systems using them which they could return to later, the BBC reported.

The operation targeted defence contractors, think tanks and universities, and appears to have initially been aimed at surveilliance and covert data-gathering.

But in February the operation massively expanded into a 'smash and grab' raid on the servers after several other hacking groups piled in.

It is thought Hafnium became aware that Microsoft had identified the vulnerability they were exploiting and planned to close it, prompting them to share its existence and causing the pile-on.

Joe Biden said China (President Xi Jinping, right) may not be directly responsible for the hacks but, like Russia, is harbouring those who are carrying them out

Pointing to the indictment, Blinken said the United States 'will impose consequences on (Chinese) malicious cyber actors for their irresponsible behavior in cyberspace.'

In a step the Biden administration hailed as unprecedented, the United States coordinated its statement Monday with allies - the European Union, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO.

The Chinese embassy in New Zealand issued a swift rebuttal of the 'totally groundless and irresponsible' allegations.

It was backed up by the embassy in Australia, as China took a coordinated stance of its own, accusing Canberra of 'parroting the rhetoric of the US.'

'It is well known that the US has engaged in unscrupulous, massive and indiscriminate eavesdropping on many countries including its allies,' the embassy said in a statement.

'It is the world champion of malicious cyber attacks.'

Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, has ramped up pressure on China, seeing the rising Asian power's increasingly assertive moves at home and abroad as the main long-term threat to the United States.

Allies backed up the castigation of China with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab describing the cyberattack as 'reckless.'

NATO offered 'solidarity' over the Microsoft hacking without directly assigning blame, while noting that allies United States, Britain and Canada found China to be responsible.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was the first time NATO - the military alliance whose members include Hungary and Turkey, which have comparatively cordial relations with Beijing - has condemned cyber activity from China.

The Microsoft hack was carried out by the Hafnium group which used a vulnerability in servers to spy on organisations, before a mass pile-on when details of the 'back door' were shared

It comes weeks after NATO took up China at a summit attended by Biden.

'We know we'll be stronger, we know we'll be more effective when we act collectively,' Price said, saying the United States was not ruling out further action.

Biden has promised a strategy driven by alliances to face Beijing, drawing a contrast with Trump's predilection for harsh rhetoric.

Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn University's McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, praised the 'breadth and depth of international cooperation' in clearly attributing responsibility to China.

'In addition to the indictments, we need to follow through to ensure there are consequences to induce changes in the Chinese government's behavior and hopefully move toward leveling the cyber playing field,' he said.

The Microsoft hack, which exploited flaws in the Microsoft Exchange service, affected at least 30,000 US organizations including local governments as well as organizations worldwide.

'Responsible states do not indiscriminately compromise global network security nor knowingly harbor cyber criminals - let alone sponsor or collaborate with them,' Blinken said in his statement.

'These contract hackers cost governments and businesses billions of dollars in stolen intellectual property, ransom payments, and cybersecurity mitigation efforts, all while the MSS had them on its payroll.'

Accusations of cyberattacks against the United States have recently focused on Russia, rather than China.

US officials say that many of the attacks originate in Russia, although they have debated to what extent there is state involvement. Russia denies responsibility.

This year has seen a slew of prominent ransomware strikes that have disrupted a major US pipeline, a meat processor and the software firm Kaseya, which affected 1,500 businesses.

Last week, Washington offered $10 million for information about foreign online extortionists.
A devastated dog owner has shared a warning after her beloved French Bulldog was found 'limp and unresponsive' after suffering heat stroke following a short walk.

Laura Kyle, 32, had taken her French Bulldog 'Betty' for a quick lunchtime walk in Livingston last week.

The West Lothian town enjoyed a prolonged period of summer sun last week, with Scots basking in 68F (20C) heat on Thursday.

Beautician Laura had left Betty with a bowl of water after the walk, but was left heartbroken hours later after discovering the pooch was 'limp and unresponsive'.

She rushed her to her local vets and was told that Betty was suffering from heat stroke and her brain had been 'badly damaged' reports Daily Record.

Betty was put to sleep later that afternoon.

A crushed Laura has now shared her story in the hopes of raising awareness of the dangers of taking dogs outside during the warm weather season.

Laura Kyle, 32, had taken her French Bulldog 'Betty' for a lunchtime walk in Livingston last week, but was left horrified after finding her pooch 'limp and unresponsive' later that day

Beautician Laura had taken 'Betty' for a short lunchtime walk in Livingston when temperatures had hit around 20C in the West Lothian town on Thursday, July 15.

She said there had been 'no warning signs' of her dog's ill health - with Betty hopping out of the car as normal after the short stroll.

She gave her pet a bowl of water and left the house, but was shocked to discover the pooch was 'limp and unresponsive' when she returned.

After putting a wet towel around Betty in an attempt to cool her off, beauty worker Laura phoned the vets who told her to come in immediately.

'It was heartbreaking,' Laura explains.

'I loved her with all my heart, and never thought that taking her for a walk would lead to this.'

The beautician has now shared her story in the hopes of raising awareness of the dangers of taking dogs outside during the warm weather season

The vets put Betty on a drip as they desperately tried to save her, but their efforts were in vain and she was tragically put to sleep later that day.

Laura told the Daily Record of her close relationship with Betty, a rescue dog she started owning less than three years ago.

She said: 'I was so close to her, I loved my dog so much, my dogs are the only things that keep me going.

'It's just absolutely gutting. It's totally scarred me for life, she was such an amazing wee dog with so much love to give and she will be very sadly missed.

'I've had her for about two and a half years, and she had a few owners before me and I don't understand why because she was amazing.'

Across the country, the Met Office issued its first ever extreme heat warning as parts of the UK are set to swelter in 91.4F temperatures until Thursday.

Public Health England (PHE) also issued a heat-health alert, warning members of the public to take measures to stay cool and look out for vulnerable people.

It is the first time the warning has been issued since the Met Office said last month that it would launch weather warnings for extreme heat after a record-breaking number of heatwave deaths were recorded in England last summer.

Temperatures are expected to reach 91.4F in some western areas later this week, with mid to high 80s expected elsewhere.

Extreme heat can have health consequences, especially for those who are particularly vulnerable, and it can impact infrastructure, including transport and energy, as well as the wider business community.
The governments long-awaited social care plan faces being delayed until the Autumn amid a backlash at claims Boris Johnson will fund the costs by hiking national insurance.

The PM and Rishi Sunak are finally believed to have thrashed out a deal on the provision that would see costs capped, meaning fewer people will have to sell their homes.

However, the package could mean NI being increased by a penny in the pound for employers and employees to raise around 10billion a year.

Economists complained that such a levy would be the least fair option for funding the long-awaited move, as it hits people on low incomes, and is paid by those of working age but not pensioners.

Bringing it in before 2024 could also breach the Tories' manifesto commitment not to raise income tax or national insurance in this parliament.

Asked at a press briefing last night if the tax lock remained in place, the Prime Minister sidestepped the question, saying the problem of social care had 'bedevilled governments for at least three decades'.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are finally believed to have thrashed out a deal on the provision that would see costs capped, meaning fewer people will have to sell their homes

'All I can say is we've waited three decades, you're just going to have to wait a little bit longer,' he added. 'I'm sorry about that, but it won't be too long now, I assure you.'

It had been hoped that Mr Johnson would be in a position to outline his long-awaited social care reforms for England this week, before the second anniversary of him making his promise to address the issue on the steps of Downing Street in 2019.

But he and the Chancellor have had to self-isolate after Health Secretary Sajid Javid tested positive for Covid, with the plan now expected to be delayed until the Autumn.

Mr Johnson is in favour of a lifetime cap on the amount individuals have to contribute towards their care costs, set at around 50,000.

The Treasury said it is 'committed to bringing forward a long-term plan to reform the social care system and we will set out proposals in due course'.

Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, told The Times: 'Funding social care just from national insurance would be very inequitable.

'It would be a continuation of a long-term policy of hitting those of working age while protecting pensioners even for something designed to benefit people well over pension age. It's a question of fairness.'

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation think tank, said: 'Tax rises will be needed to deliver decent social care, but a national insurance rise is a terrible way to raise the funds required.'

John O'Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said: 'Funding social care requires a more sustainable solution than simply whacking up taxes on working people and businesses.

'What's more, when politicians earmark tax proceeds for specific items of spending, it is usually smoke and mirrors. National insurance itself is little more than just another income tax, with receipts used for day-to-day spending and quite often wasted.'

Former Cabinet minister Jeremy Hunt has proposed a 'health and social care levy' of one per cent of incomes to help fix the care system in England.

The proposal from the former health secretary came as Boris Johnson failed to rule out the prospect of tax rises to pay for his long-awaited social care plan.

Mr Hunt said his idea  which would raise 6billion a year  could also help tackle the backlog of NHS treatments caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

He said the new premium would assist in fixing the care system without breaking Tory manifesto pledges not to raise income tax or national insurance.

'The attraction of a health and social care levy is it would fund the NHS backlog in the short term and desperately needed improvements in the social care system in the medium and longer term,' he wrote on Twitter.

Damian Green, Theresa May's former deputy, has warned a 50,000 cap on costs would benefit families with expensive homes in the South because they would not have to spend as great a proportion of their wealth.

Mr Green suggested a cap set at 30 per cent of a person's assets  ensuring those with larger homes pay more before the state steps in.
Speed limits will be reduced to 60mph on at least eight sections of the motorway across England in an effort to lower harmful levels of pollution.

Highways England has identified 30 areas across the country where levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) exceed the legal limit of 40 micrograms (g) per cubic metre.

In its report, the government-owned company confirmed at least eight of these identified areas will now see the speed limit reduced from 70mph to 60mph, with the new measures remaining in place for the 'foreseeable future'.

The move comes just a year after a trial project, introduced by Highways England, was implemented across four areas of the UK in order to assess the impact of slower moving traffic on roadside air quality.

Among the areas to see the new 60mph speed limit are the M1 from junctions 34 to 33 near Rotherham, the M6 near junctions 6 to 7 in Witton and the M602 near junctions 1 to 3 in Eccles.

Speed limits will be reduced from 70mph to 60mph on at least eight sections of the motorway across England

Highways England identified the areas in an effort to lower harmful levels nitrogen dioxide (NO2). Pictured: Traffic along the M6

The M4 in Harlington from junctions 2 to 4, the A1 in Blaydon Gateshead, the M621 at junctions 6 to 7 in Leeds and the M32 from junctions 1 to 3 have also seen a reduced speed.

The M5 from junctions 1 to 2 in Oldbury is also set to see a 60mph speed limit.

In their findings, Highways England found that a section of the A3 near Guilford had nitrogen dioxide that were double the legal limit while the A34 west of Oxford registered levels of 69 g per cubic metre in 2020.

They have proposed a 9.3 metre high barrier to be implemented on the A3 in an effort to tackle the levels of pollution.

As part of its plans, Highways England is also set to create diversion routes for HGVs on two sections of the A500 to junction 15 of the M6 during off-peak hours.

Mike Wilson, Highways England's chief highways engineer, said: 'We are committed to supporting Government to improve air quality alongside and near England's motorways and major A-roads.

'Air quality is within legal limits across the vast majority of our road network, and the picture is improving.

'We've already taken steps such as reducing speed limits and working with local authorities to fund 'try before you buy' schemes to encourages businesses to switch to electric vehicles.

'There are a number of locations where we have so far been unable to identify any measures that provide a viable measure which is available to us to implement.

'We will work with the local authorities in each area to identify solutions that we can deliver together, and we continue to work with Government to explore potential options.

'The long-term answer is to move to cleaner, low and zero emission vehicles, and we are working hard to find and develop innovative solutions as set out in our air quality strategy and net zero carbon plan.'

Drivers will be faced with a 100 fine and three penalty points if they breach the new rules.

Nearly 40,000 premature deaths every year are linked to poor air quality and the government are now hoping to tackle this by targeting nitrogen dioxide emissions from cars.

Research has found that a reduced limit indicated an average of 17 per cent drop in air pollutants

Initial assessments of the new reduced limit indicate an average of 17 per cent drop in air pollutants.

Last year head of environment at Highways England, Ivan Le Fevre, told The Times: 'Ultimately the air-quality challenge will be solved 'at the tailpipe' by vehicle manufacturers and changes in vehicle use.

What is an Electric Road System? The most mature and cost-effective technology for an electric road system is the overhead catenary system. The overhead cables are a mature and safe technology that consist of a supporting structure built outside the road boundary that holds two catenary cable systems. These wires supply the positive and negative electrical circuit that is picked up through a pantograph collector on the roof of the HGV. The HGV is free to leave the wires to overtake or complete its journey away from the catenary using a separate on-board battery (approximately the size of an electric car battery), providing zero tailpipe emissions at all times. The overhead cables, which are often used on trains, supply the positive and negative electrical circuit that is picked up through a pantograph collector sitting on the roof of the HGV. The electricity transmitted along the active pantograph would power the lorry's electric motor and recharge an onboard electric battery, enabling the vehicles to travel to destinations outside of their electric zones. The pantograph can be easily connected to and disconnected from the contact wire either automatically or manually at the push of a button. The HGV vehicle can then move away from the wires to overtake or complete its journey. Source: The Centre For Sustainable Road Freight Advertisement

'Until this happens we will continue our programme of research and solutions.

The latest move comes after cabinet ministers announced radical plans to fit UK motorways with overhead electric wires that power e-Trucks and charge them on the move.

The initiative is part of ambitious plans to cut carbon emissions by banning the sale of diesel-powered HGVs in the country by 2040.

The creation of new so-called e-highways are among Prime Minister Boris Johnson's sweeping proposals to 'decarbonise' transport and homes as the Government seeks to show off its green credentials ahead of the UN COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow in November.

This month ministers said every new road vehicle sold must be a zero-emission model, with new motorobikes and smaller truckers weighing up to 26 tonnes required to be powered by zero-emission technology by 2035.

The largest HGVs will have to make the conversion five years later.

The scheme is similar to an ongoing trial in Germany, where overhead cables have been erected over a six-mile stretch of motorway.

A connector on the top of the vehicle attaches to the powerlines which supply it with electricity used to drive the engine and slowly charge the battery.

The Department for Transport is set to invest 20million in trial schemes to accelerate the transition.

However, it has not yet released its paper, meaning it is unclear if its trial is for full electric or hybrid HGVs, where it would take place, over how many miles, and if it would be just over the slow lane.

In a statement, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said: 'Transport is not just how you get around. It is something that fundamentally shapes our towns, cities and countryside, our living standards and our health. It can shape all those things for good or for bad.

'Decarbonisation is not just some technocratic process. It's about how we make sure that transport shapes quality of life and the economy in ways that are good.

'It's not about stopping people doing things: it's about doing the same things differently. We will still fly on holiday, but in more efficient aircraft, using sustainable fuel. We will still drive, but increasingly in zero emission cars.

'The Transport decarbonisation plan is just the start - we will need continued efforts and collaboration to deliver its ambitious commitments, which will ultimately create sustainable economic growth through healthier communities as we build back greener.'

Last month, smart traffic lights were also given the green lights after they were found to reduce vehicle emissions by a quarter by eliminating unnecessary stops.

Cabinet ministers announced plans to fit UK motorways with overhead electric wires that power e-Trucks and charge them

The technology was used by Highways England over a four-month period on two motorways near Greater Manchester and could now be rolled out across the country.

Tests involved two different vehicles  a van and a heavy goods vehicle (HGV)  which made some 400 trips in total to assess their emissions impact both with and without the smart technology.

The lights work by communicating with a dashboard-mounted display  much like a satnav  which then displays the speed needed to safely beat the light change.

The smart lights are capable of relaying information to appropriately-equipped cars from a distance of up to around two-thirds of a mile.
But he later tweeted the figure applied to the unvaccinated people

He originally said 60 per cent of people going to hospital were doubled jabbed

More than half of Brits being admitted to hospital with Covid are still unvaccinated, the Government's chief scientific adviser has clarified.

Sir Patrick Vallance last night told a Downing St press conference marking 'Freedom Day' that 60 per cent of hospitalisations were patients who had received both jabs.

But he later tweeted to reveal he had misspoken and that the 60 per cent figure actually applied to unvaccinated people.

Sir Patrick did, however, warn that the trend will soon flip because most people will soon be fully vaccinated and the jabs are not 100 per cent effective.

Vaccines have already saved tens of thousands of British lives since the third wave began, drastically slashing the proportion of infected patients who are left seriously ill. But none of the jabs are perfect, and admissions will continue to track upwards in line with infections.

Sir Patrick Vallance tweeted to clarify 60 per cent of hospital admissions are among unvaccinated people, rather than vaccinated

While hospitalisations are trending upwards across the UK, the rate at which the number is increasing is slowing. Week on week data in the three weeks leading up to July 13 showed the rate hospitalisations were increasing at dropped from 52.9 per cent, to 36 per cent and then 30.4 per cent

The number of Covid patients requiring NHS treatment reached 740 a day last week  up 30.4 per cent compared to seven days earlier.

Analysts tracking the health service's battle say the current figures suggest the third wave is already outpacing some of SAGE's worst-case scenarios.

Now children as young as two could get the Covid vaccine Every child in the UK could be offered a Covid jab by the end of the year, vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi suggested today. No10 is set to unveil plans to immunise Britons aged 12 to 16 who have underlying health conditions or live with a vulnerable family member. The plans will also see 17-year-olds who are months away from their 18th birthdays offered a vaccine. But ministers will stop short of opening the rollout up to all healthy youngsters until more safety data is collected in places like the US, where it is already happening. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation  which advises No10 on the inoculation drive  will also review data from ongoing trials of Pfizer's jab in children as young as two. Mr Zahawi said the Government had niggling concerns about the 'very rare' cases of heart inflammation in some young people given the Pfizer and Moderna jabs. It comes as all Covid restrictions are lifted in England today, though Boris Johnson has urged caution as the outbreak across the country is spurred on by the more contagious Indian 'Delta' variant. He will be spending Freedom Day in isolation  along with Chancellor Rishi Sunak  because they were both identified as close contacts of Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who tested positive for the virus at the weekend. Advertisement

No10's top advisers believe daily Covid hospitalisations will breach 1,000 within weeks, as infections continue to rise.

Sir Patrick made the incorrect claim while appearing at the news briefing alongside a self-isolating Boris Johnson and Professor Chris Whitty.

He said: 'In terms of the number of people in hospital who have been double vaccinated, we know its around 60 per cent of the people being admitted to hospital with Covid have been double vaccinated.

'And that's not surprising because the vaccines are not 100 per cent effective. They are very, very effective but not 100 per cent.'

He later tweeted: 'Correcting a statistic I gave at the press conference today, 19 July.

'About 60 per cent of hospitalisations from Covid are not from double-vaccinated people, rather 60 per cent of hospitalisations from Covid are currently from unvaccinated people.'

But he warned the proportion of unvaccinated people seeking hospital treatment for Covid will definitely rise.

Sir Patrick said: 'If everybody over 18 had taken up the vaccine, then of course anyone who caught it would be double vaccinated.

'So the answer is we should expect to see a higher proportion of people in hospital and catching the infection who are double vaccinated.

'That is inevitable that we will see that because of the less than 100 per cent efficacy of the vaccines overall.'

Leading scientists estimate two doses of AstraZeneca's jab are around 85 per cent effective at preventing infected people from being hospitalised.

Jabs made by Pfizer and Moderna are similarly effective, trials show.

But the three vaccines are slightly less powerful after just a single dose.

All British adults have now been offered a first dose.

And figures show the number of people going to hospital is significantly lower than it was earlier in the pandemic.

The UK recorded nearly 40,000 cases yesterday, while 742 people were admitted to hospital.

When cases rose to 40,000 during the second peak in December, around 2,400 people were admitted to hospital, showing that the vaccine rollout is weakening the link between positive cases and hospitalisations.

Infections are currently running at about 45,000 a day (yellow line shows cases increasing since May) but deaths are still flat at about 40 a day (pink line shows fatalities in the third wave). For comparison, the last time cases hit this level when the second wave began to spiral out of control (orange line) there were more than 600 daily deaths
A leading marine biologist has said an orca calf who was miraculously saved by teenagers after being abandoned by his mum may have to be euthanised if he is not accepted into his old pod.

The calf, named Toa meaning brave or strong in Maori, was been under the care of staff and volunteers from the Department of Conservation for nearly a week.

Toa was separated from his mother and found beached in a rockpool by two teenagers in Plimmerton in north Wellington, New Zealand, on July 11.

Massey University marine biologist Karen Stockin has said she holds concerns for the calf due to his inability to learn 'critical, vital life skills' while estranged from his natal pod, the NZ Herald reported.

The calf, named Toa meaning brave or strong in Maori, was been under the care of staff and volunteers from the Department of Conservation for nearly a week

Ms Stockin explained because the calf is likely less than three months old, Toa is too young to survive in the wild without being reunited with other whales.

She commended the efforts of national and international vets and volunteers who had done 'an incredible job' of keeping the estranged orca alive and stable.

However, Ms Stockin said volunteers had two options, transport the calf to a purpose-built facility - of which there are none in New Zealand - or euthanasia.

On Monday night, Toa was diagnosed with colic meaning the orca could be distressed or may continue to develop serious health issues.

Ms Stockin described the most recent diagnosis as the first indicator that something was going wrong, but added the orca was stable on Monday morning.

Toa was separated from his mother and found beached in a rockpool by two teenagers in Plimmerton in Wellington's north on July 11

Massey University marine biologist Karen Stockin has said she holds concerns for the calf due to his inability to learn 'critical, vital life skills' while estranged from his natal pod

'But as I mention, we've got the health of the animal to consider and then we've got the welfare of the animal to consider and they're not to be considered independently', she said.

The biologist said the process of finding Toa's natal pod was not something that could happen overnight and was a complex and complicated scenario.

She said even if his pod was found, the logistics of transporting him to that location would be risky and potentially stressful for the calf.

A variety of scenarios would need to be considered including Toa's recognition of his pod, his re-acceptance into the group and if there was a female lactating.

Orca pods have been known to adopt lost children, so long as a female orca is lactating and can support the youngster.

Ms Stockin said the harsh reality of the situation was that calves up to three months were rarely reunited with their natal pod, even if the group was found.

Toa is currently behind held in a small pool, with TVNZ reporting $10,000 had been spent so far in caring for the orca, excluding the cost of DOC staff.

Ms Stockin explained because of his age, which is likely less than three months, Toa is too young to survive in the wild without being reunited with other whales

However, Ms Stockin said volunteers had two options, transport the calf to a purpose-built facility - of which there are none in New Zealand - or euthanasia

Asked if it was fair on the 2.15 metre long orca to be held in the enclosure, Ms Stockin said there was still 'some degree of debate' due to mystery around his age.

She said they were safe to say the orca was less than three months old, which in itself was a concern.

Also worrying the biologist was the amount of DOC staff and volunteers who were handling Toa, which could make the wild animal too reliant on humans.

'There's a great deal of tactile activities going on. It's fair to say, the argument keeps coming back that yes they're very social animals but yes to a point,' she said.

'We've got an animal that has been so habituated to human contact it's increasingly difficult to even imagine it will be successful in reintegrating with the amount of human contact it's had.'

Orca Research Trust founder Ingrid Visser previously told AAP that volunteers held hope they could reunite the calf with his pod.

The marina biologist said that even if his pod was found, the logistics of transporting Toa to that location would be risky and potentially stressful for the calf

'We put a man on the moon. Surely we can get a whale back to its family,' she said.

Dr Visser said they would most likely put a boat with the pod and then take Toa to it by road or boat.

'It's difficult to transport by helicopter. You don't want a 200-pound animal thrashing around inside a chopper,' she said.

New Zealand is home to up to 200 orcas, according to the Department of Conservation.

Orcas, also known as killer whales can be identified by their distinctive black and white markings and very tall, prominent dorsal fin.

Orca pods are known to venture into Wellington Harbour throughout the warmer months but rarely stick around.
The regional town of Orange will go into lockdown for seven days after an infected pet food driver spread Covid-19 to a local, as the state's list of exposure sites grows by 19 including many shops back in Sydney.

50,000 people in Orange, Blayney, and the Cabonne Shire Council in the New South Wales Central West will be plunged into lockdown from midnight on Tuesday, enduring the same restrictions as Sydneysiders.

Along with millions of people in Greater Sydney, locals in the regional area will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons in an attempt to quash the outbreak - which swelled by a further 78 cases overnight on Tuesday.

The Covid-positive driver was delivering pet food from locked-down Greater Sydney to the Nestle Purina factory at Blayney, near Orange, where a worker now has the virus.

Major stores in the area including Officeworks, Woolworths and CTC in North Orange Shopping Centre, EG Fuelco Australia, and Pizza Hut have been put on the state's list of Covid-19 exposure sites after being visited by the unknowingly infected local.

Sydney's Covid outbreak has spread to regional Australia. Pictured: A St John Ambulance staff member registering a client arriving at a Covid-19 Vaccination Centre in Sydney

Pictured: North Orange Shopping Centre, which is listed as an exposure site. The town will be locked down from midnight

Anyone who has been to those locations between Friday and Saturday is considered a close contact and has been told to get a test and isolate for 14 days, regardless of the result.

The factory worker tested positive on Monday but has been in isolation since Sunday.

Nestle Purina, the pet food factory, is undergoing a deep clean and has been closed indefinitely, the ABC reported.

Other employees are awaiting their test results, but all have returned negative swabs so far.

Health authorities also issued an alert for a Coles Express in Goulburn, southwest New South Wales, after someone with the virus went shopping on Friday morning between 11.50 and midday.

Pizza Hut in Orange (pictured) is also on the list of exposure sites after an infected person visited the store

Several alerts have also been issued for a range of venues in Sydney's southwest, including three medical centres, a chemist and a seafood restaurant.

LOCKDOWN IN ORANGE: Orange, Blayney, and the Cabonne Shire Council will be plunged into lockdown for seven days from midnight on Tuesday. Residents will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons: - To buy groceries. - To care for someone. - To visit a medical centre. - To go to work or school, if it can't be done from home. Masks are mandatory in all indoor settings outside the home, including offices and apartment buildings - Residents can travel only 10km from their homes. - Exercise and gather in groups of two while outside. - Only one member of each household per day allowed to leave the home for essential shopping. - No browsing in supermarkets and retail businesses. Shop only for essential items. - Funerals are capped at 10, weddings are banned. - No car pooling with other households when going out for exercise. Advertisement

Patrons who went to Advanced Medical Centre in Auburn last Tuesday has been told to isolate and get a test, along with those who visited Irsa Medical Centre, United Medical Centre or Ibby's Seafood Restaurant in Lakemba.

Pharmasave in Wiley Park has also been added to the list after an infected person went last Monday, as well as Swift Reecovery Agency in Sydney CBD - which is listed as an exposure site for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week.

Chemist Warehouse in Bankstown is also a Covid exposure site after someone with Covid visited on Saturday.

Anyone who went to Royal Carwash in Greenacre last Saturday, Wednesday or Friday has been told to get a test and isolate.

The same goes for Harley Place Health in Bondi Junction, after someone with the virus made a trip there on Thursday.

Customers who went to one of two Woolworths shopping centres in Chester Hill and Cecil Hills on Thursday or Friday has also been told isolate until they return a negative test.

The same goes for an entire building outside Harley Place Health in Bondi Junction, and a Red Rooster in Werrington - in Sydney's west.

A Chemist Warehouse in Parramatta is also on the list, along with Priceline Pharmacy in Merrylands.

Of the 78 new cases recorded in NSW on Tuesday, 27 were active in the community while infectious.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced the new figures as she warned residents in the hotspot Liverpool, Canterbury-Bankstown and Fairfield local government areas they could be carrying the virus even if they have no symptoms.

She said more than two-thirds of the state's new cases were still being found in those three regions.

The outbreak of infections that began in Sydney's eastern suburbs on June 16 has now reached 1,418 infections.

USE DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA'S TRACKER TO FIND THE LATEST EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

The NSW Covid outbreak has now spread to regional areas. Pictured: Medical staff doing Covid-19 tests at a drive through testing site

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.

'If you are living in a community that has a lot of cases, even if you don't have symptoms, don't assume you don't have the virus,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'In communities where the virus is lurking, where the virus is circulating, you could have the virus, not know it and unfortunately take it home and give it to your loved ones.'

Ms Berejiklian said testing rates had increased significantly in the Fairfield LGA in the past 24 hours - where two-thirds of Monday's coronavirus cases were recorded.
Covid-19 cases in Southern California's Los Angeles County have spiked to more than 10,000 cases a week - an outbreak not seen since March - as the Delta variant continues to pose a threat.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced that the county saw more than 1,300 new positive cases and two deaths Monday.

The spike in cases comes after the county had removed its indoor mask wearing mandate.

Los Angeles County reinstated its indoor mask mandate on Sunday as the Delta variant has sent positivity rates surging

A tourist posed for a photo in Hollywood as people re-adapt to wearing their masks

A man wears his American flag face mask as he goes out into the streets of Hollywood on July 19

Infections have spiked nationwide, driven primarily by the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant first identified in India

The recommendations come just one month after California dropped its coronavirus restrictions. Above, shoppers in a Hollywood store on July 19

The Los Angeles Times found that Los Angeles County recorded an average of 101 weekly cases for every 100,000 residents this past month. That means the county has a 'high' community transmission status, as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A region must hit 100 or more weekly cases per 100,000 residents to be labeled as so.

So far, about one out of every eight people in the county has tested positive for the coronavirus.

The mandate was reinstated on Sunday after a 700% increase in cases due to the Delta variant.

The average number of daily new Covid cases was 32,278 last week - up 66% from the daily rate the week before, and a shocking 145% higher than two weeks ago, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The average number of daily new COVID-19 cases in the United States has tripled in the past 30 days.

The average number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has also risen 21% over the past 30 days to over 19,000.

Almost 25,000 people are currently in hospital with Covid - a 26% increase from last week, CNN reports.

Average daily deaths, which can lag behind other indicators, rose 13% in the last week to 258.

Daily case numbers and the 7-day rolling average continue to rise in the United States

The U.S. continues to the lead the world in deaths from COVID-19

In California, cases involving the Delta variant made up 48.8% of all new cases recorded in the state in June, compared to just 6% in May.

The imposition of LA's indoor mask mandate came as health officials from eight Bay Area counties also recommended that vaccinated and unvaccinated residents wear masks indoors.

They said their recommendation was made 'out of an abundance of caution' as an 'added layer of protection for unvaccinated residents.'

Unvaccinated people are of particular risk to contracting the Delta variant, health experts say, as CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned that the current outbreak is becoming 'a pandemic of the unvaccinated' as most cases, hospitalizations and deaths are among people yet to take the shot while the nation's vaccination rollout has stalled.

About 53% of LA County residents are fully vaccinated while 60% have received at least one jab, the LA Times reported.

The case spike comes as the country's vaccination effort has stalled

More than 34.1 million total cases have been recorded

Dr. Jerome Adams, the former U.S. surgeon general, urged the CDC in a tweet to hold up LA County's mask policy as an example to stop telling people not to wear masks.

'The emerging data suggests CDC should be advising to vax it AND mask it in areas with [rising] cases and positivityuntil we see numbers going back down again,' Adams wrote.

'The highly infectious Delta variant is now the predominant strain in Contra Costa County,' said county health officer Dr. Chris Farnitano. 'While vaccines remain our best tool against COVID-19, masking in indoor and crowded outdoor settings will help us curb the spread of this latest wave of infection.'

Perhaps most concerning is the spread of cases despite high vaccination rates in the Bay Area.

In San Francisco, for instance, 83% of its residents over 12 have received at least one dose of the vaccine with 76% of its population over 12 fully vaccinated.

Still, cases are on the rise, with a seven-day rolling average of 58 new cases recorded last week compared to a low of 10 in mid June.

'The Delta variant is spreading quickly, and everyone should take action to protect themselves and others against this potentially deadly virus,' Alameda County Health Officer Dr. Nicholas Moss told the San Francisco Chronicle.

'Unfortunately, even though we have very high rates of vaccination and the excellent protection that affords, we are still seeing our case rates rise,' Santa Clara County Assistant Health Officer Dr. Sarah Rudman told CBS SF Bay Area.

She said the variant had become a particular problem among the county's unvaccinated population, and that recommending everyone wear masks was to ensure the unvaccinated continue wearing masks.
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How the Heathrow Terminal 5 border hall chaos unfolded... 1) On Monday the Government's new double-jabbed exemption for arrivals to the UK from Amber List countries comes into force. It means fully vaccinated travellers from Amber List countries no longer have to self-isolate for up to 10 days. 2) Passengers have to fill out a Passenger Locator Form (PLF) within 48 hours of travel. 3) Holidaymakers in Amber List countries filling out their PLFs ahead of Monday go on to the Government's website and find there is no option for a double-jab exemption. The Government has not updated the form ahead of Monday's change to travel rules. 4) Instead, confused passengers click a separate 'exemptions' section - which takes them to an area for special quarantine exemptions. 5) These exemptions flag up at e-gates because they have to be checked by Border Force officers. 6) On Monday night a flood of passengers arrive at Heathrow Airport's Terminal 5 with incorrectly filled out forms. 7) Many hundreds are rejected at the e-gates - sparking a backlog at the border. 8) Passengers there on the night say there are 'only four' Border Force officials. A queue of around 2,000 passengers forms at the passport hall. 9) Border Force officials decide to close the e-gates to avoid any further confusion and backlog. 10) The Passenger Form Locator is updated following the chaos. The Government also says it has beefed up staffing numbers to avoid further backlogs. Advertisement

The Government sparked chaos at a Heathrow border hall last night after failing to update Passenger Locator Forms ahead of its 'Freedom Day' rule changes - resulting in double-jabbed Britons being rejected at e-gates.

Holidaymakers arriving at Terminal 5 were left queueing for more than 90 minutes yesterday after the Government's 'out-of-date' form resulted in 'confused' passengers filling them out wrong.

It meant passengers were told to go to the 'four' Border Force staff manning the desks, sparking a build of frustrated passengers up in the Terminal's passport hall last night.

The issue was caused when holidaymakers flying back to the UK on Monday from Amber List countries went to fill out their Passenger Locator Forms ahead of their journey.

But the travel quarantine rules changed on 'Freedom Day' Monday to allow double-jabbed Britons to return to the UK without having to self-isolate for up to 10 days.

Passenger locator forms need to be filled out two days in advance of travel. But those filling out the forms on Sunday, to travel on Monday, were left with the pre-'Freedom Day' options - arrival from a green list country or quarantine.

There was another option of an 'exempt list' - but these are only for special exemptions. 'Confused' double-jabbed passengers, unable to see an option for their vaccination exemption ended up clicking this section.

And this led to confusion at the e-gates - because these exemptions must be checked by a Border Force officials.

It meant hundreds of passengers, who thought they had filled in their forms correctly, being rejected and told to go to a manned desk.

The situation at one point became so bad that Border Force officials closed off the e-gates and told people to go to manned desks instead - leading to a 2,000 strong queue last night.

Reports suggest that Border Force staff ended up encouraging to 'lie' on their forms in order to get through - though this has been denied by the Home Office. The forms have also been updated since to make it 'clearer' for double-jabbed Amber List arrivals who are able to avoid quarantine.

The chaos comes four weeks after e-gates were reopened at Heathrow's Terminals 2 and 5 following an upgrade to allow the machines to wave-through passengers from Green and Amber List countries.

One person caught up in last night's chaos said the situation was 'totally unacceptable', while another exasperated passenger branded it 'ridiculous'.

Last night passengers today took to social media to slam the lack of border staff, with one revealing that they had spent up to an hour and 45 minutes queuing at Terminal 5's passport hall.

One Twitter user said: 'Hi Heathrow. Is it because of the pingdemic that there's thousands at border control and maybe 3 staff checking us in?! By my calculations I'm here until 2am. There's babies toddlers & elderly in the queue.'

It is believed just four Border Force officials were left manning Terminal 5 passport hall last night when as many as 2,000 passengers arrived. Picture: Passengers queue at Heathrow Airport last night

Passengers at the airport say the e-gates were closed last night, while there were 'just four' Border Force staff working

Passenger locator forms need to be filled out two days in advance of travel. But those filling out the forms on Sunday, to travel on Monday, were left with the pre-'Freedom Day' options - arrival from a green list country or quarantine. Pictured: The old form passengers were faced with at the weekend

The Government has since updated the form to include the option: 'I need to self-isolate when I arrive in the UK, I have only been in green list countries or islands, or I was full vaccinated in the UK

US officials urge Americans not to travel to UK due to spike in Delta variant The US State Department is advising Americans not to travel to the United Kingdom as the Delta variant of COVID-19 surges. The move by the State Department means that Britain is now at the highest warning level possible - 'do not travel' - on a four-part ranking. First is 'exercise normal precautions'; second is 'exercise increased caution'; then comes 'reconsider travel'. The warning for Britain has fluctuated between Level 3 'reconsider travel', and Level 4 'do not travel', several times this year already. In May, the US government had lowered the U.K. to a Level 3 advisory rating. The latest upgrade comes as COVID cases across the U.K. soared by 52 per cent week-on-week, with the number of deaths falling slightly. The U.K. on Sunday recorded 48,161 COVID cases - up from the 31,772 cases recorded last Sunday. The State Department's decision comes hours after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its own advice, recommending that U.S. citizens do not visit the U.K. Advertisement

They said in a follow-up tweet: 'There is a palette of water cans in the middle of the queue where people go help themselves as they go since we're all here for hours.

'Kids crying. The occasional shouts for opening more gates. People about to miss their connections. It's such a s***show.

'No e gates tonight of course. This is dumb,' before saying: 'MADE IT. Only 1h45 in a queue that could have been completely avoided with proper staffing.'

Another wrote: 'So many people - including elderly and young children waiting for the border police to check their documents. why there not more officers here?

'Totally unacceptable for an airport like Heathrow. This is so late now, hope to catch the last train.'

It comes as the Telegraph last week reported a security staff shortage at Heathrow due to staff being 'pinged' by the NHS Covid App.

According to the paper, the Border Force were down 120 security personnel last Monday after staff were told to self-isolate.

Passengers reportedly queued for up to 150 minutes due to the border staffing shortfall.

Extra security staff were later drafted in to redress the shortfall, Heathrow said.

Meanwhile, the Heathrow e-gates reopened at Terminals 2 and 5 last month after being closed for upgrades - with more due to be reopened later this summer following testing.

The e-gates were adapted earlier this year so they can be used by passengers returning from green or amber list countries.

But, according to the Telegraph, whose Travel correspondent John Arlidge was caught in last night's chaos, the e-gates had trouble determining the new quarantine rules - because the option of not having to quarantine was not given on the Passenger Locator Form.

He wrote: 'There is currently no button on the UK's Passenger Locator Form (PFL) to declare that you are exempt from self-isolation because you are fully double vaccinated and coming from an amber country.

'If you tell the truth on the locator form and say you are exempt and tick the 'Government / Assembly Approved' reason  which is the only option that makes any sense  you cannot use the E-gates.'

It comes as the Government yesterday eased travel restrictions by dropping the requirement for double-jabbed passengers arriving in the UK from amber-list countries.

Government 'did not act unlawfully' over traffic light system, judge rules The UK Government did not act unlawfully over its travel traffic light system, a judge has today ruled. In a High Court battle, brought by Manchester Airports Group and backed by a number of airlines, the judge said the Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, acted 'lawfully' in implementing the system. A judge also ruled that the Government did not have to disclose more information on how it reaches decisions over its travel rules. Those behind the legal challenge today said in a joint statement: 'British businesses and consumers deserve to understand how the Government takes decisions on the traffic light system so that they can book their travel with confidence.' Businesses included in the High Court challenge include budget airlines easyJet and Ryanair. Advertisement

As of 4am on Monday, July 19, passengers from Amber List countries are no longer required to undertake an up-to-day 10-day home quarantine.

The rule does not apply to Amber List France, which was put on what is being dubbed the 'Amber Plus' list due to rising cases of the Beta (South African) variant.

The rules were last night branded 'excessive' by a French minister Clement Beaune, who told French channel BFM TV: 'It seems to us that the measures taken by the UK are not entirely based on scientific foundations.'

Meanwhile, the Balearic islands were also moved from the UK's quarantine free Green List to the Amber List.

The sudden move - which came just weeks after the Balearics were moved on to the Green List - sparked unvaccinated Britons holidaying in the likes of Mallorca and Ibiza to make a mad dash for the airports in order to make it back to the UK before the rule change.

Bulgaria and Croatia went the other way, going from amber to green, along with Taiwan and Hong Kong.

However Bulgaria has since banned UK holidaymakers by adding Britain to its 'red zone' list - which means only essential journeys can be made.

A Heathrow spokesperson told MailOnline: 'We welcome the move to allow fully vaccinated Brits to travel to amber list destinations without the need to quarantine on return.

'We understand the Government has now rectified some confusion regarding the use of eGates and exemption status by amending the language used on the Passenger Locator Form to provide further clarity, improving the experience at the border.'

A Government spokesperson said: 'Our utmost priority is protecting the safety and health of the public. That means, occasionally, passengers will need to accept an increase in the time taken to cross the border.

'We are aware that a number of passengers arriving from amber list countries encountered difficulties passing through e-gates as the option they selected meant they needed to be assessed by an officer rather than use eGates.

'We have now updated our form so it is clearer for those who do not need to quarantine and we continue to review and modify our approach to ensure full compliance with border and biosecurity checks.'
Babies as young as three-months-old can already show racial preferences, according to a Hasbro CRT training session secretly recorded by one of its employees.

The controversial lecture given by The Conscious Kid claimed babies' racial biases only grow as they age, and that kids 'as young as two are already using race to reason about people's behaviors.

'We may see this play out in daycare or on the playground - and how kids are starting to choose or exclude playmates and friends,' it said.

Packing engineer David Johnson blew the whistle after hearing about the racially-driven rhetoric he was going to hear during the meeting.

The training centered on media and child behavior, with Kate Ishizuka-Stephens explaining that children's racist thoughts and behaviors escalate as they age and mimic adults

Johnson worked as a contractor for the famed toymaker through London-based IT recruiting firm Harvey Nash, according to Fox News.

He first shared the contents of the training with the far-right group Project Veritas.

'I felt parents really needed to know what was happening,' he said.

The training was led by Conscious Kid co-founder Kate Ishizuka-Stephens. Johnson says it was mandatory, but Hasbro maintains it was an 'optional diversity and inclusion webinar attended by a small group of employees.'

It appears to suggest that children's' racial bias escalates as they observe adults and the social order around them, according to information shared with Project Veritas.

'By age three, children are already starting to apply stereotypes, and research shows that they also may use racist language intentionally at this age.

'White children at this age may report explicit or overt negative attitudes towards people of color By age four, kids are showing a strong and consistent pro-white anti-black bias.'

It goes on to say that 'white children' can show 'pro-white bias' by age 5.

'At the age of five, children show many of the same racial attitudes held by adults - children are really sensitive to the status of different racial groups in our society and show a high-status bias towards white people, which is the socially privileged group in our society. White children show pro-white bias at this age.'

Hasbro said the Project Veritas report 'mischaracterized' its training in a statement provided to DailyMail.com.

The company also distanced itself from the training's contents.

'Our mission is to create the worlds best play and entertainment experiences that connect children, fans and families around the world.

We occasionally invite third-party speakers for optional sessions to discuss diverse viewpoints. As always, the views expressed by external speakers are their own and do not reflect the views of the company.'

The Conscious Kid did not immediately respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com.

Johnson believes the training reinforces racial division and that Hasbro wanted to pass that on to the children that play with its toys.

The Rhode Island-based company sells board-game favorites such as Monopoly, Battleship and Operation and toys such as My Little Pony, G.I. Joe and Potato Head, which dropped the 'Mr.' from its brand name and announced a gender-neutral version in February.

Hasbro contracted Johnson through the firm Harvey Nash. Above, Hasbro HQ in Rhode Island

The company markets board games like Monopoly and toys like G.I. Joe and My Little Pony

In February, Hasbro announced the Potato Head brand would feature a gender-neutral version

'CRT teaches people - and at Hasbro they wanted to teach children - to judge people based on race. And that's not something that I feel that I think Dr. Martin Luther King would've supported,' Johnson told Fox.

'That's something [King] wanted to end in this country. It's not the correct path forward that we should be taking.'

Contracting firm Harvey Nash says Johnson did not share any concerns with his employer before going to the Project Veritas, and that it had no part in The Conscious Kid's lectures.

'It is important to note that Harvey Nash, Inc. was unaware of and had no role whatsoever in developing or delivering the training in question,' Marketing Director Robert Grimsey said in a statement provided to DailyMail.com

'It is not and would not be appropriate for us to pass judgement on training that our clients choose to develop and/or deliver to their employees and contractors.'

Johnson's behavior is being investigated to see if 'any of our client's or our own policies (including ones around confidentiality) were violated.'

Speaking on Hannity Monday night, Johnson disclosed he has since been suspended and had lost access to Hasbro work accounts.
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Published nearly 70 years ago, it was an explosive royal memoir which made headlines around the world.

Described by the Daily Mail at the time as a work that was 'unique in the history of literature', the former King Edward VIII's autobiography was published in September 1951, just six months before his brother King George VI's death.

The Duke of Windsor had a lot to talk about: his unhappy and 'lonely' time as King; his 'strict' childhood, his difficult relationship with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin; and of course the inside story of the abdication crisis which saw him depart the throne in December 1936.

The saga centred around his desire to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, and Baldwin's refusal to allow the union to take place without Edward first stepping down from his position as King.

In his ghost-written book, A King's Story: The Memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor, Edward spoke of how, in believing that his 'birth and title' should not 'set me apart from other people', he felt as though he was in 'unconscious rebellion against my position'.

The closing words of the tome centred around his decision to give up the throne so he could marry Ms Simpson.

He spoke of how 'love had triumphed over politics' and that although it proved to be his 'fate' to 'sacrifice my cherished British heritage', he drew comfort that the decision had 'long since sanctified a true and faithful union'.

Royal historian Robert Jobson told MailOnline that the work was 'much more important' than the memoir which Prince Harry is set to publish next year  because as an ex-King, the Duke 'had more gravitas' than the Duke of Sussex.

Harry revealed via publisher Penguin Random House yesterday that he was writing his book 'not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become'.

The work is expected to delve further into the breakdown in his relationship with his family and brother Prince William, which contributed to his and his wife Meghan Markle's decision to give up their royal duties and move to California at the start of last year.

Published nearly 70 years ago, it was an explosive royal memoir which made headlines around the world. Described at the time as a work that was 'unique in the history of literature', the former King Edward VIII's autobiography was published in September 1951, just months before his brother King George VI's death. Above: The Duke posing with the first edition of his memoirs

The Duke of Windsor had a lot to talk about: his unhappy time as King; his 'strict' childhood, his terrible relationship with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin; and of course the inside story of the abdication crisis which saw him depart the throne in December 1936. The saga centred around his desire to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, and Baldwin's refusal to allow the union to take place without Edward first stepping down from his position as King. Above: The Duke and Duchess of Windsor after their marriage in Monts, France, in June 1937

News of the Duke of Windsor's memoir was reported in the Daily Mail on September 27, 1951.

Reviewer George Murray said in the edition: 'He had no need to keep an ear to the keyhole, or to hide under the table to learn what the kings and queens and princes were talking about.

Who was the ghost writer who penned the Duke of Windsor's autobiography? Like Prince Harry's upcoming memoir, The Duke of Windsor's 1951 autobiography was ghost-written by an American - author and journalist Charles Murphy, who died in 1987. His career as a journalist saw him cover the Second World War, during which he survived the sinking of the Egyptian steamer Zamzam after it was attacked by a Nazi warship. He was commissioned to write the Duke of Windsor's life story in the late 1940s. Philip Ziegler, the author of the Duke's official biography, said in his 1990 book that, whilst Murphy and Edward initially worked 'harmoniously' together on the book, their relationship later soured. He explained that Murphy found Edward to be 'feckless, idle, irresponsible and wayward to an intolerable degree.' Ziegler said that the Duke accused Murphy of 'arrogance, tactlessness, incompetence, and an unsavoury sensationalism'. However, Murphy went on to write the autobiography of the Duke's wife, Wallis Simpson. The book finally appeared in 1955, after Murphy had been fired from the project and then re-hired. He then co-wrote 'The Windsor Story' in the late 1970s, which focused on Edward and Wallis's life together after the former king's abdication. Murphy retired in 1966 after serving as the Washington bureau chief of Fortune magazine for 14 years. Advertisement

'He was inside the room and at the head of the table. He was on the throne.'

'Were his book ill-constructed and ill-spelt, it would still be remarkable. But, in fact, it is brilliantly written. Time after time a situation or a personality is touched off in one illuminating phrase.'

Edward's most illuminating words centred around his feelings about his royal status, where he also touched on his service in the British Army in the First World War.

He said: 'The idea that my birth and title should somehow set me apart from and above other people struck me as wrong.

'If the levelling process of Osborne, Dartmouth and oxford and the democracy of the battlefields taught me anything, it was, firstly, that my desires and interests were much the same as those of other people , and secondly, that, however hard I tried, my capacity was somehow not appreciably above the standards of the fiercely competitive world outside palace walls I suppose that, without quite understanding why, I was in unconscious rebellion against my position. That is what comes, perhaps, of sending and impressionable prince to school and war'

He felt that his investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon in 1911  a ceremony which Prince Charles went through in 1969  was a 'preposterous rig'.

He said that, once the day was over, he made a 'painful discovery' about himself.

'It was that, while I was prepared to fulfil my role in all this pomp and ritual, I recoiled from anything that tended to set me up as a person requiring homage,' he said.

The Duke even claimed that, if the choice 'had been left to me' he may not have 'consciously chosen the Throne as the next most desirable goal of my aspirations'.

He added: 'But not to wish to be King was something else. I wanted to be a successful King, though a King in a modern way'.

His reference to his desire to update the monarchy and his feelings about his status as a royal were echoed nearly 20 years later by Wallis when she said in the couple's joint televised interview with the BBC in 1970 that her husband had been 'ahead of his time' as King.

'I think he had lots of pep and was ahead of his time. I think he wanted to establish things not ready for them really perhaps,' she said.

Edward's relationship with Wallis, who had been twice married before her union with him, was a scandal when news first emerged of it.

News of the Duke of Windsor's memoir was reported in the Daily Mail on September 27, 1951. Reviewer George Murray said in the edition: 'He had no need to keep an ear to the keyhole, or to hide under the table to learn what the kings and queens and princes were talking about. He was inside the room and at the head of the table. He was on the throne. Were his book ill-constructed and ill-spelt, it would still be remarkable. But, in fact, it is brilliantly written. Time after time a situation or a personality is touched off in one illuminating phrase'

His proposition to marry her  whilst divorce proceedings with her second husband were still ongoing - sparked a constitutional crisis which culminated in Edward's decision to abdicate.

The edition which bore the coverage of the Duke's book also featured a news report about King George VI's ailing health

In his memoir, he described how Prime Minister Baldwin came to see him when Wallis filed for divorce from her husband, the shipbroker Ernest Aldrich Simpson.

He said he was 'perturbed' by the PM's conversation with him, in which the Duke claimed Baldwin said: "I believe I know what the people would tolerate and what they would not" a reference to his expressed wish to marry Wallis once her divorce was settled.

The Duke then tore into the Conservative politician as he expressed his despair at his lack of power in the situation.

'Clear to the end, Mr Baldwin in his exchanges with me followed with scrupulous exactitude the constitutional rhetoric which preserves the fiction of kingly authority,' he wrote.

'It was always my ministers who would not let me do what I wished. It was always with his humble duty that he did what he wished.

'The Prime minister controlled all the levers of power. He could bargain with the opposition. He could canvass members of Parliament.

'He could exert party pressure for the support of the newspapers. He could even consult the Dominion Premiers in his own terms.'

The Duke added: 'He could do all this and more. I had to stand silent. How lonely is a Monarch in a struggle with a shrewd Prime Minister backed by all the apparatus of the modern State!'

Edward also touched on the role of the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Gordon Lang, in the 1936 crisis.

The churchman was widely condemned for a speech he made after Edward had stepped down as King, in which he said: 'From God he received a high and sacred trust. Yet by his own will he has ... surrendered the trust.'

Royal historian Robert Jobson told MailOnline that the work was 'much more important' than the memoir which Prince Harry is set to publish next year  because as an ex-King, the Duke 'had more gravitas' than the Duke of Sussex (pictured)

Harry revealed via publisher Penguin Random House yesterday that he was writing his book 'not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become'. The work is set to delve further into the breakdown in his relationship with his family and brother Prince William, which led to his and wife Meghan Markle's decision to give up their royal duties and move to California at the start of last year

He added that the King's motive had been 'a craving for private happiness' that he had tried to get 'in a manner inconsistent with the Christian principles of marriage.'

Writing of Lang, Edward said that 'behind' the politicians' decisions, 'I suspected was a shadowy, hovering presence, the Archbishop of Canterbury.'

The most recent edition of the Duke of Windsor's autobiography was published in 1998

He added: 'Curiously enough, I did not once see him throughout this period. He stood aside until the fateful fabric had been woven and the crisis was over.

'Yet from beginning to end I had a disquieting feeling that he was invisibly and noiselessly about.'

The final passage in his book also centred around his relationship with Wallis, who he finally married in 1937.

'Though it has proved my fate to sacrifice my cherished British heritage along with all the years in its service, I today draw comfort from the knowledge that time has long since sanctified a true and faithful union,' he said.

Beyond the endless interest that there was for Edward to speak of the events that led to him giving up the throne, he also opened up about his childhood and his relationship with his father, King George V, and mother, Queen Mary.

'My boyhood was a strict one because my father was strict in his own life and habits He had the Victorian's sense of probity, moral responsibility, and love of domesticity,' he said.

'He believed in God, in the invincibility of the Royal Navy, and the essential rightness of whatever was British The concept of duty was drilled into me, and I never had the sense that the days belonged to me alone.'

He added: 'One theme that he inculcated into us was that we must never get the idea that we were different from or better than other people and he literally pounded good manners into us but with Mama life was less severe'.

He described how his mother 'smoothed things over' after there was a 'family blow-up' following his investiture as Prince of Wales.

He said she told him: 'Your friends will understand that as a prince you are obliged to do certain things that may seem a little silly.'

Speaking to MailOnline today about the Duke's book, historian Mr Jobson said: 'It was a bestseller at the time, it went around the world.

'Historically it is a very interesting memoir because it covers all sorts of period from his life as Prince of Wales and the whole period of the abdication.

The closing words of the Duke's memoir centred around his decision to give up the throne so he could marry Ms Simpson. He spoke of how 'love had triumphed over politics' and that although it proved to be his 'fate' to 'sacrifice my cherished British heritage', he drew comfort that the decision had 'long since sanctified a true and faithful union. Above: The Duke and Duchess featured on the cover of LIFE Magazine together in 1950, the year before his book came out. The Duke wore a smart striped suit whilst the Duchess donned glamorous jewellery for the photoshoot

Edward's proposal to marry Wallis  whilst divorce proceedings with her second husband were still ongoing - sparked a constitutional crisis which culminated in Edward's decision to abdicate. Above: His letter announcing his abdication

The solemn King Edward VIII giving his abdication broadcast to the nation and the Empire, on December 11th, 1936

The Duke felt that his investiture as the Prince of Wales at Caernarvon in 1911  a ceremony echoed by Prince Charles's own investiture in 1969  was a 'preposterous rig'. He said that, once the day was over, he made a 'painful discovery' about himself. 'It was that, while I was prepared to fulfil my role in all this pomp and ritual, I recoiled from anything that tended to set me up as a person requiring homage,' he said

He described how his mother 'smoothed things over' after there was a 'family blow-up' following his investiture as Prince of Wales. He said she told him: 'Your friends will understand that as a prince you are obliged to do certain things that may seem a little silly'. Above: The then Prince of Wales at his investiture, walking hand in hand with his father

Speaking in his book of his childhood, he said: 'My boyhood was a strict one because my father was strict in his own life and habits He had the Victorian's sense of probity, moral responsibility, and love of domesticity,' he said. 'He believed in God, in the invincibility of the Royal Navy, and the essential rightness of whatever was British The concept of duty was drilled into me, and I never had the sense that the days belonged to me alone'. Above: A young Edward with the then Prince George and his wife Mary

Queen Mary is seen above playing hostess to her son when he visited her in 1945, eight years before her death at the age of 85

In his memoir, the Duke (pictured left during the First World War) criticised Baldwin (right) when he expressed his despair at his own lack of power during the Abdication Crisis. He said: 'Clear to the end, Mr Baldwin in his exchanges with me followed with scrupulous exactitude the constitutional rhetoric which preserves the fiction of kingly authority,' he wrote. 'It was always my ministers who would not let me do what I wished. It was always with his humble duty that he did what he wished. The Prime minister controlled all the levers of power. He could bargain with the opposition. He could canvass members of Parliament. He could exert party pressure for the support of the newspapers. He could even consult the Dominion Premiers in his own terms'

'He was an interesting man and very erudite, and because he was a former king he had more gravitas. Harry's will be an interesting book but i don't know if its comparable really to Duke of Windsor's story,' he added.

Wallis Simpson and King Edward VIII: A scandal that rocked a nation January 1931 - Wallis meets Prince Edward in January 1931, after being introduced via her friend Lady Furness 1931- 1934 - The American divorcee and the heir to the throne see each other regularly at various parties August 1934 - Wallis admits she and Edward are no longer just friends, after joining him on a cruise January 1936 - King George V dies. Edward asks Wallis to watch the proclamation of his accession with him from St. James's Palace August 1936 - The pair enjoy a cruise around the Adriatic sea with friends. Details of their relationship appear in the American press December 11, 1936 - Edward announces his abdication June 3, 1937 - The couple get married in the south of France. Wallis was formally known as the Duchess of Windsor, but was not allowed to share her husband's title of 'Royal Highness.' Advertisement

After his abdication, Edward was made the Duke of Windsor by his brother  the new King George VI - and granted the style of His Royal Highness.

However, after their 1937 marriage and decision to settle in France, Edward was upset by the King's decision to issue Letters Patent which denied Wallis the style of Her Royal Highness.

Edward received a tax-free allowance from his brother which went some way to maintaining his and Wallis's lavish lifestyle. He also made money from illegal currency trading.

The difficult relationship which Edward had with his family after his abdication was depicted extensively in Peter Morgan's Netflix drama The Crown.

But when asked by Kenneth Harris in 1970 if she had any regrets, Wallis tactfully replied, 'Oh about certain things yes. I wish it could have been different but I'm extremely happy.

'Naturally you've have had some hard times but who hasn't? You just have to learn to live with that.'

In 1940, Edward was appointed as Governor of the Bahamas  a role which he held until 1945.

In response to Harris's question about whether he would have liked to have had another job afterwards, he said he 'offered my services' but was never handed a new role.

His words in his book about his feelings of 'unconscious rebellion' were echoed in the BBC interview, when he was asked what he meant by the 'Establishment'.

He said: 'The establishment was a new word to me until about 15 years ago, when I heard it and asked people to explain it to me.

'It's not an easy word to explain. It's rather an obscure word. But it must have always existed. I think it means authority, authority of the law, of the church, the monarch to a certain extent.'

The Daily Mail's coverage on December 11, 1936, reported King Edward's speech announcing his decision to abdicate

The newspaper reported how the former king had 'renounced the Throne and all his titles and will leave the country to-night'

He said that, whilst he was not part of the establishment, his father, King George V, 'certainly was', as was his brother.

Edward admitted that he 'collided' with the establishment, although 'not very violently'.

And even if he had not fallen in love with Wallis and instead remained single, Edward added that his 'collision' would 'definitely' have been 'inevitable'.

'But not in a bad way,' he said. 'I think maybe, I don't know, perhaps I'm being conceited but I think it might've helped the establishment too.

'I think it might've revived the thinking of the Establishment.

His reference to his desire to update the monarchy and his feelings about his status as a royal were echoed nearly 20 years later by Wallis (right) when she said in the couple's joint televised interview with the BBC in 1970 (above) that her husband had been 'ahead of his time' as King

'The Establishment has a conservative aspect I think. I think it revivifies itself. But I think it probably does need a little lead from the Monarch.'

Netflix's The Crown depicted how, in May 1972  ten days before his death  Edward was visited by the Queen and Prince Philip.

She spoke to him alone before appearing with just the Duchess for a photograph. The Duke died on May 28, less than a month before his 78th birthday.

His body was returned to Britain, where it lay in state at Windsor Castle's St George's Chapel before his funeral.

Prince Harry 'says he DOESN'T need Queen's permission' to write $20m Megxit memoir as Royal aides fear more 'truth bombs' and 'poor me introspection' in tell-all 'book by Harry, written by Meghan'

By Martin Robinson, Chief Reporter for MailOnline and Rebecca English, Royal Editor for the Daily Mail

Prince Harry didn't feel he needed permission from Buckingham Palace to write his $20million Megxit memoir, his spokesman declared today.

The decision to write a tell-all autobiography has been branded a 'moneymaking exercise at the expense of his blood family' by royal experts and insiders who predicted it would be 'a book by Harry, as written by Meghan.'

Harry, 36, did not warn his grandmother, father or brother about the tell-all book until 'moments before it became public' in a sign that his relationship with the Royal Family did not improve during his visit to unveil Princess Diana's statue in London earlier this month, it was claimed today.

The Sussexes' spokesman told the BBC that Harry would not be expected to obtain permission for the project from Buckingham Palace - but told his family including the Queen 'very recently' - and it is not yet clear if royal officials will get to see the finished book before its release in late 2022 by publisher Penguin Random House. MailOnline has asked Harry's LA team to comment.

Harry said last night: 'I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become'. Responding to his bombshell statement signed 'Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex', broadcaster Kirstie Allsopp replied: 'In which case stop using the title to sell books' and one royal insider said tartly: 'A book by Harry, as written by Meghan.'

In his latest column for MailOnline, Piers Morgan today urged the Queen to strip Harry and Meghan of all their titles, calling the book a betrayal too far and accusing them of turning Her Majesty's world-famous motto of 'never complain, never explain' into 'always complain, always explain, never stop whining'.

The Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William are said to have been completely blindsided by Harry's shock announcement that he has been secretly working on his as yet untitled memoirs with Pulitzer-winning ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer for a year.

Another source revealed that the announcement had provoked 'much eye-rolling', adding: 'I think everyone is just tired of being angry when it comes to those two. They have spent the last 18 months doing everything they promised Her Majesty they wouldn't do  making a living off their previous lives and status as members of the Royal Family. It's depressingly predictable, unfortunately.'

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's 'truth bombing' began in March with their extraordinary 90-minute interview with Oprah Winfrey where they accused the Royal Family of racism towards Archie and ignoring cries for help from a depressed Meghan when she was suicidal and pregnant.

In the chaotic aftermath of the show, watched by almost 100million people worldwide, the couple claimed this would be their 'final word' on Megxit, only to continue talking about it in more damaging detail over the coming months.

And now the royals will be dreading the release of the book next year, which experts predict will be 'more 'poor me' introspection and more excuses to justify his decision to quit royal life' and 'the last thing the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William will want to hear'.

Royal author Phil Dampier wrote in the Express today: 'They will be in despair that Harry - doubtless prompted by Meghan - just won't leave it alone for a while. It is obvious that when Harry came over for the unveiling of Diana's statue earlier this month, no meaningful progress was made in his relationship with his father or brother. If he respected their opinion, he wouldn't do this book because they wouldn't approve of it.

'Harry wants to present himself as a mature family man who has learnt from his mistakes and become a wise old sage. But I fear many other people will see this as yet another moneymaking exercise at the expense of his blood family'.

Harry's biographer Angela Levin said: 'I feel he risks looking like a traitor to the Royal Family. I don't believe it's going to be all honey and sweetness, I think he's going to smash again. I don't know why, does he want to destroy his family? Does he feel so revengeful that he has to take yet another knock after Oprah and after Finding Freedom.

'I don't quite get it, why he doesn't want to move on, enjoy his life, he's making pots of money. He's in love with his wife, he's got two children, a girl and a boy. But why is he so negative about his past, he can't leave it alone. It's like a cat or dog, tearing at something to destroy it.'

As the Sussexes promised to tell their Megxit story again, it also emerged:

Harry told his family including the Queen about the book 'moments before' the publisher released the news, it has been claimed;

Experts told DailyMail.com that Harry will have been given 'at least' a $20million advance for his memoir - one of the largest in literary history;

The author ghostwriting Prince Harry's new book is J.R. Moehringer, who may have been introduced to Harry by George Clooney, who is turning Moehringer's own memoir, The Tender Bar, into a movie next year;

Prince Harry has been secretly working on book for nearly year which he has sold to Penguin Random House

Sources close to Prince Charles (pictured in Scilly today) said Harry's father was 'surprised' at the news and that the royals had not been warned in advance that a book was in the offing until the news broke

Harry , 36, did not warn his grandmother, father or brother about the tell-all book until 'moments before it became public' in a sign that his relationship with the Royal Family did not improve during his visit to unveil Princess Diana 's statue in London earlier this month

A statement from the publisher states: 'Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him'

The first draft of the manuscript, currently untitled, is said to be almost completely written and is due to be submitted in October

Prince Harry has been working with Pulitzer-winning ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer

Prince Harry promises readers an 'accurate and wholly truthful' book written 'not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become' Harry said the memoir, to be published by Penguin Random House, will be written 'not as the prince' he was, but as the man he has 'become'. He said, 'I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. 'I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story - the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned - I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think. 'I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a first hand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful.' Advertisement

Prince Harry did not warn his father Charles about his plan to write an explosive Megxit memoir which will hit the shelves next year, it has been claimed.

Harry's spokesman said that he told his family including the Queen 'very recently' - but a source told The Sun: 'Harry scrambled to contact his family only when he knew the story was coming out  just moments before it became public.'

The Duke of Sussex, 36, has been secretly working on the book about his life in the royal family for nearly a year, which he has since sold to Penguin Random House.

Prince Harry has been collaborating with Pulitzer-winning ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer in a rare move from a senior member of the royal family.

The first draft of the manuscript, currently untitled, is said to be almost completely written and is due to be submitted in October.

Royal experts questioned Harry's motive for writing the book, pointing out he is already wealthy and has previously spoken at length about Megxit.

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told MailOnline Harry was 'exorcising his demons' with the book - but queried how one-sided it would be, adding: 'Will it be his truth or the truth? And will they be the same or different?'

Experts have told DailyMail.com that Harry will have been given 'at least' a $20million (14.6million) advance for the memoir with millions more to be made in sales. Any 'proceeds' will go to charity, the prince has said.

Prince Harry said in a statement last night: 'I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.

'I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful.'

But sources close to Prince Charles said Harry's father was 'surprised' at the news and that the royals had not been warned in advance that a book was in the offing until the news broke on Monday.

Harry's suggestion that he would be writing about his 'mistakes' and the 'lessons' he has learned also raised eyebrows.

Royal sources said they believed that the prince had 'never been one to willingly admit' any mistakes and had spent the last three years 'blaming everyone except himself and his wife' for the catastrophic breakdown in relations with his family.

Charles and Camilla continue their royal duties at Porthcressa Beach in St Mary's, Isles of Scilly today

The proceeds of the deal are likely to be worth millions and, although the exact financial terms were not disclosed, Prince Harry will donate proceeds to charity, according to Random House

Did Harry's pal George Clooney introduce him to his ghostwriter? Pulitzer-winning author is currently working with Hollywood legend on film project about his own life The author ghostwriting Prince Harry's new book is J.R. Moehringer, a Pulitzer-winning journalist and writer who previously worked with Andre Agassi and the co-founder of Nike on their own money-spinning memoirs. It's unclear how the pair were put in touch but it's possible Harry was introduced to him by George Clooney, who is turning Moehringer's own memoir, The Tender Bar, into a movie next year. Harry and Meghan are friends with George and Amal Clooney. The Clooney's gave Meghan a ride on a private jet back from America to London in 2019 after Archie's baby shower. They attended Harry and Meghan's wedding and 'had dinners' with the pair when they were still living in the UK. Clooney is directing The Tender Bar, a film adaptation of Moehringer's 2004 memoir. The film stars Ben Affleck and will be released next year. Advertisement

Harry's 'power ghostwriter': Pulitzer-winning ex-LA Times journalist who co-wrote memoirs for Andre Agassai and Nike CEO Phil Knight has been working on book with the prince for a year Harry has been quietly working with novelist and journalist JR Moehringer to put his thoughts to paper for the last year. Described by US media as a 'power ghostwriter', the New York native, 56, first wrote his own memoir, The Tender Bar, where he recounted being brought up by his single mother in his grandfather's house and meeting a cast of characters in the bar where his uncle worked. It was after reading the deeply personal story from the Yale graduate that tennis star Andre Agassi sought out Moehringer to tell his own tale. Agassi's 2009 book, Open: An Autobiography, was not the usual sportsman's tome, espousing a love for the game that brought him great fame and wealth as others have done. Instead it made headlines when the eight-time Grand Slam winner admitted: 'I play tennis for a living even though I hate tennis, hate it with a dark and secret passion and always have.' Moehringer then went on to ghostwrite the life story of Phil Knight, co-founder of sports giant Nike. But 2016's Shoe Dog, while leaning heavily on Knight's family influences and personal anecdotes, was criticised by some reviewers for largely skipping over Nike's controversies and offering few regrets. Moehringer's work has won numerous awards, including the 2000 Pulitzer, America's top journalism honour, for feature writing. He has worked for the Rocky Mountain News, the New York Times and the LA Times during a career spanning four decades. Advertisement

Prince Harry has signed up to the book deal despite issuing repeated calls for his family's privacy to be respected.

A statement from the publisher about the upcoming book reads: 'In an intimate and heartfelt memoir from one of the most fascinating and influential global figures of our time, Prince Harry will share, for the very first time, the definitive account of the experiences, adventures, losses, and life lessons that have helped shape him.

'Covering his lifetime in the public eye from childhood to the present day, including his dedication to service, the military duty that twice took him to the frontlines of Afghanistan, and the joy he has found in being a husband and father, Prince Harry will offer an honest and captivating personal portrait, on that shows readers that behind everything they think they know lies an inspiring, courageous and uplifting human story.'

Markus Dohle, CEO of Penguin Random House, said: 'All of us at Penguin Random House are thrilled to publish Prince Harry's literary memoir and have him join the world-renowned leaders, icons, and change-makers we have been privileged to publish over the years.

'Prince Harry has harnessed his extraordinary life experience as a prince, a soldier, and a knowledgeable advocate for social issues, establishing himself as a global leader recognized for his courage and openness.

'It is for that reason we're excited to publish his honest and moving story.'

Penguin Random House said it has bought the global rights to the memoir and audiobook - expected to be published in late 2022 as it threatens to bring a dramatic end to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee year.

Robert Jobson, author of the bestseller Prince Philip's Century, has commented on Harry's book deal and drawn parallels with former King Edward VIII.

'As night follows day, this was always going to happen,' he told MailOnline.

'It will become an international bestseller, but at what cost to the monarchy? There will be nowhere to hide. It is not the first time a 'exiled' senior royal has written a memoir the former King Edward VIII wrote one.

'His book - A King's Story: The Memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor, KG - was published to a media storm in the 50s. It caused a sensation.

'But this is bound to cause mayhem amongst the House of Windsor. If Harry, which seems inevitable, goes into detail about mental health issues involving his wife and alleged racism at the heart of the royal family, it will be hugely damaging to the House of Windsor and the Monarchy as an institution.

'Harry is already hugely rich and famous so apart from damaging his family - which a book like this will inevitably do, I am not sure what he is trying to achieve. Whatever he says will lead to conflict.

'No wonder there is a rift between the royal brothers and problems with his father. How can any bridges be built when he is doing this? I cannot see any royal rift ever being healed at this rate.'

And others were also quick to question Harry's motivations with Piers Morgan tweeting: 'Ready to tell his story? Prince Privacy hasn't stopped yapping, whining & trashing his family all bloody year.'

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told MailOnline that Harry has been using his media appearances as a 'form of therapy'.

'It's not being published globally until late 2022. I do think that it is very important that an accommodation should be reached between the royal family and the Sussexes between now and then.

'[Harry] is donating the proceeds to charity. It is however worth remembering that the knowledge he is writing it and that it could be explosive and that it will be widely read worldwide is something members of the royal family will be bearing in mind when dealing with the Sussexes between now and then.

'The Sussexes problem is they keep going public. Harry has an extraordinary habit of getting headlines - Oprah, James Corden, celebrity podcasts, AppleTV and he sees these appearances as a kind of therapy.

'How can Harry build any bridges doing this?': Royal expert Robert Jobson says Prince's 'hugely damaging' Megxit memoir will cause 'mayhem' in his family and deepen rifts with Charles and William Prince Harry's explosive memoir about the royal family will only 'further damage' his relationship with his brother and father, an expert has claimed. The Duke of Sussex, 36, has been secretly working on a book for nearly a year which he has since sold to Penguin Random House. It will tell the story from his childhood growing up in palaces, to his time in Afghanistan and his decision to leave the royal family in 2020. Sources close to Prince Charles said Harry's father was 'surprised' at the news and that the royals had not been warned that a book was in the offing until the news broke tonight. Speaking to FEMAIL, royal expert Robert Jobson said the book will only 'lead to conflict' and will be 'hugely damaging to the House of Windsor and Monarchy as an institution. The author, who wrote bestseller 'Prince Philip's Century', added that Harry is already 'rich and famous' and the book serves no purpose but to 'cause damage'. 'As night follows day, this was always going to happen,' he told FEMAIL. 'It will become an international bestseller, but at what cost to the monarchy? There will be nowhere to hide'. He also compared Harry to his great-grandfather's brother Edward, who abdicated so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. 'It is not the first time an 'exiled' senior royal has written a memoir, the former King Edward VIII wrote one. 'His book 'A King's Story: The Memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor, KG' was published to a media storm in the 50s. It caused a sensation. 'But this is bound to cause mayhem amongst the House of Windsor. 'If Harry, which seems inevitable, goes into detail about mental health issues involving his wife and alleged racism at the heart of the royal family, it will be hugely damaging to the House of Windsor and the Monarchy as an institution. 'Harry is already hugely rich and famous so apart from damaging his family - which a book like this will inevitably do, I am not sure what he is trying to achieve. Whatever he says will lead to conflict. 'No wonder there is a rift between the royal brothers and problems with his father. 'How can any bridges be built when he is doing this? '. Advertisement

'It's very difficult when you're dealing with the Sussexes, that you don't know what's coming next. It might not be published until 2022.

'It's so far in the future, it's a potential lever if they want something from the royal family.

'He's exorcising his demons, and he doesn't see it as disruptive at all. He sees it as becoming a new person - escaping being trapped like Charles and William.

'But he's still sixth-in-line to the throne, a significant royal even if he's not a working royal. He wants an audience to understand how he can become a new him, and we don't know that will be yet.

'Will it be his truth or the truth? And will they be the same or different?

'A lot of his Oprah interview didn't pass a fact check, and it's difficult for the outside world to tell what is true, which is a big concern.

'They still see themselves as victims, my hope is that it's constructive and won't lead to further revelations that will damage his family. It appears it was written before the rift was healed - so it could be extraordinary.

'He's saying the book is written from the the perspective of 'the man he's become', and this is certainly what he feels at the moment.

'It's hard to see exactly what Harry and Meghan want and we might not know until we see what in the memoir is going to include and what might embarrass his father and what's going to be about their time as working royals.

'He has talked a lot about healing, but what do the Sussexes want for the royal family?'

The book deal is likely to only increase the tensions between the Duke of Sussex and the rest of The Firm as the Royal Family brace for further painful revelations.

Prince Harry has been separated from brother William, 39, by a rift that began in March 2019 when the Duke of Cambridge reportedly threw Harry and wife Meghan Markle out of Kensington Palace over the alleged bullying of staff - with the Sussexes breaking up their joint foundation.

The gulf was exacerbated when the couple, who stepped down from royal duties in early 2020, moved away from the UK to start a new life after citing the desire for a more private life.

But just four months ago Harry and Meghan, 39, made worldwide news during their explosive two-hour interview with Oprah Winfrey near the couple's home in Montecito, California, which was viewed by more than 17 million people in the US and over 11 million in Britain.

Meghan spoke of feeling lonely and nearly suicidal at six months pregnant before the couple left England and Harry acknowledged tension with his father, Prince Charles, over his decision to step back from his royal duties and his marriage to the biracial American actor.

'There is a lot to work through there,' Harry said about his relationship with his father, who was divorced from Diana, Princess of Wales, at the time of her fatal car accident in 1997.

'I feel really let down. He's been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like. And Archie (Harry and Meghan's son) is his grandson. I will always love him, but there is a lot of hurt that has happened.'

Harry told Winfrey that he felt trapped by royal life and that his family cut off him financially and took away his security.

He also acknowledged his relations were strained with his brother, Prince William.

'I was trapped, but I didn't know I was trapped,' Harry said, before adding, 'My father and my brother, they are trapped.'

Meghan also claimed that Kate Middleton left her in tears during a row over bridesmaid dresses and Harry accused his father Prince Charles of refusing to take his calls when the pair moved to the US.

In one of the most shocking sections of the Oprah interview, the duchess claimed that Harry was asked by a close relative 'how dark' their unborn baby would be.

She added that the unnamed royal had raised 'concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he's born'.

Meghan Markle will face an 'awkward reunion' with The Firm if Lilibet is christened at Windsor Meghan Markle could be faced with an 'awkward' reunion with the Royal Family if her daughter Lilibet gets christened in Windsor, a royal expert has claimed. According to royal insiders, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's daughter Lilibet Diana could follow in the footsteps of older brother Archie and be christened in St George's Chapel in Windsor with the Queen present. However, royal expert Russell Myers has warned that it will be 'definitely awkward' as tensions are still running 'very high within the family'. 'It will be definitely awkward,' he said, speaking to Today. 'Meghan isn't flavour of the month with the family. Certainly, the family have always said they will be much-loved members of the family. 'However, we're still talking about the fallout of the Oprah Winfrey interview, Emmy or no Emmy nomination. 'The tensions are still running very, very high within the family, indeed.' A source previously told the Daily Mail: 'Harry told several people that they want to have Lili christened at Windsor, just like her brother Archie. 'They are happy to wait until circumstances allow.' Advertisement

The couple refused to identify the person concerned as it would be 'too damaging to them'.

Buckingham Palace said at the time that the royal family were 'saddened' to hear how challenging the couple's lives had been.

In the days that followed, Prince William also uncharacteristically hit back at his brother's claims while visiting a school in east London with wife Kate Middleton.

Sky News reporter Inzamam Rashid asked: 'Can you just let me know, is the Royal Family a racist family?'

William, who was wearing a face mask at the time, firmly said: 'We're very much not a racist family.'

Kensington Palace later declined to comment and said that the duke had said all he wished to say.

Harry and Meghan have since faced criticism for repeatedly complaining about their own privacy being violated at the same time as sharing damaging details about private conversations they have had with senior royals in front of a global TV audience numbering in the tens of millions.

They have also been accused of 'hypocrisy' for releasing photos of private family moments on Instagram - prompting press stories of their private lives - while complaining about media intrusion after coverage that paints them in a bad light.

Last month, Meghan published her own picture book 'The Bench' through Random House Books for Young Readers.

It was inspired by a poem the Duchess of Sussex wrote for Prince Harry on Father's Day, the month after Archie was born, and explores the 'special bond between father and son' as 'seen through a mother's eyes'.

The Bench did feature as number one on The New York Times Bestseller list for children's picture books but failed to hit the UK Official Top 50 chart after selling just 3,212 copies in its first week - being beaten by footballer Marcus Rashford's self-help guide.

And this latest venture comes just weeks after the pair, who are parents to two-year-old Archie, welcomed Lilibet 'Lili' Diana Mountbatten-Windsor on June 4 at 11.40am in Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.

The couple had said they would 'both take some proper time off' to adjust to life as a family-of-four before stepping back into their various business engagements.

Prince Harry's paternity leave has meant taking time out from his executive position at a Silicon Valley start-up that claims to be worth $1.7billion.

For the couple the time-off also meant temporarily stepping back from their multi-million-pound deals with Netflix and Spotify - which Harry told Oprah Winfrey he was persuaded to sign when he was 'literally cut off financially' from the Royal Family.

It was revealed last month that the couple have so far broadcast just 35 minutes of podcast content on Spotify as part of their 18million deal.

The Sussexes were last heard on their Archewell Audio Spotify podcast for the 2020 Christmas special, and the platform had planned for 'a full-scale launch of shows' in 2021.

It is understood that the couple will be paid the full 18million fee after their duties have been met, The Sun said.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment on Harry's memoir when approached by MailOnline.
An ecstatic Dutch teenager declared 'that was great' after making history today by becoming the youngest astronaut in space.

Oliver Daemen, 18, fell into his father's arms after safely emerging from Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket which shot into space for a trip lasting just over 10 minutes.

'Thank you very much, that was great,' the physics student was heard saying in a livestreamed video from the landing site in the Texan desert.

Joining Oliver on the flight was Bezos himself, his brother Mark Bezos, Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk - a pioneering female astronaut who was making her maiden voyage into space aged 82 - who all popped champagne and embraced loved ones after landing.

Oliver, who has now become only the fourth Dutchman to go to space, said the flight was a life-changing experience.

'Every second of this flight was indescribably intense. The mighty effect of the G-forces on your frame, the epic moment you leave the atmosphere. The view of the earth from space is unforgettable,' Dutch newspaper Algemeen Dagblad quoted him as saying.

'Back on the ground, you realize how extremely vulnerable our planet is in the vast galaxy. I realize now more than ever that we have to be extremely careful with the earth. I want to contribute intensively to that.'

Ecstatic Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen declared 'that was great' after making history today by becoming the youngest astronaut in space

The 18-year-old fell into his father's arms after safely emerging from Jeff Bezos' New Shepard rocket which shot into space for a trip lasting just over 10 minutes

Speaking after the landing, Daemen said every moment of the short flight 'was incredibly intense'. Pictured L-R: Daemen, Lauren Sanchez, Jeff Bezos' girlfriend (centre) and a relative of Daemen's (right)

Oliver's dream of going to space was made possible by his father Joes Daemen, a private equity boss who placed the second place bid in the auction, before the $28million winning bidder deferred to a later flight. Pictured: Oliver (left) with his father Joes

The recent high school graduate, who this summer earned a private pilot's license, was part of the first crewed flight of the New Shepard, a rocket ship built by Bezos' company Blue Origin to cater to a future market for space tourism, which launched today from a site near Van Horn, Texas.

Oliver credits Thunderbirds with sparking his fascination with space and rockets at a young age.

His dream of travelling to space was made possible by his father Joes Daemen, a private equity boss who placed the second place bid in the auction, before the $28million winning bidder deferred to a later flight.

Joining Oliver (left) on the flight was Bezos himself, his brother Mark Bezos (pictured in cowboy hat), Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk (right)- a pioneering female astronaut who was making her maiden voyage into space aged 82 - and two other passengers

Pictured: The crew pop champagne and greet loved ones after landing safely back in Texas

'Ready to fly Into Space!,' Oliver wrote in an Instagram post on Monday alongside two pictures of himself in the bright blue Blue Origin jumpsuit he will wear into space, which bears the flag of the Netherlands on the right arm.

Oliver, 18, (left) originally secured a spot on the second New Shepard flight after his millionaire equity boss father came second in an auction. But the anonymous winner had to drop out due to an undisclosed scheduling conflict

Pictured: A young Oliver in a video message he shared after his place aboard the flight was publicly confirmed

In an Instagram post on Monday, Oliver wrote: 'Ready to fly Into Space!,' alongside two pictures of himself in the bright blue Blue Origin jumpsuit he will wear into space, which bears the flag of the Netherlands on the right arm.

In a video message after his place aboard the flight was publicly confirmed, Oliver, who enjoys a raft of outdoor activities, including wakeboarding, snorkeling and surfing, said he was 'super excited' to have the chance to fulfil a lifelong dream.

'I think it's the ultimate dream for so many people to go to space. I guess my first memories of space were Thunderbirds. I was a big fan of that, watched every single episode there was - that was like the big thing with rockets and everything,' he said.

Thunderbirds was a long-running British science-fiction television program following the missions of the International Rescue team.

Oliver's father's second bid originally secured a space on the second New Shepard flight, which the winning bidder will now travel on after a 'scheduling conflict' forced him to delay.

It is not known how much Joes Daemen, the founder and CEO of Dutch private equity firm Somerset Capital Partners, bid.

'He was a participant in the auction and had secured a seat on the second flight,' the spokesperson said via email. 'We moved him up when this seat on the first flight became available,' Blue Origin confirmed to DailyMail.com earlier this month.

'At 18-years-old and 82-years-young, Oliver Daemen and Wally Funk represent the youngest and oldest astronauts to travel to space,' Blue Origin said in a statement.

Oliver is now the fourth Dutchman to have been in space, after Lodewijk van den Berg, Wubbo Ockels and Andre Kuipers.

Joining Oliver (second from right) on the flight was Jeff Bezos (centre), his brother Mark Bezos (left), Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk (right) - a pioneering female astronaut who was making her maiden voyage into space aged 82 - and two other passengers

Oliver, a 2020 high school graduate who also recently earned a private pilot's license, enjoys a raft of outdoor activities, including wakeboarding, snorkeling and surfing

The photo above from Oliver's Instagram shows him (second from left) posing with Dutch DJ Martin Garrix (right) and Belgian-Dutch Formula One driver Max Verstappen (left) and his sister Charlotte (second from right)

Pictured: Oliver's mum, Eline Daemen Dekker, and his sister Charlotte

GeekWire reported that Oliver graduated from high school last year and took a gap year before gaining his private pilot's license in Spain.

He is due to begin a degree in physics and innovation management at the University of Utrecht in September.

Pictures on Oliver's Instagram account show him snorkeling, diving and wakeboarding, as well as posing with Dutch DJ Martin Garrix and Belgian-Dutch Formula One driver Max Verstappen.

Oliver's mother, Eline Daemen Dekker, is an ambassador at Somerset Capital Partners Foundation and volunteers with a program to combat loneliness among the elderly. She previously worked as a cabin crew member for KLM for five years. He also has a sister named Charlotte.

Blue Origin said Tuesday's launch 'marks the beginning of commercial operations for New Shepard, and Oliver represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space.'

The auction gift has allowed Club for the Future to donate $1million each to 19 non-profit organizations, which are all supporting living and working in space.

GeekWire reported that Oliver (pictured) graduated from high school last year and took a gap year before gaining his private pilot's license in Spain

Oliver is due to begin a degree in physics and innovation management at the University of Utrecht in September

Oliver (centre) is seen with his proud parents on his high school graduation day this summer

The recent high school graduate enjoys a raft of outdoor activities, including wakeboarding (pictured), snorkeling and surfing

The winner of the auction beat 20 other participants in a bidding spree at auction that began in late May and wrapped up with a 10-minute online bidding frenzy in late June, livecast by Blue Origin.

Tuesday's launch - which coincides with the anniversary of the moon landing - was the first test of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket with people on board, kicking off the company's space tourism business.

Blue Origin named the New Shepard program after astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly into space exactly 60 years ago.

Fifteen previous test flights of the reusable rocket, which brings the capsule to an altitude of more than 340,000 fleet, and capsule since 2015 - short hops lasting about 10 minutes - were all successful.

Bezos, the world's wealthiest man and a lifelong space enthusiast, was pipped to the post of launching the first commercial space flight by fellow billionaire businessman Richard Branson, who flew with his Virgin Galactic space plane nine days ago.

Today's launch - which coincides with the anniversary of the moon landing - was the first test of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket with people on board, kicking off the company's space tourism business. Pictured: Oliver and a relative

Blue Origin said Tuesday's launch 'marks the beginning of commercial operations for New Shepard, and Oliver (pictured) represents a new generation of people who will help us build a road to space'
Israel has warned of 'severe consequences' against Unilever after its subsidiary Ben & Jerry's announced it will stop selling its ice cream in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and east Jerusalem.

The ice cream brand said yesterday the sale of its products in the territories sought by the Palestinians are 'inconsistent with our values'.

Israel's prime minister Naftali Bennett said he has spoken with Unilever CEO Alan Jope about the 'glaring anti-Israel measure' and said he would react aggressively against any boycotts.

The Ben & Jerry's announcement followed pro-Palestinian pressure on the US company over its business in Israel and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, handled through a licensee partner since 1987.

The ice cream company said it would not renew the license when it expires at the end of next year and would stay in Israel under a different arrangement, without sales in the West Bank, among areas where Palestinians seek statehood.

Israel's prime minister Naftali Bennett has warned of 'severe consequences' against Unilever after its subsidiary Ben & Jerry's announced it will stop selling its ice cream

The Ben & Jerry's statement cited 'the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners'

Most world powers deem Israel's settlements illegal. It disputes this, citing historical and security links to the land, and has moved to penalise anti-settlement measures under Israeli law while securing similar legal protection in some US states.

Bennett's office said: 'From Israel's standpoint, this action has severe consequences, legal and otherwise, and it will move aggressively against any boycott measure targeting civilians.'

Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also slammed the decision, tweeting that: 'Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy'.

Britain's Unilever did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to Washington, said he had raised the Ben & Jerry's decision in a letter sent to 35 US governors whose states legislated against boycotting Israel.

The ice cream brand said yesterday the sale of its products in the territories sought by the Palestinians are 'inconsistent with our values'

'Rapid and determined action must be taken to counter such discriminatory and antisemitic actions,' read the letter, tweeted by the envoy, which likened the case to Airbnb's 2018 announcement that it would delist settlement rental properties.

Airbnb reversed that decision in 2019 following legal challenges in the United States, but said it would donate profits from bookings in the settlements to humanitarian causes.

Palestinians welcomed the Ben & Jerry's announcement. They want the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for a future state. Israel deems all of Jerusalem its capital - a status not recognised internationally.

Founded in Vermont in 1978, but currently owned by Unilever, Ben & Jerry's has not shied away from social causes.

The brand took a stand against Donald Trump administration's by rebranding one of its flavors Pecan Resist in 2018, ahead of the midterm elections.

The company said the flavour celebrated activists who were resisting oppression, harmful environmental practices and injustice. As part of the campaign, Ben & Jerry's said it was giving $25,000 each to four activist entities.

Palestinian protesters clash with Israeli troops in the West Bank. The West Bank and east Jerusalem were captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the two territories - roughly 500,000 in the occupied West Bank and 200,000 in east Jerusalem

Israel in recent years has become a partisan issue in Washington, with many Democrats - particularly of the party's progressive wing - growing increasingly critical over a number of Israeli policies, including settlement construction, and Netanyahu's close ties with former President Trump. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has been an outspoken critic of Israel.

The BDS movement - shorthand for a grassroots, Palestinian-led movement that advocates boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli institutions and businesses - applauded Ben & Jerry's decision as 'a decisive step towards ending the company's complicity in Israel's occupation and violations of Palestinian rights,' but called upon the company to do more.

'We hope that Ben & Jerry's has understood that, in harmony with its social justice commitments, there can be no business as usual with apartheid Israel,' a statement read.

The Israeli government says the BDS movement masks a deeper aim of delegitimizing or even destroying the entire country.

The Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing the roughly 500,000 Israelis living in West Bank settlements, said 'there's no need to buy products from companies that boycott hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens because of the place they choose to live.' It said Ben & Jerry's decision 'brought a bad spirit to such a sweet industry' and called on Israelis to buy locally produced ice cream this summer.

Ben & Jerry's move on Monday may not be the final chapter in the saga. Airbnb announced in 2018 that it would stop advertising properties in Israeli settlements. Several months later, after coming under harsh criticism from Israel and a federal lawsuit by Israeli Americans who owned property in the settlements, the company reversed its decision.
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Storms have swept in with a bang across Britain as torrential rain and thunder brought relief from the sun for some after a blistering heatwave that saw the hottest day of the year.

Torrential downpours hit Cambridge and Essex while one social media user spotted hailstones 'the size of bouncy balls' in Milton Keynes, and some were so big that they smashed a car windscreen in Leicestershire despite the high temperatures today.

As of 6pm on Tuesday, over two inches (60mm) of rain had fallen in just a few hours in parts of south-eastern England affected by an amber thunderstorm warning that lasted until 7pm, the Met Office said.

It came on the hottest day of the year so far as the mercury at Heathrow rocketed to 90F (32C) following a weekend of sun.

But the relief from the high temperatures will be short-lived with amber 'extreme heat' warnings in place for parts of the UK until Friday.

The scorching weather has proved too much for some with a pub and a restaurant forced to shut amid searing heat in Wales.

The Pipeworks Bar at Pontyclun in Rhondda Cynon Taf was 'unbearable' for workers while The Stone Crab in Saundersfoot in Pembrokeshire said it 'cannot let our staff continue to suffer in this hot weather'.

Britain's killer heatwave claimed eight lives as the death toll continued to rise amid an unprecedented heat, thunderstorm and flood warning from the Met Office.

The UK will be hotter than top holiday destinations such as Marbella, Mykonos and Tenerife over the next three days, with many forecasters predicting them to be the hottest of the year and temperatures peaking at 91.4F (33C) over the next couple of days.

Thunderstorms and floods hit the UK after the nation basked in sweltering temperatures - with a yellow warning in place for the East Midlands, South East and East of England for Tuesday.

The confirmed death toll from the country's warm weather surge has now risen to eight after it was confirmed that a drowned swimmer's body washed up at a Wakefield nature park.

Thunderstorms and floods look set to hit the UK as the nation basks in sweltering temperatures - with a yellow warning in place for the Eat Midlands, South East and East of England for Tuesday. Pictured: Cambridge

Heavy rain in Billericay, Essex during a brief but heavy storm. A yellow warning for storms has been issued by the Met Office for parts of the East Midlands, South East and East of England from 1pm on Tuesday until the end of the day

A social media user in Kibworth, Leicestershire, said the hailstones were 'big enough to smash a car windscreen'

Downpours hit Cambridge and Essex and hail was spotted elsewhere across the South East despite the high temperatures today

Heavy rain in Billericay, Essex during a brief but heavy storm. A yellow warning for storms has been issued by the Met Office for parts of the East Midlands, South East and East of England from 1pm on Tuesday until the end of the day

Students take time to relax as the temperatures soar in Newcastle Exhibition park today as they enjoyed the heat before the rain swept in

People enjoy the weather on Bournemouth beach in Dorset, with temperatures set to soar to sweltering highs this week

Hundreds of people have taken to beaches across the UK today, as the summer sun looks set to continue. Pictured: People pack out Bournemouth Beach, Dorset on Tuesday, July 20

A jogger runs along the Thames near London's Tower Bridge this morning, with the recent heatwave set to continue throughout the week

A runner jogs past beach huts in Bournemouth Beach, Dorset as temperatures look set to peak at 91.4F this week

A wakeboarder takes to the sea just off Bournemouth Beach, Dorset as people enjoy the nation's warm weather on Tuesday

People enjoy the weather on Bournemouth beach in Dorset, with temperatures set to soar to sweltering highs this week

Pedalo riders travel along the Serpentine in London's Hyde Park on another scorching hot afternoon in the UK

Twins Bella and Layla Hughes (4) with Annie Shepherd (2) and her brother Jude Shepherd (5) eating screwball ice creams at Helen's Bay beach in County Down, Northern Ireland

Aneurin Duffin-Murray (left) and Lauren Dalzell from Belfast on a paddle board at Helen's Bay beach in County Down, Northern Ireland

The extreme hot temperatures in the North East are causing sea fret to form on South Shields beach in South Tyneside today

People enjoying the hot weather at Bournemouth Beach in Dorset on yet another scorching hot afternoon across the UK

A man paddle boards in the sea off of Bournemouth beach in Dorset, as people enjoy this continued spell of hot weather

High temperatures cause roads to melt Temperatures have risen so high in recent days that roads are melting - with councils around the country carrying out emergency repairs to surfaces damaged in the heat. In Gloucestershire emergency maintenance had to be carried out as part of the A38 was deemed unsafe. Grit was poured on top of the melted tar to solidify it and re-attach to surfaces. Somerset County Council also say road surfaces across the county have begun to melt due to the scorching temperatures. The local authority has deployed highways teams to treat the affected roads. A post on Twitter from the council reads: 'The blistering heat has caused some roads to melt (yes, melt). We are doing all we can to protect the roads. 'A sunny day in the 20Cs can be enough to generate 50C on the ground as the dark asphalt road surface absorbs a lot of heat and this builds up during the day with the hottest period between noon and 5pm. 'When this occurs, we send out a team to spread granite dust to absorb the soft bitumen and so stabilise the road surface. 'The road network has 5 per cent of 'polymer modified binders in hot rolled asphalt' roads. These can absorb up to 80C. But these are more expensive. 'It is particularly problematic in countries that experience the two extremes of weather. 'Think of the asphalt like chocolate - it melts and softens when it's hot and goes hard and brittle when it's cold. As a result, it doesn't maintain the same strength all year round. 'We will continue to monitor the situation over the next few days.' Advertisement

The Pipeworks Bar said: 'As well as being too hot outside, it's unbearable behind our bar.

'Everything that is keeping the drinks cold is making us even hotter,' it said, referring to its three fridges.

'Plus, masks are just horrid to wear at the moment. So, it's only fair on the staff that we give them a couple of days off... We didn't ever think we would close due to sun.'

The Stone Crab added it was 'with a heavy heart and with deep thought' that they have closed until Friday due to the Met Office's extreme temperature weather warnings.

'We cannot in good knowledge let our staff continue to suffer in this hot weather.

'We have already been under significant pressure whilst working due to this heat wave, and the new warnings that have come out this evening make it unsafe for our staff to work, let alone the hours that we are all working due to staff shortages in the area.'

The Met Office tweeted at 7.15pm this evening: 'An area of torrential rain and thunderstorms is affecting areas southeast of Leicester currently, with reports of large hail and nearly 45mm of rain in 30 mins.

'Driving conditions will be difficult for the next few hours here.'

A Twitter user commented: 'Thunder and hail stones the size of bouncy balls here in Milton Keynes for the last 40 minutes.'

In a separate post, the weather service added: 'Wednesday will be another hot and sunny day for many with extreme heat warnings still in force in the west.

'There is a risk of thunderstorms in the afternoon, though they will be less likely than Tuesday.'

Temperatures rocketed to 86F (30.2C) in parts of Wales today as the unbearable heatwave continued.

But there is no legal right for staff to request to be sent home due to the heat.

Thought bosses have to provide a 'reasonable' temperature for them to work in, according to the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

Meanwhile yesterday the drowning death toll reached seven, with separate incidents in Blackpool, Buxton, Sheffield and more, while two other people died from a heart attack and 'heat stroke'.

The bookies have now made it just a 1/2 shot that 2021 ends up being the hottest summer ever on record in the UK, with the Met Office today issuing its first ever 'amber extreme heat warning'.

The Met Office's warning - which is similar to those issued when heavy rain or snow is forecast - covers a large part of Wales, all of south-west England and parts of southern and central England until the end of Thursday, and remains in force for parts of Northern Ireland until Friday.

Roads across Somerset are 'melting like chocolate' in the scalding heat as the county endures a prolonged heatwave

People enjoying the sun at Helen's Bay beach in County Down, Northern Ireland on another scorching day across the UK

Pedalo riders travel along the Serpentine in London's Hyde Park on another scorching hot afternoon in the UK

Jennifer Sanchez, from Hampshire, is pictured in a field of lavender at Lordington Lavender Farm in West Sussex

Kerry Ford takes a selfie with her mum Fiona McDonald at Helen's Bay beach in County Down, Northern Ireland this afternoon

Public Health England (PHE) also issued a heat-health alert, warning members of the public to take measures to stay cool and look out for vulnerable people. Pictured: People enjoy the sun in Dorset

People queue for ice creams at Helen's Bay beach in County Down, Northern Ireland as the temperatures continue to soar

Commuters cross London Bridge in the sun this morning as scorching temperatures continue to hit Britain this week

A kayaker travels along the River Thames near Ham Common, London on another sweltering morning in the English capital

The extreme hot temperatures in the North East are causing sea fret to form on South Shields beach in South Tyneside today

A man is pictured paddle boarding in the sea just off of Bournemouth Beach, Dorset as hundreds of people enjoyed the summer sun on Tuesday

Thousands flock to the beaches of Bournemouth in Dorset to cool off amid more soaring temperatures across the UK

Two people wade into the sea as they savour the glorious British summer weather at Bournemouth Beach on Tuesday, July 20

The extreme hot temperatures in the North East are causing sea fret to form on South Shields beach in South Tyneside today

Meteorologists have warned people to stay out of the sun during the afternoon, close their curtains to keep living rooms cool, stay out of direct sunlight and drink water.

Public Health England (PHE) also issued a heat-health alert, warning members of the public to take measures to stay cool and look out for vulnerable people.

However, the Met Office has also warned that several areas of the country could experience heavy rainfall, floods and thunderstorms for as much as nine hours today.

How to survive the heat Stay cool indoors  many of us will need to stay safe at home this summer so know how to keep your home cool Close curtains on rooms that face the sun to keep indoor spaces cooler and remember it may be cooler outdoors than indoors Drink plenty of fluids and avoid excess alcohol Never leave anyone in a closed, parked vehicle, especially infants, young children or animals Try to keep out of the sun between 11am to 3pm Walk in the shade, apply sunscreen regularly and wear a wide brimmed hat, if you have to go out in the heat Avoid exercising in the hottest parts of the day Make sure you take water with you if you are travelling If you are going into open water to cool down, take care and follow local safety advice If you or someone else feels unwell with a high temperature during hot weather, it may be heat exhaustion or heatstroke Advertisement

Yesterday, a seventh person was confirmed to have died in separate drowning incidents across England over what was the hottest weekend of the year so far - while two others died from a heart attack and 'heat stroke'.

The victim, from Bolton, was revealed to be a 29-year-old man who drowned after 'accidentally getting out of his depth' in the surf near Blackpool on Saturday.

The RNLI and coastguard launched a frantic five-hour search for the stricken swimmer when he suddenly went under the waves at around 3.25pm and failed to resurface.

The death follows a string of tragedies across England with bodies being recovered from rivers, quarries and a quay.

It was also revealed yesterday afternoon that a man's body was recovered from a disused quarry in Dove Holes, Buxton, Derbyshire on Sunday evening.

Derbyshire police said they were called to the Victory Quarry at around 7pm last night, following reports that someone had entered the water and 'found himself in difficulty.'

The force said firefighters and paramedics also attended the scene but 'despite extensive search and rescue efforts, the man's body was recovered from the water shortly before 11pm.'

Authorities also revealed Monday that another man was pulled from a lake in Sheffield late on Sunday evening, several hours after going missing.

Reports of a man coming into difficulty had been made at the Crookes Valley Park at 7.31pm, before emergency services located a body at just before midnight.

Specialist search teams did everything in their power to find him, a police spokesman said.

The tragic news emerged after four other people had already been confirmed to have lost their lives in separate drowning incidents around the country.

Emergency services had urged sunseekers to stay safe after the bodies of three teenagers and a man in his 50s were pulled from rivers and lakes.

One of the teenagers, who drowned in the river Eden, was named as 16-year-old Mohammad Abdul Hamid. The force confirmed that the body of the teenager had been found near Stony Holme at around 11.45am.

A Met Office graphic shows how high temperatures will again hit parts of the UK between Tuesday and Thursday this week

A graphic from the Met Office showing amber 'extreme heat' warnings in parts of the UK on Wednesday and Thursday

An amber 'extreme heat' warning from the Met Office in place for some of Northern Ireland on Friday

The weather service tweeted: 'Wednesday will be another hot and sunny day for many with extreme heat warnings still in force in the west'

It was also revealed on Monday that a man collapsed and died after reportedly suffering from extreme 'heat stroke' while playing football in Tower Hamlets yesterday.

Although paramedics arrived within seven minutes, the unnamed man died at the scene.

Not 24 hours earlier, cricketer Maqsood Anwar, 45, died from a suspected heart attack while bowling in 81F weather.

He had earlier experienced chest pains but decided to play on in soaring temperatures in Barry, south Wales.

Teammates rushed to call 999 but tragically the father-of-two, known by friends as 'Max', could not be revived.

Later on Sunday Greater Manchester Police confirmed that a teenager had died after getting into difficulty while swimming in Salford Quays.

A huge rescue operation was launched after witnesses reported a 19-year-old man was struggling in the water at about 4.40pm.

Police, fire and ambulance crews rushed to the scene and boats were used to search the quays for the missing teenager.

After hours of searching, Greater Manchester Police confirmed that the 19-year-old man had died.

The Met Office has issued an amber extreme heat warning for parts of Wales, all of south-west England and parts of southern and central England, while Public Health England has extended its heat-health warning, which warns people to take measures to stay cool and look out for vulnerable people, until Friday.

Grahame Madge, spokesman for the Met Office, warned of heavy rain amid the thunderstorms.

He said: 'The lightning frequency could be quite intense. We could see very large hail which could easily cause impact and obviously with any thunderstorms we could see those systems producing 30-60mm of rain within an hour or two.'

He added: 'The thunderstorms we've got developing are purely because of the heat so they're not likely to affect the heat in anyway.

'They will bring moisture and relief but it's not an indication of things changing fundamentally.'

Central England could see some of the highest temperatures over the next few days, forecasters predict.

Mr Madge said: 'Normally we say the south east but the focus of the heat is slightly shifted west this time.

'The heat is certainly likely to last up to the end of Thursday.

'From Friday onwards there is a strong signal for the heat that remains to be concentrated more towards the north and west whereas parts of England and Wales will start to come back to temperatures near normal.'

PHE has advised people to stay safe during the hot weather by keeping well hydrated, avoiding excess alcohol, wearing sun cream and trying to keep out of the sun between 11am and 3pm.

Marco Petagna, a Met Office forecaster, said: 'We have an amber extreme heat warning in place until Thursday.

'Temperatures are likely to peak at around 32C (89.6F), even reaching 33C (91.4F) in isolated spots across southern England, so very warm for many.

'Even the more cooler areas will see temperatures in the twenties while other places could see some thundery showers.'

Mr Petagna put the warm weather down to an area of high pressure above the UK.

He added: 'I'd say people should stay out of the midday sun, apply sunscreen when outside, be wary of any health issues you may have and make sure to stay hydrated.

'As this heat remains in place, people will be vulnerable to dehydration, fatigue and nausea, so make sure to stay safe on public transport and if you are heading to the beach.'

Thousands flock to the beaches of Bournemouth in Dorset to cool off amid more soaring temperatures across the UK

The extreme hot temperatures in the North East are causing sea fret to form on South Shields beach in South Tyneside today

Two women take snaps of the sea before they join the hundreds of people who have converged on Bournemouth Beach on Tuesday, July 20

A kayaker travels along the River Thames near Ham Common, London on another sweltering morning in the English capital

The hot sun burns off the sea mist at sunrise as a paddleboarder goes across Roker Harbour to Roker Lighthouse in Sunderland this morning

The recent heat, which saw the hottest day of the year so far recorded on Sunday, has brought about a number of issues across the UK, including in Birmingham where a bus shelter exploded

The bookies are now predicting this summer could be Britain's hottest yet, offering odds of just 1/2 for the period to reach record levels.

Alex Apati of Ladbrokes said: 'We've been treated to a scorching few days and it looks like there's plenty more where that came from, with a record-breaking hot summer potentially on the cards.'

The recent heat, which saw the hottest day of the year so far recorded on Sunday, has brought about a number of issues across the UK, including in Birmingham where a bus shelter exploded.

The 10ft tall, 20ft wide shelter, in busy Chelmsley Wood, fell victim to the heatwave and while nobody was hurt when it suddenly smashed into pieces, it is not clear whether anyone was standing waiting for a bus at the time.

Birmingham bus shelter explodes in heat The recent heat, which saw the hottest day of the year so far recorded on Sunday, has brought about a number of issues across the UK, including in Birmingham where a bus shelter exploded. The 10ft tall, 20ft wide shelter, in busy Chelmsley Wood, fell victim to the heatwave and while nobody was hurt when it suddenly smashed into pieces, it is not clear whether anyone was standing waiting for a bus at the time. Photos emerged showing the perspex windows and sides had melted in the intense heat after it 'self-combusted'. Police and fire crews raced to the scene after the explosion rocked Chelmsley Road just before midday yesterday, with neighbours dialling 999 after seeing the road filled with smoke. On Twitter, Chelmsley Wood Police wrote: 'Thank you to our colleagues at West Midlands Fire Service for attending this bus stop in Chelmsley Wood within minutes of the call today after it self combusted due to the intense heat. Flames were doused and the bus stop made safe.' Advertisement

Photos emerged showing the perspex windows and sides had melted in the intense heat after it 'self-combusted'.

Police and fire crews raced to the scene after the explosion rocked Chelmsley Road just before midday yesterday, with neighbours dialling 999 after seeing the road filled with smoke.

On Twitter, Chelmsley Wood Police wrote: 'Thank you to our colleagues at West Midlands Fire Service for attending this bus stop in Chelmsley Wood within minutes of the call today after it self combusted due to the intense heat. Flames were doused and the bus stop made safe.'

West Midlands Fire Service added: 'We were called to Chelmsley Road in Chelmsley Wood at 11.38 am on July 19.

'We received a 999 call saying a bus shelter was on fire. One of our 4x4 brigade response vehicles attended with three firefighters on board from Sheldon fire station.

'One hose reel was used to extinguish the fire. West Midlands Police also attended and they informed Travel West Midlands.'

Meanwhile, a boy was left with nasty burns after he steppe on a used BBQ, which was buried in the sand on a beach in Fylde.

The 10-year-old, from Preston, was injured after walking over the hot surface on Sunday afternoon, when hundreds flocked to the seaside to bathe in the sun.

The BBQ was discarded and hidden amongst the sand dunes when the child unknowingly stumbled across it, causing burns to his heel.

It is believed that the father of the child shouted for help from the Fylde Rangers who were patrolling the beach.

The ranger on the scene rushed to help the family who were instructed to call an ambulance for assistance.

A spokesperson for the Fylde Rangers Service said: 'The frame edging stuck into his foot about an inch deep. First aid was administered and they were advised to seek medical help by going to the hospital. The incident occurred on the dunes adjacent to the former Sand Wining road.'

Meanwhile, temperatures have risen so high in recent days that roads are melting - with councils around the country carrying out emergency repairs to surfaces damaged in the heat.

In Gloucestershire emergency maintenance had to be carried out as part of the A38 was deemed unsafe.

Grit was poured on top of the melted tar to solidify it and re-attach to surfaces.

Somerset County Council also say road surfaces across the county have begun to melt due to the scorching temperatures.

The local authority has deployed highways teams to treat the affected roads.

A post on Twitter from the council reads: 'The blistering heat has caused some roads to melt (yes, melt). We are doing all we can to protect the roads.

'A sunny day in the 20Cs can be enough to generate 50C on the ground as the dark asphalt road surface absorbs a lot of heat and this builds up during the day with the hottest period between noon and 5pm.

'When this occurs, we send out a team to spread granite dust to absorb the soft bitumen and so stabilise the road surface.

'The road network has 5 per cent of 'polymer modified binders in hot rolled asphalt' roads. These can absorb up to 80C. But these are more expensive.

'It is particularly problematic in countries that experience the two extremes of weather.

'Think of the asphalt like chocolate - it melts and softens when it's hot and goes hard and brittle when it's cold. As a result, it doesn't maintain the same strength all year round.

'We will continue to monitor the situation over the next few days.'
The world's largest airline is pulling all flights to and from Australia, after deciding it was no longer feasible given the country's crippling border closures and a recent reduction in international arrivals.

American Airlines will suspend all passenger and cargo services between LA into Sydney - the carrier's only route Down Under - from September 1.

The move leaves Australia increasingly isolated from the rest of the world and there are now growing fears many other airlines may follow suit.

Australia's international borders have been closed since March 2020, with no official opening date except vague promises of 'mid 2022'.

American Airlines will suspend all passenger and cargo services between LA into Sydney - the carrier's only route Down Under - from September 1 (pictured, American Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner on the runway at Sydney Airport in March 2020 when the pandemic began)

Pictured: An American Airlines flight attendant serves drinks to passengers after departing Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport - with the airline no longer serving Australia

The airline said it hopes to resume operations by the end of October, but it's very possible that deadline could be extended.

'Due to the ongoing travel restrictions surrounding the coronavirus (Covid-19), American Airlines is suspending customer and cargo flights between Los Angeles and Sydney between Sept 1 and Oct 28,' the airline said.

The company has apologised to travellers and says it will contact passengers to offer alternative arrangements.

The carrier last week revealed the international caps meant it has to make the 12,000km trip from LA to Sydney at less than 80 per cent capacity.

The reduced numbers on the long haul flight severely dented the profitability of the normally lucrative route.

Earlier this month National Cabinet announced that from July 14 until at least the end of August, the weekly cap on international arrivals would be halved to just 3,035 to make sure hotel quarantine isn't overloaded with travellers during Australia's new outbreaks.

Travel tips for entering Australia 1. Make sure you qualify to enter. Australian citizens, permanent residents, immediate family members and travellers who have been in New Zealand for 14 days prior to departure are allowed in. Apply for an exemption. 2. Book a flight to your final destination if possible 3. Fill out an entry form for the state you are landing in. It will take five to eight business days to process 4. 72 hours before your flight, get a Covid test, return a negative result, and fill out an exemption to come into Australia form. Print both before boarding Advertisement

The call was made at the behest of state premiers to keep out the highly contagious Indian Delta strain of Covid, which has decimated Sydney and spread to several other states.

Queensland's Annastacia Palaszczuk, Victoria's Daniel Andrews and Western Australia's Mark McGowan pushed for the number of travellers to be slashed to take pressure off Australia's quarantine systems.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison agreed despite push back from others such as NSW leader Gladys Berejiklian.

Earlier this month National cabinet announced that from July 14 until at least the end of August, the weekly cap on international arrivals would be halved to just 3,035. Pictured: Passengers wearing face masks arrive at Sydney Airport on July 11, 2021

Pictured: An empty departures area is seen at Sydney Airport on July 11, 2021

'Because of the particular virulency of the Delta strain, it is believed that is a prudent action while we remain in this suppression phase of the virus,' Mr Morrison said after the meeting.

But the decisions means some 34,000 Australians still stranded overseas may now find it more difficult to get home, despite an increase to repatriation flights to the Howard Springs quarantine facility near Darwin.

Ex-pats are not only faced the $3,000 cost of quarantine when they arrive but highly inflated prices for airline tickets and regular cancelations.
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Rockets exploded near the presidential palace in Afghanistan's capital of Kabul during Eid prayers this morning as Muslims around the world gathered to mark the religious holiday.

Video taken during the prayers captures the sound of incoming missiles and explosions as dozens of people bow their heads in prayer in a central courtyard.

Nobody was injured in the attack which has not yet been attributed to a group, though comes as the Taliban retake vast swathes of territory while the US withdraws.

Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice which coincides with the end of the Hajj pilgrimage, is typically marked with mass gatherings the world over and the sacrifice of animals with meat given to the needy.

Celebrations were noticeably larger than during the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan earlier this year - which came amid Covid lockdowns - but were muted compared to pre-pandemic years as governments asked worshippers to be considerate amid the spread of the Delta variant.

Muslims gather for Eid al-Adha prayers in Afghanistan's presidential palace as the sound of rockets being fired at the compound is captured in the background

Most continued their prayers but one man could be seen panicking as the rocket-propelled grenades landed nearby, causing explosions though nobody was killed or injured

Muslims around the world are gathering to celebrate the Eid al-Adha holiday today, which marks the end of the Hajj pilgrimage. Here, worshippers are pictured during morning prayers in Tirana, Albania

Thousands of Muslim worshippers are seen from the air during morning prayers in Tirana, Albania, to mark Eid al-Adha

Morning prayers take place at Baiturrahman Grand Mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia's deeply conservative province, on the morning of the Eid al-Adha holidays

Thousands of Palestinian worshippers take part in morning prayers at the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem's Old City

Muslims perform Eid al-Adha prayer at Jaber Al-Ahmad Stadium in Kuwait City, Kuwait

Prayers take place in Baghdad, Iraq, the morning after a suicide bomb attack killed at least 36 people at a market in the city

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar (fifth right) and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (sixth right) attend Eid al-Adha prayers at the Hala Sultan Camii mosque in the northern part of Cyprus' divided capital Nicosia

Muslims gather to perform the Eid Al Adha prayer at the Ar-Rahma Mosque in Kiev, Ukraine

Muslims offer prayers during the first day of Eid al-Adha outside the iconic Haghia Sophia mosque in the historic Sultan Ahmed district of Istanbul, Turkey

Israeli Arabs offer Eid al-Adha prayer at a mosque in the city of Rahat, Israel, on Tuesday morning

Muslims perform Eid al-Adha prayer at a mosque in Hargeisa, Somalia, on the Horn of Africa

The Hajj pilgrimage itself - an annual journey to Mecca in Saudi Arabia that is compulsory for all Muslims who can afford it - was also drastically reduced in size due to the pandemic, with only 60,000 fully-vaccinated worshippers allowed to participate using tickets that were raffled.

Indonesia today marked a grim Eid al-Adha amid a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation.

Large gatherings were banned and tougher travel restrictions imposed.

Vice President Ma'ruf Amin, also an influential Islamic cleric, appealed to people to perform holiday prayers at home with their families.

'Don't do crowds,' Mr Amin said in televised remarks ahead of the start of the holiday.

'Protecting oneself from the Covid-19 pandemic is obligatory.'

The surge is believed to have been fuelled by travel during another holiday, the Eid al-Fitr festival in May, and by the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

In Malaysia, measures have been tightened after a sharp spike in infections despite a national lockdown since June 1, people are banned from travelling back to their hometowns or crossing districts to celebrate.

House visits and customary trips to graveyards are also banned.

Healthy worshippers are allowed to gather for prayers in mosques, with strict social distancing and no physical contact.

Ritual animal sacrifice is limited to mosques and other approved areas.

Health director-general Noor Hisham Abdullah has urged Malaysians not to 'repeat irresponsible behaviour', adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another festival on the island of Borneo led to new clusters of cases.

'Let us not in the excitement of celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice cause us all to perish because of Covid-19,' he said in a statement.

The country's prime minister Muhyiddin Yassin urged Muslims to stay home.

An Iraqi Sunni women perform Eid Al-Adha prayers amid the COVID-19 pandemic in front of the Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad's Adhamiya district

Muslims greet each other after performing Eid al-Adha prayer at the Dinamo Stadium in Bucharest, Romania

Muslims greet each other after performing Eid al-Adha prayer at the Dinamo Stadium in Bucharest, Romania

Afghan refugees prepare to slaughter a cow on the occasion of the Eid al-Adha holiday in the Kazana Refugees camp on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan

A butcher works on animal carcasses in Nairobi, Kenya, amid Eid al-Adha celebrations which traditionally include the slaughter of livestock with excess meat given to the needy

Palestinian Muslims gather to celebrate Eid al-Adha in Gaza City, amid the ruins of buildings destroyed in fighting with Israel

Afghan security guards the streets surrounding the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan, after the area was hit by rockets earlier in the day

'I appeal to you all to be patient and abide by the rules because your sacrifice is a great jihad in Allah's sight and in our effort to save lives,' he said in a televised speech on the eve of the festival.

The World Health Organisation has reported that Covid-19 deaths had climbed after a period of decline.

The reversal has been attributed to low vaccination rates, relaxed mask rules and other precautions, and the Delta variant.

Lockdowns will severely curtail Eid al-Adha festivities in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities.

Sydney resident Jihad Dib, a New South Wales state government lawmaker, said the city's Muslims were sad but understood why they would be confined to their homes with no visitors allowed.

'It's going to be the first Eid in my life I don't hug and kiss my mum and dad,' Mr Dib told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Melbourne Muslims face their second Eid al-Adha in lockdown in as many years.

The sudden announcement of the Melbourne lockdown last week will also deal a huge financial blow to retailers who had stocked up on food ahead of what they thought would be usual Eid festivities.

Iran on Monday imposed a week-long lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported.

The lockdown begins on Tuesday.

Not everyone is imposing new restrictions.

In Bangladesh, authorities have allowed an eight-day pause in the country's strict lockdown for the holiday that health experts say could be dangerous.

In Egypt, Essam Shaban travelled to his southern hometown of Sohag to spend Eid al-Adha with his family.

He said ahead of the start of the holiday that he planned to pray at a mosque there on Tuesday while taking precautions such as bringing his own prayer rug and wearing a mask.

'We want this Eid to pass by peacefully without any infections,' he said.

'We must follow instructions.'

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks with Turkish Cypriots President Ersin Tatar (right) after the Eid al-Adha prayers at the Hala Sultan Mosque in the Turkish-administered northern part of the divided capital Nicosia

Syrian president Bashar al-Assad takes part in Eid al-Adha prayers at Khaled bin al-Walid mosque in Homs

Palestinian Muslims attend the prayer of the first day of Eid al-Adha in Gaza City

Faithful attend prayers marking the Muslim festival of sacrifice Eid al-Adha, amid the Covid pandemic, in Nairobi, Kenya

Refugees offer Eid al-Adha prayers at a mosque in the Kazana Refugees camp on the outskirts of Peshawar, Pakistan

Muslims gather to perform the Eid Al Adha prayer at the Ar-Rahma Mosque in Kiev, Ukraine

Muslims perform Eid al-Adha prayer in Bab district of Aleppo, Syria

Afghan security officers pray at the Eid Gah mosque on the first day of Eid Al-Adha holiday in Kabul, Afghanistan
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Weekly Covid deaths have risen to their highest level since April, official figures revealed today as the third wave continues to surge.

Office for National Statistics data showed 183 people had Covid mentioned on their death certificates in England and Wales in the week ending July 9, the latest available.

This was two-thirds higher than the previous week and the most recorded since the second wave was dying down at the end of April and the country was under much stricter lockdown rules.

Despite deaths now starting to tick upwards  there are 42 on average every day now compared to 20 at the start of the month  they are still just a fraction of the levels seen during the worst of the second wave, when there were up to 1,800.

Experts say fatalities will continue to climb as cases rise but the Government's scientific advisers expect them to peak at 200 or below because of the success of the vaccines.

The report found Covid deaths in care homes were also low despite surging cases in the community. There were 20 recorded in the latest week, and they have not risen above 30 since mid-April.

Last month the ONS said the proportion of overall deaths in England and Wales blamed on the virus was just 1 per cent. Now that is estimated to be 2 per cent and rising.

There were 183 deaths linked to Covid in the week to July 9, the latest available. This was a 67 per cent rise compared to the same time last week and the most since April. They are shown on the graph (dark red bar)

Care home Covid deaths have, however, remained static despite growing cases in the community. There were 20 last week, and they have not risen above 30 since March

Flu and pneumonia were also still blamed for more deaths than Covid in the latest week. They were behind 254 fatalities, compared to the 147 which noted Covid as the main cause of death

Deaths from all causes surged six per cent above the five-year average in England and Wales, however, (shown) for the number of deaths expected at this time of year

But fatalities due to the virus in care homes remained static despite growing Covid cases in the community

Every region of England saw an increase in Covid deaths but rates stayed flat in Wales, according to the weekly ONS report.

The North West  which has battled a major outbreak of the Indian 'Delta' variant  suffered the most deaths (66), followed by London and the West Midlands (both 20).

Meanwhile, the fewest Covid deaths were registered in the North East (eight) despite the region currently being hit hardest by the Indian variant, with case rates double the levels reached in the second wave.

Covid cases rise just 16% in week, figures show Britain's daily Covid cases rose by just 16 per cent yesterday, as an expert hailed the small rise as a 'remarkably good' sign that the outbreak may already be starting to slow. The Department of Health's usual update showed there were 39,950 infections across the UK in the past 24 hours, up on the 34,471 recorded last Monday. There were also another with another 19 Covid deaths registered, which was more than triple the six victims reported a week ago but still 16 times lower than at the same point in previous waves. Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that gloomy warnings of 200,000-plus daily cases and tens of thousands more deaths at the peak this autumn seemed 'a bit over the top'. He suggested infections could actually start to drop on Thursday, if England's Covid crisis plays out in the same way Scotland's did following the surge of cases during Euro 2020. Nationally, there are currently 45,000 new infections every day across Britain, on average, and the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) expects this to reach at least 100,000 in August or September. 'Professor Lockdown' Neil Ferguson  whose frightening modelling of the first wave spooked ministers into the initial shutdown  has warned that daily cases could rise to 200,000 this autumn, which would dwarf the 68,000 at the height of the second wave in January. Advertisement

Deaths across the region will rise over the coming weeks because of the data lag between cases and fatalities  it can take over a fortnight for infected patients to fall seriously ill.

No10's Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned that yesterday's easing of Covid rules in England would likely trigger a rise in Covid deaths nationwide.

'Freedom Day' saw most remaining restrictions removed, with face masks made optional and night clubs allowed to reopen for the first time in 16 months.

The ONS Covid death data looks at all cases in which the virus was listed on the death certificate.

It differs from the Department of Health's death toll which looks at all patients who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid, no matter the cause.

It comes as cases hit their highest levels in months after breaking through the 40,000 barrier, amid fears they could reach 200,000 a day in August.

But they rose by only 16 per cent yesterday after 39,950 were recorded, in a sign the third wave may already be slowing.

Professor Paul Hunter, an infectious diseases expert at the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline the figures suggested warnings of 200,000-cases a day were 'a bit over the top'.

He suggested infections may actually start to drop on Thursday, if England's Covid crisis plays out in the same way as Scotland's following the surge of cases during Euro 2020.

Hospitalisations and deaths are also rising, but they remain at much lower levels than in previous waves because of the successful vaccination drive.

Scientists have always been honest and said jabs are not perfect and will not always prevent infection but they do drastically slash the risk of someone who catches the virus being hospitalised or dying.

But in a clear sign they are working, analysis yesterday revealed Britain's Covid death rate is now 16 times lower than it was during both the first and second waves.

Infections are currently running at about 45,000 a day across Britain, with 40 deaths being registered every 24 hours on average. But the last time cases hit this level  when the second wave began to spiral out of control in late December  there were as many as 640 daily fatalities.
Boris Johnson attempted to resist pleas for a second lockdown last autumn, joking that the Covid pandemic was only killing pensioners, his former aide Dominic Cummings claimed last night.

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Mr Cummings alleged that the Prime Minister said he 'didn't buy' evidence from scientists and other experts that the NHS was in danger of being overwhelmed.

The former advisor, who was sacked at the end of last year, shared WhatsApp messages with the BBC as he alleged the Prime Minister was reluctant to heighten restrictions because 'the people who are dying are essentially all over 80' and therefore expendable.

In his first broadcast interview, with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, the hostile former chief adviser to Mr Johnson accused his one-time boss of putting 'his own political interests ahead of people's lives'.

He also revealed that the Prime Minister also wanted to carry on meeting the Queen in person while Downing Street was rife with Covid, eventually backing down when it was pointed out he could kill her.

Mr Cummings has repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of being too slow in imposing the second lockdown, which came into force on November 5.

The political adviser, who left Downing Street during a bitter row in November, shared a series of messages from October 15 that appear to be from Mr Johnson to aides.

'I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82 - 81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent ) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate,' they read.

'There are max 3m in this country aged over 80. It shows we don't go for nation wide lockdown.'

Boris Johnson wanted to meet the Queen at the start of the pandemic despite signs Covid was spreading in Downing Street, it was claimed last night (pictured: Dominic Cummings in an interview with Laura Kuenssberg)

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Dominic Cummings said he had to persuade the PM (pictured right) not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus

WHAT THE PM POSTED TO HIS STAFF 'I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities. The median age is 82  81 for men, 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate. There are max 3m in this country aged over 80. It shows we don't go for nationwide lockdown.' Advertisement

In his first TV interview since leaving No 10, Mr Cummings claimed the PM 'put his own political interests ahead of people's lives for sure'.

He said Mr Johnson's attitude last autumn was a 'weird mix' of 'partly 'it's all nonsense and lockdowns don't work anyway' and partly 'well this is terrible but the people who are dying are essentially all over 80 and we can't kill the economy just because of people dying over 80'.'

He added: 'Lots of people heard the Prime Minister say that, the Prime Minister texted that to me and other people.'

However Tory MPs rallied behind Mr Johnson. Peter Bone has dismissed Mr Cummings's allegations, saying the former aide was driven by revenge and had failed to prove a series of explosive claims he made about the inner workings of No 10 before parliamentary committees in recent months.

'He didn't provide the evidence when he was before the select committees, which he promised to do. He failed miserably to do that,' Mr Bone told the BBC.

'If you want my opinion, you can discount virtually everything Dominic Cumming says about anything.

'He is a man who is driven by revenge and serious journalists cannot possibly believe what he says.'

Mr Cummings also revealed Mr Johnson wanted to meet the Queen at the start of the pandemic despite signs Covid was spreading in Downing Street, it was claimed last night.

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Dominic Cummings said he had to persuade the PM not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus.

He told the BBC: 'I said ''what are you doing?'' and he said ''I'm going to see the Queen'', and I said, ''what on earth are you talking about, of course you can't go and see the Queen''.

'[The PM] said, ''ah, that's what I do every Wednesday, sod this, I'm gonna go and see her''.'

The former chief adviser alleged he warned the PM that there were already people in No 10 who were isolating and told him: 'You might have coronavirus.'

He added: 'I just said, ''if you... give her coronavirus and she dies what are you gonna do, you can't do that, you can't risk that, that's completely insane''.

'And he said, he basically just hadn't thought it through, he said, ''yeah, holy s***, I can't go''.'

Mr Cummings also claimed that Mr Johnson repeatedly said 'we should never have done the first lockdown'.

Cummings claimed he told Boris Johnson that 'of course he couldn't go and see the Queen' at the start of the pandemic (file photo)

The former chief adviser alleged he warned the PM that there were already people in No 10 who were isolating and told him: 'You might have coronavirus'

Mr Cummings also claimed the PM was reluctant to tighten restrictions last autumn because 'the people who are dying are essentially all over 80'

In his first TV interview since leaving No 10, Mr Cummings claimed the PM 'put his own political interests ahead of people's lives for sure'

He said: 'After the first wave passed and after he came back to work, initially his view was essentially, ''thank goodness we did do that'', but very quickly, as the Telegraph and various parts of the media and Tory Party started screaming, he then basically reverted and said ''actually the whole thing was a disaster, we should never have done it, I was right in February, we should basically just ignore it and just let the thing wash through the country and not destroy the economy and move on''.'

Mr Cummings left Downing Street in November following a power struggle and has since been highly critical of the Government's handling of the pandemic.

Last night Downing Street denied that the incident where the PM and Mr Cummings discussed visiting the Queen took place.

Buckingham Palace declined to comment.

A Downing Street spokesman told the BBC: 'Since the start of the pandemic, the Prime Minister has taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice.

'The Government he leads has delivered the fastest vaccination rollout in Europe, saved millions of jobs through the furlough scheme and prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed through three national lockdowns.

'The Government is entirely focused on emerging cautiously from the pandemic and building back better.'

The interview will be shown on BBC2 tonight at 7pm.

Mr Cummings left Downing Street in November following a power struggle and has since been highly critical of the Government's handling of the pandemic
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The government's self-isolation rules descended further into shambles today as No10 slapped down a minister for saying people can ignore being 'pinged' by the NHS app if they think it is the 'right thing' to do.

Paul Scully struck a starkly different tone from Boris Johnson's press briefing last night, when the PM insisted that self-isolation rules must stay in place to control soaring infections.

The business minister stressed that obeying the app was not a legal requirement, and people were being encouraged to 'make decisions on what's best for them'.

His departmental colleague Lord Grimstone reportedly voiced the same sentiments to a large employer, saying the software is only an 'advisory tool'.

No10 quickly tried to correct Mr Scully, insisting it is 'crucial' people isolate when told to do so by the app or by contact tracers.

But the intervention fuelled mounting confusion about how the public should behave as rising cases spark a wave of quarantine instructions. Businesses have warned they are being forced to limit hours or shut down as so many staff are absent, while there have been reports of empty supermarket shelves, overflowing bins and trains being delayed or cancelled.

BP today highlighted 'fuel supply issues' at some garages, blaming 'industry-wide driver shortages' together with the closure of a distribution due to staff isolating.

Around 1.7million are thought to be isolating currently, with the problem set to get much worse as cases keep rising.

However, the PM dismissed calls to make the app less sensitive or bring forward a daily testing scheme for the fully vaccinated, due to come into force from August 16.

Instead there are only exemptions for very limited groups of key workers, including some frontline NHS staff and parts of the food chain.

On another tumultuous day in the coronavirus crisis:

The Pound hit a five-month low against the US dollar amid fears that 'Freedom Day' is turning sour and the government will need to reimpose restrictions to control surging cases;

Mr Johnson has been accused of imposing 'compulsory vaccination' after he threatened to make anyone going to a nightclub prove they are double-jabbed;

Dominic Cummings has claimed the PM resisted pleas for a second lockdown last autumn, joking that the Covid pandemic was only killing pensioners;

A total of 183 deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending July 9 mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS)  up 68 per cent on the previous week.

Paul Scully (left) struck a starkly different tone from Boris Johnson's press briefing last night, when the PM (right) insisted that self-isolation rules must stay in place to control soaring infections

Infections are currently running at about 45,000 a day (yellow line shows cases increasing since May) but deaths are still flat at about 40 a day (pink line shows fatalities in the third wave). For comparison, the last time cases hit this level when the second wave began to spiral out of control (orange line) there were more than 600 daily deaths

BP today highlighted 'fuel supply issues' at some garages, blaming 'industry-wide driver shortages' together with the closure of a distribution due to staff isolating

Stricken businesses face disaster amid wave of self-isolation The Factory Tap, a real ale bar in Kendal, is having to close early at 10pm on Friday and 9pm on Saturday because of a shortage of staff having to self-isolate. The venue wrote on Facebook: 'We need 30% more staff to serve 75 per cent of our normal custom. Having staff isolate means we cannot operate and would have to close. 'We have been closing earlier than normal 10pm Friday and Saturday 9pm for the rest of the week, we intend to continue this. 'We close at these times for a very good reason, we are either understaffed and unable to provide the service required or are knackered and have just had enough!' The Long Eaton Art Room, a community art centre in Nottingham, has had to abandon drop-in sessions and only run pre-arranged workshops after being forced to close several times due to staff being pinged. Explaining the decision, they wrote on Facebook: 'Every time we get pinged by the app we need to close, we are aiming to avoid that as much as possible and feel that set workshops will help us.' Shakespeare's Coffee Shop in Skelmersdale, Lancashire, is closing for the week. The management wrote on Facebook: 'It is with great regret that we have had to close the coffee shop and library this week due to lots of staff isolating, after being informed by the COVID app. It's 'Freedom Day' and everyone has to stay at home. The irony.' MR Barbers in Ely will remain shut until July 24 while its barbers are self-isolating. Karl Foster, Director of MR Barbers group, said that the Ely branch is one of three barbershops in the nation-wide chain affected by the 'pingdemic'. 'We have 10 barbers that would normally be serving around 750 clients over the 10-day isolation period,' he told the Ely Standard. 'That's a lot of potentially unhappy customers and a lot of lost business.' Mark Cribb, owner of the Urban Reef restaurant and bar in Bournemouth, said he was losing thousands of pounds a night after being forced to shut his seafront bar on Mondays and Tuesdays due to staff shortages. 'The concern is that all of a sudden the pingdemic is going to take over,' he told Channel 4 News. 'In one of our restaurants last week we had over 100 people booked in on a Monday but one of our chefs got pinged so we had to phone all of them to cancel. 'Usually on a lovely evening we'd take thousands of pounds but on a Monday and Tuesday night at the moment we have had to close because of the lack of staff.' Tracy Standish, the owner of Bowl Central, a Bournemouth bowling venue, told Channel Four News: 'We've got a supervisor isolating at the moment. Every day you are concerned to get the news that you are going to lose more vital members. 'At the moment we are trading seven days a week at the moment but you are constantly under pressure. It is very stressful.' Advertisement

Although it has never been a legal requirement to obey the app's instructions, the official NHS guidance has been that people should 'self-isolate immediately' when told to.

Mr Scully told Times Radio: 'It's important to understand the rules. You have to legally isolate if you are on the... contacted by Test and Trace, or if you're trying to claim isolation payments.

'The app is there to give... to allow you to make informed decisions. And I think by backing out of mandating a lot of things, we're encouraging people to really get the data in their own hands to be able to make decisions on what's best for them, whether they're employer or an employee.'

Asked whether this meant people should or should not self-isolate if 'pinged', he said: 'We want to encourage people to still use the app to be able to do the right thing, because we estimate it saves around 8,000 lives.'

However, he added that it was 'up to individuals and employers'.

A No 10 spokeswoman said: 'Isolation remains the most important action people can take to stop the spread of the virus.

'Given the risk of having and spreading the virus when people have been in contact with someone with Covid it is crucial people isolate when they are told to do so, either by NHS Test and Trace or by the NHS covid app.

'Businesses should be supporting employees to isolate, they should not be encouraging them to break isolation.'

Shadow health minister Justin Madders said: 'The Government making it up as they go along.

'Ministers mix messages, change approach and water down proposals when the public and businesses need clarity and certainty.

'If this is a true change in approach on the app, why didn't the Prime Minister set this out last night?

'Yet again there is more confusion and incompetence from the heart of government at the expense of public health. They need to get a grip.'

John Edmunds, professor of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and a member of Sage, told Times Radio: 'Contact tracing and self-isolation play an important role in stopping cases getting out of control and preventing deaths. It's important we maintain these measures as stringently as we can.

'We have one of the highest rates of cases in the world right now. The NHS has been under strain for a long time and they are busy trying to catch up on operations and are very, very busy. So to put them under more pressure now is going to be awkward.'

Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, who chaired the ethics advisory board for NHSx on its contact tracing app, told Times Radio the Government needed to give clearer guidance to people about what to do when told to self-isolate.

'When we had no protection the risk was the same for everybody. If that risk is now reduced because someone is double-vaccinated it feels as though we need more sophisticated advice,' Sir Jonathan said.

'If we are visiting an elderly relative or a cancer patient then take the ping seriously but if you are doing something relatively Covid-friendly then maybe make a different decision.'

Professor John Edmunds, a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies which advises ministers said: 'Contact tracing and self-isolation play an important role in stopping cases getting out of control and preventing deaths.

'It's important we maintain these measures as stringently as we can.

'We have one of the highest rates of cases in the world right now.

'The NHS has been under strain for a long time and they are busy trying to catch up on operations and are very, very busy.

'So to put them under more pressure now is going to be awkward.'

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister was facing a backlash over his plans to make coronavirus vaccination compulsory for nightclubs and other crowded venues in the autumn.

Clubs, backbench Tories and opposition MPs criticised Boris Johnson's announcement on Monday - the day that clubs in England were allowed to open for the first time since March last year.

Night Time Industries Association chief executive Michael Kill accused the Government of 'an absolute shambles'.

'80 per cent of nightclubs have said they do not want to implement Covid passports, worrying about difficulties with enforcing the system and a reduction in spontaneous consumers, as well as being put at a competitive disadvantage with pubs and bars that aren't subject to the same restrictions and yet provide similar environments.'

Mark Harper, the Conservative former chief whip who chairs the Covid Recovery Group of Tory lockdown-sceptics, criticised the plans as 'effectively moving to compulsory vaccination'.

There have been reports of empty shelves in supermarkets amid disruption to supply chains and huge numbers of staff off self-isolating

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee, questioned why the Government was delaying the plans until the autumn.

Labour's shadow health minister Justin Madders said: 'How can it be safe to go to nightclubs now, with no protective measures, if in September it will require double jab status? It makes no sense.'

Mr Scully, the minister for small business, said the policy would not be introduced until the detail is right.

He suggested that pubs would not be included, with the use of the vaccine passports aimed at nightclubs and 'larger ticketed events'.

'There are a number of sporting venues that are already looking at voluntarily doing this,' he told Sky News

Mr Scully admitted to having reservations about the plan: 'I'm not comfortable that Government is mandating anything frankly, I'm a very libertarian Conservative, I want to be able to back off, that's why yesterday was an opportunity for Government to back off from so many different things and let people live their lives.

'But what we have to do is make sure that people will also live their lives safely, the NHS can function safely, and these are the challenges that we still have to do.

'So it's incredibly frustrating, it's incredibly complicated to work through the detail, but that's the challenge we have.'
Smoke from raging wildfires in the western U.S. and Canada has covered New York in a haze as the flames continue to burn hundreds of thousands of acres.

The haze is visible over the Great Lakes region and reached New York City this morning and is expected to last all day.

The smoke primarily comes from the Bootleg Fire, the largest of more than 80 fires out west that has scorched more than 476 square miles.

The haze, caused by the fires out west, has rolled into New York City and can be seen invading the skyline

The haze is expected to stay in New York throughout the day as the Bootleg fire continues to rage

A view of Manhattan's Chinatown looking uptown shows the Empire State barely visible in the distance

The view from Brookyn Bridge shows downtown Brooklyn completely shrouded in the haze

Sattelite image shows the haze from Oregon's wildfire spreading across toward the East Coast and blanketing New York

On Tuesday morning, air quality alerts were issued for New York Cityand the National Weather Service urged sensitive groups to remain indoors.

'What typically would have been just a nice sunny, blue-sky day is probably going to have that milky, hazy look to the sky,' Accuweather Senior Meteorologist Carl Erickson told the NY Post.

'It could be some rather beautiful, enhanced, vibrant sunsets tomorrow evening just because of that smoke.'

An army of 2,250 personnel battling the Bootleg Fire, raging in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest 250 miles south of Portland, had managed to carve containment lines around 30% of the perimeter by late Monday, up from 22% the day before, the Oregon Forestry Department reported.

'We are fighting the fire aggressively, and there are active efforts to build a containment line, both direct and indirect, wherever it is safe to do so,' agency spokesman Marcus Kauffman said. Ground crews, backed by water-dropping helicopters and airplane tankers, included reinforcements from at least 30 U.S. states he said.

But the amount of landscape charred since the blaze erupted on July 6 grew another 47,000-plus acres on Monday alone to reach an estimated total of 364,000 acres - more than half the land mass of Rhode Island - the forestry department said.

The overall Bootleg footprint included almost 13,000 acres burned in a smaller fire that merged with the Bootleg on Monday, Kauffman said.

A satellite image shows the fire in Oregon and the smoke clouds as the blow eastward, creating a haze that will be seen on the other side of the country today

The Bootleg Fire began July 6 in the Fremont-Winema National Forest in Oregon

A tanker drops retardant over the Bootleg Fire in hopes of containing the blaze

Over 2,000 firefighters are combating the Bootleg Fire

The Bootleg Fire is the largest of 80 wildfires blazing across the western U.S. and Canada

The Bootleg Fire has devastated the area with thousands set to evacuate

Firefighting teams from California have sent eight strike teams/task forces, including 40 engines and firefighting crews, to help with the wildfire response in neighboring Oregon

Firefighters have been able to contain 30% of the Bootleg Fire

At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames.

So far, the fire had destroyed 67 homes and over 100 outbuildings and other structures have also been lost. An estimated 2,100 people were under evacuation orders or on standby alert to be ready to flee at a moment's notice.

'It was red, like we were on Mars,' evacuee Sayyid Bey, 45, said, recounting the crimson glow of the sky as flames he saw engulfing whole trees closed in on his property on the outskirts of Bly, Oregon, on July 9, raining soot and embers on the small community.

At that point, Bey and his wife packed their three children - aged 6, 11 and 12 - with as many belongings as they could carry into a borrowed pickup truck and sped off down a gravel road out of harm's way, he said.

He returned later to find his property reduced to ash, along with much of the rest of the wooded mountain enclave of mobile homes and hand-built dwellings called Sycan Estates, Bey said.

A former salesman who left his big-city fashion industry job several years ago to move 'off the grid' in Oregon, Bey said he reckoned that at least 60 homes around his were lost. But he said neighbors were already banding together with plans to help one another rebuild.

Homeowners were not alone in finding themselves scurrying into retreat.

Extremely incendiary conditions on Sunday forced some firefighting teams to fall back to safety zones for a ninth straight day and regroup as they 'looked for opportunities to reengage,' incident commander Joe Hessel wrote in his daily report.

'This fire is a real challenge, and we are looking at sustained battle for the foreseeable future.'

The Bootleg Fire stood as the biggest, by far, of 80 major active wildfires that have collectively burned nearly 1.2 million acres in 13 states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. More than 19,600 firefighters and support personnel are confronting those flames.

The spate of conflagrations, marking a heavier-than-normal start of the Western wildfire season, has coincided with record-shattering heat that has baked much of the region in recent weeks and is blamed for hundreds of deaths.

Scientists have said the growing frequency and intensity of wildfires are largely attributable to prolonged drought and increasing bouts of excessive heat that are symptomatic of climate change.

Smoke was seen Sunday from space through the NASA Earth Observatory satellite

Smoke and heat from the inferno is creating pyrocumulus clouds - also known as fire clouds. They can create their own weather systems and thunderclouds, causing lightning that can spark additional fires

Since starting July 6, the Bootleg Fire has thrived from a combustible mix of weather conditions - gusty winds, high temperatures and low humidity - that are expected to persist. Forecasts on Monday added a chance of thunderstorms to the mix.

'Thunderstorms often just come with dry lightning and wind and don't necessarily produce any precipitation,' Kauffman said.
The body is yet to be formally identified but her mother recognised jewellery

Pictured: Qiong Yan, 30, who has been missing since April

The body of a woman found decomposing in an 'esky size' metal box on the balcony of a Brisbane apartment block may have been sitting there for nine months - as her former flat mate faces murder charges.

Qiong Yan, 30, was reported missing in April by her mother, who lives overseas, after she was unable to make contact with her daughter.

When police went to question her flatmate Yang Zhao at Newport Hamilton Apartment complex on Parkside Circuit at about 4pm on Monday, they found the human remains.

He is now due to be extradited back to Queensland, where he is expected to be charged with her murder.

The body is yet to be formally identified, but Ms Yan's distraught mum recognised jewellery concealed with the body when viewing it online from her hometown overseas.

Pictured: Police escorting Yang Zhao away in Sydney, after his flatmate's body was found in their apartment

It had been wrapped in a cloth in an 'advanced state of decomposition'.

Detective Inspector Tim Trezise said it had been there for weeks, or possibly months, with only her foot visible from under a sheet.

'The body is completely wrapped in a cloth, there is one foot visible is my understanding,' he said.

In the meantime, police have released a photo of Ms Yan in the hope members of the public can help piece together the final phase of her life.

Queensland is seeking the extradition of Zhao (pictured), 26, who lives in Sydney

Queensland is seeking the extradition of Zhao, 26, who lives in Sydney but is allegedly still renting the unit where the body was located.

His case was mentioned in the Sutherland Local Court on Tuesday as officials await Queensland detectives arriving from interstate.

The matter is expected to return to the same court on Wednesday.

When back in Queensland, he will have to quarantine for two weeks due to NSW's Covid outbreak.

There was a warrant out for Zhao's arrest on Monday.

Officers have said she was previously seen at the Hamilton apartment but there was no romantic relationship between her and the man they intend to charge with her murder.
Scott Morrison has been criticised for 'disappearing' during Australia's latest Covid-19 outbreaks by a host of The Project.

Co-host Steve Price asked 'where the Prime Minister was' during the Channel 10 program on Tuesday night as 13 million residents around the country are forced into lockdown due to an explosion of cases.

Mr Morrison is currently isolating at The Lodge in Canberra after arriving from Sydney on an 'essential workers' exemption.

He along with other returning MPs will have to undergo 14 days of quarantine ahead of parliamentary sittings which are due to start again on August 3.

The Prime Minister had been in Sydney to do a press conference with Gladys Berejiklian on July 15, just five days ago, offering financial assistance to millions of Australians locked down in New South Wales.

More than 13 million Australians are in lockdown across the country due to an explosion in Covid cases (pictured an abandoned Pitt Street Mall in Sydney on Tuesday)

But Price accused the prime minister of having gone missing at one of the most crucial parts of the country's fight against the virus.

'Can I say one thing - where the hell is the Prime Minister?' Price asked his fellow panelists.

'He's got half his country locked down and we haven't heard from him for a week.

'This is the biggest pandemic crisis in the country and the PM is locked up in The Lodge in Canberra and he's not talking to anyone.'

On Tuesday night, around the same time at Price's comments, Mr Morrison announced a major financial relief package for locked down South Australians, offering $600 a week to those who have lost income.

Price also highlighted the fact that three Australian states were currently in lockdown despite it being over a year since the pandemic first began, while the rest of the world has begun to open up.

'As a country we're in a worse position than we were this time last year,' he said.

Co-host Steve Price asked where the Prime Minister was during the Channel 10 program on Tuesday night as 13million residents around the country are forced into lockdown due to an explosion of cases

Scott Morrison is currently isolating at The Lodge in Canberra after arriving from Sydney on an 'essential workers' exemption

Co-host Carrie Bickmore also weighed in and said it was disheartening the pandemic has had such a lasting impact on the country.

'If you said this time last year, we'd still be in this situation a year later, I just don't think anyone was imagining it,' she said.

'I'm sure the experts were, but I don't think everyday people were thinking that's how long this was going to go for.'

Greater Sydney has been in lockdown for nearly a month while it was revealed on Tuesday that Orange in regional NSW would also be put under the same restrictions for one week.

50,000 people in Orange, Blayney, and the Cabonne Shire Council in the New South Wales Central West will be plunged into lockdown from midnight on Tuesday, enduring the same restrictions as Sydneysiders.

The restrictions were sparked by an infected pet food driver that spread Covid-19 to a local.

Victoria has extended its stay-at-home orders for another week after 13 new cases in the state were announced on Tuesday

Police are seen patrolling Sydney's CBD on Tuesday to ensure residents are following Covid restrictions

The Covid-positive driver was delivering pet food from locked-down Greater Sydney to the Nestle Purina factory at Blayney, near Orange, where a worker now has the virus.

Major stores in the area including Officeworks, Woolworths and CTC in North Orange Shopping Centre, EG Fuelco Australia, and Pizza Hut have been put on the state's list of Covid-19 exposure sites after being visited by the unknowingly infected local.

South Australia will also join New South Wales and Victoria in lockdown after a further two cases overnight. From 6pm on Tuesday night, the entire state will enter seven days of lockdown.

Victoria has extended its stay-at-home orders for another week after 13 new cases in the state were announced on Tuesday.
A group of furious Aussie shoppers have hit out at Aldi supermarkets in Britain for selling 'ostrich fillet steaks', while others insist it's the same as eating any meat.

A photo of the offending product was posted to the Facebook group 'Aldi Mums' by a shopper named Wendy.

'How cool would this be for Australia to get?' she asked fellow group members, revealing the steaks would set shoppers back the equivalent of $7.25.

While some Aldi fans didn't share the same enthusiasm for the bizarre meat product, others said it was no different to consuming other animals.

A photo of the offending product was posted to the Facebook group 'Aldi Mums' by a shopper named Wendy, revealing the steaks could be purchased for an equivalent of $7.25

Hundreds of divided shoppers continued to debate the topic in the comments, with several pleading for the birds to be left alone.

Poll WOULD YOU EAT OSTRICH MEAT? Yes No WOULD YOU EAT OSTRICH MEAT? Yes 142 votes

No 33 votes Now share your opinion





'Cool? I don't think so. Poor ostriches,' said one user.

'Eww I agree why would this be even remotely cool to see on the shelves?' another commented.

Others compared eating ostrich to consuming Australian native animals.

'It's bad enough that we eat Skippy,' a third shared, in reference to the sale of kangaroo meat.

'What next... koalas?' a fourth joked.

One group member suggested shoppers just stick to eating chicken.

'They were not made to be consumed. Not every single animal walking on earth has to be eaten,' they added.

While some Aldi fans didn't share the same enthusiasm for the unusual meat product (pictured), others said it was no different to consuming other animals

However, several Aldi shoppers disagreed and said eating ostrich was no different to consuming lamb, beef or chicken.

'Someone tell me how this is so bad when we sit there happily eating pigs, sheep and cows with no issue?' one said.

'Why are you so grossed out? It's not like you're eating the family dog, relax,' a second commented.

'What's the difference between and ostrich and a bird or a fish or a cow or any sort of cattle? Heck, may as well start eating cats and dogs,' a third shared.

One group member claimed ostrich meat was farmed for human consumption in the same way as turkeys and chickens were.

Several more open-minded Aldi fans said they had tried ostrich overseas and gave the product their tick of approval

Another deemed any shopper's opinions on the meat product invalid unless they were a vegan or vegetarian.

Several more open-minded Aldi fans said they had tried ostrich overseas and gave the product their tick of approval.

'This is my favourite! It's so lean,' wrote one, while another said they had eaten ostrich a lot during their time in South Africa.

Another shopper said the lean meat was 'very high' in protein.

'You eat chicken guys, its just a big chicken.'

The product first went on sale in the UK in May and due to high demand has been brought back on shelves several times since.
An explosion leveled a home and sent six people to the hospital with injuries, including three children, on Monday afternoon in suburban Dallas.

The Plano Fire Department responded to calls at 4.40pm and found homes across the street with their windows blown out.

Aerial shots obtained by NBC News show the home completely demolished within its lot as firefighters examine the scene from the debris-covered street.

The cause of the explosion remains unknown.

The cause of the explosion in suburban Dallas remained unknown as of Tuesday morning

The Plano, Texas house blast could be felt as far as the Haggard Library one mile away

The Plano Fire Department examines the scene in the 4400 block of Cleveland Drive

A resident of the home that exploded and five neighbors were taken to the hospital

Three of the victims were transported to Children's Medical Center Plano with injuries

The flattened home is located in the 4400 block of Cleveland Drive, about 22 miles north of Dallas.

A resident of the home that exploded was taken by ambulance to a Plano hospital, along with five residents from a house next door.

Three people were taken to Medical City of Plano. Three others were transported to Childrens Medical Center Plano.

Staff at Haggard Library felt the blast a mile away, according to the fire department.

Electricity and gas was shut off for the entire block, but was up and running again by 9.30pm except for the devastated home and two adjacent properties.

Gas distributor Atmos Energy, electric company Oncor and a bomb squad all investigated the scene, which was turned over to the fire marshal by 9pm.

Atmos Energy remained at the site.

'We are saddened by todays tragedy of a house explosion in our city,' said Plano Mayor John Muns in a statement.

'Several of our residents were injured. We are keeping them and their families close to our hearts and hoping for a swift and full recovery. Plano Fire-Rescue is working diligently to determine the cause of the blast. Were asking all of you to keep the victims in your prayers.'
Britain will sail an aircraft carrier taskforce through disputed international waters in the South China Sea in a direct challenge to Beijing, the Defence Secretary has revealed.

Ben Wallace confirmed that HMS Queen Elizabeth and her escort fleet will transit international waters claimed by China next month, saying Britain had a 'duty' to insist on freedom of navigation.

The Communist regime has alarmed neighbours in the region including Japan and the Philippines with illegal claims in international waters.

Mr Wallace also confirmed that the UK plans to deploy Royal Navy warships permanently to the region in a show of support for allies.

Speaking on a visit to Tokyo, Mr Wallace told the Times: 'It's no secret that China shadows and challenges ships transiting international waters on very legitimate routes.

'We will respect China and we hope that China respects us ... we will sail where international law allows.'

It comes after the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender was involved in a stand-off with Russia after sailing close to occupied Crimea in an international shipping lane.

Ben Wallace confirmed that HMS Queen Elizabeth and her escort fleet will transit international waters claimed by China next month, saying Britain had a had a 'duty' to insist on freedom of navigation.

Speaking on a visit to Tokyo, Mr Wallace told the Times: 'We will respect China and we hope that China respects us ... we will sail where international law allows.'

After passing through the South China Sea in August, the British fleet will partake in exercises in the Philippines Sea with Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea and the US.

Mr Wallace declined to say whether the fleet would breach the 12 mile zone around military bases China has built on disputed rocks in the South China Sea.

US warships and aircraft have passed close to the bases in the past, provoking warnings from Chinese vessels and angry responses from Beijing.

Mr Wallace also told The Times the West must work to avoid a Cold War in the region at a time when the world was in an 'anxious' state, but that he felt conflict was still only a remote possibility.

'The world is a more anxious place, and as a result more on edge,' he said. 'There is definitely a danger that that anxiousness tips into more aggressive measures, but I think we are still some way off a military conflict in Asia.'

The British carrier, which is carrying F-35B stealth jets on its maiden voyage, will dock at Yokosuka, the home of Japan's fleet command and the USS Ronald Reagan, the only forward deployed US aircraft carrier.

Mr Wallace met Japanese prime minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo today to discuss the UK's military plans

Plans for the high-profile visit by the carrier strike group come as London deepens security ties with Tokyo, which has expressed growing alarm in recent months over China's territorial ambitions in the region, including Taiwan.

'Following on from the strike group's inaugural deployment, the United Kingdom will permanently assign two ships in the region from later this year,' Mr Wallace said in a joint announcement in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart, Nobuo Kishi.

The British embassy in Tokyo did not immediately respond when asked which ports in the region the Royal Navy ships would operate from.

A close US ally, Japan hosts the biggest concentration of Americab military forces outside the United States, including ships, aircraft and thousands of marines.

The British carrier, which is carrying F-35B stealth jets on its maiden voyage, will dock at Yokosuka, the home of Japan's fleet command and the USS Ronald Reagan, the only forward deployed US aircraft carrier.

The Queen Elizabeth is being escorted by two destroyers, two frigates, two support vessels and ships from the United States and the Netherlands.

It will come to Japan through the South China Sea, parts of which are claimed by China and South East Asian countries after stops in India, Singapore and South Korea.

In a further sign of Britain's growing regional engagement, Wallace, who traveled to Japan with a delegation of military commanders, said Britain would also eventually deploy a Littoral Response Group, a unit of marines trained to undertake missions including evacuations and anti-terrorism operations.
The UK is in the midst of a 'pingdemic' with businesses being hammered by a shortage of staff caused by alerts from the NHS Covid app.

An estimated 1.7million people are currently being forced to self-isolate at home for 10 days after being notified by the app that they have been in close contact with someone with the virus.

While it is only a legal requirement to isolate if you are contacted, and not if you are pinged, there are fears that Freedom Day will cause even more people to remain housebound, threatening businesses across the country.

Even Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were forced to self-isolate after they were pinged following Sajid Javid's positive Covid test.

The app has been downloaded only 25million times in the UK out of a population of nearly 70million.

Other countries have their own versions of the Test and Trace app which have had varying levels of success.

The UK is in the midst of a 'pingdemic' with businesses being hammered by a shortage of staff caused by alerts from the NHS Covid app (pictured)

AUSTRALIA

Australia's COVIDSafe app was created for state and territory public health officials to contact users who had been near a Covid-19 infected person for 15 minutes.

The voluntary app, which cost $6.5million, has created controversy since its introduction, widely reported to be an ongoing failure due to little uptake on the download.

There are also reports the app had not been used to detected any new close contacts since November, 2020.

The app has been downloaded 6.44million times in a population of 25million and it is still having issues a year on, with iPhones struggling to pair data with Samsung devices, or share information while locked or running in the background.

Australia's COVIDSafe app (pictured) was created for state and territory public health officials to contact users who had been near a Covid-19 infected person for 15 minutes

US

There is no official nationwide contact-tracing programme in the US with state officials attempting to enforce their own schemes.

Contact tracers have no power to enforce self-isolation but can recommend it to those who have come into contact with Covid.

In Maryland last summer, a quarter of people called by tracers did not answer the phone.

While state authorities have released their own apps, there has been a poor take-up and there have been issues when residents cross state lines.

FRANCE

TousAntiCovid, which means Everyone Against Covid, has now been downloaded by 20million people out of a population more than three times that size.

Only half of those with the app actively use it.

When users get pinged, they are advised to get tested but it is not compulsory.

TousAntiCovid, which means Everyone Against Covid, has now been downloaded by 20million people out of a population more than three times that size

So far, around 200,000 people have been informed of a close contact with the virus, The Telegraph reports.

French health agencies carry out most of the tracing manually by sending a text message to the contacts of someone who has tested positive.

But no one checks to make sure whether the self-isolation period is carried out.

CHINA

Unsurprisingly, China has a rigorous contact tracing system from which no one is exempt.

Those who have been pinged have to be tested and forced to carry out a strictly enforced self-isolation from between 14 and 21 days.

Apps have been developed by central and local governments that track citizens via phone signals to telecom towers.

To enter any public places including the underground, parks, shopping centres and restaurants, users have to log in to the app.

It is linked to the phone user's mobile number and ID or passport, with anyone trying to cheat the system likely to land prison time.

Even if someone had travelled to an area with new cases, app users will be pinged.

ITALY

The official Italian app Immuni has only been downloaded by 11.6million people out of a population of 60million.

Those who are pinged are not required to self-isolate but are instead told to contact their local doctor for advice.

Immuni was launched in June last year and has so far sent 100,000 notifications, with 19,600 people found to be positive.

Innovation Minister Vittorio Colao said in April: 'The Immuni app did not have a great success with the public but it could in the future, and could become useful for vaccination passports.'

Immuni data can currently be exchanged with similar apps being used in other European countries such as Spain, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Austria and Poland.

BELGIUM

Belgium's app Coronalert does not automatically ping users who have come into contact with Covid.

Instead, those who have tested positive have to manually input the names and contact details of the people they have seen.

If you are contacted you are then expected to carry out a self-isolation period of 10 days and take two free PCR tests.

In a population of 11.5million, only 2.8million residents have downloaded the app.

Many of those have input their positive tests, with 80,000 logged on the app, but only 36 per cent of them shared the details of their close contacts.

TAIWAN

Taiwan, once the example country for its Covid handling, has recently suffered a huge surge in Covid cases.

The Asian country uses contact-tracing teams who use QR codes, phone signals and human intelligence to track down the contact of people who have tested positive.

All public buildings require people to scan a QR code when entering, allowing the authorities to easily find people who have been a close contact to the virus.

A voluntary app has also been developed allowing users to be notified if they have come within two metres of an infected person for more than two minutes.

Those pinged by the app are then asked to contact their health services.

INDIA

Aarogya Setu, meaning a bridge to health, has been downloaded more than 100million times in India.

But the huge reach of the app is still just a fraction of the country's population of 1.38billion.

Aarogya Setu, meaning a bridge to health, has been downloaded more than 100million times in India

Indians have been threatened with bans from hospitality venues, fines and arrests for not having the app.

But many have chosen not to download it, meaning it is now mostly defunct.

State governments are now in control of contact tracing but most authorities do not have the resources to do it effectively.

DENMARK

Smittestopp was released in Denmark last June and is designed to alert users if they have been within a metre of an infected person for more than 15 minutes.

The app is used on top of manual contact tracing which is conducted by the Danish Patient Safety Authority.

Its main function is to identify potential infections between people who do not know each other but were in close contact.

In September, it was revealed that a technical issue meant that many people who should have been pinged by the app were not.

Smittestopp was released in Denmark last June and is designed to alert users if they have been within a metre of an infected person for more than 15 minutes

The family of a Copenhagen city councillor did not receive any notifications despite living with her after she tested positive for the virus.

NETHERLANDS

The Dutch Covid app, CoronaMelder, was only launched nationally in October, months after many other countries due to privacy concerns.

The app uses Bluetooth to notify anyone who has been in close contact with a positive case of Covid, within 1.5 metres for at least 15 minutes.

Those pinged are advised to self-isolate for ten days but neither the app or the isolation period are compulsory.

In April, it was revealed that a data leak meant Android phone users' data was being collected by other third party apps.

It was taken offline for two days before the issue was resolved.
India's coronavirus death toll is up to 10 times higher than the nearly 415,000 fatalities reported by authorities, likely making it the country's worst humanitarian disaster since independence, a US research group said Tuesday.

The Center for Global Development study's estimate is the highest yet for the carnage in the South Asian nation of 1.3 billion people, which is emerging from a devastating surge partly fuelled by the Delta variant in April and May.

The study - which analysed data from the start of the pandemic to June this year - suggested that between 3.4 million and 4.7 million people had died from the virus.

India's official Covid-19 death toll of just over 414,000 is the world's third-highest after the US' 609,000 fatalities and Brazil's 542,000. During India's most deadly phase of the pandemic in May, over 4,000 deaths were being reported each day - more than any other country. However a new report suggests the true death toll could be as high as 4.7 million

India's second wave saw a devastating surge partly fuelled by the Delta variant in April and May, resulting in more 300,000 new cases reported each day (pictured)

'True deaths are likely to be in the several millions, not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India's worst human tragedy since partition and independence,' the researchers said.

After the sub-continent's partition in 1947 into mainly Hindu India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, sectarian bloodshed killed hundreds of thousands of people. Some estimates say up to two million died, and 10 to 20 million displaced.

India's official Covid-19 death toll of just over 414,000 is the world's third-highest after the United States' 609,000 fatalities and Brazil's 542,000.

A devastating rise in infections in April and May, driven largely by the more infectious and dangerous Delta variant, overwhelmed India's healthcare system and killed at least 170,000 people in May alone, according to official data.

At the most deadly point of India's outbreak in May, it was officially reporting over 4,000 deaths a day, a rate not seen anywhere else in the world since the start of the global pandemic.

Experts have been casting doubt on India's toll for months, blaming the already overstretched health service.

Pictured: Multiple funeral pyres of those who died of COVID-19 burn at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium, April 24, 2021. India's coronavirus death toll is up to 10 times higher than the nearly 415,000 fatalities reported by authorities, a new study has claimed

Several Indian states have revised their virus tolls in recent weeks, adding thousands of 'backlog' deaths.

The Center for Global Development report was based on estimating 'excess mortality', the number of extra people who died compared with pre-crisis figures.

The authors - who included Arvind Subramanian, a former chief government economic adviser - did this partly by analysing death registrations in some states as well as a recurring national economic study.

They also compared surveys of the spread of Covid-19 in India with international death rates.

The researchers, which also included a Harvard University expert, acknowledged that estimating mortality with statistical confidence was difficult.

'(But) all estimates suggest that the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count,' they said.

Pictured: A man in protective suit digs earth to bury the body of a person who died of COVID-19 in Gauhati, India, April 25, 2021. The new study - which analysed data from the start of the pandemic to June this year - suggested that between 3.4 million and 4.7 million people had died from the virus

Christophe Guilmoto, a specialist in Indian demography at France's Research Institute for Development, this month estimated that the death toll was nearer 2.2 million by late May.

India's death rate per million was nearly half the world average and Guilmoto said 'such a low figure contradicts the apparent severity of a crisis that has struck most Indian families across the country'.

Guilmoto's team concluded that only one coronavirus death in seven was recorded.

A model by the US-based Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimated that the Covid toll could be more than 1.25 million.

India's health ministry last month slammed The Economist magazine for publishing a story that said excess deaths were between five and seven times higher than the official toll, calling it 'speculative' and 'misinformed'.

A World Health Organization report in May said up to three times more people had died around the globe during the pandemic - from coronavirus or other causes - than indicated by official statistics.

Pictured: Funeral pyres of twenty-five COVID-19 victims burn at an open crematorium set up at a granite quarry on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India, May 5, 2021

Some experts have said excess deaths are the best way to measure the real toll from COVID-19.

The New York Times said the most conservative estimate of deaths in India was 600,000 and the worst case scenario several times that number. The government also dismissed those figures.

Health experts have said the undercounting is largely because of scarce resources in India's vast hinterland where two-thirds of the population lives, and because many have died at home without being tested.

India has reported a decline in daily infections from a peak in May, logging its lowest daily count in four months on Tuesday at 30,093 fresh cases.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has also been criticised for a messy vaccination campaign that many say contributed to the worsening of the second wave of infections.

India has so far only vaccinated just over 8 percent of eligible adults with the mandatory two doses.

In July, the government administered fewer than 4 million doses per day on average, versus a record 9.2 million doses on June 21, when Modi flagged off a campaign to inoculate the country's 950 million adults for free.
South Australia has been declared a coronavirus 'hotspot' by Australia's Chief Medical Officer, opening the door for residents to receive income support payments of $600-a-week.

Under the scheme, individuals who have lost between eight and less than 20 hours of work will be eligible for $375-a-week Covid-19 Disaster Payments, just like in Victoria and New South Wales.

For workers who have lost 20 hours or more, they will be entitled to subsidies of $600 a week during the period of the lockdown.

Premier Steven Marshall announced on Tuesday the entire state would be in lockdown from 6pm on Tuesday for the next seven days, with only five lawful reasons for residents to leave home.

The call was made after two new locally acquired cases of Covid overnight, bringing the total number of infections in the state to five.

The seven-day lockdown then prompted Australia's Chief Medical Officer Professor Paul Kelly to declare South Australis a 'hotspot'.

Shortly after the announced, the federal government reassured South Australians that financial support for those left out of pocket 'is on the way'.

South Australia has been declared a coronavirus 'hotspot' by Australia's Chief Medical Officer, opening the door for residents to receive income support payments of $600 a week. Pictured: long queues are seen a Centrelink in Sydney, also under lockdown, on July 20, 2021

Pictured: Health workers take samples from people in their vehicles at the Victoria Park Covid-19 testing station in Adelaide July 20, 2021

How to apply for Covid-19 Disaster Payments WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Individuals who have lost between eight and 20 hours of work will be eligible for $375-a-week Covid-19 Disaster Payments. Workers who have lost 20 hours or more are entitled to subsidies of $600 a week during the period of the lockdown. HOW TO APPLY? Those affected can apply for payments through the myGov website from Wednesday, July 28. There will be no liquid assets test applied to eligibility for these payments and the handouts will be made in arrears for the lockdown. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO RECEIVE THE PAYMENTS? Services Australia will make the payments as quickly as possible, with some payments being made in less than an hour following an application Advertisement

'Our Government will stand by South Australians, as we will with other states and territories, in support of those communities that are facing the economic consequences of extended lockdowns,' the joint statement said.

It was signed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Minister for Government Services Linda Reynolds and Minister for Emergency Management and National Recovery and Resilience Bridget McKenzie.

There will be no liquid assets test applied to eligibility for these payments and the handouts will be made in arrears for the lockdown.

Those affected can apply through the myGov website from Wednesday July 28.

'Services Australia will make the payments as quickly as possible, with some payments being made in less than an hour following an application,' the joint statement said.

The federal government is also reminding South Australians that anyone forced to self isolate is also eligible for payments of $1,500 to support them to replace lost income.

For workers who have lost 20 hours or more, they will be entitled to subsidies of $600-a-week during the period of the lockdown. Pictured: Prime Minister Scott Morrison

South Australia is dealing with an outbreak of five Covid cases of the delta variant. Pictured: Health workers perform tests at the Covid-19 testing facility in Victoria Park, Adelaide

SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S SNAP LOCKDOWN From 6pm on Tuesday the state will enter seven days of lockdown. Residents can only leave their home for five essential reasons. These reasons are: 1. For essential supplies 2. For exercise (within 2.5km of your home, only with those from your household and only for 90 minutes a day) 3. For medical care 4. For care and compassionate reasons 5. For essential work Masks are also required in public indoor spaces and on public transport. Construction sites will also close. Advertisement

Under the lockdown, South Australian residents are only able to leave their homes for care and compassionate reasons, to exercise, for essential work, to get essential supplies, and for medical reasons.

For exercise, residents can only travel within 2.5km of their homes, can only exercise with those from their household, and only for 90 minutes a day.

Construction sites across the state will shut down for seven days and schools will transition to online learning from Thursday.

'We are dealing with a different highly contagious variant. We have seen this in Victoria. We don't want this moving across our state as we have seen elsewhere,' Premier Steven Marshall said on Tuesday.

'What we have seen in Victoria is a very rapid movement out of Greater Melbourne. We now worryingly have a case in Mildura,' Mr Marshall said.

'This is a disease which is fast moving. Until we have a clearer understanding of how widespread this is we have to take action to keep our state safe.'

The state's chief health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier confirmed that state's cases were the delta variant of Covid.

On Monday the state recorded a fourth case of Covid-19 as the state began a round of tough new restrictions and authorities race to contain an outbreak of infections amid a growing list of exposure sites.

The cases now include an 81-year-old man who entered the country from Argentina, his daughter and another two men.

Premier Steven Marshall told Adelaide radio 5AA ahead of an official briefing on Tuesday the fourth case identified overnight was a man who's a close contact of the elderly man and was already in quarantine.

South Australian Premier Steven Marshall (pictured) announced a seven day lockdown in his state from 6pm Tuesday

Mr Marshall also said more testing sites would open in Adelaide on Thursday amid long queues at testing facilities on Monday and early Tuesday.

The outbreak has plunged thousands of people into quarantine with the list of more than a dozen exposure sites including at least four major shopping centres in Adelaide's north and northeastern suburbs.

'We only have one chance to get this right. Our focus from day one has been to go hard and to go early to minimise the level of disruption,' Mr Marshall said on Monday.

'We've got to respond quickly.'

Late on Monday, multiple new exposure sites linked to a person with COVID-19 were revealed, including a Coles supermarket at the Greenacres Shopping Centre in Adelaide's northeast and a number of retail shops and a TAB at Munno Para in the north.

Pictured: Cars line up at the Victoria Park Covid testing facility on Wakefield Street in Adelaide, Tuesday, July 20, 2021

The lockdown supersedes previous restrictions announced for SA on Monday which included a density change to one person to every four square metres in all venues, and all team and contact sport cancelled.

Dining had to be seated with a ban imposed on dancing and singing.

Masks must be used in all indoor public areas, including shopping malls and also on public transport and in high-risk settings.

Fitness centres are closed along with other non-essential retail outlets.

Supermarkets and pharmacies and other essential businesses will continue to trade.

Pictured: Adelaide's normally busy Rundle Mall is seen empty on day one of the lockdown in Adelaide, Thursday, November 19, 2020

The elderly man with Covid had returned to Australia via NSW, where he spent 14 days in quarantine.

He returned to the state on July 8 and presented to a suburban hospital over the weekend after developing symptoms and was later admitted.

Adelaide's other positive cases have been transferred to the Tom's Court Hotel which is used to quarantine all those with an active infection.

'We don't draw any conclusions as to where this infection came from. We simply don't know and it is very early days,' Mr Marshall said on Monday.

'Our primary concern at the moment is putting everyone who may have come into contact with this person into quarantine as soon as possible.'

Business SA Chief Executive Martin Haese said the new restrictions were another blow to the already struggling hospitality, events, tourism and retail sectors.

'We hope there will be no extension to the restrictions beyond Friday.'
Police in New York arrested an ex-con Monday for stealing a six-year-old's electric scooter on July 6 - a week before the child's birthday.

Surveillance footage shows Daniel Ufares, 59, snatch the scooter from the child as he passes the corner of 12th Avenue and 36th Street in Brooklyn.

A police spokesperson said officers could not retrieve the stolen scooter, but they were able to gift the child a new scooter for his birthday.

Daniel Ufares, right, can be seen approaching the boy riding his scooter

Ufares snatched the scooter from the boy

He rides the scooter away and later told police he wanted to sell it for drug money

Ufares, center, said he was 'sorry' for taking the scooter

The father of the boy told the New York Post that the incident had left his son traumatized, and that the scooter actually belonged to another son with special needs who used it to get around.

Ufares was still on parole for a 2010 robbery in Queens at the time of the incident.

He had served nine years of a 15-year sentence for the robbery.

Officers said Ufares admitted that he did it just to 'sell if off for drug money,' the Post reported.

'I'm sorry,' Ufares said as police walked him out of the 66th Precinct in Brooklyn.

Police were able to run the surveillance footage through their facial-recognition program to identify Ufares.

Police records show that Ufares violated his parole several times throughout his life

Ufares' former wife told the Post that the scooter crime was low even for him.

I would never have thought hed do that to kids, the disgusted ex said. Hes a lowlife.

This was not Ufares' first brush with the law.

Police said Ufares had gotten into trouble at least twice in Brooklyn, once for allegedly swiping steaks from a Key Food supermarket in Park Slope and another for stealing six packages of cooked shrimp from a Food Bazaar in Greenpoint.

His arrest record goes as far back as 1984 for a robbery in Queens and includes an attempted-murder charge in 1989 in the Bronx.

Police records also show that Ufares spent five years in jail for drug peddling and violating parole in 1993.
Tradies from across Sydney have pleaded with the government to let them go back to work so they can feed their families during Covid lockdowns that have brought the $60billion construction industry to its knees.

Building sites came to a grinding halt on Monday as Gladys Berejiklian ordered construction pause until the end of July to reduce Covid case numbers, which grew by 78 on Tuesday.

The number of infections is particularly high in the south-west Sydney hotspots of Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool - where one in ten people work in the building sector.

The greater Sydney lockdown is scheduled to end on July 30, but could last much longer.

Last week the federal government announced a coronavirus support scheme to give people who have lost more than 20 hours of work a $600 weekly payment - but Jim from St George Painting says he and his colleagues 'don't want handouts'.

Pictured: Jim, a painter from St George Painting, has pleaded with the government to let him work again

'We want to work,' he told A Current Affair on Tuesday night.

Jim has been using the lockdown to teach his sons Vasilly and Gregory about the trade, but he's going stir crazy staying at home.

'I'm trying to be the head of the family, the rock of the family and come up with answers and I can't,' he said.

'We're not used to staying at home, we're up in the morning going off to work.

He pleaded with the government: 'Open up and let us pay our way. We need the work. We love what we do.'

Builder George Khoury from Liberty Building Contractors said his company feeds seven families who have now been left without an income.

Builder George Khoury (pictured middle, with his employees and their families) from Liberty Building Contractors said his company feeds seven families who have now been left without an income

'There's seven jobs we've had to stop. And a lot of the jobs, our clients are close to moving into their homes,' Mr Khoury told the program.

'We're not being paid anything, but there's still money paid out - you have staff that you have to look after, banks don't slow down and supplies don't slow down

His wife Bernadette said: 'If we're not being paid, we can't pay our rent. And obviously no food on the table.'

Their daughter, who has a young child, said she is deeply worried about her parents - 'my dad especially'.

Fred, who is a landscaper at Thorn and Thistle, and his nephew Buddy got a delivery of plants and soil worth $1,000 on the Friday, only to be told they could no longer work the following day.

'We can't pay because we're not getting paid,' he said.

Brian Seidler is the executive director of the Master Builder's Association New South Wales (pictured) and said NSW should reopen its construction sector

Buddy said: 'We might be a small businesses, but there's a lot of people who rely on us.'

He said they often buy coffee and lunch from local stores and support local businesses.

Homeowner John was supposed to move into his newly renovated house on August 9, but the whole project has been halted due to lockdown - forcing him to extend the lease on the rental where he is staying.

'I'm spending about $200,000 for this renovation and we are bang in the middle of it at the moment,' he said.

During Victoria's gruelling lockdown last year, small residential projects were allowed to continue with less than five workers on site.

The Berejiklian government has defended the decision to suspend the building and construction industry, as it was deemed necessary to control the outbreak of the virus, especially in south-west Sydney (pictured, construction site workers in Sydney pre-lockdown)

Larger sites were allowed to continue at 25 per cent capacity, as long as all workers were confined to one site.

Brian Seidler, the executive director of the Master Builder's Association New South Wales, said Sydney should follow suit.

'With the information that has come out of the government over the last 24 hours, the industry is calling for an immediate reopening,' Mr Seidler said.

He said he has been in discussions with the state government and NSW Health about reopening some sectors of the industry.

'If the government is not basing their closure on evidence of spread, then we're calling on the government to open the industry as quickly as they closed it.'

Even if the sectors is allowed to run again, he said it will take about a month for workers to get sites back to the way they were running before.

People queuing at Centrelink at Darlinghurst in Sydney on Tuesday (pictured) as the number of people out of work due to the lockdown continues to increase

Despite the frustration of countless workers who are off the tools indefinitely, NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian insists the decision to close the building and construction industry was necessary to 'end the lockdown as soon as possible'.

'We want to make sure our population can live as safely and freely as possible until we get a large portion of the population vaccinated,' she said.

David Borger, an executive director specialising in western Sydney building projects, said workers have budgeted their work and living expenses based on their ongoing employment as key tradespeople.

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in June revealed unemployment in NSW had dropped to an encouraging 4.9 per cent.

The recent lockdown could see those figures increase to well over five per cent.

On Tuesday, NSW recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases - but 27 were out in the community while infectious.

The 78 positive results in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night came from 62,860 tests.

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.
A British billionaire who allegedly shot his game park manager dead after making a drunken 'sex-for-rent' indecent proposal has been freed by a judge on 25,000 bail in Namibia.

Tycoon Harvey Boulter, 51, is accused of murdering Gerhard van Wyk, 54, after allegedly offering to allow his son to live on his vast estate in return for sex with his wife.

Park ranger and game reserve manager van Wyk is said to have seen red at the suggestion made to his son Gerhard Jnr and new wife Liani and an argument broke out.

Witnesses told police Boulter pulled a gun from a shoulder holster and in the ensuing struggle it went off and a bullet went through his hand and into van Wyk's stomach.

Tycoon Harvey Boulter, 51, is accused of murdering Gerhard van Wyk, 54, after allegedly offering to allow his son to live on his vast estate in return for sex with his wife. Pictured: Boulter appearing at Windhoek High Court for his bail hearing

Gerhard van Wyk, far right, died on the way to hospital after apparently trying to wrestle a pistol out of Boulter's hands during the deadly barbecue scuffle in Namibia. His son Gerhard Jr and daughter-in-law Liani, who was allegedly propositioned by Boulter, are pictured at the front

Boulter - who was a donor to Ukip giving the party 30,000 and blew the whistle on a Westminster political scandal a decade ago which led to Tory defence secretary Liam Fox resigning - was arrested for murder

Van Wyk's wife Alta, Gerhard Jnr and Liani set off on a desperate 100-mile dash from the remote 66,000 acre game ranch in Namibia to the nearest hospital.

But the former soldier turned game park manager died on the drive, just a few miles away from reaching doctors in the remote bush town of Outjo from the bullet wound.

Boulter's Kaross estate near rural Kamanjab is said to be home to the Big 5 of lion, leopard, buffalo, rhino and elephant which he bought in 2012 for his love of big game hunting.

Boulter - who was a donor to Ukip giving the party 30,000 and blew the whistle on a Westminster political scandal a decade ago which led to Tory defence secretary Liam Fox resigning - was arrested for murder.

The super-rich businessman in 2011 exposed Cabinet minister Fox's 'unusual working relationship' travelling the world with best friend Adam Werritty who he passed off as a political advisor.

Despite the shooting on February 27 the Sussex born investment and defence industry tycoon has not spent any time in the cells but has remained ever since 'sick' at a private hospital.

It has led to claims of preferential treatment to Boulter whose lawyer told the bail hearing at the High Court in the capital Windhoek that he had invested 7.5m in the country so far.

Boulter, 51, leaves Windhoek High Court, Namibia, after being given bail for alleged murder

Despite the shooting on February 27 the Sussex born investment and defence industry tycoon has not spent any time in the cells but has remained ever since 'sick' at a private hospital (pictured)

Boulter's top lawyer Mr Sisa Namandje said he had ploughed 7.5m into the country during the 10 years he has lived there and been a permanent resident since 2017

It has been reported that he rubs shoulders with senior members of the Government but despite being denied bail by magistrates he got it on appeal from Judge Claudia Claasen.

Prosecutor Taodago Gaweseb said the allegations were so serious and that there was a probability of a lengthy jail sentence that it was not in the interests of justice to grant him bail.

Boulter's top lawyer Mr Sisa Namandje countered that he had ploughed 7.5m into the country during the 10 years he has lived there and been a permanent resident since 2017.

The barrister said he was settled in Namibia and employed 40 people and was running an international business supplying encrypted communications technology around the world.

Boulter's customers were governments and the military including the USA, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand and that he told the court he was not a flight risk.

He added that he would not interfere with witnesses or jeopardise the administration of justice.

Mr Namandje told the court the shooting happened after a row during a lamb spit bbq on his estate and Boulter felt under attack from Van Wyk and his son when the gun went off.

He added it was Boulter who called the police himself and reported the incident and had co-operated with the police throughout and had handed over his passport to them.

Bail of 25,000 was granted on condition Boulter stays at a fixed address in Windhoek, reports to police once a week, and may not leave Windhoek District without police permission.

Boulter is charged with murder, possession of a firearm without a licence, illegal possession of ammunition and attempting to defeat the course of justice all connected to the shooting.

The billionaire, pictured, had allegedly insulted Mr Van Wyk's daughter-in-law and threatened his family with a pistol

Namibian Police Force head Lieutenant General Sebastian Ndeitunga has told a local paper that he was 'concerned' about continued special treatment being given to tycoon Boulter

He spoke out as he revealed that Boulter had evaded being held in prison to await trial since the shooting four and a half months ago and suspected 'individuals' were helping him.

Lieut General Ndeitunga was quoted as saying he 'had a problem' with Boulter's continued stay in hospital as 'sick' adding: 'He is always admitted and does not want to go to the cells.

'I am even suspecting some people are favouring him to be a permanent patient in hospital.All suspects should go to the cells' he said referring to his stay at the Paramount Healthcare Centre.

The clinic in Windhoek caters mainly for private patients and those on medical aid.

Divorced father-of-three Boulter - who is said to own a super yacht and his own private jet - has to appear before magistrates again in Outjo in September.

Friend of the dead main claimed after his funeral that a 'worse for wear' Boulter had agreed to allow the son of his farm manager and new bride Liani build a home on his estate.

But tempers flared when he allegedly said that in return she should spend every other night having sex with him and in the ensuing argument Boulter's gun was fired killing van Wyk.

The bail address for billionaire Boulter was not revealed to the court.
A high-flying finance specialist who ejaculated on a young woman at a music festival has been fired from his job where he was earning $120,000 a year.

Muhammad 'Bilal' Khan, 40, pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual touching and one count of indecent assault in Melbourne's Magistrates Court on July 15.

Khan appeared in court again on Tuesday where his lawyer confirmed he had been fired from his job at financial services and insurance company AB Phillips.

Muhammad 'Bilal' Khan, 40, pleaded guilty in Melbourne Magistrates Court on July 15 to three counts of sexual touching and one count of indecent assault

His first accusation came from a young woman who attended the St Kilda Festival (pictured) on February 8, 2015 who in a police statement of facts 'felt something warm on her back'

The father-of-two had been a senior employee at the company until he was let go on Monday, after it was revealed he had committed a series of sex offences.

The court previously heard the serial public masturbator had carried out a spate of vile attacks on women from 2015 to 2019, after he migrated from Pakistan in 2009.

Police released this sketch of Khan after the 2015 sexual assault

On Tuesday, Khan appeared in court via video link sitting next to his two children and his wife, who has remained by her husband's side throughout the ordeal.

Acting as a character reference, his wife described as him as a 'hard worker' and a 'devoted father and husband'.

His lawyer Amelia Beech said her client is the 'breadwinner' of the family and was feeling 'enormous stress and distress' after being terminated from his job.

She previously said her client had been concerned that if a conviction was recorded he would lose his lucrative job.

The Keilor man's first accusation came from a young woman who attended the St Kilda Festival on February 8, 2015.

A police statement of facts reads that the woman 'felt something warm on her back and turned around to see Khan buttoning up his pants' news.com.au reported.

Investigators launched a public appeal in the wake of the incident to identify the perpetrator, but it would be several years before Khan would finally be identified.

On October 18, 2019, Khan was captured on CCTV approaching a woman from behind at the Carlton Club (pictured) and seen touching her buttocks and dragging his finger up her leg

On February 8, 2017, two years after the incident at the festival, the finance specialist struck again, this time ejaculating on a woman on a tram.

The victim told police she had been travelling from Flinders Street to the Royal Melbourne Hospital when a man touched her leg and ejaculated on her dress.

On March 4, 2018, Khan attended the Brunswick Festival in Melbourne and again ejaculated on a female stranger.

The victim had felt something wet and saw he had ejaculated on her top and jeans.

While the woman could not identify who the masturbator was, she handed over her clothes for police to take a DNA sample.

Just over a year later on October 18, 2019, Khan was captured on CCTV approaching a woman from behind at the Carlton Club, a popular Melbourne nightclub.

The vision shows him touching her buttocks and dragging his finger up her legs.

The father-of-two lost his job as an IT lead at Bendigo's Kangan Institute in October 2019 after his sex offences charges meant he failed a working with children check.

On March 4, 2018, Khan attended the Brunswick Festival in Melbourne and again ejaculated on a female stranger

The court previously heard that before Khan moved to Australia 'his relationship with women was very different'.

His lawyer said he found it 'overwhelming' moving to Melbourne after having limited contact with the opposite sex at university in Pakistan.

Magistrate Harnett said she plans to sentence Khan to a community corrections order under the condition he completes an offence-specific treatment program.

She said the treatment would benefit both him and the wider community.

He is due to be sentenced on Tuesday next week.
Two muggers stabbed a sheikhs son to death outside Harrods for his 34,000 designer watch but fled empty handed, a court has heard.

Badir Rahim Alnazi, 24, and Arseboon Dilbaro, 23, stand accused of knifing Mohammed Al-Araimi, 20 and his friend Nasser Kanoo, 21, after the pair left the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge.

Mr Al-Armani, a second-year King's College student who lived in London, had been in the 'wrong place at the wrong' time after going out for a meal with a friend when they were approached by two men.

Mr Al-Araimi, the son of the Omani sheikh and business tycoon Abdalla Al Araimi, was stabbed to the left side of the front upper chest on 5 December 2019.

He collapsed under a Christmas tree next to Harrods and died from his injuries just 40 minutes later, Inner London Crown Court heard.

Mr Kanoo, who studied at Kings College London with Mr Al-Araimi, was knifed to the left side of his back, just above the hip.

He received hospital treatment and will give evidence during the trial.

Mr Al-Arami was wearing a Patek Phillipe watch worth 34,460 when he was stabbed while his friend's timepiece was a Rolex worth 7,150 but the muggers fled empty-handed, jurors heard.

Mohammed Al-Araimi, 20,was wearing a Patek Phillipe watch worth 34,460 when he was killed in a mugging near to the famous Knightsbridge department store on December 5, 2019

Anthony Orchard, prosecuting, said: The two defendants had gone out that night looking for a victim or victims to rob.

Their circuitous route to Knightsbridge demonstrating their desire to wait for the right victim or victims in the right location.

Unfortunately for them, the two friends, Mohammed Al-Araimi and Nasser Kanoo were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Badir Alnazi and Arseboon Dilbaro went to them. They had knives ready to enforce their threat, ready to use.

Both victims were stabbed. Mohammed Al-Araimi died less than an hour later.

Tragically he became yet another victim of knife crime.'

Mohammed Al-Araimi was the son of, Sheikh Abdalla Al-Araimi who owns the Al Raid Group - a collective of companies that develop shopping malls and leisure centres in Oman.

Mr Al-Armani was second-year King's College student, who lived in London while studying politics and economics. Pictured: The murder scene outside Harrods, London

Despite the best efforts of paramedics, after security officers from Harrods and police had rushed to Mr Al-Araimi's aid he was pronounced dead at 00:39 on December, 6.

Mr Orchard said the two attackers walked off in the opposite direction and they were captured on a CCTV camera at the Park Tower Casino.

'The clothing and faces of both can be seen clearly.'

Jurors were told Alnazi and Dilbaro were caught on CCTV attacking their victims in an alleyway near Harrods and both accept it is them in the footage.

'Alnazi comes up behind and you see him grab Mr Al-Araimi,' said DC David Sullivan as the clip was shown in court.

Kuwaiti citizen Alnazi walked into Charing Cross Police Station on 8 January 2020 after two CCTV clips were released to the media and he saw himself on social media.

Badir Rahim Alnazi, 24 (left), and Arseboon Dilbaro, 23, stand accused of knifing Mohammed Al-Araimi, 20

Following his arrest Alnazi denied his involvement in the attack and said: I am innocent of these charges.

I deny that I went to Knightsbridge with the intention to commit robbery. Similarly, I deny that I tried to rob anyone on 5 December 2019.

I further deny that I intended to cause harm to anyone or that I stabbed or caused injury to anyone.

Police went to an address in Ashburnham Road, Kensal Green, looking for Dilbaro on 15 January but were told he had gone to Cairo.

Dilbaro, a German national, returned to the UK last 14 July and was arrested at Heathrow, the court heard.

Earlier Mr Orchard told the court two days after the killing Dilbaro purchased plane tickets from Heathrow to Athens and then from Athens to Cairo on Aegean Airlines.

He was arrested at Heathrow Airport on his return to the UK last 14 July.

Alnazi, of Beaconsfield Road, Brent, and Dilbaro, of Green Avenue, Mill Hill, deny murder, wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and attempted robbery.

Alnazi alone has admitted possession of an offensive weapon. Both defendants accept it is them captured in the CCTV footage.

The trial continues.
South Australians starting their seven-day lockdown will only be allowed to travel a maximum of 2.5km away from their homes to exercise.

The rule is one of the toughest to be imposed amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia, with exercise also limited to just 90 minutes each day.

In Sydney, the limit is 10km for an unlimited amount of time, and in Victoria it was 5km during its 112 day lockdown last year.

The entire state of SA was locked down as of 6pm on Tuesday with residents only allowed to leave their houses for five reasons.

These include for care and compassionate reasons, to exercise, for essential work, to get essential supplies, and for medical reasons.

South Australians starting their seven-day lockdown will only be allowed to travel a maximum of 2.5km away from their homes to exercise (pictured woman walking in Adelaide during Covid restrictions)

Those living in South Australia can also only exercise with someone they live with or a work colleague if they go right after finishing a shift.

The tough rule means that for those in Adelaide's CBD they can't even get past North Adelaide if they wanted to get some fresh air.

Premier Steven Marshall said tough restrictions needed to be enforced to curb the spread of the virus.

SOUTH AUSTRALIA'S SNAP LOCKDOWN From 6pm on Tuesday the state will enter seven days of lockdown. Residents can only leave their home for five essential reasons. These reasons are: 1. For essential supplies 2. For exercise (within 2.5km of your home, only with those from your household and only for 90 minutes a day) 3. For medical care 4. For care and compassionate reasons 5. For essential work Masks are also required in public indoor spaces and on public transport. Construction sites will also close. Advertisement

The rule is one of the toughest to be imposed amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia with exercise also limited to 90 minutes each day (pictured is a testing facility in Adelaide)

'We are dealing with a different highly contagious variant. We have seen this in Victoria. We don't want this moving across our state as we have seen elsewhere,' he said on Tuesday.

'What we have seen in Victoria is a very rapid movement out of Greater Melbourne. We now worryingly have a case in Mildura.

'This is a disease which is fast moving. Until we have a clearer understanding of how widespread this is we have to take action to keep our state safe.'

Construction sites across the state will shut down for seven days and schools will transition to online learning from Thursday.

Premier Steven Marshall said tough restrictions needed to be enforced to curb the spread of the virus

Two new cases were reported on Tuesday bringing the state's total to five.

The state's chief health officer Professor Nicola Spurrier confirmed that state's cases were the delta variant of Covid.

The outbreak has plunged thousands of people into quarantine with the list of more than a dozen exposure sites including at least four major shopping centres in Adelaide's north and northeastern suburbs.

Masks must be used in all indoor public areas, including shopping malls and also on public transport and in high-risk settings.

Fitness centres are closed along with other non-essential retail outlets.

Supermarkets and pharmacies and other essential businesses will continue to trade.
Joe Biden is looking at a series of responses to the Cuban unrest, including bolstering the U.S. presence at the embassy in Havana and ensuring money Cuban Americans send home makes it there.

A State working group will look at the feasibility of staffing increases at the U.S. embassy in Havana following massive antigovernment demonstrations that still have hundreds of protesters under detention after a violent crackdown by Cuban authorities.

'At President Biden's direction, the United States is actively pursuing measures that will both support the Cuban people and hold the Cuban regime accountable,' a senior administration official told the Miami Herald.

Other than a staffing boost, the State Department will also launch a review into whether all of the money Cuban Americans are sending family back on the island are actually being received in full.

'The administration will form a Remittance Working Group to identify the most effective way to get remittances directly into the hands of the Cuban people,' the official said.

President Joe Biden has ordered a State Department review of Cuba following violent clashes this month between antigovernment protesters and the socialist regime

The review will look at bolstering staffing at the U.S. embassy in Havana (pictured on May 20, 2021) and aim to make sure money sent from Cuban Americans make it to their families on the island. The administration is also looking at making internet accessible after it was cut off and the Treasury Department could issue sanctions

The administration also wants to increase humanitarian assistance to Cuban people and the Treasury Department is looking at issuing sanctions on the Cuban government.

The official confirmed they are considering different initiatives to help make the internet more accessible to Cubans.

The State Department, the official added, 'will review planning to augment staffing of U.S. Embassy Havana to facilitate diplomatic, consular, and civil society engagement, and an appropriate security posture.'

No official plans have been announced by the agency or the White House as the Biden administration weighs how to respond to the unrest in the socialist-run nation.

The reports of the review, however, come a week after thousands of Cubans took to the streets in cities across the island to protest foot shortages and unreasonably high prices in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

The antigovernment uprising was met with violent retaliation from the Cuban government, which is a Unitary Socialist Republic. The clashes left scores of people injured and at least one dead.

Despite spending months developing a strategy on Cuba, the administration now feels a sense of urgency to respond in light of the recent violence.

'On July 11, the world watched as tens of thousands of Cuban citizens marched through Havana and cities across Cuba bravely asserting their fundamental and universal rights and demanding freedom and relief from the oppression of Cuba's authoritarian regime,' the Biden official told the Herald.

'The Biden-Harris administration has and will continue to stand with the Cuban people,' they added.

This month, thousands of Cubans took to the streets across the island to protest food shortages and high prices in the midst of the coroanvirus pandemic. Cuban officials retaliated with violence, leaving many injured, at least one dead and hundreds remain in custody

As violent confrontations broke out between the people of Cuba and their government, Miguel Diaz-Canel's regime swiftly cut off citizens' internet access to stop images from being widely shared online.

Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel has accused the U.S. of funding and orchestrating the demonstrations

Lawmakers, including Florida Senator Marco Rubio, have been urging Biden to give dissidents free satellite internet access to stop the Cuban government preventing activists from sharing their posts on social media.

Diaz-Canel, the leader of Cuba, repeated accusations at a pro-government rally on Saturday that the island-wide demonstrations were financed and mobilized by the U.S.

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control will look at sanctioning Cuban officials who committed human rights violations against peaceful protesters.

Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement Cedric Richmond and Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere for the National Security Council Juan Gonzalez met on Monday with Cuban American leaders to hear their policy recommendations in the aftermath of the demonstrations.

'Administration officials underscored that the White House is monitoring the situation in Cuba closely and that addressing the moment and ongoing situation in Cuba is a top priority for the Administration,' the White House said Monday in a readout of the meeting.

'They also affirmed what the President said last week: that the demonstrations are the direct result of a failed communist government, and reminded the leaders that the President stands firmly with the people of Cuba,' the statement read. 'Stakeholders shared what they've done over the last week to help elevate the voices of demonstrators in Cuba and provided their recommendations for how the U.S. government can help.'
Dr. Howard S. Weiss, a psychiatrist from Englewood, Colorado was indicted by a federal grand jury on 120 criminal charges. He has pleaded not guilty

A Colorado doctor prescribed more than 10,000 pills to a single patient in a three-month period, including 9,000 doses of Adderall and hundreds of Xanax and muscle relaxant tablets, while operating a cash-only practice, its been alleged.

Dr. Howard S. Weiss, a 66-year-old psychiatrist from Englewood, Colorado was indicted by a federal grand jury on 120 criminal charges, according to court documents from the US District Court in Denver.

Weiss has pleaded not guilty to the charges in court on Friday. He later posted $100,000 bond.

According to federal prosecutors, Weiss charged patients between $650 and $850 per visit when they went to see him at his clinic in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.

The federal government alleges that Weiss even charged those sums when seeing indigent patients who relied on Medicaid, the low-income, government-subsidized program.

He would then prescribe them powerful opioids and other drugs that are considered highly addictive, including methamphetamine, mixed amphetamine salts, according to the indictment.

Federal prosecutors allege that Weiss prescribed one of his patients 9,000 Adderall pills, 480 pills of the muscle relaxant Soma, and 480 Xanax tablets within a three-month period

The indictment was unsealed last week by the US District Court in Colorado

Between approximately August 2013 and June 2019, the defendant, Howard Weiss, distributed controlled substances outside the usual course of professional practice and for no legitimate purpose, federal prosecutors wrote in the indictment.

Weiss prescribed high doses of benzodiazepines to individuals who were also taking opioids or who were being treated for opioid abuse, the indictment alleges.

He did this despite the fact that those substances in combination put those individuals at greater risk for potentially fatal overdoses.

At least one of Weiss patients died of an overdose, according to the indictment. The patients name is not mentioned and Weiss has not been charged with any crime linked to that persons death.

Weiss was also alleged to have prescribed high doses of controlled substances without first attempting lower doses and without first attempting alternative therapies, the indictment states.

Federal prosecutors allege that Weiss would even prescribe these drugs to patients even when told by their probation and parole officers that those individuals had a prior history of substance abuse.

The indictment alleges that Weiss performed cursory examinations and therapy sessions designed to superficially create the appearance of a legitimate practice.

Weiss, after conducting the sham sessions, failed to properly verify the putative complaints of individuals seeking controlled substances, failed to properly document symptoms that would justify his diagnoses, and failed to properly document legitimate reasons for changes in controlled substance prescriptions, according to the indictment.

According to federal prosecutors, Weiss charged patients between $650 and $850 per visit when they went to see him at his clinic in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village (above)

Weiss was allowed to practice medicine in Colorado even though his medical license in Virginia was suspended after he was convicted in federal court on a mail fraud charge that involved fraudulent billing

The court documents allege that Weiss improperly prescribed drugs to 16 patients.

One of them was given prescriptions for 9,000 Adderall pills, 480 pills of the muscle relaxant Soma, and 480 Xanax tablets, according to the indictment.

Weiss was allowed to practice medicine in Colorado even though his medical license in Virginia was suspended after he was convicted in federal court on a mail fraud charge that involved fraudulent billing, the Denver Post reported.

He was sentenced to three years probation for the charge and ordered to pay more than $35,000 in restitution to Medicare and two insurance companies.
A 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of wounding after a nurse was stabbed at a hospital in Wolverhampton this morning.

Officers rushed to the scene after a woman was stabbed at New Cross Hospital, in Heath Town, just before 11am today.

The injuries of the member of staff are not believed to be life-threatening, West Midlands Police said.

There is now increased security at the hospital and police officers are at the site.

A 21-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of wounding after a nurse was stabbed at New Cross Hospital in Wolverhampton today. Pictured: Police officers at the scene

The force have said they are now in the 'early stages of our investigation' and have urged anyone with information to come forward.

They said in a statement: 'We've arrested a man after a staff member was stabbed at New Cross Hospital, Wolverhampton, just before 11am today.

'Fortunately, the woman's injuries are not believed to be life-threatening. A 21-year-old man has been detained on suspicion of wounding.'

Meanwhile the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust tweeted: 'There has been a police incident at New Cross Hospital this morning.

'Police are currently on site and we have increased security presence. There is no disruption to services so please attend A&E or your appointment as normal.'

There is now increased security at the hospital in Wolverhampton and police officers are at the site

Following the incident, a person at the hospital, who did not wish to be named, told The Express and Star: 'I heard about the incident this morning and I'm a little shocked to hear what happened, so I hope she's OK and recovers quickly.

'It's awful to hear it's happened, but I don't think it's happened around here before.

'I don't feel unsafe at all as I think we have great security here and it's just one incident.'

Anyone with information is asked to contact West Midlands Police by calling 101 and using the quote log 1521 of 20/7/21.
This is the moment a wild brawl broke out between two passengers trying to exit a plane at Miami International Airport, on Sunday night - just the latest in more than 3,000 violent incidents reported on air travel since January.

Kiera Pierre Louis, who goes by her hip-hop name Milli Miami, recorded the whole incident, which broke out when a Frontier Airlines flight from Philadelphia landed in Miami Sunday at around 9:30 p.m.

She told Local 10 News the white man grew angry at the black passenger because he thought he was taking to long to get his luggage from the overhead bin and was blocking his way out.

The white man then threw the first punch, she said, and called the black passenger the 'N' word.

'I couldn't believe what was going on,' she said. 'You can see the white man on top of the black passenger and just beating him between the seats,' she said.

'The flight attendant got involved, the white man's wife got involved, his son, I believe his son's girlfriend, um, everyone was just involved.'

She also noted that the white man who reportedly started the fight was allowed to leave the plane, while the black man was told to stay behind.

'Racism, of course,' Pierre Louis claimed. 'The black passenger had to wait on the plane, when he didn't even start it, and the police while we were walking off the plane, walked right past the person, the white man, who actually initiated everything.'

Scroll down for video

Video posted to Instagram shows the moment a white passenger pushed a black passenger into the seat of a Frontier Airlines plane as passengers tried to deplane on Sunday night

A black woman and a white woman, presumably the men's wives, got involved, with the black woman trying to grab the white man while the white woman pulled her hair

Eventually, a group of other passengers and a flight attendant were able to pull the white man off of the black man and force him down the aisle

Miami-Dade police, however, said the black passenger was 'not held back,' but instead chose to stay on the plane so he could file a police report.

Ultimately, they said, he decided not to press charges, and the white man who reportedly started the brawl was allowed to leave.

The nearly three-minute long video shows two men arguing, when a white man suddenly grabs a black man and pushes him down into the seat. A black woman then seems to get involved and starts attacking a white woman, who grabs her by the hair as a flight attendant asks what happened.

The white man, meanwhile, continues to punch the black man, leading the black woman to grab the white man by the head, as people try to pull him off the black man.

Eventually, several other passengers and a flight attendant were able to get the white man off the black man, and push him forward to deplane.

The black man could be seen trying to follow him, but the black woman seemed to hold him back, as others on the plane shouted at him to 'get out.'

The incident reportedly occurred on a Frontier Airlines flight that landed in Miami from Philadelphia at around 9.30pm Sunday night

FAA fines for unruly passengers reaches $682,000 With nine cases of unruly passengers reported earlier this month, totaling $119,000 in fines, the agency has collected a total of $682,000 since the beginning of the year. $21,500 to a passenger on a December 2020 Frontier Airlines flight from Nashville to Orlando

$18,500 to a passenger on a February 19 Republic Airlines flight from Indianapolis to Philadelphia

$17,000 to a passenger on a January 25 Frontier Airlines flight from St. Louis, Missouri to Las Vegas

$13,000 to a passenger on a January 29 Frontier Airlines flight from San Diego to Las Vegas

$10,500 to a passenger on a February 27 Allegiant Air flight from Provo, Utah to Mesa, Arizona

$10,500 to a passenger on a January 23 Alaska Airlines flight from Seattle to Ketchikan

$10,500 to a passenger on a December 19 Allegiant Air flight from Syracuse, New York to Punta Gorda, Florida

$10,000 to a passenger on a February 19 Republic Airlines flight from Indianapolis to Philadelphia

$7,500 to a passenger on a February 25 Southwest Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles Advertisement

Frontier Airlines referred any questions about the incident to the Miami-Dade Police Department, but confirmed in a statement to Local 10 News that a fight broke out on its flight from Philadelphia to Miami.

'All passengers involved were asked to remain on the aircraft, however some disregarded the flight crew's instructions,' the statement read. 'Ultimately, local law enforcement became involved.'

Sunday's fight is just the latest in a string of violent incidents that have been documented at terminals and inside airplanes since air travel started to resume in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced in June that airlines have reported more than 3,000 incidents involving unruly passengers since January 1, with about 76 percent of the nearly 3,300 reports involving passengers who refused to wear masks on board their flights.

It has collected $682,000 in these penalties since the new regulations went into effect.

While the FAA agency did not track such reports in prior years, a spokesman said it was safe to assume this year's numbers are the highest ever.

Since announcing a 'zero-tolerance policy' against unruly passengers in January, the FAA has publicized potential fines - some topping $30,000 - against more than 80 passengers That is about three times the full-year average number of cases over the past decade, according to FAA figures.

In one instance last month, a 29-year-old woman was arrested and charged with aggravated assault while she was trying to check-in for another Frontier Airlines flight with her two children at Orlando International Airport and hit an employee with a keyboard.

And in May, a young woman on a Southwest plane in San Diego, California punched a flight attendant in the face. She was charged with felony battery.

As a result of these violent incidents, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) said they will resume self-defense training for airline flight attendants and pilots, which were halted last year due to the pandemic.

The FAA has reported an uptick in violent incidents at airports and on board planes as more people begin to travel as the COVID pandemic wanes. Here, people were seen waiting in line for TSA screening at the Orlando International Airport, where a Frontier Airlines staff member was assaulted by an unruly passenger last month

Certain airlines have also decided to ban the sale of alcohol on their flights in the wake of these violent incidences.

In May, American Airlines officials announced they would not resume serving alcohol to passengers in the main cabins until at least September, saying that they had seen 'some of these stressors create deeply disturbing situations on board aircrafts.'

Vice president of flight service Brady Byrnes added: 'Let me be clear: American Airlines will not tolerate assault or mistreatment of our crews.'

'While we appreciate that customers and crewmembers are eager to return to 'normal,' we will move cautiously and deliberately when restoring pre-COVID practices.'

American Airlines halted the sale of alcohol in economy in late March 2020 to limit interactions between passengers and flight attendants during the pandemic. The airline now says the ban will remain in place through September 13, the same date the Transportation Security Administration plans to lift the mask mandate on all flights.

Southwest Airlines has also decided to halt its plans to return to selling alcohol to customers as the COVID pandemic wanes.

'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,' said Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz.

Mainz said the decision might disappoint 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.'

The airline has not determined new dates for selling alcohol.
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham slammed Democrats Monday night for plotting to tuck in a provision to the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that would give undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship.

'If you give one person legal status there will be a run on our border like you have never seen before,' the South Carolina Republican said, calling it the 'dumbest idea in the history of the Senate, the history of the White House.'

He added that it will 'lead to the breakdown of law and order beyond what you see today.'

Sen. Lindsey Graham slammed Democrats for plotting to tuck a pathway to citizenship provision into the planned $3.5 trillion budget bill that will be passed using reconciliation

Border Patrol officers speak to a group of Central American migrants who were detained in Sunland Park, New Mexico last week

A Border Patrol officer searches a migrant who was detained in New Mexico last week

Graham made the comments on Fox News' Ingraham Angle Monday night.

While Senate Democrats and Republicans came to an agreement on a rough framework for an infrastructure bill - negotiations are ongoing this week in the Senate.

Ten Republicans haven't signed on yet, so the bipartisan deal is in jeopardy.

At the same time, some of Biden's 'human' infrastructure priorities will be part of the massive $3.5 trillion budget resolution bill, which Senate Democrats plan to pass using the filibuster-proof process of reconciliaton, meaning they can do it without any GOP support.

On Monday, President Joe Biden was asked if it was appropriate to use the budget bill as a vehicle to provide immigrants with a pathway to citizenship.

'Well, first of all, I think we need to find pathways to citizenship,' Biden told reporters after he gave an update on the economy. 'The budget bill is an appropriate way to get around the filibuster to be able to make a judgment as to whether or not they should have a pathway. Thats for the ... Parliamentarian to decide, though, not for Joe Biden to decide.'

The Senate's Parliamentarian would have to rule on whether reconciliation could be used to pass the immigration-related provision.

'It's a power grab,' Graham complained on Fox.

He added that the package doesn't have a 'damn thing to do with infrastructure.'

Every month Biden has been in office there has been an uptick in crossing at the U.S.-Mexico border.

On Friday, Customs and Border Protection said 188,829 migrants were stopped at the southern border during the month of June, up from 180,641 who were apprehended in May.

Warmer months tend to attract more border crossers, but numbers actually fell during former President Donald Trump's last year in office, in part thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Customs and Border Protection revealed that 188,829 migrants were stopped at the southwest border in June
Bodycam footage captured the moment a New York police officer saved a family of six from their burning home in upstate New York.

Officer Mark Conklin of the Jamestown Police Department has been hailed a hero after he sprang in to help the Rivera family escape from their home when it was engulfed in flames early Monday.

Conklin responded to a call about the fire at around 12.15am and arrived to find adults and children trapped upstairs in the house, the Jamestown Police Department said in a statement.

The statement included a link to a GoFundMe for Hector and Brooke Rivera, who lived in the home with their four children ranging in age from three to 12 years old.

Officer Conklin was responding to a call a block away when he ran to the burning home and asked witnesses for the address to alert authorities

Officer Conklin's bodycam footage captured the home overtaken by fire

The home belonged to Hector and Brooke Rivera, who lived there with their four children ranging in age from three to 12 years old, according to a GoFundMe campaign

Officer Conklin pulled double duty, requesting Jamestown Fire Department over his radio while standing next to the house radiating extreme heat to direct the family trapped in the burning home to jump from the upstairs window and proceeding to catch them.

Footage recorded by his body camera footage captures him running to the scene of the fire and asking witnesses for the address of the home while breathlessly radioing the police department with all the details.

Once he arrives to the burning home, he looks up and tells residents of the home 'Jump! I got you! I got you!' before you see a blur fall from the window.

The bodycam cuts off at that moment and the Jamestown Police Department did not confirm how many people Officer Conklin was able to save or their condition after the fire - but there were no reported deaths in the incident, ABC News reported.

The department did commend Conklin for his 'heroism' and quick thinking which they credited with saving the family.

'I can say that I have seen many examples of heroism over the years by officers,' Jamestown Police Chief Tim Jackson said in a statement.

'After watching the video of this incident and speaking to others involved, I can say that the actions of Officer Conklin were, to say the least, one of the most outstanding examples of bravery, heroism, and exemplary service I have seen.'

The community is pulling together to provide for the Rivera family, who lost all their belongings in the fire that completely destroyed their home (pictured)

The Jamestown Police Department linked a GoFundMe for Brooke and Hector Rivera, the family who 'lost their entire house and all belongings tragically in a house fire in Jamestown NY on July 18, 2021,' according to the fundraiser that has so far raised over $3,000

'We, the Jamestown Police Department, are honored to have officers such as Mark Conklin working in the Jamestown Police Department,' Jackson added.

The description on the GoFundMe said the Rivera family 'lost their entire house and all belongings tragically in a house fire.

'Brooke and Hector are a hard working family with 4 children shared: Hailey (12) , Hazel (3), Hayden (5) and Hannah (7),' it read.

'They have been long time residents of Jamestown and have lost literally everything. They do not have insurance that I am aware of. 100% of donations will go to cover future housing, living expenses, and replacement of their belongings to start their lives over.'

The GoFundMe has raised over $3,000 as of Tuesday morning.
Olivia Sandor, 18, says she lost a $200,000 scholarship and was denied admission to Brigham Young UniversityHawaii after requesting exemption from the school's COVID-19 vaccine requirement due to a pre-existing medical condition

An incoming college freshman was denied admission to her dream school and lost $200,000 in scholarships because she would not get vaccinated against coronavirus due to a pre-existing medical condition.

Olivia Sandor, 18, said Brigham Young UniversityHawaii (BYUH) denied her fall admission due to state and college vaccination requirements, despite the fact that they had already awarded her scholarship money.

Sandor, who suffers from Guillain-Barre syndrome (GBS), shared her story on Sean Hannity's Fox News program on Monday night and explained how she'd requested an exemption from the school's vaccination requirement after her team of medical providers advised against her getting the COVID-19 shot.

But the university denied her request for exemption - and told her to re-enroll after getting vaccinated.

Sandor developed GBS after receiving an influenza vaccine in 2019 and was paralyzed from the waist down for over a month as a result.

She said that while attending BYUH was her dream, the risks associated with the coronavirus vaccine do not outweigh the reward.

'I do not want to relapse and have another episode of Guillain-Barre,' she told Hannity. 'It's really, truly not worth it to me.'

Sandor appeared on Sean Hannity's Fox News on Monday night to share her outrage at BYU-Hawaii's decision to deny her admission over her COVID-19 vaccination status

Sandor submitted an letter from her doctor (pictured above) requesting exemption from BYUH's COVID-19 vaccination requirement due to her history of Guillain-Barre Syndrome

The exemption letter written by Sandor's doctor, and made public by Turning Point USA, reads in part: 'Because of [Sandor's] medical history I believe a COVID vaccine or another influenza vaccine will endanger her health and possibly her life' and that she 'should avoid those vaccines indefinitely'.

However, her request was met with denial from the university via email.

'After careful consideration of your request for a medical exemption, we regret that we cannot accommodate your request,' the email read.

'Due to our unique location, diverse student population, and daily interaction with international tourists at the Polynesian Cultural Center, we must take extra precautions to protect our campus and community.'

The university also encouraged her to considering attending BYUH when she is able to be 'fully vaccinated' or to 'consider attendance at one of [their] other church universities'.

Sandor said that since BYUH did not alert students of the vaccination mandate until mid-June she doesn't know what she is going to do about college.

'All those scholarships are gone,' she said. 'I really don't know where I'm going to turn or what my next steps are.'

BYUH did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment.

Her request was met with denial from the university (see above). BYUH encouraged her to attend when she is able to be 'fully vaccinated' or to 'consider attendance at one of [their] other church universities'

Sandor (photographed above) reportedly developed GBS after receiving an influenza vaccine in 2019 and was paralyzed from the waist down for over a month

She says that while attending BYUH was her dream, the risks associated with her getting the coronavirus vaccine are 'not worth it'

What is Guillain-Barre syndrome? GuillainBarre syndrome is a rare disorder in which the immune system goes into overdrive and the body attack its own nerves. Common symptoms of the rare condition include weakness and tingling in the limbs. As patients' conditions worsen, this can lead to parts of the body  or in some cases the whole body  being paralyzed. The syndrome is rare, affecting about one in 100,000 annually in the UK and US. Fewer than 20,000 cases are diagnosed per year in the US, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Doctors say it is often triggered by a viral or bacterial illness, such as Campylobacter jejuni. There is no cure. Treatment focuses on restoring the nervous system. It can be fatal if it involves the respiratory muscles. Advertisement

GBS is a very rare and serious condition that affects the body's nerves. It is thought to be caused by a problem with the immune system where it attacks the body's nerves rather than infections.

It is not clear why this happens but it often occurs after an infection - especially one in the airways, as can happen with flu.

Some vaccines, including the COVID-19 shot, are believed to trigger GBS, Dr. Nicole Saphier, radiologist and the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth, told FOX News.

However, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) does not include a history of GBS as a precaution for vaccination.

The CDC says 'people who have previously had GBS may receive a COVID-19 vaccine' and that, as of June 16, no cases of GBS have been reported following vaccination in participants in the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. One case of GBS was reported in a vaccinated participant in the Johnson & Johnson Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine clinical trial.

Despite this, Sandor is still hesitant to get the shot.

'Despite what the internet says, I truly believe that the vaccine is not meant for me,' Sandor said. 'And if you feel that it's necessary for you to get vaccinated, then by all means; I have nothing against you. But I do not feel that those with medical exemptions should be pushed to have this vaccine.'

Saphier says that although Sandor is more at risk of contracting COVID than other students, she understands apprehension about getting the shot.

'As long as she is continuing to protect herself from COVID-19, whether it be masking or whatever she's doing, I would also be just as afraid of the viral infection,' she told the news outlet.

'In terms of going to Hawaii, they need to be more flexible because once she's on that island -- when they have proven through testing and through quarantining that she doesn't have the virus, she is not placing anyone else at risk. She is at risk as someone who has suffered one of these consequences.'

BYUH (seen above) is just one of more than 500 colleges mandating students be fully vaccinated against COVID-19. However, BYUH, like most other colleges, does offer vaccination exemptions for bonafide religious or medical reasons

BYUH's requirement echoes that of other state COVID-19 guidelines. During the pandemic, Hawaii had issued some of the strictest restrictions in the nation

During the pandemic, Hawaii had issued some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in the nation.

Until recently, the state required all tourists to partake in an mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival and required a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours before a traveler's departing flight. The state also only accepted results from a Nucleic Acid Amplification Test (NAAT) from a certified lab on its approved travel partner list.

Now the state is permitting fully vaccinated travelers from the U.S. mainland to visit the island without quarantine. Travelers will be required to show officials their vaccine card, as well as upload it to the state's Safe Travels website.

Similarly to other state required immunizations, BYUH is also mandating students be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before attending the university. Like other required immunizations, students most provide proof vaccination.

BYUH is just one of more than 500 colleges requiring coronavirus vaccinations, according to data from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Ivy League schools and public university systems in Maryland, California and New York, are just a few among that list, as well as most of the universities and colleges ranked in the US News & World Report lists of the top 50 schools.

Like BYUH, most colleges are offering vaccination exemptions for bonafide religious or medical reasons.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 curve in the US is rising again after months of decline.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 curve in the U.S. is rising again after months of decline. More than 99% of deaths and 97% of hospitalizations are among people who have not been vaccinated

The number of new cases per day has tripled over the last 30 days driven by the fast-spreading Delta variant, lagging vaccination rates and Fourth of July parties

The number of new cases per day has tripled over the last 30 days driven by the fast-spreading Delta variant, lagging vaccination rates and Fourth of July parties.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, confirmed infections have climbed to an average of about 32,000 a day. The average number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 has also risen 21 percent over the past 30 days to over 19,000. Deaths rose 25 percent last week to an average of 258 per day.

While the rates are still sharply down from their January highs, officials are concerned by the reversing trendlines.

Parts of the country are running up against deep vaccine resistance, while the highly contagious Delta variant accounts for an ever-larger share of infections.

In total, 161 million people have been fully vaccinated - about 49.1 percent of the US population.

More than 99 percent of COVID-19 deaths and 97 percent of hospitalizations are among people who have not been vaccinated, according to the CDC.
This is the moment Tekashi 6ix9ine's bodyguards allegedly broke a fan's phone and pointed a taser at him after chasing him for 20 blocks in New York City for taking a video of the troubled rapper.

Five members of 6ix9ine's security team, including a retired New York City police detective, were indicted in a Manhattan court on Monday over August 2020 ordeal that was caught on camera.

Tekashi 6ix9ine, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, was not charged.

The footage, which was shot by witnesses, showed the 34-year-old fan recording 6ix9ine on a sidewalk in Harlem just days after the rapper completed his house arrest on street gang charges.

The alleged victim, who was driving by in his car, could be heard taunting the rapper, saying: 'What happened, big man? N***a, don't act tough. Fight me.'

The video, shared by XLL, then cut to the same man confronting 6ix9ine's bodyguards in the middle of the street after they allegedly pursued him and took his phone.

The man who was taunting the rapper - and was pursued by his security - hasn't been named.

The 34-year-old fan (pictured, right) in the white shirt with the yellow on his head) was filmed wrestling briefly with Tekashi 6ix9ine's bodyguards (one of whom is on the left) after they allegedly chased him for 20 blocks in New York and smashed his phone for filming the rapper in August last year

He could be heard shouting for the bodyguards to give him back his phone before he started wrestling with one of them.

Another bodyguard then approached with a taser as a witness repeatedly screamed out: 'Don't shoot'.

The video resurfaced as Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced the indictments of the five bodyguards on Monday, saying: 'A celebrity entourage is not a police department.'

Ex-NYPD detective Daniel Laperuta, Sammy Sprouse, Christian Cortez, Egardo Cortez and Kristian Fuhse were indictment on robbery, false impersonation and other charges stemming from the pursuit.

Laperuta was also charged with falsely claiming to police that the fan threatened the bodyguards with a weapon.

Prosecutors say the fan and his girlfriend had spotted 6ix9ine while driving in Harlem back on August 9 last year.

The rapper, who in 2019 was sentenced to two years in prison for taking part in a drive-by shooting as a member of a gang, was surrounded by his bodyguards at the time.

The footage, which was shot by witnesses, showed the 34-year-old fan recording 6ix9ine (above) on a sidewalk in Harlem just days after the rapper completed his house arrest on street gang charges

Five members of 6ix9ine's (above) security team, including a retired New York City police detective, were indicted in a Manhattan court on Monday over August 2020 ordeal that was caught on camera

6ix9ine, who was spared a harsher sentence after becoming a prosecution star witness, had been released from house arrest just days before the phone recording incident.

When the bodyguards saw the man trying to record video of the rapper, they 'shouted at him and began to chase him as he drove away,' prosecutors say.

The bodyguards, who were in three different SUVs, pursued the man for some 20 blocks. The SUVs were equipped with emergency flashing lights and sirens normally seen on police vehicles and ambulances.

The fan saw a marked police car and motioned for the officer to help but Laperuta, who is retired from the NYPD, allegedly flashed an official department Member of Service card.

Laperuta is then alleged to have told the officers that the fan had threatened him and other members of Tekashi 6ix9ine's security detail with a gun.

According to prosecutors, the bodyguards 'boxed in' the fan's car and forced him to pull the car over.

Another bodyguard, Sammy Sprouse, is alleged to have approached the fan's car, opened the driver's side, door, unbuckled the seat belt, and pulled his arm, knocking the phone out of his hand.

Kristian Fuhse, another member of the security detail, is alleged to have then stomped on the phone.

Ex-NYPD detective Daniel Laperuta is among the five bodyguards charged. In addition to robbery charges, Laperuta was also charged with falsely claiming to police that the fan threatened the bodyguards with a weapon

Egardo Cortez (left) and his cousin Christian Cortez (right) faced a Manhattan court on Monday to face charges over the August 2020 incident

The fan quickly got out of his car and tried to retrieve his phone. He 'wrestled' with another member of the rapper's entourage, Egardo Cortez, according to prosecutors.

Laperuta is then alleged to have approached the fan and the other bodyguards with his hand on his holstered gun.

Moments later, another bodyguard, Christian Cortez, pulled out a Taser and aimed it at the fan, it has been alleged.

An unmarked police car arrived at the scene soon afterward, prompting the bodyguards to quickly get back into their SUVs and flee, according to the criminal complaint.

Laperuta is then alleged to have gone to the NYPD's 28th Precinct to file a formal complaint against the fan. He once again is alleged to have claimed that the fan threatened the bodyguards with a gun.

When an NYPD lieutenant cast doubt on the plausibility of Laperuta's claims, Laperuta is alleged to have withdrawn his complaint and left the precinct.

Laperuta, a resident of Central Valley, New York, has been charged with robbery in the first and second degrees; criminal impersonation in the first degree; and falsely reporting an incident in the third degree.

Sprouse, Christian and Egardo Cortez and Fuhse have all been charged with robbery and criminal impersonation.

If convicted, they could face up to 25 years in state prison.

Laperuta, who is retired from the NYPD, allegedly flashed an official department Member of Service card. He is pictured in his uniform as an NYPD cop

Laperuta, a resident of Central Valley, New York, has been charged with robbery in the first and second degrees; criminal impersonation in the first degree; and falsely reporting an incident in the third degree

Egardo Cortez (right) and his cousin, Christian Cortez (left), have been charged with felony counts of robbery and criminal impersonation

'A celebrity entourage is not a police department, and Manhattan is not the Wild West,' Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. said in a written statement announcing the indictments.

'As alleged, these highly-compensated vigilantes caravanned through the streets of Harlem with sirens flashing in order to track a man down and steal and break his phone.'

Tekashi 6ix9ine pled guilty in Feb 2019 to conspiracy to commit murder and armed robbery. The crimes took place during the time he spent as a member of the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods

Tekashi 6ix9ine's security detail has made headlines in recent years.

Nearly two weeks after the alleged incident with the fan, the rapper and four of his security guards were seen on a New York City subway maskless - this despite rules mandating riders wear face coverings to guard against COVID-19.

Earlier this year, the rapper was sued by a California-based private security firm alleging that he failed to pay a $75,000 bill for services provided.

Tekashi 6ix9ine hired bodyguards from the Metropolitan Patrol three months after he was kidnapped, beaten, and robbed of almost $800,000 in jewelry and cash.

Last November, Anthony Ellison, 33, was sentenced to 24 years in federal prison for his role in the kidnapping.

Ellison was also sentenced for the slashing of another man that left him permanently disfigured.

After his own arrest, Tekashi 6ix9ine pleaded guilty and became a cooperator.

The rapper, whose legal name is Daniel Hernandez, is seen above in a New York court in October 2018. He testified against his fellow Nine Trey gang members in order to get a reduced sentence

At Ellison's trial last year, the rapper testified about his involvement with the gang, the Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods.

He described the kidnapping, saying Ellison and another man forced him into a stolen car at gunpoint.

He said the men drove him around, stopping sometimes to beat and taunt him as he begged for his life.

The men ultimately took him to his Brooklyn home, where they stole a bag full of jewelry before driving him a few blocks away and releasing him, he said.

In 2018, Tekashi 6ix9ine had a multiplatinum hit song, Fefe, with Nicki Minaj, which peaked at No. 3 on the pop charts, and Stoopid, featuring imprisoned rapper Bobby Shmurda.

In April of 2020, Tekashi 6ix9ine began serving home confinement for the last four months of a two-year prison term he was given for his role in a drive-by shooting in New York that he committed when he was with the gang.

Weeks later, he released a new video, Gooba.

The rapper declined to enter the witness protection program, insisting that he could pay for his own private security detail.

The decision is considered risky given the fact that the gangs that he testified against at trial in order to get a lighter sentence may seek revenge.
Ex-convict Leslie Scarlett, 35, is accused of opening fire on neighbors, paramedics and firefighters in Tucson on Sunday, killing one and injuring four others

Police in Tucson have identified an ex-convict as the gunman who they say fatally shot a man in front of his young son and wounded four others, including first responders, during a house fire where a charred body was found.

Suspect Leslie Scarlett, 35, remained in extremely critical condition at a local hospital, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said at a news conference on Monday night.

Magnus said Scarlett was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a police officer on Sunday.

'It is not clear what his intentions were,' Magnus said. 'This is a highly tragic, really horrific incident, with many unknowns A nightmare scenario.'

According to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Scarlett has a criminal history that includes a 2007 conviction for an attempted armed robbery. He was sentenced to six years and was released in August 2013.

Scarlett is suspected of killing a man and injuring four others in a rampage close to a house fire in Tucson, Arizona Sunday afternoon

Plywood is used to secure a house in Tucson Monday, a day after a charred body believed to be that of a mother of three was found there

Neighbor Cory Saunders, 44, was shot and killed by the rampaging gunman while trying to help put out the house fire. Saunders, a dad-of-two, is pictured with his girlfriend

The shootings spanned three locations, including the already-chaotic scene of a house fire

Scarlett was back in jail in 2016 for a brief stint after being convicted of disorderly conduct stemming from a domestic incident involving his girlfriend, who accused the man of choking her, reported Arizona Daily Star.

Police said Scarlett drove up to the house fire at 3.45pm and fired shots at an ambulance crew. The ambulance was two blocks from the fire, at Quincie Douglas Center, but was actually on standby for another incident, authorities said.

The ambulance driver, a 20-year-old man, was shot in the head, and a paramedic in the passenger seat, a 21-year-old woman, was shot in the chest and arm, police said. The driver was in critical condition and the woman was stable Monday.

The suspect then opened fire on firefighters and neighbors trying to douse the flames in the 2100 block of East Irene Vista, authorities said.

'He was just standing there in the middle of the street kind of nonchalantly reloading and just shooting ...at anybody and anything,' witness Jesse Acuna told AZFamily.

A neighbor  identified as 44-year-old Cory Saunders  was shot in the head and died in front of his 11-year-old son, Magnus said.

Saunders' girlfriend, Melissa Snyder, told KVOA that he ran out of their home the moment he realized their neighbors' house was on fire.

A window is seen shattered in an ambulance after the gunman shot and wounded two EMTs in Tucson on Sunday amid the rampage

Tucson police officer Danny Leone shot Scarlett after the suspect allegedly rammed the cop's vehicle and opened fire on him

Scarlett is seen bleeding in the middle of the road after the officer-involved shooting

Scarlett was taken into custody and transported to a hospital in critical condition

A fire department captain, a 17-year veteran, was shot in the arm, and another bullet grazed another neighbors head.

Snyder said she watched the wounded neighbor seek shelter after getting shot while waiting in vain for Saunders to return.

'I don't know how much time passed, but then, I watched them carry Cory over to our side of the yard,' Snyder said.

Scarlett has a criminal history that includes a 2007 conviction for an attempted armed robbery. He was sentenced to six years and was released in August 2013

Saunders is survived by his son and 12-year-old daughter.

Police said a badly burned body later found inside the burning home hasnt been identified yet, but likely is the mother of three children who lived there.

The children were initially reported missing but were located unharmed Monday morning, according to authorities.

It is unclear at this time what was Scarlett's relationship with the mother and children.

Neighbor Ladene Jones told KGUN9 that Scarlett, whom she said she has known a long time and was like an aunt to him, lived with his girlfriend in the house that burned down.

Jones also revealed that during the rampage she tried to reason with Scarlett and dissuade him from shooting people, but he ignored her pleas and remained silent.

A responding police officer encountered Scarlett a couple blocks away near Campbell Avenue and Irene Vista Road. Police said he rammed his SUV into the officers vehicle and opened fire.

The officer, eight-year veteran Danny Leone, wasnt injured and returned fire, critically wounding the suspect, as seen in graphic body camera video that was released by the police on Monday.

Chief Magnus told reporters on Monday that a motive in the deadly rampage has not yet been determined.

'It is not clear what his intentions were, because he was shooting at people, you know, both neighbors and firefighters, so his intentions remain unclear,' he said.

'This is a highly tragic, really horrific incident, with many unknowns,' said Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus. The police has yet to identify the gunman or his connection to the house fire

Police found the unidentified remains of a victim inside the home

A paramedic riding in the ambulance was able to summon help, despite having been shot

While at the scene of the house fire, the gunman killed a neighbor and shot a firefighter

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero thanked the police and fire departments for their work in a series of tweets Sunday night.

'I ask our entire Tucson community to join me in thinking about and praying for the victims of this afternoon's fire and shooting by Silverlake Park, including first responders from AMR and the Tucson Fire Department. This was a horrific and senseless act of violence,' she tweeted.

'Thank you to the men and women at @Tucson_Police, @TucsonFireDeptand all of the first responders and neighbors who courageously responded to the scene, knowingly putting themselves in danger.'
The Biden administration is reportedly sticking by a Trump-era policy to send thousands of federal convicts released to home confinement during COVID back to prison a month after the pandemic is over.

A memo from the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel sent a week before Biden took office states that inmates whose sentences last beyond the official state of emergency declared for the pandemic have to go back behind bars.

'We understand that approximately 40 percent of those prisoners would not have been eligible [for home confinement] absent the emergency authority,' the order reads.

More than 7,000 inmates are currently under home confinement including those not sent home under pandemic rules, according to the BOP.

The Biden legal team's decision backs a memo written by the Trump DOJ during the ex-president's last days in office. It states that federal convicts must return to prison no more than 30 days after the official pandemic emergency declaration ends

The CARES Act allowed about 4,000 nonviolent offenders to temporarily leave prison, the New York Times reports.

Recent surges in COVID cases and concerns over the Delta variant mean the emergency period, declared in March 2020, likely won't end this year.

The CARES Act directed the DOJ to allow lower-level cons released on home confinement to help slow the virus' spread. Then-AG Barr sent the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) a memo with strict eligibility standards.

As an administration that has championed prison reform, the Biden White House is under intense pressure to revoke the Trump-era directive (pictured: Clinton Correction Facility in New York)

Officials reportedly pressed that the decision was made based off of law, not policy.

The Biden team is reportedly hesitant to issue a blanket commutation over the potential political risk and concerns on intervening with DOJ policy on such a wide scale.

But as an administration that has championed prison reform, Biden has come under intense pressure to revoke the Trump-era directive.

A letter signed by 20 advocacy groups including the ACLU and NAACP begged Biden to commute thousands of prisoners' sentences.

'This is your opportunity to provide second chances to thousands of people who are already safely out of prison, reintegrating back to society, reconnecting with their loved ones, getting jobs and going back to school,' the letter sent Monday read.

Officials familiar with talks on the matter reportedly said the decision was a matter of law, not administration policy

More than two dozen House Democrats and one Republican urged Biden to 'reverse the Trump administration's cruel and misguided decision to require thousands of people currently on home confinement to return to federal prison.

'Such a move would harm families, waste tax dollars, and undermine public safety.'

Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Cory Booker also sent Attorney General Merrick Garland a letter in late April urging him to rescind the Trump DOJ policy.

Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley also supported the reversal during a hearing in April, citing statistics that say less than 1% of the criminals sent home under the CARES Act violated the terms of their home confinement.

When asked for a statement, the White House did not mention any pandemic-specific regulation.

'President Biden is committed to reducing incarceration and helping people to re-enter society,' White House spokesman Andrew Bates told the New York Times. 'As he has said, too many Americans are incarcerated, and too many are Black and brown. His administration is focused on reforming our justice system in order to strengthen families, boost our economy and give people a chance at a better future.'
A fake gem expert swapped diamonds worth 4.2 million for garden pebbles using 'sleight of hand' in a theft from a luxury Mayfair jewellers, a court has heard.

Lulu Lakatos, 60, allegedly posed as a gemmologist, 'Anna', sent to value the precious stones on behalf of a group posing as wealthy Russian buyers.

Boodles boss Nicholas Wainwright had agreed the sale of seven expensive diamonds following a lunch meeting at Monaco's Hotel Metropole.

Southwark Crown Court heard Lakatos went to the family firm's New Bond Street showroom to verify the gems, which were to be placed in a locked bag and held in the jewellers' vault until funds were transferred.

But when the bag was opened after Boodles' own diamond expert became suspicious, inside were seven small pebbles.

'The diamonds had been stolen by the defendant by sleight of hand,' said prosecutor Philip Stott.

'The conspiracy in which she is alleged to have played an integral and central part was one of the highest possible sophistication, planning, risk, and reward.'

Lulu Lakatos, 60, was charged with conspiracy to steal over the 2016 theft from the family-owned luxury jeweller (pictured) in Mayfair after she was extradited from France last year

Lakatos, who was born in Romania but lived in France, denies conspiracy to steal on or before March 10 2016.

In a statement read in court, Mr Wainwright told how he was approached by an Israeli, 'Simon Glas' in the weeks before the theft who wanted to buy high-value diamonds as an investment.

The sale of seven high-value diamonds was agreed following a meeting in Monaco, where Mr Wainwright was introduced to Glas's business partner, a Russian called 'Alexander'.

The gems, worth a total of 4.2million, included a 20 carat heart-shaped diamond valued at more than 2.2 million and a 1.1 million three carat pear-shaped fancy pink diamond.

Lakatos was allegedly the woman who posed as 'Anna' sent to Boodles to examine the stones on March 10 2016.

Mr Wainwright said he took her down the spiral glass staircase into the basement meeting room along with his own gemmologist Emma Barton.

Boodles Chairman Nicholas Wainwright told the court: 'This woman called "Anna" looked strange.

'Anna" was most unattractive, she was overweight, she was dressed most extraordinarily, she was wearing the sort of thing a Russian dancer would wear.

'She had enormous boobs and you could see her cleavage, it was most unattractive.'

Boodles chairman Nicholas Wainwright (above) watched as 'Anna' examined the stones but even could not prevent her using sleight of hand to swap the jewels for an identical bag of pebbles, a court has heard

The court heard Lakatos examined and weighed the diamonds before individually wrapping them in pre-cut tissue paper and placing them inside opaque boxes, which were put into a zippable purse-like bag that was padlocked shut.

Professional gemologist Emma Barton told the court: 'She came in wearing a camel coat.

'When she took it off, she was wearing a very low cut black dress. She was wearing a hat very low-down, so I couldn't see her forehead, and she was wearing a pair of glasses with thick arms.

'She didn't use a loupe, a jeweller's eye glass. As a first point of call, that is what you would generally do.

'She had some gemmologist's equipment that she brought with her, scales, an ultraviolet light, and a thermal conductivity probe.

'She took each stone, weighed it, places it under ultraviolet light, and used the thermal conductivity probe.

'She didn't know how to use her equipment very well. First of all, would never use the ultraviolet light under shop lights, you need a darkened room.

'It did make me question the qualifications that "Anna" had.'

But Ms Barton said 'Anna' put the locked purse into her own handbag when her boss went upstairs to take a call from the Russian buyer, 'Alexander'.

'She watched Nicholas walk up the stairs and as soon as his back was turned on the spiral staircase, she grabbed the bag and stuck it in her handbag,' she told the jury.

'I said, 'no, no, no,' you can't do that. Please take the diamonds out of your handbag now. I have to be able to see the diamonds at all times.

'In English, she replied, 'It's ok, don't worry, there's nothing to worry about'.'

The court heard the locked purse was in her handbag for a matter of two or three seconds before it was put back on the table before being put in the shop's safe.

'However, it seems what happened was it was swapped for an identical locked bag and that duplicate bag was placed back on the table,' said Mr Stott.

Ms Barton said she told her boss what had happened and he searched Anna's bag in a 'gentlemanly' way, finding nothing, before she left the store.

Lakatos allegedly then moved the purse containing the diamonds from her bag to the handbag of one of two unknown young women, who had been browsing in the nearby Ralph Lauren and Cartier stores.

Mr Stott said Lakatos, from the Saint Brieuc region of France, changed her clothes in a pub toilet, assisted by another accomplice, Georgeta Danila, before the pair left London on the Eurostar.

Lakatos is alleged to have been part of an international group of criminals who pretended to be diamond buyers in a scheme likened by police to a film plot (file photo)

Jurors were told two men, Christophe Stankovic and Mickael Jovanovic, 29, who have already pleaded guilty to conspiracy to steal over the theft - made their getaway, with the two younger women, to France in a rented Citroen through the Channel Tunnel.

All of those involved were out of the country within three hours of the theft, which was discovered the following day.

Boodles sent the bag to Heathrow to be X-rayed, which showed diamond-like stones were inside, but Ms Barton remained concerned.

She said: 'The following evening, at about 5.30pm, we were closing the shop and decided to just open the bag because of the fuss I had made and that's when we found there were seven garden pebbles.'

Lakatos was arrested in France on a European arrest warrant in September last year before being extradited to the UK.

Wearing spectacles and with her grey hair pulled back into a ponytail, she appeared in the dock, following proceedings with the help of a French interpreter.

The trial, which is expected to last three days, continues.
Kristin Smart's alleged killer Paul Flores hunted her and lurked around her dorm months before her murder, newly unsealed court documents have claimed.

Flores, now 44, was 19 when Kristin, then also 19, vanished from her dorm at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, in 1996.

He was the last person to have been seen with her and walked her home after hitting on her all night and behaving 'hyperactively' at a party they'd both attended off-campus.

He was staying in Santa Maria Hall and she was in Muir Hall, which are 0.2miles apart - a four minute walk.

At the party, Kristin's friends said Paul bragged to her 'about how great he was and the drugs he used,' according to a newly unsealed statement of facts that prosecutors submitted to the court on July 9 but that were unsealed on Wednesday.

Kristin's friends told detectives Paul had been 'lurking' around her dorm and seemed to be 'hunting her' in the weeks before she vanished.

It's unclear if her friends told cops that he'd been following her back in 1996, when she first vanished, or if they made the claim more recently.

The documents were obtained by The San Luis Obispo Tribune.

Flores, now 44, was 19 when Kristin, also 19, vanished from her dorm at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, in 1996.

Paul Flores is shown in an unrelated arrest photo from 1996, when he was 19.

The case was unsolved for 25 years until a popular Spotify podcast earlier this year prompted detectives to revive their investigation and arrest Flores and his father Ruben. Kristin's body has still never been found.

Others describe how police found videos that showed Flores raping a drunk woman when they searched his family home earlier this year.

Police also found a pornographic film titled 'Real Drunken Girls Drugged and Raped While Passed Out.' According to the prosecutor, the videos were stored in a computer file labeled 'Practice.'

The search further yielded 'fetishized rape fantasy porn' and prescription drug medications that could be used as date rape drugs, especially when taken with alcohol.

Prosecutors think that he killed Kristin either at the dorms or nearby, then brought her body to his family home and buried her in the yard.

They believe that he may have moved the body earlier this year, before he was arrested, as interest in the case started to increase, thanks to the Spotify podcast Your Own Backyard.

He pleaded not guilty to murder in April and is due to stand trial later this year. A 12-day preliminary hearing will begin on August 2.

Paul and Kristin were both freshmen at Cal Poly in 1996 when she vanished. He was staying in Santa Maria Hall and she was in Muir Hall, which are 0.2miles apart - a four minute walk

Police believe Flores killed Kristin then put her body underneath his father Ruben's deck. They think the pair moved it earlier this year shortly before they were arrested, as public interest in the case increased

Twenty-nine women have testified to police and prosecutors already about his predatory behavior.

Paul's father Ruben Flores, 80, is charged with accessory after the fact

There are now questions and criticism of how detectives overlooked Paul in their initial investigations in the 1990s.

Additional records also revealed that a March 2021 search of Ruben Flores' home in Arroyo Grande showed 'significant soil disturbance' and turned up samples that tested positive for human blood, although an expert has not ruled out that it could be ferret or primate blood.

A former tenant of Flores' told investigators that Ruben kept the area under the deck where the evidence was found padlocked and would not let anyone access it, not even a plumber who came to repair a leak.

David Stone, who rented a room from Flores for a decade, before moving out last year, said that the enclosed space 'would be the perfect place to dispose of something where nobody would see you...'

Stone also claimed that his landlord would refer to Smart as a 'dirty slut.'
Pub baron Justin Hemmes has called for a 'JobKeeper 3.0' and claims the hospitality industry is 'on its knees' as Sydney endures its fourth week of hard lockdown.

The billionaire businessman said a reinstatement of the scheme will help keep staff connected to their workplaces and have a positive effect on workers' mental health.

'Without a JobKeeper 3.0 the industry cannot survive continued lockdowns,' Mr Hemmes told The Daily Telegraph, arguing hospitality was one of the hardest hit.

Pub baron Justin Hemmes has called for a 'JobKeeper 3.0' and claims the hospitality industry is 'on its knees' due to the most recent lockdown (pictured with partner Madeline Holtznagel)

Mr Hemmes said a reinstatement of the scheme will help keep staff connected to businesses and have a positive effect on workers' mental health (pictured, bar staff making drinks at the Rio in Summer Hill)

'We are the first ones to close and often the last to open. It has been three weeks of closures already.'

The hospitality mogul said he was open to tightening the provisions of the scheme to ensure operators were prevented from gaming the system.

Mr Hemmes said the weekly payments were tried and tested, and potentially the best in the world for supporting both businesses and their workers.

So far the federal government has repeatedly refused to increase its disaster relief payments for hospitality workers.

Warnings from within the industry of more workers abandoning the sector continue to fall on deaf ears, as well as concerns popular venues will never reopen.

Restaurant owners have voiced fears their employees will jump ship to work in less lockdown-affected jobs, putting the long-term survival of their venues at risk.

Warnings from within the industry of more workers' abandoning the hospitality sector continue to fall on deaf ears, as well as concerns popular venues will never reopen

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet penned a letter to the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg requesting an extension of the scheme, but was rejected

NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet penned a letter to the Treasurer Josh Frydenberg requesting an extension of the scheme, but was rejected.

Opposition leader Chris Minns echoed Mr Hemmes' sentiments, stating that if the health advice says a deeper lockdown, then the financial support needs to include JobKeeper.

There are currently no plans to increase the $600 Covid-19 Disaster Payments, available to workers who have lost 20 hours of work or more per week during the lockdown period.

Individuals who have lost between eight and less than 20 hours of work are eligible for $375-a-week, in locked-down Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.

There are currently no plans to increase the $600 Covid-19 Disaster Payments, available to workers who have lost 20 hours of work or more per week during the lockdown period

Restaurant owners have voiced fears their employees will jump ship to work in less lockdown-affected jobs, putting the long-term survival of their venues at risk

How to apply for Covid-19 Disaster Payments WHO IS ELIGIBLE? Individuals who have lost between eight and 20 hours of work will be eligible for $375-a-week Covid-19 Disaster Payments. Workers who have lost 20 hours or more are entitled to subsidies of $600 a week during the period of the lockdown. HOW TO APPLY? Those affected can apply for payments through the myGov website from Wednesday, July 28. There will be no liquid assets test applied to eligibility for these payments and the handouts will be made in arrears for the lockdown. HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE TO RECEIVE THE PAYMENTS? Services Australia will make the payments as quickly as possible, with some payments being made in less than an hour following an application Advertisement

Those affected can apply through the myGov website from Wednesday July 28.

In an attempt to ease the financial burden of lockdown on small businesses, NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced a relief package totalling $4billion.

Mr Perrottet said businesses could start applying for the tax-free grants of between $7,500 and $15,000 from July 19.

'There are a range of initiatives available to help small businesses with cashflow, rent costs, electricity and the like,' he said.

Individuals who have lost between eight and less than 20 hours of work are eligible for $375-a-week, in locked-down Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia (pictured, people queuing at Centrelink in Sydney on Tuesday)

FIND THE LATEST EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

The applications will be available on Service NSW and are expected to be processed within five days, but Mr Perrottet warned there could be delays on Monday as people rush to see if they qualify.

The grant will be available to NSW businesses that make more than $75,000 and up to $50 million, and have a total annual wages bill of below $10 million.

It comes as the state recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight - but 27 were out in the community while infectious.

Of the 49 linked cases, 45 are household contacts and 4 are close contacts, with the 78 cases in the 24 hours to 8pm on Monday night coming from 62,860 tests.

Greater Sydney is enduring its fourth week of strict stay-at-home lockdown restrictions to slow the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.
A string of new venues has been added to Victoria and New South Wales' growing list of exposure sites, with Covid outbreaks around the country sending more than 13 million into lockdown.

Among the venues in Victoria exposed to the virus include a warehouse, a popular Aldi and a busy coffee shop, while in NSW a popular Coffs Harbour pub is also affected.

The country town of Orange in regional NSW has also been thrown into a week long lockdown after the virus spread from a pet food driver making a delivery from Greater Sydney to a local.

Along with Orange, South Australians have been ordered to stay at home for seven days while in Victoria the state's fifth lockdown has been extended for another week.

There seems to be no end in sight for Greater Sydney's lockdown while there are also now fears of an outbreak in Queensland after a woman tested positive having arrived from Melbourne.

A string of new venues have been added to NSW and Victoria's growing list of exposure sites while Covid outbreaks around the country send more than 13 million into lockdown (pictured pedestrians in Covid struck Liverpool in Sydney)

The Hoey Moey pub in Coffs Harbour (pictured) was exposed to Covid on Thursday July 15 between 3.55pm and 4.20pm, while initially only the bottle shop had been listed as an exposure site

The Aldi supermarket in Beaconsfield in Melbourne was also exposed to the virus and was added to Victoria's swelling list of affected venues on Tuesday night

The Hoey Moey pub in Coffs Harbour was exposed to Covid on Thursday July 15 between 3.55pm and 4.20pm, while initially only the bottle shop had been listed as an exposure site.

Several other venues were added to NSW Health's relentlessly growing list on Tuesday night, including two Woolworths stores, one in Sydney's Belrose and another in Chester Hill.

The new exposure sites in Victoria come after the state recorded 13 new infections on Tuesday.

The BR International Logistics warehouse in Derrimut in Melbourne's west, is believed to have been exposed by an infected resident all day for a week.

Those who attended the venue anytime from July 13 to July 19 must isolate for 14 days from the day they were exposed, regardless of a Covid-19 test result.

A woman is seen walking her dog in Melbourne on Tuesday. Victoria is in the midst of its fifth lockdown

The BR International Logistics warehouse in Derrimut in Melbourne's west, is believed to have been exposed by an infected resident all day over a period of seven consecutive days

Pop-up cafe and arts store Status Quo Pop-up in Richmond was exposed by an infected resident over four days between July 14 and July 17.

Those at the store between 8am to 3pm on any of those days are required to get a Covid test and isolate until a negative result.

The Sloane Ranger cafe in Cremorne has also been listed on July 14 from 8:25am to 9:10am and July 15 from 8.25am to 9.05am.

Meanwhile the Aldi in Beaconsfield has been put on alert for shoppers who attended the supermarket on July 17 between 1:30pm and 3:00pm.

Victoria's lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight but has been extended for another seven days until midnight July 27.

AUSTRALIAS LATEST COVID OUTBREAKS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW NEW SOUTH WALES: *The state recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight, with 27 out in the community while infectious and 29 yet to be linked to known clusters. *Of the new cases, 52 (66 per cent) were found in south-west Sydney - with health officials finding 11 cases in both the city's west and south-east. *Greater Sydney has entered its fourth week of hard lockdown, with the outbreak of new infections at 1,418 since June 16. *Officials confirmed a woman in her 50s had died from the virus in Sydney's south-west, the mother of two infected removalists. *Orange in the state's central west has also began a seven day lockdown after an infected pet food driver from Sydney spread Covid-19 to a local VICTORIA: *Victoria has extended its lockdown for a week after 13 new cases in the state were announced on Tuesday. *The lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight but has been extended for another seven days until midnight July 27. *Nine of the 13 new cases were isolating for all their infectious period, with 12 linked to the Delta outbreak in NSW and one under investigation. *Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has reinstated a hard border with NSW and ordered a temporary pause on the issuing of 'red zone' permits. *From midnight on Tuesday, Victorians returning home from north of the border must apply for a new permit. *The only ones allowed to enter will be authorised workers and those who successfully apply for a compassionate exemption. *Almost 49,500 Victorians came forward for testing on Monday while another 17,083 rolled up their sleeves for the Covid-19 jab. *Two overseas-acquired cases in hotel quarantine were also recorded. QUEENSLAND: *The state has recorded a mystery case of Covid-19, a fully vaccinated woman had tested positive despite no known links to other clusters. *The woman, aged in her 20s, flew into the Sunshine Coast from Melbourne on July 13. *The case is unrelated to any of the existing outbreaks - with authorities confirming she had been infectious in the community for three days. *Chief health officer Dr Jeanette Young said she suspected the state's latest infected woman caught the virus in a Melbourne pub. *Two new overseas acquired cases were also detected in hotel quarantine. SOUTH AUSTRALIA: *Premier Steven Marshall announced the entire state would go into lockdown from 6pm on Tuesday for the next seven days. *The call was made after two new locally acquired cases of Covid overnight, bringing the total number of infections in the state to five. *Residents only have five lawful reasons for residents to leave home, for essential supplies, to exercise, for medical care, for care or compassionate reasons or essential work. *Construction sites across the state will shut down for seven days and schools will transition to online learning from Thursday. *Mr Marshall also said more testing sites would open in Adelaide on Thursday amid long queues at testing facilities on Monday and early Tuesday. Advertisement

Victoria's lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight but has been extended for another seven days until midnight July 27 (pictured Melbourne residents wait to get a Covid vaccine)

The country town of Orange (pictured) has now been plunged into a seven-day lockdown

This is Victoria's fifth lockdown since the pandemic hit Australia's shores early last year and the third one so far in 2021.

'We want to avoid a long, lengthy challenging lockdown where you lose control of cases, we have avoided that, but we need more time,' Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews said.

He also reinstated a hard border with NSW and ordered a temporary pause on the issuing of 'red zone' permits.

Almost a third of Victoria's locally-acquired coronavirus cases can be traced back to a fan who attended an AFL game, a Euro 2020 viewing party, and a rugby match while unknowingly infectious.

That man caught the virus from a resident of a Maribyrnong apartment complex who got it from unmasked Sydney removalists, then went on to spread it to friends and family.

Twelve of Tuesday's cases are linked to the outbreaks of the Indian Delta variant in the state, which originated in NSW, and one case is under investigation.

There appears to be no end in sight for Sydney's lockdown as the city enters its fourth week of tough restrictions (pictured, an eerily quiet George Street on Tuesday)

South Australia has also entered a seven day lockdown after a total of five infections were recorded (pictured, testing in Adelaide on Tuesday)

But an extra week of lockdown in Victoria is unlikely to be enough to quash an outbreak of the Indian Delta coronavirus variant, an epidemiologist says.

Based on modelling by Monash University and his own progression data, University of South Australia academic Adrian Esterman believes local Covid-19 cases will not drop to zero by the end of Victoria's seven-day lockdown extension.

'You've got at least another week and potentially two or three weeks,' the veteran epidemiologist and biostatistician said.

USE DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA'S TRACKER TO FIND THE LATEST EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

NEW NEW SOUTH WALES COVID ALERTS ON TUESDAY NIGHT Anyone who attended the following previously announced venues is now a close contact, and must get tested and isolate immediately for 14 days, regardless of the result Coffs Harbour: The Hoey Moey - Thursday July 15, 3.55pm - 4.20pm Belrose: Taste Baguette Belrose - Tuesday July 13, 8.10am - 8.20am and Wednesday July 14, 10.30am - 11am Belrose: Woolworths in Glenrose Shopping Village - Wednesday July 14, 10.30am - 11am Belrose: Lawrence Dry Cleaners - Wednesday July 14, 10.30am - 11am Chester Hill: Woolworths - Thursday July 15, 4.45pm - 5.05pm Anyone who attended the following venues is a close contact, and must get tested and isolate immediately for 14 days, regardless of the result Greenacre: Greenacre Royal Carwash - Saturday July 10, Sunday July 11, Monday July 12, Tuesday July 13, Wednesday July 14 and Friday July 16, 9am - 5.30pm on all dates St Peters: MV Toolbox - Wednesday July 14, 2.15pm - 3.30pm Merrylands: Agha Juice - Thursday July 15, 8pm - 9pm Anyone who attended the following venues is a casual contact and must immediately get tested and isolate until a negative result is received Green Valley: Valley Fresh - Saturday July 17, 2.45pm - 3.20pm Hoxton Park: Shell Coles Express - Wednesday July 14, 11am - 11.20am Belrose: Caltex Belrose - Sunday July 18, 4.20pm - 4.40pm Dapto: Priceline - Friday July 16, 2.15pm - 2.45pm Belrose: Woolworths Glenrose Shopping Centre - Friday July 15, 5.55am - 4.30pm, Saturday July 17, 5.55am - 3.10pm and Sunday July 18, 5.55am - 4.30pm Advertisement

'It takes as long to get down as it does to take off. I'm expecting (Monash University) modelling forecasts of at least four weeks is probably correct.'

Meanwhile NSW is grappling with outbreaks of the virus in both Sydney and regional parts of the state.

Around 50,000 people in Orange, Blayney, and the Cabonne Shire Council in the NSW Central West were plunged into lockdown as of midnight on Tuesday, enduring the same restrictions as Sydneysiders.

Along with millions of people in Greater Sydney, locals in the regional area will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons in an attempt to quash the outbreak.

An extra week of lockdown in Victoria is unlikely to be enough to quash an outbreak of the Delta coronavirus variant, an epidemiologist says (pictured pedestrian in Melbourne)

The Covid-positive driver was delivering pet food from locked-down Greater Sydney to the Nestle Purina factory at Blayney, near Orange, where a worker now has the virus.

Major stores in the area including Officeworks, Woolworths and CTC in North Orange Shopping Centre, EG Fuelco Australia, and Pizza Hut have been put on the state's list of Covid-19 exposure sites after being visited by the unknowingly infected local.

Funerals in the affected areas will be limited to 10 people.

Masks must also be worn in all indoor settings and outdoors where social distancing cannot be maintained.

Meanwhile, Canterbury-Bankstown has become the new focus for health authorities trying to quash Sydney's Covid-19 outbreak, which notched 78 new local cases on Tuesday and more severe hospitalisations.

At least 27 of the new cases uncovered to 8pm on Monday were in the community during their infectious period.

Health workers are seen swabbing Adelaide residents this week after a new Covid outbreak in the city

The three-day average for new cases has dropped to 85, leading Premier Gladys Berejiklian to declare: 'We've stabilised the virus.'

NSW Health is now treating 95 cases in hospital, including 27 in intensive care. Eleven people are on ventilators.

'You can deteriorate quite quickly with COVID,' Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said.

'We're not dealing with a mild case of the flu, where you have pre-existing immunity.'

Pictured: Saeeda Akobi Jjou Stu, 54, who died on Monday

Tuesday's numbers also included the death of Sydney mother Saeeda Akobi Jjou Stu, 54, who was found dead in her home she shared with her husband, daughter, twin sons Roni and Ramsin Shawka and their partners in Green Valley on Monday.

Her sons were last week charged with breaching Covid restrictions after allegedly travelling to regional NSW for removalist work while aware they had also tested positive.

Neighbours said the beloved mum had only tested positive for the disease three days earlier and had barely shown any symptoms.

She's the fifth death in Sydney's latest outbreak.

In Queensland, health officials fear a new coronavirus cluster may have been seeded by a woman who returned from Melbourne.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young is anxiously awaiting test results from relatives and friends of the woman, who picked up the highly contagious Indian Delta variant at a Melbourne pub.

She returned to Queensland on July 13 and stayed with friends on the Sunshine Coast but two days later was told by Victorian officials that she'd been at a tier-one exposure site - the Young & Jackson Hotel in Melbourne.

Dr Young said she presented for testing but returned a negative result, and was active in the community on the Sunshine Coast, and to a lesser degree in far north Queensland, while infectious.

The popular Rice Boi restaurant in Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast has also potentially been exposed

She returned a positive result late on Monday night, after flying north to Cairns and then travelling by private vehicle to her family's home at Mareeba.

Dr Young is hopeful that the woman, aged in her 20s, may not have passed the variant on because she was fully vaccinated.

She also wore a mask while out and about on the Sunshine Coast, on public transport on the way to Brisbane airport, and on a Virgin flight VA791 from Brisbane to Cairns on July 16.

Dr Young says test results from the woman's friends at Maroochydore and family at Mareeba will be a good indicator of whether Queensland is in trouble or not.

She's also worried about fellow diners at the popular Rice Boi restaurant at The Wharf, at Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast, between 6.45pm and 8pm on Thursday, July 15, and shoppers at the Sunshine Coast Plaza shopping centre that day, between 3.55pm and 4.15pm.

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young (pictured) is hopeful the latest positive case in Queensland may not have passed on the virus because she was fully vaccinated

USE DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA'S TRACKER TO FIND THE LATEST EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

Meanwhile, Dr Young has announced all of South Australia will be declared a hotspot from 1am Thursday, after the southern state ordered a seven-day lockdown with five cases found there.

From that time, anyone who has been to South Australia won't be allowed to enter Queensland unless they are a returning Queensland resident, or have essential purpose exemptions, and all arrivals will have to quarantine for 14 days.

The entire state of SA was locked down as of 6pm on Tuesday with residents only allowed to leave their houses for five reasons.

These include for care and compassionate reasons, to exercise, for essential work, to get essential supplies, and for medical reasons.

South Australians starting their seven-day lockdown will only be allowed to travel a maximum of 2.5km away from their homes to exercise.

The rule is one of the toughest to be imposed amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia, with exercise also limited to just 90 minutes each day.
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Kamala Harris welcomed Jordanian King Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein and his 27-year-old son, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah, to the vice presidents residence at One Observatory Circle on Tuesday.

The leaders are being hosted for a working breakfast where they are expected to discuss the U.S.-Jordan relationship and cooperation on regional issues.

The vice president emerged from her residence in a powder blue pants suit just before 9 a.m. as the king and crown prince arrived in a black SUV. The car mostly blocked the view of Harris as she greeted her guests, but the trio was seen from the back walking together into the front door.

The three leaders were not wearing masks, despite the vice presidents potential exposure to COVID-19 during a Tuesday meeting with at least two of the six Texas Democratic lawmakers who tested positive for coronavirus. Even though the lawmakers were vaccinated, they still contracted the virus.

Harris had a COVID-19 test over the weekend before a doctors appointment at Walter Reed Medical Center, which came back negative.

In May, Harris held a phone call with King Abdullah II, but the meeting Tuesday morning is the vice presidents first in-person meeting with an Arab leader.

Vice President Kamala Harris emerges from her residence at One Observatory Circle on Tuesday for to greet Jordan's King Abdullah II and his son, Jordan's Crown Prince Hussein

Hussein, 27, emerges from a black SUV for a working breakfast at Harris' residence at the Naval Observatory on Tuesday morning

Harris (left) Hussein (center) and Abdullah (right) are seen walking together into the vice president's residence Tuesday morning as they are expected to discuss the U.S.-Jordan cooperation on issues in the Middle East

The Jordanian kings visit is the second time Harris is hosting a foreign leader at her residence at the Naval Observatory  following German Chancellor Angela Merkels visit there last week.

Abdullah is also set to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden hosted King Abdullah II, Queen Rania and Crown Prince Hussein, their son, at the White House on Monday.

Biden praised Abdullah as a stalwart ally in a 'tough neighborhood' as the two leaders huddled in the Oval Office, a meeting that came at a pivotal moment for both leaders in the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the first lady hosted Queen Rania for tea in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House's residence.

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden (on right) hosted (from left) Crown Prince Hussein , Queen Rania and King Abdullah II at the White House on Monday

Biden (right) meets with King Abdullah II (left) in the Oval Office on Monday

Meanwhile, Rania (left) and Jill Biden (right) had tea together in the Yellow Oval Room of the White House residence

Queen Rania (left) appears on the Truman Balcony at the White House with first lady Jill Biden (right)

Queen Rania had tea with first lady Jill Biden in the Yellow Oval Room in the White House's residence on Monday

Last week a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullah's half-brother.

Biden, who has put much of his foreign policy focus on China and Russia in the early going, faces some difficult issues in the Middle East.

He is dealing with stepped-up attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias at the same moment that his administration is trying to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table to revive the nuclear agreement that former President Donald Trump abandoned during his presidency.

'You have always been there, and we will always be there for Jordan,' Biden said during an Oval Office meeting with Abdullah and his son, the Crown Prince Hussein.

Abdullah had a difficult relationship with Trump, who he saw as undercutting any chance for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians with his 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.

He also chaffed at the Trump administration's pursuit of what officials called the Abraham Accords - deals with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco that normalized relations with Israel but left out the Palestinians.

Biden has no plans to reverse U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital.

His administration has even praised the Trump-brokered accords - a rare instance of the Democratic administration speaking positively of the former administration.

Biden planned to stress to Abdullah in private that the accords are not an 'end run' on finding the way to a peace deal that includes a Palestinian state, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

'The leaders also consulted on opportunities to enhance peace and stability in the Middle East,' the White House readout after the meeting said.

'In that regard, the President expressed his strong support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and respect for Jordan's special role as custodian of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem,' it said.

Jordan's Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah II (left), King Abdullah II (center) and President Joe Biden (right) meet in the Oval Office Monday

Abdullah, for his part, praised Biden for 'setting the standard' internationally in the battle against COVID-19.

The U.S. delivered 500,000 vaccines to Jordan days ahead of the king's visit. The king also appeared to make clear that he was looking to reset the U.S. - Jordan relationship after a four bumpy years with Trump.

'You can always count on me, my country, and many of our colleagues in the region,' Abdullah said.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Syria - more than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordan - and a wobbly security situation in Iraq, an administration official said.

At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks.

The meeting with Biden was also a chance for the king to spotlight his closeness to Biden following the attempted coup.

Bassem Awadallah, who has U.S. citizenship and once served as a top aide to King Abdullah II, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, were found guilty of sedition and incitement charges.

Both men denied the charges and Awadallah's U.S. lawyer said his client alleged he was tortured in Jordanian detention and fears for his life.

They are alleged to have conspired with Prince Hamzah, the king's half-brother.

Biden, who has known Abdullah for years, was quick to publicly express 'strong U.S. support for Jordan' and praise the king's leadership after details of the coup attempt were unveiled in April.

It's unclear if Biden raised the United States' long-standing call to extradite Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, a Palestinian woman living in Jordan who is wanted by the U.S. on a charge of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals.

It was not mentioned in the White House readout.

The Trump administration last year indicated it was considering withholding aid to Jordan in a bid to secure al-Tamimi's extradition.

She was convicted in Israel of a 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv restaurant that killed 15 people, including two American citizens.

She has lived freely in Jordan since she was released in a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap in 2011.

Biden administration officials have previously made clear to Jordan that the extradition of al-Tamimi, who is on the FBI's most wanted list, is of 'high-interest' to the United States, according to the administration official.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter, Malki, was killed in the bombing, noted that Biden has spoken frequently of 'decency' and 'dignity' as paramount values in how he'll run his administration.

Roth and his wife, Frimet, wrote Blinken and other administration officials last month calling on the administration to press Abdullah for extradition.

He said they received no response from the administration beyond acknowledgement that their letter was received.

'I can't think of two words that more powerfully encapsulate what weve been deprived of in all of our dealings with the U.S. government,' Roth said.
Journalists could face prison sentences of up to 14 years for stories that embarrass the Government under plans to reform the Official Secrets Act.

Under a consultation run by Priti Patel's Home Office, which closes later this week, reporters who handle leaked documents would not have a defence if charged under new laws designed to clamp down on foreign agents.

The 1989 act is being updated to take into account the impact of the internet age, especially in the area of speedy data transfer.

Human rights organisations and the Law Commission, which drew up the proposals, say there should be a 'public interest defence' included to prevent the prosecution of journalists who receive leaked documents.

But in a paper released for the consultation, the Home Office said such a move would 'undermine our efforts to prevent damaging unauthorised disclosures, which would not be in the public interest'.

Critics suggested that if the rules were in place now it could have led to a prosecution of the journalists who revealed this month that Matt Hancock was breaking Covid rules by having an affair with his married aide, because it relied on leaked CCTV footage.

The revelation prompted his resignation and the end of his marriage. But last week the Information Commissioner's Office faced criticism for searching two homes as part of an investigation into how the material emerged and found its way onto the Sun's front page.

Under a consultation run by Priti Patel's Home Office, which closes later this week, reporters who handle leaked documents would not have a defence if charged under new laws clamping down on foreign agents.

Critics suggested that if the rules were in place now it could have led to a prosecution of the journalists who revealed this month that Matt Hancock was breaking Covid rules by having an affair with his married aide, because it relied on leaked CCTV footage.

Among those who have criticised the new laws are the Index on Censorship and the Open Rights Group, who view it as an attack on whistleblowers.

A spokeswoman for the National Union of Journalists said: 'Existing legislation distinguishes provisions and penalties between those who leak or whistleblow, those who receive leaked information, and foreign spies.

'The government proposes to eliminate or blur these distinctions. The government also wants to increase the maximum penalties that journalists might suffer for receiving leaked material from two to 14 years....

'The NUJ has long argued that where whistleblowers believe that they have acted in the public interest, they should be able to make this case in court, and if a jury agree with them, be protected.'

But the Home Office document argues: 'Since the passage of the Act in 1989, there have been unprecedented developments in communications technology (including data storage and rapid data transfer tools) which in our view, means that unauthorised disclosures are now capable of causing far more serious damage than would have been possible previously.

'As a result, we do not consider that there is necessarily a distinction in severity between espionage and the most serious unauthorised disclosures, in the same way that there was in 1989.

'Although there are differences in the mechanics of and motivations behind espionage and unauthorised disclosure offences, there are cases where an unauthorised disclosure may be as or more serious, in terms of intent and/or damage.

'For example, documents made available online can now be accessed and utilised by a wide range of hostile actors simultaneously, whereas espionage will often only be to the benefit of a single state or actor.

'In severe cases, the unauthorised disclosure of the identities of agents working for the UK intelligence community, for example, could directly lead to imminent and serious threat to life.'

It comes just days after the UN demanded closer regulation of surveillance tech following extensive revelations of phone hacking targeting journalists, activists and politicians.

They have been spied on using cellphone malware developed by a private Israeli firm, it emerged on Sunday.

The use of the software, called Pegasus and developed by Israel's NSO group, was exposed in a data leak containing 50,000 phone numbers that belong to people targeted by NSO's clients since 2016.

Among those clients are some of the world's most-repressive government regimes, including Hungary, Saudi Arabia and Morocco.

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Freedom of press is an integral part of the UK's democratic processes and the government is committed to protecting the rights and values that we hold so dear.

'It is wrong to claim the proposals will put journalists at risk of being treated like spies and they will, rightly, remain free to hold the government to account.

'We will introduce new legislation so security services and law enforcement agencies can tackle evolving state threats and protect sensitive data.

'However, this will be balanced to protect press freedom and the ability for whistleblowers to hold organisations to account when there are serious allegations of wrongdoing.'
Chinese state-backed cybercriminals targeted close to two dozen American pipeline companies from 2011 until 2013, the federal government said on Tuesday.

The revelation comes as the Biden administration tries to figure out a way to bolster cybersecurity for the nation's critical infrastructure targets after the May ransomware attack that targeted Colonial Pipeline, disrupting gas delivery across the East Coast.

China on Tuesday denied being responsible for a massive hack of Microsoft servers after it was accused in a rare joint statement by the US, UK, EU, Australia, NATO and others.

The Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday announced new requirements for US pipeline operators to bolster anti-hacking defenses.

In a statement, the DHS said it would require operators of federally designated critical pipelines to implement 'specific mitigation measures' to prevent ransomware attacks and other cyber intrusions.

Operators must also implement contingency plans and conduct what the department calls a 'cybersecurity architecture design review.'

DHS did not immediately release further details about the guidance, which comes after another directive issued weeks after the May 7 attack on Georgia-based Colonial Pipeline.

Chinese state-backed cybercriminals targeted close to two dozen American pipeline companies from 2011 until 2013, the federal government said on Tuesday. The revelation comes as the Biden administration tries to figure out a way to bolster cybersecurity for the nation's critical infrastructure targets after the May ransomware attack that targeted Colonial Pipeline, disrupting gas delivery across the East Coast

The US has accused China and Russia of allowing cybercriminals in their country to hack into critical American infrastructure systems. The image above is a file photo

US agencies on Tuesday also disclosed that Chinese government-linked intruders targeted 23 natural gas pipeline operators from 2011 to 2013.

Thirteen of those attacks were confirmed intrusions, according to a government advisory.

The Colonial attack led to the shutdown of a system delivering about 45 percent of the gasoline consumed along the East Coast and sparked long lines and gas shortages in several states.

Colonial paid an estimated $4.4million ransom, most of which was recovered by the Justice Department.

The FBI has blamed the attack on a Russia-based gang of hackers using the DarkSide ransomware variant.

The Biden administration has repeatedly accused Russia of granting safe haven to criminal gangs and trying to steal from government agencies and private organizations in various sectors.

It imposed sanctions in April for a range of activities including hacking.

Russia has broadly denied being involved in cyberattacks of US institutions, decrying 'unfounded accusations' in a statement last month.

The US and key allies this week accused China of complicity in a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that victimized thousands of organizations.

That announcement, however, was not accompanied by sanctions against China, which has accused the US of making 'groundless attacks' against it regarding cybersecurity.

Chinese diplomats branded the allegation 'groundless and irresponsible' on Tuesday while dubbing Washington 'the world champion of malicious cyber attacks'.

Washington made the allegations after a hack of Microsoft Exchange servers in January that affected some 30,000 organizations worldwide including defense contractors and think-tanks.

Biden compared the hack to attacks emanating from Russia, saying that Beijing may not be directly responsible but is protecting those who are.

He added that US intelligence is carrying out an investigation into the hack, which affected at least 30,000 businesses, and may take action once it is completed.

China has denied being responsible for a massive hack of Microsoft servers earlier this year that affected at least 30,000 organizations worldwide (file image)

President Joe Biden (left) said China may not be directly responsible for the hacks but, like Russia, is harboring those who are carrying them out. Chinese President Xi Jinping is seen right

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the attack on Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, was part of a 'pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security.'

China's Ministry of State Security, or MSS, 'has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain,' Blinken said in a statement.

In a simultaneous announcement, the US Department of Justice said four Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking the computers of dozens of companies, universities and government bodies between 2011 and 2018.

A group known as Hafnium is believed to have identified a weakness in the servers in January, and begun inserting 'backdoors' into systems using them which they could return to later, the BBC reported.

The operation targeted defense contractors, think tanks and universities, and appears to have initially been aimed at surveillance and covert data-gathering.

But in February the operation massively expanded into a 'smash and grab' raid on the servers after several other hacking groups piled in.

It is thought Hafnium became aware that Microsoft had identified the vulnerability they were exploiting and planned to close it, prompting them to share its existence and causing the pile-on.

Pointing to the indictment, Blinken said the United States 'will impose consequences on (Chinese) malicious cyber actors for their irresponsible behavior in cyberspace.'
Authorities in Texas apprehended two suspected human smugglers after they allegedly kidnapped a migrant from Honduras and then ran over his aunt when she failed to pay a $6,000 ransom for his freedom.

Ricardo Mejia and Amy Regalado, both of Falfurrias, Texas, were arrested on Friday by the Rosenberg Police Department for their alleged role in the kidnapping of an unidentified 21-year-old Honduran man.

Police said the migrant had crossed the border into the US before being abandoned in southern Texas, where he wandered around for days before he came upon an individual at a gas station and requested assistance.

The person the reached out to their family members, who reportedly were involved in the people smuggling business and decided to take in the Honduran migrant. They then reached out to his relatives and worked out a deal for his release in the Houston area.

Mejia and Regalado arranged for the exchange to take place in the parking lot of Brazos Town Center in Rosenberg on Thursday, police said.

Amy Regalado, of Falfurrias, Texas, was arrested Friday morning for kidnapping a 21-year-old Honduran migrant man. She received a phone call from a family member who was approached by the migrant man at a gas station requesting help after he had been released by a smuggling ring. Regalado and her accomplice, Ricardo Mejia, agreed to turn over the man to his aunt in exchange for $6,000, Thursday night, but the deal went south when the woman failed to come up with the money. As they fled a mall parking lot, they struck the woman, but were caught about 90 minutes later. Regalado and her cohort have been charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault

Ricardo Mejia reportedly formed part of a migrant smuggling network in Texas. He was arrested for the aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault of a 21-year-old man from Honduras last Friday after a deal to release him to his family for $6,000 went wrong

However, the exchange was derailed when his aunt failed to come up with the cash.

The migrant smugglers sped off with the Honduran individual in tow and in the process of fleeing struck his aunt - who was not named - with their Cadillac Escalade approximately at 11.23pm.

The suspects fled the scene on US Highway 59, and were later intercepted by the Victoria County Sheriff's Deputies about 90 minutes later.

Mejia and Regalado were taken into custody, and each charged with aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault.

The Honduran migrant told authorities he has been crossed over the border a month ago and was looking to reunite with his family in New York.

Mejia and Regalado arranged for the exchange to take place in the parking lot of Brazos Town Center in Rosenberg (pictured) on Thursday, police said

Rosenberg Police Department investigators learned that after making it into the United States, he 'was ultimately sold between groups of smugglers' while being moved from one stash house to the next.

The last smuggling ring that held him in captivity decided to release him over fears of local police presence in the area.

'Local law enforcement agencies did an outstanding job putting a stop to a criminal episode that spanned international borders. It is shameful in this day and age, in a country that leads the free world, to have people bought and sold like animals,' Rosenberg Police Department assistant chief Jarret Nethery said in a statement.

'The most significant aspect of this tragedy is that this young man escaped, reached out for help, and was returned to captivity. This is the definition of evil.'

DailyMail.com reached out to the Honduras Consul General in New York for comment.
Some 200 Americans posted around the world, including a baby, have reported symptoms of Havana Syndrome.

The mysterious condition was first reported in the fall of 2016 when a staffer at the U.S. embassy in Cuba suffered headaches, hearing loss, memory issues and other symptoms.

Since then a steady stream of Americans on every continent except Antarctica have suffered the same strange symptoms - the most recent being reported in Vienna.

On Monday, the Biden Administration announced it had been looking into what the government suspects were 'directed' radio frequency attacks on US diplomats in the Austrian capitol, and a department spokesperson told the Daily Mail that the incidents were a 'top priority' for Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

'We are vigorously investigating reports of possible unexplained health incidents among the U.S. Embassy Vienna community or wherever they are reported,' the spokesperson said.

Roughly two dozen US intelligence officers, diplomats, and other officials in Vienna have reported symptoms similar to those of Havana Syndrome, which produces dizziness, headaches and hearing loss, since President Joe Biden took office in January, the New Yorker reported Friday.

More than two dozen Americans serving in the US embassy in Vienna (pictured) have reported symptoms of the so-called Havana syndrome, bringing the total number of cases to 200

The reports in Vienna, as well as previously undisclosed report that a US diplomat's term in Germany was cut short by the unexplained illness, brings the total number of cases of the syndrome to 200, NBC reported.

Among them, roughly half of all cases involved CIA officers or their relatives, roughly 60 have been linked to Department of Defense workers or relatives and about 50 involved State Department personnel the outlet reported.

Possible cases among Americans abroad have now been reported on every continent except Antarctica and in the past year including reports of more than one American stationed in Kyrgyzstan with a baby, having experienced symptoms.

Additionally, two cases were detected close to the White House in recent months, with the US government now fast-tracking sensor technology to try and identify the microwave technology and track it down.

The suspected directed-energy attacks have baffled US investigators who are working to determine who and what is causing them since they first began in Cuba five years ago.

The weapon believed to cause Havana Syndrome is said to be a smaller version of this 1990s Soviet microwave generator, which is kept at the University of New Mexico

In May reports emerged that some US officials suspect Russia's infamous foreign intelligence agency - the GRU - could be the culprit.

A U.S. military officer based in a country with a large Russian presence also says he felt like his head was going to explode during one incident where he was found to have been near a G.R.U. vehicle.

And Politico reported that government investigators are examining a suspected attack on US personnel in Miami last year.

Earlier this month former CIA officer and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Marc Polymeropolous claimed that he was zapped by one of the attacks while visiting a Moscow hotel room in 2017 and blamed it for destroying his career, as well as debilitating headaches that he continues to suffer from.

In October last year it was reported how diplomat Mark Lenzi, 45, was stationed in Guangzhou, China, in 2017, when he developed unexplained symptoms, including headaches, memory loss and trouble sleeping.

His neighbor Catherine Werner also fell ill and fellow US official Robyn Garfield was evacuated from Shanghai with his family in June 2018.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran who was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury following a 2017 visit to Russia

Diplomat Mark Lenzi, 45, left, was stationed in Guangzhou in 2017, when he developed unexplained symptoms, including headaches, memory loss and trouble sleeping. His neighbor Catherine Werner, right, also fell ill

Charles Kupperman, former deputy national-security adviser, and John Bolton, Trump's national-security adviser, both believe the syndrome is real, The New Yorker reports.

Matthew Pottinger, another former deputy national-security adviser, said: 'This is Russia's M.O.'

The senior National Security Council official who fell near the White House said he made it to hospital in a cab where he was told he may have suffered a 'massive migraine'.

What is 'Havana Syndrome'? The problem has been labeled the 'Havana Syndrome,' because the first cases affected personnel in 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba. At least 130 cases across the government are now under investigation, up from several dozen last year, according to a U.S. defense official who was not authorized to discuss details publicly. The National Security Council is leading the investigation. People who are believed to have been affected have reported headaches, dizziness and symptoms consistent with concussions, with some requiring months of medical treatment. Some have reported hearing a loud noise before the sudden onset of symptoms. Investigators believe there are at least four cases involving Trump White House officials. Advocates for those affected accuse the U.S. government of long failing to take the problem seriously or provide the necessary medical care and benefits. US senators said last month that the government is investigating an apparent increase in the mysterious directed-energy attacks. Symptoms include; -hearing loss -severe headaches -memory issues -dizziness -brain injury Advertisement

He was later contacted by a colleague, who told him about the so called 'Havana Syndrome'.

The Biden administration is facing new pressure to resolve the mystery with lawmakers from both parties, as well as those believed to be affected, are demanding answers.

But scientists and government officials are not yet certain about who might have been behind any attacks, if the symptoms could have been caused inadvertently by surveillance equipment - or if the incidents were actually attacks.

Whatever an official review concludes could have enormous consequences.

Confirmation that a U.S. adversary has been conducting damaging attacks against U.S. personnel would unleash calls for a forceful response by the United States.

For now, the administration is providing assurances that it takes the matter seriously, is investigating aggressively and will make sure those affected have good medical care.

The problem has been labeled the 'Havana Syndrome,' because the first cases affected personnel in 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba.

People who are believed to have been affected have reported headaches, dizziness and symptoms consistent with concussions, with some requiring months of medical treatment. Some have reported hearing a loud noise before the sudden onset of symptoms.

Advocates for those affected accuse the U.S. government of long failing to take the problem seriously or provide the necessary medical care and benefits.

'The government has a much better understanding of it than it has let on,' said Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who represents several people affected.

Zaid has obtained National Security Agency documents noting it has information dating to the late 1990s about an unidentified 'hostile country' possibly having a microwave weapon 'to weaken, intimidate, or kill an enemy over time.'

Chris Miller, the acting defense secretary during the last months of the Trump administration, created a Pentagon team to investigate the suspected attacks.

That was after he met a soldier late last year who described how, while serving in a country Miller wouldn't identify, he had heard a 'shrieking' sound and then had a splitting headache.

'He was well-trained, extremely well-trained, and hed been in combat before,' Miller told The Associated Press. 'This is an American, a member of the Department of Defense. At that point, you cant ignore that.'

Defense and intelligence officials have publicly promised to push for answers and better care for people with symptoms. Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell, a Defense Department spokesman, said the causes of any incidents 'are areas of active inquiry.'

CIA Director William Burns testified before Congress that he would make the investigation 'a very high priority to ensure that my colleagues get the care that they deserve and that we get to the bottom of what caused these incidents and who was responsible.'

Matthew Pottinger, pictured, another former deputy national-security adviser, said: 'This is Russia's M.O.'

Burns receives daily updates on the investigation, which covers employees who have reported cases this year.

He has met with those reporting injuries as have other top CIA officials. The agency has worked to reduce the wait time for its employees to receive outpatient treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

The CIA also replaced its chief medical officer with a doctor seen internally as more sympathetic to possible cases.

'We were treated so awfully in the past,' Polymeropoulos, a 26-year CIA veteran said. 'Now theyre putting people in place who not only believe us but are going to advocate for our health care.'

One key analysis identified 'directed, pulsed radio frequency energy' as the most plausible culprit.

Published in December by the National Academy of Sciences, the report said a radio frequency attack could alter brain function without causing 'gross structural damage.' But the panel could not make a definitive finding on how U.S. personnel may have been hit.

And a declassified 2018 State Department report cited 'a lack of senior leadership, ineffective communications, and systemic disorganization' in responding to the Havana cases.

The report says the cause of the injuries was 'currently unknown.' The document was published by George Washington Universitys National Security Archive.

The report also noted that the CIA ultimately closed its Havana station, a victory for a potential adversary.

The United States Embassy in Havana, Cuba. The problem has been labeled the 'Havana Syndrome,' because the first cases affected personnel in 2016 at the embassy, pictured

Dr. James Giordano, a neurology professor at Georgetown University, consulted with the State Department on the Havana cases and has been briefed on more recent incidents in the U.S. and abroad.

In reviewing records of people affected in Havana, Giordano noted evidence of neurological injuries in several people, suggesting they may have been hit with radio waves.

He identified two possible culprits: a device intentionally used to target potential victims or a tool that used directed energy waves to conduct surveillance that may have unintentionally harmed the people targeted.

One of the November attacks outside the White House had 'substantial similarities' to the Havana cases, Giordano said, adding that he was not authorized by the government to be more specific.

'Its very difficult, if not impossible, to fake or misrepresent certain findings to objective clinical evaluations,' Giordano said. 'I mean, there are certain things you cant make your nerves do or not do.'

Other scientists remain skeptical. Dr. Robert Baloh of the University of California, Los Angeles, argued that scans of healthy peoples brains sometimes display mini-strokes and that any possible weapon would be too large or require too much power to be deployed without detection.

Baloh said the growing number of cases considered directed energy attacks is actually linked to 'mass psychogenic illness,' in which people learning of others with symptoms begin to feel sick themselves.

'Many people are hearing about it and thats how it gets propagated,' Baloh said.

'There's no greater priority than ensuring the health and safety of our people, and the anomalous health incidents that have afflicted our personnel around the world are of grave concern,' said Rep. Adam Schiff, the California Democrat who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, in a statement.

Rep. Devin Nunes, the committee's top Republican, said the people reporting symptoms 'were apparently subject to attack.'

Polymeropoulos, the former CIA officer, said he believed the U.S. would ultimately identify what was behind the incidents and who is responsible.

'The actual intelligence is going to take us to the truth on this,' he said. 'If we find that a certain adversary did this, theres going to be uncomfortable decisions on what to do.'
The leader of a US Cuban exile group has slammed 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones after she claimed Cuba had the 'least inequality between black and white people' thanks to its socialist government.

Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat spoke out against the New York Times journalist Tuesday after a 2019 podcast where she called the communist country one of the most 'equal' in the world, resurfaced online.

The Havana-born scholar, who is based in Miami, said Hannah-Jones's remarks do not 'reflect the reality of Cuban history', noting there has actually been a lack of black leadership on the island since the 1959 revolution - which saw dictator Fidel Castro ascend to power.

'There is a very simple comparison you can make that shows how wrong this statement by Nikole Hannah-Jones is,' Gutierrez-Boronat told DailyMail.com.

'Look at the central committee of the Communist Party for the past 62 years and tell me how many prominent black Cubans have been in that central committee.

'And then look at the republic that existed between 1902 and 1959. You couldn't write the history of the republic without mentioning all the prominent black Cubans who were there.

Miami-based Cuban exiles leader Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat (left) tore into 1619 Project founder Nikole Hannah-Jones's (right) 2019 claims that Cuba has 'the least inequality between black and white people' in the hemisphere in an interview with DailyMail.com

The Havana-born scholar said the NYT journalist's comments weren't reflective of Cuba's history and accused her of using the country's 'plight' to 'promote Marxism'. Pictured: Cubans take to the streets of Havana to take part in anti-government protests on July 11

'Cuba is a syncretic culture, where two or more cultures blend together. After its independence [in 1902] there was certainly a great increase in living standards for Cuba's black population.'

The exiled leader, who has been instrumental in high-level talks in the US since protests erupted earlier this month, said black people - who once held important government roles - have instead been sidelined for positions of power and influence for decades.

'It was during Cuba's democracy that black Cubans had leadership roles as president, as president of the senate, multiple ministries, representatives to the house, important social leaders, the leader of the labor movement,' he said.

'That's what leadership was like in Cuba, under the democracy.'

'And in these 62 years of Communism it's been a white European-descent Communist leadership that has dominated power,' he added.

'I don't see how anyone cannot see that. Anyone who knows a little bit about Cuban history can confirm what I am saying.

'Fulgencio Baptista was president twice. Baptista was definitely multi-racial, with Spanish, African, and Chinese blood.'

Hannah-Jones made the controversial comments after she was asked which countries or places around the world she believed had a 'viable and sufficiently ambitious integration agenda', in a podcast with Ezra Klein of Vox and The New York Times in 2019.

'If you want to see the most equal, multiracial democ  it's not a democracy. The most equal, multiracial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba,' she replied.

Cuban-Americans participate in a demonstration to show support for protesters in Cuba, in front of the Freedom Tower in Miami on Saturday

Hannah-Jones' 2019 remarks were dragged back into the spotlight this weekend as Cuba is roiled by protests against its communist regime, with activists crying for freedom

Cuban protesters are pictured in a holding cell in Havana after being arrested during demonstrations on July 11

'Cuba has the least inequality between black and white people anyplace really in the hemisphere.

'I mean, the Caribbean, most of the Caribbean it's hard to count because the white population in a lot of those countries is very, very small.

'A lot of those countries are run by black folks. But in places that are truly at least biracial countries, Cuba actually has the least inequality.

'And that's largely due to socialism - which I'm sure no one wants to hear,' she added.

Her remarks were dragged back into the spotlight this weekend as protests continue to rock Cuba, with activists crying for freedom and expressing anger over rising prices, goods shortages, and poor health care amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Gutierrez-Boronat joined the chorus of critics on social media who blasted Hannah-Jones for her perceived ignorance on the state of the island nation.

'Her assertion that what she says is "equality" is largely due to socialism is ideological spin. That doesn't reflect the reality of Cuban history,' he continued.

'What she is saying shows how little she knows about Cuba and how they [some pressure groups] use Cuba to promote Marxism.

'They use Cuba's plight to promote Marxism. They don't care about Cuba, they care about their own ideology.'

Gutierrez-Boronat, who runs the Cuban Democratic Directorate, added: 'I think this woman needs to come to Miami and read some Cuban history. Black and white in Cuba doesn't mean the same thing as it might mean in the United States.'

Sidelined for their color: How Afro-Cubans lost positions of power and influence after the 1959 Cuban Revolution Cuban exiles leader Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat slammed Nikole Hannah-Jones's claim that Cuba has 'the least inequality between black and white people in the hemisphere.' The Miami-based scholar explained there is actually a lack of black leadership in the country as a result of the 1959 Cuban Revolution - which saw dictator Fidel Castro ascend to power. The start of the communist regime ultimately resulted in the exile of numerous prominent Afro-Cubans and saw a rise of 'white European' leaders. Martin Morua Delgado was Cuba's first black Senate president, assuming the role in 1909 after the 1895 to 1898 war of independence from Spain. As part of the Afro-Cuban political elite, he symbolized the social mobility that many black Cubans had previously been unable to achieve. He was a member of the countrys Liberal Party and later become agriculture minister. General Campos Marquetti was another leader in the independence war, living until the age of 94 before succumbing to a heart ailment in 1966 in Washington DC. He became a senator and a congressman in Havana, before ending up in exile in Miami after the 1959 revolution. He said shortly before his death that if Cubans returned to their homeland to drive out the Communist regime, he wanted to be at the forefront. Fanatical anti-communist Nestor 'Tony' Izquierdo was a prominent black Cuban who was one of the leaders in the doomed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, but escaped with his life. There is a 6ft bronze sculpture of him  toting a machinegun  in Miami's Little Havana area. In 1963 he joined a 300-man anti-Castro army backed by the CIA in Nicaragua. He was killed in a 1979 plane crash while fighting the Sandinistas in that country. Salsa queen Celia Cruz crossed swords with Castro's communist regime and made a new life for herself in the United States. She believed in 1960 that she would never set foot in Cuba again. The regime had disapproved of her band accepting offers to work abroad and at one point forbade her return to the island. An icon in the Latin music world  with hits such as Guantanamera - it was not until 1990 that she eventually made a trip back to her homeland. Famous for her shouted phrase 'azucar,' Spanish for sugar, she died at her New Jersey home in 2003 aged 77. Juan Gualberto Gomez Ferrer was a leader in the Cuban War of Independence and helped to unite the island's black population behind the rebellion. He was an activist for independence and part of the committee that drafted the country's 1901 constitution  before becoming a representative and senator in the Cuban legislature. He died in Havana in 1933 aged 78. Sandalio Junco was a Cuban-Latino labor leader and trade unionist. By 1937 he had become a leading political figure, aligning himself to ex-president Ramon Grau San Martin. Although a Communist, he was murdered by a Stalinist gun squad in 1942, causing a wave of protests throughout Cuba. Jesus Menendez was a Cuban union leader and politician who fought for the rights of sugar cane workers. He was murdered by an army officer in 1948 at the age of 36. Jose Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales was second in command of the Cuban Army of Independence, with the nickname The Bronze Titan, and was renowned for his military acumen. He was killed in action in 1896 aged 51, ending with the rank Lieutenant General. Advertisement

The controversial 2019 podcast is not the first time that Hannah-Jones has spoken out in support of the communist regime.

More than ten years prior, she wrote an op-ed where she noted the many overlooked accomplishments that had been made in Cuba including what she touted as a high literacy rate in the country, low HIV infection rate, and 'model' universal health care system.

She claimed the Cuban revolution led to the 'end of codified racism' and brought about universal education and access to jobs for black Cubans.

In 2020 she won the Pulitzer Prize for the 1619 Project which 'reframed' American history to focus on when the first Africans arrived to Virginia as slaves.

But the 2019 series of essays has come under withering criticism for portraying American history as fundamentally racist and also containing historical inaccuracies and generalizations.

She tweeted at the time: 'You do not produce a project like this and not expect pushback. History, in general, is contested. Historians debate, disagree and interpret differently the same set of facts. Historians also produce history from a vantage point. This project unsettled many. I think that is good.'

Meanwhile, families of Cuban protesters who have been arrested since the unrest broke out on July 11 are now planning to march on police stations through the island to demand information about their loved ones, Gutierrez-Boronat said.

He added: 'Hundreds of people have now been arrested in Cuba, I don't know how many dead there are.

'There were some protests until Saturday night. I haven't heard anything yesterday or today yet. The internet is really difficult.

Hannah-Jones won the Pulitzer Prize in 2020 for the 1619 Project which 'reframed' American history to focus on when the first Africans arrived to Virginia as slaves

'Family members of those who are arrested or disappeared will be having marches on police stations on Wednesday and demand to know where their loved ones are. That will be in Havana and other cities. The call has gone out.

'The slogans and the calls to action circulate among the underground and suddenly you have slogans appearing in multiple places at the same time. These are coming from the internal networks.

'I don't know how the authorities will react. They have an aggressive police presence in many places. I guess they will try to put it down.'

The resurfaced podcast sparked outrage from among many commenters online over the weekend.

'This is the person Progressives want teaching history to your kids,' tweeted conservative talk show host Jason Rantz.

'Founder of 1619 project & outspoken (idiot) communist, says Cuba has the least inequality between Black & White people. She's correct, because there's no democrat party to ensure everyone is divided. Also, communism is an equal opportunity oppressor,' wrote Jonathan T. Gilliam, an ex-Navy Seal turned author.

'Crazy!' declared senior writer for the Houston Chronicle Cindy Horswell.

'Then let's send her there! And she can live her dreams!!!' wrote user Ken Hebden.

'Yep, you're either equally poor or you are the rich oppressor. One day in Cuba and she'd realize she's one of the poor, oppressed masses begging for her freedom,' tweeted Danielle Kriner.

'Please go to Cuba and stay in Cuba - Nicole Hannah Jones. The anti-American factions in our own country fail to understand the horrors of Communism,' stated Mercedes Schlapp, a Senior Fellow for ACU Foundation penned.

'Note to Nikole: Cuba has 'equality' because everyone is equally desperately poor,' explained one Twitter account.

'I think one should be required to live in the country one believes is superior for a year before endorsing it as preferred location over one's own country,' suggested Twitter user Jerry.

'They just allow anyone to be thought leaders these days,' wrote another social media user.

'1619 project creator says Cuba's dictator government is a model for other countries. The woman Nikole Hannah-Jones is that crazy! She wants America to be like Cuba, a communist country Cuban ppl are protesting for their freedom & are tired of tyranny. This is all u need to know,' tweeted Steve.

'Why don't she move to Cuba then ??? Let her see how the people are treated, for awhile, then see what she thinks !!!' added user Alabama Lady.

Thousands of Cuban Americans in Miami have taken to the streets in the past week to show solidarity with the island. Pictured: Protesters at the Rally For Democracy in Miami on Sunday

Hundreds of people headed to Washington DC this weekend to protest outside the White House after a week of unprecedented protests on the Communist-led island this past week.

The protests in the nation's capital came as Raul Castro joined thousands at a government-organized rally in Havana on Saturday to denounce the US trade embargo and reaffirm their support for Cuba's 'revolution.'

The Havana rally came after thousands of Cubans have protested shortages of basic goods, curbs on civil liberties, and the government's handling of a surge in COVID-19 infections in the past week.

Meanwhile, demonstrators in Washington on Saturday carried signs reading 'Freedom for Cuba' while calling on President Joe Biden to help the suffering Caribbean nation.

In the wake of the protests, the Cuban government had cut off internet access on Sunday.

Internet connectivity was restored on Wednesday though access to social media sites like Facebook and Twitter remained blocked on cellular networks.
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Boris Johnson was last night outed by his former top aide over claims he dismissed a second lockdown because Covid was 'essentially' only killing the elderly and that he 'didn't buy' claims the NHS would be overwhelmed.

But one of No10's scientists told MailOnline today that while the Prime Minister's remarks were flippant, there were signs in the data last autumn which suggested it was reasonable to 'take a more measured approach'.

Leaked WhatsApp messages from October purportedly show Mr Johnson was questioning forecasts from his own advisers that hospitals could be pushed to the brink again if he did not put the country into another lockdown.

But on the day he allegedly made the comments  on October 15  there were about 4,500 Covid patients in the NHS and the number was around 10,000 when the PM caved into a second lockdown on October 31.

For comparison, there are currently 3,800 Covid inpatients now and SAGE estimates there could be up to 20,000 at a peak this autumn levels deemed acceptable enough to go ahead with Freedom Day. However, the difference between this wave and last year is that the country now has vaccines on its side.

Scientists accept that the NHS would have ultimately been overwhelmed last winter if it were not for the second and third lockdowns  which came in November and then in December.

The NHS was already in a fragile state heading into the second wave after amassing a huge backlog from the first shutdown in spring, which saw tens of thousands of operations delayed to make way for the influx of Covid.

But it is difficult to know how the second wave would have played out if it was not for the emergence of the Kent variant, according to Professor Robert Dingwall, a member of the UK Government's vaccine advisory group.

The highly infectious strain emerged in the South East in late September but was only detected the following month and announced to the public in December. Professor Dingwall suggested it was possible that the NHS would not have been overwhelmed if the country was faced with the earlier version of the virus last autumn.

Messages leaked last night by the PM's maverick former chief of staff Dominic Cummings, also show that Mr Johnson resisted calls for an October lockdown because 'the people who are dying are essentially all over 80'.

Mr Johnson appears to have been referring to Office for National Statistics data which show that the average age of Covid fatalities throughout the pandemic has been 80  78 for men and 82 for women.

Over-80s also made up nearly 70 per cent of all Covid deaths at the height of the first wave. Now the proportion of elderly people dying from the virus stands at around 47 per cent thanks to the rollout of the vaccines, which were prioritised for the most vulnerable.

Office for National Statistics data shows that last spring, over-80s made up up to 70 per cent of all Covid deaths, which dropped to around 60 per cent in the second wave. The number has dipped below 50 per cent now thanks to the vaccines which were prioritised for the elderly

Separate NHS England data shows of the 165 deaths recorded in hospitals over the last week, 140 were in people aged 60 or older. Eighteen were aged 40 to 59, seven were between 20 and 39 and none were younger than 20

Statistics from the Government's Covid dashboard show how the virus has predominantly claimed the lives of pensioners. Deaths in under-60s (light blue line) appear to remain flat while they are beginning to rise in over-60s (dark blue line). Daily deaths were seven times higher in over-60s (36) than under-60s (5) on July 15 in England

On October 15  when Boris Johnson allegedly sent text messages dismissing a second lockdown  there were about 4,500 Covid patients in the NHS. For comparison, there are currently 3,800 Covid inpatients now, a level which has been deemed acceptable enough to go ahead with Freedom Day

There were nearly 1,000 admissions for the virus every day by October 15, which was quadruple the number the previous month

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Dominic Cummings (left, in his explosive BBC interview airing tonight, and right, with the PM in 2019) revealed that Mr Johnson had made flippant comments about Covid deaths and NHS pressure

Professor Dingwall told MailOnline: 'I think there's a lot of people's predictions on both sides [of the argument for and against lockdown last autumn] that were thrown out by the rise of the Alpha [Kent] variant which was clearly beginning to effect the figures in early November.

'The Prime Minister could well have looked at the data at the time [in October] and decided the higher projections from his chief scientific advisers were at the upper end of what was plausible and made the reasonable judgement to take a more measured approach.

'His role as Prime Minister is to challenge the advice he was given and if he felt that the higher projections were not persuasive then he has no obligations to follow them.

'Some of the advisers and modellers were lucky the Alpha variant pushed things up to coincide with their models or we might have been having an argument about over-estimations now.'

'Get Covid and live longer': Dominic Cummings claims Boris Johnson joked about virus only killing the over-80s Boris Johnson attempted to resist pleas for a second lockdown last autumn, joking that the Covid pandemic was only killing pensioners, his former aide Dominic Cummings claimed last night. In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Mr Cummings alleged that the Prime Minister said he 'didn't buy' evidence from scientists and other experts that the NHS was in danger of being overwhelmed. The former advisor, who was sacked at the end of last year, shared WhatsApp messages with the BBC as he alleged the Prime Minister was reluctant to heighten restrictions because 'the people who are dying are essentially all over 80' and therefore expendable. In his first broadcast interview, with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, the hostile former chief adviser to Mr Johnson accused his one-time boss of putting 'his own political interests ahead of people's lives'. He also revealed that the Prime Minister also wanted to carry on meeting the Queen in person while Downing Street was rife with Covid, eventually backing down when it was pointed out he could kill her. Mr Cummings has repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of being too slow in imposing the second lockdown, which came into force on November 5. The political adviser, who left Downing Street during a bitter row in November, shared a series of messages from October 15 that appear to be from Mr Johnson to aides. 'I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82 - 81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent ) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate,' they read. 'There are max 3m in this country aged over 80. It shows we don't go for nation wide lockdown.' Advertisement

However, Dr Simon Clarke, a microbiologist at the University of Reading, said the writing was already on the wall in October when Mr Johnson is said to have made the remarks.

There were nearly 1,000 admissions for the virus every day by October 15, which was quadruple the number the previous month and 150 daily deaths, up on the 20 or so a month earlier.

The country was also heading into the winter, when Covid finds it easier to spread and kill, and the NHS deals with extra pressures.

Dr Clarke told MailOnline: 'What you've got to remember is what had come before he made the comments.

'The evidence from the spring lockdown was that the NHS wouldn't have been able to cope without a lockdown.'

Mr Johnson eventually caved into pressure from his scientific advisers and ordered a second lockdown in England on November 5. Daily hospital admissions peaked at 1,900 that month and fell over the four-week shutdown.

A third lockdown had to be imposed the following month when the epidemic began growing exponentially again due to the rapid spread of the highly transmissible Kent variant.

In January, daily infections peaked at a record 68,000, daily deaths at 1,200, daily admissions 4,200, and the number of Covid sufferers in beds reached almost 39,000.

SAGE models that gave No10 the confidence to go ahead with Freedom Day yesterday said hospital occupancy should not even reach half of the levels seen in the second peak due to the success of the jab rollout.

But they admit that there could be 2,000 daily admissions during the worst of the third wave, which would still put significant pressure on the health service.

Even now, trusts in Leeds, Birmingham, Inverness and elsewhere have already had to start cancelling operations.

Top NHS doctors, including Stephen Powis, the medical director in England, are confident the national NHS will ultimately be able to cope.

The difference between this wave is that people being admitted to the virus are presenting with more mild symptoms and are being discharged quicker, due to a combination of the vaccines and the fact young people make up a higher proportion of admissions.

However, there could be challenges for the NHS in juggling the Covid pressures with trying to clear the backlog of 5million patients waiting for routine surgery in England. Health Secretary Sajid Javid said this number could rise to an extraordinary 13m by the end of the year.

And infectious disease experts have warned that the country could be in for one of the worst flu outbreaks in years because so few people have natural immunity  a side effect of lockdown.

Mr Johnson's flippant comments about the second wave were revealed in a BBC interview Mr Cummings gave to the BBC, which is due to air tonight at 7pm.

In his first broadcast interview, with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, the hostile former aide accused his one-time boss of putting 'his own political interests ahead of people's lives'.

Boris Johnson wanted to meet the Queen at the start of the pandemic despite signs Covid was spreading in Downing Street, it was claimed last night (pictured: Dominic Cummings in the interview with Laura Kuenssberg)

NHS doctor warns routine surgery may come to a 'STANDSTILL' again if Covid ICU admissions continue to rise NHS medics have warned routine surgery could grind to a 'standstill' again if Covid ICU admissions approach levels of previous waves. Currently there are more than 500 Covid patients in intensive care, double the number last month. But this is still an eighth of the 4,000 in January. There are more than 615 general admissions each day, of which a small number become seriously ill. Admissions have tripled in just over a month. Intensive care doctor Charlotte Summers, an honorary consultant at Cambridge University, said if ICU capacity numbers get into the thousands then routine care could be put on the backburner once again. There are a record 5.3million people on the waiting list for routine surgery due to the pandemic, and officials have warned this could rise to 13m by the end of the year. Dr Summers said that every Covid patient admitted to ICU stays for about two weeks. This disrupts care for other patients  such as those needing hip replacements and heart surgery  who also need the beds for their operation. Advertisement

He also revealed that the Prime Minister also wanted to carry on meeting the Queen in person while Downing Street was rife with Covid, eventually backing down when it was pointed out he could kill her.

Mr Cummings has repeatedly accused the Prime Minister of being too slow in imposing the second lockdown. The political adviser, who left Downing Street during a bitter row in November, shared a series of messages from October 15 that appear to be from Mr Johnson to aides.

'I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on covid fatalities. The median age is 82 - 81 for men 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get COVID and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 per cent ) and of those virtually all survive. And I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate,' they read.

'There are max 3m in this country aged over 80. It shows we don't go for nation wide lockdown.'

In his first TV interview since leaving No 10, Mr Cummings claimed the PM 'put his own political interests ahead of people's lives for sure'.

He said Mr Johnson's attitude last autumn was a 'weird mix' of 'partly 'it's all nonsense and lockdowns don't work anyway' and partly 'well this is terrible but the people who are dying are essentially all over 80 and we can't kill the economy just because of people dying over 80'.'

He added: 'Lots of people heard the Prime Minister say that, the Prime Minister texted that to me and other people.'

However Tory MPs rallied behind Mr Johnson. Peter Bone has dismissed Mr Cummings's allegations, saying the former aide was driven by revenge and had failed to prove a series of explosive claims he made about the inner workings of No 10 before parliamentary committees in recent months.

'He didn't provide the evidence when he was before the select committees, which he promised to do. He failed miserably to do that,' Mr Bone told the BBC.

'If you want my opinion, you can discount virtually everything Dominic Cumming says about anything. He is a man who is driven by revenge and serious journalists cannot possibly believe what he says.'
China has unveiled what it hopes to be the fastest train in the world with a top speed of more than 370 miles per hour.

The new train, self-developed by China and manufactured in the coastal city of Qingdao, uses maglev technology which allows it to travel so quickly.

Using electro-magnetic force, the maglev train 'levitates' above the tracks with no contact between body and rail.

The train, capable of travelling at 372 mph (600kph), would be able to travel from London to Paris in 34 minutes, compared to the Eurostar fleet's two hours and 16 minutes.

Scroll down for video

The new train, self-developed by China and manufactured in the coastal city of Qingdao, uses maglev technology which allows it to travel so quickly

Using electro-magnetic force, the maglev train 'levitates' above the tracks with no contact between body and rail

Today, the blue and black locomotive travelled out of the manufacturing building of the state-owned CRRC Qingdao Sifang, China's official train builder, in Qingdao

What are 'maglev' trains? Maglev trains use magnets to lift the carriages above the track. This eliminates the need for wheels and, therefore, any incidence of friction, providing faster and quieter service. Acceleration and deceleration far exceed that of conventional trains. And maglev also makes for much smoother journeys. Right now speeds are limited at up to 400 kilometres (250 miles) per hour due to the excessive air resistance encountered at these speeds. But vacuum tube designs could allow them to travel over seven times faster in the future. Advertisement

Today, the blue and black locomotive travelled out of the manufacturing building of the state-owned CRRC Qingdao Sifang, China's official train builder, in Qingdao.

'Welcome to the high-speed maglev train that runs at 600kph,' read a digital screen inside the train, according to video by Xinhua news agency.

The train will be put into service in between five to 10 years, Liang Jianying, CRRC Qingdao Sifang's deputy general manager and chief engineer, told China Central Television.

The locomotive can travel with two to 10 carriages, each holding more than 100 passengers, Ding Sansan, chief engineer of the project told Xinhua News agency.

China has been using the technology for almost two decades on a very limited scale. Shanghai has a short maglev line running from one of its airports to town.

While there are no inter-city or inter-province maglev lines yet in China that could make good use of the higher speeds, some cities including Shanghai and Chengdu have started to conduct research.

At 372 mph, the train would only take 2.5 hours to travel from Beijing to Shanghai by train - a journey of more than 1,000 km (620 miles).

By comparison, the journey would take 3 hours by plane and 5.5 hours by high-speed rail.

The train, capable of travelling at 372 mph (600kph), would be able to travel from London to Paris in 34 minutes, compared to the Eurostar fleet's two hours and 16 minutes

The train will be put into service in between five to 10 years, Liang Jianying, CRRC Qingdao Sifang's deputy general manager and chief engineer, told China Central Television

The unveiling comes after China revealed a prototype of a super-fast bullet train that engineers claim could reach 385 miles per hour.

Dubbed as the 'super bullet maglev train', the model rolled off the production line and made its debut at a ceremony in the south-western city of Chengdu in January.

Southwest Jiaotong University collaborated with two state-run companies, China Railway Group and CRRC Corporation, to develop the prototype in a 60million yuan (6.8million) transport innovation programme, reported Xinhua News Agency.

The homemade prototype is a 21-meter-long (69-foot-long) locomotive designed to travel at a top speed of 620 kilometres (385 miles) per hour.

It uses high-temperature superconducting (HTS) maglev technology, different from the low-temperature technology employed by Germany and Japan in their maglev trains, according to experts from Southwest Jiaotong University.

A prototype of a high-temperature superconducting maglev train, dubbed as the 'super bullet maglev train', is pictured at its introduction ceremony in Chengdu, China, on Wednesday

The model is a 21-meter-long (69-foot-long) locomotive designed to travel at a top speed of 620 kilometres (385 miles) per hour. It has been developed solely by Chinese experts

The team claims that the Chinese version is more lightweight with a simpler structure. It is also cheaper to manufacture and operate.

The engineers consider the HTS technology more suitable for the futuristic 'vacuum transportation', which could see ultra-high-speed maglev trains zipping in vacuum tubes in speeds over 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) per hour.

'The HTS technology can make the train float without electricity, and it can be moved with just one hand,' Deng Zigang, a professor from the university, told Xinhua.

Pictures and footage released by Chinese media outlets show the silver-and-black carbon-fibre locomotive pulling into its presentation at Southwest Jiaotong University.

The university also launched an experimental railway track on Wednesday. The line, measuring 541 feet (165 metres) long, will be used to test the prototype and related technologies.

China has the world's largest high-speed railway network, which measures a staggering 35,000 kilometres (21,747 miles) as of 2019.

At present, the country's high-speed passenger trains operate at a maximum speed of 350 kilometres (217 miles) per hour. Residents can travel between Beijing and Shanghai, the nation's political and financial centres, in 4.5 hours.

The prototype uses high-temperature superconducting (HTS) maglev technology, different from the low-temperature technology used in maglev trains made by Germany and Japan

Engineers consider the HTS technology more suitable for the 'vacuum transportation', which could see maglev trains zipping in vacuum tubes at over 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) per hour

Southwest Jiaotong University also launched an experimental railway track at the Wednesday ceremony. The line, measuring 541 feet (165 metres) long, will be used to test the prototype

China also has the world's first commercial maglev system.

The 18.6-mile (30-kilometre) stretch, opened in 2002 in Shanghai, connects Shanghai Pudong Airport and the city centre and reportedly cost more than 1billion to build.

The Shanghai maglev was jointly developed by Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development and a German consortium consisting of Siemens AG, Thyssen Transrapid GMBH and Transrapid International GMBH.

It is the world's fastest commercial train system, with carriages running up to 431 kilometres (267 miles) per hour.

Japan built the fastest-ever train in the world to date, but has yet to put it into commercial use.

The maglev train, operated by Japan Railways Group, set the world record after reaching 603 kilometres (374 miles) per hour on an experimental track in 2016.

Countries from Japan to Germany are also looking to build maglev networks, although high costs and incompatibility with current track infrastructure remain hurdles to rapid development.
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Russia has unveiled a prototype of a new fighter jet featuring stealth capabilities that can cruise at supersonic speed and is set to rival the US F-35 Lightning II fighter.

Vladimir Putin inspected the warplane known as Checkmate at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon today.

Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi developed the new fighter under the LTS program, an acronym for the Light Tactical Aircraft.

Sukhoi-Su35S fighter jets of the Russian Knights aerobatic team perform a demonstration flight at the opening of the MAKS 2021 International Aviation and Space Salon

Vladimir Putin inspected the warplane known as Checkmate at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon today. Pictured: Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets during demonstration

Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi developed the new fighter under the LTS program, an acronym for the Light Tactical Aircraft. Pictured: Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets during demonstration

Vladimir Putin (pictured) inspected the warplane known as Checkmate at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon today

Its makers said the prototype is set to make its maiden flight in 2023 and deliveries could start in 2026.

They said the new design could be converted to an unpiloted version and a two-seat model.

The new aircraft is smaller than Russia's latest Su-57 two-engine stealth fighter, also built by Sukhoi, and has one engine.

It can fly at a speed of 1.8-2 times the speed of sound and has a range of 1,864 miles, the jet's makers said.

Russian state corporation Rostec, which includes Sukhoi and other aircraft makers, has advertised the new plane under the tag Checkmate, an approach apparently intended to underline its superior characteristics.

Mil Mi-28 attack helicopters of the Berkuty (Golden Eagles) aerobatic team perform a demonstration flight at the opening of the MAKS 2021 International Aviation and Space Salon

Sukhoi Su-35S fighter jets of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) aerobatic team perform a demonstration flight at the event in the town of Zhukovsky

It said the new warplane belongs to the so-called fifth generation of fighter jets, a definition that assumes stealth characteristics and a capability to cruise at supersonic speed, among other advanced features.

Rostec said the new design includes artificial intelligence features to assist the pilot and other innovative technologies. It said the jet was designed to reduce service costs and to be easily adapted to varying customer needs.

The prospective Russian fighter jet appears intended to compete with the US F-35 Lightning II fighter, which entered service in 2015.

Rostec ran an aggressive advertising campaign in the days before the air show, publishing a picture of the new fighter hidden under a black tarpaulin with 'Wanna see me naked?' written under it.

Vladimir Putin inspected the warplane known as Checkmate at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon today

Russia has unveiled a prototype of a new fighter jet with the project name The Checkmate featuring stealth capabilities that can cruise at supersonic speed

The new aircraft is smaller than Russia's latest Su-57 two-engine stealth fighter, also built by Sukhoi, and has one engine

Rostec ran an aggressive advertising campaign in the days before the air show, publishing a picture of the new fighter hidden under a black tarpaulin

It also posted a video featuring adulatory customers from India, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Vietnam and other countries, reflecting export hopes.

Plane spotters flocked to Zhukovsky last week to take pictures of the new plane as it was being taxied to a parking spot across the giant airfield which has served as the country's top military aircraft test facility since Cold War times.

The Kremlin has made modernization of the country's arsenals a key priority amid tensions with the West that followed Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

The Checkmate Sukhoi Checkmate Fighter Range: 1,864 miles Maiden flight: 2023 Top speed: Up to 1,500 miles per hour Aircraft maker: Sukhoi Engines: One Advertisement

US F-35 Lightning II US F-35 Lightning II Range: 1,700 miles Maiden flight: 2015 Top speed: 1,225 miles per hour Aircraft maker: Lockheed Martin Engines: One Advertisement

It also has strongly encouraged the development of new passenger jets to compete with planes built by American aircraft maker Boeing and Europe's Airbus that currently account for the bulk of Russian carriers' fleets.

Russia's airliner programs have encountered delays amid Western sanctions that hampered imports of Western engines and other key components. But the country managed to produce a new engine for the new MS-21 passenger plane, which also was displayed at the show in Zhukovsky.

'What we saw in Zhukovsky today demonstrates that the Russian aviation has a big potential for development and our aircraft making industries continue to create new competitive aircraft designs,' Putin said in a speech at the show's opening.

Putin praised Russia's aviation industry as he unveiled the biennial MAKS air show earlier Tuesday.

'Russian aviation has great potential for development, and our aircraft industry continues to create new competitive aircraft,' Putin said.

Putin has made investing in the army and developing new weaponry a priority over his two-decade rule.

Russia has boasted of developing several weapons that circumvent existing defence systems, including the Sarmat intercontinental missiles and Burevestnik cruise missiles.
A woman stabbed to death her mother, chopped up her corpse and disposed of the body parts including the head in bin liners dumped next to a river just hours after trying to kill her brother in a fire, a court heard today.

Lucy Fox, 39, is accused of killing her mother Judy Fox, 65, a retired nurse, in the kitchen of her home in Shifnal, Shropshire, during a frenzied attack on June 12 last year.

She then used her mother's bank card in Asda to buy a ready meal, whisky, and bin liners - which she later used to dispose of her mother's body parts, jurors were told.

A court heard Fox dismembered the body before she dumped the remains in the undergrowth in woodland close to the River Severn and Ironbridge Gorge in Coalport. Judy Fox's torso and arms have still not been found.

Police officers discovered Mrs Fox's severed head in a plastic bag four weeks later on July 10 before finding other body parts scattered around the area in several bin liners.

Fox was charged with murder and arson with intent to endanger life after admitting the crimes when she was arrested - but Stafford Crown Court was told she was unfit to be tried on Monday.

There will now be no trial and it will now be a fact-finding hearing, where the jury will only have to decide what the person did but not the motive or their state of mind at the time.

As a result Fox now cannot be found guilty of murder and arson - but after the jury's verdict the judge could decide that the suspect should go to a hospital indefinitely in a judgment known as a disposal.

Lucy Fox, 39, is accused of killing her mother Judy Fox, 65, a retired nurse, during a frenzied attack on June 12 last year.

Judge Kristina Montgomery QC told the court jurors would now be asked to decide if they could be sure that Fox killed her mother.

Opening the case, prosecutor Kevin Hegarty QC said Fox had bought two knives from a Dunelm store before driving to her mother's home where she stabbed her.

She later set fire to a door mat in an attempt to kill her brother and confessed to both crimes when she was arrested, the jury was told.

Police were called to the property after a fire broke out but there was no sign of Mrs Fox who worked as a staff nurse for local newspapers the Express & Star and Shropshire Star.

But the court heard the kitchen was covered in blood, with splatters over the ceiling, walls, cupboard drawers and back door prompting a police search for the homeowner.

The court heard a lump hammer, saw and an axe were discovered nearby as well as two knives.

Judy Fox was stabbed to death in the kitchen of her home in Shifnal last summer (pictured after the attack)

Mr Hegarty added: 'Where was she? Only Lucy Fox knew. The prosecution will ask you to conclude that Lucy Fox killed her mother, no one saw Judy Fox again.

'The police continued searching and they searched an area along the River Severn and the first remains were found at around 10.30am on July 10.

'The search continued throughout that day and the days following. The discoveries that were made were all in the same area.

'Hidden in the undergrowth was a bag that contained Judith Fox's severed head.

'The area was subject to very careful search - shoulders, two legs and some fragments of skin and the right breast were found.

'These were examined by a forensic pathologist, he found the segments of the breast and shoulder showed the presence of stab wounds.

'The stab injuries might have been caused when Judith Fox was attacked but they might have also been caused when Judith Fox was being dismembered.

'But I will ask you to bear in mind that Lucy Fox was armed with a knife, she killed her mother.

'She must have killed her mother by stabbing her. There was no other purpose for having the knife.

'When she went into the house, she was armed with at least one knife and was ready to stab her mother.

'As of today the torso and arms are still missing. The parts that were recovered showed varying levels of decay and had been lost to decomposition.

'So in the absence of much of her body, the job of the forensic pathologist in giving a cause of the death was made all the more difficult. He cannot give a cause of death.

'Nevertheless, the recovered head is identified to be that of Judith Fox by examination of dental records.

'So we say the evidence shows that Lucy Fox killed her mother.

'She entered the house carrying at least one knife and killed her mother in the kitchen.

'The amount of blood in the kitchen compared with absence in other parts of the house shows that is where she was killed.

'She was then cut up and then disposed of.

'The evidence will show also that before Lucy Fox arrived she had visited Coalport and was in vicinity of where her mother's body was found.

'She revisited Coalport at 4am on Saturday, so the question is why did she go out from her mother's house and go to the area where her mother's remains were found.

'The answer is Lucy Fox had decided where she was going to take her mother and made her trip. After she killed her mother that is where she took her.

'She told the police on the doorstep she had killed her mother and she told police she had tried to kill her brother and there is evidence that she set fire to a door mat in the early hours of Sunday.'

The case continues.
A four-year-old boy is in critical condition after a dirt bike struck him Sunday at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Boathouse parking lot in Queens, New York.

Johnathan Beauchamp was at boathouse's parking lot with his parents just before 6 p.m. when he ran out from in between two parked cars.

A rider on an illegal dirt bike then struck the child and did not stop.

Johnathan Beauchamp suffered severe head trauma after the dirt biker struck him on Sunday. He is receiving care at Cohen Children's Medical Center

Police are investigating the hit-and-run incident, which took place at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Boathouse parking lot

This footage shows the pervasive problem dirt bikes have become in New York City as group ride the illegal bikes in the streets

Beauchamp was rushed to the Cohen Children's Medical Center with severe head trauma.

"Dirt bikes going back and forth, there was so much going on, we didn't realize somebody got hit until the ambulance came," witness Harold Hadalgo told ABC 7.

Back in May, the NYPD announced a crackdown on illegal vehicles across the city. On Monday, the NYPDs 110th Precinct, which covers the park, tweeted:

Recent collisions with operators of illegal dirt bikes and ATVs have lead to fatalities & serious injuries. These motor vehicles are illegal & shouldnt be operated on NYC roads. If you drive these illegal dirt bikes & ATVs, they will be confiscated & you will be arrested.

The NYPD has been very aggressive. If ones out there, its immediately illegal. Its just not allowed in New York City and we will destroy them, literally, and send a message to people, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

Residents had recently called on elected officials to increase penalties for those illegally riding dirt bikes and ATVs.

Officers are not allowed to pursue people on these vehicles, but they usually trail the riders and wait for them at gas stations.

Recent collisions with operators of Illegal dirt bikes and ATVs have lead to fatalities & serious injuries. These motor vehicles are illegal & shouldnt be operated on NYC roads. If you drive these illegal dirt bikes & ATVs, they will be confiscated & you will be arrested. pic.twitter.com/7L75FAu8jR  NYPD 110th Precinct (@NYPD110Pct) July 19, 2021

Dirt bikes are illegal & riding them recklessly puts others at risk. Officers stopped the operator of this bike for riding inside Flushing Meadow Park, where a 4-year-old was injured by one of these bikes yesterday. The individual was issued a summons & the bike was confiscated. pic.twitter.com/CtNRASqKJp  NYPD 110th Precinct (@NYPD110Pct) July 20, 2021

Officials said eight people have been killed and 350 others have been injured by illegal bikes in the first quarter of this year.

Mark Gjonaj, a Democratic city councilmember from the Bronx, is proposing a bill to increase penalties to $750 for first time offenders and $1,500 for second offenses.

Gjonaj added that the vehicles have been connected to several crimes in the city, including a carjacking and shooting on the George Washington Bridge by a group of dirt bike riders last week, NY1 reports.

Its becoming a weapon and means of escape, knowing that no one will chase you. The image that it really presents is that we are in a city of lawlessness, said Gjonaj.

No arrests have been made yet in the Beauchamp incident.
Surveillance video captured the moment a teen desperately tried to escape from a gunman who shot him in the leg on a street in Queens in broad daylight as violent crime in New York City continues to spiral out of control.

The incident took place on Sunday afternoon in front of a 99-cent store in Jamaica, Queens.

The suspect is filmed entering the store and then later catching up with the 16-year-old victim who tries to shield himself behind a brick column.

The two appear to exchange words and at one point the victim shrugs his shoulders as if to ask: 'Why?' but he is chased relentlessly by the suspect who is holding a gun in his right hand.

Eventually the teen victim tries to make a run for it but he is shot at close range in his right leg.

It marked the latest in a string of broad daylight attacks in the Big Apple - where shootings have spiked nearly 30 percent in 2021 compared to last year.

Scroll down for video:

Footage captures the moment a teen tries to escape a gunman who brazenly shoots him in the leg in broad daylight as violent crime in NYC continues to rise

The suspect is captured shooting the 16-year-old in the right leg after chasing him

Police are asking for help identifying the suspect (pictured) who shot a 16-year-old in Jamaica, Queens

The victim and the suspect both run away from the scene in opposite directions after the shooting.

The victim was taken to a local hospital where he was treated for his non-life threatening gunshot wound.

Police say the victim has not been cooperative and as of Tuesday they are still searching for the suspect, the New York Post reported.

The shooting is the latest in the string of violent crime that have left many New Yorkers worried that the city is sliding back to the dark days of the '70s and '80s when it earned the nickname 'Fear City'.

In the 1970s, the city faced $10billion in debt and funds were cut to the police and other services.

NYPD data shows that shootings have spiked 28.9 percent in 2021 compared to last year as of July 11, its most recent data. There have been 803 shooting incidents in 2021 compared to 623 in 2020.

The incident took place on Sunday afternoon in front of a 99- cent store (pictured) in Jamaica, Queens

Crime in New York City has risen, specifically the number of shooting victims and murders

Shooting victims are also up a staggering 22.2 percent year over year, with 931 people falling victim to gun crime compared to 623 by this time last year.

The number of murders has also risen from 215 to 225 in the same timeframe - a 4.7 percent rise.

Rape has surged 7.3 percent and other sex crimes 25.9 percent.

The biggest leap in crime rates is for hate crimes, which has surged by 118.2 percent in the last year. This data comes amid numerous random attacks on Asian Americans in the city, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eric Adams, the ex-cop who is the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, warned last Wednesday that 'no one is going to come back' if violence, and in particular gun violence in the Big Apple continues.

The Brooklyn borough president appeared at an event with Governor Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday as the two political leaders presented a united front in addressing the worrying rising crime.

'No one is going to come back to our multibillion-dollar tourism industry if 3-year-olds are being shot in Times Square,' Adams said.

Adams, 60, won the Democratic primary for this year's mayoral race and will become the mayor of New York if he defeats Republican Curtis Sliwa in the general election.

He ripped New York judges and bail reform laws for not doing their part to combat the rising crime rates.

He also said judges are not using tools they do have at their disposal like Kendra's Law which lets courts order mental health treatment in some cases.

'Our judges are not giving bail on cases where they are allowed to give bail. They're refusing to use Kendra's Law on mental health issues,' Adams said.

'We have thrown up our hands, and we have surrendered our city. It's time for us to ensure our city is for the working class, everyday people who are following the laws and saying that government is going to make sure we protect them.'

Cuomo described gun violence as a 'major civil rights issue' while announcing the state will offer 4,000 summer jobs and full-time jobs with training for the city's youth in the hopes of providing an 'alternative' to gun violence, the Daily News reported.

Those efforts come after de Blasio already unveiled 75,000 jobs for city youth this summer, as noted by the Daily News.

Cuomo admitted back in May that New York City is now in the throes of a 'major problem.'

'New Yorkers don't feel safe and they don't feel safe because the crime rate is up,' he said.

'It's not that they are being neurotic or overly sensitive - they are right.'
Ethics filings and company records show how the Israeli cyberintelligence company NSO Group spent millions of dollars on Washington lobbyists, consultants and lawyers as it tried to sell its Pegasus spyware to the U.S. government.

Its parent companies paid $100,000 to Michael Flynn before he became President Trump's national security adviser; it took on the public relations firm cofounded by Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser; and it relied on the legal and consulting services of a slew of figures with government experience, according to new reports.

The company's activities have exploded into public view during the past week with revelations from a media coalition, called the Pegasus Project, that its software was used by governments to spy on political opponents and journalists

Now it has emerged in the Washington Post that NSO, its founders or allied companies hired some of Washington's most prominent names as they tried to secure government contracts.

The include former heads of the Homeland Security and Justice departments as well as some of the city's most powerful public-relations and law firms.

The Israeli cyberintelligence company NSO Group retained some of Washington's most powerful lobbyists, consultants and PR advisers as it touted for business and tried to burnish its image, including President Trump's future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn (left) and his former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security, was taken on in 2019 after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, according to the Washington Post. And NSO Group also hired P.R. firm SKSD, which was includes Anita Dunn, now a

It even launched a separate company, Westridge Technologies, to pursue government contracts, pitching to the Drug Enforcement Agency and other law enforcement agencies - although the newspaper reported the approaches were unsuccessful.

More successful were its attempts to build a D.C. rolodex filled with influencers. Some were hired in the aftermath of the Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi when the company faced a lawsuit accusing it of helping surveil the dissident.

They included Tom Ridge, the first homeland security secretary; Juliette Kayyem, a Department of Homeland Security official under President Obama; and Franc's former ambassador to Washington Gerard Araud.

Kayyem told the newspaper she had worked on ensuring NSOs spyware 'protected and respected' human rights. The other two did not respond to requests for comment.

It also took on a prominent P.R. firm SKDK. Its cofounder Anita Dunn was communications director in the Obama White House and is now a senior adviser to President Biden.

The Who's Who of government figures runs through at least three administrations.

Obama's homeland security secretary Jeh Johnson was paid by NSO's parent company, OSY, to review its human rights policy.

And Trump's deputy attorney general from 2017 to 2019 Rod Rosenstein, partner at the law firm King and Spalding, was among its advisers last year when NSO was sued by WhatsApp, which accused it of hacing the accounts of 1400 users.

Rosenstein had prosecuted foreign hackers and denounced the murder of Khashoggi as 'lawless,' during his time at the Department of Justice.

Others who did work for NSO Group or its parent company included former French ambassador and prominent Twitter personality Gerard Araud (left) and former Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson

And a Public Financial Disclosure Report, filed when he joined the Trump administration, reportedly showed that NSO's parent company, OSY Technologies, and a previous owner, Fancisco Partners, paid about $100,000 to Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The form offered no further details about his work.

The Israeli company said it would investigate its foreign government clients for 'abuses' of its Pegasus spyware after a damning Amnesty International report revealed on Sunday that it had been used to target some 50,000 phones - including those of journalists, public officials and Arab royals.

NSO Group sells Pegasus to government clients with the purported purpose of investigating terrorism and crime.

The Amnesty International report, along with another by a consortium of global media outlets, claimed that it was actually being used by governments to spy on journalists, officials, royals and individuals including murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi's widow.

The journalists targeted included Ben Hubbard, the New York Times' Beirut Bureau Chief, and Azam Ahmed, the Times' Mexico Bureau Chief, along with other journalists based in India, the Morocco, Mexico and Azerbaijan.

Others include reporters working for the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and CNN but many have not been named. 189 journalists were targeted.

NSO released a statement via its US-based lawyer, Clare Locke, to say it had nothing to do with any misuse of Pegasus.

Its CEO, Shalev Hulio, told The Washington Post: 'Every allegation about misuse of the system is concerning me.

The list includes some the 50,000 phone numbers that were exposed to the malware. The malware doesn't require users to click on it for it to work

NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio, told The Washington Post : 'Every allegation about misuse of the system is concerning me'

'It violates the trust that we give customers. We are investigating every allegation  and if we find that it is true, we will take strong action.'

Amazon Web Services has disabled its network on Tuesday. It's unclear if that means it can still operate.

'When we learned of this activity, we acted quickly to shut down the relevant infrastructure and accounts.'

The Amnesty report says NSO switched to use Amazon's CloudFront - a CDN - in 'recent months'.

Amnesty started investigating the group in 2018 after learning one of its staffers had been targeted.

It compiled a list of 50,000 phone numbers that were exposed to the malware. It's unclear if all were compromised or if the numbers are just a list of potential targets.

A spokesman for AP, which had two journalists targeted, told DailyMail.com: 'We are deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists, along with journalists from many news organizations, are among those who may have been targeted by Pegasus spyware. We have taken steps to ensure the security of our journalists devices and are investigating.'

The New York Times said: 'Azam Ahmed and Ben Hubbard are talented journalists who have done important work uncovering information that governments did not want their citizens to know.

'Surveilling reporters is designed to intimidate not only those journalists but their sources, which should be of concern to everyone.'

The journalists targeted included Ben Hubbard, the New York Times' Beirut Bureau Chief (left) and Azam Ahmed, the Times' Mexico Bureau Chief (right) along with other journalists based in India, the Morocco, Mexico and Azerbaijan.

Hanan El Atr, the widow of murdered Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi, was also targeted, according to the data

Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf was also among those whose phones were targeted

In a statement through lawyers Clare Locke, NSO said: 'NSO does not operate the systems that it sells to vetted government customers, and does not have access to the data of its customers targets.

'NSO does not operate its technology, does not collect, nor possesses, nor has any access to any kind of data of its customers.

NSO Group claims it is on a 'life-saving mission' to combat terrorism

'Due to contractual and national security considerations, NSO cannot confirm or deny the identity of our government customers, as well as identity of customers of which we have shut down systems.'

It also said its software had 'nothing to do' with Jamal Khashoggi's murder, despite Amnesty International claiming it has proof his widow's phone was hacked using Pegasus after his death.

'NSO Group is on a life-saving mission, and the company will faithfully execute this mission undeterred, despite any and all continued attempts to discredit it on false grounds,' it said.

Foreign governments including India, Rwanda and Morocco have all denied using the software to collect data on targets.

Others targeted include several Arab royal family members, 65 Business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists including a 'small number from' CNN, the Associated Press, Voice of America, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Le Monde in France, the Financial Times in London and Al Jazeera in Qatar.

Some of the reporters are named Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf, Siddharth Varadarajan and Paranjoy Guha Thakurta from Indian news site Wire Omar Radi, a Moroccan journalist, Mexican freelance journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto and Azerbaijani investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova.

In 2019, NSO Group reportedly contracted the SKDK - a PR firm run by Anita Dunn, one of President Biden's advisers.

She did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com's inquiries about the scope of her work with the firm.
An adorable and unlikely friendship between a cat and a dog has been caught on camera with the pooch bringing out a toy for the kitten to play with.

German shepherd Anya loves nothing more than bringing her best friend, kitten Munchie, her favourite toy and enticing her to play with her, according to owner Lori Knoble, from Cleveland, Ohio.

She rescued Munchie from a dumpster and says she instantly bonded with Anya.

Footage shows Anya diligently bringing Munchie's wand toy downstairs and into the kitchen before walking around trying to get the kitten's attention.

German shepherd Anya loves nothing more than bringing her best friend, kitten Munchie, her favourite toy and enticing her to play with her at home in Cleveland, Ohio

At first Munchie just stares at Anya as though she is trying to resist the temptation.

But after a few seconds she gives in and dives for the fluffy toy on the end of the string before the two spend ages in a disjointed tug of war.

Ms Knoble said: 'When we first brought Munchie the rescue kitten home, she was really scared and just stayed on the basement stairs.

'One day our dog Anya just picked up her toy and started playing with Munchie trying to get her to chase it. Since then, they play everyday.

'Anya is the one who truly helped Munchie not be afraid and helped her to adjust to her new life of living with us.

'She usually plays with her every morning, or whenever we leave the toy out laying around.

Footage shows Anya diligently bringing Munchie's toy downstairs and into the kitchen before walking around trying to get the kitten's attention

Ms Knoble said: 'Anya is the one who truly helped Munchie not be afraid and helped her to adjust to her new life of living with us'

'Munchie has grown from a tiny, scared kitten living in a dumpster all alone, to becoming a member of our family who is loved and cherished.

'It melts our hearts that Anya instinctively knew how to help Munchie to not be afraid. You can't help but smile when you see them playing together.'

'They play lovingly and they love to tease each other, too!'
If there was a slim chance that Prince Harry's relationship with his father and brother could be salvaged, his decision to pen a tell-all autobiography about his life in the Royal Family has just torpedoed any remaining hope.

Multiple royal insiders tell me that there is a 'growing sense of shock and fury' among the royal palaces and Harry's own family members about his book plan.

'This is the no going back moment  the final nail in the coffin of the Royal Family's relationship with Harry,' a senior royal source tells me. 'The emotional turmoil as they wait over a year for publication is going to be torturous.'

Multiple royal insiders tell me that there is a 'growing sense of shock and fury' among the royal palaces and Harry's own family members about his book plan, writes Dan Wootton

What has angered courtiers most is that Harry and Meghan know, whatever they say in the book, Prince Charles and Prince William, as heirs to the throne, will find it almost impossible to fight back.

Insiders close to the Prince of Wales have confirmed he did not know about Harry's book, even though he has been working on it for the past year.

Another source explains: 'Prince Charles didn't know anything about it. This is really painful, it's going to be difficult for him to take. The assumption is that he will take another kicking from Harry.

'The real disappointing thing for Charles is that he used to get on with Harry so well, actually far better than William. He feels so let down by the whole thing.'

Clarence House is also believed to be worried about what Harry might write about his stepmother Camilla.

The source adds: 'Let's be honest, Harry has never been close to the Duchess of Cornwall. If he documents their fraught relationship in the book it could be very damaging at a time when Charles is laying the groundwork for her to become Queen.'

While there is still hope that Charles and Harry's relationship will be able to recover, courtiers do not believe a rapprochement with William is possible.

A royal insider says: 'This is the end of any close relationship with the Duke of Cambridge. There's nothing more that can be said on that front. William believes his behaviour is shameful and tasteless.

'Harry's been going around to people saying he can't remember his childhood and his mother that much. Now he's going to write a book about it. How does that stack up?

'What's really telling is even the relatives he remains closest to, like princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, are stunned by what he's up to.'

As for the damage Harry's revelations could cause, courtiers are split.

Prince Charles and Prince William arrive at Royal Ascot on June 18, 2019

Prince Harry's new book could threaten Charles' plan to make Camilla (pictured today at a school in the Isles of Scilly) his queen

A royal insider explains: 'This is nothing like Andrew Morton's biography of Princess Diana or Jonathan Dimbleby's of Prince Charles  this is coming from the horse's mouth.

'Harry will have to take ownership of every word forever more. There's no room for deniability.

'So in terms of the monarchy, this is massive. It's going to have a big impact.

'But what's the worst he can say? Will he name the so-called 'royal racist'? There's a lot of worry about that.'

MailOnline columnist Dan Wootton

The book's publication in 2022 has also worried courtiers because it risks overshadowing a trio of significant royal milestones.

The source explains: 'First and foremost, it's the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. That's what matters most.

'But it's also Prince William's 40th birthday and the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana.

'With that mix, it should have been a really positive year for the Royal Family.

'But Harry clearly doesn't care. He's acting like a child. We need to remember he's a nearly 37-year-old man, not a 21-year-old. He's on the cusp of middle age.'

Some royal insiders are also questioning what Harry's announcement that the proceeds for the book will go to charity really means.

The New York Post reported that the deal with Penguin Random House will see Prince Harry getting at least 14.7million ($20m) upfront for the book, with at least a million of that believed going to the ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer.

However, Harry has not said whether the massive multi million pound advance will also be donated to charity.

Harry - pictured with Meghan - seems to 'revel' in the pushback from London

My royal source says: 'Surely Harry has to make it clear if that advance is going to charity too. Because otherwise the proceeds from the book will be much lower given it has to first cover the costs of such a massive advance.'

Harry isn't at all concerned about the pushback from London. In fact, he seems to revel in it these days.

Announcing the news yesterday, he said in a statement: 'I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learnt  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.

'I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learnt over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful.'

The Queen stepping out to attend the Royal Windsor Cup Final earlier this month

And even though there's general outrage within the Royal Family at Harry's move to become a bestselling author on the back of the institution, some admit he has finally proven beyond any doubt that he can be financially self-sufficient and sees no path back.

One royal source explains: 'There's a lot going on among the family at the moment. A shifting of the power bases following the death of Prince Philip, with Prince Charles and Prince William both solidifying their power.

'But Harry doesn't give a damn. He's there to do what's right for him. He no longer cares about how his actions impact the monarchy.

'He went to California with the sole goal of showing that he will never need to rely on his family for money again  and he's proven that beyond any doubt.'
White House comms director Kate Bedingfield said social media companies should be held accountable for publishing misleading info on vaccine

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said on Tuesday that social media companies should be held accountable for publishing misleading information on the COVID vaccine.

She also said the administration is reviewing Section 230, a section of the law that gives tech companies blanket legal protections for content posted on their platforms.

'Social media companies have a responsibility,' Bedingfield said on MSNBC's Morning Joe, echoing a message that has come out of the White House this week as they try to raise the vaccination rate.

She confirmed the administration is reviewing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

'We're reviewing that and certainly they should be held accountable. I think you heard the president speak very aggressively about this,' she said. 'It is also the responsibility of the people creating the content. Again I go back to there are conservative news outlets creating irresponsible content sharing misinformation about the virus that's getting shared on these platforms. So it is a big and complicated ecosystem and everybody bears responsibility.'

The Communications Decency Act, which sets the laws governing the internet, was written in 1996 when companies like Google and Facebook didn't exist. Tech companies are fighting to keep the blanket protections provided by the law as there is a rising call to increase regulation of them.

Section 230 is credited with allowing the modern internet to exist.

Twitter and Facebook, in particular, are heavily dependent on Section 230 to build their businesses and boost their profits. Both companies have increased their internal regulations of user content this election year in the face of the growing threat of federal regulation.

Donald Trump pushed to repeal the law when he was president. Most Republican senators - and even some Democrats - said it needs to be reformed. Trump is currently suing social media companies like Facebook and Twitter for removing him from their platforms.

The White House is pushing back against vaccine misinformation as COVID cases are on the rise across the United States. The U.S. recorded 52,111 new cases on Monday with a seven-day rolling average of 34,682, which is a 224 percent increase from the 10,678 average recorded three weeks ago.

Nearly every state - aside from Montana and Iowa - and the District of Columbia have seen infections rise in the last week, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of Johns Hopkins data.

The U.S. recorded 52,111 new COVID-19 cases on Monday with a seven-day rolling average of 34,682, which is a 224% increase from the 10,678 average recorded three weeks ago

Nearly every state - aside from Montana and Iowa - and the District of Columbia have seen infections rise in the last week

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden on Monday walked back a bit of his tough talk on Facebook. He insisted the company 'isn't killing people' and instead blamed them for allowing 12 people to spread the majority of online vaccine misinformation.

'Facebook isn't killing people,' Biden said. He stepped back remarks he made on Friday.

'These 12 people are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it,' he continued. 'It's killing people. It's bad information.'

'My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally,' Biden said, 'that they would do something.'

Biden also assured 'we are not in a battle with Facebook.'

Last week, when Biden was asked if he had a message for Facebook, he responded: 'They're killing people. I mean it really. Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people.'

Facebook pushed back against that in a statement released Saturday, lashing out at the administration for 'blaming a handful of American social media companies' for the declining vaccination rate.

'While social media plays an important role in society, it is clear that we need a whole of society approach to end this pandemic,' Facebook's vice president of integrity, Guy Rosen, wrote in a corporate blog post.

The White House's top public health official also said on Sunday morning that Facebook was 'costing' American lives by not combating misinformation.

President Joe Biden did a u-turn on Monday by saying 'Facebook isn't killing people' and pleading that CEO Mark Zuckerberg 'instead of taking it personally... do something' to combat misinformation surrounding the coronavirus vaccine

'We know that health misinformation harms people's health. It costs them their lives,' Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told CNN. 'I have seen that as a doctor over the years, as patients have struggled with health misinformation.'

'And here's the key thing to remember,' he added when speaking with State of the Union host Dana Bash, 'health misinformation takes away our freedom and our power to make decisions for us and for our families. And that's a problem.'

'The platforms have to recognize that they have played a major role in the increase in speed and scale with which misinformation is spreading.'
A wealthy British businessman was killed by a car as he attempted to cross a dual carriageway in Ukraine, an inquest heard today.

Witnesses described seeing the aftermath of the collision in which Barry Pring, 47, died while he waited for a taxi with his wife Ganna Ziuzina.

Mr Pring and Ms Ziuzina, known as Anna, had been out for a meal at a restaurant in Kiev in February 2008 to celebrate their first wedding anniversary.

The IT consultant married Ms Ziuzina, who is now called Julianna Moore, in January 2007 in a whirlwind romance after meeting online when she had registered with the www.elenasmodels.com website.

Mr Pring and Ms Ziuzina had between them drunk a litre of vodka at the Kozachok restaurant before leaving before midnight to get a taxi home.

Musician Svitlana Dudko, who was performing that evening in the restaurant, told the inquest she was working on the terrace and had a good view of the street outside.

Ms Ziuzina was a qualified primary school teacher but worked as a dancer when she married

Barry Pring and Ganna Ziuzina in a wedding picture when they married in the Ukraine in 2007

'I heard a screeching noise and the sound of an impact and then I saw a dark-coloured vehicle move along the traffic section and then I saw by the guard rail there was a dismembered body,' she told the hearing via an interpreter from Ukraine.

Asked to further describe what she saw, she said: 'They were trying to climb over the guard rail towards the traffic.

'The man had already climbed over the rail. I saw them climb.

'They had been in the restaurant from 5pm to 11.30pm and they were quite drunk because they had been drinking vodka all the time and they were just messing around near the guard rail.

'I turned around towards them when I heard the noise and screeching sound and I saw the remains of the person and it was quite mashed.'

Ms Dudko described the vehicle she saw as a 'foreign black car'.

Anna Ziuzina pictured with gun on internet posted picture has been forced to deny plot to kill

Barry Pring and Ganna Ziuzina at their wedding reception after they tied the knot in 2007

Restaurant worker Natalia Mytsyk told the inquest: 'I heard a very loud bang and heard a scream.

'I looked round outside, and I saw a girl kneeling by the rail and a blooded man on the floor.

'She was screaming. I saw a blooded mess in the snow and I realised there was nothing I could do about it and I took the young lady into the restaurant.

'I took the young lady into the bathroom and helped her wash and helped her drink and I instructed the barman to phone the police.'

The inquest previously heard that Ms Moore, who was a qualified primary school teacher but worked as a dancer when she married, had been accused in past High Court proceedings by Mr Pring's family of murdering her husband.

She told the inquest that she had not organised her husband's murder or paid anyone to do it.

Mr Pring, who was originally from Devon, owned three properties in the London area and a flat in Kiev. He also owned a second flat jointly with Ms Moore in Kiev.

His family became suspicious that his death may have been foul play because Ms Moore was 'very cold' towards him and 'not loving or caring', the inquest heard.

They hired a private investigator in the Ukraine who discovered the authorities had not investigated Mr Pring's death properly.

The hearing continues.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is calling for a 'wartime scale' effort to fight climate change in a press conference where progressive lawmakers pledged that money for a 1.5 million-strong 'climate corps' will be included in Democrats' budget reconciliation bill.

'The question is not just if we are going to do it, but how - how big, how ambitious?' the New York Democrat said Tuesday morning. 'Our climate crisis today requires a peaceful but wartime scale mobilization in order to combat the climate crisis.'

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who opened the press conference, said he would 'ensure' the climate corps is part of Democrats' sweeping $3.5trillion budget bill.

'I will fight to get the biggest, boldest CCC possible,' Schumer said.

The idea behind the CCC is modeled after the first Civilian Climate Corps, created by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 during the Great Depression.

It has has similarities to the Peace Corps that were established by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, where thousands of American volunteers worked in developing nations.

Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez called for 'a peaceful but wartime scale mobilization in order to combat the climate crisis' at a press conference Tuesday morning

Ocasio-Cortez joined House and Senate Democrats to announce that funding for a 1.5 million-strong 'Climate Corps' would be included in an upcoming budget reconciliation bill - but whether it will match President Biden's initial $10 billion price tag for the program is unclear

President Biden included $10billion for a Civilian Climate Conservation Corps in his original $2trillion American Jobs Plan, which struggled to gain Republican support.

Ocasio-Cortez outlined an ambitious scope for how far the money should go.

She pledged that half of the CCC's funds - which could be up to $5billion - would go 'to making sure that this is not just going to our national parks and funding Climate Corps members to our national parks, but in urban communities as well to face environmental injustices.'

She added that the millions of new positions would be 'good union jobs.'

Democrats' idea for a Climate Corps is modeled after the original program created by Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression, where roughly 3 million men were employed to help build roads, dams and aid in natural disaster recovery across the country. (Pictured here are a group of 250,000 men doing government reforestation work in April 1933)

Lawmakers aim for the new CCC to pay workers a minimum of $15 per hour - a big change in a public service sector where AmeriCorps and Peace Corps members get paid barely more than a small stipend (pictured is a Peace Corps volunteer and nurse tending to babies at a clinic in Malaysia in the 1960s)

The initiative would recruit 1,500,000 members by 2015 to 'complete important projects across the entire country to help address the climate crisis,' according to Senate Democrats' Civilian Climate Corps for Jobs and Justice Act.

Lawmakers aim for a minimum pay of $15 per hour plus benefits. Otherwise fulfilling service sector roles are notorious for their low compensation like AmeriCorps, where workers are seen more as volunteers who receive a stipend and are encouraged, since they are compensated so little, to sign up for food stamps.

Senate Democrats are hoping the reconciliation budget, which would allow them to bypass GOP support, could accomplish some of Biden's wish list with a 51-50 majority vote

The program employed roughly 3 million young men to help build roads, dams, fight wildfires and aid in natural disaster relief across the country. Its nine-year run was interrupted by World War II.

The CCC is a part of a sweeping $3.5trillion budget reconciliation bill full of progressive priorities.

Under increasing pressure to pass infrastructure spending and with little Republican support, Senate Democrats are hoping to agree to a reconciliation budget which would allow them to bypass GOP lawmakers and accomplish Biden's wish list with a 51-50 majority vote.

'I think that the beauty of reconciliation is that it's not an "either/or" proposition, it's a "yes, and?" proposition,' Ocasio-Cortez said.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pledged to use his leadership role to 'fight to get the biggest, boldest CCC possible'

'This is not a pipe dream, and this is not some big, progressive vision that is "unrealistic" - this is what we have already done.'

But Democrats hinted at bigger plans for the program's revival.

'Our mandate today is not just to revive some of the most ambitious programs and ideas, but so much of this is about how we go even bigger and better than we did originally,' Ocasio-Cortez said.
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Nearly 100 coronavirus deaths were recorded across Britain today in the country's worst daily fatality toll for four months.

Department of Health bosses announced another 96 Covid victims, up 92 per cent on last week and the most since March 24 (98), when the second wave was fading.

Day-to-day counts fluctuate heavily and figures on Tuesdays are normally skewed by reporting lags from over the weekend. But the number of victims, which doesn't necessarily represent how many people died overnight, has been rising for weeks, in line with the ferocious surge in cases seen throughout June.

Covid hospitalisations are also still increasing, with 745 admissions recorded on July 14  the latest date data is available for. The figure was up by a third on the week before.

But in a slight glimmer of hope, the weekly growth in infections appears to be beginning to flatten out. Another 46,558 positive tests recorded today, up by 27 per cent in a week. However, the speed of increase when looking at the seven-day average for cases  which paints a more accurate picture of the size of the outbreak  shows the rate has fallen for the third day in a row.

Meanwhile, No10 today refused to rule out making people prove they are double-jabbed to get into pubs, despite Tory rebels and civil liberties campaigners vowing to fight Boris Johnson's 'disgusting' threat to restrict access to nightclubs.

The Prime Minister  who is self-isolating after being 'pinged'  last night delivered an ultimatum to young people about the shape of the rules from September, telling a press conference that proof of double-vaccination will be a 'condition of entry' at clubs.

When pushed on whether the prospective edict could apply to bars as well, Downing Street merely said it will 'use the coming weeks to look at the evidence'.

In other developments today, the UK was left fearing a Summer of Discontent as the NHS Covid app continued to 'ping' swathes of the country into isolation. Weary Britons complained of fuel and food shortages, bin collection cancellations, railways delays, and scores of school and business closures.

Separate NHS England data shows of the 165 deaths recorded in hospitals over the last week, 140 were in people aged 60 or older. Eighteen were aged 40 to 59, seven were between 20 and 39 and none were younger than 20

Deaths in under-60s (light blue line) appear to remain flat while they are beginning to rise in over-60s (dark blue line). Daily deaths were seven times higher in over-60s (36) than under-60s (5) on July 15 in England

There were 183 deaths linked to Covid in the week to July 9, the latest available. This was a 67 per cent rise compared to the same time last week and the most since April. They are shown on the graph (dark red bar)

Care home Covid deaths have, however, remained static despite growing cases in the community. There were 20 last week, and they have not risen above 30 since March

Flu and pneumonia were also still blamed for more deaths than Covid in the latest week. They were behind 254 fatalities, compared to the 147 which noted Covid as the main cause of death

No10 refuses to rule out making people prove they are double-jabbed to get into PUBS No10 today refused to rule out making people prove they are double-jabbed to get into pubs - as Tory rebels vowed to fight Boris Johnson's 'disgusting' threat to restrict access to nightclubs. The PM faces a furious backlash from MPs and civil liberties campaigners after delivering an ultimatum to young people about the shape of the rules from September at a press briefing last night. And pushed on whether the prospective edict could apply to bars as well Downing Street merely said it will 'use the coming weeks to look at the evidence'. Former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption said the move was 'completely unnecessary' given the high rates of vaccine take-up across the UK. Scientist Carl Heneghan suggested it is the thin end of the wedge, saying if the government is worried about 'crowded spaces' they will end up demanding medical evidence to board the Tube. And Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, who chaired the ethics advisory board for NHSx on its contact tracing app, warned that ministers need to be wary about 'where incentive meets coercion'. Critics also pointed out that being vaccinated is not a guarantee people do not have coronavirus, with around 40 per cent of hospital cases having been jabbed. Tory MP Charles Walker declared he will vote against the plan if it comes to the Commons after the summer recess. 'It will start with nightclubs and then quickly move on to other parts of the hospitality sector,' he told BBC Radio 4's World at One. Another senior lockdown-sceptic told MailOnline there are 'likely' to be enough Tory rebels. But they stressed a revolt would be 'pointless' unless Labour lines up against the measures. 'It's all about Keir Starmer... unless Labour go through the division lobbies in opposition it will happen,' the MP said. The MP said the PM's was using a 'disgusting' tactic to pressure young people to get jabs. 'I am profoundly disgusted that a Conservative government is manipulating the public like this... it is awful,' they said. Asked whether pubs could also be caught by the requirement, a No10 spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister talked about the sort of areas we were considering, and nightclubs are where there is significant evidence we have at the moment. 'But we're going to use the coming weeks to look at the evidence, particularly both in the UK and globally before making a specific decision.' Advertisement

On another day of coronavirus chaos:

No10 refused to rule out making people prove they are double-jabbed to get into pubs as Tory rebels vowed to fight Boris Johnson's 'disgusting' threat to restrict access to nightclubs;

The NHS Covid app continued to 'ping' swathes of the country into self-isolation with 1.7million people thought to be forced to stay at home;

MailOnline revealed plans are being drawn up that would require football fans to prove they have had two doses of Covid vaccination before they can attend matches from the end of September;

No10 slapped down a minister for saying people can ignore being 'pinged' by the NHS app if they think it is the 'right thing' to do;

A hospital trust has bought its local Nightingale Hospital to get surgery waiting lists for the county down;

One in five parents said they would be prepared to take their children out of the classroom to avoid ruining their summer staycation;

Dominic Cummings claimed Boris Johnson attempted to resist pleas for a second lockdown last autumn, joking that the Covid pandemic was only killing pensioners.

The latest Department of Health data for England shows daily deaths were seven times higher in over-60s (36) than under-60s (5) on July 15  the most recent day an age breakdown is available for.

Separate NHS England data shows of the 165 deaths recorded in hospitals over the last week, 140 were in people aged 60 or older. Eighteen were aged 40 to 59, seven were between 20 and 39 and none were younger than 20.

Addressing the spike in deaths today, Dr Yvonne Doyle, medical director at Public Health England, said: 'The past 18 months have been tough on us all.

'Now restrictions have lifted many of us want to get back to doing what we enjoy most.

'However, we must do so with caution and remain sensible. We are in a wave of infections that has seen an increase of over 40 per cent in the past week, there is still a risk of severe illness for many people.

'We can all reduce the risk by getting both doses of the vaccine, testing ourselves twice a week at home and spending more time outside or in well ventilated rooms. Let's all remain vigilant.'

Separate data today showed weekly Covid deaths have risen to their highest level since April.

Office for National Statistics data showed 183 people had Covid mentioned on their death certificates in England and Wales in the week ending July 9, the latest available.

This was two-thirds higher than the previous week and the most recorded since the second wave was dying down at the end of April and the country was under much stricter lockdown rules.

Despite deaths now starting to tick upwards  there are 42 on average every day now compared to 20 at the start of the month  they are still just a fraction of the levels seen during the worst of the second wave, when there were up to 1,800.

Experts say fatalities will continue to climb as cases rise but the Government's scientific advisers expect them to peak at 200 or below because of the success of the vaccines.

The report found Covid deaths in care homes were also low despite surging cases in the community. There were 20 recorded in the latest week, and they have not risen above 30 since mid-April.

Last month the ONS said the proportion of overall deaths in England and Wales blamed on the virus was just 1 per cent. Now that is estimated to be 2 per cent and rising.

Every region of England saw an increase in Covid deaths but rates stayed flat in Wales, according to the weekly ONS report.

Deaths from all causes surged six per cent above the five-year average in England and Wales, however, (shown) for the number of deaths expected at this time of year

But fatalities due to the virus in care homes remained static despite growing Covid cases in the community

'Pingdemonium' chaos sees ONE MILLION children off school, the pound PLUNGE, bins uncollected and food and fuel supplies running low The UK was today left fearing a Summer of Discontent as the NHS Covid app continued to 'ping' swathes of the country into isolation - while weary Britons complained of fuel and food shortages, bin collection cancellations, railways delays, and scores of school and business closures. Around 1.7million people are thought to be currently isolating at home after being notified by the app or contacted by Test & Trace, with the problem set to get much worse as cases keep rising. More than a million pupils were out of the classroom last week, according to new Department of Education data, with 81,000 reporting a confirmed or suspected case of Covid and the rest self-isolating following a positive contact. With the summer break just 48 hours away, parents are pulling their children out of classrooms to avoid having their staycations ruined, amid warnings from travel bosses that a lack of staff will leave holiday lets and attractions unable to open. Staff shortages fuelled by self-isolating staff have seen green bin deliveries suspended in at least eight council areas, including Liverpool and Bristol, as shoppers took pictures of empty shelves and oil giant BP blamed petrol shortages at an M25 service station on the closure of a distribution centre. Yet more schools, libraries, art galleries and hospitality venues today revealed fresh tales of woe, with one Bournemouth restaurant losing thousands of pounds after having to cancel 100 table covers when one chef received an app notification. And in yet another economic blow, the pound plunged to its lowest level against the dollar for five months as investors fretted about a surge in infections that experts say will be exacerbated by Freedom Day. As of midday, one pound was worth 1.36 dollars - its lowest level since February. Advertisement

The North West  which has battled a major outbreak of the Indian 'Delta' variant  suffered the most deaths (66), followed by London and the West Midlands (both 20).

Meanwhile, the fewest Covid deaths were registered in the North East (eight) despite the region currently being hit hardest by the Indian variant, with case rates double the levels reached in the second wave.

Deaths across the region will rise over the coming weeks because of the data lag between cases and fatalities  it can take over a fortnight for infected patients to fall seriously ill.

No10's Chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance warned that yesterday's easing of Covid rules in England would likely trigger a rise in Covid deaths nationwide.

'Freedom Day' saw most remaining restrictions removed, with face masks made optional and night clubs allowed to reopen for the first time in 16 months.

The ONS Covid death data looks at all cases in which the virus was listed on the death certificate.

It differs from the Department of Health's death toll which looks at all patients who died within 28 days of testing positive for Covid, no matter the cause.

It comes as cases hit their highest levels in months after breaking through the 40,000 barrier, amid fears they could reach 200,000 a day in August.

Hospitalisations and deaths are also rising, but they remain at much lower levels than in previous waves because of the successful vaccination drive.

Scientists have always been honest and said jabs are not perfect and will not always prevent infection but they do drastically slash the risk of someone who catches the virus being hospitalised or dying.

But in a clear sign they are working, analysis yesterday revealed Britain's Covid death rate is now 16 times lower than it was during both the first and second waves.

Infections are currently running at about 45,000 a day across Britain, with 40 deaths being registered every 24 hours on average. But the last time cases hit this level  when the second wave began to spiral out of control in late December  there were as many as 640 daily fatalities.

It comes as the PM faces a furious backlash from MPs and civil liberties campaigners after delivering an ultimatum to young people about the shape of the rules from September at a press briefing last night.

Former Supreme Court justice Lord Sumption said the move to restrict access to nightclubs to the fully-vaccinated was 'completely unnecessary' given the high rates of vaccine take-up across the UK.

Scientist Carl Heneghan suggested it is the thin end of the wedge, saying if the government is worried about 'crowded spaces' they will end up demanding medical evidence to board the Tube.

And Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, who chaired the ethics advisory board for NHSx on its contact tracing app, warned that ministers need to be wary about 'where incentive meets coercion'.

Critics also pointed out that being vaccinated is not a guarantee people do not have coronavirus, with around 40 per cent of hospital cases having been jabbed.
Social media users are slamming the Washington Post after the newspaper published a full page of artwork aimed to highlight Hunter Biden's (pictured) ethical scandals

The Washington Post's attempt to mock Hunter Biden's artistic aspirations with a full-page op-ed featuring parody paintings inspired by his many ethical controversies backfired when critics slammed the newspaper for failing to take those controversies seriously in its past coverage.

The op-ed by Meghan Kruger was published Monday under the headline Sneak Preview! Paintings from the Hunter Biden Art Show - making light of the real art show the president's son will be featured in at a Manhattan gallery.

Earlier this month it was revealed that the White House helped carve out a deal under which Hunter could sell his paintings for up to $500,000 without disclosing the identity of the buyers - thereby ensuring that they would not win presidential favors.

However, ethics experts raised alarm about the plan amid questions over how the administration and Hunter's lawyers will stop individual buyers from reaching out to him and potentially seeking influence through purchases.

The Post seized on the alarm in its parody op-ed, in which it drew from the other shady business dealings that have dogged Hunter ever since his father Joe launched his presidential campaign.

Editor Glen Kessler shared the piece on his Twitter account - where it was swiftly called out by critics who reminded of the Post's history of downplaying allegations surrounding Hunter.

The first of five artworks was titled From the Heart and includes a framed photo reading 'I Heart Burisma'.

The op-ed by Meghan Kruger was published Monday under the headline Sneak Preview! Paintings from the Hunter Biden Art Show - making light of the real art show the president's son will be featured in at a Manhattan gallery

The first fictitious work featured in the article (above) refers to Biden's involvement with Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings in 2019 and his alleged relationship with DC consultancy firm Blue Star Strategies

It refers to Biden's involvement with Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings in 2019, which was caused outrage on Capitol Hill due to his alleged relationship with DC consultancy firm Blue Star Strategies.

Blue Star was dragged into the political firestorm around Hunter's involvement with Burisma when it emerged that the company hired the Washington, DC lobbying shop to improve the image of its owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, who has been accused of corruption in Ukraine and investigated by British authorities. The US Department of Justice also launched an investigation into the incident.

During her testimony, Karen Tramontano, Blue Star Strategies co-founder and CEO, said Hunter did not direct any of her firm's work for Burisma, claimed that at first she did not know Hunter Biden was on its board, and that she did not intend to influence US policy through her meetings with US officials.

However email communications, obtained exclusively by DailyMail.com last month from Biden's abandoned laptop, revealed he was intimately involved with Blue Star's hiring by Burisma.

The second piece of artwork featured in the Washington Post piece is titled The Treachery of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

The second piece of artwork featured in the piece (above) comments on the allegations that Biden asked for money from China and suggests that in return he could help bend his father's foreign policy in the country's favor

It includes a framed sketch of a 100 Chinese Yuan banknote and is captioned 'ceci n'est pas une bribe' which means 'this is not a bribe' in French.

The work comments on the allegations that Biden asked for money from China and suggests that in return he could help bend his father's foreign policy in the country's favor.

Biden accompanied his father on a trip to China in 2013 where the vice president met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The trip faced scrutiny after the younger Biden ended up inking a deal for his hedge fund with the Bank of China within ten days of the visit.

The third piece of art in the gallery, titled Federal Income Tax Return, is a mixed media piece showcasing Biden's 'response to the challenge posed by IRS Form 1040'.

The third piece of art (above) showcases Biden's 'response to the challenge posed by IRS Form 1040.' This piece is commenting on the federal probe into his finances and stems from his work in China and Ukraine

This piece is commenting on the federal probe into Biden's taxes which began in 2018. The Justice Department is investigating Biden's finances and stems from his work in China and Ukraine. Investigators have scrutinized some of his Chinese business dealings, as well as other transactions.

Biden, who says he is fully cooperating with the probe, asserts his innocence and denies allegations that he gave his father any money from his foreign dealings.

Biden was on the board Burisma while his father was vice president. During that time Joe urged the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor, which some allege was done to benefit Burisma.

The fourth piece is a titled The Art Buyer as Seen From the White House Ethics Office and parodies Rene Magritte's 1946 painting titled The Son of Man.

The fourth piece is a titled The Art Buyer as Seen From the White House Ethics Office (left) and parodies Rene Magritte's 1946 painting titled The Son of Man (right). It comments on Biden's newly pursued art career and the role that President Joe Biden's Administration played in brokering arrangements for the sale of his paintings

Magritte's piece, a self-portrait, featured a man wearing an overcoat and bowler hat standing by the sea in front of a break wall. His face is obstructed by a green apple.

In the parody piece, the painting's subject, suggested to be Biden, is in the same environment. But, instead of an overcoat, Biden is wearing a shirt that read 'lobbyist' which was then crossed out and replaced with the words 'fine art collector.'

This piece is likely commenting on Biden's newly pursued art career and the role that President Joe Biden's Administration played in brokering arrangements for the sale of his paintings.

Earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed the White House helped set up a deal for buyers' identities to remain hidden to ensure they did not win presidential favors.

'I think it would be challenging for an anonymous person, who we don't know and Hunter Biden doesn't know, to have influence,' she said during a press briefing.

'Of course he has the right to pursue an artistic career just like any child of a president has the right to pursue a career, but all interactions regarding the selling of art and the setting of prices will be handled by a professional gallerist, adhering to the highest industry standards, and any offer out of the normal course would be rejected out of hand,' Psaki added.

'And the gallerist will not share information about buyers or prospective buyers, including their identities with Hunter Biden or the administration, which provides quite a level of protection and transparency.'

While the idea behind the plan was to avoid a situation where Biden might be in the position to provide favors to buyers, critics say it still offers an opportunity for unidentified individuals to shovel large sums to the president's son as he battles high living costs and legal fees.

The final fictitious work of art included in piece (seen above) suggests that Biden would not even have an art gallery if he wasn't the president's son

The final fictitious work of art included an empty frame titled Painters Who Would Appear in This Gallery if Not Named Biden, indicating that Biden would not even have an art gallery if he wasn't the president's son.

Biden's New York art show is set for this fall. His works are expected to be listed for prices ranging from $75,000 to as high as $500,000.

Art dealers have already noted that Biden is likely profiting off his father's name given the staggering price of his artwork, with one saying his art would more likely sell for as much as $100,000 if he wasn't a Biden.

Washington Post editor Glen Kessler shared the piece on his Twitter account on Monday with a tweet reading, 'Wash Post op-ed page pulls no punches with biting and funny 'exhibition' of Hunter Biden's art via Meghan Kruger.'

Washington Post editor Glen Kessler shared the piece on his Twitter account (tweet pictured above)

However, Kessler faced backlash from users who argued it took the outlet too long to expose Biden's alleged misdoings.

'Youre a bit late?' one wrote.

'About time!!' added another.

These comments come just months after Kessler mocked investigations and media references about the ongoing scandals surrounding Biden.

In December, Kessler tweeted out an New York Post article accusing then President Donald Trump on 'cheering for an undemocratic coup.'

'In his final weeks of campaigning, Trump repeatedly praised the NY Post for publishing the laptop stuff > Give it up, Mr. President  for your sake and the nation's,' Kessler wrote in the tweet.

Now, he is being called out for his alleged change of opinion.

Now, he's facing backlash from users who argued it took the newspaper too long to expose Biden's alleged misdoings

EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden was arranging for VP Joe to quit politics and start a DC 'swamp' consultancy firm together, raising MORE questions over President's claim that he has never discussed business with his son

Joe Biden had plans to join a law and consultancy firm with his sons Hunter and Beau, emails reveal.

Hunter discussed the proposed firm in a November 2014 email with his business partner and Biden family friend Jeff Cooper, a lawyer and entrepreneur.

The plans were thwarted by Beau's tragic death in 2015 from brain cancer, setting the whole family on a drastically different path.

Had Beau not passed away, the emails suggest that Joe Biden might have quit politics and entered the DC 'swamp' of politically-tied lawyers and highly-paid consultants and lobbyists  a world he has decried in speeches.

The email also raises questions over the president's claim that he never discussed business with Hunter.

Emails obtaned by Hunter Biden's laptop show Joe Biden planned to join a law and consultancy firm with his sons Hunter (left) and Beau (right)

Hunter discussed the proposed firm in a November 2014 email with his business partner and Biden family friend Jeff Cooper

This claim has come under increasing scrutiny after emails from Hunter's abandoned laptop revealed multiple instances where Joe appeared to be involved in business meetings relating to Hunter  both during his tenure as vice president and after he left office.

A now-infamous email between Hunter and his business partners in a multi-million-dollar deal with Chinese oil giant CEFC, consultant James Gilliar set out potential terms of the deal and listed '10 held by H for the big guy?'

The email also raises questions over the president's claim that he never discussed business with Hunter

The mysterious phrase from the May 2017 message has been interpreted as a proposal for Hunter to hold 10% of the shares in the joint venture on behalf of his father, who is referred to as 'the big guy' in several other emails on the laptop.

The president has denied this interpretation.

Other emails show Joe attended a private dinner with Hunter and his business partners and potential clients while he was vice president.

Hunter wrote to a friend before the 2015 Washington DC dinner that it was 'ostensibly to discuss food security', but was in fact an opportunity to introduce his potential clients and partners to his powerful father.

This month DailyMail.com revealed Hunter arranged White House and vice presidential residence meetings with his father for two Mexican billionaires with whom he was planning multi-million-dollar business ventures  and that Joe took Hunter and his business partner on Air Force 2 to Mexico amid those deals.

And last month DailyMail.com revealed that former FBI director Louis Freeh, who represented a criminal Romanian property tycoon alongside Hunter, spoke with Joe while the VP was still in office about the Biden father and son joining his consultancy firm in 2017.

The White House has failed to respond to DailyMail.com's questions about any of the incidents.

Hunter discussed his proposed new Biden family company in an email with Cooper dated November 20, 2014, with the title 'Firm'.

He set out 'ball park' annual overheads for the consultancy shop totaling $1.2 million including a $500,000 salary for his brother Beau.

His other estimates included $250,000 for a senior attorney, $175,000 for a junior attorney, $65,000 for an administrative assistant and $20,000 per month for 'office and other expenses'.

The plans were thwarted by Beau's tragic death in 2015 from brain cancer. The family are pictured at Beau's funeral

Joe Biden entertained Mexican billionaires Carlos Slim and Miguel Aleman Velasco - his son Hunter's business associates - in the vice president's office in 2014

While Hunter and Biden family friend Jeff Cooper (far left) were working on their business plans, they managed to get the billionaires Slim, Velasco and Magnani a private 'meeting' with then-vice president Joe Biden in the VP's office. Photos on Hunter's laptop dated November 19, 2015, show the six men smiling at a meeting in Joe Bidens DC residence. Emails show the men also met Joe at the White House

Cooper replied asking if Beau, referred to in the email as 'BB', could 'offset the 500k by sitting on a few Boards etc', and if Hunter had 'any guesses on built-in clients for the firm?'

'Hadn't thought about boards- any ideas?' Hunter replied to Cooper, adding that he worried $500,000 wouldn't be enough for Beau.

Hunter indicated that he would not only have Beau on board in the new venture, but his father too  referring to them both by 'JRB'

'My main concern is that he has at least that much income guaranteed for two years. He's been offered that by Stuart Grant in return for joining his firm and being available to Stuart for client development.'

Grant is a prominent Wilmington litigator, entrepreneur and Democratic Party fundraiser.

Beau ended up joining Grant's firm in the months before he died, after he left office as Delaware attorney general in 2015.

'We could probably go as low as 350 but there are some real costs associated with upcoming treatments not covered by insurance,' Hunter continued in the November 2014 email.

'At the outset we probably wouldn't need the junior attorney until things really started rolling. As for built in clients I think that will depend on who we get as 'senior attorney.'

'I don't want to have to 'partner' with an existing firm (like another Bifferato deal), but like the idea of a relatively senior lawyer coming with some clients and the promise of revenue sharing or upside.'

Hunter then indicated that he would not only have Beau on board in the new venture, but his father too  referring to them both by 'JRB', the initials of their full names, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr and Joseph Robinette Biden III.

'In order to develop this as a platform for both JRBs I think it is imperative we (the three of us) have full control come 2016 when JRB1 comes on board,' Hunter wrote.

Cooper, who was planning the new firm with Hunter, had close ties with the Biden family for years.

The men reportedly met through their wives: Francesca Cooper went to high school with Hunter's first wife Kathleen Biden.

His Illinois law firm, asbestos claim litigation specialists SimmonsCooper, worked with Beau's Delaware law firm on dozens of cases.

It also bankrolled Hunter and Joe's brother Jim's unsuccessful attempt to buy a hedge fund in 2006.

Texts from Hunter to his daughter Naomi in 2019 show he complained about having to give Joe half of his salary. He also threatened to never give her a 'dime' again

The texts about AT&T were from 2018 - when Joe Biden had earned more than $11million

By 2008 SimmonsCooper was Joe Biden's number one donor, giving $200,000 over the previous eight years.

The large donations, and thousands more to Beau's political campaigns, drew scrutiny when Joe, in his role as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, helped block an asbestos reform.

The reform would have jeopardized SimmonsCooper's business, and the firm lobbied him over the issue.

At the time, a spokesman for Joe told the Los Angeles Times that all the SimmonsCooper business deals with his sons and brother were above board, and no special favors were arranged.

Even deeper financial ties between the president and his son were revealed this month, when emails and texts from Hunter's laptop emerged showing that he paid many of his father's bills.

Hunter complained that 'half' of his salary went to paying his father's bills while he was Vice President, casting doubt on Joe's previous claims that he has never benefited from his son's business dealings.

The bills included a $190-a-month AT&T phone bill and thousands in repairs on Joe's lakeside home in Wilmington.

The payments were described in a 2010 email, when Joe Biden was earning $225,000-a-year as Vice President. He had already made well over $100,000-a-year for decades prior as a senator and author.

In 2010 emails between Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his business partner at consultancy firm Rosemont Seneca, they discussed how much they needed to spend paying Joe's bills.

The email subject was 'JRB bills' - which match Joe's initials - and described how $2,600 was to be paid to a contractor for a 'stone retaining wall' at Joe's home, along with $1,475 to be paid to a painter for the 'back wall and columns' of the property and $1,239 to a builder who'd fixed the AC at Joe's late mother's home.

He rented that house to the Secret Service for $2,200 a month.

Years later, in a text to his own daughter, Hunter - who had by then been battling drug addiction for years - he complained: 'I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years.

'It's really hard. But don't worry, unlike Pop [Joe], I won't make you give me half your salary.'

It was a text he sent to his daughter Naomi in 2019.

In a June 2010 email, Schwerin wrote to Hunter: 'FYI, there are a few outstanding bills that need to be paid and I am not sure which ones are a priority and which should get paid out of 'my' account and which should be put on hold or paid out of the 'Wilmington Trust Social Security Check Account.

'There is about $2,000 extra in 'my' account beyond what is used for monthly expenses.'

It is unclear why he put the word my in quotation marks.

In 2010 emails between Hunter and Eric Schwerin, his business partner at consultancy firm Rosemont Seneca, they discussed how much they needed to spend paying Joe's bills

In another email the same month, Schwerin said: 'Mike Christopher [builder] is hassling me so I am paying a couple of the smaller things since I haven't heard from your Dad. Know he's busy  so it's OK.

'But if you think he has a moment or two to review the e-mail I sent you let me know.'

The following month, Schwerin said: 'Does it make sense to see if your Dad has some time in the next couple of weeks while you are in DC to talk about it? Your Dad just called me about his mortgage . . . so it dawned on me to might be a good time [for] some positive news about his future earnings potential.'

In the years after he left office as Vice President, Joe and Jill Biden made millions through book deals and speaking engagements.

In 2017 alone, the couple declared $11.1 million in earnings - more than double they had made in any other year for 18 years prior. Joe has always insisted the money was earned above board.

In a 2018 email to one of his own assistants, Hunter complained that he had been shut out of his own bank account and that his father had been using it.

'Too many cooks in the kitchen. Too many profile changes and such. Happened 10 days ago too...

'My dad has been using most lines on this account which I've through the gracious offerings of Eric have paid for past 11 years,' he said.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was too slow to tell thousands of women that they would be affected by the rising pension age, an ombudsman has ruled.

The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO) said the department failed to act quickly enough once it knew a significant proportion of women were unaware of the changes.

The 1995 Pensions Act equalised the state pension age for men and women.

The ombudsman said it had received a significant number of complaints about the way this was communicated by the DWP.

Many women said that they were not aware of the changes, and experienced significant financial loss and emotional distress, it said.

BackTo60 and WASPI members campaign outside the Royal Courts of Justice, in London last year amid the pensions scandal

Make your voice heard If you only receive a one-year backpayment from the DWP, heres how to fight for the full sum. Step 1. Make a formal complaint of maladministration to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Explain how you missed out because the DWP did not run the system properly. Was your claim form sent to your husband for example, or should Government records have shown you were due the higher rate? Or it may be you had no reason to suspect the Government would not pay you the top rate available, or that the law change in March 2008 showed the DWP knew some women were missing out. Send your complaint to the pensions minister at: Guy Opperman MP, DWP, Caxton House, Tothill Street, London SW1H 9NA Step 2. If the DWP rejects your complaint, you can then escalate it to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. To do this, visit ombudsman.org.uk/ making-complaint or call 0345 015 4033. You will also need ask your MP to refer your complaint to the ombudsman. Advertisement

The PHSO said that from 2005 onwards, there were failings in the action taken by the DWP to communicate the state pension age.

The ombudsman said its investigation will go on to consider the impact these failings had and make recommendations to put things right for any associated injustice.

This year, thousands of women have been due a windfall after admin errors dating back 30 years saw their state pensions substantially underpaid.

Amanda Amroliwala, Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman CEO, said: 'After a detailed investigation, we have found that the DWP failed to act quickly enough once it knew a significant proportion of women were not aware of changes to their state pension age.

'It should have written to the women affected at least 28 months earlier than it did.

'We will now consider the impact of these failings, and what action should be taken to address them.'

Angela Madden, who chairs the Waspi (Women Against State Pension Inequality) campaign, told the BBC: 'The findings reinforce what we, unfortunately, knew all along; that the DWP failed to adequately inform 3.8 million 1950s-born women that their state pension age would be increasing.

'These women have been waiting for many years for compensation. We cannot wait any longer.

'We are calling on the government to agree fair and adequate compensation rather than allow what has become a vicious cycle of government inaction to continue.'

The PHSO provides a complaint handling service for issues about the NHS in England and UK Government departments.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) was too slow to tell thousands of women that they would be affected by the rising pension age, an ombudsman has ruled

Are you being underpaid state pension? How to check Steve Webb's firm LCP has launched an online tool to help older married women work out if they are being paid correctly. Find out more here. But Webb stresses that the website is simply designed as a useful tool, and anyone with any doubt about the amount of pension they are receiving should contact the Department for Work and Pensions. Its details are here. Advertisement

A DWP spokesperson said: 'Both the High Court and Court of Appeal have supported the actions of the DWP, under successive governments dating back to 1995, and the Supreme Court refused the claimants permission to appeal.

'In a move towards gender equality, it was decided more than 25 years ago to make the state pension age the same for men and women.'

It emerged earlier this year that around 200,000 women will receive letters to say they are owed an average 13,500 windfall due to state pension admin blunders dating back nearly 30 years.

Budget documents revealed that the scandal will cost the Department for Work and Pensions an estimated 3billion to rectify.

The sum owed to women, who were collossally short-changed, emerged after a joint investigation by This is Money pensions columnist Steve Webb and journalist Tanya Jefferies, following a reader question to the former Pensions Minister's weekly column for us a year ago.

A dedicated team of 155 civil servants is working through hundreds of thousands of files to trace every woman affected and pay them any money owed. But the laborious task could take six years.

The scandal relates to the failure to pay automatic increases to the state pensions of wives, widows and the over-80s.

Women who retired under the old state pension system before April 6, 2016, are entitled to claim a rate equivalent to 60 per cent of their husband's basic state pension. The DWP was supposed to pay this automatically from March 2008.

Widows are also entitled to the same state pension their late husband received, and the over-80s should all be receiving at least a 60 per cent state pension.

The current basic state pension pay is 134.25 a week, so married women should be receiving at least 80.45 every week.
A Las Vegas teenager who underwent three brain surgeries from blood clots after getting the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine has only just returned home and is still unable to walk after three months in the hospital.

Emma Burkey, 18, was rushed to a Las Vegas hospital after she started suffering seizures following the one-dose COVID shot back on April 1.

Burkey suffered what has since been described as a one in a million reaction to the J&J shot after developing blood clots.

The teenager ended up being airlifted to a hospital in California where she was placed in a medically induced coma, intubated and underwent three operations to repair the clots in her brain.

Three months on, Burkey is still unable to walk and her family are now preparing to sell their home given it is not wheelchair-accessible.

Emma Burkey, 18, was rushed to a Las Vegas hospital when she started suffering seizures after receiving the one-dose COVID shot back on April 1. She underwent three brain surgeries to repair blood clots and is only just returning home now

A spokesman for the family, Bret Johnson, told the Las Vegas Review Journal that Burkey was still suffering from impaired function to the left side of her body.

'She can't walk right now. They're working, working, working with her on that, but her left leg is not cooperating, and her left side is not very cooperative,' Johnson said.

'If she can relearn how to walk, that is a game changer,' Johnson said, acknowledging it would have 'massive implications' if she couldn't.

Burkey is set to resume intensive therapy at home.

Her parents are also preparing to sell their two-story home because it is unclear how long Burkey's recovery will take.

They currently have to take her to a family friend's home where she can easily access the shower.

Johnson said despite the long road to recovery, Burkey remained in 'good spirits'.

'All her mental capacities and personality came back,' he said, adding that the teen was 'cheerful but reserved, friendly and smart.'

Three months on, Burkey is still unable to walk and her family are now preparing to sell their home given it is not wheelchair-accessible

A GoFundMe page set up for Burkey's recovery has already raised more than $60,000.

Burkey was among the few cases that was investigated by the CDC following reports of blood clots.

The J&J vaccine was paused by the CDC and FDA for 10 days in April after six women under the age of 50 developed Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (CVST), a rare blood clot that forms in the venous sinuses in the brain.

The women developed CVST in combination with a low platelet-count condition known as thrombocytopenia.

This figure was later updated to include 28 people, including one 45-year-old woman who died.

The pause was lifted and the FDA added a warning to J&J's coronavirus vaccine that rare blood clotting events might occur, primarily among women under age 50.

CVST is a rare type of blood clot that blocks the brain's sinus channels of draining blood, which can cause hemorrhages.

It occurs in about five per million people in the general population.
Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein has touched down in Los Angeles on a private jet after being extradited from New York to face rape and sexual assault charges.

The disgraced producer, 69, was spotted stepping off the jet at Burbank - the airport he once frequented regularly as a Hollywood A-lister - on Tuesday afternoon.

It is the first time Weinstein has stepped foot in Los Angeles in two years since he was taken into custody in New York and sparked the #MeToo movement.

Weinstein, who was wearing a mask, brown sweater and pants, was not handcuffed as he emerged from the plane.

Authorities appeared to help keep Weinstein - who now relies on a walker - upright as he walked down the stairs by holding onto a strap tied around his chest.

Weinstein's attorney Mark Werksman believes he will most likely be taken to the Correctional Therapy Center, which is the medical wing of the LA County men's central jail at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein arrived in Los Angeles on a private jet on Tuesday after being extradited from New York to face rape and sexual assault charges

Authorities appeared to help keep Weinstein - who now relies on a walker - upright as he walked down the stairs by holding onto a strap tied around his chest

'He's at the mercy of the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department,' Werksman told DailyMail.com.

Werksman added that his defense of his client against the slew of sexual assault charges by the LA district attorney's office would begin in earnest after Weinstein's arraignment tomorrow.

'We are confident he will be acquitted of all the charges,' Werksman said.

His initial hearing is scheduled for 1.30pm on Wednesday.

Weinstein was taken from New York's Wende Correctional Facility and put on a plane bound for the West Coast earlier in the day.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles have been seeking his transfer on charges of assaulting five women in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills between 2004 to 2013.

Weinstein was charged in California in a criminal complaint before being indicted by a grand jury.

He is facing 11 counts of rape and sexual assault, which could carry a maximum sentence of 140 years.

Weinstein maintains his innocence and contends that any sexual activity was consensual.

His attorneys had been fighting his extradition, claiming he shouldn't be moved from his current prison in New York because of ongoing medical treatment.

His attorney said the former movie mogul is suffering from a host of medical conditions.

'He has spinal stenosis, he's going blind in one eye, he's missing teeth. He really needs urgent medical care,' Werksman said.

It is the first time Weinstein has stepped foot in Los Angeles in two years since he was taken into custody in New York and sparked the #MeToo movement

The 69-year-old was spotted stepping off the jet at Burbank - the airport he once frequented regularly as a Hollywood A-lister - on Tuesday afternoon

Weinstein, who is a convicted rapist, arrived back in Los Angeles on the private jet

Weinstein's rep Juda Engelmayer told DailyMail.com that his lawyers had been trying to negotiate an agreement to wave extradition for transfer to LA.

'We are disappointed that the LA DA didnt wait for the judges ruling, but we did expect this to happen at some point,' Engelmayer said.

'We will be fighting so that Harvey can receive his needed medical care and of course, so that he can be treated fairly. Due process, presumption of innocence and a fair trial are all still his right.'

His lawyer did not disclose the conditions in open court during a hearing last month but prosecutors mentioned that he was seeking treatment from an eye doctor.

'We're not trying to avoid a trial,' his lawyer told the judge. 'He will be ready to go to LA when the jury selection begins.'

Erie County assistant district attorney Colleen Gable hit back, saying: 'It's Los Angeles. It's not some remote outpost that doesn't have medical care.

'There is absolutely nothing in either doctor's report that says this treatment can't be done in Los Angeles. Los Angeles has some of the best medical care in the country and the world.'

The judge rejected the arguments and ordered that he should be extradited this month.

Weinstein is currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York's Wende Correctional Facility after a jury found him guilty in March 2020 of rape and sexual assault.

He was convicted of raping an aspiring actress in a New York City hotel room in 2013 and sexually assaulting a production assistant at his apartment in 2006 by forcibly performing oral sex on her.

Harvey Weinstein, 69, was put on a plane from New York on Tuesday morning after being extradited to Los Angeles to face sexual assault charges. He is pictured above during a hearing last month regarding his extradition
Nicola Sturgeon warned there were serious 'ethical' concerns about vaccine passports as she refused to commit to introducing them in Scotland.

After Boris Johnson announced the controversial Covid certificates would be needed for nightclubs and potentially other large events from September, the First Minister insisted any proposal 'need to be really carefully considered'.

She also suggested yet another deviation from the path chosen by Boris Johnson in England, voicing support for vaccinating all children aged 12 and over.

The JCVI has ruled out mass vaccination of healthy children for now but has updated its advice to enable 12 to 15-year-olds with specific underlying health conditions to receive the Pfizer vaccination.

In a daily news conference this afternoon she was asked about following Mr Johnson's lead. She replied: 'I've said many times before that while there are arguments for a requiring vaccination to allow entry to certain places, it raises sensitive ethical and equity considerations - not least because there are some people who can't get vaccinated because of health conditions and we are not yet in a position of having a recommendation to vaccinate all younger teenagers.

'So we've got to weigh up these things very carefully and while we're doing that we need to continue to be cautious.'

After Boris Johnson announced the controversial Covid certificates would be needed for nightclubs and potentially other large events from September, the First Minister insisted any proposal 'need to be really carefully considered'.

The PM faces a furious backlash from MPs and civil liberties campaigners after delivering an ultimatum to young people about the shape of the rules from September at a press briefing last night.

No10 today refused to rule out making people prove they are double-jabbed to get into pubs - as Tory rebels vowed to fight Boris Johnson's 'disgusting' threat to restrict access to nightclubs.

The PM faces a furious backlash from MPs and civil liberties campaigners after delivering an ultimatum to young people about the shape of the rules from September at a press briefing last night.

And pushed on whether the prospective edict could apply to bars as well Downing Street merely said it will 'use the coming weeks to look at the evidence'.

Tory MP Charles Walker declared he will vote against the plan if it comes to the Commons after the summer recess. 'It will start with nightclubs and then quickly move on to other parts of the hospitality sector,' he told BBC Radio 4's World at One.

Another senior lockdown-sceptic told MailOnline there are 'likely' to be enough Tory rebels. But they stressed a revolt would be 'pointless' unless Labour lines up against the measures.

'It's all about Keir Starmer... unless Labour go through the division lobbies in opposition it will happen,' the MP said.

Ms Sturgeon added: 'You already see it in the debate sparked by the Prime Minister's comments yesterday: there are people who think we should use vaccine passports to open up access as much as possible and there are other people who think that are serious equity, civil liberties and ethical issues associated with these.

'So I understand the desire for speed on these things, but we've got to make sure we get this right.'

Scotland's top doctor will write to the UK's vaccine body, urging them to keep teenage vaccination under review.

Speaking at the coronavirus briefing in Edinburgh today, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said she considered it 'extremely important' that vaccinating 12-17-year-olds is not ruled out entirely.

'To that end, the chief medical officer is writing to the (Joint Committee on Vaccinations and Immunisations) asking that the benefit of vaccinating all 12-17-year-olds is kept under close and ongoing review and that it takes account of all available data from countries already doing this,' the First Minister said.

'I think that is really important - if there is a benefit to be got from vaccinating younger teenagers then its really important to make sure that young people don't lose out on that.'

The latest figures for Scotland show 13 coronavirus deaths and 1,604 new cases were recorded in the past 24 hours.

It means the death toll under this daily measure - of people who first tested positive for the virus within the previous 28 days - stands at 7,813.
Iain Duncan Smith today revealed that intelligence chiefs have warned he is under 'active and direct threat' from the Chinese state.

The former Cabinet minister, a strident critic of the regime in Beijing, said he had been told to be 'very careful' and offered extra support from the UK authorities.

However, he also demanded to know how long ministers had known about the situation, and why they had not informed him before.

Speaking in a debate on China, Sir Iain said his work with the Interparliamentary Alliance on China had made him a target.

'I understand now there is intelligence from the Five Eyes sources that there is now a very active and direct threat from the Chinese government aimed directly at the co-chairs of the Interparliamentary Alliance on China,' he said.

Iain Duncan Smith said he had been told to be 'very careful' and offered extra support from the UK authorities

'Some of these co-chairs, of which I am one, have now been warned by their intelligence services in receipt of this that they should be very careful and that they will be supported.'

He said to foreign office minister James Cleverly: 'Can I ask if his Government is in receipt of this same intelligence and if so, why have they not informed the co-chairs and others here in the UK like other allies have done?'

Mr Cleverly replied: 'He will understand that we don't discuss on the floor of the Chamber intelligence-related issues, but I take the point that he makes about making sure that people who are potentially a target of overseas intelligence actions are given the opportunity to defend themselves against those.'

The claims emerged as China hit out at the UK and other western nations for 'groundless and irresponsible' accusations that it was behind major 'systematic cyber sabotage'.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said yesterday that Chinese state-backed groups were responsible for a 'reckless' attack on Microsoft Exchange servers earlier this year.

Widespread frustration was shared by the US, Canada, EU, Australia, New Zealand and Nato, who all called for an end to such behaviour.

Officials claim the attack was highly likely to enable 'large-scale espionage', including acquiring personal information and intellectual property.

At least 30,000 organisations around the world have been affected.

The Chinese embassy in the UK said the claims are a 'sheer fabrication and slander'.

Sir Iain revealed that intelligence chiefs have warned he is under 'active and direct threat' from the Chinese state. Pictured, president Xi Jinping speaks via video at an event last month

'The Chinese side is gravely concerned and strongly opposed to this,' a spokesperson said.

'We call on the UK side to immediately stop echoing the groundless and irresponsible accusation against China.

'China is a staunch defender of cyber security and a main victim of cyber thefts and attacks.'

Sir Iain said: 'This is the latest form of Chinese attacks, not a one-off on the West, which has included espionage, economic sanctions against Australia, wolf warrior diplomacy, and its naval aggression in the South China Sea, but to name a few.
The boy, now 31, said he went along with family friend Robert Wells (pictured in 2004) who he thought was a policeman

A paedophile former police doctor filmed himself abusing a drugged eight-year-old boy after telling him he would be a star, a court has heard.



The boy, now 31, said he went along with family friend Robert Wells, 69, who he thought was a policeman.

He said: 'I asked him if it was police work because I knew he was a police doctor. I knew something wasn't right, but I didn't know what it was but I thought it would be alright because he was a policeman.'

A jury heard former police medical examiner Wells had drugged the boy before driving him to a disused industrial area in Brighton.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: 'Wells told me, you're gonna be like an actor, you're gonna be a star.'

A jury at Lewes Crown Court in Hove heard Wells has a string of convictions for sexual offences against children.

Wells, wearing a blue checked shirt, walked out of the dock for a break as the court heard he refused to meet Sussex Police detectives who tried to interview him in prison after fresh allegations were made in 2016.

Jennifer Knight, QC for the Crown, told the court Wells qualified as a doctor in the 1970s and worked as a GP in Caerleon, South Wales, for ten years before moving to private practice in Brighton in 1990.

Ms Knight said: 'He was also a forensic medical examiner, a police doctor, for Hampshire constabulary.'

A jury at Lewes Crown Court in Hove (file photo) heard Wells has a string of convictions for sexual offences against children

The boy and his mother moved to Scotland soon after starting primary school. He visited Hove during the half term break in October 1998 for a birthday party.

Ms Knight said: 'Wells said he didn't look well and gave him a pill. He reassured him he was a doctor and he needed it.

'He said he had some work to do and took him away from the party. They arrived at what looked like an industrial area.

'He was taken up stairs into a large room. They were joined by another man who he didn't know.'

There was a hospital-style bed with a bright light shining on it, Ms Knight said. 'There was a five-eight year-old girl lying on the bed, naked and seemingly unconscious.

A jury heard former police medical examiner Wells, 69, had drugged the boy before driving him to a disused industrial area in Brighton

'He recalls a large camera in the corner of the room. Wells gave him something that looked like a small hammer or judges' gavel.'

She told the court Wells told the boy to abuse the girl with it. The boy said Wells persuaded him saying he would be a star if he did it.

He said another man in the room was operating the camera. 'He remembers waking up in a different room in a bed, possibly in a flat.

'He felt confused and anxious,' Ms Knight said. The boy found the events impossible to forget and went to police in January 2016.

The jury was told while Wells was a GP in Wales he indecently assaulted three of his patients.

He assaulted another teenage girl in November 1998, telling them all he was giving them a medical examination.

Wells moved to Brighton in 2000. In Feb 2003, he was arrested after filming himself sexually abusing two young girls after drugging them at his flat in Southampton.

He was jailed for 15 years at Winchester Crown Court in 2004. After being released in 2015, he was arrested again when he failed to keep to the conditions of his licence.

He was jailed again for another seven years following another trial in Cardiff.

A cold case review led to the discovery of new abuse videos on his computers and he has been convicted of multiple offences of indecent assault, rape and filming of a girls and her sisters who he befriended in Brighton

Wells refused to meet police when they went to interview him in prison.

In February last year he was charged by post after again refusing to meet with detectives.

Wells denies two counts of indecency with a child and attempting to take an indecent image of a child with another unknown male between September and November 1998.

The trial at Lewes Crown Court in Hove continues.
Last month Apple CEO Tim Cook had called on its workforce to return to the office by early September citing declining infection rates, Apple is now saying its full workforce will return to the company's offices across the country in October by the earliest

Apple is now saying its full workforce will return to the company's offices across the country in October by the earliest as more contagious variants of the coronavirus spread across the country, even as the country's financial giants have vowed to stay the course.

Originally the Silicon Valley giant had set early September as its deadline for employees to return to in-person work, with Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook announcing to workers last month that they would be spending at least three days a week in the office.

Cook had cited declining infection rates and the widespread availability of vaccines, but the spread of the highly contagious Indian delta variant, however, appears to have prompted a reconsideration of those plans, Bloomberg reported.

The decision would make the Cupertino, California-based Apple the first of the major US tech companies to delay return-to-office plans as driven by the delta variant, Covid-19 cases have skyrocketed nationwide, prompting a reconsideration of mask wearing guidelines in California.

Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California. The company's decision comes as the delta variant has prompted a reconsideration of mask wearing mandates and guidelines in the state

Infection rates have begun to surge in recent weeks, driven primarily by the more contagious delta variant

Other Silicon Valley giants have also been testing out remote work configurations, with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announcing last year that he expected much of its workforce to remain working remotely even after the pandemic.

The company plans to reopen its offices to full capacity by October, but is offering workers the option to work remotely for up to half of the year.

Google, on the other hand, has yet to release firm remote work plans except that it expects its workers to return to in-person work three days a week in September.

Other major firms such as top investment bank Morgan Stanley have been adamant about staying the course, with CEO James Gorman telling investors late last month that he expects all of his New York City workers to return to the office in September.

Wells Fargo, too has called for a full return to office after Labor Day, according to a July 16 memo, Barron's reported.

'We believe our success depends on our employees becoming increasingly collaborative and innovative, and that we all benefit from seeing our colleagues on a regular basis,' Chief Operating Officer Scott Powell wrote in the memo.

And yet others have already called the majority of their workforce back to the office, with Goldman Sachs workers having returned on June 14, and JPMorgan on July 6.

Already the variant makes up 83% of new infections in the country

Facing a 700% positivity rate increase over the past month, LA County on Sunday became the first in the nation to reinstate indoor mask wearing mandates, even amongst the vaccinated.

Additionally, on Friday officials in eight Bay Area counties announced new indoor mask wearing guidelines, 'out of an abundance of caution,' they said, to protect their unvaccinated populations.

In testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee last Wednesday, Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said the variant accounts for 83 percent of COVID-19 cases.

The figure is a considerable increase from the 50 percent of infections that were linked to the Delta variant two weeks ago.

Nearly every state - aside from Montana and Iowa - and the District of Columbia have seen infections rise in the last week

The new infections come as the vaccine effort has flagged in the US

It comes as the U.S. recorded 52,111 new cases on Monday with a seven-day rolling average of 34,682, which is a 224 percent increase from the 10,678 average recorded three weeks ago.

Nearly every state - aside from Montana and Iowa - and the District of Columbia have seen infections rise in the last week, according to a DailyMail.com analysis of Johns Hopkins data.

However, Covid-19 deaths haven't shot dramatically higher in the wake of the rising number of cases tied to the Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2, and are currently averaging around 277 fatalities per day.

Health officials say this is because people now are protected by vaccines, though in states that have less vaccine uptake - such as Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Missouri - hospitals are starting to fill up.

Average COVID-19 cases in Missouri have risen by 60% from 1,107 per day to 1,782 per day in the last two weeks

In Arkansas, cases have jumped from an average of 602 per day two weeks ago to 974 per day on Monday, an increase of 61 %

Louisiana has seen average cases soar 115% from 650 per to 1,398 per day over the last 14 days

Deaths, too, should tick higher, but not to the rates seen during the deadly winter surge because of vaccines.

Meanwhile, as cases increase, daily COVID-19 vaccinations continue to decline, with the seven-day rolling average falling below 500,000 per day from a high of 3.5 million in April.

Apple had initially been resistant to remote work, and in June employees criticized the September return-to-office deadline as too early, with staff penning a letter to Cook saying they felt their concerns about in-person work had gone unheard.

Some Apple employees had been working in its offices on certain days throughout the pandemic, Bloomberg also reported.
A group of MPs have demanded restrictions on access to the diaries of Lord and Lady Mountbatten should be eased 'without further obfuscation and delay'.

A 2 million heritage grant in 2010 enabled the University of Southampton to purchase the Broadlands Archive, which contains 4,500 boxes of official papers and personal correspondence from major figures in the Victorian era.

The papers of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last viceroy of India, are part of the collection and include a handwritten note from Mahatma Gandhi to Mountbatten where he details his weekly 'vow of silence'.

Lord Mountbatten, who was the Duke of Edinburgh's uncle and a mentor to the Prince of Wales, was murdered by the IRA in County Sligo, Ireland, in 1979.

A cross-party group of MPs has raised concerns over the lack of access to the diaries of Lord and Lady Mountbatten over a decade after they were bought by the University of Southampton. Pictured: 1st Earl Mountbatten and wife Edwina in ceremonial robes in 1953

A cross-party group of MPs, led by senior Conservative Julian Lewis, has raised concerns over the lack of access to the personal diaries of the Mountbattens and highlighted the ongoing campaign from biographer Andrew Lownie.

In an early day motion tabled in the House of Commons, the MPs state: 'That this House notes... that, until the sale to the university, the Mountbatten family had made the diaries available to historians upon request; that Lady Mountbatten was never a public servant and consequently her writings are not subject to Freedom of Information restrictions; that in December 2019 the Information Commissioner's Office ordered the university to disclose the Mountbatten diaries and correspondence; that this continues to be resisted at the apparent direction of the Cabinet Office, citing FOI (Freedom of Information) exemptions but refusing to identify the criteria relevant to the Mountbatten diaries.'

The motion adds: 'It is deeply regrettable that their distinguished biographer, Dr Andrew Lownie, has so far had to pay 250,000 pursuing a campaign for the diaries' release to historians; and accordingly calls for their disclosure for publication without further obfuscation and delay.'

Labour, SNP, Liberal Democrat and DUP MPs have joined other Conservative MPs in signing the motion.

The papers of the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, the last viceroy of India, are part of the collection and include a handwritten note from Mahatma Gandhi to Mountbatten (pictured together) where he details his weekly 'vow of silence'

Mr Lewis, the MP for New Forest East, said: 'Whilst fully appreciating Government concern to withhold any official papers retained by Lord Mountbatten and not cleared for publication even now, this clearly should not apply to private papers and diaries which used to be open to inspection and which were sold on the open market.

'It is, frankly, futile to try to shut this stable door so long after the horses bolted and their jockeys are long gone, too.'

Mr Lownie, author of The Mountbattens: Their Lives & Loves, said the case raised 'major issues about censoring our history, misuse of Government power and taxpayers' funds, as well as freedom of speech'.

He added: 'The Government claim to be following undertakings given by Lord Mountbatten, but these are private letters and diaries which his family offered to sell to the highest bidder.

An early day motion tabled in the House of Commons calling for the papers' 'disclosure for publication without further obfuscation and delay'. The cross-party group of MPs is led by senior Conservative Julian Lewis (pictured)

'Any undertakings given related only to official papers in his possession and predated the Freedom of Information Act 2000. It is crucial the Government are held to account to explain their censorship.'

Cabinet Office minister Julia Lopez, in response to written parliamentary questions about the matter, said: 'Before he retired as Chief of Defence Staff in 1965, the first Earl Mountbatten accepted that personal diaries could not be put into the public domain without first being vetted.

'Earl Mountbatten made clear that ownership of all of these papers would be handed over to the Broadlands Trustees.

'In 1969, the Broadlands Trustees entered into undertakings not to give general or particular access to these papers without the express permission of the Prime Minister of the day through the Cabinet Secretary. A copy of the undertakings is available at the National Archives.

'In line with this agreement, the Cabinet Office is continuing to work with the University of Southampton to support the release of the Mountbatten archive whilst ensuring sensitive and official information is handled appropriately and in line with the Freedom of Information Act and Data Protection Act.

'This case is currently before the Information Tribunal. It would not, therefore, be appropriate to make further comment whilst this is subject to ongoing legal proceedings.'

The university describes the Mountbatten Papers as an archive of the 'first importance for the study of much of the 20th century', and it includes around 4,000 files of papers of the earl.

Access to the database is 'by permission only', with a registration process to be followed, according to the university.
A callous taxi driver put the lives of his passengers at risk by picking up fares despite testing positive for Covid-19.

Gordon Leadbetter, 59, accepted fares from pensioners including a 91-year-old woman, an 82-year-old man and care home workers after testing positive last December.

The cabbie also ferried desperately ill passengers to and from Edinburgh Royal Infirmary who were attending for dialysis treatment while failing to wear a protective mask.

He tested positive for the coronavirus the day after his wife was diagnosed with the killer disease and had been rushed into hospital for urgent treatment.

Leadbetter, from Musselburgh, East Lothian, was caught out after a neighbour heard of his positive test result and phoned his employers a Central Taxis to air their concerns.

Gordon Leadbetter (pictured), 59, accepted fares from pensioners including a 91-year-old woman, an 82-year-old man and care home workers after testing positive for Covid-19 last December

He was suspended from the Edinburgh taxi company following a board meeting on December 26 last year and was subsequently arrested and charged by police two weeks later.

Leadbetter pleaded guilty to culpably and recklessly accepting vulnerable passengers into his taxi between December 17 and 26 last year after he had tested positive for the virus when he appeared at the capital's sheriff court last month.

He was back in the dock for sentencing on Tuesday where Sheriff Chris Dickson said he had carried out 'a very serious offence' and had put 'a number of patients at risk'.

Leadbetter was spared a jail term and instead was placed on a 12-month supervision order and told he must complete 200 hours of unpaid work.

He will also be electronically tagged and must stay within his home for the next eight months between the hours of 9pm and 5am.

Prosecutor Debbie King told the court Leadbetter was a self-employed taxi driver who 'worked mostly for Central Taxis' and drove a seven-seater black Ford Transit Pro-Cab.

Ms King said there was 'potential threat to the most vulnerable areas of society' while he continued to work and had accepted 52 jobs between being tested and suspended.

The fiscal listed a number of passengers who had been put at risk including a 91-year-old care home resident, a 71-year-old dialysis patient and a 61-year-old with a heart condition who had been shielding.

Leadbetter pleaded guilty to culpably and recklessly accepting vulnerable passengers into his taxi between December 17 and 26 last year after he had tested positive for the virus when he appeared at the capital's sheriff court (pictured, GV) last month

The taxi driver also accepted fares from an 82-year-old dialysis patient, several care home workers and a support worker who helped elderly and vulnerable people with dementia.

Central Taxis received an anonymous tip off stating Leadbetter was continuing to drive his cab despite having been told to self-isolate due to testing positive for Covid the week previously.

Solicitor Victoria Good, defending, said her client had worked as a taxi driver for 18 years and had been 'struggling financially' in the run up to Christmas.

Ms Good said Leadbetter had displayed 'no symptoms' and had 'stupidly' decided to carry on working despite the positive test result.

Leadbetter admitted to culpably and recklessly carrying on business as a taxi driver and permitting passengers to enter his taxi, including those he knew to be vulnerable to the Covid-19 virus, after testing positive for the virus.

He should have been self-isolating between December 17 and 26 last year.

The charge also stated Leadbetter exposed the passengers to immediate risk of health and exposed them to risk of heightened communication of transmission of the virus, all to the danger of their lives and health.
Dominic Cummings has savaged Boris Johnson again during an hour-long bombshell interview, accusing his wife Carrie of 'trying to appoint clowns to key positions' while saying the PM 'doesn't have a plan' for government.

The PM's former chief adviser, who resigned in November after a year in the role, unleashed his latest blizzard of complaints about his old boss during a chat with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg tonight.

He attacked him over his fitness to lead, his Covid policy, his wife Carrie and claimed he could have harmed the Queen by visiting at the start of the pandemic.

The 49-year-old, who was the director of Vote Leave and widely seen as the architect of Brexit, claimed Mr Johnson admitted to him it was 'ludicrous' he had made it to the most powerful position in the country.

Mr Cummings also blasted the power Carrie - who he lost a power struggle to last year - has over the PM and said she wanted to 'appoint clowns to certain key jobs'.

Meanwhile he took aim at the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic and slammed it as 'like a disaster movie' where the PM puts personal politics above people's lives.

The Oxford-educated former aide claimed Mr Johnson wanted to visit the Queen at the start of the pandemic but he talked him out of it because it could kill her if she caught the virus.

Mr Cummings also faced tough questions on the Barnard Castle fallout, which saw him issue a rare speech from Downing Street after the country erupted in outrage.

He had driven with his family from London to Durham to his parents' home despite having Covid symptoms.

But he slammed the way the government decided to handle the incident as 'extremely chaotic' while admitting he should have resigned.

Despite the vicious attacks throughout the programme - called Dominic Cummings: The Interview - he said he was not speaking out of revenge.

He claimed he wanted people to think about how the country was governed and if power is distributed in the right way.

Mr Cummings added to this by outlining how he wanted British politics to look in the future, echoing his previous comments about getting 'assorted weirdos' into the halls of power.

He said the country should be 'very, very aggressively' trying to get 'very rare people' into power because they are 'times 1,000 smarter than the norm'.

Responding to Mr Cummings' criticism of Mr Johnson's handling of the pandemic, Downing Street said the Prime Minister had 'taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice'.

Elsewhere in the fiery exchange he claimed:

The Prime Minister did not take the threat of coronavirus 'seriously' in the early stages of the pandemic and that it was a 'nonsense' scare story.

Mr Johnson argued in September as Covid cases were rising that it was mainly older people who were dying of the virus and that he 'no longer bought all this NHS overwhelmed stuff'.

Mr Johnson fell out with his closest aide because he was 'fed up with the media portrayal of him being a kind of puppet for the Vote Leave team'.

He helped broker a deal between Mr Johnson and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove to become prime minister and chancellor respectively after the Brexit result.

In an interview with the BBC, broadcast tonight, he said by the middle of January 2020 - even before Covid struck, the Prime Minister 'did not have a plan for governing'.

The Oxford-educated former aide claimed Mr Johnson (pictured with Carrie at the Six Nations in March 2020) wanted to visit the Queen at the start of the pandemic but he talked him out of it because it could kill her if she caught the virus

CARRIE AND THE COUP: CUMMINGS PLOTTED TO OUST BORIS AS HE LOST POWER BATTLE TO PM'S PARTNER

The most explosive claim Mr Cummings made was against the Prime Minister's wife Carrie, who he lost out to in a power struggle last year.

He said she wanted him gone as soon as Mr Johnson was elected in 2019 and wanted to replace him with 'clowns'.

He said: 'Carrie's view was and is - the PM doesn't have a plan and doesn't' know how Whitehall works. In 2019 her view was better that its Dom and Vote Leave team than civil service.

'But as soon as election was won it was, why should it be Dom and Vote Leave team, why shouldn't it be me.'

Mr Cunmings continued: 'Literally immediately after the election it was already clear that this was a problem. We were having meetings in No 10 saying that Carrie all wants us gone.

'The situation we found ourselves in is that the PM's girlfriend wanted to get rid of us and appoint clowns to certain key jobs.

'We actually have some pretty good judgement about who is competent and who isn't competent.'

And he admitted that he and the rest of his Vote Leave allies began to clash with the then Carrie Symonds over who controlled the premier.

He said: 'There was a whole official process gone through to hire an excellent young woman, and after months of this process happening it was all just thrown in the bin, and the person who the prime minister's wanted to be appointed was just suddenly appointed.

'Me and others said ''this is just a completely hopeless way for things to be run'' and that led to a lot of tension.'

He also said he was looking to oust Boris Johnson as Prime Minister only weeks after helping him secure an 80-seat majority.

Mr Cummings, who left No 10 in the autumn after a power struggle, accused Mr Johnson of not having a plan and said he 'doesn't know how to be Prime Minister'.

He also laid bare the extent of the fractious relationship between former Vote Leave officials and Carrie only weeks after the landslide win.

'Before even mid-January we were having meetings in Number 10 saying it's clear that Carrie (Johnson) wants rid of all of us,' said the former de facto chief of staff.

'At that point we were already saying by the summer either we'll all have gone from here or we'll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as Prime Minister.'

Mr Cummings claimed that in 2019, ahead of the election, Mrs Johnson was happy to have Vote Leave officials working in Downing Street, but this later changed.

He said: 'As soon as the election was won her view was, 'why should it be Dominic and the Vote Leave team?' Why shouldn't it be me that's pulling the strings?''

Ms Kuenssberg accused him if he saw himself as superior in his relationship with the Prime Minister.

He said: 'I think that I had a plan and I was trying to get things done. He didn't have a plan and didn't have an agenda.

'You know the Prime Minister's only agenda is buy more trains, buy more buses, have more bikes and build the world's most stupid tunnel to Ireland  that's it.'

Earlier in the interview Mr Cummings admitted he thinks other people see him as 'generally a nightmare'.

EVEN 'HOPELESS' BORIS THINKS IT'S 'LUDICROUS' HE'S PM: CUMMINGS LAUNCHES HATCHET JOB ON OLD BOSS

Mr Cummings was also quick to continue to unleash his fury on his old boss the Prime Minister.

He said Mr Johnson thought it was 'ludicrous' he was PM after he took over in Downing Street and said he calls the Daily Telegraph his 'real boss'.

The former chief adviser said the he also made the comment about his old university friend and fellow leader David Cameron's time in office.

He claimed Mr Johnson has an 'odd self awareness mode' and 'hopeless' traits and he knows he should not be in his position in his latest bombshells about his old boss.

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Dominic Cummings said he had to persuade the PM (pictured right) not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus

Mr Cummings said: 'He's a very complicated character. He's unusual in a lot of politicians in having a sort of odd, self awareness mode.

'He kind of knows in all sorts of ways that it's ludicrous for him to be in that position.

'He said that to me a few times before the referendum, he said that on the 24 June, the day after the referendum in 2016.'

He added the PM said: 'It's ludicrous that Dave [Cameron] was prime minister, it's ludicrous that George [Osborne] wants to be prime minister. The whole thing's ludicrous.'

In one of the more shocking allegations tonight, he claimed the PM still refers to the Daily Telegraph as his 'real boss' and said it was 'hard to tell' if he was joking.

Mr Cummings added the Prime Minister was being 'driven round the bend' by the idea in the media he was a puppet for Vote Leave bosses.

CUMMINGS SAYS COVID WAS 'LIKE A DISASTER MOVIE' AND BORIS 'PUT POLITICS ABOVE PEOPLE'S LIVES'

In other parts of the interview the journalist pushed him on the government's coronavirus response.

He claimed the Prime Minister thought Covid would be a passing 'fad' like Swine Flu was and added it was 'like a disaster movie'.

Mr Cummings also claimed the PM was reluctant to tighten Covid restrictions last autumn because 'the people who are dying are essentially all over 80'.

He told the BBC: 'It was like a disaster movie but it was real. even in the first week of march [BJ] said 'business as usual', he didn't take it seriously. his view was that it was like swine flu and that he had seen these sort of scares before.'

He painted an image of the Prime Minister flip-flopping over whether lockdowns were a good idea.

Over whether to bring in a second lockdown, he said Sir Keir Starmer had called for it so Mr Johnson thought it would be political suicide to be bounced into one.

He said; 'He had a bunch of Tory MPs screaming at him, some of them similarly with Brexit had lost their minds and were saying all kinds of complete fake news about Covid.

'And third he had the Telegraph, who he referred to as ''my real boss'. So he had those three things all pushing him not to act.'

Mr Cummings also revealed the government's plan of herd immunity was questioned by a 'very, very smart physicist'.

He said they spoke to him ahead of lockdown and said: 'Look it doesn't seem this has been thought out, has any of this been properly checked?'

And he said they asked him if they could look into another solution to beating the pandemic.

'I SHOULD HAVE QUIT OR COME CLEAN OVER BARNARD CASTLE': CUMMINGS SAYS HE DIDN'T TELL FULL TRUTH

Mr Cummings was probed on the Barnard Castle fallout, which saw him issue a rare speech from Downing Street.

He had driven with his family from London to Durham to his parents' home despite having Covid symptoms.

But he slammed the way the government decided to handle the incident as 'extremely chaotic'.

He said: 'I'd had repeated security problems at my house going back to 2019, these problems had re-emerged... I'd said maybe I'd just move to my Dads farm in Durham.

'My wife was kind of ill but not with all the right symptoms.

'The situation was extremely chaotic... the plan was when I discussed it with the PM - he agreed we should just say nothing about it.

'What then happened is that he suddenly changed his mind and said we can't stick with the initial plan.

'I said I'm not going into the security stuff and the whole thing turned into a whole mess.

'Everything I said in the rose garden was true but i didn't go into all the security concerns in the background.

'There's also no doubt that the way we handled the whole thing was wrong - what I should've done is resigned, or spoken to my family and said we're just going to have to come clean about the whole thing.'

NO APOLOGIES OVER BREXIT: CUMMINGS SAYS 350m NHS CLAIM WAS MORE TRUTHFUL THAN MOST SLOGANS

The interview also saw him grilled by the journalist about Brexit and the infamous NHS figure he had plonked on the side of a red bus.

He refused to apologise for it but said people are entitled to oppose Brexit and think it was a mistake.

He smirked when asked about the 350million figure on the Brexit bus after the journalist said it was 'not the truth'.

He said: 'We were using true figures... if the worst that can be said about a political campaign is that they used real figures but it needed more context - then you can say 'vote leave has been more honest than any other political campaign'.'

He added: 'I don't think we won on false pretences - the arguments we made about the weaknesses, costs about the EU were vindicated.'

He also said he thought world events had justified Britain leaving the European Union.

Mr Cummings said: 'I obviously think Brexit was a good thing. The way the world has worked out since 2016 has validated Vote Leave.'

But he was open to people criticising Brexit and says anyone who thinks they know the answer 'is a complete idiot'.

He said: 'I don't know what sort of person you'd be if you didnt think Brexit was going to go down as a massive mixtake.'

'YOU CAN'T SEE THE QUEEN - WHAT IF SHE DIES?' PM HAD TO BE TALKED OUT OF MEETING AT START OF PANDEMIC

Mr Cummings also revealed Mr Johnson wanted to meet the Queen at the start of the pandemic despite signs Covid was spreading in Downing Street, it was claimed last night.

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, he said he had to persuade the PM not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus.

He told the BBC: 'I said ''what are you doing?'' and he said ''I'm going to see the Queen'', and I said, ''what on earth are you talking about, of course you can't go and see the Queen''.

Cummings claimed he told Boris Johnson that 'of course he couldn't go and see the Queen' at the start of the pandemic (file photo)

'[The PM] said, ''ah, that's what I do every Wednesday, sod this, I'm gonna go and see her''.'

The former chief adviser alleged he warned the PM that there were already people in No 10 who were isolating and told him: 'You might have coronavirus.'

He added: 'I just said, ''if you... give her coronavirus and she dies what are you gonna do, you can't do that, you can't risk that, that's completely insane''.

'And he said, he basically just hadn't thought it through, he said, ''yeah, holy s***, I can't go''.'

Mr Cummings also claimed that Mr Johnson repeatedly said 'we should never have done the first lockdown'.

'I'M TALKING TO PEOPLE': CUMMINGS SAYS THE FUTURE OF POLITICS IS A NEW PARTY (OR TAKING OVER ONE)

Mr Cummings also weighed in on what he hopes will change in British politics in the future.

He said the country should be 'very, very aggressively' trying to get 'very rare people' into power because they are 'times 1,000 smarter than the norm'.

He said: 'If you're trying to do very hard things, especially in a pandemic... or the institutional mechanism for war, and dealing with terrorism, things like that, then my view is we should be very, very aggressively trying to get into position these very rare people who are times 100, times 1,000 smarter than the norm.'

He added one option for change would be a new party to take over from the current major opposition.

'THIS ISN'T ABOUT REVENGE': CUMMINGS ON WHY HE'S SPEAKING OUT AND WHY IT'S GOT SO PERSONAL

BBC journalist Laura Kuenssberg asked Mr Cummings how he thought he was seen by others.

He replied: 'Generally as a nightmare.'

Mr Cummings was also asked about whether all his recent attacks on the government have been revenge for being booted out of No 10.

He said: 'The reason I'm speaking out is I want people to be thinking about these questions: How are we governed? How is power actually exercised in No 10? What sort of things should be more transparent? How should these power structures be opened up?'

Ms Kuenssberg asked: 'Does it have to be so personal?'

'It doesn't matter if it's personal. It doesn't matter if people are upset. All these MPs or ministers or officials or whoever ... We need more difficult conversations in this country. More people upset.

'A lot of people have a pop at me but you don't see me crying about it.'

On whether he is still in contact with the PM, he added: 'Last time I spoke to him was the Friday I left No 10.

'He texted me a few days later asking if I'd speak to him and I said no. It doesn't bother me one way or the other [if I speak to him again].'

In reply to Mr Cummings' claims, Downing Street said: 'Since the start of the pandemic, the prime minister has taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice.

'The government he leads has delivered the fastest vaccination rollout in Europe, saved millions of jobs through the furlough scheme and prevented the NHS from being overwhelmed through three national lockdowns.

'The government is entirely focused on emerging cautiously from the pandemic and building back better.'

SARAH VINE: Brutal, disloyal and obsessive... My old friend Dom seems hellbent on destroying his former boss  whatever the cost

by Sarah Vine

Hard to imagine anyone quite as destructively attention-seeking as Prince Harry, who this week announced the publication of an 'intimate' memoir, no doubt detailing the full horror of growing up never having to worry about where the next penny was coming from or how to put food on the table (except, of course, when it's the servants' afternoon off).

And yet such a person does exist, and I'm afraid to say his name is Dominic Cummings, former adviser to the Prime Minister, now full-time thorn in Boris Johnson's side.

I have known Dom on and off for many years, almost two decades, in fact. He is a man of great political passion and possesses a brilliant mind. Too brilliant, sometimes.

Intellectually, he can throw shade on almost everyone he encounters: you have to be seriously on the ball to keep up with him, even when he's half a bottle of wine down at dinner.

If you don't know him, his direct manner can sometimes be mistaken for aggression. It's not, actually; but it's true, he doesn't suffer fools gladly. I have no doubt it was this, coupled with an unnerving and very unclubbable habit of telling people the truth about themselves, that made him such a Marmite figure at No.10 and which, ultimately, cost him his job.

I have known Dom on and off for many years, almost two decades, in fact. He is a man of great political passion and possesses a brilliant mind. Too brilliant, sometimes

David Cameron disliked him intensely, famously calling him a 'career psychopath', which I always sensed Dom took as something of a compliment (there was no love lost between those two men).

In fact, when Cameron was elected Prime Minister, he didn't want Dom  who had worked hard in opposition alongside my husband to devise Cameron's education strategy  to join the Department for Education.

At the time, I couldn't really see why  but with hindsight, perhaps he had a point. Ultimately Dom's absolute refusal  or inability  to contemplate even the slightest compromise has made him a very awkward cog to insert into the machine of government.

That said, Dom's saving grace, I always felt, was that he stayed away from front-line politics, preferring to get his hands dirty in the engine-room of power and leave the shiny Sir Humphrey stuff to others. But something about the past few years, in the aftermath of Dom's Brexit triumph and the ongoing psychodrama between him and the Prime Minister, seems to have changed all that.

Put it this way: the Dom of old would never have dreamt of doing a sit-down interview with the BBC, Meghan and Harry style. He would have considered it an act of spectacular idiocy.

But then power, or closeness to power (or even worse, loss of it), does funny things to people's heads, and this Dom is a very different man from the one I knew.

Having watched the whole thing, perhaps the most damaging part of the interview is the revelation of a WhatsApp message thread from Boris to aides, sent on October 15 last year

He claims he is not motivated by a desire for revenge; but there's no denying he seems hellbent on bringing down his former boss  whatever the cost.

Perhaps that's because, as last night's interview made crystal clear, he never really considered Johnson his boss in the first place, merely his chosen vessel in the pursuit of power.

Let's face it, this is one political bromance that's gone very sour indeed. In fact, there's something a little alarming in the paranoid  even brutal  way Dom seems to obsess about the new Mrs Johnson, whom he claims supplanted him in the Prime Minister's affections.

'Before even mid-January we were having meetings in No. 10 saying it's clear that Carrie wants rid of all of us,' he tells Laura Kuenssberg in the interview.

'At that point we were already saying by the summer either we'll all have gone from here or we'll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as Prime Minister.'

It all rather brings to mind that Taylor Swift song: 'We used to have mad love/but now we've got bad blood', the video for which involved Swift and her chums tearing chunks out of each other. This is, quite honestly, a similarly less-than-edifying spectacle for all parties involved. But it is also more than just a jilted adviser boiling the metaphorical bunny.

Dom has always had an anarchic edge to his character. Properly channelled, it gives him an electrifying edge. But tinged as it now seems to be with resentment, it's an altogether more toxic kind of energy. He is not only trashing his former boss, he is also undermining the very institution of government  in much the same way that Harry's recent outpourings devalue the monarchy.

David Cameron disliked him intensely, famously calling him a 'career psychopath', which I always sensed Dom took as something of a compliment (there was no love lost between those two men)

Like Harry, Dom is not content to simply turn his back on No. 10  he wants to burn it to the ground. And all for what? Because it's hard to see how any of this benefits the nation, or leads us any closer to defeating Covid. It's just one man and his ego, on the rampage.

Having watched the whole thing, perhaps the most damaging part of the interview is the revelation of a WhatsApp message thread from Boris to aides, sent on October 15 last year, in which he observed: 'I must say I have been slightly rocked by some of the data on Covid fatalities. The median age is 82-81 for men, 85 for women. That is above life expectancy. So get Covid and live longer. Hardly anyone under 60 goes into hospital (4 pc) and of those virtually all survive.'

He goes on. 'And I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff. Folks, I think we may need to recalibrate. There are max 3m in this country over 80. It shows we don't go for nationwide lockdown.'

Dom is no fool. He knows the explosive nature of these messages, and he knows that, taken out of context, they appear cruel and callous. He also knows that in the current climate of blame across feverish social media platforms, they will play into the narrative of Johnson as a man who puts politics before people  indeed he said as much last night  and who will pursue a populist agenda at the cost of anything, even human life.

The reality, of course, is far more complex. Because unlike Dom, who as an adviser enjoyed all the trappings of power without any of the responsibility, the buck stops with Johnson. It is not only his job, but also his duty, to weigh up the pros and cons of his actions  even, yes, to the point of questioning the wisdom of sacrificing the interests of the vast majority to protect a small minority.

Far from being in denial about the situation, as Cummings implies, it seems to me the Prime Minister was facing down the realities of Covid, asking the cold, hard questions that needed asking. The real problem, from Dom's point of view, was that he wasn't doing as he was told any more.

Johnson's job during the pandemic has meant he had been forced to make some very unpleasant calculations, of which the above is just one. He has had to balance the lives of those who are clinically vulnerable to Covid in the short term with those destined to die in the medium term because of untreated diseases such as cancer and heart disease (currently thought to be in the region of 150,000), with an NHS backlog now estimated at 13 million.

Dom is no fool. He knows the explosive nature of these messages, and he knows that, taken out of context, they appear cruel and callous

Then there are the long-term effects of lockdown on future generations, debt, the economy, people's livelihoods, society, mental health and so on.

And he has to do so under extreme pressure, in the most hostile of circumstances and with vast amounts of conflicting and constantly changing data.

For Johnson, there were never any good solutions, only less bad ones. Whatever he did, whichever path he chose, some form of catastrophe was always inevitable; either way people were going to die, whether they be an 85-year-old in a care home or, like my friend whose delayed cancer diagnosis means she will probably not see Christmas, a mother in her early 50s.

Weighing up those choices is a hard process and it means exploring all the options and seeing the problem from all angles. You also have to be able to say the un- sayable, to contemplate the unthinkable, and trust that your mental modelling will not be taken out of context and used against you at a later date.

Dom may say, as he does, that Johnson was never suited to the job, and that 'we only got him in there [note the narcissistic nature of that phrasing] because we had to solve a certain problem, not because he was the right person to be running the country'.

But in fact, I doubt whether anyone else would have done much better. Certainly not Theresa May, queen of indecision; and definitely not Jeremy Corbyn.

For Johnson, there were never any good solutions, only less bad ones. Whatever he did, whichever path he chose, some form of catastrophe was always inevitable

There is a wider issue here, too, one of personal conduct. Because if a Prime Minister facing the worst of situations can't trust his closest aides, the very people  like Dom  who are supposed to help him carry this huge and frankly unfathomable burden of responsibility, what is he to do? In times of national and global crisis, those unlucky enough to find themselves holding the reins of power are forced to make choices no one should ever have to make. The closest analogy to this pandemic is World War II, in which thousands of able-bodied young people gave their lives to protect the freedom of the country as a whole.

The Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill, faced similar impossible choices, albeit in relation to troop deployment and military strategy. Some of them turned out to be the right ones. Others turned out to be huge mistakes which cost many lives. But desperate times require desperate measures, and sometimes  as we have seen with the vaccine rollout  the boldest risks do pay off. But you can't take risks if you are constantly having to anticipate a potential witch-hunt.

In Churchill's day, the ideas fizzing around in his head would have been debated in a bunker under Whitehall, or in memos fired off to colleagues. Today, a digital message dashed off on WhatsApp  so easy to save and expose later to damaging effect  is the incendiary equivalent.

What makes Dom's revelations even more of a betrayal  and forces us to question his motives even further  is that in the end, as we all know, Johnson did ultimately choose to protect the older generation at the expense of the younger one. He did lock up the country to save a fraction of the population, and he did it at huge political cost.

He may not yet be paying the price, since the true after-effects of lockdown have barely begun to show; but in a few years' time, when the financial realities bite, when the mental and physical toll starts to show, there will  as there was for Churchill, who lost the post-war election to Clement Attlee  be a reckoning. Until then, it seems the Domshells will continue to rain down.

Narcissism central, chateau-bottled sour grapes  and a palpable porkie... HENRY DEEDES watches Dominic Cummings' sit-down interview

When Dominic Cummings attended meetings at Downing Street, he would take his leave while yanking the pin from an imaginary hand grenade and tossing it back over his shoulder.

In his tumultuous time at the heart of government, nothing pleased the Prime Minister's former right-hand man more than setting off explosions all along Whitehall.

Since his departure last December, he's been pulling out more pins than a cheroot-chewing revolutionary. Barely a day passes when Cummings doesn't take to Twitter or his blog to tap out another bile-coated rant aimed at the PM. Loud, mushroom cloud-shaped kabooms going off everywhere.

Last night, we saw him do a sit-down interview with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg. Yet it wasn't quite the pyrotechnics show Mr Cummings might have hoped for.

Most of his gripes sounded like nothing more than chateau-bottled sour grapes. Narcissism central.

The former chief adviser alleged he warned the PM not to visit the Queen last year as there were already people in No 10 who were isolating and told him: 'You might have coronavirus'

By the end, it was hard not to conclude that this was someone tantalisingly close to being off his rocker.

Mr Cummings wore a crisp new shirt. You could still see the crease marks from the wrapping. Probably had a few pins still stuck in it.

For any other interviewee, such detail would be unnoteworthy except that Cummings' usual style lends itself to bohemian barge folk.

Kuenssberg lobbed a gentle opener. 'How would you describe Boris?' she asked. Cummings shot a look of confusion. 'Wh- how d'ya mean?' he spluttered. You'd think she'd asked him to knock her up a bearnaise sauce.

He mentioned something about Boris having a grasp of the absurd. He had told Cummings before being elected that the idea of him being PM was obviously ridiculous. Cummings assumed he meant it.

That he didn't recognise that remark for the self-deprecating joke it was is telling. We heard a series of marginally interesting vignettes. How he stopped Boris from infecting the Queen with Covid. How Boris went around saying he regretted the first lockdown.

Oh, and Cummings admitted handling the whole Barnard Castle thing badly. Though he stood by the eye test baloney. Kuenssberg winced. A palpable porkie.

Cummings implied he had taken a job with Boris because that's how he could get to control him.

'Don't you think that sounds unbelievably arrogant?' asked Laura K.

Cummings ran an index finger down one cheek. The thought clearly never occurred to him.

Kuenssberg put it to him that he was the cause of much of the division that engulfed Westminster after the referendum.

'No,' Cummings replied. Others were to blame too.

Did he consider himself the PM's superior? 'I don't see myself as a better person,' he replied nonchanantly.

Kuenssberg, by the way, was excellent. Never once did she try to flatter her subject. Instead, her reactions to these megalomaniac rantings was a picture.

Last night Downing Street denied that the incident where the PM and Mr Cummings discussed visiting the Queen took place but Cummings said in his interview that others witnessed it

Sometimes she flicked her hair awkwardly, at other times she simply grimaced in horror.

She reminded me of Helen Mirren in Prime Suspect interrogating some particularly unpleasant specimen.

Fast forward to the Conservatives' landslide election victory in 2019. No sooner had Boris got his tootsies back under the Downing Street desk than Dom and his cohorts were apparently trying to get him ejected.

Boris 'wasn't the right man to running the country', opined Cummings. Says who? Dom of course.

Presumably all those millions people who'd just voted for him could go swivel. This was just deranged. I'm no Che Guevara, but I'm sure staging a coup requires support.

Aside from a few unelected misfits and weirdos he'd hired from the Vote Leave campaign, Cummings had fallen out with pretty much everyone. Even Dilyn the dog hated him.

Kuenssberg was horrified that Cummings could help get someone elected whom he considered the wrong man for the job. 'What kind of con had you just pulled off on the British public if that's what you think?' she asked.

Cummings shot her a toothy grin. 'Well, I'd say that's politics,' he said.

What next? He was considering setting up a new party. He wanted to 'rewire the whole system'.

Would he ever speak to Boris again? 'It doesn't bother me one way or the other,' he smirked.

Ladies and gentlemen, here's what happens when you let the loonies take over the asylum.
The Louvre has launched legal action against Pornhub over its new app that recreates classic masterpieces with adult film stars.

The Parisian museum has challenged the company over its 'Classic Nudes' platform which offers an 'interactive guide to discover erotic art in the world's most famous museums'.

The first edition of the site shows porn actors, from the troupe My Sweet Apple, re-enacting classic masterpieces from fine art galleries including The Louvre and Musee d'Orsay in Paris, The National Gallery in London, The Uffizi in Florence and Prado in Madrid.

But developers plan to expand the collection if the initial round is successful.

The Louvre, along with The Uffizi, has since said it is suing Pornhub for rights infringements.

The museums have demanded the company remove reproductions of the works that are displayed in the flesh at their galleries.

The Parisian museum has challenged the company over its 'Classic Nudes' platform which offers an 'interactive guide to discover erotic art in the world's most famous museums'

A spokesperson for the Louvre told The Daily Beast that its lawyers had contacted Pornhub and that it expected the works to be removed 'at once'.

And a spokesperson for The Uffizi in Florence also told the publication: 'No one has granted authorizations for the operation or use of the art.

'In Italy, the cultural heritage code provides that in order to use images of a museum, compressed works for commercial purposes, it is necessary to have the permission, which regulates the methods and sets the relative fee to be paid.

The first edition of the site shows porn actors, from the troupe My Sweet Apple, re-enacting classic masterpieces including The Brunette Odalisque currently at The Louvre

The Louvre, along with The Uffizi, has since said it is suing Pornhub (re-enactment pictured) for rights infringements

'All this obviously if the museum grants the authorization which, for example, would hardly have been issued in this case.'

During the official launch, the adult site said: 'With museums finally reopening around the world as pandemic restrictions are being lifted, Pornhub wanted to do its part in stimulating the public to visit, explore and fall back in love (or lust) with these cultural institutions.'

It added: 'The online portal guides visitors past the SFW masterpieces and gets right to the good stuff: representations of the naked body in all its artistic glory.'

Pornhub's 'Classic Nudes' campaign is a collaborative initiative with creative agency Officer & Gentleman

American adult-film actress Asa Akira, who is the Classic Nudes brand ambassador, said: 'There's a treasure trove of erotic art around the world  depicting nudes, orgies, and more  that's not available on Pornhub. These pre-Internet art pieces are currently sitting in museums, which we are now finally able to start visiting again as covid restrictions are starting to lift.

'So as people start to head back to The Louvre or The MET, they can simply open Classic Nudes, and I'll be their guide. Time to ditch those boring self-tour recordings and enjoy every single brushstroke of these erotic masterpieces with me.'

Pornhub's 'Classic Nudes' campaign is a collaborative initiative with creative agency Officer & Gentleman.

MailOnline has contacted The Louvre, The Uffizi and Pornhub for comment.
Disturbing video captured the moment a one-year-old girl was struck by a stray bullet during a gunfight at a convenience store in West Philadelphia as the city and others around the US struggle with a surge in crime.

The shooting took place over the weekend inside a convenience store located on the corner of the neighborhood's 50th Street.

Surveillance video shows the baby girl in her mother's arms when chaos erupts and shots are fired from outside and inside the store.

The mother, who was at the counter, instinctively wraps her arms around her baby to protect her and runs out of the view of the camera while the shooting continues.

Surveillance footage captures the moment bullets begin to fly at a convenience store with a mother and her one-year-old daughter getting caught up in the violence

The mother of the one-year-old baby injured in the shoot out frantically pleads for help after the gunfire ends

Once the gunfire stops the mother reappears with her injured baby in her arms and frantically pleads for help before exiting the store.

Store owner Majid Choudary told ABC 6 that she is still haunted by what she witnessed.

'The day when that happened, that night I couldn't even sleep because my mind was still hearing that voice,' Choudary said.

The baby is expected to survive her gunshot wound to the leg.

It remains unclear what sparked the shooting or whether any arrests have been made.

On Monday, District Attorney Larry Krasner addressed the shooting and discussed the surge in violence, which is now impacting innocent children.

'An approximately one-year-old child was shot one time,' Krasner said. ' I think we're all impacted by the injustice of children suffering wounds.'

ABC 6 found that 123 children have been shot in Philadelphia to date and 21 of them have been killed by gunfire, a dramatic increase from this time last year.

Overall, more than 1,200 hundred people have been shot this year, with 263 people dying as a result of the gun violence, ABC 6 reported.

The shooting took place over the weekend inside a convenience store located on the corner of the neighborhood's 50th Street

Bullet holes can be seen at the West Philadelphia convenience store where a shooting injured a one-year-old girl on Saturday

Police find a bullet casing at the scene of the wild shoot out at a convenience store that left a baby wounded

The gun violence in Philadelphia is reflective of a larger violent crime surge overtaking major cities across the U.S. like Chicago and New York City.

According to Yahoo News, Chicago has seen a record number of violent crime incidents this year.

As of July 7, there had been more than 2,021 shootings in 2021, 164 more than in 2020. The city had also reported 364 shooting deaths at this time, an increase of 5 more than last year.

During a press briefing Monday, Chicago police Superintendent David Brown said the department is seeing a rise in drive-by shootings. He compared the current drive-by rates to those of the 1980s.

Between Friday and Sunday night Chicago police officers responded to 44 shooting incidents with a total of 56 victims and 11 deaths with the ages of the deceased ranging from 26 to 38.

Meanwhile in the Big Apple a recent string of violent crimes that have left many New Yorkers worried that the city is sliding back to the dark days of the '70s and '80s when it earned the nickname 'Fear City'.

In the 1970s, the city faced $10billion in debt and funds were cut to the police and other services.

NYPD data shows that shootings have spiked 28.9 percent in 2021 compared to last year as of July 11, its most recent data. There have been 803 shooting incidents in 2021 compared to 623 in 2020.

Shooting victims are also up a staggering 22.2 percent year over year, with 931 people falling victim to gun crime compared to 623 by this time last year.

The number of murders has also risen from 215 to 225 in the same timeframe - a 4.7 percent rise.

Rape has surged 7.3 percent and other sex crimes 25.9 percent.

The biggest leap in crime rates is for hate crimes, which has surged by 118.2 percent in the last year. This data comes amid numerous random attacks on Asian Americans in the city, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eric Adams, the ex-cop who is the Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, warned last Wednesday that 'no one is going to come back' if violence, and in particular gun violence in the Big Apple continues.
Jeff Bezos shared a special message to his mother from space during Tuesday morning's successful Blue Origin flight.

The billionaire and his brother Mark scrawled 'HI MOM' across their palms, which they waved at the camera during the 10 minute voyage.

When they landed back on Earth, Jeff stepped out of the New Sheppard capsule and immediately ran to hug his mother Jacklyn, later gifting her with a Blue Origin feather necklace he wore during the journey.

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Jeff and Mark Bezos sent their mother a message from space on board Blue Origin's New Sheppard space craft Tuesday morning

The pair wrote 'HI MOM' across their palms which they waved at the camera during the flight

The 57-year-old Amazon founder also gave his mother a feather that he wore on a necklace on the flight. She is shown, right, with his sister Christina

After he presented her with the necklace, the mother and son embraced

The Bezos brothers and the crew of Blue Origin took off from their base at Van Horn, Texas, at 9.12am EST on Tuesday, the 52nd anniversary of the moon landing, 12 minutes behind schedule. They ascended for four minutes before the New Shepard rocket booster separated from their capsule, leaving them floating in zero gravity for four minutes.

They were joined by 18-year-old Oliver Daemen - the word's first paying customer to buy his flight - and 82-year-old Wally Funk, who passed NASA's space program in the 1960s but never made it to space because the women's flight was canceled.

They then returned to earth with parachutes controlling the pace of their descent, touching down in the Texas desert at 9.22am EST, 10 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff.

The 10 minute journey cost $5.5billion - $550million per minute.

Bezos, who stepped down as Amazon CEO earlier this year and will now split his time between Blue Origin and his environmental charity, said at a press conference after the flight: 'For every amazon customer, you guys paid for all this so thank you from the bottom of my heart.'

The New Shepard launched at 9.12am EST on Tuesday, 12 minutes after schedule. At 9.16am EST - four minutes later - the booster separated from the capsule, where the four crew members floated in zero gravity for four minutes before starting their descent. First, three parachutes deployed then another three before the capsule touched back down in the Texas desert at 9.22am EST

Jeff Bezos hugs his mother Jacklyn after returning to earth with his crew mates on Tuesday morning, as 82-year-old Wally Funk exited the capsule

Jeff has always been close with this mother and says she inspired his success.

In 2017, he tweeted an old photo of him and his mom, noting that he had 'won the lottery with my mom,' and thanking her for everything she had done for him.

And just last year, when he testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative law, which was investigating the monopolistic practices of big technology companies like Amazon, Bezos said he considers his parents his 'greatest gifts.'

'They have been incredible role models for me and my siblings our entire life,' he said at the time.

His mom and step-father were the ones who gave Jeff the investment to start Amazon which would grow to become multibillion dollar company with a $837,330.25 revenue per minute in 2021s first quarter.

In 2017, Bezos tweeted his appreciation for his mother, Jacklyn, thanking her for everything she had done for him

He had previously announced that the 600-foot ship that would act as a floating platform for his company's 310-foot orbital class New Glenn rocket would be named in her honor

Bezos first presented his mother and step-father, Mike Bezos, with the idea of an online book company in 1995, and together they lent him $245,573 - which was then considered a lot of money, and a risk considering the internet was in its infancy, he said.

'They weren't making a bet on Amazon or the concept of a bookstore on the Internet. They were making a bet on their son,' Bezos recounted at the anti-trust hearing last year. 'I told them that I thought there was a 70 percent chance they would lose their investment, and they did it anyway.'

Their investment would be worth almost $30 billion today, according to Market Realist, making Bezos' parents wealthier than Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Jeff has found his own ways to pay his parents back.

In late December, he announced on Instagram the 600-foot ship that would act as a floating platform for his company's 310-foot orbital class New Glenn rocket would be named Jacklyn in her honor.

The 57-year-old Blue Origin founder wrote at the time: 'New Glenn's first stage will come home to the Jacklyn after every flight.

'It couldn't be more appropriately named - Mom has always given us the best place and the best heart to come home to.'

Jacklyn Bezos had Jeff when she was barely 17 and a junior in high school. They are seen here at the Amazon's Emmy Celebration at the Sunset Tower Hotel in September 2016

Jacklyn met Mike Bezos while attending night classes, and they were married in 1968. Jeff now considers Mike his father, and he and his parents were seen together at the Smithsonian Magazine's 2016 American Ingenuity Awards

The world's richest man came from relatively humble beginnings.

The world's richest man came from relatively humble beginnings.

Jacklyn had Jeff when she was barely 17 and a junior at a high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1964.

In a 2019 commencement address at Cambridge College, she revealed she had to fight to continue her education and they imposed humiliating restrictions on - banning her from speaking to other students or eat in the cafeteria or walk across the stage to get her diploma at her graduation.

When Jeff was growing up, she was a divorced single mom, surviving on a $190-a-month secretarial job - the equivalent of $1,529 in 2019.

Soon, she said, she was able to afford an apartment for her and her young son, but she did not have enough money for a phone to keep in touch with her parents, so they gave her a walkie-talkie and told her to check in every day at 7am.

Determined to continue with her education, Jacklyn then enrolled in night school and specifically chose classes where the professor would let her bring Jeff to class.

'I would show up with an infant and two duffel bags,' she recounted. 'One full of my textbooks, and the other full of diapers, cloth diapers, bottles... And the second duffel bag would have items that might keep Jeff interested for a few minutes.'

She met Mike Bezos, a Cuban immigrant, in one of those classes, she said, and the two were married in 1968. To this day, Jeff says, he considers Mike his father.

Soon though, Jacklyn said in her speech, according to CNBC, the family had to move for Mike's job and her 'dream of graduating from college was put on hold.'

Eventually, she said she began to envy her children when they went away to college, but finally, at the age of 40, she, herself, graduated from the college of Saints Elizabeth.

Bezos tweeted the speech soon after her commencement address, writing: 'My mom's incredible story. Wow. So grateful. So proud.'
A 28-year-old activist who spent the last seven months looking for her missing husband was kidnapped from her home and murdered in northern Mexico last week.

Aranza Ramos was found dead by authorities in Guaymas, Sonora, on Thursday.

According to local media, a group of armed men took Ramos by force out of her home approximately at 10pm local time in the Guaymas neighborhood of Ortiz.

The Guaymas Municipal Police and paramedics discovered her lifeless body lying on a sidewalk at 11.30pm, according to the Sonora state Attorney General's Office.

Aranza Ramos, who spent the last seven months searching for her missing husband in northern Mexico, was kidnapped and murder by a group of armed men Thursday in Guaymas, Sonora. The 28-year-old was a mother to a one-year-old girl

Aranza Ramos with her husband Brayan Celaya, who has been missing since December 6,

Ramos formed part of two volunteer groups, Madres Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Mothers of Sonora) and Guerreras Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Warriors of Sonora) following the December 6, 2020 disappearance of her spouse, Brayan Celaya.

Just hours before she was abducted, Ramos went on Facebook, posting a missing person's poster of her husband and pleading for the public's assistance in the search of Celaya.

'Family and friends, can you help me share the image of Brayan once again as I ask you to keep him in your prayers,' she wrote. 'I thank you from the heart! Thank you very very much!! We will find you my live, wait for me a little more!!'

Ramos and Celaya were parents to a one-year-old girl.

Aranza Ramos and her husband Brayan Celaya were parents of a one-year-old girl. Ramos joined the volunteer search groups, Madres Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Mothers of Sonora) and Guerreras Buscadoras de Sonora (Searching Warriors of Sonora), following the December 6, 2020 disappearance of her spouse

The late Aranza Ramos with her one-year-old daughter and missing husband, Brayan Celaya, who has been missing since December 2020

According to Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, on the day of her assassination, Ramos had participated in the search of a clandestine grave where human remains had turned up as smoked billowed out of the site.

'A great person whose only sin was to love her husband with all her soul, whom she has tirelessly searched for since he disappeared,' Madres Buscadoras de Sonora said in a statement.

'Why kill her? What crime did she commit? She was not looking for the culprits or for justice; she was just looking for peace and to find a dignified place for the love of her life, the father of her daughter.'

The Sonora state Attorney General's Office lauded Ramos' activism and her willingness to help families search for the missing relatives in Mexico.

'There will be justice for Aranza.' It is a coward (move) to deprive a woman of (her) life just for looking for her missing husband,' the prosecutor's office said in a statement.

'She was always brave, active, enthusiastic and supportive, she worked tirelessly in efforts and search actions with the firm hope that she, or other people or families could meet their loved ones again.'

About four hours and half before Araza Ramos was kidnapped and murder, she shared the above missing person's poster of her husband, Brayan Celaya, on Facebook and wrote: 'Family and friends, can you help me share the image of Brayan once again as I ask you to keep him in your prayers. I thank you from the heart! Thank you very very much!! We will find you my live, wait for me a little more!!'

The federal government said on Monday that 68 human rights or environmental activists have been killed since President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador took office in December 2018. She would be the 69th.

Mexico has reported more than 87,800 missing people since 2006, when then-President Felipe Calderon expanded the country's battle against drug cartels.

For years, groups of relatives of the disappeared have joined together to make their own searches for the missing, sometimes finding mass graves that authorities then have excavated.
Jeff Bezos has given CNN's Van Jones and celebrity chef Jose Andres $100 million each to donate to the charity of their choice just hours after spending $5.5billion on his 10-minute space journey.

The world's richest man gave the two men what he called a 'courage and civility award' in Texas on Tuesday following his successful space launch.

They were both on hand to accept their $100 million, which was announced at the conclusion of Bezos' space launch press conference.

Jones is a CNN political contributor and founder of Dream Corps, which is a nonprofit for criminal justice reform.

Andres is a Spanish chef who founded World Central Kitchen - a non-profit devoted to providing meals in the wake of natural disasters.

Jeff Bezos gave CNN's Van Jones $100 million on Tuesday for what he called a 'courage and civility award'. As he accepted the award, an emotional Jones said: 'Sometimes dreams come true'

CNN's Van Jones and celebrity chef Jose Andres were both on hand to accept their $100 million, which was announced at the conclusion of Bezos' space launch press conference

Bezos noted that the two men can donate the money to whatever charities they choose, including their own.

Jones' small non-profit had a total of $2.5 million in assets as of 2019, according to the latest available tax records. World Central Kitchen had around $27 million in assets as of the same tax year.

As he accepted the award, an emotional Jones said: 'Sometimes dreams come true' and that 'the headlines around the world should be anything is possible if you believe'.

'Lauren and Jeff don't do nothing small - they just don't do it. They dream big, they love big, they bet big. You bet on me and I appreciate it,' he said, while mentioning Bezos' girlfriend Lauren Sanchez.

Jones went on to gush over Bezos, saying the billionaire had lifted 'the ceiling off of people's dreams of humanity'.

'That's an important thing. Don't be mad about it. When you see somebody reaching for the heavens, be glad, because a lot more heaven is up there to reach for. And we can do that together,' Jones said.

'If this small group of people can make miracles happen in outer space, a bigger group of people can make miracles happen down here, and we're going to do it.'

Jones went on to gush over Bezos, saying the billionaire (pictured above together) had lifted 'the ceiling off of people's dreams of humanity'

Jones revealed that Bezos had called him over the weekend to inform him of the award.

'He said that he thought that my attempts to try to bring people together across party lines, across racial lines had been inspiring, and can I use some more support,' Jones said.

'I really didn't know what to say.

'You got people coming out of prisons, you have got people on reservations, you have got people in Appalachia, you have got people at the border, all people.

'This country is unbelievable what people are doing, and how much heart they have and how much love they have. They don't care about these things we divide over sometime and they need more support. If we can connect them with more resources, it is going to make a big difference.'

For his part Andres suggested he'd use the money to further his efforts at feeding the hungry, which his charity works on.

The award itself 'cannot feed the world on its own,' he said. But, he said, it's the 'start of a new chapter for us.'

Bezos said his new philanthropic initiative will recognize leaders who 'pursue solutions with courage'.

It is not clear how many Bezos plans to hand out.

The second award was given to Spanish chef Jose Andres, who is founder of World Central Kitchen - a non-profit devoted to providing meals in the wake of natural disasters

Celebrity chef Jose Andres was also given $100 million to donate to the charity of his choice

Bezos announced earlier this year that he was stepping down as Amazon CEO to devote more time to philanthropy.

He has been criticized in the past for only donating a small portion of his $160 billion fortune to philanthropic causes.

Meanwhile, his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, is renowned for having already donated a huge portion of her wealth since divorcing Bezos in 2019.

Scott - who helped create Amazon and is worth $60 billion - showed up Bezos earlier this year and appeared to take swipe at him for profiting during the COVID pandemic while millions of Americans and people around the world lost their jobs.

She revealed she had personally donated $4.1billion of her own fortune, adding that that the wealth of billionaires had increased amid the pandemic.

It was the latest example of how MacKenzie has publicly one-upped her ex with her giving.

She has given 9.4 percent of her wealth to charity in the last year alone but public records suggest he has donated $3.8billion over the last 10 years - 2 percent of his total wealth.
Senator Rand Paul and Dr. Anthony Fauci have been at loggerheads over gain-of-function research and a $600,000 grant the National Institutes of Health (NIH) gave to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2014.

Gain of Function Research (GOF) is a controversial practice that involves altering a virus or pathogen in order to study the development of new diseases and their transmission. The research can ultimately make the virus more contagious or more deadly in a lab.

According to an NIH definition, GOF includes studying and altering viruses in animals to make them transmissible to humans  and potentially more contagious and deadly.

Paul accused Fauci on May 11 of misleading Congress by saying the U.S. has never funded gain-of-function projects at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The Kentucky Republican points to a $3.7million grant NIH gave EcoHealth Alliance in 2014. EcoHealth Alliance in turn distributed nearly $600,000 of that funding to its collaborator, the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

Paul has maintained that emails from Fauci showed that he was worried NIH funded gain-of-function research in February 2020 when the pandemic first started to emerge.

In an interview in June, Paul told Fox News: 'I think we've had a change of opinion. Everybody left-of-center was saying this was a conspiracy, no way it could have happened in the Wuhan lab. Now even Dr. Fauci is saying we should investigate it'

'But the emails paint a disturbing picture, a disturbing picture of Dr. Fauci form the very beginning worrying that he had been funding gain of function research. And he knows it to this day but hasn't admitted it.'

Paul claimed in the interview that 'there is a lot of evidence' that Fauci's views on the Wuhan lab-leak theory were compromised by a 'conflict of interest.'

'If it turns out this virus came from the Wuhan lab, which it looks like it did, that there's a great deal of culpability in that he was a big supporter of the funding,' Paul said.

'But he was also a big supporter to this day of saying that we can trust the Chinese on this, that we can trust Chinese scientists and I think that's quite naive and really should preclude him form the position that he's in.

In June, Fauci dismissed revelations that he was warned at the start of pandemic that COVID-19 may have been 'engineered'.

Fauci seemed to play down a mass trove of damaging emails which include warnings from the start of the pandemic that the virus originated in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

He said his emails are 'ripe to be taken out of context' but he 'can't guarantee everything that is going on in the Wuhan lab'
Juul paid $51,000 to a scientific journal so that it would devote its entire bi-monthly issue to 11 studies that claimed the e-cig brand helped smokers kick their addiction to regular cigarettes.

The May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior is subtitled Special Issue on Juul.

Of the $51,000 that Juul paid AJHB to print the issue, $6,500 was paid to have the edition be accessible to the public for free. The 44-year-old journal is a subscription-based publication which normally charges readers a fee.

Three editorial board members of the AJHB resigned in protest over the arrangement, according to The New York Times.

The AJHB edition includes an introduction by two doctors - Saul Shiffman and Erik M. Augustson - who cite two clinical studies that show exposure to smoking-related toxicants drops steeply when smokers switch to Juul from conventional cigarettes.

Juul paid $51,000 to a scientific journal so that it would devote its entire bi-monthly issue to 11 studies that claimed the brand helped smoker kick their addiction to regular cigarettes

The May/June issue of the American Journal of Health Behavior is subtitled Special Issue on Juul. Of the $51,000 that Juul paid AJHB to print the issue, $6,500 was paid to have the edition be accessible to the public for free

The AJHB edition includes an introduction by two doctors - Saul Shiffman and Erik M. Augustson - who cite two clinical studies that show exposure to smoking-related toxicants drops steeply when smokers switch to Juul from conventional cigarettes

The e-cigarette manufacturer, once the dominant player in the flavored tobacco market, is now on the verge of possibly being prevented from selling its nicotine pods in the United States.

The Food and Drug Administration must decide by September 9 whether the company can continue operating in the US, where thousands of people have filed lawsuits blaming it for getting teens hooked on vaping.

Young people who had never used cigarettes before started getting their tobacco kick from Juul, critics say, which is why the federal government should reject its application.

Health advocacy groups like the American Heart Association, American Lung Association, American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Cancer Societys Cancer Action Network want the FDA to ban Juul from selling its products.

Critics also note that in 2018, Altria, the company behind popular tobacco brands like Marlboro, bought a $12.8billion stake in Juul.

Like Big Tobacco, Juul has spent millions lobbying lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Since the dangers of vaping have become more well known, the company has seen its market share shrink from 75 percent in 2018 to 42 percent in 2020.

Its sales have plummeted by $500million while it has stopped operating in 14 countries.

Last month, Juul reached a $40million settlement with the state of North Carolina.

As part of the landmark deal, the e-cig maker agreed to take more action to prevent underage use and sales.

The design of Juul devices make them easy to use, carry and conceal for teens. Before the government barred the company from marketing flavored products, they were sold in fruity and candy flavors that are attractive to younger people

A state judge accepted the first-of-its-kind agreement with a state.

North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein had sued Juul, accusing it of employing unfair and deceptive practices that targeted young people to use its vaping products, which deliver addictive nicotine.

The lawsuit had been scheduled for trial this month.

As part of the agreement, Juul will not advertise to anyone under 21 in North Carolina, including through social media, and will limit sales amounts of Juul products online to any state residents.

It will also sell its products only behind counters at retailers that have ID scanners to ensure customers are of age.

Teen use of e-cigarettes skyrocketed more than 70 percent after Juul's launch in 2015, leading the FDA to declare an 'epidemic' of underage vaping among teenagers.

Health experts said the unprecedented increase risked hooking a generation of young people on nicotine, an addictive chemical that is harmful to the developing brain.

'Juul sparked and spread a disease - the disease of nicotine addiction. They did it to teenagers across North Carolina and this country simply to make money,' Stein, a Democrat, said after a brief court hearing.

'Today's court order will go a long way towards ensuring that their e-cigarettes product is not in kids' hands, its chemical vapor is out of their lungs, and that the nicotine does not poison or addict their brains.'

Juul, which is partially owned by Altria Group Inc., has seen sales fall after already halting all advertising and social media promotion and pulling most of its flavors except for menthol.

'This settlement is consistent with our ongoing effort to reset our company and its relationship with our stakeholders, as we continue to combat underage usage and advance the opportunity for harm reduction for adult smokers,' Juul said in a statement after the court hearing.

'We seek to continue to earn trust through action.'

Several states have filed their own lawsuits against Juul.

Teen use of e-cigarattes has increased by 70% since Juul first launched in 2015

A group of 39 state attorneys general have been cooperatively investigating the company's marketing and products since February 2020.

Juul also faces hundreds of personal injury lawsuits from customers and families of young people who said they were hurt or addicted by the companys products.

Those have been consolidated in a California federal case.

Last year, at least 60 people died and more than 2,600 were hospitalized nationwide for lung illnesses linked to vaping.

According to the CDC, about 83 percent of people who've fallen ill reported vaping THC, the main psychoactive component in marijuana.

It was detected in 48 of 51 samples of tissues of patients with - what is being called - EVALI (e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung illness).

Juul already had taken a legal beating this spring in the North Carolina case.

Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson declared in May that the company had destroyed documents and ignored court orders, leading to possible massive monetary sanctions.

Teen vaping dropped significantly last year, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In a national survey, just under 20 percent of high school students said they were recent users of electronic cigarettes and other vaping products, down from about 28 percent in 2019.

Experts point to restrictions on flavors along with a new federal law that raised the age limit for all tobacco and vaping sales to 21.

Anti-vaping advocates welcomed the decision. But they said more restrictions are needed to curb teen use, including banning menthol from Juul and all other e-cigarettes.

'The evidence is clear that Juul's high-dose nicotine products caused the youth e-cigarette epidemic,' said a statement from Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.

'The evidence is also clear that menthol flavor appeals to kids and kids shifted to menthol products.'

Stein wrote the FDA asking it to ban menthol e-cigarettes and to limit their nicotine levels.

The settlement, which Hudson signed, also directs 'secret shopper' visits to stores by young people to ensure the restrictions are being carried out.

The $40 million, to be paid over six years, will be earmarked by the state for vaping cessation and prevention programs, and for e-cigarette research.
A three-year-old girl has been left with 'life-changing' injuries after being hit by a young man riding an e-scooter in south London, police have said.

The incident happened in Myatt's Field Park, Lambeth, at about 8.30pm on Monday and police were notified after the toddler's condition deteriorated.

She had been in the park with her family when the crash happened, and she was taken to a south London hospital by her relatives.

The Metropolitan Police believe the young man, who was with a group of people with another e-scooter and a bicycle, stopped after the incident to say sorry.

The force was alerted to the incident on Tuesday after the girl's condition deteriorated.

A three-year-old girl has been left with life-changing injuries after she was hit by a young man riding an e-scooter through Myatt's Field Park in Lambeth (pictured) on Monday evening

She is in a stable condition but her injuries have been assessed as life-changing. Her next of kin are being supported by specialist officers.

Det Insp Lucie Card, of the Met Police, said: 'A little girl has been left in a serious condition after this collision and her family are, of course, very distressed.

'We have reason to believe that the e-scooter's rider stopped after the collision and apologised to the little girl's mother.

'It may be that they haven't realised the severity of the girl's injuries and thought she was OK.

'I am asking this person to please come forward and speak to us because we do need to understand what happened.

'I know it might feel a little overwhelming, but please do the right thing and call us or go to your nearest police station.

Police have urged the rider, who is believed to have stopped and apologised, to come forward

'We are also keen to hear from anyone in Myatt's Field Park at around 20.30 last night. Please do get in touch with us if you witnessed what happened, or have information about the circumstances.'

Officers from the Serious Collision Investigation Unit (SCIU) are investigating and conducting CCTV enquiries.

Witnesses are urged to call the SCIU at Catford Traffic Garage on 020 82851574 quoting CAD 7891/19JUL.
House Republicans on the Judiciary and Oversight committees say Biden's approach to the border crisis is creating chaos that 'benefitted smugglers and cartels' while putting 'vulnerable migrants' at risk in their new report (Biden pictured at a Cabinet meeting Tuesday)

A damning new report by House Republicans has accused President Biden and Democratic lawmakers of having 'no plan' and 'no intention' to fix the worsening border crisis that they 'precipitated'.

GOP members of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees are accusing Biden of taking action to 'unwind the Trump Administrations successful immigration policies on the border and in the interior,' including his directive to DHS to 'preserve and fortify DACA' and halting Trump's border wall construction.

'The resulting chaos has benefitted smugglers and cartels, while incentivizing illegal activity that puts certain vulnerable migrants... at risk,' the report states.

More than one million migrants have been apprehended at the southern border since October, according to data from Customs and Border Protection, with the number increasing each month.

CPB just announced Friday that more than 188,000 migrants were encountered at the border in June, a spike of nearly 10,000 from May.

The number of migrants encountered at the border between January and May is five times what it was the previous year under President Trump.

'Democrats are in denial about the crisis on the border and its root causes, and instead, have actively opposed Republican legislative solutions,' the new report, first obtained by Fox News, states.

The comment takes a hit at the Biden administration's effort to tackle the crisis.

The number of migrants encountered at the border between January and May of 2021 is five times what it was the previous year during the same window under President Trump (pictured: a migrant from Central America crosses a fence after being detailed by CBP on July 15)

More than 2.3 million people could cross into the US by the end of 2021, CBP data projects (pictured: Central American migrants being detailed by a Border Patrol agent after crossing into the US on July 15)

The White House has taken steps to help combat what it calls the 'root causes' of the immigration crisis by advocating for a $4 billion investment in Central America and even sending Vice President Kamala Harris to Guatemala and Mexico, where she plead with people there not to attempt the journey to the US.

Harris also visited the southern border on June 25, after mounting pressure from Republican lawmakers and Trump's announcement that he would make his own border trip.

'Instead of focusing on deterrent policies and enforcing current law, the Biden Administration has attempted to shift the narrative to a root causes approach, blaming everything from President Trump to climate change for the current border crisis,' Republicans claim.

'The true root causes of the current border crisis are the Biden Administrations reckless rhetoric and policies, which quickly and haphazardly rolled back successful deterrent policies implemented by President Trump. Sending additional taxpayer money to Central American countries as a solution to the border crisis does not address the underlying issues fueling the crisis.'

Customs and Border Protection revealed that 188,829 migrants were stopped at the southwest border in June

More than 2.3 million people could cross into the US by the end of 2021, if the pace of apprehensions and those who avoid detection remain the same.

House Republicans' report says Biden's 'far-left approach to immigration' and reversal of 'bold' Trump-era immigration policies directly encouraged migrants to make the dangerous journey to the US border.

'Migrants have repeatedly told the media that the reason they are coming to the U.S. is due to their perception that the Biden administration will let them into the country,' the report states.

GOP lawmakers claim an estimated 1,000 people per day successfully cross the border undetected - pointing out that they likely aren't tested for COVID-19, either.

Out of those who were apprehended, ICE at one point 'estimated that 16% of aliens coming into their custody after being apprehended by CBP were testing positive for COVID-19.'

The report goes on to outline Republican lawmakers' efforts to speak with Vice President Kamala Harris and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about the ongoing crisis - some of which went unanswered.

Republicans have criticized the Biden administration's approach of tackling the 'root causes' of illegal immigration, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris' apparent delay in visiting the southern border (pictured here in Guatemala on June 7)

'On April 19, 2021, Ranking Members Comer, Jordan, and Katko sent a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris asking for a meeting with her to clarify her role in solving the Biden Border Crisis given that she had taken no actions at the time to alleviate the situation. Vice President Harris ignored this letter,' it states.

House Republicans ended the 38-page report by restating the severity of the border crisis, urging Biden to cease its 'haphazard reactionary approach.'

'The situation is dire and will persist until the Administration reverses course and works with Congress to fix the incentives driving these historically high levels of illegal immigration.

'Democrats are in denial about the crisis on the border and the causes for it and have actively opposed Republican solutions in the past,' it reads.

'The Biden Administration needs to implement deterrent policies and Congress needs to act to provide long-term change.'
Marjorie Taylor Greene broke her 12-hour Twitter suspension on Tuesday by comparing the social media giant to the Chinese Communist Party, claiming they are stifling free speech.

'American social media company Twitter banned me for 12 hrs, censoring me, & violating my freedom of speech,' the Georgia representative posted.

'You know who else silences, censors, and bans people they don't like and want heard. Communist China,' she continued, along with an emoji of the Chinese flag.

'Communism is not good @Twitter,' Greene wrote. 'Save America Stop Communism!'

The pro-Trump congresswoman was suspended on Monday after she posted a tweet claiming coronavirus is not 'dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65.'

Twitter labeled Greene's tweet as 'misleading' and issued a 12-hour ban on her account.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (pictured) came back from her 12-hour Twitter suspension with tweets calling the social media platform 'communist' and attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci

'Save America Stop Communism!': The Georgia congresswoman likened Twitter 'violating my freedom of speech' to the actions of 'communist China'

The tweet that got Greene suspended was sent on Monday. She claimed coronavirus is not deadly to 'non-obese people and those under 65'

After attacking Twitter for the suspension, Greene used her following few tweets to lash out at Dr. Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health's top immunologist and President Joe Biden's COVID response leader.

'#FireFauci,' Greene tweeted Tuesday as the doctor appeared on Capitol Hill for a hearing on the U.S. coronavirus response.

Shortly after, she repeated the hashtag and tweeted along with it: 'Heading over to the Senate to see what Dr Fauci is saying now. It's always something different.'

Fauci got into a heated exchanged with Kentucky Senator Rand Paul during a health committee hearing on Tuesday.

Paul accused Fauci of lying about funding for Wuhan to research gain of function in coronaviruses, and the immunologist shot back with: 'Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about' and later, 'If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.'

The Republican senator has raised questions over the origins of COVID-19, while Greene has gone to war against the coronavirus vaccine.

'The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65,' Greene tweeted Monday.

'With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone,' she added.

Twitter labeled that, and her Sunday tweet saying the vaccines are 'non-FDA' approved, as 'misleading.'

Greene said on Tuesday that she would be walking over to the Senate side of Capitol Hill as Facui testified on the response to the coroanvirus pandemic to a health committee

WHAT IS THE RISK OF DEATH FROM COVID-19 FOR OBESE AND OLDER ADULTS? While COVID-19 can infect Americans of all backgrounds, several conditions can put people at a higher risk of severe illness and death. This includes being above age 65 and being obese, both of which are known risk factors. A recent CDC report looked at more than 148,494 U.S. adults with COVID-19 and analyzed their risk of hospitalization and death. They found that those above age 65 were twice as likely to be hospitalized with 72% of senior citizens with COVID-19 being admitted to the hospital compared 35% of the under-64 group. Older adults were also much more likely to die with 17% of those above age 65 dying from the virus compared to 1.5% of the group under age 64 The report also looked at higher body mass indexes (BMI) and found the higher the BMI, the greater the risk of hospitalization and death. A healthy BMI is typically measured between 18.5 and 24.9. Anything under 18.5 is considered underweight. BMIs between 25 and 29.9 fall into overweight territory, and above 30 is considered obese. They found that of the patients hospitalized, 50.2% had BMIs higher than 30 while just 19.7% had BMIs between 18.5 and 24.9. Additionally, 46% of all COVID-19 patients who died in the study had BMIs above 30 while 23.4% of those who died had healthy BMIs. What's more, obese adults above age 65 were up to 50% more likely to die than elderly adults with a healthy weight. Advertisement

On July 18 she posted: 'This is why no entity should force NON-FDA approved vaccines or masks. Instead help people protect their health by defeating obesity, which will protect them from covid complications & death, and many other health problems. We should invest in health, not human experimentation.'

Twitter added a message to both the Sunday and Monday posts that read: 'This Tweet is misleading. Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people.'

It includes an exclamation point and a hyperlink to a Twitter-aggregated page with CDC information and news articles insisting the vaccine is safe and effective.

A Twitter spokesperson said on Monday: 'We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy'.

In a scheduled appearance on Newsmax, moments after Twitter suspended her account, the congresswoman insisted her tweets were accurate, saying the suspension was part of a pattern where she's been 'canceled' multiple times.

Twitter also labeled Greene's Sunday tweet saying the vaccine is 'non-FDA' approved as 'misleading'

'Twitter, who is playing a big part and a role with Big Tech and Facebook and the White House  apparently the Joe and the Biden administration  in censoring Americans, along with the communist cities in communist California who doesn't [sic] believe that America first represents their values, in Anaheim or Riverside.'

'We are being canceled and our speech is being canceled,' Greene continued. 'And we're being blamed for it. So you can see what's going on. This is communism. This is communism when you have American cities canceling two members of Congress's events at private venues.'

The United States is using vaccines made by Pfizer Inc , Moderna Inc, and Johnson & Johnson under Food and Drug Administration's emergency use authorization. None of these vaccines are fully approved.

In a video statement on Facebook Live, Greene acknowledged that she had been temporarily suspended from the Twitter, and blamed the Biden administration for trying to control free speech.

'Remember, last week when our press secretary said the White House is working to stop the spread of (misinformation) because they want to be careful and they want to be in control of the information that is shared about COVID-19 and vaccines, isnt that concerning?' Greene said.

The Republican representative has come under fire before for remarks on the pandemic. In June she apologized after comparing COVID-19 mask requirements and vaccinations to the Holocaust that killed 6 million Jews.

In January, Twitter locked Greene's account after she sparred with a state election official over voter fraud allegations.

Greene's suspension comes on the heels of the White House issuing warnings to social media platforms over misleading claims about coronavirus vaccines as cases surge due to the now-prominent Delta variant.

The number of COVID-19 cases has started to surge in the United States after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks

The death rate, however, has not corresponded with that surge. Doctors and public health officials have said that the surge, in 43 out of the country's 50 states, comes amid a rise in the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stagnating vaccination numbers

'I am urging all Americans to help slow the spread of health misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond,' US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy wrote in a 22-page advisory released last week.

'Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health. It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people's health, and undermine public health efforts. Limiting the spread of health misinformation is a moral and civic imperative that will require a whole-of-society effort.'

The number of COVID-19 cases has started to surge in the United States after months of decline, with the number of new cases per day doubling over the past three weeks.

Doctors and public health officials have said that the surge, in 43 out of the country's 50 states, comes amid a rise in the Delta variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and stagnating vaccination numbers.

Health experts warn that the worrying increase in cases is linked to the Indian 'Delta' variant, which accounts for as many 97 percent of infections in some states.
Shocking video captured the moment a woman fled from an apartment in Brazil after a lawyer who hired her for housekeeping services allegedly raped and threatened to kill her.

Jefferson Moura was apprehended at the residence Wednesday after the victim reported the attack to police in the northeastern state of Piaui.

The never-before-seen footage showed the victim walking behind Moura inside the condominium parking lot and walked through a stair entrance.

A second camera showed the woman pacing back and forth hours later on the apartment terrace.

While the released footage does not show her jumping from the balcony to the parking lot, a security camera did capture the distraught woman running through the parking lot and past a male individual before she sought assistance.

Jefferson Moura, a lawyer based out of Piaui, Brazil, was apprehended his residence Wednesday after he reportedly raped a woman whom he had hired to clean his apartment. The woman told police that Moura also threatened to shoot her dead before she was able to escape the home by jumping from a second floor balcony to the parking lot below

Still image from a security camera shows the woman standing on the balcony moments before she left to the parking lot below after she had been allegedly raped by Brazilian lawyer Jefferson Moura on Wednesday

Police investigator Vilma Alves confirmed to digital news outlet G1 that the woman was contacted by Moura to clean his apartment.

Her testimony revealed that she became suspicious that Moura was lying to her after claiming he was married due to the amount of women's clothing and new and used condoms that were lying around a room she was cleaning.

Moura proceeded to grab the woman and sexually assaulted. Testimony obtained by the police indicated Moura threatened to murder the cleaning lady by shooting her.

Following the attack, the woman observed that Moura was reading a book and pretended to clean the apartment. She then made her way to the balcony and fled.

According to the Piaui Military Police, agents detained Moura while he was in the company of another woman, who also provided cleaning services. He is being held without bail at the Irmao Guido Regional Penitentiary.

Still image from a surveillance camera at Jefferson Moura's condominium in Piaui, Brazil, shows the lawyer opening a stairwell door as the alleged rape victim (right) walks behind him

At least four other women have come forward and filed police reports, accusing Brazilian lawyer Jefferson Moura of sexual assault. He is being held in prison without bail

Still image from a security camera shows a woman, who had been reportedly raped by Brazilian lawyer Jefferson Moura, running towards inside a condominium parking lot moments after she was able to flee the suspect's home Wednesday

As many as four women have come forward in recent days to accuse Moura of sexual assault, including a therapist who met with him last Tuesday, the day before he reportedly raped the woman.

According to G1, the therapist, whose name has been withheld, said Moura masturbated on her while she was providing him treatment in 2018.

'I asked if he was okay and he replied that he was feeling horny. So I said it was his private reaction and that I had nothing to do with it,' she recalled.

The woman alleged that during last week's visit to Moura's apartment, 'the lawyer was under the mask calling me hot and when I said that I couldn't go on with therapy like that. He congratulated me, said I was very professional and tried to give me a hug, but I refused and left.'

She added that at least two of her friends were sexually assaulted by Moura, but they have yet to file a police report.

Brazilian Army corporal Arione de Moura Lima was allegedly shot dead by Jefferson Moura on April 25, 2010. The lawyer was never charged or tried in court for the killing

A 26-year-old woman also told authorities she visited Moura's home following an online transaction of cosmetic items and that she was dragged into the apartment and raped.

Moura had been previously arrested for allegedly killing Brazilian Army corporal Arione de Moura Lima on April 25, 2010.

Moura shot the then 23-year-old soldier outside the victim's home in the Piaui city of Picos.

At the time of the killing, Amarildo Lima told online news outlet Riachao Net that Moura had been involved in a series of disagreement with his son and that he shot him dead as a form of revenge.

Moura was never charged or tried in court for the murder of de Moura Lima.
Melania Trump's former advisor and once best friend has told DailyMail.com 'this could be the beginning of the end' of the Trumps after Donald's former 2017 inaugural committee was arrested on Tuesday

Thomas Barrack, 74, is facing federal charges in Los Angeles for illegally lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates during the 2016 campaign and later while Trump was in the White House.

He was hit with a seven-count indictment relating to trying to push the UAE's agenda in the US and shape the foreign policy of the previous administration.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to ex-first lady Melania, told DailyMail.com, 'This is big news, I need time to process it.'

'This could be the beginning of the end for all of them,' she said. 'Tom is so integral to everything in Trumps universe that it could affect the Trump family in a very significant way.'

Winston Wolkoff was Barracks Senior Advisor on the Presidential Inaugural Committee and as she wrote in her #1 New York Times bestseller Melania & Me: The Rise & Fall Of My Friendship With The First Lady, she repeatedly raised concerns and red flags about the inconsistencies in the numbers.

Barrack is the founder of the private equity firm Colony Capital, though stepped down as the company's chief executive in 2020, and in April resigned as executive chairman.

He is a close friend of Trump, a relationship that dates back to the 1980s.

'He is the only person I know who the president speaks to as a peer,' Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone said of Barrack in a 2018 New York Times report.

Scroll down for video.

The chair of Donald Trump's inaugural committee in 2017, Thomas Barrack, was on Tuesday arrested on federal charges in Los Angeles for illegally lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates during his campaign

Barrack, 74, (pictured left at the 2017 inauguration) was hit with seven-count indictment relating to trying to push the UAE's agenda and shape the foreign policy of the administration

A spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment from DailyMail.com.

Barrack's attorney, Matthew Herrington, did not immediately return an email from the Associated Press seeking comment.

Barrack, pictured at the 7th Biennial UNICEF Ball on April 14, 2018, with a guest was a close friend to Donald Trump

Barrack was due to appear at an initial appearance in federal court in Southern California.

Barrack was charged with acting as an unregistered foreign agent, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during a June 20, 2019 interview with federal law enforcement agents.

The charges were brought in Brooklyn.

Additionally, Matthew Grimes, 27, of Aspen, Colorado, and Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, aka Rashid Al Malik, 43, a UAE national, are accused of acting and conspiring to act as agents of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018, the Department of Justice said in a release.

'The defendants repeatedly capitalized on Barrack's friendships and access to a candidate who was eventually elected President, high-ranking campaign and government officials, and the American media to advance the policy goals of a foreign government without disclosing their true allegiances,' Acting Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko said in a release.

Lesko characterized the alleged conduct as 'nothing short of a betrayal of those officials in the United States, including the former President.'

'Through this indictment, we are putting everyone - regardless of their wealth or perceived political power - on notice that the Department of Justice will enforce the prohibition of this sort of undisclosed foreign influence,' the statement said.

In a letter to the LA-based judge, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York called Barrack a 'serious flight risk' since he has access to private aircrafts, and asked for steep bail conditions.

In 2013, Forbes estimated that Barrack's net worth was $1 billion.

In 2010, Barrack had helped Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law who became a Trump White House aide, unload $70 million of the debt he owed on the troubled 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper in Manhattan.

Barrack was called by Trump, who requested that he help Kushner avoid bankruptcy on the $1.8 billion purchase of the tower, according to The New York Times.

In November, Barrack was deposed as part of a lawsuit out of the D.C. attorney general's office that accused the Presidential Inaugural Committee and the Trump Organization of abusing non-profit funds to enrich the Trump family.

As chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee Barrack had hired Rick Gates - Paul Manafort's No. 2 who was sentenced to jailtime for his Ukraine lobbying - to help run the inauguration.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff (left), a former adviser to ex-first lady Melania, told DailyMail.com, 'This is big news, I need time to process it.' 'This could be the beginning of the end for all of them,' she said. 'Tom is so integral to everything in Trumps universe that it could affect the Trump family in a very significant way'

In 2010, Barrack had helped Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law who became a Trump White House aide, unload $70 million of the debt he owed on the troubled 666 Fifth Avenue skyscraper in Manhattan. Trump and Barrack are pictured inside Trump Tower

Barrack is the founder of the private equity firm Colony Capital, though stepped down as the company's chief executive in 2020, and in April resigned as executive chairman. He is pictured at the Veuve Clicquot Polo Classic in 2014

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine's office said in a January 2020 statement announcing the lawsuit that an investigation found that Gates allowed the PIC, a non-profit, to enter contracts with the Trump hotel that was 'at least twice the market rate.'

Former first lady Melania Trump's former aide Stephanie Winston Wolkoff - who later wrote a tell-all about the first lady - warned Trump associates and family members that the pricing could be a problem.

'Despite this warning, Gates allowed the PIC to enter into a contract with the Trump Hotel for four days of event space at a total cost of $1.03 million, an amount far above even the Hotels own internal pricing guidelines,' the release from Racine's office said.

Barrack had previously encouraged Trump to hire Manafort as his campaign chairman.

Barrack was credited in a 2018 story by The New York Times with rehabilitating Trump's image among 'Arab princes' whose feathers were ruffled when Trump, as a candidate in December 2015, announced a 'Muslim ban.'

The story describes Barrack as a 'fellow tycoon and a flattering courtier, a confidant and a power broker.'

In April 2016 emails, Barrack calms down UAE's Amb. Yousef al-Otaiba by pointing out Trump has 'joint ventures in the UAE' - a Trump International Golf Club in Dubai - after al-Otaiba expressed that 'Confusion about your friend Donald Trump is VERY high.'

Barrack later introduced by email Otaiba and Kushner.

'You will love him and he agrees with our agenda!' he told the Emirati about the GOP candidate's son-in-law.

In the same story, Barrack tells the paper that he rebuffed offers to become Trump's Treasury secretary or ambassador to Mexico.

Barrack also sought a White House role as special envoy for Middle Eastern economic development, but the job never materialized during Trump's one term in office.

A spokesperson for Barrack told The Times at the time that Barrack 'sees his business in the Middle East as a way to help political dialogue and understanding, not the other way around, and he does so through relationships that span as far back as the reign of even some of the grandfathers of the current regional rulers.'
A Staten Island man was found dead in his home with the disturbing message 'I touch little girls' written across his chest as well as several other injuries.

Police discovered 80-year-old Robert Raynor in the first floor hallway of a multi-family home in Tompkinsville on Monday morning.

The New York Post reported that Raynor had 'I touch little girls' written across his chest in black ink as well as 'I take dolls in my room for girls age 1-5' on his stomach.

Police discovered 80-year-old Robert Raynor in the first floor hallway of a multi-family home in Tompkinsville (pictured) on Monday morning

The words 'I touch' were written on his right foot, the Post reported.

The 80-year-old was found shirtless and lying face up, and had cuts to his forehead and two black eyes.

SILive.com reported he also had an injury to his nose but police have not confirmed if the injuries were a result of an attack or if they were obtained in an accident, such as a fall.

The disturbing allegation found on Raynor's chest do not seem to be backed up by the 80-year-old's extensive rap sheet.

The Post reports he had 24 prior arrests to his name, but no record of pedophilia and his name does not appear in the states online registry of known sex offenders.

Only four of his two dozen arrest were unsealed, including two assaults against a girlfriend in 1987, a third assault in 1992 and drug possession rap in 1996, the Post reported.

The NYPD homicide division is handling the investigation and the city's medical examiner is determining the cause of death.
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A Portland, Oregon-area couple has raked in $111,000 in less than a year after hosting some 2,700 guests who booked stays at their home through a site known as the Airbnb for backyard pools.

Jim and Lisa Battan of West Linn, Oregon have managed to generate a six-figure income using the online platform Swimply, which offers homeowners a chance to rent out their swimming pools at an hourly rate.

The Battans offer up their 15,000-gallon pool for rent at a fee of $75 per hour for a minimum of five guests. They also charge an additional $10 per hour for each guest above five.

Jim and Lisa Battan of West Linn, Oregon have managed to generate a six-figure income using the online platform Swimply, which offers homeowners a chance to rent out their swimming pools at an hourly rate

The image above shows the Battans' swimming pool as seen at night with the LED lights activated

The pool also boasts a mini-waterfall alongside other amenities on the property, according to its owners

The pool and in-pool spa can be heated. It is situated in West Linn, Oregon on a two acre property surrounded by trees

The pool allows for a maximum of 23 guests.

The Battans pool measures 26 by 18ft. Its most shallow end is 3.5ft deep while the deepest part of the pool is 6ft.

'If theres a particular day you're looking for and we look booked, reach out and we'll see if we can get creative,' Jim Battan writes in his listing on Swimply.

In less than a year, Jim and Lisa Battan (pictured) have generated $111,000 after hosting some 2,700 guests

'We designed our pool and had it custom built in the backyard on our two acre property, surrounded by trees, with a view of the barn.

'No worries during chilly weather: We keep the pool at 90 degrees; you can adjust the spa up to 104.'

Jim writes that his property includes 'lots of amenities,' among them a heated pool house and dressing room with toilet and sink.

There's also a separate pop-up changing tent. According to Battan, the in-ground pool has enough room for 16 people while the in-pool, which can accomodate eight people, measures 7 by 9ft.

Guests can also enjoy spa jets and bubblers that can be activated by a 10-button controller.

Battan writes that he uses ultraviolet light to sanitize the space while the water is purified using IntelliChem automated liquid and tablet chlorine feeders.

Cleanliness has become even more of a priority during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has benefited Swimply users like the Battans as public swimming pools were forced to close down.

This summer has also been a scorcher in Portland and the rest of the Pacific Northwest, where a heat dome pushed record-high temperatures into the triple digits - a rare occurrence in a region used to year-long mild weather.

Jim told The Wall Street Journal that the pool, which cost $110,000 to build, was not being used in the last two years ever since his youngest daughter moved out.

Last September, he learned of Swimply. He then decided to list his pool for rent on the platform.

Within the first two hours, he had three bookings.

The platform currently numbers around 13,000 pool owners in 125 cities nationwide.

Since the start of 2020, Swimply has recorded around 122,000 bookings.

The Battans pool measures 26 by 18ft. Its most shallow end is 3.5ft deep while the deepest part of the pool is 6ft

The Battans lay out a variety of pool toys just before new guests arrive to their home (as seen above)

Guests also use a pool-house with a bathroom inside. The pool-house is seen in the above photo

The Battans pool is a bit more expensive than most listings on the site, as most owners charge anywhere from $35 to $50 an hour. For each booking, Swimply takes a 15 percent cut from the hosts and another 10 percent cut from the guests

Bunim Laskin, the company co-founder and CEO, said the opportunity to use a pool during the pandemic was therapeutic for people eager to get out of the house.

'We've seen a lot of families [and friends] rekindling with Swimply,' said Laskin.

Asher Weinberger, the chief operating officer who co-founded Swimply with Laskin, said that hosts earn on average between $5,000 and $10,000.

The Battans pool is a bit more expensive than most listings on the site, as most owners charge anywhere from $35 to $50 an hour.

For each booking, Swimply takes a 15 percent cut from the hosts and another 10 percent cut from the guests.

The additional income helps pool owners cover the costs of maintaining their pools, which have only gone up during the pandemic due to disruptions in the chlorine supply chain.

Jim Battan says that it may look easy, but renting out the pool to guests is hard work.

He told the Journal that he wakes up at 5am on most days to remove leaves from the water.

His wife, Lisa, cleans the pool-house bathroom and lays out rows of pool toys before each guest arrives.

One of Swimplys main competitors is Peerspace, an online marketplace that offers venues for rent for those looking for locations to film a movie or take photos.

The image above shows firefighters battling the Bootleg Fire near Klamath Falls, Oregon, on Monday. The Pacific Northwest has seen hotter than usual temperatures this summer

Peerspace also offers customers locations with a pool.

Swimply hosts, however, must also manage risk alongside the reward.

Guests could drown or cause property damage, which may possibly lead to legal action.

Loud alcohol-fueled parties could lead to guests vomiting in the pool and the property while prompting noise complaints from neighbors.

Weinberger said that hosts mitigate risk by staying home while guests use their pool.

Swimply also offers its hosts liability insurance that covers as much as $1million. The service also offers a property damage protection policy.

'There are too many risks with unattended guests,' Jim Battan told the Journal.

He said that's why he prefers to stay home while he rents out his pool.
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Priti Patel last night agreed to give France another 54million to stop the growing number of migrants crossing the Channel.

The Home Secretary signed the pledge after chaotic scenes emerged of a French navy vessel apparently ushering an overcrowded dinghy into British waters early yesterday.

It came as the number of people to have made the perilous journey this year hit 8,452  surpassing the figure for the whole of 2020.

A record daily total of 430 landed in the UK after setting off from France in small boats on Monday  and 287 more arrived yesterday.

Miss Patels controversial agreement with French interior minister Gerald Darmanin will see policing numbers along the French coast more than double to 200 to cover a wider area.

Priti Patel has agreed to give French border authorities 54million to help stop migrants crossing the Channel - as the total of arrivals in Britain this year hit 8,000. Pictured: Migrants are escorted from the beach at Dungeness, Kent, by Border Force officers

The number of people to have made the perilous journey this year hit 8,452  surpassing the figure for the whole of 2020. A record daily total of 430 landed in the UK after setting off from France in small boats on Monday  and 287 more arrived yesterday

There will also be an increased use of aerial surveillance, including drones. The two countries agreed to draw up a long-term plan for a smart border using technology to identify where crossings are being attempted.

But the deal failed to impress critics, who accuse the French authorities of not doing enough to stop small boats leaving their territorial waters.

It comes as:

Union officials said Border Force staff are 'stretched' and 'working excessive hours in unsuitable conditions';

Ex-prime minister Theresa May sounded warnings over the prospect of the UK sending asylum seekers to Australia-style offshore processing centres;

Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O'Mahoney said 'unacceptable' rise in small boat crossings was caused by 'surge in illegal migration across Europe';

Detention Action charity said the Government's 'anti-refugee Bill' is 'political theatre that doesn't even pretend to deal with the issue or make our system, safe, fair or efficient'.

There were extraordinary scenes in Kent earlier today that showed the scale of the issue. With calm seas on one of the hottest days of the year, traffickers took their opportunity to send scores of migrants to the UK.

Dungeness was at the centre of the rush as wave upon wave arrived in boats on its pebbled beaches.

Many were in coats and jeans. Some were barefoot. But all those who were unmasked wore broad smiles. One man was dressed in a jacket that proclaimed Live or Die.

Groups started arriving at Dungeness from 9.30am. A further 12 migrants  mainly men  were filmed successfully landing their rigid hulled inflatable boat at 11.15am.

The men said they had paid 3,000 each for the ten-hour crossing.

The agreement comes as the Ms Patel's New Plan for Immigration is debated in Parliament this week. The government's Nationality and Borders Bill will crack down 'on illegal entry and the criminality associated with it, rather than allowing people to undertake dangerous journeys to the UK as their preferred destination'.

Home Secretary Priti Patel said: 'The British people have simply had enough of illegal migration and the exploitation of migrants by criminal gangs.

The Home Secretary and France's Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin confirmed they had signed an agreement to strengthen UK-French cooperation on illegal immigration in the Channel

The number of migrants crossing the Channel between 2019-21 has been increasing year-on-year. The graph above shows how many have crossed each month. The red line for 2021 soars above the lines for previous years, showing the monthly total is now at its highest ever

A group of people thought to be migrants crossing from France are escorted by officials from the beach at Dungeness, Kent

Several children were seen among the record-breaking number of arrival on England's south coast yesterday

Migrants wearing masks sitting on the beach at Dungeness in Kent this morning after they are brought ashore

A group of people thought to be migrants are escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent, by Border Force officers following a small boat incident in the Channel

Anger at EU's power grab over Gibraltar Brussels launched an extraordinary power grab against Gibraltar last night by demanding that Spanish police should be stationed on the Rock. In a provocative move, the European Commission said a post-Brexit deal on Gibraltar would have to involve a much greater role for Spain in running the British territory. The EU said Spanish border guards should police the Port of Gibraltar and enjoy 'all necessary powers to perform border controls'. The Brussels blueprint would also give Spain responsibility for granting visas to Gibraltar and allow Spanish police to pursue suspects on the Rock without special permission. The move threatened to destabilise a delicate compromise negotiated by the UK and Spain. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab accused Brussels of trying to undermine the UKs sovereignty over Gibraltar. It was seen in London as a crude attempt to pile pressure on the UK over wider Brexit issues. Brexit minister Lord Frost is due to publish proposals today that would tear up parts of the deal struck with the EU over Northern Ireland. Spain has long disputed Britains claim on the Rock. But London and Madrid had agreed a broad framework for negotiating post-Brexit arrangements at the end of last year. Advertisement

'Illegal immigration is driven by serious organised criminals and people smugglers. The public are rightly angry that small boats are arriving on our shores, facilitated by appalling criminal gangs who profit from human misery and put lives at risk.

'The Government is addressing the challenge of illegal migration for the first time in over two decades through comprehensive reform of our asylum system which will enable us to going after the gangs exploiting people, deter illegal entry into the UK, introduce new and tougher criminal offences for those attempting to enter the UK illegally and strengthen our ability to remove those with no legal right to be in the UK.'

With UK support last year, France doubled the number of officers deployed daily on French beaches, improved intelligence sharing and purchased more cutting-edge technology.

This resulted in France preventing twice as many crossings so far this year than in the same period in 2020.

However, as French interceptions increased, the Home Office said that organised criminal gangs have changed their tactics, moving further up the French coast, and forcing migrants to take even longer, riskier journeys.

A Home Office spokesman said: 'Thanks to support from the UK, the French will be able to respond by posting more security forces further up the coast, installing and utilising the latest surveillance equipment throughout northern France.'

Labour dismissed the latest move as empty promises, saying the Tories are letting down victims and allowing criminals to continue their evil trade.

Charities branded the measures inhumane, while refugee rights campaigner Lord Dubs said Miss Patels plans were a disservice to this countrys history.

Tom Hunt, Tory MP for Ipswich, said: We need to take control of this issue for ourselves and we shouldnt be dependent on the French to sort it out for us. It is fair enough to work with the French but we should not be surprised if they continue to fall short.

Miss Patel said last night: Illegal immigration is driven by serious organised criminals and people smugglers.

The public are rightly angry that small boats are arriving on our shores, facilitated by appalling criminal gangs who profit from human misery and put lives at risk.

Bella Sankey, director of charity Detention Action, said: 'With today's record this Government loses all credibility in managing a safe and fair asylum system.

'Priti Patel can re-announce enhanced police cooperation with the French all day, every day, but until there is a political renegotiation to allow refugees safe passage to claim asylum at the U.K. border in France, this relatively small number of desperate people will continue risking everything for a shot at our protection.

'Ministers should stop playing fantasy politics and step up to protect lives instead.'

Meanwhile, Tim Naor Hilton, chief executive at Refugee Action, said the growing number of crossings 'shows the Government's get-tough-quick schemes do not work'.

He added: 'Criminal smugglers prey on refugees who have little choice than to put risk their lives in rickety boats because Ministers refuse to create more routes to reach safety here.

'And the Government's cruel anti-refugee Bill will do little to stop the boats. It is unworkable, unlawful and will end up an expensive disaster that criminalises people who are simply asking for our help.'

'None of us can swim': Kuwaiti girl, 12, whose family paid 8,000 to people smugglers for perilous crossing from Calais is among hundreds more arriving today as 2021 total so far eclipses the whole of 2020

ByJack Wrightand James Fielding For Mailonline

A 12-year-old Kuwaiti girl whose family paid people-smugglers 8,000 to make the treacherous journey from Calais to England is among an ongoing surge of migrants crossing the Channel today after a French warship escorted a dinghy containing 13 people into British waters.

Border Force intercepted what is believed to be the first boat of migrants taking advantage of the flat seas and clear skies and brought its occupants into Dover Marina at around 10am. Around 20 people were seen being escorted up the gangway by Immigration Enforcement officers.

A further 12 migrants - mainly men from Iran and North and Eastern Africa - were filmed landing their orange rigid hulled inflatable boat on the pebbles at Dungeness, Kent at 11.15am.

It comes after more than 430 migrants sailed across the Channel yesterday in a new single-day record. Today it was revealed 8,452 people have crossed to the UK on board small boats so far this year, eclipsing the total annual figure of 8,417 reached in 2020.

Sky News showed aerial shots of the men getting out and sitting on the pebble beach while some washed their feet in the water as a rubber ring brought as a makeshift safety aid floated up shore. One migrant told photographers on the beach the group had paid 3,000 each for the 10 hour crossing, while another was seen wearing a denim jacket with the slogan 'live or die' emblazoned on the back.

Kent Police found a three-inch Stanley blade discarded by a life vest on the floor, believed to have been carried by one of the men. As they prepared to board a coach to Dover, the migrants emptied their possessions into a plastic bag and were interviewed by officers to know how old they were and where they had come from.

Today a family-of-six from Kuwait - including children aged 12, 11, seven and one just 20-months old - told MailOnline how they paid people-smugglers thousands of pounds to travel from France to England.

As they were escorted to Dungeness lifeboat station after being brought ashore by Border Force, police and RNLI crews, the father said: 'There are six of us, four children. We have come from Kuwait originally but have been in France for the last month. We paid 8000 to come here.'

His 12-year-old daughter added: 'None of us can swim but everyone on the boat had lifejackets.'

A 12-year-old Kuwaiti girl whose family paid people-smugglers 8,000 to make the treacherous journey from Calais to England is among an ongoing surge of migrants crossing the Channel today

A group of people thought to be migrants crossing from France come ashore from the local lifeboat at Dungeness in Kent

Good Morning Britain journalist Pip Tomson told ITV viewers that the dinghy, which is made for just six passengers, was escorted by a French warship to the border before it left, apparently thinking that the team of reporters would then escort the migrants back to the UK

MIGRANT CROSSINGS: FIVE TIMES A NEW DAILY RECORD WAS SET At least 430 migrants crossed to the UK on small boats on Monday - a new single-day record. PA, which tracks and analyses numbers of crossings, has compiled a list of five days in the last two years when a new record was set. July 19, 2021: 430 people reach the UK Dozens of people, including women and young children, were seen walking ashore after one beach landing on the Kent coast, while more arrived elsewhere. Some raised their hands in celebration as they stood on the beach, while others sat down on the shingle shoreline amid 75F sunshine. The Home Office said that overall at least 430 people arrived in various places after travelling aboard 14 boats. September 2, 2020: 416 people reach the UK A wave of boats departed France with hundreds of migrants making their way across the sunny and calm English Channel. In the House of Commons Prime Minister Boris Johnson faced questions over the Government's handling of the issue of small boat crossings. August 6, 2020: 235 people reach the UK Migrants arrived in the UK aboard 17 boats in what was then the highest numbers on record. In one incident, Border Force apprehended 15 people who had landed at Dungeness beach in Kent. July 30, 2020: 202 people reach the UK At least 202 migrants managed to cross to Britain in a surge of 20 boats on July 30. The arrivals said they were from a diverse range of nationalities, including: Yemeni, Palestinian, Ertitrean, Chad, Egyptian, Sudanese, Kuwaiti, Iraqi, Iranian, Indian, and Mali. July 12, 2020: 180 people reach the UK On the day Priti Patel announced a 'new operational approach' to dealing with small boat crossings, a record number of migrants made it to the UK. At least 180 migrants were able to cross the English Channel to the UK, among more than 380 migrants who attempted the crossing, the rest being intercepted by French authorities. Advertisement

Natalie Elphicke, Tory MP for Dover, slammed the people-smugglers and migrants taking advantage of the flat seas. She told MailOnline: 'Another day where small boats are brazenly crossing the English Channel and motoring onto our beaches.

'That's why I am backing the new powers being debated in Parliament to turn boats around and action to stop small boats leaving France in the first place.

'Only when migrants and traffickers alike know that they will not succeed in breaking into Britain will the small boats crisis come to an end.'

Speaking on Times Radio, Immigration Minister Chris Philp called yesterday the 'worst day ever' for crossings and said it is 'vital' that action is taken. He said Ms Patel is close to reaching an agreement with France to boost co-operation and increase police patrols on French beaches.

Mr Philp also pledged that the controversial Nationality and Borders Bill going through Parliament 'closes some loopholes' and will reform the asylum system.

However, campaigners claim the Bill is inhumane and unworkable because it would make it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally without permission to be here and could lead to four years' imprisonment.

The boat carrying the family from Kuwait was one of three to land in Dungeness today. The first crossing had 30 men on board and the second had 13 people.

On the third boat - among the 42 migrants - were five children and six women. The migrants were from the Middle East and Africa. They were all given water upon arrival before being bussed to immigration centres. None needed hospital appointments.

One couple had made the journey from Syria via France. The man, who gave his name as Nada, said: 'We are from Damascus but we want to be in England. I love England - it is the perfect country!'

Other migrants said they were from Kurdistan and Eritrea. Watching the migrants come ashore were locals Suzanne Wells and Jane Gane.

Suzanne, 61, said: 'I've been living here for 25-years and this is the busiest it's been for migrants coming to the UK. There were a lot of crossings last year but already I think the first seven months of 2021 have exceeded 2020's total or at least must be close to topping it.

'Yesterday there were reports that some boats were coming that had 70 and 50 people on board. At least three large coaches full of migrants passed me at lunchtime yesterday.'

Jane, 67, added: 'I feel sorry for them, especially if they are genuinely escaping hardship or persecution. But there are some who are here just for economic reasons.'

A French warship escorted a group of 13 migrants crammed into a small boat into British waters before handing them over to a baffled news crew this morning, as hundreds are expected to cross today after more than 430 people landed in the UK yesterday in a single-day record.

Good Morning Britain journalist Pip Tomson told ITV viewers that the dinghy, which is made for just six passengers, was escorted by a French warship to the border before it left, apparently thinking that the team of reporters would then escort the migrants back to the UK.

Ms Tomson said GMB alerted Border Force to the small boat, but agreed to 'observe' the migrants because UK officials were so busy handling other crossings this morning. Around 20 minutes later, a Border Force jet-ski was filmed escorting the dinghy to the English coastline.

A group of people thought to have been migrants crossing from France are escorted by officials from the beach at Dungeness, Kent, following a small boat incident in the Channel

Migrants are seen crossing the English Channel this morning as the number of people making the journey to the UK surges

Kent Police found a three-inch Stanley blade discarded by a life vest on the floor, believed to have been carried by one of the men

A man thought to be migrant, is search by a Border Force officer after being escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent

Appearing on GMB this morning, Business Minister Paul Scully said the migrants were escaping war-torn countries and said 'people should be claiming asylum in the first safe port' they reach.

France struck a deal with the UK in November to tackle illegal Channel crossings but has so far resisted the idea of having dinghies sent back to its northern beaches.

In March, Home Secretary Priti Patel announced plans to overhaul Britain's immigration regime by giving border guards patrolling the Channel greater powers to turn back migrant boats. The crackdown will be dependent on France and other countries accepting the return of migrants.

A police source told MailOnline: 'The men were intercepted by the RNLI and brought to the lifeboat station where they were given water. There were a total of 30 young men, from Iran and Northern and Eastern Africa who had set off overnight from the French coast.

'All of them are fairly healthy and nobody required hospital treatment. Officers found a Stanley knife blade which had had the base removed and was covered in silver duct tape. The blade is thought to have been discarded by one of the migrants as they came ashore before being searched by police.

'The migrants will be taken to an immigration centre and be given food once on the coach. We are expecting another craft to land less than a mile away and that one, we believe, has 40-persons on board.'

Dr Ben Greening, Executive Director of Migration Watch UK, told MailOnline: 'This was another daily record and we are going to see that surpassed time and time again going forward unless the Government gets serious.

'Illegal crossings so far this year are now nearly 11 times the number recorded by this point in 2019, just before the Home Secretary promised they would become 'infrequent'. This is not good enough and the public are fed up to the teeth with this debacle.'

As the number of people crossing in small boats rises, the number coming over to Britain in lorries or train containers through the Channel Tunnel has declined following high-profile incidents in which migrants smuggled onto lorries and containers have died en route.

Speaking to MailOnline today, furious union officials said that Border Force staff are 'working excessive hours in unsuitable conditions' as officials struggle to keep a handle on the numbers of migrants who are intercepted in the Channel and who need processing on land.

Sky News showed aerial shots of the men who were seen getting out and sitting on the pebble beach while some washed their feet in the water as a rubber ring brought as a makeshift safety aid floated up shore

One African migrant told photographers on the beach the group had paid 3,000 each for the 10 hour crossing

Male migrants are pictured walking on the beach at Dungeness in Kent this morning after they are brought ashore

Male migrants are pictured walking onto the beach Dungeness in Kent this morning

A police officer hands water to a group of people thought to be migrants as they sit in the shade following being escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent

A migrant is escorted by Border Force officers as he is brought ashore at Dover Harbour in Kent after crossing the Channel

A migrant family is escorted by a Border Force officer as they are brought ashore at Dover Harbour in Kent

Migrants are seen walking up the beach at Dungeness in Kent after they were intercepted by the coastguard

A man thought to be migrant smokes a cigarette after being escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent, by Border Force officers following a small boat incident in the Channel

Have you seen any migrant boats arriving on the south coast? Email jack.wright@mailonline.co.uk. Advertisement

'We need a mechanism allowing refugees arriving at the UK border in France to be given safe passage, and until we have it, all else is noise and distraction.'

Clandestine Channel Threat Commander Dan O'Mahoney said today: 'There is an unacceptable rise in dangerous small boat crossings across the Channel because of a surge in illegal migration across Europe.

'People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach and not risk their lives making these dangerous crossing. We are continuing to pursue the criminals behind these illegal crossings.

'Police patrols on French beaches and enhanced intelligence sharing between our security and law enforcement agencies has helped to prevent crossings through a combination of inland and sea patrols.

'The Government continues to undertake substantial steps to tackle the unacceptable problem of illegal migration through the Nationality and Borders Bill which will protect lives and break this cycle of illegal crossings. The Government is also continuing to return those with no legal right to remain in the UK.'

In Dungeness in Kent, around 50 people were seen landing on a beach after crossing aboard in a single dinghy. Some raised their hands in celebration as they stood on the beach, while others sat down on the shingle shoreline amid 75F sunshine.

The large dinghy is believed to have left northern France or Belgium earlier on Monday before crossing the dangerous 21-mile Dover Strait.

The vessel had been watched by the RNLI as it got closer and closer to the coast before eventually landing on the beach at around 1pm. Among the arrivals were women and children, some too young to walk, and some people had to be supported as they walked on to the beach.

A witness told the Sun that within five minutes a police car had arrived but all of the migrants had already disappeared. She added that two men, who appeared to be British, arrived with snacks and flasks of coffee before clearing discarded lifejackets.

A large inflatable was pictured on the beach at Dungeness in Kent where 88 people are said to have landed, according to independent monitors posting on social media.

Two coaches were pictured at the pebble beach as the group were detained by Border Force officers. It came after 241 people arrived in the UK on Sunday on board eight boats, as 2021 continues to see rising numbers of crossings.

Migrants are brought ashore at Dungeness in Kent after making the perilous journey across the English Channel

A group of people thought to be migrants crossing from France come ashore aboard the local lifeboat at Dungeness in Kent

A group of people thought to be migrants crossing from France come ashore from the local lifeboat at Dungeness in Kent, after being picked-up following a small boat incident in the Channel

A group of people thought to be migrants are escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent, by Border Force officers

Migrants are seen lying on the grass at Dungeness in Kent after they were brought ashore by UK authorities

A group of people thought to be migrants are escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent, by Border Force officers

A group of people thought to be migrants are escorted from the beach in Dungeness, Kent, by Border Force officers

Some people raised their hands in the air in apparent celebration at having completed the dangerous journey, while others had to be supported as they walked on to the beach.

Numbers of crossings have shot up in recent years, with last year's total more than quadrupling the number of arrivals in 2019. Despite this, the UK continues to see far fewer boat arrivals and asylum claims than many of its European counterparts.

At least 44,230 people have arrived in Europe via the Mediterranean by land and sea so far this year, according to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Also, despite the sharp rise in small boats arrivals on the south coast, asylum applications in the UK fell in 2020 to 29,456. This was significantly lower than the 93,475 asylum applications made in France and the 121,955 made in Germany.

Her remarks came as MPs considered the Nationality and Borders Bill, which includes clauses to allow the UK to be able to send asylum seekers to a 'safe third country' and to submit claims at a 'designated place' determined by the Secretary of State.

Lucy Moreton of the Immigration Services Union said: 'To say Border Force are stretched is an understatement. Staff are working excessive hours in unsuitable conditions and at the moment in extreme heat. Not only are those working at sea seriously over capacity so are those on land.

'From the Immigration Enforcement Officers who are tasked with screening and processing on arrival, to asylum caseworkers who have a 450 per cent increase in workload and the local authorities who have to find accommodation, support etc, in due course this pressure will also find its way through to the legal system as refused cases go through appeal.

'Although we do see families with children the majority of migrants continue to be young men. Many have asylum applications already refused elsewhere in Europe.' MailOnline has contacted the Home Office for further information.

A man gestures as a group of people thought to be migrants make their way up the beach at Dungeness yesterday

People though to be migrants are watched over by the RNLI yesterday as they make their way up the beach following arriving on a small boat at Dungeness in Kent

People thought to be migrants make their way up the beach after arriving on a small boat at Dungeness in Kent yesterday

A group of people thought to be migrants sit on the beach after arriving on a small boat at Dungeness in Kent yesterday

A group of people thought to be migrants sit on the beach after arriving on a small boat at Dungeness in Kent yesterday

Plans for sweeping reforms of the asylum system, dubbed the anti-refugee Bill by critics and campaigners, were debated again in Parliament yesterday. Theresa May sounded warnings over the prospect of the UK sending asylum seekers to Australia-style offshore processing centres.

The former prime minister said she considered the idea when home secretary but rejected the option due to 'practical concerns'.

Bella Sankey, director of charity Detention Action, said: 'The Home Office's anti-refugee Bill is political theatre that doesn't even pretend to deal with the issue or make our system, safe, fair or efficient.

Among the arrivals were women and children, some too young to walk. More people are believed to have attempted the cross to the UK on Monday, with Border Force and French warships active in the English Channel.

French authorities intercepted an additional seven boats carrying 129 migrants - while also preventing a further 15 people from entering the water.

It comes as the Borders Bill is set to be debated in Parliament. The legislation looks to deter illegal entry and crackdown on people smuggling gangs by making it a criminal offence for migrants to attempt to enter the UK without valid entry clearance.

Home Secretary Priti Patel's crackdown comes after June saw more migrants cross the Channel by small boat than in any month ever before.
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Prince Harry was facing anger from the royal households last night as his tell-all book threatens to take the shine off the Queen's historic Platinum Jubilee.

The duke's decision to bring out a memoir, which could deepen current rifts, in the same year his grandmother celebrates her landmark was branded 'deeply disrespectful'.

Royal sources told the Mail that inside Buckingham Palace and the other royal households, there was an increasing sense of anger and frustration  not just because he had chosen to write such a book, but also over the 'clearly deliberate' timing of its publication next autumn.

It could be 'the last straw' for Harry and his family, with relations already at breaking point, insiders said.

Prince Harry was facing anger from the royal households last night as his tell-all book threatens to take the shine off the Queen's historic Platinum Jubilee

The Royal Family are fully focused on making the year a joyous occasion, when the Queen will become the first British monarch to celebrate 70 years on the throne, but now fear Harry, and any bombshell revelations, will overshadow it

Prince Harry promises readers an 'accurate and wholly truthful' book written 'not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become' Harry said the memoir, to be published by Penguin Random House, will be written 'not as the prince' he was, but as the man he has 'become'. He said, 'I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. 'I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story - the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned - I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think. 'I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a first hand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful.' Advertisement

Having already been writing for a year, the prince is set to turn in a manuscript, which he promised will be a 'first-hand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful', by the end of this year. It is set to hit the shelves in 2022.

The Royal Family are fully focused on making the year a joyous occasion, when the Queen will become the first British monarch to celebrate 70 years on the throne, but now fear Harry, and any bombshell revelations, will overshadow it.

Some insiders were last night even predicting that the Queen's invitation for Harry, Meghan and their children to join the Royal Family on the balcony at Buckingham Palace to mark her milestone next June could be rescinded.

One said: 'Her Majesty has been at great pains to try to keep her relationship with her grandson and his family separate from the decisions she needs to make professionally, so to speak. And the invitation for them to join her next year was a genuine one.

'Although things have been very difficult, there was a small, but enduring hope that enough time would have elapsed for things to heal. But the feeling internally [now] is that this book will be the last straw.

'It's emerged that Harry has been secretly working on it for some time and he has made clear that he and his ghostwriter (journalist and novelist J R Moehringer) will leave no stone unturned.

'The suggestion he could even be seen with his family again in the future is looking increasingly implausible. A lot of people suspect this is the end of the road.'

The timing of the book is being seen as yet another snub to the royals after the Sussexes' explosive Oprah interview was filmed and broadcast while Prince Philip lay ill in hospital earlier this year.

Another source added: 'To bring out the book in the year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee is being seen as deeply disrespectful. There will be a whole year of celebrations... yet it will now be characterised by a drip-feed of revelations, serialisations and, eventually, publication.

'It doesn't matter what reassurances he tries to give his family about what will be in it. The Oprah interview proved how hollow those words can be.'

Having left the UK for California last year, the Sussexes have signed commercial deals thought to be worth millions with the likes of Netflix and Spotify, while Harry has taken on several roles with private companies.

It could be 'the last straw' for Harry and his family (Charles and Camilla pictured), with relations already at breaking point, insiders said

The Royal Family are fully focused on making the year a joyous occasion, when the Queen will become the first British monarch to celebrate 70 years on the throne, but now fear Harry, and any bombshell revelations, will overshadow it

The announcement of the book came with an undertaking that 'proceeds' would be donated to charity. But his publisher last night did not respond to questions about whether his reported 15 million advance would also be given away.

'Netflix, Spotify they were all seen as a bit predictable. But many also quietly acknowledged the Sussexes had stuck by their word to become financially independent of the Royal Family,' a source added.

'But all the interviews, particularly Oprah, the personal attacks dressed up as cod-psychology, and now this. Everything has changed. It's quite clear that Harry doesn't really care what his family thinks any more. Patience is wearing perilously thin.'

A spokesman for the Sussexes said Harry had told his family  including the Queen  about his intention to publish his memoirs 'very recently'.

Royal expert Ingrid Seward, whose biography of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip Revealed, was serialised in the Daily Mail, said Charles would be deeply hurt by further criticism from his youngest son.

She added: 'It's also very thoughtless that this should happen in the Queen's Platinum Jubilee year. Sadly, it seems Harry hasn't thought about the consequences for his family.'

The timing of the book is being seen as yet another snub to the royals after the Sussexes' explosive Oprah interview was filmed and broadcast while Prince Philip lay ill in hospital earlier this year

'How can Harry build any bridges doing this?': Royal expert Robert Jobson says Prince's 'hugely damaging' Megxit memoir will cause 'mayhem' in his family and deepen rifts with Charles and William Prince Harry's explosive memoir about the royal family will only 'further damage' his relationship with his brother and father, an expert has claimed. The Duke of Sussex, 36, has been secretly working on a book for nearly a year which he has since sold to Penguin Random House. It will tell the story from his childhood growing up in palaces, to his time in Afghanistan and his decision to leave the royal family in 2020. Sources close to Prince Charles said Harry's father was 'surprised' at the news and that the royals had not been warned that a book was in the offing until the news broke tonight. Speaking to FEMAIL, royal expert Robert Jobson said the book will only 'lead to conflict' and will be 'hugely damaging to the House of Windsor and Monarchy as an institution. The author, who wrote bestseller 'Prince Philip's Century', added that Harry is already 'rich and famous' and the book serves no purpose but to 'cause damage'. 'As night follows day, this was always going to happen,' he told FEMAIL. 'It will become an international bestseller, but at what cost to the monarchy? There will be nowhere to hide'. He also compared Harry to his great-grandfather's brother Edward, who abdicated so he could marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. 'It is not the first time an 'exiled' senior royal has written a memoir, the former King Edward VIII wrote one. 'His book 'A King's Story: The Memoirs of HRH the Duke of Windsor, KG' was published to a media storm in the 50s. It caused a sensation. 'But this is bound to cause mayhem amongst the House of Windsor. 'If Harry, which seems inevitable, goes into detail about mental health issues involving his wife and alleged racism at the heart of the royal family, it will be hugely damaging to the House of Windsor and the Monarchy as an institution. 'Harry is already hugely rich and famous so apart from damaging his family - which a book like this will inevitably do, I am not sure what he is trying to achieve. Whatever he says will lead to conflict. 'No wonder there is a rift between the royal brothers and problems with his father. 'How can any bridges be built when he is doing this? '. Advertisement

EXCLUSIVE  'This is the final nail in Harry's coffin': DAN WOOTTON reveals growing royal fury at tell-all book that will overshadow Queen's Platinum Jubilee and could threaten Charles' plan to make Camilla his queen

If there was a slim chance that Prince Harry's relationship with his father and brother could be salvaged, his decision to pen a tell-all autobiography about his life in the Royal Family has just torpedoed any remaining hope.

Multiple royal insiders tell me that there is a 'growing sense of shock and fury' among the royal palaces and Harry's own family members about his book plan.

'This is the no going back moment  the final nail in the coffin of the Royal Family's relationship with Harry,' a senior royal source tells me. 'The emotional turmoil as they wait over a year for publication is going to be torturous.'

Multiple royal insiders tell me that there is a 'growing sense of shock and fury' among the royal palaces and Harry's own family members about his book plan, writes Dan Wootton

What has angered courtiers most is that Harry and Meghan know, whatever they say in the book, Prince Charles and Prince William, as heirs to the throne, will find it almost impossible to fight back.

Insiders close to the Prince of Wales have confirmed he did not know about Harry's book, even though he has been working on it for the past year.

Another source explains: 'Prince Charles didn't know anything about it. This is really painful, it's going to be difficult for him to take. The assumption is that he will take another kicking from Harry.

'The real disappointing thing for Charles is that he used to get on with Harry so well, actually far better than William. He feels so let down by the whole thing.'

Clarence House is also believed to be worried about what Harry might write about his stepmother Camilla.

The source adds: 'Let's be honest, Harry has never been close to the Duchess of Cornwall. If he documents their fraught relationship in the book it could be very damaging at a time when Charles is laying the groundwork for her to become Queen.'

While there is still hope that Charles and Harry's relationship will be able to recover, courtiers do not believe a rapprochement with William is possible.

Prince Charles and Prince William arrive at Royal Ascot on June 18, 2019

Prince Harry's new book could threaten Charles' plan to make Camilla (pictured today at a school in the Isles of Scilly) his queen

A royal insider says: 'This is the end of any close relationship with the Duke of Cambridge. There's nothing more that can be said on that front. William believes his behaviour is shameful and tasteless.

'Harry's been going around to people saying he can't remember his childhood and his mother that much. Now he's going to write a book about it. How does that stack up?

'What's really telling is even the relatives he remains closest to, like princesses Eugenie and Beatrice, are stunned by what he's up to.'

As for the damage Harry's revelations could cause, courtiers are split.

A royal insider explains: 'This is nothing like Andrew Morton's biography of Princess Diana or Jonathan Dimbleby's of Prince Charles  this is coming from the horse's mouth.

MailOnline columnist Dan Wootton

'Harry will have to take ownership of every word forever more. There's no room for deniability.

'So in terms of the monarchy, this is massive. It's going to have a big impact.

'But what's the worst he can say? Will he name the so-called 'royal racist'? There's a lot of worry about that.'

The book's publication in 2022 has also worried courtiers because it risks overshadowing a trio of significant royal milestones.

The source explains: 'First and foremost, it's the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. That's what matters most.

'But it's also Prince William's 40th birthday and the 25th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana.

'With that mix, it should have been a really positive year for the Royal Family.

'But Harry clearly doesn't care. He's acting like a child. We need to remember he's a nearly 37-year-old man, not a 21-year-old. He's on the cusp of middle age.'

Some royal insiders are also questioning what Harry's announcement that the proceeds for the book will go to charity really means.

The New York Post reported that the deal with Penguin Random House will see Prince Harry getting at least 14.7million ($20m) upfront for the book, with at least a million of that believed going to the ghostwriter J.R. Moehringer.

However, Harry has not said whether the massive multi million pound advance will also be donated to charity.

Harry - pictured with Meghan - seems to 'revel' in the pushback from London

My royal source says: 'Surely Harry has to make it clear if that advance is going to charity too. Because otherwise the proceeds from the book will be much lower given it has to first cover the costs of such a massive advance.'

Harry isn't at all concerned about the pushback from London. In fact, he seems to revel in it these days.

Announcing the news yesterday, he said in a statement: 'I'm writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. I've worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learnt  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.

'I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what I've learnt over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life that's accurate and wholly truthful.'

The Queen stepping out to attend the Royal Windsor Cup Final earlier this month

And even though there's general outrage within the Royal Family at Harry's move to become a bestselling author on the back of the institution, some admit he has finally proven beyond any doubt that he can be financially self-sufficient and sees no path back.

One royal source explains: 'There's a lot going on among the family at the moment. A shifting of the power bases following the death of Prince Philip, with Prince Charles and Prince William both solidifying their power.

'But Harry doesn't give a damn. He's there to do what's right for him. He no longer cares about how his actions impact the monarchy.

'He went to California with the sole goal of showing that he will never need to rely on his family for money again  and he's proven that beyond any doubt.'
Spain is unlikely to be added to the 'amber-plus' list imminently  despite data showing higher Beta variant rates there than in France, ministers insisted last night.

Data compiled by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) suggests Beta rates in Spain have in recent weeks been more than five times higher than in France, which on Friday became the first amber list country to be excluded from new rules allowing quarantine-free travel for double-jabbed Britons.

For the week ending July 4, the latest seven-day period for which data is available, 20.2 per cent of positive cases analysed in Spain were found to be the Beta variant of Covid-19.

In France it was just 3.8 per cent for the same period.

The data prompted fears that Spain, Britain's most popular holiday destination, could also be subject to the strict rules. Ministers ruled that out last night but left open the possibility that measures could still be imposed at short notice if rates of the variant, which first emerged in South Africa, continue to rise.

Spain is unlikely to be added to the 'amber-plus' list imminently  despite data showing higher Beta variant rates there than in France, ministers insisted last night. Pictured: People enjoy the sun and the warm weather at the Playa Segur de Calafell Beach in Calafell

For the week ending July 4, the latest seven-day period for which data is available, 20.2 per cent of positive cases analysed in Spain were found to be the Beta variant of Covid-19. In France it was just 3.8 per cent for the same period

83% THINK JABBED BRITONS SHOULD BE ABLE TO GO ABROAD WITHOUT COSTLY TESTS More than four in five Britons  83 per cent  think fully-jabbed holidaymakers should be allowed to go abroad without facing costly tests on return, a poll has found. More than half (58 per cent) said it has taken too long for a 'vaccine dividend' to be delivered for the double-jabbed, according to a survey of 2,000 adults commissioned by easyJet. Some 61 per cent said they were more likely to travel once they were fully vaccinated. The average cost of a government-approved PCR test is around 100. Advertisement

The new regime kicked in at 4am on Monday and means double-jabbed travellers arriving from more than 140 amber countries no longer need to quarantine on arrival, effectively turning these destinations green for the fully vaccinated. But on Friday ministers unexpectedly announced this would not apply to France, plunging the travel plans of hundreds of thousands of Britons into chaos.

The rate of the Beta variant is also higher in Greece than in France, according to the ECDC. Greece recorded a rate of 13.4 per cent for the week ending July 4.

The following week (ending July 11), 9.7 per cent of positive cases analysed in Greece were Beta.

Scientists regard the Beta variant as the biggest threat to the UK's vaccination programme even though it is less infectious than the Delta mutation.

Despite the figures, it is understood ministers have no plans to make either Spain or Greece join France on the 'amber-plus' list. Travel industry figures and scientists last night accused ministers of being 'inconsistent' and 'changing the goalposts'.

Johan Lundgren, chief executive of easyJet, called on ministers to publish the full data they are basing their decisions on.

He told the Mail: 'They are changing the goalposts. The message [to ministers] would be, provide clear and transparent data that you're using when you're making decisions.

'It's not enough to just say 'we're looking at cases of infections, we're looking at variants of concern, we're looking at vaccination levels'. That's all obvious. But you also need to tell us what are the numbers.

Holidaymakers seen taking a rest near their tent at a campsite in western France (file photo)

On Friday France became the first amber list country to be excluded from new rules allowing quarantine-free travel for double-jabbed Briton

'What are the number of cases you think is acceptable to live with?' France being singled out has also raised eyebrows among scientists. Professor Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick, told the Mail: 'There doesn't appear to be any consistency. There seems to be a lot of knee-jerkism going on and it smacks of poor decision-making and not thinking things through.

'What is it about France that's so specific? There's a complete lack of joined-up thinking and they haven't provided the data.'

France's European affairs minister, Clement Beaune, branded the move to create a new category for his country 'excessive' and said he did not believe it was 'totally based on scientific foundations'.
California Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell spent more than $20,000 in campaign funds at the hotel where his wife worked and also splashed out on booze and limo services, FEC filings suggest.

The filings show Swalwell, 40, spent money at the Ritz Carlton in Half Moon Bay, California, where his wife Brittany was the director of sales between 2015 and November 2019, according to her LinkedIn profile, and dropped $7,000 at restaurants and steakhouses in D.C. during the second quarter of 2021.

The tally includes 13 meals at restaurants including Charlie Palmer Steak, O-Ku Sushi and STK Steakhouse in downtown New York City.

The records released on Thursday also show Swalwell spent $10,000 on 26 trips with limousine services and luxury car services.

Swalwell's campaign also spent $566 on 'Food and Beverage' on the alcohol delivery service Drizly and $1,151 on refreshments during seven trips to Capitol Hill Wine and Spirits, which is located near Congress.

FEC filings suggest Rep. Eric Swalwell's campaign spent more than $20,000 at the hotel where his wife Brittany was director of sales between 2015 and 2019

The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay styles itself as a luxury spa resort, perched on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Rooms start at $892 per night

Swalwell has been a popular target for Republicans, most recently for his role as a House manager during the second impeachment of President Trump

The filings also included $205 for 'Supporter Appreciations' at The Knot website where couples publish their wedding registries.

Swalwell was at one time seen as a rising star in the Democratic Party. He launched a presidential run in 2019, setting himself up as the candidate for a younger generation, but dropped out as his star was eclipsed by the likes of Beto O'Rourke and Pete Buttigieg.

Earlier this month it was reported that Swalwell, his wife and other members of Congress traveled to Qatar on a trip funded by the U.S.-Qatar Business Council.

Photographs of him posing shirtless while riding a camel went viral, attracting a backlash at a time when many Americans are unable to travel overseas because of pandemic restrictions.

The trip was paid for by the U.S.-Qatar Business Council, and included three other lawmakers.

Although the visit was approved by the House Ethics Committee, including personal time, the rules ban private groups from paying for entertainment during what are meant to be business trips.

The Swalwells met in September 2015 and married a year later in Oakland, California, according to their wedding notice in the New York Times

Visitors walk past the Ritz Carlton Half Moon Bay hotel in Half Moon Bay, California

Swalwell's congressional campaign also spent $1,151 on refreshments during seven trips to Capitol Hill Wine and Spirits, a liquor store on the House side of Congress

'USQBC did not pay for any camel rides during the trip to Qatar,' said the trade group in a statement, adding that it only covered costs associated with travel and official engagements.

The five-term Democrat has been a prime target of Republicans, attracting their ire for his role as House manager in President Trump's second impeachment.

They also demanded he be removed from his post on the House Intelligence Committee after it emerged last year that a suspected Chinese spy, named Fang Fang, worked as a fundraiser for him for years.

The spending also included more than $3000 at the Garre Vineyard & Winery, where Swalwell's campaign held a barbecue and bocce event.

His campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Dominic Cummings has accused the Boris Johnson of caring more about his own 'personal politics' than people's lives during the pandemic.

The PM's former chief adviser claimed Mr Johnson of wanting to appease Tory MPs 'who had lost their minds' than the public's health over lockdowns.

His scathing comments came during a bombshell sit down with the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg on Tuesday night.

He blasted the Prime Minister for an hour on a range of topics, including the role of his wife Carrie and whether he is fit to run the country.

But he also laid into his old boss on his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying it was 'like a disaster movie'.

The PM's former chief adviser claimed Mr Johnson of wanting to appease Tory MPs 'who had lost their minds' than the public's health over lockdowns

He told the BBC: 'It was like a disaster movie but it was real. even in the first week of march [BJ] said 'business as usual', he didn't take it seriously. his view was that it was like swine flu and that he had seen these sort of scares before.'

He painted an image of the Prime Minister flip-flopping over whether lockdowns were a good idea.

Over whether to bring in a second lockdown, he said Sir Keir Starmer had called for it so Mr Johnson thought it would be political suicide to be bounced into one.

He said; 'He had a bunch of Tory MPs screaming at him, some of them similarly with Brexit had lost their minds and were saying all kinds of complete fake news about Covid.

'And third he had the Telegraph, who he referred to as ''my real boss'. So he had those three things all pushing him not to act.'

Mr Cummings also revealed the government's plan of herd immunity was questioned by a 'very, very smart physicist'.

He said they spoke to him ahead of lockdown and said: 'Look it doesn't seem this has been thought out, has any of this been properly checked?'

And he said they asked him if they could look into another solution to beating the pandemic.

He admitted he and the rest of his Vote Leave allies began to clash with the then Carrie Symonds over who controlled the premier

Elsewhere Mr Cummings admitted he thought Mr Johnson being Prime Minister was 'terrible for the country'.

The former de facto chief of staff in No 10 said he had found Mr Johnson to have 'hopeless' traits after working with him during the 2016 Brexit referendum, but agreed after he entered Downing Street three years later to assist him.

But Mr Cummings, who left No 10 in the autumn after a power struggle, admitted he was now working to bring an end to Prime Minister's tenure.

Asked during a BBC interview aired on Tuesday whether he was looking to 'hasten' Mr Johnson's departure from Downing Street, he said: 'Certainly. The sooner he goes the better, for sure.'

In the hour-long broadcast, Mr Cummings said he had looked to 'exploit' the situation the country found itself in after Mr Johnson took power in 2019.

Mr Cummings, asked whether he had agreed to work with Mr Johnson so he could 'get him to do what you wanted', replied: 'In part, yes. He didn't know what he was doing but he did know that he needed help.'

In a fresh assault on his ex-boss, Dominic Cummings said he had to persuade the PM (pictured right) not to have his weekly audience with the monarch in case he gave her the fatal virus

The Vote Leave mastermind added: 'I think it is terrible for the country but I keep trying to stress, you've got to balance up the different possibilities.

'From a practical matter, all our options were bad, so it was, which is the least bad option? The least bad option seemed to be, exploit the current situation to try and push certain things through and get the country into a better position.'

Asked who was behind the decision to back Mr Johnson on the premise of securing Brexit, he replied: 'Me and a network of people - some of us who did the Vote Leave campaign, some of us who did other things. A few dozen maybe.'

Responding to Mr Cummings' criticism of Mr Johnson's handling of the pandemic, Downing Street said the Prime Minister had 'taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice'.

Another revelation made by Mr Cummings was that he considered a coup against Mr Johnson only 'days' after the 2019 poll - during which he had helped him secure one of the largest general election wins in decades - due to fears the Conservative Party leader's then-girlfriend, Carrie Johnson, was trying to oust Vote Leave personnel.

'Before even mid-January we were having meetings in Number 10 saying it's clear that Carrie (Johnson) wants rid of all of us,' he said.

'At that point we were already saying by the summer either we'll all have gone from here or we'll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as prime minister.'

He said there was a 'big argument' after Mrs Johnson, a former Tory head of communications, was looking to appoint and fire people 'in ways that I thought were unethical and unprofessional'.

No 10 said political appointments are 'entirely made by the Prime Minister'.

The 49-year-old also accused Mr Johnson of not having a plan for office and said he 'doesn't know how to be Prime Minister', claiming his 'only agenda' to be 'buy more trains, buy more buses, have more bikes and build the world's most stupid tunnel to Ireland - that's it'.
A transgender cop has sued the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, claiming his colleagues called him 'it' and wouldn't let him switch restrooms and locker rooms for six months after transitioning.

Michael McConaughey, who has worked as an officer with the agency since 2013, filed a lawsuit against his employer Sunday alleging he was discriminated against in the workplace for being transgender.

McConaughey claims colleagues purposely referred to him using female pronouns and his pre-transition name on more than 50 separate occasions after he announced he had transitioned from a woman to a man.

Complaints made to his supervisors and the human resources department over his treatment had 'no obvious impact', while one supervisor retaliated by complaining about McConaughey to his union, according to the suit.

A transgender cop has sued the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, claiming his colleagues called him 'it' and wouldn't let him change restrooms and locker rooms for six months after transitioning. Pictured Port Authority officers in New York last May

McConaughey was hired by the Port Authority as a police officer in August 2013 when he publicly identified as a woman, the suit states.

In 2018, McConaughey was diagnosed with gender dysphoria and began the process of transitioning from a woman to a man.

That summer, McConaughey told a superior and the human resources department that he was in the process of transitioning and would need to switch to using the men's locker rooms and restroom, the suit claims.

He then followed the meetings up with a formal written request, he claims.

McConaughey claims he received no response about his request for 30 days and so followed it up with another request.

He was allegedly contacted by human resources and asked to hold off on switching locker rooms while the Port Authority's insurers and legal department approved a new policy, the suit says.

McConaughey claims it took until January 2019 - six months after he first requested to be able to switch facilities - for the Port Authority to allow him to start using the male facilities.

It was then another almost year and a half - in July 2020 - before the Port Authority switched McConaughey's first name and gender identity on its papers and electronic documents, uniform and equipment rosters, and court notification, the suit claims.

The suit says McConaughey officially announced he had transitioned to a man and that he went by male pronouns in February 2019, before legally changing his name on May 2019.

Michael McConaughey, who has worked as an officer with the agency since 2013, filed a lawsuit (above) against his employer Sunday alleging he was discriminated against in the workplace for being transgender

McConaughey claims colleagues purposely referred to him using female pronouns and his pre-transition name on more than 50 separate occasions after he announced he had transitioned from a woman to a man

McConaughey claims that several superiors and coworkers including Sergeant Joseph Brenneck 'purposely referred to Plaintiff using female pronouns and his pre-transition name' from that March onwards, the suit claims.

The suit also alleges that dozens of McConaughey's coworkers began insulting or ostracizing him, 'including by misgendering or mis-naming him over Port Authority radio communications for all of his coworkers to hear'.

In one alleged incident last October, McConaughey claims a colleague stared at his genitalia in the restroom and then referred to him multiple times as 'it,' 'whatever it is,' and a 'transvestite.'

The same coworker also allegedly told colleagues McConaughey had a 'sex change' and had a 'rubber dick,' the suit says.

On other alleged occasions, colleagues would reveal his former identity to new employees to humiliate him.

McConaughey also claims when he returned to work from an extended leave for gender confirmation surgery in May 2019, he found some of his sensitive, personal documents had been removed from his desk.

LGBTQ+ activists protest in front of the Supreme Court in October 2019 as it heard arguments on whether gay and transgender people are covered by a federal law barring employment discrimination on the basis of sex

McConaughey's lawsuit, filed in Manhattan, is one of more than 300 cases which have cited the landmark June 2020 Bostock v Clayton County Supreme Court ruling

The lawsuit also describes several instances where McConaughey and his coworkers allegedly raised concerns about the harassment to no avail.

In total, McConaughey claims he complained to management at least seven times between March 2019 and June 2020 that he was being shamed and harassed by his superior and coworkers but his complaints 'had no obvious impact'.

The suit alleges that his superior Brenneck retaliated by reporting to McConaughey's union that he had 'ratted to the job on him'.

McConaughey claims the incidents amounted to a hostile work environment and retaliation against him.

He is requesting monetary damages and a trial by jury in the case.

McConaughey's attorney Daniel Kirschbaum told the Washington Examiner the case should send a message that 'anti-trans discrimination is just as unlawful and should be taken just as seriously as any other form of harassment or discrimination.'

'As a police officer, [McConaughey's] out there every day risking his own safety, for the sake of the public, and he wants the employer to respect his identity and have his back while he's protecting the public,' said Kirschbaum.

'It would be shameful if government were engaging in unlawful discrimination.'

DailyMail.com has reached out to the Port Authority for comment.

The lawsuit, filed in Manhattan, is one of more than 300 cases which have cited the landmark June 2020 Bostock v Clayton County Supreme Court ruling in the last year, Bloomberg reported.

Gerald Bostock served as the child welfare coordinator for Clayton County, Georgia.

Gerald Bostock (pictured) was fired from his job for 'conduct unbecoming of a county employee' when he joined a gay softball league

When he joined a gay recreational softball league outside of work, he was fired for 'conduct unbecoming of a county employee', his employer said.

This left him without employment or health insurance as he recovered from prostate cancer.

Bostock, who had strong internal reviews for his job performance, filed a lawsuit claiming he was discriminated against because of his sexuality.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bostock, finding that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, protects gay, lesbian or transgender people from discrimination at work.

The ruling represented the biggest moment for LGBTQ+ rights in the US since the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.

Meanwhile, Republican-led states are currently pushing back against LGBTQ+ rights with more than 250 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced in 33 states this year.

Among them, is a push from Texas lawmakers to ban transgender students from participating in sports.

This comes as Joe Biden has issued executive orders to improve LGBTQ+ rights including lifting the ban on transgender people serving in the military.
A manhunt is underway after the driver of an allegedly stolen car fled the scene of a crash that killed the passenger.

Emergency services rushed to the Burwood Highway in Burwood in Melbourne's east about 1.20am on Wednesday following reports a car crashed into a pole.

A passenger in the allegedly stolen car died at the scene and is yet to be formally identified.

Police allege the driver allegedly fled the scene before officers arrived.

Burwood Highway remains closed after the driver of an allegedly stolen slammed into a pole, killing the passenger

Police checks found the car was stolen from Reservoir, in the city's north, on the night of July 15.

Major collision investigation unit detectives remain at the crash scene as a manhunt for the driver continues.

Burwood Highway remains closed city-bound between Middleborough Road and Station Street, sparking traffic chaos.

'Our crews are assisting emergency services in directing traffic. Use Highbury Road or Canterbury Road instead. Allow extra time,' a VicTraffic alert read.

Anyone who witnessed the crash, has dash cam footage or any information regarding the whereabouts of the driver is urged to call police.
The NYPD cop who is being hailed as a hero after he 'MacGyver'd' a potato chip bag and tape to save a stabbing victim's life says he had never tried unorthodox move before.

Dylan Ubiles, 28 was stabbed in the chest in south Harlem on July 7, and stumbled until he collapsed in front of a deli on Lenox Avenue.

Scared onlookers flagged down NYPD officers in the area, including Officer Ronald Kennedy, who doubles his service duty as a volunteer firefighter with EMT training.

He can be heard in bodycam footage released late last week yelling to Good Samaritan onlookers to grab potato chips and tape, which he secured over the victim's wound.

'We requested a bag of potato chips and some tape, cause we knew right away that we needed to seal the chest,' Officer Kennedy said at a Tuesday press conference, according to the New York Post.

'There was a puncture wound there  we didnt want the air going in it, collapsing his lung,' he said.

He added: 'I was looking specifically for that size bag, squared edges and that type of material that wouldnt allow air to pass through.'

Officer Ronald Kennedy (left) used his EMT training to save Dylan Ubiles (right) after he was stabbed

The quick-thinking cop emptied a bag of potato chips and used duct tape to seal the wound

The attending physician at Harlem Hospital told the NYPD that Kennedy's actions likely saved the man's life

Officer David Galindez, who arrested the alleged attacker Erick Rodriguez, 38, told The Post he thought it was 'crazy' to use a chip bag, but only for a 'split second.'

'I know [Kennedy] has prior EMT experience, and I knew that was going to work,' Officer Matthew Grieve, Kennedys partner, told The New York Post.

'It had an immediate effect,' Grieve said.

The NYPD said a Harlem Hospital physician credited Kennedy with saving man's life.

(left to right) NYPD Officers David Galindez, Ronald Kennedy and Matthew Grieve answer questions for a WABC interview about Kennedy's quick-thinking life-saving action and the team work among the three officers.

Officer David Galindez, who arrested the alleged attacker Erick Rodriguez, 38, told The Post he thought it was 'crazy' to use a chip bag, but only for a 'split second'

Ubiles was grateful for Kennedy's quick thinking and heroic actions.

'I spoke to him at the scene,' Ubiles told Daily News on Tuesday. 'Hes actually the one who caught the (suspect). He made sure I got to the hospital, he took care of me.'

In the video released by the NYPD, Kennedy is seen rushing out of the squad car and telling a bystander to go get me a bag of potato chips right now.

He then approaches the victim, who tells Kennedy that he caught me in my lung.

Kennedy can be heard reassuring Ubiles over and over again and urging him to 'stay awake.

'We got you, we got you, Kennedy is heard telling the victim as he tapes the empty bag of potato chips to his chest.

As it appears that the victim begins to lose consciousness, Kennedy tells him: Stay with me. Stay with me.

Another bystander is heard telling the victim: Stay awake, alright?

The video then shows other officers and first responders arriving to the scene to help Kennedy.

Its the best I could do with what I had, Kennedy is heard telling his colleagues.

Kennedy then asks others for help in getting the victim onto a stretcher so that he could be loaded into an ambulance.

Keep breathing, keep breathing, boss, Officer Kennedy tells Ubiles.

NYPD Officer Ronald Kennedy responded to a report of a stabbing near 290 Lenox Avenue in the Harlem section of Manhattan on the night of July 7

The image above shows a New York City police officer using an empty bag of potato chips to treat a stab wound on July 7

First responders arrived afterward and placed the victim into an ambulance

Bystander Ricardo Gonzalez was the one who ran inside to get the bag of chips used to save a stabbing victim's life

Ubiles' mom Stacey Cuevas told The Daily News that her son was a heroin addict looking to buy drugs in the park when he was attacked, the second time in the last year that Ubiles survived a stabbing.

Ubiles is a father of three kids ages 8, 5 and 2, the Daily News reported.

He told the New York City paper that this is a wake up call for him.

'Look at me: Shot, stabbed, cut,' he told the Daily News. 'This is what happens when you live that lifestyle. This is not a lifestyle I want to live anymore.

'I want to get certain things from certain places, just like Justin Bieber, you know what Im saying? "Peaches from Georgia, weed from California." ... But when you live a certain lifestyle, this is what it gets you.'

NYPD Chief of Department Rodney Harrison praised Kennedy and the two other officers' work in a tweet on Friday.

This is just one example of the heroic work that your NYPD officers do every day.'
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said teachers should be fluent in 'dismantling racism' and accused Republicans of not wanting kids educated on the subject.

The liberal congresswoman from New York expressed her backing for Critical Race Theory in an interview with CNN's Don Lemon on Monday night.

'Critical Race Theory is not taught in elementary school. It is barely taught in law schools, frankly, in the level that it should be taught,' she said.

She blamed Republicans for it being removed from schools.

'We know that Republicans have started to now use these laws curtailing critical race 'curriculum,' that's not even being taught in the first place, as a proxy to saying we can't teach anything about race in our schools beyond just some of the most minimal, minimal, minimal facts,' she said.

Critical Race Theory highlights how historical inequities and racism have become ingrained in institutions and society; therefore they continue to shape public policy and social conditions today.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said teachers should be fluent in 'dismantling racism' as she backed the teaching of critical race theory in an interview with CNN

Conservatives argue that students are being taught a warped version of American history, while supporters say it is vital to understand how race impacts society in order to eliminate racism.

Republican legislators in more than 20 states have introduced bills that would restrict how teachers discuss racism, sexism, and controversial issues. In nine states, the bills have passed into law with some Republicans accusing Democrats of trying to indoctrinate children with the belief that the United States is inherently wicked.

'We should say why don't you want our schools to teach anti-racism? Why don't Republicans want their kids to know the tradition of anti-racism in the United States?' Ocasio-Cortez said. 'Why are they attacking the core roots of history in this country that strays anything beyond what we already know?  Why don't Republicans want us to learn how to not be racist? Why don't Republicans want kids to know how to not be racist?'

Opponents of the academic doctrine known as Critical Race Theory protest outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters, in Ashburn, Virginia, last month

Six states have banned the critical race theory and another dozen are considering passing similar resolutions

National fight over Critical Race Theory has ignited over the past year The fight over critical race theory in schools has escalated in the United States over the last year. The theory has sparked a fierce nationwide debate in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests around the country over the last year and the introduction of the 1619 Project. The 1619 Project, which was published by the New York Times in 2019 to mark 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived on American shores, reframes American history by 'placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the center of the US narrative'. The debate surrounding critical race theory regards concerns that some children are being indoctrinated into thinking that white people are inherently racist or sexist. Those against critical race theory have argued it reduces people to the categories of 'privileged' or 'oppressed' based on their skin color. Supporters, however, say the theory is vital to eliminating racism because it examines the ways in which race influence American politics, culture and the law. Advertisement

It has become a key focus on the curriculum of schools over the last year amid the nationwide reckoning for racial justice following the murder of George Floyd.

But it has starkly divided opinion.

A Public Opinion Strategies poll from early June found that critical race theory is viewed negatively by voters with a 50 percent negative to 42 percent positive margin.

President Joe Biden also has expressed support for it.

In June, he signed an executive order that required all federal agencies to ramp up workplace training on 'systemic and institutional racism' and 'implicit and unconscious bias.'

Though his order did not mention critical race theory by name, it did instruct agency leaders to provide greater access to training that covers many of the ideas outlined in that theory.

Biden earlier reversed a previous executive order from then President Donald Trump that banned any diversity training in the federal government that was based in critical race theory.

President Biden believes that 'kids should learn about our history,' including the 'many dark moments,' White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in early July when pressed about the president's stance on teaching critical race theory.

'The president believes that in our history, there are so many dark moments, and there is not just slavery and racism in our history. There is systemic racism that is still impacting society today,' Psaki said. 'And he believes, as I believe as a parent of children, that kids should learn about our history.'

She added, 'So as the spouse of an educator and as somebody who continues to believe that children should learn not just the good but also the challenging in our history, and that's part of what we're talking about here, even as it's become politically charged.'

Her comments came after the National Education Association calling for 'culturally responsive education, critical race theory and ethnic studies curriculum' to be taught from pre-K through 12th grade in schools across the country.
South Australia has recorded a new case of coronavirus, taking the latest cluster to six as the state begins its seven-day lockdown.

The latest case was announced on Wednesday morning, 12 hours after the entire state was plunged into Australia's most severe restrictions ever.

Health officials said the woman tested positive late on Tuesday night and is a close contact of an infectious case who dined at the Greek on Halifax restaurant in Adelaide on the weekend.

The woman contracted the virus while working at the restaurant and is also a boarding staff member at Westminster School at Marion, which is now listed as a high risk exposure site with school staff ordered to self-isolate for 14 days.

The fresh outbreak sparked chaos at testing clinics across Adelaide with long queues of motorists stretching for kilometres on Wednesday morning.

Some joined the queue at 9pm on Tuesday and were still waiting to be swabbed almost 12 hours later.

South Australia's outbreak has grown to six. The latest case (pictured) dined at the Greek on Halifax restaurant in Adelaide on the weekend

South Australians have woken up to the first morning in lockdown. Pictured is a deserted Adelaide on Wednesday

Premier Steven Marshall is hopeful health authorities may have 'nipped this in the bud' despite one new case overnight.

'It could be that we have essentially nipped this in the bud and put this sort of pause in place  this lockdown in place  that will slow and stop the spread very quickly,' he said on Wednesday.

'Because as you know there have been a huge number of tests yesterday and to have just one new positive case to come back is extraordinarily good, especially when the fifth case was of a real worry to the team.'

Health officials are expected to provide more details about the new case later on Wednesday.

More than 50 venues across Adelaide haven been listed as exposure sites with the list expected to rise in the coming days.

Testing clinics were swamped on Wednesday morning with long queues stretching for kilometres

South Australia has been plunged into a seven day lockdown. Pictured are health workers at a testing clinic in Elizabeth Park, Adelaide

They include major shopping centres and at least two schools along with banks, hardware stores, cafes, and chemists.

Premier Marshall said the state had to 'go hard and go early' to have any chance of containing the outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant of the disease.

'We hate putting these restrictions in place but we have one chance to get this right,' he said.

'We are moving as quickly as we can to slow and stop the spread of this cluster.'

South Australians only have five lawful reasons to leave home, for essential supplies, to exercise, for medical care, for care or compassionate reasons or essential work.

Construction sites across the state will shut down for seven days and schools will transition to online learning from Thursday.

Masks must be used in all indoor public areas, including shopping centres and also on public transport and other high-risk settings.

South Australians have answered the call from health officials to get tested. Pictured is a queue at an Adelaide clinic on Tuesday

Fitness centres are closed along with other non-essential retail.

This is South Australia's third lockdown since the pandemic began in early 2020.

The new cluster began with an 81-year-old man, who entered the country from Argentina. His daughter and another two men then caught the virus.

He returned to Australia via NSW, where he spent 14 days in quarantine.

He arrived in South Australia on July 8 and presented to a suburban hospital over the weekend after developing symptoms.

All the confirmed cases are known to the man or his extended family.
It revives questions about ethics of a production that has become a cult gay film

Acclaimed filmmaker Luchino Visconti scoured Europe in 1970 to find the 'perfect beauty' to play the lead in his upcoming film Death In Venice.

The successful candidate would have to have the ravishing looks an audience could believe would be sufficient to drive Dirk Bogarde's character, an ailing and ageing composer, to distraction.

But Visconti wasn't looking for a woman, he was looking for an adolescent boy. He found what he was looking for, casting a 15-year-old Swede, Bjorn Andresen, to play a sailor-suited Polish boy named Tadzio.

A year later, in London, for the film's world premiere in front of the Queen and Princess Anne, Visconti proclaimed Andresen to be 'the world's most beautiful boy', a stunning accolade echoed by some film critics who hailed his blond-locked, almost unearthly beauty as on a par with Michelangelo's David.

He became an overnight superstar  the world's most fawned-over face  only for his fame to become a 'living nightmare' that scarred him for life.

Visconti's 'most beautiful boy' remark may have been primarily a marketing stunt but it became a millstone around Andresen's neck for decades.

For as revealed in a new documentary film, The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, that delves deep into a desperately tragic life, Andresen would have been much happier if he'd never met Visconti, whom he describes as a 'cultural predator' who cynically exploited and objectified his youth and looks.

Bjorn Andresen, a 15-year-old Swede, pictured playing a sailor-suited Polish boy named Tadzio in Death In Venice. He became an overnight superstar  the world's most fawned-over face

Curse of fame: Bjorn Andresen with Dirk Bogarde in the film. Andresen's relationship with Bogarde isn't tackled in the documentary, although the former told the Mail in 2003 that the star was 'always very courteous . . . very kind and very British'

Andresen pictured now, in his 60s. His acting career proved so unsuccessful that he repeatedly broke off from it to work as a music teacher

The documentary revives unsettling questions about the ethics of a production that has become a cult gay film. Bogarde was openly homosexual as was Visconti, who said his male lovers included Italian director Franco Zeffirelli and Umberto II, the last King of Italy.

He was 63 when he made Death In Venice (based on a novella by German writer Thomas Mann, also gay) with a mostly gay crew, too. But Andresen wasn't gay  and even if he had been, he had only just turned 15 when he auditioned.

Far too young, he says, to be turned into a sex object whom Visconti took to gay nightclubs and who later became a trophy for rich Paris men who lavished him with presents and meals so they could parade him around.

To make matters worse, he was an orphan  a shy child whose grandmother had a fatal addiction to fame that made her the last person who should have been trusted to protect him.

Having spent years battling alcoholism and depression, Andresen remains a troubled soul. He now lives alone in a squalid flat, chain smoking, bickering with his long-suffering, on-off girlfriend and getting into trouble with his landlord for leaving his gas stove on.

British actor Dirk Bogarde and Swedish actor Bjorn Andresen on the set of Death in Venice

Young Bjorn never wanted to act but instead hankered to be a pianist. His grandmother, who wanted at least one of the children to be famous, had other ideas

Death In Venice is hardly a film one envisages Hollywood making now. The documentary includes footage of Visconti sizing up lines of boys who filed past him during a Europe-wide quest for a Tadzio that lasted years.

'How old is he? Older right?' Visconti asks a Swedish-speaking casting director as Andresen poses self-consciously for them at a casting call in Stockholm one chilly day in February 1970. 'Yes, a little. He's fifteen,' the casting director replies. 'Fifteen? Very beautiful,' Visconti observes. 'Could you ask him to undress?'

Andresen is obviously taken aback but eventually strips down to his trunks, as a photographer snaps away and a delighted Visconti makes clear he has found exactly what he was looking for.

It was a defining moment in Andresen's life and not a good one, he and his family now say.

'It felt like swarms of bats around me. It was a living nightmare,' says Andresen of the fame and attention for which he was woefully underprepared. 'I was a sex object  Big Game.'

Death In Venice is hardly a film one envisages Hollywood making now

As revealed in a new documentary film, The Most Beautiful Boy In The World, that delves deep into a desperately tragic life, Andresen would have been much happier if he'd never met Visconti

Bjorn Andresen and Silvana Mangano in Death In Venice

Now 66, he's still striking  albeit nowadays looking more like a rake-thin wizard with a nicotine-stained beard and white hair that comes half way down his back.However, as the haunting documentary reveals, Andresen's life had been marked by tragedy some years before he came into the orbit of Visconti.

His bohemian mother, Barbro, never told him the identity of his father (he still doesn't know) and made no secret that she wanted more from life than being mother to Bjorn and his half-sister.

He recalls standing behind her as a little boy as she stared silently out of a window and thinking: 'When I grow up, I'm going to save Mum.' He never got the chance when he was ten she disappeared and police found her six months later in woods after she'd apparently taken her own life.

The children went to live with their maternal grandparents in Stockholm and the family never mentioned their mother again.

Young Bjorn never wanted to act but instead hankered to be a pianist. His grandmother, who wanted at least one of the children to be famous, had other ideas.

He'd already appeared in a film, a 1970 Swedish romantic drama, when he auditioned for Death In Venice. He was paid $4,000 for his role in the film.

The Italian director Luchino Visconti, the Austrian-born French actress Romy Schneider, the Italian actress Rossella Falk and the Swedish actor Bjorn Andresen during the Cannes International Film Festival

Death in Venice star Bjorn Andresen at home in Stockholm

Despite the frequent lingering glances that Andresen and Bogarde exchange in the film, Visconti publicly played down any notion there was anything sexual between them. 'It's a love story, one that's pure. It's neither sexual nor erotic,' he said unconvincingly.

Andresen's relationship with Bogarde isn't tackled in the documentary, although the former told the Mail in 2003 that the star was 'always very courteous . . . very kind and very British'. Bogarde, the only foreigner who bothered to find out how to pronounce his name properly, instructed Andresen how to bow to the Queen when he met her.

Two months later, the film was shown at the Cannes Film Festival. After the festival's main banquet, Visconti and his friends took Andresen to a gay nightclub where he felt that waiters and guests leered at him and he drank himself in a stupor 'just to shut it out'.

Much to his discomfort, he became a sex symbol and  for some  a gay icon. He received sackfuls of fan mail from besotted teenagers and grown men alike.

He later visited Japan where he was mobbed by fans in scenes comparable to Beatlemania and, in fact, recorded a couple of songs.

Back in Europe, he continued acting but struggled to shake off his 'world's most beautiful boy' moniker. In 1976, he came to Paris for a film. It never came to anything but he stayed a year despite being penniless.

Andresen's acting career proved so unsuccessful that he repeatedly broke off from it to work as a music teacher

A string of rich men paid for everything, showering him with expensive meals and gifts, providing him with a flat and giving him 500 francs weekly pocket money.

'I must have been bloody naive because it was sort of like: 'Wow! Everyone's so nice,' ' he says now. 'I don't think they treated me out of the kindness of their heart . . . I felt like [a] wandering trophy.'

The documentary doesn't tackle the question of whether he ever succumbed to any man's advances. He told the Mail 18 years ago that he felt a fleeting confusion about his sexuality in his 20s and had one homosexual experience. 'I did it more or less to be able to say I'd tried it but it's not really my cup of tea. It wasn't more serious than that,' he said at the time.

He insists he's always preferred women, although even here he has had trouble. After growing used to clicking his fingers and having girls come running, he admits he never learnt how to flirt.

Even so, he managed to get married to a poet named Suzanna Roman after they had a daughter, Robine, in 1984. However, tragedy again struck three years later when their nine-month-old son Elvin, died. Andresen had been lying in bed beside him, insensible after a night out drinking, while his wife took their daughter to kindergarten.

Although it was a cot death, he blames himself for the tragedy, saying he'd been an inadequate father. 'Their diagnosis is sudden infant death syndrome but my diagnosis is lack of love,' he says. The family collapsed. 'I descended into depression, alcohol, self-destruction in all ways imaginable  it was an ego trip. Poor me, me, me.'

Andresen's acting career proved so unsuccessful that he repeatedly broke off from it to work as a music teacher. He disappeared from public view so completely that some thought he was dead until he re-emerged in 2003, when a photo of him was used to illustrate the front cover of The Beautiful Boy, Germaine Greer's ode to the beauty of young boys.

Andresen publicly complained he'd never given permission and said, having been exposed to it, adult lust  by men or women  for adolescents was nothing to celebrate.

He still suffers from depression and, judging by the film, is often tearful.

If ever there was living proof that beauty can be a curse it endures in the shape of the boy whose childhood was stolen by a highly manipulative film director.

The Most Beautiful Boy In The World is in cinemas from July 30.
The Army is set to scrap a 5.5billion 'light tank' before it has entered service.

In tests, the Ajax armoured vehicle could not be fired on the move or go faster than 20mph. It also caused crews to suffer acute hearing loss, nausea and spinal injuries.

The Ministry of Defence has already spent 4billion on Ajax but only 26 of the 589 ordered in 2014 have been delivered.

Yesterday defence minister Jeremy Quin told MPs an independent expert is being sought to evaluate the project and admitted it may be cancelled.

Major General Timothy Hodgetts told the defence select committee the Army was now looking at alternatives.

Cancellation could spark a legal battle between the MoD and makers General Dynamics (UK) over compensation.

In tests, the Ajax armoured vehicle could not be fired on the move or go faster than 20mph. It also caused crews to suffer acute hearing loss, nausea and spinal injuries. Pictured: The Ajax Army tank ordered by the Ministry of Defence

Mr Quin insisted the military, officials and contractor General Dynamics were all committed to making the Ajax vehicle a success.

But he told MPs 'we can't be 100% certain that can be achieved' and military commanders are already working on contingency plans in case the armoured vehicles cannot be used.

Trials of the light tank have been paused because of safety concerns which have left some personnel complaining of vibration injuries while others have suffered hearing loss - in some cases requiring steroid treatment in an attempt to reverse the damage.

Mr Quin told the Defence Select Committee: 'I have described Ajax as a troubled programme, I wish it wasn't, but it is.

'It requires a lot of work from ourselves and our industry partners to get ourselves back on track.

'We can't be 100% certain that that can be achieved.

'But this programme matters to the British Army, to 4,100 employees in 230 companies across the UK, and we will do our utmost to succeed.'

A leaked internal report had claimed the machine were unable to travel safely faster than 20 miles per hour - half the 40mph top speed, and crew members were suffering noises so loud that it made them feel sick

The overall cost of the contract is 5.5 billion, with around 3.2 billion of taxpayers' money spent so far.

A new official will be appointed to oversee the programme until it reaches final operational capability (FOC) - or is scrapped.

'We are currently undertaking a search for the right person who will be responsible for the delivery of this programme through to FOC or indeed informing ministers if - which we sincerely hope is not the case - this is for any reason unachievable,' Mr Quin said.

Tory committee member Mark Francois, a former defence minister, said: 'If you are having to give people steroid injections after having been in the vehicle, that tells you everything you need to know.'

It was time to 'rip the plaster off' and cancel it, he said.

Committee chairman Tobias Ellwood welcomed the minister's 'willingness to conduct a review and make a sober assessment as to whether you can genuinely go forward with this or whether it is then time to draw a line'.
Emmanuel Macron's phone number was among potential targets of a huge international spying operation, it was revealed last night.

The French president is among 50,000 politicians, journalists and human rights activists around the world said to have been identified as 'people of interest' by clients of Israeli firm NSO, developer of a surveillance system called Pegasus.

The Paris prosecutor's office is investigating suspected widespread use of Pegasus spyware and an official in the president's office said: 'If this is proven, it is clearly very serious.'

Investigator Laurent Richard said on French TV: 'We found these numbers but we obviously couldn't do a technical analysis of Emmanuel Macron's phone to determine if it had been infected with a spying device.'

Other leaders on the list that emerged include South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

President Imran Khan of Pakistan was also among potential targets found on a list of numbers leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories.

Last night the NSO Group denied that it had ever maintained 'a list of potential, past or existing targets'.

The French president is among 50,000 politicians, journalists and human rights activists around the world said to have been identified as 'people of interest' by clients of Israeli firm NSO, developer of a surveillance system called Pegasus

World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

French President Emmanuel Macron was among a list of 14 current or former heads of state who may have been targeted for hacking by clients of the notorious Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

'The unprecedented revelation... should send a chill down the spine of world leaders,' Amnesty's secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement.

Among potential targets found on a list of 50,000 phone numbers leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories include Presidents Imran Khan of Pakistan, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Barham Salih of Iraq.

Three current prime ministers and the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, are also on the list, The Washington Post reported.

The Post said none of the heads of state would offer their smartphones for forensic testing that might have detected whether they were infected by NSO's military-grade Pegasus spyware. Thirty-seven phones identified in the investigation were either breached or shows signs of attempted infection, it has reported.

The Post and 16 other members of a global media consortium were granted access to the leaked list. Another member, the French daily Le Monde, determined that 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets with Macron in 2019.

Following first reports by consortium members on Sunday, the Paris prosecutor's office said it was investigating the suspected widespread use of NSO's military-grade Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists and politicians in multiple countries.

President Imran Khan of Pakistan was also among potential targets found on a list of numbers leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories

Also Sunday, Amnesty released a forensic analysis of the alleged targeting that showed Amazon Web Services was hosting NSO infrastructure. In response, Amazon said it shut down NSO accounts that were 'confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity.' Amazon said the accounts had violated its terms of use.

Another U.S. company identified by Amnesty as hosting NSO servers was DigitalOcean. When contacted by The Associated Press, DigitalOcean neither confirmed nor denied whether it had identified or cut off such servers.

'All of the infrastructure outlined in the Amnesty report is no longer on DigitalOcean,' it said Tuesday, without elaborating, in an emailed statement.

The consortium's findings significantly widen the scope of alleged abuses in which NSO Group has been implicated since 2016. Those include the surveillance of friends and relatives of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018 - and highlight what critics call the urgent need to regulate global sales of commercial hacking tools.

Le Monde said the phone numbers for Macron and the then-government members were among thousands allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance. In this case, the client was an unidentified Moroccan security service, according to Le Monde.

South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa

Consortium members said they were able to link more than 1,000 numbers in 50 countries on the list with individuals, including more than 600 politicians and government officials and 189 journalists. The largest share were in Mexico and the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients.

Also on the list were phone numbers in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda, as well as ones for several Arab royal family members, the consortium reported.

An official in Macron's office said authorities would investigate Le Monde's report, and if the targeting is proven, it would be 'extremely grave.'

Le Monde quoted NSO as saying the French president was never targeted by its clients.

NSO Group has denied that it ever maintained 'a list of potential, past or existing targets.' It called the Forbidden Stories report 'full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.'

The source of the leak - and how it was authenticated - has not been disclosed. While a phone number's presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it was confident the data indicated potential targets of NSO's government clients.

The Paris prosecutor's office said in a statement Tuesday that it opened an investigation into a raft of potential charges, including violation of privacy, illegal use of data and illegally selling spyware.

As is common under French law, the investigation doesn't name a suspected perpetrator but is aimed at determining who might eventually be sent to trial. It was prompted by a legal complaint by two journalists and French investigative website Mediapart.

Multiple lawsuits by alleged victims have been filed against NSO Group including by Facebook over the Israeli firm's alleged hacking of its WhatsApp application.
The UK's oldest swan has died just weeks after celebrating his 30th birthday with a cake.

Pickles the Whooper swan, pictured, reached the milestone birthday on June 3.

Staff at Leeds Castle, Kent, where he lived, had dubbed June 3 as Pickles Day  celebrating it since his arrival in 2013. And, after a year with no visitors, last month he received a special seed cake.

But yesterday wildlife manager Mark Brattle said: 'It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Pickles. He was a massive character at the castle and will be missed by staff and visitors.'

The UK's oldest swan Pickles has died just weeks after celebrating his 30th birthday with a cake at Leeds Castle, Kent, on June 3

Pickles had been putting smiles on people's faces at Leeds Castle in Kent for eight years before passing away.

The bird was easily spotted with his classic white plumage, long thin neck, black legs and large vibrant yellow bill.

He was often seen swimming around the 12th century castle's giant moat or on the vast Great Water nearby.

Leeds castle is home to over a dozen captive bred swans, including Mute Swans, Trumpeter Swans and the famous Leeds Castle Black Swans.

But none as famous as Pickles who hatched sometime in early June 1991 and arrived at the castle in Maidstone in 2013.

A castle spokesman added: 'Pickles will be fondly remembered by staff and visitors at the castle, RIP to the feathered King of the Castle, fly high.'

Pickles had been putting smiles on people's faces at Leeds Castle in Kent for eight years before passing away. The bird was easily spotted with his classic white plumage, long thin neck, black legs and large vibrant yellow bill

A typical lifespan for Whooper Swans is around 10 years in the wild, but they can live into their late 20s in captivity.

Growing up to 160cm in length from bill to tail and weighing up to 11kg, they undertake one of the longest sea crossings of any swan species, migrating around 1400km to Britain from Iceland.

Mr Brattle said: 'When he arrived there was little known about him other than he had hatched sometime in early June 1991.

'No exact date had been given, which meant Pickles didn't have a birthday.

'So we decided to assign him a day and June 3 became known at the castle as Pickles Day.'
Mounting public anger at the 'pingdemic' has led to a mass revolt against the NHS Covid app and self-isolation rules, a poll reveals today.

Nearly one in four people has deleted or switched off the app  and millions more say they will refuse to isolate if 'pinged'.

The backlash has been fuelled by the row over Boris Johnson's initial attempt to avoid going into self-isolation after he was in contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who contracted the virus.

A total of 72 per cent of people say the Government's Covid stance has been a 'shambles' in the past few days.

But despite worries that Mr Johnson may be relaxing the rules too quickly, the poll for the Daily Mail shows clear backing for his 'if not now, when?' approach to controlling the virus.

Nearly one in four people has deleted or switched off the app  and millions more say they will refuse to isolate if 'pinged'

If Covid deaths remain low and most of those who need hospital treatment have not been vaccinated, voters are opposed to renewed curbs  unless there is a full-scale NHS crisis. In other developments:

The UK recorded another 46,558 Covid cases and a further 96 deaths  up from 50 a week earlier;

Self-isolation rules descended into chaos after two ministers said people did not have to obey alerts from the NHS app  only for No 10 to say it was 'crucial' they did so;

Ministers are considering requiring drinkers to prove they have had the vaccine in order to go to the pub this autumn;

Over a million pupils were absent from school for Covid-related reasons last week  a record high since classes fully reopened in March;

Ministers insisted Spain was unlikely to be added imminently to the 'amber-plus' list of countries.

Get the jabs in: Passports for pubs 'by the autumn' Drinkers will have to prove they are fully vaccinated to go to the pub this autumn under plans being considered by ministers. Tory MPs voiced fury last night as Government sources said vaccine passports could be required across the hospitality sector. William Wragg, Tory chair of the Commons public administration committee, said: 'It is a dreadful idea. If you give people the facts they make an informed choice, but this would be a form of coercion.' One lockdown sceptic said the Prime Minister 'shouldn't be surprised if lots of Conservative MPs and activists refuse to attend' the party conference if forced to prove their vaccination status. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross added: 'I don't like a situation where we could have two tiers of people  those who can and have been vaccinated and those who so far have not.' Advertisement

The results of the J L Partners survey  the first major poll conducted since the so-called 'Freedom Day' on Monday  appear to signal a sea change in public attitudes.

Since coronavirus hit the UK last year there has generally been strong support for strict controls to control its spread. But fears over the pandemic appear to have given way to fury at the 'pingdemic'.

Vast numbers have been told to self-isolate by the NHS Covid app, which indicates they may have been in contact with someone who has gone down with the virus. The majority of those who have been 'pinged' are not infected, causing havoc in public services, key industries and education.

According to the poll, 23 per cent of the public have either deleted it from their electronic devices or turned it off.

Nearly one in five (18 per cent) of those who have ditched the app have done so since the self-isolation fiasco involving Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak at the weekend. After being told they had been in contact with Mr Javid, the pair planned to use a testing scheme loophole to avoid having to go into isolation  until public outrage forced them into a U-turn.

Among those still using the app, one in four (24 per cent) say they are considering abandoning it.

More than six out of ten (62 per cent) maintain the conduct of Mr Johnson and Mr Sunak will make the public less likely to obey self-isolation rules  72 per cent say it will lead to greater numbers deleting the app. Most damaging of all, more than three in four (76 per cent) say the episode shows senior Conservatives believe there is 'one rule for them and another for everyone else', according to the poll.

More encouragingly for Mr Johnson, despite Labour claims that he is 'reckless' to ease the rules, his overall approach commands widespread support. An overwhelming 72 per cent say it is time for the nation to 'live with Covid because the curbs cannot last for ever'.

More than half (55 per cent) back Mr Johnson's argument that now is the right time to give the public more freedom. Only 20 per cent disagree. Similarly, 44 per cent say if Britain does not get back to normal now, it might never do so. A total of 38 per cent disagree with this statement.

The survey also suggests voters are more sympathetic to calls by Tory MPs for a 'more realistic' attitude to coping with Covid over the long term. Asked if restrictions should be increased if Covid deaths are the same level as flu deaths, only 17 per cent agree, with 33 per cent saying they should be decreased. A total of 29 per cent say curbs should continue to be reduced if most of those who need hospital treatment have not had the vaccine. Some 20 per cent say curbs should be tightened if this occurs.

Similarly, 28 per cent say curbs should continue to be eased if hospitalisation rates remain high while deaths stay low, while 20 per cent say controls should be made more stringent in this eventuality. But there is strong support (62 per cent) for another Covid crackdown if the NHS is in danger of being over-run by a big upsurge in cases. Nearly three in four voters (73 per cent) believe there will be another lockdown in the winter.

Mr Johnson's so-called 'vaccine halo'  a surge in his personal support on the back of the Government's successful vaccination programme  is slipping. A total of 61 per cent say he has handled Covid badly, against 30 per cent who say he has handled it well.

But in a head-to-head, across-the-board contest with Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Johnson wins by 36 per cent to 28.

The self isolation row has also brought Mr Sunak's sky-high ratings closer to earth. He is still the most popular Cabinet minister, but his net rating of plus 21 points is down 19 since September.

J L Partners interviewed 1,021 adults in England, Wales and Scotland online on Monday and Tuesday.
Victoria state Premier Dan Andrews was missing from Wednesday morning's daily Covid briefing as 22 new local cases were confirmed on the first day of the extended seven-day lockdown to stem the spread of the highly-contagious Delta variant.

Mr Andrews has been the face of Victoria's Covid crisis since the pandemic began last March.

During Melbourne's extended lockdown last year, he fronted press conference updates on 120 consecutive days. At the time he said: 'I'll be here until this is done.'

But since then, Mr Andrews was seriously injured in March when he fell at a holiday home in Sorrento and fractured his spine and broke several ribs.

Victoria state Premier Dan Andrews (pictured) was missing from Wednesday morning's daily Covid briefing as 22 new local cases were confirmed

He disappeared from public view for months while recuperating from his injuries until he resurfaced in June, just before the current outbreak began.

The premier immediately resumed his role in front of the media when Victoria began to see cases appear in the latest Covid cluster, until today.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted the premier's office for a reason for the absence.

At this morning's briefing Mr Andrews was replaced by health minister Martin Foley who said the new community cases are all linked to known outbreaks.

Wednesday's 22 new locally-acquired cases is the highest daily increase in Victoria since September during the state's deadly second wave of Covid-19 infections, but just six were in the community while infectious.

Dan Andrews was replaced by Victoria health minister Martin Foley (pictured) who said the new community cases are all linked to known outbreaks

'What this means is that our contact tracers and our restrictions are working in tandem to beat this virus,' said Mr Foley.

'That should give us confidence that this process is working, and it is working because millions of Victorians are backing it in and doing the right thing.'

The state has 18,000 primary contacts and another 10,000 secondary contacts affected by the current outbreak who have been tracked and traced, he said.

'If Victoria wasn't managing those secondary close contacts as tightly as we are now, the advice that we have is that this virus would have gone beyond us already,' he said. 'It has not.

'It's important, because this variant moves faster than any other variant we have seen.'

A record total of almost 60,000 tests were carried out in Victoria in the last 24 hours, said health mnister Martin Foley (pictured), with 98.8 per cent of results delivered the same day

A record total of almost 60,000 tests were carried out in Victoria in the last 24 hours, he said, with 98.8 per cent of results being delivered the same day.

Victoria's Covid commander Jerome Weimar added: '22 is a large number. It's a big number. It might have looked concerning for those who saw the number come up.

'But that 16 of 22 fully isolated for their entire infectious period is a really good sign that has changed dramatically in the last couple of days.

'I expect it to be improving over time. It may even be that within a couple of days we don't see anyone who's been out in the community for any of their infectious period.'

Included in the latest 22 cases are five connected to Trinity Grammar School, with one staff member, two students, and two household members testing positive.

Phillip Island is still on high alert after sewage tests again detected a possible unknown infection overnight, and locals have been asked to continue to be tested.

The state government also unveiled an extra rescue package for businesses, especially in the snowfields which have been hit hard by the latest lockdown.

The state government will give an additional $282.5 million in business grants after lockdown was extended.

The package includes licensed hospitality grants up to $7200, $25,000 grants for public events and suppliers and $7000 for live performance presenters.

Alpine business operators eligible for previous $15,000 grants will get an additional $3000, community sport organisations who have cancelled events can receive $2000, while small businesses not registered for GST can claim Commonwealth Disaster Payments.

The figures come after a string of new venues were added to Victoria and New South Wales' growing list of exposure sites, with Covid outbreaks around the country sending more than 13 million into lockdown.

Among the venues in Victoria exposed to the virus include a warehouse, a popular Aldi and a busy coffee shop, while in NSW a popular Coffs Harbour pub is also affected.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has meanwhile shared an alarming map which showed how hundreds of residents across the southern state had already been directly exposed to the virus.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews on Monday night shared an alarming map showing how there are now hundreds of residents directly exposed to the virus across the state

'This Delta variant is moving faster than anything our public health experts have seen before,' the state leader wrote in a Facebook post on Monday evening.

'Ninety-six active cases, around 18,000 people in quarantine, and hundreds of exposure sites from Phillip Island to the Mallee - all in just over a week.'

The country town of Orange in regional NSW has also been thrown into a week long lockdown after the virus spread from a pet food driver making a delivery from Greater Sydney to a local.

Along with Orange, South Australians have been ordered to stay at home for seven days while in Victoria the state's fifth lockdown has been extended for another week.

There seems to be no end in sight for Greater Sydney's lockdown while there are also now fears of an outbreak in Queensland after a woman tested positive having arrived from Melbourne.

The Hoey Moey pub in Coffs Harbour was exposed to Covid on Thursday July 15 between 3.55pm and 4.20pm, while initially only the bottle shop had been listed as an exposure site.

A string of new venues have been added to NSW and Victoria's growing list of exposure sites while Covid outbreaks around the country send more than 13 million into lockdown (pictured is an empty street in Melbourne on Tuesday)

Pictured are pedestrians in Melbourne on Tuesday. Wednesday's 22 new locally-acquired cases is the highest daily increase in Victoria since September

The Hoey Moey pub in Coffs Harbour (pictured) was exposed to Covid on Thursday July 15 between 3.55pm and 4.20pm, while initially only the bottle shop had been listed as an exposure site

The Aldi supermarket in Beaconsfield in Melbourne was also exposed to the virus and was added to Victoria's swelling list of affected venues on Tuesday night

Several other venues were added to NSW Health's relentlessly growing list on Tuesday night, including two Woolworths stores, one in Sydney's Belrose and another in Chester Hill.

The new exposure sites in Victoria come after the state recorded 13 new infections on Tuesday.

The BR International Logistics warehouse in Derrimut in Melbourne's west, is believed to have been exposed by an infected resident all day for a week.

Those who attended the venue anytime from July 13 to July 19 must isolate for 14 days from the day they were exposed, regardless of a Covid-19 test result.

A woman is seen walking her dog in Melbourne on Tuesday. Victoria is in the midst of its fifth lockdown

The BR International Logistics warehouse in Derrimut in Melbourne's west, is believed to have been exposed by an infected resident all day over a period of seven consecutive days

Pop-up cafe and arts store Status Quo Pop-up in Richmond was exposed by an infected resident over four days between July 14 and July 17.

Those at the store between 8am to 3pm on any of those days are required to get a Covid test and isolate until a negative result.

The Sloane Ranger cafe in Cremorne has also been listed on July 14 from 8:25am to 9:10am and July 15 from 8.25am to 9.05am.

Meanwhile the Aldi in Beaconsfield has been put on alert for shoppers who attended the supermarket on July 17 between 1:30pm and 3:00pm.

Victoria's lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight but has been extended for another seven days until midnight July 27.

AUSTRALIAS LATEST COVID OUTBREAKS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW NEW SOUTH WALES: *The state recorded 78 new Covid-19 cases overnight, with 27 out in the community while infectious and 29 yet to be linked to known clusters. *Of the new cases, 52 (66 per cent) were found in south-west Sydney - with health officials finding 11 cases in both the city's west and south-east. *Greater Sydney has entered its fourth week of hard lockdown, with the outbreak of new infections at 1,418 since June 16. *Officials confirmed a woman in her 50s had died from the virus in Sydney's south-west, the mother of two infected removalists. *Orange in the state's central west has also began a seven day lockdown after an infected pet food driver from Sydney spread Covid-19 to a local VICTORIA: *Victoria has extended its lockdown for a week after 13 new cases in the state were announced on Tuesday. *The lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight but has been extended for another seven days until midnight July 27. *Nine of the 13 new cases were isolating for all their infectious period, with 12 linked to the Delta outbreak in NSW and one under investigation. *Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has reinstated a hard border with NSW and ordered a temporary pause on the issuing of 'red zone' permits. *From midnight on Tuesday, Victorians returning home from north of the border must apply for a new permit. *The only ones allowed to enter will be authorised workers and those who successfully apply for a compassionate exemption. *Almost 49,500 Victorians came forward for testing on Monday while another 17,083 rolled up their sleeves for the Covid-19 jab. *Two overseas-acquired cases in hotel quarantine were also recorded. QUEENSLAND: *The state has recorded a mystery case of Covid-19, a fully vaccinated woman had tested positive despite no known links to other clusters. *The woman, aged in her 20s, flew into the Sunshine Coast from Melbourne on July 13. *The case is unrelated to any of the existing outbreaks - with authorities confirming she had been infectious in the community for three days. *Chief health officer Dr Jeanette Young said she suspected the state's latest infected woman caught the virus in a Melbourne pub. *Two new overseas acquired cases were also detected in hotel quarantine. SOUTH AUSTRALIA: *Premier Steven Marshall announced the entire state would go into lockdown from 6pm on Tuesday for the next seven days. *The call was made after two new locally acquired cases of Covid overnight, bringing the total number of infections in the state to five. *Residents only have five lawful reasons for residents to leave home, for essential supplies, to exercise, for medical care, for care or compassionate reasons or essential work. *Construction sites across the state will shut down for seven days and schools will transition to online learning from Thursday. *Mr Marshall also said more testing sites would open in Adelaide on Thursday amid long queues at testing facilities on Monday and early Tuesday. Advertisement

Victoria's lockdown was scheduled to end at midnight but has been extended for another seven days until midnight July 27 (pictured Melbourne residents wait to get a Covid vaccine)

The country town of Orange (pictured) has now been plunged into a seven-day lockdown

This is Victoria's fifth lockdown since the pandemic hit Australia's shores early last year and the third one so far in 2021.

'We want to avoid a long, lengthy challenging lockdown where you lose control of cases, we have avoided that, but we need more time,' Mr Andrews said.

He also reinstated a hard border with NSW and ordered a temporary pause on the issuing of 'red zone' permits.

Almost a third of Victoria's locally-acquired coronavirus cases can be traced back to a fan who attended an AFL game, a Euro 2020 viewing party, and a rugby match while unknowingly infectious.

That man caught the virus from a resident of a Maribyrnong apartment complex who got it from unmasked Sydney removalists, then went on to spread it to friends and family.

Twelve of Tuesday's cases are linked to the outbreaks of the Indian Delta variant in the state, which originated in NSW, and one case is under investigation.

There appears to be no end in sight for Sydney's lockdown as the city enters its fourth week of tough restrictions (pictured, an eerily quiet George Street on Tuesday)

South Australia has also entered a seven day lockdown after a total of five infections were recorded (pictured, testing in Adelaide on Tuesday)

But an extra week of lockdown in Victoria is unlikely to be enough to quash an outbreak of the Indian Delta coronavirus variant, an epidemiologist says.

Based on modelling by Monash University and his own progression data, University of South Australia academic Adrian Esterman believes local Covid-19 cases will not drop to zero by the end of Victoria's seven-day lockdown extension.

'You've got at least another week and potentially two or three weeks,' the veteran epidemiologist and biostatistician said.

USE DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA'S TRACKER TO FIND THE LATEST EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

NEW NEW SOUTH WALES COVID ALERTS ON TUESDAY NIGHT Anyone who attended the following previously announced venues is now a close contact, and must get tested and isolate immediately for 14 days, regardless of the result Coffs Harbour: The Hoey Moey - Thursday July 15, 3.55pm - 4.20pm Belrose: Taste Baguette Belrose - Tuesday July 13, 8.10am - 8.20am and Wednesday July 14, 10.30am - 11am Belrose: Woolworths in Glenrose Shopping Village - Wednesday July 14, 10.30am - 11am Belrose: Lawrence Dry Cleaners - Wednesday July 14, 10.30am - 11am Chester Hill: Woolworths - Thursday July 15, 4.45pm - 5.05pm Anyone who attended the following venues is a close contact, and must get tested and isolate immediately for 14 days, regardless of the result Greenacre: Greenacre Royal Carwash - Saturday July 10, Sunday July 11, Monday July 12, Tuesday July 13, Wednesday July 14 and Friday July 16, 9am - 5.30pm on all dates St Peters: MV Toolbox - Wednesday July 14, 2.15pm - 3.30pm Merrylands: Agha Juice - Thursday July 15, 8pm - 9pm Anyone who attended the following venues is a casual contact and must immediately get tested and isolate until a negative result is received Green Valley: Valley Fresh - Saturday July 17, 2.45pm - 3.20pm Hoxton Park: Shell Coles Express - Wednesday July 14, 11am - 11.20am Belrose: Caltex Belrose - Sunday July 18, 4.20pm - 4.40pm Dapto: Priceline - Friday July 16, 2.15pm - 2.45pm Belrose: Woolworths Glenrose Shopping Centre - Friday July 15, 5.55am - 4.30pm, Saturday July 17, 5.55am - 3.10pm and Sunday July 18, 5.55am - 4.30pm Advertisement

'It takes as long to get down as it does to take off. I'm expecting (Monash University) modelling forecasts of at least four weeks is probably correct.'

Meanwhile NSW is grappling with outbreaks of the virus in both Sydney and regional parts of the state.

About 50,000 people in Orange, Blayney, and the Cabonne Shire Council in the NSW Central West were plunged into lockdown as of midnight on Tuesday, enduring the same restrictions as Sydneysiders.

Along with millions of people in Greater Sydney, locals in the regional area will only be allowed to leave their homes for essential reasons in an attempt to quash the outbreak.

USE DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA'S TRACKER TO FIND THE LATEST EXPOSURE SITES NEAR YOU

Meanwhile, Dr Young has announced all of South Australia will be declared a hotspot from 1am Thursday, after the southern state ordered a seven-day lockdown with five cases found there.

From that time, anyone who has been to South Australia won't be allowed to enter Queensland unless they are a returning Queensland resident, or have essential purpose exemptions, and all arrivals will have to quarantine for 14 days.

The entire state of SA was locked down as of 6pm on Tuesday with residents only allowed to leave their houses for five reasons.

These include for care and compassionate reasons, to exercise, for essential work, to get essential supplies, and for medical reasons.

South Australians starting their seven-day lockdown will only be allowed to travel a maximum of 2.5km away from their homes to exercise.

The rule is one of the toughest to be imposed amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Australia, with exercise also limited to just 90 minutes each day.
The record heatwave that ripped through the US's west coast last month forced hundreds of baby birds to jump from their nests in order to escape the blazing temperatures.

The Portland Audubon Society reported that it collected 100 baby hawks in the area in the final week of June when temperatures hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit in regions where these brids call home

Baby hawks arrived at Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in California in droves, leading specialists to call the rare event a 'hawkpocalypse.'

Raptors, or birds of prey, nest high up in trees where they are in direct sunlight, so they become more sensitive to the heat as temperatures rise.

Many of the baby birds fell up to 60 feet to the ground, while most survived and have been returned to the wild, Blue Mountain Wildlife rehabilitation center in Oregon had to euthanize 13 that had sustained multiple fractures.

'We've never seen anything like this before,' Lynn Tompkins, the center's executive director, told Reuters.

'So hopefully, next year won't be the same. But I know that with climate change and the extreme heat and increasing heat, things like this are going to be more likely.'

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The Portland Audubon Society reported it had collected 100 baby hawks in the area in the final week of June when temperatures hit 116 degrees Fahrenheit. And baby hawks arrived at Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in droves, leading specialists to call the rare event a 'hawkpocalypse'

The heatwave killed dozens of people on the West Coast, which officials say was likely caused by climate change, but it also took a toll on the wildlife living in the region.

Baby birds that jumped from their nests were found with severe head trauma and other fractures, and others had signs of overheating, ABC News reports.

The Blue Mountain Wildlife rehabilitation center was inundated with calls from concerned citizens, who were advices to put out water and turn on sprinklers for the baby birds.

However, Tompkins cautions against always rescuing baby birds that have fallen out of their nests.

Raptors, or birds of prey, nest high up in trees where they are in direct sunlight, so they become more sensitive to the heat as temperatures rise

'Almost all of them, the parents were still there, and we really hate to take babies of any kind away from their parents because they're the most qualified to take care of them,' she said.

Sally Compton, the executive director of Think Wild Central Oregon, a nonprofit wildlife hospital, told ABC News, that their center received three times the number of calls about injured baby birds than they did last summer  and they had 60 patients at the hospital in June alone.

'During the busy season we have about 10 to 20 cases,' Compton said.

Just a further south in California, the 'hawkpocalypse' started one Saturday evening in June while Jeanne Capozza was working at the Shasta Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation in Anderson, The Washington Post reports.

Baby birds that jumped from their nests were found with severe head trauma and other fractures, and others had signs of overheating

Seattle also saw its fair share of falling baby birds, with many of them dying following the long fall to the ground.

Temperatures this week are still reaching up to 105F and the heat has led to major wildfires in drought-stricken Washington state.

'This situation was totally unprecedented,' said Tompkins, who has worked for 30 years in wildlife rehabilitation.

'I can't remember having temperatures of 115 several days in a row either.

'This in June, July, they just couldn't deal with it other than bailing out of their nest to try to escape the heat.'
Thousands of baby flamingo carcasses are sprawled out on a dried lakebed in Turkey that fell victim to a severe drought plaguing the nation.

The flamingo colony that calls Lake Tuz home has suffered greatly the past two weeks when the drought transformed the body of water into a cracked, desolated landscape with only clumps of salt left behind.

Environmentalists suggests climate change and agricultural irrigation methods are to blame, noting a report from the Turkish Foundation for Combating Soil Erosion (TEMA) that determined water demand is dramatically draining the regions supply.

Turkish Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, Bekir Pakdemirli told Reuters that around 1,000 birds were thought to have died, but denied agriculture was to blame.

He also stressed that the dead birds were flaminglets that are stull unable to fly, leaving them in a desolate wasteland without water while adults fled to a more sustainable area.

'With less water and increased concentration ratio in the water, we observed deaths of flaminglets that were unable to fly,' he said.

'I want to stress that there is no direct or indirect connection between this incident and the wells in the area or the agricultural irrigation.'

Thousands of baby flamingo carcasses are sprawled throughout a dried lakebed in Turkey that met their demise by a sever drought that is plaguing the nation

Lake Tuz is home to a giant flamingo colony that produces up to 10,000 flaminglets every year at the lake.

The lake is located in a closed basin called the Konya basin, lying in three provinces: Ankara, Konya and Aksarayn.

It stretches for about 65 miles and is the second largest in Turkey - but it is the largest salt lake of Turkey and the world.

The lake fills a tectonic depression in the central part of the country. It is fed by two major streams (Pecenek and Melendiz rivers), as well as by ground water and surface water.

The flamingo colony that calls Lake Tuz home has suffered greatly the past two weeks when the drought transformed the body of water into a cracked, desolated landscape with only clumps of salt left behind

Lake Tuz is located in a closed basin called the Konya basin, lying in three provinces: Ankara, Konya and Aksarayn

However, the lake itself has no outlets.

Because of its high salinity, Lake Tuz has three mines that extract, work, refine and sell salt that makes up 63 percent of the country's supply.

In 2000, Lake Tuz was declared a specially protected area, a designation that aims to protect biological diversity, natural and cultural resources.

The lake is typically filled with stunning pink flamingos roosting in and drinking from the large body of water, but the sever drought has left nothing behind but bones and feathers of dead babies.

The lake is typically filled with stunning pink flamingos roosting in and drinking from the large body of water

Environmentalists suggests climate change and agricultural irrigation methods are to blame

Environmentalists blame farming practices along with climate change for the drought, which saw demand for water in the area outstrip supply by 30 percent last year, according to a report published by Turkish environmental foundation TEMA.

In 2020, the annual water reserve in central province of Konya's close basin was 4.5 billion cubic meters, while the consumption reached 6.5 billion cubic meters, TEMA found.

Environmentalist and wildlife photographer Fahri Tunc said water supplies from a canal which feeds Lake Tuz were being redirected for farming.

'This is the irrigation canal that comes from Konya. It needs to deliver water to Lake Tuz,' environmentalist and wildlife photographer Fahri Tunc told Reuters.

Pictured are a number of dead baby flamingos that were unable to fly away to find water

'As you can see, the water is not coming through. It stopped.'

Tunc said only 5,000 eggs had hatched in the colony this year and most of the chicks had died for lack of water on the partially dried lake.

'It is a sin we are all committing,' Tunc said.

President of the Turkish NGO the Nature Association Dicle Tuba Kilic said the only way to prevent mass flamingo deaths is to change the agricultural irrigation methods in region.
Pikach-EWW! The real-life 'counterparts' of the popular Pokemon have a disgusting way to survive winters without hibernating  eating yak faeces.

Experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied pikas, tiny mammals which live in the meadows of the QinghaiTibetan plateau at altitudes of some 16,400 feet.

They found that, to get through the winters, when temperatures fall down to -22F (-30C), plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) adopt a number of strategies.

Alongside sometimes eating yak excrement, which provides a ready and easily digestible food source, they also slow down their metabolism to save energy.

The finding also helps to explain why pika populations are larger in areas where yak graze, despite how the animals are believed to usually be in competition for food.

Despite the similarity appearance, Pokemon's Pikachu was actually styled after squirrels, while 'pika' was derived from a Japanese word for a sparkling sound.

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Pikach-EWW! The real-life counterparts of the popular Pokemon have a disgusting way to survive winters without hibernating  eating yak faeces  a study found. Pictured: a pika caught after snaking on a lump of excrement on the QinghaiTibetan plateau

The finding helps to explain why pika populations are larger in areas where yak also graze  despite the fact that the animals are normally in competition for food. Pictured: a yak

Researchers led from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found that, to get through the winters of the of the high-altitude QinghaiTibetan plateau, when temperatures fall down to -22F (-30C), plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) adopt a number of survival strategies

The study was undertaken by biologist John Speakman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues.

'Lots of animals including rabbits and pikas eat their own faeces,' Professor Speakman told Live Science, explaining that this 'coprophagy' can help animals absorb nutrients that they couldn't initially digest from the food.

'But eating the faeces of other species is relatively rare,' he added.

In their study, Professor Speakman and colleagues spent 13 year studying the tiny mammals on the high-altitude meadows of the QinghaiTibetan plateau.

Alongside filming the plateau pikas, the team also implanted temperature-logging sensors into the animals to monitor them over the cold winters, during which they manage to expend around 30 per cent less energy than usual.

The team found that the creatures responded to the harsh conditions by lowering their body temperatures and cutting down on physical activities such as foraging.

Instead, in locales where such was available, they turned to the excrement of domestic yak (Bos grunniens) as a readily available source of food that didn't require so much energy-intensive searching to locate.

Having already passed through the yak's gastrointestinal system, the researchers explained, the faecal matter would be eat for the pikas to digest  and likely still retains both water and nutrients needed to sustain the mammals.

Not only did the team capture this unappealing behaviour on film, but their analysis also revealed signatures of yak DNA in the stomach contents of some of the pika that they analysed.

Alongside sometimes eating yak excrement  which provides a ready and easily digestible food source  pikas (pictured) also suppress their body temperature to save energy

'Lots of animals including rabbits and pikas eat their own faeces,' Professor Speakman told Live Science, adding: 'But eating the faeces of other species is relatively rare.' Pictured: a pika (left) eats yak excrement, a habit not shared by Pokemon's Pikachu (right) Despite the similarity in appearance, Pikachu was actually styled after squirrels  while 'pika' was derived from a Japanese word for a sparkling sound.

'We are currently studying what other benefits might accrue [from eating yak faeces],' Professor Speakman added.

'There are obvious potential costs as well, like exposure to gut parasites  so that's probably why it isn't a very common behaviour.'

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In their study, biologist John Speakman of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and colleagues spent 13 year studying the tiny mammals on the high-altitude meadows of the QinghaiTibetan plateau. Pictured: Professor Speakman in 2008, holding a plateau pika, Ochotona curzoniae

Experts with the Chinese Academy of Sciences studied pikas, tiny mammals which live in the meadows of the QinghaiTibetan plateau (pictured) at altitudes of some 16,400 feet
Snapchat has introduced 3D Bitmoji, a new feature to help users bring their virtual avatar to life.

Rolling out this week, the feature is letting users create a 3D version of their Bitmoji for their Snapchat Profile and Friendship Profile on the app.

Bitmoji are the animated avatars that Snapchat users create to represent themselves on the social media platform, but previously they were only available in 2D.

3D Bitmoji includes around 1,200 combinations of body poses, facial expressions, gestures and backgrounds for users 'to further personalise their digital presence'.

3D Bitmoji letting users create a 3D version of their Bitmoji for their Snapchat Profile and Friendship Profile on the Snapchat app

HOW TO ACCESS 3D BITMOJI Snapchat users can tap this link on their phone to create their 3D Bitmoji in the Snapchat app. Alternatively, clicking the link on a computer will bring up a Snapcode that users can scan on the app. - To scan a Snapcode: 1. Open Snapchat and point your camera at the Snapcode 2. Press and hold the Snapcode on your screen to scan it Advertisement

Snap Inc, the US company behind Snapchat, said 3D Bitmoji will offer a new way for users to 'express themselves and their personalities on Snapchat'.

More than 200 million people use Bitmoji daily, the firm says, and more than 300 million use Bitmoji every month.

'From peace signs and prayer hands, to scenic beaches and trendy animal print backgrounds  Snapchatters can now match their 3D Bitmoji to their every mood,' the firm said.

'Using Pixar-quality 3D capabilities, Snapchatters will see enhanced details on their customised avatar  from the clothing textures and unique embellishments from their favourite fashion labels, to the sparkle and shine on their avatars earrings.'

Bitmoji is seen by Snapchat as a fun and engaging way for users to present themselves on the platform.

Ba Blackstock, the CEO of Bitmoji, thinks cartoon avatars resonate with users when they engage with others online.

'Its not just about having an avatar [where] you have a picture of yourself,' he told Hollywood Reporter.

'Its more about what can you do with that avatar? What part does it play in your digital life?'

From peace signs and prayer hands, to scenic beaches and trendy animal print backgrounds, Snapchatters can now match their 3D Bitmoji to their every mood, the firm says

'Not everyone is comfortable putting photos or videos of themselves online.

Blackstock also said he thinks of Bitmoji as a 'kind of digital ID'.

'It really is this essential representation of not just what you look like, but your personality,' he said.

The Bitmoji app was created in 2007 as a website called Bitstrips, which was acquired by Snapchat in March 2016 for around $100 million.

Snapchat is constantly adding new features for its Bitmoji  last year, it launched a TV channel called Bitmoji TV, letting users create short cartoons featuring the Bitmoji of themselves, friends and celebrity guest stars.

In 2019, it introduced a new gaming platform called Snap Games, letting users play live multiplayer games against their friends, incluidng titles such as Bitmoji Party and Alphabear Hustle.

And in 2018, Snapchat launched Bitmoji Stories, a personalised comic strip starring users and their friends' Bitmojis.

In its first month, Bitmoji Stories were seen by more than 40 million unique viewers.
Archaeologists have discovered a rare stone that once outlined the city limits of ancient Rome, dating from the age of Emperor Claudius in AD 49.

The rare stone  made of travertine, a type of limestone  was found during excavations for a new sewage system in the Italian city.

It formed part of the pomerium, a sacred perimeter marking the sacred heart of the city from its outer territory.

In ancient Rome, the area within the pomerium was a consecrated piece of land where it was forbidden to farm, live, build or enter with weapons.

A detail of an archaeological finding emerged during the excavations at a Mausoleum is pictured during its presentation to the press in Rome, Friday, July 16, 2021

The travertine pomerium at the Ara Pacis Museum is pictured here to the right of a bust of Emperor Claudius

The pomerium marked the heart of ancient Rome - tiny compared to modern Rome, which is big and sprawling

WHAT WAS THE POMERIUM? The pomerium was Rome's sacred perimeter marking the edge of the city from its outer territory. Romans prohibited their armies from entering the gates of their city, noting a clear divide between what should be considered domestic and martial. The pomerium, which was said to have dated back to Rome's founding, marked that dividing line Source: Bryn Mawr College Advertisement

The pomerium is thought to have dated back to the time of Rome's founding  more than 2,700 years ago.

Rome rapidly expanded beyond its pomerium, but the date of its demarcation  April 21, 753 BC  is still celebrated as the anniversary of the citys foundation.

The slab was found on June 17 during excavations for a rerouted sewer under the recently restored Mausoleum of Augustus, right off the central Via del Corso in Rome's historic centre.

Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi was present at its unveiling to the press last Friday (July 16).

Mayor Raggi noted that only 10 other stones of this kind had been discovered in Rome, the last one 100 years ago.

'Rome never ceases to amaze and always shows off its new treasures,' she said.

The stone is now on display at the Ara Pacis museum in the city, which is known for housing the Ara Pacis altar, before moving to the Mausoleum of Augustus.

At a press conference in the Ara Pacis museum near the mausoleum, Claudio Parisi Presicce, director of the Archaeological Museums of Rome, said the stone had both civic and symbolic meaning.

The monumental pomerial stone is dating back to Roman Emperor Claudio and was used to mark the pomerium

The pomerium was the sacred boundaries of the 'Urbe', the city of Rome, during the Roman Empire

Antique statue of Emperor Claudius as Jupiter in the Vatican Museum, Italy. Claudius ruled the Empire between AD 41 and AD 54

'The founding act of the city of Rome starts from the realisation of this pomerium,' he said.

The stone features an inscription that allowed archaeologists to date it to Claudius and the expansion of the pomerium in AD 49, which established Rome's new city limits.

Claudius was the fourth Roman emperor who ruled the Empire between AD 41 and AD 54.

Dr Andrew Sillett at the University of Oxford's department of classics, said the inscribed boundary stones from Claudius' expansion of the pomerium are some of the best evidence for the new letters Claudius invented.

Photographers take pictures during the presentation to the press of the newly-recovered part of the pomerium

The slab in all its glory: The pomerium is said to have dated back to Rome's founding but it was expanded in AD 49 during the reign of Claudius

'The pomerium was the boundary separating the civic and military spheres  a general's power to command troops lapsed if he crossed it,' Dr Sillett told MailOnline.

'The only generals who could cross the pomerium were those given permission to celebrate a triumph.

'So you used to have the sight of generals waiting outside the pomerium for years waiting for the Senate to vote them a triumph.

'It was also traditionally expanded whenever the boundaries of the empire were expanded. Claudius did it after he invaded Britain.'

Only 10 other stones of this kind had been discovered in Rome - the last one 100 years ago, according to Rome's mayor

Rome's Mayor Virginia Raggi (pictured) during the presentation to the press of the major archaeological finding

Rome's Mayor Virginia Raggi, centre, backdropped by the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) at the Ara Pacis museum in Rome, where the pomerium is currently being housed

Claudius was preceded by Caligula, the third leader of the Roman Empire, who was renowned for living a depraved lifestyle.

Caligula indulged in brazen affairs with wives of his allies and incestuous relationships with his sisters before his murder in AD 41.

As well as indulging in the carnal pleasures of sex and gluttony, Caligula would torture high-ranking senators by making them run for miles in front of his chariot.

It is also believed he used to roll around in cash and drink precious stones dissolved in vinegar.

Bust of Emperor Caligula in Modena, Italy. He is generally considered Rome's most tyrannical emperor. (Stock image)
Before Jeff Bezos successfully headed into space on Tuesday, his counterparts in the billionaire space race, SpaceX's Elon Musk and Virgin Galactic's Sir Richard Branson, wished him well.

Musk, 50, tweeted, 'Best of luck tomorrow [Tuesday morning] before Bezos, 57, his 53-year-old brother Mark, Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk and 18-year-old physics student Oliver Daemen headed to space on Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket.

SpaceX's Elon Musk wished Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos well on his flight to space. Musk, 50, tweeted, 'Best of luck tomorrow [Tuesday morning]

At 82, Funk became the oldest person to fly to space, surpassing former NASA astronaut John Glenn, while Daemen was the youngest.

The launch took place at 9:12am EST and saw the crew go up into space to experience weightlessness for about four minutes, before falling back to Earth.

Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson, who became the first billionaire in space, also wished Bezos well

Richard Branson flew 53 miles above the New Mexico desert during his July 15 trip to space

Virgin Galactic's Richard Branson, who became the first billionaire in space earlier this month, beating his rivals, also wished Bezos well.

'Best wishes [Jeff Bezos] and the Blue Origin crew from all of us at Virgin Galactic,' Branson wrote on Bezos' Instagram.

Branson also congratulated the group upon their return to Earth, calling the feat 'impressive.'

Well done @blueorigin, @jeffbezos, Mark, Wally and Oliver. Impressive! Very best to all the crew from me and all the team at @virgingalactic  Richard Branson (@richardbranson) July 20, 2021



The four astronauts flew 66 miles above the surface of the Earth on the fully autonomous rocket and capsule New Shepard, sending Bezos 13 miles higher than billionaire rival Sir Richard Branson who flew to space on July 11.

The group traveled in a capsule with the biggest windows flown into space, offering stunning views of the Earth, according to the space tourism company.

Space tourism is likely to be a competitive market, as Virgin Galactic has sold more than 700 seats at $250,000 for a single seat to the edge of space. In contrast, Bezos announced Blue Origin has sold over $100 million worth of tickets, but the company has not yet disclosed the price of a seat.

Bezos, 57, along with the three other astronauts, will fly up to 66 miles above the surface of the Earth on the fully autonomous rocket and capsule New Shepard

Blue Origin named the New Shepard program after astronaut Alan Shepard, who was the first American to fly into space exactly 60 years ago.

Fifteen previous test flights of the reusable rocket, which brings the capsule to an altitude of more than 340,000 fleet, and capsule since 2015 - short hops lasting about 10 minutes - were all successful.

Musk's SpaceX is competing with Bezos' Blue Origin for lucrative government contracts

Not only are Blue Origin, Virgin Galactic and SpaceX are competing for media attention and the democratization of space, but all three are vying for lucrative government contracts, particularly Blue Origin and SpaceX.

According to The Wall Street Journal, SpaceX has received $2.8 billion in 52 contracts from NASA and the Pentagon over the past 14 federal fiscal years.

By comparison, Blue Origin, founded in 2000, has received $496.5 million in 33 contracts.

Both Blue Origin and SpaceX (along with Dynetics) received lucrative NASA contracts in 2020 to build lunar landing systems to carry NASA astronauts for Artemis moon missions.

A NASA spokesperson eventually confirmed Blue Origin would receive $579 million, while SpaceX and Dynetics would receive $135 million and $253 million, respectively.

On July 13, Blue Origin received approval Monday from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to carry humans on the New Shepard rocket into space on July 20.

New Shepard, which stands 60 feet tall, was specifically designed for Blue Origin's space tourism venture and has successfully completed 15 test launches, with the latest on April 14.

The capsule that rides atop New Shepard seats six passengers and is equipped with reclining seats.

Each of the seats has a window that are said to the 'the largest to fly into space.'

Cameras line the interior, allowing travelers to share their memories that are truly out of this world.

The crew traveled 66 miles above Earth's surface, where they experienced weightlessness due to the zero gravity and see the curve of the planet with the darkness of space as the backdrop.

Blue Origin's maiden voyage traveled farther than Branson's who reached an altitude of 53.5 miles over the New Mexico desert before gliding safely back to Earth.

The billionaire space race is fueled by optimism that space travel will become mainstream as nascent technology is proven and costs fall, fueling what UBS estimates could be a $3 billion annual tourism market by 2030.

Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, as well as Musk's SpaceX, have also discussed using their rockets to link far-flung global cities.

UBS says that long-haul travel market could be worth more than $20 billion, though several barriers such as air-safety certification could derail the plans.

Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas said: 'Putting the world's richest man and one of the most recognized figures in business into space is a massive advertisement for space as a domain for exploration, industrialization and investment.'

Blue Origin has not divulged its pricing strategy for future trips.

In 2018 that Blue Origin was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 for the ride, based on a market study and other considerations, though its thinking may have changed.

Washington state-based Blue Origin is largely self funded by Bezos, who has been selling over $1 billion worth of stock in Amazon per year to fund the company.

While celebrities and the uber-rich appear to be a core market for space tourist jaunts, at least initially, industry sources expect Blue Origin to include some philanthropic component to its ticket strategy.

The idea of sending paying customers to the edge of space was once only a plot in science fiction films, but many companies other than Blue Origin are turning the epic journey into a reality.
Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, successfully touched back down to Earth on Tuesday after jetting into space on board New Shepard rocket.

Bezos travelled on the exclusive flight with his brother Mark, Dutch 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest person in space, and former NASA trainee Wally Funk, 82, who became the oldest.

On landing after the 11 minute trip, Bezos described it as the 'best day ever' and randomly put on a cowboy hat the second he exited the capsule before popping champagne corks.

Now, social media users have taken a swipe at the billionaire, who has a personal wealth of more than $200 billion (147 billion), according to Forbes.

Many pointed out the highly suggestive shape of the New Shepard rocket and the demonstrable gulf of wealth that exists between Bezos and Amazon staff.

Jeff Bezos (right) celebrates after exiting Blue Origin's reusable New Shepard craft capsule returned from space, safely landing on July 20, 2021

As the crew exited the capsule they celebrated with family and friends, marking a 'historic moment' in commercial spaceflight

Twitter user @Jessie_Coffield said: 'Jeff Bezos immediately putting on a cowboy hat and popping champagne after getting off his spaceship is peak richest man in the world.'

Another user, @McJesse, tweeted shots from the 1999 film Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me with the words: 'The entire internet watching Jeff Bezos fly into space.'

The film features a memorable sequence centred around antagonist Dr Evil's penis-shaped rocket, which bears an uncanny resemblance to New Shepard.

Image shows the New Shepard rocket - and it's suggestive shape - on its launch pad in Van Horn, Texas prior to the launch on Tuesday

One user, @McJesse, tweeted shots from the 1999 film Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me with the words: 'The entire internet watching Jeff Bezos fly into space

'Overcompensating for something'? Another Twitter user drew comparisons between Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and a part of the male anatomy

The New Shepard Blue Origin rocket prepares to lift-off from the launch pad in Texas on Tuesday

Another user, going by the handle @MajorPhilebrity, said: 'Jeff Bezos spent more time in space that Amazon allowed in bathroom breaks last year'.

Amazon previously rubbished suggestions that staff are denied bathroom breaks and have to do their business in bags so they have enough time to reach their performance targets.

And @beerguypdx tweeted: 'Turns out Jeff Bezos wanted to go [to] space just so he could keep an eye on ALL of his employees' bathroom breaks at the same time.'

@beerguypdx said: 'Turns out Jeff Bezos wanted to go [to] space just so he could keep an eye on ALL of his employees' bathroom breaks at the same time'

Another bleak post simply said: 'Jeff Bezos made it back to Earth? Day ruined.'

The journey from launch to landing only took 10 minutes and 20 seconds  leading many to question why Bezos even bothered.

Clearly unimpressed, Twitter user @FGR_Adam posted: 'Why is Jeff Bezos and the crew celebrating like they just discovered a new planet? Bro you went up for a few minutes and came back down. chill.'

Another said Bezos 'went to space and back before I could make coffee today'.

Clearly unimpressed, Twitter user @FGR_Adam posted: 'Why is Jeff Bezos and the crew celebrating like they just discovered a new planet? Bro you went up for a few minutes and cmae back down. chill.'

Bezos reached 13 miles higher than billionaire rival Sir Richard Branson who flew to space during his own manned test flight on July 11.

But the Amazon founder went above the Karman Line, the 62-mile mark that is internationally recognised as the boundary of space.

Meanwhile, SpaceX's Elon Musk is planning a manned test flight, too, and he'll be using one of Sir Richard Branson's rockets.

Just like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic (led by and Sir Richard Branson and Elon Musk), Blue Origin envisages an era where members of the public pay exorbitant amounts for a holiday in space  a phenomenon frequently dubbed 'space tourism'.

Blue Origin  founded by Bezos in 2000 in Kent, Washington, near Amazon's Seattle headquarters  hasn't recently estimated a price for a ride to space.

Pictured, Jeff Bezos, whose company Blue Origin want to send paying travellers to the edge of space and beyond

Blue Origin said in 2018 that it was planning to charge passengers at least $200,000 for a ride to space aboard its rocket, but this may have increased.

In the age of climate change and and a viral pandemic, some believe there are more important issues that jetting off on luxury space flights.

Writing for MailOnline at the weekend, broadcaster John Humphrys said: 'Let's try to swallow our envy that billionaires get to cruise the cosmos while most of us can't even manage a week in Crete.'

He called the current space race an 'utterly pointless exercise in inflating egos that already dwarf the size of the average planet'.
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Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk, 82, finally achieved her dream on Tuesday when she launched aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket to just beyond the edge of space, and the space icon hopes to return as soon as possible.

At a press briefing following the launch, Funk, now the oldest person to travel to space, was asked how it felt to be inside the capsule and the 82-year-old snapped out of her chair and let out a celebratory 'woot!'

'It was a great time and I want to go again and fast,' she continued.

Funk told the audience in West Texas that she was 'waiting a long time to finally get up there.'

'I have done a lot of astronaut training and I could always beat the guys cause I was always stronger and did everything on my own.'

Following Funk's speech, Bezos chimed in and said: 'We can confirm that Wally once again in training outperformed the men.'

Funk joined Amazon found Jeff Bezos, his brother Mark and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen 66 miles above the surface, where they spent around four minutes in zero gravity while feasting their eyes on views that were out of this world.

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Funk (right) joined Amazon found Jeff Bezos (second from right), his brother Mark (second from left) and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen (left) 66 miles above the surface, where they spent around four minutes in zero gravity while feasting their eyes on views that were out of this world

Funk was the 'honored' guest of this mission and has wait 60 years for her chance to leave Earth.

She trained to be an astronaut in 1961 as part of the Mercury 13 project - a group of 13 American women who underwent the same training as NASA's Mercury 7 men but were not selected for a mission because of their gender.

However, on Tuesday morning Funk's dream came true and the aviator could be heard rejoicing inside the capsule as it climbed toward space and all the way back to the ground.

The crew launched from Blue Origin's 'Launch Site One' in Van Horn, Texas at 9:12 EDT.

At a press briefing following the launch, Funk was asked how it felt to be in the capsule and the 82-year-old snapped out of her chair and let out a celebratory 'woot!' 'It was a great time and I want to go again and fast,' she continued

Mary Wallace 'Wally' Funk, 82, finally completed her path to the stars on Tuesday when she launched aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket to just beyond the edge of space. Here she is stepping out of the capsule after the mission

Funk was the 'honored' guest of this mission and has waited 60 years for her chance to leave Earth

The crew launched from Blue Origin's 'Launch Site One' in Van Horn, Texas at 9:12 EDT. Blue Origin reached an altitude of about 66 miles , more than 10 miles higher than Bransons July 11 ride

Blue Origin reached an altitude of about 66 miles, more than 10 miles higher than Bransons July 11 ride.

The 60-foot booster accelerated to Mach 3 or three times the speed of sound to get the capsule high enough, before separating and landing upright.

On landing Jeff Bezos described it as the 'best day ever' when asked for a 'status check' by capcom.

They experienced weightlessness for about four minutes, before falling back to Earth to land in Texas.

While the crew were enjoying their time in space, the booster returned to the landing pad for use on another flight.

During the weightlessness time you could clearly hear Funk shouting 'it is dark up here', followed by a status check call from each of the four, with Jeff Bezos having to remind Wally and Oliver to confirm because the pair were just overwhelmed by the out of this world experience.

Funk could be heard saying 'wow' and 'oh my lord' over and over again inside the return capsule following the mission, which she said felt like it was only five minutes, as the four waited for crews to release them

Not only did she finally get her dream, but Funk will forever go down in history for the oldest person to ever visit space

Pictured is that path Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket and capsule took Tuesday

After the landing, Bezos told Funk, 'Wally, that was incredible!' Funk answered, 'It was! I was thinking that it would be more jerky and it wasn't.'

Funk could be heard saying 'wow' and 'oh my lord' over and over again inside the return capsule following the mission, which she said felt like it was only five minutes, as the four waited for crews to release them.

She was also surprised how easy zero gravity was, as Bezos compared it to swimming in a pool of water.

When the capsule finally opened, Funk popped out the door with arms spread wide open and a huge smile on her face.

Each seat inside the Blue Origin capsule has its own giant window and Funk placed a postcard on hers, which shows her in front of the American flag on board the space launch, Business Insider reports.

'That is what is going to be on the window when I go up,' Funk told told Blue Origin's director of astronaut and orbital sales, Ariane Cornell.

'I'm going to take a picture with it with the earth behind me.'

Each seat in inside the Blue Origin capsule has its own giant window and Funk placed a post card on hers

The post card shows her in front of the American flag on board the space launch

Not only did she finally get her dream, but Funk will forever go down in history for the oldest person to ever visit space.

Social media also erupted in a celebration after watching Funk reach for the stars.

Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shared a picture of the crew on Twitter, writing: Godspeed Wally Funk and those other guys.'

Social media also erupted in a celebration after watching Funk reach for the stars. Retired NASA astronaut Scott Kelly shared a picture of the crew on Twitter, writing: Godspeed Wally Funk and those other guys'

While Vala Asfhar, chief digital evangelist at Salesforce, posted a meme showing Funk as an aviator in front of a air plane and then her popping out of the Blue Origin capsule Tuesday

While Vala Asfhar, chief digital evangelist at Salesforce, posted a meme showing Funk as an aviator in front of a air plane and then her popping out of the Blue Origin capsule Tuesday.

The caption on the post reads: 'How it started: How it's going: Wally Funk is the oldest person in space at age 82  a 60 year journey.'

In addition to being the oldest person in space and part of the Mercury 13, Funk, who never married, has an extraordinarily impressive background.

At 20, she became a professional aviator, working as a civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.

Wally (second from left) trained to be an astronaut in 1961 as part of the Mercury 13 project - a group of 13 American women who underwent the same training as NASA 's Mercury 7 men but were not selected for a mission because of their gender

In addition to being part of the Mercury 13, Funk, who never married, has an extraordinarily impressive background

At 20, she became a professional aviator, working as a civilian flight instructor at Fort Sill, Oklahoma

She was the first female FAA inspector and first female NTSB air safety investigator in history.

She became the 58th US woman to earn an Airline Transport Rating in 1968. She tried three times to get a job with commercial airlines, but was turned away because she is a woman.

After NASA started accepting women to be astronauts in the 1970s, Funk applied three times but she was denied, as she did not have an engineering degree or a background as a test pilot.
Blue Origin made history Tuesday by launching the richest, oldest and youngest person into space aboard its New Shepard rocket, but before the aerospace firm added space tourism to its list of service it was nothing more than an idea on paper.

Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 to chase down a childhood dream of spaceflight and building a society of millions of people who live and work in space.

In a 1982 Miami Herald interview, he gave after being named valedictorian of his high school, the then 18-year-old said he wanted 'to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for two or three million people who would be in orbit.'

'The whole idea is to preserve the earth' he told the newspaper ... The goal was to be able to evacuate humans. The planet would become a park.'

The idea of Blue Origin came about in 1999 after Bezos watched the film October Sky, a movie about a school kid who wants to build rockets, and the aerospace company was born just one year later.

It took 15 years before Bezos' company made its first successful launch and landing of New Shepard, but today that rocket has taken him, his brother Mark, Dutch teenager Oliver Daemen, who become the youngest person in space, and former NASA trainee Wally Funk, 82, who become the oldest, 66 miles above Earth's surface.

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Blue Origin made history Tuesday (pictured) by launching the richest, oldest and youngest person into space aboard its New Shepard rocket, but before the aerospace firm added space tourism to its list of service it was nothing more than an idea on paper

Bezos was born Jeffrey Preston Jorgensen on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but adopted by his step father, Mike Bezos, at the age of four when his last name was changed.

His mother, Jacklyn, was 17 years old when she gave birth to Bezos and his father, Ted Jorgensen, was a local bike shop owner in the city.

His parents married following the news Jacklyn was pregnant, but divorced in 1965.

She met a Cuban immigrant named Miguel 'Mike' Bezo and the two married - Mike officially adopted Bezos in April of 1968.

Jeff Bezos (second from left) founded Blue Origin in 2000 to chase down a childhood dream of spaceflight, which evolved into a goal that aims to form a new society of millions of people who live and work in the final frontier. Pictured is Oliver Daemen (left), Mark Bezos (second from right) and Wally Funk (right), who joined the Tuesday mission

While still in high school, Bezos developed the Dream Institute, a center that promoted creative thinking in young students.

In 1986, he graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science.

Bezos then worked in New York in 1990 at an investment bank, but quit four years later to move to Seattle, Washington to open a virtual bookstore - and he setup shop inside his garage, according to Britannica.

Named after the South American river, Amazon sold its first book in July 1995.

In a 1982 Miami Herald interview, he gave after being named valedictorian of his high school, the then 18-year-old said he wanted 'to build space hotels, amusement parks and colonies for two or three million people who would be in orbit.' Pictured is Bezos as a senior in high school

Bezos (center) always had a love for science and technology. Here he is again as a senior in high school

Bezos stepped from what is now a nearly $400 billion company earlier this year and is using his skills and focus on other projects, such as Blue Origin.

In 2014, Bezos invested over $500 million of his own money into the aerospace company and by 2016, he was spending up to $1 billion a year, which was funded by Amazon stocks.

Although the New Shepard rocket was the star on Tuesday, it was Blue Origin's Goddard rocket that started it all.

Goddard was the first developmental vehicle in Blue Origin's New Shepard program that first flew on November 13, 2006, but has since been retired.

The craft used nine clustered peroxide-powered rocket engines to make sub-orbital flights, and it was essentially a proof-of-concept testbed and demonstration article to show the company's intent.

It was named in honor of Robert Goddard, who is considered the father of modern rocket propulsion.

Bezos began working on a new rocket that was a vertical-takeoff and landing spaceship, which he named New Shepard after Alan Shepard who was the first American in space.

The idea of the space company came about in 1999, after Bezos watched the film October Sky, which is about a school kid who wants to build rockets, and Blue Origin was born just one year later

New Shepard is powered by a single BE-3 liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen rocket engine and stands 59 feet tall.

The rocket first launched on April 29, 2015 from Blue Origin's Launch Site One in Van Horn, Texas, and was the milestone Bezos needed to embark on his space tourism venture.

In video released by Blue Origin, the booster - using liquid hydrogen and oxygen - lifts the New Shepard vehicle to an altitude of 58 miles.

This was four miles short of the official boundary of space, which New Shepard cleared Tuesday.

Although the New Shepard rocket is the star Tuesday, it was Blue Origin's Goddard rocket that started it all. Goddard was the first developmental vehicle in Blue Origin's New Shepard program that first flew on November 13, 2006, but has since been retired

Bezos began working on a new rocket that was a vertical-takeoff and landing spaceship, which he named New Shepard after Alan Shepard who was the first American in space. It first launched on April 29, 2015 (pictured)

'The in-space separation of the crew capsule from the propulsion module was perfect,' Bezos said in a blog post.

'Any astronauts on board would have had a very nice journey into space and a smooth return.'

Along with New Shepard, Blue Origin also has its trusty New Glenn rocket that is set to launch later this year or in early 2022.

The firm hopes to use this rocket to send crew capsules into orbit.

Following with the trend of Blue Origin's other rockets, New Glenn is named after Mercury astronaut John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth during his Friendship 7 flight.

Bezos has also had his sights set on sending humans to the moon and unveiled Blue Origins lander on May 9, 2019.

Bezos has also had his sights set on sending humans to the moon and unveiled Blue Origins lander on May 9, 2019

The plan could ultimately serve as a stepping stone for colonization of the moon and deeper space targets, Bezos suggested.

Blue Origin was in the running for a contract with NASA to build a lunar lander that will send the first woman and next man to the lunar surface, but lost it to Elon Musk's SpaceX.

However, the Bezos-owned company protested NASA's decision and SpaceX was told to halt building a lunar spacecraft, pending the outcome of challenges by rival bidders at the Government Accountability Office.

NASA's decision means SpaceX has to stop any work specifically related to the moon program contract until the GAO makes a ruling, expected August 4 at the latest.

While it is not clear if Bezos will ever get to the moon, he can say he has ventured just beyond the edge of space. The crew took off at 9:12am ET and experienced weightlessness for about four minutes, before falling back to Earth to land in Texas

Pictured is Bezos experience zero gravity for at least four minutes

While the new astronauts were enjoying their time in space, the booster returned to the landing pad for use on a future flight. On landing Jeff Bezos described it as the 'best day ever' when asked for a 'status check'

While it is not clear if Bezos will ever get to the moon, he can say he has ventured just beyond the edge of space.

The crew took off at 9:12am ET and experienced weightlessness for about four minutes, before falling back to Earth to land in Texas.

While the new astronauts were enjoying their time in space, the booster returned to the landing pad for use on a future flight.

On landing Jeff Bezos described it as the 'best day ever' when asked for a 'status check.'
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NASA has released the first images that the Hubble Space Telescope took after resuming full operations and they're a doozy  a few different galaxies, including a rare spiral galaxy with three arms.

The first object, known as ARP-MADORE2115-273, is two galaxies 297 million light-years from earth that are intertwined.

'Astronomers had previously thought this was a "collisional ring" system due to the head-on merger of two galaxies,' NASA wrote in a description of the image.

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'The new Hubble observations show that the ongoing interaction between the galaxies is far more complex, leaving behind a rich network of stars and dusty gas.'

The second image, ARP-MADORE0002-503, is a spiral galaxy 490 million light-years from Earth.

NASA released the first images that the Hubble Space Telescope took after resuming full operations. The first object (left), known as ARP-MADORE2115-273, is two galaxies 297 million light-years from earth that are intertwined. The second image, ARP-MADORE0002-503 (right), is a spiral galaxy 490 million light-years from Earth

Science operations on the Hubble resumed on July 17, following a month in which it was halted due to a technical malfunction

Unlike most spiral galaxies, which have even-numbered arms, ARP-MADORE0002-503 has three arms that reach out to a radius of 163,000 light-years, three times more expansive than the Milky Way.

A light-year, which measures distance in space, is roughly 6 trillion miles.

Other initial targets for Hubble included globular star clusters and aurorae on Jupiter, NASA said.

The US space agency released the images on Monday, much to the delight of star gazers, including NASA's Administrator Bill Nelson.

'I'm thrilled to see that Hubble has its eye back on the universe, once again capturing the kind of images that have intrigued and inspired us for decades,' Nelson said in a statement.

'This is a moment to celebrate the success of a team truly dedicated to the mission. Through their efforts, Hubble will continue its 32nd year of discovery, and we will continue to learn from the observatory's transformational vision.'

Science operations on the Hubble resumed on July 17, following a month in which it was halted due to a technical malfunction.

Last week, NASA successfully performed a 'very risky' maneuver to switch the Hubble to its backup computer.

The switch 'was performed to compensate for a problem with the original payload computer that occurred on June 13 when the computer halted, suspending science data collection.'

The switch, which started on July 15, involved bringing the backup Power Control Unit (PCU) online, as well as the backup Command Unit/Science Data Formatter (CU/SDF) on the other side of the Science Instrument and Command & Data Handling (SI C&DH) unit.

The PCU brings power to the SI C&DH components, while the CU/SDF sends and formats commands and data.

NASA added that other pieces of hardware on the Hubble were also switched to alternate interfaces to connect to the backup SI C&DH.

The backup payload computer was then turned on, loaded with software and normal operations mode.

Prior to Thursday's events, the backup payload computer had not been powered on since it was installed in 2009 during Hubble's last servicing mission.

Safely switching to a backup unit was a 'very risky process,' NASA previously said.

Since its launch in April 1990, the Hubble has taken more than 1.5 million observations of the universe, and over 18,000 scientific papers have been published based on its data

Hubble, a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, has been observing the universe for over three decades.

Since its launch in April 1990, it's taken more than 1.5 million observations of the universe, and over 18,000 scientific papers have been published based on its data.

It orbits Earth at a speed of about 17,000mph (27,300kph) in low Earth orbit at about 340 miles in altitude, slightly higher than the International Space Station (ISS).

On June 14, flight controllers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland tried to restart the computer after they noticed it stopped working on June 13, but they ran into the same issue and could not get it to operate normally.

Launched in April 1990 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Hubble is showing more and more signs of ageing, despite a series of repairs and updates by spacewalking astronauts during NASA's shuttle era.

The telescope is named after famed astronomer Edwin Hubble who was born in Missouri in 1889 and discovered that the universe is expanding, as well as the rate at which it is doing so.

The Hubble recently marked its 31st anniversary in space, doing so with an image of a giant star that is 'on the edge of destruction'.

The US space agency is going to replace the Hubble with $10 billion James Webb Telescope, however it has run into delays recently.

Earlier this month, said it would delay James Webb because the European Space Agency-funded Ariane 5 rocket to launch it isn't ready.

A NASA spokesperson told DailyMail.com last month the launch of the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope will happen 'no earlier than October 31.'

It is still expected to launch for space this year and James Webb will spent at least 30 percent of its first year studying exoplanets.

Earlier this month, the space agency had to dismiss fears from former NASA space shuttle pilot Clayton C Anderson that Hubble is 'beyond repair' or would be decommissioned due to the issue.
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Birch does not see itself as a hotel. Its a community, an off-grid hideout, an escape from urban living, time off for the always on.

All of which sounds like the creatives, with their skinny lattes and skinny jeans, have been let loose. But to my surprise, Birch (brainchild of Chris Penn, who launched the trendy Ace Hotel in Shoreditch) is all these things and more  although the escape from urban living happens to be just off the M25 in Hertfordshire.

I am expecting hipster pretension, when actually its a music festival without the music: 55 acres to rock and roam, build dens, snooze in hammocks, swim in a fresh-water lido, learn to make sourdough bread, join a breathing class, sit around a fire pit, watch a movie in the screening room, eat well  all without feeling that youre being fleeced.

Birch - brainchild of Chris Penn, who launched the trendy Ace Hotel in Shoreditch - is an escape from urban living

The Inspector says he was 'expecting hipster pretension' but discovered Birch is actually 'a music festival without the music'

The rooms at Birch are simple, with no TV, no phone, no directory, no fluffy bath robe, and no tea or coffee-making apparatus

It helps that central to this is a magnificent Georgian stately home with just enough dilapidation to fit the shabby-chic mould, and so much space that youre invited to work at one end of the building and play in the other, while children and dogs are positively encouraged. You can become a member of this community and get a 15 per cent discount on a room and 10 per cent off food and drink.

And anyone booking a Friday and Saturday night is given Sunday night for free.

Hey babe, how are you settling in? asks a member of staff when I turn up at the lido. Very well indeed, thank you.

At Birch, explains the Inspector, you can build dens, snooze in hammocks, swim in a fresh-water lido, learn to make sourdough bread, join a breathing class, sit around a fire pit, watch a movie in the screening room and eat well

At Birch everything is pay-as-you-go, to avoid a hassle when you leave. Pictured is Valeries restaurant

Become a member of the Birch community and you get a 15 per cent discount on a room and 10 per cent off food and drink

My room is on the top floor with views of the parkland. The stairs leading to it are bare concrete, chipped in places. The room itself is simple: no TV, no phone, no directory, no fluffy bath robe, nothing on the walls and absolutely no tea or coffee-making apparatus.

The fancy restaurant in the former stable block is called The Zebra Riding Club, where 48 gets you six courses. No space there, so I eat outside at Valeries. What I had not appreciated is that everything is pay-as-you-go, to avoid a hassle when you leave, as my new friend puts it.

I pick up a flat white and croissant at the coffee shop in the morning, where a notice tells guests whats going on during the day. Theres toning, pottery, candle-making, dance, gentle flow and you can always pop into the bakery to practice your kneading.

Youre with us for a week, arent you? asks the young thing at reception. If only.
Georgia Love has appeared on Sunrise just hours after the Seven breakfast show's executive producer Michael Pell slammed her on Twitter.

Pell took to social media on Monday to call out the reality star's criticism of Sydneysiders not wearing masks outdoors during the city's Covid-19 outbreak.

The former Bachelorette, who works as a reporter for Seven News Melbourne, then awkwardly had to appear on Pell's show the next morning to give an update on the virus' spread in her state.

Awkward! Georgia Love (pictured) has appeared on Sunrise just hours after the Seven breakfast show's executive producer slammed her on Twitter

Love, 32, appearing outside AAMI Park early in the morning, was one of four reporters giving live updates on the Covid response from their respective states.

The live cross with Sunrise co-host Natalie Barr came just hours after Love drew ire from media figures for criticising Sydneysiders for not wearing masks outdoors.

She expressed shock at busy scenes along Sydney's beaches over the weekend, tweeting a video of crowds along with the caption: 'Bondi right now, where masks nor social distance seem to matter.'

Pell responded to the tweet: 'And posting random videos from a different city wouldnt you just concentrate on your own lockdown?'

Grin and bear it: The live cross with Sunrise co-host Natalie Barr (left) came just hours after Love drew ire from media figures - including Sunrise executive producer Michael Pell - for criticising Sydneysiders for not wearing masks outdoors during the city's Covid-19 outbreak

Early-morning dispatch: Love, appearing outside AAMI Park early in the morning, was one of four reporters giving live updates on the Covid response from their respective states

Lockdown smackdown: Love had expressed shock at busy scenes along Sydney's beaches over the weekend, tweeting: 'Bondi right now, where masks nor social distance seem to matter.' She was summarily criticised by Sky News journalist Laura Jayes

Pell wasn't the only news personality to call out Georgia.

'Well, this is unnecessary,' Sky News journalist Laura Jayes responded to her tweet.

Michelle Stephenson, the National News Director for Nova, also criticised Love for 'using camera angles that trick the eye' in the footage of the crowded boardwalk.

Not impressed: The former Bachelorette, 32, was among those shocked at the packed scenes at Sydney's beaches

Love clapped back: 'Not sure what camera tricks you think are being used here?'

'But I will also put on the record this is not my video, it was sent to me, and that filming in a public place is entirely allowed without receiving consent from individuals,' she concluded.

The social media skirmish comes after a top doctor claimed Sydney's beaches should stay open as the city's coronavirus outbreak worsens, despite being packed with exercising residents.

Difference of opinion: 'Well, this is unnecessary,' Sky News journalist Laura Jayes (left, with Peter Stefanovic) responded to the tweet

Ouch: Sunrise EP Michael Pell (here with Sam Armytage and David Koch) replied: 'And posting random videos from a different city wouldnt you just concentrate on your own lockdown?'

Internal feud: Pell's criticism is especially notable given both he and Love work for Seven, with the former reality TV star now serving as a reporter for the network

NSW recorded 105 cases on Sunday as Sydney and surrounding regions entered their fourth week of lockdown.

But stay-at-home orders haven't stopped hundreds of Sydneysiders from flocking to the beach to get their daily dose of exercise and fresh air, which is currently allowed as part of the stay at home orders.

As residents in three local councils in Sydney's south-west complied with strict new orders to stay in their neighbourhoods, there were different scenes in the eastern suburbs and the northern beaches on the weekend.

The footage: 'Bondi right now, where masks nor social distance seem to matter,' Georgia tweeted on Sunday

Trick photography? Michelle Stephenson, the National News Director for Nova, also criticised Love for 'using camera angles that trick the eye'

The promenades along Bondi and Manly beaches were packed with people exercising and walking their dogs while enjoying the winter sunshine.

But former federal deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth wasn't worried about the busy scenes seen at beaches, citing a low risk of transmission.

'I didn't have an issue with what we saw over the weekend,' he told the Today show on Monday.

The numbers of Covid cases who were in the community while infectious are showing no signs of slowing down, despite being the key to lockdown being lifted.

But Dr Coatsworth said the risk of the virus of being transmitted while exercising outdoors was far less than at a packed stadium of fans at a sporting match or concert.

Thousands of AFL and rugby union fans were ordered to isolate for 14 days after they were deemed as close contacts of an infected case at separate matches in Melbourne in recent days.

Surfers and swimmers were keen to hit the water, despite being the middle of winter. Pictured is Manly Beach on the northern beaches on Saturday

'I think we've got to be moderate about this. Of course the Delta strain does transmit outdoors but only in very close circumstances,' Dr Coatsworth said.

'There was a Trans music festival in the Netherlands, of course 20,000 people in close proximity listening to dance music and of course, in that sort of situation, you may get transmission.

'But if you're walking past someone during your morning exercise, that is not going to be an issue.'

Many at the packed Sydney beaches weren't wearing masks, despite reiterated pleas from NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and health officials to take one with them whenever people leave the house.
A Love Island Australia star has received her first Covid-19 vaccine and warned her followers to be wary of anti-vaxxer lies circulating on social media.

Erin Barnett, 26, received her first Pfizer jab last Thursday and posted a picture of her vaccination card to Instagram on Monday.

She wrote an essay-long caption in which she revealed her initial hesitancy about receiving the shot due to misinformation.

Outing the liars: Love Island Australia star Erin Barnett, 26, has received her first Covid-19 vaccine and warned her followers to be wary of anti-vaxxer lies circulating on social media

Erin said she was hesitant because of things she was 'seeing on social media and the news' and the fact she was allergic to 'many different medications'.

'What if I have a bad reaction to Pfizer?! What if I die?' she wrote. 'What if this? What if that? and around and around we go in my thoughts.

'I eventually just said to myself, "I'm sure I've put worse s**t in my body before." I decided to go ahead with the jab because I personally think its the right thing to do.'

She told her 502,000 followers it was a case of 'each to their own' when it comes to getting the vaccine, and she wasn't going to judge anyone for choosing not to get it.

Vaccinated: Erin received her first Pfizer jab last Thursday and posted this picture of her vaccination card to Instagram on Monday. She also wrote an essay-long caption in which she revealed her initial hesitancy about receiving the shot due to misinformation

After revealing she'd had no side effects from the jab three days later, Erin debunked a particularly dangerous anti-vaxxer lie being spread on TikTok.

'No magnetic is getting stuck to the arm they jabbed me in, so that TikTok I watched is clearly a lie. DUH!' she wrote.

Erin went on to say she was a 'hypochondriac' by nature and the 'mixed things about the vaccine' she'd seen online had only fuelled her hesitancy.

'No magnetic is getting stuck to the arm they jabbed me in': After divulging that she has had no side effects from the jab three days later, Erin points out an anti-vaxxer's lie that was spread on TikTok

She then responded to those criticising her in the comments section by saying she would 'rather be vaccinated' than risk becoming seriously ill with Covid.

'Please grow my engagement by putting your not-asked-for opinions below,' she added sarcastically.

Erin appeared on the 2018 season of Love Island Australia.

She is happily in a relationship with her post-show boyfriend Mick Russell, 45.
She's the estranged cousin of Bindi Irwin who launched her own adults-only subscription website this week.

And while it's certainly a big career shift for Rebecca Lobie - who used to be a manager at Australia Zoo - her raunchy new venture also arrived on a significant day for the rest of the Irwin clan: matriarch Terri Irwin's 56th birthday.

While Terri's daughter Bindi was busy paying tribute to her 'amazing mama' on Instagram, Rebecca, 33, was encouraging her fans to pay a $7 monthly subscription fee for access to her 'exclusive' content.

Meanwhile, it all comes amid the Irwin family feud, which hit the headlines last month when Bindi accused her grandfather Bob, 82, of neglecting her.

Different paths: Rebecca Lobie's long-awaited adult website has gone live, while the rest of the Irwin family celebrate Australia Zoo owner Terri Irwin's 56th birthday

'I'm so excited to launch my exclusive content today! Can't wait to connect with you all,' Rebecca said on Monday night, hours before her legion of fans woke up to the opportunity to subscribe to her website on Tuesday morning.

Rebecca, who is the daughter of Steve Irwin's sister Joy and her husband Frank Muscillo, is believed to be estranged from the family since resigning from Australia Zoo in December 2015.

She made no mention of Terri's birthday on her Instagram account on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, Rebecca told Daily Mail Australia she 'doesn't believe in airing out our family business' when asked how things were going between her and the Irwins.

'There is enough hurt and emotion for everyone involved with it all that it doesn't need to be rehashed,' the mother of two said.

Family: While her estranged cousin Bindi (right) was busy paying tribute to her 'amazing mama' Terri (centre) on Instagram, Rebecca was encouraging her fans to pay a $7 monthly subscription fee for access to her 'exclusive' content. Pictured left: Robert Irwin

Price: Rebecca is charging fans US$4.99 (AUD$6.80) for the first month's subscription fee, and US$9.99 (AUD$13.61) thereafter. But there is a catch, as it appears more raunchy videos of the Instagram star cost extra

Rebecca is charging fans US$4.99 (AUD$6.80) for the first month's subscription fee on beckylobie.com, and US$9.99 (AUD$13.61) thereafter.

But there is a catch, as it appears more raunchy videos cost extra.

For an additional US$55 (AUD$74.92), Rebecca says one video shows her 'fully naked... with just the seat belts covering up my [lemon emoji].

'But don't worry, I made sure to pull back to give you a full view. We are just getting started.'

For an extra US$34 (AUD46.31) she promises a 'nip slip' in a three-photo gallery.

Exit: Rebecca, the daughter of Steve Irwin's sister Joy and her husband Frank Muscillo, is believed to be estranged from the family since resigning from Australia Zoo in December 2015

The Irwin family feud was blasted wide open last month after Bindi spoke about her strained relationship with her grandfather Bob in a scathing Facebook post.

She sensationally claimed Bob - who is Steve's father - has shown 'no interest in spending time with me or my family'.

'I really wish my entire family could spend time with [daughter] Grace. Unfortunately, my grandfather Bob has shown no interest in spending time with me or my family,' the 22-year-old said.

Bindi went on to claim that Bob had 'returned gifts I've sent after he opened them' and ignored any letters sent from her.

'From the time I was a little girl he has ignored me, preferring to spend time doing anything else rather than being with me,' she continued.

'He has never said a single kind word to me personally. It breaks my heart.'

She went on to say that her mother Terri still writes to him and sends birthday cards and Christmas gifts, but claims they have received no reply.

Rift: The Irwin family feud was blasted wide open last month, after Bindi she spoke about her strained relationship with her grandfather Bob, 82, (pictured) in a scathing Facebook post

Claims: When one fan asked why she hadn't included her grandfather Bob, Bindi gave an uncharacteristically raw account of their relationship (pictured)

'We have also been his financial support since 1992 when he returned from Australia Zoo, sending him funds every week,' she added.

'We built him a house on a beautiful property and will always do our best to ensure his wellbeing.

'I hope everyone remembers to be kind to one another but most of all care for your own mental health. I have struggled with this relationship my entire life and it brings me enormous pain,' Bindi concluded.

Following her harsh post, members of Bob's inner circle fired back at Bindi.

Bethany Wheeler, another granddaughter of Bob's by marriage, declared on Facebook: 'The time has come to speak up.'

Ms Wheeler, whose stepmother Mandy is Bob's daughter, defended her grandfather's character, calling him 'one of the most genuinely beautiful humans on this planet' who has 'never spoken out or put down anybody'.

Amanda French, a family friend who co-wrote Bob's 2016 autobiography The Last Crocodile Hunter, also accused Bindi of assassinating her grandfather's character.

'To read the sad comments online today has sickened me, and people who are closest to him,' Ms French wrote on Facebook.

She described Bob as 'kind, gentle, generous and extremely f**king introverted'.
Almost exactly two years after Marvel announced that Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali will be the new Blade, the studio has found a director in Bassam Tariq.

The filmmaker, who directed Riz Ahmed in the critically-acclaimed 2020 film Mogul Mowgli, is in talks to direct, according to Deadline, though the deal is not complete.

Marvel has not commented on the news, though the studio reportedly spent months searching for the right filmmaker.

New Blade: Almost exactly two years after Marvel announced that Oscar-winning actor Mahershala Ali will be the new Blade, the studio has found a director in Bassam Tariq

Director: The filmmaker Tariq (above), who directed Riz Ahmed in the critically-acclaimed 2020 film Mogul Mowgli, is in talks to direct, according to Deadline

Stacy Osei-Kuffour will make her feature writing debut on Blade, after writing on popular shows such as Watchmen, Pen15, Hunters and Run.

Marvel had reportedly considered a few writer-director options before separating the two positions and hiring Osei-Kuffour.

After they brought her on to write the script, Marvel had a final round of director candidates with meetings that spanned from March to June.

Comic: Stacy Osei-Kuffour will make her feature writing debut on Blade, after writing on popular shows such as Watchmen, Pen15, Hunters and Run

The 34-year-old filmmaker, a native of Karachi, Pakistan, becomes the sixth director of color to take the helm of a Marvel Studios movie.

He follows in the footsteps of Black Panther's Ryan Coogler, Thor: Ragnarok's Taika Waititi, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' Destin Cretton, Eternals' Chloe Zhao and Captain Marvel 2's Nia DaCosta.

After facing criticism for its lack of diversity in front of and behind the cameras, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige has made it a priority to improve inclusion.

Director of color: The 34-year-old filmmaker, a native of Karachi, Pakistan, becomes the sixth director of color to take the helm of a Marvel Studios movie

Blade was created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Conlan, debuting in the Marvel Comics in July 1973, a dhampir (half-human, half-vampire) who dedicates his life to the eradication of vampires around the world.

The character, known as the Daywalker, was brought to life on the big screen by Wesley Snipes in the 1998 movie Blade, which helped pave the way for the comic book movie craze of the early 2000s.

The first film was a modest hit, earning $131 million worldwide from a $45 million budget, with Snipes starring in two subsequent sequels, 2002's Blade II (directed by Guillermo del Toro), which earned $155 million worldwide from a $54 million budget and 2004's Blade: Trinity, starring Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, which earned $131 million worldwide from a $65 million budget.

Comics: Blade was created by Marv Wolfman and Gene Conlan, debuting in the Marvel Comics in July 1973, a dhampir (half-human, half-vampire) who dedicates his life to the eradication of vampires around the world

Daywalker: The character, known as the Daywalker, was brought to life on the big screen by Wesley Snipes in the 1998 movie Blade, which helped pave the way for the comic book movie craze of the early 2000s

Sequel: The first film was a modest hit, earning $131 million worldwide from a $45 million budget, with Snipes starring in two subsequent sequels, 2002's Blade II (directed by Guillermo del Toro), which earned $155 million worldwide from a $54 million budget and 2004's Blade: Trinity, starring Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, which earned $131 million worldwide from a $65 million budget

Ali was first unveiled as the new Blade at the end of Marvel Studios' annual San Diego Comic-Con panel in July 2019.

Tariq has a number of short films to his credit, including the documentary short Ghosts of Sugar Land, which won the Short Film Jury Award at Sundance in 2019.

His first feature film was Mogul Mowgli, starring Riz Ahmed, about a British-Pakastani rapper on the brink of stardom whose career is derailed by an illness.

Unveiled: Ali was first unveiled as the new Blade at the end of Marvel Studios' annual San Diego Comic-Con panel in July 2019
Taken: Hunting The Sex Traffickers

Rating:

Killing Escobar

Rating:

When a riot squad van turns up at the home of a schoolgirl to make sure shes obeying Covid quarantine regulations, you cant help wondering what the police would do if they ever discovered a real crime.

Taken: Hunting The Sex Traffickers (C4) supplied the answer. There will be a whole lot of serious surveillance. The gangsters might not have their collars felt, but theyll certainly appear in many long-range, fuzzy photos. Villains beware.

If the family of 12-year-old Charlotte Crook in Manchester were watching, they must feel more bemused then ever.

Their daughter was visited twice as she isolated last week by coppers who turned up in a van with an armoured grille over the windscreen. Perhaps they thought she might open fire with a water pistol.

Nothing so visible was used as the South West Regional Organised Crime Unit set about spying on two men in Cheltenham suspected of smuggling in sex workers from Brazil and forcing them to work as virtual slaves at a brothel in a residential flat.

Taken: Hunting The Sex Traffickers (C4) showed what the police would do if they ever discovered a real crime. There will be a whole lot of serious surveillance. The gangsters might not have their collars felt, but theyll certainly appear in many long-range, fuzzy photos

Police sat outside the apartment block and observed a steady flow of visitors. Men buzzed on the door, and they werent delivering Amazon parcels. Did the coppers swoop? No. The whole idea was that the criminals wouldnt know they were there, perhaps ever. If were watching you, said one detective, youll never see us.

The watchers identities are hidden, which doesnt make for great TV, since most images are half-masked by an arm or the headrest of a car seat. Much of the film appeared to be shot from inside a bag held at knee height.

But perhaps theres psychological cunning in this ploy. Hardened law-breakers, plagued by the constant sensation of being spied upon, will chuck it in and open a newsagents instead.

In the hope of deterring one trafficker by stealth, the unit observed him arriving at Heathrow, where he marched a young Brazilian woman straight through customs.

In my naivety, I wondered whether a more stringent immigration law might come in handy here, just to stop people being press-ganged into slavery in full view of officials. But I expect that would be too tricky to enforce.

Hidden slogan of the night: Tim Dunn spotted a glorious 1911 poster for the Tube on Secrets Of The London Underground (Yesterday channel). He noted the colours were the green, white and violet of the Suffragettes  but did he know why? GWV stood for Give Women Votes! Advertisement

Here, the smuggler went straight to a pub, where he downed three pints and got back in his car.

Now the fearless boys in blue did act. They flagged him down and asked him to take a breathalyser test. He passed, so they sent him on his way with a friendly warning to mind how you go.

If this is the Thin Blue Line in action, then God help us.

No such subtlety in Colombia, South America, where a ragtag squad of British mercenaries assembled in 1989 to assassinate the drug baron who controlled 80 per cent of the worlds cocaine output.

Ex-SAS soldier and mercenary Peter McAleese leaned on a walking stick and told with relish, on Killing Escobar (BBC2), how he and arms dealer Dave Tomkins planned the hit  and how a helicopter crash in the Andes wrecked the mission.

The documentary started shakily, with a melodramatic reconstruction of the least interesting part of the tale  the injured McAleese battling for survival in the jungle while waiting to be rescued after the crash.

Tomkins and McAleese both loved having an audience for their hair-raising reminiscences. And it became a unique piece of story-telling through home video of the soldiers training camp.

Why these professional killers were happy to be filmed, loosing off grenade launchers and machineguns in the rainforest, wasnt explained, but it made incredible viewing  real-life characters from a Frederick Forsyth novel, captured on videotape.
She never fails to look incredible.

And Anna Friel exuded style as she rocked a powder blue and white dress while at J.Sheekey's 125th Anniversary Party in London on Monday.

The Marcella star, 45, flaunted her trim waist in the stunning gown which boasted a delicate lacy material and statement sleeves.

Simply stunning: Anna Friel looked sensational as she rocked a powder blue and white dress with a lacy detailing while at J.Sheekey's 125th Anniversary Party in London on Monday

Anna's dress cinched in at her waist to highlight her enviably toned physique, with the star added a pair of glitzy heels for some extra height.

Ensuring all eyes were on her dress, the actress kept her accessories to a minimum and only donned a pair of small drop earrings and a stylish gold bracelet.

The brunette beauty wore her locks in a sleek updo for the occasion at the iconic seafood eaterie and completed her look with a slick of red lipstick.

Beauty: The Marcella star, 45, flaunted her trim waist in the stunning gown which featured statement sleeves and a full maxi skirt

Also seen enjoying the 125th anniversary event was model Suki Waterhouse, 29, and her lookalike sister Maddi, 22.

It comes after Anna shared a sweet clip of her daughter Gracie blowing out her candles on her 16th birthday as she doted that her birth was the 'best day of my life'.

The actress took to Instagram on Sunday to post the heartwarming video which saw Gracie beaming from ear to ear.

Anna explained that she and her family were 'in the mountains' for the teenager's birthday as the group looked to be enjoying some warmer weather.

Sweet: Anna shared a sweet clip of her daughter Gracie blowing out her candles on her 16th birthday on Instagram on Sunday as she doted that her birth was the 'best day of my life'

Close bond: The mother and daughter hugged after Anna and her father Des sang to Gracie while she blew out her candles

Captioning the post, she wrote: 'Yesterday, 16 years ago, was without question the best day of my life because I was given the honour of becoming your mother Gracie.

'We were lucky enough to be in the mountains with our family. Gracie You are the kindest and most delightful human being I have ever encountered.

'I am so proud of who you are and what you stand for. Keep doing what you are doing and life will continue to shower you with wonder.

'You are my heart. I love you. Happy happy sweet 16th my beautiful, always, Mama.'

The mother-daughter duo appeared to also be joined by Anna's father, Des Friel.

Parents: Anna shares her daughter Gracie with her ex-partner and actor David Thewlis who she met in 2001 and dated until 2010

Anna shares her daughter Gracie with her ex-partner and actor David Thewlis.

They first met in 2001 on a flight to Cannes and, despite Anna's endometriosis diagnosis in the same year, they welcomed Gracie in 2005. They announced their separation in December 2010.

While on Friday David, 58, announced he has married for the second time, tying the knot with his French partner Hermine.

The actor, who has starred in the Harry Potter movies, Seven Years in Tibet and Black Beauty, confirmed the happy news in a gushing Instagram post.

Alongside a series of loved-up photos of himself and his wife Hermine, David penned a lengthy caption, revealing it had been 'love at first sight' for the couple.
Twitter trolls were allegedly 'a factor' in Hamish Macdonald's departure from the ABC, according to a new report.

The 40-year-old journalist quit the ABC on Monday, less than 18 months after replacing Tony Jones as host of Q&A.

And 'scrutiny and abuse' on Twitter were 'a key factor in Macdonalds decision to quit', the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Tuesday.

Abused: Hamish Macdonald's departure from the ABC allegedly came about due to the 'scrutiny and abuse' he faced on Twitter while host of Q&A, according to a new report

The newspaper also speculated on possible replacements for the outgoing host.

Stan Grant, Virginia Trioli, Fran Kelly and David Speers are all rumoured to be in line to fill Macdonald's shoes - should Q&A even continue to air.

David Knox, the editor of TV Tonight, told Daily Mail Australia earlier this week he believes Q&A may soon face the chop.

In the hot seat? The Sydney Morning Herald also speculated on possible replacements for the outgoing host. Pictured: Virginia Trioli in 2019

Contenders: Stan Grant (left), Virginia Trioli, Fran Kelly and David Speers (right) are all rumoured to be in line to fill Macdonald's shoes

Knox said that owing to the talk program's flagging ratings, 'the big question now is whether Q&A will be renewed for 2022 at all'.

He also predicted who may take over as host in the meantime.

'I'd tip ABC having rotating presenters with the likes of David Speers, Stan Grant, Virginia Trioli and others just to see the year out,' Knox said.

Long shot: Knox said that owing to the talk program's flagging ratings, 'the big question now is whether Q+A will be renewed for 2022 at all'. Pictured: potential host Fran Kelly

Haters: 'Scrutiny and abuse' on Twitter were 'a key factor in Macdonalds decision to quit,' The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Tuesday. Some reactions to Monday's news seen here

Knox also acknowledged that Macdonald faced an 'uphill battle' from the beginning of his tenure as Q&A host.

'This year's ratings for Q&A have struggled since it moved to a Thursday night timeslot,' he said.

'Personally I thought he was a good choice to freshen up the show given the ABC is in a constant chase to lower the average age of its audience.

'If we look to last year, when he also hosted, the numbers were quite good. But that too is impacted by early interest around the pandemic, so there are always various factors at play.

'Abandoning its Monday night timeslot meant Macdonald had an uphill battle no matter how good he was.'

Fans: Not all social media users rejoiced Macdonald's fall, as evidenced here

Concerns: 'Abandoning its Monday night timeslot meant Macdonald had an uphill battle no matter how good he was,' Knox told Daily Mail Australia on Monday

On Monday, Macdonald quit the ABC less than 18 months after taking over as Q&A host - and almost a month since he last fronted the show with flagging ratings.

The 40-year-old broadcaster represented generational change when he replaced baby boomer Tony Jones, who had hosted the current affairs panel program since its debut in 2008.

Macdonald took over hosting duties in February 2020, just before the onset of the pandemic but Covid social distancing rules meant the show for much of last year lacked a studio audience.

Out: It comes after news that Macdonald has quit the ABC less than 18 months after taking over as Q&A host - and almost a month since he last fronted the show with flagging ratings

Ratings fell in 2021 as the program was shifted from Monday nights to 9.35pm on Thursdays, with viewer numbers in April dropping to just 224,000, less than half the 600,000 level of 2012.

The ABC announced his departure on Monday with a statement praising his 'outstanding 18 months with the national broadcaster'.

With Sydney in lockdown since June 26, Melbourne-based ABC journalists David Speers and Virginia Trioli have filled in as Q&A presenters so the program could have a small studio audience.

Before the lockdown, Stan Grant was occasionally hosting the show in NSW.

Macdonald, who hasn't hosted Q&A since June 24, said he was 'enormously grateful for the opportunity I've been given'.

Slump: Ratings fell in 2021 as the program was shifted from Monday nights to 9.35pm on Thursdays, with viewer numbers in April dropping to just 224,000, less than half the 600,000 level of 2012

'I'm really excited to be moving on to a new opportunity, and working more with the ABC in the future,' he said.

Veteran TV producer Robert McKnight said viewers didn't like the revamped Q&A hosted by Macdonald.

'The writing was on the wall from the very beginning. Viewers didn't connect with the new format or host and numbers started falling,' he said on TV Blackbox.

Just before he started hosting Q&A, Macdonald was an occasional presenter on Ten's The Sunday Project, but he has continued filling in for Fran Kelly on the ABC's Radio National Breakfast program and fronting occasional stories for 7.30.

Most Q&A episodes have been filmed at the ABC's Ultimo studios in Sydney, inviting criticism that it is too focused on inner-city viewers with cosmopolitan, left-wing views, reflected in the audience routinely jeering conservative panelists.

Grateful: Macdonald, who hasn't hosted Q&A since June 24, said he was 'enormously grateful for the opportunity I've been given'

Prime Minister Scott Morrison refused to appear on Q&A ahead of the May 2019 election and he hasn't made a single appearance during Macdonald's time hosting the show.

Former Liberal PM Malcolm Turnbull however has made several appearances, with his moderate views favouring more ambitious action on climate change more in keeping with the Q&A audience sentiment.

Australia's international border closure in March 2020 meant Q&A was also unable to have big name international celebrity guests to liven up the show, often dominated by politicians reciting boring talking points.

Macdonald, who was born and raised at Jindabyne in the New South Wales Snowy Mountains, took a different approach to hosting Q&A, sitting on the left of the screen instead of in the middle of the panel as Jones did.

Unlike his predecessor 26 years his senior, he allowed guests to ask questions of each other and refrained from using the phrase 'I'll take that as a comment' for audience members delivering long speeches.

Duties: Macdonald (pictured with his boyfriend Jacob Fitzroy) took over hosting duties in February 2020, just before the onset of the pandemic but Covid social distancing rules meant the show for much of last year lacked a studio audience

Jones finished hosting Q&A in 2019 after his wife Sarah Ferguson was named as the ABC's next Beijing correspondent, a role that had to be reneged after Communist China harassed foreign journalists.

Like Jones, Macdonald has also worked as a foreign correspondent.

The ABC media release noted the timeslot change had been a challenge.

'Macdonald had steered Q&A through challenging times during the initial coronavirus lockdown as well as guiding the program through the first timeslot change in its 13-year history to 8.30pm Thursdays,' it said.

The ABC's news director Gaven Morris hinted Macdonald would be offered future freelance roles with the national broadcaster.

'Hamish has long been a part of the ABC family and we look forward to continuing that relationship when opportunities arise,' he said.
Karen Gillan makes her long-awaited return as Nebula next year in Thor: Love and Thunder, followed by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which may be the last Guardians movie.

Both writer-director James Gunn and Gillan's co-star Dave Bautista have hinted in interviews that it will be their last Guardians movie, but Gillan hopes to keep playing Nebula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The 33-year-old Scottish actress was promoting her new movie Gunpowder Milkshake in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, when she revealed she's 'obsessed' with Nebula.

Karen returns: Karen Gillan makes her long-awaited return as Nebula next year in Thor: Love and Thunder, followed by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which may be the last Guardians movie

Nebula: Both writer-director James Gunn and Gillan's co-star Dave Bautista have hinted in interviews that it will be their last Guardians movie, but Gillan hopes to keep playing Nebula in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

New movie: The 33-year-old Scottish actress was promoting her new movie Gunpowder Milkshake in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, when she revealed she's 'obsessed' with Nebula

'I love my character so much. Im sort of obsessed with her,' Gillan said with a laugh in the interview.

'I just get such a kick out of playing a character thats really removed from myself. But I also feel really emotionally invested in her through everything that shes gone through with Thanos and all of that,' she added.

While Gillan admitted she doesn't know what another Guardians movie, 'would really look like without James or Dave,' she still would, 'love to continue the journey.'

Obsessed: 'I love my character so much. Im sort of obsessed with her,' Gillan said with a laugh in the interview

'I really like playing her, so Im not eager to finish,' Gillan continued.

The actress recently shared the mold she did of her face for the prosthetics artists on Guardians 3, revealing she has to do it for each movie.

'Most times, yes, because your face kind of changes over the years. Ive been playing this character for eight years now, which is insane because when I signed up, it was for eight days of filming,' she said with a laugh.

Mold: The actress recently shared the mold she did of her face for the prosthetics artists on Guardians 3, revealing she has to do it for each movie

'And now, its eight years later. So, yeah, we have to do that before each film, and thats so they can make the mold specifically for your face, perfectly,' she added.

Gillan's co-star Chris Pratt revealed during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live that filming is slated to begin later this year.

'We will be shooting that at the end of this year and the beginning of next year, so like November to maybe April,' Pratt said.

Eight years: 'And now, its eight years later. So, yeah, we have to do that before each film, and thats so they can make the mold specifically for your face, perfectly,' she added

He also said that he read the script, 'years ago,' since it was originally supposed to be filmed long before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gillan revealed that Gunn has a new draft of the script, which needed to be updated, though she hasn't read it yet.

'Ive read one, but I havent read the new one. I read one a long time ago. It could be completely different now, but what I read was amazing,' she said.

Marvel currently has Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 slated for release on May 5, 2023.
Big Brother's Chad Hurst has found a genius way to keep himself busy during Sydney's hard lockdown.

A video has emerged of the reality star enjoying a spot of fishing off the balcony of his apartment in Rushcutters Bay.

The extraordinary moment he reeled a sizable fish in from the water and up onto his balcony was shared on Instagram over the weekend.

Catch of the day! Big Brother's Chad Hurst has found a genius way to keep himself busy during Sydney's hard lockdown. A video has emerged of the reality star enjoying a spot of fishing off the balcony of his apartment in Rushcutters Bay

'I don't even know how to f**king do it,' Chad said in the clip as the fish dangled off his line.

'Wind it up,' his housemate replied.

'I'm tryin',' Chad said, as he wriggled his fishing rod around.

The reality star then flaunted his impressive catch to the camera.

Reeling it in: The extraordinary moment he reeled a sizable fish in from the water and up onto his balcony was shared on Instagram over the weekend

Look what's for dinner: The reality star flaunted his impressive catch to the camera

Chad was crowned the winner of last year's season of Big Brother, taking home the $234,656 cash prize.

He said last month that despite his six-figure victory, he's still working seven days a week as a model and personal trainer.

'I'm doing everything; it's killing me and I can't wait to have a day off to be honest,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

'But it's not really work because I have such a passion for PT and modelling.'

Chad, who is signed to the IMG agency, told Daily Mail Australia in June: 'Life in the fashion world for me has always been a great ride.

'The opportunities and adventures it has given me, I'll always be grateful.'

Chad infamously blurted out the F-word on live TV after being crowned the winner of Channel Seven's Big Brother last year.

Grateful: Chad told Daily Mail Australia in June: 'Life in the fashion world for me has always been a great ride. 'The opportunities and adventures it has given me, I'll always be grateful'

He later revealed it was a bittersweet moment as his late father was a huge fan of the show and would've loved to have seen him win.

Chad told Daily Mail Australia in July last year he'd applied for Big Brother to honour his dad.

'I was on the show for dad, and I know I've made him proud now, but it would be good to take home the money to pay ma's bills. She bloody deserves it,' he said.
Megan Fox announced Monday that she wouldn't be walking the red carpet at that evening's premiere for new new crime thriller Midnight In The Switchgrass.

The 35-year-old actress announced via a representative that she was skipping the premiere over safety concerns related to a rise in cases of Covid-19.

'Due to the recent California mask mandate and rise of COVID cases, Megan Fox will no longer be attending the premiere tonight,' her rep said in an email to reporters covering the premiere shortly beforehand. 'We appreciate your understanding.'

Safety first: Megan Fox, 35, shared via a rep on Monday that she was skipping that night's Midnight In The Switchgrass premiere in LA due to rising Covid cases and LA County's new mask mandate; seen in May 2021

The premiere is being held at the large Regal LA Live multiplex in Downtown Los Angeles.

Following the outdoor lineup of celebrities, the serial killer thriller will be screened indoors.

Director Randall Emmett, who's engaged to Vanderpump Rules star Lala Kent, was set to be at the premiere, as were the cast members Lukas Haas, Caitlin Carmichael, Sistine Stallone and Olive Abercrombie.

Notably, the biggest stars of the film seem to be skipping the event, including Bruce Willis and Megan's boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly.

Sitting it out: Other stars, including Bruce Willis, appeared to be skipping as well, and photographers weren't allowed to the afterparty to decrease attendance; still from Midnight In The Switchgrass

Photographers were also barred from an after party in order to decrease the number of people attending, Variety reports.

Beginning at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday, Los Angeles Country reintroduced a requirement for people to wear masks in all indoor establishments amid rising Covid-19 cases.

The increase has been driven by the spreading Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is more contagious than the version of the virus that spread throughout the US last year. It's also believed to be more deadly.

So far, most experts believe that vaccinated people are well-equipped to resist the variant, and even those who have a rare 'breakthrough infection,' in which the virus is able to bypass the vaccine, are significantly less likely to get seriously sick or to be hospitalized.

However, as more unvaccinated people are sickened with the Delta variant of Covid-19, it increases the odds that vaccinated people could also get sick.

Tense: She and Bruce star as FBI agents trying to bust a sex-trafficking ring who come across a serial killer. When she's captured, her partner has to try to save her before time runs out

Megan and Bruce lead the film as FBI agents Rebecca Lombardi and her partner Karl Helter, respectively.

The duo are near a bust on a sex-trafficking ring when they run across the path of a notorious serial killer operating down south.

They team up with another agent from Florida (Hirsch) to catch the killer, but he abducts Megan's character, forcing the two men to work overtime to save her before it's too late.

The film is very loosely based on the real-life Truck Stop Killer, who was apprehended in 1990, though he was caught while in the act of torturing his victims, rather than being caught by investigators on his tale.

The killer, Robert Ben Rhoades, is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Calculated: Megan admitted to Who What Wear that she only agreed to be in her new movie Midnight in the Switchgrass in order to meet co-star Machine Gun Kelly (pictured in 2020)

In a recent interview for the July edition of Who What Wear, Megan claimed that she had only agreed to star in Midnight In The Switchgrass in order to meet her costar, 31-year-old Machine Gun Kelly (real name: Colson Baker).

'It was definitely a vehicle  I'll be honest  for me to meet Colson,' she said.

'I knew he was gonna be in the movie, but the universe was just like, "Go do this. There's something about this experience that'll be really rewarding for you."'

According to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles star, there was an immediate connection with her future boyfriend when they met on set.

'When I met [MGK], I knew instantly that this is a soul I've travelled with before, that this was a soulmate connection, and that there was a purpose here,' she gushed.

'There was my logical brain chiming and being like, "This will never work for 101 reasons,"' one of the reasons being that MGK was staying with his girlfriend Sommer Ray at the time.

Prior to coupling up with the rapper-turned-rocker, Megan was married to Beverly Hills, 90210 star Brian Austin Green, 48, with whom she shares three young boys: Noah, eight, Bodhi, seven, and Journey, four.
She was one of the breakout stars of this year's Miami Swim Week.

And Lucciana Beynon has offered her fans a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how she prepared for the OMG Swimwear runway.

The Venezuelan-Australian model, 19, practised her hip-swaying stride in a skimpy pink bikini as a photographer buzzed around her, in a video shared to Instagram.

Practice run: Lucciana Beynon has offered her fans a behind-the-scenes glimpse into how she prepared for the OMG Swimwear runway at Miami Swim Week earlier this month

She wore black heels as she strutted around a sun-drenched Miami mansion.

Lucciana, whose parents are both former models, looked toned and tanned in the video, and styled her raven hair loosely.

She certainly made a splash at Miami Swim Week earlier this month, turning heads as she sashayed down the runway in a variety of daring swimsuits.

Stunning: The Venezuelan-Australian model, 19, practised her hip-swaying stride in a skimpy pink bikini as a photographer buzzed around her, in a video shared to Instagram

She donned a perilously high-cut white one-piece that highlighted her statuesque figure for the OMG Swimwear catwalk.

Sporting a fresh golden tan, the 'It girl' swanned down the platform in diamond-encrusted stilettos.

Her racy swimwear showed off her toned abs and lean legs, while a pearl necklace drew the eye to her ample cleavage.

Perfection: She certainly made a splash at Miami Swim Week this year, turning heads as she sashayed down the runway in a variety of daring swimsuits

That wasn't her only runway look, as she also slipped into a one-shoulder black swimsuit with elaborate cut-outs and G-string bottoms.

At one stage, she toted a bubble gun as she preened on the ocean-themed catwalk.

Lucciana's father is Australian tobacco tycoon Travers Beynon, who is known for his polyamorous lifestyle and wild parties at his Gold Coast mansion.

Hot to trot: She toted a bubble gun and handbag as she preened on the ocean-themed catwalk

The Kardashian lookalike previously spoke of her plans to relocate to the U.S. after finishing high school to focus on her modelling career.

She told The Gold Coast Bulletin in 2017: 'When I finish school I'll still be 17, so as soon as I turn 18, I'm going to move to America forever.'

'I want to become a Victoria's Secret Angel and then ultimately become a supermodel,' she added.

Dreams: Lucciana, who looks like a long-lost Kardashian sister, previously spoke of her plans to relocate to the U.S. after finishing high school to focus on her modelling career

Lucciana, whose mother is Venezuelan former beauty queen Ninibeth Leal, has a contingency plan for when her modelling career eventually ends.

'Once my time is up, because you know modelling doesn't last forever, I'll get involved in the family business and invest in property,' she said.

She was recently linked to British social media star Max Wyatt, after they were pictured partying together in Miami.
She announced last week that she is pregnant with her second child.

And on Monday, Ashley Graham kept cool in a loose-fitting black frock as she headed to dinner with husband Justin Ervin in New York City.

The plus-size model, 33, held hands with her Ervin as they walked to a restaurant in the Tribeca neighborhood.

Baby on board: Ashley Graham, who's expecting her second child, kept cool in a loose-fitting black dress as she headed to dinner in NYC on Monday with husband Justin Ervin

Graham's dress was sleeveless with a waistband around the top of her baby bump and a below-the-knee hem.

She paired the floaty number with strappy black heels and wore her hair sleekly styled in a bun.

She accessorized with a chunky gold necklace and earrings and carried a pink purse from BOYY.

Ervin was more casually attired, opting for a t-shirt and faded jeans along with slip-on shoes,

Sweet: The couple, who married in 2009, held hands as they headed to a restaurant in the Tribeca neighborhood

Couple: Graham shared a selfie to her Instagram, too, showing herself and Ervin in the backseat of their ride in the Big Apple

The couple, who married in 2009, welcomed their first child, son Isaac, in August 2019.

On Tuesday July 13, Graham excitedly shared the news via Instagram that they are expanding their family.

Posting a photo in which she posed almost naked in a meadow showing off her blossoming belly, she wrote: 'The past year has been full of tiny surprises, big griefs, familiar beginnings and new stories. im just beginning to process and celebrate what this next chapter means for us.'

Baby number 2: Graham excitedly shared her pregnancy news via Instagram on July 13 with a photo in which she posed almost naked in a meadow showing off her blossoming belly

Apple of her eye: Her first child with Ervin - son Isaac - was born in August 2019

Previously, Graham had urged her fans to 'love the skin you're in' as the summer months heat up.

The star stripped down for a nude selfie on Instagram and shared stunning pictures of body-positive fans who had previously tagged her in the snaps to promote self-love.

Graham was in the buff and makeup-free in her sultry selfie as she gazed at the camera, carefully positioned so none of her more intimate body parts showed.

'As the weather gets warmer, i know a lot of people struggle with wearing less clothes and showing more skin,' Ashley penned in a caption.

'hope these photos i've been tagged in of so many beautiful bodies motivates you to love the skin you're in,' she continued, sharing snaps of beauty real women in all shapes and sizes.

Ashley went on: 'believe me when i say your body is beautiful, and i know it's easy to tell yourself the lie that you're not good enough, thin enough, sexy enough, 'flawless' enough to wear a tank top or a swimsuit, but it's hot out there and so are you. don't let your mind stop you from enjoying your life to the fullest (and remember to say 'i love you' to yourself every day)!'

Body positivity: Graham is encouraging - and being encouraged by - her followers to 'love the skin you're in' as the summer months heat up

Last month Ashley said she feels 'honored' to be a role model after not having anyone who 'looked like her to look up to' when she was younger.

The model explained how being an 'inspiration' for many also encourages her to keep 'pushing for change' and more 'inclusivity' in the fashion industry.

The beauty gushed at an event: 'I'm honored to serve as an inspiration for this new generation. When I was younger, I didn't have anyone to look up to who looked like me.

'That's what inspires me to continue pushing for change. I believe everyone has the power within themselves to create infinite possibilities, but it starts with confidence.

'When you feel confident in yourself, you can realize your own strength and use your voice to empower others.'

And although pleased with how things have changed in the fashion industry since she was first starting out, Ashley said there's still some way to go, emphasizing that everyone has a part to play in bringing around change.
Fans got to see much more of Steve Zahn than they ever expected in the premiere episode of HBO's The White Lotus last week, with the actor opening up about the scene.

The show follows a number of guests and employees at a tropical resort, with the memorable shot in the premiere featuring his character Mark telling his wife Nicole (Connie Nielsen) that he's worried about testicular cancer, as the audience gets a full-frontal eyeful.

While discussing the new series from writer-director Mike White (Enlightened) in a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the 53-year-old actor revealed that wasn't him... and it wasn't a real penis either.

Steve reveals: Fans got to see much more of Steve Zahn than they ever expected in the premiere episode of HBO's The White Lotus last week, with the actor opening up about the scene

Worried: The show follows a number of guests and employees at a tropical resort, with the memorable shot in the premiere featuring his character Mark telling his wife Nicole (Connie Nielsen) that he's worried about testicular cancer, as the audience gets a full-frontal eyeful

'I didnt even have to do that part. Its somebody else wearing a prosthetic. Thats about as absurd as it gets, right?' Zahn admitted.

The actor has spent the past 20 years living on a homestead in rural Kentucky, though 2020 was the longest time he's stayed at home, and he was itching to work.

'I was sitting on this farm for eight months, living in 1850, and worrying about not working. I wouldve done anything, really,' Zahn said.

Not him: 'I didnt even have to do that part. Its somebody else wearing a prosthetic. Thats about as absurd as it gets, right?' Zahn admitted

'To have this brilliant script fall into my lap and have it be in Hawaii? It was green lights all the way. We were at the Maui Four Seasons. It was closed, so we were truly in a bubble. It felt like film camp,' Zahn continued.

When asked if he got a chance to enjoy the scenery Hawaii offered, he said it was 'limited' though he did get scuba certified.

'Fred (Hechinger) and I both got our PADI (scuba) license. Neither of us were really into it,' Zahn said with a laugh.

Hawaii: 'To have this brilliant script fall into my lap and have it be in Hawaii? It was green lights all the way. We were at the Maui Four Seasons. It was closed, so we were truly in a bubble. It felt like film camp,' Zahn continued

'Our instructor was a little bewildered. Ninety-nine percent of the time, people are excited, but I was like, "How many ways can I die underwater?"' Zahn said.

The actor admitted he had a 'bad experience' filming the 1995 movie Crimson Tide, which has lead to his issues with filming in water.

'Theres a scene where were all drowning in the sub. They told us wed be underwater for 30 seconds. Thirty seconds doesnt seem long. But when youre acting that youre dying, it gets difficult,' Zahn said.

Limited: When asked if he got a chance to enjoy the scenery Hawaii offered, he said it was 'limited' though he did get scuba certified

'They said, "If you feel like you need help, just cross your arms and well come get you." First take, everybody crossed their arms,' he said.

Zahn will next be seen in Gringa with Judy Greer and Roselyn Sanchez, that is currently in post-production though no release date has been set.

He also has 8-Bit Christmas with Neil Patrick Harris, June Diane Raphael, which doesn't have a release date.
Irwin matriarch Terri celebrated her 57th birthday on Tuesday.

And the milestone was a family affair, with the entire clan celebrating the occasion by releasing some turtles back into the wild off the coast of Queensland.

Daughter Bindi, 22, shared some sweet images from the day.

'This will live in my heart forever': On Tuesday, Bindi Irwin shared sweet images of herself cradling her daughter as they joined the family celebrating Terri's birthday by releasing turtles into the wild

In one photo, she was seen cradling her baby Grace Warrior, who turns four months this week.

'Celebrating my beautiful mama's birthday by releasing five sea turtles back to the wild, after they were in care at our Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital,' Bindi wrote on Instagram.

She added: 'This day will live in my heart forever, with the most amazing Mama turned Bunny (our term for grandmother). I love you beyond description, Mum.'

Her girl! In one photo, Bindi was seen cradling her baby Grace Warrior, who turns four months this week

'Celebrating my beautiful mama's birthday by releasing five sea turtles back to the wild, after they were in care at our Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital,' Bindi wrote on Instagram

She added: 'This day will live in my heart forever, with the most amazing Mama turned Bunny (our term for grandmother). I love you beyond description, Mum'

Back in February, Bindi revealed that her mother Terri will go by the name of Bunny to her daughter instead of grandmother.

'We spent a long time searching for grandma names that also had an animal link,' Bindi told The Bump of Terri's alternative nickname.

'We decided that she's going to be called "Bunny". When she was growing up in Oregon her neighbour down the street was always called "Bunny",' Bindi said.

It's Bunny to you! Back in February, Bindi revealed that her mother Terri will go by the name of Bunny to her daughter, instead of grandmother

She added: 'It only just dawned on us that it wasn't her name but rather that everyone called her since she was a grandmother figure to the entire neighborhood.'

Bindi and husband Chandler Powell also joked that Bindi's younger brother Robert, 17, had decided to 'upgrade' his title as uncle to 'funcle': 'It means fun uncle. I love it!'

The happy occasion comes amid feuding between several members of the Irwin clan.

On Tuesday, Rebecca Lobie, the niece of the late Steve Irwin, launched her own adults-only subscription website - the same day as Terri's birthday.

Oh dear! On Tuesday, Rebecca Lobie, the niece of the late Steve Irwin, launched her own adults-only subscription website - the same day as Terri's birthday

Earlier this week, Rebecca told Daily Mail Australia she 'doesn't believe in airing out our family business' when asked how things were going between her and the Irwins.

'There is enough hurt and emotion for everyone involved with it all that it doesn't need to be rehashed,' the mother-of-two said.

The Irwin family feud was blasted wide open last month after Bindi spoke about her strained relationship with her grandfather Bob in a scathing Facebook post.

She sensationally claimed Bob - who is Steve's father - has shown 'no interest in spending time with me or my family'.

Keeping mum: Earlier this week, Rebecca told Daily Mail Australia she 'doesn't believe in airing out our family business' when asked how things were going between her and the Irwins

'I really wish my entire family could spend time with [daughter] Grace. Unfortunately, my grandfather Bob has shown no interest in spending time with me or my family,' the 22-year-old said.

Bindi went on to claim that Bob had 'returned gifts I've sent after he opened them' and ignored any letters sent from her.

'From the time I was a little girl he has ignored me, preferring to spend time doing anything else rather than being with me,' she continued.

'He has never said a single kind word to me personally. It breaks my heart.'

Making headlines: The Irwin family feud was blasted wide open last month after Bindi spoke about her strained relationship with her grandfather Bob in a scathing Facebook post

She went on to say that her mother Terri still writes to him and sends birthday cards and Christmas gifts, but claims they have received no reply.

'We have also been his financial support since 1992 when he returned from Australia Zoo, sending him funds every week,' she added.

'We built him a house on a beautiful property and will always do our best to ensure his wellbeing.

'I hope everyone remembers to be kind to one another but most of all care for your own mental health. I have struggled with this relationship my entire life and it brings me enormous pain,' Bindi concluded.

Following her harsh post, members of Bob's inner circle fired back at Bindi.

Bethany Wheeler, another granddaughter of Bob's by marriage, declared on Facebook: 'The time has come to speak up.'

Ms Wheeler, whose stepmother Mandy is Bob's daughter, defended her grandfather's character, calling him 'one of the most genuinely beautiful humans on this planet' who has 'never spoken out or put down anybody'.

Amanda French, a family friend who co-wrote Bob's 2016 autobiography The Last Crocodile Hunter, also accused Bindi of assassinating her grandfather's character.
They had been married for seven years and had four children together before definitively separating earlier this year.

And Kim Kardashian is reportedly commenting on her estranged husband Kanye Wests new romantic pursuits, now that he is in a highly publicized relationship with model Irina Shayk.

According to a source who spoke with People Magazine, Kardashian, 40, 'is fine with Kanye dating.'

Moving on: Kim Kardashian is reportedly commenting on her estranged husband Kanye Wests new romantic pursuits, now that he is dating again

According to a source: Kardashian, 40, 'is fine with Kanye dating'; seen on Instagram

The source continued, 'She just wants him to be happy.'

The estranged couple recently reunited to spend time with their kids, daughters North, seven, and Chicago, three, and sons Saint, five, and Psalm, two.

'Kanye is keeping things amicable with Kim so the kids can be happy,' the source added.

Ready to mingle: The estranged couple recently reunited to spend time with their kids; West seen here in 2019

'They have been spending time together as a family.'

Kim, who still goes by her married name Kim Kardashian West on her Instagram page, filed for divorce in February, with Kanye, 44, submitting an official response to the filing in April and requesting joint legal and physical custody of their children.

Both parties are allegedly on board with shared legal and physical custody of the kids, and neither is said to be contesting the prenuptial agreement in place.

Seen here in May 2019: Kim, who still goes by her married name Kim Kardashian West on her Instagram page, filed for divorce from Kanye in February

Over the weekend, the family reportedly reunited when they visited a museum in San Francisco with all four children.

The group visited the Asian Art Museum before opening hours, a museum source told E!.

'They were excited to be there, and everyone seemed to be getting along great between Kim and Kanye,' the source said.

Ex files: Both parties are allegedly on board with shared legal and physical custody of the kids, and neither is said to be contesting the prenuptial agreement in place; seen on Instagram

'They were there for the kids as the museum is a very family friendly environment, and this specific exhibit brings out the childlike wonder in us all. By all accounts they were gracious, appreciative, and had a great time!'

The A-listers started dating in 2012, became engaged in 2013, and married in Florence, Italy in 2014.

While Kim has yet to start publicly dating anyone since the split, Kanye has begun a blossoming romance with Russian model Shayk, who appeared in his 2010 music video for Power.

While Kim has yet to start publicly dating anyone since the split: Kanye has begun a blossoming romance with Russian model Irina Shayk, who shares a child with Bradley Cooper

While Kim is said to have at first grappled with the decision to divorce Kanye, sources say she now believes she did the right thing.

'Kim is doing great,' a source told People last month. 'She was really struggling around the time she filed for divorce.

'She was very upset about it and really didn't want to file. She has come a long way since she filed for divorce, though. She's very happy and convinced that she made the right decision.'
She was booted off Australian Survivor: Brains vs Brawn on Monday night's episode.

And following her departure, Janelle Durso has revealed she had 'no idea' how brutal the Aussie outback would be, after assuming the show would take place in a tropical paradise.

'I was expecting to be on the beach - 100 per cent expecting it to be on the beach,' the 43-year-old told New Idea, having watched previous seasons filmed in Fiji and Samoa.

Not a clue: Following her departure from Australian Survivor on Monday, Janelle Durso has revealed she had 'no idea' how brutal the Aussie outback would be

Instead, the mother of three was plunged into the vast, unforgiving outback of northwest Queensland, which is known for its harsh climate.

While the filming location of Cloncurry holds the record for the highest temperature ever recorded in Australia at 53.1C, at night temperatures can plummet into single figures - something Janelle learned quickly.

'It was horrible - it's just brutal - absolutely brutal,' she said, recalling her agonising pain from the show's challenges.

'I honestly thought there wouldve been a little bit of TV sparkle. I honestly thought they wouldve helped us a little bit or provided us with some umbrellas - just something - and there was just nothing.'

Not happy: 'It was horrible - it's just brutal - absolutely brutal,' the mother of three said

She wasn't the only contestant left shocked by the sudden temperature drop, as Kerryn 'Kez' McGee forgot to even pack a jacket before departing for the show.

Kez, from the Brawn tribe, complained she was freezing cold after being left to sleep on the ground with very little shelter and no fire to keep her warm.

'It's freezing cold, and I'm just thinking, "Kez, why didn't you bring a jacket? You're in the outback, in the freezing cold, with a singlet and short-shorts on. Good idea, Kez,"' she reflected.

Oops: Viewers were left in disbelief watching Sunday's premiere episode after competitor Kerryn 'Kez' McGee forgot to pack a jacket

Janelle was a member of the Brawn tribe this season, and became the second person to depart the show after Phil Ferguson.

She had volunteered to take part in a puzzle challenge, which she subsequently lost - putting her on 'the chopping block'.

But she still has no regrets, telling the Townsville Bulletin: 'Ive loved Survivor for a very long time and it was always a dream to push myself and push my body to the absolute limit.

'Of course Im disappointed (to be eliminated on day five). I really wanted to get into those really gruelling, hardcore challenges.'
Carla Gugino opened up about suffering a broken wrist in the Dominican Republic while making the film Leopard Skin earlier on in the year.

'I went on this amazing hike and I was coming down a hill and I broke my wrist really badly,' the 49-year-old actress told Variety Monday. 'I broke all the bones all the way across and then had a bunch of complications because I had to have a bonesetter on.'

The Sarasota, Florida native described the medical contraption she was required to wear for healing.

The latest: Carla Gugino, 49, opened up about suffering a broken wrist in the Dominican Republic while making the film Leopard Skin earlier on in the year

'It made me look like RoboCop, but it was a massive metal thing that was literally drilled into my bones that I had to have on for seven weeks,' Gugino said.

Gugino said the injury 'didnt heal because the bone was pulled too far apart, so I had to have a second surgery seven weeks ago,' adding, 'I now am bionic.'

Gugino in the interview detailed her new project Gunpowder Milkshake, a Netflix film in which she plays an assassin - as part of a group that includes Angela Bassett, Lena Headey, Karen Gillan and Michelle Yeoh - in mission to save the life of a real girl.

The Watchmen actress said that the ensemble cast 'definitely was absolutely a big part of the lore to do it.

Ouch! Gugino said of the injury, 'I broke all the bones all the way across and then had a bunch of complications because I had to have a bonesetter on'

Gugino's new project Gunpowder Milkshake is a Netflix film in which she plays an assassin. The Watchmen actress was snapped in NYC at an event in 2019

She appears in an ensemble cast including Angela Bassett, Lena Headey, Karen Gillan and Michelle Yeoh

'None of the women had ever worked with each other,' she said. 'It was like, "Wow, this a group of amazing women who are going to come together to kind of play."'

Gugino added: 'One of the things I found that, besides this being a hugely entertaining film, is also there is this sense of found family.'

Gugino told the publication that she thinks the Spy Kids film anthology which she starred in, from director Robert Rodriguez, will likely end at four films.

'You know, I think Robert has moved on,' she said. 'I actually just saw him recently and we always want to collaborate. I think he did four of them and that was sort of right.'
The end is nigh for one of Australia's most successful dramas, Wentworth, after a successful eight season run.

And fans will be in for an action-packed ending, three weeks after the show's main character Allie Novak (Kate Jenkinson) was shivved at the correctional centre.

Foxtel just released the gripping trailer for the finale via TV Blackbox.

'A lot of people will know will end up dead' The gripping trailer for the long-awaited finale of Wentworth: The Final Sentence has been released

'The path you're walking leads to war,' a voice can be heard as flashes of all the characters appear on screen.

'A lot of people we know will end-up dead,' she continues.

TV Blackbox reports that Allie's attacker is still at large and no-one realises they have a terrorist and would-be murderer, Judy Bryant, on their hands.

Not happy: The trailer shows The Freak as she angrily walks along the prison yard in action packed scenes on the trailer

As the trailer continues a voice says: 'I'm having urges and I can't contain them.'

The proceeding scenes show jail bang-ups and someone getting hanged with a rope noose while screaming.

Wentworth finished filming its 100th and final episode in September of last year.

The cast and crew of the acclaimed drama said their final goodbyes on the Melbourne set at the time, TV Tonight reported.

Last day: Wentworth finished filming its 100th and final episode in September of last year. Wentworth's producer Pino Amenta shared a few photos of the final day on Twitter

The show's line producer Sue Edwards and head of production Brett Popplewell were notably congratulated in speeches for their efforts.

They managed filming under strict COVID-19 restrictions.

Foxtel also sent individual bottles of Champagne to the show's team for completing filming, according to the publication.

Bittersweet end: Wentworth's producer Pino Amenta wrote: 'Last day of Shooting on Wentworth. What a glorious experience it's been working with such wonderful people

Wentworth's producer Pino Amenta shared a few photos of the final day on Twitter.

He wrote: 'Last day of Shooting on Wentworth. What a glorious experience it's been working with such wonderful people.

'Will miss the whole damn thing! Very emotional day, thanks to every single one of them,' he added.

Final scenes: Producer Amenta said on Twitter: 'Will miss the whole damn thing! Very emotional day, thanks to every single one of them'

Wentworth, which is a fresh take on iconic 1980s series Prisoner, has garnered plenty of critical acclaim, winning several AACTA and Logie awards over the years.

It has also aired in several countries, including New Zealand, the UK and Ireland, where it has developed a devoted fan base.

The Foxtel produced series was also popular with Australian audiences, who even petitioned hard to save the show from cancellation after the seventh season.
Alessandra Ambrosio has been soaking up the sun in her native Brazil over the past few weeks.

But come Monday night the longtime supermodel had to bundle up during a cold spell in Sao Paulo, which is more than 540 miles from her hometown of Erechim, Rio Grande do Sul.

And despite being on a holiday of sorts, the mother of two hasn't let up on her near daily workout routine.

Working it: Alessandra Ambrosio, 40, kept up with her workout routine by hitting a gym inside the Fasano Hotel in an upscale neighborhood in Sao Paulo on Monday

Ambrosio, 40, was spotted moments after leaving a gym located inside the Fasano Hotel in the upscale Jardins neighborhood in Sao Paulo.

She was sill wearing her black workout leggings with openings on the side of each leg.

The longtime Victoria's Secret Angel kept warm in an off-white and baby blue jacket which was likely worn over a crop top she donned during the workout.

Sporty: The longtime supermodel, who's been on her extended summer stay in her native Brazil for several weeks, was still dressed in her workout cloths after workout

Keeping warm: The Brazilian native bundled up in a jacket on a cold Monday night

Earlier in the day, Ambrosio laid down and relaxed for a massage, which she gave her fans and followers a glimpse with a few short video clips.

At one point she lifted her head up and stared into the camera with a big beaming smile as her masseuse worked on the tissue near her booty and lower back.

It appears the Gal Floripa co-founder's session included hot stone massage from the looks of the rocks that were placed on her spine.

Later in the day she hooked up with friends Fernanda Motta, who's the host of Brazil's Next Top Model, and artist Matheus Mazzafera.

Socializing online: The Gal Floripa co-founder also documented her Monday on Instagram

Rub it out: The day started out with a massage, which she documented in s few short videos

At one point she lifted her head up and stared into the camera with a big beaming smile as her masseuse worked on the tissue near her booty and lower back

Magical: It appears the Gal Floripa co-founder's session included hot stone massage from the locks of the rocks that were placed on her spine

Chillin': Later in the day the model hooked up with friends Fernanda Motta, who's the host of Brazil's Next Top Model, and artist Matheus Mazzafera

On Thursday, Ambrosio posted a short, edited video clip of her workout at the gym that included views of her working out on various chord and band-based machines.

The 5ft9.5 beauty has also been meeting up with Motta and her best friend and Gal Floripa business partner on a regular basis since arriving in Brazil with her two kids and beau Richard Lee.

Neither the kids or Lee appeared in any of her Monday escapades on social media.

Ambrosio posted a short, edited video clip of her workout at the gym on Thursday

Working it: Ambrosio stretched and worked out on various chord and band-based machines

Annual: The mother of two normally spends an extended time in her native Brazil each summer
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Russell Crowe is doing Sydney lockdown in luxury, whether his neighbours like it or not.

The actor, 57, gave his $25million Finger Wharf apartment in Woolloomooloo a Hollywood-style upgrade last week by installing a Scandinavian wooden barrel sauna on the balcony.

Photos taken on Thursday shows tradesmen positioning the luxury sweatbox in the corner of Russel's undercover balcony - a vantage boasting panoramic views of Sydney Harbour.

What will the neighbours say? Russell Crowe, 57, gave his $25million Finger Wharf apartment in Woolloomooloo a Hollywood-style upgrade last week by installing a Scandinavian wooden barrel sauna on the balcony

The towering structure is also largely visible to the public, no doubt prompting neighbours to wonder whether they'll catch a glimpse of Russell's sauna sessions in future.

It's understood the sauna, which can retail for more than $10,000, was installed last week before the actor commences work on his next film Poker Face in Sydney.

Russell originally purchased the home for $14.35million back in 2003, but listed it in November 2016 for off-the-market buyers, following the break-up of his marriage with Danielle Spencer.

However he then decided to take it off the market in 2017 despite receiving an offer of about $25million.

Lockdown luxury! It's understood the sauna, which can retail for more than $10,000, was installed last week before the actor commences work on his next film Poker Face in Sydney

Luxurious: The Hollywood actor paid $14.35million for the home in 2003, and the apartment takes up a whole floor, is 1000 square metres, and has seven car spaces (pictured left and right in 2003)

In 2017, it was claimed by Domain that luxury car importer Neville Crichton had made the $25million offer on the apartment, and it has been said he has since bought a waterfront house in Point Piper.

Russell's apartment takes up a whole floor, which is 1000 square metres, while it also comes with a 35-metre marina berth and has seven car spaces.

The actor is only the second owner of the property, having purchased it from Nutrimetics founder Imelda Roche and her property developer husband Bill, who originally bought it in 1998 for $9.8 million.

Russell is currently preparing to transform Sydney into a Hollywood movie set for Poker Face this week.

Property ladder: Russell listed it in November 2016 for off-the-market buyers, following the break-up of his marriage with Danielle Spencer (pictured in 2010), but then took it off the market in 2017 despite receiving an offer of $25 million

Great location: The apartment has stunning views of Sydney harbour from all angles (pictured in 2003)

The Gladiator star, who will direct as well as star in the action-thriller, has picked out several iconic locations for the film's set pieces, according to The Daily Telegraph.

The movie will feature a high speed car chase inside the Harbour Tunnel, as well as showcase the $140million penthouse atop James Packer's Crown Residences and 'a sprawling Point Piper mansion overlooking Sydney Harbour'.

While the film was originally set in Miami, Florida, Russell reportedly demanded it be filmed and set in Sydney.

According to Deadline, Poker Face tells the tale of a tech billionaire called Jake (played by Russell) who gathers his childhood friends to his estate for what turns into a high stakes game of poker.

'Those friends have a love/hate relationship with the host, a master game-player/planner, and he has concocted an elaborate scheme designed to bring a certain justice to all of them,' Deadline reports.

Joining Russell in the cast will be Wu-Tang Clan frontman RZA, while Natalie Portman is 'circling a role'.
Gerard Beale is considering trying to extend his NRL career into another season with his return out of retirement lighting the fuse for the St George Illawarra centre to play on.

Beale has been one of the few success stories at the Dragons over the past two months as they fight to stay in the top eight, scoring four tries in his six matches.

The 31-year-old played his 200th NRL game last weekend, after deciding to retire from the NRL last season to head back to play Queensland Cup for the Brisbane Tigers.

Gerard Beale is considering trying to extend his NRL career into another season with his return out of retirement lighting the fuse for the St George Illawarra centre to play on

The decision to answer an SOS from the Dragons on a five-month deal meant leaving his young family behind on the Gold Coast, and that will now weigh heavily on any decision of if he plays on.

'Joining the Dragons has definitely ignited my desire and hunger to continue on,' Beale said.

'I have a manager that is taking care of what that looks like beyond this year.

'My kids are in primary school, so it was a decision me and my family made to keep them in the routine (and stay living there).

'I was going to travel up and back but the border closed.'

Beale still has a one-match ban to serve in the next three weeks for attending Paul Vaughan's barbecue, which he apologised for last week.

The Dragons went part way to strengthening their pack following Vaughan's axing by finalising Jaydn Su'A's three-year deal on Tuesday, however that won't start until 2022.

Prop Jamayne Taunoa-Brown will also be with them for another two weeks after signing a brief three-game deal before he returns to the Warriors.

That move is not technically a loan as it could not be approved under NRL rules, after the league deemed last year's loans a one-off due to COVID-19 challenges.

The potential of loans returning in a revamped contracting system remains under review, with Taunoa-Brown backing the idea given he was not getting game time at the Warriors.

'It's something for the NRL to look into,' Taunoa-Brown said.

'It definitely gives a bit more opportunity to play some footy and held out clubs that might not have players available.

'You're definitely more determined to play well (at the loan club) so you can ... hopefully get back into the 17 at the Warriors.'
She's determined to make it in Hollywood just like her famous father.

And on Monday night in LA, Sistine Stallone stole the show as she walked the red carpet at a premiere for the movie Midnight in the Switchgrass.

Sistine, 23, showed off her long legs in a silky green mini dress and embellished gold sandal heels.

Big night: Sylvester Stallone's daughter Sistine stole the show with her leggy look at the LA premiere for Midnight In The Switchgrass on Monday night

She was able to bask in the spotlight since the film's stars Bruce Willis and Megan Fox were both absent from the event.

Fox had been due to attend but canceled at the last minute citing fears about the rising number of COVOD-19 cases in Los Angeles driven by the Delta variant.

A rep for the Lionsgate movie said in a statement: 'Due to the recent California mask mandate and rise of Covid cases, Megan Fox will no longer be attending the premiere tonight. We appreciate your understanding.'

Interest in the film has been heightened due to the romance that sparked between Fox and Machine Gun Kelly on the Puerto Rican set in early 2020.

The cast also includes Emile Hirsch, Lukas Haas, Caitlin Carmichael and Olive Abercrombie.

Looking good: Sistine, 23, posed up a storm in a silky green mini dress cinched at the waist with a gold link belt. She wore embellished gold sandal heels and carried a gold clutch purse

Good genes: She left her long hair loose and accessorized with a necklace and earrings

Siblings: Sistine had support on the red carpet from her sisters Scarlet, 19, and Sophia, 24

Celebrity offspring: he trio are the daughters of Sylvester Stallone, 75, and his third wife Jennifer Flavin, 52, who married in 1997

Sistine had support on the red carpet from her sisters Sophia, 24, and Scarlet, 19.

The trio are the daughters of Sylvester Stallone, 75, and his third wife Jennifer Flavin, 52, who married in 1997.

Sistine made her big screen debut in the 2019 shark horror film 47 Meters Down: Uncaged.

MIA: Absent from the premiere were the film's stars Bruce Willis and Megan Fox. Fox had been due to attend but canceled at the last minute citing fears about the rising number of COVOD-19 cases in Los Angeles driven by the Delta variant

Co-stars: Sistine posed for photos with co-star Emile Hirsch who did show up for the red carpet event

Relaxed: Hirsch, 36, was casual in a t-shirt and jeans with a lightweight black zipper jacket

Eye-catching: Caitlyn Carmichael, 17, has a role in the movie and pulled out all the stops in a colorful patterned romper and heels

Red carpet moment: Caitlin posed with fellow child actress Olive Abercrombie, 10, who is also in the supporting cast

On trend: Actress Lydia Hull, 35, paired a black halter top and skinny pants with statement shiny silver shoes

The premiere brought out a string of reality stars who were there to support the film's director Randall Emmett, who is engaged to Vanderpump Rules castmember Lala Kent.

Emmett, a producer who makes his feature directorial debut with Midnight In The Switchgrass, and Kent welcomed a child together in March.

On the guest list were Kent's on screen pals Scheana Shay and Brock Davies, Beau Clark and Stassi Schroeder. Jax Taylor, Katie Maloney & Tom Schwartz, Tom Sandoval and Ariana Madix, and James Kennedy.

Helmer: Midnight In The Switchgrass marks the directorial debut of producer Randall Emmett, 50, who arrived with reality TV star girlfriend Lala Kent, 30, on his arm

Curves: Kent showcased her figure in a skintight black sequin mini dress with long sleeves and padded shoulders. She added black heels and wore her long blonde hair loose

Flashed skin: Vanderpump Rules castmember Scheana Shay, 36, wore a very revealing outfit as she posed with boyfriend Brock Davies

Couples: Stassi Schroeder, 33, and boyfriend Beau Clark also came out to show support as did her Vanderpump Rules castmate Brittany Cartwright, 32, and husband Jax Taylor

Date night: Vanderpump Rules' Kristen Doute was also on hand, wearing a pretty llong-sleeve floral print dress

Reality TV star: James Kennedy, 29, chose an eclectic ensemble of black t-shirt and skinny tartan trousers along with a cream blazer and black bovver boots

The film is based on the true story of Texas' most dangerous serial killer with the dramatization translocated to Florida.

FBI agent Karl Helter (Bruce Willis) and his partner Rebecca Lombardi (Megan Fox) are very close to busting a sex-trafficking ring. When they realize their investigation has crossed the path of a brutal serial killer, they team up with Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent Byron Crawford who has years on this case.

When Rebecca herself is abducted by their target and her life hangs in the balance, Byron has precious few hours to piece together the last clues and put an end to the infamous 'Truck Stop Killer.'

Midnight In The Switchgrass will hit theaters this Friday, July 23.
Australian Survivor: Brains vs Brawn won Monday night's TV ratings.

The reality game show was the clear leader, beating out competing programs Farmer Wants a Wife and Beauty and the Geek.

It's a big win for Channel 10, who attracted 768,000 metro viewers for Survivor and 744,000 for the comedy quiz show, Have You Been Paying Attention?

Top of the leaderboard: Australian Survivor: Brains vs Brawn won Monday night's TV ratings. The reality game show was the clear leader, beating out competing programs Farmer Wants a Wife and Beauty and the Geek. Pictured: Survivor host Jonathan LaPaglia

Channel Seven's Farmer Wants a Wife came in second with 705,000 viewers.

The popular series has been sitting at the 600-700,000 mark for the previous few nights, and has risen slightly higher as the series finale draws near.

Nine's Beauty and the Geek was further down the list, dropping past Aussie soap Home and Away and The Chase Australia, with 618,000 viewers.

Reality show face-off: Channel Seven's Farmer Wants a Wife came in second with 705,000 viewers, while Nine's Beauty and the Geek was further down the list, dropping past Aussie soap Home and Away and The Chase Australia, with 618,000 viewers

The Sophie Monk-hosted reboot, which last screened seven years ago in 2014, is almost halfway through its current season.

Meanwhile, Australian Survivor also won the audience share in several key demographics.

The series topped the leaderboard for the 16-39 demographic (273,000 viewers) and 18-49 (407,000 viewers).

They narrowly lost the 25-54 age group to Have You Been Paying Attention?

Popular with the youth: Meanwhile, Australian Survivor also won the audience share in several key demographics. The series topped the leaderboard for the 16-39 demographic (273,000 viewers) and 18-49 (407,000 viewers)

In terms of overall network ratings, Channel Seven took first place with 26.3%, Ten was second with 25.4% and Nine came third with 24.6%.

Despite the popular reception, Australian Survivor Brains vs Brawn is still only two episodes into the new season.

It will be a test to see if the series retains its ratings lead.

The third episode airs tonight at 7:30pm on Channel Ten and 10 Play.
Elle Macpherson's son Flynn Busson debuted his new romance with with his stunning girlfriend Anna De Ferran last week.

And now new details have emerged about the photogenic pair's blossoming romance.

A source told Daily Mail Australia this week that university graduate Flynn, 23, and DJ Anna, 26, 'met through mutual friends' and their relationship works 'well' as they're both based between Miami and London.

'It just works': More details have emerged about Elle Macpherson's son Flynn Busson's new romance with stunning DJ girlfriend Anna De Ferran

'They met in Miami through some mutual friends,' the insider said.

'She's the founder of a DJ agency called L'Amigas Collective so they kept running into each other at events she was DJing at and things went from there.'

The source added: 'They both live between Miami and London so it works super well.'

How they met: A source told Daily Mail Australia this week that university graduate Flynn, 23, and DJ Anna, 26, 'met through mutual friends' and their relationship works 'super well' as they're both based between Miami and London

'She's the founder of a DJ agency called L'Amigas Collective so they kept running into each other at events she was DJing at and things went from there,' the insider said

Last week, Flynn debuted his romance with Anna by sharing his first Instagram photo of the couple, captioning the sweet snap: 'She's alright, are you alright?'

His supermodel mother, 57, commented below the post: 'You're both a bit of alright' alongside love-heart emojis.

Anna is the daughter of Gil de Ferran, a French-born Brazilian race car driver and Formula One team manager.

He's smitten! Last week, Flynn debuted his romance with Anna by sharing his first Instagram photo of the couple, captioning the sweet snap: 'She's alright, are you alright?'

There's little wonder why Flynn is so smitten with the blonde bombshell, whose Instagram account features an array of seductive selfies.

Anna certainly isn't afraid to show off her figure, and earlier this month posed in a bright red bikini as she rode a mechanical bull.

'So this happened last week....' Anna captioned the post, alongside a cowboy emoji.

If you've got it! There's little wonder why Flynn is so smitten with the blonde bombshell, whose Instagram account features an array of seductive selfies. Anna certainly isn't afraid to show off her figure, and earlier this month posed in a bright red bikini as she rode a mechanical bull

Family: In December, Elle posed with her sons, Flynn and 18-year-old Cy, on the cover of France's Elle magazine

In December, Elle posed with her sons, Flynn and 18-year-old Cy, on the cover of France's Elle magazine.

The model shares her children with her ex-partner, French financier Arpad Busson.

Elle previously said she decided to prioritise her family over her modelling career when she became a mother.

'I was 35 when I had my first [Flynn] and 41 when I had Cy, so I came to children a little later in life, but I made sure they were going to be the priority,' she said in 2019.
She could give women half her age a run for their money with her sensational figure and ageless looks.

And mother-of-six Madeleine West looked simply sensational as she filmed her new movie, Me and the Penguins, at Suttons Beach in Brisbane on Monday.

The 40-year-old certainly stood out on set in a pair of chic cream trousers teamed with a colourful sweater.

Timeless beauty! Mother-of-six Madeleine West flaunted her ageless visage and flawless figure in a chic colourful outfit on the set of her new movie in Brisbane on Monday

The ageless actress flaunted her flawless line-free visage in minimal makeup and had her long dark locks up in a casual bun.

Madeleine enjoyed a coffee and took some selfies during breaks in-between filming on the COVID-safe set.

You, Me and the Penguins is currently being shot in Brisbane with former Home and Away star Tammin Sursok playing an outreach manager at the Animal Discovery Institute in San Diego.

Tammin's character is forced to travel to Australia's Crystal Bay Penguin Sanctuary when its threatened with closure.

The story arc gets its thrust when she gets heated with the head zoologist, played by Jason Wilder, after the pair are forced to work together.

Tammin relocated from Los Angeles back to Australia to work on the film after the role was offered to her.

Flawless: The ageless actress flaunted her flawless line-free visage in minimal makeup and had her long dark locks up in a casual bun

Meanwhile, Madeleine recently shared a nifty little trick to use during the lockdown when Melbourne went through their fourth lockdown in May.

'HEY MELBOURNE! My UK mate just shared her fave lockdown hack and I wanna share it with you,' she began in an Instagram post.

'Get all dressed up like you are going out to lunch/dinner/show/club, put on your fave frock, slap on your fave lippy/perfume/cologne,' she advised.

'Jump in the car, pump up your fave tunes...then decide, "No, I think I'd rather stay home" and eat 2 minutes noodles on the couch."

According to former Neighbours star, the point of the hack is to ensure you've gained some control in the matter, making your own decisions despite such odd times.

'Sometimes telling yourself you can do anything but are CHOOSING not to, can be the greatest,' the Playing For Keeps star added.

Madeleine also went on to share an inspiring message with Victorians, writing: 'You got this! Sending many hugs, warm thoughts, and eye-rolling emojis to you all.'

Madeleine is mum to Phoenix, 13, Hendrix, 10, Xascha, eight, Xanthe, seven, and twins Xahlia and Margaux, four, who she shares with her celebrity celebrity chef and former husband Shannon Bennett.

Selfie: Madeleine enjoyed a coffee and took some selfies during breaks in-between filming on the COVID-safe set

In December, before moving to Byron Bay, she confirmed her mother, Jules, had come to Sydney to spend time with the family after spending months in stage four lockdown in Melbourne.

Posting a few photos of her mum on Instagram, Madeleine revealed her daughters had already enjoyed some bonding time with their grandmother.

'Real life actual evidence of the impact of lengthy social distancing and border closures... when grandma finally arrives from after a full year away, the six-year-old twin granddaughters will transform her into a human hairdressing salon,' she wrote.
She managed to keep her job on Vanderpump Rules even as several of her friends were fired from the reality series.

But Lala Kent, 30, and her fiance Randall Emmett, 50, still had plenty of support from current and former castmates on Monday when the arrived for the Los Angeles premiere of Randall's directorial debut, Midnight In The Switchgrass.

Among those supporting the new couple were Lala's current costar Scheana Shay, along with former on-screen fixtures Jax Taylor, Brittany Cartwright and others.

Big family: Lala Kent, 30, and her fiance Randall Emmett, 50, were joined by her Vanderpump Rules costars at the LA premiere of his directorial debut Midnight In The Switchgrass on Monday

Lala Kent showcased her stunned post-baby body in an elegant dark green cocktail dress that was ruched around her midriff and covered in sparkling sequins.

The low-cut dress featured padded shoulders and long sleeves, and its shirt skirt highlighted her trim legs.

Randall was the man of the hour after directing Midnight In The Switchgrass, a dark thriller about two FBI Agents on the tale of a serial killer, with Megan Fox and Bruce Willis playing the principal roles.

The director looked sleek in a black suit with a tie-free black shirt and some carefully cultivated salt-and-pepper stubble.

Sparkler: Lala Kent showcased her stunned post-baby body in an elegant dark green cocktail dress that was ruched around her midriff and covered in sparkling sequins, while Randall wore a black suit

New mother: Lala welcomed her first child with Randall in March

Lala and Randall have built up strong relationship with her Vanderpump Rules friends, so they had a bevy of pals joining them on the red carpet.

Scheana Shay, who was pregnant around the same time as Lala, beamed ear to ear as she arrived at the premiere in a lustrous mauve satin dress.

The skimpy outfit featured spaghetti straps and a plunging top highlighting her cleavage, with a twist tie and cut-out over her midriff.

She wore her long raven locks in thicks waves cascading down her shoulders and had a slim pink handbag strapped on.

Glowing: Scheana Shay, who was pregnant around the same time as Lala, beamed ear to ear as she arrived at the premiere in a lustrous mauve satin dress

Loved-up: The reality star, who welcomed her first child in April, was joined by her boyfriend Brock Davies, who wore a purple blazer with a black shirt and jeans and black-and-white spotted cowboy boots

The reality star, who welcomed her first child in April, was joined by her boyfriend Brock Davies, who wore a purple blazer with a black shirt and jeans and black-and-white spotted cowboy boots.

Scheana and Lala have had a rough history, and last year she claimed on the #NoFilter With Zack Peter podcast that she had cut ties with Lala after she failed to be supportive enough when she had a miscarriage over the summer.

But time and the shared experiences of motherhood allowed the two to restart their friendship.

'I think being a mother has softened us both, and its given us something to really bond over and put pettiness aside,' Lala said in May on Watch What Happens Live. 'So, I will always show her all the love in the world with her baby.'

Water under the bridge: Scheana once feuded with Lala, but they restarted their friendship after becoming first-time mothers

Also making the rounds on the red carpet were Jax Taylor and his wife Brittany Cartwright, who were from Vanderpump Rules in December.

Brittany wore a lovely plunging scarlet dress with a high slit and black open-toe stilettos

Her dress was tied off on the side, and she paired it with black stilettos that strapped up her ankles.

Jax was her opposite in a low-key black blazer and a white T-shirt, along with shredded jeans and white sneakers.

Contrast: Also making the rounds on the red carpet were Jax Taylor and his wife Brittany Cartwright. She looked lovely in a scarlet dress, while he went casual

False alarm: They were fired in December, possibly due to Jax's entanglement in the show's racism scandal. He tweeted that his costar Faith Stowers, who is Black, was a criminal

No reason was given for Jax's firing when it was announced in December, and Brittany also left the show at the same time.

However, he had been embroiled in a racism scandal that led to his costars Stassi Schroeder and Kristen Doute getting the boot.

The two women both reported their costar Faith Stowers, who is Black, to the police, claiming she was a different woman wanted in connection with several crimes.

Although Jax wasn't involved in the police report, he sent out a tweet accusing Faith of being a criminal. Even though he escaped the first round of firing, it appeared to have caught up with him eventually.

The bartender also had a checked past, including multiple run-ins with the law, and he and Brittany came under fire for their wedding ceremony, which was broadcast on Vanderpump Rules, when they initially got an anti-gay and anti-transgender minister to lead the ceremony.

Stunner: Stassi Schroeder looked chic in a double-breasted blazer-style dress with pointy black heels

Legal entanglement: She was fired from Vanderpump Rules for reporting her costar Faith to the police for looking like another woman wanted for various crimes

Despite her own firing, Stassi Schroeder looked happy to be back among her old pals for the day.

She looked chic in a double-breasted blazer-style dress with pointy black heels with bows over the toes, while she carried a black handbag.

Her husband Beau Clark wore a gray patterned shirt with dark jeans and brown leather shoes.

They welcomed their first child in January, and the baby has given them a chance to socialize with Brittany and Lala.

They trio were last seen together for a Mother's Day party in May.

Vibrant: Her costar Kristen Doute, who was fired at the same time over the Faith Stowers scandal, looked striking in a purple ruched dress covered in floral designs

Suited up: She beamed while posing with her boyfriend Alex Menache, who had on a burgundy blazer with gray jeans and a black T-shirt

Revealing: Katie Maloney looked glamorous in a sheer black dress with opaque black stripes revealing a hint of her midriff

Lightened up: Her husband Tom Schwartz wrapped his arm around her while contrasting her in a gray patterned shirt and charcoal trousers

Her costar Kristen Doute, who was fired at the same time over the Faith Stowers scandal, looked striking in a purple ruched dress covered in floral designs.

She beamed while posing with her boyfriend Alex Menache, who had on a burgundy blazer with gray jeans and a black T-shirt.

Katie Maloney looked glamorous in a sheer black dress with opaque black stripes revealing a hint of her midriff.

Her husband Tom Schwartz wrapped his arm around her while contrasting her in a gray patterned shirt and charcoal trousers.

Back in black: Tom Sandoval looked stylish with a hypnotizing black shirt with starfish-like designs, plus a black blazer and matching pants with white loafers

Leather fan: His costar and partner Ariana Madix looked fierce in a short black leather dress, plus edgy black heels with studs around the edges

Tom Sandoval looked stylish with a hypnotizing black shirt with starfish-like designs, plus a black blazer and matching pants with white loafers.

His costar and partner Ariana Madix looked fierce in a short black leather dress, plus edgy black heels with studs around the edges.

James Kennedy mixed fancy and casual with a black shirt under a beige blazer, plus dark plaid pants and black combat boots.
Australian actor Jai Courtney looked as handsome as ever as he arrived at the screening of his new movie Jolt in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The 35-year-old, who relocated to Los Angeles in 2012, oozed sophistication in a fitted grey suit as he hit the red carpet to celebrate the movie's upcoming release.

Jai appeared content and comfortable as he posed for photos at the event, teaming his svelte suit with a casual striped T-shirt.

Red carpet ready: Australian actor Jai Courtney looked as handsome as ever as he arrived at the screening of his new movie Jolt in Los Angeles on Tuesday

He accessorised with a pair of black dress shoes and a gold ring on his finger.

The development process on Jolt was initially announced in 2019, when Deadline reported that Kate Beckinsale had signed on as the lead.

Kate also appeared at the screening alongside Kai, wearing a show-stopping embellished blazer and matching shorts and a sultry low-cut top.

She wore her hair in a casual ponytail, and accentuated her features with a glowing shimmer eyeshadow and a peach lip gloss.

The film follows Lindy (Beckinsdale), a woman who controls her murderous impulses with the use of an electrode device that shocks her whenever she begins to feel herself spiralling into a rage.

Handsome: The 35-year-old, who relocated to LA in 2012, oozed sophistication in an grey fitted suit as he posed up a storm on the red carpet to celebrate the movie's upcoming release

Gorgeous: Kate Beckinsale also appeared at the screening alongside Kai, wearing a show-stopping embellished blazer and matching shorts and a sultry low-cut top.

Stunner: Kate wore her hair in a casual ponytail, and accentuated her features with a glowing shimmer eyeshadow and a peach lip gloss

After the man she loves, Justin (Courtney), is murdered, she goes on a rampage in order to exact revenge on his killer while being trailed by the police as the main suspect in her partner's death.

Tanya Wexler, best known for helming Hysteria and Buffaloed, directed the much-awaited action movie.

While Jai has was recently in Australia to film his latest movie Black Site in Queensland, he lives in LA full-time.

However in 2016 he admitted that if he was ever to raise a family in future, there's only one place he'd want to do it.

Chic: Jai appeared content and comfortable as he posed for photos at the event, teaming his svelte suit with a casual striped T-shirt

'This is where I reside for now, but if I have a family I wouldn't raise them anywhere else,' he revealed, after calling Australia '100 per cent' his home.

Jai also indicated his intentions to move back to his homeland when the time is right.

He continued: 'This makes sense right now, and it's good  I like LA, you have to find your version of it that works for you. But I look forward to the day that I can move home.'

Jolt is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video from July 23
Karl Stefanovic has shared a heartbreaking tribute to TV titan David Leckie following his death aged 70.

The Today show host, 46, shared the final photo he took with David to Instagram on Tuesday.

'This isn't a great photo, but the last I have of David Leckie holding court at Sails in Noosa. He loved me hugging him in public,' Karl wrote.

'He will be missed': Today show host Karl Stefanovic (pictured) paid a heartfelt tribute to TV titan David Leckie following his death aged 70

Tribute: The Today show host shared the final photo he took with David to Instagram and wrote: 'Beneath the toughest of exteriors I loved his brutal direct unique and engaging company. He was not dull. He didn't miss. But he will be'

'I met him years ago at Nine and I sh*t myself every time I saw him coming at me in the corridors. He was frightening. Years later I would lean on him for advice and he never wavered,' he continued.

'When things were bad he was there. Beneath the toughest of exteriors I loved his brutal direct unique and engaging company. He was not dull. He didn't miss. But he will be. All our love to Skye and the family.'

Legendary former Australian television executive David died, aged 70, at his home in the NSW Southern Highlands.

His wife Skye and sons Harry and Ben made the announcement in a family statement on Tuesday.

'With immense sadness we advise the passing of our adored and much loved husband and father, David Leckie,' they said.

'David passed away at Mulberry Farm, Robertson, after a long illness this morning. He was surrounded by his loving family.'

David was CEO of Seven until 2010, then Seven West Media until 2012, before becoming an adviser and leaving the company in 2016.

Tragic: Legendary former Australian television executive David died, aged 70, at his home in the NSW Southern Highlands

Before Seven, he led the Nine Network from 1990 to 2001.

Tributes for the media personality flowed online.

Television presenter Sonia Kruger tweeted: 'Big, bold, brash and brilliant ... I had the pleasure and privilege of working with the legendary David Leckie and loved every minute.'

Columnist Peter FitzSimons described the 'legendary' television executive as an 'unreconstructed, unvarnished man'.
It took about three months, under strict COVID-19 protocols in the Dominican Republic, but M. Night Shyamalan was able to complete his latest feature film, Old.

And on Monday the famed writer and director made the world premiere for the supernatural thriller a family affair by having his wife and three daughter by his side.

The debut event was held at Jazz at the Lincoln Center in New York City, followed by an afterparty inside the venue's Appel Room.

Family affair: M. Night Shyamalan and wife Bhavna Vaswani shared the spotlight at the world premiere of the writer and directers new film Old with their three daughters Shivani Shyamalan, Saleka Shyamalan and Ishani Shyamalan

The Pennsylvania native, by way of Mahe, India, looked dapper in a champagne-colored suit with a white dress shirt, colorful tie and black shoes.

His wife, who he started dating more than 31 years ago, looked elegant in a black and white-patterned skirt that was paired with a sheer black bustier.

Vaswani rounded out her ensemble with black open-toe heels and her raven tresses styled long and flowing to about the middle of her back and a center part.

Shyamalan, 50, looked dapper in a champagne-colored suit, a white dress shirt, colorful tie and black shoes as he posed with wife Bhavna Vaswani

Edgy elegance: Vaswani looked elegant in a black and white-patterned skirt that was paired with a sheer black bustier

The couple's daughter Saleka Shyamalan, known professionally as Saleka, looked like the belle of the ball in her elegant gown for he premiere

Teaser: The Shyamalan's daughter Ishana Shyamalan gave more than a hint of her cleavage and left leg in her black-patterned dress

The premise of Old centers on a family go on a tropical vacation and discover that the secluded beach they are relaxing on for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives into a single day.

The film features a stellar cast including Gael Garcia Bernal, Eliza Scanlen, Thomasin McKenzie, Aaron Pierre, Alex Wolff, Vicky Krieps, Abbey Lee, Nikki Amuka-Bird, Ken Leung, Rufus Sewell, Embeth Davidtz, Kathleen Chalfant and Emun Elliott.

Shyamalan had to bring his team to the Dominican Republic to begin principal photography for Old in late September, which lasted through the wrap date of November 15.

Tough conditions: Shyamalan shot Old in the Dominican Republic from September to mid-November during a rise in cases of COVID-19 around the world; the couple made sure to strike a number of poses together

Proud papa: The Pennsylvania native, by way of India, also snuggled up with daughter Ishana

Proud statistic: Shyamalan went on to reveal that his cast and crews of Old and Servant, in the previous months, followed extremely strict protocol and were tested 6,000 times with a confirmed case of COVID-19 on the two sets

Afterwards, the famed writer and director announced he and his team were able to shoot the movie and season two of his psychological horror series, Servant, in the months before it without any new cases of COVID-19.

He went on to reveal that his cast and crews followed extremely strict protocol and were tested 6,000 times between the two projects. And that was during a time when the number of confirmed virus cases rose in many countries around the globe.

Initially Old was slated to premiere on February 26, but with the delay due to the coronavirus pandemic it was pushed back to July 23.

Shyamalan is best known for his films The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), and After Earth (2013).

More partying: Shyamalan and Vaswani also attended an afterparty for Old

Making the rounds: The Sixth Sense director and writer also chatted with film score composer Trevor Gureckis

The team: Shyamalan also posed with some of the cast and crew including, Luca Faustino Rodriguez, Aaron Pierce, Kylie Begley, Gael Garcia Bernal, Vicky Krieps, Rufus Sewell, Kailen Jude, Alex Wolff, Nolan River, Alexa Swinton, Mikaya Kenzie Fisher and Nikki Amuka-Bird
Julie Bishop's partner David Panton was pictured working up a sweat during an exercise session in Sydney on Tuesday.

The property developer, 60, wore a pair of tight swimming shorts as he hit the beach for a brief workout near his home in Manly, amid the city's ongoing lockdown.

David - who has been dating the former foreign minister, 65, for seven years - appeared in high spirits as he showed off his impressive physique and muscular arms after a dip in the ocean.

What a bod! Julie Bishop's partner David Panton was pictured working up a sweat during an exercise session in Sydney on Tuesday

He raised a smile as he enjoyed the winter sunshine on his bare chest, before going for a brief jog on the sand.

Julie and David publicly stepped out together in 2014 and have attended a number of events together over the years, including the 2018 wedding of Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough.

In 2019, she spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald about how she fell for the former pharmacist and their bond over their love of health and fitness.

'I think that's self-evident  have you seen him?' she laughed.

Workout: David - who has been dating the former foreign minister, 65, for seven years - appeared in high spirits as he shows off his impressive physique and muscular arms after a dip in the ocean

Out and about: He had earlier been pictured going for a swim in Manly on Saturday

'He's a very independent-minded and successful businessman, and he has a delightful sense of humour. He makes me laugh.'

Julie was previously married to Neil Gillon from 1983 to 1988.

She was later dating former Lord Mayor of Perth Peter Nattrass for at least 12 years.

Happy: Julie Bishop and David publicly stepped out together in 2014 and have attended a number of events together over the years, including the 2018 wedding of Karl Stefanovic and Jasmine Yarbrough. Pictured in June 2021

Julie retired from federal politics in 2019, and was the first woman to hold the role of deputy leader of the Liberal Party.

'Her passion that she has always brought to her role, the dignity and grace that she has always demonstrated in every single role she has held,' Prime Minister Scott Morrison told Parliament in February 2019.

'She is an incredibly classy individual. Her successor will have big shoes to fill, and we know that Julie has the best shoes in Parliament.'
Australian Survivor has acknowledged the traditional owners of the land where Brains vs Brawn is filmed.

On Monday, the reality show's official Instagram posted a respectful acknowledgement, specifically referring to the original custodians of the region at Cloncurry in north-west Queensland.

'The producers of Australian Survivor acknowledge the Mitakoodi people, the traditional custodians the Traditional Custodians of the Country on which was filmed, and pay respects to Elders past, present, and emerging,' it read.

Class act: Australian Survivor acknowledged the original custodians of the land where Brains V Brawn is filmed on Monday. Pictured, host Jonathan LaPaglia

Viewers of the hit series were pleased to see the message and praised the program on the social media platform.

'Finally Aboriginal people are getting the recognition and respect they deserve,' wrote one follower.

'Every episode should open with this,' suggested another, even though this statement is screened at the beginning of every episode.

Welcomed: 'Finally Aboriginal people are getting the recognition and respect they deserve,' wrote one follower

'Thank you! I came here looking for a post like this. It is so important to acknowledge the mob, the dreaming and spirit ancestors of the land,' a fan added.

The acknowledgement plays into the more inclusive position Network 10 has recently taken with regards to Indigenous language, place names and landmarks.

In early July, Channel 10 replaced the names of Australian cities with traditional Aboriginal names in its weather bulletins.

Moving forward: 'Thank you! I came here looking for a post like this. It is so important to acknowledge the mob, the dreaming and spirit ancestors of the land,' a fan added. Pictured, the cast of Brains V Brawn

The US-owned network removed colonial place names to mark NAIDOC week - a national event that celebrates the history and culture of indigenous people.

Traditional names for cities across the country were changed on a map during the forecast, and by weather presenter Amanda Jason.

It comes a month after Channel Ten publicly vowed to take the station into a more 'socially progressive' direction.

Australian Survivor Brains vs Brawn continues Tuesday at 7:30pm on Ten
Kate Beckinsale and Laverne Cox both set heads turning when the hit the red carpet for a special screening of their upcoming Amazon film Jolt.

The 47-year-old Underworld star and the 49-year-old Orange Is The New Black sensation both showed off their stylish ensembles while joining their costars in Los Angeles on Monday.

Kate opted for a busy look featuring a buttonless blazer covered in intricate designs and illustrations.

Star power: Kate Beckinsale, 47, and Laverne Cox, 49, were among the stars of Amazon's upcoming action-comedy Jolt at a special screening in Los Angeles on Monday

The actress and social media sensation wore a plunging black ruched top underneath that highlighted her cleavage and trim figure.

She paired her jacket with a matching set of black shorts with similar designs, including a stylized cat, which must have delighted Kate, as she regularly features her cats' antics on Instagram.

The brunette beauty had her highlighted locks tied back in a ponytail to show off her dangling earrings, while adding a bump to her hair.

She elevated her 5ft7in stature with simple black open-toe heels that strapped around her ankles.

Hypnotizing: Kate opted for a busy look featuring a buttonless blazer covered in intricate designs and illustrations

Back in black: She wore a plunging black ruched top underneath that highlighted her cleavage and trim figure. Kate paired her jacket with a matching set of black shorts with similar designs, including a stylized cat

Elegant: The brunette beauty had her highlighted locks tied back in a ponytail to show off her dangling earrings, while adding a bump to her hair

Kate was also seen after the screening mingling with friends and fans after the screening concluded.

Although she went mask-free on the red carpet, she opted for a black mask while chatting with others.

Over the weekend, Los Angeles County instituted another mask mandate for all public indoor spaces regardless of vaccination status, in response to a significant uptick in Covid-19 cases, though the vast majority of people hospitalized this time around are unvaccinated.

The Last Days Of Disco star was spotted with a cute boxy handbag that strapped around her wrist easily.

Catching up: Kate was also seen after the screening mingling with friends and fans after the screening concluded

Heading home: She was spotted popping into a waiting vehicle after the screening

High voltage: Kate star in Jolt as Lindy, a woman with a condition that causes her to have extremely violent rages at slight annoyances. She wears an electrical vest to snap her out of them

Kate stars as Lindy, a woman with a psychological condition causing her to be overcome by severe and violent fits of rage at even slight annoyances.

A special vest that zaps her with electricity is supposed to soothe her fits of rage, but when she's wronged one too many times she goes on a violent rampage.

Laverne stars as a detective who tries to track Lindy down.

The Promising Young Woman actress stunned in a white dress with a high slit that was ruched across her midriff.

She dressed down the look with a black blazer, and she added floppy black suede boots to her look.

She wore her hair styled straight and with a slight silvery tint.

On the case: Laverne stars as a detective who tries to track Lindy down

Woman in white: The Promising Young Woman actress stunned in a white dress with a high slit that was ruched across her midriff. She dressed down the look with a black blazer, and she added floppy black suede boots to her look

Eye-catching: She wore her hair styled straight and with a slight silvery tint

Rita Ora wasn't part of the film's cast, but that didn't stop her from showing off a chic ensemble with a colorful beaded jacket.

She wore a silky purple plunging top under it and a set of black parachute pants.

The pop star and occasional actress had her blonde tresses cascading down her shoulders in thick waves, and she wore an ultra-pointy pair of black boots.

Sparkling: Rita Ora wasn't part of the film's cast, but that didn't stop her from showing off a chic ensemble with a colorful beaded jacket. She wore a silky purple plunging top under it and a set of black parachute pants

Blond beauty: The pop star and occasional actress had her blonde tresses cascading down her shoulders in thick waves

Kicking hazard: She contrasted Kate's footwear with some extremely pointy black boots

Suicide Squad Jai Courtney, who plays Justin in Jolt, looked spiffy in a lustrous gray suit.

The Australian actor also had on a red striped polo shirt with a gray color to match the jacket.

In a trailer for Jolt, his character is seen quizzing Lindy about her anger condition, though it's not clear if he's a love interest or someone looking to end her reign of terror.

He was seen cozying up on the red carpet with his costars Kate and Laverne.

In contrast to some of the other attendees, actress Monet Mazur chose a more minimalist look with a simple off-the-shoulder black top and high-waisted pleated white slacks.

Jolt will be released to Amazon Prime subscribers on July 23.

Dapper: Suicide Squad Jai Courtney, who plays Justin in Jolt, looked spiffy in a lustrous gray suit. The Australian actor also had on a red striped polo shirt with a gray color to match the jacket

Mysterious: In a trailer for Jolt, his character is seen quizzing Lindy about her anger condition, though it's not clear if he's a love interest or someone looking to end her reign of terror

The whole gang: He was seen cozying up on the red carpet with his costars Kate and Laverne
Big Brother VIP host Sonia Kruger has weighed in on the show's decision to dump far-right media personality Katie Hopkins.

Speaking to Perth Now on Tuesday, Kruger, 55, praised Channel Seven's decision.

'I think the network have done the right thing. You can't have somebody come over and put our health workers at risk by flouting the rules,' she said.

Exit: Big Brother VIP host Sonia Kruger (right) has weighed in on the show's decision to dump far-right media personality Katie Hopkins (left). Speaking to Perth Now on Tuesday, Kruger, 55, praised Channel Seven's decision

Kruger went on to claim that Hopkins did not take a quarantine spot from Australians trapped abroad and desperate to get home while facing restrictive arrival caps.

'I know for a fact that Seven and Endemol Shine are on top of that exemption process,' the TV host insisted.

'Those international arrivals don't take the place of stranded Aussies trying to return home. They are above the caps.'

Right: 'I think the network have done the right thing. You can't have somebody come over and put our health workers at risk by flouting the rules,' Sonia said. Kruger went on to claim that Hopkins did not take a quarantine spot from Australians trapped abroad

The far-right provocateur was ditched from the show on Sunday and deported from Australia on Monday, after 'joking' that she was opening her door to hotel staff naked and maskless, while undergoing 14-day mandatory hotel quarantine in Sydney.

Hopkins tried to claim her humiliating deportation from Australia as a victory, telling her supporters she will never be 'silenced' after being sent back to the UK.

The reality star and anti-lockdown campaigner, 46, shared a selfie to Instagram at about 5am Tuesday (AEST), and captioned it: 'See you in the morning, my lovelies.

'You may 'deport' the Hopkins, but you cannot silence the truth. We will fight to TAKE BACK our freedoms.'

Bitter: Far-right provocateur Hopkins has tried to claim her humiliating deportation from Australia as a victory, telling her supporters on Instagram she will never be 'silenced' after being sent back to the UK for joking about breaching hotel quarantine in Sydney

Hours earlier she'd been deported from Australia after 'joking' about breaching hotel quarantine rules and calling Covid lockdowns the 'greatest hoax in human history'.

The controversial British social commentator boarded a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney at 3pm on Monday after her 'critical skills' visa was torn up by the Federal Government and she was fined $1,000 (536) for answering the door of her room in quarantine naked and without a face mask in violation of quarantine rules.

Australia has enforced strict border closures since the start of the pandemic, with tickets into the country rationed and all arrivals forced to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine in their city of arrival along with repeat testing before being allowed in.

Hopkins had flown in to Australia last week and was placed into 14-day isolation in Sydney ahead of an appearance on Celebrity Big Brother.

Deported: The controversial British commentator, 46, boarded a Singapore Airlines flight from Sydney at 3pm on Monday

Controversial: Hopkins did not wear her mask properly as she went though security at Sydney Airport

Hopkins had flown in to Australia last week to appear on Celebrity Big Brother after finishing her mandatory 14-day quarantine. She is pictured leaving the country

But during her stay in a hotel room, she shared an Instagram Live video in which she joked about deliberately breaking Covid rules by opening her door naked and mask-free to the workers who deliver her food.

'The police officer who checked me in told me when they knock on my door I have to wait 30 seconds until I can open the door,' she said while breaking out into hysterics.

How Katie Hopkins rose to fame on BBC's The Apprentice to become a media personality Katie Hopkins is a well-known media personality and commentator in Britain who rose to fame on The Apprentice in 2007 and soon became an outspoken household name, writing in several newspapers. The 46-year-old mother-of-two finished as runner-up in the 15th series of the UK's Celebrity Big Brother in 2015, becoming popular among some for her no-nonsense attitude, and loathed by others for her controversial comments. Hopkins is known for her contentious views on race, sex, class, obesity and migration  and in recent months has criticised the Black Lives Matter movement as well as Covid-19 lockdowns. She once had a popular radio show on LBC, but stepped away after writing on Twitter that a 'final solution' was needed to deal with terrorists. Many thought this was a reference to the Holocaust. Hopkins also lost a libel case against food blogger Jack Monroe which saw her pay out 24,000 in damages after suggesting they backed the defacing a war memorial during a protest in London. Donald Trump once described her in 2015 on Twitter as a 'respected columnist' after she backed the former US president's claims that parts of London had become so radicalised that people were scared to visit. Hopkins was permanently banned from Twitter in June 2020. Advertisement

Hopkins said she was 'lying in wait' to 'spring [the door] open and frighten the s*** out of them and do it naked with no face mask.'

After the comments sparked huge backlash, Channel Seven dropped Hopkins from the show and her visa was cancelled.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said on Monday morning: 'I hadn't heard of her before and I don't want to hear about her ever again.

'I thought it was just shameful, the fact that she was out there boasting about breaching quarantine was just appalling,' she told the ABC.

'It was a slap in the face for all those Australians who are currently in lockdown and it's just unacceptable behaviour.'

Some 12 million Australians in Victoria and Greater Sydney are in lockdown over an outbreak of the highly contagious Delta variant which began on June 16.

Under one of the toughest Covid border policies in the world, Australia has banned tourists and is only allowing 3,035 people a week to enter the country via 14-day hotel quarantine, leaving 40,000 Aussies stranded overseas.

But foreigners with critical skills visas are not always included in the cap because they are deemed to bring 'economic benefit' to the country.

'There are very well established processes and procedures for people to enter this country and many decisions are made on the basis of economic benefit,' Ms Andrews said.

Critical skills visas are for sectors 'critical to Australia's economic recovery' including financial technology, large scale manufacturing, film, media and television production and emerging technology.

The minister said her department approved Hopkins' visa at the request of the New South Wales government.

'It was the State Government that came to us with an application to bring in this individual to effectively increase the economic opportunities in that particular State,' she said.

Facing criticism that celebrities are being prioritised over Australians seeking to return, Ms Andrews said the federal government wants to increase the arrival cap which was halved last month at the request of Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia state governments.

Out: Hopkins was told to leave the country after she joked about breaching quarantine rules

Private: Hopkins wore sunglasses as she walked into the international terminal on Monday afternoon

Ms Andrews praised the Australian Border Force for dealing with Hopkins' visa revocation swiftly over the weekend.

'As soon as we found out about her behaviour and the fact that she was out there openly flaunting our quarantine system here, we took pretty strong action as quickly as we possibly could to get that visa cancelled, and to make sure she would be leaving country,' she said.

Hopkins rose to fame after starring on The Apprentice in the UK in 2007 and is known for her contentious views on race, sex, class, obesity and migration.

Channel Seven confirmed she has been booted from Celebrity Big Brother.

A spokesman told Daily Mail Australia on Sunday: 'Seven Network and Endemol Shine Australia confirm that Katie Hopkins is not part of Big Brother VIP.

'Seven and Endemol Shine strongly condemn her irresponsible and reckless comments in hotel quarantine.'

Leaving Australia: Hopkins carried her own luggage into the Airport after being dropped off by quarantine staff

On Sunday, the hosts of Channel 10 show The Project slammed Seven for its decision to hire Hopkins.

Jan Fran, a comedian and regular panellist on the show, said: 'What was someone expecting when they did hire Katie Hopkins to do this? She's a troll. She courts controversy. They knew that is what she would bring to the Big Brother house.'

Fran went on to express disgust over Hopkins' use of the term 'Final Solution', which referrs to the mass murder of Europe's Jews during the Holocaust.

Her co-host Peter van Onselen agreed: 'They want controversy but maybe didn't think it would lead as far as this.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said of Hopkins: 'I hadn't heard of her before and I don't want to hear about her ever again'. Pictured: Hopkins at Sydney Airport

'She will go back to the UK and complain about us and build her brand locally off what we've done even though what we've done is the right thing.'

'Don't you think this is what Channel Seven wanted? It cost them, how much is an economy ticket from the UK, $150,000?' co-host Lisa Wilkinson chimed in, joking.

'That's all it's cost them which is cheaper than a marketing budget'.

It was at 5am on Saturday that Hopkins took to Instagram live to post a speech where she 'called out' the lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne and threatened to answer her hotel door naked.

Critic: Hopkins (pictured at Sydney Airport) has criticised lockdowns and mask wearing during the Covid-19 pandemic

On Sunday she denied she broke quarantine rules in Sydney, writing on Instagram that it was just a joke.

'WARNING: EXTREME HUMOUR. I have never broken quarantine,' she wrote in her caption.

'My whole heart goes out to Australians and this brilliant country known for sense of humour. Families MUST be reunited.

'Auzzies [sic] need the dignity of work and lockdown is the Greatest Hoax in Human History. Do not give up my darlings. Bring Australians home,' she added.

Lockdowns: Hopkins often makes posts mocking mask mandates and lockdowns on Instagram since being banned from Twitter in June last year for 'hateful conduct'

Hopkins described her antics as a 'game' but other travellers stuck in hotel quarantine were outraged by her behaviour.

Posting to the Facebook group 'Australians in quarantine facilities' one user wrote: 'This is abhorrent...some people are racing against time with the quarantine trying to get to family members. This is really cruel and sick.'

'Anyone else who has just returned home like me, too ashamed to admit how ashamed I am of my own country right now?' wrote another traveller.

'What has happened to Aussie spirit, our heart, mates looking after mates, the Govt caring about its own people. Has it been lost over the last few years?

'It makes my blood boil that so many fellow Aussies are stranded and cannot get home yet we can waste seats and hotel rooms on actors etc.'

Anger: Members of the closed group 'Australians in quarantine facilities' vent their outrage

Questioned: Many travellers in quarantine questioned why Hopkins was allowed to fly into the country while Australians are stranded overseas

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who famously threatened to euthanise Johnny Depps dogs when he sneaked them into Australia in 2015, said Hopkins should be sent home.

He told ABC's Insiders: 'I'm the one who wanted to send home Johnny Depp's dogs home so I have no problem sending home someone who wants to flout our laws.

'If you want to do that, pack your bongos and get out of the country.'

Acting Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Andrew Giles criticised the decision to grant Hopkins a visa in the first place.

'Now that Ms Hopkins is in Australia, she has begun broadcasting from what described as 'VIP Quarantine', and has explained how she is opening up her hotel door naked and without a face mask in a deliberate attempt to breach hotel quarantine rules.' Mr Giles said.

'This is grossly disrespectful to frontline workers who are only trying to keep us safe.'

Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce said on ABC's Insiders: 'I'm the one who wanted to send home Johnny Depp's dogs home so I have no problem sending home someone who wants to flout our laws'

Hopkins often takes to Instagram to mock lockdowns and mask mandates.

In a video uploaded to the social media platform on Friday, filmed from her hotel quarantine, Ms Hopkins described lockdowns as 'the greatest hoax in history'.

'You are living through the greatest hoax in human history, they are trying to take everything from you, and one of the very best and most powerful weapons we have is a sense of humour, and someone like me is probably a massive thorn in their sides,' she said.

In the bizarre video, she said: 'We've just heard that there's been a new variant, Delta plus, and you have to be very, very afraid of it.

She then lifted up a sanitary towel in the air and added: 'All politicians are about as useful as a tampon on a tranny.'
Production is well underway for Masters Of The Air, with the drama first starting to film in February this year.

And it appears that Oxford is the next spot for the World War II drama to film in, as Anthony Boyle was seen dressed in military uniform while stepping out on set with a female co-star in the university town on Monday.

Not only that, but troop transports and other cars from the period have also been brought to the location in preparation for filming.

To work: Masters Of The Air prepared to film in Oxford on Monday as Anthony Boyle dressed in military uniforms stepped out on set and World War II troop transports were brought to the city

Anthony was seen dressed in a crisp olive-green blazer that he wore buttoned over a matching shirt and a beige tie.

He completed his look by wearing a pair of grey trousers and smart brown shoes, and he accessorised with a military-issue hat.

His female co-star, meanwhile, looked chic in a matching jacket that she wore over a sleep pencil skirt that she paired with heeled brogues.

Her brunette locks were pinned back into a sleek bun that she covered with an olive-green peaked cap.

Transformation: A number of vehicles from the period have been brought to the location in preparation for filming

Suit up: Anthony was seen dressed in a crisp olive-green blazer that he wore buttoned over a matching shirt and a beige tie

In recent months, producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg have constructed a sprawling US airforce base in the British countryside to film the drama - at an eye-watering cost of 5 million.

The Hollywood heavyweights are producing the Apple+ TV series, which started shooting in the UK in February and features Anthony, Callum Turner, Austin Butler and Jude law's son, Rafferty, among its cast.

Masters Of The Air is based on Donald L. Miller's book Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany.

It was initially reported that HBO had planned to televise the series, when rumours first swirled almost a decade ago back in 2012, by 2019, it was revealed that Apple TV had made a deal with Spielberg and Hanks' production companies for the series.

Dressed up: One extra looked chic in a matching jacket that she wore over a sleep pencil skirt that she paired with heeled brogues

Exciting: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are producing the Apple+ TV series, which features Anthony, Callum Turner, Austin Butler and Jude law's son, Rafferty, among its cast

While Deadline Hollywood reports 10 episodes at $200 million, the Hollywood Reporter has claimed it will be nine episodes at $250 million.

Established in 1944 after the redesignation of VIII Bomber Command, the Eighth Air Force was the largest in terms of personnel, aircraft, and equipment that was deployed during the war.

Their bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest of the Second World War and was considered a war within a war until Allied soldiers crossed into the country in the final months of the conflict.

Historical drama: Masters Of The Air is based on Donald L. Miller's book Masters of the Air: America's Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany

Show: It was initially reported that HBO had planned to televise the series back in 2012, but by 2019 it was revealed that Apple TV had made a deal with Spielberg and Hanks

Bomber crews were an elite part of the American Air Force, with notable members of the team including actors Jimmy Stewart and Clark Gable, and they were expected to engage in air-to-air fighter combat at 25,000 ft.

It is hoped that the series will emulate the success of Band Of Brothers, the American war drama miniseries also produced by Spielberg and Hanks back in 2001.

Based on based on historian Stephen E. Ambrose's 1992 book of the same name, the show dramatised the history of "Easy" Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, of the 101st Airborne Division.

Drama: The Eighth Air Force was the largest to be deployed during the war and their bombing campaign against Nazi Germany was the longest of the Second World War
They soared to fame on Love Island last year.

And Jess and Eve Gale proved their star-power on Tuesday as they were seen putting on a sizzling display while heading out in London.

The twins, 22, opted for similarly racy ensembles with a Jess choosing an orange form-fitting look and Eve choosing a similar style in black.

Hot stuff! Jess and Eve Gale, (right) proved their star-power on Tuesday as they were seen putting on a sizzling display while heading out in London

The stunning outing came shortly after Eve stripped down to her bra and knickers for her latest sexy Instagram post. The star sported a Boux Avenue sky blue lingerie set with white flowers over the bust.

The steamy snaps showed off the social media influencer's signature curves as she posed with her fingers in her hair while perched on a sun bed on a balcony.

The beauty's bright blonde locks were poker-straight and half of it was tied up in a ponytail on top of her head, and the rest tumbled down over her shoulders.

Woah: The twins, 22, opted for similarly racy ensembles with a black and orange look catching the eye and showing off their incredible frames

Sizzling: Eve showed off her incredible curves in the chic look

The TV personality, who rose to fame on the first winter series of Love Island in 2020, wore a glam make up look and captioned the post: 'A lingerie & balcony vibe,' while beating the London heatwave.

Eve and her twin sister Jess were just two of many celebrities who jetted to Dubai throughout the pandemic, as they visited the sun-soaked city in December.

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.

Orange you pleased to see me? Jess looked stunning as she stepped out in her form-fitting number

Stunning: The stunning outing came shortly after Eve stripped down to her bra and knickers for her latest sexy Instagram post. The star sported a Boux Avenue sky blue lingerie set with white flowers over the bust

Revealing: The TV personality, who appeared on the winter series of Love Island in 2020, wore a glam make up look and captioned the post: 'A lingerie & balcony vibe'

Beauty: The stunner's bright blonde locks were poker-straight and half of it was tied up in a ponytail on top of her head, and the rest tumbled down over her shoulders

Many stars insisted their trips were for 'work purposes' after criticism from the Home Secretary Priti Patel.

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.
Mackenzie Phillips was once the favourite tipped to win Farmer Sam Messina's heart.

But Tuesday night's episode of Farmer Wants a Wife ended in heartbreak for the nurse when she was sent home in a shock double elimination.

Sam, also 24, told Mackenzie and fellow contestant Allanah Taranto that he didn't see a future with either of them.

It's over! Tuesday night's episode of Farmer Wants a Wife ended in heartbreak when Farmer Sam Messina sent fan favourites Mackenzie Phillips (left) and Allanah Taranto home

The episode saw the farmers and ladies sit down to dinner, where the farmers were served up a menu of questions written by the ladies with no topic being off-limits.

Allanah asked Sam if he thought he was ready for a relationship.

He bluntly answered 'next question,' which prompted Allanah to ask more.

'I don't want you to be upset, but I think Mackenzie and I deserve some answers,' she began. 'Be honest, that's the most courageous thing you could do.'

Ouch! Sam told the Oncology nurse and Allanah Taranto that he didn't see a future with either of them

Later on in the episode, Sam asked Allanah and Mackenzie to step outside for a private chat to address their future.

In the cool breeze of the night, Sam told both ladies that they had both ostensibly been placed in the friend zone.

'It's been a crazy rollercoaster,' he began, before adding, 'I didn't think it was going to be this tough.

'I did want to come into this and find love. Just recently, I haven't seen anything more than a friendship with you girls.'

Brutal: Allanah asked Sam if he thought he was ready for a relationship. He bluntly answered 'next question,' which prompted Allanah to ask more

Happier times: Later on in the episode, Sam asked Allanah and Mackenzie to step outside for a private chat before sending them both home. All pictured

Mackenzie walked off immediately while Allanah questioned him repeatedly, asking him if he was telling the truth.

Sam replied: 'I have tried. I wanted more. I really did.'

Mackenzie was confused by Sam's sudden change of heart but said she cared for him.

'When it's just him and me, he's a completely different person and that's the person I can share my life with. That is the person I love being around. I don't understand,' she said.

Sam acknowledged he had a strong connection with Mackenzie at the start, but it 'wasn't love.'

Farmer Wants a Wife continues Wednesday at 7.30pm on Channel Seven
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Simon Cowell's girlfriend Lauren Silverman slipped into a plunging white swimsuit on Monday as she joined the music mogul on the beach in Barbados.

The couple were seen strolling along the coast with their son Eric, seven, before a sunburnt Simon, 61, headed to the water for an afternoon of snorkelling.

Simon's annual break abroad comes as he continues to recover from breaking his back in an electric bike accident in August.

Family break: Simon Cowell's girlfriend Lauren Silverman slipped into a plunging white swimsuit on Monday as she joined the music mogul on the beach in Barbados

Lauren displayed her incredible physique by slipping into the revealing white one-piece and pulled back her brunette tresses with a spotted hairband.

She and Simon headed down to the beach to take their dogs for a walk, before the Britain's Got Talent judge plunged into the water for a snorkel with his son.

Continuing his remarkable recovery since breaking his back, Simon went shirtless in a pair of green swimming shorts as he headed down to the ocean for the walk, displaying the impact of spending hours in the sun through his sunburnt skin.

Wow! Lauren showcased her incredible figure in the tight one-piece, with her brunette tresses pulled back with a spotty headband

Family break: Simon was seen heading out to walk their dogs on the beach with Lauren and their son Eric, seven

On the mend: Continuing his remarkable recovery since breaking his back, Simon went shirtless in a pair of green swimming shorts as he headed down to the ocean for the walk

Low-key: Lauren teamed her white swimsuit with blue denim cut-off shorts as she made her way down to the beach with the dogs

Doting: After arriving at the beach, Simon joined his son for a spot of snorkelling in the ocean

Their latest Caribbean holiday comes after Simon vowed to do everything he can to ensure he makes a full recovery following breaking his back.

Simon was left bedridden for months after a devastating electric bike accident at his Malibu home in August last year.

The record executive now walks for several hours a day and holds business meetings at 9AM so that he no longer lives like a 'vampire'.

Gorgeous: She displayed her trim physique in the summery ensemble as she enjoyed an afternoon on the beach during their family getaway

Lovely: She finished her holiday look with round-framed sunglasses as she strolled along the beach

On the mend: Their latest Caribbean holiday comes after Simon vowed to do everything he can to ensure he makes a full recovery following breaking his back

Close call: Simon was left bedridden for months after a devastating electric bike accident at his Malibu home in August last year

Settled: The record executive now walks for several hours a day and holds business meetings at 9am so that he no longer lives like a 'vampire.

Of his new fitness regime, a source told MailOnline: 'Simon said how he hasn't worn trainers as much as this in 20 years.

'He feels fitter than ever before and is keeping to a normal routine rather than being on the phone until into the early hours of the morning.'

Simon told Extra in February of the horror bike incident: 'I nearly smashed my spine to pieces!'

The X Factor boss also admitted he 'couldn't have got through' it without his girlfriend Lauren and son Eric, who sweetly called him 'iron man' when he first saw his dad with metal rods and screws in his back following surgery.

Active: Of his new fitness regime, a source told MailOnline: 'Simon said how he hasn't worn trainers as much as this in 20 years'

Terrifying: Simon told Extra in February of the horror bike incident: 'I nearly smashed my spine to pieces!'

Touching: The X Factor boss also admitted he 'couldn't have got through' it without his girlfriend Lauren and son Eric

Blossoming romance: Simon met Lauren when she was still married to millionaire property developer Andrew Silverman

Simon met Lauren when she was still married to millionaire property developer Andrew Silverman.

Their affair became public  and Simon's life changed  at the end of July 2013 when news broke of Lauren's pregnancy.

In 2015, Simon told Mail on Sunday Event magazine: 'I'm not proud of the circumstances, I can't hold my head up about it.'

And of the pregnancy, he admitted: 'This was not something I planned. But I remember going to the first scan with Lauren.

'I called him Tad because he looked like a tadpole. Something just kicked in. I felt unbelievably protective of both of them. I just absolutely wanted him. I just hadn't known that before.'

Bombshell: Their affair became public  and Simon's life changed  at the end of July 2013 when news broke of Lauren's pregnancy
Robert Irwin has shared a sweet tribute to his mother, Terri, for her 57th birthday.

The 16-year-old wildlife warrior took to his Instagram to share an adorable throwback photo of the pair of them.

'Happy birthday Mum! Love you so much!' he wrote alongside the photo.

So sweet! Robert Irwin has shared a throwback photo and touching tribute to his mother Terri who celebrated her 57th birthday on Tuesday. Robert is pictured left alongside Terri and Bindi

In the sweet photograph, a baby Robert is seen smiling while his mother gripped onto him with her arms up in the air.

Robert's older sister Bindi was quick to comment underneath the photo.

'The cutest!!' she wrote.

Cute! In the sweet photograph, a baby Robert is seen smiling while his mother gripped onto him with her arms up in the air

Over on her own channel, Bindi, 22, shared a series of photos of the entire Irwin clan celebrating the occasion by releasing some turtles back into the wild off the coast of Queensland.

In one photo, she was seen cradling her baby Grace Warrior, who turns four months this week.

'Celebrating my beautiful mama's birthday by releasing five sea turtles back to the wild, after they were in care at our Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital,' Bindi wrote on Instagram.

That's nice! Over on her own Instagram, Bindi shared a series of photos of the entire Irwin clan celebrating the occasion by releasing some turtles back into the wild

Busy day: 'This day will live in my heart forever, with the most amazing Mama turned Bunny (our term for grandmother). I love you beyond description, Mum'

She added: 'This day will live in my heart forever, with the most amazing Mama turned Bunny (our term for grandmother). I love you beyond description, Mum.'

Back in February, Bindi revealed that her mother Terri will go by the name of Bunny to her daughter instead of grandmother.

'We spent a long time searching for grandma names that also had an animal link,' Bindi told The Bump of Terri's alternative nickname.

'We decided that she's going to be called "Bunny". When she was growing up in Oregon her neighbour down the street was always called "Bunny",' Bindi said.
She never fails to look sensational.

And Lottie Tomlinson, 22, once again posed up a storm on Tuesday for her 4.2million Instagram followers to see in her latest slew of stunning snaps.

The bronzed make-up artist went braless in a striped figure-hugging dress with a red-and-yellow colour palette which helped enhance all her best bits.

Bronzed: Lottie Tomlinson, 22, once again posed up a storm on Tuesday for her 4.2million Instagram followers to see in her latest stunning snaps

The stunner, who is the sister of One Direction star Louis Tomlinson, opted for the 'less is more' belief, having excluded all accessories from her look.

She leant against a brick wall and rested her right hand upon her blonde-highlighted tresses, displaying two delicate tattoos.

The founder of the self-tanning company, Tanologist, shot a sultry expression before glancing directly into the camera lens.

Lottie is currently dating model Lewis Burton, who previously dated Caroline Flack.

Sultry: The bronzed makeup artist flashed her legs in a red-and-yellow colour palette striped figure-hugging dress

They were revealed to be seeing each other last July - five months after Lewis' ex Caroline tragically took her life.

In December, the influencer spoke about wanting kids during an interview with PrettyLittleThing: 'Yes I definitely want kids, I want five!'

Lottie and Lewis were in Dubai earlier this year despite the UK's national lockdown with strict instructions to stay home amid the coronavirus pandemic.

During their trip to the UAE the couple were pictured during a heated exchange while in the smoking section of high-end restaurant Nammos on January 31.

Loved up: She's been dating model Lewis Burton since July 2020, who previously dated the late Caroline Flack

A source told MailOnline: 'It's no surprise that neither Lottie or Lewis have posted anything on their social media accounts about being in Dubai.

'But why they would go to such a well-known, crowded restaurant for Sunday lunch and then have a stand-up row in front of other customers  we were in disbelief.'

Lottie and Lewis were pictured having a similar heated exchange last August in Ibiza, where they appeared to argue on the beach.
Larry Emdur has shared a heartbreaking tribute to TV titan David Leckie following his death aged 70.

In a post shared to Instagram on Tuesday, the 56-year-old wrote at length: 'Now listen to me you little s**t! I'm not going to pay you much but I'm going to make you famous so this negotiation is over!

'That's how David Leckie opened our negotiation for the original Price is Right circa 1993.'

Tribute: Larry Emdur (pictured) has shared a heartbreaking tribute to TV titan David Leckie following his death aged 70

'The rest of the conversation isn't fit for human consumption, but it was epic, legendary, frightening and fabulous all at the same time .

'Over the years David hired me and fired me (mainly fired) many times but was always a gentleman and a true TV genius. I have a lot to thank him for.

'I doubt I'd still be on TV today if he didn't sign me for Price. So many TV people will have similar stories of one of the great TV execs. TV will miss him. Sending Lots of love to Skye and the family'.

Thanks: 'Over the years David hired me and fired me (mainly fired) many times but was always a gentleman and a true TV genius. I have a lot to thank him for,' Larry said. David is pictured

Legendary former Australian television executive David died, aged 70, at his home in the NSW Southern Highlands.

His wife Skye and sons Harry and Ben made the announcement in a family statement on Tuesday.

'With immense sadness we advise the passing of our adored and much loved husband and father, David Leckie,' they said.

Tragic: Legendary former Australian television executive David died, aged 70, at his home in the NSW Southern Highlands

'David passed away at Mulberry Farm, Robertson, after a long illness this morning. He was surrounded by his loving family.'

David was CEO of Seven until 2010, then Seven West Media until 2012, before becoming an adviser and leaving the company in 2016.

Before Seven, he led the Nine Network from 1990 to 2001.
Kim Kardashian seems to have a favorite child this week: son Saint West, aged five.

The 40-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians vet shared two new images of the boy who wore no shirt, just shorts, as he showed off a gold nameplate necklace.

The Selfish author has three other children with estranged husband Kanye West: North, eight, Chicago, three, and Psalm, two.

Tops: Kim Kardashian seems to have a favorite child this week: son Saint West, aged five

He has Kanye's smile: The 40-year-old Keeping Up With The Kardashians vet shared two new images of the boy who wore no shirt, just shorts, as he showed off a nameplate necklace

The makeup mogul added a heart-eye emoji and a crying emoji.

In the images Saint looks to be in good spirits as he is photographed by outdoor furniture on a patio. His hair is worn in braids.

This comes after claims Kanye has 'accepted' that Kim 'wants a divorce'.

The Heartless rapper was reportedly 'disappointed' when his estranged wife filed to end their marriage earlier this year after seven years of marriage, but sources have now said he has 'come around' to the idea of separating.

Mommy: Kim seen plugging her SKIMS line last week at her $60M Hidden Hills mansion

She is always hugging her eldest son: Mom KK with her arms around Saint

Kanye is said to be keen to 'keep things amicable' with Kim, and wants to make sure they still 'spend time together as a family' for the sake of their four children.

An insider told People magazine: 'Kim and Kanye are spending time with the kids. Kanye has accepted that Kim wants a divorce. For a long time, it was very hard for him. He was disappointed. He has come around though.

'He wants the best for his kids. He is keeping things amicable with Kim so the kids can be happy. They have been spending time together as a family.'

Done: Kim filed for divorce from Kanye in March; seen in NYC in May 2016

Single mom: The Selfish author has three other children with estranged husband Kanye West: North, eight, Chicago, three, and Psalm, two

This weekend they reportedly reunited as they visited a museum in San Francisco with their four children.

Kim and Kanye, 44, visited before opening hours the teamLab: Continuity exhibition at the Asian Art Museum with their children on July 17, a museum source told E!

'They were excited to be there, and everyone seemed to be getting along great between Kim and Kanye,' the source said.

The comments come after it was previously claimed the star and the musician still 'get along' amid their split.

Fun on her own: After the siren shared this bikini photo Dolly Parton responded

Another source said: 'Kim and Kanye are getting along. They have both stayed true to their commitment to make the best situation for the kids.

'Kim is very happy that they have managed to keep things calm. She thinks Kanye is a good dad. She wants him to be able to spend as much time with the kids as he wants.'

It has also been reported the reality star is 'happier' now that she's split from Kanye, as she knows it was the 'right decision'.

The source added: 'For every week that goes by since she filed for divorce, Kim seems happier. She knows that filing for divorce was the right decision. The kids are doing as good as she could hope.'
Anti-vaxxer Dan Osborne claimed Prime Minister Boris Johnson is 'blackmailing people into having a Covid jab' in a furious rant on Monday.

The Prime Minister has proposed that, from September, proof of having both vaccinations will be required for large-scale ticketed events, nightclubs, and potentially even some pubs.

The former TOWIE star, 30, who has openly spoken about his decision not to vaccinate himself or his children, shared a tweet that compared the unvaccinated to paedophiles.

Fuming: Anti-vaxxer Dan Osborne claimed Prime Minister Boris Johnson is 'blackmailing people into having a Covid jab' in a furious rant on Monday

The tweet read: 'How about passports and mandatory QR codes for pedophiles and rapists? Oh, that's right. It goes against their human rights and it's an invasion of their privacy. Pedophiles are safer than the unvaccinated!' [sic]

Dan shared the tweet, adding: 'Worlds a f***ing mess. Absolute joke!

'Basically blackmailing people into having a jab if they really want life to go back to 'normal', even to go to nightclubs or most countries in the world on holiday...

'Proper top class bulls***!' [sic]

Fuming: Dan shared a tweet that compared the unvaccinated to paedophiles

Dan shared the tweet, adding: 'Worlds a f***ing mess. Absolute joke! Basically blackmailing people into having a jab if they really want life to go back to 'normal', even to go to nightclubs or most countries in the world on holiday... Proper top class bulls***!' [sic]

His wife added: 'Freedom? Really? World has gone mad!'

The vaccine has been, at the time of writing, administered to 54.2 per cent of the UK's population.

Public Health England statistics demonstrate that two doses of the vaccine will help in preventing symptoms from the Delta variant by 79 per cent. Two doses are 96 per cent effective at preventing hospitalisations.

Dan has declared he won't have the jab, nor will his children. Jacqueline Jossa and Dan share Ella, six, and Mia, two, and Dan has a son - Teddy, seven - from a previous relationship

Unvaccinated: Jacqueline and Dan share Ella, six, and Mia, two, and Dan has a son - Teddy, seven - from a previous relationship

News: The Prime Minister has proposed that, from September, proof of having both vaccinations will be required for large-scale ticketed events, nightclubs, and potentially even some pubs

Dan previously claimed that coronavirus 'is not dangerous enough to be forcing a vaccine on the world' - despite the illness killing 4.1m globally, at the time of writing.

Last month Dan declared his anti-vaxxer status in a bizarre rant to his 1.1 million Instagram followers. The former TOWIE star took to social media to claim that the COVID-19 crisis is 'all about money', despite the pandemic causing a global recession which is the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The rant began when he traveled home from Portugal and filmed himself in his car heading back from the airport.

'I've said it from day one. People are going to have a go at me, but the whole thing is about money. The whole damn thing. I've had hundreds, maybe thousands of messages about kids getting the vaccination. Personally that s**t isn't even going in me - never mind my kids. People do your research, it's not good!' he raged.

U Ok hun? Dan came out as an anti-vaxxer in a bizarre rant to his 1.1 million Instagram followers

Oh dear! The former TOWIE star took to social media to claim that the COVID-19 crisis is 'all about money', despite the pandemic causing a global recession which is the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s

On arriving home, the ex-Celebrity Big Brother contestant returned to his Instagram Stories, having clearly been met with a slew of outraged messages from fans slamming his anti-vaxxer stance.

He said: 'People are going mad at me for talking bad about the vaccine. You guys are crazy!

'All I'm saying is if there was a legitimate vaccine that actually works and is no harm to you, why would it not just be all the vulnerable people get the vaccine and that's it.

Rant: He also claimed that coronavirus 'is not dangerous enough to be forcing a vaccine on the world' and that he won't be getting the jab - and neither will his three young children

'Why would a 12-year-old kid need a vaccine. If all the vulnerable people had had it and they were safe, why would anyone else need it? You just wouldn't because it's a 99.6 percent chance that you're going to be fine with COVID-19.

'It's not dangerous enough to be forcing it on the world. That to me is suspect!'

Dan was then seen later in the evening asking his followers to stop bombarding him with responses, clearly having faced a backlash from them.

He was seen drinking beer and eating a take-out to cheer himself up, adding that he was feeling 'nervous' after the barrage of comments he had been inundated with after his rant.
Kendall Jenner first appeared on Vogue Spain's cover on October 2016.

And almost five years later, the model graced the cover of the magazine once again, this time for their August 2021 issue.

The 25-year-old reality star, who was snapped by photographer Micaiah Carter, wowed in a sheer lace gown layered over high-waisted shorts with a black fringed wig.

Stunner: Kendall Jenner first appeared on Vogue Spain 's cover on October 2016. And almost five years later, the model graced the cover of the magazine once again, this time for their August 2021 issue

For the cover image, Kendall showcased her long legs in a sheer floral dress with a coordinating black top and high-waisted bottoms beneath.

The supermodel added knee-length boots while posing in front of a white background.

Kendall donned a shoulder-length jet black hair with shimmering eye shadow on her eyes and pink glossy lips.

The issue's focus was centered on those who advocate for change, with Kendall chosen as one because of how outspoken she has been about raising awareness on the importance of mental health.

Cover girl: The 25-year-old reality star, who was snapped by photographer Micaiah Carter, wowed in a sheer lace gown layered over high-waisted shorts with a black fringed wig; pictured June 24, 2021 in Las Vegas

Her appearance on the August 2021 issues comes almost five years since she last graced Vogue Spain's cover.

In August 2016, Kendall dazzled on the cover, rocking a bold red lipstick with defined, strong brows.

She wore her hair pulled back into an elegant updo with statement earrings and a textured orange sweater.

Kendall's cover also include a video element, with the star drawing backlash after she pretended to be a ballerina - as directed - for the clip.

The star later had to clarify that she was just doing her job as a model and was told that she was going to be a ballerina for the video clip while she was in hair and makeup.

She made the statement in her now defunct app, adding: 'I never said I knew ballet and I didn't practice beforehand. I just show up to do my job!'

Mesmerizing: Her appearance on the August 2021 issues comes almost five years since she last graced Vogue Spain's cover. In August 2016, Kendall dazzled on the cover, rocking a bold red lipstick with defined, strong brows

Kendall continued: 'I have so much respect for women who do their jobs really well and would never purposely try to offend anyone. It confuses me how people can get that upset when there are so many important things going on in the world. But, it's obviously not going to stop me from working hard and being me.'

In May, Kendall opened up about her own battle with anxiety during a four part conversation with Vogue titled Open Minds.

The stunner said: 'Two or three years ago I genuinely started having very, very bad panic attacks.

'I was having frights in the middle of my sleep, literally felt heart palpitations. I couldn't breathe.'

'I was pretty bad,' the KUWTK star admitted, which earned the praise from the LA County Department of Mental Health's Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Curley Bonds.

The more people that come out and talk about their anxiety, the more the public is aware that this is a real thing,' she said.

Kendall recently shared her public support for her boyfriend Devin Booker, by snapping a picture of herself while rocking a colorful Phoenix Suns windbreaker.

Strike a pose: Kendall recently shared her public support for her boyfriend Devin Booker, by snapping a picture of herself while rocking a colorful Phoenix Suns windbreaker

The jacket was super oversized; it maybe have belonged to her six-foot-five-inch boyfriend, a shooting guard on the Phoenix Suns.

Soon after, the stunner posted a racy snap of herself rocking a barely there green bikini for a mirror selfie.

In addition to her busy modeling career, Kendall is the founder of the award winning 818 Tequila brand.

Star power: In addition to her busy modeling career, Kendall is the founder of the award winning 818 Tequila brand
She quietly rekindled her romance with her beau in February after growing close again during lockdown, following their split last year.

And Megan McKenna looked incredible as she soaked up the sun during her holiday to Mallorca with boyfriend Josh Riley on Tuesday, wowing in a tiny patterned bikini.

The former TOWIE star, 28, appeared smitten with her businessman beau as they packed on the PDA at a resort before taking a cooling dip in the Mediterranean sea.

Looking good: Megan McKenna looked incredible as she soaked up the sun during her holiday to Mallorca with boyfriend Josh Riley on Tuesday, wowing in a tiny patterned bikini

Megan looked on fine form as she displayed her toned physique in the floral halterneck two-piece, which perfectly highlighted her taut midriff and long, tanned pins.

The beauty, who added a pair of gold hooped earrings to her beach look, swept her caramel tresses off her face with a hair claw and went make-up free for her sunny outing.

Megan and Josh certainly made the most of their day by the sea as they enjoyed a leisurely spot of swimming.

Kiss kiss: The former TOWIE star, 28, appeared smitten with her businessman beau as they packed on the PDA at a resort before taking a cooling dip in the Mediterranean sea

They then took to the sun beds were they worked on their tans while enjoying some downtime from their busy lives in the UK.

Josh, who later covered up in a black T-shirt and cap, is the company director of the online men's fashion brand, Yelir World, which has been featured in GQ and has been worn by Wayne Rooney.

The couple appeared completely smitten with each other as they larked about in the water before sharing several intimate moments together on the sun beds.

Stunning: Megan looked on fine form as she displayed her toned physique in the floral halterneck two-piece, which perfectly highlighted her taut midriff and long, tanned pins

Wow: Megan was sure to turn heads as she showed off her figure in the floral patterned two-piece

Lovely: The beauty, who added a pair of gold hooped earrings to her beach look, swept her caramel tresses off her face with a hair claw and went make-up free for her sunny outing

Earlier this year, sources reported that the pair 'couldn't be happier' after quietly rekindling their romance, and have been 'enjoying each other's company' in lockdown.

The X Factor: Celebrity winner had initially began dating the London businessman in August 2020, but their relationship fizzled out.

A source told The Sun at the time that the pair secretly reunited during lockdown after splitting sometime in September.

They said: 'Megan and Josh quietly got back together - they've been enjoying each others company again throughout lockdown and realised what they had lost - now they couldn't be happier.'

Work it: Megan looked amazing as she stretched out on a sunbed

Lazy days: The pair were chilled as they enjoyed a day by the sea, with Josh busying himself on his phone at one point

Fun times: Megan and Josh certainly made the most of their day by the sea as they enjoyed a leisurely spot of swimming

The best time: The couple appeared completely smitten with each other as they larked about in the water

MailOnline contacted representatives for Megan McKenna for comment at the time.

Megan also previously dated Pete Wicks and the pair had a tumultuous relationship which came to a head on The Only Way is Essex in 2017.

She then began a relationship with the late Love Island star, Mike Thalassitis, before the couple separated in July 2018 after seven months of dating.

Megan was heartbroken when she discovered her ex had died by suicide in March 2019 and she entered therapy to cope with the shock.

Going swimmingly: The couple enjoyed a leisurely swim side-by-side

Smitten: Megan and Josh couldn't keep their hands off each other in the water

Gorgeous: Megan displayed her bronzed tan as she reclined on a sun bed

Meanwhile, last month Megan showed off her natural smile without fillers in a dramatic throwback snap, after ditching the cosmetic injections in 2019.

The reality star previously revealed she dissolved her lip filler because people couldn't look past her 'trout pout'.

And to mark her younger sister Milly's birthday, she uploaded a natural snap - without any cosmetic enhancements - from her teenage years alongside her sibling and older brother Harry.

Megan sparked concern in the past for her plump pout, and she confirmed her decision to ditch lip fillers in 2019 because she felt no-one would take her seriously as a recording artist.

The Celebrity X Factor star said critics couldn't look past her 'trout pout' to hear her voice as she discussed her battle with body dysmorphia on Loose Women later that year.

Penny for them? Megan looked lost in her own thoughts at one point as she basked in the sunshine
The first trailer for The Last Duel was released on Tuesday.

And Jodie Comer, 28, shared the clip on Instagram, and gushed that she felt 'so proud to share this' and called the film 'a dream come true'.

In the dramatic clip, Jodie could be seen as French noblewoman Marguerite de Carrouges in the Ridley Scott-directed epic, as a booming voice says: 'There is only one question that matters. Do you swear on your life that what you say is true?'

Star power: Jodie Comer transformed into French noblewoman as Matt Damon and Adam Driver 'fight to the death' in the first trailer for the medieval drama, released on Tuesday

Adapted from Eric Jager's book of the same name, The Last Duel follows the true story of Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon), a 14th century French knight who embarks on a fight to the death with former friend Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver).

Jodie's character Marguerite is the woman at the centre of the fight, after she and her husband de Carrouges accuse Le Gris of raping her.

In the trailer, Killing Eve star Jodie can be heard saying in character: 'My father told me my life would be blessed with good fortune,' before she declares: 'I'm married, I was a good wife.'

Drama: The film follows the true story of Jean de Carrouges (Matt Damon, pictured), a 14th century French knight who embarks on a fight to the death with former friend Jacques Le Gris

True story: Jodie's character Marguerite is the woman at the centre of the fight, after she and her husband de Carrouges accuse Le Gris (Adam Driver, pictured) of raping her

As she reflects on how her claims Les Gris raped her are received, she added: 'And then I was judged and shamed by my country.'

The two knights, Jean and Jacques, can then be seen preparing for their duel as they mount their horses in front of a baying crowd.

Marguerite then shouts: 'I say before all of you, I spoke the truth.'

Her story: In the trailer, Jodie can be heard saying in character: 'My father told me my life would be blessed with good fortune... then I was judged and shamed by my country'

Playing the part: Ben Affleck, who plays Count Pierre d'Alencon in the Ridley Scott-directed epic, makes a brief appearance in the trailer

Ben Affleck's character Count Pierre d'Alencon then makes an appearance, saying: 'The most unspeakable charge has been brought against you.'

In response, Marguerite says: 'Jacques Le Gris entered our home, he attacked me', to which Adam says as Jacques: 'The accusation is false.'

It is then decided the men shall 'fight to the death' and 'let God decide' their fate, before Matt's Jean tells Marguerite: 'I'm risking my life.'

War: It is then decided the men shall 'fight to the death' and 'let God decide' their fate as the true story is retold

Key character: Matt tells Jodie's character that he is 'risking his life' for her, but she is not cowed as she tells him he's only doing it for his 'pride'

But clearly she won't be cowed, as Marguerite tells him: 'You're risking my life to save your pride.'

The Last Duel marks the first return of Matt's writing partnership with Ben since their award-winning script for Good Will Hunting, and the pair co-wrote the screenplay alongside Nicole Holofcener.

Originally, Matt and Ben were set to play the two leading roles in the film, but they ran into scheduling conflicts because of Ben's film Deep Water, so Adam took over the role of Le Gris.

Ready for action: The trailer gives movie fans a glimpse at some of the action to be expected in the flick

Blast from the past: The film is set in medieval France and was filmed on location in the country and Ireland

Filming began on the movie in February last year in France but the set was shut down in March due to the pandemic and travel restrictions in Europe, before they returned to filming in September.

Matt was at the film's next location in Ireland when lockdown began and, amid the travel ban, ended up isolating in the seaside resort of Dalkey, an affluent suburb of Dublin with his wife and four children for a few weeks.

The Last Duel had a scheduled released date of December 2020 but it has now been pushed back to October 15, 2021.

Collaboration: The Last Duel marks the first return of Ben's writing partnership with Matt Damon since their award-winning script for Good Will Hunting
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She is having the time of her life in Greece this summer and happy to bring along her 1.4million Instagram followers for the fun.

On Tuesday Delilah Hamlin shared some stunning snapshots from her vacation on the island of Mykonos in the Aegean Sea as she said, 'I am so happy to be here you have no idea, what a stunning haven.'

The 23-year-old fashion model was seen in a cute two piece bikini with a floral print and a tie in front as she added a deep blue straw hat and a crystal necklace.

When in Greece: She is having the time of her life in Greece this summer and happy to bring along her 1.4million Instagram followers for the fun. On Tuesday Delilah Hamlin shared some stunning snapshots from her vacation on the island of Mykonos in the Aegean Sea as she said, 'I am so happy to be here you have no idea, what a stunning haven'

The eldest daughter of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna and LA Law actor Harry Hamlin looked to be in terrific shape as she posed in her sweet bikini.

Mom Lisa added four white hearts in the comment box.

The fashion model was also seen on the trip with longtime boyfriend Eyal Booker, 24.

The sister of Amelia Hamlin - who dates Scott Disick - was modeling a crochet top and gold chains earlier this week. 'Ill have a virgin mule and an English breakfast tea please,' she said in her caption.

And a week ago she was seen in a black and yellow bikini while on the island: 'Relaxation levels reached 99.9%.'

Toned and terrific: The eldest daughter of Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Lisa Rinna and LA Law actor Harry Hamlin looked to be in terrific shape as she posed in her sweet bikini

The looks that spell confidence: The young star showed off her body with ease as she landed pose after pose

Hands on hips: She flashed several beaded bracelets in pink and blue as she also revealed most of her tattoos

This weekend she was seen in a black and white leopard print mini dress with sandal heels in silver at sunset at her stunning white hotel hut.

The photogenic star put her arms around her beau and they hugged in what looked to be a very intimate evening.

Meanwhile, her sister Amelia has been in the Hamptons with her beau Scott and the three kids he shares with Kourtney Kardashian: Mason, Penelope and Reign. On Monday they treated themselves to Italian ices.

In May Amelia said Scott lights up her life.

I call this place home... for now: This weekend she was seen in a black and white leopard print mini dress with sandal heels in silver at sunset at her stunning white hotel hut

Kissy: The photogenic star put her arms around her beau and they hugged in what looked to be a very intimate evening

The actress posted a sweet tribute to her boyfriend to mark his 38th birthday, as she described him as the 'most caring, loving, special person on this planet'.

In a gushing post on Instagram, she wrote: 'happy birthday my love. you light up my life, and make my world better. i can't imagine what i would do without you.

'thank you for being you. the most caring, loving, special person on this planet. i'm so lucky. i'm so blessed to have met you. i love you.'

Sizzling at sunset: The sister of Amelia Hamlin - who dates Scott Disick - was modeling a crochet top and gold chains earlier this week. 'Ill have a virgin mule and an English breakfast tea please,' she said in her caption

A closer look: The siren pulled back her shoulders which also pulled back her knitted caramel colored bikini top

Scott is incredibly close to his former partner, Kourtney Kardashian but Amelia isn't 'bothered' by Scott and his ex's friendship as they have children together - Mason, 11, Penelope, eight, and Reign, six.

Amelia and Delilah are the daughters of Rinna and Hamlin, who became husband and wife in 1997.

Hamlin also has a 41-year-old son Dimitri Alexander with ex Ursula Andress, 85.
Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, and Cynthia Nixon were all smiles while filming a street scene for HBO Max's And Just Like That in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood on Tuesday.

The Ohio-born 56-year-old wore a pink Carolina Herrera shirt-dress with the same $250 black-studded Streets Head 'Roger' belt she rocked in the Sex and the City movie.

Sarah's character Carrie Bradshaw - wearing a wedding band - has gone from New York Star columnist to author to podcaster in Michael Patrick King's 10-episode reboot.

Happily reunited! Sarah Jessica Parker (M), Kristin Davis (L), and Cynthia Nixon (R) were all smiles while filming a street scene for HBO Max's And Just Like That in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood on Tuesday

On Monday night, Parker - who boasts 6.9M Instagram followers - joked that she was excited to 'sleep in' until 3:45am on Tuesday after her 'call [time] got pushed back.'

The two-time Emmy winner and her two onscreen BFFs are earning '$1M per episode' to produce and reprise their SATC roles in the limited series - according to Variety.

Sarah, the silver-haired 55-year-old, and the 56-year-old brunette were filming a scene where Carrie points to something disturbing happening on a high-rise or rooftop.

Cynthia wore a brown plaid shirt-dress as attorney Miranda Hobbes, and Kristin wore a sailboat-print dress over a T-shirt as mother-of-two Charlotte York Goldenblatt.

2021 vs. 2007: The Ohio-born 56-year-old wore a pink Carolina Herrera shirt-dress with the same $250 black-studded Streets Head 'Roger' belt she rocked in the Sex and the City movie

Wearing a wedding band: Sarah's character Carrie Bradshaw has gone from New York Star columnist to author to podcaster in Michael Patrick King's 10-episode reboot

Zzzz: On Monday night, Parker - who boasts 6.9M Instagram followers - joked that she was excited to 'sleep in' until 3:45am on Tuesday after her 'call [time] got pushed back'

$10M total each! The two-time Emmy winner and her two onscreen BFFs are earning '$1M per episode' to produce and reprise their SATC roles in the limited series

All three ladies looked shocked at whatever it was they were seeing up high.

It prompted Carrie to cower, hide her face, and walk away from the horrifying sight.

Bradshaw then started to sprint in her black pumps just like the time she lost her former fiance Aidan Shaw's (John Corbett) dog Pete in the rain back in 2000.

Emotional Carrie even tried shielding her face with her cute green clutch.

Oh no! Sarah, the silver-haired 55-year-old (L), and the 56-year-old brunette (M) were filming a scene where Carrie points to something disturbing happening on a high-rise or rooftop

Fashionistas: Cynthia (L) wore a brown plaid shirt-dress as attorney Miranda Hobbes, and Kristin (M) wore a sailboat-print dress over a T-shirt as mother-of-two Charlotte York Goldenblatt

Ominous: All three ladies looked shocked at whatever it was they were seeing up high

Hiding in plain sight: It prompted Carrie to cower, hide her face, and walk away from the horrifying sight

Athlete: Bradshaw then started to sprint in her black pumps just like the time she lost her former fiance Aidan Shaw's (John Corbett) dog Pete in the rain back in 2000

Emotional moment: Carrie even tried shielding her face with her cute green clutch

Last Thursday, Page Six got a glimpse at Emmy-nominated sound mixer Charles Hunt's script pages revealing Bradshaw will be divorcing her on/off flame, Mr. Big (Chris Noth).

'I was taping the podcast, I was washing my hair,' Carrie tells her friends in the leaked scene.

'Yes, I wasn't eating or sleeping, but at least I felt good about my marriage. Now I'm just one of the wives he was taking care of?'

Fans can expect at least 'one of the wives' - Natasha Naginsky - to return for the continuation as Bridget Moynahan reported to the set on Tuesday.

Bad romance: Last Thursday, Page Six got a glimpse at Emmy-nominated sound mixer Charles Hunt's script pages revealing Bradshaw will be divorcing her on/off flame, Mr. Big (Chris Noth)

Carrie tells her friends in the leaked scene: 'I was taping the podcast, I was washing my hair. Yes, I wasn't eating or sleeping, but at least I felt good about my marriage. Now I'm just one of the wives he was taking care of?'

She's back! Fans can expect at least 'one of the wives' - Natasha Naginsky - to return for the continuation as Bridget Moynahan reported to the set on Tuesday

Was this what the ladies were staring at? The 50-year-old Blue Bloods star shot a scene where her character was reading Taylor Jenkins Reid's 2019 novel Daisy Jones & The Six in front of a window in a brick building

Banter: Other returning Sex and the City cast members include Willie Garson, Evan Handler, and Mario Cantone

Woke: And Just Like That got a shot of diversity by welcoming newcomers Nicole Ari Parker, Karen Pittman, Sara Ramirez, and Sarita Choudhury

Sneak peek! Original SATC costume designer Patricia Field was unable to return because she's working on Netflix's Emily in Paris, so her former associate Molly Rogers stepped in

The 50-year-old Blue Bloods star shot a scene where her character was reading Taylor Jenkins Reid's 2019 novel Daisy Jones & The Six in front of a window in a brick building.

Other returning Sex and the City cast members include Willie Garson, Evan Handler, and Mario Cantone.

And Just Like That got a shot of diversity by welcoming newcomers Nicole Ari Parker, Karen Pittman, Sara Ramirez, and Sarita Choudhury.

Original SATC costume designer Patricia Field was unable to return because she's working on Netflix's Emily in Paris, so her former associate Molly Rogers stepped in.

There is no denying the original HBO series - which aired for six seasons spanning 1998-2004 - based on Candace Bushnell's 1997 book was iconic albeit a whitewashed version of Manhattan.

Time capsule: There is no denying the original HBO series - which aired for six seasons spanning 1998-2004 - based on Candace Bushnell's 1997 book was iconic albeit a whitewashed version of Manhattan (pictured in 1998)

More to explore? Excitement for AJLT might have fans forgetting just how dismally bad the films Sex and the City: The Movie and Sex and the City 2 (pictured) were in 2008 and 2010

Three-legged table: And with the hilarious Kim Cattrall's exit, they risk making the same mistake The Golden Girls producers made by continuing on without Bea Arthur in The Golden Palace, which was canceled by CBS after one season in 1993

Excitement for AJLT might have fans forgetting just how dismally bad the films Sex and the City: The Movie and Sex and the City 2 were in 2008 and 2010.

The CW also aired a forgettable, eighties-set spin-off The Carrie Diaries starring AnnaSophia Robb from 2013-2014.

Producers arguably betrayed their audience by anticlimactically marrying off their symbol of the strong single woman to her toxic ex John.

And with the hilarious Kim Cattrall's exit, they risk making the same mistake The Golden Girls producers made by continuing on without Bea Arthur in The Golden Palace, which was canceled by CBS after one season in 1993.
Molly-Mae Hague flashed her toned stomach in a brown suede crop top and matching skirt as she posed up a storm in Ibiza.

The blonde beauty, 22, set pulses racing in a series of sultry snaps on Instagram on Tuesday after jetting off to the Balearic Islands for a photo shoot.

She looked picture perfect and sun-kissed wearing the eye-catching ruched co-ord in the Ibiza sunset.

Sizzling: Molly-Mae Hague flashed her toned stomach in a brown suede crop top and matching skirt as she posed up a storm in Ibiza on Instagram on Tuesday

The elasticated asymmetric top draped over one shoulder and pulled under her other arm, flashing a glimpse of her washboard abs.

The matching skirt was ruched on one side above a slit which allowed Molly-Mae to showcase her slender legs.

She paired the standout look with a large white padded clutch bag and a pair of strappy nude heels.

Letting the co-ord do the talking, she kept accessories to a minimum - only adding a gold pendant necklace and a chunky gold watch.

Beautiful: The blonde beauty set pulses racing in a series of sultry snaps after jetting off to the Balearic Islands for a photo shoot

Gorgeous: She looked picture perfect and sun-kissed wearing the eye-catching ruched co-ord set

The Love Island star took to her Instagram Stories on Tuesday morning to document her journey to Ibiza.

She shared a snap of herself in a lift surrounded by a variety of bags, including a Louis Vuitton suitcase, holdall and laptop case.

On her way to the airport, Molly donned a bright red tracksuit set from House of Drew - Justin Bieber's fashion line.

Clearly too hot for the jumper in the warm English weather, she wore a tight white crop top and pulled her hair into a large bun on the top of her head.

Jetsetter: She shared a snap of herself in a lift surrounded by a variety of bags, including a Louis Vuitton suitcase, holdall and laptop case

Fancy: On her way to the airport, Molly donned a bright red tracksuit set from House of Drew - Justin Bieber's fashion line and showed off her various jewellery items

She then proceeded to share a picture of her breakfast - a pot of oatmeal and some juice - as she sat waiting for her flight in Manchester Airport just after 6am.

While waiting for take off, she also posted a snap of her freshly manicured nails as well as her various designer jewellery items, including a Rolex watch and Cartier Love rings.

As the reality star sat on the plane wearing a disposable face mask, she informed her 5.7million followers that she was off to the 'most exciting shoot EVER'.

Keeping her millions of followers in the loop about her latest adventure, she shared clips from inside the lavish villa she was staying at in Ibiza.

Exciting: As the reality star sat on the plane wearing a disposable face mask, she informed her 5.7million followers that she off to the 'most exciting shoot EVER'.

Wow! Keeping her millions of followers in the loop about her latest adventure, she shared clips from inside the lavish villa she was staying at in Ibiza

Amazing: Molly-Mae showed off the enormous and inviting pool as well as the various seating areas in the plush accommodation

She showed off the enormous and inviting pool as well as the various seating areas in the plush accommodation.

Sharing the clips, she wrote: 'Home for the next few days. So excited.'

It comes after Molly and her boyfriend Tommy Fury packed on the PDA at her mother Debbie's wedding on Saturday.

She shared the loved up snaps to her Instagram on Sunday - which showed her passionately kissing her boxer beau, 22, as she reflected on the day.

The beauty looked incredible in a royal blue bridesmaid's dress as she kissed dapper Tommy in the sweet snap.
Love Island's Lucie Donlan enjoyed an idyllic day at Yorkshire's Saltburn beach with beau Luke Mabbott and friends Biggs Chris and Rebecca Gormley on Monday.

It was surf's up for the two couples, who were making the most of the hot weather on Tuesday as they hit up the Yorkshire seaside for a spot of surfing.

The petite blonde was pictured smiling as she donned a navy blue shorts wetsuit alongside her hunky boyfriend Luke, 25, who showed off his taut abs and chest tattoos as he stood topless for the occasion.

Warm weather: Love Island's Lucie Donlan enjoyed an idyllic day at Yorkshire's Saltburn beach with beau Luke Mabbott and friends Biggs Chris and Rebecca Gormley on Monday

Their friends Rebecca, 23, and Biggs, 27, dressed appropriately for the activity at hand, with the former Car-body repair specialist donning an all-black long sleeve wetsuit and nike sliders, and the model wearing a navy blue, sky blue and black colour block wetsuit.

Lucie let her crimped mermaid-like locks fall down past her torso, while her gal-pal Rebecca sported a high ponytail, the wind brushing a few strands towards her face.

Lucie captioned her beach-day pic: 'What an amazing day yesterday .. BBQ & evening swim' with the waves and green heart emoji.

Biggs also shared a photo onto Instagram of the squad at the picturesque location, captioning his joyful image: 'Nothing better than good weather & good company... thanks for borrowing us your swim suits'.

Outraged: Lucie later took to Instagram to urge beach goers at Newquay's Fistral Beach to 'take your rubbish HOME' in a recent post on her Instagram story

Luke commented on Biggs' photo: 'Love guys what a day!!' with a red love heart emoji, while Lucie commented: 'What a day best double date ever, love you guys'.

After all that hungry work taking to the waves, the group sat down on the sand for a BBQ in the evening.

Lucie later took to Instagram to urge beach goers at Newquay's Fistral Beach to 'take your rubbish HOME' in a recent post on her Instagram story.

The 23-year-old Fistral beach ambassador took to the social media platform on Tuesday, re-sharing an image of a very littered Fistral beach in Cornwall.

She captioned the sad image: 'This CANNOT be serious my home beach looking like this after the weekend...people why are you not waking up. Take your rubbish HOME.'

Lucie's plea comes after she hit up Yorkshire's Saltburn beach with her beau Luke Mabbott, 25, and pals Rebecca Gormley, 21, and Biggs Chris, 27 - whom she met during her time on the ITV reality show last winter in South Africa.

Squad trip: Biggs also shared a photo onto Instagram of the squad at the picturesque location, captioning his joyful image: ' Nothing better than good weather & good company... thanks for borrowing us your swim suits'

This comes after Luke recently urged the police to clamp down on Internet trolls  and said producers don't always portray contestants accurately on the show.

The former contestant told MailOnline 'more needs to be done' by the authorities to regulate trolling, because negative comments can escalate to much larger problems.

In an exclusive interview, Luke said it was 'shocking' that new Islander Chloe Burrows' family had to appeal to the public for nasty comments about their daughter to stop, after she was inundated with horrific death threats.

Luke, whose new collaboration with His Column is out now, said: 'Chloe's family shouldn't have to put a statement out to say stop, it should be an automatic thing not to do it. It's disappointing and shocking. You don't sign up to get trolled the hell out of.

'Everyone that goes on Love Island gets trolled in some way and no matter how good you are, you will get people who don't like you and a lot more needs to be done to stop them by the police.

'It begins with trolling, but it can escalate and become something much larger. People used to say to me "this is what you've signed up to", but it isn't, it isn't what you sign up to. You don't sign up to get absolutely rinsed.'

'You can report and block them but then they make another account a week later, and it's never ending. Hopefully, something will be done this year about it.

'The thing is with Love Island, depending on what they chose to run on you, it's 24 hours you're in there and viewers only see an hour, the person you're portrayed as on the outside might not be the person you are in real life. You can't always judge a book by its cover.'

Luke said him and girlfriend Lucie are watching the current series of Love Island together, and he predicts Jake Cornish could easily have his head turned.

Jake is paired with Liberty Poole but has admitted to being open to getting to know new arrivals in the villa, especially blonde bombshells who he describes as his 'type.'

'A lot more needs to be done':This comes after Luke recently urged the police to clamp down on Internet trolls  and said producers don't always portray contestants accurately on the show

Luke and Lucie, who are looking forward to celebrating their one-year anniversary this month, are planning on moving to Newquay together, where they will start a new chapter of their relationship alongside pet dog, Bunny.

And Luke is already thinking ahead to when the couple gets married, revealing he wants to wed Lucie one day.

He said: 'We have nearly been together a year, which is crazy. We're told all the time we're the perfect match.

'We like to do all sorts together, motocross, diving, literally everything. We're thinking about moving to Newquay, because I fell in love with it. It's the place for me. So, I think we'll probably be moving together to Newquay very soon. It'll be hard because it's far away, but I've lived here all my life and in Newquay there's so much more to do.

'I think we will get married eventually; Lucie is a bit younger than me. You can't put a time on it. I definitely want to marry her, but it needs to be the perfect time. I am a relationship type of guy and I prefer to have a best friend and partner there.'

Luke Mabbott's edit with His Column is available on His Column's website now
Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's two children Ava and Deacon enjoyed a tropical vacation with their partners this month.

And the group shared some snapshots from the stunning trip to social media on Tuesday.

Ava, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, was seen with her longtime boyfriend Owen Mahoney while 17-year-old high school student Deacon was pictured with his girlfriend Marine Degryse.

The nest generation: Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe's two children Ava and Deacon enjoyed a tropical vacation with their partners this month. And the group shared some snapshots from the trip to social media on Tuesday

Also making an appearance in two photos was Tennessee Toth, aged eight, the only child of Reese, 45, and her second husband, talent agent Jim Toth, 50.

Deacon shared five photos with the group for his 373K Instagram followers as his caption read: 'Im so lucky man.'

He was in dark swim trunks as he stood next to his girlfriend Marine who had on a red string bikini that showed off her tattoos.

Happy with his lady: 17-year-old high school student Deacon was with his girlfriend Marine Degryse on the beach

There was also an image of the pair with Ava and Owen.

And two shots showed Deacon with little brother Tennessee on his shoulders.

Marine wrote on Instagram, 'Some cool film with some cool people!' She shared an image with Deacon as well.

Ava posted two photos from her trip: one was of the beach, the other was of her in yellow and white.

Hola: Marine wrote on Instagram, 'Some cool film with some cool people!'

Like sisters already: Marine put her arms around Ava who wore a red top and denim shorts

Pulling Miley faces for the camera: Marine, Deacon and Owen stick their tongues out

Reese was not seen in the photos but she did share two images this week that suggested she was on some sort of vacation.

In June Ava shared a photo with her boyfriend, who many believe resembles her father Ryan.

While the Reese mini me has previously cringed when her followers have compared her dad and past significant others to each other, the similarities were undeniable in her latest Instagram post from June.

Deacon's mini me brother: Also making an appearance in one photo is Tennessee Toth, the only child of Reese and her second husband, talent agent Jim Toth

A good role model: Deacon and Tennessee live with Reese and Jim in Los Angeles

Looking identical to her superstar mom, Ava posed for a cute photo with her beau after they went batch watching at Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin, Texas.

'The bats were feeling shyso here's a pic of us instead,' she captioned the picture, which immediately prompted social media users to compare the couple to Ava's parents.

Commenters were quick to admit they '1000000% thought' the image was a throwback of her mom and dad as well as gush they look like a 'younger version' of her parents, who were married for seven years before divorcing in 2006.

Free to be who she wants: The Angeleno is a student at UC Berkeley in Northern California

It's paradise: The blonde beauty also shared a view of the ocean and sunset

'I thought this was a throwback pic of your parents!!' one wrote, while another called Ava her mom's 'mini me.'

Witherspoon also commented on the post, writing 'these two' with a smiling face emoji with heart-eyes.

Under her comment, fans tagged the actress in messages that said Ava is her 'twin' and should be cast in Legally Blonde 3.

Did she join her kids? Reese was not seen in the photos but she did share two images this week that suggested she was on some sort of vacation

A lovely way to spend the summer: And in this image she talked up a book for her book club: 'The Downstairs Girl by @staceyleeauthor is clever, poignant and funny. It's a bold portrait about a young Chinese-American woman named Jo who is faced with adversity and the realities of intersectionality in her community\

Others reminded commenters to refrain from pointing out the resemblance of Ava's boyfriend to her dad because they 'doubt you would want to hear someone comparing your significant other to your parent.'

Last week, Witherspoon, who is also a mom to sons Deacon, 17, and Tennessee, eight, told actress Tracee Ellis Ross that her relationship with her kids is very special in a new issue of Interview magazine.

'My gosh, I've been crying a lot this week. I'll have memories of my kids when they were little, or I'll remember my favorite English teacher from high school, and I'll just burst into tears,' said the Oscar-winning actress.

Just like her parents: Ava sent fans into a frenzy in June after posting a selfie with her boyfriend, who many believe resembles her father Ryan Phillippe

Throwback: While the 21-year-old UC Berkeley student has previously cringed when her followers have previously compared her dad and past significant others' appearances, the similarities were undeniable in her latest Instagram post on Monday morning (Reese Witherspoon and her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe seen in 2006)

The Morning Show star also shared got emotional when she talked about how close she is with her kids.

'That makes me want to cry, the idea of having a long relationship with adult children,' Reese revealed to Tracee.

'I never expected the kind of relationship that I have with them, but it's so rewarding to be able to have kids that you can process life with a little bit, and they help me understand the complexities of what it means to be a human now.'

And the Draper James designer said she would do anything to make her kids laugh, including dancing around the kitchen to 'different Top 40 songs.'
Dolly Parton recreated her iconic 1978 Playboy magazine cover for her rarely seen husband Carl Dean's 79th birthday.

The country music superstar, 75, has been married to her other half for 57 years, and dressed up in the publication's famous bunny outfit as a special treat on his big day.

Sharing a video via Twitter on Tuesday, Dolly wrote: 'It's always #HotGirlSummer for my husband, Carl. Happy birthday my love!'

Wow! Dolly Parton, 75, recreated her iconic 1978 Playboy magazine cover by dressing up in a bunny outfit for husband Carl's 79th birthday on Tuesday

Cover girl: Dolly famously posed for the cover of Playboy in 1978, making history as the first country music star to pose for the magazine

Dolly's very ample and very famous assets were front and center in the costume which also accentuated her tiny waist.

She wore bunny ears on top of her signature blonde hair and paired the bustier outfit with long gloves and a little white bow tie at the collar.

In an accompanying video on Twitter, the Jolene hitmaker explained: 'Remember sometime back I said I was going to pose in Playboy magazine when I'm 75? Well I'm 75 and they don't have a magazine any more.

'My husband always loved the original cover of Playboy so I was trying to think of something to do that would make him happy.

Big surprise: As she wished Carl a happy birthday on Twitter, the country music superstar posted a video explaining to her fans what she was up to and why

'He still thinks I'm a hot chick after 57 years and I'm not going to talk him out of that and I hope he agrees with me too,' she added with a giggle.

Dolly famously posed for the cover of Playboy in 1978 and for Carl's birthday present, she did a photo shoot in her bunny costume and presented him with a framed copy of that cover alongside her new mocked up cover.

'In the first one, I was kind of a little butterball,' she quipped. 'Well, I'm string cheese now but he'll probably think I'm cream cheese I hope.'

Birthday treat: The Jolene hitmaker explained: 'My husband always loved the original cover of Playboy so I was trying to think of something to do that would make him happy'

Happy birthday! Dolly ended the video with a picture of herself presenting Carl with her gift while still dressed in the outfit

She ended the video with a picture of herself presenting Carl with her gift while still dressed in the outfit.

Her husband, who has remained notoriously private throughout her incredibly successful career, is shown from behind with only the top of his head visible as he sits in a chair.

In an interview with 60 Minutes Australia in March 2020, Dolly had joked about doing a second cover for Playboy when she turned 75.

She had made history with her 1978 cover as the first country music star to pose for the magazine and an inside article ran for 17 pages.

Then and now: For Carl's birthday present, she did a photo shoot in her bunny costume and presented him with a framed copy of that cover alongside her new mocked up cover

Dolly and Carl met in Nashville and started dating in 1966 when she was 18 and he was 21.

They married two years later in a small ceremony in a Baptist church in Georgia with only her mother and the preacher and his wife present.

As her recording career took off, Carl made it clear that he wanted to remain out of the spotlight and that's the way it has been ever since.

'He just don't have any desire to be in show business,' Parton said in her 1978 Playboy interview. 'He don't want to go out to the supermarket and have people say, "That's Dolly Parton's husband."'

Instant attraction: Dolly and Carl Dean met in Nashville and started dating in 1966 when she was 18 and he was 21

Newlyweds: They married two years later in a small ceremony in a Baptist church in Georgia with only her mother and the preacher and his wife present

In 2015, the star explained to People: 'We're completely opposite, but that's what makes it fun. I never know what he's gonna say or do. He's always surprising me.'

She added: 'My husband is a good man, first of all. He's a deep person, but he has a great and warped sense of humor. He makes me laugh and entertains me. He's very secure within himself.'

Dolly continued: 'He wants to be mostly around the house. He knows I'm just the opposite. I can't go enough places. I can't do enough things. He loves that. He's independent. He doesn't need me in his face, and it's the same with me.

'But when we're together, we have enough things in common that it works. We love the simple life. We can be calm and just have a good time.'
The Ritz remained open during both world wars and survived the Blitz, but the 115-year-old hotel has fallen victim to the pingdemic.

I can reveal that Britains most famous hotel was forced to close its Michelin-starred restaurant yesterday, just 24 hours after so-called Freedom Day, because staff had been pinged, or ordered to isolate, by the Governments Test and Trace app.

And it will remain closed until further notice.

The restaurant, which is known for its ornate red-and-gold dining room, offers Beef Wellington for 98, or its speciality Crepes Suzette for 40.

One guest who had booked a special birthday lunch for yesterday was phoned on Monday to have her booking cancelled.

The Ritz, Britain's most famous hotel, (pictured) has been forced to close its doors until further notice because staff had been pinged, or ordered to isolate, by the Test and Trace app

The hotel has offered its sincerest apologies for shutting its restaurant due to unforeseen circumstances and offered to extend all dining vouchers until the end of January 2022.

Top restaurateur Jeremy King, who co-owns The Wolseley down the road in Piccadilly, warns that the closure could be just the first of many that will cripple the restaurant business just as diners were beginning to return after lockdown.

I have immense sympathy for The Ritz, says King, who also runs Colbert and The Delaunay.

With the current test and trace system, its going to be a lottery as to which restaurants close over the coming weeks. He adds: The system needs a rethink.

The Ritz, where a suite can cost more than 2,000 a night, is said to be still offering 24-hour room service to guests.

A spokesman for the hotel, which held the Queens 80th birthday party and received a Royal Warrant for banqueting and catering services in 2002, could not be reached for comment. Perhaps they were pinged, too?

Film director Mickey Cornwell didnt have to look far to find the stars of his new movie.

He has cast his very talented twin daughters, Maggie and Marie, to play 13-year-old twins in his short film, Court Number 5, released next week.

It depicts the girls making a life-changing decision of whom to live with when their parents split up.

My Hollywood insider tells me: These girls are going to be huge stars.

Bells are set to Peel for Lady Antonia

The Queen held her most senior aide, Earl Peel, in such high regard that she hosted a retirement ceremony for him just four days after Prince Philips death.

Now, the former Lord Chamberlain has some news to celebrate: his daughter, Lady Antonia Peel, 29, has become engaged to financier Hubert Morant, 28, son of ex-jockey and horse trainer Simon Morant.

He proposed at his parents house a few weeks ago, she tells me. It was very relaxed.

Lady Antonia Peel - the daughter of Lord Chamberlain - has become engaged to financier Hubert Morant, 28, (pictured with Lady Peel) son of ex-jockey and horse trainer Simon Morant

Lady Antonia is Winston Churchills great granddaughter through her mother, Charlotte Soames.

She works as PA to the headmistress of Wetherby Kensington School, part of the same school group attended by Princes William and Harry.

Lady Antonia and Hubert share their flat in Clapham, South London, with a pug called Hippo.

Dame to inherit Hays 4.5million

Hailed a hero when he saved the jobs of 2,500 travel agents after taking over the collapsed Thomas Cook chain, John Hays has ensured his widow is a wealthy woman.

Dame Irene Hays is due to inherit more than 4.5 million after her husband collapsed in his office and died last November at the age of 71. Hundreds lined the streets of Sunderland for his funeral.

Dame Irene Hays is due to inherit more than 4.5 million after her husband John Hays (pictured together), founder of Hays Travel, collapsed in his office and died last November aged 71

Newly released documents from the probate registry in London reveal that the Hays Travel founder left an estate of 4.59 million to Irene, 67, who became a dame in the 2021 New Year Honours.

Hays started his business 41 years ago in the back of his mothers babywear shop, and built it up to become the largest independent travel agent in Britain. In 2018, its turnover reached 1 billion.

Friel and Finty party again

Some are reluctant to return to the social scene after 16 months of hibernation, so hats off to Anna Friel for setting an energetic example.

On Freedom Day, the Marcella star attended not one, not two, but three parties in the space of a few hours.

The most glittering of the West End bashes was at J Sheekey, where the restaurant was celebrating its 125th anniversary.

Friel, 45, was delighted to be reunited with her old friend Finty Williams, the 48-year-old daughter of Dame Judi Dench.

We met 22 years ago in New York when she was being a star on Broadway, Finty tells me. Anna hasnt aged at all  I cant believe it.

Anna Friel, 45, was delighted to be reunited with her old friend Finty Williams, the 48-year-old daughter of Dame Judi Dench on Freedom Day as she attended four parties to celebrate

Former foreign office minister Sir Alan Duncan made his first social foray this week since the publication of his explosive diaries.

Im terrified of bumping into people I insulted in the book, he wails at the Savile Club in Mayfair.

Among his countless jibes, Sir Alan described Jeremy Hunts etiquette gaffe on an Arab trip as equivalent to nose picking; he called Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg a cheap nationalist with an ego the size of a planet; and said ill-fated Health Secretary Matt Hancock used to be a pushy little s***.

Top ballet couple in pas de deux

Dazzling audiences with his prowess is part of the job for Matthew Ball, principal dancer of The Royal Ballet.

And I hear hes also made a big impression backstage  on his Brazilian dance partner, Mayara Magri, 27, whom he introduced to me at a party this week.

Pictured: Matthew Ball, principle dancer for the Royal Ballet, and Brazilian dancer Mayara Magri have moved in together during the pandemic after falling for each other through work

This is my girlfriend, Matthew, 27, tells me. We met through work and moved in together just before the first lockdown.

Adds new principal dancer Mayara: The chemistry we have makes our performance better. We have trust.
Although Reggae contains much Rastafari symbolism and several of the genres most prolific entertainers identify as Rastafarians, one Jamaican pastor believes it is important to note that the Rastafari movement did not invent the genre. According to controversial clergyman Rev Clinton Chisholm, Reggae derived from the clapping pattern of Black churches.

On the latest episode of The Bald Head-N-The Dread Podcast, the retired Jamaica Baptist Union pastor and former academic dean of the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology weighed in on the genres origins while describing how Rastafarianism and Christianity have had a mutual influence on each other.

Based on Chisholms (who is also a classically trained musician) musings, black peoples clapping patterns have always been syncopated, whereas classical white music carries a distinctly weaker pattern. He claims to have tested the theory of the history of black peoples clapping pattern amongst both white and black congregations and that black people are generally and characteristically more rhythmic.

When asked how much of a role has Christianity played in the development of Rastafari, Chisholm responded, Its a mutual influence. To its credit, the Rastafari movement has made Christians more culture-sensitive and more culture appreciative.

He went on to say that while Rastafari has contributed immensely to global culture, the phenomenon known as Reggae music has unbiased origins.

When the host challenged Chisholm with the widely accepted notion that the Nyabinghi movement with its rhythmic reasonings and drum sessions was Reggaes true source, the scholar clarified the extent of Rastafaris role.

Rastafarians have given us in Jamaica and the globe an appreciation of the value of rhythms in music. They exploited it and they made it international but they didnt invent it, thats all Im saying, the pastor said.

Outside of its more stringent doctrines, Rastafarianism is thought to be largely derived from Christianity. Rev. Chisholm also made remarks on the nature of this relationship, and how the religion has helped break down barriers among less secular groups.

The church of Jesus Christ in general has been helped by Rastafari in terms of being more pro-culture, being more affirming of your amoral cultural intention, so I would say the influence is more Rastafari to Christianity than Christianity to Rastafari in the general sense.
LIMA, Peru (AP)  Rural teacher-turned-political novice Pedro Castillo on Monday became the winner of Perus presidential election after the countrys longest electoral count in 40 years.

Castillo, whose supporters included Perus poor and rural citizens, defeated right-wing politician Keiko Fujimori by just 44,000 votes. Electoral authorities released the final official results more than a month after the runoff election took place in the South American nation.

Wielding a pencil the size of a cane, symbol of his Peru Libre party, Castillo popularized the phrase No more poor in a rich country. The economy of Peru, the worlds second-largest copper producer, has been crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, increasing the poverty level to almost one-third of the population and eliminating the gains of a decade.

The shortfalls of Perus public health services have contributed to the countrys poor pandemic outcomes, leaving it with the highest global per capita death rate. Castillo has promised to use the revenues from the mining sector to improve public services, including education and health, whose inadequacies were highlighted by the pandemic.

Those who do not have a car should have at least one bicycle, Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press in mid-April at his adobe house in Anguia, Perus third poorest district.

Since surprising Peruvians and observers by advancing to the presidential runoff election, Castillo has softened his first proposals on nationalizing multinational mining and natural gas companies. Instead, his campaign has said he is considering raising taxes on profits due to high copper prices, which exceed $10,000 per ton.

Historians say he is the first peasant to become president of Peru, where until now, Indigenous people almost always have received the worst of the deficient public services even though the nation boasted of being the economic star of Latin America in the first two decades of the century.

There are no cases of a person unrelated to the professional, military or economic elites who reaches the presidency, Cecilia Mendez, a Peruvian historian and professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told a radio station.

Fujimori, a former congresswoman, ran for a third time for president with the support of the business elites. She is the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

Hundreds of Peruvians from various regions camped out for more than a month in front of the Electoral Tribunal in Lima, Perus capital, to await Castillos proclamation. Many do not belong to Castillos party, but they trust the professor because he will not be like the other politicians who have not kept their promises and do not defend the poor, said Maruja Inquilla, an environmental activist who arrived from a town near Titicaca, the mythical lake of the Incas.

Castillos meteoric rise from unknown to president elect has divided the Andean nation deeply.

Author Mario Vargas Llosa, a holder of a Nobel Prize for literature, has said Castillo represents the disappearance of democracy and freedom in Peru. Meanwhile, retired soldiers sent a letter to the commander of the armed forces asking him not to respect Castillos victory.

Fujimori said Monday that she will accept Castillos victory, after accusing him for a month of electoral fraud without offering any evidence. The accusation delayed his appointment as president-elect as she asked electoral authorities to annul thousands of votes, many in Indigenous and poor communities in the Andes.

Lets not put the obstacles to move this country forward, Castillo asked Fujimori in his first remarks in front of hundreds of followers in Lima.

The United States, European Union and 14 electoral missions determined that the voting was fair. The U.S. called the election a model of democracy for the region.

Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told a radio station that Castillo is arriving to the presidency very weak, and in some sense in a very similar position to Salvador Allende when he came to power in Chile in 1970 and to Joao Goulart, who became president of Brazil in 1962.

He has almost the entire establishment of Lima against him, said Levitsky, an expert on Latin American politics.

He added that if Castillo tried to change the constitution of Peru  enacted in 1993 during the tenure of Alberto Fujimori  without building a consensus, (without) alliances with center games, it would be very dangerous because it would be a justification for a coup.

The president-elect has never held office. He worked as an elementary school teacher for the last 25 years in his native San Luis de Puna, a remote village in Cajamarca, a northern region. He campaigned wearing rubber sandals and a wide-brimmed hat, like the peasants in his community, where 40% of children are chronically malnourished.

In 2017, he led the largest teacher strike in 30 years in search of better pay and, although he did not achieve substantial improvements, he sat down to talk with Cabinet ministers, legislators and bureaucrats.

Over the past two decades, Peruvians have seen that the previous political experience and university degrees of their five former presidents did not help fight corruption. All former Peruvian presidents who governed since 1985 have been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned or arrested in their mansions. One died by suicide before police could take him into custody. The South American country cycled through three presidents last November.

Castillo recalled that the first turn in his life occurred one night as a child when his teacher persuaded his father to allow him to finish his primary education at a school two hours from home. It happened while both adults chewed coca leaves, an Andean custom to reduce fatigue.

He suffered a lot in his childhood, his wife, teacher Lilia Paredes, told AP while doing dishes at home. The couple has two children.

He got used to long walks. He would arrive at the classroom with his peasant sandals, with a woolen saddlebag on his shoulder, a notebook and his lunch, which consisted of sweet potatoes or tamales that cooled with the hours.

Castillo said his life was marked by the work he did as a child with his eight siblings, but also by the memory of the treatment that his illiterate parents received from the owner of the land where they lived. He cried when he remembered that if the rent was not paid, the landowner kept the best crops.

You kept looking at what you had sown, you clutched your stomach, and I will not forget that, I will not forgive it either, he said.

___

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
WASHINGTON (AP)  House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy has picked five Republicans to sit on the new select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, signaling that Republicans will participate in the investigation that they have staunchly opposed.

McCarthy said Monday that he has selected Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, who recently visited former President Donald Trump on trips to the U.S.-Mexico border and Trump's New Jersey golf club, to be the top Republican on the panel. The Republican leader also tapped Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis, North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong and Texas Rep. Troy Nehls to serve on the committee.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi must approve the names before they are final, per committee rules. An aide to Pelosi said she has received notification from McCarthy, but it is unclear when or if she will approve the GOP members. The aide was granted anonymity to discuss the Republican picks ahead of an official announcement.

The five Republican men selected by McCarthy have all backed Trump, whose supporters laid siege to the Capitol building on Jan. 6 and interrupted the certification of President Joe Biden's victory. Banks, Jordan and Nehls all voted to overturn Biden's win that day, even after the rioting. Davis and Armstrong were among the minority of Republicans who voted to certify Biden's win.

McCarthy's picks come after all but two Republicans opposed the creation of the 13-person select committee in a House vote last month, with most in the GOP arguing that the majority-Democratic panel would conduct a partisan probe. House Democrats originally attempted to create an evenly split, independent commission to investigate the insurrection, but that effort fell short when it was blocked by Senate Republicans.

House Republicans have largely remained loyal to Trump despite the violent insurrection of his supporters that sent many of them running for their lives. Banks made clear in a statement Monday evening that he would take a politically combative approach to his leadership on the panel, sharply criticizing the Democrats who had set it up.

Make no mistake, Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the Lefts authoritarian agenda," Banks said.

Jordan, one of Trump's staunchest defenders through his two impeachments and the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said after the House vote to form the panel that he believed the investigation is impeachment three against the former president. Trump was impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate both times.

The members selected by McCarthy had mixed reactions to the insurrection as it happened on Jan. 6. While Jordan led the effort to overturn election results, others tweeted to the rioters to end the violence or condemned it.

Thank you to the Capitol police and all law enforcement, Armstrong tweeted shortly after the House was evacuated that afternoon. Rioting is not protesting. This needs to stop. Now.

Around the same time, Davis tweeted: This is a sad day for our country. The lawlessness has got to stop. Protestors must leave the Capitol so Congress can resume the process of confirming the Electoral College vote.

Nehls, a former sheriff, was one of several members who helped barricade the House doors as rioters tried to beat them down. He tweeted an Associated Press photo of himself holding the door alongside Capitol Police  face to face with rioters who had broken the glass in the entryway.

I was proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Capitol police barricading entrance to our sacred House chamber, while trying to calm the situation talking to protestors, Nehls tweeted. What Im witnessing is a disgrace. Were better than this. Violence is NEVER the answer. Law and order!"

A week later, all five members voted against the impeachment of Trump, who had told his supporters gathered in Washington on Jan. 6 to fight like hell to overturn his election defeat.

The Democratic chair of the select committee, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said Monday evening that he hadn't seen the GOP names but referred the matter to Pelosi. It's up to her, he said.

Pelosi named eight members of the committee earlier this month  seven Democrats and Republican Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has strongly criticized Trump and has been the most outspoken member of her caucus against the insurrection. Cheney, who was demoted from GOP leadership in May over her comments, was one of the two Republicans who voted in favor of forming the committee, along with Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger.

As McCarthy stayed quiet for weeks on Republican participation on the panel, Thompson has said that the committee will have a quorum to conduct business whether GOP members are present or not.

The new members will be put to the test at the panel's first hearing next week, with at least four rank-and-file police officers who battled rioters that day testifying about their experiences. Dozens of police officers were injured as the crowd pushed past them and broke into the Capitol building.

Seven people died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.

___

Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.
Hearst Connecticut Media

To the Editor:

Last Thursday, Tara Ochman announced her bid for First Selectman. I was excited to join the crowd that gathered at Darien Town Hall to support her announcement.


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New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Tuesday termed wholly uncalled for the Kerala government's relaxations for Bakrid in areas with a high Covid positivity rate and said giving in to pressure from traders discloses a sorry state of affairs.

Directing the state government to "heed the Right to Life", the apex court also warned Kerala it will take action if the easing of curbs leads to further spread of the virus and this is brought before it by any person. To give in to pressure groups (of traders) so that the citizenry of India is laid bare to a nationwide pandemic discloses a sorry state of affairs. Even otherwise, assurances from traders and nothing more do not inspire any confidence in the people of India or this court, a bench of Justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai said.

We direct the Kerala government to give heed to Right to Life enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution, it said.

The bench was hearing an application raising the issue of the Bakrid relaxations in Kerala. The apex court had last week taken cognisance on its own of media reports on the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow the Kanwar Yatra amid the Covid pandemic.

The apex court referred to a paragraph in the affidavit filed by the Kerala government and said it disclosed that the state has given in to associations of traders, which made a representation that they have stocked up goods for the purpose of Bakrid.

What is extremely alarming is the fact that in Category D where infection rates are the highest, a full day of relaxation has been granted, it said.

We state that this affidavit discloses a sorry state of affairs as has been stated above and does not in real manner safeguard the Right to Life and Health guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution it said.

We may also indicate that if as a result of this (relaxations), if any untoward spread of COVID-19 takes place, any member of the public may approach this court after which the court will take action accordingly. The IA is disposed of, the top court said.

The bench had on Monday asked the Kerala government to file its response during the day on the application against the three-day relaxation in Covid restrictions in the state in view of Bakrid on Wednesday.

In its affidavit filed in the top court, the state has said that curbs and resultant economic slowdown have put the population in a lot of misery.

The traders were expecting that the Bakrid sales will alleviate their misery to a certain extent. They have stocked up the goods for this purpose much early. The organisation of traders started to agitate against the stringent curbs implemented in the LSGIs (local self government institutions) and declared that they will open shops all over the state flouting the regulations," the affidavit said.

It said the opposition political parties also raised the traders' issue in public domain and demanded more relaxations in the curbs to give some respite to the traders and to allow some economic activities in the state.

"The chief minister held discussion with the organisations and heard their demands on July 16, 2021. The traders assured that the opening of shops will be strictly following COVID protocols and they are ready to follow the additional regulations ordered by the state, if any," it said.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had announced the concessions at a press conference on July 17. In view of Bakrid (Eid-ul-Azha) being celebrated on July 21, textiles, footwear shops, jewellery, fancy stores, shops selling home appliances and electronic items, all types of repairing shops and shops selling essential items shall be allowed to open on July 18-20 from 7 AM to 8 PM in category A, B and C areas, he said.

In D category areas, these shops can function only on July 19, he had said. The areas have been categorised based on test positivity rates.

On Monday, the top court closed the matter related to the Kanwar Yatra in Uttar Pradesh and asked the authorities to ensure that any untoward incident directly affecting the lives of the public shall be looked upon sternly and prompt action would be taken immediately.
Bengaluru: Amid heightened buzz within a section of the ruling BJP that the exit of Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa was on the cards, community factor seems to have come to the fore, with prominent Veerashaiva-Lingayat political leaders across party lines and seers throwing their weight behind him.

Several seers and leaders of the dominant community, which is estimated to form about 16 per cent of the states population, have cautioned the BJP against any move to dislodge the 78-year-old Lingayat strongman from the Chief Minister's post.

The Veerashaiva-Lingayat community is considered to be the BJP's core support base.

With a new round of speculation on whether replacement of Yediyurappa is round the corner, senior Congress leader and the head of the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, Shamanur Shivashankarappa, said the community is behind the Chief Minister. "They (BJP leadership) should remember history-- S Nijalingappa, Veerendra Patil, J H Patel and S R Bommai (all former Chief Minisyers). They will destroy themselves if they attempt such a thing," Shivashankarappa said in response to a question on reports that BJP is mulling replacing Yediyurappa.

Stating that the community wants him to continue as the Chief Minister, he said Yediyurappa has built the party from scratch.

"Veerashaiva Mahasabha is behind him...as long as Yediyurappa is there, they (BJP) will be there. If Yediyurappa is disturbed, things will end there," he said.

Another prominent Congress leader from the Lingayat community and former Minister M B Patil has warned that the BJP may face the wrath of Lingayats, if they "ill treat" a tall leader like Yediyurappa.

"BJP should value the contribution of Yediyurappa and treat him with dignity. This is my personal opinion, understanding that the proposed changes may be internal matters of the BJP," he said.

However, the statement by senior Congress leaders, coming out in the open, in support of Yediyurappa is seen as an attempt to enhance their clout in the community by attracting his Veerashaiva-Lingayat support base towards themselves.

Several prominent seers from the community like Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, head of the Chitradurga-based Sri Jagadguru Murugharajendra Mutt, Sri Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami of Rambhapuri Peetha of Balehonnur, and Srisaila Jagadguru Channa Siddharama Panditaradhya have also favoured Yediyurappa's continuation, while warning the BJP.

Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami said any move to replace Yediyurappa will have "big consequences" for the BJP.

"Friction is common in politics, let anyone say anything, but we have confidence that B S Yediyurappa will continue as the Chief Minister and complete the term.If there are any shortcomings in this, it will have big consequences for the party," he said.

Yediyurappa has support from people across parties and communities for his efficient work during floods and COVID, even at this age, the seer said. "I have confidence that the national leadership (of BJP) will not allow it (CM replacement)," he added. Murugha Sharanaru said Yediyurappa is among the great statesmen-politicians that the state has seen, and he is a force. "Yediyurappa may be Lingayat by birth, but he is a mass leader who can take all the communities together. Nothing should happen that affects the dignity of a tall Lingayat leader like him.He has grown from grassroot level and functioned effectively during COVID, and his continuation is the wish of various pontiffs, people, organisations and political leaders across party lines," he added.

Siddharama Panditaradhya said, "Yediyurappa may be old, but he's still working.He should be allowed to continue."

Yediyurappa is known for having provided generous grants to mutts and religious institutions during his previous term as Chief Minister, and thereby has earned their trust, according to some analysts.

Recently amid speculation about his replacement, Yediyurappa's younger son and state BJP Vice President B Y Vijayendra had held a series of meetings with prominent Veerashaiva-Lingayat seers, which had raised eyebrows in political circles.

Siddharama Panditaradhya swamiji and Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami had even paid a visit to Yediyurappa's home in Shivamogga, recently.

However, Yediyurappa's main detractors are also from within the community.

Disgruntled BJP MLAs Basanagouda Patil Yatnal and Arvind Bellad, who are said to be among those at the forefront of the efforts that have been on for some time now seeking for CM's replacement, belong to the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community.

The community, which owes allegiance to the 12th century social reform movement initiated by Basaveshwara, has a substantial population in Karnataka, especially in the northern parts of the state.

The politically influential community is considered to have a significant presence in about 140 of the total 224 assembly constituencies in the state, and decisive in about 90 seats, according to political observers.
Saying that Leichombam cant be kept behind the bars even for a day more, Justice D.Y.Chandrachud heading a bench also comprising Justice M.R.Shah said that he will be released by 5 pm today. (Twitter)

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the release of activist Erendro Leichombam who was detained under National Security Act (NSA) for his Facebook post criticising ruling Bharatiya Janata Partyu (BJP) leaders advocating cow dung and cow urine as cures for Covid.

Hailing from Maniour, Leichombam, a post-graduate in public administration from Harvard university, was arrested for his Facebook post. His father L. Raghumani Singh had moved the top court for the release of his son Leichombam.

Saying that Leichombam cant be kept behind the bars even for a day more, Justice D.Y.Chandrachud heading a bench also comprising Justice

M.R.Shah said that he will be released by 5 pm today.

Ordering the release with Leichombam furnishing a personal bond of Rs 1000/-, the court in its order said, We are of the view that continued detention of the petitioner would be a violation of right to life and personal liberty under Article 21. We accordingly direct that the petitioner shall be released forthwith 

The court further ordered that its e order has to be complied with on or before 5 pm today,

He cannot be kept in jail even for a day. We will order his release today, Justice Chandrachud said as Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the government, sought a days time to take instructions.

L Raghumani Singh in his petition had said that the detention of Leichombam is a reprisal for his criticism against ruling party leaders advocating cow-dung and cow-urine as cures for Covid.

The petition further said that it was a shocking instance of misuse of preventive detention law to stifle completely innocuous speech that is fully protected by the constitution and was made in public interest.

Recalling April 2021 order of the top court restricting police across the country from proceedings against the people for their social media posts critical of Covid policies being followed by the government. The petition said that the detention of Leichombam was in contempt of the April 30, 2021 order of the top court in the suo motu case of Covid in which the court had said that no one should be punished for critiquing Covid policies over social media.
As organisers of the demonstration had already intimated about their protest programme, a large number of police personnel had been deployed all along the routes leading to the CMs Camp Office. (PTI)

Vijayawada: There was high tension near Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddys Camp Office on Monday as a large number of unemployed youth and students tried to lay a siege demanding filling up of vacant posts in various government departments.

As organisers of the demonstration had already intimated about their protest programme, a large number of police personnel had been deployed all along the routes leading to the CMs Camp Office.

Many protesters had been taken into preventive custody while on their way to the camp office. Some leaders had even been placed under house arrest.

AP Pradesh Congress Committee president Sake Sailajanath condemned the arrest of unemployed youth and students. He said they were only protesting in a peaceful manner.

CPI state secretary K. Ramakrishna too protested against the arrests and wondered why the state government has taken two long years for releasing a job calendar with very few vacancies.
A health worker carries vials of the Covaxin vaccine against the Covid-19 coronavirus at a health centre in New Dehi. (Photo: AFP)

Hyderabad: The World Health Organisation, which is currently reviewing Bharat Biotech's application for an Emergency Use Listing (EUL) of its COVID-19 vaccine Covaxin, has said it is assessing the data of the jab.

In an update on its website, the WHO, which began rolling data on July 6, said the date for a decision on the jab is yet "to be confirmed".

Rolling data allows the WHO to start its review right away, as information continues to come in, to accelerate the overall review process.

Suchitra Ella, joint managing director of Bharat Biotech, had recently said the EUL process is a step closer to the final decision on Covaxin's 'global acceptance' as the rolling data was slated to begin in July.

She also, in a tweet, said the company was working closely with the WHO for inclusion of Covaxin in its EUL and approval is not expected to be a long drawn process as cell line and majority of Bharat Biotech's facilities have already been audited and approved by the global health watchdog for BBIL's other vaccines in the past.

The city-based vaccine maker recently said it concluded the final analysis of Covaxin efficacy from Phase 3 trials.

The jab demonstrated 77.8 per cent effectiveness against symptomatic COVID-19 and 65.2 per cent protection against the B.1.617.2 Delta variant, it said.
Kerala suffered a loss of over Rs 30,000 crore in the devastating floods of 2018. (Photo: PTI/File)

Malappuram: A Primary Health Centre near here, which was destroyed in the 2018 floods, has got a new lease of life under the Rebuild Kerala initiative.

Claimed to be the country's largest family health centre, the state-of-the-art facility at Vazhakkad will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on July 24.

It was reconstructed under the 'VPS-Rebuild Kerala initiative' for Rs 10 crore.

"Nestled in rural Malappuram, the health centre has an advanced laboratory and modern imaging department. The family health centre has ten observation beds with oxygen concentrators and a stabilisation unit to attend to patients suffering from low oxygen saturation," a release said.

District Medical Officer K Sakeena said the facility used to attend to around 75,000 people annually.

The upgraded facility is expected to see around 200,000 patients a year, she said.

"We wanted all the members of the community to be a part of the initiative.Experts from different fields along with the local population had come together to make this endeavour a success," UAE-based VPS Healthcare Chairman and Managing Director, Shamsheer Vayalil said.

The reconstructed family health centre has adopted a modern structure developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and designed by a group of students from the School of Architecture and Planning at Government Engineering College, Thrissur.

The technology used is Glass Fibre Reinforced Gypsum (GFRG) panel technology known as Rapidwall.

The eco-friendly technology eliminates bricks, blocks, timber, and plasterboard linings, making the building environment-friendly, non-polluting, energy-efficient, and aesthetically pleasing, the release said.

The 15,000 square feet family health centre has an emergency room, a mini-operation theatre, doctors' consulting rooms, nurses' station, medical store, vaccine store, sample collection centre, vision and dental clinic, a designated zone for mother and child, pregnant women and the elderly.

A play area for the children abutting the mother and child department is a unique feature.Also, the family health centre has separate and exclusive outpatient facilities for pregnant women and the elderly population, ensuring quality consultation time and adequate care.

Kerala suffered a loss of over Rs 30,000 crore in the devastating floods of 2018.
Its ironic to recall as the world waits for the predicted apocalypse after the United States completely withdraws from Afghanistan that as late as the 1970s American newspapermen used Afghanistanism to mean dull and distant events of no consequence. As a New York Times writer put it, who can check up on or take offence at news from Afghanistan?

Things have moved on considerably since then. The spectre of Afghanistan again under the fundamentalist Taliban haunts global thinking. In an unrelated but simultaneous development, the bipartisan US Commission on International Religious Freedom has recommended for the second year running that India should be listed among Countries of Particular Concern for the worst violations of religious freedoms. The stricture coincides with the Uttarakhand high courts warning that a civilisation is judged by how it treats its minorities. If that hints at fears of Hindutva smuggled in by the backdoor, a bastion of Hindu orthodoxy may have to find ways of co-existing with a fiercely bigoted Islamic regime beyond the virtual no-mans-land of strife-torn Pakistan.

The recent admittedly accidental killing of a talented young Indian photographer, Pulitzer prize-winner Danish Siddiqui, in Kandahar further underlines the need to be prepared for that eventuality. Closing down two (or is it three?) of four consulates means that India, the brother country whose friendship no enemy can hamper, as the Kabul foreign ministry put it, is scaling down its role in Afghanistan. How far that process is carried depends as much on New Delhis innovative diplomacy as on the Afghan/Taliban response.

India has dismissed as completely false reports of Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, the external affairs minister, meeting the Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar. But his ministry did admit on June 10 that we are in contact with various stakeholders in Afghanistan. With a peripatetic minister roaming the world, there has been ample opportunity for both direct and indirect soundings. The ambivalent denial may be like the earlier rejection of rumours about 32 Indian consulates in Afghanistan. However great the exaggeration, India was the South Asian country with which Afghanistan had the closest ties. To quote Shaida Mohammad Abdali, former Afghan ambassador in Delhi, India is the biggest regional donor to Afghanistan and the fifth largest donor globally with over $3 billion in assistance. India has built over 200 public and private schools, sponsors over 1,000 scholarships, hosts over 16,000 Afghan students. Such massive investment in the Salma Dam, the Parliament building, hospitals, roads and power stations may have called for numerous outlets which others might have given a diplomatic colouring.

Reports suggest that not all militants might be equally opposed to their kaffir benefactor. The network that the deceased Jalaluddin Haqqani founded, and which is now led by his son Sirajuddin and operating out of North Waziristan in Pakistan, is said to have reservations about Indias role in Afghanistan, according to The Times, London. Indians blame it for the 2008 attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. In contrast, Suhail Shaheen, Talibans political spokesman based in Qatar, acknowledges the need for external help in reconstruction. However, India should remain neutral and should not support the current Kabul administration with military hardware which are ultimately used against the people of Afghanistan and the destruction of the country, he warns. This is not good for their image and peoples perception of them.

However unyielding these statements may sound, the exigencies of protracted war and a power struggle that goes back to even before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 does not make for constancy. The Haqqani Network was a prized asset of the Central Intelligence Agency during the war against the Soviet Union when former US President Ronald Reagan called Jalaluddin Haqqani a freedom fighter. Other American officials thought he was goodness personified for directing a holy war by pro-Taliban militants. In 2016, Lt. Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr. claimed that the US and Nato forces were not targeting the Haqqani Network in Afghanistan.

Given this pragmatism, it isnt surprising that the Americans  more so the Trump administration than President Joe Bidens -- have been pressing India to reach an understanding with the Taliban. Mr Trumps special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, was especially keen because of the Doha Agreement of February 29, 2020 with the entity that calls itself the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. India would naturally insist on guarantees that the Taliban will not act in concert with Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence or terrorist organisations like the Lashkar-e-Tayabba and Jaish-e-Mohammed or provide sanctuary to

wanted criminals. The Indian interlocutors can justifiably add that the Doha Agreements clauses have been openly violated.

Some in New Delhi may even be waiting for a return of the halcyon days of the Northern Alliance, officially the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, set up in late 1996 after the Islamists overran Kabul. Ahmad Shah Massouds 2001 murder days before 9/11 left the alliance in shambles but there is talk now of regrouping under the septuagenarian Ismail Khan, once the Herat strong man, and Massouds former vice-president, Marshal Abdul Rashid Dostum. Much will depend on Pakistan and its ability and willingness to manipulate non-state actors to avenge its own sense of deprivation. In turn, Pakistans success in fishing in troubled waters is determined to a large extent by Indias domestic perceptions. The situation created by the sudden abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution by a presidential order in August 2019 and the equally sudden dismantling of the State of Jammu and Kashmir is not helped by continuing pinpricks like the restrictions on beef in Lakshadweep, the ban on meat and eggs in and around Haridwar and the Assam Cattle Preservation Bills feared impact in Meghalaya and Nagaland as well as on local Muslims.

If Kashmir is really the root cause of all problems, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his advisers need to ask themselves dispassionately why the obstacle has persisted these 74 years despite thousands of crores spent in welfare expenditure and thousands more on various forms of what is euphemistically called security. Even if Pakistan were the only spoiler, we would need to consider whether discontent at home is not a major catalyst.
Few people have understood what the Niti Aayog is or what it does, but its head Amitabh Kant has given his view on how to enhance the ease of doing business in India. His answer is single window clearances, timely clearances and land acquisition. Mr Kant also says that public-private partnerships in social infrastructure such as healthcare is yet another avenue of investment in India.

It is of course extremely important that India do this as the number of people who are employed in India has shrunk in the past five years, though the population has grown. I wanted to look at one sector which I understand reasonably well.

NGOs, or non-governmental organisations, are the third largest workforce in the United States. The retail and manufacturing sectors employ more people than the NGO sector there. In 24 American states out of 50, NGOs actually employ more workers than all the branches of manufacturing combined. It is similar in the United Kingdom. In Europe, 13 per cent of all jobs are in the NGO sector, and this is 2.8 crore jobs in total. To put this figure in perspective, consider that less than 10 per cent of all jobs in India are in the formal sector.

Now let us look at how this government has enhanced the ease of doing business for this part of the private sector in India. In 2020, the Narendra Modi government ordered a change in the way that NGOs could work in India. The first change is that the 23,000 NGOs which received any form of foreign donations could receive that money only in a single branch of the State Bank of India at Parliament Street in New Delhi. Only 1,488 NGOs were registered in New Delhi, and so the rest must come to New Delhi to open and operate their account, and this is during the Covid-19 pandemic. No other part of the private sector is asked to do this and corporate bodies can receive foreign money in any bank account anywhere in India.

Over 46 per cent of these NGOs had received no foreign money in 2018-19 though they had an FCRA licence, and another 41 per cent had received less than `1 crore.

The second change was that the NGOs could spend only 20 per cent of the money they received on what the government defines as administrative expenses. Salaries, travel expenses, the cost of hiring individuals, consumables like electricity and water charges, telephone charges, postal and courier charges, repairs to the office, stationery and printing charges, transport, the cost of accounting for and administering funds, running and maintenance of vehicles, cost of writing and filing reports, legal and professional charges and rent were all classified as administrative expenses. No more than 20 per cent could be spent on these things. Again, no other part of the private sector is given orders on what it can and cannot do with its own money.

The third is that the law now prevents an NGO from redistributing its funds to smaller NGOs, which worked on the ground and did not have access to money. This rule would hit the sector because NGOs do not compete with each other and cooperate in many areas. A study by Ashoka University showed that half of the 4,107 small NGOs who received money in this fashion in 2018-19 got only `7.6 lakh or less. They would no longer get even this.

There were some other changes too but let us leave those aside to consider what the damage to India has been. When the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic hammered India, the Modi government turned to these same NGOs for help. Ten NGOs the BBC spoke to for a report on its Newsnight show said they all had trouble distributing aid because of the new rules. Indian hospitals and charitable trusts could not receive Covid relief material sent by donors abroad because of the law. This jeopardised plans by donors to buy oxygen plants and concentrators, especially in rural areas. In one hospital where two dozen people had already died for lack of oxygen, foreign donors could not send an oxygen production plant because of the law. No entity could receive foreign aid even as medicines or equipment to save lives, without being registered under the NGO law, called the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act.

Moreover, the very stringent provisions of this FCRA law means that the intended use of the foreign contribution should also match the specified objective of the trust at the time of FCRA registration. This means that if the NGO has registered its specified objective as education, it cannot use its money to buy ventilators. None of these restrictions apply to any part of the rest of the private sector. It is only the NGOs of India who are subjected to this, even though it damages the country and hurts the poorest Indians as the pandemic has exposed very clearly.

If the government is serious about making it easier to operate in India, there is one easy way for it to do so. It should stop what it is deliberately doing to the NGO sector and let it operate as freely as the rest of the private sector. And it should look at the United States, Britain and Europe and consider what the benefits of a large and robust NGO sector are to the economy, employment and to society.
The latest travel advisory replaces the one issued on May 5 that had placed India in the Level 4 category. (Representational image: PTI)

Washington: The US has lowered its travel advisory for India from the highest Level 4, meaning no travel, to Level 3, which urges citizens to reconsider it, amidst a drop in the number of COVID-19 deaths and infections in the country.

India recorded 30,093 new coronavirus infections, the lowest in 125 days, taking the total tally of COVID-19 cases to 3,11,74,322, according to the Union Health Ministry data updated on Tuesday.

The death toll climbed to 4,14,482 with 374 daily fatalities, the lowest in 111 days, while the active cases have declined to 4,06,130, the lowest in 117 days.

When last month's advisory was issued, India was struggling with a second wave of the pandemic with more than 3,00,000 daily new coronavirus cases being reported.

Hospitals in many parts of the country were reeling under a shortage of medical oxygen and beds.

The US also eased travel recommendations on Pakistan from Level 4 to Level 3.

The improvement of the travel advisories for India and Pakistan by the State Department on Monday comes in an acknowledgment of the improving COVID-19 pandemic situation in the region.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 3 Travel Health Notice for India due to COVID-19, indicating a high level of COVID-19 in the country, the State Department said on Monday.

"Your risk of contracting COVID-19 and developing severe symptoms may be lower if you are fully vaccinated with an FDA authorised vaccine. Before planning any international travel, please review the CDC's specific recommendations for vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers," it said.

"Reconsider travel to India due to COVID-19. Exercise increased caution due to crime and terrorism," it said.

The latest travel advisory replaces the one issued on May 5 that had placed India in the Level 4 category.

While the CDC issued a Level 2 Travel Health Notice for Pakistan due to COVID-19, indicating a moderate level of the pandemic, the State Department maintained Level 3 risk for US citizens travelling to the country due to terrorism.

"Reconsider travel to Pakistan due to terrorism and sectarian violence. Exercise increased caution in Pakistan due to COVID-19. Some areas have increased risk. Read the entire Travel Advisory," the State Department said.
Security personnel inspect a damaged vehicle which was firing rockets in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, July 20, 2021. At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid-a-Adha. (AP)

Kabul: At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, which destroyed at least one car parked on a nearby street.

The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off.

The barrage came as the US and NATO complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the Taliban gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighbouring countries over the past weeks.

The withdrawal is more than 95 per cent complete and the final US soldier will be gone by August 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.

This Eid has been named after Afghan forces to honour their sacrifices and courage, especially in the last three months, Ghani said in his address to the nation following morning prayers for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice."

The Taliban have no intention and willingness for peace Ghani said.

We have proven that we have the intention, willingness and have sacrificed for peace.

Ghani also deplored his government's decision to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners to get peace talks started last year as a big mistake that only strengthened the insurgents.

We released 5,000 prisoners to start peace talks, but until today the Taliban haven't shown any serious or meaningful interest in peace negotiations.

Abdullah Abdullah, the No. 2 official in the government, was inside the palace during the rocket attack on Tuesday, having returned on Monday from peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

Those inside the palace, however, were far removed from where the rockets landed.

The two days of meetings in Doha - the highest level of negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban so far - aimed at jumpstarting stalled talks but ended with a promise of more high-level talks.

In his speech, Ghani also assailed neighbouring Pakistan, which Kabul blames for harbouring the Taliban leadership and providing a safe haven and assistance to the insurgents.

In the most recent fighting in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, Taliban fighters were seen receiving treatment at a Pakistani hospital across the border in Chaman.

Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it claims is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace.

Pakistan has also been deeply critical of Kabul, saying it has allowed another militant group, the Pakistani Taliban - Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan - to find safety in Afghanistan from where they have launched a growing number of attacks targeting the Pakistan military.

Pakistan does not want a Taliban regime in its homeland" but their media have been campaigning for a Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Ghani added.

The Eid al-Adha is the most important Islamic holiday, marking the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim - Abraham to Christians and Jews - to sacrifice his son.

During the holiday, which in most places lasts four days, Muslims slaughter sheep or cattle and distribute part of the meat to the poor.
The joint investigation into Pegasus identified at least 180 journalists in 20 countries who were selected for potential targeting between 2016 to June 2021. (Photo: Representational Image/AFP)

PARIS: Prosecutors in Paris said Tuesday that they had opened a probe into allegations that Moroccan intelligence services used the Israeli surveillance software Pegasus to spy on several French journalists.

The investigation will examine 10 different charges, including whether there was a breach of personal privacy, fraudulent access to personal electronic devices, and criminal association.

Investigative website Mediapart filed a legal complaint on Monday over the spying claims, which Morocco has denied, and the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine has said it plans to do so as well.

A collaborative investigation by The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde and other media outlets, based on a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers, claimed Monday that spying worldwide using the technology from the NSO Group had been far more extensive than previously thought.

Mediapart revealed that the phones of its founder Edwy Plenel and one of its journalists were among those targeted by Moroccan intelligence services.

In an article published Monday, it said that Morocco had "violated the privacy of two journalists, undermined the profession of informing people and the freedom of the media, stolen and exploited personal and professional data."

Around 30 journalists and bosses in the French media were allegedly targeted by Moroccan security services, including employees of Le Monde, Le Figaro, France Televisions and Agence France-Presse, Le Monde reported.

Morocco denied the claims, saying it "never acquired computer software to infiltrate communication devices."

The country ranks 136 out of 180 countries in the 2021 World Press Freedom Index, and journalists there "continue to be subjected to judicial harassment," according to the Reporters without Borders media freedom group.

Journalists reporting on the ruling monarchy, corruption or events in the disputed Western Sahara region are known to face particular scrutiny.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal told French public radio that "these are extremely shocking acts and, if proven, are extremely serious."

He said that France was "extremely attached to press freedom" and that any attempt to curtail journalists' freedom to report was "very serious."

The joint investigation into Pegasus identified at least 180 journalists in 20 countries who were selected for potential targeting between 2016 to June 2021.

Among them were reporters for The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, El Pais, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, The Economist and Reuters, The Guardian reported.
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Derry woman Aoibheann Gillespie-Mules has returned to Ireland after spending years travelling the world. As a qualified diving instructor, she has visited some of the most exotic underwater locations. Today, she reveals her favourites and tells of the difficult decision of going ahead with her wedding to Raffy on an exotic island in the Philippines without any of her family in attendance due to the coronavirus pandemic.



Little did Aoibheann know when she first entered the water as a toddler in the Portnoo area of Donegal, she would go on swim underwater at some of the world's most exotic locations.

When asked what is the favourite country she has visited, Aoibheann had no hesitation.

It definitely has to be the Philippines, and one island in particular is Palawan, Raffys home. Many family and friends from home stopped over in this stunning spot where I had the chance to take them diving and exploring the islands.

Every year in Raffys home, on his local beach, female turtles come to lay their eggs - last year over 100 nests hatched. This country has such a special place in my heart, not only from the nature and beauty but now, of course, my family connection through Raffy.

As a scuba instructor I was hoping to find a place where the jungle met the sea, where I would be diving daily in clear, torquise waters seeing turtles on every dive. I found a job in the gorgeous village of El Nido, on Palawan looking for new instructors and I took a chance and all of a sudden I was on the plane to the Philippines  it was literally the dream job

My first job was in a family-run dive centre in El Nido where I was mainly instructing and guiding customers around the reef. Over the three year period working here I instructed nearly 500 students from beginner courses all the way up to professional courses. We were doing three-four dives daily and as intense and challenging the job could be the experiences were incredible - working in such a positive environment, introducing people to the underwater world and helping students learn and develop their skills as a diver.

We moved to another island, Negros Oriental, and spent four years working at Marine Conservation NGO where I worked as the lead instructor and volunteer co-ordinator for up to 40 volunteers, mainly focusing on professional courses for our interns.

Aside from instructing, we were much involved in monitoring the reefs along the coastline, working with local communities and government units to help protect reef, mangrove and seagrass ecosystems.

Aoibheann has dived in many different countries now, from Australia, all around South East Asia, Africa and, finally, Ireland.

They have all been spectacular in their own unique way - the top on my list has to be our trip to Tubbataha Reef Marine Park, almost 100,000 hectares of high quality marine habitats.

This reserve has been protected since the early '80s by an amazing team and is one of the most beautiful and pristine areas I have seen - from the tiniest marine creatures to some of the largest - we spent a week diving here and every dive blew me away. It was incredible to see that a Marine Protected Area (no take zones) can be successful if well managed.

Aoibheann met, Raffy, the man who would become her husband, in El Nido.

He was working as boat crew and a scuba technician for the dive centre I started in. He had been working there a few years already. He later became a scuba instructor too.

Aoibheann conceded deciding to get married thousands of miles from home without any of her family present was a 'difficult'.

She said: 'We had been preparing as best we could within the organisation but like most, nothing could really prepare us for the world shutting down.

As airlines were cancelling flights, our focus was to get our international volunteers off the Island and to Manilla to make sure they could catch the last flight home. It was a race against time, and very traumatic for many, we then had to decide ourselves if we would leave ASAP which meant being separated, or decide to stay, which meant we could be together but knowing that we may not be able to leave the country/see family, for who knew how long.

That also meant accepting if a family member took ill that I would be unable to travel home.

We were on a different island to Raffy's family, too, which meant we were also isolated from them. We decided to stay together and stick it out. Unfortunately, with the tourism industry hit so hard we also lost our jobs, but the main thing was that we were safe, together, and were able to stay at our work base (eight months) until we decided to relocate home to Ireland with our dog. I definitely wouldnt recommend relocating during a pandemic whilst travelling with an pet. It was a nightmare, but we made it and it was completely worth it.

We always wanted to eventually come home to Ireland but the pandemic sped it all up. We looked at it positively as a chance to reconnect to my roots and find my feet again after being abroad for years and, of course, be close to family  although we couldnt have found a further spot from Derry - weve relocated to beautiful Kerry, where Ive found a position managing a small marine awareness and activity centre.

Ive been able to reconnect with the ocean/marine life in Ireland, hoping to get comfortable diving in cold water and continue to work in marine awareness, connecting people to our oceans and their importance to us as a species  in turn to help sustain and protect what is left in our marine environment.

My main role is working in marine education focusing on ocean literacy, running activities that help connect/reconnect people with our beautiful ocean. Activities such as snorkelling, paddle boarding, kayaking and seashore safaris where we take groups rock pooling along the seashore finding the most weird and wonderful creatures  hopefully, diving in the future, once I get used to the cold water.

The Irish coastline is an incredible place for marine biodiversity so its been wonderful chance to reconnect myself and have the opportunity to guide others to experience the magic.

During the lockdown I actually started a photography website, showcasing the intricate details of coral reefs, but I am so excited to add Irish marine life to it - check it out... www.coralreefbeauty.com.

Its been what feels like a very long time since I was home in Derry for a period of time, but looking forward to spending more time there catching up with old friends and family. It's been a crazy year of uncertainties, change, tough situations and decision making for all of us - I am so grateful and fortunate to have an incredible family here in Ireland and in the Philippines, and an amazing group of friends from all over the world who have been so supportive throughout my life abroad.

It definitely hasnt been easy at times, but the journey and experience has been completely worth it - has led me to meet the love of my life and spending most of my days under the surface exposed to such ocean wonders. Ive lived a dream.

Aoibheann said one thing that had 'really shone a light' during the pandemic was how important our surrounding natural world was, not only to our mental health but to our survival as a species.

Over 50% of the oxygen that we breathe comes from the ocean, it is so vital that we keep on making changes In our lives to give back to our gorgeous environment. We need to protect our oceans and natural world, and in turn, it will protect us.
As part of Echo Echos summer long digital programme, the Derry-based dance-theatre company, is releasing a free online course in dance and movement for over 50s.

The course of eight sessions is for anyone who is interested in dance and movement and offers a relaxed and gentle exploration of how to move in a more poetic way.

The course is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and is led by highly experienced Echo Echo Ensemble member, Kelly Quigley.

Kelly said: The course starts from the perspective that the wisdom you have gained from life resides within your cells and is waiting to be accessed for the purpose of dancing and creating dancing, thats why the course is called Body Wisdom,'

The course is an extension of Echo Echos popular Body Wisdom class for 50 years+, which has been running for over 10 years. If you like the digital programme, why not get in contact with Echo Echo to try out their new in person Body Wisdom programme which will be starting this September and is open to new members in their state-of-the-art dance studios on Magazine Street.

You can sign-up for the Digital Body Wisdom programme at https://www.echoechodance.com/whatson/echo-echo-digital-programme-body-wisdom-over-50s-2

It can be accessed online at any time from the comfort of your own home.
There has been a further rise in the number of Covid-19 cases in County Derry, with one further death occurring.

A 2.5% increase in the number of tests completed has yielded an 18.5% rise in case numbers across the county as the latest wave of cases to hit Northern Ireland continues its upward trajectory.

A total of 6,999 tests were carried out in County Derry, with 890 new cases identified from July 12-18.

Numbers have risen in all areas except for BT46, BT48 and BT49, where minor decreases were recorded.

Case numbers in Portstewart (BT55) have more than doubled, while increases of 56% and 44% were recorded in Magherafelt (BT45) and Waterside (BT47) respectively.

The county's rate per 100,000 of population has also fallen below the overall NI figure (388.3) for the first time since since March 22, despite the figure rising from 302.7 to 358.7.

BT48's figure of 519.2 is the highest in the county, while BT46 is lowest on 140.4.

No postal areas within County Derry are in the Northern Ireland top ten, with BT48 highest on 15th.

The percentage of people testing positive for the virus has again risen from 11% to 12.7%, with BT48 sitting on the highest figure of 17.5%. Coleraine's figure of 8% is the lowest positive percentage.

There has been one more Covid-related death within the county's three local government districts to add to the two recorded last week.

One person has died within the Derry City and Strabane council area, while figures for Causeway Coast and Glens and Mid Ulster council areas have remained static.

Antrim Area Hospital currently has nine Covid inpatients, an increase of four from last week, while numbers in Altnagelvin have fallen slightly (-2) to 20.

A total of 1,185,869 people  63% of the Northern Ireland population - have now received at least one dose of the vaccine, while 982, 562  52% of the Northern Ireland population  have received both doses.

Meanwhile, anyone travelling into Northern Ireland from France has been advised they will continue to be required to quarantine for a period of ten days, even if fully vaccinated.

Travellers from France will also be required to undertake a Day 2 and Day 8 test as part of the arrangements, including any UK-vaccinated person travelling through France from a green or amber rated country.

The move has been taken to combat persistent cases in France of the Beta variant of the virus, first identified in South Africa.

Anyone arriving from other amber countries, who have been fully UK-vaccinated, will not be required to quarantine.
Unionist councillors are not supporting plans by Derry City and Strabane District Council to provide up to 50,000 to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

Next year marks the 50th anniversary of the shootings in Derry during which 14 people were killed by British paratroopers while taking part in a civil rights demonstration in the city on January 30, 1972.

A special series of events are being organised in 2022 by the Bloody Sunday Trust to mark the anniversary.

The estimated cost of the events is 150,000 and the Trust has asked the local council to provide 50,000 of this proposed budget.

The request was discussed at a meeting today of the council's Business and Culture committee.

Eight councillors voted to approve the financial support but three unionist councillors voted against it.

Details of some of the events being planned for the anniversary were outlined at today's meeting.

The main event, called Beyond The Silence, will be held on Sunday, January 30, 2022.

It will be a 'large scale music/remembrance event' attracting, according to organisers, an estimated 7,000 people.

The event will begin in William Street at the same time the shooting began.

Relatives of those killed will then proceed to Guildhall Square along a route animated to commemorate the events of Bloody Sunday and its aftermath.

The Bloody Sunday Trust is also planning to hold an international conference in the Guildhall on June 15, 2022, which coincides with the anniversary of Saville report ruling into the events of Bloody Sunday.

Artist Robert Ballagh has also indicated to the Trust that he would be prepared to loan a commemorative artwork he has created about Bloody Sunday for display in the Guildhall for up to six months next year.

Outling his party's stance on the matter at today's meeting, DUP Alderman David Ramsey said they needed more information on how the anniversary events would be 'inclusive'.

Based on our history in our city and legacy and how we move on as a people, I think it is very important that we how we can be inclusive because of the many families who suffered in this area, he said.

Not even including the Strabane area, we have over 200 (people) in the city alone who lost their lives during the Troubles of all walks of life

We are going down the route of equality and we would obviously be interested in how an equality impact assessment would pan out in this.

Alderman Ramsey said he would have no issue with 'in-kind advice' being provided by the council to the Bloody Sunday Trust as this was something that the council would do with other groups.

However, he said the proposed display of the Robert Ballagh painting in the Guildhall could also be an 'issue' given that the Guildhall is a 'neutral' space.

The Bloody Sunday Trust are entitled to seek funding, advice and help but as a council corporate I think we have a lot more work to do. So, as this stands today, we will not be able to support the recommendations going forward," said Alderman Ramsey.

Ulster Unionist councillor Darren Guy said he had no problem with people marking the anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

However, he did question the request for council funding of 50,000 for next year's events.

I note it could be considered under the major events fund which has already been allocated for the current year which would then require additional monies from an already tight budget.

Alderman Guy said that when any sum of funding is applied for it is 'scrutinised thoroughly' and added that the Bloody Sunday application 'should be no different'.

He proposed that the committee redirect the funding request to the 'appropriate working group' within the council to allow councillors to 'further discuss the requested amount and be given more detail of planned activities around the event'.

Sinn Fein councillor Sandra Duffy said her party would not be supporting Alderman Guy's proposal.

She said the report presented to the committee had provided details of all the anniversary events taking place next year, and added that she believed the request did not have to go to a working group to 'delay it any further'.

Aeidin McCarter, the council's Head of Culture, told councillors that at this stage they were being asked to approve that the application from the Bloody Sunday Trust goes forward to the council's major events fund with 'indicative' funding of 50,000.

That would be assessed by officers and generally we would discuss those applications in the members' working group where there would be full details on the proposal.

So there is a route and there is a proposal for detail to come into members.

After Ms McCarter's comments, Alderman Guy said he was happy to withdraw his proposal.

The original proposal to provide financial support for the Bloody Sunday anniversary events was then put to a vote.

It was supported by five councillors from Sinn Fein and SDLP along with two independent councillors and People Before Profit councillor Shaun Harkin.

Two DUP councillors and one UUP councillor voted against it.
Malta, New York, July 19, 2021  GlobalFoundries (GF), the global leader in feature-rich semiconductor manufacturing, today announced its expansion plans for its most advanced manufacturing facility in upstate New York over the coming years. These plans include immediate investments to address the global chip shortage at its existing Fab 8 facility as well as construction of a new fab on the same campus that will double the sites capacity.

The announcement was made as the company convened leaders from government and industry to progress the national discussion around solving U.S. semiconductor supply chain challenges. CEO Tom Caulfield was joined by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo, former Pentagon officials, and executives from leading companies throughout the semiconductor supply chain.

GF will invest $1 billion to immediately add an additional 150,000 wafers per year within its existing fab to help address the global chip shortage. Following that, GF plans to construct a new fab that will create more than 1,000 new direct high-tech jobs and thousands more indirect jobs including high-paying construction jobs for the region. Following the successful investment model of Fab 8, GF is planning to fund the new facility through private-public partnerships including customers, federal and state investments. This new capacity will serve the growing demand for secure, feature-rich chips needed by high-growth markets including automotive, 5G connectivity and the Internet of Things. The facility will also support national security requirements for a secure supply chain.

These investments to expand GFs U.S. manufacturing footprint are part of the companys broader global expansion plans that include the recently announced new fab in Singapore and $1 billion planned investment to expand in Germany, all to meet the growing demand from customers worldwide.

Our expansion and job creation in Malta requires a new economic model, based on the bold public-private partnerships being championed in Washington by visionary leaders Senator Schumer and Secretary Raimondo, as well as close collaboration with our customers, said GF CEO Tom Caulfield. Our industry is expected to grow more in the next decade than it did in the past 50 years and GF is stepping up to do its part as we work together to address the growing demand for technology innovation for the betterment of humanity. We are honored to be joined by government and automotive leaders, national security experts, and our valued customers to continue the critical discussions needed to create a reliable supply of American-made chips to support the U.S. economy and national security.

Ive led the fight to establish historic federal incentives for semiconductor manufacturing and R&D to strengthen the domestic semiconductor supply chain that is critical to our national security and global competitiveness, including addressing the chip shortage impacting industries across the economy, all in hopes of bringing us to announcements like this today, said Sen. Schumer. As Majority Leader, I worked hard with companies like GlobalFoundries to craft and pass the bipartisan U.S. Competition and Innovation Act, providing $52 billion to expand the domestic semiconductor industry and supercharge the GlobalFoundries expansion of Fab 8 and building a new fab in Malta. Todays announcement is a win-win-win: a win for jobs in the Capital Region, a win for GlobalFoundries, and a win for U.S. government, automakers, and other critical industries that desperately need chips.

GF employs more than 15,000 worldwide with 7,000 people across the U.S., and nearly 3,000 at its headquarters in Malta, New York. GF has invested more than $15 billion in its Fab 8 facility over the last decade to support innovation and increase manufacturing capacity. As an accredited supplier of advanced semiconductors to the U.S. government, GF delivers secure and reliable semiconductor solutions at Fab 8, which is compliant with the U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Moreover, GF offers the highest industry, customer and government criteria for secure manufacturing, worldwide, through its GF Shield program.

About GF

GlobalFoundries (GF) is one of the worlds leading semiconductor manufacturers and the only one with a truly global footprint. GF delivers feature-rich solutions that enable its customers to develop innovative products for pervasive chips for high-growth markets. GF provides a broad range of feature-rich process technology solutions with a unique mix of design, development and fabrication services. With an at-scale manufacturing footprint spanning the U.S., Europe and Asia, GF is a trusted technology source to its customers across the globe. GF is owned by Mubadala Investment Company. For more information, visit www.gf.com.






Shilpa Shetty's husband Raj Kundra arrested for allegedly making pornographic films; Mumbai Police calls him key conspirator

Actor Shilpa Shetty's husband Raj Kundra was on Monday night arrested by Mumbai Police for allegedly creating pornographic films and publishing them through some mobile applications.

"Businessman Raj Kundra has been arrested by the Crime Branch in a case relating to the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. He appears to be the key conspirator. We have sufficient evidence regarding this," Mumbai Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale said.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Raj Kundra (@rajkundra9)

The case was registered with Crime Branch Mumbai in February 2021 about the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. "We have arrested Raj Kundra in this case on July 19, 2021, as he appears to be the key conspirator of this. We have sufficient evidence regarding this. The investigation is in progress please," Nagrale said in a statement.
Sushant Singh Rajput's sister questioned about supporting his ex Ankita Lokhande, says, "I have seen her take care of Bhai"

Ankita Lokhande was hailed last year for lending her support to ex Sushant Singh Rajputs family after his tragic demise. The support and solidarity, shown by Sushant fans towards the actress, however, soon dried up as the Pavitra Rishta actress moved on in her life. The actress has since addressed the incessant trolling time and again but despite all odds she still has the support of Sushants family especially his sister Shweta Singh Kirti.

The late actors sister was recently asked in the comments of one of her posts about why she supports Ankita who broke up with Sushant in 2016. Shweta Singh Kirti why do u support Ankit lokhnde b she hd been using Sushant n her fake affair vd him for her PR. In fact she is one partying vd most of the suspects involved in Annihilation OF SUSHANT, the comment read.

Shweta was recently seen extending best wishes Ankita for her new season of Pavitra Rishta, the show that, catapulted the actress and Sushant Singh Rajput to fame on TV. Replying to the user on Facebook, Sushants sister said that it is ahrd for the family to overlook the support Ankita gave them even after the actors demise last year.

Drdivya I really dont know what the truth is.but it is hard for me to overlook how Ankita has always stood by the family even after the death of Bhai, she wrote in reply. She also recalled an old incident from the time when Ankita and Sushant were dating and wrote, "I have seen her take care of Bhai, once when I was visiting him in Mumbai and he had stomach pain I saw how she called the doc, gave him medicine and showered him with love. The act was enough to prove to me that she has a kind and loving heart."

Shweta also said that the truth behind Sushants death would come out once CBI concludes their investigation. I have full faith in the CBI and I am waiting for them to tell us the truth. I am praying to God everyday so that the truth comes out and I believe there is no bigger power than him. Have faith and stay strong.

Sushant and Ankita began dating on Pavitra Rishta post. They were also living together as a couple before they parted ways in 2016. Pavitra Rishta is all set to make a comeback on TV where Ankita will be reprising her role while Sushants character will be played by Shaheer Sheikh.
Yami Gautam finally spills the beans on dating Aditya Dhar and keeping it a secret, reveals who knew within the industry

Yami Gautam and Aditya Dhars wedding was big surprise for the fans. The couple managed to keep the relationship away from the spotlight for quite a long time and Yami has now opened up about everything from how they fell in love to why they kept it a secret.

The Bhoot Police actress and the filmmaker collaborated for the first time during Uri: The Surgical Strike and that is where they became friends. Yami while talking to Hindustan Times revealed, Id say the start was during the promotion of Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019). Thats when we started talking. I wouldnt call it dating. But yeah, that was a time when we started interacting with each other and started a friendship.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Yami Gautam Dhar (@yamigautam)

The actress is happy to have surprised the media for the right reasons with her wedding announcement in June. She added that as individuals both her and Aditya are private people and do not believe in doing outings which helped keep them away from the limelight.

Yami on being quizzed about who in the film industry knew about their relationship told the publication, I dont think its right on my part to reveal that. Lets just say that I have a lot of respect for certain friends, very few of our common friends, who respected our privacy. It meant a lot to us. Its always nice to share this with people and the media, but when you both are comfortable. There shouldnt be any kind of pressure or any kind of precedent for anyone that Oh, that is how so and so carries themselves. So thats how it has to be. Youve to decide for yourself, what works for you and what makes you happy. And this is what makes us happy.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Yami Gautam Dhar (@yamigautam)

Yami and Adityas wedding was an extremely private ceremony where even a planner was hired at the last moment. The actress says she had always known shed wear her moms saree, the dupatta and nath gifted by her nani for her wedding and wouldnt change a thing about ceremony even if there was not pandemic.

While the wedding announcement did create quite a stir on social media with fans going gaga over the simplicity of the whole affair, Yami says, I wouldnt have changed anything about the wedding, none of us would. Even if there was no pandemic, we wouldve still wanted this quiet and personal ceremony with our families, and just the way it was in a place where we both connect with. Thats who we are as people. Our families are really happy.

Both Yami and Aditya have resumed work after returning to Mumbai. Yami will be seen next in Bhoot Police while Aditya has begun work on The Immortal Ashwatthama with Vicky Kaushal.
Oppo is all set to reveal new smartphone charging technology this month, as per an official Chinese poster that reads From 22.5W to 125W, can mobile phone charging only get faster and faster? Additionally, Oppos new smartphone charging tech seems to be more than just fast.

Last year, Oppo shook the smartphone industry when it revealed the 125W Super Flash Charging technology which easily charged a 4,000 mAh smartphone battery from 0 to 41% in 5 minutes and completely in 20 minutes. Last years demonstration didnt make it to production, therefore rumours suggest that Oppos announcement could make the 125W Super Fast Charging technology available to consumers.

Oppo Fast Charging Technology Announcement Has Fans Excited

Oppo is ready to take the fast charging war even further by introducing a brand new technology on July 22. Its 125W Super Flash charging builds upon the current 65W SuperVOOC 2.0 charging technology, which increases current instead of total wattage to quickly charge smartphones.

Not just Oppo, but several major smartphone manufacturers want their smartphones to charge 100 minutes as quickly as possible. Xiaomi also tested its 200W wired hypercharge feature to completely charge a custom-made Mi 11 Pro with a 4,000 mAh battery in 8 minutes last year. It recently released a 67W fast charger for consumers which also charges the 5,000 smartphone battery of the Mi 11 Ultra in 36 minutes.

The trend of manufacturers becoming more obsessed with battery charging time instead of battery longevity has some experts worried. It could be a major motivation to look forward to Oppos new announcement to check what they have in store other than fast.
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By MEG KINNARD

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C.  Investors who lost fortunes in the failure of a multi billion-dollar nuclear reactor construction deal in South Carolina will soon begin to see their portions of a $192 million settlement, under a recently approved distribution.

Last week, a federal judge signed off on a plan to disperse the funds among former shareholders in SCANA Corp., the former parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas. The settlement itself was the largest securities class action recovery obtained in South Carolina when a judge approved it last year, according to attorneys for the investors.





. . .
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SEATAC  A Motel 6 at 20651 Military Road S. in SeaTac sold for $5.2 million, according to King County records.

The seller was G6 Hospitality Property LLC, which acquired the property in 2012 for $5.4 million.





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Ola Electric's scooter receives record 1 lakh bookings in 24 hours

Ola Electric, the EV start-up, has received record one lakh bookings for its electric scooter within the first 24 hours of the opening of bookings. Ola Electric opened the reservation for its electric scooter on 15 July.

The revolutionary Ola Scooter can be reserved for Rs499 via olaelectric.com. The booking amount is fully refundable.

With bookings now open, the scooter is likely to be launched in the coming weeks, most probably this month itself.

While Ola is yet to reveal the features and price of the scooter, the company is seeing unprecedented rush of customers on its website looking to book the scooter.

In a video released earlier, the scooter is shown to have large underseat stowage, good acceleration and segment leading range as well. The exact details about technical specifications are yet to be released.

The Ola electric scooter is being manufactured at Ola Electric's plant in Tamil Nadu, which meets Industry 4.0 standards will have an installed capacity of 10 million electric scooters per annum. The capacity will stand at two million units per year in Phase 1. The plant will have 10 general assembly lines and will be able to roll out a scooter every two seconds, and 25,000 batteries per day.

The unprecedented demand is a clear indicator of shifting consumer preferences to EVs. This is a huge step forward in our mission to transition the world to sustainable mobility. I thank all the consumers who have booked the Ola Scooter and have joined the EV revolution," Bhavish Aggarwal, chairman and Group CEO, Ola, said.

The Ola Scooter will be made-in-India for the world, to be manufactured at the companys state-of-the-art Future factory. The first phase of the Ola Future factory is nearing completion and will be operationalised soon, while the full capacity of 10 million vehicles per annum will be built by next year.

The buoyancy in the demand for electric two-wheelers can be gauged from the fact that between January and June 2021, the total sales of electric two-wheelers in India stood at 30,000 units.
India emerges 5th largest forex reserves holder with $608.99 bn of foreign currency holding

Indias forex reserves reached $608.99 billion as of 25 June 2021, making the country the fifth largest foreign exchange reserves holder in the world after China, Japan, Switzerland and Russia, minister of state for finance Pankaj Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha in a written reply today.

The minister said Indias foreign exchange reserves position is comfortable in terms of import cover of more than 18 months and as a cushion against unforeseen external shocks. Government and the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) are closely monitoring the emerging external position calibrating policies or regulations to support robust macroeconomic growth, he added.

Further giving details on the forex reserve build-up, the minister said that RBI takes regular steps for diversification of forex reserves by scaling up operations in forex swap and repo markets, acquisition of gold and exploring new markets/products, while adhering to safety and liquidity standards.

Variation in Indias forex reserves is primarily the outcome of RBIs intervention in the foreign exchange market to smoothen exchange rate volatility, valuation changes due to movement of US dollar against other international currencies in the reserve basket, movement in gold prices, interest earnings from deployment of foreign currency assets and inflow of aid receipts the minister pointed out.

He said a current account deficit, accompanied by increasing foreign exchange reserves, reflects a surplus on the balance of payments, ie, the magnitude of the net capital inflows exceeds the volume of the current account deficit. In 2020-21, Indias balance of payments recorded surplus in both current account and capital account, which contributed to the increase in foreign exchange reserves during the year.

Besides exports and imports of goods and services, the overall stability of the external sector depends on other components of balance of payments, including remittances (transfers), income in the current account, the size of net capital flows and external debt. India is comfortable in most of these external sector vulnerability indicators, the minister added.
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There have been calls for the Government to act on the issue of people who were vaccinated in Northern Ireland who now cannot access an EU Digital Covid-19 Certificate.

Louth Senator Erin McGreehan called for the Minister for Public Procurement and eGovernment, Ossian Smyth, to find a solution to the problems.

It is wholly unacceptable that citizens in the North would not have access to the Digital Cert - this needs to be rectified as soon as possible, said the Fianna Fail Senator.

According to Senator McGreehan, she has been contacted by people living in Ireland who work in Northern Ireland and received their vaccine there, who say they cannot access the cert.

I have been contacted by individuals who work in the North and were vaccinated there and now find themselves in a situation where they cannot obtain the certificate despite living in the Republic.

Senator McGreehan says that she has contacted Minister Smyth and the Taoiseachs Department and that she hopes to see a resolution soon.

The EU Digital Covid-19 certificates have begun to be issued for anyone who has been fully vaccinated against Covid-19.

Depending on where a person got their vaccine, their certificate may either be issued through email or in the post.

The cert is needed for people to travel to other European countries, due to restrictions on international travel easing yesterday.
The Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO) has called on the Government to reduce class sizes in schools across Louth and nationwide.

The INTO made the call for reduced class sizes as part of a pre-budgetary submission to the Government, several months before Budget 2022 is set to be revealed by Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe and Public Expenditure Minister Michael McGrath.

The group said that Irish primary school classes remain the highest in the EU.

Too many pupils in Louth still learn in a classroom of 30 or more pupils, with one in five pupils nationally learning in such crowded environments, said a spokesperson for the INTO.

At the height of the pandemic, Ireland was the only EU country that had to plan for social distancing in supersized classes of thirty or more.

Research shows that smaller classes enable teachers to give adequate and necessary time to each child in the classroom, which has a positive impact on learning outcomes.

According to the INTO, reducing the size of classes will help promote inclusion and diversity, while also catering to a range of different learning styles.

The INTO has said that reducing the number of students by one would cost 14.5 million in a full year, while only costing 4.8m in 2022. The figures set out by the INTO come from a Dail question response from the Minister for Education, Norma Foley.

The INTO are also calling for more substitute teachers, to ensure that students are always being taught by a qualified teacher throughout their time in school.

Nationwide substitute supply panels are essential to achieving this. A supply panel involves a base primary school hiring a full-time substitute teacher, who covers absences in their school and neighbouring schools, thereby guaranteeing every absence is covered, said the spokesperson.

The group have said that the government introduced a nationwide panel during the pandemic and that Budget 2022 should ensure this is kept into the future.

There have also been calls by the INTO for the government to improve school funding in general, to stop schools needing to fundraise for lighting, heat and insurance.

It is simply not good enough that the parents of Ireland have to contribute nearly 50 million every year to keep primary schools afloat.

As the government has said repeatedly during the crisis, primary education is a national priority. It should therefore be fully, not partially, funded.

The organisation are calling for a capitation grant of 1 per student per day to cover daily running costs.

As we move out of the pandemic, we need to invest in our primary schools as they play their role in the great national effort supporting their pupils, some of whom have sadly fallen behind, said INTO President Joe McKeown.

While it will be easy for Government to roll out short term sound bites, sustained support for the sector is the only proven method for ensuring pupils and schools are supported in the years to come.
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Claremont, NH (03743)

Today

Partly cloudy in the morning followed by scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 74F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly clear skies. Low 53F. Winds light and variable.
North Andover, MA (01845)

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Mostly sunny early. Scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. High 78F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low 57F. Winds light and variable.
North Andover, MA (01845)

Today

Mostly sunny skies during the morning hours. Scattered showers and thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High 78F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 57F. Winds light and variable.
North Andover, MA (01845)

Today

Mostly sunny in the morning then increasing clouds with some scattered thunderstorms later in the day. High 77F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

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Authorities on Monday identified a suspect accused of fatally shooting one person and wounding four others, including firefighters and paramedics, during a house fire in Tucson
Haitis government has installed a new prime minister, while officials mourned assassinated President Jovenel Moise and arrested at least three police officers implicated in his killing
Improving access to safe drinking water for Kyzyl-Kiya city residents

On a scorching June afternoon, I find myself in a car, heading towards the Isfairamsai water intake facility half an hour outside Kyzyl-Kiya, a city of 55,000 people in the southern Kyrgyz Republic. Kyzyl-Kiya was an industrial coal-mining centre in the Soviet era; it now depends on commercial activity at local markets.

I am accompanied by 64-year-old Dykanbai Usonov, chief engineer of the Kyzyl-Kiya municipal water company since 2009. On the way, he explains with great passion how his citys water supply system works and what its key challenges are. As we near the facility, I cant help but notice its picturesque location in a gorge divided by the fast-running Isfairamsai river.

There are only three water sources in Kyzyl-Kiya, Dykanbai, a long-time city resident, tells me, this river intake facility and two groundwater intakes. Almost 70 per cent of the drinking water comes from here, the rest from underground sources.

Last year, Dykanbais company replaced four old pumps at the river facility with modern, high-capacity ones sporting smart control panels. At any given time, two pumps are in operation and two are on standby. The next step is to install automatic flow meters for the accurate measurement and regulation of public water from this source.

Isfairamsais water is piped to a water treatment plant closer to the city, from where clean drinking water is supplied to residents. At the two groundwater intake facilities, Kulushtan and Tak-Tek, the company has restored underground wells and installed flow meters and disinfection systems with automatic controls. In the past, workers had to undertake water chlorination manually.

None of these upgrades would have been possible without substantial funding. To this end, the water company received a 1.5 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), a 1 million loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) and a 3.5 million grant from the European Union (EU).

The funds also allowed the company to carry out significant upgrades to the water treatment facility on the outskirts of Kyzyl-Kiya. It painted all of the plants pipes, parts and metal fittings, replaced all the valves, restored the gravity sand filters, installed backwashing pumps and built a new water reservoir with an automated disinfection system.

Earlier in the day, we had stopped by the water companys offices on a street where dozens of day labourers waited patiently for anyone willing to hire them. Some years previously, a fire had destroyed the companys headquarters. Since then, it has operated out of an old municipal building, with Soviet-era wall stoves hinting at its past amid its freshly renovated corridors and offices.

In his office, Dykanbai shows me a large municipal map, with streets highlighted in different colours  a blueprint of the new water mains, complete with manholes and fire hydrants, stretching more than 32.5 km across the city.

The infrastructure is outdated, he says, with some of the pipelines dating back to 1924 and 1952. Consequently, the old pipes have leaked badly, with drinking-water losses of up to 35 per cent!

The upgrades will not fully solve the problem, as the entire water network is 364 km in length. Still, the new mains pipes will cut losses dramatically and residents daily water supply will be extended to six hours a day from two-three hours, significantly improving their quality of life. Specialised maintenance vehicles and repair equipment procured as part of the project are already in use, ensuring prompt responses to any issue that may arise and boosting efficiency.

In the past, we had to ask other municipal enterprises or hire small businesses with specialised vehicles to help us, Dykanbai says. Now the mobile workshop trucks have all of the tools required to address any repair needs. As someone in charge of fixing the water supply system, Dykanbai is understandably proud of his new fleet of repair vehicles.

He also shows me one of the 6,000 water meters soon to be installed in city households  an important element in the commercialisation of the water companys operations. This will ensure its sustainable operation, including the payment of its loans and the development of its own infrastructure. With funding from Austria and Japan, experienced international consultants are helping the company to develop transparent policies on tariffs and to improve its reporting, accounting and collection of payments.

The project is quickly moving towards completion. The company is awaiting further finance from one of its partners and is planning to complete the installation of water meters to take advantage of the new supply pipes, install an additional 5 km of water mains, buy a water tanker and a pickup vehicle for repair crews and replace the mains pipe that runs from the Isfairamsai river to the city.

The project is quickly moving towards completion. As the final stage, the company is planning to complete the installation of water meters to take advantage of the new supply pipes.

I view all of these infrastructural improvements as major milestones for our city and the water company, Dykanbai says. It really makes me happy to see how they benefit Kyzyl-Kiya residents."


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Dealing with cybersecurity is an ongoing battle of wits and skills that often leaves IT professionals feeling like they are barely holding back the never-ending attacks of a giant whack-a-mole defensive game of chance.

Take the case of Microsoft and the infamous SolarWinds supply chain hack that was first reported last December. Its ramifications are still not fully known, while the potential damage continues to fester in hundreds of compromised business and government networks.

SolarWinds is a major U.S. information technology firm whose computer network was breached in a series of cyberattacks that spread to its clients and went undetected for months. Microsoft recently disclosed that it too was no doubt a victim of the same Russian-based hacker gang responsible for the SolarWinds onslaught.

As some of the details surrounding the cyberattack become known, the bleak disclosures might justifiably cause a sniffled gasp indicating that if Microsoft can be breached, what hope is left for everyone else?

Microsoft admitted that an attacker believed to be involved with Nobelium in late May phished one of its customer service agents to steal information and then used it to launch hacking attempts against customers. Microsoft said it discovered the compromise during its response to hacks by a team responsible for earlier major breaches at SolarWinds and Microsoft.

Ironically, the nation-state hackers who orchestrated the SolarWinds supply chain attack compromised a Microsoft worker's computer.

In follow-up statements about the ongoing struggles with cybersecurity, Microsoft president Brad Smith called SolarWinds "the largest and most sophisticated attack the world has ever seen," according to published reports. The attack campaign had more than a thousand hackers behind it.

Former SolarWinds CEO Kevin Thompson offered that the successful breach could have resulted from an intern who created "'solarwinds123" as a password and then shared that password on GitHub.

Of course, that is how phishing attacks are supposed to work. Attackers disperse their tactics and hope to have them remain secret for as long as possible. Usually, large-scale attacks like SolarWinds are fought on multiple attack vectors.

"We are entering the low-intensity, high-impact cyberwarfare age. Over the last two decades, adversaries have developed sophisticated capabilities to launch and deliver cyber weapons across nation-states and industries, but attackers can now use the new hyper-connected world in their favor," Om Moolchandani, CISO of Accurics, told TechNewsWorld.

Urban Warfare Gone Digital

Cyberattackers no longer need to craft extremely sophisticated attack vectors. They can use existing connectivity to penetrate victims, he noted. He likened cyberattackers' new doctrine to today's physical warfare strategies. The intensity is low, and attacks are confined, but the impacts are extremely high.

"Adversaries blend and hide between non-combatants in urban warfare, just as cyberattackers are now using customer support staff to hide their tactics," Moolchandani observed.

Microsoft's Threat Intelligence Center on June 25 reported that Nobelium launched new attack activity that includes password spray and brute-force attacks. But those tactics have been largely unsuccessful, according to Microsoft.

If Nobelium's attack on Microsoft's infrastructure was "mostly unsuccessful," then we can presume that it was "partially successful," countered Neil Jones, cybersecurity evangelist at Egnyte.

"This is a classic example of the continual need to harden your passwords, deploy effective multi-factor authentication (MFA) techniques, and maximize password management techniques," he told TechNewsWorld.

Those requirements are mission-critical for systems that are used to interact with your clients and to collect their data, he added.

"The most recent attack is also a stark reminder that you need to make data governance a board-level priority if you haven't done so already," said Jones.

More Details Emerge

The Threat Center's investigation also detected information-stealing malware on a machine belonging to one of Microsoft's customer support agents with access to basic account information for a small number of our customers, according to the Center's June 25 report.

"The actor used this information in some cases to launch highly-targeted attacks as part of their broader campaign. We responded quickly, removed the access, and secured the device," noted the report.

Microsoft's support agents are configured with the minimal set of permissions required as part of the company's zero trust "least privileged access" approach to customer information, the statement explained.

That information reinforces the importance of best practice security precautions such as zero-trust architecture and multi-factor authentication in continuing to prevent network intrusions, according to Microsoft.

"Since the malicious actor was already launching precision attacks on customers whose information was compromised, this indicates that attacking support agents were likely part of the campaign with a larger mission," added Moolchandani.

Attacker Intentions

The stolen information could possibly disclose customer patterns for usage, logging, or subjects of the service provided by the IT service provider, or other relevant data that can be used to spoof a victim's ID, noted Moolchandani.

"Support agents require customer secrets in order to identify them. If stolen, this information can be used by adversaries for spoofing victim email IDs and gaining access to corporate accounts," he explained.

Targeting IT companies reflects that attackers want to gain access to their end targets using supply chain mechanisms. Most IT companies provide backbone services to large enterprises, businesses, governments, and industries.

"IT companies focus heavily on customer success and require sensitive information, privileges, and access to deliver these services. They have a lot of juicy information that is attractive to adversaries, and any lack of cybersecurity best practices such as zero trust, hardening, or multi-factor authentication can result in the compromise of customer data," Moolchandani said.

Support Agents Key Targets

Attackers are constantly looking for low-cost options to complete their missions. It is easier and more cost-effective for them to target support agents working for smaller IT companies providing support services for large enterprises than it is to target those large organizations directly, according to Moolchandani.

"Support staff usually are provided with minimal access to systems for their needs, but organizations are still working hard to roll out cybersecurity awareness at rank-and-file levels, and that maturity still has to hit the point where every employee is aware of the risks. This is the weakness that attackers want to exploit," he explained.

The latest disclosures illustrate that simply adding password protection controls is not enough. Near real-time monitoring of the complex behavior of credentials and entitlements is equally important and mandatory for response teams as those preventative controls will always fail, warned Ralph Pisani, president of Exabeam.

"Despite Nobelium being well-known among the security community due to the SolarWinds attack and other past successes, they continue to develop new footholds and do not appear to be going away anytime soon," he told TechNewsWorld.

Better Plans Needed

During this instance with Microsoft, the adversaries were able to use the infected machine to gather more context about customers. This information allows the adversaries to create highly targeted phishing emails around the topic of their accounts and payments to gain more access and credentials, noted Pisani.

"As part of the intrusion set, Microsoft witnessed both password spray and brute-force attacks on accounts and customers. We must embrace the idea that identity is the new perimeter. We know that a compromised employee played a role in this most recent incident," he added.

Security teams have seen the cyber enemies run the same game over and over. So the defense starts with detection, triage, investigation, and response, Pisani urged.

"While there is increasing focus on addressing the two ends of detection and response, most companies struggle or overlook the middle pieces without realizing the smokescreen this provides for attackers," Pisani cautioned.

Security Operations Center teams need a more comprehensive outcomes-based approach to security, he urged. Beyond passwords, protecting the identities of your employees, customers, partners - and anyone inside your IT systems - is a critical outcome.

Jack M. Germain has been an ECT News Network reporter since 2003. His main areas of focus are enterprise IT, Linux and open-source technologies. He is an esteemed reviewer of Linux distros and other open-source software. In addition, Jack extensively covers business technology and privacy issues, as well as developments in e-commerce and consumer electronics. Email Jack.


Local Authority Elections: Concerns as hundreds self-isolating ahead of polling day



By Chris Cave - Local Democracy Reporter

Proxy voting wont be allowed in this weeks local authority elections despite a surge in coronavirus cases and hundreds self-isolating.

Voters in seven areas will head to the polls when they open at 08:00 on Thursday.

Those quarantining due to Covid-19 rules will not be able to vote in the ballot unless they applied for an absent vote before the deadline.

The Local Government Unit, part of the Department of Infrastructure, says it is providing support to authorities who need it.

Proxy voting is the process of delegating voting power to somebody else in your absence.

The elections have been delayed twice already due to problems arising from the coronavirus pandemic.

However, contests will now take place Castletown, Douglas (Central, East and North wards), Garff (Lonan ward), Jurby, Onchan, Peel and Santon on Thursday.

Guidance issued by the DOI says: The elections are the responsibility of the local authorities and the relevant Returning Officer.

Legislation does not allow proxy voting in these local authority elections.

If a voter did not apply for an absent vote before the deadline or is unable to attend a polling station on Thursday 22 July due to self-isolation rules then they will not be able to vote.

The Local Government Unit is of course always available to provide support to local authorities and in this case has suggested considering the UK electoral commissions guidance around local elections during Covid, which includes carrying out risk assessments.
New cots donated to Jane Crookall Maternity Unit

New mums will benefit from the generosity of a Manx charity that has donated 13 new side by side cots for the Jane Crookall Maternity Unit at Nobles Hospital.



Funds have been raised to purchase the new cots by the Manx Association for the Welfare of Children in Hospital (MAWCH), in addition to the charity benefitting from a significant donation from a national organisation. In November 2020, the Co-op Local Community Fund shared 17.3million between more than 4,000 local causes throughout the British Isles, through which MAWCH was awarded just over 15,000.



Margaret Davies, Secretary of MAWCH, commented: We are delighted that weve been able to donate these cots to the Jane Crookall Maternity Unit, and it is our sincere hope that this will help give babies the very best start in life due to their close proximity to their mothers.



New mum Shelley Rawstron recently gave birth to her baby, Caleb, by Caesarean section and was amongst the first to use the new cots. She commented: I really appreciated the position of the new cot and being able to have Caleb right by my side after giving birth  my mobility was definitely restricted in the first few days. Thank you to all of the team at the Jane Crookall Maternity Wing for looking after us so well.


Amenity site charge increase could 'entice' fly-tipping

A rise in charges at the Eastern Civic Amenity Site could lead to an increase in fly-tipping, according to a Douglas councillor.

Changes to the cost of disposing electrical items came into effect on 14 July.

A number of councillors have criticised the move, fearing the rise in costs could lead to residents using other ways to get rid of their rubbish.

The new contract means disposal of PC monitors and laptops will now cost 14 while an American style fridge weighing 150kg or above would see a charge of 87.

Hills Ward member Carol Crawley told the chamber people are not going to pay [the new] prices and is urging the government to reconsider.

She spoke to Local Democracy Reporter Chris Cave:



Media

Flytip Crawley IV
Covid-19 cases in schools being closely monitored during final week of term says Gov

The Manx Government has said it is closely monitoring COVID-19 cases and how the number of people being asked to self-isolate after testing positive is affecting schools on the Island.

Parents are still responsible for sending their children to school unless there is a medical reason why they cannot attend.

The Department of Education, Sport and Culture understands that some parents might choose not to send their children to school this week.

Pupils who stay home will be recorded as an unauthorised absence, but no other action will be taken or penalties handed out.

With some staff also absent due to COVID-19, schools will remain open wherever possible and operate with mitigations in place.
Easyjet to introduce IOM to Manchester route



 Copyright Richard Hoare and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Easyjet will introduce a new route serving the Isle of Man and Manchester later this year.

The low-cost airline confirmed flights would begin from 2nd November.

Flights to the Isle of Man will operate daily, up to seven times a week throughout the winter season.

Karen Smart, Manchester Airport managing director, said: The Isle of Man will be welcomed by passengers here on the mainland and also on the island itself."

As well as increasing domestic connectivity, the route will also allow the Manx population additional choice when accessing our long haul network from Manchester.

Easyjet also has routes from the Island - including Bristol, Liverpool, Gatwick and Luton.
A participant dives in the mud to keep the volleyball from hitting in the ground Saturday at Swan Creek Park in the fourth annual Mud Volleyball for a Cure hosted by the County for a Cure Relay for Life team.
Jeffrey Preston Bezos, a 57-year-old dad from New Mexico, flew to the edge of space and back again today. He wasn't the only person aboard the rocket, which was the first-ever crewed flight from private space company Blue Origin, but he's the one that camera crews flocked to once the 10-minute trip was done. Maybe they were drawn in by his smile. Maybe they thought he was the winner of a sub-orbital Lex Luthor lookalike contest. Maybe his bulbous, pale cowboy hat caught their eye.

In reality, of course, it was because Bezos is the founder of Blue Origin and Amazon, and considered to be the richest person in the world. This wealth not only gives him the opportunity to build, run and then ride his own rocket ships, but it also makes people really interested in what he has to say, regardless of his relationship to the matter at hand.

When Bezos stepped back onto Earth after spinning around in zero-gravity for a few minutes, the cameras descended and his cowboy hat answered a handful of questions about the experience. The world's richest man shared his thoughts about space, pollution and wage depression, likely just before taking an SUV caravan to his private jet and heading to one of his global luxury estates.

Here are three of the most centibillionaire things Bezos said after his Blue Origin flight today:

We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space. And keep Earth as this beautiful gem of a planet that it is. In this same interview, Bezos discussed his plans to expand Blue Origin's space tourism business over the coming decades, a venture that has the potential to pump massive amounts of carbon and other chemicals into the atmosphere. Unlike ground-based emitters like cars or coal-powered plants, rocket emissions are expelled directly into the upper atmosphere, where they linger for years. Additionally, Amazon has threatened to fire employees for speaking up about the company's support of the oil and gas industries.

"We need unifiers, not vilifiers. When you look out at the planet, there are no borders. There's nothing. It's one planet and we share it and it's fragile." As the CEO of Amazon, for years Bezos fought against company efforts to unionize, even amid credible reports of inhumane, exploitative conditions for Amazon delivery drivers and warehouse workers.

.@JeffBezos speaking truth after successful #BlueOrigin flight:



I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this. https://t.co/hMS01eRzMs pic.twitter.com/3CueAOX9M8  Dan Linden (@DanLinden) July 20, 2021

Bezos, who amassed more than $70 billion in personal wealth last year and regularly pays $0 in federal income taxes, then thanked those same Amazon employees for paying for his trip to space. He said, I also want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer because you guys paid for all of this. That line, at least, is completely accurate.
Google will fix your Pixel 4 XL phone for free for up to a year after your warranty expires, provided you live in the US, Singapore, Canada, Japan and Taiwan. The tech giant has launched an extended repair program for the larger version of its 2019 flagship device, which features motion gesture support and built-in radar. Google stopped selling the Pixel 4 and the Pixel 4 XL from its own store in August 2020, but they're still available from retail partners until supplies last. While this program can get you free repairs if you're in one of the eligible regions, it only covers specific power-related issues.

In particular, the issues must be related to not being able to switch on your phone and to having trouble charging with an adapter or a wireless charger. If your phone keeps restarting or shutting down without you doing it or if your battery drains significantly faster than before, you could get free repair under the program, as well. In Canada, Japan and Taiwan, you could even get a free replacement. That said, you can't get a free repair or replacement if you purchased your device from Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy Spain or the UK, even if you're in one of the eligible locations.

Make sure to check Google's FAQ page for more information on how you can take advantage of the program in your location. In the US, you'd have to bring your device to a uBreakiFix location or access Google's repair center website to start the process.
Louis Vuitton's forays into tech-infused luxury gear have taken in handbags with screens and luggage trackers. A year after the release of its $1,000 earbuds, the French fashion house's latest stab at audio is as eccentric as they come. The new LV Horizon Light Up Speaker looks like a spaceship sculpted by aliens to resemble a sawn-off spinning top. What's more, it costs $2,890, but you knew it wouldn't come cheap.

Inspired by its Toupie handbag, the speaker lights up to accentuate the brand's flower insignia and a spelled out Louis Vuitton around the center. There's also a top ring light with 23 LEDs that puts on a rainbow color show. The neons combined with the black perforated and embossed leather is best described as cyber-chic.

Louis Vuitton

But, if you're going to splurge just shy of $3,000 on a speaker, you probably want it to sound good. The Horizon features a 3-inch woofer paired with two 0.75-inch tweeters that LV says combine to offer 360-degree sound. Though, the jury's out on whether it can match the immersive audio touted by the likes of the $700 Sony SRS-RA5000. If the mid-range Qualcomm QCS 404 chipset inside is anything to go by, it may not offer the big sound you'd associate with its price tag. It also comes with three mics in case you want to take calls on the glowing mothership on your desk.

The conical shape means the speaker sits on its side, which doesn't impact the sound as it can apparently "adapt to its orientation." Just don't leave it on a sloping surface. To avoid any (expensive) accidents, the Horizon comes with an accompanying dock that you can rest it in. Being wireless, it works with Bluetooth and supports Apple AirPlay to boot. You can purchase the speaker now from Louis Vuitton's online store.
At CES 2020, Sony demoed its 360 Reality Audio (360RA) technology on a home theater setup like you would put in your living room. The in-booth layout included a soundbar, subwoofer and two rear satellite speakers. Today, the company announced the first gear that will allow you to actually create something similar at home. The company's new HT-A7000 flagship soundbar offers Dolby Atmos in addition to 360RA and the option to tack on sub and/or extra speakers can accommodate any space. If you're not so much into soundbars but still want the sensation of immersive audio, Sony also introduced the HT-A9: a set of four speakers and a control box equipped with new 360 Spatial Sound Mapping tech.

The HT-A7000 is a 7.1.2-channel soundbar packed with Sony's X-balanced speakers, side beam tweeters, up-firing drivers for Dolby Atmos and dual subwoofers. Thanks to a Virtual Surround Engine (overhead) and S-Force Pro Front Surround (horizontal), the A7000 can simulate immersive audio on its own so you can take advantage of DTS:X in addition to Atmos. The soundbar is equipped with Sound Field Optimization that uses built-in microphones to calibrate the speaker to a room by detecting the height and width of the space as well as the position of a wireless subwoofer and any rear speakers.

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When it comes to music, the A7000 accommodates High-Resolution Audio and 360 Reality Audio. In fact, this is the first Sony soundbar to support 360RA and just the third speaker from the company to do so. The A7000 also has Sony's DSEE Extreme technology that Sony has leveraged for its headphones. That feature restores some of the compression from streaming services in real time, giving you something akin to lossless audio without the massive file sizes or the need for a wired setup.

In terms of connectivity, the A7000 has HDMI 2.1 with eARC and both 8K and 4K/120fps passthrough  plus Dolby Vision support. The soundbar works with Chromecast, AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect, so you have options when it comes to streaming music from your phone or another device. When used with compatible Bravia TVs, the A7000 works with Sony's Acoustic Center Sync that allows you to employ your television's speakers as additional center audio for things like speech clarity. The new soundbar can be controlled by a Google Assistant device at launch and Sony plans to add Alexa compatibility in a future update. Lastly, the company says optional wireless subwoofers and rear speakers will connect automatically to the A7000 when you power them on.

Unlike the HT-ST5000 that it's replacing, the HT-A7000 soundbar doesn't come with a subwoofer. Sony says it unbundled the pairing based on customer feedback. Some people wanted the company's top-of-the-line soundbar, but they weren't necessarily interested in the sub. It's a beast in terms of both size and sound, so it's not ideal for apartments on any room where space is limited. Instead, Sony is offering two subwoofer options  the SA-SW5 and SA-SW3  along with a pair of rear satellite speakers (SA-RS3S) as separate purchases. All of the add-ons connect to the HT-A7000 wirelessly, with the SW5 offering 300 watts of low-end tone via a 7-inch driver and the SW3 packing 200 watts of bass with a 6-inch speaker.

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With the A9 "home theater system," four cylindrical speakers offer what Sony describes as a "flexible layout" option that's meant to blend in with your living room decor. Thanks to Sound Field Optimization and built-in mics, the A9 can calibrate itself to any space  just like the tech does for the A7000. A key difference here is that the A9 is also equipped with Sony's new 360 Spatial Sound Mapping Technology. This feature not only lets you place the four units as you see fit, but it also offers a broad soundstage the company says is more immersive than "traditional" soundbars. Sony explains that the A9 gives users the sensation that the audio is "coming from beyond their walls" by creating up to 12 "phantom" speakers with just the four units. Of course, this is something we'll have to put the test to double-check the claim.

Each speaker houses X-balanced front and up-firing speakers along with a tweeter and bass duct. The four devices connect wirelessly to a control box that has HDMI in/out (eARC output) with 8K and 4K/120 passthrough alongside Dolby Vision. The A9 is compatible with immersive formats like Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, 360 Reality Audio and High-Resolution Audio. It also works with Chromecast, AirPlay 2 and Spotify Connect and you can leverage voice control by pairing the set of speakers with a Google Assistant (at launch) or Alexa (via future update) device. If you need a boost in the center channel, you can use the A9 with compatible Bravia TVs and Sony's Acoustic Center Sync to employ the speakers from the display. Lastly, both of Sony's new subwoofers can be paired with the A9 speakers for fuller sound.

All of Sony's new home theater gear is set to arrive in "September/October," according to the company. The HT-A7000 soundbar is $1,300 while the HT-A9 speaker set is $1,800. The SA-SW5 and SA-SW3 subwoofers are $700 and $400 respectively, while the SA-RS3S satellite speakers are $350. That means if you're expecting to grab a complete setup with the A7000, a soundbar and rear speakers, you'll need to hand over at least $2,050.
June 17, 1949 - July 20, 2021 Celebration of Life Service for Carrie Lee Lanier, 72, of Enid, will be 10:00 a.m. Saturday, July 24, 2021, in the Anderson-Burris Funeral Home Chapel with the Rev. Ethan Stoking officiating. Cremation arrangements are under the direction of Anderson-Burris Fune
Nanostructuring often makes materials very powerful in many applications. Some nanomaterials take on the desired complex structures independently during their creation process. Scientists from the University of Hamburg, DESY, ESRF and the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich have studied the formation of cobalt oxide crystals just a few nanometers in size and how they assemble, while they are still being formed. The results are published today in Nature Communications.

Nanomaterials have special properties that make them more effective than conventional materials in various applications. In sensors and catalysts (in green energy production, such as water splitting into energy-rich hydrogen and oxygen) the important chemical processes happen at the surface. Nanostructured materials, even in small amounts, provide a very large surface and are therefore suitable for this kind of applications.

Further potential arises due to the variety of shapes and material combinations that are conceivable on the nanoscale. However, establishing the exact shape of these nanostructures can be a tedious process. Researchers focus on nanocrystals that independently form complex structures without any external influence, for example by sticking together (assembling). This increases their effectiveness in important technological applications, such as green energy generation or sensor technology.

Often nanoparticles arrange themselves independently, as if following a blueprint, and take on new shapes, explains Lukas Grote, one of the main authors of the study and scientist at DESY and the University of Hamburg. Now, however, we want to understand why they are doing this and what steps they go through on the way to their final form. That is why we follow the formation of nanomaterials in real time using high-intensity X-rays.  For some of the experiments, the researchers used the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) and DESY's synchrotron radiation source PETRA III.

However, nanomaterials usually have a complex formation genesis, emphasizes Dorota Koziej, professor at the Center for Hybrid Nanostructures (CHyN) at the University of Hamburg: That is why a single X-ray method is not sufficient to examine all the steps during the emergence of nanostructures. At every step you have to apply the right technique and later put the individual results together to form an overall picture. "

X-rays from a synchrotron radiation source are both attenuated (absorbed) and deflected (scattered) by matter. Depending on which of these interactions is measured with a certain X-ray technology, conclusions can be drawn about different stages of the development process of a nanomaterial. If you combine both X-ray absorption and X-ray scattering, you can decipher all the steps from the starting material (left) to the fully assembled nanostructures (right). Credits: Nature Communications.

When X-rays move through matter, they are both attenuated (absorbed) and changed (scattered) in their direction of movement. Both processes can be observed separately, and conclusions can be drawn from them about different stages in the growth process of a nanomaterial. From the X-ray absorption spectroscopy, chemical changes in molecules can be recognised. This technique shows the steps in which the starting materials of the nanostructures are transformed, even before nanocrystals have formed.

At the ESRF, the team carried out high resolution X-ray spectroscopy experiments on ID26 and BM14. Blanka Detlefs, co-author of the paper and scientist on ID26, explains: our technique allows to follow chemical state changes in complex reactions within a chemical reactor and in real time. Such in situ experiments are always challenging, as we have to reproduce the same experimental conditions as in the laboratory with an extra optical access for the X-ray beam. Kristina Kvashnina, researcher at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden Rossendorf and also involved in the experiment, adds: Combining the technique with electronic structure calculations, it becomes an efficient method to study and evaluate the unique properties of nanomaterials.

From the moment when the smallest nanocrystals form and grow, the way in which the X-ray light is scattered by the material changes. The superposition (interference) of light waves causes more light to be deflected in certain directions than in others. From this scattering of the X-ray light, we can then calculate how the shape and size of the cobalt oxide nanocrystals develop during their formation process, explains Cecilia Zito, one of the main authors, from the University of Hamburg and who is now working at the Sao Paulo State University in Brazil. We can then also observe the way in which the nanocrystals attach to each other, that is, assemble independently to form new and more complex structures, adds Kilian Frank, also main author from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich.

Finding out the blueprint for nanomaterials still remains a major challenge. Every compound is different, and we don't yet understand many ways of self-assembly, says Grote. However, the researchers involved are convinced that this will soon change. "In the end, we are looking for an overall model with which we can explain and predict the formation of complex nanostructures in general," says Koziej. "In this way we learn how to best influence the dynamic processes on the nanoscale, and ultimately how to use the full potential of these tailor-made nanomaterials."

Reference:

Grote L. et al, Nature Communications, DOI: 10.1038/ s41467-021-24557-z CC
WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 -- Surpassing the biological limitations of the brain and using one's mind to interact with and control external electronic devices may sound like the distant cyborg future, but it could come sooner than we think.

Researchers from Imperial College London conducted a review of modern commercial brain-computer interface (BCI) devices, and they discuss the primary technological limitations and humanitarian concerns of these devices in APL Bioengineering, from AIP Publishing.

The most promising method to achieve real-world BCI applications is through electroencephalography (EEG), a method of monitoring the brain noninvasively through its electrical activity. EEG-based BCIs, or eBCIs, will require a number of technological advances prior to widespread use, but more importantly, they will raise a variety of social, ethical, and legal concerns.

Though it is difficult to understand exactly what a user experiences when operating an external device with an eBCI, a few things are certain. For one, eBCIs can communicate both ways. This allows a person to control electronics, which is particularly useful for medical patients that need help controlling wheelchairs, for example, but also potentially changes the way the brain functions.

"For some of these patients, these devices become such an integrated part of themselves that they refuse to have them removed at the end of the clinical trial," said Rylie Green, one of the authors. "It has become increasingly evident that neurotechnologies have the potential to profoundly shape our own human experience and sense of self."

Aside from these potentially bleak mental and physiological side effects, intellectual property concerns are also an issue and may allow private companies that develop eBCI technologies to own users' neural data.

"This is particularly worrisome, since neural data is often considered to be the most intimate and private information that could be associated with any given user," said Roberto Portillo-Lara, another author. "This is mainly because, apart from its diagnostic value, EEG data could be used to infer emotional and cognitive states, which would provide unparalleled insight into user intentions, preferences, and emotions."

As the availability of these platforms increases past medical treatment, disparities in access to these technologies may exacerbate existing social inequalities. For example, eBCIs can be used for cognitive enhancement and cause extreme imbalances in academic or professional successes and educational advancements.

"This bleak panorama brings forth an interesting dilemma about the role of policymakers in BCI commercialization," Green said. "Should regulatory bodies intervene to prevent misuse and unequal access to neurotech? Should society follow instead the path taken by previous innovations, such as the internet or the smartphone, which originally targeted niche markets but are now commercialized on a global scale?"

She calls on global policymakers, neuroscientists, manufacturers, and potential users of these technologies to begin having these conversations early and collaborate to produce answers to these difficult moral questions.

"Despite the potential risks, the ability to integrate the sophistication of the human mind with the capabilities of modern technology constitutes an unprecedented scientific achievement, which is beginning to challenge our own preconceptions of what it is to be human," Green said.

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The article "Mind the gap: State-of-the-art technologies and applications for EEG-based brain-computer interfaces" is authored by Roberto Portillo-Lara, Bogachan Tahirbegi, Christopher A.R. Chapman, Josef A. Goding, and Rylie A. Green. The article will appear in APL Bioengineering on July 20, 2021 (DOI: 10.1063/5.0047237). After that date, it can be accessed at https:/ / doi. org/ 10. 1063/ 5. 0047237 .

ABOUT THE JOURNAL
Tuesday, July 20, 2021, CLEVELAND: A Cleveland Clinic study demonstrates that adults with obesity lost significantly more weight when they had access to medications for chronic weight management in conjunction with their employer-based weight management program, compared to adults who did not have access to the medications. The study was published in JAMA Network Open.

Obesity is a complex disease that is caused by multiple factors, including genetic, environmental, and biological. A lifestyle intervention with a focus on nutrition and exercise is often not enough to treat obesity, which is a chronic disease that requires long-term therapy. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved several prescription medications for weight loss and chronic weight management, also called anti-obesity medications. However, they have limited health insurance coverage.

"The research results support the need to treat patients with a multidisciplinary weight management program that incorporates safe and effective medications to lose weight and maintain weight loss," said Bartolome Burguera, M.D., Ph.D., chair of Cleveland Clinic's Endocrinology & Metabolism Institute and primary investigator of the study. "Doctors prescribe medications to treat some of the health consequences associated with obesity, such as hypertension and type 2 diabetes. However, medications for weight loss and chronic weight management are underutilized."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that more than 42% of U.S. adults have obesity. In addition to the serious health conditions associated with obesity  such as type 2 diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, high-blood pressure, heart disease and stroke  the CDC also reported the economic impact of obesity on the U.S. healthcare system. The estimated medical care costs of the disease in the United States represented $147 billion (in 2008 dollars).

The objective of this study was to determine the effect of combining anti-obesity medications with a multidisciplinary employer-based weight management program.

The one-year, single-center, pragmatic clinical trial was conducted in the real-world setting of a workplace health plan. The study included 200 adults with obesity (body mass index of 30 or greater) who were enrolled in the Cleveland Clinic Employee Health Plan between January 2019 and May 2020. As part of the health plan, participants had access to a comprehensive weight management program.

In this real-world setting, eligible participants were randomized 1:1 to either a weight management program with FDA-approved anti-obesity medications or a weight management program alone. The weight management program was administered through monthly shared medical appointments (SMAs) that offered a multidisciplinary approach, including nutrition education. The monthly SMA visits focused on adopting a healthier lifestyle and addressed the five components of the weight management program: nutrition, physical activity, appetite control, sleep, and mental health. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, some of the SMAs were conducted virtually.

The 100 study participants, randomized to the weight management program combined with access to the medications, received their prescriptions at the time of their monthly SMAs, based on recommended clinical practice.

Patients were prescribed one of five FDA-approved medications for chronic weight management - orlistat, lorcaserin, phentermine/topiramate, naltrexone/bupropion, liraglutide 3.0 mg. The medication selected for each patient was at the discretion of the treating provider, and was determined after a thorough assessment and discussion with the participants. (Lorcaserin was withdrawn from the market in February 2020. The eight patients taking lorcaserin at the time were notified immediately and either switched medications or discontinued medication due to proximity to the end of the study.)

Research results showed that the participants who had access to the anti-obesity medications averaged significantly greater weight loss at 12 months (-7.7%), compared to the participants who were in the weight management program alone (-4.2%). In the group who had access to the medications, 62.5% of the participants lost at least 5% of their weight, compared to 44.8% of the participants in the group with the weight management program alone. SMA attendance was higher among the participants who had access to the weight loss medications.

"Many patients see improvement in their health when they lose 5% of their weight," said Kevin M. Pantalone, D.O., first author of the study and an endocrinologist at Cleveland Clinic. "Based on our study results, access to anti-obesity medications combined with a multidisciplinary weight management program provides a more effective treatment compared to a weight management program without access to these medications."

More long-term research is needed in real-world, employer-based settings to evaluate the costs and benefits of anti-obesity medications and their use in conjunction with workplace wellness plans.

###

This study was funded by Novo Nordisk. Representatives of Novo Nordisk (the sponsor) were involved in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript. Dr. Burguera reported receiving consulting honorarium as a member of the U.S. National Expert Panel for the SELECT trial, a steering committee member for the study being reported, and research support from Novo Nordisk. Dr. Pantalone reported receiving consulting and speaking honorarium, as well as research support from Novo Nordisk, and currently serves as the principal investigator at Cleveland Clinic for the Novo Nordisk sponsored SOUL trial.

About Cleveland Clinic

Cleveland Clinic - now in its centennial year - is a nonprofit multispecialty academic medical center that integrates clinical and hospital care with research and education. Located in Cleveland, Ohio, it was founded in 1921 by four renowned physicians with a vision of providing outstanding patient care based upon the principles of cooperation, compassion and innovation. Cleveland Clinic has pioneered many medical breakthroughs , including coronary artery bypass surgery and the first face transplant in the United States. U.S. News & World Report consistently names Cleveland Clinic as one of the nation's best hospitals in its annual "America's Best Hospitals" survey. Among Cleveland Clinic's 70,800 employees worldwide are more than 4,660 salaried physicians and researchers, and 18,500 registered nurses and advanced practice providers, representing 140 medical specialties and subspecialties. Cleveland Clinic is a 6,500-bed health system that includes a 173-acre main campus near downtown Cleveland, 19 hospitals, more than 220 outpatient facilities, and locations in southeast Florida; Las Vegas, Nevada; Toronto, Canada; Abu Dhabi, UAE; and London, England. In 2020, there were 8.7 million total outpatient visits, 273,000 hospital admissions and observations, and 217,000 surgical cases throughout Cleveland Clinic's health system. Patients came for treatment from every state and 185 countries. Visit us at clevelandclinic.org. Follow us at twitter.com/ClevelandClinic. News and resources available at newsroom.clevelandclinic.org .
WASHINGTON - A peer-reviewed study by the Environmental Working Group recommends stringent health-based exposure standards for both children and adults for radiofrequency radiation emitted from wireless devices. EWG's children's guideline is the first of its kind and fills a gap left by federal regulators.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Health, relies on the methodology developed by the Environmental Protection Agency to assess human health risks arising from toxic chemical exposures. EWG scientists have applied the same methods to radiofrequency radiation from wireless devices, including cellphones and tablets.

EWG recommends the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, adjust its woefully outdated health standards for wireless radiation, last revised a quarter-century ago, well before wireless devices became ubiquitous, heavily used appliances synonymous with modern life. The recommendation draws on data from a landmark 2018 study from the National Toxicology Program, or NTP, one of the largest long-term studies on the health effects of radiofrequency radiation exposure.

EWG's new guidelines, the first developed in the U.S. to focus on children's health, recommend that children's exposure overall be 200 to 400 lower than the whole-body exposure limit set by the FCC in 1996.

The EWG recommended limit for so-called whole-body Specific Absorption Rate, or SAR, for children is 0.2 to 0.4 milliwatts per kilogram, or mW/kg. For adults, EWG recommends a whole-body SAR limit of 2 to 4 mW/kg, which is 20 to 40 times lower than the federal limit.

The FCC has not set a separate standard for children. Its standards for radiofrequency radiation set a maximum SAR of 0.08 watts per kilogram, or W/kg, for whole-body exposure and an SAR for localized spatial peak - the highest exposure level for a specific part of the body, such as the brain - of 1.6 W/kg for the general population.

The NTP studies examined the health effects of 2G and 3G wireless radiation and found there is "clear evidence" of a link between exposure to radiofrequency radiation and heart tumors in laboratory animals. Similar results were reported by a team of Italian scientists from the Ramazzini Institute.

Cellphone radiation was classified a "possible carcinogen" in 2011 by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, part of the World Health Organization, a conclusion based on human epidemiological studies that found an increased risk of glioma, a malignant brain cancer, associated with cellphone use.

EWG scientists say that more research is needed on the health impacts of the latest generation of communication technologies, such as 5G. In the meantime, EWG's recommendation for strict, lower exposure limits for all radiofrequency sources, especially for children.

When the FCC established its radiofrequency radiation limits, following the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, relatively few Americans, and likely no children, owned and used cellphones.

Much has changed since the federal limits were set, including technology and how these devices are used. A survey completed by the nonprofit Common Sense Media in March 2020, just before the start of the Covid-19 spread in the U.S., found that 46 percent of 2- to 4-year-olds, and 67 percent of 5- to 8-year-olds, had their own mobile devices, such as a tablet or smartphone.

With remote learning, a necessity during the Covid-19 pandemic, phones, tablets and other wireless devices became a part of life for young children, tweens and teens nationwide.

"The FCC must consider the latest scientific research, which shows that radiation from these devices can affect health, especially for children," said Uloma Uche, Ph.D., EWG environmental health science fellow and lead author of the study.

"It has been 25 years since the FCC set its limits for radiofrequency radiation. With multiple sources of radiofrequency radiation in the everyday environment, including Wi-Fi, wireless devices and cell towers, protecting children's health from wireless radiation exposures should be a priority for the FCC," she added.

"We have grave concerns over the outdated approach the federal government has relied on to study the health effects of cellphone radiation and set its current safety limit and advice for consumers," said EWG President Ken Cook. "Government guidelines are a quarter-century old and were established at a time when wireless devices were not a constant feature of the lives of nearly every American, including children."

Reviewing 5G and other aspects of wireless technology should be the focus of public health agencies, noted Cook. "It is long past time the federal government made exposure to 5G wireless devices safe. We strongly believe those exposures deserve far more investigation and scientific rigor than has been applied to date."

"The evidence shows that children absorb more radiofrequency radiation than adults, and the developing body of a child is more vulnerable to such effects," said Olga Naidenko, Ph.D., EWG's vice president for science investigations and co-author of the study.

"More research on the safety and sustainability of wireless technology is essential," added Naidenko. "Meanwhile, there are simple steps everyone can take to protect their health, such as keeping wireless devices farther from their bodies."

There are a number of easy, precautionary steps consumers can take until the government conducts the rigorous scientific assessment the issue deserves, which should have occurred years ago.

"Based on our review of the health risks and the inadequacy of current standards to protect children, while the science evolves, it is perfectly reasonable for parents to consider minimizing or eliminating radiofrequency radiation sources at home by relying more on wired internet access, and to urge schools to take comparable steps to reduce classroom and campus exposure," said Cook.

Other health-protective tips for consumers who want to reduce radiofrequency radiation from wireless devices include using a headset or speaker, texting instead of talking, and limiting the time children spend on smart phones.

Find all of EWG's tips to reduce exposure to wireless radiation here.

EWG's recommendation for limits for radiofrequency radiation exposure is its latest effort to advance the public dialogue about science-based standards that protect public health.

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The Environmental Working Group is a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that empowers people to live healthier lives in a healthier environment. Through research, advocacy and unique education tools, EWG drives consumer choice and civic action.
For the first time, stealth coronal mass ejections can be detected before they wreak havoc on Earth without the need for dedicated spacecraft

On 23 July 2012, humanity escaped technological and economic disaster. A diffuse cloud of magnetized plasma in the shape of a slinky toy tens of thousands of kilometers across was hurled from the Sun at a speed of hundreds of kilometers per second.

This coronal mass ejection (CME) just missed the Earth because its origin on the Sun was facing away from our planet at the time. Had it hit the Earth, satellites might have been disabled, power grids around the globe knocked out, GPS systems, self-driving cars, and electronics jammed, and railway tracks and pipelines damaged. The cost of the potential damage has been estimated at between $600bn and $2.6trn in the US alone.

While CMEs as large as the 2012 event are rare, lesser ones cause damage on Earth about once every three years. CMEs need between one and a few days to reach Earth, leaving us some time to prepare for the potential geomagnetic storm. Current efforts to limit any damage include steering satellites out of harm's way or redirecting the power load of electrical grids. But many CMEs -- called 'stealth CMEs' because they don't produce any clear signs close to the Sun's surface -- aren't detected until they reach Earth.

Now, an International Space Science Institute (ISSI) team of scientists from the US, Belgium, UK, and India shows how to detect potentially damaging stealth CMEs, trace them back to their region of origin on the Sun, extrapolate their trajectory, and predict if they will hit Earth. The results were recently published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences.

Visualizing the invisible

"Stealth CMEs have always posed a problem, because they often originate at higher altitudes in the Sun's corona, in regions with weaker magnetic fields. This means that unlike normal CMEs -- which typically show up clearly on the Sun as dimmings or brightenings -- stealth CMEs are usually only visible on devices called coronagraphs designed to reveal the corona," said corresponding author Dr Erika Palmerio, a researcher at the Space Sciences Laboratory of the University of California at Berkeley.

"If you see a CME on a coronagraph, you don't know where on the Sun it came from, so you can't predict its trajectory and won't know whether it will hit Earth until too late."

Palmerio continued: "But here we show that many stealth CMEs can in fact be detected in time if current analysis methods for remote sensing are adapted. Put simply, we compared 'plain' remote sensing images of the Sun with the same image taken between eight and 12 hours earlier, to capture very slow changes in the lower corona, up to 350,000km from the Sun's surface. In many cases, these 'difference images' revealed small, previously overlooked changes in the loops of magnetic fields and plasma that are hurled from the Sun. We then zoom in on these with another set of imaging techniques to further analyze the stealth CME's approximate origin, and predict whether it is headed towards Earth."

Stealth CMEs leave overlooked signs

Palmerio and collaborators looked at four stealth CMEs that occurred between 2008 and 2016. Unusually for stealth CMEs, their origin on the Sun was approximately known only because NASA's twin STEREO spacecraft, launched in 2006, had happened to capture them 'off-limb'. This means it was viewed outside the Sun's disc from another angle than from Earth.

With the new imaging techniques, the authors revealed previously undetected, tiny dimmings and brightenings on the Sun at the region of origin of all four stealth CMEs. They conclude that the technique can be used for the early detection of risky stealth CMEs.

"This result is important because it shows us what to look for if we wish to predict the impact on Earth from solar eruptions," said Palmerio.

"Another important aspect of our study -- using geometric techniques to locate a CME's approximate source region and model its 3D structure as it expands and moves towards Earth -- can only be implemented when we have more dedicated observatories with different perspectives, like the STEREO spacecraft."

The authors predict that the new European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter, launched in February 2020, will help with this, just like similar initiatives which are currently discussed by researchers worldwide.

"Data from more observatories, analyzed with the techniques developed in our study, could also help with an even more difficult challenge: namely to detect so-called 'super stealth CMEs', which don't even show up on coronagraphs," said coauthor Dr Nariaki V Nitta, a senior researcher at Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, US.

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When it was discovered in the 1980s in Argentina, this hadrosaur was diagnosed with a fractured foot. However, a new analysis now shows that this ornithopod commonly known as the duck-billed dinosaur actually had a tumour some 70 million years ago, as well as two painful fractures in the vertebrae of its tail, despite which, it managed to survive for some time.

This dinosaur, called Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis, was discovered in Argentinean Patagonia in the 1980s, and the first analyses of its fossils indicated an ailment of the foot, possibly a fracture, as the Argentinean palaeontologist Jaime Powell pointed out at the time. The study of this animal then came to a standstill until 2016, when Powell invited another team of scientists to resume the research.

"In addition to the ailment of the foot, there were other possible fractures in several neural spines of the vertebrae of the tail," as Penelope Cruzado-Caballero, the lead author of the study, now published in the journal Cretaceous Research, and a scientist at the Research Institute of Palaeobiology and Geology of CONICET and the National University of Rio Negro (Argentina), as well as a professor at the University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain), has told SINC.

The researchers decided to analyse them all to see this hadrosaur, also known as duck-billed dinosaur, "during its lifetime" and to see how it was able to interact with the environment, with its fellows, and with predators while suffering from these problems.

Scientists were particularly surprised by the condition of the foot. "We were struck by the large overgrowth of bone that gave it a cauliflower-like appearance and covered almost the entire metatarsal," the researcher points out. When studying the histology and CT scans of the fossil, the team did not find a fracture. Instead, the indicators showed a reduction in bone density and several areas where cortical tissue had been destroyed.

"We were probably looking at a cancer or a neoplasm, such as an osteosarcoma," specifies Cruzado-Caballero. The presence of diseases such as tumours confirms that they already existed at a very early age and among a very diverse group of animals.

"Despite the large development of the cancer, it did not significantly affect the muscle insertion zone, so we cannot be sure that the lesion affected its locomotion," says the palaeontologist. The study has allowed us to determine that the tumour did not spread to other bones - since this ornithopod preserved almost half of its skeleton -, "so, although it severely affected the metatarsus, it did not cause its death," she adds.

Tail fractures followed by infections

In addition to the foot tumour, other pathologies were identified in the neural spines of two vertebrae in Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis's tail. According to the scientists, one of the vertebrae had a displaced fracture that had almost healed. "It was probably related to an injury resulting from a strong blow that caused the bone to be displaced and to heal in this manner, giving the spine a curved appearance," Cruzado-Caballero stresses.

The other vertebra had an almost completely healed fracture also produced by a stress event (it is not known if it was due to impact), which did not lead to the displacement of the bone. Although the spine maintains its straight shape, the researchers observed a swelling that formed a callus on the bone as it healed.

"These fractures, especially in the case of the displaced fracture, must have been associated with infections following the rupture of the muscles surrounding the bone," says the researcher, who considers that they must have been painful not only because of the blow, but also because of the infections that could have impeded the mobility of the tail and caused this specimen a great deal of discomfort when it moved.

However, despite the severity of the ailments, the death of Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis did not follow immediately after its injuries, the authors point out. "But we cannot quantify how long it lived afterwards, which means that it could have lived for months or years. Nor can we confirm that these injuries were the final cause of its death," comments the scientist.

This hadrosaur, although badly injured, therefore managed to survive and continued to interact with its fellows, despite the initial pain caused by fractures and infections. These could have been caused by falling, hitting an object or another animal to defend itself from predators, or even by being trampled on the tail by another hadrosaur.

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Reference:

Penelope Cruzado-Caballero et al. "Osseous paleopathologies of Bonapartesaurus rionegrensis (Ornithopoda, Hadrosauridae) from Allen Formation (Upper Cretaceous) of Patagonia Argentina" Cretaceous Research
Retail traders often fear that reducing the amount of urban space made available for parking private vehicles would have a negative effect on their businesses. A survey conducted by researchers from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) on two shopping streets in Berlin shows that traders have a skewed perception of their customers' mobility habits. The findings of this research will facilitate better-informed decision-making around urban land-use planning.

The researchers surveyed around 2,000 customers and 145 retailers on Kottbusser Damm (Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district) and Hermannstrae (Neukolln district). The vast majority of shoppers - 93 per cent - had not travelled to their destination by car. 91 per cent of the revenue generated by these businesses came out of the wallets of customers who walked, cycled or used public transport to reach them. Customers that drive to the shops accounted for just 9 per cent of sales.

Just 7 per cent of customers travel to businesses by car

"The results of this survey confirm the findings of studies published in 2019 on the inner cities of Offenbach, Gera, Erfurt, Weimar and Leipzig. Studies on mobility and local economic impacts conducted in other European countries, North America, and Australia paint a similar picture. The car is less relevant for local business than is often assumed in policy processes. Pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders are the important customer groups for local business in an urban context." says IASS researcher Dirk von Schneidemesser. Retailers in the cities surveyed overestimated the share of customers who come by car - so too in Berlin, where retailers estimated that 22 per cent of their customers used this mode of transport, when in fact it was only 7 per cent.

This misperception could be due to a human tendency to assume that others behaviour in a similar manner. The survey revealed that traders who drive to their business estimated much higher customer car use (29%) than traders that use other modes of transport (between 10% and 19%). Traders were also found to overestimate the distance that customers travel to visit their businesses. In fact, over half (51%) of the shoppers surveyed lived less than 1 kilometer from the shopping street. In contrast, traders estimated that just 13% of customers live within this range.

Better infrastructure for active mobility can benefit businesses

"The findings of this survey are in line with the growing body of literature that suggests improved active travel (i.e. for pedestrians and cyclists) and transit infrastructure is likely to benefit local business", says Dirk von Schneidemesser. Business associations should consider this evidence when weighing the benefits and disadvantages of infrastructure development in order to best represent the interests of local business.

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July 20, 2021; Oslo, Norway and Seoul, Republic of Korea: The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) today announced a new programme of clinical research which aims to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. CEPI will provide funding of up to $12.7m to the Expanding Access and Delivery of COVID-19 Vaccines in Africa (ECOVA) consortium led by IVI to carry out clinical trials of Sinopharm's BBIBP-CorV vaccine which will support the expanded use of the vaccine on the African continent.

Up to 170 million doses of BBIBP-CorV will be distributed by the COVAX Facility under an agreement announced on 12 July 2021, and the vaccine is already being deployed in over 50 countries around the world. However there have been no clinical trials of BBIBP-CorV in African populations or against the variants of concern circulating in southern Africa. The ECOVA research programme aims to generate crucial data to inform the use of the vaccine in Africa, and potentially expand use of the vaccine to HIV-infected individuals. All results generated by ECOVA will be made available open source to inform policy makers and regulatory authorities' recommendations on the use of BBIBP-CorV in national immunization programmes.

The ECOVA consortium is led by IVI, working in partnership with Mozambique's Instituto Nacional de Saude (INS), the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), the University of Heidelberg, Germany (UH), Harvard University, USA, and the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar (UA).

Clinical trials in Mozambique

ECOVA will conduct two clinical trials in Beira and Maputo, Mozambique, which will be led by INS in collaboration with IVI. The trials will begin shortly, with the first interim results expected before the end of 2021. Participants in both trials will be followed up for two years to gather important long-term data about the vaccine.

A Phase 3 trial will assess the safety and efficacy of BBIBP-CorV against locally circulating variants of concern (VoCs) in healthy adults. This will be the first trial of this vaccine in an African population, and against the VoCs prevalent in much of southern Africa. The trial will also assess the vaccine's safety and immunogenicity in HIV-infected individuals, which could broaden the indication of the vaccine for use in this population. In addition, it will investigate the potential for co-administration of BBIBP-CorV with seasonal influenza vaccines.

A separate Phase 2 mix and match trial will evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of mixed schedules of BBIBP-CorV and AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine. The trial will investigate the potential of giving two different vaccines which are both likely to feature significantly in Africa's vaccine rollout, which could bring greater flexibility to vaccination campaigns at times of uncertain or fluctuating supplies.

Dr Richard Hatchett, CEO of CEPI, said:

"Only a handful of clinical trials of COVID-19 vaccines have taken place in sub-Saharan Africa, but for vaccines to have the maximum impact they must be evaluated in the populations that will receive them and against the variants those populations are most likely to encounter. The ECOVA project in Mozambique will generate valuable additional data about BBIBP-CorV, with the goal of expanding access to the vaccine for people in Africa.

"Through our collaboration with the African Union and Africa CDC, CEPI is working to enhance vaccine R&D and manufacturing on the continent, which includes boosting clinical trial capacity so the region is better equipped to respond to emerging infectious diseases. Investing in high quality clinical trials such as these will fill in immediate gaps in our clinical knowledge, while also strengthening regional health security in the future."

Dr Florian Marks, Deputy Director General of Epidemiology, Public Health and Impact at IVI, said:

"To end the pandemic as quickly as possible, it is vital to evaluate vaccines in a variety of populations and contexts, and to ensure safe and effective vaccines are available to countries everywhere. We are extremely grateful to receive CEPI's support for the ECOVA project, aiming to expand access and delivery of COVID-19 vaccines in Africa. To achieve this goal, IVI and our consortium of partners, the National Institute of Health in Mozambique; icddr,b; the University of Heidelberg; Harvard University; and the University of Antananarivo will work to generate critical clinical data, including the effect of BBIBP-CorV against new variants of concern, vaccination strategies using two different vaccines for two doses, and the use of COVID-19 vaccines in individuals with HIV infection."

Dr Ilesh V. Jani, Director General of the INS (National Institute of Health) in Mozambique, said:

"We are pleased to partner with IVI and our other consortium members on this important study to evaluate the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against new variants of concern--particularly the Beta and Delta variants which now account for the majority of infections in our region. The ECOVA project supported by CEPI will have a significant impact on bringing an effective and much-needed vaccine solution to Mozambique and other African countries."

Dr. Sonia Enosse, Director of Research on Health and Wellbeing at the INS, said:

"The ECOVA project will be of great importance to Mozambique, further developing the country's clinical trial capacity that has been established in the past decade. Data originating from ECOVA will not only provide information on vaccine efficacy of the BBIBP-CorV product but generate additional epidemiological data on transmission patterns of SARS-CoV-2, which will be valuable for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic."

Expanding access to COVID-19 vaccines by filling R&D gaps

ECOVA is the second programme to be funded in response to a CEPI Call for Proposals launched in January 2021 which aims to address current gaps in our clinical knowledge of vaccine performance both now and in the long term, in order to expand access to COVID-19 vaccines as part of the global vaccination rollout. Examples of such gaps include assessment of the safety and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines in pregnant women, infants and children, and immunocompromised populations, as well as studies on booster doses, length of vaccine efficacy, 'mix and match' strategies, and dosing intervals. CEPI is also co-funding a study of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy in immunosuppressed and transplant patients led by Oslo University Hospital in response to this Call for Proposals. In addition, CEPI has previously announced funding to support a mix-and-match study led by the University of Oxford

This funding forms part of CEPI's next 5-year plan, published in March 2021, which aims to reduce or even eliminate the future risk of pandemics and epidemics. As part of this plan CEPI is working to strengthen our defences against COVID-19 and reduce the risk of future coronavirus pandemics, by optimizing our current vaccines, addressing variants of concern, developing next-generation COVID-19 vaccines, and initiating the development of broadly protective or universal coronavirus vaccines.

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About CEPI

CEPI is an innovative partnership between public, private, philanthropic, and civil organisations, launched at Davos in 2017, to develop vaccines against future epidemics. Prior to COVID-19 CEPI's work focused on developing vaccines against Ebola virus, Lassa virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus, Nipah virus, Rift Valley Fever virus and Chikungunya virus - it has over 20 vaccine candidates against these pathogens in development. CEPI has also invested in new platform technologies for rapid vaccine development against unknown pathogens (Disease X).

During the current pandemic, CEPI initiated multiple programmes to develop vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants with a focus on speed, scale and access. These programmes leverage the rapid response platforms developed by CEPI's partners prior to the emergence of COVID-19 as well as new collaborations. The aim is to advance clinical development of a diverse portfolio of safe and effective COVID-19 candidates and to enable fair allocation to these vaccines worldwide through COVAX.

CEPI's 5-year plan lays out a $3.5 billion roadmap to compress vaccine development timelines to 100 days, develop a universal vaccine against COVID-19 and other Betacoronaviruses, and create a "library" of vaccine candidates for use against known and unknown pathogens. The plan is available at http://www. endpandemics. cepi. net .

Follow our news page for the latest updates. Follow us via @CEPIvaccines, @DrRHatchett, and LinkedIn.

About the International Vaccine Institute (IVI)

The International Vaccine Institute (IVI) is a nonprofit inter-governmental organization established in 1997 at the initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). IVI has 36 countries and the World Health Organization (WHO) on its treaty, including Korea, Sweden, India, and Finland as state funders.

Our mandate is to make vaccines available and accessible for the world's most vulnerable people. We focus on infectious diseases of global health importance such as cholera, typhoid, shigella, salmonella, schistosomiasis, chikungunya, Group A Strep, Hepatitis A, HPV, TB, HIV, MERS, COVID-19, as well as antimicrobial resistance. For more information, please visit https:/ / www. ivi. int

Media Contacts

CEPI

Email: press@cepi.net

Phone: +44 7387 055214

IVI

Email: aerie.em@ivi.int

Phone: +81 2-881-1386
Study finds declines in prescription drugs dispensed to children during COVID-19, including infection-related medicines and some used for chronic diseases

ANN ARBOR, Mich. - As children made fewer visits to health facilities and engaged in social distancing and other COVID-19 mitigation measures, a smaller number of them also received prescription drugs, a new study suggests.

Overall, medications prescribed for children dropped by more than a quarter during the first eight months of the pandemic compared to the previous year, with the steepest declines in infection-related medicines like antibiotics and cough-and-cold drugs.

Antibiotic dispensing to children and teens plunged by nearly 56 % between April and December 2020 compared with the same period in 2019. Researchers also found declines in prescriptions for chronic diseases, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and asthma, but no change in prescriptions for antidepressants, according to the findings in Pediatrics.

"The decline in the number of children receiving antibiotics is consistent with the large decreases in infection-related pediatric visits during 2020," said lead author Kao-Ping Chua, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatrician and researcher at University of Michigan Health C.S. Mott Children's Hospital and the Susan B. Meister Child Health Evaluation and Research Center.

"Because antibiotics have important side effects, the dramatic decreases in antibiotic dispensing may be a welcome development," he added. "However, declines in dispensing of chronic disease drugs could be concerning."

Dispensing of infection-related drugs declined sharply

Researchers analyzed national prescription drug dispensing data from 92% of U.S pharmacies to assess changes in dispensing to children ages 0-19 during COVID-19.

Between January 2018 and February 2020, nearly 25.8 million prescriptions were dispensed to children a month. Dispensing totals during the first 8 months of the pandemic dropped by about 27% compared to the same period in 2019.

Overall, drugs typically prescribed for acute infections, including antibiotics, fell by nearly 51 % while those for chronic diseases fell by 17 %.

"The decrease in antibiotic dispensing most likely reflects reductions in infections, such as colds and strep throat, due to COVID-19 risk-mitigation measures like social distancing and face masks," Chua said.

"As a result, children had fewer infection-related visits and had fewer opportunities to receive antibiotic prescriptions, whether for antibiotic-appropriate conditions or antibiotic-inappropriate conditions."

Chua's previous research has suggested that nearly a quarter of antibiotic prescriptions among children and adults may be unnecessary. In children, antibiotics are the leading cause of emergency room visits for adverse drug events, with potential side effects including allergic reactions, fungal infections and diarrhea.

Long term, antibiotic overuse may also contribute to antibiotic-resistant bacteria development, causing illnesses that were once easily treatable with antibiotics to become untreatable and dangerous, Chua said.

Another welcomed development in drug dispensing trends, researchers found, was a decline in prescription medicines to treat symptoms of the common cold, particularly to suppress coughs. Findings suggest a nearly 80 % drop in these medications (known as antitussive drugs) during the 2020 study period.

"These drugs have little benefit but are associated with potentially harmful side effects, particularly in young children," Chua said.

"From the perspective of health care quality, the sharp decline in dispensing of cough-and-cold medications may represent a silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic."

While dispensing of infection-related drugs to children could rebound as social distancing measures are lifted and infections increase, it may still not necessarily return to pre-pandemic levels soon, Chua said. If COVID-19 risk-mitigation measures continue in schools and day cares, for example, this may lower the incidence of conditions for which antibiotics are frequently prescribed, such as ear infections, sinusitis, and upper respiratory infections.

Dispensing of chronic disease drugs

The study found a modest 11% decline in dispensing of prescriptions for ADHD.

"Whether this decline is concerning needs to be studied further," Chua said. "For example, it is unclear whether the decline in ADHD prescriptions reflect a reduced need for medications at school due to the transition to remote learning, disruptions in medication access, or delays in diagnosis."

There were also large declines in dispensing of asthma medications, such as albuterol and inhaled steroids, according to the research

National data suggest that the number of asthma attacks in children has dropped sharply during the pandemic, Chua said. Given this, the decline in medication dispensing likely reflects better control of asthma.

Researchers need more data to better understand the lack of change in antidepressant dispensing to children during the pandemic.

"An optimistic view is that few children on established antidepressant regimens discontinued use," Chua said.

"Studies, however, suggest that the mental health of children has worsened during the pandemic, particularly among adolescents. Given this, our findings might suggest that antidepressant dispensing has not risen to meet this increased need."

Clinicians may be able to use electronic health records to identify decreases in the frequency of refill requests among children on established drug regimens for chronic disease, Chua said. Clinicians could then call families to determine if there is a reason for concern - such as medications not being affordable for them - or if the changes reflect improved disease control.

Dispensing totals declined more sharply for prescriptions paid with cash than for other payer types. Chua believes that this finding suggests that uninsured children faced greater financial-related barriers to accessing medical care and prescription drugs during the pandemic.

The decreased dispensing in kids is consistent with the drop in total number of prescriptions dispensed to adult Americans, which declined sharply during the pandemic but subsequently rebounded. However, the study indicates dispensing to children has not rebounded to the same degree, Chua said.

"This study provides a national picture of prescription drug dispensing to children before and during the pandemic," he said. "It will be important to monitor whether the reductions we demonstrate are temporary or sustained."

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EAST LANSING, Mich. - Diagnosing a rare medical condition is difficult. Identifying a treatment for it can take years of trial and error. In a serendipitous intersection of research expertise, an ill patient in this case a child and innovative technology, Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome has gone from a list of symptoms to a successful treatment in just 16 months.

The paper chronicling this lightning-fast scientific response to the Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome was published in the open-access journal, eLife.

For more than 25 years, Andre Bachmann, professor of pediatrics in Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, had been studying the ODC1 gene. This gene and its protein product ODC, which produces polyamines are crucial for cell survival and contribute to many developmental processes, including muscle tone and motor skills in children.

Through Bachmann's research, he also knew that the drug difluoromethylornithine, or DFMO, (sometimes referred to as eflornithine), had already been successful and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating other diseases linked to problems with ODC like African sleeping sickness and hirsutism (excessive hair growth). It was also studied in cancer clinical trials of colon cancer and pediatric neuroblastoma.

In 2018, Caleb Bupp, a medical geneticist at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital in Grand Rapids and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, had an unusual patient. Three-year-old Marley Berthoud's symptoms included a large head size, complete hair loss, low muscle tone and developmental delays. She could not hold her head up, feed herself, crawl or communicate.

When Bupp sequenced Marley's exome (the part of the human genome that contains the genetic code for making proteins), he discovered a mutation on her ODC1 gene. Bupp recalled a presentation by Surender Rajasekaran, a pediatric ICU physician at Helen DeVos and assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Human Development in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine, and Bachmann about ODC1, and he reached out to them.

Marley's ODC1 gene mutation caused her body to accumulate lots of ODC protein which was building up in her system. Bachmann knew from his previous work that DFMO deactivates ODC proteins.

"We can't stop her body from accumulating ODC protein, but we can make the protein inactive," Bachmann said.

Bupp was encouraged by Bachmann's previous research showing that DFMO was safe and had minimal side effects on patients, especially children. With her family's approval, Marley started taking DFMO in 2019. This was the first FDA-approved single-patient study in the world to treat a patient with an ODC1 mutation using DFMO.

"From the discovery of the syndrome until the patient's first dose it took less than two years," Bachmann said. "That doesn't usually happen so quickly."

While Bachmann, Bupp, Rajasekaran and Berthoud's family waited to see if DFMO would work, Marley's list of symptoms was given the official name of Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome by the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, an online database of human genes and genetic disorders.

"This rarely happens," Bachmann said. "As of today, and still many years from now, medical students will be learning about Bachmann-Bupp Syndrome and this all started at MSU."

Since she started taking DFMO, Marley has made tremendous progress. She has gained muscle tone which means she can hold her head up, feed herself with a spoon and crawl, but the most visible sign of success has been a full head of new hair growth.

"It's astounding," Bachmann said. "When I first saw a picture of her, I couldn't believe she had grown that much hair in a year, and she managed to sled down a hill by herself."

Seeing all of this external progress was promising but Bupp wanted to go a step further to learn more about the internal changes happening inside Marley's body from the DFMO treatment. Bupp contacted Metabolon, a health technology company based in Morrisville, North Carolina, that has developed a tool for the detecting biological markers of rare diseases and response to treatment.

Metabolon's Precision Metabolomics technology could test Marley's blood samples before and during treatment to find out exactly how her body's metabolism responded to DFMO treatment and the effect the drug was having on her body.

"There is not really a regular lab test you can do to look at that, so working with Metabolon gave us that window into Marley's biochemistry that wouldn't have been possible otherwise," Bupp said. "What we saw in the numbers agreed with what we were observing with our eyes -- Her body was changing on the inside too."

The result of what was happening inside Marley's body confirmed that DFMO works and was just as impressive as what was happening on the outside.

"Now Marley is using some sign language, where previously she couldn't communicate," Bupp said. "My heart melted when she was able to give me a high five for the first time."

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(Note for reporters: Please include a link to the original paper in online coverage: https:/ / pubs. acs. org/ doi/ 10. 1021/ acs. molpharmaceut. 1c00400 )

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FORT LAUDERDALE/DAVIE, Fla. - It's good to have friends.

Most humans have experienced social anxiety on some level during their lives. We all know the feeling - we show up to a party thinking it is going to be chock full of friends, only to find nearly all total strangers. While we typically attribute the long-lasting bonds of social familiarity to complex thinkers like humans, growing evidence indicates that we underestimate the importance of friendship networks in seemingly "simple" animals, like fish, and its importance for survival in the wild. To better understand how familiarity impacts social fishes, a group of research scientists studied this idea using schooling coral reef fish.

"We studied how the presence of 'friends' versus 'strangers' affected how fish responded to a predator threat," said lead author Lauren Nadler, Ph.D., an assistant professor in Nova Southeastern University's (NSU) Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. "The presence of 'strangers' seemed to distract fish, making them react more slowly and greatly increasing the chance that they would become lunch for a hungry predator when in the wrong social scene."

You can find the study published online in the journal Communications Biology.

Nadler and her colleagues believe that their results come down to trust. In social animals living in the wild, individuals rely on their buddies to alert them if a predator is lurking, but they need to balance the risk of being eaten against the wasted energy of reacting to inaccurate information. So, individuals will alter their sensitivity to social information based on the level of familiarity in the group, and hence trust in the information's accuracy.

"Trust among individuals is critical. This is true for humans as well as many other species, including fishes," said co-author Jacob Johansen, Ph.D., assistant professor at University of Hawaii Manoa. "Our research in fishes show that when accurate information transfer breaks down, so too does the chance of survival for the individual and the group as a whole."

Further, the researchers' results seemed to be driven by a combination of greater vigilance by the first fish to detect the predator, as well as more effective information sharing among neighboring fish.

"Our work shows that readiness to react to a threat depends on who is around you, if you are a fish," said Dr. Paolo Domenici, Research Director with the Institute of Biophysics at the Italian National Research Council "If you are in an unfamiliar social environment, this is already something you need to pay attention to. If you are surrounded by familiar individuals, then you will be able to pay attention to any external threat more readily."

As escape performance underpins survival from predator attacks, these results help us to understand why animals have evolved to prefer associating with "friends" rather than "strangers", due to the implications for both individual and group-level survival in the wild.

"Friendship networks matter, both for humans and for less evolved taxa like fishes," said Mark McCormick, Ph.D., of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. "The more you can rely on your friends, the easier and more fulfilling your life will be."

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An international group of researchers representing thousands of coral scientists across the globe is calling for new commitments and actions by the world's policymakers to protect and restore coral reefs.

In a paper presented July 20 at the International Coral Reef Symposium, the scientists said that the coming decade will likely offer the last chance for policymakers at all levels to prevent coral reefs "from heading towards world-wide collapse."

The paper, developed by the International Coral Reef Society, pushes for three strategies to save the reefs: addressing climate change, improving local conditions and actively restoring coral.

"The model projections show that up to 30% of coral reefs will persist through this century if we limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius," said Andrea Grottoli, distinguished professor of earth sciences at The Ohio State University, society president and a contributing author of the paper.

"But if we are to limit warming to 1.5 degrees, we have to do it now: The science and the models show that we have only a few years left to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that put us on that path. It has to happen this decade, or we won't make that target."

Coral reefs are at an inflection point, the researchers say. Stop climate change now - and start to reverse it - and some reefs might survive, with the possibility that they could be rebuilt in the future and provide the seeds to regrow damaged reefs elsewhere.

"From a coral reef perspective, we go from 30% of reefs surviving to only a few percent surviving if we don't act now," Grottoli said. "We are already faced with a grand challenge in trying to restore the reefs. Once we do eventually reduce carbon dioxide emissions and the planet is no longer warming at an accelerated rate, trying to restore from just a few percent is much more difficult."

This year, policymakers from around the world will create updated global frameworks for addressing both of those crises, via the upcoming Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) and the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP15). Grottoli said the society created its policy paper to influence those frameworks.

The society's paper makes three asks of policymakers:

Commit to addressing biodiversity loss and the effect climate change has had on coral reefs, ensure policies are ambitious enough to address those crises, and ensure that policies are implemented.

Build coordinated actions across related policy fields at all levels of governance, from local councils to international bodies. This includes efforts in conservation, management and restoration, as well as policies that address climate change adaptation, biodiversity and sustainable development.

Innovate new approaches to help coral adapt to climate change. Global warming is here, and adaptation is unavoidable. A small percentage of reefs and some coral species have been successfully managed. "Studies of these 'bright spots' provide important lessons to guide future actions, such as how local community participation can improve management outcomes," the scientists wrote.

"As bad as climate change has been for the last decades, we also have lost vast amounts of coral reefs through overfishing, pollution and other local actions, and we need to tackle both of those fronts simultaneously," said Nancy Knowlton, lead author of the paper and Sant Chair for Marine Science Emerita at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.

"Climate change is important but it's important that these other things aren't neglected. There's no time for arguing about which is most important; we need to do all of them."

Coral reefs are crucial ecosystems, housing about a third of the known ocean species despite covering less than 0.1% of the world's oceans. They are also critical for local food supplies and economies. Reef-related tourism alone generates some $36 billion per year and the global economic value of reefs across all sectors approaches $10 trillion per year.

They are sources for important biochemical compounds, including drugs that treat cancer.

And they protect coasts from storm flooding: A healthy reef can break waves and buffer more than 90% of incoming wave height and energy. In the United States and its territories alone, according to the ICRS paper, the annual value of flood risk reduction provided by coral reefs is more than 18,000 lives affected by flooding and $1.8 billion. Without reefs, researchers have estimated that annual flood damage would more than double, and that flooding would increase by 69%.

But reefs are particularly susceptible to the negative effects of climate change, which causes ocean temperatures to increase and ocean waters to acidify. Those environmental changes can cause coral to bleach, stop growing and die.

"The window for opportunities to act both on coral reef adaptation and on climate change mitigation will soon close for good," said David Obura, contributing author to the paper and director of CORDIO East Africa, a nonprofit research organization focused on coral reefs and sustainability in Africa. "We need a massive increase in commitment now and even more in coming years, coherence across all scales and jurisdictions, and innovation - new mindsets, approaches and techniques. More than anything we need everyone to act, including us scientists by providing our approaches and knowledge, to do our part in saving coral reefs."

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The ICRS policy paper was authored by scientists from the U.S., Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Australia. The mission of the ICRS is to promote the acquisition and dissemination of scientific knowledge to secure the future of coral reefs, including via relevant policy frameworks and decision-making processes. The policy statement released in coordination with the 14th International Coral Reef Symposium is the most comprehensive in the society's history.

The full document, along with translations of this press release and the paper's executive summary (Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, Arabic and Mandarin), are available online at http://coralreefs. org/ publications/ rebuilding_coral_reefs/

CONTACTS: Andrea Grottoli, grottoli.1@osu.edu

Nancy Knowlton, knowltonn@gmail.com

David Obura, dobura@cordioea.net

Heinz Krimmer, heinz.krimmer@icrs2021.de

Written by Laura Arenschield, arenschield.2@osu.edu
Researchers examine the impact of the 2015-2016 El Nino on Amazonian plant mortality. The Amazon has been experiencing increased droughts and forest fires. However, the combined impacts of droughts and fires on Amazonian plant mortality and subsequent carbon dioxide emissions are unclear, especially in forests with a history of human disturbances. Erika Berenguer and colleagues examined the Amazonian epicenter of the 2015-2016 El Nino. The authors analyzed plant mortality and carbon loss before, during, and after the El Nino, using data from 21 forest plots across Eastern Amazonia in Brazil. The plots experienced either increased drought severity or both increased drought severity and forest fires as a result of the El Nino. Compared with trees in undisturbed areas, trees situated in forests with a history of human disturbance were more likely to die because of forest fires. Plant mortality following the El Nino remained higher than pre-El Nino mortality levels for at least 3 years. The authors estimated at least 495 teragrams of carbon dioxide emissions attributable to the mortality of approximately 2.5 billion plants resulting from the El Nino. Three years following the start of El Nino, plant growth had offset only 37% of the emissions. The findings suggest that regional droughts and forest fires may affect the global carbon balance, according to the authors.

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Article #20-19377: "Tracking the impacts of El Nino drought and fire in human-modified Amazonian forests," by Erika Berenguer et al.

MEDIA CONTACTS: Erika Berenguer, University of Oxford and Lancaster University, UNITED KINGDOM; tel: +44-7805514916; email: <erikaberenguer@gmail.com>; Jos Barlow, Lancaster University, UNITED KINGDOM; email: <josbarlow@gmail.com>
William L. "Bill" Greene, PharmD, the chief pharmaceutical officer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, has been selected by the Tennessee Pharmacists Association to receive the 2021 Shelby Rhinehart Public Service Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of his work and support of the pharmacy profession. The award was created in 2002 to recognize individual support of the pharmacy profession through legislative and service efforts in honor of the late pharmacist and Representative Shelby A. Rhinehart.

Greene has been an active member of the Tennessee Pharmacists Association and Tennessee Society of Health-System Pharmacists for over 30 years, serving as president of both organizations and on numerous committees throughout the years. Greene has drafted and helped pass legislation in Tennessee that defines the medication and laboratory-ordering authorities ("prescribing/ordering privileges") given to pharmacists, and the conditions under which those authorities are valid.

"Receiving this award is a tangible recognition of the energy and efforts I have invested in our state organization, and in advancing the practice of pharmacists in our state," Greene said. "I'm honored to be so appreciated by my peers."

Greene received his degree in Pharmacy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Pharmacy. He joined St. Jude in 2007.

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St. Jude Children's Research Hospital

St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is leading the way the world understands, treats and cures childhood cancer and other life-threatening diseases. It is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children. Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to 80% since the hospital opened more than 50 years ago. St. Jude freely shares the breakthroughs it makes, and every child saved at St. Jude means doctors and scientists worldwide can use that knowledge to save thousands more children. Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing and food -- because all a family should worry about is helping their child live. To learn more, visit stjude.org or follow St. Jude on social media at @stjuderesearch.
The Save our Seas Foundation is celebrating an overwhelming number of applications and awards. This heralds a hopeful new cohort of ocean conservationists, young scientists and local initiatives being supported to make a positive change for our planet.

After a bleak year, with ongoing Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns and increasing threats to our oceans, we could do with good news. As the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) celebrates its 18th year dedicated to protecting life, especially sharks and rays, in our oceans, the Foundation has found hope in its biggest-ever cohort of grant recipients. The organisation continues to invest in research, conservation and education projects, albeit with experience now gained and looking ahead to its evolving conservation strategy in our changing world. This year, the Foundation exceeded its average of 50 projects funded annually by announcing 61 grant awards for 2021 and received a 50% increase in applications for its keystone grants. Never before has the number of grant applications been so high: an optimistic indication that despite the mounting challenges, there is willpower to turn the tide in the conservation sector. From researchers harnessing citizen science to solve local problems, to projects that meet current conservation crises with cutting-edge technology, this year's grant recipients span all seven continents and embrace a new era of innovation, communication and compassion.

Learning to listen, and to incorporate existing local knowledge, is important to Ilse Martinez, one of 22 Small Grant recipients for 2021. Working with fishers around the largest coastal lagoon in south-east Mexico to glean insights from their lived-experiences, Ilse's project demonstrates one of the Foundation's philosophies of fostering awareness beyond the boundaries of traditional scientific publications. Other Small Grant recipients, like Fabio David Cuello Mercado, are also emphasising an inclusive approach: he is training local personnel to save Critically Endangered largetooth sawfish off the coast of Colombia.

Our oceans are getting noisier and busier as ocean animals compete with us for sea space. Jeremy Kiszka is one of 24 new Keystone Grant recipients for 2021 and he is monitoring blue whales and other cetaceans visiting Seychelles. When do they visit, and why? Jeremy spends hours observing whales and dolphins from a boat to document their behaviour, where they move and what they do. He uses their calls to identify whether they're feeding or mating, and where they come from, hoping to identify important areas to protect for Seychelles' cetaceans.

Some Keystone Grant recipients, like Demian Chapman, are tackling the illegal trade in 'rhino rays': the guitarfishes, giant guitarfishes and wedgefishes nicknamed for their pointy snouts and Endangered status. He is developing DNA tools to help border control officers in Hong Kong to identify illegal shark products. Others, like Aristide Takoukam Kamla, are visionary in their quest to gather information for regions where we know little of sharks and rays. Aristide has created a citizen science platform and mobile app for fishermen across Cameroon's 400 km coastline to record sightings of marine life: the information he gathers will be some of the first for the region.

'Our newly expanded network of grant recipients represents some of the most creative minds working in marine conservation around the world,' says Dr James Lea, the SOSF's chief executive officer. 'As a collective, project leaders have focused their work primarily on shark, skate, ray and sawfish species, many of which are listed as Endangered and continue to feel intense pressure from human activities worldwide.'

The Foundation continues to fund the SOSF D'Arros Research Centre in Seychelles, the SOSF Shark Education Centre in South Africa and the SOSF Shark Research Centre in the United States of America. Its long-standing partners - the Bimini Biological Field Station Foundation, Manta Trust, North Coast Cetacean Society, Shark Spotters and The Acoustic Tracking Array Platform - all received renewed funding. Continuity, long-term monitoring and collaboration remain at the core of these relationships.

'Our innovative range of projects for 2021 gives me great cause for optimism at a time when we need to rethink our relationship with the environment,' explains the Founder of the SOSF, His Excellency Abdulmohsen Abdulmalik Al-Sheikh. 'When we most need hope, it is humbling to support such passionate individuals who can envisage healthy oceans and a sustainable future for sharks, rays - and ultimately - ourselves.'

Whether better protecting baby scalloped hammerhead sharks in their nursery grounds like Kelly Kingon, gathering data on sharks in Congo like Phil Doherty, or diving in to protect deep-sea sharks in fishing grounds like Sofia Graca Aranha Ramos, all 2021 Project Leaders join the almost 400 projects funded in more than 80 countries around the globe since the Foundation's inception. They passionately uphold the Founder's wish to make a lasting impact on the health of our oceans and ultimately for every person on the planet. To learn more and follow project news, visit the Project Leader story section here and follow the SOSF on social media.

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About the Save Our Seas Foundation

Founded in Geneva, Switzerland, in 2003, the Save Our Seas Foundation (SOSF) is a philanthropic organisation whose ultimate goal is to create a legacy of securing the health and sustainability of our oceans, and the communities that depend on them, for generations to come.

Its support for research, conservation and education projects worldwide focuses on Endangered sharks, rays and skates. Three permanent SOSF research and education centres reinforce its actions in Seychelles, South Africa and the USA.
In the largest study of its kind, an investigation by UC San Francisco has found no evidence that moderate coffee consumption can cause cardiac arrhythmia.

In fact, each additional daily cup of coffee consumed among several hundred thousand individuals was associated with a 3 percent lower risk of any arrhythmia occurring, including atrial fibrillation, premature ventricular contractions, or other common heart conditions, the researchers report. The study included a four-year follow up.

The paper is published July 19, 2021, in JAMA Internal Medicine.

"Coffee is the primary source of caffeine for most people, and it has a reputation for causing or exacerbating arrhythmias," said senior and corresponding author Gregory Marcus, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at UCSF.

"But we found no evidence that caffeine consumption leads to a greater risk of arrhythmias," said Marcus, who specializes in the treatment of arrhythmias. "Our population-based study provides reassurance that common prohibitions against caffeine to reduce arrhythmia risk are likely unwarranted."

While some professional societies suggest avoiding caffeinated products to lower the risk for arrhythmia, this connection has not been consistently demonstrated - indeed, coffee consumption may have anti-inflammatory benefits and is associated with reduced risks of some illnesses including cancer, diabetes, and Parkinson disease.

In the new study, UCSF scientists explored whether habitual coffee intake was associated with a risk of arrhythmia, and whether genetic variants that affect caffeine metabolism could modify that association. Their investigation was conducted via the community-based UK Biobank, a prospective study of participants in England's National Health Services.

Some 386,258 coffee drinkers took part in the coffee research, with an average mean age of 56 years; slightly more than half were female. It was an unprecedented sample size for this type of inquiry.

In addition to a conventional analysis examining self-reported coffee consumption as a predictor of future arrhythmias, the investigators employed a technique called "Mendelian Randomization," leveraging genetic data to infer causal relationships. As those with the genetic variants associated with faster caffeine metabolism drank more coffee, this analysis provided a method to test the caffeine-arrhythmia relationship in a way that did not rely on participant self-report and should have been immune to much of the confounding inherent to most observational studies.

With a mean four-year follow up, data were adjusted for demographic characteristics, health and lifestyle habits.

Ultimately, approximately 4 percent of the sample developed an arrhythmia. No evidence of a heightened risk of arrhythmias was observed among those genetically predisposed to metabolize caffeine differently. The researchers said that higher amounts of coffee were actually associated with a 3 percent reduced risk of developing an arrhythmia.

The authors noted limitations including the self-reporting nature of the study, and that detailed information on the type of coffee - such as espresso or not - was unavailable.

"Only a randomized clinical trial can definitively demonstrate clear effects of coffee or caffeine consumption," said Marcus. "But our study found no evidence that consuming caffeinated beverages increased the risk of arrhythmia. Coffee's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties may play a role, and some properties of caffeine could be protective against some arrhythmias."

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Co-authors are Eun-jeong Kim, MD; Thomas J. Hoffmann, PhD; Gregory Nah, MA; Eric Vittinghoff, PhD; and Francesca Delling, MD, all of UCSF.

Disclosures can be found in the paper.

About UCSF Health: UCSF Health is recognized worldwide for its innovative patient care, reflecting the latest medical knowledge, advanced technologies and pioneering research. It includes the flagship UCSF Medical Center, which is ranked among the top 10 hospitals nationwide, as well as UCSF Benioff Children's Hospitals, with campuses in San Francisco and Oakland, Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics, UCSF Benioff Children's Physicians and the UCSF Faculty Practice. These hospitals serve as the academic medical center of the University of California, San Francisco, which is world-renowned for its graduate-level health sciences education and biomedical research. UCSF Health has affiliations with hospitals and health organizations throughout the Bay Area. Visit http://www. ucsfhealth. org/ . Follow UCSF Health on Facebook or on Twitter

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New research adds to a body of evidence indicating decisions about withdrawing life-sustaining treatment for patients with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) should not be made in the early days following injury.

In a July 6, 2021, study published in JAMA Neurology, researchers led by UC San Francisco, Medical College of Wisconsin and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital followed 484 patients with moderate-to-severe TBI. They found that among the patients in a vegetative state, 1 in 4 "regained orientation" - meaning they knew who they were, their location and the date - within 12 months of their injury.

"Withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment based on early prediction of poor outcome accounts for most deaths in patients hospitalized with severe TBI," said senior author Geoffrey Manley, MD, PhD, professor and vice chair of neurological surgery at UCSF and chief of neurosurgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, noting that 64 of the 92 fatalities in the study occurred within two weeks of injury.

"TBI is a life-changing event that can produce significant, lasting disability, and there are cases when it is very clear early on that a patient will not recover," he said. "But results from this study show a significant proportion of our participants experienced major improvements in life functioning, with many regaining independence between two weeks and 12 months after injury."

The patients in the study were enrolled by the brain injury research initiative TRACK-TBI, of which Manley is the principal investigator. All patients were 17 and older and had presented to hospitals with level 1 trauma centers within 24 hours of injury. Their exams met criteria for either moderate TBI (approximately one third of patients) or severe TBI.

In both groups, the most common causes of injury were falls, assault and primarily car and motorcycle crashes in which the patient had been a driver/passenger, pedestrian or cyclist.

The patients, whose average ages were 35 in the severe TBI group (78 percent males) and 38 in the moderate TBI group (80 percent males), were assessed using the Glasgow Outcomes Scale Extended (GOSE), which ranges from 1 for death to 8 for "upper good recovery" and resumption of normal life. The Disability Rating Scale (DRS) was also used to categorize impairment.

At 12 Months, Small but Significant Minority of Severe TBI Patients Had No Disability

At two weeks post-injury, 93 percent of the severe TBI group and 79 percent of the moderate TBI group had moderate-to-severe disability, according to the DRS, and 80 percent had GOSE scores from 2 to 3, meaning they required assistance in basic everyday functioning.

But by 12 months, half of the severe TBI group and three-quarters of the moderate TBI group had GOSE scores of at least 4, indicating they could function independently at home for at least eight hours per day. Moreover, 19 percent of the severe TBI group had no disability, according to the DRS, and a further 14 percent had only mild injury, the researchers noted.

Most surprising were the findings for the 62 surviving patients who had been in a vegetative state, defined as a chronic state of brain dysfunction in which a person shows no signs of awareness. All patients had recovered consciousness by the 12-month mark and 14 out of the 56 with available data (1 in 4) had regained orientation. All but one survivor in this group recovered at least basic communication ability.

"These patients made the cut for favorable outcome," said co-first author, Joseph Giacino, PhD, of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. "Their GOSE scores were 4 or higher, which meant they could be at home unsupervised for at least eight hours a day, since they were able to take care of basic needs, such as eating and toileting."

The study follows previous research that shows a significant percentage of patients with grave impairments achieve favorable functionality many months or years later. This research, led by Giacino, coincided with the recommendation in 2018 from the American Academy of Neurology that in the first 28 days after injury, clinicians should refrain from telling families that a patient's prognosis is beyond hope.

"While a substantial proportion of patients die or suffer lasting disability, our study adds to growing evidence that severe acute impairment does not portend uniformly poor long-term outcome," said Manley, who is also affiliated with the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences. "Even those patients in a vegetative state - an outcome viewed as dire - may improve, since this is a dynamic condition that evolves over the first year."

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Co-first author is Michael McCrea, PhD, of Medical College of Wisconsin. A full list of authors and TRACK-TBI investigators is available in the journal.

The study was supported by grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Neurologic Disorders and Stroke, U.S. Department of Defense, TBI Endpoints Development (TED) Initiative.

About UCSF: The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is exclusively focused on the health sciences and is dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. UCSF Health, which serves as UCSF's primary academic medical center, includes top-ranked specialty hospitals and other clinical programs, and has affiliations throughout the Bay Area. UCSF School of Medicine also has a regional campus in Fresno. Learn more at ucsf.edu, or see our Fact Sheet.
Interstellar clouds are the birthplaces of new stars, but they also play an important role in the origins of life in the Universe through regions of dust and gas in which chemical compounds form. The research group, molecular systems, led by ERC prize winner Roland Wester at the Institute for ion physics and applied physics at the University of Innsbruck, has set itself the task of better understanding the development of elementary molecules in space. "Put simply, our ion trap allows us to recreate the conditions in space in our laboratory," explains Roland Wester. "This apparatus allows us to study the formation of chemical compounds in detail." The scientists working with Roland Wester have now found an explanation for how negatively charged molecules form in space.

An idea built on theoretical foundations

Before the discovery of the first negatively charged carbon molecules in space in 2006, it was assumed that interstellar clouds only contained positively charged ions. Since then, it has been an open question how negatively charged ions are formed. The Italian theorist Franco A. Gianturco, who has been working as a scientist at the University of Innsbruck for eight years, developed a theoretical framework a few years ago that could provide a possible explanation. The existence of weakly bound states, so-called dipole-bound states, should enhance the attachment of free electrons to linear molecules. Such molecules have a permanent dipole moment which strengthens the interaction at a relatively great distance from the neutral nucleus and boosts the capture rate of free electrons.

Observing dipole-bound states in the laboratory

In their experiment, the Innsbruck physicists created molecules consisting of three carbon atoms and one nitrogen atom, ionized them, and bombarded them with laser light in the ion trap at extremely low temperatures. They continuously changed the frequency of the light until the energy was large enough to eject an electron from the molecule. Albert Einstein described this so-called photoelectric effect 100 years ago. An in-depth analysis of the measurement data by the early-stage researcher Malcolm Simpson from the doctoral training programme, atoms, light and molecules at the University of Innsbruck finally shed light on this difficult-to-observe phenomenon. A comparison of the data with a theoretical model finally provided clear evidence of the existence of dipole-bound states. "Our interpretation is that these dipole-bound states represent a kind of door opener for the binding of free electrons to molecules, thus contributing to the creation of negative ions in space," says Roland Wester. "Without this intermediate step, it would be very unlikely that electrons would actually bind to the molecules."

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The work was supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, which also finances the PhD program Atoms, Light and Molecules (ALM) at the University of Innsbruck.
Memphis, Tenn. (July 20, 2021) - Faculty members from the University of Tennessee Health Science Center have led the development of PubSeq, a global digital data repository of COVID-19 RNA sequences. PubSeq is open to all interested individuals, primarily researchers working to understand the CoV-2 coronavirus and the pattern of spread of its numerous variants (including the Delta variant).

"We created an online resource where researchers can upload RNA data and associated metadata from the coronavirus, so it gets collected into a database, and people can query those data," said Pjotr Prins, PhD, a bioinformatician and assistant professor in the Department of Genetics, Genomics and Informatics at UTHSC.

Dr. Prins explained that in the first days of the pandemic, sequencing information was available only at large repositories and only under relatively strict access control. "Our initiative started as a response to the fact that data about the virus was not sufficiently public, especially in the first part of the epidemic," he said. "If a researcher sequenced the virus, like we are doing in Memphis, they send the data to the central repository, but first they have to register, and when they register, they have to agree to a specific license, and that license essentially means that they cannot share their data, other than with people who part of that repository team. This is not truly open science."

Feeling that to fight the virus effectively, information had to be shared much more rapidly and without impediments, Dr. Prins and other scientists held an international "biohackathon" last year with the goal of creating an open source for storing sequence data on the coronavirus.

More than 150 scientists contributed software to the biohackathon and PubSeq. It is now linked to other major resources, such as NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) GenBank and EBI/ENA (European Bioinformatics Institute/European Nucleotide Archive) and adds value by providing quality control and by normalizing metadata, including information on geographical location. PubSeq is an ongoing global and open initiative, and anyone can contribute to both software development and data repositories.

"Currently we are working with Joep de Ligt, PhD, who leads the pandemic sequencing effort in New Zealand, on uploading of viral sequence data from the handheld Oxford Nanopore sequencer (new generation sequencing technology) into PubSeq, using inexpensive hardware for primary analysis," Dr. Prins said. He said the group is also working with Peter Amstutz, principal software engineer for Curii Corp., and Michael Crusoe, cofounder and lead at the Common Workflow Language project, to expand online reproducible workflows of this data. "This can only happen when data is public and abides by FAIR principles (of scientific data management and stewardship). "We hope this effort will help early identification of new viral variants around the globe in this and future pandemics."

The PubSeq website is hosted in Memphis with the GeneNetwork program, a free scientific web resource developed at UTHSC. Amazon has also made PubSeq part of the Open Data Program, further extending its reach and availability. PubSeq now has more than 86,000 viral sequences for researchers studying the virus.

"Dr. Prins and colleagues at UTHSC are at the vanguard of making sure that the results on COVID that are paid for mainly by the public purse are freely available to those developing vaccines, treatments, and rational policies to reduce risk of infection," said Robert Williams, PhD, chair and professor in the UTHSC Department of Genetics, Genomics and Informatics.

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Memphis, Tenn. (July 20, 2021) - The University of Tennessee Health Science Center's Office of Research announced that annual research grant and contract awards for FY21, which ended June 30, total more than $121 million, a 20.6% increase from last year.

The FY21 research award total is $121,700,667. Roughly half of these funds come from federal sources. The faculty of all six colleges and four campuses broke records in a number of categories, including grant proposal count by fiscal year and quarter. Additionally, the UTHSC College of Pharmacy moved up to Number 14 nationally among colleges and schools of pharmacy in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health.

Year-over-year metrics show a total increase from $85 million in FY17 to today's $121.7 million in research awards for the university. This represents a 43% growth in research grants and contracts in five years.

During this same period, UTHSC's all-source, non-clinical grant and contract expenditures (sponsored programs, research, and education grants and contracts) were more than $300 million, showing strong growth in all grant and contract portfolios.

The infrastructure overhaul, accomplished by the UTHSC Office of Research and led by Vice Chancellor for Research Steven Goodman, PhD, as part of the five-year Operational Strategic Plan for Research written in 2016, allowed the UTHSC research enterprise to remain fully functional during the pandemic, despite the fact that the campuses were operating primarily remotely. Increased staffing, improved resources, and new streamlined and automated processes allowed researchers to successfully adapt and advance their projects, despite the physical restrictions in place on all campuses. Additionally, a part of the research strategic plan, the Office of Research's Collaborative Research Network (CORNET) seed grant funding program is credited by the faculty as driving major collaborative grant efforts.

Many programs and faculty had exceptional performance over that period, which added to the growth in funding. A few recently include:

The UT Institute for the Study of Host Pathogen Systems (ISHPS) led by Colleen Jonsson, PhD, Van Fleet Endowed Professor and director of the UTHSC Regional Biocontainment Laboratory (RBL), received a multiyear national grant for nearly $23 million in 2017.

The Tennessee Heart Health Network led by Jim Bailey, MD, Robert S. Pearce Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine and director of the Tennessee Population Health Consortium, received a $4.5 million multiyear grant in May from the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Sam Dagogo-Jack, MD, A.C. Mullins professor of medicine, director of the General Clinical Research Center, and chief of the Division of Endocrinology and Metabolism, along with Nawajes Mandal, PhD, associate professor in the Departments of Ophthalmology, Anatomy and Neurobiology, and Pharmaceutical Sciences, received $1.99 million in April from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases for their work to advance understanding of the pathophysiology of prediabetes, diabetes, and related complications.

Jonathan H. Jaggar, PhD, Maury Bronstein Endowed Professor in the Department of Physiology, received a $2.3 million grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in March for blood pressure research.

Francesca-Fang Liao, PhD, and Fu-Ming Zhou, PhD, both professors in the Department of Pharmacology, Addiction Science, and Toxicology, received $1.9 million in March from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to study possible causes of dementia.

Since its launch in 2018, the Clinical Trials Network of Tennessee (CTN2) has brought more than 200 clinical trial opportunities, including three related to COVID-19, to the university and the citizens of Tennessee, generating more than $10 million in awards to the university.

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Raymundo Hernandez was always drawn to psychology - that is, until he took his first neurobiology class as an undergraduate.

"Thought, choice, autonomy - I remember being struck by the fact that these concepts we discuss a lot in psychology are fundamentally just brain cells communicating with each other," said Hernandez, a fourth-year graduate student in Virginia Tech's Translational Biology, Medicine, and Health (TBMH) Graduate Program.

"Suddenly all I wanted to learn about was how brain cells give rise to thoughts and behavior, and how understanding their biology can improve human health."

Now, Hernandez, a first-generation university student, has been awarded a competitive six-year $466,669 National Institutes of Health grant that will fund his remaining doctoral and postdoctoral research into how the brain's intricate lattice of cells matures.

In particular, Hernandez and his mentor, Michelle Olsen, associate professor and director of graduate studies in Virginia Tech's School of Neuroscience, are investigating how a specific molecule - brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) - controls key aspects of healthy brain development.

"Receiving this award is a major accomplishment for Ray and will set him up for success in the years to come. Not only does it show what tremendous potential Ray has for a career in science, it also speaks to the wonderful mentorship he has received from Dr. Olsen, the strength of the TBMH graduate program, and the strength of the growing neuroscience community here at Virginia Tech," said Michael Fox, director of Virginia Tech's School of Neuroscience and a professor at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC.

Over the next two years, Hernandez will map out the downstream chemical reactions that occur when BDNF is absent or unable to bind to astrocytes, a type of brain cell that helps neurons stay healthy and function properly.

Previous studies have shown that the molecule plays a key role in organizing neuronal circuits, but Hernandez and Olsen are among the first to look at how BDNF influences astrocyte development. In 2019, Olsen's lab published a study in eLife describing how loss of a BDNF receptor molecule in astrocytes caused the star-shaped glial cells to shrink by 30 percent.

"Many neuropsychiatric disorders are related to a lack of this protein," Olsen said. "By generating a signaling map to fully appreciate the downstream consequences, we move closer to identifying strategies to therapeutically intervene."

In the lab, Hernandez and Olsen study mouse models of Rett syndrome, a rare disease that affects roughly 1 in 10,000 girls. Babies with the condition develop normally for the first few months after birth, before developing severe cognitive impairments, such as loss of speech and motor skills.

Hernandez said this model is ideal for studying problems with BDNF levels in the brain.

"Humans and mice with Rett syndrome lack this growth factor, which we believe could be causing the improper neuronal development and lack of morphological complexity both neurons and astrocytes need to maintain proper signaling," Hernandez said.

Hernandez expects to defend his doctoral dissertation in 2023 and pursue a postdoctoral fellowship in a laboratory that specializes in studying neurons. He said this grant is a "dream come true."

"Coming from a non-college background, I am honored to secure this funding to advance my career as a postdoc, and eventually a primary investigator," Hernandez said.

He grew up in California and completed his undergraduate degree at Arizona State University before pursuing his doctorate at Virginia Tech.

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July 19, 2021 - At the organization responsible for certifying the training and skills of US urologists, achieving and maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion is more than just a "numbers game," according to a special article in Urology Practice, an Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.

In the new article, the American Board of Urology (ABU) points out that the practice of diversity and inclusion has been a cornerstone of its values for years. However, the Board acknowledges that while progress has been made, more work remains to be done. The authors included ABU Trustees Douglas A. Husmann, MD, Martha K. Terris, MD, and Cheryl T. Lee, MD, and Executive Director J. Brantley Thrasher, MD.

Building and sustaining diversity and inclusion at ABU The report focuses on informing ABU diplomates about initiatives to evaluate and strengthen diversity and representation on three Committees central to the ABU's mission: The Board of Trustees and the Written and Oral Examinations Committees. For several years it has been the ABU's standard of practice to perform a yearly GAP analysis, comparing and contrasting the membership of their committees to the characteristics of their constituents: practicing urologists within the United States, as defined by the American Urology Association's 2019 annual National Census.

The selection of new Committee members is subsequently based on both the individual's merit and an attempt to match or exceed the diversity ratios defined within the Census regarding gender, race, ethnicity, geography of practice, and subspecialty area. This year's evaluation revealed the ABU committee structure consisted of 85% men and 15% women, compared to 90% and 10% in the 2019 National Census, respectively.

Regarding race and ethnicity, proportions of Committee members compared to the National Census of practicing urologists were non-Hispanic White, 74% versus 81%; Asian, 22% versus 12%; Black/African American, 3% versus 2%; and Hispanic, 1% versus 4%. Regarding region of practice, the ABU assesses the proportion of US urologists practicing within a given section, and attempts to achieve a Committee structure that is equivalent or within 1 to 4 percentage points.

While counting and comparing gender and racial/ethnic representation is a necessary first step, establishing ratios has not been found to change societal behavior or attitudes substantially - and indeed may have significant negative unintended consequences. Dr. Husmann and coauthors outline a series of "continuous and structural processes" to promote a lasting culture of diversity and inclusion. Specific aims include:

Educating ABU diplomates and Committee members regarding the benefits of diversity

Educating Committee members about the concept of unconscious bias

Performing rigorous assessments of the ABU written and oral examinations to verify the absence of implicit bias

Stressing the need to mentor today's diverse constituency of young urologists to participate and eventually take over leading roles in state, regional and national committees - giving them the experience they will need to succeed as ABU Committee members

Anticipating the changing demographics of the next generation of urologists - for example, whereas only 10 percent of urologists currently in practice are women, they account for 30 percent of residents in training

Above all else, encouraging frank and open discussions regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion

Dr. Husmann and coauthors conclude: "The ability to achieve and maintaining diversity, equity, and inclusion is an imperative requiring regular attention and discussion to ensure that we continually strive to reflect the values and principles of both the public and the diplomates we serve."

Click here to read "The American Board of Urology: In Pursuit of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion."

DOI: 10.1097/UPJ.0000000000000244

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About Urology Practice

An Official Journal of the American Urological Association (AUA), Urology Practice focuses on clinical trends, challenges and practice applications in the four areas of Business, Health Policy, the Specialty and Patient Care. Information that can be used in everyday practice will be provided to the urology community via peer-reviewed clinical practice articles (including best practices, reviews, clinical guidelines, select clinical trials, editorials and white papers), "research letters" (brief original studies with an important clinical message), the business of the practice of urology, urology health policy issues, urology education and training, as well as content for urology care team members.

About the American Urological Association

Founded in 1902 and headquartered near Baltimore, Maryland, the American Urological Association is a leading advocate for the specialty of urology, and has more than 23,000 members throughout the world. The AUA is a premier urologic association, providing invaluable support to the urologic community as it pursues its mission of fostering the highest standards of urologic care through education, research and the formulation of health care policy. To learn more about the AUA visit: http://www. auanet. org .

About Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the clinicians, nurses, accountants, lawyers, and tax, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,200 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands.

Wolters Kluwer provides trusted clinical technology and evidence-based solutions that engage clinicians, patients, researchers and students in effective decision-making and outcomes across healthcare. We support clinical effectiveness, learning and research, clinical surveillance and compliance, as well as data solutions. For more information about our solutions, visit https:/ / www. wolterskluwer. com/ en/ health and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter @WKHealth.
For the past seven months, the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute has helped add to COVID-19 testing throughout the state via mobile vans and by focusing on communities of color.

MORGANTOWN, W. Va.-- Not all West Virginians have the luxury of popping into a health clinic on a whim to get tested for COVID-19.

For the past seven months, the West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute has helped ramp up COVID-19 testing throughout the state via mobile vans and by focusing on communities of color.

Based at West Virginia University, WVCTSI has expanded the testing in partnership with the state's Department of Health and Human Resources and the National Guard and primary care clinics in the West Virginia Practice-Based Research Network.

Dr. Sally Hodder, director of WVCTSI, was awarded a two-year, $4.78 million grant by the National Institutes of Health in late 2020 as part of the NIH's Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics in Underserved Populations (RADx-UP) initiative to help elevate COVID-19 testing in the United States.

Hodder explained that it remains critical to continue testing for COVID-19 despite the rollout of the vaccine. As of July 19, nearly 56% of the West Virginia population for whom the COVID-19 vaccine is authorized have completed the vaccination series.

Critical to the success of WV RADx-UP has been the leadership of Stacey Whanger, WV RADx-UP project director, who has spearheaded efforts to increase testing through rural primary care offices and mobile vans, Hodder said. Whanger said the communities have welcomed RADx-UP efforts as they strive to keep up with demand while juggling other public health duties.

"In the heat of the epidemic, we had health departments approach us and say, 'We have a population that needs tested but we just can't keep up with the demand,'" Whanger said. "It's been really valuable to them. A lot of these clinics and primary care centers are also working with health department on vaccine distribution. And, of course, they need to keep up with primary care concerns. Despite all of that, the testing efforts have not been lost in the shuffle, thanks to the grant."

As testing demand has declined since April, the RADx-UP project has been able to maintain testing in communities where testing support has been removed.

"We work closely with the West Virginia National Guard and DHHR to schedule vans in counties that don't have a lot of testing and that are at risk for near-term increases in COVID-19 infections," Hodder said. "RADx-UP supports six testers who are trained by and work closely with the WV National Guard. From Jan. 1 to June 15, RADx-UP mobile testing vans have served 38 counties and administered 2,265 tests. I cannot say enough regarding the tremendous support and teamwork provided by the West Virginia National Guard and their staff."

In addition to providing testing via mobile vans, WV RADx-UP is enhancing testing through the WVPBRN. An 11-person RADx-UP team administers tests at 51 participating primary care clinics in 29 counties throughout the state. Additionally, these clinics have been provided personal protection equipment. WV RADx-UP contributed to the administration of 45,115 COVID-19 tests at primary care clinic sites.

WV RADx-UP also focuses on extending testing to communities of color. Romelia Hodges leads the communities of color component. Additionally, the acceptability and feasibility of home testing for COVID-19 is also being tested among communities of color.

"The strength and the success of this program is, in large part, due to the outstanding leadership of Stacey Whanger and Romelia Hodges as well as the dedicated individuals who comprise the WV RADx-UP team," Hodder said. "It is my privilege to work with these teams as well as our collaborative partners across the state to address the pandemic."

The project is officially titled "Developing Novel Strategies to Increase COVID-19 Testing Among Underserved Populations in West Virginia through Community and State Partnerships." The WV RADx-UP project is one of 70 across the United States supporting research to better understand COVID-19 testing patterns among underserved populations for purposes of informing strategies to reduce SARS-CoV-2 testing disparities.

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Macroeconomia

Los interinos de mas de 10 anos podran obtener su plaza sin opositar si superan el concurso de meritos
The British Pound to Euro (GBP/EUR) exchange rate has been mixed since markets opened this morning as concerns over coronavirus in the UK limits the appeal of Sterling.

The GBP/EUR pairing is trading around the 1.1651 level, recovering from a one-week low earlier in the morning as the Euro struggles against a strengthening US Dollar.

Pound (GBP) Exchange Rates Firm on UK Coronavirus Concerns

The Pound has firmed against the Euro this morning as markets remain concerned over the UKs coronavirus situation as restrictions are eased and social distancing measures are scrapped for much of the country.

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard, director of the Oxford Vaccine Group, commented on what we could expect now restrictions have been lifted:

The effectiveness of the vaccines against severe disease and hospitalisation and death remains extremely high against the variants which are around here in the UK, he told BBC Radio 4s Today programme. I think with that information, we can be very confident that the rates will remain low - but they are going to rise, and we know that.

The modelling predicts that there will be an increase in cases as we have been hearing over the last few days. Of course were seeing it, that there are more people getting infected, and that will unfortunately translate into an increase in hospitalisations and deaths.

Whilst many experts have come forward to denounce the easing of restrictions, this morning vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi was more optimistic surrounding the further reopening. Speaking to UK television this morning he said:

We have to be careful, we have to remain vigilant. Our border controls remain in place, our expectation and recommendation that people in crowded places continue to wear masks and take both personal and corporate responsibility, and it is great to see TfL and others doing that.

It is a step forward, an important step forward - there is no perfect time to take this step, this is as good a time as any as (Professor) Chris Whitty has said, with the summer holidays and schools being out, which will hopefully bear down on the R number, the transition rate. So, Im confident that we are doing the right thing.

Euro (EUR) Exchange Rates Stumble on US Dollar Strength

The Euro has found itself stumbling this morning as the single currency struggles on the back of a strengthening US Dollar and worsening coronavirus situation across the Eurozone.

Whilst the bloc has enjoyed a ramped up vaccination rollout, many countries in the Eurozone have reintroduced lockdown restrictions.

As reported by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control new coronavirus cases have increased by 64.3 percent in the EU and EEA on the week previous.

It comes as France announces controversial measures to combat the virus including health passes and mandatory vaccines for those in the healthcare sector.

The announcement brought about protests across the country alongside violence and vandalism as the country battles an anti-vaccine campaign.

GBP to EUR Exchange Rate Outlook: Coronavirus Developments in Focus

For both the UK and Eurozone an absence of economic data in the coming days will instead see investors focusing on any further coronavirus developments.

As the UK reopens from restrictions whilst battling a surge in cases and the Eurozone also worries over the delta variant of the virus the GBP/EUR exchange rate could be open to further losses.
The Pound US Dollar exchange rate dipped by 0.2% today hitting a three-month low against the Greenback as concerns rise over the Covid-19 Delta variant derailing the UKs economic recovery. The pairing is currently trading around $1.37.

Jeffrey Halley, an analyst at OANDA, expressed deep concerns about the easing of lockdown restrictions today, saying:

Pound (GBP) Exchange Rates Sink Despite England Lifting Lockdown Measures

The reopening is occurring as delta-variant cases explode in the UK, and I expect nerves over whether this is the dumbest post-pandemic policy decision ever to cap gains in Sterling this week.

As a result, the GBP/USD exchange rate has fallen on rising worries that the increasing daily infections could prompt another lockdown in the near future.

Today also saw the Bank of Englands (BoE) policymaker Jonathan Haskel say that it was too early to tighten monetary policy.

Haskel said:

[T]he economy is fully not recovered yet and faces two headwinds over the coming months: the highly transmissible Delta variant and a tightening of the fiscal stance.

With cases of the Covid-19 Delta variant soaring in the UK, Pound investors have become more cautious about the outlook for the nations economy in the months ahead.

US Dollar (USD) Exchange Rates Edge Higher as Risk Sentiment Sours

The US Dollar rose against the Pound today thanks to souring risk sentiment driving demand for the safe-haven currency.

With concerns over the highly transmissible Delta Covid-19 variant spreading across Asia  which is lagging behind in vaccinations  investors have become more concerned about the outlook for the global economy.

Today is thin on US economic data, but could the latest NAHB housing market index for July show some positive signs for the nations economic recovery? Any signs of improvement could drive up the USD/GBP exchange rate.

Last weeks lacklustre US data has weighed on confidence in the worlds largest economy, however, with retail sales in June showing a larger decline than estimates.

Kevin Cummins, chief US economist at NatWest Markets in Stamford, Connecticut, was optimistic about the outlook for the US economy, stating:

With the economy re-opening, services spending has begun to pick up and could pull some spending away from goods toward some services that are not captured in the retail sales report.

GBP/USD Exchange Rate Forecast: US Building and Housing Data in Focus

US Dollar (USD) traders are looking ahead to tomorrows release of the latest US building permits data for June. Any improvement could see the Greenback edge higher against the Pound.

Tomorrow will also see the release of the latest US housing starts data for June. Could an uptick in the figure see the USD/GBP exchange rate head higher?

Pound (GBP) investors will be looking ahead to Fridays release of the latest GfK consumer confidence and PMI data for July.

If the outlook for the UK economy continues to improve, then we would see the Pound to US Dollar exchange rate head higher.

However, if concerns over the UKs soaring number of daily Covid-19 cases puts a dampener on economic confidence, then the GBP would fall.
Monday was a bad day for risk markets, and oil led the way lower with a 7.3% decline.

Several negative drivers came into play almost at the same time.

Commodity currencies have been hit hard and the Canadian Dollar is down over 6% from the June high against the USD.

Markets are trying to recover from Mondays rout and in early Tuesday trading the Dax and FTSE are higher by around 1.2% but still well down for the week as the spread of the Delta variant of Covid has spooked investors. The US dollar is higher again and while steady against the Euro, commodity currencies such as the Canadian Dollar and the Australian Dollar have been selling off hard. AUDUSD is not only making new 2021 lows but is below the September 2020 high and trading at 0.733, nearly 10% off the February peak.

One of the largest moves on Monday came in oil, which fell 7.3%, its largest one-day correction this year. Not only will the Covid spread threaten oil with fresh lockdowns, OPEC+ agreed a deal to add back production over the weekend. The Canadian Dollar and Norwegian Krone could come under increasing pressure.

Oil Crashes Lower

Oil made fresh new 2021 highs earlier this month and briefly exceeded $76 / bbl as it seemed like nothing could slow the rally. Fast forward 2 weeks and it has fallen nearly 15% from the highs and is back under the $67.79 break-out point from the March peak. Bullish sentiment has unravelled quickly and has been hit by several negatives at the same time.

The first of these is affecting all risk markets: the spread of the Delta variant. This has a been a slow-burner of a story as thee spread through the UK has been ongoing but largely ignored by the markets, and indeed the UK government who have proceeded to lift all restrictions. However, it is fast becoming an issue in the US and it is spreading quickly in unvaccinated pockets of the population. Whether this is just a brief bout of panic and markets recover remains to be seen but we have seen before how sensitive oil is to any threat of lockdown and after such a huge rally, price can correct quickly.

The second negative for oil is the deal struck by OPEC+ over the weekend. This follows on from the last meeting at the start of July which concluded without any deal and sent oil higher. OPEC+ has now been able to finalize a deal that adds back some production.

The sell-off in risk assets was also compounded by a 6% sell-off in crude oil prices as OPEC+ finally agreed on a supply increase and new baseline numbers from May 2022. And also continued fears about Chinese property developer Evergrande and its ability to service its debt.

OPEC+ finally reached an agreement over the weekend to increase crude oil output gradually. The group decided to increase oil supply by around 400Mbbls/d per month starting in August 2021 until all of the 5.8MMbbls/d of output cuts are restored. The group will reassess the market situation in December 2021 and take a final decision on output increments for next year, covered ING.

This is close to the amount expected by the market before the original July meeting fell apart without a deal. Of course, it could be changed again in light of fresh lockdowns, but assuming this doesn't happen, there is a clear path of increasing production into the end of the year with 2MMbbls/d of supply returning into the market over the next five months. The US could also add production and clearly there is added headwinds for the oil rally.

Under this backdrop, the Canadian Dollar is showing relative weakness and coupled with broader US dollar strength, USDCAD has reversed sharply higher. Indeed, after making a new 5-year low in June, USDCAD has now rallied over 6% and doesnt look like slowing down.
From: Jeffrey Schell -- Denver Patent Lawyer For Immediate Release: Dateline: Denver , CO Tuesday, July 20, 2021

The Senate has confirmed Tiffany Cunningham, President Bidens first pick for the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Judge Cunningham is expected to be sworn in this week and immediately step into her new role (although the court typically slows down during August). Judge Cunningham will be the first African American judge on the Federal Circuit. The vote was bipartisan, although 33 republicans voted NO, including my two senators (Josh Hawley and Roy Blunt). About Rocky Mountain Patent

Rocky Mountain Patent is a Denver patent law firm that helps inventors, startups, and entrepreneurs transform their concepts into companies. The firm also works with established companies to deploy white space identification techniques to advance and protect innovative concepts. Rocky Mountain Patent features SuperLawyers-rated attorneys and staff members that have been recognized by the Denver Post and as the Top Young Professionals in Colorado by ColoradoBiz Magazine. For more information, visit www.rockymountainpatent.com.


Tuesday, July 20, 2021

German patent prosecution and litigation firm Bardehle Pagenberg published an article last week on a landmark Mannheim FRAND judgment that came down in early March, but the redacted version of which apparently wasnt published until a couple of months later. In that case, LG Electronics won an injunction against TCL over a standard-essential patent (SEP). The redacted judgment doesnt name the parties, but LG issued a press release a week after its first-instance victory.

I strongly recommend the summary and the analysis provided by Bardehles Professor Tilman Mueller-Stoy and Jan Boesing. After reading the Mannheim ruling, I dont have much to add, but I do wish to address two of the key holdings (one of them is actually just a dictum) because they are so very relevant to aspects of SEP litigation that this blog has addressed and will continue to discuss. Maybe my way of putting it will even encourage some more people to dig deeper by reading the aforementioned article.

Patent exhaustion clause in implementers counteroffer needs to be timely and stand on solid ground, or will contribute to finding of unwillingness

In some patentnot only but also SEPcases, patent exhaustion has saved the day for defendants. Its been almost ten years that I attended a French Samsung v. Apple preliminary injunction hearing that resulted in a victory for the iPhone maker because of the exhaustive impact of a license agreement between Qualcomm and Samsung. In that Mannheim case that was decided in March, TCL sought to benefit from a license agreement between LG and the same San Diego chipmaker: Qualcomm. Not all of the accused products in LG v. TCL came with a Qualcomm chip (unlike the particular iPhone model at issue in that French case), but some, and TCL wanted to benefit from patent exhaustion in two ways:

TCLs counteroffer excluded Qualcomm-powered devices from the computation of the release payment (i.e., back-royalties) that would compensate LG for past infringement.

TCL also reserved the right to dispute its obligation to pay license fees on future product sales if and when its SEPs might be exhausted under a Qualcomm-LG agreement.

The way I understand the Mannheim Regional Courts Second Civil Chamber (Presiding Judge: Dr. Holger Kircher), the judges would have considered at least the first partand possibly even the second partacceptable if TCL had raised the question of patent exhaustion early in the negotiations and if it had a strong case for exhaustion. However, the court notes that it was a very late stage of the infringement proceedings at which TCL brought this up for the first time, and dilatory tactics are often fatal to a FRAND defense in Germany under the Federal Court of Justices two Sisvel v. Haier decisions clarifying the application of the European Court of Justices Huawei v. ZTE guidance. But the court also looked at the clause of the Qualcomm-LG agreement TCLs exhaustion theory was based upon, and found TCLs argument unavailing as a matter of contract law. The ruling also mentions the territorial nature of patent exhaustion.

SEP holders can insist on back-royalties as an indispensable contractual condition. The court was also concerned that TCL might relitigate the exhaustion-related merits in the future by withholding payments.

The ruling doesnt explicitly say that TCL lost the case just because of the shortcomings of the exhaustion-related parts of its counteroffer. Its one of of those multifactorial findings, and TCL did other things that the court deemed to call into question TCLs willingness to take a license on FRAND terms. Also, to be on the safe side, the court also found that LGs offer and negotiating conduct were exemplary (without using that particular term), making TCL look even worse by comparison. Still, my subjective understanding of the decision is that the exhaustion part in and of itself would have been sufficient for TCL to lose the case. Of course, it remains to be seen what the appeals court will say (unless the case gets settled).

Given that the court found TCLs patent exhaustion theory not only belated but also legally deficient, I wouldnt want to jump to conclusions as to what would happen in a case where the patent exhaustion argument is substantially stronger, and made early on, though there still is an argument over whether exhaustion occurred. When products are sold in a different jurisdiction than the one in which they or the relevant components are made, patent exhaustion is rarely a slum dunk for defendants. And a conservative defendant really has to tread carefully in Mannheim now when it comes to exhaustion-related clauses in a proposed license agreement.

 315 FRAND licensing offer no safe harbor despite appellate decision

The LG v. TCL decision came down shortly after a ruling by the Karlsruhe Higher Regional Courtto which all Mannheim patent decisions are appealedthat breathed new life into the  315 safe harbor.  315 German Civil Code enables contract clauses that leave the determination of an exact amount to a court of law if the parties cannot agree. Its like a placeholer for an actual number, enabling a binding agreement to be concluded even though what is often the single most important question may be left open.

Even the arguably patentee-friendliest judge ever to have served on the Federal Court of Justice of Germany, Professor Peter Meier-Beck, declared himself sympathetic to the  315 approach to SEP licensing at a Mannheim conference earlier this month.

In LG v. TCL,  315 came up only in an obiter dictum. That is so because TCL merely brought it up as an analogy when seeking to defend its approach to patent exhaustion against criticism that a licensing offer is unacceptable to the patentee if it leaves open such a fundamental question of exhaustion, which has the potential to give rise to subsequent litigation. TCL apparently told the court that a  315 offer doesnt totally resolve everything either, but a license agreement comes into being and an injunction may not issue.

Interestingly, the Mannheim court once again rejected the suggestion that a  315 offer was sufficient. It didnt say that no  315 offer would ever be acceptable from an implementer in a SEP case, but took a rather negative position.

That would have been inconceivable in a comparable U.S. case. If the Federal Circuit had addressed a question like this in another patent case and had said pretty clearly that a particular type of approach to the royalty amount is FRAND, a court below wouldnt dare to deviate from it. But the U.S. is a common law jurisdiction, while Germany is a civil law jurisdiction (civil law meaning in this case that it is in the tradition of the sixth-century Corpus Juris Civilis and the Napeolonic Code Civil).

What the Mannheim court does here is intransigent: it acts as if it had not been overruled (in the form of an order to stay the enforcement of an injunction due to the defendant likely prevailing, as opposed to an actual appellate opinion) over a  315 clause in Nokia v. Daimler. But its not a miscarriage of justice or whatever. They can do it, though they will likely be overruled again and again. In LG v. TCL its just a dictum, so there cant be a formal reversal. Maybe the appeals court will assert its authority again and also issue a dictum. It might also just ignore this part as its not outcome-determinative.

As a SEP holder Id definitely be encouraged by that Mannheim LG v. TCL ruling. Nokia probably knew about it already when it decided to bring 11 (eleven!) patent cases against OPPO in Mannheim this month. Nokia is also suing OPPO in Munich and Dusseldorf, but Mannheim is the center of gravity of the German part of that dispute. At least initially.

LG will even more aggressively enforce its patents now, so I guess well see LG in action in Mannheim again in no time. And TCL is a frequent defendant to patent infringement complaints. What we wont see too soon, however, is an Ericsson v. TCL case: theyve settled their long-running dispute according to Reuters.

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Tuesday, July 20, 2021

By Anastasia Hadjidemetri | July 15, 2021

Aggie from Toronto dedicates hours of her time every week to connecting and entertaining Stitch members in Toronto, Ontario, as well as members in the rest of Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia! She does this because she is one of Stitchs superstar Community Champion Volunteers.

Community Champion Volunteers are Stitch members who volunteer their time to host events that help other members connect and find companionship with others in the community, especially in areas where the community isnt active yet.

If you havent already, be sure to attend one of Aggies many activities, join her groups, and participate in her online discussions! Aggie shares her Stitch journey with us below.

I joined Stitch during our dark, depressing Canadian winter and in the middle of the scary Covid lockdown here in Toronto. I was working full time, single, lonely and isolated.

When I started volunteering for Stitch, I wanted to help and fill my lonely spare time with something meaningful. I didnt know that by helping others, I would be helping myself the most.

Pretty soon, I was very involved with a lot of activities. I organized Fitness salsa and walking in a park here in Toronto, close to the lake. It was freezing cold, but I had so much fun dancing with those people I just met. I couldnt believe how happy it made me feel and how close I felt to these strangers.

I have hosted a lot of online events as well. They include Latin dancing (of course!), Dating after 50-ty, Fast Friendship Canada, and Aggies proven way to lose weight, to name a few. I tried a book club too, but it didnt fly.

I also started a very popular discussion forum called Ask men, Ask women. As part of these discussions, we open our hearts and share our perspectives and personal stories as a way of getting to know and help one another. Its not about who is wrong or who is right. Its about learning and understanding while having fun.

I love sharing my optimism and positive outlook for life. I share what I know, I support my people when needed, and I enjoy every second of it. Its very fulfilling. You can not go wrong with this.

Several months after joining Stitch, I can now say I am busy, happy, and have plenty of friends who are Stitch members in Toronto, Ontario, and worldwide! I even made a very special friend, an awesome man I met on Stitch named Tracy.

Stitch saves lives. Im very grateful for Stitch.

This article has been provided by our Partner Stitch.net. For more information on this story feel free to check their website! https://www.stitch.net/blog/2021/07/stitch-members-toronto-ontario/

Check out more articles and blogs from us at AgeBrilliantly.org!
Tuesday, July 20, 2021

My series on Fletcher Prouty's interview with the ARRB consists of eight posts, and there is more to come. As you can see, Prouty was unable to corroborate any of the many allegations he made in his books and articles.

Here is the overall ARRB conclusion about his testimony :

"Fletcher Prouty was where he says he was during the period from 1955-1964. His position can be documented. Beyond documents verifying his position, however, the ARRB is unlikely to add to the record by following Prouty's allegations or statements. His statements, coming from someone who was verifiably in a position to know, sound plausible, and would appear to carry the credibility of an insider's knowledge.

Under more careful analysis, it becomes clear that:

a.) Prouty has no first hand knowledge of any activities involving Lee Harvey Oswald, a plot to assassinate the president, or any evidence of such a plot.

b.) Prouty's allegations, while sounding authoritative, are based primarily on his interpretation of events. Furthermore, upon questioning, it seems clear that many of Prouty's allegations are not based on interpretations of actual events, but merely his feelings or general beliefs. Any follow-up action on his allegations would be an ineffectual use of ARRB time and resources.

c.) Prouty, in his published work, makes allegations which point clearly to a high level conspiracy. Given the opportunity to document these allegations or in some other fashion uncover the truth, however, Prouty declined to do so, and often retreated from or contradicted his published claims.

Two things should be emphasized: that this rejection of Prouty does not reflect a rejection or confirmation of any other conspiracy theories; and that the ARRB did not seek out Prouty for the purpose of discrediting him or theories. We had intended on hearing his story and trying to obtain suggestions from Prouty as to where we could find documents to add to the collection. In the face of numerous contradictions, unsupportable allegations, and assertions which we know to be incorrect, we have no choice but to conclude that there is nothing to be gained or added to the record from following up on anything he told us. No evidence was offered to substantiate any of the allegations Prouty has either published in the past or raised during the interview."

I mentioned this ARRB document in my book, On the Trail of Delusion - Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser. James DiEugenio, in his critique of my book, discussed the ARRB interview with Prouty :

"Which brings us to the ARRB appearance that Litwin likes to use against the man. Prouty understood from the first couple of questions what the agenda was. So he decided to play along and give them what they wanted. He then called Len and informed him about it."

Let's have a look at "the first couple of question." Here is the letter that the ARRB sent Prouty:

And, here are the first five pages of the ARRB interview :

All of the question were friendly and routine. And Prouty is extremely talkative, no? The substantive questions start on page six and Prouty seems to be responding fully, without confusion. I encourage everybody to read the transcript for themselves, to see that the questioning was quite mild. On page eleven, Wray brings up Lansdale and Prouty talks at length. On page thirteen, Prouty pulls out a replica of the Christchurch newspaper. You can see how freely Prouty is talking on pages seventeen and eighteen.

The point is very clear. The actual transcript does not support DiEugenio's claim that there was an agenda.

DiEugenio went further on Facebook about the ARRB interview :

So, let me get this straight - Prouty "played the ARRB" by pretending to be a doddering fabulist? This is 4D chess, right?

DiEugenio had very little to say about my post on William McKinney, a reporter from Erie, Pennsylvania who called Prouty in the 1970s .

Here is DiEugenio's reply to my post on Facebook:

So, when did Prouty first write about the phone call from McKinney? The only reference, besides his books, was his article "The Guns of Dallas" in the October 1975 issue of Gallery Magazine. Here is the page from the article that mentions McKinney:

It is most likely that McKinney's recollection of the date was a few years off. Remember his ARRB interview was in 1997, more than twenty years after the phone call. The call probably happened at some point between 1972 and 1975. Here is an excerpt from his ARRB interview:

"Regarding Fletcher Prouty, McKinney did acknowledge telephonically contacting him after the assassination. However, it was in 1977 or 1978, and it was on a matter unrelated to the JFK assassination. By that time, McKinney was a newspaper reporter in Erie, PA. He was doing a story on a series of derailings which might have been caused by unsafe track conditions. He called "either Amtrak or Conrail, I can't remember which," and asked to speak to their PR person, and Fletcher Prouty got on the line. They talked for some time about the rail case, and then began conversing on other subjects. Prouty's interest in the assassination came up, and McKinney mentioned that he had been in the 316th. McKinney proceeded to tell Prouty the same story that he told us; i.e., that people in his unit wondered why they had been told they weren't needed, and that they could have provided extra security had they been asked. They discussed nothing classified, McKinney said, and this was the only occasion McKinney ever spoke to Prouty."

Prouty was in his Public Affairs job at Amtrak as of 1972 :

"In 1971, Prouty accepted a position at AMTRAK where he was responsible for developing AMTRAK's government and military marketing division. Starting in 1972, he was Senior Director of Public Affairs for Amtrak, a position he held until his retirement in 1982."

McKinney said he was writing a series on derailings. It just so happens that in March 1973 there was a major Amtrak derailing:

"One man was killed and at least 19 persons were injured today when five cars of Amtrak's Broadway Limited, carrying 167 passengers, left the track in a heavy snowstorm.

Four of the five derailed cars turned onto their sides, a witness said, splintering several utility poles and shearing off the front of a manufacturing company near the tracks.

The cause of the derailment, which occurred in this community about 15 miles south of Youngstown, was under investigation.

Henry Eckhart, chairman of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio, said Penn Central officials told him that a previous accident might have damaged the track and caused the Amtrak accident."

A year later, another derailment:

Penn Central officials say that, a split rail caused the derailment Saturday of the Broadway Limited, a 17-car Amtrak passenger train, resulting in minor injuries to 56 persons.

The train, with 435 passengers on board, was traveling from Chicago to New York when the mishap occurred about 40 miles northwest of Harrisburg. A railroad spokesman said that the top of a track section was split Vertically, causing 13 cars to slip off the rail as it was rounding a curve.

According to published reports, the Federal Railroad Administration says that train derailments are increasing, primarily because of poor track conditions.

About 8,248 miles of Penn Central track is said to be in such poor condition that trains are under slow orders, which means that engineers must slow to below normal speeds. Spokesmen said that there were no such orders covering the stretch of track where the derailment occurred.

So, a 1974 phone call from McKinney to Amtrak, to discuss derailments, is quite plausible.

There is one last issue regarding William McKinney. In Fletcher Prouty's testimony to the ARRB, he said that the phone call occurred in 1964 or 1965. If it was in 1964, then why didn't Prouty call the FBI or the Warren Commission? If it was 1965, again, why not call the FBI? Why keep this all secret for ten years?

Of course, as we know, Prouty destroyed his notes . DiEugenio says that Len Osanic saw the notes. But what was the date on the notes? In 1964 or 1965, there would have been absolutely no reason for McKinney to call Prouty; in 1974-1975, there were very good reasons to call.

Fletcher Prouty could not substantiate any of his allegations during his interview with the ARRB. And conspiracy theorists aren't capable of substantiating them either.

Previous Relevant Posts on Fletcher Prouty

Fletcher Prouty Talks to the ARRB

A summary document of his interview with the ARRB

Transcript of Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB

Fletcher Prouty and Army Intelligence in Dallas

Another summary document from the ARRB about Prouty's allegations and army intelligence.

Was Fletcher Prouty an Antisemite?

Prouty had some very unsavory relationships with antisemitic groups.

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part One

Was Fletcher Prouty's Trip to Antarctica Unusual?

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Two

Regarding Christchurch, New Zealand and The Christchurch Star

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Three

Regarding the 112th Intelligence Corps (INTC) Group and/or the 316th INTC Detachment

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Four

Did Prouty Keep the notes from his supposed phone call about army intelligence?

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Five

Prouty's experience with military presidential protection duties

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Six

Flagrant failure by the Secret Service to take minimum precautions?

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Seven

Did Lee Harvey Oswald participate in a covert program in Indonesia in 1958?

Fletcher Prouty's Interview with the ARRB, Part Eight

Was General Edward Lansdale in one of the pictures of the three tramps?
Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman's work un-sealing and publishing Monsanto litigation documents is highlighted in a new research paper titled 'Suborning science for profit: Monsanto, glyphosate, and private science research misconduct.'

Published in Elsevier's Science Direct on May 24, 2021 and in print in the September issue of Elsevier's Research Policy journal issue 50, the authors analyzed and cited numerous declassified court documents from the Monsanto Roundup litigation as evidence that "[s]cientific misconduct by private firms threatens the integrity of public science and the public's trust in science." The litigation alleges Monsanto's Roundup weed killer and its active ingredient, glyphosate, causes non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and that Monsanto failed to warn of this severe health hazard.

Court documents from the litigation, which became known as 'The Monsanto Papers,' captured worldwide attention because they allowed people to see what happens "behind the curtain" of corporate secrecy.

After reviewing the trove of court documents, the paper authors concluded that, among other things:

Monsanto engaged in research misconduct, including ghostwriting, to disrupt regulatory oversight for Roundup (glyphosate), one of the company's most profitable products.





Unlike public science organizations with standards and practices that punish research misconduct, private science organizations do not have the same mechanisms to deter or combat research misconduct. Per the paper, at least one Monsanto employee bragged about research misconduct in promotion materials.





Journal editors that oversaw decisions in which Monsanto manipulated the peer review process did not disclose their conflicts of interest with the company.

The Law Firm That Went Public with the Monsanto Papers

In 2020, Bayer AG, the multinational corporation that acquired Monsanto, announced a massive $10.9 billion settlement with several law firms to resolve tens of thousands of Roundup cancer lawsuits. The settlement announcement came after three consecutive trial losses for Monsanto in which the juries awarded the plaintiffs $2.4 billion in total damages.

Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman was the only law firm in America to serve on the trial teams in all three cases. The firm's vice president and senior shareholder, R. Brent Wisner, was co-lead trial counsel in two of the cases (for Dewayne "Lee" Johnson and Alva and Alberta Pilliod), delivering the opening and closing statements, and cross-examining many of Monsanto's corporate witnesses.

But the firm's role as a leader in the Monsanto litigation goes beyond verdicts and settlements. Starting in 2016, Baum Hedlund attorneys began meticulously cataloging internal Monsanto emails, text messages, reports, studies, and other memoranda supporting the plaintiffs' pending lawsuits against the agrichemical giant. On numerous occasions during the litigation, the firm fought to de-designate documents marked as "confidential" that did not actually contain proprietary information or "trade secrets." Once Monsanto finally conceded, waived, or lost confidentiality over the documents, Baum Hedlund made them public.

"We get these really incredible documents that affect people's public health, and we make a point to get them unsealed," R. Brent Wisner said in a recent interview with Super Lawyers. "Most lawyers don't bother or care to do that because it doesn't really affect the case, but for us it's a greater good kind of thing."

Baum Hedlund sent these court documentslater dubbed 'The Monsanto Papers'to regulatory agencies, scientists, academics, reporters, consumer advocates, and others around the world. The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and many other major news agencies reported on the important issues raised in the documents.

The authors of 'Suborning Science for Profit: Monsanto, Glyphosate, and Private Science Research Misconduct' acknowledged Baum Hedlund's efforts in publishing the Monsanto Papers throughout the paper:

The Baum, Hedlund, Aristei & Goldman law firm sorted, coded, and organized those internal documents in three ways. The first involved sorting the raw documents, including e-mails, memos, PowerPoints and talking points, journal manuscripts, and reports, into 75 categories based on themes. They then aggregated the documents into eight general thematic areas, described the relevance of the documents for litigation, and explained how the documents would be used in the trial. Their sorting, coding, and legal commentary made it easy for us to read and make sense of the documents. Combining their analysis with ours also served as an inter-rater reliability check.

Monsanto Papers Analyzed in 'Suborning Science for Profit: Monsanto, Glyphosate, and Private Science Research Misconduct'

Paper authors Leland Glenna from Pennsylvania State University and Analena Bruce from the University of New Hampshire used the Monsanto Papers to highlight Monsanto's efforts to "distort the scientific peer-review process through ghostwriting, to orchestrate campaigns to retract journal articles, and to influence editorial decisions."

Monsanto's scientific misconduct was primarily directed at two goals: to discredit the International Agency for Research on Cancer's (IARC) report on glyphosate, which concluded the chemical is a probable human carcinogen, and to prevent regulatory agencies from responding to the IARC report by re-evaluating glyphosate.

The paper focused on the following major themes highlighted in Baum Hedlund's publishing of the Monsanto Papers:

Ghostwriting, Peer-Review & Retraction

Surfactants, Carcinogenicity & Testing

Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism & Excretion

Regulatory & Government

According to the authors, several Monsanto Papers documents show that Monsanto engaged in multiple cases of scientific misconduct, including ghostwriting.

"Monsanto executives orchestrated a series of ghostwritten manuscripts to build up the scientific record that could later be used to convince regulatory overseers to dismiss the IARC report," the paper authors say. "They openly used the term 'ghost writers' in their e-mail exchanges. Employees boasted about misconduct in their performance evaluations."

In one example cited in the paper, Monsanto executive William Heydens admits to ghostwriting the introductory chapter of an "independent" expert panel report. In the email, Heydens makes it clear that he does not want to be listed as an author; a Monsanto employee author would undermine the credibility of the expert panel because it would no longer be seen as "independent."

In another email chain, Professor John Acquavella (a former Monsanto employee) says: "You guys know me. I can't be a part of deceptive authorship on a presentation or publication. Please note the ICJME guidelines below that everyone goes by to determine what is honest/ethical regarding authorship." Acquavella was protesting his name not being included as an author of an independent panel review. Heydens did not want to include him as a review author because his previous employment at Monsanto would undermine the "independence" of the review panel.

Heydens wrote to Acquavella: "I thought we discussed previously that it was decided by our management that we would not be able to use you or Larry as Panelists/authors because of your prior employment at Monsanto-was that not your understanding?

Acquavella responded: "I didn't realize that Bill. Also, I don't think that will be okay with my panelists. We call that ghost writing and it is unethical."

Ghostwriting was not the only scientific manipulation cited in the paper. Monsanto, the authors note, also distorted the peer review process for glyphosate research through efforts to influence journal editors.

One example of this was Monsanto's effort to retract a study from G. E. Seralini, a professor, author, international researcher and world expert for GMOs and pesticides risks, that found a link between Monsanto's Roundup Ready maize and liver and kidney tumors in rats. In an internal Monsanto performance review of employee David Saltmiras, Saltmiras boasted about his role in working with Wallace Hayes, the editor of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, which published the Seralini study.

Specifically, Saltmiras notes in the performance review that he convinced scientists to write letters to the editor to call for the retraction of Seralini's paper. Saltmiras also asserted:

"Throughout the late 2012 Seralini rat cancer publication and media campaign, I leveraged my relationship with the Editor in Chief of the publishing journal, Food and Chemical Toxicology, and was the single point of contact between Monsanto and the Journal."

Saltmiras then proclaims that he "[s]uccessfully facilitated numerous third-party expert letters to the editor which were subsequently published, reflecting the numerous significant deficiencies, poor study design, biased reporting and selective statistics employed by Seralini." David Saltmiras's comments in his performance review reveal a contrast between public science and private science.

Food and Chemical Toxicology retracted the Seralini study. Per the paper, Wally Hayes received a substantial consulting contract from Monsanto prior to the Seralini retraction. The paper authors noted that it was "striking that Hayes did not indicate that he had worked as a consultant for Monsanto in his official statement regarding the retraction of the Seralini article. Food and Chemical Toxicology has strict guidelines about authors disclosing conflicts of interest. Those guidelines do not seem to apply to their editors."

The authors assert that, based on the documents, Monsanto used its relationships with scientific journals to advance the company's interests:

"If university scientists boasted in their performance evaluations that they had engaged in research misconduct, they would be disciplined and possibly even fired. In this private-science context, however, research misconduct is listed positively."

Ghostwriting, disruption of the peer review process, and retraction efforts had great effect on glyphosate regulation. According to the paper, Monsanto's ghostwriting created a collection of seemingly independent journal publications and reports that touted glyphosate's safety. Regulators relied on these "independent" journal publications to evaluate glyphosate and did not consider studies that Monsanto worked to retract. According to the authors, Monsanto's research misconduct "did not just affect a handful of journals or a few regulatory officials. It had ripple effects throughout the scientific peer-review process."

The authors conclude the paper by noting:

"[T]he public trusts science less when the private sector is involved in funding or conducting the research. Our analysis indicates that the public is wise to be skeptical of private science."

For a full list of all the documents in the Monsanto Papers, click here.

About Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman

The national law firm of Baum Hedlund Aristei & Goldman successfully resolved thousands of cases in the Monsanto Roundup litigation. The only firm in the country to serve on the trial teams in all three cases that went before juries, the firm has earned a reputation for holding Fortune 500 companies accountable and breaking new legal ground. Since opening its doors in 1973, the firm has won more than $4 billion in verdicts and settlements on behalf of clients. At this time, the firm is no longer accepting Roundup NHL cases. Additionally, nothing in this statement is intended to promote or encourage further litigation against Monsanto related to Roundup and NHL.
If a meteorite punches a hole in the roof, the electricity goes out or a water pipe breaks in a home on Earth, there are people you can call to help. For astronauts living on the Moon, Mars or beyond, it wouldnt be so simple.

With virtually no atmosphere and temperatures ranging from minus 387 to 253 degrees Fahrenheit, a problem on the Moon very quickly could become an emergency. The closest handyman, plumber or electrician to call is 239,000 miles away, and it could take months for help to arrive.

So a group of scientists and engineers from Purdue University, Harvard University, the University of Connecticut and the University of Texas at San Antonio are trying to figure out how to make space habitats more resilient and survivable as part of a five-year, $15 million NASA study.

Arturo Montoya, a UTSA associate professor of civil and environmental engineering, is leading the San Antonio portion of the project formally known as the Resilient Extra-Terrestrial Habitats Institute, or RETHi.

On ExpressNews.com: UT San Antonio moon rock researchers seeking the ideal recipe to build lunar bases

Were developing all the technologies needed to eventually have this long-term space habitat, he said. If we keep pushing, we can be closer to actually having a space habitat thats resilient, autonomous and can adapt to any challenge.

Thats important, he said, because damage to space structures is inevitable due to extreme temperatures, meteorite impacts, dust storms, mold, quakes, vibrations, gamma ray effects, solar radiation and other threats.

You want your habitats to be resilient so they take some of the damage, but they can recover quickly, he said. Were trying to minimize the time that you recover  so you absorb the damage, you adapt to it and you go back to full or nearly full functionality.

The first thing the scientists are trying to understand is the problems that could occur.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio firm is working on moon launch pads for NASA

What happens when theres a fire? What happens if theres a leak? Montoya said. You have to anticipate those faults, and maybe theres some faults that nobody has thought of, because nobody has been there.

Once scientists understand all that can go wrong, theyll need ways to detect problems, so theyre developing a network of sensors.

You need sensors distributed throughout the habitat because you can have local damage that can eventually cause global damage. But if you dont detect the local damage, then the habitat can fail, he said. So you need a very robust sensor system.

Courtesy Astroport /XArc /

The study is also evaluating robots and how they can assist humans with maintaining and repairing space habitats. Some space bases may not always have humans present, so scientists are eyeing robots to help with upkeep when the people are away.

Because its difficult to recreate extreme space conditions on earth, RETHi scientists are using a mix of physical and computer modeling for testing. They call it cyber-physical testing.According to Montoya, the physical test bed will be at Purdue,with UTSA developing the computer models.

On ExpressNews.com: Southwest Research Institute scientist steps closer to space with successful Virgin Galactic flight

Montoya and his team of graduate and undergraduate students are using UTSAs supercomputer  called Shamu  for their modeling.

This concept on how you approach complex systems, I think, is very unique, and it can be used in many scenarios, he said. Even dealing with catastrophic events here on Earth, like hurricanes.

Shirley Dyke, professor of mechanical and civil engineering at Purdue, is leading the multi-disciplinary team of 22 faculty, 30 graduate students and many undergraduate students across the four universities.

She said RETHi aims to make space habitats smart.

That means that theyre not only able to listen to instructions and try to figure out whats happening to them, but theyre also trying to react, she said. Theyre making decisions at some level of autonomy where they are keeping themselves in that safe state.

On ExpressNews.com: Lander with San Antonio roots headed to far side of moon

The team is leveraging lessons from earthbound systems in their research, Dyke said. Power grids, nuclear power plants, subway systems and communication networks are a few of the examples she cited.

What I find exciting is bringing all these systems together, she said. Its complicated, its challenging and its a lot of work. But when we can bring all these systems together and look at their interconnectedness, their interactions, theres a lot of things that we can learn about systems here on earth or about systems in space.

UTSAs role in the program is just one part of San Antonios growing space exploration and construction industry.

Last month, NASA awarded San Antonio-based Astroport Space Technologies a contract to develop a furnace to liquefy moon dust and a nozzle that will use the lava-like substance to create interlocking bricks. The goal is to use the bricks as construction materials for lunar landing pads.

Astroports research partner is UTSA, where scientists are studying how much energy is required to run the lunar furnaces and which types of moon dust work best for creating bricks.

We are tracking Professor Montoyas progress in his habitat resiliency investigations, said Sam Ximenes, founder and CEO of Astroport. Our hope is to use his findings in our own habitat design projects, as we scale up the modeling of our prototypes.

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
San Antonios Black Rifle Coffee Co. has made a name for itself by leaning into Americas culture war. Now some right wing groups are souring on the combat veteran-owned java company that sells premium freedom-filled coffee to people who love America after founders attempted to distance themselves over the weekend from the extremists who have in recent years adopted their brand and message.

On Sunday, Black Rifle Coffee Co. was featured in a New York Times Magazine story headlined Can the Black Rifle Coffee Company Become the Starbucks of the Right? In the story, founders denounced the Proud Boys and other violent white nationalist groups that have hijacked the companys brand.

Black Rifle Coffee Co. was founded in 2014 by a group of veterans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Lately, the Salt Lake City-based company that hosts retail stores in San Antonio and Boerne has become popular among conservative groups and far-right leaders thanks to its pro-firearm, pro-military and pro-police branding.

On ExpressNews.com: Family of 5 from Texas Panhandle among 52 Texans facing charges in connection with Capitol riot

It has also made headlines in recent years.

Kyle Rittenhouse, the Illinois teenager charged in the fatal shootings of two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Wisconsin last summer, wore the companys T-shirt after he bonded out of jail. Some of the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 were decked out in apparel from two San Antonio companies  Black Rifle Coffee Co. and Grunt Style.

Evan Hafer, the co-founder of the company, told the Times: How do you build a cool, kind of irreverent, pro-Second Amendment, pro-America brand in the MAGA era without doubling down on the MAGA movement and also not being called a [expletive] RINO by the MAGA guys?

Hafer added: The racism [expletive] really pisses me off. I hate racist, Proud Boy-ish people. Like, Ill pay them to leave my customer base. I would gladly chop all those people out of my [expletive] customer database and pay them to get the [expletive] out.

This led to backlash among the companys customer base and far-right pundits who have championed the companys products for years.

Raheem Kassam, the editor in chief at the National Pulse, wrote on Twitter: "How to destroy your company in one easy step: give an interview to the New York Times trashing your customers.

Several conservative publications accused Black Rifle of going woke and throwing customers under the bus. Others falsely claimed that the companys owners called its customers a repugnant group of people.

Black Rifle Company did not immediately respond to a phone call requesting comment.

On Tuesday, Hafer responded to the criticism in a nine-minute video posted on Instagram. The 44-year-old said that the New York Times and others have mischaracterized his comments.

Hafer said he was clearing up the significant amount of misinformation being put out on the internet about the company and the statements he made that were perceived as derogatory toward his customers and conservatives.

Hafer said his statements were taken out of context by the newspaper. He said he sat down with the New York Times reporter to talk about racism and anti-semitism in America. Hafer, who is Jewish, was bombarded on social media with anti-Semitic attacks last year.

We were purely discussing that, Hafer said, who noted that he was not conflating those groups with conservatives.

The New York Times story highlights the companys marketing strategy, which has often played off the divisive language and topics. Black Rifle Coffee Co. endorsed Trumps Muslim ban and bought Google ads based on searches for Covfefe, the newspaper pointed out.

On ExpressNews.com: Pentagon says unmasked troops can be questioned about vaccination status - and ordered to show proof they got their shots

The company has recently become the unofficial coffee of the MAGA universe, winning public endorsements from Sean Hannity and Donald Trump Jr., according to the Times.

Black Rifle Coffee Co. products appeared in photos and video captured during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The image of a masked man wearing a Black Rifle hat and carrying flex handcuffs in the Senate chamber went viral in the violences aftermath.

The FBI used the hat  with a rifle overlaid on a U.S. flag  along with other details to identify the man as Eric Gavelek Munchel of Nashville, Tenn., according to a Justice Department affidavit.

Hafer told the Times that he would never want my brand to be represented in that way, shape or form, because thats not me.

On ExpressNews.com: Median home price in San Antonio inches closer to $300,000 as pace of sales tops previous summers

The Times reported that the company has made little public effort to separate itself from Munchel, a departure from previous instances.

On Instagram, Hafer bemoaned the difficulty in navigating the culture war and noted that it has become increasingly difficult and complex.

Its like if you dont conform to one side of the country, theyre going to call you a nazi or an extremist. If you dont conform to the other side, theyre going to call you woke or something else. I am here to tell you that were not conforming to either side. Were conforming to Black Rifle. We get up every day and roast coffee, he said.

Hafer said he did an interview with the Times because he felt that he had a responsibility to his customers and the veteran community to give reporters an objective story so that they can focus on their mission.



The New York Times, as we know, the chances of them being objective were fairly slim, but we gave them the opportunity, Hafer said.

Hafer said he wanted to use the opportunity to speak to the newspaper about veteran issues and hoped to bring attention to the various causes the company undertakes. The Times instead chose to go with the salacious headline about the company instead, he said.

I really need you guys to get the facts straight on this, which is: Theres no chance in hell Im gonna talk s--t about conservatives to the New York Times," Haffer said. "Its just not gonna happen.

Timothy.Fanning@express-news.net
As the delta variant drives an increase in coronavirus infections, the Pentagon has tightened its COVID-19 rules, telling commanders that troops who do not wear masks can be asked for proof of vaccination.

A new Defense Department guidance says service members and civilian employees who misrepresent their vaccination status may be subject to appropriate adverse administrative or punitive actions.

The memo, which outlines the latest coronavirus safeguards for military and civilian personnel at Joint Base San Antonio, is a marked departure in tone and substance from the previous set of rules.

It appears to reflect heightened concern about the delta variant, which has spread across the U.S. and now accounts for more than 80 percent of all infections. Newly confirmed cases and COVID-19 hospitalizations have been rising in San Antonio and much of country, although at levels well below the peaks seen this past winter and last summer.

Under the previous Pentagon guidance, issued in May, soldiers, sailors and airmen who had been fully vaccinated were no longer required to wear masks at military installations, indoors or outdoors.

Jerry Lara /Staff photographer

Those not fully vaccinated had to wear masks when indoors, but commanders and supervisors were directed not to ask people whether they had been vaccinated.

The latest directive, dated June 29, marks at least a limited retreat from the honor system. It says that unmasked, fully vaccinated service members should be prepared to show proof of vaccination, such as a shot record issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or other medical documentation.

It says that personnel who are not fully vaccinated must continue to wear masks.

The guidance applies to 48,862 troops at Joint Base San Antonio-Randolph, Fort Sam Houston and Lackland AFB, home of Air Force basic military training. It also applies to the Camp Bullis training range.

The new guidance was written by an acting undersecretary of defense and signed by the JBSA commander, Brig. Gen. Caroline Miller. A JBSA spokeswoman told the Express-News she could not speculate on whether concern about the delta variant had prompted the new rules.

A statement issued in Millers name said: We continue to evaluate our measures for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and protecting our people and the vital missions we conduct here. Were in this together.

Separately, the Army Medical Center of Excellence (MEDCoE), which oversees training of medics at Fort Sam, has mandated a return to wearing masks indoors because of the threat of the delta variant.

That directive, issued by Maj. Gen. Dennis LeMaster, commander of MEDCoE, took effect Sunday.

In a statement Tuesday, MEDCoE said it hasnt identified any infections caused by the variant among personnel in the command but is awaiting test results.

LeMaster reissued the mask order for all personnel while indoors, regardless of vaccination status, out of an abundance of caution, the statement said.

If the new positive cases within the command are the highly contagious delta variant, there is a greater chance of rapid spread among our trainees, the statement said. Masking is one of the prevention measures recommended by the CDC to slow the spread of COVID.

At JBSA, troops wore masks and practiced social distancing throughout the pandemic. There was particular emphasis on protecting Air Force recruits in basic training at Lackland and medics taking intensive instructional courses at Fort Sam.

But as transmission of the coronavirus declined and vaccines became widely available in recent months, mask wearing on the base grew less prevalent.

On ExpressNews.com: How the Air Force kept basic training on course through the pandemic

The new Pentagon guidance says that as a general matter, supervisors arent allowed to ask civilian employees about their vaccination status or try to verify that they have been vaccinated.

But the guidance, in a significant exception to that rule, says supervisors can question unmasked civilians if there is a reasonable basis to believe the unmasked employee has not been fully vaccinated, based on reliable evidence such as firsthand knowledge of voluntary employee statements.

Some 25,427 civilians and contractors work at JBSA.

The new guidance was issued as the Air Forces 37th Training Wing prepared to hold the first public graduation ceremony in 18 months for personnel completing basic military training. The ceremony will be held Thursday at JBSA-Lackland.

An expected crowd of 1,200 civilians will have to present vaccination records but will not be required to wear masks once inside the Pfingston Reception Center. Those in the crowd will be required to socially distance.

MEDCoE recently held its first public graduation in 15 months. The ceremony at Fort Sam honored 14 radiology specialists, with family members in attendance.

The new Pentagon guidance adopts a CDC rule requiring that when more than one person travels in a government vehicle, all the occupants must wear masks  regardless of vaccination status.

The CDC requires passengers on buses, planes, trains, taxis, ride shares and ships to wear masks, even if theyre immunized.

The rule applies to Defense Department transportation hubs, but excludes ships, submarines and aircraft in operational environments.

The Pentagon guidance also requires all individuals, vaccinated or not, to wear masks in correctional complexes and health care settings, including Defense Department medical, dental and veterinary treatment facilities.

Miller, the JBSA commander, said in her statement that the new guidance superseded one issued May 14, which allowed fully vaccinated personnel to forgo masks when indoors or outdoors at military facilities.

Troops who have been fully vaccinated can continue to dispense with masks. The difference now is that they can be questioned about their vaccination status and asked to produce proof that they have gotten their shots.

I appreciate the unwavering support, flexibility and adherence to guidance from our team, which enables us to protect one another and keep our mission going, Miller said in her statement.

sigc@express-news.net
There are many startling moments in Roadrunner, Morgan Nevilles rich and moving documentary about the singular culinary storyteller Anthony Bourdain, who tragically took his life at the age of 61.

Heres just one that sticks out: a quick scene with a therapist, in Argentina. As Bourdain lies on her couch, cameras rolling for an episode of his show, he describes some frightening psychological urges he has. She asks him if he wants to change, and to feel differently. He replies: I suspect its too late.

We never learn here why Bourdain wanted to film what seems a genuine therapy session. But it fits in perfectly with the portrait Neville paints of a man who couldnt resist being anything but painfully honest, and painfully public, even when it took him down some dark paths.

Its also an example of just how much material Neville had to work with. Between Bourdains own recordings and voiceovers, copious footage  much never seen  from production of his TV travelogues, and countless home movies and photos, it comes to feel like Bourdain himself is narrating his life story. And its hard to shake the feeling he already knows what happens, especially when he quips early on: Heres a little pre-emptive truth-telling: theres no happy ending.

RELATED: Auction of Anthony Bourdain's belongings fetches nearly $2 million

Neville dispenses quickly with the early stuff  Bourdain dropping out of college, washing dishes in Cape Cod  even his years as chef at Manhattans Brasserie Les Halles. It really starts at age 44, when Kitchen Confidential, his wickedly funny memoir about the underbelly of the restaurant world, catapults him into stardom and a life as a globetrotting raconteur bold enough to swallow a still-beating cobra heart or a sheeps testicle.

The transformation is dizzying: People are shouting to Bourdain in the streets. Hes sitting down with Letterman, and with Oprah. Theyre saying Brad Pitt wants to play him. It was like he died and was reborn, says his brother, Chris Bourdain.

In footage from his various shows, which culminated with Parts Unknown on CNN, we accompany Bourdain to an idyllic lunch in Provence with chef-buddy Eric Ripert, or to Vietnam, where he guzzles that cobra heart. Or to Haiti, where an episode on local cuisine leads to a chaotic scene of hungry youths seeking food. In a 2006 episode of No Reservations shot in Beirut, violence flares up between Israel and Hezbollah, and the crew is left to lounge by a pool for days while conflict rages. I had begun to believe the dinner table was the great leveler, Bourdain says. Now Im not so sure.

On ExpressNews.com: Critic's picks: 5 great buffets in San Antonio restaurants open again post-pandemic

A casualty of Bourdains outsized fame is his first marriage. Nancy Putkoski doesnt speak to Neville, but Bourdains second wife does -- Ottavia Busia, with whom he shared a daughter. Her tearful regret at not having kept a closer eye on him once their marriage was over is one of the more moving moments of the film, as is the frank commentary -- loving, sad and angry all at once -- from celebrity chef David Chang. The tears flow copiously in this film, a credit to Nevilles vibrant filmmaking. Chang also has one of the catchiest lines about his friend: It was almost never about food. It was about Tony learning to be a better person.

The first two-thirds are fittingly exhilarating. Its hard not to be jealous of a man who freely admitted he had the best job in the world: If Im not happy, its a failure of imagination, he once told The New Yorker magazine.

But if imagination was all it took to be happy, this film makes clear, Bourdain would likely be with us today.

RELATED: Critic's picks: 10 best April 2021 book releases to read from Malcolm Gladwell, Anthony Bourdain and more

The final act of Roadrunner is infused with a feeling of dread. Bourdain had become involved with Italian actor Asia Argento, a key accuser of Harvey Weinstein. She directed an episode of his Parts Unknown in Hong Kong, and we literally watch Bourdain falling in love. We also hear how devastated he was when a tabloid published pictures of her with another man, shortly before his death during filming in eastern France.

Its clear that some of Bourdains co-workers felt the relationship with Argento sent Bourdain into a tailspin that led to his death  even though one of them points out, rightly of course, that Tony did this. Its unfortunate that the film does not include Argentos own voice here.

But one cannot fault Roadrunner for not coming up with clear answers. There rarely are clear answers, anyway, and this film seems to want to be about a life, not a death. A fascinating life, parts of which will forever remain unknown.

Roadrunner, a Focus Features release, has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for language throughout. Running time: 118 minutes. Three stars out of four.

___

MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires parent or adult guardian.
Two of Tristian Jaden Rosas favorite things were chili cheese fries and the video game Fortnite.

He was going to make his own game, said Ray Arredondo, Jadens uncle.

Jaden, 15, was playing Fortnite inside his familys West Side apartment when a stray bullet came through the wall and killed him early Tuesday.

Police said an unidentified 40-year-old man was fighting with a group of individuals about 3 a.m. at the Gates of Capernum Apartments, 8611 Waters Edge Drive. During the fight, shots were fired.

Jaden was playing his favorite game with three of his younger cousins when the bullet struck him, family members said.

He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. No one else in the apartment was injured.

On ExpressNews.com: East Southcross Boulevard residents concerned amid spate of dangerous crashes

The 40-year-old also was shot and taken to the hospital. Police said he is expected to survive. Police do not believe the man is related to Jaden.

Kin Man Hui /Staff photographer

Police said at least three men fled the scene on foot toward Horal Drive, leaving a trail of evidence on the street.

The police dont know what led to the fight but believe its an isolated event, San Antonio Police Department spokesman Chris Ramos said.

It is very tragic, especially with such a young man losing his life, Ramos said.

Jaden was in San Antonio because of another death in the family. His mother died of cancer this spring, said another uncle, Robert Guzman.

We had just buried his mom on April 14 so we brought him down here because he wanted to be around family, and he was struggling with his moms passing, Guzman said. The teen is from ODonnell, a small town south of Lubbock, he said.

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Guzman said Jaden loved spending time with his cousins, who were like siblings to him. They had plans to visit Six Flags and the beach in Corpus Christi, he added.

Guzman said he was in the living room of the apartment when he heard the shots being fired.

William Luther /Staff photographer

Jadens cousins are still trying to process what happened. They are shocked right now because thats their brother, Guzman said. They still cant believe it. They saw him collapse.

We want justice from the people that caused this to him because he was not a part of it, Guzman said.

Family and friends held a private vigil Tuesday evening inside the gates of the apartment complex. They lit candles before saying a prayer and performing a balloon release to mourn their loss.

Outside the gates, several cars lined Waters Edge Drive to show their respects.

gabriella.ybarra@express-news.net | taylor.pettaway@express-news.net
(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

Paul Bierman, University of Vermont

(THE CONVERSATION) In a tunnel 40 feet beneath the surface of the Greenland ice sheet, a Geiger counter screamed. It was 1964, the height of the Cold War. U.S. soldiers in the tunnel, 800 miles from the North Pole, were dismantling the Armys first portable nuclear reactor.

Commanding Officer Joseph Franklin grabbed the radiation detector, ordered his men out and did a quick survey before retreating from the reactor.

He had spent about two minutes exposed to a radiation field he estimated at 2,000 rads per hour, enough to make a person ill. When he came home from Greenland, the Army sent Franklin to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. There, he set off a whole body radiation counter designed to assess victims of nuclear accidents. Franklin was radioactive.

The Army called the reactor portable, even at 330 tons, because it was built from pieces that each fit in a C-130 cargo plane. It was powering Camp Century, one of the militarys most unusual bases.

Camp Century was a series of tunnels built into the Greenland ice sheet and used for both military research and scientific projects. The military boasted that the nuclear reactor there, known as the PM-2A, needed just 44 pounds of uranium to replace a million or more gallons of diesel fuel. Heat from the reactor ran lights and equipment and allowed the 200 or so men at the camp as many hot showers as they wanted in that brutally cold environment.

The PM-2A was the third child in a family of eight Army reactors, several of them experiments in portable nuclear power.

A few were misfits. PM-3A, nicknamed Nukey Poo, was installed at the Navy base at Antarcticas McMurdo Sound. It made a nuclear mess in the Antarctic, with 438 malfunctions in 10 years including a cracked and leaking containment vessel. SL-1, a stationary low-power nuclear reactor in Idaho, blew up during refueling, killing three men. SM-1 still sits 12 miles from the White House at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It cost US$2 million to build and is expected to cost $68 million to clean up. The only truly mobile reactor, the ML-1, never really worked.

Nearly 60 years after the PM-2A was installed and the ML-1 project abandoned, the U.S. military is exploring portable land-based nuclear reactors again.

In May 2021, the Pentagon requested $60 million for Project Pele. Its goal: Design and build, within five years, a small, truck-mounted portable nuclear reactor that could be flown to remote locations and war zones. It would be able to be powered up and down for transport within a few days.

The Navy has a long and mostly successful history of mobile nuclear power. The first two nuclear submarines, the Nautilus and the Skate, visited the North Pole in 1958, just before Camp Century was built. Two other nuclear submarines sank in the 1960s  their reactors sit quietly on the Atlantic Ocean floor along with two plutonium-containing nuclear torpedos. Portable reactors on land pose different challenges  any problems are not under thousands of feet of ocean water.

Those in favor of mobile nuclear power for the battlefield claim it will provide nearly unlimited, low-carbon energy without the need for vulnerable supply convoys. Others argue that the costs and risks outweigh the benefits. There are also concerns about nuclear proliferation if mobile reactors are able to avoid international inspection.

A leaking reactor on the Greenland ice sheet

The PM-2A was built in 18 months. It arrived at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland in July 1960 and was dragged 138 miles across the ice sheet in pieces and then assembled at Camp Century.

When the reactor went critical for the first time in October, the engineers turned it off immediately because the PM-2A leaked neutrons, which can harm people. The Army fashioned lead shields and built walls of 55-gallon drums filled with ice and sawdust trying to protect the operators from radiation.

The PM-2A ran for two years, making fossil fuel-free power and heat and far more neutrons than was safe.

Those stray neutrons caused trouble. Steel pipes and the reactor vessel grew increasingly radioactive over time, as did traces of sodium in the snow. Cooling water leaking from the reactor contained dozens of radioactive isotopes potentially exposing personnel to radiation and leaving a legacy in the ice.

When the reactor was dismantled for shipping, its metal pipes shed radioactive dust. Bulldozed snow that was once bathed in neutrons from the reactor released radioactive flakes of ice.

Franklin must have ingested some of the radioactive isotopes that the leaking neutrons made. In 2002, he had a cancerous prostate and kidney removed. By 2015, the cancer spread to his lungs and bones. He died of kidney cancer on March 8, 2017, as a retired, revered and decorated major general.

Camp Centurys radioactive legacy

Camp Century was shut down in 1967. During its eight-year life, scientists had used the base to drill down through the ice sheet and extract an ice core that my colleagues and I are still using today to reveal secrets of the ice sheets ancient past. Camp Century, its ice core and climate change are the focus of a book I am now writing.

The PM-2A was found to be highly radioactive and was buried in an Idaho nuclear waste dump. Army hot waste dumping records indicate it left radioactive cooling water buried in a sump in the Greenland ice sheet.

When scientists studying Camp Century in 2016 suggested that the warming climate now melting Greenlands ice could expose the camp and its waste, including lead, fuel oil, PCBs and possibly radiation, by 2100, relations between the U.S, Denmark and Greenland grew tense. Who would be responsible for the cleanup and any environmental damage?

Portable nuclear reactors today

There are major differences between nuclear power production in the 1960s and today.

The Pele reactors fuel will be sealed in pellets the size of poppy seeds, and it will be air-cooled so theres no radioactive coolant to dispose of.

Being able to produce energy with fewer greenhouse emissions is a positive in a warming world. The U.S. militarys liquid fuel use is close to all of Portugals or Perus. Not having to supply remote bases with as much fuel can also help protect lives in dangerous locations.

But, the U.S. still has no coherent national strategy for nuclear waste disposal, and critics are asking what happens if Pele falls into enemy hands. Researchers at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Academy of Sciences have previously questioned the risks of nuclear reactors being attacked by terrorists. As proposals for portable reactors undergo review over the coming months, these and other concerns will be drawing attention.

The U.S. militarys first attempts at land-based portable nuclear reactors didnt work out well in terms of environmental contamination, cost, human health and international relations. That history is worth remembering as the military considers new mobile reactors.

[Get our best science, health and technology stories. Sign up for The Conversations science newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article here: https://theconversation.com/the-us-army-tried-portable-nuclear-power-at-remote-bases-60-years-ago-it-didnt-go-well-164138.
The District 1 field office is no longer a home for the homeless.

Eight people were kicked off of the property on Vance Jackson Road last week. City officials said there were health and safety concerns, as well as suspected criminal activity, such as drug dealing and prostitution.

Of the eight, one person accepted shelter, according to Roland Martinez, public relations manager for the citys Department of Human Services.

District 1 Councilman Mario Bravo said he spoke with the residents taking shelter at the field office regularly when he took office in June.

When I was there, I saw people drinking  I saw people who were very incoherent on drugs, Bravo said. That presents a liability for the city, and so the city decided that they needed to enforce their own ordinances.

On ExpressNews.com: He promised to work with us - Homeless, Dellview residents wait for councilman to weigh in on encampment

A city ordinance bans camping in public places. Recently, Texas Legislature passed a similar bill to ban camping in public places. Starting in September, anyone camping in a public place can get a Class C misdemeanor.

Bravo said the city didnt enforce the ordinances until outreach workers with the Department of Human Services and nonprofits had sufficient time to go and offer support to anybody who was willing to take it.

Nobodys targeting homelessness, Bravo said. Police are cracking down on the criminal element in the area.

Offering the homeless a place to camp at the field office was a pivotal point in the fight for the District 1 council seat this past election season.

For two years, former District 1 Councilman Roberto Trevino used his staff to perform outreach with the homeless at the field office. Ultimately, more than 50 people received services, such as housing or substance use treatment. Many others had their identification recovered, which is needed to receive many homeless services in San Antonio.

Trevino worried the homeless would be criminalized.

A lot of these folks simply have nowhere to go, he said in June. Those that are vulnerable are almost always victims of those with power.

San Antonio Police Department records show multiple calls for disturbances, burglary alarms, narcotics and panhandling at the field office this past year. From January 2021 to June 2021, SAPD made seven arrests on the property as the result of calls for disturbances, a wanted person, assault and other activity.

The Westfall Library, which is immediately adjacent to the field office, has also had various calls for service. Calls for arson, a suspicious person and other activity resulted in three arrests.

Residents in the Dellview area said they felt threatened and unsafe in their own neighborhood.

In early February, when Trevino still represented District 1, activists and angry neighbors clashed outside the field office. The city was expected to clear out the area, but Trevino stood his ground.

Try to stop me, he said.

The crew never showed, and the removal was canceled at the last minute.

Current District 1 Councilman Mario Bravo promised Dellview residents that he would listen to them and clean up the homeless encampment at the field office. He beat third-term incumbent Trevino by 7 percentage points, or about 500 votes, in the June runoff election.

Once elected, Bravo started talking to the Department of Human Services, residents and organizations that work with the homeless.

A lot of the people who were unsheltered in the Dellview area were not accounted for in the (Homeless Management Information) system, Bravo said. The system is used by the city and outreach organizations to keep track of homeless clients and which services they receive. It can also help determine which clients are the most vulnerable and what housing solutions would be best.

On ExpressNews.com: This is where I find sanctuary - Music brings homeless and community together

Staff with the citys Department of Human Services have been at the field office nearly every day to engage with people experiencing homelessness to connect them to services, treatment, shelter and housing, according to Martinez.

Staff and other partner agencies have also gone to the site to provide meals, medical attention and intake for job training and substance use treatment, Martinez said.

Police and outreach also advised the people staying outside the field office that camping on the property was not allowed due to city ordinance, as well as the soon-to-be enacted state law.

liz.hardaway@hearst.com | Twitter: @liz_hardaway
Ken Branca /21 ProVideo /

A 69-year-old woman who died in a fatal wrong-way car crash has been identified by the Bexar County Medical Examiners Office.

Sally Anne Holtz was pronounced dead Sunday after her vehicle collided with a Toyota Tundra while driving southbound in the northbound lanes of Highway 281, San Antonio Police said.
Results of the 2020 Census are due next month, and the data collected last year will be used to apportion new seats in Congress, help all kinds of institutions prepare for population changes and further divide us.

Its race, its always about race.

Specifically, its the two questions on the census form that ask about ethnicity and race. The latter has been far more complicated for Latinos to answer.

A proposal to combine the two into one question has been described as a fundamental shift in how the federal government counts the Latino population.

The race query raised questions from the start, because how Hispanics and Latinos self-identify ethnically doesnt always translate to race.

While those who identify as Blacks or Caucasians may have less trouble self-identifying racially, Latinos arent solely of one race, or even see themselves in terms of race.

They may have Native American and European ancestry and/or Black and Asian ancestry. They may see themselves as white, as generations of Texans largely have been categorized.

Racial identity can be personal and complicated, even if two people share the exact same ancestry.

The two questions, and resulting data, can be divisive, scaring or angering some white Americans. Divide-and-conquer politicians have made sure of that by seizing on feelings of white majority loss.

On the other hand, the potential rise of a majority-minority population has empowered and animated Latinos, Black, Asians and other groups that hope new data translates into visibility, equality and equity in resources and power.

Experts propose the two questions be combined in a way that allows respondents to answer with one or multiple answers. Theyre proposing such changes not only for the 2030 Census but also the more frequently conducted American Community Survey.

They worry the current, separate questions have led to non-responses. Others have suggested Latinos have responded to the race question by answering other as a silent protest to the bureaus approach to race.

Laura E. Gomez, director of the critical race studies program at the University of California-Los Angeles law school, has written about the problem, suggesting the 2020 Census will show that other will be the second-largest racial category behind white.

She also says the great majority of others will be Latino.

Still, experts say the shift could improve the data collected and how its used.

It will help Latino families whose questions sound ridiculous even to them. Are we white, or are we other? one cousin asked me during the last census.

Ultimately, the hope is the change will get more people to answer and complete the census and produce better data. It might someday show the complexity in identity, and how that changes over time.

The Census Bureau, the federal statistical system, doesnt decide the questions asked in the short 10-question census form, but the San Antonian whos likely to head the agency has supported the changes that have been revived by the Biden administration.

Rob Santos is the right person to address the bureaus challenges and these proposed changes, as one of the countrys leading statisticians.

Barring any surprises, his Senate confirmation is believed to be forthcoming.

State Demographer Lloyd Potter of the University of Texas at San Antonio welcomes the leadership shift and the potential combination of the race and ethnicity questions. He believes it will lessen the confusion for demographers as well.

Thats because race and ethnicity are social constructs, he said. Theyre ideas created and accepted by a society, not absolutes. Theyre not consistent either.

The concept of ethnicity is inconsistent with the concept of race, Potter said.

If they choose to self-identify as mestizo, as Santos does, referring to mixed European, Native American and Black ancestry, thats probably due to self-knowledge or family history.

In the 1980 Census, enumerators determined the race of a respondent, but ethnicity wasnt being recorded at all, Potter said.

The 2030 Census could include a new category called MENA, for people with Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.

The modification is reflective of change. It cant be stopped.

I often say that if we lived in a world where race wasnt an issue, we wouldnt have to ask the question, Potter said. But the reason we ask is because it makes a difference for outcomes, such as access to education and jobs.

If we get to a place, when the distribution of income is the same for Hispanics as it is for whites, then race and ethnicity becomes statistically irrelevant.

eayala@express-news.net
The 2002 movie Antwone Fisher shows how determination helps overcome adversity. In a powerful scene, the title character, played by Derek Luke, revisits the childhood foster home where he suffered abuse. While there, Fisher tells his former guardian: You tried to destroy me. Im still standing. Im still strong. And I always will be! His words still inform and inspire.

Earlier this year, billionaire businessman and media mogul Tyler Perry discussed the pandemics impact on the Black community. In exasperation, Perry angrily asked: Where is the Black church?

What good are you? Perry said in an interview about COVID-19 resources.

Perhaps that stinging rebuke was needed for the few who allowed its purpose to be pushed to the periphery. However, it fails to fully appreciate the challenges Black churches face to make a difference.

The Black church is where it has always been: fighting to serve with limited resources. Despite marginalization in the nonprofit space, and antipathy and apathy by contemporaries, the Black church  without equitable external support and fanfare  continues to leap systemic hurdles to help everyone, not just the Black community.

During the pandemic, the Black church embraced the role of public health champion by encouraging safety and vaccination, although equity and equal access to stimulus resources were limited. Fewer than 25 percent of churches applied for rescue funds, according to one report. Like us, a few Black churches received them  but most never did. Recently, the Small Business Administration revealed that systemic flaws prevented these resources from reaching Black organizations.

Could the same fate await the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act? Seemingly, some officials prefer centralization and old partnerships instead of new pathways with front-line practitioners. Hopefully, these dollars are not destined for coffers of the connected, bloated municipal budgets and pet projects instead of actual community crisis recovery.

Community: Give Black leaders an equal opportunity to soar

Additionally, the Black church continues to navigate the digital divide to reach a community that reports show is a decade behind other races in broadband access and connectivity. Yet the Black church continues to innovate and provide resiliency-building support to a community hardest hit by the pandemic. Any recovery funding must address the worsening internet accessibility gap in minority and rural communities.

Moreover, the Black church is still building community solutions with agencies that receive funding the church will never access. Even in this recovery-focused environment, government, corporations and philanthropists overlook the first and most impactful Black institution in the history of America: the church. This is unfortunate because the church has a record of effectively delivering programs that include social justice, health and economic literacy. Its no secret that if you want to fund change in the Black community, find a pastor with a plan.

Curtis Compton /Associated Press

Counter to stereotypes, the Black church has a long history of the best and brightest leadership. For instance, Ive worked at the corporate level at the Pentagon and advised business leaders in the private sector. I also have a masters in business administration and another in ministry, and have completed executive education at the University of Virginias Darden School of Business. I am enrolled in a doctoral program focusing on crisis leadership and community resiliency and lead a 501(c)(3) organization with a board of business leaders and owners. Still, like voting literacy tests used in the South in the 1940s and 50s, some lending institutions question qualifications, level extraneous layers or delay requests. They listen to the vision but miss the value, cloaking their actions by calling it risk  but the accurate word is race.

As a result, the Black church experiences discrimination accessing credit and capital. Even when it is just as healthy as other organizations in terms of finances, administration and organizational excellence, lending disparity persists. The American City Business Journals notes an 84 percent drop in SBA 7(a) loans to Black businesses since 2008. In this challenging lending environment, Black churches are treated as a double minority.

Finally, the Black church is fighting to join conversations on national challenges with Main Street consequences. Corporately, the intellect and skill set of the Black church exceed the topics of race and religion. However, offering diverse views to national problems like health care, economy, infrastructure, housing, jobs and the climate often requires struggle. This dialogue is difficult when politicians and pundits prefer myopic personalities to represent a community that is not monolithic. In the end, policy and spending become tools to treat symptoms instead of solving chronic systemic community problems.

Professor Henry Louis Gates recently told Time magazine: No pillar of the African American community has been more central  than the Black Church. It is the most effective, self-sustained Black nonprofit in America  and a good crisis recovery partner.

The Black church has always been at the forefront of community solutions  and the pandemic highlighted this. And, like Fisher, the church is still standing and still strong. So why not give it the same funding and consideration as other nonprofits? Thats not a handout. In business, its called an investment and winning collaboration.

Les Bramlett is a pastor and Air Force veteran in San Antonio. He retired from the Pentagon.
He saw it coming. In his final moment of life, Johnny Hernandez  a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war, newly promoted Army Reserve staff sergeant and the love of my life  instinctively turned our car so he would take the impact of a wrong-way drunken drivers SUV hurtling toward us. Johnnys maneuver saved me and my two little daughters.

Heroism like Johnnys is rare. I respectfully ask our entire congressional delegation to do something heroic: Demand the U.S. finally use existing car technology to stop drunken driving.

Our crash felt like an explosion, instantly killing Johnny, along with the drunken driver who hit us. The impact shredded our car, leaving my 11-year-old daughter, Amina, with a lacerated liver, dislocated hip, broken leg and wrist, and bleeding in her brain. She was in an induced coma for more than a month. Our 8-month-old daughter, Aamilah, was strapped into a car seat but nearly lost her tongue on impact. I had broken bones, and severe internal and external bruising.

My heart is forever broken. That Sunday evening  Feb. 28, 2016  feels like yesterday. I can still feel the kiss Johnny and I shared before getting in the car, not knowing it would be our last.

Today, I work for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, or MADD, as its volunteer resources specialist for Central and South Texas. This is not the career I planned. But thats what drunken driving does to victim-survivors: It turns our life upside down and fills us with a burning desire to save others and end these senseless tragedies.

As human beings, each of us must care enough about others to stand up, speak up and demand an end to drunken driving. Intervene when a friend or loved one is about to drive while impaired. Advocate for change.

Texas is a long way from the U.S. Capitol, but bipartisan members of Congress are working to pass legislation that is near to my heart. Im calling on our entire congressional delegation to support these bills and work hard for their quick passage. You have the power to save thousands of lives a year  and to keep thousands of hearts like mine from breaking.

Impact journalism: Tell us about your experience with DWI enforcement in San Antonio

The House version, HR 2138, is called the Honoring Abbas Family Legacy to Terminate Drunk Driving, or HALT, Act. Its named after an entire family of five that was killed by a wrong-way drunken driver in 2019. The language of this bill was included in the Invest in America Act that the U.S. House of Representatives approved July 1.

The Senate version, S. 1331, is named the Reduce Impaired Driving for Everyone, or RIDE, Act. Thanks to bipartisan cooperation among key senators, the bills language was included in the Surface Transportation Investment Act, which the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation passed in June. It still must be approved by the full U.S. Senate.

Both bills direct the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to establish a new safety standard requiring DWI-prevention systems in all vehicles in the future. These technologies already exist; they just need to be put into all vehicles.

These lifesaving systems include ones that monitor the vehicle movement with technology such as lane departure warning and attention assist; systems that monitor the drivers head and eyes, typically using a camera or other sensors; and alcohol-detection systems that use sensors to determine whether a driver is drunk and then prevent the vehicle from moving.

If our members of Congress love Texas the way we believe they do, they will listen when we call on them to publicly push for the passage of these bills. The goal is simple: to save lives. Only shame  and more heartache  will come if Congress fails to put advanced technology between drunken drivers and the heroes they kill.

Azeza Salama is a volunteer resource specialist with Mothers Against Drunk Driving in San Antonio.
For victims of domestic violence, the pandemic was more than a medical nightmare. COVID-19 made domestic violence cases skyrocket in San Antonio and elsewhere across Texas and the nation. As San Antonio shut down and residents were asked to self-quarantine, victims and abusers were living together 24/7. It was a recipe for disaster.

More than 2,000 people were killed by domestic violence-related shootings in 2020  a 4 percent increase nationwide over 2019, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings across the United States.

The Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence found domestic violence killings disproportionately impact women. A 2017 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found nearly half of female homicide victims were killed by a current or former male partner. Overall, 23 percent of all U.S. killings from 2010 to 2019 were domestic homicides, more than half of which involved shootings

How bad is it in Texas for victims of domestic violence? San Antonio police responded to roughly 80,000 family violence-related calls in 2020, according to the Texas Medical Association.

Sadly, COVID-19 precautions made life even more difficult for victims of domestic violence by creating more obstacles for survivors trying to escape abuse. They were, in essence, locked up with their abusers.

A University of Texas at Austin researcher recommends we view domestic violence as a community issue, not a personal or family issue. The CDC reports that 1 in 4 women and 1 in 7 men will be physically assaulted by their intimate partners. Domestic violence is a public health crisis; it is not a personal or family crisis.

As a family lawyer, I often represent victims of domestic violence. They are overwhelmingly women with children. They feel trapped and frightened  desperate to break away from their abuser but tied to him in so many ways.

To protect my clients, we often seek a protective order to prohibit perpetrators from being in close contact with them. It is important to know protective orders can work.

On ExpressNews.com: 11 judges agree to handle family violence cases after Bexar County officials highlight backlog problem.

Protective orders are a tool of tremendous value  but the attitude of the perpetrator is critical to whether it works. We hear and read in the news about the times when protective orders do nothing; abusers will still kill  and people will say it did nothing.

If a perpetrator is determined to assume power, control and ownership over the victim, he will do it through any means, including killing her. In those cases, a protective order will not work. But in cases for which domestic violence is not as extreme, a protective order can make a difference.

A judge must grant a protective order. It needs to be recorded, so if authorities are called to enforce it, a search will show an active protective order. The victim also must be ready to press charges if the perpetrator has violated the order.

I tell my clients that a protective order is just a piece of paper; you need to have a safety plan in place and the willingness to report violations to authorities. I tell my clients the Battered Women and Childrens Shelter can be their safe place if all else fails. A protective order wont stop a knife or a bullet  but it is one piece of the puzzle dedicated to keeping victims safe.

Amber Lidell Alwais is an attorney, a member of the San Antonio Bar Association, Womens Bar Association, San Antonio Family Lawyers Association and Texas Bar College, and vice president of the Family Law Bar Association-San Antonio.
Guns are not toys, so it is baffling and disturbing that a gun would be made to look like a toy.

We are referring to the Block 19, a gun kit that sparked an uproar and, thankfully, has been disassembled. The basic idea from Utah-based Culper Precision was to allow gun owners to snap Lego blocks onto the model and create their own design.

Or as Culper Precision posted on its Instagram page: Heres one of those childhood dreams coming to life, the Block 19 prototype, yes you can actually build Legos onto it.

To be clear: This has nothing to do with the Lego company, which asked Culper Precision to drop the Block 19.

But we think its important to dwell on this horrifying idea. Why would anyone  even the biggest supporters of Second Amendment rights  want to create a gun that looks like a toy?

In 2020, more than 5,000 children were shot with a gun, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This includes 299 children 11 and younger who were killed; 1,075 children ages 12 through 17 were also shot and killed.

The nation has taken a number of steps to ensure toy guns dont look like real guns, so its a bit stunning to think states and the federal government may need to consider legislation to ensure real guns dont look like toys. But as David Pucino, an attorney with the Giffords Law Center, told the Washington Post, its almost certainly legal to make a gun look like a toy.

Stupid and legal  and potentially fatal.

Guns have become part of our nations culture wars, but the reality is most Americans support sensible gun safety measures, such as universal background checks for sales and banning assault weapons. We are confident most Americans would agree a gun that looks like a toy is a stupid, horrifying idea.
Texas House Democrats will not return to the state until after the special session of the Legislature is over, one of the leaders of their walkout confirmed Tuesday.

State Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, said they expect to return to Texas on Aug. 7  when the 30-day special session aimed at passing new voting restrictions is required to end.

It will be our plan on that day  on or about  to return back to Texas, Martinez Fischer told advocates of a group Center for American Progress Action Fund, that is led by former White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, a Democrat. Then we will evaluate our next option.

More than 50 Texas Democrats left the state on July 12 to make sure there were not enough members in the Texas House to vote on legislation that would place new restrictions on voting. Democrats are hoping to spur their colleagues in Congress to pass voting laws at the federal level to supersede the measures that Republicans are trying to enact in Austin.

Texas House and Senate Republicans are pushing a new voting restrictions bill that, among other things, bans drive-thru voting and stops late-night voting, prevents elections officials from sending out absentee ballot applications unsolicited, and eliminates absentee ballot dropoff boxes as an option for voters to submit completed ballots.

WHATS IN THE LATEST ELECTIONS BILL The legislation passed by the Texas Senate a week ago would: - Ban drive-thru voting - Ban voting after 9 p.m. in Texas - Prevent county election officials from sending absentee ballot applications to any voter who has not requested one - Require counties to have video surveillance systems in places where they tally ballots - Require partisan poll watchers to be allowed to "see and hear" election activities at polling sites and central vote-counting areas - Authorize state election officials to compare DPS driving records with voter rolls to find potential non-citizen voters - Ban absentee ballot drop boxes, requiring voters to mail in completed absentee ballots or deliver them to an elections official - Require a person requesting an absentee ballot to provide a drivers license number or social security number to get one - Create a process for a voter to correct or verify a signature on an absentee ballot that might otherwise be tossed for a non-matching signature - Require any person who transports 3 or more voters other than family members to the polls to fill out a form - Ban 'vote harvesting,' defined as a third-party group helping a voter fill out absentee ballots in order to benefit a specific candidate See More Collapse

COVID UPDATE: Aides for Pelosi, White House test positive for COVID after meeting with Texas Democrats

Republicans have blasted the fleeing Democrats, accusing them of failing to do their jobs even as they collect a $221 per diem from the state for serving during the special session. Gov. Greg Abbott has threatened to have them arrested as soon as they return to Texas.

Martinez Fischer said the walkout was an appropriate response because Republicans were not interested in addressing their concerns about the legislation.

The Republican majority hasnt really worked with us in good faith, he said from the Zoom call which he did from his hotel room in D.C. where he is quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19.

He said Democrats want to soften some of the sharp edges of the voting restrictions Republicans are proposing  specifically, how the GOP bill enables felony charges against election officials who violate its provisions, as well as for people who help voters fill out their ballots without the proper documentation, even for inadvertent offenses.

There really has been no attempt to negotiate in good faith, he said. We are all putting our hopes in a federal standard.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

Other Texas Democrats have said their plan right now is to keep their caucus unified and focused on spurring national action. State Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, said Abbotts threats to have them arrested or to call more special sessions dont mean much to her.

Our presence here together ensures that those Texans who are not being heard by Gov. Greg Abbott continue to be stood up for, Johnson said.

Clock running out on Congress

Democrats on Tuesday said while in Washington, they are pushing for a meeting with President Joe Biden and were continuing to meet with key leaders. That included a strategy session with U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a top leader in the House from South Carolina.

But if the Texans are counting on Congress acting, they dont have much time. The U.S. House goes on its annual August recess starting July 30 and the U.S. Senate leaves a week later. Neither returns to Washington until after Labor Day.

When Texas Democrats do finally return, Abbott has made clear hell call them back into special session again to pass an elections bill and other key priorities of Republicans who control the agenda in state politics. The Texas Constitution allows the governor to call as many special sessions as he wants, but each cannot last for more than 30 days.

I will continue to call special session, after special session, after special session every single month until we address and vote on these bills, Abbott said last week.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry called 12 special sessions during his tenure as governor, more than any other governor in Texas history. But in just one year, former Gov. Bill Clements, a Republican, repeatedly called lawmakers into back-to-back special sessions. Lawmakers spent 152 days in special sessions between June 1989 and June 1990.

The Democrats walkout has brought them praise and national attention from Democratic leaders and advocacy groups. After meetings with Vice President Kamala Harris and other key members of Congress, the lawmakers have been applauded by people like Georgia voting advocate Stacey Abrams who was on the same call with Martinez Fischer.

Theyre doing an amazing job, Abrams said of the Texas Democrats and lawmakers in other states fighting bills to restrict voting.

On MSNBC on Monday night, former Congressman Beto ORourke said the Texas Democrats were providing moral leverage to force action on voting rights legislation. ORourke, who has already helped raise $600,000 to help the Texas Democrats, is expected to address the group in D.C. on Thursday morning during a voting rights conference they are holding.

jeremy.wallace@chron.com
While the vast majority of Democrats in the Texas House continue to camp out in Washington, D.C., Republicans are berating their colleagues for blocking not only the GOPs priority elections bill, but also a proposal to send retired teachers a one-time pension bonus.

Last week, the Texas Senate passed a bill authorizing the so-called 13th check to the states more than 400,000 retired teachers equal to their monthly annuity or $2,400, whichever is less. Republicans have since convened news conferences and meetings with retired teachers at the Capitol in an effort to shame the absent House Democrats for holding up the measure, which would cost the state an estimated $701 million.

House Speaker Dade Phelan, R-Beaumont, last week demanded that Democrats get back to Texas to pass legislation that would provide a 13th check for retired teachers, among other items. And one of the speakers allies, state Rep. Dustin Burrows of Lubbock, posted a photo of himself with one of his former teachers who visited Austin to discuss the bill.

I told her if only 18 Democrats would show up for work, we would pass this legislation! Burrows tweeted.

House Democrats have been quick to point out that nearly their entire caucus signed onto the bonuses in the spring, only to watch the proposal die in a Republican-controlled committee  a committee led by Burrows.

Texas House Democrats supported both a 13th check and a cost-of-living increase for our retired teachers during the regular session. Yet, Governor (Greg) Abbott and Republican leadership drowned those measures to keep dangerous and partisan bills afloat, said state Rep. Rafael Anchia, D-Dallas, who chairs the House Pensions, Investments and Financial Services Committee, which advanced both bills.

RELATED: Texas Democrats spurn House speakers offer to fly them back from D.C.

All but three of the 67 Democrats in the House signed on as authors of the bill, while 17 Republicans declined to do so  a number of them allies of Phelan, including Burrows, chairman of the House Calendars Committee, which controls which bills reach the House floor and did not advance the measure on the 13th check.

A spokesman for Phelan said new state revenue projections, spurred by increased sales tax revenue as Texans return to pre-pandemic life, have freed up enough funds to support the 13th check payments.

Since April and May, when House members were considering the bill, Comptroller Glenn Hegar has revised his estimate for the amount of revenue Texas will collect in the next two fiscal years, giving lawmakers more money to spend during special sessions and when the Legislature meets again in January 2023.

The economy has improved following the pandemic and subsequent recession as evidenced by the comptrollers revised biennial revenue estimate released on July 7, Phelan spokesman Enrique Marquez said in a statement. The state has several billion dollars in available general revenue that was not available to use during the regular session, and we want to commit a portion of it to a 13th check for retired teachers when House Democrats finally return to work.

Used as pawns

Texas teachers union officials have sided with Democrats in casting blame on Republicans for the stalled checks.

Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, said union members share deeply in the disappointment of hardworking retirees who potentially lose this chance at a 13th check, though he disputed claims by Phelan and other Republicans that the state lacked the funds to approve the bonuses in May.

Thousands of AFT members wrote letters to their senators demanding a 13th check, Capo said in a statement. Retired educators should not be used as pawns in divisive political debates and partisan fights. The governor and the Legislature had five months (not to mention all the preceding years) to support retired teachers and did nothing, but now they want to use political opportunity to cast blame elsewhere.

Still, the budget approved by lawmakers for the next two fiscal years provides $5 billion for the Teacher Retirement Systems public education and higher education retirement funds, an increase of about 8 percent from the current two-year period.

TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox

In April, the Texas Retired Teachers Association said the pension fund value had reached an all-time high of $185 billion, citing the figure in pushing lawmakers to approve a cost-of-living adjustment during the regular session.

During the Legislatures spring session, Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, filed a bill that would have provided a 6 percent cost-of-living increase for retired teachers, capped at $100 a month. That bill also had broad bipartisan support but died in the House Calendars Committee.

A similar proposal in the Senate was never taken up either.

After Caprigliones bill died, the executive director of the retired teachers association, Tim Lee, asked Abbott in a letter to add the cost-of-living adjustment to the agenda for the special session, which began July 8. (The governor alone controls which topics lawmakers can consider during the 30-day session.)

Rep. Greg Bonnen, a Friendswood Republican who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Jim Murphy, R-Houston, had said the retired teachers pension fund would no longer be considered financially stable if it granted a cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, at that time. But they kept the door open to doing so in the future.

The COLA money would come directly out of the TRS retirement fund itself, and it doesnt have the actuarial strength to do that, said Murphy, a former chair of the House pensions committee. Its something that we would like to do, but you have to be within the financial parameters that are offered to you at the time. Thats why were standing here today saying, lets do the 13th check. COLA, its something we can sure talk about.

The Legislature last approved a cost-of-living increase for retired teachers in 2013, applying the change to members who retired before 2004. More than half the current pension recipients have never seen a cost-of-living increase, and over 130,000 members receive a monthly annuity payment of less than $1,000, Lee wrote in his letter to Abbott.

jasper.scherer@chron.com
SEOUL, South Korea  South Koreas prime minister has offered a public apology over a large-scale coronavirus outbreak on a destroyer on an anti-piracy mission off East Africa.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Tuesday the government is very sorry for failing to carefully take care of the health of our soldiers who are devoting themselves to the country.

The Defense Ministry says 247 of the destroyers 301 crew members have been infected. Its the largest cluster for South Koreas military since the pandemic began.

South Korea sent two military planes to bring back all 301 sailors.

On Tuesday, South Korea reported 1,278 new virus cases, taking the total caseload to 180,481, with 2,059 deaths from COVID-19. It was the 14th day in a row that South Korea has confirmed more than 1,000 new cases.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Olympic athlete tests positive in Tokyo days before 1st game

 Scientists, many Britons, apprehensive as Freedom Day arrives in England

 French Holocaust survivor denounces anti-vaccination protesters comparing themselves to Jews during Nazi era

 Bangladesh lifts lockdown to celebrate Eid al-Adha, exasperating experts

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Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

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HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

WASHINGTON  The United States has upgraded its travel warnings for Britain, Indonesia and three other destinations, advising Americans not to travel there due to a surge in coronavirus cases.

The CDC and the State Department issued revised advice to U.S. travelers Monday alerting them to the increased risk of contracting COVID-19 in Britain, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Fiji and the British Virgin Islands. Previously, all had been covered by a less severe advisory to reconsider travel.

The advisories are recommendations that are constantly under review and are not binding, although they may affect group tours and insurance rates.

The warning for Britain, for example, has fluctuated between Level 3, or reconsider travel, and Level 4, or do not travel, several times this year already.

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JACKSON, Miss.  Mississippis top public health official says the state is seeing a rapid increase in coronavirus infections.

Dr. Thomas Dobbs tweets that the 4th wave is here.

The Mississippi State Department of Health said Monday that 2,326 new cases were confirmed Friday through Sunday. That is largest three-day increase reported in the state since February.

Mississippi has one of the lowest coronavirus vaccination rates in the nation.

State Rep. Jeramey Anderson of Moss Point posted the Health Department numbers Monday on Twitter and lashed out at people who havent been vaccinated.

In the legislators words: Consequences of not getting vaccinated and poor mask wearing. Well Mississippi  you wanted it here it is. This is ridiculous and the deaths that will definitely follow were completely avoidable.

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TOPEKA, Kan.  The health department in the most populous county in Kansas is urging the countys public schools to require students and staff who arent vaccinated against the coronavirus to wear masks indoors when classes resume for the fall.

The guidance Monday from the Johnson County Department of Health and Environment in the Kansas City area came with confirmed cases of the faster-spreading delta variant continuing to rise across Kansas and fueling larger numbers of new COVID-19 cases.

The state reported Monday that confirmed delta variant cases increased 20% since Friday, up 158 to 950.

State data also show that Kansas averaged 440 new COVID-19 cases for the seven days ending Monday.

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HONOLULU -- Oahu restaurants and bars have the option to do away with social distancing if customers provide proof of vaccination or a recent negative coronavirus test.

But Hawaii News Now reports that many restaurant operators arent doing so because diners dont want to show their vaccination cards or present test results.

Restaurants say they are short-staffed already and it would be difficult for workers to check documentation. They also dont want employees to have to manage angry and confused customers who dont agree with the program.

Don Murphy, owner of Murphys Bar and Grill in Chinatown, says he noticed nearby restaurants asked patrons for vaccination cards but received backlash.

He said: They got eaten alive on social media. I dont want to put my staff through that.

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MONTGOMERY, Ala.  With COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations up sharply over the last month in Alabama but still far below when the pandemic was at its worst early this year, school officials have said vaccines wont be required in the fall and local systems can decide on their own whether to require masks or other precautions.

While the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending that schools require face masks for children older than 2 and all adults, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey disagrees, an aide said.

Governor Ivey believes students need to be in the classroom without any type of mask requirement. She continues to encourage all eligible Alabamians to roll up their sleeves and get the vaccine to make COVID-19 a distant memory, spokeswoman Gina Maiola said Monday.

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LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  Arkansas hospitalizations due to the coronavirus jumped by 106 over the weekend as the state led the nation in new cases per capita.

The state Department of Health said virus hospitalizations increased to 787. Of those, 291 patients are in intensive care. There are 124 patients on ventilators. The states virus cases increased over the past three days by 2,552 to 365,132 total since the pandemic began. The state reported 15 new deaths.

The states surge in cases has been fueled by the delta variant and its low vaccination rate. Only 35% of the states population is fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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INDIANAPOLIS  A federal judge is allowing Indiana University to continue with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all students and employees.

A ruling from a judge in South Bend rejects a request from eight IU students who sought to block the requirement while they pursued a lawsuit claiming that the universitys policy violates their constitutional rights by forcing them to receive unwanted medical treatment.

The judge wrote in a ruling dated Sunday that evidence IU has pursued a reasonable policy in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff.

An attorney for the students said he would appeal the ruling.

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SALT LAKE CITY  In Utah, where COVID cases are steadily increasing, experts are raising the alarm as the state plans to reopen schools without masks in less than a month.

About 38% of Utah kids ages 12 to 17 have gotten at least one shot, a number that compares well with other states, but is still far below herd immunity.

University of Utah professor of pediatric infectious diseases Adam Hersh says: I think its highly likely that well see substantial levels of in-school transmission outbreaks in schools, resulting in school closures, quarantines of large numbers of individuals. And an even greater disruption that we saw last year and even greater disruption at younger levels.

Utah is one of several states that ban individual school districts from implementing their own mask mandates, a law that passed after anti-mask activists took over a suburban Salt Lake City school board meeting in May.

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TORONTO  Canada announced Monday it will begin letting fully vaccinated U.S. citizens into Canada on Aug. 9, and those from the rest of the world on Sept. 7.

Canadian officials said the 14-day quarantine requirement will be waived as of Aug. 9 for eligible travelers who are currently residing in the United States and have received a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Canada.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said a date for the U.S. to allow fully vaccinated Canadians to cross the land border isnt yet known. Any Canadian can currently fly to the U.S.

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THE HAGUE, Netherlands  The Dutch government says it is donating 745,000 doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to countries in need that have appealed to the Netherlands for help.

The government announced Monday that Tanzania and Namibia will be among countries to receive shots. The Dutch government will arrange transport of the vaccines.

Most people getting vaccinated in the Netherlands get either the shot made by Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna.

The government still has stocks of AstraZeneca in cold storage and is using very little of the vaccine. Earlier Tuesday, the health ministry announced that people who have had one shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine can choose to have a second shot of Pfizer/BioNTech instead.

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MADRID  Spanish officials are celebrating that half of Spains residents, or roughly 24 million people, have been fully vaccinated already, although they say that a steep increase in contagion is sending worrying numbers of patients into hospitals.

The occupation rate in Spanish hospitals climbed on Monday to 5.4% of all beds tending COVID-19 patients and 11.4% of the intensive care unit beds. Although there is still plenty of room, admissions have increased 65% in regular beds and 45% in ICUs only in one week, according to an officiall with the Health Ministrys emergency coordination center.

Maria Jose Sierra said hospitalizations will likely continue increasing but officials expect they will remain proportionally much lower than in previous contagion waves due to the high vaccination levels.

The latest health ministrys data show that 50.7% of Spains 47 million residents were fully vaccinated by Monday and an additional 5 million are waiting for their second dose of the coronavirus jab.

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NEW YORK  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Monday he does not plan to reinstate a citywide mask mandate even as COVID-19 cases increase, opting instead to focus on vaccinating more residents.

There have been calls for New York City to follow the lead of Los Angeles County, which announced last week that it will require masks be worn indoors amid a sharp increase in virus cases.

But de Blasio insisted vaccinations are a better strategy for the nations most populous city.

Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is, the mayor said during an livestreamed press briefing. So we do not intend a mask mandate. We do intend to double down on vaccination.

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LONDON  Anti-lockdown protesters scuffled with police and hurled bottles and outside Parliament in London on Monday, the day all remaining social restrictions were lifted in England.

Hundreds of demonstrators espousing a range of anti-mask, anti-vaccine and conspiracist views gathered in Parliament Square, chanting freedom, and moved into the road, blocking traffic.

A police officer put a lock on one of Parliaments gates as protesters chanted shame on police and arrest Boris Johnson.

The Metropolitan Police force said officers had been met with hostility and 11 people had been arrested.

As of Monday, there are no mandatory mask-wearing or social-distancing rules in England, though the government is still advising people to wear face coverings in crowded indoor spaces.

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo.  With the delta variant causing a surge of new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in southwestern Missouri, health officials have taken to going door-to-door in an effort to encourage vaccinations.

The Kansas City Star recently followed along as health officials knocked on doors in Springfield, handing out brochures. The effort was non-confrontational and the officials always took no for an answer, the newspaper reported, despite concerns raised by Gov. Mike Parson and other Republican leaders that the outreach would be heavy-handed.

Southwestern Missouri has seen an alarming rise in illnesses caused by COVID-19 in recent weeks. There was a tinge of good news Monday: The number of people hospitalized dipped slightly both in southwestern Missouri and across the state, according to Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services data.

After several days of more than 1,000 newly confirmed cases, the state reported 826 on Monday, bringing the total for the pandemic to 545,551. No new deaths were reported, keeping the total at 9,474.

Southwestern Missouri lags well behind the national average for vaccinations.

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ST PETERSBURG, Fla.  U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan of Florida said Monday he has tested positive for COVID-19 even though he was fully vaccinated against the coronavirus.

The congressmans announcement came as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said a seasonal pattern affecting mainly Sun Belt states is largely to blame for a recent spike in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Florida.

DeSantis opposes virus-related mandates, but says that nonetheless it is important for people to get vaccinated.

Buchanan said in a news release he got the test recently after experiencing very mild flu-like symptoms. The congressman said he is quarantining at home.

The congressmans announcement comes amid a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Florida and around the country. One statistic released by the White House estimated 20% of new cases last week occurred in Florida.

DeSantis told reporters Monday that the increase was expected in Florida in mid-summer.
BRUSSELS (AP)  Belgium's king and queen visited the flood-stricken town of Verviers to lead the nation in a minute of silence Tuesday to remember those who died, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a second tour of the disaster zone in her country and pledged rapid help to those who lost nearly everything.

Rebuilding what was damaged in last weeks rampaging torrents will take years and millions of euros.

All means will be used, promised King Philippe in his traditional address on the eve of Belgium's July 21 independence day, which will be more subdued this year because of the disaster.

He and Queen Mathilde consoled those suffering in Verviers in the wake of the floods that killed 31 people and left about 70 people missing in Belgium. At least 170 people died in Germany, bringing the death toll in both countries to 201.

Flags were lowered to half staff. At noon, sirens wailed across Belgium, followed by a minute of silence.

We will not abandon you ... we will do everything possible to support you, said Prime Minister Alexander De Croo in an open letter.

Help is pouring in from elsewhere in Belgium, and about 10,000 volunteers have offered to go to the hilly eastern region to help in the cleanup once the high water recedes.

In Germany, where the damage is more extensive from the rushing floodwaters in once-picturesque villages, Merkel said the affected areas faced a very long haul to recovery.

We will not forget you, she vowed.

Her visit came a day before her Cabinet plans to approve a package of immediate aid, expected to be about 400 million euros ($472 million).

We will do everything  so that the money comes quickly to people who often have nothing left but the clothes on their backs, Merkel said. I hope this is a question of days.

The government also plans a long-term reconstruction effort. Restoring infrastructure will take more than a few months, given the many bridges destroyed, she added.

It was her second visit to the region hit by the July 14-15 flash floods, and work continued to clean up piles of mud-caked debris and search for any more victims. She began her day in the town of Bad Muenstereifel, visiting a warehouse where donations were being stored.

In both Belgium and Germany, government leaders promised a redoubled political focus on curbing climate change. European Union environment ministers underscored the point when they met in Slovenia on Tuesday to assess the bloc's plan to contain climate change.

Germany's deputy environment minister, Jochen Flasbarth, said that we do not have an alternative" to delivering on that plan.

EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans agreed.

What weve seen last week was a small reminder of the fact that the cost in human lives, but also material costs of nonaction are way, way higher than the cost of acting, he said.

Humanity will be confronted with very erratic weather patterns," he said, citing 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) in northwestern Canada and 40 degrees (122 F) in Siberia and central Europe.

"The floods, droughts, agricultures dealing with wildfires.  that is a consequence of the climate crisis," he said.

Timmermans is the chief architect of the proposals to spend billions and force industry into drastic reforms to help cut the EUs emissions of the gases that cause global warming by 55% this decade.

In his speech, King Philippe noted that the floods came on top of the suffering in the coronavirus pandemic.

In Germany, officials voiced concern that the disaster could lead to new infections, which are beginning to rise from very low levels. The health ministry in Rhineland-Palatinate state said a special vaccination bus was being sent to the devastated Ahr valley to enable residents to get shots and COVID-19 tests.

People are necessarily working hand in hand, often without being able to keep extensively to corona protection measures, said Denis Alt, the states deputy health minister. Despite the difficult circumstances, we want to offer the best possible protection in the corona pandemic here too.

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Moulson reported from Berlin
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Texas lawmakers who hightailed it to the nation's capital in a faceoff over voting rights said Tuesday that they're pressing on with their mission to get Democrats in Washington, D.C., to bolster their cause, even as COVID-19 spreads through their ranks.

Six of the more than 50 Texas state representatives who decamped to Washington last week have since tested positive for the coronavirus, along with two Washington staffers associated with the group.

During a news conference Tuesday, the Texas Democrats said they remain optimistic about their cause, even after their Monday night town hall on MSNBC was scaled back because of the positive test results.

I do believe we are being very innovative and we are rising to respond to these challenges, Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds said.

Asked about the prospects of a meeting between President Joe Biden and the Texas delegation now that several members have become infected, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said it was unlikely.

There has not been a meeting planned and there hasnt been a change to that, she said. Vice President Kamala Harris met with members of the delegation a few days before the positive cases were announced, but her office reiterated that she is fully vaccinated and didnt have close enough contact with the legislators to require going into isolation.

State Rep. Donna Howard confirmed Tuesday that she tested positive for COVID-19. She said in a statement that she is fully vaccinated and basically asymptomatic, but that she is isolating to limit the spread of the virus.

The delta variant seems to be much more contagious, even for those vaccinated, than initially thought, Howard said. Thankfully, Im vaccinated and feeling well. But this variant is hitting the unvaccinated with severe illness and hospitalizations, particularly impacting those under 65. Vaccines work. Everyone, please get vaccinated and protect yourselves.

It's possible for people who are vaccinated to still catch COVID-19, although health experts say those breakthrough cases are usually mild. The latest numbers show the majority of hospitalized coronavirus patients have not been vaccinated.

One of the two Washington staffers who tested positive works in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, confirmed that a fully vaccinated senior spokesperson in the Speakers Press Office tested positive for COVID after contact with members of the Texas state legislature last week.

Hammill said the employee has had no contact with Pelosi since exposure and that much of Pelosi's press staff was working remotely Tuesday, with the exception of those not exposed or who have recently tested negative.

A vaccinated White House staffer tested positive for the virus after interacting with the Pelosi aide, according to a White House official. The infected person has not been in close contact with Biden.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

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Acacia Coronado 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.
HARTFORD  A city man was killed in a shooting Monday, police said.

Officers were called to Irving Street around 7:47 a.m. for a report of a person shot. When they arrived, they found the victim, 21-year-old Brian Oliver, outside a home with an apparent gunshot wound, Lt. Aaron Boisvert said.

Oliver was unresponive when officers arrived and was pronounced dead at the scene, he said. It was unclear to investigators what led up to the shooting.

Detectives from the Major Crimes and Crime Scene divisions were still at the scene collecting evidence around 11:30 a.m. Boisvert said they do not have a suspect yet.

This is very early in the investigation, we dont have that yet, he said.

Police are asking anyone with information to contact the departments tip line at 860-722-8477.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP)  J.B. Pritzker on Tuesday said he has engineered a road back to sound state finances in making a case for a second term as Illinois governor, but he carefully left open continuing to pursue a graduated income tax that would raise revenue by taking a bigger chunk from the wealthy.

The Democrat pointed to a balanced budget that holds the line on most spending except for schools, eliminating a monstrous pile of overdue bills and bond-house credit rating upgrades despite voters' rejection last fall of the tax change all while managing the coronavirus pandemic which has sickened 1.4 million and killed more than 23,000.

I'm excited because the states moving in the right direction, we want to keep going, we have more yet to do, Pritzker told The Associated Press in one of a number of interviews with Statehouse reporters a day after he tweeted his 2022 re-election plans. I believe in the people of our state, and weve proven that the direction were going is the right one. And people are doing things to lift up their communities that were helping to support.

But he didn't rule out a second try at what he calls the fair tax" because 97% of taxpayers would pay the same or lower taxes. He merely said there were no plans for a campaign before his current term expires in January 2023.

A Pritzker victory next year would mark the first time an Illinois governor has been re-elected since Rod Blagojevich in 2006. The 56-year-old multi-billionaire, a private equity investor and heir to the Hyatt Hotel fortune, bested a crowded field of talented Democrats in 2018. He then defeated Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner, whose popularity had sunk because of a two-year budget standoff with Democrats in the General Assembly, in one of the more expensive gubernatorial races in U.S. history.

Pritzker spent nearly $150 million of his own money. With $33 million in his campaign account now, he has thus far drawn opposition from little-known Republicans including including Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, who captured headlines last summer with court challenges to Pritzkers COVID-19 emergency orders; former state Sen. Paul Schimpf; and Gary Rabine, a businessman from the northwest suburbs of Chicago.

It's a mess over there on the Republican side, Pritzker said. They need to work all that out. Well see where they end up.

Rabine noted that Pritzker raised taxes to pay for a $45 billion infrastructure plan and this year by eliminating corporate tax breaks he approved just two years ago, increased spending with the help of federal pandemic relief and oversaw the state's first-ever drop in population in the 2020 Census.

Schimpf, a state senator from Waterloo from 2017 to 2021, decried the Pritzker Leadership Deficit, contending he has failed to stand up to corruption, failed to protect our veterans and families, and failed to help overtaxed Illinoisans.

Bailey said Pritzker was attempting to buy another election," that his COVID-19 restrictions hurt small businesses and that he was conducting a war on police in approving tighter rules on law enforcement in the criminal justice system.

Billions of dollars in federal coronavirus-relief loans, due in December 2023, will be paid back early under a May agreement Pritzker reached with legislative leaders, about the time they trumpeted the fact that the bill backlog, $15 billion when Pritzker took office, is now at $7 billionthe amount ready for the state comptroller's action is $3 billion, about the amount that can be paid on a 30-day cycle.

The budget that takes effect July 1 does include $2.5 billion in additional federal aid, $1 billion of which Democrats set aside for capital construction projects that have been designed and are ready for groundbreaking. That means Pritzker an a lot of Democratic lawmakers could benefit from election-year photo ops of ribbon cuttings at shiny new facilities.

His profile raised during his response to the pandemic, which for much of last year included daily public briefings, Pritzker pledged to continue encouraging people to get vaccinated at a time when virus variants pose deadly risks and resistance to the shots grows in part because of misinformation Pritzker labeled Facebook fakery.

That will include incentives such as lotteries offering millions of dollars in prizes to entrants who have received at least one vaccination shot, which debuted this month. Pritzker did not say whether such incentives have increased participation, but he said vaccination is the only way to get past the worldwide health crisis.

Thats why were doing everything that we possibly can and we have been since the very beginning to communicate to people how important this is not just for their neighbors, their friends, but for themselves, Pritzker said. You want to keep yourself, your family, your community safe.

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Follow Political Writer John OConnor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration has reached a preliminary agreement with Germany over a controversial Russia-to-Europe gas pipeline that is vehemently opposed by Ukraine and Poland as well as both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Congressional aides briefed on the outlines of the deal said it would allow the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline without either Germany or Russia facing new U.S. sanctions. In return, the U.S. and Germany will make certain concessions to Ukraine and Poland, although it was not immediately clear if those would be welcomed.

Administration officials declined to comment on specifics of the matter pending an announcement that could come as early as Wednesday. The State Department said Monday that a senior diplomat would be visiting both Poland and Ukraine this week in part to discuss Nord Stream 2 in what are expected to be contentious talks.

The Nord Stream 2 project has posed a major foreign policy dilemma for the Biden administration. U.S. officials from both parties have long feared that it would give Russia too much power over European gas supplies, potentially shutting off gas to Russian adversaries Ukraine and Poland. But the pipeline is almost completed and the U.S. has been determined to rebuild ties with Germany that were damaged during the Trump administration.

President Joe Biden's approach to Ukraine is also a sensitive political subject. Former President Donald Trump's attempt to pressure Ukraine's president to dig up dirt on Biden and his son led to Trump's first impeachment. He was later acquitted by the Senate.

State Department spokesman Ned Price would not confirm on Tuesday that a deal had been done, but said the Germans have put forward useful proposals and we have been able to make progress on steps to achieve that shared goal, again that shared goal being to ensure that Russia cannot weaponize energy flows.

Word of the impending agreement comes as Ukraine is eager to have the White House make good on an invitation to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to visit Washington. The invitation was extended in principle for later this summer before Biden met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva last month.

Although Zelenskyy said at the time he expected to meet Biden in July, no date has been announced as the month draws to a close and Ukraine's public reaction to the Nord Stream agreement may be muted as a result.

Nord Stream 2 has been a topic of intense debate between U.S. and German officials for some time and it was a major agenda item during Biden's meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel last week. Merkel supports the pipeline and Biden has suggested that punishing Germany for that support would be counterproductive to broader U.S. interests.

But like the Trump administration before it, the Biden administration regards the Nord Stream 2 project as a threat to European energy security and has imposed sanctions on some of those involved in building it.

We continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Price said. We view it as a Kremlin geopolitical project that is intended to expand Russias influence over Europes energy resources and to circumvent Ukraine. We have made no bones about the fact that it is a bad deal for Germany, it is a bad deal for Ukraine and for Europe more broadly.

Still, Biden earlier this year waived sanctions against the German company constructing the pipeline and its top executives, drawing angry responses from members of Congress and disappointment from Ukraine and Poland. State Department counselor Derek Chollet is visiting Kyiv and Warsaw on Tuesday and Wednesday to brief officials there on developments.

Administration officials have defended the waivers, saying they can be rescinded at any time and that that threat actually gives the U.S. more leverage. That argument has been scoffed at by pipeline opponents, although Price said imposing the sanction would have been counter-productive.

It did not make sense to sanction our allies over a project that was more than 90% complete on day one of this administration, he said. We did not believe that sanctions could stop the completion of the pipeline. And so we made the determination that it made more sense to address Russias use of energy potentially as a weapon and other malign activity.

Poland, Ukraine and other eastern and central European countries bypassed by the pipeline are concerned that Russia will use gas supplies as a political weapon. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in Congress and some members of the administration are sympathetic to that position

Under the terms of the expected U.S.-Germany agreement, Ukraine would get $50 million in green energy technology credits, a guarantee of repayment for gas transit fees it will lose by being bypassed by the pipeline through 2024, and a pledge from both Germany and the U.S. that sanctions will be revisited should Russia use the gas as a political weapon, according to the congressional aides.

In a nod to Poland, Germany will also agree to sign onto the so-called Three Seas Initiative," an EU and U.S.-promoted scheme that aims to boost investment, infrastructure development and energy security among the countries bordering the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic seas, according to the aides.
Guns were not involved in 92% of violent crimes last year, national stats show.

By John R. Lott Jr., RealClearInvestigations

July 20, 2021

In response to sharp increases in violent crime, President Biden stressed again last week that his administration is focused on stemming the flow of firearms used to commit violent crimes. But critics warn that this guns first approach ignores a basic fact  about 92% of violent crimes in America do not involve firearms.

Although firearms were used in about 74% of homicides in 2019, they comprise less than 9% of violent crimes in America.

The vast majority of violent offenses  including robberies, rapes and other sex crimes  almost always involve other weapons or no weapons at all.

Consider Chicago, which has become a national symbol of violent crime. While shootings have increased by about 11% this year, the number of murders has decreased slightly in 2021  to 382 as of July 11 compared to 387 for the same time period last year. The dramatic increase Chicago is experiencing is in sex crimes -- a 23% rise (1,068 as of July 11 compared with 868 during the same period in 2020).

In New York City, murders through the same period have dropped by 36.4% compared to last year. But robberies are up by 18%, rapes by 9%, and other sex crimes by 35% -- all of which do not usually involve guns, sex crimes rarely so. This year murders make up 0.3% of felonies.

Even if gun crime were to rise dramatically, experts point out that it would still be a small fraction of overall violent crime.

The National Crime Victimization Survey, in the latest year available (2019), shows that there were 5,440,680 rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults and 16,425 murders. Firearms were used in 440,830 incidents for rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults (Table 25) and 10,258 murders. Adding those numbers up, 8.27% of violent crime incidents involved firearms. The percentage has stayed virtually the same for decades. For example, in 2000, it was 8.5%. In 2010, it was 9% (Table 4). Nor do most gun crimes end in murder: just 2% do.

The gulf between Democrats and Republicans on this is large. While Democrats are continuing to push for restrictions on police authority, Republican states are responding by giving police more power to do their job.

Nevertheless, Biden and other Democrats argue that lax gun control, which allows gun trafficking, is responsible for the increase in violent crime. The Biden administrations focus on gun crimes is seen in the titles the White House put on Bidens talks in April, June and last week: Remarks by President Biden on Gun Violence Prevention, Remarks by President Biden and Attorney General Garland on Gun Crime Prevention Strategy, and Remarks by President Biden Discussing His Administrations Comprehensive Strategy to Reduce Gun Crimes.

In three speeches on crime, Biden mentioned gun or firearm 148 times. The term weapon, sometimes in connection with assault weapon, is used another 21 times. By contrast, when not directly discussing guns, he mentioned the words crime, violence, or violent about half as often  89 times.

Unmentioned by the president as factors in the violent crime increase were last year's widespread unrest over the George Floyd murder and the dislocations of the pandemic, including mass layoffs, youths kept out of schools and, notably, the early release of many convicts from infection-prone prisons. Against this backdrop, some scholars question the presidents focus on gun laws.

What change in gun control laws in 2020 could possibly explain the increase in violent crime over the last year? asked Carl Moody, an economist who specializes in studying crime at the College of William & Mary, in an interview with RealClearInvestigations. Why did violent crime increase now, rather than two or three or four years ago? he asked rhetorically.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans, such as former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, point more generally to law enforcement. They argue that in many urban areas, more than half of prison inmates have been released on account of the pandemic and the releases are continuing. Bail reforms allow those accused of crime to remain on the streets. In some places, police have been ordered to stand down and their budgets cut. Prosecutors in many major urban areas have refused to prosecute violent criminals.

The Los Angeles Police Protective League, the union that represents rank-and-file officers, released a statement late last year criticizing Los Angeles County's then newly elected District Attorney George Gascons pledge (since fulfilled) to reduce criminal sentences and eliminate cash bail for misdemeanors. As homicides, shooting victims and shots fired into occupied homes soar in Los Angeles, the union wrote, its disturbing that Gascons first act in office is to explore every avenue possible to release from jail those responsible for this bloodshed."

Gascons office did not respond to a request for comment.

In contrast with Republicans, Biden mentioned policing just four times in his three addresses. He did so once in connection with red flag gun laws, and three times boasted that the American Rescue Plan passed earlier this year by Congress provided funds to hire more police officers, more nurses, more counselors, more social workers. However, the bill did not require that local governments spend any of the $350 billion they received on law enforcement.

Moody told RealClearInvestigations that the presidents emphasis on violent crime is understandable if only because of how heavily concentrated murders are in the country. Over 50% of the murders take place in just 2% of the counties (60 of the 3,140 counties, the 60 making up 27.5% of the population), and even within those counties most murders occur within 10-block areas. These are overwhelmingly gang-related murders. They are surely important, but dont touch the lives of most Americans. Fifty-four percent of counties have no murders and another 15% have one.

Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and most recently the author of Gun Control Myths. Until January, he worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as senior adviser for research and statistics.
Attorneys representing multiple environmental groups, a mining company and a Montana agency tangled last Friday over a state-approved permit for a copper mine that some fear could pollute the Smith River.

The oral arguments presented to Judge Katherine Bidegary at Meagher County District Court centered around whether the Montana Department of Environmental Quality violated state law by issuing a mine operating permit without adequately analyzing the projects environmental ramifications.

Several environmental groups filed the lawsuit against DEQ after the state agency approved a permit allowing Sandfire Resources America, previously Tintina Resources, to advance construction of the large copper mine about 15 miles north of White Sulphur Springs.

The mine would be built along Sheep Creek  a tributary to the Smith River in the Little Belt Mountains.

The groups argued that DEQ failed to adequately analyze whether toxic waste held in the tailings facility would leak into the creek, then make its way toward the Smith, a famed fishing destination. The Smith River is a crucial stronghold for trout, including westslope cutthroat trout, according to the projects opponents.

At Fridays hearing, Jenny Harbine, a senior attorney for the environmental law firm Earthjustice, argued that Montana DEQ violated the Metal Mine Reclamation Act by failing to ensure the mining company would have safe and stable waste impounding structures.

She added that DEQ violated the Montana Environmental Policy Act by failing to provide reasonable assurance that the mining companys cemented tailings facilities would operate as planned.

These laws are meant to protect our lands and our waters, and they couldnt be more important in this case. The Smith River and its tributaries have irreplaceable value to Montana fisheries and residents alike, she said. We ask that you send DEQ back to the drawing board on the Black Butte mine to ensure these resources are protected.

Sarah Clerget, an attorney for Montana DEQ, said at the hearing that the design for the mines cemented tailings facility lays out protection after protection to ensure it is safe and stable.

In the six year process of reviewing the operation permit, DEQ had 17 internal experts looking at the mine plan and approving it. The agency also employed 42 other outside experts to review the plan, she said.

The Smith is safe. This mine plan is solid as a rock. It will not move, it will not leak, it will not fail. It is the safest and most stable mine plan ever proposed in the state of Montana, and probably in the world, Clerget said.

Clerget added that the court need not determine how the mine will impact water quality, as the Montana Environmental Policy Act only requires judges to look at whether state agencies follow the right procedures when analyzing a mines impacts on water.

The case they brought only asks, Did DEQ take a hard look? she said. You dont have to look yourself You have to review the procedure DEQ took, not the substance of the review.

DEQ wrote in the projects environmental impact statement that the mine would help meet public demand for copper and increase employment and tax benefits for locals in the area.

Earthjustice wrote in a news release that the mine would prompt the company to divert a massive amount of water that threatens water rights. It would also produce about 12.9 million tons of acid-generating waste, which threatens water quality and important trout habitat, the firm wrote.
Millie J. Mill McCann, 95 of Augusta, passed away peacefully July 11, 2021 at Benefis Teton Medical Center in Choteau, after a long battle with dementia.

Cremation has taken place under the direction of Gorder-Jensen Funeral Home and a celebration of Millies life will be held July 24, 2021 at 1:30pm at the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Choteau.

Millie was born May 22, 1926 in Lewistown, MT to Herbert LeRoy and Myrtle Bell (Nichols) Lee. Her family lived in Tyler, MT for 10 years and then moved to Sun River where she finished growing up and graduated from Simms High School with the class of 1944.

On February 18, 1948 Millie married her grade school sweetheart Max McCann in Fort Benton. The couple lived in Great Falls and Millie started work as a secretary at the Great Falls Hospital from 1950 to 1953. Following she moved near Belt, to a cattle and wheat ranch where she gained some experience as a ranch wife. In 1956 the couple moved south of Augusta, to work for Mr. Ellis, eventually the ranch was sold to the Soap Creek Cattle Company and Millie and Max remained at the Ellis place as employees to the new owners, working there off and on for 32 years. Millie was the ranch cook for many of those years. The couple briefly moved to Lincoln in an attempt at owning a grocery store, which unfortunately fell through. They went back to Augusta where they moved to the ranch and Millie took a job at Allens Manix Store. After 3 years, they were both offered jobs with the First Bank of Minneapolis and the company moved them to a large ranch in South Dakota. Millie was a secretary for the bank and was also in charge of feeding all of the ranch hands. Eventually they were able to purchase a home in Augusta and moved back. During this time Millies husband was severely injured and she devoted the rest of her life taking care of him until he passed away in 2002.

Millie was multi-faceted, not only was she a wonderful homemaker, mother and friend but she was also a very talented seamstress, operating a shop from home. She loved children and in her 60s and into her 70s she ran an in home daycare at her house in Augusta. Above everything she loved to spend time with her family. She spent hours with her grand-daughters, teaching them to sew, bake, cook and the word of the Lord.

Millie is survived by her children Randy McCann of Augusta, MT and Janelle (Gene) Bilile of Ronan, MT; siblings Gwen Ferguson of Lacey, WA and Julian (Carol) Lee of Great Falls, MT; grandchildren Leah Rea of Portland and her children Katelynn and Brooklynn Corey; Korine Rea of Polson, MT and her children Enzo and Ayha Ryals of Bozeman, MT and Kayla Rea of Portland and her children Deondre and Samara. Millie also loved Genes children Justin, Breanna and Jordan of Ronan, MT.

Millie was preceded in death by her husband Max McCann, brothers Jack, Jim, Kay and Paul and sisters Grace, Dorothy and Coleen.

In Lieu of flowers, donations in Millies name can be made to the Choteau, Seventh Day Adventist Church; PO Box 900 Choteau, MT; 59422.

Condolences may be left on-line at

www.gorderjensenfuneralhome.com
(The Center Square)  A lack of affordable childcare and additional unemployment benefits are contributing to the labor shortage for businesses in tourist-reliant Montana communities with small retail, lodging and restaurant businesses.

Many business leaders attribute the difficulties to service industry workers receiving more income from state and federal unemployment benefits than they made working.

I suspect that the accumulation of that for some employees outweighed what they [get paid] for the job, Bridger Mahlum of the Montana Chamber of Commerce told The Center Square.

A Flathead County business official said it's more than that. Even highly educated people aren't returning to work because they can't find childcare or it costs more than they can earn, Kate Lufkin, director of Education and Workforce for the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce, told The Center Square.

The effect on the community shows at local businesses.

"Right now, we're seeing the bars, restaurants, service industries and mainstays are really struggling to be open on evenings and weekends," Lufkin said.

A single childcare provider in Flathead County is open past 6 p.m. and on weekends, she said. That makes it difficult for parents to work shifts on nights or weekends. This keeps some restaurants closed Thursday through Monday. Child care facilities meet only 33% of the demand in the county.

Montana was the first state in the nation to forego federal unemployment benefits in favor of a one-time return to work bonus using federal money to incentivize people to get back to work. Mahlum believes this incentive may work.

Dont expect an overnight change with the end of the $300 weekly federal unemployment check, Ronda Wiggers, executive director of the National Federal of Independent Businesses  Montana, told The Center Square.

"I think it's one of those things where it's going to take a little while for people to say, Oh, that was my unemployment check he was talking about, Wiggers said.

The NFIBs recently released Small Business Optimism survey results showed 63% of businesses are trying to hire or are hiring in June, a slight increase from May. Wiggers said that almost every Montana business owner she has met is struggling to fill spots and has said they have increased wages.

The NFIBs monthly jobs report said 46% of small business owners nationwide had job openings that could not be filled. Though thats a decrease from May, it remains more than double the historical average.

Businesses are making changes like paying employees after each shift to help retain employees, Wiggers said.

I think as the vaccination levels rise ... more people are going to be able to return to work in a more healthy environment where more people are vaccinated. And the opening of schools in the fall, I think that is underrated that might be a big motivator for some people, Mahlum said.
Ruth Reiquam was born on October 2, 1931 to David Reiquam and Muriel Skratus. She would be the younger sister of Marge (Carlson) and Helen (Dellwo). Ruth was born in Conrad, Montana and her family lived in Collins and Culbertson where her father passed away when she was 6 years old.

She moved with her mother and sisters first to Great Falls and then to Dutton and finally, Choteau, where she attended school and graduated from High school in 1949. Ruth found her vocation early on in life as a teacher. She taught swimming and managed the Choteau pool in the summer while attenting and graduating with a teaching degree from the University of Montana. Ruth was a Griz for life. Two major themes developed in Ruthies life Teaching and Friendship.

Ruth Reiquam was a TEACHER! She taught one year in Townsend, Montana followed by five years in Cut Bank. Her life took a major turn when she left Montana on a big adventure and moved to Los Angeles to teach at North Hollywood High School. For the next 35 years she would work as a school counselor and as a PE teacher.

She lived fully the values of friendship, adventure, risk taking, and having fun. She had a natural ability with children and made them feel safe and cared for. When you talked with Ruth, you knew you were heard. When you were with her, she made one feel important and special.

Ruthie did have high personal standards and she did not suffer fools easily and we have all been foolish a time or two. But with Ruth you always got another chance and there was always a new adventure! From picnics in the park to trips to Los Angeles, a ride in her Mustang convertible or trying out new restaurants, Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Universal Studios, games at Dodger Stadium, plays at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, the Lakers at the Forum, staying in hotels with Pools, Glacier or Yellowstone, off to Europe or New Orleans, and sailing in Santa Monica Bay or on Canyon Ferry Lake. There was always a new adventure and if you were fortunate enough to go along, you were in for a time! Uff Da!

Ruthie - you will be missed, but we will pass on the lessons you taught us adventure, friendship, trying new things, and giving and taking many chances to improve. We wish you well on your new adventure. Say Hi to Marilyn and Mandy, Helen and Glen, Marge and Ray, Bob and Helen, Michael and Ed, John, Marjorie, Billy and Eleanor, Betty, Mabel, all of the Reiquam cousins, and all the countless others who will be very excited to see you again because you always have the best ideas for the next new thing! Perhaps a Heaven Division of the Teton County Womens Riding Lawn Mower Drill Team of which she was the instigator!

Ruthie is survived by her nieces, Jamie Maurer (Greg), Debbie Saylor (Pat), and nephews Sam Carlson, David Dellwo (Nancy), Mike Dellwo (Arlene), Doug Dellwo (Margi), many Great Nieces & Nephews, also Great- Great ones and a few on the way! As well as friends who were Extended Family: Alice Lewis, Bill and Robin Marney, Suzie, Robert, Kevin, & Adam Sheedy and many, many other dear friends.

A celebration of life will be held at Trinity Lutheran Church, Choteau, Montana on July 24, 2021 at 11 am. A wonderful Lutheran lunch to follow. All are welcome to attend a committal of the ashes and a party, Ruthie Style, following the luncheon at Arrow Ranch  home of Pat & Deb Saylor.

Suggested Memorials to Intermountain, 500 S. Lamborn St., Helena, MT 59601, Trinity Lutheran Church-Choteau, or Donors choice.
Although it seems longer ago, on this date in 2016 Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a controversial speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. One of the last Republican rivals left standing in the gale wind that was Donald Trump's candidacy, Cruz was reluctant to endorse the nominee. He certainly had his reasons: Trump had insulted Cruz's wife, and had claimed -- bizarrely even for The Donald -- that Cruz's father was somehow implicated in John F. Kennedy's assassination.

So what do to? Cruz decided to speak to the delegates without implicitly endorsing the party's standard-bearer. "Vote your conscience," he told the GOP faithful. "Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution."

I thought it was an artful dodge. Not everyone agreed. The normally temperate Indiana Sen. Dan Coates angrily called Cruz "the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I've ever seen." Rep. Marsha Blackburn advised Cruz to "get over yourself." Chris Christie proclaimed the speech "awful" and "selfish."

For Christie, at least, there was a glass house issue. In the annals of "awful" convention speeches, one only had to look 24 hours earlier, when Christie led the convention in a cringe-inducing call-and-response attack on Hillary Clinton in which the audience was led to chant "Lock her up!" And if one is collecting "selfish" nominating speeches, only four years earlier the keynote speaker at the GOP convention in Tampa never mentioned the incumbent Democratic president -- and waited 16 minutes to mention party nominee Mitt Romney's name. Instead, the speaker talked about himself. That speaker's name, of course, was Chris Christie.

One commentator who put Ted Cruz's 2016 gambit in historical perspective was Rush Limbaugh, who pointed out that the sainted Ronald Reagan did the same thing to Gerald R. Ford at the 1976 GOP convention -- even though Ford was the incumbent president. Although Reagan's speech was moving and memorable -- and has stood the test of time -- he never mentioned Ford at all, let alone asked Americans to vote for him.

"[Cruz] wanted to deliver a speech that was Reaganesque in that the delegates would walk out of there thinking that they should have nominated him," Limbaugh said. "He didn't get there."

That's no disgrace, if you think about it. Reagan was a tough act to follow, as Jerry Ford told me himself in an interview many years ago. But that is a story for another day.

Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.
The Charles Koch Foundation donated nearly $12 million to Arizona State University (ASU), the nation's most innovative university, according to U.S. News & World Report. A press release from the Koch Foundation said that the grant money would be used to develop programs for "students to more effectively pursue their own individualized and self-defined learning goals." One sponsored initiative is a "stackable credential" system that would allow students  particularly low-income and working students  to accumulate industry-specific credentials and customize their higher-education experience.

According to Connecting Credentials, a stackable credential is a certificate awarded as part of a "sequence of credentials that can be accumulated over time to build up an individual's qualifications." The "stackable" nature of the credential means that it can be completed in tandem with other certification courses as the student progresses in his career.

Many of Arizona State's programs  including nursing, business, and tech consulting  offer students the ability to acquire such credentials, allowing working students opportunities for career advancement and the option to resume their education later in life. The school says stackable credentials "enable learners to earn badges and certificates, in addition to degrees, that validate the attainment of their skills and focus on workforce-specific competencies."

Derrick Anderson, an associate professor and adviser to ASU's "President for Innovation," told RealClearEducation that the University created its stackable-credential programs by breaking down standard academic courses into their component parts and making those parts available to students. One challenge, he said, was taxonomizing those parts in a way that was accessible to interested learners.

"We kind of said, Hey, we need a library for 'learning objects.' And that's going to help us take what we have right now and break it apart into stackable experiences because we have the content. We're a research university  we have Nobel Prize-winning scientists here. We have content that's just as good as any place out there, or better. We just need to start breaking it apart into stackable experiences, Anderson explained.

He said that the Koch grant is being used in part to flesh out that "library" of credential offerings for students.

According to a Columbia University white paper, stackable credentials have existed in some form since at least 1994, when Congress passed the School-to-Work Opportunities Act. The Act called on states to create a "process for issuing skill certificates"  portable credentials awarded to students who have demonstrated proficiency in a given skill. One element of Congress's intent was to provide workers without bachelor's degrees a bridge to better-paying jobs and further education.

Decades later, it is clear that this goal hasn't been fully realized. According to the National Skills Coalition, middle-skill jobs  meaning jobs that require more training than a high-school degree but less formal education than a bachelor's degree  account for 54% of the U.S. labor market. Still, only 44% of the American workforce are trained to the middle-skill level.

Rachel Vilsack, a senior fellow at the National Skills Coalition, told RealClearEducation that programs like the ones envisioned by Arizona State have the potential to narrow the skills gap.

"Because these programs are often shorter terms, it allows people and working adults to be able to connect more quickly with opportunities, to get that retraining and up-skilling that is needed," she said.

The pandemic heightened the need for adaptive education models like the one being pursued at ASU. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, between 32 and 43% of employees laid off due to the pandemic will have their positions permanently cut. This will force many displaced workers to return to school and learn new skills.

For many workers, research suggests that stackable credentials can boost earnings and enhance career prospects. According to researchers at Brown University, adults who completed a stackable-credential program are four percent more likely to be employed and earn about seven percent higher pay than their non-stacking peers.

The demonstrated success of stackable-credential programs is precisely why Vilsack sees programs like the one offered at ASU becoming more prevalent over time, particularly as automation and other economic pressures cause workers to update their skills.

"We have seen a greater emphasis and are certainly promoting a greater emphasis on stackable credentials as a way to help  whether it's that adult worker who has been laid off and doesn't have any college education, getting into a postsecondary career pathway and pursuing their career through an industry. Think of it even in healthcare  from a nursing assistant to an LPN to a registered nurse. We can look at that whole sequence as being 'stackable credentials' over someone's career," she said. "We see this as a critical [economic] recovery strategy."

Ryan Stowers, executive director of the Charles Koch Foundation, told RealClearEducation that another economic benefit of stackable-credentials programs like the one offered at Arizona State is their potential to reduce the number of students saddled with crippling debt upon graduation.

"If more learners can pursue low-cost, quality pathways that offer portability and the opportunity to begin fulfilling careers, then we should start to see fewer of the 'non-completers' that leave people with burdensome debt. In addition, when an institution's transfer policies are learner-centered, stackable credentials provide individuals a chance to decrease the cost and time to earn a degree by having their prior learning counted for credit," Stowers said.
A panel of farmers, academics and NGO representatives have published a consensus pathway to help the Scottish farming industry reach net-zero by 2045.

In a debate that has been notoriously polarised, the inquiry was able to set out a credible way forward by bringing different perspectives around the same table.

After a 2-year long inquiry, the Farming for 1.5 panel has produced a set of policy recommendations to take the sector to net zero by 2045.

The panel warned that Scottish government couldn't achieve its climate targets without a transformation in farming as the sector accounted for 20% of the country's greenhouse gas emissions.

The key recommendations of their report, released on Monday (19 July), include whole farm contracts to deliver on farming and nature from 2024.

It also calls for a reduction in total emissions from agriculture while maintaining food production per capita, along with a rapid uptake in low methane breeding for cows and sheep.

The report proposes a pathway to 2032 and then to 2045 which supports farmers to deliver the transition.

It suggests targets for each of the three key greenhouse gases: For carbon dioxide, it sees some efficiency savings in the next ten years while the sector prepares for fully decarbonising farm machinery in the 2030s.

For methane, a reduction of 25% by 2032 will be through a combination of better animal health, improved genetics, early adoption of feed additives and better management of manures.

And by 2045 a reduction of 50% on current levels is possible through low methane breeding and widespread adoption of feed additives, the report says.

For nitrous oxide, the panel see a fall of 25% by 2032 through more efficient use of bagged nitrogen, manures and slurries, an increase in the use of legumes and the reduction of nitrogen use in the large areas of land being farmed for nature.

As part of the report, the panel heard evidence from experts on farming practices, environmental impacts and behavioural change; and conducted farm visits.

Nigel Miller, co-chair of the inquiry, said the newly-found consensus left him 'optimistic about the future of rural Scotland'.

"The inquiry journey has reached into soil health and sustainable cropping, in some ways revisiting principles which were established in the 18th century with the first agricultural revolution," he said.

"Cutting edge science, precision techniques and genetics have also been a significant focus. Both approaches will be part of the net zero future.

"The transformation pathway mapped out by the group is a holistic plan which balances the three core goals; food, biodiversity and the 2045 net zero target.

"It delivers for society as a whole but also provides an integrated route for farmers, crofters and land managers to deliver diverse and sometimes conflicting policy priorities.

The Farming for 1.5 panel was established as an independent inquiry in 2019 by NFU Scotland and Nourish Scotland.

Other groups involved include Scotland's Rural College (SRUC), Scottish Forestry and the University of Oxford, among others.
One of Scotlands leading free range egg producers has warned the sector is experiencing a downturn due to Brexit and worldwide trade disputes.

Free range egg producer and packer Glenrath Farms posted a 20 percent drop in pre-tax profits during the last financial year.

It saw profit before tax fall from 4.6 million in 2019 to 3.6 million in 2020, with revenue roughly level at 53 million.

Chairman Sir John Campbell said the industry was experiencing difficulties he had foreseen and warned of.

My long predicted downturn for the industry is firmly with us given the challenges we are facing with external factors such as Brexit and uncertainties caused by worldwide trade disputes, he said.

In his 2019 report Sir John struck a positive note on Brexit: "All British supermarkets are all currently committed to purchasing UK produced eggs wherever possible and the advent of Brexit with strengthen this demand.

"The UK egg industry must rise to the European challenge to ensure we are able to support our customers with UK produce, not just now but in the foreseeable future."

But in his latest report he said Brexit was causing some concern: Although Brexit offers opportunities to UK egg producers, it is also causing disruption and concern in the market place.

"Uncertainty will continue within the industry and within our company and we must be careful to manage the risks, he said.

Sir John said that large amounts of imports were bought from European countries, such as feed and plant and machinery.

Even with a deal in place between the UK and the EU, he said there was a risk that not enough feed could be bought or that the price would increase and not be reflected in sales, so reducing profits.

But the Glenrath chairman said the company had done well in the face of difficulties facing the free range egg industry.

"The UK egg industry is facing challenges at the present time and we at Glenrath are adapting as quickly as possible," Sir John said.

"Despite the large investment being made by the company in meeting our customer demands, we have remained profitable throughout.

"The results for the year have been achieved by adopting a prudent management approach and cost savings throughout the group.
Some meat processors are seeing up to 10 percent of their workforce having to self-isolate due to the current 'pingdemic' crisis, the sector has warned.

The staff absences are caused by factory employees being told to isolate by NHS Test and Trace, according to the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA).

Figures show show that half a million people in England and Wales were 'pinged' by the Covid app in the week to 7 July, an increase of 46% on the previous week.

Nick Allen, chief executive of BMPA, told BBC Radio 4s Today Programme that some of its members were seeing staff shortages of between 5% and 10%.

This was on top of the 'desperate' shortage of workers that the industry was already suffering, he added.

As a result, some companies are having to simplify down their range of products to compensate for key skills being removed from their production lines.

Mr Allen explained that, if the UK workforce situation deteriorated further, companies could be forced to start shutting down production lines all together.

Its for this reason that the sector has been calling on the government to add butchers to the Shortage Occupation List.

According to the BMPA, this would allow the industry to temporarily fill these growing vacancies with overseas workers until the current crisis has passed.

Elsewhere, retailer Iceland has been forced to close stores due to staff shortages caused by people being told to self-isolate by NHS Test and Trace.

The supermarket chain said it has now had to temporarily close shops because 1,000 staff have been 'pinged' by the app.

The government plans to relax self-isolation rules on 16 August, but the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) said on Monday that 'speed was of the essence' amid staff shortages.

CBI president Karan Bilimoria, said: With restrictions being lifted and cases rapidly increasing, we urgently need a surefooted approach from government.

Building and maintaining confidence is key to securing the economic recovery. Mask-wearing in enclosed spaces, especially transport, will help create confidence for both staff and customers, as will clarity around the future availability of free testing for employees.
Farmers and smallholders are being urged to ensure timely registration of their rare breed livestock despite the disruption to shows and sales for a second year.

In a normal year, summer shows and sales often provide key milestones ahead of which rare breeds are registered, but many of these have been cancelled for another year running.

Registered livestock and equines need to be recorded in the relevant flock book, herd book or stud book, and some receive certificates.

Due to pandemic disruption, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust (RBST) has pushed farmers to register to help societies determine an accurate picture for breed numbers.

If registrations of rare breeds are overlooked in 2021 as a result of disruption, crucial information could be lost and the work to support breeds may suffer.

RBST chief executive Christopher Price said: This analysis informs our conservation priorities and programmes of work, as well as decisions about which breeds to target for the UK Gene Bank and categorisations on the RBST Watchlist.

"Some breeds must be registered within a certain timeframe and missing the window this year will have impacts for years to come, because only progeny of registered animals can themselves be registered.

Irish Moiled cattle are an ancient breed that came close to extinction in the early 1980s and conservators have worked hard breeding and registering through the Irish Moiled Cattle Society.

Registration for the breed has been invaluable to the breeds survival, according to the Michelle McCauley, who works at the society.

"By registering in the herd book, it helps to monitor and record numbers, it gives the assurance that the cattle are pure bred, and DNA proven, there is a wealth of information on the sires/dams etc. all at your fingertips," she said.

"Sadly, Irish Moileds that are not registered their breeding will be lost to the gene pool and numbers will also start to decline as their offspring cannot be registered.

"It is important that we continue the work of the conservators before us and continue to register to record and maintain records to help protect this unique and distinct rare breed.

Many breeds allow online registration through the Grassroots system or the Cloudlines platform, and paper applications can also be sent directly to the relevant breed society.
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Image: InstagramThe 90s formed a prominent era for fashion and films. A time where one was often found experimenting with different subcultures and styles. From grunge to the soft girl style, the 90s set a record with its ever-evolving fashion trends. In 2021, we saw various trends from the 90s making a grand comeback, albeit with a GenZ twist. A few of the most popular styles have been inspired by our favourite Hollywood movies and their characters.Scroll down to see our favourite style icons from the 90s from which you can still get some trendy tips to go all out yourself!
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Delta, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 19, 2021) - AirTest Technologies Inc. (TSXV: AAT) (OTC Pink: AATGF) (FSE: 71A) (WKN: A1JMFL) (the "Company") President George Graham is very pleased to confirm the Company's Annual General Meeting is being conducted on Wednesday, July 21 in a Virtual Meeting format. The meeting will commence at 10:30 Pacific time, 1:30 Eastern time. All current shareholders are invited to attend the meeting by calling the conference number, which is 416-764-8687, or toll-free at 1-888-575-5167.

All voting related to the meeting agenda items has been conducted by Proxy, but guests phoning in will have an opportunity to listen to the full agenda and ask questions on any of the subjects on the agenda.

About AirTest: AirTest Technologies is a Green-Tech company specializing in Demand Control Ventilation systems that improve commercial building operating efficiency and generate proven energy savings. The Company has developed new wireless sensors with dynamic realtime communication and control technologies, which builds upon 17 years of experience and thousands of installations amongst clients such as Lowe's, Shoppers Drug Mart and Ikea. AirTest solutions provide data on levels of Indoor Air Quality required by Schools, Retail Stores and Offices.

For further information, please contact:

Mr. George Graham, President

Phone: (604) 517 3888

Fax :(604) 517 3900

Email: ggraham@airtest.com

Website: www.airtest.com

Or

Investor Relations Contact

Jeff Walker

Vice President

The Howard Group Inc.

Email: jeff@howardgroupinc.com

Tel: 403-221-0915

Toll Free: 1-888-221-0915

Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking statements". Forward-looking statements are projections of financial performance or future events. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "plan", "believe", "estimate" and words of similar meaning. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and they are subject to risks that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include those concerning the Company's belief in the energy savings that can be achieved through installation of the Company's products and that these installations lead to reduced maintenance, downtime expenses, future cost savings, and improvements in the bottom line. These statements are subject to risks that may cause the actual results to be materially different in future periods from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Risks that may prevent or delay the forward-looking statements from coming to fruition as anticipated include the availability of working capital, risks inherent in product development, as well as market factors that may increase costs or time to market. It is our policy not to update forward-looking statements except to the extent required under applicable securities laws. Further information on the Company is available at www.sedar.com or at the Company's website, www.airtest.com.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90662
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 19, 2021) - SBD Capital Corp. (CSE: SBD), (the "Company") announces the resignation of Mr. Conan Taylor as a director of the Company, effective immediately. The Company wishes to thank Mr. Taylor for his valuable contribution to the Company and wishes him every success in his future endeavors.

The Company is also pleased to announce the appointment of Mr. Kyler Hardy as a director of the Company. Samuel "Kyler" Hardy has over 16 years of experience in the global resource sectors. He has worked with venture capital, private equity funds and has introduced strategic partners to advance projects. Mr. Hardy has founded, managed and successfully sold several resource sector businesses. Mr. Hardy is currently the CEO of Cronin Group a natural resource focused merchant bank, CEO of Cloudbreak Discovery PLC, Chairman of Temas Resources Corp, Co-Executive Chairman of Imperial Helium Corp., Director of Norseman Silver Inc., Director of Hexa Resources Limited and Director of Graycliff Resources Ltd.

On behalf of the Board,

SBD Capital Corp.

Arvin Ramos, Chief Financial Officer

Aramos@resourcesgroup.ca

(416) 361-2515

This news release contains certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities law. Forward-looking information is frequently characterized by words such as "plan", "expect", "project", "intend", "believe", "anticipate", "estimate", "may", "will", "would", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the information is provided, and is subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking information. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change, unless required by law. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90640
Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - July 19, 2021) - Mobi724 Global Solutions Inc. (TSXV: MOS) ("Mobi724" or the "Company"), a fintech enabler of AI-enhanced payment card-linked solutions, today announced that it has retained NATIONAL Capital Markets to provide investor relations and financial communications services, effective July 19, 2021.

"Our commitment to creating engaging consumer experiences and generating incremental commercial opportunities for our clients will now be supported and enhanced by a best-in-class investor communications program," stated Marcel Vienneau, Chief Executive Officer of Mobi724. "We look forward to benefiting from NATIONAL's full-service capabilities as Canada's largest independent communications firm in order to clearly and reliably communicate with our stakeholders through proven best practices."

Subject to approval by the TSX Venture Exchange, Mobi724 has engaged NATIONAL Capital Markets to provide comprehensive investor relations, corporate communications and investor outreach services for a monthly retainer fee of C$10,500. Neither NATIONAL Capital Markets nor any of its principals have an ownership interest, directly or indirectly, in Mobi724 or its securities, and the Company has not granted NATIONAL Capital Markets or its principals any right to acquire such interests.

NATIONAL Capital Markets is one of Canada's largest and most experienced investor relations firms with a proven track record of communicating in the financial technology industry. NATIONAL Capital Markets provides investor relations support as well as special situations, transaction and corporate communications support to clients in all business sectors. The firm's investor relations expertise, national and international reach, and scope of services form an unparalleled offering.

About Mobi724 Global Solutions Inc.

Every Transaction is An Opportunity

Mobi724 Global Solutions Inc. (TSXV: MOS) is a fintech company that enables banks and merchants to offer their customers real-time payment card-linked incentives, in a white-label format. Mobi724's objective is to add a layer of AI-driven actionable intelligence to every payment transaction, creating engaging consumer experiences & generating incremental commercial opportunities to its clients.

ABOUT NATIONAL Capital Markets

NATIONAL Capital Markets is a fully integrated part of NATIONAL Public Relations, an AVENIR GLOBAL company - one of the world's leading independent communications firms - which has been at the centre of issues that matter for over 40 years. NATIONAL Capital Markets has access to over 550 professionals - working across all vertical markets and partnering with thousands of clients around the world - and offers a full range of strategic communications services, including investor relations, public relations, marketing, media relations, corporate and financial communications, issues and crisis management, stakeholder relations, and digital engagement. For more information, visit nationalcapitalmarkets.ca

Legal Disclaimer

Mobi724 cautions investors that any forward-looking statements or projections made by Mobi724 are subject to risks and uncertainties, that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Such factors include, but are not limited to, those described under Item 'Risk Factors and Uncertainties' in the Company's Management Discussion and Analysis, available on SEDAR.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

THIS NEWS RELEASE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE A SOLICITATION TO BUY OR SELL ANY SECURITIES IN THE UNITED STATES AND IS NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO US NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES.

Investor Relations:

For further information, please visit www.MOBI724.com or contact:

Marcel Vienneau, CEO

Mobi724 Global Solutions Inc.

T: 514-394-5200 ir@mobi724.com

Nicole Piasentini, Investor Relations

NATIONAL Capital Markets

T: 647-382-9373 npiasentini@national.ca

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90680
VANCOUVER, BC and TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / July 19, 2021 / Silver Elephant Mining Corp. ("ELEF") today has filed an early warning report under National Instrument 62-103 - The Early Warning System And Related Take-Over Bid And Insider Reporting Issues in connection with its dispositions (the "Dispositions") of 8,061,000 common shares ("Shares") of Victory Nickel Inc. ("VN").

Between July 14 and July 19, 2021, ELEF disposed of 8,061,000 through the facilities of the Canadian Securities Exchange at an average price of $0.0168 for a total consideration of approximately $135,435.00. Prior to the Dispositions, ELEF held 25,283,000 Shares which represented approximately 18.3% of the issued and outstanding Shares of VN on a non-diluted basis. Immediately after the Dispositions, ELEF holds 17,222,000 Shares which represents 12.46% of VN's issued and outstanding Shares on a non-diluted basis. All Shares are held directly by ELEF and no joint actor of ELEF holds any securities of VN.

ELEF acquired Shares for investment purposes. ELEF intends to evaluate its investment in VN and to increase or decrease its shareholdings from time to time as it may deem appropriate.

ELEF and VN have entered into a voting trust agreement in respect of the Shares acquired by ELEF whereby ELEF has agreed it shall either vote the Shares held by ELEF in accordance with the direction of VN or shall abstain from voting such Shares. An early warningreport has been filed by ELEF in accordance with applicable securities laws and will be available on SEDAR under the VN's profile at www.sedar.com or may be obtained directly from ELEF upon request at the telephone number below. The head office of VN is located at 9 Crestwood Drive, Toronto, Ontario M1E 1E6 and the Shares are traded on the Canadian Securities Exchange. The head office of ELEF is located at Suite 1610 - 409 Granville Street, Vancouver, British Columbia V6C 1T2. There are no joint actors in connection with the Acquisition.

Contact Information:

John Lee, Chief Executive Officer, Silver Elephant Mining Corp.

604 569-3661

ir@silverelef.com

SOURCE: Silver Elephant Mining Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656203/Silver-Elephant-Mining-Corp-Files-Early-Warning-Report-in-Respect-of-Victory-Nickel-Inc


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Since their election as the majority in the US, the Democratic party has worked hard to legalize marijuana across the country. The latest bill drafted by the senate Democrats is supposed to bring an end to the problem of marijuana in the country.



Majority leader Chuck Schumer along with Senate Finance Committee chairman Ron Wyden and senator Cory Booker has brought out a discussion draft of the bill named the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.



Schumer said, 'For decades, young men and young women, disproportionately young Black and Hispanic men and women, have been arrested and jailed for carrying even a small amount of marijuana in their pocket - a charge that often came with exorbitant penalties and a serious criminal record because of the over-criminalization of marijuana, and it followed them for the remainder of their lives. It makes no sense, and it's time for a change.'



Recently, Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs found a huge 40 acre illegal planting site in Muskogee county which also had many instances of human trafficking. According to a spokesperson for OBNDD, there were 20 to 30 Hispanic men who were kept in subhuman conditions without any proper sanitation or salary and were promised to be paid in shares of the harvest.



Followed by this incident, Republican senator of the state Jim Inhofe has brought a bill to funnel a $4 million funding to strengthen marijuana laws in the country. While the Democratic party has actively supported the legalization of marijuana, President Biden's lack of willingness for universal marijuana legalization is also going to be crucial for the future of the bill.



The main idea of the bill, along with the Safe Banking Act, is to help the marijuana industry boom across the nation. While the former has already passed House, the future of the latter is going to be the matter of contempt.



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CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / July 19, 2021 / Ivrnet Inc. (TSX.V:IVI) ("Ivrnet" or the "Company") announces that it has changed the venue for its 2021 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders scheduled for 10:00 am Mountain Time on July 23, 2021 to Suite 4000, 520 - 3rd Ave SW, Calgary, Alberta (the Meeting").

Details of the change of the Meeting venue are as follows:

the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders will be held on July 23, 2021 at 10:00 a.m. Mountain Time at Suite 4000, 520 - 3 rd Ave SW, Calgary, Alberta;

Ave SW, Calgary, Alberta; the Company will post a copy of this news release on SEDAR; and

the Company will take all reasonable steps necessary to inform all parties involved in the proxy voting infrastructure (such as intermediaries, transfer agents and proxy service providers) of the change in the location for the Meeting.

The Company will not be preparing revised or supplemental proxy materials for the Meeting. A copy of the materials for the meeting are available under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

In light of the current COVID-19 pandemic, and to mitigate the risks to the health and safety of our communities, shareholders, employees and other stakeholders, the Company has set up a teleconference line for shareholders to call to participate in the meeting. Please text or call 1-800-351-7227 in advance of the Meeting to obtain the telephone number and participant code. The Company strongly encourages shareholders to participate via teleconference and to not attend the meeting in person. The current recommendations of Alberta's Chief Medical Officer discourage such in person gatherings and encourage people to stay home whenever possible. If you choose to attend in person, please be advised that the Company reserves the right to refuse entrance to the meeting to anyone who appears to be displaying symptoms associated with COVID-19. The Company also reserves the right to refuse entrance to the meeting to anyone if the then current recommendations or requirements of Alberta's Chief Health Officer cannot be adequately complied with including, but not limited to, social distancing recommendations and limits on the size of gatherings.

About Ivrnet

Ivrnet is a software and communications company that develops, hosts, sells and supports value-added business automation software. The company's products and services are delivered through the Internet and traditional phone network. These applications facilitate automated interaction through personalized communication between people, mass communication for disseminating information to thousands of people concurrently, and personalized communication between people and automated systems.

For further information: please contact Andrew Watts, President and CEO, Ivrnet Inc.; Suite 222, 1338 - 36 Avenue NW, Calgary, Alberta T2E 6T6; Tel/fax 1.800.351.7227; E-mail: investors@ivrnet.com; www.ivrnet.com.

Forward-looking Information

This press release may contain forward-looking statements which reflect Ivrnet's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to Ivrnet. These statements require Ivrnet to make assumptions it believes are reasonable and are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results and developments may differ materially from the results and developments discussed in the forward-looking statements as certain of these risks and uncertainties are beyond Ivrnet 's control.

These statements are based on Ivrnet's understanding and assessment of applicable markets and the opportunities within those markets. However, there can be no guarantee that Ivrnet's assessment is correct, or even if it is correct, that Ivrnet will be able to capture any of those revenue opportunities or that it will be able to grow those opportunities. These statements are based on the assumption that Ivrnet has the technical capabilities to build and deliver technical enhancements and that such technical enhancements will increase revenue opportunities for Ivrnet as anticipated. However, there can be no guarantee that Ivrnet will be successful in building and delivering those technical enhancements in a commercially viable manner or that such technical enhancements will deliver any new revenue opportunities for Ivrnet or, if generated, that Ivrnet will be able to capture such revenue opportunities. Consequently, all of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and other cautionary statements or factors contained herein, and there can be no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized or, even if substantially realized, that they will have the expected effects on Ivrnet. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by applicable securities legislation, the Company assumes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent information, events, or circumstances.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Ivrnet Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656206/Ivrnet-Announces-Change-of-Location-of-Annual-General-Meeting
SHANGHAI, China, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Junshi Biosciences (HKEX: 1877; SSE: 688180), a leading innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapies, announced today that the company has established a joint venture with Immorna, a fast-growing biotechnology company focusing on the process development and optimization of mRNA and delivery vehicles and the research and development of new nucleic acid drugs, to develop and commercialize new drugs for the global market in the fields of cancer, infectious diseases, rare diseases, and other diseases, based on the mRNA technology and other technology platforms.



Immorna's unique mRNA construction and established versatile process platform are suitable for the development of self-replicating mRNA as well as conventional non-replicating mRNA products, enabling the construction of a customized form of mRNA molecule for a specific disease. In terms of delivery vehicles, Immorna has developed several nanoliposome particles (LNP) suitable for different administration methods and has technical capabilities in the field of research and development of new non-LNP delivery vehicles.

Under the terms of the agreement, Junshi Biosciences will inject at most 799 million RMB in cash into the joint venture. The initial investment is 200 million RMB, of which 50 million RMB will be used to subscribe to 50% of the registered capital of the joint venture. Immorna will invest in the joint venture company with intellectual property rights involved in the mRNA technology platform. The 50 million RMB in the estimated asset value of the platform will be used to subscribe to other 50% of the registered capital of the joint venture company.

"As the mRNA Technology Platform gradually matures, its potential in a variety of fields-including infectious diseases, cancer, rare diseases, and other diseases-has become increasingly evident," says Dr. Ning Li, Chief Executive Officer of Junshi Biosciences. "This is highly consistent with the therapeutic areas covered by Junshi Biosciences' R&D pipeline and our desire to explore the next generation of innovative therapeutics. Immorna has a wealth of experience and expertise in mRNA industrialization. We look forward to working together to develop more revolutionary therapeutics for patients worldwide through our mRNA Technology Platform with domestic intellectual property rights and promote public health on a global scale."

"Immorna is very pleased to reach a strategic collaboration agreement with Junshi Biosciences, under which a joint venture company has been created," says Dr. Zihao Wang, Chief Executive Officer of Immorna Therapeutics. "We are very confident that this new entity will allow us to take advantage of each other's core competency, quickly and efficiently utilize the versatile mRNA platform technology in immunotherapy and infectious disease prevention, and continue our search for new directions of the application."

About Immorna

Immorna is an innovative drug research company that focuses on developing self-replicating and conventional mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines. It has maintained stable and fast growth since its incorporation in 2019. Currently, it has built a comprehensive set of mRNA synthesis, purification and analytical quality control processes well suited for commercial production and developed a common mRNA platform with higher expression levels (including self-replicating and non-self-replicating mRNA). With the aid of its efficient screening tools, Immorna has developed an arsenal of mRNA delivery vehicles including polymers and lipid nanoparticles. Immorna possesses multiple independent intellectual property rights applicable to cationic lipids suitable for intramuscular, intravenous or tissue-targeting delivery. Immorna has a diverse product pipeline spanning cancer immunotherapy, infectious diseases, rare genetic diseases and cosmetology. Immorna is quickly advancing its oncology and infectious disease projects into their clinical stages.

About Junshi Biosciences

Founded in December 2012, Junshi Biosciences is an innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics. The company has established a diversified R & D pipeline comprising 28 innovative drug candidates and 2 biosimilars, with five therapeutic focus areas covering cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, neurological, and infectious diseases. Junshi Biosciences was the first Chinese pharmaceutical company that obtained marketing approval for anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody in China. Its first-in-human anti-BTLA antibody for solid tumors was the first in the world to be approved for clinical trials by the FDA and NMPA and its anti-PCSK9 monoclonal antibody was the first in China to be approved for clinical trials by the NMPA. In early 2020, Junshi Biosciences joined forces with the Institute of Microbiology Chinese Academy of Science and Eli Lilly to co-develop JS016.

Contact Information

IR Team:

Junshi Biosciences

info@junshipharma.com

+ 86 021-2250 0300

Solebury Trout

Bob Ai

bai@soleburytrout.com

+ 1 646-389-6658

PR Team:

Junshi Biosciences

Zhi Li

zhi_li@junshipharma.com

+ 86 021-6105 8800








TOKYO, July 20, 2021 - (JCN Newswire) - TANAKA Holdings Co., Ltd. (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director & CEO: Koichiro Tanaka) announced today that TANAKA Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K. (Head office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Representative Director & CEO: Koichiro Tanaka), which operates the TANAKA Precious Metals manufacturing business, developed an active brazing filler metal/copper composite material for power devices that can reduce processing times.The new product is a composite (cladding) of copper (Cu) material with active brazing filler metal on one side. Since it can be joined directly to any material including ceramics (oxides, nitrides, and carbides) and carbon materials, it is expected that it will be used in ceramic substrates and next-generation heat sinks for power devices. In addition, TANAKA can make various proposals tailored to customer needs ranging from supply of prototypes using this product to brazing[1] processes, testing, and evaluation.Product Features and New Processing Proposals: Both High Heat Dissipation and Processing Labor Savings PossibleImproved Performance- The thick Cu electrodes needed for high heat dissipation heat sinks can be formed Directly on ceramics, which was difficult to do with existing etching[2] processes. This makes possible even finer wiring pitch.- Since the material does not contain any solvents, there is no residue and bonding reliability is improved.Cost Reduction- The brazing filler thickness can be 10 um (micrometers) or less, which means that compared to earlier active brazing filler metal, silver bullion costs can be reduced by half or more and the brazing filler thermal resistance is halved.- The Cu material is compounded, which means that a pattern can be formed simply by setting the material, reducing processing costs.Environmental Impact Reduction- Since the material contains no solvents, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are not released. In addition, the brazing time can be greatly reduced, which leads to energy savings and can be expected to reduce environmental impact.As a result of the features described above, this product can be used in a wide range of semiconductor applications, with expectations particularly high for deployment in the heat dissipation field.Potential for Contributions by this Product in Individual Heat Dissipation AreasIn the power devices market, higher outputs and increased efficiency are demanded, and in conjunction with this, heat generation is rising. As a result, providing individual components with high heat dissipation, high heat resistance, and high bonding reliability and developing materials that are compatible with even further miniaturization are urgent priorities for the industry. This is especially the case in the market for eco-cars such as electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid vehicles (HVs), the high-output laser diode market, and the market for next-generation heat sinks,[3] demand for which in the PC, smartphone, and other markets is expected to grow. To maintain high heat dissipation, high heat resistance, and high bonding reliability, it is first necessary to increase the thickness of the Cu plate, and this product make it possible to form electrodes on a thick Cu material and enhances bonding reliability without using etching, so it can be expected to contribute to higher heat dissipation.TANAKA plans to begin full-scale sample shipments in 2021 and establish a mass production system in 2023. Going forward, TANAKA will continue to develop products tailored to customer needs and to develop technologies with an eye towards expanding its lineup of active brazing filler metals.[1] BrazingA method of joining metals or other materials whereby an alloy (brazing filler metal) with a melting point lower than the base materials to be joined is melted and the base material is melted as little as possible.[2] EtchingAlso referred to as chemical corrosion. Etching is used a process for obtaining the desired shape by dissolving and eroding unneeded areas.[3] Heat sinkA component of machinery that is intended to dissipate and absorb heat. Heat sinks are often made of metals with good heat conduction properties such as aluminum, iron, or copper, but graphite is also attracting attention for next-generation heat sinks. Applications include cooling semiconductor components, coolers in refrigerators and air conditioners, and radiators and heaters in automobiles.TANAKA's Active Brazing Filler MetalsThe active brazing filler metals used are updated versions of earlier products and are silver (Ag), copper (Cu), tin (Sn), and titanium (Ti) allows that can be used to braze ceramics. AgCuSnTi alloys can be dispersed more finely than SnTi alloys and support manufacturing and supply of product with thin brazing filler.Press release in PDF: https://www.acnnewswire.com/pdf/files/202107_EN.pdfTANAKA Holdings Co., Ltd. (Holding company of TANAKA Precious Metals)Headquarters: 22F, Tokyo Building, 2-7-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, TokyoRepresentative: Koichiro Tanaka, Representative Director & CEOFounded: 1885Incorporated: 1918*Capital: 500 million yenEmployees in consolidated group: 5,193 (FY2020)Net sales of consolidated group: JPY 1,425,617 million (FY2020)Main businesses: The holding company at the center of TANAKA Precious Metals responsible for strategic and efficient group management and management guidance to group companies.URL: https://www.tanaka.co.jp/english/* TANAKA Holdings adopted a holding company structure on April 1, 2010.TANAKA Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K.Headquarters: 22F, Tokyo Building, 2-7-3 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, TokyoRepresentative: Koichiro Tanaka, Representative Director & CEOFounded: 1885Incorporated: 1918Capital: 500 million yenEmployees: 2,453 (as of March 31, 2021)Sales: JPY 1,251,066,897,000 (FY2020)Main businesses: Manufacture, sales, import and export of precious metals (platinum, gold, silver, and others) and various types of industrial precious metals products.URL: https://tanaka-preciousmetals.comAbout TANAKA Precious MetalsSince its foundation in 1885, TANAKA Precious Metals has built a diversified range of business activities focused on precious metals. TANAKA is a leader in Japan regarding the volumes of precious metals handled. Over the course of many years, TANAKA has not only manufactured and sold precious metal products for industry but also provided precious metals in such forms as jewelry and resources. As precious metals specialists, all Group companies within and outside Japan work together with unified cooperation between manufacturing, sales, and technological aspects to offer products and services. Additionally, to make further progress in globalization, TANAKA Kikinzoku Kogyo welcomed Metalor Technologies International SA as a member of the Group in 2016.As precious metal professionals, TANAKA Precious Metals will continue to contribute to the development of an enriching and prosperous society.The five core companies that make up TANAKA Precious Metals are as follows.- TANAKA Holdings Co., Ltd. (pure holding company)- TANAKA Kikinzoku Kogyo K.K.- TANAKA Denshi Kogyo K.K.- Electroplating Engineers Of Japan, Limited- TANAKA Kikinzoku Jewerly K.K.Press InquiriesTANAKA Holdings Co., Ltd.https://tanaka-preciousmetals.com/en/inquiries-for-media/Source: Tanaka Holdings Co., Ltd.Copyright 2021 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Barcelona and Paris, 20 July 2021 - Adevinta Ventures, the investment arm of Adevinta, today announced its investment in Lovys, an all-in-one B2C digital subscription-based insurance provider in Europe. This is Adevinta Ventures' first investment in France, in the Fintech and Insurtech sector.





Adevinta Ventures, alongside Japanese funds MS&AD Ventures, join existing investors Heartcore, NewAlpha, Raise Ventures, and Lovys's historical investors Maif Avenir, Portugal Ventures, Plug&Play, TechStars, and BpiFrance. The startup, with more than 90 employees, recorded growth of 70% in daily sales in the first quarter of 2021. The additional funding will support Lovys's partnerships with reinsurers and distributors in key markets in France, Spain and Portugal. The company recently launched its international expansion in Spain and Portugal. Lovys will also continue to fine-tune its product offer, by proposing new features such as loan insurance, and to improve its current insurance offerings, particularly in cars and pets. The startup aims to reach 100,000 policyholders across Europe by December 2021.



Founded in 2017 by Joao Cardoso, Lovys provides, on a single digital platform, a complete and simplified insurance protection (housing, car, pets, smartphone and mortgage insurance).

Jordi Iserte, Investment Director at Adevinta Ventures, said: "Our investment demonstrates the confidence we place in Lovys. We believe they can consolidate their leading European insurtech digital position to become a key challenge. Their European and inclusive company culture greatly contributes to Lovys's rapid growth and also reflects the values shared by Adevinta."



Joao Cardoso, Lovys' founder and CEO, commented: "Our Series A already allowed us to accelerate our development with 25 recruitments, to launch a new product, and to settle in Spain and Portugal. The vote of confidence we have received from Adevinta Ventures and MS&AD Ventures, two major funds, confirms that Lovys addresses a major challenge faced by policyholders in Europe. Thanks to these additional funds, our objective is to become one of Europe's digital insurance leaders within just a few years, by developing new products and expanding Lovys's presence in other European countries."



said Jon Soberg, Managing Partner of MS&AD Ventures.-end-Melodie LarocheCorporate CommunicationsT: +33Adevinta Ventures is the investment arm of Adevinta, a global online classifieds specialist operating leading digital marketplaces in 16 countries. Adevinta Ventures invests in fast-growing European startups with the potential to shape the future of marketplaces,MS&AD Ventures is the venture arm of MS&AD Group Holdings, the largest insurance conglomerate in Asia and the 8th largest in the world. MS&AD does business across 47 countries and regions worldwide. MS&AD Ventures has a mission to contribute to a vibrant society and help secure a sound future for our world by investing in technology companies that create innovative business models, products and services that help people live better lives.Created in 2017 by Joao Cardoso, Lovys is the first 100% digital neo-insurance company that offers tailor-made insurance products that meet the needs of new generations and accompany them at every stage of their lives. Lovys offers an all-in-one monthly subscription that allows you to subscribe simply and separately to a whole range of tailor-made insurances: home, smartphone, car, pets, and mortgage insurance. lovys.com
The acquisition creates significant commercial development and manufacturing opportunities for XPhyto as well as cost synergies and improved margins on its diagnostic products.

The acquisition secures XPhyto an experienced research and development team with a pipeline of ready-to-launch biosensor products.

The acquisition facilitates XPhyto's aggressive expansion into the point-of-care biosensor market which is growing at 8% per annum and expected to reach a market size of $42 billion by 2028 according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc.

XPhyto will pay 3a-diagnostics a total of EUR 3.9 million to acquire 100% of 3a-diagnostics.

VANCOUVER, BC and FRANKFURT, GERMANY / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / XPhyto Therapeutics Corp. (CSE:XPHY / OTCQB:XPHYF / FSE:4XT) ("XPhyto" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has signed a definitive agreement for the acquisition of 3a-diagnostics GmbH, Frickenhausen, Germany ("3a"), XPhyto's exclusive diagnostics development partner. Pursuant to the definitive agreement, XPhyto will acquire all of the outstanding shares of 3a for EUR 400,000, to be paid immediately, and EUR 3.5 million, to be paid on closing, planned for on or around October 31, 2021.

Hugh Rogers, CEO of XPhyto said, "We have collaborated closely with the 3a-diagnostics team on several diagnostics products and have found them to be a highly innovative and focused partner. The successful development and recent launch of the 25-minute PCR test COVID-ID Lab is a great example of our fruitful collaboration. We strongly believe that this acquisition will result in powerful synergies and further feed XPhyto's diagnostic pipeline, supporting our long-term commercial growth plans."

In April 2020, XPhyto and 3a signed a definitive development, technology purchase and license agreement for the development and commercialization of real-time, low-cost and easy-to-use biosensor screening tests and related development platform for the rapid detection of infectious diseases. This agreement was amended in July 2020 to include 3a's proprietary enhanced RNA screening system, related intellectual property (IP) and exclusive commercialization rights for its rapid COVID-19 tests. In March 2021, XPhyto and 3a received European commercial approval for their 25-minute PCR test.

The planned acquisition of 3a is expected to result in significant synergies in research and development and manufacturing; significantly improved margins for commercial products, such as the 25-minute COVID-ID Lab test; as well as expedite commercialization of products in 3a's near-market development pipeline. 3a's intellectual property, including patents, know-how, expertise and contracts with third parties will be transferred to XPhyto at the time of closing the acquisition. XPhyto plans to maintain, support and further develop 3a's operations in Southern-Germany.

"This agreement underscores the value of our experienced team and proven track record. We look forward to the completion of the transaction and joining XPhyto and believe that together we will develop and commercialize many great products in both the diagnostic and biosensor markets" noted Dr. Heinrich Jehle, Managing Director of 3a-diagnostics GmbH.

Wolfgang Probst, Director Germany of XPhyto added: "With our activities currently focused on Europe and the Middle East, 3a-diagnostics, with its facilities near Stuttgart, is a valuable addition to our Germany-based operations. 3a-diagnostics has an attractive pipeline, experienced team and is well respected for their work in the development and commercialization of innovative diagnostic products. They perfectly complement our existing capabilities and contribute to XPhyto's successful corporate development."

About 3a-diagnostics

3a is a research-based biotechnology company located Southeast of Stuttgart, Germany, specializing in the development, production and marketing of point-of-care test systems. 3a has developed a pipeline of peptide-based biosensor screening tests for bacterial and viral infectious diseases which include stomatitis, periimplantitis, periodontitis, scarlet fever, and influenza. Positive detection of the causative pathogen results in enzymatic release of an extreme (but safe) bitter compound. 3a has also designed a scalable next generation microbial-enzyme screening tool for high-throughput identification of biosensor targets to facilitate rapid development of new tests.

About XPhyto Therapeutics Corp.

XPhyto Therapeutics Corp. is a bioscience accelerator focused on next-generation drug delivery, diagnostic, and new active pharmaceutical ingredient investment opportunities, including: precision transdermal and oral dissolvable drug formulations; rapid, low-cost infectious disease and oral health screening tests; and standardization of emerging active pharmaceutical ingredients for neurological applications, including psychedelic compounds and cannabinoids. The Company has research and development operations in North America and Europe, with an operational focus in Germany, and is currently focused on regulatory approval and commercialization of medical products for European markets.

An exclusive collaboration agreement between XPhyto and 3a-diagnostics, announced in April 2020 and amended in July 2020, paved the way for the development and commercialization of rapid, point-of-care, low-cost, and easy-to-use infectious disease screening tests which include COVID-19 diagnostics and oral dissolvable biosensors for pandemic threats and dental health applications.

XPhyto Therapeutics Corp.

Hugh Rogers, CEO and Director

Investor Inquiries:

Mr. Knox Henderson

T: 604-551-2360

E: info@xphyto.com

Media Inquiries:

MC Services AG

Julia Hofmann, Andreas Jungfer

T: +49 89 210 228 0

E: xphyto@mc-services.com

Forward looking statements

This news release includes statements containing forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities law ('forward-looking statements'). Forward-looking statements are frequently characterized by words such as "develop", 'plan', 'continue', 'expect', 'project', 'intend', 'believe', 'anticipate', 'estimate', 'potential', 'propose' and other similar words, or statements that certain events or conditions 'may' or 'will' occur, and in this release include the statement regarding the Company's goal of building a successful diagnostic, drug delivery, and medical cannabis company. Forward-looking statements are only predictions based on the opinions and estimates of management at the date the statements are made and are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including: that the Company may not succeed in developing a commercial product; that the sale of products may not be a viable business; that the Company may be unable to scale its business; product liability risks; product regulatory risk; general economic conditions; adverse industry events; future legislative and regulatory developments; inability to access sufficient capital from internal and external sources, and/or inability to access sufficient capital on favourable terms; currency risks; competition; international risks; and other risks beyond the Company's control. The Company is under no obligation, and expressly 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 expressly required by applicable law. Neither the CSE nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

SOURCE: XPhyto Therapeutics Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656236/XPhyto-Signs-Transformative-Acquisition-Agreement-With-3a-Diagnostics-to-Enter-Hi-Tech-Biosensor-Market-and-Expand-Its-Diagnostic-Product-Portfolio
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / LINK GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES INC. (CSE:LNK; FRA:LGT; OTC PINK:LGLOF) ('LINK' or the 'Company'), an innovative power and infrastructure solutions provider for Bitcoin mining, and data hosting operations, is pleased to announce it has signed the Crypto Climate Accord.

The Crypto Climate Accord (CCA) is a private sector-led initiative to decarbonize the crypto and blockchain sector. The CCA brings together organizations that inform, develop, test, and implement new solutions that accelerate crypto's transition to renewable energy. The Accord provides an open space to address challenges, gather requirements, showcase solutions, share learnings, and promote best industry practices.

By becoming a CCA Signatory, LINK is making an important public commitment in addition to supporting the development of digital solutions that MakeCryptoGreen. As a CCA Signatory, LINK has committed to achieve net-zero emissions from the electricity consumption associated with all of its respective crypto-related operations by 2030 and to report progress toward this net-zero emissions target using best industry practices.

CEO and Board Member Stephen Jenkins comments, "Now, more than ever it is important for companies involved in the crypto space to step up and commit to lowering emissions as part of our future power generation. The CCA is completely aligned with the core values of Link and our goals for a sustainable future. We are proud to be part of this forward-thinking initiative."

Company update

Link Global announces that on July 19th, 2021 the Board of Directors approved the granting of an aggregate option of 450,000 shares at an exercise of $.60, $.70 and $.80 at 150,000 share increments, for consultation in the services of marketing to the Corporation for a term of one year.

About Link Global Technologies Inc.

Link is engaged in providing infrastructure and operating expertise for digital mining and data hosting operations. Link's objectives include locating and securing, for lease and option to purchase, properties with access to low-cost, reliable power, and deploying this low-cost power to conduct digital mining and supply clean energy and infrastructure for other data-hosting services.

To learn more about Link's activities, visit us at https://linkglobal.io/

On behalf of Link Global Technologies Inc.

Stephen Jenkins

Chief Executive Officer & Director

For more information, visit http://linkglobal.io/ or contact:

Steve Jenkins

stephen@linkglobal.io

+1-877-770-6545

For investor information, please contact:

Omar Diaz

Investor Relations Manager

omar@linkglobal.io

604-551-2950

The CSE has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION. This news release contains 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as 'plans', 'expects', 'is expected', 'forecast', 'budget', 'scheduled', 'estimates', 'forecasts', 'intends', 'anticipates', or 'believes', or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases, or statements that certain actions, events or results 'may', 'would', 'could', 'should' or 'might' occur. All such forward-looking statements are based on factors or assumptions that were applied in drawing a conclusion or making a forecast or projection, including assumptions based on historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments. Since forward-looking statements relate to future events and conditions, by their very nature, they require making assumptions and involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The Company cautions that although it is believed that the assumptions are reasonable in the circumstances, these risks and uncertainties give rise to the possibility that actual results may differ materially from the expectations set out in the forward-looking statements. In the case of the Company, these risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other factors include, without limitation: that actual use of proceeds of the Offering may differ materially from those set out in this news release; those set out in the Company's most recent MD&A, fluctuations in the price of electricity, fluctuations in the price of digital currencies/Bitcoin, the future potential halving of Bitcoin, increases in the network difficulty rate and price of digital currencies/Bitcoin, negative changes in the level of digital currency/Bitcoin rewards per block, the securing of economic rates for the purchase of power, the opportunities for acquiring digital currency mining hardware, unanticipated changes in laws, regulations or other industry standards affecting the business of the Company, reliance on key management personnel, the Company's ability to implement its business plan, litigation risk, stock price volatility, the effects of general economic and other factors beyond the control of the Company, and other matters that may occur in the future. Given these risks, undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements, which apply only as of the date hereof. Other than as specifically required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information, subsequent or otherwise.

SOURCE: Link Global Technologies

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656237/Link-Global-Technologies-Joins-Crypto-Climate-Accord
The brand's acclaimed solar charge controllers are now a global solution with new HazLoc certifications for North America, Europe, and International Operators

Morningstar Corporation's solar charge controllers are installed in oil rigs and normally unmanned installations (NUIs) in the North Sea, one of the most dangerous seas in the world. Solar-plus-storage now offers a more cost-effective, reliable, and safer power source for oil and gas facilities. Photo courtesy of JCE Energy.

NEWTOWN, Pa., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Morningstar Corporation announced today its signature SunSaver and higher-powered ProStar solar charge controller lines have achieved certifications for HazLoc use in North America (with UL/CSA ratings) and Internationally/Europe (with IECEx/ATEX ratings). Morningstar's new wider range of solar chargers designed for HazLoc use enables the digital oilfield. They bring new opportunities for economical solar electricity solutions equipped with battery storage to power remote off-grid systems with improved safety and reliability.

Solar plus energy storage makes sense in oil and gas applications . Operations are often great distances from any electrical grid, yet require dependable sources of electricity for essential services including injection pumping, monitoring and control, data and communications, security, lighting, and other "digital oilfield" needs.

Generators can power remote off-grid systems, but they require fuel and frequent maintenance. In contrast, a solar electric system has no moving parts and, outside of storage batteries, requires little maintenance over the system's comparatively long operational life. "The economics of solar work out to an extremely low operational expense over the life of the system, making it more cost-effective in the long run," noted Lee Gordon, President and Founder, Morningstar Corporation.

"One of Morningstar's first products nearly 30 years ago was our SunSaver controller designed for oil & gas customers. We grew up in this industry. Today, with over 4 million products used in over 100 countries, Morningstar Corporation has a proven track record of the highest reliability through the lowest hardware failure rate in the industry. Our latest generation of HazLoc-rated controllers build on their predecessors' excellence and take it forward into new applications."

"Energy storage batteries are one of the most expensive components of a solar system. Your choice of a charge controller is critical in protecting that investment and ensuring optimal battery health," commented Bill Mellema, Product Director, Morningstar Corporation. "Our controllers are used in the most extreme environments found on Earth . There's no such thing as 'overkill' when it comes to reliability in these areas."

Out of a field of over 700 brands of charge controllers, Morningstar is unique for earning HazLoc certification on a wide range of models. For months, the company underwent a rigorous audit of its operations, documentation, and quality procedures in the design, control, and production of these solar charge controllers. Passing the audit demonstrates that Morningstar follows rigorous standards and procedures to ensure quality and consistency in its product lines.

Morningstar's new range of HazLoc controllers makes it possible to enable "digital oilfields" with larger (up to 1,100 Watts), more capable solar electric solutions. Products with the new UL/CSA North America and IECEx/ATEX International/European certifications includes:

ProStar and ProStar MPPT charge controllers , 8 models

, 8 models SunSaver and SunSaver MPPT charge controllers , 8 models

, 8 models Morningstar SunKeeper for single-panel systems carries the UL/CSA ratings
Panakes will use the successful closing of its second Fund to extend its investment activity to biotech, while maintaining its ongoing activity in medtech, the focus of Panakes first fund

Panakes plans to invest the new fund in companies at the forefront of global innovation with the potential to transform patient care, with a focus on Europe , and Italy in particular

Panakes' Purple Fund has been backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), the Fund of Funds managed by CDP Venture Capital SGR, financial institutions and some of the main Italian companies operating in the Life Sciences sector

MILAN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Panakes Partners, the leading Italian venture capital firm in the Life Sciences sector, announces the first closing of its 150 million ($180 million) Purple Fund, the firm's second fund.

Panakes' Purple Fund is currently the largest venture capital fund actively investing in Italian companies and the most significant fund dedicated wholly to the Life Sciences sector in Italy. The fund will invest in companies at the forefront of innovation, with a focus on Europe, and Italy in particular, which remains underserved in terms of Venture Capital funding.

The Purple Fund is the second venture capital fund dedicated to life sciences launched by Panakes Partners. Panakes' first fund, raised in 2016, supported companies in the medtech sector. To-date it has invested in 12 portfolio companies, which have collectively received almost 200 million in funding. Thanks to this financial support, these companies have already brought five innovative medical products to the market and have a further ten products in active clinical trials.

The Purple Fund has been backed by investors from the first fund as well as new investors. The Fund's two anchor investors are EIF and the Fund of Funds FoF VenturItaly managed by CDP Venture Capital SGR. The EIF investment is backed under both the InnovFin Equity initiative from the European Commission under Horizon 2020, the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, as well as the pan-European Guarantee Fund (EGF).

These anchor investors have been joined by several Italian banking foundations and pension funds, as well as numerous Italian companies and family offices in the Life Sciences sector. These include Menarini, the Cogliati family (Elemaster Group), the Colombo family (SAPIO Group), the Rovati family (Rottapharm Biotech), the Petrone family (Petrone Group), the Re family (Digitec Group), the Bassani family (Movi Group) and others.

The Purple Fund will invest mainly in Series A funding rounds, as well as later stage opportunities. The majority of investments will be in companies developing innovative therapeutics and products in the fields of biotechnology, diagnostics, and medical devices.

The fund aims to support the growth of entrepreneurial companies who will reshape healthcare globally by addressing real medical needs, saving lives and providing a better quality of life for patients. By achieving these goals, the fund aims to generate value for both investors and for society as a whole.

"We are delighted with the successful first close of our new Purple Fund, and we would like to thank the high-quality investors who have trusted us. Over 500 innovative life science companies have already submitted funding requests to us in the first six months of 2021," said Fabrizio Landi, President of Panakes and a founding partner of the firm alongside Diana Saraceni andAlessio Beverina. "The fund will remain open for additional subscribers until the end of the year, with a new target of 180 million. By expanding into the biotech sector, we hope to contribute to the growth of companies active in the development of new therapies and vaccines," concluded Landi.

"Panakes has established a strong track record and solid international credibility since it was created a few years ago, also with the support of the CDP Group," commented Enrico Resmini, Chief Executive Officer of CDP Venture Capital SGR. "We are delighted to invest in Panakes' second fund, as it extends its activity into biotechnology, a sector where long-term planning and the availability of capital is essential to finance the R&D that is expected to lead to the innovative new therapies of tomorrow."

Alain Godard, Chief Executive of the European Investment Fund (EIF/FEI), added: "We are happy to once again support Panakes after our previous investment in its first fund. Panakes has managed to build a strong brand in Italy and beyond thanks to its expertise in identifying and investing in novel medtech opportunities. With the extension of its investment strategy into biotech and the resulting growth of the team, Panakes will be able to further support European Life Sciences companies, and particularly those in Italy, which have exceptional R&D but are strongly underserved in terms of Venture Capital funding. We are glad to be able to use both the InnovFin mandate from the European Commission and the direct backing of EU Member States under the European Guarantee Fund to further support this exciting market segment."

To support its expansion into the biotech sector, Panakes intends to recruit three new professionals with significant experience in drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry to its existing team, which is currently made up of 11 professionals. Recently, Barbara Castellano has been promoted to the role of Partner, while the management team of the SGR has been strengthened with the arrival of a new CFO, Lorenzo Giordano, and a Financial Assistant, in the person of Andrea Steffanini.

Panakes Advisory Board has also been expanded and strengthened with the appointment of Biotech and Digital Health industry experts Fabio Pammolli, Professor of Economics, Finance, and Management Science at Politecnico di Milano, and Sergio Abrignani M.D. Ph.D. Full Professor at the National Institute of Molecular Genetics (INGM) in Milan.

About Panakes

Panakes Partners is a Milan-based venture capital firm that aims to improve the lives of people around the world by providing the most promising companies and teams with the financial and corporate support needed to build the next generation of companies bringing revolutionary technologies and products to the field of life sciences. Panakes was founded in 2015 by Fabrizio Landi, Alessio Beverina and Diana Saraceni.

www.Panakes.it

About CDP Venture Capital SGR - Fondo Nazionale Innovazione

CDP Venture Capital is an asset management company (70% owned by CDP Equity and 30% owned by Invitalia) with over 1 billion euro of assets under management. It aims to make Venture Capital a strategic pillar to Italy's economic development and innovation, creating the conditions for a comprehensive and sustainable growth of the Venture Capital ecosystem. It operates through a series of funds that aim to support startups in all their life cycle stages, making both direct and indirect investments.

About EIF

The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank Group. Its central mission is to support Europe's micro, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) by helping them to access finance. EIF designs and develops venture and growth capital, guarantees and microfinance instruments which specifically target this market segment. In this role, EIF fosters EU objectives in support of innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth, and employment. The EIF investment is supported by InnovFin Equity, with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020, the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020). Through or alongside selected Venture Capital (VC), Business Angels (BA), Technology Transfer funds and funds-of-funds, the EU provides risk capital financing to enterprises, research organisations, universities in their proof-of-concept, pre-seed, seed, start-up and other early-stage phases allowing them to set up or reach their next stage of development. The EIF participation is also backed under the European Guarantee Fund (EGF), which was set up by the EIB Group with contributions from Italy and other EU Member States to shield companies suffering from the COVID-19 crisis. Using nearly EUR 25 billion in guarantees, the EGF allows the EIB and the EIF to quickly make loans, guarantees, asset-backed securities, equity and other financial instruments available to mostly small and medium-sized enterprises. The EGF is part of the European Union's recovery package aiming to provide a total of EUR 540 billion boost those parts of the EU economy that have been hit the worst.

Media Contacts:

Panakes Partners

news@panakes.it

MEDiSTRAVA Consulting

Sylvie Berrebi, David Dible

panakes@medistrava.com

Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 9571
- 'Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co. KG' will deliver transformation at scale with a focus on decarbonization

- As part of the strategic partnership between Infosys and Daimler, the center will support the German automotive company on its data center transformation journey to hybrid cloud

STUTTGART, Germany, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Infosys (NSE: INFY) (BSE:INFY) (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, today announced the launch of its Automotive Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart, Germany, building on its strategic commitment to drive innovation and IT infrastructure transformation in the sector.

The new center brings together automotive and IT experts from across Germany into a space for shared knowledge, skills and innovation. As a part of Infosys' partnership with Daimler, automotive IT infrastructure experts based in Germany will transition from Daimler AG to the new Digital Technology and Innovation Center. Encouraging sustainable growth within the German automotive sector, it will provide its customers with tools to meet the country's growing demand for electric vehicles.

Infosys aims to create a gold standard for Germany's automotive and manufacturing companies to accelerate and standardize technology adoption. It will provide training and innovation labs and focus on industry transformation, including the infrastructure required to design future and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation and electrification. The center will also spotlight Infosys' commitment to championing sustainability, leveraging resources such as a data center operating on 100 percent renewable energy and zero water consumption.

Through the new center Infosys will support leading German automotive company, Daimler AG, strengthen its IT & data center infrastructure, and drive competitive edge in line with its ambitions to standardize, consolidate, scale and transform to Net Zero with seamless customer experience.

Dr.-Ing. Jorg Sommer, formerly Director of Digital Foundation at Daimler has been designated as the CEO of the Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart, which is a separate legal entity and officially called Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co. KG.

The center promotes a multi-cloud and carbon neutral approach to IT infrastructure transformation, leveraging Infosys Cobalt, a combination of Infosys services, solutions and platforms that supports enterprises in accelerating their cloud journey, alongside other leading cloud providers. Through its cloud approach the center will enable an anytime, anywhere workplace primed to address present and future needs. The center offers Infosys the opportunity to play an instrumental role in the transformation of Daimler as an industry leader, and in turn provides other automotive manufacturers the opportunity to leverage Infosys IP and tools as well as unlock valuable growth opportunities during a crucial time for the automotive sector and growing German economy.

"The Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart will provide a wide range of benefits for both Infosys and the German automotive sector. By bringing together the formidable skills and expertise across Germany, this center will support Daimler in its hybrid multi-cloud and AI-driven digital transformation journey to scalability. It will also provide a cloud architecture blueprint for other German manufacturers to emulate as they move through a period of resilient IT transformation. Amidst the rising demand for electric cars, we're committed to supporting the German automotive industry as it addresses these changes in behavior," said Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys.

"As software becomes modular and IT infrastructure continues to scale, Daimler will take three simultaneous steps to transform its IT landscape: consolidation, scaling and modernization. Through establishing the Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH in Germany, Infosys is committed to grow with us in the automotive industry and provide exciting career opportunities for our employees. The center will also set new standards for cloud and infrastructure services in the automotive industry. We're delighted that through this partnership, Daimler will strengthen its overall technology investment and partnership strategy," said Jan Brecht, Chief Information Officer, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz.

"We're thrilled to announce the establishment of the Digital Technology and Innovation Center, an exemplary facility providing a testbed for innovation, and critically, a platform for cross-industry expertise and skills transfer. To deliver on new and emerging mobility trends, automotive brands need to be able to scale and deliver innovation to market at speed. Through cutting-edge technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, automation, and electrification, the Innovation Center will be a catalyst for accelerating the development and availability of pioneering technology in the market, as well as simplifying and standardizing hybrid cloud stacks across the industry," said Dr.-Ing. Jorg Sommer, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co. KG.

About Infosys

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in over 50 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NSE, BSE, NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, financial expectations and plans for navigating the COVID-19 impact on our employees, clients and stakeholders are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and the effects of government and other measures seeking to contain its spread, risks related to an economic downturn or recession in India, the United States and other countries around the world, changes in political, business, and economic conditions, fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry and the outcome of pending litigation and government investigation. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law.

For more information, please contact:

Dena Tahmasebi, Head of Communications EMEA, Infosys: dena.tahmasebi@infosys.com

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/633365/Infosys_Logo.jpg
DENVER, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Microsoft releases the case study "Swiss Re Corporate Solutions Transforms its CRM into a 360-degree, Next-gen CEM Solution with Aureus." In the case study, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions (CorSo), the primary insurance arm of Swiss Re Group, selected digital transformation and product engineering company, Aureus Tech Systems, as its technology partner to leverage Microsoft technology to build CorSo's Next Generation Customer Engagement platform.

As the primary insurer, CorSo specializes in making corporate customers more resilient through offering risk transfer solutions, risk insight services and risk partnerships. This results in a large volume of data and the volume of this data continues to increase exponentially. To further harness the potential of this data in customer engagements, CorSo took a strategic decision to transform its traditional CRM solution into a data- and analytics-driven Customer Engagement platform branded internally as Customer 360.

"Customer 360 is transformational in allowing us to address the inverse relationship we had with 'data in' versus 'value out' for our users, which ultimately leads to us being better equipped to understand and serve our customers and brokers, therefore building better relationships," stated Paul Fitzgerald, Global Distribution Management Leader, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions.

In collaboration with Microsoft Gold Partner Aureus Tech Systems, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions was able to build an Azure cloud-native ecosystem that leverages CorSo's existing infrastructure components and integrates internal and external data sources providing 360 customer/broker views.

"The key to winning in this new digital age is to put your data to work, empowering your employees so that they can make winning decisions. We designed the solution to enable the Swiss Re sales team with a data-driven customer engagement platform," said Abhishek Pakhira, COO, Aureus Tech Systems.

Utilizing the power of cloud and AI, CorSo's Customer 360 solution leverages native IT environments, integrates into core business applications, and brings together multiple native systems into one solution. The platform aggregates the information on the customer and broker levels, provides relationship insights, and delivers contact-level details to relevant users. It introduces a consistent user experience across all market-facing teams and shifts from a data-entry approach towards a data-consumption culture.

Customer 360 has enabled a quantum shift for CorSo into a customer-first culture, providing a 360 view combined with core CRM components. Aureus Tech Systems expertise in Microsoft technologies was key to accelerate the build of this platform with speed, scale, and a best-in-class user experience.

"Our vision was to make CRM invisible and transfer customer insights into the native applications of our market-facing teams. Together with Aureus, we were able to set a new standard in the CRM application industry," stated Tobias Maeder, Digital Transformation Leader Customer Experience, Swiss Re Corporate Solutions.

All of this was achieved using the technology stack Microsoft Azure, integration with Dynamics Marketing, Azure ML, and Azure Databricks.

"We take advantage of the scalability, reliability, and agility of Azure to drive app development and shape business strategies," said Prasad Naik, Technology Owner for Customer Engagement, Swiss Re.

Aureus Tech Systems is a Microsoft Certified Gold & Co-sell partner and product engineering company that offers enterprise Cloud and AI solutions. Aureus offers Office365 Development, AI & Big Data, Modern Workplace, IoT, CRM, Customer Engagement Management (CEM), and eDiscovery solutions all in one unified Microsoft Azure native cloud platform. For more information, visit www.aureustechsystems.com.

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- Grunenthal provides 200,000 Euros in emergency aid for the City of Stolberg, which is significantly affected by the floods.

- In addition, Grunenthal will donate 200,000 euros to the coalition "Germany Helps" (Aktion Deutschland Hilft).

AACHEN, Germany, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Grunenthal is deeply saddened by the situation of the people affected by the flood disaster in Germany. Staff and executive management have set up a relief programme to provide immediate support for people who urgently need help.

Grunenthal donated 200,000 euros as immediate support for the severely affected town of Stolberg. The company will donate an additional 200,000 euros to the coalition "Germany Helps" (Aktion Deutschland Hilft) to support nationwide measures.

"Our thoughts and solidarity are with the people in our neighbourhood in the greater Aachen region and the other affected areas," says Gabriel Baertschi, CEO Grunenthal. "We will provide unbureaucratic support to the helpers on the ground."

Grunenthal supports employees who are personally affected by the flood disaster with financial and material means and paid leave.

About Grunenthal

Grunenthal is a global leader in pain management and related diseases. As a science-based, privately-owned pharmaceutical company, we have a long track record of bringing innovative treatments and state-of-the-art technologies to patients worldwide. Our purpose is to change lives for the better - and innovation is our passion. We are focusing all of our activities and efforts on working towards our vision of a world free of pain.

Grunenthal is headquartered in Aachen, Germany, and has affiliates in 29 countries across Europe, Latin America and the US. Our products are available in more than 100 countries. In 2020, Grunenthal employed around 4,500 people and achieved sales of  1.3 bn.

More information: www.grunenthal.com

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: Grunenthal Group

Instagram: grunenthal
BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - The euro area current account surplus declined in May, data from the European Central Bank showed on Tuesday. The current account surplus dropped to a seasonally adjusted EUR 12 billion in May from EUR 22 billion in April. In the same period last year, the surplus totaled EUR 6 billion. The surplus on goods trade remained unchanged at EUR 25 billion, while the surplus on services trade dropped to EUR 6 billion from EUR 9 billion. The primary income showed a deficit of EUR 5 billion versus a surplus of EUR 1 billion in the previous month. The shortfall on secondary income widened to EUR 14 billion from EUR 13 billion. During twelve months to May, the current account surplus rose to EUR 310 billion or 2.7 percent of the euro area GDP, up from EUR 228 billion or 2.0 percent a year earlier. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - INCA ONE GOLD CORP. (TSXV:I NCA) (OTCQB: INCAF) (FSE: SU92) ("Inca One" or the "Company") a gold producer, operating two, fully permitted, mineral processing facilities in Peru, is pleased to report it has recorded another record month of production for the month of June 2021.

Following up on the prior month of May's record deliveries and production, the Company has just recorded another best-ever month as it processed 5,183 tonnes of gold-bearing material during June 2021. This represents a 46% increase over the prior month of May and a 37% increase over the previous best-ever June total (3,774 tonnes processed in June 2019). Additionally, this marks the Company's highest level of processing since December 2019 (5,177 tonnes). In this past month of June, the Company processed an average of 173 tonnes per day ("TPD").

Now halfway through the year, the Company is pursuing additional working capital to increase its ore purchases in what are historically the highest production months of August to December.

To highlight the results discussed above, the following table lays out the last four months of processing, since receiving the Gold Prepayment Facility (please see March 16, 2021, press release) from OCIM Precious Metals:





To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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"As we have previously reported, our production tends to lag ore supply and the production results from this past month of June are a direct result of our record deliveries in during May," stated Edward Kelly, President, and CEO of Inca One. "We have demonstrated once again that higher levels of working capital directly leads to increased processing rates which fuel production growth and positive cash flow."

About Inca One

Inca One Gold Corp is a TSXV listed, gold producer operating two, fully permitted, gold mineral processing facilities in Peru. The Company has produced more than 92,000 ounces of gold, generating over US$125 million in revenue from its first six years of operations. Inca One is led by an experienced and capable management team that has established the Company as a trusted leader in servicing government permitted, small-scale miners in Peru. Peru is the world's seventh-largest producer of gold, and its small-scale mining sector is estimated by government officials to be valued in the billions of dollars annually. Inca One possesses a combined 450 tonnes per day permitted operating capacity at its two fully integrated plants, Chala One and Kori One. To learn more visit www.incaone.com.

Figure 1. Inca One's gold processing facilities in Peru (left: Chala One facility; right: Kori One facility)





To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:

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On behalf of the Board,

Edward Kelly,

President and CEO

Inca One Gold Corp.

For More Information Contact:

Konstantine Tsakumis

Inca One Gold Corp.

ktsakumis@incaone.com

604-568-4877

NEITHER THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE NOR ITS REGULATION SERVICES PROVIDER (AS THAT TERM IS DEFINED IN THE POLICIES OF THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE) ACCEPTS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

Statements regarding the Company which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. Such information can generally be identified by the use of forwarding-looking wording such as "may", "expect", "estimate", "anticipate", "intend", "believe" and "continue" or the negative thereof or similar variations. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results in each case could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements due to factors such as: (i) fluctuation of mineral prices; (ii) a change in market conditions; and (iii) the fact that future operational results may not be accurately predicted based on this limited information to date. Except as required by law, the Company does not intend to update any changes to such statements. Inca One believes the expectations reflected in those forward-looking statements are reasonable, but no assurance can be given that these expectations will prove to be correct and such forward-looking statements included herein should not be unduly relied upon.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state in which such offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90723
Top European Institution Chooses Engageli to Improve Teaching and Learning Experience for Thousands of Students and Faculty

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 20, 2021, a purpose-built digital learning platform designed to provide superior learning experiences, today announced a strategic partnership. With this partnership, Engageli will reach more than 10,000 students and hundreds of faculty and staff in the upcoming academic year, providing them with the tools and technology to create dynamic, quality learning experiences.



UC3M will leverage Engageli across a variety of core courses focused on foundational skill building, such as Digital Literacy and Digital Numeracy, among others. The partnership with Engageli will allow UC3M to achieve its broader objective: to drive active learning across all types of learning modalities, whether fully online, hybrid, synchronous or asynchronous.

"Students are increasingly opting for taking some courses through digital platforms. Digital education levels the playing field for many students, and it's here to stay. In the digital classroom, there is no back row," said Juan Romo Urroz, Rector of UC3M. "As we navigate this new world, we need solutions that bring students together, foster collaborative learning and that enable our faculty to deliver flexible, impactful experiences. Engageli is helping us achieve this."

"Engageli is revolutionizing digital learning," said Carlos Delgado Kloos, Vice President for Strategy and Digital Education at UC3M. "We want to provide our students with access to high quality learning experiences, and Engageli's unique platform is making that possible. We are thrilled to partner with Engageli as we shape the future of education."

UC3M is a Spanish public university recognized for its teaching and research in Europe and around the world. In addition to its academic excellence, UC3M is a leading innovator in education, working alongside top edtech companies such as Khan Academy and edX to enhance learning experiences. UC3M also hosts several top-industry conferences, including EMOOCs and Open Education Week.

"UC3M is highly committed to effective modern teaching and learning experiences," said Dan Avida, CEO of Engageli. "We're honored to partner with such forward-thinking leadership and faculty that values innovating in teaching and reimagining what is possible when it comes to student learning outcomes."

Engageli was built from the ground up by educators to offer an engaging, collaborative and inclusive platform that supports modern pedagogical best practices that drive student success. Its many features include flexible table groups, student note-taking, Q&A, chat functions, and student-instructor feedback loops, all designed to enhance the digital teaching and learning experience.

To learn more about Engageli and how to become a university partner, visit: https://www.engageli.com/join .

About University Carlos III of Madrid

[UC3M to provide boilerplate]

About Engageli

Engageli is a digital learning platform optimized for student success and that delivers engaging teaching and learning experiences across a broad spectrum of needs for higher education. The company was founded in 2020 by a team that includes Dan Avida, Serge Plotkin, and Daphne Koller. Engageli has raised over $47 million in funding.

Contact Information:

LaunchSquad for Engageli

engageli@launchsquad.com
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Komo Plant Based Foods Inc. (CSE:YUM)(OTC PINK:KOMOF)(FSE:9HB) ("Komo"), plant-based food company, is pleased to announce it appointed Sherrie Bobojevic as a member of its advisory board on July 19, 2021.

Sherrie currently holds the role of Director of Sales at Love Good Fats, and was previously Director, National Retail Sales Canada for Daiya Foods Inc. She has had a successful career in the plant-based foods industry for 10 years and has over 20 years experience in business development, distribution, retail sales, sales brokering and brand management in the natural food industry. Sherrie has helped establish thousands of points of distribution for various brands, including Sol Cuisine, Earth Balance, Daiya foods, Wholly Veggie, Pacific Foods, Gardein, Coconut Bliss and White Wave Foods.

Sherrie will focus on advising the Komo team on strategies to build its wholesale and food service partnerships and points of distribution in the Canadian market.

"I value the people behind Komo Comfort Foods and the beliefs which create the foundation of this brand. The Komo team has placed a strong brand voice behind the company, and I love the way they are thinking about the present and the future of plant-based foods. They are focused on creating the items that consumers have been asking for and bringing them to life, for the whole family to enjoy," says Sherrie Bobojevic.

The Komo brand was launched by three lifelong foodies who also happen to be the best at what they do. A plant-based chef, an inspired food scientist/product inventor and an operations/food safety leader, working together to craft real food that follows three rules. It has to be seamless to include in everyday life. It has to be made with strictly wholesome ingredients. And it has to be plant-based. Komo creates plant-based, feel good food worth sharing.

About Komo

Komo Plant Based Foods Inc. is a premium plant-based food company that develops, manufactures, markets and sells a variety of plant-based frozen meals that are always hearty, satisfying, and made with wholesome ingredients. At Komo, our mission is to help make plant-based meals a staple on every dinner table by sharing our love for feel-good food that connects the people to the planet. We believe plant-based eating is the future and - Change can start with a single biteTM. Our experienced plant-based innovation and development team recreates vegan versions of traditionally cheesy and meaty classics, with 100% plants. Komo's products are sold direct-to-consumer through our eCommerce website and a distribution network of online and brick and mortar grocery, convenience and natural retailer channels. Our operating subsidiary Komo Comfort Foods launched in 2021 with our flagship products: plant-based Lasagna, Shepherd's Pie and Chick'n Pot Pie and has recently launched a new line - Komo Plant-Based Meal HelpersTM - versatile meal starters to allow the creation of many dishes at home.



Learn more at: www.komocomfortfoods.com and follow on Instagram: @komocomfortfoods

For further information, please contact:

William White, President & CEO

will@komoeats.com

1-866-969-0882

Renmark Financial Communications Inc.

Joshua Lavers: jlavers@renmarkfinancial.com

Tel: (416) 644-2020 or (212) 812-7680

www.renmarkfinancial.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the contents of this news release.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking information. These statements relate to future events or Komo's future performance. The use of any of the words "could", "expect", "believe", "will", "projected","estimated" and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on Komo's current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Actual future results may differ materially. In particular, Komo's product development plans, its ability to retain key personnel, and its expectation as to the acceptance of its products by consumers constitute forward-looking information. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The statements made in this press release are made as of the date hereof. Komo disclaims any intention or obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be expressly required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE: KOMO Plant Based Foods Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656222/Komo-Plant-Based-Foods-Appoints-Plant-Based-Veteran-Sherrie-Bobojevic-to-Advisory-Board
Montreal, Quebec--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - QcX Gold Corp. (TSXV: QCX) (OTCQB: QCXGF) (FSE: 21MA) ("QcX" or the "Company") announces it has completed its inaugural drill program at the Golden Giant Project in James Bay, Quebec. A total of 17 holes (3,011m) were completed into various high priority targets on the Golden Giant East ("GGEast") and Golden Giant West ("GGWest") blocks. Drilling encountered favourable mineralization across wide intervals in several holes. A more detailed description can be found below.

Aaron Stone, Vice President Exploration of QcX, stated, "We are very pleased with the pace of this program and to have completed it on schedule owing to easy access to the property and very efficient geological and drilling teams. Our drilling encountered some significant percentages of mineralization, including the same styles of mineralization seen in grab samples that produced up to 18.9g/t Au. We eagerly await assay results from the lab and will update shareholders as they become available and compiled."

Four holes were drilled on the GGWest block (as seen in Figure 1) for 960 m and 13 holes were completed on the GGEast block (as seen in Figure 2) for 2,051 m. For reference, the GGEast Block is located only 2.9 km from Azimut Exploration Inc.'s Patwon discovery on its Elmer project, as can be seen in Figure 3. The Golden Giant project covers 18,992 hectares and contains favourable structures following the general trend of geologic deformation in the area.





Figure 1: Location of drillholes completed on the Golden Giant West Block (red outline) underlain by local geology.



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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Figure 2: Location of drillholes completed on the Golden Giant East Block (red outline) underlain by interpretation of local geology.



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Figure 3: Location of the Golden Giant Project (red) with respect to neighbouring companies including Azimut Exploration's Elmer project.



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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A selection of mineralization encountered in drill core is summarized below:

Golden Giant East Block Mineralization Highlights

Drill holes GG-21-06 and GG-21-07 (propositions P-GG-21-O and PP-GG-21-P) both displayed zones with significant amounts of mineralization. These two holes were drilled into a S-fold of a Banded Iron Formation (BIF), located in a deformation zone clearly marked out in the high-resolution magnetic image (please see press release dated May 26th, 2021 for image and further details). Several areas of semi-massive sulphides were encountered in the cherty layers of this BIF as well as continuous pyrite and/or pyrrhotite stringers in BIF characterized by strong garnet enrichment.





Image 1: Semi-massive pyrite-pyrrhotite mineralization in a cherty layer of a banded iron formation (BIF) observed in drillhole GG-21-07.



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Image 2: Semi-massive pyrite-pyrrhotite mineralization within BIF observed in GG-21-07.



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Image 3: Pyrite-pyrrhotite sulphide mineralization in GG-21-07 at 143.65m downhole.



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Image 4: Pyrrhotite-pyrite-chalcopyrite mineralization associated with a quartz vein within a garnet rich BIF in drillhole GG-21-06.



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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Golden Giant West Block Mineralization Highlights

On the GGWest block, disseminated mineralization similar in style to that found in grab samples that produced up to 18.9g/t Au were observed. Disseminations of pyrite and pyrrhotite (commonly 1-5%, but ranging up to 15% locally) were observed throughout drillholes GG-21-01, GG-21-02 and GG-21-03 (propositions P-GG-21-Q, P-GG-21-R and P-GG-21-T). Disseminated arsenopyrite (up to 2%) was locally found in GG-21-03, which can often be associated with gold mineralization.





Image 5: Disseminated pyrite (15%) + pyrrhotite (2%) mineralization following the foliation of the rock in drillhole GG-21-03.



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Image 6: Disseminated arsenopyrite (2%) and pyrrhotite (3%) mineralization following the foliation of the rock in GG-21-03.



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Qualified Person

Maxime Bouchard P.Geo. M.Sc.A., (OGQ 1752), a Qualified Person ("QP") as such term is defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, has reviewed and approved the geological information reported in this news release.

About QcX Gold

QcX Gold is exploring for gold and VMS style mineralization on its highly prospective and well-located properties in Quebec, Canada. The Golden Giant Project is located in the James Bay region of Quebec, only 2.9 km away from Azimut Exploration Inc.'s Patwon discovery on their Elmer gold project. The Fernet Project is located in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt in the Province of Quebec and is contiguous with Wallbridge Mining Company Limited's Fenelon/Martiniere property. Both properties are in close proximity to major discoveries which bodes well for exploration.

For further information, please contact:

Aaron Stone

Vice President Exploration

aaron.stone@qcxgold.com

514-235-6012

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-looking statements:

This news release contains forward-looking statements. All statements, other than of historical facts, that address activities, events or developments that the Company believes, expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future including, without limitation, the planned exploration program, the expected positive exploration results, the timing of the exploration results, the ability of the Company to continue with the exploration program, the availability of the required funds to continue with the exploration and the potential mineralization or potential mineral resources are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of the words "will", "should", "continue", "expect", "anticipate", "estimate", "believe", "intend", "to earn", "to have', "plan" or "project" or the negative of these words or other variations on these words or comparable terminology. Forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict, that may cause the actual results of the Company to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations include, among other things, failure to meet expected, estimated or planned exploration expenditures, failure to establish estimated mineral resources, the possibility that future exploration results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations, general business and economic conditions, changes in world gold markets, sufficient labour and equipment being available, changes in laws and permitting requirements, unanticipated weather changes, title disputes and claims, environmental risks as well as those risks identified in the Company's annual Management's Discussion and Analysis. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Although the Company has attempted to identify important risks, uncertainties and factors which could cause actual results to differ materially, there may be others that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements except as otherwise required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90621
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Spey Resources Corp. (CSE: SPEY) (OTC PINK: SPEYF) (FRA: 2JS) ("Spey" or the "Company") announces that it has accepted a quotation from Amaru Mining Services and preparations are being made to commence drilling at the Incahuasi Salar, Argentina in the next three weeks. The drilling will take place in the locations shown below:





Figure 1: Red stars show drill hole locations 1 -5

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The five drill holes at Incahuasi will cover a depth of approximately 600m. When completed, the rig will move to the Pocitos 1 and 2 concession on the Pocitos Salar approximately 120km away and drill three holes on the targeted aquifer locations. A double packer device will sample the brines at depth and be assayed. Preparations are currently being made for the camp, fuel and roads.





Figure 2: Line 1 - 003-011 survey points with drill locations, aquifers at depth 150m and 250m

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Figure 3: Drill hole in Line 3 point 020-027. Aquifer extends from 10m to 100m, then two 50m drill holes to test the surface sample high.

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Nader Vatanchi CEO commented, "We are making great progress at Incahuasi Salar, with geophysics completed, the road in good condition and easy access. Amaru, our drillers are very familiar with the salar and are completing their preparations. Our bulk brine surface samples from Incahuasi Salar have been sent to the University of Melbourne to be processed. The state of the art Ekosolve process handles very high levels of magnesium so we are looking forward to the results of the processing using their laboratory scale plant and samples of lithium carbonate. At Pocitos Salar, we have the results of surface sampling and geophysics completed on Pocitos 2 and drilling completed close by on Pocitos 1 by AIS Resources. The project drill team have nearly completed all their preparations. I'm delighted with the progress our team has made and look forward to the brine analysis results from drilling and University of Melbourne."

Qualified Person

Phillip Thomas, BSc Geol, MBusM, FAusIMM, MAIG, MAIMVA, (CMV), a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101 regulations, has reviewed the technical information that forms the basis for portions of this news release, and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Thomas is independent of the Company but discloses that he is a shareholder of SPEY.

About Spey Resources Corp.

Spey Resources is a Canadian mineral exploration company which holds an option to acquire 100% interest in the Candela II lithium brine project located in the Incahuasi Salar, Salta Province, Argentina through its wholly owned subsidiary Tech One Lithium Resources Corp. Spey also holds an option to acquire a 100% undivided interest in the Silver Basin Project located in the Revelstoke Mining Division of British Columbia as well as an option to acquire a 100% interest in the Kaslo Silver project, west of Kaslo, British Columbia.

For more information, please contact:

Nader Vatanchi CEO, Director

nader@speyresources.ca

778-881-4631

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain disclosure in this release may constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. In making the forward-looking statements in this release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable. However, the forward-looking statements in this release, including without limitation, statements pertaining to the future exercise of the Agreement to acquire an interest in the Property, the Company's exploration programs and the Company's mineral property development plans, are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and risks include, without limitation, financing risks, delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required regulatory approvals, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political or competitive developments, exploration and operational difficulties, the timing of future business expenditures, the potential of the Company's mineral properties and changes in economic conditions or financial markets. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not intend, and expressly 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 law.

The Canadian Securities Exchange has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90719
Novartis and the Novartis US Foundation to join forces with Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Morehouse School of Medicine, 26 other Historically Black Colleges, Universities and Medical Schools and others to address root causes of disparities in health and education

This collaboration will create actionable solutions to target the systemic racism that drives inequitable health outcomes and work together for health equity progress through greater diversity, equity and inclusion across the research and development ecosystem





Novartis US Foundation plans to invest approximately $13.7 million to establish three digitally enabled research centers at Morehouse School of Medicine, including a clinical trial center of excellencethat could be a model for possible expansion to other HBCU medical schools, to increase diversity among clinical trial investigators and participants





Novartis US Foundation also plans to invest $20 million to help prepare up to 1,200 Black and African American students to become the next generation of leaders in health, science, technology and business in collaboration with Thurgood Marshall College Fund





Basel, July 20, 2021 - Novartis and the Novartis US Foundation today announced a planned 10-year collaboration with Coursera, the National Medical Association, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Morehouse School of Medicine and 26 additional Historically Black Colleges, Universities and Medical Schools (HBCUs) to co-create programs that address the root causes of systemic disparities in health outcomes and create greater diversity, equity and inclusion across the research and development ecosystem.

Leaders from these companies, organizations, and learning institutions have signed a pledge (https://www.novartis.com/news/beacon-hope-addressing-health-disparities-through-holistic-community-based-collective-action) to co-develop programs focused on building trust in the health care system with communities of color and making measurable progress towards health equity. Working together with the communities they aim to impact, the collaboration will focus on improving access to high-quality education, technology, improved health outcomes, and promising jobs; increasing clinical trial and clinical trial investigator diversity; addressing inherent bias in the data standards used to diagnose and treat disease; and finding actionable solutions to environmental and climate issues that disproportionately affect health among communities of color.

"At Novartis, we envision a world with equity in health for all. Just as there are a multitude of factors and causes behind racial disparities in health and education, there is no single solution to this critical challenge. It will take the concerted, urgent action of diverse stakeholders across the public and private sectors," said Vas Narasimhan, MD, CEO of Novartis. "We are honored and humbled to work together with these organizations to build enduring solutions to some of the most pressing, deeply rooted, and historic challenges in the United States, and we invite other like-minded companies and organizations to join us in creating this paradigm shift in health equity."

Over an initial period of ten years, the collaboration will focus on four key areas:

Enable the next generation of Black and African American leaders by creating equitable access to high quality education and professional development for future leaders, in health science, technology and business-related fields. Support the establishment of Digitally Enabled Clinical Trial Centers of Excellence, managed and led by clinical researchers of color, to build trust, increase diversity and inclusivity in clinical trials, and contribute to improved health outcomes for people of color. Research and validate existing data standards that drive diagnosis, clinical trial endpoints and population health policy to identify areas for increased inclusivity and ensure accurate data collection and unbiased treatment decisions. Establish Digitally Enabled Research Centers on the impact of the environment and climate change on health to identify solutions to environmental and climate issues that disproportionately affect communities of color.

All parties will spend the next six months co-creating programs with the communities, including establishing the first clinical trial, data standards, and environment, climate and health research centers at Morehouse School of Medicine. Each organization will bring its own expertise and resources to design and implement enduring solutions in these areas.

"Health equity is not only accessible healthcare for patients, but developing educational and professional opportunities to create a diverse pipeline of educators, clinicians and other professionals, as well as ensuring all are included in clinical studies," said Valerie Montgomery Rice, MD, President and CEO, Morehouse School of Medicine. "This is a first of its kind collaboration and Morehouse School of Medicine is excited to work with Novartis and this coalition of medical schools, colleges, universities and other leading companies and organizations to create centers of excellence for clinical trials, data standards research, and environment and health research. We know that real change starts here, when work is done to make a significant impact on representation and inclusion."

Health disparities affecting minority groups are endemic in the US, most recently demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic by the disproportionate rates of hospitalization and death in minority groups.1 Compared with non-Hispanic whites, the Black and African American community has a lower life expectancy, a higher mortality rate from cancer, a greater likelihood of diseases such as asthma, and significantly increased rates of maternal and infant mortality.2 Some of these health disparities are further exacerbated by increased exposure to negative environmental factors such as air pollution, excessive heat, and poorer water quality in communities of color.3

Health inequity extends to Black and African American underrepresentation across medical systems - not just among clinical trial participants but also among medical school students, physicians, and clinical trial investigators. In 2019, Black and African Americans comprised 13.4% of the US population but only 6.2% of medical school graduates,5% of practicing physicians, and an even smaller proportion of clinical trial investigators.4

"Black and African American people endured education and health disparities in the United States long before the COVID-19 pandemic. Their exclusion from the research and development ecosystem has resulted in mistrust and a delayed uptake of life-saving innovative medicines and effective care models, further exacerbating racial disparities in care and outcomes," said Patrice Matchaba, MD, President of the Novartis US Foundation. "We are proud to come together to take our direction from Black and African American community members and other minority groups on programs that will help achieve sustained change."

Enabling the next generation of Black and African American leaders

As an initial step, the Novartis US Foundation plans to invest $20 million in scholarships, mentorships and research grants over the next 10 years to help create equitable access to high quality education and professional development for HBCU students in health-related fields.

Administered by The Thurgood Marshall College Fund, the program will train and prepare up to 1,200 students:

Scholarships : Three-year scholarships of $10,000 a year for up to 360 students at select Historically Black Colleges, Universities and Medical Schools

: Three-year scholarships of $10,000 a year for up to 360 students at select Historically Black Colleges, Universities and Medical Schools Mentorships : Novartis employee volunteers will mentor up to 400 HBCU students, including the scholarship recipients, for a period of three years each, for a total of up to 1,200 students. Students also will receive career readiness and leadership development training

: Novartis employee volunteers will mentor up to 400 HBCU students, including the scholarship recipients, for a period of three years each, for a total of up to 1,200 students. Students also will receive career readiness and leadership development training Internships : HBCU undergraduate and medical school students will be encouraged and supported to apply for the Novartis annual internship program

: HBCU undergraduate and medical school students will be encouraged and supported to apply for the Novartis annual internship program Research grants: Competitive faculty research grant program offering up to ten grants of $25,000 each year to HBCU faculty, focusing on actionable solutions to health equity issues

"We are pleased to work with Novartis to answer the calls for urgent action to address the role that systemic racism plays in health disparities among Black people," said Harry L. Williams, EdD, President and CEO, Thurgood Marshall College Fund. "This kind of investment in HBCUs is critical to ensuring that Black students have opportunities to pursue influential roles in health, science and technology by eliminating barriers and creating pathways through mentorship and training."

Participating Companies and Organizations Novartis Novartis US Foundation Thurgood Marshall College Fund Coursera National Medical Association

Participating HBCUs and Medical Schools Alabama A&M University Meharry Medical College Bowie State University Morehouse School of Medicine Charles R Drew University of Medicine and Science Morehouse College Clark Atlanta University Morgan State University Delaware State University North Carolina Agricultural &Technical State University Dillard University Prairie View A&M University Fisk University Southern University and A&M College Florida A&M University Spelman College Hampton University Tennessee State University Howard University College of Medicine Texas Southern University Howard University Tuskegee University Jackson State University University of Maryland Eastern Shore LeMoyne Owen College Xavier University of Louisiana Lincoln University in Pennsylvania

Novartis commitment to diversity in clinical trials

Diversity in clinical trials is integral to who we are at Novartis. Our purpose is to reimagine medicine to improve and extend the lives of all people - inclusive of race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual orientation, disability, location and socioeconomic status. Diverse, inclusive trials are critical to ensuring that we understand how those patients who are most likely to be treated for a disease or condition will respond to a medicine. Novartis is taking a proactive, science-driven approach to address barriers to clinical trial participation, such as identifying sites where diverse patients with a particular disease or condition may be located, identifying healthcare providers who treat underserved or underrepresented populations, and collaborating with researchers to address the goals of enrolling a diverse population in a clinical trial. To learn more about our Commitment to Diversity in Clinical Trials, please visit https://www.novartis.com/sites/www.novartis.com/files/commitment-for-diversity-in-clinical-trials.pdf (https://www.novartis.com/sites/www.novartis.com/files/commitment-for-diversity-in-clinical-trials.pdf).

Disclaimer

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements can generally be identified by words such as "potential," "can," "will," "plan," "may," "could," "would," "expect," "anticipate," "seek," "look forward," "believe," "committed," "commitment," "investigational," "pipeline," "launch," "pledges," "to target," "to increase," or similar terms, or by express or implied discussions regarding the activities and efforts described in this press release. You should not place undue reliance on these statements. Such forward-looking statements are based on our current beliefs and expectations regarding future events, and are subject to significant known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. There can be no guarantee that the activities and efforts described in this media update, including the collaboration with Coursera, the National Medical Association, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, Morehouse School of Medicine and 26 additional Historically Black Colleges, Universities and Medical Schools, will be completed, or will achieve any of its intended goals, or succeed in the expected time frame or at all. In particular, our expectations regarding the activities and efforts described in this press release, including such collaboration, could be affected by, among other things, the uncertainties inherent in research and development, including clinical trial results and additional analysis of existing clinical data; regulatory actions or delays or government regulation generally; global trends toward health care cost containment, including government, payor and general public pricing and reimbursement pressures and requirements for increased pricing transparency; our ability to obtain or maintain proprietary intellectual property protection; the particular prescribing preferences of physicians and patients; general political, economic and business conditions, including the effects of and efforts to mitigate pandemic diseases such as COVID-19; safety, quality, data integrity or manufacturing issues; potential or actual data security and data privacy breaches, or disruptions of our information technology systems, and other risks and factors referred to in Novartis AG's current Form 20-F on file with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Novartis is providing the information in this press release as of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.





About Novartis

Novartis is reimagining medicine to improve and extend people's lives. As a leading global medicines company, we use innovative science and digital technologies to create transformative treatments in areas of great medical need. In our quest to find new medicines, we consistently rank among the world's top companies investing in research and development. Novartis products reach nearly 800 million people globally and we are finding innovative ways to expand access to our latest treatments. About 110,000 people of more than 140 nationalities work at Novartis around the world. Find out more at https://www.novartis.com (https://www.novartis.com).

About the Novartis US Foundation

The Novartis US Foundation is a charitable organization established by Novartis to support philanthropic efforts in the United States. The mission of the Novartis US Foundation is to improve health in underserved communities in the US by creating innovative and sustainable solutions to expand access to healthcare and build trust within the healthcare system. We do this by supporting sustainable programs and partnerships that strengthen health systems, eliminate barriers to quality health services, and enhance local communities.

Novartis is on Twitter. Sign up to follow @Novartis at https://twitter.com/novartisnews (https://twitter.com/novartisnews)

For Novartis multimedia content, please visit https://www.novartis.com/news/media-library (https://www.novartis.com/news/media-library)

For questions about the site or required registration, please contact media.relations@novartis.com (mailto:media.relations@novartis.com)

References

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/racial-ethnic-disparities/disparities-deaths.html (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/racial-ethnic-disparities/disparities-deaths.html) https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/ (https://www.minorityhealth.hhs.gov/) Hsu, A., Sheriff, G., Chakraborty, T. et al. Disproportionate exposure to urban heat island intensity across major US cities. Nat Commun 12, 2721 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22799-5 (https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-22799-5) Association of American Medical Schools: Diversity in Medicine: Facts and Figures 2019

# # #

Novartis Media Relations

E-mail: media.relations@novartis.com (mailto:media.relations@novartis.com)

Julie Masow

Novartis US External Communications

+1 862 579 8456

julie.masow@novarts.com (mailto:julie.masow@novarts.com) Caryn Marshall

Novartis US External Communications

+1 201 213 3976

caryn.marshall@novartis.com (mailto:caryn.marshall@novartis.com)

Novartis Investor Relations

Central investor relations line: +41 61 324 7944

E-mail: investor.relations@novartis.com (mailto:investor.relations@novartis.com)
Tuckahoe, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - UGE International Ltd. (TSXV: UGE), a leader in commercial and community solar energy solutions, today debuted its new rooftop community solar project at Tuckahoe Housing Authority. The project provides on-site affordable clean energy to housing residents in the apartment complex in Westchester County.





Tuckahoe Housing Authority solar project

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"Community solar is a win-win for everyone involved, allowing Tuckahoe Housing Authority to produce clean energy right on their rooftops, lower their energy costs and carbon emissions, and pass those savings on to residents," said Mateo Chaskel, UGE USA's Managing Director. "UGE is proud to provide financing so that there is no upfront cost for housing authorities to make the switch to solar."

Tuckahoe Housing Authority will receive annual lease payments for hosting the solar project atop its properties, which are home to more than 300 residents. With the community solar project in place, the housing authority will also see savings reflected in its utility bills. UGE will own, operate, and maintain the system for the entirety of the project's lifetime, relieving the Housing Authority of any operational risk.

"Our goal is always to provide residents with safe, affordable housing, and clean, low-cost energy is a key aspect that supports this mission," said Irina Matveevskii, Executive Director, Tuckahoe Housing Authority. "UGE has made it easy to switch to community solar, and we're excited to see the benefits it brings to our community."

The project was supported by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority's (NYSERDA) $1.8 billion NY-Sun initiative which is aimed at advancing the scale-up of solar and moving the State closer to having a sustainable, self-sufficient solar industry. Since 2011, solar in New York State has grown over 2,100%, with NYSERDA committing $30 million for projects benefiting environmental justice and disadvantaged communities.

"NYSERDA was proud to provide support for this new rooftop community solar project developed by UGE and Tuckahoe Housing Authority," said Doreen M. Harris, President and CEO of NYSERDA. "Projects such as this provide meaningful health and cost-saving benefits to disadvantaged communities while helping to increase access to clean, renewable energy for all New Yorkers under the State's climate and clean energy goals. We congratulate our partners on this milestone."

Tuckahoe Housing Authority resident John "Doc" Henry Smith III has lived in the complex for over 45 years and is excited about the potential for solar in his community.

"I was on the Tuckahoe Housing board for nine years. Our two biggest bills are gas and electric, and this is going to help us out with our electric bill," said Smith. "We're the first ones in Westchester to get this."

The Tuckahoe Housing Authority solar project is one of a growing number of UGE's community solar projects in the region. Community solar programs allow energy users within the same region to purchase energy credits from a solar system, offsetting the energy costs otherwise paid to their utility. In doing so, energy users save money, and benefit the environment.

"We expect that within a decade, most New Yorkers will pay their utility bill to a solar company, and we're excited to be a part of this massive movement towards cleaner, cheaper energy," Chaskel said.

Those interested in subscribing to community solar to lower energy costs, or learning more about rooftop solar, can visit www.ugei.com.

About UGE

UGE develops, owns, and operates commercial and community solar projects in the US and strategic markets abroad. Our distributed energy solutions deliver cheaper, cleaner energy to businesses and consumers with no upfront cost. With over 500MW of global experience, we work daily to power a more sustainable world. Visit us at www.ugei.com.

For more information, contact UGE at:

+1 917 720 5685

investors@ugei.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90659
Leading Operator Reiterates Strong Commitment to North American Growth Strategy

Sunrise Senior Living ("the Company") announced today that following a comprehensive strategic review, the Company will exit as manager of its United Kingdom ("UK") portfolio. Management of the 46 UK communities operating under the Sunrise and Gracewell Healthcare brands will be assumed by two leading providers of senior care in the UK, Signature Senior Lifestyle and Care UK, with existing community team members remaining in place to provide continuity in services. All parties are working collaboratively to help ensure a smooth management transition by year-end 2021.

"Looking forward, we see tremendous potential for growth across North America for Sunrise over the next decade. Capitalizing on these exciting opportunities requires an intense focus on our top strategic priorities, and we are doubling down on our collective efforts to champion quality of life for seniors across the United States and Canada where we believe strong market demand exists for highly personalized care and services," said Sunrise Chief Executive Officer, Jack R. Callison, Jr. "We fully intend to leverage our scalable operating platform to capitalize on these compelling growth opportunities. We will drive value through our robust ground-up development pipeline, the redevelopment of existing communities, the continued lease up of our newly opened communities, and the strategic acquisition of new management contracts. The future for Sunrise remains bright and we are eager to embark on this exciting next chapter of growth."

Most recently, Sunrise successfully opened communities in Old Town Alexandria, VA, Newton, MA, and Boynton Beach, FL, to bring the benefit of the organization's leading assisted living and memory care services to more seniors and their families. Additionally, the Company is completing construction of eight new communities projected to open in 2021 and early 2022.

Callison continued, "Throughout the last 20 years, we have proudly served thousands of seniors in the UK and have great appreciation for the many team members that made our communities a great place to live and work. We look forward to working closely with the Signature and Care UK teams throughout this transition to support our cherished residents with the high-quality care and service to which they are accustomed."

About Sunrise Senior Living

Sunrise Senior Living, a McLean, Va.-based company employs approximately 32,000 people. As of April 1, 2021, Sunrise operated 331 communities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, including 21 Gracewell Healthcare communities, with a total unit capacity of approximately 29,600. Sunrise offers a full range of personalized senior living services, including independent living, assisted living, care for individuals with Alzheimer's and other forms of memory loss, as well as nursing and rehabilitative services. To learn more about Sunrise, please visit SunriseSeniorLiving.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005678/en/

Contacts:

Sara Abriatis

Corporate Communications

571-205-4035
PED launches its propriety CannDeliv technology in BC, a software delivery solution allowing BC dispensaries to enhance their B2C distribution channels and customer service strategies

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / World-Class Extractions Inc. (CSE:PUMP) (FRA:WCF) (OTCQB:WCEXF) ("Company" or "World-Class"), is pleased to report that its subsidiary, Pineapple Express Delivery Inc. ("Pineapple Express Delivery" or "PED"), a company in which World-Class has a controlling interest, is rolling out its robust, proprietary technology platform - CannDeliv - in British Columbia. PED has entered into a licensing agreement ("Licensing Agreement") with City Cannabis Corp. ("City Cannabis") to facilitate City Cannabis' B2C sales.

Pineapple Express Delivery is a leading logistics technology company: its delivery platform, CannDelivis currently integrated with e-commerce platforms like Dutchie, Buddi, and Shopify. PED previously entered into a licensing agreement in Ontario to provide software and support services to an arm's length party, and PED is now expanding its technology footprint into British Columbia.

Under the License Agreement, Pineapple Express Delivery provides City Cannabis with integration through API, delivery program development, support, access, and driver training services for its robust CannDeliv proprietary software. The CannDeliv platform will allow City Cannabis's employee drivers to deliver its retail cannabis products efficiently and effectively to customers from three dispensaries in British Columbia. PED's CannDeliv technology and focusses on enabling safe and easy cannabis delivery securely and in full compliance with provincial and federal regulations, while providing dedicated dispatching, real-time track-and-trace chain of custody, proof of delivery and signature capture, real-time status-driven customer tracking page, customer notifications via SMS, customer care and driver support.

Pineapple Express Delivery's Support Program for City Cannabis alleviates the strain a delivery program can put on dispensaries by handling the details that help to maintain their license and comply with regulations, while not compromising on the customer or retail experience. Alex Orantes, Senior Operations Manager for City Cannabis Co. says; 'Pineapple Express, and their onboarding team, have been nothing but helpful, quick and reliable when it came to launching our delivery program at all 3 of our Vancouver City Cannabis Co. locations, in less than a month. With their great customer support team on our side, we're excited to continue providing our excellent customer experience inside and outside of our store.'

Randy Rolph, CEO of Pineapple Express Delivery stated, "We are pleased to help City Cannabis realize their delivery program as we expand into British Columbia. Our support offerings for Retailers, Drivers, and Customers makes it easy for BC Retailers to deliver their products just as compliantly as we do in other provinces, to their customers and continue focusing on the in-store experience. Our CannDeliv software is scalable to support delivery footprint across Vancouver and all of BC, and we are excited to demonstrate with City Cannabis how Pineapple Express Delivery's agility in this ever-changing market supports world-class delivery experiences for dispensaries and customers alike."

PED's logistics and delivery services include medical and recreational cannabis delivery in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan - and now British Columbia - and liquor delivery in certain jurisdictions in Saskatchewan. Collaborating with innovative and world-class technology companies like Shopify and Dutchie enables Pineapple Express to provide leading-edge delivery capabilities and support as the cannabis market matures. Pineapple Express Delivery's clients include Shoppers Drug Mart / Medical Cannabis by Shoppers, Spectrum Therapeutics, the medical division of Canopy Growth Corporation (TSX:WEED)(NYSE:CGC), The Saskatoon Co-operative Association Ltd. (Liquor Division) and CannTrust Inc. to their estoraTM medical cannabis patients.

About Pineapple Express Delivery Inc.

Pineapple Express Delivery's management team has over 10 years of experience offering same-day 60-minute delivery services in multiple industries across Canada with a record breaking 40,000 deliveries per month. Pineapple Express Delivery offers a personalized experience for its customers and has established in-depth security and delivery protocols to facilitate same-day delivery of medical and recreational cannabis across the country. Pineapple Express Delivery has been providing a same day delivery option to the legal Cannabis Industry from October 17th, 2018 and has provincial offices set up across Canada. Pineapple Express Delivery is a subsidiary of World-Class Extractions Inc. For more information please visit https://pineappleexpressdelivery.com/.

About City Cannabis Corp.

City Cannabis is a premier cannabis retailer recently acquired by Wildflower Brands and holds three City of Vancouver licenses to sell cannabis and four licenses in the Province of B.C. City Cannabis has been profitably operating various dispensaries in Vancouver since Vancouver commenced licensing

About World-Class

World-Class is an innovation-driven company with a focus on the evolving cannabis and hemp industries. World-Class offers compliant and secure delivery of government regulated products through its subsidiary Pineapple Express Delivery Inc., including medical and recreational cannabis in Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, and liquor delivery in certain jurisdictions in Saskatchewan. World-Class continues to investigate opportunities to deploy and manage custom-built extraction centres utilizing its custom systems, technology, and processes to efficiently produce high-quality cannabis and hemp concentrates and end-products.

Contact

World-Class Extractions Inc.

1-437-266-1968 | ir@worldclassextractions.com

www.worldclassextractions.com

https://pineappleexpressdelivery.com/

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release, which has been prepared by management.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws, and the ability of Pineapple Express Delivery to expand its delivery services and to provide discrete shipment of products. The Company provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited those identified and reported in the Company's public filings under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law.

SOURCE: World-Class Extractions Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656135/Pineapple-Express-Delivery-Launches-Proprietary-Technology-in-British-Columbia-Executing-Licensing-Agreement-With-City-Cannabis-Corp
Q2 2021 with more than USD 15 million revenue

Copy-trading increased by 360%

2020 audited results to be published July 26th

NAGA Group AG (XETRA: N4G, ISIN: DE000A161NR7), provider of the social network for financial market trading NAGA.com, announces the preliminary group figures for its record-half year 2021.

NAGA continues its impressive growth journey. With unaudited preliminary revenues of more than USD 15 million in Q2 (Q2 2020: USD 6.3 million) NAGA delivered the 11th consecutive quarter of record growth posting a 135% quarter over quarter. Total group sales of the first half year amounted to USD 29 million which is +85% increase to USD 15,7 million of the first half year in 2020 and almost the entire revenue of 2020 (USD 30 million).

NAGA's unique social-investing concept is one of the major growth drivers with its core functionality auto-copy trading. Copied trades grew by 366% to 2.8 million in HY21 (HY20: 0.6 million), which also surpassed the entire number of copied trades of 2020 (1.7 million) by 64%. Overall transactions in HY21 jumped by 78% to 4.8 million (HY20: 2.7 million).

Traded volume has also seen significant growth of more than 160% compared to the same period last year. In 2021 over USD 155 billion were traded over the NAGA.com platform (HY20: USD 59 billion). During the first half year, NAGA has already seen more traded volume than the entire year of 2020 (USD 143 billion).

"2021 was fantastic for us and we keep on accelerating our growth. We are entering growth levels which will soon elevate our brand and platform to global success. It's all a question of marketing, brand awareness and ensuring that our systems scale. We understand our profitability ratios better and our cohort's user growth is healthy", commented CEO Benjamin Bilski on the record numbers.

NAGA additionally continues to improve its product offering. With its brand-new popular investor-program it launches an innovative copy-trading dashboard with audience analytics and career-path for content creators and traders who aim to monetize their skillset. Furthermore, a new crypto-wallet and social features are being released. And to top it up, its payment app NAGA Pay comes close to being released later in the quarter.

"Given the current valuations of peers from the payment space we believe that NAGA Pay will be an absolute growth catalyst for the Group and strengthens our growth speed. We are extremely excited to get started and expect a lot of interest. We have 100,000 cards being delivered for the launch day", adds Bilski.

The company is also pleased to inform that after a COVID-19 related delay the audited 2020 consolidated financial statements will be published and uploaded on July 26th on the company's investor relation website, https://ir.naga.com

About NAGA

NAGA is an innovative fintech company that seamlessly connects personal finance transactions and investments through its social trading platform. The company's proprietary platform offers a range of products from stock trading, investments and cryptocurrencies to a physical VISA Card. Additionally, the platform allows for exchanges with other traders, provides relevant information in the feed, and autocopy features for successful members' trades. NAGA is a synergistic total solution that is easily accessible and inclusive. It provides an improved foundation to trade, invest, network, earn and pay.



Language: English Company: The NAGA Group AG Hohe Bleichen 12 20354 Hamburg Germany E-mail: info@naga.com Internet: www.naga.com ISIN: DE000A161NR7 WKN: A161NR Indices: Scale 30 Listed: Regulated Unofficial Market in Berlin, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt (Scale), Hamburg, Munich, Stuttgart, Tradegate Exchange

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005701/en/

Contacts:

Benjamin Bilski

Tel:+49 (0)40 5247 79153

Email:ben@naga.com,

ingo.janssen@ubj.de
Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Benton Resources Inc. (TSXV: BEX) ('Benton' or 'the Company') is pleased to provide a corporate update on the Company's ongoing exploration efforts in Ontario and Newfoundland.

The Far Lake Copper-Silver project, located 80 km west of Thunder Bay, Ontario, the focus of Benton's exploration efforts since 2020, has undergone a detailed geological mapping campaign since the beginning of May. The area had never been mapped in detail, and the new structural and lithological information collected in the field will assist in all exploration work going forward. In addition, prospecting and soil sampling have been ongoing and are providing new targets for exploration.

In the area of drill hole FL-20-12, recent surface sampling has provided results including two samples grading 2.37% Cu and 2.80% Cu, further indicating the significant mineralization occurring along a 1,900 m length of the FL#1 structure. Hole FL-20-12 exhibited similar chemistry and texture to these new high-grade samples but did not contain the Cu mineralization, therefore this zone could be faulted or dipping in a different direction and will be re-evaluated by stripping or drilling in the next campaign.

In June, the Company collected nearly 3,500 soil samples in hopes of extending known mineralized trends as well as new untested areas of the project. To date, only 10% of the 2021 soil assays has been received and already there are some Cu and Au anomalies that correspond with prospective geology and geophysical (VLF) features known to contain mineralization. The Company looks forward to receiving the remaining results in the coming weeks and completing further mechanical stripping and drilling on the project.

Below are the copper results from Far Lake drilling to date:

Hole ID From To Interval Cu (%) Zone FL-20-01 46.2 48 1.8 0.23 Discovery High-Grade Zone FL-20-02 35.6 36.4 0.8 0.44 FL-20-03 26.2 59.8 33.6 0.19 incl 29.2 32.3 3.1 1.11 FL-20-04 45 72.3 27.3 0.11

48.3 54.3 6 0.21 FL-20-05 55.9 64.9 9 0.11 and 74.9 79.9 5 0.15 FL-20-06 NSA* Recon Hole FL-20-07 NSA* Shebandowan Greenstone Belt (Volcaninc Sequence) FL-20-08 33.3 34.9 1.6

FL-20-09 93.7 134.5 40.8 0.051 Two-Ponds FL-20-10 138.3 152.3 14 0.023 FL-20-11 82.8 147 64.2 0.15 FL#1 Structure (North) incl 120.6 136.2 15.6 0.35 incl 124.7 128.3 3.6 1.08 FL-20-12 102.4 106.5 4.1 0.09 FL#1 Structure (Central) FL-20-13 218 221 3 0.25 FL#1 Structure (North) and 249 253 4 0.11 FL-20-14 166 169 3 0.12 FL-20-15 115 129 14 0.1 FL-20-16 414.2 428 13.8 0.022 NW Deep IP Target (FL#2) FL-20-17 336.5 342.5 6 0.16 Centre Pond incl 336.5 338 1.5 0.56 FL-20-18 NSA* Discovery Zone (adjacent) FL-20-19 201 224 23 0.13 Discovery Zone at Depth FL-20-20 162.75 164.15 1.4 0.12 and 288.5 291.5 3 0.11

*No significant assays

A map showing the location of each hole is available on the Company's website (www.bentonresources.ca).

Grey River Sokoman/ Benton JV Project

Airborne geophysical surveying totalling 1,099 line-kilometres is about to begin at the 324-claim (8,100 hectares - 81 sq km) Grey River JV in southern Newfoundland and will consist of a Heliborne High-Resolution Magnetic and Matrix Digital VLF-EM Survey flown by Terraquest Ltd. The results of the survey will help define structural targets that may be associated with the gold mineralization at Grey River. The property is targeting high-grade gold mineralization similar to that currently being mined at Pogo, Alaska with published reserves of 6.9 million ounces at 9.4 g/t Au (Northern Star Resources website March 31, 2021), as well as other styles of gold mineralization including shear zone and intrusion-related gold.

Management of Benton and Sokoman Minerals Corp. ("Sokoman") have visited the Grey River and the Golden Hope properties to establish priorities and to engage in sampling as many areas of known mineralization. The visit to Grey River was extremely successful in that sampling in the vicinity of the historical 225 g/t Au sample site resulted in the identification of visible gold in a portion of the mineralized zone. In addition, prospecting in the immediate area identified several other mineralized horizons that did not appear to be previously sampled. Assays are pending from a suite of samples collected from several locations on the property. The historical "Quartz Zone" reported by previous workers is impressive and extends for several kilometres in an east west direction (photos can be viewed on Sokoman's website under the Grey River Project tab) and is up to 200-300 metres in width locally. Multiple gold showings are known along most of its length ranging from 100-200 ppb Au to 225 g/t Au, but no drilling has been carried out at any of the known gold occurrences. The companies have applied for drilling permits which will target these zones.

Golden Hope Benton/Sokoman JV Project

Exploration has also commenced on the 3,176-claim (79,400 hectares - 794 sq km) Golden Hope Property in southwestern Newfoundland, including a 5,709-line-kilometre Heliborne High-Resolution Aeromagnetic & Matrix Digital VLF-EM Survey being flown by Terraquest Ltd. The survey will help provide an overall structural picture of the property and identify extensions of known gold-bearing structures as well as any previously unrecognized structures on the property. An initial reconnaissance mission at Golden Hope was completed earlier this month by management of Benton and Sokoman in order to get a firsthand look at the ground and to obtain samples in as many areas as possible (photos can be viewed on Sokoman's website under the Golden Hope Project tab). Mineralization observed included multiple occurrences of structurally controlled quartz veins with variable amounts of pyrite, as well as a previously unknown zone of locally significant arsenopyrite and pyrite (as stringers and veinlets comprising up to 10% of rock volume), that was noted to be several dozen metres in thickness and of unknown strike length. Overall, approximately 50 rock samples as well as seven stream sediment and four C-horizon till samples were collected and submitted for assaying/processing.

Kepenkeck Benton/Sokoman JV Project

The Company has informed Joint Venture partner Sokoman that a Heliborne High-Resolution Aeromagnetic & Matrix Digital VLF-EM Survey totaling 1,984 line-kilometres has been flown by Terraquest Ltd. A prospecting program has begun, and a detailed soil sampling program will commence shortly. The Kepenkeck property lies in east-central Newfoundland, along trend from Canstar Resources' Golden Baie project and immediately east of New Found Gold's Queensway project. The target is high grade and quartz veining, hosted in graphitic shales similar to that of the New Found Gold property.

Benton and Sokoman have received the first assay results from 24 samples submitted. Gold grading from >5 ppb to 5,340 ppb have been obtained from localized float and outcrops. The companies are very encouraged by these early results, and follow-up has been planned to further these discoveries.

Equity Holdings

Benton continues to be very encouraged by the progress made by Clean Air Metals Inc. ("Clean Air"), in which Benton holds 24.6 million shares. Clean Air has two drill rigs operating on the Thunder Bay North and Escape Lake Copper-Nickel-PGM projects and has released excellent drill results from its ongoing drill campaign. Benton looks forward to receiving ongoing encouraging drill results and future project advancement.

Benton also holds 3,940,000 shares of Quadro Resources Ltd, which is advancing various projects in Newfoundland and Ontario. Additionally, Benton holds 3.6 million shares of Maxtech Ventures Inc. Maxtech has an Option and Joint Venture agreement on Benton's Panama Lake gold project in the Red Lake mining region. Further, Benton holds 1.0 million shares of Sokoman Minerals Corp. which continues to release excellent drill results from its Moosehead Project in Newfoundland, and 1.36 million shares of Metallica Metals advancing Benton's Saganaga (Starr) Gold project. Benton also has two NW Ontario projects optioned to Rio Tinto Exploration Canada (the Bark Lake and West Baril Lake Copper-Nickel PGE projects).

QP

Nathan Sims (P.Geo.), Senior Exploration Manager for Benton Resources Inc., the 'Qualified Person' under National Instrument 43-101, has approved the scientific and technical disclosure in this news release and prepared or supervised its preparation.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Benton Resources Inc.,

"Stephen Stares"

Stephen Stares, President

About Benton Resources Inc.

Benton Resources Inc. is a well-funded mineral exploration company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol BEX. Following a project generation business model, Benton has a diversified, highly-prospective property portfolio in Gold, Silver, Nickel, Copper, and Platinum Group Elements and currently holds large equity positions in other mining companies that are advancing high-quality assets. Whenever possible, BEX retains Net Smelter Royalties (NSR) for potential long-term cash flow.

Benton also recently entered into a 50/50 strategic alliance with Sokoman Minerals through three large-scale joint venture properties including Grey River, Golden Hope and Kepenkeck in Newfoundland that are now being explored.

For further information, please contact:

Stephen Stares, President & CEO

Phone: 807-475-7474

Email: sstares@bentonresources.ca

CHF Capital Markets

Cathy Hume, CEO

Phone: 416-868-1079 x251

Email: cathy@chfir.com

Website: www.bentonresources.ca

Twitter: @BentonResources

Facebook: @BentonResourcesBEX

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements."

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90710
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Monument Mining Limited (TSX-V: MMY and FSE: D7Q1) "Monument" or the "Company" is pleased to announce the commencement of a planned exploration drilling program at the Murchison Gold Project in Western Australia.



The first stage of the drill program planned for 18,000 metres and combines aircore ("AC") and reverse circulation ("RC") drilling, and is designed to test new high quality structural targets beneath cover for potential mineralization that may lead to the identification of shallow stand alone or satellite gold deposits to supplement the current resource base at the 100% owned Burnakura gold project.

The progressive nature of the exploration program at Burnakura and Gabanintha (Figure 1) will see work continue for the next six to eight months as new targets are identified and evaluated for their potential to develop into a new satellite gold deposit. At the conclusion of this exploration program Monument will be in a position to evaluate the entire 170km2 land package of the Murchison Gold Project and determine, in an informed manner, the most logical approach in which to advance the project.

Figure 1 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/dd22a782-1160-4900-b469-1989221a4cfe

HIGHLIGHTS

First time drilling on high quality structural targets defined from geophysical surveys in areas of shallow cover

Multipurpose drill rig to commence initial 18,000 metre drilling program

All Programme of Works ("PoW") approvals in place

Drill targets to test south-southwest of Munro Bore mineralized system within Monument's land package

Drill targets at Banderol South will test if the trend continues south from the Banderol open pit

Drill targets at the Junction Area will assist in better defining basement geology and test beneath cover

The CEO and President Cathy Zhai comments: "The Monument exploration team is excited to begin drilling after extensive work to identify high quality targets at the Murchison Gold Project. The WA area has been heating up this year with a large amount of exploration work being undertaken, and we are fortunate to get started ahead of schedule having secured a drill rig."

The drilling contract has been awarded to Strike Drilling Pty Ltd ("Strike"), who will supply a Schramm T450 multipurpose drill rig to undertake the entire program. The earliest commencement date of work was originally planned to September this year; however, working in conjunction with Strike, the Company has been able to fast-track the deployment of the multipurpose drill rig and has secured it for an initial two month window starting in first week of July, 2021. The drill rig is truck mounted and the area is mostly flat and clear, so there is no significant field preparation work required.

All samples collected from the drilling program, along with QA/QC blanks, standards and duplicates, will be dispatched to ALS Geochemistry laboratory in Malaga, Western Australia for gold and multi-element analysis. With all Permit of Work ("PoW") approvals now in place, initial assay results are expected to be available from September 2021 onwards.

FIRST DRILL PROGRAM SUMMARY

The first drill program will commence at a series of high potential targets identified beneath cover on the Burnakura Project shown in Figure 2. Details of the drill program are presented in Table 1.

Table 1: Drill Program Summary

Drill Area Holes AC Metres RC Metres Munro Bore Extension 12 - 1,260 Banderol South 142 5,680 - Junction 276 11,040 - Total 430 16,680 1,260

Figure 2 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4651289a-d465-4851-bf70-af0d5e23b9dd

Munro Bore Extension

An unexploited historical Mineral Resource at Munro Bore reported by Giralia Resources in 20101, estimated to be 266,000t at 1.6g/t Au, lies in close proximity to the northern boundary of Monument's M51/178 mining lease. The strike continuation of this mineralized system appears to extend in a south-southwest orientation directly into Monument's land package (Figure 3 and Figure 4). No significant drilling or evaluation of this mineralized structure within M51/178 has been conducted. Monument intends to undertake a 12 hole, 1,260m RC drilling program along strike of the Munro Bore deposit with the aim of determining whether economic mineralization continues along this structure.

Figure 3 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/d48453bb-caba-4f7a-aee2-649e06302c01

Banderol South

Interpretation of the detailed aeromagnetic data over the Burnakura Project area has enabled Monument to identify a secondary north-south structural splay deviating off the regional northeast Burnakura Shear Zone (BSZ) trending. The orientation of this splay coincides with the structural orientation of mineralized quartz veins within the Banderol open pit (Figure 4). The trend is interpreted to continue south from the Banderol open pit and is bounded by granodiorite to the west and a sequence of Archean Greenstone rocks consisting of felsic volcanics and mafic/ultramafics to the east.

Figure 4 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/45358d87-e132-4b06-b036-d483a5c45048

Junction

The known mineralized NE-SW structural zone extending from the deposit at Munro Bore is interpreted to intersect the N-S structure further south at the Junction target where an E-W trending magnetic high is observed (Figure 5). As the Greenstone lithologies approach the E-W trending magnetic high to the south and approach two granodiorite bodies they are interpreted to be dragged and deformed potentially creating extensional dilatational zones within the favorable host lithologies.

The Junction target area is structurally complex, which increases the potential for fracturing and related gold bearing quartz vein formation. A regolith development of extensive sheet wash cover obscures the Archaean basement rocks and inhibits the use of surface geochemistry in this area. A sequence of AC drill holes is planned to assist in better defining basement geology and potentially identify gold mineralization beneath cover.

Figure 5 is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3279c770-796e-4eed-a630-061c46b2b11b

The scientific and technical information in this press release has been assembled by Adrian Woodfield, Chief Geologist of the Company, reviewed and approved by Roger Stangler, MEng, FAusIMM, MAIG, a Qualified Person as defined by NI43-101, retained by Golder Associates Pty Ltd.

About Monument

Monument Mining Limited (TSX-V: MMY, FSE:D7Q1) is an established Canadian gold producer that owns and operates the Selinsing Gold Mine in Malaysia. Its experienced management team is committed to growth and is also advancing the Murchison Gold Projects comprising Burnakura, Gabanintha and Tuckanarra JV (20% interest) in the Murchison area of Western Australia. The Company employs approximately 200 people in both regions and is committed to the highest standards of environmental management, social responsibility, and health and safety for its employees and neighboring communities.

Cathy Zhai, President and CEO Monument Mining Limited Suite 1580 -1100 Melville Street Vancouver, BC V6E 4A6

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION visit the company web site at www.monumentmining.com or contact:



Richard Cushing, MMY Vancouver T: +1-604-638-1661 x102 rcushing@monumentmining.com (mailto:rcushing@monumentmining.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."

Forward-Looking Statement

This news release includes statements containing forward-looking information about Monument, its business and future plans ("forward-looking statements"). Forward-looking statements are statements that involve expectations, plans, objectives or future events that are not historical facts and include the Company's plans with respect to its mineral projects and the timing and results of proposed programs and events referred to in this news release. 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". The forward-looking statements in this news release are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. These risks and certain other factors include, without limitation: risks related to general business, economic, competitive, geopolitical and social uncertainties; uncertainties regarding the results of current exploration activities; uncertainties in the progress and timing of development activities; foreign operations risks; other risks inherent in the mining industry and other risks described in the management discussion and analysis of the Company and the technical reports on the Company's projects, all of which are available under the profile of the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Material factors and assumptions used to develop forward-looking statements in this news release include: expectations regarding the estimated cash cost per ounce of gold production and the estimated cash flows which may be generated from the operations, general economic factors and other factors that may be beyond the control of Monument; assumptions and expectations regarding the results of exploration on the Company's projects; assumptions regarding the future price of gold of other minerals; the timing and amount of estimated future production; the expected timing and results of development and exploration activities; costs of future activities; capital and operating expenditures; success of exploration activities; mining or processing issues; exchange rates; and all of the factors and assumptions described in the management discussion and analysis of the Company and the technical reports on the Company's projects, all of which are available under the profile of the Company on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements, except in accordance with applicable securities laws.

_____________________

1 Technical Project Review and Independent Valuation Report (Short Form) Giralia Resources NL for PwCS (PricewaterhouseCoopers Security Ltd) by Ravensgate Mining Industry Consultants 5 January 2011
HONG KONG, July 20, 2021 - (ACN Newswire) - The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) noticed recent discussions on Hong Kong's business environment. Dr Peter KN Lam, Chairman of the HKTDC, said that most companies operating in Hong Kong remain confident in the city's business landscape.Dr. Lam said, "Based on my interaction with Hong Kong's international business community, they are excited about the vast opportunities arising from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area development, and see Hong Kong as the ideal entry point.""As a global business hub, Hong Kong's fundamental strengths remain robust. The city continues to be a place which is easy to do business, has a rich pool of international talent, and enjoys economic freedom, a low level of corruption and free flow of capital, goods, people and information. I believe global investors and the business community are confident in Hong Kong's continued role as a two-way investment and business platform," Dr. Lam added.Given Asia's strong growth potential as well as opportunities arising from the Mainland's 14th Five-Year Plan, dual circulation policy and development of the Greater Bay Area, the HKTDC has planned a series of activities focusing on Hong Kong's strengths in areas such as medical and healthcare, technology, finance, logistics, legal as well as intellectual property, to support local and international companies to capture these opportunities.About HKTDCThe Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body established in 1966 to promote, assist and develop Hong Kong's trade. With 50 offices globally, including 13 in Mainland China, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a two-way global investment and business hub. The HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to create business opportunities for companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in the mainland and international markets. The HKTDC also provides up-to-date market insights and product information via research reports and digital news channels. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Twitter @hktdc and LinkedInMedia Contact:HKTDC's Communications and Public Affairs DepartmentSusanna Sin, Tel: +852 2584 4294, email: susanna.kc.sin@hktdc.orgSource: HKTDCCopyright 2021 ACN Newswire . All rights reserved.

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Wedgemount Resources Corp. (CSE:WDGY) ("Wedgemount" or the "Company"), is pleased to announce that it has commenced its 2021 field exploration program at the Company's Cookie copper - gold project, located in the prolific southern Toodoggone copper belt of north-central British Columbia.

Mark Vanry, President & CEO of Wedgemount commented, "We are extremely excited to kick off our inaugural Cookie exploration program. The prospectivity of the Cookie project for copper and gold makes it one of the most compelling targets in the southern Toodoggone region of British Columbia. The 2021 program will be the first comprehensive exploration on project for almost 20 years. Further, the Cookie program marks the second of three property-scale exploration programs to be undertaken by Wedgemount during 2021."

Cookie Project

The centre of the recently expanded 28,000 hectare Cookie project (see News Release dated June 29, 2021) is approximately 40 kilometers south of Centerra Gold's past producing Kemess copper-gold mine and approximately 200 kilometers north of Smithers B.C. Historical work from the late-1960s to the early 2000's, including geological mapping, geophysical and geochemical surveys and limited drilling, have outlined numerous porphyry-related copper-gold targets. These areas are defined by widespread hydrothermal alteration zones, copper and gold mineralization and strong, yet un-drill-tested copper-in-soil geochemical anomalies.

Program Details

The primary focus for the 2021 program will be on the 5.0 kilometer, northwest trending Red-Amber corridor, host to the Red and Amber targets. The southeastern Red target is underlain by Triassic Takla Group volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks cut by a northwest trending intrusive complex varying from porphyritic monzonite to gabbro. Copper and gold mineralization is reportedly associated with these intrusive rocks and define a 2 by 1.6 kilometer area of local surface mineralization spatially associated with an open ended, northwest-trending chargeability IP (induced polarization) anomaly (Harris, 2005). The northwest extent of the Red-Amber corridor comprises the Amber target, defined by strong copper-in-soil anomalism associate with a broad gossan. The Red-Amber corridor remains largely un-tested and represents a priority area for evaluation. A systematic program consisting of geological mapping, confirmation soil geochemistry and possible deep penetrating IP geophysical surveys will be completed to define drill targets.

Wedgemount has compiled all regional geological, geophysical and stream sediment data together with project-scale historic geophysical data and geochemical data for over 3,000 soil and 400 rock samples. This compilation has defined multiple new areas of interest across the 28,000 hectare property. The 2021 exploration program will also consist of property-wide geological mapping, rock-chip sampling and focused soil geochemical grids and contoured soil transects across these areas of interest to develop new targets.

Data Verification and National Instrument 43-101 Disclosure

Some data disclosed in this news release relating to sampling and drilling results are historical in nature. Neither the Company nor a Qualified Person, as defined by National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"),have verified the data, and, therefore, investors should not place undue reliance on such data. In some cases, the data may be unverifiable due to lack of drill core. Mineralization hosted on adjacent and/or nearby and/or geologically similar properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Company's property. The technical information disclosed in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Christopher Leslie, P.Geo., a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101.

About Wedgemount Resources Corp.

Wedgemount Resources is a junior mineral exploration company focused on maximizing shareholder value through the acquisition, discovery and advancement of high-quality copper - gold projects in North America.

References

Harris, S., 2005, 2004 Geological, geochemical, geophysical and diamond drilling report on the Red property, Assessment Report 27622, Assessment Report Indexing System, aris.empr.gov.bc.ca, 179 p.

On behalf of the Board of Directors,

WEDGEMOUNT RESOURCES CORP.

Mark Vanry, President and CEO

For more information, please contact the Company at:

Telephone: (604) 343-4743

info@wedgemountresources.com

www.wedgemountresources.com

Reader Advisory

This news release may contain statements which constitute "forward-looking information", including statements regarding the plans, intentions, beliefs and current expectations of the Company, its directors, or its officers with respect to the future business activities of the Company. The words "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "plan", "anticipate", "believe", "estimate", "expect" and similar expressions, as they relate to the Company, or its management, are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements made in this news release include the Company's plans for exploration of the property and anticipated exploration results. Investors are cautioned that any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future business activities and involve risks and uncertainties, and that the Company's future business activities may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, but not limited to, availability of funds, personnel and other resources necessary to conduct exploration programs, successes of the Company's exploration programs, availability of capital and financing and general economic, market or business conditions. There can be no assurances that such information will prove accurate and, therefore, readers are advised to rely on their own evaluation of such uncertainties. The Company does not assume any obligation to update any forward-looking information except as required under the applicable securities laws.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Wedgemount Resources Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656131/Wedgemount-Commences-Exploration-Program-at-Its-Cookie-Copper-Gold-Project
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Gold Terra Resource Corp. (TSXV:YGT)(FSE:TX0)(OTCQX:YGTFF) ("Gold Terra" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that the Company's fully funded 10,000 metre Phase 2 drilling program has started with the objective to delineate a potential gold mineral resource to add to the Company's current NI 43-101 compliant 1.2 million inferred ounce resource (see March 16, 2021 press release and NI 43-101 Technical Report). The drilling is focused on the Campbell Shear at the Yellorex zone where significant high-grade gold zones were intersected during the Phase 1 drilling program (14.09 g/t Au over 4.65 metres) (see April 6, 2021 press release).

In addition, the Company is pleased to announce assay results from five drill holes completed in April and March 2021 at Crestaurum North and the Ranney Hill Shear located on the Company's 100% Yellowknife City Gold Project ("YCG"). Two of the drill holes tested previous trench and channel grab sampling results which had returned values ranging from 4.11 g/t to 24.9 g/t Au, along with one very high-grade grab sample of 746 g/t Au. Both holes intersected anomalous gold values with the highest value of 8.65 g/t Au over 0.70 metres within the targeted shear/vein system and multiple horizons of shearing, alteration, and quartz veining. Three of the drill holes targeted high-grade veins in the Crestaurum Shear adjacent to Company's current NI 43-101 compliant Inferred mineral resource of 1.2 million ounces.

Yellorex Zone Drilling - Campbell Shear South of Con Mine

The Yellorex zone is located immediately south of the Con Mine on property optioned from Newmont Ventures Limited and Miramar Northern Mining Limited (the "Newmont Option") and adjacent to the the YCG property. The Phase 2 drilling program will concentrate on the Yellorex zone and South Con Mine area with a 50 to 100 metre drill spacing along strike and down dip (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Phase 2 drilling at Yellorex Zone.

Ranney Hill Drilling Results

Gold Terra's land package has numerous prospective mineralized areas that require additional follow-up work outside of the current Yellorex zone drilling program area (see figure 2). The Ranney Hill Shear was identified as an area of interest for further exploration as more than 60 surface and channel samples taken in 2017-2018 returned significant gold values. The top 15 samples returned the following gold values: 746 g/t, 24.9, 21.7 g/t, 11.9 g/t, 11.55 g/t, 11.2 g/t, 9.64 g/t, 4.65 g/t, 4.4 g/t, 4.11 g/t, 3.72 g/t, 3.11 g/t, 3.1 g/t, 2.92 g/t, and 2.41 g/t Au.

Figure 2 - Ranney Hill Shear Location Map.

Two drill holes (GTRH21-001 and 002) totaling 302 metres were located between the West Bay and Akaitcho Faults and 2.5 kilometres northwest of the Giant Mine. The two drill holes successfully intersected the target shear. The higher grade intersection and the multiple horizons of anomalous gold support the interpretation that this area is the southern strike extension of the Crestaurum Shear, providing a 2.5 kilometre strike of untested shear. Drilling results are as follows:

GTRH21-001 intersected 8.65 g/t Au over 0.70 metres in a vein within 1.60 metres of moderate shearing in the Ranney Hill Shear at 103.86-105.46 metres depth. The shear contained blebby fracture-filling pyrite and blebby pyrrhotite and pyrite in a halo around a smokey grey quartz vein containing ankerite, chlorite, and pyrite fracture-filling.

intersected in a vein within 1.60 metres of moderate shearing in the Ranney Hill Shear at 103.86-105.46 metres depth. The shear contained blebby fracture-filling pyrite and blebby pyrrhotite and pyrite in a halo around a smokey grey quartz vein containing ankerite, chlorite, and pyrite fracture-filling. GTRH21-002 intersected 0.65 g/t Au over 4.00 metres, including 1.99 g/t Au over 1.00 metre within 4 metres of the Ranney Hill Shear from 141.40-145.40 metres. The shear contained ankerite-calcite-quartz veins with medium grained pyrite  fine grained needley arsenopyrite.

Notable intersections from Ranney Hill Shear-area drill holes are as follows:

Hole UTM East UTM North From

(metres) To

(metres) Length

(metres) Au g/t GTRH21-001 634993 6937975 23.41 25.23 1.82 0..52 GTRH21-001 37.49 39.99 2.50 0..66 GTRH21-001 69.57 71.07 1.50 0.106 GTRH21-001 77.07 78.07 1.69 0.157 GTRH21-001 104.76 105.46 0.70 8.65 GTRH21-002 635031 6938035 8 8.93 0.93 0.361 GTRH21-002 116.15 117.3 1.15 0.275 GTRH21-002 118.3 119.3 1.00 0.113 GTRH21-002 141.4 145.4 4.00 0.65 GTRH21-002 153.5 155 1.50 0.392 GTRH21-002 155 156.5 1.50 0.108 GTRH21-002 164 165 1.00 0.196

Crestaurum Drilling Results

Three holes, GTCR21-113, 114 and 115, totaling 318 metres were drilled in the vicinity of the Crestaurum Shear target. Drilling results are as follows:

Holes GTCR21-113 and GTCR21-114 targeted a N-NW trending vein set on the footwall side of the Crestaurum Shear that contains various high-grade surface grab samples ( up to 157.5 g/t Au . Both holes intersected various styles of veining. Hole GTCR21-114 intersected considerably more (six) individual veins with assay results ranging from 0.118 - 0.394 g/t Au, over 0.74 to 1.50 metres.

targeted a N-NW trending vein set on the footwall side of the Crestaurum Shear that contains various high-grade surface grab samples ( . Both holes intersected various styles of veining. Hole GTCR21-114 intersected considerably more (six) individual veins with assay results ranging from 0.118 - 0.394 g/t Au, over 0.74 to 1.50 metres. Hole GTCR21-115 was drilled on the northern end of the Crestaurum Shear in efforts to intersect the Hanging-wall structure and further define the main Crestaurum Shear. The Hanging-wall assayed 1.46 g/t Au over 1.00 metre, while the Crestaurum Shear contained 1.56 g/t Au over 3.00 metres, including 3.24 g/t Au over 1.00 metre. The Hanging-wall structure is a <1 to 4 metres wide NE/SW trending structure with prominent biotite alteration and wispy calcite veining, with boudinaged glassy grey quartz veining and sulphides (pyrite, arsenopyrite)  visible gold, that intersects the Crestaurum Shear at an oblique angle.

Notable intersections from Crestaurum Shear-area drill holes are as follows:

Hole UTM East UTM North From

(metres) To

(metres) Length

(metres) Au g/t GTCR21-113 635445 6941585 11.9 12.9 1 0.103 GTCR21-114 635450 6941615 2.45 3.19 0.74 0.183 GTCR21-114 4.64 5.85 1.21 0.109 GTCR21-114 7.05 8.55 1.50 0.246 GTCR21-114 10.05 11.55 1.50 0.118 GTCR21-114 36.30 37.30 1.00 0.156 GTCR21-114 48.40 49.40 1.00 0.394 GTCR21-115 636285 6942115 21.66 23.16 1.50 0.109 GTCR21-115 47.75 48.75 1.00 1.46 GTCR21-115 243.98 246.98 3.00 1.56 GTCR21-115 251.03 252.53 1.50 0.802 GTCR21-115 256.53 257.53 1.00 0.643

The technical information contained in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Joseph Campbell, Chief Operating Officer, a Qualified Person as defined in National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects.

About Gold Terra's Yellowknife City Gold Project

The YCG project encompasses 800 sq. km of contiguous land immediately north, south and east of the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. Through a series of acquisitions, Gold Terra controls one of the six major high-grade gold camps in Canada. Being within 10 kilometres of the City of Yellowknife, the YCG is close to vital infrastructure, including all-season roads, air transportation, service providers, hydro-electric power, and skilled tradespeople.

The YCG lies on the prolific Yellowknife greenstone belt, covering nearly 70 kilometres of strike length along the main mineralized shear system that host the former-producing high-grade Con and Giant gold mines. The Company's exploration programs have successfully identified significant zones of gold mineralization and multiple targets that remain to be tested which reinforces the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada.

Visit our website at www.goldterracorp.com.

For more information, please contact:

David Suda, President and CEO

Phone: 604-928-3101 | Toll-Free: 1-855-737-2684

dsuda@goldterracorp.com

Mara Strazdins, Manager of Investor Relations

Phone: 1-778-897-1590 | 604-689-1749 ext 102

Strazdins@goldterracorp.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements made and information contained in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation ("forward-looking information"). Generally, this forward-looking information can, but not always, be identified by 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 statements that certain actions, events, conditions or results "will", "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connotations thereof.

All statements other than statements of historical fact may be forward-looking information. Forward-looking information is necessarily based on estimates and assumptions that are inherently subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements of the Company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking information regarding the current drilling on the Campbell Shear on the Newmont Option potentially adding high grade ounces to the Company's current YCG mineral resource, future planned drilling on the Newmont Option area and the Company's objective of re-establishing Yellowknife as one of the premier gold mining districts in Canada.

There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as the Company's actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in this forward-looking information as a result of the factors discussed in the "Risk Factors" section in the Company's most recent MD&A and annual information form available under the Company's profile at www.sedar.com.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that would cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. The forward-looking information contained in this news release is based on information available to the Company as of the date of this news release. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. All of the forward-looking information contained in this news release is qualified by these cautionary statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information due to the inherent uncertainty thereof. Except as required under applicable securities legislation and regulations applicable to the Company, the Company does not intend, and does not assume any obligation, to update this forward-looking information.

SOURCE: Gold Terra Resource Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656177/Gold-Terra-Starts-Drilling-on-High-Grade-Yellorex-Gold-Zone-Campbell-Shear-South-of-Con-Mine-and-Reports-on-Assay-Results-for-Crestaurum-North-and-Ranney-Hill-Areas-Northwest-Territories
Former JVC Kenwood Exec Tasked with Driving Sales Growth and M&A Strategy

WEST MELBOURNE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / BK Technologies Corporation (NYSE American:BKTI) today announced the appointment of John Suzuki as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), effective July 19, 2021. Mr. Suzuki is a proven leader in the mobile communications sector with broad executive experience including sales and marketing, operations, product development and supply chain.

"We could not be more excited to welcome an executive the caliber of John to the management team," commented Major General (Ret.) E. Gray Payne, Chairman of the Board of Directors of BK Technologies. "He is a proven technology leader with a distinguished track record of innovation, talent development and revenue growth. We believe that John will be a wonderful addition to our existing leadership team including Tim Vitou, who will remain the President, and we look forward to leveraging John's extensive expertise and industry relationships to capitalize on the significant opportunity ahead and grow the Company, both organically and inorganically, into a much larger and more profitable business."

Mr. Suzuki joins BK Technologies following his role as President & CEO of land mobile radio company EF Johnson Technologies, a division of JVCKENWOOD. During his four-year tenure at EF Johnson, revenue doubled with a reduction in overhead. Previously, Mr. Suzuki was Senior Vice President of Sales at Avtec Incorporated, where he instituted new sales processes resulting in double digit revenue growth. From 2011 to 2013, as Vice President, Sales and Marketing at Ultra Electronics 3eTI, Mr. Suzuki helped grow year over year sales 23% in 2012. Earlier in his career, Mr. Suzuki was Senior Vice President, Sales at EF Johnson responsible for all domestic and international sales for their land mobile radio products. In this role, Mr. Suzuki created and implemented a strategic sales plan that grew the state, local and international businesses from $12 million to $72 million between 2004 and 2011 with a significantly enhanced subscriber business and expanded dealer channel sales.

Mr. Suzuki spent most of his early career at Ericsson where he held multiple positions of rising responsibility. Starting as Director of Product Development for Land Mobile Radio he executed new product development programs and marketed TDMA digital, data and network land mobile radio solutions globally, generating sales in excess of $160 million annually. Subsequently, as General Manager, Land Mobile Radio he implemented a strategic sales plan which grew the business by 60%, including a 50% increase in dealer channel sales. As General Manager of Ericsson's Service Solutions, Mr. Suzuki helped streamline the business and grow the division from $35 million to $85 million in two years. Ultimately, as Vice President, Supply for Ericsson, Mr. Suzuki managed a 400-person team that produced and delivered cellular base stations to customers in over 20 countries and generated over $1 billion in revenues. During his tenure, on time customer delivery performance rose dramatically to over 95%. Mr. Suzuki began his career as a Radio System Engineer, Land Mobile Radio at Motorola Canada. He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Ottawa and MBA from Duke University.

"I'm thrilled to join BK Technologies and lead the Company at such an exciting time," Suzuki commented. "I have tremendous regard for BK's strong reputation in the industry, deep customer relationships, and the tremendous progress the team has made evolving the product line, and I'm particularly excited to join the Company as it prepares to launch the BK 9000 product line. I believe that BK has the opportunity to play an important role in the future of the mobile communications industry and I look forward to working closely with the talented team to accelerate innovation, drive sales and create value for our customers and shareholders."

About BK Technologies

BK Technologies Corporation manufactures high-specification, American-made communications equipment of unsurpassed reliability and value for use by public safety professionals and government agencies. BK Technologies is honored to serve these heroes with reliable equipment when every moment counts. The Company's common stock trades on the NYSE American market under the symbol "BKTI". Maintaining its headquarters in West Melbourne, Florida, BK Technologies can be contacted through its web site at www.bktechnologies.com or directly at 1-800-821-2900.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains certain forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the "Safe Harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements concern the Company's operations, economic performance and financial condition and are based largely on the Company's beliefs and expectations. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors and risks, some of which have been, and may further be, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, include, among others, the following: changes or advances in technology; the success of our land mobile radio product line; successful introduction of new products and technologies, including our ability to successfully develop and sell our anticipated new multiband product and other related products in the planned new BKR Series product line; competition in the land mobile radio industry; supply chain disruptions and delays; general economic and business conditions, including federal, state and local government budget deficits and spending limitations, any impact from a prolonged shutdown of the U.S. Government, and the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic; the availability, terms and deployment of capital; reliance on contract manufacturers and suppliers; risks associated with fixed-price contracts; heavy reliance on sales to agencies of the U.S. Government and our ability to comply with the requirements of contracts, laws and regulations related to such sales; allocations by government agencies among multiple approved suppliers under existing agreements; our ability to comply with U.S. tax laws and utilize deferred tax assets; our ability to attract and retain executive officers, skilled workers and key personnel; our ability to manage our growth; our ability to identify potential candidates for, and consummate, acquisition, disposition or investment transactions, and risks incumbent to being a noncontrolling interest stockholder in a corporation; impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the companies in which the Company holds investments; impact of our capital allocation strategy; risks related to maintaining our brand and reputation; impact of government regulation; rising health care costs; our business with manufacturers located in other countries, including changes in the U.S. Government and foreign governments' trade and tariff policies, as well as any further impact resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic; our inventory and debt levels; protection of our intellectual property rights; fluctuation in our operating results and stock price; acts of war or terrorism, natural disasters and other catastrophic events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic; any infringement claims; data security breaches, cyber-attacks and other factors impacting our technology systems; availability of adequate insurance coverage; maintenance of our NYSE American listing; risks related to being a holding company; and the effect on our stock price and ability to raise equity capital of future sales of shares of our common stock. Certain of these factors and risks, as well as other risks and uncertainties, are stated in more detail in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020 and in the Company's subsequent filings with the SEC. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release, and the Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

Company Contact:

IMS Investor Relations

John Nesbett/Jennifer Belodeau

bktechnologies@imsinvestorrelations.com

(203) 972-9200

SOURCE: BK Technologies Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656216/BK-Technologies-Appoints-Mobile-Communications-Industry-Veteran-John-Suzuki-as-Chief-Executive-Officer


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Pacific Biosciences of California, Inc. (PACB), a provider of high-quality, long-read sequencing platforms, Tuesday reported preliminary second-quarter revenue of around $30.5 million, a growth of around 78 percent from last year.



The company also announced a deal to acquire Omniome for upfront consideration of approximately $600 million. The consideration consists of 9.4 million shares of PacBio common stock and $300 million in cash.



The overall transaction is valued at approximately $800 million, including an additional $200 million in cash and stock payable in connection with the achievement of certain milestones.



The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies. The deal is expected to close later this quarter, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.



Omniome is a San Diego-based developer of highly differentiated, proprietary short-read sequencing platform capable of delivering high accuracy.



Pacific Biosciences expects the integration of the complementary technologies will enable it to dramatically expand its market opportunity for sequencing in novel ways.



In connection with the proposed acquisition, PacBio has entered into a definitive agreement to sell approximately 11.2 million shares of PacBio common stock in a private placement transaction at a price of $26.75 per share.



The aggregate gross proceeds to the Company would be around $300 million, with commitments from a premier syndicate of life sciences investors. The closing is subject to customary closing conditions, as well as the closing of the Omniome acquisition.



The company is expected to release its full financial results for the second quarter on August 3, 2021.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

PACIFIC BIOSCIENCES OF CALIFORNIA-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Company maintains quarterly dividend payout - for 41 consecutive quarters

Ottawa, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - C-COM Satellite Systems Inc. (TSXV: CMI) (OTCQB: CYSNF), a leading global provider of commercial grade mobile auto-deploying satellite antenna systems, announced today its financial results for the second quarter ended May 31, 2021.

The Company generated revenues of $836,734 and a net loss after taxes of $219,203, or -1 cent per share. This compares with revenues of $1,061,665 and a net loss after taxes of $466,928, or -1 cent per share as reported in 2020.

The year-to date net income for fiscal 2021 has increased to $1.2 million, as compared to a net loss of $0.7 million for the same period last year.

The year-to-date gain in profitability for fiscal 2021 has led to a 7.6% increase in the Company's working capital. The Q2 2021 working capital has increased to $24,179,758 from $22,472,963 as of November 30, 2020.

The Company paid out $503,476 in dividends during the second quarter. The Company has maintained its quarterly dividend payout while continuing to innovate and invest in the next generation of advanced antenna products.

The Company also announced the payment of an eligible quarterly dividend in the amount of $0.0125 per common share payable on August 17, 2021 to all shareholders of record as of August 3, 2021. Based on the closing price of $2.88 per share on July 19th, 2021, this dividend represents a yield of 1.7% on an annualized basis. This is the Company's 41st consecutive quarterly dividend.

"With worldwide markets struggling to activate a more normal pace in the face of new waves of COVID variants, we're still having to weather an environment of weaker sales. I am, however, cautiously optimistic about future demand given the roll-out of COVID vaccination programs and pent-up demand for our products. Meanwhile we are well positioned with a healthy balance sheet and extensive inventory to help us face the evolving challenges," said Leslie Klein, President and CEO of C-COM Satellite Systems Inc.

"C-COM remains committed to an extensive R&D effort to develop the next generation electronically steered phased array antenna technologies. In May 2021 we announced that we had successfully tested our latest phased array antenna prototype over the Telesat Anik F3 satellite-a 1024-element Ka band version which exceeded performance expectations. C-COM was able to stream video, surf the net, perform speed tests and conduct an uninterrupted video conference over WebEx. Our goal is to develop a world market leading product line based on this technology for both fixed and mobile applications," Klein concluded.

About C-COM Satellite Systems Inc.

C-COM Satellite Systems Inc. is a pioneer and world leader in the design, development, and manufacture of transportable and mobile satellite-based antenna systems. The Company has developed proprietary, auto-acquisition controller technology for rapid antenna pointing to a satellite with just the press of a button, enabling Broadband Internet via Satellite across a wide range of market applications worldwide, including regions unserved or underserved by terrestrial access technologies.

C-COM has sold more than 8,500 antenna systems, in over 100 countries, through a dedicated dealer network that provides service to a wide range of vertical markets such as Oil & Gas Exploration, Military Communications, Disaster Management, SNG, Emergency Communications, Cellular Backhaul, Telemedicine, Mobile Education, Government Services, Mobile Banking, and others. The Company's iNetVu brand is synonymous with high quality, reliability, and cost-effectiveness.

C-COM is in late-stage development of a potentially revolutionary Ka-band, electronically steerable, modular, conformal, flat panel phased array antenna. In cooperation with the University of Waterloo, C-COM is engaged in the design of this unique antenna with the intent of providing low-cost, high-throughput mobility applications over satellite for land, airborne and maritime verticals. For additional information please visit www.c-comsat.com

iNetVu is a registered trademark of C-COM Satellite Systems Inc.

The Company is publicly traded on the Canadian Venture Exchange (TSXV: CMI) and on the US OTC Exchange (OTCQB: CYSNF).



INVESTOR RELATIONS

C-COM Satellite Systems Inc.

Tel: (613) 745-4110 ext. 4950

Fax: (613) 745-7144

lklein@c-comsat.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.

Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Statements about C-COM's expectations as to its performance after the COVID-pandemic and its intentions with respect to its Ka-band antenna version all contain forward-looking information. Several factors could cause actual events, performance or results to differ materially from the events, performance and results discussed in the forward-looking statements. The COVID pandemic may last longer than expected or C-COM's preparations may not translate into expected performance for any number of reasons, some of which are beyond C-COM Satellite Systems' control. Anticipated benefits of the new technology may not be realized, and new products and services may not be released or, if released may not gain market acceptance. Any of those events and others could influence future performance and C-COM Satellite Systems Inc.'s ability to achieve the results mentioned above. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and C-COM Satellite Systems Inc. does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Readers are directed to the risk factors associated with the business of C-COM Satellite Systems in the company's most recent MD&A available at www.SEDAR.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90667
New high grade silver-zinc-lead brownfields exploration project

Strategically located in the Silver Valley, Idaho bordering two large mines on each side of the Ranger-Page Project

No modern systematic exploration applied to the Ranger-Page Project

605 g/t Ag equivalent average grade from 63,098 tons mined at Crown Point and 386 g/t Ag equivalent average grade from 214,126 tons mined at Blackhawk (1) (2)

Patented lode claims with no pre-existing royalties in a top tier mining jurisdiction ranked #1 in the world under the Policy Perception Index (PPI)(3)

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - OrganiMax Nutrient Corp. (TSXV: KMAX) (FSE: L3U) (OTC: BNRJF) ("OrganiMax" or "the Company") is pleased to announce that, further to its press release dated February 10, 2021, the Company has entered into a definitive agreement dated July 20, 2021 (the "Definitive Agreement") with Blackhawk Exploration LLC (the "Vendor") for an option (the "Option") to earn up to a 100% interest in the Ranger-Page Project (the "Project") in the Silver Valley within the Coeur d'Alene Mining District in Idaho, USA.

OrganiMax's President & CEO, Director Brandon Rook commented, "The signing of the definitive agreement marks a major milestone in the Company's history. The Ranger-Page Project represents a significant exploration and development opportunity for the Company's shareholders as we turn our focus to high grade silver, zinc, and lead exploration in Idaho. Idaho, specifically the Silver Valley, is regarded as one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world. Permitting operations, both because of patented claims and Idaho's policies, make for an efficient and friendly place to explore and develop."

The Ranger-Page Project was never consolidated within one company early on and was owned periodically by up to five different groups, thereby limiting mining capabilities because of disjointed small scale mining operations. As a result of the small-scale operators and despite the Project being located between two prolific past producing mining properties, the Project has remained unavailable for exploration and development over the past 80 years due to claim boundary issues between Bunker Hill Mining (the Bunker Hill Mine) and ASARCO (the Page Mine), as well as the subsequent transfer of the property to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (the "EPA") and the closure of the area for mining in the late 1970's. Today, the Project area has been cleared of any environmental issues and for the first time, the Project area has been consolidated by one company to explore for the strong discovery potential that the Company believes exists.

Ranger-Page Project Highlights

Bordering Two Major Mines - Strategically located between two major mines, Bunker Hill (mined to 5,800 feet below surface) to the east and Page (developed to 3,400 feet) to the west. The Page Mine sourced ore grade mill feed from the Project (Blackhawk Mine) for 21 years but never mined deeper than 1,200 feet below elevation. The other 4 mines located on the Project produced ore from near surface to 200 feet below surface.





Strategically located between two major mines, Bunker Hill (mined to 5,800 feet below surface) to the east and Page (developed to 3,400 feet) to the west. The Page Mine sourced ore grade mill feed from the Project (Blackhawk Mine) for 21 years but never mined deeper than 1,200 feet below elevation. The other 4 mines located on the Project produced ore from near surface to 200 feet below surface. Historical Production - Five historic mines are located on the Project with underground mining data and surface geological data supporting high grade silver-zinc-lead mineralization present within the shallow, undeveloped mines. These mines remain open at depth, and laterally along strike, with no modern systematic exploration applied to the Project.





Five historic mines are located on the Project with underground mining data and surface geological data supporting high grade silver-zinc-lead mineralization present within the shallow, undeveloped mines. These mines remain open at depth, and laterally along strike, with no modern systematic exploration applied to the Project. High Grade Potential - 605 g/t Ag equivalent average grade from 63,098 tons mined at Crown Point and 386 g/t Ag equivalent average grade from 214,126 tons mined at Blackhawk (1) ( 2 ) .





605 g/t Ag equivalent average grade from 63,098 tons mined at Crown Point and 386 g/t Ag equivalent average grade from 214,126 tons mined at Blackhawk . Exploration Potential at Depth and Along Strike - The east-west striking veins at the Project have been partially explored with evidence that there is continuation throughout the Project area. Strong evidence that mineralization continues from where historical underground mining operations ceased.





The east-west striking veins at the Project have been partially explored with evidence that there is continuation throughout the Project area. Strong evidence that mineralization continues from where historical underground mining operations ceased. Secondary Source of Ore Feed - The Blackhawk Mine was a secondary source for ore grade mill feed to the Page Mine for 21 years. The Blackhawk Mine ceased being a lease mine to ASARCO's Page Mine in the mid-1900's.





The Blackhawk Mine was a secondary source for ore grade mill feed to the Page Mine for 21 years. The Blackhawk Mine ceased being a lease mine to ASARCO's Page Mine in the mid-1900's. Patented Lode Claims - Ownership of both surface and mineral rights. No federal permitting required; permitting with the State of Idaho is straightforward with patented claims.





Ownership of both surface and mineral rights. No federal permitting required; permitting with the State of Idaho is straightforward with patented claims. Top Tier Mining Jurisdiction - Idaho is an established top tier mining jurisdiction, ranking 1 st in the world under the Policy Perception Index ("PPI") and ranked 9 th in the world under the Investment Attractiveness Index as part of the Fraser Institute's 2020 Annual Survey (3) .





Idaho is an established top tier mining jurisdiction, ranking 1 in the world under the Policy Perception Index ("PPI") and ranked 9 in the world under the Investment Attractiveness Index as part of the Fraser Institute's 2020 Annual Survey . Established and Nearby Infrastructure - Favorable infrastructure nearby, located 94km east of Spokane, Washington, approximately 1km south of the Interstate 90 highway, including full access to power, water and full industrial infrastructure, which includes fabrication facilities and a highly experienced underground mining work force.





Favorable infrastructure nearby, located 94km east of Spokane, Washington, approximately 1km south of the Interstate 90 highway, including full access to power, water and full industrial infrastructure, which includes fabrication facilities and a highly experienced underground mining work force. Mill Nearby - One flotation mill located within 10km of the Project. Four-hour drive to the Trail, BC smelter to process concentrate.





One flotation mill located within 10km of the Project. Four-hour drive to the Trail, BC smelter to process concentrate. No Royalties - No pre-existing royalties on the Project.





No pre-existing royalties on the Project. 3D Geological Model in Progress - A 100-year detailed map folio from the Project, the Page Mine and the Bunker Hill Mine will be incorporated into a 3D geological model that will add significant value to future exploration and development of the Project.





A 100-year detailed map folio from the Project, the Page Mine and the Bunker Hill Mine will be incorporated into a 3D geological model that will add significant value to future exploration and development of the Project. Experienced Management - Operations team in Idaho with deep roots into the area.

Transaction Terms

The Company may earn a 75% interest in the Project by paying to the Vendor US$650,000 and incurring US$3,000,000 of exploration expenditures over 4 years. Upon acquiring a 75% interest the Company will have the right to either: a) acquire the remaining 25% interest by making a one-time payment of US$2,250,000 in cash or subject to regulatory approval in cash and/or a combination of cash and shares; or b) enter into a joint venture with the Vendor for the further development of the Project.

Sources:

AgEq assumptions: Silver price of US$26.00/oz Ag; Zinc price of US$1.20/lb Zn; Lead price of US$0.90/lb Pb; and Copper price of US$4.00/lb Cu. Source: US Bureau of Mines, Western Field Operations Centre, Spokane, Washington. Source: 2020 Fraser Institute Mining Survey.

Qualified Person

Timothy Mosey, B.Sc., M.Sc., SME, a Qualified Person (the "Qualified Person") as such term is defined by National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the technical data and geological information reported in this news release. The Qualified Person has not completed sufficient work to verify the historic information on the Ranger-Page Project. however, the Qualified Person assumes that sampling and analytical results were completed to industry standard practices. The information provides an indication of the exploration potential of the Ranger-Page Project but may not be representative of expected results.

About OrganiMax Nutrient Corp.

OrganiMax Nutrient Corp. (TSXV: KMAX) is an exploration company that has a 100%-owned lithium and potassium bearing salar complex of mineral concessions in the Central Mexican Plateau located in the states of Zacatecas, and San Luis Potosi. Regional geophysical work has indicated that the depths of the salar basins may be much greater than previously thought, making the salars highly prospective for large brine aquifers to be discovered at depth. The Company is targeting Sulfate of Potash ("SOP") and Lithium Carbonate ("LCE") and boron for both the domestic and international markets.

The Company has announced a maiden sediment mineral resource estimate ("MRE") of both lithium and potassium at its three salars. Highlights include:

120 million tonnes (Mt) of Inferred Mineral Resources grading 4.6% potassium (K) and 380 ppm lithium (Li);

Continuous high-lithium portion of La Salada salar containing 7 Mt grading 1,490 ppm Li;

Contained 12.3 Mt of SOP and 243,000 tonnes of LCE;

Sampling is restricted to 5 metre depths in most areas therefore there is good exploration potential to increase the Mineral Resource at depth and also extending the sampling to the edge of the salar basins where sampling has not taken place;

Geophysical surveys completed suggest there is potential for additional similar layers of potassium or lithium enriched material to be found under the current pitting/drilling;

Recent regional geophysical work has indicated that the depths of the salar basins may be much greater than previously thought, making the salars highly prospective for large brine aquifers to be discovered at depth.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of OrganiMax Nutrient Corp.,

"Brandon Rook"

Brandon Rook, President and Chief Executive Officer, Director

For further information please contact us at:

604-800-4710 or

info@organimax.com

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

Completion of the transaction contemplated by the Definitive Agreement is subject to a number of conditions and there can be no assurance that the contemplated transaction will be completed as proposed or at all. Investors are cautioned that any information released or received with respect to the contemplated transactions may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the securities of the Company should be considered highly speculative.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90670
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Wealth Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: WML) (OTCQB: WMLLF) (SSE: WMLCL) (FSE: EJZN) (the "Company" or "Wealth"), announces it has shifted its license portfolio in both the Atacama and Ollague Projects. This shift was conducted to best reflect management's conversations with local stakeholders, geological prospectivity and to position the Company for easier future permitting efforts.

Atacama Project

Wealth Minerals has tailored its license footprint in the Atacama Salar. The Company has reconfigured its original 46,200 hectares license package. The Company has moved away from licenses which have low prospectivity for shallow brines, as determined by past geophysical work by the Company. Additionally, the Company no longer has licenses which cover the Laguna Cejar, a topographical feature important to local indigenous peoples. Wealth notes that the new license hectares package contain the best geophysical anomalies for potential shallow and deep brine recovery.

Management believes this move is in the best interests of the Company and local stakeholders, and Management anticipates that future permitting work from various Chilean agencies, Company dialog with local indigenous peoples, and total license holding costs will be eased due to this corporate action.

Additionally, the Company has expanded its license footprint in the east of the Atacama Salar next to Highway 23, previously referred to as the "Harry Project" (see press release February 11, 2019). The original Harry Project was 7,900 hectares, to which has been added 3,500 hectares. The Company has entered into an arm's length property purchase agreement for the acquisition of this additional 3,500 hectares license position (the "Harry Agreement"). Upon approval, the Company will issue 1,290,000 common shares of Wealth to the vendor. Completion of the Harry Agreement is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.

In total, the entire Wealth Minerals' claim portfolio in the Atacama Salar is 46,200 hectares, which is the same as the original position acquired by Wealth, and is a major position on par in size with state-company CORFO, which currently hosts Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (SQM) and Albemarle Corporation who collectively account for a fourth of global lithium production here.

The Company has superimposed its geophysical work onto the license map (below in Maps 1 and 2). The geophysical data identified very high conductivity (very low resistivity) zones (as denoted by pink and red colors), which are interpreted to represent porous media with high-salinity fluids (potentially lithium-bearing brines).

Updated License Map 1, Deep Anomaly (approximately 800m below surface)



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4437/90691_figure1.jpg

Updated License Map 2, Shallow Anomaly (approximately 100m below surface)



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4437/90691_figure2.jpg

Ollague Project

The Ollague Salar (previously referred to as "Vapor") is in northern Chile (see press release February 11, 2019) and the Company has added to its existing claim portfolio an additional 2,100 hectares for a total of 6,420 hectares. The Company has entered into an arm's length property purchase agreement (the "Ollague Agreement") for the acquisition of this additional 2,100 hectares license position. Upon approval, the Company will issue 1,210,000 common shares of Wealth to the vendor. Completion of the Ollague Agreement is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.

Recent drilling activity by a peer company in the area returned lithium grades up to 480 Li mg/l. Readers are cautioned that the properties held by a peer company are adjacent properties and that Wealth has no interest in or right to acquire any interest in any part of the properties and that mineral deposits on adjacent or similar properties are not in any way indicative of mineral deposits on Wealth's position in the Ollague Salar.

Wealth has interpreted past geophysical work to identify shallow zones of very low electric resistivity (Map 3), which are the most obvious targets for lithium bearing brines to be tested with drilling (see press release of February 28, 2019).

Map 3, Ollague License Area with Pink Color Highlighting Interpreted Area of Shallow Anomaly (less than 400m below surface) Showing Resistivity Less than 1 ohm.m



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/4437/90691_64a499c4e4f4babf_006full.jpg

Hendrik van Alphen, CEO of Wealth, commented: "Our Company has a fantastic asset portfolio in Chile and we have analyzed and acted the best way to create value for our shareholders while taking into account the interests of our wider range of stakeholders. I look forward to updating you on our progress."

About Wealth Minerals Ltd.

Wealth is a mineral resource company with interests in Canada, Mexico and Chile. The Company's main focus is the acquisition and development of lithium projects in South America. To date, the Company has positioned itself to work alongside existing producers in the prolific Atacama salar, where the Company has a substantial license package.

Lithium market dynamics and a rapidly increasing metal price are the result of profound structural issues with the industry meeting anticipated future demand. Wealth is positioning itself to be a major beneficiary of this future mismatch of supply and demand. The Company also maintains and continues to evaluate a portfolio of precious and base metal exploration-stage projects.

For further details on the Company readers are referred to the Company's website (www.wealthminerals.com) and its Canadian regulatory filings on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors of

WEALTH MINERALS LTD.

"Hendrik van Alphen"

Hendrik van Alphen

Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please contact:

Marla Ritchie

Phone: 604-331-0096 Ext. 3886 or 604-638-3886

E-mail: info@wealthminerals.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements and forward-looking information (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and U.S. securities legislation, including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, included herein including, without limitation, anticipated exploration program results from exploration activities, the Company's expectation that it will be able to enter into agreements to acquire interests in additional mineral properties, the discovery and delineation of mineral deposits/resources/reserves, the closing and amount of the Placement, and the anticipated business plans and timing of future activities of the Company, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that such statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are typically identified by words such as: "believe", "expect", "anticipate", "intend", "estimate", "postulate" and similar expressions, or are those, which, by their nature, refer to future events. The Company cautions investors that any forward-looking statements by the Company are not guarantees of future results or performance, and that actual results may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, including, operating and technical difficulties in connection with mineral exploration and development activities, actual results of exploration activities, the estimation or realization of mineral reserves and mineral resources, the timing and amount of estimated future production, the costs of production, capital expenditures, the costs and timing of the development of new deposits, requirements for additional capital, future prices of lithium, changes in general economic conditions, changes in the financial markets and in the demand and market price for commodities, lack of investor interest in the Placement, accidents, labour disputes and other risks of the mining industry, delays in obtaining governmental approvals, permits or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities, changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting mining operations, title disputes, the inability of the Company to obtain any necessary permits, consents, approvals or authorizations, including acceptance by the TSX-V, required for the Placement, the timing and possible outcome of any pending litigation, environmental issues and liabilities, and risks related to joint venture operations, and other risks and uncertainties disclosed in the Company's latest interim Management Discussion and Analysis and filed with certain securities commissions in Canada. All of the Company's Canadian public disclosure filings may be accessed via www.sedar.com and readers are urged to review these materials, including the technical reports filed with respect to the Company's mineral properties.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements in this news release or incorporated by reference herein, except as otherwise required by law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90691
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Oculus VisionTech Inc. (TSXV: OVT) (OTCQB: OVTZ) (FSE: USF1), an emerging data compliance innovator, through its brand, ComplyTrust, today announced the latest v1.0.1 release of the "Forget-Me-Yes" (FMY) data privacy solution.

This latest software release incorporates an Acknowledgement of Deletion Intent (ADI) feature providing a secure DSAR proof-of-deletion for both the Data Subject and the request-processing Data Collector/Steward.

"Forget-Me-Yes" (FMY) is ComplyTrust's Software-as-a-Service application for organizational and individual Right-to-be-Forgotten (RtbF) and Right-of-Erase (RoE) data privacy compliance. The "Forget-Me-Yes" secure Zero-Knowledge platform provides single-source capability of continuous compliance by incorporating automated policy-driven re-query services that guarantees a Data Subject's requested RtbF/RoE data remains 'forgotten' over the life of their FMY subscription.

"We are excited to announce that FMY now incorporates the Acknowledgement of Deletion Intent (ADI) feature," said Michael Johnson, co-founder at ComplyTrust. "ADI provides secure 3rd party auditability, protecting all parties within the DSAR request-for-deletion process."

Running within the global AWS cloud infrastructure, FMY provides a cost-effective, elastic, resilient, scalable and secure platform for CCPA, CDPA, GDPR, LGPD and SB220 data subject privacy compliance management. FMY's cloud-native microservice architecture, is available on a monthly subscription-basis for Salesforce organizations structured DSAR processing data queries.

"The Forget-Me-Yes data privacy platform has helped us streamline the DSAR request workflow, while saving us both time and money as data privacy compliance continues to become a more prevalent and prominent factor in protecting our Salesforce clients", said Jonathan Castelo, VP Development and Senior Partner at Corrao Group.

As part of the Oculus ongoing business strategy to consistently protect and provide value to customers and shareholders alike, ComplyTrust recently received USPTO public confirmation of their ComplyTrust and Forget-Me-Yes trademark registrations on July 13, 2021.

To more information and to request a Forget-Me-Yes demonstration, please visit https://complytrust.com/ today.

About Corrao Group

The Corrao Group https://corraogroup.com/ has helped hundreds of Salesforce customers customize the platform to their business in order to maximize their Salesforce investment. They have been providing custom Salesforce consulting services including configuration, development, implementation, integration, analytics and ongoing support for Sales, Service, and Marketing Clouds since 2002.

Learn more about the Corrao Group at https://www.corraogroup.com/.

About ComplyTrust

ComplyTrust Inc. https://complytrust.com/, a 100% wholly-owned subsidiary of Oculus VisionTech, is specifically focused on providing enterprise organizations and individuals with secure data privacy tools that provide sustained and continuous global regulatory compliance of data subject rights. Headquartered in San Diego, California, ComplyTrust was founded by industry veteran storage technology experts and is operated by an experienced management team.

Learn more about ComplyTrust at https://complytrust.com/.

About Oculus VisionTech

Oculus VisionTech Inc. (OVT), www.ovtz.com, is a development-stage technology company focused on cyber security and data privacy compliance solutions for Enterprise business customers. With offices in San Diego, California and Vancouver, British Columbia, the company is currently expanding its' new ComplyTrust, www.complytrust.com, product suite which includes the ComplyScan cloud backup reporting tool and Forget-Me-Yes B2B data privacy Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform, optimizing CCPA, CDPA, GDPR, LGPD, SB220 and other regulatory compliance legislation for Salesforce organizations worldwide. OVTZ's legacy Cloud-DPS digital content protection solution implements invisible forensic watermarking technology that seamlessly embeds imperceptible tracking components into documents and video-frame content that enables tamper-proof legal auditability for intellectual property protection.

Learn more about Oculus at www.ovtz.com or follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/OculusVT) or Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Oculus VisionTech/ ) .

For further information, contact:

Anton Drescher

Telephone: (604) 685-1017

Fax: (604) 685-5777

Website: http://ovtz.com/

TSXV: https://money.tmx.com/en/quote/OVT

US OTC Markets (OTCQB): https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/OVTZ/security

Berlin Borse: https://www.boerse-berlin.com/index.php/Shares?isin=US67575Y1091

Frankfurt Borse: https://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/equity/oculus-visiontech

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release contains forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities laws (collectively, "forward-looking statements"), including the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements in this news release which are not purely historical are forward-looking statements and include any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Such forward-looking statements include, among others, statements as to the intended uses of the proceeds received from the Offering. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by words such as "pro forma", "plans", "expects", "may", "should", "budget", "schedules", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", "potential" or variations of such words including negative variations thereof and phrases that refer to certain actions, events or results that may, could, would, might or will occur or be taken or achieved. Actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statements due to numerous factors including risks and uncertainties relating to, among others, the change of business focus of the management of Oculus, the inability of Oculus to pursue its current business objectives, the ability of the Company to obtain any required governmental, regulatory or stock exchange approvals, permits, consents or authorizations required, including TSXV final acceptance of the Offering and any planned future activities, and obtain the financing required to carry out its planned future activities. Other factors such as general economic, market or business conditions or changes in laws, regulations and policies affecting the Company's industry, may also adversely affect the future results or performance of the Company. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and Oculus assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements, or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Although Oculus believes that the beliefs, plans, expectations and intentions contained in this news release are reasonable, there can be no assurance those beliefs, plans, expectations, or intentions will prove to be accurate.

Investors should consider all of the information set forth herein and should also refer to the risk factors disclosed in Oculus' periodic reports filed from time to time with the United States Securities Exchange Commission and Canadian securities regulators. These reports and Oculus' public filings are available at www.sec.gov in the United States and www.sedar.com in Canada.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90695
DGAP-News: Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc.

Cooper Standard Announces Date for Release of Second Quarter 2021 Results, Provides Details for Management Conference Call



20.07.2021 / 14:30

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.





Cooper-Standard Holdings Inc. (NYSE: CPS) expects to release its financial results for the second quarter 2021 on Wednesday, August 4 after market close. The Company's earnings results will be posted to the Cooper Standard website ( http://www.ir.cooperstandard.com) once released.

Cooper Standard will host a conference call on Thursday, August 5 at 9 a.m. ET. The Company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Edwards and Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Banas will discuss the financial results, provide a general business update and respond to investor questions.

A link to the live webcast of the call (listen only) and presentation materials will be available on Cooper Standard's Investor Relations website at http://www.ir.cooperstandard.com.

To participate by phone, callers in the United States and Canada should dial toll-free 877-374-4041 (international callers dial 253-237-1156) and provide the conference ID 7365064 or ask to be connected to the Cooper Standard conference call. Representatives of the investment community will have the opportunity to ask questions after the presentation. Callers should dial in at least five minutes prior to the start of the call.

Individuals unable to participate during the call may visit the investors' portion of the Cooper Standard website ( http://www.ir.cooperstandard.com) for a replay of the webcast.

About Cooper Standard

Cooper Standard, headquartered in Northville, Mich., is a leading global supplier of sealing and fluid handling systems and components for diverse transportation and industrial markets. Cooper Standard employs approximately 25,000 people globally and operates in 21 countries around the world. For more information, please visit www.cooperstandard.com.

###

CPS_F

Media Contact

Chris Andrews

+1 248-596-6217

candrews@cooperstandard.com

Analysts Contact

Roger Hendriksen

+1 248-596-6465

roger.hendriksen@cooperstandard.com

https://www.cooperstandard.com/

News Source: News Direct
CAMBRIDGE, MA / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / IIOT-OXYS, Inc. (OTC PINK:ITOX) announced the execution of a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with a strategic South American Structural Health Monitoring start-up.

Cliff Emmons, CEO of IIOT-OXYS, Inc., stated, "This company has developed and deployed a structural health monitoring (SHM) system for bridges which is also applicable to mining infrastructure. The company and its innovative leader, a subject matter expert (SME) in the field of structural health monitoring, has formed strategic and business relationships with government agencies, a prominent university, and an engineering consultancy contracted by both the government and private industry within the South American country in which it is established. This NDA is the first step of the engagement process with this strategic partner. It establishes a path for collaboratively pursuing both government and commercial contracts, collaborations outside the U.S. (and U.S. with their SHM SME leader, and access to potential co-marketing and co-development of SHM system technology. We look forward to partnering with their technology-savvy leadership to see where our edge computing and machine learning algorithms will add the most value to both our and their customers' SHM needs."

This marks the third such agreement with a structural health monitoring focused organization, for a total of six new NDAs in our SHM and smart manufacturing sectors this year. We are excited the leader of this company saw our successful New England DOT Bridge Monitoring Pilot completed in the late summer of 2020 and our ability to attract top academic institutions focused on SHM to partner with us, as complementary to their technology and successful proof of concept on their railway bridge infrastructure project. This partnership will include exploring possible acquisition of the company or purchase of its assets. Together with this company and our strong collaboration with Aingura IIoT, S.L. we are positioned to pursue contracts in SHM worldwide. In the U.S., we have positioned our company to potentially tap into the $2 Trillion USD infrastructure legislation that is pending rollout from the Biden administration. Major news outlets have reported that the pending infrastructure legislation includes $40 billion USD for bridge repairs and improvements. Other reports state that companies such as ours that are involved with connected infrastructure, which includes connected roads and bridges and the underlying "smart" sensor and software technology, are poised to benefit from the proposed legislation. Independent research shows that the world-wide Structural Health Monitoring market size will reach $2.9 billion USD by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 14.1%. We expect our successful Bridge Monitoring Pilot, combined with the technical strength of our internal team, our current commercial partner, Aingura IIoT, S.L., and this new partner will lead to strong new business in due time.", continued Mr. Emmons.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements that reflect Management's current views about future events and financial performance. Forward-looking statements often contain words such as 'expects,' 'anticipates,' 'intends,' or 'believes.' Our forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and events to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Risks and uncertainties that could adversely affect us include, without limitation, the loss of major customers, our failure to obtain new contracts, our inability to patent products or processes, our infringement of patents held by others, our inability to finance our business and the other risks and uncertainties that are discussed in our most recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made only as of the date of this news release. We undertake no obligation to update our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

About Us

IIOT-OXYS, Inc. is a technology company at the intersection of IIoT, AI & Machine Learning, Edge Computing and Manufacturing Operations. We provide actionable mission-critical insights for the Medical/Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Defense, and Structural Health, and other industries. IIOT-OXYS, Inc. edge computing open-source hardware and proprietary ML algorithms employ our Minimally Invasive Load Monitoring (MILM) technology to simply gather data and gain insights to monitor, scope, move from preventive to predictive maintenance, and even optimize development and manufacturing processes. For additional information visit www.oxyscorp.com

CONTACT:

Clifford L. Emmons

CEO

IIOT-OXYS, Inc.

contact@oxyscorp.com

www.oxyscorp.com

SOURCE: IIOT-OXYS, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656214/IIOT-OXYS-Inc-Enters-into-NDA-with-a-South-American-Structural-Health-Monitoring-Start-Up
Company Maintains Profitability over $1 Million Despite Effects of COVID

New Company Superstores on Target for Completion in 2021

Over the Next 12 Months, Company Expects to Add $5 Million in Revenue and Over $500,000 in Operating Profits from New Stores

MIAMI, FL / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / OneMart grocery and retail stores, and Builders Depot, in the Caribbean today announced its results for the third quarter, which ended on May 31, 2021.

Although government pandemic regulations were put into effect during the first quarter, OMHI retained all employees and was able to fully-service all customers, either in-store or via delivery, and provide them with the high-quality goods and services they expect from OneMart.

The company greatly expanded its marketing initiatives during the third quarter and nine months ended May 31, 2021 and is already seeing increases in its business from these programs, especially in the charter boat and luxury yacht market; historically, this is the largest expansion program undertaken by the company.

During the nine months ended May 31, 2021, OMHI announced the construction of two new stores in the British Virgin Islands; in addition to these new stores, management is considering four additional sites for new superstores. With its new technology subsidiary, Rydeum Caribbean, Inc., and its new stores, the nine months ended May 31, 2021, has seen the largest expansion program in company history. Management anticipates increased revenue from these activities by the end of the fiscal 2022.

THIRD QUARTER/NINE MONTHS RESULTS

The company's nine months sales performance compared to fiscal year ended August 31, 2020, was lower by 4% despite the negative effects of Covid-19 pandemic on the economy during the nine months reporting period. The third quarter reflected less than 1% difference. This demonstrates the resilient nature of the business even during such a pandemic.

For the third quarter ended May 31, 2021, sales revenue reached $7,361,292 as compared to $7,421,909 for the same prior year period; for the nine months ended May 31, 2021, revenue reached $20,629,528 as compared to $21,493,749 for the same prior year period.

The net Income for nine months which exceeded $1 million, reflected a 5% decrease over the previous year because of the COVID pandemic effect.

For the nine months ended May 31, 2021, shares were 47,101,422, as compared to 44,400,596 the same prior year period.

BUSINESS UPDATE

Significant progress has been made at both new stores under construction. The construction of OMHI's new 34,000 square foot supermarket in Fat Hogs Bay (East End) British Virgin Islands (BVI) is expected to be completed by the end of 2021. The store will be similar to the company's first store, but larger so it can offer even more goods, including food, clothing, appliances, furniture, electronics and general household items - everything shoppers need for one stop shopping. It will provide adequate parking compared to its competitors in the area.

The company's new store concept, OM Builders Depot, will be in Port Purcell, near the main port and the capital Road Town on Tortola, BVI. OM Builders Depot will comprise 15,000 square feet and will provide building materials, hardware and tools, home appliances, cement, paint and plumbing supplies to builders and contractors. White sand, gravel, rebars, blocks and lumber will be available for purchase outside the building.

OMHI has signed a long-term lease on an acre of property for the Builders Depot store - its land costs are minimal, and the company expects significant profits and growth from this store. Builders Depot is 200 feet from the first OneMart and several miles from the new store, where construction is underway. OM Builders Depot building, and inventory will cost $3 million. This store is expected to add $5 million in sales to the OMHI Group in the first 9 months (December 2021 - August 2022) and over $500,000 dollars in operating profits.

Rydeum Caribbean, Inc. has a regional exclusive software license and IT managed services agreement with Rydeum Technologies, Inc., based in Atlanta, GA. These exclusive agreements allow Rydeum Caribbean, Inc. to efficiently launch LODE-TECH in Jamaica and in 27 additional Caribbean countries. Rydeum Technologies, Inc. is in the process of applying for three U.S. patents for a novel decentralized architecture which will have the ability to power multiple Local On-Demand Economies, allowing local businesses to easily onboard and enable customers to obtain transportation, delivery, and professional services via a single mobile app.

OMHI will vertically integrate Local-On-Demand Economy (LODE) technologies to power the purchase and delivery of retail merchandise and services for all customers throughout the Caribbean. Via Rydeum's DoGetGo app, customers will be able to shop at the company's stores from their smartphones have their purchases delivered; the app also enables both residents and visitors to get around the island by car. On July 12, 2021, OMHI announced Rydeum Caribbean Inc. has signed a five-year contract with the Jamaican Union of Travelers Association (JUTA) and its 12,000 members.

"In spite of the pandemic, which severely hurt the Caribbean economy, our results demonstrate our team's ability to maintain the provision of our premier service to all of our customers," said Mark Vanderpool President & CEO of OM Holdings International, Inc. "With our new marketing and buying initiatives, we anticipate improved results by year-end."

"We are launching DoGetGo in Jamaica, and we expect to roll the app out throughout the Caribbean," Mr. Vanterpool continued. "We are confident the mobile app will significantly increase business from our current customers and from new customers, and we expect to see additional B2B and B2C transactions. The technology agreement, DoGetGo, the JUTA contract, and the opening and operation of our new stores should make fiscal 2022 the beginning of dramatic growth for OMHI for years to come."

About OM Holdings International, Inc.

OM Holdings International, Inc. (OTC PINK:OMHI), founded in 1986 in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) by Mark Vanterpool, operates delivery services and grocery stores in the Caribbean, with a mobile application delivery platform that provides an expedient, contactless option for the transportation of people and essential goods. The company's storefront, OneMart, is the second-largest grocery store in the BVI. OHMI's delivery subsidiary, Rydeum, founded by Mark Hannah in 2019, has partnered with Jamacia's largest taxicab union to provide an Uber Eats delivery service model to Jamaican consumers. The company also provides lumber and other construction supplies to contractors throughout the Caribbean. For more information, please visit https://omholdingsinc.com/.

Forward-Looking Statements

With the exception of the historical information contained in this news release, the matters described herein, may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Statements preceded by, followed by or that otherwise include the words "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "intends," "projects," "estimates," "plans" and similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as "will," "should," "would," "may" and "could" are generally forward-looking in nature and not historical facts, although not all forward-looking statements include the foregoing. These statements, involve unknown risks and uncertainties that may individually or materially impact the matters discussed herein for a variety of reasons that are outside the control of the company, including, but not limited to, the company's ability to raise sufficient financing to implement its business plan, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company's business, operations and the economy in general, and the Company's ability to successfully develop and commercialize its proprietary products and technologies. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward- looking statements, as actual results could differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements contained herein. Readers are urged to read the risk factors set forth in the company's filings with the SEC, which are available at the SEC's website (www.sec.gov). The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Investor Relations

Michael J. Porter, President

Porter, LeVay & Rose, Inc.

T: (973) 865-9357

E: mike@plrinvest.com

LinkedIn@PlRinvest

SOURCE: OM HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL, INC.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656234/OM-Holdings-International-Inc-OMHI-Reports-Continued-Profitability-In-Third-QuarterNine-Months-Results
- The expanding demand for bleaching agents, especially across the paper and pulp industry, will help in increasing the growth rate of the sodium borohydride market between 2019 and 2027

- The global market for sodium borohydride is expected to expand at a CAGR of 5.2 percent during the assessment period of 2019-2027

ALBANY, N.Y., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The escalating demand from various industries, including the packaging industry, pharmaceutical industry, packaging industry, and others will bring good growth prospects for the sodium borohydride market across the forecast period of 2019-2027. The increasing influence of sodium borohydride among a large number of sectors and businesses will prove to be a game-changer for the global market.

Sodium borohydride, also known as sodium tetrahydridoborate and sodium tetrahtdroborate, is an inorganic compound available in the form of an aqueous solution or white crystalline powder. It is helpful in a variety of technical and laboratory applications. The chemical formula of sodium borohydride is NaBH4. It is an affordable metal hydride that serves as an excellent reducing agent. It can also be used for storing hydrogen as it acts as a hydrogen carrier. The advantages associated with sodium borohydride will have a positive impact on the growth of the sodium borohydride market.

Strong expertise with attention to detail makes our market research reports stand apart. Request a sample now - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=16685

Transparency Market Research (TMR) has conducted an expansive analysis on all the factors associated with the sodium borohydride market. The TMR experts, according to their market analysis of sodium borohydride, expect it to record a CAGR of 5.2 percent across the assessment period of 2019-2027. The global market for sodium borohydride was pegged at US$ 1577 mn in 2018 and is prognosticated to reach a value of US$ 2498 mn by 2027, the end year of the forecast period.

The swelling demand for sodium borohydride across the healthcare sector will serve as an excellent growth-generating factor. The healthcare industry is evolving rapidly. Many countries are focusing on improving the healthcare infrastructure. This aspect will indirectly benefit the sodium borohydride market to a considerable extent. Such developments bode well for the growth of the sodium borohydride market.

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Key Findings of the Report

Heightening Need for Antibiotics to Add Extra Stars of Growth to the Sodium Borohydride Market

The growing awareness about the importance of antibiotics among a substantial chunk of the populace will bring considerable growth opportunities for the sodium borohydride market. The increasing prevalence of chronic diseases and other disorders is leading to an increase in the demand for antibiotics. As sodium borohydride is used expansively in the production of antibiotics, the global market will observe a profitable growth trajectory during the tenure of 2019-2027.

Research and Development Activities to Play a Major Role in the Growth of the Sodium Borohydride Market

The players in the sodium borohydride market always focus on research and development activities. These activities help the players derive new formulations and insights. All the activities eventually assist in boosting the revenues of the players in the sodium borohydride market, ultimately sowing the seeds of growth.

Buy Research Report on Sodium Borohydride Industry @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=16685<ype=S

Sodium Borohydride Market: Key Growth Drivers

The evolving role of sodium borohydride in fuel cell technology will invite profitable growth for the sodium borohydride market

The rise in the demand for vaccine development across the globe due to the COVID-19 outbreak has resulted in an increase in the demand for sodium borohydride, which brings good growth prospects.

The emergence of hydrogen as a sustainable energy alternative will invite exponential growth as sodium borohydride has good hydrogen storage capacity and is stable. Thus, the growing need for renewable energy around the globe will lay a red carpet of growth across the sodium borohydride market.

Chemicals & Materials Industry battles Tangible Impact of Economic and Cultural changes, Stay Updated on the Latest Trends in Chemicals & Materials Market @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/chemical-market-reports-2.html

About Transparency Market Research

TMR has a track record to provide ace market research solutions that has earned us the trust of our clients for their business intelligence needs. Serving 13 industry verticals with a database of over 1,000 reports and 1 million + data points, our expanse to provide market research solutions is exceptional. We deep dive for a thorough understanding of the subject, gather precise information, and then analyze it to present solutions that are par excellence.

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Transparency Market Research

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The 50 million project is planned to begin commercial operations in 2023.From pv magazine France. Legendre Energie, a subsidiary of the French group Legendre, has signed a 25-year concession agreement with the Malian Ministry of Economy and Finance for the construction of a 50 MW solar park in Fana, in western Mali's Koulikoro region. Construction on the facility is planned to start next year, with the start of commercial operations being planned for 2023. The plant is expected to generate 87 GWh per year of electricity and to feed the network of the country's state-owned utility, Electricite ...

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
NASHVILLE, TN / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Thermic Science International Corporation, formerly known as Omnicanna Health Solutions, Inc. aka Endocan Corporation. (WKN:A1W61J) (ISIN:US29271J1097) (OTC:ENDO), is proud to announce it has officially filed all required financials & reporting requirements ahead of schedule to bring the Company current and in compliance with the OTC Market Exchange and the new Amendments to Rule 15c2-11 before the September 2021 Deadline. as confirmed:

https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/ENDO/disclosure

Thermic Science now awaits processing and verifications from the OTC Markets Exchange. Once verified and processed by the OTC Markets, the Exchange will reflect and make the verified changes to the Company exchange status immediately to "Pink Verified and Current".

Thermic Science CFO Robert Kane stated, "We are already going over the filings with the OTC Markets, just as they normally do to work with Companies to help achieve their successes. We work through the updates, re-loads, and document processing with the Exchange, its financials and reporting requirements so we go step by step until its done."

Thermic Science President & CEO Raymond C. Dabney, confirmed, "This it! We did it! We should and will be Celebrating Everywhere, seems we will be soon enough! Compliance documents uploaded into the system to bring the company current and in compliance with the Amended Rule 15c2-11. But this is certainly it Guys, We Made It!

Confirmed, we are filed! We will continue communications with the OTC markets to complete the goal and see the Pink Current reporting status come to fruition. We can not get any closer than this, everything is filed and being processed now! Cheers! Stay Safe and Strong."

What is Rule 15c2-11?

First adopted nearly fifty years ago in 1971, long before the existence of electronic trading, Rule 15c2-11 was originally designed to deter fraudulent quoting activity by broker-dealers in OTC securities by requiring brokers to obtain and review specified information about the issuer before initiating a quoted market.

The SEC's recent amendments overhaul the Rule's existing framework, with the goal of enhancing investor protection and deterring deception in the OTC market through transparent and timely reporting. The amended Rule, which will be applicable in September 2021, will require OTC-traded companies to make current disclosure publicly available in order to have a publicly quoted market. The Rule also streamlines the pathway to the public market for companies meeting their disclosure requirements and allows OTC Markets Group to play a greater role in bringing companies on our markets.

Thermic Heating Paint and Portable Thermic Heating Units

Paint any wall, ceiling or floor into an infrared heating panel! Large sized Infrared heaters on low temperature on walls and ceilings are the future. Thermic Paint provides the highest infrared heat radiation and lowest energy consumption.

Portable Thermic heating units are coming soon: Get ready for the revolutionary portable heating unit that can change your life, the environment and your pocketbook. Actually, Thermic Paint holds a world record: It's the Infrared heating system with the lowest consumption needed to heat with a constant temperature. Large sized Infrared heaters on low temperature on walls and ceilings are the future. More than 50% of the required heat load can be saved with an efficient layout and intelligent control of the infrared heating system.

Portable Thermic Self-Generating Electrical Power Units

Right on time for the changing living environments and sporadic and emergency energy consumption: Thermic self-generating electrical power units can generate power for a wide variety of applications and uses, including cars, houses, streetlights, retail stores, agriculture grow operations, backup and primary power for computer networks, portable thermic heating units, lighting, TV's, stereos and more. The Company is excited to release the first generation of self-generating electrical power units to the public.

Renewable Thermic Solid-State Ceramic Cu2+ Battery Power Units

Renewable Thermic Solid-State Batteries are a thing of the future, and they are here now! Imagine electric cars, houses, campsites, buildings, electric bikes, portable battery-operated toys, radios, flashlights - the list goes on and on. The future is here with Thermic renewable batteries. This game-changing technology will revolutionize your power consumption and usage.

Thermic Graphene Concrete

Concrete Thermic Mix for any type of concrete: 96% compressive strength increase, 56% heat capacity increase and 150% water permeability reduction.

Electroluminescent Coating System

Asia goes wild over electroluminescent paint, Japan being the biggest buyer as evidenced by the wide variety of uses and media coverage.

The LitCoat Airbrush Paint System, ideal for use on cars, motorcycles, or bicycles, allows users to airbrush on LitCoat electroluminescent paint for an even application and coverage on almost any coverage or material. This airbrush paint system works similarly to many other systems for airbrushing paint; however, it is specialized for the application of LitCoat's electroluminescent varieties.

Lighting surfaces improves visibility and can be lifesaving, especially on clothing, motorcycles, bicycles, cars and helmets. It provides also functional lighting, and aesthetic lighting.

Automotive interior & exterior parts

Motorcycles

Aerospace

Helmets

Signage

Technical textile

Buildings

Houses

Bicycles

Clothing

About Thermic Coating Systems

Thermic Heating Paint Construction Applications (Current European market)

Thermic Heating Paint Portable Units (First Goal; USA targeted distribution)

Thermic Heating Fog Free Mirror and Basic Glass (USA & International release)

Thermic Portable Self-Generating Electrical Power Units (USA & International release)

Thermic Cu2+ Solid-State Ceramic Super Charge Renewable High-Performance Battery Units (USA & International release)

Thermic Agriculture (USA & International Agriculture Applications)

Concrete Thermic Mix for any type of concrete 96% Compressive strength increase, 56% Heat capacity increase and 150% Water permeability reduction.

Revolutionary heating with the advanced Thermic technology, infrared thermic paint systems and so much more. North American expansions through manufacturing and job opportunities pushes the CSi-EDP to continue to flourish, while creating jobs, educating the public on new Thermic heating advanced technologies and the implementation of such advanced technology worldwide. Not only a revolutionary key to the environment and heating industry, the profound effects on the agriculture industry, home heating and appliance applications are overwhelming. The Thermic business & medical applications are immense and with some infrastructure integration for large- and small-scale construction, you are changing the environment to the favor of many. The individual Thermic unit applications target so many different industry applications; only your lack of imagination will stop the flow of viable applications.

Please visit:

https://thermicpaint.com/

https://thermicpaint.com/shop

Cannabis Science Inc. Acquisition:

(formerly Cannabis Science OTC:CBIS)

Thermic Science International has begun updating the financials and accounting, reporting and filings to complete the process to complete the acquisition and share exchange transaction with CSi-EDP. The name change process has begun, company structure changes are underway, company management changes are underway, and the CSi-EDP shareholder first rights are underway.

Somewhat similar to the Cannabis Science structure before it went private, all Cannabis Science shareholders are on track to receive what Cannabis Science had been planning all along.

All shareholder notices on track to send out in the second quarter of 2021.

All shareholder certificates will be confirmed through the transfer agent.

All proposed share changes will be reclassified under the following structure changes: Preferred Shares (Voting Shares) Common Shares (Current Trading Shares) Common Class A (Cannabis Science New Shares)

About Thermic Science International (TSi)

Thermic Science International Corporation (OTC: ENDO) has recently acquired Cannabis Science Inc., (CSi-EDP), Thermic Coating Systems Ltd. (UK), and now, Litcoat Electroluminescent Paint Systems. The Company has voted to change its name to Thermic Science International. The firm is being coined the newest North American Entrepreneurial SPAC. Targeting the creation of a very strong corporate conglomerate SPAC themed CSi-EDP; Bringing it All Together & just as laid-out in the Harvard Award winning Cannabis Science CSi-EDP, as presented for four years in a row at the Harvard GHC Summit. A conglomerate SPAC Group designed to bring affordable and free education, traditional and entrepreneurial job creation, and cannabinoid drug development internationally.

About Omnicanna Health Solutions, Inc.

Omnicanna Health Solutions, Inc. is currently developing new natural hemp-based products based on innovative formulations to utilize the unique and potent benefits of the hemp plant. Medicinal properties of hemp have been known and applied for thousands of years. With the aid of scientific research, Omnicanna Health Solutions is translating such knowledge into development of effective hemp formulation-based health and wellness solutions as well as cosmeceutical, nutraceutical, and food brands throughout the world. The Company's health and wellness, nutritional, and cosmetics lines will address personal needs and will evolve with the introduction of new formulations and products, advancing the Company within the expanding multibillion-dollar global market.

Forward-Looking Statements

This Press Release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. A statement containing words such as 'anticipate,' 'seek,' intend,' 'believe,' 'plan,' 'estimate,' 'expect,' 'project,' or similar phrases may be deemed 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Some or all of the events or results anticipated by these forward-looking statements may not occur. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include the future U.S. and global economies, the impact of competition, and the Company's reliance on existing regulations regarding the use and development of cannabis-based drugs and products. The Company does not undertake any duty, nor does it intend to update the results of these forward-looking statements.

Contact Information:

Thermic Coating Systems Ltd.

www.thermicpaint.com

Anthony Spring

tony@thermicpaint.com

Cannabis Science Inc.

www.icannabinoid.com

www.cannabisscience.com

http://edp.cannabisscience.com/

Raymond C. Dabney

President & CEO

raymond.dabney@cannabisscience.com

Thermic Science International Corporation

Omnicanna Health Solutions, Inc.

ENDOCAN Corporation

www.Omnicanna.com

www.ihemp.omnicanna.com

Robert Kane, CFO

(910) 515-2917

info@Omnicanna.com

robert.kane@omnicanna.com

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SOURCE: Thermic Science International Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656254/Thermic-Science-Proudly-Files-All-Required-Financials-Report-Filings-Ahead-of-Schedule-to-Bring-the-Company-to-Pink-Current-Status-and-in-Compliance-with-the-OTC-Market-Reporting-Changes-the-New-Rule-15c2-11-Amendments-before-the-September-2021-Deadline
Management Forecasts Proforma Fiscal 2021 Revenue of USD$4.7M to USD$5.1M

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Kovo HealthTech Corporation (TSXV: KOVO) (the "Company" "Kovo") - a leader in healthcare technology and Revenue Cycle Management ("RCM") software and services - today provided initial 2021 guidance to advise it anticipates year-over-year organic revenue growth of 43% in 2021 versus the same period in the prior year.

Full Year 2021 Annualized Recurring Revenue Forecast of USD$4.7M to $5.1M

The Company expects fiscal revenue will be approximately 43% higher than in 2020 due to organic growth on its core RCM software and services business. On a consolidated basis, including its recent acquisition of Midwest Medical Billing, Service Inc., the Company is forecasting proforma revenue between USD$4,700,000 to USD$5,100,000 for the year ending December 31, 2021 - which it expects to translate into revenue growth in the range of 56% to 69% versus 2020.

In addition to anticipated continued revenue growth, the Company forecasts Adjusted EBITDA* to be approximately 10% of revenue in 2021 based on higher payroll expenses incurred as part of its increased investment in staffing based on the strength of its organic sales. In addition, the Company incurred higher professional fees as part of its public company listing in 2021. The Company expects these expenses to normalize over time as it scales operations for organic and acquisition growth for the foreseeable future.

"I am very proud of the progress we are making as an organization in onboarding new customers through our internal sales effort - and in providing strong client service and technology support," says Kovo CEO Greg Noble. "We believe clients are recognizing the value of our industry-leading sub 30 days cash conversion cycle, which delivers funds to our clients faster. We look forward to building on this success in 2021 through organic customer growth and accretive acquisitions, both of which provide consistent recurring revenue," he adds.

About Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)

Kovo HealthTech Corporation is a growing healthcare technology company that specializes in RCM services and software for US healthcare clinics, hospitals and private practices. RCM is a process used by healthcare providers in the US and globally to digitally track and manage patient care registration, services, billing and payments in a seamless way. Effective RCM practices are essential to ensure health care settings maintain the financial viability that allows them to provide ongoing quality care for their patients. The Company's focus is organic growth of its core RCM business and acquiring profitable RCM related businesses and systems within the US. Kovo optimizes acquired businesses by leveraging its over 20 years of operating experience and proprietary technology.

About Kovo HealthTech Corporation

Kovo is a leader in healthcare technology and Revenue Cycle Management services. Kovo creates, acquires and grows businesses to better the healthcare experience within the patient encounter continuum. To learn more about Kovo and to keep up-to-date on Kovo news, visit www.kovo.co.

For more information:

Greg Noble, CEO

investors@kovo.co

1-866-558-6777

Debra Quinn

deb@kovo.co

1-866-558-6777

Forward-Looking Information and Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking information") concerning the Company and its subsidiaries within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information may relate to the future financial outlook and anticipated events or results of the Company and may include information regarding the Company's financial position, business strategy, growth strategies, acquisition prospects and plans, addressable markets, budgets, operations, financial results, taxes, dividend policy, plans and objectives. Particularly, information regarding the Company's expectations of future results, performance, achievements, prospects or opportunities or the markets in which the Company operates is forward-looking information. In some cases, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "plans", "targets", "expects", "budgets", "scheduled", "estimates", "outlook", "forecasts", "projects", "prospects", "strategy", "intends", "anticipates", "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might", or "will" occur. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, intentions, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances contain forward-looking information. Statements containing forward-looking information are not historical facts but instead represent management's expectations, estimates and projections regarding future events or circumstances.

Many factors could cause the Company's actual results, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, or achievements that may be expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including, without limitation, those listed in the "Risk Factors" section of the final prospectus of the Company dated May 26, 2021. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements prove incorrect, actual results, performance, or achievements could vary materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained in this press release.

Forward-looking information, by its nature, is based on the Company's opinions, estimates and assumptions in light of management's experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors that the Company currently believes are appropriate and reasonable in the circumstances. Those factors should not be construed as exhaustive. Despite a careful process to prepare and review forward-looking information, there can be no assurance that the underlying opinions, estimates and assumptions will prove to be correct. These factors should be considered carefully, and readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking information. Although the Company bases its forward-looking information on assumptions that it believes were reasonable when made, which include, but are not limited to, assumptions with respect to the Company's future growth potential, results of operations, future prospects and opportunities, execution of the Company's business strategy, there being no material variations in the current tax and regulatory environments, future levels of indebtedness and current economic conditions remaining unchanged, the Company cautions readers that forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and that our actual results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which the Company operates may differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. In addition, even if the Company's results of operations, financial condition and liquidity, and the development of the industry in which it operates are consistent with the forward-looking information contained in this press release, those results or developments may not be indicative of results or developments in subsequent periods.

This press release makes reference to certain non-IFRS measures. These measures are not recognized measures under IFRS, do not have a standardized meaning prescribed by IFRS and are therefore unlikely to be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Rather, these measures are provided as additional information to complement those IFRS measures by providing further understanding of the Company's results of operations from management's perspective. The Company's definitions of non-IFRS measures used in this release may not be the same as the definitions for such measures used by other companies in their reporting. Non-IFRS measures have limitations as analytical tools and should not be considered in isolation nor as a substitute for analysis of the Company's financial information reported under IFRS. The Company uses non-IFRS financial measures, including "EBITDA", "Adjusted EBITDA" and "Adjusted EBITDA Margin" to provide investors with supplemental measures of its operating performance and to eliminate items that have less bearing on operating performance or operating conditions and thus highlight trends in its core business that may not otherwise be apparent when relying solely on IFRS financial measures. "EBITDA" means net income (loss) before amortization and depreciation expenses, finance and interest costs, and provision for income taxes. *"Adjusted EBITDA" adjusts EBITDA for stock-based compensation expense, transactional gains or losses on assets, asset impairment charges, interest income, net foreign exchange gains or losses, income tax expense or recovery, forgivable one-time government financial payments related to the COVID-19 pandemic ("PPP Loans"), and any transactional expenses. Specifically, the Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA, when viewed with the Company's results under IFRS and the accompanying reconciliations, provides useful information about the Company's business without regard to potential distortions. By eliminating potential differences in results of operations between periods caused by factors such as depreciation and amortization methods and restructuring, impairment and other charges, the Company believes that Adjusted EBITDA can provide a useful additional basis for comparing the current performance of the underlying operations being evaluated. The Company believes that securities analysts, investors and other interested parties frequently use non-IFRS financial measures in the evaluation of issuers. The Company's management also uses non-IFRS financial measures in order to facilitate operating performance comparisons from period to period.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important risk factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other risk factors not presently known to the Company or that the Company presently believes are not material that could also cause actual results or future events to differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking information. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information, which speaks only as of the date made (or as of the date they are otherwise stated to be made). Any forward-looking statement that is made in this press release speaks only as of the date of such statement.

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.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90731
Safety and tolerability data for Cohort 2 of the Discover Study reviewed by Data Safety Monitoring Board, allowing the study to proceed with the final cohort

Berwyn, Pennsylvania--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Annovis Bio, Inc. (NYSE American: ANVS), ("Annovis" or the "Company"), a clinical-stage drug platform company addressing Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and other neurodegenerative diseases, with data from two phase 2 studies showing its lead compound improves cognition in AD patients and motor function in PD patients, today announced that the Data Safety Monitoring Board (DSMB) has reviewed the safety and tolerability data for Cohort 2 of the Company's Phase 2 AD trial and has approved the study to proceed with Cohort 3, the final cohort of the study. Funding for this clinical research was provided by a grant from the National Institutes on Aging and the study is run by the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) at University of California San Diego School of Medicine.

Previously, Annovis Bio announced the DSMB approval to continue from Cohort 1 of the study, after it reviewed data from the first eight patients in the Phase 2 AD trial treated with ANVS401, the Company's lead compound, at a dosage of 60 milligrams (mg) per day. The safety evaluation of Cohort 2, conducted by the DSMB, reviewed data from an additional eight patients treated with ANVS401 at a dosage of 120 mg per day (2x60 mg) or placebo.

Douglas Galasko, Professor, Department of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine and Martin Farlow, MD, Professor and Vice Chairman of Research, Indiana University School of Medicine, are serving as Project Directors for the study.

"We are extremely pleased to have the DSMB's approval to move to our third and final cohort of our DISCOVER Phase 1/2 AD trial," stated Howard Feldman, MD, Director of the ADCS and Professor of Neurosciences at UC San Diego School of Medicine. "With Cohort 3 now open, without modification, our trial sites are now able to screen patients and are expected to reach full enrollment for this trial. We are encouraged by this trial's progress in evaluating multiple doses and effects on amyloid beta peptide production and clearance and are hopeful, looking forward to the final trial results."

The Phase 2 AD trial, taking place at six sites, including UC San Diego, Johns Hopkins, Indiana University, Washington University, the Cleveland Clinic, and Columbia University, is a 24-patient study. Final data readout from the study is expected next year.

About Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study

Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) was formed in 1991 as a cooperative agreement between the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the University of California, San Diego. The ADCS is part of the NIA Division of Neuroscience program's effort to facilitate the discovery, development and testing of new drugs for the treatment of AD.

About Annovis Bio Inc.

Headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Annovis Bio, Inc. (Annovis) is a clinical-stage, drug platform company addressing neurodegeneration, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), Parkinson's disease (PD) and Alzheimer's in Down Syndrome (AD-DS). We believe that we are the only company developing a drug for AD, PD and AD-DS that inhibits more than one neurotoxic protein and, thereby, improves the information highway of the nerve cell, known as axonal transport. When this information flow is impaired, the nerve cell gets sick and dies. We have two ongoing Phase 2 studies: one in AD patients and one in both AD and PD patients. In the AD/PD study our drug improves memory loss and dementia associated with AD, as well as body and brain function in PD. For more information on Annovis, please visit the company's website: www.annovisbio.com

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this press release contain "forward-looking statements" that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "expect," "believe," "will," "may," "should," "estimate," "project," "outlook," "forecast" or other similar words, and include, without limitation, statements regarding the timing, effectiveness, and anticipated results of ANVS401 clinical trials. Forward-looking statements are based on Annovis Bio, Inc.'s current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Further, certain forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. These and other risks and uncertainties are described more fully in the section titled "Risk Factors" in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and Annovis Bio, Inc. undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

Investor Relations:

Dave Gentry, CEO

RedChip Companies Inc.

407-491-4498

Dave@redchip.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90733


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A whopping 50000-plus new coronavirus cases were reported in the United States on Monday.



The sudden surge in numbers may be attributed to addition of backlogs due to reporting delay at the weekend. However, this marks the highest daily infection rate since April 23.



With 52111 additional cases reporting, the national total has increased to 34,133,835, as per the latest data from Johns Hopkins University.



The seven-day average of daily infections in the United States has more than tripled from the levels recorded almost a month ago.



From an average of 11000-plus cases reported on June 20, the seven day average has surged to 35035 on Monday.



The daily casualty rate remains at a lower 218, taking the national COVID death toll to 609,268.



California reported the most number of cases - 7931 - and most COVID-related deaths - 432 - on Monday.



California is the worst affected state in terms of both the COVID metrics. A total of 3,869,674 cases have been reported in the state, while 64,132 people have died due to the disease there.



A total of 29,406,202 people have so far recovered from the disease in the country.



338,247,434 vaccine doses have been administered so far nationally. 186,317,651 people have received at least one dose.



161.5 million people, or 48.6 percent of the U.S. population, are fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.



79.5 percent of people above 65 have received both vaccine doses.



Former President Donald Trump came down heavily on his successor by saying that President Joe Biden is way behind schedule regarding the distribution of anti-corona vaccine.



'He's not doing well at all,' Trump said in a statement. 'He's way behind schedule, and people are refusing to take the Vaccine because they don't trust his Administration', according to him.



White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the United States continues its efforts to donate COVID-19 vaccines for global supply. 'Today, we can announce that we have over a million Johnson & Johnson vaccines headed to Gambia, Senegal, Zambia, and Niger,' she said at a news conference. 'We're also pleased to announce 3 million vaccines going to Guatemala tomorrow, continuing our prioritization of Latin American countries,' Psaki told reporters.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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Carnival Corporation to Operate up to 75% of Fleet Capacity by End of 2021

World's largest cruise company continues building momentum for restarting cruise vacations with announced sailings to date on 54 ships through end of 2021 across eight of its world-leading cruise line brands - Carnival Cruise Line, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, Seabourn, AIDA Cruises, Costa Cruises, Cunard and P&O Cruises (UK)

MIAMI, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL; NYSE: CUK), the world's largest cruise company, today announced that it expects to resume guest cruise operations with 65% of its total fleet capacity by the end of 2021 across eight of its world-leading cruise line brands. Additionally, Carnival Cruise Line has announced plans that envision the brand's entire fleet returning to service by the end of 2021, which would further increase Carnival Corporation's total operating capacity to nearly 75% by the end of the year.

Eight of the company's nine brands - AIDA Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Seabourn - have announced plans to resume guest operations on 54 ships to date through the end of 2021, with nearly half of the capacity represented by ships homeported in the U.S. In addition to those ships previously announced by the company's brands, Carnival Cruise Line's intent to return to full fleet service in 2021 would add another nine vessels, totaling 63 ships to date that are expected to resume guest operations this year. Further brand restart announcements are expected in coming weeks, including resumption plans for more ships and itineraries for 2021.

Collectively, the brands are continuing to resume operations from ports around the world using a gradual, phased-in approach, including sailings in the U.S., Caribbean, Europe and Mediterranean, along with itineraries planned in Central America and to Antarctica, among others. The cruises include enhanced health protocols developed in conjunction with government and health authorities, and informed by guidance from the company's public health, epidemiological and policy experts.

The following summarizes Carnival Corporation's brand restart announcements to date through the end of 2021.

North America Brands:

Carnival Cruise Line resumed guest cruise operations with three ships to date sailing out of two U.S. ports, Galveston and Miami , and has announced its intent to have 15 ships in operation by the end of October and to have its entire fleet sailing by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations with three ships to date sailing out of two U.S. ports, Galveston and , and has announced its intent to have 15 ships in operation by the end of October and to have its entire fleet sailing by the end of the year. Princess Cruises will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from Seattle to Alaska , and will expand with a series of cruises around UK coastal waters in late July, as well as cruises out of Los Angeles , San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale to the Caribbean , Panama Canal, Mexico , Hawaii and California coast in the fall, with eight total ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from to , and will expand with a series of cruises around UK coastal waters in late July, as well as cruises out of , and to the , Panama Canal, , and coast in the fall, with eight total ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. Holland America Line will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from Seattle to Alaska , followed by sailings from Greece in August, and from Italy and Spain in September, as well as sailings to Mexico , Hawaii , the California coast and the Caribbean this fall for a total of six ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from to , followed by sailings from in August, and from and in September, as well as sailings to , , the coast and the this fall for a total of six ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. Seabourn resumed guest cruise operations with two ships to date sailing from Greece and Barbados , and plans to begin the Antarctica season in November with a third ship.

Europe & Asia Brands:

Costa Cruises resumed guest cruise operations in May with sailings in Italy and Greece , and the line is now offering sailings to France and Spain , to be followed by sailings to Portugal and Turkey in September for a total of seven ships expected to be sailing in the Mediterranean by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations in May with sailings in and , and the line is now offering sailings to and , to be followed by sailings to and in September for a total of seven ships expected to be sailing in the Mediterranean by the end of the year. AIDA Cruises resumed guest cruise operations in March sailing in the Canary Islands and in May with sailings in Greece and Germany . The line is now offering additional sailings out of Germany as well as upcoming sailings in Spain , Italy , Malta , the Netherlands and the Persian Gulf from late July to December for a total of nine ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations in March sailing in the Canary Islands and in May with sailings in and . The line is now offering additional sailings out of as well as upcoming sailings in , , , and the Persian Gulf from late July to December for a total of nine ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. P&O Cruises (UK) resumed guest cruise operations with a series of summer sailings around UK coastal waters that started in June, and plans to expand to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic coast and the Caribbean starting in September for a total of four ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations with a series of summer sailings around UK coastal waters that started in June, and plans to expand to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic coast and the starting in September for a total of four ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. Cunard will resume guest cruise operations in August with one ship sailing UK coastal cruises, followed by sailings to the Iberian coast and Canary Islands, and plans to expand with a second ship returning to service in November with a combination of transatlantic crossings and Caribbean cruises.

The additional voyages build on recent restarts from five of the company's brands, including AIDA Cruises and Costa Cruises, which have been sailing in Europe since March and May, respectively, as well as its P&O Cruises brand in the UK. Most recently, the company's Carnival Cruise Line brand resumed in early July from the U.S. along with its Seabourn brand, which restarted earlier this month in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

"With strong ongoing demand for cruising, we look forward to serving our guests with additional ships announced across eight of our brands and nearly three-quarters of our fleet capacity returning by the end of this year, marking an important milestone for our company and all those who rely on the strong economic impacts generated by the global cruise industry," said Roger Frizzell, chief communications officer for Carnival Corporation.

Frizzell added: "For our entire company, our highest responsibility and top priority is always compliance, environmental protection, and the health, safety and well-being of our guests, our shipboard and shoreside employees, and the communities we visit. Our ongoing restart effort closely reflects those priorities, as we continue to work together across the industry and with partners around the world to resume cruising in the best interest of public health."

In working with global and national health authorities and medical experts, as well as authorities in destination countries, the company's brands have developed a comprehensive set of health and safety protocols for protection and mitigation across the entire cruise experience for its initial cruises. This includes cross-industry learnings and best practices based on the proven health and safety record of industrywide sailings, and input from top science and health experts and health authorities.

Cautionary Note Concerning Factors That May Affect Future Results

Some of the statements, estimates or projections contained in this document are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions with respect to us, including some statements concerning our resuming of cruise operations in the US, Caribbean and Europe. These statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbors from liability provided by Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical facts are statements that could be deemed forward-looking. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about our business and the industry in which we operate and the beliefs and assumptions of our management. We have tried, whenever possible, to identify these statements by using words like "will," "may," "could," "should," "would," "believe," "depends," "expect," "goal," "anticipate," "forecast," "project," "future," "intend," "plan," "estimate," "target," "indicate," "outlook," and similar expressions of future intent or the negative of such terms.

Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, there are many factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. This note contains important cautionary statements of the known factors that we consider could materially affect the accuracy of our forward-looking statements and adversely affect our resuming of risk operations. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include the risk factors discussed in Item 1A of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").

Forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as a prediction of actual results. Subject to any continuing obligations under applicable law or any relevant stock exchange rules, we expressly disclaim any obligation to disseminate, after the date of this document, any updates or revisions to any such forward-looking statements to reflect any change in expectations or events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statements are based.

About Carnival Corporation & plc

Carnival Corporation & plc is one of the world's largest leisure travel companies with a portfolio of nine of the world's leading cruise lines sailing to all seven continents. With operations in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises (Australia), Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Cunard.

Additional information can be found on www.carnivalcorp.com, www.carnival.com, www.princess.com, www.hollandamerica.com, www.seabourn.com, www.pocruises.com.au, www.costacruise.com, www.aida.de, www.pocruises.com and www.cunard.com.

CONTACT: Roger Frizzell, Carnival Corporation, rfrizzell@carnival.com, (305) 406-7862; Mike Flanagan, LDWW, mike@ldww.co, (727) 452-4538
Golar LNG Limited ("Golar" or "the Company") announces today that it has agreed with Perenco Cameroon ("Perenco") and Societe Nationale des Hydrocarbures ("SNH") to increase utilisation of the FLNG Hilli Episeyo ("Hilli") (the "Agreement").

Commencing 2022 the capacity utilisation of Hilli will increase by 200,000 tons of LNG, bringing total utilisation in 2022 to 1.4 million tons. The tolling fee for the 2022 incremental capacity is linked to European gas prices at the Dutch Title Transfer Facility ("TTF"). At current average 2022 TTF gas prices (avg. $8.70/MMBTU for 2022) the increased capacity utilization represents an expected US$26.1m in incremental Adjusted EBITDA. For each US$1.00/mmBtu change in TTF, this Adjusted EBITDA will increase (or decrease) by US$3.7m.

In addition to the 2022 capacity increase, Perenco and SNH intend to drill and appraise 2 to 3 incremental natural gas wells during 2021, and subsequently upgrade upstream facilities in 2022 to support further sustained increases in production from 2023 onward.

Under the Agreement, Perenco and SNH are granted an option ("Option") to increase capacity utilisation of Hilli by up to 400,000 tons of LNG per year from January 2023 through to the end of the current contract term in 2026. This has the potential to increase total annual LNG production from Hilli to 1.6 million tons from January 2023 onwards. The tolling fee for the 2023+ incremental capacity will also be linked to TTF. Based on current average 2023 TTF gas prices ($6.72/MMBTU avg. future price for 2023) the additional 400,000 tons of production would generate US$30.4m of incremental annual Adjusted EBITDA. For each US$1.00/mmBtu change in TTF, this Adjusted EBITDA will increase (or decrease) by US$7.4m. The Option must be declared during the third quarter of 2022.

At current TTF future prices, and assuming the Option is exercised, the incremental Adjusted EBITDA backlog of the potential increase in capacity utilization for Hilli from 2022 until July 2026 is expected to be around US$113m.

Golar has an 86.9% economic interest in the incremental Adjusted EBITDA generated as a result of the Agreement. The Agreement will not change any existing terms, conditions, tolling fees or the Brent Oil link associated with trains 1 and 2.

Golar CEO Karl Fredrik Staubo commented "We are pleased to announce increased capacity utilization of our FLNG Hilli, unlocking embedded value to our shareholders by utilizing more of Hilli's 2.4 million tons of liquefaction capacity. The innovative tolling fee arrangement delivers on our announced strategy to increase our upstream LNG and gas exposure. Today's announcement is a further testimony to Hilli's strong track record of 100% commercial uptime since delivery in 2018 and will benefit all stakeholders involved in the project, as well as bringing us closer to our target to reach full capacity utilization of Hilli."

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This press release contains forward-looking statements (as defined in Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended) which reflects management's current expectations, estimates and projections about its operations. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, that address activities and events that will, should, could or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. Words such as "may," "could," "should," "would," "expect," "plan," "anticipate," "intend," "forecast," "believe," "estimate," "predict," "propose," "potential," "continue," or the negative of these terms and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Reference to Adjusted EBITDA assumes there are no changes to the current accounting treatment of FLNG Hilli in our financial reporting.

These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and other factors, some of which are beyond our control and are difficult to predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed or forecasted in such forward-looking statements. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. Golar LNG Limited undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by applicable law.

Hamilton, Bermuda

July 20, 2021

Enquiries:

Golar Management Limited: + 44 207 063 7900

Stuart Buchanan


Nearly one-fifth of adults are believed to suffer from chronic pain. This type of pain is ongoing and typically lasts more than six months. It has a variety of causes and negatively impacts the quality of life of those who are affected. Traditional pain treatments, such non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen or analgesics, like acetaminophen (paracetamol), are often not strong enough to treat patients' pain and opioids are highly addictive and problematic. Therefore, safe and nonaddictive alternatives are in high demand.

The natural world is full of venomous creatures whose venoms are full of potential drug candidates, for treating conditions such as diabetes, pain, and cancer. Pain signaling takes place via electrical signaling with the brain. This signaling is accomplished with a combination of ion channels to propagate the signal. Ziconotide, for instance, or ?-conotoxin MVIIA, is a peptide that was first isolated from the cone snail and is an approved medicine for treating chronic pain through blockade of calcium-specific ion channels.

Like cone snails, many spiders also produce venoms which contain a mixture of compounds including ion channel blocking peptides. Certain spiders have evolved different prey immobilization tactics utilizing peptides that are more selective towards terrestrial organisms as opposed to aquatic animals which cone snails would target. Isolation of certain sodium channel blocking peptides from spider venoms have been shown to function as potential therapeutics for pain alleviation.

Through a collaborative effort, spearheaded by professors, Dr. Vladimir Yarov-Yarovoy and Dr. Heike Wulff at UC Davis and supported in part by an NIH initiative, researchers have utilized a venom peptide originally isolated from the Peruvian green velvet tarantula (Thrixopelma pruriens) that blocks Nav1.7 voltage-gated ion channels, an ion channel important in pain signaling. This peptide is rather promiscuous and blocks other sodium voltage-gated channels as well. The UC Davis program uses computer modeling tools to select positions on the peptide which may improve the ability to selectively block pain signals via the Nav1.7 channel, while preventing interactions with other voltage-gated ion channels without causing unfortunate side effects.

Targeting the voltage-gated ion channels may yield useful treatments in an array of disorders, including pain, migraines, epilepsy, neurological disorders, and more. AmbioPharm Inc. is pleased to play an active role in this program helping to take these designed peptides and synthesize these novel and complex spider venom peptides.

"Harnessing the power of natural selection that millions of years of venom evolution and improving upon this with modern tools to design more selective and potent peptides has been one of my lifelong passions," stated Michael Pennington, Ph.D., the Chief Scientific Officer at AmbioPharm. AmbioPharm is uniquely positioned to assist researchers at all levels in their programs from discovery to commercial production.

About AmbioPharm Inc.:

AmbioPharm, a part of the Ambio Pharmaceuticals Group, is a leading and innovation-driven company specializing in the development and manufacture of peptides and peptide-related products. With a comprehensive range of services, AmbioPharm produces custom products for research, clinical development, and commercial application to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies worldwide. Founded by Juncai (Chris) Bai, Ph.D. and headquartered in the United States of America and with locations in Europe, the USA, and Asia, AmbioPharm operates internationally with over 14 years of experience and expertise. Further information is available at: http://www.ambiopharm.com

We invite you to read more about the exciting research:

Turning tarantula venom into pain relief (video)

Reference:

https://health.ucdavis.edu/health-news/contenthub/turning-tarantula-venom-into-pain-relief-video/2021/07

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005249/en/

Contacts:

AmbioPharm Inc.

Michael Pennington, Ph.D.

mike.pennington@ambiopharm.com
ST AUGUSTINE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / James McCabe, President and CEO of Maverick Energy Group, Ltd. (OTC PINK:MKGP) ("Maverick"), an independent oil and gas exploration company, announced today that Maverick/USR have signed a binding LOI and will jointly develop Martin Foree Operating (MFO) wells using USR Ultra Short Radius Horizontal Drilling Technology.

Maverick/USR targeted zones are the San Andres and Grayburg reservoirs which have yielded approximately 42% (9.8 billion barrels) of the total cumulative production of oil from the Permian Basin of West Texas. Major San Andres and Grayburg reservoirs are estimated to contain 8.7 billion barrels of unrecovered mobile oil. Approximately 900 million barrels of unrecovered mobile oil lie within a northwest-trending group of fields including McElroy, Dune, Waddell, Jordan, and Penwell on the eastern margin of the Central Basin Platform according to a study performed in April 2012 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

Maverick/ USR/ Martin Foree Operating (MFO) believe the Dune Field, which is 15 miles south of Odessa, Texas in Crane County, has significant quantities of mobile oil remaining after primary and secondary recovery. The Dune Field was discovered in 1938 and developed with 900 conventional vertical wells.

Maverick/USR and MFO's first targeted producing formation is the San Andres dolomite which is a 200' thick highly fractured carbonate oil reservoir at a depth of 3,300' that contains an estimated 590MMbbls of original oil in place. Approximately 177MMbbls have been recovered from the vertical wells representing roughly 30% of the original oil in place.

Various methods including acid treatments, water floods and increased well density have been used to improve oil recovery from this oil rich but tight rock. However, no San Andres horizontal wells have been drilled to recover additional oil reserves in the undrained fracture systems in this area. A few horizontal wells have been drilled in the overlying Grayburg with initial production rates of +/-200BOPD.

In the 1950's Mobil Oil Corporation was active in the Dune Oil Field. In 1954 they formed the "Mobil University Unit 15/16" and worked to improve oil recovery by drilling additional wells on 20 acres spacing in conjunction with water flooding. Mobil ultimately drilled 101 wells in the 1,280 acres unit and produced 13.8 million barrels of oil from this unit.

The MFO 960 acres in the "UTEX Lease" is Dune Field acreage that adjoins and is up dip to the Mobil 15/16 Unit. Like most of the Dune Field we believe that this acreage has not been properly exploited. Ultra-Short Radius (USR) horizontal drilling technology will be used to unlock the oil stranded between vertical wells without drilling additional wells. The first candidate well for re-entry and sidetrack is DD #6. We believe that the success of the DD #6 well will make hundreds of wells readily available for re-entry to the Maverick/USR/MFO group.

Highlights of the Maverick/USR/MFO Dune Field development are: 960 contiguous acres; 27 existing wellbores; two saltwater injection wells; gas gathering system and electrical throughout the property.

Highlights of the Dune Field Geology and Reservoir are: 200' thick San Andres Formation; high formation oil saturation; formation porosity of 10-18%; natural fractures and a current bottom hole pressure of 500ps, which is 30-40% of original bottom hole pressure.

The Dune Field engineering studies estimate the field to have 590 million barrels of oil originally in place of which 177 million barrels have been produced to date. Unrecovered remaining moveable oil is approximately 413 million barrels. Vertical wells in the Dune Field have produced on average 196,666 barrels of oil. An integrated geological and reservoir study has indicated that approximately 10,000,000 barrels of unrecovered oil is in an area of only one square mile.

"Maverick has made significant progress in establishing industry relationships and implementing its unique business model with the strong relationship with USR. With the Dune Field project, Maverick will now participate in a world class oil field development that can be repeated many times over with USR and MFO," said James McCabe, CEO Maverick Energy Group, Ltd.

About Maverick Energy Group

Maverick Energy Group LTD is a crude oil and natural gas acquisition, production, exploration, and horizontal drilling development company focusing on select areas of North America. Maverick believes that its access to patented and proprietary horizontal production enhancement technologies facilitates the rapid accumulation of valuable oil and gas assets, while at the same time greatly improving the rate of production and lifetime potential of these properties.

Company Website: www.maverickeg.com

Safe Harbor Statement

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. You can identify these statements by the use of the words "may," "will," "should," "plans," "expects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimates," "projects," "intends," and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause results to differ materially from those projected or anticipated. These risks and uncertainties include, butare not limited to, the Company's ability to successfully execute its expanded business strategy, including by entering into definitive agreements with suppliers, commercial partners, and customers; general economic and business conditions, effects of continued geopolitical unrest and regional conflicts, competition, changes in technology and methods of marketing, delays in completing various engineering and manufacturing programs, changes in customer order patterns, changes in product mix, continued success in technical advances and delivering technological innovations, shortages in components, production delays due to performance quality issues with outsourced components, regulatory requirements, and the ability to meet them, government agency rules and changes, and various other factors beyond the Company's control.

CONTACT:

Maverick Energy Group, Ltd.

investors@maverickeg.com

SOURCE: Maverick Energy Group, Ltd.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656208/Maverick-Energy-Group-LTD-Announcing-Permian-Basin-Agreement-in-Crane-County-Texas-7202021
New SnapLogic study reveals two thirds of employees want more AI in the workplace to improve productivity and decision making

New research published today by SnapLogic, provider of the #1 Intelligent Integration Platform, has found that 81% of employees believe Artificial Intelligence (AI) improves their overall performance at work. As a result, more than two thirds (68%) are calling on their employers to deploy more AI-based technology to help them execute their daily work better and faster.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005063/en/

New research from SnapLogic finds employees are embracing AI in the workplace and calling on their employers to deploy more AI-based technologies to improve productivity and decision making. (Graphic: Business Wire)

According to IDC, global spending on AI technologies reached $50.1 billion in 2020, a figure that is expected to double in the next four years. So it's no surprise that AI is transforming the workplace as a result. But while employees were initially skeptical of this technology, new data suggests perception is shifting. This new study, conducted across the US and UK, sought to understand how workers across various lines of business from HR to Finance to Marketing, and more feel about working with AI technologies today.

Currently, more than half (56%) of office workers say they are using AI as a part of their daily job responsibilities. The research indicates that the potential for AI's impact is much broader, however, as 89% believe AI could support them in up to half of their everyday work activities.

Where do employees believe AI can assist them the most? The top three tasks identified all involved moving, accessing, or analyzing data. These were, in order: understanding data and how trends and patterns can aid decision making; moving data from one place to another; and accessing data residing in different places across the business.

When asked about the benefits of AI in the workplace, 61% said it helped them have a more efficient and productive work day. Additionally, almost half (49%) felt that it improved their decision making and accelerated time-to-insights. What's more, just over half (51%) believe that AI in the workplace helps them achieve a better work/life balance due to the aforementioned productivity boost.

"In recent years, there was concern among office workers that AI would drive job losses, but employee opinions seem to have changed. The more they've been exposed to AI and see it in action, the more they've realized how much it can assist them with their daily work," said Craig Stewart, CTO at SnapLogic. "As AI is increasingly used to make better decisions and rack up productivity gains, they've gone from tentatively accepting to fully embracing AI. The fact that they are now calling on their leaders to accelerate AI technology adoption in the enterprise is a real sea-change."

The research also took a look at the growing market for personal AI applications versus those used at work. The workplace appears to be the proving ground for the use of AI, with 45% downloading AI-driven apps for their use at work, compared with just 26% who had downloaded AI-driven apps for personal use. As employees get comfortable with AI at work, perhaps they will more fully embrace it at home as well, closing the current gap.

The research was conducted in May 2021 by 3GEM on behalf of SnapLogic. 400 office workers were surveyed, including 200 in the US and 200 in the UK.

About SnapLogic

SnapLogic powers the automated enterprise. The company's self-service, AI-powered integration platform helps organizations connect applications and data sources, automate common workflows and business processes, and deliver exceptional experiences for customers, partners, and employees. Thousands of enterprises around the world rely on the SnapLogic platform to integrate, automate, and transform their business. Learn more at snaplogic.com.

Connect with SnapLogic via our Blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005063/en/

Contacts:

Scott Behles

SnapLogic

scott.behles@snaplogic.com

+1 415-571-4462

Cameron Burke

Kaizo for SnapLogic

snaplogic@kaizo.co.uk

+44 (0)203 176 4700

Jeff Drew

Guyer Group for SnapLogic

snaplogic@guyergroup.com

+1 617-233-5109
Mary Kay Inc., a global advocate for women's empowerment and entrepreneurship, has furthered its commitment to advancing gender parity by releasing a position paper welcoming the European Commission's Gender Equality Strategy for 2020 2025 and by joining the Generation Equality Forum Global Action Coalitions.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005347/en/

This month, Mary Kay also joined the "Drivers of change" Program at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, France (June 30 July 2). (Graphic: Mary Kay Inc.)

The position paper, which can be accessed here, echoes the strategy of the European Union on gender equality. According to the European Union: "The Strategy presents policy objectives and actions to make significant progress by 2025 towards a gender-equal Europe. The goal is a Union where women and men, girls and boys, in all their diversity, are free to pursue their chosen path in life, have equal opportunities to thrive, and can equally participate in and lead our European society."

"Discriminatory laws, gender bias and stereotyping, violence against women and girls these are all global issues and must be tackled in partnership with the public and private sectors and civil society organizations across the world," said Julia Simon, Chief Legal Diversity Officer at Mary Kay. "Achieving gender equality is critical to the survival of the planet and the rebuilding of more sustainable and thriving economies and societies."

This month, Mary Kay also joined the "Drivers of change" Program at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris, France (June 30 July 2). 26 years after the Beijing Declaration, the Generation Equality Forum, convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of Mexico and France, was the "most critical moment in a generation to invest in gender equality and accelerate momentum for women's safety, leadership and economic opportunity1

Julia Simon participated to a panel titled "Building a Transformative Strategy for Gender-Responsive Procurement," aiming at creating awareness of the disproportionately complex and interconnected barriers on women's entrepreneurship and promoting gender-responsive procurement. Globally, 1 in 3 businesses are owned by women2, yet women win only 1% of the procurement spend of governments and large corporations3.Speakers shared insights and concrete advice substantiated by their own journey on how to implement a GRP strategy.

At the Paris Forum, Mary Kay also joined four of the Generation Equality Action Coalitions through policy, programmatic, and advocacy commitments: Economic Justice and Rights; Feminist Action for Climate Justice; Gender-based Violence and Innovation and Technology. 50,000 people virtually engaged in the Forum which gathered 1,000 commitment-makers, recorded $40 billion of investments for gender equality in support of a 5-year plan to act for equal across 6 areas of action.

These engagements are the latest of a series of Mary Kay's advocacy efforts in support of women's economic empowerment and gender equality at high level meetings around the world alongside its UN partners and local strategic partners.

On March 16, 2021, Deborah Gibbins, Mary Kay's COO, joined the UN Global Compact Target Gender Equality meeting to discuss how Mary Kay empowers women entrepreneurs in nearly 40 countries. Gibbins highlighted the data freshly released by the World Bank 4 revealing that, on average across the world, women have three quarters the legal rights of men. She challenged companies to take a stand against legal discriminations and advocate for reforms to close the gaps so that women can achieve their full potential. The event brought together over 5,000 people from the business sector, the United Nations, member states, and civil society organizations from over 100 countries, with 75% of the participants representing the private sector.

revealing that, on average across the world, women have three quarters the legal rights of men. She challenged companies to take a stand against legal discriminations and advocate for reforms to close the gaps so that women can achieve their full potential. The event brought together over 5,000 people from the business sector, the United Nations, member states, and civil society organizations from over 100 countries, with 75% of the participants representing the private sector. On March 24, 2021, on the sidelines of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW65), Gibbins participated in a panel hosted by the Women's Empowerment Accelerator (WEA) titled "Women Leading Economic Recovery Through Entrepreneurship" where she highlighted the need for public-private sector partnerships to help shape an enabling ecosystem for women entrepreneurs. Incepted by Mary Kay in collaboration with 5 UN agencies, The Women's Entrepreneurship Accelerator was featured as an example of the unique impact of multi-partnership to accelerate change.

On March 26-April 4, Edita Szaboova, General Manager of Mary Kay Czech Republic and Slovakia, shared remarks at the Equal Pay Day Conference where she stressed the importance of "women supporting women," and highlighted the work of Mary Kay in nurturing women entrepreneurs through training, leadership, and mentorship. "When women come together, we can achieve extraordinary things for the benefit of women and humanity at large. Because we know that if we lift one, we lift all. At its core, Mary Kay develops and trains entrepreneurs, who, in turn, get to build their own businesses and write their own stories and legacy for their daughters," said Szaboova.

On June 15-16, 2021, at the UN Global Compact Leaders Summit, Gibbins spoke at the "Women In Sustainability: Innovating In A Man's World" main stage session advocating for women entrepreneurs as the role models needed for the economy and society. She also emphasized the critical mission of the Women's Entrepreneurship Accelerator incepted by Mary Kay together with 5 UN agency partners: UN Women, the UN Global Compact, International Trade Centre, the International Labour Organization and the UN Development Programme. The Accelerator has committed to educating and empowering 5 million women entrepreneurs over the next 10 years. "Women entrepreneurship will play a key role in the successful pandemic recovery. This is why the mission of the Women's Entrepreneurship Accelerator is so timely. And, this is why women entrepreneurs need a framework of this magnitude," said Gibbins. The annual Summit convened virtually more than 25,000 leaders from business, government, the UN, and civil society, to take stock of the state of progress and to drive collective action towards alleviating climate crisis, global pandemic, economic disparities, and social inequalities.

On July 6, in Ekaterinburg, Mary Kay joined the International Industrial Trade Fair INNOPROM-2021 the main industrial, trade and export platform in Russia. Guest speaker at a panel hosted by UN Women titled "UN Women Programs for the Promotion and Development of Gender-Based Entrepreneurship," Mary Kay highlighted the critical importance of gender-responsive procurement strategies and emphasized that the pandemic also brings a unique opportunity to advance action and to support women's businesses around the world.

About Mary Kay

One of the original glass ceiling breakers, Mary Kay Ash founded her beauty company almost 58 years ago with three goals: develop rewarding opportunities for women, offer irresistible products, and make the world a better place. That dream has blossomed into a multibillion-dollar company with millions of independent sales force members in nearly 40 countries. Mary Kay is dedicated to investing in the science behind beauty and manufacturing cutting-edge skin care, color cosmetics, nutritional supplements and fragrances. Mary Kay is committed to empowering women and their families by partnering with organizations from around the world, focusing on supporting cancer research, protecting survivors from domestic abuse, beautifying our communities, and encouraging children to follow their dreams. Mary Kay Ash's original vision continues to shine-one lipstick at a time. Learn more at www.marykay.com

1 https://forum.generationequality.org/home

2 World Bank (2020). Enterprise Surveys, World Bank Gender Data Portal cited by World Bank Blogs (2020) Women entrepreneurs needed stat!

3 Vazquez and Sherman (2014). Cited by UN Women (2017) The Power of Procurement: How to source from women-owned businesses.

4 Women, Business and the Law, 2021. A report conducted in 190 countries.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005347/en/

Contacts:

Mary Kay Inc. Corporate Communications

Marykay.com/newsroom

(+1) 972.687.5332 or media@mkcorp.com
Rollout of HempBoxesTM to Create New High Margin, Direct to Consumer Revenue Channel of Hemp CBD Cigarettes

San Diego, California--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Green Globe International Inc. - Hempacco (OTC Pink: GGII) ("GGII"), the leading herb and hemp cigarette manufacturer, in their mission of Disrupting Tobacco, today announced that it has entered into a strategic agreement with The Pelican Group, a leading vending and amusement management company, to lead the rollout of the Company's HempBoxTM automated vending machines that sell CBD, CBG and hemp cigarettes, including The Real StuffTM hemp smokables. A video describing a HempBoxTM in greater detail can be viewed by clicking this link.





A Fully Automated HempBoxTM CBD Vending Machine



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/7978/90724_gg.htm6.jpg

Under the terms of the agreement, The Pelican Group will help facilitate the rollout of the Company's approximately 600 HempBoxTM machines across its extensive and expanding nationwide network of high traffic retail locations as well as providing all fulfillment, distribution, and servicing needs. In doing so, the HempBoxTM machines are expected to further bolster the Company's financial performance by creating a new revenue channel with a highly scalable and passive income stream beginning in the current fiscal quarter.

The Company's HempBoxTM machines will offer THC free, pharmaceutical grade CBD, CBG and hemp-infused products for people and pets, and feature advanced robotics, WIFI network capability, seamless touchscreen interfaces and advanced cashless payment options.

"Our agreement with The Pelican Group ensures a successful nationwide rollout of our innovative and state-of-the-art HempBoxTM fully automated CBD vending machines," said Sandro Piancone, Chief Executive Officer of Green Globe International, Inc. "We are looking forward to leveraging Pelican Group's extensive industry experience and national network to support the national supply chain, expanded distribution capabilities for our premium grade CBD, CBG and hemp products, while increasing our overall brand recognition," continued Mr. Piancone.

"We are excited to be selected by Sandro and the HempBox Team to support their national rollout of innovative kiosks and extensive CBD product offerings. The HempBox kiosk is very innovative, and customers will appreciate how user-friendly the kiosk interface is. With age verification at the forefront of all retailers' minds, HempBox did an excellent job with their software to ensure age of users is 100% verified!" said Sean Hanna, EVP of Operations for The Pelican Group.

HempBoxesTM Targeting Two Rapidly Growing Markets

CBD products in vending machines is the combination of two rapidly growing markets. Cashless payments are on the rise more than ever and serve as a key driver for growth in the multi-billion dollar vending space. Technavio reports the vending machine market size will grow by $ 11.24 billion during 2020-2024.





Figure 2



To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

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"Although cashless payment systems have consistently grown to represent a higher percentage of total transactions for retailers, the demand for these systems broke all-time records due to the social distancing guidelines required by the Covid-19 pandemic," said Mr. Piancone. "Our HempBoxTM automated CBD vending machines are capitalizing on this new era of limited interactions by not only offering cashless payments, but also a state-of-the-art solution that will facilitate greater product diversity resulting in better inventory control and repeat sales," concluded Mr. Piancone.

About The Pelican Group:

The Pelican Group, founded in 1993 by Richard Scherer, is the Nation's leading vending management company headquartered in Danville, CA. The Pelican Group manages over 50,000 pieces of coin-operated amusement and vending machines and specialty kiosks for more than 60 national clients through its network of 600 professional operators. With offices in every time zone, Pelican offers a single source of contact, contract administration and accounting for clients with locations anywhere in North America.

The principals of The Pelican Group have more than three hundred years of combined experience in the vending and amusement businesses. Utilizing this expertise and knowledge, The Pelican Group has a proven track record of improving its clients' revenue and customers' satisfaction by implementing its Management Program within client locations freeing its clients from 'vending burden'.

About Green Global International Inc. (GGII) - Hempacco, Co. Inc.:

Green Global International Inc. and its wholly owned subsidiary Hempacco Co., Inc. are Disrupting Tobacco's nearly $1 Trillion industry with herb and hemp-based alternatives to nicotine cigarettes by manufacturing and marketing consumer goods, including Herb Smokables, CBG, and CBD Hemp cigarettes. The Company owns and licenses intellectual property, has conducted extensive research and development, and is engaged in manufacturing and sales of smokable Hemp brands, including The Real Stuff Hemp Smokables. Hempacco Co., Inc.'s operating segments include joint-venture private label agreements and sales, Intellectual Property licensing, and the development and sales of inhouse brands using patented counter displays as well as six hundred Kiosk vending machines called HempBoxes.

Add Your Name to Hempacco Investor Email List

To be added to GGII - Hempacco's investor email list to be kept apprised of all upcoming IR activities, please subscribe using this link: https://newsroom.newsfilecorp.com/lists/8020/490 , or for additional information, please call Investor Relations Partners at 323-380-4500.

You can purchase The Real Stuff Hemp Cigarettes by clicking here or copy-paste https://www.realstuffsmokables.com to your browser and get free samples of our Hemp Blunts. Wholesale distributors and retailers get wholesale pricing by calling (775) 473-1201.

Forward Looking and Cautionary Statements

This news release may include forward-looking statements including opinions, assumptions, estimates, the Company's assessment of future plans and operations, including but not limited to information concerning a potential combination with Hempacco and the timing thereof. When used in this document, the words "will," "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "intent," "may," "project," "should," and similar expressions are intended to be among the statements that identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements are founded based on expectations and assumptions made by the Company. Forward-looking statements are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties. Although the Company believes that the expectations represented by such forward-looking statements are reasonable, there can be no assurance that such expectations will be realized. Any number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements including, but not limited to regulatory and third party approvals not being obtained in the manner or timing anticipated; the ability to implement corporate strategies; the state of domestic capital markets; the ability to obtain financing; changes in general market conditions; industry conditions and events; and other factors more fully described from time to time in the reports and filings made by the Company with OTC Markets Group, Inc. or the securities regulatory authorities. Except as required by applicable laws, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements publicly. We intend that all forward-looking statements be subject to the safe-harbor provisions of relevant securities laws and considered forward-looking information within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended.

# # #

Company Contact:

Founder Sandro Piancone or

Co-Founder Jorge Olson

IR@HempaccoInc.com

Investor Relations Contact:

Harry Tajyar

htajyar@irpartnersinc.com

Phone: 323-380-4500

Here are other Press Release headlines from GGII - Hempacco:

Green Globe Intl. - Hempacco Appoints Industry Veteran Dr. Stuart Titus as Chairman of The Board of Directors

GGII Announces 20 Billion Share Reduction in Issued and Outstanding Common Stock

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco to Be Featured in New Hemp and Cannabis Documentary Debuting at Sonoma Film Festival

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco Announces New Initiative to License Their Technology to Manufacture Cannabis Cigarettes

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco Receives Purchase Order for 250,000 packs of CBD Hemp Cigarettes from Ace & Axle, The Largest in Company History

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco launches CalivibesDelta8.com & Signs Joint Venture Agreement to launch Calivibes Delta8 Hemp Cigarettes with a 50% Ownership Stake

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco to Produce a Portfolio of Flavored Hemp Paper Wraps or Hemp Blunts, with the First Order of $230,000

GGII Green Globe - Hempacco Files Patent Application for Cigarette Filter Infusion Technology for Cannabis, Tobacco, Herb, and Hemp Cigarettes, Furthering Their Mission of Disrupting Tobacco

Green Globe - GGII Licenses Patent for Terpene Spraying Technology from Open Book Extracts, Furthering their Mission of Disrupting Tobacco

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90724
INCHEON, SOUTH KOREA / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / PABLO AIR, the South Korean-based drone delivery startup has announced that it has raised $8 million in Pre-Series B funding (Related link: https://bit.ly/2UtOByC). The company will utilize the money to fund its global expansion plans.

"We are happy to announce that we have raised $8 million from our investors in Pre-Series B Funding," says the spokesperson for PABLO AIR. "We have drawn up major expansion plans to establish a global presence for our brand. The money from this funding will be utilized to fund our expansion plans and give shape to our growth plans."

According to the company, KTB Network, Be High Investment, Shinhan Venture Investment, BNK Ventures, and Lotte Ventures were the investors who financed a total of 8 million dollars for the pre-Series B round.

Earlier, PABLO AIR had attracted 1.8 million dollars in Series A investment from KTB Network in 2020. The company had also successfully attracted additional investment in the pre-Series B within a year.

KTB Network had made follow-up investments after the Series A round. PABLO AIR has now secured investment funds worth 11 million dollars.

With the "First Penguin Business" by Korea Credit Guarantee Fund (KODIT), PABLO AIR reached 12.5 million dollars for the total accumulated funds.

PABLO AIR exhibited its expertise in drone capabilities for the first time in South Korea in March 2019 when they organized an art show involving 100 drones. They have conducted more than 30 such performances since then. It included a drone art show held in June 2020, complete with art and flames, and involved more than 300 drones.

PABLO AIR successfully completed Simultaneous Long Distance Delivery with two drones for 80.6 km, which is the longest distance record the first time with drone in Korea in November 2020. The company is developing an advanced ground control station to solve the 'last mile problem' using drones. PABLO AIR is also developing a drone system optimized for delivery and is working on preparing a solution for delivery service in the sky.

PABLO AIR participated in the "K-Drone System Demonstration Support Project" after the consortium was signed recently with Incheon International Airport Corporation. It has carried out many other projects to commercialize drone delivery.

PABLO AIR is also working on one of its core technologies. "PAMNet", or "Pablo Air Mobility Network". It is a remote-control system for multi-modal mobility and will enable real-time control of all mobility such as drones, autonomous vehicles, and trucks that will work without human intervention. People will be able to operate unmanned vehicles and monitor or control using "PAMNet" in real-time from anywhere.

The technology can be used to communicate with government agencies in charge of creating new routes in the sky and airspace control on "PAMNet". They have plans to commercialize the service through PoC or Proof of Concept.

In May, the PAMNet system was nominated for the AUVSI XCELLENCE Award, the world's most prestigious unmanned system-related award.

In June, PABLO AIR established PABLO AIR International, INC., an American corporation. They are currently in discussions with global players such as DHL and UPS to launch various services using drones in the U.S. and Southeast Asia, especially for medical, food, and marine products.

Kim Young-Joon, CEO of PABLO AIR, said "Apart from the Series B investment, we are planning to implement a faster and more convenient drone delivery service with drone logistics hubs that will be built up both nationally and abroad. We believe we can introduce a SaaS service that combines autonomous cooperation technology for drone systems and flight control technology suitable for drone delivery with achieving advanced levels of autonomous driving and using collaborative delivery robots so that we can provide a more efficient delivery service to our customers and consumers who have last-mile problems. We will keep challenging ourselves, expanding our business into the global market, and doing our best to become the best partner to help logistics companies grow further."

For more information, visit www.pabloair.com

About PABLO AIR

PABLO AIR is a group with a common mission and a big dream of drones and aims to lead the world drone market. The company started with a UAV swarm flight and now offers a variety of solutions in the UAV niche.

Contact Details

Company: PABLO AIR

Contact: Derek Lee

Email: dlee@pabloair.com

Phone: +82 070-5222-6968

Address: #546~553, Aerospace Campus, 36, Gaetbeol-ro, Yeonsu-gu

Website: http://www.pabloair.com/

SOURCE: PABLO AIR

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656262/PABLO-AIR-a-Drone-Delivery-Startup-Based-in-South-Korea-Raises-8-Million-in-Pre-Series-B-Funding-to-Fuel-Global-Expansion
IN A RECENTLY RELEASED DOCUMENTARY SERIES BY THE ECONOMIST, HUAWEI SHOWS ITS AMBITION AND DETERMINATION TO LEAD THE INNOVATION IN 5G AND AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES

LONDON, UK / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Renowned British media, The Economist Group, has recently given extensive coverage to the Chinese Tech Giant -- Huawei in its latest documentary series (https://bloodsweatanddreams.economist.com). This brand is now known worldwide for fighting back all the way to the top, despite being heavily sanctioned by the United States. Huawei has claimed its spot on the global center stage by officially becoming the largest networking gear provider in the world. Moreover, it has also emerged as the biggest proponent of the futuristic 5G Technology.

"The Economist has released the three-episode documentary series with the theme of scientific innovation of the tech brands worldwide, and it has extensively focused on Huawei." A tech journalist said while talking about the documentary series. "The series also featured the Ghana's Rural Star project that help connect country's remote areas to the internet and improve their medical system." He added. Except for the Rural Star project mentioned above, the documentary also introduces other innovative projects such as the TrackAI, which can help solve eyesight problems for young children. The series is massively popular on social media.

Founded in 1987, Huawei has come a long way in the last 35 years, and it has recently emerged as one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world, which make Huawei now become the world's largest producer of telecom equipment with revenues exceeding $103 Billion Dollars. In the wake of a historic trade war against China waged by the former US President Trump, many countries led by the US sanctioned China and the primary target of this war was Huawei. However, the Chinese tech company not only survived from the war but also fought back and then emerge as a global leader in the 5G technology.

In addition to the US cutting off Huawei from the chip supply, the Chinese company was also excluded from Germany's 5G plan, while its base stations have been removed by the UK. But regardless of all above, Huawei successfully launched HarmonyOS 2.0, which had been highly anticipated by its users. HarmonyOS 2.0 is a historic victory on Huawei's part, and a master stroke that put Huawei on the world map of information technology and high-end innovation.

Also featured in the documentary was Huawei's TrackAI technology has contributed to diagnosing eye diseases of adolescents and kids. According to Huawei sources, artificial intelligence (AI) will continue to play an important role in the medical system and the core policies of the company. The Chinese Tech Giant has invested more than 100 billion dollars in R&D in the last decade, and it established more than ten R&D centers worldwide. However, Huawei's management still believe that there is still a long way to go with a lot of research and backing.

More innovative technology projects in different fields will be introduced in the following episodes. According to The Documentary, Huawei's broadband base station helped connect the remote town of Iqaluit in Northern Canada, close to the Arctic to the world. In another project, the Digitruck, mainly in Africa, Huawei and its partners are bringing digit opportunities to many people in remote areas of Africa, helping them enjoy digital education and change their lives. For deaf-mute children, Huawei launched a free Storysign software in 2018. This project is a pioneer to use AI technology to convert content of children's books into sign language, thus helping mute-deaf children to read. In the field of automobile manufacture, Huawei is unlocking the future of information technology ranging from 5G technology to autonomous vehicles like never before and setting new benchmarks in the tech industry worldwide. Overall, we got optimistic view of the future of Huawei.

CONTACT:

Isabel Jacques

Email: kgzup@iubridge.com

SOURCE: Super Box Communications

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656264/Behind-Huaweis-Innovative-Projects-Determination-to-be-the-Leader-of-5G-Technology
Vilnius, Lithuania, 2021-04-30 16:57 CEST -- We are providing audited financial statements of UAB "Terseta" for the year 2020, management report and the statements by the responsible persons within the issuer. A spin-off of the Company was completed on the 25th of November, 2020, by separating a part of the activities of the Company, related to management and lease of real estate located on the Juozapaviciaus str. 13, Vilnius, by transferring this activity into a newly established company - UAB "J13", registration code 305663041, 100% of shares of UAB "J13" are owned by sole shareholder - closed ended real estate investment fund for informed investors Lords LB Baltic Fund IV Net revenue of the Company were equal to 1,477,986 EUR in 2020 (2,172,471 EUR in 2019). Net revenue were lower compared to 2019 due to the transferred activities according to spin-off terms and lower occupancy of the Investment assets during 2019. Company continues its activities of management and lease of the newly acquired (December, 2020) real estate property, located on the Gedimino avenue 7, Vilnius (former Vilnius Post Office building) and no structural changes in the Company's operations are planned. Company is seeking to prepare all necessary documents to receive a building permit and carry out major repair works of the newly acquired real estate property on Gedimino avenue 7, by preparing and adapting the building to new tenants in 2021. More information in the audited financial statements of UAB "Terseta" for year 2020 and other attachments. English translation of the audited financial statements of UAB "Terseta" for year 2020 signed with physical signatures, together with original Independent Auditor's Report in English has been uploaded in the attachments, replacing the translation of the Independent Auditor's Report of the previous version of the attachment (Attachment: BFIV Terseta FA 2020 12 31 EN.pdf). Rytis Zaloga CEO Phone: +370 650 32044 Email: rytis.zaloga@lordslb.lt Attachment: https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=1007252
The "Luxembourg General Insurance Key Trends and Opportunities to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The 'Luxembourg General Insurance Key Trends and Opportunities to 2024' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into Luxembourg's general insurance segment.

This report provides a detailed outlook by product category for Luxembourg's general insurance segment.

It provides values for key performance indicators such as direct written premium, loss ratio, retail and commercial split, premium by line of business, and premium accepted, during the review period (2015-2019) and forecast period (2019-2024).

The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of Luxembourg's economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country.

The report brings together the publisher's research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure.

Key Highlights

Key insights and dynamics of Luxembourg's general insurance segment.

A comprehensive overview of Luxembourg's economy, government initiatives, and investment opportunities.

Luxembourg's insurance regulatory framework's evolution, key facts, taxation regime, licensing and capital requirements.

Luxembourg's general insurance reinsurance business's market structure giving details of premium accepted.

Luxembourg's general insurance segment structure giving details of retail and commercial lines of business.

Distribution channels deployed by Luxembourg's general insurers.

Details of the competitive landscape, M&A and competitors' profiles.

Scope

It provides historical values for Luxembourg's general insurance segment for the report's 2015-2019 review period, and projected figures for the 2019-2024 forecast period.

It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in Luxembourg's general insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2024.

It profiles the top general insurance companies in Luxembourg, and outlines the key regulations affecting them.

Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Economy Overview

Regulatory and Compliance

Key Market Trends

Summary Trends and KPIs

Key Trends by Line of Business

Property Insurance

Motor Insurance

Liability Insurance

Financial Lines Insurance

Marine, Aviation and Transit Insurance

Personal Accident and Health Insurance

Miscellaneous Insurance

Distribution Channels

Competitive Landscape

Competitor Profiles

Reinsurance

Regulatory and Compliance

Competitor Landscape

Insurtech

Appendix

Companies Mentioned

Foyer Assurances S.A.

La Luxembourgeoise S.A.

AIG Europe S.A.

Axa Assurances Luxembourg S.A.

Baloise Assurances Luxembourg S.A.

Foyer Sante S.A.

The Shipowners Mutual Strike Insurance Association Europe

Swiss Re International SE

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xvz0ex

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005838/en/

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ResearchAndMarkets.com

Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager

press@researchandmarkets.com

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NEW BRUNSWICK (dpa-AFX) - AmerisourceBergen (ABC), Cardinal Health (CAH) and McKesson (MCK) agreed to pay up to $1.179 billion in a settlement with the State of New York and its participating subdivisions, including Nassau and Suffolk Counties, to settle opioid-related claims. The agreement calls for the three major drug distributors to pay the combined settlement amount over the next 17 years, with payments beginning in two months, according to the New York state Attorney General's Office. The New York Attorney General Letitia James reached a $230 million settlement agreement with Johnson & Johnson late last month, removing the company from the ongoing opioid trial. Johnson & Johnson agreed to stop selling opioids nationwide. New York AG said that the trial against the three remaining defendants - Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA, and Allergan Finance - is currently underway and will continue in state court. The opioid crisis refers to the extensive overuse of opioid medications, both from medical prescriptions and from illegal sources. The crisis began in the United States in the late 1990s, when opioids were increasingly prescribed for pain management and resulted in a rise in overall opioid use throughout subsequent years. From 1999 to 2017, more than 399,000 people reportedly died from drug overdoses that involved prescription and illicit opioids. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Recent acquisition marks both COYO's expansion into the French market and the enhancement of COYO's employee communications platform by Jubiwee's powerful people analytics software and smart surveys.

COYO, the leading social intranet and employee communications platform, lands a coup with the acquisition of Paris-based people analytics platform Jubiwee. For the past 5 years Jubiwee has been doubling its operations and customer-base yearly. Over 40 French blue-chip companies use Jubiwee to assess staff motivation or to support transformation projects. In joining forces with Jubiwee, COYO accelerates its internationalization outside the DACH region and adds a critical toolkit to its digital workplace proposition.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005881/en/

COYO acquires French Employee Engagement Platform Jubiwee (Graphic: Business Wire)

Since the virus fast-tracked remote work, countless businesses have learned that their operational effectiveness in remote scenarios was heavily dependent on employee engagement. With Jubiwee's engagement analytics tools and their own communications and intranet platform, COYO now brings a complete employee engagement offering to the market. Customers will be enabled to address the limitations of remote work and make it more successful for employers and employees alike.

To ensure continuity and stability both company- and product-wise, Thibaud Martin, co-founder of Jubiwee, will join the COYO management team. Jubiwee's office in Paris will become COYO's French head office. Jubiwee customers have already been informed that their product of choice will be continued and even enhanced.

With the ambition to build 'sexy and engaging business software', Hamburg-based tech entrepreneur Jan Marius Marquardt founded COYO in 2010. The current platform is a modern social intranet and employee app that empowers organizations to drive employee engagement and improve workplace culture. The platform has over 400 customers, serving more than 1 million end-users. Jan Marius Marquardt, founder and CEO of COYO, says: "I am beyond happy about joining forces with Jubiwee: It feels like the right step, pushing the company and product to the next level and accelerate our expansion to France, one of our priority markets. Beyond cool technology there is no better way to start building up a French presence than by teaming up with a French team that has already proven successful and shares our values. This addition is a next big step towards becoming the most widely adopted employee communications platform in the world."

Both companies have European DNA, share the same culture and vision and are very product-focused: UX and UI are critical, while user adoption is above-market. Jubiwee's tech and UX-centered product resonates strongly with COYO's product philosophy. Jan Marius Marquardt explains: "A capable engagement analytics solution is instrumental in a truly 360 employee communications offering and will bring a lot of value to customers. The merger thus presents an excellent opportunity for both current German and French customers."

Jubiwee was founded in 2016 by Thibaud Martin, Victor Mustar, and Antoine Bellion. The company offers a new generation engagement analytics platform with a user-centric approach to improve employee experience, reduce turnover and improve retention. Thibaud Martin, co-founder, and CEO of Jubiwee, explains: "The people analytics and overall employee engagement market has grown tremendously in recent months, partly due to the COVID-crisis. Also, customers have grown more mature and demanding. To capitalize on this shift, we decided to partner with a strong, renowned, and ambitious company that shares the same values: COYO. Joining forces with COYO is the best way to build a more comprehensive offer and accelerate at this crucial time."

Both solutions will be continued in their current form and developed according to their respective roadmaps. Short-term ambitions include continuing Jubiwee's growth in France, cross-selling respective solutions to existing customers and prospects as well as introducing the COYO offer in France. Mid and long-term ambitions include integrating both solutions to offer a complete employee engagement suite, enabling companies to communicate, and take the pulse of their coworkers in a modern, efficient and seamless way. Overall, the companies' solutions are complementary and together present a strong offering, both in terms of depth and breadth. By adding two very competent best-of-breed solutions, COYO and Jubiwee are creating one extremely compelling suite.

More information is available at www.coyoapp.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005881/en/

Contacts:

Press contact

Sarah Mag PR Manager

COYO GmbH

+49 1712783772

sarah.mag@coyoapp.com
Also, Wafer producer Zhonghuan Semiconductor has further reduced the prices of its products.Shanghai-listed Linyang Energy has announced the signing of an agreement with the government of Bengbu City, in Anhui province, to build a renewable energy complex comprising a 1.5 GW solar farm, a 500 MW wind power plant, and a 400 MW/800 MWh energy storage facility. According to Linyang's statement, the renewables projects will be integrated with local industry and will include fishpond aquaculture and agriculture. The company wants to invest around RMB10.8 billion (US$1.67 billion) in the project, which ...

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PARIS (dpa-AFX) - Luxury jewelry and specialty retailer Tiffany & Co. has settled its long pending lawsuit against Costco Wholesale Corp. for trademark infringement and for selling counterfeit diamond rings with 'Tiffany' name. Both companies' lawyers filed a stipulation, dismissing the case with the U.S. District Court in Manhattan after eight years. The lawyers reportedly said the companies amicably resolved their dispute. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed. Tiffany, which was acquired in January this year by French luxury goods company LVMH SE, sued Costco on Valentine's Day in 2013. The luxury retailer alleged that Costco conned its customers into buying hundreds of 'Tiffany' diamond rings. Meanwhile, Costco claimed that 'Tiffany' had become a generic term and described the rings' pronged setting. During the period covered by the lawsuit, an estimated 3,349 customers bought Tiffany-set rings at Costco. In 2017, Tiffany won the case following a jury trial, which found Costco liable for selling the disputed rings. However, a federal appeals court in August last year overturned Tiffany's $21 million judgment against Costco. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Nucor Corp. (NUE) announced Tuesday that it has entered into an agreement to purchase Hannibal Industries, Inc. for $370 million. The company is a leading national provider of racking solutions to warehouses and serves the e-commerce, industrial, food storage and retail segments. Pending approvals, Nucor will purchase 100 percent of Hannibal Industries' outstanding shares from its Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). Acquiring Hannibal Industries gives Nucor a new growth platform and broadens its offering to the fast-growing warehouse channel, and complements its current product capabilities, including beams, joists and deck, metal buildings and insulated metal panels. This acquisition also reflects Nucor's strategy of expanding beyond its core steel businesses and establishes a new area for Nucor to pursue a market leadership position. Hannibal Industries has manufacturing facilities in Los Angeles and Houston, as well as three distribution centers. It utilizes sheet and bar steel, as well as steel decking, wire deck and fasteners to produce its racking solutions, providing potential supply chain efficiencies with other Nucor businesses. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Terumo Europe and University Medical Center Utrecht signed a Memorandum of Understanding

LEUVEN, Belgium, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Terumo Europe and University Medical Center Utrecht (UMC Utrecht) announced today that they signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to recognize the longstanding partnership in the field of oncology. In the past years, both parties have successfully collaborated in technology transfer, product development and the advancement of clinical evidence in the field of Selective internal radiation therapy, referred to as SIRT (also known as Radioembolization, RA or Transarterial radioembolization, TARE) for the treatment of unresectable liver tumors. The MoU marks the continuation of the existing partnership and confirms the shared interest of both parties to enhance education and innovations to develop meaningful solutions that provide significant clinical benefits to patients with cancer and increase their access to treatments.

Quirem Medical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Terumo since July 2020, based in Deventer, originated as a spin-off from the UMC Utrecht in 2013. Quirem Medical manufactures QuiremSpheres, the only commercially available microspheres containing the radioactive isotope Holmium-166. Trials have shown the safety and efficacy of holmium microspheres in the treatment of unresectable liver tumors. Quirem Medical also manufactures the SIRT work-up product QuiremScout Holmium-166 Microspheres, which is used prior to the therapy to select patients and plan the SIRT procedure. Across Europe, hundreds of patients are treated with QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and QuiremScout Holmium-166 Microspheres every year.

"With the acquisition of Quirem Medical in 2020 and the creation of the Global TIO team in 2021, we see great opportunities to leverage the broad Terumo technology base in interventional oncology for improved cancer care. The UMC Utrecht has proven a highly reliable, professional & innovative clinical partner with a strong focus on image guided therapies in cancer care. As such, the UMC Utrecht is a partner of choice in this journey; and we look forward to a successful continuation of our close collaboration in education, innovation and data generation to contribute to society through healthcare together." Says Ghada Farah, Senior Vice President Terumo Interventional Systems EMEA.

Terumo, a global leader in medical technology, announced on April 12, 2021 the launch of its Global Therapeutic Interventional Oncology (TIO) team. This reflects Terumo's aspiration to be a global leader in the field of Interventional Oncology by focusing on improving patient's quality of life and survival.

"Terumo and the UMC Utrecht have a fruitful history of collaboration on QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres for radioembolization of liver tumors. This Memorandum of Understanding underlines the collaboration that is already there for QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and the ambition to collaborate in the broader range of interventional oncology, including tumor ablation and chemoembolization. Terumo's dedication to improve patient care and the company's global reach make Terumo an ideal partner for this journey." says Dr Maarten Smits, Interventional Radiologist, UMC Utrecht

About Terumo

Terumo (TSE: 4543) is a global leader in medical technology and has been committed to "Contributing to Society through Healthcare" for 100 years. Based in Tokyo and operating globally, Terumo employs more than 25,000 associates worldwide to provide innovative medical solutions in more than 160 countries and regions. The company started as a Japanese thermometer manufacturer and has been supporting healthcare ever since. Now, its extensive business portfolio ranges from vascular intervention and cardio-surgical solutions, blood transfusion and cell therapy technology, to medical products essential for daily clinical practice such as transfusion systems, diabetes care, and peritoneal dialysis treatments. Terumo will further strive to be of value to patients, medical professionals, and society at large.

About Terumo Europe

Terumo Europe is a core player in the EMEA healthcare market by providing best in class quality medical products and services. We are a strong actor of the Terumo Group by contributing to innovation and sustainable growth. Terumo Europe produces, distributes, markets, and sells a vast range of medical devices in five main business units: Interventional Systems, Pharmaceutical Solutions, Medical Products, Cardiovascular Products and Diabetes Management. Terumo Europe EMEA headquarters and production facilities are located in Leuven (Belgium), production facility in Knowsley (UK), European Distribution Center in Genk (Belgium) and sales offices across EMEA. www.terumo-europe.com

About UMC Utrecht

The University Medical Center Utrecht is the main referral center for radioembolization in the Netherlands, performing over 100 radioembolization procedures a year. The division Imaging & Oncology is characterized by close collaboration of interventional radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians, oncologists and other oncologically-oriented specialists offering a variety of oncologic treatments. The UMC Utrecht ambition is to become a national hub for state-of-the-art cancer care, clinical studies and innovations.

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BANGALORE, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Power Semiconductor Market is Segmented by Type (Power Semiconductor Device, Power Module, Power Integrated Circuits), by Application (Industrial, Automobile, Communication, Consumer Electronics). The report covers global opportunity analysis and industry forecasts from 2021 to 2026. It is published in Valuates Reports under Electronics & Electrical Category.

The global Power Semiconductor market size was valued at USD 41380 Million in 2019 and it is expected to reach USD 59640 Million by the end of 2026, growing at a CAGR of 5.3% during the forecast period 2021-2026.

Major factors driving the growth of the power semiconductor market are:

Expanding usage of power electronics in the manufacturing of electric cars is expected to drive the power semiconductor market.

The power semiconductor market is rising as new technologies are incorporated into consumer electronics like smartwatches, smartphones, and IoT devices, allowing them to function as small electrical gadgets and facilitating simple access to technology.

Furthermore, features of power electronics, such as lightweight, power efficiency, high speed, and enhanced portability fuel the market growth.

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TRENDS INFLUENCING THE GROWTH OF POWER SEMICONDUCTOR MARKET

Increasing use of non-conventional energy sources such as tidal, solar, and photovoltaic and increased the adoption of power semiconductors in the IT & consumer electronics industry, automotive, power distribution, and rail transportation sectors are expected to drive the growth of the power semiconductor market.

The increasing use of power integrated circuits in the automobile industry for electric vehicles or multiplexed bus systems with distributed power integrated circuits for light, motor, and air conditioning control is also driving the growth of the power semiconductor market. Many semiconductor vendors are developing industry-specific devices in response to the growing use of Power MOSFET in electric and hybrid vehicles; this is expected to further drive the growth of the power semiconductor market.

The increased adoption of 5G technology and advancements in wireless communication will create a large market for power semiconductors. Telecom suppliers may benefit from the growing use of GaN power transistors.

Browse the Table of Contents and List of figures at: https://reports.valuates.com/reports/QYRE-Auto-23F4703/global-power-semiconductor

POWER SEMICONDUCTOR MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS

By type, power integrated circuits are the most commonly used type, with about 53.68% market share in 2018.

Power semiconductor is widely used in many areas, which applied most in industrial with about 35% market share in 2018.

Because of the rapid growth of consumer electronics goods, APAC is predicted to be the most lucrative region during the forecast period. In the APAC market, consumer electronics, industrial, and automotive are all key verticals that drive the power semiconductor market growth.

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TOP COMPANIES IN THE POWER SEMICONDUCTOR MARKET

In 2018, the top 12 power semiconductor manufacturers in the world accounted for 56.35% of the market share. Infineon is the world's largest power semiconductor vendor, accounting for 11.27% of the market, with revenue of about $4.4 billion in 2018.

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SIMILAR REPORTS

- The global RF Power Semiconductor market size is projected to reach USD 34660 Million by 2027, from USD 21010 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 8.7% during 2021-2027. The APAC area is likely to provide significant development possibilities for enterprises operating globally, and it is the largest market in the global RF power semiconductor industry. The APAC region's established electronics sector is a primary driving force behind its expansion in the worldwide RF power semiconductor market. Low production and development costs in APAC countries like Taiwan, Malaysia, and China also contribute to the region's RF power semiconductor market's growth.

- The global Gallium Nitride (GaN) and Silicon Carbide (SiC) Power Semiconductors market size is projected to reach USD 6290.7 Million by 2027, from USD 750.4 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 35.5% during 2021-2027.

- The global 3D Semiconductor Packaging market size is projected to reach USD 7272.7 Million by 2027, from USD 2452.4 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 16.8% during 2021-2027. However, IT & telecom is expected to grow fastest at a CAGR of 17.82% during the forecast period, owing to increased investment by developing nations to increase connectivity and rise in the number of wireless devices worldwide.

- Automotive Power Semiconductor Market contains segmentation By Type (Rectifiers, Voltage Suppressor, Charging Systems), By Application (Automotive, Industrial, Others)

- Big Data Analytics in Semiconductor & Electronics Market contains segmentation By Type (Dashboard & Data Visualization, Self-service Tools, Data Mining & Warehousing, Reporting, Others), By Application (Customer Analytics, Supply Chain Analytics, Marketing Analytics, Pricing Analytics, Workforce Analytics, Others)

- SIC Power Semiconductor Market contains segmentation By Type (SiC MOSFET Devices and Modules, SiC Diode Devices), By Application (Automobile Use, Industrial Use, Photovoltaic, Others)

- The global Semiconductor Materials market size is projected to reach USD 52410 Million by 2026, from USD 40420 Million in 2019, at a CAGR of 3.3% during 2021-2026. APAC accounted for roughly 63 percent of the market, with Taiwan being the most profitable country.

- The global Silicon Wafer market size was valued at USD 11150 Million in 2019 and it is expected to reach USD 14390 Million by the end of 2026, growing at a CAGR of 4.2% during 2021-2027

- The global Semiconductor Manufacturing Equipment market size is projected to reach USD 53200 Million by 2027, from USD 39510 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 3.9% during the forecast period 2021-2027.

- The global Automotive Electronic Components market size is projected to reach USD 68810 Million by 2027, from USD 46380 Million in 2020, at a CAGR of 5.8% during 2021-2027.

To see the full list of related reports on the Semiconductor

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NOIDA, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A comprehensive overview of the Global Microgrid market is recently added by UnivDatos Market Insights to its humongous database. The Global Microgrid market report has been aggregated by collecting informative data of various dynamics such as market drivers, restraints, and opportunities. This innovative report makes use of several analyses to get a closer outlook on the Global Microgrid market. The Global Microgrid market report offers a detailed analysis of the latest industry developments and trending factors in the market that are influencing the market growth. Furthermore, this statistical market research repository examines and estimates the Microgrid market at the global and regional levels. Global Microgrid market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.6% from 2021-2027 to exceed US$ 71 billion by 2027.

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Market Overview

The main driver of this market growth is its ability to produce clean energy. Microgrids can be powered by renewable technologies such as wind systems, solar systems, microturbines, hybrid systems and combustion turbines. Microgrids can be integrated with these renewables technologies to reduce the carbon footprints on the environment. Several governments worldwide are taking initiatives to reduce the carbon footprints on the environment, for example, the Government of Delhi, India started a transition to zero-emission vehicles in 2020, aiming to have 25% of all newly registered vehicles to be EVs by 2024, which number is currently 0.2%. A few drawbacks that the microgrid market can encounter include the initial setting up cost and the high maintenance cost of microgrids. The setting up costs of microgrid are 25-30% higher than the traditional grids.

COVID-19 Impact

The recent covid-19 pandemic in 2019 took the world by a storm. The pandemic brought the world to a standstill. All industries have suffered some form of loss due to the pandemic. In addition to this the pandemic has also cost many lives. Most nations around the world were affected by the pandemic which not only took lives but also took away jobs. The pandemic caused a huge economic burden all around the world with most industries bearing some form of loss. The Global Microgrid industry also saw a slowdown during the pandemic as the industries were shut and production was affected.

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Global Microgrid market report is studied thoroughly with several aspects that would help stakeholders in making their decisions more curated.

By Connectivity, the market is primarily segmented into

Grid Connected

Off Grid

The Off Grid segment generated revenue of US$ XX billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of XX% during the forecast period to reach a market valuation of US$ XX billion by 2027F.

By Grid-Type, the market is primarily segmented into

AC Microgrid

DC Microgrid

Hybrid

Amongst grid-type, the AC Microgrid segment of the Global Microgrid market was valued at US$ XX billion in 2020 and is likely to reach US$ XX billion by 2027 growing at a CAGR of XX% from 2021-2027.

By Power Source, the market is primarily segmented into

Diesel generators

Natural Gas

Solar PV

Combined Heat and Power (CHP)

Others

The Natural Gas segment generated revenue of US$ XX billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of XX% during the forecast period to reach a market valuation of US$ XX billion by 2027F.

By Storage Device, the market is primarily segmented into

Lithium-ion

Lead Acid

Flow Battery

Flywheels

Others

Amongst Storage Device, the Lithium-Ion segment of the Global Microgrid market was valued at US$ XX billion in 2020 and is likely to reach US$ XX billion by 2027 growing at a CAGR of XX% from 2021-2027.

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By Application, the market is primarily segmented into

Healthcare

Educational Institutes

Military

Utility

Industrial/ Commercial

Remote

Others

The Industrial/Commercial segment generated revenue of US$ XX billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of XX% during the forecast period to reach a market valuation of US$ XX billion by 2027F.

Global Microgrid Market Geographical Segmentation Includes:

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

Rest of the World

Based on the estimation, the North America region dominated the Global Microgrid market with almost XX% revenue share in 2020. North America also saw the highest CAGR of XX% in the forecast period due to the increasing demand of electricity in rural areas and increasing demand for renewable energy.

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The major players targeting the market includes

ABB

General Electric Company

Siemens AG

Eaton Corporation Inc

Schneider Electric SE

Honeywell International Inc.

HOMER Energy LLC

S&C Electric Company

Power Analytics Corporation

Exelon Corporation

Competitive Landscape

The degree of competition among prominent global companies has been elaborated by analysing several leading key players operating worldwide. The specialist team of research analysts sheds light on various traits such as global market competition, market share, most recent industry advancements, innovative product launches, partnerships, mergers, or acquisitions by leading companies in the Global Microgrid Market. The leading players have been analysed by using research methodologies for getting insight views on global competition.

Key questions resolved through this analytical market research report include:

What are the latest trends, new patterns, and technological advancements in the Global Microgrid market?

Which factors are influencing the Global Microgrid market over the forecast period?

What are the global challenges, threats, and risks in the Microgrid market?

Which factors are propelling and restraining the Global Microgrid market?

What are the demanding global regions of the Microgrid market?

What will be the global market size in the upcoming years?

What are the crucial market acquisition strategies and policies applied by global companies?

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Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Sky Gold Corp. (TSXV:SKYG)(OTC PINK:SRKZF) ("Sky Gold Corp." or the "Company") reports on the results from the diamond drill program on the Company's Mustang Property contiguous to the Queensway Gold Project, owned by New Found Gold Corp. ("New Found").

A total of 19 diamond drill holes comprising 3,283 meters were completed, with one additional hole (MT-21-10a) lost at 47 meters, and re-drilled. All holes were directed at interpreted epithermal structurally controlled gold mineralization in the Mustang Zone, located on the eastern portion of the property. Previous exploration on the Mustang Zone in the 1980's and 1990's had returned significant gold mineralization in surface rock samples, soil geochemical samples and diamond drill core. The Company's 2020-2021 diamond drill program confirmed and expanded the gold mineralization on the Mustang Zone.

Highlights include:

Drilling was conducted in three areas along a 1.2 kilometer strike length, trending North-North-East and South-South-West.

Several narrow intercepts of gold mineralization were intercepted in multiple holes (e.g. MT-21-14, 3.80 grams per tonne gold (g/t Au) over 1.50 meters (m) at 36.42 m depth, 7.77 g/t Au over 0.50 m at 66.04 m, and in MT-21-15, 7.49 g/t Au over 0.50 m at 99.3 m depth). See Table 2 below, highlighting assay values of 0.50 g/t Au or greater, with completed assay data and cross-sections available on the Company's website (http://www.skygoldcorp.com).

Wider intervals of lower grade gold values were intercepted in multiple holes, with potential for low-grade bulk-style mineralization on portions of the Mustang Zone. Intervals include MT-21-14, 0.78 g/t Au over 32.85 m from a depth of 15.00 m, and MT-20-01, 0.58 g/t Au over 20.32 m from a depth of 80.18 m.

Company President and CEO Mike England commented "The initial diamond drill program on the Mustang Zone has confirmed and expanded the previously identified mineralized targets. We have only tested a limited portion of the entire length of the Mustang Zone and have numerous drill targets on the western portion of the property, and new gold-in-soil geochemical targets that warrant additional drilling."

All of the Company's field activities are conducted under Federal and Provincial COVID-19 operating protocols and safety measures as required. Planet X Exploration Services Ltd.'s field crews, retained through Grassroots Prospecting, a local, Newfoundland-based prospect generation company, are undertaking all field and drill activities on the Company's Newfoundland properties.

Figure 1: Location of the Mustang Property and area of current drilling.

Table 1: Drilling Summary

Figure 2: DRILL PLAN -NORTH AREA

Table 2: North Zone Drilling Results

Figure 3: DRILL PLAN - SOUTH AREA

Table 3: South Zone Drilling Results

All core samples were secured delivered to Eastern Analytical Laboratory in Springdale, Newfoundland, for analysis, an ISO/IEC17025 accredited laboratory. QA/QC included the systematic insertion of certified standards and blanks. Core samples were analyzed for the ICP-34 package (34 element 4 acid leach, ICP-OES finish) and the Fire Assay (30g) with AA finish. Eastern Analytical also provides its own internal QA/QC protocol of blanks, duplicates and standards in each work order, which is supplied to the Company.

SKY GOLD'S NEWFOUNDLAND PROJECTS

Virginia Property

The Virginia property comprises 100 hectares and is approximately 5.7 kilometres northeast of New Found's drill hole NFGC-19-01 which intersected 92.86 Au g/t over 19 m (see New Found press release dated August 12, 2020). Historic results completed in the early 1990s by Manor Resources Ltd., reports two areas of mineralization (Zone A-2). One showing comprised quartz veining developed over a 35 m wide zone within sheared gabbro and graphitic shale (main shear) returning up to 8.7 Au g/t, and a second showing comprised a sheared gabbro returned a grab sample up to 109.6 Au g/t.

Mustang Property

The Mustang property comprises 1,625 hectares and is contiguous to New Found Gold's Queensway project and approximately five kilometres southwest of their discovery hole. The Mustang property hosts numerous gold prospects including the Mustang and Piper zones, on trend with New Found Gold Corp's current drill program, and the Road Breccia, Jasperoid, and Barite showings on the western portion of the property.

Qualified Person

Catherine Fitzgerald, P.Geo., a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, and Independent Director of Sky Gold, is the Qualified Person responsible for reviewing and approving the technical contents of this news release as they pertain to the Mustang and Virginia properties.

About Sky Gold Corp.

Sky Gold Corp. is a junior mineral exploration company engaged in acquiring and advancing mineral properties in Canada and the USA. In addition to the Company's Newfoundland properties, the Company also owns the Evening Star property, located 12 km southeast of Hawthorne, NV, which is prospective for gold mineralization and CRD (Carbonate Replacement Deposit) base and precious (silver and gold) mineralization. The Company also owns the Imperial Project comprising two contiguous claim blocks (6,576 hectares) prospective for gold and VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) mineralization and covers 4.7 kilometres of the northern border with Amex Exploration's Perron property in Quebec, where high-grade gold has been intersected in three zones along a 3.2 km corridor.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Mike England"

Mike England, CEO & Director

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Tel. 1-604-683-3995

Toll Free. 1-888-845-4770

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward -looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at WWW.SEDAR.COM).

SOURCE: Sky Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656286/Sky-Gold-Reports-Drill-Results-From-The-Mustang-Project-Newfoundland
Fidelity China Special Situations PLC

Results of Annual General Meeting

At the Company's Annual General Meeting held on 20 July 2021, all resolutions were duly passed. The resolutions passed as special business were as follows:

- to renew the Directors' authority to allot a limited number of currently unissued ordinary shares (or sell any ordinary shares which the Company holds in Treasury) for cash;

- to issue such shares (including Treasury shares) without first offering them to existing ordinary shareholders pro-rata to their existing holdings; and

- the Company's authority to purchase up to 77,267,975 of its own ordinary shares for immediate cancellation or for retention as Treasury shares at the determination of the Board. This represents approximately 14.99% of the number of ordinary shares in issue on 7 June 2021.

- the Articles of Association as submitted to the meeting were approved and adopted.

- the proposed changes to the Investment Policy and Investment Objective to increase the limit on unlisted investments from 10% of Net Assets plus Borrowings to 15% were approved.

Proxy results will shortly be available online at www.fidelity.co.uk/china

Contact for queries:

Name:Natalia De Sousa, FIL Investments International, Company Secretary

Telephone: 01737 837846
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Sky Gold Corp. (TSXVSKYG)(OTC PINK:SRKZF) ("Sky Gold Corp." or the "Company") is pleased to report the commencement of a diamond drill program on its Evening Star Property, located in Mineral County, Nevada. The Evening Star property is prospective for gold mineralization and CRD (Carbonate Replacement Deposit) base and precious (silver and gold) mineralization, and is located 12 kilometers southeast of the town of Hawthorne. The property is north of, and contiguous to the Pamlico property, owned by Newrange Gold Corp.

Altar Drilling Inc. of Tucson, Ariz., mobilized to the Evening Star property last week, with diamond drilling initiated on the weekend. The Company has received approval from the Bureau of Land Management for its near-term proposed exploration and drill plan under a notice of intent, which is limited to five acres of surface disturbance. EM Strategies, based in Reno, Nev., assisted with the application.

Eight drill site areas have been selected on the Gold Bug, Golden Eagle-Golden Bomber and Good Hope 2 targets. The strong coincident geophysical (gravity and magnetic surveys) anomalies (refer to press release March 17, 2021) interpreted to be related to the silver-rich base-metal skarn and/or carbonate replacement deposit mineralization at the Gold Bug target area will be the initial priority target. This phase of diamond drilling will comprise about 2,500 meters of drilling in 12-15 holes.

Qualified Person

Sky Gold's disclosure of a technical or scientific nature in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Garry Clark, P.Geo., who serves as a qualified person under the definition of National Instrument 43-101.

About Sky Gold Corp.

Sky Gold Corp. is a junior mineral exploration company engaged in acquiring and advancing mineral properties in Canada and the USA. The Company is active in Newfoundland on the Mustang and Virginia properties, which are located contiguous to New Found Gold Corp's Queensway project, where high-grade gold mineralization has been discovered, with the district being actively explored by numerous companies. The Company also owns the Evening Star property, located 12 km southeast of Hawthorne, NV, which is prospective for gold mineralization and CRD (Carbonate Replacement Deposit) base and precious (silver and gold) mineralization. The Company also owns the Imperial Project comprising two contiguous claim blocks (6,576 hectares) prospective for gold and VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) mineralization and covers 4.7 kilometres of the northern border with Amex Exploration's Perron property in Quebec, where high-grade gold has been intersected in three zones along a 3.2 km corridor.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

"Mike England"

Mike England, CEO & Director

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

Tel. 1-604-683-3995

Toll Free. 1-888-845-4770

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward -looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at WWW.SEDAR.COM).

SOURCE: Sky Gold Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656297/Sky-Gold-Commences-Drill-Program-on-Priority-Targets-on-the-Evening-Star-Property-Nevada
Regulatory News:

AKKA Technologies (Paris:AKA) (BSE:AKA) (ISIN:FR0004180537), a European leader in engineering consulting and R&D services announces today its Board of Directors has approved some additional liquidity lines for a total amount of 179.3m, concluded through:

the grant of a 104.3m French State Guaranteed Loan from four major banking institutions and Bpifrance to its French subsidiary AKKA Services, which reimbursement will be amortized over a period of four years as from 2022 (till July 2026);

the signature of an agreement with a leading European bank, on a 75m additional revolving credit facility (currently undrawn) for a two-year period, with three extension options (3X1 year), potentially extending the maturity up to 2026. The covenants associated with this new RCF are aligned with the RCF agreements already in place (Covenant ratio defined as net debt divided by EBITDA adjusted below 4.5x taking into account the IFRS16 related debt1

These operations have no material impact on the Group's average financing cost, and the net debt and covenant ratios are not affected by these operations.

Considering the Group's liquidity position, the Group is fully confident in its ability to repay its debt maturities due in 2022, while taking into account the cash outflows that will occur between now and then, and without prejudging any refinancing transactions of this debt that may take place in the interim.

Nathalie Buhnemann, Chief Financial Officer of AKKA, commented: "The transactions we are announcing today strengthen our liquidity position, diversify our risks, and demonstrate the confidence of our financial partners. We are very pleased to expand our banking pool with the addition of a new major European institution while maintaining an efficient cost of funding, which underlines AKKA's sound financial position. In an environment where credit conditions are tightening, the trust shown in us by our partners reflects their belief in the gradual upturn in our business activity, as currently factored in the consensus figures for 2021, and in line with our own expectations."

Next events: Half-year 2021 results: Press release on September 8th, 2021, 5.45pm Analyst meeting on September 9th, 2021, 9.30am

In case of discrepancies between the French and English versions of this press release, only the English version shall be deemed valid.

ABOUT AKKA

AKKA is a European leader in engineering consulting and R&D services. Our comprehensive portfolio of digital solutions combined with our expertise in engineering, uniquely positions us to support our clients by leveraging the power of connected data to accelerate innovation and drive the future of smart industry. AKKA accompanies leading industry players across a wide range of sectors throughout the life cycle of their products with cutting edge digital technologies (AI, ADAS, IoT, Big Data, robotics, embedded computing, machine learning, etc.) to help them rethink their products and business processes. Founded in 1984, AKKA has a strong entrepreneurial culture and a wide global footprint. Our 21,000 employees around the world are all passionate about technology and share the AKKA values of respect, courage and ambition. The Group recorded revenues of 1.5 billion in 2020. AKKA Technologies (AKA) is listed on Euronext Paris and Brussels segment B ISIN code: FR0004180537.

For more information, please visit: https://www.akka-technologies.com/

Follow us on: https://twitter.com/AKKA_Tech

-------------------

1 See Annual report 2020 Chapter 3 Management Report, section 10 Alternative performance measures p52 for more details on the calculation

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005914/en/

Contacts:

Stephanie Bia

Group Communications Investor Relations Director

Tel: +33(0)6 47 85 98 78

stephanie.bia@akka.eu




KEY FIGURES Revenue in first half of 2021 - Provisional







529.4 M At constant exchange rates and scope1







+21.3% where



companion animals +24.3%

food producing animals +17.7% Growth at constant exchange rates







+14.0%



Overall

change







+10.7%

+17.9%excl. Sentinel

1 Growth at constant exchange rates and scope is the organic growth of sales, excluding the impact of exchange rate changes, by calculating the indicator for the financial year in question and that for the previous financial year on the basis of identical exchange rates (the exchange rate used is that in effect for the previous financial year), and excluding the impact of changes in scope, by calculating the indicator for the financial year in question on the basis of the scope of consolidation for the previous financial year, and by excluding only the sales of Sentinel, a product transferred on July 1,2020, for the two financial years in question.





Quarterly consolidated revenue

Our second-quarter revenue hit 262.9 million, a steep +18.3% increase, excluding Sentinel (+14% at actual scope), from the same period in 2020. At constant exchange rates and scope, growth rose to +20%, propelled by the execution of our strategy, our excellent performance in all the geographical areas in which we operate, and outstanding momentum in the first months of 2021 in the animal health sector (visits to veterinarians, number of companion animal adoptions, rebound of the food producing animal segment, etc.). Our growth over the period was mainly driven by the performance of Europe and the Asia-Pacific area, which benefited from a favorable base effect over the quarter and contributed to approximately 80% of the quarter's growth. In Europe, all countries supported our growth, particularly France, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, Spain, and Italy, which had exceptional performances in the companion animal segment (vaccines, petfood, and specialty products). In Asia-Pacific, India alone drove more than half of the quarter's growth, thanks to products for ruminants (food supplements and parasiticides). Latin America benefited from strong momentum in Brazil and Mexico, broadly compensating for the withdrawal of aquaculture activities in Chile. Finally, the United States grew over the quarter, excluding Sentinel, thanks to Iverhart and specialty products.





Cumulative consolidated revenue at the end of June

For the first half of the year overall, our revenues were 529.4 million, compared with 478.3 million, representing an overall increase of +17.9% excluding Sentinel (+10.7% at actual scope) compared with the same period in 2020. Excluding the unfavorable impact of exchange rates, revenues rose by +21.3% excluding Sentinel (+14% at actual scope).

All areas had double-digit organic growth at the end of June, reflecting both the sector's momentum and the successful execution of our strategic plan - thanks largely to the ongoing commitment of our teams. In Europe, revenue grew by +18.4% at real rates (+18.7% at constant exchange rates). The main contributors to this performance were France, the United Kingdom, Export activities, Italy, Benelux, Spain, and Germany, driven by strong momentum in the companion animal ranges (particularly the specialty ranges, petfood, and the rebound in vaccines). In Asia-Pacific, real-rate growth was up +23.5% (+26% at constant exchange rates). India continues to drive the area's growth, alone accounting for over half; Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, and China also had a hand in the area's very strong growth. In the United States, first-half activity excluding Sentinel grew by +24.3% (+36.4% at constant exchange rates). The U.S. had sustained growth over all ranges and particularly specialty products, Iverhart, the dental range, which, in addition to the sales to the clinics, benefited from the strong development of its online sales; and recently launched products (Clomicalm, Senergy, Itrafungol and Stelfonta). In Latin America, apart from Chile, business grew by +19.8% at real rates (+31.5% at constant exchange rates), reflecting strong contributions from Brazil and Mexico. Finally, in Chile, activity in the first half was down by -19.1% at real rates (-15.1% at constant exchange rates), due to the drop in salmon smolts put in the water last year as a result of the health crisis and restaurant closings.

In terms of species, companion animal activities grew by +24.3% overall at constant exchange rates excluding Sentinel (8.7% at constant exchange rates and actual scope, and +5.8% at actual exchange rates and scope), essentially driven by the remarkable double-digit growth of the specialty ranges (including Clomicalm, Movoflex, Stelfonta), internal parasiticides, petfood, dermatology, dental, and by the rebound of the vaccine range for dogs and cats from the first half of 2020, which had been strongly impacted by our production and shortage problems. It should be noted that sales of Itrafungol and Clomicalm, products acquired in March 2021, represented around 4 million in sales over the period from March to June. The food producing animal segment also showed strong growth, at +17.7% at constant exchange rates (+14.2% at actual exchange rates), mainly driven by the ruminants sector (up +25.9% at constant exchange rates) and the swine-poultry sector (+10.0% at constant exchange rates), while the aquaculture sector is, as explained above, significantly down (by -11.6% at constant exchange rates) compared to the same period in 2020.





Outlook

We currently anticipate like-for-like revenue growth (excluding the impact of Sentinel's sale) of 10% to 14% (7% to 11% at constant exchange rates and real scope), and a ratio of "current operating profit before depreciation of assets arising from acquisitions" over "revenue" of around 15% at constant exchange rates. We also anticipate an unfavorable impact of exchange rates on revenue of approximately 13 million associated with currency depreciation.

So far, the health crisis has not had an overly negative impact on the animal health sector, but, as explained above, we have implemented a set of measures and day-to-day oversight to prevent and limit its potential impacts. In addition, our extensive presence in terms of geographic areas and species, our highly diversified product portfolio, our varied distribution channels, the very strong responsiveness and adaptability of the teams throughout our organizational model, and the robustness of our financial situation are the perfect assets for us to ride out the pandemic. However, we are remaining vigilant to new developments in the coming months and are well placed to address them.

CONSOLIDATED FIGURES

Non-audited figures

in millions of euros 2021 2020 Growth Growth

at constant exchange rates 1 Growth

at constant exchange rates and scope 1 Revenue for 1st quarter 266.5 247.7 +7.6% +12.3% +22.6% Revenue for 2nd quarter 262.9 230.6 +14.0% +15.8% +20.0% Revenue for first half year 529.4 478.3 +10.7% +14.0% +21.3% Revenue excluding Sentinel 521.9 442.6 +17.9% +21.3% +21.3%









A lifelong commitment to animal health



At Virbac, we make innovative solutions available to veterinarians, farmers and animal owners in more than 100 countries around the world. Covering more than 50 species, our range of products and services can diagnose, prevent and treat the majority of pathologies. Every day, we are committed to improving the quality of life of animals and to shaping the future of animal health together.





Virbac: NYSE Euronext - compartment A - ISIN code: FR0000031577/SYMBOL: VIRP

Financial Affairs Department: tel. 04 92 08 71 32 - email: finances@virbac.com - Website: corporate.virbac.com

Attachment
Regulatory News:

Under the liquidity agreement between Legrand (Paris:LR) and Exane BNP Paribas, the following assets were held in the liquidity account at June 30th, 2021:

64,801 shares

22,134,663

In the first half of 2021, it has been negotiated a total of:

Number of executions on buy side on semester: 10,731

Number of executions on sell side on semester: 12,641

Traded volume on buy side on semester: 1,262,866 shares for 101,660,496

Traded volume on sell side on semester: 1,295,792 shares for 104,417,380

Recap:

At the previous statement date (December 31st, 2020), the following assets were held in the liquidity account:

97,727 shares

19,377,778

In the second half of 2020, it has been negotiated a total of:

Number of executions on buy side on semester: 9,167

Number of executions on sell side on semester: 9,263

Traded volume on buy side on semester: 1,331,316 shares for 92,529,715

Traded volume on sell side on semester: 1,346,196 shares for 93,676,081

When the agreement was first put in place, the following assets were held in the liquidity account:

90,346 shares

19,880,644

The liquidity agreement complies with AMF Decision no. 2018-01 dated July 2nd, 2018, introducing liquidity agreements on equity securities as permitted market practice.

The reader is invited to verify authenticity of press releases by Legrand with the CertiDox app. More information on www.certidox.com

Date Buy Sell Quantity Number of executions Traded volume Quantity Number of executions Traded volume 04/01/2021 12 500 77 936 150 05/01/2021 12 500 109 939 758 12 500 160 941 423 06/01/2021 5 555 64 421 697 13 055 106 998 955 07/01/2021 10 000 43 790 400 08/01/2021 16 500 240 1 329 867 16 500 113 1 331 445 11/01/2021 12 500 96 1 004 925 7 000 102 563 405 12/01/2021 15 000 118 1 198 777 11 507 132 921 094 13/01/2021 3 000 15 239 983 5 507 51 441 013 14/01/2021 8 046 45 647 831 46 1 3 715 15/01/2021 2 805 20 223 107 2 805 42 223 464 18/01/2021 17 000 153 1 351 918 17 000 280 1 352 493 19/01/2021 7 500 52 598 569 5 000 55 399 500 20/01/2021 10 500 114 838 283 10 500 95 838 931 21/01/2021 5 000 36 399 250 5 000 65 400 200 22/01/2021 5 000 49 400 450 2 500 33 200 900 25/01/2021 5 000 60 397 050 670 12 53 587 26/01/2021 747 5 58 415 8 247 53 652 259 27/01/2021 12 500 84 989 000 5 700 55 452 392 28/01/2021 12 500 93 960 481 14 000 177 1 077 817 29/01/2021 25 000 148 1 913 756 24 900 420 1 907 093 01/02/2021 8 200 123 628 177 8 500 45 651 516 02/02/2021 6 593 81 509 146 8 093 71 625 460 03/02/2021 5 165 84 403 863 5 165 40 404 486 04/02/2021 10 000 59 775 380 12 000 136 931 787 05/02/2021 12 866 110 1 000 089 8 500 124 660 951 08/02/2021 7 020 75 547 485 8 720 102 680 628 09/02/2021 7 500 65 583 056 7 500 115 583 350 10/02/2021 5 070 59 394 883 5 070 25 395 372 11/02/2021 25 000 97 1 891 728 22 500 285 1 707 079 12/02/2021 929 5 68 746 8 429 51 632 636 15/02/2021 5 000 20 375 650 2 500 22 188 800 16/02/2021 5 000 40 374 350 5 000 40 375 350 17/02/2021 7 500 61 562 892 7 500 68 564 750 18/02/2021 10 000 74 750 350 10 000 77 753 926 19/02/2021 5 000 33 372 850 5 000 40 374 350 22/02/2021 10 247 77 757 752 222 2 16 517 23/02/2021 15 000 108 1 079 950 10 000 74 720 400 24/02/2021 17 193 148 1 244 582 19 693 176 1 428 167 25/02/2021 11 000 97 796 692 11 000 167 798 026 26/02/2021 15 000 67 1 078 450 15 000 166 1 079 611 01/03/2021 5 010 78 364 324 7 710 58 561 372 02/03/2021 12 650 102 924 521 7 650 63 560 844 03/03/2021 10 000 81 725 745 3 000 29 218 324 04/03/2021 7 220 69 518 992 7 220 63 520 228 05/03/2021 12 500 100 896 375 15 000 136 1 077 950 08/03/2021 2 500 15 182 150 17 500 106 1 294 800 09/03/2021 7 500 61 565 900 10/03/2021 11 250 122 853 385 11 000 88 836 506 11/03/2021 900 14 69 121 7 500 38 577 350 12/03/2021 15 500 96 1 192 066 8 000 92 615 550 15/03/2021 22 500 216 1 717 038 12 292 70 941 508 16/03/2021 7 500 60 572 850 17/03/2021 13 201 128 1 005 032 4 201 43 320 219 18/03/2021 25 000 137 1 875 069 17 500 255 1 314 334 19/03/2021 23 000 136 1 709 725 16 750 181 1 247 746 22/03/2021 15 000 119 1 107 300 15 000 191 1 108 559 23/03/2021 25 000 222 1 848 599 25 000 322 1 849 842 24/03/2021 20 000 190 1 489 754 20 000 198 1 490 994 25/03/2021 5 000 31 372 007 7 500 74 560 523 26/03/2021 975 6 75 075 13 475 88 1 040 120 29/03/2021 17 500 254 1 370 281 20 500 148 1 606 010 30/03/2021 20 798 156 1 645 015 17 798 179 1 408 740 31/03/2021 8 000 72 635 020 13 000 81 1 032 251 01/04/2021 18 590 178 1 482 693 21 090 225 1 683 252 06/04/2021 15 701 131 1 254 555 10 701 118 855 603 07/04/2021 12 627 71 999 262 5 127 76 406 235 08/04/2021 15 000 80 1 199 500 09/04/2021 2 500 18 202 750 10 000 83 815 500 12/04/2021 10 000 88 826 450 10 000 52 827 350 13/04/2021 10 000 78 829 950 10 000 53 831 650 14/04/2021 7 500 46 618 050 15/04/2021 2 500 7 206 300 10 000 51 826 200 16/04/2021 2 976 30 246 210 7 500 55 622 600 19/04/2021 22 833 214 1 904 446 21 433 268 1 788 727 20/04/2021 15 633 167 1 298 377 16 633 158 1 384 158 21/04/2021 27 500 255 2 281 726 21 500 241 1 785 524 22/04/2021 7 075 87 589 095 11 975 143 997 522 23/04/2021 20 600 182 1 708 584 20 000 236 1 659 830 26/04/2021 12 500 127 1 035 249 12 500 167 1 035 850 27/04/2021 17 500 159 1 458 453 17 500 136 1 459 582 28/04/2021 12 500 78 1 032 500 29/04/2021 14 512 115 1 188 000 14 512 163 1 188 508 30/04/2021 13 000 107 1 060 437 8 000 92 653 412 03/05/2021 9 725 91 792 281 15 000 176 1 223 060 04/05/2021 28 500 212 2 320 385 26 000 338 2 117 728 05/05/2021 12 500 101 1 025 750 06/05/2021 9 000 92 764 381 16 500 97 1 404 619 07/05/2021 9 344 143 808 109 8 344 32 724 685 10/05/2021 10 335 79 884 243 335 1 28 944 11/05/2021 12 500 82 1 045 096 12 500 55 1 046 715 12/05/2021 7 500 53 632 600 13/05/2021 7 500 60 630 650 7 500 57 631 150 14/05/2021 5 000 46 431 000 7 500 44 648 250 17/05/2021 13 175 179 1 143 736 14 556 177 1 265 158 18/05/2021 12 500 161 1 090 426 11 500 81 1 004 570 19/05/2021 14 646 127 1 261 023 10 757 163 927 068 20/05/2021 3 500 28 302 550 8 500 71 736 100 21/05/2021 7 500 73 656 056 10 000 54 875 500 24/05/2021 5 000 50 438 853 5 000 62 439 272 25/05/2021 18 750 138 1 650 381 16 250 195 1 430 985 27/05/2021 15 000 143 1 305 872 16 500 223 1 437 616 28/05/2021 11 500 116 995 559 7 000 93 606 263 31/05/2021 5 000 67 430 300 2 500 23 215 700 01/06/2021 7 500 54 643 600 5 000 49 430 400 02/06/2021 6 718 50 575 423 9 218 66 791 102 03/06/2021 677 5 58 357 5 139 42 443 654 04/06/2021 5 000 20 435 000 08/06/2021 325 1 28 685 10 000 56 886 150 09/06/2021 13 700 131 1 217 703 4 700 64 418 098 10/06/2021 16 006 82 1 408 209 20 006 180 1 761 595 11/06/2021 10 000 82 881 977 3 022 26 266 881 14/06/2021 8 000 63 701 539 13 500 149 1 187 534 15/06/2021 4 151 35 368 647 12 151 81 1 079 183 16/06/2021 12 500 126 1 115 877 4 630 89 413 438 17/06/2021 13 750 115 1 213 179 13 750 87 1 213 752 18/06/2021 15 000 109 1 316 889 13 000 132 1 141 524 21/06/2021 8 510 74 740 142 13 510 144 1 177 808 22/06/2021 5 000 40 440 116 10 000 72 882 400 23/06/2021 10 750 78 949 503 11 500 90 1 016 070 24/06/2021 4 000 34 357 483 25/06/2021 10 000 64 891 150 6 000 41 534 960 28/06/2021 16 317 117 1 454 984 11 096 119 990 318 29/06/2021 10 000 69 902 171 10 000 53 903 350 30/06/2021 10 000 83 892 575 2 932 32 262 033

Key financial dates:

2021 first-half results: July 30, 2021

"Quiet period 1 " starts June 30, 2021

"Quiet period " starts June 30, 2021 Capital Markets Day: September 22, 2021

2021 nine-month results: November 4, 2021

"Quiet period1" starts October 5, 2021

1 Period of time when all communication is suspended in the run-up to publication of results.

ABOUT LEGRAND

Legrand is the global specialist in electrical and digital building infrastructures. Its comprehensive offering of solutions for commercial, industrial and residential markets makes it a benchmark for customers worldwide. The Group harnesses technological and societal trends with lasting impacts on buildings with the purpose of improving life by transforming the spaces where people live, work and meet with electrical, digital infrastructures and connected solutions that are simple, innovative and sustainable. Drawing on an approach that involves all teams and stakeholders, Legrand is pursuing its strategy of profitable and sustainable growth driven by acquisitions and innovation, with a steady flow of new offerings-including Eliot* connected products with enhanced value in use. Legrand reported sales of 6.1 billion in 2020. The company is listed on Euronext Paris and is notably a component stock of the CAC 40 and CAC 40 ESG indexes. (code ISIN FR0010307819).

https://www.legrandgroup.com

*Eliot is a program launched in 2015 by Legrand to speed up deployment of the Internet of Things in its offering. A result of the group's innovation strategy, Eliot aims to develop connected and interoperable solutions that deliver lasting benefits to private individual users and professionals.

https://www.legrandgroup.com/en/group/eliot-legrands-connected-objects-program

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005096/en/

Contacts:

Investor relations

Legrand

Ronan Marc

Tel: +33 (0)1 49 72 53 53

ronan.marc@legrand.fr

Press relations

Publicis Consultants

Laurence Bault

Mob: +33 (0)7 85 90 63 36

laurence.bault@publicisconsultants.com
Comprehensive capabilities and hyperscaler ecosystem to simplify and accelerate business transformation

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, announced the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services and its commitment to invest $1 billion in cloud technologies, capabilities, acquisitions and partnerships over the next three years. As the cloud opportunity accelerates, Wipro FullStride Cloud Services brings together the full portfolio of Wipro's cloud-related capabilities, offerings and talent to better orchestrate the cloud journey for clients. This commitment builds on Wipro's existing and extensive cloud business with clients and significantly expands the investment with its partners and hyperscalers, creating industry solutions that accelerate results for mutual clients.

Wipro has seen consistent growth in its cloud business and today employs over 79,000 cloud professionals and more than 10,000 people certified by the leading cloud service providers. Over the past 12 months, Wipro has announced significant cloud-related wins with Telefonica Germany O2, Verifone, and E.ON in addition to METRO AG, one of the largest deals in Wipro's history.

"Today, cloud adoption is at the core of any IT transformation initiative, and our clients have been turning to Wipro for help with this. With our $1 billion investment in cloud capabilities, and the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, we are in a far stronger position to simplify, orchestrate and accelerate the cloud journey for our clients," said Thierry Delaporte, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Wipro Limited

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services will work with clients to better align business and IT with the cloud imperative, create significant business value and increase competitive differentiation. It will also improve their business agility, embed resilience and significantly optimize their technology investments in favor of change and innovation. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services puts client and business needs first while orchestrating simplicity in an otherwise complex ecosystem.

"Cloud adoption and innovation are an essential part of our IT strategy. For a company like METRO that operates in 25 countries, quickly migrating to the cloud enables decentralization, agility, speed and flexibility in engineering and development. We are delighted to have a multi-year strategic partner and leader like Wipro to support our cloud strategy and simplify a complex, technology ecosystem for our success and growth," said Timo Salzsieder, CIO, METRO AG

"With the introduction of the Chief Growth Office, we are renewing our focus on our global partnership ecosystem, amplifying and simplifying how we go to market together to orchestrate cloud transformation for our clients. We will announce a new leader for this group very soon." said Stephanie Trautman, Chief Growth Officer, Wipro Limited

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services is a collaboration between Wipro's Chief Growth Office and existing Global Business Lines to create an integrated and comprehensive cloud transformation capability for customers, partners and cloud experts. With the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, Wipro is set to make cloud innovation and progress thrive, fueled by passion, collaboration, and boldness for clients.

For more information, visit wipro.com/cloud/mediakit.

About Wipro Limited

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 200,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future.

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements contained herein represent Wipro's beliefs regarding future events, many of which are by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside Wipro's control. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Wipro's growth prospects, its future financial operating results, and its plans, expectations and intentions. Wipro cautions readers that the forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in our earnings, revenue and profits, our ability to generate and manage growth, complete proposed corporate actions, intense competition in IT services, our ability to maintain our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which we make strategic investments, withdrawal of fiscal governmental incentives, political instability, war, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our business and industry. The conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could decrease technology spending, adversely affect demand for our products, affect the rate of customer spending and could adversely affect our customers' ability or willingness to purchase our offerings, delay prospective customers' purchasing decisions, adversely impact our ability to provide on-site consulting services and our inability to deliver our customers or delay the provisioning of our offerings, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. Our operations may also be negatively affected by a range of external factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, Annual Reports on Form 20-F. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. We may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by us or on our behalf.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005977/en/

Contacts:

Wipro Media Contact:

Purnima Burman

Wipro Limited

purnima.burman@wipro.com
Regulatory News:

Veolia (Paris:VIE):

This press release does not constitute an offer to acquire securities

PRESS RELEASE DATED JULY 20, 2021

CASH TENDER OFFER

for the shares of:

SUEZ

initiated by:

VEOLIA

presented by:

Credit Agricole HSBC Advising and presenting Bank and Guarantor Advising and presenting Bank and Guarantor Morgan Stanley Bank of America Advising and presenting Bank Advising and presenting Bank

Veolia is also advised by:

Messier and Associes P/W/P BNP Paribas Deutsche Bank citi

AVAILABILITY OF THE OFFER DOCUMENT PREPARED BY VEOLIA

Terms of the Offer

19.85 per Suez share (distribution rights attached)

This press release was prepared by Veolia and made available to the public pursuant to Articles 231-27 1 and 2 of the General Regulation of the Autorite des Marches Financiers (the "AMF

Important notice

In the event the number of shares not tendered in the Offer by the minority shareholders of Suez does not represent, following the Offer, or, if applicable, of the Reopened Offer, more than 10% of the share capital and voting rights of Suez, Veolia intends, within a period of ten (10) trading days from the publication of the notice announcing the result of the Offer or, if applicable, at the latest within three (3) months following the closing of the Reopened Offer, in accordance with Article L. 433-4 II of the French Monetary and Financial Code and Articles 232-4 and 237-1 to 237-10 of the AMF General Regulation, to implement a squeeze-out to acquire the Suez shares not tendered in the Offer in exchange for compensation equal to the Offer price, after adjustments, where applicable.

Pursuant to Article L. 621-8 of the French Monetary and Financial Code and Article 231-23 of the AMF General Regulation, the AMF has, pursuant to its clearance decision regarding the tender offer for Suez shares dated July 20, 2021, granted visa no. 21-338 dated July 20, 2021 to the offer document prepared by Veolia.

Information relating in particular to the legal, financial and accounting characteristics of Veolia which supplements the offer document prepared by Veolia will be made available to the public no later than the day preceding the opening of the tender offer. A press release will be issued to inform the public of the manner in which the information will be made available.

This offer document is available on the website of the AMF (www.amf-france.org) and the website of Veolia (www.veolia.com) and may be obtained free of charge from:

Veolia Environnement 21, rue La Boetie

75008 Paris

France or 30, rue Madeleine Vionnet 93300 Aubervilliers France Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank

12, place des Etats-Unis

CS 70052, 92547 Montrouge Cedex France HSBC Continental Europe

38, avenue Kleber

75116 Paris

France Morgan Stanley Europe SE

61, rue de Monceau

75008 Paris

France Bank of America Europe DAC (Branch in France)

51, rue La Boetie

75008 Paris France

This press release has been prepared for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to acquire securities. The distribution of this press release, the tender offer and acceptance of the tender offer may be subject to legal restrictions in certain jurisdictions. Persons coming into possession of this press release must inform themselves of the applicable legal restrictions and comply with them. Veolia will not be liable for the violation of applicable legal restrictions by any person.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006045/en/

Contacts:

Group Press Relations:

Laurent Obadia Edouard de La Loyere

Tel.+ 33 1 85 57 85 23

edouard.de-la-loyere@veolia.com

Investors Analysts:

Ronald Wasylec Ariane de Lamaze

Tel.: +33 (0)1 85 57 84 76 84 80

investor-relations@veolia.com
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / July 20, 2021 / Black Tusk Resources Inc. ("Black Tusk" or the "Company") (CSE:TUSK)(FSE:0NB)(OTC PINK:BTKRF) is pleased to announce that planning is underway for exploration on the South Rim property located in central British Columbia. The South Rim property comprises four claims totalling 1,771.33 hectares. The project is located approximately 140 kilometres south of Smithers, in central British Columbia. Black Tusk intends to send a geologic crew onto the property this August to map and sample historic gold and multi-element showings. Black Tusk announced the acquisition of the project in 2020, and released information regarding historically mapped and sampled mineralization at that time. Some of the following repeats that original announcement.

The project has undergone a number of exploration programs dating back to 1967. These were designed to explore for gold and molybdenum. This work eventually led to the discovery of mineral occurrences that are now documented in the BC Mineral Inventory database.

The BC Mineral Inventory database includes 13 mineralized occurrences within the South Rim property. Sampling returned gold values for the 13 occurrences, ranging from 0.132 grams per tonne (gpt), to 24.0 gpt. Silver values range from 2.2 gpt to 42.8 gpt. The mineralization is typically described as epithermal, intrusion-related polymetallic sulphide and low-sulphidation (quartz) veins. Black Tusk has not undertaken any exploration upon the claims to date and has yet to verify the sample results listed in the Minfile database or within related assessment reports.

Black Tusk also obtained records of historic work undertaken by other companies that includes 465 rock samples and 1,346 soil samples (ARIS reports indicated in table below). Twenty -four rock samples returned greater than 0.5 gpt gold. The series of elevated gold values plot along a northwest trending alignment, passing through the East Side, Chalco, High View, Center View, and Camp View mineralized showings, for a distance of approximately two kilometres. This trend of elevated gold values, often associated with elevated silver, provides a primary target of interest for further exploration.

Gold greater than 0.5 gpt from rock samples reported in historic work

Sample ID East North Gold ppb Silver ppm Year ARIS SR-20100901 613278 5923487 2,675 2.8 2010 31796 SR-20100904 613273 5923474 665 0.7 2010 31796 SR-20100934 613429 5923226 2,279 2.8 2010 31796 SR-20100963 613028 5923608 3,460 4.8 2010 31796 DO 23 612873 5924433 1,720 2.6 1988 17962 ZR 313 613166 5924479 1,053 2.5 1988 17962 BH 128 612090 5923796 1,765 1.7 1987 16677 BH 129 612085 5923786 1,010 0.3 1987 16677 TRW 531 613146 5924564 540 2.2 1987 16677 TRW 533 613169 5924588 1,075 1.8 1987 16677 TRW 535 613192 5924607 1,050 0.1 1987 16677 TRW 536 613228 5924656 580 1.2 1987 16677 BH 138 612900 5923472 1,625 25.6 1985 14531 BH 161 613140 5923434 870 3.1 1985 14531 BH 171 613915 5922962 24,000 9.8 1985 14531 BH 178 612776 5923670 730 7.4 1985 14531 BH 189 614119 5922369 530 3.9 1985 14531 BH 190 614070 5922387 770 1 1985 14531 BH 203 614081 5922377 510 6.4 1985 14531 BH 204 614080 5922363 4,100 5.5 1985 14531 1 613995 5922421 1,580 6.6 1984 12666 8 612798 5923742 640 0 1984 12666



Soil sampling results show 10 samples returned greater than 50 ppb gold, with a high of 275 ppb. These elevated values appear to be relatively isolated, with little to no follow-up recorded in the historic reports. Black Tusk will further evaluate the soil sample results as consideration for future property exploration.

Geoscience BC provides airborne geophysical survey results for the project area in their Report 2017-3. Initial review of their database indicates that several magnetic features may be associated with mineralized bedrock on the property. These provide substantial targets for ground follow-up.

The company believes that the results from historic work and accompanying database provide strong incentive to continue exploration of the property for precious and base metal deposits. The company will undergo a "boots on the ground" map and sampling program in August to locate historic workings and verify the mineralization, and expand upon those results where possible.

The property lies within geologic terrain that hosts the Huckleberry Copper-Molybdenum Mine located 23 kilometres to the north of the South Rim Property. The Huckleberry Mine contains remaining reserves of 35 million tonnes of proven and probable grading 0.32 % copper and 0.01 % molybdenum, with measured and indicated resources of 180 million tonnes grading 0.32 % copper and 0.01 % molybdenum (Imperial Metals website, February, 2020)

The Ootsa Project is located on the south shore of the Nechako Reservoir, 6 km from the Huckleberry copper-molybdenum mine. The Ootsa project contains an estimated measured and indicated resource of 224 million tonnes grading 0.22 % copper, .021 % molybdenum and 0.15 gpt gold (Surge Copper Corporation website, January, 2020).

(The reader is cautioned that resources that exist on regional or adjacent properties are not necessarily indicative of potential on the Black Tusk -South Rim Project.)

Black Tusk is looking forward to exploration on the South Rim project.

Perry Grunenberg, P.Geo, a qualified person, as that term is defined under National Instrument 43-101, has compiled and reviewed this news release, and will undertake the August 2021 exploration work on the South Rim project.

Cautionary Statement

This press release contains forward-looking statements based on assumptions as of that date. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guarantees of future performance. The Company cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond the Company's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to exploration and development; the ability of the Company to obtain additional financing; the Company's limited operating history; the need to comply with environmental and governmental regulations; fluctuations in the prices of commodities; operating hazards and risks; competition and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in the Company's Prospectus dated September 8, 2017 available on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions, and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions, and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Richard Penn

President & CEO

Black Tusk Resources

(778) 384-8923

SOURCE: Black Tusk Resources Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/656349/Black-Tusk-Resources-Inc-To-Explore-South-Rim-Gold-Project-Central-British-Columbia


WOLFSBURG (dpa-AFX) - Volkswagen of America, Inc. has announced plans to end production of Passat in Chattanooga with model year 2022, as part of the plant's transformation to build future electric vehicles.



However, the German auto giant plans to release a limited edition Passat with Chattanooga-inspired details, that will celebrate the integral role the vehicle played in the resurgence of Volkswagen in the United States.



'We've sold some version of the Passat for nearly 50 years, and the Passat launched our relationship with Chattanooga, which supports thousands of jobs,' said Scott Keogh, President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc. 'With the Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport in high demand, and the North American production launch of the all-electric ID.4 SUV next year, our future in Chattanooga looks brighter than ever.'



The 2022 Passat Limited Edition includes unique exterior and interior design details created to celebrate the model's history and recognize the contributions of the employees who built Passat. A run of 1,973 Limited Edition models are expected to be produced to recognize the year the first Passat was launched in Germany.



The Passat Limited Edition will be available in four unique color combinations-- Aurora Red Metallic models with Titan Black interior, Racing Green Metallic models with Mauro Brown interior, Pure White models with Mauro Brown interior and Platinum Grey Metallic models with Titan Black interior.



Pricing for the 2022 Passat Limited Edition starts at $30,295 with a destination cost of $995. The Aurora Red Metallic exterior color option is an additional $395.



Recently auto companies have been cutting down or stopping productions of sedan and hatchback models, and have shifted their focus to more lucrative SUVs and pickup trucks.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

VOLKSWAGEN-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de


LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The Israeli Government on Tuesday warned consumer goods company Unilever Plc (UN, ULVR.L, UL) of 'severe consequences' over its subsidiary Ben & Jerry's decision to stop the sale of ice cream in Israeli-occupied territories.



In a phone call made to Unilever Chief Executive Officer Alan Jope, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said the move was a 'glaring anti-Israel measure' and the government would move 'aggressively against any boycott measure targeting civilians.'



On Monday, the ice cream maker had released a statement stating that it would not renew the license agreement with its Israeli partner once it expires at the end of next year. The company said that the sale of its products in Palestinian occupied portions is 'inconsistent with its values'.



Earlier, the Vermont-based company had come under pressure from pro-Palestinian groups to shut down its business in Israel and Jewish settlements in West Bank, which it has been operating since 1987 through its partner, Ben & Jerry's Israel.



Worldwide, many countries consider the Israeli settlements in Palestine as illegal but Israel is not of the same opinion. Ben & Jerry, which was acquired by Unilever in 2000, is known for its support for social justice schemes and this recent move can be seen as one of those as well.



Unilever acquired the ice cream maker in a deal, which allows the latter to operate with more autonomy than other subsidiaries, including having given legal powers to an independent board to make decisions over its social mission, brand integrity and policies.



Regarding the move to not renew the license, Ben & Jerry said that the company would continue to operate in Israel with a different agreement, under which there will not be sales in the West Bank, among areas where Palestinians seek statehood.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

UNILEVER PLC-Aktie komplett kostenlos handeln - auf Smartbroker.de
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - July 20, 2021) - Harvest One Cannabis Inc. (TSXV: HVT) (OTCQX: HRVOF) ("Harvest One" or the "Company") a uniquely positioned cannabis-infused consumer packaged goods ("CPG") leader, is pleased to announce that on July 19, 2021, it signed a three-year renewable marketing and distribution agreement (the "Agreement") for international market expansion with WB Canna Co. & Wellness ("WB Canna"), a leading cannabidiol ("CBD") and wellness products distributor in the Caribbean, Central America, and travel retail/cruise channel.

Partnering with WB Canna aligns with Harvest One's growth strategies for its core brands, and further contributes to the Company's growth and brand expansion initiatives for fiscal 2022. Based on the terms of the Agreement, the Company granted WB Canna exclusive distribution and marketing rights across 33 countries throughout the Caribbean and Central America inclusive of Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. Such distribution includes channels of duty free, cruise and travel retail. Products will be priced at wholesale prices, subject to annual price increases. Canna will provide expert guidance and forward thinking, logistical and regional expertise, as well as local category training to support the CPG brand strategies of Harvest One across these regions.

Gord Davey, President and CEO of Harvest One said, "Executing on our commitments for expansion and channel development is key to our long term focused growth. Once again, our team has delivered and showed the relevance of our brands in providing real wellness solutions in new and emerging markets. These relationships, complemented by our existing partners and distribution network in the US market, will accelerate brand awareness and product trial and demonstrate the strength of our product in the Health and Wellness category. This expanded distribution is exciting news as it will foster additional growth of the Company's existing CPG brands and position Harvest One for future success with our anticipated line extensions of both infused and non-infused products."

"WB Canna Co. & Wellness welcomes the Harvest One family of brands, including Dream Water, to our exciting portfolio of wellness minded brands," Phillip Jarrell, COO of WB Canna Co. & Wellness said. "Better health includes better sleep patterns and habits. We're excited to be Dream Water advocates, and to assist in promoting healthier living throughout our Caribbean, Central America and travel retail/cruise networks."

For a more detailed description of each of our consumer brands, we encourage you to visit the portfolio pages our website; www.harvestone.com/portfolio/dream-water/.

About Harvest One

Harvest One is a global cannabis infused CPG leader that develops and distributes premium health, wellness and selfcare products with a market focus on sleep and pain. Harvest One is a uniquely positioned company in the cannabis space with a focus on cannabis infused and non-infused consumer packaged goods. Harvest One owns and operates two subsidiaries; Dream Water Global and LivRelief. For more information, please visit www.harvestone.com.

About WB Canna Co. & Wellness

WB Canna Co. & Wellness, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Miami-based WEBB Banks, distributes top-quality CBD and wellness products in the Caribbean, Central America, and travel retail/cruise channel. Its portfolio includes well-known brands and category leaders including cbdMD, Marley, and Secret Nature. Visit www.wbcannaco.com as well as @wbcannaco on Instagram and @wbcannacoandwellness on Facebook for the latest updates.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates, and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements include, among other things, statements with respect to the anticipated synergies with the partnership with WB Canna, the distribution of the Company's products into different regions, future expansion plans, initiatives and strategies of the Company, and the Company's performance, growth initiatives, profitability, production capacity and gain in market share.

These forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions and estimates of management of the Company at the time such statements were made. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Company's operations; fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; expectations regarding the size of the cannabis markets where the Company operates; changing consumer habits; the ability of the Company to successfully achieve its business objectives; plans for expansion; political and social uncertainties; inability to obtain adequate insurance to cover risks and hazards; employee relations and the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on cultivation, production, distribution, and sale of cannabis and cannabis-related products in the markets where the Company operates. Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes, or believed at the time, to be reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure shareholders that actual results will be consistent with such forward-looking statements, as there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. The Company assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change, except as required by law.

Additional information regarding this and other risks and uncertainties relating to the Company's business are contained under the heading "Risk Factors" in the Company's annual information form dated as of March 2, 2021, for the year ended June 30, 2020, and under the heading "Risks and Uncertainties" in the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis dated October 28, 2020, for the year ended June 30, 2020, filed under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Neither TSX-V nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX-V) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Investor Relations:

Jack Tasse

Investor Relations

IR@harvestone.com

1-877-915-7934

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/90699
Highlights:



Euro Manganese's wholly owned subsidiary, Mangan Chvaletice s.r.o., has been granted an extension of its Chvaletice Exploration Licenses to May 31, 2026.

Mangan Chvaletice has also been granted a new Preliminary Mining Permit, also valid to May 31, 2026.

Permitting agencies consulted with local communities on the extensions, and there were no objections to the granting of these rights.

The supportive permitting decisions made by the Czech Ministry of the Environment represent a continued vote of confidence in Euro Manganese's Chvaletice development plans.

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Euro Manganese Inc. (TSX-V and ASX: EMN; OTCQX: EUMNF) (the "Company" or "EMN") is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiary, Mangan Chvaletice s.r.o., ("Mangan") has been granted extensions of its exclusive resource development rights related to the Company's Chvaletice Manganese Project ("Project").

On July 2, 2021, Mangan received notice from the Czech Ministry of the Environment (the "Ministry") that its exploration licences have been extended by three years to May 31, 2026. The first exploration tenure was granted in 2014, when exploration and evaluation work began at the project site. The extension allows work to continue on all aspects of the manganese resource development, including the tailings extraction for the Project's Demonstration Plant ("DP"), targeted to begin operation in the first quarter of 2022.

On July 20, 2021, the Ministry also granted Mangan a new Preliminary Mining Permit, valid until May 31, 2026. The permit secures Mangan's exclusive rights to the Chvaletice tailings resource and the Company's right to conduct the Project's Final Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, which is expected to be completed and filed with permitting authorities in the first quarter of 2022. The existing permit was due to expire in 2023.

The opportunity to extend the Chvaletice resource development rights to 2026 was made possible by the Czech permitting agencies in acknowledgement of the potential benefits the Project will bring, as well as delays and challenges that have been caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Permitting agencies consulted with local communities on the extensions, and there were no objections to the granting of these rights.

The exploration licenses and Preliminary Mining Permit are expected to be superseded by mining leases and permits for the Project, contingent on approval of the Final Environmental and Social Impact Assessment.

"Our Project team has worked diligently to develop strong lines of communication and earn the trust and cooperation of regulatory agencies, community stakeholders and all levels of government," says Euro Manganese CEO, Marco Romero. "The extension of our mineral rights by the Ministry of the Environment is clear evidence of the strength of the relationships and reputation that we have built, and the respectful and collaborative approach that governs all our dealings with stakeholders. Further, these extensions give us ample time to execute the Project work against our ultimate goal of start-up, commissioning and commercial production in late 2024/early 2025."

The Chvaletice Manganese Project continues to make steady progress as demand for high purity manganese continues to increase in Europe and globally. The restart of the pilot plant, which will provide small samples of high purity manganese products for prospective customers, is proceeding on schedule, with delivery of samples expected later this year. Fabrication of the Project's Demonstration Plant is well underway. The DP is designed to produce large-scale product samples for supply chain qualification purposes. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in the first quarter of 2022. Work is also advancing well on the Projects' definitive feasibility study and Final Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, both also on track for completion in the first quarter of 2022.

In addition to supporting the EU's goals of decarbonization, electrification of mobility and creating a circular economy, the Project brings local environmental and social benefits. As tailings from the decommissioned mine get recycled to produce battery-grade manganese, a longstanding source of water pollution will be eliminated, and high-quality jobs will be created for local communities.

Selected past EMN news releases for further background:

June 14, 2021 news release: Euro Manganese to Restart Pilot Plant in Response to Prospective Customers. (https://www.mn25.ca/post/euro-manganese-to-restart-pilot-plant-in-response-to-prospective-customers)

May 23, 2021 news release: Euro Manganese provides update on Chvaletice Manganese Project (https://www.mn25.ca/post/nr-2021-10).

About Euro Manganese Inc.

Euro Manganese Inc. is a battery materials company whose principal focus is advancing the development of the Chvaletice Manganese Project, in which it holds a 100% interest. The proposed Project entails re-processing a significant manganese deposit hosted in mine tailings from a decommissioned mine, strategically located in the Czech Republic. The Company's goal is to become a leading, competitive and environmentally superior primary producer of ultra-high-purity Manganese Products in the heart of Europe, serving the lithium-ion battery industry, as well as other high-technology applications.

The technical information in this news release concerning the Chvaletice Manganese Project was prepared under the supervision of Ms. Andrea Zaradic, P. Eng., a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). Ms. Zaradic has reviewed and approved the information in this news release for which she is responsible and has consented to the inclusion of the matters in this news release based on the information in the form and context in which it appears.

Authorized for release by the CEO of Euro Manganese Inc.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) or the ASX accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Contact: Euro Manganese Inc. Marco A. Romero Fausto Taddei President & CEO Vice President, Corporate Development +1 (604)-681-1010 ext. 101 & Corporate Secretary +1 (604)-681-1010 ext. 105 Media inquiries: Ron Shewchuk Director of Communications +1 604-781-2199

E-mail: info@mn25.ca

Website: www.mn25.ca

Company Address:

#709 - 700 West Pender St.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6C 1G8

Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company, its projects, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements or information. Such statements can be identified by the use of words such as "may", "would", "could", "will", "intend", "expect", "believe", "plan", "anticipate", "estimate", "scheduled", "forecast", "predict" and other similar terminology, or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. Such forward-looking information or statements relate to future events or future performance about the Company and its business and operations, which include, without limitation, statements with respect to the continued development of the Project, the restart of the pilot plant, the timing of the delivery and operation of the demonstration plant, the successful qualification of the Company's high-purity manganese products, the completion and timing of the definitive feasibility study, the timing of the filing of Project's Final Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, and the ability of the Company to convert the exploration licenses and Preliminary Mining Permit into mining leases and permits for the Project. Further, it should be noted that no production decision has been made with respect to the Project and that such a decision will only be made based on completion of a positive feasibility study, permitting and financing having been secured.

Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. Forward-looking statements and information involve significant risks and uncertainties, should not be read as guarantees of future performance or results and will not necessarily be accurate indicators of whether or not such results will be achieved. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the results discussed in the forward-looking statements or information, including, but not limited to, the factors discussed under "Risks Notice" and elsewhere in the Company's MD&A, as well as the inability to obtain regulatory approvals in a timely manner; the potential for unknown or unexpected events to cause contractual conditions to not be satisfied; unexpected changes in laws, rules or regulations, or their enforcement by applicable authorities; the failure of parties to contracts with the Company to perform as agreed; social or labour unrest; changes in commodity prices; and the failure of exploration programs or studies to deliver anticipated results or results that would justify and support continued exploration, studies, development or operations.

Although the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are based upon what management of the Company believes are reasonable assumptions, the Company cannot assure investors that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this news release and are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement. Subject to applicable securities laws, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise the forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this news release. The Company's actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of the factors set forth in the "Risks Notice" section and elsewhere in the Company's MD&A for the year ended September 30, 2020 and its Annual Information Form.
CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - Japan will on Wednesday release June figures for imports, exports and trade balance. Setting the pace for a modest day in Asia-Pacific economic activity. Imports are expected to jump 29.0 percent on year, up from 27.9 percent in May. Exports are called higher by an annual 46.2 percent, slowing from 49.6 percent in the previous month. The trade surplus is pegged at 460 billion yen following the 187.1 billion yen deficit a month earlier. Japan also will see the minutes from its monetary policy meeting on June 17 and 18. At the meeting, the central bank voted to keep its benchmark lending rate steady at -0.1 percent. The bank also will continue to purchase a necessary amount of Japanese government bonds without setting an upper limit so that 10-year JGB yields will remain at around zero percent. Australia will June results for retail sales and for the leading economic index from Westpac Bank. Retail sales are tipped to fall 0.5 percent on month after rising 0.4 percent in May. The economic index dipped 0.06 percent in May. Thailand will provide June numbers for imports, exports and trade balance. In May, imports were up 63.54 percent on year and exports jumped an annual 41.59 percent for a trade surplus of $0.8 billion. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Rio Tinto and Bougainville community members, represented by the Human Rights Law Centre, have reached an agreement to identify and assess legacy impacts of the former Panguna copper mine in Bougainville. This follows several months of constructive discussions facilitated by the Australian OECD National Contact Point (AusNCP).

A joint committee of stakeholders will be formed to oversee a detailed independent assessment of the Panguna mine to identify and better understand actual and potential environmental and human rights impacts of the mine which ceased operating in 1989.

The Panguna Mine Legacy Impact Assessment Committee will be established by the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) and the parties to the AusNCP process, Rio Tinto, the HRLC and the community members the HRLC represents. It will be chaired by an independent facilitator with representatives invited to join the Committee from the Independent State of Papua New Guinea (PNG), ASX-listed Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL), as well as other landowners and community representatives.

Rio Tinto chief executive Jakob Stausholm said, "This is an important first step towards engaging with those impacted by the legacy of the Panguna mine. It comes after months of constructive engagement with the HRLC and the community members they represent facilitated by the Australian National Contact Point, as well as engagement with other key stakeholders including the Autonomous Bougainville Government.

"Operations at Panguna ceased in 1989 and we've not had access to the mine since that time. Stakeholders have raised concerns about impacts to water, land and health and this process will provide all parties with a clearer understanding of these important matters, so that together we can consider the right way forward. We take this seriously and are committed to identifying and assessing any involvement we may have had in adverse impacts in line with our external human rights and environmental commitments and internal policies and standards."

The scope of the Impact Assessment, along with terms of reference for the Committee, have been drafted by the parties to the AusNCP process. The Impact Assessment will be predominantly funded by Rio Tinto with BCL contributing separately, provided that broader stakeholders on the Committee endorse the process and proposed methodology of the Impact Assessment, the Impact Assessment can be safely completed and an appropriate funding mechanism can be agreed. The ABG has confirmed its support for the process.

The Committee will appoint a chairperson and an independent third-party company (or consortium) to complete the Impact Assessment with strong environmental and human rights expertise as well as both global and regional experience.

Following the Impact Assessment, Rio Tinto and the other parties to the AusNCP process will discuss the recommendations from the Impact Assessment and the remaining commitments sought by the communities.

The joint statement from the parties to the AusNCP process is available at https://ausncp.gov.au/.

Background

The Panguna mine was operated by BCL, majority owned by Rio Tinto, for 17 years from 1972 until 1989, when operations were suspended due to an uprising against the mine and subsequent civil war. A peace agreement was signed in 2001 and Bougainville was given greater autonomy within PNG, with a non-binding referendum in favour of independence held in 2019.

Rio Tinto transferred its 53.83 per cent majority shareholding in BCL to the ABG and the PNG Government in 2016 for no consideration, enabling ABG and PNG to hold an equal share in BCL of 36.4 per cent each. BCL is an ASX listed company with the remaining 27.2 per cent held by public and institutional investors. Rio Tinto holds no shares in BCL.

In September 2020, the HRLC, representing 156 residents of villages in the vicinity of the Panguna mine, filed a complaint with the AusNCP against Rio Tinto. The complaint alleges that Rio Tinto is accountable for significant breaches of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises relating to past and ongoing environmental and human rights impacts allegedly arising from the Panguna mine. The complaint also alleges that, notwithstanding its divestment, Rio Tinto is accountable for remediating these ongoing impacts as it has an ongoing obligation to provide for or cooperate in remediation where it identifies it has caused or contributed to harm. The complainants are seeking commitments from Rio Tinto to:

Engage with Panguna mine-affected communities to help find solutions and undertake formal reconciliation as per Bougainvillean custom;

Fund an independent environmental and human rights impact assessment of the mine by a team of qualified local and international experts to map impacts and to develop recommendations (Impact Assessment); and

Contribute to a substantial, independently managed fund, to help address the harms allegedly caused by the mine and assist long-term rehabilitation efforts.

The AusNCP accepted the complaint and Rio Tinto, HRLC and community representatives have been engaging productively through the 'good offices' of the AusNCP since November 2020.

This announcement is authorised for release to the market by Steve Allen, Rio Tinto's Group Company Secretary.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006261/en/

Contacts:

Contacts

Please direct all enquiries to media.enquiries@riotinto.com

Media Relations, UK

Illtud Harri

M +44 7920 503 600

David Outhwaite

M +44 7787 597 493

Media Relations, Americas

Matthew Klar

T +1 514 608 4429

Investor Relations, UK

Menno Sanderse

M: +44 7825 195 178

David Ovington

M +44 7920 010 978

Clare Peever

M +44 7788 967 877

Media Relations, Australia

Jonathan Rose

M +61 447 028 913

Matt Chambers

M +61 433 525 739

Jesse Riseborough

M +61 436 653 412

Investor Relations, Australia

Natalie Worley

M +61 409 210 462

Amar Jambaa

M +61 472 865 948

Rio Tinto plc

6 St James's Square

London SW1Y 4AD

United Kingdom

T +44 20 7781 2000

Registered in England

No. 719885

Rio Tinto Limited

Level 7, 360 Collins Street

Melbourne 3000

Australia

T +61 3 9283 3333

Registered in Australia

ABN 96 004 458 404

riotinto.com

Category: General
Accenture (NYSE: ACN) acquired Cloudworks, a Toronto, Canada-based Oracle Cloud implementation service provider across North America.

The amount of the deal was not disclosed.

The deal further enhances Accentures capabilities to deliver Oracle solutions to clients on their journeys to the cloud.

Founded in 2016 and led by Jason Nott, CEO, Cloudworks specializes in strategy, business and technology consulting and is a provider for Oracle Cloud-based solutions in Enterprise Resource Planning, Enterprise Performance Management and Human Capital Management. The firm has capabilities in robotic process automation (RPA), data analytics and AI, which help maximize the business value for clients investments in Oracle Cloud. It supports clients in several industries, including transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, mining, oil & gas, utilities and energy, telecommunications & media, financial services, real estate, public sector, and higher education. The majority of Cloudworks 100 employees are located in Toronto, with additional offices in Calgary, and other locations throughout the United States.



Cloudworks represents the third acquisition for Accenture Canada over the last year following Avenai, an Ottawa consultancy focused on public service organizations, and Callisto Integration, an Oakville, Ontario provider of consulting and technology services in digital manufacturing in food and beverage, chemicals, utilities and other industries, both in 2020.



Globally, in 2021, Accenture has announced two Oracle-focused acquisitions: NellArmonia, a consulting and technology company specialized in enterprise performance management solutions, headquartered in Paris, France, and AppsPro, an Oracle Cloud implementation service provider in Saudi Arabia.



FinSMEs

20/07/2021
Capchase, a Boston, MA-based provider of non-dilutive capital for recurring revenue businesses, raised an additional $280m in new debt and equity funding.

The round was led by i80 Group.

The funding, which follows a $125m round in June, will help to drive Capchases financing of European recurring revenue businesses. Currently live in the UK and Spain, the company expects to launch broadly across European countries in the next 6 months.

Led by Miguel Fernandez, co-founder and CEO, and Henrik Grim, Europe MD, the company provides recurring-revenue companies with an alternative to equity financing. To do this Capchase employs a range of programmatic funding solutions that provide startups capital based on their future revenue. Its latest release, Capchase Expense Financing enables companies to manage their largest expenses  such as legal bills, cloud hosting services, payroll and bonus payments, and recruitment fees  without depleting their cash.

Repayment terms are fixed in either 3, 6, 9, or 12-month increments.

FinSMEs

20/07/2021
Mural, a San Francisco, CA-based provider of digital workspaces for guided visual collaboration in the enterprise, raised $50m in Series C funding.

The round, which brought total funding to approximately $200m and values the company in excess of $2 billion, was led by existing investors Insight Partners and Tiger Global. In addition, AthenePartners Founder and former Microsoft SVP and HP COO, Bill Veghte, was appointed as executive chairman of the board of directors. In addition, Qualtrics Founder and Executive Chairman, Ryan Smith, was appointed as an advisor to Mural.

The company plans to use the new capital to further platform development to support hybrid and distributed workforces. This includes new software integrations with Microsoft Teams, Zoom Video Communications, Inc., Webex by Cisco, and Atlassian. The funds will also support programs for Murals community of tens of thousands of facilitators, team leaders, and design thinking and Agile experts. These programs will help visual collaboration pioneerscalled Playmakersshare methods, playbooks, and best practices while learning from each other.

Led by CEO Mariano Suarez-Battan, Mural provides a collaboration platform which offers teams in product, consulting, leadership, innovation, technology, sales and customer success, among others, a digital workspace for visual collaboration, as well as methods for ideation and co-creation. Enterprise teams use guided visual collaboration to work together from anywhere.

Customers include global enterprise companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Facebook, Booz Allen Hamilton, Publicis Sapient, SAP, and Atlassian, among others.

The company currently employs over 600 employees across 30 countries globally.

FinSMEs

20/07/2021
SmartRecruiters, a San Francisco, CA-based hiring success company, raised $110m in Series E funding.

The round, which brought the companys total amount raised to $205m, with a valuation of $1.5 billion, was led by Silver Lake Waterman with participation from existing investors Insight Partners, and Mayfield Fund.

The company intends to use the funds to:

accelerate product development for its talent acquisition suite in the areas of intelligence, automation and conversational interfaces,

expand go-to-market efforts across US, EMEA and APAC, and

provide on-the-ground support for its customer community and partner ecosystem.

Led by Jerome Ternynck, CEO and Founder, SmartRecruiters provides a cloud-based global Talent Acquisition Suite that allows teams to attract, select, and hire talent. Four thousand companies worldwide use it to achieve hiring success using recruitment marketing, CRM, AI, ATS, and a marketplace of 600+ connected vendors, all within one scalable platform.

SmartRecruiters already serves prominent enterprises, including Visa, Square, McDonalds, Ubisoft, FireEye, Biogen, Equinox, Public Storage, and others.

FinSMEs

20/07/2021

SOURCE SmartRecruiters

Related Links
Worldr, a London, UK-based provider of a platform that gives businesses back privacy and control over their data and communication, raised $3m in seed funding.

The round was led by IQ Capital and Playfair Capital with participation from cyber seed investors including CyLon (co-founded by Grace Cassy and Jonathan Luff), Andreas Wuchner (Group Head of IT & Risk at Credit Suisse) and Privitar Co-Founder, John Taysom.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to develop the product ahead of public launch later this year.

Founded by Max Buchan, former first employee of CoinShares, and Dzmitry Maskaliou, a 12-year corporate law veteran, Worldr provides a business communication platform built around privacy, security and data protection in team communication. The company also provides end-to-end encryption integrations for some of the most popular third-party communication tools. Worldr has also announced the launch of Microsoft Teams wrapper for end-to-end encrypted communications, protecting each companys data against unauthorised or unlawful processing from any third party in any jurisdiction.

FinSMEs

20/07/2021




Google Hangouts is one step closer to become a software of the past as the company has announced that it will begin upgrading Hangout users to Google Chat, unless they explicitly opt out, starting from August 16, 2021.

Google Chat is the companys latest attempt at creating an instant messaging service, which has been integrated into Google Workspace suite of apps. For users who have the Chat and classic Hangouts setting selected to Chat preferred, Google will upgrade them from Hangouts to Google Chat.

For user who do not want to upgrade yet, they can select explicitly opt out, and Google will not upgrade them for now. However, by late 2021, Google will completely end support for Hangouts and all remaining users will be migrated to Google Chat.

When migrating, Google will transfer all the 1:1 and group chats from Hangouts to Google Chat. Direct call capabilities however is not yet supported on Google Chat yet, and Google is looking to add it by the end of the year.

The upgrade process will begin for all Google Workspace customers, from August 16th, 2021, and will likely be completed within two weeks.
Paxton, IL (60957)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 85F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. Low 71F. Winds light and variable.
CINCINNATI (AP)  A dog in Ohio who had been missing for five days is back home after it was found trapped between two concrete walls in a nearby home's garage and freed by firefighters using a saw and a sledgehammer.

The homeowner called the Cincinnati Fire Department on Sunday after hearing the dog's cries.

Firefighters discovered Gertie had fallen down a crevice and was trapped between the walls. The dog had escaped from its home on Tuesday and its owners had put up missing posters around the neighborhood.

A video posted on Facebook showed firefighters using the tools to create an opening in the wall to pull Gertie to safety after about 10 minutes. The dog wagged its tail after being rescued.

"It was just so sweet, just wagging that little nub tail, and she was just so, she was so excited, Gertie's owner, Connie Frick, told WXIX-TV.
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Food Bank of Alaska shares eligibility calculator with public in light of new pandemic relief on its way
Galveston, TX (77553)

Today

Generally sunny despite a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds SSW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

A mostly clear sky. Low 82F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph.




[This unedited press release is made available courtesy of Gamasutra and its partnership with notable game PR-related resource Games Press.]

Aloof is a cute puzzle-battler with adorable animals in which you defend your small islands.



The game is perfect for classic Tetris lovers and fans of Puyo Puyo Tetris or Super Puzzle Fighter Turbo II.



This unique and challenging game, created by ButtonX, is heading to Nintendo Switch later this year, thanks to a global publisher RedDeer.games.



CHALLENGING EXPERIENCE

Embark on a marvelous adventure in the colorful world of Aloof, where challenging levels with multiple win conditions await you.



Play as a cute brave bunny and face the opponent to protect your little islands.



Enjoy beautiful and peaceful piano music while fighting your enemy. Play solo or with your friends in the local co-op mode.



DEFEAT YOUR OPPONENTS

Summon small islands and defend them against your opponent. Move pieces left, right, down and up. Keep in mind that pieces don't descend by themselves, so take your time to think and move fast to repel an opponent's attack successfully!







BUILD AMAZING COMBOS

If you're not satisfied with the pieces in your field, you can just flush them away by holding the flush button.



You can switch between 2 fields so that you don't need to mess up your amazing combo if something else needs to be done first.



SOLO OR COUCH CO-OP CAMPAIGN

Experience a challenging adventure in the unique world of Aloof solo or with your friends and family in local co-op mode!



Compete with your loved ones in 1v1 or 2v2 matches in the co-op campaign with puzzle levels, matches versus AI, rescue missions and bosses!



Aloof Trailer is now available on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/Pp0XP7bC5bM



KEY FEATURES: Cute and competitive puzzle-fighter - challenging puzzle game like Puyo Puyo Tetris, but plays completely different: Summon and defend small islands all the while you build combos against your opponent.

23 challenging levels with multiple win conditions - destroy your opponent's islands, seize all islands or take a risk and defeat your opponent before he seized a single island!

Charming animals - you play as a cute and brave little bunny that battles opponents from the world of animals.

Solo and couch co-op campaign - experience challenging adventure alone or compete with your friends in local co-op mode.

The Press kit (screenshots, arts, etc.) is available for download HERE.



To stay up to date with upcoming news on the console release of Aloof, please follow the game's official Twitter account, RedDeer.games official Facebook fanpage, RedDeer.games official Discord Server, and RedDeer.games website.



ABOUT REDDEER.GAMES

RedDeer.games is an award-winning global gaming company that focuses on developing and publishing unique indie games.



We aim to create accessible games, easily distinguishable by their original art style. Our main goal, however, is for them to be FUN!



In recent years we released Cyber Protocol, Brawl Chess, Comic Coloring Book, Clumsy Rush, Art Sqool, Nirvana Pilot Yume, Under Leaves and Little Mouses Encyclopedia.



Currently, the company is working on the science fiction game Time Hole, with former NASA director Dr Alexander Nawrocki as a consultant, and the comic, humorous platformer 7 Horizons. We also announced two games in the universe of the beloved comic "Kayko and Kokosh".



Check out reddeer.games to learn more.



ABOUT BUTTONX

ButtonX is an independent game development studio based in Hague, Netherlands, funded by Joram Van Schaik.



Joram is a self-taught software developer. In recent years he has made the step to IT. He worked as a cyber crime investigator, and lately, he started working as a full-time developer.
We cant go back to putting people in the parks, Napack said. Thats just not right. I dont condone people being moved, but we cant allow a free for all. Ive seen safety issues. Ive seen piles and piles of bike parts and trash. Residents are being intimidated away from using public parks in their own neighborhoods.

People also have a right to live, countered Maughan. "Please look at this issue with compassion. You dont know what its like to be in their shoes. This is a hard decision and this is not going to be the end of it. We need new resources and we need a new path. Stopping the public camps is not the way to do it.

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Three additional motions were proposed following the vote on Maughans motion. Councilors a) unanimously backed a Chaplen motion to direct city staff to develop a system to safely store the belongings of homeless people during the day; b) unanimously backed a Shepherd motion that will increase distribution of the guidelines on homelessness that stem from the Martin Vs. Boise court decision; and c) rejected on a 5-3 vote a Chaplen motion that would have encouraged the formation of a city/county working group on shelter needs.

Marys Annexation
Many of the Capitol insurrectionists had a history of mental illness and related social dysfunction. We made fun of several.

Eric Munchel of Nashville, Tennessee, who brought restraints police use on hands, legs and arms to the Capitol, was dubbed the "zip-tie guy."

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Actually, Munchel had been charged with assaulting a man and woman in 2013. Recently fired from his job at a bar, he entered the Capitol costumed in paramilitary gear, his mother at his side.

Sean McHugh of Auburn, California, who attacked Capitol police with chemical spray, had accused the officers of "protecting pedophiles." McHugh, it turns out, had done jail time for statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl.

It was thought at first that Rosanne Boyland had been crushed to death in the rush of stampeding vandals, but the medical examiner concluded that the Georgia resident died from an overdose of amphetamines. Boyland had a history of drug use, including a charge of felony drug possession. The pandemic cut off her in-person group meetings of addicts.
Gillette, WY (82718)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. High 93F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph..

Tonight

Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 59F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph.
CHICAGO, July 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Natures Fynd, a food company growing sustainable protein from a microbe with origins in the geothermal springs of Yellowstone National Park, announced today it has raised $350 million in a Series C financing - bringing the companys total financing to over $500 million. The round was led by SoftBanks Vision Fund 2* and joined by new investors including Blackstone Strategic Partners, Balyasny Asset Management, Hillhouse Investment, EDBI, SK Inc. and Hongkou with continued support from existing investors.



The company is a pioneer in the development and production of Fy, its highly versatile nutritional fungi protein that is grown by a revolutionary fermentation technology using just a fraction of the land, water and energy required by traditional agriculture.

This latest round of funding will help accelerate Natures Fynd growthincluding expanding its production capacity, delivering exciting partnerships, laying the foundation for global reach and extending its product portfolio from breakfast to dinner and everything in betweento deliver on its mission of creating amazing foods that nourish people while nurturing the planet.

We know consumers today expect great tasting meat and dairy alternatives without compromising on health or sustainability. And Fy - our natural, complete vegan protein delivers on all fronts: amazing taste and texture while being healthier for people and gentler on the planet than traditional proteins. The successful launch of our Fy Breakfast Bundle with Original Meatless Breakfast Patties and Dairy-free Cream Cheese earlier this yearwhich sold out in 24 hours clearly showed that we can meet our consumers expectations for delicious meat and dairy alternatives with no tradeoffs. In the past year, we also showed that we can grow Fy at commercial scale leveraging robotics and automation in our new state-of-the-art facility in Chicagos historic Union Stockyards, said Thomas Jonas, CEO and Co-founder of Natures Fynd. In 2022, we will bring our branded Fy based foods to consumers in the US, expand to new geographies with a special focus on Asia where there is substantial demand and need for sustainable protein and create multiple brand-aligned partnerships for retail, quick-serve restaurants (QSR) and emerging high growth channels.

Angela Du, Investment Director at SoftBank Investment Advisers said, Natures Fynd is combining its unique fermentation technology with robotics to develop protein-rich foods that are significantly more sustainable to create, and produced in a fraction of the time as animal- and soy-based proteins. We are excited to partner with Thomas Jonas and the Natures Fynd team to help them scale their business and capture the tremendous global opportunities in front of them.

Energized by the companys scalable manufacturing process and the successful limited-release Fy Breakfast Bundle Direct-To-Consumer launch, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Generation Investment Management and 1955 Capitalwho led previous rounds of fundinghave returned to support the companys ambitious growth goals, alongside early investors including Danone Manifesto Ventures and ADM.

Natures Fynd expects to launch its Fy based meatless and dairy-free products in selected retailers later this year.

About Nature's Fynd

Nature's Fynd is a Chicago-based food company creating versatile alternative proteins to nourish the world's growing population while nurturing the planet. Born out of research conducted for NASA on microbes with origins in Yellowstone National Park, the company's breakthrough fermentation technology grows Fy. Fy is a new-to-the-world nutritional fungi protein that uses only a fraction of the resources required by traditional agriculture. For more information visit www.naturesfynd.com Or follow along on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or LinkedIn. The terms Natures Fynd, The Fynder Group, Fy, and Fy Protein are trademarks of the Company.

*As of the date of this press release, SoftBank Group Corp. has made capital contributions to allow investments by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 (SVF 2) in certain portfolio companies. The information included herein is made for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy limited partnership interests in any fund, including SVF 2. SVF 2 has yet to have an external close, and any potential third-party investors shall receive additional information related to any SVF 2 investments prior to closing.

Media Contact:

sarah@wickedgm.com
New York, NY, July 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Facts and Factors have published a new research report titled Medical Billing Software Market By Pricing Option (One Time, Annual, Monthly, and Others), By Deployment (On-Premise and Cloud) and By End-User (Hospitals, Clinics, and Others): Global & Regional Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecasts, 2021  2026.

According to the recent research report, the demand of global Medical Billing Software Market size & share expected to rise at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.3% during the forecast period 2021 to 2026

Global Medical Billing Software Market: Overview

In healthcare and medical organizations, medical billing software is used for the creation and management of invoices for the services they provide. Health care institutions require certain industry-specific billing features, as medical invoicing varies according to patient diagnostic, treatment, and health care coverage. Medical billing software includes support for compliance with health care regulations such as the 1996 act of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States. In addition, medical billing solutions can increase the accuracy and speed of the billing process for health care organizations. Some advanced solutions also provide functionality for revenue management or profitability analysis. The medical billing software is needed to be integrated with medical practice management software, which holds patient information, as well as with accounting software, which processes payments. Integration with benefit carriers is also required for electronic invoices or claim submissions.

Request Your Free Sample Report of Global Medical Billing Software Market @ https://www.fnfresearch.com/sample/medical-billing-software-market

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2020 Updated Report Introduction, Overview, and In-depth industry analysis

COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak Impact Analysis Included

225+ Pages Research Report (Inclusion of Updated Research)

Provide Chapter-wise guidance on Request

2020 Updated Regional Analysis with Graphical Representation of Size, Share & Trends

Includes Updated List of table & figures

Updated Report Includes Top Market Players with their Business Strategy, Sales Volume, and Revenue Analysis

Facts and Factors research methodology

(Note: The sample of this report is updated with COVID-19 impact analysis before delivery)

Industry Major Market Players

Navicure

Nextech Systems LLC

Insta Health Solutions

Meditab Software

TotalMD

CollaborateMD Inc

Paystand Inc

AllegianceMD

American Medical Software

bflow Solutions

Medical Group Management Association (MGMA)

Insta Medical Care

Therabill LLC

Brightree LLC

Kareo

To know an additional revised list of 2020-2021 top market players, request a sample report: https://www.fnfresearch.com/sample/medical-billing-software-market

Key questions answered in this report:

What is the projected market size & growth rate of the Medical Billing Software Market?

What are the key driving factors for the growth of the Medical Billing Software Market?

What are the top companies operative in Medical Billing Software Market?

What segments are covered in Medical Billing Software Market?

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Global Medical Billing Software Market: Market Dynamics, Growth Factors and Opportunities Analysis

The process includes a healthcare provider submitting, as well as following up on, claims with health insurance companies so as to receive payment for services rendered like treatments as well as investigations. Many insurance companies use the same process, whether they are private companies or government-sponsored programs. Medical coding gives information about what the diagnosis and treatment were, & prices are applied consequently. Several software companies have been providing medical billing software to this predominantly lucrative market. Many companies also provide full portal solutions over their own web interfaces. The global medical billing software market is expected to grow enormously over the forthcoming years. With the rapidly changing requirements of the health insurance companies, numerous aspects of medical billing as well as medical office management have formed the necessity for specialized training. The increasing demand for on-cloud and on-premise medical billing software among hospitals and clinics around the globe is likely to boost the growth of the market over the forecast period.

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Increasing Penetration Of Technology In Healthcare Industry Boosts The Market Growth

Electronic medical billing is the process by which a health care provider electronically submits a bill, or claim, to a health insurance company, or payer, for the rendering of medical services. There has been a considerate rise in the demand for on-cloud as well as on-premise medical billing software among hospitals and clinics all over the world. Also, in recent years, there has been a substantial rise in digitalization across numerous industrial verticals, including the medical and healthcare industries. The enormous amount of data generated on a daily basis makes it important to implement well-planned and efficient systems that will allow effective storage, organization, and manipulation of data as per the industry's requirements; leading to the increasing demand for medical billing software. Moreover, the need for decreasing health prices and increasing the aged population are some of the additional factors behind the growth of the medical billing software market in the forecast period of 2021 to 2026. On the other hand, the increasing technological innovation and M&A activities in the industry will further create several opportunities that will lead to the growth of the medical billing software market in the above-mentioned period.

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Global Medical Billing Software Market: Segmentation

On the basis of pricing options the medical billing software market is bifurcated into one time, annual, monthly, and other. Based on deployment the market is bifurcated into on-premise and cloud systems. While, on the basis of end-user the medical billing software market is bifurcated into hospitals, clinics, and others. The hospital segment was the highest-earning segment in FY 2020 since the claim volumes are highest in hospitals thus making them prime users of billing services. Hence, the demand for billing software is observed to be high in the hospital segment.

North America Region Dominates the Global Medical Billing Software Market

On the regional segmentation, the medical billing software market is divided into five main regions namely North America, Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific and, The Middle East, and Africa.

The region of North America comprises developed economies like the United States and Canada, where the adoption of technology is predominantly high across all the major industrial verticals, including medicine and healthcare. Also, the increasing rate of government investments towards development in the healthcare industry will contribute to the rise in demand for medical billing software in North American economies. Simultaneously, the continent of Europe is also expected to provide a promising market for medical billing software attributing to its supportive and favorable government policies relevant to the healthcare sector, resulting in growing investments by the public as well as private players towards the upward trajectory of the healthcare industry. Thus, in turn, up-surging the demand in the medical billing software market.

Browse the full report Medical Billing Software Market By Pricing Option (One Time, Annual, Monthly, and Others), By Deployment (On-Premise and Cloud) and By End-User (Hospitals, Clinics, and Others): Global & Regional Industry Perspective, Comprehensive Analysis, and Forecasts, 2021  2026 at https://www.fnfresearch.com/medical-billing-software-market

The global medical billing software market is segmented as follows:

By Pricing Option:

One Time

Annual

Monthly

Others

By Deployment:

On-Premise

Cloud

By End-User:

Hospitals

Clinics

Other

Key Highlights of this Report:

Statistically Validated Analysis of Historical, Current, and Projected Industry Trends with Authenticated Market Sizes Information and Data in terms of Value and Volume, wherever applicable

Detailed List of Key Buyers and End-Users (Consumers) analyzed as per Regions and Applications

Overview of Key Marketing Strategies and Key Sales Channels Adopted in the Market

Market Attractiveness Analysis and Key Investment Opportunity Analysis in the Market going forward

Direct and Indirect Factors that Impacted the Industry as well Projected Rationales expected to affect the industry going forward

Historical and Projected Company / Vendor / OEM / Supplier Market Shares, Competitive Landscape, and Player Positioning Data

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Voltalia (Euronext Paris, ISIN code: FR0011995588), an international player in renewable energy, has launched the construction of South Farm Solar, a 49.9 megawatts solar plant in the United Kingdom. The plant will supply the City of London Corporations buildings and services, in London's prestigious business district.

In November 2020, the City of London Corporation signed a power purchase agreement with Voltalia under which the governing body of the Square Mile will buy all the electricity produced by a new-build solar farm for 15 years.

The deal, the first of its kind in the UK to be signed directly between a renewables producer and a governing authority, will help City of London provide cheaper, sustainable and more secure electricity supply protected from the price volatility of energy markets.

The solar plant will have a total capacity of 49.9 megawatts  enough to power the equivalent of 15,000 UK homes  and will provide over half the City Corporations electricity needs, powering buildings including its historic Guildhall, three wholesale markets and the Barbican Arts Centre.

The solar farm located near the village of Spetisbury, Dorset is expected to be commissioned in the course of 2022. Voltalia is committed to using local suppliers wherever possible: the grid connection, the fencing and compound construction are all being carried out by contractors from the South West region of England.

Sebastien Clerc, Voltalias CEO, concludes: We are very proud to support the City of London Corporation in its 2040 net carbon zero target. Our fully integrated profile enables us to provide the City of London with our expertise over the entire life cycle of the power plant from construction to power production. We look forward to supplying clean electricity to the historic Square Mile and the financial and commercial heart of the UK.

James de Sausmarez, Chairman of the City of London Corporations Corporate Asset Sub Committee, said: This is a pioneering scheme which we hope will lead the way for local authorities across the UK. It means they can play their part in reducing emissions without the risks of owning their own energy firms or infrastructure and without the need for Government funding. This partnership supports our ambitious Climate Action Strategy, will make the Square Mile net zero by 2040  10 years ahead of Government goals.

Next on the agenda: Q2 2021 revenues on July 21, 2021 (after market closing)

About Voltalia (www.voltalia.com) Voltalia is an international player in the renewable energy sector. The Group produces and sells electricity generated from wind, solar, hydraulic, biomass and storage facilities that it owns and operates. Voltalia has generating capacity in operation and under construction of more than 1.4 GW and a portfolio of projects under development representing total capacity of 9.7 GW.



Voltalia is also a service provider and supports its investor clients in renewable energy projects during all phases, from design to operation and maintenance.



As a pioneer in the corporate market, Voltalia provides a global offer to private companies, ranging from the supply of green electricity and energy efficiency services to the local production of their own electricity.



The Group has more than 1,130 employees and is present in 20 countries on 4 continents and is able to act worldwide on behalf of its clients.



Voltalia is listed on the regulated market of Euronext Paris, compartment B (FR0011995588  VLTSA) and is part of the Enternext Tech 40 and CAC Mid & Small indices. The Group is also included in the Gaia-Index, an index for socially responsible midcaps. Voltalia

Investor Relations: invest@voltalia.com

T. +33 (0)1 81 70 37 00 Actifin

Press Contact: Jennifer Jullia

jjullia@actifin.fr . T. +33 (0)1 56 88 11 11

Attachment
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Endeavour Silver Corp. (TSX: EDR, NYSE: EXK) announces it has entered into a definitive agreement (the Agreement) with Canamex Gold Corp. to acquire a 100% interest in Canamex Bruner Property, a gold exploration, located in Nye County, Nevada approximately 180 kilometres (km) southeast of Reno for US$10 million in cash.



Gold was originally discovered at Bruner in 1906 and the district saw intermittent historic small-scale mining between 1906 and 1998. Recent exploration activities by previous operators included mapping, sampling, geophysical surveys and drilling, culminating in a mineral resource estimate in 2015 and a preliminary economic assessment in 2017 outlining a low capital cost, open pit, heap leach mine operation.

Highlights of the Properties:

Acquiring a 100% interest totalling 1,457 hectares on patented and unpatented claims, subject to pre-existing NSR royalties, some of which can be repurchased.





interest totalling 1,457 hectares on patented and unpatented claims, subject to pre-existing NSR royalties, some of which can be repurchased. Ideally located within Nevadas Walker Lane northwest trending mineral belt currently hosting several producing mines and recent discoveries.





within Nevadas Walker Lane northwest trending mineral belt currently hosting several producing mines and recent discoveries. Readily accessible by paved highway and gravel roads only 25 km from the town of Gabbs, Nevada. High voltage power is available approximately 30 km from the project and water rights have been secured.





by paved highway and gravel roads only 25 km from the town of Gabbs, Nevada. High voltage power is available approximately 30 km from the project and water rights have been secured. Favourable geology with gold and silver occurring in low-sulphidation epithermal veins and in disseminations within sheeted and stockwork zones. Three gold areas have been outlined within a broad 3 km zone of anomalous gold values.





with gold and silver occurring in low-sulphidation epithermal veins and in disseminations within sheeted and stockwork zones. Three gold areas have been outlined within a broad 3 km zone of anomalous gold values. Historic resources of 342,000 ounces of gold contained in 17.5 million tonnes grading 0.61 grams per tonne in three zones, Paymaster, HRA and Penelas, as estimated by Canamex Gold. Endeavour has not verified this historic resource estimate and is not relying on it. See below for historic resource estimate qualifications.





of 342,000 ounces of gold contained in 17.5 million tonnes grading 0.61 grams per tonne in three zones, Paymaster, HRA and Penelas, as estimated by Canamex Gold. Endeavour has not verified this historic resource estimate and is not relying on it. See below for historic resource estimate qualifications. Strong potential to discover additional gold and silver mineralization amenable to open pit mining, as shown by surface sampling between Paymaster, HRA and Penelas zones.





to discover additional gold and silver mineralization amenable to open pit mining, as shown by surface sampling between Paymaster, HRA and Penelas zones. Excellent metallurgy  cyanide leach test results show that each mineralized zone has gold recoveries > 85% for 0.75 to 3.0 crush size with potential for run-of-mine leaching.





 cyanide leach test results show that each mineralized zone has gold recoveries > 85% for 0.75 to 3.0 crush size with potential for run-of-mine leaching. Provides diversification with an advanced stage exploration project in Nevada, USA, a world class, stable mining jurisdiction.



Endeavour CEO, Dan Dickson, commented We are pleased to add an advanced stage precious metals exploration property to our project pipeline. Bruner represents a good start on building an attractive gold-silver portfolio in Nevada and should be an accretive acquisition for our five-year strategic plan to become a premier senior silver producer, with potential for exploration discoveries, district acquisitions, near-term production, and organic growth.

Our exploration team will focus initially on verifying the historic resources, then turn its attention to the many exploration targets on the Bruner Property. We look forward to unlocking the full potential of the Bruner Property with the goal of building a new mining operation in another historic mining district in Nevada.

Transaction Summary

Pursuant to the Agreement, Endeavour will pay US$10 million in cash for 100% of the Bruner Gold Project which includes mineral claims, mining rights, property assets, water rights, and government authorizations and permits. Completion of the transactions under the Agreement is subject to customary closing conditions and is subject to Canamex shareholder approval.

The Bruner Gold Project resource estimate was prepared for Canamex Gold in a technical report dated January 22, 2018 titled NI 43-101 Technical Report on the Bruner Gold Project, Updated Preliminary Economic Assessment, Nye County, Nevada, USA by Welsh Hagen Associates. The resource estimate was established through surface drilling. A Qualified Person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical estimate as a current mineral resource or mineral reserve.

Endeavour is not treating the historical estimate as a current mineral resource or mineral reserve, has not verified the historical resource estimate and is not relying on it. Endeavour plans to twin certain drill holes and conduct a drilling program to upgrade the historical estimate as a current mineral resource.

Dale Mah, B.Sc., P.Geo., Endeavour's Vice President Corporate Development, is the Qualified Person who reviewed and approved this news release.

About Endeavour Silver  Endeavour Silver Corp. is a mid-tier precious metals mining company that owns and operates three high-grade, underground, silver-gold mines in Mexico. Endeavour is currently advancing the Terronera mine project towards a development decision and exploring its portfolio of exploration and development projects in Mexico and Chile to facilitate its goal to become a premier senior silver producer. Our philosophy of corporate social integrity creates value for all stakeholders.

SOURCE Endeavour Silver Corp.

Contact Information

Galina Meleger, Vice President, Investor Relations

Toll free: (877) 685-9775

Tel: (604) 640-4804

Email: gmeleger@edrsilver.com

Website: www.edrsilver.com

Follow Endeavour Silver on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the United States private securities litigation reform act of 1995 and forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Such forward-looking statements concern the Companys strategic plans, completion of the Bruner Gold Project acquisition, timing and expectations for the Companys exploration and drilling programs, estimates of mineralization from drilling, geological information projected from sampling results and the potential quantities and grades of the target zones. Such forward-looking statements or information are based on a number of assumptions, which may prove to be incorrect. Assumptions have been made regarding, among other things: the completion of the Bruner Gold Project acquisition, receipt of shareholder approval by Canamex; conditions in general economic and financial markets; accuracy of assay results; geological interpretations from drilling results, timing and amount of capital expenditures; performance of available laboratory and other related services; future operating costs; and the historical basis for current estimates of potential quantities and grades of target zones. The actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of the risk factors including: satisfaction of closing conditions for the Bruner Gold Project acquisition, receipt of shareholder approval by Canamex; the timing and content of work programs; results of exploration activities and development of mineral properties; the interpretation and uncertainties of drilling results and other geological data; receipt of title opinion on the Bruner Property, maintenance and security of permits and mineral property titles; environmental and other regulatory risks; project costs overruns or unanticipated costs and expenses; availability of funds; failure to delineate potential quantities and grades of the target zones based on historical data, and general market and industry conditions. Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Companys management on the date the statements are made. The assumptions used in the preparation of such statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date the statements were made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements included in this news release if these beliefs, estimates and opinions or other circumstances should change, except as otherwise required by applicable law.
SHANGHAI, China, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Junshi Biosciences (HKEX: 1877; SSE: 688180), a leading innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of novel therapies, announced today that the company has established a joint venture with Immorna, a fast-growing biotechnology company focusing on the process development and optimization of mRNA and delivery vehicles and the research and development of new nucleic acid drugs, to develop and commercialize new drugs for the global market in the fields of cancer, infectious diseases, rare diseases, and other diseases, based on the mRNA technology and other technology platforms.



Immornas unique mRNA construction and established versatile process platform are suitable for the development of self-replicating mRNA as well as conventional non-replicating mRNA products, enabling the construction of a customized form of mRNA molecule for a specific disease. In terms of delivery vehicles, Immorna has developed several nanoliposome particles (LNP) suitable for different administration methods and has technical capabilities in the field of research and development of new non-LNP delivery vehicles.

Under the terms of the agreement, Junshi Biosciences will inject at most 799 million RMB in cash into the joint venture. The initial investment is 200 million RMB, of which 50 million RMB will be used to subscribe to 50% of the registered capital of the joint venture. Immorna will invest in the joint venture company with intellectual property rights involved in the mRNA technology platform. The 50 million RMB in the estimated asset value of the platform will be used to subscribe to other 50% of the registered capital of the joint venture company.

As the mRNA Technology Platform gradually matures, its potential in a variety of fieldsincluding infectious diseases, cancer, rare diseases, and other diseaseshas become increasingly evident, says Dr. Ning Li, Chief Executive Officer of Junshi Biosciences. This is highly consistent with the therapeutic areas covered by Junshi Biosciences R&D pipeline and our desire to explore the next generation of innovative therapeutics. Immorna has a wealth of experience and expertise in mRNA industrialization. We look forward to working together to develop more revolutionary therapeutics for patients worldwide through our mRNA Technology Platform with domestic intellectual property rights and promote public health on a global scale.

Immorna is very pleased to reach a strategic collaboration agreement with Junshi Biosciences, under which a joint venture company has been created, says Dr. Zihao Wang, Chief Executive Officer of Immorna Therapeutics. We are very confident that this new entity will allow us to take advantage of each others core competency, quickly and efficiently utilize the versatile mRNA platform technology in immunotherapy and infectious disease prevention, and continue our search for new directions of the application.

About Immorna

Immorna is an innovative drug research company that focuses on developing self-replicating and conventional mRNA-based therapeutics and vaccines. It has maintained stable and fast growth since its incorporation in 2019. Currently, it has built a comprehensive set of mRNA synthesis, purification and analytical quality control processes well suited for commercial production and developed a common mRNA platform with higher expression levels (including self-replicating and non-self-replicating mRNA). With the aid of its efficient screening tools, Immorna has developed an arsenal of mRNA delivery vehicles including polymers and lipid nanoparticles. Immorna possesses multiple independent intellectual property rights applicable to cationic lipids suitable for intramuscular, intravenous or tissue-targeting delivery. Immorna has a diverse product pipeline spanning cancer immunotherapy, infectious diseases, rare genetic diseases and cosmetology. Immorna is quickly advancing its oncology and infectious disease projects into their clinical stages.

About Junshi Biosciences

Founded in December 2012, Junshi Biosciences is an innovation-driven biopharmaceutical company dedicated to the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative therapeutics. The company has established a diversified R & D pipeline comprising 28 innovative drug candidates and 2 biosimilars, with five therapeutic focus areas covering cancer, autoimmune, metabolic, neurological, and infectious diseases. Junshi Biosciences was the first Chinese pharmaceutical company that obtained marketing approval for anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody in China. Its first-in-human anti-BTLA antibody for solid tumors was the first in the world to be approved for clinical trials by the FDA and NMPA and its anti-PCSK9 monoclonal antibody was the first in China to be approved for clinical trials by the NMPA. In early 2020, Junshi Biosciences joined forces with the Institute of Microbiology Chinese Academy of Science and Eli Lilly to co-develop JS016 (etesevimab), Chinas first neutralizing fully human monoclonal antibody against SARS-CoV-2. JS016 administered with bamlanivimab has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) from the US FDA in February 2021 for the treatment of recently diagnosed, mild to moderate COVID-19 in patients who are at a high risk of progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization. The JS016 program is a part of our continuous innovation for disease control and prevention of the global pandemic. Junshi Biosciences has over 2,000 employees in the United States (San Francisco and Maryland) and China (Shanghai, Suzhou, Beijing and Guangzhou). For more information, please visit: http://junshipharma.com.

Contact Information

IR Team:

Junshi Biosciences

info@junshipharma.com

+ 86 021-2250 0300

Solebury Trout

Bob Ai

bai@soleburytrout.com

+ 1 646-389-6658

PR Team:

Junshi Biosciences

Zhi Li

zhi_li@junshipharma.com

+ 86 021-6105 8800
Singapore, Singapore, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AR7 announces its exciting and exclusive collaboration with Muranishi Toru, who is known in the country of Japan as the The Legendary Director. AR7 is a trendy blockchain tech start-up focused on the art industry. It is based in Singapore and operated by TreasureGate Pte Ltd. Its aim in partnering with Muranishi Toru is to enhance and expand the blockchain art business, which is the next wave of the industry.

Japans Famous Director Muranishi Toru Teams Up with AR7 to Tackle Blockchain Art Industry

Due to his incessant popularity and attention from the media, Muranishi Toru makes an engaging partner when it comes to the blockchain art industry. Simply put, blockchain technology may be explained as exceptional digital assets that may be used as individual identifiers for physical assets on a blockchain. In turn, this allows for authenticated ownership, furthering the goal of AR7 to build trust, security, and transparency in a digital landscape.

AR7 incorporates its two integral services by pairing AR7 Tech (www.ar7.io, a blockchain platform solution geared to address the needs of the art industry) and Cherie Gallery (www.cherie.gallery, a blockchain art, and traditional art gallery) with the aim of cultivating a global gallery market that is of benefit to content creators around the world.

In addition, Cherie is currently organizing a blockchain art exhibition that will launch in New York City on July 22, 2021. It will take place on Broadway Road, NY. Spearheading the elaborate exhibition, Cherie Gallery operates as the second arm of Treasuregate Pte Ltd., which in turn serves as a ground-breaking gallery that specializes in traditional artwork and the unique arena of blockchain artwork. In fact, it unites hundreds of esteemed artists and gallery users on a single platform. Furthermore, Cherie Gallery plans to launch offline shops in New York City, London, and Tokyo within Q3.2021. This incredible undertaking will enable a diverse range of art lovers to own widely disseminated digital artwork.

AR7 has preemptively put protections in place on the artists behalf, offering a fully transparent and tamper-proof transfer of digital ownership each time the works are resold. In essence, this gives content creators more control over their work, staving off the middlemen and actively encouraging potential buyers. The aim of Treasuregate Pte Ltd. is to improve the traceability of creative artwork, as well as guarantee the authenticity and the intellectuality of the work itself.





Media Contact:

AR7 Tech

Kenneth Koh

+6569781496

Media@ar7.io

Cherie YouTube

Content Disclaimer:



DISCLAIMER of Liability. IN NO EVENT SHALL OUR PR COMPANY BE LIABLE OR RESPONSIBLE TO YOU OR ANY OTHER PERSON FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, SPECIAL, OR EXEMPLARY DAMAGES OF ANY KIND, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION, LOST PROFITS OR LOST OPPORTUNITIES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES IN ADVANCE AND REGARDLESS OF THE CAUSE OF ACTION UPON WHICH ANY SUCH CLAIM IS BASED, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY CLAIM ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH ANY OF THE CONTENT, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, AUDIO, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND VIDEOS, OR OF THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, OR LEGALITY OF ANY STATEMENT MADE IN OR OMITTED FROM ANY advertisement, sponsorship, endorsement, testimonial, opinion, or other product-related or service-related statement or review appearing in the Websites or in ANY post or article distributed via the Websites.








Lithuanian English

INVL Asset Management, one of Lithuania's leading asset management companies, managed by Invalda INVL, has established INVL Renewable Energy Fund I (REFI), which will invest in renewable energy assets in the European Union, mainly in Poland.

The rules of the sub-fund intended for informed investors were approved by the Bank of Lithuania on 19 July. The fund targets EUR 60 million in assets under management, with the hard cap set at EUR 100 million, and a target net return to investors of 11%.

"We believe that the opportunity to invest in solar and wind power plants and thus not only contribute to solving climate problems, but also earn attractive returns and diversify their investments will be of interest to investors," said Vytautas Plunksnis, Head of Private Equity at INVL Asset Management.

INVL Renewable Energy Fund I will focus on two of the most competitive renewable energy technologies currently available: continental wind and utility-scale solar farms in the European Union, with a primary focus on the Polish market.

"Poland is one of the main markets for the development of renewable energy projects in the European context. It is a deficit market with high electricity prices, heavily influenced by the price of CO2 emissions allowances. The Polish market recorded the highest wholesale electricity prices in the EU in 2020, and given the current balance of generation, it is clear that the trend towards high electricity prices will persist. This is particularly favourable for the renewable energy sector, which can offer electricity generation at lower prices and generate electricity without significant negative impact on the environment," said Liudas Liutkevicius, Managing Partner of INVL Renewable Energy Fund I.

He added that investments in renewable energy would contribute to the minimisation of environmental impacts and strict compliance with environmental standards. The Fund's team is not only interested in reducing CO2 emissions, but also in the overall impact on the environment in order to contribute to the European Union's Green Deal goal of making Europe a climate-neutral continent with a circular economy by 2050.

In Lithuania, the Fund's units are distributed by the brokerage firm INVL Finasta, with the minimum investment amount set at EUR 125 000. The duration of the Fund is 7 years. Invalda INVL Group jointly with sub-fund partners are investing EUR 1.3 million to this sub-fund.

For more information contact:

Kristina Malevskiene

Head of Communication, INVL Asset Management

E-mail: media@invl.com
New York, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Construction Outlook to 2025 (Q2 2021 Update)" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05935290/?utm_source=GNW

The central forecast for growth in global output is 5.7% in 2021, following the 2.4% drop in 2020.



This report provides a detailed analysis of the prospects for the global construction industry up to 2025, including an assessment of the impact of COVID-19.



Scope

- An overview of the outlook for the global construction industry to 2025, with specific focus on assessing the impact of COVID-19

- Analysis of the outlook for the construction industry in major global regions: North America, Latin America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South and South-East Asia, North-East Asia, Australasia, the Middle East and North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

- A comprehensive benchmarking of 91 leading construction markets according to construction market value and growth

- Analysis of the latest data on construction output trends in key markets.



Reasons to Buy

- Evaluate regional construction trends from insight on output values and forecast data to 2025, and understand the immediate risks and challenges presented by the spread of COVID-19. Identify the fastest growers to enable assessment and targeting of commercial opportunities in the markets best suited to strategic focus.

- Identify the drivers in the global construction market and consider growth in emerging and developed economies. Formulate plans on where and how to engage with the market while minimizing any negative impact on revenues.

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05935290/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________
Dublin, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Russian Log Export Ban in 2022 - Implications to the Global Forest Industry" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Russia has been a leading log exporter for decades and this may come to an end in 2022.

A proposed export ban will have immediate impact on global trade flows of logs and lumber. China will be forced to explore new supply regions. Russia will strive to process the logs domestically into lumber and other forest products. This Focus Report highlights Russia's major trade partners and the likely changes in global forest products trade as a consequence of the Russian log export ban.

Questions the report helps answer

What trade will be impacted by the ban?

How will the ban impact log markets in China and Finland?

What secondary impacts could this have on global log markets?

What opportunities does the ban create for log and lumber exporters in other regions?

How is the Russian forest industry likely to respond?

Who is likely to invest in the Russian wood processing industry, what are the key hurdles?

Who the report is most relevant for

Buyers/consumers of Russian logs

Log exporters in Europe, North America and Oceania

Forest industries in China and Finland

Lumber manufacturers exporting to China

Timberland investors in North America and Oceania

Investors in Russian wood processing

Analysts, consultants, financial institutions and industry associations

What you get:

60-page report in easy-to read slide format

One of authors available for 45 min interview

Access to ppt slides can be discussed

Key Topics Covered:

1. Importance of Russian log exports

Share of global resource and harvest

Potential to expand harvest

Sawlog and pulpwood prices

Log exports

2. Proposed export ban

Details of the proposed ban

Impact of past export restrictions

Strategy for the development of the timber industry

Reactions to the proposed ban

3. Likely impact on China and Finland

Current imports to China and Finland from Russia

Impact on China log supply

Impact on Finland log supply

4. Implications for Russian forest industries

Overview of likely impact of ban on Russian industry

Impact on wood prices in Russia

Likely responses from Russian forest industries

Russian investment targets and progress

Potential investors and hurdles

Implications for illegal logging

5. Potential repercussions for global markets

Overview of possible impacts on global markets

Softwood log trade flows

Softwood log supply potential in key export regions

Hardwood log imports to China

Softwood lumber trade flows and outlook

Potential for Russian wood processing

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2rnhry
New York, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Consulting Service Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p06106059/?utm_source=GNW





- There is a growing need for management consulting services, owing to the strong economic growth in the European markets, the regulatory reforms in the financial sector, the outsourcing of back-end operations to low-cost economies, and public investments. Over the forecast period, the faster economic growth, the emergence of digital consulting, and the rise of globalization are expected to drive further growth.

- Many companies are constantly trying to reduce costs and increase their efficiency so that they can transfer the costs saved to the customer and withstand the intense competition they face. This is leading to an increase in the demand for business process improvisations and consulting related to operational efficiency.

- Regulatory changes, such as Brexit and the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), have led to a rise in demand for consulting across all major service lines. In order to stay compliant with regulations, multinational organizations seek high-value advice, thereby boosting the demand for management consulting services.

- Consulting companies are facing an increasingly complex macro macro-environment in which they must continue to provide the best advice. The global nature of the sector adds to the problem. Firms are delivering more and more projects overseas, sometimes working with subcontractors, partner companies, and independents. Delivering the project faster, more efficiently, and with tighter budgets, while achieving customer satisfaction, is a challenge.

- Although the pandemic has negatively impacted various industries, it is expected to present some consulting firms with opportunities. For instance, some organizations may seek the guidance and expertise of these firms in order to map out future strategies and business scenarios. Some firms may also need strategic expertise to restructure their operations in order to become digital, thereby ensuring business continuity and resiliency for in case of future disruptions.



Key Market Trends

Financial Advisory to show the Highest Growth rate



- Financial consulting services mainly provide services related to accounting, auditing, finance, taxation, and regulations. The services help clients with finance transformation, defining and implementing risk management, compliance management, but also financial planning of projects, fiscal and tax-related matters, and the financial side of mergers and acquisitions, financing, and debt restructuring. Financial advisory mainly consists of Transaction Services, Corporate Finance, Crisis and Recovery, Risk Management, Accounting Advisory, Tax Advisory, Real Estate Advisory, and Forensics and Litigation.

- In past years, financial advisory continuously performed relatively stable throughout the crisis years and their aftermath, driven by three key factors. During the economic woes, the demand for crisis and turnaround management grew strongly, while the demand for accounting advisory services and risk management took off not long after, particularly in the financial services sector.

- Although, in 2020, the market witnessed a contraction, non-discretionary projects around risk and regulation, digital transformation, and other technology have generally continued, while other areas deemed more discretionary like financial management have been hit much harder. However, in coming years, the segment is expected to recover as the governments are making stringent audit reforms along with regulations like GDPR. Pandemic has expanded the scope for financial crisis and recovery advisors services.



North America Holds the Highest Market Share



- The United States (US) is the largest revenue-generating consulting service market in the world, owing to being the home of top global consultancy firms catering across a wide range of end-user verticals significantly. Furthermore, the highly volatile marketplace across the US economy, along with the sustained reforms in government regulation, is driving companies to turn to management consulting providers for acquiring assistance in their financial operations across the country.

- Furthermore, the United States is also a pioneer in the market and plays a significant role in bringing technological advancement to the global market. The US-based consulting service providers, like McKinsey & Company, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the Boston Consulting Group, Ernst & Young (EY), and KPMG, among others, are some of the top market vendors globally.

- The consulting service industry in the country has expanded in recent years, as the number of people employed in management consulting in the United States has also grown annually over the past five years, and in 2020, there were nearly 734,000 management consultants. However, many experts claimed that the most pressing issue in the regional industry is attracting and developing new businesses, with 40% of senior managers citing this as a leading challenge.



Competitive Landscape

Consulting Service market is highly competitive and consists of a significant number of global and regional players. These players account for a considerable share in the market and focus on expanding their client base across the globe. These players focus on the research and development activities, strategic alliances, and other organic & inorganic growth strategies to stay in the market landscape over the forecast period.



- March 2021 - Digital transformation advisory firm Cambridge Management Consulting expanded its telecommunications capability with the acquisition of Straxia. The network infrastructure consultancy primarily specializes in helping its clients infrastructure planning, delivery, and management.

- May 2021 - Toronto-based cloud managed services provider, Carbon60 acquired OpsGuru, a Vancouver-based multi-cloud and DevOps consulting firm. The OpsGuru deal was Carbon60s third acquisition since 2019 when it became a portfolio company of M/C Partners, a US-based private equity firm focusing on emerging companies in communications and technology services. The acquisition is mainly focused on strengthening the firms cloud consulting services in cloud assessment, migration, compliance, and security.



Reasons to Purchase this report:

- The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format

- 3 months of analyst support

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p06106059/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A.I.S. Resources Limited ( TSXV: AIS, OTCQB: AISSF ) (the Company or AIS) announces the Companys optionee Spey Resources Corp. (Spey) has engaged Amaru Mining Services and preparations are being made to commence drilling at the Incahuasi Salar, Argentina in the next three weeks. The drilling will take place in the locations shown below:



Figure 1: Red stars show drill hole locations 1 -5

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/c73a3793-c98f-4d5f-9d6d-33a0fafacd0c

The five drill holes at Incahuasi will cover a depth of approximately 600m. When completed, the rig will move to the Pocitos 1 and 2 concession on the Pocitos Salar approximately 120km away and drill three holes on the targeted aquifer locations. A double packer device will sample the brines at depth and be assayed. Preparations are currently being made for the camp, fuel and roads.



Figure 2: Line 1  003-011 survey points with drill locations, aquifers at depth 150m and 250m

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/135e201d-4a68-4ef0-aaa4-93d396125789

Figure 3: Drill hole in Line 3 point 020-027. Aquifer extends from 10m to 100m, then two 50m drill holes to test the surface sample high.

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/dc79575f-3ac4-4c89-af06-796bce456bdb

Nader Vatanchi CEO of Spey Resources commented, We are making great progress at Incahuasi Salar, with geophysics completed, the road in good condition and easy access. Amaru, our drillers are very familiar with the salar and are completing their preparations. Our bulk brine surface samples from Incahuasi Salar have been sent to the University of Melbourne to be processed. The state of the art Ekosolve process handles very high levels of magnesium so we are looking forward to the results of the processing using their laboratory scale plant and samples of lithium carbonate. At Pocitos Salar, we have the results of surface sampling and geophysics completed on Pocitos 2 and drilling completed close by on Pocitos 1 by AIS Resources. The project drill team have nearly completed all their preparations. Im delighted with the progress our team has made and look forward to the brine analysis results from drilling and University of Melbourne.

Martyn Element Chairman of AIS stated, We are pleased with the rapid progress Spey Resources is making in progressing the Incahuasi and Pocitos projects.

AIS has granted Spey the option to acquire 80% of the Incahuasi project by making certain cash and share payments including making $500,000 in exploration expenditures by April 21, 2022. Spey may acquire the remaining 20% by making a payment of $6 million (subject to increase by $250,000 for each fifty tonnes by which the indicated or inferred resource exceeds 45 million tonnes lithium metal equivalent) by March 18, 2023.

Qualified Person

Phillip Thomas, BSc Geol, MBusM, FAusIMM, MAIG, MAIMVA, (CMV), a Qualified Person as defined under NI 43-101 regulations, has reviewed the technical information that forms the basis for portions of this news release, and has approved the disclosure herein. Mr. Thomas is independent of the Company but discloses that he is a shareholder of SPEY.

About A.I.S. Resources Limited

A.I.S. Resources Limited is a publicly traded investment issuer listed on the TSX Venture Exchange focused on precious and base metals exploration. AIS value add strategy is to acquire prospective exploration projects and enhance their value by better defining the mineral resource with a view to attracting joint venture partners and enhancing the value of our portfolio. The Company is managed by a team of experienced geologists and investment bankers, with a track-record of successful capital markets achievements.

AIS owns 100% of the 28 sq km Fosterville-Toolleen Gold Project located 12 km from Kirkland Lakes Fosterville gold mine (subject to completion of certain exploration expenditures), a 60% interest in the 58 sq km New South Wales Yalgogrin Gold Project (with the right to acquire 100%), and 100% interest in the 167 sq km Kingston Gold Project in Victoria Australia near Stawell.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors,

A.I.S. Resources Ltd.

Phillip Thomas, President & CEO

Corporate Contact

For further information, please contact:

Phillip Thomas, Chief Executive Officer

T: +1-323 5155 164

E: pthomas@aisresources.com

Or

Martyn Element. Chairman

T: +1-604-220-6266

E: melement@aisresources.com

Website: www.aisresources.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

ADVISORY: This press release contains forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof and the Company undertakes no obligations to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements or information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Marion, North Carolina, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Greene Concepts, Inc. (OTC Pink: INKW) is happy to announce the company H2O Artesian, Inc. has signed an agreement as a new BE WATERTM distribution partner for the companys Florida region. H2O Artesian, Incs focus is to identify, target and consult with national food and beverage retailer outlets in Florida to proliferate BE WATERTM sales across the state.

H2O Artesians principal partners, Brian Adkins and Mike McMurray, lead the effort to extend BE WATERTM sales in Florida. Mr. Adkins is a distinguished sales professional with more than 20 years of consumer-packaged goods industry experience to include HBC, frozen/dry grocery, beverage and natural food categories. Mike McMurray, a well-established 30-year business owner of a concrete and remodeling company, holds strong relationships with multiple business owners throughout Florida to include restaurants and retail outlets.

Brian Adkins notes, We have already ordered our initial five truckloads of BE WATERTM due to the huge pre-sale interest we have already received throughout Florida. This includes multiple retail stores, restaurant chains and hotels which were as excited about the BE WATERTM backstory and product quality as we were. H2O Artesian takes great pride in providing BE WATERTM as a new staple good in the Florida marketplace. We are already preparing for our second order to meet the demand as we believe the first five truckloads will sell very quickly.

Amy McNally, VP of Marketing and Regulatory, highlights, Brian and Mike will make BE WATERTM well-known throughout the state of Florida. With 50 years of combined sales experience, they have a track record of targeted sales with a focus on customer satisfaction. They come to us with a detailed business plan for executing high-volume sales with leading retailers throughout Florida, and I am proud to partner with them.

Lenny Greene, CEO of Greene Concepts, states, We expect H2O Artesian to generate massive revenue as the exclusive Greene Concepts Florida distributor while working directly with all other Florida sub-distributors and sales accounts, who will work directly with H20 Artesian to sell BE WATERTM. This synergizes talents and centers all Florida BE Water initiatives through H2O Artesian which will provide us with periodic updates as they gain new clients. I am excited to have Brian and Mike onboard. H2O Artesians first truckload of BE WATER left our Marion, NC bottling plant on July 15. With their efforts, we are much closer to establishing BE WATERTM as a national brand.

About H2O Artesian, Inc.

H2O Artesian, Inc. is a Satellite Beach and Melbourne, Florida based distributor that services the entire state of Florida and distributes all of Greene Concepts brands. The company was established by Mike McMurray and Brian Adkins, who combined have over 50 years of sales and promotion expertise to retailers and consumers.

About Greene Concepts, Inc.

Greene Concepts, Inc. ( http://www.greeneconcepts.com ) is a publicly traded company with the companys main plant operations in Marion, North Carolina. The Company owns and operates a bottling and beverage facility. The bottling facility has as its water sources a combination of seven spring and artesian wells that are fed from a natural aquifer that is located deep below the Blue Ridge Mountains. The Company specializes in its premium artesian bottled water brand, BE WATER ( www.bewaterbeyou.com ), to support total body health and wellness.

Safe Harbor: This Press Release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based on the current plans and expectations of management and are subject to a few uncertainties and risks that could significantly affect the company's current plans and expectations, as well as future results of operations and financial condition. A more extensive listing of risks and factors that may affect the company's business prospects and cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in the reports and other documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission and OTC Markets, Inc. OTC Disclosure and News Service. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, because of new information, future events or otherwise.

Greene Concepts, Inc.

Investor Relations

IR@greeneconcepts.com

Attachments
SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- San Francisco resident, philanthropist and Cambodian advocate Lyna Lam has launched A Khmer Buddhist Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the lives of the Khmer people and preserving their rich traditions and culture. The Khmer are native to Southeast Asia and constitute most of the Cambodian population.



The organizations first act was to donate a nearly $500,000 gift to support Cambodians impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The donation will be used to provide much-needed supplies, including oxygen manometers, patients monitors, ventilators and personal protective equipment to meet the dire needs of a country still grappling with the pandemics devastating effects.

In addition to the medical supplies, part of the donation will be also used to support food and aid to impoverished children, youth and their families. The humanitarian donation will be administered through Friends International, a Cambodia-based nonprofit organization that has been saving lives and building futures for the most marginalized children and youth, their families and communities in Southeast Asia and across the world for more than 26 years.

The gift was made in partnership with Digital Divide Data (DDD), the largest technology-related employer in Cambodia, whose innovative social model enables talented youth from low-income families to access professional opportunities and earn lasting higher income.

"We were saddened to hear about the devastating COVID-19 situation in Cambodia, said Lam, founder and executive director of A Khmer Buddhist Foundation. While we know firsthand that the people of Cambodia are resilient and have a history of recovering from any hardship stronger than before, we also know that additional supplies and resources can help accelerate their recovery and end this terrible pandemic. We believe its vital for ethnic Cambodians in the U.S. to help Cambodia in any way they can, just as Indian Americans have so heroically stepped up to help the COVID crisis in India.

While this first donation is earmarked for COVID-19 relief, the foundation aims to support a wide variety of worthwhile causes for the Cambodian people, including arts and culture, startup grants for new businesses, community support and college internships, among others.

The foundation is accepting COVID-19 relief funds and encourages anyone with the resources to help to consider giving back without delay. Donations can be made here: https://www.akhmerbuddhistfoundation.org/donate

About Lyna Lam

Lyna Lam came to the Bay Area as a refugee following the Vietnam War and Cambodian genocide. Years of hard work and diligence yielded small business success, and she has launched the foundation because she has witnessed firsthand how support, mentoring and a small amount of initial funding can fundamentally change lives from desperation and poverty to empowerment and contribution.

Previously Lam and her husband, Chris Larsen, have made a transformational $25 million gift to San Francisco State Universitys College of Business (now the Lam Family College of Business), where 37% of the students are the first in their families to attend college. She is also the co-sponsor of the Larsen Lam ICONIQ Impact Award, which was formed to support innovative solutions to the worlds refugee crisis. In addition, she is financing a one-of-a-kind program to catalogue and digitize all the surviving Khmer scripts, documents that are crucially important to maintaining the Khmer culture. Currently she is also in the process of building a temple, always a foundation of Khmer culture, in San Jose, California.

About A Khmer Buddhist Foundation

A Khmer Buddhist Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the lives of the Khmer people and preserving their rich traditions and culture. It offers grants each year to enrich and strengthen the lives of the Khmer population, in areas that include arts and culture and business. Learn more: www.akhmerbuddhistfoundation.org

Media contact:

Birgit Johnston

birgitjohnston@me.com, 408 656-8025
SEATTLE, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- According to Coherent Market Insights, the global adult incontinence products market is estimated to be valued at US$ 10,605.1 million in 2020 and is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period (2020-2027).

Key Trends and Analysis:

The increasing number of product launches is expected to drive growth of the global adult incontinence products market during the forecast period. For instance, in 2018, ENKA HIJYEN, a company headquartered in Turkey, which is a subsidiary of IMAM KAYALI HOLDING A.S., entered into adult diapers business by launching new adult diapers under Paddlers brand.

The increasing number of people suffering from incontinence also results in high demand and adoption rate of adult incontinence products and thereby driving the market growth over the forecast period. For instance, according to Europe National Health Service (NHS) 2017 report, around three to six million people in the U.K. suffer from some or the other form of urinary incontinence and around 1.4% of the general population aged above 40 suffer from fecal incontinence.

Various companies are also entering the market through inorganic growth strategies such as collaboration and partnerships. For instance in July 2017, PAUL HARTMANN AG, a company that manufactures and markets personal hygiene and medical products, announced the acquisition of Procter & Gambles (P&G) Lindor, an adult incontinence brand in Spain and Portugal. This helped the company to enhance its position in the incontinence product markets of Spain and Portugal.

Request for Sample pages of this Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/request-sample/2290



The increasing number of geriatric population will also drive the growth of global adult incontinence products market. For instance, according to an article published in 2018 by the National Association for Continence, around 50% of men experience symptoms of an enlarged prostate by the age of 60 while 90% of men experience symptoms by age 85 in the U.S.

Key Market Takeaways:

The increase in inorganic strategies such as collaboration and acquisition of major key players in global adult incontinence products market is expected to exhibit a CAGR of 5.9% during the forecast period. For instance, in December, 2020, Seniority and Nobel Hygiene entered into collaboration to launch Friends Premium Pants. The new diapers are equipped with the unique odor-locking technology and anti-bacterial core for added comfort.

North America is estimated to hold a dominant position in the market in 2020 owing to rising cases of urinary incontinence in the region. For instance, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services 2018, around 25 million individuals in the U.S. experience the ill effects of urinary incontinence. Similarly, as per the Urology Care Foundations 2019 report, 40% of women and 30% of men in the U.S. live with overactive bladder symptoms.

Competitive Landscape:

Key players operating in the global adult incontinence products market are Unicharm Corporation, Medtronic Plc., Kimberly- Clark Corporation, Abena A/S, Essity AB, Hengan International Group Company Limited, ONTEX, DSG International Ltd., First Quality Enterprise, Inc., Kao Corporation, and Procter & Gamble.

Buy-Now this Research Report @ https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/insight/buy-now/2290



Market Segmentation:

Global Adult Incontinence Products Markets, By Product Type: Adult Diaper Pads and Liners Pants Others

Global Adult Incontinence Products Markets, By End User: Men Women

Global Adult Incontinence Products Markets, By Distribution Channel: Pharmacy & Drug Stores Supermarket Online & E- commerce Others

Global Adult Incontinence Products Markets, By Region: North America By Country: U.S. Canada Europe By Country: U.K. Germany Italy Spain France Russia Rest of Europe Asia Pacific By Country: Australia India China Japan ASEAN South Korea Rest of Asia Pacific Latin America By Country: Brazil Mexico Argentina Rest of Latin America Middle East By Country: GCC Israel Rest of Middle East Africa By Country/Region: South Africa Central Africa North Africa



Related Market Intelligence Reports:

Adult and Pediatric Hemoconcentrators Market, by Product Type (Adult Hemoconcentrators and Pediatric Hemoconcentrators), by End User (Hospital, Ambulatory Surgical Centers, and Others), and by Region (North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa) - Global Forecast to 2026

Read more: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/adult-and-pediatric-hemoconcentrators-market-2483



Adult Incontinence Products Market Report, by Product Type (Adult Diaper, Pads, Pants, and Others), by End User (Men and Women), by Distribution Channel (Supermarket, Online Stores, Pharmacy & Drug Stores, and Others), and by Region (North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa) - Size, Share, Outlook, and Opportunity Analysis, 2018-2026

Read more: https://www.coherentmarketinsights.com/market-insight/adult-incontinence-products-market-2290



About Us:

Coherent Market Insights is a global market intelligence and consulting organization focused on assisting our plethora of clients achieve transformational growth by helping them make critical business decisions. We are headquartered in India, having sales office at global financial capital in the U.S. and sales consultants in United Kingdom and Japan. Our client base includes players from across various business verticals in over 57 countries worldwide.

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New York, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Saudi Arabia Food Services Market, By Type, By Region, Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, 2026F" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891074/?utm_source=GNW

Large base of young adults & working population coupled with social and cultural changes are the major drivers for the Saudi Arabia Food Services Market. Moreover, the online food services industry has been growing at an exponential rate, with technological advancements facilitating the development of online platform and allowing for a better user experience and convenience.

Restaurants were forced to close their dine-in services during the lockdown in 2020 due to government restrictions, leaving them with no choice but to rely on online delivery services.This increased the overall demand for online food ordering and delivery in Saudi Arabia.



Recognizing a massive opportunity for online food delivery services, market players adopted the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines and began to adhere to no contact delivery, which helped them regain customer trust and, as a result, helped the market recover. Furthermore, the pandemic has broadened the customer base of online food delivery market, pushing it beyond typical younger consumer segment.

The Saudi Labor Law requires employers to fill the majority of positions with Saudi nationals, with the remainder filled by expats. Many positions are still unfilled because restaurant owners are not allowed to hire foreigners, thereby, negatively impacting the food service market in the country.

Saudi Arabia Food Service market is categorized by type, by region and by food chain. In terms of by type, the Saudi Arabia food services market is segmented into QSR (Quick Service Restaurants), Dinning Services, Cafe & Others (Canteens, Lounges, etc.). Amongst, Quick Service Restaurants segment leads all the types of restaurant segments in the Saudi Arabia food services market and this segment is expected to continue its dominance over the forecast period on account of changing tastes and preferences of people. Factors such as increased price consciousness and value-seeking consumer behavior, among others, have contributed to an increase in demand for quick service restaurants. Another reason for this segments rapid growth is the widespread use of the internet and social media, which divulging large number of Saudis to Western food and culture. Cafes are increasing in number in Saudi Arabia, with international brands, like Applebees, Outback Steak House, Chilis, and TGI Fridays, marking their presence.

In terms of region, the Saudi Arabia Food Service market is categorized into Western, Central, Eastern, Southern and Northern region, respectively.In 2020, the Western Region was the highest revenue-generating region in the Saudi Arabia food services market.



Furthermore, due to factors such as increased internet connectivity, modern and changing lifestyles and preferences, and so on, the region is expected to remain the most dominant region during the forecast period as well. Some of the major players operating in the Saudi Arabia Food Services market are McDonalds, Herfy, AL BAIK, KUDU, KFC, etc.



Years considered for this report:



Historical Years: 2016-2019

Base Year: 2020

Estimated Year: 2021E

Forecast Period: 2022F2026F



Objective of the Study:



 To analyze the historical growth in the market size of the Saudi Arabia food services market from 2016 to 2020.

 To estimate and forecast the market size of the Saudi Arabia food services market from 2021E to 2026F and growth rate until 2026F.

 To classify and forecast Saudi Arabia food services market based on by type, by region and by food chain.

 To identify the dominant region or segment in the Saudi Arabia food services market.

 To identify drivers and challenges for the Saudi Arabia food services market.

 To examine competitive developments such as expansions, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, etc., in the Saudi Arabia food services market.

 To conduct pricing analysis for Saudi Arabia food services market.

 To identify and analyze the profiles of leading players operating in Saudi Arabia food services market.

 To identify key sustainable strategies adopted by market players in Saudi Arabia food services market.

The analyst performed both primary as well as exhaustive secondary research for this study.Initially, the analyst sourced a list of service providers across the country.



Subsequently, the analyst conducted primary research surveys with the identified food chains.While interviewing, the respondents were also enquired about their competitors.



Through this technique, the analyst could include the service providers which could not be identified due to the limitations of secondary research. The analyst examined the service providers, and presence of all major players across the country.

The analyst calculated the market size of Saudi Arabia food services market using a bottom-up approach, wherein data for various segments were recorded and forecast for the future years. The analyst sourced these values from the industry experts and food chain representatives and externally validated them through analyzing historical data of these segments for getting an appropriate, overall market size.



Various secondary sources such as company websites, news articles, press releases, company annual reports, investor presentations, and financial reports were also studied by the analyst.



Key Target Audience:



 Food Services owners and franchise.

 Food Service end users.

 Research organizations and consulting companies.

The study is useful in providing answers to several critical questions that are important for the industry stakeholders such as service providers, end-users, etc., besides allowing them in strategizing investments and capitalizing on market opportunities.



Report Scope:



In this report, Saudi Arabia Food Service market has been segmented into the following categories, in addition to the industry trends which have also been detailed below:

 Saudi Arabia Food Services Market, By Type

o QSR (Quick Service Restaurant)

o Cafe

o Dining Services

o Others (Canteens, Lounges, etc.)

 Saudi Arabia Food Services Market, By Region:

o Western

o Central

o Eastern

o Southern

o Northern



Competitive Landscape



Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies present in Saudi Arabia Food Services market.

Available Customizations

With the given market data, we offers customizations according to a companys specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report:



Company Information



 Detailed analysis and profiling of additional market players (up to five).

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05891074/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



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BURLINGTON, Vt., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Seventh Generation, a leading household and personal care products company and pioneer in the environmentally conscious products space, today announced it has named Alison Whritenour to serve as Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Whritenour represents the next chapter of leadership that will continue to accelerate business growth while working toward the companys mission to make the world a healthy, sustainable and equitable place for the next seven generations.



During her nine years on the Seventh Generation business, Whritenour has held many roles across brand marketing, innovation and customer development, most recently serving as Head of Sales where she fueled growth trajectory while building a strong culture and sense of community. As CEO, Whritenour will be charged with accelerating Seventh Generations growth trajectory, while staying true to its mission and values.

From day one at Seventh Generation, Ive been inspired by how our business can be a force for good. For nearly a decade Ive had the unique opportunity to experience our business from a number of vantage points, from product innovation to sales, which has given me an incredible understanding of our brand, our business and our consumer, said incoming Seventh Generation CEO Alison Whritenour. Im honored to steward the company and its mission as we enter a pivotal time for the homecare category on the heels of the biggest disruption of our category in decades.

Whritenour joined Seventh Generation in 2012 to help challenge the household and personal care products industry to change the way it thinks about product development and sustainability. In her prior role as Head of Sales, Whritenour reported directly into Unilever organization where she had a unique vantage point of the Seventh Generation business through the lens of the broader Unilever portfolio and the role the company plays in accelerating purpose and growth and serving as a beacon for sustainability. Whritenour started her career in advertising before moving into brand marketing at Colgate Palmolive. Whritenour holds an MBA from Fordham University and a BA from Loyola University. She resides in Vermont with her husband and three children.

Former CEO Joey Bergstein will remain a member of the Seventh Generation Social Mission Board, which includes a range of dynamic sustainability leaders who ensure the mission and core values remain at the center of every company action.

Seventh Generation has a history of transforming commerce, championing climate justice and equity, fostering the health of our environment, and inspiring a consumer revolution to nurture the health of the next seven generations. For more information visit www.seventhgeneration.com/insideSVG/mission.

About Seventh Generation

For more than 30 years, its been Seventh Generations mission to help you protect your world with our environmentally conscious and effective household products. Our products are solutions for the air, surfaces, fabrics, pets and people within your home -- and for the community and environment outside of it. Seventh Generation offers a full line of laundry, dish and household cleaners, baby products including Free & Clear diapers, training pants and baby wipes, plus recycled paper products and recycled plastic trash bags, personal care products such as deodorant and body wash and period care products including Organic certified tampons. The company derives its name from the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy that states, "In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations." For information on Seventh Generation cleaning, paper, baby and feminine personal care products, to find store locations, and explore the company's website visit www.seventhgeneration.com.

Contact:

Brandi Thomas

seventhgen@allisonpr.com

A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/14afd737-2baf-403a-99e5-bf3ec112fcfe
SAN DIEGO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Ubersuggest, the global SEO and content platform part of NP Digital, announced today that Miles Nurse has joined as its Chief Product Officer. Nurse brings a creative and analytical mentality to the team, helping drive a product strategy that will impress Ubersuggests customers and fuel growth.

Nurse brings more than 25 years of invaluable and diverse experiences in strategic planning initiatives, product innovation, branding, learning development, and cultural transformation for organizations ranging from $1M to $20B in revenue. Through his various leadership roles, he has gained knowledge in SaaS, education, advertising, digital agencies, and game development. Nurse offers a breadth of perspectives required to grow innovative digital enterprises such as Ubersuggest.

A core area of investment, priority and focus for Ubersuggest is the quality of our products and services, said Max Cheprasov, CEO of Ubersuggest. Miles has spent his career building his knowledge and expertise in the product space, and were pleased to welcome him to the team as this will be instrumental in driving our innovation strategy forward.

Prior to joining Ubersuggest, Nurse was the former CPO for Unbounce, the leading ML-powered landing page platform for marketers. Before that, he led incubation and whitespace exploration at BigPark (Microsoft), co-founded an AR start-up, and built and managed the #1 post-secondary Digital Design program in North America.

Its an exciting time to join Ubersuggest as the company hyper-focuses on product development and enhanced client experiences. Im eager to join this forward-thinking team and bring strategic product-specific leadership to the organization, said Nurse. Ubersuggest and NP Digital have continuously led the charge in the marketing industry and its an honor to help further accelerate its expansion and value.

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About Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest, a proprietary technology part of NP Digital, is a robust SEO and content marketing platform that provides keyword and content suggestions. The tool uses consumer search demand, content format performance and competition, on-page technical SEO and backlink analyzers, and a workflow digital asset management solution for end-to-end SEO campaign management.

Ubersuggest is offered for free in 234 countries and in 9 languages to the marketing community and offers a more robust paid subscription. In 2020, Ubersuggest had 14 million unique visitors, and hit a milestone of 2 million active users with an average of 500 million monthly queries against its growing data set of over 6 billion keywords, 2 trillion links, and 1 billion pieces of content.

About NP Digital:

NP Digital is a performance marketing agency focused on enterprise and mid-market challenger brands, and has a small business division. Underpinned by its proprietary technology division and platform Ubersuggest, NP Digital is regarded as one of the fastest growing, award winning performance marketing agencies in the industry. NP Digital views marketing through a consultative lens that takes a holistic view when applying specialist execution to building meaningful partnerships. These partnerships include some of the worlds most important Fortune 500 brands in addition to mid-size, DTC challenger-type organizations.

NP Digital spans across the globe with seven offices and headquartered in San Diego, CA. For more information visit npdigital.com

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Caversham, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reading, UK based Reading Cosmetic Laser is pleased to announce that they are offering pain-free hair removal services. The clinic also encourages their community to reach out to their representatives if they have any concerns regarding this or any other procedure.

According to the clinic, many people may avoid laser hair removal because they believe it will be too painful to bear. In fact, the experience at a typical laser hair removal provider feels similar to being swatted by an elastic band hundreds of times for 30 minutes to an hour. However, this is not the case for the laser hair removal offered at Reading Cosmetic Laser. They are able to deliver quick and pain-free hair removal services thanks to their usage of the latest laser hair removal technology  the Motus AY laser.

The Motus AY laser is the first FDA-approved Alexandrite and Nd:YAG laser. It was manufactured in Italy and is designed to meet European safety standards. It delivers treatments through a 20 mm integrated sapphire contact cooling tip that pulses at extremely short durations. This method of treatment delivery is best suited for removing stubborn hair. The Motus AY laser uses a Moveo handset that allows for double laser energy transmission, giving better results compared to other laser hair removals. It also utilizes Move Technology to swiftly function at 100% efficiency while causing virtually no pain. It may also be used for thread vein removal, non-surgical skin rejuvenation and skin mark removal. Additionally, Moveo Technology can engage its plume protection mode, which reduces COVID-19 transmission risks. All of these factors combine to make the Motus AY laser much more safe, efficient and painless when compared to its other Alexandrite laser counterparts.

Another useful benefit to utilizing the Motus AY laser is the fact that Reading Cosmetic Laser can treat all skin types. The usual Alexandrite laser is not suited for use on people with skin types 5 or 6 because of the lasers ability to target melanin. However, this limitation does not apply to the Motus AY laser. This means that the clinic can help all clients experience the joys of swift and painless laser hair removal in Reading regardless of their skin type.

As noted on the companys website, the Motus AY laser has been made available in Reading for the first time thanks to Reading Cosmetic Laser. In fact, Reading Cosmetic Laser and their clients are both excited about this machine. Clinic manager Louisa Muston says, "When we first started telling our clients that we could offer pain free laser hair removal with our new Motus AY laser, they smiled, or even laughed. This was because many had experienced laser hair removal previously, and it had really hurt! Until now, laser hair removal has not been a pleasant experience, in fact quite the opposite. Now, spending time with us at Reading Cosmetic Laser is more like going to a spa day, and you won't be pulling a face during the treatment!"

Reading Cosmetic Laser offers free consultations before booking clients for any treatments. They do this to make sure that Laser Hair Removal is suitable for all of their potential clients.

Those who wish to visit the clinic for painless laser hair removal can also rest assured that Reading Cosmetic Laser is taking all necessary steps to protect their clients and their team from COVID-19. As such they have implemented strict health protocols throughout the entire centre. Everyone who enters their building, for instance, will be asked to use a hand sanitizer. The team has also placed various hand sanitizer stations throughout the entire building. They have designated a PPE station where they will provide PPE for their clients to wear while also maintaining social distancing (with a distance of 2 meters). All further bookings are also done through the phone to minimize the amount of face-to-face contact.

https://youtu.be/foIbJLhpiMk

Those who wish to experience painless laser hair removal are welcome to contact Reading Cosmetic Laser to schedule a consultation. They may also learn how laser hair removal works by heading over to the clinics website.

###

For more information about Reflex Spinal Health, contact the company here:



Reflex Spinal Health

Andrew Green

01189462100

andrew.green@reflexspinalhealth.com

17 Church Rd, Reading, RG4 7AA
TAMPA, FL & WASHINGTON, D.C., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vector Solutions, the leading provider of industry-focused software solutions for training, risk management, safety, and prevention, today announced that it has acquired EVERFIs higher education business for $100 million. This segment of EVERFIs business includes its highly-regarded online training catalog for colleges and universities and the Campus Prevention Network (CPN). The addition of EVERFIs higher education business to the Vector Solutions family brings together two long-time leaders in higher education training, prevention, and compliance, with years of commitment and passion for student success and campus safety.

Founded in 2008, EVERFI is an education technology company driving social change through education to address the most challenging issues facing society. The Companys higher education solutions power compliance and prevention strategies for over 1,000 of the nations most widely recognized and prestigious names in post-secondary education. EVERFIs CPN training catalog includes more than 50 titles for college and university students, faculty, and staff on alcohol and substance abuse prevention, sexual assault prevention, diversity, equity, and inclusion, and mental health and well-being. EVERFIs higher education programs have been accessed by more than 20 million learners in efforts to build healthy and safe communities for all. Its flagship course within the higher education community is its notable AlcoholEdu for College which has reached more than 10 million college students nationwide to date, the single most widely accessed online course in the country. The Companys higher education solutions offer real-time data and powerful analytics, peer, national, and custom benchmarks, and comprehensive strategy assessments. Its research-backed education framework and extensive thought leadership and expertise, not only ensures compliance, but also drives positive student and institutional outcomes.

Both Vector Solutions and EVERFI have a long history of serving the higher education market and share a commitment to bring high-quality training programs proven to help make institutions of higher education safer, smarter and better, said Vector Solutions CEO Marc Scheipe. The addition of EVERFIs higher education business to the Vector family solidifies that commitment to institutional students, faculty, and staff by expanding the products and capabilities available to them so that they can prevent incidents, make campuses more inclusive, and safeguard lives.

"We are delighted that our Campus Prevention Network and higher education business are joining the Vector Solutions family," said EVERFI CEO and Founder, Tom Davidson. "The impact of the combined business means that we can ensure even more campus communities are healthy and safe. Together, we establish the definitive higher education market leader, delivering best-in-class data-driven digital programs for students, faculty, and staff nationwide."

EVERFI will continue to focus and grow its business operations based on its 13 year-old founding mission of delivering the Missing Learning Layer globally. The Company will leverage its data-driven Impact-as-a-ServiceTM software platform to deploy critical skills education to learners in K-12, consumer, and employee environments. EVERFIs customers represent some of the most recognized global brands aligned in reaching learners with lifes most important skills including: financial capability, health care literacy, college and career readiness, and mental health, among many other life-enhancing skills. The Company expects to reach more than 7.5 million learners in the coming year.

With the addition of EVERFIs higher education business, Vector will now serve 2,200 customers in higher education and approximately 50 percent of all degree-granting colleges and universities. EVERFIs higher education business will roll into Vectors education-focused business unit, which serves both the higher education and K-12 markets through Vectors campus solution suite, which features a variety of eLearning, performance support, and risk management solutions like Vector LiveSafe. Clients can expect to receive the same level of outstanding products, innovation, and customer service to which they have been accustomed.

About Vector Solutions

Vector Solutions is the leading provider of award-winning, intelligent SaaS solutions that help organizations and individuals operate at the highest level and prepare for more challenging workplaces and environments. Providing industry-focused solutions that connect information and technology, its unique product set includes training management, continuing education (CE), compliance training, workforce scheduling, safety management, and more. Its extensive online and mobile training library features carefully curated world-class content to meet the unique needs of professionals in the industrial, engineering, education, and public safety industries. Reaching approximately 22 million users and more than 21 thousand clients worldwide, Vector's mission is to serve everyday heroes by delivering intelligent software solutions that empower them to make safer, smarter, better decisions. The company was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. For more information, visit www.vectorsolutions.com. Follow us on Twitter @VectorPerform and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/VectorPerformance.

About EVERFI

EVERFI is an international technology company driving social impact through education to address the most challenging issues affecting society ranging from financial wellness to mental health to workplace conduct and other critical topics. Founded in 2008, EVERFIs Impact-as-a-Service TM solution and digital educational content have reached more than 41 million learners globally. In 2020, the company was recognized as one of the Worlds Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company and was featured on Fortune Magazines Impact 20 List. The company was also named to the 2021 GSV EdTech 150, a list of the most transformative growth companies in digital learning. Some of Americas leading CEOs and venture capital firms are EVERFI investors including Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, Twitter founder Evan Williams, as well as Advance, Rethink Education, Rethink Impact, The Rise Fund, and TPG Growth. To learn more about EVERFI and how you can #answerthecall please visit everfi.com or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Twitter @EVERFI.

Victoria Zambito

Vector Solutions

813-864-2593

victoria.zambito@vectorsolutions.com

Sonya Udler

EVERFI

301-467-0700

sudler@everfi.com

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ROSEVILLE, Calif., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- During the month of July, Sutter Health employees and allies will rally at facilities across northern California, including TOMORROW at 11 a.m., Wednesday, July 21 at Sutter Roseville Medical Center, to expose the threat to workers and patients caused by understaffing, long patient wait times and worker safety issues at Sutter facilities.

While Sutter has been driving up costs, theyve been driving down the quality of care, staffing and safety at our hospitals. Just about every department is understaffed. Workers are getting run ragged with no time for breaks, and patients are suffering with long wait times for the care they need, said Joe Brown, a radiology technician at Sutter Roseville Medical Center. Its time for Sutter Health management to put patient and caregiver safety first. Listen to caregivers. Stop short-staffing and lowering the quality of patient care.

Despite making $189 million in profits in 2021, receiving $843 million in taxpayer money during the COVID-19 pandemic, and paying out millions of dollars in executive salaries and bonuses, Sutter Health has announced layoffs of workers and continues to short-staff their hospitals.

WHAT: Healthcare workers will set up a danger zone with large signs and other visuals, caregivers in their uniforms, PPE and safety gear. They will hold a rally, give speeches, and hold signs in protest of Sutter Healths understaffing, long patient wait times and worker safety issues.

WHERE: Sutter Roseville Medical Center, 1 Medical Plaza Dr, Roseville, CA 95661

WHEN: Wednesday, July 21, 11 am  1 pm

Additional Dates & Locations: 11 am  1 pm

July 21: Sutter Roseville Medical Center & Sutter California Pacific Medical Center - Mission Bernal Campus

July 28: Sutter Lakeside Hospital & Sutter Alta Bates Summit Medical Center

# # # # #

SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW) is a healthcare justice union of more than 100,000 healthcare workers, patients, and healthcare activists united to ensure affordable, accessible, high-quality care for all Californians, provided by valued and respected healthcare workers. Learn more at www.seiu-uhw.org.
CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Col. Jennifer Pritzker, the Chicago philanthropist, and business owner announced today that she will donate $101,000 and additional six-figure future support to the ACLU from her TAWANI Foundation to fight Tennessees anti-transgender laws in court. The ACLU and its Tennessee chapter announced on June 25 that they filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of two businesses. The lawsuit argues that a state law requiring businesses to post signs outside transgender-friendly bathrooms is unconstitutional and violates businesses First Amendment rights against forced speech.

It is with both alarm and resolve that I announce a $101,000 donation and additional six-figure support in the future to the ACLU to fight the growing anti-transgender laws appearing in Tennessee, said Col. Jennifer Pritzker. These laws stigmatize an already vulnerable population and threaten to encourage abuse and violence like the tragic killing of Private First Class Barry Winchell, an outstanding young soldier murdered by his own comrades in an Army barracks simply for loving a person like me, a transgender woman, Pritzker added.

As American citizens and as human beings, we cannot allow the possibility of such incidents to reoccur in the twenty-first century. Pritzker, a business owner in Tennessee, noted how personal this topic is to her, having lived in Tennessee during her three-year tour.

The number 101 is a nod to my time serving as an infantry officer in the 101st Airborne Division, explained Pritzker.

Since its activation in World War II, the 101st has been on the side of defending the rights of all American citizens. Its members were a significant force in defeating the Nazis, and many members were wounded or lost their lives in the fight to end a murderous regime. The 101st Division continued its anti-fascist, anti-racist struggle on the home front after that. They escorted Black children into previously segregated schools in the 1950s, and since then, the Division has consistently served to defend human rights around the globe.

Anti-LGBTQ laws harm the economic well-being of the state, while respect for diversity and inclusion attract our nations best and brightest, Pritzker said. I stand ready to continue the good fight as necessary, including conferring directly with Governor Bill Lee and the Tennessee Legislature to find truly humane and just solutions to the issues raised by transgender equality. This should be done through candid, good-faith discussions that are sure to result in a better life for us all.

Col. Pritzker is the founder and president, and CEO of TAWANI Enterprises, and founder of the TAWANI Foundation, Pritzker Military Foundation, and the Pritzker Military Museum & Library. She is widely known for her philanthropy, historic preservation, and commitment to military and veterans issues. The first-of-its-kind, the Tennessee law that the ACLU is fighting, went into effect July 1, 2021, and is one of many that Tennessee and other states recently enacted that target the LGBTQ community.

About TAWANI Foundation

Founded in 2002 by notable philanthropist and entrepreneur Colonel (IL) Jennifer N. Pritzker, IL ARNG (Retired), TAWANI Enterprises philanthropic organization, the TAWANI Foundation is a 501(c)(3) that provides support in the areas of arts and culture, historical preservation, health and wellness, LGBT and human rights, education and environmental initiatives. TAWANI Foundations vision is to make a sustained and measurable difference for organizations that focus on enriching knowledge, improving health and wellness, and promoting scientific understanding  all with a common goal of making a positive, long-term impact on individuals, communities and the culture itself. To learn more, visit www.tawanifoundation.org.

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TORONTO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Spectral Medical Inc. (TSX: EDT) (Spectral or the Company) is pleased to announce the launch of a proposed overnight marketed public offering of units of the Company (the Units) of up to $10 million (the Offering). The Offering will be conducted by a syndicate of underwriters led by Paradigm Capital Inc. (the Lead Underwriter) and including A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners (together, the Underwriters).

Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (a Common Share) and one-half () of one Common Share purchase warrant of the Company (each whole Common Share purchase warrant, a Warrant), with each Warrant entitling the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share (a Warrant Share) for a period of 36 months following the closing of the Offering. The definitive size of the Offering, issue price per Unit and exercise price of each Warrant will be determined in the context of the market.

The Company has also agreed to grant the Underwriters an over-allotment option (the Over-Allotment Option) to offer for sale up to an additional number of Units equal to 15% of the Offering, to cover over-allotments, if any, and for market stabilization purposes. The Over-Allotment Option will be exercisable in whole or in part, at the sole discretion of the Underwriters, at any time, and from time to time, for a period of 30 days from and including the closing date of the Offering and shall be exercisable for additional Units, Warrants and/or Common Shares (or any combination thereof).

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the Offering for its Phase III registration trial for its PMX treatment for endotoxemic septic shock, patient enrolment into the DIMI usability trial, product development and regulatory approval for the DIMI device, an observational study in support of Tigris, and for general corporate and working capital purposes.

The Offering will be conducted by way of a prospectus supplement (the Prospectus Supplement) to the Companys short-form base shelf prospectus dated July 3rd, 2020 (the Base Prospectus, and together with the Prospectus Supplement, the Prospectus) in each of the provinces of Canada, other than Quebec (collectively, the Jurisdictions). It is expected that the Company and the Underwriters will enter into a definitive underwriting agreement and file the Prospectus Supplement following pricing of the Offering.

The Units will be offered for sale in the Jurisdictions pursuant to the Prospectus. The Units may also be offered for sale in the United States on a private placement basis pursuant to exemptions from the registration requirements of the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the U.S. Securities Act) and applicable state securities laws, as well as other jurisdictions outside of Canada and the United States as the Company and Underwriters may agree, on an exempt basis in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The closing of the Offering will be subject to certain customary conditions, including but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary approvals, including the approval of the Toronto Stock Exchange (the TSX).

This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy the Units in any jurisdiction, nor will there be any offer or sale of the Units in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. The Units have not and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any U.S. state securities laws, and therefore will not be offered or sold within the United States except pursuant to applicable exemptions from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws.

About Spectral

Spectral is a Phase 3 company seeking U.S. FDA approval for its unique product for the treatment of patients with septic shock, Toraymyxin (PMX). PMX is a therapeutic hemoperfusion device that removes endotoxin, which can cause sepsis, from the bloodstream and is guided by the Companys Endotoxin Activity Assay (EAA), the only FDA cleared diagnostic for the risk of developing sepsis.

PMX is approved for therapeutic use in Japan and Europe, and has been used safely and effectively on more than 300,000 patients to date. In March 2009, Spectral obtained the exclusive development and commercial rights in the U.S. for PMX, and in November 2010, signed an exclusive distribution agreement for this product in Canada. Approximately 330,000 patients are diagnosed with severe sepsis and septic shock in North America each year.

Spectral, through its wholly owned subsidiary, Dialco Medical Inc., is also commercializing a new set of proprietary platforms addressing renal replacement therapy (RRT) across the dialysis spectrum. SAMI is targeting the acute RRT market, while DIMI is targeting the chronic RRT market. Dialco is currently pursuing regulatory approval for U.S. in-home use of DIMI, which is based on the same RRT platform as SAMI, but will be intended for home hemodialysis use. DIMI recently received its FDA 510k clearance for use in hospital and clinical settings, and obtained its Health Canada license for use within Canadian hospitals, clinics and in home.

Spectral is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol EDT. For more information, please visit www.spectraldx.com.

Forward-Looking Statement

Information in this news release that is not current or historical factual information may constitute forward-looking information or forward-looking statements within the meaning of securities laws and includes, without limitation, statements regarding the Offering generally, including anticipated size and pricing, expectations about the likelihood of completing the Offering, the anticipated use of proceeds and the receipt of requisite TSX approval. Implicit in this information, particularly in respect of the future outlook of Spectral and anticipated events or results, are assumptions based on beliefs of Spectrals senior management as well as information currently available to it. While these assumptions were considered reasonable by Spectral at the time of preparation, they may prove to be incorrect. Readers are cautioned that actual results are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including the availability of funds and resources to pursue R&D projects, the successful and timely completion of clinical studies, the ability of Spectral to take advantage of business opportunities in the biomedical industry, the granting of necessary approvals by regulatory authorities as well as general economic, market and business conditions, including but not limited to the ongoing impact of COVID-19.

Certain assumptions with respect to the Offering include those relating to the successful overnight marketing efforts to achieve pricing, filling of the prospectus supplement, completion of the Offering in a timely manner and the ability to obtain all necessary regulatory approvals in connection with the Offering. Risks and other factors that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations with respect to the Offering include, but are not limited to, the risk of overnight marketing efforts being unsuccessful, and the inability of the Company to satisfy all conditions to the completion of the Offering. There can be no assurance that the Offering will be completed or as to the actual size or pricing of the Offering. Actual results could differ materially from what is currently expected and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Except as required by law, the Company disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements. Reference is also made to the other risks and uncertainties that may affect the Company which are more fully described in Spectrals Annual Information Form dated March 25, 2021, the Prospectus and other filings of Spectral with the securities regulatory authorities which are available at www.sedar.com.

The TSX has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this statement.

For further information, please contact:
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Governor Northam Announces Specialty Snack Company to Expand in Henrico County, Creating 60 New Jobs

Red River Foods to invest $16.5 million in new warehousing operation and nut and fruit processing facility

RICHMONDGovernor Ralph Northam today announced that Red River Foods, Inc., a U.S. supplier of premium specialty snacks headquartered in Richmond, will invest $16.5 million to establish a warehouse and processing facility for tree nuts, seeds, and dried fruits at 2840 Sprouse Drive in Henrico County. Virginia successfully competed with Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania for the project, which will create 60 new jobs.

Red River Foods significant expansion speaks volumes about the business climate and top-notch talent in Central Virginia, said Governor Northam. Food and beverage processing is Virginias second-largest manufacturing sector and one of our fastest-growing industries. Red River Foods has been based in Richmond for 30 years, and the companys continued success here is another important testament to the Commonwealths status as the best place to do business.

Headquartered in the City of Richmond, Red River Foods has established a global reach serving more than 350 companies with over 40 products sourced from 30 countries. With offices on five continents and more than 1,000 employees, the company has supplied quality tree nuts, seeds, and dried fruits to the bakery, dairy, confectionary, cereal, and snack food industries for more than 40 years. A vertically integrated company, Red River takes control of the supply chain from harvest to the hands of customers, maintaining strong relationships with farmers, processors, and customers to ensure a quality product that is ethically and sustainably grown.

The Commonwealths food and beverage processing industry employs more than 42,000 Virginians and is a powerhouse for our economy thanks to investments by corporate partners like Red River Foods, said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Brian Ball. The companys commitment to quality and sustainability is commendable, and we are excited to welcome this new warehouse and processing facility to Henrico County.

We have called the Richmond region home since my father, Jim Phipps, moved the company from New York City to Virginia in 1991, said Dan Phipps, CEO of Red River Foods. Although we have experienced tremendous growth since that time, a majority of our personnel expansion has been concentrated in cashew-growing countries within Africa and Asia. Investing in Henrico County is further investment in our value chain. Creating valuable jobs here in our local community is one step further in connecting our farmers to our customers.

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with the Henrico Economic Development Authority to secure the project for Virginia. Red River Foods is eligible to receive state benefits from the Virginia Enterprise Zone Program, administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development. The company is also eligible to receive benefits from The Port of Virginia Economic and Infrastructure Development Zone Grant Program.

We are thrilled that Red River Foods will expand its reach with the addition of warehousing capabilities at its Henrico County operation, said member of the Henrico County Board of Supervisors Reverend Tyrone E. Nelson. The companys strategic location provides access to markets both domestic and abroad. We wish the company great success as a contributor to Henricos thriving food manufacturing and processing community.

The news that Red River Foods is expanding in Henrico County is a positive development for Virginias economy, said Stephen A. Edwards, Virginia Port Authority CEO and Executive Director. Red River sources products from around the world, and The Port of Virginia is ready to help this company extend its reach by playing an integral role in its logistics supply chain. We look forward to helping Red River leverage the efficiency of this world-class port to help the company grow and prosper for years to come.

This expansion of Red River Foods is a big boost to the economy of Henrico County, said Senator Jennifer L. McClellan. The new warehouse and processing facility will support 60 new jobs and help grow our economy in the greater Richmond area. Thank you to the Governors office and to Henrico County leaders for helping to make this investment possible.

I am excited for the arrival of Red River Foods and the possibilities for economic impact on our community, said Delegate Delores McQuinn. When there is a commodity to be sold and individuals to be trained and employed, this creates a recipe for a successful Commonwealth. I am embracing and looking forward to helping make this another successful business operation for the company in Virginia.

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The Governors Official Program is comprised of a wide range of constitutional and legal duties and ceremonial and community engagements. Each year, the Governor hosts thousands of visitors to Government House to take part in investiture and award ceremonies, Open Days, receptions and meetings, and travels widely throughout Queensland to support the activities of Patron groups. View a chronological record of the Governors daily program below.

On Monday, in the morning, at the Cathedral of St Stephen, Brisbane City, His Excellency the Honourable Paul de Jersey AC CVO attended the Supreme Court of Queenslands Church Service to mark the commencement of the 2021 Law Year.

Following, at Government House, His Excellency and Mrs Kaye de Jersey received Judge of the Trial Division, Supreme Court of Queensland and President, Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the Honourable Justice Martin Daubney AM and Mrs Rosie Daubney.

In the afternoon, at Government House, His Excellency and Mrs de Jersey hosted a luncheon for Judge of the Trial Division, Supreme Court of Queensland and President, Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, the Honourable Justice Martin Daubney AM and Mrs Rosie Daubney.

Following, at Government House, His Excellency and Mrs de Jersey hosted an afternoon tea in support of the Brisbane State High School Centenary, and the Governor addressed guests.
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Spring Lake

Village's Social District open for business

Courtesy photo Cups carrying the business logo can be used to walk around outside in downtown Spring Lakes Social District. Courtesy photo Seven Steps Up owner Gary Hanks relaxes with a drink in the commons area outside the Epicurean Village in downtown Spring Lake. This is within the newly approved Social District.

The Village of Spring Lakes Social District opened Friday, allowing customers to consume alcoholic beverages while strolling around a specified downtown area.

The first Social District weekend was great, said Paul Pugsley, owner of Fuel Bar + Refuge. We had customers take drinks and hang out in the Adirondack chairs placed within the Social District boundary. ... Those that we spoke to were excited and said they look forward to seeing their downtown keep adding things to do. This includes the approaching revamp of Tanglefoot Park.

Four bars and restaurants were approved as licensees to provide alcoholic drinks in specially designed cups. Customers can take those outside and stroll the Social District, which encompasses two and a half blocks of the downtown area, on the south side of Savidge Street.

Qualified businesses in the district are Finns Chophouse & Speakeasy, 106 W. Savidge St.; Fuel Bar + Refuge, 228 W. Savidge; Seven Steps Up, 116 S. Jackson St.; and Stans Bar, 208 W. Savidge.

Social District hours are 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, bars and restaurants are just beginning to open up, and this will provide them with a larger footprint in which to serve the community, Village Manager Chris Burns said. Its also a great way to practice social distancing when youre waiting for your table at dinner.

The Spring Lake Village Council approved the district at its May 17 meeting. The state of Michigan also had to approve the district, and the participating bars and restaurants were required to apply to be a part of it.

Each business will sell drinks in the same style cup with their own logo on it, according to Angela Stanford-Butler, director of the villages Downtown Development Authority. The drink may not be taken back into the establishment where it was purchased, or into any other business.

They are purchased for the sole purpose of being enjoyed outside within the common areas of the district, Stanford-Butler said.

Joe Stalac, owner of Stans Bar and the only one of the four businesses that was open Sunday, said it went well.

I saw people finish their drinks from somewhere else and then come in here, he said.

Stalac said that his staff sold a fair share of drinks in the special cups, considering a lot of people were not aware that the district was now in effect.

We have signs in the bar explaining it, he said.

The Lilley Cares Foundation, along with several area businesses, purchased Adirondack chairs and outfitted a common area outside of the Epicurean Village building in advance of the Social Districts opening.

Gary Hanks, owner of the nearby Seven Steps Up, with his wife, Michelle, was one of Stalacs customers on Sunday. Hanks and Courtyard Concerts volunteer Georgia Meyer took their drinks back to the common area and relaxed after a busy weekend with the concerts in Grand Haven.

With the recent approval of an outdoor service permit, Hanks said Courtyard Concerts will start holding pop-up concerts in the parking area next to the Seven Steps Up building. Hanks said he is looking forward to people being able to stroll around outside with their drinks, enjoy a concert by local artists and continue onto dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Grand Haven, MI (49417)

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Thunderstorms likely in the morning. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 81F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%..

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Partly cloudy with late night showers or thunderstorms. Low 73F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.
Max Verstappen's father has advised Toto Wolff against picking up the phone to him in the future.

After the Red Bull driver's huge 51G shunt and brief hospitalisation on Sunday, Max and Jos Verstappen spent the night in a motel near Silverstone before returning to Monaco.

"Max is doing well so far. He's ok," Jos Verstappen told the press.

"But it was an extremely hard impact. Max was winded. That's why he didn't want to say anything at the beginning in order to catch his breath."

Verstappen snr has no doubt that Lewis Hamilton was entirely to blame for the incident.

"It was Max's corner. Lewis accepted a collision in a very fast and therefore dangerous corner," he said.

Max's boss Dr Helmut Marko admits he is still angry with the seven time world champion, "because Hamilton played with Max's health".

But Jos is also furious with Toto Wolff, for not rebuking Hamilton's wild post-race celebrations while Verstappen was having his brain scanned in hospital.

"You don't celebrate a victory with such euphoria when your colleague is still in the hospital," Verstappen snr charged.

"As for Toto Wolff, we had good contact for years. He kept calling us with a honey-mouth and I think everyone knows why. But he didn't call yesterday.

"He no longer needs to call us anymore," Jos concluded.

(GMM)
Toto Wolff has reacted to former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone's claim that Lewis Hamilton is "not quite the fighter that he was".

"There are lots of occasions this year where he could have done better and he hasn't," 90-year-old Ecclestone, who was replaced as F1 CEO in 2017, told PA news agency.

When faced with Ecclestone's comments, the seven time world champion responded at Silverstone last weekend: "I'm definitely not the driver I was when I started.

"I think I'm better and I know myself way more than I ever did."

Hamilton's Mercedes boss Wolff was also asked to respond to Ecclestone's jibe.

"Bernie is always good for banter and headlines," said the Austrian.

"He likes to create controversy and confusion, which is good for the sport and also for him. I think it's important that Bernie, who created all of this, still has clear views."

(GMM)
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Volkswagen of America, Inc. will end assembly of the Passat sedan in Chattanooga with model year 2022 as part of the plants transformation to build future electric vehicles. To celebrate the integral role of the Passat in the resurgence of Volkswagen in the United States, a short-run Limited Edition will join the lineup with Chattanooga-inspired details.





Weve sold some version of the Passat for nearly 50 years, and the Passat launched our relationship with Chattanooga, which supports thousands of jobs. With the Atlas and Atlas Cross Sport in high demand, and the North American production launch of the all-electric ID.4 SUV next year, our future in Chattanooga looks brighter than ever. Scott Keogh, President and CEO, Volkswagen Group of America, Inc.

The 2022 Passat Limited Edition includes unique exterior and interior design details created to celebrate the models history and recognize the contributions of the employees who built Passat. A run of 1,973 Limited Edition models are expected to be produced to recognize the year the first Passat was launched in Germany.

The Passat Limited Edition will be available in four unique color combinations, with the number of each paying homage to an aspect of the vehicles past.

Aurora Red Metallic models with Titan Black interior will number 411 units, representing the original vehicle production code.

Racing Green Metallic models with Mauro Brown interior will number 423, for the Chattanooga, TN area code.

Pure White models with Mauro Brown interior will number 524 units, signifying the opening date of the Chattanooga Plant on May 24, 2011.

615 Platinum Grey Metallic models with Titan Black interior will be producedsignifying six generations of imported Passats, one generation assembled in Chattanooga, and five decades of US sales.

Fifteen-spoke 18-inch aluminum alloy wheels are standard, along with black mirror caps for the power-folding mirrors with memory. Additionally, Limited Edition models feature LED headlights with the Advanced Front-lighting System (AFS) and Easy Open trunk.

Inside, Limited Edition models will bear unique seat tags featuring 1 of 1973 on one side and Chattanooga 2011 on the other. A special mat adorns the cupholders, featuring aerial maps of the city and an aerial line drawing of the Chattanooga factory. Additionally, Limited Edition models will be equipped with comfort sport seats with perforated Vienna leather seating surfaces, driver seat memory, power passenger seat, heated front and rear seats, Discover Media infotainment with navigation, Fender Premium Audio, Park Assist with front and rear Park Distance Control and Light Assist (High Beam Control for Headlights).

Pricing for the 2022 Passat Limited Edition starts at $30,295 MSRP with a destination cost of $995. The Aurora Red Metallic exterior color option is an additional $395.

The first versions of the Passat family sedans and wagons from Volkswagen for US customers were launched in 1974 under the Dasher name. More than 222,000 were sold before the car was replaced by the second-generation Passat, this time marketed as the Quantum. The Passat name appeared for the first time in the US market in 1990 and has remained ever since. The first six generations were imported from Europe.

In 2011, Volkswagen started assembling the Passat for the North American market out of its advanced assembly plant in Chattanooga. Specifically designed for North America, the 2012 Passat was bigger than the car it replaced, with ample rear-seat and trunk space, offering German engineering and styling at a competitive price. The US-assembled Passat has been exported around the worldto Canada, South Korea and Middle Eastern marketsever since.
Philadelphias public media organization WHYY, also the local PBS and NPR station, reports that the regional public transportation authority SEPTA has sidelined its entire fleet of 25 Proterra electric buses since February 2020.

In an initial report in September 2020, unnamed sources within the agency blamed a defect in the chassis that led to a cracking problem. The absence of the electric buses from service was largely unnoticed by SEPTA riders during a pandemic era thats caused record-low ridership.

In a follow-up report on 15 July, WHYYs Ryan Briggs wrote that:

Externally, SEPTA has said little about the failed battery bus program or its progress in restoring the buses to service, insisting that it is working on a resolution with the bus manufacturer. But internal communications, obtained by WHYYs PlanPhilly through a right-to-know request, reveal the incident shook SEPTAs top executives and triggered a serious reevaluation of its plans to convert more of its fleet to electric power. They also show that damage to the buses was discovered even earlier than the agency previously acknowledgedbefore the buses even began regular service. In a March 2021 email, SEPTA General Manager Leslie Richards said she planned to tell Federal Transit Administration officials, who helped underwrite the initial purchase of Proterra buses with a $2.6 million federal grant, that she had doubts about the future of electric vehicle procurement. I plan on explaining why we do not feel the current technology is a good investment at this time, she wrote.

The report notes that Proterra buses were also taken out of service in Duluth, Minnesota, after officials realized that hilly routes and heaters were draining batteries too quickly. BYD buses were removed from service in Indianapolis for upgrades due to range issues, while officials in Albuquerque, New Mexico, returned 15 BYD buses for similar reasons, Briggs reported.

Proponents, like engineering professor Jeremy J. Michalek, director of Carnegie Mellon Universitys Vehicle Electrification Group, said he worries incidents like the mysterious failure of SEPTAs ballyhooed battery fleet will scare others away from zero-emission vehicles. I definitely worry about those kinds of things, he said. If we push too fast, too early, and the technology isnt ready and people have bad experiences, they may be reluctant to try again. Theres only a few ways to move people around without emissions, and electric vehicles are one of them.

Briggs reports that Proterra told SEPTA that non-structural skin coat cracks were first detected in bus chassis in May 2019, but were purely cosmetic, that a repair was on the way purely cosmetic, and that it would not reoccur.

Cracking did recur, in some instances atop prior repairs. SEPTA mechanics also discovered that brackets holding roof-mounted equipment were failing. The buses were taken out of service in February 2020.

SEPTA spokesperson Andrew Busch said because the root cause of the cracking was not identified or corrected by Proterra, SEPTA worried that these cracks could be, or could propagate into, structural issues. A protracted legal back-and-forth began, with Proterra maintaining the buses should be put back into service and SEPTA insisting on a fix.

Proterra maintains that SEPTAs fleet will be put back into service eventually.
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When it comes to flashiness, priests and pastors usually arent at the top of the list of people you would expect to show off exorbitant amounts of wealth.

Its no surprise that when photos of televangelist Joel Osteen driving a Ferrari surfaced on over the weekend, Twitter had a lot to say about it.

In Joel Osteen's defense, Jesus also drove a $325,000 car and lived in a eight figure 17,000 square foot home.



You want him to park a Prius here? God don't like ugly. pic.twitter.com/kMdYJNhL0c  Franklin Leonard (@franklinleonard) July 18, 2021

In Joel Osteen's defense, Jesus also drove a $325,000 car and lived in an eight figure 17,000 square foot home, joked Franklin Leonard, who posted his Tweet alongside a photo of Kanye West's mansion.

Others werent as cheeky.

Remember that one time Joel Osteen helped the poor instead of himself? Yeah, me neither.  Mayo (@MayoIsSpicyy) July 18, 2021

Joel Osteen exploits religion and his followers to feed his own gluttony.  Kate (@ImSpeaking13) July 18, 2021

Ferrari is trending. That means either someone won a race or Joel Osteen took some of the money Jesus told him to give to the poor and went on another shopping spree.  Mrs. Betty Bowers (@BettyBowers) July 18, 2021

I wonder if Joel Osteen thinks he can drive that Ferrari through the eye of a needle  Rex Zane (@rexzane1) July 18, 2021

What would Jesus think of Joel Osteen's $325,000 Ferrari?  Jake Lobin (@JakeLobin) July 18, 2021

Osteens Ferrari reportedly costs $325,000.

The preacher caused a stir earlier this year when it was revealed that his congregation, Lakewood Church, received a whopping $4.4 million in PPP loans amid the pandemic.

As the shutdown persisted month after month, given the economic uncertainty, Lakewood finally applied for the PPP loan and has been able to provide full salaries and benefits including health insurance coverage to all of its employees and their families, the church said in a statement at the time.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Osteen is valued at nearly $100 million, thanks to his television broadcasts, public speaking engagements and book sales.

The Texas-based preacher lives with his wife and two children in a 17,000 square-foot estate which is reportedly valued at around $10.5 million.

Osteen hasnt yet commented on the social media backlash but Tweeted about greatness earlier Monday morning.

Greatness doesnt come from people; it comes from God. Yes, our natural fathers influence us, they teach us what they know, but your gifts, talents, favor come from your Father in heaven. What Hes spoken over your life will come to pass.  Joel Osteen (@JoelOsteen) July 19, 2021

Greatness doesnt come from people; it comes from God, he wrote.

Osteen's most recent sermon was on Sunday.

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GREENWICH  A service will be held Friday for Serena Bechtel, the Greenwich resident who died in a car crash last week.

According to the pastor at Stanwich Congregational Church, the service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday at the church at 202 Taconic Road. The family has asked the public not to attend due to space constraints.

Bechtel, 52, died July 13 in a crash on Lake Avenue, police said. According to police, her 2013 Chevy Suburban left the road and hit a wall, then a tree.

The crash remains under investigation by the Greenwich Police Departments Crash Reconstruction Team.

Bechtel, a mother of three, was a Greenwich resident and business owner. Her friend and business partner Crissy Robinson said Bechtel touched everyones lives in such a positive way and spoke about Bechtels love for her children and her moral compass.

Bechtel was a member of the Stanwich congregation, according to Senior Pastor Nathan Hart.

On Tuesday, Hart spoke about the impact Bechtel had on people and how many are now grieving.

She was well loved and people are really stepping up to show that love, he said.

Bechtel attended The Foote School, Miss Porters School, Yale University and Parsons School of Design, where she received a masters degree in the history of decorative arts. She worked in the museum, auction and appraisal fields, as well as at Backroads and recently at Above and Beyond Move Management, a company she founded with Robinson.

Bechtel was also involved with the Stanwich Congregational Church, the Colonial Dames and Hortulus, according to her obituary.

Her family asked that memorial gifts be made to Stanwich Congregational Church. Fred D Knapp & Son Funeral Home at 267 Greenwich Ave. is handling arrangements.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
As major construction projects commence in Port Chester, N.Y., concerns about noise and heavy machinery are rising in the nearby Byram neighborhood of Greenwich.

A large crane has been moved into place by barge, and construction equipment is starting to excavate the shoreline along the Byram River, where a collapsed bulkhead will be restored. Pile driving is expected to commence in the coming days for the $8 million seawall repair project, which is expected to run for about three years.

Noise could be a problem in Byram as a result of the work, which is on the Port Chester side of the river, and First Selectman Fred Camillo sent an advisory to the neighborhood to warn about the construction work.

There may be noisy conditions created by the heavy machinery and equipment needed for the project as well as ground vibrations when sheet piling is driven or drilled into the shoreline bedrock. We will continue to be in contact with the village administration should any concerns arise with our residents or businesses in the area, Camillo stated.

Neighbors are getting apprehensive about the increasing noise and construction activity in the area, said Joseph Kantorski, chairman of the Byram Neighborhood Association.

Noise has a way of traveling across water, he said, It could be an issue; well monitor it.

In addition to the bulkhead repairs, work is also set to begin soon on a six-story building, called Tarry Lighthouse that will include 209 rental apartment units along with retail and restaurant space at 175 N. Main St. in Port Chester. Kantorski said the Byram community is bracing for construction vehicles using local streets to access the construction site.

Port Chester is in the middle of a building boom that is adding hundreds of new residential units and a substantial amount of commercial space to the area. In addition to the Tarry Lighthouse project, a large residential building  nine stories tall with office space  is planned near the Port Chester railroad station, not far the Greenwich border.

The bulkhead work is contracted out to Navillus/ Marine Construction for about $8 million. The bulkhead has been in poor condition, and it collapsed in separate sections around a decade ago. Along with the repairs, a riverfront promenade will be installed in the area, as part of a long-term goal to reactivate the downtown waterfront, in the words of Port Chester Village Manager Stuart Rabin.

Its been a long time coming, Rabin said at a recent ribbon-cutting ceremony for the project.

The bulkhead lies along an inlet of the Byram River, with the Greenwich neighborhood of Byram just on the other side. At the recent ceremony, Port Chester Mayor Luis Marino said the bulkhead repairs would benefit the Byram community by removing an eyesore along the waterfront.

rmarchant@greenwichtime.com
Connecticuts COVID-19 positivity rate continued to tick upward over the weekend as did the number of people hospitalized, a trend observed across much of the country with vaccination efforts hitting a wall and a more contagious variant of the virus making up majority of new cases.

Data released by the state Monday showed a daily positivity rate in Connecticut of 1.53 percent  the highest since May 13  and an additional six hospitalizations since Friday, bringing the total number of patients hospitalized to 50. The states seven-day positivity rate is the highest its been since May 19.

Health officials say the vast majority of those getting sick and dying are unvaccinated. Los Angeles County became the first major county in the nation to reinstitute its indoor mask mandate, even for those who are vaccinated, in hopes of combatting a spike in cases there, largely due to the highly contagious delta variant.

Gov. Ned Lamont has so far said he does not plan to put in place any new restrictions in Connecticut. But the governor continued to urge residents to be cautious, with about 30 percent of those eligible still not fully vaccinated.

It just reminds you that we still have to be careful. We still have to be able to think fast. We still have to be agile and move on our feet, the governor said Monday at an unrelated news conference in New Canaan.

He said there has not been a decision made on masks in school in the fall.

If there is a large outbreak among unvaccinated groups, it increases the exposure of the vaccinated who are at low, but not zero risk, and creates more possibility that some of them, particularly those that are immunocompromised and may not have had a vigorous response to vaccine, getting ill and possibly requiring hospitalization, Tom Balcezak, chief clinical officer at Yale New Haven Health, said in an emailed statement Monday.

Vaccine distribution and instituting safety protocols in schools such as requiring masks are two of the major reasons Lamont requested his emergency powers, set to expire Tuesday, be extended to Sept. 30, which the General Assembly granted last week. Lamont said Monday that his administration will decide whether to mandate masks for school children in the near future.

Things are changing pretty fast. There is such variability. New Canaan is 99 percent vaccinated. Other places are 45 percent, so we have to figure out what it is. Obviously if youre not vaccinated we strongly say you ought to wear that mask. No question about it and that means all those K-through-8 kids, they should. Whether we mandate it or not we have to figure it out in the next little bit, the governor said.

In addition to vaccinations, Dr. Asha Shah, director of infectious diseases at Stamford Health, said its also critical that we do not cast aside public health measures like masking and social distancing.

These efforts protect people that are not able to get vaccinated like children, and those who are immunocompromised, Shah said Monday in an emailed statement.

The American Academy of Pediatrics released new guidance Monday recommending that children older than age 2 wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.

Staff writers Amanda Cuda and Ken Dixon contributed to this report.

julia.bergman@hearstmediact.com
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  Public Service Company of New Mexico poured more than $1 million into advertising from March through June to sell the public on its proposed merger with Avangrid.

Included among four bills to PNM from the Albuquerque marketing firm 3 Advertising is one from early March for $864,290 for ad campaign planning and production, plus broadcast, radio, digital and print ads, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

The expenditures  and in-person visits by PNM and Avangrid executives to key influencers  indicate the companies face not just a challenge to gain merger approval from the Public Regulation Commission. Theyre also seeking wider public support in a process that could immediately go to the state Supreme Court if the commission rejects the proposal.

The advertising keeps coming.

Well, theres a lot of it, thats for sure. Its pretty amazing, said Jeff Albright, who represents Bernalillo County in the matter. I think it would be nice if they put that same level of effort into working with the parties affected by the proposal.

Connecticut-based Avangrid, which hopes to buy PNM for $8.3 billion, has had a bumpy journey since the announcement of the planned merger late last year. Avangrid has been accused, among other things, of withholding information from the Public Regulation Commission about service problems involving its subsidiaries in the northeastern United States.

Avangrid on July 11 ran a full-page newspaper ad in The New Mexican, titled An open letter to New Mexico from AVANGRID. The letter, signed, Humbly yours, Bob, was from Bob Kump, president and deputy CEO of Avangrid.

He wrote Avangrid never intended to leave the impression that we were withholding information and if we created that impression, we apologize.

PNM and Avangrid also ran a joint full-page ad that day in The New Mexican that asserted, PNM is merging with AVANGRID. But approval of the merger from the Public Regulation Commission appears to be less than certain.

And the companies are not just advertising. PNM, Avangrid and Avangrids parent company, Spain-based Iberdrola, have brought out their bosses to talk to individuals who have input into key organizations positions on the proposed merger.

Pedro Azagra Blazquez, who serves the dual role of Avangrid board member and Iberdrolas corporate development director, came to New Mexico last Monday to win support for the proposal.

Among those he met with in Albuquerque were representatives of Bernalillo County and the Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, neither of which has signed on with the merger proposal.

Were still trying to bridge the gap, and we are making progress, Albright said, adding theres still a long way to go. Attempts to schedule an interview with Blazquez through Avangrid and PNM public relations staff members were unsuccessful.

Many organizations have given their blessing to the proposed merger. Those include the San Juan Citizens Alliance, Dine Citizens Against Ruining Our Environment, Western Resource Advocates and the NAVA Education Project.

And some have not, including the Sierra Club and New Mexico Affordable Reliable Energy Alliance.

Some of the outstanding issues include the composition of the board that would oversee PNM, how much economic development aid would be given directly to the state in the transaction, and an investigation in Spain of potential wrongdoing involving two Iberdrola executives and some other companies officials.

Avangrid said the investigation is only a fact-finding mission, adding there have been no charges and Iberdrola is cooperating with investigators.

The merger proposal has the support of Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Attorney General Hector Balderas, both Democrats.

Supporters say PNM and New Mexico lag in converting to increasingly important renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. They say New Mexico has an abundance of both and that Avangrid and Iberdrola, which have considerable experience in renewable energy, could move the state into the new era.

Pat Vincent-Collawn, president and CEO of PNM Resources, was among Avangrid and PNM executives who met with representatives of The New Mexicans editorial board in May.

At that meeting, Vincent-Collawn said: Im sure you know we would like you to look favorably on and ultimately endorse the merger that were talking about with the Avangrid family of companies.  But we would like today to answer every one of your questions, no matter how difficult they are.

PNM and Avangrid are making their arguments for the importance of this merger through ads. They say that shareholders are paying for this, said Mariel Nanasi of Santa Fe, a critic of the merger. Almost weekly now, theyre having ads in the Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican.

Tim Calkins, a clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern University in Illinois, said you have to make sure the benefits come across when companies make a proposal like this. Calkins hasnt studied the New Mexico situation extensively.

Some of the negatives are getting a lot of attention and overwhelming the positives, he said. He said image-building for companies is best done early because playing catch-up is tough. And when you miss that window, its hard to overcome it.

The four invoices to PNM from 3 Advertising were acquired by Nanasi, head of New Energy Economy. Nanasi is a dogged adversary of PNM and the merger who has sought one document after another through the discovery process allowed in Public Regulation Commission cases.

Documents that are acquired through discovery are shared with dozens of other participants in a case, such as lawyers and staffers, and may become relevant to a case.

Avangrid has hired Joanie Griffin, a marketing and public relations specialist with Sunny505 in Albuquerque, to assist it with ads and media relations. Griffin said she and her company are getting paid their standard rate, totaling $150 an hour.

The ads are designed to introduce the company to New Mexico. Griffin helps write ad copy and devise the marketing strategy.

They hired me to have someone on the team that is local and knows the media here, she wrote. Advertising is one of the ways we use  to get the truth out.

Griffin, contracted for service in May, said through email, I joined the effort because I believe the merger is the best way for New Mexico to achieve the governors goals of being 100% renewable by 2045. She said the feedback she receives from people about the proposal is excellent.

Some expert witnesses, such as Scott Hempling, a Maryland attorney who has written extensively about utilities, have offered scorching written assessments of the merger proposal. The proposal is required by the commission to be in the public interest. Hempling said the proposal appeared designed to benefit shareholders rather than the public.

Commission hearing examiner Ashley Schannauer, who serves as a quasi judge with recommending authority to the commission on final decisions, has made tough rulings against the companies. In one of those, he told PNM and Avangrid to publicly disclose a letter they had sought to keep confidential.

In another, Schannauer said Iberdrola would have to be included as an applicant in the proceedings despite the companys wish to remain outside the process.

Albright said PNM and Avangrid hoped to have a hearing in March, but that has been pushed to August. He said of Avangrid leaders: I dont think they had a good sense of both the process and the different entities that would be involved out here.

The advertising has given many media outlets in New Mexico some nice cash, although none would say how much. One invoice said full-page ads had been placed in nine New Mexico newspapers in May. That invoice from 3 Advertising showed a bill of $180,763 to PNM.

PNM spokesman Ray Sandoval didnt return messages for this story.

The company also is advertising with smaller media outlets.

Were getting at least two a month, Las Vegas Optic ad representative Cynthia Fitch said. PNM and Avangrid generally run different ads, she said. She said the New Mexico Press Association assists her newspaper and others in the process.

Not every media outlet has received a chunk of ad revenue from the companies in the merger process. Bill Anderson, vice president and general manager of KRQE-TV in Albuquerque, said PNM has an account with his television station but Avangrid does not.

Anderson said: We just havent met the new guys yet.
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)  The federal government is making $200 million available for logging businesses that have been hurt by the pandemic.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins and Democratic Rep. Jared Golden were co-authors of the Loggers Relief Act, and they pressed for the funding to be expedited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

"This much-needed support for Maines family logging and log hauling businesses is now on the way, Collins said.

Paper mills drastically slashed output or shut down their operations during the pandemic, adding to the pressures on loggers and log haulers.

The offices of Collins and Golden said they are ready to help constituents navigate the application process.

In other pandemic-related news:

VACCINATION RATES

More than 70% of Maine residents age 20 and older are now fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that more than 67% of all the eligible people in the state are fully vaccinated. The number tracks higher for older age groups. It's more than 80% for Maine residents who are age 50 and older.

Maine has one of the highest rates of coronavirus vaccination in the country. The vaccines are available to everyone age 12 and older in all states.

Maine is using pop-up vaccine clinics to try to get the vaccine for more people as cases rise around the country this summer.

PORTLAND-EMERGENCY

The Portland City Council has voted to end a state of emergency imposed because of the pandemic.

The local emergency declaration would end July 29, terminating the additional powers granted to the city manager during the pandemic that were used to restrict public gatherings and impose curfews.

It would have meant an end to the city's extra hazard pay for minimum-wage workers, but the state supreme court ruled this month that the provision does not go into effect until 2020. Nonetheless, some employers went ahead and paid the hazard pay, which was $18.23 an hour, compared to the statewide $12.15 minimum wage.

The decision to end the state of emergency paves the way for the City Council to resume in-person meetings.

___

Follow APs coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic.
Today Apple has released iOS 14.7 to all supported iPhones, although as of yet it hasn't also sent out the corresponding iPadOS 14.7 update to its tablets, which is weird, because these usually go out together. Anyway, by the time you read this the iPadOS 14.7 update may already be on its way, but it wasn't at the time of writing.

iOS 14.7 brings support for the MagSafe battery pack that the company quietly released a few days ago. This is compatible with the iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, and 12 Pro Max.

The new software also introduces an Apple Card Family feature which lets you combine credit limits and share one co-owned account with an existing Apple Card user, and gives the Home app the ability to manage timers on the HomePod. Additionally, the Weather and Maps apps get air quality information for Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, South Korea, and Spain. Finally, the Podcasts library now lets you choose to see all shows or only followed shows.

The update includes a bunch of bug fixes too, as you'd expect, having to do with the Share playlist menu option missing in Apple Music, Dolby Atmos and Apple Music lossless audio playback unexpectedly stopping, a battery service message disappearing after reboot on some iPhone 11 models, and Braille displays showing invalid information while composing mail messages.

It's not the hugest of updates for sure, but it's probably good enough to install as soon as you can. To do that, simply head to Settings > General > Software Update on your iPhone if it hasn't prompted you to update already.

Source
Oppo will introduce its Reno6 Z tomorrow in Thailand but a day before the launch we stumbled upon the devices official specs on Oppos Thai website. These confirm past rumors including a 6.43-inch AMOLED display with FHD+ resolution and a 60Hz refresh rate. Theres a punch-hole cutout for the 32MP selfie shooter in the top left corner.

The device features Oppos signature Reno Glow design with Stellar Black and Aurora colorways. The back comes with a rectangular camera cutout for the 64MP main cam which is backed by an 8MP ultrawide snapper and 2MP macro cam. The phone will support 4K recording at 30fps and 1080p video capture at up to 120fps.

Theres a MediaTek Dimensity 800U sitting at the helm aided by 8GB RAM and 128GB built-in storage which is also expandable. The battery capacity comes out to 4,310 mAh and supports 30W fast wired charging. Reno6 Z boots Android 11 with ColorOS 11.1 on top.

Pricing details for Thailand were not made available yet but a past listing in Vietnam suggested a starting price of VND 9,490,000 ($412).

Source (in Thai)
Sony clarifies: the Xperia 1 III will get at least two Android updates

Sony representatives reached out to us to set the record straight on the expected software support for the Xperia 1 III flagship. The company plans to deliver at least two Android OS updates to the Mark 3 flagship.

Thats a lot better than the single OS update that Sony Netherlands was claiming. And yes, the statement is worded defensively, but thats to cover unforeseen circumstances.

We have to point out that the Sony Xperia 1 III will launch in August in the US and in Europe with Android 11 pre-installed. Googles schedule shows that Android 12 will reach platform stability with Beta 4, set to be released in August and to be followed by a proper release soon after that.

With that in mind, the Xperia 1 III should be updated to Android 13 at a minimum with security updates stretching beyond that.
Android users will soon receive the benefit of signing in with a Google account when accessing the app via an Android device. As reported by 9to5Google, the Twitter Beta build for Android now allows you to sign into your Twitter account using Googles sign-in feature. This feels like it is long overdue.



Source: 9to5Google

If you dont have a Twitter account already, you can use the Google sign-in option to create a new account, though the handle will be randomly assigned, after which you can change it. If you currently have a Twitter handle that is already linked to a Google account (@gmail.com), you should be able to sign right on, as long as that email is already signed in on the Android device.

The option to sign in with a Google account is currently live on Twitter version 9.3.0-beta.04 for those enrolled in the Twitter Beta channel through the Google Play Store.

Via
Antisocial behavior has reached pandemic levels. Disruptive airline passengers are punching flight attendants. Thugs are attacking Asians, gays and other minority groups. Criminals have grown more brazen in bringing violence to the streets and into American politics as seen in the savage invasion of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Mental illness clearly underlies a lot of these disturbing trends, with the cracks widening during the COVID-19 scourge. The pandemic deprived many of community, personal interaction and, for those on the edge of psychic breakdown, the in-person mental health services they relied on or need.

Americas system for supporting good mental health has never been strong to begin with. The 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act did help expand coverage, but getting insurance to pay for treatment of serious psychiatric problems remains problematic.

And the need has risen. From March through October of last year, hospital emergency rooms saw a surge of patients seeking urgent mental care, according to JAMA Psychiatry. The numbers were far lower in the same months of 2019, right before the pandemic hit. The crises ranged from suicide attempts to drug and opioid overdoses to abuse of partners and children.

Last year, a third of American adults displayed symptoms of clinical anxiety or depression, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That was up from 11% in previous years.

Many of the Capitol insurrectionists had a history of mental illness and related social dysfunction. We made fun of several.

Eric Munchel of Nashville, Tennessee, who brought restraints police use on hands, legs and arms to the Capitol, was dubbed the zip-tie guy.

Actually, Munchel had been charged with assaulting a man and woman in 2013. Recently fired from his job at a bar, he entered the Capitol costumed in paramilitary gear, his mother at his side.

Sean McHugh of Auburn, California, who attacked Capitol police with chemical spray, had accused the officers of protecting pedophiles. McHugh, it turns out, had done jail time for statutory rape of a 14-year-old girl.

It was thought at first that Rosanne Boyland had been crushed to death in the rush of stampeding vandals, but the medical examiner concluded that the Georgia resident died from an overdose of amphetamines. Boyland had a history of drug use, including a charge of felony drug possession. The pandemic cut off her in-person group meetings of addicts.

When you look at some of the creeps who had been attacking Asians, you find something more than the usual racial animus. For example, the homeless man seen viscously stomping on a 65-year-old woman of Filipino origin in New York is Black. He was on parole for having killed his mother in front of his 5-year-old sister.

Another homeless man with 90 prior arrests was charged with slashing a gay man. Both the criminal and the victim were Latino.

You see madness in the faces of airline passengers throwing tantrums over demands that they wear masks. Videos show the protesters, usually women, making noisy and self-righteous stands for their right to break the rules. No matter how normally these disrupters dress, they radiate the look of the unhinged.

The mission here isnt to solve the dearth of psychiatric services for those barely hanging on. Others can better do that. Rather, its to note that fragile psyches often lie beneath the growth of appalling behavior. And a society in the grips of fraying social ties is going to suffer more of it.

We now have an evil mix of social isolation and extremist rhetoric that some use to confer an air of respectability to their delusions. The social services that keep the mentally unbalanced in check need to be strengthened  and soon.
The Center for Biological Diversity sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, saying the agency failed to protect critical habitat for 23 species on Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.

The group said nine animals and 14 plants have been harmed by agricultural and urban sprawl, military expansion and training, invasive species, fire, typhoons, sea-level rise and climate change.

The animals include bats, tree snails, butterflies and damselflies. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Guam, says federal wildlife officials have failed to designate any habitat for these imperiled species as required under the Endangered Species Act.

These beautiful, dwindling Pacific island species desperately need protected habitat or they wont survive, said Maxx Phillips, Hawaii director and a staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. We cant stop the extinction crisis if wildlife officials ignore the law and abandon the places where imperiled species live. Militarization, invasive species, climate change and urban sprawl have taken an enormous toll. Since government officials wont take action, were asking the court to force them to.

In 2015 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed 23 plant and animal species in greater Micronesia as endangered or threatened. The Endangered Species Act requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to designate critical habitat for all threatened and endangered species, but the group says agency has failed to designate critical habitat for any of these plants or animals.

These plants and animals need protection. They need critical habitat to survive and recover, said Frances Meno, a local traditional healer. I am very bothered by this. Without our plants, we cant make medicine.

Designating critical habitat will prohibit federal actions that destroy or harm areas the plants and animals need to survive and help conserve what remains of these species limited native range, the group said.

We need to get serious about protecting our endangered and threatened species, said attorney Julian Aguon of Blue Ocean Law. The first step is to designate critical habitat. The second is to stop giving the military a free pass. Were suing Fish and Wildlife to remind them they must do both.

Some of the threatened plants and animals include:

Pacific sheath-tailed bat: This insectivorous bat has already been wiped out on Guam and the island of Vanuatu. Across its remaining range, it is threatened by habitat destruction from nonnative species, development, military training, urbanization, typhoons and climate change.

Slevins skink: Also known as the Mariana skink, this creature has already been wiped out on Guam. The rest of its range is also threatened by habitat destruction from nonnative species, development, military training, urbanization, typhoons and climate change. Military training puts the skink at risk of direct harm from live-fire training exercises.

Mariana eight-spot butterfly: Native to Guam and Saipan, the butterfly is no longer found on Saipan. It is reliant on two host plant species, one of which is used as a native medicinal plant to treat various ailments. The butterfly is threatened by parasitic wasps, and its habitat is threatened by nonnative species, development, military training, urbanization, typhoons and climate change.

Guam tree snail: Found only in Guam, this snail is critically endangered. In addition to the common habitat threats listed above, the Guam tree snail is threatened by fire and overcollection for commercial and recreational purposes.

Bulbophyllum guamense: Part of the Guam Plant Extinction Prevention Program, this orchid has a greenish-yellow flower that smells faintly of carrion. The plant once occurred in common large mat-like formations on trees. The orchid is harmed by habitat-based threats and predation by nonnative slugs.
A hundred lighted quadcopters will hover and dance over the shoreline Wednesday evening at Ypao Beach, marking the islands first public drone light show.

The foot-wide drones, whose choreographed movements over the beach will be controlled by a computer, were purchased specifically for this years Liberation Day celebration, according to Charlie Hermosa, president of Bella Wings, which was hired by the Guam Visitors Bureau to provide the show.

This year marks the 77th anniversary of the liberation of Guam from Japanese occupation during World War II.

The 13-minute drone light show at the closed Governor Joseph Flores Memorial Park is scheduled to start 8 p.m., followed by traditional fireworks shows at Oka Point, the Hagatna boat basin, and a barge off the Merizo pier. A second drone show, without fireworks, is scheduled for 8 p.m. Thursday, in Merizo, and should be visible from the villages of Merizo and Umatac.

The total cost for drone shows and fireworks is $200,000, according to GVB.

Theres gonna be animation, formation of figures, words being spelled out, messages being sent out, Hermosa said about the drone shows. A lot of good graphics, a lot of colorful designs.

You can almost look at it like theyre pixels, he said about the drones, which are equipped with LED lights. Once the drones take off, each one of them is assigned to a specific pixel number, associated with the design weve drawn in the computer.

There are no sound effects for the drone show, but residents can tune to 93.9 FM to hear theme music for the drone shows and the fireworks displays, according to GVB.

We wanted to test out with 100 (lighted drones) and see how that works, and then were going to scale up in the future, Hermosa said. As you do 300 or 400 drones, you get more of that 3-D effect, he said, as well as the option of putting on shows simultaneously in different locations.

The pandemic has limited the islands traditional Liberation Day celebrations, canceling the parade and the carnival.

If we cant celebrate Liberation Day with gatherings of thousands of our people like we usually do, then we will just have to line the night sky with messages of unity and hope for our families at a time when our whole community is working together to beat this virus once and for all, GVB President and CEO Carl Gutierrez said.

Although the Governor Joseph Flores Memorial Park will be closed to the public Wednesday, the drone show will be visible from anywhere along Tumon Bay, according to GVB.
Ieremia Fagavao was sentenced to serve a year in prison in connection to an incident where Fagavao attempted to disarm a Guam Police Department Officer in May.

Fagavao entered a plea of guilty for the charges of reckless conduct and family violence both as misdemeanors before Judge Maria T. Cenzon at the Superior Court of Guam.

The victim of the family violence charge was present at the hearing via phone line and indicated that she is allowing Fagavao to contact her. Cenzon ordered that Fagavao cannot harm, or harass, the victim in any way.

Cenzon also requested Fagavao to stay away from the GPD officer involved in the incident but indicated a call to GPD in the form of a 911 call will not be a violation of the order.

Fagavao also was ordered to not consume intoxicating substances as they were involved in the circumstances of the incident.

In a release sent by GPD, Fagavao was accused of disarming a police officer on May 6.

Officers were responding to a disturbance complaint at a residence in Yigo where Fagavao was not allowed to be due to an ongoing case, the release said.

Upon arrival, officers noticed Fagavao was aggressively arguing with a household member, the release said.

As officers were escorting him out of the home, Fagavao reached for an officer's duty belt and grabbed the firearm. Fagavao was restrained immediately as he attempted to pull the weapon from the officer's holster, according to the release.
Accused Swamp Road murderer, Matthew Manibusan, made multiple motions in a hearing before Judge Vernon Perez, at the Superior Court of Guam. One of which included a motion to dismiss the indictment.

Along with the dismissal, Manibusans counsel, Nicole Cruz of Arriola Law Firm, made two more motions: a motion to compel discovery from the Office of the Attorney General and another to exclude evidence.

Perez scheduled a hearing for the motions to be argued by both parties on August 3 keeping in mind how it may affect the scheduling of the trial.

Im not going to take long to make a decision. Im not at the comfort of taking long because of speedy trial status, Perez said.

It also was revealed in the hearing that a medical expert will testify once trial begins. Perez inquired about the availability of the expert so he can take it into account when planning for trial dates.

Manibusan was accused of killing Joshua James Meno after his body was found on Swamp Road in April. A trail of blood from Menos body led to Manibusans home nearby, court documents state.

Manibusan admitted to shooting Meno in the abdomen which was found to be his cause of death, according to police.

Manibusan was indicted for two counts of murder as a first degree felony and one count of aggravated assault as a second degree felony with special allegations for the possession or use of a deadly weapon in the commission of a felony.
A number of police and firefighters came out in support of a study for an improved retirement plan for GovGuam peace officers at the Guam Legislature on Tuesday.

Sen. Jose "Pedo" Terlaje's Bill 137 would put $75,000 toward a cost-benefit study for an improved retirement system for public safety officers. The study would be done with the Government of Guam Retirement Fund. Terlaje has called Guams retirement age of 62 one of the highest in the nation and stated that the current plan does not account for the physical rigors of uniformed personnel.

Terlaje on Tuesday stated that he was not eyeing a particular plan to replace the current one, but wanted to see the study carried out.

Battalion Chief Edward L. Flores of the Guam Fire department came in support of the measure. The aging force at GFD was preventing the agency from bringing on new firefighters, he explained, forcing many older members to remain locked into lower-ranking and more physically demanding positions.

Lt. Mark Torre of the Guam Police Department said the chance for a comfortable retirement was one of the reasons he joined the department in the 1990s. That incentive isn't there any more, which hurts recruiting efforts, he said.

GPD Chief Stephen Ignacio said a lower retirement age for peace officers, around 56, would bring Guam in line with federal agencies. The type of work that had to be done was not suited to aging officers, he said.

Ignacio said there was no provision in the current retirement plan for officers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. Given the mental strain of being a police officer, it was among one of his bigger concerns as chief, he said. There was currently no safety net in place for employees, and many had to remain on disability and in the GovGuam system without retiring.

One case involving an officer deemed unfit for duty due to PTSD dragged on for 20 years, because the department was unable to determine its options, Ignacio said.

Firefighter Art San Nicolas supported a new retirement plan, but questioned the need for a study. Lawmakers already had the ability and the money to implement a plan, San Nicolas said.

The 55-year-old firefighter stated that he wished he could retire, and cited how hard it was for him to put on his full gear and run the obstacle course to keep up with the physical requirements.

Terlaje's office has said a lot of older peace officers would be incapable of meeting the physical fitness requirements, which are currently suspended.

Sens. Joanne Brown and Telo Taitague supported the study, but did raise notes of caution about creating a plan that might put a burden on the retirement fund. Brown pointed to the old GovGuam retirement plan  an option which was more attractive than 401k-based options  but ultimately proved unsustainable for government operations.
{child_flags:featured}Sked appointed sixth attorney; Quinata requests case be severed

{child_byline}By Shane Healy

Pacific Daily News{/child_byline}

Co-defendants Joyner Sked and Rudy Fegurgur Quinata, charged in the death of former Umatac Mayor Daniel Quinata Sanchez, appeared at the Superior Court of Guam before Magistrate Judge Jonathan R. Quan Tuesday afternoon.

In the hearing, Skeds attorney, Jay Arriola, made a motion to withdraw because of a conflict of interest. Arriola said employees in his office as well as immediate family members of his are related to Sanchez, making it difficult to represent Sked fairly.

Judge Quan granted the request to withdraw and appointed Douglas Moylan to represent Sked. Moylan will be Skeds sixth court appointed attorney.

After granting the motion, Quinatas attorney, Heather Zona, followed up about her motion to sever the case, which she requested in a previous hearing. Zona requested it be granted as it was unopposed by the Office of the Attorney General.

In response, Quan said he looked at the motion but wanted to ensure counsel was appointed to Sked before making a decision.

Sked and Quinatas next hearing was scheduled for at 2:30 p.m. Thursday.

Jury selection for the trial is set to begin Aug. 4.

The co-defendants became suspects in the death of Sanchez after his body was found in Umatac in April, according to court documents.

When Quinata was picked up by GPD officers and he was questioned about the killing of Sanchez he told officers twice, Joyner did it, court documents state.

Sked allegedly told a witness she stabbed Sanchez while Quinata was beating him up, court documents state.

Sked and Quinata were both indicted by a grand jury for murder as a first-degree felony and aggravated assault as a second-degree felony. Both pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Point Park Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga Battlefields, by Anonymous

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org . If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Point Park Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga Battlefields

National Military Park, Georgia and Tennessee

Author: Anonymous

Release Date: July 19, 2021 [eBook #65875]

Language: English

Produced by: Stephen Hutcheson and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POINT PARK LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN AND CHATTANOOGA BATTLEFIELDS ***

Point Park

Lookout Mountain

and Chattanooga

Battlefields CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA

National Military Park

GEORGIA AND TENNESSEE

UNITED STATES

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR

National Park Service

The National Park System, of which this area is a unit, is dedicated to conserving the scenic, scientific, and historic heritage of the United States for the benefit and inspiration of its people.

Cover: Chattanooga and the winding Tennessee River from Point Park, Lookout Mountain.

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1961 0-618486 REPRINT 1961

1

Point Park, Lookout Mountain and Chattanooga Battlefields



CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA NATIONAL MILITARY PARK

The Battle of Chattanoogaa Union victory in November 1863 which secured that important railroad center and opened the way for the Atlanta Campaign

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, oldest and largest of the national military park areas, was established in commemoration of two important battles of the American Civil War. On these battlefields gallant soldiers of the North and the South fought for control of Chattanooga, strategic railroad center and gateway to the heart of the Confederate States. Here, thousands of men on both sides exemplified the true American qualities of independence, courage, and self-sacrifice, which constitute the enduring strength of our democracy. At the dedication of the park, a veteran of the battle said: Here ... we and they, the living and the dead, Confederate and Federal, fought for the right as each understood it, for the Constitution as each construed it, and for the liberty as each interpreted it.

The Campaign for Chattanooga

Chattanooga was an important railroad center at the time of the Civil War. Railroad lines radiated in the four principal directions and provided connections with Nashville, Memphis, Atlanta, and Richmond. The location of the city on the navigable Tennessee River where there were gaps in the mountains added to its strategic value. Its capture by Union forces would be a severe blow to the South. It would check the east and west passage of men and supplies for the Southern 2 armies and provide a springboard for the invasion of Georgia.

During the summer and early fall of 1863, by skillful maneuvers, the Union Army of the Cumberland forced the Southern Army of Tennessee out of middle Tennessee and Chattanooga. On September 19 and 20, at Chickamauga Creek in Georgia, the two armies met in one of the fiercest engagements of the war. While this battle ended in Confederate victory, the Union forces succeeded in retreating northward into Chattanooga.

The Confederates now settled down to siege tactics and attempted to force the surrender of the Army of the Cumberland through starvation. By occupying Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge and by establishing a line between the two heights, they cut off all but the most difficult route by which supplies could be brought into the city. Within a month the Union Army in Chattanooga was in a desperate situation and was reduced to half rations. Ten thousand horses and mules died and surrender seemed inevitable.

The North, however, met this crisis by a change of command and reinforcements. Troops from the Army of the Potomac in Virginia and from Grants Vicksburg forces in Mississippi were sent hurrying to Chattanooga, and General Grant arrived to take the overall command.

The reinforcements arrived in time to save the besieged army. A new supply route was opened and was successfully defended. As a result of this timely aid, the siege of Chattanooga failed. Nevertheless, the Confederates still held their positions. In November the greatly strengthened Union Army assumed the offensive.

Missionary Ridge from DeLong Reservation.

The Battle of Chattanooga

The Battle of Chattanooga was a 3-day engagement, November 23 to 25. As planned by the Union officers, victory was to be won by a flanking movement against the Confederate right wing on the north end of Missionary Ridge. If this position were carried, Union troops in the center were to join in an effort to sweep the Confederates from their base of supplies and communications and to defeat them. The engagement, however, developed much differently. While the main force was maneuvered into position, a demonstration attack was made on a Confederate outpost at Orchard Knob, about a mile in front of Missionary Ridge. This advance movement was successfully carried out on 3 November 23 but it warned the Confederates of danger on that right flank and prompted them to strengthen their positions.

On the next day, while the maneuvering force was still getting into position, the Union officers tried another demonstration, this time to divert the Confederates on their left. Moving along the slopes of Lookout Mountain from the western side, Union troops gradually drove back the few Confederate defenders. At Cravens Farm, however, they met stubborn resistance from an entrenched line of troops. Here the fighting was most serious, the Confederates finally being dislodged and forced to retreat to a new line 400 yards beyond. At this point the fighting ended, and although the Confederates had not yet been driven from the mountain, their position was in danger. Rather than risk being cut off from the main line of forces on Missionary Ridge, the Confederate commander, General Bragg, evacuated all troops from Lookout Mountain and the valley below. When Union soldiers scaled the palisades the next morning, they found the mountain deserted.

On the third day, the Union Army resumed the attempt to gain a foothold on the north end of Missionary Ridge, which it had previously failed to take, but all attacks were repulsed by the Confederates. The forces on Lookout Mountain were ordered to advance across Chattanooga Valley to attack the Confederate left flank, but they advanced slowly. Meanwhile, in order to relieve the situation on both Union flanks, other troops were thrown against the Confederate rifle pits along the base of Missionary Ridge. In a rush these Union soldiers carried the rifle pits. Then in their enthusiasm, without waiting for further orders, they charged up the mountain slopes and broke the Confederate positions. This precipitated a general retreat of the Confederate Army across the border into Georgia. Complete control of Chattanooga and its approaches had at last been won by the Union.

Tennessee River from Point Park, Lookout Mountain.

The Park

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is composed of separate areas, the more important of which are: Chickamauga Battlefield, in Georgia; Point Park and the Battlefield of Lookout Mountain, and Orchard Knob, in Chattanooga; a chain of 4 small reservations located on Missionary Ridge; and Signal Point on Signal Mountain. The park contains approximately 8,190 acres of Federal land.

Point Park and Lookout Mountain Battlefield

You are urged to go first to Point Park on Lookout Mountain, where from the terrace of the Adolph S. Ochs Observatory and Museum, high above the winding Tennessee River, you may obtain a comprehensive view of the Battlefield of Chattanooga. On the parapet are markers to identify the more important troop positions, and maps are available to indicate the natural and historic features of interest. You may get further assistance from a National Park Service attendant.

The observatory and museum bears the name of one of the parks major benefactors, the late Adolph S. Ochs, publisher of the Chattanooga Times and the New York Times. He was responsible for the acquisition of considerable land on Lookout Mountain for inclusion in the park.

From Lookout Point interesting foot trails, extending along eastern and western flanks of the mountain, will reveal to you unusual rock formations typical of the area and will provide ever-changing and beautiful vistas of the countryside below.

You can reach Point Park from Chattanooga via U. S. 41, 64, 72, and 11 which combine as they leave the city and skirt the base of Lookout Mountain. You then turn off on the Scenic Highway, which leads up the mountain to the park entrance. You may also visit the park by means of the St. Elmo buses from Chattanooga, which connect with the Lookout Mountain Incline Railway at the foot of the mountain. The top of the incline is within short walking distance of the Point Park entrance.

Missionary Ridge

To commemorate the engagement on Missionary Ridge, there are a series of park areas located at important points on the ridge. Access to these areas is provided by the Crest Road which runs the entire length of the line occupied by the Confederates during the battle. Markers, monuments, tablets, and gun positions will provide you with information, and you can get excellent views of Chattanooga along this drive. The more important units of the park on Missionary Ridge are: The Sherman Reservation, where Shermans forces unsuccessfully attacked the north end of the Confederate line; the DeLong Reservation, site of one of the breaks in the Confederate line; the Ohio Reservation, an area set aside to commemorate the participation of Ohio troops in the battles; and the Bragg Reservation, where the Confederate commander had his headquarters.

Orchard Knob

This unit of the park is located near McCallie Avenue (U. S. 11 and 64), in Chattanooga. It marks the site where the first action of the Battle of Chattanooga took place. Orchard Knob became General Grants headquarters during the remainder of the battle.

Administration

Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park is administered by the National Park Service of the United States Department of the Interior.

At the park headquarters, located on the Chickamauga Battlefield in Georgia, there are a museum and reference library. The Fuller gun collection of American shoulder arms is an outstanding attraction of the museum.

Additional information may be obtained by addressing the Superintendent, Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park, Fort Oglethorpe, Ga.

Those who plan to visit in a group may receive special service if advance arrangements are made with the superintendent.

5

CHICKAMAUGA AND CHATTANOOGA

NATIONAL MILITARY PARK

GEORGIA AND TENNESSEE

Transcribers Notes

Silently corrected a few typos.

Retained publication information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.

In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POINT PARK LOOKOUT MOUNTAIN AND CHATTANOOGA BATTLEFIELDS ***
MEANDERING THE MESQUITE: CAMELS IN THE DESERT  No Mirage in Arizona

Only known surviving photo of the U.S. Camel Corps. A member of the legendary southwestern Camel Corps stands at ease at the Drum Barracks mil




Haiti - National funeral : Note from the First Lady Martine Moise





"The First Lady of the Republic wishes to express her deep gratitude to the Haitian people for their messages of compassion and solidarity towards their family, following the assassination of the President of the Republic HE Mr. Jovenel Moise, in his private residence, during the night from July 6 to 7, 2021. She is very touched by all the expressions of sympathy shown towards her (*)



Your moral support gives the presidential family the courage to go through this great ordeal and helps them transcend these moments of indescribable pain.



The Office of the First Lady takes the opportunity to inform the public that the presidential family wishes to pay alone the expenses related to the funeral of the President of the Republic. To do so, it does not intend to benefit from the financial support of the Public Treasury.



However, this decision does not detract from the official and national character of these funerals, to which President Jovenel Moise is entitled with the respect, solemnity and dignity attached to his rank of Head of State.



The First Lady thanks the national and international authorities who have paid a vibrant tribute to President Jovenel Moise. She invites them to remain in prayer union on the day of the funeral to accompany President Moise to his final resting place.



In this dark period of our history, the First Lady renews her wishes of courage to the entire people and joins your prayers for peace and justice to reign in Haiti.



Office of the First Lady of the Republic of Haiti"



(*) expressions of sympathy :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34207-haiti-assassination-of-president-moise-rain-of-reactions-part-3.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34180-haiti-politic-assassination-of-president-moiserain-of-reactions-part-2.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34169-haiti-flash-rain-of-reactions-on-the-assassination-of-president-moise-part-1.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34175-haiti-assassination-of-president-moise-international-reactions-part-1.html



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34258-haiti-flash-the-first-lady-back-in-haiti.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34252-haiti-politic-calendar-of-the-national-funeral-of-president-moise.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34238-haiti-flash-monitoring-of-investigations-into-the-assassination-of-president-jovenel-moise.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34233-haiti-flash-new-message-from-martine-moise-first-photo.html

https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34209-icihaiti-flash-martine-moise-s-surgery-went-well.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34170-haiti-flash-the-first-lady-martine-moise-would-still-be-alive-but.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34201-haiti-flash-authenticated-message-from-the-first-lady-martine-moise-audio.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34162-haiti-flash-president-jovenel-moise-assassinated-by-mercenaries-official-updated-7am-+-video.html



HL/ HaitiLibre






















Haiti - News : Zapping...





National Funerals : public holidays

For the funeral of President Jovenel Moise on July 23, "The days of Thursday 22 and Friday July 23, 2021 are declared public holidays" according to a government decree.



Secretary of State and OAS discuss commitments

The Secretary of State of the United States and the Secretary General of the OAS discussed their commitment to provide support to Haiti in matters of security and good governance] following the assassination of President Jovenel Moise.



"The Core Group is on the wrong track" dixit Andre Michel

"[...] Ariel Henry does not have the legal and constitutional provisions to set up a government. The international community is on the wrong track. It takes a broad consensus, accompanied by political agreement, to break the current political impasse. The Core Group is on the wrong track [...]" declared Me. Andre Michel, one of the leaders of the radical opposition.



Paris : Consulate of Haiti register of condolences

The Consulate General of Haiti in Paris informs the public in general and the Haitian community of France in particular that, following the death of the President of the Republic Jovenel Moise, a condolence register is open at the Consulate, 35 Avenue de Villiers 75017 Paris, from Tuesday, July 20, 2021, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.



The Haitian Consulate in Montreal specifies

The Consulate General of Haiti in Montreal specifies to the public in general and the Haitian community of Montreal in particular that Mr. Ashkard Joseph Pierre who is the subject of a search notice of the National Police of Haiti (PNH) accused of assassination and armed robbery https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-34265-haiti-news-zapping.html , no longer works at the Consulate on a contractual basis since September 30, 2017. In addition, the Consulate holds a letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated February 10, 2017 appointing Mr. Ashkard Joseph Pierre Counselor at the Embassy of Haiti in the Bahamas.



Mobile clinic for people with disabilities

On Saturday July 17, 2021, FOSREF and Medecin du Monde Suisse set up a mobile clinic with a psychological support component for the benefit of disabled people and other vulnerable people staying at the Communal School of Petion-Ville, victims of the fire at the Lapiste camp last June 17 https://www.icihaiti.com/en/news-34147-icihaiti-social-the-disabled-victims-of-the-arson-at-the-lapiste-camp-supported.html



HL/ HaitiLibre


















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Published on 2021/07/20 | Source

New stills added for the upcoming Korean movie "Hostage: Missing Celebrity" (2019)

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Directed by Pil Kam-sung

With Hwang Jung-min, Han Kyu-won-I, Lee Ho-jung, Kim Joo-hee-I, Ji Nam-hyuk,...

Synopsis

After a VIP movie premiere, Korean top movie star Hwang Jung-min gets kidnapped by strangers. Jeong-min first thinks that someone is playing pranks, but the kidnappers' cruelty helps Jeong-min realize that the abduction is no joke. Jeong-min tries to find his way out, while the kidnappers demand him a huge amount of ransom within 24 hours.

Jeong-min encounters a real brutality that is way different and more extreme than the ones he has seen in the movies.

Release date in Korea : 2021/08/18
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Our View: Critical race theory ban reveals lack of community oversight

Parents and local communities must be more involved in selection of educational materials
Press release

The government of Canada announced Monday the details of its approach to easing border measures for some travellers entering Canada.

These measures will come into force Aug. 9 at 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time.

It is important to note that, in the meantime, travel restrictions remain in place for all foreign nationals, including U.S. citizens. Seeking entry to Canada for discretionary  non-essential  travel such as tourism and recreation continues to be prohibited until then.

Examples of discretionary travel include, but are not limited to: hikes across the border, social events, such as birthday parties or weddings, camping, picking up a pet, visiting or checking on a seasonal residence, etc.

U.S. citizens and permanent residents without a right of entry to Canada or who are not otherwise eligible to enter Canada under the current travel restrictions, and who attempt to visit Canada for discretionary reasons will be turned away at the border, even if they are fully vaccinated.

Starting Aug. 9, Canada plans to begin allowing entry to American citizens and permanent residents who are currently residing in the United States and have been fully vaccinated at least 14 days prior to entering Canada for non-essential travel. This preliminary step allows for the government of Canada to fully operationalize the adjusted border measures ahead of Sept. 7, and recognizes the many close ties between Canadians and Americans.

Subject to limited exceptions, all travellers must use ArriveCAN  app or web portal  to submit their travel information. If they are eligible to enter Canada and meet specific criteria, fully vaccinated travelers will not have to quarantine upon arrival in Canada.

To further support these new measures, Transport Canada is expanding the scope of the existing Notice to Airmen  NOTAM  that currently directs scheduled international commercial passenger flights into four Canadian Airports: Montreal-Trudeau International Airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport, Calgary International Airport, and Vancouver International Airport.

Effective Aug. 9, international flights carrying passengers will be permitted to land at the following five additional Canadian airports:

 Halifax Stanfield International Airport;

 Quebec City Jean Lesage International Airport;

 Ottawa MacdonaldCartier International Airport;

 Winnipeg James Armstrong Richardson International Airport, and

 Edmonton International Airport.

These airports, in cooperation with the Public Health Agency of Canada, the Canada Border Services Agency and Transport Canada, are working to implement the measures necessary to safely welcome international passengers as soon as possible after Aug. 9, as conditions dictate.

All travelers, regardless of vaccination status, will still require a pre-entry COVID-19 molecular test result. However effective Aug. 9, the government of Canada is adjusting its post-arrival testing strategy for fully vaccinated travelers. Using a new border testing surveillance program at airports and land border crossings, fully vaccinated travelers will not need a post-arrival test unless they have been randomly selected to complete a Day 1 COVID-19 molecular test. There are no changes to the mandatory testing requirements for unvaccinated travelers.

This strategy allows the government of Canada to continue monitoring variants of concern in Canada and vaccine effectiveness. Using these layers of protection, the government of Canada can monitor the COVID-19 situation in Canada, respond quickly to threats, and guide decisions on restricting international travel.

Finally, with the advent of increased vaccination rates in Canada, declining COVID-19 cases and reduced pressure on health care capacity, the three-night government authorized hotel stay requirement will be eliminated for all travelers arriving by air as of 12:01 a.m. Eastern Time Aug. 9. Fully vaccinated travelers who meet the requirements will be exempt from quarantine; however, all travelers must still provide a quarantine plan and be prepared to quarantine, in case it is determined at the border that they do not meet the necessary requirements.

Before heading to the border, U.S travellers should be informed and know their obligations. The government of Canada has a website to assist travellers in finding out if they can enter Canada and, if able to enter, what their public health obligations are: Find out if you can enter Canada.

Canadas response to the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to prioritize the health and safety of Canadians. As vaccination, case counts and hospitalization rates evolve, the government of Canada will continue to consider further targeted measures at the borders  and when to lift or adjust them  to keep Canadians safe and the economy running.
Havre Daily News staff

Havre Public School Superintendent Craig Mueller reminded people today that the deadline is Friday for people to weigh in on what the Havre Public School District should do with COVID-19 relief dollars.

The district issued a survey for people to fill out while it works on its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund plans.

The fund contains around $7 million in COVID-19 relief and Mueller said the school system needs to submit a plan to the Montana Office of Public Instruction for how they plan to use these funds over the next few years.

The community is invited to take the survey online which will ask about various issues facing the school right now and how important they feel each of these issues are to address through COVID-19 relief funds.

The survey can be found at HPS website at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScN8TIWNscfuuyVq5K1mihzK8Nsn2x6NWKsnTH3I1bhzWwnFw/viewform .

Mueller said last week that data obtained from this survey will be vital in creating a prioritization list for how money will be spent.

Please, please take the survey, he said.

He also specifically encouraged students to take the survey and make their voices heard, as they are the most directly affected by many of the issues and theyre observations are very valuable.

Mueller said the survey will hopefully answer any questions people have about the fund as well.

He said last week the public will have more opportunity for making comments after the survey closes Friday.
Cases of COVID-19 in the Hill and Blanie county areas continue to trickle in as the rate of new cases doubles in many parts of the U.S., and Hill County Public Health Director and Health Officer Kim Berg as well as Blaine County Public Health Nurse Jana McPherson-Hauer are urging residents to get vaccinated as soon as possible in preparation for a possible surge this fall.

The surge has the potential to be exacerbated by the Delta variant of COVID-19 now circulating through the U.S. and recently found in Blaine County.

Berg said, as of 5 p.m. last Thursday, six people in the county that the department knows of have COVID-19 and one is actively hospitalized.

While reinfection numbers are not available at the moment the county has also seen at least 10 breakthrough cases as well.

Christen Obresley, administrator at Northern Montana Care Center, said every case in her facility was a breakthrough case including those in residents and staff, the former of which is completely vaccinated and the vast majority of the latter is as well.

Officials say the more people who are vaccinated, the less likely breakthrough cases will occur as the spread of the virus slows. A study also found evidence that breakthrough cases are likely to have milder symptoms and are less likely to spread the virus.

Berg said the health department's concerns regarding the possible surge are primarily based on general infection trends which indicate that fall will be worse for infections of all kinds, including influenza and norovirus.

"We're all inside, schools are opening up again and it's just easier to spread those germs," she said.

Berg said while COVID-19 may not follow all the typical trends of infection, last year's surge in fall indicates that a seasonal uptick is likely, and depending on its intensity, could be a huge problem.

"We don't want to see another fall like last year," she said. "I don't even know what we would do at this point."

McPherson-Hauer said her department - as well as Berg's - is preparing for the surge. She thinks it's very unlikely that it will be quite as bad as last fall given that around half of Blaine County is vaccinated.

She said she's not especially worried about their resources and personnel being strained, in part because their local government is very supportive of their efforts, but she is concerned that the Delta variant could make the surge worse.

"We are concerned about what the Delta variant or subsequent variants can do to that," she said.

In a release sent out last week, her department announced that a case that has since recovered was confirmed to be of the Delta variant, which McPherson-Hauer said isn't cause for panic but should be a reminder for the community to stay safe and keep using prevention measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 - primarily vaccination - despite the county's relatively low case load.

"We are not an exception to the troubles that the pandemic is bringing to communities," she said.

Neither the Delta nor Delta-plus variants of COVID-19 have been confirmed in Hill County, but their spread worldwide is still a significant concern for the Hill and Blaine county health departments.

The variants are more easily transmissible than the original strain of COVID-19 and are capable of causing more severe symptoms in younger people and lead to worse outcomes, including death.

Berg said the more chance the virus has to be transmitted the more chance it has to mutate and the more variants like this, including possibly vaccine-resistant variants, will come into existence, which she said is all the more reason to get vaccinated as soon as possible.

"We don't want to see any more variant," she said. "It can get pretty smart."

Berg said the fact that the virus is attacking younger and younger people is horrible, but she hopes because of that people are beginning to understand how important vaccination is for young people, and that they act on that understanding.

She said it appears that one of the primary drivers of low vaccination rates among young people is the fact that they have less options in terms of which vaccine they can get and consequently fewer opportunities to get it.

She also said the initial push to prioritize the elderly in the vaccine's initial distribution, while the right thing to do, had the consequence of giving young people the impression that they weren't in danger.

Berg said young people, while far less likely to get seriously ill, were still dying even before the Delta variants, but it was not nearly as common relative to other age groups, a situation that is changing.

She said she's hoping, between the increasing awareness about the Delta variants, vaccines getting approved for younger and younger people and back-to-school vaccination programs, that the problem may be alleviated, though she didn't appear confident that it would significantly boost the county's near-stagnant vaccination rate of 45 percent.

"I don't know if the overall percentage will go up, but it does mean more people vaccinated," she said.

Berg said the fact that the county's vaccination rate is still so low is a problem as well, especially if the fall ends up being as bad as they fear.

She said every person who gets vaccinated is a victory and people still come in every week, but the county is not even close to herd immunity and if a surge happens in the fall, those vaccinations will not prevent its spread.

She said the the department is continuing its efforts to promote the vaccines and educate people about its effectiveness and safety.

Blaine County is a bit ahead of Hill, with just over 50 percent of their eligible population vaccinated and vaccination among young people in the high 30s, which McPherson-Hauer said was encouraging, especially given the strides some age groups have seen in her county in the past three months despite a general slowdown in demand.

She said her department is shooting for at least 50 percent in every age group by the end of the summer, a goal she's not sure they'll reach, but is worth trying for.

Both departments are trying their best to supply the public with the most accurate, up-to-date information they can, educating people about the effectiveness and safety of the vaccines, but both face the problem of having their information drowned out by misinformation which, McPherson-Hauer said, is their biggest problem, and makes for a frustrating situation.

"That's our biggest challenge," she said.

She said in looking back through history, it's not uncommon for a new vaccine to have trouble finding enough people to reach herd immunity early on, but it is unheard of to see a vaccine having this much trouble while the disease it aims to eliminate is at pandemic levels.

"It's unimaginable to me," she said.

McPherson-Hauer stressed that her frustration is not so much directed at individual skeptics, but rather the general situation and just how much misinformation there is and how it spreads so quickly online.

Berg echoed this sentiment and said skepticism about a new vaccine developed in such a short time is understandable and she wants people to ask questions and not blindly believe it just because they say so.

She said the department is prepared to explain how the vaccine works, and why it's safe, and if they don't want to talk to the department, they can talk to their primary care provider.

McPherson-Hauer said word of mouth between friends is also important.

She said people are more likely to believe their friends than any given government agency and telling people that the vaccine is effective, safe, and will help protect their families from COVID-19 is always helpful to public health.

Unfortunately, the misinformation about the vaccine still runs rampant online, something U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy recently issued his first Surgeon General's Advisory on, warning the American public that the massive proliferation of health misinformation has become a threat to public health.

An email from the department regarding the advisory said misinformation, including disinformation, has threatened the U.S. response to COVID-19 and continues to prevent Americans from getting vaccinated, prolonging the pandemic and putting lives at risk.

"During the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans have been exposed to a wide range of misinformation about masks and social distancing, treatments, and vaccines," the email says. "As of late May, 67 percent of unvaccinated adults had heard at least one COVID-19 vaccine myth and either believed it to be true or were not sure of its veracity.

"Health misinformation has already caused significant harm, dividing families and communities and undermining vaccination efforts. An analysis of millions of social media posts found that false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be shared than true stories. And a recent study showed that even brief exposure to misinformation made people less likely to want a COVID-19 vaccine," Murthy said.

The advisory encourages technology and social media companies to take more responsibility to stop online spread of health misinformation and what can be done to prevent further harm to the public.

"Health misinformation is an urgent threat to public health," Murthy said. "It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, and undermine public health efforts, including our ongoing work to end the COVID-19 pandemic."

Berg said there will always be people that can't be reached and will reject science regardless of evidence, but her department will never stop trying to educate and inform the public.

"You can't just give up," she said.

She said vaccines are one of the most significant improvements to quality and length of life worldwide.

Berg said the department is looking into what they are allowed to do in terms of offering possible incentive to people who may be on the fence about getting vaccinated, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hasn't gotten back to them.

Gary & Leo's Fresh Foods is entering people who get COVID-19 vaccines at their pharmacy through the month into a drawing for a $100 gift card to the store, with winners to be announced Aug. 2.
HCTC officials presented a check for $2,500 to representatives of the Doyle Community Center, one of four such presentations recently awarded. A matching grant with CoBank doubled each donation for a total of $20,000. On hand for the check presentation were, from left, Karen Mattox, Allen Hatten, Lois Shaw, Marc Hess (HCTC), Alexis De Sela and Yolanda Melendez.
Ride to Remember pays tribute to Ryan Hendrix

Family members Laura, Benjamin and Jamin Hendrix, Don and Heidi Hendrix, and Tim, Locke, Leif and Betsy Hendrix pose in front of the Ride to Remember trailer.

Law officers would have given anything to have no reason to host the Ride to Remember.

But they did, because one of theirs, Ryan Phillip Hendrix, was one of more than 300 officers who died in the line of duty in 2020. The traveling tribute to fallen officers pulled into Jackson Park on Monday afternoon to honor the deputy who was gunned down in the line of duty last Sept. 10.

He was the one next to me, the one under me, said older brother Tim, an English teacher in Oman who was visiting his parents with his wife and two boys. Its sad to see, that there are so many people. You think of the families that are represented by those faces.

The faces number 339 in all, more than double the toll of officers who died doing their job in 2019.

Horrific, said Amy Moden, a sort of volunteer counselor who can empathize. Her husband, Master Sgt. William Moden of the Colorado State Patrol died in the line of duty on June 14, 2019. There was 147 in 2019 that were killed in the line of the duty and 339 is twice the amount and its tragic and very sad. Some of it is from contracting Covid ... shootouts, traffic related.

The trailer will travel to 46 states, covering 22,500 miles to visit 194 law enforcement agencies. Moden, who is accompanying the tour for the month of July, said she joined to be part of doing what they do best, which is support survivors and agencies and letting them know their fallen is not forgotten and that they are loved across the country and their service is appreciated and their service matters.

For me, grief is linear, its ever evolving and it changes every day, she added. It helps me on my healing journey to know that Im not alone because I have this amazing blue family that you see here to stand by my side. Its important to me to let the family know that they are not alone either.

Law officers from the sheriffs office and other local agencies exchanged handshakes and hugs with Ryans parents, Don and Heidi Hendrix, and two of his brothers, Tim and Jamin, and their families.

The tributes on the trailer featured photos of each fallen officer, starting with Ryan D. Fortini  New York State Police, End of Watch Jan. 1, 2020  and ending with Angel De La Fuente  Fresno PD, End of Watch, Dec. 28, 2020. And there, between Luis Mario Herrera, Lincoln, Nebraska, police, and Angela Chavers, Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office, was Ryan Hendrix, in a photo now familiar to the community that mourned him, the square jaw, boyish grin, the light behind the eyes, forever 34.
Labor department issues citations, fines in fatal wall collapse

Emergency workers respond to a wall collapse that killed one worker and injured three others.

The state Department of Labor fined a Mills River masonry contractor and the company it was working for, Hajoca Corp., $30,800 each for the construction accident that killed one worker and seriously injured two others, the department said Tuesday.

After six-month investigation and its occupational safety and health inspection that began after the fatality and injuries on Jan. 13, the department issued citations to Robert Crawford Masonry, Hajoca Corp. and Pinnacle Grading Co. Inc. Pinnacle was cited for one serious violation and fined $2,800. Hajoca and Robert Crawford Masrony were each cited for one willful serious violation and one serious violation, drawing fines of $28,000 and $2,800 respectively.

The retaining wall collapse at Hajoca, at 1027 Spartanburg Highway, killed 37-year-old Marcelino Godofredo Rendon Hernandez. Injured were Bradley Colby and Robert Angel, according to a Hendersonville police incident report the Lightning obtained through a public records request.



Regulators cited Robert Crawford Masonry and Hajoca Corp. each with one alleged willful serious violation and one alleged serious violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of North Carolina with a total penalty each of $30,800. The Labor Department also cited Pinnacle Grading Co. Inc. with one alleged serious violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of North Carolina with a total penalty of $2,800.



Civil penalties for OSH violations are included in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of North Carolina in the General Statutes. The maximum penalty for each willful violation is $70,000 and for each serious violation is $7,000. The General Statutes say that the Labor Department has to take into consideration various factors such as the gravity of the violation, the size of the business, the good faith of the employer, and the history of previous violations.



The penalties are in no way designed to make up for loss of life, the department said in a news release. By law, the civil money penalties collected by the N.C. Department of Labor are not the receipts of the department but rather must be remitted to the Civil Penalty and Forfeiture Fund, which then distributes the monies to North Carolina public schools.





All three companies requested an informal conference as allowed under Labor Department rules to present "questions, problems, concerns, evidence and abatement verification," the department said. The conference can result in an amended citation, a "no change" letter or an informal settlement agreement that the employer has 15 days to review. Results of the informal conferences are not yet available, Dolores Quesenberry, the Labor Department's public information officer, said in response to the Lightning's questions.

THIS IS A DEVELOPING STORY. RETURN TO THE LIGHTNING FOR MORE.
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Provo, UT (84601)

Today

Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 94F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph.
During the troubling times we are presently having with the fires burning wildly in Californ
The US Navy's Ohio Class ballistic missile submarine could unleash its arsenal of nukes and rain nuclear havoc that may end the world. These weapon systems outclass even an entire carrier strike group's combined fired power, and these subs are silent with lethality to the extreme.

The United States submarine force is getting caught up by the Chinese and Russians in technology and quality, but Ohio is still advanced in some respects. It is only one of many nuclear subs in the USN that outnumbers similar forces.

Even with the awesome destructive weaponry it has, it would be replaced by another generation of updated subs. Gradually, Ohio will come to serve with the new Columbia class which are ballistic missile subs that are more advanced.

The harbinger of destruction

The Ohio class is designed to destroy cities and military targets if anyone presses the button for mutual destruction. But its presence will be about deterrence, reported Nationalist Interest.

But when the Cold War came to an end, there was no need to keep the threat of Armageddon anymore. Nuclear deterrence was not such a priority for the US as before.

Wisely, the USN would have scrapped and mothballed their Armageddon bringers, but four of the oldest were saved. Now, the navy had decided on the conversion to fire Tomahawk land attack missiles for $700-900 million each.

They were refitted from US Navy's Ohio Class ballistic missile submarine to Ohio-class guided-missile submarines, for attacking targets with non-nukes. These nuclear subs have done their nuclear refueling, overhaul, and weapons upgrade in 2003, finished in 2006, with other boats in 2008.

Read Also: Los Angeles Class Nuclear Attack Submarine: Cold War Warrior That Fights On Since 1982

Ready to fight!

What made these subs highly destructive is its 24-four tubes of Trident ballistic missiles that were more potent than conventional missiles. The loss of tridents did not lessen its lethality with a total of 154 Tomahawks that are able to be ripple fire in succession with destructive power incomparable to all weapon systems.

A Tomahawk cruise missile is worth $1.5 million, equipped with a 1-ton warhead that can hit any target from 1000 miles away, with GPS to guide it autonomously. A loaded Ohio has about $200 million in missiles inside it.

Adapting the Ohio class for a non-nuclear conflict is aimed at China, Russia, and Iran. This could be another application of a lethal cold war weapon. Even the nuclear bomber was recalled to service as prospective carriers of the next generation hypersonic weapon.

Like all American weapon systems, the refitted Ohio SSGN or converted ICBM to missile carrier is still good for more than one mission, cited Naval Technology. Two of the missile silos are now used for undersea airlocks for sending out Navy seals on special ops, and setting out underwater unmanned vehicles (UUV), SEAL delivery vehicles (SDV), even sonar buoys and other equipment.

Participation in above-water operations when the US wanted to make adversaries aware of its potent display of the USN's power. In 2010, the Chinese were subject to this naval display in Ohio, Florida, and Michigan when test-firing missiles from Diego Garcia, Philippines, and South Korea, as noted by War is Boring.

The US Navy's Ohio Class ballistic missile submarine conversion to a missile carrier did not diminish it but showed how it can be as deadly in another role.

Related Article: US Navy's New Missile Subs Will Be Armed with Deadly Nuclear Missiles

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Tension escalates in the South China Sea (SCS) as China builds military base on disputed Subi Reef. China displays dominance as another installation takes on reefs which are claimed by other nations. They are using these artificial islands as a staging base to control the SCS, while other countries are conducting military undertakings to push back against Chinese COmmunist Party (CCP).

Bejing has sanctioned the occupation of reefs and isles from which a new Great Wall in the SCS according to sources is being built. The communist regime denies its claims of ownership which has been disproven.

Facilities in the massive base indicates China is committed

The latest base on Subi reef is the latest addition to the military base which is equipped with airstrips for planes, ports for its ships and other facilities. This endeavor is viewed as an infringement of the territorial rights of the area claimed by the Philippines, which rightfully owns but does not have the military capability to enforce its claim.

A report by the Washington Times mention satellite images of People'sLiberation Army (PLA) Air Force deploys PLA KJ-500 to Mischief Reef located in the Spratly Isles last May and June. Other activities include the installing of Y-9 aircraft transports, with Z-8 helicopters in Subi Reef since June.

Concern was expressed by Michael Dahm, former naval intel operative saying the Chinese are playing for keeps as the helicopters and transport planes seem to be stationed there for long term, reported the Sun UK.

One of the major changes in the PLAs presence in the SCS is that in 2021, China established the military base apart from the deployment of special mission aircrafts and helicopters, which was exercised before.. With China building the military base on disputed Subi Reef and Mischief Reefs, this shows they are commited in these areas. This massive structure might be purposed for their routine air operations,with the anticipation of more planes coming in.

Read Also: China Warns US It Isn't Afraid as Numerous Troop and Assets Are Holding Drills in Guam

Instead of buckling down its activities in the Indo-Pacific with SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, Beijing used it to build and seize more territory that should not be militarized.

Despite China's dominance that the South China Sea belongs to them, other nearby countries contradicted this claim including Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Brunei, which is verified by international law. Beijing is using diplomacy and military strength to cow its neighbors.

Assurance not to pursue militarization denied

A pronouncement by the United Nations (UN) Tribunal backs an independent ruling that it is international waters, no one holds exclusive control. According to the convention which says the claims to waters will be measured to the distance from land.

Using deceit and subterfuge, Beijing made man-made isles on reefs in the SCS. They consented with the ruling but did not honor its pledge not to militarize it. When Xi Jinping met with Democrat US president Barrack Obama in 2016, he assured not to pursue militarization but the Diplomat later reported the assurance was denied.

In 2015, Beijing said the purpose of isle building is for safe havens and rescue facilities for commercial fishing on the Paracel's and Spratly reefs.

Dahm said the combat aircraft on these island bases are meant to enhance military might, which is lacking in the Chinese Navy. They want to spy and observe using Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) and other resources.

According to Dr. Bryce Wakefield of the Australian Institute of International Affairs (AIIA), it is a bare attempt by Beijing to keep the SCS under PLA control, coordinating harassment and readying for a war that might come.

China builds military base on disputed Subi Reef that is claimed by nearby nations and stations AWACS for more air operation in the South China Sea, especially against US assets.

Related Article: Taiwan Claims They Can Shoot down Chinese Drones Circling the South China Sea

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China appealed to the World Health Organization (WHO) on Monday to maintain its scientific and professional position in detecting where COVID-19 originated. As it gears up for the second phase of study, it appears to go sternly against the politicization of the subject.

According to Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday, China also hopes that the WHO coordinates with the international community to maintain the serious and scientific nature of the COVID-19 origin tracing. He stated that the country is concerned regarding the action of political nations to politicize origin tracing. The severity of the issue necessitates it to be tackled with the aid of the global scientists' coordination.

The Need of the Lab-Leak Theory To Be Taken More Seriously

A team of scientists in May overturned the debate regarding the coronavirus origins. In the journal "Science," they published a letter indicating that the lab-leak theory necessitates to be addressed more seriously by their community.

The scientists denoted that the outbreak possibly has originated from a lab, particularly the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The laboratory examines coronaviruses as infections from an animal that has contracted the virus.

WHO Asked China To Be More Cooperative With the Investigation

Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus asked China to coordinate more with the Phase 2 of WHO's probing into the root cause of COVID-19. According to Ghebreyesus, the United Nations agency is appealing to China to be open and transparent, especially in relaying information and raw data they asked for.

According to Beijing, the proposal of the UN agency for further research into the root cause of COVID-19 is not consistent with its position. It added the focal point of the next phase of query must veer away from China. The WHO plan was delcared on Friday, which was one day following the director general's persuasion of Beijing to coordinate with the second phase of the study. He said that scientists remained to lack sufficient raw data on COVID-19 cases in the outbreak's initial days, reported South China Morning Post.

Read Also: Dr. Vivek Murthy States Mask Mandates Amid Delta Surge "Very Reasonable"; 58% of COVID-19 Cases Linked to Delta Variant

Zhao stated that as deliberated on 73rd World Health Assembly resolution, the plan for the global origins study's next transition must be spearheaded by member states. He noted that they hope the WHO and member states will openly listen to the proposals and opinions of all parties, fully coordinate with each other, and affirm that the work plan's drafting process is transparent and open, reported CGTN.

The resolve at the convention clearly appealed to the WHO director general to continue to coordinate well with countries in order to identify the coronavirus' zoonotic source and the transmission to humans. Also, according to the spokesperson, following a China-WHO joint research for 28 days in China, the WHO issued a joint report on March 30 with clear science-based recommendations and conclusions for the global origins study's next transition, reported Xinhuanet.

Zhao re-underscored the predilection of China for more recognition of the role of frozen foods and cold chains in the transmission of the virus and for the probing's next steps to focus on more research on early worldwide cases.

Related Article: FDA Grants Priority Review to Pfizer Vaccine; Full Approval Could Have an Impact on Vaccine Mandates

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Amid international tensions, the Russian military announced it has successfully conducted a test launch of its new hypersonic cruise missile.

Officials announced the news on Monday, with Russia's Defense Ministry saying the Zircon missile was launched from the Admiral Groshkov frigate in the White Sea. The missile allegedly flew at seven times the speed of sound, successfully hitting a specified practice target placed more than 350 km away from the launch site, the ministry said.

New Hypersonic Missile

In a statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Zircon missile would soon be capable of flying up to nine times the speed of sound. He added that the weaponry will have a range of 1,000 km. The leader also said the deployment of the missile will have a significant effect in bolstering the country's military capabilities.

Previously, the Russian navy conducted multiple test launches of the new hypersonic missile, including one on Putin's birthday in October. Officials also said that the tests of the military equipment are scheduled to be completed later this year.

The Zircon missile is planned to arm Russian cruisers, frigates, and submarines to bolster their firepower. The equipment is one of Russia's several hypersonic missiles under development. NATO responded to the test by releasing a statement arguing that Russia's test launches could cause a "greater risk of escalation and miscalculation," US News reported.

The statement noted that the new hypersonic missile was highly destabilizing and that it posed a threat to security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic area. NATO said its allies were committed to responding to Russia's actions of growing its arsenal of conventional and nuclear-capable missiles. The statement added they would not be following Russia's footsteps but will take other precautions to bolster their defenses.

Read Also: Ted Cruz Accuses Biden of Trampling Free Speech As He Attacks Social Media Sites Due to Vaccine Misinformation

Despite rising tensions with the West after Russia's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, the Kremlin has continued to modernize the region's military capabilities, which is considered to be a top priority.

Putin also praised the test launch of the hypersonic missile, touting it as part of a new generation of missile systems that lead the world's technology. The defense ministry also noted that the test launch showed officials the tactical and technical characteristics of the Zircon missile.

Tensions Rise

However, some Western experts are questioning the technological advancements of Russia's new missile. However, they acknowledged the weaponry's combination of speed, maneuverability, and altitude made it a difficult object to track and intercept, Reuters reported.

In 2018, Putin announced an array of new hypersonic missiles during one of his bellicose speeches. The Russian president said the weapons could hit almost any region worldwide and are capable of evading a U.S.-built missile shield.

Putin then threatened to deploy hypersonic missiles in 2019 targeting ships and submarines that could be lurking outside U.S. territorial waters if the American government decided to deploy intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe. Despite the United States not conducting any such moves, Russia feared it would.

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have been on the rise as officials argue about certain global issues, including Belarus, Ukraine, NATO, and human rights, Aljazeera reported.



Related Article: Suspected Carbon Monoxide Poisoning at Michigan Music Festival Kills 3, Leaving 2 People in Critical Condition

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A suicide bombing recorded at least 35 fatalities in a congested market in Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, on the eve of the festivities of Eid al-Adha. The body parts of the victims were dispersed throughout the busy market. The crime scene was initially packed with customers buying food prior to the Islamic festival.

Medical sources report that a suicide attack caused the explosion inside the Wahailat market on Monday. Over 60 people were wounded, with a number of them now in critical condition, according to a police source.

The explosion transpired in the densely populated majority-Shiite suburb. A video posted on social media of the result of the explosion displayed yelling people and bloodied victims.

Islamic State Group Claims Responsibility for the Blast

On Tuesday, the Islamic State group claimed accountability for the suicide detonation. The militant group, in a message posted to its Telegram channel, stated that suicide bomber Abu Hamza al-Iraqi blew up his explosive belt on Monday in the midst of a throng of people in Sadr City, an eastern suburb of Baghdad.

The fatalities toll may rise as some wounded people were in critical condition, according to hospital sources. Iraq President Barham Salih remarked that they will not rest before terrorism is uprooted with the advent of a devastating crime that targetted Sadr City citizens on the eve of the Islamic festival.

According to the Iraqi interior ministry in a statement, a terror onslaught through the use of an IED (improvised explosive device) made locally was the cause of the destruction.

A number of shops burned down as an aftermath of the fatal explosion. Children and women were among the fatalities, reported Aljareeza. Numerous market stalls in Sadr City had their roofs blown up by the strong shattering.

Read Also: US Warplanes Retaliate After Sophisticated Attacks by Surveillance-Avoiding Drones from Iran

The Iraq president added the culprits do not allow citizens to celebrate the occasion with glee even for one moment. The International Committee of the Red Cross showed its symphaties as well, indicating it was a lonely Eid evening in the nation, reported Express.

Initially, security officials informed that the fatalities toll was at least 18. They were concerned that the number killed could rise further and it did. No immediate claim of accountability was made, reported Macau Business.

This incident has been deemed as one of the worst attacks in the capital of Iraq in the past few years. Medical sources said seven children and eight women were among the fatalities.

By the end of 2017, the government of Iraq announced victory in its war against the Sunni Muslim jihadist group. However, sleeper cells carry on a low-level revolt in Iraq.

This 2021, it was the third time that a bomb struck a market in the inundated area. At least four individuals in April in Sadr City were killed in a car bomb siege.

A joint interior ministry security and military body called Baghdad Operations Command remarked it had initiated a probing into the striking on Monday.

Related Article: Pentagon Linguist Sentenced for 23 Years, Gave Her Hezbollah-Linked Lebanese Man a List of US Spies' Names

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United States President Joe Biden was quickly hit with backlash and criticism from reporters and pundits after claiming that Facebook was "killing people" with the spread of COVID-19 misinformation on the social media platform.

On Friday, Biden answered a reporter by saying that Facebook was "killing people." He asserted that the social media platform was responsible for causing the deaths of many residents amid the coronavirus pandemic with the threats posed by a great number of unvaccinated people in the country.

Facebook is 'Killing People'?

On Monday, the Democrat was asked to further clarify his words where he said his administration narrowed down 12 individuals who were responsible for spreading misinformation on Facebook. He added the suspects spread false facts about the coronavirus and the vaccines against it.

Biden said his administration talked with Facebook who found out about the 12 suspects responsible for the incident. He retracted his previous statement that the social media platform was "killing people." He noted it was the 12 people that were responsible for the deaths of many residents and hoped that the social media platform would be able to respond accordingly and right the wrong.

Many journalists and media personalities took to social media to voice out their criticism of Biden's walking back on his comment. One reporter, Alex Health of The Verge, said Facebook received so much hate for the comments the president uttered. Another media personality, Dylan Byers from NBC, said Biden's comments against Facebook were not the administration's finest hour, Fox News reported.

The WH gets its weekend of rage at FB in the news, pegged to headline-friendly Biden killing people comment, after missing its vaccination goal



Then Biden gets to quietly walk back on Monday



You can even hate FB and see how manufactured this news cycle was  Alex Heath (@alexeheath) July 19, 2021

Not the administrations finest hour. https://t.co/eHuRd5zZHh  Dylan Byers (@DylanByers) July 19, 2021

Read Also: Ted Cruz Accuses Biden of Trampling Free Speech As He Attacks Social Media Sites Due to Vaccine Misinformation

Biden also touted Facebook for doing more than it should in efforts to stop the spread of misinformation on its platform. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also clarified the president's remarks, saying the administration was not fighting against Facebook but with the COVID-19 virus.

Many people have continued to spread misinformation regarding the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccines meant to fight against it on social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Researchers and lawmakers previously accused the social media giant of not properly enforcing its policies to keep harmful content out of its platform.

Spread of COVID-19 Misinformation

Last week, Facebook responded to the president's statements saying that about 85% of its users have reported having received the vaccine or are willing to get vaccinated. Guy Rosen, a company vice president, posted a blog that said the administration's missed goal of vaccinating 70% of Americans by July 4 was not Facebook's fault, Yahoo Finance reported.

After tensions between the Democratic administration and the social media platform escalated, several officials have continued to be in communication with Facebook over the last several days. On Monday, a senior aide said the government was working with the social media platform behind the scenes to address the issue.

Administration officials claim Facebook's current system is inefficient and ineffective in dealing with the rampant spread of misinformation. Psaki said that they did not remove any options from the table when asked about regulatory actions Biden would order. She said the responsibility would fall onto Congress to determine what to do moving forward, CNN reported.

Related Article: FDA Grants Priority Review to Pfizer Vaccine; Full Approval Could Have an Impact on Vaccine Mandates

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A municipal judge decided on Thursday that anti-Biden flags on a Roselle Park homeowner's fence, featuring the F-bomb, were obscene and had to be removed because they violated a borough code.

A court has chastised a New Jersey woman and ordered her to remove anti-Biden banners from her home. Attorneys claimed that the ruling is a breach of her First Amendment right to free speech, but the judge disagreed.

Judge Gary Bundy of the Roselle Park Municipal Court ordered the Willow Avenue resident to remove the profanity-filled posters within a week or face a fine of $250 per day. The property is owned by Patricia Dilascio; but her daughter, Andrea Dick, put up the banners.

New Jersey Mayor urged a woman to remove anti-Biden banners

According to Mayor Joseph Signorello, borough authorities began getting complaints about the sign on Friday, which has a portrait of Donald Trump raising both middle fingers and the words "F- Biden" below. The F-bomb appears on three of the six flags.

The homeowner was ordered to take down the signs because it violated a borough rule prohibiting people from displaying "obscene materials," according to Signorello. Although a law disallowing the exhibition of obscene items can be seen on the borough's website, the New Jersey woman denied there is one.

Signorello cited a section of the borough's law that defines "obscene" as anything that "lacks significant literary, artistic, political, or scientific significance" or unpleasantly shows sexual activity, as per NJ.com.

The signs contain obscene terms and are located near a school, according to Democrat Roselle Park Mayor Joseph Signorello III, who is running for state Senate. Dick, on the other hand, stated that the signs will not be removed because they constitute political speech protected by the First Amendment.

A code enforcement officer sent the residence with a violation notice last month for violating a statute prohibiting "any obscene material, communication, performance, or other object or item which is obscene inside the Borough." Even after getting a call from the city's Democrat mayor, Dick refused to remove the signs before the hearing, claiming First Amendment rights, The Washington Examiner reported.

The signs, she told NBC New York, are her way of expressing support for Trump, whom she believes "should have won the election." Michael Campagna, Dick's attorney, called the woman's right to display the flags "censorship."

Andrea Dick of Roselle Park refused to trust the results of the 2020 election between Trump and Joe Biden, which was determined in November and confirmed in January. Bundy ruled that the signs violated municipal regulations against public obscenity in his ruling.

Read Also: Suspected Carbon Monoxide Poisoning at Michigan Music Festival Kills 3, Leaving 2 People in Critical Condition

Other citizens also put up anti-Biden banners

It's possible that signs like "Don't blame me, I voted for Trump, and Socialism Sucks, Biden Blows" will stay up. Dick had received a letter from Roselle Park officials on June 2 asking her to remove the banners or face a daily fine.

A citizen in Jackson, Michigan, began flying a flag with a similar obscene message. According to Northern Kentucky University law professor Ken Katkin, who told The Washington Examiner, while some courts detest parents exposing children to profanity, the non-sexual context of the f-word on the flag may preclude judges from viewing the message as obscene.

A man named Jim Greenawalt in Erie, Pennsylvania, flew a similar flag from his front porch and was permitted to keep it up owing to the freedom of expression. Greenawalt and the Munford man have no intention of taking down their flags. Greenawalt's flag, according to the aforementioned website, is allowed as long as it does not obstruct municipal services or encourage violence through hate speech.

Related Article: Diners Attack New Jersey Waitress After Getting Chased for $70 Unpaid Bill



@YouTube

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Appointment

20 July 2021

Radisson Blu Mall of America announces the appointment of Alex Francis to general manager. Francis brings extensive management experience to his new role with proven success overseeing four and five diamond hotels.

Francis brings over two decades of experience in hotel operations to his new role. He has opened multiple hotels and restaurants, oversaw multimillion-dollar renovations, and helped his hotels earn coveted awards such as "Sales Team of the Year" and "Hotel of the Year" from Interstate Hotels and Resorts. Most recently, Francis oversaw another Radisson Blu property, Radisson Blu Minneapolis Downtown, where his leadership earned him "General Manager of the Year" for Radisson Hotel Group Americas in 2020. Francis joined Radisson Hotel Group Americas from Graves Hospitality in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he was the vice president of operations. Before moving to Minneapolis, Francis held general manager positions with Radisson Resort Celebration in Orlando, Florida; Las Alcobas in Napa Valley, California; and the Sheraton Orlando North Hotel in Florida. At the Sheraton, Francis oversaw the property's multimillion-dollar renovation covering 390 rooms, 20,000-square-feet of meeting space, and four food and beverage outlets. Under his leadership, the property saw a 65% increase of topline revenues in three years and 163% increase in gross operating profit. Francis has also worked in hospitality management positions throughout Colorado and Washington. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in humanities with a concentration in English and a hotel restaurant administration degree from Washington State University in Pullman, Washington.
Appointment

20 July 2021

Signia by Hilton Atlanta has announced the appointment of Kyle Stevens as director of sales and marketing at the 975-room property which broke ground in May and is scheduled to open in late 2023. Stevens joins Signia by Hilton Atlanta from Hyatt Regency Atlanta and will lead strategic commercial, sales, and marketing endeavors for the first new-build premiering Hilton's Signia by Hilton brand while supporting the hotel's mission to provide an elevated experience for convention, business, and leis ure travelers. Signia by Hilton Atlanta is owned by Georgia World Congress Center Authority (GWCCA) and managed by Hilton Management Services.

Before joining Signia by Hilton Atlanta, Stevens held director of sales and marketing positions at Grand Hyatt San Antonio, Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort & Spa, and most recently Hyatt Regency Atlanta where he was also active in the Hyatt Convention Alliance. Stevens holds a bachelor's of science degree in Hospitality Management from Roosevelt University. He is also involved in giving back to the local community with his involvement with Atlanta Food Bank and Piedmont Park Conservancy, underscoring Hilton's Travel with Purpose corporate responsibility program and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy.
Appointment

20 July 2021

Nicole Philips, formerly VP International Hotel Development Planning at Marriott International, is the new Program Director of the MSc in Real Estate, Finance and Hotel Development at Glion Institute of Higher Education in London.

Having first joined Glion as a lecturer in September 2018, Nicole brings over 25 years' experience in hospitality and real estate industries across Europe, Middle East and Africa to her new role as Program Director. She worked for Marriott International for 16 years during which time she supported the expansion of the company in the region.

Amongst her areas of responsibility were the scheduling of all feasibility projects, departmental training and appraisals, and preparing facility recommendations and financial projections for proposed hotels. Before that, Nicole worked for HVS International in both London and Singapore, having previously been engaged with a number of hotel operations departments in Europe and the USA. Nicole holds an MBA in Hospitality Management from IMHI (Cornell University - Essec School of Management).

Under Nicole's leadership, the MSc in Real Estate, Finance and Hotel Development prepares students for careers in international hotel development and asset management, real estate investment, and investment strategies and financing. Modules covers areas such as business and financial analytics, mergers and acquisitions, portfolio valuations and private equity. Graduates from the program, which launched two years ago, have subsequently gone into positions at Altus Group (analyst), CBRE Global Investment Partners (investment analyst), Xenium Advisors (associate finance advisory) and Zoku Hotels (finance administrator).
Appointment

20 July 2021

Today, Synergy Global Housing (Synergy) named Robin Spindel as its new VP of Marketing. Spindel will operate out of Synergy's New York office and report to International President, Stephen Hanton. In her new role, Spindel will oversee the company's global marketing strategy and execution.

Spindel brings over 20 years of experience creating and developing teams, building and managing marketing operations, and guiding agency partners. Most recently, as EVP of Marketing for an international serviced apartment company, she proved pivotal in doubling the company's annual revenue during her tenure, expanding its digital presence, and fueling the company's growth from a regional player to a global corporate housing company. Prior, Spindel served in numerous marketing executive roles for hospitality brands such as Ultimate Escapes, Insight Cuba, and Sherman's Travel.

Spindel's hire comes mere months after the company completed a bottom-up brand refresh, complete with a new icon, tagline, and aforementioned vision, mission, purpose, and value statements. The brand refresh aimed to appeal to a diverse global audience of extended-stay travelers, and along with its parent organizations, The Ascott Limited and CapitaLand Limited, firmly plant Synergy as the worldwide leader of extended-stay housing. Spindel will focus on the core areas of digital, content thought leadership, and supporting collateral to help grow domestic operations while further developing international brand recognition and appeal.
Appointment

20 July 2021

Eighteen-year Four Seasons veteran Mazen Saleh has been named General Manager of Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Fort Lauderdale. The brand's fourth hotel in South Florida is anticipated to make its debut in late 2021, bringing an inspiring sense of possibility to this next-generation coastal city.

First joining Four Seasons in 2003, it's the only company Saleh has ever worked for, a testament to both his loyalty and admirable reputation. Beginning as a management trainee in Sharm El Sheikh, Saleh quickly rose through food and beverage positions while jumping on task force opportunities at openings in Mauritius, Beirut, Alexandria and Istanbul. He joined the reopening of Four Seasons Resort Nevis as Assistant Director of Food and Beverage in 2010, and three years later took the same position in Austin for a city hotel experience. In 2015, a promotion to Director of Food and Beverage at Four Seasons Resort Palm Beach drew him to South Florida where he was later promoted to Resort Manager in 2017. A respected and rising leader, Saleh was chosen to lead the way at Four Seasons Hotel and Residences Fort Lauderdale as its opening General Manager.

Saleh's creative side and collaborative spirit are among his exceptional hotelier qualities, driving his ability to partner with the property's global visionaries as well as build his preopening team and create experiences property-wide, from Fort Lauderdale's best ocean-view dining to the city's most prestigious beachfront setting for meetings and events.
Supplier News

20 July 2021

ATLANTA, Georgia, July 20, 2021  Shiji Distribution Solutions has released its latest version of its Hospitality Technology Distribution Chart: 2021 to help visualize the current hotel and hospitality technology landscape, how the various providers fit in, and their relationships with the hotel, the guest, and each other.

Originally published in 2015 by SnapShot, Shiji Distribution Solutions has picked up the tradition of analyzing the hotel and hospitality technology landscape to reflect all the various technology solutions of the industry and create a useful tool for hoteliers strategies for 2021 and beyond.

The infographic follows the data flow from the hotel towards the guest via three distribution groups: Online, Travel Agents & Tour Operators, and Meetings & Events  across Property Management Systems, Distribution Tools, Aggregation Platforms, Selling / Booking Platforms, Marketing Platforms, and Optimizing Tools.

Following continued requests from hoteliers to release an updated chart, the Shiji Distributions Solutions team was tapped to pick it up. We are happy to share our latest version of the chart to reflect all the changes our industry has experienced and provide hospitality professionals with a useful tool to help navigate the many layers of technology in hotel distribution. When large crises happen in our industry, the best remedy for hotels is to widen their distribution channels to get more visibility and increase potential bookings. We hope this chart can help hotels ensure that all avenues are being used towards recovery, said Greg Berman, COO of Shiji Distribution Solutions.

Find the updated Hospitality Technology Distribution Chart: 2021 here.
Press Release

20 July 2021

Tourist hotspots like Phuket are now open to international tourists who dont have to quarantine and others like Koh Samui are following suit, pointed out William Heinecke, CEO of Minor International, which runs a chain of hotels and restaurants worldwide.

The hospitality industry is seeing a strong recovery in some parts of the world and is seeing a preference for luxury rooms, and health and wellness-focused experiences.

However, hoteliers are also concerned about slow vaccine rollout in parts of Asia which may harm the regions recovery.

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The darkest days for the tourism industry may soon be over, according to the chairman of a multinational hospitality firm.

Tourist hotspots like Phuket are now open to international tourists who dont have to quarantine, and others like Koh Samui are following suit, pointed out William Heinecke, CEO of Minor International, which runs a chain of hotels and restaurants worldwide.

The Thai government recently announced a sandbox scheme for Phuket, saying the popular resort island will be open, quarantine-free to vaccinated Thai and foreign travelers from July 1. Koh Samui, Thailands second largest island also became accessible to tourists from July 15 under the same rules.

Tourists can move around both islands freely and leave for other cities in Thailand after staying in Phuket or Samui for 14 days.

Read the full article
Press Release

20 July 2021

For the first time ever, HOSPACE , the annual conference of the Hospitality Professionals Association, is set to be a dual affair this year - as HOSPA partners with HTNG to share hosting responsibilities to build upon the success of HOSPA's 2020 hybrid event.

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Given the worldwide audience of last year, for 2021, HOSPA is partnering with HTNG (Hospitality Technology Next Generation), a leading global organization based in Chicago and part of the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA). This partnership will give the event a truly international flavor, driving awareness of HOSPACE amongst HTNG's established global presence while also engaging thought leaders from the HTNG community to better address main issues impacting the hospitality industry today.

"We're delighted to partner with the team at HTNG for this year's HOSPACE. The fact their focus is on next-generation technological solutions for hospitality is perfect given what we're trying to achieve this year," said Jane Pendlebury, CEO of HOSPA . "The pandemic changed so much for everyone in our industry, and it's now imperative to turn to technology to help us rebuild and recover."

Confirmed for the Royal Lancaster London on Thursday 18 November 2021, this year's HOSPACE follows the same hybrid edition of 2020, which included incorporating live guests in a studio along with an extended reach to advance attendance from additional parts of the world.

The event will focus on a variety of topics, including the impacts of COVID-19 on the hospitality industry, emerging trends in technology, sustainability and climate change, staffing and engagement issues, decentralized identification and more. Initial planning for the event estimates 400 guests will attend in person, with capacity for another 500 to attend remotely thanks to the use of virtual technology, with content and speakers to be announced once confirmed.

"HOSPA has always done a great job in bringing the hospitality community together to engage in discussion around the key issues impacting our industry," said Michael Blake, SVP and CTO of AHLA . "We're excited to combine the forces of both organizations and look forward to our first event back with our members in the European region!"
Opinion Article

20 July 2021

Theres an interesting dichotomy taking shape within the world of hotel marketing: Guests are asking that their experiences be uber-personalized  theyre annoyed by constant, generic emails with offers that dont make sense for them  while at the same time companies like Apple, Google and Facebook are moving to protect user data, which limits hotel companies ability to track travelers search and spending habits.

With fewer data to rely on, the expectation is that hoteliers will soon find it tough to provide the experiences that guests want. How can hotels move to provide a more Amazon-like experience  curating the right offers, the perfect location, the preferred room types, with all the personalized amenities that make the guest feel special  when much of the data they rely on today will soon be missing?

The short answer is that hotel companies must change the way they collect and manage guest data. They must shift their focus to collecting, storing, analyzing, and serving up first-party data as opposed to relying on third-party data. However, this not only requires a shift in strategy, it requires additional technology and APIs that allow for data-sharing across multiple guest touchpoints, centralizing data collected from multiple CRM instances, email campaigns, social tools, website visits, and many other places where hotels interact with their guests.

While CRM technology has existed in the hotel space for a few decades, todays tools are no longer sufficient in centralizing, de-duping, normalizing, and serving the data up in real-time to all the necessary systems that need it. The next step, one that will be required for marketers to make a true impact in personalizing every guest touchpoint, will require advanced marketing technology called a Customer Data Platform, or CDP. Below, well walk through the differences between a CRM and a CDP, how hoteliers can use a CDP to store and analyze first-party data, and why a CDP will become table stakes for hotel companies that are looking to future-proof their businesses and ensure they remain relevant long into the future.

First-Party vs. Third-Party Data

Its no secret that tech giants like Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are enacting strategies to protect user data. In April, Apple began giving users the choice to block the IDFA identifier at the app level, meaning apps are required to ask users for permission to collect and share data. Google is moving to block third-party cookies from Chrome after Safari and Firefox recently made similar moves. And Apple is introducing a new Mail Privacy Protection with iOS 15, which will eliminate many of the email tracking and data gathering capabilities email marketers use today.

Essentially, hotels and other companies  sooner rather than later  will be unable to use third-party data to learn more about potential guests and target anonymous travelers with offers. This means hotels must increase their efforts to learn more about travelers by collecting their own data on their own channels  what is referred to as first-party data. First-party data can be collected through visitors to your own website, by collecting information from past guests, opt-in email subscribers, from lists of corporate travel managers, meeting planners, wedding and event planners, etc. Loyalty program data is explicitly first-person. Most data that is generated through your PMS, CRS, booking engine, CRM or email subscription forms is first-party data.

Suppliers that help companies collect first-party data, through pop-ups on your website, for example, will become increasingly useful. This data will allow hotels to establish direct relationships with past and potential guests and then personalize marketing to these travelers.

The good news is that first-party data is of higher quality. It often drives increased conversion and revenue because it allows hotels to be more accurate with their offers and experiences. The bad news is that its exponentially more difficult to collect and analyze, which is where a CDP comes in.

CRM vs. CDP

You may be thinking, I already have a CRM, why do I need a CDP?

A CRM is incredibly useful; it allows hotels to build profiles of their guests and access those profiles in real-time. It allows you to operationalize and share those profiles with other systems to some degree, for strategies like email automation.

A CDP takes these efforts a step further. It organizes all the data that is collected by different sources, such as your website and social media, but also from atypical sources, and then uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to make sense of the data. It stores the data, maps it, and allows you to apply rules to action the data. It delivers the information to other systems in your marketing tech stack in complex ways that a CRM is incapable of. For example, while a CRM might serve up a previously built list of contacts, a CDP will generate a smart audience powered by machine learning and auto-generate this list into your marketing platform. A CDP will also make continual, granular changes to those audiences, such as updating the phone number for a guest, and then send profile information updates to subscribed systems.

Hotels can look to the world leader in customer marketing data for the best example of what a CDP can do. Salesforce has offered their Interaction Studio for years and more recently introduced Customer 360 Audiences, a platform that allows companies to connect Salesforce apps and create a fused customer ID to build an individual view of the customer. Salesforce says companies can connect any app, data source, or device from the cloud or on-premise to Customer 360 Audiences.

The bottom line: A CRM is an important tool in managing guest engagement, but a CDP is going to provide the full picture of a guest in the new world ahead and finish the last mile of the race for you.

CDP Will Power Future Innovation

Theres a reason Salesforce has become the giant that it is today. Theyve built a community of experts and users that are constantly innovating, and providing educational resources on how to make customer data work for your company.

Hoteliers that want to remain agile and future-proof their business will consider a CDP to create unified profiles of their customers and rely on the system to make that data available in real-time so they can deliver personalized experiences.
SAN FRANCISCO  Twitter said Monday that it was suspending Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from its service for 12 hours after she posted messages that violated its policy against sharing misleading information about the coronavirus.

Greene, R-Ga., has been an outspoken opponent of vaccines and masks as tools to curb the pandemic. In tweets Sunday and Monday, she argued that COVID-19 was not dangerous for people under the age of 65 who are not obese, and said vaccines should not be required.

But cases of the coronavirus are on the rise, and the highly contagious delta variant accounts for more than half of new infections in the United States, federal health officials said this month. In Greenes home state, Georgia, new cases have increased 193% in the past two weeks.

Twitter said Greenes tweets were misinformation, and it barred her from the service until Tuesday. We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy, a Twitter spokesperson said. The company also added labels to Greenes posts about the vaccines, calling them misleading and pointing to information about the safety of the inoculations.

In a statement, Greene said Silicon Valley companies were working with the White House to attack free speech. These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isnt state-approved, she said.

Twitter took action after President Joe Biden called on social media companies to do more to combat the spread of vaccine misinformation on their platforms. On Friday, Biden said that sites like Facebook were killing people by allowing misinformation to flourish unchallenged, adding, Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, and that  and theyre killing people.

His statement capped weeks of frustration at the White House over the spread of online misinformation, which has led to vaccine hesitancy, health officials say.

Facebook, which took the brunt of the criticism, argued that Bidens statement was unfounded. The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies, Guy Rosen, Facebooks vice president for integrity, said in a blog post Saturday. The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased.

On Monday, the president softened his criticism, saying that particular users were responsible for the spread of misinformation rather than Facebook. The company should do more to combat the outrageous misinformation spreading on its platform rather than taking his remarks as a personal insult, Biden added.

Twitter has long banned users from sharing misinformation about the coronavirus that could lead to harm. In March, the company introduced a policy that explained the penalties for sharing lies about the virus and vaccines.

Weve observed the emergence of persistent conspiracy theories, alarmist rhetoric unfounded in research or credible reporting, and a wide range of unsubstantiated rumors, which left uncontextualized can prevent the public from making informed decisions regarding their health, and puts individuals, families and communities at risk, the company said in its policy against sharing COVID misinformation.

People who violate that policy are subject to escalating punishments known as strikes and could face a permanent ban if they repeatedly share misinformation about the virus. A 12-hour ban, like the one Greene is experiencing, is Twitters response to users who have either two or three strikes. After four strikes, Twitter suspends users for seven days, and after five strikes, Twitter bars the user altogether.

Other Republicans who have been suspended from Twitter have complained that the social media company is censoring them.

In January, Twitter barred President Donald Trump after the company determined that his social media posts played a role in inciting violence during the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Trump has argued that Twitter and Facebook, which also suspended his account, were censoring him and said the companies required government oversight.

Greene was previously suspended from Twitter in April, but the company said it was a mistake caused by one of its automated systems for detecting spam and abuse.

Everyone knows thats a LIE, and it was no mistake, Greene tweeted after her suspension was lifted.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Oil was the biggest loser in a broad market selloff after OPEC+ agreed to boost crude supply as a resurgent virus shook investor confidence in the global economic recovery.

Futures in New York fell 7.5 percent on Monday, the largest decline since September. OPEC and its allies agreed to monthly supply hikes of 400,000 barrels a day. At the same time, the spread of the delta variant is stoking a risk-off mood in broader markets and threatening oil demand with fresh mobility restrictions around the world. The dollar also rose, reducing the appeal of commodities priced in the currency.

The demand story has really taken a big hit here, and on the supply side, were getting more barrels of crude, said Ed Moya, senior markets analyst at Oanda Corp. The momentum behind this move could get ugly.

Oil prices have been volatile over the last two weeks while OPEC+ remained in a dispute over adding supplies to the market. The deal was struck this weekend after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates reached a compromise on UAEs demand for a more generous output limit. OPEC+ will now face a new set of challenges next year as rival supplies grow, said Toril Bosoni, head of IEAs oil industry and markets division, in an email.

As supplies from other producers not part of the deal rebound, and demand falls seasonally, stocks could see renewed builds early in the year, she said.

Countries around the world are also dealing with surges in new cases of Covid-19 as the highly contagious delta variant drives up infections. Indonesia surpassed India and Brazil in daily case numbers. U.S. infections are outpacing the global rate of increase, and the U.K. on Saturday reported the most cases since January.

Weve got risk aversion firmly in place and its all triggered by the spread of the delta Covid-19 variant, said Moya of Oanda Corp. Theres this fear that youre not going to have that strong economic recovery we were all hoping for in the second half of the year.

The delta strain may make oil volatile in the near term, but the deal between the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies would support a constructive view on prices, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said. The market is still very tight, despite the addition of supply, said Ed Morse, head of commodities research at Citigroup Inc. in a Bloomberg Television interview.

The agreement spans more than a year and covers millions of barrels of production, but it also remains flexible. The alliance will continue to hold talks every month from September, including a review of the market in December.

Thats a fair bit of time before global oil supplies are back to pre-pandemic levels, said Stewart Glickman, energy equity analyst at CFRA Research. It doesnt feel like a glut to me.
WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of Texas congressmen and senators are calling on the Biden administration to pressure Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to back off efforts to roll back energy reforms that opened Mexico's energy sector to U.S. companies for the first time in more than 70 years.

In a letter to President Joe Biden Tuesday, Republicans Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, along with Democratic House members Lizzie Fletcher of Houston, Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen, and Henry Cuellar of Laredo, said Mexico was in violation of the United States Mexico Canada free trade agreement through legislation passed this year that favors Mexican energy companies over foreign competitors.

"We ask that you address these violations when engaging in diplomatic discussions with President Lopez Obrador," the letter read. "This is necessary to not only establish a level playing field for U.S. companies operating in Mexico, but also to allow for compeition in the energy market that will protect American jobs and ultimately drive down consumer cost and greenhouse gas emissions."

RELATED: In Mexico, US energy firms face a 'slow rolling expropriation'

Since Mexico passed constitutional reforms in 2013 to end the monopoly of state-owned energy companies like Pemex, U.S. companies have invested biillions of dollars in Mexico's energy sector.

But following the 2018 election of Lopez Obrador, who campaigned against the decision to open up Mexico's energy sector as harmful to workers, those investment have begun to fall into doubt. Earlier this month Mexico announced that Pemex would lead development of an oil and gas field in the Gulf of Mexico that had been discovered by Houston-based Talos Energy.

Earlier this year The Mexican Legislature has also passed legislation ending a move to open up Mexico's fuel market to retailers other than Pemex and ordering Mexico's power grid to give preference to plants operated by the state-owned utility Federal Electricity Commission.

Tuesday's letter followed a similar effort to get the Trump administration to pressure Lopez Obrador. Former energy secretary Dan Brouillette wrote a letter to his counterpart in Mexico last year, cautioning that business uncertainty leads investors to delay or change their plans, and without investment an economy cannot grow.

Other politicians signing the letter include Sen. James Inhofe, of Oklahoma, and Rep. Garret Graves, of Louisiana, as well as Texas Congressmen Randy Weber, R-Beaumont, Michael Burgess, R-Lake Dallas, Michael Cloud, R- Corpus Christi, Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, and Marc Veasey, D-Dallas.
The U.S. oil and gas industry supported 11.3 million workers, including 2.5 million Texans, before the global pandemic and subsequent oil crash forced energy companies to lay off more than 160,000 jobs nationwide.

American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers says he believes the number of jobs in the industry can return, says to the 2019 level outlined in the trade groups biennial jobs report released Tuesday. API commissioned accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to compile the report using government data.

This is a preview of what could be again, Sommers said. Were still very bullish on the future of oil.

Analysts and economists however, arent so sure the jobs lost during the pandemic will return as the industry consolidates in the aftermath of the pandemic and increasingly relies on remote drilling technology and automation to streamline operations. Theres also looming uncertainty over oil and gas as governments worldwide impose more regulations on the industry and as society shifts to renewable energy

These trends will have profound implications in Texas, where oil and gas represents 14 percent of the states jobs and nearly a quarter of the states total economic output. In Texas, the oil and gas industry pays more than $251.1 billion in wages and has more than $411.5 billion in economic impact.

The Texas oil and gas industry in 2019 employed more than 620,000 workers in the oil exploration and production sector, 1 million in oil-field services, 212,000 at fuel stations, 118,500 in oil and gas transportation, and 71,000 in oil-field equipment manufacturing.

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Sommers, in Houston this week in preparation for the World Petroleum Congress in December, said he remains confident that crude demand will recover from the pandemic, leading to a rebound in industry jobs. He pointed to the International Energy Agency, which forecast that the world will consume 50 percent more energy by 2050 as the global population grows by 2 million people. Sommers said he expects that oil and gas will remain a major part of the energy mix  especially natural gas which provides 40 percent of the nations electricity.

We only see consumption going up over time, Sommers said. You cant make a Tesla without oil and gas.

Norwegian energy research firm Rystad in November said it expects global oil demand to peak at 102 million barrels per day by 2028, up from around 100 million barrels per day in early 2020. At the worst of the pandemic, global oil demand fell to 81 million barrels per day, still a significant amount of demand, Sommers said.

Sommers said he hopes the jobs report will catch the attention of the Biden administration, which has promised to impose more environmental regulations on the oil and gas industry to reduce carbon emissions and avert the worst effects of climate change. The administration has blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, banned new drilling leases on federal lands and waters, and is weighing raising royalty rates on federal property.

These new regulations, Sommers said, will hurt the U.S. oil and gas industry, and shift these jobs overseas.

These 11.3 million jobs are nothing to sneeze at, Sommers said. We think they should stay in the U.S.
Step out of your comfort zone.

Thats become a motto for Memorial resident Farhat Shamsi when it comes to outreach.

And sometimes, she explained, moving in a new direction can be as simple as crossing the street.

Walk up, ring the bell, and you could go in and find a completely different world, Shamsi said.

She had a transformative experience stepping through a strangers door  one that helped her learn some of the greatest needs can be found in her own backyard.

Shamsi was volunteering at Masjid At-Tawhid and took a meal to a nearby woman who called in to say she was hungry.

The house looked OK from outside, Shamsi recalled. But when I went inside, I was just stunned. In a country so wealthy, I had never imagined people lived like this.

The woman was emaciated, Shamsi said, and there was no air conditioning.

Everything was falling apart, she said. I still remember that. It stays with me all the time.

The womans gratitude to receive a hot meal also made a lasting impression. Shamsis main takeaway was that charity doesnt need to be focused on faraway countries; local giving can have an immediate impact.

There are pockets in our own city where there is such a great need, Shamsi said. And it is such a basic way to help  to feed people. That made me want to give more here and to recognize there is a need here as well.

During COVID-19, she said, hunger has only grown. And as the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha approaches, beginning July 19, she has been brainstorming how best to help.

Eid al-Adha, also known as the Festival of Sacrifice, honors Abraham or Ibrahim  a religious leader central to the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths  focusing on the story of when he was called by God to sacrifice his son.

In Islam, Ishmael was the son involved in the ritual; Isaac is in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

When Ibrahim carries out Gods commandment, he finds Ishmael replaced with a ram. During Eid al-Adha, Muslims celebrate this act by sacrificing a goat or lamb.

For the holiday, Muslims keep a third of the meat for themselves, give a third as a gift, and another third must go to charity. In the U.S., Muslim families often place an order at the local slaughterhouse or send funding overseas to give all of the meat directly to those in need.

Shamsi spent a long time debating how to best help others this year and decided on two sacrifices  one to help in the crisis in Yemen and one for those in need in Houston. I didnt feel right about just helping one or the other, she said.

Shamsi is the founder of Quran and Soul, an educational organization that offers courses on the Quran. The holy text asks followers not only to help others but to look for those in need who are close by.

She explained that in the Quran, charity is essential, as is loving neighbors. And the extent to which neighbors can be in need can sometimes be forgotten, Shamsi said.

Most people dont realize it, she said. Its not something people see all the time.

But taking the time to open your eyes is worth the effort, Shamsi explained.

When you do outreach, it feels so good, she said. You realize how immediately you can make a difference in someones life.

Ibrahim Oladejo, a chaplain at Houston Methodist West Hospital, said that the meat from Eid is meant to be shared.

Dont eat it alone, he said. Its a religious obligation.

He is a member of Masjid-ul Mumineen in Brays Oaks, which is distributing meat locally. From Nigeria, Oladejo said having masjids, or mosques, guide the way to giving locally is important.

We are new in this country, he said. You want to make sure the good gets in the hands of the needy.

Masjid At-Tawhid, in Fifth Ward, is dedicated to serving the community throughout the year and provides a variety of services to its neighbors, Imam Qasim ibn Ali Khan explained.

It just takes on a different energy during Eid, he said.

During the holiday, Masjid At-Tawhid receives extra donations of fresh meat, from the qurbani, a ritual sacrifice. The center is ready, Khan said, with five deep freezers and two large coolers.

We have accelerated our efforts, Khan said. Were anticipating thousands of pounds of meat.

The masjid has a fleet of vehicles ready to bring food to neighbors, as well as volunteers at the ready, just as with all donations during the year.

Its simply part of the centers DNA, Khan explained. The imam said Masjid At-Tawhid was founded in 2012 and celebrated its grand opening the next year.

During the first Ramadan at the center, iftars, or meals to break the fast, were left behind. Instead of letting the food go to waste, members packed it up and delivered it to the community.

The first stop, Khan said, was emergency rooms, where individuals were waiting hours for care, many without a meal.

Thats how we started, in the trunks of cars, taking food to the people, he said.

When Ramadan ended, the outreach effort continued. As time passed, more and more people learned that Masjid At-Tawhid accepted donated food and also was the place to go for the hungry.

As our reputation began to grow, so did our responsibility, Khan said.

Khan said that neighbors often have a home but no food inside. Its not uncommon that the food we take them is the only meal they have, he added.

When the pandemic hit, the masjid started offering regular drive-thru grocery-pickup events.

Things are getting a little better, but we arent out of the woods yet, he said. We still have to work at it every day.

On July 25, Masjid At-Tawhid is hosting the Distinguished Community Leadership Tribute with proceeds benefiting the centers community service.

Mayor Sylvester Turner, Police Chief Troy Finner, Councilwoman Letitia Plummer, Councilwoman Tarsha Jackson, Texas state Rep. Harold Dutton and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee are the honorees.

Khan said the event is meant to strengthen the relationship with community leaders, encourage local action and make a positive impact in Fifth Ward.

They can use their powers to improve the quality of life for people in the neighborhood, he said. With the vote we gave them comes the responsibility to improve the neighborhood.

Khan emphasized the importance of local giving in Islam.

In our religion, were taught that its not fair or right to step over someone close to you to serve someone far away, he said.

Still, individuals often pay more attention to pain and suffering in faraway locales. Sometimes, that help never reaches those for whom it was intended.

Instead, Khan advocates being a pebble in a pond  starting a ripple that moves outward.

The Brand Lane Islamic Center in Stafford is following a similar approach.

Moulay Bachir, chairman of the Zakat Committee, said the masjid supports about 100 families on a regular basis.

We help them with rent, utility bills and food, Bachir said.

He has participated for the past 15 years. In the beginning, he said, the community was small. Through the years, members outreach has grown.

Now we collect a lot, he said.

During Eid al-Adha, volunteers from Brand Lane collect and refrigerate meat before distributing it to those in need.

The masjid also hosts a barbecue for neighbors, usually the week after the holiday. Everyone is invited, Bachir said. Neighbors  Muslims and non-Muslims alike  come to celebrate.

Last year, COVID caused the cancellation of the meal. This year, a lot of people are looking forward to it, Bachir said.

Since the pandemic, he has noticed increasing economic woe and food insecurity. A lot of people lost their jobs. A lot lost their businesses and their savings, Bachir said.

He also saw an influx of refugees. We try to focus on those who are impacted the most, he said. According to Islam, you want to prioritize your community first and focus on those who have not.

Its always a priority for Brand Lane.

Its all about helping others, its all about sharing and bringing joy to other people, easing their pain and suffering, Bachir said. This is part of our faith. Its all about caring for others  and bringing a smile to their faces.

Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer.
Chris Gonzalez repeatedly banged her gavel as she asked the audience to refrain from outbursts. She requested that the speakers stick to addressing topics that were on the agenda during citizens participation at the school board meeting.

When her calls went unheeded, the president of the Spring Branch ISD school board recessed Mondays special meeting, and the board members left and went into a back room.

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The speakers kept bringing up the lawsuit filed by former Spring Branch ISD school board candidate Virginia Elizondo, who alleged that the school districts elections violated the Voting Rights Act. She requested that board elections be changed from the present system where every board member is elected at-large to a system with zoned board members.

It is always important that the community can comment, but it is also really important that we conduct the business that is on the agenda and follow the agenda items, said Gonzalez. In this case, with our special meeting (which was called for the primary purpose of hearing the recommendations from the CTE Long Range Planning Committee), we can only have citizens participation on agenda items. So we recessed, took a break, gave everybody a little bit of time to relax, catch their breath, come back out and get back to work.

The speakers  most of whom used extremely similar language  introduced their speech by referencing the boards agenda item regarding endorsement of candidates for the Texas Association of School Boards and then transitioned into the topic of the lawsuit by mentioning their hope that the board would endorse candidates for TASB that would stand up to the lawsuit.

Theyve never had that problem before with community members discussing items related to an agenda item that segue into another item, claimed Amanda Orr, a Spring Branch ISD resident and mother of three children in Spring Branch ISD who was one of the people signed up to speak during Citizens Participation.

Orr pointed out the fact that a summer school board meeting had a standing room only crowd where the number of people standing outnumbered the number of people sitting.

To have a back-and-forth among the speakers in the audience and the board was exceptional, she said. It was a community that is hurting. They wanted to be heard, and they were going to find a way to be heard at this meeting, and thats what they did.

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Based on the number of speakers, 20, that had signed up for citizens participation, Gonzalez allotted two minutes per speaker. When speakers continued bringing up the topic of the lawsuit, Gonzalez cut some of them off. She also tabled five speakers who had indicated in their required sign-up forms that they were addressing the lawsuit.

While Orr acknowledged that Gonzalez probably did need to do something to regain control of the room, she did not think it was necessary for the board to recess.

She felt that had speakers been given their full two minutes to address the topic of their concern, there would have been fewer disruptions and things would not have gotten out of hand.

The recess came about 20 minutes into the meeting and lasted for about 20 minutes after which the citizens participation portion of the meeting continued.

People continued to address the lawsuit but did so more indirectly, and the audience reactions were much more muted.

Over half of the meeting attendees left after the conclusion of citizens participation, which came at the beginning of the meeting.

The board continued through the meetings agenda, the last item of which was a full presentation on the recommendations of the CTE Long Range Planning Committee.

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Gonzalez said she recognizes community members desire to be heard by the board but stressed the importance of sticking to agenda items during a special meeting.

She said the proper way for community members to express their sentiments is by reaching out to them by phone or email or to address the board at a future special meeting when the lawsuit is on the agenda.

elliott.lapin@hearst.com
For two years, businessman, chess champ and celebrated Democrat Rodney Griffin took a break from the public eye.

Now, the long-time Missouri City resident has returned to local politics, being appointed to the Missouri Citys Bond Exploratory Committee and, more recently, Missouri Citys Planning and Zoning Commission.

Im so ready to serve and bring my skill sets to the table, Griffin said. I thank Mayor Robin Elackatt and Council.

The BEC has started work on a bond package for the city council to present to residents before the November 2021 elections. While this is his first time on a BEC, Griffin is by no means a stranger to the arena of local governance, having served eight terms on the State (Texas) Democratic Executive Committee in Austin, as well as numerous other groups and broads throughout the years.

Griffin also has the distinction of being one of the first people to endorse Barack Obama for president.

It was a fundraising event through the Houston Black Democrats organization, he said. Sen. (Barack) Obama had just announced for the presidency. He came here. I was the first party officer of Texas who endorsed then-Sen. Obama for the presidency.

Griffin received a Certificate of Congressional Recognition from the U.S. House of Representatives for his 22 years of dedicated service on the SDEC. He was also a White House Guest for the Fiftieth Civil Rights Summit, held at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.

Opening sequence

A native Houstonian and former Sunnyside resident, Griffin attended Worthing Junior High and Jack Yates Senior High.

Griffins first important contribution to his community came in junior high, when he competed in the Houston High School Chess League. The tournament was the first black-white student competition in Houston, and Griffin became the youngest member on the first all-black team. The team made it to the winners circle, making history.

We won seven out of nine of those matches; that put us in the winner's circle, Griffin said.

Having come of age in Houston during the late fifties- early sixties, Griffin grew up in a society of strict, legalized racial separation. His teams victory in 1962 was momentous; it desegregated the chess league and dispelled the notion that black students were intellectually inferior. The opposing teams principal was asked by whose authority had he allowed a Negro team to participate.

He answered, 'by the authority of the US Chess Federation,' " Griffin said.

Dr. Martin Luther King's historic march on Washington came a year later, as did the bombing of the 16th Avenue Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama - events and experiences that would stay with Griffin, propelling him towards a career in public service.

"Empowering the least, the lost, the last, and the left out, is the center of my politics, Griffin says today.

Public Service

Griffin went on to attend the University of Texas at Austin, majoring in mathematics with minors in government and psychology. After graduation, he started work in city government as a curriculum writer focusing on womens education.

In due course, Griffin returned to Houston to start his own consulting and financial services. He joined the Texas Democratic Executive Committee in 1996, eventually becoming its head, until he stepped down in 2018.

Griffin, with his sturdy background in city government and mathematics, was appointed to the Missouri City BEC in May 2021.

Every five or ten years, cities look at their infrastructure  roads, parks, facilities  and try to make a determination, said Griffin. What needs to be rehabilitated or revitalized, and how much it will change. So, youre looking for a list of projects that have accumulated over time. And these are big-dollar issues. It is our job as a  lets say as a gold-star committee  to make recommendations to the council about what needs to be a priority.

Part of Griffins role is to study the plans already approved by the city council regarding the citys capital needs. The 24-member committee will review financing options for the projects which require voter approval, demographic trends, and research about how population growth patterns will affect the citys roadways, facilities, and parks.

Which projects to make the recommendations on  that would be the biggest challenge, said Griffin. Because the list is long and its not unusual to have a number of projects.

Griffin was appointed to the Missouri City Planning and Zoning Commission last month. He was sworn in to the nine-member committee by Mayor Robin Elackatt on June 7, 2021. His two-year term began on July 1.

Although I have administration management background in city government, I am excited about applying my skill sets in a different city government venue, Griffin said.

Griffin and his wife Jan West have lived in Texas Parkway for 42 years. They have four children, Elizabeth Bert, William, Omari, and Brook as well as numerous grandchildren.

juhi.varma@hcnonline.com
The yearslong effort by state and local governments in the U.S. to force the pharmaceutical industry to help pay to fix a nationwide opioid addiction and overdose crisis took a major step forward Tuesday when lawyers for local governments announced they were on the verge of a $26 billion settlement with the nation's three biggest drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.

Under the deal, Johnson & Johnson would not produce any opioids for at least a decade. And AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson share prescribing information under a new system intended to stop the avalanches of pills that arrived in some regions about a decade ago.

Lawyers for local governments said full details could be shared within days. That would not be the end of the deal though; each state would have 30 days to decide whether to join. And local governments will have five months after that to decide. If governments don't opt in, the settlement total would go down.

This is a nationwide crisis and it could have been and should have been addressed perhaps by other branches of government, Paul Geller, one of the lead lawyers representing local governments across the U.S., said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday. But this really is an example of the use of litigation for fixing a national problem.

If approved, the settlement will likely be the biggest of many settlements to opioid litigation. While it means billions for lawyers who worked the cases, it is expected to bring more than $23 billion to abatement and mitigation efforts to help get treatment for people who are addicted along with other programs to address the crisis. The money would come in 18 annual payments, with the biggest amounts in the next several years.

The deal echoes one the companies have been pushing, sometimes in public, for two years.

Johnson & Johnson reiterated in a statement that its prepared to contribute up to $5 billion to the national settlement.

There continues to be progress toward finalizing this agreement and we remain committed to providing certainty for involved parties and critical assistance for families and communities in need, the company said. The settlement is not an admission of liability or wrongdoing, and the Company will continue to defend against any litigation that the final agreement does not resolve.

But Cardinal Health declined to comment early Tuesday, and the other distribution companies did not respond to requests for comment.

An Associated Press tally finds there have been at least $40 billion in completed or proposed settlements, penalties and fines between governments and the toll of opioids since 2007, not including one between the federal government and OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma in which most of the $8.3 billion would be waived. Purdue is trying to reach a deal through bankruptcy court that could be worth $10 billion over time; a hearing on that plan is scheduled for August.

Other deals are possible. While a growing number of companies in the industry have struck deals, some manufacturers have not  and no pharmacy companies have struck nationwide settlements.

But the total amount in the settlements is far below estimates of the financial costs of the epidemic. The Society of Actuaries found that the cost of the crisis in the U.S. was $630 billion from 2015 through 2018, with most of the costs borne by the private sector. And the White House Council of Economic Advisers, when considering the economic impact of people who fatally overdosed, put the one-year cost at about $500 billion nationally.

Unlike with the tobacco settlements reached in the 1990s, governments have agreed to spend money they bring in from opioid-related settlements to deal with the opioid crisis.

In a joint statement, the attorneys general for Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee said the settlement talks with the four companies are potentially nearing their completion, and that, we look forward to bringing much-needed dollars home to our states to help people recover from opioid addiction and to fundamentally change the opioid manufacturing and distributing industries so this never happens again.

But they still have choices ahead on exactly how they do it.

Is it a nice chunk of change?" asked Ryan Hampton, who is in recovery from an opioid addiction and is a Las Vegas-based advocate for policy to address the overdose crisis. Sure it is. Will it go to where it needs to go? The jurys still out on that.

Even before the settlement plan was unveiled Tuesday, a group of public health advocates and experts began calling for any settlement money to be spent to address the opioid crisis.

Its money that can do a lot of good if its used well," said Joshua Sharfstein, a vice dean at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who is spearheading the effort. Its really important to use it well to save lives because its coming at the peak of the overdose epidemic.

Private lawyers on the Plaintiffs' Executive Committee representing local governments in opioid lawsuits across the country announced some details of the settlement Tuesday even before it was completed. The decision to do so was partly because the state of New York reached a settlement Tuesday with the three big distribution companies amid a trial playing out in a state court on Long Island.

New York's deal, worth more than $1 billion, represents the share of the national deal it will receive from distributors if the national deal is finalized. New York also reached a similar deal last month with Johnson & Johnson worth $230 million.

Today, were holding them accountable delivering more than $1 billion more into New York communities ravaged by opioids for treatment, recovery, and prevention efforts, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Tuesday.

The trial is expected to continue, but the settlement leaves only three drug manufacturers as defendants.

Other manufacturers, regional distribution companies and pharmacies will remain in the New York and other cases for now. Closing arguments in a West Virginia trial against the distributors are expected to proceed as scheduled next week. The attorney general there, Patrick Morrisey, said the state would probably not agree to the terms.

I will keep fighting to protect West Virginia and will not allow larger states to dictate how we hold defendants accountable for their actions, he said in a statement Tuesday.

The state and local governments say distribution companies did not have proper controls to flag or halt shipments to pharmacies that received outsized shares of powerful and addictive prescription painkillers. The companies have maintained they were filling orders of legal drugs placed by doctors  so they should not shoulder blame for the nation's addiction and overdose crisis.

An Associated Press analysis of federal distribution data found that enough prescription opioids were shipped in 2012 for every person in the U.S. to have a 20-day supply.

And opioids  including both prescription drugs and illegal ones like heroin and illicitly produced fentanyl  have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000. The number of cases reached a record high in 2020.

___

Associated Press writer Cuneyt Dil in Charleston, West Virginia, contributed to this report.
TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP)  Taiwan will exchange representative offices with Lithuania, the self-governed island said Tuesday, in a breakthrough for its foreign relations that are under constant pressure from China.

The offices will seek to enhance economic and trade relations, along with cooperation in various other fields, the island's Foreign Ministry said.

The office will bear the name of Taiwan, rather than Chinese Taipei, the term used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing, which claims the island as its territory without the right to diplomatic recognition.

The governments of Taiwan and Lithuania have mutually agreed after intensive negotiations that Taiwan will soon establish a representative office in the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnyus," Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

The name of the representative office will be The Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is aggressively working on the preparations," Wu said.

Taiwans first-ever representative office abroad to bear the name of Taiwan was established in Somaliland in 2020. While Chinese pressure has reduced the island's formal diplomatic allies to just 15, it maintains informal ties with all major nations through the use of de facto embassies.

Lithuania will set up its office in Taiwan in the autumn, Wu said.

I therefore believe that Taiwan and Lithuanias economic and trade exchanges, cooperation in various fields, as well as the friendships between people will all be enhanced, despite their geographical distance, Wu said.

The last time Taiwan established a representative office in Europe was in 2003 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Along with poaching Taiwan's formal diplomatic partners, China has used its diplomatic and economic heft to prevent or shrink unofficial relations between the island and foreign nations. In February, Guyana canceled permission for Taiwan to open a trade and investment office in the South American country under pressure from China.

In Beijing on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the Cabinet's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, said on social media that China urged Lithuania to adhere to the one-China principle and not send the wrong signals to forces behind Taiwan independence."

Zhu did not specify any steps China would take in retaliation, but said nothing Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party-led government does would change the fact that Taiwan is a part of China."

Taiwan has long sought closer relations with the Baltic states, citing their past experiences under authoritarian rule and embrace of multiparty democracy and liberal values.
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The Houston Police Department on Tuesday released surveillance video and new details about the suspect vehicle in a recent deadly road rage shooting as investigators continue to hunt for the escaped shooter.

The suspected gunman in the July 6 shooting was driving a 2011 to 2013 white Buick LaCrosse CXL premium model with Venti Ports on the hood, seven-spoke wheels and round fog lights, a police spokesperson said.
A Houston woman has been sentenced to eight years of deferred adjudication after pleading guilty to the 2017 death of her 9-year-old son.

Ramona Stevenson went before a judge on July 16, where she plead guilty to the death of 9-year-old Dayleon, who was found dead in Stevenson's bed at an apartment in north Houston.

In reports from the July 14, 2017 incident, authorities said the boy appeared malnourished and had several lacerations and bruises on his body.

Stevenson and her boyfriend, 25-year-old Ladesmon Lewis, were charged with injury to a child, a felony.

At the time, Stevenson told police that Dayleon was diagnosed with seizures at a very young age and prescribed medication, but she had stopped giving it to him because she didn't believe it helped.

The night before he died, Dayleon reportedly suffered four seizures and went to bed without eating. When Stevenson checked on him in the middle of the night, she thought something was wrong, but told police she planned to take him to the hospital in the morning.

Now, four years later, Stevenson pleaded guilty to injury to a child by omission, a second-degree felony.

Deferred adjudication is a special form of judge-ordered probation that allows Stevenson to accept responsibility of a crime without an actual conviction placed on record. Under her sentence, Stevenson will need to abide by the following:

Cannot commit any offenses

Cannot use or possess any illegal drug or prescription drugs that are not currently prescribed by a medical professional

Report to supervising officer

Work a suitable employment and/or attend school full-time

Remain within in Harris County or any counties directly touching Harris County, and cannot travel outside the location unless given permission

Stevenson's boyfriend is scheduled to appear in court in August.
Diana Gonzalez noticed a garlic-like smell coming into her home in Galena Park. It was worse than the usual chemical odor for the city adjacent to the Houston Ship Channel, giving her headaches and making her nauseous. Her 79-year-old mothers nostrils burned.

Gonzalez didnt know what her family was breathing on July 14. She didnt know whether they needed to leave. The whole thing fired her up: Nobody was giving us information that we felt we deserved from our local authorities, she said.

So Gonzalez tried to get help for her and her neighbors  but two days passed before they learned the origin of the smell. Harris County Pollution Control investigators couldnt immediately figure it out, though they tried, working late at night and early in the morning, they said. Nor could a local environmental advocate.

No company had taken blame publicly.

Only on Friday, about when county investigators said they finally figured out where the odor had come from, did LyondellBasell Industries fess up. The Netherlands-based company posted a notice on a public forum, CAER Online. It explained that workers were trying to address the odor coming from its refinery east of Galena Park. The statement insisted the smell posed no harm.

That was hard for Gonzalez to believe.

As it happened, a floating roof on a chemical tank had collapsed, according to the county. LyondellBasell told pollution control staff broadly what it was. The county staff analyzed samples, posting updates on social media.

By Friday evening, county investigators identified several chemicals of interest. These included carbon disulfide, which has been linked to nausea, vomiting, dizziness and other symptoms, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The county in a statement advised sensitive populations to limit their time outside and wear face coverings, but that guidance came as the smell was expected to dissipate. The company said in a statement late Monday that they had contained the leak and finished the cleanup.

LyondellBasell didnt issue a community alert when the incident happened because it wasnt aware residents were impacted, spokesperson Kara Slaughter wrote.

Maintaining an open line of communication with our community neighbors is important to us, her statement said. As soon as we were made aware, we provided an update.

The way LyondellBasell handled the situation sat poorly with advocate Juan Flores, who works for Air Alliance Houston and lives in Galena Park. Hed felt the intense smell building up in the back of his throat as if he could taste it. That LyondellBasell appeared to wait days to tell residents what was happening, he thought, was messed up.

About 11,000 people live in Galena Park, a predominantly Hispanic community. And as the environmental justice movement illustrates, low-income communities of color such as theirs fight an unfair share of pollution. Flores, Gonzalez and others pushed for help as they breathed in the smell, and Gonzalez sprayed Febreze into her air-conditioner.

emily.foxhall@chron.com

twitter.com/emfoxhall
Immigrants in Houston called on Congress to take immediate action to provide permanent legal status for young people impacted by the decision of a federal judge in Texas that struck down as unconstitutional a program that protects Dreamers.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, commonly known as DACA, was created in 2012 during the Obama administration to protect from deportation qualifying young immigrants who came to the country illegally when they were minors, many brought by their parents during early childhood.

Mondays protest in front of the federal courthouse in Houston was against a decision by Judge Andrew Hanen of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas in Houston.

Today  we demand a permanent pathway to protection from deportation, said Norma Gonzalez, the lead organizer in Houston of United We Dream, the largest national organization of young immigrants known as Dreamers, many of whom are DACA participants.

Hanen ruled in a lawsuit filed in May 2018 by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Texas led a coalition of states against DACA.

Paxton said at the time that our lawsuit is about the rule of law.  Texas has argued for years that the federal executive branch lacks the power to unilaterally grant unlawfully present aliens lawful presence and work authorization.

That premise has been argued and challenged in other court cases.

The Trump administration attempted to end DACA in 2017 but was defeated in court. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the administration for failing to provide adequate justification to cancel the program.

Dreamers and allies, however, were expecting Hanens decision to align with the Paxton argument of unconstitutionality.

Enough is enough, Houston resident and DACA participant Susana Lujano said at the protest, referring to the constant attacks to the program led by Republicans of Texas. She said she is heartbroken by the decision, which leaves thousands of immigrant youth who were applying for the first time for DACA in limbo.

Roughly 650,000 immigrants are DACA participants, according to the latest data from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The number is only a fraction of the approximately 3.6 million Dreamers living in the country, many of whom havent applied, have aged out of the programs specifications or do not meet the qualifications.

Although Hanens decision did not cancel DACA for those now in the program, it banned the government from approving new applications. The program was renewable every two years but changed to annual renewal last year.

It hurts deeply that my home state, the place Ive grown up in and that Ive grown to love, is the one leading the charge against me and my right to live and work, said Lujano, who was brought to the U.S. by her parents from Mexico when she was 2 years old.

She said she is afraid of going back to living in fear of deportation, much more now, after discovering that she and her fiance, who is also a DACA participant, are expecting a baby. They have discussed their future, she said while crying, and are frightened, wondering what life would be like with children, constantly living with the fear of being separated from them.

Hanens 77-page ruling said the government should not deny renewals of DACA for current participants based on his decision, but Dreamers at Mondays event said the only way for them to have actual protection against deportation is for Congress to legislate for a permanent solution.

Damaris Gonzalez, the immigrants rights community organizer with Texas Organizing Project and a DACA participant, said at the event that the youth impacted by Hanens ruling are valuable workers and community members who deserve to have a regular immigration status.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Im a Texan. Ken Paxton wants to deport me

Let me remind Judge Hanen and the rest of the Republican Party that it was DACA recipients who were and are still fighting at the front line trying to save lives during this horrible pandemic. We are essential to this country, Gonzalez said.

She added that immigrants in Houston urge President Biden and Congress to act now and do everything in its power to defend DACA and to include a pathway to citizenship in the budget reconciliation bill to ensure permanent protections against deportation for our communities.

Biden said Saturday that the Department of Justice intends to appeal this decision in order to preserve and fortify DACA.

Several experts believe that the current budget reconciliation process in Congress is a sizable opportunity to achieve an agreement and pass legislation to regularize the immigration status of DACA recipients and other immigrants with temporary statuses.

Fridays terrible decision on DACA only underscores the need for Congress to act immediately on a pathway to citizenship, said Philip E. Wolgin, acting vice president of immigration policy at the nonprofit Center for American Progress. He believes the prospect for DACA participants to win a path to legalization this year is strong and an advantage for the country.

Wolgin said putting DACA participants and those with Temporary Protected Status on a pathway to citizenship would grow U.S. GDP (gross domestic product) by $1.5 trillion over a decade, create over 400,000 new jobs and increase the wages of all workers by $600.

USCIS said in a statement that all individuals whose DACA requests were granted before the ruling will continue to be eligible to renew DACA. The agency said that DACA recipients are students, military service members, essential workers and part of our communities in every way, shape and form.

olivia.tallet@chron.com

Twitter.com/oliviaptallet
Texas A&M and Prairie View A&M universities will work together this fall to enhance graduate-level education through a five-year partnership.

It launches with a teaching exchange program that will allow doctoral students of one college to teach at its partner institution to learn about their respective core undergraduate courses, according to a Friday release from the A&M system.

The strengths of Texas A&Ms Graduate and Professional school and Prairie Views Office of Graduate Studies will offer students a unique educational experience, officials said.

Karen Butler-Purry, dean of the A&Ms graduate and professional school, called it a win-win.

Texas A&M graduate students will benefit from the experience of teaching at a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) whose student population is uniquely diverse  culturally, socially, educationally and economically, Butler-Purry said in a statement. Likewise, Prairie View graduate students will benefit from the experience of teaching at a Tier 1, (research), land-grant institution whose student population is different from that at their home institution.

Butler-Purry added that undergraduates will benefit from learning from advanced grad students and might be inspired to consider graduate school.

Dorie Gilbert, dean of Prairie Views College of Arts and Sciences worked to develop the partnership over the past year and said the collaboration is a natural one considering the schools close proximity.

PVAMU in Prairie View is less than an hour away from Texas A&Ms flagship campus in College Station.

Bi-monthly meetings of partnership members will create new initiatives and establish strategies to provide high-quality programs for students at both universities while engaging university departments and community members, the systems release said. The agreement will be assessed and reviewed after five years, and may then be renewed.

brittany.britto@chron.com
VAN HORN  Jeff Bezos roared into space Tuesday, officially opening West Texas for space tourism and loudly celebrating the company he so quietly founded 21 years ago.

Were going to build a road to space," he said Tuesday during a post-launch news conference. "What were doing is the first step of something big. And I know what that feels like. I did it almost three decades ago with Amazon."



Bezos, who is no longer Amazon's CEO, was one of four people on Blue Origins first crewed flight. The New Shepard rocket system lifted off from Launch Site One, a private facility north of Van Horn, just before 8:12 a.m. Tuesday.

VAN HORN: How Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin changed the small West Texas town of Van Horn

The entire ride lasted 10 minutes and 10 seconds. The crew gazed at the world from 66 miles above sea level. They did back flips and caught Skittles in their mouths.

Its dark up here, shouted 82-year-old Wally Funk, who let out periodic cheers during the flight.

Their capsule landed beneath parachutes and a triumphant Bezos emerged, wearing his cowboy hat. He was followed by the companys first commercial customer, 18-year old Oliver Daemen, Funk and his brother Mark Bezos.

Funk flung her arms wide open and flashed a massive grin to the crowd of friends and family. She had waited 60 years for this moment.

"I want to go again. Fast." she said. "I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer. (I) could do a lot more rolls and twists and so forth, but there was not quite enough room for all four of us to do all those things."

In 1961, three years before Bezos was born, Funk volunteered for a privately funded program that tested women for astronaut fitness. She underwent the same physical and mental tests as NASAs male astronauts but was never sent into space.

We can confirm that Wally once again in training outperformed the men," Bezos said.

Now, shes part of a small but growing class of astronauts who are taking short jaunts to space and back.

In addition to Blue Origins flight on Tuesday, Virgin Galactics VSS Unity had its first fully crewed test flight (two pilots and four passengers, including billionaire founder Richard Branson) on July 11 from New Mexico. This was also a suborbital flight.

Blue Origin was first to announce its mission, but Virgin Galactic was first to fly. This prompted Blue Origin to market its vehicle by listing Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic attributes side-by-side.

Top of that list was how high the vehicles fly.

Where is space?

Its difficult to pin down where the Earths atmosphere ends and space begins. For starters, this boundary fluctuates given how the atmosphere interacts with the sun, said Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at the analytics and engineering firm BryceTech.

Governments also use different measurements. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the U.S. military have used the 50-mile threshold for purposes of awarding astronaut wings. Virgin Galactic flies above 50 miles.

The Federation Aeronautique Internationale recognizes the boundary of space at 62 miles, known as the Karman line, for purposes of aeronautical and astronautical records. Blue Origin flights surpass this higher threshold.

New Shepard was designed to fly above the Karman line so none of our astronauts have an asterisk next to their name, Blue Origin said on Twitter.

Smith said several scholars feel 50 miles is the more appropriate boundary  some satellites have the lowest part of their orbit around 50 miles.

My guess is that most people will agree that missions above 50 miles will be spaceflights, Smith said in an email.

BATTLE OF THE BILLIONAIRES: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos' space race is heating up, and Texas gets a front-row seat

Greg Autry, a clinical professor of space leadership, policy and business for Arizona State University, said its a silly argument and amusing online discussion.

In my mind, and I think the way that most potential customers view it, the boundary to space is when Im floating in free fall in a black sky, he said via email. The stars are out during the day, and I can see the thin atmosphere below me wrapped around a curving globe. 50 miles qualifies for that.

NASA awards the astronaut designation after a candidate has completed his or her training. That person becomes a flown astronaut after launching and landing in a spacecraft. When NASA astronaut Nick Hagues mission was aborted (there was an issue with the Russian Soyuzs rocket booster after it launched, and the capsule was safely pulled away from the rocket) he was considered a flown astronaut because he launched and landed in a spacecraft on an intended mission to the International Space Station.

Van Horn

Tuesday's crew received specially designed Blue Origin wings after their flight, and Bezos took a moment to thank the town of Van Horn, which has had a front-row seat to the company's development.

This is a small and amazing little town, and you know were making a dent in it," Bezos said. "And we appreciate you for allowing us to be part of your town.

Blue Origin and Van Horn are connected by Texas 54, though a portion of this highway was closed during Tuesday's launch.

Some locals drove as far north as they could to see the action. Arely Zamudio, 18, arrived about 30 minutes prior to liftoff. She's studying aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

I was honestly a little overwhelmed," she said. "We were all just waiting to see the remarkable moment.

But for this launch, she had to stand farther back than usual. And that deterred Penny Self, who had hoped to take her three grandchildren and her great nephew. She didn't feel the view from the roadblock was much better than the RV park she owns. So they left and watched it from there.

Something this big, he should have had a place for people to go and park, Self said. "Kids are interested in it."

Tuesday was the 16th flight for New Shepard, and Blue Origin chose this date to coincide with the 52nd anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepping on the moon.

They made history by landing on the moon, Blue Origin CEO Bob Smith said in a pre-launch news conference, and we are working hard each and every day to be good stewards of that legacy. To live up to those high standards and to go even further in our leg of this multi-generational journey to space.

The company often honors NASA heritage. Its reusable New Shepard rocket system is named for the first American in space. NASA astronaut Alan Shepard flew 116 miles high and then came back down. The flight on May 5, 1961, lasted about 15 minutes. Shepard did not circle the Earth.

THE ROSTER: Blue Origin announces 18-year-old will be on its first crewed flight from West Texas

The technology on New Shepard is overkill for suborbital tourism, Bezos said. But landing the rocket vertically has given the company practice with a technology that its scaling for New Glenn, a rocket thats being developed to propel payloads into orbit.

New Glenn could take its maiden flight in late 2022, the company said in February. The rocket was named for NASA astronaut John Glenn, who was the first American to orbit the Earth. Glenn circled the globe three times in a Feb. 20, 1962, flight that lasted nearly five hours.

The right price

Sales for New Shepard are approaching $100 million, Bezos said. He did not specify how many people have purchased tickets or what they are paying. Blue Origin is planning to have two more crewed flights this year.

The company held an auction for a seat on its first crewed mission. This began with sealed online bidding where people blindly offered how much they would pay to go to space. That was followed by unsealed online bidding, where people could see the highest bid, and then a live auction that fetched a winning bid of $28 million. This money is being donated to Blue Origins Club for the Future foundation.

The auction's other competitive bidders were offered a chance to purchase seats on subsequent flights. Daemens father, the CEO of an investment firm in the Netherlands, had participated in the auction and secured a seat for his son on the second New Shepard flight. Daemen was moved to the first flight because the $28 million bidder had scheduling conflicts.

To Phil Smith, with BryceTech, the auction was a Blue Origin marketing strategy to raise awareness of this first flight.

Autry, however, thinks Blue Origin is trying to figure out what people are willing to pay. And rather than committing to a price like Virgin Galactic, which initially sold seats at $200,000 and later increased its prices, Blue Origin will fetch as much money as it can while demand is high.

Right now, demand exceeds supply, Autry said. Nobody in their right mind would sell for less than they can get. The investors wont allow it. I think prices will go up for both suborbital and orbital and then theyll come down, but not until the demand has been supplied. Thats economics 101.

Bezos said commercial spaceflight will need to follow the same trajectory as commercial airlines. And right now, space is in the phase where biplanes are flying to a farmer's field and charging people for a few minutes in the air.

Thats what were doing right now," Bezos said, "but you know where that barnstorming phase leads? To 787s. And thats what we have to do.

andrea.leinfelder@chron.com

twitter.com/a_leinfelder
State Rep. Michelle Beckley, one of Texas Democrats who fled to Washington, D.C. in protest of a controversial elections bill, is running for Congress.

Her first campaign advertisement focuses heavily on the quorum break, opening with scenes of D.C. monuments as news anchors describe the Democrats escape. The camera then switches to Beckley, typing on her computer in a hotel room.

Generations of Americans have come to Washington, D.C. to learn about our democracy, she narrates. I came here with over 50 of my colleagues to save it, leaving our families behind, to block the Texas Republicans voter suppression bill.

Republicans say the bill would make voting practices more consistent across the state.

Beckley, of Carrollton, is the first Texas Democrat to announce a run for a higher office since they undercut the special legislative session with their exit. She has filed paperwork to run in the 24th congressional district, a seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Irving, though the district lines will likely be redrawn during this falls redistricting process.

TEXAS TAKE: Get the latest news on Texas politics sent directly to your inbox every weekday

National Democrats have targeted Van Duynes seat since the Republican narrowly captured a win last November, besting Democratic opponent Candace Valenzuela by about 4,500 votes in the Dallas-area race.

Beckleys ad calls out Van Duyne by name, criticizing her vote earlier this year to reject Pennsylvanias presidential election results  a decision that bolstered former President Donald Trumps false claims that illegal votes cost him the election.

Beth Van Duyne can walk away from her duty to defend democracy, but not me, she said in the ad.

Andrea Coker, a spokeswoman for the Van Duyne campaign, said the congresswoman remains focused on helping North Texans earn new job opportunities and take care of their families while Democrats sort out who is the biggest extremist in their primary campaign.

In a statement she provided to The Dallas Morning News in January, Van Duyne said she objected to the Pennsylvania results because the election was conducted unconstitutionally through executive and court actions, which changed the rules of the election without the express approval of the Pennsylvania State Legislature.

She did not object to the Arizona election results, as some of her Republican colleagues did.

Beckley was first elected to the Texas House in 2018, when she ousted the incumbent Republican Rep. Ron Simmons. She owns a bird shop in Carrollton.

Jeremy Wallace contributed reporting.

cayla.harris@express-news.net
This whole voter fraud thing, which Gov. Greg Abbott once declared an epidemic in Texas, is becoming a bit passe now that Texans have checked the math and discovered no evidence of it.

The minuscule smattering of minor cases Republicans have scraped together are no crisis  and any real fraud is aptly addressed by current Texas election law.

So what now?

Never fear, Texans. Republicans have another clever excuse for their voting bill. It goes something like this: Dont worry, were not taking away anybodys voter rights. Were just rolling back special, temporary voting access Texans enjoyed during the pandemic.

The argument appears to be persuasive among a few of our readers who have written to ask whether the current legislation would curtail rights Texans had before COVID-19  and if so, how?

The answer is yes and were happy to explain. But first, let us object to the whole premise of pandemic specialness. It makes no sense. Theres no reason to roll back election innovations just because they began during the pandemic. Theres no evidence that 24-hour voting, secure drop boxes or drive-thru voting led to fraud. Incidentally, there is evidence that they improved turnout among people of color  and theres the real rub for Republicans.

These voting methods, it should be said, were not expressly illegal procedures that somehow got a pass during the pandemic. Theyve long been possibilities under the law, which local officials could use to expand access to the polls.

But setting all that aside, there are several troubling ways Texas lawmakers are trying to restrict other voting rights that predated the pandemic. Among them:

1. Empowering poll watchers. Dont confuse poll watchers, who have a long history of voter intimidation in this country, with that kindly older woman  either Republican or Democrat  who has helped keep your local polling place running smoothly for years. Shes a poll worker, and is actually trained to be there. She probably goes out of her way to avoid even the perception of bias. But if recent legislation passes, shell have less power to maintain order and fairness. Lawmakers propose to give partisan poll watchers broader access and protections, entitling them to sit or stand near enough to hear or see the activity and letting them sue and seek court orders against that kindly election worker if they feel shes obstructing their view. Ostensibly, poll watchers would still be prohibited from seeing someones ballot but a poll watcher who violates that rule or causes another kind of disturbance couldnt be thrown out for it, according to the House version of the bill, unless and until he has received a clear warning.

2. Making it harder to vote by mail. As if we needed to make it any harder. While Oregon has been conducting its elections exclusively by mail for 20 years and many other states allow no-excuse mail voting, Texas guards the method jealously, opening it only to voters 65 and older, the disabled and those away during the election. Now, following Trumps stand against mail voting, Texas is trying to restrict it even more: A current bill requires mail voters to include identification numbers on their applications and their envelops that match numbers on their voter registration. They must also provide their driver license number or if they dont have one, the last four digits of their Social Security number. For some of us, these changes would be a minor inconvenience. For others, particularly among the disabled and elderly population voting by mail, such changes could bring confusion and opportunity for error that could result in ballots being disqualified. While voters could go in person to cure a problem with a signature, they wouldnt have that option for number errors.

3. Hindering the helpers. It can be a challenge for elderly folks, or those with limited English, to find neighbors and others to help them fill out a mail ballot or to assist them at the polls. Soon, it could get even harder. Texas lawmakers  again, with no proof that this change is needed  want to require helpers to fill out additional paperwork and explain why theyre helping. If they help fill out a ballot, they must submit their signature, name, address, relationship and information about whether they received compensation for the service. Forget to fill it out? The helper could be arrested and charged with a crime. Legislation also would require election officials to refer all ballots that appear improper to the attorney general.

Is that all? Maybe. Maybe not. Democrats have good reason to fear Republicans will stab them in the back, exclude them from deliberations, toss out agreed compromises and then, in some eleventh-hour backroom deal, insert extreme provisions that were never debated. Why? Because Republicans did all this in the regular session. Thats what prompted Democrats to walk out the first time to kill the bill  and thats what keeps them in exile now.

It should be noted  and we have  that this legislation does a few good things. Namely: requiring those with felony convictions to be notified of the temporary restrictions on their voting eligibility.

But much of the bill is ripe for abuse, confusion, error  and oh yes, completely unnecessary. Of course, the broader impact and potential chill of voter participation, may be worse than any single provision.

Is the current bill Jim Crow 2.0? Is it the end of democracy?

No.

But should we, American citizens of the 21st century, really require overtly racist, 1950s-level suppression before we get concerned about eroding voting rights?

No.

Any government that wants to shave a flake of the sacred constitutional rights of its people should have a damn good reason why. This is how gun owners feel. This is how free speech advocates feel. This is how many voters feel.

No true Texan would sit on his hands and say come and take it  unless he was ready for a fight.
WASHINGTON  U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, a former Fort Bend County sheriff who helped secure the House of Representatives against Capitol rioters, is one of six Republican members tapped to serve on a congressional panel investigating the insurrection.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Monday night named Nehls to the House Select Committee on Jan. 6. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has yet to approve the picks, but Nehls, a freshman, would be the only Texan on the committee, which has its first hearing next week.

Nehls appointment to the committee comes as views of Jan. 6 have become increasingly partisan, with some Republicans seeking to downplay the riot as Democrats have sought to keep a spotlight on it.

BACKGROUND: Fort Bend Congressman Nehls faces Capitol rioters in viral photos

Nearly every Republican, including Nehls, opposed a a proposal to establish a bipartisan, independent 9/11-style commission to investigate. Nehls also joined all but two other House Republicans in opposing the committee he has now been appointed to, which Democrats in the House voted to set up after the independent commission proposal failed to pass the Senate.

Nehls told CNN he believes he was selected because of his law enforcement background.

Ive been a law enforcement officer 30 years, as a sheriff for eight years, so I just think its, you know, maybe he looked at those skill sets, Nehls told CNN about the appointment. Its an honor and a privilege to be able to serve at the leaders request and Im going to do the best job I can.

YOU CANT STOP US: FBI timeline depicts roles Texans played in Capitol siege

Nehls, who was sworn in just days before the insurrection, can be seen helping Capitol police in viral photos of the standoff as they stood with guns drawn and rioters trying to storm the chamber. Nehls told Hearst Newspapers that he tried to negotiate with the rioters through the chamber doors.

This is un-American, Nehls recalled telling them, and this isnt the way we should conduct ourselves.

Nehls was also one of 17 Texas Republicans who objected to counting Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden later that night.

You sent me to Congress to fight for President Trump and election integrity and thats exactly what Im doing, Nehls wrote in a tweet at the time.

ben.wermund@chron.com
WASHINGTON  Texas Democrats plans to spend their time in D.C. lobbying for new federal election laws have been complicated by a rash of COVID cases they may have spread to aides who met with them, including one in the White House and one in House Speaker Nancy Pelosis office.

Six fully vaccinated Texas Democrats have tested positive for COVID since arriving in Washington last week, when they held a series of meetings with congressional leaders and Vice President Kamala Harris as they push for new federal voting laws.

Both the White House and speakers office on Tuesday confirmed that aides had tested positive for COVID this week, despite being vaccinated. They include a spokesperson for Pelosi and an unidentified White House aide who tested positive off campus. Neither were in close contact with Pelosi, high-level White House staff or the president, officials said.

THE LATEST: Texas Democrat who fled to D.C. launches campaign for Congress

The cases  all mild  come as Texas Democrats hope to continue meeting with their federal colleagues to keep pressure on them to pass new federal voting laws. The Texans fled from Austin to D.C. to derail new voting restrictions statehouse Republicans are pushing in the special session that began July 8.

The 55 House members spent the first part of the week holding a makeshift, mostly virtual conference with civil rights leaders out of their hotel. Those who have tested positive have remained quarantined in their rooms, while others have gathered in a large conference room.

Meetings have continued with congressional Democrats, meanwhile  albeit virtually  including a meeting with House Majority Whip James Clyburn on Tuesday. And they continue to push for a meeting with President Joe Biden, even if not in person.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said no meeting has been scheduled yet. The positive White House case hasnt had an impact on that, she said.

We know that there will be breakthrough cases, but as this instance shows, cases in vaccinated individuals are typically mild, Psaki said. The White House is prepared for breakthrough cases with regular testing. This is another reminder of the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines against severe illness or hospitalizations.

ben.wermund@chron.com
Houston, MO (65483)

Today

Mostly sunny in the morning then increasing clouds with some scattered thunderstorms later in the day. High 88F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

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Mostly clear skies. Low 71F. Winds light and variable.
More Information

Texas County Memorial Hospital reported Monday that it admitted 15 COVID-19 patients in the last week.

Of that total, seven became patients since Friday. There are eight patients hospitalized.

Its positive test rate stood at 30.4 percent.

The hospital, in a statement said, If you are vaccinated you are very well protected against hospitalization and death, unfortunately that is not true if you are not vaccinated. 99.5 percent of deaths in the U.S. from COVID-19 are individuals who are not vaccinated.
The Herald has two obituary options: 1) A free obituary that is edited by our staff. 2) A paid obituary that is not edited and includes a color photo. All obituaries must come from a funeral home or crematory and can be emailed to news@houstonherald.com. Payment arrangements are made through the business handling the service.
July 20, 2021 - Houston police are investigating the fatal shooting of two men and a woman, and the wounding of two other men at 3421 Antoine Drive about 11:10 p.m. on Sunday (July 18).



One of the deceased men, the armed suspect, fired multiple shots at responding HPD officers who returned fire. The suspect, Irvin Peterson (b/m, 35), was pronounced deceased at the scene.



The identities of the two deceased victims are pending verification by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.



The three HPD officers who discharged their weapons were not injured in this incident. Officers B. Karlsen, B. Real, and J. Eakins are assigned to the North Patrol Division. Officer Karlsen was sworn in as an HPD officer in May 2019, Officer Real in December 2019 and Officer Eakins in November 2020.



HPD Special Investigations Unit Sergeant G. Rodgers and Detectives I. Ulloa, S. Mohajer, M. Resnick and J. Brown reported:



HPD patrol officers were called to a motel at the above address by a man (Peterson) threatening to kill other people and responding officers. While officers were responding, he fatally shot an adult woman and an adult male. Peterson also wounded two additional adult males.



When officers arrived, Peterson immediately began shooting at them from the second floor balcony of the motel. The officers were not hurt; however, HPD patrol vehicles were struck. Three officers returned fire.



Officers then cautiously approached the balcony and found Peterson deceased. They also observed two victims deceased on the same balcony. An autopsy by the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences will determine whether Peterson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound or if he was struck by the responding officers gunfire.



One of the two men wounded by Peterson was struck in the right arm and was transported to an area hospital. The second wounded man was struck in the left arm and drove himself to a hospital for treatment. Both men suffered what are believed to be non-life-threatening wounds.



Anyone with additional information in this case is urged to contact the HPD Special Investigations Unit at 713-308-3600.



As is customary in HPD officer-involved shooting incidents in the city limits, this case is being investigated by the HPD Special Investigations Unit, HPD Internal Affairs Division and the Harris County District Attorneys Office.





KJS/JFC 7-19-21

Inc. #096966821
Chicago, IL (60637)

Today

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Chicago, IL (60637)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 86F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 74F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph.
A Love Letter To The Newport Folk Festival

CelebrityAccess publisher Marc Gentilella leads a chorus of much-deserved praise for the iconic Newport Folk Festival.

The Collaboration performs at the Newport Folk Festival. Credit: Marc Gentilella.

by Marc Gentilella of CelebrityAccess

After the last Newport Folk Festival (NFF) in 2019, CelebrityAccess planned to give extensive coverage to one of Americas most iconic music festivals. Youll notice I didnt say iconic folk festival because I believe it is one of the most important music festivals in the world!

This article was originally intended to be published following the conclusion of the Newport Folk Festival in 2019, but we decided to wait till the dead of winter in hopes to bringing back the warmth and thoughts of a beautiful Newport summer day.

Newport Folk Exec. Producer Jay Sweet, left, and CelebrityAccess President/Editor-in-Chief Marc Gentilella.

Unfortunately, the dead of last winter also birthed a global pandemic which brought the live touring industry to a halt, but now, with the Newport Folk Festival returning as in-person events this week, the timing seemed right.

Prior to starting CelebrityAccess, I was a concert promoter for 25 years. Despite working in the live events industry, I had never attended the NFF, until my wife recently dragged me to it four years ago and ever since, Ive wondered, what the hell  why had I never attended!?

But here I am, getting ready to attend this weekends festival  and I say this to all in our industry  If you pass up a chance to perform for Jay Sweet at the Newport Folk Festival, you may be hurting your career, or the careers of the artists you represent  period!!!

Id go so far as to say if you have to play for free  it could be the best investment youve ever made in your career or the careers of your clients.

In the worlds of Folk, Roots, and Americana music  Jay Sweet is a king/queen-maker.

Whether you love him, or hate him, (either because of his role as a gatekeeper for the Newport brand, or his tough negotiating stances), Jay Sweet has one responsibility  to keep this historic American festival thriving with a limited budget.

In all honesty, what Ive witnessed firsthand with Jay and from those Ive spoken to about his style over the years, is hes not really disliked for being a tough negotiator because he really doesnt have anything to negotiate with. Hes just effing persistent  like the proverb If you dont think something small can make a difference  youve never tried to sleep with a mosquito in the room, or in Jays case, and I say this with love, a bloodthirsty one.

Or as someone close to the organization told me, We arent cheap because we wanna be and we NEVER skimp on helping when help is needed.

In doing so he keeps ticket prices low, particularly in light of the quality of talent one gets to see over the three days of this jewel of a festival.

Members of Lucius perform with Brandi Carlile at Newport Folk 2018 (Brian Lima Photography)

Those in the know realize Jay Sweets limited budget is roughly $700,000, a surprisingly small amount which might be enough to book a single headliner for a major festival in todays market. Despite that the Newport Folk Festival consistently punches well above its weight class, bringing in an impressive array of artists that range from aspiring journeymen on track to being the next big thing, to established artists who have already become that next big thing.

At 2019s NFF, Dolly Parton thought it was a good idea to perform (sans fee), where Brandi Carlile led The First All-Female Headlining Collaboration at the last Newport Folk Festival.

Jeff Tweedy performs at the Newport Folk Festival in 2019 (Marc Gentilella)

Considering the depth, amount and quality of the performers that attend, most are probably playing for close to free (at least in relationship to what their normal performance fees consist of). There is a very good reason for that. The Fans  The Fans  The Fans!! There is nothing like them at any other festival Ive ever attended. They could be the greatest street team  social media magnifiers and pure fan publicist influencers on the planet. If the fans of the NFF fall in love with you, youll be on a quick trajectory to blowing up your following.

When you combine this rabid fan base with someone like Jay Sweet, you have a combination that is  simply put  UNBEATABLE! When it comes to breaking an artist, reviving an artist career, or just reveling in the prowess of an artist at the pinnacle of their career, there is no better place youd want to be performing at. It is a no-lose situation when it comes to performing at this incredible festival.

When I started writing this article, I came away so jazzed about what I experienced that I actually took a break before publishing this piece, because I wanted to see if my feelings would have changed and I can say  THEY HAVE NOT.

Jay Sweet is one of those rarified promoters, on a very short list in our industry, that shoots straight. There is no BS with Jay. What you see and hear from him is what you get.

Somewhere throughout his career, hes learned to tell it exactly like it is.

In talking to many in our industry and that includes managers, agents, and most importantly the artists  the common theme weaved throughout all the conversations is TRUST. They trust Jay and they trust the fans at the Newport Folk Festival.

After attending the 60th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival in 2019 and interviewing and speaking with dozens of artists, every one of them says this is one of their favorites or most favorite places to perform, as well as partake in the camaraderie with their fellow peers and/or collaborate with them musically.

Gov. Gina Raimondo and Newport Folk Festival founder George Wein announce a lease extension for the event. Photo Credit: Marc Gentilella

NFF is one of the few festivals you will find artists of all calibers casually walking amongst their fans without being bothered or approached in a way that is nothing but respectful. And were not talking C and D listers here, we are talking about almost every artist.

The festival is a non-profit. In short, not only is NFF a music-first fantasy land but that the reason for all the frugality and egalitarian spirit is because Newports foundation gives the money away, supporting more than 100 different music programs, chosen by the artists themselves. (Editors note; In the pandemic, they also gave out emergency aid grants to over 400 artists who applied.)

In an essay on the now-notorious Woodstock 50 Festival, industry pundit and longtime CelebrityAccess contributor Bob Lefsetz noted:

As the Who once sang, this song is over, no one wants to sing it in the wide-open spaces, no one wants to sing it to the infinite sea. But the question is, are they searchin for a note, pure and easy, playing so free, like a breath rippling by?

Actually, they are, they call it Newport Folk, off the radar but legendary, and continuous.

A chorus of praise

But dont take it from Bob and me, see what Sweets colleagues have to say:

From Judy Collins Manager:

The Newport Folk Festival has brought to light the newest and most inspiring musical gems throughout its 60 year history. In 1967, Pete Seeger gave the task to Judy Collins to curate and put together an emerging artist stage. Collins found two of the most impactful artists of our musical history  Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell.

Jay Sweet has been continuing that tradition during his tenure at Newport Folk Festival with allowing artists like Brandi Carlile, Margo Price and many more an invitation to the worlds stage.

In early 2019, I started talking to Jay about how best to remind the historians of Judy Collins early role as curator and as a member of the Board of directors. We came up with the idea of joining the collaborative effort of the weekend and celebrating Collins illustrious career.

I couldnt think if a more perfect tribute than to have the song that has defined a generation and was inspired by Collins be performed at Newport. Chis Funk of The Decemberist put together a unbelievable line up of artists to perform Suite: Judy Blue Eyes  Robin Pecknold,

Jason Isbell, Eric D. Johnson (the Shins; Fruit Bats) for Suite: Judy Blue Eyes at Newport Folk Festival. Additionally, Collins was given the opportunity to recreate her original interpretation and duet of Pete Seegers Turn Turn Turn with Robin Pecknold.

As if this wasnt enough, the real icing on the cake was the Saturday evening All Female showcase that Brandi Carlile curated. Not only did Judy Collins have an opportunity to perform her signature song, Both Sides Now, with the magical Brandi Carlile, Brandi personally talked about Judys 1967 involvement and her continued advocacy of causes. These were the incredible lengths Jay

went to help clarify Judy Collins role in the development Newport Folk Festival.

Katherine DePaul, Manager

ARTIST VISION

www.artist.vision

Best, Katherine

-

From agent Jonathan Levine:

This year I had Kacey, Phil Lesh, The Milk Carton Kids, and Todd Snider. Last year I had Sturgill, Margo Price, The Lone Bellow, Colter Wall, and Tyler Childers.

We as an agency obviously had much more than that

JL

My quote:

Websters dictionary defines Indefatigable as: incapable of being tired out; not yielding to fatigue; untiring. Websters defines the word Passion as: a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything: ie, a passion for music.

Jay Sweet can best be described as the ultimate combination of both: Indefatigable and Passionate

Great seeing you again Marc,

Jonathan Levine

Paradigm Nashville



From Mark Cunningham Manager at Red Light Management

Manager of Brandi Carlile, The Highwomen, etc

I dont know many people in this business who put their heart, soul and every ounce of themselves into what they do quite like Jay does. His commitment to making everything feels special to the fans and artists is unrivaled.

Newport Folk Festival is a big deal to so many artists, because of the rich history the festival has and also the collaborative space it creates for the artists whenever they are on site. The fans are there for all the right reasons and their enthusiasm for what goes into every single show at Newport makes it one of the premiere festivals every year.

Mark Cunningham | Red Light Management



Newport Folk is so much more than a music festival, its a keeper of roots music history. The lineup is always stacked with the best acts, young and old, but the moments that are created extend far beyond just the band performances. Unique collaborations, amazing fan energy and an unforgettable location make this one of the highlights of the festival season. We had a memorable set in front of a packed house with a special appearance by the Preservation Hall horns. I was also lucky enough to take part in the closing set, playing the banjo part for Rainbow Connection while Kermit the Frog and Jim James sang together backed by an all-star band. It was truly one of the coolest collaborations I have ever been a part of! Newport Folk Festival is such a magical event, and the Stringdusters were so very honored to be a part of it again this year.

Chris Pandolfi

The Infamous Stringdsusters



Newport has always been on the right side of history in her opening of her Saturday set at the festival in 2019.

Brandi Carlile | The Highwomen

Please DONATE to the Newport Festivals Foundation

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BCC Upcoming Admissions Info Sessions

PITTSFIELD, Mass.  Berkshire Community College (BCC) invites prospective students to its next series of free Virtual General Information Sessions: Wednesday, Aug. 4 at 5 pm, Thursday, Aug. 19 at 12 pm, and Saturday, Aug. 21 at 12 pm.

The 30-minute info sessions, presented by admissions counselors on Zoom, are designed to familiarize prospective students with the application and registration process.

Virtual General Information Session participants can:

Ask questions about the admissions process: how to apply, register, and choose classes

Learn about BCC's affordability and its financial aid options

Hear from staff about quality programs and student support services

Discover how classes will transfer to hundreds of schools or prepare graduates for an immediate career

Nursing Virtual Information Sessions

In addition to general admissions information sessions, BCC also offers sessions for those interested in pursuing or continuing a nursing career. Upcoming sessions include:

Associates Degree in Nursing (ADN): Thursday, July 22 at 12 pm; Wednesday, Aug. 11 at 12 pm; and Wednesday, Aug. 11 at 5 pm

Educational Mobility (PN to AND): Thursday, July 22 at 1 pm; Wednesday, Aug. 11 at 1 pm; and Wednesday, Aug. 11 at 6 pm
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The Union of Journalists and Social Communication Technicians in Guinea Bissau (SINJOTECS) in collaboration with the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) under the UTU Project 2021 held a two  day workshop on climate change reporting from 15  16 July, 2021 in Bissau.

The workshop was aimed to enhance the capacities of journalists to report effectively on climate change and to have a better understanding of climate change and other environmental issues. Twenty journalists from various media houses in Bissau including the national radio, community radio stations as well newspapers and online media attended the workshop.

The workshop dilated on a wide range of climate change subject and reporting techniques that are crucial for every journalist who reports on climate change. Various climate change conventions and protocols were discussed including the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. In addition to the conventions and protocols, the workshop also discussed issues concerning climate change and its effect on human society and the role of journalists and the media in particular in raising awareness on the consequences of climate change and environmental protection.

SINJOTECS President, Indira Correia Balde, said that the workshop is very important to the union as it is in line with their social responsibility functions with regards to the civil conduct of journalists and their commitment in the preservation of nature. She further expressed It makes sense that journalists should be equipped with the required knowledge and skills to raise awareness on how to prevent or avoid major disasters by protecting the environment. With what we have seen in recent years concerning drought and flooding in certain areas it is now necessary that we mainstream climate change issues in all our activities.
Police have arrested three people in connection to an attack on Bahannor Alo correspondent Selim Shamrat, who was attacked while investigating an illegal land seizure on July 11. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemns the attack on the journalist and calls on police to ensure the investigation is followed through.

Shamrat was attacked when he went to investigate a land grabbing incident in the Barakhata area. Locals told the Daily Star that Shamrat was pushed to the ground and then was forcefully beaten. Shamrat said, At one point the land grabbers attacked me without any reason, pushed me to the ground, and started beating me mercilessly."

After the attack, local people rescued Shamrat while the attackers, Ali Reza Badal, Taijul Islam Mukut, and Taijuls son, Mirajul Islam Hridoy, fled the scene.

Shamrat said that both Badal and Mukut asked to see his identification card before they attacked him. An eyewitness to the attack, Mizanur Rahman, said the attackers are known for grabbing land illegally in the Barakhata area.

The officer-in-charge, Ershadul Alam, reported that police originally went to arrest the attackers in a raid but did not locate them. The three men were arrested on July 14 after being on the run for three days

The IFJ said: The protection of journalists must be made a priority in the Barakhata area where there is a noted history of land grabbing. Journalists reporting in the public interest need to be protected and justice is vital.
The Luxembourg Parliament approved on 8 July a new aid scheme that aims at fostering media pluralism and offers support to digital and emerging media, including subsidies to accredited journalists working in their newsroom. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) welcomes the reform and encourages other governments to follow its example.

The new plan provides for an annual grant of 30,000 euros per professional journalist working in the newsroom and an annual budget of 200,000 euros will be made available to support innovation.

The bill reforms a regime established in the 1970s, under which aid was calculated according to the number of printed pages. This meant that digital media were heavily discriminated against in recent years. With the new press aid scheme, the annual financial support is calculated according to the number of accredited journalists, a change benefiting both online and print media, but also media start-ups, and quality rather than quantity.

In addition, under the old regime, only media publishing in French, German and Luxembourgish were eligible for the support system. Now, any media in a language that concerns at least 15% of the country's population is eligible, which notably includes media publishing in English.

IFJ's affiliate, the Luxembourg Association of Journalists (ALJP), welcomed the adoption of the law but also expressed reservations about several flaws, especially the definition of "journalist". The union also regrets that it was not consulted during the debates surrounding the law.

IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: "We welcome the progressive reform of the Luxembourg press support scheme, which represents a real step forward for media pluralism and the emergence of digital newsrooms. However, we regret that the government didn't consult the ALJP, particularly on the bill's restrictive definition of journalists.
The days of endless Zoom calls and Slack notifications are about to be over for many American workers. Nearly 74 percent of businesses report they're bringing employees back to the office, according to a survey this month conducted by Chicago-based staffing and recruiting firm LaSalle Network. That's a 25 percent increase from the survey's findings in March.

Following the widespread availability of the Covid-19 vaccine and a return to social engagements, companies are next in line to return to normal. "People either socially or professionally are going out and living life normally with the vaccine," LaSalle's CEO Tom Gimbel told CNBC's Squawk Box July 15.

Many large companies are already returning to office life, or planning to do so soon. Goldman Sachs welcomed most of its workers back in June, and Citi is planning to reopen its offices in September. Facebook and Apple are looking at plans for at least a partial return in 2021. Google is planning a return to the office for most employees in the second half of 2021, despite reports from employees that productivity increased during last year's period of remote work.

While many workers prefer to work from home, Gimbel noted that employees with longer tenures are much more likely to want to return to the office. "We're actually seeing that employees that spend more than four years at the same company are more inclined to want to come back," he said. Newer employees, considered those who have worked at the company for less than three years, seem to prefer to work from home.

Considering bringing everyone back to your office soon? Gimbel advises making sure that employees know your motive for ending remote work. "Do you really care about the employees, or are you trying to bring back them back for an ulterior motive?" Gimbel said, in an interview with Inc. And if you are bringing them back for good reasons, he says, give them plenty of notice.

Also, don't throw employees into the deep end of in-office work. Ease the transition by asking them to come in two or three days a week at first.

Finally, make the office a place where people will want to return. If most workers shut themselves in their offices or cubicles and rarely socialize, a return to the office likely won't add much value.
Apple employees aren't ready for a return to normalcy.

In a letter delivered to company management on Monday, July 19, employees requested the option to continue working from home full-time after the tech giant welcomes workers back to the office this fall, Recode reports. Apple had previously told its employees they'll be able to work from home only twice a week.

The letter requests that Apple allow employees to work from home full-time for at least another year, pending the approval of their managers. It outlines potential arrangements for local employees who want to continue working remotely as well as for employees who have moved away from the company's Cupertino, California headquarters.

Apple CEO Tim Cook told employees in a June email that they should expect to come to the office in September. The company's leadership has traditionally preferred that employees work in the company's offices, given the collaborative and secretive nature of its hardware development. Prior to the pandemic, the company did not allow its employees to work from home at all.

"Video conference calling has narrowed the distance between us, to be sure, but there are things it simply cannot replicate," Cook wrote in the June email.

A group of 1,700 staffers sent a memo protesting the decision two days later. Apple vowed to hear employees' concerns, but two weeks later announced it wouldn't be changing the policy.

In Monday's memo, Apple employees expressed disappointment that their concerns hadn't been heard, writing that it was too early for some to come back to the office given the current state of the pandemic. They said that an informal survey of fellow employees found that 68 percent somewhat or strongly agreed that the company's new work-from-home rules would cause them to leave Apple.

Later on Monday, Apple pushed back the target date for its return to the office from September to October, citing a rise in Covid-19 cases across the country, according to Bloomberg.

Business owners across the country are grappling with similar decisions regarding their work-from-home policies. One recent survey found that nearly half of all workers would rather quit their jobs than lose their remote work flexibility.
Summer camps and schools are reopening, but life hasn't gotten easier for working parents. That's according to a new survey commissioned by Vivvi, a New York City-based child-care provider that lets companies offer daycare and preschool as an employee benefit.

The survey found that, despite a greater emphasis on flexible work during the pandemic, many parents are still struggling. Conducted in late spring by market research consultancy Wakefield Research, the survey polled 500 full-time employees at companies with staffs over 500 and who have children ages 5 and under.

While 80 percent of respondents said they received flexible working arrangements in the past six months, almost 40 percent of those parents said that greater flexibility led to working more hours. This can have serious effects on employee well-being, engagement, and turnover: 66 percent reported experiencing burnout, and 38 percent said they've considered looking for a different job or even leaving the workforce due to pandemic-related child-care challenges. This could pose a problem for businesses that are already having trouble finding and retaining qualified workers as they reopen.

That doesn't mean parents don't want more flexibility -- 94 percent said it would benefit them -- just that it's not enough as a stand-alone policy, according to the survey results. Complicating the situation, many caregivers don't feel comfortable raising the issue of child care with their employers, according to the survey. Sixty-six percent of respondents said they worried that speaking too much about their struggles would mark them as a "problem employee."
Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid has defended Prince Harry after it was announced the Duke of Sussex will release a tell-all memoir.

The book, to be released in 2022, has been described by its publisher as intimate and heartfelt.

Speaking on the ITV morning talk show GMB, Reid said: I dont think its unreasonable for Prince Harry to define the kind of privacy that he wants. Hes talked about how he found it really traumatic just constantly being covered by [paparazzi] and the experience that his mother had and the way that tabloid newspapers have covered him.

I think its a little disingenuous when people say, Oh well you wanted privacy and you went away and now youre doing a book, well, in their words he wants to tell his own truth. He wants to be in charge of his own story.

The as-yet-untitled book will be published by Random House. Proceeds from the memoir will be donated to charity.

The project is one of several that Harry has embarked on since stepping down from his duties as a major royal.

Earlier this year, Harry presented and produced the Apple TV+ series The Me You Cant See alongside Oprah Winfrey.

Speaking about his memoir, he said: Im writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become. Ive worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.

Im deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what Ive learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a first-hand account of my life thats accurate and wholly truthful.

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV from 6.00am.
Even for those of us who lived through the declining Britain of the late 1970s and early 1980s, its a struggle to recall the shameful state of what used to be called race relations. It feels like another country, a place both remote and unfamiliar. It was a place where, to put things at their simplest, Black lives did not matter, and, it was widely assumed, never would. But many still bear the scars from that time.

Steve McQueens new documentary series Uprising, broadcast over three evenings this week, is a moving, unblinking piece of storytelling from a brilliant director. It focuses on 1981, a year when race riots raged across cities in England. Those riots have now come to be rebranded as an uprising, and McQueen (best known for his award-winning 12 Years a Slave) shows just why that term is an apt one. The lawlessness of 1981 was no accident. We were two nations, and the juxtaposed video of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di in Uprising makes that point without labouring it.

The uprising began with a house fire at 439 New Cross Road on the morning of Sunday 18 January, where a large group had gathered for an all-night birthday party. The fire is believed to have been caused by a petrol bomb thrown from a passing car, following a series of firebomb attacks on the homes and community centres of Black and Asian people in London. Thirteen young Black people died in the New Cross Road blaze, and another survivor took his own life two years later.

The story of the fire is told through well-chosen archive footage from the time, some reconstruction, and the eyewitness accounts of survivors, which are filmed in a very sparse set, their testimonies to being almost burnt alive bringing those awful moments back life. Wayne Haynes, for example, was the DJ at the party. He talks about the extreme heat and his attempts to wipe sticky sweat from his face, only to realise it was his skin beginning to peel off. He leapt from a window, smashing his leg and hip in the process, but miraculously survived. Sandra Ruddock, leafing through her wedding album, tells of how she lost her new husband, Paul, in the fire. These stories are told with great vividness and sensitivity, and with no clumsily judgmental narrator.

For the Black community, it was yet another act of aggression made against them. The reaction from the wider white community seemed indifferent at best, despite witnesses claiming the fire was started deliberately. There was no public inquiry, no parliamentary debate, little media interest. As the slogan of the time went, 13 Dead, Nothing Said.

As Uprising shows, for years people of colour had not only faced personal abuse and teachers telling their kids they had no future, but also a string of institutionalised persecutions, political oppression and organised attacks. The far-right group the National Front frequently marched through areas where immigrant communities lived, waving union jack flags. But by the time of the Fronts march through Lewisham and New Cross in 1977, a new generation  the children of those whod arrived in the 1950s and 1960s  were ready to fight back, even if that included the police. To many, law officials were on the wrong side.

George Rhoden, a rare police interviewee, reflects during the documentary on how he felt at the time: conflicted at being called a traitor and having to protect the fascists. He also tells of seeing a fellow officer with an NF badge pinned on the inside of his coat. When he tested the signal on his police radio, he heard monkey noises in response.

The NF called for compulsory, humane repatriation, wording that only slightly differed from the Tories, whose policy was voluntary repatriation. Margaret Thatcher spoke of people being worried about their culture being swamped. Black British citizens were treated as temporary and second-class. But, as McQueens documentary highlights, how much has really changed?
Chinese government has hit back at the allegations of carrying a major cyber-attack against tech giant Microsoft labelling the claims groundless and demanding the US drops charges, while complaining that China itself has been a victim of cyber attacks from the US.

Calling the claims unwarranted, Chinas foreign ministry spokesperson has said on Tuesday that the allegations are smear and suppression with political motives.

The United States ganged up with its allies to make unwarranted accusations against Chinese cybersecurity, said the spokesman, Zhao Lijian at a regular press briefing in Beijing. This was made up out of thin air and confused right and wrong. It is purely a smear and suppression with political motives. China will never accept this.

Mr Zhao also accused the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of carrying out hacking attacks on Chinas aerospace research facilities, oil industry, internet companies and government agencies over an 11-year period, stating that these were the findings of Chinese cybersecurity research.

He said the attacks by the US severely compromised national and economic security of China.

China once again strongly demands that the United States and its allies stop cyber theft and attacks against China, stop throwing mud at China on cybersecurity issues and withdraw the so-called prosecution, he said. China will take necessary measures to firmly safeguard Chinas cybersecurity and interests.

The Chinese embassies in New Zealand and Australia also reiterated similar charges and called the hacking claimsgroundless.

The series of defensive statements from China comes after the statements from US authorities on Monday where the officials said the Chinese government-affiliated hackers targeted American and other victims in a cyber attack with demands for millions of dollars. The White House said it reserved the right to take additional action against China over its cyber activities.

US President Joe Biden told reporters that the Chinese government may not have been carrying out the attacks themselves, but were  protecting those who are doing it. And maybe even accommodating them being able to do it.

Also, on Monday, the US Department of Justice has also announced criminal charges against four Chinese nationals accused of being hackers who the prosecutors said worked with the MSS to target computers at companies, universities and government entities, as part of a long-term campaign targeting foreign governments and entities in key sectors in a least a dozen countries. They are accused of targeting trade secrets, scientific technologies and infectious-disease research.

The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, on Monday called that a reckless but familiar pattern of behavior.

Microsoft Corp also blamed Chinese spies for the Microsoft Exchange attack that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world.

The Microsoft hack affected at least 30,000 organisations globally where the MSS system powers the email chain.

Additional reporting by agencies
The number of excess deaths in India from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic till June this year could be 10 times the official toll, according to a new study.

Excess deaths from January last year till June 2021 could be between 3 million to 4.7 million, according to the study conducted by US-based nonprofit Centre for Global Development, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

Excess deaths measure the difference between the observed number of deaths in a specific time period and the expected number of deaths in the same time period. This means calculating how many more people died in a specific period of time than usual.

The studys researchers, including the Indian governments former chief economic adviser Arvind Subramanian, said estimating Covid deaths with statistical confidence may prove to be elusive, but all estimates suggest the death toll from the pandemic is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count of 400,000.

India has so far reported 414,482 deaths due to Covid-19. But experts have flagged concerns that both the number of coronavirus infections and fatalities in India are a massive undercount.

Not all excess deaths estimated by the study could have been caused by Covid-19, but the overall impact of the coronavirus pandemic can still be assessed with the help of the study.

Dr Jacob John, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College in southern India, told AP that the report underscores the devastating impact Covid-19 had on the countrys under-prepared health system.

This analysis reiterates the observations of other fearless investigative journalists that have highlighted the massive undercounting of deaths, he said.

The researchers also said the first wave in India seemed to have been more lethal than is popularly believed.

The authors of the study, including researchers at the Centre for Global Development and Harvard University, said mortality in the first wave appeared to be moderate because it was spread out over time and space, unlike the sudden and concentrated surge of the second wave.

They cited one of the estimates, suggesting up to two million may have died in the first wave. In fact, not grasping the scale of the tragedy in real-time in the first wave may have bred the collective complacency that led to the horrors of the second wave, they wrote.

The researchers said the true number of deaths during the Covid pandemic are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably Indias worst human tragedy since partition and independence.

Some Indian states have adjusted the number of their Covid-related deaths in recent months after finding fatalities which were not reported earlier.

The eastern Indian state of Bihar updated its official figures last month following an audit, increasing the number of reported deaths by 72 per cent.
A 16-year-old student appeared in court in Singapore on Tuesday charged with murdering a fellow teenager in a case which has rocked the normally safe country.

The victim, a 13-year-old, was killed at school after being allegedly attacked with an axe.

The suspect was a fellow student of River Valley High School. According to reports, he brought an axe to school.

The suspect, whose identity has not been revealed since he is a minor, was charged with murder on Tuesday. Police also sought a court order to remand the suspect for psychiatric assessment, reports said. The suspect and the victim did not know each other, according to the police.

The Straits Times reported that the police were alerted at about 11:40 am after which the officials arrived at the scene and found the 13-year-old student motionless with multiple wounds in a toilet.

The Singapore Civil Defence Force paramedic pronounced the teenager dead at the scene of the crime.

The Strait Times also reported that an axe was seized from the suspect as evidence.

The Shin Min Daily News also said some students saw someone holding an axe and standing by a drinking fountain to clean blood, saying: I just killed someone.

A parent  a 43-year-old man only identified by his second name Mr Huang  was quoted in The Straits Times saying that he received a text from his daughter at 11:50 am which said there was someone wielding an axe in the school, after which she sent a video of students running in the school compound.

Outside the school gate, at least four police vehicles, a crime scene investigation van and an ambulance were present around 1 pm, usually lunch hour at the school. Staff members told the media that students were asked to remain inside their classrooms and not venture out.

Chan Chun Sing, the Singapores education minister, said officials were working closely with the Singapore Police Force in investigating the incident.

We are all shocked to receive news of the tragic incident at River Valley High School this morning, he told the media, adding that the safety and well-being of students and staff were of paramount importance.

Authorities of the River Valley High School, where the incident took place, said they were deeply saddened by the loss of one of the students and that they will extend their fullest support to his family.

River Valley High School, a popular school in Singapore, marks its 65th year this year and was selected as a Special Assistance Plan school in 1979.

The Ministry of Education also said that the school has also reached out to students, parents and staff to provide counseling support and the necessary assistance to ensure their well-being.

It also said that in this hour of grief, we urge the public to accord his family privacy and respect.

The BBC quoted Singapores law and home affairs minister K Shanmugam as saying that preliminary investigations suggested the accused had bought the axe online.

We all grieve with the parents of the boy who was killed. Its difficult to even describe the true extent of their grief, he said.
At least three rockets landed near the presidential palace in Kabul on Tuesday shortly before Afghan president Ashraf Ghani was to deliver a speech marking the beginning of the Muslim holiday of Eid-a Adha.

Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesperson for the interior minister, said there were no injuries and that the rockets landed outside the palace grounds.

No one has come forward to take responsibility for the attack.

In a video of the incident aired on the Afghan TV channel TOLO News and widely circulated on social media, the sounds of the rockets landing near the heavily fortified presidential palace can be heard just as attendants begin to kneel down for prayers.

Though the footage shows some participants visibly panicked at the sound of the attack, most continue with the prayers as the sound of rockets exploding persists.

The palace is in the middle of a Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire and houses several embassies including the US mission. The streets near the palace have long been closed off.

The violence and instability in the country has been increasing since the US and NATO forces began their troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Taliban militants have seized dozens of districts as Afghan forces have largely retreated, and the group is now believed to control about a third of the country.
The monsoon-like downpour drenches a busy highway, causing tricky driving conditions for the stream of SUVs. Sudden waterfalls appear on the side of the road.

It would be a common sight in parts of Southeast Asia, but this is the United Arab Emirates, in the height of a summer heatwave which has seen temperatures regularly surpass 120F.

And according to the UAEs National Center of Meteorology, the precipitation was enhanced by cloud seeding operations to increase rainfall in the Gulf country.

On Sunday, the UAEs national weather service released video footage of the heavy downpours.

Its cloud seeding operations are part of an ongoing mission to generate precipitation in the Middle East country, which has an average rainfall of just four inches.

The cloud seeding operations work through manned aircraft firing chemicals such as silver iodide into the clouds in order to cause increased precipitation.

The National reported the heavy rainfall caused waterfalls to appear in the city of Al Ain and made driving conditions hazardous.

In an effort to curb the countrys sinking water table, the UAE invested $15 million in nine different rain-making projects in 2017.

To find out what others are saying and join the conversation scroll down for the comments section or click here for our most commented on articles

One system set to be trialled in the UAE uses drones to shoot electrical charge into the clouds to increase precipitation.

The project is being led by researchers at the University of Reading in England. Professor Maarten Ambaum, who worked on the project, told the BBC in March that the UAE has enough clouds to create conditions conducive to rain.

The project tries to get the water drops to merge and stick when they receive an electrical pulse, like dry hair to a comb.

When the drops merge and are big enough, they will fall as rain, Prof Ambaum told the BBC.

Applying electrical shocks to clouds is preferred as it doesnt require the use of chemicals.

The originally piece incorrectly referred to the use of a project from the University of Reading that used electrical currents to enhance rainfall.
Just weeks after the US election, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive members of the squad rallied outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters demanding Joe Biden embrace the Green New Deal.

We are all here today because of the movement ... because at the end of the day, dollars dont vote, people do, Representative Ocasio-Cortez said at the rally on 20 November.

During the election campaign, President Biden said that he would not pursue a Green New Deal, and instead laid out his own $2trillion plan for addressing the climate crisis.

But the presidents plan has drawn criticism from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party who say the proposals do not go far enough.

So what exactly is the Green New Deal? And how does President Bidens plan to tackle the climate crisis compare?
All remaining lockdown restrictions in England have eased, which means people are no longer being urged to work from home if they are able to.

But the lifting of the work-from-home order comes amid a heatwave, with temperatures soaring to 31.6C on the hottest day of the year on Sunday.

How hot does it need to be before workers should be sent home by their employers?

Heres everything you need to know:

The guidance on workplace temperatures

Employers have a legal obligation to ensure that the temperature in the workplace is reasonable, as outlined by the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992.

Not only do they have a responsibility to maintain a suitable temperature for their employees, but its also their duty to ensure that the air is clean and fresh.

Recommended Heatwave could prompt record UK temperatures as health warnings issued

While there isnt a maximum temperature for the workplace as laid out by the government, efforts have been made in the past to put one into place.

In 2006, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) released a briefing that highlighted the temperatures that it believes should be maintained in various workplaces as a matter of health and safety.

The TUC stated that it believes a maximum temperature of 30C should be set by employers, with a maximum of 27C put into place for those doing strenuous work.

The TUC added that employers should still aim to keep temperatures below 24C and note if employees express discomfort over the temperature.

The Chartered Institute of Building Services Engineers recommends a working temperature of 13C for those undertaking heavy work in factories; 16C for those doing light work in factories; 18C for those working in hospital wards and shops; and 20C for those working in offices and dining rooms.

The government has stated its recommended minimum temperatures for employees, with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) recommending a minimum temperature of 16C for workers and 13C for those carrying out manual work under its Approved Code of Practice.

Despite the fact that a maximum temperature in the workplace hasnt become legalised in the UK, there are measures that employees can utilise if theyre of the opinion that their workplace has become too hot to handle.

What to do if your workplace is too hot

The government recommends that employees speak to their bosses if the temperature in their workplace is uncomfortable.

According to the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS), employers should carry out a risk assessment for the health and safety of their workers in order to determine whether the workplace is a safe environment in which to work.

The HSE states that employers must take six factors into account when assessing whether their workplace is a safe.

These factors are: air temperature, radiant temperature, air velocity, humidity, what clothing they wear and the average rate at which they work.

The HSE has created a thermal comfort checklist, which it recommends employers ask employees to fill out in order to determine whether they're experiencing thermal discomfort.

Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Show all 20 1 /20 Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Don't eat too much protein Make sure youre not eating too much protein as this can actually heat your body up by boosting your metabolic rate, according to sleep expert Dave Gibson Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Freeze your sheets Put your bedding in the freezer for a couple of minutes (put it in a plastic bag first though). If you dont have much room in your fridge or freezer, even just your pillowcase or PJs will help Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Keep your windows closed in the day Contrary to popular belief, Gibson says we should keep windows closed during the day to keep the house cooler. Keep the curtains closed too Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Freezing fan Put a pan or bottles full of ice in front of a fan to cool the air Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Wet your bed clothes Sleep in cool, wet socks or even a damp T-shirt Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Excercise in the morning Exercise in the morning rather than evening to stop your body getting too hot Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Cold water bottle Fill a hot water bottle with iced water and place on the cooling points of your body: knees, ankles, wrists, neck, groin and elbows. You can also fill a hot water bottle with cool water, freeze it and take it to bed with you Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Hot food cools through sweating Eat spicy food, but at least three hours before bed - it can make you sweat which cools the body down Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Sleep apart Sleep in a separate bed from your partner - two bodies = twice the body heat Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Lukewarm showers Keep your evening shower tepid to lower your body temperature. Dont have a freezing cold one though, as your body will react to the sudden change in temperature by preserving heat Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Cold perfume Fill an empty perfume bottle with chilled water and keep it by your bedside, spray on your face, back of your neck, and back of your knees to cool down Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Sleep on the ground floor Sleep downstairs if you can as heat rises Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Stay sensibly hydrated Drink water regularly during the day, but not too much at night. About  pint before bed will be enough to keep you hydrated and prevent you from having to get up and go to the loo Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Switch off Turn off all electrical devices in the bedroom as these emit heat. Switch off sockets too Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Expose your feet Keep your feet cool, either by keeping them outside the covers or resting on an ice pack Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Cool down with aftersun Moisturise before bed with an aloe vera based aftersun cream, ideally kept in the fridge Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Strictly cotton pyjamas and sheets Use cotton pyjamas and thin, pure cotton sheets for your bed - high quality cotton is the ideal bedding material to sleep between to stay cool as its most breathable Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Head relief If you wake up in the night, rub a menthol stick on your forehead to help cool down, Dr Ramlakhan recommends Amazon Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Flannel in the fridge Place a wet flannel in the fridge for an hour or so before you go to bed, and rest this on your forehead as you drift off Getty Getting to sleep in a heatwave: Top tips Cool your wrists Rinse your wrists and feet with cold water before getting into bed Getty

If a worker ticks two or more of the "yes" options on the checklist, then they could be at risk of thermal discomfort.

In this case, employers may need to carry out a more detailed risk assessment of the workplace.

It is ultimately up to the employer to decide whether the circumstances arent suitable for work.

However, it also depends on what kind of environment you work in.

If working outdoors, its the employers responsibility to introduce rest breaks for their workers and encourage them to hydrate regularly.

Furthermore, for those who typically wear business clothes to work, adopting a more casual dress code could prove essential for the overall wellbeing of employees.

Here are some measures that employees can put into place to keep workplaces as cool as possible:

Insulate exposed pipes that can become hot.

Shade windows.

Move workstations away from areas that are exposed to the sun or frequently become hot.

Provide air conditioning or fans for employees.

Provide thermometers so that workers can keep an eye on the temperature.

Rotate workers if certain individuals are forced to cope with uncomfortable temperatures for prolonged periods of time.

For all the latest news on the UK weather, click here.
What are they up to?

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos made his maiden voyage into space on Tuesday, taking to the atmosphere aboard a Blue Origin rocket as part of a crew of four, an undertaking he hopes will beckon the dawning of the age of interstellar tourism.

The wealthiest man on Earth blasted off from Van Horn, Texas, in the company of his brother Mark, 18-year-old financiers son Oliver Daemen of the Netherlands and 82-year-old aviation pioneer Wally Funk, the latter two the youngest and oldest person to ever leave the planet respectively.

Their fully-automated New Shepard craft, which does not require trained personnel to operate, launched on the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, hitting an altitude of roughly 66 miles before making its return to terra firma, all inside of 10 minutes.

The launch followed 15 successful test missions by the company since 2015 and realises the dream of a lifetime for Mr Bezos, who hopes to make lucrative commercial flights a reality in the near future.

His exploits also come nine days after Sir Richard Bransons space travel venture Virgin Galactict took to the skies above New Mexico in its Unity craft (while most of us were glued to the the Euro 2020 final), reaching a height of 55 miles above ground, an achievement Mr Bezoss camp has rubbished by arguing it fell short of touching the true boundary of space, the Karman Line.

Mr Branson, a showman who has previously kite-surfed the English Channel and attempted to circle the world in a hot air balloon in the manner of Jules Vernes gentleman adventurer Phileas Fogg, denied he was trying to pip Mr Bezos at the post.

Meanwhile, Tesla boss and cryptocurrency influencer Elon Musk is continuing to develop projects of his own at SpaceX, tweeting regular updates about the progress of his latest Starship prototype, the SN16.

Mr Musk has ambitions to launch crewed missions to Mars as early as 2024 and currently has the field to himself, with no government agency or private competitor on course to challenge his goal of being the first to reach the Red Planet.

Equally unable to resist stealing Mr Bezoss thunder, SpaceX tweeted an image of the first static test of its new Starlink Heavy Booster (boasting three Raptor engines) in the early hours of Tuesday morning, while its patron was busy wishing his rival good luck.

How are they justifying their projects?

I know its going to change me and Im excited to find out how, Mr Bezos told CNN ahead of Tuesdays take-off.

We really believe this flight is safe - I had friends say to me, How about the second flight or the third flight, why do you have to go on the first flight? and the point is that we know the vehicles safe.

If the vehicle is not safe for me, its not safe for anyone. We have never raced. We have taken this one step at a time, were ready.

For Sir Richard, reaching outer space is less to do with personal growth or taking risks and primarily about expanding mans horizons.

I truly believe that space belongs to all of us, he said before the Unity launch, declaring that Virgin Galactic stands at the vanguard of a new commercial space industry, which is set to open space to humankind and change the world for good.

He added: Its one thing to have a dream of making space more accessible to all; its another for an incredible team to collectively turn that dream into reality.

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket sits on a spaceport launch pad near Van Horn, Texas (AP)

As part of a remarkable crew of mission specialists, Im honoured to help validate the journey our future astronauts will undertake and ensure we deliver the unique customer experience people expect from Virgin.

As for Mr Musk, he has described his motivation as lying in the prospect of our planet facing existential threats, telling a conference in Mexico in 2016 that the future for the human species amounts to staying on Earth and awaiting some eventual extinction event unless we establish new colonies elsewhere to increase our chances of survival.

We need to have a big permanently occupied base on the Moon, and then build a city on Mars and become a spacefaring civilisation, he told a Nasa conference this April.

We dont want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planetary species.

Why are we asking this now?

Planet Earth certainly feels under duress in summer 2021, with recent natural disasters like the heat dome boiling the Pacific Northwest, wildfires tearing through the California hills and floods engulfing continental Europe all placing renewed emphasis on the urgent need to address the climate emergency and the consequences of global heating before it is too late.

The coronavirus pandemic continues to rage across the world, with the Tokyo Olympics facing the threat of a last-minute cancellation just days before its opening ceremony as Japanese case numbers soar and the wisdom of Boris Johnsons Freedom Day undermined by the fact that he, his chancellor and his new health secretary all had to meet it in isolation.

Weve seen economic turmoil, violence in Washington, Northern Ireland, Gaza and South Africa, political authoritarianism thriving and racism erupting on social media as society gives the impression of becoming more bitter, fragmented and unequal with every passing day

Against the backdrop of these multiple crises of late capitalism, the efforts of the super-rich to ascend to the stars and leave our wearying struggles behind might remind you of the ennui and disillusionment of Watchmens Dr Manhattan relocating to the Moon in a panel from the celebrated graphic novel so often repurposed as a meme.

Their projects have been called everything from multi-billion dollar exercises in extreme narcissism to a jaw-dropping waste of money better spent on tackling the climate crisis or other serious problems of our moment like entrenched poverty.

Familiar criticisms of Amazons corporate tax record and questions over its treatment of its workforce are commonly cited among the derision, but Mr Bezos does at least deserve huge credit for putting aside $10bn of his personal fortune into the Bezos Earth Fund to help safeguard the environment.

Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addresses the media about the New Shepard rocket booster (Reuters)

When such opposition was put to him by CNN earlier this week, the network pointing out that many people think there are worthier uses for his investment than fanciful space travel, the e-commerce tycoon responded: Well, I say theyre largely right. We have to do both. We have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those.

And we always need to look to the future. Weve always done that as a species, as a civilisation. We have to do both.

If we can do that then well be building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there. And those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth, he said.

So, the real answer is: Yes, we have to do both.

Sir Richard Branson was even more forthright in defending his ambitions, telling US chat show host Stephen Colbert that the naysayers are not fully educated as to what space does for Earth.

Every single spaceship that we sent putting satellites up there, monitoring different things around the world, the degradation of rainforests, monitoring food distribution, even monitoring things like climate change, these things are essential for us back here on Earth.

We need more spaceships going up to space, we dont need less.
It is difficult to have anything but a great deal of admiration for someone who managed to annoy as diverse a group of people as did Thomas Hobbes (15881679).

Parliamentarians were annoyed by his claim that the kings right to rule is absolute, and monarchists by his suggestion that the root of this power is not divine but granted by the people. Hobbes annoyed mathematicians by insisting in the face of overwhelming criticism that he had squared the circle. He annoyed Descartes by offering profound objections to his views shortly before the publication of Meditations on First Philosophy. He annoyed at least one bishop with his position on free will and conducted a lifelong public and sometimes acrimonious debate with him on the subject. He annoyed the Church by arguing, among other things, that the king is in charge of the interpretation of scripture and atheists by taking the sacrament when he mistakenly thought he was about to die.

Proof that a lecturer had indulged in Hobbism, a byword for atheism, was grounds for dismissal during Hobbess lifetime. The possibility that Hobbes had annoyed even God was, for a time, seriously entertained. Following the Great Fire and the Great Plague, parliament wondered whether Hobbess writings had provoked Gods retribution and were somehow responsible for Londons disasters. A committee was set up which eventually demanded that Hobbes stop publishing.
Amnesty International has released a toolkit to help people find out if their phone was secretly monitored by Pegasus, the military-grade spyware that targeted human rights activists, journalists, and lawyers around the world.

The software scans devices for the small clues that are left behind if a phone is infected by the Pegasus spyware.

A leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers was obtained by journalism non-profit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty before being shared with the media.

The spyware, built by Israeli firm NSO Group, can be used to record calls, copy and send messages or even film people via phone cameras. The spyware can and has been used to target both Apple iOS and Android devices.

NSO Group denied false claims made in the report, as did the governments of Hungary, Morocco, India, and Rwanda that have allegedly used the technology.

Early versions of the software required targets to click malicious links, giving unauthorised persons access to the victims private data, including passwords, calls, texts and emails, but experts believe the software has advanced so that targets do not have to click any link to have the spyware installed.

Amnestys researcher toolkit, the Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT), works on both iOS and Android devices to help users find out if they have been targeted. It uses a device backup and searches it for any indicators of compromise that would be used to deliver Pegasus, such as domain names used in NSO Group infrastructure.

If an iPhone backup is encrypted, the MVT can be used to decrypt it without having to make another copy.

The toolkit works using the command line, requiring basic knowledge on how to navigate the terminal. TechCrunch said it took approximately 10 minutes to have the tool operational.

When it is started, the toolkit scans a backup of the phone for any evidence that it has been hacked. It takes a minute or two to do so, and creates a number of files that show the results of the scan  if the phone is potentially compromised, those files will say so.

While NSO Group has denied the report, Amnesty International Security Lab said its forensic analyses found results that were consistent with past analyses of journalists targeted through NSOs spyware, including the dozens of journalists allegedly hacked in the UAE and Saudi Arabia and identified by Citizen Lab in December of last year.

Claudio Guarnieri, director of Amnesty Internationals Security Lab, said: There are a bunch of different pieces, essentially, and they all fit together very well. Theres no doubt in my mind that what were looking at is Pegasus because the characteristics are very distinct and all of the traces that we see confirm each other.
Jeff Bezos has thanked Amazon employees and customers for paying for his trip to space.

The Amazon founder has faced sustained criticism for amassing the biggest fortune the world has ever seen, while employees of his company complain they are subject to harsh working practises and low pay.

In a press conference after the launch, Mr Bezos thanked those staff for helping him amass enough money that he was able to shoot himself to space in a rocket.

I want to thank every Amazon employee, and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all this, he said to laughs from the crowd.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart very much. Its very appreciated.

The thanks led to outrage on Twitter, where politicians and other commentators argued that the comment showed Mr Bezos should be paying more taxes.

He also thanked the town of Van Horn, in west Texas, where Blue Origin has made its home, as well as the members of the team who helped send him to space.

During the same press conference, Mr Bezos said that he was launching a new Courage and Civility Award, through which he would give away $100 million to select people to distribute to their chosen nonprofits. The first two awards would go to two celebrities who did not give exact indications of how that money would be spent.

Both comments came hours after Mr Bezos took part in the first ever human flight by Blue Origin, the private space company he founded.

The billionaire blasted off in the sub-orbital New Shepard rocket from Texas on Tuesday, the 52nd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Minutes later he emerged safely from the capsule after it landed softly on the ground, slowed down by three huge parachutes.

He took off with his brother Mark, female astronaut Wally Funk, 82, who trained in 1961 but never went to space, and the companys first customer, Dutch 18-year-old Oliver Daemen.

Ms Funk and Mr Daemen are the oldest and youngest people to fly into space respectively.

She took on board a postcard of herself standing in front of the American flag, having promised to take a picture with it and Earth in the background.

The crew members also took a number of historic items with them, including the goggles Amelia Earhart used to fly across the Atlantic and a brass medal made from the first hot air balloon which flew in 1783  the first time humans left Earth in control of flight.

The crew also carried a piece of canvas from the Wright Flyer - the plane flown by the Wright brothers.

During a post-flight press conference Jeff Bezos presented his mother with a feather necklace he wore on the flight.

Additional reporting by agencies
Military-grade spyware Pegasus, used to infiltrate the smartphones of at least 40 journalists in India, has been around since at least 2016 and is one of the most sophisticated hacking tools capable of extracting information from mobile devices.

Built by Israeli firm NSO Group, also known as Q Cyber Technologies, the spyware can be used to record calls, copy and send messages or even film people via phone cameras. The spyware can and has been used to target both Apple iOS and Android devices.

Early versions of using Pegasus required targets to click on malicious links sent to lure them, causing the software to be quietly installed on their smartphones and enabling the monitoring of their private data, including passwords, calls, texts and emails.

The spyware has the potential to turn smartphones into 24-hour surveillance devices. This is helped in part by the ability of the spyware to evade most forensic analysis, avoid detection by antivirus software and be deactivated or removed by its operators inconspicuously.

Once installed, experts say, Pegasus links devices to what are known as Command and Control Servers (C2s) that are computers or domains used to send and receive commands and data to those devices.

Pegasus is designed to use minimal bandwidth consumption, to evade suspicion, by sending regular, scheduled updates to C2s.

The C2s domains can therefore be used to confirm a Pegasus hack, by correlating the likely timeline of when a device may have been infected with the time stamps for different data on linked C2 servers.

For instance, one such forensic method used by Amnesty International is based on temporal correlation between the first appearance of data in logs and phones communication with known Pegasus installation servers.

Experts, including those from The Citizen Lab, an interdisciplinary laboratory based in the University of Toronto, point to concerns over current versions of Pegasus that are more advanced.

The spyware now uses what are known as zero-click exploits or attacks, that do not require potential victims to click on any secretive and exploitative links to activate it.

These zero-click attacks are used by exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities or bugs in the operating systems of devices that have not been fixed yet.

In December last year, researchers, including Bill Marczak from the lab, noted in a report that government operatives used this advanced version of the spyware to hack into 36 personal phones of journalists, producers, anchors, and executives at news network Al Jazeera.

They pointed out one such zero-click exploit on the iMessage app that was used against iOS 13.5.1 to hack Apples then-latest iPhone 11.

Marczac noted in a tweet on Sunday that the latest iPhones may be vulnerable to such zero-click attacks as well, adding that there could be a MAJOR blinking red five-alarm-fire problem with iMessage security.

To identify Apple devices exploited by Pegasus, Amnesty International analysed records of process executions and their respective network usage in DataUsage.sqlite and netusage.sqlite, two database files stored in iOS devices.

While the former can be found on the iTunes app backup folder, the latter cannot, according to the organisation.

Amnesty Internationals forensic analysis found the devices that communicated with Pegasus C2 domains contained records of a suspicious process linked to browser exploitation that prepares for its infection with the full Pegasus suite.

Amnesty has named 45 such suspicious processes in their draft report, with 28 of those being common with another draft report independently published by The Citizen Lab.

Hackers can even go to several lengths to socially engineer targets and subsequently install vulnerabilities in their devices.

In one such incident, the wife of a murdered Mexican journalist was sent alarming text messages about her husbands murder to trick her into clicking on a link and infect her phone with Pegasus.

Another version of the spyware targeted 1,400 phones via a software vulnerability that was exploited through a missed voice call on WhatsApp.

The Facebook-owned social media company said it identified and fixed the bug soon after.

Experts warn that not all vectors and methods used to infect devices with the spyware are publicly known, fueling concerns of an increasing cyber arms race.

We believe that remedying this problem will not be easy or simple. It will require a coalition of stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, and civil society to reign in what is now a wild west of unmitigated abuse, the report by The Citizen Lab noted.

Experts have warned that the NSO Group  who sells Pegasus only to governments  and other companies are equipping authoritarian governments with powerful tools holding politicians and administrators accountable.

Not acting urgently on this critical public emergency threatens liberal democracy and human rights worldwide, they noted.
A nation was tossing and turning in unison last night, sweating into their bedsheets as the British Isles sizzled in the highest heat of the summer.

With the heatwave set to continue, the Met Office has now slapped parts of the country with its first ever extreme heat warning. So, if youre struggling to focus thanks to distinct lack of shut-eye, know that you are not alone.

Heres how to survive a working day if your night didnt really work at all

Simplify your tasks

Most weeks contain days that are busy, and days that are less so, and today belongs firmly in the latter camp. Try to shift non-essential commitments to later in the week, and streamline your day to centre around the things you absolutely have to do. Theres nothing wrong with a bit of calculated procrastination when youre sleep-deprived. Just rebrand it as good time management.

Take advantage of your energy

Your energy levels will ebb and flow during the day (mostly ebb, probably), so when you are feeling functional, its important to cash in. It may seem counter-intuitive but after a bad night, youre usually most productive in the morning, so try and frontload any difficult tasks.

Known and feared in workplaces across the land, the post-lunch dip strikes with unerring precision at two or three oclock most days, and after a sleepless night, its a foe to be reckoned with.

Have a power nap

The mid-work nap has been creeping into corporate cultures for some time. In Japan it even has a name, inemuri (sleeping while present), and sporadic snoozing at your desk can be seen as a sign of diligence. Google also famously installed sci-fi-looking sleep pods into several of its European offices, allowing exhausted employees to steal some zeds during their down time.

Theres no better time to jump on the bandwagon. If your eyelids get unmanageably heavy, a lunch break power nap could pep you up perfectly for the remainder of the day.

Dont have too much sugar

A brief energy spike now, in return for an epic, last-days-of-Rome-style crash around mid-afternoon. Slow and steady wins the race.

Coffee and water are your friends

All things in moderation, and doubly so for caffeine, which can turn you into a jittery wreck if you have too much, but especially if you dont drink much coffee, often a double-shot latte can be just the ticket for surviving a sleepy spot.

More generally, its important to drink plenty of water. Fatigue is one of the key symptoms of dehydration, and not getting the requisite litres could be the final nail in your productivitys coffin.

Take breaks through the day

We know outside is currently hotter than the seventh circle of Hell but smattering five-minute strolls through your day will help you stay focused, whatever the weather. Air and light exercise has a rejuvenating effect on almost everyone, and can be as restorative mentally as physically.

Just beware how breaks can snowball. One moment its, Oh Ill just check this clip a friend sent me, the next its three in the afternoon, you still havent had lunch, and youve just spent two hours watching cat videos.

Have a light lunch

We all know the feeling of ambling home after a nice dinner, already fatigued from the digestive effort of processing your massive meal. Eating a lot makes you drowsy. It is not the day for that.

Dont panic

Heat or no heat, randomly not sleeping and having a rubbish day happens to people absolutely all the time. Its not pleasant, but you can at least enjoy complaining about it in the pub after work.
A woman has gone viral after sharing a video to TikTok of the moment a coworker pointed out that she had been complaining while her microphone was still on during a Zoom call.

Alexandra Ceberio, 24, from Long Island, New York, who goes by the username @alllyvert on TikTok, shared the video to TikTok last week, along with the caption: Second day of work things.

In the clip, which took place during her second day at a new sales job, according to BuzzFeed, Ceberio was filming her outfit for her friends, and complaining that none of her coworkers had turned their cameras on for the virtual meeting, when she was informed that she could be heard.

My work from home fit today, some f***ing bullshit, because I got ready and everyone has their cameras off, Ceberio could be heard saying in the video as she showed off her outfit. So I got this frizzy a** gym hair from yesterday, this shirt is from

However, as Ceberio shared details of her outfit, she was then interrupted by a coworker, who informed her via Zoom: Hey guys, I can hear you, just so youre aware.

The clip then captured Ceberios reaction to the realisation, with the TikTok user seen frozen on the screen as she registers what happened before whispering: He can hear me and covering her mouth.

The video, which Ceberio uploaded to TikTok, has since accumulated more than 493,000 views, with hundreds of people amused by the work mistake.

Haha I would quit immediately, one person commented, while another wrote: I would have logged off and never looked back.

Someone else added: This is my biggest fear.

However, while embarrassing, Ceberio told BuzzFeed that the video, taken while she was on a break during Zoom training and trying to film a Snapchat for her friends, could have been worse, as her boss wasnt on the call.

Luckily my boss or anyone important wasnt on it, but it was still so embarrassing, she said, adding: After the video ended I muted myself, and literally tried to change my voice for the rest of the call. I did not speak unless I was spoken to.
The corruption trial of former South African President Jacob Zuma resumed Monday, more than a week after his imprisonment for contempt of court in a separate case set off rioting in parts of the country.

Zuma is accused of receiving bribes from the French arms manufacturer Thales related to the countrys controversial 1999 arms procurement contracts. The trial is taking place virtually, but Zumas lawyers may seek to postpone the proceedings so he can appear physically in court.

The former president's imprisonment earlier this month triggered protests that escalated into widespread unrest in KwaZulu-Natal Zuma's home province, and in Gauteng the province that includes Johannesburg South Africa's largest city. Zuma's supporters forced the closure of strategic highways and rioters ransacked malls and shopping centers in poor areas. In KwaZulu-Natal warehouses and factories were looted and then burned by arsonists.

At least 212 people died in the rioting, many of them crushed during chaotic rampages in shops. More than 2,500 people have been arrested for theft and vandalism. Order was restored following the deployment of 2,500 army troops to assist police.

At the time he is alleged to have received the bribes through his former financial advisor, Schabir Shaik, Zuma was a high-ranking official in the ruling African National Congress party and a provincial minister in KwaZulu-Natal

Shaik was convicted on related charges in 2005, sentenced to prison and later released on medical parole.

Zumas lawyers are expected to press his application for the lead prosecutor in the case, Billy Downer, to recuse himself from the states legal team. Zuma's lawyers have argued that Downer is biased against Zuma.

The corruption case is different from Zuma's contempt of court conviction. Zuma had defied court orders to testify before a state inquest into allegations of corruption during his 2009-2018 presidency. The judicial inquest has heard damning testimony of widespread corruption during Zuma's administration.

The Constitutional Court is considering his request to have his 15-month contempt of court sentence rescinded. Zuma's lawyers have argued that the nation's apex court made errors when convicting and sentencing him.

Assessing the damage done to South Africa's economy by the unrest, President Cyril Ramaphosa said Monday that the nation has already begun recovering from the violence.

But we are not only rebuilding our country after the destruction of the past week; we are rebuilding after the devastation of decades of dispossession and exploitation, Ramaphosa wrote in his weekly letter to the nation.

We need to fundamentally transform our economy and our society, deepening our efforts to create employment, lift millions out of poverty and ensure that the countrys wealth is shared among all its people, he said. The events of the last week are a stark reminder of how deep the problems are and how far we still have to go. These events must propel us to act with greater purpose and speed.

Ramaphosa also reiterated that the violence was not spontaneous but allegedly planned.

Those who lit the tinderbox of this unrest hoped to mobilize our people by exploiting their conditions of hardship. They were counting on citizens falling for crude propaganda designed to turn them not just against the state, but against each other, the South African leader said. What they were not counting on was the enduring ability of South Africans to unite in the face of a common threat.
OPEC and allied nations Sunday agreed to raise the production limits imposed on five countries, ending an earlier dispute sparked by the United Arab Emirates that roiled global energy prices.

The disagreement, sparked by a demand by the UAE to increase its own production, temporarily upended an earlier meeting of the cartel. In a statement Sunday, the cartel announced that Iraq, Kuwait, Russia Saudi Arabia and the UAE would see their limits rise.

What bonds us together is way beyond what you imagine, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said. We differ here and there but we bond.

Prince Abdulaziz declined to elaborate on how they came to that consensus, saying it would see the cartel lose our advantage of being mysterious and clever. But he clearly bristled at earlier reports on the dispute between Saudi Arabia, long the heavyweight of the Vienna-based cartel, and the UAE.

Prince Abdulaziz deferred at the beginning of a news conference afterward to al-Mazrouei in a sign of respect.

The UAE is committed to this group and will always work with it and within this group to do our best to achieve the market balance and help everyone, al-Mazrouei said.

Oil prices collapsed amid the coronavirus pandemic as demand for jet fuel and gasoline dropped amid lockdowns across the globe, briefly seeing oil futures trade in the negatives. Demand since has rebounded as vaccines, while still distributed unequally across the globe, reach arms in major world economies.

Benchmark Brent crude oil traded around $73 a barrel Friday.
Smoke and heat from a massive wildfire in southeastern Oregon are creating giant fire clouds over the blaze  dangerous columns of smoke and ash that can reach up to 6 miles (10 kilometers) in the sky and are visible from more than 100 miles (160 kilometers) away.

Authorities have put these clouds at the top of the list of the extreme fire behavior they are seeing on the Bootleg Fire, the largest wildfire burning in the U.S. The inferno grew Friday to about 75 square miles (194 square kilometers) larger than the size of New York City and was raging through a part of the U.S. West that is enduring a historic drought.

The fire was so dangerous late Thursday and into Friday that authorities pulled out crews. Meteorologists this week also spotted a bigger, more extreme form of fire clouds  ones that can create their own weather, including fire tornadoes."

Extreme fire behavior, including the formation of more fire clouds, was expected to persist Friday and worsen into the weekend.

WHAT ARE FIRE CLOUDS?

Pyrocumulus clouds  literally translated as fire clouds"  look like giant, dirty-colored thunderheads that sit atop a massive column of smoke coming up from a wildfire. Often the top of the smoke column flattens out to take the shape of an anvil.

In Oregon, fire authorities say the clouds are forming between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. each day as the sun penetrates the smoke layer and heats the ground below, creating an updraft of hot air. On this fire, crews are seeing the biggest and most dangerous clouds over a section of wilderness that's made up mostly of dead trees, which burn instantly and with a lot of heat.

For four days in a row, the Bootleg Fire has generated multiple fire clouds that rise nearly 6 miles (10 kilometers) into the atmosphere and are easily visible from 100 to 120 air miles away (160 to 193 kilometers), authorities said Friday.

The conditions that create the clouds were expected to worsen over the weekend.

WHAT'S THE SCIENCE BEHIND THESE CLOUDS?

When air over the fire becomes super-heated, it rises in a large column. As the air with more moisture rises, it rushes up the smoke column into the atmosphere, and the moisture condenses into droplets. That's what creates the fire clouds that look much like the thunderheads seen before a big thunderstorm.

These clouds, however, hold more than just water. Ash and particles from the fire also get swept into them, giving them a dark gray, ominous look.

IS THERE SOMETHING EVEN MORE DANGEROUS THAN A FIRE CLOUD?

Yes. When a pyrocumulus cloud forms over a fire, meteorologists begin to watch carefully for its big brother, the pyrocumulonimbus cloud.

NASA has called the latter the fire-breathing dragon of clouds because they are so hot and big that they create their own weather.

In a worst-case scenario, fire crews on the ground could see one of the monster clouds spawn a fire tornado," generate its own dry lightning and create dangerous hot winds below. They can also send particulate matter from the smoke column up to 10 miles (16 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

So far, most of the clouds on the Bootleg Fire have been the less-intense fire clouds, but the National Weather Service on Wednesday spotted a pyrocumulonimbus cloud forming on what it called terrifying satellite imagery.

Please send positive thoughts and well wishes to the firefighters. ... Its a tough time for them right now, the weather service said in a tweet.

HOW DANGEROUS ARE THESE CLOUDS?

Both types of fire clouds pose serious risks for firefighters.

Multiple pyrocumulus clouds have been spotted for four consecutive days, and one of them on the southern flank of the fire partially collapsed Thursday, causing dangerous winds and embers to fall on crews.

That prompted the emergency evacuation of all firefighters and dirt-moving equipment from that part of the fire line. Authorities say there have been no reported injuries.

Were expecting those exact same conditions to develop today and even worsen into the weekend, fire spokeswoman Holly Krake said Friday.

WHERE ELSE HAVE THESE CLOUDS FORMED?

These types of fire-induced clouds are becoming more common as climate change lengthens and intensifies the wildfire season across the U.S. West and in other places, including Australia.

A wildfire in British Columbia last month that leveled an entire town also generated a pyrocumulonimbus cloud.

Blazes in California in 2020 and in the years before have created multiple pyrocumulus clouds, with the Creek Fire in the Fresno area generating a mighty pyrocumulonimbus cloud last fall.

Australia's bush fire siege in January 2020 also produced pyrocumulonimbus clouds that threatened to produce a fire tornado.

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Follow Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus.
The chairman of Channel 4 has warned Boris Johnsons government not to go down the high-risk and damaging path of privatising the broadcaster.

In a letter to culture secretary Oliver Dowden, Charles Gurassa said the government risks sleepwalking into the irreversible and risky sale of an important, successful and much-loved British institution.

The government is consulting on plans to privatise Channel 4  saying last month that moving the broadcaster into private ownership could ensure its future success.

Mr Gurassa wrote to Mr Dowden: We look forward to engaging in a constructive dialogue with you  However, we are deeply concerned with the unsubstantiated assertion that a sale of Channel 4 is in the national interest.

He added: Without a transparent assessment of the implications of such a decision, the government is in danger of sleepwalking into the irreversible and risky sale of an important, successful and much-loved British institution.

The channel, which was founded in 1982 to deliver to under-served audiences, is owned by the government and also receives funding from advertising.

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) said the decision to review Channel 4s ownership structure had been taken because the changing media landscape posed a serious threat to traditional broadcasters.

In his letter, Mr Gurassa trumpeted the channels financial health and said it has a clear plan moving forward.

The board said it shares the governments ambition for the channel since the organisation thrives on change ... sticking with the status quo is not the modus operandi of Channel 4, and never has been.

The letter touted the board members experience in the private sector  but questioned if that was the best environment for Channel 4. It is thriving without any taxpayer support and in addition is delivering a unique range of public obligations and broader economic benefits, it said.

The letter also states: We have serious concerns that the consequences will be very harmful, both to the UKs creative economy and to the choice and breadth of distinctive British-made content available to UK audiences.

And Mr Gurassa wrote: Channel 4 is not an inefficient state-owned monopoly, but an agile, innovative challenger with a public purpose at its heart. It is efficient, well run, and on a sure footing to tackle the future challenges facing the sector.

A government source said: The Channel 4 model is facing increasing pressure from competition for viewers from high-spending streaming giants and growing pressure on the advertising revenue on which it solely depends.

Were looking at reform to protect Channel 4s long-term future so it can continue serving audiences with great public service content for decades to come.
 Close Boris Johnson calls The Telegraph his real boss, claims Dominic Cummings

No-one on Earth knows whether Brexit was a good idea for Britain, the driving force behind the Vote Leave campaign has admitted.

Dominic Cummings, who went on to mastermind Boris Johnsons election victory on a get Brexit done platform, said that he personally regards EU withdrawal as a good thing but admitted it could have been a mistake.

The former top aide revealed his thoughts on the EU referendum in an explosive interview by the PMs former top adviser with the BBCs political editor Laura Kuenssberg, which aired on BBC Two at 7pm this evening.

He also said he discussed removing the prime minister from his role only weeks after the 2019 election and revealed lockdown-sceptic WhatsApp messages sent to him by Mr Johnson last autumn. The messages resembled ideas in a fringe anti-lockdown opinion piece published in the Telegraph newspaper a few days earlier.

All the claims revealed in leaked messages were made virtually word-for-word in a comment piece published just a few days before in the 11 October edition of the newspaper  which until recently paid Mr Johnson 275,000 a year.

Critics have accused the prime minister of believing everything he reads in the paper.
The unveiling of long-awaited government plans to overhaul the social care service has been delayed until the autumn, after Boris Johnson failed to reach agreement with key ministers ahead of parliaments summer recess.

The prime minister, chancellor Rishi Sunak and health secretary Sajid Javid are known to be close to agreement on a scheme for funding care for elderly people, thought to involve a controversial hike in national insurance payments by working-age people which was branded inequitable by experts.

The plan was due to be announced this week, to spare Mr Johnson the embarrassment of the two-year anniversary since he arrived in No 10 claiming to have a worked-up solution to the care crisis.

But the requirement for all three to go into self-isolation after Javid tested positive for coronavirus has prevented them getting a decision over the line.

Labour social care spokesperson Liz Kendall said: After more than a decade in power  and two years after the prime minister made a clear promise on the steps of Downing Street, we are still no closer to seeing a plan to fix the crisis in social care.

Every day the government delays their plans for fixing the crisis in social care is another day that staff dont get the pay and training they deserve, another day that thousands of people go without the basic help they need, to do things like get up, washed, dressed and fed, and another day that families are pushed to breaking point.

Ministers must now put in place a 10-year plan for investment and reform that puts social care on a sustainable footing, and provides all older and disabled people with the dignity and security they deserve.

Downing Street refused to comment on speculation that the ministers are on the verge of agreeing a hike of one percentage point in national insurance contributions, which was widely attacked as unfair on younger workers.

Ministers appear to be backing away from a new tax on all over-40s, including pensioners, in favour of increasing national insurance in breach of a Conservative manifesto pledge not to hike rates of the three main taxes paid by individuals.

Following an intense battle between Mr Johnson and the chancellor, the pair are now understood to be close to agreement, but insiders said further face-to-face meetings would have helped seal it.

Low-income think tank the Resolution Foundation condemned national insurance contributions (NIC) as a terrible way to raise the funds required  a criticism echoed by both senior Tory and Labour politicians.

Whilst I welcome the governments focus on fixing social care, this is an unfair way of doing it, tweeted Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and a former Labour health secretary.

NI is a regressive tax paid by working-age adults. How can it be right to ask a generation already saddled with university fees and high housing costs to pick up the whole tab?

Gavin Barwell, Theresa Mays former chief of staff, said the government was right to push up taxes to fix social care but wrong to pick national insurance.

UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 20 July 2021 People during morning prayer during Eid ul-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, in Southall Park, Uxbridge, London PA UK news in pictures 19 July 2021 Commuters, some not wearing facemasks, at Westminster Underground station, at 08:38 in London after the final legal Coronavirus restrictions were lifted in England PA UK news in pictures 18 July 2021 A view of spectators by the 2nd green during day four of The Open at The Royal St George's Golf Club in Sandwich, Kent PA UK news in pictures 17 July 2021 Cyclists ride over the Hammersmith Bridge in London. 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Reuters UK news in pictures 22 June 2021 Actor Isaac Hampstead Wright sits on the newly unveiled Game of Throne's "Iron Throne" statue, in Leicester Square, in London, Tuesday, June 22, 2021. The statue is the tenth to join the trail and commemorates 10 years since the TV show first aired, as well as in anticipation for HBO's release of House of the Dragon set to be released in 2022 AP UK news in pictures 21 June 2021 Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon receives her second dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 20 June 2021 Joyce Paton, from Peterhead, on one of the remaining snow patches on Meall aBhuiridh in Glencoe during the Midsummer Ski. The event, organised by the Glencoe Mountain Resort, is held every year on the weekend closest to the Summer Solstice PA UK news in pictures 19 June 2021 England appeal LBW during day four of their Womens International Test match against India at the Bristol County Ground PA UK news in pictures 18 June 2021 Scotland fans let off flares in Leicester Square after Scotland's Euro 2020 match against England ended in a 0-0 draw Getty UK news in pictures 17 June 2021 Members of the Tootsie Rollers jazz band pose on the third day of the Royal Ascot horse racing meet AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 16 June 2021 A woman and child examine life-size sculptures of a herd of Asian elephants set up by the Elephant Family and The Real Elephant Collective to help educate the public on the elephants and the ways in which humans can better protect the planets biodiversity, in Green Park, central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 15 June 2021 Hydrotherapists with Dixie, a seven-year-old Dachshund who is being treated for back problems common with the breed, in the hydrotherapy pool during a facility at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home's in Battersea, London, to view their new hydrotherapy centre PA UK news in pictures 14 June 2021 Scotland's David Marshall in the net after Czech Republic's Patrik Schick scored their second goal at Hampden Park Reuters UK news in pictures 13 June 2021 Raheem Sterling celebrates with Harry Kane after scoring Englands first goal of the Euro 2021 tournament in a match against Croatia at Wembley Reuters UK news in pictures 12 June 2021 Oxfam campaigners wearing costumes depicting G7 leaders pose for photographers on Swanpool Beach near Falmouth, Cornwall EPA UK news in pictures 11 June 2021 Members of the Vaxinol team, who are commercial, industrial and residential cleaners specialising in disinfection and decontamination, use electrostatic spray systems to deep clean the Only Fools Bar in Liverpool PA UK news in pictures 10 June 2021 A woman walks her dogs as the incoming tide begins to wash away the heads of G7 leaders drawn in the sand by activists on the beach at Newquay, Cornwall AP 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

The tax, which is not paid by anyone receiving the state pension is regressive, he said, adding: Why should older people with good incomes not contribute?

And Torsten Bell, the Resolution Foundations chief executive, said: Its a tax disproportionately loaded on to younger and lower-paid workers, compared to a fairer rise in income tax.

Why we would target a tax rise on the groups who have been hardest hit by the economic impact of this pandemic, while exempting older and wealthy individuals, is completely beyond me.

Increasing national insurance by one percentage point  for both employers and employees  would raise 10bn a year and would probably be dubbed a new health and social care levy.

Initially, it would be used to cut alarming NHS waiting lists for treatment, which are feared could rise from 5.3 million to 13 million patients.

It would then be spent to cap care costs, along the lines of a decade-old proposal to limit costs to 50,000 so families do not end up selling their homes, and plug growing gaps in care treatment.

Paul Johnson, head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said: Funding social care just from national insurance would be very inequitable.

It would be a continuation of a long-term policy of hitting those of working age while protecting pensioners even for something designed to benefit people well over pension age. Its a question of fairness.

A 20-year-old starting work on 20,000 a year could expect to pay a total of 16,500 over the course of their careers as a result of a one percentage-point rise in NICs, said tax advisers Blick Rothenberg.

Robert Pullen, a partner at the firm, said: Increasing NIC rates by 1 per cent will cost 2 per week for someone earning 20,000 per year, or 17 per week for someone earning 100,000 per year. This is not insignificant and will make a real dent in average family incomes.

The change would add an effective 0.52 per cent tax to someone earning 20,000 per year, and 0.9 per cent to someone earning 100,000 per year, due to the way the allowances work.

Mr Pullen added: No doubt the government will try to sell the idea of what could be seen as an age war by arguing that the additional NIC cost, for someone working from age 20 to 67 and earning 20,000 per year increasing by 3 per cent annually, is 16,500 as a result of the increase, but this will save them thousands of pounds in care costs later in life.

Robert said: Increasing NIC in this way will add around 6bn to tax receipts per year from employees and self-employed individuals, which broadly doubles to 12.5bn if employers are also asked to pay an additional 1 per cent NIC, as seems likely.

The prime ministers spokesperson declined to put a date on the publication of the government proposals, saying only that it would come before the end of 2021.
The UK will send two warships into Asian waters to be permanently based there.

The vessels will be assigned to the Indo-Pacific region from later this year, according to the British defence ministry.

This is set to follow plans for a British aircraft carrier and escort ships to carry out exercises in the Philippine Sea alongside forces from other countries in August.

Plans for the high-profile visit by the carrier strike group come as London deepens security ties with Tokyo, which has expressed growing alarm in recent months over Chinas territorial ambitions in the region, including Taiwan.

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has indicated the royal navy fleet will sail through disputed waters claimed by China during the operation.

After the groups first ever deployment, the defence ministry said two ships  HMS Spey and HMS Tamar  will be permanently stationed in the Indo-Pacific region.

The offshore patrol vessels will also contribute to a Littoral Response Group in the coming years, according to the department.

They will be deployed at the end of August and will be supported by Australia, Japan and Singapore, among other partners, in their operations.

These ships are two of the navys new offshore patrol vessels, with the HMS Spey commissioned into the fleet this week.

The commissioning of Spey demonstrates a further development to the royal navys role in global Britain, Rear Admiral Simon Asquith OBE said on Monday.

He said the vessel will be deployed to the Indo-Asian Pacific region for the foreseeable future.

Once deployed, they will work closely with allies and partners to support maritime security in the region, the commander of maritime operations added.

Additional reporting by Reuters
Malis interim president Assimi Goitas office said he was safe and sound after a man tried to assassinate him as he was performing Eid al-Adha prayers on Tuesday morning at the Grand Mosque in Bamako.

Officials and witnesses said the man approached Mr Goita, who was surrounded by his bodyguards and tried to stab him. The attacker was immediately overpowered by security. Investigations are ongoing, the presidency said. He is now understood to have been arrested.

An official at the presidency later said Mr Goita was safe and sound.

Following the attack, Mr Goita was taken to the Kati military camp, outside the Bamako, where security has been reinforced, the official said.

The attack happened during the al-Adha prayer, Arabic for sacrifice, the second Islamic official holiday every year.

The Minister of Religious Affairs, Mamadou Kone, who was a few steps away from the president, told AFP that a man immediately tried to kill the president of the transition with a knife in the Great Mosque of Bamako.

But he was well controlled before committing his crime, he added.

It was after the prayer and the sermon of the imam when the imam should normally go to immolate his sheep, that the young man tried to stab Assimi (Goita) from behind, but it was another person who got injured, Latus Toure, manager of the great mosque confirmed to AFP.

The president and his security detail are understood to have drawn their weapons, according to reports.

Mali is mired in political uncertainty. Mr Goita, a 38-year-old special forces colonel, took power in June after condemning a government reshuffle that prompted him to arrest President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, who were appointed in September last year to restore civilian rule after a military coup.

Mr Goita, who instigated last years coup and held the vice presidents office under Mr Ndaw, accused the former president of contravening the transitional charter and said elections would go ahead as planned.

French President Emmanuel Macron warned that his country would withdraw troops fighting militant groups from Mali if political instability leads to greater Islamist radicalisation.

On Tuesday, it was confirmed that a French Mirage 2000 jet fighter crashed in northern Mali due to a technical problem, the French military said.

The two pilots involved were safe, armed forces spokesman Colonel Pascal Ianni said. The crash occurred in the Hombori region in the sub-Saharan country.

Additional reporting by agencies
Three adults have been charged with child cruelty after footage of a 12-year-old Atlanta boy being taunted and assaulted before having the word gay shaved into the side of his head with hair clippers went viral.

A clip of the disturbing incident was later posted to Instagram Live and widely shared, leading to a criminal investigation and an outpouring of shock among the Black community in Atlanta.

On the video, a man can be seen grabbing the child by his T-shirt while questioning him about his sexuality on the porch of a home.

When the boy doesnt respond to the aggressive questioning, the man appears to hit the boy, pushing him onto the ground and then against a rail.

You think I cut this in your head for no reason? the man says before allegedly slapping the boy again.

The Atlanta Police Department said its Special Victims Unit began an investigation after being made aware of the video. They had been able to identify the property where the alleged assault took place with help from the public.

Lorkeyla Jamia Spencer, 19; Brittney Monique Mills, 35; and Jordan Jarrode Richards-Nwankwo, 18, are facing criminal charges in connection with the boys assault, police announced on Friday.

Both Ms Spencer and Ms Mills were charged with cruelty to children, and have had bond set at $40,000. Mr Richards-Nwankwo was charged with cruelty to children and battery involving family violence and has a bond of $50,000.

All three are in custody in Fulton County Jail.

The 12-year-old boy was removed from the home and has been placed with the Georgia Division of Family & Children Services.

Police withheld the relationship between the boy and the three people charged, to protect his privacy.

The behavior in this social media post was difficult to watch and is absolutely unacceptable, the Atlanta PD said in a statement.

We are appreciative of the number of people who flagged this case with us and for those who provided information on the location where it took place.

An Atlanta city council candidate and local activist from the district where the alleged assault took place said he had been left heartbroken after seeing the video pop up on social media last week.

Devin Barrington-Ward told local NBC affiliate WXIA he was moved to make contact with the boy as he had also suffered homophobic abuse.

As a Black queer man, I have experienced some of the same homophobia and some of the same abuse by the hands of people that I love as a child, he told the news station.

He has since met with the child and promised to provide him with ongoing support. He and Hope Giselle, a Miami-based Black trans activist, are raising money for the boy via an online fundraiser which had raised more than $10,000 by Monday afternoon, and a dragshow in Atlanta this Thursday.

What I told him on the patio at his home is that youre loved, we care for you, we got your back,Mr Barrington-Ward told WXIA.

I apologised because we didnt create enough safe spaces to prevent this from happening.
An Ohio woman who crashed into two cars and a house last month told police she had been speeding intentionally, to test her faith with God.

The woman, who had her 11-year-old child in the car with her at the time, ran a red light at over 100mph. Traffic camera videos captured her Ford Taurus hitting the front of one car in an intersection before crashing into the next, reports Jalopnik.

According to reports, the 31-year-old driver, who has not been named, lost control of her vehicle, which knocked into a utility pole before hitting a Beachwood home and finally coming to a stop.

Police were called to the scene of the crash in Beachwood, Ohio. The womans daughter, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was taken to a local hospital to be treated for head injuries

The woman admitted to police officers that she intentionally sped down the road and through the intersections at about 120 mph to test her faith. According to the police report, she said she let go and let God take the wheel, adding that she believed she did the right thing.

She also police she had recently been fired from her job and was going through some trials and tribulations.

Fearing a mental health crisis, police had her taken to a local hospital for evaluation.

According to Republic World, she reportedly faces multiple charges including felony assault, endangering a child, and driving under suspension. Prosecutors are expected to present the case to a grand jury this week.
An Oklahoma woman wanted on suspicion of assisting a murder was apprehended after she responded to a police departments social media post asking for reward money.

Lorraine Graves, who the Tusla Police Department said last week was an accessory to murder in the killing of 30-year-old Eric Graves on 13 March, was featured as the forces weekly most wanted, which appeals for more information suspects still to be found.

Two others wanted for the killing, Jayden and Gabriel Hopson, had already been arrested and charged shortly after the incident, police added.

After the department appealed for further information into Ms Graves last Wednesday, she replied to their Facebook post asking if there was reward money on offer and wrote: Wheres the reward money at?

A Facebook user responded to Ms Grave and said: You better stay off social media they can track you!. Another wrote: Aint gonna be as funny you get processed.

In a follow-up post on Friday, the Tusla Police Department said its Fugitive Warrants unit apprehended Ms Graves at an address north of Tuslas downtown, after it tracked her down.

The Facebook post soon went viral with over 2,000 comments, 3,000 shares, and 4,000 by Tuesday morning, as news of the womans arrest got round.

Police said Ms Graves bond has been set at $500,000.
It did not take very long.

Two days after a group of key foreign nations  their involvement arising after the assassination of the nations president earlier this month  announced at the weekend it supported Ariel Henry as Haitis next prime minister, Claude Joseph, the man currently holding the position, said he would stand aside. Neither had been elected.

Everyone who knows me, knows that I am not interested in this battle, or in any kind of power grab, Joseph told the Washington Post. The president was a friend to me. I am just interested in seeing justice for him.

From a distance, it might appear the arrangement brokered by the international community was intended to offer calm amid chaos and anxiety. The ad hoc group, consisting of Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the US, France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organisation of American States (OAS), is even know the Core Group, perhaps suggesting strength and integrity.

The international diplomats urged the formation of a consensual and inclusive government.

To this end, we strongly encourage the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government, it said, in what amounted to a volte face.

In the short term, at least, that appears to be what will happen.

I present my compliments to the Haitian people who have shown political maturity in the face of what can be considered a coup, said Henry, 71, a neurosurgeon who had been selected to be the nations next prime minister by Jovenel Moise, two days before Haitis president was assassinated.

Moise was killed in the first week of July, by several dozen gunmen, the bulk of them foreigners, who stormed his official residence in Port-au-Prince, murdering him and seriously injuring his wife.

A twisting investigation into the crime  the first assassination of a head of state in the Western hemisphere since John F Kennedy was killed in Dallas, Texas in 1963  is continuing

In so many ways, the machinations that have been playing out in recent days mirror the fate suffered by Haiti for generations  or even centuries.

Formerly a French colony, Haitians fought and secured their independence in an uprising that began in 1791 and was led by self-freed slaves. Their actions reverberated across the Americas.

And yet that freedom has rarely been fully realised. Rather, Haiti for decades was ruled by harsh and brutal dictators, perhaps best exemplified by the Duvaliers, who were backed by the US and Europe as a perceived bulwark against communism.

In 1990, in what were seen as the nations first ever free election, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a populist priest who wanted to help the poor, was elected president

He was ousted in a coup backed by the CIA less than a year later, and in 2004, Aristide  having won re-election in 2001  was against forced out in a move supported by elements in Washington.

As it was, Aristide returned to Haiti last week after spending a month in Cuba for medical treatment. And this week, Martine Moise, the 47-year-old former first lady also flew into Port-au-Prince from Miami, where she had undergone treatment following the attack on her home that killed her husband.

This weekend, the front page of the New York Times detailed how the US had backed Moise, elected in 2016 and who sought to remain in power beyond his presumed term, even as allegations of human rights abuses mounted up.

 New PM takes office in Haiti

Critics say the American approach to Mr Moise followed a playbook the United States has used around the world for decades, often with major consequences for democracy and human rights, said the article.

.reflexively siding with or tolerating leaders accused of authoritarian rule because they advance American interests.

Yet this time something is different. The Haitian people are speaking out and demanding that they  and not the foreign powers  decide their future.

Since 2018, Haitians are facing systematic human rights violations  corruption, assassination, gangs massacres. Today, what we need is a country where we can live, knowing that we can go out without thinking we might not be able to go back home, said Rosy Auguste Ducena, a lawyer and activist with the human Haiti-based National Network for the Defense of Human Rights.

We had several type of foreign intervention  military and humanitarian  and today, the international community dictates what they want to see in Haiti. But, at the end of the day, we have not seen any improvement in the situation.

In a WhatsApp message to The Independent, she added: Today, the civil society is asking for a chance to let Haitians find solutions to their own problems, without international interference. Our response today is stronger not because of [Moises] assassination but because we can see that no result came out from the international interference.

Vigil held in honour of Haitis slain president Jovenel Moise in Miamis Little Haiti neighbourhood (AFP via Getty Images)

Many of the campaigners speaking out and organising, came of age in the 2018 protests over rising fuel prices. They have also spearheaded demands for action against corruption, triggered by accusations dating to 2019, that Moise helped himself to hundreds of thousands of dollars of government funds due to be spent on social programmes, and involving Venezuelan PetroCaribe, oil coalition. Moise had denied the claims.

Our demands are the same since 2019 - a government of transition to break with the bad practices of corruption, impunity, gang violence and state terrorism, said Velina Elysee Charlier, of the anti-corruption group Nou Pap Domi, or We Will Not Sleep.

What we want is rupture from all anti-democracy behaviours in politics. We want peace through justice and we demand security. We need to break the cycle of impunity and we ask for governments accountability.

Jake Johnston, a Haiti researcher and writer with the Washington DC-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think-tank, recently returned from the country.

He said he believed one reason activists were speaking out with such a voice was the spread of social media.

The other was the increasingly poor image of international and outside groups, something that has grown since the earthquake of 2010, and the scandals that followed.

This is the sort of grass roots organising that you saw back in 1990 with the election of Aristide.

Monique Clesca, a Haitian writer and former UN official, said she found it astounding that foreign nations were still trying to dictate her nations future.

Its offensive that in 2021, you have a group of superpowers, along with UN, trying to decide or tell us what to do, she said, speaking from Miami. Its deeply offensive and has no place.

Clesca, whose books include a novel, La Confession, and Mosaiques, a collection of essays about women and human rights, said she was also amazed that some Haitian leaders had requested the dispatch of US troops. She said she found that close to treason.

She added: We are not the backyard of the US or the backyard of the UN.
State surpluses of the Covid-19 vaccine may go to waste as supply outgrows demand across the country.

Millions of the doses are set to expire this summer, according to public health officials speaking to STAT. According to the officials, state health departments have been urging the federal government to give the surplus vaccines to other countries that have less access  or none at all  to the shots.

Despite their pleas, federal officials have largely rejected the requests on the grounds that the logistical and legal issues involved would be too difficult to navigate.

Some of the waste could be mitigated if US health officials extend the acceptable shelf life of the Pfizer vaccine, but even with an extension the doses will eventually expire if they are not used.

A large portion of Pfizer doses are expected to expire in August, and based on the current rate of vaccination are not likely to be used before they must be discarded.

Marcus Plesica, the chief medical officer at the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, told STAT that the demand for the vaccine was dropping off across the country.

"It's not like, if Connecticut doesn't need theirs, it can go to Alabama. There just isnt the demand," he said.

According to data from the federal government, the states have been given 52.36 million more doses than they have been able to distribute. Some of that disparity is the result of reporting errors or delays, as well as wastage, and those numbers do not account for vaccines that are scheduled to be administered as second doses for those waiting to take their final shot.

Nearly a million of North Carolina's doses are expected to expire over the summer, and hundreds of thousands more will reach the end of their shelf life in the fall. In Delaware, 25,768 doses will expire in August, and in Colorado another 352,533 doses will go bad by the end of the summer.

The surplus is not just an issue for the states; the federal government has its own growing surplus. The US bought 1.41 billion doses, but has only distributed approximately 390 million doses, leaving it with a surplus of more than one billion doses. That number is only going to grow, as the nation is expecting another 562 million doses from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson later this year.

Last month, the US government said it planned to donate 80 million doses, and will buy another 500 million doses for low and middle-income countries.

US vaccines are especially sought after by other countries because they are ready to use and can be rapidly administered to a population.
Two experts on tuberculosis have said that the mass death stemming from the disease at residential schools in Canada wasnt an accident but caused by intentional negligence.

A PhD student at the McGill International TB Centre in Montreal, Lena Faust, and the manager of the Tuberculosis Programme Evaluation and Research Unit at the University of Alberta, Courtney Heffernan, wrote in an op-ed in The Globe and Mail on 12 July that its not known how many of the children whose remains were discovered in unmarked graves over the last two months died from TB.

In late June, members of an indigenous nation found 751 unmarked graves where a residential school in Saskatchewan previously stood, just weeks after the remains of 215 children were found at a similar school in British Columbia.

The chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs, Peter Henderson Bryce, identified schools as an ideal location for spreading TB as early as 1907. He died in 1932.

At one point, he is reported to have said that it was almost as if the prime conditions for the outbreak of epidemics had been deliberately created, Alberta Native News reported.

Ms Faust and Dr Heffernan emphasised that while there was an ongoing TB epidemic at the time, conditions in residential schools made it much worse.

TB is a communicable infectious disease directly shaped by inequity at the individual and population level. It is well-established that social determinants of health, including malnutrition, overcrowding and poor ventilation, contribute to the development and spread of TB, and these conditions were common in residential schools, they wrote.

Residential schools in Canada were sponsored by the government, run by churches, and their purpose was to educate and convert indigenous young people and to assimilate them into Canadian society.

Over 130 residential schools existed in Canada between 1831 and 1996. At most, 80 were operating at the same time, in 1931.

Dr Bryce discovered that the rate of deaths from TB in residential schools was much higher than that of children in the general Canadian population.

Deaths caused by TB in First Nations communities  groups of Canadian indigenous peoples  in the 1930s and 1940s were 700 per 100,000 individuals, according to the Canadian Public Health Association. These were some of the highest rates recorded. But the number of TB deaths in residential schools was a staggering 8,000 per 100,000 children.

Dr Bryce recommended improvements to the buildings and to have TB nurses on hand. The federal Canadian government ignored his guidance, saying the changes would be too expensive. But they also stopped Dr Bryce from researching the issue further and presenting his findings at academic conferences.

He slammed the government. writing in his 1922 book  The Story of a National Crime: Being an Appeal for Justice to the Indians of Canada  that this trail of disease and death has gone on almost unchecked by any serious efforts on the part of the Department of Indian Affairs.

In 2017, 1,796 cases of TB were reported in Canada. First Nations and Inuit communities were disproportionately affected. Ms Faust and Dr Heffernan said the number of active TB cases was 400 times higher among the Inuit population, in comparison to the non-Indigenous population.

This staggering imbalance underlines the continuing consequences of colonial structural violence and a failure to address the social determinants of TB, such as equitable access to health care and adequate housing, they wrote in The Globe and Mail.

A genuine attempt at reconciliation involves not only recognising the truth of the suffering deliberately inflicted on Indigenous peoples by settlers, but also honouring Indigenous community mourning and calls to action with a comprehensive review, and addressing the harms that persist in our relations today, they added.
Fox News personality Tucker Carlson questioned the legitimacy of Covid-19 vaccine advice, directly contradicting his co-stars on the same network who that day had urged viewers to get the jab.

In his Monday segment, titled Our leaders want us to shut up and not ask questions, Mr Carlson told viewers: There are a lot of people giving you medical advice on television and you should ignore them.

To back up his argument, Mr Carlson used inaccurate footage from the UK governments chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, who mistakenly told the public that 60 per cent of hospitalisations from Covid are among vaccinated people.

Mr Vallance later corrected himself on Twitter, stating that 60 per cent of hospitalisations from covid are currently from unvaccinated people.

There are a lot of those people giving you medical advice on television, and you should ignore them, Mr Carlson said on his show. The advice theyre giving you isnt designed to help, its designed to make you comply. And you shouldnt comply mindlessly. Youre an American adult. Youre allowed to ask simple questions and then demand clear answers. Thats why we live here. Thats your birthright.

Schools across the country are asking students to take the vaccine as a condition of their education. Is that a good idea? Is it rooted in science? We should know the answer to that. Before we can answer that question we need to know how many young people are dying from Covid.

Meanwhile, earlier that day, Fox News host Steve Doocy on Fox & Friends advocated for the Covid vaccine.

He criticised the Biden administration for not being able to stop vaccine disinformation spreading online: They have not been able to get Facebook to get rid of some of the disinformation. The disinformation is online: The vaccine is killing lots and lots of people or it changes your DNA or there are little microchips. None of that is true, he said on the Monday morning show.

Also on Monday, Fox News host Sean Hannity appeared to side with his Fox & Friends co-workers, contradicting Mr Carlson and telling his viewers to take the pandemic seriously and stating that believes in the science of vaccines.

In direct contrast to Mr Hannity and Doocys views, Mr Carlson responded to a clip of Dr Rochelle Walensky, director of the CDC, in which she stated the health crisis was becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated.

We know lying when we see it and you just saw it, responded Mr Carlson to the clip. To say again  this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated is simply untrue.

Mr Carlson didnt specifically advise viewers not to take the Covid-19 vaccine. Were not saying theres no benefit to the vaccine, there may well be profound benefits to the vaccine. Our mind is open and has been from the first day. We never encourage anyone to take or not take the vaccine.

As of July, the Tucker Carlson Tonight show was the highest-rated cable show in the US, averaging 3 million viewers a night, according to Nielsen.

The Independent has contacted Fox News for comment.
Missouri and Arkansas are currently facing the worst Covid-19 outbreaks in the United States, becoming the countrys new virus epicenter.

In several counties in the two states, coronavirus caseloads and hospitalisations have reached levels not seen since their peaks last winter. Officials say the infections are being driven by the Delta variant, a highly contagious strain of the virus that now makes up most of the countrys cases.

We are truly in a very dangerous predicament, Mayor Ken McClure of Springfield, Missouri, told NPR . While we are one of the unfortunate few early hot spots of the Delta variant, we are not giving up.

Cases in both states have skyrocketed in the past month. According to data compiled by The New York Times , Arkansas has gone from a seven-day average of about 230 cases per day in late June to about 1,020 this week. In Missouri, that number has gone from 640 to 1,980.

As a result, hospitals in Springfield are becoming overwhelmed, running short of nurses and ventilators. Mercy Hospital Springfield has announced its adding a sixth Covid-19 unit to treat the influx of patients.

The outbreaks have grown so severe that Chicago issued a travel warning last week, specifically for Missouri and Arkansas.

After several weeks with no states on its Travel Advisory, Missouri and Arkansas have been added back to the list amid an increase in COVID-19 cases in some regions of the country, the city said on its website. Any unvaccinated people traveling from Missouri or Arkansas are advised to obtain a negative COVID-19 test result no more than 72 hours prior to arrival in Chicago or quarantine for a 10-day period upon arrival.

Vaccination rates are low in both states. In Missouri, only 57.6 per cent of adults have had at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. In Arkansas, only 54.9 per cent have gotten a shot.

Begging people to take the vaccine while there is still time, tweeted Steve Edwards, CEO of the Missouri hospital network CoxHealth. If you could see the exhaustion in the eyes of our nurses who keep zipping up body bags, we beg you.

As other states begin to reemerge from the pandemic  particularly in regions where vaccination rates are higher  in the Ozarks region the crisis is far from over.
Texas lawmakers who hightailed it to the nation's capital in a faceoff over voting rights said Tuesday that they're pressing on with their mission to get Democrats in Washington D.C., to bolster their cause, even as COVID-19 spreads through their ranks.

Six of the more than 50 Texas state representatives who decamped to Washington last week have since tested positive for the coronavirus, along with two Washington staffers associated with the group.

During a news conference Tuesday, the Texas Democrats said they remain optimistic about their cause, even after their Monday night town hall on MSNBC was scaled back because of the positive test results.

I do believe we are being very innovative and we are rising to respond to these challenges, Democratic state Rep. Ron Reynolds said.

State Rep. Donna Howard confirmed Tuesday that she tested positive for COVID-19. She said in a statement that she is fully vaccinated and basically asymptomatic, but that she is isolating to limit the spread of the virus.

The delta variant seems to be much more contagious, even for those vaccinated, than initially thought, Howard said. Thankfully, Im vaccinated and feeling well. But this variant is hitting the unvaccinated with severe illness and hospitalizations, particularly impacting those under 65. Vaccines work. Everyone, please get vaccinated and protect yourselves.

It's possible for people who are vaccinated to still catch COVID-19, although health experts say those breakthrough cases are usually mild. The latest numbers show the majority of hospitalized coronavirus patients have not been vaccinated.

One of the two Washington staffers who tested positive works in the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Drew Hammill, a Pelosi spokesman, confirmed that a fully vaccinated senior spokesperson in the Speakers Press Office tested positive for COVID after contact with members of the Texas state legislature last week.

Hammill said the employee has had no contact with Pelosi since exposure and that much of Pelosi's press staff was working remotely Tuesday, with the exception of those not exposed or who have recently tested negative.

A vaccinated White House staffer tested positive for the virus after interacting with the Pelosi aide, according to a White House official. The infected person has not been in close contact with President Joe Biden

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Darlene Superville and Zeke Miller in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.

___

Acacia Coronado is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
A special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration has been arrested after allegedly carrying his firearm and and waving a flag reading Liberty or Death as he joined a mob storming the US Capitol grounds on 6 January.

According to federal prosecutors, Mark Sami Ibrahim was on leave and was not acting as a law enforcement officer on the Capitol grounds that day.

Charging documents include photos posted to WhatsApp  from a group chat with at least five other police officers  and images from surveillance video that appear to show Mr Ibrahim posing with his badge and gun and climbing monuments on the Capitol grounds.

He was arrested on 20 July and charged with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm, entering Capitol grounds with a firearm, and stepping and climbing on statues on Capitol grounds.

Mr Ibrahim also was charged with making false statements, following a March interview with the US Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General.

During the interview via teleconference, Mr Ibrahim admitted to being at the Capitol with his DEA credentials and firearm but denied that he displayed them, according to federal prosecutors.

I had my creds. I had my firearm, and my badge on me , he told investigators, according to charging documents. But never exposed ... Not that I know of.

He said he went to the riot with a friend, who he claims was asked by the FBI to document the event  which his friend denied, according to federal prosecutors.

According to the friend, Ibrahim crafted this story about how his friend was at the Capitol to assist the FBI and that Ibrahim was there helping him, prosecutors said.

They were not there in any formal capacity for the FBI and that the FBI was not giving him directions or marching orders, according to documents. Mr Ibrahim crafted the story to cover his ass, his friend said, according to prosecutors.

His friend told investigators that Mr Ibrahim intended to promote himself at the event to launch a political podcast and cigar brand, prosecutors said.

Mr Ibrahim was suspended from the DEA in March.

In an interview with Fox News that month, Mr Ibrahim said after the attack on 6 January, he got on a flight back to LA. I had my badge and gun taken away from me. I was escorted off the premises to my apartment like a criminal, and I was fired after being suspended for two months, for performance issues.

He claimed that he started to document everything and, via my friend, we handed everything over to the FBI so those criminals could face justice when the crowd began to be hostile toward law enforcement.

In a statement to The Independent, attorney Darren Richie said that Mr Ibrahim looks forward to vigorously defending himself against every charge.

The prosecutorial authorities in this case have clearly reached on this indictment with regard to Mr Ibrahims conduct which at all times remained peaceful and docile; there is no evidence or allegations to the contrary, he said.

Mr Richie added: Mr Ibrahim played no role in any riot. He never committed any violence, attempted to enter any buildings nor induced or promoted others to do so. Further, Mr Ibrahim remained honest and voluntarily cooperative with authorities.

He said that the US Department of Justice indictment results from conjecture, political pressure and a flawed attempt to paint a specific narrative through pictures taken wholly out of context.

Mr Ibrahim firmly believes the truth shall always prevail, he added. Despite now having to defend charges that should never have been brought, he plans to loudly and widely share his truth to pronounce his innocence as well as his love for this country. 

More than 500 people have been arrested in connection with the riot, which sought to stop the certification of millions of Americans votes in a violent breach fuelled by Donald Trumps baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and his supporters.

The latest charges bring the number of off-duty law enforcement officers charged in the assault to more than 20, following the recent arrests of a father-and-son duo of Florida police officers.
Illinois Democratic Rep Marie Newman has said that Georgia Republican Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene is deeply broken. I hope she gets help.

Speaking to the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday, Ms Newman recounted what has led to well-documented animosity between the two representatives, whose Capitol Hill offices are across the hall from each other.

The two freshmen lawmakers clashed in February as the House was debating the Equality Act, which would prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.

Ms Newman has a transgender child who transitioned around five years ago.

Ms Greene tried and failed to block a vote on the Equality Act, and the House passed the measure that same month. The chamber previously passed the measure in 2019. It still hasnt received a vote in the Senate, where the filibusters 60-vote threshold is a major obstacle to passage.

Ms Newman placed the trans flag outside her office, with Ms Greene responding only hours later with a large sign that said: There are two genders. Male & Female. Trust The Science.

Ms Newman had shared her daughters story on the House floor, meaning that it was public knowledge on Capitol Hill that she had a transgender child.

That sign is still there, Ms Newman told the paper on Thursday. Its still hateful and all of her behaviour, her hate, and her spewing is indicative of who she is. And so it says nothing about the issue or the topic, which is just equality.

Which is, you know the LGBTQ+ community is not asking for more or less, theyre just asking for equality, and thats very reasonable.

So, what I will say about Representative Taylor Greene, is, that shes deeply broken, and I hope she gets help.

Ms Greene was stripped of her committee assignments earlier this year following a vote in the House, where the Democrats hold a slim majority, after making racist and anti-semitic statements and pushing baseless conspiracy theories.

She was temporarily suspended from Twitter on Monday for spreading Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.

Ms Greene attended a fundraiser for freshman Illinois Rep Mary Miller earlier this month. Ms Miller represents a strongly Republican district in the southern part of the state.

WBEZ Chicago reported that Ms Greene once again went after Ms Newman and her transgender daughter during the fundraiser.

Her so-called daughter is a trans, biological adult son, approximately close to the same age as my two, very much biological real girls  daughters, Ms Greene said regarding Ms Newman, prompting some in the assembled audience to laugh.

I call her Marie Newperson. Cause she doesnt believe in gender! I dont want to offend her, so I changed her name from Newman to Newperson She is very confused. As a matter of fact, so is her son, Ms Greene said.

Ms Newman told the Chicago Sun-Times: Honestly, I just ignore her and block her out. Shes not a serious member of Congress, and Im there to do very serious business.

The Independent has reached out to the office of Ms Greene for comment.
Dr Anthony Fauci has repeatedly rejected claims from Republican Senator Rand Paul that the National Institutes of Health had funded gain-of-function research on coronaviruses in China, a narrative that has fuelled conspiracy theories as scrutiny intensifies on the origins of Covid-19.

During a US Senate committee hearing on the federal governments response to the public heath crisis on 20 July, the GOP senator suggested Dr Fauci, the chief White House medical adviser and director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had lied to Congress over whether the agency supported such research.

Senator Paul, you do not know what youre talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially, Dr Fauci said. You do not know what youre talking about.

The senator claimed Dr Fauci is trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million dying around the world from a pandemic.

You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individuals. I totally resent that, Dr Fauci said. If anybodys lying here, senator, it is you.

Asked by Democratic Senator Tina Smith whether he wanted to address the senators remarks, Dr Fauci said: This is a pattern that Senator Paul has been doing now at multiple hearings based on no reality.

He keeps talking about gain of function, he said. This has been evaluated multiple times by qualified people to not fall under the gain of function definition. I have not lied before Congress  I have never lied certainly before Congress. Case closed.

Dr Fauci had previously denied that NIH directly funded gain-of-function research  in which a studied pathogen is altered to make it more transmissible in an effort to better predict emerging diseases and combat them with vaccines  at a lab in Wuhan, China that was scrutinised as a possible source of the disease.

At issue is whether the NIH funded research into bat coronaviruses that could have created a more-infectious pathogen, or whether a naturally occurring or lab-manipulated virus been released from the lab.

A moratorium on such research was imposed from 2014 to 2017.

In 2014, the NIH awarded a grant to the US-based EcoHealth Alliance to study coronaviruses in bats, a project that was renewed in 2019 and cancelled in 2020 following the US outbreak of Covid-19. The grant distributed $600,000 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has fuelled rampant speculation on right-wing media and conspiracy theories across social media depicting Dr Fauci as an architect of the pandemic.

NIH said in a statement in May that neither the agency nor the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases had ever approved any grant that would have supported gain-of-function research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.

None of the virus samples used to conduct such research were or could have been transformed into the new coronavirus that causes Covid-19, according to multiple peer-reviewed reports and statements from researchers involved. The EcoHealth grant supported sample collection, not experiments.

The issue has become polarised in the media and among partisan officials, as scientists and researchers engage in more nuanced debate about the risks and benefits of such research now under fierce scrutiny as a political cudgel  deflecting from former President Donald Trumps chaotic response to the public heath crisis while villainising its central figure now working under a Democratic administration.

What were alleging is that gain-of-function research was done in that lab and NIH funded it, Senator Paul said. You cant get away from it, it meets your definition and you are obfuscating the truth.
Congressman Jim Jordan, who was announced as one of the GOP-appointed members of the 6 January select committee this week, has provided a preview of the message Republicans will give to defend former President Donald Trump.

The Ohio Republican told The Independent he wants to pin the blame on Democrats for creating a culture where political violence is permissible, particularly in reference to the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020.

I think its important to point out that Democrats created this environment sort of normalising rioting, normalising looting, normalising anarchy in the summer of 2020 and I think thats an important piece of information to look into, Mr Jordan said.

Jim Jordan speaks to reporters outside the US Capitol building on 19 July, 2021 (Getty Images)

Rep Adam Schiff, whom House Speaker Nancy Pelosi selected as one of the Democratic members of the committee, said he would not comment on Mr Jordans specific words when asked about them.

I can just say that Jordan was picked because thats who Kevin McCarthy and Donald Trump want because theyre not interested in getting the truth, Mr Schiff, who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and was an impeachment manager during Mr Trumps first impeachment, told The Independent.

Mr Jordan is one of five Republican members appointed by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, along with Reps Jim Banks of Indiana, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota, Troy Nehls of Texas and Rodney Davis of Illinois.

Mr Banks will be the leading Republican on the committee and leads the Republican Study Committee, and he echoed Mr Jordans point in his statement on Monday announcing his appointment.

If Democrats were serious about investigating political violence, this committee would be studying not only the January 6 riot at the Capitol, but also the hundreds of violent political riots last summer when many more innocent Americans and law-enforcement officers were attacked, Mr Banks said. He also pointed to the death of Capitol Police officer William Billy Evans, who was killed in a car attack .

But Mr Jordan, one of the founding members of the House Freedom Caucus that was a thorn in the side of Republican leaders, emerged as a vociferous defender of the president, especially on the House Judiciary Committee, where he is the ranking Republican.

I think the one question that needs to be answered is why wasnt there a proper security presence that day and frankly only the speaker can answer that question, Mr Jordan told reporters in reference to Ms Pelosi. But Mr Jordan said he doubted the committee would look into it and it would likely find a way to blame Mr Trump.

Mr Nehls, a former sheriff who assisted police during the riot, said the goal of the investigation was to investigate what caused the events.

 Marjorie Taylor Greene dodges question about Trump role in Capitol riot

I just think that the whole purpose of the commission is what, go in and examine the events that took place on January 6 and maybe the events leading up to it and just take a deep dive into it, he said. Is that why the committee was formed?

Mr Nehls, like Mr Jordan and Mr Banks, voted to object to election results that day. But, as the Washington Post noted , Mr Nehls previously called the riot criminal. At the time, he also said the riot was a disgrace.

I was proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with Capitol police barricading entrance to our sacred House chamber, while trying to calm the situation talking to protestors, he tweeted at the time.

The Texas Republican said he was optimistic about working with Democrats.

Why not? I have Democrats working on some criminal justice reform with me right now, he said.

Rep Adam Kinzinger, who voted to impeach Mr Trump, called Mr McCarthys picks a mixed bag.

I think, a couple fair arbiters and a couple that had their mind made up so itll be an interesting dynamic to see, said Mr Kinzinger, who along with Rep Liz Cheney was one of only two Republicans who voted to create the select committee. Mr Kinzinger added that he hoped his fellow Illinoisan Mr Davis, the ranking Republican on the House Administration Committee, would be a fair arbiter.

Itll certainly be an interesting dynamic, thats for sure, he said.

But Rep Jerry Nadler of New York, who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, decried Mr Jordans selection because of his history of promoting conspiracy theories.

Hes still convinced that Trump is the president, Mr Nadler said.

But even Pete Sessions, a Republican from Texas, said he wished there were more experienced lawyers among the Republican members.

We have a lot of formal people who work as attorneys and I believe that they more adequately come into contact with visions and variance and nuances of law than say someone like me that was a business guy, he said.
In a rare hearing outside of Washington DC, a panel of Democratic senators and Georgia lawmakers took aim at the states sweeping, Republican-sponsored voting law that restricts access to the ballot and hands more election authority to GOP lawmakers.

The Senate Rules Committee  holding its first field hearing in 20 years  convened in Atlanta at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights on 19 July as a forceful rebuke of the law and to lobby support for a pair of voting rights bills that Senate Republicans have vowed to block.

The Georgia legislation was among nearly 400 bills introduced in nearly every state within the first months of 2021, buoyed by Donald Trumps stolen election narrative under the guise of preserving election integrity and voter confidence despite overwhelming turnout and no widespread evidence of fraud in 2020 elections.

Republican leaders in at least 17 states have enacted at least 28 new laws that make voting more difficult.

In an interview with NBC News before the hearing, committee chair Amy Klobuchar called GOP proposals absurd, adding, This is not America.

So much progress that Americans have sought for  that Americans have died for, is at stake, she said in her opening remarks, which traced the violent history of the civil rights movement and the events of Bloody Sunday in 1965, when activist and future congressman John Lewis led 600 civil rights marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where they were brutally attacked by police.

She criticised the Georgia law as a blatant exercise of raw power and part of a coordinated effort to limit Americans freedom to vote.

We must meet this moment, she said. That is why were here.

The nation living in the great house built by democracy is on fire, said Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock.

The fight for voting rights is the fight for human rights, he said. Theres nothing more noble, more important for us to do in a moment like this.  We can pass legislation that can create uniform national standards so your right to vote cannot be challenged. We can create a baseline for voting. Basic standards that apply no matter what state you live in.

No Republican senators on the committee attended the hearing.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a member of the committee, called the hearing a silly stunt amplifying Democrats phony hysteria over Republican lawmakers nationwide attempts to restrict ballot access.

Georgia lawmakers urged the committee to pass the For The People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act  a restoration of the landmark civil rights law to be named in honour of the late congressman  as an antidote to state-level voting laws.

But against overwhelming GOP resistance and a lack of unanimous Democratic support for amending filibuster rules that have allowed Republican blockades of their agenda, it is unclear what the path to their passage looks like.

We desperately need your help, Georgia state Senator Sally Harrell told the committee.

But theres no one solution to this problem, and its not a static thing where youre going to be able to pass one bill and solve it all, because the methods keep changing, she said.

While Republicans restrict mail-in ballot access and winnow early voting hours after ballots cast by mail helped boost turnout in 2020 elections during the coronavirus pandemic, a parallel effort from GOP lawmakers has seen more than 200 bills in 41 states to give themselves more authority over the electoral process.

At least 24 of those bills have been signed into law  including in Georgia.

The Georgia elections law rolls back mail-in ballot options and early voting in larger counties and criminalises handing out food and water at the polls, among other measures.

It also would give the states Republican-dominated legislature more control over the states election board and empower lawmakers to suspend elections officials.

Georgia Democratic state Rep Billy Mitchell said those proposals would create cheating umpires who would then install political appointees whose only concern is the person who appointed them.

To counter those proposals, Senator Warnock has introduced the Preventing Election Subversion Act, which would ban arbitrary and unfounded removals of election officials and allow them to petition federal authorities for redress if they are subjected to removal proceedings.

It also would make it a federal crime to threaten or intimidate election workers, as GOP proposals could also embolden partisan poll watchers to harass them, and mandate buffer zones around them.

The hearing in Georgia follows the arrival of a group of Texas Democratic state lawmakers who left the state in a last-ditch effort to block passage of similarly restrictive voting laws in their state.

While in Washington DC, those lawmakers are lobbying members of Congress and the White House to pass federal voting rights measures.

In an impassioned address from Philadelphia last week, President Joe Biden called GOP proposals that give election authority to Republican lawmakers election subversion and the most dangerous threat to voting.

Its hard to declare how critical this is. Its simply unconscionable, he said.

Despite calling those threats a defining battle of his presidency, the president has not publicly made the case to Democratic senators  including prominent holdouts like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema  to amend or abolish the current filibuster rules that have undermined his agenda.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell implored unvaccinated Americans Tuesday to take the COVID-19 shot, issuing a stark and grave warning of a repeat of last year's shutdowns if people refuse to protect themselves from the coronavirus.

McConnell urged Americans to ignore the demonstrably bad advice coming from pundits and others against the vaccines. As caseloads skyrocket, he noted that nearly all the new virus hospitalizations in the U.S. are among people who have not been vaccinated.

If there is anybody out there willing to listen: Get vaccinated, McConnell, R-Ky., said at his weekly press conference at the Capitol.

These shots need to get in everybody's arms as rapidly as possible or were going to be back in a situation in the fall that we don't yearn for  that we went through last year, he said. This is not complicated.

McConnell has been one of the most outspoken members of his party in urging vaccinations to stop the virus spread, speaking often in his home state of Kentucky of the need for people to get the shot.

Without criticizing prominent Republicans who refuse the vaccine or mock the severity of the virus, including members of Congress he has expressed dismay at those who choose to go unvaccinated.

As a survivor of childhood polio, McConnell often draws on his own experience of having endured that disease and he has spoken publicly of the relief that eventually came with the development of vaccines.

On Tuesday he said it never occurred to me that after the COVID-19 vaccines that were quickly developed for use in the U.S., we'd have difficulty getting Americans to get the shot.
US forces, including the navys SEAL Team 6 almost committed an unauthorized incursion into Nigerian territory  also commonly referred to as an invasion  last year while undertaking a mission to free a 27-year-old American kidnapped by a local militant group, a new book from two Washington Post reporters claims.

In I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trumps Catastrophic Final Year by authors Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, a chaotic scene is described as unfolding when US special forces descended upon the country in an effort to rescue Philip Walton, the son of an American missionary, who had been kidnapped at his home by armed gunman in neighboring Niger.

According to Ms Leonnig and Mr Rucker, US operators had to halt their mission while en route after learning that a White House aide, Kash Patel, had been mistaken in his assertion that Nigerias government had given the OK or even been warned about the impending US incursion to rescue the young man, who was being held in a remote compound in the countrys north.

The operation resumed after permission was obtained from Nigerias government, but the revelation underscored how close the US came to making an unauthorized strike against militants in a foreign country.

Mr Patel, according to the book, was not in a role where it was his job to get in contact with foreign governments to notify them of operations in their territory, but according to the book such processes had broken down in the final months of former President Donald Trumps term in office.

Mr Trump gave approval for the military action while Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was overseas, national security adviser Robert OBrien was out of town, and Defence Secretary Mark Esper had yet to discuss the matter with the president, the book claims. In the ensuing confusion, Mr Patel reportedly assured senior officials involved in the process that Nigerias government had been notified.

The mission had to be paused until the Nigerian government signed off. American forces had come very close to a technical invasion of a foreign country, wrote the authors.

I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trumps Catastrophic Final Year was released on July 20, published by Bloomsbury.

Mr Patel declined to discuss the events of Halloween when contacted by the books authors. The 31 Oct mission was successful, leading to the deaths of numerous militants, according to the book, while Mr Waltons rescue was reported by news outlets last year.

"Big win for our very elite U.S. Special Forces today," Mr Trump tweeted at the time of Mr Waltons rescue last year.

"Last night, our Countrys brave warriors rescued an American hostage in Nigeria. Our Nation salutes the courageous soldiers behind the daring nighttime rescue operation and celebrates the safe return of yet another American citizen! he added.
The Department of Justice has unveiled a lengthy indictment accusing Thomas Barrack, a former adviser to Donald Trump , of several federal charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and acting as a foreign agent.

But what, in laymans terms, is he accused of doing?

In essence, the DOJs claim is this: before and after the 2016 election, Mr Barrack allegedly lobbied Mr Trump on behalf of another country, the United Arab Emirates , without ever telling the DOJ that he was doing so  as is required by law. Then, the DOJ says, when the FBI asked Mr Barrack about these activities, he lied to them.

None of this has been proven yet, and Mr Barrack denies any wrongdoing.

Mr Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset, his spokesperson told CNN . He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty.

The DOJ, however, has harshly criticized Mr Barrack and his alleged co-conspirators, Matthew Grimes and Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, who were indicted as well.

The conduct alleged in the indictment is nothing short of a betrayal of those officials in the United States, including the former President, Acting Assistant Attorney General Mark Lesko said in a statement . Through this indictment, we are putting everyone  regardless of their wealth or perceived political power  on notice that the Department of Justice will enforce the prohibition of this sort of undisclosed foreign influence.

The DOJs narrative begins in April 2016, when it says Mr Barrack began acting as an informal adviser to Mr Trumps presidential campaign. In November, after Mr Trump won the election, he became chairman of the Presidential Inaugural Committee. After the inauguration, the DOJ says, he informally advised senior US government officials on issues related to US foreign policy in the Middle East.

Throughout all this time, Mr Barrack was regularly and repeatedly in contact with the senior leadership of the UAE government, the Department says, either directly or through Mr Grimes or Mr Alshahhi.

Under US law, people acting on behalf of another government are required to register as foreign agents. According to the indictment, Mr Barrack never did so.

Neither Alshahhi nor Barrack nor Grimes provided the required notification to the US Attorney General that they were acting in the United States as agents of a foreign government, the DOJ says.

But the accusations dont stop there. According to the indictment, FBI agents asked Mr Barrack about his work in June 2019, and Mr Barrack allegedly lied to them.

During the interview, Barrack allegedly made numerous false statements, including falsely denying that Alshahhi had ever requested that he take any actions on behalf of the UAE, the DOJ says.

Lying to federal investigators is a felony. The alleged falsehoods in this case led to two of the charges against Mr Barrack: obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal investigators.

William Sweeney Jr, assistant director in charge of the FBIs Field Office, slammed Mr Barracks alleged conduct in a statement.

This case is about secret attempts to influence our highest officials, and when that corrupt behavior was discovered, we allege Mr Barrack went even further, obstructing and lying to FBI special agents, Mr Sweeney said. In case it needs repeating, each of those bad choices is a federal felony, and each now comes with significant consequences  the first being todays indictment.

The Independent has reached out to Mr Barrack for comment though First Republic Bank, where he is a board member, but has not immediately heard back.
A man has been arrested after escaping coronavirus quarantine by tying bedsheets together and climbing from a fourth-floor window.

Police said the 39-year-old was spending time in mandatory quarantine in a hotel in Perth, Australia, when he made the getaway.

Officers said the man had flown to Perth from Brisbane, but was refused entry due to tough border controls aimed at limiting the spread of Covid-19.

He was told to leave the West Coast state within 48 hours and taken to a hotel for temporary quarantine.

But just before 1am local time on Tuesday, he made his escape.

He climbed out a window of the fourth floor room using a rope made of bed sheets and fled the area, Western Australia Police said.

Officers posted images of the makeshift rope hanging from a window on the brick buildings top floor down to the street.

The man was arrested in Perth about eight hours later and charged with failing to comply with a direction, and providing false or misleading information.

The escape artist was due to appear at Perth Magistrates Court in connection with the incident.

Australia has imposed mandatory hotel quarantine for anyone arriving from abroad or  during outbreaks  another state.

The policy has led to a series of dramatic escape attempts, including a woman accused this month of climbing down two balconies and kicking in a door to evade quarantine in Cairns, a city in Queensland.

Katie Hopkins, a far-right British commentator, was recently deported from Australia after joking about breaching hotel quarantine rules on social media.

Additional reporting by Reuters
Prosecutors in France have opened an investigation after a hoarding featuring a photomontage of Emmanuel Macron as Hitler appeared on a street, according to reports.

The poster, which was apparently displayed in response to the French governments vaccine policy, showed the presidents face superimposed with the Nazi dictators moustache, hair and military uniform.

France Bleu, part of the national public broadcasting group Radio France, reported that two of the posters appeared in recent days: one in the Mediterranean coastal city of Toulon and another in nearby La Seyne-sur-Mer.

The posters include the words: Obey, get vaccinated. One of the signs had the word honte, or shame, written over the top, France Bleu reported.

An investigation was said to have been opened on Tuesday by the prosecutor's office in Toulon to establish the identity of the owner of the signs.

France has historically had a higher than average level of vaccine hesitancy, but on Monday the government introduced a bill requiring all health care workers to get vaccinated against coronavirus and requiring Covid passes to enter restaurants and other venues.

The fast-track legislation comes into force on Wednesday for cultural and recreational venues, and early August for restaurants, bars and other places.

Polls suggest most French people support the measures, but they have prompted anger among some, with vandals targeting two vaccination centers in southwest France over the weekend.

One was set on fire, and another covered in graffiti, including a reference to the Nazi occupation of France.

On Saturday, more than 100,000 people marched around France against government vaccine rules, with some demonstrators wearing yellow stars recalling the ones the Nazis forced Jews to wear.

Other demonstrators carried signs evoking the Auschwitz death camp or South Africa's apartheid regime, claiming the French government was unfairly mistreating them with its anti-pandemic measures.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal condemned the absolutely abject comparisons of vaccine rules to Nazi atrocities.

We are in a fourth wave, he said after a Monday evening Cabinet meeting. We won't cede to a dictatorship of images and outrageous words.

Additional reporting by agencies
French president Emmanuel Macron and Moroccan King Mohamed VI are among world leaders whose phones may have been selected as potential targets for Israeli-made spyware, a new investigation has revealed.

One thousand high-profile individuals may have been targeted with the military-grade software on behalf of other countries, according to Pegasus Project, an investigation led by Amnesty International, Paris-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories and a dozen media organisations.

The phone numbers of three presidents, 10 prime ministers and a king were among 50,000 on a leaked list obtained by the investigation.

Forensic analysis of a sample of 67 phones from the leaked data found 37 contained traces of infection or attempted infection by Pegasus spyware made by Israeli company, NSO.

In addition to Macron, the list includes phone numbers linked to the president of the European Council Charles Michel, Pakistans prime minister Imran Khan, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa and Egyptian prime minister Mostafa Madbouly.

Also on the list are Moroccos prime minister Saad-Eddine El Othmani, Iraqi president Barham Salih , Ugandas Ruhakana Rugunda and Lebanons Saad Hariri.

The Washington Post and the Guardian said none of the named leaders offered up their devices for forensic testing, so investigators were unable to confirm if any were infected by the Pegasus spyware.

The Washington Post said it was not possible to determine if any NSO client attempted to deliver Pegasus to the phones of these heads of state much less whether any succeeded.

NSO has vehemently denied the accusations, calling the report false and flimsy from the beginning.

It said Pegasus had never been licensed to 50,000 numbers, and told the Guardian that Macron was not a target of any of its customers.

There is no link between the 50,000 numbers to NSO Group or Pegasus, an NSO spokesperson said.

Forbidden Stories described use of the spyware as a new global weapon to silence journalists and claimed that at least 180 journalists around the world have been selected as targets by clients of the cyber-surveillance company NSO Group.

These include reporters, editors and executives at the Financial Times, CNN, the New York Times, France 24, The Economist, the Associated Press and Reuters, it said.

Among the list were also two women who were close to the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the investigations revealed.

Israels defence ministry, which has to issue export licences for each sale NSO makes, is under mounting pressure to halt the licences and to distance itself from the group, which has previously been described by opponents as the long arm of the government and defence ministry.

Danna Ingleton, Deputy Director of Amnesty Tech, told The Independent: There is overwhelming evidence that NSO spyware is being systematically used for repression and other human rights violations

NSO Group must immediately stop selling its equipment to governments with a track record of abusing human rights. Israels Ministry of Defence must also revoke the security export license of spyware company, she said.
Turkeys president said Tuesday his country will talk with the Taliban regarding Turkeys bid to operate and secure the airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Speaking after Eid al-Adha prayers in northern Cyprus, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged that the hardline Islamist group had some discomforts over Turkeys proposed plans for Hamid Karzai International Airport.

This process will also be discussed with the Taliban, he said, adding that the group had previously negotiated with the United States and should hold these talks much more comfortably with Turkey 

I give the possibility that we will discuss these issues with them well and have an agreement because Turkey does not have an opposing side to their beliefs, Erdogan said. He stressed that Turkey has always stood with Afghanistan, saying imperial powers have been there for decades, including in the past 20 years  an apparent reference to the U.S. deployment that is drawing to a close.

Erdogans comments follow Taliban warnings last week that Turkey should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, along with other foreign forces. The group called Turkey's airport proposal reprehensible.

On Monday, Erdogan called on the Taliban to end its occupation of its siblings' lands" and said Taliban's stance in Afghanistan did not fit how Muslims should treat other Muslims.

The Taliban have been taking strategic border posts and pushing to gain territory in recent weeks, driving tens of thousands of Afghans to flee their homes. Many have been trying to cross to Turkey, with more than 1,450 migrants found by authorities in eastern Van province.

Government forces have regained some posts and are refocusing their resources on strategic points and provincial centers.

Turkey has been negotiating with the U.S. over a proposal to operate and secure the airport. Erdogan reiterated that Turkey would do so only if certain conditions are met and said Washington had asked Turkey to stay on. First, America will stand with us at the point of diplomacy and diplomatic relations, he said. The other conditions are logistical and financial support.

An agreement on the protection of the airport has become increasingly urgent as the final withdrawal of the remaining 2,500-3,500 U.S. troops and 76,000 allied NATO soldiers nears a conclusion.

NATO-member Turkey has over 500 troops in Afghanistan and already plays a significant role at the airport but the troops have not served on combat missions.

Turkish-American relations have been rocky for the past few years over a host of problems, including Turkeys human rights issues, Ankaras purchase of a Russian-made missile system, Washingtons support of a Syrian Kurdish group Turkey considers terrorists, and the continued U.S. residency of a Muslim cleric whom Turkey accuses of masterminding a bloody failed coup.

Erdogan was speaking during a two-day visit to Cyprus breakaway north for celebrations to mark the 47th anniversary of a Turkish invasion that split the island along ethnic lines.
The tears were flowing as Liudmila Sheremet made her way down the avenue. She had to get to work, she told herself. Not to tune in to her sons morning show and greet him  in the way she usually did, from hundreds of miles away in Minsk  with a smile, a wave and a hi, son, or a why are you in that scruffy T-shirt? No, to get to her desk, open her computer, and to hope what her granddaughter had just told her was an awful mistake.

A short while earlier, at 7.40am on 20 July 2016, her son, the journalist Pavel Sheremet, had begun his own commute. He sat in the drivers seat of the red Subaru he shared with his partner, and began the short journey to Radio Vesti across town in central Kiev. It would be touch and go whether hed get there in time for the 8am start, but his colleagues had become used to his late arrivals. This time, however, he would never make it, thwarted by a remote explosive device detonated from under his seat. He died in an ambulance on the way to hospital.

Five years on  Tuesday marks the tragic anniversary  Sheremets assassination continues to throw up more questions than answers. A murky Ukrainian investigation has belatedly produced five suspects, but even the president is unsure the evidence proves their guilt. If they are the hitmen, as his government claims, there is no clear answer as to who could have procured them. And there is no consolidated opinion about what the motive might have been.

Liudmila Sheremet says there isnt a minute when she doesnt think about her son. Not about the ongoing court case  that isnt in the slightest bit interesting, she claims  but what he would have made of it all.

There are many parallels with the murder of Boris Nemtsov near the Kremlin in 2015. Then and now, the hit men have been identified, but key evidence like CCTV footage went missing, and we are no closer to knowing who did it Ekaterina Sergatskova, journalist and close friend of Sheremet

I think the one thing hed be worried about is innocent people suffering, she says. Hed be concerned that officials arent looking to pin the blame on scapegoats.

Enemies every way you look

Pavel Sheremet grew up in Minsk, Belarus, with an unusual sense of justice. He was afraid of nothing, and told everyone the truth "whether they liked it or not. Even teachers would be at the receiving end of his lectures: especially when one decided to raise the marks of classmates after their parents had helped with school repairs. After school, Pavel studied banking, but money counting was never his thing, and so he became a journalist.

Pavels interest for everything made him a star of Belarusian journalism, latterly as a foreign correspondent for the Russian state broadcaster ORT. It was in this capacity that he made his first international headlines, jailed in 1997 by the fledgling dictator Alexander Lukashenko, after filing a report on smuggling at the Lithuanian-Belarus border. The famous dispatch saw him demonstrate gaps in the border by literally stepping across them. He was convicted for illegal border crossing.

Sheremet would only be freed after an extraordinary intervention by Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who unexpectedly denied his Belarusian counterpart an airspace corridor.

Free Sheremet first, was Yeltsins famous retort. Lukashenko eventually backed down and released Sheremet, setting up a lifetime of enmity  and a sense of deja-vu when it came to stories involving airspace and the Belarusian-Lithuanian border.

Sheremet moved to Russia in 2000, where he would make a second home, and front a flagship weekly news programme on state TV. He would later describe this as a shameful period of his career, as, like many others in the system, he struggled between conscience and compromise with increasingly pro-Kremlin managers. In 2011, Sheremet relocated to Kiev, still working for Russian state TV, but increasingly disillusioned with it.

The impossibility of objective coverage on Russian TV following the 2014 revolution saw him switch completely to Ukrainian publications, and publicly denounce the Kremlins undeclared war with its Slavic neighbour. He was later granted Ukrainian citizenship.

His uncompromising reporting earned him the enmity of at least five presidents, and has made the investigation of his death a complicated maze with few easy answers. He was under surveillance by Moscow, Minsk and Kiev, friends and family say. Latterly, he complained he was being followed by what he believed were officers of the Ukrainian security services.

We thought he was safe enough in Kiev, but a friend later told me he seemed worried before his death, that he was carrying serious baggage, she said. She asked him what was up, and he said he was being watched.

The official version

Questions about the thoroughness of the official Ukrainian investigation into Sheremets death persisted from the start. Over a hundred hours of relevant video footage only appeared after journalists launched their own probe. A documentary film released ten months after his death revealed missed leads and unfathomable gaps in the official versions of police and security services.

Ukrainian interior minister Arsen Avakov tendered his resignation last week (Reuters)

Ukrainian authorities have persisted with a theory that the assassination was carried out in Russian interests, and designed to destabilise Kiev. In December 2019 with newly elected president Volodymyr Zelensky in charge, interior ministry officials identified five suspects. All were nationalistic-leaning veterans of Ukraines undeclared war with Russia.

It remains unclear how veterans of the war with Russia might have been working in Moscows interests, and the evidence against them is not watertight. All insist on their innocence. At his annual press conference this year, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky seemed to suggest he shared the doubts, revealing he had been in correspondence with one of the suspects.

Ukraines interior minister Arsen Avakov would not remain in his job if it was discovered people had been illegally put on trial, Zelensky revealed. Last week, the longtime minister tendered his resignation. It is unclear if the two matters are in any way connected.

A Belarusian footprint

A second, dramatic shift in the investigation came in January 2021, when Igor Makar, a former Belarusian special forces officer, claimed Alexander Lukashenko signed off on an assassination plan in 2012.

To back up his argument, Makar released a contemporaneous recording of Vadim Zaitsev, Belaruss security chief. The man purported to be Zaitsev describes Sheremet as a massive pain in the arse. The recording continues: Well plant a bomb and this f***** rat will be taken down in f****** pieces  legs in one direction, arms in the other direction.

Segvil Musayeva, editor in chief of Ukrainian Pravda, the famed investigative newspaper founded by Sheremets partner Olena Prytula, and where he latterly worked, says she has seen enough in the evidence presented by Makar to be persuaded by this explanation of her colleagues assassination.

One theory the investigation explored was that the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, signed off on Sheremets assassination (AP)

Sheremet was, after all, a thorn in Lukashenkos side throughout his life, supporting dissidents and protests  and financing an opposition newspaper, The Belarusian Partisan, via a charity in Lithuania. He was a personal enemy of the erratic leader.

We know Lukashenko has no use-by date when it comes to matters of revenge, Musayeva says. The murder, creepily enough, was carried out on the anniversary of Lukashenkos first inauguration: I cant prove it, and he may well have used Ukrainian killers, but the audio recording and Makars own testimony do fit the other pieces of evidence we have.

Others are more sceptical of this theory.

Irina Khalip, a journalist, friend and colleague of Sheremet from Minsk, says the chronology does not fit the contours of Belarusian politics. Even if Lukashenko had ordered an assassination in 2012, this was a period of protests and extreme tensions: Khalip herself was under house arrest and surveillance. By 2016, however, the Belarusian leader had moved on, and was enjoying a renaissance in relations with Europe. He had little to gain from the murder of a historical enemy.

Lukashenko was swimming in chocolate by then, freeing political prisoners, and even positioning himself as a great peacemaker in Ukraine, she says. Yes, his death squads had been implicated in multiple murders and disappearances, including Sheremets own cameraman Dmitry Zavadsky, but did not need four years to prepare a hit: If they get the order, they do it quickly, so for me the logic doesnt work.

Ekaterina Sergatskova, an editor and close friend of Sheremet since she moved to Kiev from Crimea in 2014, concurs: We cant rule anything out, but Pavel had become a marginal figure in Belarus by 2016, and at the same time Lukashenko was not quite the crazy dictator he is now.

Closer to home

Sergatskova, whose Zaborona website has probed a number of dropped investigation leads, says the most likely explanation remains the most troubling one: that Pavel was targeted by shadowy forces in the Ukrainian state as part of an attack on free media. That arguably provides the most logical answer for the sluggishness of the official investigation, the suggestions he had been followed, and the disappearance of key evidence.

There are many parallels with the murder of Boris Nemtsov near the Kremlin in 2015, she says. Then and now, the hit men have been identified, but key evidence like CCTV footage went missing, and we are no closer to knowing who did it.

Leaked correspondence purporting to involve Artyom Shevchenko, press officer to the interior ministry, later suggested counter-intelligence had screwed up and dragged others into their mess

Certainly, Sheremet was a larger-than-life character, whose fearlessness represented the sharpest of Ukrainian journalism. Just two weeks before his murder, he was harangued by a press officer for not being more polite in his questioning of then president Poroshenko. During his time working for Ukrainian Pravda, the countrys most aggressive and professional investigative newspaper, he was a constant irritation to authorities. He was also the partner of Olena Prytula, the papers co-founder. Some have suggested she may have been the real target.

For all its post-Maidan political advances, Ukraine remains a dangerous place for journalism. Those asking the wrong questions at the wrong time risk physical assault and worse, and a culture of contract killings is undeniable.

President Zelensky, who has not always appeared well-briefed on the investigation, has refused to rule out the involvement of elements within Ukraines security services. At a press conference earlier this year, he said there was a possibility that figures connected to counter-intelligence in the former administration were involved.

Leaked correspondence purporting to involve Artyom Shevchenko, press officer to the interior ministry, later suggested counter-intelligence had screwed up and dragged others into their mess. Mr Shevchenko declined the opportunity to respond to the leak, or explain why the course of the official interior ministry investigation had proved so disappointing.

The fallout

The grisly act of 20 July 2016 was a political assassination, and it was investigated appallingly. This much is undeniable. But the challenge of identifying who was behind it is at least in part a consequence of there being no indisputable benefit for any of the obvious suspects.

Five years on, I cant understand who needed this murder, says Khalip. It has done nothing for no one, provided no political dividends, delivered nothing but grief to colleagues, relatives and friends.

But the fact that no one has been held responsible has had obvious effects for those working in his place. It has resulted in at least two waves of self-censorship, says Sergatskova.

In the murders immediate aftermath, many journalists held back from broaching the most sensitive of topics. Later, the announcement that war veterans may have been involved meant reporters became subjected to harassment from nationalistic forces. Some cut off reporting from the trial altogether.

Liudmila Sheremet, who says she now believes the answer to her sons death likely lies in Kiev, insists the search for truth has only one beneficiary: Ukraine.

Pavel is no more, thats all I care about, she says. Ukraine will decide in its own way how it wants to investigate, and if indeed it wants to give its people and its journalists the security of tomorrow.
Ben & Jerry's decision to stop selling its ice cream in Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories (OPT) will have "severe consequences", prime minister Naftali Bennett has warned.

Mr Bennett spoke with Alan Jope, the CEO of Unilever, which owns Ben & Jerry's, on Tuesday - a day after the ice cream company announced it is to pull products from the areas.

"The prime minister made it clear that he views with utmost gravity the decision by Ben & Jerry's to boycott Israel...which has taken a clearly anti-Israel step," Mr Bennett's office said in a statement following the call.

"[He] emphasized that from the perspective of the State of Israel, this is an action that has severe consequences, including legal, and it will take strong action against any boycott directed against its citizens," the statement added.

Announcing the move on Monday, Ben & Jerry's said it believed "it is inconsistent with our values for [our] ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

"We also hear and recognize the concerns shared with us by our fans and trusted partners."

The statement added: "We have a longstanding partnership with our licensee, who manufactures Ben & Jerrys ice cream in Israel and distributes it in the region. We have been working to change this, and so we have informed our licensee that we will not renew the license agreement when it expires at the end of next year.

"Although Ben & Jerrys will no longer be sold in the OPT, we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement. We will share an update on this as soon as were ready."

Palestinian activists welcomed the decision by Ben & Jerry's, which has in recent years built up a reputation for taking a stance on some political issues.

It has made statements on debates about race, climate change and law and order.

Estimates suggest there are around 600,000 Jewish people living in about 140 settlements built since Israel's occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war.

Most countries around the world agree that the settlements are illegal under interational law, which is disputed by Israel.

Yair Lapid, Israel's foreign minister, branded the move a "disgraceful capitulation" to anti-Semitism.

He accused the ice cream maker of bowing to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for a complete boycott of Israel

In a statement, BDS said Ben & Jerry's decision was "a decisive step towards ending the company's complicity in Israel's occupation and violation of Palestinian rights".
The Moroccan investigative journalist and human rights activist, Omar Radi has been jailed for six years after rights groups allege his phone was infected with the Pegasus spyware, an accusation Rabat denies.

Radi, 35, was sentenced by a Moroccan Court yesterday on charges of espionage and rape. Radi had initially been arrested in June of last year, just days after Amnesty alleged his phone was successfully infected by the Pegasus spyware.

Radi protested his innocence throughout his one year of pre-trial incarceration, where, in addition to the charge of rape, he faced two accusations of "undermining the internal security of the state."

The charge of rape relates to his colleague, Hafsa Boutahar, with whom Radi claimed he enjoyed a consensual sexual relationship. Ms Boutahar has denied this on numerous occasions. However, rights groups have pointed to a growing trend within the Moroccan judiciary of eliciting and distorting charges of sexual assault with which to prosecute activists and journalists.

Another of Radis colleagues, Imad Stitou, was sentenced to one years imprisonment for his part in the assault upon Ms Boutahar, half to be suspended, after he appeared as a witness.

Prior to his arrest, rights groups claim Radi had been a consistent victim of government harassment due to his efforts to expose corruption and rights abuses within the Kingdom, principally through the Le Desk platform which he had co-founded.

In December 2019, Radi received a four-month suspended sentence for "contempt of court," following a tweet he had published some eight months earlier and sparking a series of confrontations with the government that culminated in yesterdays trial.

The Moroccan government has denied claims of using the Israeli spyware, saying that it "never acquired computer software to infiltrate communication devices." Moreover, Rabat insists that it has never "infiltrated the phones of several national and international public figures and heads of international organisations through computer software"

Nevertheless, a forensic analysis of Radis phone carried out by Amnesty International last year found it had been infected with the malware, supporting the groups claim that he and other human rights defenders in Morocco were being targeted by the government using the Israeli spyware.

Pegasus, which is manufactured by NSO has a controversial history, dating back to at least 2019 when it was sued by Whatsapp for allegedly hacking activists phones. According to NSO, its Pegasus software is exported to governments to allow them to track terrorist networks and criminal gangs, by harvesting photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones. However, a recent data leak of up to 50,000 phone numbers obtained by a number of media companies has suggested that the Pegasus malware has instead been used by governments to target journalists and human rights defenders.

For Morocco, few would dispute that press freedom is in decline. According to the media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders, Morocco fell three places to 136 of the 180 countries ranked within its 2021 World Press Freedom Index.

Speaking to The Independent, Reporters Without Borders spokesperson and Editor in Chief, Pauline Ades-Mavel said, "Moroccos media continue to be subjected to judicial harassment. In addition to the trials of a number of media figures that have dragged on for years, several new prosecutions on sex charges have been initiated against journalists"

Ms Ades-Mavel continued, pointing to the manner in which such trials were carried out and the "media hype and defamation accompanying them," which she said deprived both the victim and alleged aggressor of their rights. "Heavy sentences have been passed, and several journalists and citizen-journalists continue to be imprisoned," she continued.

Ms Ades-Mavel was also quick to add her voice to the chorus of right groups criticising the sentencing of Radi and Stitou, as well as highlighting the case of rights activist and journalist, Soulaimane Rassouni,

49-year old Rassouni was sentenced to five years imprisonment in June for an indecent assault upon a young man, alleged to have been carried out in 2018. Rassouni was initially arrested in May 2020. He is currently on hunger strike.

"This is a shameful verdict," Ades-Mavel said. "In the midst of the Pegasus affair, and a few days after having handed down a similar decision in the Rassouni case, the Moroccan justice system persists in denying the unfairness of its procedures, and in handing down decisions that heavily condemn journalists who are denied a fair trial."
Jeff Bezos is set to fly on his own rocket, becoming the second

But he will go alongside three other crew members who are not as famous or as rich.

They are made up of his brother Mark, pioneering almost-astronaut Wally Funk and teenager Oliver Daemen, whose father bought him a seat on the rocket. The latter two will be the oldest and youngest people, respectively, to go to space.

Strictly speaking, the passengers are not crew in the traditional sense  the spacecraft is autonomous, and so will do all the work of flying itself. (That is in contrast with Richard Bransons flight, which had pilots as well as the billioniare and his fellow passengers.)

Here is everything you need to know about the history-making and space-faring quartet, including how much a seat cost.

>

Jeff Bezos

By far the best known of the crew, Jeff Bezos founded Amazon and stepped down as its chief executive earlier this month. While he is probably better known for his work for Amazon and the Washington Post, his commitment to space is not new: he founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has been closely involved with it ever since.

Mr Bezoss mission was set to be even more pioneering when it was announced, when was to become the first billionaire in space, and the first person to travel there in a spacecraft built by their own company. Richard Branson beat him to those records  though Blue Origin has argued that the Virgin Galactic flight does not really count as space travel.

Mark Bezos

Jeffs brother, Mark, might not be as rich as the more famous Bezos  but he is still well off. He has shares in Amazon that mean he is a millionaire, and he has made a career of his own, volunteering as a firefighter, working as head of communications at a charity, and being one of the co-founders of private equity company Highpost Capital.

Mark is five years younger than Jeff, who he has described as his best friend. (The pair also have another sibling, sister Christina.)

Wally Funk

Ms Funk is by the far the most qualified of her crew. Among other achievements, she was one of the Mercury 13, who completed the same training programme as the early Nasa astronauts and almost went to space, as well as other work in aviation since.

Ms Funk, like Mark Bezos, does not appear to have paid for her ticket. She was personally invited to join the flight by Jeff Bezos.

At 82, she will become the oldest person in space after the flight is completed. The record is currently held by John Glenn  who lends his name to another of Blue Origins spacecraft  after he flew on the space shuttle at the age of 77.

Oliver Daemen

The latest and least famous addition to the crew, Mr Daemen was not strictly meant to be on the flight  his seat opened up when the winner of the open auction said they were too busy to go on the flight. His financier father had been the second in line, and so the ticket was passed on to him, who passed it on to Oliver.

Relatively little is known about Daemen, who is a student who will go to the Netherlands University of Utrecht later this year after taking a gap year to learn to fly.

But one very big thing is known about him: the cost of his seat. Daemens father Joes paid for the seat  and while the price hasnt been revealed, its likely to be millions, given that the winner of the auction paid $28 million.

As well as the high price, the ticket means that Daemen is Blue Origins first paying customer and one of the first ever people to pay for a ticket on board a spacecraft.

He is also the youngest person ever to go into space. He beats the then 25-year-old Gherman Titov, who flew as part of the Soviet Unions Vostok 2 mission in the 1960s.

Jeff Bezos shared a video of Daemen in advance of the launch, which revealed more about his thoughts on the launch. He said it was cool to be sharing the trip with Ms Funk, that he felt a responsibility because Im the youngest person in space, and that he expects to be speechless when he arrives back on Earth.
Jeff Bezos has announced he will be traveling to space next month on one of his Blue Origin rockets alongside his brother Mark Bezos.

On Monday, the Amazon founder that he and his brother would be making a suborbital sightseeing mission on 20 July.

Ever since I was five years old, Ive dreamed of traveling to space, Jeff Bezos said in an Instagram post.

On July 20th, I will take that journey with my brother. The greatest adventure, with my best friend, he said.

But who is Mark Bezos, Jeff Bezos brother, and space companion?

Recommended Jeff Bezos to send himself to space on board Blue Origin rocket

Mark Bezos is the younger brother of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He is 53-years-old, five years his brothers junior. The pair have one other sibling, a sister named Christina.

Jeff Bezos parents are Miguel Bezos and Jacklyn Bezos. According to Biography Jeff Bezos mother was a teenager when she gave birth to him. His biological father is a man named Ted Jorgensen.

According to an interview with Wagmag in 2016, Mark Bezos, originally from Texas, graduated high school in Norway.

In an interview with his brother in 2017, Mark Bezos explained that that growing up the siblings would spend a lot of summers on their grandparent's 25,000-acre cattle ranch in Cotulla, Texas.

He and his family live in Westchester County, New York. According to Wagmag, he met his wife Lisa in New York City and has four children.

According to his LinkedIn page, Mark Bezos serves on the boards of multiple technology companies and as a director of the Bezos Family Foundation.

He also previously worked as head of communications at Robin Hood, a non-profit poverty-fighting charity in New York City.

The younger brother is also a co-founder of the private equity firm Highpost Capital and has in the past volunteered for the Scarsdale Fire Department.

Not every day is going to offer us a chance to save somebodys life, but every day offers us an opportunity to affect one, he said in a viral TED talk discussing his volunteer role in 2011.

In 2020, SFGATE reported that Mark Bezos was selling his four-acre six-bedroom, four-bathroom home in Scarsdale for $11m (7.8m).

His LinkedIn page describes him as an innovator, investor, and pioneer in brand development, customer experience, and social enterprise.

He also had his own advertising firm which he sold in 2006.

Mr Bezos serves on a number of non-profit boards, including iMentor, Leary Firefighters Foundation, the Robin Hood Leadership Council, and Scarsdale Schools Education Foundation, the page notes.
If the US Senates long-awaited bipartisan infrastructure proposal fails to materialize this week, it should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with the 10 moderate lawmakers negotiating the package.

Thats because most of them  ahem  arent actually moderates.

More than four weeks after negotiators announced an agreed-upon framework for a deal worth $1.2 trillion, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have yet to actually finalize it and put their ideas into legislative text. In the meantime, DC media outlets have succumbed to a lazy reporting habit to describe the dramas key players.

A recent edition of Politicos Playbook lumped Utah Senator Mitt Romney into a core trio of moderates along with fellow Republican Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine. And in April, the Wall Street Journal reported that centrist West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito was leading the GOP in talks with the Biden administration about infrastructure.

This is Mitt Romney were talking about. Mitt Romney  whose social conservatism, promises to repeal Dodd-Frank and Obamacare, and commitment to oil and natural gas carried him to the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Since when did he become a moderate?

And what exactly in the record of Shelley Moore Capito, who voted to repeal Obamacare in 2017 despite publicly recognizing the 2010 health care laws overwhelmingly positive impact in her state, makes her a centrist?

It gets worse.

Reuters reported in January that ten moderate Republican US senators were urging Joe Biden to scale back his $1.9 trillion Covid relief package (which ultimately passed at that price tag on a party-line vote). Among the Republicans Reuters collectively characterised as moderates: Indianas Todd Young, the Senate GOPs campaign chairman last cycle, one of the most partisan posts in Washington; Kansas Jerry Moran, who not only signs his name on congressional letters in Comic Sans but has been one of Mitch McConnells most reliable votes since arriving to the Senate in 2011; and South Dakotas Mike Rounds, whose list of notable bipartisan achievements could fit neatly in a quick scrawl on the back of ones palm.

Dabbling in bipartisan footsie does not make one a moderate or a centrist, especially when such behavior is obviously a tease, as was the case with the GOPs short-lived Covid relief negotiations with the nascent Biden administration this past winter.

Neither does supporting Donald Trumps impeachment make a moderate hero of Romney or Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana or Ben Sasse of Nebraska or any of the other four Republicans who voted guilty at the ex-presidents trial in February. Trump incited a deadly riot at the Capitol to stop Congress from certifying President Bidens electoral victory, then did nothing for hours to stop the violence. There is no spectrum for that kind of tyranny, no middle-of-the-road stance: You either tolerate it (as McConnell and 42 other Republican senators did) or you dont.

The truth about the 117th Congress is that there are only four to six senators total who could be described as centrists or moderates, depending on how you feel about the likes of Portman and Democratic Senators Mark Warner of Virginia and Chris Coons of Delaware.

The crumbling infrastructure talks have laid bare once again the new reality in Washington: moderates and centrists are a dying breed.

So, what (and who) is a moderate/centrist?

I characterize moderates as those politicians with a certain pragmatic, inclusive governing approach. They are process junkies, lawmakers who elevate a given proposals ability to gain bipartisan support to the same level of importance as the bills actual substance. The only remaining Democratic senators to whom this label can be attached with certainty are Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both senators have steadfastly refused over the first six months of the Biden administration to scrap the Senates traditional 60-vote threshold for legislation  known as the filibuster rule  that has allowed Republicans to stall large chunks of Bidens agenda in a 50-50 Senate.

Even Coons, often lauded in Washington for his cross-aisle collegiality (and rightfully so), has failed the filibuster purity test, suggesting that Democrats might move to curtail the 60-vote threshold if Republicans keep blocking Bidens priorities, as they did in June to Democrats sweeping voting rights proposal. If all of these come to the same end as the efforts around voting rights, where its blocked 50-50, thatll sharpen the focus on the filibuster, Coons said in a recent interview with NPR.

There are, of course, degrees of moderatism. Warner of Virginia, an independently wealthy pro-business Democrat, has stepped out of the shadows into a prominent go-between role for the ongoing infrastructure negotiations, both between the parties and within his own. Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist, wanted north of $6 trillion for the Democrat-only portion of the package, but Warner helped whittle that down to the $3.5 trillion price tag the Democrats settled on in June. He was also instrumental in resuscitating bipartisan talks last year that eventually resulted in another $900 billion in federal Covid relief.

But while Warner has flashed a moderate streak, he is not what can properly be termed a centrist. A centrist is an actual policy tweener, someone whose favored policies  matters of process and politics aside  truly tack towards the middle.

Manchin is a centrist: a pro-gun, pro-coal, anti-immigration Democrat who also happens to be one of Obamacares most vocal champions. Sinema, who voted against the $15 minimum wage earlier this year and opposes the estate tax on the wealthiest Americans, has significant centrist tendencies, though not to the same degree as Manchin.

Collins of Maine and Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska are the closest any Republicans come to centrism. Both claim to support the landmark Roe v Wade Supreme Court case granting women abortion rights (their voting records on Trumps judicial nominees tell a different story). Collins has voted to uphold Obama-era environmental regulations and campaigned (unsuccessfully) to curtail oil drilling in Alaskas Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Murkowski is one of the few Republicans who supports a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.

Thats it for the centrists.

The shift away from a regional and geographic-based political framework towards a national one, as well as the proliferation of highly-organized, well-funded outside interest groups on both the right and the left have contributed to the demise of centrists.

Case-in-point: Georgia, where Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, a Black pastor and a 34-year-old Jewish former journalist, defeated a pair of Trump-hugging conservative incumbents on an uncompromisingly mainstream liberal platform in the 2021 runoffs. Vats of digital ink have already been spilled on Stacey Abrams influence from the outside galvanizing Black voters on the issue of voting rights, so I wont add more here.

Georgia is not a purple state, for there is little mixing of its red and blue elements. Centrism and moderatism increasingly play to neither partys political advantage, in the Peach State nor elsewhere. Democrats learned that the hard way in the 2018 midterms, when their centrist block was toppled by a trio of staunch conservatives. In Missouri, Senator Claire McCaskill lost to an upstart state attorney general named Josh Hawley (yes, that twerp). North Dakotas Heidi Heitkamp and Indianas Joe Donnelly, another pair of Democratic moderates, fell by wide margins to true-blood conservatives Kevin Cramer and Mike Braun.

To borrow a term from veterans of Capitol Hill, there are a handful of other remaining serious legislators who to their credit are constantly working across the aisle to find common ground on bills because they recognize the need for bipartisanship to pass most bills in the Senate. Portman, the Ohio Republican retiring at the end of his current term, is the GOPs closest analogue for Warner: a serious legislator who has found himself at the centre of most of the recent bipartisan negotiations on Covid relief and infrastructure. Romney and Pennsylvanias Pat Toomey have proven their sincerity in dragging major bipartisan legislation across the finish line, as have Democrats John Tester of Montana, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Coons of Delaware.

So lets be clear: Wielding the bare minimum of legislative pragmatism does lend these lawmakers more credibility when they go home to tell their constituents about the work theyre doing in Washington.

But it doesnt make them moderates.
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Businessman Raj Kundra was arrested on Monday by the Mumbai police in a case related to alleged creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps, a senior official said.

Mr. Kundra (45), arrested by the Crime Branch after being booked under relevant sections of the IPC and the Information Technology Act, has been alleged to be the key conspirator of the case, he said.

Unsplash/Representational image

"There was a case registered with the Crime Branch Mumbai in Feb 2021 about creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some Apps. Weve arrested Mr Raj Kundra in this case on 19/7/21 as he appears to be the key conspirator of this. We have sufficient evidence regarding this," the Mumbai Police Commissioner said in a statement.

Reuters

The case was registered on February 4 at the Malwani police station in suburban Mumbai.

"An FIR was registered against Mr. Kundra after a woman approached the police and made certain allegations in her complaint", another official said. Raj Kundra is also Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty's husband.



raj Kundra "On that basis, the FIR was registered and the case transferred to the Crime Branch. Earlier also, we had registered cases related to pornography in which an actress and some other persons were made accused," he said.





Netizens are angry at Bollywood and its hypocrisy. Connecting the case to injustice that happened with Sushant Singh Rajput, people started tweeting #BoycottBollywood.

No Biggie....Just some "Normaaaal" Bollywoodiya Biz People here

Thaali wali Auntyji Kahan Ho

Never forget Nor forgive how these GutterWoodiyas Bullied & Sullied our Visionary Sushant !!!#BoycottBollywood #RajKundraArrest pic.twitter.com/u3XDiAFpTP  PHOENIX  (@PhoenixPRIYA1) July 19, 2021

Shilpa Shetty's husband Raj Kundra arrested in pornography case



Few months back same couple was summoned by NCB Mumbai



I hope people will get to know understand the dirt of Bollywood



Pls stop watching them for GOD sake#BoycottBollywood#RajKundraArrest #shilpashettykundra pic.twitter.com/mbBHrI5mVB  Nitika Singh (@itsNitikaSingh) July 20, 2021

Key word here is February. All Warriors for SSR notice that the agencies are constantly working to get down to the truth. No one will be spared. Universal Justice will take place. Truth is in front of us now each one of us determines if we #BoycottBollywood or not.#Justice4SSR pic.twitter.com/mFY58bmXjD  Saanya Chopra Dua  (@SaanyaChopraDua) July 20, 2021

BOLLYWOOD

DRUGS

SEX RACKETS



Everything is getting exposed with time.



I trust CBI and NCB, who has been doing tremendous job after Sushant murder.



#BoycottBollywood  Sonu Nigam (@indexupdates) July 20, 2021

Bollywood is exposed & Sushant's divine soul is doing this everyday.



Creeps of Bollywood can do anything for money , they can exploit anyone , bully anyone no matter what's the age.



Visionary Sushant's words has become reality. Bollywood is collapsed. #BoycottBollywood  Koushani Kundu (@kundu_koushani) July 20, 2021

Main is gambheer maamle me chuppi saadhna pasand karungi,,,ab reh hi kya gya kehne or sunne ke liye..#RajKundraArrest#BoycottBollywood  Menakshi Gusain (@GusainMenakshi) July 20, 2021





Drug dealing

Sex / Child Abuse

Child trafficking

Nepotism

Casting couch

Murders

Rape

Underworld connection



- YE HAI BOLLYWOOD ka sach !!



Ready to clean up ?#BoycottBollywood pic.twitter.com/ht4dvQoyon  Ayan (@ayan_says7) July 20, 2021

"We will probe the Raj Kundra case and find out is there is any link between this and pornography cases which we had registered earlier," the official said.

porn-laptop-5ea6b0cab0e67

Kundra was booked under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 34 (common intention), 292 and 293 (related to obscene and indecent advertisements and displays) besides relevant sections of the IT Act and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, he added.



(With inputs from PTI)


Well, as they say sky is your limit. Vaidehi Dongre, a 25-year-old woman believed in that and today she is crowned as Miss India USA 2021. Vaidehi who resides in Michigan shared this happy and proud news on Instagram.



Instagram

Announcing this news with pictures of her being crowned, Vaidehi wrote Thrilled to be representing the state of Michigan at Miss India USA in July!

The Miss India USA pageants have always provided a platform to empower and encourage women of Indian origin. As a little girl having been born in India and raised in the US, I have always straddled the line between Indian & American culture and values & discovered all the amazing gifts that both have to offer. I believe that the Miss India USA platform will give me the confidence & resources to further my goals, and leave a positive lasting impact on my community. Wish me luck This one is for my Aai (Mom).

Instagram

Talking about how it wasnt easy task, Vaidehi adds, This past year has been one of the toughest of my life as I am sure it has been for many others. On a personal level, I moved back home in February of 2020 due to the pandemic and stayed to support my family through a difficult time. After a full year of deep reflection and work on myself, the Miss India Michigan pageant made me realize how much growth can come from leaning into challenges. Participating in and winning the Miss India Michigan pageant brought me a level of internal clarity and confidence that I didnt think was possible.

Instagram

Well, she sure made her people and everyone else proud.
Nobody can debate over the fact that the world has permanently changed after the Covid-19 pandemic. In addition to the value of hygiene and cleanliness, it has made us realize many things that went unnoticed before.

The value of digitalization and the work from home scenario has become an aspect in our lives that may become permanent as well due to coronavirus.

However, this virus has spread worldwide without acknowledging borders. It has impacted all industries, all sectors and all aspects of our lives with devastating economic and financial losses and significant uncertainties.

One of the biggest industry that was impacted by the pandemic was the airline industry.

Unsplash

Now, if you have at all travelled in an aeroplane since March 2020, you'd know how much more strict the airport security has become. From taking proper precautions to using the Covid app, the rules are intact at airports.

However, one can't deny that the aviation industry has gone into losses since the lockdown came into place last year. Worldwide, this impact has affected everyone in this industry and there is still no recovery as such when it comes to international travel. In fact, 2020 was deemed as the worst year in history for air travel demand.

How was the Airline Industry affected internationally and in India?

The Airline Group of the International Federation of Operations Research (AGIFORS) held its 60th Annual Symposium in October 2020 on a virtual platform and talked about this very topic. The panels included representatives from Airbus, Boeing, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and 11 airlines from across the world: AeroMexico, Air Canada, Air FranceKLM, American, Cathay Pacific, Copa, Emirates, IndiGo, United, Qatar, and SAS.

According to this report, they stated that the commercial aviation industry has supported more than 80 million jobs worldwide and has contributed up to 8% of the gross domestic product. More than 30% of all international trade by value is carried by air and approximately 60% of international tourists travel by air.

It read, " In 2020, weve seen everything fall off a cliff. At the worst point in April, two-thirds of the worlds fleet of aircraft was grounded, 90% of operations were not happening and even more so for international operations, where it was more like 98%. And we have the latest IATA [International Air Transport Association] estimation of where we will end up at the end of the year, which is around 60% down or 65% down on last year."

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), global passenger traffic as measured in revenue passenger kilometres declined by 65.9 per cent compared to 2019, as international passenger demand dropped 75.6 per cent and domestic demand fell 48.8 per cent below 2019 levels.

Unsplash





About the year 2020 Alexandre de Juniac, IATAs Director General and CEO said, "Last year was a catastrophe. There is no other way to describe it. What recovery there was over the Northern hemisphere summer season stalled in autumn and the situation turned dramatically worse over the year-end holiday season, as more severe travel restrictions were imposed in the face of new outbreaks and new strains of COVID-19.



In India, all scheduled international flights and domestic passenger flights in 2020 were suspended from March 23 and March 25, respectively. Scheduled domestic flights were restarted in a limited manner from May 25.

In fact, India's two largest airlines. IndiGo incurred net losses of 2,884 crore and 1,194 crore in Q1 and Q2 of this fiscal respectively. SpiceJet posted net losses of 600 crores and 112 crores in Q1 and Q2, respectively.

Moreover, due to losses, thousands of employees were laid off, some of them were sent on leave without pay or their salaries were cut. Not just that, the government also had to extend the deadline for submitting bids for Air India five times during the year.

Based on a Bloomberg analysis of data from flight tracker OAG, in 2021 carriers in the country had reached 87% of their pre-pandemic seat capacity through early April. The data also showed that the capacity had fallen to 71% of 2019 levels, a 16 percentage-point drop from March to April. Further eroding demand is a move by nations including Singapore, Australia, the U.K. and the United Arab Emirates to impose restrictions on visitors from India.



Unsplash

What is the path ahead?

With vaccination campaigns taking place all over the world in the year 2021, there will be some positive signs and prospects for recovery. Both travellers and industry stakeholders are eager to resume travelling. Many industry experts forecast a surge in travel for the second half of 2021. Some are even referring to this potential increase as a post-war like surge in travel.



However, there may be short term expenditures by the aviation industries when it comes to the cost of health-related measures. Operating costs are likely to increase for both airlines and airports because of additional health and safety requirements (e.g. disinfection, PPE, temperature checks or viral tests) before they can be passed on to consumers. This may continue until the pandemic has been completely wiped out.

Moreover, people are eager to on leisure trips, so that will be the main source to incur domestic losses unless international barricades are completely open.

Unsplash

What is the future of the aviation industry in India after covid-19?



India is still overwhelmed by the Covid-19 pandemic and is gearing for the third wave. Despite, no steep recovery in this aspect people have been going out to travel to nearby hill stations like Manali and Shimla which may be the reason for the extension of this pandemic. John Grant, chief analyst at OAG said, with airlines still cancelling flights and countries throwing up more barriers, Indias market could plummet to as little as 25% of normal.



However, thanks to the vaccination drive there is good news for international travel. Recently, some European countries opened their gates for Indian travellers who have been vaccinated. This step can be the beginning for all International travel to take place once again. But, until things get back to normalcy, one can't expect the aviation industry to get back to its 2019 phase anytime soon.
The months of lockdown have been tough on millions of Indians who lost their incomes and livelihoods. While most states have come out of the lockdown phase and are cautiously opening up, in places like Kerala, it is still there at least in parts.

This is adding to the struggles of the small business owners, who are unable to open their shops, yet have to pay the rent and taxes.

BCCL

With no income and debts mounting, many small businesses in the state have down their shutters for good, while others have been thrown out by their landlords or nonpayment of rent.

One such small business owner, Prasanna has been gifted a second chance to rebuild her life and business, thanks to the kind gesture of billionaire businessman MA Yousuf Ali.

Humane gesture

Ali, the Chairman of UAE-based Lulu Group paid the rent dues of Prasanna who was evicted by the Greater Cochin Development Corporation (GCDA) from her shop at Kochi.

The 54-year-old had to pay Rs 13,800 per month as rent but due to Covid lockdown and some maintenance work, she was not able to open the shop.

With no income, the woman, who also has to support her mentally challenged daughter defaulted on rent payments.

When she was unable to pay a due of Rs 9 lakh GCDA officials had shut down the shop on Wednesday and Prasanna.

BCCL

On learning about her plight, Yusuf Ali promised to help the struggling woman and his company paid the Rs 9 lakh rent dues.

In addition to this, the Kerala-born businessman also gave Rs 2 lakh to Prasanna to help her run the street shop where she was selling refreshments and juices.

"When notice was served on me, I did not have any means other than thinking about suicide. I don't have Rs 9,000 with me, how can I pay Rs 9 lakh. I and my family thank Yusuf Ali saheb wholeheartedly for this benevolence showered on us. He was literally God sent to us," Prasanna told IANS.

Not the first time

Last month, in another humanitarian gesture, Yousuf Ali had paid nearly Rs 1 crore as 'blood money' to save the life of an Indian man who was on death row in the UAE.

Facebook

Becks Krishnan, a native of Kerala's Thrissur was jailed in September 2012 after his car rammed into a Sudanese boy and was sentenced to death by UAE Supreme Court after he was found guilty of reckless driving.

After he was sentenced to death, Krishnan's family had been trying unsuccessfully to get him released.

Things took a positive turn after the kin of Krishnan approached Yusuf Ali, who is an influential businessman in the Middle East and one of the richest NRIs.

Subsequently, Yusuf Ali paid 500,000 Dirhams (Rs one crore approximately) as compensation in the court to secure Krishna's release.
All passengers flying to West Bengal, on both commercial and non-commercial flights, will have to produce either a certificate that shows they are fully vaccinated or a Covid-19 negative (RT-PCR) test report, the state government wrote to the civil aviation ministry.

The decision will be implemented with immediate effect, West Bengal Home Secretary BP Gopalika wrote to Civil Aviation secretary PS Kharola.

Representational Image/BCCL

Passengers need to produce proof of their full vaccination or a COVID-19 negative test report at the time of boarding. The RT-PCR test must be conducted within 72 hours of the departure of the flight.

A total of 12 Covid-19 deaths were registered in the state on Monday pushing the coronavirus death toll to cross the 18k-mark to reach 18,011, it said.

At least 666 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the state which increased the caseload to 15,18,847. In the last 24 hours, 1,006 recoveries were reported in the state which improved the discharge rate to 97.97 per cent. So far, 14,88,077 people have recovered from the disease in West Bengal.

Reuters

At present, there are 12,759 active cases in the state. Since Sunday, 40,391 samples have been tested for Covid-19 in the state taking the total number of such tests to 1,51,78,563.

On Monday, 3,18,805 people were inoculated in the state, a health department official told news agency PTI.
Cover of An Ugly Truth. Media reports on the Pegasus project said that some 300 Indians were targeted using spyware capable of extracting data from a phone. (free photo via IANS)
Bhavna and Vishal Patel and their one-year old daughter, Aishani, were killed last month as the 12-storey South Champlain Towers condominium complex, where they lived, collapsed. Trisha Devi, Bhavnas friend, told India-West the Indian American familys bodies were cremated July 15, and their ashes will be scattered in the Atlantic Ocean. (Trisha Devi/Facebook photo)
An Indian medic fills a syringe with a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, in Ajmer, Rajasthan, July 16. The CDC has suggested that Indian Americans and other U.S. residents reconsider travel to destinations that are classified as Level 3, and that if people travel there, they should make sure they are fully vaccinated before they go. (ANI photo)
The Siemens facility will have power capacity of 100MW and energy storage capacity for 200MWh, and will store electricity generated locally from surplus renewable energy. It will also cover demand peaks on the power grid.

The electricity will come from German grid network operator Zukunftsenergie Nordostbayern (ZENOB) while the...
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.
According to her great, great nephew, Monica Flinn likely spent the first summer at her new El Charro Cafe making pots of stew and tortillas to feed local construction workers. That was 99 years ago, and summer survival continues to be the hallmark of the season at each of El Charros Tucson
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced an agreement with McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc. and Amerisource Bergen Drug Corporation that will deliver up to $1.1 billion to New York state to combat the ongoing opioid epidemic.

The $1.1 billion agreement is the largest monetary settlement ever negotiated by James. The agreement resolves claims made by James for the role of the three companies in helping to fuel the opioid epidemic and will remove the three distributors from New Yorks ongoing opioid trial, currently underway in Suffolk County State Supreme Court.

For more than two decades, the opioid epidemic has wreaked havoc on countless communities throughout New York and across the rest of the nation, killing hundreds of thousands of our friends and family members and addicting millions more, said James in a press release issued by her office

As part of the agreement, McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen will pay New York state a total of up to $1,179,251,066.68, of which more than $1 billion will go toward abatement. Payments will start in two months and will continue over the course of the next 17 years.

The majority of the $1.1 billion payment will be a guaranteed base payment with the remaining funds earmarked as incentive payments to be paid if New York maximally bars, resolves or releases current and future subdivision litigation.

Part of the payment includes New Yorks share of a national pot that will be provided to states that did not hire outside counsel. Like most other funds announced, these funds will be used for abatement purposes and will not go toward the states general fund.

Finally, any national fund created to compensate private practice attorneys for lawyers fees will also be used to pay private attorneys used by New Yorks political subdivisions, ensuring the more than $1 billion being announced for opioid abatement will not be allocated to anything else.

While no amount of money will ever compensate for the millions of addictions, the hundreds of thousands of deaths or the countless communities decimated by opioids, this money will be vital in preventing any future devastation, James said in the release.

In the context of an anticipated upcoming national settlement, James also negotiated for a change in the way information about opioid orders is collected and employed nationwide. Pursuant to that agreement, McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen will implement a new process for collecting and analyzing data about opioid orders received by other companies through the creation of a clearinghouse operating under the oversight of an independent third-party monitor.

Specifically, this clearinghouse will pool data from the three distributors in order to allow consistent and aggregated data analysis, giving each distributor the ability to account for their own opioid shipments while simultaneously accounting for the shipments of the other distributors. Additionally, the clearinghouse will use the distributors collective data to establish pharmacy-specific opioid shipment limits that each distributor must follow.

The agreement would additionally resolve lawsuits against McKesson, Cardinal Health and Amerisource Bergen by Nassau and Suffolk counties if the county legislatures approve the agreement next month. In the meantime, James plans to make a motion to remove the three distributors from New Yorks ongoing opioid trial in state court.

This agreement was negotiated in coordination with a larger global settlement that remains ongoing. While a global agreement still remains under negotiation, if an agreement is reached before July 1, 2022, New York will join that settlement and the terms of this agreement will be folded into that settlement, the press release said.

Source: New York State Office of the Attorney General

Topics New York
Insurity Appoints Campestre as Chief Sales Officer

Insurity, a provider of cloud-based software for insurance carriers, brokers and managing general agencies, appointed Craig Campestre as chief sales officer.

Campestre will lead Insuritys sales strategy and operations, which includes driving revenue growth, developing a leading sales team and ensuring alignment to Insuritys strategic goals. He will report to Insurity CEO Chris Lafond.

Campestre brings to Insurity more than 20 years of experience in sales, sales operations and accelerating growth at leading software companies. Most recently, he served as chief revenue officer at IPC Systems, a technology and service leader in the global financial services markets. He also served as vice president of sales for Fidelity National Information Services (FIS).

Source: Insurity

Westchester Appoints McLaughlin as Executive VP of Casualty Practice

Westchester, Chubbs wholesale excess and surplus insurance business, appointed Thomas McLaughlin as executive vice president of its casualty practice.

In this capacity, McLaughlin will have oversight of product and business development, underwriting operations and profit and loss performance.

He succeeds Dean Andrighetto, who has announced his retirement. McLaughlin will be based in Boston, Massachusetts, and report to Scott Meyer, senior vice president of Chubb Group and division president of Westchester.

McLaughlin joined Westchester in June 2019 as senior vice president, chief operating officer and Northeast regional manager for its casualty division. He has more than two decades of experience in the insurance industry, where he has held a variety of leadership roles.

Source: Chubb

Lockton Adds Five to Expand Presence in Philadelphia Market

Lockton announced that Clark Engle, Joseph Curcio, Daniel Foley, Kevin Walker and Mike Colarusso are joining the company to expand Locktons presence in the Philadelphia market.

Engle has more than 28 years of experience in the insurance industry. Prior to joining Lockton, he worked at Aon Risk Solutions, where he was senior vice president in its national healthcare practice.

In this role, he will have responsibility for leading the marketing, placing, program design of professional, general and umbrella/excess insurance and reinsurance coverage for healthcare clients.

Curcio joins Lockton after 20 years in the industry as a vice president specializing in employee benefits solutions. He is responsible for leading new business development as a strategic advisor by providing consultative advice to employers on market-appropriate employee benefits solutions to help them achieve their recruitment, retention, employee welfare and financial objectives.

Before joining Lockton, Curcio was responsible for developing new strategic services and overseeing new business development at Connor Strong & Buckelew.

Foley joins Lockton as a senior vice president, bringing more than 20 years of industry experience and expertise in employee and executive benefits, property/casualty insurance and retirement plans.

He previously served as the vice president of consulting at Innovative Benefit Planning and is currently an advisory board member for the Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs.

Walker has a decade of industry experience. In his role at Lockton, he manages complex client relationships and coordinates Lockton resources that deliver client service. He has special expertise in employee benefits.

Colarusso will serve as senior vice president and benefits consultant for Lockton. He has spent more than 30 years in the industry. He covers all aspects of health and benefit programs, from benefits design and underwriting to vendor management and benefits administration and communication.

Prior to Lockton, he served as managing director for NFP, where he led benefit and health management strategic and financial initiatives for the benefits practice.

Source: Lockton

Topics Chubb Lockton
These editions of International People Moves covers appointments at a new reinsurance broker, Ardonaghs Inver Re; The Hartfords Global Specialty business unit, and the aviation reinsurance division of MS Amlin Underwriting.

A summary of these new hires follows here.

The Ardonagh Group has appointed Neil Higgins as head of Facultative Reinsurance at its new reinsurance broker Inver Re.

Higgins joins from Miller where he held a number of roles since 2010, most recently as head of Property.

Throughout his decade at Miller, Higgins was instrumental in growing the business from a team of 12 to a property/casualty division of more than 100. Prior to this, he held senior roles at PWS and Newman Martin and Buchan.

Higgins will oversee the creation of a client centric, strategic, flexible and market-neutral approach to facultative reinsurance solutions.

Inver Re will align this capability with broader treaty reinsurance expertise, as well as drawing upon the combined expertise of Ardonagh Specialty and the Group, to position the new reinsurance broker as a credible, independent alternative for clients and work towards its aim to become a top 5 global reinsurance broker.

Founded in 2021, Inver Reinsurance Brokers Ltd. is a subsidiary of the Ardonagh Group, a UK-based independent insurance distribution platform and a top 20 broker globally.

***

The Hartford has appointed Carrie Brodzinski as chief underwriting officer within its Global Specialty business unit.

She will be based at the companys corporate headquarters in Hartford, Conn. and will report to Adrien Robinson, head of Global Specialty insurance.

As chief underwriting officer at The Hartford, Brodzinski will advance the companys strategic priorities concerning underwriting excellence and top quartile performance among specialty lines insurers. She will direct and coordinate all aspects of underwriting quality, governance and monitoring of The Hartfords diverse portfolio of products. Additionally, she will provide leadership on the critical function of underwriter learning and development.

Prior to joining The Hartford, Brodzinski was the head of Global Underwriting Management for the Insurance Segment at AXA XL and XL Catlin previously. As an insurance industry executive with more than 25 years of experience in product strategy, underwriting operations and risk analysis, Brodzinski has successfully brought several breakthrough products to the industry, and is a well-known expert on management and professional liability coverage and exposures.

She began her professional career as an attorney focused on commercial law and bankruptcy.

***

MS Amlin Underwriting Ltd. (MS AUL), the Lloyds global specialty re/insurer, announced the appointment of Richard Bayman as head of Aviation Reinsurance. Bayman will take up the role in the third quarter of 2021, subject to regulatory approval. He will report to Matthew Wilken, head of Reinsurance.

Bayman brings more than 20 years of experience in the aviation re/insurance market to MS AUL, most recently as head of Aerospace at Chubb where he was responsible for strategic planning and underwriting performance.

Topics Agencies Excess Surplus Reinsurance Mississippi Aviation AXA XL
Africa Specialty Risks (ASR), the pan-African focused reinsurance managing general agent, announced it has secured an additional $10 million in capacity for its Political Violence and Terrorism (PVT) division from Lloyds insurer Atrium Underwriting Ltd.

This is in addition to the multi-year binder capacity across all of ASRs business lines, of up to $25 million per risk through a partnership with GIC of India and annual capacity from Peak Re as announced in February this year. GIC has an AM Best rating of BBB+ (Good), while Peak Res AM Best rating is A- (Excellent).

Atrium is a leading insurer with expertise in managing and underwriting specialist insurance and reinsurance business, exclusively at Lloyds. Atriums Syndicate 609 is made up of 12 separate underwriting class teams, each led by an experienced market professional. The syndicate underwrites a broad mix of insurance and reinsurance business, both through facilities and on a facultative basis. The firm reported capacity for 2020 of 525 million ($719.7 million), having risen from 60 million ($82.3 million) in 2000.

ASR launched its PVT business line in April 2021, appointing Zouheb Azam as head of the division, and offering bespoke products that cater to the specific requirements and challenges of PVT risks in Africa, covering a broad range of perils and extensions.

We are delighted with the additional capacity for PVT from Atrium. PVT cover is more important now than ever before, and this extra capacity will allow us to further support our clients across Africa, commented Zouheb Azam, head of PVT as Africa Speciality Risks.

Securing capacity from Atrium is a real demonstration of the strength of ASRs strategy and I am looking forward to driving the PVT team forward, executing our strategy of providing specialist cover to a market that is so underserved, Azam added.

ASR was launched by Helios Investment Partners LLP in partnership with Mikir Shah, former CEO of AXA Africa Specialty Risks and Bryan Howett, former CEO of Old Mutuals pan-African reinsurance operations.

Related:

Topics Excess Surplus Lloyd's
Workers and residents at a Missouri residential nursing facility were exposed asbestos hazards when three employers at the site failed to ensure safe removal of the known carcinogen during a flooring replacement project, a federal workplace safety inspection alleges.

OSHA initiated an inspection at the Bentonview Park Health & Rehabilitation in Monett in January 2021, based on a referral from the Missouri Department of Natural Resources. On Jan. 22, the state agency evacuated the facilitys residents  31 days after flooring work began on Dec. 21, 2020.

OSHA alleges Eastern Coast Management Inc., SRZ Mgmt Holdings LLC and SRZ OP Bentonview LLC failed to test for the presence of asbestos, did not erect protective barriers to contain residue and failed to use respiratory and personal protective equipment to prevent exposure. Bulk samples of tile backing and mastic collected at three locations in the facility indicated that between 45 percent and 51 percent of the samples contained chrysotile asbestos.

Together, the three companies faced penalties of more than $200,000.

OSHA inspectors allege that workers for the three employers removed about 10,000 square feet of floor tiles containing asbestos, and that none of the employers completed an asbestos assessment to determine its presence.

After its inspection, OSHA cited the three companies for not implementing a respiratory protection program, exposing workers to asbestos hazards and failing to inform employees of the potential presence of asbestos. Additional violations and penalties proposed against each company include:

Eastern Coast Management Inc., the projects lead contractor,  faces proposed penalties of $105,127 for 11 serious violations. SRZ Op Holdings LLC, the facilitys owner, hired the Woodmere, New York, company to remove and replace the flooring.

SRZ Mgmt Holdings LLC of Jefferson City faces proposed penalties of $95,570 for 10 serious violations. Investigators determined the companys regional director of operations removed flooring and used removal equipment and scrapers to keep the project moving in the lead contractors absence. The company assigns managers to the Bentonville facility.

SRZ OP Bentonview LLC, which operates as Bentonview Park Health and Rehabilitation, faces $38,228 in proposed penalties for four serious violations. As the facilitys manager, the company had responsibility for protecting its employees and other workers in the rehabilitation facility from potential respiratory hazards.

Bentonview Park Health and Rehabilitation provides both short-term rehabilitation and long-term care.

All three companies have 15 business days from receipt of its citations and penalties to comply, request an informal conference with OSHAs area director, or contest the findings before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.

Source: OSHA

Topics Workers' Compensation Missouri
Hacking Expert Bixby Joins Aon Cyber Solutions

Aon has appointed Adam Bixby as the new managing director, Proactive Security leader, for Cyber Solutions North America. Bixby is responsible for the Proactive Security practices, advisory and testing, leading business development, service delivery, people and operations.

Previously, Bixby served as co-practice leader of Aons Cyber Security Testing Team.

In addition to his role with Aon, Bixby is a contributing hacking technical consultant for TV and movies, including Mr. Robot, Oceans 8, The Flight Attendant, and The Equalizer. Prior to his career in cyber security, Adam was in the United States Air Force as a Security Forces member.

Guy Carpenter Adds Willis Res Petka, Underwood at GC Access

Reinsurance broker Guy Carpenter & Co. announced the appointments of Matt Petka as managing director and Riley Underwood as senior vice president within its GC Access business unit.

GC Access provides dedicated managing general agency (MGA) program business services, including carrier and reinsurance transactions, captive support, insurtech expertise and program startup roadmaps.

In his new position, Petka will assume a senior leadership role within GC Access, responsible for overseeing services development and client management. Alongside Underwood, he will focus on delivering programs for U.S. regional clients in the MGA sector. Based in Dallas, Texas, they will report to Michael Jameson, president, GC Access.

Petka brings 22 years of broking experience to the role, with knowledge of the U.S. auto and property sectors. He joins from Willis Re, where he was executive vice president managing a team focused on MGA and program business.

Underwood is a senior broker who also joins from Willis Re. Most recently, he was senior vice president responsible for new account production and account management.

Zywave Names Guntrum, Flynn, Palatnik to Senior Leadership

Insurance technology firm Zywave has added new senior leadership in its customer experience and marketing departments. Software and technology solutions expert Heather Guntrum has been named Zywaves chief customer officer, B2B tech marketing executive Amanda Flynn, vice president of Marketing, and Mikhail Palatnik, vice president, Data Solutions & Product Management.

In her role, Guntrum is responsible for leading all post-sale operations, customer journey and support, enhancing the overall customer experience as Zywave continues its rapid growth in the insurance technology market. Guntrum brings 20 years lof experience with software companies, most recently serving as the customer success officer at Alfresco, an open source provider. Guntrum has also served as a strategic leader in various acquisitions and mergers, one of the drivers of Zywaves expansion.

As the vice president of Marketing, Flynn will play a vital role in the advancement of the marketing function and expansion of the company. Prior to joining Zywave, Flynn served as vice president of Marketing at BenchPrep, a cloud-based learning platform.

To help lead product innovation, Palatnik, as vice president of Data Solutions and Product Management, will oversee multiple Zywave product lines, including the quoting and proposals offerings, and Zywaves data and analytics offerings. With more than 20 years of experience in the property/casualty insurance space, prior to Zywave, Palatnik was vice president of Product Management at CoreLogic, a data and analytics provider to real estate, insurance, capital and public sector markets. He led the product management function for insurance business, overseeing a suite of over 100 products, serving more than 800 clients.

Between organic growth and with seven acquisitions in the last two years, Zywave now serves more than 15,000 insurance organizations globally.

Topics Cyber Aon Leadership Willis Towers Watson Marsh McLennan
Surplus lines premium exceeded $24 billion and premium bearing transactions exceeded 2.6 million through the first six months of 2021, according to the 2021 Midyear Report of the U.S. Surplus Lines Service and Stamping Offices by the Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association (WSIA). Premium increased 21.9% and transactions increased 7.2% over numbers reported through the same period in 2020.

Each of the 15 stamping offices reported premium increases through midyear 2021 and all but one state reported increases in transactions. Stamping office reporting is an indicator of the direction of the U.S. surplus lines market since states with stamping offices accounted for 62.7% of U.S. premium volume in 2019, according to stamping office and AM Best reports. State stamping and service offices are non-governmental entities that help facilitate compliance with surplus lines insurance regulations and tax filings as well as additional services for their respective memberships.

The 2021 Midyear Report revealed that in contrast to the midyear 2020 and annual 2020 reports, transaction counts increased for the first time since the 2019 report.

Idaho reported the highest increase with 13,257 transactions, up 27% from 2020. Premium growth can be seen in general liability, fire & allied, and general contractors, according to Wendy Tippetts, manager of the Surplus Line Association of Idaho. Transactions are up significantly in high limit accident & health, she said. General liability and fire & allied increases are not surprising due to the magnitude of residential and commercial construction.

Other western states also showed growth in the surplus lines market. According to Scott Wede, executive director of the Surplus Line Association of Arizona, overall double-digit rate increase came from all lines of business. Commercial and residential construction class premiums have increased along with professional classes, he said. Arizona and some neighboring states are in a building boom and the addition of new households reflects increases in all classes.

In other states it was casualty coverages driving the growth in surplus lines premium volume.

In Illinois, our property categories have retreated somewhat from their strong gains in 2020, said Surplus Line Association of Illinois CEO David Ocasek. However, we are seeing significant growth in the first half of 2021 for general liability, excess general liability, E&O/D&O, cyber, umbrella, commercial auto physical damage and pollution. Strong performance in these categories has contributed to surges in both total premium (15.2%) and number of documents filed (8.7%), as well as a 6% increase in average premium per filed document, according to Ocasek.

New York experienced the lowest premium growth of any stamping office state in 2020 but has rebounded significantly in the first half of 2021. Year over year, as of June 30, the New York excess line market enjoyed substantial premium growth of 18%, said Dan Maher, executive director of the Excess Line Association of New York. The increase of nearly $470 million is nearly triple the increase from 2019 to 2020 at midyear. I attribute the difference to the pandemics negative impact in 2020.

North Carolina reported the second highest premium growth of the stamping office states. Geoff Allen, chief operating officer of the North Carolina Surplus Lines Association, said that North Carolina realized an increase of 34% in premium for the first half of 2021. The month of June and the second quarter of 2021 were both records for surplus lines premium filed in North Carolina. Most of the increases were in commercial property, general liability, excess liability, directors and officers and cyber liability. In addition, the total number of filings were up 8% in 2021 over the same period in 2020.

Since 2018, surplus lines premium growth reported by the stamping offices in quarters three and four has exceeded premium growth in quarters one and two, and many market leaders see continued opportunity for expansion in the second half of 2021.

The reports statistics are gathered and reported individually by each state stamping office and the data is aggregated and summarized by WSIA on their behalf.

Source: Wholesale & Specialty Insurance Association (WSIA)

Topics Carriers Trends Excess Surplus Pricing Trends
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he will take legal action against a recent court order that left in place Center for Disease Control orders for cruise ships to follow as they roll out to sea later this summer.

A panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision on July 17 enforcing the CDCs authority to set health guidelines and restrictions for cruise ships. The last minute ruling overturned a preliminary injunction from US District Judge Stephen Merryday, who blocked a CDC request to extend its COVID-19 restrictions for cruise ships.

Speaking at a June 19 press conference in Poinciana, Fla., DeSantis said the state of Florida will probably extend its legal fight to the full 11th Circuit.

I think that most courts at this point have had their limit with the CDC issuing these dictates without a firm statutory basis. So Im confident that wed win on the merits at the full 11th Circuit, DeSantis said. Honestly, Im confident wed win at the U.S. Supreme Court.

Florida filed a lawsuit against the CDC and the Biden administration in April to force the reopening of the cruise industry without COVID-19 guidelines. The suit claims the CDCs policies worsen revenue shortfalls at Florida seaports and reduces state and local taxes associated with the cruise industry.

One of the reasons why we did it was not just its an important industry for our state, DeSantis said. Were committed to that, but it raises a bigger question: Can you just have one agency in the government, without Congress ever passing a law, just basically shutting down an industry?

Floridas ban on vaccine passports brought on a lawsuit from Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings earlier in July. The company contends the states ban on vaccine documentation violates the First Amendment by blocking communication between a business and its customers.

NCLH warned it could be forced to pay penalties of up to $5,000 per passenger by enforcing vaccine documentation.

Indeed, the only way NCLH could maintain its protocols and operations as currently planned is by abandoning Florida altogether, the suit said.

Topics COVID-19 Florida
Island Insurance Co. has promoted Denise Kadomoto to assistant vice president of accounting and finance.

Kadomoto will continue to serve as the companys controller, a position she has held since 2015.

Kadomoto joined Island in 2007 as senior accountant. She has nearly 35 years of accounting and finance experience with past roles at Royal State Financial Corp., Kaiser Permanente, the Queens Health Systems and Deloitte & Touche LLP.

Island Insurance is a locally-owned property/casualty insurer offering a range of insurance protection solutions including personal auto, homeowners, condo, renters and umbrella insurance, and commercial insurance.

The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers has named Jeff Arricale chief financial officer.

Arricale has 25 years of accounting, capital markets, insurance and ESG expertise. He began his career in the audit practice of KPMG LLP and then spent 18 years as an insurance analyst, and research director with T. Rowe Price and Lord Abbett. Most recently, he was Chief of staff and head of Capital Markets for commercial insurer ProSight Specialty.

The Liberty Company Insurance Brokers is a privately held brokerage firm in Woodland Hills, Calif., with offices throughout the country.

Topics California Agencies
Gerry Adams wrote to Tony Blair on the very day his New Labour government swept to power, assuring him Sinn Fein would be totally committed to bringing peace to Ireland, previously private correspondence between the two men shows.

Mr Adams and Mr Blair were among those noted for their roles in bringing about the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 after years of bitter conflict between republicans and loyalists in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles.

Documents on Anglo-Irish relations from Mr Blairs first few days in office show Mr Adams was keen to signal his co-operation from the outset.

Tony Blair with Gerry Adams at Stormont in Belfast. Picture: Paul Faith/PA Wire

In a letter from the Sinn Fein president, on personalised paper to Number 10 and marked May 2 1997, Mr Adams wrote: Be assured that this (peace in Ireland) is a priority for me also and that Sinn Fein is totally committed to democratic and peaceful methods of struggle and to a negotiated settlement to the conflict in our country.

The rebuilding of a credible peace process must be tackled without further delay.

While I am mindful of the difficulties for all concerned, I remain confident that the peace process can be established on a solid basis of equality and inclusive dialogue.

That is certainly my commitment.

Mr Blairs response, again in a private letter released by the National Archives in Kew, appeared firm.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness (left) outside No 10 Downing Street. Picture: Fiona Hanson/PA Wire

You and those you represent should also be in no doubt as to the Governments fundamental approach in seeking to promote reconciliation and overcoming the divisions which have contributed to conflict, he wrote.

It is fundamental that such negotiations can take place only among those committed to exclusively peaceful methods and who have shown that they abide by the democratic process.

We shall not be diverted by violence or threats of violence. It is vital that there should be no misunderstanding about our approach and our commitment to follow it through consistently.

Mr Blair called for the restoration of an IRA ceasefire, which duly came into force in July.

In October, Mr Blair and Mr Adams shook hands during a historic meeting in Belfast, while Mr Adams met the PM in Downing Street two months later.
The Government is moving this morning to deal with major backlogs in its Digital Covid Certificate (DCC) helpline.

An extra helpline on the DCC will be in place from this morning so it will be able to take a far higher number of calls, senior government sources have said.

As a result, they say the person ringing will not get the call failed message.

The number to contact for the new DCC helpline is 1800 807 008.

Thousands of people have been told to buy PCR tests costing up to 400 to allow them to leave the country this week after the Governments Covid cert helpline buckled under the demand of calls.

The delays have been branded as completely unacceptable, with assurances given only last week by officials that the technology was able to cope with the level of calls.

As a result of the logjams, fully vaccinated or recovered Covid-19 passengers due to leave the country in the coming days have been left with no choice but to seek to get a PCR test as a workaround, with some paying several hundred euro.

With the return of non-essential travel yesterday, there were widespread complaints about not being able to access the helpline or being forced to wait several hours before an agent was available.

Junior transport minister Hildegarde Naughton accepted there were issues with the helpline.

"There have been issues with the helpline, but I can assure you the Government is working very hard in order to get that system back up and running as quickly as possible," said Ms Naughton.

"This was the number one ask from the aviation sector that we can reopen international travel as safely as possible, adhering to public health guidance, so I would hope that that helpline will be back up and running as soon as possible."

The government had a "difficult day" in dealing with the calls, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe said.

He accepted the staff numbers on in the call-centre was not sufficient to meet the high demand from the public who have been experiencing long delays and disconnections when attempting to retrieve their certs to allow them to travel.

He said the establishment of the second helpline should ease the pressure.

High volume of calls

A Department of Health spokesperson told the Irish Examiner that a high volume of calls was being received yesterday and it was impacting on the ability of people to access the helpline.

Evelyn Harrington, (left) originally from Rochestown, Cork, heading back to Jamaica after 9 months in Cork and her sister Gillian Quinlan, Blackrock, Cork, going on a holiday to Jamaica from Cork Airport.

"The Digital Covid Certificate Service Centre is currently handling a very high volume of calls and delays may be experienced by members of the public trying to contact the centre.

We are currently working to increase the capacity of the service centre. The helpline number is 1800 851 504 and is for queries relating to your vaccination certificate and/or requesting your recovery certificate."

However, this response was rejected by the Opposition, who said the failure to cope was causing mayhem.

It is completely unacceptable that this has happened when assurances were given that all of the technology was in place and the capacity was there, said Labour Party transport spokesman Duncan Smith.

As a result, people who are due to fly out this week are scrambling to get a PCR test, which could cost up to 400 both ways.

In total, 22,500 passengers arrived at and departed Dublin Airport yesterday, 87% less than pre-Covid levels for this same period in 2019. In 2019, Dublin Airport facilitated 116,000 people passing through the airport per day in peak season.

For the past two weeks, the daily average for arriving and departing passenger numbers was 14,000.

Travel cert 'working well'

Ryanair CEO Eddie Wilson said the EU digital travel cert was working well and will gradually become part of the travel experience, like presenting a passport.

To date, over 1.1m certificates have been emailed to people and over 600,000 have been posted.

Mary Delaney, West Waterford, leaving Cork Airport for a family visit in the UK.

The Government has been urged to provide clarity on when people from the North who hold Irish passports will be able to use the new EU digital Covid cert. Most Irish passport holders in the North will not be able to access the cert at first because they were vaccinated outside of the Republic; currently, the cert is only available to those who were vaccinated by the HSE.

Irish passport holders vaccinated elsewhere will be given a certificate in phase two of the rollout," said Fine Gael TD Neale Richmond. "At the moment, however, we dont know when this will be. I have been informed that in the meantime, those vaccinated elsewhere can still travel if they show their proof of vaccination in the airport.

Ive raised this with the Taoiseach, the minister for health, and my party colleagues, and Ill continue to do so until we get clarity on this.

Meanwhile, it is expected President Michael D Higgins will on Wednesday sign the bill to allow the return of indoor hospitality from next Monday.

The Department of Health confirmed 1,071 new cases of Covid-19. There are 101 patients in hospital, with 20 of these in ICU, down two on Sunday.

With the vaccination programme now well advanced, the link between cases and hospitalisations has been weakened but public health officials continue to monitor the situation.
Northern Irelands chief scientific adviser has said he is very concerned at stalled vaccine rates.

Almost 82% had received a first dose of the jab compared to 87.8% in England, 89.8% in Scotland, 90.5% in Wales by July 18.

Of the 18-29 age group, just 56% have come forward for the vaccine.

Professor Ian Young said he was very concerned about the uptake of vaccination.

People queuing to receive the vaccine at the Covid-19 vaccination centre in the SSE Arena, Belfast (Liam McBurney/PA)

Theres still around 18% of adults who have not come forward for the first dose of their vaccine, he told the BBC.

And that means 18% of people who are just as susceptible to the most severe effects of Covid as they were earlier in the epidemic and at just the same risk of severe illness, long-term illness in the form of long Covid, hospital admission and death.

He urged those who have yet to come forward for their jab to think really hard about taking up the opportunity.

The regions chief medical officer Michael McBride said overall the roll out of the vaccine programme has been a huge success, describing reaching 82% from a standing start in December as a remarkable achievement.

Vaccination is our way out of this pandemic, unfortunately over the past number of weeks we have seen the number of people presenting to get the first dose of the vaccine slow very significantly particularly in the younger age groups, he told the BBC.

Northern Ireland Chief Medical Officer Sir Michael McBride receiving his first dose of the Oxford/AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine from nurse Alana McCaffery at the Ulster Hospital in March (Liam McBurney/PA)

Of all the people eligible to receive the vaccination, there are 18% of people in Northern Ireland who are still vulnerable to this virus, can still be infected with the virus, can still get sick with the virus, can still get long Covid and can still pass the virus on to others, and all they need to do is turn up and walk in to our vaccine centre or turn up at one of our mobile clinics and get the jab and protect ourselves and make sure we can sustain progress on our way out on the other side of this pandemic.

Mr McBride said there is work to do to understand hesitancy.

He urged people dont believe what youre reading sometimes on social media, on Facebook, or Instagram around these vaccines.

These are safe effective vaccines, so say the FDA in the USA, the medicines regulators here in the United Kingdom, the European medicines regulator.

These are safe and effective vaccine, and I would just appeal to all young people to take up the opportunity to get the jab, he said.

They wont be as accessible in the future, our first doses of the vaccines will end on July 31 at mass vaccination centres and we will begin to stand those down in August so its going to become more difficult to access the vaccine although we will still be rolling it out to people who change their mind belatedly.

More than 1,700 new cases of the virus were notified in Northern Ireland on Monday,

Modelling by the department of health suggests that by mid August there could be 3,000-4,000 cases of the virus a day, with a worst case scenario of up to 8,000 cases a day which could translate to 400-600 in hospital with Covid and in the worst case scenario, over a thousand.

Mr McBride said those figures could be reduced by 50% if 5% more people are vaccinated with their first doses.

Small percentage changes make a big difference in terms of the pressures on our health service, adding that Northern Ireland is now unlikely to achieve the 90% vaccinated target.

Mr McBride said at the peak of this wave it is possible that some scheduled and planned treatments may have to be delayed as happened in previous waves.

Obviously that will be a last resort but we have to be realistic, the best way to ensure our health service remains open for business, treating people who need access to care is to keep the number of cases in the community down so that we limit the knock on pressures into our hospitals, he said.

The chief medical officer said it should be recognised that health care staff have been under a huge amount of pressure and there is a finite capacity in our health care system.

Prof Young said the Stormont Executive would be facing difficult decisions on Thursday when ministers meet to consider whether to approve the latest round of relaxations in Northern Ireland.

He said ministers would need to find a balance between the health data on the pandemic and the economic and societal harm caused by restrictions.

On face masks, the chief scientific adviser said he would continue to support their use, particularly in indoor settings.

Theres a very strong case for continuing to recommend face coverings in indoor settings where people cant socially distance and settings which are not well ventilated, Prof Young added.
Nadine Lott suffered "severe blunt force trauma" and stab injuries at the hands of her former partner "in a sustained attack" in her Arklow home, a Central Criminal Court jury has heard.

Opening the trial of Daniel Murtagh today, prosecution counsel John O'Kelly SC said the court will hear evidence that the injuries to Ms Lott were "so serious" that she never regained consciousness and died three days later in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.

Mr Murtagh (34), of Melrose Grove, Bawnogue, Clondalkin, Dublin 22, has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of his 30-year-old ex-partner Ms Lott at her apartment in St Mary's Court, Arklow, Co. Wicklow, on December 17, 2019.

Following the opening address, defence counsel Brendan Grehan SC, for Mr Murtagh, made a number of admissions of fact to the court on behalf of his client. These included that the accused accepted that he had unlawfully killed Ms Lott and he "alone inflicted the injuries she suffered".

The issue to be decided by the jury, Mr Grehan said, will be his intent and in the "broader sense his mental state at the time".

Addressing the jury of seven men and five women, Mr O'Kelly said a case "like this can be very distressing" and there would be a lot of "very distressing issues" which will arise in the trial. "But you as judges have to approach the evidence objectively," he said.

One cannot get inside the mind of Mr Murtagh on the day when he inflicted those injuries on Ms Lott, Mr O'Kelly said, but what one can do is look at his conduct when he inflicted them and "ask ourselves what are the natural and probable consequences of doing that to someone".

"If you want to know what someone intended to do, look at what they did," he added.

Counsel asked the jury to look at the facts, context and conduct of Mr Murtagh when he inflicted the injuries to Ms Lott. "On that basis you will reach your conclusion as to his intent at the time," he indicated.

Outlining the facts of the case, Mr O'Kelly said that Ms Lott lived in Wicklow and it was arranged that Mr Murtagh would come down from Dublin on the evening of December 13. It was later decided that Mr Murtagh would stay overnight in Ms Lott's apartment.

One of the things that made this later arrangement more suitable, the barrister said, was that a birthday party had been organised for Ms Lott's aunt, which was being held in the local pub. "Friends of the family were going along and Nadine was bringing a cake," he remarked.

As a result of Mr Murtagh staying overnight in Ms Lott's apartment, this meant Ms Lott could go to the "family do", he said.

Background to relationship

Detailing the background of the accused and Ms Lott's relationship, counsel said they had met in Darwin in Australia when the Arklow woman was on "a year's working holiday". Having spent some time in Perth, Ms Lott had moved to Darwin where she met Mr Murtagh, the court heard.

Despite the fact that both individuals were from Ireland, Mr O'Kelly said, they had never encountered each other before their meeting in Darwin. The pair started going out together and Ms Lott later arranged to return to Ireland, he said. Mr Murtagh stayed on in Australia for some months and then he also returned to Ireland.

Upon his return, Mr Murtagh lived with Ms Lott and her mother for some time. The accused and Ms Lott moved into an apartment after a few months but unfortunately that did not really work out, said counsel.

"It ended up with Nadine moving back into her mother's and Mr Murtagh went back to his parents in Clondalkin," he said.

Around 2016, Ms Lott and Mr Murtagh got back together again for a short while and they planned to get a house or an apartment but this "fell through".

Night of the killing

On the evening before the killing, Ms Lott got changed and went out to her aunt's birthday party. The mother-of-one left the party around 1.30am and got a taxi with a couple of other people from the party back to her apartment.

Mr O'Kelly said the events of the next couple of hours are unclear but it did appear that Ms Lott had got dressed for bed as she had changed into her pyjamas and her dress had been folded.

Shortly after 3.30am, Mr O'Kelly said the evidence will be that a neighbour heard someone scream. "There was a lot of noise and some time after 4am, the neighbour looked out the window of their apartment and could see that the door to Ms Lott's apartment was open," he said.

Eventually one of the neighbours who had looked out of the window decided to go to Ms Lott's apartment and see what was happening. She saw Ms Lott being "attacked" on the ground of the living room by Mr Murtagh. The neighbour then contacted emergency services and paramedics came to the scene.

The court will also hear evidence, the lawyer said, from the first garda who arrived at the house before the paramedics. "She was taking instructions over the telephone for CPR," he added.

Ms Lott's mother also came to her daughter's house before paramedics arrived and assisted at the scene.

Ms Lott was brought by ambulance to St Vincent's Hospital. The jury will also hear evidence of how she was "moved on from the trauma team into the intensive care unit" and remained there "under intense treatment" for the next few days until she died on December 17.

Forensics

The court heard there will be forensic evidence of what was found in the apartment and a report from the State Pathologist who carried out the post-mortem on the deceased.

Mr O'Kelly said there was evidence of extensive blunt force trauma to Ms Lott's face, an incised wound to the left side of the neck and a stab wound to the right side of the neck. "All the injuries combined to cause significant haemorrhage and blood loss and suggest a sustained assault from blunt force trauma. It led to the development of multiple cardiac arrest resulting in traumatic brain injury," he said.

Essentially, Mr O'Kelly said, Mr Murtagh had engaged in a series of actions in the early hours of the morning of December 14, where he inflicted severe blunt force trauma and stabbing injuries to Ms Lott "in a sustained attack". Although paramedics were able to resuscitate her, her injuries were so serious that she never regained consciousness and she died three days later on December 17, he outlined.

In relation to the evidence against the accused, Mr O'Kelly said he left the apartment around 4.30am after "the attack" and took his Volvo car from outside and drove it away. "We don't know what happened for the next few hours," he said.

Around 7am that morning and some 31kms away from Ms Lott's apartment, Mr Murtagh crashed his car into a ditch in Laragh and received some minor injuries. Some people noticed him and stopped their car to look after him. The jury will hear that Mr Murtagh told the man that he had "killed his wife".

Mr O'Kelly said the accused also told paramedics that he had "killed his girlfriend". "The prosecution submit that what is significant is that when Mr Murtagh met these people the next morning between 7.30am and 8am, his state of mind was that he had killed Nadine," said counsel.

The trial continues this afternoon before Mr Justice Michael MacGrath and 12 jurors. It is expected to last two weeks.
A member of An Garda Siochana was verbally abused as a Polish prick by a Cork man who insisted that he paid the guards wages.

Garda Gheroghe Rosu gave evidence at Cork District Court in the case against Jason OConnor who failed to appear in Cork District Court for his case.

OConnor of 108 Ballinderry Park, Mayfield, Cork, was accused of being drunk and a source of danger and engaging in threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour.

Garda Rosu observed the defendant just before eight oclock on the morning of November 29, 2020.

Two men were arguing with each other at Eglinton Street on November 29, 2020. They then got into a scuffle and both of them fell to the ground at the side of the road.

Jason OConnor became abusive, roaring and shouting in an aggressive manner Garda Rosu testified.

He shouted, Get your hands off me you f***ing prick. I tried to calm him down and he said, You Polish prick, I pay your wages.

The witness said the accused was drunk and a source of danger to himself or others at the time.

Judge Olann Kelleher convicted the accused in his absence on both public order offences.

It will now be a matter of gardai arresting the accused to bring him to court for sentencing on a later occasion.

When the accused was being charged originally he was also charged with failing to appear in court on a previous occasion. Judge Kelleher also convicted him on that charge.
A mother has told the trial of a man accused of murdering her daughter of the moment she found her lying on her back in the kitchen, gurgling and gasping for air. "I couldn't recognise her face, I couldn't recognise it was Nadine," she said.

"I got down on the floor and said 'you're ok, we can do this'. I was doing mouth-to-mouth. It was absolutely excruciating but I was doing what I could to try and save my daughter's life," Claire Lott told the murder trial at the Central Criminal Court this afternoon.

Ms Lott said she was blowing into Nadine's mouth but the resuscitation was ineffective as the beauty therapist was just "gurgling" and she could not feel her chest inflate.

Opening the trial of Daniel Murtagh this morning, prosecution counsel John O'Kelly SC said Ms Lott suffered "severe blunt force trauma" and stab injuries at the hands of her former partner "in a sustained attack" in her Arklow home.

The barrister said the court will hear evidence that the injuries to Ms Lott were "so serious" that she never regained consciousness and died three days later in St Vincent's Hospital in Dublin.

Mr Murtagh (34), of Melrose Grove, Bawnogue, Clondalkin, Dublin 22 has pleaded not guilty to murder but guilty to the manslaughter of his 30-year-old ex-partner Ms Lott at her apartment in St Mary's Court, Arklow, Co Wicklow on December 17, 2019.

Claire Lott's testimony

Giving evidence this afternoon, Claire Lott told Mr O'Kelly that Nadine was her second eldest child and she went to Australia in June 2012 on a work visa. She "did really well" working there in a beauty salon as she was a qualified beautician, the court heard. Ms Lott testified that Nadine had met Mr Murtagh in Darwin and recounted that all her daughter had said about him was that he was "funny''.

Ms Lott said her daughter returned to Ireland in May or June of 2013. She said that Mr Murtagh did not come home at the same time but returned a few months later.

Recalling the events of the early morning of December 14, Ms Lott said her daughter Phoebe "burst into the room in a panic" at 4am and said "we've to go mammy" as "Dan has stabbed Nadine, we need to go now."

Ms Lott said she jumped out of bed and ran, telling the jurors: "I didn't even have shoes on me". Arriving at Nadine's apartment, Ms Lott said Phoebe ran inside first and the rest of them were behind her. The witness said she found Nadine on the floor and got down on the floor to talk to her.

"Nadine was on her back, her head was slightly tilted and she was gurgling and gasping for air. I couldn't recognise her face, I couldn't recognise it was Nadine. I said you're ok, I was saying we can do this," said Ms Lott.

The witness said she remembered gardai arriving and a female garda contacted emergency services telling them it was "bad, what do we need to do".

Ms Lott said the female garda began doing compressions on Nadine's chest and she was doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. "It was absolutely excruciating but I was doing what I could to try and save my daughter's life," she continued.

The witness said the mouth-to-mouth wasn't effective. "I was breathing into Nadine but she was gurgling. When I was blowing into her mouth I couldn't feel her chest inflate. I don't think anything I was doing helped really," she said.

Ms Lott said she was covered in blood and kept doing what she could until the ambulance arrived. She then left Nadine with the paramedics.

Phoebe Lott's testimony

Earlier, Nadine's younger sister, Phoebe Lott, said she lived with her mother in Arklow and was "very close" to the deceased. "Even though there was six years between us, we had the same group of friends. It felt like I lost my left arm the day she left for Australia but we spoke most days," she said.

Nadine had briefly told her about meeting Mr Murtagh, she said, and described him as "funny" and a "great laugh".

She said Nadine came home from Australia in June 2013. In August 2016, Ms Lott said that her sister and Mr Murtagh were supposed to move into a house together in Arklow but Nadine could not contact him to find out where he was.

"She decided she had tried hard enough at that stage and the relationship ended," said Ms Lott.

Describing the events of the early hours of December 14, Ms Lott said Nadine's neighbour called her at 4.30am. "She said Dan had stabbed Nadine and we needed to come quickly. I ran into my mam and her partner and told them what had happened and that we needed to go," she explained.

Ms Lott said the door to Nadine's apartment was halfway open and she went into the sitting room, where pieces of glass from a broken mirror were everywhere.

"I could see a lot of blood. When I walked I could hear the mirror crunching under my feet. I was in a panic trying to find her. I went straight down the hall towards the kitchen and saw her lying on the floor beside a cabinet with her feet at the sink," she remarked.

Ms Lott said Nadine was lying on her back, covered in blood and there were "wound marks" to the left side of her face. "Her lip was completely split, her eyes were really black and swollen. She was not conscious and was gargling and gasping for air," she said. The witness said her sister was in her bare feet and wearing her pyjamas.

Garda Ben Silverlock said he was the observer in a patrol car on the night of December 13 with his colleague Gda Linda Butler, when they received a transmission call at 4.29am regarding a domestic dispute at St Mary's Court. He said they met Ms Lott's neighbour outside her house and she was very upset and physically shaking.

"She explained that there was a disturbance in the house and Daniel Murtagh had just left the scene and the female inside had bad injuries," he said.

When he walked into the apartment, Gda Silverlock said there was a lot of broken glass through the hall. Ms Lott was on the ground of the kitchen with her head resting on the skirting board. She had severe injuries to her face and neck and a lot of blood was lost, he said.

"I could hear gasping and gurgling as if trying to breathe but she didn't seem to be conscious," he said. There were puncture wounds in her neck and the witness said he could barely "make out her face" as it was covered in so much blood.

A silver canteen cutlery knife was beside her as well as broken glass and splintered timber in the area, he said.

The trial continues tomorrow before Mr Justice Michael MacGrath and a jury of seven men and five women. It is expected to last two weeks.
A convicted murderer will be sentenced next week for impeding the investigation into the murder of another man who had found out about the earlier killing.

Jonathan Duke, 27, was strangled to death at Bridge House, Sean Hales Place, Bandon, Co Cork, on November 12, 2011. His body was then thrown into the nearby River Bandon.

Just 24 hours earlier, a resident of the building, 42-year-old John Forrester, had met a similar fate.

Mr Duke, a father-of-one, was visiting Mr Forresters murderers there when he became aware of what had happened the previous day. Gardai believe he was killed because he had knowledge of the first murder.

Mr Forresters former girlfriend, mother-of-three Catherine OConnor, is currently serving life in prison for both murders. Her boyfriend at the time of the killings, Ciprian Grozavu, aged 47, denied murdering both men and went on trial for their murders separately.

The Romanian father-of-one was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to life in prison. However, he appealed his murder conviction in the case of Mr Duke and the Court of Appeal quashed it and ordered a retrial.

Detective Sergeant Ann Murphy today summarised his crime in relation to Mr Duke. She said that the occupants of another flat in Bridge House arrived home after 10pm that night and heard an apparent row in a neighbouring flat.

One of the witnesses then heard the occupants of that flat outside their door. He heard Catherine OConnor say to Ciprian Grozavu, who was known as 'Chippy': Just pull him will you, Chippy. Hes dead anyway.

The witnesses then looked out their window and saw OConnor and Grozavu carrying a body, before throwing it over a railing towards the River Bandon.

They said the two were cheering and laughing as they came back inside.

The Garda sub aqua unit searching the River Bandon where the body of Jonathan Duke was recovered and a second man was recovered about half a mile downstream. Picture: Dan Linehan

Meanwhile, their neighbours got dressed, went out, and saw pools of blood in the halls and stairs. They fled the building and rang 999 to report what they had seen.

When gardai arrived, they followed a trail of blood up flights of stairs to Grozavus flat. He claimed the blood was his and indicated a number of small abrasions to his face and hands, but eventually admitted it was Mr Dukes blood.

The gardai later discovered Mr Dukes body floating in the river. A previous trial heard that the body had more than 100 separate injuries, after being beaten and stabbed.

Grozavu then told gardai that he had been asleep earlier and that three men, including Mr Duke, had entered his home and attacked him with a variety of weapons including a sword and a hammer.

He later admitted disposing of the body with OConnor.

Under cross-examination by Lorcan Staines, defending, Det Sgt Murphy agreed that his client had claimed that he was afraid of OConnor and her brothers. She also agreed that these would be considered violent people and all had serious convictions for violence.

The familys Garda liaison officer, Sergeant OLeary, read out a victim impact statement prepared by Mr Dukes family.

In it, his sisters wrote that they think of Mr Duke last thing at night and first thing in the morning.

A young, fit man with his life ahead of him, he liked to write and draw.

Nothing can compare to the love that we share, he once wrote to his family.

They noted that it was almost 10 years since he was murdered and that it was heartbreaking.

He was thrown into the River Bandon by his so-called friends, they wrote.

We cannot imagine why his life had to end in such a cruel and evil way.

They pointed out that the convicted can have visitors and phone calls, but they were afraid theyd forget their brothers voice.

We feel pain every day, they wrote.

They explained that his mother, Michelle, had sadly passed away in December.

He was the only man in our lives for a very long time, they said, describing him as a father figure as well as a brother. A caring person, he would now be an uncle to a baby boy and girl, they added.

We feel the physical pain in our hearts since the day he was taken from us, they said.

Mr Duke was also a very proud father to his daughter, Angel, who is now 18.

A child at the time of her fathers murder, she had described feeling sad at school when others would talk of their fathers.

She has not gone back to the riverside, all down through the years, wrote her aunts of the area where she and her father would feed the ducks.

The statement continued that Mr Duke was cared for as a baby in the same flat at Bridge House, and the family described it as a strange twist of fate that this was where he was attacked, strangled, and murdered.

They said that this last trial was the hardest for the family.

Watching the CCTV footage, we wanted to pluck Jonathan off the screen and bring him back home, they wrote.

We will never forget. We will never forgive.

They said that their mother, Michelle, was working in a nearby restaurant as her son was being murdered.

Her life ended without knowing the outcome of this trial, without knowing the truth, they said.

The court heard that Grozavu had 13 previous convictions. Along with his murder conviction, he also had convictions for assault causing harm, harassment, stalking, possession of knives, drunk-driving, and careless driving.

Mr Staines pointed out that the accused has now served nine and a half years in prison, and that the maximum sentence for this crime is 10 years. He also pointed out that there is no power to make any ordinary sentence consecutive to a life sentence.

He explained that there is currently an appeal in relation to the murder of Mr Forrester.

Mr Justice Michael MacGrath said he would hand down sentence on Tuesday next.
Update, July 20:

Declan Scanlon has been located safe and well.

Gardai have thanked the public for their help with this matter.

July 19: Gardai in Cork are asking for the publics help in tracing the whereabouts of a missing man.

Declan Scanlon, 48, was last seen in the Glasheen area of Cork city this morning, July 19.

He is described as being approximately 6 feet in height with a stocky build. He has grey hair, blue eyes, and tattoos on both arms.

Declan Scanlan was last seen in the Glasheen are this morning. Picture: Garda Info

When he was last seen, Declan was wearing a wine long-sleeved top, black shorts and flip-flops.

Declan's family and investigating gardai said they are concerned for his welfare.

Anyone with information on Declan's whereabouts has been asked to contact Gardai in Togher on 021 494 7120, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111, or any Garda Station.
The British Prime Minister was facing a backlash over his plans to make coronavirus vaccination compulsory for nightclubs and other crowded venues in the autumn.

Clubs, backbench Tories and opposition MPs criticised the Boris Johnsons announcement on Monday  the day that clubs in England were allowed to open for the first time since March last year.

He was also told to clarify the relaxation of isolation rules for some fully-vaccinated critical workers who are close contacts of Covid-19 cases after a Government statement said it would not be a blanket exemption for any sector or role.

Speaking from self-isolation on so-called freedom day, Mr Johnson warned venues with large crowds that they must make full vaccination a requirement of entry from the end of September.

Chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance said during the Downing Street press conference clubs had the potential to cause super spreading events.

Mr Johnson declined to rule out extending vaccination passports to pubs as he attended the briefing virtually from his country residence of Chequers.

Night Time Industries Association chief executive Michael Kill accused the Government of an absolute shambles.

So, freedom day for nightclubs lasted around 17 hours then, he said.

80% of nightclubs have said they do not want to implement Covid passports, worrying about difficulties with enforcing the system and a reduction in spontaneous consumers, as well as being put at a competitive disadvantage with pubs and bars that arent subject to the same restrictions and yet provide similar environments.

Mark Harper, the Conservative former chief whip who chairs the Covid Recovery Group of Tory lockdown-sceptics, criticised the plans as effectively moving to compulsory vaccination.

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative chairman of the Health and Social Care Committee, questioned why the Government was delaying the plans until the autumn.

Labours shadow health minister Justin Madders said: How can it be safe to go to nightclubs now, with no protective measures, if in September it will require double jab status? It makes no sense.

This proposal is more confusion and incompetence from the heart of Government at the expense of public health. They need to get a grip.

In other developments:

 American citizens were warned against going to the UK when Britain was placed on the highest level of US travel guidance over spiralling coronavirus cases.

 A further 39,950 lab-confirmed cases were announced in the UK on Monday, along with an additional 19 deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid test.

 NHS Test and Trace was understood to have told health minister Edward Argar to isolate over a contact with Health Secretary Sajid Javid.

 Mr Javid announced that children who are at increased risk of Covid-19 are to be offered the Pfizer vaccine as soon as possible, as are those living with people with weakened immune systems.

(PA Graphics)

Mr Johnson resisted calls to announce a more wide-reaching change to quarantine rules to reduce the number of people in isolation amid a so-called pingdemic as Covid cases soar and bosses warn of severe staff shortages.

He argued it is necessary to keep the rules largely unchanged until August 16, when a testing regime will replace the requirement for fully-vaccinated contacts to isolate.

Mr Johnson argued self-isolation as one of the few shots we have got left in our locker, on the day he scrapped most remaining legal restrictions and defended the moves timing.

But he did announce a limited change for a a very small number of fully-vaccinated critical workers who will be able to leave isolation for their roles.

Mr Johnson suggested it would cover some in hospitals and care homes, or working in the supply of food electricity and medicines, and transport, defence and borders.

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said the change would cover the police, air traffic controllers and train signallers, and others in circumstances where there would be a serious risk of harm to public welfare if people in critical roles are unable to go to their workplace.

But neither went further in setting out who it would apply to and a subsequent Government statement said departments will be writing to employers to explain their next steps.

This is not a blanket exemption for any sector or role. Decisions to inform an employer that designated critical workers are considered to have a reasonable excuse to attend work will be made by the relevant department with responsibility for the critical service, a spokesman said.

Lib Dem health spokeswoman Munira Wilson accused the Government of chaotic late-night meddling with the self-isolation criteria that will sow further confusion.

The Government must stop undermining all the sacrifices weve made through their continued incompetence and issue immediate clear guidance to everyone affected by these changes, she added.

(PA Graphics)

The British Retail Consortium also called for clarity on who would be exempt and said retail workers and argued suppliers should be included for the vital role they have played in the pandemic.

Chief executive Helen Dickinson said: While it is good that Government recognises the problems that are being created by an overzealous track and trace system, it remains unclear who will be covered under the new list of critical workers.

With community cases soaring, the number of healthy retail staff having to self-isolate is rising fast, threatening to disrupt retail operations, and potentially close shops or distribution centres.

Mr Johnson was self-isolating in his official country residence after Mr Javid tested positive for Covid-19.

The PM and Chancellor Rishi Sunak initially tried to avoid quarantining after being contacted by NHS Test and Trace, by saying they were taking part in a testing pilot.

But in the face of mounting public fury they made a swift U-turn, which meant three of the most senior ministers were among those in quarantine on freedom day.

Mr Johnson insisted he did not think he was above the rules, following the aborted plan that would have allowed him to continue working from Downing Street instead of self-isolating.

I absolutely didnt think that, he told the press conference. I am today on Zoom or Teams or whatever brilliant system it is that we are using.
Burma Ethnic Karen Armed Group Clashes with Karen Forces Allied to Myanmar Junta

KNU/KNLA troops in Karen State / The Irrawaddy

Clashes between the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) and the Karen State Border Guard Force (BGF), which is under the control of the Myanmar military, are continuing, despite last months peace talks aimed at ending the factional fighting between different ethnic Karen armed groups.

The KNLAs Brigade 1 clashed with a BGF battalion led by Major Saw Tin Win around 10.30pm on Saturday near the village of Kontangyi in northern Hpa-an Township in Karen State, according to Secretary Padoh Saw Soe Myint of the Karen National Union (KNU), the political wing of the KNLA.

BGF troops advanced in two vehicles and our soldiers clashed with them in Kontangyi. The KNLA troops ambushed the vehicles and retreated after shooting for a few minutes. Two BGF fighters were seriously injured in the skirmish, said Padoh Saw Soe Myint.

BGF Maj. Saw Tin Win confirmed that his troops were ambushed, but denied that two were injured.

The KNLA used rocket-propelled grenades and guns to attack the house of BGF Major Khin Maung Win in Bilin Township, Mon State around 2am on Saturday, said Maj. Saw Tin Win. The house was damaged, but Major Khin Maung Win and his family members were unharmed in the attack.

Padoh Saw Soe Myint denied that the KNLA attacked the BGF majors house. The KNLA is only responding to the BGFs attempts to occupy KNLA territory, he claimed.

There will be stability in the region if the other side (BGF) does not conduct military operations anymore. But if they do, there will be continued fighting because the KNU/KNLA has to protect its territory, said Padoh Saw Soe Myint.

Leaders of the KNU, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, the Karen National Union/ Karen National Liberation Army  Peace Council and the BGF met at KNU headquarters from June 15-16 last month in response to fighting between the groups in Karen State. The leaders reached a common agreement to solve future problems through dialogue rather than armed confrontations.

But at least five clashes have taken place between the KNLAs Brigade 1 and the BGF since the meeting, including four on June 21 alone, according to the KNLA.

Despite the agreement between the leaders, it is inevitable that troops on the ground clash from time to time due to their military activities, said Maj. Saw Tin Win.

Yes, there are sporadic clashes on the ground. It is natural to have skirmishes as we are all armed groups. We have to address this step by step over time, he said.

The KNU signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement in October 2015 with U Thein Seins quasi-civilian government.



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Burma Myanmar Junta Arrests Doctors After Luring Them With Fake COVID Emergency

Healthcare workers are seen at a COVID-19 center prior to the ousting of the National League for Democracy government. / The Irrawaddy

Five volunteer doctors working for a community-based COVID-19 prevention and charity group in Yangons North Dagon were lured to a house under false pretenses and arrested by the military regime on Monday.

The group was asked by phone on Monday morning to go to an address in South Okkalapa Township to attend to a COVID-19 patient suffering from a lack of oxygen. Three doctors went to the location and were arrested after entering the house, which is near the South Okkalapa Township police station, group leader Ko Chan Lay told The Irrawaddy.

Junta troops then raided the office of the charity group in North Dagon and two more doctors were arrested there.

It is unacceptable that volunteer doctors were tricked and arrested. I condemn it, Ko Chan Lay said.

Junta troops also confiscated oxygen cylinders, personal protective equipment and medicines that had been donated to the office, he said.

Such community-based COVID-19 prevention and charity groups have been formed in various locations in Yangon as the city faces increasing COVID-19 infections and fatalities. Some striking government employees are reportedly involved in the groups.

It remains unknown where and why the five volunteer doctors are being detained, Ko Chan Lay said.

The arrests have provoked the ire of the public, as the junta seems to be targeting volunteers who are helping patients independently, rather than cooperating with it. The regime has been inviting doctors and volunteers to join its efforts to contain the virus and work at its COVID-19 centers.

The North Dagon COVID-19 prevention and charity group said it would continue to provide free COVID-19 consultation in other forms, and urged members of the public to help each other.



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A serious security flaw in Apple's iMessage has allegedly been exposed after an iPhone spyware exploited "major" issues in the messaging app.

The spyware, called Pegasus and developed by Israeli surveillance company NSO, made "zero-click" attacks on iMessage vulnerabilities on the iPhone 12 Pro Max running iOS 14.6. This came from a report made by Amnesty International and the University of Toronto-based global security research group Citizen Lab, per Forbes.

This follows purported data leaks of 50,000 potential Pegasus targets, the report said.

iPhone iMessage Hack: iOS Running iMessage Data, Attachments Automatically Even to Strangers

Citizen Lab researcher Bill Marczak said in the Forbes interview that iOS would run data and attachments automatically within iMessage, even if the user is a stranger, which puts legitimate users at risk.

Read Also: New iPhone Bugs Can Expose Sensitive Information: How to Download iOS 14.6 to Fix

Marczak, a security expert who has dedicated years researching NSO's Pegasus hacks, recommended that Apple should implement a measure "similar to what Twitter or Facebook has been doing with their DMs."

Apple's iMessage on iPhones uses end-to-end encryption to send and receive messages, with only the sender and the receiver of the messages supposedly able to see its contents--including photos, videos and other attachments.

According to the Amnesty International-Citizen Lab report, hackers remotely accessed and replicated data from phones of 37 individuals, mostly journalists and reporters, using Pegasus, Business Insider noted.

Pegasus, a military-grade hacking service, is marketed to governments for intelligence purposes. Using the spyware, hackers could infect phones with the "zero-click" texts through iMessage. This means the target user need not interact with the text to have their phone hacked.

What's more alarming is that this breach could happen to the latest iPhones, even with the latest security patches installed.

iPhone Spyware: NSO Targets Journalists, Heads of State, Human Rights Activists

According to a BBC report, it is believed that Pegasus spyware has targeted individuals susceptible to government surveillance such as reporters and heads of state. Such journalists include Financial Times editor Roula Khalaf and murdered Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda. The list also included people close to murdered Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, such as his wife Hanan Elatr and fiancee Hatice Cengiz, a Turkish researcher who accompanied Khashoggi to the Saudi consulate in Turkey when he was killed on October 2, 2018.

The BBC report further said that Pegasus had targeted Arab royals, 600 politicians and government officials, 64 business executives, 189 journalists, 85 human rights activists in a breach of 50,000 phones.

The NSO Group rebuked the findings, flatly denying the hacking allegations, Business Insider further reported.

NSO Denies Spying Allegations, Apple Affirms Security Leadership

The $1 billion surveillance company said in a statement the charges were "so outrageous and far from reality that the NSO is considering a defamation lawsuit."

In an Apple statement provided the Washington Post, the Cupetino, California-based tech giant defended its security features, saying that the company has long been an industry leader in security.

Ivan Krstic, head of Apple's Security and Engineering and Architecture, asserted that Apple condemns such cyberattacks against journalists, human rights activists and other prominent individuals. The attacks that was detailed in the Amnesty International-Citizen Lab report were "highly sophisticated" and should not pose a threat to an "overwhelming majority" of iPhone users.

Related Article: iPhone Malware Exposed 128 Million Users: What Is XcodeGhost and Why Was It a Security Risk?


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Capgemini announces that it has entered into a Scheme Implementation Agreement with Empired to acquire Empired under an Australian statutory shareholder approved process (Scheme).

Capgemini said, with more than 1000 professionals in Australia and New Zealand, this acquisition would strengthen Capgeminis capabilities in cloud and data across the region. Capgeminis leadership position in the Australia market would be supported by this acquisition, its 4th in the country in 18 months.

Capgemini say with locations across Australia and New Zealand, and a forecast annual turnover as of June 30, 2021 of between 186 and 188 million Australian dollars, Empired provides end-to-end capabilities in cloud and data to enable the digital transformation of key industries across Australia and offers a complementary geographic footprint to Capgemini. Furthermore, Empired, known in New Zealand through its brand Intergen, would mark a step change for Capgemini in New Zealand, where it generates about a third of its business.

Capgemini says, Empired is enabling organisations to transform and achieve more thanks to the depth and breadth of its capabilities across the entire Microsoft platform. Highly complementary to Capgeminis global partnership with Microsoft, Empired would bring to Capgemini the largest accredited Microsoft Dynamics team in Australia and New Zealand.

The acquisition of Empired would strengthen Capgeminis client portfolio across key industries, notably in Mining, Utilities and Government. For Empired, Capgeminis positive momentum in Asia-Pacific, breadth of service offerings and global scale would help its clients growing needs, as well as expand career opportunities for its team members.

Capgemini Australia and New Zealand managing director Kaylene OBrien (pictured) said, The acquisition of Empired is further evidence of Capgeminis confidence in the local market and ambition to be a leader in digital, data and cloud in Australia and in New Zealand. Empired has a strong partnership with Microsoft and together we will provide our clients with leading edge cloud expertise and services.

Following the successful acquisition of RXP Services and Acclimation, Capgemini is stepping up to a new scale in Australia and New Zealand as part of our growth ambition. Empireds purpose to create the best possible future highlights a natural culture match, as we work together to build an inclusive and sustainable future.

Empireds managing director Russell Baskerville said, Over the past 15 years Empired has been on a journey to build the most respected digital services company across Australia and New Zealand. Our strategy has delivered material growth in shareholder value and we are confident that being part of Capgemini will help to accelerate our combined market position in the coming years.

If implemented, the Scheme will provide outstanding career opportunities for our people and have a positive impact for existing and prospective clients by providing them with access to the significant resources, service capabilities and international experience of Capgemini.

Capgemini said it has been accelerating the digital transformation of its clients across industries locally, offering capabilities in strategy and transformation, application and technology, and operations and engineering. Earlier this year, Capgemini announced the acquisition of digital services consultancy provider RXP Services and SAP consulting and digital solution provider Acclimation.

The total proposed consideration for the acquisition of 100% of the share capital of Empired (on a fully dilutive basis) would amount to A$233M. The implementation of the Scheme remains subject to certain conditions including Empired shareholders approval, court approval, granting of a New Zealand Overseas Investment Act direction order and other customary conditions for a transaction of this nature. Capgeminis acquisition of Empired is expected to close in mid-November of 2021.
PROMOTIONAL NEWS INTERVIEW: iTWire spoke with the companys Melbourne-based Vice President of Sales, Daniel Kohut about Blue Yonders expansion into ANZ and some key trends affecting the local market, with the company stating its "award-winning digital fulfillment platform and end-to-end supply chain management solutions help over 3000 customers worldwide make smarter business decisions."

Blue Yonder. The company says transformative growth, consistent profitability and a reimagined customer experience starts and ends with the supply chain, and that has created an end-to-end digital supply chain platform purpose-built to fulfill your potential.

Were told the platform is automated, orchestrated, intelligent and highly predictive, and that it is built to reimagine the entire customer experience, delivering across any channel, every time, in every situation.

Headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, Blue Yonder has offices in over 40 locations worldwide across the US, Asia Pacific, Canada, Latin America, Europe, Australia, and the Middle East.

We spoke with the companys Vice President of Sales, Daniel Kohut, who is based in Melbourne, about some key trends affecting the local market, and Blue Yonder's expansion into Australia and New Zealand.

1. Blue Yonder was formerly known as JDA Software, why did you decide to change the name?

In July 2018, the company (then known as JDA Software) announced its revolutionary vision for the supply chain of the future; a self-learning, self-healing and self-driving Autonomous Supply Chain. The company aggressively moved towards this vision, by introducing a number of next-generation supply chain solutions that leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies. To complement the new vision, it was decided that a new brand name was necessary to spearhead the companys transformation and future growth.

In that same year, the company acquired a German-based software-as-a-service provider named Blue Yonder, which offered a similar range of automated solutions powered by AI and ML technology. With a strong synergy between the two companies offerings, it was decided that JDA Software would adopt Blue Yonders name. With reference to blue skies and expansive possibilities, Blue Yonder believes the new brand name encompasses the companys goals and future vision of an Autonomous Supply Chain.

2. With Blue Yonder recently expanding into the ANZ market, can you tell me what supply chain management solutions you offer to local businesses?

Blue Yonder offers solutions in three key areas: Supply Chain Planning, Supply Chain Execution and Omni-Channel Commerce. The Luminate Planning solutions portfolio encompasses demand and supply planning, inventory optimisation and product planning, while the Luminate Logistics solution portfolio specifically targets the transport and logistics sector, offering warehouse and labour management, logistics network and warehousing tasking capabilities. Lastly, the Luminate Commerce solutions portfolio provides customers with inventory, order and workforce management capabilities and lifecycle pricing solutions.

Blue Yonder has held a presence in the ANZ market for over 20 years, helping customers across transport and logistics, retail, manufacturing and warehousing, mining and other industries optimise their supply chain management.

3. What key impacts are artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) technologies having on the supply chain, transport & logistics and retail sectors?

Automated solutions powered by AI and ML can assist companies in making sense of the significant volumes of data they generate. These automated tools can digest all of this data, and then generate valuable insights that can be used to make smarter, more informed decisions to increase business productivity and profitability. With access to these tools, companies can identify risks early and predict disruption, such as package delays caused by adverse weather conditions or high volumes of orders during a particular time of the year. These automated solutions give companies the supply chain visibility they need to facilitate more accurate decision-making and provide better customer service.

Right now, supply chains are operating in a highly disruptive environment, and frequent changes to demand and supply are critically impacting the bottom line. Being able to identify, predict and respond to change in a timely and effective manner is imperative for companies to maintain their competitive advantage, hence the significant uptake of AI and ML technologies in these three sectors.

4. Blue Yonder was recently acquired by Panasonic, with the vision of accelerating the autonomous supply chain  tell us what this partnership means for your customers?

The acquisition between Panasonic and Blue Yonder is anticipated to settle in the back end of 2021.

The acquisition will accelerate our shared mission to empower customers to optimise their supply chains using the combined power of AI/ML, IoT and edge devices. We anticipate the partnership will provide a unique competitive advantage for ANZ customers, by allowing them to better utilise business data to improve their operations in real-time.

5. Looking forward, how do you see demand for automated supply chain management solutions changing in the next 5-10 years? Are there any new industries you hope to tap into?

In todays on-demand economy, there is more pressure than ever before on supply chains. E-Commerce is proliferating at a speed that many retailers cant keep up with, and customers are demanding faster and more convenient delivery timeframes. With these trends in mind, we expect the demand for automated supply chain solutions to grow significantly in the next 5-10 years, as organisations look to increase productivity in every way possible.

At Blue Yonder, we currently target all relevant industries where there is a demand for automated supply chain management solutions. However, we are always seeing new cases emerge via the adoption of edge technologies and the use of real-time data to make informed decisions
Optimisation software specialist Complexica has appointed Jonathan Drake to the role of chief financial officer.

"As Complexica accelerates its expansion plans and gears up for a listing on the ASX, we are strengthening our management team by adding world-class talent to help the business achieve its objectives," said Complexica managing director Matt Michalewicz.

"I am particularly happy that Jonathan Drake has accepted the position of Complexica's CFO, as his background, experience, and expertise are a perfect match for the strategy we want to execute in the coming months and years. His contribution will be invaluable, and I personally look forward to working with him to accelerate the company's growth and market position."

Drake joins Complexica from Petrosys (a subsidiary of Constellation Software, Canada's largest software company), where he most recently served as CFO and general counsel.

He held other roles during his 14-year tenure with the company, including company secretary, chief operating officer, and regional manager for Australia.

Drake started his career as a law clerk with Minter Ellison.

He holds bachelor's degrees in law and computer science from the University of Adelaide, and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

"The Decision Cloud platform has already demonstrated real value to customers across multiple industries, and this growing success, together with Complexica's high-calibre team and industry recognition, makes for a winning combination," said Drake.

"I am truly excited by the prospect of supporting Complexica on its path to becoming one of the most iconic, lasting, Australian public companies in the technology space."
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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.
NASA has been bringing the public into space through its beautiful and revelatory Image and Video Library. Of the more than 140,000 images and audio and video clips, Stacker highlighted 30 of the most breathtaking. Click for more.
A funeral service for Bill Slider, of Jacksonville, is scheduled at Autry Funeral Home Chapel in Jacksonville on Saturday, July 24, 2021, at 4 p.m. Reverend Ernest Higginbotham and Jeff Slider will officiate. He will be laid to rest at Pierce's Chapel Cemetery in Jacksonville. Visitation wil




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.
Evan Robinson-Johnson covers issues residents face on a daily basis, from smoky skies to housing insecurity. Originally from New England, he has settled in east Jackson and avoids crowds by rollerblading through the alleyways.
Managing Editor Rebecca Huntington has worked for newspapers across the West. She hosts a rescue podcast, The Fine Line. Her family minivan doubles as her not-so-high-tech recording studio.
Since moving to Jackson Hole in 1992, Richard has covered everything from local government and criminal justice to sports and features. He currently concentrates on arts and entertainment, heading up the Scene section.
Horses work out as the sun rises at Churchill Downs Friday, April 30, 2021, in Louisville, Ky. The 147th running of the Kentucky Derby is scheduled for Saturday, May 1.
Jonesboro, AR (72401)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds from time to time. Low 74F. Winds light and variable.
Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a public charity. It can be found at missouriindependent.com.
EPTA employees William Timmons, left, and Kim Hogbin, right, are going to be recognized at the W.Va. Public Transit Association Conference. Timmons will be recognized as the W.Va. Public Transit Maintenance Employee of the Year and Hogbin as the W.Va. Public Transit Employee of the Year.
Rural school teacher Pedro Castillo on Monday became the first president of Peru with no ties to the elites that have governed the Andean country for decades.

The 51-year-old far-left trade unionist was largely unknown until he led a national strike four years ago that forced the then-government to agree to pay rise demands.

He was born to peasants in the tiny village of Puna in the historic Cajamarca region where he has worked as a teacher for 24 years.

He grew up helping his parents with farm work, and as a child, he walked several kilometers to school.

Today, he is rarely without the trademark white, wide-brimmed hat of his beloved Cajamarca, where the last Inca emperor Atahualpa was assassinated on the main square in 1533 by Spanish conquistadores.

Castillo likes to don a poncho and shoes made of recycled tires, and traveled on horseback for much of his presidential campaign as he vocalized the frustration of struggling Peruvians and cast himself as a man of the people.

No more poor people in a rich country, he said as he campaigned for the Peru Libre (Free Peru) party.

He has said he would renounce his presidential salary and continue living on his teacher earnings, and described himself as a man of work, a man of faith, a man of hope.

Castillo, said analyst Hugo Otero, is the first poor president of Peru.

 Surprise victory 

In April, Castillo surprised many by taking the lead in the race to become Perus fifth president in three years, edging out 17 other candidates.

He then faced off against rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimori in the runoff, promising radical change to improve the lot of Peruvians contending with a recession worsened by the pandemic, rising unemployment and poverty.

One thing unlikely to change under a Castillo presidency is the Peruvian states socially conservative character: he is Catholic and vehemently opposed to gay marriage, elective abortion and euthanasia.

He frequently quotes from the Bible to drive home his points, and at his two-story brick home in the hamlet of Chugur in Cajamarca hangs a picture of Jesus surrounded by sheep and a caption, in English, Jehovah is my shepherd.

 Respect for private property 

Castillo has targeted creating a million jobs in a year, and said Perus mining and hydrocarbon riches must be nationalized.

Peru is a large producer of copper, gold, silver, lead and zinc, and mining brings in 10 percent of national GDP and a fifth of company taxes.

He has promised public investment to reactivate the economy through infrastructure projects, public procurement from small businesses, and to curb imports that affect the national industry and peasantry.

But he has also sought to dispel fears that we are going to take your wine farm, that we are going to take your house, your property.

Among his more controversial campaign promises, Castillo has vowed to expel illegal foreigners who commit crimes in Peru, giving them 72 hours to leave the country.

The comment was perceived as a warning to undocumented Venezuelan migrants who have arrived in their hundreds of thousands since 2017.

Free Peru is one of few left-wing Peruvian parties to defend the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose 2018 re-election is not recognized by dozens of countries.

To combat crime, Castillo has proposed withdrawing Peru from the American Convention on Human Rights, or San Jose pact, to allow it to reintroduce the death penalty.

He has also mooted replacing Perus free-market-friendly constitution  a relic of his rivals father, ex-president Alberto Fujimori, serving jail time for corruption and crimes against humanity.

 A humble man 

Castillo burst onto the national scene four years ago when he led thousands of teachers on a near 80-day strike to demand a pay rise.

It left 3.5 million public school pupils without classes to attend, and compelled then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who initially refused to negotiate, to relent.

In a bid to delegitimize the protest, then-interior minister Carlos Basombrio claimed its leaders were linked to Movadef, the political wing of the defeated Shining Path Maoist guerrilla group dubbed a terrorist organization by Lima.

Castillo, who had participated in armed peasant patrols or ronderos that resisted Shining Path incursions at the height of Perus internal conflict from 1980 to 2000, vehemently rejected these allegations.

Today, his home is guarded by ronderos brandishing canes and leather whips.

Next to his house, Castillo has a one-hectare farm where he grows corn and sweet potatoes and raises chickens and cows.

We are proud that my brother has made it this far, being a humble man, his younger sister, Amelia, told AFP.
Three and a half years after opening its doors and following three years of investigation, Colombias Special Jurisdiction for Peace unveiled its second batch of indictments over the past two weeks. In two separate decisions it accused 25 former Army officials of having murdered 247 civilians and then unlawfully passing them off as rebels killed in combat, a tragedy that has appalled Colombians for over a decade and that became euphemistically known as false positives.

First, on July 6, the tribunal  known by Colombians as the JEP  charged six officers, three non-commissioned officers and one civilian with 120 extrajudicial executions, 24 forced disappearances and one attempted murder in Catatumbo, a mountainous zone on the border with Venezuela between 2007 and 2008. Then, on July 15, it followed up with a second indictment, charging eight officers, four non-commissioned officers and three soldiers with 127 similar executions in the northern Caribbean coast between 2002 and 2003.

Instead of searching for guerrilla commandos high in the mountains and pursuing paramilitary strongholds  and engaging in legitimate combat with them  [they] preferred to kill defenceless civilians, Catalina Diaz, one of three justices leading the investigation, said during the live-streamed hearing. They were not isolated acts or committed spontaneously by Army members [but] part of a generalized and systematic attack against the civilian population, justice Oscar Parra echoed her a week later.

This marks the first time the special tribunal stemming from the 2016 peace deal brings charges against state actors, following its January accusation against eight former commanders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) over kidnappings. In both cases the tribunal ruled that these extrajudicial executions constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity, just as it did with FARC.

The indictees now have six weeks to ponder which road to navigate in the Colombian transitional justices two-track system. If they accept the courts findings and acknowledge their responsibility, as well as contribute with the truth and personally redress victims, they may receive 5-to-8-year sentences in a non-prison setting. If they reject its findings, their case would move to an adversarial system and, if found guilty, would face 15-to-20-year prison sentences.

Showing a broader criminal pattern

Case 03 is one of the first seven macro-cases opened by the transitional justices judicial arm and one of the two specifically focusing on Colombian state agents deeds. Over the past three years, the JEP has documented the plight of 397 victims who are now accredited as parties to the case, usually relatives of the young men aged 25 to 35 who were executed. It did so using 36 reports submitted by different parties, including 32 from victims and indigenous organisations, two from the Attorney Generals Office and two from the Inspector Generals Office, as well as hundreds of military dossiers and in-site inspections.

The JEP also spoke extensively with those standing accused. In lengthy confidential hearings and written testimonies, at least 113 former Army officials  including several generals and one former Army commander  have answered the tribunals questions regarding false positives. Hours of videos and hundreds of pages in transcriptions were then transmitted to victims so they could confront their captors accounts, with at least 14 organisations or groups submitting observations and questions.

These two indictments are part of a broader probe on extrajudicial executions between 2002 and 2008, a six-year period coinciding with Alvaro Uribes administration in which the JEP deems that at least 6.402 such murders took place. In March, the special tribunal laid down its criteria to build the case and explained which specific regions, military units and years it will focus on to illuminate the broader criminal pattern. In line with this approach they termed from the ground up, justices will first present indictments in six sub-cases  beginning with these two  and use these to glean information on the underlying patterns of behaviour and the institutional norms and culture that allowed such crimes to occur.

This means that after bringing charges against these and other officers with regional command, the JEPs Judicial Panel for Acknowledgment will then present its case against those most responsible at the top, potentially including members of the top brass of the Armed Forces and the Defence Ministry during those years.

Different methods, same crime

After studying all of this material, in its most recent 401-page indictment, the JEP identified two distinct criminal patterns that occurred within the 2nd Artillery Battalion La Popa that operated in the the northern departments of Cesar and La Guajira.

Between 2002 and 2003, this military unit falsely presented 75 local persons as members of FARC or National Liberation Army (ELN) guerrillas killed in combat, in cahoots with local paramilitary groups. Then, from 2003 to 2005, to avoid local communities suspicion, battalion members brought 52 civilians from cities like Valledupar or Barranquilla after duping them with fake job offers, murdered them and also presented them as supposed combat kills, says the indictment.

A week before, in its other 287-page decision, the JEP identified the same two behaviours in Catatumbo, but described them as different methods of one same criminal pattern. First, during 2007, members of the 15th Mobile Brigade and the 15th Infantry Battalion General Francisco de Paula Santander murdered rural inhabitants who were deemed members of armed groups. After a December 2007 meeting in Ocana, where communities decried the disappearance of relatives and neighbours, members of those military units began bringing youngsters from other cities, many of them deliberately targeted because they had mental health illnesses or problematic drug use. As Justice Info told, it was the discovery that some victims hailed from Soacha, 635 kilometres away, which finally led to the uncovering of these atrocities in 2008 and to the corrective measures within the Army that former President Juan Manuel Santos described before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission a month ago.

Justice Oscar Parra leading the search by Colombias Special Jurisdiction for Peace for missing persons who were victims of extrajudicial executions in cemeteries like El Copey, where La Popa battalion operated.  JEP

The false positive handbook

Perhaps whats most striking about both indictments is how exhaustively they detail the different modus operandi and strategies used to present civilian homicides as fictitious operational results. Although a number of reports and legal decisions over the past decade had illuminated some of these, the JEPs reconstruction  in response to victims truth-seeking requests  painstakingly reveals similar patterns in hundreds of cases.

Both decisions give ample space to how Army officials feigned combat zones and planted evidence to tie their victims to rebel groups, going as far as dressing them in camouflage, moving bodies and contaminating crime scenes before they were processed, destroying personal documents to prevent victim identification and leaving arms and gunpowder traces (known as legalisation kits), in what the tribunal describes as increasingly sophisticated cover-ups. According to the JEP, there was also a legal mise-en-scene comprising forged operational documents, coordination of factual accounts, threats to witnesses and the destruction of evidence, even after visits from General Carlos Arturo Suarezs eye-opening 2008 fact-finding mission.

In the end, these crimes and efforts to varnish them with a guise of legality, the JEP argues, involved meticulous planning. Tasks ranging from victim selection to cover-up were distributed among soldiers in what justices termed a division of criminal labour. Uncorroborated allegations brought forward by paid or criminal informants were enough to seal victims fates, without following the steps of the basic intelligence cycle to gather, process and verify information.

In order for this to happen, a number of factors were needed. In first place, during those years the Army ascribed a higher value to casualties over arrests and demobilisations, leading the JEP to contend that defence strategy favoured the body of the enemy fallen in combat as the main indicator of a military efforts success and, consequently, pressured and encouraged combat casualties. This sustained pressure from above was, according to the indictment, not occasional or anecdotal, but permanent [and] daily, with national and regional commanders fostering competition among military units and drilling this idea in radio transmissions and speeches with language such as whatever it takes or a kill is in order. Army members were rewarded with days off, cash prizes, paid holidays to the sea (which soldiers dubbed Caribbean plans) or medals for bravery, while reluctant soldiers were demoted or punished.

None of this would have been possible, the tribunal concluded, without the institutional resources of the National Army, including its funds, its incentives, its administrative procedures and an absence of oversight from those in command, which helped it to improve, by illegal means, the perception of the security forces effectiveness. All of this information was the basis for the JEPs argument that the criminal patterns were both systematic and widespread.

Spotlight on indigenous victims

The indictments also underscore how specific population groups were targeted, including unwitting homeless or handicapped persons. One thoroughly documents how the Wiwa and the Kankuamo  two indigenous groups that live in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta mountain range  were especially targeted, with the latter accounting for 7% of La Popa battalions victims even though they only represent 1% of Cesar departments population.

The tribunal showed how both indigenous groups were routinely stigmatised by soldiers and how members as young as 13 years old were murdered and passed off as combat kills in the days after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted them precautionary measures, or right before meetings where they gathered to discuss the implementation of those measures.

Given this reality, the JEP designed special participation mechanisms for these groups. For example, on two separate occasions, a hundred Kankuamo Indians gathered in a school within their reservation in Atanquez and over nine-hour sessions pored over the videos in which soldiers described these extra-judicial executions. After seeing footage of the testimonies brought by Justice Oscar Parra and two JEP psychologists, they identified parts where their recollection about the events that occurred over a decade ago differed from the military and came up with new questions for them.

War crimes and crimes against humanity

For their role in what it described as criminal organizations embedded within military units, the JEP accused 25 officials  including one general, six colonels and four majors  of the war crime of wilful killing of protected persons and the crimes against humanity of homicide and forced disappearance. The tribunals justices also charged them with homicide of protected persons and forced disappearance under Colombian law. In doing so, it underscored that all victims were civilians and that therefore the military had a legal duty to protect them, including eight rebels killed by La Popa soldiers after being wounded in combat or turning themselves in.

Although five lower-ranking officials among the indictees had already been convicted by the ordinary criminal justice for individual cases between 2012 and 2016, this is the first far-reaching probe that explains how these crimes fit into a broader criminal pattern and traces them higher up in the command chain. Throughout the rest of this year, the JEP will announce similar decisions detailing the actions by military units in four other regions, before moving on to those most responsible for these policies on a national level.

Dilemmas ahead

In the JEPs two-track system, officials may receive a more lenient sentence if  and only if  they fulfil three conditions: they must acknowledge their responsibility, tell their victims relatives the truths they still long for and personally redress them. With most of the defendants registered before the JEP and many of them already enjoying benefits like parole, it seems likely that theyll accept its indictment. Chances are, however, that parts of the case will move to the tribunals prosecution unit and possibly a trial, given that at least three of them seem reluctant.

Colonel Hernan Mejia, who commanded La Popa battalion between 2002 and 2003 and who was the first major officer taken off duty over this scandal, has said he is still reading the decision that accuses him of activating the criminal plan based on the orders he gave and having an 87% rate of illegal combat kills. In a cryptic message on Twitter, Mejia  who declared himself a presidential candidate for next years election and has been defended by politicians from Uribe and President Ivan Duques party  stated that he refuses to bow down as enemies celebrate and traitors and cowards rejoice, promising not to accept what he did not do.

Me Niego a Arrodillarme.

Dios Salve a Colombia. pic.twitter.com/bRpaRFWfbl  Coronel Hernan Mejia (@CoronelHMejia) July 16, 2021

A more complex scenario awaits two other high-ranking officials. General Paulino Coronado of the 30th Regiment in Catatumbo has so far not requested admission to the JEP and Colonel Juan Carlos Figueroa, who succeeded Mejia at La Popa, remains a fugitive. Since he has not been seen since July 2019, when migration records show he left Colombia for Paris, the JEP is considering to alert Interpol.

Two other crucial debates are also pending. First, what officials sanctions will look like, including whether they will be allowed to fulfil them in military facilities. And second, what will happen with the other 77 soldiers involved in executions committed by both military units and whose legal situation the JEP must also determine. Its decision of whether to prosecute them or not highlights the still thorny debate of selectivity within the tribunal.

Six weeks from now, when these 25 officials are due to announce whether they own up to their crimes, Colombia will come closer to providing victims of extrajudicial executions with the truth, justice and redress they have been seeking for as long as two decades. At the same time, in a strange twist of events, false positives continue to grab world headlines: just last week it was discovered that one of the 21 former Colombian officials presumably involved in the July 7, 2021 assassination of Haitian president Jovenel Moise stands accused of committing them in Antioquia  another of the six prioritised sub-cases  and left the country without the JEPs permission.
Pedro Castillo, a politician from a rural teacher, was appointed President-elect of Peru, six weeks after his right-wing competitor Keiko Fujimori (Keiko Fujimori) had a polarizing vote on suspected election fraud. .

Official statistics released on Monday showed that more than a month after the runoff took place CastilloIts supporters included impoverished and rural residents in Peru, defeating Fujimori by only 44,000 votes. She is now facing trial on corruption charges.

On behalf of my family, I pay tribute to the electoral authorities and to the political parties participating in this democratic celebration, Castillo said to the hundreds of supporters gathered at his Peruvian Freedom (Free Peru) Party headquarters. horse.

Dear compatriots, I bring an open heart to each of you, he announced on the balcony, at the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE) election jury chairman Jorge Luis Salas in a short virtual ceremony to announce the card After Stillo won.

Hundreds of supporters who spent weeks outside the JNE headquarters supporting Castillo broke out in the news to celebrate. He will be sworn in on July 28.

Finally, we have a president, said Rosa Huaman, a 27-year-old Castillo supporter in the crowd, who chanted: Yes, you can!

Mariana Sanchez of Al Jazeera reported from Lima that although the new president has not held a political office before, he has become an excellent negotiator as a union leader.

He doesnt have any management experience, she said. But he won the election cleanly and transparently. Democrats in the area have always welcomed him.

Supporters of Pedro Castillo welcome the announcement that the 51-year-old teacher won the election [Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters]

Castillo ran for office and promised to improve the lives of Peruvians in response to the economic recession worsened by the recession COVID-19 pandemicThe country has been devastated by the coronavirus, and about one-third of the people currently live in poverty. This disease has exposed the deficiencies of Perus public health system.The per capita mortality rate for COVID-19 in Peru is Tallest in the world.

Political outsider

As the son of a farmer, Castillo promised to redraft the constitution and increase taxes on mining companies, although he appeared to soften earlier calls for the nationalization of mining and gas companies. Peru is a major producer of copper, gold, silver, lead and zinc. The mining industry brings in 10% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and one-fifth of the corporate tax.

Historians say that despite the economic growth in the past 20 years, Castillo was the first person from outside the elite to become president.

There is no case of someone who has nothing to do with professional, military or economic elites ascending to the throne, Cecilia Mendez, a Peruvian historian and a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told a radio station.

Castillo works as an elementary school teacher in his hometown of San Luis de Puna, a remote village in Cajamarca in northern Peru. He is known for leading a national strike before running for president four years ago. In April, when he took the lead in the presidential race, it surprised many peoplethis was Perus fifth president in three years after experiencing a series of crises and corruption scandals.

Fujimori, a former congresswoman, is accused of taking money from the scandal-contaminated Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht (now known as Novonor) to fund two previous failed presidential elections. She campaigned with the support of business elites. According to Peruvian law, if Fujimori becomes president, the lawsuit against Fujimori will be suspended until the end of her term.

Keiko Fujimori, a right-wing competitor to the presidency, admitted defeat earlier. After the vote, she claimed fraud without evidence.The U.S., EU, and other countries all believe that voting is fair [Juan Carlos Guzman/Andina via AFP]

Fujimori said on Monday that after accusing Castillo of victory, she would accept his victory. Election fraud No evidence is provided.

The United States, the European Union, and 14 electoral colleges determined that the vote was fair. The United States called this election a model of democracy in the region.

Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told a radio station that Castillos presidency was very weak and, in a sense, his status was the same as when he came to power in Chile in 1970. Salvador Allende (Salvador Allende) and Joao Goulart (Joao Goulart) who became President of Brazil in 1962.

He has almost the entire Lima institution opposed to him, said Levitsky, a Latin American political expert.
According to the province, a water bomber trying to extinguish a forest fire in eastern Manitoba had to turn back after a manned drone blocked its way.

It happened on Saturday as the plane was preparing to extinguish the fire in Whiteshell Provincial Park near the Ontario border. When a drone blocked its flight path, the water bomber was flying over the south shore of Lake West Hawk.

The water bomber had to turn back, putting the firefighters on the ground in danger.

Don Harlett, assistant director of the Manitoba Wildfire Bureau, said: This may get worse than before, just because someone pilots a drone. Thankfully, the ground crew can do what we need them to do.

The province said there were many people on the beach, but no one was found flying a drone.

Just think about your community and your fellow Manitoba, Harriet said.

He said people who fly drones near the fire site may face charges. Anyone who witnessed the incident was asked to contact the Falcon Lake RCMP.

Residents in parts of eastern Manitoba must be ready to leave

Extremely dry conditions continue to hinder efforts to control wildfires. Most areas of Manitoba are still under the fire ban, Including provincial parks and most cities, including Winnipeg.

Starting Tuesday morning, additional restrictions will be implemented in areas near the Ontario border.

The Wildfire Bureaus District 4 will implement a full travel ban, which includes large areas north of the Wanipigo River, east of Lake Winnipeg to the Ontario border (including Atikaki Provincial Park) and north of the Poplar River area.

The province stated that it will not be able to enter the cabins and permanent residents must be prepared to leave after one hours notice.

Have 130 forest fires are burning Now in Manitoba, about two dozen provinces are classified as out of control.

Harriet said that most of the current fires are caused by natural causes such as lightning strikes.
The Osoyoos Indian Band of Okanagan Valley in British Columbia has issued evacuation orders to nearly 200 properties. Due to wildfires, further evacuation warnings and orders from nearby Osoyoos and Oliver are awaiting.

This wildfire, known as the Inkaneep Creek Wildfire, occurred on the land of the Osoyoos Indian Band, between Oliver and Osoyoos. In a few hours on Monday afternoon, it quickly increased from 3 hectares to more than 300 hectares. As of 9pm, the area is 700 hectares.

BC Wildfire Service personnel reported aggressive fire behavior.

On Monday night, nearly 3,000 customers in the area lost power for several hours due to wildfires. FortisBC stated that this was a deliberate interruption to support the local emergency services of Oliver and Osoyoos.

The Oliver-Osoyoos region is located at the southern end of the fertile Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. This is a popular tourist destination, famous for its wineries.

Smoke from Inkaneep Creek billows from this vantage point in Oliver, British Columbia (Anita Bass/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

The Okanagan-Similkameen area has declared a state of emergency. Oliver Mayor Martin Johnson said the town has also declared a state of emergency.

BC RCMP spokesperson Dawn Roberts said that members of the Osoyoos and Oliver RCMP units have been deployed for tactical evacuation.

Physical evacuation is underway. Members are actually going from house to house [theyre] Work closely with the Osoyoos Indian Band to ensure that we fight the most vulnerable areas, Roberts said.

This fire is one of hundreds of wildfires currently burning in British Columbia, including more than 100 wildfires concentrated in the interior.

The evacuated residents have been scrambling to find a safe place-an increasingly difficult task.

Ken Gillis, chairman of the Thompson-Nicola region, said that Kamloops, Merritt or Salmon Arm did not have accommodation.

They are absolutely full, he said.

Ashes from the Inkameep fire (45 kilometers to the south) on my parasol. The red light shining on the tree is the sun. It seems to be a vigorous fire. pic.twitter.com/V6JhegCeSa @CanningsNDP

Anyone who receives an evacuation order must leave the area immediately.

Evacuation centers have been set up throughout the province to help anyone evacuating from communities threatened by wildfires.To find the center closest to you, please visit Emergency Management in British Columbia website.

Encourage evacuees to register online Emergency Support Service, Regardless of whether they receive services in an evacuation center.
The terrible wildfires burning in Oregon have grown to one-third the size of Rhode Island and spread for several kilometers every day. But compared with much smaller fires in densely populated areas of California, evacuation and property damage are minimal.

The jaw-dropping scale of the blaze is in stark contrast to its relatively small impact on people, highlighting the vastness of the American West and reminding people that Oregonlarger than the United Kingdomis still a major rural state, albeit mainly for its The largest city is known as Portland.

As of Monday, 25% of the 1,210 square kilometers of piracy fires have been controlled, and they are burning in and around the Fremont-Vinema National Forest about 480 kilometers southeast of Portland. This is a vast expanse of virgin forests, lakes and lakes. Wildlife sanctuary.

James Johnston, a researcher on historical wildfires at Oregon State Universitys School of Forestry, said that if the fire happened in a densely populated area of ??California, it has now destroyed thousands of houses.

But it is burning in one of the remote areas of the 48 contiguous states of the United States. This is not the Bay Area.

During the fire, at least 2,000 families were evacuated and another 5,000 were threatened. At least 70 houses and more than 100 outbuildings were destroyed by the fire. The dense smoke has suffocated residents and wildlife in areas that have experienced months of drought and extreme heat. No one died.

Here are some pictures of Oregon.

Fight with the flame

On July 15, a firefighting aircraft returned to base in heavy smoke after throwing flame retardant at the Bootleg fire in Blaye, Oregon.

(Matthew Lewis-Roland/Reuters)

On Monday, firefighters extinguished hot spots in the wildfire-hit area near Bligh.

(David Ryder/Reuters)

On July 14, the Oregon National Guard regrouped at the Bootleg Fire Command Center in Chiloquin, Oregon.

(Nathan Howard/Associated Press)

On July 15, a wildfire near Highway 34 in southern Oregon burned at night.

(Jason Pettigrew/Bootleg Fire Incident Command/Associated Press)

On July 15, firefighter Nahum Reyes slept under a fire truck after Bly changed his shift.

(Matthew Lewis-Roland/Reuters)

On July 17, Osmose utility service staff Nick Beasley (left) and Cody Maby connected the flame-retardant net to the electric wire near Bligh.

(Peton Bruni/AFP/Getty Images)

Property and life are threatened

On July 16, Bob Dillon poses for a photo on the ashes of the fire surrounding his home caused by the Bootleg Fire in Beatty, Oregon.

(Peton Bruni/AFP/Getty Images)

Mary Gerlach, a fire evacuate, tends to her horse at the Red Cross relief shelter in Klamath Falls, Oregon, on July 14.

(Matthew Lewis-Roland/Reuters)

On July 18, near Chiloquin, the Bootleg fire continued to expand, a sign of thanks to the firefighters.

(David Ryder/Reuters)

On July 18, a herd of cattle graze in the sunset in the wildfire smoke near Bligh.

(David Ryder/Reuters)
A senior climatologist from Environment Canada said that prolonged rains and strong winds may dissipate wildfires and smoky parts of western Canada, but this is not a forecast this week.

As wildfires in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba continue to burn, David Phillips of Environment Canada said he was particularly shocked that the smoke covered Alberta. , The height from the jet to the ground.

One thing that surprised mewhat surprised me was that yesterday the temperature rose to 13.4 degrees Celsius. [in Edmonton] But it is expected to be on the 26th and 27th, Phillips said on Monday.

So the temperature is only half the original. This shows how crazy the air column is. The sun cannot get in to warm the air.

Despite predicting rain in certain areas, Phillips said he does not think there will be any major weather systems in the Prairie or parts of British Columbia to help extinguish some of the flames.

Wildfire smoke has reduced Edmontons air quality and visibility. (Janet French/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

What western Canada needs is long rains, which will spoil weekend camping trips. Strong westerly winds that seem unfamiliar at this time of the year also help to purify the air, so meteorology can correct the situation in many ways, but we I just didnt see them coming, he said.

In Edmonton, Alberta, you can taste, smell, see and feel it. Its like smoking a few packs of cigarettes to breathe the air.

On Monday, the Saskatchewan Department of Public Safety ended the fire ban because the provinces low temperatures and low rainfall have allowed firefighters to make some progress in extinguishing the flames. Steve Roberts, vice president of operations, said the agency had lifted the fire ban because despite the large number of wildfires, they were not large in scale.

There were 161 active fires in Saskatchewan, an increase from the 137 fires reported on Friday. Roberts said that there were 424 wildfires in Saskatchewan this year, twice the provincial average and the most frequent in its 10-year history.

But Phillips said that Saskatchewan will not escape the hot and dry temperatures in the short term.

We havent even reached the dog days of summer, he said.

I think this story is obviously that the high temperature came early, it was very hot, but it was basically limited to the West. This is an unfortunate situation, and this is a lot of things we have to deal with in recent years.

On Monday, about 300 wildfires were burning in British Columbia, and new evacuation orders were issued for properties in multiple areas. The BC Wildfire Service classified the fire hazard in most of the southern half of BC as high to extreme, while cool and humid weather lowered the risk level in the northern half.
Green Party leader Annami Paul said today that the internal challenges faced by her leadership should wait until after the widely anticipated fall elections.

Paul said at todays press conference: We see that we have candidates ready to start. We dont need this kind of distraction, so of course I hope this is the end.

Until recently, the governing body of the Green Party will vote of confidence in Pauls leadership and review her party membership. CBC News learned over the weekend that the vote of confidence has been cancelled and the review of Pauls party membership has been abandoned.

Paul said she will face a scheduled leadership review after the next federal election. At the same time, she said that she needs the support of the party.

I hope people will continue to support me. I hope I have the opportunity to serve, and thats what it really means, Paul said.

I want to lead us to the next election. I want to provide my services to our members and Canada. I hope that those who feel different will wait until a more appropriate time to take action.

The party issued a statement on Monday confirming the cancellation of the vote. It said: No further motion of no confidence in the leader will be proposed to the current Federal Council or the Green Party before the next meeting.

The current Federal Council will be replaced in mid-August, which means that Paul may still face threats to his leadership before the fall elections. Paul said that she hopes the party will continue to support her during this period so that it can return to working hard to get the Green Party candidate elected.

Due to funding constraints, the party executive fired the staff in Pauls office and did not release any funds to support her horse riding. Paul said on Monday that none of these decisions have been reversed.

She said: It is very difficult and still very difficult to deprive me of the many tools I need to be an effective leader.

Middle East tensions within the party

The conflict between Paul and her party reached a crisis point in May, when violence in the Middle East escalated, and Paul issued a statement calling for easing and resuming dialogue.

Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin left the Green Party to join the Liberal Party in June, calling the statement completely insufficient. Her departure left the Green Party with only two MPs.

Noah Zatzman, Pauls political adviser at the time, stated in a Facebook post on May 14 that he had experienced anti-Semitism and discrimination in the party and criticized what he said was anti-Semitism. Politicians, including members of the Green Party.

He wrote that the Green Party will work to introduce progressive climate advocates who oppose the law and support LGBT, indigenous sovereignty and Zionists!!!

The partys Federal Council told Paul that she must abide by its instructions and publicly refute Zatzmans comments to avoid a vote of confidence. She refused to do so, and the party now seems to have entered a short-term peace.

This is very painful for me and my family, and I want to meet frankly about it, Paul told reporters at a press conference in the Toronto Center today that she intends to participate in the next election.

When you value your integrity so much, its hard to be questioned. Its hard to put your commitment to human rights and social justice into question.

Paul said that the conflict with her party has caused losses to her and her family, and she has considered resigning several times in recent weeks.

The reason I didnt was because it shouldnt be so hard, she said. For well-meaning people and experienced people, it should not be difficult to provide services to their country.

There are too many good people who find it impossible. I just dont want to be one of them.
Jakarta, Indonesia  On a residential street in Bogor, on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital, another family lost a loved one due to COVID-19.

A young woman sat in front of her fathers body, clutching her rosary and sobbing.

Wake up, please dont go to sleep, she cried, and a team of funeral home members carefully wrapped his body in sterilized plastic.

Muhammad Jauhar, 32, is part of a team that helps families in the area, and he is familiar with the sound of sadness.

He told Al Jazeera: We do all kinds of work in this task force. I drive an ambulance for the dead, and I prepare a lot of things-including coffins and shrouds.

He said: I am also preparing to clean, pack and transport the corpse to the cemetery.

Jauhar is not the undertaker-he is actually a director in a television production. However, as Indonesia is struggling with the recent surge in COVID-19 deaths, there are too many distressed families and not enough workers to bury the dead.

At the COVID-19 cemetery, gravediggers work late into the night to keep up with their workload.

Muhammad Jauhar used to work in television production.Now he is a volunteer of the Bogor Funeral Task Force, not far from Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia [Al Jazeera]

Volunteers like Jauhur are now an important part of Indonesias funeral industry.

The impact of COVID is huge, and the death toll in Bogor is really high. This is what we can do to help these families, he said.

We have not received any payment. We do this work from the heart.

This month, Indonesia surpassed India in the number of daily COVID-19 cases and surpassed Brazil, reporting the worlds highest number of daily deaths due to COVID-19.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths in Indonesia exceeds 73,000.

On Monday, Indonesia reported 1,338 COVID-19 deaths, the highest in history.

But experts warn that even these numbers may be underestimated because the countrys coronavirus testing levels are too low.

Nurhasanah is one of only three women in the burial team, they are preparing to bury the body [Al Jazeera]

As overwhelmed hospitals were forced to evacuate patients, more and more people died in isolation at home. Many people never even have the opportunity to receive treatment from a medical professional.

Collapse

Lapor Covid-19 is an independent group responsible for collecting and collating data related to the pandemic.

Ahmad Arif, one of the co-founders of the organization, said their research shows that the actual death toll is three to five times the government figure.

Most people who died in quarantine have difficulty getting into the hospital. Their condition deteriorated and they tried to go to the hospital, but they were full, so they died at home, he said.

We have seen that the death of a self-isolated person is an indicator of the collapse of our medical services.

The situation is far from improving-there are signs that even in the more remote provinces of Indonesia, a health crisis is forming.

Outside of Java, deaths in self-isolation have begun to occur. Last week, we obtained data on the number of deaths in Riau, Lampung, East Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan, etc., Ahmed Say.

This shows that the health service can no longer control cases.

In Bogor, only 3 of the 50 volunteers of the Burial Task Force are women.

Volunteers prepare to bury the body and pray.As the pandemic has overwhelmed hospitals, more and more people are dying at home [Al Jazeera]

According to religious teachings, only people of the same sex can perform the Islamic ritual of washing the dead and the shroud.

Nurhasanah, 37, is one of the female volunteers-because the other two women are students, she agreed to go to the evening shift.

She should start at 8 in the evening and end at 5 in the morning.

But as the death toll in her community soared, her shift hours became longer, sometimes she worked more than 14 hours a day.

Im a housewife, I only worked at home before, Nurhasana said.

I really dont think about the timing. After seeing the situation of these families, deep in my heart, I want to help them.

For the past week, Nurhasanah helped prepare the bodies of three to four women for burial every day.

She said that due to health regulations, she is not always able to bathe her body-therefore, in some cases, she cleans her body with disinfectant and prays.

We do this from the bottom of our hearts, we just want to help them. Even after I get home, I will think of them.
On the hottest day of the year today, a huge hail pours down and four weather warnings are in place.

The Bureau of Meteorology issued a thunderstorm and extreme high temperature warning today, and the temperature at Heathrow Airport soared to 32.2 degrees Celsius.

13 This afternoon, a man in a punt in Cambridge suffered hail in Cambridge Credit: SWNS

13 Billericay, Essex, it rained heavily in a short but violent storm Credit: PA

13 23-year-old Jade Edmunds and 19-year-old Rose Rosser enjoy hot and sunny weather on the beach in Barry, South Wales Credit: WNS

Just a stones throw away from Londons Heathrow Airport, rain and hail, marble size pouring in Essex and Kent during the storm.

The Bureau of Meteorology has now issued four different weather warnings.

New extreme heat the weather Warnings were issued throughout the south-central and southwestern regions, and until Thursday night, the situation is expected to cool down.

Two amber thunderstorm warnings have been issued in Cambridgeshire and Maidstone in Kent, while yellow warnings have been issued throughout the southeast and East Midlands from Nottingham to the north of Brighton.

Record-breaking heat

The previous high this year was 31.6C, which was also set at Heathrow Airport on Sunday.

A four-day heat wave started this week at 31 degrees Celsius in London and other places on Monday. Many areas are hotter than Ibiza, and some places are even 29 degrees Celsius higher than the temperature in Nouakchott, Mauritania, on the edge of the Sahara Desert. .

In the next few days, mercury is expected to rise by one degree or more.

Weather Bureau forecaster Marco Petagna said: The temperature may peak around 32C (89.6F), and even reach 33C (91.4F) in remote areas of southern England, which is very warm for many people.

13 Heavy rain and thunderstorms hit Cambridge and met the office to issue a yellow weather warning in Cambridgeshire Credit: SWNS

13 The lawn in the southeast was covered with hail

Even cooler areas will have temperatures in their 20s, and thunderstorms may occur elsewhere.

New extreme heat the weather The warning lasted until Thursday night, when the weather is expected to turn cooler and thunderstorms and heavy rain are sweeping the UK.

Most parts of Wales, southwest England, and parts of southern and central England are experiencing extremely hot weather.

The concept was launched on June 1 to emphasize the dangers of heat waves to health, infrastructure and other services.

According to data from the Public Health Department of the United Kingdom, 2,256 excess deaths in the UK were recorded during the 2020 heat wave, which is the highest record since records. This has raised concerns about heat wave killers.

Flood fear

At the same time, the yellow thunderstorm warnings issued today in the Southeast and East Midlands remind residents of the risk of flooding for homes and businesses.

The storm is accompanied by lightning, hail and strong winds, which are expected until midnight tonight.

A huge hailstone was found in Essex this afternoon, as the storm hit residents and reported that the hailstone was the size of a marble.

Jim Dale, a meteorologist at the Met Office, said: From about mid-week, the high pressure seems to weaken, and after experiencing very hot weather, we can see more active downpours.

Extreme weather may cause power outages, traffic delays and cancellations in London and the Southeast.

Road to Smelting

13 Somersets road melted today Credit: Twitter

13 Four weather warnings are in place, with amber severe heat in the west and yellow thunderstorm in the east

At 33 degrees Celsius, todays roads melt like chocolate, and parliaments across the country are urgently repairing surfaces damaged by the high temperature.

In Gloucestershire, because part of the A38 is considered unsafe, emergency maintenance is required.

Somerset County Council said: Think of asphalt as chocolate-it melts and softens when hot, and hardens and becomes brittle when cold.

So it will not maintain the same intensity throughout the year.

Pour the gravel on the molten tar to solidify and reattach to the surface.

It turns out that the countrys trains are too hot and dozens of passengers are late.

The speed of some trains has been halved due to the risk of lines bending at high temperatures.

The London Northwest Railway cut the speed of the main line from Euston, London, the Chiltern Railway also affected the line from Marylebone in London to Oxford, and the Northern Railway was affected between Hull and Bridlington in East Yorkshire. The impact.

Network Rail said: Rails will expand as the temperature rises. The speed limit means less force on the track, which reduces the chance of buckling.

Heat waves may cause the aircraft to turn to approved airspace in the event of GPS failure.

The British Civil Aviation Authority said: In hot weather, tablets and mobile phones may overheat and shut down.

We have recently seen an increase in airspace violations due to overheated equipment being used as mobile maps on GA aircraft.

The bookmaker reduced the likelihood of temperatures in the UK reaching 35 degrees Celsius this week.

As the heat wave continues, Ladbrokes has reduced the probability of thermometers reaching 35C anywhere in the UK before this weekend to 3/1.

Jessica OReilly of Ladbrokes said: Freedom Day plus heat waves will definitely see many workers getting sick this week. Its not surprising to see temperatures above 35C.

13 A man in a punt suffered a hail storm in Cambridge Credit: SWNS

13 As roads melted, thunderstorms and hail marble size hit Britain at 32 degrees Celsius

13

13 Rae Pitham, 2 years old, was playing at Blackpool Beach today Credit: Dave Nelson

13 Beach visitors enjoy the hot morning sun and calm sea in Lyme Regis Credit: Graham Hunt

13 Lauren Tudge and Hannah Laschke cool off in the sea on Barry Island, South Wales Credit: WNS
Last month, the Canadian Museum of History announced that It will cancel Canada Day celebrations After unmarked graves were found in former boarding school locations across the country-this was one of a series of adjustments made after the traumatic discovery.

The museum in Gatineau, Quebec, said in an email to CBC News that other changes it plans to make include signs detailing the history and continuing influence of the boarding school, warnings about the content of exhibits covering the subject, and its content A comprehensive review.

CBC News contacted more than a dozen museums across the country and asked them how to solve the remaining problems of Canadian boarding schools.

The museums response varied: some pointed to long-term exhibits on display in consultation with indigenous communities, others held ceremonies to commemorate boarding school victims and survivors, and still others said they had long-term plans to solve the problem.

But a daunting task lies ahead: how can museums better tell the story of our country in a way that accurately reflects the role of Canadian institutions in destroying indigenous lives and communities through the boarding school system?

CBC News interviewed an Aboriginal artist and executives from two major Canadian museums to understand the upcoming changes and what they mean for reconciliation.

The CEO of the Human Rights Museum says that great art reflects who we are

Isha Khan is the CEO of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights. Last year, she took over the position after the museum came under fire for racism, homophobia, sexism, and censorship. (Gary Solilac/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

Isha Khan, CEO of the Canadian Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, said the role of the museum has changed, from displaying artifacts to amplifying sounds and stories.

Regarding the topic of boarding schools, the institution currently exhibits a piece called Witness blanket, It was exhibited there for the first time in December 2015.

This is a wooden quilt made by indigenous artist and engraver Kyrie Newman. It aims to record the boarding school experience through a series of survivors, former school sites, government buildings and churches.

I call it truth, Khan said of the artwork. I think what we learned is that art is powerful. Great art captures who we are and where we have been.

You have a very deep respect for it, because it is more than just an artifact its a part of someones life, their family history, something full of emotions.

In August of last year, Khan was appointed to the post of CEO. An external report found There is universal and systematic racism and content censorship in the museum.Another report Only released last month Outlines allegations of abuse and fetishism by racialized male employees, especially black men, when working for the agency.

Khan said that because museums capture historical narratives and memories, these institutions have the potential to determine how we deal with the dark parts of the countrys history and how we shape our national identity based on these realities.

We are a storytelling platform, she said. If you look at it this way, we have unlimited potential to educate, define our identity as a society at any point in time, and then make sure we have a memory of where we came from.

We have a lot of work to do, because before we move forward, you know, you talk about the road to reconciliation. We need to know the truth about us  but we dont.

The RCMP Museum plans to negotiate with the Aboriginal community

Tara Robinson is the newly appointed chief executive officer of the RCMP Heritage Center. (Richard Agkutai/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

The newly appointed chief executive officer Tara Robinson said that the Regina RCMP Heritage Center has not updated its exhibits for several years. But as it seeks the designation of the National Museum, this situation will change.

Robinson said: There are many stories, some with national pride, some with grand celebration. But others with sadness and some collective sadness [an example being] Boarding schools across the countryWe believe these stories need to be told. 

The museum plans to tell the history of the RCMP from multiple angles, including the history of Aboriginal communities.In the age of boarding schools, the National Police Force responsible for Forcibly remove children from their families and homes so that they can be sent to school.

Robinson told CBC News: I firmly believe that museums are here for education, and they are for educating good, bad and other knowledge.

The RCMP Heritage Center in Regina will receive 4.5 million Canadian dollars in funding from the federal government when seeking national designation. (Richard Agkutai/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

In May, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Heritage Center announced that it would be transformed into a national museum, and the federal government would provide 4.5 million Canadian dollars in funding over three years.Steve McClellan, chairman of the board, said This funding will enable the museum More contact with indigenous communities than in the past.

However, he also said that the current exhibits Minimize references The dark history between the Canadian Mounted Police and Aboriginal communities.

In the same month, data released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police showed that 102 members were identified as Aboriginal Left the army in the past three years, After Congressman Matthew Green requested the number.

Robinson said that now, the RCMP Heritage Center has the opportunityand has the responsibilityto build relationships with the Aboriginal communities and work with them to historicize the National Police Force.

Consultations with indigenous communities will be extensive, she said. Probably the most extensive we have done.

The artist said that the school was only a part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Polices colonization process.

Carey Newman is the artist and master engraver behind Witness Blanket, a wooden quilt with items collected from boarding schools, survivors, government agencies and churches. He was shot with Zoom. (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

Kyrie Newman, aboriginal artist, professor behind and master sculptor Witness blanket, Said the RCMP played a greater role in colonization outside of boarding schools.

If we are to take our identity seriously, and our collective identity for what it means to be Canadians, I think this step is a step towards recognizing all history The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is important in this country, the artist Said that his traditional name is Hayalthkingeme.

I hope it is not limited to boarding schools.

He pointed to other examples of historical interactions between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Aboriginal communities, such as removing them from the prairie and implementing a protected area system.

Newman is the son of a boarding school survivor. He said that one of the concepts that helped him understand his father was what he called concentric trauma, which lays the root of intergenerational trauma in its original source of injury, rather than implying responsibility for the individuals and families affected by it.

I can see all the ways it affects my father, and how it affects our relationship and how I deal with it in the artwork I make, Newman said. But perhaps more importantly, in my personal relationship and how I treat my daughters father.

Witness Blanket collected more than 800 items from 77 communities. (Gary Solilac/Canadian Broadcasting Corporation)

Worked with the Canadian Museum of Human Rights on display Witness blanketNewman said, If there is an intention, change is possible-but institutions like the RCMP Heritage Center need to go this way.

I know how difficult it is to create change, he said. So I think I am a bit skeptical, waiting to see how these words are translated into action; what is the content and appearance of the exhibition.

Do you have information about unmarked graves, children who have never returned home, or boarding school staff and operations? Email your tips to the CBC Investigative Boarding Schools new Aboriginal leadership team: [email protected].
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

Lloyd Lerat still remembers the day in the early 1960s when workers came to remove headstones from a section of the cemetery in Cowessess First Nation, Sask., that is now covered with tiny flags marking spots left by a ground-penetrating radar survey that the nation says found evidence of 751 unmarked graves.

A student at Marieval Indian Residential School at the time, Lerat, 72, said he and other children heard a hubbub of activity coming from the cemetery near the school, located about 164 km east of Regina. They saw workers and a truck removing headstones and wooden crosses.

We came out, and there were all kind of activity going on there, said Lerat.

We knew something was happening so we would watch, but dont get caught, you couldnt go running. You had to just take a look and say, OK, somethings happening and to see them being, I dont know, gathered somehow, either pushed out of the way and picked up.

Lerat, who returned to work at the school in the 1970s, rising to become administrator of the residence in the 1980s, said he doesnt know where the workers put the headstones and wooden crosses.

The school operated from 1898 to 1997 in the area where Cowessess is now located, about 164 kilometres east of Regina. (CBC)

Several stories have surfaced in the community about what happened to the grave markers, and they all agree on one thing: a priest ordered their removal in the early 1960s. But no one story explains why, and officials from the Catholic Church, which ran the school until the late 1960s, have not been able to confirm the account or explain why either.

A similar uncertainty shrouds the identities and precise location of those buried in this section of cleared cemetery now at the centre of national attention, with some former students suggesting the majority of the 751 grave sites do not contain the remains of children from the residential school.

Nevertheless, early Catholic mission records obtained by CBC News, along with the testimony of elders from the community who attended Marieval residential school, help shed some light on who could be buried there.

The records and testimony also suggest the Catholic Church has additional documents with some of the names connected to these unmarked graves.

An undated photo of the Marieval residential school, which was run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate until the late 1960s and then taken over by the federal government and, eventually, Cowessess First Nation. (Collection generale de la Societe historique de Saint-Boniface)

Not a residential school grave site: chief

Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme said that, according to local oral history, up to 75 per cent of the interred are children who attended Marieval residential school, which was run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate.

But I cant confirm that, he said in an interview with CBC News.

The Cowessess discovery sent shock waves across a country still reeling from the findings revealed three weeks earlier of another ground survey that identified 200 potential unmarked graves in an old apple orchard near a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, speaks to Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme during a visit to Cowessess July 6. The discovery of unmarked graves at the former Marieval residential school and similar discoveries at other school sites have attracted national attention. (Shannon VanRaes/Reuters)

Other First Nations have since announced discoveries of unmarked graves, and searches at residential school sites across the country are ongoing.

In Cowessess, the announcement surfaced painful memories for survivors who attended Marieval residential school.

From the beginning, Delorme has maintained that the area surveyed also held remains of others from the community and surrounding region who did not attend the school.

This is a Roman Catholic grave site. Its not a residential school grave site, he told CBC News.

Other Roman Catholic faith-goers, Indigenous and not, adults as well, have been buried there. There are one-metre-apart graves. We understand that those are not adult sizes.

Weve always known these were here

Cowessess First Nation sits in Treaty 4 territory, along the deepest part of the QuAppelle Valley. Before the Catholic missionaries arrived and built the church and school in the late 1800s, the people from here buried their dead throughout the high, green hills that frame this Saulteaux and Cree community, said Lerat.

From Lerats home, taking a right turn before the Cowessess gas station and grocery store, then a left onto Oblates Road, sits the location of the old Catholic mission  the church and rectory now gone, burned in 2018 under suspicious circumstances.

A survey flag next to a solar-powered light marking the spot where, Cowessess officials say, ground-penetrating radar detected an unmarked grave. (Richard Agecoutay/CBC News)

This is where the oldest part of the cemetery begins. It is now a sea of little flags and small, solar-powered lights. There is also a headstone for a nun and a worn grave monument for three members of a German family from Grayson, Sask., a village about 25 kilometres north of Cowessess.

Weve always known these were there, said Lerat of the unmarked graves.

He said the idea that the graves were primarily of children who attended the school took on a life of its own.

Its just the fact that the media picked up on unmarked graves, and the story actually created itself from there because thats how it happens, Lerat said.

The newer section of the cemetery is dotted with headstones and grave markers. A community member was recently buried there.

More consultation needed, some community members say

Some in Cowessess say they feel uneasy that the dark reality of residential schools, and the thousands of Indigenous children who never came home from them, has been blurred with the history of a cemetery where the wider communitys ancestors lie.

Linda Whiteman, 80, attended Marieval residential school along with her sister, Pearl Lerat, 78, from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s.

Whiteman said it hurt to hear news of the 751 unmarked graves from her community ricocheting across the country, because she thinks most of them do not contain the remains of children from the residential school.

The older ones knew that it wasnt all children in there, she said. I stayed home for two days straight because I didnt want to go anywhere.

It was very upsetting, to say the least. And it went national just about right away, overnight. But I hope that something good will come out of it, and people will learn the truth about it.

Pearl Lerat, left, and her sister, Linda Whiteman, attended Marieval residential school from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. (Richard Agecoutay/CBC News)

Pearl Lerat said the sisters parents, grandparents and great-grandparents are buried there along with others from outside the First Nation.

There was a mixture of everyone in that graveyard, in that cemetery, she said.

It was the surrounding farmers, and the beaches, you know, and on the north side of the river, there was a Metis community, and they had people buried as well in our cemetery.

Lerat said she wished there would have been more consultation with the older generation before the Cowessess leadership held a news conference and announced the find.

WATCH | More unmarked graves found near former Sask., residential school:

WARNING: This story contains distressing details. Saskatchewans Cowessess First Nation says ground-penetrating radar recently found 751 unmarked graves near the former Marieval Residential School, but some answers about who might be buried there and what happened to the headstones can be found in the communitys oral history and some church documents. 7:00

Ask for their advice, ask them the history that they remember. We were there. We lived it. We should know, said Lerat.

Im not claiming to be 110 years old, to know everything, but I think Ive experienced enough on my home reserve to remember not only the bad times but the good times.

Mission records reveal hundreds of burials

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation recorded eight student deaths at Marieval from its opening in 1898 to its closing in 1997. The institution was taken over by the federal government in 1968 and then the First Nation in 1987.

Many federal Indian Affairs records were destroyed over the years, leaving gaps in the history of residential schools. The loss of those records makes it difficult to determine the exact number of children who died in the care of church and state.

Two volumes of Indian Affairs funeral records from Cowessess First Nation, also known as Crooked Lake, were destroyed by the federal government between 1936 and 1956, according to archived files listing destroyed documents provided to CBC News by a researcher. These records may have provided additional information to what is held by the Catholic Church.

While Lloyd Lerat was a student, he said, he remembers one girl from the community dying at the school from illness.

She got sick there and died in the residence, he said.

And her parents just lived down the valley.

An undated archival photo of the cemetery at the Marieval Catholic mission. (Collection generale de la Societe historique de Saint-Boniface)

Early mission records obtained by CBC News through an online genealogy site maintained by the Mormon Church reveal that dozens of children were buried at the cemetery while it was overseen by the Oblates, but its not clear how many were from the residential school.

The records include an index for Volume 1 of the mission register, covering baptisms, marriages and burials from 1885 to 1933, along with several pages of handwritten entries.

The documents record about 450 burials during the 48-year period. CBC News was able to determine the ages in 184 of the recorded burials up to 1908. More than half are preschool-aged children or those who died at birth.

The rest range in age from six to 100. At least two school-aged children were buried after the residential school opened in 1898.

There are a total of four volumes of the mission register, with one held by the band and the rest by the Catholic Church, said Lloyd Lerat.

A band member fought to keep the four volumes in the community when the Oblates handed over operation of the residential school to the federal government in the late 1960s, said Lerat.

She said those were the property of Cowessess, and they should stay here because these are our records, said Lerat.

She fought quite hard to keep them, but then she was threatened by the priest  that they would charge her with theft.

Title page from the Marieval mission registry. (Genealogical Society of Utah)

The Archdiocese of Regina would not comment on whether any of the records CBC News obtained matched or added to documents in its possession.

In a statement, it said it is currently working with Cowessess First Nation, and any records related to the mission and the residential school would only be shared directly with the community.

The Archdiocese also asked CBC News to stop phoning the parish priest in Grayson  or any parish  in the search for additional records.

The parish in Grayson provided ministerial support to the church in Cowessess First Nation and CBC News was seeking access to the parish records in case they held any clues as to why a priest removed headstones in the early 1960s.

The first page of the index for Volume1 of the Marieval mission register of births, deaths and marriages. (Genealogical Society of Utah)

Cemetery was in terrible shape

The Archdiocese said it did not have any information on the removal of headstones.

Several stories have circulated for years on why the priest removed the grave markers.

In one version, the priest removed headstones in a dispute with the band leadership. In another version, horses damaged the gravestones and crosses one winter, and planned repairs never happened.

Do you have information about unmarked graves, children who never came home or residential school staff and operations? Email your tips to [email protected] .

Lerat heard a different story. He said the cemetery was in disrepair and the priest wanted it fixed up.

The priest at that time basically informed all the parishioners, and people that had loved ones in there, that they better come and clean it up, said Lerat.

But not enough parishioners came out, apparently. So, he decided if youre not going to look after it, this is how its going to be done.

Ken Zimmer, 78, an amateur historian and retired headstone salesman, remembers walking through the cemetery in the mid-1950s. He said it was in terrible shape and some of the grave sites were sinking into the ground.

A lot of monuments  were caved in, they were falling over, the grave covers were slanted in, he said.

Ken Zimmer, an amateur historian, retired headstone salesman heard stories about why the headstones were removed while working as a bartender in Grayson, Sask., a village north of Cowessess. (Jorge Barrera/CBC News)

Later, bartending in nearby Grayson in the early 1960s, Zimmer heard from patrons that the priest removed the grave markers and plowed over the cemetery because human remains began to surface.

[A] couple told me  that they visited, and they saw bones there. So, they kicked the bones in with their feet, they pushed the ground in on top to cover it up because they didnt like to see that, said Zimmer, whose research was used in a book about the region.

Zimmer said the couple told him they told the priest, who decided something had to be done, leading to the removal of all the markers, said Zimmer.

What lies outside cemetery boundaries?

The only evidence to surface to date that plots out the burial spots and names is in hand-drawn maps. A community member in charge of burials handed them down to his son, who took over the job until his death, said Lerat, and residents have since been circulating copies.

Pearl Lerat and Linda Whiteman showed CBC a copy of one such map covering burials from 1966 to 1989. Each grave was represented by a little square with a name and dates of birth and death. Several squares on the map were recorded as unknown.

I think once theyre matched up along with the records that they receive from the church, then a lot of what they call the unmarked graves will be marked again, said Lloyd Lerat.

Lloyd Lerat said this building was a warming shack next to the site of an old skating rink now dotted with survey flags from a ground-penetrating radar survey that detected unmarked graves. (Richard Agecoutay/CBC News)

What weighs on Lerat are the survey flags dotting areas outside the cemetery boundaries  the site of an old skating rink and where the church and rectory stood.

Whats the shocking part is whats out there? What we dont know, what we didnt know growing up, what we played over, you know, and treated as a schoolyard, but not knowing there were bodies there, said Lerat.

You would expect the church not to be part of the graveyard  Whats down there? Were not sure.

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools and those who are triggered by these reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for residential school survivors and others affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Due to the outbreak in Yunnan Province, which borders Myanmar, China has reported the highest daily increase in newly confirmed COVID-19 cases since January, and the province is experiencing a surge in coronavirus due to the spread of delta variants.

The National Health Commission said in a statement that mainland China recorded 65 new confirmed cases on July 19, up from 31 the day before. This is the most since January 30, when 92 new cases were reported.

Imported infections accounted for the majority of new cases. Yunnan has reported 41 new cases from abroad, all of which involve Chinese citizens who have recently returned from Myanmar.

The current round of cases in Yunnan began on July 4 and concentrated in Ruili and Longchuan, two small cities on the border between China and Myanmar.

Ruili is fighting the fourth outbreak since the pandemic began. On July 19, 7 new locally transmitted cases were reported, while Longchuan had 1 case.

Ruili is an important land transfer station in Yunnan, which has a 4,000-kilometer (2,485-mile) border with Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam.

The Yunnan outbreak marks the second cluster of infections in China Involve the highly contagious Delta strain, Following the outbreak in southern Guangdong Province in May and June.

Steel Fortress

During his visit to Ruili on Sunday, Zong Guoying, deputy governor of Yunnan Province, promised to build a steel fortress to prevent further spread.

In Xishuangbanna Prefecture, which borders Myanmar, police have set up checkpoints on all roads to check incoming and outgoing traffic.

The police told Reuters in a recent interview that the Jinghong city centre in Xishuangbanna discourages travel, and special permission is required to enter neighboring cities such as Lincang and Puer, as well as Ruili.

In mainland China, 19 asymptomatic coronavirus cases were detected on July 19, compared with 17 the day before. China does not count asymptomatic infections as confirmed cases.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in China has now reached 92,342, and the death toll remains unchanged at 4,636.

I want to say that if the necessary and effective actions are not taken in time to slow down the infection, more than 300,000 or as many as 400,000 people may be killed.https://t.co/eFBtaWTAdf -Radio Free Asia (@RadioFreeAsia) July 20, 2021

Body Mover

In Myanmar, it is reported that medical volunteers are collecting the rapidly increasing number of victims who have died at home from door to door, including in the commercial capital Yangon.

Every day My team is collecting 30-40 bodiesI think other teams will be like us, one of the volunteers, Than Than Soe, told AFP.

Sometimes, there are two corpses in a room.

Due to the long-term attack on the military generals who seized power in February, there are basically no doctors and patients in hospitals across the country.

Volunteers wearing personal protective equipment pray in front of the bodies of people who died of COVID-19 during the funeral at the cemetery in Mandalay District, Myanmar [Stringer/AFP]

The widespread anger over the coup-and the fear of being seen as collaborating with the military-also kept many people away from military-run hospitals, allowing volunteers to provide oxygen and take the dead to crematoriums.

Medical staff at the forefront of COVID-19 in Myanmar The pre-coup response was attacked after leading an early mass protest against the general.

As of the latest statistics, the country has reported about 230,000 COVID-19 cases and at least 5,000 deaths, but analysts say the actual death toll may be much higher.

Last week, the military called on doctors and nurses to volunteer for COVID-19 work, acknowledging that they face difficulties in controlling the surge.

State media reported on Saturday that the authorities were snatching oxygen supplies from neighboring Thailand and China.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar warned last week that the country is at the risk of becoming a super spreader of COVID-19.

On Monday, the United Nations country team in Myanmar also stated that the new wave of infections could be catastrophic for this country of 54 million people.

The team said in a statement: The current COVID-19 outbreak is expected to have devastating consequences for population health and the economy.
The unforgettable image should still shame the enlightened Israelis.

It is July 2014. Israel once again decided to teach the Palestinians a long and fatal lesson. Day and night, from land, sea, and air, the Israeli army methodically wiped out the Gaza Strip and imprisoned children, women, and men. They tried to survive the recurring horrors, but often to no avail.

All the while, cheerful Israelis have gathered together and perched safely on the top of a mountain overlooking the nearby Gaza Strip. A UPI photographer photographed three young men wearing flip-flops, short hair, and binoculars, sitting on a heavy cream-colored leather sofa. A place where a man barefoot appears to be a green, half-empty beer or soda bottle. Another person trained his black binoculars on violent scenes in order to observe the death and destruction occurring below more closely, which is probably more satisfying.

The photo of the ghoul on the mountain is not only a delayed, fixed-time prosecution of the three ruthless people in the photo, but also a prosecution of too many other Israelis. They also treated the massive demolition of Gaza and the indiscriminate killing of them. Palestinian residents are like a leisurely afternoon or evening sport-popcorn and snacks at hand.

According to reports, the general mood among Israelis on that mountain that day was a dazzling mixture of celebration and contentment. A group of happy Israelis took selfies and cheered and cheered. The bomb fell and thick smoke and dust filled the sky over the besieged Gaza.

Although there are many tragic stories about Israelis paralyzed by fear of the attack, no one on the top of the mountain seems to fear or stop Hamas and its combustible kites, balloons or metal firecrackers.

When the Palestinians died, the Israelis smiled.

We know that since 2014, Israel has imprisoned, maimed, and killed more Palestinians in Gaza and other areas, including during the 11-day massacre blitz in May. At the same time, Israel continues to ignore international law and destroy and steal Palestinian houses, businesses, and land with impunity in occupied Palestine.

As more and more Palestinians are imprisoned, maimed, and killed in Gaza and other areas, too many Israelis are content with, and may even desire to watch from close or long distances. As Israel continues to ignore international law and destroy and steal Palestinian houses, businesses, and land with impunity in occupied Palestine, too many Israelis continue to cheer.

Of course, some enlightened Israelis understand that Israels continuous imprisonment, maiming, and killing of Palestinians, and systematically eradicating and stealing their homes, businesses, and lands are illegal, wrong, and a blatant affront to dignity and any appearance.

In January of this year, the Israeli human rights organization BTselem discovered that Israel had implemented apartheid against Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian areas. After careful consideration, Israels overall intention is to impose a Jewish supreme regime through its decades-long deep-rooted policy of Division, Separation, and Rule initiated and implemented through ruthless military occupation.

An organizational principle is the foundation of a series of Israeli policies: to promote and perpetuate the supremacy of one group-Jews-over another-Palestinians, BTselem wrote.

solution? Enlightened Israelis must resist the apartheid regime and disband the state-sanctioned racist machinery that was implemented in their name.

All of us must first choose to say no to apartheid, BTselem urged the Israelis. People created this regime, and people can make it worse-or try to replace it If it is not named, how can people fight injustice? Apartheid is an organizing principle, but recognize it It does not mean giving up. On the contrary: it is a call for change.

BTselem is right. The Israelis, if they wish, can end the injustice and crimes of apartheid that have been caused to the Palestinians since Israels orchestrated establishment in 1948. But first, they must finally admit that the crimes and injustices experienced by generations of Palestinians constituted apartheid as a matter of international law, not rhetoric.

Too many Israelis have failed to pass this fundamental challenge and test. On the contrary, too many Israelis choose to refuse to take any responsibility for the deep and serious injuries and trauma that Israel should indeed bear, and find comfort in the ridiculous illusion that their country is still the shining incarnation of magnanimity and democracy. haven.

Too many Israelis did not acknowledge the obvious facts, but slammed their denials and made the same regrettable and familiar accusations. These accusations stemmed from dissatisfaction and narrow-mindedness, in order to reject what more and more people in the world have become aware of- Israel is an apartheid country.

Human Rights Watch published more evidence on this fact in April. In a detailed 213-page report, Human Rights Watch confirmed with straightforward clinical details Israels long history of deliberately committing crimes against humanity in the Occupied Palestine.

Like BTselem, Human Rights Watch has concluded that the sinister purpose of Israels deep-rooted, government-sanctioned persecution of Palestinians is not to protect the safety of Israelis, but to impose national supremacy in occupied Palestine, and Drive Palestinians out of their homes, businesses and into shrinking slums, where they endure rather than enjoy life.

Human Rights Watch begged Israel and, in turn, the Israelis to change their disastrous and inhumane practices. It calls on Israel: Eliminate all forms of systematic oppression and discrimination, which are at the expense of Palestinians, give Israeli Jews privileges, and systematically violate Palestinians rights in other ways to ensure Jewish The dominance of the Israelis and an end to the persecution of the Palestinians.

It is foreseeable that Israels hysterical response to the Human Rights Watch report reflects the response of a large number of apologists at home and abroad, who perfunctorily used anti-Semitism cliches to slander the picky messenger.

Faced with what Human Rights Watch rightly describes as stubborn and damn realities on the ground, chanting anti-Semitism is slowly but surely losing its currency and effectiveness.

I think shrewd Israelis recognize this. The old, proud certainty, defense, and assurance have given way to a new, shocking realization: Israel is guilty.

Enlightened Israelis can no longer ignore or ignore Israels cruel and lawless evidence. They now need to make a groundbreaking choice: to remain silent and indifferent to the appalling insults, losses and sufferings that Palestinians are forced to face bravely, or to stop, dont reshape the future in my name.

It can be done. Will the enlightened Israelis eventually muster the necessary determination and humanitarianism to do this?

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
San Diego (CNS)-The funeral for Father Joe Carroll was held on Tuesday. He is an icon of San Diego charity service. He has served the homeless for decades, making him a nationally renowned figure and his adoption Beloved citizen of his hometown.

Carols funeral is scheduled to be held at St. Rita Catholic Church in Lincoln Park at 10 am. Carol died of diabetes on July 10 at the age of 80. The mourners arrive as early as possible and carpool as much as possible.

Carol served as the President and CEO of St. Vincent de Paul Village from 1982 until his retirement in 2011, after which the facility was renamed Father Joe Village.

In the past 39 years, the organization has helped thousands of homeless people find shelter, medical assistance, childcare, housing, and other resources.

Father Joe has always been a source of inspiration, hope and light, Deacon Jim Vargas, president and CEO of Father Joes Village, said at a press conference the day after Carols death. He swept San Diego. He has created innovative projects in more than 30 years of service.

Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Falcona praised Carol as a champion of people who have been forgotten by othersthe poor, the sick, and the homeless.

He inspired the entire city to care like him, created a lasting organization, and helped so many people, Falcona said. And when he did all this, there was a gleam in his eyes.

The Speaker of the Senate, Pro Tem Toni Atkins, praised Carroll as a dedicated advocate who always helps our neighbours in need in large and small ways.

He is the light of hope and love for our community, Atkins said.

Carol once stated that he wanted to provide more than 1.7 million meals to those in need, so he held a fund-raising contest. On Thanksgiving Day, 5K became the annual tradition of Balboa Park. Runners who raise more than $100 will receive a Father Joe shaking his head doll.

In 2019, San Diego State University awarded Carroll an honorary doctorate in humanities in recognition of his lifelong dedication to the underserved communities in San Diego.

Carol is a New Yorker and moved to Southern California when he was in his 20s. He studied at St. Johns Theological Seminary in Camarillo, where he was expelled for being overly concerned with material gains while running the seminary bookstore.

He then moved to San Diego, completed his studies at the University of San Diego and was appointed in 1974. He worked in the Catholic Church of Santa Rita in Valencia Park, and was then appointed the head of the Saint Vincent de Paul thrift store downtown, where he would find his true mission and build his own legacy.

He turned a parking lot near the store into a center for the homeless, and worked hard to acquire other properties near San Diego to create a one-stop shop that can integrate services for the homeless. In the following years, he established a strong fundraising campaign, and by the time he retired, the organization had employed nearly 500 employees and had a budget of US$40 million.

The public is invited to leave flowers and messages for Carol at the center of Joan Crocker, Father Joes village at 1501 Empire Avenue, in memory of Carol.

In addition, the San Diego Convention Center will hold a celebration in Carroll at 10:30 on August 10th. To book free tickets for the event, please visit https://my.neighbor.org/take-action/events/Celebrate Life/.

Copyright 2021, City News Service, Inc.
San Diego-The county urged San Diego to check their voter registration before the September recall election.

The postal ballot for the September 14 removal election could overthrow the seat of Governor Gavin Newsom, beginning the week of August 16. The county communications office stated that if your information is up to date, you can receive the ballot in the mailbox within the same week.

If you are a new member of San Diego County or have moved since the last time you voted, you need to register to vote with your new address. You can do this by completing a new voter registration application online: sdvote.com. The registration form can also be obtained by calling 858-565-5800 or sending an email [email protected].

Voters can return their ballots by mail or at one of the many mail-in ballot delivery locations throughout the county.

If you prefer to vote in person, the venue will be open for four days from Saturday, September 11 to Tuesday, September 14.

Where to vote in advance:

From August 16, Monday to Friday, 8 am to 5 pm at the registration office

Saturday, September 11 to Monday, September 13 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at a polling place near you or the registrars office

All locations will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on election day, September 14

The county stated that voters will see two parts on the removal ballot. First, voters have a yes or no option on whether to remove Newsom from office.

Second, voters have the opportunity to choose alternative candidates. If more than 50% of voters vote to remove the governor, the replacement candidate with the most votes will be elected.
Indias main opposition party, the Congress Party, accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of treason and endangering national security. Earlier news reported that dozens of Indians could be targeted by Israeli-made spyware snooping. .

On Sunday, a survey conducted by a consortium of media organizations revealed that more than 1,000 phone numbers in India were chosen among nearly 50,000 phone numbers in the world as customers of the Israel-based NSO Group, which is the maker of Pegasus spyware. Quotient.

The leaked list was shared with the news media by the Paris-based news non-profit organization Forbidden Stories and human rights organization Amnesty International. It shows the identities of more than 300 phone numbers in India, including politicians and dozens of people. Journalists, businessmen, and even two ministers of the Modi government.

Indian media reported that Modis main rival and former Congress Party chairman Rahul Gandhi was one of dozens of Indian politicians, activists and government critics identified as potential targets of Pegasus spyware. .

Whether the surveillance of Indian security forces, judiciary, cabinet ministers, opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi, journalists and other activities through spyware of foreign entities is not a crime of treason and an unforgivable breach of national security  Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala said at a news conference in New Delhi on Monday.

We know what he has been reading-everything on your phone!#Pegasus https://t.co/d6spyji5NA  Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 19, 2021

Gandhis phone number has been abandoned by him, and it appears to be a target chosen between 2018 and mid-2019 (when Indias parliamentary elections are held).

The Congress Party asked on Monday to investigate the role of Modi and his closest aide, Minister of the Interior Amit Shah, in the scandal.

Our first request is to immediately dismiss Amit Shah, the Minister of the Interior and Internal Security, and to investigate the prime ministers role in this matter, Sujewala said.

Others reportedly targeted by phone numbers include a top virologist, a woman accused of rape by the former chief justice of India, a former election commissioner who oversaw the 2019 national polls, and Prashant, a leading political strategist Kishor.

What is the Pegasus project?

Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International have access to a list of tens of thousands of phone numbers around the world. These phone numbers may be targeted by Pegasus spyware and shared with media organizations from different countries.

Although Forbidden Stories oversaw the investigation called Project Pegasus, the security laboratory of Amnesty International provided forensic analysis and technical support during the investigation.

Pegasus is spyware owned by Israeli technology company NSO Group. It can realize remote monitoring of smart phones, secretly unlock the content of the target phone and convert it into a monitoring device.

The company claims that spyware is specifically sold to censored governments around the world to combat terrorism and other serious crimes.

The company did not confirm the identity of its customers, saying that the findings of the Pegasus project were exaggerated and baseless.

Worried about cyber attacks? Want to ensure your digital security as much as possible? Here are 8 tips to help. pic.twitter.com/nGvbSSYhuK -Amnesty International (@amnesty) July 19, 2021

Although the Indian government has not yet acknowledged whether any of its agencies are using spyware, investigations have shown that hacker spyware is widely and continuously abused in the country.

The Indian news website The Wire and The Guardian and The Washington Post reported on Monday that most of these people, including Gandhi, were targets on the eve of the 2019 national election, and Modi exceeded that in 2014.

This exposure caused a major political controversy in India. Congress referred to Modis right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the Bharatiya Jasoos Party-jasoos means spy in Hindi-and accused it of listening to people. Bedroom Talk.

Who is the target of India?

Although it is not known how many phones on the list are surveillance targets or how many attempts have been successful, the Washington Post said that a forensic analysis of 22 smartphones in India showed that at least 10 smartphones were included on the list. With Pegasus as the goal, seven of them succeeded.

Among the Indians whose mobile phones were targeted by NSO-owned spyware, former Indian election commissioner Ashok Lavasa (Ashok Lavasa) once accused Modi of violating the model code of conduct before the 2019 election.

Of all the cases that Pegasus spied on, one of Chief Justice Gogois accusers was the worst and the most heartbreaking. Basically, if you are a woman who fights against a powerful man, you will not get justice. Is there anything more shameful than this?  Rohini Singh (@rohini_sgh) July 20, 2021

In addition, at least 11 of these phone numbers belonged to former Supreme Court staff and their families. The woman, who could not be identified due to legal reasons, accused the former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of rape in April 2019 and was quickly dismissed.

It was revealed that in the same week that her allegations against Gogoi were first reported, the phone numbers belonging to the woman and her family began to be monitored. Gogoi is currently a member of the BJP of the Indian Parliament.

Also on the Pegasus spyware list were more than 40 Indian journalists from different news organizations.

Vijaita Singh, who reports on internal security for Indian newspapers, is one of them. She told Al Jazeera that she didnt realize any intrusion of her mobile phone until a few days ago.

Its disturbing and disturbing, she said. Nowadays, our mobile phones do include all aspects of our lives.

Reporter Ritika Chopra reports on the Indian Election Commission and Ministry of Education for the Indian Express.

She said that only after The Wire contacted her for comment last week did she discover that her phone number appeared on the leaked list of potential surveillance targets.

Someone told me that I might become a target in 2019. I dont want to speculate about the behind-the-scenes. This violates my privacy and freedom, but it will not affect my work as a reporter, Chopra told Al Jazeera.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta (Paranjoy Guha Thakurta), a writer and former editor of Economic and Political Weekly, had his mobile phone stolen. He told Al Jazeera that this exposure had caused him  Chilling effect.

It sends signals and messages to other people, and you can be spied on, he told Al Jazeera.

Thakurta said that a very small part of the Indian media actually plays the role of the fourth country and holds the truth about power.

Look at who are these more than 40 reporters? They are all reporters criticizing the government, so this is obviously sending a message that we can invade your privacy, he said.

What did the government say?

At least two serving ministers in the Modi governmentAshwini Vaishnaw and Prahlad Singh Patelalso appeared in the leaked database. These figures are believed to have been selected by NSO Groups customers as potential surveillance targets.

Ironically, Vaishnaw, who was recently appointed as Minister of Information Technology, defended the government on this issue in Parliament on Monday, calling the exposure an attempt to discredit Indias democracy and its well-established institutions.

In the past, there were similar allegations [about the use of Pegasus] On WhatsApp, these have no factual basis, and they are categorically denied, he said.

Vaishnaw said that any form of illegal surveillance cannot be achieved through checks and balances of our laws and powerful institutions.

The Interior Minister Shah claimed that the Pegasus report issued by the destroyers helped the obstructors when the parliament started the monsoon meeting.

Saboteurs are global organizations that dont like Indias progress. Blockers are politicians who dont want Indias progress. Indian people are very good at understanding this chronology and connection, he said on Monday.

In a statement on Monday, Access Now, an organization that defends the digital rights of users around the world, stated that products sold by NSO were allegedly used to invade and hack into the private communications of thousands of people around the world, which made us angry.

Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific Policy Director and Head of Global Cybersecurity at Access Now, told Al Jazeera that hacking is a crime, even if it is directed by the government. He asked the Indian government to answer whether its agency or security department is dealing with NSO.

The previous statement avoided this issue and vaguely asserted that safeguards were taken to avoid excessive surveillance. This is clearly not the case. The worlds largest democracy cannot be at the mercy of a shady private company, he said.
According to the most comprehensive study of the spread of the virus in South Asian countries, Indias excess death toll during the pandemic may be 10 times the official COVID-19 death toll, which may make it the worst human tragedy in modern India.

Most experts believe that Indias official death toll of more than 414,000 people is greatly underestimated, but the government considers these concerns to be exaggerated and misleading.

The report released on Tuesday estimated that between January 2020 and June 2021, the number of excess deaths (the gap between the recorded number and the expected number) will be between 3 and 4.7 million.

In this photo from April 24, 2021, the cremation pyre of multiple people who died of COVID-19 burns on the ground in New Delhi converted into a crematorium [File: Altaf Qadri/AP]

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the former chief economic adviser of the Indian government, and two other researchers from the Center for Global Development and Harvard University, claiming that the exact number may be elusive, but the true number of deaths may be larger than official statistics.

The report said that the count could miss deaths that occurred in overwhelmed hospitals, or where health care was delayed or interrupted, especially during the devastating second wave of pandemics earlier this year.

The report said: The real death toll may be millions instead of hundreds of thousands. This is arguably Indias worst human tragedy since its division and independence.

In 1947, the British-ruled Indian subcontinent split into independent India and Pakistan. Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslim mobs killed each other, killing as many as 1 million people.

How is the research conducted?

The report on the number of deaths from the virus in India uses three calculation methods: data from the civil registration system that records the number of births and deaths in seven states, blood tests showing that the virus is prevalent in India, and global COVID-19 mortality rates, and treatment of nearly 900,000 people Peoples economic surveys are done three times a year.

In this photo from April 25, 2021, a relative of a person who died of COVID-19 collapsed during the cremation of Jammu in Indian-controlled Kashmir [File: Channi Anand/AP]

The researchers cautioned that each method has weaknesses, such as economic surveys ignoring the cause of death.

Instead, the researchers studied deaths from various causes and compared the data with mortality rates in previous yearsa method that is widely regarded as an accurate measure.

The researchers also warned that the virus epidemics and COVID-19 deaths in the seven states they studied may not translate to India as a whole, because the virus may spread more in urban and rural areas, and the quality of healthcare across India big difference.

Although other countries are also considered to have underestimated the number of deaths in the pandemic, India is considered to have a bigger gap because it has the worlds second-highest population of 1.4 billion and the situation is complicated because not all deaths were recorded even before the pandemic Number of people.

Substantial underestimation of the death toll

Dr. Jacob John, who studies the virus at the Vellore Christian Medical College in southern India, reviewed the Associated Press report and said it highlighted the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the countrys underprepared health system.

Jacob said: This analysis reiterates the observations of other fearless investigative reporters that underscore the massive underestimation of the death toll.

In this photo from May 11, 2021, family members and volunteers carry the body of a COVID-19 victim for cremation in New Delhi [File: Amit Sharma/AP]

The report also estimated that nearly 2 million Indians died during the first surge in infections last year, and stated that the lack of real-time grasp of the scale of the tragedy may bred up the collective complacency that led to the horror of the surge earlier this year. .

In the past few months, some states in India have increased the number of deaths from COVID-19 after finding thousands of previously unreported cases, which has raised concerns about more deaths that are not officially recorded.

Several Indian journalists also used government data to release higher numbers for some states. Scientists say this new information is helping them better understand how COVID-19 is spreading in India.

Murad Banaji, who studies mathematics at Middlesex University and has been studying COVID-19 mortality data in India, said recent data confirms some suspicions of underestimation.

Banagher said the new data also showed that the virus is not limited to urban centers. As contemporary reports have shown, Indian villages have also been hit hard.

One question we should ask is whether some of these deaths can be avoided, he said.
French newspaper Le Monde reported on Tuesday that in the Pegasus spyware case, the phone call of French President Emmanuel Macron was the target of potential surveillance on behalf of Morocco.

The French president said that if the news about Macrons phone call is true, it will be very serious.

Le Monde said that according to sources, one of Macrons frequently used phone numbers since 2017 is on the list of numbers selected by Moroccan intelligence services for potential cyber spies.

Morocco issued a statement on Monday denying involvement in the use of Pegasus and rejecting the so-called baseless and false accusations.

An investigation published on Sunday by 17 media organizations led by the Paris-based non-profit news organization Forbidden Stories stated that spyware manufactured and licensed by the Israeli company NSO has been used to try and successfully hack smartphones belonging to journalists , Government officials and human rights activists.

The statement is based on a leaked document containing 50,000 people identified as potential targets for Pegasus between 2016 and June 2021.

This list mainly comes from 10 countries-Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The Guardian reported on Tuesday that the list includes the phone numbers of Macron and 13 other world leaders, including South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The Washington Post reported that the phone number of Iraqi President Barham Saleh was also on the list.

The Post stated that it was unable to determine whether the Pegasus spyware infected Salihs phone or whether anyone tried to do so.

Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnes Karamad said in a statement: The unprecedented revelation that at least 14 heads of state may be invaded by the NSO Groups Pegasus spyware should chill the worlds leaders.

NSO Group can no longer conceal that its spyware is only used to fight crime-it seems that Pegasus is also the spyware of choice for those who want to spy on foreign governments.

Unproven theory

The National Bureau of Statistics issued a statement on Sunday to dismiss reports from media partners, saying it was full of false assumptions and unproven theories.

It said its products are only used by government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to combat terrorism and crime.

In addition, Radio France reported on Tuesday that the phone call of King Mohammed VI of Morocco and a large number of members of the Moroccan royal family were also included in the list of the number of people identified by Moroccan intelligence as potential targets of Pegasus spyware.

It said they included the kings wife Lara Salma Bennani, and his cousin Prince Murray Hicham Allawi, who was nicknamed the Red Prince because of his progressive views, and the late King Hassan IIs former son-in-law and entrepreneur Fuad Ferrari, and Hassan IIs former bodyguard Muhammad Meduri, the current kings stepfather.

Indian parliament disrupted

In India, the countrys opposition party disrupted the parliament on Tuesday, demanding investigations into reports of the governments use of Pegasus spyware to snoop on many journalists, activists and politicians including the main opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

Opposition members chanted slogans against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, expressing their desire to conduct independent investigations into complaints of spies and the resignation of Interior Minister Amit Shah.

The Indian news portal The Wire reported that before the 2017-19 national election, 300 verified Indian figures were listed as potential surveillance targets, including the opposition Congress Party senior leader Gandhi and two other legislators. Of politicians with smartphones.
Muslims around the world celebrate another important Islamic holiday in the shadow of the pandemic, and there is growing concern about the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Eid al-Adha or sacrificial feast is usually marked by group prayers, large social gatherings, and for many people the slaughter of livestock and the provision of meat to those in need.

This year, when the holiday starts on Tuesday, many countries are fighting the delta variant first discovered in India, prompting some countries to impose new restrictions or call on people to avoid gatherings and follow safety regulations.

The pandemic has caused damage to the sacred pillar of Islam, the pilgrimage, for the second year in a row. Its final days coincide with Eid al-Fitr. It once attracted about 2.5 million Muslims from all over the world to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, but due to the virus, Islamic pilgrimage activities have been greatly reduced.

This year, 60,000 Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia who have been vaccinated have been granted the Hajj, preventing Muslims from other countries from fulfilling their Islamic obligations.

Dont be a crowd

When a new wave of coronavirus cases broke out in the worlds most populous Muslim-majority country, Indonesia marked a severe Eid al-Fitr. Ban large gatherings and implement stricter travel restrictions. Vice President Malouf Amin is also an influential Islamic scholar, who called on people and their families to pray for festivals at home.

Dont be crowded, Amin said in a televised speech before the holiday. It is necessary to protect yourself from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is believed that this surge was driven by travel during another holiday (Eid al-Fitr in May) and the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

In Malaysia, despite the nationwide lockdown since June 1, measures have been tightened after the infection rate has risen sharply-people are forbidden to return to their hometowns or travel across regions to celebrate. Home visits and traditional cemetery trips are also prohibited.

Healthy worshipers are allowed to gather in the mosque to pray, strictly maintain social distancing, and prohibit physical contact. Animal sacrifices are limited to mosques and other approved areas.

Health Director-General Nur Hisham Abdullah urged Malaysians not to repeated irresponsible behavior, adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another holiday on the island of Borneo led to new Case cluster.

He said in a statement: Let us not cause all of us to perish due to COVID-19 in the excitement of celebrating the feast of sacrifice.

Blockade of Australia and Iran

The World Health Organization reports that the death toll from COVID-19 has risen after a period of decline. This reversal is attributed to low vaccination rates, loose mask regulations and other preventive measures, as well as Delta variants.

The blockade will severely reduce the Eid al Adha celebrations in Australias two largest cities, Sydney and Melbourne.

Sydney resident and New South Wales government politician Jihad Dib (Jihad Dib) said that Muslims in the city are very sad, but understand why they are restricted to their homes and not allowed to enter.

This will be the first Eid Mubarak in my life without hugging and kissing my parents, Dib told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Melbourne Muslims are facing Eid al-Adha, which is blocked for the second time in years. The sudden announcement of the Melbourne blockade last week will also cause a huge financial blow to retailers who stock up on food before what they consider to be the usual Eid celebrations.

According to official media reports, Iran imposed a week-long blockade on the capital Tehran and surrounding areas on Monday as the country is struggling to cope with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic. The blockade began on Tuesday.

Not everyone is imposing new restrictions. In Bangladesh, the authorities allowed the countrys strict lockdown during the holidays to be suspended for eight days, which health experts say could be dangerous.

In occupied East Jerusalem, the Islamic religious organization estimates that 100,000 believers pray in the Al-Aqsa Mosque to commemorate the first day of the festival.

Palestinians celebrate the first day of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha in the compound called the Temple of the Nobles by Muslims in the Old City of Occupied East Jerusalem [Ammar Awad/Reuters]

Restricted parties

In Egypt, Essam Shaban went to his southern hometown of Sohag to celebrate the Eid al-Adha with his family. He said before the start of the holiday that he planned to pray at a mosque there on Tuesday while taking precautions such as bringing his own prayer blanket and wearing a mask.

We hope this Eid al-Fitr can be spent peacefully without any infections, he told the Associated Press. We must follow the instructions.

Shaban has been looking forward to buying a buffalo with his brothers for slaughter, giving some meat to the poor from house to house, and enjoying a traditional festive meal with his extended family later in the day.

Usually it is noisy with laughter and quarrels with children, he said. its great.

Muslims perform Eid al-Adha prayers at the Grand Kamlica Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey [Serhat Cagdas/Anadolu Agency]

But the others will have no relatives.

In India, Eid al-Adha starts on Wednesday, and Tahir Qureshi always prays with his father, and then visits family and friends. His father died in June after contracting the virus during the pandemic that swept the country, and the thought of having to spend his vacation without him is heartbreaking.

It would be difficult without him, he said.

Muslim scholars in India have been urging people to exercise restraint and abide by health regulations. Some states restrict large gatherings and require people to spend the holidays at home.

At the same time, the economic impact of the pandemic has thrown millions of Indians into financial trouble, many of whom say they cannot afford livestock.

In the controversial Muslim-majority Indian-controlled Kashmir region, businessman Ghulam Hassan Wani is one of those cuts.

I sacrificed three or four sheep before, but we can hardly afford one this year, Varney said.
Before Gromova went to Japan to teach English, the trip to Florida was supposed to be the last vacation between 23-year-old friend Michel Passos and 24-year-old Anastasia Gromova .

These young women met when they were studying in the third grade at McGill University in Montreal, where they were both studying for a business degree. They were living in Pazos fathers apartment in Surfside, Florida, and the apartment collapsed on June 24.

As an engineer, Elena Pazos said that from the moment she saw a picture of the wreckage of Champlain Towers South, she knew that her daughter might not have survived.

When I saw the pile of things left there, there was no structure I knew it was bad at the time, she said.

Thats why I dont want to watch it anymore.

A 12-story tower near Miami caused 97 deaths when it partially collapsed. Authorities stated that rescue and recovery efforts need to remove more than 12,000 tons of debris and concrete as search and rescue teams continue to search for the dead.

According to county officials, the Miami-Dade Police have identified 95 victims so far.

According to the Canadian Department of Global Affairs, Passos separated husband, 55-year-old Miguel Passos, and their daughter Michel Passos are the second and third Canadian victims identified in the collapse of the apartment. Three weeks later, their bodies were recovered.

Passos said she would remember her daughter as a happy person.

Michelle is the sunshine in my life, her mother said. She is everything to me.

23-year-old Michelle Anna Pazos was killed in the collapse of an apartment in Surfside, Florida. (Submitted by Elena Passos)

Passos said that although she was distraught at the sudden death of her daughter, her body was confirmed to be the only comfort.

Im very happy, Passos said. I know its scary [to say]  But when you go through this ordeal to find your loved ones, in the end, you want to hear the news that they have found them.

The most important thing is that you have lost the people you love and you will never see them again.

Looking for closure

On June 27th, Sergiy Gromov and Larysa Gromova heard about their daughter and her friend and flew from Toronto to Florida.

They spent a lot of time togetherthey have the same idea, Larysa Gromova said. They help each other to make the right decisions in life.

The couple said they had accepted the question of their daughters possible death, but needed to determine her body so they could find the end.

We hope they can at least restore something, Gromov said. Otherwise, you know, its unbearable.

The body of Anastasia Gromova has not been found. (Submitted by Larysa Gromova)

The last time Larysa Gromova received a message from her daughter was via text message, because she often sent the latest news about her travels.

When you check our WhatsApp messages, the last thing [Anastasia sent] It is I love you. Its too hard, she said.

Nearly a month has passed since the collapse, and Gromov said he knew that rescuers will not find Anastasia soon.

Given the humid climate in Florida, human remains will deteriorate rapidly, and he said that detectives told him that DNA testing would take time.

Gromov said his daughters life was full of vitality before being cut off.

She is very smart. She is the strongest in our family, I understand now, he said. Shes very smart. She didnt waste time. She used everything in her life to travel, learn some places, meet friends, and meet people.

A spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada said in a statement that Canada expresses its deepest condolences to the families of the deceased and provides direct support.
Due to the threat of strike action, the federal governments plan to reopen the border to vaccinated American citizens next month may become complicated.

This week, more than 8,500 Canadian Border Services Agency officials (who have not had a contract since June 2018) are voting to decide whether they are willing to withdraw.

If more than half of the people vote yes, they may go on strike in early Augustjust as the country is ready to once again welcome fully vaccinated American citizens and permanent residents.

Although some CBSA officials will be considered essential staff, the strike may cause substantial delays for those travelling by air and land.

This may slow things down, said Mark Weber, national chairman of the Customs and Immigration Union.

We did not have any joy in doing this, because we really want the border to run smoothly. For a year and a half, we have been working hard to ensure that we can run smoothly under the most difficult conditions that any of us encounters. Encountered.

Weber said the union is fighting for three things: wage equality with other law enforcement officers in Canada, better prevention of harassment and discrimination, and a remote work policy for non-uniformed members.

He said that harassment at work has made CBSA a very cold and dark place to work.

As the federal government takes steps to allow fully vaccinated tourists to visit Canada again, it is expected that there will be a large influx of tourists in the coming weeks. (David Kawai/Canada Press)

Weber said that although the union does not want to cause difficulties for Canadians and tourists at the border, it feels it has encountered obstacles in the negotiation.

Weber said: Seeing it reach this point is not a moment we like, but the other party who refuses to really bargain after three years. We really have no choice.

We have been working hard to keep the border running smoothly and we are doing this work every day. No one wants to see it blown up.

Expected influx at ports of entry

A CBSA spokesperson said the agency is preparing for possible work interruptions.

The Canadian Border Services Agency will respond quickly to any work action/work interruption to maintain the security of our borders, ensure compliance with our laws, and facilitate the flow of legal goods and travel, Luis-Carl Brissett Lesage (Louis-Carl Brissette Lesage) said in a statement. Send an email to CBC News.

We hope that our officials will continue to perform their duties with the highest level of integrity and professionalism.

The vote for union members will end on Thursday, and results are expected early next week.

If most union members vote yes, the strike will not be triggered automatically. It will give the union the task of strike and provide a range of options for the negotiating team to put pressure on the CBSA-such as working according to the rules or rotating, comprehensive or strategic strikes.

On Monday, the federal government announced plans to allow vaccinated tourists to visit Canada again soon.

Starting at 12:01 AM Eastern Time on August 9, fully vaccinated US citizens and permanent residents living in the country will be able to visit Canada.

The government said it plans to open the Canadian border to vaccinated travelers from all other countries on September 7.
Good morning, UTD fans

Wayne Rooney thinks Jesse Lingard can enter Manchester Uniteds starting lineup after his striking West Ham loan spell.

Rooney, 35, told Sky Sports: Jesse is a great player. He did a great job on loan to West Ham United, and sometimes thats the motivation for you to restart your career.

He went through a difficult period and he survived.

The way he survived the difficult situation is to rent and return to playing. He gave himself a good opportunity to return to the Manchester United squad.

At the same time, Atletico Madrid and Manchester United are taking a hard line against England defender Kieran Trippier.

Solskjaer hopes the former Tottenham Hotspur right-back will provide defensive screens at Old Trafford next season.

Manchester United is ready to pay about 18 million pounds for the 30-year-old former Burnley, but Atletico owner Diego Simeone is not in a hurry to sell.

Therefore, if Old Trafford wants to sign the Bury-born player, they seem to have to raise their offer.

The Spanish champions are still waiting to hear what Trippier wants to do.

If he wants to return to the Premier League after two years in La Liga, he may need to force this problem to be solved.

Finally, Manchester United is getting closer and closer to signing Real Madrid ace Rafael Varane.

According to the Manchester Evening News, Manchester United is close every day to finalize Varanes deal.

Negotiations have been very fruitful, and the central defender hopes to join the Red Devils this summer.

Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer is looking for a top defender to contact Harry Maguire behind.
Clase Azul

The root has always been, through symbolism and practicality, through native cultures agriculture handbooks, the beginning of everything. If the roots are good, the tree, the bush, the flower will grow. If not, then not. The roots begin life, and are almost always, in native cultures, the symbols of stability and heritage. Having roots in a community means the person is firmly established. Having roots in a place usually implies there are blood relatives living in that area. In religious and cultural symbolism, roots communicate a sense of stability and legacy.

Roots absorb water and minerals, anchor plants to the ground, and store food. But in Mexico, the root of two cousin plants the maguey and the agave, have allowed both a new luxury and legacy dimension of Mexican culture to thrive. The maguey is actually a member of the agave family  a cousin to the Tequila blue agave.

Clase Azul is the first high-end Mexican brand to bring this spirit, born of deep Mexican root systems, to the many who may have experienced Tequila and Mezcal in somewhat un-memorable circumstances. There are many who drank Tequila in high school to the 1958 tune Tequila by The Champs, or Tequila Sunrise by the Eagles.

But now, the mission of Clase Azul is to change the stereotype, by creating a greater luster to this rooted spirit, through a better, organic, slow processing dimension that has not only a purified taste, but created a deeper taste spirit of culture and tradition to the spirits of agave.

Susan Kime - Artisanal Decanter of Clase Azul Anejo Tequila

Clase Azul was founded by CEO Arturo Lomeli, who was later joined by childhood friend, President Juan Sanchez to build the brand, whose mission and vision were and are to share the historic, cultured, and luxury aspects of Mexico with the world.

Clase Azul Mezcanl Guerrero Hand Painted Bottle Top

To those ends, Clase Azul uses the purest ingredients and is now recognized for its slow process, producing flavor profiles of each Tequila and Mezcal. In addition, are the memorable hand-crafted decanters made by Mexican artisans. The Clase Azul Spirits are Clase Azul Plata, Clase Azul Reposado, Clase Azul Anejo, Clase Azul Ultra Anejo, and two Mezcals: Clase Azul Mezcal Durango and Clase Azul Mezcal Guerrero, each with a specific flavor profile and identity, just launched on April 1, 2021 in the U.S. and Mexico.

In addition, Clase Azul now provides a new culinary experience called A Taste Of Culture at the Shoppes at Palmilla in Cabo San Lucas. Each participant experiences the history and mystery of Tequilas and Mezcals with a three-course exceptional, native cuisine created by master Chef Gilberto Covarrubios. The inspiration of this experience is in learning more about the roots of the iconic Mexican plant, the agave and all the Tequilas and Mezcals it produces.

Chaquira- Huichol Natve American beading the bottle top for the Clase Azul Mezcal bottle

The Clase Azul Tequilas originated in the small Mexican town of Santa Maria Canchesda. The native artisans who handcraft each decanter dedicate their time and heart in the sculpting, and hand-painting of each piece. Clase Azul Tequila is created using 100% organic Tequilana Weber Blue Agaves  the only agave of over 200 varieties--- that produces Tequila.

Once harvested, the Agaves are cooked in old brick ovens for 72 hours. Once cooked, the pinas or, roots, are crushed to extract the juices, which are then mixed with a special proprietary yeast. The fermentation process takes place, and finally, the alcohol is distilled twice to ensure the highest quality spirit. The ultra-premium line of Tequila is produced in one of the highest points in Los Altos, or the highlands  in the town of Jesus Maria, in the region of Jalisco  that results in a very unique flavor profile.

With Clase Azul Mezcal Durango, the process involves the traditional Palenque production process.

This video honors the 15th anniversary, Clase Azul Spirits tells a story that involves four unique products of the world, all with Mexican designation: Amber, Olinala, Talavera and Tequila.

Clase Azul

For this type of Mezcal, the Cenizo Agave is used. It is from Durango that takes between 12 and 15 years to mature before it blooms, and the roots can be harvested to produce the Mezcal spirit. Slow underground roasting of the agave root hearts using firewood and volcanic rock cook the and generate enough heat to give the Mezcal a smoky quality. It produces notes of peanut, brown sugar, honey, ash, wood, and chocolate. Next comes artisanal milling made by hand using only an axe. Then, the fermentation is created using stone piles covered with red oak adding ripened fruit notes. Finally, there is a double distillation process, using an alembic copper still, also known as El Viejo (the old man). To many, the result is called, El elixir de los dioses --the elixir of the gods.

Clase Azul

The other Clase Azul Mezcal is Mezcal Guerrero. This is made from 100 percent Agave Papalote, also known as Agave cupreata, specific to the Guerrero region of Mexico. In the mountainous region of Guerrero, this agave plant grows wild and completely natural by seed propagation. Papalote Agave can take up to 15 years to fully mature and only the best agaves are cooked over the course of several days in a pit oven using volcanic rock and firewood from the Guamuchil tree, according to a statement from Clase Azul Spirits.

Yet, no matter how exceptional the Clase Azul spirit identities are, the designs on the decanters are equally as memorable. Decanters that hold this elixir are handcrafted, with no two alike.

Mexican artisans and their artistic movement are at the forefront of the Clase Azul culture, and through their charitable arm  Fundacion Con Causa Azul they support artisanal communities also. Benefits include equipment for their studios, raw materials needed to produce their art, the necessary planning needed to exhibit their art, and training in the marketing of their creations.

Clase Azul is certain that by supporting these artisans, and creating A Taste Of Culture Experiences, they aid in enlivening the artisanal, colorful true Mexican culture, and with that, the deeper Agave and Maguay root systems have the chance to flourish as well.

#ATasteOfCulture

www.claseazul.com

Susan Kime - Clase Azul Mezcal Durango. Hand beaded top.

Susan Kime

Clase Azul Mezcal, Guerrero
BATON ROUGE, LA  Since the public health emergency was declared, Louisiana has experienced massive unemployment with hundreds of businesses forced into closure and their employees out of work. Unfortunately, fraudsters seized upon the situation; and the Unemployment Trust Fund was an easy target.

Many press reports have highlighted the more than $400 million in Louisiana unemployment benefits being dispersed to individuals who did not qualify to receive them, the $6.2 million in benefits that went to prisoners in our State, and the $1.08 million in benefits paid to dead people.

In October, Attorney General Jeff Landry announced arrests his office made related to COVID-10 unemployment fraud. Today, he is announcing several more arrests of people accused of stealing over $1 million of government benefits.

With the unemployment system being as overwhelmed and insecure as it has been, it is no surprise that bad actors are coming out of the woodworks to take advantage of it, said Attorney General Landry. So my office will continue investigating false claims and doing what we legally can to bring criminals to justice.

Louisiana Bureau of Investigation (LBI) agents learned multiple groups of individuals operating across several parishes in Louisiana had conspired to defraud both the Louisiana and California COVID-19 unemployment insurance programs. It is alleged that members of these groups filed multiple fraudulent online claims with the California Employment Development Department (EDD) and the Louisiana Workforce Commission (LWC). In total: LBI asserts that over 100 false claims were filed with California EDD, resulting in over $1 million in stolen unemployment funds; and that several of the accused simultaneously submitted fraudulent claims to the LWC, resulting in more than $60,000 being stolen.

Dynasty Rowe (26 of Maringouin) has been charged with Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds, Criminal Conspiracy, and Government Benefits Fraud.

Kendell Fowler (42 of Baton Rouge) has been charged with Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds and Criminal Conspiracy.

Miquel Banks (28 of Plaquemine) has been charged with Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds, Criminal Conspiracy, and Money Laundering.

Lasia Brock (20 of Thibodaux) has been charged with Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds and Government Benefits Fraud.

Ashley Johnson (32 of Prairieville) has been charged with Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds, Criminal Conspiracy, Money Laundering, and Government Benefits Fraud.

Darrolyn Bell (29 of Plaquemine) has been charged with Illegal Transmission of Monetary Funds, Criminal Conspiracy, and Government Benefits Fraud.

The arrests were made with assistance from the Ascension Parish Sheriffs Office, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriffs Office, Iberville Parish Sheriffs Office, West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriffs Office, Addis Police Department, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and LWC.

Crime has no geographical boundaries and because of our partnerships with other law enforcement agencies, neither do we, said Sheriff Brett Stassi. These partnerships are a crucial part in curbing crime and corruption in our communities.

There are currently two other outstanding warrants related to this matter for Adrienne Johnson (37 of Prairieville) and Joseph Mitchell (24 of Baton Rouge). Anyone with information on their whereabouts is encouraged to contact LBI at 800-256-4506 or the local law enforcement agency.

Additionally, LBI received requests for assistance regarding other allegations that eventually resulted in two more arrests.

Cole Morden (24 of Denham Springs) has been charged with Government Benefits Fraud. He is accused of knowingly causing the submittal of weekly certifications to the LWC and allegedly collecting over $800 in unemployment funds while incarcerated at the Livingston Parish Sherriff's Office Correctional Facility.

Dana Ganaway (51 of Morgan City) has been charged with Government Benefits Fraud. During an interview with LBI agents, she confessed to submitting false unemployment insurance claims and concealing her employment income for purposes to receive pandemic unemployment benefits. Ganaway allegedly received $8,000 in fraudulent unemployment benefits.

The arrests were made with assistance from the Livingston Parish Sheriffs Office, St. Mary Parish Sheriffs Office, DOL, and LWC.

I want to thank all of our law enforcement and agency partners who helped in our efforts, concluded Attorney General Landry. I encourage anyone who knows of fraudulent activity related to COVID-19 unemployment benefits to report it.

Please note the investigations are ongoing and all suspects are presumed innocent until proven guilty. Those who know someone fraudulently receiving funds from the Unemployment Trust Fund or who believe they have been victimized may report it to the National Center for Disaster Fraud at 866-720-5721 or the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation at www.agjefflandry.com/unemployment/fraud/complaint.
Port Sulphur  Troopers with Louisiana State Police Troop B responded to a two-vehicle crash on LA 23 near US 11 in Port Sulphur, LA on July 19, 2021 around 7:00 pm,. The crash ultimately claimed the life of 55-year-old Antoinio Aguilar of Buras, La.

The initial investigation revealed that Aguilar was driving west on US 11 in a 2009 Nissan Versa. At the same time, a 2019 Kenworth tow truck was traveling north on LA 23. As Aguilar approached the LA 23 intersection, he failed to yield at a stop sign. The Nissan entered the intersection and was struck by the Kenworth tow truck. After the collision, both vehicles traveled of the roadway and came to rest near a tree line.

Aguilar, who was unrestrained at the time of the crash, suffered fatal injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene. The driver of the tow truck suffered minor injuries as a result of the crash. Impairment on the part of Aguilar is a suspected factor in the crash, routine toxicology samples were taken and will be submitted for analysis as a part of the ongoing investigation.
The powerhouse cast of the highly anticipated spinoff "Kingdom: Ashin of the North" was spotted at the online press conference just days before the premiere.

Lead stars Jun Ji Hyun, Park Byung Eun, and more looked dazzling in elegant ensembles as they welcomed the viewers for the "Kingdom's" special episode.

"Kingdom: Ashin of the North" Online Press Conference

Over Netflix Korea's official Instagram, the cast members, including Kim Roe Ha, Koo Kyo Hwan, and child star Kim Shi Ah attended the online press conference alongside director Kim Sung Hoon and screenwriter Kim Eun Hee.

Interestingly, the group shines with their white and blue-themed outfit.

Meanwhile, fans definitely swooned over the Hallyu queen's stunning cut-out drawstring dress from Alexander McQueen, which reportedly retails for a whopping $ 4,790.

On the other hand, the "Oh My Baby" actor looked dapper in his off-white suit and matchy trousers.

READ MORE: 'Kingdom: Ashin of the North' Releases Character Posters Illustrating High Tension Between Jun Ji Hyun, Park Byung Eun, and More

Jun Ji Hyun and Park Byung Eun "Grateful" for their Role in "Kingdom: Ashin of the North"

At the online press conference, the cast members, director, and scriptwriter share their thoughts on the much-awaited special episode.

Park Byung Eun, who plays the head of the Royal Commandery Min Chi Rok, shared that he was thrilled and at the same time "very grateful" to appear as one of the main characters in "Kingdom: Ashin of the North."

In addition, he gets honest and revealed that he did not expect that he would reprise his role as the royal commandery in the spinoff.

"I was thinking that it would be season 3 if I met Min Chi Rok again, and I was surprised when I said that it would appear in the special episode," he explained.

Interestingly, the 44-year-old South Korean star gave hints for his Role, saying that he portrays a person "with high loyalty and loyalty to the country."

Moreover, he also described Min Chi Rok as a soldier "who can sacrifice himself" for a good cause.

As for the titular role of Ashin, played by Jun Ji Hyun, she recalled the time when she was offered to play the female warrior.

She confessed to being a fan of the veteran screenwriter Kim Eun Hee, who also penned the two previous seasons.

In addition, she also shared that she wanted to appear in a small role but was stunned and felt honored for playing the Role of Ashin.

Meanwhile, the renowned screenwriter mentioned the preparation she did for the "Kingdom" spinoff, adding, "I did a lot of thinking and researching about life and death. I thought it would be interesting."

"Kingdom: Ashin of the North" Release Date and What to Expect

Amid the stunning visuals through their captivating still cuts and trailers, "Kingdom: Ashin of the North" is set to debut on June 23, exclusively on Netflix.

Moreover, the 92-minute special episode will expose the origin of the purple flower known as the resurrection plant and uncover the mystery behind Ashin's character.

IN CASE YOU MISSED: Netflix Rumored to Create Another 'Kingdom' Spin-Off + To Focus on Crown Prince Lee Chang





KDramastars owns this article.

Written by Geca Wills
PORTLAND, Ore.  With new legislation in place, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission (OLCC) indicated on Monday that it would be putting more attention to the issue of illegal marijuana in southern Oregon as local agencies struggle to keep up with the sheer volume of grow operations.

Representative Lily Morgan championed House Bill 3000, which was drafted to bridge the enforcement gap. It directs the OLCC to work with the Oregon Department of Agriculture and other state and local agencies to crack down on illegal grows.

Whats going on in southern Oregon with the cartel takeover of cannabis growing through the guise of hemp and our role in being able to enforce that is all incredibly important, said OLCC Executive Director Steve Marks. We and our partners are poised to begin eradicating this illegal activity, to bring stability to disrupted communities starting in Jackson and Josephine counties, and to ensure that our legal, licensed, tax-paying cannabis licensees arent being undermined by illegal market activity.

According to the OLCC, HB 3000 also puts the chemicals extracted from marijuana and hemp under stricter control. The agency helped provide technical support to legislators on the issue.

"Currently Delta-8-THC, which is chemically extracted from hemp, can be sold to children at neighborhood convenience stores; House Bill 3000 requires the OLCC to keep THC products away from kids," the agency said in a statement.

Effective August 2, the OLCC's official name will change to the "Oregon Liquor & Cannabis Commission" (it will remain the OLCC).

In both Jackson and Josephine counties, a coalition of law enforcement and other agencies have stepped up raids on illegal marijuana grows since the beginning of the year. Investigators raided a small "compound" north of Eagle Point on July 15, preceded on July 13 by a series of raids in Josephine County.
PORTLAND, Ore.  State regulators will start inspecting registered hemp grow sites in southern Oregon to evaluate whether they contain plants with elevated levels of THC, the active chemical in cannabis products.

Oregon Liquor Control Commission executive director Steve Marks indicated on Monday that a number of producers have started cultivating marijuana plants under the guise of growing hemp, which he linked to a "cartel takeover" in the industry.

With local law enforcement struggling to enforce state law in this environment of ambiguity, House Bill 3000 was signed into law this week in an effort to crack down on these issues. The OLCC passed temporary rules to accompany the legislation that establishes a limit on the level of THC that can be contained in a hemp-derived product, in addition to creating methods for testing hemp in the field.

According to the OLCC, state regulators will begin inspecting registered hemp grow sites in southern Oregon this week using THC field-testing units. State staff plan to brief local elected officials on those inspection plans later this week, as the inspectors start spreading out across Jackson and Josephine counties.

Our objective through the remainder of the summer and into the fall is to make sure that every field gets these tests done, said Marks.

Marks said that legitimate hemp farmers should not have anything to worry about.

Were really not trying to define what hemp is here: were really trying to spot check and take a minimum amount of samples to figure out what is commercial marijuana, said Marks. This will enable [the Department of Agriculture] or law enforcement to stop the illegal production of marijuana disguised as hemp production.

Part of HB 3000 was a prohibition on the sales of "adult-use cannabis items" to minors, targeting a form of THC called Delta-8-THC. The OLCC said that this chemical can be produced from hemp and used to make products with higher potency levels than cannabis.

"However, Delta-8-THC was being sold outside Oregons regulated market and could be found at neighborhood convenience stores, where children could buy it," the agency said in a statement.

State agencies plan to set new potency and concentration limits for chemicals found in hemp products by January of 2022. The new legislation requires the establishment of tracking requirements for cannabinoid hemp products intended for human consumption, similar to those used in the recreational cannabis market.

"HB 3000 gives OLCC and ODA tools to target illicit production of hemp," the OLCC said. "Specifically around cannabis being illegally produced because it is unregistered or under the guise that its hemp. OLCC inspectors will support ODAs staff, with law enforcement providing necessary protection and safety assessments to the joint inspection teams. Together the agencies will inspect hemp grow sites to test the crops THC levels to determine compliance with Oregons Hemp Program and, if necessary, take enforcement action, which could include crop destruction."
YES: The competition is the same.

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NO: It was silly to stage them.

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The Country Thunder music festival, which was cancelled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, wrapped up Sunday, with festival officials estimating that the event drew more than 30,000 people on each of its four days.

Bob Stoll, Randall town chairman and a fire officer with the Randall Volunteer Fire Department, said the festival went very well.

There were far fewer incidents and calls than in the past, Stoll said. When you get a lot of people together like this, theres always the potential.

According to Sgt. Christopher Hannah of the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department, there were 104 county ordinance citations handed out, 79 of which were for underage drinking. That was a drop from the 173 citations issued in 2019, 155 of which had been for underage drinking.

Hannah also said there were seven misdemeanor criminal arrests this year, one for OWI, three for disorderly conduct and two for obstructing. There were no felony arrests, and Hannah said the crowd was cooperative with deputies.

This is a success this year, Hannah said.

Although Stoll didnt have exact numbers, he said there seemed to be less people than in past events.
The total number of law enforcement officers and the total number of police academy graduates in Wisconsin are both at  at least  a 10-year low. Recruiting and retaining officers has become more difficult, making it an employees market.

The number of law enforcement officers in the state and the number of law enforcement academy graduates here have fallen to their lowest points in at least a decade, according to data from the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

Wisconsin has about 13,600 law enforcement officers at the moment. Thats down from a decade high of nearly 16,000 in 2012. And the state graduated only 766 people from law enforcement academies in fiscal year 2020, according to the most recent data from the states DOJ. That number has been dropping gradually since a decade-high 954 people graduated from academies in fiscal year 2012.

Across Wisconsin, law enforcement agencies offer varying starting salaries and benefits for those interested in attending police academy and becoming a law enforcement officer. Here is a sample of what law enforcement agencies in Wisconsin are paying new recruits:
News

Lot Next Door on the way to become established program

Courtesy of Troy Body An infographic depicts Hopkinsville Lot Next Door process from lot identification to new lot deeding.

The start of the new fiscal year for the city of Hopkinsville has given the Lot Next Door program more funding to get the initiative established.

Hopkinsville City Council approved the program to be an official committee during a city council meeting in May.

The approval authorized the mayor and Chief Administrative Officer, Troy Body, to initiate legal action and release liens as needed for the facilitation of the program.

The Lot Next Door program was awarded upwards of $250,000 in the new budget, for new software that will connect code enforcement and other departments to streamline the process, Body said.

Thats going to help us synchronize, modernize and help everyone be on the same page. By everyone, youve got the code enforcement division, the mayors office, the new revenue enhancement office and the city attorney, plus Mike Perry the Director of Public Works, Body said.

New software will make the program and discussion between offices more efficient as well as allow code enforcement officers to work while in the field, Body added.

Body said there additional money was allocated to hire someone to manage the Lot Next Door program.

When citizens call or come in, she (the new hire) will be able to walk you through it because its very legal. You got to get it right because youre dealing with property.

The new staffer, Body explained, will also staff the Land Bank Authority which he says is important to help move the properties.

It brings a lot of vigor and light to both of these programs and were getting it off of the ground, Body said.

He said that in five years time, the program will look drastically different but for now their priority is getting the program off the ground.

We were delayed a year because of the pandemic. The courts were basically shut down.

As the courts reopened, Body said, he was told that there were more important cases such as delayed murder cases that cause the legal action required to move the properties off the citys register to be more delayed.

Were ramping back up, we had a detour but again, the council and the mayor have been extremely supportive, Body said.

He added that many community members are already interested in the program. He said many city offices have been receiving numerous phone calls.

While the numerous interested citizens has been a great start, Body explained that the Lot Next Door program is a process.

Body said that this program will not transform the city of Hopkinsville in six months to a year.

This is something that we are going to have to work on in the course of several years.

The Lot Next Door program is looking to have five to 10% (out of 950) lots be bought by the end of the fiscal year, Body said.

Done right, (The Lot Next Door program) it should pay for itself.

Abandoned lots throughout the community have fallen to the Public Works Department for maintenance and appearance.

Body explained that the city does not get any taxes off of managing the lots but they do spend their budget on upkeep.

Body added that once the lots can be added to the tax roll, the city will be receiving taxes off of the property, even if we get a small amount of tax revenue.

The LND program has several steps, which Body says will take time to complete.

Once identified, the property owners adjacent to the vacant lots will be given a notice asking if they are interested in purchasing the property.

Interested LND applicants must own the adjacent property to have priority.

Eligible LND applicants can submit their interest letter and a $25 non-refundable fee, then a Landbank donation letter will be sent to the owner of the identified lot.

If a lot owner does not respond or donate property, the city may file foreclosure on the lot. From that step, if a sale is ordered, Lankbank bids at public sale of property.

During that process, city taxes and liens are forgiven and a clear title is established.

Once the property is acquired by the Lankbank, they will contract LND applicants for cash or sweat equity.

A 12-month maintenance period is required. If successful property is deeded to the LND applicant.
I had just finished a grueling orthopedic residency. Yet once again, I was on the run and bearing bad news. I was sprinting from a well-known Mumbai hospital to a nearby hotel room. But this time, the bad news wasnt for the family of one of my patients. It was for my mother.

As I waded through the crowd whose constant overflow from the sidewalk onto the road left a shifting tidemark, my senses stayed dead to the incessant cacophony of the traffic and its limitless supply of inescapable exhaust fumes. Mumbai, a bedazzling beehive of unabating human activity, suddenly seemed to have gone dark and come to a standstill.

But just for me.

Mom looked up as I entered the room. She appeared to be praying silently with the beads of the holy rosary trembling in her otherwise rock-steady hands. Does the hospital need more cash? she asked, nodding towards an open briefcase on the bed stacked with high denomination rupee notes. Like most Indians in the 1990s, we had to pay an advance in cash for treatment in big-city private hospitals and replenish the account when the deposit ran out.

She thought I had come to collect more money. I came to give her the bad news.

The news that I carried with me followed my sudden exit from my sixty-year-old dads intensive care unit bedside. He had undergone a cardiac bypass the previous day in the Mumbai hospital and was feeling uneasy. Uneasy enough that the Catholic in him asked for a priest to administer the last rites. I reassured him that he would be fine, but nevertheless, I found a church nearby and a priest who was kind enough to drop everything and walk back to the hospital with me. I laughed through my nervousness as I said to the priest, My dad is a very anxious man  so much for the steely confidence of a surgeon undergoing surgery! Father Barbosa nodded understanding. He will feel better after I pray with him. We all prayed together by his bedside, and at the end, the priest anointed my dads forehead with holy oil.

Dad and I were big fans of famous last words quotes trivia, and our final exchange would have been more poignant had we known what was to follow. Dad, I am going to walk Father Barbosa to the hospital entrance and will be back soon. He nodded. I will be waiting, he said.

All I know is that when I returned to my dads hospital room, I walked into the all too familiar hell that breaks loose when a soul in hospital threatens to leave this world. Where a beep storm of monitors triggers circumferential waves of quick thinking human activity around a patients bed. One of the humans by my dads bedside was a young ICU resident who, two hours prior, had taken me aside and said, We have run all the tests. Everything seems fine. I think your dad is a little anxious. Now it was she who looked more than a little anxious.

The surgeon in me wanted to stay, but the son in me took over, and I began my lonely run back to the hotel.

I burst into the hotel room to break the news to Mom. Deep down inside, I knew that Dad had passed away, but my words came out clothed in a white coat, Mom, Dads condition suddenly got critical. Her eyes widened in shock. Oh my God, she gasped. I pushed on, I hope to God he makes it. My stricken face gave my words away.

As a physician herself, she did not need a bad news translator. Whats the use of all this? she choked as she despairingly shoved the open briefcase filled with money from the bed onto the ground, where the notes ended up forming a bizarre-looking rug. Her hands continued to clutch the holy rosary. I didnt say anything more and just held her close.

Surgeons dont cry, they say. We both did  not just because another surgeon died but because a husband and father did.

We were both oblivious to the rupee notes scattered all over the ground. My Mom did not let go of the rosary beads. And we did not let go of each other. That moment drove home for me that when matters of sickness and health reach a point of reckoning, science and wealth may not necessarily be the highest power that the afflicted turn to. Including people of science who also possess wealth. Maybe it is because science does not always get it right, and money cannot cure every wrong.

As we stood desperately holding each other, I knew what was going on in my mind was possibly going on in hers, and we will never stop playing it on a loop, forever. The events, the decisions that led to us being here.

It all began with my otherwise asymptomatic dad consulting a doctor for throat burn from eating spicy food. This seemingly innocuous decision put him on a cascading investigative path where an EKG led to a stress test that led to an angiogram, a test that outlines the pipes that supply blood to the heart. This test demonstrated near blockage of the blood vessels that supplied his heart. Cardiac bypass surgery was recommended, but my dad wanted to have a balloon angioplasty, a procedure that can be performed by slipping a small tube through a poke hole in his thigh, as he did not want his chest split open by the surgery. The irony was not lost to me that surgeons are as afraid of surgery as everyone else. Perhaps even more so.

Given his angiography findings, our cardiologist did not recommend balloon angioplasty as it had the potential to precipitate a block in the blood supply to the heart, lead to a heart attack and necessitate an emergency bypass. But one of the countrys foremost angioplasty experts who prided himself on his ability to do cases that no one else has the ability to do decided to give my father what he wanted. And my father ended up getting that forewarned complication and needed an emergency bypass. The interventional cardiologist possessed a hammer, and my dad asked to be the nail. The hammer-nail cliche had dealt yet another blow, this time close to home. And in a crazy way, our family full of physicians unwittingly aided the system in carving out our very own swiss cheese model of accident causation, creating perfectly aligned craters of calamity through which, holding hands, we executed a free fall.

At every point, Mom and I went with the flow, blindly trusting what the system had to offer and the decisions being made and going along with what my dad wanted. Adding to the calculus, elementally, we were from a small town and had come to the big city for treatment. To frame our medical journey using American geography, we lived in idyllic Northern Maine and had traveled to a medical Mecca comparable to Boston or New York City for my dads treatment, where he ended up being treated by doctors of great renown who counted Heads of State and Bollywood stars among their patients. Perhaps the humanity of big-name hospitals and rock star physicians can be layered with an intimidating gloss that can make the awestruck patient reluctant to subject that gloss to the nicks of questioning. Even if the patient is a surgeon himself.

I have often wondered how the cardiac surgeon mentally processed my dads death. I can imagine the well-meaning, yet clumsy, attempts of his colleagues to console him, akin to what well-meaning friends do to console at times of personal grief. You did everything you could, If you operate enough, you are going to have complications. It could have happened to any of us.

All surgeons know the pain of having hurt someone we are trying to heal. We talk about our complications with our colleagues like we would talk with a close friend about a breakup or a death in the family. We are always deeply torn inside and wondering what we could have done differently and better! I think of that resident sometimesthe one who called him anxious two hours before he died. Just as I learned something, I hope she did too. Wisdom that she will pass on to her students and that her patients will benefit from.

There is a public perception that we surgeons think we are God, and we are ridiculed for it. But when faced with a complication, that is the one time we wish that we were a deity gifted with the power to change the course of events.

To our family of mortal surgeons, a well-intentioned system filled with kind and knowledgeable professionals delivered a death by a thousand cuts. We learned that when we are cut, we bleed just like everyone else.

And I learned that a knife that carves your or your kins body could also reshape your thinking and change your process of decision-making. It certainly did mine, and made me more thoughtful whenever the opportunity arose to use a knife. The timing of this tragedy could not have been worse for my family while in a perverse way beneficial for my future patients. Having recently completed my orthopedic residency, I now sat atop the decision-making tree that controlled life and limb, where a labor of planning, precision, and love could still yield the bitter fruit of failure.

Like every surgeon, my dad was no stranger to that experience in his professional life. For his surgeon son and spouse, this was further reinforced by his death.

Some of us surgeons believe in the afterlife. I do. And I hope my dad is listening in when I say, Dad, I learned a lot in medical school and residency. I learned even more about what it means to be a doctor when you were alive, but sadly I learned the most from your death. Wherever you are, I want you to know that by constantly endeavoring to do the right thing by the patient, I am doing the right thing by you.

I know I will not always get it right, but it will never stop me from trying.

Gleeson Rebello is a pediatric orthopedic surgeon.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
SALEM, Ore.  Gov. Kate Brown is holding a press conference Tuesday to discuss the ongoing response to wildfires burning in the state.

The event is set to start at 11:30 a.m.

Brown will be joined by the Oregon Department of Forestry, the office of the Oregon State Fire Marshal, the Oregon Military Department, Oregon Emergency Management and the Oregon Health Authority.

Watch the press conference here.
Tucker Carlson has called the idea of vaccine passports the medical equivalent of "Jim Crow" laws. And other Fox News personalities have spent months both trafficking in anti-vaccine rhetoric and assailing the concept of showing proof of vaccination status.

But Fox Corporation, the right-wing talk channel's parent company, has quietly implemented the concept of a vaccine passport as workers slowly return back to the company's offices.

Fox employees, including those who work at Fox News, received an email, obtained by CNN Business, from the company's Human Resources department in early June that said Fox had "developed a secure, voluntary way for employees to self-attest their vaccination status."

The system allows for employees to self-report to Fox the dates their shots were administered and which vaccines were used.

The company has encouraged employees to report their status, telling them that "providing this information to FOX will assist the company with space planning and contact tracing."

Employees who report their status are allowed to bypass the otherwise required daily health screening, according to a follow-up email those who reported their vaccination status received.

"Thank you for providing FOX with your vaccination information," the email said. "You no longer are required to complete your daily health screening through WorkCare/WorkMatters."

The concept, which was first reported Monday by Ryan Grim on The Hill's morning streaming show, is known internally as "FOX Clear Pass."

While the "Fox Clear Pass" is voluntary for employees, and other companies have similar tools, it is still remarkable, given how vocal Fox's top talent has been in criticizing the concept of vaccine passports.

Fox News has spent months portraying the notion that people might be asked to show vaccination status as dangerous to personal freedom and anti-American.

Fox has also hyped the rejection of vaccine passports by Republican elected officials like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Spokespeople for Fox Corporation and Fox News did not comment in response to questions Monday about why the right-wing talk channel has been so forcefully against vaccine passports while the company has itself implemented a version of one.

It's not the first time that Fox has been so brazenly hypocritical about coronavirus precautions.

While its television hosts railed against face masks, the company issued guidance recommending employees wear them. It also said it would require people attending tapings of host Greg Gutfeld's show to wear masks.

It's unclear whether Fox will require vaccinations when employees fully return to the office. Hundreds of Fox staffers are already back at work in some capacity. When CNN began to reopen its facilities in June, vaccinations were required in order to come in.

Fox has said that it hopes to fully reopen its offices after Labor Day.

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ALBANY, Ore. -- Charming, funny, and intelligent are all words used to describe Hector Cisneros, the 24-year-old victim in a Sunday shooting at a rodeo near Albany.

Cisneros was killed after a fight broke out in the parking lot after the event.

Amanda Filloy taught Cisneros at Linus Pauling Middle School and Corvallis High School. She said he was funny, nice, and always smiling.

MORE: CORVALLIS MAN MURDERED AT RODEO NEAR ALBANY

"It's hard for me to imagine him ending up in a fight that went horribly wrong," Filloy said.

Filloy said she remembers Cisneros getting along with everyone.

"I never thought of him as a fighter or an antagonist at all," Filloy said.

KEZI spoke with one of his high school friends, and she said it's not right that Hector is no longer with us.

Arturo Ramos, one of the event coordinators, said it was a shame because everything was going so well. Family and friends gathered together to celebrate the rodeo and their Mexican culture.

"It's unfortunate, but we feel like everything went well besides that," Ramos said. "We felt like we were safe and the event was great."

Ramos said they were in the back when the shots were fired. They ran to the parking lot and found Cisneros on the ground. He said they want to have a fundraiser to help support the Cisneros family.

The investigation is ongoing. Stay with KEZI 9 News for updates.
FLORENCE, Or. -- A long-term care facility in Florence that's experiencing a major COVID-19 outbreak has released its vaccination data for both residents and staff.

The parent company for Spruce Point Assisted Living and Memory Care, Nightingale Healthcare, claims 87% of the facility's residents and 36% of it's staff members are fully vaccinated. However, Lane County Public Health maintains the percentage of staff members vaccinated at the facility is 5%.

Our team is providing excellent care to all of our residents, said Billie Wingfield, Senior Executive Director at Spruce Point. We are working in close collaboration with Lane County Public Health and following all state and county guidelines for protocols, procedures, and counter-measures.

A total of 19 residents and six staff members have tested positive for the virus. Lane County Public Health said the spread is likely due to the low vaccination rate among the staff members.

RELATED: COVID-19 OUTBREAK AT FLORENCE MEMORY CARE FACILITY CAUSES CONCERN

The most recent reported statewide vaccination rate for long-term care facility staff is 62%. That number was released by the Oregon Health Authority on May 9.

According to a press release, the Florence facility is encouraging all of its staff members and residents to get vaccinated. However, under Oregon law, a mandate is not a possibility: ORS.413.416 states employers are not allowed to mandate immunizations for health care workers.

Family member Donna Wiser said she and her cousin Donnie are both fully vaccinated. She said they both attempted to visit her uncle who lived at the facility, but they were not allowed inside due to the active outbreak.

"We know my uncle was on end-of-life and so we knew he couldn't go out and sit down that long, and Donnie said the same thing. He sat out there with him, but you know, he got tired," Wiser said.

She said another relative has been allowed to move in and out of the facility as she pleases after presenting a negative COVID-19 test. Sadly, Wiser's uncle died Monday morning.

"End-of-life people that are on hospice, you're supposed to be able to go in and see them, no matter what," Wiser said.

The Oregon Department of Human Services released guidance during the pandemic excluding visitors to these facilities except for a small list of "essential individuals." That list includes "friends or family members visiting during end-of-life stages."

Lane County Public Health deployed a vaccination team to the facility Monday to offer shots to unvaccinated residents and staff members.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. -- A man accused of killing four people in North Bend will stay in Wisconsin until at least August.

Oen Nicholson appeared in front of a Milwaukee County judge Tuesday morning.

KEZI spoke to the judge after the hearing, who said "literally nothing happened."

Nicholson turned himself in to authorities on June 20 after allegedly kidnapping a woman in Springfield and driving thousands of miles to Wisconsin.

RELATED: NORTH BEND MURDER SUSPECT TURNS HIMSELF IN TO WISCONSIN AUTHORITIES

It all started the morning of June 18 when Nicholson allegedly killed his father, Charles Nicholson, 83, at the RV campground near the Mill Casino in North Bend, stole his father's pickup truck, hit and killed Anthony Oyster, 74, and hit wife Linda Oyster, 73, who later died of her injuries. Minutes later, police were called to a shooting at Herbal Choices Marijuana Dispensary, where they found Jennifer Davidson, 47, dead.

MORE: FOURTH VICTIM IN NORTH BEND KILLING SPREE DIES FROM INJURIES

Police say Nicholson then made his way to the Gateway Mall parking lot in Springfield, where he kidnapped Laura Johnson, 34, who was on her lunch break at Cabela's. She was recovered safely, and she returned home to her family.

The extradition hearing is set for 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 17.

Stay with KEZI for the latest.
EUGENE, Ore.  Forrest Gump is a friendly pit bull terrier mix who arrived at Greenhill Humane Society a month ago as a stray.

This 8-year-old dog is looking for a moderately active home where he will have daily walks and time to romp around in the yard or bask in the sun. He needs a family that will be gentle with him while he settles into his new home. His sweet, sensitive personality is sure to come through once he gets comfortable in his new surroundings.

Forrest Gump can probably live with another mellow dog, but would be too much for a cat. He can go to a family with older children.

Forrest Gump weighs about 75 pounds and his adoption fee is $100. This fee helps pay for shelter expenses such as vaccinations, microchip identification, spaying or neutering, a certificate for a free veterinary exam, post-adoption support and more.

Forrest Gump was Tuesdays Pet of the Week on KEZI 9 News. Every Tuesday, KEZI showcases a homeless pet on the Midday newscast at 11 a.m. and again at 4 p.m.

If you are interested in Forrest Gump or the other animals at Greenhill Humane Society, more information is available here. A video of Forrest Gump can be watched here.

Greenhill Humane Society is located at 88530 Green Hill Road and is open daily from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its phone number is 541-689-1503. Appointments are available.
By Ritah Kemigisa

President Museveni has asked Muslims around the world to celebrate Eid al-Adha scientifically by observing all standard operating procedures.

I encourage you to observe the Covid safety protocols. It is by strict observance of these protocols and the Standard Operating Procedures that we shall be able to defeat this monster, the covid-19, stay well stay safe, he said.

Today is Eid al-Adha, when Muslims sacrifice healthy animals, in remembrance of an act of faith and obedience by Ibrahim who honoured God and expressed willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmail.

The day falls on the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah on the Islamic calendar and celebrations last for four days.

In his message to Muslims, President Museveni also asks the Muslim community to emulate Ibrahims example of total devotion and submission to the will of Allah.

This is the day when our Muslim brothers and sisters commemorate Prophet Ibrahims portrayal of total faith and obedience to Allah when he accepted to sacrifice his only child Ismail. May your good deeds and sacrifices be accepted and blessed by Allah.
By Ritah Kemigisa

The Mufti of Uganda Sheikh Ramadhan Mubajje has asked the government to review the relief cash program for the vulnerable people affected by the ongoing lockdown.

Leading Eid al-Adha prayers at the Uganda National Mosque, Old Kampala, Sheikh Mubajje says the ongoing disbursement of shs 100,000 has not been impactful adding that very many people have been left out.

He has now asked the government to consider giving food rations using the door to door policy like it was the case during last years lockdown.

We thank the government for putting in place measures to assist the vulnerable by giving them cash this time, but it has not helped the needy people on the ground, our desire is that this is reversed. The food given out last year had an impact, nobody denied receiving assistance, but with cash, only a few have admitted receiving the money, said Sheikh Mubajje.

Sheikh Mubajje is meanwhile asking security authorities to allow people who can afford to directly distribute food to the people.

Guide them but do not discourage them, said Sheikh Mubajje.

Yesterday police banned the distribution of food to vulnerable people on grounds of contravening standard operating procedures (SoPs) and quality of handouts.
By Xinhua

Sudan on Monday reiterated its rejection of Ethiopias completion of the second filling of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD).

The Ministry of Irrigation and Water Resources renews Sudans firm position in rejecting neighbouring Ethiopias unilateral measures, its fait accompli policies and ignoring of the legitimate interests and serious concerns of its partners in the river, said the Sudanese ministry in a statement.

The best alternative to this Ethiopian approach, which will only lead to harming the distinguished and historical ties between the two brotherly countries and peoples, is to continue to negotiate in good faith to reach a binding and comprehensive legal agreement that preserves the interests of all parties and addresses their concerns, the statement noted.

The ministry further expressed the belief that reaching the desired agreement is very necessary and possible if there is political will.

Earlier, according to official Ethiopian media, the Ethiopian government announced that it has achieved its goal in the second filling of the GERD, saying it was planning to start electricity production from the dam within months. Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia have been in talks for years, under the African Union, over the technical and legal issues related to the filling and operation of the GERD.

Sudan proposed a mediation quartet of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the African Union regarding the GERD issue. Ethiopia, however, has rejected this proposal. Ethiopia, which started building the GERD in 2011, expects to produce more than 6,000 megawatts of electricity from the dam project, while Egypt and Sudan, downstream Nile Basin countries that rely on the river for its freshwater, are concerned that the dam might affect their share of the water resources.
The Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission (IHREC) have put a review by Kilkenny County Council in relation to Traveller-specific accommodation under the microscope.

In response to the review, requested by the IHREC, the Commission have made recommendations to the local authority on the matter.

Kilkenny County Council states in their Equality Review that its assessment of housing need is specifically tailored to meet the needs of Traveller family applicants, taking cognisance of possible comprehension and literacy difficulties.

The Council identifies an apparent ongoing challenge to balance the national objectives and meeting the identified accommodation needs of members of the Traveller community who are approved housing applicants in their account.

It is the contention of the IHREC that this challenge would be obviated if transparent methods for the collection and recording of Traveller accommodation preferences were adopted.

Accurate collecting and recording of multiple preferences could rule out these potential underlying reasons and give the Council a more robust basis for its record of accommodation preferences, the report states.

This in turn would create a more solid foundation for future Traveller-specific accommodation policies.

Kilkenny County Council notes in their report that where Traveller-specific accommodation is provided, there are high maintenance costs thereafter.

Funding and staff support services are expended in areas such as waste management, fire services, control of dogs and horses and estate management, the Council notes.

It is referenced by the IHREC that the Council does seem to have a close working relationship with several Traveller representative bodies and commended the Council for actively engaging in supporting the Traveller community in respect of care for horses.

The IHREC recommends that the Council explore the idea of establishing a forum between the local authority and local Travellers and Traveller organisations and track the experiences of the Traveller community in seeking to secure accommodation in the private rented sector.

It also recommends the development of a more transparent recording of the methodology of collection and data obtained in the annual count of members of the Traveller community and advises that the Traveller-specific Tenant Liaison Officer has a drop-in or phone clinic available.

Several more recommendations for improving local authority outcomes were made in the report, available here.
One of President Joe Biden's priorities is a historic overhaul of global tax rules. The world's most powerful 20 economies are on board. But an island nation of 5 million people is standing in the way.

Biden still needs Ireland.

For years, the country has successfully attracted hordes of global businesses with a corporate tax rate of just 12.5%, compared to 21% in the United States and 19% in the United Kingdom. Facebook, Google and Apple have set up regional headquarters in the country, while pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer have built manufacturing hubs.

Now, with 132 governments around the world in agreement on a minimum corporate tax of at least 15% to ensure big business pays its fair share, Ireland is digging in its heels.

"We are not in that agreement," Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe recently told Irish media.

Political pressure could yet force Ireland's leaders to relent. Donohoe met with US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week and said talks were productive. Yellen told reporters that Ireland, along with fellow European Union holdouts Hungary and Estonia, "want to find a way to get to yes."

But Ireland's opposition highlights the obstacles that remain as governments try to transform public support for the ambitious project into actual policy. Ireland is thought to be holding out to see if Biden can rally enough support in Washington. And even if Ireland ultimately signs on, experts on European Union law think implementation in the bloc could be tricky.

"These plans always take longer to implement and legislate than is talked about," said Gary Hufbauer, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Ireland's low-tax legacy

In 2016, something spectacular happened in Ireland: In a shock revision of official data, the country reported that its economy had grown by more than 26% the previous year.

Unemployment was down, and government finances were being carefully managed. But the real reason output soared was that global companies had moved parts of their business to the Emerald Isle.

"This revision can be seen as an effect of increasing globalization," the European Commission said in a memo. "It is primarily due to the relocation to Ireland of a limited number of big economic operators."

The episode underscores just how effective the country has been in recruiting multinational firms, which have been drawn in part because of a 12.5% corporate tax rate that's been in place since 2003.

"A low corporate tax rate has been one of the factors that has made Ireland attractive to foreign direct investment," said Iulia Siedschlag, associate research professor at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. "Clearly multinationals have made and make a substantial contribution to economic growth."

The presence of foreign companies helped Ireland recover from the global financial crisis and subsequent European debt crisis. While Ireland needed 68 billion ($80 billion) in international bailout loans in 2010, after its property market collapsed and banks started failing, its economy was growing at an eye-popping rate of more than 8% by 2014.

Tax receipts from multinational companies also gave government finances a crucial boost during the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2020, Ireland was the only EU economy to grow instead of contract.

Donohoe has emphasized his commitment to working with other countries and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is coordinating the tax talks. But he's expressed concern that a deal could damage one of Ireland's big economic advantages.

"While the potential revenue loss depends on many factors, my department's estimate is that corporation tax could be impacted by up to 2 billion annually over the short to medium term," he recently told lawmakers.

Holding out

Ireland, whose backing is needed for the European Union to ultimately issue a directive on the matter, is under significant pressure to soften its stance.

Before a meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers earlier this month, countries including India, China and Switzerland came out in favor of the OECD reform plan, backing the minimum tax of at least 15% and a related provision that would force the biggest companies to pay tax where they generate sales and earn profits, and not just where they have a physical presence. That could have have major ramifications for top tech companies like Google and Amazon.

Last week, the European Union announced that it was delaying its proposal for a digital tax that would have interfered with talks, another indication of growing support.

"The details must be finalized, but the political traction is stronger than it's ever been," said Robert Danon, a professor of international tax law at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

There's good reason to think Ireland will eventually capitulate. Per the proposal, if a global minimum tax of 15% is agreed and Dublin doesn't change its statutory rate, the United States would be able to step in and collect the remaining 2.5% of tax owed by an American firm, for example, on its profits recorded in Ireland. At that point, Ireland may as well make the changes needed to net that revenue itself.

"At the end of the day, if you have a critical mass of countries adopting the framework, that's it," Danon said.

Siedschlag notes, however, that a "major concern" for Ireland's leaders is the possibility that a global minimum tax rate could ultimately be pegged higher than 15%, an option that remains on the table.

The country could likely absorb a 2.5 percentage point rise, she said. But if consensus builds around a 21% global minimum tax, that would erase Ireland's competitive edge on taxes versus the United States, the source of more than 50% of foreign direct investment in the country.

Not just Ireland

Ireland isn't the only obstacle standing between the Biden administration and an overhaul of global tax rules.

Hufbauer believes that once the details of the tax plan are released, it will "run into very serious objections in the US Congress" as lawmakers run the numbers on how top American companies would be affected. Reapportioning the US tax base will also involve overriding existing US bilateral tax treaties, which Hufbauer describes as a "a very tedious process" that won't sit well with some senators.

Gerard Brady, chief economist at Ibec, Ireland's business lobby, said his country's government is right to withhold its backing while Biden tries to determine what's feasible domestically.

"The decision not to make commitments until we can see what the US Congress can pass makes strategic sense," he said.

Additionally, while European Union leaders support the OECD proposal, actually turning it into law in the bloc could be tricky, given the complex web of existing rules and regulations, said Adolfo Martin Jimenez, chairman of the European Association of Tax Law Professors.

Talks will continue in the coming months, with the goal of landing on a final plan for implementation by October. Ireland has said it will continue to actively participate.

"We are committed to the negotiation to see if we can enter the agreement at some point," Donohoe said last week.

But the Irish government's reluctance is a reminder that rewriting global tax rules won't be easy, despite unprecedented political support  and that's even before you dig into what's actually in the plan.

"An agreement to establish a global minimum tax of at least 15% is a major step forward. But the devil is in the details," the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote earlier this month.

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Here's a look at the life of former CIA Director and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta.

Personal

Birth date: June 28, 1938

Birth place: Monterey, California

Birth name: Leon Edward Panetta

Father: Carmelo Panetta, restaurant owner and farmer

Mother: Carmelina (Prochilo) Panetta, restaurant owner

Marriage: Sylvia Marie (Varni) Panetta (1962-present)

Children: Christopher, Carmelo and James

Education: University of Santa Clara, B.A., 1960; University of Santa Clara, J.D., 1963

Military service: US Army, 1964-1966, First Lieutenant

Religion: Roman Catholic

Other Facts

His parents were Italian immigrants who owned a walnut farm in the Carmel Valley of California.

Graduated magna cum laude in political science.

Received the Army Commendation Medal.

Was forced to resign as the head of the US Office for Civil Rights when he tried to speed up the pace of school desegregation, against the wishes of the administration of President Richard Nixon.

Timeline

1966-1969 - Legislative aide to Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel of California.

1969 - Special assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under President Nixon.

March 1969-February 1970 - Head of the US Office for Civil Rights.

1971 - Switches parties from Republican to Democrat.

1971 - Returns to California to practice law.

1976 - Elected to the House of Representatives, representing the area around Monterey, California. Is reelected eight times.

1979-1989 - Serves on the House Committee on the Budget.

1989-1993 - Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget.

1991 - Votes against a resolution authorizing Operation Desert Storm.

January 21, 1993-October 1994 - Director of the Office of Management and Budget.

July 17, 1994-January 20, 1997 - Chief of staff to President Bill Clinton.

1997-2009 and 2013-present - Co-director, and then chairman of The Panetta Institute for Public Policy.

1997 - Appointed presidential professor at Santa Clara University, teaching a course called Studies in Public Policy.

1997-2003 - Serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange.

2000-2003 - Chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission.

2002 - Joins the National Review Board set up by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in the wake of priest sex abuse scandals.

2004 - Co-chair of the California Council on Base Support and Retention, which was established after the Department of Defense announced it would be realigning and closing military bases across the country.

2005 - Serves as a member of the Migration Policy Institute's Independent Task Force on Immigration and America's Future addressing illegal immigration.

2006 - Member of the Iraq Study Group tasked with assessing the US effort in Iraq and making policy recommendations following their findings.

January 5, 2009 - Nominated by President-elect Barack Obama to be the new director of the CIA.

February 12, 2009 - Confirmed by the US Senate as the new director of the CIA.

February 13, 2009-June 30, 2011 - Director of the CIA.

April 28, 2011 - President Obama nominates Panetta to be the new secretary of defense to replace Robert Gates.

June 21, 2011 - Confirmed by the US Senate as the next secretary of defense.

July 1, 2011-February 26, 2013 - Twenty-third secretary of defense.

December 15, 2011 - Attends the handover ceremony in Baghdad, commemorating the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

January 24, 2013 - Announces the US military will end its longstanding policy of excluding women from combat and open front-line units to female service members.

October 7, 2014 - His memoir, "Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace" is published.

June 5, 2020 - Joins 88 other former defense officials in Washington Post open letter criticizing President Donald Trump's threat to use the US active military to quell nationwide protests over the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, at the hands of Minneapolis police.

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CHARLES CITY, Iowa  A not guilty plea is entered over child sex abuse in Floyd County.

James Tyrone Teel, 32 of Charles City, is charged with one count of second-degree sexual abuse.

Court documents state a 10-year-old child accused Teel of sexual contact in the bathroom of a Charles City business.

Teels trial is scheduled to begin on September 28.
LIME SPRINGS, Iowa  Two people had to be removed from a vehicle that crashed Monday afternoon in Howard County.

The Sheriffs Office says Valentine Neil Mahr, 67 from rural Lime Springs was driving north on Pleasant Avenue and apparently experienced a medical episode just after 1 pm. Mahrs vehicle when into the east ditch, over the embankment, crossed 70th Street, and hit another embankment.

Mahr and his wife, Janelle Mahr, 64, had to be removed from their crashed vehicle by Cresco Fire and Rescue and were taken to Regional Health Services of Howard County Hospital by ambulance. The Mahrs were later airlifted to St. Marys Hospital in Rochester.

The Howard County Sheriffs Office says one firefighter suffered minor injuries and was treated by EMS at the scene of the crash.

The Iowa State Patrol, Howard County Ambulance Service, Cresco Towing and Recovery, MiEnergy Cooperative, and Howard County Secondary Roads also assisted with this accident.
ROCHESTER, Minn.  A man accused of trying to run a woman off the road is pleading not guilty.

Michael James Pommerening, 28 of Waseca, was arrested on June 8 and is charged with terroristic threats and domestic assault.

Rochester police say Pommerening met an ex-girlfriend at Oxbow Park in Kalmar Township to exchange some property. Investigators allege that Pommerening got angry and threatened the woman, telling her restraining orders dont mean anything. Police say the woman drove away but Pommerening followed and swerved at her like he was trying to run her off the road.

No trial date has been scheduled.
MASON CITY, Iowa  The driver charged with homicide in the death of a Mason City bicyclist is pleading not guilty.

Cody William Skiye, 28 of Mason City, is accused of homicide by vehicle-OWI. Law enforcement says Skiye was driving a pickup truck on June 5 on Thrush Avenue when he hit bicyclist James Powell. Court documents state Skiye had a blood alcohol content of .222 at the time of the collision, almost three times the legal limit.

Powell died from his injuries on June 11.

Skiyes trial is scheduled to begin on September 21. He remains in the Cerro Gordo County Jail on $25,000 bond.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A Black Minnesota state lawmaker who rose to prominence after his friend Philando Castile was shot to death by police is coming under pressure to resign.

State Rep. John Thompson turned to activism after Castile's fatal shooting during a 2016 traffic stop and then to politics, winning a seat in the state House. Thompson became a fierce advocate for policing changes. But things started unraveling in early July, when Thompson claimed to have been racially profiled during a traffic stop. That soon led to questions about his driver's license and his state residency.

Now, revelations of old domestic abuse allegations against Thompson have caused top Democrats to join the calls for his resignation.
ROCHESTER, Minn.  A woman accused of stealing over $50,000 from her disabled daughter is pleading not guilty.

Pamela Jean Fischer, 66 of Rochester, was charged in April with one count of financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. The Olmsted County Sheriffs Office says Fischers 39-year-old daughter had mental and physical infirmities and was living in a care center when it received information from the Minnesota Adult Abuse Reporting Center.

An investigator says Fischer withdrew $59,819.55 from her daughters bank account and a special needs trust and used it for her own benefit. Court documents state the misappropriation of funds started in November 2016 and continued for at least a couple of years.

No trial date has been set.
Investigators are looking for a man who was caught on video burning an American flag that was hanging outside of a Pennsylvania home.
FAIRVIEW HEIGHTS, Ill. (AP)  Activists are calling for officials to reinvestigate an incident where a southern Illinois police officer used force against two Black teenagers while breaking up a fight at a trampoline park.

Nearly 20 people held a protest march Sunday through the streets of Fairview Heights in the Metro East region to call for accountability following the June 26 incident at the Sky Zone Trampoline Park, the Belleville News-Democrat reported.

4 juveniles taken into custody after fights erupt at Metro East SkyZone Several fights at a SkyZone in Fairview Heights led to officers taking four juveniles into custody late June

Fairview Heights police and officers from other agencies were sent to the park to disperse a crowd of more than 200 young patrons. Videos of the police response were posted on social media, with one showing a Fairview Heights officer punching downward to break up a fight between two girls.

An internal police investigation, which was reviewed by Illinois State Police and the OFallon-Metro East NAACP branch, found that the officers use of force was appropriate.

But JD Dixon, an organizer of the protest held by Empire 13, a Belleville-based grassroots activist organization, said officers are trying to cover up their use of excessive force.

Were out here seeking justice because the families and the teens deserve justice, due process, he said Sunday.

The police investigation found that officers' response to the volatile and dangerous situation exhibited a tremendous amount of restraint. It states that the officer involved in breaking up the fight between the two girls was using his fists to break one girl's grip on the other girls braided hair.
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Kokomo, IN (46901)

Today

Intervals of clouds and sunshine. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 84F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A few clouds. Low 68F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph.
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By Jun Ji-hye







A Korean man in his 50s was sentenced to two years in prison for confining and assaulting a 23-year-old man from Uzbekistan, after drugging him with a sedative and handcuffing him.







The Incheon District Court handed down the prison sentence to the Korean national, Monday, on charges of injury and confinement.







According to the court, the victim visited the perpetrator's home after seeing a job ad from an employment agency looking to hire a guide to carry baggage for tourists. The ad also said that the employer would provide accommodation and meals for 10 days.







The victim went to the perpetrator's apartment in Incheon on Jan. 20 and was given a drink spiked with Zolpidem, a sedative often used for the treatment of insomnia. After the victim lost consciousness, the perpetrator handcuffed him.







The perpetrator then confined the victim and physically attacked him with a blunt instrument for eight hours. As a result, the victim suffered injuries to his head, jaw and right hand.







After being assaulted, the victim barely managed to escape from the apartment and reported the incident to the police.







The perpetrator lost consciousness after attempting suicide, but was transferred to a nearby hospital. His motive for committing the crime has not been disclosed.







The perpetrator had earlier received a one-year jail term on charges of sexual violence in November 2018.







"He committed this crime on top of his previous criminal record," Judge Yoon Seong-heon said in his ruling. "A harsh punishment is unavoidable as the victim suffered serious injury, mental anguish and fear."


By Andrew Hammond





The Asia Pacific Economic Council (APEC) held the first extraordinary leadership meeting in its history, Friday, as the region recovers from the pandemic, its biggest economic and political shock since World War II.







As 2021 APEC chair, New Zealand's highest priority is leading the region's response to the worst health and economic crisis in living memory, including 1 million deaths and some 81 million jobs lost. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern therefore sought Friday to promote an inclusive, sustainable and resilient recovery, as countries including Indonesia, Thailand and Australia face new waves of infections.







Some progress was made with the 21 leaders pledging to work to expand the sharing and manufacturing of vaccines. However, Friday also showed that APEC's consensus approach is starting to creak with wear: no big surprise given that it is a disparate grouping that includes the world's three largest economies  the United States, China and Japan  but also much poorer nations, such as Papua New Guinea.







Even before the corona crisis, that consensus model had been strained, with the group unable to agree on a communique at its 2018 meeting, driven by differences between China and the U.S. Moreover, while the body agreed in June to review trade barriers and expedite the cross-border transit of vaccines and related goods, it stopped short of a broader commitment to remove tariffs, which New Zealand had been pushing for.







Ardern's efforts to promote a pan-APEC approach are being undercut by not only U.S.-China squabbles, but also the attempts of wider forums, such as Group of Seven (G7) and the Group of 20 (G20), to influence this agenda.







It is the U.S.-China bilateral rivalry, however, that could most impede APEC, given the competing ambitions of those two nations to shape the regional order. Underlining the diplomatic battle for influence, which the pandemic has intensified, the White House pre-briefed in the run-up to Friday's talks that it intended to serve "as an arsenal of vaccines for the region," while China said it had already supplied developing countries with more than 500 million doses.







Yet, the pandemic is far from the only flashpoint impeding APEC. This point was highlighted, just as Friday's meeting concluded, when Washington announced sanctions on seven mainland Chinese individuals over the crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong.







This announcement highlights the much bigger battle in play, with the Biden team pre-briefing that it would use the forum to demonstrate its commitment to a free and open Asia-Pacific. What is being referred to here is the nascent U.S. strategy to shape the regional order, including the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) of Australia, India, Japan and the United States.







As the Biden team flexes its muscles, it is aware of the Chinese juggernaut being mobilized by Xi Jinping in the form of the Belt and Road plan, plus the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the proposed Free Trade Area of Asia Pacific (FTAAP).







These schemes have assumed new importance for Beijing, since the inception of the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which the Obama team championed, but was rejected by Trump.







Xi has said that the FTAAP and RCEP do not "go against existing free trade arrangements," however, at the heart of the debate on these issues are contrasting U.S. and Chinese visions to shape the regional order and cement their influence in it. Beijing's push for the Belt and Road, RCEP, and FTAAP provides a non-U.S. alternative model for economic integration, shaped by Beijing, with its interests at center stage.







It is in this context that the Biden team is beginning to set out its own stall for shaping the regional order. The Trump team did begin making some initiatives in its four years of office, however, there appeared no overarching plan to bring them all together in a powerful strategy.







History points to what may now be needed to fill this vacuum. In the post-war period, the United States has undertaken a global institutional-building project on a largely bipartisan basis, at least until the election of Trump, to encourage the growth of democracy and open markets across the world.







From 1945, U.S. administrations helped create and nurture key bodies that exist to this day, from the U.N., to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Inspired by this success, both the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton sought to respond to the collapse of Soviet Communism by encouraging the creation of a range of economic institutions, including the World Trade Organization.







Yet, with Trump pulling the plug on U.S. participation in the CPTPP, and disparaging other institutions such as the WTO, a vacuum now exists that either the U.S. or others will fill. And the danger for Washington is that irresistible momentum could now build for a regional architecture  including the RCEP, Belt and Road and FTAAP  that allows Beijing to assume the upper hand, damaging U.S. influence not just with local allies, but potentially well beyond too.







) is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.



Andrew Hammond ( andrew.korea@outlook.com
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Thunderstorms likely in the morning. Then a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the afternoon. High 79F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Tonight

Scattered showers and thunderstorms. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Mixed clouds and sun with scattered thunderstorms. High near 80F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially during the evening. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Mixed clouds and sun with scattered thunderstorms. High near 80F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%..

Tonight

Variable clouds with thunderstorms, especially early. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV)  Authorities are asking for the publics help in solving who pulled the trigger in downtown Portland early Saturday morning, killing a young woman and injuring several other people.

Police identify woman killed in deadly downtown Portland shooting PORTLAND, OR (KPTV)  Portland Police Bureau identified the 18-year-old woman who was shot a

The Portland Police Bureau has partnered with Crime Stoppers of Oregon to seek information from anyone who knows more about the deadly shooting that happened in the 300 block of Southwest 3rd Avenue. Seven people were shot and one of the victims died. Makayla Maree Harris was only 18 years old. Her family has set up a GoFundMe for funeral expenses.

PPB detectives believe numerous people left the shooting scene without speaking to officers. PPB said some of those witnesses may have information that could help solve Harris death. Crime Stoppers of Oregon is offering a cash reward up to $2,500 for information that leads to an arrest in the case.

Tips must be reported to Crime Stoppers and can be submitted anonymously online or on the P3 Tips via smart phone or tablet.
Some girls like playing with dolls, but some like something with a bit more bang.

The Pocatello Fish and Game office has been teaching a group of young ladies about hunter's safety while teaching them lessons that can last a lifetime. Read more
(ST. JOSEPH, Mo.) Region H public health departments are issuing a Public Health Advisory in response to rapidly increasing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations across northwest Missouri related to the emergence of the delta variant.

At this time, unvaccinated residents of all ages who have resumed normal activities without adequate protection are most at risk, particularly immune-compromised individuals.

COVID-19 vaccines have been proven to significantly reduce the risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death.

The regions public health departments strongly recommend residents take the following precautions to protect themselves and others in their community:

-Get fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Anyone 12 and older should seek vaccination immediately.

Help protect children younger than 12 by ensuring those around them who are eligible are vaccinated.

Individuals who have initiated 2-dose vaccination should get their second dose to ensure maximum protection against all COVID-19 strains, including delta.

Talk with friends and family about the importance of getting vaccinated.

If you have specific concerns about whether you should get the vaccine, consult your physician.

-Unvaccinated individuals should wear a mask while visiting indoor public places, in crowded outdoor settings, and for activities in close contact with others who are not fully vaccinated.

People with underlying medical conditions may not be able to receive full protection from the vaccine and children younger than 12 are not yet eligible for vaccination. These populations are vulnerable to being exposed to COVID-19.

-Both vaccinated and unvaccinated residents should exercise caution.

Currently, 40% of Missourians and 25% of those in Region H are fully vaccinated. In northwest Missouri, assume 3 of every 4 people in any crowd or gathering could be unvaccinated. If you do not know the vaccination status of those around you, resume social distancing of at least 6 feet and wear a mask.

If unvaccinated, being in crowds like restaurants, bars, fitness centers, or movie theaters puts you at a higher risk for COVID-19. Avoid indoor spaces that do not offer fresh air from the outdoors as much as possible.

Additionally, continue practicing good hand hygiene by washing your hands frequently for at least 20 seconds.

-Stay home if you are sick.

Seek testing if you develop or have any symptoms of COVID-19, including mild symptoms similar to a cold or allergies.

-Individuals with underlying medical conditions should get fully vaccinated as soon as possible and wear masks when around persons of unknown vaccination status.

The following conditions are associated with increased risk of death from COVID-19: Age above 65, organ transplant recipient, cancer, diabetes, obesity, chronic heart/lung/kidney/neurologic conditions, rheumatologic conditions such as Rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, psoriasis, use of immunosuppressive medications, AIDS, and other immunosuppressive conditions or neurological diseases.

Having more than one of these conditions may significantly increase the risk of hospitalization or death. For more information, please visit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website.

To find information about vaccination locations and updated guidance, please visit your local health department website or social media page(s). The following regional public health departments have partnered to endorse this message.

Andrew County Health Department

(816) 324-3139

Andrew Hoffman, Administrator

AndrewH@andrewcountyhealth.com

Atchison County Health Department

(660) 736-4121

Julie Livengood, RD, LD, Administrator

Julie.Livengood@lpha.mo.gov

City of St. Joseph Health Department

(816) 271-4636

Debra Bradley, Health Director

dbradley@stjoemo.org

Caldwell County Health Department

(816) 586-2311

Tracy Carmen, BSN, RN, Administrator

tracycarmen@caldwellcountyhealthdept.com

Daviess County Health Department

(660) 663-2414

RaCail King, RN, Administrator

Racail.King@lpha.mo.gov

Tri-County Health Department (DeKalb/Gentry/Worth)

(660) 783-2707

Teresa McDonald, RN, Administrator

Teresa.McDonald@lpha.mo.gov

Grundy County Health Department

(660) 359-4196

Elizabeth Gibson, Administrator

egibson@grundycountyhealth.org

Harrison County Health Department

(660) 425-6324

Courtney Cross, Administrator

Courtney.Cross@lpha.mo.gov

Holt County Health Department

(660) 446-2909

Krissy Prussman, Administrator

Krissy.Prussman@lpha.mo.gov

Livingston County Health Center

Sherry Weldon, RN, Administrator

sherry.weldon@livcohealth.com

Mercer County Health Department

(660) 748-3630

Gina Finney, Administrator

Gina.Finney@lpha.mo.gov

Nodaway County Health Center

(660) 562-2755

Tom Patterson, Administrator

tompatterson@Nodawayhealth.org
Omaha expert on Afghanistan 'so fearful for the people' as US withdraws
BILLINGS - There were lots of emotions in Red Lodge after one of their own firefighters was injured while fighting the Harris Fire near Joliet.

The firefighter, Dan Steffensen, was flown to Salt Lake City for treatment of his injuries.

Now, Red Lodge Fire Chief Tom Kuntz says he wants Dan to know the whole town has his back.

"I was able to travel to Salt Lake and sit with Dan and express the love and faith that people have had," the chief said.

An emotional Chief Kuntz just got back from Salt Lake City Monday afternoon. He got to see Dan, who was injured by flames of the Harris Fire.

"He's in very serious condition and has significant burns on his body," Chief Kuntz said.

Red Lodge Fire tells us Dan went through a successful surgery on Monday, but his recovery won't be easy. They say it's expected to take about six months.

But the chief says Dan has high spirits.

We're told he now knows that the town of Red Lodge and firefighters across the northwest are cheering for him.

"We were able to express to him the amazing outpouring of support that we've received from the community. And we could tell that meant a lot to him," Chief Kuntz said.

It's already been a busy fire season, and between the Robertson Draw Fire to the west, and now the Harris Fire to the east, Dan's absence will be noticeable. He's a nationally qualified wildland firefighter that's worked in several western states.

"Obviously, having a significant injury puts a lot of stress on our organization," Chief Kuntz said.

Red Lodge Mayor Bill Larson says his firefighters are invaluable this time of year, especially this summer.

"It's a big concern because it's July. Usually, our fire season doesn't start until August," Red Lodge Mayor William Larson said.

A GoFundMe page set up for Dan has raised over $53,000 since this last weekend. It's a number, the Mayor says, will keep going up.

"Our firefighters, we respect them a lot, and our prayers are with him," Mayor Larson said.

If you would like to donate to help Dan, you can do so through the GoFundMe page here.
UPDATE: JULY 22 AT 2:53 P.M.

Dan is recovering after a successful second surgery Thursday to remove all of the burned areas, except those on his face, Red Lodge Fire Rescue reports.

As the burns on his face continue to heal, Red Lodge Fire Rescue says doctors are hoping to remove his intubation tube this weekend. However, they are being extra cautious because Dan has a "touch of pneumonia" and they are waiting to see how he responds to antibiotics.

Red Lodge Fire Rescue says healing energy from the public is much appreciated.

UPDATE: JULY 19 AT 4:45 P.M.

Red Lodge Fire Rescue released an update on Dan's condition following his first surgery. They wrote: Dan went through his first of many surgical procedures today at the University of Utah Burn Center. The surgery was successful and he has been alert and is communicating with the family and firefighters that are with him. The recovery process will be long and difficult. It is expected that he will be there for about six months. We all appreciate the tremendous support from everyone across the region. Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers. A GoFundMe has been set up to help Dan that you can donate to here

UPDATE: July 17 AT 3:01 P.M.

The firefighter injured Friday on the Harris Fire near Joliet has been identified as Dan Steffensen.

According to Red Lodge Fire, Dan has been a firefighter with them since 2015.

In 2017 Dan was selected as volunteer Firefighter of the Year and works on the fuel mitigation/Initial Attack crew where in the summers he works to reduce hazardous fuels around homes and responds to emerging wildland fires, Red Lodge Fire said in a release. He is a nationally qualified wildland firefighter and has fought fires in Montana, Oregon, California and other western states as an engine boss and tender operator.

The other Red Lodge firefighter on the two-person crew was identified as Scott Wilson.

Scott was not injured and joined the fire department this year after retiring to Red Lodge.

Dan and Scott were reportedly fighting the Harris Fire when strong winds suddenly shifted toward them.

Dan tried to reach safety but was overrun by the fast moving fire.

Scott informed the incident commander and acted to get Dan to Emergency Care.

Due to the severity of his burns, Dan has been admitted to the University of Utah Burn Center in Salt Lake City, and according to Red Lodge Fire, he is in serious condition.

His family and firefighting colleagues are traveling to be with him.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help Dan that you can donate to here.

Wed like to thank the wildland firefighting community for reaching out to us with offers of help and words of support. Please keep Dan and his family in your thoughts and prayers during these difficult times, said Fire Chief Tom Kuntz. This event is a reminder that firefighting is dangerous and we are truly grateful to those who answer the call to help others in time of need.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

JOLIET, Mont. - A firefighter is getting treatment for severe burn injuries after Fire Engine 78 was burned over Friday while crews worked the Harris Fire near Joliet.
BILLINGS - Billings Clinic announced via press release Tuesday that the psychiatrists in the inaugural class of Montana's first-ever psychiatry residency program have arrived in Billings.

They will provide additional mental health resources and help to meet the ongoing need for more psychiatrists serving the region.

"This first class of residents is a very intelligent, well-educated group of young doctors with a pioneering spirit and a passion for serving rural and underserved communities, John Powers, MD, Billings program director and a Billings Clinic psychiatrist, said. This residency will increase the number of well-trained psychiatrists we have here at Billings Clinic and in the region and expand access, which will provide the communities we serve with much-needed mental health services.

The residents include, Brian Schlidt of Casper, Wyoming, Russell Ollerton of Half Moon Bay, California and Kimiko (Koko) Urata of Juneau, Alaska.

Schlidt completed his undergraduate degree in Physiology from the University of Wyoming and is completing medical school at the University of Washington as part of the WWAMI program.

Ollerton completed his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University in Exercise Science. During medical school at the University of Utah, he developed a psychiatric educational YouTube channel and helped cofound a Music in Medicine Group.

Urata received her bachelor's and master's degrees in Biology from Stanford University. She is attending medical school at the University of Washington. She was also the two-time recipient of a service award for commitment to advocacy work.

For decades, Montana, Wyoming and Alaska have consistently reported suicide rates that are, or are among, the highest in the country. Rural areas in Montana face a mental health crisis due to high suicide rates, isolation and a lack of mental health care resources and providers.

With the support of a $3 million grant awarded by The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, Billings Clinic created Montana's first psychiatry residency program in 2018.

The four-year residency program, called the Montana Track at Billings Clinic, provides hands-on training to hand-picked residents with a strong desire to serve in rural areas.

A total of 12 residences across of four years of the residency program will be admitted. After medical school, they will spend their first two years in Seattle, Washington, and complete the final two years at Billings Clinic.

Through the residency, psychiatrists train to become change agents in the rural communities they serve by uncovering and nurturing their passions, teaching evidence-based clinical skills and inspiring innovative approaches to closing gaps in community-based systems of mental health care.

With the arrival of this first class, the residents, our faculty, and Billings Clinic at large have entered into the history of graduate medical education as the first psychiatry residency to ever exist in Montana, Dr. Powers said. Billings Clinic is an academic medical center while also being Montanas largest health care system serving communities in Montana, Wyoming, and the western Dakotas. Having a psychiatry residency here is important because doctors tend to stay in the area in which they complete their residency. That means those communities, as vast an area as our service area is, will have better access to psychiatric care as this residency produces more and more well-trained psychiatrists.

Billings Clinic psychiatry resources available to residents include Project ECHO Billings Clinic, which provides tele-mentoring and teaching support across the state, the Eastern Montana Telemedicine Network, based at Billings Clinic and one of the countrys first providers of telepsychiatry services, interventional psychiatry and the new Psychiatric Stabilization Unit, a unit designed to get patients in psychiatric crisis out of the Emergency Department and into an outpatient setting that provides access to psychiatric assessment and treatment services within 24 hours.

There are so many people who have contributed to help Billings Clinic get ready to give these residents an excellent and unique training experience, Dr. Powers said. Theyve given their effort, their time and in some cases their money to ensure its success. Many, many thanks to everyone, inside of Billings Clinic and out, who has worked so hard to get us ready for the residents arrival. To do something like this, having a vision is important, but those who execute the vision are every bit as critical to the success of the endeavor.

For more information on the residency program, you can visit www.uwmtpsychtrack.org.
U.S. Senator Steve Daines released the following statement:

Its time to reopen the border between Montana and Canada, and its time to do it now, not weeks from now. Doing so is essential for Montana families, agriculture, jobs and tourism. While Im encouraged to see Canada finally make an official announcement about opening the border, it needs to be reopened fully and immediately, and I urge the Biden administration to respond and ensure this happens. President Biden allowing the northern border to remain closed while opening the southern border to illegal immigrants and drugs is beyond hypocritical and frustrating for Montanans.

U.S. Senator Jon Tester released the following statement:

Trade and travel across the U.S. - Canadian border is critical for Montana families and for our economy, and this important milestone puts us one step closer to our economy returning to normal. Ive pushed both the Biden Administration and Canadian officials to find a way to reinstate nonessential crossings as quickly and safely as possible, and I look forward to the boost Montanas economy will receive once travel resumes on both sides of the border.

Montana Governor Greg Gianforte released the following statement:

The Biden administrations decision to extend the closure of the northern border is out of touch and comes at the expense of hardworking Montanans. I urge President Biden to reconsider his misguided decision and fully reopen the border for trade and travel.
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - Acting United States Attorney Bob Murray announced that 60-year-old Theordore Eugene Garland, of Edmond, Oklahoma was sentenced on seven counts of illegal activities and violations in Yellowstone National Park (YNP).

Garland appeared in front of Magistrate Judge Mark L. Carman in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming on July 2 for the sentencing.

He was charged with 15 counts of illegal activities and violating national park regulations. After hearing the evidence at a bench trial held on April 7 and 8, Judge Carman found Garland guilty on seven counts.

According to a release, Garland has a social-media page, podcast and a guidebook. All three have overlapping pictures and posts about his guided tours in YNP, which violated closures and other park regulations and encouraged visitors to do the same.

Some of the examples included providing unauthorized guided tours, trespassing on thermal grounds, violating swimming closures and cliff jumping, creating hot pots in rivers and disturbing wildlife.

At sentencing, the government requested that Garland be imprisoned for 30 days, served concurrently on all counts, pay a fine of $750 for each count, make a Community Service Payment of $750 for each count, five years of unsupervised probation and that he receive a ban from YNP for five years.

Judge Mark Carman sentenced Garland on the seven counts, resulting in a seven day jail sentence; a total of $600 in fines and fees, a one-time payment of $500 to Yellowstone Forever Geological Resource Fund and a ban from the park until December 31.

He was also ordered to write an introduction/forward to his guidebook communicating respect for the park and removing references of illegal activity by July 16.

Garland will serve five years of unsupervised probation and shall not promote violations of laws in the national parks in any way.

Enforcing federal criminal laws for the protection of our national parks resources will always remain a priority of the United States Attorneys office in Wyoming, Acting United States Attorney Bob Murray said. That is especially true when a criminal motivated by greed, like Mr. Garland, encourages others to commit more crimes and cause more damage to the treasures of

Americas first national park.

This case was handled by the National Park Service and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Stephanie Hambrick.
Weve been experiencing an inordinate amount of rain lately. Have there been any upsides to that trend for you and your family? What are your favorite rainy day activities?
ROME, JUL 20 - The government's justice reform bill to speed up Italy's notoriously slow system must be changed after the country's top 'Ndrangheta prosecutor said it will kill 50% of Italy's criminal trials, the ruling 5-Star Movement (M5S) said Tuesday. Due to a shortening of the statute of limitations, half of the trials will be timed out before they come to judgement, said Nicola Gratteri, who leads the fight against Italy's richest and most powerful mafia. Speaking to the House justice committee, he said he feared one of the consequences of the reform, which is one of the key conditions for the EU-funded Recovery Plan and which has still to be approved by parliament, would be the demise of seven major trials against 'Ndrangheta in and around Catanzaro. Mafia and corruption trials would be equally hit despite a provision in the reform plan to have the statute of limitations lengthened by a year for them, said Gratteri. In its current form, the reform framed by Justice Minister Marta Cartabia sets a two-year limit on the statute for first appeals, and a further one-year limit on appeals to the supreme court - barring mafia and the other most serious crimes that would have the one-year extension. Gratteri said, despite that provision, that "in concrete terms the consequences will be the diminishment of the level of security for the nation, seeing as how it will be even more attractive to commit crimes". The populist M5S, which is the biggest party in Mario Draghi's national unity government, reacted to Gratteri's alert by reiterating that the Cartabia reform must be changed in parliament. In a statement, M5S MPs said Gratteri's testimony to the House panel "was dramatically clear: the criminal justice reform drawn up by Minister Marta Cartabia must be modfiied". The statement said "of all the criticisms voiced by Gratteri, the ones that concern us the most, because they spell worrying scenarios, are those relating to the concrete consequences: 'greater incentive to commit crime' and 'diminishment of the nation's security level'." New M5S leader Giuseppe Conte, Draghi's predecessor as premier, told the former central banker Monday that his formerly anti-establishment party would be vigilant on the justice reform debate to make sure that it did not result in "impunity". Cartabia reacted to the renewed criticism by saying that "the political forces are pushing in diametrically opposed directions, but this reform must be achieved because the status quo cannot remain as it is." She said Italian and European norms said the new statute of limitations would mean a "reasonable trial duration, which is a Constitutional principle". She said the Recovery Plan, officially called the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), for whose implementation the justice reform is essential, embodied "a unique opportunity, not to be missed". Democratic Party (PD) House Whip Debora Serracchiani said there was the possibility of "adjustments" to the new statute of limitation rules. (ANSA).
NAPLES, JUL 20 - Whirlpool workers on Tuesday blocked the high-speed rail tracks at Naples' central station in protest at the US domestic appliance multinational's announced closure of its plant in the southern Italian city. The demonstrators also blocked streets leading into the central Piazza Garibaldi, outside the station. The protest lasted for about two hours. Workers from Whirlpool's Naples plant on Thursday blocked access to the departures area of the city's Capodichino airport, preventing passengers from checking in for around 30 minutes. The protests follow the decision by the home-appliance multinational to start the procedure to fire its 320 workers at the plant. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 20 - Rightwing League leader Matteo Salvini on Tuesday dismissed the appointment as government advisor of a former labour minister he demonised because she tearfully made thousands of people jobless and pensionless overnight at the height of the debt crisis in 2011. Elsa Fornero, a respected academic who served as former premier Mario Monti's labour minister in his 2011-2013 emergency austerity administration, has been named as an economic advisor to Premier Mario Draghi. Salvini, who waged a relentless campaign of vituperation against her after she created the so-called 'esodati' or 'exiled ones," said Tuesday "Formero? she counts less than zero for me". Fornero, 73, is an economist, university lecturer, and politician who served as Minister of Labour, Social Policies, and Gender Equality in the Monti cabinet from November 2011 to April 2013. Fornero was accused by many journalists, media, and politicians belonging to opposition parties of acting with a snobbish attitude towards the problems of common people during the economic crisis. Her statement that "nowadays, a job would not be a right anymore" and that young people should not be too "choosy" (using the word in English) about seeking work became quite famous. In December 2011, shortly after her appointment to the government post, Fornero cried publicly while presenting her new austerity measures. Salvini is an enthusiastic supporter of former European central banker Draghi while his closest ally, Giorgio Meloni of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, is the only major party leader not to have joined his national unity administration and uses that position to voice strong opposition to many of its policies. (ANSA).
COSENZA, JUL 20 - A Calabrian mayor was implicated in a water purification scam in the southern Italian region on Tuesday. Barbara Mele, first citizen of San Nicola Arcella near Cosenza in northern Calabria, has been served an order to report to police regularly. In all, 10 warrants were issued in the probe. Regional environmental agency technician Francesco Fullone was suspended for a year for agreeing with purification plant managers on the procedures for testing. Tests were not properly carried out, police said. Company managers paid bribes to elude proper testing, they said. (ANSA).
ROME, JUL 20 - The COVID-19 state of emergency may be extended till October, government sources told ANSA Tuesday, while stressing that no decision had been taken yet. Currently the state of emergency is set to elapse at the end of this month. (ANSA).
Elbow Creek Fire informational meeting

WALLOWA  The Oregon Department of Forestry's incident management team will hold a fire information meeting Tuesday, July 20, at 7 p.m. at the Wallowa Senior Center, 204 2nd St.

There will also be a Facebook Live/Zoom option for those unable to attend in person.
Lake of the Ozarks - MUST SEE!! 4 BR | 4 BA LF home in the heart of Sunrise Beach with a view that cant be beat! Situated on the 10 MM on the Main Channel, youll get up early & stay up late to witness breathtaking sunrises & sunsets! Spacious deck with lots of room to gather with family & friends. Open floor plan & Main Level living. Gorgeous kitchen with granite tops, Stainless Steel appliances, island dining space & huge dining room, too! Large living room with wood burning fireplace. Master BR is lakeside & has a spa like bath & an enormous closet. Head upstairs to open area that can be anything want to make it - media room, rec room, family room - no limits except your own imagination. Two more generous sized bedrooms & full bath. Lots of storage space, and many opportunities to create additional bedrooms.A low maintenance yard so you spend more time enjoying The Lake. This beautiful home would be a great VRBO investment property or your very own space to make family memories.
LAKE OZARK, Mo.  Lake Ozark city officials met with approximately 40 business owners and managers on Tuesday, to talk problems and solutions, in the aftermath of the deadly shooting on The Strip last week.

In that incident, on Thursday, July 15, multiple motorcycle clubs became involved in a brawl on the front porch of Casablanca restaurant & bar. The fight escalated into a gun battle that spilled into the street with approximately 20 shots fired. As a result, a local man was killed and four others were injured.

The city's Tuesday meeting of Lake Ozark businesses that hold city/state liquor licenses. This is an opportunity for you to have input and be involved in the solutions, City Administrator Dave Van Dee told the estimated 40 business owners and managers.

Lake Ozark Police Chief Gary Launderville told the group that Bike Night, which occurs the third Thursday of the month during the summer, has been cancelled for the balance of the year. Sponsor Benne Media has withdrawn its sponsorship.

One point of discussion was local and state laws.

Topics included:

Motorcycle club/gang activity

Stricter enforcement of existing ordinances including disorderly conduct within an establishment

Reducing public intoxication

Enforcing occupancy limits

Increased business security with qualified individuals or security companies

Open container violations

Possible increase in Driving While Intoxicated (DUI) checkpoints

Overserving of alcohol to patrons

Underage serving of alcohol and fake IDs

City Officials Urge Businesses To Act

City officials noted that while there are several state laws and ordinances in place that help regulate activity within the community, its ultimately up to each business owner/manager to control the type of clientele that enters their business and to regulate the conduct of their customers. They pointed out local and state laws can help with that.

We are going to do what we can to keep this type of incident outside of the city of Lake Ozark, Police Chief Gary Launderville said. Do we really want to allow them (motorcycle gangs) to take over our businesses and our city? Do you think people will continue to come here and visit our community?

The chief urged cooperation between business owners, the Lake Ozark Police Department and the city.

A few businesses have welcomed them into their business, catered to them and in some cases allowed them to take over your bar, he noted. Its your establishment. If you want them coming in and taking over, thats on you, but it affects the rest of the city.

The LOPD will work with you for the betterment of the entire city, but the LOPD cannot lead this change by itself, he added. We can if we work together, and you must step up as well. We must work together.

Mayor Dennis Newberry then stood up. He applauded local law enforcement, saying the Lake Ozark Police Department did a wonderful job in the aftermath of the shooting. He also asked the business owners and managers in the room for their thoughts and feedback, emphasizing he wanted the city to hear from them. "They started talking," he told LakeExpo in an interview after the meeting (LakeExpo was not informed about nor invited to the meeting). Newberry said many business representatives spoke up and the feedback was instructive for city leaders as the continue to formulate a plan for what's next.

Its critical we have a working partnership with our businesses and look at this as a team effort to be successful, he said. Its my intent to grow the relationship between City Hall and the business community.
The officer said there was a small amount of blood coming from the girls mouth and a bullet wound in the middle of her back near her spine.

Robinson told police he had gone into the gas station and left his vehicle at the pumps with the keys in the ignition outside.

According to the complaint, Robinson told police he saw two females in the parking lot and saw one of them jump inside his car and take off.

The defendant said that he chased after the car and yelled for them to stop but the car continued to accelerate. The defendant stated that he then drew his Glock pistol from his holster on his left side and shot what he thought was three rounds at the vehicle. The defendant stated that he was trying to shoot out the back passenger side tire to stop the vehicle, the complaint states. The defendant said he waited with the girl and tried to help her until the police arrived on scene, the complaint states.

A friend of the girl told a detective she and the 13-year-old were walking to a friends house when they cut through the gas station parking lot and saw the Sebring in the lot with the engine running. She said the 13-year-old got into the drivers seat, although she told her not to and began driving away when the man came out and began shooting at her.
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The drink menu also offers this feeling of island escape, featuring mai tais, pina coladas, and of course, the ultimate margarita, made with casamigos blanco tequila straight from the draft.

This place, you walk in, and you can just see that it was meant for fun, Denise Scherrer said.

Fun is part of the philosophy at the Thirsty Parrot. The owners described their staff as a family who loves to work in each others company.

One employee, Chris Barns, said he drives 40 minutes every day to come work at the Thirsty Parrot.

Theres a hundred other restaurants I could work at, but why not help out people I like? Barns said.

The Legends and Thirsty Parrot owners said they are excited to offer a unique experience to their visitors. Customers can start the evening at Legends, enjoy a meal, and then finish the night next door with some tropical cocktails.

The bar is in its early days, with its grand opening still on the horizon. But the Scherrer-Vassos team is more than ready for the challenge.

We still have work to do, but were excited, Lexus Scherrer said. Were really happy were here.
Gaffey said he is thankful to the public for pushing the event to such prominence. He is optimistic about Ribfests future as patrons continue to spread the word.

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The public has really been the biggest thing, Gaffey said. People are willing to share a good experience.

As the event grows, more barbecue enthusiasts travel to join the ranks of Ribfest competitors. 2021s grand champion Thomas Green Jr. of Mr. Greens drove his food truck from Milwaukee to visit Ribfest for the first time this year. He was blown away by the turnout on Day One.

They told me it was going to be slow, Green Jr. said. They call this slow, and thats crazy.

Green Jr. has been cooking barbecue since he was 10 years old, learning from his fathers side of the family. They never decided to start a restaurant, Green Jr. said, so he did it himself.

Mr. Greens ribs held the highest combined score across the peoples choice, best ribs, best sauce and kids choice categories. Scores were determined by the public vote, expert judges from the Kansas City Barbecue Society (KCBS) and the fairgrounds own panel of judges.

It was the right choice, Gaffey said. I would drive 50 miles to go and eat at his place.
TWIN LAKES  Maria Burlingame, 11, didnt hesitate to jump in the water to help an unresponsive woman whose kayak had capsized in the middle of Lake Mary on Thursday. Maria held the womans head above water until her mother, Jennifer Burlingame, a physician, could help get the woman into their boat and begin resuscitation efforts.

On Saturday, the family of the woman  Tina Krause, 51, of Twin Lakes  the Twin Lakes Police Department and Twin Lakes Fire and Rescue thanked the Burlingames, in town from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., to attend Country Thunder, for their selfless and courageous acts.

We are here today to recognize some true heroes who did a very brave and heroic thing in our community Thursday afternoon, Twin Lakes Police Chief Adam Grosz said at a ceremony Saturday held outside the police department, at which the Burlingames were presented with plaques and police and fire patches.

If it wasnt for the actions of Jennifer and Maria, this probably would have been a much different outcome. It would have been a tragedy in our community.

Gary Krause, Tinas husband, cried as he hugged each of them, calling them angels. Debra Taylor, Tinas niece who was kayaking with her that day and also responded to her aid, also wept as she offered her gratitude.
You can always count on me, my country, and many of our colleagues in the region, Abdullah said.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Syria  more than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordan  and a wobbly security situation in Iraq, an administration official said. At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks.

Abdullah is set to have a working breakfast Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris and to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The meeting with Biden was also a chance for the king to spotlight his closeness to Biden following the attempted coup.

Bassem Awadallah, who has U.S. citizenship and once served as a top aide to King Abdullah II, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, were found guilty of sedition and incitement charges. Both men denied the charges and Awadallahs U.S. lawyer said his client alleged he was tortured in Jordanian detention and fears for his life.
Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced his widely anticipated bid for reelection Monday and acknowledged his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic will be the overarching issue in the 2022 race.

When I ran for governor four years ago, I could not have imagined that I would end up leading the state through a pandemic, Pritzker said in a three minute video focused on the way he dealt with COVID-19 issues which accompanied his reelection announcement.

Pritzker acknowledged that I may not have gotten every decision right in handling the pandemic, which involved his use of emergency orders restricting public activity. But, he said, at every step he followed the science to protect residents.

Part of why Im running for reelection is because I watched the heroes across our state step up and do the right thing. We had so much to accomplish and we were able to do that together, he said. Im very proud of all of the people in the state of Illinois. And, we have so much more we can do together.

While Pritzkers decision was widely expected, particularly after he put $35 million of his own money into his campaign account in March, the governor had been silent publicly about his reelection plans  an effort to show he was more focused on the pandemic and governance than politics.
Biologicals are products developed to work in concert with and in place of agricultural chemicals. The three main areas of biological development are biopesticides, biostimulants and biofertilizers.

On June 29, the Farm Foundation presented a forum on these products.

The first speaker was Mark Trimmer, managing partner of DunhamTrimmer LLC, which provides market research, development and consulting on biological products.

The 14.4% annual growth of the biological products market, Trimmer said, is two to three times faster than the growth in traditional markets.

Favorable government policy in the U.S. reflects the significance of this innovation and includes the addition of a biopesticide division at the Environmental Protection Agency.

This division has established guidelines for low-toxicity, environmentally friendly biological products.

In the fresh fruit and vegetable markets, the demand for ecologically sound ag products has been huge, Trimmer said.

In addition, because consumers want their fruits and vegetables all year long, biostimulants can help plants avoid stress and enhance production.

Trimmer said there are five growth areas for the industry: microbial, peptide-based technology, pheromone synthesis, formulation and production, and biofertilizers.

He predicts that these products will become more popular in row crops and for carbon sequestration and nitrogen fixation.

Bayer microbial scientist Laura Lampa reviewed the corporations work in this arena.

Lampa said Bayer has determined that 40 to 70% of crops received some biological product to control insects, weeds or disease. And most of the usage is combined with chemical treatments.

Bayer has developed a number of biological products, Lampa said, including Serenade, which uses biological components to activate a plants own defense mechanisms to improve root growth and nutrient intake. The product also protects roots with a biofilm.

Karsten Temme, co-founder and CEO of Pivot Bio, is developing ways to enhance a plants ability to absorb and use nitrogen  to self-fertilize.

Temme said there are drawbacks to fertilizing with inorganic nitrogen, and the alternative  microbes  can live and grow in plants and then absorb nitrogen from the air, providing it to the plants on demand.

Biologicals can improve farming operations even when chemistry cannot, Temme said.

The biggest barriers to farmers adopting biologicals, Temme said, are that farmers dont know the products are availability and dont know how effective they are.

The industry must get the word out, he said.

University of Minnesota Extension says that biostimulants are often ineffective and recommends farmers conduct a replicated trial before making the products a major part of their operations.
London, Jul 19 (PTI) Children over the age of 12 who are at higher risk of getting ill if they catch COVID-19 will be offered a vaccine, Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi told the UK Parliament on Monday.

Based on advice by the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), the vast majority of children in the UK who are at low risk from the deadly virus will not be offered the vaccine for now.

However, some healthy children over 12 who live with other vulnerable people can have the vaccine, as well as those on the cusp of turning 18. Overall, around 370,000 children will be eligible for a coronavirus vaccine and will be offered the Pfizer/BioNtech jab.

Young people aged 12 to 15 with severe neuro-disabilities, Down's Syndrome, immunosuppression and multiple or severe learning disabilities, as well as people who are household contacts of individuals who are immunosuppressed, will be eligible for vaccination soon, UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who is self-isolating after testing positive for COVID-19, said in a statement which was relayed to the House of Commons by Zahawi.

Today's advice does not recommend vaccinating under-18s without underlying health conditions at this point in time. But the JCVI will continue to review new data, and consider whether to recommend vaccinating under-18s without underlying health conditions at a future date, Javid's statement added.

The minister described the COVID-19 vaccines as a wall of defence, which have saved almost 37,000 lives and prevented around 11.7 million infections in England alone.

The latest decision sets the UK in marked contrast with some other countries  such as the US and Canada  which have mass vaccinated children aged 12 to 17.

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from Syndicated News feed, LatestLY Staff may not have modified or edited the content body)
On Tuesday, July 20, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos is making flight history as he is set to take off in a fully automated spacecraft after Blue Origin finally cleared the New Shepard rocket and capsule for launch.

The mission will be New Shepard's 16th flight, but this will be the first time that it would carry humans aboard. The mission dubbed the 'First Human Flight' will carry Bezos along with three other civilians and would blast off at 9:00 AM EDT from the company's Launch Site One near Van Horn, Texas.

According to Space.com, the launch will be broadcasted on Tuesday from 7:30 AM EDT on their website and also at BlueOrigin.com. While the liftoff is expected to happen at 9:00 AM, it could still change depending on technical matters and weather conditions.

The New Shepard

The New Shepard is expected to reach a higher altitude than the Richard Branson's winged space plane that took him in his Virgin Galactic flight. Moreover, the New Shepard capsule offers a great view of the Earth, which will be around 62 miles below it since it is equipped with the largest windows that were ever built into a spacecraft.

In addition to the amazing view, the capsule is also equipped with a flight-tested abort system designed to immediately propel the ship and the flight crew away from any malfunctioning boosted, CBS News reported.

The same as what Branson did before him, the presence of the Amazon CEO in the first manned flight of New Shepard is to show the public his confidence in the capsule's readiness to start sub-orbital flights for those who can afford to become space tourists and government researchers. Before the first manned flight, the New Shepard has had 15 successful unpiloted blast-offs.

ALSO READ: Jeff Bezos' Riches Hit All-Time Record High After Pentagon Contract; Former Amazon CEO's Wealth Peaks A Day After Stepping Down

The Crew

The 'First Human Flight' in the New Shepard will carry four people, however, there will be no pilot since the spacecraft is run by an automated system, Yahoo! News reported. The people who will be in the flight are:

Jeff Bezos, a 57-year-old tycoon who founded Amazon.com and also founded Blue Origin in 2000.

Mark Bezos, the younger brother of Jeff Bezos who is also a millionaire. According to Business Insider, Mark is a former ad executive who is a part of a leadership council for the non-profit organization Robin Hood.

Wally Funk, 82 years old. Funk is one of the pioneering female aviators who was part of the famous Mercury 13. The Mercury 13 are the women who were tested by NASA during the early days of the space program in the U.S. to be potential astronauts. With this launch, Funk is set to be the oldest person to ever fly to space, overtaking John Glenn who flew on his second mission in 1998 aboard NASA's Discovery at age 77.

Oliver Daemon, 18 years old and is set to become the youngest person to fly to space. Daemon is a Physics student who aims to study at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Before Daemon, the youngest person to take a trip to space was Gherman Titov of Russia who was 25 when he went aboard the Soviet Union's Vostok 2 in 1962.

RELATED ARTICLE: Virgin Galactic Founder Richard Branson to Fly Into Space 9 Days Ahead of Jeff Bezos' Spaceflight

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Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Jeff Bezos On Eve Of Space Launch: 'I Can't Wait To See What It's Like' - TODAY
Haiti's Interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph has agreed to step down and hand over power to a political challenger to stabilize the nation after the assassination of President Jovenel Moise.

Mathias Pierre, Haiti's elections minister, said that Joseph forms part of a broad political agreement urged by the U.S. and other nations to bring stability, according to The Wall Street Journal report.

Ariel Henry is set to replace Joseph. Henry is a neurosurgeon who was appointed Haiti's prime minister shortly before the president was assassinated.

Joseph will become Henry's foreign minister in his cabinet, while other cabinet appointments are still under negotiation.

READ NEXT: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Warns Migrants From Cuba, Haiti Not To Flee to U.S. Amid Unrest

Power Grab in Haiti

Joseph served as acting prime minister before Henry's appointment. He was also the foreign minister under Moise's presidency.

However, he had refused to recognize Henry as the designated prime minister, saying that Henry had not been sworn in at the time of the president's killing, according to an Aljazeera report.

Joseph said he talked to Henry and they agreed that he would be out of the position for the good of the nation.

Joseph said that everyone who knows him will know that he is not interested in this kind of battle. He noted his friendship with the president and added that he is interested in seeking justice for Moise.

Israel Jacky Cantave, the foreign ministry senior official, said that Joseph would give the position to Henry, possibly on Tuesday.

Pierre said that it was part of the plan and wishes of Moise that Henry should lead a new coalition to be prime minister and form a new government, according to an NPR report.

Henry called for political unity and said he would soon announce a consensus government that would lead the country until elections can be held to elect a new president. He also wished for a quick recovery for Moise's wife, Martine, who survived the attack and returned to Haiti on a private jet.

Henry assured that those responsible for the assassination will be put before the law.

President Jovenel Moise Assassination Suspects

Police arrested someone they deem a key suspect in the assassination of Moise.

The suspect was a doctor and identified as Christian Emmanuel Sanon, a 63-year-old Haitian. He flew into the country on a private jet in early June with alleged political motives.

Moise was killed at his home by 28 foreign mercenaries, according to a BBC News report.

Martin described the way her husband was killed during the assassination. She said that assassins riddled her husband with bullets.

Haiti's police chief Leon Charles said that Sanon's initial plan was to arrest Moise. However, it did change.

Charles said that when they caught the suspect after they committed the crime, the first person that one of the assailants called was Sanon.

The police chief also noted that the assailant contacted two other people that they considered to be masterminds. However, the police did not name the other two people that the assailant called.

READ MORE: Haiti Gang Led by an Ex-Cop Declares 'Revolution' as Violence Surge Fueled by Poverty

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Written by Mary Webber

WATCH: Interim Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph to step down - from Al Jazeera English






More than 500 flights in Denver, Colorado were delayed following the wildfire smoke that moved from the Pacific Northwest. Newsweek reported that airport officials confirmed the said delays, citing visibility issues caused by the smoke.

National Weather Service noted that the smoke from several wildfires occurring in the Pacific Northwest moved through Colorado and created hazy skies.

"The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has implemented a traffic management program for arriving flights due to the haze [and] smoke," Denver International Airport spokesperson, Alex Renteria, was quoted in a report from the Denver Post.

READ NEXT: American Airlines Cancels Almost 400 Flights Over Staff, Maintenance Issues

Wildfire Smoke Causes Delays and Cancellations in Denver International Airport

As of this writing, Flight Aware recorded at least 514 delays at Denver International Airport, with at least 15 flight cancellations within, into, or out of the United States.

Renteria also noted that whether more flights would be delayed throughout the day will depend on the weather and wind patterns. National Weather Service on the other hand expected that the wildfire smoke would continue to move to Colorado through Monday.

"It will remain mostly aloft but be very noticeable at sunrise and sunset especially," NWS Boulder said. The agency also posted a view to the east showing layers of smoke in the skies.

1/2: Smoke from numerous large wildfires in the NW U.S. is making the long trip into northeast CO now through the next couple days. It will remain mostly aloft but be very noticeable at sunrise and sunset especially. #COwx pic.twitter.com/IpezCozL1C  NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) July 19, 2021

The delayed flights were from 13 airlines, with Southwest, SkyWest, United, Commutair, American, and Frontier Airlines having the largest number of delays.

Southwest had 199 flights delayed; SkyWest had 127; United Airlines had 96; Commutair had 23; American Airlines had 21; Frontier had at least 21 flights delayed.

Other Airlines who were affected by the delays in Denver, Colorado are Alaska Airlines, Delta, Jet Blue, Jazz, Sun Country Airlines, Allegiant Air, and Air Canada.

Meanwhile, 5 Airlines had their flights canceled, including Frontier, SkyWest, Southwest, Commutair, and American Airlines.

In the wake of the delayed flights in Denver, Colorado, Rentaria urged the people to always check their flight status with their airline, before heading to the airport.

Wildfires in the West Continues

The flights that were delayed over smoke and visibility concerns, came as wildfires in the western region of the U.S. continue to char acres of land. Newsweek noted that the Bootleg Fire in Oregon remained to be the largest active fire in the nation and has charred about 475 square miles of land in the area.

Furthermore, the Bootleg fire was also reported to destroy at least 67 homes and more than 100 buildings, prompting at least 2,000 people to evacuate. As of June 18, the wildfire in Oregon was 22 percent contained.

Apart from Oregon, firefighters were also battling a wildfire in California called Tamarack Fire, as it grew with more than 20,00 acres.

It can be remembered that a mentioned report from Congressional Research Service Fact Sheet revealed that an average of 62,805 wildfires occurs annually in the U.S. Meanwhile, 7.5 million acres of land were affected yearly from 2011-2020. However, in 2020, 70 percent of the lands burned nationwide were owned by the state.

READ NEXT: TikTok Video Shows American Airlines Passenger Duct-Taped to an Airplane Seat

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Written By: Joshua Summers

WATCH: What Do You Need to Know About Wildfire Smoke and Your Health? - From Osmosis
The American Academy of Pediatrics, said that it recommends all children over the age of 2 wear masks when returning to schools this year despite being fully vaccinated. The pediatrics group said it is important for children to return to in-person learning this year. The AAP had also recommended that school staff also wear masks, according to an NBC News report.

The AAP is dubbing the new guidance as a "layered approach."

Sonja O'Leary, chair of the AAP Council on School Health, said that they need to prioritize getting children back into schools with their friends and their teachers, adding that they play a role in ensuring it happens safely.

O'Leary noted that combining layers of protection that include vaccinations, proper hygiene, and wearing masks, will make in-person learning safe and possible.

AAP's Dr. Sara Bode also said that some people cannot get vaccinated. Bode said that universal masking is one of those tools that is proven effective in protecting people, according to a CBS News report.

Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, said that U.S. President Joe Biden would rely on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's recommendations. She also noted that the different guidelines can be confusing to parents.

Psaki said that there will be different decisions made by school districts, just as how local communities make decisions.

The press secretary said that they will still depend on the CDC for guidelines and guidance.

AAP said that several schools will not have the means to monitor the vaccination status of those involved in their community, such as students, teachers, and staff.

They also noted that some communities have low vaccination uptake where the virus may be circulating more prominently.

CDC reported that 99.5 percent of hospitalizations are people who were not immunized. The health agency earlier said that vaccinated adults and teens can go without a mask, according to an ABC News Go report.

READ NEXT: Delta Air Lines Passenger Arrested, Dragged From Flight for Refusing to Wear Mask and Spitting On Passengers

CDC Mask Mandate

Meanwhile, surgeon general Vivek Murthy defended the CDC's decision to lift the mask mandate for all vaccinated individuals after earning criticisms from leading health experts, saying that the decision may have been premature.

Murthy said that the decision was meant to give flexibility to individuals and localities to make their own decisions about mask mandates, according to The Hill report.

The revised guidance has come under criticism when new COVID cases in the U.S. have grown due to the highly contagious delta variant.

Non-vaccinated individuals have accounted for the huge majority of new deaths and hospitalizations.

Former U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams took on Twitter to express his worries, saying that the CDC had made its decision prematurely and was a harmful move.

Las Vegas and Los Angeles had already reimplemented masks indoors for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, according to another The Hill report.

In Las Vegas, the Southern Nevada Health District said that it wants individuals to mask up despite their vaccination status due to the rising cases in the area.

The same decision was announced in Los Angeles, with masks being required in most indoor settings despite being vaccinated or not.

READ MORE: Restore Mask Mandates, Biden Tells States Amid New COVID Spike

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by Mary Webber

WATCH: Indoor Mask Mandates To Be Reinstated in Los Angeles - from NBC News






An Ohio woman is facing a felony charge after leaving her pet Husky dog inside her hot car that led to the animal's death.

Kasey Wise had a history of previous animal-related violations, People reported. The Parma Police Department said Wise had been charged with one count of felonious prohibitions concerning companion animals.

An officer responded and went to Wise's address at Kenmore Avenue on the afternoon of June 10 after she reported that her Husky dog was locked inside her car and appeared to be not moving anymore.

A body camera video showed an officer arriving to unlock the SUV as Wise asked for help. The responding officer called for assistance from the Parma Animal Control.

Julie Kocik, a Parma Animal Control officer, responded and found the dog dead inside the Ohio woman's car. Kocik was heard saying on the footage that the Husky dog was dead. Kocik then demanded that Kasey Wise be arrested, Fox 8 News reported. She said: "I want her f****** arrested."

READ NEXT: Ohio Teacher's Aide Charged With Rape After She Repeatedly Had Sex With 12-Year-Old Student at Her Home

Husky Dog Dies Inside the Car

Kasey Wise told officers that the Husky dog had been in the vehicle since noon. The Ohio woman said she had placed the dog there to stay cool in the vehicle's air conditioning. However, the vehicle died.

Kasey Wise said that her car was running the whole time. She then put her pet Husky inside the running vehicle. The Ohio woman is currently facing a charge of cruelty against a companion animal.

She failed to appear in a hearing in Pharma Municipal Court before the case was turned over to the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas.

A spokesperson for the county prosecutor's office said the Ohio woman's case is currently pending before a grand jury, eyeing felony charges based on Goddard's Law.

According to a neighbor included in the incident report, Kasey Wise had already put the Husky dog in the car for a long period of time in the past.

Meanwhile, Kocik was also heard in the video telling Wise to get out before the animal control officer kills her. The local animal control office released a statement regarding its officer's reaction, saying that the officer is passionate about her job and animals.

The statement added that the officer regrets allowing her emotions to get the best of her in this matter. The office added that the safety director counseled her about her reaction, KWTX reported.

Animal-Related Violations

Kasey Wise has a history of 20 citations since September 2020 for animal-related violations, including animal running at large, failure to comply with requirements for a dangerous dog, and failure to comply with rabies vaccination requirements, animal registration, and comply with quarantine.

The Ohio woman has already been released on bond but has yet to enter a plea.

The animals whose abuse is most often reported are cats, dogs, horses, and livestock. Animal abuse can be seen several times in the factory farm industry, according to a Human Society fact sheet.

One survey showed that 71 percent of domestic violence victims reported that their abuser also targeted their pets.

READ MORE: Ohio State Students Hold Protest for Ma'Khia Bryant, Demand University to Cut Ties With Columbus Police

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Mary Webber

WATCH: Animal Control Freaks Out on Animal Abuser - From Cleveland Area Body Camera






All 6.2 million public school students in California would no longer be hungry, as the state decided to give them the option to eat school meals for free, regardless of their family's earnings.

The program would also serve better quality food when California schools open their classrooms for the fall term. According to KTLA, it will be the largest free student lunch program in the U.S.

Erin Primer, director of food services for the San Luis Coastal Unified School District on California's central coast, said the program "is historic," and "beyond life-changing."

Primer further noted that the state completely leveled the playing field in terms of giving out school food. The food services director added that the extra funding would allow the food services department to offer tastier and better quality food sourced from local producers.

A number of cities, including New York, Boston, and Chicago, had already offered free school meals for all students within their dominion.

However, statewide universal meal programs were considered too costly and unrealistic until the state of California decided to become the first state to adopt a universal program last month. The state of Maine followed shortly after with the same plan.

The largest free student lunch program in the country was made possible by an unexpected budget surplus. It was applauded by school officials, lawmakers, anti-hunger organizations, and parents. It is pioneering a way to prevent the stigma of accepting free lunches and feeding more hungry kids, KCRA reported.

READ NEXT: TikTok Campaign Leads to California Murder Suspect's Arrest; Tips Direct California Authorities in Mexican Resort

No More Hungry California Students

Based on the federal rules, a family composed of four members must make less than $34,000 a year to qualify for free meals and not more than $48,000 income to be eligible for reduced-price meals.

The caps differ annually, but they were based on federal poverty measures and were not based on California's high cost of living and taxes.

Backing up the latest California's program, philanthropist Kat Taylor, who was a major funder of the Center for Ecoliteracy and TomKat Ranch, noted that the program targeted not only most poor families but also some individuals who failed to sign up or were fearful of signing up in the previous free food programs.

Around 60 percent of students in the state of California were qualified in the previous program. However, experts noted that the number of students in the state who need food assistance was much higher, especially in a state with vast income inequality.

Experts said that communities of color were disproportionately affected. Experts emphasized that immigrant communities, in particular, were fearful of applying because of detailed forms that ask intrusive questions such as their family income, Social Security number, and their immigration status.

During the Trump administration, California schools reported that there was a declining percentage of families applying for free and reduced-price meals.

READ MORE: California Lawmakers Approve Sending Up to $1,000 Monthly Checks to Residents in Country's 1st Guaranteed Income Plan

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: California Launches Largest Free School Lunch Program In US - From FOX 5 San Diego
After six weeks of election conflict with rival Keiko Fujimori, rural teacher-turned-politician Pedro Castillo was declared the new president of Peru.

Based on the official count released Monday, July 19, Pedro Castillo defeated the right-wing presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori by only 44,000 votes. Most of the ballots that the former teacher got were from his supporters in the rural areas of Peru.

The official result of the June 6 presidential elections in Peru has been delayed because of Fujimori's appeal of annulling some ballots over fraud accusations.

Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori. She is a former congresswoman who ran for the third time for president with the business elites backing her.

Earlier in the day, Keiko Fujimori said she would recognize the official result because "it is what the law and the constitution that I have sworn to defend, mandates. The truth is going to come out anyway."

According to Al Jazeera, Peru's president-elect Pedro Castillo thanked hundreds of his supporters who assembled at the Peru Libre or Free Peru party in Lima. Castillo also lauded the electoral officials and political parties who took part in the democratic celebration.

During a brief virtual ceremony, the head of the Jurado Nacional de Elecciones (JNE) elections jury, Jorge Luis Salas, announced the victory of the former educator. Salas declared Pedro Castillo as the election winner from a balcony.

Hundreds of Castillo's supporters who had spent weeks outside the JNE headquarters broke out in celebration after hearing the news. Among the crowd of Castillo's supporters was 27-year-old Rosa Huaman, who said that finally, they got a president.

Despite not having any experience in the political scene, Peru's new president, Castillo, had developed a reputation as a good negotiator with his experience as a trade union leader. Democrats in the region also welcomed Pedro Castillo, Al Jazeera reported.

During the campaign, the former teacher and union leader promised that he would make everything that he could to improve the lives of the citizens of Peru. Pedro Castillo also said he would fight COVID-19 that crippled their country since it spread.

Peru has been crushed by COVID-19, with about a third of Peruvians now living in poverty. The disease also exposed the inadequacies of the country's public health system. Based on the latest data, Peru's per capita death rate from COVID-19 ranked number 1 globally.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pedro Castillo Claims Victory Before Official Announcement in Peru Presidential Election; Keiko Fujimori to Challenge Vote Results

Pedro Castillo: From Rural Teaching to Ruling Peru

According to historians, Pedro Castillo is the first individual from outside the elite to become Peru's president. Poor and indigenous people in Peru usually receive the worst of deficient public services despite the economic gains in the past 20 years.

Cecilia Mendez, a Peruvian historian and professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told a radio station that no cases of a person unrelated to professional, economic elites, or even military had reached the presidency.

Considered as the son of peasant farmers, Pedro Castillo worked as a primary school teacher in his native San Luis de Puna, a remote village in Cajamarca, a northern region of Peru.

His place was best known for leading a national strike four years ago, which allegedly prompted him to run for the presidency. Pedro Castillo would be sworn into office on July 28.

READ NEXT: Peru Struggles With Lack of Cemetery Space as COVID-19 Deaths Mount

This article is owned by Latin Post

Written by: Jess Smith

WATCH: Castillo Named President-Elect in Peru, Fujimori Concedes - From Al Jazeera English
Jamie Chung is hyper aware of anti-Asian hate crimes following a spike in cases over the past year.

The 38-year-old actress has said it has been really scary to see the increase in anti-Asian attacks in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, and she is now hypervigilant when it comes to being aware of her surroundings and what the people around her might be thinking.

She said: "It was a really scary time and we're still not really out of that. It makes you become hypervigilant and makes you become hyper aware."

The Misfits star also praised the filmmakers of Asian descent who are creating stories that help to prevent violence and create understanding.

She added: "We have filmmakers of Asian descent that are having their moment. But it feels like we're just beginning."

And Jamie now wants to use her platform to make an impact, after she began her career as a castmate on MTV's The Real World in 2004.

Speaking to the PEOPLE Every Day podcast, she explained: "It's amazing as someone like who's been able to transition to go back and make an impact."

Jamie has been outspoken about politics for some time, and in 2017 she said she would love to meet then-President Donald Trump so that she could grill him about some of his policies, including how his 2017 health bill would affect certain groups of women.

She said at the time: "If I could meet anyone, it would be President Donald Trump. I would ask him why his new health bill allows insurers the right to deny or exploit women who have 'pre-existing conditions,' such as C-sections and victims of rape."
A former intercounty hurler who robbed a Post Office in the Midlands has won an appeal over the time he was given by a Circuit Court Judge to compensate his victims.

The Court of Appeal has agreed to an application by Alan Coyne (46) of Ballinaree Cottage, Edgeworthsown, Co Longford, to extend the time limit for him to pay compensation to his victims.

Coyne was sentenced to five years in prison with the final two years suspended at Longford Circuit Criminal Court in May 2020 after pleading guilty to the robbery of the post office in Ardagh, Co Longford on October 16, 2019 and three related charges.

The appellant stole cash worth 13,238 from An Post after threatening a female staff member as well as a female customer and delivery man with a small knife before driving off in the customers car after forcing her to hand over her car keys.

Coyne was apprehended after crashing the vehicle shortly after he was instructed to stop by gardai in a patrol car.

The sentencing judge, Judge Keenan Johnson, suspended part of Coynes sentence on several conditions including that he attend a residential drug treatment course within 18 months of his release from prison and pay 4,000 to each of his two victims within two years of his release, with 2,000 to be paid to each in the first 12 months.

Counsel for Coyne, John Shortt SC, claimed there was no issue with the severity of the sentence but the two conditions created undue hardship as there was an unrealistic prospect that their client could amass 8,000 in compensation at a time when he had to undertake a residential rehabilitation course which would not allow him to be in gainful employment.

The Court of Appeal heard that the course was likely to last 20 weeks.

Mr Justice George Birmingham, presiding with Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and Ms Justice Isobel Kennedy, said it may have been ambitious and unrealistic to expect Coyne to be able to pay 4,000 compensation within the first year of his release, while also being required to attend a drug treatment programme.

The court agreed to vary the conditions to allow 2,000 to be paid to each of his victims in the first two years of his release with the remainder to be paid within a further 12 months.

Mr Justice Birmingham also observed that the sentence was considerably lenient before later adding it could be considered remarkable leniency.

Coyne, who played intercounty hurling for Dublin, had previously been free from his addiction for a number of years but had relapsed following the breakdown of a relationship after his partner had a miscarriage.

He has 35 previous convictions, including 25 for robbery, dating from 1998 to 2013.

Coyne, a former member of St Brigids GAA Club in Castleknock, claimed he had been under pressure to pay off a drug debt of 1,500 at the time he committed the post office robbery.
With water restrictions in place in Portlaoise, one talented Laois dog has a great trick she can do to prevent water wastage.

Penny is a two year old springer labrador cross who has been specially trained to actually sniff out water leaks as she walks along the roads.

She is owned by Borris-in-Ossory brothers Kevin and Noel Flanagan, with Noel (below) being her trainer and minder.

Penny detects leaks by smelling the chlorine which is added to public water to kill bacteria. She can sniff it by just walking along the road above watermains pipes, and she can do it far quicker and therefore cheaper than just by using detection equipment.

"As proof we listen with our apparatus as well. She found a massive leak in Durrow, within 20 or 30 minutes. It can take a week or two sometimes to find a leak along miles of water systems. You can't listen for it if cars are passing so it is often done at night," Kevin told the Leinster Express.

Kevin who owns a road drainage business, told the Leinster Express that he has high hopes for Penney, who is the only working water leak detection dog in Ireland.

"We have her for six or seven months only, she is young and still training but doing her job better and better."

He invested 9,000 to buy Penny and train her to follow Noel's commands, and is confident of a return as her reputation for sniffing out leaks grows.

Below: Penny after her big find in Durrow.

The business is called K9 Water Leak Detection.

"We do a lot of work for group water schemes in Laois. Leaks are in the system all over Ireland, losing millions of gallons," he said.

Penny is well looked after too he said.

"She has her own van, her own vet, lots of rests, top notch. She is very bubbly and very dedicated to Noel. She gets the best of everything, she will be one of my top employees over the next year," Kevin Flanagan said.
The death has occurred of Patrick (Paddy) Behan

River Lawns, Kill, Kildare / Rathcoole, Dublin



Suddenly at his home. Beloved son of the late Laurence and Kathleen, much loved and sadly missed by his brothers, sisters, sisters-in-law, brothers-in law, nieces, nephews, relatives and a large circle of friends.

Paddy will be reposing at his home tomorrow, Tuesday, from 3pm till 5pm. For those who would like to attend, strict Covid restrictions will apply. Removal from his home at 6pm to arrive at The Church of The Holy Family, Rathcoole, for prayers. Funeral Mass Wednesday at 10am followed by Burial in Newcastle Cemetery.

May Paddy Rest In Peace.

Those who would liked to attend the funeral but cannot due to current restrictions may leave a message in the "Condolences" section below.

The death has occurred of Philomena (Phil) Duggan (nee Norris)

St. Brigid's Terrace, Straffan, Kildare



Duggan (nee Norris), Philomena (Phil), St Brigid's Terrace, Straffan, Co. Kildare, July 18th 2021, peacefully at Naas General Hospital surrounded by her loving family. Deeply regretted by her loving husband Tom, brother Padraig, relatives, neighbours and close friends.

Rest In Peace

Due to current government guidelines, a private family funeral will take place for Phil (limited to 50 persons). Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to the current restrictions cannot, please leave a personal message for the family in the condolence's section below.

Phil's Funeral Mass can be viewed on Wednesday morning at 11am by clicking on the following link : https://www.celstra.ie/live-feed/.

Oliver Reilly Funeral Directors accept no responsibility for any live webcam interruptions or issues.

Phil's Funeral Cortege will be leaving Oliver Reilly's Funeral Home, Woods House, Clane at approx. 10:30am and will travel via Phil's late residence and then will arrive to St. Brigid's Church, Straffan for 11am Funeral Mass, followed by burial in Straffan Cemetery.

Family flowers only please, donations, if desired, to the Kildare Animal Foundation.

The death has occurred of Micheal KANE

St. Conleth's Place, Naas, Kildare



Predeceased by his wife Anna, son David and granddaughter Siobhan. Beloved father of Michael, Paul, Marie, Catherine, Veronica, Robert, Martin and Aine. Sadly missed by his family, daughters-in-law Marie, Lorna, Marie and Rose, sister Eithne, brothers Dermot, sons-in-law Brendan, John and Bill, grandchildren Paula, Barry, Brian, Emma, Rory, Orlaith, Hannah, Ben, Sinead, Ciara, Fiona, Aoife, Eimear, Aidan, Katie and Sam, sisters-in-law Mary and Olive, nieces, nephews, relatives and friends.

"May Micheal Rest In Peace"

Due to current Government guidelines regarding public gatherings, a private family funeral will take place with Funeral Mass on Wednesday morning at 12 noon in The Church of Our Lady and St. David, Naas. Those who would like to join the private funeral service remotely by webcam can do so by clicking on https://www.naasparish.ie/our-parish/naas-webcam or via the Naas Parish App on the webcam folder. Micheal will be laid to rest in St. Corban's Cemetery, Naas. Family flowers only please.

Those who would have liked to attend the funeral, but due to current restrictions can not, please feel free to leave a message in the condolence page below.

The death has occurred of Terry McWey (nee Moore)

Tower View Park, Kildare Town, Kildare



Terry McWey (nee Moore), Tower View Park, Kildare Town and late of Tully, July 19th 2021, peacefully at The Midlands Regional Hospital Portlaoise and previously in the loving & compassionate care at Oghill Nursing Home. Predeceased by her beloved husband Michael, son Joe, brother John, sisters Mary & Ann.

Sadly missed by her loving family, Thomas, Carmel, Suzanne, Vivienne & Michael, her cherished grandchildren, in laws, nieces, nephews, extended family and friends.

Ar dheis de go raibh a ainm





Funeral Arrangements Later

For all enquiries, please contact Oliver Reilly Ltd. Funeral Directors on (045) 868230.
A new five-year economic strategy for Kildare aims to help the county reach its potential, according to County Kildare Chamber.

The Kildare 2025 Economic Development Strategy outlines a roadmap for attracting new investment, sustaining existing industry and enterprises and ensuring long-term and sustainable growth for Kildare.

An online webinar last week, hosted by the council in conjunction with County Kildare Chamber, was told that the strategy is the culmination of a lengthy consultation process with key stakeholders as part of the Kildare Economic Forum.

The blueprint identifies eight key areas of focus, which will contribute to the future economic success of Kildare: Indigenous Industry/SMEs, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), Knowledge Economy, Equine Industry, Agri Food Sector, Sustainable Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure, Retail and Climate Action & Green Economy.

Kildare Chamber chief executive Allan Shine commented: We have the right people working together to ensure we implement this plan and its not just going to sit on a desk.

Jacqui McNabb, head of enterprise and economic development, Kildare Local Enterprise Office, said:

Businesses have been really challenged and put to the pin of their collars.

The timing for this strategy is good to take us forward. It certainly adds to an air of optimism for us.

Mr Shine added: Were very good at shouting about our strengths but we must also recognise any weaknesses we have and seek to address them.

Economist Jim Power, who was involved in the webinar, said he was familiar with Kildare because he lived in Celbridge in the 1980s.

He noted that incomes in Kildare were 11% above the national average and it was the fifth highest populated county and the second highest for foreign direct investment.

He said Kildare should continue to strive to be a place where people want to live, work, socialise and spend their money.

He added: Kildare will become a major economic force in the Irish and the European economy and there is a strong focus on foreign direct investment and the growth and development of indigenous business.
Minister of State for Trade Promotion, Digital and Company Regulation, Robert Troy met with the Chair of the North-West Regional Enterprise Plan Steering Committee Philip Martin, CEO of Cora Systems today at their offices in Carrick-on-Shannon to discuss progress on the development of a new Regional Enterprise Plan to 2024 for the region.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment is overseeing the development of nine new Regional Enterprise Plans to 2024 by regional stakeholders, which will identify growth opportunities, recognise vulnerabilities, and in response, strengthen the regional enterprise ecosystem to enable job creation in the regions.

Speaking after the meeting, Minister Troy said The development of a new Regional Enterprise Plan for the North-West is a key part of this Governments commitment to driving balanced regional development. To ensure the North-West region of Leitrim, Sligo and Donegal are best prepared to seize on the opportunities of a post-pandemic landscape, I have asked that these new Regional Plans are ambitious and achievable. I am very encouraged by the ideas emerging from the North-West process that I have heard today from the Chair, Philip Martin.

Minister Troy continued: The North-West has so much to offer, and with successful companies like Cora Systems thriving in the region, we know more companies can do so too. This new Plan when finalised will capitalise on the success of the previous Plan; with over 9 million approved last year for investment in new enterprise hubs and R&D facilities under the Border Enterprise Development. A strong thread coming through the new Regional Plans is collaboration between private and public organisations which I hope will help guide a more resilient and stronger North-West economy.

Philip Martin, Chair of the North-West Regional Enterprise Plan Steering Committee, said: It was great to have the opportunity to meet with Minister Troy in Carrick-on-Shannon today to talk about the challenges and the opportunities for businesses here in the North-West. The preparation of the new Regional Enterprise Plan for the North-West is continuing apace, and we are very pleased with the high levels of engagement and support from both public and private sectors with the process to date. We have real ambition for the Region and in making our new Plan the most impactful Plan possible.

The Regional Enterprise Plan process will see new plans developed for each region which will cover the period through to 2024. The plans are based on a bottom-up collaborative approach, involving development agencies, Enterprise Ireland (EI) and IDA Ireland, Local Enterprise Offices (LEOs), Local Authorities, higher and further education bodies and businesses.

A new National Oversight Group, chaired by Minister Robert Troy and Minister Damien English TD, has been established to oversee the development of the new Plans and to monitor their implementation at National level through to 2024. The new Regional Enterprise Plans are expected to be launched later this year.
Limerick TD and Minister of State for Skills and Further Education, Niall Collins, has this week stated that students who have been on the PUP will not miss out on their college grant, SUSI, when they return to college this September.

Minister Collins said, The student support scheme is a critical financial support for students participating in higher education. Some opposition politicians are scaremongering saying that students in receipt of the PUP will not qualify for their SUSI grant  this is completely false.

Collins explained that as in any statutory scheme, a core principle is that there is a consistency of approach and equitable treatment for applicants as part of the means assessment process. This applies to people who are dependent on different types of social protection payments.

Minister Collins added, The PUP has been treated as reckonable income since it was introduced in March 2020. Income from the Covid-19 payment has the same standing and is treated in a similar fashion to other Department of Social Protection payments, such as jobseeker's benefit or jobseeker's allowance. This means that a student or family on the PUP should be treated in the same way as a student or family who are dependent on jobseeker's benefit or allowance.

An important feature of the SUSI scheme is the change of circumstance provision. If a student has experienced a change of circumstances during 2021, they can apply to SUSI for their application to be assessed or re-assessed under a change of circumstances. Such a change in circumstances will clearly include no longer being in receipt of the PUP. Students will no longer be able to receive the payment from early September, in line with normal circumstances where students do not qualify for unemployment payments while at college.

Therefore, no student will miss out on the SUSI grant as a result of them being in receipt of the PUP because they will not be receiving it from September onwards concluded Minister Collins.
Major IT services company HCL Tech on Monday posted its first quarterly results for FY22 while also announcing its hiring status, employee compensation, as well as when it may call its staff back in office as most are working remotely for over a year in view of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

During the earnings uodate, HCL Technologies Chief Human Resources Officer (CHRO)Apparao V V said that currently, about 3% of the employees in India are coming to workplace, while others continue to work from home.

When asked about bringing the employees back in office, Apparoa said, "We will take (a call on) it as we go...depending on the customers' needs."

Moreover, the CHRO also informed that HCL expects to vaccinate 100 per cent of its employees in the ongoing quarter. Currently, about 74% of its employees have been inoculated.

India's other major IT services companies TCS, Infosys and Wipro are also hoping to see their employees in offices sooner or later this year.

While announcing their earnings update for the quarter ended 30 June, 2021, Infosys, TCS and Wipro are now expecting their employees all over the world to return to offices, fully vaccinated, around the second half of 2021.

Moreover, Bengaluru-based Wipro is likely to bring employees slowly back to work from September as vaccination gains pace, depending on the pandemic and third wave, said Saurabh Govil, chief human resources officer, Wipro.

Moreover, in terms of employee headcount and attrition, HCL Tech said that at the end of the June 2021 quarter, the compoany had 1,76,499 employees with a net addition of 7,522 people. Its attrition for information technology (IT) services (on last 12-month basis) was at 11.8 per cent.

During the briefing, Apparao V V said that last year, the company had onboarded 14,600 freshers globally.

"This year, we are targeting anywhere between 20,000-22,000 freshers and I will not be surprised if we cross this number...in Q2, we are targeting (to onboard) 6,000 (freshers)," Apparao said.

Apart from this, the other three major IT services companies of India are also expecting to hire over 1 lakh college graduates combined this fiscal year.





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India and the US are exploring the possibility of a visit by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and it could take place as early as next week. It is learnt that both sides are in the process of finalising the dates and other relevant details of the visit that would be Blinken's first trip to India as the US Secretary of State.

There was no official comment on the proposed visit.

The focus of the visit would be to prepare grounds for an in-person summit of leaders of the Quad grouping comprising India, Japan, Australia and the US in Washington later this year.

The US has been looking at convening the in-person summit of the leaders of Quad to boost practical cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region as well as to send a strong signal about Washington's commitment to the grouping.

Blinken would be the second high-ranking Biden administration official to visit India since it came to power in January.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd J Austin paid a three-day visit to India in March to further boost bilateral defence and security ties.

Austin's visit to India came days after the top leadership of the Quad grouping of India, the US, Japan and Australia vowed to expand their cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region at a virtual summit hosted by President Joe Biden.

The evolving situation in the Indo-Pacific region in the wake of China's increasing military muscle-flexing has become a major talking point among leading global powers.

Several countries and blocs have come out with their vision for the Indo-Pacific considering its growing strategic interests.

In April, the European Union came out with a comprehensive strategy for the Indo-Pacific listing its priorities and vision for the region that the bloc said represented the world's "economic and strategic centre of gravity".

During Blinken's India visit, both sides are expected to focus on a range of bilateral and regional issues including the fast-evolving situation in Afghanistan, China's growing assertiveness in the region and ways to boost cooperation in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.

External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar visited the US in May during which he had met senior executives of the leading US pharma companies. The supply of raw materials by the US to India to boost its domestic production was a major focus of Jaishankar's five-day visit to the US.

It is expected that the situation in Afghanistan will be a major area of focus in the Indo-US talks.

Afghanistan witnessed a series of terror attacks in the last few weeks as the US withdrew the majority of its troops from the country and aimed to complete the drawdown by August 31, ending nearly two-decade of its military presence in the country.

The Taliban was evicted from power by the US-led forces in 2001. Now, as the US is pulling back its troops, the Taliban fighters are attempting to gain control of various parts of the country.

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A 100-pound opah, also known as a moonfish, washed up on a beach near Sunset Beach in northern Oregon on July 14.

Beachgoers in Oregon were recently wowed by the dazzling remains of an exotic 100-pound (45 kilograms) fish after it washed up hundreds of miles from its normal habitat.

The 3.5-foot-long (1 meter) opah, also known as a moonfish , was discovered on the shore of Sunset Beach in northern Oregon at 8 a.m. local time on July 14. The colorful creature had a mix of silvery and bright reddish-orange scales across its flattened circular body, with occasional white dots and glinting, golden eyes.

After receiving photos of the beached fish from a passerby, staff from the nearby Seaside Aquarium recovered the remains. Visitors at the aquarium were later treated to seeing the rare specimen up close and personal.

Related: 13 bizarre things that washed up on beaches

Image 1 of 4 A detailed look at the opah's beautiful coloration. (Image credit: TiffanyBoothe/SeasideAquarium) Image 2 of 4 A close up of the opah's golden eye. (Image credit: TiffanyBoothe/SeasideAquarium) Image 3 of 4 A close up of the opah's pectoral fin. (Image credit: TiffanyBoothe/SeasideAquarium) Image 4 of 4 A close up of the opah's tail. (Image credit: TiffanyBoothe/SeasideAquarium)

It is not clear what happened to the opah, but it was in "great condition, meaning it was close to shore when it died," Tiffany Boothe, assistant manager at the Seaside Aquarium, told The Washington Post .

Opah are pelagic fish, meaning they live in the open ocean, but are commonly found off the coast of California and around Hawaii, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) . However, it is extremely rare to find one this far north. "I wouldn't expect an opah that size to normally be off Oregon," Heidi Dewar, a research biologist with NOAA Fisheries who was not involved in the recovery, told the Post.

One possible explanation is that warming ocean temperatures, caused by climate change , are forcing opah to leave waters that have become too hot and move into once-colder waters. They have been known to travel long distances in response to environmental conditions, according to NOAA.

"We are seeing some marine organisms moving northward as ocean temperatures increase," Dewar said. However, there is not enough data to confirm that warming seas drove the fish northward, she added.

In 2015, a study led by NOAA found that opah are the only fully warm-blooded fish alive today, Live Science previously reported . Unlike other ectothermic fish, opah are endothermic and can control their body temperatures to stay warm, for instance, in the deep sea.

Little else is known about their biology, although scientists think opah can grow to over 6 feet (1.8 m) and weigh more than 600 pounds (272 kg), according to the Seaside Aquarium .

Although opah are not targeted by fishers, they have become an increasingly common bycatch for swordfish fisheries, and their rich meat has become a popular seafood But because a population assessment has never been carried out, there is no way to know if opah populations are stable, and if fishing has had a serious impact on their numbers, according to NOAA. It is also unclear how many species of opah there really are.

The beached opah in Oregon has been frozen by the Seaside Aquarium for the start of the next school year, when a group of lucky children will be given the opportunity to dissect it. After this educational exercise is complete, researchers will carry out further analysis of the hefty fish.

"Not a lot is known about these beautiful fish," Boothe said, "so anything we can learn will be beneficial."

Originally published on Live Science.
Bezos shows the aviation glasses that once belonged to Amelia Earhart, which he took with him during the flight, at the post-flight press conference.

Now that Jeff Bezos has reached the edge of space, does that mean the world's richest man is an astronaut?

The claim, made by the spaceflight company belonging to the former CEO of Amazon, has been met with skepticism by some experts.

"Our astronauts have completed training and are a go for launch," Blue Origin, the suborbital spaceflight company owned by Bezos, announced on Twitter yesterday evening (July 19). Less than 10 hours later, at 9:22 a.m. EDT, Bezos and three other passengers  Mary "Wally" Funk, an 82-year-old aviator; Oliver Daemen, an 18-year-old son of a Dutch hedge fund CEO; and Bezos' brother Mark  finished their successful, slightly more than 10-minute flight by touching down in a puff of dust not far from the New Shepard rocket's launch site in West Texas, Live Science reported .

Related: Photos: Blue Origin's New Shepard mission to space

At the highest point of its ascent, Bezos' passenger capsule crossed the Karman line, the boundary 62 miles (100 kilometers) above sea level that some scientists use to demarcate where Earth's atmosphere ends and outer space begins.

It could seem like an open and shut case, then: The richest man on the planet went to outer space, so he must be an astronaut. But it takes more than the crossing of a boundary to earn the title, space experts said.

"'Training'" Scott Manley, a space commentator, tweeted as a reply to Blue Origin. "Remember Wally [Funk] has more flight experience than any astronaut in space right now." Funk has logged 19,600 flight hours on a variety of aircraft and has taught more than 3,000 people to fly.

Funk, who prepared to be an astronaut as part of the 1961 Mercury 13 program but was excluded from spaceflight by NASA because of her gender, is the only member of the crew with any flight training.

Usually, to qualify as an applicant for a NASA training program, astronauts must have a master's degree in a STEM field and either two years of relevant professional experience or 1,000 hours of logged pilot-in-command time on a jet aircraft. After meeting this first requirement, they must pass a strenuous physical evaluation before embarking on a two-year-long basic training course, in which they learn everything from how to pilot a spacecraft to how to communicate in Russian with the Russian Mission Control Center, according to NASA.

Once they have passed basic training, NASA astronauts are assessed for suitability before being assigned to a mission, which they may take up to several years to prepare for before ever taking flight. International Space Station crews tend to train for two years in order to spend six months in space.

In 2017, more than 18,000 people applied to NASA's astronaut class of 2017, but only 12 were selected for further training.

Related: What does it take to become an astronaut?

In contrast, Bezos and his crew received just 14 hours of training over two days before they blasted off, during which they were prepared for nominal, "off nominal" and emergency procedures inside the passenger capsule, Blue Origin lead flight director Steve Lanius said during a July 18 news conference .

Aside from Funk's prior experience, these 14 hours constituted the only training the crewmembers received.

Blue Origin made history when four passengers, including Jeff Bezos, lifted off and made it to space aboard New Shepard. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Charles Bolden, a former NASA administrator and astronaut, said that to be considered astronauts, candidates must be prepared to fly the vehicle and work in emergency situations  tasks that the New Shepard, as an autonomous craft, is designed to prevent its passengers from performing.

"When you talk about tourism, you want to try to take the interaction of the human out of the play as much as you can, so you can have a tourist," Charles Bolden, a former NASA administrator and astronaut, told CBS News before the launch. "I was surprised that they were walking up the steps. The most stressful thing they will do today, physically, is get in the vehicle."

The blurring of the definition of "astronaut" to include a trained professional, a space tourist or really anyone who happens to be momentarily floating above our heads could become a more frequent focus for linguistic debate in the future, as more and more tourists embark on suborbital flights.

NASA's official definition is hardly helpful at settling the score; it refers to an astronaut as both a crewmember aboard a spacecraft and someone who makes "space sailing"  which derives from the Greek word for astronaut  their profession.

And then there's the debate about where space begins. Some people say it starts at the Karman line, where the atmosphere becomes too thin to sustain a normal aircraft in flight. Others contend that the line may be as far up as 93 miles (150 km). By one definition, Bezos could be an astronaut. By the other, he isn't even a space tourist.

"I am reasonably certain there is no single compelling definition for 'the edge of space,'" Edwin Turner, professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton University, told Business Insider.

Turner says that a popular definition of space should be the lowest altitude a craft can complete one orbit of the Earth at (without needing to boost itself) before it is slowed by atmospheric friction and dragged back to Earth.

This may mean that an aircraft of one size or shape could arrive in space earlier than another, or that the line may be shifted by changes to the atmosphere, he added.

Perhaps going by definitions alone is unhelpful. After his brief suborbital joyride, the best way to consider whether astronaut belongs on the Amazon CEOs CV might be to ask whether he is now qualified to work as one. If that answer is a no, the job, and the title, should probably be left to the pros.

Originally published on Live Science.
Ancient "megaripples" as tall as five-story buildings are hiding deep under Louisiana, and their unique geology indicates that they formed in the immediate aftermath of the asteroid strike that killed the nonavian dinosaurs , a new study finds.

The 52-foot-tall (16 meters) megaripples are about 5,000 feet (1,500 m) under the Iatt Lake area, in north central Louisiana, and date to the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago, when that part of the state was underwater, the researchers said. The megaripples' size and orientation suggest that they formed after the giant space rock, known as the Chicxulub asteroid, slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula, leading to the Chicxulub impact tsunami , whose waves then rushed into shallower waters and created the megaripple marks on the seafloor, the researchers said.

The occurrence of "ripples of that size means something very big had to disturb the water column," study lead researcher Gary Kinsland, a professor in the School of Geosciences at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, told Live Science. "This is just further evidence that the Chicxulub impact ended the Cretaceous period."

Related: In images: How North America grew as a continent

The project began when the energy corporation Devon Energy took a 3D seismic survey of Iatt Lake. A seismic survey entails creating loud sound waves (often made with "explosives or big thumps," Kinsland said) and placing surface detectors around the area that can capture the returning sound waves, which are reflected when they hit various underground rock layers. Data from these sound waves allow researchers to make maps of the underground geology.

Study co-researcher Kaare Egedahl, then a master's student of petroleum geology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, took the Devon Energy data and created a seismic image of the subterranean area. "Kaare brought it to me, and he said, 'What's this?' because it's so different than anything you would expect to see in deposits laid down by the sea or by rivers," Kinsland said. "I looked at it, and I went 'OMG.'"

A black-and-white seismic image of the megaripples, created by study co-researcher Kaare Egedahl for his master's thesis. The seismic image covers an area of about 11 by 7 miles (18 by 11 kilometers). (Image credit: Kinsland, GL. et al. Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2021); Kaare Egedahl)

Kinsland had previously studied the Chicxulub impact crater. When he looked at the seismic image, "I immediately saw the ripples, and I immediately knew the direction the water would have had to have been traveling [to create them]," he said. "And I knew that if you go backwards from that, you run right in Chicxulub."

Kinsland was able to determine the tsunami's direction because the megaripples are asymmetrical, which shows the direction the water was flowing when they were made. In this case, the long, asymmetrical side of the megaripples have a south-southeast-facing slope, which points back to the Chicxulub impact crater, he said.

This map shows the Chicxulub impact crater (red arrow) and the location of the newly discovered megaripples (red star) that were likely left by a tsunami caused when the asteroid hit 66 million years ago. The numbers represent previously identified tsunami deposits from the event. (Image credit: Kinsland, GL. et al. Earth and Planetary Science Letters (2021); Original base map by Ron Blakey/Colorado Plateau Geosystems; Nina Zamanialavijeh)

The megaripples have an average wavelength (from one crest to the next) of 1,968 feet (600 m). That, combined with their 52-foot-high amplitude, makes them "the largest ripples documented on Earth," the researchers wrote in the study.

Moreover, these megaripples are at the top of the Cretaceous/Paleogene geological boundary dating to 66 million years ago, and lie beneath a layer of debris that were kicked up in the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact, the researchers wrote in the study.

Related: Waves of destruction: History's biggest tsunamis

How did the megaripples persist?

The megaripples indicate that after the space rock hit Earth 66 million years ago, a tsunami rushed across the Gulf of Mexico and then shoaled and broke offshore as it "reached the abrupt shallowing of the Gulf of Mexico within what is now central Louisiana," the researchers wrote in the study. "The resulting pulses of water flowing north-northeast over the shelf area produced the asymmetric megaripples which are imaged within the seismic data."

But tiny ripples left by waves on a sandy beach are short-lived. So how did the megaripples persist for 66 million years?

After the tsunami created the megaripples, they remained underwater. They were deep enough underwater that when storms swept through the Gulf of Mexico, the megaripples remained undisturbed, Kinsland said. Then, the megaripples were buried by shale  in essence, a sedimentary rock made of mud mixed with clay and mineral fragments  over a period of about 5 million years, during the Paleocene epoch (66 million to 56 million years ago), he said. Later, that shale was covered by even younger sediments, he added.

The study was published online July 2 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters .

Originally published on Live Science.
How much pollution is Jeff Bezos going to generate during his trip to space? It turns out that, when it comes to adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket should be among the cleanest launch vehicles around, though climate change concerns from suborbital spacecraft could increase as similar flights take off in the near future.

Rockets aren't exactly green technology, and their overall environmental impact is still being studied. The vast majority of launches produce things like water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), soot, and aluminum oxides, depending on what type of fuel they use, according to a helpful explainer from the website Everyday Astronaut, which covers different aspects of spaceflight.

New Shepard, which billionaire Bezos will ride on its initial crewed flight tomorrow (July 20), is combining liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen in its engine to generate thrust, meaning "the main emissions will be water and some minor combustion products, and virtually no CO2," Darin Toohey, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, told Live Science in an email. (Water  H2O  is composed of hydrogen and oxygen.)

Related: See photos of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket

More: Watch Bezos launch into space in this livestream

Water in rocket exhaust can increase the number of clouds in the atmosphere, Toohey added, including the iridescent "mother-of-pearl" clouds often seen at sunset after a launch. These can impact the upper atmospheric layers known as the mesosphere and ionosphere , but because the number of rocket launches is so low at present, they are not much of a concern in climate modeling, he and a co-author wrote in a 2019 article for Eos, the news magazine of the American Geophysical Union.

That could change as launch rates increase in the near future, and a good deal of the Eos article involves a call for more studies of the potential impact from such flights.

Carbon dioxide pollution from spaceflight is still fairly negligible, with rockets accounting for around 0.0000059% of all CO2 emissions in 2018, according to Everyday Astronaut. (The airline industry was around 2.4% of global CO2 emissions that same year). But while ice and clouds can reflect sunlight back into space and reduce global heat, water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide , and the longer that vapor remains in the atmosphere, the greater it will heat our planet.

"Water vapor up in the higher parts of the atmosphere are not completely harmless," Florian Kordina, who wrote the Everyday Astronaut article, told Live Science in a direct message on Twitter. "But since New Shepard will cut off its engine relatively early in the flight, very little [water] will even get high enough to stay up there."

The main concern when it comes to rocket flights are small particles such as soot and aluminum oxides, Toohey said. "These can have a disproportionate impact on the atmosphere," he wrote. "A very small amount can make a big difference."

In 2010, he and two other researchers modeled the effects of soot injected into the atmosphere from 1,000 private suborbital flights a year and found that they could increase temperatures over the poles by 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) and reduce polar sea ice levels by 5% to 15%.

But New Shephard's engine doesn't produce much in the way of particulates, Toohey said. "It might be among the cleanest of the fuels in that context."

Originally published on Live Science.
When Amazon founder Jeff Bezos offered her a seat on the first crewed flight of his space tourism enterprise Blue Origin , it was an invitation aviator Wally Funk had waited six decades to receive.

Funk, age 82, is one of a dozen women who have come to be known as the Mercury 13 in pointed contrast to NASA's original astronauts, the Mercury 7 . Funk and the others were skilled pilots who, like their male counterparts, dreamed of flying even higher, to space. But they were never included in NASA's vision for spaceflight and never became astronauts  until now.

"Wally Funk has really never given up on her dream of spaceflight," Margaret Weitekamp, curator of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum's space history department who wrote a book about the women who lobbied to be included in NASA 's astronaut program, told Space.com. "There's a nice bit of poetic justice in including her on this flight."

Related: How to watch Blue Origin launch Jeff Bezos into space on July 20

Live updates: Blue Origin's first astronaut launch updates

Fighting for access to space

Funk and Bezos will make up half the crew of the first crewed flight of Blue Origin's reusable suborbital space tourism vehicle, dubbed New Shepard, when it launches from the west Texas desert on Tuesday morning (July 20). She'll become the oldest person to fly in space when she launches.

But Funk laid the groundwork for this flight during a brief period six decades ago, when she became one of the group that was, decades later, dubbed the Mercury 13 and is often misleadingly portrayed as a sort of women's counterpart for NASA's first group of astronauts, although the agency never endorsed their efforts and only began recruiting women for spaceflight in 1978.

"It was never a NASA project, it was really a privately funded investigation into women's physical capabilities for spaceflight," Weitekamp said. Funk, already an accomplished pilot in her early 20s, learned about the project in 1960 when she read about Jerrie Cobb , a female pilot who volunteered to undergo tests meant to determine whether a human body could withstand the strain of spaceflight.

Related: As space billionaires take flight, 'the right stuff' for space travel enters a new era

Those tests were developed for NASA by a team led by William Randolph Lovelace and were designed to identify any weaknesses that might identify hidden health issues before flight. NASA used the tests to evaluate the military test pilots it had recruited for the young human spaceflight program.

But where the agency was focused on reaching milestones in space exploration, Lovelace had a bigger picture in mind, an ideal pulled from science fiction of whole offices lofted from 1950s America into orbit. Just as women were the secretaries and telephone operators on Earth , so too they would be in space, this line of thinking went, according to Weitekamp.

Independently of his NASA work, then, Lovelace was interested in how women's bodies fared during these tests, which spanned a week. The tests included everything from a tilt table and a stint in a sensory deprivation chamber to examining the women's stomach acids.

Related: Blue Origin's launch with Jeff Bezos: Everything you need to know

Surviving members of the group of women informally dubbed the Mercury 13 attended the 1995 shuttle launch of Eileen Collins as she became the first female shuttle pilot. Wally Funk is second from the left. (Image credit: NASA)

Funk went into them with a competitive streak.

"Her aim was to not only to just do it to the best of her ability, every test, but to try to do better than whoever had gone before her," Sue Nelson, a science journalist who later traveled with Funk to research her book, "Wally Funks Race for Space" (Chicago Review Press, 2019), told Space.com. "She just is immensely driven and competitive, which is a sort of the typical early astronaut, test pilot type really  she fits the mold of those early astronauts."

And Funk and 12 other women were deemed to have passed Lovelace's tests. "The 13 of the 25 who became the finalists on average did as well or in some cases better than the Mercury 7 astronauts did," Weitekamp said. (Some of the tests focused on cardiovascular health , where the women had a key advantage, she noted, since most of the Mercury 7 smoked.)

Lovelace wanted to bring those 13 in for still more tests, this time at government facilities, but couldn't get approval. And while some, like Funk, applied directly to NASA, it didn't make a difference.

"I got a hold of NASA, four times, I said, 'I want to become an astronaut.' But nobody would take me," Funk said in the video released to announce her flight. "I didn't think that I would ever get to go up."

Related: Meet the crew launching on Blue Origin's 1st astronaut flight on July 20

Unlike the close-knit men of the Mercury program, Funk hadn't met most of the other participants, since the women had undergone the initial tests in ones and twos. And, of course, whereas the Mercury 7 became celebrities and spent the bulk of their careers with NASA, the women found other ways to fill their time.

"It was a very short part of their lives," Nelson said. "Wally just kept on with her career and doing loads of interesting things."

For Funk, with no spaceflight on the horizon, she set about traveling on Earth instead for a few years, then building a career as a pilot, flight teacher, and eventually investigating plane crashes and other safety issues for the government. In the video released with Blue Origin about her joining the flight, she said that she has racked up 19,600 flight hours on a variety of aircraft and has taught more than 3,000 people to fly.

NASA eventually came around on flying women, too late for Funk and the others. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space in 1983, although it wasn't until 1995 that NASA made Eileen Collins the first female pilot of the space shuttle. (Collins invited Funk and others who underwent Lovelace's tests to watch the launch.)

"Like so many things that we see in women's history, the advancement happens in fits and starts," Weitekamp said. "There's some interest and then it doesn't necessarily have a direct legacy."

Related: From Yuri Gagarin's launch to today, human spaceflight has always been political

Aviator Wally Funk in a video released to announce her participation in Blue Origin's first crewed flight on July 20, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Opportunity 60 years later

Blue Origin has long showed an interest in nodding to spaceflight's history, so it's not a coincidence that Funk will step inside the New Shepard capsule on its first crewed flight. (The vehicle itself, of course, is dubbed for one of the group she so notably did not become, Alan Shepard , who became the first American in space with a suborbital flight on May 5, 1961.)

For Nelson, seeing Bezos' announcement was a poignant moment. "It's poignant, she has waited a lifetime for this," she said. "I just got a lump in my throat and tears welled up." And while Funk has long held a ticket with Blue Origin competitor Virgin Galactic , Nelson said, the New Shepard model represents a different vision of spaceflight.

"It's so much more akin in my eyes as a sort of old-fashioned astronaut experience, more similar to the one that if NASA had allowed women into the astronaut corps 20 years earlier," Nelson said.

And from Nelson's description of calling to congratulate her friend on the invitation, Funk is conscious of the weight of history that she'll carry into the capsule.

"She said, 'I've waited a lifetime, honey,' and then she said, 'I'm going up for all of us.'"

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her on Twitter @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Blue Origin founder and billionaire Jeff Bezos is scheduled to blast off to space today (July 20), a flight that will concurrently set two records for oldest and youngest person in space.

Bezos will be aboard Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket, accompanied by female aviation pioneer Wally Funk, 82, his brother Mark Bezos, and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, a physics student from the Netherlands whose father was the ultimate winner of an auction for a seat on the inaugural crewed flight of the private spacecraft.

You can watch the launch right here, as Live Science will host a livestream. The rocket will leave the pad in remote West Texas at approximately 9 a.m. EDT/6 a.m. PDT. Coverage begins at 7:30 a.m. EDT/4:30 a.m. PDT. There is no public in-person viewing of the launch site.

Related: See photos of Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket

Inaugural voyage

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of developing vehicles for suborbital spaceflight, a goal that later expanded to orbital flight and even the development of a moon lander, Blue Moon. (The goal for an operational lander is set for 2024, but NASA awarded the contract for the development of a lander for its current Artemis mission to the moon to another private spaceflight company, SpaceX, leaving the future timeline of the project in question.)

Part of Blue Origin's goal is to enable private space tourism. The company held an auction for a seat on today's inaugural crewed flight, and an anonymous winner paid $28 million for the ticket. That person backed out, however, saying that they had scheduling conflicts and would ride a later mission. Oliver Daemen's father Joes Daemen, a hedge-fund manager from the Netherlands, was the runner-up.

The younger Daemen will become the youngest person ever to travel to space, beating by seven years the record of cosmonaut Gherman Titov, who orbited Earth at the age of 25 in 1961. Meanwhile, Funk will beat John Glenn's record for oldest person in space, which he set at the age of 77 in 1998.

Technical spectacle

Today's flight will be the 16th for New Shepard, but the first with any humans aboard. The rocket first flew in April 2015, though the model that the Bezos brothers, Funk and Daemen will fly aboard was first launched in January 2021.

New Shepard consists of a six-person crew compartment perched atop a reusable booster powered by a BE-3 engine (for "Blue Engine 3"). It's piloted by onboard computers and does not require human intervention either from a pilot or from the ground. It's designed to reach the Karman line located 62 miles (100 kilometers) up, which is one internationally-recognized boundary for space. (According to the U.S. government, space starts 50 miles, or 80.5 kilometers, up, and anyone who travels to that altitude is eligible for a U.S. astronaut badge.)

Bezos, Bezos, Funk and Daemen will experience suborbital spaceflight, meaning their craft will reach space, but that its trajectory will take it back down to Earth before it could actually orbit the planet. The passengers will experience a few moments of weightlessness and a pretty dramatic view of the planet. In 2016, Blue Origin fitted one of its boosters with a camera for a flight nearly to the Karman line, which is available on YouTube and approximates what the passengers aboard New Shepard will see.

The flight comes on the heels of another billionaire's cruise into space. On July 11, Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson traveled on the first crewed mission of the Unity 22 spacecraft , reaching 53 miles (86 km) above Earth's surface.

Originally published on Live Science
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The Velvet Queen (La Panthere des neiges), Marie Amiguets lushly lensed documentary which world premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the Cinema for the Climate section, has lured buyers in major territories, including the U.S.

Represented in international markets by London-based banner The Bureau Sales, The Velvet Queen follows award-winning nature photographer Vincent Munier and writer Sylvain Tesson on a journey across the Tibetan highlands to document the infamously elusive snow leopard. Munier introduces Tesson to the subtle art of waiting from a blind spot, tracking animals and finding the patience to catch sight of the beasts. Through their exploration of the Tibetan peaks, the two men engage in a philosophical conversation about the place of humans among living beings and celebrate the beauty of the world.

Produced by Paprika (Two of Us), Kobalann and Le Bureau, the highly cinematic documentary also boasts an original score by Warren Ellis featuring Nick Cave.

Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired U.S. rights to the documentary and is planning a traditional theatrical release for the title.

The Velvet Queen is a stunningly beautiful experience, filled with a lifetimes worth of wisdom and insight, said Oscilloscope Laboratories Dan Berger. Marie Amiguets non-traditional storytelling truly embraces the adage its not the destination, its the journey. And what a wonderful journey it is.

The Bureau Sales, whose team is headed by Clementine Hugot, also scored a flurry of deals for the documentary, which was shown for the first time to buyers and audiences at Cannes. Territories closed at Cannes include Australia and New Zealand (Madman), Germany and Austria (MFA), Switzerland (Filmcoopi), Benelux (Periscoop & Lumiere), Italy (Wanted), Spain (Wanda) and China (DD Dream). Other territories are currently under discussions.

Haut et court, the prestige French distributor of Cannes-prizewinning Compartment no.6, will release The Velvet Queen in December.

I couldnt be happier with the initial sales made on the film so far, said Clementine Hugot, head of sales at The Bureau Sales. We have passionate distributors attached who took the time to prioritize the film and believe in its potential in spite of coverage that often focuses on competition titles and high profile premieres, when in reality films such as this are what need the support most.

Tesson, who is also credited as cinematographer on the film along with Munier, previously wrote about his exploration in the illustrated book La Panthere des neiges which won the prestigious Prix Renaudot in 2019 and sold more than 270,000 units.

Le Bureau is a well-established production company with a track record in documentaries (David Dufresnes The Monopoly of Violence) and films (Jessica Hausners Little Joe).

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After months of delay, Harvey Weinstein has been extradited to Los Angeles to face charges that he raped or sexually assaulted five women.

Weinstein was taken on Tuesday morning from the Wende Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison near Buffalo, N.Y. He is expected to be held at the Twin Towers jail in downtown Los Angeles pending his trial.

This morning at approximately 9:25 custody of Mr. Harvey Weinstein was handed over to the appropriate officials for transport to the state of California per a court order, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision said in a statement.

Weinsteins attorneys had fought the extradition, arguing that he was in poor health and needed treatment on his eyes to keep from going blind. The defense had filed a habeas petition in Los Angeles court objecting to the extradition, and were still waiting on a ruling from a Los Angeles judge.

Last month, a judge in Buffalo rejected Weinsteins attempts to block the extradition, overruling the defenses objections to the paperwork. Los Angeles officials have assured the court that Weinstein can receive adequate medical care in county jail.

Under the rules governing extradition, Los Angeles prosecutors have 120 days to bring Weinstein to trial once he arrives in Los Angeles. However, both sides must still engage in pre-trial motions, so it is not entirely clear when a trial can begin.

Weinstein is already serving 23 years on his February 2020 conviction on two felony counts in New York. He faces an additional 11 counts in Los Angeles, which carry a total maximum sentence of 140 years.

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The Malaga Festivals Spanish Screenings, the only dedicated Spanish film sales and promotion market in Spain, is determined to grow, adapting to industrys demands for its 15th edition, which will run Oct. 20-23.

Part of Malagas far larger Malaga Festival Industry Zone (MAFIZ) umbrella of initiatives, the Spanish Screenings will host for the first time ever a Regional Film Hub, aimed at giving Spanish regions a space from which to promote their films.

Malagas industrial centerpiece will also renew its sidebar Next From Spain, offering exhaustive information of the Spanish film releases scheduled for 2022 and 2023, meeting an increasing demand.

Next From Spain and Neocine-Malaga sections have been for many years at the service of Spanish producers, providing them with a space to screen trailers/teasers of their next films. Spanish Screenings 2021 now responds to the demand of buyers, festival programmers and national and international distributors, informing about the Spanish cinema that is to come, said Juan Antonio Vigar, Malaga Film Festival director.

Facing a necessary growth effort to meet international industry requests, the Spanish Screenings will be inviting executives from the streaming platforms to participate more actively in the Spanish film market, reacting to the increasing appetite for Spanish-language films by the streamers.

Our short-term goal is to increase profiles, encompassing pay, televisions and digital creators platforms, Vigar said.

Further highlights of the Spanish Screenings upcoming edition take in Hack MAFIZ Malaga section, aimed at digital creators from Spain and Latin America. Fifteen of them will enjoy the opportunity of meeting with Iberoamerican film industry leaders at the Malaga Festival next years edition.

A municipal entity, Malaga Procultura integrates both the Malaga Film Festival and the Malaga Film Office, also headed by Vigar, who has constantly innovated since taking over the Malaga Festivals reins in 2013.

Recent international shoots in Malaga are films such as The Hitmans Wifes Bodyguard, Operation Mincemeat and True Things About Me, plus series such as Warrior Nun and Season 4 of The Crown.

Variety spoke with Vigar about the Spanish Screenings 2021s main changes and how the Malaga Film Office, now celebrating its 20th anniversary, has recovered its lensing activity, rapidly shrinking the impact of the pandemic lockdown

Does the launch of Regional Film Hub mark a recognition of the growing importance of regions in film production financing in Spain?

Spain is diverse, defined by different cultural and linguistic identities, which are reflected in its regional film. The regions bet on and finance their film and need their own space to promote the films they support. For this reason, Spanish Screenings, the platform for the sale and promotion of Spanish cinema, will offer this year a new space for Spanish film institutes to screen the movies they supported. In this way, Regional Film Hub will be a new platform for the promotion and diffusion of the cinema of the different Spanish communities.

How will the Next From Spain sidebar help to promote projects?



Next From Spain will screen teasers, trailers and 10-minute cuts and will offer a catalog with detailed information on when a Work in Progress version and a completed film will be available. The development of this new tool will facilitate the distributors work and help these productions international promotion and find both national and international distribution.

A further challenge for the 2021 edition is to strengthen the presence of streaming buyers

In recent years the audiovisual industry has radically changed, new production formats have emerged and therefore new professionals in the international market. It is no longer only feature films that are sold; Spain is becoming a benchmark in series, documentaries and animation production and also in digital creators and talent.

Spanish Screenings, as the only official Spanish audiovisual market, is forced to grow and evolve to adapt to what the international industry now demands and, therefore, new and urgent needs arise in its organization and logistics to place this project on a competitive level with other international markets that strongly support their respective films.

It is important to look at streaming platforms and invite them to participate more actively in the Spanish film market. The Spanish sales agents demand their participation and we have to respond to this demand because Spanish Screenings is a market at the service of the sector and our films international distribution.

Why have you set up Hack MAFIZ Malaga?



Hack MAFIZ Malaga is a new bet aimed at digital creators. With this initiative, the Malaga Festival faces the sectors challenge of reaching new audiences who consume audiovisual content through very diverse channels and have a community identity that requires a much more active dialogue on the part of creators and content producers. Hack MAFIZ Malaga allows us to reach several objectives: to create a seedbed of talent; generate new audiences; dialogue with creators; make known new talent to industrial players and see them in action.

Malaga Film Offices activity grew 2% last year, despite the pandemic. Could you explain that growth?

Indeed, in 2020 it experienced a 2% increase in the number of shoots served, 426 audiovisual projects in total. The growth obeyed several factors. One of them is that production companies are not only interested in Malaga for its natural benefits (climate, locations), but also for its great professionals and companies in the sector, who have demonstrated the technical and creative quality of the Malaga industry and because they know that the City Council understands what a production is and implies and therefore that filming in Malaga is easy, fast and flexible.

That increase has also been possible thanks to the recovery of activity in the second half, since many of the audiovisual projects that had been postponed by the pandemic began to be carried out. But we also aroused the interest of new projects, generated by the increase in audiovisual consumption on streaming platforms. Compensating the first six months, and finally obtaining a positive yearly balance despite the circumstances.

Can you explain the management model applied by Malaga Film Office and its impact over the years?



It is a model based on experience, on the fact that in these 20 years it has attended more than 6,000 shoots. Malaga Film Office has become a focus for attracting investment. In fact, the activity carried out by this office from its start-up has meant a investment of more than 93 million ($109 million) total budget invested directly in the city between September 2001 and June 2021, demonstrating it performs as a key instrument for Malagas economic revitalization.

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Bugs Bunny, Sylvester, Yosemite Sam, Yogi Bear and Fred Flintstone all have one thing in common: Not only do they appear in Space Jam: A New Legacy, but behind the scenes, voiceover actor Jeff Bergman is responsible for voicing all these characters.

A legendary voice actor, Bergman stepped into the booth as one of the voices of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Sylvester after Mel Blanc died in 1989..

Bergman talks about his career and the advice Blanc gave him when he was getting started in the Industry.

What was it like going to the premiere and seeing it with an audience?

It was epic to walk into a theater with a few hundred people. In the theater was Don Cheadle and of course the star, LeBron James and our wonderful director.

It was so strangely surreal because you just didnt think this was going to happen about three months ago. We didnt think it was going to happen, but there we were with popcorn and snacks. It was so joyful and emotional.

Whats your memory of animation and Bugs Bunny through the years?

We have to go back to the late 1960s, early 70s when people had only had a television in their homes for 15 years. Anything animated on television would blow your mind.

I remember seeing Bugs Bunny in a Tang commercial and when I saw that, I thought Id freak out. I thought, Theres Bugs Bunny who comes out of a hole and hes advertising Tang? It was this convergence of advertising, animation and color and it was all unbelievable.

That was the first inspirational thing for me. There was also The Flintstones, and that was my jam growing up. When I heard Fred Flintstone say, Yabba, Dabba Doo, it was like air and it became an indelible part of my childhood. This film brings it all back, because I get to relive it through the film.

When did you discover that you could do this for a living?

It was something that I messed around with as a kid, but because your voice is so high pitched when youre a boy, I dont think I sounded really much like anybody. However, my parents thought it was mildly amusing. When my family was over, they would encourage me to pretend that I was Richard Nixon. It wasnt until high school that I started to do voices that maybe I started to do it more.

I met Mel Blanc and it was like meeting the Jedi Master. He was at this motel when he was speaking at the University of Pittsburgh, and I knocked on his door. It was late at night, and I asked for three minutes of his time. He asked, Are you Jewish or Italian? I told him I was Jewish and he invited me in.

He looked at me and he could see that I wasnt an academic. I didnt want to be in school and I wanted to perform, but he told me to stay in school and get a degree. And he said, If you ever get out to Los Angeles, look me up.

That was a watershed moment for me, and that changed the trajectory of my life. I got really passionate about what I wanted to do, which was to be a performer and a voice actor, and thats when I got serious.

You have such great dynamic with LeBron  what was it like recording in the pandemic?

I found out on March 4, that I was Bugs Bunny for the film and a week later, we went into lockdown. I started to upgrade my own home studio recording equipment. I asked a sound engineer on Our Cartoon President to work with me on the recording.

It was all done over Zoom, but we all connected. There was an intimacy that we all had. Malcolm gave such context to every line and that it made it easy.

What is it like to know that a new generation is going to be introduced to our favorite characters and youre being immortalized at this moment in the film?

I didnt understand it until the trailer dropped on April 3, and I saw people watching the trailer. Thats when it hit me. This is for people that are growing up now, and were all a part of this. They were crying, laughing and watching the trailer.

There is an homage to the first film. We get to see a party. We get to see the universes of so many characters, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear and the Iron Giant, amidst this super cool story between LeBron and his son.

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Megan Fox has pulled out of tonights Los Angeles premiere of her new movie Midnight in the Switchgrass because of the ongoing concern over COVID in Los Angeles.

Due to the recent California mask mandate and rise of COVID cases, Megan Fox will no longer be attending the premiere tonight, a rep for the premiere wrote in an email to press covering the event just a couple of hours before the red carpet. We appreciate your understanding.

The premiere is set to take place at Regal LA Live in downtown Los Angeles. The hour-long red carpet, which kicks off at 6:30 p.m., is outdoors followed by an indoor screening. The guest list also includes director Randall Emmett and cast members Lukas Haas, Caitlin Carmichael, Sistine Stallone and Olive Abercrombie.

On Friday, reporters and photographers were informed that they were no longer allowed to cover the after-party in order to limit the number of people in attendance.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced on Thursday that it would be reinstating the indoor mask mandate regardless of vaccination status due to a sharp rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. The new mask policy began at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday.

Roadside Attractions canceled its Friday night screening of Joe Bell, hosted by stars Mark Wahlberg and Reid Miller at WME in Beverly Hills, after the talent agency announced that it would be closing its Los Angeles offices for at least a week beginning Monday. A surprise Ted Lasso Q&A on Saturday at the Tower Theater Apple Store in Los Angeles was also put on hold.

The premiere of Amazon Studios Jolt is still happening tonight at San Vicente Bungalows with star Kate Beckinsale. The streamer is requiring proof of a negative test result to attend. Rapid testing is available on-site. Masks are mandated during the screening and in the indoor area of the post-screening reception.

As the indoor mask mandate returns to Los Angeles, Canada announced on Monday that vaccinated U.S. citizens will be allowed to enter the country starting Aug. 9, while vaccinated visitors from other countries will be able to enter on Sept. 7, two days before the Toronto Film Festival begins. The loosening of travel restrictions may signal a sign that TIFF will have more in-person events than previously planned.

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Mexican cinema has found an adopted home at the Cannes Film Festival. Since 2005, Critics Week at Cannes has organized a strand dedicated to Mexican short films by curating and screening in Cannes some of the top shorts from Mexicos Morelia Intl. Film Festival (FICM), one of the most important film festivals in Latin America.

As it returned to Cannes in 2021 after the 2020 edition was cancelled, Cannes Critics Week selected four films from the 18th Morelia Film Festival to showcase the new generation of Mexican film talent. Cannes Critics Week is, after all, the event where Guillermo Del Toro and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu were first discovered on the international stage through their award-winning first films (Cronos in 1993 and Amores Perros in 2000, respectively).

Though these four films from Morelia all had their own distinctive voice, they all highlighted, in their own way, the role of women in Mexican society, calling attention to issues of gender violence and femicides particularly  a central problem in todays Mexico (in early 2020  when the films were made  there was an average of 10 Mexican women murdered every day).

The founder and artistic director of FICM, Daniela Michel, told Variety that it was very important that they [the filmmakers] focus on these subjects.

In style theyre very different, but also in the age groups [of the characters], Michel said, referring to the four short films. Theres a young woman, teenagers, then someone whos already a teacher, and also someone whos a prostitute and a mother, so you see different angles. But you also see the different social classes: you see poor people suffering violence, but also people from the bourgeoisie with a girl getting bullied in school, and then a young woman who has a discussion with her boyfriend who was the owner of the house.

The four short films include Bisho, directed Pablo Giles, La Oscuridad (The Darkness) by Jorge Sistos Moreno, Pinky Promise by Indra Villasenor Amador, and Un Rostro Cubierto de Besos (A Face Full of Kisses) by Mariano Renteria Garnica.

Bisho, which is reminiscent of Amores Perros, tells the story of how an incessantly barking dog triggers the slow breakdown of a couple with unequal social statuses. La Oscuridad  shot mostly at sundown as its title suggests  follows a school teacher out for revenge against her aggressor, who happens to be the school principal. Pinky Promise, which won the Best Short Film prize in Morelia, explores teenage pregnancy and drama among a quarrelling group of middle-class Mexican girls. Un Rostro Cubierto de Besos, meanwhile, looks at the hardship faced by sex workers in Mexico, who are confronted with near-constant harassment by men.

Michel said that she receives up to 600 short film submissions a year from across Mexico for Morelia, and can only select around 50. Though she founded the festival in 2003, its been since 2005 that a small selection is chosen by Cannes Critics Week curators to take part in Cannes. The joint collaboration started when the then head of Critics Week Jean-Christophe Berjon attended the Mexican festival and decided to begin to bring a part of it to Cannes.

Even before this partnership started, Michel said that Cannes played a pivotal role in drawing the film industrys attention toward Mexican cinema. She notably cited the fact that the 1994 animated short film El Heroe (The Hero) by Carlos Carrera won the Short Film Palme dOr in Cannes as a source of inspiration for her to create the Mexican film festival.

It was very inspiring for other short filmmakers that someone in Mexico could win the Palme dOr, Michel said. I come from a time in the 1990s where they were saying that Mexican cinema is dead, so my goal with this festival was to promote Mexican talent, including shorts, feature films, and documentaries.

Since its inception, FICM has been an important stepping stone for the next generation of Mexican talent. An example of this can be seen in this years Cannes edition, as Tatiana Huezos first feature film Noche de Fuego (Prayers for the Stolen) is part of the festivals official selection in the Un Certain Regard category. Huezo was part of Morelia herself when she was just starting out, with her acclaimed documentary Tempestad (Tempest) in 2015.

Michel spoke proudly of this new cohort of Mexican filmmakers getting their big break in Cannes, expressing gratitude to Cannes Critics Week for this special collaboration as she continues to keep an eye on the past and future talent.

At Morelia, we like to give continuity to filmmakers, she said. Once we know about their work in Morelias short films, we keep track of what theyre doing.

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As it turns out, Peter Jacksons Get Back might be only the second-most satisfying authorized Beatles documentary of 2021 when it comes out around Thanksgiving time. Or maybe itll come out as the toppermost of the poppermost after all in fan rankings of these thing. But whats for sure is that the Rick Rubin-hosted McCartney 3, 2, 1 is such an unerring delight that it sets a very high bar for Beatlemania satiation this year. Not because its that artfully created or brilliantly hosted, but maybe because it doesnt aspire to impress anyone with anything except how effortlessly it prompts the most talented musician of the last century to empty out a good portion of his brainpan for public perusal.

If you saw the teasers for the six-part series, and saw the shots of McCartney and Rubin standing over a mixing board and both nodding their heads vigorously to the playback of Beatles master recordings, maybe you wondered if there was any value left in yet another interview where an interrogator gets Macca to confess that, yes, in fact, he has realized how great the Fab Four were and is kind of objectively gobsmacked about it himself, now that he thinks about it. There are a few moments of that in this, where its like the high-rent version of that SNL skit with Chris Farley on the elevator, with McCartney acceding that his former group was, in fact, awesome. But theres really not a lot of that over the three hours of Q&A. Most of the time when Rubin is getting his idol to join him in a light head-bang, he starts fiddling with the board and pulls up a stem of an instrumental curio and just asks McCartney how he or they came up with something that ingeniously odd. And he always has an answer, and if you care about this recording stuff, the whole series exists somewhere around the intersection of catnip and nirvana.

Rubins questions arent always deep or penetrating, although occasionally he comes up with a zinger that reminds you he didnt earn a Malibu compound just by being a fanboy. But with McCartney, if your goal is to get him to reminisce about the creative process, they dont need to be. Hes a wind-up toy whose springs sometimes take him down expected paths to familiar anecdotes but just as often turn up something you never realized about a three-minute song youve obsessively (or accidentally) heard hundreds of times. As a music producer, Rubin has alternately been described as a goader and a stay-out-of-the-way guy  usually doing one and then the other at points on a project  and thats how he operates here. Having cranked McCartney up, he then knows to more or less shut up and listen to what the man said.

There is a near-complete randomness to the series thats kind of refreshing, with no beats to hit to establish where the Beatles were at their career  just mainlining hit after hit of anecdotes about Babys in Black or Eleanor Rigby or A Day in the Life or Penny Lane or, in the very, very moments when Rubin finds something after 1969 valuable, Band on the Run or Waterfalls. (Barely a few minutes are spent on McCartneys Wings or solo careers; lets hope that means theres a sequel in the works using more of the 15 hours of footage reportedly collected.) Maybe structure and narration are overrated? Thats not something wed say a lot, but it may hold true for the McCartney hardcore who really dont need any of this contextualized for the 150th time as they wait for the good stuff. The nice thing is, even if youre a young person who hasnt heard yet how the British Invasion revolutionized culture, youre probably just as likely to respond to Rubin pulling up a really bizarre bass or guitar part and asking: How the hell did you do that?

Since the songs and time frames of McCartney 3, 2, 1 are presented in no particular order, chronological or otherwise, other than seeming to have some kind of basic flow, here are 10 similarly random favorite moments from the series:

1. McCartney mimes John Lennons rhythm guitar part for All My Loving, which sounds like a relaxed song but, when you pull it apart, has Lennon doing something deeply frantic. You try doing that for three minutes, says McCartney, pantomiming Lennons furious strumming, before patting his sore arm.

2. Also on All My Loving, McCartney points up the separate lead guitar solo and says, simply: Country! And though you probably never noticed it before, it is.

3. He talks about a long bygone phenomenon  how, in the original LP age, having made a long trip to a record store, you usually might have had a long time on public transit to exhaustively examine the album jacket and sleeve before a turntable presented itself. McCartney says he was thinking of that in designing the Sgt. Pepper cover, wanting something youd need a few bus rides to figure it out.

4. Rubin pulls up the bass part on While My Guitar Gently Weeps, which is a much deeper, thicker, almost heavy metal-sounding thing than youd guess if only ever considering the song as a whole. Ive never heard a bass sound like that before, says Rubin, remarking that its like two different songs are happening at once, if you factor in the bass. Interesting you bring that up. I was never conscious of it till you play it now, says McCartney, almost seeming as if hes not sure why he came up with something so contrapuntal, either.

5. Having recruited a pro for the final solo of Penny Lane, McCartney vocally dictates how the solo should go, then is informed of the climactic high note, Thats officially out of the range of the piccolo trumpet. He never seems happier over the course of the series than when he is playing air-piccolo-trumpet and mimes the note he badgered the bloke into reaching.

6. Rubin plays the isolated track of John, Paul and George all holding an extended, wordless harmony in Dear Prudence to an extent that, like that piccolo note, seems inhuman. Its fun when youre playing around and youre pushing yourself, he says, not noting whether the other two finally agreed.

7. In the early days one of our things was, if the producer doesnt notice the mistake, its not a mistake. Said while pointing out a mistake audible in an isolated track of Another Girl.

8. McCartney used to be a guitarist, alongside Lennon, in the first incarnation of their band, then had stage fright one night in Liverpool. After that, I thought no more lead. Except, of course, for all the times he badgered someone else about how to play a lead guitar solo and then they just told him to do it, like George Harrison handing over the reins on Taxman. It was kind of an awkward thing; if youd had a good idea for something youd say it, the other guy would say, You play it.' His rationale for being a control freak on that one: The tracks so cooking, and if were gonna have a solo, it should be ridiculous.

9. He had a role model for his famously melodious bass lines. It was a double eded sword. People would say, Cant you play straighter? I did get reprimanded once or twice for being too busy, but by that point, Id heard James Jameson.

10. Rubin finds an isolated guitar part for Maybe Im Amazed so loud, bizarre and buzzsaw-like, it mightve threatened to turn the song into speed-metal, if itd been included. McCartney winces, having no memory of the abandoned part. Maybe there was a poltergeist in the machine.

Does this kind of ephemera seriously enrich our understanding of the Beatles catalog? Not most of it, probably. Its not even clear that the greatest lesson of going down all these rabbit holes is one we can learn from. The show is all about the magnificence of whims  a wonderful thing to pursue if youre one of the great creative geniuses of the 20th and 21st centuries, at the peak of your game; maybe not so much so for everyone else probably doomed to abject failure if our muses led us to a piccolo trumpet. In the end, a mini-series like McCartney 3, 2 1 can really only firmly stake out one position: Its pro-magic.

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Fox News has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for the mixed messages it has sent viewers about getting vaccinated against coronavirus. Steve Doocy might promote getting vaccinated on Fox & Friends, but primetime host Laura Ingraham has suggested U.S. government efforts to get Americans to take their shots should make people wary.

Someone comes up to your door outside wearing a mask, showing up at your house claiming to work for the government asking you personal medical questions, Ingraham said on her show earlier this month. What could possibly go wrong there? Tucker Carlson, another Fox News primetime stalwart, has also criticized government efforts to get people vaccinated, telling viewers to be wary of efforts to undermine personal freedoms.

At Fox News, executives appear to be drawing a line between what is good health-wise and whether viewers should have to give up personal freedoms to do so. But that has created a volley of different stands on the issue, with Fox News running a public-service campaign in April urging viewers to keep up the fight against the pandemic, and Fox & Friends co-anchor Brian Kilmeade generating controversy Monday by comparing people who didnt want to get vaccinated to cliff divers, noting It seems a little dangerous, but Im not going to judge you. And if you go ahead and put yourself in danger, and you feel as though this is not something for you, dont do it. But dont affect my life.

On Monday, two of Fox News best known faces, Doocy and Sean Hannity made blunt pleas to the audience to get vaccinated. If you have the chance, get the shot. It will save your life, Doocy said yesterdays Fox & Friends. Hannitys comments were even more impassioned: Please take COVID seriously, I cant say it enough. Enough people have died. We dont need any more deaths.

Viewers of Fox News may see a back and forth over coronavirus protocols, but Fox News employees have not. Fox News parent company, Fox Corp., has in recent weeks told employees they must get vaccinated in order to enjoy greater freedoms at work. Los Angeles-based employees of Fox Corp. were told recently that they had to wear mask regardless of your vaccination status, due to rising cases in California. In June, employees were told that to be considered fully vaccinated at work they had to provide proof of getting vaccinated to the company in order to obtain a Fox Clear Pass that would allow them to go without masks in the office. Employees who may be fully vaccinated but who have not entered their vaccination information into Workday will be considered unvaccinated under Company policies, a June memo said.

The way Fox News handles the subject is likely to have more ripples in days to come. The nation is growing more concerned about the spread of the Delta coronavirus variant, which is likely to cause great harm to people who remain unvaccinated.

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Chris Perez paid a San Antonio spot for tapatios a visit over the weekend.

Perez got a bite to eat at La Maceta Tapatios after performing at Picks Bar with Grupo Metal on Friday. Perez was married to Tejano icon Selena at the time of her 1995 death and was the guitarist of her band, "Los Dinos." He's continued making music and performing since then.

La Maceta co-owner Amy Torres tells MySA she didn't expect to to see the San Antonio native pop up at their kitchen.

RELATED: 'Los Dinos' members reunited in San Antonio to celebrate Selena's Grammy nod

"We were very surprised when [Pick's Bar owner] Jessica Marinez and Chris walked into the kitchen to greet us," Torres says. "He made us feel welcomed to engage in conversation with him."

Amy Torres says Perez complimented the style of chef Jessica Torres, calling her the "stylin' chef."

La Maceta is known for their tapatios, a rolled tortilla filled with beef and topped with cabbage and Mexican crema, but Perez was searching for a vegetarian option. He went to the right place. La Maceta has a vegetarian taco plate on their menu. It's six mini tacos filled with fresh avocado, tomato, cabbage, onion, and cilantro. Amy Torres says they hooked him up with a plate.

READ MORE FROM MADALYN: This Las Vegas story gives us all the more reason to love Spurs legend Manu Ginobili

Perez was "super appreciative" and took the time to snap photos with the La Maceta team, Amy Torres says.

La Maceta started in 2015 as a food truck bringing Del Rio flavors to the Alamo City. The La Maceta team officially took over the kitchen at Pick's Bar in April. Customers can try the food at the bar at 4553 North Loop 16014 West, Thursday through Sunday from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. or sellout.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on its Amaq news channel.

Police quickly fanned out across the area. One car parked on a nearby street was completely destroyed; the police said it was used as launching pad for the rockets.

The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off.

The barrage came as the U.S. and NATO complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the Taliban gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighboring countries over the past weeks.

The withdrawal is more than 95% complete and the final U.S. soldier will be gone by Aug. 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.

This Eid has been named after Afghan forces to honor their sacrifices and courage, especially in the last three months, Ghani said in his address to the nation following morning prayers for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice."

The Taliban have no intention and willingness for peace Ghani said. We have proven that we have the intention, the willingness and have sacrificed for peace.

However, Afghan forces have complained about being left without reinforcements and supplies, often running low on food as the Taliban advanced. In many instances, Afghan troops surrendered rather than fight. Washingtons watchdog monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan reported that troops are deeply demoralized and corruption is rampant. After their pullout, the U.S. and NATO are committed to spending $4 billion annually on Afghan forces until 2024, the majority of that money coming from Washington.

Ghani said he deplored his government's decision to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners to get peace talks started last year as a big mistake that only strengthened the insurgents.

Yet Ghani has released other prisoners, including several sought by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with whom he signed a peace deal in 2017. Among those freed at Hekmatyar's request was Abdul Basir Salangi, who killed two U.S. military personnel in 2011 in Kabul.

Meanwhile, Abdullah Abdullah, the No. 2 official in the government, was inside the palace during the rocket attack on Tuesday, having returned on Monday from peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar. Those inside the palace, however, were far removed from where the rockets landed.

The two days of meetings in Doha  the highest level of negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban so far  aimed at jumpstarting stalled talks but ended with a promise of more high-level talks.

In his speech, Ghani also assailed neighboring Pakistan, which Kabul blames for harboring the Taliban leadership and providing a safe haven and assistance to the insurgents. In the most recent fighting in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, Taliban fighters were seen receiving treatment at a Pakistani hospital across the border in Chaman.

Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it calims is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace.

Pakistan has also been deeply critical of Kabul, saying it has allowed another militant group, the Pakistani Taliban  Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan  to find safety in Afghanistan from where they have launched a growing number of attacks targeting the Pakistan military.

Pakistan does not want a Taliban regime in its homeland" but their media have been campaigning for a Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Ghani added.

The Eid al-Adha is the most important Islamic holiday, marking the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim  Abraham to Christians and Jews  to sacrifice his son. During the holiday, which in most places lasts four days, Muslims slaughter sheep or cattle and distribute part of the meat to the poor.

___

Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.
SAN DIEGO (AP)  A 22-year-old former nursing student pleaded guilty Tuesday to murder and other charges in connection with a deadly shooting at a Southern California synagogue on the last day of Passover.

John T. Earnest avoided the death penalty with his plea in San Diego Superior Court. The San Diego County district attorneys office said he agreed to serve the rest of his life in state prison without the possibility of parole. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 30.

Earnest opened fire with a semi-automatic rifle during the last day of Passover services in April 2019 at Chabad of Poway. The attack killed 60-year-old Lori Gilbert-Kaye and wounded three others, including an 8-year-old girl and the rabbi, who lost a finger.

Earnest then called 911 to say he had shot up a synagogue because Jews were trying to destroy all white people, authorities said.

He faces similar charges in federal court, where U.S. prosecutors face an Aug. 30 deadline on whether to pursue the death penalty. Kelly Thornton, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego, said the federal case is moving forward, with a hearing scheduled for Sept. 8.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland halted federal executions this month while the Justice Department conducts a review of its policies and procedures.

Earnest submitted a conditional plea agreement for consideration by federal prosecutors on June 4, the San Diego County district attorney's office said.

The district attorney said it consulted the Kaye family and other victims before agreeing to the deal, aware that a possible plea arrangement in the federal prosecution would prevent the state's case from moving forward.

While we reserved the option of trying this as a death penalty case, life in prison without the possibility of parole for the defendant is an appropriate resolution to this violent hate crime, and we hope it brings a measure of justice and closure to the victims, their families, friends and the wider community," the office said. "This plea ensures the defendant is held accountable for his crimes under California state law.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a moratorium on the death penalty in 2019.

Representatives of Chabad of Poway didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
LONDON (AP)  U.S. climate envoy John Kerry called on China to join America in urgently cutting greenhouse gas emissions and described the international alliances that rebuilt Europe after World War II as a model for fighting against climate change.

Kerry challenged global leaders to accelerate the actions needed to curb rising temperatures and pull the world back from the edge of the abyss. "Allies, partners, competitors and even adversaries must work together, he said during a speech at Londons Kew Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage site where scientists are working to protect plants from global warming.

The climate crisis is the test of our own times, and while it may be unfolding in slow motion, to some, this test is as acute and as existential as any previous one, Kerry said. Time is running out.

Kerry described the next decade as decisive, saying countries around the world must speed up efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if they are to meet their commitment to limit temperature increases to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

While many countries have pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says emissions must be cut by at least 40% by the end of the decade to keep temperatures in check.

Organizers of the next United Nations climate summit are calling the November event in Glasgow, Scotland the worlds last best chance to get runaway climate change under control. The primary goal of the meeting, known as COP26, is for countries to set ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

To meet these targets, countries need to phase out the use of coal, reduce deforestation, accelerate the shift to electric vehicles and encourage investment in renewable energy, according to the conference organizers.

China, the United States and India are the worlds biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, meaning efforts to control climate change are likely to fail unless all three lead the way in slashing emissions.

Kerry referred to the often tense relationship between the U.S. and China but said the future depended on their cooperation. Both countries also need to raise their ambitions, he said.

It is not a mystery that China and the U.S. have many differences. But on climate, cooperation is the only way to break free from the worlds current mutual suicide pact,'' he said. President Biden and President Xi have both stated unequivocally that each will cooperate on climate despite other consequential differences. America needs China to succeed in slashing emissions. China needs America to do the same.''

Chinas output of climate-wrecking pollution surged in the last decade as its economy boomed, especially as it kept operating, building and financing new, dirty-burning coal-fired power plants.

The Rhodium Group analysis firm reported in May that China as of 2019 was pumping out more than 27% of all climate-damaging emissions globally. Thats more than the United States, which stood at 11%, and more than the rest of the developed world combined, Rhodium said.

The Trump administration and others in the United States pointed to Chinas lead role in climate damage in justifying the rolling back of many emissions-cutting efforts in the U.S. China and other developing economies, meanwhile, say Western nations most responsible for the global-warming that occurred in the past are asking them to rein in their own development with little or no compensation.

Antony Froggatt, an energy policy consultant at the Chatham House think tank in London, applauded Kerrys speech for highlighting the urgent need for action  for all.

There is an acceptance fromone of the highest climate change officials in the world that climate change is here, its real, its having an impact, and its future impact will be equivalent to sort of a global warand therefore we need to do things now, Froggatt said. That isnt just America, that isnt just the EU. It is India. It is China. It is these major emitters that actually need to take action on the real short term and demonstrate that they are changing emissions levels.

____

Associated Press Writer Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed.
PARIS (AP)  The cellphones of French President Emmanuel Macron and 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets in 2019 of surveillance by spyware made by the Israel-based NSO Group, according to a newspaper report Tuesday.

The report by Le Monde follows an announcement by the Paris prosecutors office that it is investigating the suspected widespread use of NSO's Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists and politicians in multiple countries.

Le Monde is part of a global media consortium that identified the targets from a leaked list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organizations which began publishing their findings on Sunday.

That same day, Amnesty released a forensic analysis of the alleged targeting that showed Amazon Web Services was hosting NSO infrastructure. In response, Amazon said it shut down NSO accounts that were confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity. Amazon said they had violated its terms of use.

Another U.S. company identified by Amnesty as hosting NSO servers was DigitalOcean. When contacted by The Associated Press, DigitalOcean neither confirmed nor denied whether it had identified or cut off such servers.

"All of the infrastructure outlined in the Amnesty report is no longer on DigitalOcean," it said Tuesday without elaborating in an emailed statement.

Le Monde said the phone numbers for Macron and the then-government members were among thousands allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance. In this case, the client was an unidentified Moroccan security service, according to Le Monde.

Consortium members said they were able to link more than 1,000 numbers on the list with individuals, including more than 600 politicians and government officials and 189 journalists. Among the numbers were those of journalists and politicians in France. The largest share were in Mexico and the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients.

Also on the list were phone numbers in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda, as well as ones for several Arab royal family members, heads of state and prime ministers, the consortium reported.

An official in Macron's office said authorities would investigate Le Monde's report, and if the targeting is proven, it would be extremely grave.

Le Monde quoted NSO as saying the French president was never targeted by its clients.

NSO Group denied that it ever maintained a list of potential, past or existing targets. It called the Forbidden Stories report full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.

The source of the leak  and how it was authenticated -- was not disclosed. While a phone numbers presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it believed the data indicated potential targets of NSOs government clients.

The Paris prosecutors office said in a statement Tuesday that it opened an investigation into a raft of potential charges, including violation of privacy, illegal use of data and illegally selling spyware.

As is common under French law, the investigation doesnt name a suspected perpetrator but is aimed at determining who might eventually be sent to trial. It was prompted by a legal complaint by two journalists and French investigative website Mediapart.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris, Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, and Frank Bajak in Boston contributed reporting.
On July 16, the City of Laredo filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, the US Department of Homeland Security and its secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the US Customs and Border Protection and its senior official Troy Miller, and the US CBP Office of Border Patrol and its chief Rodney S. Scott for the continuation of transportation of migrants to the city.

According to the complaint, Assistant City Attorney Alyssa J. Castillon is representing Laredo and calls for the court to have an emergency hearing on the citys request for a temporary restraining order on the transportation of detained refugees, immigrants and/or migrants, or RIMs, to Laredo until local shelters have the capacity to house and accommodate them.

The release of people who are COVID-19 positive and/or have been exposed to someone who is COVID-19 positive poses a danger that this city and country have endeavored to remedy since the inception of this pandemic, the claim states. Unfortunately, the federal government has left this public health concern to be tackled by our local government with no considerations of the citys little to no resources nor regard for the deadly ramifications it could have on the country.

According to court documents, the city states that between three to six bus loads of RIMs are transported to the city from the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio each day. This is a minimum of 250-350 people, excluding those that are detained at the Laredo border.

As Holding Institute and Catholic Charities shelters are on the frontlines of housing and accommodating the incoming RIMs, the influx is causing additional strain as some incoming migrants may be COVID-19 positive.

On July 9, it was announced that the Holding Institute had been placed under quarantine by the Laredo Health Authority. This was reportedly due to a significant number of cases that had yet to have been accurately tallied. Some local reports had the total over 200 persons, but Pastor Michael Smith, who oversees the Holding Institute, stated that was not true.

According to the citys lawsuit, the Holding Institute had 99 positives recorded between July 1-7. The facility had tested 1,230 adults and children, and it had a positivity rate of 8%.

This is an uptick from June which featured 50 positive cases in 1,784 tests, or a 2.8% positivity rate. That was well below May which had 83 positives out of 2,201 tests, or a 4.1% positivity rate. The only other month the complaint lists is April, and only from the 26th through the end of the month. That week had no positives in 69 tests.

Overall, the Holding Institute in the data listed dating back to April 26 has had a combined 232 positive cases out of 5,104 persons screened, a 4.5% positivity rate and 90% of the eligible individuals receiving a vaccination, according to Vera Health.

The complaint also states that spanning four more days to July 11, there have been a total of 296 probable positives at the Holding Institute since April 26. It adds that Catholic Charities has had 41 probable positives during that time while Mercy Ministries has had none.

Additionally, the complaint also featured more data from the citys most recent COVID-19 report from last Thursday. Of Laredos 139 active cases, the citys data states that 63 are from detainees/migrants. It also added that of that overall active total, 111 were not vaccinated and 110 were between the ages of 20-49.

Although the City of Laredo can temporarily continue to provide funding through federal funds, the imminent issue at stake is the immediate lack of logistics for obtaining additional operational space and the lack of new and willing employees to recruit to assist, the citys argument states.

In a June 29 email from CBP Laredo Sector Chief Matthew Hudak, he told Fire Chief Guillermo Heard that the Laredo Sector would have to shift back to help the RGV Sector in processing family units, which he believed would result in a higher number of local releases.

cocampo@lmtonline.com
BOSTON (AP)  French President Emmanuel Macron leads a list of 14 current or former heads of state who may have been targeted for hacking by clients of the notorious Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, Amnesty International said Tuesday.

The unprecedented revelation ... should send a chill down the spine of world leaders," Amnesty's secretary general, Agnes Callamard, said in a statement.

Among potential targets found on a list of 50,000 phone numbers leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories include Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Barham Salih of Iraq. King Mohammed VI of Morocco and three current prime ministers  Imran Khan of Pakistan, Mustafa Madbouly of Egypt and Saad Eddine El Othmani of Morocco  are also on the list, The Washington Post reported.

The Post said none of the heads of state would offer their smartphones for forensic testing that might have detected whether they were infected by NSO's military-grade Pegasus spyware. Thirty-seven phones identified in the investigation were either breached or shows signs of attempted infection, it has reported.

The Post and 16 other members of a global media consortium were granted access to the leaked list. Another member, the French daily Le Monde, determined that 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets with Macron in 2019.

Following first reports by consortium members on Sunday, the Paris prosecutors office said it was investigating the suspected widespread use of NSO's military-grade Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists and politicians in multiple countries.

Also Sunday, Amnesty released a forensic analysis of the alleged targeting that showed Amazon Web Services was hosting NSO infrastructure. In response, Amazon said it shut down NSO accounts that were confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity. Amazon said the accounts had violated its terms of use.

Another U.S. company identified by Amnesty as hosting NSO servers was DigitalOcean. When contacted by The Associated Press, DigitalOcean neither confirmed nor denied whether it had identified or cut off such servers.

"All of the infrastructure outlined in the Amnesty report is no longer on DigitalOcean," it said Tuesday, without elaborating, in an emailed statement.

The consortium's findings significantly widen the scope of alleged abuses in which NSO Group has been implicated since 2016. Those include the surveillance of friends and relatives of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018  and highlight what critics call the urgent need to regulate global sales of commercial hacking tools.

Le Monde said the phone numbers for Macron and the then-government members were among thousands allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance. In this case, the client was an unidentified Moroccan security service, according to Le Monde.

Consortium members said they were able to link more than 1,000 numbers in 50 countries on the list with individuals, including more than 600 politicians and government officials and 189 journalists. The largest share were in Mexico and the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients.

Also on the list were phone numbers in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda, as well as ones for several Arab royal family members, the consortium reported.

An official in Macron's office said authorities would investigate Le Monde's report, and if the targeting is proven, it would be extremely grave.

Le Monde quoted NSO as saying the French president was never targeted by its clients.

NSO Group has denied that it ever maintained a list of potential, past or existing targets. It called the Forbidden Stories report full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.

The source of the leak  and how it was authenticated  has not been disclosed. While a phone numbers presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it was confident the data indicated potential targets of NSOs government clients.

The Paris prosecutors office said in a statement Tuesday that it opened an investigation into a raft of potential charges, including violation of privacy, illegal use of data and illegally selling spyware.

As is common under French law, the investigation doesnt name a suspected perpetrator but is aimed at determining who might eventually be sent to trial. It was prompted by a legal complaint by two journalists and French investigative website Mediapart.

Multiple lawsuits by alleged victims have been filed against NSO Group including by Facebook over the Israeli firm's alleged hacking of its WhatsApp application.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris and Alan Suderman in Richmond, Virginia, contributed reporting.

___

This story has been updated to correct that Imran Khan is the prime minister of Pakistan, not president.
The United States Border Patrol is receiving a new batch of workers in its Laredo Sector.

The USBP Laredo North Station hosted a graduation for its second Laredo Sector Export Concealed Humans and Narcotics Detection Handlers Course.
The United States Border Patrol Laredo Sector shined a spotlight on two of its canine partners Monday.

Border Patrol stated that Lady and Gobby helped discover more than 100 migrants found locked in the back of a tractor trailer with no way out in separate incidents.

This is another example of the ruthless and inconsiderate disregard by the smugglers portrayed on these two human smuggling events in Laredo, USBP said in a statement. With the assistance of our canine partners, detecting these deceitful smuggling attempts is feasible.

Border Patrol also stated that canines are the greatest tools available to detect and apprehend controlled substances and other contraband.

Citing love for their canine companions, USBP asked citizens to post pictures of their pets on social media with the hashtag #TheNoseKnows in an effort to fill social media with pet love this week.
Niagara County District Attorney Brian D. Seaman is surrounded by what he says is a couple years worth of court cases yet to go to trial in this March photo.
A garda searching the home of one of the men accused of abducting and assaulting businessman Kevin Lunney found a book titled, "The Forensic Casebook, The Science of Crime Scene Investigation," the Special Criminal Court has heard.



Detective Garda Lisa Young told Sean Guerin SC for the prosecution that she was part of a garda search team at the Dublin 3 apartment belonging to the accused man named as YZ, who cannot be named for legal reasons. She found the book, written by Ngaire Genge, in the main bedroom.



Michael Hourigan BL for YZ asked Det Gda Young if she was aware that the book is easily available on Amazon. She said, "I would imagine so."



YZ (40) from Dublin 3, Alan OBrien (40), of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3, Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3 and Luke OReilly (67), with an address at Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan have all pleaded not (NOT) guilty to false imprisonment and intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Lunney at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan on September 17, 2019.

Mr Lunney has told the court that he was bundled into the boot of a car near his home and driven to a container where he was threatened and told to resign as a director of Quinn Industrial Holdings. His abductors cut him with a Stanley knife, stripped him to his boxer shorts, doused him in bleach, broke his leg with two blows of a wooden bat, beat him on the ground, cut his face and scored the letters QIH into his chest. They left him bloodied, beaten and shivering on a country road at Drumcoghill in Co Cavan where he was discovered by a man driving a tractor.

Mr Justice Tony Hunt is presiding in the ongoing trial with Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge David McHugh.

Longford Leader gallery: Wedding bells ring for Longford/Westmeath TD It was a day that will forever live in the hearts and minds of Longford-Westmeath TD Robert Troy and Aideen Ginnell as the happy couple said 'I do' last week.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue has begun a nationwide sectoral dialogue, visiting farmers, fishers, foresters and food producers across farming and coastal communities.

The visits started with a visit to Howth harbour and fishers and Whytes farm in north Co Dublin last week and will end in Galway on July 30.

The Minister will visit ports and harbours such as Castletownbere and Greencastle as well as farming and food producers who play a critical role in Ireland's 14bn export sector.

Minister McConalogue said: It has been a difficult but historic year for our farmers, fishers, and food producers. I pay huge tribute to everyone in the sector for keeping food on our tables while also ensuring that our world class export sector continues to grow and flourish. We have had Covid-19, Brexit and reforms of the CAP while also contending with our climate change ambitions.

Ireland is the sustainable food capital of the world and this would not be possible without those who catch the fish, milk the cows, lamb the ewes and harvest the crops. Now that restrictions allow, I am taking the opportunity to meet people in person, to personally thank them and to hear how I can help make their lives easier.

As has been a hallmark of my time as Minister, I will spend the summer listening to as many people in our great sector to get their views and opinions. It is their sector and I want to hear as many opinions as possible.

Our farmers, fishers, foresters and food producers are the backbone of our rural economies and it is crucial for rural Ireland that our Government considers their views and supports them, he concluded.
A Longford man is fighting for his life in a Spanish hospital after being found unresponsive while out swimming.

Michael McDonald is in an induced coma at the Hospital Insular, Las Palmas in Gran Canaria after falling ill during a holiday break last Tuesday.

Fellow Longford man Mark Connolly, told of how he came to his friend's aid at a private apartment complex in the popular Spanish holiday resort.

We were in the pool doing laps and I noticed him floating, recalled Mark.

I thought he was acting the mick but when I was coming back after doing a second lap he was still floating.

Myself and a Spanish girl pulled him out and she did CPR on him until he arrived.

The Legan native was rushed to hospital and placed in an induced coma, where he remains.

Mark said the Department of Foreign Affairs are providing consular assistance to the family as medics continue to treat the stricken 65-year-old.

Nobody knows what happened. He is in hospital and I don't really know any more at the minute as I am not family.

Mark also told of how the pair had been due to fly out last year but owing to the onset of Covid-19 those plans were shelved until travel restrictions eased.

Please God, he pulls through, added Mark.
(Alliance News) - Alba Mineral Resources PLC on Tuesday said the phase 2 drilling programme has commenced at its wholly owned Thule Black Sands ilmenite project in northern Greenland.

In addition, the company said it is making progress on the spin out of its Greenland assets into a stand-alone AIM-quoted vehicle. The move was first reported back in May, when Alba said it intends to divest its assets in Greenland, namely the Amitsoq, TBS, Melville Bay and Inglefield projects, into a separate vehicle.

The newly-created company will acquire the Greenland projects from Alba for shares, and, simultaneously with the listing, the new company will undertake an initial public offering fundraising to secure the necessary working capital to fast-track the development of the Greenland projects.

Turning back to the development of Thule Black Sands project, Alba said drilling operations have commenced. Alba seeking to drill 125 holes for up to 1,000 metres with the aim of substantially increasing the existing JORC mineral resource.

Alba shares closed 4.9% lower in London on Tuesday at 0.26 pence each.

By Evelina Grecenko; evelinagrecenko@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Goldplat PLC on Tuesday said it plans to distribute royalties and surplus cash to shareholders, as it nears completion of the sale of the Kilimapesa gold mine in Kenya.

Shares were up 14% to 7.99 pence in London on Tuesday afternoon, giving it a market capitalisation of GBP13.6 million.

Goldplat is a gold recovery services company based in London and Benoni, South Africa.

The company said it has "no further material calls on its cashflows to invest in gold mining" following the disposal. As a result, it will distribute cash left over after paying for operational and development requirements.

In addition, Goldplat will pay any royalties it receives from Kilimapesa as dividends. The company is entitled to a 1% net smelter royalty on all production from the mine up to a maximum of USD1.5 million.

Goldplat completed the USD1.5 million sale of Kilimapesa to Mayflower Gold Investments Ltd in April. Mayflower is set to be taken over by Papillon Holdings PLC, after which Goldplat will receive USD450,000 in cash and the rest in Papillon shares.

Goldplat is a step closer to receiving the proceeds, after the UK Financial Conduct Authority on Monday approved Papillon's prospectus to be readmitted to the London Stock Exchange - a condition of the reverse takeover.

The Kilimapesa mine is one of several transactions Goldplat is undertaking. The company also announced on Tuesday that it is increasing its stake in its subsidiary, Goldplat Recovery (Pty) Ltd, to 91% from 74%.

That will be effected through a share buyback by GRL costing ZAR89.3 million, about GBP4.5 million.

The transaction will be partly financed through a new ZAR60 million loan from Nedbank Group Ltd. This carries interest of the South African Prime Rate plus 1.75% and is repayable over three years. The loan replaces Goldplat's facility with Scipion - the GBP33,000 outstanding on that will be settled.

As part of the GRL buyback deal, GRL will issue shares worth a 4.9% stake to Aurelian Capital Proprietary Ltd for ZAR16 million, equivalent to GBP807,000. Aurelian is controlled by Sango Ntsaluba, a non-executive director of Goldplat. It means Ntsaluba will ultimately own the other 9% stake in GRL.

Werner Klingenberg, chief executive of Goldplat, said the GRL deal "will provide Goldplat shareholders with the best value for use of the cash generated in the group. The transactions place the group in a position to start sharing the results of its operations with shareholders through declaration of dividends from future cashflows."

By Ivan Edwards; ivanedwards@alliancenews.com

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - Time limits will not be included in new guidelines for eating inside bars and restaurants in Ireland.

Final guidelines for the reopening of indoor dining are set to be considered by the cabinet on Wednesday.

Representatives from the restaurant and bar sectors held meetings with government officials on Tuesday ahead of the potential reopening of indoor service next week.

Discussions centred around trading hours, social distancing between tables and ventilation in bars and restaurants.

Following the meeting, Adrian Cummins, from the Restaurants Association of Ireland, called for a "robust inspection regime by the State to give confidence to the general public that restaurants, pubs and cafes are a safe place for indoor dining for customers vaccinated and those who have recovered from Covid in the past nine months".

It is understood that a digital Covid certificate checker is being developed by government Information Services for businesses and customers in order to check valid certificates.

While it is expected that set time limits for dining will be removed from the guidelines on the basis of public health advice, an 11:30pm closing time will remain but will be reviewed.

It is believed that unvaccinated children will be allowed to eat indoors as long as they are accompanied by vaccinated adults and seated two metres away from other tables.

Earlier, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe said restaurants and bars applying the new guidelines would be "critical" to the reopening of indoor dining.

The minister for finance said the guidelines give the best chance of avoiding a risk of closing the sector as a surge in cases is driven by the Delta variant.

Donohoe said that any restaurant that meets the criteria agreed between the government and the Restaurants Association of Ireland will be safe for indoor dining.

"What will be critical will be the implementation of the protocol and any restaurants that does meet these criteria and is safely implementing the protocol that is agreed by Government, I would myself be happy to eat indoors," he added.

"I believe it would be safe to do so.

"There is always going to be risk, there is always going to be issues that customers will need to be assured of, but I do believe that the protocol that the government is looking to agree with the restaurants does give us the best chance of managing the risk that could be there regarding indoor dining.

"If a restaurant is safely implementing those protocols, I myself would be happy to eat in it."

Meanwhile, a further 1,110 cases of Covid-19 have been reported in Ireland.

As of Tuesday morning, there were 89 Covid-positive patients in hospital with 21 in intensive care.

Ronan Glynn, deputy chief medical officer, said: "Almost 7,700 cases of Covid-19 have been notified in the last seven days, an increase of 88% on the previous week. Incidence rates have increased in every county over the past seven days.

"The counties with the highest 14-day incidence rates are Donegal (725/100,000 population), Louth (474/100,000 population), Dublin (307/100,000 population), Limerick (258/100,000) and Galway (257/100,000).

"During this spell of fine weather, we know that the vast majority of people are continuing to protect themselves and others by following the public health advice. This remains really important as we seek to protect as many people as possible through vaccination over the coming weeks.

"As we have said since the vaccine programme began, Covid-19 vaccines are extraordinarily effective at reducing each person's individual risk of hospitalisation or severe disease.

"Vaccines along with the core public health advice remain our pathway out of this pandemic a please avail of the opportunity to get protected through vaccination when it is offered to you."

source: PA

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Sharecast News) - London stocks were off earlier highs but still in the black by midday on Tuesday, recovering some ground following heavy losses in the previous session but with rising Covid cases still weighing on investors' minds.

The FTSE 100 was up 0.5% at 6,875.84.



Susannah Streeter, senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Although bargain hunters will be sniffing around, nervousness is still largely the sentiment rippling through the markets, as concerns are growing that higher infection rates will bring about a fresh economic slowdown.



"It isn't just the spread of new variants causing jitters, rising tensions between the US and China are also a worry, after the Biden administration accused Beijing of being behind the hack of Microsoft's exchange email server software. As China grows increasingly isolated, it's sparked fresh worries that global trade will suffer as a consequence."



In equity markets, housebuilders were among the top performers. IG market analyst Chris Beauchamp said: "Updates from the sector have been rosy" over the past few months, providing a positive backdrop to the shares, and with the sector down some 13% from its peak in April it looks like the time is ripe to go shopping in the likes of Persimmon and Barratt Developments."



Elsewhere, some of the stocks that were hit hardest on Monday were the standout gainers. Engine maker Rolls-Royce, InterContinental Hotels, broadcaster ITV, Cineworld, Tui and easyJet were all higher.



InterContinental Hotels was also boosted by an upgrade to 'buy' at Stifel, while easyJet was in focus after the budget airline said it had reduced cash burn amid continuing Covid restrictions as it reported a 318m third-quarter loss.



Rolls-Royce, meanwhile, was lifted by a research note from Citi, which said the shares offer "significant" long-term value.



Elsewhere, Transact owner IntegraFin was higher after it said third-quarter funds under direction passed 50bn for the first time amid positive equity markets, rising 7.2% over the previous quarter.



Morrisons was in the spotlight as it emerged that US private equity firm Apollo Global Management was in talks with Fortress Investment Group to join its bid for the supermarket chain. Apollo said it would not make an offer for Morrisons on its own.








(Alliance News) - Dominic Cummings has admitted he thought Boris Johnson being UK Prime Minister was "terrible for the country", but that he and "a few dozen" backers sought to use his premiership to their advantage.

The former de facto chief of staff in No 10 said he had found Johnson to have "hopeless" traits after working with him during the 2016 Brexit referendum, but agreed after he entered Downing Street three years later to assist him.

But Cummings, who left No 10 in the autumn after a power struggle, admitted he was now working to bring an end to prime minister's tenure.

Asked during a BBC interview aired on Tuesday whether he was looking to "hasten" Johnson's departure from Downing Street, he said: "Certainly. The sooner he goes the better, for sure."

In the hour-long broadcast, Cummings said he had looked to "exploit" the situation the country found itself in after Johnson took power in 2019.

Cummings, asked whether he had agreed to work with Johnson so he could "get him to do what you wanted", replied: "In part, yes. He didn't know what he was doing but he did know that he needed help."

The Vote Leave mastermind added: "I think it is terrible for the country but I keep trying to stress, you've got to balance up the different possibilities.

"From a practical matter, all our options were bad, so it was, which is the least bad option? The least bad option seemed to be, exploit the current situation to try and push certain things through and get the country into a better position."

Asked who was behind the decision to back Mr Johnson on the premise of securing Brexit, he replied: "Me and a network of people a some of us who did the Vote Leave campaign, some of us who did other things. A few dozen maybe."

During the programme, Cummings made a series of allegations.

He said the prime minister did not take the threat of coronavirus "seriously" in the early stages of the pandemic and that it was a "nonsense" scare story.

He claimed he had to talk Johnson out of going to see the Queen in-person only days before a national lockdown was ordered in March 2020, warning him he could give the monarch Covid-19 and kill her.

Johnson argued in September as Covid cases were rising that it was mainly older people who were dying of the virus and that he "no longer bought all this NHS overwhelmed stuff", Cummings claimed.

He said Johnson fell out with his closest aide because he was "fed up with the media portrayal of him being a kind of puppet for the Vote Leave team".

He said he helped broker a deal between Johnson and Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove to become prime minister and chancellor respectively after the Brexit result.

Responding to Cummings' criticism of Johnson's handling of the pandemic, Downing Street said the prime minister had "taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice".

Another revelation made by Cummings was that he considered a coup against Johnson only "days" after the 2019 poll a during which he had helped him secure one of the largest general election wins in decades a due to fears the Conservative Party leader's then-girlfriend, Carrie Johnson, was trying to oust Vote Leave personnel.

"Before even mid-January we were having meetings in Number 10 saying it's clear that Carrie (Johnson) wants rid of all of us," he said.

"At that point we were already saying by the summer either we'll all have gone from here or we'll be in the process of trying to get rid of him and get someone else in as prime minister."

He said there was a "big argument" after Carrie Johnson, a former Tory head of communications, was looking to appoint and fire people "in ways that I thought were unethical and unprofessional".

No 10 said political appointments are "entirely made by the prime minister".

The 49-year-old also accused Johnson of not having a plan for office and said he "doesn't know how to be prime minister", claiming his "only agenda" to be "buy more trains, buy more buses, have more bikes and build the world's most stupid tunnel to Ireland a that's it".

source: PA

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
(Alliance News) - The UK government, after threatening to look at "all options" to fix a Brexit impasse with Brussels over Northern Ireland, said it plans to present new proposals on Wednesday.

In a phone call Tuesday, Prime Minister Boris Johnson told his Irish counterpart Micheal Martin that the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol was "causing significant disruption", according to Downing Street.

"The prime minister said that the UK government would outline its approach on the Northern Ireland Protocol to parliament tomorrow," it said, declining to comment further on the plan's contents.

While stressing the UK's commitment to peace in Northern Ireland, Johnson also demanded the EU "show pragmatism" on its side.

Pro-UK unionists feel betrayed by the Brexit agreement with the EU to regulate trade in Northern Ireland, which now has the UK's only land border with the 27-nation bloc.

But the EU, seeking to preserve the integrity of its single market, says Britain has been acting in bad faith after completing its drawn-out Brexit divorce.

London has refused to rule out suspending the protocol, which effectively keeps Northern Ireland in the EU's customs territory, necessitating checks on goods crossing over from mainland Britain.

That would amount to a political earthquake, but Brexit minister David Frost told parliament on Monday: "All options are on the table, we've always said that and keep saying it, and we don't rule anything out."

Speaking after talks with Martin in Dublin last week, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen denied the EU was being inflexible.

"The protocol is important, the Good Friday (peace) Agreement is paramount, and therefore I cannot imagine our British friends will not show the same flexibility that we have shown," she said.

London and Dublin are also at loggerheads over a UK plan to impose a statute of limitations on prosecutions for past unrest in Northern Ireland.

Martin said after his meeting with von der Leyen that victims' relatives felt "betrayed" by the unilateral plan.

In Tuesday's phone call, Johnson "stressed that the current focus on criminal justice is not working for anyone" and looked forward to further talks with all sides including Dublin, Downing Street said.

jit/jwp/achA

source: AFP

Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
There is fresh speculation in the mainstream British media that Spain could be added to the Amber Plus British travel list which would mean that even tourists who had received both jabs would have to quarantine on their return home.

Many of the UK national newspapers were reporting that Spain and Greece could join France on the hit list after a rise in the number of cases.

With thousands of British tourists heading to our shores this week the move would be a severe blow and could dent holiday bookings.

At the moment you can travel to the Balearics without quarantine on your return home if you have been vaccinated twice.

Newspapers were reporting that a decision would be taken at cabinet level.
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Editor

Darren Marcy, a journalist since 1992, is the editor of the Manchester Journal. A New Mexico native, he previously worked for newspapers in the Land of Enchantment before moving to Vermont in 2004. He joined the Journal in October 2018.
MANISTEE COUNTY  The wet weather pattern settled over the area has health officials warning Michiganders to prepare for the mosquitos that will follow.

The mild winter weather and the recent rainfall have made ideal conditions for an explosion in the mosquito population, officials at Central Michigan District Health Department said in a news release.

Beyond the annoying itch these bloodsuckers inflict on their victims, its the transmission of diseases  Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) and West Nile virus  that concern health officials.

In 2020, 39 Michiganders contracted a mosquito-borne illness: 31 with West Nile virus; four with EEE, resulting in two deaths; and three with Jamestown Canyon virus according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. None of the human cases were in Manistee or Benzie counties.

As of July 15, only the Jamestown Canyon virus had been identified in 2021, according to the latest 2021 Michigan Arbovirus Surveillance weekly summary. Positive mosquitos were found in Bay, Oakland and Saginaw counties.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

West Nile: While most people with West Nile will not have symptoms, about one in five will develop a fever. Headaches, body aches, joint pains, vomiting, diarrhea or rash also are common. Fatigue and weakness may last for weeks or months.

Less than 1% will develop serious neurologic illness, such as encephalitis or meningitis. In addition to headache and high fever, symptoms may include neck stiffness, disorientation, coma, tremors, seizures or paralysis. Mortality rate is about 10%

People age 60 and older have the greatest risk for severe illness, along with people who have certain medical conditions. For more information, visit michigan.gov/westnilevirus.

Eastern Equine Encephalitis: Like West Nile, most people who contract EEE will develop symptoms. About 5% will develop chills, fever, weakness, muscle and joint pain for up to two weeks. Fatigue and weakness may last for weeks or months.

For the less than 1% who develop severe neurologic illness, symptoms may include high fever, headache, irritability, restlessness, drowsiness, anorexia, vomiting, diarrhea, bluish discoloration of the skin, convulsions, and coma. Mortality rate is 30%.

High risk populations include older adults and those with certain medical conditions, as well as children. For more information, visit michigan.gov/eee.

Jamestown Canyon: This is the first year the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services have tested for Jamestown Canyon virus. According to a news release, cases have been increasing in the Midwest.

Like EEE and West Nile, most people infected with Jamestown Canyon virus do not experience symptoms. Those who do may experience fever, headache and fatigue. In rare cases, it can cause severe neurologic illness, such as encephalitis or meningitis.

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF

Arboviruses, such as the three mentioned above, are transmitted by mosquitoes or other insects. Health officials encourage Michiganders to take steps to prevent being bitten.

It only takes one bite from an infected mosquito to cause a severe illness, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, chief medical executive and chief deputy director for health at MDHHS, said in a news release reporting the Jamestown Canyon virus cases.

We urge Michiganders to take precautions, such as using an EPA-registered insect repellent when outdoors, avoiding areas where mosquitoes are present if possible, and wearing clothing to cover arms and legs to prevent bites.

Other tips include:

 Fixing and maintaining screening on doors and windows; and

 Emptying standing water, such as in buckets, pools or old tires, to reduce areas mosquitoes can lay eggs.

For more information, visit michigan.gov/emergingdiseases.
Dicie Irene Hollan, 86, Red Oak, passed away on Tuesday, July 20, 2021 at her home in Red Oak. Services will be on Friday, July 23, 2021 at 2 p.m. at the Leflore Baptist Church with the burial to follow in the Leflore Cemetery. Officiating will be Rev. Doug Nixon. Services are under the dire
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Jul. 17As often happens in local government, tremors of change can come from the smallest meeting rooms. Such was the case earlier this week when the Cobb Board of Commissioners' plans to craft a mobility sales tax referendum were upended in a half hour of discussion. Scrapping a plan to assemble a citizens advisory committee, which would have been tasked with developing the referendum's ...
Shilpa Shettys husband Raj Kundra has always been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons and this time is no different. Last year, his name popped up in the gold scam and fraud as a Non-Resident Indian businessman, Sachiin J. Joshi claimed in a police complaint that he was reportedly lured and then cheated by SGPL's 'Satyug Gold Scheme', launched around 2014.

Cut to 2021, Raj Kundra has been arrested for making porn movies. Yes, you read that right.

This is what we know so far:

1. Mumbai Police said that Raj Kundra is the key conspirator in this case and it first came to the police's attention in February. Police found key evidence against Raj and now after hours of investigation, he has been taken in custody. There was a case registered with Crime Branch Mumbai in February 2021 about the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. Weve arrested Mr. Raj Kundra in this case on 19/7/21 as he appears to be the key conspirator of this. We have sufficient evidence regarding this. The investigation is in progress," said Hemant Nagrale, Commissioner of Mumbai Police.

2. According to reports, 10 people have been arrested in this case including Raj Kundra.

3. It all started when the Property Cell of the Mumbai Police busted a gang that made adult content for OTT platforms. Police first arrested actor Gehana Vasisth along with eight others in the case.

4. During the probe, the crime branch arrested a person named Umesh Kamat who then shed light on Raj Kundras role in the whole racket. Our team worked on it closely after filing the first charge sheet in the case. During the probe, we found that the accused, in fact, sent WeTransfer files abroad sitting in Kundras office," said an officer of the Crime Branch.

5. Raj Kundra has been booked under sections 420 (cheating), 34 (common intention), 292, and 293 (related to obscene and indecent advertisements and displays) of IPC besides relevant sections of the IT Act and the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act.

6. It has also come into notice how the gang used to lure struggling actors into making porn movies by promising them roles in OTT shows. As per a report in News18, the accused used to earn Rs 2-3 lakh per video and the victims were just paid Rs 20,000-Rs 25,000.

Both Raj and Shilpa are mum on these allegations and havent released any statements so far in their defense.

People are bashing Raj Kundra on social media and have funny reactions to his arrest. They have also dragged Shilpa in their comments. People are using Shilpas popular dialogue super se upar while making fun of Kundra.

Here are the reactions:

 NDTV Instagram

 NDTV Instagram

 NDTV Instagram

What do you have to say about the whole fiasco? Let us know in the comments section below.


The Raj Kundra case involving his arrest in making pornographic films for paid apps has just got murkier with fresh details erupting by the minute. While he is in custody till the 23rd of July, social media is currently abuzz with actresses Sherlyn Chopra and Poonam Pandey coming forward and blaming him to be the reason why they ended up in the adult film business in the first place. The two names were linked in the complaint filed against Kundra and now more details have emerged.



Sherlyns statement recorded in this case is going viral. Reportedly, Sherlyn was paid Rs 30 lakh for each project she did with his media company and so far, she had done about 15 to 20 projects for Raj.



According to another report, Poonam Pandey had filed a complaint against his company back in 2019. Her app was a client of Raj Kundra's firm Armsprime Media and she saw some disparity in the revenue. It was also claimed that even though the contract ended between them, Poonam Pandey stated that Raj Kundras firm was using her movies and footage discreetly without authority.

She also filed a complaint stating the firm was illegally using content featuring her after the termination of her contract. The same company also developed apps for actresses Gehna Vashishta and Sherlyn Chopra.

However, earlier this year Raj Kundra had claimed to have sold his shares of the company and had even submitted the documents of his investments and exit formalities to the legal authorities. Whatever the case maybe, it surely is getting murkier by the day!
If theres one brand that does right by its motto, time and again, its OnePlus.

Never Settle is clearly the way of life for the OnePlus workforce, and their state-of-the-art phones are proof! Last year, the brand took the tech world by storm by launching OnePlus Nord, which redefined the premium mid-segment market.

Its successor, the OnePlus Nord 2 5G is all set to raise the bar higher - and no, we are not exaggerating.

First things first, OnePlus Nord 2 5G is powered by the Mediatek Dimensity 1200-AI Chipset. This chip extends several AI-based features that make this phone an enviable gadget. For starters, the phones display gets a major facelift with AI Resolution Boost and AI Colour Boost. Were talking true-to-life colours, immersive graphics - in short, smartphone heaven! The display experience only gets better with a 6.43 inch AMOLED screen, 90 Hz refresh rate and HDR 10+ certification.

OnePlus Nord 2 5Gs 50 MP AI Triple Camera packs fascinating AI-based features like AI photo enhancement, AI video enhancement and Nightscape Ultra. The Sony IMX766 sensor on the phones primary camera absorbs 56% more light than the usual lens - were talking vivid night shots that look unbelievably real.

Now imagine a camera with 3 world-class lenses and AI-based assistance - its almost impossible to not click a good picture.

Additionally, the phone comes pre-installed with Oxygen OS 11, backed up by 2 major android updates and 3 years of security updates.

How many features are too many features? Dont ask OnePlus because theyre going all out with Nord 2!

Fellow tech junkies, werent we all taken aback by OnePlus Nords AR launch last year? What a clutter-breaking idea, right? The question is, will OnePlus Nord 2 5Gs launch live up to last years ?

The answer is - hell yes!

In addition to a live streaming link for the launch - yeah, bookmark it - the brand also has 2 super interesting AR challenges. Winners get rewarded generously, some of them can even bag the OnePlus Nord 2 5G itself. Click here to learn more about the challenges.

All you need is an internet connection and the chrome/safari browser. What are you waiting for? Wear your gaming hat, roll your sleeves and play to win.
Jeff Bezos is all set to launch into space in Blue Origins first manned mission today at 6:30 PM IST and will be the second billionaire to do so. The Amazon founder will take off from the West Texas facility along with his brother Mark. Bezos will also be flying with an 82-year old aviation pioneer Wally Funk. Funk was trained to go into space in the 1960s but was not given the opportunity due to gender discrimination. The fourth passenger will be an 18-year-old paying teenager Oliver Daemen who will be aboard as a tourist.

 Blue Origin

The New Shepard aircraft will fly fully automated without any pilots and go roughly 100km above Earth. The ship will go beyond the Karman Line from where the passengers will be able to see the curvature of the planet before parachuting back to the surface. The aircraft will lift off today and the entire journey will last for about 10 minutes. Flight Director Steve Lanius said, "We are not currently working on any open issues and New Shepard is ready to fly."



The New Shepard is designed to take off and land vertically similar to SpaceXs Falcon-9 rockets. The vehicle has a pressurised crew capsule that also has the largest windows to offer an awesome view of the planet from space. Like Falcon-9 rockets, the New Shepard is a reusable suborbital rocket system.

How to Watch: Jeff Bezos Blue Origin's LIVE Stream

 Blue Origin

In order to watch the liftoff live, you can tune in to Blue Origins live stream on YouTube. The coverage is expected to begin at 6:30 PM. You can also tune in to the flight on Blue Origins social media channels on Twitter and Facebook. Additionally, the launch will also be live-streamed on its official website where the broadcast is set to start 90 minutes before liftoff.



Space Tourism: A New Frontier

 Reuters

Blue Origin will join Richard Bransons Virgin Galactic as the second private company to offer tourists a chance to go to space. Bezos company will face tough competition from both SpaceX and Virgin Galactic where the race is currently being led by Elon Musks SpaceX. Having said that, Blue Origin is not far behind both its competitors as the company will be looking to take astronauts and research payloads past the Karman line after the successful test flight.


Services for Ms. Katherine Raye "Pete" Wilhite will be on Thursday, July 22, 2021, at graveside, at 10 a.m. with Bro. Dale Moore officiating. Interment will be in Magnolia Cemetery. Ms. Katherine was born on Sept. 14, 1931, to Henry and Veda Wilhite. She passed away on July 18, 2021. Before 
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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
MCSC aids COVID-19 response and recovery

MCSC aids COVID-19 response and recovery

The Michigan Community Services Commission (MCSC) jumped into action during the COVID-19 pandemic as the State of Michigan's lead agency of volunteerism and donations management during times of disaster.

MCSC secured donations of over 16 million pieces of personal protection equipment and products to help Michiganders, including healthcare workers, youth and the elderly.

A total of 6,782 volunteers registered with MCSC to engage in 330,218 service hours to further progress the COVID-19 response and recovery for the state.

MCSC also received the largest Volunteer Generation Fund in the country of $2.2 million over three years to support volunteerism during the pandemic recovery. Through the creation of the Michigan Community Resilience Program, the MCSC granted out $200,000 to 13 regional organizations to support the infrastructure and capacity of nonprofits throughout the state.

"We want to tap into Michigander's grit and determination to help others and start a volunteer movement," said Ginna Holmes, MCSC's Executive Director. "We want to ensure we collaborate across the state and that organizations have the tools and resources to support local efforts."

MCSC also played a large role in organizing and training volunteers at the Ford Field Vaccination Clinic. The commission promoted, recruited, registered, trained, and scheduled volunteers to support the vaccination clinic. The friendly faces of the volunteers provided a warm greeting to many residents. In addition to Michigan based volunteers, MCSC also leveraged AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps team to help vaccination efforts as well.

"It is inspiring to see the wide support from national service members, community volunteers and disaster response volunteers who have all joined efforts to help Michigan recover from COVID-19." said Holmes.

The commission also provided $45,000 to support 114 service projects, engaging more than 8,000 volunteers for Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service and Global Youth Service Day. Volunteers participated in making child-sized masks, distributing food services, addressing the needs of mental health and the homeless, and many other services to assist the community throughout the pandemic.

In partnership with Applied Textiles, MCSC provided mask making kits to volunteer sewers, who created 40,000 masks.

Michigan AmeriCorps members also adapted their service aid to COVID-19 relief efforts. Members engaged in activities such as providing emergency food distribution, delivering basic needs and hygiene kits, assisting at drive-thru testing sites and many others in response to the pandemic.

MCSC provided resources to nonprofits across the state to help aid their efforts and strengthen capacity.

"The Michigan Community Service Commission has provided great resources to help us support youth during these trying times. Mentoring is such an important tool that has proven to guide youth to success," said Eric Miller of the Lawn Academy. "We are thankful for the Commission for assisting us in mentoring more youth, serving more of those in need and running our nonprofit more efficiently."
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Releases Muskegon Heights School District from Receivership

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Releases Muskegon Heights School District from Receivership

July 19, 2021

Today, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released the Muskegon Heights School District from receivership under the Local Financial Stability and Choice Act and dissolved its Receivership Transition Advisory Board (RTAB).

The governor's actions follow a recommendation to terminate receivership from the Muskegon Heights School District RTAB. Effective immediately, the school district will regain local control without state oversight, marking the end of any school district or community under active state oversight.

"Today is a new day for the Muskegon Heights School District and the state of Michigan," Governor Whitmer said. "The efforts of the school district and community to identify problems and bring together the resources to solve complex financial challenges are to be commended. I am proud to say that we no longer have any school district or community under state oversight."

Since the state oversight board was appointed in late 2016, the school district has had accomplishments toward continued fiscal stability, including:

Ended Fiscal Year 2019-2020 with a general fund balance of $653,744, or 46% of revenues.

Added to the general fund balance for three consecutive years.

Current on all required pension and other post-employment benefits.

Continued compliance with bond and note obligations to date.

The role of the RTAB was to work with local leaders to ensure the school district continued a path toward long-term financial stability. This includes ensuring the school board adhered to its assigned responsibilities and the school district had a balanced budget, which have both been accomplished.

Both the school district and public school academy have systems in place that will continue to govern the relationship of the board of education and academy.

The state of Michigan will continue to support Muskegon Heights schools to ensure a quality K-12 education is provided for its youth.

For example, the Michigan Department of Education has a Partnership Agreement with the school system to prioritize academic outcomes. Recently, the public school academy was awarded a $3 million state grant from the state Education Department to help with literacy initiatives.

The state Treasury Department will continue to provide technical assistance as needed to support long-term financial stability, as well as monitor the district's fiscal health, including the repayment of debt obligations.

Background

In December 2011, the Muskegon Heights School District's Board of Education voted to engage an emergency manager to address the fiscal challenges of the district.

In January 2012, Gov. Rick Snyder appointed a six-member Financial Review Team to examine the school district's conditions indicative of a financial emergency. The review team concluded a financial emergency was present in the district and an emergency manager was appointed.

In July 2012, the Muskegon Heights School District entered into a Charter Agreement with the Muskegon Height Public Schools Academy System to operate the district's K-12 education system. This contract remains until long-term debts are paid off.

Upon the conclusion of the emergency manager's term in October 2016, Governor Snyder appointed the RTAB to ensure a smooth transition to local control and continued stability for the school district.

Under state law, the RTAB's sole function is to oversee the school district's finances, including working through budgets, debt and deficient elimination plans.

# # #

Press Contacts: Danelle Gittus or Ron Leix, Treasury Public Information Officers, at 517-335-2167
Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II Tours Small Business in Grand Rapids to Highlight Small Business Support Efforts as Michigan Gets Back to Work

Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II Tours Small Business in Grand Rapids to Highlight Small Business Support Efforts as Michigan Gets Back to Work

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 19, 2021

Press@Michigan.gov

Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II Tours Small Business in Grand Rapids to Highlight Small Business Support Efforts as Michigan Gets Back to Work

LANSING, Mich. - Today, Lt. Governor Garlin Gilchrist II toured GRNoir Wine & Jazz in Grand Rapids following remarks at the Grand Rapids regional Small Business Summit, which brought together small business owners, advocates, support organizations and lenders from West Michigan as part of a statewide effort to inform a comprehensive strategy for small business investment in Michigan.

Support for small businesses represents a key component of the administration's Economic Jumpstart Plan which would allocate millions in federal relief funding to support and invest in working people in Michigan.

"We have a generational opportunity before us to create significant, lasting impacts on Michigan families and businesses and we know that we will only be truly successful in doing so if we work together as one Michigan to get the job done," said Lt. Governor Gilchrist. "As we put Michiganders back to work, it remains imperative that we stand tall for small businesses across Michigan by continuing to provide the supports needed to help them recover from COVID-19 and boost our economic jumpstart throughout the state."

With additional state revenues expected following last month's Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference and incoming federal funding that includes $2 billion in remaining CARES Act funding, nearly $6.5 billion in flexible funding through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), $176 million in federal State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) funds, and $1.4 billion in federal child care funding Michigan is in a strong position to make the investments that can transform the landscape for small businesses and help both residents and businesses recover from the pandemic.

Today's summit in Grand Rapids is the second of four regional summits following last month's virtual Small Business Summit hosted by the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation meant to inform a comprehensive strategy for small business investment in Michigan.

"After the challenges and setbacks small businesses and the workforce faced during the pandemic, these conversations are just the beginning to address the unique needs of employers in West Michigan," said Susan Corbin, acting director of the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. "I look forward to participating, actively listening and strategizing with our business partners, local officials, community organizations and lenders in future events this summer. By working together and bringing a diverse set a voices around the table, we can continue to jumpstart the economy and get Michigan back to work"

A recent survey conducted by New Economy Initiative found 86 percent of microbusinesses, or those with less than 10 employees, reported being negatively impacted by the pandemic and 77 percent stated capital was their most significant need. The impact of small businesses on the economy is felt throughout the state, with 63 percent of Grand Rapids and Lansing businesses having less than 10 employees, while 70 percent, 71 percent and 72 percent of Marquette, Traverse City and Detroit businesses, respectively, have less than 10 employees.

"With the influx of federal dollars coming to our state, this is an opportunity to create unprecedented access to capital for micro-enterprises and disadvantaged small businesses," said Jamiel Robinson,

founder and CEO of Grand Rapids Area Black Businesses. "From reports and studies, we know minority-owned businesses received very little relief grants and PPP loans. This is an opportunity to further support the recovery of businesses negatively impacted by the pandemic. It's also an opportunity to make transformational investments in businesses that make our neighborhoods vibrant and great."

Through the administration's Economic Jumpstart Plan, the state is helping people go back to work and support their families while giving them the peace of mind to know that their children are safe and learning. Critical to that approach is the administration's focus on supporting small businesses by providing access to available, affordable childcare along with strong benefits to encourage families to utilize expanded childcare options as Michigan's recovery picks up steam.

Governor Whitmer and Lt. Governor Gilchrist also sent a letter to the U.S. Small Business Administration urging it to consider alternative resources to support restaurants with minority, women and veteran owners following the court rulings in Texas and Tennessee around the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. These small businesses, especially, were among the hardest hit by the pandemic, and are a vital part of Michigan's economic jumpstart moving forward.

"If Michigan, and Grand Rapids, is truly committed to taking advantage of this historic moment, then supporting microbusinesses, or those with less than 10 employees, particularly microbusinesses of color must be an intentional focus, with effective strategies and impact," said Shatawn and Nadia Brigham, owners of GRNoir Wine & Jazz. "This includes not just capital, but ways for us to support thriving wages, health insurance, and sustainability for our businesses."

For more information on the small business summits and support for small businesses visit www.michigan.gov/smallbusiness.

# # #
Gov. Whitmer Announces Plans for New State Park in Flint

Gov. Whitmer Announces Plans for New State Park in Flint

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 14, 2021

Contact: Press@Michigan.gov

Gov. Whitmer Announces Plans for New State Park in Flint

FLINT, Mich. - Governor Gretchen Whitmer today announced plans to create a new Michigan state park in the City of Flint by utilizing federal relief dollars from President Biden's American Recovery Plan. This would mark the first state park in Genesee County, the only county in Michigan without land that is managed by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and when completed would become Michigan's 104th state park.

"Parks are pillars of our local communities and economies," said Governor Gretchen Whitmer. "Through the pandemic, park attendance reached historic highs as people went outdoors to unwind and connect with their loved ones. That's especially true in Michigan's great cities, which have been disproportionately impacted by COVID. This new park in Flint is a multi-generational investment in the community that will support small businesses, create jobs, and give people a space to enjoy with friends and family."

Governor Whitmer made the announcement at Chevy Commons, a former industrial site in Flint currently owned by Genesee County that would serve as the center for the new outdoor recreation space. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources will look to leverage the Flint River Restoration Plan and collaborate with the local community to develop this new park and to seek other funding to bring the park to fruition and provide for its future operations and maintenance

The $26.2 million investment in the Flint state park would be drawn from $250 million in funding previously proposed by Whitmer to address a backlog of needs in state parks and trails across Michigan to help support businesses and local economies.

"A new state park in the heart of Flint will help transform our community and create opportunities for people to enjoy the outdoors and come together," said Congressman Kildee. "In Congress, I helped pass the American Rescue Plan to provide resources to the state of Michigan to make these significant economic investments. I applaud Governor Whitmer for her leadership and bold vision to help Flint reimagine and reinvest in Chevy Commons."

The park fulfills elements of the DNR's Public Land Strategy as well as the 2012 report of the Michigan Parks and Outdoor Recreation Blue Ribbon Panel. These documents identify as priorities increased access to diverse recreation opportunities in or near urban areas and the establishment of a "signature park" in the City of Flint.

"We have long recognized the need to build quality recreational spaces closer to the state's population," said Ron Olson, chief of the Parks and Recreation Division for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. "This plan answers that need by providing a park along the Flint River in the heart of the city, connecting citizens and neighborhoods to this natural asset. We look forward to working closely over the next few years with our partners in the City of Flint, Genesee County, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and throughout the community to fashion a park that will answer local needs and reflect a local vision."

State and local parks saw an influx of visitors during the pandemic, as people sought safe and socially distanced ways to stay mentally and physically healthy. State parks alone saw 35 million visitors in 2020, a 30 percent increase over the previous year. Local parks have seen a similar increase in use during the public health crisis.

"Developing a state park on the Chevy Commons site would be an outstanding use of this property, and the governor's proposed funding will be critical in moving this project from concept to reality," said Mark Young, chairman of the Genesee County Board of Commissioners. "Once this funding is approved by the Legislature, the county intends to work closely with the state, the City of Flint and other partners to design a park that meets the future needs of our community."

The governor's proposed investment, which requires approval from the Legislature, would develop a park that would be anchored at Chevy Commons and expanded along the Flint River corridor to seamlessly connect the park to local neighborhoods, businesses, and institutions, such as the University of Michigan-Flint, Kettering University, the Flint Farmers' Market, the Flint Cultural Center Campus, and the Iron Belle Trail. Although plans are in their earliest stages, the new park could include non-motorized trails, unique playscapes, accessible open spaces, fishing platforms, and canoe and kayak launches into the Flint River.

A timeline for completion and further funding still needs to be developed, but the commitment of state funding will prove a critical catalyst in pushing the project forward.

"Flint is proud to be the first city in Genesee County to have a State Park," said Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley. "Repurposing this land for outdoor recreational space will enhance residents' health and quality of life while giving families in Flint an opportunity to enjoy nature. A state park in Flint is a beacon of light and will have vast environmental, economic, and social impacts through the transformation of key land within the City. We thank God, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Governor Whitmer for making this possible. Prayer, Planning and Partnerships work."

"In Flint, our parks are a hub for the community," said Sen. Ananich (D-Flint). "Never were they more important to our health and well-being than this last year, when we relied on them as a refuge. I am so pleased to see the governor make our public greenspaces a priority with her plan to bring a state park right here to Genesee County. An investment in our parks is an investment in the fabric of Flint that families from around the state will be able to enjoy for generations to come."

"The creation of a state park in Flint and Genesee County is the culmination of a decade-long dream and effort for me," said Rep. John Cherry of Flint. "The transformation of the riverfront from a shuttered factory and concrete field to an expansive and beautiful recreational space will bring enjoyment for families, vibrancy, economic development and opportunity that will reach out to all parts of the city. I look forward to the day when I bring my young daughter to Michigan's 104th state park and tell her how it came to be. I am excited to see the continued restoration of our river that this project will spark."

"The Mott Foundation applauds the creation of the first state park in Genesee County, centered around the Flint River," said Ridgway White, president and CEO of the Foundation, which has granted $5.43 million in support of the Flint River Restoration Project. "Most important, the new park, enhanced trails and other planned amenities have great potential to improve the health, well-being and quality of life for Flint residents. We also hope they'll be a boost to the community as a whole, serving as one more step forward as Flint continues to recover from the water crisis, pandemic, and decades of disinvestment by the public and private sectors."

"For the last 10 years, Flint & Genesee Education & Talent has partnered with Michigan's Department of Natural Resources to connect hundreds of Flint teens to outdoor summer jobs and recreational activities," said Dr. Kimberly Leverette, executive director of Flint & Genesee Education & Talent, a division of the Flint & Genesee Group. "The establishment of this new park builds upon that partnership by creating new jobs and career paths that both teens and adults can pursue in Flint and Genesee County. Through spurring job creation and offering new recreational opportunities for residents and families, this park will surely contribute to a higher quality of life for our community."

More information about the proposed park can be found here:

###
Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is offering two free summer webinar series focused on supporting mental wellness to help Michiganders recover emotionally from the COVID-19 pandemic.

As part of the agencys Stay Well program, created in April 2020 near the start of the pandemic, the two series of webinars are called the Summer Resilience Series and Draw Your Feelings!

The webinars offered are great topics for everyone and look to be great ways to do whats called closing the stress cycle,' said Kathy Snyder, the wellbeing coordinator for the Midland Area Wellbeing Coalition. These types of practices help our bodies realize that the stress is over and have a calming effect. Additionally, all of these practices have strong research behind them to support and bolster wellbeing.

The Summer Resilience Series is open to anyone with access to the Zoom online platform. Featuring a diverse assortment of guest speakers from around Michigan, the webinars explore practices that help people find hope, tranquility and optimism, according to a Michigan Department of Health and Human Services press release. View the remaining program line-up here, with all Summer Resilience webinars beginning at 1 p.m.

Additionally, the Draw Your Feelings! series offers interactive zoom workshops designed for parents and their children. Led by licensed clinical mental health counselor Zeinab Moussa, the weekly workshops are designed to help children build emotional intelligence through guided drawing activities. View the schedule and topics for this series here. All Draw Your Feelings! webinars are at 2 p.m.

MDHHS has recognized the value of helping people take care of their behavioral health as well as their physical health during the fight against COVID-19 and will continue to do whatever we can to help Michiganders address their mental health needs, said Allen Jansen, senior deputy director of the departments Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Administration. The idea is to give Michiganders feeling distressed by the pandemic some new ways to channel their thoughts and energy this summer. Or, as we like to say, be kind to your mind.

In addition, if youre feeling emotional distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic, get free, confidential support from a Michigan Stay Well counselor. Dial 1-888-535-6136 and press 8. The Stay Well counseling line is available 24/7.

To learn more and register for the sessions, visit Michigan.gov/staywell. Recordings of past webinars are also available at the site.

Be the first in the know by signing up for the Midland Daily News newsletter here.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Jasmine Crockett, a Black civil rights lawyer and one of the youngest lawmakers in Texas, was just a few months into her first term in the Legislature when Republicans were on the cusp of passing new limits on when and how Texans could vote.

Like other Democrats, she was adamantly opposed to the bill. But when they discussed using extraordinary tactics to try to block it  including a walkout  she sensed hesitancy from older, veteran members who are more accustomed to being the minority party in the state House of Representatives.

I dont understand. Why are we sitting here? Crockett, 40, recalled of the frustration among her younger colleagues. Were asking legitimate questions, like, Cant we leave? What is the problem?

When Texas Democrats bolted for Washington in a dramatic gambit to block the bill, it was a significant strategic victory for Crockett and a group of newer Texas lawmakers, including Black and Latino members, whose instincts are more inclined to confrontational politics. If their long-suffering party is to find a way out of the wilderness in Texas, Democrats need to sharpen their message and their elbows, they argue.

The demographics are there for someone to win Texas right now. I dont think it can be someone who is completely measured. They have to be loud and outspoken, said Crockett, who is the only first-term Black legislator in a state Capitol that still is mostly older and white.

As Texas Democrats entered the second week of their holdout Monday, they continued their media blitz and their meetings with members of Congress. Chris Turner, chairman of the Texas House Democrats, said they would meet with House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn on Tuesday.

Turner told MSNBC on Monday night, This was the only option we had if were going to stop Greg Abbott and other Republicans from making it harder for Texans to vote.

To run out the clock on the GOP's sweeping elections bill back home, Democrats must stay out of Texas for 19 more days, at which point Republican Gov. Abbott says he will immediately call another special session to try for a third time to pass the measure.

Nationwide, younger progressives elected to office are pushing a more aggressive strategy within the Democratic Party, most notably in their calls to rewrite Senate rules and do away with the filibuster  it stands in the way of federal voting rights legislation that Texas Democrats say is their best hope of blunting new GOP restrictions back home. A similar dynamic spurred the first dramatic walkout in May, though Texas Democrats remain more unified.

Still, they acknowledge wanting their party to take a harder edge as the GOP implements a far-reaching conservative agenda after President Donald Trump lost his bid for reelection in November.

They tend to be a little more combative, said Rice University professor Mark Jones, a political scientist who has scored Texas lawmakers' partisanship since 2009. The older style would have been to have worked this out behind the scenes. The younger style is more to make it public and make it more of a protest movement.

Jones is skeptical that it helps Democrats quest to flip Americas biggest red state in the long run.

Its inextricably linked Texas Democrats to national Democrats, who are quite unpopular in Texas, he said.

The demographics of the Texas Legislature haven't much changed with the arrival of younger Democrats. White candidates in 2018 flipped most of the dozen, mainly suburban seats Democrats picked up in the House, where Republicans have an 83-67 majority.

The scramble to leave Austin under the threat of arrest came as Democrats remain stumped by a riddle they have not cracked in 27 years: how to win a statewide race in Texas. Even now, less than a year before the 2022 primary elections, Democrats still have no candidate for governor. They are waiting for an answer from former congressman Beto ORourke, but if he doesnt run, there is but one other prominent figure flirting with a challenge to Abbott  actor Matthew McConaughey. It's unclear what, if any, party McConaughey would run under.

In Texas, Democrats are fond of looking to Georgia, where Black leaders and progressives mobilized voters and helped flip one of America's most reliably red states in November. But Texas Democrats also have a poor track record of prediction, seldom more glaring than last year when massive expectations foundered, including a failure to pick up additional statehouse seats that would have bolstered their chances of stopping or weakening a voting bill.

Instead, the results emboldened Texas Republicans, who came away seeing new opportunity with Latinos. Of the Texas Democrats who stayed behind, several are from districts on the U.S.-Mexico border.

I would say we are at Georgia five years ago, Arizona five years ago, said Texas state Rep. James Talarico, 32, who is the youngest House Democrat. It was young people and young leaders, in particular, that led those states out of the political wilderness. And I think this quorum break perfectly encapsulates this new, fighting spirit."

Republicans call it a fight that Democrats will inevitably lose.

For many years there was a distinction, I think, between Texas government and D.C.," Republican state Rep. Mayes Middleton said. And unfortunately ... this younger side of the caucus is pulling the Texas Legislature more towards the direction of D.C. where you have this division.

The GOP's voting bill in Texas would ban 24-hour polling places, prohibit ballot drop boxes and empower partisan poll watchers, moves that Democrats say are designed to suppress and intimidate voters. Republicans are continuing to show up at the state Capitol, even though they can't pass any laws, calling the bills safeguards that have nothing to do with Trump's loss to Democrat Joe Biden last year.

But as recently as last week, state Sen. Larry Taylor, the Senate GOP chair, would not acknowledge that Biden rightfully won the election.

I don't know that. I hear a lot of discussion about it. There's been no real investigation on that, Taylor said while leading a news conference defending the bill.

Trump has falsely claimed that he was robbed of a second term because of massive voter fraud nationwide. In fact, claims of massive fraud have been refuted by numerous judges, state election officials and even Trump's own administration after the election.

It is those kind of comments that Democrats say justify the extreme measures they are taking to try thwarting the bill. O'Rourke said he has raised more than $600,000 to keep the absent Democrats afloat. They were set to appear in a town hall on MSNBC on Monday, although that was scaled back after members of the delegation tested positive for the coronavirus.

Texas state Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, who was voting protection director in Nevada during President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, won her seat in 2018 by challenging a 29-year House incumbent in a primary and itched for harder fights over issues like women's health and LGBT rights. I was frustrated, you know, that we were getting attacked, said the 40-year-old Gonzalez, who is Latina.

Two years later, she was picked as vice chair of the House Elections Committee.

They're the ones leading the charge, said Democratic state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, who was first elected in 2000. They deserve a lot of credit.

___

Associated Press writer Acacia Coronado contributed to this report.
For the past few years, summer night pool parties have been a huge hit for two local organizations, The ROCK Center for Youth Development and Midland Parks and Recreation. The two groups have partnered to provide free pool parties for the communitys teens.

On July 15, 185 middle and high school students attended this event, despite the cloudy and cool weather. They enjoyed spending time with their friends, snacks and of course  swimming. Two more pool parties are on deck for the summer  July 22 and 29. Both take place 8:30-10 p.m. at Plymouth Pool.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)  Abu Dhabis powerful crown prince visited Saudi Arabia for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday following weeks of speculation about the growing rift between the two leaders. It came as their nations compete for business, regional investments and prominence.

The meeting between Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, 60, and Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 35, also came a day after their energy ministers announced a compromise on oil production quotas that had been preceded by rare public commentary between the OPEC allies.

Both princes, whose nations sit on vast reserves of oil, are seen as de-facto leaders of their respective countries. They oversee their country's armed forces and wield control over intelligence and foreign policy.

Their meeting in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was attended by a tight circle of three top officials from each side. The state-owned Saudi Press Agency reported few details about the meeting, describing it as a discussion on the deep-rooted fraternal relations between the two countries and the latest regional and international developments.

The news agency reported that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally welcomed Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed upon his arrival to Riyadh.

The two princes once shared a brotherly like bond, reportedly spending time on hunting trips in the desert as Abu Dhabi's crown prince mentored Saudi Arabia's ambitious and brazen heir to the throne. Prince Mohammed worked to model aspects of the kingdom's transformation on the successes of the United Arab Emirates.

So close were the two de-facto leaders that Saudi Arabia and the UAE launched into a war in Yemen and cut ties with neighboring Qatar together. In late 2017, the two nations announced a new partnership to coordinate in all military, political, economic, trade and cultural fields.

In more recent years, however, increasing political differences emerged, particularly with regard to the fighting in Yemen and relations with Qatar. This has prompted some analysts to speculate of behind-the-scenes tensions between the two powerful princes.

But on Monday, the UAE's state-run news agency said the meeting in Riyadh explored ways for enhancing the flourishing relations and strategic cooperation between the two countries.
The Orange-based corporate parent of The United Illuminating Co. and two of Connecticuts natural gas companies has launched a panel of its customers and community members to get feedback on the operation of its utilities.

The success of our companies rests upon listening to our customers, said Frank Reynolds, president of UI.

The first meeting of Avangrids Customer Listening Council in Connecticut was on June 21, Reynolds said. Avangrid also has Listening Councils in Maine, Massachusetts and New York, where it has utility companies.

The councils are made up of between 11 and 15 people from across the service territories of each Avangrid utility, Reynolds said, and includes a large base of our customers that includes commercial and industrial businesses as well as nonprofits.

Noticeably absent in the makeup of the group are individual residential customers. Reynolds said the group does have a nonprofit that represents a certain socioeconomic class of ratepayers. He would not elaborate on what socioeconomic class that is.

Susan Millerick, an Avangrid spokeswoman, said the councils still are evolving.

Its hard to go through initially and say who is average (among the utilities residential customers), Millerick said. We are going to continue refining this group and bringing in new people.

As part of their involvement in the listening councils, members will receive operational updates from the Avangrid companies, according to company officials. The listening councils will meet three or four times a year and membership will rotate periodically to ensure new voices and perspectives are heard, officials said.

Garrett Sheehan, president of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce, is a member of the Connecticut council. Sheehan said UI officials have always been responsive to the needs of the business community.

The Customer Listening Council in Connecticut takes this to another level, he said. UI is creating regular contact points with senior leadership. In my experience, they want to hear everything, the good and the bad.

Paula Panzarella, one of the cofounders of the New Haven-based consumer energy activist group Fight The Hike, said the company needs to rethink the makeup of the listening councils.

If they are really interested in listening, they need to broaden who they are going to be listening to, Panzarella said. Regular citizens, consumer advocates and energy activists should be involved. Theres no lack of people that would be interested and have a level of expertise who would be willing to serve if they were asked and do it in a non-adversarial way.

In addition to UI, the companies other Connecticut utilities are Southern Connecticut Gas and Connecticut Natural Gas.

During hearings by Connecticut regulators regarding UIs performance in the aftermath of Tropical Storm Isaias last summer, officials with the electric utility were criticized for offering too little in terms of ways customers could offer feedback. Reynolds said the listening councils have nothing to do with the companys post-Isaias performance.

We continue to say we did a great job with the storm, Reynolds said. We also recognize that Bridgeport didnt agree with that assessment.

Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim at one point threatened to sue UI in the aftermath of the storm and publicly called for utility repair crews to work harder and faster to return power to thousands of his constituents.

luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com
NEW MILFORD  Literacy Volunteers on the Green is presenting its annual Celebration of Literacy, a fundraiser. Usually a dinner event with a silent and live auction, this years benefit is a Virtual Silent Auction.

Tickets to the event are not necessary, just pre-register at givergy.us/lvg-ct. and begin browsing through the wide assortment of items, all available for online bidding and eventual purchase.
RENO, Nev. (AP)  A Navy helicopter crew looking for a hiker missing in some California mountains east of Yosemite National Park survived after they crashed near the tallest peak in Nevada, and both the searchers and the hiker were rescued over the weekend.

The four-member crew escaped injury but had to spend Friday night in the rugged wilderness before being rescued Saturday from a ridge along the California-Nevada line, about 120 miles (193 kilometers) south of Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada, authorities said.

The Navy is investigating the cause of the crash reported about 5 p.m. Friday, Navy spokesman Zip Upham said Monday. The Navy MH-60 Knighthawk had been helping with the search for a lost hiker in the White Mountains in the Inyo National Forest.

Ronald Bolen, an Oklahoma University professor who was reported missing last week on a trail to Boundary Peak, was found by hikers late Saturday or Sunday in good condition and transported for medical treatment, the Mono County sheriffs office said.

A family member told the Reno Gazette Journal that Bolen was dehydrated but otherwise in good shape.

Boundary Peak, near the California line about 100 miles (161 kilometers) east of Yosemite National Park, is Nevada's tallest mountain at an elevation of 13,410 feet (4,005 meters).

The helicopter crash occurred at 11,700 feet (3,566 meters) in very rugged terrain in the national forest, Upham said.

It's going to take us a little time to do the investigation because of where the aircraft rests, he said. After that, we'll see about removing the aircraft.

A second Knighthawk helicopter left the air station after the crash and found the crew but was unable to safely rescue them.

A California National Guard CH-47 Chinook helicopter that performs better at high altitudes and is based at Mather Field in Sacramento returned Saturday afternoon to safely remove the crew members, Upham said.

They had been on standby for firefighting so they were available, he said.
Venice, FL (34285)

Today

Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Scattered thunderstorms. Low 79F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
Bridgeport Police / Contributed

BRIDGEPORT  A man wanted in connection with an attempted murder from May was taken into custody Thursday, according to police.

City detectives and members of the U.S. Marshals Violent Fugitive Task Force took 19-year-old Rashaad Shoddy Bynum into custody in the 800 block of Hancock Ave., Lt. Christopher LaMaine said.
With the birth of the Space Force, the Coast Guard is getting a well-deserved relief from the other branches nonstop puddle pirate jokes. The lighthearted jokes may be funny, but its important to know the not a real branch of the military gag only exists on paper.

The Coast Guard technically lives under the Department of Homeland Security, not the Defense Department. But for a time, the Department of the Navy was nonexistent, and the Coast Guard -- then called the Revenue Cutter Service -- was the only maritime force the United States had to defend its coasts.

Since then, Coasties have been getting in on the action wherever it was necessary, fighting World War II before Pearl Harbor, taking down pirate havens and even leading U.S. Army soldiers into combat. The most important thing to remember is that this list is by no means complete.

1. The Revenue Cutter Service Gives France a Black Eye

After the Franco-American lovefest that was the American Revolution, relations between France and the United States began to deteriorate after the French Revolution. The U.S. reneged on its Revolutionary War debts with France, claiming the money was owed to the king, not the French Republic. Anger turned to threats, and since there was no Judge Judy to settle the debt question, threats turned to an undeclared shooting war.

When 'Puddle Pirates' take down actual pirates. (U.S. Coast Guard)

While the Department of the Navy was getting its act together, Congress used the Revenue Cutter Service to protect American ships from the French Navy. Oh, what a service it was. The Coast Guards predecessor captured 18 ships and helped the Navy capture two more.

2. How the Revenue Cutter Got Its Sword Back

The War of 1812 was launched in part because British ships were boarding American vessels illegally and impressing U.S. sailors into their fleet. Once the war started, things didnt go quite as well as either side hoped it would. The British Royal Navy learned about the Revenue Cutter Service the hard way.

"You chose poorly." - Capt. Samuel Travis (U.S. Coast Guard)

A 50-man boarding party from the HMS Narcissus tried to sneak up on the Revenue Cutter Surveyor under Capt. Samuel Travis. The Surveyors crew was outnumbered more than three to one but saw the British coming, so when the Royal Navy sailors boarded, the Coasties opened up on them with two loaded pistols each. The cutter was captured, but the British captain returned Travis sword out of respect for the crews stalwart defense.

3. The Coast Guard Leads the Army

For 20 years, the U.S. military fought to subdue the American Indian tribes that had not yet been sent to reservations or were otherwise hostile to American expansion in the frontier areas. This often included some places that we traditionally dont think of as frontier, like Washington states Puget Sound. There, the fighting was known as the Puget Sound War, fought between the U.S. Army and the Nisqually, Muckleshoot, Puyallup and Klickitat tribes. This part of the Indian Wars also had a maritime component that required the Navy and Revenue Cutter Service.

"It's the Coast Guard! Let's get out of here!"

USRC 2nd Lt. James Harrison was assisting the U.S. 4th Infantry in the area in 1855. While operating with the Army, he was second in command. When the 4th Infantrys commander was killed in an ambush on their camp on Dec. 3, 1855, Harrison assumed command of the soldiers. Harrison regrouped his men, led a counterattack on the tribes and safely led them back to Fort Steilacoom 18 days later.

4. Even the Navy Needs Rescuing

The Revenue Cutter Service also saw action in the 1898 Spanish-American War. As part of the U.S. blockade of Cuba that year, the USRC Hudson was tasked to join Navy ships in a raid on the islands city of Cardenas. After a flotilla of Spanish ships attempted to break the blockade by attacking the Navy vessels, they sought safe harbor in Cardenas. The U.S. was going to enter the harbor and destroy them.

When the U.S. military gets in over its head, they call in the Coast Guard. (U.S. Coast Guard)

When the USS Winslow entered the area, it came under heavy fire from the city forts and was heavily damaged. The Hudson sailed to its rescue, fixing a tow cable to the ship for nearly a half-hour, under the same fire that had disabled the Winslow. President William McKinley awarded the Hudsons crew special medals for its efforts.

5. The Coast Guard Gets into WWII Three Months Early

The USCG Northland is an unlikely World War II hero at first glance. It was the last cruising cutter built for the Coast Guard equipped with a sailing rig. It not only hunted submarines when the war started but got into it a little early. In an agreement with Denmarks government-in-exile (Denmark already had fallen to the Nazis), it scored the first U.S. naval capture of the war, three months before the U.S. entered World War II.

126 reasons not to mess with the Coast Guard. (U.S. Coast Guard)

Northland was patrolling the coast of Greenland (which was controlled by Denmark) on Sept. 12, 1941, when it came upon the German-controlled Norwegian sealer Busk. A boarding party captured the ship and discovered Nazi radio equipment and documents that led it to a German radio station on the island. The Coasties raided the station and arrested three German radiomen, seizing their equipment and radio codes.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

Want to Learn More About Military Life?

Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
BOISE, Idaho  An Idaho lawmaker who publicized the name of a 19-year-old intern who accused another state lawmaker of rape will face a legislative ethics hearing next month.

The House Ethics and Policy Committee found probable cause that Rep. Priscilla Giddings, a Republican from the tiny town of White Bird, engaged in conduct unbecoming a representative, which is detrimental to the integrity of the House as a legislative body, the committee announced Tuesday.

Giddings did not immediately respond to a phone message and an email from The Associated Press requesting comment.

She faced criticism and complaints this year after sharing links to a far-right blog post that included the intern's name, photo and details about her life with thousands of people in a newsletter and on social media.

The intern had reported to police and legislative leaders that then-Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, a Republican from Lewiston, had raped her after they went out to dinner.

Von Ehlinger has denied any wrongdoing and said the sexual contact was consensual. An ethics committee found he engaged in conduct unbecoming a lawmaker, and von Ehlinger resigned before the full House could vote on whether he should be removed from office.

The Ada County prosecutor's office told the AP last week that police were still investigating the allegation against von Ehlinger.

The AP generally doesn't name people who report sexual assaults unless they agree to be publicly identified. The young woman who reported the rape allegation has previously asked to be referred to as Jane Doe.

She was repeatedly harassed after she reported the allegation. Rep. Heather Scott, a Republican from Blanchard, sought a copy of the police report and made inquiries into how people who make rape allegations could themselves be charged with a crime. Giddings made disparaging remarks about the woman in a newsletter to constituents that included the links to the blog post with identifying details. Giddings also shared the same post on her social media page that has thousands of followers.

Members of a far-right anti-government group also tried to follow and harass the woman after she was called to testify in von Ehlinger's ethics hearing. She later told the AP that the harassment was overwhelming during an already difficult time.

Under legislative rules, ethics committee investigations can only be triggered if a lawmaker files a formal complaint against a colleague. Those complaints aren't made public unless the committee finds there is probable cause to hold a hearing on the matter, so its unclear if any complaints have been made about other lawmakers.

After the harassment was revealed, hundreds of people reached out to legislative leaders to complain about Giddings' actions. Residents also called for the U.S. Air Force Academy to investigate whether Giddings, who is a major in the Air Force Reserves, violated any military rules.

The Air Force acknowledged in June that an assessment is ongoing, but because it's subject to federal privacy rules, it's not clear if that review resulted in any findings.

The House Ethics Committee received two formal complaints about Giddings but didn't immediately release details on either, other than to say it found probable cause that misconduct may have occurred regarding a portion of each complaint.

The public ethics hearing is set for Aug. 2 at the Idaho Statehouse.

The intern's attorney, Annie Pelletier Hightower with the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, said that when Giddings publicized the woman's personal information, the lawmaker did pretty much exactly what every person who experiences sexual violence fears will happen to their information.

Hightower said she was happy to learn an ethics hearing would be held.

It's an important step for the state, if we are really invested in creating space where people can report sexual violence, Hightower said. I think we should expect better of our lawmakers, and I am happy that there is some process for accountability that is ongoing.
A Senate Armed Services subcommittee has advanced a proposal that would give the decision for prosecuting most felony cases involving U.S. troops to military attorneys outside of the chain of command.

In the first step to craft the annual defense policy legislation, personnel subcommittee chairwoman Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., said that the basic bill, which will be considered Wednesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee, contains a provision that would remove prosecution decisions for sex crimes from unit commanders and the chain of command.

While she praised that inclusion, noting it's the first time that a Senate Armed Services Committee chairman -- in this case, Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. -- has supported it since she first introduced the idea in 2013, Gillibrand said that proposal would "create a separate but unequal system within the military for survivors." Instead, she is pushing to include felony crimes other than those that are uniquely military, such as desertion or disobeying an order.

Under Gillibrand's proposal, known as the the Military Justice Improvement Act, military attorneys outside the chain of command would decide whether to prosecute crimes such as murder, robbery, fraud and child endangerment, in addition to sexual assault.

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"We must resist the urge to isolate sex crimes," she said before offering her bill as an amendment to the subcommittee's draft of the Senate fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization legislation. "We must guarantee a professional unbiased system for all service members."

Gillibrand's bill currently has 65 sponsors, but its track to be passed as a stand-alone bill has been thwarted by Reed. He has said the proposal should be part of the annual defense policy bill and restricted to rape, sexual assault and harassment crimes.

Gillibrand has said in the past that commanders have an inherent bias because they know and work with alleged perpetrators and victims. She argued that limiting prosecutions to sexual assault doesn't take into account the racial bias prevalent in the military's legal system.

"That's a grave mistake," Gillibrand told Military.com in June, referring to limiting the bill to sex crimes. "It doesn't account for racial biases in punishments. This aims to help both plaintiffs and defendants."

Supporting Gillibrand on the personnel subcommittee is Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., former attorney general for Missouri, who said Tuesday that the amendment "will go a long way toward standardizing our system and doing justice for military families."

"I think it's a predictable system," Hawley said. "I think it is one that both defendants and victims can support because the rules are uniform. It's across the board, it's analogous to our civilian system, but still, of course, stays within the military system of justice and is one I believe that our allies also use and use successfully."

Gillibrand's amendment passed the subcommittee in a 5-1 vote with Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., casting the lone "no." Tillis said he believed the issue to be "a matter for the full committee" and preferred to deal with it there.

"For that reason, I'll be opposing the amendment," he said before the vote. "But make no mistake about it, we have to make progress on military sexual assault, and I believe in this [update] that we will."

A Pentagon commission has recommended that the Defense Department institute changes for sexual assault prosecutions in 2023, putting an independent prosecution system in charge of those cases.

Pentagon officials said those changes will be made that year, giving the U.S. military time to establish the system.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has said he supports the commission's recommendations, to include placing domestic violence and other special victims crimes in the system.

Nearly 6,300 sexual assaults were reported in the U.S. military in fiscal 2020, a 1% increase from the previous year.

Gillibrand and her counterpart on the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., have worked for years to improve reporting and accountability on sexual assaults and increase prevention efforts within the Defense Department. But the issue came under renewed scrutiny last year following the murder of Army Spc. Vanessa Guillen at Fort Hood, Texas. Before she was killed, she had reported that she had been sexually harassed by a colleague. Later investigations found base commanders tolerated a permissive environment for sexual harassment and assault.

The Senate Armed Services Committee will review the proposed fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization legislation and any amendments offered by members during a closed session Wednesday.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Related: Armed Services Chair Faces Tough Decision on Removing COs from Military Prosecutions
The United States on Tuesday carried out an airstrike in Somalia against the extremist group al-Shabaab.

In a statement, Defense Department spokeswoman Cindi King said that U.S. Africa Command forces conducted a single airstrike against al-Shabaab near Galkayo, Somalia.

King said the airstrike was carried out to support Somali National Army troops who were under attack by al-Shabaab fighters. No U.S. forces accompanied the Somalis during the operation, but they were remotely advising and assisting from another unidentified location, she added.

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King would not say what kind of aircraft carried out the strike, what kind of ordnance was used, or the specifics about the forces hit in the airstrike.

Al-Shabaab is an Islamic extremist group based in Somalia with ties to al-Qaida.

It was the first U.S. airstrike conducted in the country since Jan. 19, when Africa Command said it carried out two airstrikes near Jamaame and Deb Scinnele targeting al-Shabaab leaders involved in training, planning and carrying out bomb attacks.

That pair of strikes followed one on Jan. 18 that destroyed an al-Shabaab compound near Tiyeeglow, Somalia, according to Africa Command.

The U.S. military had about 800 troops in Somalia as of late December on missions to conduct counterterrorism operations and to train, advise and assist the Somalis.

Former President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to withdraw roughly 700 of those troops, a process that began in early January.

As he announced plans to withdraw forces to other bases in East Africa last December, Army Gen. Stephen Townsend, head of Africa Command, warned al-Shabaab that the U.S. remained capable of striking the group "at the time and place of our choosing."

"They should not test us," he added.

The U.S. has continued working with Somali forces in advisory and training roles since it moved personnel out of the country and conducted its first post-drawdown training engagement in late January.

-- Stephen Losey can be reached at stephen.losey@military.com. Follow him on Twitter @StephenLosey.

Related: AFRICOM Sends Warning to Al-Shabaab as US Troops Begin Withdrawing from Somalia
On Purple Heart Day, Americans pause to recognize the wounded warriors of the United States military. The medal is awarded to those who are "wounded or killed in any action against an enemy of the United States or as a result of an act of any such enemy or opposing armed forces."

Looking at the history and traditions of the armed forces, it should come as no surprise that the roots of this medal make it the oldest military award still presented to U.S. service members.

The History of the Purple Heart

Until the Civil War, the U.S. military didnt really award medals for soldiers or veterans of any war. The idea of giving medals was considered a more European military tradition. The idea of the Republic awarding bits of ribbon for combat actions often was looked upon with scorn.

Gen. George Washington didnt see it that way, and we know that because he personally issued medals to a few individuals, three that we know for sure. It was the Badge of Military Merit, and he awarded it to those who performed not only instances of unusual gallantry in battle, but also extraordinary fidelity and essential service in any way."

The award he gave those men was a heart in purple cloth, or silk, edged with narrow lace or binding. A few examples of those awarded by Washington still can be seen in museums, but its design is the foundation of today's Purple Heart medal. The award also bears a profile of Gen. Washington, along with an inscription on the reverse that reads: FOR MILITARY MERIT.

Although the medal fell into disuse from those early days through World War I, it was revived in the years between the world wars. On Washingtons 200th birthday in 1932, President Herbert Hoover authorized the wearing of the Purple Heart medal to any service member awarded the Meritorious Service Citation Certificate or who were authorized to wear wound chevrons after 1917.

True to Washingtons original order, the medal was authorized for anyone wounded by the enemy and for those exhibiting meritorious performance of duty. By the end of 1942, it was restricted to those who were wounded by an enemy force.

President John F. Kennedy extended the award to those who were killed in combat in 1962. In 1984, President Ronald Reagan again extended the medal to those wounded by terrorist attacks or as part of a peacekeeping force after 1973. In 1985, those wounded by friendly fire were eligible for a Purple Heart as well. The award is authorized when the Secretary of the Army recognizes it as a qualifying attack, or is authorized jointly by secretaries of the branches involved in the attack.

Staff Sgt. James N. Wheeler received the Purple Heart for injuries sustained during an improvised explosive device attack in Iraq on March 3, 2006. (U.S. Marine Corps)

Special Benefits for Purple Heart Recipients

Those who have received a Purple Heart get some extra state and federal veterans benefits. Though the more local benefits vary by state, the federal benefits offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs are fitting for Americas wounded warriors.

Read: Veteran State Benefits

These benefits include an automatic upgrade for their VA priority group, 10-point preference when applying for a federal job and full funding for the Post-9/11 GI Bill regardless of time spent on active duty.

Purple Heart Day

Every Aug. 7 since 2014 has been recognized as Purple Heart Day. Its an unofficial holiday, so government offices, businesses and stock markets will be open. Those interested in creating an official local celebration that day can coordinate learning activities or ceremonies with local veterans groups.

Those interested in observing the occasion on their own might want to talk to local veterans about their service, meet those who have received a Purple Heart or donate time or money to the Purple Heart Foundation, which helps fund the Military Order of the Purple Heart, advocating and protecting the interest of wounded veterans and caring for the needs of those veterans and their families.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

Want to Learn More About Military Life?

Whether you're thinking of joining the military, looking for post-military careers or keeping up with military life and benefits, Military.com has you covered. Subscribe to Military.com to have military news, updates and resources delivered directly to your inbox.
The Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission at Punjab, has upheld an order penalising a holiday club for unfair trade practices. Genial Holiday Club offered holiday accommodations at various locations.

In September 2019, the district consumer forum had (in an ex-parte order) ordered Genial Holiday Club of Chandigarh to refund Rs95,751 paid by the complainants, Bhupinder Singh Batra and his wife Kawal Jit Kaur, both residents of Patiala, towards membership of the holiday club.

The consumer court had also ordered the club to pay Rs10,000 as compensation for litigation charges and harassment while terming the matter an unfair trade practice.

The complainants alleged that after collection of the membership amount, they were informed that the club would charge an annual maintenance from them, though no such information was mentioned on the companys website.

Genial Holiday Club was unwilling to refund their money hence they requested the company to book two studio apartments in Manali. However, the couple said the apartments were substandard.

The complainants claimed that the company changed the hotels after repeated reminders but those too were not good enough. Feeling harassed, they demanded a refund of their membership fee, which the company rejected.

The couple then moved the district forum for redressal of their grievance.

Genial Holiday Club while appealing against the order in the commission, argued that the order passed by the forum in allowing the complaint was illegal, void and without appreciation of the facts, documents and evidence on record.

The company further said that it had nowhere mentioned about the star rating of any property in the memberships and that studio apartments were never rated by any hotel association of India.

While upholding the order, the commission noted that the club had failed to list its owned properties in the membership certificate. It added that no contract or agreement was executed with the consumers and that the membership certificate was an excuse to grab their clients hard-earned money. The commission thus found Genial Holiday Club deficient in rendering its service. The commission also pointed at the companys casual behaviour and observed that it failed to respond to emails sent by the complainants.
We had mentioned in Mondays closing report that Nifty, Sensex were under pressure from a global selloff. On Tuesday, the indices continued to fall. On the NSE, there were 478 advances, 1,511 declines and 59 unchanged.

The trend of the major indices on Tuesdays trading are given in the table below:

Asian Paints net profit for the April-June 2021 quarter more than doubled to Rs 574.3 crore against Rs 219.6 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous financial year. Revenue almost doubled to Rs 5,585.4 crore from Rs 2,922.7 crore in the same period last year.

ACC consolidated net profit more than doubled to Rs 569.45 crore from Rs 271 crore in the year ago quarter. Sales grew 49% to Rs 3,885 crore from Rs 2,602 crore in the previous year.

Bajaj Finance net profit for the June 2021 quarter grew 4% to Rs 1,002.4 crore from Rs 962.3 crore in the corresponding quarter of the previous year. Net interest income grew 8% to Rs 4,489 crore from Rs 4,152 crore in the year ago quarter.

HDFC Life Insurance consolidated net profit fell 40% to Rs 269.55 crore from Rs 450.54 crore in the year-ago quarter.

HCL Tech consolidated net profit for the quarter ended 30 June 2021 rose 9% to Rs 3,205 crore from Rs 2,931 crore in the same period last year. Revenue grew by 12.48% to Rs 20,068 crore, from Rs 17,842 crore in the previous year.

Wipro has sold its entire stake in IntSights for a consideration of USD 19.17 million to Rapid7 Inc. Wipro had acquired this minority stake in the cyberthreat intelligence service provider for USD 4.21 million.

Newgen Software net profit jumped to Rs 21.6 crore from Rs 9 crore in the same period last year. Revenue grew 21% to Rs 159.5 crore from Rs 132 crore in the year ago quarter.

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala reduced his stake in Tata Motors to 1.14% as per June 2021 shareholding data from 1.29% in March 2021.

ISGEC Heavy Engineering has secured orders for two sets of carbonation columns, one set of gas scrubber columns and a set of distillation columns based in Russia.

Shyam Metalics reported net profit of Rs 458 crore for the quarter ended 30 June 2021 compared to Rs 80.4 crore in the year-ago quarter. Revenue nearly tripled to Rs 2,465 crore from Rs 911.8 crore in the year ago quarter.

Premier Explosives has entered into technology transfer agreement with Thorimba Global for utilising the unique technology developed by them in the manufacture of ammunition.

During the period 2016-19, This investment was made through Wipro Ventures, the strategic investment arm of Wipro.

The top gainers and top losers of the major indices are given in the table below:

The closing values of the major Asian indices are given in the table below:
Market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has barred Global Infratech and Finance Ltd (GIFL), the company directors and 12 other individuals from the securities market for their roles in a fraudulent scheme of trading in the firm's shares.

The company (GIFL) and its directors -- Pravin Sawant and Jagdish Chander Sharma -- have been restrained from the securities market for two years, while others have been barred for six months according to an order passed by SEBIs whole time member Madhabi Puri Buch.

The other individuals who have been barred include Raj Kumar Sharma, Puspal Chandra, Rajendra Kumar Kothari, Priti Kothari, Saroj Devi Kothari, Dilip Kumar Mandal, Nishant Kothari, Anoop Jain, Anoop Jain (HUF), Ritu Jain, Ammaji Anumolu, Anumolu Harshitha.

All the entities and individuals are also restrained from associating themselves with any listed public company and any public company, which intends to raise money from the public or any intermediary registered with SEBI, during their respective period of restraint.

GIFL was promoted by Radhe Shyam Poddar and Gopal Poddar to carry out the activities of investment, leasing, bill discounting and operations of secondary market and got listed on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) in February 1996. In 2012, the company changed its name to Global Infratech & Finance Ltd from Asianlak Capital & Finance Ltd.

SEBI investigated the company for the period between 25 June 2012 to 4 September 2014 into the matter of buying, selling or dealing in the scrip of GIFL to ascertain possible violation of the provisions of the SEBI Act, 1992 and SEBI (Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices relating to Securities Market) Regulations, 2003.

The market regulator noted during its investigation that Global Infratech and Finance had made two preferential allotments in January and June 2012 and transferred some of its preferential allotment proceeds to three entities.

SEBIs investigation revealed that certain connected preferential allottees, who were connected to Global Infratech, and thereby also connected to the individuals involved in price manipulation, sold their shares at the manipulated high price. The shares were sold at the inflated and manipulated price for profit.

A common show-cause notice dated 1 March 2018 was issued to all noticees - a total of 46 persons and entities.

In its order, SEBI stated that Global Infratech and its directors were also part of a scheme to manipulate the price of the shares to benefit connected preferential allottees.

Section 11 of SEBI Act casts a duty on the Board to protect the interests of investors in securities and to promote the development of and to regulate the securities market. For achieving such object, it has been authorised to take such measures as it thinks fit. Thus, power to take all measures necessary to discharge its duty under the statute which is a reflection of the objective disclosed in the preamble has been conferred on SEBI, the order observed.

Pursuant to the said objective, PFUTP Regulations have been framed. The said Regulations, apart from other things, aims to preserve and protect market integrity in order to boost investor confidence in the securities market. By executing a fraudulent scheme, as has been executed by the Noticee No. 1 to 10 and 42 to 46 in the instant matter, the price discovery system itself is affected. It also has an adverse impact on the fairness, integrity, and transparency of the stock market. In view of the same and considering the violations committed by the Noticee No. 1 to 10 and 42 to 46, I find that it becomes necessary to issue appropriate directions against them, the SEBI order added.

Therefore, the entities have been barred from the securities market for violation of Prohibition of Fraudulent and Unfair Trade Practices norms (PFUTP Regulations). In view of the prohibition on sale of securities, during the period of restraint, the existing holding, including units of mutual funds shall remain frozen.

In case they have any open position in any exchange traded derivative contracts, as on the date of the order, they can close out/ square off such open positions within 3 months from the date of order or at the expiry of such contracts, whichever is earlier, the SEBI order added.

SEBI has also permitted some of the barred entities to settle the pay-in and pay-out obligations in respect of transactions, if any, which have taken place before the close of trading on the date of this order.
Weather Alert

...RED FLAG WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM NOON TO 9 PM MDT FRIDAY FOR GUSTY WINDS AND LOW RELATIVE HUMIDITY FOR FIRE WEATHER ZONES 115, 116, 117, AND 118... * AFFECTED AREA...Chouteau and Fergus Counties, Lincoln Ranger District of the Helena National Forest, Central and Eastern Lewis and Clark National Forest Areas and Helena and Townsend Ranger Districts of the Helena National Forest. * WINDS...West 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 35 mph. * RELATIVE HUMIDITY...As low as 9 percent. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... A Red Flag Warning means that critical fire weather conditions are either occurring now, or will shortly. A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity, and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior. Please advise the appropriate officials or fire crews in these areas of this Red Flag Warning. &&
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Fans have been waiting a long time for this, but we finally have a release date for the third season of 'Sex Education'.

The show follows a bunch of school kids going through the many ups and downs of teenage life.

The show has been a huge success for the streaming service, with over 40 million people tuning into the first season worldwide.

"With a new headmistress, new uniform and a new attitude - it's time for change at Moordale Secondary." Netflix said of season 3.

"Reopening our doors on September 17. See you there!" - The countdown til then is officially on!
Halliburton Co., the biggest provider of fracking services, is gearing up for several years of expansion in both the U.S. and foreign markets as spending recovers in the global energy industry.

"The positive activity momentum we see in North America and international markets today, combined with our expectations for future customer demand, gives us conviction for an unfolding multi-year upcycle," Chief Executive Officer Jeff Miller said in a statement Tuesday.

The Houston-based contractor rose as much as 3.1% Tuesday after reporting better-than-expected second-quarter earnings. The bullish commentary from the world's No. 3 oil-services provider follows comments last month from its largest rival, Schlumberger, which said the global economic recovery will trigger an energy-industry "supercycle" that should lead to wider margins.

That represents a dramatic rebound for the sector, which was laid low last year by the pandemic and forced to lay off tens of thousands of workers. The three biggest companies -- Halliburton, Schlumberger and Baker Hughes Inc. -- all report earnings this week and are expected to boost profits by at least 20% compared with the first three months of the year, according to an average of analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

"The margin performance that buoyed results should be enough to drive relative outperformance for Halliburton today, pending the company's outlook commentary," analysts at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. said Tuesday in a note to investors. "We'll be listening for international revenue outlook commentary as COVID-19 has, yet again, begun to impact certain international regions."

Oil-services providers haven't seen three straight quarters of share appreciation since the days of $100-a-barrel crude back in 2014. Now, as drilling accelerates around the world, the Philadelphia Oil Service Index is showing just that.

The Houston-based contractor reported second-quarter earnings per share excluding one-time items of 26 cents, exceeding the 23-cent average of analysts' estimates, while revenue of $3.7 billion trailed the $3.75 billion average. Halliburton reported its largest North American quarterly sales since the onset of the pandemic last year.

Miller, who slashed more than $1 billion in costs during the downturn, three months ago forecast double-digit year-on-year growth in international orders during the second half of this year. Closer to home, he left investors disappointed with a more subdued outlook for the North American market.

The shares were 1.1% higher at $19.58 at 10:11 a.m. in New York. They have eked out a 3.4% gain this year, after four consecutive annual losses that saw the company's market value cut by more than half. The stock has 16 "buy" recommendations among analysts, compared with six "holds" and three "sells."

Among its largest peers, Halliburton is most dependent on North America, where it generates roughly 40% of sales. Fracking in the U.S. is expected to grow 7% in the current quarter before erasing those gains by the final three months of the year, according to Goldman Sachs. Explorers are forecast to boost spending by 20% next year, the bank said last week in a note to investors.

Exploration and production spending is widely seen as a proxy for future crude output because the budgets cover everything from drilling new holes in the ground to fracking and completing the wells for oil to flow.
BERLIN (AP)  One of Germany's most ambitious cultural projects, which will feature collections of African, Asian and other non-European art in a partial replica of a Prussian palace that was demolished by East Germany's communist government after World War II, is opening to the public on Tuesday.

The Humboldt Forum  located in the heart of Berlin, next to the neoclassical Museum Island complex  was designed by Italian architect Franco Stella and features three replica facades, one modern one and a modern interior. It cost 680 million euros ($802 million).

The project results from a 2002 vote by the German parliament to reconstruct the 18th-century palace. The original was demolished in 1950 and later replaced by East Germany's parliament building, itself now knocked down.

It will feature exhibits from two of Berlin's state museums, the Ethnological Museum and the Museum for Asian Art. It is starting out with six exhibtions, including one on Berlin's history, another on ivory, and one on brothers Alexander and Wilhelm von Humboldt, the explorer and educator whose name the forum bears.

The exhibitions are very varied, from very different institutions, director Hartmut Dorgerloh told German news agency dpa. I think that is very good because it shows the bandwidth of subjects but also the various ways in which exhibitions can be done today.

Recreating the 18th-century royal palace wasn't universally popular. Some former East Berliners had fond memories of the Palace of the Republic, the 1970s East German parliament building, which also housed restaurants and a bowling alley but was considered an eyesore by most westerners.

Berlin's museums authority hopes to be able to show at the Humboldt Forum some of the artifacts known as the Benin Bronzes, which were looted from the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin by a British colonial expedition in 1897. The Ethnological Museum has one of the world's largest collections of historical objects from the kingdom, and Berlin wants to discuss possible future showings in Germany in negotiations on returning artifacts to Nigeria.
While some may think National Hot Dog Day lands on July Fourth with the Nathans Hot Dog Eating Contest, it is this Wednesday. Here are some eateries celebrating National Hot Dog Day.

Midland will soon have a new hot dog food truck. N2O Hot Dogs Express will feature Venezuelan hot dogs, Texuelan and German food, according to the Facebook page. With hot dog recipes from around the world, the truck will be at the Downtown Farmers Market on Saturdays and the Golf Course Road Church of Christ parking lot on Friday evenings. Visit here for more information.

McAlisters Deli is celebrating National Hot Dog Day by introducing a pretzel dog in partnership with Auntie Annes for a limited time. Auntie Annes kids pretzel dogs, sweet pretzel dough wrapped around a bite-sized hot dog, are available for a limited time at McAlisters Deli, according to a press release. The meal comes in a three-piece or five-piece with a choice of side and a mini chocolate chip cookie. The Kids Auntie Annes mini pretzel dogs start at $2.99.

Sonic Drive-In will offer $1 hot dogs all day on Wednesday.

Wienerschnitzel will offer five chili dogs for $5 on Wednesday. Hot dog enthusiasts can also enjoy the Texas BBQ Dog, Aussie Dog, Green Chile Chili Cheese Dog (made with Hatch green chiles) and more at Midlands location at 5313 Loop 250 Frontage Road.

Try a hot dog in a tortilla at Torchys Tacos. The Republican -- a jalapeno cheddar sausage, pico de gallo, cheddar jack cheese and poblano sauce on a flour tortilla -- is here to stay on the main menu. During the pandemic the Republican and Independent tacos were removed from the menu but the Republican is back. However, that doesnt mean it will stay the same. The chain is looking into creating a different Republican and Independent tacos.

This week, the Midland RockHounds will be play at home against Corpus Christi. The many food stands at the stadium also offer a peanut butter and jelly bacon hot dog. Enjoy a hot dog at the ballpark this week.

More food news

--Ally Cafe will have a Daou wine dinner Thursday at 6:30 p.m. in the Lions Den at Ally Outdoors. The five-course meal will feature summer butter lettuce salad, creamy lobster pasta, Sicilian flatbread, filet mignon oscar and old-fashioned apple dumpling. Tickets at $125 per person and can be reserved by calling Whitney at 817.733.1699.

--This Saturday, support the 3:11 Ministries Pints for Pencils back-to-school fundraiser event. Starting at 6 p.m. at Eccentric Brewing at 1402 Cotton Flat Road, there will be Pachuco Mobile Food Truck and live music with 12 craft beers on tap. Patrons can buy a $15 glass and have $5 beer fills all night long.

--The Midland Downtown Farmers Market will host a back-to-school drive this Saturday. The Rainbow Room will distribute backpacks to Permian Basin children in Child Protective Services and foster care in August. The supplies are being gathered for a fill the backpack work session at the end of July. Drop off school supplies to be donated to children. A Drop-off box will be located on the K Street curve in front of The Soap Company. Items that can be donated include backpacks, binders, colored pencils, composition notebooks, crayons, dividers, earbuds and headphones, erasers, folders, glue and glue sticks, hand sanitizer, highlighters, markers, notebook paper, pens and pencils, pencil pouches or boxes, rulers, scissors, spiral notebooks and tissues.
DOVER AIR FORCE BASE, Del. (AP)  This is the place where widows wailed, where mothers buckled to the tarmac in grief and where children lifted their teddy bears to see daddy carried off in a flag-covered box.

This is where presidents stood and generals saluted because this is the place where the price of the war in Afghanistan was made plain.

This is the place where Chaplain David Sparks saw it all. This is the place he found his calling.

This, the minister says, is holy ground.

The end of the war is sobering for those who have tended to the battles dead, who unzipped their body bags, dressed them in uniform one last time and clutched their bereft families.

Virtually all of the Afghan wars dead arrived back on American soil here at Dover Air Force Base. Seeing to those remains is such trying work that many do it for just six months. But Sparks was here when the war was launched and the first casualties arrived, through waves of bloodshed, and now, two decades later.

In the belly of C-17s carrying the fallen, his voice quivered in prayer, and in the autopsy suite, he smelled the stench of death. He watched a father reaching for his dead son, repeatedly bellowing the Marines name, and he heard little boys weep. In anger, families cursed him, and in gratitude, they held him tight.

After two decades of it, two decades of decimated bodies returned home, of survivors so haunted they turned to a bottle or their own gun, of folded flags and mournful trumpets and torn families, its finally ending. Americas longest war is nearly over. And Sparks will walk away, left with the emotional remains.

My heart has been torn out so many times, the 74-year-old says, I can hardly count.

Dover Air Force Base has housed a mortuary since 1955, when airmen first received the dead in a pair of Quonset huts. In the years since, it has seen victims of base shootings, aircraft crashes, terror attacks and space shuttle disasters. More than 20,000 of the Vietnam Wars dead passed through here.

As if its history alone didnt make Dover synonymous with sacrifice, the base is teeming with reminders.

At a uniform shop, posthumously awarded medals are polished to a high shine and positioned on jackets with a ruler so a slain servicemember can be dressed perfectly one last time.

In a building reserved for the personal possessions of the dead, workers inventory every belonging of a troop, from love letters to stashes of Sour Patch Kids to ultrasounds of a baby theyd never meet.

And in a waiting area for relatives, copies of When You Become a Single Parent After a Loss are lined on a bookcase and a blackboard in a play area has a childs drawing of a family with the letters RIP hovering overhead.

Precision dictates everything, down to the V-formation of Yoo-Hoos in a Subzero and flawless stacks of Hersheys Miniatures in a candy dish at the bases lodging for bereaved families.

We want to make sure everything is done to perfection, says Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicole McMinamin, who runs the uniform shop. They put their life on the line for this country.

Sparks arrived on base in 1980 as a chaplain in the Air Force Reserves and largely was tasked with the spiritual needs of the 436th Airlift Wing, organizing Sunday school and seminars, talking through servicemembers problems at home, attending events, and otherwise becoming a familiar face while juggling his full-time job as pastor of a small Nazarene church.

By the time hed been at it for 21 years, hed risen to lieutenant colonel and was starting to think about his military retirement. Then Sept. 11, 2001, arrived. He was called to active duty and assigned to the mortuary, where the Pentagons dead were being brought, and where he was to be a source of solace for those charged with the somber task of identifying, autopsying and preparing the dead.

Weeks turned to months, one war turned to two, and by the time Sparks submitted his resignation from pastoring a third time, the church board accepted. He found himself with a life entwined with death.

Hed don a white Tyvek suit and draw a black cross on the breast, standing by as x-ray technicians, dentists and medical examiners worked on remains. If they needed help moving a body, hed pitch in, but mostly he talked with workers about their cat or their crazy ex-girlfriend or anything that would get their mind off the horror laid before them on a gurney.

Normal conversation, he says, in an abnormal venue.

At the height of the war, the pace at the mortuary could be staggering. The staff raced to keep up as remains arrived almost daily. Chaplains, in turn, were swamped as the work took its toll on the staff.

You couldnt really grasp it. It was a firehose, says Electa Wright, a former Air Force reservist who is now a civilian mortuary worker. You had to learn how to cope with that amount of death.

Though Sparks had rarely spent time at the mortuary before 9/11, he found he was unwittingly prepared. As a seminarian, he volunteered as a pallbearer, and as a young minister, he shadowed a mortician friend at work. Dying congregants kept him in and out of hospices and hospitals for years.

He was able to shift his focus from what lay before him in the morgue, a scene that was often jarring.

All we receive may be a hand or a leg, says Air Force Col. Alice Briones, a former combat medic who went on to become a forensic pathologist and now runs the military's medical examiner system. But with every remain, whether its a fingernail, a hand or the whole torso, its the same dignity, honor and respect.

Sparks office is off an atrium that houses a koi pond and is crowned by a curved glass roof that mimics the huts of the bases first mortuary. Red Sox paraphernalia and bereavement books line his desk and his computer is a repository for the prayers he slid into the acetate sleeves of a small photo album and read aboard or beside the plane when remains arrived, covered by flags, in aluminum crates.

The military calls the movement of remains, from planes onto grey Ford cargo vans with the silhouette of saluting servicemembers painted on the back, dignified transfers. Aside from the quiet commands of seven-member honor guards who carry the boxes, the short prayers of the chaplain typically are the only words spoken during the ritual, and feeling the weight of such a responsibility, Sparks wrote a new one for each of the more than 400 times he was called to that duty.

He saves them in Word files named for something defining about the day. One Suicide May 2005 references loved ones of the soldier whose confusion is overwhelming and whose sorrow is deeper than we can begin to imagine. Christmas Eve 2004 notes the irreparable imprint left on the family of the Marines for whom Christmas future will always bring back the awful memory. 40 Transfer Cases (Jan 05), marvels at the enormity of what the victims gave their country, calling it the price of freedom.

Where do we find such men and women who prize liberty and freedom over the risk to their lives, and who knowing the price they might have to pay, are willing to volunteer for the mission, put on the uniform and serve in harms way? he prayed that day. We look around and see them everywhere.

After the Afghan wars deadliest single incident, when a transport helicopter carrying 30 Americans and eight Afghans was shot down in 2011, their bodies arrived at Dover. As Sparks climbed the ramp of the plane, his eyes welled at the sea of flags, and as the honor guards broke their at-attention stance, they shifted their gaze downward to cue the start of his prayer. He opened his mouth but nothing came out.

Seconds felt like minutes as he blinked away tears, took a deep breath and coaxed his voice to emerge.

Its easy for most of us to go about our day and do our job and put the pegs in the holes and not think, How am I affecting the lives of the people around me, Sparks says. When Im staring at a flag-draped transfer case of someone who has given their life, its a good opportunity to think if we can do better.

Hes repeated the routine too many times, though, and the memories run together in his mind. The shell-shocked spouse, the inconsolable parent, all those flag-draped crates. He no longer recalls the first time he stood before a soldiers corpse much less the stories of each of their lives.

The movements and the prayer can become routine. And when I discover that I dont really like it, he says.

At the start of the war, Sparks attention was almost exclusively on the mortuary staff. But a 2009 policy change offered troops next of kin the opportunity to travel to dignified transfers at government expense, bringing a surge of families to Dover and a second congregation to Sparks.

As a pastor, he was used to relationships with churchgoers that continued for years. Here, so many families come before him that he knows he cant keep up contact forever. He centers himself before meeting them, listening to jazz and reminding himself he can only be with them for part of their journey.

They may not remember my name, probably dont, he says, but I know that I had an impact.

Some families seem to sink into a catatonia that he knows means he should give them space. Others come clutching photos of the lost or otherwise tip Sparks off that his conversation might help.

Tell me about your love story, hell ask a spouse. What did you call him? hell ask a parent.

Sometimes, hell find a child hasnt been told why theyre there. Others pose wrenching questions, like a boy who asked the minister who would play catch with him now that his father was gone.

We dont talk about closure anymore, he says. Thats always going to be with you.

The work can bring some of the steeliest to crumble. Hes seen drivers who transported families of the dead bawling and embalmers who reached their breaking point and found a new profession. A handful of times over the years, a mortuary staffer has died by suicide or suffered through an attempt.

You cant focus on the horror, he says. You cant focus on that all of the time and survive.

Images of the most gruesome remains are still in his mind and dreams of dying soldiers have stirred him. He insists hes not haunted by the visions and says his counselor tells him hes healthily processing it.

Sparks never expected to be here this long. On 9/11, he thought hed be deployed a month. Even once he resigned his church post, he wasnt sure this is something hed be doing for years.

Now, hes long past the militarys mandatory retirement age. He submitted his papers and traded his battle fatigues for business casual years ago and was promptly hired back to the job as a civilian.

This year is his last. He hasnt set a retirement date yet but thinks either the 20th anniversary of 9/11 or his 75th birthday, on Nov. 28, would make meaningful last days in a place thats come to define him.

It just feels like Ive been here forever, he says.

The frenzy of the wars darkest days has now passed. The last of 2,312 U.S. military deaths may already have been recorded in the Afghan war. American bases in Afghanistan have emptied out. Troops are heading home.

Today, the transfer vans are idle in the loading dock; the gurneys are unused inside. On a file cabinet outside the autopsy room, a sign says Make Good From the Bad, and through the door, the 10 bays are empty. There are no families to host, no uniforms to prepare, no prayers to write.

Sparks doesnt look back in sadness at his years here. As he walked with the grieving and stood with the dead, he found constant reminders of hope.

Its in those moments, he says, that the presence of God is most real to me.

___

Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://twitter.com/sedensky
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The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that college athletes can be compensated for their name, image and likeness (NIL). Although schools are not allowed to pay athletes to play sports, student-athletes can be paid by others. Student-athletes can accept money from businesses in exchange for allowing the businesses to feature them in advertisements or products. Athletes can use their status to promote their own public appearances, to start their own sports camps and teach lessons, to sell memorabilia, to make paid speaking engagements and to launch their own businesses. Do you think college athletes should be allowed to profit from their NIL? Choices are:

You voted:
The trial for a former state senator and one-time gubernatorial candidate accused of money laundering, tax evasion and misuse of campaign funds has been moved to November.

The court has granted the second continuance of the case against William Sam McCann. His attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Rosana E. Brown, requested the change July 6, saying the complexity of the charges and the volume of information to be reviewed made it nearly impossible to go to trial July 27.

More than 64,000 pages of material have been presented by federal prosecutors.

McCann, who has pleaded not guilty and is free on bond, was indicted Feb. 23 on nine counts: seven of fraudulent misuse of campaign money and providing false reports to the IRS; and two alleging money laundering and tax evasion, willfully evading taxes in 2018 and preparing false reports.

McCann was elected in 2011 to represent the states 49th Senate District, which later became the 50th District and included Morgan, Greene, Pike, Scott and Calhoun counties and portions of Jersey, Macoupin, Madison and Sangamon counties. He left the Republican Party in 2018.

The indictment maintains that McCann and political committees he oversaw received more than $5 million in campaign donations and some of that money was used to buy personal vehicles, pay personal debts, make mortgage payments and pay himself.

Among the allegations made in the indictment, which is a formal charge by a grand jury but is not proof of guilt, are that McCann:

 used more than $60,000 in campaign funds to partially fund the April 2017 purchase of a 2017 Ford Expedition and the July 2018 purchase of a 2018 Ford F-250 pickup, which he titled in his own name and used for his personal travel.

 used campaign funds for loan payments on the F-250 and for fuel and insurance expenses for both vehicles, while at the same time using campaign funds to reimburse mileage expense claims he did not incur.

 used $18,000 in campaign funds to buy a 2018 recreational travel trailer and, in May 2018, used $25,000 in campaign funds to buy a 2006 recreational motor home, both of which he titled in his own name.

 established an online account with a recreational vehicle rental business in Ohio listing the vehicles for rent, identifying Sam McCann as the owner and establishing a second account with the same rental business and identifying himself as potential renter with a different residential address and email than those he listed as the owner. From about May to June 2018, McCann  while representing himself as the renter  rented both the travel trailer and motor home from the owner through the RV rental business, according to the indictment.

 used $62,666 in campaign funds to pay the rental cost of the RV. McCann reimbursed the campaign accounts $18,000, resulting in more than $77,000 in campaign funds being used to buy and rent from himself, the indictment said.

 used a $20,000 cashiers check funded by a campaign account and issued to himself to pay off a personal loan.

 used campaign funds to pay about $64,750 on two separate personal mortgages.

 caused the Conservative Party of Illinois, which he formed when he challenged J.B. Pritzker for governor, to issue about $187,000 in payments to himself and an additional $52,282 in payments for payroll taxes, concealing himself as the payee for the expenditures.

The indictment also contends about $50,000 in campaign funds were used for personal expenses  including credit card payments related to a family vacation in Colorado and other personal expenses, charges from Apple iTunes, Amazon, stores and cash withdrawals.

McCann faces more than 45 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Final pretrial has been set for Oct. 18 by video before U.S. District Judge Eric I. Long. Jury selection and trial are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. before U.S. District Judge Sue E. Myerscough in Springfield.

It was the cases second continuance. One granted in March for 90 days had pushed McCanns scheduled trial date to July 27.
Colleges in Illinois are being urged to require students to get vaccinated against COVID-19 before the start of the school year, but the institutions will have the final say in what measures they take.

According to guidance issued Monday by the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board, it is being recommended schools follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggestions on such things as testing, mask use and social distancing.

Many colleges finished the school year with hybrid instruction, a combination of in-person and online learning. Most are expressing a desire to return to in-person classes when the fall semester starts in mid- to late-August.

Students should feel confident campuses will be safe when they return and know there are resources available to help them, Illinois Board of Higher Education Executive Director Ginger Ostro said. We are strongly encouraging universities to require vaccination to protect their campus and local communities as they bring students back for a full campus experience.

While some colleges nationwide have said they will require students to be vaccinated before returning to campus, many are trying to balance safety with personal choice.

Illinois College, for example, is asking students to send documentation of COVID-19 immunization before arriving on campus. Those who provide their information will be entered into a drawing for $500 cash. There will be a drawing for every 100 students who submit proof they have been vaccinated, according to the colleges latest health protocols.

Students who have not submitted documentation showing that they are fully vaccinated  at least two weeks past the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine or two weeks past the Johnson & Johnson vaccine  by the time they arrive on campus will be required to take a rapid test before moving into housing or engaging in any other campus activity, according to the schools protocols.

Students who have not been vaccinated will be required to be tested at least twice a week to remain on campus. They also should be prepared to wear masks as required in certain indoor spaces, according to the college.

The CDC has recommended continued use of facial coverings for those who have not been vaccinated.

Lincoln Land Community College initiated safety guidelines with its summer sessions, requiring social distancing and avoiding contact with others  including shaking hands or embracing others.

Students and visitors who have not been fully vaccinated are required to wear a mask on any Lincoln Land campus. Those who do not wear a face covering will have to provide proof of vaccination.

In addition, any student attending a class in person will be required to complete a health screening, as will campus visitors.

The college is providing saliva-based COVID-19 testing and is recommending weekly testing at minimum for those attending face-to-face classes.

LLCC is offering five class formats for the fall semester  in-person, online, remote, hybrid and flex  to provide students with safety and flexibility in choosing their preferred learning environments.

Illinois Community College Board Executive Director Brian Durham said the state guidance is intended to provide significant flexibility for community colleges as they consider their own local context, allowing them to fully reopen in the fall while also keeping the safety and well-being of their students, faculty and staff at the forefront.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)  Ecologists in a vast region of wetlands and forest in remote Oregon have spent the past decade thinning young trees and using planned fires to try to restore the thick stands of ponderosa to a less fire-prone state.

This week, the nation's biggest burning wildfire provided them with an unexpected, real-world experiment. As the massive inferno half the size of Rhode Island roared into the Sycan Marsh Preserve, firefighters said the flames jumped less from treetop to treetop and instead returned to the ground, where they were easier to fight, moved more slowly and did less damage to the overall forest.

The initial assessment suggests that the many years of forest treatments worked, said Pete Caligiuri, Oregon forest program director for The Nature Conservancy, which runs the research at the preserve.

Generally speaking, what firefighters were reporting on the ground is that when the fire came into those areas that had been thinned ... it had significantly less impact.

The reports were bittersweet for researchers, who still saw nearly 20 square miles of the preserve burn, but the findings add to a growing body of research about how to make wildfires less explosive by thinning undergrowth and allowing forests to burn periodically  as they naturally would do  instead of snuffing out every flame.

The Bootleg Fire, now 606 square miles (1,569 square kilometers) in size, has ravaged southern Oregon and is the fourth-largest fire in the state's modern history. It's been expanding by up to 4 miles (6 kilometers) a day, pushed by gusting winds and critically dry weather that's turned trees and undergrowth into a tinderbox.

Fire crews have had to retreat from the flames for 10 consecutive days as fireballs jump from treetop to treetop, trees explode, embers fly ahead of the fire to start new blazes and, in some cases, the inferno's heat creates its own weather of shifting winds and dry lightning. Monstrous clouds of smoke and ash have risen up to 6 miles into the sky and are visible for more than 100 air miles.

The fire in the Fremont-Winema National Forest merged with a smaller nearby blaze Tuesday, and it has repeatedly breached a perimeter of treeless dirt and fire retardant meant to stop its advance.

More evacuations were ordered Monday night, and a red flag weather warning signifying dangerous fire conditions was in effect through Tuesday. The fire is 30% contained.

Were in this for as long as it takes to safely confine this monster," Incident Commander Rob Allen said Tuesday.

At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died.

The Bootleg Fire was one of many fires burning in a dozen states, most of them in the West. Sixteen large uncontained fires burned in Oregon and Washington state alone on Monday.

On Tuesday, officials temporarily closed all recreational and public access to state-managed lands in eastern Washington due to fire danger, starting Friday.

Historically, wildfires in Oregon and elsewhere in the West burned an area as big or bigger than the current blaze more frequently but much less explosively. Periodic, naturally occurring fire cleared out the undergrowth and smaller trees that cause today's fires to burn so dangerously.

Those fires have not been allowed to burn for the past 120 years, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State Universitys College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires.

The area on the northeastern flank of the Bootleg Fire is in the ancestral homeland of the Klamath Tribes, which have used intentional, managed fire to keep the fuel load low and prevent such explosive blazes. Scientists at the Sycan Marsh research station now work with the tribe and draw on that knowledge.

Climate change is the catalyst for the worsening wildfire seasons in the West, Johnston said, but poor forest management and a policy of decades of fire suppression have made a bad situation even worse.

My colleagues and I have been predicting a massive fire in that area for years. Its an area thats exceptionally prone to catastrophic fire," said Johnston, who is not affiliated with Sycan Marsh. Its dry. Its fire-prone and always has been. But whats changed over the past 100 years is an extraordinary amount of fuel buildup."

Elsewhere, fire crews were engaged in other daunting battles.

In Northern California, authorities expanded evacuations for the Tamarack Fire in Alpine County in the Sierra Nevada to include the mountain town of Mesa Vista late Monday. That fire, which exploded over the weekend was 61 square miles (158 square kilometers) with no containment.

Tony Galvez fled with his daughter at the last minute and found out the family's home is gone.

I lost my whole life, everything Ive ever had. The kids are whats going to matter, he said as he fielded calls from relatives. I got three teenagers. Theyre going to go home to a moonscape.

On the western side of the Sierra, the Dixie Fire has scorched more than 90 square miles (163 square kilometers), threatening tiny communities in the Feather River Valley region.

Meteorologist Julia Ruthford told a briefing that a surge of monsoonal moisture from the Southwest had created plumes topping 6 miles  so big that the fire generated a thunderstorm over itself with lightning and gusty winds.

For the past two days in Oregon, the fire has danced around Sycan Marsh, where researchers raced to protect buildings with sprinklers and fire lines. The 47-square-mile habitat attracts migrating and nesting birds and offers a unique location to research forest and fire ecology.

The nonprofit operates its own fire engines and now has three engines and seven firefighters on the blaze and more people are arriving.

Its an amazing place, Caligiuri said. Its very hard to watch it all happening, and seeing all of that work being threatened by this fire is a lot to process.

___

Associated Press Writer John Antczak in Los Angeles and AP Video Journalist Haven Daley in Alpine County, California, contributed to this report.

___

Follow Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus
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BARRY  Efforts to recognize as part of the National Park Service the first town in the nation platted and registered by a Black man have taken a major step forward.

New Philadelphia was an 80-acre town in Pike County founded in 1836; it was platted and legally registered by an African American man, Frank McWorter. Over the years, it has been blended in to the town of Barry.

Interest in the significance of New Philadelphia was renewed about a decade ago because of its role in the nations history. McWorter made his way to Illinois  which did not permit slavery  earning money by mining saltpeter and buying his wifes freedom in 1817 and his own freedom in 1819.

The family farm was established in 1831, about 20 miles from the Mississippi River in Pike Countys Hadley Township. With the money made by farming, McWorter was able to buy another tract and 42 acres of the 80-acre tract became the 144 60- by 120-foot lots known as New Philadelphia in 1836, according to the National Park Service.

Blacks and whites lived together in the settlement until most of the land reverted to agricultural use by the turn of the century.

McWorter died in 1854. Records indicate that, by that time, he had bought the freedom of 16 enslaved individuals at a cost of $14,000, a sum equal to hundreds of thousands of dollars in todays currency, according to the National Park Service.

Congressman Darin LaHood has been a driving force in attempts to bring the settlement under the umbrella of the National Park Service, which oversees about 400 site of cultural significance across the U.S.

In April, LaHood and others testified before the House Natural Resources Committee in support of House Resolution 820, the New Philadelphia National Historical Site Act. The committee unanimously approved the resolution last week, clearing the way for a vote before the full House of Representatives.

The site already is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is designated as a National Historic Landmark. National Park Service status would open new resources for the site and ensure continued preservation, LaHood said.

New Philadelphia and Frank McWorters story is an important part of Illinois and our nations history, he said.

Phil Bradshaw, president of the New Philadelphia Association, said he was appreciative of LaHoods efforts on the sites behalf.
Two Illinois College professors and an IC student recently spent time in South Florida, but it wasnt a beach vacation.

The three were studying the endangered ghost orchid, including extracting nectar from the rare plant to see what can be done to prevent it from becoming extinct.

There are less than 2,000 worldwide, IC biology professor Lawrence Zettler said.

Ghost orchids  dendrophylax lindenii  mostly are found in humid, tropical areas such as Florida, Cuba and the Bahamas and are leafless with chlorophyllous roots that are gray-green in color.

Tony Ruiz, 19, who will be an IC sophomore this fall, joined Zettler, chemistry professor Brent Chandler and Zettlers daughter, Audrey, 18, in spending 10 days at the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge  searching for the plant while avoiding alligators and poisonous snakes.

It was incredible, Ruiz said of the trip, his first to the Sunshine State. My first reaction was that I was just in awe. Its a lot of stuff to process because there is so much stuff to see out there.

Audrey Zettler, a 2021 Routt Catholic High School graduate, has visited Florida before and has traveled because of her fathers work.

I like being in nature, she said. It was incredible.

Lawrence Zettler has spent two decades working with students to learn more about flowers and plants like the ghost orchid, many of his efforts funded by the Naples Orchid Society. Finding the rare flower and being able to experience it with students is something that never gets old, Zettler said.

It kind of gives a spell over you, he said of getting close to the plant and smelling it. We need to study it so it doesnt become extinct.

Although the 10-day trip was an experience, it didnt end once they left the refuge.

Extracting nectar from the orchid and breaking it apart will help Chandler and Ruiz study what attracts the moths that help pollinate the flower.

You need a specific moth and it takes (the nectar) to the next flower, Chandler said, adding that the moths help fertilize the flowers and there are macro-nutrients like carbohydrates and amino acids in the nectar. There is a cycle of life there.

Once they were able to find the flower, Chandler and his colleagues were able to collect samples to dissect without harming the flower.

We froze everything and got it back to Jacksonville, Chandler said.

Working from a science lab at Illinois College, Ruiz and Chandler will study the nectar to learn more about its ingredients.

What is in the flower from the insects perspective? Chandler asked, explaining one of the questions of their research.

Working through a series of steps in the lab  from drying the nectar to heating it in a bid to break down its base  the goal is to learn more about the nectar and what makes it so attractive to the moth.

I believe were the first to do this, Chandler said.

Working in the refuge was an experience in itself, he said.

For me, it was like a treasure hunt, he said. Its an amazing experience.

They struggled to find the flower at first but noticed the root system that led them to it, Chandler said.

The experience is one that helps guide IC students like Ruiz to hone in on what they want to study.

The institution is here to help find out what their passions are, Chandler said, adding that he was blown away when he saw Ruizs reaction to finding a ghost orchid.

Ghost orchids grow on trees  usually the north side  and have root systems that can be easier to spot than the flower, Chandler said.

The orchid is on the endangered list for two reasons  invasive species moving in and taking over its growing areas, and flower poachers who extract them from their native habitat.

The IC team is working to reverse some of that damage.

Its fighting a fight to keep native stuff, Chandler said.
Jessica Edonick will join Illinois College as its dean of students starting Aug. 2.

She will be responsible for creating a supportive, welcoming, safe and inclusive community for students. Edonick will work closely with students and student organizations and oversee several areas that support students, including residential life, career readiness and experiential learning, community engagement, global programs, health and wellness, psychological counseling and campus safety.

Edonick most recently served as dean of students for Pennsylvania College of Art and Design. Before that, she held roles that included academic adviser and director of commuter and transfer student engagement at Drexel University.

She is pursuing her doctorate in leadership and learning in organizations from Vanderbilt University. She has a masters degree in counselor education and counseling psychology from Western Michigan University. Her undergraduate degree is from Miami University in Ohio, with a major in history and minors in French and sociology of law.

President Barbara A. Farley said the position is an essential one for the well-being of students.

I am delighted that Jessica Edonick is joining the IC community, she said. I am impressed with her vision, insight and thoughtful reflections on the challenges facing todays college students.
Members of Pilot Club of Jacksonville recently attended Pilot Internationals annual convention in Atlanta, Georgia, celebrating the parent clubs 100th anniversary and the Jacksonville chapters 70th anniversary.

Pilot International was founded Oct. 18, 1921, in Macon, Georgia, with 40 local businesswomen signing the charter. They took the clubs name from the riverboat pilots of the day, who represented leadership and guidance. The clubs mission is to influence positive change in communities throughout the world, with a focus on brain health and safety and support for caregivers of all varieties.
Greene County

Sheriff

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Dionne M. Osborne, 40, of Kane was booked into Greene County Jail at 1:49 a.m. Thursday on a domestic battery charge and on a warrant accusing her of violating Illinois Department of Corrections parole.

 Stewart N. Wilson, 36, of Jerseyville was booked into Greene County Jail at 9:13 p.m. Wednesday on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia.

Carrollton Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 William V. Griffith, 38, of Carrollton was booked into Greene County Jail at 9:44 p.m. Saturday on a battery charge.

 Sarah R. Baumgartner, 41, of Carrollton was booked into Greene County Jail at 10:04 a.m. Wednesday on a Greene County arrest warrant accusing her of mail or wire fraud and possession of methamphetamine.

Greenfield Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Anthony W. Tinker, 34, of Bethalto was booked into Greene County Jail at 12:47 a.m. Sunday on charges of driving while license is suspended and possession of drug paraphernalia.

 Kyle R. Powell, 38, of Hillview was booked into Greene County Jail at 5:06 a.m. Saturday on charges of possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, possession of methamphetamine, possession of drug paraphernalia and improper use of title or registration and on a Morgan County warrant accusing him of failing to appear in court.

 Jonah M. Elliott, 24, of Greenfield was booked into Greene County Jail at 8:45 p.m. Friday on a Greene County arrest warrant accusing him of possession of methamphetamine.

Roodhouse Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Marcus S. Knapp, 41, of Roodhouse was booked into Greene County Jail at 6:46 p.m. Sunday on a Greene County arrest warrant accusing him of possession of methamphetamine.

White Hall Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Samuel D. Holder, 35, of White Hall was booked into Greene County Jail at 7:48 p.m. Friday on a Jersey County warrant accusing him of possession of methamphetamine.

 Bruce W. Benson, 26, of White Hall was booked into Greene County Jail at 2:46 p.m. July 12 on a Greene County warrant accusing him of aggravated battery and on a Greene County petition to revoke probation.

 Kelly Ann Bishop, 53, of Jerseyville was booked into Greene County Jail at 1:39 p.m. July 12 on charges of driving while license is revoked or suspended, aggravated fleeing or eluding police and possession of drug paraphernalia.

 Tyler D. Lockhart, 26, of White Hall was booked into Greene County Jail at 4:27 a.m. July 12 on charges of aggravated battery involving use of a deadly weapon and unlawful use of a weapon.

 Tiffany A. Syrcle, 39, of White Hall was booked into Greene County Jail at 3:21 a.m. July 12 on a charge of aggravated battery in a public place.

 Clifford D. Maxon, 32, of White Hall was booked into Greene County Jail at 1:13 p.m. July 10 on charges of possession of a controlled substance, possession of methamphetamine and driving while license is revoked.



Pike County

Sheriff

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Justin J. Barker, 30, of Griggsville was arrested at 12:37 p.m. Wednesday on a petition to revoke and a warrant accusing him of failing to appear in court for a petition to revoke review.

 Trisha S. Davis, 41, of Hannibal, Missouri, was arrested at 3:42 p.m. Wednesday on a retail theft charge.

 Raefeal E. Crider, 40, of Hull was arrested at 6:10 p.m. Friday on a charge of improper use of registration.

 Jonathon C. Moore, 21, of Pittsfield was arrested at 10:44 p.m. Sunday on charges of driving under the influence, driving while license is suspended, improper lane use and illegal transportation of alcohol.

Pittsfield Police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

Shannon M. Kirgan, 38, of Griggsville was arrested at 8:35 p.m. Saturday on a battery charge.

State police

ARRESTS, CITATIONS

 Cody J. Larson, 25, of Plainfield was arrested at 12:10 a.m. Saturday on charges of following too closely, improper use of title or registration and operating an uninsured vehicle.

Compiled by David C.L. Bauer
ATLANTA (AP)  Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene blasted social media companies over her temporary suspension from Twitter on Tuesday, calling it a Communist-style attack on free speech."

Twitter imposed the 12-hour timeout on Monday, saying some of her tweets violated its policy against spreading misinformation that could cause harm during the coronavirus pandemic.

Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the Silicon Valley Cartel are working hand in hand with the White House to censor Americans," the Georgia Republican said in a statement.

Twitter suspended Greene after President Joe Biden urged tech companies to take stronger action against bogus vaccine claims that are killing people. Twitter has defended its efforts to keep dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 off its site, saying it has removed thousands of tweets and challenged millions of accounts worldwide.

Greene appears to have been disciplined under the strike system Twitter launched in March, using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning to identify content about the coronavirus that is misleading enough to cause harm to people. Two or three strikes earn a 12-hour account lock; four strikes prompt a weeklong suspension, and five or more strikes can get someone permanently removed from Twitter.

We took enforcement action on the account @mtgreenee for violations of the Twitter Rules, specifically the Covid-19 misleading information policy, the company said in an email.

One of Greene's latest tweets that Twitter labeled misleading claimed that the virus is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, people under 65 account for nearly 250,000 of the U.S. deaths involving COVID-19.

U.S. cases of COVID-19 last week increased by 17,000 nationwide over a 14-day period for the first time since late fall, and an increase in death historically follows a spike in illness. Much of the worsening problem is being driven by the delta variant first identified in India, that has since spread to the United Kingdom and other countries, said U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isnt state-approved," Greene said in the statement. I will not back down."
Illinois College student Tony Ruiz, Illinois College professors Brent Chandler, Lawrence Zettler, and recent Routt Catholic High School graduate Audrey Zettler just returned from visiting the Florida Panther National Wildlife Refuge where they searching for the endangered flower ghost orchid. Worldwide, there are around 2,000 of them remaining. Once the group located the flower they extracted nectar so they can learn more about what attracts insects to help pollinate.
Watertown, SD (57201)

Today

Some sun in the morning with increasing clouds during the afternoon. High 92F. Winds SSW at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.
South Korean missing after fall while scaling Pakistani peak View Photo

ISLAMABAD (AP)  A famous South Korean climber fell into a crevasse and went missing over the weekend in bad weather after scaling another mountain peak in northern Pakistan, a mountaineering official said Tuesday.

Kim Hong Bin was descending after having reached the 8,047-meter (26,400-foot) high Broad Peak in Pakistans north Karakoram Range on Sunday, said Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Pakistan Alpine Club.

With the summit, the 57-year-old Kim had scaled all of the worlds 14 highest summits, becoming the first person with disability to do so. In 1991, while climbing in Alaska, he suffered severe frostbite and had all his fingers amputated.

While descending from the peak with several other mountaineers on Sunday, Kim slipped and fell down the Chinese side of the mountain, according to Haidri.

Since then no information is available about him, the official said, adding that a search mission is being planned.

In Seoul, the Foreign Ministry said Pakistan has promised to send a helicopter to find Kim as soon as weather conditions allow the flight. Spokesman Choi Young-sam said China has also agreed to make efforts to locate the climber.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in  who had earlier issued a message congratulating Kim on scaling of the worlds 14 highest summits  said that hell pray for Kims safe return.

There are some reports speculating his death, but the information is not clear and Im not abandoning hopes that hes still alive, Moon tweeted. Ill earnestly wait for the news of his safe return with my people to the end.

Kims successes include worlds highest, Mount Everest on the China-Nepal border, and Pakistans K2, the second-highest, which like Broad Peak is also in the Karakoram Range. Disability never became a hurdle for Kim, Haidri said, and did not stand in the way of his passion.

The other mountaineers, who had in vain tried to find Kim, were safe and were descending amid bad weather. The South Korean Embassy in Islamabad was also organizing a search mission, he added.

We do not want to speculate on Kims fate, Haidri told The Associated Press, refusing to comment reports on Twitter that the climber had died.

Ghulam Muhammad, the owner of Blue Sky Expedition tour operating company who arranged the expedition for Kim, also confirmed an unfortunate incident when the South Korean was returning to base camp.

The organizers of the expedition were in contact with the family of the missing South Korean and any further information will be shared by his family or by the South Korean officials, he added.

Scores of mountaineers visit Pakistan every year to scale different mountains and peaks, located in the countrys scenic north. But the sport is dangerous, particularly when a sudden change in weather occurs.

Earlier this year, three climbers  Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara, Jon Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile  died while attempting to summit the 8,611-meter (28,250-foot) high K2. Their bodies could not be traced and retrieved despite several attempts by Pakistani search and rescue team aided by the military.

___

Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.

By MUNIR AHMED

Associated Press
German officials defend their actions on devastating floods View Photo

BERLIN (AP)  German officials defended their actions ahead of last weeks severe floods that caught many towns by surprise and killed 196 people in Western Europe, but they conceded that more lessons can be learned from the disaster.

As floodwaters receded Monday, authorities continued searching for more victims and intensified their efforts to clean up a sodden swath of western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands.

So far, 117 people have been confirmed dead in the worst-affected German region, Rhineland-Palatinate, while 47 were killed in the neighboring state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and at least one in Bavaria, parts of which saw heavy rain and flooding over the weekend. The death toll in Belgium was 31.

Authorities said they were likely to find more victims among destroyed homes.

Weather officials had forecast the downpours that led to even small rivers swelling rapidly, but warnings of potentially catastrophic damage didnt appear to have made it to many people in affected areas  often in the middle of the night.

Federal and state authorities faced criticism from some opposition politicians over the disaster, which comes as a national election looms in September. But Interior Minister Horst Seehofer dismissed suggestions that federal officials had made mistakes and said warnings were passed to local authorities who make decisions on disaster protection.

I have to say that some of the things Im hearing now are cheap election rhetoric, Seehofer said during a visit to the Steinbach Reservoir in western Germany, where authorities say they no longer fear a dam breach. Now really isnt the hour for this.

Seehofer underlined that message during a visit Monday to Bad Neuenahr, in the worst-hit area, but said authorities will have to draw lessons once the immediate relief phase is over.

Wherever we can improve anything  in alarms, in equipment  we must do so, he said. We owe that to the families who have been affected, and above all to the victims.

The head of Germanys civil protection agency said the weather service had forecast relatively well and that the country was well-prepared for flooding on its major rivers.

But, Armin Schuster told ZDF television Sunday night, half an hour before, it is often not possible to say what place will be hit with what quantity of water. He said 150 warning notices had been sent out via apps and media.

He said we will have to investigate where sirens sounded and where they didnt.

Officials in Germanys Rhineland-Palatinate state said they were well-prepared for flooding, and municipalities were alerted and acted.

But the states interior minister, Roger Lewentz, said after visiting the hard-hit village of Schuld with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday that we, of course, had the problem that the technical infrastructure  electricity and so on  was destroyed in one go.

Local authorities tried very quickly to react, he said. But this was an explosion of the water in moments.  You can have the very best preparations and warning situations (but) if warning equipment is destroyed and carried away with buildings, then that is a very difficult situation. Cellphone networks also were knocked out by flooding.

Broader questions about Germanys emergency warning system had arisen after a nationwide test in September 2020, the first in 30 years, largely failed. Sirens didnt sound in many places, or had been removed after the end of the Cold War, and push alerts from the national warning app arrived late or not all.

Schuster, the head of the civil protection agency, noted that a program to reform civil protection was launched earlier this year, including a drive to encourage local authorities to install more sirens. Germany doesnt have a text messaging system for disaster warnings, but Schuster told Deutschlandfunk radio it is exploring the possibility.

As local communities face the huge task of rebuilding smashed homes and infrastructure such as bridges and water systems, Merkels Cabinet is set to draw up a package of immediate and medium-term financial aid Wednesday.

At the Steinbach Reservoir, North Rhine-Westphalia state governor Armin Laschet said the dam was designed for a risk that might occur once in 10,000 years.

This was exceeded in the last few days, he said. It was a likelihood nobody had foreseen.

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Associated Press writer Frank Jordans at the Steinbach Reservoir contributed.

By GEIR MOULSON

Associated Press
Anger as French protesters compare vaccines to Nazi horrors View Photo

PARIS (AP)  A French Holocaust survivor has denounced anti-vaccination protesters comparing themselves to Jews who were persecuted by Nazi Germany during World War II. French officials and anti-racism groups joined the 94-year-old in expressing indignation.

As more than 100,000 people marched around France against government vaccine rules on Saturday, some demonstrators wore yellow stars recalling the ones the Nazis forced Jews to wear. Other demonstrators carried signs evoking the Auschwitz death camp or South Africas apartheid regime, claiming the French government was unfairly mistreating them with its anti-pandemic measures.

You cant imagine how much that upset me. This comparison is hateful. We must all rise up against this ignominy, Holocaust survivor Joseph Szwarc said Sunday during a ceremony commemorating victims of antisemitic and racist acts by the French state, which collaborated with Adolf Hitlers regime.

I wore the star, I know what that is, I still have it in my flesh, Szwarc, who was deported from France by the Nazis, said with tears in his eyes. It is everyones duty to not allow this outrageous, antisemitic, racist wave to pass over us.

Historian and former Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld also took aim at the analogy, stressing Monday that the yellow star was a symbol of death that excluded Jews from society and marked them for extermination, while vaccines, on the other hand, save lives. To equate the two, he told The Associated Press, is an odious comparison that serves to trivialize the yellow star.

French government spokesman Gabriel Attal lamented the absolutely abject comparisons of vaccine rules to Nazi atrocities, and he urged other political leaders to speak out.

Attal later stressed the need for vaccinations despite some increasingly radical pockets of resistance.

We are in a fourth wave, he said after a Monday evening Cabinet meeting, a day before a bill goes to parliament to make vaccination passes to access public spaces, including restaurants, obligatory. It enters into force Wednesday for cultural and recreational venues, and early August for restaurants, bars and other places  once the fast-track law is in place.

We wont cede to a dictatorship of images and outrageous words, the government spokesman said in reference to the anti-vaccination protesters.

The International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism said the anti-vaccination protesters were mocking victims of the Holocaust and minimizing crimes against humanity committed during World War II.

Some commentators said political forces that are jockeying ahead of next years French presidential election manipulated the protesters.

Saturdays protests drew a mix of people angry at the government for various reasons, and notably, supporters of the far right. Prominent French far-right figures have been convicted in the past of antisemitism, racism and denying the Holocaust.

The government is introducing a bill Monday requiring a ll health care workers to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and requiring COVID-19 passes to enter restaurants and other venues.

At a large protest in Paris on Saturday against vaccine rules, one demonstrator pasted a star on his back reading not vaccinated. Another, Bruno Auquier, a 53-year-old town councilor who lives on the outskirts of Paris, drew a yellow star on his T-shirt and handed out arm bands with the star.

I will never get vaccinated, Auquier said. People need to wake up, he said, questioning the safety of COVID-19 vaccines.

Auquier expressed concern that the new measures would restrict his two childrens freedom and pledged to take them out of school if vaccination becomes mandatory.

Polls suggest most French people support the measures, but they have prompted anger in some quarters. Vandals targeted two vaccination centers in southwest France over the weekend. One was set on fire, and another covered in graffiti, including a reference to the Nazi occupation of France.

France has reported more than 111,000 deaths in the pandemic, and new confirmed cases are increasing sharply again, raising worries about renewed pressure on hospitals and further restrictions that would damage jobs and businesses.

The government ordered tougher border controls on visitors, and some regions have reinstated mask rules outdoors and ordered restaurants and bars to close early. Government spokesman Attal raised the possibility Monday of shutting down night clubs again, just days after they reopened.

Klarsfeld, whose father died in Auschwitz, pushed back against protesters demands for liberty and claims that the latest health measures were dictatorial, saying that dictatorships adopt repressive measures to serve their own ends, while republics sometimes adopt necessary measures for everyones good.

What freedom is it they seek? The freedom to be contagious? he asked.

In Germany last year, several people protesting virus restrictions put on Stars of David, prompting prominent German Jewish leader Josef Schuster to denounce a disgusting instrumentalization of the symbol.

In Russia, popular actor Yegor Beroyev wore a yellow star last month at an awards ceremony, speaking of waking up in a world where (COVID-19 vaccination) became an identification mark. He drew widespread criticism but also scattered support. He spoke after the Moscow mayor announced new coronavirus restrictions including for restaurants. Those restrictions only lasted three weeks.

___

Daria Litvinova in Moscow, and Geir Moulson in Berlin, contributed to this report.

By ANGELA CHARLTON and CONSTANTIN GOUVY

Associated Press
Ex-aide launches new salvo against UKs Johnson over virus View Photo

LONDON (AP)  A disgruntled former top aide to Prime Minister Boris Johnson claims the British leader was dismissive of the threat caused by surging coronavirus cases last year, saying he did not want to impose a lockdown because the disease was only killing the elderly.

Dominic Cummings left his job as Johnsons adviser in November and has since launched a series of excoriating attacks on his former boss.

In an interview with the BBC broadcast Tuesday, Cummings said Johnson resisted imposing a second lockdown in the fall of 2020 because the people who are dying are essentially all over 80.

Britain was in lockdown for more than three months from March 2020 before restrictions on public activity eased up over the summer. The governments top science adviser advised new restrictions in September, as cases rose again. Johnsons government imposed a new lockdown in early November, and a third in January.

Cummings said the prime ministers attitude in fall 2020 was a weird mix of, partly Its all nonsense and lockdowns dont work anyway and partly Well this is terrible but the people who are dying are essentially all over 80 and we cant kill the economy just because of people dying over 80.

Cummings said others had heard the prime minister make the remarks.

The BBC said Cummings showed it a WhatsApp message from October 2020 in which Johnson  who himself required intensive care while hospitalized with COVID-19 in April 2020  said, I no longer buy all this nhs overwhelmed stuff. Folks I think we may need to recalibrate. Early in the pandemic, scientists and medics warned that the National Health Service could be overwhelmed by coronavirus patients and cease to function without a national lockdown.

Johnsons office did not deny Cummings specific allegation about the lockdown comments but said that since the start of the pandemic, the prime minister has taken the necessary action to protect lives and livelihoods, guided by the best scientific advice.

Cummings, one of the architects of the successful 2016 Brexit referendum campaign that resulted in a vote to leave the European Union, went to work in Downing Street when Johnson became prime minister in 2019, filling a loosely defined but powerful role that saw him dubbed Boriss brain.

A self-styled political disruptor, Cummings has often expressed disdain for many civil servants, journalists and politicians  including Johnson.

Since leaving his job, Cummings has used testimony to lawmakers, blog posts and a stream of tweets to accuse Johnson of overseeing a chaotic government whose failure to act quickly against the coronavirus caused thousands of unnecessary deaths. The U.K. has recorded more than 128,000 deaths among people with COVID-19, the highest toll in Europe after Russia.

Cummings alleged that Johnson called the Daily Telegraph, the right-leaning newspaper he once worked for, my real boss. The newspaper has published skeptical views of many pandemic lockdown measures.

He put his own political interests ahead of peoples lives, for sure, Cummings said.

The sooner he goes, the better, the former aide added.

Cummings helped Johnson win a resounding election victory in December 2019 with a promise to end the political gridlock over Brexit. But Cummings told the BBC that just weeks later he and his allies were discussing ways to oust the prime minister.

Cummings said he felt Johnson doesnt have a plan, he doesnt know how to be prime minister and we only got him in there because we had to solve a certain problem, not because he was the right person to be running the country.

Cummings many critics accuse him of seeking revenge and trying to downplay his own role in government, ahead of a public inquiry into Britains handling of the pandemic that is due to start next year.

Cummings has also admitted not telling the truth about his reasons for driving across the country after contracting COVID-19, in breach of COVID restrictions  a trip that badly dented the governments credibility. His initial defense  that he was seeking childcare help from relatives in case he got sick  rang hollow to many Britons who had made sacrifices to follow the rules. Cummings later said his real motivation was his familys safety, because there had been threats to his London home.

By JILL LAWLESS

Associated Press
New Haiti leader with international backing to take charge View Photo

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  A new prime minister supported by key international diplomats will take charge of Haiti, an official said Monday  a move that appeared aimed at averting a leadership struggle following the assassination of President Jovenal Moise.

Ariel Henry, who was designated prime minister by Moise before he was slain but never sworn in, will replace the countrys interim prime minister, Haiti Elections Minister Mathias Pierre told The Associated Press.

It wasnt immediately clear how quickly Claude Joseph, who has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military since the July 7 assassination of Moise, would step down.

Negotiations are still in course, Pierre said, adding that Joseph would go back to being minister of foreign affairs. There was no immediate comment from Joseph.

In an audio recording, Henry referred to himself as prime minister and called for unity, saying he would soon announce the members of what he called a provisional consensus government to lead the country until elections are held.

I present my compliments to the Haitian people who have shown political maturity in the face of what can be considered a coup.  Our Haitian brothers gave peace a chance, while leaving the possibility that the truth could one day be restored, Henry said.

Now it is up to all the national leaders to walk together in unity, towards the same goal, to show that they are responsible.

The political turnover followed a statement Saturday from a key group of international diplomats that appeared to snub Joseph as it called for the creation of a consensual and inclusive government.

To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government, the statement from the Core Group said.

The Core Group is composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

On Monday, the U.N. issued a statement calling on Joseph, Henry and other national stakeholders to set aside differences and engage in constructive dialogue on ways to end the current impasse.

The U.N. added that Joseph and Henry made significant progress in the past week and that it supports dialogue to find minimal consensus for holding fair legislative and presidential elections.

Monique Clesca, a Haitian writer, activist and former U.N. official, said she doesnt anticipate any changes under Henry, whom she expects to carry on Moises legacy. But she warned Henry might be viewed as tainted because of the international backing that preceded his taking power.

There is not only a perception, but the reality that he has been put there by the international community, and I think thats his burden to carry, she said.

What were calling for is for Haitians to really say this is unacceptable. We do not want the international community stating who ought to be in power and what ought to be done. It is up to us.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the Biden administration welcomes reports that Haitian political actors are working together to determine a path forward in the country.

We have been encouraging, for several days now, Haitian political actors to work together and find a political way forward, she said.

Earlier, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price had said the U.S. would continue to work with Joseph after noting he was the incumbent in the position and was serving as acting prime minister before the assassination.

On Monday, Price urged all political actors in Haiti as well as the civil society and private sector to work together in the interest of the people, adding that the U.S. is standing with them.

We have always said, and we continue to believe, that the decision of who should lead Haiti belongs to the Haitian people, he said. Political gridlock has taken a tremendous toll on the nation of Haiti, and its vital for the countrys leaders to finally come together to chart a united, inclusive path forward.

The Core Group statement was issued hours after Moises wife, Martine, arrived in Haiti on Saturday aboard a private jet clad in black and wearing a bulletproof vest after being released from a hospital in Miami. She has not issued a statement or spoken publicly since her return to Haiti as the government prepares for the July 23 funeral that will be held in the northern city of Cap-Haitien. Other events to honor Moise are planned this week in the capital of Port-au-Prince ahead of the funeral.

Moise designated Henry as prime minister shortly before he was killed, but he had not been sworn in. The neurosurgeon was previously minister of social affairs and interior minister. He has belonged to several political parties including Inite, which was founded by former President Rene Preval.

The upcoming change in leadership comes as authorities continue to investigate the July 7 attack at Moises private home with high-powered rifles that seriously wounded his wife.

Authorities say more than 20 suspects directly involved in the killing have been arrested. The majority of them are former Colombian soldiers, most of whom Colombian officials say were duped. Another three suspects were killed, with police still seeking additional ones, including an ex-Haitian rebel leader and a former Haitian senator.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed.

By DANICA COTO

Associated Press
Update at 7:08am: The CHP reports that Highway 88 is now back open near the Tamarack Fire.

Original story posted at 6:25am: Markleeville, CA  The Tamarack Fire in Alpine County near Markleeville is up to 39,045 acres.

There remains no containment. A new road closure was announced late last night by the CHP. Highway 88 is now closed at the Nevada/California State line continuing to Highway 89 at Picketts Junction due to the continuing growth. In addition to the evacuation order in Markleeville and the immediate vicinity, the Alpine County Sheriffs Office added Blue Lakes Road and Mesa Vista.

Providing the latest information about conditions witnessed yesterday, the Forest Service reports, Wind from the thunderstorms increased fire activity, moving the fire to the northeast toward the California-Nevada state line and the US-395 corridor. Crews are working to prevent the fire from impacting US-395 and the surrounding area.

Firefighters continue to mop up around Markleeville and Grover Hot Springs. Crews on the ground were assisted by helicopters providing water drops. Single-engine air tankers also dropped retardant to protect communications towers on Hawkins Peak. On the northeast portion of the fire, point protection around structures remains a priority for firefighters.

1,069 firefighters are assigned to the incident. A larger Type One Incident Management Team is taking over the operations today.
Sacramento, CA  Lunch will be free of charge for the 6.2-million California school students this coming fall.

State lawmakers are using surplus budget revenue to launch the largest free student lunch program in the country. Some cities like Boston, New York and Chicago already offer students free lunch, but California is the first to do so statewide.

Proponents say it will end a stigma for students who already get free lunch related to their familys low income. In recent years, around 60-percent of students have qualified for a subsidized free lunch program.

The program is estimated to cost the state around $650-million annually.

The proposal was introduced by Democratic lawmakers and it was also supported by Republicans in the Senate Education Committee. Republican lawmakers noted it is a way to help Californians cope with the states increasing cost of living.
Rob Kostlivy and Dore Bietz View Photo

Sonora, CA  Many of the drought-related challenges witnessed in Tuolumne County back in 2014 and 2015 are emerging once again.

The county is in the early stages of a potentially concerning trend over the coming months.

Office of Emergency Services Director Dore Bietz coordinated a presentation on local drought conditions at todays board of supervisors meeting. Related to the recent dry spell, she noted that last March the federal USDA designated 50 counties in California as primary natural disaster areas due to drought. On May 10, Governor Gavin Newsom issued a Statewide Drought Emergency noting there are risks of water shortages in many communities if drought conditions continue into next year. On July 8, Newsom then issued an Executive Order asking all Californians to voluntarily conserve water use by 15-percent.

Numerous local private water wells dried up in the fall of 2014, and Tuolumne County was coordinating a program by 2015 to truck in potable water to help many county residents cover basic health and safety needs. The program ended after the county saw wetter winters in the immediate years that followed.

Tuolumne County Environmental Health Director Rob Kostlivy indicated that history is beginning to repeat itself.

Stating, I kind of anticipated that we would see an increase in well failures this coming fall. I can tell you that I was wrong. We are seeing them now.

He added that several months back the only local water hauler based in the county was fielding about a single call per day for assistance with failed wells, and it is now up to 6-12 per day.

Regarding the severity of the drought, Kostlivy said the shoe could drop this fall and continue into 2022 if there is another similar dry weather year.

Another concern brought up is that Tuolumne County only has two commercial well drillers, and if they retire soon, there will not be anyone left locally to service customers. Representatives from the industry were on hand and voiced concerns about increased state regulations that make the drilling practice more and more difficult. They also encouraged those on wells to conserve water when possible.

From a business perspective, officials with Evergreen Lodge near Groveland stated that their wells started suffering in June and July, and the business is having challenges keeping up with demand. They are working with the county currently to drill an additional well.

TUD Interim General Manager Don Perkins and Community Affairs Specialist Lisa Westbrook also spoke at the meeting. Perkins noted that Pinecrest and Lyons reservoirs both filled and spilled this year and indicated the district should be ok with water supply in the coming months as long as customers are somewhat conservative, especially up until Labor Day, when Pinecrest Lake can be drawn down further following the summer recreation season. Perkins added that most TUD customers have positively changed their water use practices following the 2014-15 drought.

It was also noted that the Twain Harte Community Services District has seen an increase in water use this past year. It is believed that this is partly due to more people using part-time homes as permanent residences.

At the end of the presentation, the board of supervisors voted to continue a localized state of emergency related to the drought. The Office of Emergency Services has also restarted Drought Task Force meetings with the numerous local water partners. Drought presentations will be delivered to the board at least every 60 days, moving forward.
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP)  Israel carried out an aerial attack southeast of Syrias northern Aleppo province late Monday, a Syrian military official said.

The unidentified military official, quoted by the state news agency SANA, said Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles in the attack that occurred just before midnight. The targets are still being identified, the official said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots that belong to Iranian-backed militia operating in Aleppos Safira region. The group said the strikes were followed by loud explosions. The weapons depots were located inside Syrian military posts, the group said.

The attack took place on the eve of Eid Al-Adha, one of Islams holiest holidays.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. Last month, Israel reportedly carried out an attack on targets in central Syria.

Israel fears Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier, and it has repeatedly struck Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Hezbollah.
Families lay to rest loved ones after deadly Baghdad blast View Photo

BAGHDAD (AP)  Families laid to rest loved ones Tuesday who were killed in a deadly bombing that claimed at least 30 lives just hours earlier in a busy market in Iraqs capital.

Coffins were carried by relatives and placed on minibuses that transported them for burial. The funerals were held for the victims of the blast the night before in a crowded market in Sadr City, a Baghdad suburb.

Iraqs military said it concluded an investigation into the bombing and found it was caused by a suicide bomber who detonated an explosives-filled vest in the middle of a popular market. Iraqi security officials initially said the attack was caused by a roadside bomb.

The military said in a statement that at least 50 people were wounded in the attack. It was the third time that militants targeted Sadr City this year.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack and said in a statement posted online the bombing was carried out by Abu Hamza al-Iraqi.

The attack occurred a day before the Eid al-Adha holiday when many residents were out shopping for gifts. New clothes are typically given during the holiday.

Hussein al-Lami laid to rest his 12-year-old nephews Murtada and Amir Sahi the night before, soon after they were killed in the attack.

The calamity was huge, especially for the parents and relatives of the two martyrs, he said. Today, Iraqis are spending Eid with calamity after they suffered in this terrorist act. Now there is misery in every Iraqi house.

In June, 15 people were wounded when a bomb placed under a kiosk in another Sadr City market detonated. In April, at least four people were killed in a car bomb attack in Sadr City. That blast was caused by an explosive device attached to a parked car at the market.

Large bomb attacks, once an almost daily occurrence in Baghdad, have slowed in recent years since IS was defeated on the battlefield in 2017.

At the Vatican, the pope expressed his deep sadness at the loss of life in the explosion Monday, according to the text of a telegram sent in his name to the papal envoy in Iraq.

Francis sends condolences to the families and friends of those who have died, the Vatican said Tuesday evening. Francis also renews his fervent prayers that no act of violence will diminish the efforts of those who strive to promote reconciliation and peace in Iraq.

The pontiff made a pilgrimage to Iraq in March that stressed peaceful coexistence in the country.

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Associated Press writer Frances DEmilio in Rome contributed.

By ALI ABDUL-HASSAN

Associated Press
Minnesota Dem who rose after Castile death is under pressure View Photo

MINNEAPOLIS (AP)  A Black Minnesota state lawmaker who rose to prominence after the fatal shooting of his friend Philando Castile came under increasing pressure to resign Monday, after old domestic abuse allegations surfaced as he was already dealing with fallout over an acrimonious traffic stop.

Legislative Republicans threatened to file an ethics complaint against John Thompson, who became an outspoken activist on police accountability and later turned to politics after Castile was shot to death by a police officer in 2016.

Thompson used his position to argue for policing changes that would shield people of color from unfair treatment. But the domestic abuse allegations, first reported by KMSP-TV on Friday, were the last straw for top Democrats after a tumultuous couple of weeks.

First, Thompsons residency in his St. Paul district was called into question after he claimed he had been racially profiled during a traffic stop July 4. Then, he went on trial last week on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing police for his alleged conduct during a confrontation that led to a lockdown at a suburban hospital in 2019, before he ran for office.

By Saturday, top Minnesota Democrats had had enough. State House Speaker Melissa Hortman and Majority Leader Ryan Winkler called on Thompson to quit, saying his continued presence was jeopardizing the very causes he championed.

Representative Thompson ran for office to advance progressive policies, but his recent actions, and unacceptable reports of abuse and misconduct, have become an impediment to that work, Hortman and Winkler said. Within minutes, several other top Democrats, including Gov. Tim Walz, also called for Thompson to step down.

Thompson has refused to resign and has insisted he lives in his district. His attorney, Jordan Kushner, on Sunday denied the abuse allegations and disputed the authenticity of the police reports cited in news reports. He suggested they were fabricated by police who have despised Thompson since his obscenity-laced speech during a demonstration last August outside the home in suburban Hugo of Lt. Bob Kroll, who was then head of the Minneapolis police union. Thompson, noting the violence after last summers death of George Floyd, talked of burning Hugo down and struck at pinatas depicting Kroll and his wife, a WCCO-TV anchor.

Kushner called the police reports a product of the campaign to silence an American African man who speaks out against powerful and abusive interests, and not the product of any effort to uncover truth.

On Monday, the top Republican in the Minnesota House, Minority Leader Kurt Daudt, called on Hortman to explain by Wednesday what she intends to do about Thompson. If Hortman fails to act, he said, House Republicans will move ahead with ethics complaints.

That panel, made up of two Democrats and two Republicans with one alternate from each party, was already scheduled to meet Friday to consider a different ethics complaint against Thompson. GOP state Rep. Eric Lucero filed it late last month after Thompson, during a contentious floor debate over policing legislation, denounced Lucero by saying, I know youre a racist. GOP lawmakers allege in the complaint that Thompsons conduct violated House rules on decorum.

Thompsons unraveling might not have happened if it werent for his own statements during a memorial July 6 on the fifth anniversary of Castiles death. At the memorial, Thompson disclosed that St. Paul police had pulled him over for a missing front license plate  what he called a pretextual stop of the kind he fought to end as a legislator.

Im still being profiled.  You can still get driving-while-Black tickets in the state, Thompson said.

It soon emerged that Thompson was driving on a Wisconsin license and had never had one from Minnesota, which he was legally required to have to drive if he was a Minnesota resident. Thompson has yet to provide public proof that he lives in his St. Paul district.

Amid the furor over the traffic stop, Thompsons trial last week began on the misdemeanor obstruction charge that predated his election campaign and previously attracted little attention. Hes accused of interfering with a police officer at a suburban hospital in 2019 as a crowd gathered following a family friends suicide attempt. Thompson alleged that police and hospital staff overreacted because the people in the crowd were Black.

Then on Friday, KMSP-TV reported on four cases involving domestic abuse allegations involving Thompson between 2003 and 2010. In a 2003 incident in Superior, Wisconsin, Thompson was accused of striking his girlfriend in the face in a supermarket parking lot in front of her 5-year-old daughter. He eventually pleaded guilty to lesser charges of disorderly conduct and fleeing police. In 2004, he allegedly attacked the same woman at her suburban St. Paul apartment.

Prosecutors declined to file charges in that incident or two others, in St. Paul in 2009 and 2010, in which he allegedly made threats during arguments with women and took out his penis in front of them and children who were present. Through Kushner, Thompson denied all of the abuse allegations.

Democratic state Rep. Cedrick Frazier, an African American freshman who emerged this year as a leading voice in the House on police accountability, deflected a question on whether Thompson could politically survive the allegations and the loss of Democratic support, saying its up to Hortman, the House speaker.

But Frazier said Thompson deserves due process via the ethics committee and from voters. He said the Legislature needs citizen lawmakers who bring a variety of life experiences that can guide policy and help improve peoples lives.

None of us come to this job as perfect, as not having any type of blemishes and not having any type of life lived coming into this work, Frazier said.

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Follow Steve Karnowski on Twitter: https://twitter.com/skarnowski

By STEVE KARNOWSKI

Associated Press
Judge exonerates man who served 20 years in Georgia slayings View Photo

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP)  A judge on Monday dismissed all charges against a man convicted of the 1985 slayings of a couple at a south Georgia church, exonerating him after he spent two decades behind bars, the mans attorneys said.

Glynn County Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett granted a motion by prosecutors to dismiss the case against Dennis Perry, 59. Scarlett last year gave Perry the chance for a new trial after DNA recovered from the crime scene matched a different suspect during reinvestigation of the case. He also ordered Perrys release from prison while prosecutors decided whether to refile charges.

Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney Keith Higgins, who took office in January, decided not to pursue the case.

There are times when seeking justice means righting a wrong, Higgins said, according to WTLV-TV. While this case was prosecuted prior to my administration, the new evidence indicates that someone else murdered Harold and Thelma Swain.

Perry, who had maintained his innocence, said in a statement he knew that eventually someone else would see the truth.

This indictment has been hanging over my head for over 20 years, and its such a relief to finally not have to worry about being accused of this awful thing, he said.

The Swains were killed inside Rising Daughters Baptist Church in Waverly, Georgia, in 1985.

Perry was convicted in 2003 largely on the testimony of his ex-girlfriends mother, who said Perry had told her he planned to kill Harold Swain. The state didnt disclose to the defense that the woman was paid $12,000 in reward money for her testimony. Perry received two consecutive life sentences in prison.

The new DNA evidence has cast suspicion on another man in the slaying. Authorities were led to that suspect after reporting by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found his alibi was fabricated, Perrys attorneys say.

We are thrilled that Dennis and his family can now begin the long process of recovery and healing, said Jennifer Whitfield, an attorney with the Georgia Innocence Project, which along with the King & Spalding law firm helped secure Perrys exoneration. It takes so little to convict, and yet so much to undo a wrongful conviction.
HCA Q2 profit surges as patients return to hospitals View Photo

The first major hospital chain to post second-quarter results surprised Wall Street on Tuesday with how much it has grown since a rapidly spreading pandemic curtailed surgeries and other care last year.

HCA Healthcare said Tuesday that admissions to its hospitals soared while COVID-19 related care fell in the three-month window that ended June 30. That contributed to better-than-expected earnings in the quarter and a raised forecast for 2021.

With the effects of the pandemic moderating  we experienced a strong rebound in demand for services, CEO Sam Hazen said.

That rebound happened largely before COVID-19 cases started climbing around the country over the past few weeks, drawing concern from federal officials and epidemiologists. The seven-day rolling average for daily new cases has nearly tripled over the past two weeks to 34,730 as of Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

COVID-19 cases are now increasing in nearly every state as a highly contagious virus variant spreads, leaving millions of still unvaccinated people vulnerable to serious illness or hospitalization.

Even so, company officials told analysts on Tuesday that they expect demand for their services to remain strong throughout the year. That demand has been fueled in part by growth in employment and insurance coverage.

About 68% of U.S. adults also have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Last year, before vaccines were authorized for emergency use, patients stayed home or cancelled elective surgeries and other care.

HCA runs 187 hospitals as well as hundreds of surgery centers, free-standing emergency rooms and clinics in 20 states and the United Kingdom.

The company said Tuesday that inpatient surgeries at established locations grew 15% compared to last years second quarter, and outpatient surgeries soared more than 52%.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 patient admissions fell to 3% of total admissions during the quarter. Thats down from 10% in the first quarter.

Overall, HCAs adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization grew about 21% to $3.22 billion. That compares to $2.67 billion in last years quarter, when the company also booked $822 million in government stimulus income that it has since paid back.

Adjusted earnings totaled $4.37 per share in this years second quarter, and revenue grew 30% to $14.44 billion.

Analysts expected, on average, earnings of $3.16 per share on $13.61 billion in revenue, according to FactSet.

For 2021, HCA now expects earnings to range between $16.30 and $17.10 per share after forecasting $13.30 to $14.30 in April.

Wall Street forecasts $14.02 per share.

Citi analyst Ralph Giacobbe called the results a blowout.

The performance and magnitude of upside is impressive and we expect shares to trade higher, Giacobbe said in a research note.

Shares of Nashville, Tennessee-based HCA Healthcare Inc. jumped more than 15% to approach $252 and set another all-time high price on Tuesday while broader indexes were up over 1%.

Hospital operators like HCA have largely outpaced the broader market since last November. Thats when drugmakers released clinical study results on their experimental COVID-19 vaccines and gave investors initial hints that the pandemic could be brought under control.

HCA competitor Tenet Healthcare Corp. will detail its second-quarter results Wednesday after markets close while another hospital chain, Community Health Systems Inc., reports next week.

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Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter: @thpmurphy

By TOM MURPHY

AP Health Writer
GREENBELT, Md. (AP)  A gang member was sentenced on Tuesday to 30 years in federal prison for his role in the killing of a 16-year-old boy who was stabbed and cut more than 100 times at a Maryland home before his body was set on fire.

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis also sentenced Kevin Alexis Rodriguez-Flores, 20, of Annandale, Virginia, to five years of supervised release following his prison term. The plea agreement between prosecutors and Rodriguez called for a sentence ranging from 30 years to life imprisonment, but Xinis wasnt bound by that recommendation.

Rodriguez admitted he was a member of the street gang Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13 for short, and took part in the March 2019 killing over the mistaken belief that the boy, a fellow member, was working with police, prosecutors said. The boy was beaten and stabbed or cut roughly 144 times by Rodriguez and others whom he believed to be his friends, they wrote in a court filing.

Prosecutors had sought a 35-year prison sentence for Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise and conspiracy to destroy and conceal evidence.

The killing took place during an MS-13 clique meeting in the Hyattsville, Maryland, home of the cliques leader. After the boys killing, clique members took his body to a secluded location in Stafford County, Virginia, and set it on fire, according to prosecutors.

A grand jury indicted Rodriguez and three other men in July 2020 on charges stemming from the boys killing. He is the only defendant to plead guilty as of Tuesday.

Xinis has set a Sept. 17 deadline for the U.S. Justice Department to notify the court whether it intends to seek the death penalty against co-defendant Jose Domingo Ordonez-Zometa. The indictment describes Ordonez as the MS-13 clique leader and claims he ordered the boys killing after questioning him about a recent encounter with police.

Rodriguez came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 2016. He lived with his mother in New Jersey before moving to Virginia approximately a month before the killing.
Idaho lawmaker who shared rape accusers name faces hearing View Photo

BOISE, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho lawmaker who publicized the name of a 19-year-old intern who accused another state lawmaker of rape will face a legislative ethics hearing over her actions next month.

The House Ethics and Policy Committee found probable cause that Rep. Priscilla Giddings, a Republican from the tiny town of White Bird, engaged in conduct unbecoming a representative, which is detrimental to the integrity of the House as a legislative body, the committee announced Tuesday.

The finding came after two formal complaints  including one signed by a bipartisan group of roughly two dozen lawmakers  were filed, alleging Giddings threatened the interns privacy and safety by sharing her identity and that the lawmaker tried to mislead the ethics committee when asked about it under oath.

Giddings faced criticism and complaints this year after sharing links to a far-right blog post that included the interns name, photo and details about her life with thousands of people in a newsletter and on social media.

Giddings did not immediately respond to a phone message and email from The Associated Press requesting comment. On Facebook, she claimed a political rival was pushing for the ethics hearing as a form of dirty politics.

As a decorated Air Force officer and a recognized womens advocate, I take a backseat to no one in standing up for the rights of victims, Giddings wrote.

The intern had reported to police and legislative leaders that then-Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, a Republican from Lewiston, had raped her after they went out to dinner.

Von Ehlinger has denied any wrongdoing and said the sexual contact was consensual. An ethics committee found he engaged in conduct unbecoming a lawmaker, and he resigned before the full House could vote on whether to remove him from office.

The Ada County prosecutors office told the AP last week that police were still investigating the allegation against von Ehlinger.

The AP generally doesnt name people who report sexual assaults unless they agree to be publicly identified.

The young woman was repeatedly harassed after she reported the allegation. Rep. Heather Scott, a Republican from Blanchard, sought a copy of the police report and made inquiries into how people who make rape allegations could themselves be charged with a crime. Giddings made disparaging remarks about the woman in a newsletter to constituents that included the links to the blog post with identifying details. Giddings also shared the post on her social media page that has thousands of followers.

Members of a far-right anti-government group also tried to follow and harass the woman after she was called to testify in von Ehlingers ethics hearing. She later told the AP that the harassment was overwhelming during an already difficult time.

Under legislative rules, ethics committee investigations can only be triggered if a lawmaker files a formal complaint against a colleague. Those complaints arent made public unless the committee finds there is probable cause to hold a hearing, so its unclear if complaints have been made about other lawmakers.

After the harassment was revealed, hundreds of people reached out to legislative leaders to complain about Giddings actions. Residents also called for the U.S. Air Force Academy to investigate whether Giddings, who is a major in the Air Force Reserves, violated military rules.

The Air Force said in June that an assessment is ongoing, but because its subject to federal privacy rules, the results are not known.

The interns attorney, Annie Pelletier Hightower with the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, said Giddings publicizing personal details about the woman is pretty much exactly what every person who experiences sexual violence fears will happen to their information.

Hightower said she was happy to learn an ethics hearing would be held.

Its an important step for the state, if we are really invested in creating space where people can report sexual violence, Hightower said. I think we should expect better of our lawmakers, and I am happy that there is some process for accountability that is ongoing.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, Giddings claimed House Speaker Scott Bedke had weaponized the ethics hearing against her and asked people to donate to her defense. Both Giddings and Bedke, who couldnt be immediately reached for comment, are running for lieutenant governor.

After reviewing the formal complaints, the House Ethics Committee found probable cause that misconduct may have occurred regarding a portion of each complaint. The public ethics hearing is set for Aug. 2 at the Idaho Statehouse.

In one complaint filed April 19, Rep. Greg Chaney, a Republican from Caldwell, said Giddings mischaracterized the ethics investigation against von Ehlinger on social media, created a hostile work and retaliatory environment for the intern and wrongly accused other lawmakers of illegal conduct by claiming the investigation into von Ehlinger was tainted or done for financial gain.

In the second complaint filed May 3, Bedke and roughly two dozen other Republican and Democratic lawmakers said Giddings should be investigated for two things: first, for harassing and potentially endangering the intern by releasing her identity on social media and making defamatory remarks about her, and second, by trying to mislead ethics committee members who asked Giddings about the social media posts under oath.

Those questions came during von Ehlingers ethics hearing, when Giddings was called as a witness. The members asked Giddings to confirm that she had posted a picture of the intern, and she said, That is not correct, according to the complaint.

By REBECCA BOONE

Associated Press
GOP radio host Larry Elder sues to get on California ballot View Photo

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder is suing over a decision by California election officials to block him from running in the September recall election that could oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, saying hes the target of political shenanigans by Democrats.

The Republican said in a statement late Monday that he filed all the necessary paperwork to qualify for a slot on the ballot, including over 300 pages of tax returns that are required to become a candidate. But the secretary of states office did not include Elder on a preliminary list of 41 candidates last weekend, saying he filed incomplete information on those returns.

Elders campaign said he sued Monday, seeking an order from a court in Sacramento that would require Secretary of State Shirley Weber to list Elder as a candidate on the final certified list of candidates, scheduled to be issued Wednesday.

Weve complied with everything the secretary of state has required of us, said Elder, a popular voice on the political right whose show is nationally syndicated. The politicians in Sacramento know Im the only candidate who can beat Gavin Newsom. They are afraid, and they are using whatever shenanigans they can to try to trip me up. It wont work.

Frankly, this action by the secretary of state is not simply unfair and absurd but a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent, said Elder, who also is an attorney.

Meanwhile, the secretary of states office on Tuesday added another name to the list, making it 42 replacement candidates in the Sept. 14 contest. It wasnt immediately clear why Democrat Armando Mando Perez-Serrato was a late addition.

If Elder fails to make the ballot, it would be a setback for recall organizers who hoped for a large field of prominent candidates to attract voters. When Elder announced his candidacy last week, he immediately became one of the most recognized Republicans in the race, given his years on talk radio and frequent appearances on Fox News.

In a statement, Webers office said the agency applies the same criteria to each candidate that seeks elected office.

The list of candidates issued did not include Mr. Elder and others that failed to comply with those requirements. This is the first election where the gubernatorial candidate tax-disclosure law has been applied.

Elder is facing a narrow window of time for the court to make a change. With the election less than two months away, election officials already are arranging for ballots to be printed. Mail-in ballots go out next month.

Other Republicans who qualified to run include former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer; reality TV personality and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner; businessman John Cox, who was defeated by Newsom in 2018; and state lawmaker Kevin Kiley.

Elders campaign argued that under state law, Weber has the authority, if not the duty, to fix any redaction errors for the public. The campaign said Webers office has not informed Elder of its specific objections to the filing of his tax returns and added that Weber was effectively engaging in voter suppression by denying voters the ability to choose Elder.

The campaign also said Webers decision violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution because Newsom did not have to comply with the same tax return disclosures.

I am waging a legal battle to run as the candidate for Californians who are tired of the partisanship and entrenched interests of Sacramento. I fully expect to be on the final certified list of candidates, Elder said.

Voters will be sent a ballot with two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? And who should replace him? If more than half of voters say yes to the first question, then whoever on the list of potential replacements gets the most votes is the new governor of the nations most populous state. With numerous candidates and no clear front-runner, its possible that someone could win with less than 25% of the votes.

The push to oust the first-term, Democratic governor is largely rooted in frustration with school and business closures during the coronavirus pandemic that upended daily life for millions of Californians.

In the lawsuit, Elder raises the issue of whether the requirement for candidates to release their previous five years of taxes is legally valid. He points out the 2019 law on which its based applies to a primary election, but the secretary of state unilaterally imposed it on a recall election.

A statement from the secretary of state said the agency adopted the same approach as was used in the states 2003 recall election, when the basic requirements for replacement candidate qualifications were based on those for primary elections.

Neither the California Constitution nor the (state) elections code provide specific replacement candidate qualifications and requirements for gubernatorial recall elections, the agency said.

___

Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento contributed.

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD

AP Political Writer
AP source: Biden looks to increase staffing of Cuba embassy View Photo

WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Monday ordered the State Department to create a working group to review U.S. remittance policy to ensure that money that Cuban Americans send home makes it directly into the hands of their families without the regime taking a cut.

He also ordered a review of the viability of increasing staff at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The White House is hopeful that a boost in staffing could help it better facilitate civil society engagement following one of the communist islands biggest antigovernment demonstrations in recent memory.

The actions were detailed by a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Biden administration hadnt yet publicly announced the effort.

It comes a little more than a week after thousands of Cubans took to the streets of Havana and other cities across the island to protest food shortages and high prices during the coronavirus crisis. Its a level of frustration not seen in Cuba in more than 60 years.

Biden is also calling for the administration to work with Congress to identify options to make the internet more accessible on the island. The regime moved to quickly cut off internet access to stop images of the protests from being broadcast to the world. Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have been urging Biden to make free satellite internet access available to dissidents to help them subvert the Cuban governments effort to stop activists from getting their messages on social media.

The administration will also look to work with international organizations to increase humanitarian assistance, while the Treasury Departments Office of Foreign Assets Control will explore sanctioning Cuban officials who committed human rights violations against peaceful protesters in Cuba, the official said.

Biden senior adviser Cedric Richmond and Juan Gonzalez, a senior National Security Council official, met on Monday with Cuban American leaders to hear their policy recommendations and concerns in the aftermath of the demonstrations, according to the White House.

Biden, who has been under congressional pressure to take action, last week called Cuba a failed state that was repressing their citizens.

But Biden also suggested that taking effective action was complicated.

There are a number of things that we would consider doing to help the people of Cuba, but it would require a different circumstance or a guarantee that they would not be taken advantage of by the government, Biden said. For example, the ability to send remittances back to Cuba. We would not do that now because the fact is its highly likely the regime would confiscate those remittances or big chunks of it.

A dramatic drawdown of embassy personnel from Cuba began in 2017, unrelated to the Trump administrations antipathy towards President Barack Obamas rapprochement with the island.

Instead, the removal of staffers from the U.S. Embassy in Havana began in the spring and summer of that year in response to unexplained brain injuries suffered by American diplomats, spies and other government employees posted to the island.

The Trump administration also moved to reverse many of the Obama administrations initiatives, reimposing restrictions that had barred direct commercial flights by U.S. carriers to multiple Cuban airports and port calls by U.S. registered cruise ships.

As president Donald Trump also sharply curtailed remittances that Cuban Americans were allowed to send to relatives on the island, barred financial and commercial transactions with most Cuban companies affiliated with the government or military and, in his final days in office, redesignated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, in part for its support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Biden said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana, and the political right in the U.S. has accused him of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents. Thus far, the Biden administration has said its reviewing its Cuba policy and has done little to move away from Trumps posture toward the communist regime.

Some of the more liberal members of the Democratic Party, most notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have criticized the Cuban government but also called on Biden to lift the embargo and argued that the embargo policy is contributing to Cuban suffering.

By AAMER MADHANI and MATTHEW LEE

Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP)  Pacific Gas & Electric reported to California utility regulators that its equipment may have been involved in the start of a fire burning in the Sierra Nevada that is threatening hundreds of homes.

PG&E said in a report Sunday to the California Public Utilities Commission that a repairman responding to a circuit outage on July 13 spotted blown fuses in a conductor atop a pole, a tree leaning into the conductor and fire at the base of the tree.

The utility said its system showed around 7 a.m. that the Cresta Dam off Highway 70 had lost power but because of the steep, rough terrain, the worker sent to check it couldnt reach the area until nearly 5 p.m.

The employee reported the fire to his supervisor who called 911 and the dispatcher said they were aware of the fire and responding. Firefighters with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention began dropping water and fire retardant about 5:30 p.m., the utility said.

By that night, the blaze had grown to 10 to 15 acres (4 to 6 hectares) and firefighting crews on the ground had problems accessing the area, it said.

Cal Fire investigators collected portions of a power line, including the conductor, jumpers, insulators, and fuse cutouts, and parts of the tree.

The Dixie Fire roared to new life Sunday, prompting evacuation orders in rural communities near the Feather River Canyon and had grown to nearly 63 square miles (163 square kilometers) Monday, largely in remote wilderness. It was reported to be 15% contained.

The fire is burning northeast of the town of Paradise, where survivors of a 2018 fire that was started by PG&E equipment killed 85 watched warily.

PG&E equipment has been blamed for sparking some of the states deadliest wildfires in recent years, most notably in 2017 and 2018 when a series of wildfires burned down more than 28,000 buildings and killed more than 100 people. It emerged from bankruptcy last year after a series of deadly wildfires ignited by its long-neglected electrical grid prompted it to declare financial insolvency.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said he would wait to comment on the utilitys possible involvement until the investigation is completed.

These things all deserve an investigation and Im not going to jump to any conclusions, Newsom said Monday. He said his administration continues to do more to demand from PG&E and other investor-owned utilities real accountability for investing in wildfire suppression, camera detection technology and making sure they are doing the forest management and vegetation management which are foundational to wildfire prevention.

Meteorologists predicted critically dangerous fire weather with lightning possible through at least Monday in both California and southern Oregon. Noting the dry conditions, the National Weather Service in Sacramento said any thunderstorm has the potential to ignite new fire starts.

Extremely dry conditions and heat waves tied to climate change have swept the region, making wildfires harder to fight. Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive.

Firefighters said in July they were facing conditions more typical of late summer or fall.
MOSCOW (AP)  Russian aircraft makers on Tuesday unveiled a prototype of a new fighter jet that features stealth capabilities and other advanced characteristics and will be offered to foreign buyers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin inspected the prospective warplane displayed with much fanfare at the MAKS-2021 International Aviation and Space Salon, which opened Tuesday in Zhukovsky, outside Moscow.

Russian aircraft maker Sukhoi developed the new fighter under the LTS program, a Russian acronym for the Light Tactical Aircraft.

Its makers said the prototype is set to make its maiden flight in 2023 and deliveries could start in 2026. They said the new design could be converted to an unpiloted version and a two-seat model.

The prospective warplane, marketed under the project name Checkmate, has one engine and is designed to be smaller and cheaper than Russias latest Su-57 two-engine stealth fighter, also built by Sukhoi. It can fly at a speed of 1.8-2 times the speed of sound, has a range of 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles) and a payload of 7,400 kilograms (16,300 pounds), the jet's makers said.

Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Borisov voiced hope that the new fighter could be sold to India, Vietnam and African nations, adding that foreign customers are expected to order at least 300 such aircraft. Borisov noted that one foreign customer he didn't name has already expressed a strong interest in the new jet.

The sales of warplanes have accounted for the bulk of Russian weapons exports, but the two-engine Su-30 and Su-35 fighters have faced growing competition in global markets.

Industries and Trade Minister Denis Manturov said that the prospective fighter was being developed to compete with the U.S. F-35 Lightning II fighter that entered service in 2015, a new Chinese fighter, and other designs. We must join other nations that sell such aircraft, he said.

Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec state corporation that includes Sukhoi and other aircraft makers, said the new plane is expected to cost $25-30 million. He said that the Russian air force is also expected to place an order for the new fighter.

Russia's Sukhoi and MiG aircraft makers only have produced two-engine fighters since the 1980s. Some experts observed that it has placed Russia at disadvantage in some foreign markets where customers preferred cheaper one-engine aircraft.

Rostec said the new warplane belongs to the so-called fifth generation of fighter jets, a definition that assumes stealth characteristics and a capability to cruise at supersonic speed, among other advanced features.

The corporation noted that the new design includes artificial intelligence features to assist the pilot and other innovative technologies. It said the jet was designed to reduce service costs and to be easily adapted to varying customer needs.

Manturov noted that the new design would incorporate some components from the previous fighters to help reduce price.

Rostec ran an aggressive advertising campaign in the days before the air show, publishing a picture of the new fighter hidden under a black tarpaulin with Wanna see me naked? written under it. It also posted a video featuring adulatory customers from India, the United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Vietnam and other countries, reflecting export hopes.

Plane spotters flocked to Zhukovsky last week to take pictures of the new plane as it was being taxied to a parking spot across the giant airfield which has served as the countrys top military aircraft test facility since Cold War times.

The Kremlin has made modernization of the countrys arsenals a key priority amid tensions with the West that followed Moscows 2014 annexation of Ukraines Crimean Peninsula.

It also has strongly encouraged the development of new passenger jets to compete with planes built by American aircraft maker Boeing and Europe's Airbus that currently account for the bulk of Russian carriers' fleets.

Russia's airliner programs have encountered delays amid Western sanctions that hampered imports of Western engines and other key components. But the country managed to produce a new engine for the new MS-21 passenger plane, which also was displayed at the show in Zhukovsky.

What we saw in Zhukovsky today demonstrates that the Russian aviation has a big potential for development and our aircraft making industries continue to create new competitive aircraft designs, Putin said in a speech at the show's opening.
ISLAMABAD (AP)  A famous South Korean climber fell into a crevasse and went missing over the weekend in bad weather after scaling another mountain peak in northern Pakistan, a mountaineering official said Tuesday.

Kim Hong Bin was descending after having reached the 8,047-meter (26,400-foot) high Broad Peak in Pakistan's north Karakoram Range on Sunday, said Karrar Haidri, the secretary of the Pakistan Alpine Club.

With the summit, the 57-year-old Kim had scaled all of the world's 14 highest summits, becoming the first person with disability to do so. In 1991, while climbing in Alaska, he suffered severe frostbite and had all his fingers amputated.

While descending from the peak with several other mountaineers on Sunday, Kim slipped and fell down the Chinese side of the mountain, according to Haidri.

Since then no information is available about him," the official said, adding that a search mission is being planned.

In Seoul, the Foreign Ministry said Pakistan has promised to send a helicopter to find Kim as soon as weather conditions allow the flight. Spokesman Choi Young-sam said China has also agreed to make efforts to locate the climber.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in  who had earlier issued a message congratulating Kim on scaling of the worlds 14 highest summits  said that hell pray for Kims safe return.

There are some reports speculating his death, but the information is not clear and Im not abandoning hopes that hes still alive, Moon tweeted. Ill earnestly wait for the news of his safe return with my people to the end.

Kim's successes include world's highest, Mount Everest on the China-Nepal border, and Pakistan's K2, the second-highest, which like Broad Peak is also in the Karakoram Range. Disability never became a hurdle for Kim, Haidri said, and did not stand in the way of his passion.

The other mountaineers, who had in vain tried to find Kim, were safe and were descending amid bad weather. The South Korean Embassy in Islamabad was also organizing a search mission, he added.

We do not want to speculate" on Kim's fate, Haidri told The Associated Press, refusing to comment reports on Twitter that the climber had died.

Ghulam Muhammad, the owner of Blue Sky Expedition tour operating company who arranged the expedition for Kim, also confirmed an unfortunate incident" when the South Korean was returning to base camp.

The organizers of the expedition were in contact with the family of the missing South Korean and any further information will be shared by his family or by the South Korean officials, he added.

Scores of mountaineers visit Pakistan every year to scale different mountains and peaks, located in the country's scenic north. But the sport is dangerous, particularly when a sudden change in weather occurs.

Earlier this year, three climbers  Pakistani mountaineer Ali Sadpara, Jon Snorri of Iceland and Juan Pablo Mohr of Chile  died while attempting to summit the 8,611-meter (28,250-foot) high K2. Their bodies could not be traced and retrieved despite several attempts by Pakistani search and rescue team aided by the military.

___

Associated Press writer Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Two weeks after celebrating Americas near independence from the coronavirus, President Joe Biden is confronting the worrying reality of rising cases and deaths  and the limitations of his ability to combat the persistent vaccine hesitance responsible for the summer backslide.

Cases of COVID-19 have tripled over the past three weeks, and hospitalizations and deaths are rising among unvaccinated people. While the rates are still sharply down from their January highs, officials are concerned by the reversing trendlines and what they consider needless illness and death. And cases are expected to continue to rise in coming weeks.

While the national emergency may have faded, officials say the outbreak is now a more localized crisis in communities where not enough people have rolled up their sleeves.

Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated, Biden said Friday, echoing comments made earlier in the day by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The rising numbers are being driven by large pockets of infection among the more than 90 million eligible Americans who have yet to get shots. Just four states with low vaccination rates made up 40% of new cases last week, and nearly half of them came from Florida alone.

But there is little appetite in the White House for a return to broad mandates for masks or other measures, as 161 million Americans are already fully vaccinated.

Reflecting that mindset, Walensky said Friday that in low-vaccination areas with rising cases, local policymakers might consider whether masking at that point would be something that would be helpful for their community."

Some communities are acting. Los Angeles County on Thursday reinstituted its requirement that masks be worn in most indoor settings regardless of vaccination status, and health officials in Las Vegas recommended on Friday that workers and patrons in the tourism hotspot wear face coverings while inside.

With three highly effective vaccines authorized for use in the U.S., the Biden administration believes the most effective way to attack the virus is not trying to slow the spread with mass masking and such  something the U.S. showed it was not very good at last year  but to continue to press the importance of vaccinations.

Its no easy fix. Many Americans remain resistant or unmotivated to get shots, despite months of often-creative efforts by federal and state officials and the private sector to spread information about vaccine safety and accessibility.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy added that while government can play an important role, this has got to be an all of the above strategy with everybody in, including schools, employers, technology companies and individuals.

In recent days, the administration has turned its focus to younger Americans. It enlisted pop star Olivia Rodrigo for a day-long White House visit Wednesday with Biden and top infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci that was heavily documented for social media. Younger people are at lowest risk of adverse outcomes from the virus and have proven to be among the least likely to get vaccinated.

But another huge group has proven to be an even more vexing challenge: Republicans. The White House has long acknowledged that, given rampant disinformation about the vaccines and the nations partisan divides, it would have little success convincing the GOP to get on board. Instead, administration officials have amped up criticism in recent days of public officials and social media companies for spreading or not condemning vaccine misinformation spreading among the GOP.

Theyre killing people, Biden said Friday of social media companies. A day earlier, Murthy, the surgeon general, warned that false information about vaccines spreading on platforms such as Facebook posed a public health risk to the nation.

We will not be distracted by accusations which arent supported by the facts, Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said in a statement. The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet."

The new government expression of frustration comes amid near disbelief that tens of millions of Americans continue to refuse to get vaccinated, needlessly extending the pandemic and costing lives, as health officials emphasize that nearly all serious cases and deaths are now preventable.

More than 99% of COVID-19 deaths and 97% of hospitalizations are among people who have not been vaccinated, according to the CDC.

The pandemic is now one that predominantly threatens unvaccinated people, White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Friday.

He said the Biden administration expects cases to increase in the weeks ahead because of spreading in communities with low vaccination rates But Zients added that there is a sign that the increased cases are driving more people in those communities to seek vaccination, reporting that states with the highest case rates are seeing their vaccination rates go up faster than the national average.
NASA

Southwest Research Institute is working on a NASA project that will return old technology to the moon to help identify materials that could make it possible for explorers to 'live off the land' at target worlds such as the moon and Mars."

The three-year, $2.18 million Environmental Analysis of the Bounded Lunar Exosphere (ENABLE) project adapts mass spectrometry technology for use on NASA missions, according to a news release from the San Antonio-based SwRI. The proposed design could be used on both lunar surface landers and robotic rovers, as well as a handheld tool used by future astronauts.
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Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, will publish a memoir in late 2022 with Penguin Random House.

For the first time, Prince Harry will reveal his intimate account of the experiences, adventures, losses and life lessons that have shaped him. The memoir will cover his childhood in the public eye, his two tours in Afghanistan and the joy he has found in becoming a husband and father.

The book will be published in print and digital formats, in addition to an audiobook. Prince Harry will be donating proceeds to charity.

Im writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become, Prince Harry said in a statement. Ive worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think. Im deeply grateful for the opportunity to share what Ive learned over the course of my life so far and excited for people to read a firsthand account of my life thats accurate and wholly truthful.

In June, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed their second child, Lilibet Diana, who joined two-year-old Archie Harrison. In January 2020, Harry and Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, announced that they were taking a step back from royal duties and leaving the U.K. They now live in California where they have set up their own production company.

Since then, Prince Harry and Markle have done limited press, including an interview with Oprah Winfrey and a podcast with Dax Shephard, to discuss their choice to distance themselves from the Royal Family.

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Eight years ago, Gabriel Chavez Zeckua departed from the hustle and bustle of Mexico City to the (relatively) quiet and sleepy urban center of San Antonio, Texas.

Life in Mexico City was too fast paced, and he wasnt able to spend nearly enough time with his wife. After he landed a bank job as an IT professional, the couple swiftly relocated to the new city.

Soon after that, his first son, Santiago, was born. Chavez Zeckua, newly present, didn't want to miss any of his son's first moments, so naturally, he purchased his first primitive drone with a go-pro attachment.

Now, seven years later, the drone hobbyist has put in his hours, bought more drones, and established himself as San Antonios central drone photographer and videographer through his popular Instagram account, Skyline Drones.

I met up with him at the UNAM campus to talk drone photography, preview his art show, and have him explain what the citys like from above, a view known best by his trusty fleet of FPV (first person view) drones and the city's robust pigeon population.

This September, Chavez Zeckua will debut a collection of his drone photos capturing whats special about the city in his first exhibition (originally supposed to transpire in 2020, before the pandemic) at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) campus in Hemisfair. "It is still amazing to me, and I think not being from here makes me have that eye," says the drone photographer, who feels that his outsider perspective sheds a new and novel light on landmarks and features that have become common and ordinary to those who have grown up here.

"I always have my backpack with me," Chavez Zeckua tells me, revealing a compact and grey portable drone with fluttering, insect-like features. I marveled at how tiny it was as he showcased it, and immediately felt a rush of dizziness envisioning how high it can climb  and how fast.

"I work downtown, if I see that it's a beautiful day, I'll just fly the drone and take some pictures."

Camille Sauers

To his fortune, Chavez Zeckua's office is adjacent to the the Tower Life building, his favorite monument in the San Antonio skyline. Much of the photos in the upcoming installation San Antonio: Perspectives from the Sky as part of Fototoseptiembre, UNAM's photography festival, feature spontaneous samplings from quiet mid-day moments like this, rather than from his string of increasingly high-profile commissions.

Back in the day, his professional portfolio took flight with a music video for the local band, Lonely Horse. Since, he's collaborated with almost every San Antonio heavy hitter in the books. Towering institutions like the Alamodome KENS 5, the San Antonio Missions, to name a few.

Camille Sauers

When he's getting in the drone zone, with the first person view head gear on, it's like an expedition. While sitting together on a park bench, enjoying the drone, he explains to me something I wouldn't have guessed. Much of his process, like setting up shots and angles from above, is actually informed by musical rhythms. I was surprised to learn this, but it makes sense, especially with his videos.

It turns out that the styling's of the Foo Fighters, Metallica, Depeche Mode, Genesis and Grimes help his drones navigate the contours of the city, from the crisp contemporary figures like the new Frost Bank building, to older, more historic structures.

Eight years and two kids later, he is still excited to call San Antonio home and document it from above. "The city is a beautiful city and people are so friendly, I'm really happy to be in this community," he shares.

"It still feels like vacation."

Chavez Zeckua's exhibition, with 24-by-36 acrylic renderings of some of his aerial photos, will debut during a reception open to the public on August, 26 at 7:00 p.m and will be free and open to the public through October 1. To keep of with the latest from Skyline Drones, follow him on Instagram.
The American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday recommended "universal masking" during the 2021-2022 school year.

Students over age 2 and staff should wear face masks regardless of coronavirus vaccination status as "a significant portion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccines" and because many schools will not have systems in place to monitor the vaccination status of students and staff.

The group also "strongly recommends" that students return for in-person learning and that "all who are eligible" to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

"We need to prioritize getting children back into schools alongside their friends and their teachers  and we all play a role in making sure it happens safely," Sonja O'Leary, MD, FAAP, chair of the AAP Council on School Health, said in a statement. "The pandemic has taken a heartbreaking toll on children, and it's not just their education that has suffered but their mental, emotional and physical health. Combining layers of protection that include vaccinations, masking and clean hands hygiene will make in-person learning safe and possible for everyone."
McALLEN, Texas  In Republicans bid to retake control of Congress, this traditionally Democratic stretch of South Texas has quietly become a top battleground.

After making unexpected gains last November, the GOP is zeroing in on a trio of House seats in the region as key targets heading into next years midterm elections. They include the 15th Congressional District, which hasnt sent a Republican to Washington since its creation in 1903, but where a GOP newcomer came within three points of winning in 2020.

Republican leaders believe the party is on the precipice of a political realignment among Hispanic voters in communities along the U.S.-Mexico border like McAllen. Inroads among Latinos could potentially offset the partys growing vulnerabilities among voters, particularly in the suburbs. The elections next year will determine whether these shifts are enduring or a more limited response to the turbulent politics of the Trump era, as Democrats hope.

But with Congress having just a six-seat majority in the House, Democrats in Texas say the party has to take the threat seriously.

I dont think theres any question that we need to be concerned about it and we need to put more resources into it, said Gilberto Hinojosa, the chair of the Texas Democratic Party.

Republicans top target in the area is the 15th District. It currently stretches from the borders Hidalgo County, which is more than 90percent Hispanic, to the eastern suburbs of San Antonio. Voters here have never sent a Republican to Washington, which is why national party leaders were so stunned when Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, a small business owner, came within 10,000 votes of beating Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, a two-term Democrat.

Sitting behind her office desk in Alamo earlier this month wearing cowboy boots and a campaign T-shirt, De La Cruz-Hernandez, who is running again, credited her performance to former President Donald Trump. She said his colorful personality had sparked new interest in national politics that changed many Texans minds about politics.

When they paid attention to what was happening on the national stage, I think that the lights started to turn on for people where they saw, you know what? My conservative values no longer align with the Democrat Party, she said. The bottom line is that the Hispanic values are pro-God, pro-life and pro-country. And we are conservatives down here.

Border security, she said, is number one issue from the north side of the district to the south side of the district, as border crossings have soared. And Republicans in the state have been laser-focused on the issue, with Trump staging a post-presidential visit to the border last month that drew hundreds of supporters.

Democratic state lawmakers have been focused on blocking a sweeping election overhaul bill and have been camped out in Washington  though some Democrats representing the Rio Grande Valley did not join them.

Nationally, the Pew Research Center estimates that about 38percent of Hispanic voters supported Trump in 2020, compared with 28percent in 2016. While Trump lost Hidalgo Country by 17 percentage points in 2020, he more than doubled his support from 2016, when he lost by a whopping 40 points, earning just 28percent of the vote. And he flipped a handful of other nearby districts, including Zapata County, which Democrat Hillary Clinton had won 66percent-33percent, and Kenedy, which Clinton carried 53percent-45percent

Beyond those gains, Republicans point to other data points to support their optimism. Javier Villalobos in June was elected mayor of McAllen, becoming the first Republican to hold the post in decades. Texas redistricting process, which is controlled by state Republicans, could produce districts that are even more favorable to GOP candidates as the lines are redrawn to reflect the states gain of two congressional seats.

Villalobos, who joined Trump at his border briefing and was hailed as a superstar by other officials at the event, said he saw his election as part of a trend driven both by Trump as well as economic changes as more Hispanics have entered the middle class.

Historically, its been Hispanic people are very conservative, but they vote traditionally Democrat. And little by little, even the older people are changing, he said. And thats a beautiful thing. Competition is good.

Its unclear whether the gains Republicans made in 2020 will carry over when Trump isnt on the ballot in 2022. Democrats insist their poor performance last year was a one-off and point to unique circumstances, including the partys decision to largely forgo in-person campaigning during the pandemic. The McAllen mayors race, they also note, was nonpartisan, and turnout was less than 10,000 votes.

Gonzalez, the Democratic incumbent in the 15th District, insists hes unfazed by the strong showing of De La Cruz-Hernandez. He described last years results as an anomaly driven by a pandemic that devastated the district, killing thousands of residents, including some of his personal friends, and dissuaded many elderly voters from casting their ballots.

He pointed to concrete gains made under the Biden administration that he will campaign on, including an economic recovery, mass vaccinations and relief dollars that helped keep small businesses open.

Everyone at the end of the day is running on results and the work that weve done and we will be running on what weve done for the people, he said.

But Hinojosa, the Texas Democratic chair, was more cautious. He acknowledged the party was caught off guard by a surge in first-time voters who cast ballots for Trump. Because no one thought the races would be competitive, little money and effort were spent on the contests, with no canvassing, phone banking or get-out-the-vote drives.

Trumps message, he said, also resonated with voters, especially in the Rio Grande Valley, where poverty rates are high and the economy remains hobbled by a shuttered southern border. He cited concerns about the future of the oil and gas industry, the border, and calls from some Democrats to defund the police, which freaked out many voters who have ties to law enforcement.

It was just almost a perfect storm for the Republicans down here, he said, noting the party lacked the resources that were needed to shore up support down here because the races werent considered competitive.

In preparation for next years election, he said he has already held meetings across South Texas with local leaders, forming coalitions along the border, as well as hiring a full-time organizer.

Were going to spend a heck of a lot more money and lot more time than we ever have before just to make sure that what Republicans say is going to happen wont happen, he said. Were not going to take any chances.

But interviews with voters suggest there is work to be done.

Eryc Palomares, 42, who lives in McAllen and works in a medical laboratory, said he was thrilled to see others like him who had broken their allegiance to the Democratic Party because thats all weve seen, thats all weve known here.

Its as if they have you already brainwashed: Go vote Democrat. Thats all it was here, said Palomares, who now tends to vote Republican.

People are waking up, said Manuel Pescador Jr., 54, an occupational safety consultant and local activist who lives in McAllen.

Pescador Jr. said he switched parties seven years ago, rejecting what he saw as a culture of handouts and false promises, and now rails against immigrants who enter the U.S. illegally.

They come here, they refuse to assimilate and theyre here to use everything they can, in any way they can. And so thats why I call them depleters, he said. Thats why that Hispanics that can vote, vote Republican, because we know whos coming in.

Joe Guerra, an independent who lives in McAllen, didnt vote in last years presidential election, but said he wasnt at all surprised by the GOPs gains.

The Republican Party was, for years, just a token presence here. But the conservative spirit has always been here, he said. They were always there and (Trump) just had the ability to bring them out. Thats who theyve always been.
San Antonio astronomers are in planning mode for an event still three years away. That's because it will be centuries until the city experiences this kind of astronomical event again.

The Alamo City will see two eclipse events  an annular eclipse on October 14, 2023 and a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. The six month succession makes it a rare occasion, but that's not what has both astronomers and astrologers looking to the future.

The Northwest Side of San Antonio and surrounding Hill Country towns such as Boerne and Fredericksburg are on the 115-mile wide total solar eclipse path crossing Mexico into Texas and up to Maine in three years. Other Texas cities, such as Austin and Dallas will also experience the event.

However, Angela Speck and Chris Packham, both professors of the University of Texas at San Antonio's astronomy department, tell MySA being closer to the U.S.-Mexico border will provide a more unobstructed view. They describe it as a "once-in-a-lifetime" event for the city.

San Antonians will experience a sky "as dark as a full moon night" for up to for four minutes and 24 seconds, Speck says. The time will be 1:32 p.m.

Speck was teaching at the University of Missouri and was co-chair of the National Total Solar Eclipse Task Force when the 2017 "Great American Eclipse" occurred. Her friends joke that her move to San Antonio two years ago has something to do with the upcoming eclipse. She denies it, but says it's time "to get serious" about planning for 2024.

She says the local science community and museums are in informal discussions about prepping for the eclipse. She hopes to embed the event in some of her UTSA teachings while suggesting local school districts make plans to highlight the eclipse in curriculum or work with other campuses to provide viewing areas in the northern parts of town.

Speck is sure the UTSA area will be blanketed in total darkness. Downtown San Antonio will miss the darkness "by a few blocks," she says.

Courtesy, GreatAmericanEclipse.com

In 2017, San Antonians secured special eclipse glasses and maybe ditched an hour of work to get to a location to witness the eclipse. Though interesting, it was only a partial experience that left residents with a feeling that they missed out on the videos and images that were blasted on social media from the maximum point in Missouri.

Speck says residents will finally get their time in the darkness in 2024. She describes it as an experience that activates all of your senses. Other living beings also respond.

"You can see stars, the planets. It also gets colder, because you just blocked out the sun," she adds. "Animals also react and plants too, so bees stop buzzing, cows will actually head home to the barn. It's a really interesting thing, it's something that you sense with not just your eyes. It's all sorts of sensors."

Speck says the happening converts the unfazed into enthusiasts.

"If you've never seen one, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, what's the big deal," she adds. "It's a completely amazing event and most people who have seen them once, see them again."

She says it will be centuries until something like this happens again in the city and is the first time in hundreds of years that the Alamo City has been on the path. According to TimeAndDate.com, which provides maps and times of total solar eclipses, the last time the city was near a total solar eclipse path was May 28, 1900 and even at that, it was a partial experience.

If locals become completely mystified by the 2024 event, they'll be able to witness it again two years later, but will need to hop a plane to Spain or Greenland in time for August 12, 2026.

Packham searched for the next U.S. total eclipse experience while Speck and I chatted. His search spanned a few minutes. Finally, he found the date: Aug 22, 2044. Viewers will have to be near Montana for that one.

While the UTSA team is working to add the eclipse event into their education moving forward, Catherine Urban, a Cleveland-based astrologer is examining how the alignment of these celestial objects will effect people and play a part in the history books.

She ties in historical events, like World War I and the abolishment of slavery, coinciding with the times of total solar eclipses in the past. She also notes the 2017 total solar eclipse happened during a "remarkably divisive time in this country."

Urban adds another layer: the eclipse is happening shortly after the planetary return of Pluto to the United States after 240 years (using July 4, 1776 as America's birth date).

"Considering that these eclipses fall in the wake of the United States' Pluto return, astrologers are suspecting that these eclipses too reflect a highly eventful period in American history," she adds.

The astronomers and astrologer are on the same page about the same thing  the San Antonio area is going to be a travel destination that April and it won't have anything to do with Fiesta.

"The total solar eclipse on April 8th, 2024, however, will be one of the most miraculous events one could ever witness," Urban says via email. "To witness a Total Solar Eclipse is sublimely profound. Definitely have your glasses ready for viewing! And consider staying the week with a friend and AirBnB-ing your place. Total Solar eclipses will attract visitors from nearby. Where will you be when the lights go out?"

Speck agrees. She says another added benefit of being in the San Antonio area is the weather. Folks up north might have their experience soured by cloud cover. As someone who has traveled as far as Argentina to witness a total solar eclipse, she knows a thing or two about eclipse tourism.

"The weather is going to be very iffy as you go further north along the path. So San Antonio and South Texas are going to be the best place from a cloud cover point of view," she says. "So we're going to get a lot of people coming to Texas, because we get the longest time in darkness in the U.S. and we also have the best chance of not having clouds."

Much like in 2017, websites and memorabilia are already popping up, adding to the hype surrounding the 2024 eclipse. There are T-shirts, binoculars, and of course, glasses, promoting the event of a lifetime.

Geographer Michael Zeiler, who provides the graphics for the Great American Eclipse website, sums up the attraction the rest of the world will have with to our part of the country.

"Texas will surely be a magnet for many from North America and around the world," he says.
State Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, has tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the sixth case among nearly 60 House Democrats who traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to prevent the passage of a GOP election bill at the Texas Legislature.

"Despite following CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] guidelines and being fully vaccinated, I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday," Howard said in a statement Tuesday, noting that she was "basically asymptomatic except for some minor congestion."

Over the weekend, the Texas House Democratic Caucus said that five of its members had tested positive for the virus. The members who tested positive, including state Reps. Celia Israel, D-Austin, and Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, have been fully vaccinated.

The caucus, which has said it plans to not identify lawmakers who test positive, has started additional precautionary measures, such as providing daily rapid tests.

News of Howard's positive test was first reported Tuesday by the Austin American-Statesman. The Dallas Morning News first reported news of a sixth case Monday night.

A small percentage of vaccine breakthrough cases, which involve a fully-vaccinated person testing positive for the virus, have been expected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but they do not discount the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.

In her statement, Howard said she will continue to work virtually and urged people to continue to get vaccinated.

"The delta variant [of the coronavirus] seems to be much more contagious, even for those vaccinated, than initially thought," she said. "Vaccines work."

The caucus in recent days has met with Vice President Kamala Harris and other lawmakers on Capitol Hill in an effort to push Congress to pass federal voting laws, though the confirmed cases have prompted the delegation to make adjustments for how to continue having such conversations.

Harris has since tested negative for the virus, though others, including a White House official and staffer for U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have tested positive after the staff member helped the delegation around the Capitol last week, according to Axios.

The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans  and engages with them  about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.
San Antonio activists and immigrants are heading to Washington D.C. days after a federal judge in Texas ruled the Obama-era program illegal  and they're encouraging others to follow.

The Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) is mobilizing a trip of about 30 people to the Capitol for planned meetings with members of Congress on July 24. The group will push for action against U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen's ruling.

Hanen ruled on July 16 the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative illegal, putting an abrupt halt to new applicants to the program that prevents the deportation of thousands of immigrants brought into the U.S. as children. Current DACA recipients are unaffected.

Lead organizer Juana Guzman says RAICES planned the D.C. trip months before the decision, but now there is more urgency.

RAICES is going there to ensure that everyone's voice is included in that discourse.

"We believe that everyone, including DACA-eligible youth and DACA recipients, and just in general, the close to 13 million undocumented people are included in that conversation," Guzman says. "Having DACA for some is not enough. We really need more permanent relief."

On Sunday, President Joe Biden said the Department of Justice plans to appeal Hanen's decision. Biden also urged Congress to "provide a path to citizenship for Dreamers."

"[Congress] has all these tools at their disposal, and we want them to use them as much as the previous administration used these tools to pass anti-immigrant legislation," she says.

The DACA program helped nearly 826,000 people since its creation under the Obama-Biden administration in 2012. There are other avenues for immigrants to obtain temporary relief, Guzman says, like the Temporary Protection Status program and asylum status, the latter of which is more difficult to obtain.

Until then she encourages DACA-eligible immigrants and other vulnerable people to join in the conversation, and be as open with their efforts as they feel comfortable.

"We can't keep going through that emotional roller coaster, through that limbo. So we're really asking everyone to join us to ask for more," Guzman says.

The trip to D.C. is filled already, but Guzman urges immigrants and allies can take action by reaching out to members of Congress to urge for more temporary protections and a clear path to citizenship. She says RAICES already has 240 letters from people directly impacted and allies.

"There's been decades of these promises made to the immigrant community, and we're just asking them to keep that promise," she says.
San Antonio State Rep. Diego Bernal (TX-123) may have just coined a new voter rallying cry for South Texas during in an interview on MSNBC.

Bernal, one of the Texas Democrats that fled to Washington D.C. on July 12, was discussing the Republican-backed voting rights bill that passed the Texas Senate with NBC anchor Jonathan Capehart Monday night.

In the clip Bernal shared to Twitter this morning, he calls out a provision in the bill that would criminalize people helping their neighbors, friends and family go out and vote, creating a "trapdoor" for Texas voters. The provision asks people to take an oath saying they didn't encourage or persuade someone to go vote.

If the person is unsure of what that oath means, it will discourage them from taking someone to go vote.

"What that means is if I say, 'hey tia, or nana, or bubbe, come on, it's Wednesday, let's go vote. I promise you I'd take you. Get your chanclas. Let's go do it,'" Bernal says. "And the penalty for that is criminal. So, if I don't want to get myself in trouble, I might back off and say,'Nevermind.'"

Bernal "chanclas" quote resonated with others among the local Twittersphere, including former SA2020 CEO turned consultant Molly Cox.

"'Grab your chanclas. Were going voting,' could be the new Bat signal for 2022." Cox writes in the tweet.

Candace Venezuela, 2020 Democratic nominee for Texas' 24th Congressional District, joined Cox in making "chanclas" a symbol of voter empowerment.

"All chanclas are voting chanclas, but I think I need chanclas designated for the purpose," Venezuela writes in a tweet.

The Republican-led Texas House of Representatives passed voter suppression bills on July 13, a day after Texas Democrats fled to Washington D.C. to avoid voting on the bills during a special spring session.

At least 51 of the 67 Democratic members of the Texas House left for Washington D.C.  the amount needed for a quorum.
Aging rental homes at Brooks, a former Air Force base on the South Side, are being replaced.

The 163-unit Heritage Oaks community, which was built in 1962 as officers quarters, will be razed to make way for about 450 single-family and duplex rental homes.

The project will include a clubhouse and pool, dog and recreational parks, and walking paths.

Preston Hollow Capital, a Dallas-based finance company, is leasing the land from Brooks Development Authority. The investment is expected to total about $85 million, said Ramiro Albarran, Preston Hollows co-head of originations.

Preston Hollow has invested in projects at Brooks since 2015, and funded real estate and infrastructure developments on the roughly 1,308-acre campus, Albarran said.

WILLIAM LUTHER /SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS

A Preston Hollow representative did not respond to an inquiry about the latest project, including what rents are projected to cost and whether Heritage Oaks tenants will be given the option first to lease the new units.

The project comes amid an expansion of housing options at Brooks.

San Antonio-based Terramark Urban Homes announced last winter that it plans to build the first for-sale housing at the campus.

The company bought nearly 5 acres for $1.8 million from the Brooks Development Authority and will construct 60 single-family homes, with prices starting at $270,000. Terramark borrowed $1.5 million for the purchase from the organization, which is overseen by an 11-member board of directors appointed by the mayor and City Council.

On ExpressNews.com: Terramark to build first for-sale housing at Brooks

Brooks was recommended for closure by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005 and decommissioned in 2011. Since then, it has been converting to a mix of businesses, apartments, stores, restaurants and hotels.

There are now more than 40 businesses at Brooks, and more than 3,200 people work at the campus, which includes 1,337 residential units.

Japanese manufacturer Nissei Plastic Machinery America Inc., food packaging company Cuisine Solutions and business processing services company Okin Process have set up facilities there.

One attraction for businesses: The land at Brooks is exempt from property taxes.

The former base is also a Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, which reimburses developers for infrastructure improvements from property tax revenue, and it is designated as an opportunity zone.

The zones, established by then-President Donald Trumps 2017 tax overhaul, provide tax breaks on capital gains to investors who put capital in long-term investments within designated areas.

The program is intended to generate investment in underserved neighborhoods but has been criticized for primarily benefiting wealthy investors rather than residents. Research also has shown mixed economic conditions within the designated areas, and suggests that Brooks and other local zones already were seeing investment.

Brooks got Texas first project under the program in 2019: a self-storage facility with flex space built by DPR Investments. Amazon, which plans to open a delivery station at the campus, also is using the designation.

Apartments at theater site

Work on an apartment complex that will replace a shuttered theater is expected to begin early next year.

On ExpressNews.com: Closed Fiesta 16 theater in Northwest San Antonio could be replaced with apartments

Madison Iszler / San Antonio Express-News

San Antonio-based Koontz Corp. is building a 300-unit complex on a roughly 10.4-acre site at 12631 Vance Jackson Road. The discount Regal Fiesta Stadium 16 movie theater there permanently closed during the coronavirus pandemic.

The developer recently bought the property from Houston-based Weingarten Realty and had it rezoned to allow for the apartments.

The complex will include one- and two-bedroom units, two swimming pools and a dog park, and is expected to be completed in 2024.

We are excited to bring a first-class multifamily residential development to this vibrant area of San Antonio, Koontz Corp. President and CEO Bart Koontz. Its infill location with plenty of nearby grocery, retail and restaurant choices make it an ideal site.

Koontz develops apartments, as well as office, retail and industrial buildings.

Bart Koontz and B.J. Red McCombs founded the company, then known as Koontz McCombs Ltd., in 1997 and added a construction company in 2000.

Koontz bought McCombs interest in 2015 and rebranded as Koontz Corp., then sold the Koontz Construction commercial division to Joeris General Contractors the next year.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield, who has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She is currently writing a book about textile artisans.

Last week, when I last wrote about the Purdue bankruptcy exit plan, it looked like the Sackler family would get to keep most of their fortune, and receive immunity from third-party lawsuits for claims related to the role they played in the opioids epidemic.

Fifteen states had signalled, including previous stalwarts of state opioids litigation Massachusetts and New York, they would drop their opposition to the proposed plan. These states later followed through and made that official.

It therefore looked increasingly likely that Judge Robert Drain would approve the plan following a hearing scheduled for August 9 (see Purdue Bankruptcy Plan Moves Closer to Approval: Sacklers Would Make Out Well and Preserve Much of the Family Fortune, Despite the Opioids Crisis).

Forty states have now agreed to the plan, although significant holdouts remain, including Connecticut and the District of Columbia.

Yesterday, however, two arms of the DoJ, the DOJs U.S. Trustee program, which according to NPR, serves as a national watchdog over the federal bankruptcy system, and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss made separate court filings that raised constitutional and other concerns (see this NPR account, JJustice Department Blasts Purdue Pharmas Bankruptcy Plan).

In his filing, U.S. Trustee William Harrington described the releases that purport to provide the Sacklers with immunity from lawsuits as illegal. In a separate brief, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Audrey Strauss also noted that she has fundamental concerns with the releases, according to Reuters, which was first out of the gate with the latest on the Purdue story, Purdue bankruptcy watchdog says protections benefiting Sacklers are illegal. Strausss brief raised constitutional concerns, arguing the proposed involuntary third party release violated due process by lacking sufficient notice and opportunity to be heard for the claimants.

From Harringtons filing:

The United States Trustee objects to confirmation of the Plan because of two impermissible provisions: (1) the extraordinarily broad release of the Sackler Family and associates at section 10.7(b) from any and all claims related to the opioid crisis held by all persons, including direct claims of victims against the Sackler Family, which constitutes an impermissible discharge of hundreds (and possibly thousands) of non-debtors; and (2) the payment of up to $500 million in attorneys fees under section 5.8 without court oversight and approval or the opportunity for parties to object as required by section 503(b)(4) of the Code.<

From the U.S. Attorneys brief:

Nonetheless, the United States has fundamental concerns with the proposed ShareholderRelease. First, the proposed involuntary third-party release violates due process because it deprives individuals and entities of their property rights without sufficient notice or a sufficient opportunity to be heard. Second, there is no authorization in the Bankruptcy Code for third-party releases outside of the asbestos context, and the Second Circuits ruling in In re Metromedia Fiber Network, Inc., 416 F.3d 136, 142-43 (2d Cir. 2005), that permitted a third-party release notwithstanding a lack of statutory authorization, was wrongly decided.. Nor can debtors make the required showing under Metromedia given the breadth and scope of the Shareholder Release. Third, if involuntary third-party releases are permissible, they must be approved by the district court de novo, as bankruptcy courts lack the adjudicatory and constitutional authority to enter final orders approving such releases [footnotes omitted].

Separately Connecticut state attorney general (AG) also filed papers objecting to the bankruptcy exit plan, on behalf of his state and eight other AGs, as also did the West Virgina state AG, on different grounds

The outlook for the Sacklers doesnt look so rosy now  although its too soon to think that some measure of justice might finally be done, especially with white shoe powerhouse law firm Davis, Polk& Wardwell on the case. For which they are being well paid. Very well paid indeed  a fact to which Harrington also took exception, as noted above. Under the proposed exit plan, the firm would be paid more than $500 million in fees, without any opportunity for opponents to challenge this payday.

DoJ Objections

Harringtons filing minced no words. But first, some necessary context. From Reuters:

Purdues proposed plan would wind down the company and shift assets to a new entity, which would steer profits toward plaintiffs that have accused the company of aggressively marketing OxyContin while downplaying its risks. The plan also sets up trusts to distribute funds to opioid abatement programs around the country. As part of the deal, the Sackler family owners  who have not filed for bankruptcy  would contribute roughly $4.5 billion in exchange for releases from opioid-related litigation that could be filed against them.

Harringtons prime objection:

But, in Harringtons view, the third-party releases  which are often challenged by the U.S. Trustees office in large, corporate bankruptcies  go too far. The trustee called the protections nothing less than an illegal, court-ordered discharge of a potentially limitless group of non-debtors. He also said the definition of who exactly is releasing claims and who benefits from the releases is incomprehensible. Harrington argued that such releases violate a provision of bankruptcy law that generally prevents a court from extinguishing involuntarily certain claims against non-bankrupt parties without the claim holders consent.

Now, to be sure, there are allowable exceptions to the general rule, for example, if parties to be released make substantial contributions to reorganization efforts. But Harrington didnt think that was the case here, as the bankruptcy claimants arent being paid in full under the proposed exit plan and the releases extend to parties, e.g., the Sacklers, beyond those making the contributions, e.g., Purdue.

Instead of rebutting the devastating arguments advanced by Harrington and Strauss, Purdue relied on side-steps in a statement it issued, emphasizing two arguments. First, this settlement is only following grown well trodden in mass tort bankruptcies, in which, as quoted by NPR, third party releases have long been allowed under the law in most jurisdictions. Reuters noted the releases do not cover criminal liability.

I question whether emphasizing that the releases dont cover criminal liability is a sound strategy, as this statement might provoke some enterprising state or federal prosecutor to pursue the criminal route. Although I imagine that the reason that such a red flag is waved in front of potential prosecutorial bulls is that the window for bringing criminal charges may have passed, and various statutes of limitations might have tolled.

The second argument the Sacklers and their attorneys think may be a clincher is that again according to NPR, the exit plan would transfer billions of dollars of value into trusts for the benefit of the American people. The promise of a big pot of money to buy their way out of their opioids legal troubles has seduced convinced many, including the state AGs of Massachusetts and New York, as I discussed in my post linked to above. But more hard-headed considerations may now prevail. Offering relatively modest amounts of cash alone  sums I point out which only shave the family fortune  may no longer suffice to make these issues go away.

Over to Reuters again, describing Purdues laments in full spate:

Removing the releases in Purdues plan would result in the destruction of billions of dollars of value that would otherwise go to state and local communities to abate the opioid crisis. Furthermore, it would in future cases allow a single entity to block a plan supported by and in the best interest of all other stakeholders, the company said in its statement.

State AGs File Objections

Connecticut state AG William Tong has also filed objections to the exit plan and was joined by eight other AGs: California, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington. According to the Westchester & Fairfield County Business Journals, AG Tong files formal objection to Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan:

The objections, which were filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York as part of the Stamford companys bankruptcy proceedings, are in reference to the $4.3 billion that the Sackler family will pay for its companys role in the opioid crisis. The attorneys general pointed out that the Sackler family made at least $11 billion in profits from producing and marketing OxyContin and that the Sacklers themselves are neither bankrupt nor claiming bankruptcy. Furthermore, the attorneys general oppose a provision in the bankruptcy plan that would grant the Sacklers lifetime immunity from all liability, which would prevent the states from bringing consumer protection lawsuits against the family. And they highlighted a recent New York Times editorial that showed the Sacklers will continue to earn interest on their $4.3 billion as the settlement is paid out over nine years, thus ensuring they will be wealthier than they were when they started. Connecticut will not sit on the sidelines while the Sacklers raid their own charity funds and walk away with their personal wealth intact, said Tong. This plan represents an unprecedented legal maneuver to try to force states to give up our strong claims against the Sacklers. This plan is a far cry from justice, and we will not give up our fight for justice and accountability.

On Sunday, West Virginia state AG Patrick Morrisey, as he objected to the amount of money his state would receive under the plan.

As 12 WBOY reported in WV Attorney General rejects Purdue Pharma bankruptcy plan:

I remain vigorously opposed to a proposed allocation formula that would distribute settlement funds largely based on a state or local governments population  not intensity of the problem, said Attorney General Morrisey. Any such allocation formula fails to recognize the disproportionate harm caused by opioids in our state. I look forward to arguing our case in court this August. In April, the Attorney General filed his objection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, arguing that Purdues failure to disclose how its multibillion-dollar proposal would be split among states undermined its desire to avoid court challenges to an inherently inequitable arrangement. Purdue Pharma responded by disclosing publicly the once-closely held Denver Plan, which the Attorney General opposes since it would distribute settlement funds largely based on population  not intensity of the problem.

The Bottom Line

This movie is far from over  not by a long-shot. In the light of Harringtons stinging objections, the constitutional concerns raised by Strauss, and the arguments made by the state (and DC) AG hold-outs, I dont see how Judge Drain could sign off on the sweeping third-party releases as they now stand in the proposed exit plan. Especially as the Sacklers will retain the bulk of their fortune  and in fact, as the NYT editorial pointed out.

But I am not by any measure an expert on bankruptcy law.

So I cede the floor to readers for comments.
Laundering machine: Furniture giant Ikea implicated in logging protected Siberian forests Mongabay

Scientists were stunned by last weeks rare Arctic lightning storms Arctic Today (chuck l)

As Arctic warms, scientists wrestle with its climate tipping point Mongabay

Ethiopia says second filling of Renaissance Dam complete Al Jazeera

As water scarcity intensifies, so does the battle for resources in the worlds drought-hit regions New Statesman

Germany ponders lessons from deadly floods  live updates Deutsche Welle

Flood Disaster Could Become a Major Issue in German Election Der Spiegel

When it comes to addressing the biodiversity crisis, Canadas environmental laws fall short The Narwhal

The Most Beautiful Photo We Could Find of Every U.S. National Park Conde Nast Traveler. From January, still germane. My mother is a national parks aficionado, and looking at these made me recall many pleasant road trips together.

Creator of Free-Range Kids updates call to give kids more independence Tampa Bay Times

Stirring the Embers of Faith Commonweal. Review of new Graham Greene biography, which Ill add to my to-read list.

Prince Harry nabs $20M from Penguin Random House for memoir NY Post

Montana Boomtown Jumps to No. 1 on WSJ/Realtor.com Housing Market Index WSJ

#COVID-19

Biden Administration

About That Tout Doomberg. I considered posting about this  but then realized I didnt have anything to add to this analysis.

New York State of Mind

Julian Assange

Nothing will fundamentally change.

How do people like @SecBlinken not choke on the stench of their own deceit, propaganda and authoritarianism? pic.twitter.com/FAzmNHaQjX  Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) July 20, 2021

Black Injustice Tipping Point

The Overlooked Factors in Police Abuse Cases TK News. Matt Taibbi.

Class Warfare

Brexit

The Groves of Academe

Big Brother IS Watching You Watch

During the Bush years, when the NSA spying on civilians and/or the press and leaking intercepts for political gain would have had you out on the streets? But now youre fine with it.

Dress up all these Dick Cheney policies in blue and everyones happy.

At least Im consistent. https://t.co/in5z2to1NS  Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) July 18, 2021



The Caribbean

Myanmar

Myanmar Plunges Into Deadly Third COVID-19 Wave The Diplomat

Syraqistan

India

China?

Antidote du Jour (via):

See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here.
By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids  Jack D. Ribber, Doctor Strangelove

Jack D. Ripper was directionally correct, wasnt he? And if we cross out flouridation and write in PFAS, and cross out commies and write in industrial capitalists he was pretty much on the nose, wasnt he (certainly without any choice).

PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), popularly called a forever chemical, may sound like a dry topic, but if you drink water (or eat food grown in American soil), you should be aware of it, and concerned. You may be not be interested in PFAS, but PFAS is interested in you.

This is a survey post on PFAS. First, Ill look at the whistleblower who first raised awareness of PFAS. Then, Ill look at PFAS chemistry (why it is forever), products that use PFAS (lots), PFAS harms, how people are exposed to PFAS (water, soil, air), PFAS remediation (it is possible), and PFAS regulation. Having set the stage, I will then look at Maines pioneering PFAS legislation (good, with some problems), and conclude.

The PFAS Whistleblower

From NC in 2019:

About a third of the way into the film Dark Waters, Rob Bilott, played by Mark Ruffalo, is lying in bed with his eyes open, looking anxious. The lawyer has spent the past year poring over thousands of internal documents from the DuPont chemical company, and has pieced together a harrowing story. The company has been dumping a chemical called C8 into the air and water outside of its plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, for decades, and withholding information about the dangers it posed to human health. Bilott gets out of bed, boots up a boxy PC from the early 2000s, and opens a blank document. He hesitates for a moment  hes about to do something unprecedented in his corporate law firm  then begins typing a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency outlining everything hes gathered about DuPonts cover-up. That letter became known as Robs Famous Letter among Bilotts colleagues, as Nathaniel Rich reported in the New York Times Magazine article that inspired the film. If Bilott had never sent it, the world might still be blind to the dangers of C8 and other per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances known collectively as PFAS  a class of nearly 5,000 substances called forever chemicals because of how long they persist . The nickname is hardly an exaggeration. Some of them, like C8, literally never break down in the environment.

Bilott (who did not graduate from an Ivy League law school) is still litigating environmental cases, which is good. We need more like him, many more. See the APPENDIX for the splendid rant that introduces a movie with a similar theme: Michael Clayton.

PFAS Chemistry

What then are PFAS? (Since the S in PFAS stands for substances, we dont have to say PFASs. That would be bad. On the other hand, PFAS are, not PFAS is.) From WBUR:

There are around 4,700 chemicals in the PFAS family, and they all have two things in common: Theyre all man-made.

They contain linked chains of carbon and fluorine.

The bond between carbon and fluorine atoms is one of the strongest in nature. That means that PFAS chemicals dont degrade easily; they stick around in the human body and the environment for a long time, and are very stable in water. Thats why some people call them forever chemicals.

We hear a lot about PFOS and PFOA, but those are only two of the 4,700 PFAS chemicals. From the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency:

PFOS and PFOA are the most recognized and most studied individual compounds in the larger group of PFAS chemicals. Major manufacturers of PFAS in the United States agreed to phase out the use of PFOS, PFOA and other select PFAS in 2006, but manufacturers that are not part of this agreement may still be producing them. PFOS and PFOA are still manufactured and used in products made overseas that may be shipped for sale in the United States. PFOS  Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) was the key ingredient in the stain repellant Scotchgard, and was used in surface coatings for common household items such as carpets, furniture, and waterproof clothing. PFOA  Perfluorooctanoic acid was used in the production of nonstick coatings for cookware. The best known of these coatings, PTFE or Teflon, is made from PFOA and may contain some traces of PFOA. It was also used in production of carpets, upholstery, clothing, floor wax, and sealants.

Nobody really needs Teflon or Scotchgard, so I originally thought PFAS would be easy to deal with, because we would be able to stop manufacturing excessively stupid products. Sadly, no.

PFAS Products

PFAS are used because of their unique oil- and water repellent (ScotchGuard-like) properties. Here is a handy table of PFAS uses from the Interstate Technology and Regulatory Council. From the Introduction to the table:

So the massive table that immediately follows is a general ( not exhaustive ) introduction to some of the uses of PFAS:

So when you read material like this

[PFAS] are used in many consumer and industrial products, including firefighting foam, nonstick coating and food packaging.

 think of the table above. The range of uses is much more broad (and hence the chemical is that much more pervasive).

PFAS Harms

From Grist:

Also, since PFAS hang around forever, they keep causing harm. You ingest PFAS, excrete PFAS, and in the fullness of time some other living being ingests the same, unchanged PFAS. This is unlike even other exceptionally nasty man-made toxic substances like PCBs, which do break down, or even dioxins, which break down over a decade or so. So harm just keeps building.

PFAS Exposure

Here is a map of PFAS exposure sites from the Environmental Working Group:

At least for Maine, this is only an approximation; Maine appears to have only five sites, four of them involving military aircraft. (Airport fire-fighting foam is a source of PFAS). Maine should be so lucky!

From Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology, here is a summary of how humans are exposed to PFAS:

Human exposure to PFAS occurs through several pathways, including ingestion of contaminated drinking water, food and household dust, inhalation of indoor air, and contact with other contaminated media. Drinking water sources include rivers, lakes and groundwater may also be contaminated with PFAS originating from industrial sources. There may also be significant exposure risk from PFAS-contaminated sewage sludge and recycled water from wastewater treatment plants, which are often used in agriculture, with exposure through contaminated soils and crop foods.

Here is a more detailed breakdown of the major sources:

Aqueous Film Forming Foams (AFFFs). Fire training facilities undergo extensive and prolonged use of AFFFs, which has caused large volumes of PFAS to be released into adjacent soils during short periods. From there PFAS leaches into groundwater supplies. Landfill Leachate. In a landfill, soil chemistry is heavily compromised which impacts natural degradation processes due to the number and nature of pollutants present. PFAS within waste can become mobile and leach into pore water creating contaminated leachate. Fortunately, modern sanitary landfills typically have stringent mechanisms for preventing and mitigating leachate from entering groundwater. However, the controlled discharge of leachate to wastewater treatment plants is allowed. Reinforcement of smaller and older sites to stop the threat of local point source contamination into surrounding soil and groundwater is paramount. PFAS will continue to persist in the landfill and continue to increase over time. Biosolids and Recycled Water. Point sources of PFAS transmission to agriculture occurs through the application of recycled water from wastewater treatment plants, landfill leachates and biosolids applied to agricultural land Once in agricultural lands, PFAS can be taken into the root systems of plants including cereals, fruits, and vegetables. PFAS in Soil Systems. As a consequence of these major sources of PFAS, these compounds are almost ubiquitously detected in the environment. Research has indicated that soil organic carbon content is the dominant solid-phase parameter which affects the adsorption of PFAS.

Landfills, biosolids, and soil systems will become important when we get to Maine.

PFAS Remediation

By location:

Wastewater Treatment plants. From Chemical and Engineering News:

[T]he best on the market still leaves room for improvement. Reverse osmosis, ion-exchange resins, and granular activated carbon, though capable of trapping PFAS, were not designed to specifically bind these newly scrutinized and little-understood pollutants. These technologies can also allow smaller PFAS molecules to slip through and are vulnerable to fouling from other substances in the water, causing them to lose efficiency. Plus, they create a concentrated waste stream. So now, researchers are not only designing adsorbents that specifically take up PFAS but are also developing treatment methods to completely destroy the molecules rather than merely sequestering them. And theyre doing this with an eye toward making as little long-term waste as possible.

Wastewater Treatment plants. From Grist:

In a paper published last month in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, [Michael Wong, a chemical engineer at Rice University] and his team of researchers found that boron nitride  also known as BN and commonly used in cosmetics and electronics  could destroy up to 99 percent of a type of PFAS called PFOA in about four hours. The research centered around a process called photocatalysis  a chemical reaction in which tiny, semiconductive particles are suspended in contaminated water and excited by ultraviolet light. With the right kind of particles, that reaction can be strong enough to degrade the durable carbon-fluorine bonds of PFAS.

In the soil. From Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology:

Biodegradation has the potential to form the basis of a cost-effective, large scale in situ remediation strategy for PFAS removal from soils. Both fungal and bacterial strains have been isolated that are capable of degrading PFAS; however, to date, information regarding the mechanisms of degradation of PFAS is limited.

Here is one example. From Chemical and Engineering News, phytoremediation:

A new study reports that over a 100-day period in the lab, a wetland bacterium removed the fluorine atoms from up to 60% of perfluorooctanoic acid Although the defluorination is slow, this Feammox research is potentially transformative, showing for the first time that these fluorinated compounds can be biodegraded, says William Cooper, an environmental chemist at the University of California, Irvine. Compared with pumping groundwater and applying chemical or physical treatments, biological remediation can be done in place relatively easily and more cheaply, he says.

A second example. From Frontiers, mycoremediation:

To date, research is limited on their ability of fungi to degrade PFAS. This is perhaps surprising given they are known to degrade lignin, one of the most recalcitrant natural compounds along with many toxic natural and xenobiotic compounds including organochlorines [e.g., DDT and DDE, organophosphates, pesticides, including chlorpyrifos and polychlorinated biphenyls (Beaudette et al., 2000) andpolyaromatic hydrocarbons (Moghimi et al., 2017)].

No research because theres not enough money to be made selling fancy equipment with a maintenance contract? (Wheres Paul Stamets when we need him?)

PFAS Regulation

PFAS regulation is, as one might expect, practically designed to encourage externalities. From NPR:

These are a very broad class of chemicals  probably 5,000 or more  and it seems like new ones are being produced all the time, [ Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program] says. In most cases, U.S. chemical regulations do not require that companies prove a chemical is safe before they start selling it. Its up to the EPA to determine whether a substance is unacceptably dangerous and under what circumstances, and typically such analyses begin only after public health concerns are raised. As a result, we really dont know much about the great majority of these chemicals, says Birnbaum. One approach that scientists supported by the National Institutes of Health are taking is to analyze hundreds of PFAS varieties at once. The goal is to identify subgroups of PFAS with similar characteristics, so scientists wont have to do a battery of toxicity tests on each individual chemical. Theres no way that well ever be able to test 5,000 or more PFAS, Birnbaum explains.

Oh.

Maines PFAS Legislation

Finally we come to Maine. Here is the headline: Maine outlaws PFAS in products with pioneering law. Not quite, as we shall see. But not bad! Interestingly, alert reader oaf let us know the score back in 2019, commenting on a post on the lead in Flints water:

Theres another widespread toxicity issue, yet to be addressed to my satisfaction: PFAS/PFOS in composted sewage sludge provided to commercial and residential usersit has shut down at least one farm here (in Maine), and the state authorities have decided that it is still fine to keep providing it!How much locally produced food is grown with this chemical in it? Food providers should have to disclose if their products have been grown with this stuff; so consumers can have a choice whether to be part of this long-term experiment. once it is in you; it is allegedly in you foreverIt seems a convenience to municipalities to sell it.but at what cost to society?

Maine Public Radio summarized the legislative state of play in early July. LD stands for Legislative Document, i.e., a bill:

One of the most consequential new bills, LD 129 , lowers the level of PFAS contamination that the state considers safe for drinking water to 20 parts per trillion  one of the nations lowest limits and down from a federal advisory level of 70 parts per trillion that the state had previously used. Other bills that have received [Governor Janet] Mills signature will ban the aerial application of PFAS chemicals; extend the statute of limitations for lawsuits involving PFAS pollution to six years after the pollution is discovered, rather than six years after it first occurred; and direct Maines agriculture department to research crops that can be safely be grown on contaminated farms. Some of the other biggest bills are still waiting for the governors signature. One of them, LD 1600 , would require the state to systematically test for PFAS pollution in all sites where municipal and industrial wastewater sludge has historically been applied, so that those areas can be remediated. Another unsigned bill would restrict how often firefighting foam that contains PFAS can be used in Maine. A third measure, LD 1503 , would go even further to reduce the use of PFAS in Maine, by first requiring manufacturers to report when they are used, and then phasing them out entirely by 2030, except in cases where companies can demonstrate there are no alternatives.

Lets look at LD 129, LD 1503, and LD 1600 in turn. LD 129 and 1503 were both passed on an emergency basis, meaning by a two-thirds vote, and signed by Governor Mills. LD 1600 has passed, but as of July 15 had not been signed.

LD 129 was passed and signed on June 21, 2021. This is a municipal water systems testing statute. From the text:

On or before December 31, 2022, all community water systems and nontransient, noncommunity water systems shall conduct monitoring for the level of PFAS detectable using standard laboratory methods established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in effect at the time of sampling. Monitoring under this subsection must be conducted for all regulated PFAS contaminants and additional PFAS included in the list of analytes in the standard laboratory methods established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in effect at the time of sampling.

And:

If monitoring results under subsection 1 or 2 confirm the presence of any regulated PFAS contaminants individually or in combination in excess of 20 nanograms per liter, the department shall: A. Direct the community water system or nontransient, noncommunity water system to implement treatment or other remedies to reduce the combined levels of regulated PFAS contaminants in the drinking water of the water system below 20 nanograms per liter; and B. Direct the community water system or nontransient, noncommunity water system to issue a notice to all users of the water system to inform them of the detected PFAS concentration and potential risk to public health until the treatment under paragraph A is completed.

Which is all good, I suppose, depending on how many of the 4,700 PFAS compounds the EPAs standard laboratory methods detect, and what level of funding is required for treatment or other remedies (bottled water?).

LD 1503 became law on July 15, 2021. This is the phase-out statute. From the text:

C. The department may by rule identify products by category or use that may not be sold , offered for sale or distributed for sale in this State if they contain intentionally added PFAS. The department shall prioritize the prohibition of the sale of product categories that, in the departments judgment, are most likely to cause contamination of the States land or water resources if they contain intentionally added PFAS. Products in which the use of PFAS is a currently unavoidable use as determined by the department may be exempted by the department by rule . The department may not prohibit the sale or resale of used products. D. Effective January 1, 2030, a person may not sell, offer for sale or distribute for sale in this State any product that contains intentionally added PFAS, unless the department has determined by rule that the use of PFAS in the product is a currently unavoidable use. The department may specify specific products or product categories in which it has determined the use of PFAS is a currently unavoidable use . This prohibition does not apply to the sale or resale of used products.

So, the state can prohibit product categories, and individual products. That makes sense. But currently unavoidable use looks like a pretty big loophole to me. From the text:

B. Currently unavoidable use means a use of PFAS that the department has determined by rule under this section to be essential for health, safety or the functioning of society and for which alternatives are not reasonably available .

Well reasonable, IIRC means up to a judge or jury. So, given that the vpters of Maine were exercised enough for these bills to pass as emergency legislation, Id say thats not a problem. But essential for functioning of society? ScotchGuard, probably not. A paper mill? Maybe so.

LD 1600 was passed by the legislature on Jul 15, 2021. This is the landfill sludge leachate bill. From the text:

On sludge:

Sec. 2. Testing of locations with land applications of sludge or septage for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance contamination. The Department of Environmental Protection shall develop and implement a program to evaluate soil and groundwater for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances and other identified contaminants at locations licensed or permitted prior to 2019 to apply sludge or septage. 1. The department may exclude a location from evaluation under the program for good reason , including, but not limited to, upon a determination that no sludge or septage was actually applied at the location or that the location is no longer owned or controlled by the licensee or permittee and the department is unable to obtain authorization to evaluate soil and groundwater at the location . As part of the report required under the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 38, section 1310-B-1, subsection 2, paragraph C, the department shall identify any location thus excluded and describe the reason for the exclusion.

Surely we ought to be able to test the soil no matter the ownership status of the property? And whats this for good reason bushwa?

On leachate:

Sec. 3. Testing of landfill leachate for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance contamination . The Department of Environmental Protection shall develop and implement a program for the testing of leachate collected and managed by solid waste landfills for perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance contamination. 1. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, within 90 days of the effective date of this Act, the department shall require each licensed solid waste landfill to conduct periodic testing of leachate collected and managed by the landfill for all perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances that may reasonably be quantified by a laboratory certified under the Maine Revised Statutes, Title 22, section 567. A solid waste landfill that conducts testing of leachate pursuant to this section shall provide the department with the results of that testing. 2. On or before January 15, 2024, the department shall submit a report to the joint standing committee of the Legislature having jurisdiction over environment and natural resources matters regarding the testing program implemented under this section, including a description of the results of such testing and any recommendations, including proposed legislation. After reviewing the report, the joint standing committee may report out legislation related to the report.

For whatever reason, the other statutes say PFAS. This one says perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substance. I dont know if this is meaningful or not, but the landfill lawyers (who write the landfill statutes) are as twisty as corkscrews. More centrally, the landfills do the testing, not a third party. Are you kidding me? Come on, man.

So, all in all, a good years work at the Maine State Legislature (and amazingly enough, on a bipartisan basis). As so often these days, however, its not clear that good will be good enough. For example, just as alert reader oaf wrote in his comment, Maine paper mills  which have even more clout than landfill operators  create sludge, which has either been treated by them and spread on fields, or has been processed by wastewater treatment plants and then spread on fields. From the Portland Press Herald:

Paper mills have used a lot of PFAS  and in some cases still do  in the coatings that keep grease or liquids from soaking through picnic plates, takeout food containers, pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags and fast-food wrappers. Determining which Maine paper mills have used PFAS in their manufacturing processes is extremely difficult because they were not required to report that data under either state or federal laws. Paper companies are also notoriously competitive and secretive about their processes. According to records compiled by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which licensed and regulated the land application of sludge, eight paper companies spread more than 500,000 cubic yards of paper mill waste in Maine between 1989 and 2016. That is a conservative and potentially incomplete figure, nor does it include the hundreds of thousands of cubic yards spread by wastewater treatment plants, some of which process paper mill sludge and wastewater. Great Northern Paper, which operated mills in the Millinocket region, applied more than 100,000 cubic yards of waste in the 1980s and 1990s in towns or unorganized territories in Penobscot and Aroostook counties, according to an analysis of the DEP data. The application sites were fully licensed and approved by the DEP under a state-promoted beneficial reuse program that provided farmers with free nutrients for their crops and helped municipalities and sewer districts avoid paying landfill costs  costs ultimately borne by ratepayers.

DEP, good job.

Conclusion

Maines poster boy for PFAS contamination is Nathan Saunders, whose well and land were contaminated by toxic sludge. Theyd been drinking the water for decades, and Saunders has the PFAS bloodwork of a 3M factory worker. Heres a photo of his farm:

Everything about that photo says rural Maine, from the surprisingly big sky, to the set and roof of the house, to the slope of the hill, and to summers intense green, so green as to be tropical. It really frosts me that every bit of that scene  from the well in the foreground, to the net of green plants, to the soil itself, could be toxic. Perhaps ecoside is not to strong a word.

APPENDIX

The opening scene of Michael Clayton:

Like a glaze, a coating
One of the rare economic success stories of the past year. But there are also downsides and dark sides to the remittances story.

Between January and May of this year the total amount Mexico received in remittances  transfers of money by workers of Mexican descent mainly in the US but also other countries to individuals in Mexico  surged by 21.75% compared to the same period last year, from $15.75 billion to $19.17 billion. Spanish lender BBVA says its on target to set another annual record, of around $47 billion. Thats after increasing by 11.4% in 2020, to $40.6 billion. This all happened despite the fact that GDP in the US, where 98% of the remittances to Mexico originate, slumped by 3.5% last year, the worst annual decline since 1946.

Mexico is the third largest recipient country for remittances inflows worldwide, behind India ($83 billion of inflows in 2019) and China ($70 billion), both with populations more than ten times larger than Mexicos. After nine consecutive years of increases in inflows, Mexicos economy is receiving more than double the amount it received in 2011 ($19 billion). The most important host regions for remittance outflows are the United States and Canada ($200 billion), the Arabian peninsular ($130 billion) and Europe ($121 billion).

Mexico was not the only country in Latin America to witness a sharp rise in remittances last year. In El Salavador, where remittances account for 24% of GDP, $5.93 billion of remittances arrived in 2020, $275 million more than the previous year. The Dominican Republic saw its total remittance haul surge by 16%, to $8,219 million. A similar trend was observed in Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala. Bucking the Trend None of this was expected. In late April 2020, as the global economy seized up and financial markets cascaded, the World Bank released a press release warning that remittances were likely to drop significantly across the worlds low and middle-income economies:

Remittance flows are expected to fall across all World Bank Group regions, most notably in Europe and Central Asia (27.5 percent), followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (23.1 percent), South Asia (22.1 percent), the Middle East and North Africa (19.6 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (19.3 percent), and East Asia and the Pacific (13 percent).

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, there was a six-year downtrend in remittances to Mexico, totalling 21%. Yet the opposite has happened during this downturn  and not just in Mexico. As the World Bank reported in May this year, despite COVID-19, remittance flows remained resilient in 2020, registering a smaller decline than previously projected:

Officially recorded remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries reached $540 billion in 2020, just 1.6 percent below the 2019 total of $548 billion, according to the latest Migration and Development Brief. The decline in recorded remittance flows in 2020 was smaller than the one during the 2009 global financial crisis (4.8 percent).

In some regions remittance income actually increased. In Latin America and the Caribbean it went up by 6.5%; in South Asia, by 5.2%, and in the Middle East and North Africa, by 2.3%. But it fell in East Asia and the Pacific (7.9%); in Europe and Central Asia (9.7%) and in sub-Saharan Africa (12.5%). Most of the decline in flows to Sub-Saharan Africa have been attributed to a 28% decline in remittance flows to Nigeria. Excluding those flows, remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa increased by 2.3 percent.

Six Possible Reasons

It is still not entirely clear why remittances have weathered this crisis  at least so far  so much better than the last one. Here are six possible reasons:

Fiscal support initiatives. Most countries with large populations of migrant workers have taken measures to support businesses and jobs, allowing remittances to continue to flow. In the US workers with roots in Mexico and other Latin American countries have received government support, such as unemployment benefits and stimulus money, which enabled them to continue sending money back to their families. Essential jobs. Many Latino immigrants in the US kept hold of their jobs because their jobs were deemed essential, says Sonia Plaza, co-chair of the World Banks Global Knowledge Association for Migration and Development (KNOMAD): They have been in everything from cleaning services, hospitals and everything that provides services despite COVID-19. For this reason they have also been disproportionately impacted by the health fallout of COVID-19. According to the CDC, Hispanics and Latinos are 1.9 times more likely to contract COVID-19 than their non-Hispanic white counterparts, 2.8 times more likely to be hospitalized from COVID-19 and 2.3 times more likely to die from COVID-19. Acquired human resilience. Most Latin American migrants are well accustomed to big economic crises, says Plaza. As such, when a crisis like this one hits, they are more flexible and willing to shift to other sectors to find new work. The economic fallout of the virus crisis in the US last year was not quite as brutal as initially feared. In general, the income from remittances received from the US, where the majority of Latin American immigrants reside, did not decrease last year. One reason for this was the countrys comparatively better  or rather, less bad  economic performance. Last summer, the IMF forecast that the US economy would shrink by 5.9%. In the end, it shrank by just 3.5%. By contrast, some large European economies contracted by more than double that, including France (-8.23%), Italy (-8.87%) and Spain (-11%). Its worth noting that remittance flows between Spain and most Latin American countries fell sharply last year. The formalization of payment transfers. Before the pandemic-induced lockdowns and travel restrictions made it much more difficult to cross borders, many immigrants carried the remittances home with them or sent them via a friend, or with a courier. When the borders closed, they had no choice but to send them through official channels, whether via banks or money transfer companies. And that meant that the money was more likely to show up in official records. Heightened solidarity. If things were bad in the US last year, they were orders of magnitude worse in countries like Mexico, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, which have neither the fiscal firepower or monetary leeway to offset the external and internal shocks unleashed by the pandemic. Against this backdrop, many migrant workers in the U.S. and elsewhere who werent overly impacted by the crisis  such as staff at hospitals treating Covid patients or construction workers  sent more money to their families to help them weather the crisis back home.

That money has played a vital role in sustaining not only families and local communities but also entire regional and national economies. Most of the money that gets sent is spent very quickly into the local economy, often on rents, basic provisions or building costs.

In the case of Mexico remittances now account for 4% of GDP, up from just under 3% in 2019. Last years haul helped to partially offset the plunging revenues of the oil, construction and tourism sectors, as well as falling foreign direct investment. But it was still a drop in the ocean compared to the losses suffered last year. In the case of tourism, for example, the sectors revenues provided just 1.5% of Mexicos GDP in 2020, down from 8.7% in 2019.

Remittances have also provided a vital source of much-needed hard foreign currency for many struggling economies, says Plaza.

Countries and governments are interested in bringing in more remittances because it helps with their current account and balance of payments. What they need is foreign exchange, and if the flow from tourism is shut down, foreign exchange remittances can at least plug some of the shortfall.

Downsides and Dark Sides

But there are downsides and dark sides to the remittances story. For example, there is the brain drain effect as many of the most skilled workers in low and middle-income countries move to host countries that offer better employment incentives and opportunities. If this process goes too far, it can exacerbate, rather than mitigate, inequalities between countries by depriving low-income countries of their best and brightest. Some countries end up facing acute labor shortages. The Philippines, for example, where roughly two in five qualified nurses end up working abroad, now has the lowest number of nurses per capita in Southeast Asia.

This can end up perpetuating a vicious cycle. The more that low-income countries function to provide cheap labor to high-income economies, the more difficult it is to develop a strong economy at home. As a result, yet more people leave for greener shores. Of course, there are myriad other pressures, pushing people in the Global South to migrate northwards, including climate change, resource wars and drug wars, political instability and all-round economic hardship exacerbated by the virus crisis.

Another downside is all the money that migrant workers have to shell out in transfer fees, which in some instances can reach over 10% of the amount sent. In some remittance corridors, costs continue to be exorbitant. For example, the cost of sending money to Cuba exceeds 9%, according to the World Bank. Sending money from Japan to Brazil is even more expensive (11.5%).

In 2019, the Mexican government publicly named and shamed a number of financial companies for overcharging on remittances. The problem is not just the upfront fees the firms charge, which could reach over $10 per transfer, but also the deceptive exchange rates they bake into their transfer calculator. The two worst offenders, according to Mexicos consumer protection agency Profeco, were PayPal Holdings Inc.s Xoom and Western Union Co.

Arguably the biggest danger is that of over-dependence. In some Mexican states, remittances can represent as much as 10% of total revenues. In some Central American states, such as El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala they account for 20% or more of GDP. If that flow of money were to begin to subside, it would have a significant negative impact on those nations economies. As Plaza says, remittances, while a vital source of income and foreign currency for many of the worlds poorest countries, are not a substitute for home-grown development.
I began my journalism career in Nashville in 1990, with my current position with Nashville Post having evolved since October 2000 (when I was with the now-defunct The City Paper, a sister publication of the Post starting in 2008).

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(Natural News) Astronomers are getting closer to detecting the memory that gravitational waves leave behind as they pass through space. Next-generation facilities and existing ones, such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in the U.S. and the Virgo Interferometer in Italy, will be key to this detection.

In an article for Space, astrophysicist Paul Sutter of the Ohio State University wrote that once these observatories had gathered enough data, they would one day provide evidence for the so-called gravitational-wave memory, or a permanent distortion in space-time.

What is gravitational wave memory?

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time. They squeeze and stretch everything in their path and come from nearly every kind of motion possible. However, because gravitational waves are so weak, only the most energetic events can create ripples that can be detected by LIGO and Virgo, both of which are designed to detect gravitational waves. Such events include supernovas and mergers of black holes.

When gravitational waves wash over the Earth, they move things by a distance of less than the width of an atom. Once they have passed, they leave behind another wave of gravitational ripples, which also leave behind another wave of new ripples, and so on.

Each new generation of waves is weaker than the last, Sutter said, but the effect accumulates into what astronomers call space-time memory  a permanent distortion of space-time left in the wake of a passing gravitational wave.

In other words, when gravitational waves wash over you, you dont just stretch and squeeze temporarily. When all is said and done, you are left permanently stretched, Sutter wrote. (Related: Space-time ripples could help scientists uncover exoplanets from other galaxies.)

While scientists havent found direct evidence for space-time memory yet, he said that the future data taken by LIGO and Virgo should bear proof of it. This would take the form of a permanent shift in the position of the detectors, well after the passage of a confirmed gravitational-wave event, he added.

The astrophysicist acknowledged that detection would take time, since the memory of each ripple was virtually impossible to observe. To make a detection, scientists would have to record multiple events to build up the evidence needed to spot space-time memory.

Gravitational-wave memory may be detected as early as this decade

In a study published last year in the journal Physics Review D, researchers from Monash University in Australia provided an idea of what and how long it would take to detect gravitational-wave memory.

After analyzing the first 10 black hole mergers detected by LIGO and Virgo between 2015 and 2017, the researchers predicted that the observatories would need to record around 2,000 black hole mergers to spot the aftereffects of space-time ripples. While this figure seemed huge, the team expected to hit this number by the middle of this decade.

They also noted that while LIGO and Virgo were currently not sensitive enough to make any statements about gravitational-wave memory, the facilities were continuously being upgraded and had been able to detect more than 40 mergers between April 2019 and January 2020. The recent addition of Japans KAGRA observatory, which went online last year, should also boost observations.

Advancements in technology could further quicken data collection and lead to an earlier detection than expected. Indeed, the next generation of gravitational-wave observatories might be able to detect gravitational-wave memory within just a year of observations, Sutter said.

Follow Cosmic.news to learn more about gravitational waves and other fascinating space concepts.

Sources include:

Space.com

SpacePlace.NASA.gov

Phys.org
(Natural News) Rescue crews are working around the clock to try to find survivors of extensive floods that have been causing devastation across Western Europe. The death toll so far exceeds 150 people, and rescuers believe that figure will climb as more bodies are discovered. Thousands of people have been left homeless after their homes were destroyed or deemed at risk, and officials are already concerned about the long-term economic effects that the lost homes and businesses will have so soon after COVID-19-related upheaval.

The flooding was caused by record rainfall on the continent. Germany and Belgium have been the hardest hit, but the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Switzerland have also been affected.

In Germany, more than 100 people have died so far, and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that the devastation was shocking. At a news conference, he said: Whole places are scarred by the disaster. Many people have lost what they have built all their lives.

The worst-hit areas there are North Rhine-Westphalia, Saarland and Rhineland-Palatinate. Floodwaters swept through one assisted living center, killing a dozen disabled people there, and there are still many people unaccounted for.

Rescue efforts have been complicated by difficult conditions as anxious relatives wait for news of their loved ones. A lot of abandoned cars have been found on flooded roads, but fire services report that many of the occupants of these cars must have reached dry land because they are not finding bodies inside.

One resident likened the damage to a war zone, saying that cars had been washed away and houses had been completely knocked down. Residents are now facing a tremendous cleanup effort, with huge piles of debris and mud-covered streets to contend with. Many businesses have been entirely swept away, ruining peoples livelihoods. One hotel owner said the floods came on quickly and rose as high as six feet.

Belgium, Switzerland and the Netherlands also dealing with flooding nightmare

In Belgium, meanwhile, armed forces have been sent out to four of the countrys ten provinces to assist in evacuation and rescue efforts, with Prime Minister Alexander de Croo declaring July 20 a national day of mourning. He called the floods the most catastrophic our country has ever seen. At least 20 lives have been lost there so far and Italy has sent officials in to help with the rescue efforts.

A river in the Swiss capital of Bern burst its banks last week, while Lake Lucerne is now flooding into the town. Flash flooding there has swept away cars, destroyed small bridges and flooded basements. In the Netherlands, rising waters that broke through a dike in the Limburg province sent thousands of people fleeing from their homes.

Across the internet, photos can be seen showing dramatic before and after photos of the damage across Western Europe. Many utility companies are reporting widespread disruptions of gas and electricity that they say may last for several weeks.

According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), some areas of Western Europe have been hit by two months worth of rainfall during just two days, a situation that was made worse by the fact that soil was already saturated by previous rainfall in the area.

Climate change alarmists like to link every natural disaster to global warming, and theyve wasted no time taking advantage of peoples suffering to promote their agenda with this emergency. Although some in the German government have been quick to blame the floods on climate change, WMO spokesperson Clare Nullis said it was too soon to jump to that conclusion.

Sources for this article include:

StarTribune.com

BBC.com
(Natural News) According to a recent study, mandatory coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccination for care home workers in England is unnecessary, disproportionate and misguided.

Researchers who conducted the study also said that the governments orders are based on unreliable data, highlighting the fact that the move is more about medical tyranny instead of health freedom.

Mandatory vaccination is a profound departure from public health norms

The study, which was published in the journal The BMJ, said that mandatory vaccination is an unnecessary order from the UK government.

The researchers warn that the governments decision to remove the right of care home staff in England to choose whether or not to get vaccinated against the coronavirus is a profound departure from public health norms.

Following mandatory vaccination for care home staff, the UK government plans to enforce a rapid and massive expansion of compulsory vaccination that will legally require coronavirus and flu vaccination of all frontline health and social care workers, depending on consultation.

However, Lydia Hayes, Professor of Law at Kent University, and Allyson Pollock, Professor of public health at Newcastle University, advised that vaccination, whether for coronavirus or other diseases, is not a panacea for safety. Hayes and Pollock added that vaccines arent going to magically resolve the serious shortcomings of the care sector in England.

Even the studies that suspiciously support Big Pharmas claims that vaccines are the cure for coronavirus should be taken with a grain of salt, especially government consultation documents and reports that claim that mandatory vaccination is essential due to low vaccination take up rates in some care homes. (Related: England now ready to adopt vaccine passports for mass events.)

Despite what these unreliable studies claim, data reveals that as of June 20:

More than 90 percent of care home residents in England have already received two doses of a coronavirus vaccine,

About 84 percent of care workers in England received their first dose,

At least 72 percent of care workers already received their second dose.

These figures are in line with Scientific Advisory Group recommendations.

After analyzing the data for the study, scientists found that uptake of the first dose of coronavirus vaccination among care workers is below 80 percent (or around 68-74 percent) in only three English local authorities, but the figures are due to very low numbers of staff at care homes in London.

The researchers also emphasized that the UK governments own methodology note advises that reliable information on vaccination uptake shouldnt be directly derived from the data the government itself is using.

Focus on whats important for strong public health, advise researchers

Regulatory law states that safety in care homes is achieved through adequate staffing levels, training, equipment, cleanliness, personal protective equipment, risk assessment, and consultation with staff and residents.

While vaccination allegedly protects individuals from coronavirus and reduces transmission risk, neither duration of protection nor efficacy against new COVID-19 variants have been confirmed.

Both Wales and Scotland have rejected compulsory vaccination for care workers. Instead, the two countries set aside funding for systems of mandatory registration for care workers that will help professionalize the sector.

The systems will also give care workers better access to training and embed a culture of continuous professional development, which the researchers say the UK government should emulate instead of enforcing mandatory vaccination.

Yet in England, successive ministers continue to reject national care worker registration, resulting in the Department of Health and Social Care and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) not having a reliable database of Englands care workers. At the same time, training of the care workforce is woefully inadequate, caution the researchers.

Researchers warn that relying on mandatory vaccination isnt the best way to address coronavirus in England. Instead of impinging on the health freedom of care home workers, the researchers urged the UK government to value civil liberty, which is crucial for strong public health.

The most effective way to ensure public safety is by taking steps to build trust and to mitigate outbreaks.

Care workers need paid time in which to access vaccination and good training, decent wages (including sick pay), personal protective equipment, and strong infection control measures, concluded the researchers.

According to the governments outlined mandatory vaccination plan, by October all employees at care homes and those registered with the CQC are required to receive two doses of the vaccine unless they are medically exempt.

The move follows a public consultation and is subject to parliamentary approval, with a 16-week grace period. Sector leaders also warned that the controversial decision may significantly affect the UKs already-stretched staffing levels.

Got to MedicalTyranny.com for more on how different countries are violating the health freedom of their citizens.

Sources include:

EurekAlert.org

BMJ.com

HertfordshireMercury.co.uk
(Natural News) Not content to stop at convincing large segments of the worlds adult population to inject themselves with an experimental vaccine, Big Pharma is now trying to push COVID-19 shots on children. In a virtual symposium with Johns Hopkins University earlier this month, an executive from Pfizer said that the firm is hoping its experimental mRNA shot will be administered to children as young as five this fall. They have also said they want to release a COVID booster shot soon to offer additional protection against the delta variant of the virus, even as the CDC maintains that it is not necessary.

Although Pfizer may be eager to get its jabs into childrens arms, medical experts take the opposite view, urging caution when it comes to COVID injections for children. Earlier this month, a team of researchers and professors in fields such as medical ethics, law, pediatric immunity and infection, philosophy and palliative care medicine sent a letter to the BMJ outlining their concerns about the global push to give these shots to children. They believe that the rollout needs to be delayed because, in their words, the net benefit of vaccinating children is unclear.

They point out that only around 3,500 adolescents have participated in randomized trials of the shots, and those trials were not designed to uncover rare side effects.

They also cited the many cases of heart inflammation, such as myocarditis and pericarditis, that have been seen in adolescents who were given the injections. This has been occurring in roughly 56 to 69 cases per million doses, and it is serious enough to warrant additional investigation. On top of that, we have no way of knowing yet if other complications will emerge when the vaccine is administered to a larger segment of children.

Moreover, the authors say that the potential benefits of giving children the vaccine is a lot smaller than it is in adults because children have already shown to be less likely to contract COVID-19, and they are significantly less likely to become seriously ill with the virus. They have also been playing a very limited role in transmitting the virus to others, which means that injecting them would have what the authors term a marginal benefit in protecting others.

This team of experts emphasizes that they are not against vaccines overall and they do believe that the benefits outweigh the risks for adults. However, they do not want to see children getting the jab until there is more data about how it will affect them.

FDA expects to authorize COVID vaccines for kids under 12 this winter

On Thursday, FDA officials said that emergency authorization for vaccines for kids under 12 may come in early winter and that the agency hopes to move quickly toward getting full approval for the vaccine for children in this age group. Right now, they are still only authorized for people aged 12 and older, and none of the vaccines have been granted full FDA approval.

As pharmaceutical companies push forward with their campaigns to get children vaccinated, one can only hope that governments around the world will not take away parents freedom to choose whether or not their children take on the very real risks of these shots. For example, it is scary to think that some schools might require children to have the COVID-19 vaccine to attend classes. Right now, that would be difficult in the U.S. because the shot has not been officially approved by the FDA and is only being given under Emergency Use Authorization, but there are many parties have been pushing the FDA to grant a full approval precisely to avoid these types of protections and give more weight to mandates.

Sources for this article include:

BMJ.com

NBCNews.com

NaturalHealth365.com
(Natural News) In the search for answers about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, a team of researchers led by the World Health Organization is looking for an unidentified Italian woman who went to a Milan hospital with a sore throat and skin lesions in November of 2019, a month before the virus was identified in Wuhan, China and was later found to have COVID-19. However, there is a lot about this story that isnt adding up.

A skin sample that was taken from the 25-year-old woman when she initially visited a dermatologist was found to contain traces of the virus when it was tested six months afterward, suggesting that the virus had already been circulating long before the first cluster took hold in Wuhan. The woman had been experiencing an unexplained rash on her arms, but she reported that it disappeared by April 2020. The virus has been known to cause skin disorders such as rashes as well as discoloration of fingers and toes, although these symptoms are less common than the classic symptoms of fever, dry cough and tiredness.

A blood sample taken from the same patient in June 2020 tested positive for antibodies to coronavirus, but authorities warn that does not necessarily mean she had the virus when she first went to the hospital that November. By June, she could have well been exposed to an asymptomatic COVID-19 infection after her November illness as northern Italy was in the throes of the pandemic at that time.

Nevertheless, scientists are convinced that further study of the case could help determine how long the virus has been out there. However, the womans identity is not known and the doctor who was treating her recently died.

Mystery surrounds patients identity

According to the Wall Street Journal, the facilities in charge of her case, the University of Milan and Milans Policlinico Hospital, do not have the patients details for some reason. In addition, the dermatologist who had been treating her, Raffaele Gianotti, died just days before the WHO team asked for an investigation into the patient in March.

When the pandemic hit Italy in the beginning of 2020, Dr. Gianotti had looked at archived skin samples to look for traces of COVID-19 and found the spike protein and protein shell in the womans sample, but it had degraded too much for him to carry out a crucial third test that could have enabled him to sequence the virus and confirm it was COVID-19.

The WHO team that is investigating the womans case is also recommending that other possible COVID-19 cases that predate the first case in Wuhan be tracked down to help develop a clearer picture of the timeline of the viruss early spread. They have asked blood banks in several countries to test blood samples taken in late 2019 to look for COVID-19 antibodies.

It is difficult to believe that several different medical professionals would have taken and tested blood and skin samples from a patient without linking a name to them. Although some of the more remote areas of Italy might have questionable record-keeping practices, this woman was under the care of modern, reputable hospitals in Milan, and she may have also been given a prescription.

Although its an interesting story, its hard not to wonder if this could be an attempt to take some of the heat off of China. The fact that the WHO is involved in this story and that the doctor conveniently died before he could help identify the patient only add to the skepticism. Like many things related to the virus, it is possible we will never know the truth.

Sources for this article include:

DailyMail.co.uk

TheLocal.it
(Natural News) With Democrats ratcheting up the pressure on their war against election integrity and several states waiting in the wings to see what happens, Arizonas state Senate held a publicly broadcast hearing Thursday to get updates from three officials overseeing the independent audit of Maricopa Countys 2.1 million votes.

(Article by Ben Sellers republished from HeadlineUSA.com)

Cyber Ninjas head Doug Logan made several preliminary bombshell disclosures about ways sloppy administration and bookkeeping might have flipped the outcome of the state, which Democrat Joe Biden officially won by 10,457 votes in the 2020 election.

Loganwho has faced the brunt of leftist attacks, including, as of Wednesday, a politically motivated investigation against him by the Democrat-run US House Oversight Committeealso emphasized that there was much work left to be done to ensure that the auditors work was irrefutable and beyond reproach when it formally released its findings.

We totally understand how much focus is on us right now and how important this is to our country, he said.

But he said that the findings left a lot of questions for Maricopas Board of Supervisors and other election officials to answer.

Among those was an explanation as to why and how paper ballots printed on site might have resulted in calibration errors and bleeding due to the use of Sharpies and substandard paper.

The issue, colloquially referred to as SharpieGate, surfaced from anecdotal accounts in the immediate wake of the Nov. 3, 2020 election.

It all comes full circle. Now we have a #SharpieGate reference. How many conspiracies are we up to now?  Maricopa County (@maricopacounty) July 15, 2021

Although George Soros-backed Democrat Secretary of State Katie Hobbs downplayed the scandal at the time, Logan confirmed that the problem was realand might have affected 16 times more ballots than made up Bidens margin of victory.

The countys election website boasted that it only used a more secure form of heavy-stock paper that would prevent bleeding. But the same was not true, Logan said, for the roughly 168,000 ballots that needed to be printed on demand.

We are seeing a lot of very thin paper stock being utilized, especially on Election Day, he said.  I would expect that, with Sharpies, the bleedthrough could be greater.

Likewise, the ballots that were professionally printed in advance showed no calibration errors, while those printed on demand had a greater risk of being off the mark.

Logan also noted several issues related to mail-in ballots and voting rolls that demanded further explanation.

He noted that there were 70,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent due to the fact that there were more forms for the receipt of incoming, returned absentee ballots than forms for outgoing ones being mailed.

Other records showed more ballots being sent to residences than there were official residents.

In all, Logan suggested that the auditors should be permitted to perform door-to-door canvassing on about 74,000 absentee voters to confirm the authenticity and, in some cases, clarify the voters intent.

Based on the data were seeing, Id highly recommend that we do the canvassing, he said.  I think when weve got 74,000it merits knocking on a door and verifying.

Democrats, including the federal Justice Department, have made this effort a particular point of contention. They have accused the auditors of voter intimidation and have threatened to pursue civil-rights charges if they follow through.

Fann noted the irony, however, in the Biden administrations recent plan to go door-to-door harassing non-vaccinated citizens, puzzling as to how one canvassing initiative might be less intimidating than the other.

Two other issues that Logan highlighted in the hearing involved inaccurate voter rolls. Both appeared to affect numbers beyond Bidens alleged margin of victory.

Logan said there were 11,326 Maricopa County voters whose names did not show up on a list from Election Day but who were listed a month later, in a Dec. 4 reissue of the voter rolls.

I cannot think of a logical explanation on what that would be, but that would be a great thing to hear from the county, he said.

Moreover, roughly 18,000 county residents who voted in the election were quickly removed from the voter rolls in its immediate aftermath.

And another 3,981 voters were discovered to have registered after the Oct. 15 deadline.

Further issues pertained to the signature-verification procedures on absentee-ballot envelopes, which saw their standards reduced over time.

Initially, the county required 20 points of matching with the signature on file, but eventually they were just told to let every single mail-in ballot through, Logan said.

Efforts to check the signatures were hindered by the fact that the auditors could not locate a file with the images of the envelopes that was supposed to have been included in the materials delivered as part of the Senates initial subpoena.

Also testifying were cybersecurity expert Ben Cotton and former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who had volunteered to serve, unpaid, as the Senate liaison in the audit.

Both vouched to the frustration over Maricopas stonewalling, as well as the sloppy and incomplete materials they had been given by the county.

Cotton noted, for instance, that event logs showed more than 30,000 anonymous queries in March of this year. Those processes had basically wiped all the event-log data from before February since the files were set only to hold up to 20 megabytes of data.

Along with the lack of record-keeping, he noted that poor practices such as using the same password for all administrative accounts could have made voting systems vulnerable to hacking in less than 10 minutes.

Bennett testified to the disarray of many of the slips that were supposed to account for how many ballots and duplicate ballots there were per batch. Because some of these lacked serial numbers, it was virtually impossible to tell, in some cases, whether a ballot was the original or a duplicate made for reasons such as damage to the original.

The auditorswho have been hammered on the Left for allegedly unreliable work, with partisan officials declaring that all of the compromised voting machines would need to be replacedappeared determined to dispel that false narrative.

Bennett meticulously outlined the security measures in place, including constant video recording and chain-of-custody procedures, which stood in stark contrast to the lackadaisical procedures that Maricopa officials appeared to have followed.

But the audits transparency and security measures were essential, Fann noted, to fulfilling its underlying purpose of helping restore voter confidence in the election process.

This has never been about anything other than election integrity, she said in her opening address.

This is the epitome of what America stands for, and if we do not have faith and confidence in our electoral process, then everything we do in life is jeopardized, she added.

Read more at: HeadlineUSA.com and VoteFraud.news.
(Natural News) After more than a year of denying it, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus acknowledged that it was far too premature to rule out the possibility that the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) was engineered in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where it then accidentally leaked out after infecting an employee.

This is a very rare departure from the WHOs usual deference to Chinese authorities on matters regarding COVID-19 and its origins. This also represents a break from the WHOs outright dismissal of the lab leak theory and its long-held stance that the coronavirus naturally passed from animals to humans.

Neither Tedros nor anybody else in the WHO has publicly apologized for the year-long denial of the lab leak theory.

Tedros admits discounting lab leak theory was premature

Without explicitly apologizing for being wrong, Tedros acknowledged the WHOs error during a press conference with reporters.

I was a lab technician myself, Im an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen, said Tedros during the briefing. Its common.

He told reporters that the WHO is actually asking China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic.

He added that there was a premature push to rule out the lab leak theory. This undermines the WHOs own report published earlier this year that concluded that a lab leak was extremely unlikely. The report added that the most probable origin was a natural jump from animals to humans. It should be noted that China was a partner in crafting the WHOs report. This report was made after a visit to Wuhan that was carefully choreographed by Chinese authorities.

Tedros said figuring out what happened during the early stages of the pandemic, especially in the labs in Wuhan, is extremely important for figuring out if the virus came from a lab or not.

We need information, direct information on what the situation of this lab was before and at the start of the pandemic, he said.

Tedros added that Chinas cooperation with any possible future investigation is crucial. If the world can get access to all the information and data China is hiding, it may help exonerate the communist nation if the virus really did have natural origins.

In any outbreak, you go and understand the origins, the WHO chief added. We need to know what happened in order to prevent the next [pandemic].

I think we owe it to the millions who suffered and the millions who died really to understand what happened.

Beijing has struck back very aggressively to renewed assertions that the coronavirus came from a lab in Wuhan, arguing that attempts to link the lab with the virus are politically motivated. The country suggested once more that the virus may not have started in China, and that any future investigation into COVID-19s origins should be conducted overseas.

Dont forget: Tedros and the WHO instrumental in discrediting the lab leak theory

Tedros admission that the lab leak theory still holds merit is a very distinct reversal in WHO policy. During a trip to China early on in the pandemic, the director-general was recorded as saying that he had no doubt about Chinas commitment to transparency. Now, Tedros is arguing that it is very difficult for WHO officials like himself to gain access to important data.

The lab leak theory was first widely pushed by former President Donald Trump and other members of his administration. They saw links between the WIV and the coronavirus and wanted this link explored. But so-called experts and the mainstream media widely dismissed it, including Tedros and the WHO. Tedros very public dismissal of the lab leak theory helped quash most mainstream sources from taking it seriously.

But the idea has regained a lot of attention in recent months, despite the continued protests from the Chinese government. It gained even more credibility in the eyes of the mainstream media after President Joe Biden in May announced that he had asked his intelligence officials to conduct a review into the theories surrounding the origins of the virus, including the lab leak theory.

Outside of the Biden administration, scientists all over the world have been demanding for months that the lab leak theory be taken seriously. This includes an international group of 18 scientists who, back in May, demanded that the lab leak theory be given balanced consideration during any future investigation of COVID-19s origins. (Related: International group of scientists call for new, independent investigation into coronavirus origins.)

Learn more about the lab leak theory and how more and more people are starting to believe it by reading the latest articles at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

DailyMail.co.uk

APNews.com

Townhall.com

TheHill.com

BusinessInsider.com
(Natural News) For months, President Donald Trump has warned that the 2020 election was rigged and thus stolen from him, and for the same period of time, Democrats who are likely in on the theft have pushed back, along with their minions in the mainstream media.

But Trump the liar has once again been proven correct, at least in Arizona.

Preliminary results from an ongoing audit of some 2.1 million ballots cast in Arizonas most populous region, Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, reveals enough fraudulent ballots to overturn Joe Bidens victory by orders of magnitude.

Among the audits findings so far: 11,326 people in the county who voted in the November 3 election were NOT on the voter rolls on November 7, but were added to the voter rolls by December 4, the National File reported.

This number is higher than Joe Bidens supposed statewide lead in Arizona of 10,457 votes. Additionally, more than 74,000 mail-in ballots were counted in the county even though there is no recorded evidence of the ballots being sent to the voters in the first place  and Maricopa County withheld all photographic evidence of the mail-in ballot envelopes from the Republican audit team (meanwhile, photographs show ballot printers and boxes getting loaded onto a Destruction truck in Phoenix during the Senate hearing), the site added.

The findings were relayed to state Senate Republicans late last week by officials from Cyber Ninjas, the firm conducting the audit. The news reached President Trump, as expected, and he issued a statement that also singled out the garbage media for ridicule.

AP and other media outlets are doing major disinformation to try and discredit the massive number of voter irregularities and fraud found in both Arizona and Georgia, the 45th president said.

When the real numbers are released people will be shocked, he added, but this is a concerted effort of the Fake News Media to discredit and demean.

There has never been anything like it, Trump continued. Numbers will be released shortly, and they are extraordinarily big and highly determinative!

He also addressed Cyber Ninjas preliminary findings directly.

They spew the gross misinformation purposefully put out by the county and the Associated Press, and IGNORE the very important Arizona Senates hearing yesterday, which showed 168,000 fraudulent ballots printed on illegal paper (unofficial ballots), 74,000 mail in ballots received that were never mailed (magically appearing ballots), 11,000 voters were added to the voter rolls AFTER the election and still voted, all the access logs to the machines were wiped, and the election server was hacked during the election, Trump noted.

In addition to the tens of thousands of ballots that were counted without there being any evidence they were sent out, the audit team also discovered that thin paper used for about 1268,000 ballots led to bleed through which damaged them after a polling official ordered staff to hand out Sharpie markers to same-day voters even though she was aware they could taint ballots.

Another round of subpoenas is expected, as state senators call for the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature to decertify the election and recall Joe Bidens electors in the state, the National File reported.

Activists on the ground are fighting to get a warrant from necessary Arizona senators to compel Maricopa County to hand over more evidence.

Interestingly, a new poll released this week found that a solid majority of Republican voters in Arizona are confident that the election was stolen.

The Arizona Public Opinion Pulse survey, conducted by OH Predictive Insights, found that 62 percent  nearly two-thirds  of state GOP voters believe the audit will show that Trump pulled out a victory there last year.

Republicans are counting on this audit to prove the rhetoric they have heard on Fox News and other conservative news sources  that Trump won Arizona and the entire election, said Mike Noble, OHPI chief of research.

Were sure Arizona was tampered with, along with several other battleground states in 2020.

Sources include:

NationalFile.com

USAFeatures.news

Trump.news
(Natural News) As you likely know, the U.S. Constitution specifically prevents the federal government from censoring, banning or otherwise preventing Americans from speaking and expressing themselves freely.

The founders thought that protections for speech and expression, along with freedom of religion, the right to assembly and to petition government, were so vital to the new republic they put them in the Constitutions very first amendment.

But now, some 245 years later, we actually have a regime in power that is working to undermine those protections through direct threats.

No doubt aware that the administration would lose in federal court big time, and at the Supreme Court, if Joe Bidens handlers simply had him sign an executive order outright banning certain speech and information, the regime is doing the next best thing: Its holding its vast executive powers over Facebook (and, truth be told, other social media platforms as well) as a threat if the sites dont do what they are instructed to do.

In short, the Biden regime isnt actually censoring information; it is threatening Facebook and others with action if they dont censor information the regime feels needs to be hidden.

Whats more, the regime has openly admitted what its doing.

Weve increased disinformation research and tracking, Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the press last week regarding the COVID-19 pandemic that never seems to die.

Within the Surgeon Generals Office, were flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation. Were working with doctors and medical professionals to connect medical experts with people, who are popular with their audiences with accurate information and boost trusted content. So, were helping get trusted content out there, she said.

Helping  as in, youd better get rid of these posts we have flagged or else.

The Biden administration is telling Facebook which posts it regards as problematic so that Facebook can remove them, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald said on Twitter in response to Psakis admission. This is the union of corporate and state power  one of the classic hallmarks of fascism  that the people who spent five years babbling about fascism support.

If you dont find it deeply disturbing that the White House is flagging internet content that they deem problematic to their Facebook allies for removal, then you are definitionally an authoritarian, Greenwald continued. No other information is needed about you to know that. There is no circumstance  none  in which its acceptable for the White House or any other agency of the government to be providing lists to Facebook of problematic content it wants removed, yet thats exactly what Psaki says theyre doing.

The White House is admitting that theyre compiling lists of people who they claim are posting content they regard as problematic and that constitute misinformation and are demanding Facebook remove them. This is authoritarianism, he added.

Hes not the only one, thankfully, that is finding all of this unacceptable.

In a letter to Biden last week after Psaskis announcement, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., demanded a briefing on the situation and made clear that what is being suggested by the regime is unacceptable.

These revelations are deeply concerning, the Tennessee Republican wrote in her letter. The blatant actions by your administration to work with Big Tech companies to censor Americans free speech are shocking  and arguably a violation of the First Amendment.

What criteria are you directing social media platforms to use to flag and remove posts? she demanded to know. What criteria are you directing social media platforms to use to ban users?

What is the legal basis for your Administrations decision to direct social media platforms to flag and remove posts from their sites? she asked. Does the White House have staff dedicated to searching social media for content to flag for removal?

This is blatant in-your-face censorship by the federal government  by proxy.

Sources include:

FoxNews.com

CaitlinJohnstone.com

Censorship.news
(Natural News) The French are gathering in the streets, chanting liberte! and the British are marching, demanding the arrest of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson! European governments are rolling out vaccine passports as quickly as possible, forcing people to comply with endless medical experiments, bodily requirements, digital surveillance and tracking, and a two-tiered society that discriminates and segregates the unvaccinated.

The British government is rolling out vaccine passports for clubs, pubs and restaurants now, while demanding vaccine requirements for all workers across all industries. Great Britains Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) wants vaccine requirements for everyday workplaces, requiring office workers to use the NHS app to verify their compliance with the new world vaccine order. In order to have a job, the British will have to return to the office showing proof they have been fully vaccinated. The app will also be used to enforce all future booster shots required by the Big Pharma-Big Tech-Big Government dictatorship.

Great Britain mocks the principles of liberty and rolls out vaccine passports on Freedom Day

So far, the British government has coerced up to 10.4 million people to sign up for the NHS COVID pass, by threatening to take away basic freedoms if Great Britons do not comply. Ever since the vaccine verification requirements were added to the app on May 17, an influx of six million new users appeared in the NHS database.

Introducing a medical apartheid to Europe, Great Britains Department for Health and Social Care states, The apps COVID-19 vaccine status service allows users easily to show their proof of vaccine, which will help people to travel abroad, start returning to workplaces and attend large-scale events as we cautiously proceed with the roadmap. Many people would like to believe that the lockdowns are ending, but restrictions are not being lifted. The worst is yet to come. The controls are only becoming more strict, more discriminatory and more Orwellian with each passing month.

According to the DHSC documents, the vaccine passport system will be used as a means of entry anywhere where people are likely to be in close proximity to others outside their household. This means the vaccine passport will be incorporated into every aspect of society, a permanent fixture of enslavement and discrimination. The guidance threatens all industries to adopt these sufficient measures or else the government will consider mandating the NHS COVID Pass in certain venues at a later date.

The people are rising up across the UK, as resistance becomes necessary

Disgraced Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, announced July 19 as Freedom Day as he announced vaccine requirements throughout society. Thousands of Great Britons have gathered on Parliament Square to protest the new restrictions and upcoming segregation. Can I clear it up for anyone wondering why thousands have gathered at parliament square freedom protest? one freedom fighter commented. Freedom is having the right to choose to wear masks or not without the constant threats of new winter lockdowns and vaccine passports. Today is not true freedom.

Throughout the covid-19 scandal, governments have used the threat of infection to control entire populations, first telling people to stay locked down in their house. When that wasnt enough, the police began visiting people any time of the day to make sure people were complying with stay-at-home orders. Government contact tracers were deployed to lock people down further and deprive them of their liberty. Basic medical rights and civil liberties were vanquished as forceful mandates were applied.

Today, the population is awarded their freedoms back when they comply with the governments inoculation requirements. Now people will have to carry papers and show digital proof of vaccination if they want to get together with people and engage in activities outside their homes. But it doesnt even end there. People who dont comply with this medical apartheid are being threatened to live on the streets, with no job prospects, no career to advance. As the UK perverts the peoples freedom and destroys countless lives, there is nothing left to lose. Resistance is a necessary duty. Every individual must be treated equally under the law.

Sources include:

Summit.news

NaturalNews.com

NaturalNews.com

Summit.news

Mirror.co.uk
(Natural News) Whats the most important issue plaguing this generation?

For Miss New Jersey contestant Justine Murray, its censorship  and she made it known in a passionate response to a judges question during the Miss New Jersey pageant at Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City.

The beauty queen, a booking producer with One America News, was asked by the judge to identify her generations most important issue and explain why.

Murray, who is the reigning Miss Northern Highlands, didnt hesitate to answer.

Our generation is experiencing an epidemic of censorship and entitlement, she said. Its because our professors and our celebrities are teaching students to be narcissists, to believe that any view that differs from their own is an existential threat.

She also shared her experience of being censored on her own college campus.

The beauty queen said some people have taken censorship too far. This is what I experienced on my own campus with censorship to the point where people believe that speech is violence so that they can threaten other people with violence, simply because they disagree with them, Murray said.

Miss NJ candidates impassioned plea for free speech

Her fiery speech didnt end there. When asked for a social impact statement  her priorities if she wins Miss New Jersey, and ultimately Miss America  Murray chose to champion the importance of the First Amendment, which covers free speech.

The beauty queen said that free speech is listed first in the Bill of Rights for a reason. Without it, all other liberties crumble, she said.

Murray, who calls herself the Anti-PC Pageant Queen on Twitter, decried how universities have now become battlegrounds for free speech. She also noted how political correctness has evolved, and worse, become weaponized.

The mere words Im offended are now being used as an excuse to silence students, fire professors and cancel people simply because they do not tow the popular line of thought, said Murray.

She vowed to lend a voice to young women if she were to win Miss New Jersey, saying that she will empower young women to stand up for what they believe in and become a voice to be reckoned with. Murray didnt win the competition  Alyssa Sullivan was crowned  but said that she would say her speech all over again if given a chance.

This was my onstage interview for Miss New Jersey. I didnt win. I didnt even place. But I wouldnt have changed a single word.#FreeSpeech #AntiPCPageantQueen pic.twitter.com/zvoJ3CAWRa  Justine Brooke Murray (@Justine_Brooke) June 21, 2021

Brandeis releases weird oppressive language list

In Massachusetts, the Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center at Brandeis University recently published the Oppressive Language List, which forces students to refrain from saying words or phrases that others may deem offensive. This development underscored Murrays point in her speech.

Words included in the list are policeman, crazy and walk-in. It also includes trigger warning, a phrase often associated with the Left.

PARC classifies its so-called oppressive language into five categories  violent language, identity-based language, language that doesnt say what we mean, culturally appropriative language and person-first alternatives. (Related: Facebooks deliberate censorship of alternative news is nothing compared to Wikipedias censorship of alternative medicine.)

For instance, the list flags the pronouns she and he and suggests using they. Other examples include using BIPOC  black, indigenous and people of color  instead of saying people of color; saying picnic when the proper term is outdoor eating; or using policeman instead of police officer.

According to PARC, the list aims to remove oppressive language from everyday use. The site also asks students to add more words to the list. What suggestion do you have for our Oppressive Language List? Personal reasons are more than welcome and if you have any other sources, that too, it said.

Censorship.news has more stories on how free speech is in danger in the U.S.

Sources include:

CitizenFreePress.com

NYPost.com

Breitbart.com
(Natural News) The Second Gentleman of the United States is terrifying immigrants to make them get the COVID vaccine. Douglas Emhoff pressured a native-Spanish speaker into a publicity stunt to help his wifes administration achieve its vaccination goals. A Mexican immigrant was given a vaccine after the heavy-handed arm twisting by Emhoff.

(Article by Emily Miller republished from EmilyPostNews.com)

On Wednesday, Emhoff was at a mobile vaccination site at the Broadmoor Community Church in New Orleans. Emhoff has been touring the country this summer to help promote the political vaccinae goals of his wife, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Pres. Joe Biden.

The media was brought outside the church to watch Mexican immigrant Gustavo Posadas waiting for a shot at a vaccination site, according to a press pool report. The PR gimmick was clearly set up in advance. Who do we have here? Emhoff asks, while looking around for the man.

This is Gustava, here, replied a man wearing a clerical collar. The pastor pointed at Posadas who was wearing a green t-shirt, straw hat and a face mask below his nose. A live video of the event was taken by NOLA on Facebook.

I heard it took a little work, but youre there, so lets do this, creepy Emhoff said to Posadas. Thanks for doing it in front of everybody.

Emhoff spoke to the 44-year-old man as if he was a toddler at the doctors office. Dont be nervous. It wont hurt. Ive had it. I can take it. So dont be scared, Emhoff told Posadas.

The immigrant then stood off to the side while Emhoff shook hands with doctors and medical staff from Ochsner Health. After posing for photos, Emhoff turns back to Posadas.

Gustava, thank you so much. Muy importante, Emhoff said in English-accented Spanish. What do you have to say to people? And youre going to tell a bunch of people?

I tell everybody, Posadas said in Spanish-accented English. I dont want this before. But now I think this is real

This is real, Emhoff says, completing his sentence. And its the only thing that is going to prevent you, your family and others from dying or getting really sick.

Say what? A vaccine is the only thing that is going to prevent people from dying from COVID? Is this what the Biden administrations door knockers are telling people in private?

The recovery rate for COVID is 98 to 99 percent. Almost all the deaths are due to age or underlying conditions. Johns Hopkins currently has the rate at 98.2 percent in America. Even Dr. Anthony Fauci testified before Congress that the survival rate is actually 99 percent because asymptomatic cases are under counted.

Emhoff seemingly doesnt care to give the facts to Posadas and put the success of the media stunt at risk. Im so grateful youre doing this in front of the cameras so you can tell everyone its okay, said Emhoff.

Posadas nods his head. Everything  my people  I thinks, we want the shot. This is real. I not believe you before, but I feel it now.

No reporter asks questions. But the obvious one is: How long ago did Posadas not believe Emhoff? Who convinced him to take the vaccine? What was told to him in English or Spanish?

Emhoff wastes no time with Posadass hesitancy. Well lets do it! said the Second Gentleman while the medical staff and clergy applaud.

Posadas is put in a white, folding chair. He keeps on the mirrored sunglasses. A woman in scrubs tells him to pull the mask over his nose. He rolls up his sleeve as the woman comes in with the needle. Posadas looks in the opposite direction.

Look at me! Look at me! Emhoff tells him, while the shot is administered. The crowd applauds. Emhoff holds out his fist, and Posadas bumps him after he stands.

Thank you for doing this, Emhoff says, while Posadas rubs his arm and says something in Spanish. Thank you for telling everyone to do this.

Emhoff walks away to do media interviews while a woman is heard off camera saying, Gustava, did you get your card with your vaccination on it?

The Second Gentleman tells reporters that, On the Covid piece, on the vaccinations, Im not going to stop. This administration is not going to stop until we continue to get the word out here.

Emhoff continues but seems to not remember Posadass name. You heard what he said  its real. He didnt believe it. He believes it now. Harriss husband does a hard sell of the vaccines and adds, Were going to go door to door, bring the vaccines out to the people until we get this done.

The July 4th deadline for the Bidens goal to get 70 percent of Americans vaccinated is past. He and Harris should stop their obsession with universal vaccination and just let people like Posadas make their own medical decisions based on a risk assessment. Also, there should be a required interpreter for any door-to-door vaccine salesman from the Biden White House who convinces a non-native English speaker to get a shot.

Read more at: EmilyPostNews.com and BorderSecurity.news
(Natural News) The state of California, alongside much of the western U.S., is again facing severe drought. The drought hitting the Golden State has notably threatened its agriculture. With about four-fifths of Californias developed water allocated to growing crops, the drought itself is enough to raise alarm bells.

According to the U.S. Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, almost all of California is experiencing severe to exceptional drought. Two papers also elaborated that the Golden States drought is not just a one-off occurrence.

A 2020 paper published in Science found that the southwestern U.S. experienced its second driest 19-year period from 2000 to 2018. Another study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that from 2012 until 2014, California experienced its driest three-year period. Both studies noted that the patterns occurred at least 1,200 years prior.

There are several types of drought that California has experienced. First, agricultural drought is caused by dwindling soil moisture. Global warming worsens this situation as more moisture from the land gets transferred to the atmosphere.

Second, changing precipitation patterns result in meteorological drought. Warmer temperatures will cause more rain to fall in the winter, but less during the spring and autumn months. This essentially extends the dry season in California. According to researchers, the rainy season in California has become shorter and sharper since the 1960s.

The impact of global warming on the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains also triggers two types of droughts. Snow drought happens when the snowpack from the mountains melts more quickly. Hydrological drought occurs when the melted mountain snow no longer replenishes water levels in rivers, lakes and streams.

Reports from June 2021 said Californias reservoir water levels were about 40 percent below the historical average. Meanwhile, the Sierra Nevada snowpack was completely gone more than a month earlier than normal. Other western states such as Nevada, Oregon, Arizona and Utah also experienced droughts  leading Utah Gov. Spencer Cox to exhort residents to pray for more rain.

The California drought has had a large effect on crops and others

The drought in the Golden State has far-reaching effects on its agriculture, environment and waterways. First, it threatens the agriculture industry in California. The state produces two-thirds of all fruits and nuts in the U.S.  and about 80 percent of all the worlds almonds. California almonds generate $6 billion worth of revenue annually. (Related: Californias San Joaquin Valley, once fertile farming ground, now succumbing to drought.)

However, almond trees and other nut trees require a lot of water  which poses a problem for farmers who face water shortages. This has led to some farmers removing almond trees on their farms and replacing them with crops that require less water to grow.

Second, the drought also increases the risk of wildfires  with hotter and drier conditions and dead trees serving as a recipe for these blazes. Bark beetles attracted by warmer winters attack these stressed trees until they die, resulting in more fuel for wildfires. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment Report, worsening droughts and bark beetles have killed seven percent of forests in the western U.S. over the past 40 years.

Third, the drought affects waterways in the Golden State. According to the same report, severe drought between 2011 and 2015 reduced hydroelectricity generation in California  courtesy of the Hoover Dam hydroelectric plant  by two-thirds. Aside from hydroelectricity, the droughts also impact the population of salmon and other fish species in California rivers. (Related: Despite record-breaking drought conditions, California officials are draining reservoirs.)

Nevertheless, water conservation think tank Pacific Institute expressed hope that California could alleviate the effects of subsequent droughts. Six of the institutes water resources experts suggested a number of actions that California and other southwest states can implement to address water shortage in a June 4 article.

The experts wrote in their piece that drought-affected states can change their citizens behaviors alongside how they make use of urban and agricultural water. They also suggested exploring non-traditional water sources such as stormwater and recycled water. All [these steps]  can help lessen the severity of [the current] drought and future ones, the experts noted.

Collapsifornia.com has more stories about the drought affecting the Golden State.

Sources include:

EcoWatch.com

YaleClimateConnections.org

DroughtMonitor.UNL.edu

PacInst.org
(Natural News) A United Nations (UN) report released on July 12 showed a sharp increase in the number of undernourished people around the world.

It was the first comprehensive assessment of hunger since the start of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The report noted that hunger and malnutrition have been worsening for over a decade due to conflicts, economic recessions and climate extremes.

According to the report, nearly 10 percent or an estimated 768 million people across the globe were undernourished in 2020 as the pandemic disrupted economies, job markets and supply chains and inflated food prices. That represented an additional 118 million from 2019, when 8.4 percent of the worlds population was undernourished.

Africa was hit the hardest as hunger and malnourishment increased dramatically during the pandemic. More than a third of the continents nearly 1.4 billion people were suffering from undernourishment.

UN leaders said that the pandemic continues to expose weaknesses in our food systems and that we are at a critical juncture to transform food systems. (Related: Famine of biblical proportions headed our way due to COVID-19, warns UN food chief.)

They pointed to the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) in September, the COP26 on climate change in November and Nutrition for Growth Summit in December as crucial events that will shape how food systems develop in the years ahead.

The Food Systems Pre-Summit kicks off in Rome on July 26.

UNFSS sparks criticisms, protests and calls for boycott

For over a year, the UNFSS has sparked criticisms, protests and calls for a boycott from food security experts, UN insiders and hundreds of organizations from Africa and other countries. They were concerned about the dominant role of large corporations and private donors, including the Gates Foundation, that were pushing a narrow set of approaches for profit-driven agricultural development.

Many African groups think that the current market-based agricultural development models driven by external actors are worsening the situation. The same false solutions are being recycled, with the same narrow benefits accruing to a limited number of actors, said the African Center for Biodiversity, an advocacy group working towards food sovereignty and agroecology in Africa.

Those models were business-as-usual, quick-technofix policy prescriptions of the agribusiness agendas, the African groups said. They were instead pushing for a radical shift from fossil fuel-based industrial agriculture and corporate monopolies of food and agriculture to food sovereignty and agroecology.

In March, hundreds of faith groups and people of faith from Africa asked the Gates Foundation to stop promoting a model of industrial monoculture farming and food processing that is not sustaining our people. The groups wrote their letter out of grave concern that the Gates Foundations support for the expansion of intensive industrial-scale agriculture is deepening the humanitarian crisis.

Marion Nestle, professor emerita at New York University, described the criticisms of the UNFSS in a July 14 blog post at FoodPolitics.com.

The criticisms are so severe that the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism for relations with the UN is organizing counter events July 25-27, she wrote.

According to Nestle, the UNFSS has been heavily criticized for setting agenda themes determined by corporate entities; favoring corporate technological solutions to food system problems; ignoring agroecology, organic farming and indigenous knowledge; excluding meaningful representation from people most affected by food system transformation; promoting corporate control of food systems; ignoring the conflicted interests of its organizers; and being fundamentally undemocratic.

Billions at stake in battle over food systems

Michael Fahkri, the UN rapporteur on the right to food, said that billions of dollars in public and private investments to improve food systems are at stake through the food summit negotiations.

Fahkri and other UN insiders have criticized the summits leaders, saying that they are ignoring human rights, marginalizing civil society and restructuring the process to shift power away from the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) into the hands of a small set of private sector actors.

The High Level Panel of Experts (HLPE) on food security and nutrition, which advises the CFS, has earlier called for a paradigm shift away from industrial agriculture and toward agroecological approaches and policies that address social needs and inequality.

But instead of following the direction of its expert panel, the UN has allowed an agribusiness takeover of food system negotiations.

The 2021 UNFSS was announced alongside a new partnership agreement between the UN and World Economic Forum (WEF). UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appointed Agnes Kalibata, president of the Gates-funded Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), to lead the food summit. (Related: How Bill Gates and his foundation are driving the food system  in the wrong direction.)

These moves sparked outrage from hundreds of groups who called for the termination of the WEF agreement and asked for Kalibatas appointment to be revoked over concerns that AGRA promotes a high input agricultural model that is not sustainable beyond constant subsidy, which is drawn from increasingly scarce public resources.

In a new report published recently, the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) described a problematic new science-policy framework and governance structure that is being proposed through the food summit.

If adopted, the plan could marginalize the CFS, its expert panel and civil society groups even further, effectively excluding them from UN decision-making processes. IPES-Food described the situation as a high-stakes battle over different visions of what constitutes legitimate science and relevant knowledge for food systems.

Follow FoodCollapse.com for more news and information related to food shortages.

Sources include:

USRTK.org

USNews.com

FoodPolitics.com

GainHealth.org
(Natural News) The World Health Organization (WHO) is finally admitting that it lied about the origin of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

After earlier insisting that there was no way the Chinese Virus came from a Chinese laboratory, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus now says that it is entirely possible that the Wuhan Flu was cooked up by mad scientists.

The truth will only come out if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) agrees to be more transparent, Ghebreyesus says, which up until now has not been the case. Thus, there is no way to truly know where the Fauci Flu originated.

Last year around this time, WHO investigators traveled to communist China to investigate the source of the Chinese Flu. The United Nations arm spent a brief amount of time there before quickly declaring that Chinese Germs randomly came from nature.

Fast-forward to 2021 and the WHO has found itself battling that same narrative now that new evidence has emerged to show that the Chinese Sickness did not come from bat soup at a Wuhan wet market, but rather from Fauci and his communist friends.

Now, the WHO is pretending to care about this newfound proof of foul play, claiming that if only the CCP had cooperated last year then widespread misinformation would not have spread.

Ghebreyesus told reporters that he is asking actually [sic] China to be transparent, open and cooperate, especially on the information, raw data that we asked for at the early days of the pandemic.

He added, speciously, that there was a premature push to rule out the lab origin theory, even though the WHO itself declared that it was extremely unlikely that the Fauci Flu came from a lab leak.

I was a lab technician myself, Im an immunologist, and I have worked in the lab, and lab accidents happen, Ghebreyesus now claims, pretending as though he did not hold the opposite view last year. Its common.

Rather than push communist China to share all pertinent data last year, the WHO went in and out of the country in a flash before declaring at warp speed that the Chinese Virus was just a random fluke that could not have been stopped.

The World Health Organization is steeped in deception and junk science

According to Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law from Georgetown University, these latest claims by Ghebreyesus prove that the WHO is exceptionally weak.

WHO has no powers or political heft to demand access to information critical for global health, Gostin says. All Tedros can do is use the bully pulpit, but it will fall on deaf ears.

Hilariously, the WHOs trip to China last year had to first receive approval from the CCP, which basically put together its itinerary. The communist regime decided which field sites the WHO could visit and when, and agents from the United Nations arm had to receive the CCPs permission for everything they did.

Still, politicians everywhere continue to praise communist China, likely because they are on the dole. China Joe sure is doing its bidding, as are others like German Health Minister Jens Spahn, who praised the Chinese regime for its cooperation during the first mission to the country at the start of the plandemic.

They (China) just threatened to nuke Japan nonstop if they interfere with their attempt to conquer Taiwan, and you want them to cooperate with a lab leak investigation that would land them in serious trouble worldwide? asked one commenter at Breitbart News, pointing out the ridiculousness of the WHOs empty calls for a proper plandemic investigation.

The WHO is a special kind of goofy.

The latest news about Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) deception can be found at Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

Breitbart.com

NaturalNews.com
(Natural News) An X-ray technician in California whose January death was under investigation as his family suggested a possible link to his second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine died due to heart disease, a coroners report concluded. Tim Zook, 60, died of hypertensive and atherosclerotic heart disease with severe cardiomegaly and heart failure, according to his autopsy report.

(Article by Alexandria Hein republished from FoxNews.com)

The report did not mention a COVID-19 vaccine and said he died at UC Irvine Medical Center.

At the time of his death, Zooks widow, Rochelle, told local news outlets that her husband believed in vaccines and was sure he would take that vaccine again, and hed want the public to take it, but that she noticed his health went into a sharp decline after he received his second dose of the Pfizer shot.

We are not blaming any pharmaceutical company, she had told the Orange County Register, before suggesting that his downturn was some sort of a reaction.

At the time, the Orange County coroner confirmed to Fox News that it was investigating his death and said that if its determined there may be a correlation to the vaccine, we will immediately notify the OC Health Care Agency.

Pfizer and BioNTech had also confirmed to Fox News at the time that they were aware of Zooks death and were thoroughly reviewing the matter.

Our immediate thoughts are with the bereaved family, a statement provided to Fox News said at the time. We closely monitor all such events and collect relevant information to share with global regulatory authorities. Based on ongoing safety reviews performed by Pfizer, BioNTech and health authorities, BNT162b2 retains a positive benefit-risk profile for the prevention of COVID-19 infections. Serious adverse events, including deaths that are unrelated to the vaccine, are unfortunately likely to occur at a similar rate as they would in the general population.

In 2020, nearly every death in America was labeled a covid death, while in 2021, nearly every post-vaccine death is declared to be completely unrelated to the vaccine.

Read more at: FoxNews.com and VaccineDeaths.com
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City of Richland is Shutting Off the Light at Bradley Blvd on George Washington Way
Johnny L. Gardner, 56, of New Castle passed away the morning of July 22, 2021, at UPMC Jameson Hospital. Following his wishes, no calling hours or services are scheduled at this time.


Royal award for Burnham Thorpe church organist

Mary Heather, who has been playing the organ at Burnham Thorpe parish church for eight decades, has received an award from the Prince of Wales for her fund-raising achievement for the Norfolk Churches Trust.

Mary, who is now 93 years old, started playing the organ at All Saints, Burnham Thorpe, as a teenager, and she is still doing so eighty years later. A special service was held at which she was presented with her award.



She raised a magnificent 25,700 of the record total of more than 175,000 in the Norfolk Churches Trusts latest annual Bike Ride. She was presented with a certificate which had been signed by Prince Charles, who is patron of the Norfolk Churches Trust, in recognition of her remarkable achievement. Lady Dannatt, Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, presented the framed certificate on behalf of the Prince. She also gave a 1,000 cheque from the trust to the church for raising the most by an individual, as well as a bottle of champagne for Mary herself.



Revd. Steve Wood, Priest-in-charge of the Burnham Benefice, said in his address, Mary who has been a tireless contributor to this church here in Burnham Thorpe, has been a churchwarden and a leader in the community, and has played the organ here for more years than I care to say. Today we are specially thanking her for her fundraising effort for Norfolk Churches, which she has been doing by bicycle, and on foot for many years.



In reply, Mrs Heather, who played at the service, thanked her friends and supporters. She had thoroughly enjoyed taking part in the annual Bike Ride for many years, which had given her the opportunity to visit so many churches.



The photo above shows Mary Heather, centre, with her nephew Paul Howard, and Lady Dannatt (in green), Norfolk's Lord Lieutenant, and members of the Norfolk Churches Trust, including Lord Dannatt (extreme right) and trust chairman, Peter Sheppard, extreme left. The picture is courtesy of Charles Inglis.



This story is based on an article in the Eastern Daily Press .

Do you have a news story or forthcoming event relating to Christians or a church in North Norfolk?

If so, e-mail tony.rothe@networknorwich.co.uk with details and, if possible a suitable picture.

Tony Rothe, 20/07/2021
Newburyport, MA (01950)

Today

Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. High near 75F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
Newburyport, MA (01950)

Today

Partly cloudy early. Scattered thunderstorms developing in the afternoon. High near 75F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
By Associated Press

As the coronavirus pandemic threatened to overwhelm Chinese hospitals last year, Chinese resellers appear to have colluded to inflate the prices of ventilators and other essential medical equipment from multinational companies including Siemens, GE and Philips, according to a review of recent public records on the sale of medical equipment in China.

Hospitals purchased high-value MRIs, CT scanners, ultrasound machines, and other equipment all vital for diagnosing and researching the novel coronavirus -- in some cases paying millions of dollars above fair market prices. Such inflated prices typically include a cushion for bribery of hospital officials and others along the purchasing chain, according to court cases and corruption experts.

One Chinese hospital paid a reseller $5.16 million for a GE Signa Pioneer MRI scanner, while another Chinese hospital paid just $2.56 million for the same machine. A Siemens CT scanner sold for $3.24 million at one Chinese hospital, when the top-of-the-line Siemens model carries a market price of $1.95 million.

The bidding documents, which usually include the prices, often contain such detailed technical specifications that it would be difficult for anyone other than employees of the manufacturers to draw them up, suggesting that companies like Siemens, GE, and Philips may at times tacitly assist resellers engaged in deals that risk violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

In 2008, Siemens paid one of the biggest corporate fines in history, $1.6 billion, over foreign bribery charges and made pledges of reform, admitting it had violated the record-keeping and internal control provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Later reporting by Suddeutsche Zeitung and The New York Times following Chinese corruption trials documented the involvement of employees of Western companies in bribery in Chinese health care.

The new revelations, based on more recent purchases by hospitals, suggest the return of a "familiar cycle," according to Peter Humphrey, who investigated corruption in China for several years, at one point bringing a legal case against pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline. In the aftermath of the case, Humphrey, a former Reuters correspondent, eventually served two years in a Chinese prison for buying personal data.

"In my experience, companies neglect due diligence, turn a blind eye to corruption, until the bomb goes off," he said. "Then the bomb goes off, they're in trouble. Part of the response is to launch a stronger compliance function, but after a number of years they revert to form."

"The jungle grows back," he said.

Dangerous resellers

Public tenders from across China are collected on the website chinabidding.com, a search of which reveals numerous suspicious deals: For instance, in May 2020 the Fifth People's Hospital of Jingzhou, in the Hubei province not far from Wuhan, paid 2.4 million renminbi, or $340,000, for a GE Logiq S8 ultrasound.

The machine typically retails new for $70,000 to $150,000, depending on the options, according to medical equipment suppliers.

ALSO READ | China rejects hacking charges, accuses US of cyberspying

GE would not comment specifically on this deal or any of the others in this article, but in a statement, a GE spokesperson insisted that the third-party resellers involved in such deals were not company representatives or agents, but GE's customers. The company has no control over the prices resellers charged hospitals, it maintains, adding that it is not even allowed to know the pricing under antitrust law.

Antitrust lawyers dispute GE's interpretation, noting that antitrust laws don't prevent a manufacturer from simply knowing the price that a reseller sets, or keep manufacturers' employees from providing support to resellers submitting public tenders of their equipment.

In another bid, from November 2019, a Chinese reseller sold Newport ventilators made by the US-Irish company Medtronic for 295,000 renminbi, or $42,000, to the Southern Medical University Hospital of Integrated Traditional Chinese and Western Medicine.

The same machine, known as a Covidien e360 ventilator, sells for less than half that price on medical tech retail websites in the United States. In a statement, Medtronic said it did not control distribution pricing, and that many factors can influence how a product is priced. "Reseller pricing can further vary in China based on the nature of services associated with product delivery, education and training, and product service and support among other factors," the statement said.

But insiders in the Chinese health care market say none of those factors explain the price disparities. "If you look at the bidding documentation and the global prices, you can still see a huge gap in between," said Meng-Lin Liu, a former Siemens compliance officer in China, who has analyzed dozens of such transactions. Hospitals pay the high bidding price to the resellers, but the resellers only pay the normal global price to the multinationals, Liu explained.

Bribing foreign public officials, such as hospital officials in a public health care system, is illegal under the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Hence the need for middlemen, who offer a form of legal insulation. But as Tom Fox, veteran FCPA lawyer and independent consultant, noted, "Under the FCPA, it's of zero consequence who sells the equipment; the manufacturer is liable. It doesn't matter what you call it: Whether it's a reseller, whether it's a distributor or an agent - if I'm selling Siemens equipment, Siemens is 100 percent always liable for the bribery."

The SEC is conducting a massive, long-term probe into bid-rigging in various regions involving Siemens, GE, and Philips, according to a source familiar with the probe. The SEC will not comment on the existence of ongoing investigations, but in a February 2021 filing to the SEC, Philips acknowledged that it has been cooperating with an SEC and DOJ inquiry into "tender irregularities in the medical device industry in certain other jurisdictions...These interactions are ongoing and focus primarily on a number of compliance findings that the company is addressing in China and Bulgaria."

Philips declined to comment further, but a spokesperson said, "(E)veryone in Philips and its business partners is expected to always act with integrity. Philips rigorously enforces compliance of its General Business Principles throughout its operations." Like GE, Siemens and Medtronic, Philips declined to answer specific questions about the deals mentioned in this article.

Corruption during a pandemic

One tender, published April 7, 2020, shows the Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University seeking bids for a Siemens CT Scanner to treat Covid-related pneumonia. While government documents do not name the model selected, they do give the price paid: 22.98 million renminbi, or $3.24 million. That surpasses the typical cost of the most expensive Siemens machines, the SOMATOM Force or the SOMATOM Drive, in the US and elsewhere in China by more than $1 million.

In the US, the SOMATOM Force currently sells for about $1.95 million, while the SOMATOM Drive retails for $1.68 million, according to the New York State Office of General Procurement Services, which publishes the prices of medical devices it purchases for state agencies.

In a statement, Siemens maintained that resellers were "completely free" in their pricing. "The distributor calculates a price that includes all their costs," a spokesman said, adding that price disparities could reflect ancillary costs and terms.

However, not all Chinese hospitals are paying vastly inflated prices for equipment. A bid from May 2019 shows the Affiliated Hospital of Chengde Medical College purchased a GE Signa Pioneer directly for just 17.6 million renminbi, or $2.56 million, including warranty and freight expenses. That's more than $2 million less than another hospital in Yangchun paid for the same machine in January 2020.

Chinese hospitals and companies involved in bids mentioned in this article did not respond to detailed questions.

A senior manager at the Shenzhen Gaokaiyue Trading Co. did speak, requesting anonymity due to the "sensitive" nature of the information. He said the final price for equipment could differ in China depending on "features and configurations," but that it "should not be 80 percent more or even double than the net price in the States."

Contrary to claims by GE and Siemens, the manager said that manufacturers' representatives were routinely involved in a reseller's bid. He said "every manufacturer's salesman will represent the company" in meetings to explain the medical devices to clients during the bidding process. Occasionally, their managers joined as well.

Familiar terrain

Witnesses in Chinese court cases released in the past year also testified that employees of both GE and Siemens were directly involved in the bid-rigging schemes. In one recently published verdict, a hospital president who took bribes from 2004 to 2017 testified that a Siemens business manager offered him 2 million ($300,000) in 2011 to ensure that Siemens products won bids. In another case against a corrupt hospital president, a third-party reseller testified that a GE regional manager was not only complicit in a 2011 bid-rigging scheme but "would be responsible for taking the GE authorization letter and making the bidding submission."

Siemens has itself often boasted of, and has been celebrated for, tightening its compliance system in the wake of the 2008 bribery scandal. As part of that landmark settlement, Siemens was ordered to appoint a monitor who produced yearly reports, which the SEC and Justice Department have kept entirely from the public eye until now. (See Part II of this series.)

The involvement of international firms in bribery in China is hardly new, said Matt Kelly, publisher of the Radical Compliance newsletter. "Every single transaction with a government-owned business is high-risk. Period," he said.

This article is an abridged version of an investigation produced by 100Reporters, a nonprofit investigative news organization, in partnership with the McGraw Center for Business Journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York. The full investigation can be found at 100R.org.
Bismah Malik By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Shiv Nadar who co-founded Indias leading IT services firm HCL Technologies in 1975 has stepped down as the Managing Director and board member of the company.

He will be the Chairman Emeritus and strategic advisor to the board. Nadars daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra, who was appointed as the Chairperson last year, will continue in her role. HCL Tech CEO C Vijayakumar will take over as the company Managing Director, the management said on Monday.

Nadar had co-founded HCL Tech more than four decades ago primarily as a computer hardware company. The Noida-headquartered firm has crossed more than $10 billion revenue in 2021.

"Shiv Nadar, Chief Strategy Officer & Managing Director of the Company, on completing 76 years of age, has tendered his resignation as the Managing Director as well as the Director of the company with effect from close of business hours on July 19, 2021, the tech firm informed the stock exchanges in a filing.

The IT veteran earlier attempted to sell digital calculators through his business Microcomp and later founded HCL Tech with seven other colleagues with an investment of Rs 1.8 lakh. The firm later expanded to Singapore and sold IT hardware. Nadar currently owns nearly 60% shareholding in the company.

Meanwhile, the companys revenue for Q 1, FY22 grew by 2.2% sequentially at Rs 20,068 crore whereas earnings before income and tax (EBIT) declined by 2.1% at 19.6%, the lower end of the margin guidance that the company had provided earlier.

The company said that the impact of one-time bonuses handed over to its employees during the June quarter worth Rs 728 crore wasnt factored in while calculating the profitability.

The company has been able to maintain a healthy cash flow of $ 2.05 billion despite a dividend payout of Rs 4,344 crore.

HCLs contract value for the June quarter stood at $1.66 bn, up 37% y-o-y although the deal value almost halved sequentially. The deal-mix constituted of eight large services and four deal wins.

Rs 728 crore Firm paid bonus in June quarter
By AFP

COLOMBO: International ratings agency Moody's placed cash-strapped Sri Lanka under watch for a downgrade Tuesday on rising fears that the island could default on its foreign debt.

Foreign reserves of $3.6 billion at the end of June was insufficient to cover Sri Lanka's annual foreign debt servicing -- of $4 billion to $5 billion -- over the next four to five years, Moody's said.

It said Colombo's financing options were limited although it managed to obtain some bilateral loans.

Colombo has announced a $250 million loan from Bangladesh, a fellow South Asian country with a much lower per capita income than Sri Lanka.

"The decision to place the ratings under review for downgrade is driven by Moody's assessment that Sri Lanka's increasingly fragile external liquidity position raises the risk of default," Moody's said.

In September, Moody's downgraded Sri Lanka's sovereign credit rating by two notches to "Caa1" (high credit risk), saying Colombo would struggle to secure funding to service its large debt.

In a desperate bid to save foreign exchange, Sri Lanka has banned luxury imports, including some food and spices, since March last year.

"Moody's expects Sri Lanka's foreign exchange reserves to continue declining from already low levels, further eroding its ability to meet sizeable and recurring external debt servicing needs," the agency said.

Sri Lanka's finance ministry reacted angrily to Moody's latest announcement saying it was "unwarranted", and warned it could reconsider employing the ratings agency.

"The unwarranted announcement by Moody's... re-emphasises the need for the Sri Lanka government to revisit its relationship with rating agencies," the finance ministry said in a statement.

Sri Lanka's central bank governor WD Lakshman said last month that the country would meet its debt obligations.

The economy shrank a record 3.6 percent last year on the back of lockdowns sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, the central bank expects growth of 4-5 percent this year with the gradual reopening of the economy and the roll-out of a vaccine programme.
KV Navya By

Express News Service

CHENNAI: Following the announcement of Class 12 results, numerous top performers have expressed dissatisfaction with the marks awarded to them as per new evaluation criteria. Many seek to write the optional exam to improve their scores.

A Class 12 student, V Sridevi, who scored 547 marks out of 600 marks, said, I would have scored at least 30 marks more than what I have scored now had I written the board exam. I did not attend a lot of revision tests since I was preparing for the final exam. Last year, I fell sick and could not write my Class 11 exams properly. These 30 marks could be the deciding factor to get a seat in a college.

Apart from the top performers, students who studied in CBSE till Class 10 and then switched to State Board for their higher education also complained of low marks. CBSE does not give marks as liberally as the State Board. When the competition is with other CBSE students, it is acceptable.

But, for students who switched, there is a huge mark difference, especially because Class 10 marks were given the most weightage, said P Bhargavi, another student. According to the evaluation criteria, the maximum weightage of 50 per cent is given for Class 10 marks, 20 per cent for Class 11 marks, and 30 per cent for Class 12 marks.

We usually get at least 20-30 centums in the school. However, owing to the new evaluation criteria, not even a single student scored 100 per cent or 600 marks, said Rajan, principal, Childrens Paradise Matriculation Higher Secondary School. Students, particularly, have been panicking after Higher Education Minister K Ponmudy, announced on Monday that college admissions will begin from July 26. They are worried if such a short duration is enough to write an optional test and get results, to apply for colleges.

100 per cent success rate

While in 2021, the Class 12 pass percentage is 100, it was 92.3 per cent in 2020, 91.3 per cent in 2019, and 91.1 per cent in the year 2018
By PTI

NEW DELHI: In the first verdict on north-east Delhi riots, a court here on Tuesday acquitted a man of rioting and dacoity charges while noting that the prosecution "miserably failed" to prove its case.

Freeing sole-accused Suresh alias Bhatura, Additional Sessions Judge Amitabh Rawat said the prosecution has not been able to prove its case against the accused as no incriminating material has come up against him.

It is well apparent that the prosecution has miserably failed to prove its case, forget about beyond reasonable doubts. All major witnesses are at variance with each other on material terms impacting the prosecution version, ASJ Rawat said in a 21-page judgment.

Furthermore, he said there was no testimony that connected the accused to the offence in question, and his identification is not established at all.

Notably, the prosecution had examined a total of seven witnesses which included the complainant, an eye witness, public witness, duty officer, assistant sub-inspector, head constable, and the investigating officer of the case.

While pronouncing the order through the video conferencing earlier in the day, the judge had mentioned that it was a clear-cut case of acquittal.

This is the first judgment in the case concerning the riots that broke out in northeast Delhi in February 2020 during the anti-CAA protests.

Trial is underway in many cases related to the violence that killed 53 people.

According to the police, Suresh, now acquitted, along with a huge crowd of rioters carrying iron rods and sticks, allegedly broke open the lock of a shop situated in Delhi''s Babarpur Road and looted it on the evening of February 25.

The shop belonged to one Bhagat Singh and was rented to Asif, who is the complainant in the case.

During the investigation, Singh told the police that the rioters were aggressive and wanted to loot the said shop because it was of a Muslim and he tried to stop them but in vain.

Both Singh and Head Constable Sunil, who was the beat constable in the area, later identified Suresh as part of the rioters.

Suresh was arrested on April 7, 2020, and admitted on bail on February 25, 2021, after spending ten months in Mandoli Jail.

On March 9, 2021, the court framed charges against him under sections 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting), 427 (mischief), 454 (lurking house-trespass) read with section 149 (unlawful assembly) and section 395 (dacoity) of the IPC.

Suresh had pleaded not guilty and claimed trial.

Advocate Rajiv Pratap Singh represented the accused, while Saleem Ahmed was the Public Prosecutor in the case.

Communal clashes had broken out in northeast Delhi in February 2020, after violence between the Citizenship (Amendment) Act supporters and its protesters spiralled out of control leaving at least 53 people dead and over 700 injured.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: In order to create world class drainage system in the national capital, the Public Works Department (PWD) should be made the nodal authority to undertake the redesigning of Delhis drainage system, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday suggested at a meeting chaired by Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal. He highlighted the PWDs success in fixing the weaterlogging problem at Minto Road underpass.

I am pleased with the work done by our agencies, and we can see the proof of their work at Minto Bridge. When Minto Bridge gets waterlogged, that day marks the onset of the monsoon. Our officers and engineers gave their best towards ensuring that the bridge does not get waterlogged,Kejriwal said,

Congratulating all officers and engineers, the CM said the PWD has proven its capacity to curb waterlogging at all the 147 vulnerable points.

Delhi, being the national capital, should have the best designed drainage system on offer, which unfortunately we do not have. There are a lot of places where drains of the Jal Board and the MCD converge, where there is no coordination. If an excellent design is in place and all the agencies can work together on it, then we can implement it, said Kejriwal.

Once such a system is in place, we would only require de-silting it once a year and the drainage system will be free of liability. We need to also popularise our grievance helpline numbers with the people of the city, he added.

The meeting was also attended by water minister Satyender Jain, senior officials of PWD MCD, DDA and other departments. Jain directed PWD staff to be alert 24x7 as the city will witness excess rainfall. We not only have to be alert during the day but extra alert during the night. We have over 1,500 pump sets and should deploy them all, he added.
ANUPAMA MILI By

Express News Service

KOCHI: The recent series of dowry-related deaths and the surge in the number of domestic violence cases against women have forced the government to start a Pink Protection Project that will monitor and take immediate action against culprits. The project will focus on dowry-related violence against women and protect them against anti social elememnts in public and cyberspace.

There was a series of suicides by young women  Vismaya (an Ayurveda student in Kollam), Archana (in Kovalam) and Suchithra (in Alappuzha)  in the recent months, allegedly due to torture. To ensure the safety of the brides at the houses of the in-laws, the Women and Child Development Department issued an order appointing Dowry Prohibition Officers in all districts. It was earlier confined to just three officers at the regional level.

The police will strengthen the existing Pink Police patrol along with the new projects and ensure the team members will visit houses and collect details from the relatives, neighbours and ward members. They will hand over the information to the respective station house officers. Specially-trained women police officers are part of the project and they would be available near educational institutions, buses and bus stations, and public spaces. They will be called Pink Shadow Patrol Team.

There will also be a Bullet patrol team called Pink Romeo. Pink Control Room would be set up in every district to support their activities, said deputy director V P Pramod Kumar. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan launched the project on Monday by flagging off the Pink Patrol team, including 10 cars, 40 two-wheelers and 20 cycles.

THE WOMAN WHO LED THE FIGHT AGAINST DOWRY

Indira Rajan, secretary-general of National Council of CBSE schools, filed a public interest litigation in the High Court on July 6, seeking immediate measures from the government, including the appointment of dowry prohibition officers in every district.

In the amended Dowry Prohibition Act of 2004, there were instructions to start three regional offices in the state to be led by a regional dowry prohibition officer, Indira said. However, these offices have been dysfunctional since 2017, she added. In my petition, I sought to find out what happened to these offices and requested the appointment of officers, Indira said. She added that those giving dowry are also equally responsible for the crime. In the petition, she cited that dowry deaths account for 40 to 50 per cent of all female homicides recorded annually in India, a trend over the period from 1999 to 2016.
By Express News Service

Blurr, the first film from Taapsee Pannus newly launched production house Outsiders Films, has gone on floors.

The team shared pictures from their muhurat shot in Uttarakhand. As they left for the shoot to Nainital, Taapsee introduced her on-screen husband, actor Gulshan Devaiah. Taking over the producer responsibility of revealing my star on board ! she wrote.

Blurr will be partly shot in the heritage buildings of Nainital with Mall Road and Russian Bypass. Besides this, certain scenes will be canned at places like Bhimtal, Bhawali Sattal and Mukteshwar. Blurr is being helmed by Section 375 director Ajay Bahl. Written by Pawan Sony and Ajay Bahl, the film is a psychological thriller with a social context.
By Express News Service

Mohanlal will be joining the Hyderabad sets of Prithviraj Sukumarans new directorial Bro Daddy today. The film had commenced production in Hyderabad on July 15, with Prithviraj shooting the portions featuring himself and Kalyani Priyadarshan.

Produced by Antony Perumbavoor, the team shifted to Hyderabad as shooting in Kerala wasnt permitted at the time. Now that the government has approved film shoots in the state (from today), the Bro Daddy team will be returning to Kerala after a few days of shoot in Hyderabad.

Mohanlal is also set to begin shooting for his next feature with Jeethu Joseph titled The 12th Man at a location in Idukki. The film marks the actors fourth collaboration with Jeethu after Drishyam 1 and 2 and the yet-to-be-completed Raam. Antony Perumbavoor is backing both films under the banner of Aashirvad Cinemas.
Navein Darshan By

Express News Service

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) announced its debut Breakthrough Initiative for India, by selecting 10 promising talents in film, television and gaming last month. Interestingly, the initiative which has Mozart of Madras AR Rahman as its brand ambassador chose only one talent from the field of music: Karthikeya Murthy, who made heads turn with his tunes in Madhumitas KD (a) Karuppu Durai.

An excited Karthikeya confesses that he didnt think that he would make it when he applied. It was director Madhumita and her husband who pushed me to apply for BAFTA Breakthrough. They trusted me more than myself and even supported me with making the showreel I had to submit as a part of the process.

Life has come full circle for Karthikeya in a way as AR Rahman was one of the judges to pick his band as the winners in the reality show, Ooh La La La, several years back.

He was extremely kind. He stood up for us when we werent selected despite delivering a good performance. He probed into the issue, got it sorted, and finally chose us as the winners. Karthikeya reveals that he has a long connection with ARR, and says that the Oscar winner is why he became a composer in the first place.

When I was a kid, my father (the famous musician TK Jayaraman) used to take me to recordings, and show Rahman sir playing keyboard and say, Dhileep (ARRs old name) epdi vaasikran paaru! This was the seed to my musical journey. Karthikeya shares that the album of Jeans gave him the final push to pursue music as a career. I was in 9th grade when Jeans was released. I was listening to Hai Rabba song for the first time. When the line Anbae enai, nee neenginaal, oru kanam ennuyir thaangaadhu came, I got goosebumps because of the composition. I kept asking myself how Rahman could conceive of that experience. I longed for the thrill and excitement of creating such music. It made me a professional musician.

One might assume that the journey might have been a bed of roses for Karthikeya, considering that his family ancestors have been famous musicians. But this wasnt the case. It was actually the opposite, says Karthikeya, laughing.

Music isnt a financially viable career, and my family knows this well. Though my family has been into music for seven generations, they experienced the association as a scar almost, and the wounds got deeper over the years. So, I had to take up a day job to convince them. They started trusting me only after K Balachander sir gave me a chance to work on his show, Oru Koodai Paasam.

Karthikeya states that composing for films is a different ball game. I struggled for years to reach the right people for opportunities. I was even chased away by many celebrities security guards. I guess all musicians out there must have gone through this phase.

The composer, who is currently busy with the composition of many web series shows for top OTT platforms, is eagerly awaiting the call from BAFTA.

I will be travelling to the UK, Where I will be mentored and given global networking opportunities. The organisation is waiting for the severity of the pandemic to subside, so the programme can get started.

He explains that each of the selected talents will be getting a unique program that is in no way similar to others. I have the choice to design my programme and mentors. It is designed according to the requirements and goals of the talents.

Karthikeya hopes to take the music of our land like Kurathi Kummi and Santali to the international audience if he gets a chance. India has a lot of unexplored folk music. These music forms got restricted geographically. I would also like to employ foreign music in Indian projects and create a cultural bridge. I am hopeful that this networking programme will mark the beginning of that journey.

He feels that the advancement in technology has reduced the incubation period for talents. It is a huge blessing. It would have been great had this boom had happened a decade ago, since many of the struggles that musicians like me went through could have been avoided. But better late than never! he says. I am happy for the young talents who are today able to fill the internet with their music. In fact, they keep me on my toes. He adds that keeping oneself updated every day is highly essential now to stay relevant. I see teenagers exploring new genres and uploading videos on Instagram every day. If a person fails to stay updated, they would get obsolete in no time. The competition is fierce. Indha competition ku edaila erangi six adikradhu dhan success.
Sumi Sukanya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Private hospitals in most parts of the country, barring metropolitan cities, seem to be struggling to carry out Covid vaccination due to low supply by the vaccine manufacturers and coordination issues at the state level under the new inoculation regime.

Days after criticism by the Centre on slow vaccination, their representatives have retorted in a letter to the government, which The New Indian Express has accessed, saying that the majority of the available vaccine this month has gone to the central quota.

The Association of Private Healthcare Providers of India, in a letter to the Union Health Ministry, has said that since vaccine manufacturing ramp-up is yet to materialise fully, most of the stock is picked up by the central government for distribution.

Not much is available for the private sector and only after July 15, there has been progress on procurement of vaccines by private hospitals. It is therefore not correct to say that the private sector was not showing interest in vaccination, said the letter.

ALSO READ | Delta variant 40-60% more transmissible than Alpha: Top official

Of about 41 crore Covid vaccine doses administered in Indiait is not clear how many were given out in private hospitals but sources said it could be in the range of 7-8 crore -- the majority of which may be concentrated only in a handful of cities.

From June 21, the Centre has taken over the responsibility of procuring 75% of the total available Covid vaccine in India while the rest is up for procurement by private hospitals.

Last week, in a review meeting of the vaccination at private centres, Union health secretary Rajesh Bhushan had termed the slow pace of vaccination through such hospitals as a cause of serious worry

In the letter, the AHPI, however, pointed out that many hospitals were not able to get the vaccine for a variety of reasons, which could be the absence of coordination at the state government level and the inability on part of manufacturers to supply the vaccine.

It also cited a recent survey carried out during the first two weeks of July among 70 private hospitals to gauge the status of the supply of vaccines to private hospitals.

About 77% of the hospitals said that they were not getting the vaccine on time and 41% of hospitals said that there were no nodal officers appointed by state governments in their localities.

It shows that the new system which was to come in effect from 21st June, has still not been in full functionality and therefore it will not be correct to say that private hospitals were not showing interest in vaccination, the association has said.
By PTI

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday lashed out at the opposition parties for creating a "negative" atmosphere in the country and stalling the Parliament proceedings over the Pegasus snooping controversy and demanded that they apologise.

At a press conference here, the BJP leader also said it was because of the "negative attitude" of the Opposition that it did not allow issues concerning the common people to be raised in Parliament.

"For the past two days, the Opposition has been trying to vitiate the atmosphere of the country over the Pegasus issue and it only proves their sick mentality. Congress governments had been doing such things during their tenures and now the party is following the same while in Opposition," Adityanath said.

The chief minister accused the Opposition of indulging in "negative politics" during the time of the coronavirus crisis. The Pegasus spyware issue has rocked the Monsoon session of Parliament.

As political heat rose over allegations linked to the snooping row, the Centre on Monday categorically rejected them saying attempts were being made to "malign" Indian democracy even as the Congress and the BJP sparred and the main opposition party demanded the sacking of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

An international media consortium reported on Sunday that over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge besides scores of businesspersons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Alleging that Amnesty International is directly involved in the Pegasus conspiracy, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Tuesday said he would request the Central government to ban the activities of the organisation in India.

Amnesty International is directly involved in the Pegasus conspiracy. Various Left-wing organisations throughout the world are a part of the conspiracy. I will request the Government of India to immediately ban the activities of Amnesty International within India, Sarma told journalists outside the state Assembly.

He said there were evidences against it in the past but with this recent expose, it was clear that Amnesty could go to any extent to defame Indias democratic fabric.

He said a certain international media organisation and a news portal of India, which broke the Pegasus story, said Amnesty International was a partner in their project.

We all know the role of Amnesty International and its credibility. It is all along encouraging Left-wing terrorism in India. It is working overnight to defame India. This (Pegasus) is a well-designed international conspiracy to defame (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi and the Indian parliamentary system and make a deliberate attempt to create dissatisfaction among people, Sarma said.

Condemning the malicious design, he insisted that the people involved in the process should be examined and brought to law. He asked how they could take so many names without any evidence.

The Assam CM said the names of many people had come into the public domain but none was ready to give his/her phone for a forensic examination.

(Congress leader) Rahul Gandhis name is also on the list. He could have filed an FIR with his hand device and it could have been examined through a forensic test. If he had done that, he would have known whether or not his phone was hacked. But he said he lost his phone. What does it mean? Sarma said.

He slammed the Congress for creating a ruckus in Parliament. Highlighting its past records, he said in response to an RTI application filed in 2013, the then UPA government had said it was doing surveillance over 5,000 phones and 500 email accounts.
By PTI

GUWAHATI: The Assam government on Monday made the COVID-19 test mandatory for all passengers from the North-Eastern region entering the state through airports and railway stations, an official order said.

Earlier, people from North-Eastern states who arrived in Assam by air or train and directly proceeded to their destination state were exempted from undergoing the COVID-19 test.

The decision was taken due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the neighbouring states, a notification issued by the Health and Family Welfare department said.

It comes five days after the state government had made COVID-19 testing compulsory for vaccinated travellers, withdrawing its earlier order that exempted mandatory testing for fully vaccinated travellers arriving via air and train.

The mandatory testing will be applicable until further orders, the notification said.

Five districts of Assam will continue to be under total lockdown owing to their high COVID-19 positivity rate while the movement of people to and from other districts across the state will remain suspended, state Health Minister Keshab Mahanta said on Monday.

These five districts Jorhat, Golaghat, Sonitpur, Biswanath, and Lakhimpur - along with two others, were declared as total containment zones on July 7 for showing a high COVID-19 positivity rate.

While the restrictions have been partially relaxed in Goalpara and Morigaon due to a slight improvement in the situation, the other five districts will continue to be under complete lockdown, Mahanta said.

There will be a round the clock curfew in these five districts.

"However, in the districts showing moderate positivity rate, namely Goalpara and Morigaon, curfew will be from 1 pm to 5 am," Mahanta said.

In the rest of the districts, which are showing improvement in the COVID-19 positivity rate and caseload, curfew will be from 5 pm to 5 am, the minister said.

All workplaces, business or commercial establishments, shops, restaurants, dhabas, eateries, showrooms of cold storage, among others, can remain open up to noon in districts with moderate positivity, and up to 4 pm in districts showing improvement, he added.

"However, shops dealing with groceries, fruits and vegetables, dairy and milk booths, animal fodder will be open up to 5 pm in districts showing high and moderate positivity and up to 4 pm in the districts showing improvement," Mahanta said.

He further informed that all inter-district passenger transport services and movement of people to and from other districts will remain suspended.

Though there will be a ban on the movement of all public and private transport in the total containment districts, movement of goods will be allowed, he said.

"In other districts, public transport will be allowed but authorities must enforce COVID-19 appropriate behaviour, " the minister said.

While public gathering is banned in total containment districts, up to 10 persons will be allowed in marriage or funeral events in the other districts, the minister said.

Other restrictions and COVID-appropriate behaviour, including wearing face masks, the odd-even formula for plying of vehicles, as notified earlier will remain in force, he added.

The minister said the new directives will come into force from 5 am on Tuesday and will be remain in force until further orders.

The state's COVID-19 caseload mounted to 5,49,080 on Monday as 1,797 people tested positive for the infection while 20 fresh fatalities pushed the coronavirus death toll of the northeastern state to 5,019, the National Health Mission bulletin said.

Kamrup Metro district reported the highest number of cases at 237, followed by Golaghat (230), Dibrugarh (115), and Jorhat (113).

Of the 20 fatalities, four deaths each were reported from Golaghat and Sonitpur and two from Goalpara.

Barpeta, Cachar, Charaideo, Darrang, Dhemaji, Jorhat, Karbi Anglong, Karimganj, Nagaon, and Sivasagar reported one death each.

The current death rate is 0.91 percent and the number of COVID-19 positive patients dying due of other causes is 1,347.

The state now has 16,107 active cases, and 5,26,607 patients have recovered from the infection, including 2,138 in the last 24 hours.

The new cases were detected out of 1,52,771 tests conducted during the day.

A total of 1,71,33, 089 samples have been tested for COVID-19 in the state thus far.

So far 89,24,857 people have been vaccinated, of whom 15,55,855 have received both doses.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Finance Ministry on Tuesday issued an order to implement the Cabinet decision to hike Dearness Allowance for central government employees to 28 per cent from July 1.

Last week, the Union Cabinet had approved an 11 percentage point hike in Dearness Allowance (DA) and Dearness Relief (DR) for central government employees and pensioners with effect from July 1, benefitting more than 48 lakh central government employees, and 65 lakh pensioners.

With this, the new DA rate will be 28 per cent, up from 17 per cent. In an office memorandum, the Department of Expenditure under the Finance Ministry said the DA payable to central government employees shall be enhanced from the existing rate of 17 per cent to 28 per cent of basic pay.

Centre issues notification for revised rates of Dearness Allowance. Copy of memorandum. @NewIndianXpress @TNIEBiz pic.twitter.com/MpLcrfZMR1  Anuradha Shukla (@anu1122) July 20, 2021

The increase subsumes the additional instalments arising on January 1, 2020; July 1, 2020, and January 1, 2021.

"These orders shall also apply to the civilian employees paid from the Defence Services Estimates," it said, adding for Armed Forces personnel and Railway employees separate orders will be issued by the respective ministries.

In April last year, the Finance Ministry had put on hold an increment in dearness allowance (DA) till June 30, 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rate of DA from January 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021, was 17 per cent.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: India has been offered 7.5 million doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX global vaccine sharing programme, but it is not clear when the jabs will arrive in the country as a consensus on the indemnity clause is yet to be reached, sources said.

The government last week said that it is working actively with vaccine manufacturer Moderna to see how its vaccine can be made available in the country.

Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine was granted emergency use authorisation by India's drug regulator last month.

"India has been offered 7.5 million doses of Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine through the COVAX global vaccine sharing programme," a source said.

However, there is no clarity so far when the shots would be available in India as "the talks are still on and a consensus on the indemnity issue is yet to be reached," a source said.

On the availability of Moderna vaccine in the country, NITI Aayog member (Health) Dr V K Paul had recently said the government is working actively with Moderna to see how its vaccine can be imported and made available in the country.

"To and fro (talks) are going on over the contractual specifics. Discussions have not yet concluded. We are making efforts as to it happens at the earliest. We are now expecting to hear from them anytime. Currently, they have to respond to some of the points we have made and we will take it forward," he said on Friday.

According to sources, the Indian government has put forth certain conditions for finalising the indemnity clause contract and has sent it to the US drug manufacturer for their perusal.

The cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered in the country has surpassed 41 crore, the Union health ministry said on Monday.

The ministry said that according to the 7 pm provisional report, 47,77,697 vaccine doses have been administered on Monday.

It said that 22,38,900 vaccine doses were administered as first dose and 1,48,075 vaccine doses were given as second dose in the age group 18-44 years on Monday.

Cumulatively, 12,73,70,809 persons in the age group 18-44 years across the country have received their first dose and 50,58,284 their second dose since the start of phase-3 of the vaccination drive.

Three states -- Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh -- have administered more than 1 crore cumulative doses of COVID-19 vaccine in the age group 18-44 years.

Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Kerala, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Punjab, Uttarakhand and West Bengal have vaccinated more than 10 lakh beneficiaries of the age group 18-44 years for the first dose of COVID-19 vaccine, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, more than 2.60 crore balance and unutilised COVID-19 vaccine doses are still available with states and union territories and private hospitals to be administered, the Centre said on Monday.

Over 42,15,43,730 vaccine doses have been provided to states and UTs so far, through all sources.

More than 2,60,12,352 balance and unutilised COVID-19 vaccine doses are still available with states and UTs and private hospitals to be administered, the ministry said.

The Union government is committed to accelerating the pace and expanding the scope of COVID-19 vaccination throughout the country.

The new phase of universalisation of COVID-19 vaccination commenced from June 21.

The vaccination drive has been ramped up through availability of more vaccines, advance visibility of vaccine availability to states and UTs for enabling better planning by them, and streamlining the vaccine supply chain.

As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the government of India has been supporting states and UTs by providing them COVID-19 vaccines free of cost.

In the new phase of universalisation of the Covid vaccination drive, the Union government will procure and supply (free of cost) 75 per cent of the vaccines being produced by vaccine manufacturers in the country to states and UTs, the ministry said.
Bala Chauhan By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: The Uttar Pradesh State Law Commission has released a draft of the Population Control Bill, which incentivises small families with one to two children and disincentivises them for non-adherence.

Eight states  Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand  have two-child norms and UP will be the ninth.Karnataka is also mulling a similar policy to incentivise smaller families.

TNIE spoke to Poonam Muttreja, executive director, Population Foundation of India, on the proposed legislation and its impact on women and their right to reproductive health. Excerpts:

Is there a population explosion in India? Has the birth rate gone up in the last 10 years?

There is no evidence of population explosion in the country. Demographic transition is under way in India.

The Indian Census data on population confirms that the decadal growth rate during 2001-2011 had reduced to 17.7% from 21.5% over 1991-2001.

Indias Total Fertility Rate has also declined substantially from 3.2 in 2000 to 2.2 as per the 2018 Sample Registration System.

More recently, data from the first phase of the NFHS-5 (2019-20) suggests that of the 17 surveyed states and five surveyed UTs, only Bihar, Manipur and Meghalaya are yet to achieve a TFR of 2.1 or less, implying that most states have attained the replacement level of fertility, which is defined as the rate at which the population replaces itself from one generation to next.

Where does India stand as far as maternal and neonatal mortality are concerned?

Between 2007-09 and 2016-18, India has seen a decline in maternal mortality by 47%. Both UP and Assam saw a decline of 45%.

According to NFHS-5 (2019-20), all states, except Tripura, Manipur and Meghalaya, reported a decline in neonatal mortality rate between NFHS-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-20). Kerala (3.4) and Bihar (34.5) reported lowest and highest NNMR, respectively in 2019-20.

What are the Karnataka statistics? A survey showed that the desired family size in Karnataka is two children.

According to the National Family Health Survey-5, Total Fertility Rate in Karnataka is 1.7, which is less than the national average of 2.2 and much below replacement level fertility of 2.1, which is when the population replaces itself.

Data from the NFHS-5 shows that desired fertility rate (the average number of children women of reproductive age desire to have) is even lower at 1.38%.

This shows that even without a coercive population policy, men and women want smaller families. The state, therefore, needs to expand the basket of contraceptive choices.
By PTI

RANCHI: Citing "challenging circumstances" in vaccinating its entire population amid limited availability of private hospitals, Jharkhand has once again urged the Centre to alter the ratio and allot at least 95 per cent of the COVID-19 shots through the government route.

This comes close on heels of the Jharkhand government last month asserting that "artificial" tie-up of 25 per cent vaccination in private hospitals may result in many citizens missing the jabs and emphasising the need for reducing the allocation to private hospitals to 5 per cent from 25 per cent.

"We have again requested the Centre to reduce the allocation to the private hospitals to 5 per cent as a major constraint in the state is limited availability of private hospitals to cater the rural and tribal population," Additional Chief Secretary Health, Arun Kumar Singh told PTI.

Private hospitals have made requisitions for procuring barely 1.20 lakh vaccine doses out of 8.28 lakh allocated for them for the month of July, he said, adding these requisitions came from hospitals in three districts only.

The state government has been emphasising that the mandate for 75:25 allocation format of COVID vaccines to the government and the private institutions needs to be reconsidered keeping in view the doctrine of colourable legislation (What cannot be done directly, should also not be done indirectly).

Singh in a letter to the Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan wrote: "This is to bring to your kind notice that in order to achieve 100 per cent vaccination, a major constraint in the state is limited availability of private hospitals to cater to rural and tribal population. It was requested to reduce the share of vaccination in private hospitals from 25% to 5% for the state of Jharkhand, against which, response is yet to be received."

Asserting that the state left no stone unturned in vaccinating eligible population in least time frame, Singh said private hospitals in the state have made request for procuring less than 15 per cent of the allocation earmarked for them for the month of July.

He also mentioned that only 19 private health facilities from three districts have come forward for procurement out of 24 districts in the state.

"As per allocation received from Government of India, 8,28,390 doses of COVID-19 vaccine are earmarked for private hospitals for the month of July 21. Against the aforementioned allocation, till date, requests from only 19 private facilities across 3 out of 24 districts of the state have been received from procurement of vaccines aggregating only 1,20,600 doses for the month of July which is less than 15% of the quantity earmarked by Government of India," the letter mentions.

The state urged the Centre to correct the anomaly expeditiously to facilitate total vaccination of all the eligible beneficiaries.

"In light of the above facts and challenging circumstances, it is once again requested to reduce the share of vaccination in private hospitals and allocate 95% vaccines to the state of Jharkhand from the government route to enable equitable distribution of vaccines," the letter said.

The state government has earlier pleaded that its more than 75 per cent population living in the rural areas have negligible reach to private hospitals.

Earlier, the Odisha government had also sought tweaking the share of vaccines to 95:5.

The state had said, even in cities where private hospitals are available, on account of lack of purchasing parity, demand for COVID-19 vaccine on payment basis is very limited as Below Poverty Line (BPL) population across the state is more than 37 per cent.

It said the overall objective of the government is to achieve 100 per cent vaccination, leaving no one behind, at the least possible time frame.

The revised guidelines for implementation of the National COVID Vaccination Programme issued by the Government of India states that vaccine manufacturers shall provide 25 per cent of the production to private hospitals who can administer the vaccine on payment of vaccine purchase price and applicable service charge per dose.

In Jharkhand of the 24 districts in the state, 13 districts are notified as Tribal districts and 19 districts are listed as Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected districts wherein hesitancy in vaccination has been a key challenge in the ongoing COVID-19 vaccination drive.
By PTI

LUCKNOW: BSP president Mayawati on Tuesday termed the Pegasus snooping incident as a "very serious matter" and demanded an impartial inquiry into it for fixing responsibility.

"The dirty game of espionage and blackmailing is not a new thing, but breaching privacy with the help of very expensive equipments, minutely spying on ministers, opposition leaders, officers and journalists, etc. is a very serious matter. There is sensation across the country after it has been busted," the former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said in a tweet in Hindi.

In a related tweet, she said, "The clarifications, refutations and arguments of the Centre in this connection have failed to satisfy the people." Due to the seriousness of the matter, it would be good for the government and the country that an independent and impartial inquiry gets conducted at the earliest so that responsibility could be fixed, Mayawati added.

An international media consortium reported on Sunday that over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including those of two ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge, besides scores of business leaders and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the Israeli spyware Pegasus sold only to government agencies.

The government, however, dismissed the allegation of any kind of surveillance on its part on specific people, saying it "has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever".
Sumi Sukanya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Top government officials on Tuesday suggested that primary schools in India can be opened first in districts reporting less than 5% Covid test positivity rate as kids can handle infection better.

It was, however, also recommended that full vaccination of teachers and all support staff in schools should be ensured before schools can be reopened.

Schools across India have been shut since March 2020 and while physical classes for classes 9 and above had begun last year briefly in a few states when the Covid19 cases started declining, they were again forced shut and shifted to online mode due to the devastating second wave of the pandemic.

We know clearly that children can handle viral infections much better than adults as they have fewer ACE receptor cells which the virus uses to invade the body, said ICMR director general Balram Bhargava in a press briefing on Tuesday.

Referring to the findings of the latest round of the national Covid serosurvey which showed that 57.2% kids in the 610-year age group and 66.7% of kids in the 1017-year age group had antibodies against SARS CoV 2, Bhargava also said that antibody exposure in children is not very different from adults.

He also pointed out that some Scandinavian countries didn't shut their primary schools through any of the Covid waves so far.

ALSO READ | Two-thirds of Indians have Covid antibodies, another 40 crore still vulnerable to infection: Government

"Once India starts considering (opening of schools), it'll be wise to open primary schools first before opening secondary schools. All the support staff whether it be school bus drivers, teachers & other staff in the school need to be vaccinated," said.

His remarks come on a day, AIIMS director Randeep Guleria too advocated the staggered reopening of schools.

Meanwhile, speaking to a leading portal, Guleria suggested that schools can be reopened in places where Covid cases are falling and positivity rates are less than 5%. I am a proponent of opening up schools in a staggered way, for districts that are seeing less virus circulation

Guleria, who is also a member of the countrys Covid19 task force on Covid said that districts with less positivity rate and cases should explore the option of bringing children back to schools on alternate days and look for other ways of a staggered reopening.

He added that if surveillance hints at the spread of infection, classes can be immediately suspended.

Last month, stressing that there has been a major loss in studies in the last one-and-half years on account of the Covid19 pandemic, Guleria said, Schools have to be reopened and vaccination can play an important role in that.
By Express News Service

KOLKATA: Despite drawing a blank in the Bengal election, the popularity of the young crop of leaders fielded by the CPM has seen an uptick on social media platforms, drawing murmurs of protest from party elders, who believe the emerging culture of individual fan clubs does not gel with the tenets of CPM that puts party before self.

CPM had banked on youth power to gain foothold in its erstwhile turf by fielding many young candidates under 30, prodding their social media savvy followers to launch massive campaigns on digital platforms.

However, two months after the results, the fan clubs carry on extolling the capabilities of individuals.

CPM state secretary Surya Kanta Mishra was one of the first to express displeasure over individual cult followings after coming across the Facebook fan-pages of Meenakshi Mukherjee, JNU scholars Deepshita Dhar and Oishee Ghosh, partys youth and student wing leaders Srijan Bhattacharya and Sayandeep Mitra.

Soon, politburo member Mohammad Selim, too, derided the emergence of individual followerships, saying, The party does not believe in loyalty to individuals. It would be good not to have a fan-page.

However, there were dissenting voices as well. A member of the DYFI said: If supporters create a fan-page, it should not be opposed as it would give our party electoral dividends.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Accusing the government of treason, the opposition parties on Monday demanded the resignation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah and a probe into the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Pegasus spying row, inviting a sharp rejoinder from the BJP which accused them of orchestrating conspiracies against the government.

The Congress mounted an offensive charging the government with compromising on national security.

The party said it would take on board all opposition parties over the issue and decide whether to ask for a judicial or parliamentary probe into the matter.

The Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge, said Shah should immediately resign as he does not deserve to occupy the position he is holding.

The government has not only attacked freedom of speech, but also the fundamental rights of people, he alleged. Congress spokesperson R S Surjewala said, The person responsible for deployment of this illegal spyware Pegasus is no less than the home minister, who must be sacked.

The CPM said it had raised in Parliament two years ago how this dangerous spyware was being used in India, as revealed by WhatsApp.

With these revelations, it is clear that this government has engaged NSO for such surveillance against its own citizens. The central government must come clean on what is its engagement with NSO (the Israeli tech firm that created the spyware), what are the terms and how much our public funds have been paid for this, the party said in a statement.

The Trinamool Congress said it will raise the issue in Parliament.

It is a serious issue and the minister in his statement in the House does not deny that the government was using the software. We will raise this issue in Parliament, said TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O Brien.

Party MP Sukhendu Sekhar Ray has given a notice in the Rajya Sabha under Rule 267 to discuss the Pegasus 'snooping' issue, the party said on Monday.

Opposition parties on Monday hit out at the government over the alleged phone-tapping of prominent personalities in the country using Israeli spyware, Pegasus, and demanded an independent judicial or parliamentary committee probe.

"Trinamool's Sukhendu Sekhar Ray has given a (Rule) 267 notice for Pegasus," the party said.

Rule 267 gives opposition MPs an opportunity to give a written notice to suspend regular business in the Upper House and seek a discussion on a burning issue.

Addressing a press conference, senior BJP leader Ravi Shankar Prasad also questioned the credentials of those behind the story, alleging that The Wire, the news portal which broke it in India, had been earlier associated with stories which have been found to be "incorrect" while Amnesty International has a declared "anti-India" agenda in many ways.

Those who broke the story themselves said that the presence of a particular number in the database does not confirm that it is infected with Pegasus, he said while questioning the timing of the story coming as it did a day before Parliament's Monsoon session began on Monday.

Noting that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is also being mentioned as a target of the alleged snooping, Prasad said sarcastically that his every comment is on Twitter everyday.

"He keeps sharing his wisdom with the country. Is there any need to know anything more," the BJP leader said in a lighter vein.

He also brushed aside a question on the Congress' demands for Home Minister Amit Shah's resignation and probe against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and accused the opposition party of hitting a "new low" in making baseless allegations in a manner that was bereft of any political propriety.

With the Congress "shrinking and losing", the entire row is timed to disrupt Parliament and build a baseless agenda, he said and also raked up snooping allegations levelled against the opposition party in the past, including a row involving then Union ministers Pranab Mukherjee and P Chidambaram.

He said an RTI reply in 2013 had revealed that around 9,000 phones and 500 email accounts were monitored every month by the Congress-led UPA government at the time and even recently its dispensation in Rajasthan was allegedly involved in phone tapping.

"One can go on and on about Congress' history of infringing upon people's privacy and freedom," he said.

Prasad said, "The BJP strongly refutes and condemns the baseless and bereft of political propriety comments levelled by Congress against the BJP. This is a new low in the political discourse of a party that has ruled India for over 50 years."

Targeting the sources behind the story, he said The Wire was also behind the Judge Loya story.

The Supreme Court had also commented on this, and it was all found to be a "lie", he said.

Judge Brijgopal Harkishan Loya, who presided over the Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, had died of heart attack but some reports had questioned the official cause of his demise.

The Supreme Court had also dismisses pleas for an independent probe into the matter.

Prasad added, "Can we deny that bodies like Amnesty had a declared anti-India agenda in many ways? They withdrew from India when we asked them about their foreign funding as per law."

Claiming that there is a conspiracy to target the Modi government as India develops and burnishes its credentials globally under the prime minister's leadership, he wondered if some people have become "supari agents" (hired agents) for such "international conspiracies".

He noted that NSO, the Israeli company that owns Pegasus spyware, has said that over 45 western countries have used the technology and asked as to why India was being targeted.

The company itself has trashed the reports about the snooping, he said.

The government has been similarly targeted in the past with baseless allegations about threat to India's diversity and multiculturalism, he said.

He also asked the Congress to not run away from debate in Parliament, and said that the government has made it clear that it is willing to discuss any issue.

Prasad said, "Our IT Minister confirmed today that for lawful interceptions of electronic communication can only be made as per relevant rules under provisions of Sec 5(2) of Indian Telegraph Act, 1885 & Sec 69 of Information Technology Act 2000.

Any form of illegal surveillance isn't possible with checks & balances in our laws & robust institutions."

Meanwhile, Congress veteran Digvijaya Singh on Monday said he managed to escape the alleged phone tapping using Israeli spyware Pegasus because he had stopped using his old mobile number which was mentioned in a letter related to the Elgar Parishad-Maoist links case.

The Rajya Sabha MP said he had already raised the issue of alleged snooping on certain individuals through the Pegasus spyware in December 2019.

"I was not on WhatsApp on the number they had mentioned in the letter from one Naxalite to another other and the case registered against me in Pune. Fortunately for me, I had stopped using that phone (number) for a long time, therefore I could not be implicated," Singh told reporters here.

The former chief minister was replying to a question whether he suspects that even his phone may have been compromised in the Pegasus spyware case.

In 2018, the Pune police had seized a letter in connection with the Elgar Parishad probe referring to a mobile number purportedly belonging to Singh.

The letter, seized in nationwide raids, was made part of a chargesheet filed against activists arrested for alleged Maoist links in connection with the Elgar Parishad case.

Singh was referring to the same letter.

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee Monday taunted Union Home Minister Amit Shah over allegations of snooping against him, saying Shah was unable to save his face from the humiliation of Bengal assembly poll defeat despite spying on him.

He mockingly asked the senior BJP leader to come back well prepared for 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

The Trinamool Congress also lamented the development and termed the allegations of snooping on Banerjee and poll strategist Prashant Kishor as "an attack on democracy".

"Two Minutes of SILENCE for the SORE LOSERS! Despite ALLIES like ED, CBI, NIA, IT, ECI, @BJP4India's money + might and #PegasusSpying Mr @AmitShah couldn't save his face in #BengalElections2021. Please COME Prepared with Better RESOURCES in 2024!," Abhishek Banerjee tweeted.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday hit out at the opposition Congress and international organisations for suggesting that the government was involved in surveillance of phones of politicians, journalists and others, saying such "obstructers" and "disrupters" will not be able to derail India's development trajectory with their conspiracies.

Despite putting its best efforts, the saffron party failed in its "mission Bengal" and faced defeat in the hands of Mamata Banerjee, who formed government in the state with a thumping majority.

The TMC leadership said the revelations prove that the saffron party is suffering from "fear-psychosis" over rise of Abhishek as a national leader.

"This is a black day for democracy. This is shameful that the Union government is using spyware to snoop on the phones of politicians, journalists, activists. Even youth leaders like Abhishek Banerjee are also not spared; our poll strategist Prashant Kishors phone was hacked."

"This only reflects the authoritarian mindset of this government. The union government should come clean on it. We condemn it," senior TMC leader Sougata Roy told PTI.

Echoing him, TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said, the revelations reflect the "fear psychosis" of Abhishek Banerjee that the BJP is suffering from.

Congress leader P Chidambaram on Monday took a swipe at IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw over his statement in Lok Sabha on the alleged illegal surveillance using Pegasus software and said it is unfortunate that the minister has started his innings on the "wrong foot".

In a series of tweets, Chidambaram said the minister should answer if the government acquired the Pegasus software/spyware.

"NSO Group, the owner of Pegasus, has said that 'NSO sells its technologies solely to law enforcement and intelligence agencies of vetted governments.' It is unfortunate that Minister Vaishnaw has started his innings on the wrong foot," he tweeted.

"The Minister should answer a simple question: Did the government acquire the Pegasus software/spyware?" he added.

Vaishnaw, in a suo motu statement in Lok Sabha, categorically rejected the allegations of snooping on politicians, journalists and others using Pegasus software, and asserted that illegal surveillance was not possible with checks and balances in the country's laws.

He said the media reports on alleged snooping published a day before the start of the Monsoon Session of Parliament "cannot be a coincidence" and stressed that there is "no substance" behind the sensationalism.

"The press reports of 18th July 2021 also appear to be an attempt to malign the Indian democracy and its well-established institutions," Vaishnaw said in his first statement in Parliament as a minister.

The minister, however, did not specify whether the Indian government was using Pegasus spyware developed by Israeli company NSO.

Chidambaram said, "In his statement the Minister has omitted to quote the crucial part of Pegasus' statement. The services that are 'openly available to anyone, anywhere, and anytime' refer to HLR Lookup services, not to Pegasus."

The former Union minister was referring to the statement given by the Israeli company to a group of media organisations that broke the story across the globe.

The Congress has demanded a thorough, independent probe into the matter and immediate sacking of Home Minister Amit Shah.

The NCP also sought a probe into the alleged phone tapping row and demanded action against those responsible for the act.

Party spokesman and Maharashtra cabinet minister Nawab Malik said only an inquiry will establish which agency of the central government allegedly hacked the phones of journalists, ministers and industrialists.

More than 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two serving ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge, besides scores of business persons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the Israeli spyware sold only to government agencies, an international media consortium had reported on Sunday.

Malik told reporters here that Pegasus has made it clear that it provided the software only to governments and not private individuals.

"If the software wasn't sold to private individuals, which agency of the central government hacked the phones of journalists, ministers, social workers, judges and industrialists," he asked.

Malik said the Modi government should explain if the alleged phone tapping was done for surveillance.

Action should be taken against those responsible, he added.

Earlier in the day, NCP ally Shiv Sena said Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Home Minister Amit Shah should clarify on the issue of alleged snooping of several people, including journalists, through the Israeli spyware Pegasus.

This shows the country's "government and administration is weak", Shiv Sena MP Sanjay Raut told reporters in New Delhi.

Extremely alarming: UN high commissioner for human rights on Pegasus snooping

The apparent use of the Pegasus software to spy on journalists, human rights defenders, politicians and others in a variety of countries is "extremely alarming" and the States concerned should take steps to protect against such "invasions" of privacy, the UN high commissioner for human rights said on Monday.

Politicians, rights activists and journalists were among those targeted in several countries including India, with a phone spyware sold to various governments by an Israeli firm, according to an international media consortium.

In a statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said governments should immediately "cease their own use of surveillance technologies" in ways that violate human rights, and should take concrete actions to protect against such "invasions" of privacy by regulating the distribution, use and export of surveillance technology created by others.

"Revelations regarding the apparent widespread use of the Pegasus software to spy on journalists, human rights defenders, politicians and others in a variety of countries are extremely alarming, and seem to confirm some of the worst fears about the potential misuse of surveillance technology to illegally undermine people's human rights," Bachelet said.

Media reports on Sunday claimed that spyware Pegasus was used to conduct surveillance on about 300 Indians, including ministers, political leaders, government officials and journalists.

The Indian government has categorically rejected the attack on it by the opposition parties in the wake of the snooping row, saying attempts were being made to "malign" Indian democracy.

Bachelet said various parts of the UN Human Rights system have repeatedly raised serious concerns about the dangers of authorities using surveillance tools from a variety of sources.

"Use of surveillance software has been linked to arrest, intimidation and even killings of journalists and human rights defenders. Reports of surveillance also have the invidious effect of making people censor themselves through fear," she said.

Bachelet said journalists and human rights defenders play an indispensable role in societies, and when they are silenced, everyone suffers.

"I would like to remind all states that surveillance measures can only be justified in narrowly defined circumstances, with a legitimate goal. And they must be both necessary and proportionate to that goal," she said.

Referring to the reports, the UN high commissioner for human rights said, "If the recent allegations about the use of Pegasus are even partly true, then that red line has been crossed again and again with total impunity."

She said companies involved in the development and distribution of surveillance technologies are responsible for avoiding harm to human rights and they need to take immediate steps to mitigate and remedy the harms their products are causing or contributing to.

"In addition to immediately stopping their own role in violations of human rights, States have a duty to protect individuals from abuses of the right to privacy by companies," she said.

"One key step to effectively prevent abuse of surveillance technology is for States to require by law that the companies involved meet their human rights responsibilities, are much more transparent in relation to the design and use of their products, and put in place more effective accountability mechanisms," she added.

The UN high commissioner said that these reports also confirm the urgent need to better regulate the sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology and ensure strict oversight and authorisation.

"Without human rights-compliant regulatory frameworks there are simply too many risks that these tools will be abused to intimidate critics and silence dissent," she said.

"Governments should immediately cease their own use of surveillance technologies in ways that violate human rights, and should take concrete actions to protect against such invasions of privacy by regulating the distribution, use and export of surveillance technology created by others," she added.

(With PTI Inputs)
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Rajya Sabha proceedings were adjourned twice during the pre-lunch period on Tuesday after uproar by opposition members over various issues including the Pegasus snooping issue.

The House was first adjourned for a few minutes after it met in the morning and then again soon after it met at 12 PM.

Members of the Congress, TMC, left parties rushed to the well as the House reassembled at 12 and started raising slogans.

They were also carrying placards with them.

Protesting members ignored the requests made by deputy chairman Harivansh to allow the Question Hour to function.

"Please go back to tour seats. Let the Question Hour continue. This is your time," he said urging the members to return to their seats and allow the House to function.

After continued uproar and sloganeering by opposition members, he adjourned the House till 1 PM.

ALSO READ | Pegasus row: Opposition meets to chalk up strategy against Modi government; Congress to hold press conferences in every state on Wednesday

He said members of various parties had met the Chairman, who decided that the House will take up a discussion on COVID-19 at 1 PM.

Earlier in the morning, opposition parties obstructed regular business over various issues, including the Pegasus snooping controversy.

Members of opposition parties, who had given as many as 15 notices under Rule 267 requiring setting aside of the business of the day to take up the issue they want to raise, raised slogans and rushed into the Well of the House, prompting chairman M Venkaiah Naidu to adjourn the proceedings till 12 noon.

The issues include alleged snooping of Opposition leaders, journalists and vocal critics of the government, fuel price rise and farmers' agitation against new farm laws.

No sooner had the House condoled the death of a former member, Ramadhar Kashyap, members of Congress, TMC, Left and DMK were up on their feet raising various issues.

With the chairman disallowing all the 15 notices as he did for the 17 served on Monday, Anand Sharma of the Congress said either the Rule 267 should be removed or the Chairman should consider notices given under them as long as it is there in the rule book.

"These are issues of concern. We should not only read about it in newspapers or see on television," he said.

Naidu said he agrees with Sharma.

"There is a need for (rule) 267. I have been there in the House and I understand the problem of national security, something serious happens, you have to suspend the business and then take up that matter."

But this provided the Chairman goes through the notice and then admits it, he said adding the notices given on Monday and Tuesday largely relate to "variety of issues. some of them ongoing for a long time, some of them discussed earlier."

The Chairman said he had received 15 notices on various issues.

The Zero Hour is the time when members can raise issues on which they have given notices, he added.

But Opposition members were not convinced and started to rush to the Well as Naidu called for listed official papers to be laid on the table.

ALSO READ | Covid pandemic not political but humanitarian issue: PM Modi to BJP MPs

As they raised slogans, Naidu adjourned the proceedings.

Lok Sabha proceedings were adjourned too till 2 pm on Tuesday.

Opposition members, including from the Congress and the TMC, started raising slogans and showing placards to attack the government on the snooping issue as soon as the House met for the day at 11 am.

The proceedings lasted for barely five minutes.

One of the placards read that while people are suffering from unemployment, the government is busy with "jasoosi" (spying).

The slogan was in Hindi.

Trinamool Congress (TMC) members alleged that party MP Abhishek Banerjee's phone number was selected for surveillance.

Abhishek Banerjee is the nephew of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

YSRCP members also flagged the issue of special status for Andhra Pradesh.

Speaker Om Birla said it is not right to disrupt the House and the government is ready to give answers on any matter.

"Please go back to your seats. I will facilitate a debate on every issue. (But) sloganeering is not right. The government is ready to debate on whatever issues you want to debate on," he said.

ALSO READ | Illegal Rohingya migrants pose threat to national security: Modi government tells Lok Sabha

The issue of "snooping" using Pegasus spyware has snowballed into a massive political row in Parliament and outside as various parties are demanding a thorough investigation and sacking of Home Minister Amit Shah, while the government maintains it had nothing to do with it.

Former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, BJP ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Prahlad Singh Patel, as also former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa and poll strategist Prashant Kishor were among those whose phone numbers were listed as potential targets for hacking through an Israeli spyware sold only to government agencies, an international media consortium has reported.

Meanwhile, Congress, Trinamool Congress (TMC), Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) held a meeting at Parliament and decided to raise the issue of Pegasus in both the Houses.

Although, Opposition parties are likely to meet again at 2 pm to take a decision over attending the briefing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on COVID today.

Reacting on the Pegasus issue, Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, "Have you ever heard of the usage of the intelligence system (Pegasus) by Congress and spying of this kind? This is a strategy of making new India."

Congress party on Monday demanded an independent probe into the alleged illegal surveillance of journalists using Pegasus spyware and sought the resignation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

While addressing the press conference on Monday, Congress leader and LoP in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge alleged, "The Prime Minister and Home Minister are involved in snooping on Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi, journalists, and even Union ministers. Before a probe, Amit Shah Sahab should resign and an inquiry should be conducted against Modi Sahab. If you have faith in democracy and work according to the constitution, then you are fit to be on that post."

(With ANI Inputs)
By ANI

NEW DELHI: The Congress will hold press conferences in every state on Wednesday on the 'Pegasus Project' media report issue.

State units of the party will also stage a protest march to Raj Bhavans across the country on July 22 demanding Supreme Court-monitored judicial enquiry on the 'Pegasus Project' media report, AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal said in a statement.

"Latest revelations today reveal that telephones of former Congress President Rahul Gandhi and his office staff were also hacked. It has been also reported that the spyware 'Pegasus' was also being used to hack cell phones in the run-up to the 2019 General Elections to Parliament," the statement said.

The statement further said that the "'Pegasus' spyware and all NSO products are exclusively sold to Government only. It is thus, clear that the Government of India and its agencies bought the spyware to hack the phones of opposition leaders, journalists, lawyers and activists."

"In this regard, the party has decided to hold nationwide protests across the country demanding Supreme Court-monitored judicial enquiry on Spyware Pegasus and resignation of Home Minister Amit Shah," it added.

The names of over 40 Indian journalists appeared on the leaked list of potential targets for surveillance by an unidentified agency using Pegasus spyware, according to a report published in The Wire on Sunday.

According to the report, the journalists who were targeted work for some news organisations in the country including Hindustan Times, The Hindu, India Today, Indian Express and Network18. Many of them cover matters related to Defence, Home Ministry, Election Commission and Kashmir among others.

However, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday said there is 'no substance' in the media report regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp, adding that the report was an attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions.

Speaking in Lok Sabha, Vaishnaw said that it can't be a coincidence that the report appeared a day before the commencement of the monsoon session of Parliament.

The Minister said that any form of illegal surveillance isn't possible with "checks and balances in our laws and robust institutions."

The party also held a meeting of Lok Sabha members at the parliamentary party office on Tuesday to chalk out floor strategy on the issue.

The meeting, which was also attened by Trinamool, RJD and DMK was held at 10:30 am prior to starting the business of House.

Congress party on Monday demanded an independent probe into the alleged illegal surveillance of journalists using Pegasus spyware and sought the resignation of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

While addressing the press conference on Monday, Congress leader and LoP in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge alleged, "The Prime Minister and Home Minister are involved in snooping on Opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi, journalists and even Union ministers. Before a probe, Amit Shah Sahab should resign and an inquiry should be conducted against Modi sahab. If you have faith in democracy and work according to the constitution, then you are fit to be on that post."

Taking a jibe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, "PM Modi says he promotes Digital India but today we are seeing it is surveillance India. NSO is saying that its products are used exclusively by the government to fight crime and terror. But they are using Pegasus against people who speak against the Prime Minister."
By Online Desk

Before the toppling of the JD(S)-Congress government in Karnataka two years ago, phone numbers linked to the HD Kumaraswamy regime were possible targets for surveillance, claimed the latest revelations on the Pegasus snooping row published in The Wire.

The report links the fall of the government in July 2019 and the BJP's takeover to alleged snooping. However, there is no evidence to establish that the phones were hacked.

The phone numbers of the then Deputy Chief Minister G Parameshwara, as well as close aides of the then Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy and senior Congress leader Siddaramaiah, were possible targets for snooping just before the toppling of the government, according to the report.

ALSO READ | Won't allow Parliament to function till Pegasus issue is discussed: Opposition parties

The records indicate that the phone numbers of some key political players in Karnataka appear to have been selected around the time when an intense power struggle was taking place between the BJP and the JD(S)-Congress-led state government after 17 legislators of the ruling alliance abruptly resigned to force a trust vote in the assembly, added the report.

Their phone numbers are part of a leaked database accessed by the non-profit French media Forbidden Stories and shared with an international media consortium, which also includes the Washington Post and the Guardian, as part of what is called The Pegasus Project.

The report said these numbers were spotted in a review of records of numbers that were of interest to an Indian client of Israel's NSO group, which sells its Pegasus spyware only to governments.


By PTI

NEW DELHI: Delhi Congress leaders and workers staged a protest near BJP headquarters here on Tuesday, demanding a judicial inquiry into the reported use of Pegasus spyware against journalists and politicians.

The protesters led by Delhi Congress president Anil Kumar marched raising slogans and carrying placards from their party office on DDU Marg to the nearby BJP headquarters. They were stopped at a barricade by the police.

Addressing the protesters, Kumar alleged the government had a role in the snooping row and termed it as a national security threat.

An international media consortium on Sunday reported that more than 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two serving ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge besides scores of business persons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.

The central government, however, dismissed allegations of any kind of surveillance on its part on specific people, saying it "has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever".
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: An international collaborative investigation by journalists on Monday continued to reveal more names, including those of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, election strategist Prashant Kishor and two ministers in the Modi government, whose phones were potentially targeted for hacking using Israeli malware Pegasus.

The names, which included new IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and Minister of State for Food Processing Prahlad Singh Patel, were revealed hours after the former defended the government in Parliament.

Making a suo motu statement in Lok Sabha, Vaishnaw said the report on the government using Pegasus was nothing but an attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions.

It is not a coincidence that the reports have been published a day before the monsoon session of Parliament. In the past, similar allegations were made on WhatsApp but there is no factual basis to these and have been categorically denied, he said.

The number of Vaishnaw, who recently became a minister, was among the 300 verified Indian numbers listed as potential targets for surveillance during 2017-2019 by a client of the Israel-based NSO group, The Wire said.

While Parliament saw a stormy start to the Monsoon Session as Vaishnaw made the statement amid the din on the Pegasus affair, a political slugfest ensued outside Parliament with the Congress and the BJP trading barbs over the issue.

While the Congress demanded the sacking of Home Minister Amit Shah and a probe into the "role" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the matter, the BJP hit out at the Opposition party over its attack and claimed that there is not a "shred of evidence" to link either the ruling party or the Modi dispensation with the matter.

While Union home minister Amit Shah called it a report by disrupters for obstructers, the Congress sought his resignation and a probe into the role of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter.

Reacting sharply to the report, Shah said, "disruptors and obstructers will not be able to derail India's development trajectory through their conspiracies" and asserted that it the report has been "amplified by few with only one aim - to humiliate India at world stage."

Releasing the fresh tranche of investigation, The Wire said at least two mobile phone accounts used by former Congress chief Rahul Gandhi were listed as potential targets by "an official Indian client of the Israeli surveillance technology vendor, NSO Group".

The forensic inspection of a cross-section of phones drawn from this list by Amnesty International's technical lab has confirmed the presence of Pegasus spyware in as many as 37 instruments, 10 of which are in India.

The Opposition will hold a strategy session on Tuesday on how to corner the government in Parliament on Pegasus.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjees nephew Abhishek Banerjee, renowned virologist Gagandeep Kang, India head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Hari Menon and former election commissioner Ashok Lavasas names also featured on the potential list of targets.

Over 1,000 Indian phone numbers were on the list of potential targets of which 300 were verified by the collaborative following which technical forensic analysis was performed on 22 smartphones.

The portal claimed that traces of the malware were found in Kishors smartphone. According to the portal, the list of around 50,000 phone numbers across the world was obtained through leaked data by Amnesty International and Parisbased Forbidden Stories.

The use of the malware could be confirmed on the smartphones only after forensic analysis. Some smartphones do not leave its traces and hence the potential hack could not established.

Israeli company, the NSO group, which owns Pegasus, claims only vetted governments are part of its clientele.

Mondays list came a day after it was revealed that the malware was used to hack into the phones of around 40 journalists and activists critical of the government.

While Lavasas phone was added to the list after he faulted Prime Minister Modi for poll code violations, Kangs was added in 2018 and Menons around 2019.

Gandhi's phones are not among those examined as he no longer has the handsets he used at the time that his numbers appear to have been selected for targeting - from mid-2018 to mid-2019, the report said.

In the absence of forensics, it is not possible to conclusively establish whether Pegasus was deployed against Gandhi, it said.

In his remarks, Vaishnaw said, "A highly sensational story was published by a web portal yesterday night. The press report appeared a day before the Monsoon session of the Parliament."

ALSO READ | Aap chronology samajhiye, says HM Amit Shah as he hits out at Congress, International organisatations on snooping allegation

"This cannot be a coincidence. In the past similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp. Those reports have no factual basis and were categorically denied by all parties. The press report of July 18, 2021 also appeared to be an attempt to malign the Indian democracy and a well-established institution," the minister said.

The report has been published by The Wire news portal from India as also 16 other international publications including Washington Post, The Guardian and Le Monde, as media partners to an investigation conducted by Paris-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories and rights group Amnesty International into a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers from across the world that are believed to have been the target of surveillance through Pegasus software of Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.

Also on the list was the personal secretary to Vasundhara Raje Scindia, when she was the BJP's chief minister in Rajasthan, and Sanjay Kachroo, who worked as an officer on special duty (OSD) for Smriti Irani in her first years as a Union minister in the Modi government from 2014-2015, it said.

Other junior politicians linked to the Bharatiya Janata Party, and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's leader, Pravin Togadia are other individuals whose numbers figure in the database.

The news portal said the list reveals that several people associated with the functioning of elections were also selected for potential surveillance, including Lavasa, the only member of the 3-member Election Commission to rule that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had violated the Model Code of Conduct while campaigning for the 2019 general election.

The leaked data also includes Hari Menon, the India head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and at least one other foundation employee, who were selected in mid 2019.

ALSO READ | Pegasus row: Spyware being used by Centre to crush dissent, says Thirumurugan Gandhi

Gandhi told The Wire that he had received suspicious WhatsApp messages in the past, one of the known vectors for a spyware hack, and frequently changed numbers and instruments so as to make it "a little harder for them" to target him.

Asked for his reaction to the news that he had been placed on a list of potential targets for hacking, Gandhi told The Wire, "Targeted surveillance of the type you describe whether in regard to me, other leaders of the opposition or indeed any law-abiding citizen of India is illegal and deplorable."

"If your information is correct, the scale and nature of surveillance you describe goes beyond an attack on the privacy of individuals. It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country. It must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible be identified and punished," the former Congress chief said.

ALSO READ | Pegasus spyware: Pakistan PM Imran Khan was potential target of programme, says report

Such was the apparent interest in Gandhi that the numbers of five of his social friends and acquaintances were also placed on the list of potential targets, the report said.

Hack not established, says government

The consortium has accessed a leaked database of 40,000 numbers. The presence of a number does not indicate whether there was an attempted hack, or a successful one, Vaishnaw said.

ADR founder on list

Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) founder Jagdeep Chhokar, associates of Union minister Smriti Irani and former Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, and around 11 mobile phones

belonging to a Supreme Court officer who levelled sexual harassment allegations former CJI Ranjan Gogoi were also on the list of potential targets.

Report by disrupters

Union home minister Amit Shah called it a report by disrupters for obstructers and said they have

been amplified by a few whose only aim is to do whatever is possible to humiliate India on world stage.

IWPC demands independent probe in Pegasus snooping row

The Indian Women's Press Corps (IWPC) Monday demanded an independent probe into the use of Pegasus spyware for alleged snooping on journalists.

In a series of posts on the microblogging site Twitter, the journalist body said it is "unfortunate" that in a democracy like India, journalists have to go through "something like this" in the course of their work.

"IWPC strongly condemns the spying on the phones of 40 Indian journalists," it tweeted.

Citing media reports, the IWPC noted the Israeli software allegedly used for snooping is sold only to the governments.

"And, as the government has come out with a denial, we demand an independent inquiry in the whole matter," it said.

The IWPC said independent journalism is one of the "most important tools" to uphold the rights that the Constitution has vested into the citizens of this country.

"It is unfortunate that in a democracy like India, journalists have to go through something like this in the course of their work," the journalist body said, adding "under no circumstances should the independence of media be compromised".

(With PTI Inputs)
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Samyukt Kisan Morcha on Monday accused Delhi Police of spreading misinformation by describing their protest outside Parliament as "Sansad gherao".

However, there was no reaction from police regarding the allegation.

SKM has already informed that there are no plans of laying siege to the Parliament, and the protests will be peaceful and disciplined, the umbrella body of farmer unions said in a statement.

"Delhi Police is choosing to indulge in deliberate misinformation and SKM asks Delhi Police to desist from the same," it said.

It condemned social media posters doing rounds, asking for a siege of the Parliament.

"All such calls, genuine or fake, are anti-farmer, and against the interest of the ongoing farmers' movement. SKM strongly condemns it," the statement said.

"SKM and the protesting farmers have nothing to do with such calls or any such organisation. SKM calls upon those generating posters and calls for action, to desist from deviating and diverting in any way, the just cause of farmers and their peaceful protests," it added.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court Monday refused to entertain a plea challenging denial of permission by the Maharashtra government on the ground of COVID-19 situation to hold annual pilgrimage by 'warkaris' of 'Sant Namdev Maharaj Sansthan' and other organisations to Lord Vitthal temple at Pandharpur in the state.

As per practice, pilgrims called as 'warkaris', along with over 250 'Palki' undertake the pilgrimage by foot from their respective natives places to the Lord Vitthal temple at Pandharpur.

Considering the pandemic situation in mind, the state government has put restrictions including the fact that now 10 'palki' can be taken to the temple.

The plea said the state government has arbitrarily denied the permission which has violated the fundamental rights of devotees.

"You know the pandemic. You know the situation in the country. And, you want that there should be no restrictions. Sorry, we cannot do this," a bench comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices A S Bopanna and Hrishikesh Roy said.

"Sant Namdev Maharaj Sansthan', in its plea, said the pilgrims from Maharashtra, Chattishgarh, Goa, Gujarat, Kamataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana will face a lot of hardship in completing their 'wari' (pilgrimage) , which normally starts froth their home to the Temple of Lord Vitthal, since the Maharashtra has allowed only 10 'palki' to perform the ritual."

"The Violation of Article 14, 19(1) (d), 21 and 25 of the Constitution. The State of Maharashtra has arbitrarily denied the permission to perform the Vari. The wari is an age-old tradition. Last year in the wake of Corona the 'warkaris' themselves had not pressed. But this year, people are more aware about the disease and would follow the protocol".

on Monday closed the matter related to Kanwar Yatra in Uttar Pradesh and asked the authorities to ensure that any untoward incident directly affecting the lives of the public shall be looked upon sternly and prompt action would be taken immediately.

The apex court took note of Uttar Pradesh government's submission that in view of the COVID-19 pandemic Kanwar Sanghs of various districts will voluntarily not take out any Yatra and they have postponed it this year keeping in mind the health and safety of public.

"Considering that the pattern of last year is to be followed by the state of Uttar Pradesh, in which it is clear that the "Kanwar Sanghs' of the various districts have given in writing their consent that, in view of the health and safety of the public, the Kanwar yatra will be postponed this year also, it is necessary now to close this matter," a bench of Justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai said.

"We may only remind the authorities at all levels to have regard to Article 144 of the Constitution of India and ensure that untoward incidents which directly affect the lives of the public will be looked upon sternly and prompt action taken immediately, reminding the authorities of a paragraph in our order dated July 16, 2021, which is set out once again, given the importance of the Citizens' of India's Right to Life," the bench said in its order.

The bench noted the paragraph from its July 16 order in which it had said that health of the citizenry of India and their right to "life" are paramount and all other sentiments, albeit religious, are subservient to this most basic fundamental right.

The top court had last week taken suo motu cognisance of earlier media reports on Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow Kanwar Yatra amid the pandemic.

Senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan, appearing for Uttar Pradesh, referred to the July 19 additional affidavit.

The affidavit said that pursuant to the court's July 16 order, the state government again convened a meeting of UP State Disaster Management Authority on July 17 under the chairmanship of Chief Minister.

It said additional chief secretary, Home, informed the authority that in response to state's appeal, all Kanwar Sanghs have given positive response and police commissioners, divisional commissioners, district magistrates/SSPs/SPs have clearly given their report that Kanwar Sanghs have given in writing their consent that in view of health and safety of public, Kanwar Yatra will be postponed by them this year also.

It said state disaster management authority took cognizance of reports received from various districts and made recommendations, including that "SDMA agreed with the offer of the Kanwar Sanghs and welcomes their proposal that they will voluntarily not take out any Kanwar Yatra in the current year and they themselves have postponed the Kanwar Yatra. From this, it is clear that like last year i.e.2020, this year also there is no possibility of Kanwar Yatra."

It said last year at the same time, COVID-19 graph was on an increase whereas this year, it is at its lowest with positivity rate being only 0.042 per cent.

"Last year also, keeping in view the decision of Sanghs to defer the Kanwar Yatra, no orders were issued to restrict the Kanwar Yatra and no adverse situation had arisen. Therefore, the SDMA advised that like last year, keeping in view the decision of Kanwar Sanghs to voluntarily defer the Kanwar Yatra this year also, there is no necessity to issue any orders restricting Kanwar Yatra," it said.

It said SDMA has recommended that if at local level, any devotee goes to local temple for 'Jalabhishek', it will be necessary for them to fully comply with existing COVID-19 protocol regarding religious ceremonies.

"SDMA also considered the fact that if orders are issued to restrict/ban the Kanwar Yatra, then demand can be raised to restrict other religious ceremonies of other religions /communities due to which social order could be affected," it said.

It said all religious organisations are giving their full support and priests (dharam gurus) have also made appeals to comply with COVID protocol.

"The neighbouring states where restrictions have been placed/not placed on Kanwar Yatra, will ensure that Kanwar devotees from their respective states do not enter in the state of Uttar Pradesh and Government of India should be requested to issue directions to this effect," it said while referring to recommendations.

During the hearing conducted through video-conferencing, Vaidyanathan said governments of Delhi and Uttarakhand have already said they would not allow Kanwar Yatra this year.

The bench also heard senior advocate K Radhakrishnan who intervened and requested the court to see that the Centre and states are vigilant and not complacent so that infectious or contagious diseases which have inter-state ramifications are fully contained.

"We appreciate the concern of Radhakrishnan and have addressed this concern in the preceding paragraph," the bench noted.

The Centre had earlier told the top court that state governments must not permit any kind of "Kanwar yatra" in view of the pandemic and arrangements should be made for water from the Ganges to be available through tankers at designated places.

The fortnight-long yatra, which begins with the onset of the month of Shravan by the Hindu calendar goes on till the first week of August, and sees a large gathering of Kanwariyas in Haridwar from neighbouring states, including Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi.
By PTI

TAMLUK/KOLKATA: Amid the nationwide row over alleged snooping activities with Pegasus spyware, Leader of Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly, Suvendu Adhikari, stoked a controversy when he said that he got access to call details of Purba Medinipur district SP Amarnath K, prompting the police on Tuesday to file suo motu cases against him.

Adhikari, during a party meeting in the district's Tamluk area on Monday, had also publicly advised the local police chief to "refrain from doing anything that might lead to his transfer to Kashmir".

Taking cognisance of his remarks, the district police, during the day, filed suo motu cases against the BJP MLA and 14 of his aides under various sections of the IPC, including one dealing with the Disaster Management Act for holding a rally without permission, and another related to deterring a public servant from performing his duty.

The senior BJP leader, in his message to the district superintendent of police (SP), had said, "Do not file fake cases. I have evidence to prove that they are fake and politically motivated. I will file public interest litigation seeking a CBI probe into such allegations. Please do not do anything that would lead to your transfer to Kashmir's Anantnag or Baramulla."

The saffron party legislator is facing multiple probes, one of which involves alleged tarpaulin theft.

The Nandigram MLA, who narrowly defeated Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee in assembly elections held earlier this year, also said, "I have details of all calls made to you (SP and other police personnel) by the office of the nephew (TMC MP Abhishek Banerjee)," and added that "if you have the state government's support, we have the Centre by our side".

Citing the example of former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who the CBI had grilled for his alleged involvement in chit fund cases, Adhikari said it would be best if police officers carry out duties without bias.

He hailed the NHRC report on Bengal's post-poll violence, which noted that the situation in the state is a manifestation of "law of the ruler" and not the "rule of law".

The leader of opposition added that he would hold a mass agitation in the district on August 9 with one lakh people to protest against all such "malpractices".

The district SP, when contacted, said, "We have lodged suo motu cases against Mr Adhikari. He claimed he has call records. Since he is not working in the law enforcement, he can't be having such devices (to record calls)."

The Nandigram legislator's assertions at the party meeting have further triggered a war of words between the TMC and the BJP, with the state's ruling party demanding Adhikari's arrest for "illegally snooping into the phone of a public servant and threatening him with a transfer".

"Suvendu Adhikari should be arrested immediately and interrogated in custody. He has proved that Pegasus was used to snoop on many people, including Abhishek Banerjee. It is a heinous crime. The Centre is misusing its powers," said TMC state general secretary Kunal Ghosh.

The state BJP unit, however, came out in Adhikari's defence and said if action is taken against Adhikari, TMC leader Mukul Roy should also be arrested for making similar allegations after switching over to the BJP in 2017.

"Suvendu Adhikari is a seasoned politician. He made the statements at a rally. If the police can lodge cases against Adhikari, then why is Mukul Roy being spared? "After joining the BJP, he said in an interview that the TMC government had tapped his phones. Was that statement true or false?" state BJP chief spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya maintained.

Roy, who had quit the TMC in 2017 and joined the BJP, returned to the state's ruling party last month.

The TMC has come down heavily on the BJP government at the Centre after party leader Abhishek Banerjee's name apparently figured in the list of targets of the Pegasus spying operation, terming it as "an attack on democracy".
Sudhir Suryawanshi By

Express News Service

MUMBAI: A day after 35 people died in a wall collapse triggered by a landslide, Mumbai officials on Monday started evacuating people from vulnerable areas.

However, with 22,000 slums housing over 1.50 lakh people in landslide-prone zones, activists fear such makeshift evacuations are only delaying a major disaster waiting to happen.

In 2005, RTI activist Anil Galgali had sought information on how many slums lay close to landslide-prone locations and the government plans to relocate them.

However, 16 years on, nothing much has been done by the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation and the urban development department.

Chavan government ordered survey of vulnerable areas

Galgali alleged that after a few landslide incidents, Maharashtra former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan had ordered the officials to identify landslide-prone slums across Mumbai.

In the survey, 22,483 slums were identified as prone to landslide. There were 3,968 and 18,797 slums in South Mumbai and suburban districts, respectively. These slums were spread over 327 locations. Of 22,483, residents of 9,657 slums needed to be urgently relocated. Nothing has been done, he alleged.

Missing master plan

Galgali said the state government and the local authorities were more interested in constructing the retaining walls than locating the people.

I have pursued this issue with all MPs and MLAs, but have never received any positive response. Unless the government prepares a long-term plan to shift the people, Mumbai will continue to lose lives, the RTI activist said.

New survey coming

He recalled a meeting, wherein the administration had given in writing that a master plan for the rehabilitation of slum dwellers close to landslide-prone areas would be prepared in a month, but nothing was done.

Attempts to contact Eknath Shinde, who is in charge of the urban development department, went in vain.

However, the department said the figure of 22,000-odd slums was from an old survey, and a new study to ascertain the facts before drawing a master plan was in the pipeline.

Rains pummel city

Rains continued to lash Mumbai for the third consecutive day, leaving a trail of destruction across the financial capital of India. Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation said wall collapse incidents were reported from five places, but no life was lost.

Power failure, inundation, short-circuit sparked fires and traffic

snarls were reported from across the city.

In Navi Mumbai, more than 200 tourists were trapped after spate in a local river. Local authorities with the help of fire and rescue personnel evacuated the tourists to safety.

Vehicles submerged

Due to heavy rains, nearly 400 vehicles, including high-end cars and motorbikes, were submerged in an underground public parking lot built by the Mumbai civic body at Thakur Complex in suburban Kandivali.

While the BMC did not put a number, it assured to look into the possibility of giving compensation to their owners.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Union Minister Nisith Pramanik became a sticking point on Monday, with the Opposition questioning the nationality of the newly inducted Minister of State in Home Affairs.

In the Rajya Sabha, the TMC MPs claimed Pramanik is a Bangladeshi  an allegation which was dismissed by the Centre which also slammed them for casting aspersions on the leader from a tribal community.

Without naming the minister, TMCs Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge asked the government to clear its stand over the nationality of Pramanik.

We will not let that minister speak on the floor of the house as he is a Bangladesh national, said Derek OBrien, TMC floor leader in Rajya Sabha.

Objecting to the remarks of opposition members, Union Minister and Leader of the House Piyush Goyal termed the allegation as baseless, asserting there is no truth in it.

This should be expunged. Its an insult of a big leader and a large society to which he belongs, he said, adding such remarks were condemnable.

"Go through Wikipedia, then you will find that the name of the gentleman A Minister of State for Home Affairs is a reportedly a Bangladeshi," Sekhar was also supported by Kharge and other opposition members.

"He has raised a relevant point. It's a point of order," said Kharge adding, "I have every right to know whether he is a Bangladeshi or not."

Last week, Rajya Sabha member and Assam Pradesh Congress Committee President Ripun Bora had written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to conduct an inquiry into allegations that newly appointed minister Nisith Pramanik is a Bangladeshi national.

As the issue sparked an uproar, Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman Harivansh Narayan Singh tried to pacify the members but failed.

Amid the commotion, Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal introduced The Marine Aids to Navigation Bill, 2021.

Lok Sabha has already passed the bills that will replace an over nine-decade-old law governing lighthouses and seeks to provide for a fresh framework to establish and manage vessel traffic services, besides changing the use of the term marine aids to navigation.

The Deputy Chairman asked the agitating member to discuss only the bills listed in the business of the house.

However, the members did not relent, after which the Singh adjourned the house till 3 PM.

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi was prevented from introducing his newly-inducted union ministers to Rajya Sabha as several slogan-shouting opposition members trooped into the Well of the House to protest over various issues, including farm laws and fuel price hike.

The House proceedings were adjourned till 2 PM as the protesting opposition members did not relent to Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu''s repeated appeal for order in the House.

When the House assembled on day one of the Monsoon Session, the proceedings were adjourned for an hour as a mark of respect to departed sitting MPs Raghunath Mohapatra and Rajeev Satav.

No sooner did the House meet again at around 12.25 PM, opposition members started raising slogans as the Chairman was making his opening remarks about the expectations from the current session amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the prime minister rose to introduce the newly inducted members in his Council of Ministers, opposition members created an uproar by raising slogans.

Questioning the opposition's conduct, Modi wondered "what kind of mindset is this" that prevents them from giving respect to the new ministers who are women, Dalits and come from Scheduled Tribes and OBC communities.

(With PTI Inputs)
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Opposition parties have unanimously decided to continue with their protest in both the Houses of Parliament over the alleged use of spyware Pegasus by the Centre to track politicians, journalists, and other prominent persons.

Leaders of the Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha met on Tuesday morning before the Parliament proceedings started. It was agreed upon that the Centre should take up the issue of Pegasus.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has convened an all-party meeting Tuesday at 6 pm where top health ministry officials will give a presentation to some MPs on the matter. Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) have decided not to attend the meeting.

The Congress demanded that the presentation should happen in Central Hall so that all the members could attend it. However, SAD said that they will boycott it pending their demand to repeal the three farm laws.

Congress Chief Whip in Lok Sabha K Suresh said that it has been decided that the Opposition will collectively continue to protest inside both the Houses on the matter from Thursday. Parliament is closed Wednesday on the occasion of Bakrid.

ALSO READ | Pegasus row: Congress demands probe by Joint Parliamentary Committee

Lok Sabha did not function on Tuesday while it was agreed upon in the Rajya Sabha to take up the short discussion on the management of the Covid pandemic.

Discussion in Rajya Sabha was agreed upon under special circumstances keeping in mind the importance of the matter and not participating in the discussion would have projected the Opposition unsympathetic to people who have suffered due to pandemic, said a senior Congress leader in Rajya Sabha.

The leader further said that the Business Advisory Committee under the Chairmanship of Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu agreed to take up the discussion earlier while the Pegasus report having named prominent political leaders being snooped by the government came later.

We will not allow the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha function till the Pegasus issue is discussed in the House. Today is different as Rajya Sabha took the discussion on Covid as the Centre does politics on the issue. Pegasus is the number 1 issue, it is a national security issue and no compromise on that, said Derek OBrien, TMC Rajya Sabha floor leader.

He said that repeal of three farm laws is also the topmost priority for the party and would continue pressing for the same in the Parliament.
By PTI

FARUKHABAD: A local court has issued a non-bailable warrant against Louise Khurshid, wife of former Union minister and Congress leader Salman Khurshid, in a case of misappropriation of over Rs 71 lakh received in central grants by Dr Zakir Hussain Memorial Trust run by her.

Chief Judicial Magistrate Praveen Kumar Tyagi issued the non-bailable warrant against Louise and Trust secretary Athar Farooqui and fixed August 16 as the next date for hearing In March 2010, the Trust had received a grant of Rs 71.50 lakh from the central government for the distribution of wheelchairs, tricycles and hearing aids among physically challenged persons in 17 districts of Uttar Pradesh.

Later allegations of corruption and forgery were levelled against the Trust's office-bearers in 2012 when Khurshid was a minister in the then UPA government.

However, the Khurshids had denied any wrongdoing.

The Economic Offence Wing started a probe and in June 2017, EOW inspector Ram Shankar Yadav registered an FIR against Lousie Khurshid and Farooqui in Kayamganj police station here.

Louise Khurshid was the project director of the Trust.

The charge sheet in the case was filed on December 30, 2019.

It was alleged that signatures of senior officials of Uttar Pradesh were forged and their fake seals were used to receive grants from the Union government for the welfare of the disabled.

The trust had said it had organised camps for differently-abled children across over a dozen districts  Etah, Etawah, Farrukhabad, Kasganj, Mainpuri, Aligarh, Shajahanpur, Meerut, Bareilly, Moradabad, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Rampur, Sant Kabir Nagar and Allahabad-- of UP for the distribution of equipment.

It was claimed that equipment was distributed among children and Louise Khurshid had verified it as the director of the Trust in May 2010.

However, it was later alleged that camps for the disabled allegedly existed only on paper.
Srinivas Sistla By

In the Yaksha Prasnaha (Yaksha's Questions) of the Mahabharata of Vyasa, a Yaksha in the form of a crane asks questions to which Yudhishthira gives befitting answers after saying, Virtuous persons never approve that one should applaud their own self." However, it is not at all uncommon to see many people indulge in self-praise. "One said, 'in this ruined village there is no one to praise me, so I praise myself'," thus goes a Telugu proverb. An idiom forbids humans from indulging in "Aatma-stuti, Para-ninda" (Self-praise and abuse of others). In the Sanskrit Panchatantra of Vishnu Sharma, The Turtle and the Swans narrates how fatal it would be if one indulges in self-praise, even when a situation demands it.

A turtle and two swans become friends in a pond, which gets dry. The birds plan to migrate to another pond, but feel sorry for their friend who cannot fly. The turtle proposes an idea in which the birds hold a stick in their beaks, and the turtle holds it with its mouth and flies along the birds. Before doing so, the birds warn the turtle not to open its mouth for any reason until they reach another pond. During the flight, the turtle hears someone on the ground say, "What an idea of the swans in carrying the turtle to another place." This enrages the turtle, which tries to say, "It's my idea," falls on the ground and dies instantly.

The Buddhist Kacchapa Jataka in Pali tells an altered version of the tale in which en route from the Himalayas, the turtle falls on the earth and dies at Benares when it was ruled by the over-talkative King Brahmadatta. His advisor, a Bodhisattva or the Buddha in one of the previous births, says, "O king, they that have the limitless tongue would encounter such a misfortune as this," and the king learns a lesson.

The swans-turtle tale was also narrated in the Sanskrit Hitopadesa and Somadeva's Katha Sarit Sagara,which were translated into English. To Edwin Arnold's English rendering of the former text, Gordon Browne had done an illustration in which the swans and the turtle in the sky were portrayed life-like and the landscape in the backdrop naturalistically, which were typical features of Western art. Though many woodcut prints were produced on the theme from the Renaissance onwards, to the best of my knowledge, no well-known artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Albrecht Durer, to name a few, had done works based on such popular fables.

In India, as C S Patil had pointed out, at least 39 ancient temples and sites contain reliefs that cover tales from the Panchatantra. I discuss here two reliefs that I photographed decades ago; but to the best of my knowledge, both have not received any attention earlier from scholars on the topic. Sri Bhimeswara Temple at Draksharamam (East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh), which was constructed by the Eastern Chalukya King, Bhima I (r. 892-921 CE), displays an executively carved panel with a pair of swans and a turtle between them. The swans seem to be holding a stick together in their beaks vertically, which is very unique, for all other works on the theme show the birds holding the stick horizontally. The birds appear to be still on the ground and are about to lift up the turtle, which had grabbed one end of the stick with its mouth. Such a visualization of the theme is rare and, as far as I know, not seen anywhere else. Panugallu (Nalgonda, Telangana) houses Sri Chaya Someswara and Sri Pachala Someswara temples. A portion of the former temple had been dismantled decades ago by concerned authorities with an intention to restore the same. The pull apart sculptures on the ground cover many incidences of the fable. A broken piece shows the pair of swans carrying a stick and the turtle; and, to suggest that the incident is taking place in the sky, the artist(s) had also included a small bird in flight right below the main subject. They had also included a man and another swan on either side of the central panel. The man, in my opinion, most likely represents the one on the ground who remarks about the intelligent idea of the swans.

The fable was translated into Pahlavi, Arabic and Persian, and many manuscripts of them contain picturesque illustrations. A few medieval printed editions of the story in Italian, German, French, English and other European languages also contain woodcut prints. The print in a German edition (1484) shows two additional turtles that came out of the dry pond and are looking, perhaps with astonishment, at the birds carrying the turtle on a stick into the sky. In Italian Tales of Bidpai and in its earliest translation into English (1570) by Thomas North, the same print was used. It shows the main scene taking place up in the sky and close to a castle on a nearby mountain ranges.The artist(s) had also incorporated many other birds, each one gliding in different directions. These gliding birds, in my opinion, clearly hint at the kinetic nature of the central scene. Thus, the artist(s) who visualised the tale, across the world, had added a new dimension to the theme by incorporating various other forms and figures in the visual.

(The writer is associate professor, Department of Fine Arts, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam and can be reached at sistlasrini@gmail.com)
Vinay Sahasrabuddhe By

For decades, democracy as a global institution has been struggling to cope up with an acute crisis of delivery. As several research reports have suggested, democracy'democracy. The key to the strategy to overcome this crisis, of course, lies in the way democracy is conducted. And obviously, the principal role in the conduct of democracy is that of elected representatives. When on the threshold of celebrating 75 years of our Independence, it is pertinent to enquire about what ails India's system of public representation.

Firstly, there are some key systemic flaws, in-built in the Westminster model that we adopted immediately after Independence. Many, like KL Munshi in the Constituent Assembly, had serious reservations about the efficacy of this model. However, for various reasons, the Westminster model was opted for. According to jurist MC Chagla, the preference for Parliamentary democracy '... was mainly due to (the fact that) before Independence we had been working through our Legislatures, both at the Centre and in the states more or less on the British model and so we were accustomed to the practices and conventions of that system'.

One of the ills of the Westminster model is the fact that an elected representative here is simultaneously accountable to his/her constituency, party and the house that he/she belongs to. This understandably creates crass confusion, facilitating flawed interpretation and leading to convenient prioritisation at times, while in reality ending up with accountability to none. More often than not, accountability to the electors, to the voters and thereby the constituency very understandably dominates. Then comes accountability to the respective houses and lastly comes the party. Post the anti-defection law of 1985, the primacy of political parties saw great decline as the decision about the validity of defection is left to the presiding officer of the house and not to the respective political party.

Regardless of the ambiguity in this arena, our representative democracy has worked fairly successfully; thanks to the contribution of the likes of Rambhau Mhalgi, a Maharashtra politician of the 70s. Three times MLA from Pune and twice MP from Thane, Mhalgi was known for adhering to high ethical standards, total commitment to his party's (BJP) ideology and complete dedication to the cause of his constituency, thereby the idea of democratic public representation. And remember, all this he did alongside his practise as an advocate, as full-time politics was a luxury to him. Recently, his birth centenary was observed where he was remembered by veteran politicians cutting across party lines as one of the ideal elected representatives of the last century.

Three things made Rambhau Mhalgi stand apart: firstly, supremely exceptional qualities in him as a public servant. He was punctuality personified. When the discussion was primarily about dealing with financial corruption, Mhalgi used to refer to 'misappropriation of time', as time any day is a resource much superior to all others. Acutely conscious of the extremely demanding nature of politics, he used to utilise his travel time between Pune and Mumbai to prepare for his Assembly debates on the way to the latter and for his court cases while coming back to the former almost every evening. More importantly, unlike many politicians today, never shy of strictly abiding by the values like transparency and accountability, he refused to give up on the front of disciplining his supporters.

Secondly, he was known for using very adroitly all legislative/parliamentary tools to raise issues of public concern. Having worked for years on opposition benches in the Assembly, he found himself on the treasury side in 1977 in the Lok Sabha. But here too, he set new standards of dexterity in using parliamentary tools without making government leaders ever feel awkward. More importantly, he raised the bar of the quality of people's representation by adopting new and innovative ways. One of the most remarkable was his practise of publishing a 'Report to the Electorate' every year. Later, many MLAs and MPs in Maharashtra from several political parties adopted this practise and continued with it for years.

However, the most noteworthy of Mhalgi's contributions was his emphasis on an institutionalised mechanism to build the capacities of elected representatives. His mentor, Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay, had realised that for an elected representative, to be electable is a must for his personal survival, but to be able to govern is important for the success of democracy. And to make that happen, Mhalgi wanted to set up a school for politicians and realise the dream of his mentor. Considering the gravity of multiple challenges before democracy, the centrality of the idea of capacity building of elected representatives cannot be undermined. This is because if democracy is failing the people, elected representatives are failing democracy. When common voters find that the representative they elect fails in understanding the complexity of issues, lacks basic skills and is incapable of finding solutions to myriad problems that they face, they start losing confidence in democracy itself. Happily, Rambhau Mhalgi's passionate follow up of the cause of training of elected representatives at various levels was later translated into reality and an institution for the same was set up in 1982 in Mumbai. Known as Rambhau Mhalgi Prabodhini, this academy is untiringly working for strengthening democracy in its own way. The essential message of Mhalgi is that for democracy to deliver, elected representatives must improvise their performance in every respect, in all possible ways!

(The writer is president, ICCR and BJP Rajya Sabha MP and can be reached at vinays57@gmail.com)
Ashwini M Sripad By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: Two days after Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa returned from New Delhi after holding talks with central leaders, speculation over leadership change continues, with many in the party, including ministers, claiming there is no clarity over the latest developments. While some ministers maintained that Yediyurappa will continue till this month-end and anything can happen in August, others claimed there is no clarity over developments within the party.

"He will not resign on July 26, as speculated in the media. We are also waiting, anything can happen in August," said a cabinet minister.

On Saturday, the CM held a two-hour-long meeting with loyalist ministers and some legislators over lunch, and discussed the developments of his Delhi visit. Ministers Basavaraj Bommai, R Ashoka, Dr Sudhakar, ST Somashekar, Byrathi Basavaraj, BC Patil, newly appointed Vokkaliga Development board chairman M Krishnappa, and a few others attended the meeting. One of the ministers said it was an unplanned meeting and "nothing major was discussed".

The timing of the Vokkaliga Development Board constitution, changes in some boards and corporations, and the Governor's visit to Delhi when central leaders are busy with the Parliament session, has raised some eyebrows in political circles.

Sources said recommending dissolution of the assembly may also be an option before Yediyurappa, but is unlikely to happen. A senior minister said there was no discussion, or even a suggestion, on recommending dissolution of the assembly.

When contacted, Ashoka said it was just a lunch meeting with a few ministers, and they had discussed various issues. He, however, did not reveal any information. Sources said Ashoka is likely to visit New Delhi in the next few days, but is finding it difficult to get an appointment with central leaders, as they are busy with the monsoon session of Parliament.

A senior minister told TNIE that ever since Yediyurappa had visited Delhi, there was no clarity either over his next move or the party leaders' next step. At Delhi, it was a closed indoor one-to-one meeting, he said.

Another minister said he trusts the new team more than the veterans.

"There is no doubt, one cannot replace Yediyurappa, no one can match his mass leadership. But of late, he is not trusting anyone. He hasn't shared or sought our opinions," said a minister. "Speculation will continue even after this, though we are part of the government, we are clueless."
By Express News Service

KOCHI: The Kerala High Court has observed that when public opinion influences an investigation, its very course gets diverted with 'exasperating' results. A Division Bench comprising Justice K Vinod Chandran and Justice Ziyad Rahman AA made the observation while acquitting Mani and Rajan of Agali in Palakkad, life convicts in the rape and murder of a tribal woman on May 30, 2005.

The Bench observed that a tribal woman was murdered and the suspect was her confidant who was from the same community. "The community rose in arms against the implication of their own and the police removed him from the array of suspects and proceeded against two other suspects from a different community with a higher caste status thus alleging offences not only under the Indian Penal Code but also under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989," the court observed. The protest was led by the then panchayat member against arraying a tribe as one of the accused.

The prosecutor submitted that the entire case of the prosecution was built on the evidence of Jungan, who "surrendered" at a police station claiming that he had murdered her. Initially, he was one of the suspects but nothing had come out in the investigation to array him as an accused. The person last seen with the deceased was Jungan and he deposed that he left the deceased alone for 20 minutes when she was raped and murdered by the accused.

The court pointed out that the entire narration and the conduct of Jungan was highly suspicious, especially looking at the contradictions he was specifically confronted with in cross-examination. His version of the actual incident is very shaky and full of inconsistencies. He had stated that while he and the deceased sat down near the pathway, they both drank the arrack they had with them.

The scientific analysis of the contents of the stomach and the internal organs of the deceased does not reveal the presence of any ethyl alcohol. The court also said that the factum of rape having been committed on the deceased leads to a reasonable inference that there were others, one or more persons, involved.

The court said, "We find nothing to connect the accused to the crime other than the testimony of Jungan, whom we suspect, as being interested in either saving himself or covering up the actual facts. The incident happened more than a decade and a half back and that alone inhibits us from ordering a further investigation, which would be futile especially in the absence of any scientific evidence. Again a woman is molested and murdered and the perpetrators are roaming free; the poor soul is not avenged. We see absolutely no way other than to acquit the accused."
By PTI

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday termed "wholly uncalled for" the Kerala government's relaxations for Bakrid in areas with a high Covid positivity rate and said giving in to pressure from traders discloses a "sorry state of affairs".

Directing the state government to "heed the Right to Life", the apex court also warned Kerala it will take action if the easing of curbs leads to further spread of the virus and this is brought before it by any person.

"To give in to pressure groups (of traders) so that the citizenry of India is laid bare to a nationwide pandemic discloses a sorry state of affairs. Even otherwise, assurances from traders and nothing more do not inspire any confidence in the people of India or this court," a bench of Justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai said.

"We direct the Kerala government to give heed to Right to Life enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution," it said.

The bench was hearing an application raising the issue of the Bakrid relaxations in Kerala.

The apex court had last week taken cognisance on its own of media reports on the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow the Kanwar Yatra amid the Covid pandemic.

The apex court referred to a paragraph in the affidavit filed by the Kerala government and said it disclosed that the state has given in to associations of traders, which made a representation that they have stocked up goods for the purpose of Bakrid.

"What is extremely alarming is the fact that in Category D where infection rates are the highest, a full day of relaxation has been granted," it said.

"We state that this affidavit discloses a sorry state of affairs as has been stated above and does not in real manner safeguard the Right to Life and Health guaranteed under Article 21 of the Constitution," it said.

"We may also indicate that if as a result of this (relaxations), if any untoward spread of COVID-19 takes place, any member of the public may approach this court after which the court will take action accordingly. The IA is disposed of," the top court said.

The bench had on Monday asked the Kerala government to file its response during the day on the application against the three-day relaxation in Covid restrictions in the state in view of Bakrid on Wednesday.

In its affidavit filed in the top court, the state has said that curbs and resultant economic slowdown have put the population in a lot of misery.

"The traders were expecting that the Bakrid sales will alleviate their misery to a certain extent. They have stocked up the goods for this purpose much early. The organisation of traders started to agitate against the stringent curbs implemented in the LSGIs (local self government institutions) and declared that they will open shops all over the state flouting the regulations," the affidavit said.

It said the opposition political parties also raised the traders' issue in public domain and demanded more relaxations in the curbs to give some respite to the traders and to allow some economic activities in the state.

"The chief minister held discussion with the organisations and heard their demands on July 16, 2021. The traders assured that the opening of shops will be strictly following COVID protocols and they are ready to follow the additional regulations ordered by the state, if any," it said.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had announced the concessions at a press conference on July 17.

In view of Bakrid (Eid-ul-Azha) being celebrated on July 21, textiles, footwear shops, jewellery, fancy stores, shops selling home appliances and electronic items, all types of repairing shops and shops selling essential items shall be allowed to open on July 18-20 from 7 AM to 8 PM in category A, B and C areas, he said.

In D category areas, these shops can function only on July 19, he had said.

The areas have been categorised based on test positivity rates.

On Monday, the top court closed the matter related to the Kanwar Yatra in Uttar Pradesh and asked the authorities to ensure that any untoward incident directly affecting the lives of the public shall be looked upon sternly and prompt action would be taken immediately.
By Express News Service

PURI: The stage is set for the Trinitys Bahuda Yatra (return car festival) on Tuesday. Chief administrator of Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) Dr Krishan Kumar on Monday reviewed the preparations for Bahuda Yatra and Suna Besha of the deities in a meeting with Puri Collector Samarth Verma, SP K Vishal Singh and other officials.

Briefing mediapersons, Kumar said servitors would pull the chariots to Srimandir by following Covid guidelines and the SOP issued by the State government.

The administration will flood the Bada Danda (Grand Road) to facilitate smooth pulling of chariots by barefooted servitors. This apart, heavy duty water sprinklers would be used by fire services to cool down the servitors.

Energy drinks would be provided to them en route while beds have been reserved in the district headquarters hospital for sun stroke victims.

Kumar insisted on timely observance of all nitees and rituals of the BahudaYatra. Earlier on the day, Dutta Mahaptara servitors performed the Banaklagi (face makeup) ritual following which the Trinity appeared for Nabami darshan.

In the night, servitors fixed Charamalas (ladders) to the three chariots and Ratnasimhasan in the Garbha Gruha of the Adapa Mandap to facilitate Pahandi of the deities. Artisans have prepared giant-size floral tiaras to be tied on the forehead of the deities before the Pahandi.

Tight security arrangements have been put in place for the festival. All connectivity to the pilgrim town has been cut off while police has vacated hotels and lodging houses located along the Bada Danda.

Residents of private buildings along the Grand road have been directed not to come to rooftops and balconies to watch the festival proceedings.

A 48-hour curfew has been imposed on the entire stretch of Bada Danda and Gundicha temple. Besides the CCTVs, drone cameras would be used for surveillance. Meanwhile, the 3D laser scanning of Jagamohan, Natamandap and Bhogamandap was completed on the day.

The footage and photos of the inspection have been sent to the lab for experts to analyse. Kumar said the eight worn-out doors of the temple like Jai Bijay, Beheran and Kalahat were being replaced with new ones.

While silver plating of one door is expected to be completed before Niladri Bije, the steel frames of other doors would be fixed soon. The woodwork of the doors was done using imported teak from Burma, he added.

Ritual timings
By Express News Service

COIMBATORE: May 17 Movement leader Thirumurugan Gandhi accused the Central government of spying on journalists and opposition leaders using Pegasus spyware.

Addressing the media on Monday, he said the Centre violated the Supreme Court order on the right to privacy and urged the judiciary to intervene in the issue. The spyware Pegasus, which is developed by an Israel-based company, is sold only to governments and not individual firms or persons.

The Central government has used the software to spy on political leaders, judges, social activists and journalists. In Parliament, the government said the spyware was not used illegally. But it did not deny using the spyware. Using spyware, the government wants to crush voices of dissent, he said.

Thirumurugans number is on the leaked Pegasus database. However, it is not known if his phone was hacked.
By PTI

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government is committed to enhancing the state's gross domestic product to USD 1 lakh crore by 2030 and appealed to industrialists to extend their support to this cause, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Tuesday.

At a function here, the CM said the government's vision is to make Tamil Nadu the 'investment favourite destination' in South Asia.

"To create a favourable atmosphere for industries planning to invest, and to serve all those entrepreneurs who evince interest to set up shops in the state and to expedite the approval process, I have formally rolled out the single window portal 2.0 today", he said at the Investment Conclave organised by Guidance Tamil Nadu here.

The conclave is considered to be the first such event held after the ruling DMK assumed power. On the occasion, as many as 49 companies committed investments to the tune of Rs 28,508 crore that would generate 83,482 new jobs.

The exchange of documents between the government and the companies was done in the presence of Stalin.

"The government's vision is to make Tamil Nadu as the favourite investment destination in South Asia. Tamil Nadu government has committed to enhance the state's gross domestic product to USD 1 lakh crore by 2030 and I appeal to industrialists to extend their support for this cause", he said.

The single window portal 2.0 of the Guidance Tamil Nadu offers over 100 services across 24 government departments for existing and new investors in a fully digitalised manner.

The upgraded system would feature parallel processing of clearances, virtual meeting with departments, artificial intelligence based chatbot facility and deemed approval for select clearances, he noted.

"We have planned to add an additional 210 government services by March 2022 (in the single window portal 2.0)", he added.

The government would also lay emphasis on boosting other industries like electric vehicles production, solar and wind energy, information technology apart from the existing automobile, textiles and leather sectors.

The Chief Minister said his government also planned to unveil various policies related to exports, medical products, research and development.

"The government is taking up various measures like developing an industrial database comprising details of all industries, setting up of an export cell (to encourage exports)," he said.

The investments signed today are spread across districts like Tirunelveli, Tuticorin, Dindigul, Virudhunagar, Madurai and others ensuring all round economic development besides generating new jobs in the region, he said.

Stalin also appealed to the industrialists who were present at the venue to extend their invitation to other companies to invest in the state.
By Express News Service

HYDERABAD: TPCC president A Revanth Reddy on Monday, in a bid to show the extent of nepotism in the sale of Kokapet lands, listed several firms and their alleged links to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao or one of the latters family members. The Malkajgiri MP said MSN Pharma, owned by TRS MP Manne Srinivas Reddy, which bought 7.72 acres, was a beneficiary of KCRs munificence. Apart from them, other companies based outside Telangana including Varsity Education Management Pvt Ltd, are said to have close links with KCR, he added.

He directly linked this to Minister KT Rama Raos wife K Shailima, saying B Seema and B Sushmasri, who are Directors/ Signatories of this company, have direct links with Shailima. Revanth alleged that more than 7,000 square yards of land that was regularised, which was surplus land under the Land Ceiling Act, was bought by the trio. He said they handed it over for development to the company At Home run by Yalamachalai Sridhar, who in turn had a deal with Telakuntla Sridhar, again a friend of KTR.

Reddy said Sridhars company was a front but the entire deal was done by KTR to avoid getting caught. His name first came to light when KTR claimed to have taken unsecured loan of Rs 7 crore in the affidavit of 2018 Assembly elections, he explained. The MP further alleged that Prestige Estates Projects Ltd, a Bengaluru-based company, was also not new, was involved in land deals in Gachibowli and cases on the company were still pending in the Supreme Court.

When Unitech failed to clear the bills for 41 acres registered for IT development, it was forced to relinquish its land to Prestige, ignoring the Supreme Courts direction against such a transfer. Now it is being sold as plots after forming layouts. When I complained to Somesh Kumar, he asked for proof. Now when I have the proof, he is not answering the phone, he said.
By AFP

WASHINGTON: The wealthiest man on the planet Jeff Bezos spent a few minutes in space Tuesday on Blue Origin's first human mission, a key moment for a fledgling industry seeking to make the final frontier accessible to elite tourists.

"A very happy group of people in this capsule," said Bezos after the spaceship touched down in the west Texas desert following an 10-minute hop to the Karman line and back. The four-member crew exchanged high-fives and hugged family who came to meet them at the landing site.

Earlier, the New Shepard capsule reached at an altitude of 66.5 miles (107 kilometers), allowing the passengers to experience weightlessness while admiring the curve of the Earth. "It's dark up here," said barrier-breaking female aviator Wally Funk, who joined Bezos, his brother and 18-year-old Dutchman Oliver Daemen, who became the youngest ever astronaut.

Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson made the voyage on July 11, narrowly beating the Amazon magnate in their battle of the billionaires. But Blue Origin's sights were set higher: both in the altitude to which its reusable New Shepard craft would ascend compared to Virgin's spaceplane, and in its ambitions.

57-year-old Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 with the goal of one day building floating space colonies with artificial gravity where millions of people will work and live. Today, the company is developing a heavy-lift orbital rocket called New Glenn and also a Moon lander it is hoping to contract to NASA.

Named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space, the New Shepard suborbital rocket had flown 15 uncrewed flights to put it through its paces and test safety mechanisms. Lift-off was slightly delayed and came at 1312 GMT from a remote facility in the west Texas desert called Launch Site One, some 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the nearest town, Van Horn. "This might have looked easy today, it was anything but easy," said Gary Lai, lead designer of New Shepard.

Richest, oldest, youngest

Notably absent was the still anonymous winner of a USD 28 million auction for a seat, who had "scheduling conflicts" and will take part in a future flight. Daemen's father, the CEO of a private equity firm, was a runner-up in the bidding, allowing his teenage son to become the company's first paying customer.

After lift-off, New Shepard careened towards space at speeds exceeding 2,300 mph (3700 kmph) using a liquid hydrogen-liquid oxygen engine whose only byproduct is water vapour. The capsule separated from its booster, and when it got high enough, the astronauts unbuckled and experienced space for three to four minutes.

The booster returned autonomously to a landing pad just north of its launch site, while the capsule fell back to Earth with three giant parachutes, and finally a thruster, for a gentle landing.

'Read the room'

Blue Origin has remained relatively coy about what comes next. The company says it plans two more flights this year, then "many more" next year. Analysts say much will hinge on early successes and building a solid safety record.

CEO Bob Smith revealed Sunday that the next launch could take place in September or October, adding "willingness to pay continues to be quite high." At the same time, the sector is beginning to face criticism over the optics of super wealthy individuals blasting off to space while Earth faces climate-driven disasters and a coronavirus pandemic.

"Could there be a worse time for two uber-rich rocket owners to take a quick jaunt toward the dark?" wrote Shannon Stirone in an Atlantic piece titled "Space Billionaires, Please Read the Room."
By ANI

OTTAWA: The government of Canada, in a statement on Monday, July 19, 2021, announced to open its borders for international travel from September 7, 2021.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government has also announced that it is extending the ban on incoming passenger flights from India for another month due to the Delta variant of COVID-19. The ban, which was imposed on April 22 when India was witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases, was set to expire on July 21, but will now remain in place until August 21, Global News Ca reported.

In the first step, starting August 9, 2021, the government has planned to allow entry to American citizens and permanent residents, who are currently residing in the United States and have been fully vaccinated.

This strategy will allow the government to continue monitoring variants of concern in Canada and vaccine effectiveness. Using these layers of protection, the Government of Canada can monitor the COVID-19 situation in the country, respond quickly to threats, and guide decisions on restricting international travel, the statement said.

The government intends to open Canada's borders to any fully vaccinated travellers who have completed the full course of vaccination with a Government of Canada-accepted vaccine at least 14 days prior to entering Canada and who meet specific entry requirements, the Canadian government informed in a statement.

"Subject to limited exceptions, all travellers must use ArriveCAN (app or web portal) to submit their travel information. If they are eligible to enter Canada and meet specific criteria, fully vaccinated travellers will not have to quarantine upon arrival in Canada."
By AFP

JERUSALEM: Israel shelled Lebanon early Tuesday, July 20, 2021, in response to earlier rocket attacks, the Israeli army said, as the United Nations urged all sides to show "maximum restraint."

The Israeli army said "two rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory," with one intercepted by air defences while the other struck open ground.

"In response, a short while ago (Israeli) artillery struck in Lebanese territory," the army said.

A Lebanese security source told AFP the rockets were fired at Israel from the Qlaileh area of southern Lebanon, where a third rocket was also found.

The source said the Lebanese army had not identified the group responsible for the launch.

The UN peacekeeping force in the border region, UNIFIL, said it had boosted security in the area and "launched an investigation" in collaboration with the Lebanese military.

"UNIFIL is in direct contact with the parties to urge maximum restraint and avoid further escalation," it said in a statement.

The last time rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israel was in May, during an 11-day conflict between Israel and Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.

In recent weeks, Israeli security officials have expressed growing concern over the deepening economic crisis in Lebanon and its ramifications for border security.

Defence Minister Benny Gantz tweeted: "The state of Lebanon is responsible for the rockets fired overnight, as it allows terrorists to operate within its territory.

"We will not allow the social, political and economic crisis in Lebanon to turn into a security threat to Israel. I call on the international community to take action to restore stability in Lebanon," Gantz said.
By AFP

BAMAKO (MALI): Malian strongman Colonel Assimi Goita survived an assassination attempt at a mosque in Bamako on Tuesday, in the latest blow to stability in a country reeling from two military coups in less than a year.

Two assailants -- one of whom was wielding a knife -- attacked Goita after prayers at the capital's Grand Mosque for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha, an AFP journalist saw. Goita, a special forces colonel who was named transitional president in May, was quickly whisked away by security.

The journalist saw blood at the scene, although it was unclear who was wounded. Goita later appeared on the state broadcaster ORTM, where he said he was doing "very well" after the attack. "That's part of being a leader, there are always malcontents. There are people who at any time may want to try things to cause instability," he said, wearing a blue hat and shiny blue gown.

His office released a statement saying that Goita was "safe and sound" after what was labelled an assassination attempt. Security had subdued one attacker, and "investigations are ongoing," the presidency added.

The assailants went for the president as an imam was directing worshippers outside the Great Mosque for a ritual animal sacrifice. Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone, who was at the mosque, told AFP that a man had "tried to kill the president with a knife" but was apprehended.

The mosque's director, Latus Toure, said an attacker had lunged at the president but wounded someone else. Later, a security official who requested anonymity said that two people had been arrested and were now in detention.

Goita referred to only one attacker during his televised address, however. As did his prime minister, Choguel Kokalla Maiga, who made a similar statement. The atmosphere in Bamako was calm on Tuesday after the assault, according to AFP journalists, including in the area surrounding the mosque.

Political turmoil

The shocking attack follows months of political turmoil in Mali, which is also battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes. Goita was sworn into office in June after leading the country's second coup in less than a year.

He headed a putsch last August that ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running jihadist conflict. The junta then handed power to a civilian-led transitional government which promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022.

But in late May, Goita, who was vice president under the transitional government, ousted the president, Bah Ndaw, and premier Moctar Ouane, saying they had sought to "sabotage" the handover. In June, with Goita as interim president, a new government was unveiled, with military figures in key roles.

Facing the wrath of the African Union and the West African regional bloc ECOWAS, Goita vowed the government would "uphold all its commitments" and pledged to stage "credible, fair and transparent elections."

Fragile country

The assassination bid is the latest episode in the country's long history of turbulence. Mali, a deeply poor state of around 20 million people, has known little stability or democracy since it gained independence from France in 1960.

Its West African neighbours have been viewing the deepening crisis with disquiet, fearing the impact on efforts to stem a jihadist insurgency in the Sahel.

The bloody campaign erupted in the north of Mali in 2012, and has since spread to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

France, the mainstay of the anti-jihadist operation, has been especially critical of the military takeover in Mali. It suspended military cooperation after the second coup and then announced a major drawdown of its 5,100-man Barkhane mission.
By AFP

YANGON: A confidante of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and stalwart democracy campaigner died on Tuesday after becoming infected with COVID-19 in prison, authorities said. Nyan Win, a veteran senior member and former spokesperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party -- led by Suu Kyi -- was 78.

He had been arrested after the February 1 coup removed the NLD from power and was held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison on charges of sedition. "U Nyan Win was found with COVID symptoms on July 11 and transferred to Yangon General Hospital... to get treatment. He died this morning at 9 am in the hospital," said Zaw Min Tun, spokesman of the State Administration Council -- as the junta calls itself.

Nyan Win had underlying conditions of hypertension and diabetes, he added. A veteran politician who worked on human rights issues, Nyan Win was the sole person allowed to meet with Suu Kyi during the previous junta regime when she was held under intermittent house arrest for 15 years.

He served as a conduit for the Nobel laureate while she was imprisoned, passing on her messages from an isolated Burma -- as Myanmar was formerly known as -- to the outside world and her supporters. "We have relied on him so much. I am so sad to have lost him. But we will transform our sorrow into our strength to move forward," lawyer Khin Maung Zaw, who is part of Suu Kyi's legal team, told AFP.

Myanmar -- which has been in turmoil since the coup -- is now buckling under a surge of COVID-19 cases. Hospitals across the country are suffering from a lack of medical equipment, beds, oxygen and doctors. Myanmar's prisons are also full, due to the junta's crackdown on dissidents, activists and NLD politicians -- raising concerns of a fatal outbreak behind bars.

Spokesman Zaw Min Tun said 375 people in prisons across the country have tested positive for Covid-19. About 200 of them are in hospitals, including senior NLD member Han Thar Myint who is currently in intensive care.

American journalist Danny Fenster is also being held at Insein after he was detained while trying to leave Myanmar in May. State-run media said that 1.6 million people have been vaccinated across the country -- about two percent of the population.
By ANI

OSLO: The Norwegian government on Monday, July 19, 2021, formally attributed a breach of email accounts associated with the Norwegian parliament to Chinese hackers involved in the exploitation of vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Exchange Server.

The Norwegian parliament in March said that email systems had been breached as part of the Microsoft Exchange Server incident.

"This was a very serious incident affecting our most important democratic institution," Norwegian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Eriksen Soreide said in a statement. "Following a detailed intelligence assessment, it is our view that the vulnerabilities have been exploited by actors operating out of China."

ALSO READ: Microsoft Exchange email hack was caused by China, says US

Soreide confirmed that the Storting was a victim of this exploitation and that the Chinese Embassy had been contacted in order to "raise the issue directly."

The revelations come on the day the US and Western allies formally blamed China for a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software and asserted that criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations.

The minister pointed to the attribution to China by allied nations as part of pushing back against the attack.

"We expect China to take this issue seriously, and to ensure that such incidents are not repeated," Soreide stressed. "Allowing such malicious cyber activities to take place is in contradiction of the norms of responsible state behaviour endorsed by all UN Member States."

The compromise as part of the Microsoft Exchange Server vulnerabilities was not the first hacking incident to hit the Norwegian government in the past year.

The Storting announced in September that it had been hit by an "IT attack," and that a small number of members of parliament and staff members, with data from these accounts successfully downloaded by the attackers.
By Associated Press

NEW DELHI: India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country.



Most experts believe India's official toll of more than 414,000 dead is a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns as exaggerated and misleading.



The report released Tuesday estimated excess deaths  the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected  to be between 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and June 2021. It said an accurate figure may "prove elusive" but the true death toll "is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count."



The report, published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian government's former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development and Harvard University, said the count could have missed deaths occurring in overwhelmed hospitals or while health care was delayed or disrupted, especially during the devastating peak surge earlier this year.



"True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably India's worst human tragedy since Partition and independence," the report said.



The Partition of the British-ruled Indian subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947 led to the killing of up to 1 million people as gangs of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other.



The report on India's virus toll used three calculation methods: data from the civil registration system that records births and deaths across seven states, blood tests showing the prevalence of the virus in India alongside global COVID-19 fatality rates, and an economic survey of nearly 900,000 people done thrice a year.

In this April 25, 2021, file photo, a relative of a person who died of COVID-19 breaks down during cremation in Jammu, India. (Photo |AP)





Researchers cautioned that each method had weaknesses, such as the economic survey omitting the causes of death.



Instead, researchers looked at deaths from all causes and compared that data to mortality in previous years  a method widely considered an accurate metric.



Researchers also cautioned that virus prevalence and COVID-19 deaths in the seven states they studied may not translate to all of India, since the virus could have spread worse in urban versus rural states and since health care quality varies greatly around India.



And while other nations are believed to have undercounted deaths in the pandemic, India is believed to have a greater gap due to it having the world's second highest population of 1.4 billion and its situation is complicated because not all deaths were recorded even before the pandemic.



Dr. Jacob John, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India, reviewed the report for The Associated Press and said it underscores the devastating impact COVID-19 had on the country's under-prepared health system.



"This analysis reiterates the observations of other fearless investigative journalists that have highlighted the massive undercounting of deaths," Jacob said.



The report also estimated that nearly 2 million Indians died during the first surge in infections last year and said not "grasping the scale of the tragedy in real time" may have "bred collective complacency that led to the horrors" of the surge earlier this year.



Over the last few months, some Indian states have increased their COVID-19 death toll after finding thousands of previously unreported cases, raising concerns that many more fatalities were not officially recorded.



Several Indian journalists have also published higher numbers from some states using government data. Scientists say this new information is helping them better understand how COVID-19 spread in India.



Murad Banaji, who studies mathematics at Middlesex University and has been looking at India's COVID-19 mortality figures, said the recent data has confirmed some of the suspicions about undercounting. Banaji said the new data also shows the virus wasn't restricted to urban centers, as contemporary reports had indicated, but that India's villages were also badly impacted.



"A question we should ask is if some of those deaths were avoidable," he said.
Taiwan's first diplomatic outpost in Europe in 18 years will be called the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, not the Taipei Office.

The self-ruled democracy of some 23 million people, known officially as the Republic of China, is only recognised as a country by 15 other nations.

Taiwan's foreign minister Joseph Wu called the move "very significant."

"Lithuania is a good partner for Taiwan who shares the same values for freedom and democracy," Wu said at a virtual briefing, adding both are on the "strategic frontline of defending democratic systems."

The Lithuanian foreign ministry said it planned to open a trade office in Taipei this autumn.

"Lithuania is interested in expanding its cooperation with Taiwan in various fields, laying particular emphasis on the development of economic relations and cultural exchanges," the ministry said in a statement.

The announcement is the latest in growing signs that some Baltic and central European countries are seeking closer relations with Taiwan, even if that results in angering China.

Beijing claims the island and has vowed to one day retake it -- by force if needed.

China tries to keep Taipei isolated on the world stage and balks at any official use of the word "Taiwan" lest it lend the island a sense of international legitimacy.

But Taiwan maintains de facto diplomatic relations with dozens of nations through its Taipei Representative Offices.

In May, Lithuania announced it was quitting China's 17+1 cooperation forum with central and eastern European states, calling it "divisive".

It has since pledged to donate some 20,000 coronavirus vaccines to Taiwan and open its own representative office on the island.

Last week, Slovakia also announced it was donating 10,000 vaccines to Taiwan, a gesture of thanks for some 700,000 masks Taipei sent the central European nation at the start of the pandemic.

Politicians in the Czech Republic have also pushed for closer ties with Taiwan.

In 2019, Prague cancelled a sister city agreement with Beijing and signed one with Taipei while a high profile visit to Taiwan last year by Czech senate leader Milos Vystrcil infuriated China.

Beijing remains a major trade and diplomatic ally to many other nations in the region as well as a valuable source of coronavirus vaccines.

China cut official contacts with Taiwan and ramped up diplomatic pressure after the 2016 election of President Tsai Ing-wen.

Tsai, who won landslide reelection last year, rejects Beijing's stance that the island is part of "one China" and instead views Taiwan as a de facto sovereign state.

Beijing has poached seven of Taipei's diplomatic allies since 2016 and kept it frozen out of international bodies such as the World Health Organization (WHO).

Last year, Taiwan opened reciprocal offices with Somaliland, a move that sparked an angry rebuke from China.

That office also used the word "Taiwan" but, unlike Lithuania, Somaliland is not recognised as a sovereign state by most nations.
By ANI

NEW DELHI: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to visit New Delhi soon. It is learnt that preparations for the high-level visit are underway. There is no official announcement of the visit from either side. However, when in India Secretary Blinken is expected to hold bilateral talks with his counterpart External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar.

Jaishankar and Blinken have already met thrice in the past one year. After US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin's visit to India, this will be the second high profile visit of the member of Biden administration. The US had lent support to India when it was grappling with the deadly second wave of coronavirus.

Biden administration intervened to expedite procurement of raw materials for Indian vaccine makers and had sent ventilators and other equipment to counter COVID-19.

Jaishankar had visited the United States in May and during his five-day visit discussed a wide range of issues related to shared priorities and regional security challenges apart from the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad).

The COVID-19 situation, vaccines, the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan besides China are expected to figure on the agenda during Blinken's visit. There is no official word on either agenda or on the dates of visit and an announcement may happen soon.
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Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

NEW HAVEN  A city man was shot while riding a dirt bike Sunday on Whalley Avenue, according to police.

Shortly after 6 p.m., detectives were dispatched to St. Vincents Medical Center in Bridgeport for a report of a person who had been shot in New Haven showing up for treatment, Officer Scott Shumway said Monday.
When I left my rural Connecticut home for the excitement of living on my own in south Florida, my mother cried, Ill never see you again. My father sent me a subscription to Yankee magazine with a note Dont forget where you came from. I never have.

I grew up on a small subsistence farm with one cow, two pigs, a lot of chickens that provided eggs and Sunday dinner, berries of all kinds, a grape arbor and a beehive. My siblings and I had chores to do since my parents both held other jobs. We may not have appreciated that at the time, but later on one of my sisters and I reminisced about our early life and agreed it was the perfect upbringing. We learned the value of hard work when we picked strawberries and that night my mother made strawberry shortcake, or we husked it and then enjoyed corn-on-the-cob for dinner.
Police have identified in the suspect in a deadly shooting rampage that left three crime scenes in the Tucson area Sunday, including a burning house where a charred body was found.

Leslie Scarlett, 35 was identified as the suspect by Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus during a Monday night press conference.

Scarlett has a criminal history that includes serving six years in prison for armed robbery and is a "prohibited possessor" of a firearm, Magnus said.

Scarlett is currently hospitalized and in extremely critical condition, following Sunday's gunfire exchange with police, according to Magnus. It has not yet been determined what charges Scarlett will face, he said.

Burning residence and gunfire exchanged

The series of incidents began when fire personnel responded to a call that a house was on fire Sunday afternoon.

The crew reported that a vehicle was following them into the neighborhood and then reported that shots had been fired. Less than two minutes later, firefighters radioed that a fire captain had been shot.

The gunman, now identified as Scarlett, shot at firefighters as well as at neighbors who came out to help, ultimately injuring two people, according to Magnus.

Corey Saunders, 44, died at the scene, Magnus said. He is survived by his 11-year-old son who witnessed the attack.

A short while later, a call came in for an ambulance crew that had been shot about a mile away from the fire scene.

Magnus said that Scarlett then returned to the original fire scene.

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"He shot at firefighters and neighbors alike, basically anyone who was trying to help," Magnus explained.

Scarlett then fled the scene again, ramming a Tucson police car that was responding to the incident.

Magnus identified the officer in that car as Officer Danny Leone, an eight-year veteran of the Tucson Police Department. Leone immediately got out of his vehicle and took cover as Scarlett fired three rounds at him.

The officer returned fire, striking Scarlett before he and other officers rendered first aid to Scarlett.

The fire was extinguished by the Tucson fire department and human remains were found in the house. The mother of the three children who resided in the house is unaccounted for but presumed dead.

Magnus said a motive has not yet been established in the deadly rampage.

"It is not clear what his intentions were, because he was shooting at people, you know, both neighbors and firefighters, so his intentions remain unclear," he said, adding that they are also exploring any connections between Sunday's fire and one from earlier this year in which Scarlett's wife died.

"This is both a highly tragic, really horrific incident with many unknowns at this time," Magnus said.

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Tens of millions of patients around the world suffer from persistent and potentially life-threatening wounds. These chronic wounds, which are also a leading cause of amputation, have treatments, but the cost of existing wound dressings can prevent them from reaching people in need.

Now, a Michigan State University researcher is leading an international team of scientists to develop a low-cost, practical biopolymer dressing that helps heal these wounds.

The existing efficient technologies are far too expensive for most health care systems, greatly limiting their use in a timely manner. An economically accessible, practical and effective technology is needed." Morteza Mahmoudi, Assistant Professor, Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and the Precision Health Program

To develop that new technology, Mahmoudi tapped into years of experience and expertise, having studied advanced materials to heal heart tissue, fight infections and support immune systems. But the team also kept an eye on cost, working to develop a product that could be made available to as many patients as possible, even in resource constrained markets.

"My goal is always to make something that works and is practical," Mahmoudi said. "I want to see my research become clinical products that help patients."

With his latest work, published July 19 in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics, Mahmoudi is getting closer to that goal. He's working with partners in the United Kingdom who have started a company to oversee the development and approval of the new technology.

"We are building an experienced and expert team in the U.K. who will be able to efficiently commercialize the dressing," Mahmoudi said. "The company has just won a very competitive Eurostar grant to accelerate product development."

Working with his collaborators, Mahmoudi conducted a small pilot trial of the wound dressing with 13 patients with chronic wounds, all of whom were cured, he said.

Patients with advanced chronic wounds -- those which do not respond to traditional therapies -- are estimated to number over 45 million globally, making this one of the world's most pressing and urgent health care needs, Mahmoudi said.

The United States is home to about 5% of this population, yet more than 90% of the sales of "active" wound care technologies happen in the U.S. That essentially means that the rest of the world is left out, Mahmoudi said.

Venous leg ulcers and pressure ulcers associated with immobility in older and paralyzed patients are also major causes of chronic wounds, but perhaps the best-known examples of this type of injury being diabetic foot ulcers. Worldwide, there are more than 400 million people living with diabetes, and some studies have estimated that up to a quarter of those patients will develop foot ulcers within their lifetime.

Even with the high level of care available in the U.S., more than 30% of patients who develop a diabetic foot ulcer will die within five years of its onset. For reference, that percentage is higher than breast cancer, prostate cancer and colon cancer.

Diabetic foot ulcers also illustrate many of the reasons why chronic wounds can be so challenging to treat.

Patients with diabetes can be dealing with restricted blood flow and other factors that slow their immune response, compromising the body's ability to heal the wound on its own. They can also have nerve damage that dulls the wound's pain and can delay patients from seeking treatment. When wounds heal more slowly and stay open longer, bacteria have more opportunities to cause infections and lead to serious complications. Put bluntly, there's a lot going wrong in a chronic wound.

"Chronic wounds are some of the most complicated things doctors have to treat," Mahmoudi said. "If you want to make a dressing that works, it has to address all those problems. And in order to be relevant to the majority of patients in the world, it has to be easy to use, practical and inexpensive as well."

There are many technologies available to support healing in chronic wounds, but those that can stimulate tissue regeneration are typically derived from harvested natural tissues. This is complex and expensive, resulting in products that cost upwards of $1,000, putting them out of reach for many patients and health care systems.

To attack those problems, Mahmoudi drew on a wealth of experience in developing new materials for biomedical applications. By designing a product that can be manufactured from readily available biopolymers, production costs can be kept low, and the team could add various other materials to lead to improved healing.

The team starts with a flexible framework of nanofibers -- exceedingly thin threads -- of natural polymers, including collagen, a structural-support protein found in our skin and cartilage. The framework provides a three-dimensional scaffold that fosters cell migration and the development of new blood vessels, essentially replicating the function of the extracellular matrix, the natural support system found in healthy, living tissue.

"It's important that the physical and mechanical properties of the dressing are really close to that of skin," Mahmoudi said. "In order to heal, the new cells have to feel like they're at home."

To that framework, the team can incorporate proteins, peptides and nanoparticles that not only spur the growth of new cells and blood vessels but also fight off bacteria by encouraging a patient's own immune system to join the charge. (The team's experiences on these elements were documented in earlier publications in Nature Nanotechnology and Trends in Biotechnology).

The dressing also degrades over time, meaning that nobody would have to change or remove it and potentially aggravate the wound site. And at roughly $20 apiece, Mahmoudi believes that the dressings -- if and when approved by regulatory agencies -- will be affordable to even resource-strapped health care systems faced with treating these serious wounds.

Although there are many existing wound care products, Mahmoudi is optimistic that the new dressing will stand out thanks to its low cost, high performance and another piece of research he did years ago.

For this previous project, though, he wasn't developing any new technology. He was interviewing hundreds of health care workers around the U.S., asking them what they wanted and needed in a wound dressing.

"We developed this dressing to solve the problems they were having. One of the clinicians told me, 'When you see too many products on the market, that means none of them works,'" said Mahmoudi, a Spartan driven to make things that work.

More than 20 researchers joined Mahmoudi on this project, representing about 15 different research institutions, including Harvard Medical School; Emory University; Georgia Tech; Rutgers State University; McGill University; University of Siegen in Germany; and the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
The first wave of COVID-19 in 2020 in India saw a substantial increase in the sale of antibiotic formulations used in adults and adolescents, especially azithromycin, says a study.

COVID-19 likely contributed to about 216 million excess doses of non-paediatric formulations of antibiotics in total and 38 million excess doses of azithromycin between June and September 2020, says the study which looked at the private health care sector in India, and published this month in PLOS Medicine.

Antibiotics are often used in viral infections (e.g. viral pneumonia) to combat possible bacterial co-infections. This is despite antibiotics being ineffective against viral infections, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, 16.29 million doses of antibiotics were sold in India, the world's largest antibiotic user. The proportion of non-paediatric formulations of antibiotics increased from 72.5 per cent in 2019 to 76.8 per cent in December 2020, with children less likely to suffer from symptomatic and severe COVID-19 infection, researchers noted.

Sumanth Gandra, study author and associate professor of the Division of Infectious Diseases, Washington University School of Medicine, US, tells SciDev.Net that the results suggest that nearly every person diagnosed with COVID-19 received an antibiotic - most especially azithromycin - during the first wave in India.

Our results indicate that at least 12 million azithromycin treatment courses were unnecessarily prescribed between June and December of 2020. This massive use of azithromycin, a vital drug for treating typhoid fever and diarrhoea, is highly concerning as it will lead to resistance in bacteria that cause these illnesses." Sumanth Gandra, study author and associate professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, Washington University School of Medicine

According to Brian Godman, a visiting professor at the Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, UK, it is important to curb inappropriate use of antibiotics for viral infections which will increase resistance rates and result in greater loss of life in the future.

"This is particularly important in the community since inappropriate prescribing and dispensing of antimicrobials for essentially viral infections constitutes their greatest overuse," Godman tells SciDev.Net. "Trained pharmacists are important as they can direct patients to more appropriate treatments that are more effective in symptomatic relief and often cheaper. This should be a priority in India given the rising antimicrobial resistance rates."

Similar trends are likely to have occurred in other low- and middle-income countries where antibiotics are often overused, the study sayid. The medium- and long-term consequences for bacterial resistance patterns are "highly concerning", it added, highlighting the need for urgent antibiotic stewardship measures such as avoiding the use of antibiotics if there is no suspicion of bacterial infection, and limiting the duration of antibiotic treatment for co-infections.

India's approach to antibiotic use during the pandemic was more of a knee-jerk reaction than a well thought-out plan, says Diptendra Sarkar, a COVID-19 strategist, public health analyst and professor at the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata, India.

"While evolving evidence did not favour the use of antibiotics, there was little governance on the community use of antibiotics," Sarkar tells SciDev.Net. "Self-medication also played a major role in upscaling antibiotic use that are not evidence-based."

According to Sarkar, there will likely be increased community resistance to common antibiotics in India as a result of the pandemic. "It may lead to the evolving of superbugs in hospital practice," he says.
A potentially life-saving treatment for heart attack victims has been discovered from a very unlikely source - the venom of one of the world's deadliest spiders.

A drug candidate developed from a molecule found in the venom of the Fraser Island (K'gari) funnel web spider can prevent damage caused by a heart attack and extend the life of donor hearts used for organ transplants.

The discovery was made by a team led by Dr Nathan Palpant and Professor Glenn King from The University of Queensland (UQ) and Professor Peter Macdonald from the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute.

Dr Palpant, from UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB), said the drug candidate worked by stopping a 'death signal' sent from the heart in the wake of an attack.

After a heart attack, blood flow to the heart is reduced, resulting in a lack of oxygen to heart muscle. The lack of oxygen causes the cell environment to become acidic, which combine to send a message for heart cells to die. Despite decades of research, no one has been able to develop a drug that stops this death signal in heart cells, which is one of the reasons why heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the world." Dr Nathan Palpant, UQ's Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB)

Dr Palpant tested the drug candidate, a protein called Hi1a, using beating human heart cells exposed to heart attack stresses to see if the drug improved their survival.

"The Hi1a protein from spider venom blocks acid-sensing ion channels in the heart, so the death message is blocked, cell death is reduced, and we see improved heart cell survival."

There are currently no drugs in clinical use that prevent the damage caused by heart attacks.

Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute's Professor Macdonald said this incredible result had been decades in the making.

"This will not only help the hundreds of thousands of people who have a heart attack every year around the world, it could also increase the number and quality of donor hearts, which will give hope to those waiting on the transplant list," said Professor MacDonald.

Professor MacDonald, who is also a senior cardiologist at St Vincent's Hospital in Sydney, added: "The survival of heart cells is vital in heart transplants -- treating hearts with Hi1a and reducing cell death will increase how far the heart can be transported and improve the likelihood of a successful transplant.

"Usually, if the donor heart has stopped beating for more than 30 minutes before retrieval, the heart can't be used - even if we can buy an extra 10 minutes, that could make the difference between someone having a heart and someone missing out. For people who are literally on death's door, this could be life-changing."

The discovery builds on earlier work by Professor King, who identified a small protein in the venom of the Fraser Island (K'gari) funnel-web spider that was shown to markedly improve recovery from stroke.

"We discovered this small protein, Hi1a, amazingly reduces damage to the brain even when it is given up to eight hours after stroke onset," Professor King said.

"It made sense to also test Hi1a on heart cells, because like the brain, the heart is one of the most sensitive organs in the body to the loss of blood flow and lack of oxygen.

"For heart attack victims, our vision for the future is that Hi1a could be administered by first responders in the ambulance, which would really change the health outcomes of heart disease."

"This is particularly important in rural and remote parts of Australia where patients and treating hospitals can be long distances apart - and when every second counts."

Also, this could help for the transfer of donor hearts for cardiac transplantation - allowing these donor hearts to be transported over longer distances and therefore increasing the network of available donors and recipients.

The protein has been tested in human heart cells, and the team are aiming for human clinical trials for both stroke and heart disease within 2-3 years.

The Heart Foundation's General Manager of Heart Health and Research, Bill Stavreski, welcomed the findings.

"About 57,000 Australians have a heart attack every year, and many result in permanent damage to the heart muscle, leading to heart failure, disability and reduced quality of life - while more investigation is needed, this research may lead to a new way of reversing this damage in heart attack survivors."
Analysis of children and young people's proximity to woodlands has shown links with better cognitive development and a lower risk of emotional and behavioral problems, in research led by UCL and Imperial College London scientists that could influence planning decisions in urban areas.

In what is believed to be one of the largest studies of its kind, researchers used longitudinal data relating to 3,568 children and teenagers, aged nine to 15 years, from 31 schools across London. This period is a key time in the development of adolescents' thinking, reasoning and understanding of the world.

The study, published in Nature Sustainability, looked at the links between different types of natural urban environments and the pupils' cognitive development, mental health and overall well-being.

The environments were divided into what planners call green space (woods, meadows and parks) and blue space (rivers, lakes and the sea), with green space separated further into grassland and woodland. Researchers used satellite data to help calculate each adolescent's daily exposure rate to each of these environments within 50m, 100m, 250m and 500m of their home and school.

After adjusting for other variables, the results showed that higher daily exposure to woodland (but not grassland) was associated with higher scores for cognitive development, and a 16% lower risk of emotional and behavioral problems two years later.

A similar but smaller effect was seen for green space, with higher scores for cognitive development, but this was not seen for blue space. The researchers note though that access to blue space in the cohort studied was generally low.

Examples of other explanatory variables considered included the young person's age, ethnic background, gender, parental occupation and type of school, e.g., state or independent. The level of air pollution might have influenced adolescents' cognitive development, but researchers did not feel these observations were reliable or conclusive, and these require further investigations.

It is already estimated that one in 10 of London's children and adolescents between the ages of five and 16 suffer from a clinical mental health illness and excess costs are estimated between 11,030 and 59,130 annually for each person. As with adults, there is also evidence that natural environments play an important role in children and adolescents' cognitive development and mental health into adulthood, but less is known about why this is.

The results of this study suggest that urban planning decisions to optimize ecosystem benefits linked to cognitive development and mental health should carefully consider the type of natural environment included. Natural environments further away from an adolescent's residence and school may play an important role too, not just their immediate environment.

Lead author, PhD student Mikael Maes (UCL Geography, UCL Biosciences and Imperial College London School of Public Health) said: "Previous studies have revealed positive associations between exposure to nature in urban environments, cognitive development and mental health. Why these health benefits are received remains unclear, especially in adolescents.

"These findings contribute to our understanding of natural environment types as an important protective factor for an adolescent's cognitive development and mental health and suggest that not every environment type may contribute equally to these health benefits.

"Forest bathing, for example (being immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of a forest), is a relaxation therapy that has been associated with physiological benefits, supporting the human immune function, reducing heart rate variability and salivary cortisol, and various psychological benefits. However, the reasons why we experience these psychological benefits from woodland remain unknown."

Joint senior author Professor Mireille Toledano (Director, Mohn Centre for Children's Health and Wellbeing and Investigator, MRC Centre for Environment and Health and Principal Investigator of the SCAMP study, Imperial College London) said: "It's been suggested previously that the benefits of natural environments to mental health are comparable in magnitude to family history, parental age and even more significant than factors like the degree of urbanization around you, but lower than your parents' socio-economic status. Sensory and non-sensory pathways have been suggested as potentially important for delivering cognition and mental health benefits received from exposure to nature.

"It's critical for us to tease out why natural environments are so important to our mental health throughout the life course - does the benefit derive from the physical exercise we do in these environments, from the social interactions we often have in them, or from the fauna and flora we get to enjoy in these environments or a combination of all of these?"

One possible explanation for our findings may be that audio-visual exposure through vegetation and animal abundance provides psychological benefits, of which both features are expected in higher abundance in woodland. Even though our results show that urban woodland is associated with adolescent's cognitive development and mental health, the cause of this association remains unknown. Further research is fundamental to our understanding of the links between nature and health." Professor Kate Jones, Joint Senior Author, UCL Centre for Biodiversity & Environment Research, UCL Biosciences

To arrive at the findings, researchers analyzed a longitudinal dataset of 3,568 adolescents between 2014 and 2018, whose residence was known, from the Study of Cognition, Adolescents and Mobile Phones (SCAMP) across the London metropolitan area. They assessed adolescents' mental health and overall well-being from a self-reported Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) - covering areas such as emotional problems, conduct, hyperactivity and peer problems - and the KIDSCREEN-10 Questionnaire taken by each adolescent for SCAMP.

Limitations of the study include an assumption that living or going to school near natural environments means more exposure to them, which may not always be the case due to how easily they can be accessed by a child or young person or how usable they are.

Also, a considerable proportion of the participants (52.21%) were in the group whose parents had a managerial/professional occupation, so adolescents in less favorable socio-economic groups may be underrepresented and pupils requiring special needs may be differently affected compared with their peers. Crime rates, which may have influenced the results too, were not taken into account.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine have discovered yet another functional autoantibody in COVID-19 patients that contributes to the disease's development and the "firestorm" of blood clots and inflammation it induces.

A growing body of studies suggests COVID-19 emulates many aspects of systemic autoimmune disorders, including the release of a flurry of overactive immune cells that produce toxic webs of proteins and DNA called neutrophil extracellular traps, or NETs.

For this study, the team analyzed serum from over 300 hospitalized COVID patients, searching for a novel autoantibody that shields the toxic NETs from being destroyed and produces a lasting noxious effect in a patient's body.

The results, published in JCI Insight, reveal markedly elevated levels of the anti-NET antibodies in many of the participants. Those with higher levels of the autoantibodies were more likely to develop severe COVID-19 symptoms.

We see a slew of different antibodies produced in COVID-19 patients, and now we discovered another clinically significant one that is likely contributing to severe COVID. They feed into the inflammatory storm that we're seeing in the most serious cases of viral infection." Yu (Ray) Zuo, M.D., lead author and rheumatologist at Michigan Medicine

Researchers generated NETs in the lab and incubated them with COVID patient serum. They found the serum from patients with higher levels of anti-NET antibodies struggled to degrade the toxic traps.

The team also spiked healthy serum with anti-NETs purified from the infected patients. While a healthy person's serum should completely disintegrate the extracellular traps, the purified anti-NET antibodies significantly hindered the process.

"We knew that people with severe forms of COVID have higher amounts of these neutrophil extracellular traps, which amplify inflammation and promote blood clot formation," said Jason Knight, M.D., corresponding author of the paper and an associate professor of rheumatology at Michigan Medicine. "We've now found that this process is exacerbated by the anti-NET antibodies, which disrupt our body's immune homeostasis during COVID-19 infection."

Similarities to another autoimmune disease

Zuo and the Michigan Medicine team previously reported the presence of anti-NETs in patients with antiphospholipid syndrome, a systemic autoimmune condition characterized by severe blood clots and recurring pregnancy loss.

The anti-NET antibodies, which are likely associated with the development of recurrent blood clots and more severe disease in antiphospholipid syndrome, showed remarkably similar function in this study of COVID-19 patients, said corresponding author Yogen Kanthi, M.D., a cardiologist and vascular medicine specialist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Lasker Investigator at the National Institutes of Health.

"In both diseases, the anti-NET antibodies coat the surface of the neutrophil extracellular traps, making it much harder for the body to clear out this web that causes inflammation and clotting," Kanthi said. "Knowing their function is likely to help physicians design more targeted COVID-19 treatments and also for other inflammatory diseases."

How COVID-19 manages to trigger the production of a variety of autoantibodies, including anti-NETs, remains unknown. Further study of the virus' autoimmune aspects, Zuo noted, will not only lead to better understanding of the disease, but will also likely shed light onto the origins of autoimmune diseases.

Future research and "long COVID"

The paper's findings may also unlock other COVID mysteries, including the persistence of symptoms in some people months after clearing the virus, a phenomenon known as long COVID, Zuo said.

The team is currently conducting a follow-up study, calling back patients who were previously hospitalized to repeat testing for the anti-NETs and other autoantibodies that formed during their hospitalizations.

Previously, they found durable anti-NET antibodies that persisted in antiphospholipid syndrome patients for up to four years. The team will investigate if and how the autoantibodies influence long COVID, the post-acute sequalae of the virus marked by symptoms like brain fog, fatigue and shortness of breath.

While vaccination is doing its job to limit severe infections and hospitalizations, millions still feel the effects of long COVID, which is why this research is so important, Zuo said.

"The better we understand these COVID-induced autoantibodies such as anti-NET antibodies, the more equipped we will be to fight COVID-19 at every stage of viral infection," Zuo said. "Studying these antibodies will also teach us about the mechanisms of autoimmunity in general, especially in the field of rheumatology."
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2), which is the causative agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is often transmitted to others through respiratory droplets from saliva and nasal fluid. When an individual is infected with COVID-19, these tiny droplets contain SARS-CoV-2 viral particles that have a diameter within the range of 0-10 micrometers (m).

Infected respiratory droplets can be produced during talking, sneezing, coughing, and panting by an infected individual, and can remain viable in aerosols for up to 3 hours. As a result, this mechanism of transmission has been primarily responsible for the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the world, causing over 190 million confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections and more than 4 million deaths as of July 20, 2021.

Study: Efficacy of Essential Iodine Drops against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Image Credit: bluecrayola / Shutterstock.com

The antiviral activity of iodine

While mitigation measures such as lockdowns, masking, social distancing, and vaccines have been adopted to reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, several other methods of reducing and controlling the virus have been proposed. Oral and nasal sprays with antiviral activity against SARS-CoV-2, for example, are actively being studied. More specifically, an Intranasal Povidone-Iodine (PVP-I; 1.25%) spray has been found to be active against SARS-CoV-2, as well as SARS-CoV and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS).

Iodine is established as having a broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity against bacterial, viral, fungal, and protozoal pathogens and has been used as an antiseptic for the prevention of infection and the treatment of wounds for decades.

A recent study published in PLOS One estimated the virucidal efficacy of Essential Iodine Drops (EID) for oral/nasal decontamination of known or suspected cases of COVID-19 as a potentially better alternative to the PVP-I.

The superior activity of EID

Zoltan Kontos, a researcher from IOI Investment Zrt., in Budapest, Hungary, recently demonstrated the efficacy of iodine against SARS-CoV-2 as a better alternative to Povidone-Iodine. In this work, Dr. Kontos found that Iodine-V, which is currently available as the EID formulation, inactivated 99% of SARS-CoV-2 after 60 and 90 seconds. These results were similar to PVP-I, which has previously been reported to inhibit 99.99% of SARS-CoV-2 at 60 seconds.

Iodine-V offers an advantage as a nasal or oral antiseptic to reduce viral transmission from known or suspected COVID-19 patients.

While the current study established that EIDs are as efficacious as PVP-I against SARS-CoV-2, it also discussed it as a potentially safer alternative to PVP-I, as this agent is known to cause serious rashes despite being non-cytotoxic. When used as a preoperative antiseptic in oral and maxillofacial surgery, for example, PVP-I is often associated with late-onset allergic contact dermatitis in some patients due to the free iodine that has an oxidizing effect on the skin or mucosa.

The improved safety profile of EID is largely due to the significantly lower amount of iodine present in this formulation as compared to that which is found in PVP-I. EID, for example, is an aqueous solution of Iodine-V containing 200 micrograms (g) of elemental iodine/milliliter (ml). This is comparable to 1-5% PVP-I, which often contains 10005000 g/ml iodine.

In addition to the therapeutic benefits of EID against SARS-CoV-2, the Iodine-V in EID also serves as a mineral supplement that can maintain healthy thyroid functioning.

Being already on the market as a mineral supplement to help people with iodine deficiency, it is safe when used routinely orally or intranasally in known or suspected COVID-19 patients.

Conclusion

Taken together, the current study concluded that being excipient-free, Iodine-V is likely to have better stability and an enhanced potency in vivo when compared with PVP-I against SARS-CoV-2. The study, therefore, recommends the use of intranasal/oral Iodine-V to reduce the risk of transmitting SARS-CoV-2.
Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) launched a new online tool that could more quickly advance medical discoveries to reverse progressive hearing loss. The tool enables easy access to genetic and other molecular data from hundreds of technical research studies involving hearing function and the ear. The research portal called gene Expression Analysis Resource (gEAR) was unveiled in a study last month in Nature Methods. It is operated by a group of physician-scientists at the UMSOM Institute for Genome Sciences (IGS) in collaboration with their colleagues at other institutions.

The portal allows researchers to rapidly access data and provides easily interpreted visualizations of datasets. Scientists can also input their own data and compare it to other datasets to help determine the significance of their new finding.

It saves scientists a huge amount of time. Instead of relying only on identifying mutations in genes for hearing loss, researchers can easily identify which cells express any gene in the ear, and how this expression changes, for example, as a result of noise exposure or in processes of regeneration in other species." Ronna Hertzano, MD, PhD, Study Corresponding Author, Associate Professor of Otorhinolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at UMSOM and Founder of the gEAR

Dr. Hertzano and her team recently added data from the BRAIN initiative to a specialized domain of the gEAR portal to provide access to those performing neuroscience studies to better understand brain function and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. The portal is free and available to any researcher seeking access.

Users of the portal can do a variety of applications depending on their needs. They can access the dataset uploader and add their dataset into gEAR to view their data in a private setting. This enables them to see their findings in the context of other public data before posting their results online or submitting their paper for publication. Once a manuscript is published, a permalink can be included in the manuscript which links readers directly to a curated view of that dataset.

"The gEAR portal currently includes over 800 datasets, which we carefully reviewed before inputting," said Dr. Hertzano. "We currently have more than 1,200 registered users and over 80 citations in research studies. We are expecting a large increase now that our methods paper is published." She and her colleagues did a soft launch of the portal a few years earlier and publicized its existence via discussions with colleagues and user workshops at scientific meetings.

The Hearing Restoration Project, a non-profit research consortium funded by the Hearing Health Foundation, provided initial support of gEAR in an effort to better understand the mystery of hair cell regeneration - why hair cells in the ear regenerate in certain animals but not in humans. Our hair cells do not naturally regenerate when they die off due to aging, excess noise, or exposure to certain potent medications like chemotherapy drugs for cancer. For this reason, hearing loss is usually permanent and cannot be reversed. The consortium uses genomic analyses to compare molecular processes in species that do not regenerate hair cells. "The gEAR team closely interacts with the consortium researchers who also serve as our focus group, providing priceless feedback and suggestions," Dr. Hertzano said.

Understanding how the expression of certain genes plays a role in hair cell regeneration - and how enzymes and other proteins mediate that process - could lead to new treatments to reverse hearing loss by triggering a regeneration of these cells.

"By enabling rapid access to enormous datasets, the gEAR portal can serve as a valuable hub for community building around common research areas," said Claire M. Fraser, PhD, the Dean's Endowed Professor of Medicine, Microbiology and Immunology, and Director of IGS. "Having access to data in large repositories is not enough. What's essential is that gEAR curates and organizes the data into an accessible format so it can be used to address important scientific questions."

Study lead author Joshua Orvis, Lead Bioinformatics Software Engineer at IGS and study co-author Yang Song, PhD, Bioinformatics Analyst II at IGS, were instrumental in the development of gEAR. Researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, University of Iowa, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel also contributed to this study.

"The gEAR portal is a beautiful example of the value of close collaboration of clinicians, biologists, and engineers to bridge the gap in technology and make the critically important 'omic' data generated across the world immediately accessible to biologists in a meaningful format," said E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs, UM Baltimore, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, and Dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine.

The gEAR portal's development has been funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Hearing Restoration Project (HRP), part of the Hearing Health Foundation (HHF).
Representatives of numerous pathogenic fungal species are finding new habitat on microplastic particles in the soil and could thus be one of the possible causes of an increase in fungal infections. Researchers from Bayreuth, Hannover and Munich demonstrated this in a new study. Using high-throughput methods, the scientists analyzed fungal communities from soil samples taken from sites near human settlements in western Kenya. The findings of this research have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

This study is the first to focus on fungal communities on microplastic particles in the soil. Many of the species detected belong to groups of fungi that are pathogenic to plants, animals and humans. Pathogenic microfungi are able to colonize the otherwise inhospitable surfaces of microplastic particles due to their characteristic adhesive lifestyle. Furthermore, they are able to withstand strong solar radiation and heat to which they are exposed on soil surfaces.

We were able to observe all stages of fungal biofilm formation on the microplastic particles recovered from the soil samples. In doing so, we were able to demonstrate that fungi not only grow, but also reproduce in the so-called plastisphere. The data we obtained from microscopic examinations and DNA analyses supports the assumption that fungi systematically colonize microplastics in the soil. Moreover, they provide evidence that microplastics in soil accumulate certain pathogenic fungal species: some species dangerous to humans, including black fungi and cryptococcal yeast fungi, are present on the surfaces of microplastic particles in higher concentrations than in the surrounding soil. Our study therefore justifies the presumption that microplastics in soil are a potential source of fungal infections." Gerasimos Gkoutselis M.Sc., lead author of the study and doctoral student, University of Bayreuth's Department of Mycology

Imaging techniques such as scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy were used to examine the microplastic particles. Metabarcoding analyses showed that the number of species on the microplastic particles was lower than in the soil samples. "Our research results therefore support the assumption that specialized fungal communities form on the microplastic particles, which differ significantly from the fungal communities in the surrounding soil. At the same time, however, we were able to prove that the number of fungal species occurring on microplastic in the soil is significantly higher than the number of fungal species colonizing microplastic particles in rivers and lakes," explains Prof. Dr. Gerhard Rambold, head of the Department of Mycology at the University of Bayreuth.

Especially in tropical countries, the risk of microplastic in the soil becoming a carrier for pathogenic fungi is comparatively high. The microplastic-containing soil samples examined in this new study were collected from study sites in the west Kenyan town of Siaya. The sites included a marketplace, a dump site, a roadside, and a courtyard. "Even though plastic waste is often portrayed as a Third World problem, Kenya actually has pioneer status in plastic waste prevention. Since 2017, effective measures have been taken there to eliminate single-use plastic. Kenya has also joined an alliance to impede import plastic from industrialized countries. This means that measures have been taken at an early stage to counteract the problem of plastic waste in the environment. The fact that we discovered numerous potentially pathogenic fungal colonies in the soil samples from Kenya is a clear indication of the urgency of the problem in tropical regions in general, where the rate of fungal infections is already high. Worldwide, fungal infections are on the rise. Our study shows: Measures to prevent plastic waste from entering the environment and to further develop waste management are urgently needed globally," Prof. Rambold explains further.

The findings published in Scientific Reports are the result of close interdisciplinary cooperation between scientists at the University of Bayreuth and partners at Leibniz University Hanover and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. The interdisciplinary working group at the University of Bayreuth is part of the local DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1357 "Microplastics". Scientists from the fields of mycology, microbiology, biogeochemistry, and genetics are working together in this team to investigate the interaction of microplastics and microorganisms living in the ground.
The second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine induces a powerful boost to a part of the immune system that provides broad antiviral protection, according to a study led by investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The finding strongly supports the view that the second shot should not be skipped.

Despite their outstanding efficacy, little is known about how exactly RNA vaccines work. So we probed the immune response induced by one of them in exquisite detail." Bali Pulendran, PhD, professor of pathology and of microbiology and immunology

The study, published July 12 in Nature, was designed to find out exactly what effects the vaccine, marketed by Pfizer Inc., has on the numerous components of the immune response.

The researchers analyzed blood samples from individuals inoculated with the vaccine. They counted antibodies, measured levels of immune-signaling proteins and characterized the expression of every single gene in the genome of 242,479 separate immune cells' type and status.

"The world's attention has recently been fixed on COVID-19 vaccines, particularly on the new RNA vaccines," said Pulendran, the Violetta L. Horton Professor II.

He shares senior authorship of the study with Kari Nadeau, MD, PhD, the Naddisy Foundation Professor of Pediatric Food, Allergy, Immunology, and Asthma and professor of pediatrics, and Purvesh Khatri, PhD, associate professor of biomedical informatics and of biomedical data science. The study's lead authors are Prabhu Arunachalam, PhD, a senior research scientist in Pulendran's lab; medical student Madeleine Scott, PhD, a former graduate student in Khatri's lab; and Thomas Hagan, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar in Pulendran's Stanford lab and now an assistant professor at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta.

Uncharted territory

"This is the first time RNA vaccines have ever been given to humans, and we have no clue as to how they do what they do: offer 95% protection against COVID-19," said Pulendran.

Traditionally, the chief immunological basis for approval of new vaccines has been their ability to induce neutralizing antibodies: individualized proteins, created by immune cells called B cells, that can tack themselves to a virus and block it from infecting cells.

"Antibodies are easy to measure," Pulendran said. "But the immune system is much more complicated than that. Antibodies alone don't come close to fully reflecting its complexity and potential range of protection."

Pulendran and his colleagues assessed goings-on among all the immune cell types influenced by the vaccine: their numbers, their activation levels, the genes they express and the proteins and metabolites they manufacture and secrete upon inoculation.

One key immune-system component examined by Pulendran and his colleagues was T cells: search-and-destroy immune cells that don't attach themselves to viral particles as antibodies do but rather probe the body's tissues for cells bearing telltale signs of viral infections. On finding them, they tear those cells up.

In addition, the innate immune system, an assortment of first-responder cells, is now understood to be of immense importance. It's the body's sixth sense, Pulendran said, whose constituent cells are the first to become aware of a pathogen's presence. Although they're not good at distinguishing among separate pathogens, they secrete "starting gun" signaling proteins that launch the response of the adaptive immune system -- the B and T cells that attack specific viral or bacterial species or strains. During the week or so it takes for the adaptive immune system to rev up, innate immune cells perform the mission-critical task of holding incipient infections at bay by gobbling up -- or firing noxious substances, albeit somewhat indiscriminately, at -- whatever looks like a pathogen to them.

A different type of vaccine

The Pfizer vaccine, like the one made by Moderna Inc., works quite differently from the classic vaccines composed of live or dead pathogens, individual proteins or carbohydrates that train the immune system to zero in on a particular microbe and wipe it out. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines instead contain genetic recipes for manufacturing the spike protein that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, uses to latch on to cells it infects.

In December 2020, Stanford Medicine began inoculating people with the Pfizer vaccine. This spurred Pulendran's desire to assemble a complete report card on the immune response to it.

The team selected 56 healthy volunteers and drew blood samples from them at multiple time points preceding and following the first and second shots. The researchers found that the first shot increases SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody levels, as expected, but not nearly as much as the second shot does. The second shot also does things the first shot doesn't do, or barely does.

"The second shot has powerful beneficial effects that far exceed those of the first shot," Pulendran said. "It stimulated a manifold increase in antibody levels, a terrific T-cell response that was absent after the first shot alone, and a strikingly enhanced innate immune response."

Unexpectedly, Pulendran said, the vaccine -- particularly the second dose -- caused the massive mobilization of a newly discovered group of first-responder cells that are normally scarce and quiescent.

First identified in a recent vaccine study led by Pulendran, these cells -- a small subset of generally abundant cells called monocytes that express high levels of antiviral genes -- barely budge in response to an actual COVID-19 infection. But the Pfizer vaccine induced them.

This special group of monocytes, which are part of the innate museum, constituted only 0.01% of all circulating blood cells prior to vaccination. But after the second Pfizer-vaccine shot, their numbers expanded 100-fold to account for a full 1% of all blood cells. In addition, their disposition became less inflammatory but more intensely antiviral. They seem uniquely capable of providing broad protection against diverse viral infections, Pulendran said.

"The extraordinary increase in the frequency of these cells, just a day following booster immunization, is surprising," Pulendran said. "It's possible that these cells may be able to mount a holding action against not only SARS-CoV-2 but against other viruses as well."
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a novel coronavirus that was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019. SARS-CoV-2, which has a very high rate of transmission, is the causal agent of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Several vaccines have been developed against SARS-CoV-2, several of which have received emergency use authorization (EUA) from global regulatory bodies. As a result, vaccination programs have commenced in many countries, with over 3.6 billion doses that have been administered worldwide as of July 19, 2021.

Study: SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern exhibit reduced sensitivity to live-virus neutralization in sera from CoronaVac vaccinees and naturally infected COVID-19 patients. Image Credit: Foxeel / Shutterstock.com

SARS-CoV-2 has mutated many times since it was originally identified at the end of 2019. This has led to the emergence of various SARS-CoV-2 variants that are often referred to as variants of concern (VOCs). Several SARS-CoV-2 VOCs are associated with greater infectivity and higher mortality rates than the original SARS-CoV-2 strain. Furthermore, some of these variants have been shown to evade vaccine-induced or naturally (COVID-19 recovered patent)-induced immunity, thus posing a threat to the efficacy of available vaccines.

Effectiveness of CoronaVac vaccine against SARS-COV-2

The CoronaVac vaccine has been developed by Sinovac Biotech in China and is based on the inactivated whole-virus. This vaccine has been approved for emergency use in Thailand and has also been used in vaccination programs in many low-income countries.

The Phase 1/2 clinical trial results for CoronaVac have recently been published. In Chile, for example, a large observational study was conducted and revealed that the CoronaVac vaccine is almost 66% effective in preventing COVID-19. This study also showed that CoronaVac reduced hospitalizations by 87.5%, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions by 90.3%, and mortality rates by 86.3%.

CoronaVac vaccine vs. natural immunity

The VOCs that are currently circulating in Thailand include the B.1.1.7 (Alpha), B.1.351 (Beta), and B.1.617.2 (Delta) strains. A new study published on the preprint server medRxiv* evaluates the efficacy of vaccine- and infection-induced antibodies against these variants.

In this study, the researchers assessed S1-receptor-binding domain (RBD)-binding immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels, and neutralizing antibody (NAb) titers against the SARS-CoV-2 prototypic vaccine strain (WT), as well as the Alpha, Beta, and Delta SARS-CoV-2 variants. The efficacy of the CoronaVac was assessed using the sera from healthcare workers who were fully vaccinated with the CoronaVac vaccine.

The sera of vaccinated individuals were compared with the sera of unvaccinated individuals who were naturally infected with COVID-19. The authors denoted COVID-19 hospitalized patients from March 2020 to May 2020 as Natural Infection 2020, and those from April to May 2021 as Natural Infection 2021.

Taken together, individuals who received a full 2-dose regimen of CoronaVac exhibited SARS-CoV-2 S1-RBD-binding IgG, which is referred to as IgG titer levels, that were comparable to the levels detected in patients who were naturally infected by COVID-19. Notably, IgG titers were not found to be affected the age and/or gender of the vaccinated individual. However, the day on which the serum was collected from the candidates was found to be an important determining factor for their IgG titer values. All participants of the cohort were reported to be seropositive for IgG.

Violin plots of IgG titer by cohort group. Boxplots indicate medians and IQRs. The horizontal dotted line indicates the threshold for positive detection (50 AU/ml). There was no significant difference in SARS-CoV-2 S1-RBD-binding IgG levels between groups adjusting for patients sex, age, and serum collection date. Geometric mean IgG titer and 95%CI, computed at mean serum collection date (17.16 days), age (42.25 yr) averaged cross sexes: CoronaVac = 1741.28 (1240.48-2444.25) AU/ml; Natural infection 2020 = 1875.07 (1236.29-2843.89) AU/ml; Natural infection 2020 = 2034.54 (1340.47-3087.99) AU/ml. The data points are colored according to the serum collection date. The p values shown are Tukey-adjusted p-values.

CoronaVac vaccine and SARS-COV-2 VOCs

The authors also evaluated NAb levels against all SARS-CoV-2 VOCs in the cohort. In their work, NAb positivity cut-off refers to the percentage of candidates with quantifiable NAb titers above or equal to 20 units.

The NAb titers were found to be highest against the wildtype (WT) SARS-CoV-2 strain (99.17%) and lowest for the Delta strain (69.17%). Comparatively, NAb titers against the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha and Beta variants were 85.83% and 82.50%, respectively. This trend was consistently found in all cohorts.

The percentage of detectable NAb titer values in individuals vaccinated with CoronaVac was found to be lowest compared to naturally infected individuals. Based on the statistical analysis of the entire cohort, a significant decrease in the mean NAb titer was observed against the four VOCs when compared to the WT.

In the case of the Alpha and Beta strains, no significant difference in the levels of the NAb titers was found. However, the NAb titer against the Delta variant was the lowest and was significantly different from the rest.

Violin plots of NAb titers grouped by virus strain nested within cohort groups (top), and by cohort group nested within virus strain (bottom). Boxplots indicate medians and IQRs. The horizontal dotted line indicates the threshold for positive detection (20 units). The data points are colored according to the IgG titer. The p-values shown are Tukey-adjusted p-values. IgG titer-, sex-, and age-adjusted geometric mean NAb titers can be found in Table 3.

Conclusion

The authors of this study reported that the WT strain of SARS-CoV-2 was best neutralized by Natural Infection 2020 when compared to CoronaVac and Natural Infection 2021 sera. However, the Alpha variant was best neutralized by Natural Infection 2021 sera, when compared to CoronaVac and Natural Infection 2020 sera.

In the case of the Beta variant, this form of SARS-CoV-2 was best neutralized by Natural Infection 2020 and 2021 sera with higher NAb titer levels. Although the Delta variant was neutralized well by Natural Infection 2020 and 2021 sera, levels of NAb titers were much lower when compared with the Alpha and Beta variants.

In summary, the results of the current study indicate that NAb titers elicited by CoronaVac are much lower when compared to natural infection.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
The struggle to get your child to go to sleep and stay asleep is something most parents can relate to. Once the bedtime battle is over and the kids have finally nodded off, many parents tune out as well.

But University of South Australia researcher Professor Kurt Lushington is calling for parents to check on their small snoozers before switching off.

He says knowing the quality of a child's sleep is important, as it could be an indicator of sleep-disordered breathing - an under-reported medical condition that can affect a child's health and wellbeing.

During sleep, the muscles keeping the upper airway stiff relax, and as a consequence, the airway narrows, which can cause snoring, snorting or in severe cases, the complete obstruction of the airway." Professor Kurt Lushington, University of South Australia

"This is known as sleep-disordered breathing, which can lead to a number of problems for children including daytime sleepiness, fatigue, irritability, hyperactivity and poor attention - and potentially worsens school performance.

"The long-term effects are not well understood but research suggests sleep-disordered breathing could also impair cardiovascular and metabolic health.

"Sleep-disordered breathing is significantly undiagnosed in the community. Parents can play an important role in the diagnostic process by looking out for the common symptoms, which include heavy breathing, snoring, gasping, or snorting, and stopping breathing altogether - and then share that information with their child's doctor."

In a new study of 1639 children in South Australia, Prof Lushington and colleagues surveyed parents to gauge whether they saw sleep-disordered breathing symptoms as a sleep problem. The findings suggest many parents do hold concerns about their children's sleeping habits, but it doesn't translate to them seeking medical help.

Almost all parents of children with sleep-disordered symptoms viewed apnoea as a problem while nearly two-thirds saw snorting, gasping, and being fearful their child would stop breathing as a problem.

Roughly half of parents considered snoring a problem and only one third viewed breathing heavily but not snoring as an issue.

Prof Lushington says the results are surprising given that most parents don't bring up these concerns with their child's medical professionals.

"Parents don't tend to discuss their child's sleep difficulties at medical consultations - in Australia, it's estimated only four per cent of parents will bring this up with their doctor," he says.

"The good news from our study is that we found that many parents are already recognising that there is a sleep problem. Prior to this, we had hypothesised that the under-reporting of symptoms suggestive of sleep-disordered breathing, or of sleep problems in general, at medical consultation could be because of the lack of parents' awareness of a problem existing.

"While there does need to be more education for parents on symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing - particularly around snoring or heavy breathing being a potential cause for concern, there are clearly other barriers to parents bringing up sleep problems in medical consultations.

"To address this, we suggest medical practitioners need to purposely include questions about sleep at consultations to prompt parents to discuss any symptoms they may have observed in their children at night.

"If parents check in to see how well their children are sleeping at night and doctors routinely check in with parents to discuss children's sleeping habits, we might be able to catch sleep-disordered breathing earlier and take steps to treat it before it affects a child's behaviour and health."

The current treatment for sleep-disordered breathing in children is adenotonsillectomy - the removal of adenoid and tonsils - which is known to improve children's quality of life and sleep.

The research was published in the paper 'Sleep disordered breathing in children: which symptoms do parents consider a problem?' in the Sleep Medicine.

Your child's sleep - tips for checking in:

Familiarise yourself with guidelines advising how much sleep children need at different ages to function well during the day.

If your child is getting enough sleep according to the guidelines but experiences daytime problems with sleepiness, fatigue, irritability, hyperactivity, or poor attention, this could be a sign of sleep-disordered breathing.

If you notice your child snores, struggles to breath at night, has long pauses between breaths greater than 20 seconds, or gasps at night - it's time to bring up the symptoms with your child's GP or paediatrician.

Educate yourself on what normative sleep is to make sure everyone in your household is getting a good night's sleep - the Sleep Health Foundation is a great starting point with a number of fact sheets freely available online.
Getting clean drinking water cost Ignacio Padilla his health insurance.

The World War II veteran needed to repay the loan for the water pump installed on his 1-acre property in rural Tulare County, the only source of water to his mobile home. He carefully socked away a few thousand dollars so he could make the payoff  only to find that those savings put him over the asset threshold to remain on Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program for low-income people. He was booted from the health insurance program in 2019.

It wasn't an emergency at the time. Padilla still had coverage from Medicare and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and he could live an independent, if remote, life.

But now Padilla is 95 and has congestive heart failure. His children are trying to get him back on Medi-Cal so it can eventually cover the costs for nursing home care.

His older daughter, Emily Ysais, worries that Padilla's finances  limited though they are  will again disqualify him. He gets $1,100 a month from his pension and Social Security. If Veterans Affairs approves the monthly caregiving stipend she helped her dad apply for, it could tip him over the limit of Medi-Cal's "asset test."

"Our hands are tied," said Ysais, 67. "It's hard to keep figuring out a way to take care of him."

Change is coming, though perhaps not soon enough for Padilla. A provision in California's newly approved state budget will eliminate the asset test for the 2 million Californians enrolled in both Medi-Cal and Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older and people under 65 with certain disabilities. Instead, their financial eligibility will be based solely on income, as it is for the millions of other people in Medi-Cal.

The elimination of the test will be a game changer for aging or impaired Californians who need long-term care but are caught in a common conundrum: They don't earn enough to cover the high costs of ongoing nursing home care and can't rely on Medicare, which does not cover extended nursing home stays. They can get that care through Medi-Cal, but they would have to wipe out their savings first.

The 2021-22 state budget deal includes several provisions that will make it easier to get on and stay on Medi-Cal, including the elimination of the asset test. Everyone 50 and over will be eligible, regardless of immigration status. And new mothers will be allowed to remain on Medi-Cal for one year after giving birth, up from 60 days.

The budget also includes $15 million over the next three years, starting this year, to develop online enrollment forms and translate them into multiple languages, and $8 million for counties to help some people who get in-home care stay enrolled.

California has a strong Medi-Cal takeup rate, with 95% of eligible people enrolled, said Laurel Lucia, director of the health care program at the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California-Berkeley. But of the remaining uninsured people, about 610,000 qualify for Medi-Cal, she said.

"We are doing well, but so many people are eligible and not enrolled," Lucia said. "The barriers to Medi-Cal enrollment and retention are really multifaceted, so the solutions have to be as well."

This is an especially volatile moment for the program, which covers 13.6 million Californians. The state is trying to improve the quality of care by renegotiating its contracts with managed-care insurance companies. At the same time, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state Department of Health Care Services are proposing a massive overhaul that would provide more services to homeless people and incarcerated people and boost mental health care.

Meanwhile, Medi-Cal enrollment continues to grow: State officials estimate enrollment will balloon to 14.5 million this fiscal year, which began July 1.

The changes to Medi-Cal that were approved in the budget include an expansion that Democratic lawmakers have been seeking for years: California already allows eligible unauthorized immigrants up to age 26 to receive full Medi-Cal benefits. Starting next spring, that will expand to people 50 and up.

State officials estimate about 175,000 people will enroll in the first year, with an additional 3,600 people signing up every year thereafter, eventually costing the state $1.3 billion annually.

And, starting next July, new mothers will be able to stay on Medi-Cal for up to one year after giving birth. By 2027, the additional coverage is expected to cost the state about $200 million a year.

Assembly Republican Leader Marie Waldron (R-Escondido), who said she supports expanding eligibility for the program in limited circumstances, was the author of a bill to allow incarcerated people to enroll before they're released that was ultimately folded into the budget and will take effect in 2023.

But she said the changes in this year's budget go too far.

"Expensive government-run health care doesnt really work, and most voters dont want to pay for it," Waldron said. "But California Democrats seem to think everyone will love it once they are on it, which is not true. Its creeping socialism.

The elimination of the Medi-Cal asset test for older Californians and those with certain disabilities, which takes effect July 1, 2022, marks a dramatic change to the program. Officials estimate it will cost the state roughly $200 million a year once fully implemented because of the increased enrollment.

Right now, these people can't qualify for Medi-Cal if they have saved more than $2,000. For couples, it's $3,000. Complicated rules dictate what counts as an "asset" and what doesn't: A house doesn't count and neither does one car, but a second car does. Engagement rings and heirlooms are fine, but other jewelry counts toward the limit.

Ultimately, the test favors individuals and families who can navigate the rules and find ways to hide money in exempt accounts, said Claire Ramsey, a senior attorney with Justice in Aging.

"You create administrative hurdles, which keeps people artificially off the program," Ramsey said. "If it's hard for the lawyers to understand all the rules, what does that mean for the average person who's just trying to have health insurance?"

The federal Affordable Care Act eliminated the asset test for most Medicaid enrollees, basing financial eligibility exclusively on income, but left out people who qualify for both Medicaid and Medicare.

This is especially important when it comes to expensive long-term care, like nursing homes, which can cost $10,000 a month, said Patricia McGinnis, executive director of California Advocates for Nursing Home Reform.

Medicare covers nursing home care only in limited circumstances and for up to 100 days. After that, patients must find another way to pay, either out-of-pocket or through Medi-Cal. Because many people don't qualify for Medi-Cal if they have too much money or other assets, they have to spend through their savings and shed their belongings before they can get on the program.

"Thousands and thousands of people have become impoverished to afford nursing home care," McGinnis said. "You want free medical care? You're going to have to spend every penny you have to get it."

A state Assembly analysis estimated that 17,802 additional Californians would have become eligible in 2018 if the asset test hadn't been required. Of those, 435 were in long-term care, and over the course of the year, 263 spent their money or gave away their assets to qualify for Medi-Cal.

Assembly member Wendy Carrillo (D-Los Angeles), the author of the asset test bill that was folded into the budget, sees eliminating the requirement as part of a larger movement toward universal coverage, in line with efforts to expand Medi-Cal to older unauthorized immigrants or establish a single-payer system.

"We need to aggressively and proactively work on legislation that gives more people coverage," Carrillo said. "And until we have universal health care, these are the steps necessary to ensure that."

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.
Evidence shows that early detection and treatment of cancer can significantly improve health outcomes, however women in Mississippi, particularly in underserved populations, experience the worst health outcomes for cervical, breast, and oropharyngeal cancer.

A new publication from Michelle Williams, associate professor at George Mason University's College of Health and Human Services Department of Global and Community Health, published in the Journal of Cancer Education evaluates the feasibility of offering free, same-day cancer screening and health education to reduce disparities of "preventable cancers." Williams evaluated the effects of providing access to free mammograms, Pap tests and pelvic exams, and oral cancer exams on participants' knowledge about cancer, self-efficacy for obtaining healthcare, and intentions to change their health behaviors.

Williams and colleagues evaluated an implementation of the See, Test, & Treat Program, an evidence-based program developed by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Foundation which they adapted for use with uninsured and underserved women in the Jacksonville Metropolitan Area. See, Test, & Treat participants were educated about cancer screenings during their consultation with providers. Important features of the See, Test, & Treat program were that participants received screening results within 2 hours and participants who received abnormal results were able to schedule a follow-up appointment at a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) before leaving. In addition, upon arriving at the screening site waiting room, participants could choose from a variety of health activities, including demonstrations of healthy cooking, yoga, and Zumba.

Cancer screenings are a valuable tool for the early detection of cancer - however uninsured and underserved women may lack access to life-saving routine screenings. Evaluating the implementation of this program helps show that it is feasible to provide access to free cancer screenings to vulnerable populations and to provide screening results in the same day." Michelle Williams, Associate Professor , George Mason University's College of Health and Human Services Department of Global and Community Health

The majority of participants reported that they attended the See, Test, & Treat Program because they wanted free cancer screening and they could get the test results back the same day. The majority of participants reported that the program had a positive effect on their knowledge of cancer screenings and their self-efficacy for seeking regular check-ups. In addition, participants reported that the health education activities had a significant effect on their understanding of the cancers for which they screened as well as health, nutrition, and exercise.

Follow-up appointments were made for all participants who received abnormal test results, including 18 women who received abnormal mammogram results. 15 of the 18 women obtained a diagnostic mammogram, three of whom required biopsies. All the biopsy results were benign. Two of the women who received the oral cancer exams had abnormal results and both were referred for treatment. None of the 44 Pap tested were abnormal, however 14 women were diagnosed with trichomonas and referred for treatment.

Overall, the program was positively received by the participants and successfully provided uninsured and under-served women with free cancer screening and health education. When asked about what they enjoyed most about the program, participants identified the convenience of same day screening results and that the staff treated them with respect. One participant reported that the staff "didn't make me feel like someone who didn't have health insurance." Limitations of the evaluation approach include the lack of long-term follow-up because the evaluation survey was completed anonymously. William seeks to include an interview and follow-up survey of all participants in future iterations of the program.

Participants learned of the program through advertising disseminated through channels such as churches, healthcare centers, and social media. Childcare was made available for participants with young children. The American Cancer Society guidelines were used to determine eligibility for the breast and cancer screening. 72 women met the eligibility requirements, 53 women were screened, and 52 participants completed the evaluation survey.

Williams initially led the program evaluation while at the University of Mississippi Medical Center (UMCC) Cancer Center and Research Institute and will continue her evaluations at George Mason University. The program evaluation is funded by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) Foundation.
England has achieved relatively high vaccine coverage with at least one dose of vaccine having been given to three out of four citizens, for age groups 18 years and above. This is good news for the country, which has been hard-hit by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) since March 2020.

A new study reports this finding, along with varying antibody prevalence among different groups and regions and between different age groups. In the current paper, available as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, the results of the sixth round of the REACT-2 study are reported.

In the earlier rounds, significantly varying rates of COVID-19 prevalence by region, ethnic origin and occupation were reported. In succeeding rounds, the seroprevalence dropped gradually, as antibody levels declined, but then rose again, as a result of the second wave of viral spread as well as an increase in vaccine coverage.

The current round was carried out from May 12 to 25, 2021, covering over 207,000 adults who self-tested using the LFA. This number comprises less than a third of those invited, but over 80% of all who registered for the test.

Background

The REACT-2 (REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission-2) is a cross-sectional random community survey of adults in England, has been going on in England ever since the early days of the pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

The methods include questionnaires to elicit symptomatic infections coupled with lateral flow immunoassay (LFA) testing to detect evidence of past or current infection. The detection of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody to the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was used as a proxy for the prevalence of infection before the vaccination program began.

The COVID-19 vaccine rollout in England began in December, 2020, in a phased manner, prioritizing those at the highest risk of infection and of severe symptomatic disease. Rapid implementation of the vaccination program occurred, assisted by introducing a practice of delayed second doses to 12 weeks after the first. By the beginning of July 2021, 85% of adults in England had received one dose, and almost two in three had received both doses.

Evidence is accruing that rapid vaccine coverage has helped bring down SARS-CoV-2 transmission, reduce hospital admissions and the death rate from COVID-19.

Vaccine coverage

The researchers found that of the study sample, approximately 73% of adults were vaccinated with at least one dose. However, this included only one in four of those aged 18-24 years, but almost all those aged 75 or more.

Health workers were approximately ten times more likely to be vaccinated, and care workers four times, relative to non-essential workers, while those in the field of education had 63% increased odds relative to other fields of work. Unfortunately, workers in the areas of hospitality and retail, who would be expected to have contact with the public, had approximately 30% lower odds of vaccine coverage compared to other workers.

Even so, men were 10% less likely to have been vaccinated than women, while Black people had 60% lower odds of having received the vaccine. Conversely, Asian people had 13% higher odds.

Socioeconomic deprivation was also inversely linked to vaccine coverage, and those who reported having had COVID-19 already were 40% less likely to be vaccinated. Londoners had 14% lower odds, while those in the Northwest of England had 23% higher odds of being vaccinated relative to Southeast England.

What about vaccine hesitancy?

The scientists found that about 98% of participants said they had been or intended to be vaccinated when they became eligible. The percentage of vaccine hesitancy or unwillingness declined across age groups, with less than 1% of people identifying themselves as such.

The most unwilling were those aged 25-34 years, with 25% more hesitancy than those aged 35-44 years. Poorer and less educated people also showed slightly more hesitancy, as did those of Black or mixed ethnic origin, compared to Caucasian or Asian origin.

A history of COVID-19 or smoking also pushed up the risk of hesitancy. Overall, the reasons most often given for hesitancy were fear about the long-term adverse effects or wanting to have evidence of vaccine efficacy. However, this reason was less often proffered in this round compared to earlier rounds.

What was antibody prevalence?

The results showed that antibody prevalence went up remarkably following the implementation of vaccination. The increase to 61% contrasts with 14% and <7% in the previous two rounds. The lowest prevalence was in the Northwest, at 58%, vs. 62% among Londoners.

Taking individual local authorities, the variation was greater, from 40% to 79%. Health workers were eight times as likely to be seropositive than other or non-essential workers, while care workers had four times higher odds. Essential workers had 30% increased odds compared to other non-essential workers.

Again, age predicted higher seroprevalence, with 95% of those aged 75 or more showing anti-spike antibodies vs. 36% of those aged 18-24 years. This trend, mirroring vaccine coverage, persisted with respect to ethnicity, with Asians showing 67%, Blacks 55%, but mixed 17%, and other races 37% higher odds of seropositivity.

Men were at 30% lower odds to be seropositive, however, but deprivation did not show a significant effect in this area. Hospitality and retail workers had 30% to 40% lower odds of antibody positivity.

Post-vaccine antibody positivity

Antibody positivity rose after the first and second doses, with a decline at 4-5 weeks after the first dose, lasting up to 11 weeks. Positivity was higher in those with a history of prior infection, and the Pfizer vaccine recipients also had higher odds of seropositivity relative to the Astra-Zeneca vaccine.

After two doses, the Pfizer vaccine was associated with 100% seropositivity at all ages except at 80 years and above, this group showing 98% positivity. With the AstraZeneca vaccine, approximately 90% or more of those up to 79 years were seropositive, vs. 84% of those older than this.

Single-dose positivity ranged from 100% in the 18-29 years to 32% in those aged 70-79 years for the Pfizer vaccine. In contrast, the Astra-Zeneca vaccine produced 72% seropositivity in the youngest, but only 46% in the 80 years and over the group. A few received the Moderna vaccine with high seropositivity rates.

What are the implications?

The study shows that vaccination has been implemented in a rapid and large-scale fashion in England among adults, producing a relatively higher antibody prevalence after two vaccine doses. The lowest coverage is in the youngest eligible group, who have the lowest vaccine priority, as well as in some disadvantaged groups, among men and London dwellers.

Among workers facing the public, both vaccine coverage and seroprevalence were low, indicating they remain at higher risk of infection and hence may transmit the infection. Those with a history of COVID-19 had lower coverage, perhaps because a four-week delay is recommended in this group or because such individuals feel they are already immune.

A satisfying rise in antibody prevalence is observed after 70% coverage with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. The rise is clearest after the second dose, which implies that both doses must be taken when offered. The dramatic rise after the second dose, especially since antibody titers fall between weeks 4-11 after the first dose, bears out the need to reduce the period between the first and second doses during a period of rapid spread.

Further research is required to elicit the link between being positive for IgG against the virus, and neutralizing capacity, which alone can hinder infection and transmission. It is also possible that emerging variants such as the delta strain will not be neutralized unless high protective antibody titers are achieved.

Deprivation is linked to poorer vaccine coverage, whereas non-White ethnicity was associated with higher seropositivity due to a greater risk of infection. Overall, encouraging vaccination rates and seropositivity prevalence is set off by lower coverage and antibody prevalence in some groups.

Obtaining improved rates of vaccination in these groups is essential to achieving high levels of protection against the virus through population immunity, the authors point out.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
An interesting new study, released as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, reports that vaccine hesitancy in the UK is driven not, as is commonly thought, by the so-called infodemic of misinformation that has characterized much public messaging during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.

Instead, the personality of the individual, the ability to trust scientific and government leadership, political affiliations, and openness relative to the process of vaccine development was found to be key in the development of this attitude.

Background

The UK was the earliest country to approve a COVID-19 vaccine against the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Namely, the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccine. This was followed by the approval of the adenovirus vector vaccine, the Oxford University/AstraZeneca ChAdOx1, and the Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccines shortly thereafter.

The UK vaccination policy shifted quite early to maximizing coverage, based on the shortage in vaccine supply, by giving a single dose of one of these vaccines to as many people as possible in the eligible categories. Evidence proved that this pragmatic approach worked since a single dose of the Pfizer vaccine provided high protection against severe and critical COVID-19 and deaths related to the SARS-CoV-2.

Similarly, a single ChAdOx1 dose provided effective protection against severe disease. As hoped by many scientists, vaccination also reduced the secondary attack rate, that is, the number of people infected from a given index patient.

At present, almost 85% of all UK adults have received one or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine, and about two-thirds have had two doses. This indicates high vaccine confidence, increasing over time.

Conversely, it contradicts commonly reported trends among the vaccine-hesitant. Namely, that their long-term safety is unknown, at best, and that both within the UK and globally, vaccine hesitancy is a significant challenge with relation to COVID-19 vaccines.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) SAGE Working Group on Vaccine Hesitancy, Confidence, Complacency, Convenience are the three Cs that play key roles in the unwillingness to take vaccines. These have been countered in the UK by making vaccination extremely convenient, such as ensuring a ready stock of vaccine at local health centers at no cost. Complacency is not considered a problem as Britain was badly affected by the first wave.

What about confidence?

The researchers aimed to understand what made individuals decide to accept or refuse the vaccine at the start of the rollout in the UK. Using a mixed-methods approach, on about 4,500 adults, the survey covered mostly Whites, with 65% being female.

In this survey, 85% of the participants expressed vaccine willingness. Only about one in five, however, said they believed the UK government was acting rightly in its COVID-19 control strategies. Many said the governments step in distributing vaccines was sensible and responsible, both for themselves and for the community at large.

These people also felt that the vaccine was essential to protect those most vulnerable, who were not eligible for vaccination. Many also felt it was the only way to restore ones freedom to return to a normal life.

Reasons for vaccine hesitancy

Those who did not feel this way had, not surprisingly, 63% higher odds of refusing the vaccine.

When queried in greater detail, the reasons for skepticism directed at government actions centered around the motives for such actions, truthfulness and political or social agenda. About a third stated the government could never/rarely be trusted for its truthfulness in this area, and these subsets had approximately nine times, and five times, higher odds for vaccine hesitancy, respectively.

Another often-cited reason was the perceived excessive haste and lack of transparency in the vaccine development process, often accompanied by mistrust of the pharmaceutical company that developed it. The latter was often pointed to as having an unproven or negative track record.

Some also indicated the lack of success in developing a coronavirus vaccine for over 20 years until the pandemic occurred, implying or even stating outright that this meant the vaccines had been manufactured before the current outbreak.

The fact that COVID-19 was mild or asymptomatic in most cases also led some to suppose that a vaccine was unnecessary.

Over 80% said they generally trusted vaccines. In fact, about 60% of the respondents said they took annual flu shots. Predictably, those who denied ever having taken, or who reported rarely taking, a flu shot, had >5 times, and approximately twice, the odds of not accepting the COVID-19 vaccine either, respectively.

The former acceptor group often compared the two shots and their reasons for taking them, seeing little difference between them. The second group sometimes traced their hesitancy to a negative experience with the flu shot.

Being able to remember the impact of measles and polio vaccines on these deadly diseases had a generally favorable effect on vaccine willingness.

In general, participants who were worried about the vaccine were more likely to refuse it. If they had already refused other shots, they had 20 times the risk of refusing the COVID-19 jab, too, while those who had accepted other shots offered to them had four times the odds of hesitancy towards this shot.

A clash was perceived between the vaccine willingness of some people, who confessed they took the vaccine only because it was a mandatory requirement for travelers; or because they wanted to protect vulnerable people with whom they came into contact.

Others said they were determined not to take the vaccine at present but were open to change once further evidence came in. Some individuals in this category pointed out that they had medical conditions in which the vaccine had not been tested.

Rather than specific medical conditions, however, the perception of ones health was more important in driving vaccine hesitancy, with people who felt they were in good shape being more likely to refuse the vaccine.

Employment status and income were independent of vaccine intentions for the most part, except for retired people who were more likely to accept the vaccine.

The impact of political affiliations was obvious, with left-leaning individuals being 30% less likely, but rightists being twice as likely, to refuse the vaccine, compared to centrists.

What are the implications?

The survey results were meant to describe how people reacted to a novel vaccine being rolled out during a period of a health emergency.

The results indicate a high likelihood of widespread vaccine acceptance throughout the UK. Conducted in December 2020, it showed 85% vaccine willingness among UK adults, independent of age, education, gender, location, comorbidities, or history of COVID-19.

This contrasts with other studies showing that age is linked to higher acceptance. This may correspond with the increased chances of vaccine acceptance by retirees.

Smokers have a negative attitude to the vaccine, with smoking being known to be associated with higher risk-taking, poor ability to make good decisions, and impaired ability to evaluate the future consequences of actions  all of which are possible explanations of their refusal of the vaccine.

Political affiliations were linked to vaccine acceptance, but in a manner, that contrasts with the trend in the USA, which may indicate that anti-vaccination attitudes are driven by suspicion of experts, similar to leftist parties, while the individual continues to support conservative policies.

Mistrust of the governments COVID-19 strategy grew from approximately half the survey participants in April 2020, to about 80% by December of the same year, while about 40% thought that the government was consistently truthful about the pandemic. Suspicion of governmental truth and actions in this area is linked to vaccine hesitancy.

The study shows that misinformation played a minor role in driving vaccine hesitancy, overall, with trust being a major factor instead. The anti-vaccination group cited trust issues with the vaccine quality and safety, and suspicion of the motives and track record of the manufacturers and of the government (the need for a global vaccination program).

These are legitimate concerns and cannot be dismissed as pseudoscientific or misinformation-related hesitancy. Instead, the government and health agencies must interact at this level to regain public trust in science and in leaders.

In contrast, those who elected to take the vaccine cited social responsibility and a desire to return to normalcy as their driving motives.

This supports critical insights into vaccine hesitancy which reject knowledge deficit framings of the problem, recasting it instead into a question of trust in scientific expertise, write the researchers.

The need of the hour is therefore to address these issues through effective engagement with the public through a process of transparency, ethical reasoning and both formal & informal deliberation.

*Important notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Shelia R. Cooper, 66, of Memphis, IN, passed away at 8:43 p.m. on Monday, July 19, 2021, at Clark Memorial Health in Jeffersonville, IN. Shelia was born on Saturday, May 28, 1955, at Clark Memorial Hospital in Jeffersonville, IN. She is the daughter of Lonnie Cooper Jr. who preceded her in d
From left, Ed Croom, president of the University of Mount Olive, meets with Mike Mancuso, Triangle East Chamber of Commerce president, and Paul Rutter, UMO executive director for strategic partnerships, to discuss the universitys new offering for a masters degree in business administration in Smithfield.
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(Newser)  With the pandemic inspiring many Americans to reconsider how, where, and how much they want to work, this might be a opportunity to retire the five-day workweek. Employees' connection to the eight-hour, five-day week already is disrupted, and Anna North suggests in Vox that we don't have to return to it. "When you live it every Monday through Friday, year in and year out, it can be hard to imagine any other way," North writes. "But theres nothing inevitable about" that schedule. It became law in the 1930s, an improvement from the 14-hour days that some employers required. The issue wasn't just how hard people should work but "an attempt to gain time back," a historian said. People are wrestling with deciding whether they want to spend so much of their time commuting or working in low-wage, sometimes dangerous jobs.

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The pandemic made workers pause to ask, "We have one lifeand are we working to live, or are we living to work?" a worker advocate said. The 40-hour week came only after a long battle that included mass strikes. There were efforts for a six-hour day or an otherwise shorter workweek into the 1960s, North says, but they faded with the climbing unemployment of the '70s. Even before the pandemic, the workers' rights movement was building, especially with the drive for a $15 minimum wage. Studies in several other countries have found shorter workweeks pay off. "In a country as work-focused as the United States, it can be hard to imagine reforms that would help (some) people work less," North writes. "But some say the pandemic, along with growing worker activism in recent years, have created conditions similar to the 1930s, where big changes finally seem possible." You can read the full piece here. (Read more five day workweek stories.)
(Newser)  A federal judge has ruled against students who argued that Indiana University's requirement for students and staff to receive COVID vaccines violates both state law and the Constitution. Judge Damon Leichty declined to block the mandate, saying the "balance of harms and the public interest favor Indiana University," Politico reports. This appears to be the first ruling upholding a university's COVID vaccine mandate, the New York Times notes. The IU policy requires students and staff to be fully vaccinated before the start of the fall semester. The university will recognize medical and religious exemptions, but unvaccinated students and staff will be require to continue wearing masks and socially distancing, reports the South Bend Tribune. The requirements are only in effect for the fall semester.

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The students' reasons for opposing both the vaccine and masks ranged from religious objects to a belief masks caused acne, the judge noted. James Bopp Jr., a lawyer for the eight student plaintiffssix of whom have already received exemptionsargued that the vaccine mandate is the "government forcing you to do something that you strenuously object to and have your body invaded in the process." He said an appeal would be funded by the conservative anti-vaccine group America's Frontline Doctors. The judge acknowledged that students opposed to the mandate may face a "hard choice," but said the Fourteenth Amendment "permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty, and staff." (Read more coronavirus vaccine stories.)
(Newser)  An announcement from Ben & Jerry's on Monday got a very frosty reception in Israel. The Vermont-based company said in a statement that it will no longer allow its ice cream to be sold in the "Occupied Palestinian Territory"the West Bank and east Jerusalembecause the sales are "inconsistent with our values." The move was condemned by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who said the company has "decided to brand itself as the anti-Israel ice cream," the Hill reports. He described the decision as "morally wrong," adding, "There are many ice cream brands but only one Jewish state." The company said it is ending its relationship with a licensee that manufactures the ice cream in Israel and distributes in the region, but "we will stay in Israel through a different arrangement."

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Some 700,000 Israeli settlers now live in the territories seized in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, and since all major Israeli supermarkets, the main distribution channel for the ice cream, operate in the territories, it's not clear how the company could enforce a sales ban, the AP notes. The move from Ben & Jerry's, which was founded by Jewish Americans Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, followed pressure from pro-Palestinian activists who said allowing sales in the territories conflicted with the company's vocal support of social justice causes, reports the Washington Post. The company was criticized for not speaking out during the May conflict in Gaza, and its normally highly active Twitter account was silent for nearly two months before Monday's announcement. (Read more Ben & Jerry's stories.)
(Newser)  Although an inspector general's report found that he misled Congress about the Trump administration's attempt to put a citizenship question in the census, former Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross won't face any charges. "Our investigation established that the then-Secretary misrepresented the full rationale for the reinstatement of the citizenship question" in two 2018 congressional hearings, Peggy Gustafson, inspector general for the Commerce Department, wrote to congressional leaders, the Hill reports. Ross testified that the administration wanted to ask about citizenship on the 2020 form only because the Justice Department wanted the question, so it could use the data in enforcing the Voting Rights Act, per CNN. Evidence later showed Ross and other administration officials were planning a citizenship question before the Justice Department, which declined Monday to comment on the case, asked for it.

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Gustafson released her letter Monday, which says that she gave the evidence of Ross' deception to the Justice Department but that prosecutors decided against bringing perjury charges. Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, who asked for the investigation, issued a statement saying that "lying to Congress is unacceptable." She said her Oversight Committee nonetheless will look into the "Trump administration's political interference with the census." Civil rights advocates and others had objected to the question, saying that it could cause an undercount by deterring immigrants from answering the survey. That in turn could result in immigrant communities being underserved by the federal government. In the end, the Supreme Court blocked the question, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing that Ross' answers were a deflection. His majority opinion cited "a significant mismatch between the Secretarys decision and the rationale he provided." (Read more Wilbur Ross stories.)
(Newser)  A Colorado man has been convicted of vehicular homicide after prosecutors say he hit a car while driving around 120 mph during a Facebook livestream showing him speeding. A jury in Adams County found 44-year-old Bryan Kirby guilty Thursday in the 2018 crash, District Attorney Brian Mason said Monday. Kirby was also found guilty of reckless manslaughter and leaving the scene of a fatal accident, the AP reports. Kirby was accused of driving as fast as 167 mph during the livestream on a highway near Denver while making comments to viewers about his speed. At the end, he rapidly crossed from the left lane to the right and crashed into a sedan from behind, Mason said.

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The phone appeared to tumble inside Kirby's vehicle before the video stopped. Prosecutors say Kirby then ran away from the crash. The driver of the sedan, 67-year-old Robert Hamilton, was pronounced dead at the scene. "The incredibly reckless actions of this defendant caused the death of an innocent victim," said Mason, per CBS Denver. "He not only acted in a manner that ultimately caused someones death, he livestreamed it on social media for the world to see. Kirby will be sentenced Sept. 10.

(Read more Colorado stories.)
(Newser)  Government documents have been released that show the FBI knew what it was getting when it recruited Boston mobster Whitey Bulger as an informant in the 1970s. The 300 pages of records, some of which have to be held upside down to a mirror to be read, were posted in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Boston Herald. The FBI said more releases will follow, the Herald reports. The release shows a gangster who, in addition to being tied to at least 11 homicides, was involved in loan sharking, fixing horse races, and drug rackets. He also was an enforcer, the files indicate. Bulger's targets include an FBI informant the files say he "slapped around" before being recruited himself by the FBI. The agency had told the informant to withhold payments to gangs, then put a recorder on him.

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In the racing scam, the records provide details about Bulger bribing jockeys and drugging horses at tracks in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Boston, and Las Vegas, per the Times Leader, to profit local bosses. Bulger left town in 1994 when his handler tipped him off that he was going to be indicted, per WCVB. He evaded arrest until 2011, when he was picked up in Santa Monica, California, where he was living with a woman and had stuffed the walls of his apartment with more than $800,000 in cash. Bulger was beaten to death in prison in West Virginia in 2018 when he was 89; his family has sued the federal prison system for $200 million over his death. (Read more Whitey Bulger stories.)
(Newser)  One of 18 scientists to sign a May letter upping the idea that the novel coronavirus may have leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology says new evidence points in another direction: the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market. "I do think transmission from another species, without a lab escape, is the most likely scenario by a long shot," Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, tells NPR. "The data are very consistent with it starting at the market." A March report from the World Health Organization was inconclusive on whether the outbreak started at the market, though it did suggest transmission from bats to humans through another animal. Worobeyco-author of a new online review who's used computer models to show how SARS-CoV-2 spread through Wuhan, Chinasays that report failed to look at the location of early known COVID-19 cases in relation to the market.

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Since signing the letter, Worobey has worked with microbiologist Robert Garry of Tulane University to map where people with early confirmed cases lived in Wuhan. The Wuhan Institute of Virology sits outside the initial cluster of cases. But the seafood market, more than 10 miles away, "seems like the bull's-eye," says Worobey. "It's pretty extraordinary." Plus, a recent study showed the market was one of four in Wuhan selling illegal wildlife, including palm civets and raccoon dogs, "which are the likely suspects as intermediaries to SARS-CoV-2," says Worobey. Civets are thought to have caused the SARS-CoV pandemic in 2003, per NPR. This new research comes as WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus calls on China to release early "raw data" and allow greater access to its labs so scientists can better understand SARS-CoV-2's origin, per Science. (Wuhan's only foreign virologist thinks the lab-leak theory is unlikely.)
(Newser)  The monstrous wildfire burning in Oregon has grown to a third the size of Rhode Island and spreads miles each day, but evacuations and property losses have been minimal compared with much smaller blazes in densely populated areas of California, the AP reports. The fire's jaw-dropping size contrasted with its relatively small impact on people underscores the vastness of the American West and offers a reminder that Oregon, which is larger than Britain, is still a largely rural state, despite being known mostly for its largest city, Portland. The 476-square-mile Bootleg Fire, Oregon's fourth-largest in modern times, is burning 300 miles southeast of Portland in and around the Fremont-Winema National Forest, a vast expanse of old-growth forest, lakes, and wildlife refuges. Pushed by strong winds from the southwest, the fire is spreading rapidly to the north and east, advancing toward an area that's increasingly remote. The megafire, which is 25% contained, could burn until late fall or even early winter.

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If the fire were in densely populated parts of California, it would have destroyed thousands of homes by now, said James Johnston, a researcher with Oregon State University's College of Forestry who studies historical wildfires. But it is burning in one of the more remote areas of the lower 48 states. It's not the Bay Area out there. At least 2,000 homes have been evacuated at some point during the fire and another 5,000 threatened. At least 70 homes and more than 100 outbuildings have gone up in flames. Thick smoke chokes the area where residents and wildlife alike have already been dealing with months of drought and extreme heat. No one has died. Evacuation orders on the fire's southern edge, closer to more populous areas like Klamath Falls and Bly, have been lifted or relaxed as crews gain control. Now it's small, unincorporated communities like Paisley and Long Creekboth with fewer than 250 peopleand scattered homesteads that are in the crosshairs. (Officials are calling for outside help.)
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It's a new look for Coke Zero, and a new taste too. (Getty Images)

It's a new look for Coke Zero, and a new taste too. (Getty Images)
(Newser)  Billionaire No. 2 has completed his trip to space. Jeff Bezos and three passengers blasted off on Tuesday from Texas aboard a Blue Origin rocket and returned safely about 10 minutes later. The flight, another crucial test for space tourism, follows the feat of Richard Branson. As the AP notes, Bezos' Blue Origin flight was to reach an altitude of 66 miles, about 10 miles higher than Branson. That would give Bezos bragging rights of sorts by eclipsing what's known as the Karman Line, the international boundary of space 62 miles above the planet. Branson reached the US designation of space, which is slightly lower.

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Also aboard: Bezos' younger brother, Mark; Wally Funk, one of 13 female pilots who went through the same testing back in the early 1960s as NASA's Mercury astronauts, but failed to make the cut because they were women; and Oliver Daemen, a college-bound student from the Netherlands whose father was among the unsuccessful bidders. The capsule is fully automated, so there was no need for trained staff on the flight. Branson's Virgin Galactic rocket plane needs two pilots to operate.

(Read more Jeff Bezos stories.)
(Newser)  A recurring clash between the government's top infectious disease doctor and a senator has erupted again on Capitol Hill, with each accusing the other of lying. Dr. Anthony Fauci angrily confronted Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in testimony before a Senate committee on Tuesday. Fauci rejected Paul's insinuation that the US helped fund research at a Chinese lab that could have sparked the COVID-19 outbreak, the AP reports. Fauci spoke to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, saying a study the senator mentioned referenced a different sort of virus entirely from the one responsible for the coronavirus outbreak. "Senator Paul, you do not know what you're talking about, quite frankly," Fauci said. "And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you're talking about." He added, "If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you."

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Also Tuesday, Fauci suggested parents follow new COVID-19 guidance for mask-wearing issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The academy is recommending schools require face masks for children older than 2 and all adultsregardless of vaccination status. Fauci told CBS This Morning the academy wants to "go the extra mile" to make sure children are protected at school because of the rise in cases blamed on the delta variant of the coronavirus. That guidance is slightly different from that of the CDC, which has advised mask-wearing in schools just for unvaccinated children and adults. Fauci said the CDC is "carefully looking" at its COVID-19 school guidance.

(Read more Anthony Fauci stories.)
(Newser)  Israel's prime minister has warned Ben & Jerry's that there will be "serious consequences, legal and otherwise" for its decision to ban sales of its ice cream in what the company calls "Occupied Palestinian Territory." Naftali Bennett said Tuesday that Israel "will act aggressively against all boycott actions directed against its citizens," the AP reports. Bennett said he had spoken to Unilever CEO Alan Jope about the move, though Unilever, which acquired Ben & Jerry's in 2000, said in a statement that the decision had been made by the ice cream maker's independent board, reports the BBC. Gilad Erdan, Israel's ambassador to the US, said he had written to the governors of 35 states that have passed laws against anti-Israel boycotts.

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Anuradha Mittal, chair of the Ben & Jerry's board, says the board has been pushing for an end to sales in the West Bank and east Jerusalem for years, NBC reports. Mittal says the board did not approve a company statement Monday that promised sales in Israel itself would continue. Ben & Jerry's, which had been under pressure from pro-Palestinian activists, plans to end its contract with its Israeli franchise next year. Franchise owner Avi Zinger tells the Jerusalem Post that he has long resisted pressure from the company to end sales in Israeli settlements. He says the government of Israel "cannot afford for" the boycott to happen and he hopes the company will change course. "When you mix politics with ice cream, you do not know where it will stop," he says. (Read more Ben & Jerry's stories.)
(Newser)  New York prison officials handed over convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein to be taken to California on Tuesday to face additional sexual assault charges, ending the former movie producer's protracted fight to delay his extradition. Weinstein, 69, was released by the New York State corrections department around 9:30am, a department statement said. Weinstein's spokesperson, Juda Engelmayer, said that Weinstein's lawyers were still trying to negotiate an extradition waiver but that the transfer was expected, the AP reports. "We will be fighting so that Harvey can receive his needed medical care and of course, so that he can be treated fairly," Engelmayer said. "Due process, presumption of innocence, and a fair trial are all still his right." Details of Weinstein's travels were not immediately known.

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A New York judge in June approved Weinstein's extradition, denying his request to remain at a state prison near Buffalowhere he is serving a 23-year sentence for a rape conviction last yearuntil jury selection begins in the Los Angeles case. Weinstein was charged in January 2020 with 11 sexual assault counts in California involving five women, stemming from alleged assaults in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013. The charges include rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint, and sexual penetration by use of force. Weinstein maintains his innocence. A lawyer for one of Weinstein's accusers, who has not been identified by name in the case, applauded Tuesday's transfer. "The opportunity to hold Weinstein accountable for his actions in California gives voice to the survivors including my client," attorney Elizabeth Fegan said in a statement, adding, "They deserve to be heard."

(Read more Harvey Weinstein stories.)
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Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Mostly cloudy with some showers after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..

Tonight

Mostly cloudy with some showers after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
Fairbanks, AK (99707)

Today

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

Cloudy skies early, then off and on rain showers overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

The Public Prosecution has confirmed that it received notification from the Reformation and Rehabilitation Centre that a prisoner, who is serving a sentence for terrorist offences, has recently communicated his intention to refuse food.

As a result of this information, the Public Prosecution initiated a visit to the Reformation and Rehabilitation Centre on 18 July to meet with the prisoner and provide him with advice and guidance to resolve the matter.

The Chief of the Southern Governorate Prosecution reported that the Public Prosecution recorded the grievance of the prisoner, who disclosed that his refusal of food is a response to him having less contact with his family than other prisoners, as well as the confiscation of some documents belonging to him by the Centres administration.

The prisoner concerned did confirm that he was receiving all necessary healthcare and existing treatment prescribed for him, including medicines, and he is being supplied with nutrients whenever he needs them. The Public Prosecution subsequently reviewed the call records of the prisoner and found he had conducted seven private calls via video conferencing between April and July this year.

The Reformation and Reformation Centre confirmed that documents belonging to the prisoner were confiscated during an attempt to send them from prison in breach of the established procedures and rules. The Public Prosecution has referred all matters set out above to the Independent Office of the Ombudsman, including the full details of the prisoners complaint.
TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune  www.newsofbahrain.com

His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa has congratulated the loyal Bahraini people and the residents on Eid Al-Adha, wishing them many happy returns of the blessed occasion, as well as abundant health and happiness.

HM King Hamad also extended congratulations to Team Bahrain, led by His Royal Highness Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Crown Prince and Prime Minister, on the same occasion, expressing pride in the tremendous efforts they are exerting and the continuous outstanding successes they are making in fighting the novel Coronavirus pandemic and mitigating its effects through well-thought-out plans and precautionary measures, which led to a sharp drop in the number of active cases.

HM the King praised the great sacrifices made by frontline heroes, including medical and nursing staff, as well as allied teams and those responsible for the National Vaccination Campaign, noting that they all set the best examples of dedication, humanitarianism, loyalty and devotion to the cherished land, citing their constant keenness to protect the health and safety of everyone.

HM the King affirmed that all required support will continue to be provided for Team Bahrain to ensure the success of their national duties so that Bahrain overcomes the pandemic, and everyone in the kingdom enjoys wellness and good health.

HM King Hamad expressed thanks to the citizens and residents for their sense of responsibility, awareness and unwavering support for the ongoing national efforts to combat the pandemic, by continuing their compliance with the precautionary measures in force and keenness to take the vaccines, and even the booster dose.

HM the King affirmed that the health situation in Bahrain is reassuring and that the kingdom is on the right track towards recovery, adding that Bahrain will overcome this period through the cooperation and awareness of everyone, as well as their commitment to working together as one team.

HM King Hamad expressed deep pride in the Bahraini competencies who are dedicated to serving the nation in all sectors, which makes Bahrains future reassuring and promising.

HM the King asserted that the kingdom is moving steadfastly towards the future, and is determined to protect its gains and enhance its blessed march.

HM King Hamad prayed to Allah the Almighty to protect Bahrain and its people, as well as end the pandemic as soon as possible.
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NEWTOWN  The towns top elected politician will seek a third term by breaking with traditional politics and running on a minor party line called the Serve America Movement.

Dan Rosenthal, a fiscally conservative Democrat, said the coronavirus crisis and the corrosive 2020 presidential campaign left him with a conviction that if he was going to seek a new two-year term, it would be as a nonpartisan candidate who tried to center the conversation as much as possible.

I dont see myself doing my job any differently if I am fortunate enough to be reelected, Rosenthal said on Tuesday. This is the way I feel spiritually about what is right for the town.

Rosenthal said his decision was not a political protest but a commitment to principles of transparency, accountability and problem-solving.

Its not like there was a defining moment where I said, Im out, but more of an evolution as I tried to figure out the message I wanted to send, and SAM seemed to be the best way, Rosenthal said. Some people may be completely fine with the current state of affairs, but I think we are all reflecting on how we can work better together.

Rosenthals announcement thats hes running as a nonpartisan comes one week before the leadership committees of Newtowns Democrats and Republicans meet to endorse candidates for the November election.

The leaders of both parties said Tuesday they supported Rosenthal, even if they could not endorse him.

We looked into cross-endorsing him, but we cant because he is a petitioning candidate, said Eric Paradis, Newtowns Democrat Party chair. Were happy with the work Dan has been doing, and we do wish he was running with us, but we understand his decision.

As a result, Democrats will not field a candidate for Newtowns top elected office in the fall. If the Republicans are running a candidate for First Selectman, its the best-kept secret in Newtown.

Newtown GOP chairman Dennis Brestovansky on Tuesday declined to comment about the top of the ticket for the Republicans, except to say the party supported Rosenthal.

In general, we think Dan Rosenthal has a good approach to governing in Newtown, Brestovansky said. He is a lot more fiscally conservative than some may believe, and we have been a supporter of most of what Dan does.

Rosenthals decision means the towns highest profile politician will have to collect signatures to get on the November ballot.

The fledgling SAM Party, which has chapters in Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, is dedicated more to the problem-solving process than policy positions, he said.

It tries to break down the hyper-partisanship we see on the 24-hour news cycle, where you get a different take depending on which media you watch, and on social media, where people are living out loud, Rosenthal said. Prejudging people based on what we think their views are is very dangerous.

Monte Frank, an attorney from Sandy Hook who chairs the Connecticut chapter of SAM agreed in an op-ed piece in Hearst Connecticut Media in February.

If you fiercely believe your party, whether Democrat or Republican, is always right, then SAM is not for you, Frank wrote. But if you believe, as we do, that we have been taking sides for too long in America, that compromise is a virtue, and that our political process needs to be fixed, then consider SAMs approach to government

rryser@newstimes.com 203-731-3342
H John Voorhees III / Hearst Connecticut Media

EASTON  The Easton-Redding-Region 9 school district will be hosting several community forums both virtual and in-person to answer questions and receive feedback ahead of the hiring of a new superintendent, according to a press release.

In June, Superintendent Rydell Harrison resigned from his position after 10 months with the district. Harrison took over as superintendent in August of 2020 and will stay on through late September before transitioning into a new position at the non-profit Connecticut Center for School Change.
Southbury First Selectman Jeffrey Manville plans to pursue a fourth term in his role leading the town. Standing in his way is fellow Republican selectman Emily Harrison.

The two are seeking a nod as the Republican candidate for first selectman at Tuesdays party caucus where candidates will be endorsed. The caucus is being held Tuesday at Pomperaug High at 7 p.m.

Manville said he is running again strictly on his record as first selectman the past three terms.

During my time nothing has been put off, Manville said. Fire trucks and town trucks have been replaced, no programs have been cut and no capital items are being put off. I will run on my record being fiscally conservative.

Wall Street has increased our bond rate and to me that says we have a very well-run govrnment. In the six budgets produced under my watch the mill rate has increased 0.9, less than a mill, and 85 percent of our roads need no work.

Southburys bond rating was upgraded in May from an Aa2 to Aa1, per Moodys Investors Service.

One item Harrison said needs to be addressed is Manville hasnt focused on is a project to improve River Road. Manville said widening the road and building it out is a long-term item. He said it is an engineering issue to determine what the width should be.

Harrison, in her first term as a selectman, said she is running to restore integrity and honesty to the First Selectmans office. In May, Harrison served Manville with a cease and desist letter and said he made false and malicious claims about her to public officials and constituents. While the letter hasnt progressed further than that, Manville said he has since retained a personal lawyer in case the letter develops into a lawsuit.

Manville said he believes the letter was done for political purposes.

Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media

Harrison denied that and said her decision to challenge Manville for the First Selectman position had nothing to do with the letter.

That letter was sent in May, well before and and completely separate from my decision to run in June, Harrison said. I ultimately decided to run after continuing to experience a schism in the Southbury Republican Party. The Republican members of the Board have not caucused in over nine months.

Southbury deserves a leader who can work with all members of the board to accomplish more for Southbury.

Manville said anytime someone runs against you it is a challenge and he welcomes that challenge.

This is the second time Manville has faced a Republican challenger. In the last local election Manville beat Jennifer Naylor, a selectman endorsed by the local GOP, in a September 2019 primary. He went on to defeat the Democratic candidate in November.

I will never discredit an opponent, Manville said. Its a time like this when its good to hear from other people about what their concerns are. Its healthy to look at this and say to myself have I missed something. What could I be doing better.

Ive heard the accusations about restoring honesty and integrity to the First Selectmans office. If there wasnt honesty and integrity it would have shown up in the three terms I have served. My track record and what I have done in three terms speaks for itself.

At the caucus on Tuesday, there will be a two minute nominating speech, followed by a second nominating speech for 90 seconds followed by a three minute speech by the candidates to accept the nomination.

When I give my speech, Im going to talk about my record, Manville said. There is a lot more I would like to do for this town.
NEW MILFORD  Charles Brooks Temple, Jr., an integral figure in the fight for affordable housing in New Milford, died on July 10 at the age of 78 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Temple, who went by Brooks, leaves behind him a legacy of public works and kindness from his final job as a school bus driver, to his work restoring the historic Booth House, to his co-founding of New Milford Affordable Housing, a local nonprofit.

Temples years of cultural, social and infrastructural contributions made him a recognizable and well-loved figure around town. And he did it all with a smile on his face.

Brooks had the most positive outlook on life I could imagine anyone having, said his wife Cappy Temple. His mantra whenever things were tricky or sticky and there were plenty of those times his mantra was lets figure this out, and if we cant, well have fun trying.

Whether it was helping a young neighbor with math problems or running a tense meeting on affordable housing, Temple was ready to meet problem head-on.

He just was an amazing person, said Mary Jane Lundgren, a town council member who has served on the housing nonprofits board with Temple for many years. He was driven and just had the biggest heart and really wanted to help people find housing.

Former New Milford Mayor Liba Furhman also remembered Temples positivity.

Brooks always smiled and always looked at the bright side of things, she said. He believed and he wanted to see change in the town.

Temple is survived by his wife, his son, Charles Brooks Temple IV, daughter, Cameron Temple Peburn, and grandchildren.

Temple was born in Boston in 1942, but grew up in Old Greenwich, attending the King School in Stamford, and Tabor Academy in Massachusetts, according to his obituary. After spending roughly three years in the US Marine Corps from 1964 to 1967, Temple made his way to the University of Denver.

As a New Milford resident, Temple was dedicated to his town.

He was all about service to his community, said Cappy Temple.

During his life, Temple held leadership positions with the Commission on the Arts and the Planning and Zoning boards, and was also active with the New Milford Hospital Planning and Development Committee and the Rotary Club. He also made time to also found and then sponsor a local Cub Scounts Pack and Boy Scouts Troop.

Temple served as chairman for the Commission on the Arts for 17 years before resigning, and current chairman Diane Dubreuil said he would be missed.

Brooks was enthusiastic in supporting arts and cultural events in our community and his enthusiasm was contagious, she wrote in an email.

Cappy Temple said her husband was also a self-taught guitarist with a great love for classic rock n roll artists like Chuck Berry.

Furhman said that thanks to his constant work with the Zoning Commission, the group actually added the Temple Amendment to their procedure, a development protocol that prevents overdevelopment in ecologically sensitive areas by eliminating steep slopes and wetlands from the calculated building area.

Furhman said the amendment to local zoning procedure is a great preservation tool of our natural resources.

But for all his various titles, people always return to Temples dedication to affordable housing, which made its mark on New Milford.

He just he saw that need a long time ago well over 20 years ago that there wasnt housing for people, Lundgren said. Nobody else was doing anything.

Under Temples leadership, the nonprofit, incorporated in 1990, was able to create two major affordable housing options for New Milford: a 40-unit affordable complex called Indian Field and a 12-unit supportive and affordable housing complex called Brookside Commons on Thomas Lane.

It remains the only not-for-profit building affordable housing in the area, aside from an elderly housing nonprofit.

The nonprofit is still working to increase the towns share of affordable housing. As of 2021, more than 75 percent of houses in New Milford are single-family homes, and more than half of renters are cost-burdened, according to Michele Shackelford, coordinator for healthy, efficient and diverse housing for Sustainable CT, a certification program that supports sustainability in Connecticut municipalities.

Housing is actually one of the big issues in New Milford, and so his efforts really helped that, Furhman added.

The nonprofit is planning to honor Temples work with a ceremony and plaque dedicating Brookside Commons Apartments to his memory. A ceremony date has not yet been determined.

At the nonprofits meetings, Temple was famous for starting the meeting with a joke one that wasnt always put in the minutes before settling down to business. He always kept a calm demeanor despite tackling tough subjects and strategies, members said.

Discussing and implementing affordable housing plans could be stressful and complicated, but meetings with Temple were still fun.

He was always able to make it seem like it was going to be possible, and it always was, said Martha McMahon, who also worked on the board with Temple.

He had a passion for it and a compassion for it, she added.

McMahon also recalled Temples respectful and polite interactions with tenants at the housing units.

When scheduling meetings, Lundgren said that timing often revolved around Mr. Brookss school bus route schedule.

According to Cappy Temple, he drove bus routes starting around 2013 or 2014 until 2019, but loved the job so much that people who knew him said he probably should have done that forever. Temple would meet the children as they left the school and lead them back to the bus, she said.

He talked about that all the time, Lundgren said. He loved his kids. He absolutely loved doing that.

Lundgren said she was going to miss Temples advice the most. That, she said, and his sense of humor and gentle teasing that he brought to every meeting. No matter how heated the meeting got, Temple stayed steady.

Brooks always had the answer, he always had the solution. He stayed calm.
Contributed / Ridgefield Police Department

RIDGEFIELD  Police have identified a local woman who died after an incident on High Ridge Avenue last week left her with multiple injuries.

Elsie Craig died on July 15 at Danbury Hospital, according to her obituary. Police said the investigation into the circumstances of her death is ongoing, and its not clear yet whether a vehicle was involved.
CALGARY, AB, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - Ensign Energy Services Inc. ("Ensign" or "the Company") is scheduled to release its second quarter 2021 results before the markets open on Friday, August 6, 2021. A conference call and webcast has been scheduled for 10:00 AM MST (12:00 PM EST) on Friday, August 6, 2021.

The conference participant call in numbers are as follows:

US/Canada Dial-in #: (888) 664-6392 or

Local/Int'l Dial-In #: (416) 764-8659

Conference ID #: 00069310

A live webcast of the conference call can be accessed via Ensign's website at www.ensignenergy.com/presentations. A digital recording of the call will be available shortly after the call ends until August 13, 2021 by dialing 1-888-390-0541 (local calls 416-764-8677) and entering reservation number 069310#.

Ensign is a global leader in oilfield services, headquartered out of Calgary, Alberta, operating in Canada, the United States and internationally. We are one of the world's top land-based drilling and well servicing contractors serving crude oil, natural gas, and geothermal operators. Our premium services include contract drilling, directional drilling, underbalanced and managed pressure drilling, rental equipment, well servicing and production services. Please visit our website at ensignenergy.com.

Ensign's Common Shares are publicly traded though the facilities of the Toronto Stock Exchange under the trading symbol ESI.

SOURCE Ensign Energy Services Inc.

For further information: Ensign Energy Services Inc., 400 - 5th Avenue S.W., Suite 1000, Calgary, Alberta T2P 0L6 Canada, Mr. Michael Gray, Chief Financial Officer, Telephone: 403.262.1361; Ms. Nicole Romanow, Investor Relations, Telephone: 403.267.6234

Related Links

http://www.ensignenergy.com


Today, Terry Beech, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (B.C.), on behalf of the Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages, announced funding of $536,729 in federal support for the University of Victoria to create the Centre for Advanced Materials & Related Technology (CAMTEC) BioMedical Core.

This funding will help establish a Class II biosafety facility, or wet lab, that will be shared by a broad range of clients. The specialized equipment in this facility will position CAMTEC to support a variety of initiatives, including oncology and precision health, apparel manufacturing, and water treatment programs.

The new CAMTEC BioMedical Core will support increased access to critical infrastructure and training for industry partners that lack access to specialized equipment. This transformation is essential in ensuring companies can access the resources they need in order to grow.

The Government of Canada is committed to creating well-paying jobs for British Columbians and to being a global leader in the biosciences innovation sector. This project aligns with Western Economic Diversification Canada's priorities of supporting health biological sciences, advanced manufacturing, clean resources, and inclusiveness.

Quick facts:

B.C. has the fastest growing life sciences sector in Canada .

. There are 1,100 active life sciences companies and 20,000 employees in B.C.

Quotes

"Today's announcement reinforces our government's plan for a strong economic recovery. These important investments in the life sciences industry will in turn improve the health of western Canadians and create well-paying jobs for British Columbians. That's what our plan is about: being there for people and getting our economy back on track."

- The Honourable Melanie Joly, Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages, and Minister responsible for Western Economic Diversification Canada

"Supporting strong regional economies is critical for Canada's growth and sustainability. This investment will have a significant impact on a broad range of small and medium-sized enterprises, providing them with the infrastructure and training they need to grow."

- Terry Beech, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard and to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (B.C.)

"The new CAMTEC BioMedical Core greatly expands biosciences infrastructure and access to Class II biosafety space on Vancouver Island. This unique core facility incorporates advanced instrumentation and infrastructure that has previously been totally unavailable to local businesses looking to compete in a global marketplace. The availability of these resources in a shared, industry-focused research environment will contribute to substantial growth in the life sciences sector in British Columbia."

- Jeremy Wulff, professor of chemistry, Canada Research Chair and director, CAMTEC BioMedical Core

Associated links

Stay Connected

Follow the department on Twitter: @WD_Canada

WD Homepage

WD Toll-Free Number: 1-888-338-WEST (9378)

TTY (telecommunications device for the hearing impaired): 1-877-303-3388

SOURCE Western Economic Diversification Canada

For further information: Contacts: Ben Letts, Regional Communications Manager, Western Economic Diversification Canada, Vancouver, British Columbia, 604-379-9629, [email protected]; Robyn Quinn, Strategic Communications Officer, Media Relations, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, 250-415-7020, [email protected]

Related Links

http://www.wd.gc.ca/


SAWYERVILLE, QC, July 19, 2021 /CNW/ - Today, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, the Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, announced an investment of over $2.6 million to Canadian Forage and Grassland Association (CFGA) to support three projects that will assess and improve alfalfa growth using artificial intelligence and will develop a Canadian grassland carbon offset system. Alfalfa is a key forage crop producers rely on to capture and fix carbon, return nutrients to the soil and improve soil health.

Minister Bibeau made the announcement at the farm Bergerie Malvibois in Sawyerville, Quebec, one of the key data collection sites for the project.

Funding will be allocated as follows:

Up to $998,185 to develop a tool to improve yield and forage nutritive value from alfalfa fields using artificial intelligence. The tool will identify potential agronomic, climatic and soil-related factors affecting Alfalfa yield. It will also predict potential yield and nutritive value loss through soil nutrient analysis and health diagnostics.

to develop a tool to improve yield and forage nutritive value from alfalfa fields using artificial intelligence. The tool will identify potential agronomic, climatic and soil-related factors affecting Alfalfa yield. It will also predict potential yield and nutritive value loss through soil nutrient analysis and health diagnostics. Up to $996,190 to develop a tool to assess and improve alfalfa's winter survival rates with artificial intelligence and persistency by combining data and remote imagery with artificial intelligence.

to develop a tool to assess and improve alfalfa's winter survival rates with artificial intelligence and persistency by combining data and remote imagery with artificial intelligence. Up to $621,572 to develop an assurance system for farmers to produce and sell carbon offsets, contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and retention of Canada's grasslands. Canadian Forage and Grassland Association expects that more than 5,000 hectares of Canadian grasslands will be protected by land conservation agreements, and 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) will be saved through third-party verified carbon offset credits.

These projects will help farmers better understand alfalfa growth, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Government of Canada is committed to providing new and innovative means for farmers to improve the yields of their cover crops and building a sustainable agriculture sector.

Quotes

"Today's announcement is about projects that will help to develop tools farmers can use to produce and export more, higher-quality alfalfa through artificial intelligence, and to sell carbon offsets."

- The Honourable Marie-Claude Bibeau, Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food

"The Canadian Forage and Grassland Association is very excited about this funding from AAFC's Canadian Agricultural Strategic Priorities Program. Alfalfa is an important ingredient that feeds many other agriculture sectors in Canada, and this funding will help provide forage producers with valuable decision-support tools to help alfalfa crops thrive."

- Cedric MacLeod, Executive Director, Canadian Forage & Grassland Association

Quick Facts

Funding for the first two projects comes from the Canadian Agricultural Strategic Priorities Program (CASPP). The CASPP supports the Canadian agricultural sector's participation in the Government of Canada's growth and policy objectives, by investing in the sector's design, development and implementation of tools and strategies to respond to and seize opportunities created by these objectives. These projects include a network of 40 agronomists and 225 farms for collecting the data.

growth and policy objectives, by investing in the sector's design, development and implementation of tools and strategies to respond to and seize opportunities created by these objectives. These projects include a network of 40 agronomists and 225 farms for collecting the data. Funding for the third project comes from the AgriAssurance Program, which funds projects, at the national level, to help industry develop and adopt systems, standards and tools to support health and safety claims about Canadian agricultural and agri-food products.

Formed in 2010, the CFGA is the national voice for all sectors of the forage and grassland industry. Their main role is to uphold the robust forage industry and realize the potential of the domestic and export forage market.

Additional Links

Canadian Agricultural Strategic Priorities Program

AgriAssurance Program: National Industry Association Component

Canadian Forage and Grassland Association

Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

Web: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

SOURCE Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

For further information: Contacts: Oliver Anderson, Director of Communications, Office of the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, [email protected], 613-462-4327; Media Relations, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, 613-773-7972, 1-866-345-7972, [email protected]

Related Links

www.agr.gc.ca


TSXV: HELX

VANCOUVER, BC, July 19, 2021 /CNW/ - Helix Applications Inc. (TSXV: HELX) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed the previously announced business combination (the "Transaction") with GlobalBlock Limited ("GlobalBlock"). GlobalBlock is now a wholly owned operating subsidiary of the Company.

GlobalBlock is a fast-growing United Kingdom based digital asset broker that provides a personalised telephone brokerage service, trading platform and mobile app. GlobalBlock was established in 2018 by an experienced team of financial services professionals and acts as a trusted agent serving the cryptocurrency needs of individuals, corporates, institutional financial firms and intermediaries, providing best execution trading and safe custody of digital assets.

GlobalBlock is committed to meeting the highest standards of digital asset regulation and customer protection and has been temporarily registered under the Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing and Transfer of Funds (Information on the Payer) Regulations 2017 as a cryptoasset business until 31st March 2022, pending the determination of GlobalBlock's application by the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom. Plans include looking to expand beyond the United Kingdom, ensuring relevant jurisdiction licences are granted and adhering to local regulations in any new territories it looks to operate in.

Rufus Round, Chief Executive Officer of the Company said:

"As we worked to complete the transaction with GlobalBlock over the past few months, GlobalBlock has been building out its team by adding to its sales, business development and marketing functions. Plans for new products and services are already underway as the new combined business aims to become the leading provider of digital asset brokerage services in the UK and beyond. This is an exciting time for all current and now new shareholders in the business."

David Thomas, GlobalBlock Head of Operations, and new Chief Operating Officer of the Company, said:

"We believe that our service led, transparent and secure digital asset platform is a standout to other digital asset trading and custody offerings. Firstly, being UK based and adhering to the highest of regulatory standards is a must in today's digital asset environment and secondly having a team that has such a wealth of experience in building successful financial services businesses."

"We are hugely excited to complete this this business combination, which allows us to continue to focus on our growth and development within the digital asset space, making us well placed to become the number one digital asset broker within the UK market and beyond."

The Transaction

The Company completed the Transaction by acquiring all of the issued and outstanding securities of GlobalBlock from its four (4) shareholders in exchange for an aggregate of 48,450,000 common shares of the Company for aggregate deemed consideration of CAD$55.233 million (based on the price of CAD$1.14 per share, being the last closing price of the common shares of the Company prior to announcement of the Transaction). Those 48,450,000 common shares of the Company issued to the former GlobalBlock shareholders have been deposited into a 24-month escrow, wherein 15% of those shares are to be released from escrow six months after closing of the Transaction, and an additional 15% are to be released every three months thereafter.

In addition, the Company issued 2,550,000 common shares as finders fees, with 1,649,850 of those common shares being issued to Rupert Williams and the remaining 900,150 common shares being issued to Angus Campbell.

The Company now has 104,648,741 common shares issued and outstanding.

Board, Management and Corporate Matters

Management

The Company's current interim Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Rufus Round, and its Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary, Ms. Jessica van den Akker, remain in place as senior management of the Company and are joined by Mr. David Thomas, who has been appointed as Chief Operating Officer of the Company. Mr. Thomas is one of the former shareholders of GlobalBlock and his biography is set forth in the May 17, 2021 press release of the Company (the "May Press Release").

The other three (3) former shareholders of GlobalBlock, Messrs. Karl Thompson, Patrick Bullman and Tim Bullman remain in place as local management of GlobalBlock. Biographies for each of these key managers of the combined Company are also set forth in the May Press Release.

Board of Directors

As set forth in the May Press Release, Mr. Jay Sujir has resigned as a director of the Company and has been replaced by Mr. Stuart Olley. The Company thanks Mr. Sujir for his dedication to the Company. In addition, Mr. David Thomas has been added as a director of the Company. Biographies for Mr. Olley and Mr. Thomas are also set forth in that May Press Release.

The Board of Directors of the Company is now comprised of the following members: Rufus Round, Trevor Gabriel, David Thomas and Stuart Olley. The members of the Audit Committee of the Company now consist of Rufus Round, Trevor Gabriel and Stuart Olley.

Operational Information

At this time, GlobalBlock only accepts United Kingdom and Ireland resident clients or customers for its digital asset broker or trading services. To be specific, measures (including comprehensive AML/KYC procedures) have been implemented to prevent residents in the provinces and territories of Canada and the United States from becoming clients or customers owing to regulatory restrictions.

The Company aims to conduct business to the highest industry standards and within the constantly developing global, regulatory environment with regards to digital assets. GlobalBlock primarily holds client assets through the Qredo custodian platform as described below, and through GlobalBlock's accounts on digital asset exchanges. GlobalBlock has engaged third party digital asset custody provider, Qredo Limited (the "Custodian") to manage client assets being held internally, through an omnibus account in the name of GlobalBlock. The Custodian accepts an ever growing list of digital assets with more being added, on a frequent basis. The Custodian is not a Canadian or foreign financial institution and is awaiting SOC1&2 attribution, expected in December 2021. The Company is unaware of any related parties between itself and the Custodian. The Custodian is based in London, United Kingdom and utilizes a multi-signature, MPC (multi-party computation), decentralised storage protocol. The Custodian currently provides US$5 million equivalent of insurance per wallet.

Name Change

It is intended that the Company will be renamed "GlobalBlock Digital Asset Trading Limited", or such other name as determined by the Board of Directors of the Company, and as approved by the TSX Venture Exchange. The Company will issue additional press release(s) related to this name change and other material information as it becomes available.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

Helix Applications Inc. is a publicly traded holding company (TSX Venture: HELX) whose wholly owned subsidiary, GlobalBlock Limited (https://www.globalblock.co.uk), is a United Kingdom based digital asset broker that provides a personalised telephone brokerage service, trading platform and mobile app. Established in 2018 by an experienced team of financial services professionals, GlobalBlock Limited acts as a trusted agent serving the digital asset needs of individuals, corporates, institutional financial firms and intermediaries, providing best execution trading and safe custody of digital assets.

The TSX Venture Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the Transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this news release.

Early Warning Reporting

Former shareholders of GlobalBlock, in connection with the Transaction, now own and control common shares of the company as follows:

Mr. David Thomas (c/o 65 Curzon Street, London , W1J 8PE, United Kingdom ) now owns and controls a total of 12,112,500 common shares of the Company (acquired at an effective price of CAD$1.14 per share), representing approximately 11.57% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company.

Mr. Karl Thompson (c/o 65 Curzon Street, London , W1J 8PE, United Kingdom ) now owns and controls a total of 12,112,500 common shares of the Company (acquired at an effective price of CAD$1.14 per share), representing approximately 11.57% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company.

Mr. Patrick Bullman (c/o 65 Curzon Street, London , W1J 8PE, United Kingdom ) now owns and controls a total of 12,112,500 common shares of the Company (acquired at an effective price of CAD$1.14 per share), representing approximately 11.57% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company.

Mr. Tim Bullman (c/o 65 Curzon Street, London , W1J 8PE, United Kingdom ) now owns and controls a total of 12,112,500 common shares of the Company (acquired at an effective price of CAD$1.14 per share), representing approximately 11.57% of the issued and outstanding shares of the Company.

The Company is advised that the four (4) individuals set forth in the paragraph above acquired these securities for investment purposes and has no present intention to acquire further securities of the Company, although each may in the future acquire or dispose of securities of the Company, through the market, privately or otherwise, as circumstances or market conditions warrant. A copy of the early warning reports required to be filed by each of those four (4) individuals with applicable securities commissions in connection with this acquisition will be available for viewing under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com .

CAUTIONARY NOTE REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Certain information set out in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements or information. Forward looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "seek", "anticipate", "plan", "continue", "estimate", "expect", "may", "will", "intend", "could", "might", "should", "believe" and similar expressions. In particular, this news release contains forward-looking statements in respect of among other things, the continued and successful development of the businesses of each of the Company and GlobalBlock, the ability of GlobalBlock to obtain the applicable regulatory approvals (including permanent registration with the Financial Conduct Authority in the United Kingdom) to continue to conduct its business in the United Kingdom, Ireland and other jurisdictions, receipt of requisite approvals for a name change for the Company, the ability of GlobalBlock to successfully expand its products and services and other information concerning the intentions, plans, future action and future successes of the Company, and its businesses, technologies and products described herein. Forward-looking statements are based upon the opinions and expectations of management of the Company as at the effective date of such statements and, in certain cases, information provided or disseminated by third parties. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, and that information obtained from third party sources is reliable, they can give no assurance that those expectations will prove to have been correct. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements included in this document, as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which the forward-looking statements are based will occur. By their nature, forward-looking statements involve numerous assumptions, known and unknown risks and uncertainties that contribute to the possibility that the predictions, forecasts, projections and other forward-looking statements will not occur, which may cause actual results in future periods to differ materially from any estimates or projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, among other things, risk factors set forth in the Company's most recent management's discussion and analysis, a copy of which is filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com , and readers are cautioned that the risk factors disclosed therein should not be construed as exhaustive. These statements are made as at the date hereof and unless otherwise required by law, the Company does not intend, or assume any obligation, to update these forward-looking statements.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Service Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE Helix Applications Inc.

For further information: please contact the Company at: Rufus Round, CEO, c/o 65 Curzon Street, London, W1J 8PE, United Kingdom, Tel. +00 44 20 3286 2904, [email protected]

Related Links

https://www.helixapps.ca/


MONTREAL, July 20, 2021 /CNW Telbec/ - Metro Inc. will release its third quarter fiscal 2021 results on August 11th, 2021. The release will be followed by a conference call at 9:00 a.m. (EDT).

Mr. Eric R. La Fleche, President & CEO and Mr. Francois Thibault, Executive Vice President & CFO will hold a conference call intended for investors and financial analysts to comment on the financial results. The conference call will be followed by a question period.

The analysts and institutional investors are invited to access the conference call, by dialing 416 764-8651 or 1 888 390-0620 (access code 43457906) or via the website by clicking here. The journalists and public will be able to access it in a listen mode only. The replay of the conference call will be available approximately two hours after the event at 1 888 390-0541 (access code 457906) or via the website by clicking here, until 23:59 p.m. (EDT) on September 11th, 2021.

About METRO Inc.

With annual sales of almost $18 billion, METRO Inc. is a food and pharmacy leader in Quebec and Ontario. As a retailer, franchisor, distributor, and manufacturer, the company operates or services a network of some 950 food stores under several banners including Metro, Metro Plus, Super C and Food Basics, as well as some 650 drugstores primarily under the Jean Coutu, Brunet, Metro Pharmacy and Food Basics Pharmacy banners, providing employment to almost 90,000 people. For more details, visit corpo.metro.ca.

SOURCE METRO INC.

For further information: Francois Thibault, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Metro Inc., 514 643-1000

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www.corpo.metro.ca


Indias External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar held a round of bilateral talks with his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi in Dushanbe. The meeting was on the sidelines of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers Meeting. The meeting focused on diffusing tensions between the two countries along the Line of Actual Control(LAC)

Dr. Jaishankar conveyed a firm message that there are not many options for China to explore, regarding the dispute. According to his tweet about the meeting, Jaishankar reiterated Indias stance on the matter and made it abundantly clear that a unilateral change of status quo is not acceptable to the Government of India. The tweet added that a full restoration of the April 2020 status quo is a necessity for return of normalcy in the India-China relations.

India has been facing Chinese aggression along its eastern Ladakh stretch of LAC since the month of May in 2020. The border dispute saw its first physical confrontation, between Indian & Chinese soldiers in Galwan Valley, in the month of June, the same year. India lost 40 of its bravehearts defending the territorial integrity of the motherland. China bore the brunt of the skirmish as well, with an unconfirmed number of fatalities.

The Galwan episode pinned national sentiments with the border dispute and made it a point of no retreat for either country. This national sentiment, coupled with the continuous attacks on the Modi government by the opposition for ceding land to China, is likely why Dr. Jaishankar put forth Indias demand in a loud and clear manner and left next to no room for the Chinese to get their way. Moreover, this tough stance by the Indian Government needs to continue in the future while dealing with Chinas expansionist policies. India needs to take on the dragon one front at a time.
Mr. Haider claimed that he and his party were destined to form government one more time in POK region in these upcoming elections. He added This has made Imran Khan worried and because of that he is denting the constitution in Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

Raja Farooq Haider, Prime Minister of Pakistan occupied Kashmir (POK) has strongly warned the Pakistan government to stop their interference in the forthcoming general elections. POK Prime Minister, Raja Farooq Haider accused Imran Khan Government of destroying and violating the constitution of the occupied region. He also questioned Imran khan of considering the people of occupied region as slaves.

He said, Prime Minister Imran Khan and his ministers blatantly destroying and violating the constitution of the occupied region. I want to place my case before the people of POK.

Mr. Haider claimed that he and his party were destined to form government one more time in POK region in these upcoming elections. He added This has made Imran Khan worried and because of that he is denting the constitution in Pakistan occupied Kashmir.

On Sunday, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan attacked the opposition parties and urged voters in the Pakistan occupied Kashmir to vote for the leader who is honest and trustworthy in the upcoming Assembly polls on July 25. He added, Nation which do not make the distinction between right and wrong, first die a moral death and then an economic one.

Amid the surge in new covid19 cases, the general elections for the Legislative Assembly will be held on 25th July. Last year, Pakistan conducted Assembly elections in Gilgit-Baltistan Region.
Andrew Sears

In 1106, as Cologne was expanding its city walls, a group of masons discovered the purported Roman mass grave of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins. Under the supervision of neighboring religious houses, the martyrs bodies were excavated and exported on what we might call a commercial scale. At least 1,800 skulls were distributed among Colognes 12 parish churches, and countless others were translated as ecclesiastical gifts across the archdiocese. By the 14th century, as the Rhineland became increasingly urbanized, the relics began figuring in the regional economy. Some went into the hands of secular elites and others moved along Hanseatic trade routes. Churches that had long possessed relics of the 11,000 Virgins commissioned new types of sumptuous containers atypical of traditional treasury arts. Rather than being made from precious metals and stones, they were fashioned by local craft industries and secular laborers. Wooden busts were produced in the Rhineland, painted boxes were made in Cologne, and silk veils were sewn and embroidered for skull relics in the Low Countries. Ursula and her companions came to be patrons of economic activity and products of it.

This dissertation explores the ways in which relics, defined as priceless according to canon law, became intertwined with the market. On the one hand, this is a study of mercantile culture affecting understanding of sacred objects and their value: the commoditization of religion, as it were. On the other hand, I put pressure on such a secularization narrative and consider the persistent role of holy patrimony in understanding urbanism. Relics and reliquaries proximity to the market raised vital questions about the ethics of sacred and secular city life and its administration. How could the sacred be valued, and who had the power to decide? Did mercantilism stem from commercialism or saintly patronage? Who should manage marketplacestemporal or religious powers?

Each chapter focuses on a location in the Cologne archdiocese with its own craft tradition and examines the debates around the fashioning of reliquaries for the 11,000 Virgins. The first chapter looks to the gilt silver chasses commissioned by Margaret the Black, Countess of Flanders and Hainaut (r. 12441280), who intervened in the ecclesiastical relic trade in order to enact her political agenda. While Margarets commissions do not appear any different from other reliquaries, their patterns of circulation were. Her most sumptuous gifts went to the borders of her territory and beyondto powerful Benedictine and Cistercian abbeys that managed trade canals between Flanders and France and that had historically sided against her. Through this rather early and exceptional instance, treasury arts can be seen to have a manifold kind of currency, aiding in the establishment of economic allegiances and the negotiation of geopolitical borders.

The second and third chapters consider the implications of reliquaries made of vernacular materials, namely wooden busts and painted caskets. Starting in the late 13th century, Colognes guild of woodworkers serially manufactured wooden busts, about 200 of which still survive. The choice of walnut and oak is often understood to be the result of economic constraint, yet the degree of output suggests that the material was a means through which the objects were understood. The production of busts was key to Colognes rise to fame as one of Northern Europes largest craft centers, exporting wooden sculpture across Germany, France, and the Netherlands. The martyrs entanglements with marketing were, in turn, later expressly thematized in the painted reliquary caskets from Colognes convent of the Holy Maccabees. Ursula and her companions are shown sailing to Colognes trade partners along the Rhine and martyred in front of one of the citys earliest skyline depictions.

The final two chapters turn to the convents of Herkenrode and Roermond, where the sisters dressed their Cologne relics with linen wrappings, silk veils, and crowns of wire, thread, and glass beads. Through examining the stages of productionweaving, spinning, sewing, and embroideryI demonstrate the degree to which religious labor became increasingly subject to market regulation. Throughout the region, nuns became involved in the textile industry and were often reprimanded for overproducing their wares, selling it to merchants, and violating their poverty vows.

In progressing through these case studies that span the 13th through 15th centuries, I attempt to modernize the premodern and demonstrate its sophistication in theorizing its own growth. Discussions of secular, mercantile society streamline some of the most exciting and complicated negotiations of the High and Late Middle Ages on the relationship between religion and economics. Arising are questions of ethics, power, and responsibility: Where do they come from, who wields them, and who oversees them? Indeed, these are questions still relevant today, particularly in Cologne, as the archdiocese remains the wealthiest in the world and the validity of its vast stock and real estate holdings are continuously debated.

[University of California, Berkeley]

David E. Finley Fellow, 20182021

Over the coming year, Andrew Sears will teach at the Universitat Bern and revise his dissertation for publication.


But perhaps the most unexpected meditation on media archaeology that this year of research produced involves the question of whether theft can be considered as a medium. A medium is often described as the support vehicle through which something is carried, as that which mediates between two other things. Theft, accordingly, is a vehicle for transport, one that connects the site of looting with the site of later collecting (as well as the people at those sites). Theft is the vehicle that connects a number of my narrative strands, and explains how the 1540s bark paper source for the original Lienzo traveled from an archive in Tlaxcala (where it was traced by Henri de Saussure in 1855) to the University of Texas at Austin (where it was purchased in 1964). The possible culprit, the specific criminal medium who allowed me to connect my various stories, was suggested after delivering my colloquiumcomments that I probably would never have received were it not for this fellowship!

In the mid- to late 1890s, after the large-format lithograph was printed in Mexico City, the Indigenous governor of Tlaxcala (Prospero Cahuantzi) commissioned a smaller-scale, handheld edition. It was printed but not distributed, and the sheets ended up in the archives of Tlaxcala (where historian Charles Gibson still encountered many loose Cahuantzi plates in the late 1940s). A decade earlier, however, most of those small-format lithographed plates were acquired by Mexico City printer and bookseller Guillermo M. Echaniz. He had them bound (finally) as a book in 1939, adding his own prologue. Echaniz was also a dealer in manuscripts, and he was probably the man from whom art dealer Earl Stendahl bought the woodcut-inspired bark paper fragment once in Tlaxcalas archive. The Stendahl Gallery, in turn, was the source from which the University of Texas bought those three documents in 1964. The 1930s rescue of a Tlaxcalan facsimile project from the 1890s may, then, also have been the means by which much older documents were removed from Tlaxcala and sent to Mexico Cityand then to Los Angeles, and then to Austin.

The Ohio State University

William C. Seitz Senior Fellow, 20202021

During the 20212022 academic year, Byron Ellsworth Hamann will be in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Studys School of Historical Studies.
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP)  A Black couple working at Tyson Farms plant in North Carolina has filed a lawsuit that says a supervisor frequently used racial slurs against them, showed disdain for their Muslim faith and that the company refused to address the issue despite multiple requests.

Michelle and Adrian Switzer filed the lawsuit in Forsyth County Superior Court in April. Tyson Farms, with headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, and 123 plants nationwide, replied in an email that a response could be expected within five business days.

Herman L. Stephens, the attorney for the Switzers, didn't immediately return a telephone call seeking comment Tuesday. A working phone number for his clients couldn't be found.

Michelle and Adrian Switzer began work at the Tyson Farms plant in Wilkes County in 2015, according to the lawsuit. The company maintained an atmosphere which created a strong fear among employees regarding their job security and of revealing Tyson Farms employee matters to outsiders, the lawsuit said.

The Switzers said their team leader, who is identified in the suit but not named as a defendant, used a racial slur on numerous occasions in front of Adrian Switzer to disparage Black people, according to the complaint.

The lawsuit added that the team leader berated the man repeatedly and watched him during his work break. Michelle Switzer also was targeted by slurs, and on one occasion had a protective smock thrown at her by the team leader, according to the suit.

The couple says the couple submitted complaints to a supervisor who, the lawsuit says, indicated that he didn't want to hear them. The Switzers also complained to the company's human resources department, plant management and a company help line, all to no avail, according to the lawsuit.

Michelle Switzer was fired on April 20, 2019, for reasons related to her race, religion and in retaliation for her complaints, the lawsuit says. Adrian Switzer wanted to keep his job, but was forced to quit because of the team leader's hostility and the failure of Tyson Farms to address the conduct, the document says.

In January, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued a right to sue notice for the Switzers, according to the lawsuit. The couple is seeking a trial by jury, compensatory and punitive damages in excess of $25,000, and attorney's fees.
WASHINGTON  Three of the Democratic state lawmakers who fled Texas to stymie a Republican-backed effort to impose broad new voting restrictions have tested positive for COVID-19 in the nations capital.

The Texas Houses Democratic caucus says in a statement that one of the three tested positive on Friday and the others did so on Saturday. It didnt release their names or conditions. It said all three were fully vaccinated against the disease.

More than 50 Democratic Texas lawmakers left the state to deny the Republican-controlled Legislature the necessary quorum to pass a bill that would enact new voting restrictions.

Republicans and others had criticized the Democrats after a photo showed them on a charter flight to Washington without masks, though federal pandemic guidelines dont require masks on private flights.

Members of the caucus have met with Vice President Kamala Harris, but it was not immediately known whether the three who contracted COVID-19 did so. Harris office said it would issue a statement later Saturday.

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MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 Biden grappling with pandemic of the unvaccinated

 Thailand tightens measures as daily cases cross 10,000

 European nations impose incentives, penalties to boost shots

 Desperate for vaccines amid surge, Iranians flock to Armenia

 Arkansas governor's vaccination tour reveals depths of distrust.

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 Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine

___

HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

LAS VEGAS  Some Las Vegas resorts and casinos are again requiring employees to wear masks, a response to a recommendation by regional health officials amid rising COVID-19 case rates.

The Southern Nevada Health District on Friday recommended that all people, vaccinated or not, wear face coverings in public settings such as stores, malls, casinos and events.

The recommendation isnt a mandate, but local media outlets reported that it prompted properties such as Westgate Las Vegas, The Venetian and Las Vegas Sands to impose masking requirements for employees.

Some also offered complimentary masks to visitors.

Restrictions affecting casinos and other venues were lifted in May when the state fully returned pandemic control measures to counties.

Nevada health officials on Thursday reported 938 new cases of COVID-19 statewide  the biggest one-day coronavirus case jump since February  and 15 new deaths. An additional 866 cases were reported Friday.

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PHOENIX  Arizona on Saturday reported over 1,000 additional COVID-19 cases for the fourth straight day as virus-related hospitalizations continued to increase.

The state Department of Health Services coronavirus dashboard reported 1,152 additional cases and 14 deaths, increasing Arizonas pandemic totals to 907,268 cases and 18,114 deaths.

Public health experts attribute the increases to low vaccination rates, the fast-spreading delta variant and July Fourth gatherings.

The number of virus-elated hospitalizations in Arizona generally ranged between 500 and 600 during May and June but rose in the past week, with 745 COVID-19-related hospitalizations as of Friday, according the dashboard.

Virus patients occupied 9% of in-patient beds as of Friday, up from 6% a week ago but far below the pandemic peak of nearly 60% seen in mid-January during the winter surge.

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ATHENS, Greece  The island of Mykonos has become the first location in Greece to have a curfew reimposed due to a spike in coronavirus cases.

Greek authorities said Saturday that one in 10 individuals tested on the island in recent days tested positive.

The 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. curfew took effect Saturday and authorities also imposed a round-the-clock ban on music in bars, cafes and restaurants starting 6 pm Saturday. Fines for renting out properties for parties of more than 20 people can range up to 200,000 euros ($236,000).

The ban on music and the curfew will end on Monday, July 26, unless the government decides to extend it.

Police on the island, a high-end tourist destination, say that violations of social distancing norms had gotten out of hand recently.

Authorities say the single hotel assigned to people quarantining has overflowed and visitors who have tested positive have been camping on beaches.

Greece continued to report a relatively high number of new infections Saturday, with 2,562 cases reported in the 24-hour period ending 3 pm Saturday. There were also seven deaths.

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HELSINKI  Residents in the Finnish capital were able to get coronavirus jabs without advance appointment on Saturday at four dedicated walk-in vaccination points in a one-day trial meant to lure young people in particular to get vaccinated.

Health officials in Helsinki, a city of 631,000 inhabitants, urged all those aged 16 and above, and those 12 to 15 who belong to a risk group, to get vaccinated.

Now its possible to drop by and get the vaccine if you go for a walk or drive, or even in a group. Were trying this for the first time now on Saturday and depending on the result we might offer this possibility more frequently, said Leena Turpeinen, the citys director of health and substance abuse.

Finnish media reported long lines in front of the vaccination points located in four city districts.

About 65% of adult Helsinki residents have received their first coronavirus jab so far, slightly more than the respective figure in entire Finland, a nation of 5.5 million, officials said.

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LONDON  Britains health minister says he has tested positive for the coronavirus and is experiencing mild symptoms.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid says he has tested positive with a rapid test and is self-isolating as he awaits the results of a more accurate PCR test.

Javid said Saturday, Im grateful that Ive had two jabs of the vaccine and so far my symptoms are very mild.

Cases of the virus are surging in the U.K., driven by the highly infectious delta variant, despite a high level of vaccination.

Javid took over last month from Matt Hancock, who resigned after breaching social distancing rules. Hancock was ill with COVID-19 early in the pandemic last year. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson spent several days in intensive care with the virus in April 2020.

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PARIS  France will allow international travelers who have had AstraZenecas Indian-manufactured vaccine into the country starting Sunday.

At the same time, France is tightening border checks to control the spread of the delta variant and protect hospitals, according to a statement from the prime minister Saturday.

The move to accept visitors vaccinated with AstraZenecas vaccine made by Indias Serum Institute came after global outcry over the fact that the European Unions COVID-19 certificate only recognizes AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in Europe. Several other EU countries already accept the Indian version. France still does not recognize vaccinations by Chinese or Russian vaccines, only those authorized by the EU medicines regulator.

Tunisia, Indonesia, Cuba and Mozambique have now been added to Frances red list of countries with high virus risk, according to Saturdays statement.

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LONDON  Tourists and the travel industry are venting frustration and anger after Britain reversed a plan to ease travel restrictions on France just two days after the change was due to start, citing concerns about a variant of the coronavirus.

The U.K. government says people arriving from France must self-isolate for 10 days on entering Britain, even if they are fully vaccinated.

The announcement came just days after the government said fully vaccinated U.K. residents will no longer face quarantine starting Monday when arriving from European Union nations and dozens of other countries.

British health authorities say France is being singled out because of cases of the beta variant, which is believed to be more resistant to vaccines than other strains.

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ATHENS, Greece  European nations are scrambling to ramp up vaccination drives.

They are using a carrot-and-stick approach to persuade those who are reluctant to get their shots as the more transmissible delta variant drives a surge in infections.

Greece became the latest to enact new restrictions on Friday. The country is requiring proof of vaccination or recent recovery from COVID-19 for access to indoor restaurants, cafes, bars and movie theaters. Children can enter with negative tests.

Some European countries like France and Greece have also introduced mandatory vaccinations for certain professions.

___

YEREVAN, Armenia  A surge of new coronavirus infections in Iran fueled by the fast-spreading delta variant has threatened to overwhelm hospitals.

Thousands of Iranians are taking matters into their own hands and flocking to neighboring Armenia as the urgency of vaccination grows.

Vaccine uptake has remained sluggish in the ex-Soviet Caucasus nation amid widespread vaccine hesitancy. Authorities have been doling out free doses to foreign visitors.

That has been a boon for Iranians afraid for their lives and sick of waiting. Iran has the highest COVID-19 death toll in the Middle East, less than 2% of the countrys 84 million people have received both doses. But the trip has become so popular for Iranians that the price of the journey is soaring.

___

BANGKOK  Thailand has tightened coronavirus restrictions and warned of further measures as daily cases surpassed 10,000 and the death toll hit a record 141 despite an overnight curfew in Bangkok and several other provinces.

The surge since April has overwhelmed hospitals, strained the economy and thrown tourism recovery plans in doubt.

The vaccine rollout, hindered by supply problems, is slugging with some 5% of the population fully vaccinated and 15% only partially.

Cases have been climbing particularly in Bangkok and surrounding provinces.

The government imposed additional measures overnight including a ban on any gatherings and activities that can spread the virus, including anti-government rallies that have criticized Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ochas handling of the pandemic.
KENT  The private school that rented its facilities to a weight-loss camp now under state investigation has stated it has severed ties with the camp.

The South Kent School, a boys prep school located off of Bulls Bridge Road, stated in an email to the Hearst Connecticut Media on Monday that it has terminated all contractual agreements with Camp Shane, the weight loss camp now under investigation by the state Office of Early Childhood and Department of Children and Families. The camp, which closed July 13, has ceased all operations at our campus, the school said in the email.

The camp is not run by or associated with the South Kent School, according to Sue Harris, the schools chief marketing and communications officer.

The two state agencies announced an investigation last week into the camp related to concerns about the health, safety and well-being of children enrolled at the summer youth camp. The departments declined to comment further.

Camp owner David Ettenberg said he shut down operations last week due to staffing shortages, and a former counselor told Hearst Connecticut that she estimated about 10 counselors left during the weeks the camp was in operation, leaving just eight at its close.

An email was sent to parents July 13 informing them the camp was closing sooner than expected. The day before an email was sent to parents abruptly informing them they had to collect their children from the camp, an 8-year-old girl suffered serious head injuries while playing with other children. It is unclear whether the incident is tied to the investigation and the closure.

South Kent School said all questions related to Camp Shane should be directed to the camps leadership team.

We understand there is an ongoing investigation, and we will cooperate fully with state and local authorities. We have no further comment about the camp at this time, Harris email stated.

In 2019, the camp was located at the Rectory School in Pomfret before relocating to Kent. The Rectory School has not responded to request for comment.

Records maintained on 211childcare.org - a website for information on child care administered by the United Way and supported by the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood - show inspections and investigations of the camp dating back to 2019. A corrective action plan for the various violations was then put into place to resolve the concerns.

Ettenberg said last week upon moving the camp to Connecticut after 52 years in New York, Camp Shane ran into issues with state regulation differences.

Basically we had to start from the beginning with all the regulations, he said. We didnt know anything, so they told us, You need this, you need that. We worked on that.
ANSONIA  Mayor David Cassetti has called his economic revitalization initiative Ansonia Recharged since 2013, when he originally ran for office.

That game plan was to work with Ansonia Copper and Brass and bringing it back to economic prosperity, Cassetti said. His administration later on issued a logo for Ansonia Recharged, complete with a lightning bolt over the o.

And now the city could be getting another jolt from above in the form of $2 million in state bonds to renovate the Ansonia Copper and Brass facility. The State Bond Commission is expected to approve the funding later this week as part of a bonding package for projects across the state.

State Rep. Kara Rochelle and state Sen. Jorge Cabrera, who both represent Ansonia and Derby, applied for the funds. The Bond Commission will make its decision Friday, although once placed on the agenda projects are rarely turned down.

The funding comes about one week after Gov. Ned Lamont visited the former Farrel Foundry nearby to announce that the city would get $1 million to demolish that dilapidated facility.

The money for the Ansonia Copper and Brass site would go in part towards renovating the 175,000-square-foot extrusion mill at the site.

These would be the first major state funds secured to renovate and revitalize the Ansonia Copper & Brass site, which has been a priority of mine for many years, said Rochelle. With this needed funding, we hope to lure developers to the site, grow our grand list, increase property values, bring jobs to the region and give the city the opportunity to lower property taxes.

Cabrera called the funding a game changer for the city.

This is only the beginning of more great things to come for Ansonia, he said.

The complex consists of several rusting buildings spanning more than 40 acres of Naugatuck riverfront property.

Sheila OMalley, economic development director for Ansonia, said the city previously did a study that showed the site could be salvaged and repurposed for other uses. Companies are eager to set up shop in the city and the site once renovated would be an attractive location for businesses, OMalley said.

She said cooperation from city and state officials was essential to getting the funds for renovating the extrusion mill.

This is a direct request to our state legislators for authorization for this $2 million. So I have to give credit where credit is due, OMalley said.

In a press release issued by Rochelles office, it was noted that the renovations would consist of repairing the roof, replacing the HVAC system and demolishing portions of the mill and surrounding buildings in order to improve access. OMalley said that an access road would need to be built for the mill as well.

The city has additional grant applications that are currently under consideration by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Connecticut Economic Development Association for the facility.

For Cassetti, the money acts as proof that the city is indeed recovering.

Correction: A previous version of this story misstated the status of the $2 million, the name of the official in town last week and the amount awarded for the Farrel property. The $2 million is expected to be awarded and it was Gov. Ned Lamont who was in town to award $1 million for the Farrel property.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden on Monday ordered the State Department to create a working group to review U.S. remittance policy to ensure that money that Cuban Americans send home makes it directly into the hands of their families without the regime taking a cut.

He also ordered a review of the viability of increasing staff at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. The White House is hopeful that a boost in staffing could help it better facilitate civil society engagement following one of the communist island's biggest antigovernment demonstrations in recent memory.

The actions were detailed by a senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the Biden administration hadnt yet publicly announced the effort.

It comes a little more than a week after thousands of Cubans took to the streets of Havana and other cities across the island to protest food shortages and high prices during the coronavirus crisis. It's a level of frustration not seen in Cuba in more than 60 years.

Biden is also calling for the administration to work with Congress to identify options to make the internet more accessible on the island. The regime moved to quickly cut off internet access to stop images of the protests from being broadcast to the world. Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, have been urging Biden to make free satellite internet access available to dissidents to help them subvert the Cuban governments effort to stop activists from getting their messages on social media.

The administration will also look to work with international organizations to increase humanitarian assistance, while the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control will explore sanctioning Cuban officials who committed human rights violations against peaceful protesters in Cuba, the official said.

Biden senior adviser Cedric Richmond and Juan Gonzalez, a senior National Security Council official, met on Monday with Cuban American leaders to hear their policy recommendations and concerns in the aftermath of the demonstrations, according to the White House.

Biden, who has been under congressional pressure to take action, last week called Cuba a failed state that was repressing their citizens.

But Biden also suggested that taking effective action was complicated.

There are a number of things that we would consider doing to help the people of Cuba, but it would require a different circumstance or a guarantee that they would not be taken advantage of by the government, Biden said. For example, the ability to send remittances back to Cuba. We would not do that now because the fact is its highly likely the regime would confiscate those remittances or big chunks of it.

A dramatic drawdown of embassy personnel from Cuba began in 2017, unrelated to the Trump administrations antipathy towards President Barack Obamas rapprochement with the island.

Instead, the removal of staffers from the U.S. Embassy in Havana began in the spring and summer of that year in response to unexplained brain injuries suffered by American diplomats, spies and other government employees posted to the island.

The Trump administration also moved to reverse many of the Obama administrations initiatives, reimposing restrictions that had barred direct commercial flights by U.S. carriers to multiple Cuban airports and port calls by U.S. registered cruise ships.

As president Donald Trump also sharply curtailed remittances that Cuban Americans were allowed to send to relatives on the island, barred financial and commercial transactions with most Cuban companies affiliated with the government or military and, in his final days in office, redesignated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism, in part for its support of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Biden said as a presidential candidate that he would revert to Obama-era policies that loosened decades of embargo restrictions on Havana, and the political right in the U.S. has accused him of not being supportive enough of Cuban dissidents. Thus far, the Biden administration has said it's reviewing its Cuba policy and has done little to move away from Trump's posture toward the communist regime.

Some of the more liberal members of the Democratic Party, most notably Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have criticized the Cuban government but also called on Biden to lift the embargo and argued that the embargo policy is contributing to Cuban suffering.
BRIDGEPORT  Two city residents were among the five members of rapper Tekashi 6ix9ines private security team who were indicted this week for allegedly robbing a man after chasing him through New York City streets with flashing lights and sirens, according to the Manhattan District Attorney.

District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. announced the indictment Monday, charging all five individuals with first-degree robbery, second-degree robbery and first-degree criminal impersonation.

One of the individuals, former New York Police Department detective Daniel Laperuta, of Central Valley, N.Y., was also charged with third-degree falsely reporting an incident for claiming to NYPD officers, and in a 911 call, that the victim was threatening the defendants with a gun, Vance said.

The other defendants were identified by Vance as Christian Cortez, of Bridgeport; Egardo Cortez, of Bridgeport; Sammy Sprouse, of Murfreesboro, Tenn.; and Kristian Fuhse, of Pompano Beach, Fla.

A celebrity entourage is not a police department, and Manhattan is not the Wild West, Vance said in a statement Monday. As alleged, these highly-compensated vigilantes caravanned through the streets of Harlem with sirens flashing in order to track a man down and steal and break his phone. Along the way, a retired NYPD Detective tried to cover up their conduct by lying to his former colleagues and repeatedly claiming the victim had threatened to shoot them. False reports  especially about firearms  can carry devastating consequences and fortunately, no one was injured or killed in the actual police response.

The charges stem from an incident on Aug. 9, 2020, when a 34-year-old man and his girlfriend saw rapper Daniel Hernandez, also known as Tekashi 6ix9ine, and several members of his security team while driving in Harlem. When the group saw that the victim was trying to record the rapper on his cellphone, they yelled at him and started to chase after him as he drove off, Vance said.

The team followed the victim for about 20 blocks in SUVs, which were equipped with flashing lights and sirens, according to Vance.

When the victim tried to flag down a marked police car, Laperuta flashed a retired NYPD Member of Service card, told the officers the victim threatened them with a gun and rejoined the chase, Vance said.

He said Laperuta called 911 as the team continued to chase the victim.

The team boxed in the victims car with their SUVs at the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and 125th Street and forced him to pull over, Vance said.

Sprouse then allegedly approached the victim, opened his car door, unbuckled his seatbelt and pulled on the victims arm, the District Attorney said. The victims phone was knocked out of his hand, and Fuhse allegedly stomped on it, Vance said. The victim got out of his vehicle and wrestled with Egardo Cortez to try to get his phone back, according to Vance.

Thats when Laperuta walked up, his hand on his holstered gun, with Christian Cortez, who pointed a Taser at the victim, Vance said. When an unmarked police cruiser showed up with flashing lights, the security team got into their SUVs and fled, according to Vance.

Laperuta filed a complaint with the NYPDs 28th Precint, again claiming the victim threatened them with a gun, Vance said. When a lieutenant challenged Laperutas claim, he left the precint.
NEW HAVEN  Former Police Chief Otoniel Reyes will receive an estimated annual pension of $117,515 from the city, according to the calculation released by city officials.

The city released the pension calculation for Reyes, who left the postearlier this year after more than 21 years of service, in response to a Freedom of Information request and subsequent email requesting the information. The final calculation is expected in August.

By comparison, former Police Chief Anthony Campbell, Reyes predecessor, earned an annual pension of $120,143.83, Acting Budget Director Michael Gormany said in an email.

Former Police Chief Dean Esserman, who resigned in 2016, was not eligible for a pension, Gormany said. Esserman was first appointed chief by former Mayor John DeStefano Jr. in 2011, and later reappointed by then-Mayor Toni N. Harp in February 2014 to a four-year term. He previously served as assistant chief in New Haven from 1991-93.

The calculations for retirement for police are based on the bargaining unit contract that is in effect upon retirement. Chief Reyes retired under the provisions of the current bargaining unit agreement; while Chief Campbell retired under the previous agreement that expired June 30, 2016, Gormany noted.

Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media

Reyes said Monday the pension was an incentive, beyond the desire to be a public servant and benefit the community, that helped offset the sacrifices of the job.

There is a physical, emotional and mental burden that accompanies being a police officer, he said  long, irregular hours, regular exposure to difficult scenarios and situations that really takes a toll on you, and forced time away on holidays, weekends and birthdays.

The arrangement was a trade-off, Reyes said. In addition to working to benefit residents, he paid that price to garner security for his family. The city, through collective bargaining, allowed for them to plan for the future.

It comes at that price, said Reyes. I signed up to do this job. I signed on to bear this risk  to bear the responsibility that comes with being a police officer. ... (The pension is) part of the agreement.

Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media

Police officers hired before December 18, 2012, are eligible to retire with a pension after 20 years of service, including any additional buyback time earned over the course of their career, according to the current collective bargaining agreement between the city and Elm City Local, which represents New Haven police.

Officers hired after December 18, 2012, are eligible to retire with a pension after 25 years of service, including buyback time, or after reaching the age of 52, according to the agreement.

The pensions of officers, other than those hired between Oct. 20, 2012, and Dec. 18, 2012, cannot exceed 70 percent of their average earnings in their four best-paid years, the agreement states.

Reyes comes in at 69.6 percent of $168,817.84, which is the average of his best four years, according to the city records. Campbells was 68 percent of his best years, according to documents released by Gormany.

The officers hired in the roughly two-month span in 2012 are eligible for pensions of up to 80 percent of their average earnings in their top four years, according to the agreement.

Mayor Justin Elicker said that the police contract changed about 10 years ago but there are department members who are grandfathered into a previous agreement that allowed for overtime and extra duty to be used in pension calculations. That has changed and anyone hired after Nov. 1, 2009, will have a pension calculated only on their base wages or salary, and it cant be more than 70 percent of that wage or salary.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

But Elicker also said it is important to note that many towns in Connecticut have defined pension plans for police and a good number of towns pay higher than New Haven for their police chief.

The point is that the market for attracting officers and chiefs in Connecticut is similar to attracting superintendents (of schools), is such that one needs to compensate based on what the existing market is, Elicker said. There is this myth in Connecticut that large cities dont spend money efficiently and that is just factually incorrect.

By and large we pay less than our suburban counterparts, Elicker said. Our employees in almost all cases have more challenging jobs than our suburban counterparts.

Reyes noted that officers contribute to the pension; with the last collective bargaining agreement, that contribution rose from 10 percent to 12 percent, according to the document.

In that way, he said, the pension also represents the his investment in New Haven over the years.

I earned every single penny of that, said Reyes. Its something my family earned.

Reyes, who officially retired June 30 and was succeeded by now-acting Chief Renee Dominguez, became the head of the public safety department at Quinnipiac University.

Reyes said the pension wasnt something he thought about on a day-to-day basis  it really only came into focus later in his career.

Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media

He said hes glad to be able to enjoy the reward of his career and provide for his familys future. It was bittersweet to leave, including some relief, he said  on his last day, he realized God and his colleagues had helped see him through the years.

The final calculation on his pension will not be made until Aug. 1, Reyes said.

When there is contact that is negotiated, we need to follow through with the terms of the contract, Elicker said. And, we need to be practical about how we attract officer to work on our force,

Reyes was named interim chief in March 2019 by then-Mayor Toni Harp, then sworn-in as the full-time chief in September of that year. A city native, he joined the department in 2000.

He held a number of positions over the course of his career, including the head of the Detective Bureaus Major Crimes Division, commander of the departments Emergency Services Unit, Hill-South District manager, detective sergeant, patrol sergeant, DEA task force officer, narcotics enforcement officer and patrol officer.

Peter Hvizdak / Hearst Connecticut Media

As his 21-year tenure came a close, he drew strong praise for his loyalty to the city and its residents and his ability to help others learn.

The Chief has provided consistent and guiding leadership to our Police Department through one of the most challenging years in recent history, Elicker said in a statement as Reyes announced his plans to retire. New Haven has been fortunate to benefit from his integrity, strength of character, compassion for the community, and work ethic.

william.lambert@hearstmediact.com
A Branford man was sentenced to two years in prison for defrauding Connecticuts Medicaid Program, according to federal authorities.

Wali Muhammad, 46, also was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant to three years of supervised release, federal authorities said in a statement.

Muhammad, who owned and operated Happy Family Clinical Services LLC, a mental health and social services agency, engaged in a scheme to defraud the Connecticut Medicaid Program by submitting fraudulent claims for psychotherapy services that were purportedly provided to Medicaid clients, from 2013 through 2019, federal authorities said in the statement, citing documents and statements made in court.

The claims were for occasions and dates of service when no psychotherapy services of any kind had been provided to the Medicaid clients identified in the claims, federal authorities said in the statement.

Further, according to federal authorities, the claims were submitted using the names and identities of licensed clinical social workers and other licensed health care providers who purportedly worked for Happy Family, and represented that the psychotherapy services were personally rendered by the licensed providers, when, in fact, the licensed providers had not personally rendered the services, had not supervised the services that were billed, and were unaware that Muhammad was billing or causing the services to be billed as if the providers had personally rendered the services.

Federal authorities also said in the statement that when services were provided, they were usually rendered by unlicensed individuals and billed as licensed psychotherapy.

Bryant ordered Muhammad to pay $527,034 in restitution to Medicaid, federal authorities said in the statement.

Muhammad pleaded guilty March 11, 2021 to one count of health care fraud.

Muhammad, who is free on bond, is to report to prison on Sept. 27, 2021, federal authorities said.

This case was investigated by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General and the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit of the Connecticut Chief States Attorneys Office.

Anyone who suspects health care fraud can report it by calling 1-800-HHS-TIPS.
COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP)  A full federal appeals court has decided to rehear a case over a sweeping Missouri abortion law that would ban the procedures at or around the eighth week of a pregnancy.

The U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals last week decided to take up the case on its own motion.

At issue is a 2019 state law that would ban abortions as early as eight weeks into a pregnancy and prohibit abortions based on a Down syndrome diagnosis.

A three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit Court last month upheld an injunction from U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs prohibiting Missouri from enforcing the provisions. But the full appeals court will now consider the case.

We have long said the fight to protect abortion access in Missouri is far from over," Yamelsie Rodriguez, president and CEO of Reproductive Health Services of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said in a statement. The Eighth Circuits sudden change to reconsider Missouris sweeping abortion ban  one the court said was unconstitutional  is just another troubling signal in a long line of threats to our reproductive freedom.

A spokesman for the Missouri attorney general's office, which is defending the law, didn't immediately reply to a request for comment.

Sachs said when he ruled last year that he thought Planned Parenthood and the ACLU would likely succeed in their lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional. Similar laws have been struck down in North Dakota and Iowa.

Legislators who helped draft the Missouri law had said it was meant to withstand court challenges instead of spark them. It included a provision stating that if the eight-week ban was struck down, then a series of less-restrictive abortion limits would kick in at 14, 18 or 20 weeks. But courts have blocked enforcement of all of those limits thus far.

Missouri's Republican attorney general, Eric Schmitt, earlier this month asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. In a court filing, he said the U.S. Supreme Court should consider whether Missouris restrictions are reasonable regulations on abortion and should also use the case to decide whether to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established a nationwide right to abortion at any point before a fetus can survive outside the womb, which is roughly around the 24th week.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider allowing the enforcement of a Mississippi law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which could dramatically alter nearly 50 years of court precedent on abortion rights.

Missouri also is among several conservative states in recent years that have passed abortion restrictions in the hopes that the increasingly conservative Supreme Court will eventually overturn Roe v. Wade.

The next hearing on the Missouri abortion law has not yet been scheduled, according to online court records.
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP)  Authorities on Monday identified a suspect accused of fatally shooting one person and wounding four others, including firefighters and paramedics, during a house fire in Tucson.

Leslie Stephen Scarlett, 35, remained in extremely critical condition at a local hospital, Tucson Police Chief Chris Magnus said at a news conference.

Magnus said the suspect was wounded in an exchange of gunfire with a police officer on Sunday.

It is not clear what his intentions were, Magnus said. This is a highly tragic, really horrific incident, with many unknowns  A nightmare scenario.

According to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Scarlett has a criminal history that includes a 2007 conviction for an attempted armed robbery. He was sentenced to six years and was released in August 2013.

Police said Scarlett drove up to the house fire and fired shots at an ambulance crew. The ambulance was two blocks from the fire but was actually on standby for another incident, authorities said.

The ambulance driver, a 20-year-old man, was shot in the head, and a paramedic in the passenger seat, a 21-year-old woman, was shot in the chest and arm, police said. The driver was in critical condition and the woman was stable Monday.

The suspect then opened fire on firefighters and neighbors trying to douse the flames, authorities said.

A neighbor  identified as 44-year-old Cory Michael Saunders  was shot in the head and died, Magnus said. A firefighter was shot in the arm, and another bullet grazed another neighbors head.

Police said a badly burned body was later found inside the home hasn't been identified yet, but likely is the mother of three children who lived there. The children were initially reported missing but were located unharmed Monday morning, according to authorities.

A responding police officer encountered the suspect a couple blocks away. Police said he rammed his SUV into the officers vehicle and opened fire.

The officer wasnt injured and returned fire, critically wounding the suspect.

Tucson is about 115 miles (185 kilometers) southeast of Phoenix.

___

This story has been corrected to accurately spell Cory.
BRANFORD  A year after receiving unanimous approval from the Planning and Zoning Commission, site work is underway at the future site of Aldi Grocery Store and Chase Bank, opposite Interstate 95s Exit 53 ramp.

The initial work is environmental cleanup, according to Anthony Cinicola, Branford Building official.

The permits are ready to be issued from a building standpoint, were just waiting for the sewer agreement and approval from the engineering department to be put into place, he said.

The applicant, at the time of approval, June 4, 2020, was Trumbulls Sound Development.

Owners John J. Maturo, Jr. and Nicole Kovesces sold the property on June 20, 2020 for $2.2 million, to HV Retail Development, LLC, a Houston-based company that was established as a business in Connecticut on Feb. 16, 2021.

A building permit was issued to HV Retail Development, LLC on April 15, 2021 for the project that includes a 19,210-square foot Aldi store and a separate, 3,470-square-foot Chase Bank building on nearly 10 acres.

The long-vacant property formerly was a series of auto dealerships, most recently Branford Mitsubishi.

To see the site be redeveloped, its good to see that activity and increase the tax base, said First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove.

Aldi is a German-owned cousin of Trader Joes known for its low prices, high-quality store brands, no-frills style and growing selection of natural and organic foods. Its U.S. base is in Chicago.

We always welcome new businesses and promote growth to the town of Branford, said Cinicola. Were happy to have them onboard.

We are excited to confirm we are planning to open our first Aldi store in Branford, Connecticut in spring 2022, said Aldi South Windsor Division Vice President Chris Daniels.

Mark Zaretsky contributed to this story in an earlier report for the New Haven Register. Sarah Page Kyrcz can be contacted at suzipage1@aol.com.
Niagara Falls, NY (14301)

Today

Sunny. High 81F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Mainly clear early, then a few clouds later on. Slight chance of a shower late. Low 61F. Winds light and variable.
The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the federation, Monday denied reports making the rounds that the former President Goodluck...

The Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the federation, Monday denied reports making the rounds that the former President Goodluck Jonathan and himself will contest the forthcoming 2023 presidential election.

His media aid Dr Bashir Gwandu described the rumour as pigment of some persons imagination who are bent on distracting the minister from his official duties.

Gwandu added that, the AGF never discussed such with anybody and has not shown interest in any political post. He said that Malami is so occupied with his ministerial duties of serving his country the best way he could,  2023 is still very far to even talk about it, the attorney has never indicated interest to stand for election with anybody he advised members of the public to be wary of what they say or post on social media or anywhere, what the minister needs now is to focus more on how to deliver much needed services to the country and that has been doing and will continue.

He explained that, people should not force words into the mouth of the AGF and to henceforth stop peddling such unfounded rumours that has no basis whatsoever, he warned detractors of the minister to stay off Gwandu added.
Deji Adeyanju, popular rights activist, has insisted that Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, and Yoruba freedom...

Deji Adeyanju, popular rights activist, has insisted that Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, and Yoruba freedom fighter, Sunday Igboho are not criminals.

Adeyanju wondered why Kanu and Igboho should be treated as criminals for demanding self determination.

In a tweet, the activist recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari was referred to as a hero for overthrowing a government.

According to Adeyanju: If Buhari, who overthrew a democratically elected government can become president years later and referred to as a hero by some people, then how can Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho who are only demanding for self determination be treated like criminals?

Kanu was recently captured in an African country, believed to be Kenya, and repatriated to Nigeria.

Since his return to Nigeria, the IPOB leader has been in custody of the Department of State Services, DSS.

Kanus remand in DSS custody was ordered by Justice Binta Nyako-led Federal High Court.

Also, Igboho who has been agitating for Oduduwa Republic had his residence invaded by DSS operatives.

He, however, escaped but some of his aides were arrested and killed during the attack.

However, the agitator was last night arrested in Cotonou, Benin Republic, by security agents.

One of his lawyers, Pelumi Olajengbesi had claimed that Igboho was not arrested but surrendered himself.
Malis interim president Assimi Goita has survived a knife attack at the Great Mosque of Bamako during the Eid-al-Adha prayer. Two men, one ...





Malis interim president Assimi Goita has survived a knife attack at the Great Mosque of Bamako during the Eid-al-Adha prayer.

Two men, one of whom was holding a knife, lunged at him at the mosque.

It was not clear whether he was wounded, but his securitymen quickly evacuated him from the scene.

His office in a statement later said he was safe and sound.

Goita arrived at the military camp of Kati, outside the capital, where security has been reinforced, the official said.

Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone told AFP that a man had tried to kill the president with a knife but was apprehended.

Latus Toure, the director of the mosque, said the attacker ended up wounding someone else.

The shocking attack follows months of political turmoil in Mali, which is also battling a jihadist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and driven hundreds of thousands from their homes.

Goita was sworn into power in June, after leading the countrys second coup in less than a year.

The colonel had already led a putsch last August, when he and other army officers ousted elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita after weeks of mass protests over corruption and the long-running jihadist conflict.

The second coup in nine months sparked diplomatic uproar, prompting the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to suspend Mali, calling for the appointment of a civilian prime minister.

France, which has thousands of troops stationed in the war-torn country, also suspended military cooperation with Mali.

The former colonial power followed by announcing that it would wind down its 5,100-strong Barkhane force that has battled jihadists in the Sahel since 2013.

The military junta handed power to a civilian-led transitional government, which promised to restore civilian rule in February 2022.

In June it unveiled its new government, appointing military figures in key roles.

Goita vowed that the government would uphold all its commitments, pledging to stage credible, fair and transparent elections.

A large majority of the 15-nation UNs Security Council later called for free and fair elections to go ahead in the country without the participation of its current leaders.

Mali also faces unrest outside the political arena.

It has been struggling to contain an jihadist insurgency that first emerged in the north of the country in 2012, and has since spread to Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

The conflict has also been mirrored by political instability in the capital.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has commenced the process to extradite Sunday Igboho from Benin Republic. The Yoruba agitator was ...

The Federal Government of Nigeria has commenced the process to extradite Sunday Igboho from Benin Republic.

The Yoruba agitator was apprehended in the neighboring country on Monday night.

Nigeria is not expected to face resistance from the Beninoise government, an age-long ally.

The authorities regard Africas most populous nation as big brother.

Igboho was declared wanted after the Department of State Services (DSS) operation at his Ibadan residence on July 1.

He was asked to turn himself in to the nearest security agency. But the secessionist went underground.

Igboho stayed away from the July 3 Yoruba Nation rally he promoted and later called off due to the assault on his home.

An intelligence source disclosed that there was nothing supernatural about him and that his hideout had been identified.

If this secessionist thinks hes hiding, that thought should be erased. The government knows where he is but is restraining due to tactical reasons, the source said.

The strategy was to wait till he came out of hiding. Igboho was nabbed just ten days after federal agencies placed him on stop-list.

The July 9 memo copied the DSS, the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and the Nigeria Police.
The UK Parliament has said that the way and manner Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, was rearrested in Kenya a...

The UK Parliament has said that the way and manner Nnamdi Kanu, leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, was rearrested in Kenya and extradited has to be explained by the Nigerian Government.

Lord Tariq Ahmad, the UK Minister of State for the Commonwealth, demanded that the government of President Muhammadu Buhari should explain to the British Government how it repatriated Kanu.

The decision followed a July 7, 2021, debate on the floor of the Parliament during which the lawmakers discussed the UK governments assessment of Kenyas role in the matter.

The issue was brought to the House of Lords by Lord Alton (Liverpool), who sought to address the controversies surrounding the transfer of the IPOB leader from the East African country to Nigeria against his will.

The lawmaker also sought to know if the High Commission in Abuja has provided any assistance to Kanu.

A parliamentary schedule stated, Lord Alton of Liverpool to ask Her Majestys Government what assessment they have made of (1) the alleged role of the government of Kenya in the detention and alleged mistreatment of Nigerian activist Nnamdi Kanu, (2) the circumstances surrounding the transfer of Kanu to Nigeria against his will, and (3) of any assistance being provided to him by the High Commission in Abuja. HL1665.

In response, Tariq Ahmad said, We are seeking clarification from the Nigerian Government about the circumstances of the arrest and detention of Nnamdi Kanu.

Furthermore, the Minister confirmed earlier reports about his country providing consular assistance for the IPOB leader.

The UK has requested consular access to Kanu from the Nigerian government, and we stand ready to provide consular assistance, he said.

The Buhari government is yet to tell Nigerians how the IPOB leader was arrested and repatriated to Nigeria.
Obi Cubana, Nigerian business mogul, says he threw a lavish funeral in honour of Uche Iyiegbu, his mother, because of the promise he made ...

Obi Cubana, Nigerian business mogul, says he threw a lavish funeral in honour of Uche Iyiegbu, his mother, because of the promise he made to her.

The 46-year-old nightlife promoter has become a viral sensation since he buried his mother, who died in December last year.

In an interview with BBC Pidgin , the entrepreneur said he and his siblings had earlier promised to celebrate the deceased in grand style when she clocks 80.

He said contrary to the plan, his mother passed on before the age of 80, prompting him and his siblings to channel their initial energy for her birthday into giving her a befitting burial.

My mothers burial was like that because we had already promised her that whenever she clocks 80, well organise a unique carnival, which is the first of its kind in the world, to celebrate her, he said.

We joked about it and agreed. But thereafter, she died before she clocked 80. Due to that, we dissipated all our energy and initial plans to celebrate her 80th birthday into organising a befitting burial for her. Thats why it is the talk of the town.

This year (2021) makes it 15 years that our father passed away. After my fathers death, we gave our mother all the love because she was always there for us. She was the one playing the role of a father and mother for us before her death.

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Whenever you visit her, she must pray for you before leaving. Even in your absence, she still prays for you, so when she died, it was as if they collected part of my energy.

Its a show of love  Obi Cubana defends naira rain at the funeral

In the interview, Obi Cubana also dismissed criticisms trailing the spraying of naira notes at his mothers burial.

The entrepreneur, whose real name is Obinna Iyiegbu, argued that no one should decide for his guests how to spend the money they worked for.

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How would I have arranged for people to come to the event and spray money. Is it to bathe with it? The money belongs to them, so it is their choice to spend it anyhow they like, he said.

All those that came for the burial are bigwigs across various industries, so theyre basically there to show love for my family. Some of them were my friends and colleagues from school several years back.

Therefore, the burial offered them the platform to come and show their love and support. Thats what happened that day.

Obi Cubana also called out those questioning his open display of wealth at his mothers burial, explaining that such people are only envious of others progress.

I dont have time for people who want to tell me how to spend the money that I made through my own efforts. Its waste of time replying to such people. Theyre only criticising me because they dont want others to succeed, he said.

We didnt plan it (the burial) this way. Its not about money. Money couldnt have gotten us such a huge crowd, it was out of the goodwill that I enjoy from the public.

How I made my first N1 million

On how he made his first one million naira, Obi Cubana said: After undergoing my compulsory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme in Abuja, I started searching for a job all to no avail.

That made me start some small jobs and from there I became a real estate agent. I usually get five percent of every task that is successfully executed. It was along the line that I and my colleagues met a man who asked us to help him furnish his house.

We did it very well that he gave me N500,000 separately from the profit of N600,000 which I also made from the deal. That made it N1.1 million in total. It was after my NYSC that I made my first one million naira.
A renowned historian, Emeritus Professor Banji Akintoye, has confirmed the arrest of Yoruba rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly kno...

A renowned historian, Emeritus Professor Banji Akintoye, has confirmed the arrest of Yoruba rights activist, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho.

Igboho was arrested on Monday at an airport in Cotonou, Benin Republic.

In a statement confirming the arrest, Akintoye who heads the umbrella body of Yoruba self-determination groups, Ilana Oodua, said he and others are working to provide assistance for Ighoho to prevent his extradition into Nigeria, saying Benin Republic is a land that respects the rules of law.

He called on all Yoruba people within and beyond the shores of Nigeria to come out and ensure that their ancestral land is not defeated by invaders.

The statement titled, Ighoho: Theres A Strong Possibility That Extradition Request Of Nigerian Government May Be Rejected By Benin Republic  Akintoye, was signed by him and made available to newsmen by his Communications Manager, Mr. Maxwell Adeleye.

It read in part, I received last night the troubling information that Chief Sunday Adeyemo fondly called Igboho had been arrested at the Cotonou Airport.

I and other Yoruba Patriots who are immediately available are now working to provide the assistance necessary to ensure that nobody will be able to do to him anything unlawful or primitive and to prevent him from being extradited into Nigeria which is strongly possible.

Fortunately, Benin Republic is reliably a land of law where the authorities responsibly obey the law. We have secured the services of a leading and highly respected lawyer whom we can confidently rely on.

What the situation now calls for is that the Yoruba nation at home and in the diaspora must stand strong, resolved that neither Sunday Igboho nor any other Yoruba person will henceforth be subjected to inhuman or dehumanizing treatment of any kind.

We Yoruba nation are, by the grace of God, a very strong nation. We must arise now to show that strength.

For a start, we must all see to it now that Sunday Ighoho will get his freedom back so as to be able to move and operate as a free person. We all know he has committed no crime.

We know that some people are trying to suppress or even eliminate him only because he stood up to defend his kinsmen, women and children who are being massively killed and raped in their ancestral homeland; who are having their assets and means of livelihood destroyed, and who are facing ethnic cleansing and even genocide without having the benefit of protection by the rulers of their country.

We know, furthermore, that for the protection of his people who are being brutalized, he has joined hands with many of his brethren to take the legally appropriate step, namely to seek the intervention of the International Criminal Court, Akintoye said.
The Presidency has told the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to forget any dream of capturing power in 2023 as the masses will not forget Pr...

The Presidency has told the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to forget any dream of capturing power in 2023 as the masses will not forget President Muhammadu Buharis influence in a hurry.

Senior Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu spoke on Tuesday after the Eid-el-Kabir prayer in Abuja.

According to him, president Buhari enjoyed unshakable support not only in his hometown but also across the country and that this was enough for the opposition to admit that the President mattered a lot for the ruling party and Nigerians in general.

He said Buhari constituted a political obstacle the PDP and other political parties could not dismantle come 2023.

Shehu said we believe the PDP and other opposition parties are nursing false hopes of taking power comes 2023.

He stated that the masses would never abandon Buharis leadership and the APC.

Shehu added that I assure you that in 2023, the masses will be waiting for the President to show the way in courtesy of what he has been building for the country in terms of infrastructure and wellbeing of young people in the country.

The presidential spokesman said nobody would take the risk by inviting another party to come and take over in 2023.
Former Lagos Governor, Bola Tinubu has asked Muslims to pray for the unity and stability of Nigeria. He advised them to dedicate the...

Former Lagos Governor, Bola Tinubu has asked Muslims to pray for the unity and stability of Nigeria.

He advised them to dedicate themselves to greater adherence to the compassionate and spiritually nourishing commands of Almighty Allah.

Tinubu, in a statement on Monday, urged the people not to forget the poor and vulnerable.

He encouraged the Muslim faithful never to forget the reason for Eid-el-Kabir and to reach out to give solace to others.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) leader said to be a good Muslim is to be a caring and generous human being.

The politician called on Nigerians to remember President Muhammadu Buhari, governors and other leaders in their prayers.

By so doing, together we can enjoy the benefits of a better Nigeria, he said.

Tinubu prayed for gallant soldiers and other security agents confronting evil people.

We pray for the unity and stability of this country, the APC stalwart added.
The Yoruba nation Freedom fighter, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Ugboho has been arrested in Cotonou, Benin Republic. It was gat...





The Yoruba nation Freedom fighter, Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Ugboho has been arrested in Cotonou, Benin Republic.

It was gathered that he was nabbed by security forces in Benin Republic at an airport in Cotonou on Monday night.

Recall that the freedom fighter was recently declared wanted by the Department of State Services, DSS, over alleged activities threatening the corporate existence of the country.

The freedom fighter, according to a source intended to fly out through the West African neighbouring country before he was intercepted. He intended to travel to Germany, the source further revealed.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks to the press at the end of a visit with his Belgian counterpart of Europes largest Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine production site on June 15. Canada has fully vaccinated 48.8% of its population against COVID-19. AFP via Getty Images/TNS
Rep. Elise M. Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, speaks to supporters on election night 2020 at her victory party in Glens Falls. Christopher Lenney/Watertown Daily Times
For two decades, the barge board cottage on Tchoupitoulas Street just past Napoleon Avenue had been known as Dick & Jennys, even though a succession of increasingly different restaurants did business here under that name during that span.

Now though, a new restaurant is poised to open here that is out to make its own name. Its taking a markedly different approach not just from its predecessors here, but from anywhere else in town.

Mister Mao is slated to officially open July 24. Its the first restaurant from chef Sophina Uong and her husband William Greenwell, who began the concept as a pop-up.

The style they have created for Mister Mao eludes a concise description but folds in elements of Southeast Asian, Latin American and Indian flavors (sometimes in the same dish). Uong described the idea as a "tropical roadhouse," and embraces the idea of presenting inauthentic global cuisine.

+11 Ian McNulty: At Maypop, Italian fusion and a fresh reminder of what restaurants give us The ham spent a year longer than planned hanging in the curing case at Maypop, not exactly forgotten but set aside as the restaurant sat close

A changing array of small plates will be served from carts wheeled around the dining room, in the style of dim sum service. On the main menu, look for dishes like escargot Wellington, onion bhaji (pakora-like fritters), coffee-rubbed pork shanks with smoked corn dumplings, habanero octopus aguachile and Kashmiri fried chicken with black salt and pineapple yogurt.

https://www.mistermaonola.com/eat

Greenwell runs the restaurants bar, dubbed Naked Bills, where the cocktail list includes nonalcoholic creations and beer from Zony Mash Beer Project, a venue where Mister Mao pop-ups found an early home.

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The former Dick & Jennys got its start here in 1999, the creation of husband-and-wife team Jennifer and Richard Benz. They sold it in 2006 to a group led by some of their former employees.

More owners and operators would come through in the years that followed, until the name and basic layout were about all that remained of its heyday. The last incarnation of Dick & Jennys closed in 2020, just before the pandemic began.

Mister Mao

4501 Tchoupitoulas St., 504-345-2056

Dinner Thu.-Mon., 5-10 p.m.

Korea House closes in Metairie after 35 years; new Chinese restaurant to take its place In the ongoing shakeup of the local restaurant scene, the areas oldest Korean restaurant has closed and a new restaurant focused on the flavo
Four of the parishs 12 fire protection districts raised their property tax millages to the maximum level authorized by voters at a series of sparsely attended hearings last week at Parish Government headquarters near Mandeville.

St. Tammany Parish Fire Protection District 1 in the Slidell area, District 4 in the Mandeville area, and Districts 6 and 12 in the Covington area opted to roll up their millages.

According to the St. Tammany Parish Assessors Office, the rollups will generate nearly $1.5 million of additional annual revenue for the four districts.

District 1 will be the largest beneficiary with an additional $883,343 in revenue next year as a result of its increase, the office said. District 4 is next with an additional $396,493 likely gained.

Fire District 12, which covers the unincorporated areas around Covington, will receive $149,792 more, while District 6, serving the Lee Road area, will bring in an additional $37,188.

All of the assessor offices figures are estimates based on the total assessed value of properties in each taxing district. Each mill results in a tax of $1 per $1,000 of assessed value on properties subject to the tax.

The millages now total 35 mills for District 1; 26 mills for District 4; 20.12 mills for District 6; and 25 mills for District 12.

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Reasons for the rollups varied.

Chief Chris Kaufmann of Fire District 1 said the increased revenue would be used to replenish and maintain the districts cash reserves, which it is using this year to fund the department after cutting the millage back last year in response to financial strains the coronavirus was putting on families in its service area.

Chief Kenneth Moore of District 4 said the additional money would go toward the construction and operation of two additional stations that the district needs in order to maintain its top rating by the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana.

District 6 Chief J.P. Taylor says that while the additional money will be used to maintain the current level of service, it will not be enough to meet the districts future needs.

District 12 Chief Terry Stuard said his districts roll-up was necessitated by increased operating costs, particularly the significant increases in the cost of funding pension payments.

Unlike last year, when the St. Tammany Parish Council discouraged millage increases because of coronavirus hardships, there was no opposition to this years rollups.

All other fire districts are keeping their millages at current levels, as is the Covington Fire Department. Details can be found on the assessors website at www.stpao.org.
In Louisiana, 1,325 more confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported on Monday as hospitalizations and ventilator usage continue to increase.

The Louisiana Department of Health reported a total of 421,122 confirmed coronavirus cases and 9,810 total confirmed deaths in its noon update Monday.

After waiting, Steve Scalise gets COVID vaccine, calls it 'safe and effective' Soon, U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise replied at the beginning of April when asked when he would be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Counting the additional 80,372 probable COVID-19 cases in Louisiana, the state has now surpassed 500,000 total suspected cases. The Department of Health reports a total of 501,494 suspected cases as of Tuesday.

New cases have more than quintupled since the surge started at the beginning of July, with nearly 8,140 new infections reported over the last seven days. That's a bit more than half the peak of the state's second wave last summer, with no signs new infections are abating.

On Tuesday, the reported number of hospitalizations increased by 68, and the number of patients in need of ventilators increased by one.

In recent days, the number of patients hospitalized with the coronavirus has risen from the relatively stable and low plateau that they had maintained since the third wave ended in early spring. Hospitalizations increased nearly every day this month and are now nearly three times higher than the average in June.

Deaths remain at a relatively low rate, though it is not clear whether that's because of the protection offered by vaccines or because it typically takes weeks before a patient with a serious infection ultimately succumbs to the virus.

These are another few key statewide statistics as of Monday:

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Total confirmed cases: 421,122

Total "probable" cases: 80,372

Total confirmed deaths: 9,810

Hospitalized: 779

On ventilators: 55

Vaccine series initiated: 1,849,580 (updated twice weekly)

Vaccine series completed: 1,686,533

Note: The Advocate and The Times-Picayune staff calculates daily case count and confirmed death increases based on the difference between today's total and yesterday's total of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths. The Louisiana Department of Health releases a daily case count on its dashboard that includes probable cases as indicated by a positive antigen test. That case count can be different than the one listed here.

Can't see chart below? Click here.

Can't see chart below? Click here.

Louisiana began reopening for Phase 1 on May 15-16 then moved to Phase 2 on June 5. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards extended Louisiana's Phase 2 restrictions twice in August before moving the state to Phase 3 on Sept. 11. The governor then moved the state back to a modified Phase 2 near the end of November before putting Louisiana back in a modified Phase 3 on March 2, 2021.

This is a developing story. More details and analysis to come.
Soon, U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise replied at the beginning of April when asked when he would be vaccinated against the coronavirus.

He repeated the response in May when he was asked the same question.

But it wasn't until Sunday that Scalise actually received his first Pfizer vaccination at an Ochsner clinic in Jefferson Parish.

Why did the No. 2 Republican in the House wait until now?

Especially with the delta variant becoming a lot more aggressive and seeing another spike, it was a good time to do it, he said in an interview. When you talk to people who run hospitals, in New Orleans or other states, 90% of people in hospital with delta variant have not been vaccinated. Thats another signal the vaccine works.

With the more virulent and transmissible delta strain spreading rapidly, the Louisiana Department of Health reported on Monday that hospitals have the highest number of COVID-19 patients since mid-February, when a deadly winter surge in cases was abating.

Scalise said he waited, in part, because he tested positive for COVID antibodies a while back  he believes he had a mild case of the virus at some point  and thought he had some immunity from that.

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The politics of the vaccination was not a factor in his decision to be inoculated, he said.

Among Democrats, 86% had received at least one shot of a vaccine, a Washington Post-ABC News poll reported earlier this month, compared to only 45% of Republicans. And 47% of Republicans said they arent likely to get vaccinated compared to only 6% of Democrats.

Its safe and effective, Scalise said, noting he supported funding that allowed the Trump administration to fast-track the process. It was heavily tested on thousands of people before the FDA gave its approval. Some people believe that it might have been rushed. Thats not the case. Ive been vocal about that for months. I know their process has high standards. The FDA approval process is probably the most respected in the world.

Scalise said he would encourage others to get vaccinated as well, but opposes any mandatory rules.

I dont think people should be shamed into getting it, he said. Its their choice.
A 28-year-old woman was arrested Monday around 11:30 a.m. after NOPD said she and a man ransacked a home in Central City.

The home of a 49-year-old victim in the 3500 block of Second Street (map) was allegedly burglarized by the arrested woman, Amanda Wilson, and a man who remains at-large, police said. The two entered the victim's home looking for someone, who they didn't find, according to police.

Police said the victim tried to move Wilson from inside her home when the man, who remains at large, got inside. When police got there, they arrested Wilson, but the other subject got away. Court records show Wilson was booked with home invasion.

In other matters, police are investigating a shooting that took place at the intersection of Louisiana Avenue and Chippewa Street (map) around 9:40 p.m. Monday night.

A 25-year-old man was shot by another man at the Irish Channel address before returning fire in defense, police said. The man was brought to an area hospital in a personal vehicle, according to the NOPD.

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Police also investigated a reported rape in the 3700 block of Silver Maple Court (map) in Algiers. A victim was sexually assault by a subject, who remains at-large, around 4:30 p.m. Monday, police said.

Meanwhile, the Orleans Parish Coroner's Office released the identities of two homicide victims Tuesday morning. The cause of death was gunshot wounds in both cases.

The coroner identified the man shot last Friday in the 1800 block of Touro Street (map) in the 7th Ward as 40-year-old David Moore.

The coroner identified the man shot and killed Friday at the intersection of Pauger and North Derbigny Streets (map) in the South 7th Ward as Warren Smith, 33.

Anyone with information regarding these crimes is asked to call Crimestoppers at 504-822-1111. Tipsters may be eligible for a cash reward.
A man killed his girlfriend by slashing her throat with a knife and beating her with a hammer during an argument at their Gentilly home on Monday, according to New Orleans police.

Alvin Severin, 19, allegedly admitted he killed his 18-year-old girlfriend, though he claimed he blacked out during the deadly attack and never meant to hurt her, investigators wrote in criminal court records.

The Orleans Parish Coroner's Office has identified the slain woman as Alliyah Staes.

Citing his alleged confession, police believe that Severin and Staes  who was five months pregnant  began arguing at their home in the 5000 block of De Bore Circle before 5 p.m. on Monday.

Severin allegedly claimed that Staes threatened to have him killed if he did not take care of their unborn child, and he became so angry he blacked out, investigators said in the court documents.

During the argument, police allege, Severin cut Staes' throat with a knife, struck her in the face with the forked end of a hammer, carried her to the backyard and left her near a shed.

Severin claimed he regained consciousness after his grandmother came into the home and found Staes' body in the backyard, police said.

According to police, when told his girlfriend was dead, Severins response was: I didnt mean to kill her. Im not a killer.

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Woman dead after being stabbed in Gentilly home; New Orleans police investigating A woman was stabbed and killed Monday evening in Gentilly Woods, according to the New Orleans Police Department.

After police were called out to the house, they recovered both the knife that was used to kill the woman as well as a bloodstained hammer with strands of hair on it, police said.

Police said they detained Severin, interrogated him, and jailed him on a count of second-degree murder.

Magistrate Court Commissioner Albert Thibodeaux set Severin's bail at $750,000 on Tuesday afternoon. He had not posted a bond and remained in custody later in the evening.

Severin would receive a mandatory life prison sentence if convicted of murder.

A study published last year in JAMA Pediatrics by Tulane University and Louisiana State University researchers found that homicide is among the leading causes of death for pregnant women in Louisiana, outpacing preeclampsia and car crashes while trailing a broad category of natural diseases.

Note: This post was updated to include information from the coroner.
A French Quarter portrait artist and outspoken advocate for people with disabilities died Sunday from injuries sustained during a hit-and-run in the 7th Ward.

On Friday evening, Sher Stewart, 74, had loaded up her art supplies and was riding her bicycle from Jackson Square to the McDonogh 16 Apartments on the corner of Henriette Delille and Pauger streets where she lived with friends.

According to fellow artist Kenneth Cook, she was attempting to cross St. Claude Avenue when she was hit by a driver. The driver fled the scene, according to New Orleans police. Stewart was taken to an area hospital due to a significant brain injury, according to Cook, where she died.

The NOPD said its traffic fatality unit was investigating the hit-and-run.

Stewart worked as a portrait artist in Jackson Square ever since arriving in the city in 1967. She was also an activist for the LGBT community and the disabled, according to artist Mattie Stillwell.

Though she was able-bodied, Stewart, who was originally from Memphis, was a lifelong member of ADAPT, a disability rights organization. Stewarts partner, the late Deborah Cunningham, was a paraplegic and survivor of polio. She inspired Stewart to become involved in protesting for the rights of people who were disabled. Stillwell said Stewart would brag about the six times shed been arrested while demonstrating.

She was also one of the best portrait artists Ive ever seen, Stillwell said.

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Bicyclist, 62, killed in hit-and-run crash in Algiers; New Orleans police looking for BMW Authorities are asking for the public's help in finding the vehicle involved.

Elaine Cummins, another Jackson Square artist, said for ten years she spent nearly every night with Stewart on her back porch when they were neighbors. Stewart sipped cider and Cummins listened to her tell story after story.

"There honest to God wasnt anything bad about her," Cummins said.

Stillwell called Stewarts death a tragedy for the community, and asked the person who hit Stewart on her bike to come forward.

How can you live with yourself otherwise? she said.

She said Ghost Bikes, an organization that memorializes cyclists who are killed, plans to place a bike at the corner where Stewart was killed.

Friends are also working with members of ADAPT to auction off Stewart's remaining paintings, with the proceeds going to the organization.
Sowande Salmon stood on a chair on the back porch of his Mandeville area apartment at 1 a.m. Tuesday, worried that rising water from torrential rain would spill in through the back door, as it had threatened to do in previous storms.

But as the water began lapping at the threshold, his girlfriend Krista Boggs yelled from inside the residence. The water, she told him, was coming in the front door  and quickly.

The couple went to work, stacking the sofa on top of chairs in their one-bedroom unit at Cypress Lake Apartments, and scrambling to salvage items as the water reached their ankles. Their wet/dry vacuum lay submerged in the middle of the flooded living room, and socks and items of clothing floated by as their three dogs barked.

"It was too much, too fast," Salmon said. "Everything just started floating everywhere.

Salmon and Boggs weren't the only ones caught off guard as bands of heavy thunderstorms dumped more than 8 inches of rain on western St. Tammany Parish overnight and into the morning. The overnight deluge that swamped the Cypress Lake Apartments was followed by another downpour as people were trying to leave for work later Tuesday morning.

Residents, business owners and government officials said it was like nothing they'd seen before, with parts of the Mandeville area that had never flooded before taking on water. While neither St. Tammany Parish nor Mandeville city officials had a tally of flooded structures, there were reports of flooding in the Beau Rivage, Woodstone and Tall Timbers subdivisions. Parts of Old Mandeville also had flooding.

In Beau Rivage off West Causeway Approach, where at least four homes took on some water, Drew Kall said his rain gauge showed that 5 inches fell from midnight to 1 a.m. and another 3.82 inches fell after sunrise.

"It's the worst I've seen in 35 years," said Kall, who was able to prevent major problems with some old sandbags he had on hand and only had to deal with seepage using a wet/dry vacuum, mops and towels.

The Mandeville Fire Department tweeted that its Girod Street station in Old Mandeville had taken on water, and that passing vehicles were pushing water into buildings on flooded streets, including the fire station.

A number of streets were closed in Old Mandeville. Fontainebleau resident Janet Fabre Smith said it took her two hours to reach the parish government buildings on Koop Drive where she went to get sandbags. Police were diverting people from Florida Street and Louisiana 59, she said. "You just had to turn around. A bunch of us were stuck at the Shell Station."

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Several businesses in the Pontchartrain Plaza shopping center off Causeway Boulevard in Mandeville reported water coming through their front doors during the deluge.

Roy Viger, owner of Crossfit Francos, said the parking lot had filled with at least a foot of water when he arrived at 4:45 a.m. Tuesday. Water was streaming in through the front door, he said, filling the gym with around an inch.

Gym members who came for the 5 a.m. exercise class instead started cleaning, he said. He bought shop vacs at Home Depot and they rolled up the mats, vacuumed and mopped.

Weve gotten water in the back before, but never like this, Viger said.

Mike Coscino, owner of Coscinos Italian Grill, said he arrived at the restaurant around 6 a.m. to find about half an inch of water. He set up a dehumidifier and fans and called his employees in to help clean and planned to be open by dinnertime later Tuesday.

Others called in the big guns: One Servpro cleanup employee said the company had received tons of calls, many of which they couldnt get to because of still-high water.

Mandeville Mayor Clay Madden said by late morning he was mostly seeing debris lines on yards instead of flooded streets and that the water levels in detention ponds in many neighborhoods were down significantly.

Mandeville City Councilmember Rick Danielson, who lives in Beau Rivage, said that part of the problem was saturated ground after what has been weeks of rain.

Jacqueline Petagna, whose home in Beau Rivage took on water, took the advice of her sisters who went through floods in Baton Rouge and Monroe and moved quickly to pull out sodden flooring and baseboards.

Petagna and her husband are building a new house  a raised one  and had just decided to go up one more foot. "We were telling each other, aren't we glad we did?"

Editor's note: A previous version of this story said some homes in Fontainebleau flooded based on reports from officials. It turns out there were no homes that flooded there.
Thousands of Louisiana landlords will be barred from using prospective tenants' criminal histories to deny them state-subsidized housing, according to a new state policy that advocates say will help reunite families and reduce homelessness among formerly incarcerated people.

The Louisiana Housing Corp., the state agency that offers tax credits and other incentives to developers who build affordable housing, signed off this month on the new policy that restricts landlords who take advantage of the state financing from automatically denying rental applications based on a criminal record.

Under the policy, approved July 14 and set to take effect early next year, managers of properties funded by the state housing agency may run background checks on prospective tenants, but can't automatically reject people because of those records.

Managers may not consider arrests, criminal charges that didn't result in convictions, or juvenile criminal records when deciding whether to rent someone an apartment. They also can't consider nonviolent misdemeanor convictions and violent misdemeanors that are over three years old. And they can't deny applications for violent felony convictions that occurred more than five years ago or nonviolent felony convictions that occurred more than three years ago.

Per the policy, landlords should also consider a tenant's recent participation in counseling programs and personal or professional recommendations when weighing whether to admit a tenant with a criminal past.

+3 HANO board approves new policy easing rules on housing applicants with criminal records Bleary-eyed but determined, activists packed a Housing Authority of New Orleans board meeting room Tuesday evening, urging the authority to do

The new state policy, based on federal Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines issued in 2016, comes as other housing agencies including the Housing Authority of New Orleans have taken steps to make it easier for people with a criminal past to find a place to live.

Advocates have long pushed for the end to rules that barred people with felony convictions from publicly-subsidized housing. They've argued that rules aimed at protecting residents from people with violent pasts were often responsible for keeping formerly incarcerated people from reconnecting with family members after leaving prison, making it harder for them to successfully reenter society.

"When we lock people out of opportunity and make it harder to find a place to live or to find a job, we are fueling scarcity and desperation, and we are the ones creating dangerous conditions," said Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center Executive Director Cashauna Hill, who supports the state's move.

The new guidance is related to programs administered by the state's housing agency, such as the federal low-income tax credit program, the largest source of new affordable housing in the country and a funding source for 60,000 affordable units statewide. The program requires developers to keep rents low for a period of years in exchange for receiving tax credits that they can then sell to project investors. The investors receive a tax break over that same period, usually about 10 years.

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A year later, HANO's criminal background check policy still not in effect at some developments A policy that makes it easier for ex-convicts to obtain affordable housing in New Orleans is in effect at only some of the privately managed h

It does not apply to other local subsidy programs, though public housing authorities may adopt their own similar criminal background rules. And some past crimes would still warrant a denial. Applicants convicted of dealing methamphetamines while living in subsidized housing won't be allowed. Neither will applicants who committed crimes requiring them to register as sex offenders for their lifetimes.

The policy is meant to help the 49% of adults in Louisiana who have a criminal record, state housing officials said in the document. Property managers must send the agency proof that their selection policies comply with the new order by Jan. 1, 2022.

The housing agency will also investigate complaints from applicants who believe their applications have been wrongly denied. Though the policy says the agency will also take action against property managers who don't follow the new rules, a spokesperson said Monday that it was "not LHC's intent to enforce compliance, (as) our function is not an enforcement agency."

The policy comes five years after the Housing Authority of New Orleans passed similar rules for its own properties, including those managed by third parties. Michelle Whetten, vice president and Gulf Coast director of Enterprise Community Partners, a development firm, referenced HANO's step Monday as she praised the state's action.

"While implementation of the policy will require more work in some cases on the part of property managers and landlords, those who have been working under HANOs policy have demonstrated that the process is not overly burdensome and is clearly the right thing to do," she said.

Gabrielle Perry of the Thurman Perry foundation, which provides aid and scholarships to formerly incarcerated women and girls, added that the policy will ensure that past mistakes don't forever ruin people's chance to find a place to live.

Perry struggled to secure safe and affordable housing for nearly a year after her arrest in 2014 for a nonviolent offense that has since been expunged, she said.

"Even if you don't have a record itself, the arrest is enough to ruin your life. What are we supposed to do, just ignore these people?" Perry said.
With vocal support from Louisiana Republicans, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday confirmed New Orleans native Kenneth Polite to a high-ranking Justice Department post.

Senators voted 56-44 to make Polite the chief of the criminal division, giving him authority over prosecutions ranging from corporate and cyber crime to drug trafficking.

+4 Kenneth Polite, New Orleans native nominated to top Biden post, gets warm U.S. Senate reception Former New Orleans U.S. Attorney Kenneth Polite appears to be headed for an easy confirmation to a top Justice Department post after a U.S. Se

The vote mostly broke down along party lines, with Democrats uniting in support of Joe Biden's nominee. But a handful of Republicans, including Bill Cassidy and John Kennedy of Louisiana, also voted in favor.

Im confident that Kenneth Polite will exercise sound judgment as an assistant attorney general," Kennedy said. "I believe hell pursue justice and shun political pressure, and thats why I was happy to support his nomination.

Polite, 45, previously served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana from September 2013, when he was nominated by Barack Obama, to March 2017. He was credited with leading the office after his predecessor, Jim Letten, resigned in the wake of an online commenting scandal.

Most recently, he was a partner at the Morgan Lewis law firm in Philadelphia.

Within the Senate, there appeared to be no organized opposition to Polite. He received only a single, friendly question during a key Judiciary Committee hearing in May.

Outside the Senate, Polite drew some criticism for his handling of the prosecution of former St. Charles Parish District Attorney Harry Morel, who was accused of trading leniency in court for sexual favors, and for his law firms investigation of how LSU handled sexual harassment claims.

+2 Ex-FBI agent who protested lenient deal for disgraced St. Charles DA blasts Ken Polite nomination A former New Orleans FBI agent who was fired after speaking out about cases he handled is now objecting to one of President Joe Biden's key nominees.

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Despite the bipartisan support from his home state, only four Republican senators outside of Louisiana voted for Polite.

"You just can't break many votes away from the opposition party these days," said Carl Tobias, a University of Richmond law professor at who studies the judicial selection process. "It's not a reflection on Polite or his qualifications."

Polite brought a strong personal story to his confirmation process. He grew up in the Lower 9th Ward and the former Calliope public housing development, obtained a scholarship to De La Salle High School and eventually graduated from Harvard University and Georgetown Universitys law school.

The top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee spoke in favor of Polite on Tuesday, noting that he also had the backing of Republican Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry.

"Mr. Polite's track record as an even-handed public servant has earned him support from across the aisle," said Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois.

Polite succeeds acting Assistant Attorney General Nicholas McQuaid.

Separately, Biden has nominated Keva Landrum, a New Orleans native and former Orleans Parish Criminal District Court judge, to serve as the U.S. attorney in New Orleans.
Federal officials have released increasing numbers of immigrants from rural Louisiana lockups in recent days, leaving some stranded in detention center lobbies or at transit hubs, according to observers and volunteers.

While few plan to stay in Louisiana, the sudden, uncoordinated drop-offs at places like the Shreveport bus station have flummoxed local officials, drawn concern from U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy and, on Friday, prompted a letter of complaint from advocates.

As of July 8, there were 2,347 immigrants held in detention in Louisiana, the second-most of any state. While Louisiana doesnt share a border with a foreign country, in recent years sheriffs have welcomed detainees as a way to plug budget holes left by criminal justice reforms.

+4 Biden made sweeping changes to immigration enforcement, but change comes slowly in Louisiana When President Joe Biden signed orders last week to pause deportations and to protect people who arrived in the U.S. as children and live here

The bulk of those being released appear to be asylum-seekers making claims of persecution in other countries, according to volunteers and Homero Lopez, an attorney with the non-profit group Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy. The United States has signed international treaties establishing those immigrants legal right to seek asylum.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement declined to provide information about the number or type of detainees being let go, but the sheriff overseeing the highest-population detention facility in the state confirmed releases are up.

Theyre just running them through and getting them out, Winn Parish Sheriff Cranford Jordan said. Most of them are not staying long at all.

Because new detainees arrive almost as soon as others leave, the overall number of immigrants held at the Winn Correctional Center is up slightly from 466 in January -- Donald Trumps last month in office -- to 488 at the most recent count on July 8.

Nationwide, the number of people held in immigration detention has risen to its highest point since May 2020.

+4 Tantamount to torture: Complaint alleges inhumanity, overuse of solitary at Pine Prairie center A wide-ranging complaint submitted by over a dozen civil rights groups to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security alleges that the Pine Prair

Shortly after Biden took office, ICE issued interim guidance directing its employees to focus enforcement and deportation efforts on a limited set of national security, border security and public safety priorities, and deportations dropped. When asked about the releases in Louisiana in recent weeks, an ICE spokeswoman pointed to the guidance.

Critics like Sheriff Jordan say they prefer the more aggressive approach to deportations taken by the Trump administration.

In the old days, when they left our facility, they were being taken to Alexandria to be put on a plane to go back to their home country, and now theyre not doing that, he said. I dont agree with it, but thats not my decision.

+11 Special report: In north Louisiana, sheriff and private prison operator trade prisoners for ICE detainees The north Louisiana mill town of Jonesboro, saddled with a stagnant local economy and few job prospects and located more than 600 miles from t

While immigrant advocates are pleased that asylum seekers are being paroled to wait out the resolution of their cases, they said in the Friday letter that ICE should give immigrants more information about transportation options and better coordinate with volunteers.

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ICE has a policy requiring immigrants to be transported to bus and train stations or airports. But for years, advocates say, detention centers in Louisiana have forced immigrants to pay for taxi rides costing up to $600 to reach those transit hubs. Volunteers have mobilized to pick up immigrants for free, but that requires coordination, according to Frances Kelley, a volunteer with Louisiana Advocates for Immigrants in Detention.

+17 As number of immigrants behind bars soars under Trump, Louisiana becomes detention hub The path that led Dixan Hernandez Naranjo to a small, drab courtroom in rural Allen Parish in August began months earlier in his native Cuba a

A man who says he was subjected to political persecution in Venezuela spoke through an interpreter to describe his experience. A volunteer was supposed to pick him up, but guards at the facility told the volunteer that he wasnt there, the man said. The man said he slept on the lobby floor without food for 18 hours until a volunteer returned the next day.

They wouldnt let me communicate with my family to ask them what was going on, the man said. Nobody was telling us what was going on. They just left us there waiting.

The man declined to be identified out of fear that it could harm his asylum case.

Last week, ICE began busing immigrants to transportation hubs to address concerns about the expensive cab rides, Kelley said. But that came with its own shortcomings.

In Shreveport, 80 immigrants from Haiti were dropped off without advance notice to city officials on Thursday, KTBS-TV reported. Another busload was dropped off in Monroe on July 12 without warning, Kelley said.

Then on Friday, immigrants were dropped off at the Baton Rouge bus station with just hours notice.

To exacerbate problems, some immigrants have been given little information about how theyre supposed to reach their final destinations. One man with an intellectual disability was dropped off at a bus station without money, a phone or advance warning to his family, Kelley said.

Theyre undergoing immense suffering and then being released in a disorganized and chaotic way, and without the necessary support that they need, she said.

Texas, Louisiana sues U.S. government over failure to hold some immigrants for deportation DALLAS (AP)  Texas and Louisiana sued the federal government Tuesday alleging immigration authorities have declined to take custody of people

On Sunday, Cassidy issued a statement criticizing the Biden administration's handling of the releases.

The White House cannot dump groups of Haitian refugees into Louisiana communities with nowhere to go, no photo ID, and no money, Cassidy said. It appears Washington told ICE to just send them somewhere, and apparently gave little to no notice to state and local officials. Horrible mismanagement. Do President Biden and Vice President Harris care about communities, immigrants, and controlling the border?
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.
William "Bill" Thomas Ratliff (92) of Noble, passed away on July 19, 2021 at his home. Graveside services will be 11:00 am Friday, July 23, 2021 at the Noble IOOf Cemetery. Directed by McMahans Funeral Home of Noble.
When Abdul-Malik Walker was released from his 10-year prison stay, his mother gave him six months to live with her before he had to have a job and move into his own place.

Five months later, Walker had his first job and, in one year, he started his own business.

When I was younger  youre kind of like a leaf in the wind. You dont know where youre going to land the next day. For me that ended in me being involved in criminality, Walker said. My particular crime that I went to jail for involved loss of life. As a leaf in the wind, you didnt expect to land there. But, you knew you were riding the current that would take you there.

In 2009, Walker was sentenced to 10 to 20 years in state prison for his role in the death of a Selinsgrove man over a drug dispute.

It was a crime and a sentence that would have ruined the lives of most people but, during his 10-year confinement, Walker was determined to push toward redemption. He spent his time taking courses and earning certificates in a variety of hands-on fields including HVAC.

I decided that I wanted to change. So when I entered the prison system, Id already undertaken a journey, Walker said. I asked myself, What can you do next? I wanted to make sure that my next move was towards redemption.

Growing up

Walkers childhood was not an easy one. There was no father figure in his home and it wasnt until he was 7 that his mother, Wala Tillman, went to rehab and stopped using drugs. She has now been clean for over 30 years.

He didnt like school and could often be found at the library reading books or at his grandmas afterschool program where other kids worked on homework.

Walkers first interaction with police came when he was about 6 and his mother failed to pick him up from school. Law enforcement officers arrived and one handcuffed the energetic boy to a table to keep him from running around, Walker recalled.

It was in the mid-1980s when a 7-year-old Walker witnessed the murder of his cousin on the streets of his Philadelphia neighborhood. He was shot point-blank in the face with a shotgun, Walker said.

It was a tragedy why he was killed He was unrecognizable, Walker said. At 7, that had a tremendous impact.  This was our neighborhood, this was my cousin  and I think it was a turning point.

With that tragic event, Walker was introduced to the world of crime and continued in that vein throughout his teenage years. He moved to Williamsport as a teenager and often struggled with the drastic differences between his inner-city school district and the small town one in Loyalsock Township.

Walkers long journey in crime ended when he and two friends traveled to Selinsgrove to confront Steven Rodriguez, 19, over a drug dispute. The conflict ended with Walkers cousin, David Cannie Jr., 27, of Philadelphia, fatally shooting Rodriquez.

After serving his minimum sentence, Walker was paroled and will stay on parole for the remaining 10 years, of which he has served two.

The goal is to count down on this side of the fence and not that side of the fence, Walker said. The stakes are high.

Starting a business

It was Walkers grandmother who inspired him to be an entrepreneur. After being released from prison in 2019, he...

Read the whole story on On the PULSE




Williamsport, Pa. The Lycoming County District Attorneys office charged a Philadelphia man after they said he sold $200 worth of crack to a confidential informant.

Antwan Hairston, 40, of Philadelphia was charged with felony possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance and criminal use of a communication facility for his role in the incident.

Agent Sarah Edkin of the Lycoming County District Attorneys office said on March 4 a confidential informant arranged a deal with Hairston for $200 worth of crack. Both Edkin and the CI traveled to 2029 East Third Street in Loyalsock. The CI then met Hairston at room 237 and exchanged money for the crack, according to the report.

No bail was listed for Hairston.

Docket sheet
After a smoky sunset Monday, heavy smoke continued to hang over the Northeast on Tuesday morning, as a result of more than 100 wildfires burning in the western U.S. and more in Canada. Air quality advisories were in effect for much of Canada and had been issued for Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

The smoke spread up to 2,500 miles downwind of the locations of the wildfires. "Due to the fact that smoke particles are small and light, they can be transported hundreds if not a few thousand miles away from their source," AccuWeather Meteorologist Alex DaSilva explained.

"While the smoke is not thick enough to obstruct surface visibility, it is thick enough to create poor air quality in some areas and allow for vibrant sunrises and sunsets," DaSilva said.

Wildfire smoke consists of gases and fine particles from burning trees, plants, buildings and other burning materials, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Anyone can get sick from inhaling the smoke, but those at particular risk are people with asthma, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), heart disease, children, people who are pregnant, and first responders.

Breathing in the smoke from a wildfire can cause an array of immediate effects, including breathing troubles, stinging eyes, scratchy throat, runny nose and sinus irritation, headaches, tiredness, chest pains and an increased heartbeat. Breathing in smoke can also trigger asthma attacks.

Much of the Northeast US was experiencing fair to poor air quality Tuesday morning. Southern Canada had a slew of air quality advisories to begin the week as a result of the smoke Monday, and advisories were issued for the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia areas on Tuesday.

"Elderly individuals and people who may have breathing problems should try to avoid long periods of outdoor activity," DaSilva said, but overall most people in the Northeast won't be at risk.

"The smoke out West is a lot closer to the ground because thats where the fires are," he explained. "It's more of a health concern out there."

CLICK HERE FOR THE FREE ACCUWEATHER APP

He said the sky may look "dirty" at some points as the smoke moves through the region, but overall it will not be of concern for most individuals in terms of posing respiratory risks.

Locations from Washington, D.C., all the way to the Great Lakes had ideal conditions to witness a colorful sunset Monday night and sunrise Tuesday morning, in areas without clouds.

Smoky skies may seem concerning for those in the Northeast who are not accustomed to the phenomenon, but AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Tom Kines said that, overall, the smoke will not be of major concern to most residents in the region the same way it is across the western U.S. because the smoke reaching the Northeast is much higher in the atmosphere.

This is not the first time the wildfire smoke from the West has trekked all the way to the opposite end of the country. Just last year, wildfire smoke from California, Oregon and Washington produced some hazy skies in the Midwest and Northeast.

"It's not a yearly occurrence, but it's happened before," Kines explained, adding that very high wildfire activity in the western U.S. is necessary for the smoke to make it across the nation.

But the chance to witness enhanced sunsets may be fleeting. Following Tuesday's sunset, DaSilva said, a cold front will move into the Northeast from Canada, clearing out some smoke in the process.

With five dozen large and uncontained wildfires, the national preparedness level in the U.S. is at five, which is the top of the scale and means the nation is currently at the highest level of wildfire activity and firefighting resources are at risk of being exhausted, according to The National Interagency Fire Center.




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Rome, GA (30161)

Today

Some clouds this morning will give way to generally sunny skies for the afternoon. High 94F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

A clear sky. Low 71F. Winds light and variable.
The workforce thats returning is not the same: As employees return to offices, they may bring new addictions with them
Rome, GA (30161)

Today

Some clouds in the morning will give way to mainly sunny skies for the afternoon. High 94F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 71F. Winds light and variable.
Napoleon, OH (43545)

Today

Rain showers early with scattered thunderstorms arriving for the afternoon. High 82F. Winds S at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds light and variable.
Roseburg, OR (97470)

Today

A mainly sunny sky. High 93F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

Clear skies. Low 61F. N winds at 10 to 15 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.
Roseburg, OR (97470)

Today

Mainly sunny. High 93F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph..

Tonight

A mostly clear sky. Low 61F. N winds at 10 to 15 mph, decreasing to less than 5 mph.
Drivers cannot predict exactly what their income will be in four years, and some could end up seeing a decline in take-home pay four years from now because of the increased out-of-pocket expenses for health care, he said.

Pepsi drivers striking over potential five-fold increase in health care premiums PepsiCo delivery workers picket outside the company's bottling facility in Munster last week after the company and Teamsters Local 142 union f

Pepsi did not immediately return a request for comment but has previously said the strike is "disruptive to all parties involved."

Workers at the Munster plant drive Pepsi products to stores across the Midwest, typically within a day's drive. Jackson said the Teamsters union has been able to provide shipping services to Pepsi more cheaply than outside carriers partly because of a lack of overnight and per diem expenses that longer truck trips necessitate.

State Rep. Mike Andrade, who joined the picket lines with workers last week, said he supported and would fight for the striking workers.
HAMMOND  A federal judge sentenced a Gary man for defrauding nearly a quarter-million dollars from a Munster senior home.

U.S. District Court Judge Philip P. Simon imposed a 24-month term on 24-year-old Da'Ione Fields late last week.

Fields pleaded guilty March 31 to mail fraud under the terms of an agreement with the U.S. attorneys office in which he gave up his right to a jury trial in return for a more lenient punishment.

Fields admitted that while he was employed by Community Village Senior Living Facility in Munster, he used his job at the facility to divert insurance checks worth $232,759 from its mailbox to his own.

Fields completed a change of address for with the U.S. Postal Service on Oct. 22 and Nov. 30, 2020, diverting the facility's mail to his residential address in Gary, U.S. District Court records state.

Fields cashed about 31 insurance reimbursement checks and other checks payable to the facility totaling more than $220,000 between Oct. 18 and Nov. 22, 2020, documents allege.

Fields opened a corporate account at Peoples Bank in Gary on Nov. 21, 2019, by misrepresenting himself as an authorized representative of the facility, records say. He's accused of depositing six checks totaling more than $60,000.
HAMMOND  School City of Hammond will celebrate its new high school with a ribbon cutting later this week.

On Thursday, students, staff, district officials and community members will gather for a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new Hammond Central High School.

"It's an enormous privilege to help usher in the first generation of Hammond Central students for the 2021-2022 school year," said Superintendent Scott Miller.

The aging Clark, Gavit and Hammond high schools were closed at the end of the 2020-2021 school year, resulting in students being redistricted between Hammond Central and Morton High School, according to a news release from the district.

Incoming Hammond Central student ambassadors will lead tours of the new $100 million facility. There will also be performances in the Black Box Theatre by Hammond Art and Performance Academy students.

Those students who attend the new school will become the first pack of Hammond Central Wolves, a name and mascot that came from in-person and virtual town hall meetings and two community surveys conducted over more than two months.
VALPARAISO  A 29-year-old Valparaiso man charged last month with murdering a friend is still working on hiring an attorney, it was revealed during a hearing Tuesday morning.

Matthew Castro informed the court of his efforts and Porter Circuit Court Judge Mary DeBoer set a status hearing for Aug. 17, according to the court.

Castro is charged with murder in the March 21 death of Valparaiso resident Michael Overton.

Valparaiso police responded to the 250 block of Michigan Avenue late that night after a relative called 911 to report Castro called and said he may have killed his friend, according to court documents.

Castro was arrested on preliminary charges police initially said were unrelated to the investigation. He was first charged with three counts of battery with bodily injury to a public safety official, two counts of battery against a public safety official, two counts of intimidation and one count of resisting law enforcement, according to court records.

When police arrived at the scene, they found Castro outside the residence with blood on him, according to court records. He told officers "my friend tried to beat ..." and then made a gagging sound.
When Metcalf arrived in a vehicle with others, the woman's brother said he asked them to leave and they complied, police said. When the vehicle returned with its lights off, it was chased away, police said.

Police said Metcalf acknowledged the dispute over the child in an interview. He said when they arrived at the South Haven home, the woman's brother pointed a gun at them and then gave chase in a vehicle.

Metcalf said the vehicle he was in ended up in a cornfield and the other vehicle's occupants yelled, "we are going to get you (racial slur)," court files state.

Metcalf said another man with him decided to return to the house and shoot their pursuers, police said. Metcalf and others headed back on foot and planned to wait until the two men from the other vehicle were clear of the house because of the child inside, but grew impatient and shot multiple times.

He said the drive back to Gary was mostly quiet because the group thought they had killed someone, police said.

Police said they recovered a bullet fragment from the frame of the vehicle of the alleged victims and found three .45-caliber cartridges in a nearby grassy area.
The Indiana Dunes National Park will collect ideas for new commercial services from members of the public and business community at two open houses this week.

"The park is developing a commercial services strategy to review and identify opportunities to enhance the parks mission and the visitor experience through commercial services and activities," according to its announcement of the open houses.

The public session are scheduled for 6-8 p.m. Thursday at the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk Pavilion at 1000 Riverwalk Drive, Portage, and noon to 2 p.m. Friday at the West Beach Bath House at 376 N. County Line Road, Gary.

The rain location is the Paul H. Douglas Center for Environmental Education at 100 N. Lake St., Gary.

Questions to consider include these, the park said in its announcement: "When youre at the beach is the food too far away or just the right distance? Ever wished there were guided tours or services at the park?"

Services including food and beverages, bike rentals, non-motorized boat rentals, guided recreation opportunities, horseback riding, transportation, retail sales, guided educational tours and fitness classes are among those that will be discussed.
Attorney Dave Westland, representing McDermott, asked the board to rule in favor of his client since Kallas presented no evidence McDermott broke the law in any way, and simply seems to be engaged in a fishing expedition to find out with whom McDermott eats dinner and otherwise spends his time.

As to the congressional race, McDermott explained he retained a team of accountants and lawyers last year to refund money donated to his mayoral campaign account that he intended to permanently close if he was elected to the U.S. House.

Records show some, but not all, of the refunded money later was re-donated to his congressional campaign account as permitted by federal law.

"It's a unique situation: How do you shut down one account and get into the federal account? This is how we were told to do it," McDermott said.

"It's really hard to shut down an account like McDermott for Mayor in weeks. It was really hard, and we working hand-in-hand with the Federal Election Commission the entire time  they were advising us."

Kallas stood silently as the county election board voted 5-0 to dismiss both components of his complaint.
More recently she has had the unconditional and constant support of her new husband, Caleb Fair, an IT consultant who works in Chicago.

They were married on April 5 after first meeting and getting to know each other on social media and through phone calls.

"We hit it off because we share the same values. We are both Christians and goal-oriented. We were both looking for something serious," Brittany Fair said.

Caleb Fair recalls having an emotional connection with his wife-to-be before they met in person. The spoke on the phone for hours.

"When I started talking to her I knew it was someone I could spend the rest of my life with," Caleb Fair said.

On their second date, Fair shared with him her health issues.

"She told me and I felt relieved she trusted me with her information. That was courageous," Caleb Fair said.

The couple, who live in Dyer, would like to have children and have even taken steps to hopefully make that happen with the assistance of a surrogate.

Fair has undergone egg retrieval toward that goal.

"Once we get past chemotherapy and my tumor is shrunk down," she said.
The West has responded to the crackdown by imposing sanctions on Belarus. The European Union ramped up the restrictions after Belarus in May diverted a passenger jet to Minsk to arrest a dissident journalist. The government in neighboring Lithuania has accused Belarusian authorities of organizing a flow of migrants from the Middle East and Africa in retaliation.

Lukashenko, who has ordered to halt cooperation with the EU on stemming illegal migration, said Monday that Belarus could contain the flow of migrants if the bloc rolls back the sanctions.

They have introduced sanctions to strangle us," Lukashenko said. "They take such action against the Belarusian people and they want us to protect them  listen, it's really weird. If you want us to help you, dont put a noose around our neck.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenkos main challenger in the August 2020 election, was forced to leave Belarus under official pressure immediately after the vote. She was in Washington on Monday for meetings with officials and U.S. House members to rally support for the Belarusian opposition.

They have the power, they have weapons and they have been trying to silence people, Tsikhanouskaya said. But we have been standing up to them for a year.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

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Two months before the Food and Drug Administrations deadline to decide whether to approve Biogens controversial Alzheimers drug, aducanumab, a council of senior agency officials resoundingly agreed that there wasnt enough evidence it worked.

The council, a group of 15 officials who review complex issues, concluded that another clinical trial was necessary before approving the drug. Otherwise, one council member noted, approval could result in millions of patients taking aducanumab without any indication of actually receiving any benefit, or worse, cause harm, according to minutes of the meeting, obtained by The New York Times.

It is critical that the decision be made from a place of certainty, the minutes said.

The session, whose details have not been reported before, represented at least the third time that proponents of approving aducanumab in the F.D.A. had received a clear message that the evidence did not convincingly show the drug could slow cognitive decline.

On June 7, the F.D.A. greenlighted the drug anyway  a decision that has been met with scathing rebuke from many Alzheimers experts and other scientists and calls for investigations into how the agency approved a treatment that has little evidence it helps patients.
The companies say the government is saving money by staying on the sidelines. But it is saving that money at the expense of taxpayers. The federal review estimated 14 million Americans paid for a tax prep program in 2019 even though they were eligible to use a free version of the same program. Intuit makes money charging for what should be a free service.

The governments dependence on private tax preparation websites is also impeding the distribution of monthly payments to families with children under a new federal program. The Biden administration and its allies in Congress set up the payments as a tax credit. People who filed federal income tax returns receive the money automatically; people who dont owe taxes can claim the benefit by filing a simplified return. But because the government doesnt have its own tax preparation site, it is stuck referring people to Intuits shoddy site, which among other shortcomings is not optimized for mobile phones or available in Spanish.

Last year, after the I.R.S. tried to strengthen the Free File program, the second-largest provider of tax prep software, H&R Block, announced that it was dropping out. Now Intuit, whose TurboTax software is used by more Americans than any other tax filing program, is leaving too.

This should not come as a surprise. The Free File program was designed to fail. Anything that makes it more useful for American taxpayers makes it less useful for tax preparation companies.

Intuit, which advertises a free, free, free, free version of its TurboTax software, says that it will still offer free tax filing, though not as part of the Free File program. Intuit says it will be able to offer a better service to customers outside the strictures of the government program. But the company makes money by charging for extras, like advice.

It is free to try. And the government needs to create an alternative thats free to use.

A number of smaller companies still offer tax preparation websites as part of the Free File program. But it would be a mistake to keep the program alive. The governments bargain with industry is fundamentally rotten. It makes no sense to pressure companies to undermine their business when an easy alternative is readily available. The I.R.S. can create its own software  or it could license a private program and offer it as a public service.

Austan Goolsbee, a onetime economic adviser to President Barack Obama, estimated in a 2006 analysis that a government system for filing simple tax returns could save lower-income households roughly $2 billion per year on tax prep fees  not to mention the millions of hours of record-keeping and paperwork that would no longer need to be done.
Wally Funk is finally going to space. When on Tuesday she crosses that arbitrary altitude that divides the heavens from Earth below, in a rocket built by Jeff Bezos company Blue Origin, shell be 82, the oldest person ever to go into space. But that is not what makes her so special.

Ms. Funk is one of the few people who has directly participated in both eras of human spaceflight so far  the one that started as an urgent race between rival nations, and the one that we are now transitioning into, in which private companies and the billionaires who finance them are in fierce competition for customers, comeuppance and contracts. That she was ultimately excluded from the first phase because she is a woman, and will now be included in the next one, also highlights difficult questions of whom space is for.

Her path to space arguably begins with a ski accident in 1956 that crushed two of her vertebrae. She was told she would never walk again. By age 17, she already had a history of greeting you cant with defiant proof that she could. As she was recovering, a guidance counselor suggested that she take aviation classes to distract her. In the book Promised the Moon by Stephanie Nolen, Ms. Funk said that during her first flight up, in a Cessna 172, The bug bit and that was it.

That year she soloed and had her pilots license at 17. Ms. Funk flew at every opportunity, including sneaking out of a formal dance to go night flying. In all, she has logged over 19,600 flying hours and taught more than 3,000 people to fly.
One day before Andrew Lloyd Webbers much-anticipated Cinderella musical was slated to open in Londons West End, and two days after a cast member tested positive for the coronavirus, the prolific composer and producer announced on Monday that opening night would yet again be delayed.

I have been forced to take the heartbreaking decision not to open my Cinderella, he said in a Twitter statement. The impossible conditions created by the blunt instrument that is the Governments isolation guidance mean that we cannot continue.

Lloyd Webbers announcement initially did not specify whether the production was closing for good or just being postponed, though a spokeswoman for him later clarified that the shows opening was delayed, not canceled, and that they hoped to open the show soon, but its very difficult under the current conditions.

The composers statement was likely an attempt to try and force the British government to change its rules on quarantine for actors and crew. Last month, he made newspaper front pages with comments promising to open Cinderella at full capacity come hell or high water  even if he faced arrest for doing so. He quickly pulled back from the plan after learning his audience, cast and crew risked fines for breaching British coronavirus rules.
The government is basically saying, Weve done all we can. Now its up to you. Theyve become the first country to surrender.

DEVI SRIDHAR, head of the global public health program at the University of Edinburgh, speaking about the British governments decision to lift all but a few coronavirus restrictions.
I revived the passion I always felt when I started playing again, she said. Since then, it has been like a second life.

Today Dr. Jiji, who lives with her 93-year-old husband in an Upper East Side townhouse, can be found playing most Fridays with other amateurs and friends in two musical groups, a trio and a string quartet, at the 92nd Street Y. Shes also a part of the Ys annual musical performance. In 2007 she self-published her first book, Cello Playing for Music Lovers, which is sold on Amazon in more than 20 countries. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)

What made you return to music after all these years?

Brooklyn College gave me companions and socialization with other teachers and students. I felt important socially. When I retired, I lost that. I felt empty and needed to replace that loss and community. I wanted to meet people in the neighborhood.

How did you feel about retiring?

I thought my life was over; it wasnt. I had to find a different road. I thought about the road I took when I was younger, and the one I didnt take because I was a wife and a mother of four and had a career. I thought about the road I didnt travel  one filled with music  and realized I should take that road now. I couldnt take both at the same time. The one I took became my life. I went back to the fork and took the other road to see where it would take me.

How did you know where to start?

Im a half a block away from the 92nd Street Y. I walked in and asked about classes; they had a creative music class for people over 60 and told me to just show up. I thought I would have to take a test, but I didnt. I was at the piano, seated next to an instructor who said, Lets see how you play, when someone walked in carrying a cello. I couldnt believe it. I asked if I could play it and I fell in love with the instrument instantly.
Rick Laird, a bassist who played a central role in the jazz-rock fusion boom as a founding member of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, then retired from music to pursue a career in photography, died on July 4 in New City, N.Y. He was 80.

His daughter, Sophie Rose Laird, said the cause was lung cancer.

The guitarist John McLaughlin called Mr. Laird in 1971 with an invitation to join a group he was forming with the goal of uniting the jazz-rock aesthetic  which Mr. McLaughlin had helped establish as a member of Miles Davis and Tony Williamss earliest electric bands  with Indian classical music and European experimentalism.

The new ensemble, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which also featured the drummer Billy Cobham, the keyboardist Jan Hammer and the violinist Jerry Goodman, became one of the most popular instrumental bands of its time. It released a pair of studio albums now regarded as classics for Columbia Records, The Inner Mounting Flame (1971) and Birds of Fire (1973), and one live album, Between Nothingness & Eternity (1973).
If the story of Walker and Maes cannot be separated from the longing and naivete of the 1960s, as Kapur writes, it is even more tangled up in the politics of Auroville itself, which was thrown into an identity crisis after the death of the Mother in 1973. The ideological rifts went all the way up to the Indian Supreme Court: Did the teachings of Auroville constitute a religion, a sect or a spirituality? What are the differences between the three?

For a book that is so diligent about context, however, Kapurs lack of interest in the colonial legacy of Auroville is surprising, and his description of the land itself  a fitting tabula rasa for the new world, this, in the teeming state of Tamil Nadu  genuinely took me aback. (For a thorough treatment of the colonial roots of Auroville  and indeed the idea of utopia itself  see Jessica Namakkals Unsettling Utopia, published last month.)

A louder, more troubling omission is Maes herself. The contours of her faith, desires, personality are not easy to trace, and her contradictions impossible to reconcile  she who let young Auralice be raised by neighbors but insisted on spoon-feeding the girl into her teens? She is a sphinx, reduced mostly to the extraordinary fact of her beauty. Walker, on the other hand, not only left a cache of correspondence but proved to be an uncommonly interesting writer. Some of the most vivacious prose in the book can be found in his letters (extended quotation comes with its perils). Kapur has his talents  the story is suspensefully structured, and I consumed it with a febrile intensity  but he has a deadly attraction to cliche. Men contain all the requisite multitudes in this tale full of unfinished business and the wreckage of history, in which the wolf is perpetually at the door and seasons are spent in the belly of the beast (in this case, Harvard).

If there is a mystery to be solved in this book, it is not what happened on that day in October 1986, in the hut, where a man lay dying and a woman watching him wept. What happened was witnessed by many, it turns out; it was tragic and deeply unnecessary. The mystery lies in this books provenance and desire, the reason, I suspect, for that decorous reticence where Maes is concerned. This book has one real reader in mind: Auralice, who was raised with a kind of reverence and neglect not uncommon in Auroville in those days. She foraged for food, escaped to neighbors when the chaos of her home proved too much. Living with her, Kapur has come to know the quality of her silences  there are places we dont go, thing we dont  cant  talk about, he writes. I suppose one of the reasons I wrote this book was to break down those walls.

He accomplishes far more. He brings this past into a kind of balance: He shows how to hold it, all together, in one eye  a people and a place in all their promise and corruption. It is a complicated offering, this book, and the artifact of a great love.
INTIMACIES

By Katie Kitamura

Early in Katie Kitamuras fourth novel, Intimacies, the unnamed narrator recalls watching three street cleaners in The Hague carefully extracting cigarette butts from between the cracks of the cobbled road, one by one by one  despite the fact that there were several well-placed public ashtrays on that stretch of street alone. The sight of these immigrant men laboring with their elephantine vacuum exemplifies how the docile surface of the city concealed a more complex and contradictory nature, and how the veneer of civility was constantly giving way, in places it was barely there at all.

On first read this scene demonstrates the narrators quiet, observational mood, as shes just left New York after her fathers death and had begun looking for something, although I didnt know exactly what, but on reflection it pierces several thematic layers, and sets expectations. In this interpersonal thriller, Dutch methods of urban trash removal are rendered in greater detail than our heroines nearly absent back story. Character motivation and development are less important here than the systems within which those characters live.

As a court translator for an unspecified international entity, the narrator is tasked with intimately vanishing into the voices and stories of the plethora of war criminals in our midst. In her words, it was the job of the interpreter not simply to state or perform but to repeat the unspeakable, though she later wonders if translating the details of those atrocities caused them to recede further and further into some state of unreality. She eventually begins to see her colleagues as marked by alarming fissures, levels of dissociation that I did not think could be sustainable.

As another interpreter, Amina, relates an accusation against a former militia leader, she reflexively slips into a voice of cold disapproval, as if she were a wife scolding a husband for some small domestic failing. The unrepentant man on trial, offended by her tone, levies an intimate and intimidating look upon her. Dont shoot the messenger, she almost added, before remembering that this was precisely the kind of thing the accused did, it might even have been on the list of crimes, actually shooting the messenger. Although she knew there was nothing the man could do to her, she could not deny that she was afraid, he was a man who inspired fear, even while sitting immobile he radiated power.
To child readers, this book might seem like all talk and no action, while to adult readers, it may seem too childlike, for The Council of Animals is a replicator, rather than interrogator, of fixed ideas about animals subservience to people and their roles as human instruments. Its levity of tone can be read as gentle handling or glib reduction, depending on your taste. For some readers, the story may land as a playful pantomime, meant to be received in that spirit of fun and seasoned with a thoughtfulness thats broad but not too deep. But for those readers who may be discomfited by the casual use of animal figures as caricatures, and to those who, like me, are compelled by the subjectivity and uniqueness of other life-forms and are acutely anxious about their imminent peril at our hand, the book resonates more like a joke being told in the wake of an untimely death  and in the fleeting moments before the next death occurs.

As diversions for young readers, fiction has near-infinite license for silliness  to critique whimsical childs literature straight-faced and primly feels foolish, like trying to scrutinize a prancing pink unicorn under a microscope. But since The Council of Animals has been likened to Orwell, though, the critical bar is set higher: McDonell  a journalist with a record of reporting on war and its casualties  clearly wishes to offer us more than childs fare alone.

But through its inversion of the risks of current human activity  the conceit that human extinction, rather than the mass extinction of others, is the looming specter that haunts our kind  the novel enacts a kind of gamification of the tragedy of loss. This well-intentioned fable returns us once more to the arc of narcissism that has increasingly defined our dominant myths. Other animals and plants are being drastically, swiftly obliterated across the globe and may survive, in many cases, only in captivity or not at all as the coming decades unspool; but still people are the heroes, the villains and the victims in every epic. Why not? The world belongs to us.

So, as thousands of species hover on the brink of extinction in our own backyard  only 10 little vaquita porpoises, the last of their kind in the world, remain in the Gulf of California, for instance  this story concerns itself with a fictional 12 last humans.
The combat death of young George in 1758 on that New York battlefield made Richard the new viscount and family patriarch. Having gone to sea in 1736, the beginning of a six-decade career as one of Britains greatest fighting sailors, Richard by 1760 had participated in 57 naval battles, with many more to come. He so distinguished himself in the Seven Years War  known in America as the French and Indian War  that George III, who became king shortly before Britains triumphant victory in the struggle, later called Richard his trusty and well-beloved cousin.

William, who took an army commission in 1746, won fame in the same war by leading his troops up a near-vertical river bluff in Britains celebrated defeat of the French at Quebec in September 1759. Siblings nicknamed him the Savage. The fighting Howes emerged from the war as household names in Britain and America. Four Howe brothers would hold seats in Parliament.

In December 1774, Caroline initiated a three-month series of sociable chess matches in her Grafton Street townhouse against Benjamin Franklin, then an agent for colonial interests in London. She became the conduit for last-gasp British government efforts to avoid bloodshed in America. Nothing came of the efforts, but Franklin, who soon sailed home to join the revolutionaries, confessed, I never conceived a higher opinion of the discretion and excellent understanding of any woman on so short an acquaintance.

When the American rebellion became a shooting war in 1775, the crown turned to Richard and William, now a vice admiral and a major general, respectively. Forced to patrol a 1,000-mile American coastline, to escort supply and troop transports across the North Atlantic, and to support British Army operations, Richard made the best of a bad lot while battling American privateers and, soon enough, French warships allied with the rebels.

Flavells effort to resuscitate Williams military reputation is a heavy lift. General Howe commanded the bloody British catastrophe on Bunker Hill in June 1775, which left at least 226 redcoats dead, and he was the commander responsible for British defeats 18 months later at Trenton and Princeton. More damning, William contributed to Britains strategic incoherence with a meandering campaign against Philadelphia in 1777 that was wholly disconnected from a simultaneous sortie out of Canada toward the Hudson River  the prelude to Americas stunning triumph at Saratoga. He bore much culpability for Britains abominable treatment of American prisoners, thousands of whom died from hunger, disease and neglect.

By the time William was recalled to England in 1778 (he had requested to leave), followed a few months later by Richard, the prospect of a British victory had all but vanished. Five more years of war under different senior commanders would prove the point. At home the Howe brothers were pelted with fatuous assertions that they were war profiteers, or rebel sympathizers, or limp in their war-making  a charge that would baffle Americans whose men were bayoneted, women raped and towns burned. The Howes fought back in parliamentary hearings, pamphlet salvos and drawing room pleadings. But, as one critic observed, The fault must be laid somewhere to account for the miscarriage of an undertaking which has been given out as impossible to fail. Walpole concluded simply, The Howes are not in fashion.
The White House said on Tuesday that it would nominate Jonathan Kanter to be the top antitrust official at the Justice Department, a move that would add another longtime critic of Big Tech and corporate concentration to a powerful regulatory position.

President Bidens plan to appoint Mr. Kanter, an antitrust lawyer who has made a career out of representing rivals of American tech giants like Google and Facebook, signals how strongly the administration is siding with the growing field of lawmakers, researchers and regulators who say Silicon Valley has obtained outsize power over the way Americans speak with one another, buy products online and consume news.

Mr. Biden has named other critics of Big Tech to prominent roles, such as Lina Khan, a critic of Amazon, to lead the Federal Trade Commission. Tim Wu, another legal scholar who says regulators need to crack down on the tech giants, serves in an economic policy role at the White House. And this month, Mr. Biden signed a sweeping executive order aimed at increasing competition across the economy and limiting corporate dominance.

Mr. Kanter, 47, is the founder of Kanter Law Group, which bills itself online as an antitrust advocacy boutique. He previously worked at the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. His services have attracted some of the most prominent critics of Big Tech in corporate America, including Rupert Murdochs News Corp and Microsoft as well as upstarts like Spotify and Yelp.
The past year has been especially difficult for the smaller food carts and vendors, though. Many are recent immigrants who often have obtained the $200 city-issued permit on the underground market, paying as much as $25,000 over two years to the person who holds the permit, even during the pandemic. (The city hopes to eliminate the underground trade by annually issuing 400 new permits, which it said would not be able to be traded in an underground market, over the next 10 years. Just 2,800 exist now.)

Most of the vendors are working and theyve seen a small amount of pickup in the last few months, but others are just waiting because even just to set up the coffee or falafel cart in Midtown costs too much, said Mohamed Attia, managing director of the Street Vendor Project at the Urban Justice Center. Vendors must not only pay for the food and beverages they stock each day, but also pay an S.U.V. or a van $50 to $80 a day to transport the cart back and forth from depots in Queens and elsewhere.

Most of them need to spend $300 a day just to open the doors, and if youre not seeing those kinds of sales, youre going to lose money, Mr. Attia said.

M.D. Alam, who came to New York from Bangladesh in 1998, pays $18,000 every two years to the person who holds the permit to operate his mobile cart, Royal Grill Halal Food, from a corner of 44th Street and Avenue of the Americas.
Coffee-shop Marks gets its fullest expression on weekend days, simultaneous with and as an alternative to Barney Greengrass Marks. If your vision of an ideal brunch does not revolve around smoked fish, then the tuna salads (plural; recently, there were two) and turkey sandwiches (again, two) are there for you. This is where I encountered the only letdown of my time at Marks, a watery brisket hash. Two strips of bacon, thick and majestically smoky, came with it and went a long way toward making up for it.

Going to Marks at night means going to Italian Marks. True, there are just enough oddities on the dinner menu  the marvelous chicken soup and the fresh Bavarian-style pretzels, both clear products of Strausmanian obsessions  to tell you that this is no normal Italian restaurant. But forget the outliers for a moment. Marks at night can give you a lovely, soft, slouching lump of eggplant Parmesan in which fried eggplant, tomatoes and cheese have become one. The sliced and broiled squid is tossed with barely charred bread crumbs and chopped raw tomatoes. The bread-crumb lids on the broiled clams are seasoned with enough fresh herbs to turn them green. There is a simple spaghetti in a tomato sauce, too, and that sauce is thicker, fuller and redder than just about every other version in town.

Italian Marks also means garlic. Garlic in every dish I just mentioned, and in most of the ones I havent. Once in a while, as in the impressive many-layered meat lasagna, the garlic is restrained. More often, it is sure of itself, as if it has never imagined that everybody is not deeply in love with it. The ways Mr. Strausman uses garlic suggest that his cooking comes at least as much from Queens and Brooklyn as it does from Florence. That spaghetti sauce, with its invisible jolt of crushed red peppers, would be right at home at the Park Side in Corona. The linguine alle vongole suggests a less fire-breathing version of the pink clam sauce at Don Peppe in Ozone Park.
Headliner

Sarashina Horii

The history of this restaurant, which specializes in soba noodles, goes back to 1789 when it started serving its noodles to aristocrats and the imperial families in Japan. Using the heart of the buckwheat seeds, its soba is white, making it more delicate and refined. Yoshinori Horii, who runs the company, decided that New York would be its first overseas branch, but the pandemic stalled the opening. In the warmly decorated New York restaurant, the chef Tsuyoshi Hori (the name is a coincidence) and his staff make the soba that they use. They also make more traditional buckwheat soba using some wheat flour, and diners can select which type of soba they prefer. There are more than a dozen soba dishes, cold and hot, many served with tempura and involving seafood, meats like duck, and vegetables. Several sauce options are also available. In addition, the restaurant offers appetizers like deep fried tofu, grilled eel with eggplant, crab cake, fish carpaccio and a soba roll. Salads, tempura dishes, black cod with miso, sukiyaki, and stone-grilled duck with vegetables are some non-soba items. (Opens Wednesday)

45 East 20th Street, 917-409-0546, sarashinahorii.com.

Opening

Cicci di Carne

Dario Cecchini, an eighth-generation Tuscan butcher, has opened a deli in New York as part of Sam Nazarians C3 collection of restaurants. (Mr. Cecchinis family shop, in Panzano in Chianti, has become world famous thanks in part to his showmanship, as seen in his episode of Chefs Table on Netflix.) Dont expect slabs of bistecca alla fiorentina here; the shop and restaurant in the Brookfield Place complex at Battery Park City, sells and serves sliced meats like mortadella, salami, nduja, finocchiona and roast beef layered in hot and cold sandwiches with cheeses, vegetables and other items. It has been installed on the ground floor next to P.J. Clarkes on the Hudson, in what is essentially a testing area for different concepts developed and owned by C3. The tryout will last six months, then another C3 brand will move in. A more permanent Cicci di Carne will be going into the C3 food hall at Brookfields Manhattan West in September. There are 20 more of them planned around the country.

Brookfield Place, 250 Vesey Street (West Street), 646-933-2920, ciccidicarne.com.

Gabriels Bar & Restaurant

It was almost two years to the day since Gabriel Aiello closed his long-running restaurant and bar near Columbus Circle because the building was being demolished. His new location opened early this month, and the Northern Italian menu, somewhat abridged for the opening weeks, hews closely to the original. The restaurant was designed by the Rockwell Group, which gave it a somewhat more formal look, with pale walls, handsome lighting, a marble bar up front and plush semicircular booths instead of the previous big, open trattoria-style room. Mr. Aiello said that the seating had increased by about 30 percent and that there were outdoor tables. What has barely changed is the staff. Im proud that almost all of them have come back, he said.

40 Central Park South (Fifth Avenue), 212-956-4600, gabrielsbarandrest.com.

Temperance Wine Bar

This West Village wine bar owned by Jonathan Rexroat and Devin Rochford has A.J. Ojeda-Pons, formerly at the Lambs Club and Mercado Little Spain, organizing the diverse and far-reaching wine list, and Chris Jaeckle, taking a break from hand rolls, overseeing the snacks and small plates. (Wednesday)

40 Carmine Street (Bedford Street), temperancenyc.com.
In a country where the political fault lines are increasingly jagged and deep, Ms. Dicks case is the latest of several such disputes to highlight the delicate balance local officials must sometimes strike between defending free speech and responding to concerns about language that some residents find offensive.

Ms. Dick, 54, said she acquired the banners  which are available from Amazon and other retailers  earlier this year, but did not hang them on the home in Roselle Park where she lives with her mother, or on the fence outside, until Memorial Day.

Something must have gotten me worked up, she said.

Shortly after the holiday weekend, she said, she became aware that some Roselle Park residents, noting that her home was near a school, were upset about the language on the banners and about the potential for passing children to see it.

Ms. Dick, whose mother, Patricia Dilascio, owns the house, said that no children lived on the block and that no children routinely walk by on their way to the school.

But the towns mayor, Joseph Signorello III, said he had received several complaints about the banners, which he passed on to the boroughs code enforcement officer. Residents of Roselle Park, a town of 14,000 people about a 40-minute drive from Times Square, voted overwhelmingly for Mr. Biden in November.
We will be fighting so that Harvey can receive his needed medical care and of course, so that he can be treated fairly, Mr. Engelmayer said in a statement. Due process, presumption of innocence and a fair trial are still his right.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles district attorney declined to comment.

In 2017, Mr. Weinstein was publicly accused by a number of women of sexual assault and harassment, setting off the MeToo Movement and a national conversation about men who took advantage of their power and status to prey on others. The following year, Mr. Weinstein was indicted on rape and criminal sexual act charges in Manhattan.

By now, more than 90 women have accused Mr. Weinstein of sexual misconduct or assault. He has maintained that he engaged only in consensual sexual activity.

After being found guilty in early 2020, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison. (He has filed an appeal asking that the conviction be reversed.) If he were to be convicted in Los Angeles, Mr. Weinstein would serve any resulting sentence in California after finishing out his prison term in New York.

Mr. Weinsteins legal team fought hard to keep him in New York, arguing among other things that he had severe medical issues that made a cross-country trip a risk to his health. They were able to successfully delay his transfer for months during the pandemic and as New York began its recovery.
At one point prosecutors had recommended that the court award restitution to 25 people.

Judge Garaufis determined that 17 people deserved restitution under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, which applies to crimes including forced labor, sex trafficking and document servitude. Those victims are entitled to restitution for legal counsel they retained in connection with the government investigation and Mr. Ranieres criminal proceedings, the value of unpaid labor they performed within D.O.S., and medical services, including mental health care and brand removal.

Another four people are entitled to restitution under a second law, the Mandatory Victim Restitution Act of 1996, which applies to crimes including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy and wire fraud conspiracy.

Among those to whom Mr. Raniere is being ordered to pay restitution is Sarah Edmondson, one of the first people to speak publicly about the brandings. In 2017 she told The New York Times that she wept as she endured that experience and disassociated out of my body.

Other recipients include a woman identified only as Sylvie, who testified during Mr. Ranieres trial that she was ordered to have sex with him and described life within D.O.S. as lies and deceit and darkness, and a woman identified as Daniela, who testified that Mr. Raniere became jealous when she rejected him and caused her to be kept in a room for two years.

The largest restitution amount, $507,997, was awarded to Danielas younger sister, Camila. Mr. Raniere began sexually abusing Camila when she was 15, according to court records. Judge Garaufis said on Tuesday that there was information that the defendant induced her to submit to pornographic photography sessions.

Judge Garaufis also said lower-ranking D.O.S. members are statutorily entitled to the return of their collateral and directed Mr. Raniere to assist in that effort. But that order was stayed until Mr. Ranieres appeal of his conviction is exhausted.

While restitution cases with a single victim and perpetrator  and one clear-cut crime  can be straightforward, Mr. Ranieres case appeared to be particularly complex, said Paul G. Cassell, a former federal judge in Utah and professor at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah, who has written about crime victims and restitution.
There were liberal defenders of intervention too. One of its foremost champions emerged in Samantha Power, an ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama and the current administrator of the United States Agency for International Development. If the United States rightfully prided itself on helping to end the Holocaust, she wondered in her 2002 book, A Problem From Hell, why had it done nothing to stop the Rwandan genocide that left some 800,000 dead in 1994? The promise of never again, she argued, obligated the United States to prevent atrocities around the world  by unilateral force, if necessary.

To the Times columnist David Brooks, both the national-security and humanitarian justifications for U.S. military hegemony still hold sway. Every day I see progressives defending womens rights, L.G.B.T.Q. rights and racial justice at home and yet championing a foreign policy that cedes power to the Taliban, Hamas and other reactionary forces abroad, he writes. If were going to fight Trumpian authoritarianism at home, we have to fight the more venomous brands of authoritarianism that thrive around the world. That means staying on the field.

How the postwar consensus cracked

For better or for worse, military engagement abroad and U.S. dominance more generally have become unpopular with the American public.

One reason is that national-security justifications for U.S. supremacy no longer pack the same punch they did after Sept. 11. Americans live in a world that is safer and freer than ever before in human history  and it is not even close, Micah Zenko and Michael A. Cohen wrote in their 2019 book, Clear and Present Safety. Decades of fear-mongering about foreign threats by Washington insiders, they argued, have obscured what truly harms Americans: substandard education and health care systems, dilapidated infrastructure, gun violence, inequality, congressional gridlock and climate change.

The global war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq also did severe damage to the humanitarian justification for military intervention. In a 2010 article in The Journal of Genocide Research, the historian Stephen Wertheim argued that after the Rwandan genocide, neoconservatives and liberal interventionists like Power fatally underestimated the difficulties of stopping ethnic conflict and ignored the challenges of postwar nation-building. In casting military intervention as a categorical imperative  regardless of the consequences, and regardless of public opinion  interventionists laid the path for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Nearly two decades later, Peter Beinart argues in The Times, it is difficult for the United States to maintain its preferred image as a uniquely beneficent global actor. According to Brown Universitys Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Americas post-Sept. 11 wars have killed over 800,000 people, displaced 37 million and cost some $6.4 trillion. (For reference, that is about $1.9 trillion more than the estimated cost of completely transitioning the U.S. power grid off fossil fuels.) The United States also continues to export more weapons than any other country, including to five of the six most interventionist states in the Middle East.
From March 2020 to last April, over a million children worldwide lost a mother, father, grandparent or another adult they relied on as a primary caregiver to Covid-19. In South Africa, one in every 200 children lost his or her primary caregiver. In Peru, it was one in every 100.

Because of international gaps in coronavirus testing and reporting, these numbers are likely underestimates. But our team of researchers, including experts from public health organizations and universities around the world, used mathematical modeling and mortality and fertility data from 21 countries with 76 percent of global deaths from Covid-19 to estimate the number of children who lost a caregiver (some lost one or both parents, others lost grandparent caregivers). We created an online calculator that shows minimum estimates for every country in the world.

What we found was a scale of family loss that has not been seen since AIDS first rampaged through sub-Saharan Africa. Do you remember Africa in 2002, when we realized that all the dying adults meant orphaned children? asked the lead author of our study, Susan Hillis, a senior technical adviser for Covid-19 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I did. I remembered the spread of a deadly virus at a time when lifesaving medicines were available in the United States and Europe, but still years away for other countries. I remembered that we were too slow to invest in caring for those children losing their mothers, fathers and grandparents. The global community made well-meaning but terrible errors in our response: sending hundreds of thousands of youngsters to orphanages, and so putting them at a higher risk for mental health problems, infectious diseases, physical abuse and sexual violence and poverty.
But as we start to fumble our way back to some sort of normal, its not enough for employees to demand that our hours return to what they were. Prepandemic, nearly a third of Americans clocked 45 hours or more every week, with around 8 million putting in 60 or more. While Europeans have decreased their work hours by about 30 percent over the past half century, ours have steadily increased. We have long needed better work-life balance, but despite constantly trying to hack our lives by waking up before dawn or exercising during lunch, that can be achieved only by actually working less.

To Americans, who log 7 to 19 percent more time on the job than our European peers, that may sound heretical. But we should heed the other countries that have come to this realization. This year, the Spanish government announced a pilot program to entice companies to try out a four-day workweek without reducing anyones pay. Last month, Japan released economic policy guidelines encouraging employers to do the same. Iceland just published results from an experiment with a four-day week in Reykjavik that ran from 2015 to 2019 and found that productivity didnt decline and in some cases even improved. The reduced schedule showed that we are not just machines that just work, one Icelandic participant said. We are persons with desires and private lives, families and hobbies. Employees reported being less burned out and healthier.

Working too long is bad for our health, associated with not just weight gain and more alcohol and tobacco use but also higher rates of injury, illness and death. A study that looked at long work hours across 194 countries found a higher risk of heart disease and stroke, leading to about 745,000 attributable deaths. Long work hours are the largest of any occupational risk factor calculated to date, the authors wrote.

There is a class divide in overwork in the United States, however. The demand to spend 60 hours at an office is one that depletes the lives of professional, higher-paid workers. What would appear to be an opposite problem plagues those at the lower end of the wage scale. In 2016, about one-tenth of American workers were working part time but trying to get more hours. Despite current hand-wringing that these workers are refusing to come back to the job, thanks to lucrative unemployment benefits, the problem is typically the opposite: People who work in retail or fast food often struggle to get enough hours to qualify for benefits and pay their bills, just to survive.

They also struggle to cobble them together into a predictable schedule. Sixteen percent of American workers schedules fluctuate based on their employers needs. The people who suffer from just-in-time scheduling that never quite adds up to a normal 9 to 5 arent spending their off hours on leisure. Theyre working second and third jobs. They are hovering over an app to find out if theyre going to be called into work and are scrambling to piece child care and transportation together if and when they are. Employers are still usurping their time by forcing them to be available at a moments notice.
ezra klein

Im Ezra Klein, and this is The Ezra Klein Show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Something Ive been wrestling with lately, both in my head and then, of course, on the show, is what Ive come to think of as productivity paradoxes, these things that look and feel to us like work, like productivity, that the culture tells us are work and productivity but turn out to be the opposite. They turn out to be distractions or they turn out to miss something profound about how we work or how we think or even how we live. If you remember, for instance, my interview with Cal Newport from earlier this year, that was about one of these: the way constant communication on platforms like Slack and Teams and to some degree even email, it codes as work, it looks like work, and its often a distraction not just from work but from its fundamental precursor, focus. There are also, of course, distractions from life and leisure. When were not able to work well in productivity in the time were supposed to do it, it expands outward into everything else. So this isnt just about work but about being able to balance work and the rest of life. Then I began reading this new book, The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul. Paul is a science writer, and her book, the work here, began as an inquiry into how we learn, but then it became something else. It became a book about how we think. Because what came to tie her research together was this 1998 article by the philosophers Andy Clark and David Chalmers called The Extended Mind, which argued that there was a, quote, active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes, end quote. That what you should think of as our mind, and certainly the way our mind worked, was extending out beyond our head and was intimately shaped, like actually intertwined, with tools, with people, with the environment, with the visual field. And subsequent research really, really bore this out. And the implications of it, I think, are profound. A lot of this book is about recognizing that we have the intuitive metaphor of our minds, that theyre an analytical machine, a computer of sorts. And weve taken this broken metaphor of the mind and then built schools and workplaces and society on top of it, built the built environment on top of it. And the result is that our work and school lives are littered with these productivity paradoxes. What so often feels and looks like productivity and efficiency to us are often the very activities and habits that stunt our thinking. And many of the habits and activities that look like leisure, sometimes even look like play, like if youve taken a walk in the middle of the day or a nap, those end up unlocking our thinking. If the question is, how can we be the most creative or come up with the most profound productive insights, you need to do that stuff. And so if you read it correctly, in my view at least, this is a pretty radical book. It has radical implications not just for how we think about ourselves but for policy, for architecture, for our social lives, for schooling, for the economy. And Ill say that it has stuck with me quite a bit. It has changed the way I structure a bunch of my days. Im trying to work with my mind more and against it less. As always, my email for guest suggestions, reading recommendations, whatever, is ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Annie Murphy Paul, welcome to the show.

annie murphy paul

Thanks, Ezra. Im really glad to be here.

ezra klein

You have a quote in the book that encapsulates kind of the whole of it for me, and youre talking here about the limits of the brain as a computer, this analogy that we use all the time. And you write, quote, When fed a chunk of information, a computer processes it in the same way on each occasion, whether its been at work for five minutes or five hours, whether it is located in a fluorescent lit office or positioned next to a sunny window, whether its near other computers or is the only computer in the room. This is how computers operate. But the same doesnt hold for human beings. The way were able to think about information is dramatically affected by the state were in when we encounter it. End of the quote. Why is that true? Why doesnt our brain work the same way in all contexts?

annie murphy paul

Well, it has to do with the fact that our brain is a biological organ and an evolved organ thats very different from a computer. And the computer metaphor for the brain has been dominant since the emergence of cognitive science in the middle of the last century, and it really permeates the way we think and talk about the brain, and it places these sort of invisible limits on how we use the brain, how we regard other peoples brains, and its because that metaphor is so faulty it leads us to act and to make choices in ways that are not at all optimal. And so in this book, I wanted to challenge the metaphor of the computer and point out that, no, actually the brain evolved in particular settings, mostly outside. It evolved to do things like sense and move the body to find its way through three dimensional landscapes, to engage in encounters in small groups of people. These are the things that the brain does effortlessly, naturally. The brain is not a computer. It never was, and its failures are particular to its own nature, and it has to be understood on its own terms.

ezra klein

You argue that a lot of thinking  I dont know if youre quite saying happens in the body, but its certainly picked up by the body as opposed to picked up by our mental ruminations. And the body can in some ways be even more rational than what we think of as a brain. What do you mean by that? Make that argument for me.

annie murphy paul

Well, as we go through our everyday lives, theres way more information than we can process or retain consciously. It would just completely explode our mental bandwidth. But we are taking in that information, noting regularities and patterns, and storing them in the non-conscious mind so that it can be used later when we encounter a similar situation. Then the question becomes, well, if its non-conscious, how do we make use of that information? And its because the body lets us know. I mean, thats what we call a gut feeling or what psychologists, what scientists call interoception, which is the perception of internal sensations that arise from within the body. And people who are more attuned to those internal signals and cues are better able to draw on that wealth of information that we know but we dont know. We possess it, but we dont know it explicitly or consciously. So thats what a gut feeling is. Its sort of your body tugging at your mental sleeve and saying, hey, youve been here before. Youve had this experience before. Heres how you responded. It worked or it didnt work. Heres what is the right thing to do now. But in our world where we are so brain bound, so focused on the cerebral and the things that go on in our head, we tend to push the body aside, to quash those feelings, to override them, even, in the service of getting our mental work done, when really we should be cultivating that ability, becoming more attuned and more sensitive to it, because it has all this accumulated experience and information to share with us.

ezra klein

You cite a study that just floored me by the psychologist Antonio Damasio, which looked at the body picking up some of these unconscious processes in a pattern recognition game. Can you describe that?

annie murphy paul

Yeah. So Damasio set up a kind of card game online on a computer where players were asked to turn over cards from one of four decks. And they could choose which cards they wanted to turn over. And they were given a starting purse. The object was to gain as much money as possible and lose as little money as possible, because each card came with an associated reward or took some money away. And so the experimenter said go. People started clicking on the decks and turning over cards. And unbeknownst to them, two of the decks were good decks. They contained many more rewards than punishments. And two of the decks were bad decks. They contained many more punishments that took away money than rewards that granted money. And the interesting thing is that as the participants played this game, their skin conductance was being monitored. Thats a measure of our nervous system arousal. And as the game progressed and the players were turning over these cards, their skin conductance started to flare whenever they considered taking a card from the bad deck, indicating that their bodies, their physiology, was reacting to the presence of threat. And yet consciously, the players had no idea that two decks were good and two decks were bad. He knows this because he asked them and they had no clue about the pattern that was present in the game. But they began to slowly but surely learn this pattern in an unconscious way and avoid those bad decks more and more as the game went on, showing that they were learning, in a sense. But again, this was all non-conscious. So those of us who are more in touch with our internal sensations, and this is an ability that can be deliberately cultivated, can make better use of that wisdom and experience that is stored in a sense within the body.

ezra klein

You also cite some studies of Wall Street traders who seem to make more money when theyre more interoceptively attuned, when theyre better at reading their own body signals. But lets stop here and say this is weird. If youve grown up in this culture and youre a human who has been taught to trust the cold, rational processes, at least theoretically, of your brain, whereas intuition, bodily intuition, it sounds woolly. It sounds fuzzy. I mean, I live in the Bay Area. I hear about it all the time. Ive come to take it more seriously in part for reasons like this. But its not just that some of us are bad at picking up our bodily signals but that we are taught that thats a dumb way to go through the world. What does your body know? So what do you think is happening here? How is the body picking up a pattern before the brain is? What is being listened to there?

annie murphy paul

Yeah. Well, I think the attitude that you mentioned that paying attention to the body is sort of silly and sort of foolish comes from a very old idea in Western culture that mind and body are separate and that mind is made of this sort of special spiritual stuff and the body is this grubby kind of animal creature that needs to be subdued and that is irrational and doesnt have anything  certainly doesnt have anything to contribute to intelligent decision making or intelligent thinking. And I argue in the book that a lot of what we consider to be built-in heuristics and biases that are inevitable that come along with having a human brain only show themselves when were using the brain alone and when were not incorporating this other resource of the body and its source of information. So I think this idea that the brain is the be all end all of sort of rational thinking is wrong. And youre right. It is a radical challenge to the way were used to thinking.

ezra klein

If the point is to listen to the body, and it is clearly true that the body sometimes tells us not to do things that we should do ... the body being afraid of an airplane strikes me as a very rational thing for the body to be afraid of. But you should get on airplanes. Now maybe thats an obvious one, because of course airplanes are unnatural given the evolution of our species. We dont have wings and things that are heavy tend to not fly. But there are a lot of other things in our lives where the body gives us bad information or just challenging information. And so what Im hearing from you is actually another brain- bound way of interpreting the body. Thats trying to reconstruct what my bodys telling me to match what my brain thinks I should believe about the situation. But I think what Im asking is if the body has so much wisdom but also sometimes that wisdom fails, when should I be listening to the body and when should I be listening to my prefrontal cortex?

annie murphy paul

I would say that I think we need to become more skilled at determining when the bodys signals are steering us in the right direction. I write in the book about keeping whats known as an interoceptive journal. And that means when youre contemplating a choice or decision, pay attention to how your body feels and note that down. And then maybe after that decision has been made and you have a sense of whether it was a successful decision or not, go back and take a look at how you felt when you made it. And over time, collect many of these kinds of vignettes and look for a pattern. Does your body steer you right in certain kinds of situations, certain kinds of decisions, and would it have steered you wrong in others? Thats the kind of thing where right now were using our gut feelings, our interoception in a kind of haphazard way and in a non-intentional way. And when we become more aware of it, we dont always have to follow its promptings. Thats true. But we should be aware of them and we should be aware of what theyre telling us. And we should be skilled enough to know when to listen and when to ignore.

ezra klein

That strikes me is really important. And Ill liberally sprinkle in some personal experiences throughout this conversation. Over the past 10 or 15 years, Ive deepened my meditation practice quite a bit. And one of the things that did unexpectedly was made me much more attuned to how my body was feeling. And I remember realizing at a certain point, this was probably five or six years ago now or maybe even a bit more, that I had been telling myself for years I was stressed when what I was was tired. And that I had actually lost the ability to hear my body well, and I was just trying to put everything in a cognitive framework that made sense to me. But then the second part of that that Id be curious to hear your thoughts on is we do a lot to try to keep our cognitive performance high that makes it hard to hear our bodies. So particularly for meditation, I notice if Ive had a lot of caffeine that day, my body is just totally weird feeling. But I think theres a lot like that. A therapist once told me that looking at social media is a kind of stimulant because its fast moving, it gives you little bits of dopamine, and that made total sense to me, that I look at social media to wake back up. Im curious if youve thought about that, beyond just meditation, what we do that makes our body easier to hear and what we do that makes it harder to hear.

annie murphy paul

Oh, so interesting. I mean, well, meditation is definitely one of those things that makes it easier to hear, as youve found in your own experience. I talk in the book about doing a particular exercise that often starts off a meditation session called a body scan, which is when you pay attention in succession to parts of your body in this open minded, nonjudgmental way. And I recommend that people do this periodically, not even in a formal way, but just sort of checking in with their body throughout the day so that they stay rooted in their body and they know whats going on in their body and they get the sort of regular infusion of interoceptive awareness. Because we can go through our day. Were so busy. Were so stimulated. A lot of these stimulants, whether its social media or caffeine, they mask the bodys signals and cues so that we cant perceive them quite so well. So yes, I think its important to tune into those signals not only so we know whats going on with us inside our own bodies, but its also the key to understanding whats going on in other people. And this was very moving to me, actually, this strand of research that I explored for the book, which is that we dont have a direct connection to other peoples brains, to whats going on inside their heads. Its rather opaque to us. And so its actually the body that provides the channel for understanding in a really visceral way what theyre feeling. And when we speak to someone face to face, and this is another reason why in person contact is so important, when we speak to someone face to face, we very subtly mimic their expressions, their posture, their demeanor, and then we kind of read off from our own bodies what that feels like, what emotion is being created within us. And thats how we know how other people are feeling. Thats kind of the basis of empathy and emotional intelligence. And again, studies suggest that people who are more introceptively aware are able to be more empathetic. Theyre able to be more accurate in how they understand other people, because theyre using their own body as a conduit to connect with the feelings inside that other person.

ezra klein

I want to move to another space of working with the body. So weve been talking here about listening to the body, listening to the body as an almost thinking organ that is giving you information in terms of how it feels. But you talk a lot in the book about using the body to create contexts in which we think better. Can you tell me a bit about what weve learned in recent decades about the relationship between bodily movement and cognition?

annie murphy paul

Yeah. And here again were talking about reversing the causal arrow in a sense. The way we usually think about it is the brain has an idea and it directs the body to do something and the body executes it. And thats a very brain- bound way of thinking, obviously. But theres another way, which is that we induce the body to make certain movements or enter certain kinds of spaces, like the outdoors, or move our hands in a certain way in a gesture, and that influences the way we think. And this is often a more efficient and effective way of affecting our thinking than starting and ending often with the brain and having it all happen inside our heads. So for example, ideas will come to us when were moving, when were walking rather than when were sitting at our desk. Which the brain- bound computer model says it shouldnt matter, but it does matter. And so when we change our context, when we change the way our body is moving, we can change the way the brain operates.

ezra klein

So I think we know that, but we dont, for the most part, do it. And this, to me, is a really, really, really important part of the book that I want to tag out here explicitly. I thought one of the most challenging ideas laced through the book is what I came to think of as the productivity paradox, which is: the things that we have been taught to think of and feel as being productive are often not the best way for us to be productive. And Ill use taking a walk as an example. When I am behind on a piece, when I am struggling with my work, when I am having trouble getting something done, what feels to me like the responsible thing to do is chain myself to my computer and my desk and keep banging away at it. That there is some static number of minutes between me and the completion of this task, and I just got to get through them. And if I were to go take a long walk or go to a coffee shop and just sit there and drink a coffee just on my own and eat a pastry, or do all kinds of things that are I would think of them as restful. I would think of them as a form of leisure. But your argument is thats wrong, that thats probably the best thing you can do at that moment, because your brain is not a computer and its not just working on the problem. But there is a cultural barrier to doing it, because shouldnt I be working given that Im behind?

annie murphy paul

Right, right. Well, and another factor in our culture that we havent mentioned yet that reinforces that idea are ideas from popular psychology like grit and the growth mindset, both of which have at their core another metaphor. Not the metaphor of brain as computer, but the metaphor of brain as muscle. And people start thinking that the brain actually is a muscle, which of course it isnt. And even as a metaphor, its very powerful because it carries with it  there are all these assumptions embedded in it  that lead us to think, oh, if the brains a muscle, then the more I work it, the more tirelessly and exhaustively I work this muscle, the stronger it gets, and the better Ill be able to think. And again, because metaphors are so powerful and they shape the way we use the brain, I propose my own metaphor in the book for what the brain is like. I compare the brain to a magpie, one of these birds that plucks a twig here and a piece of string here but also more unusual things. I mean, the catalog of things that magpies have incorporated into their nests is amazing, but the point is that they build their nests from whatever is available in their immediate environment and that the brain is something like that. Its assembling its thought processes from whats available in its environment. And that means that thinking better is not about working the brain ever harder. Its about creating a space and a set of capacities wherein you have more and better resources from which to assemble your thought processes.

ezra klein

Im going to try to offer another metaphor that Ive thought about over the past couple of years. And this actually came to me when I was on a meditation retreat and I couldnt stop thinking about something. I didnt want to. I didnt want to be thinking about this thing. I didnt rationally think it was important anymore. I didnt think any good was coming of thinking it, but I couldnt stop. And I began on that retreat, sitting in endless silence just with myself and my annoying brain, to think about the brain as a big corporation, like a multinational corporation that has, in theory, some goals it is trying to achieve as a whole but all these different divisions, and theyre all doing different things. And some of them are getting attention and some of them are well run and some of them, what they do comes to the focus of the main office all the time. And then others are just there still working on problems that the rest of the corporation has long ago moved on from. But theres this way in which there are all these different divisions. And one of the difficult things for me about the brain, but one of the things that your book sort of helped clarify, is that a question about the context youre putting yourself in is which divisions of the brain are getting attention and are getting the raw materials, I guess, in this metaphor, maybe simply the budget, to actually do their work? Theres a different division that is helped by going on a walk than by staring at my computer, a different division that has helped by going on a vacation, a different division that has helped by meditation, a different division that is  and so on and so forth. But its this weird way in which its not one thing. Different things are happening. And sometimes just like in a big organization, its unclear why or by whose order or why people arent all on the same page anymore. But its an emergent property of a lot of different processes that sometimes seem to be, certainly in my head, to be at cross purposes with each other.

annie murphy paul

Mm-hmm. I would just want to add to your metaphor, Ezra, that Id like to see some of those divisions offshored, like outside the head. Id like to understand some of those divisions as maybe not being inside the brain.

ezra klein

Theyre contractors.

annie murphy paul

Contractors, contractors, right. Yeah, I mean, and that reminds me of yet another metaphor, because you can never have too many metaphors, but another metaphor I use for the brain, which is we shouldnt think of it as a workhorse that we just need to keep lashing until your assignment is done, for example, but rather more like an orchestra conductor. Obviously theres still a role for the brain. I dont ever want to be understood as saying that the brain isnt important or isnt a central locus for thinking. But its the role that we expect the brain to play that I think should be altered. I mean, if we think of the brain not as a workhorse but as an orchestra conductor, then we see the brain playing this role of bringing in this resource here and bringing in that resource now and knowing, in a skillful way, which resources to use and when. And thats the kind of intellectual facility that we should be developing, I think, in our students and employees and in ourselves.

ezra klein

But I want to come back to this productivity paradox. And Im going to give an example that struck me, because it happened while I was reading your book and it seemed like a good example of it. So two weeks ago, I was having a day where I wasnt being that productive. And I was stressed because I had a lot of errands I had to do, including bringing my dogs to the dog camp, I guess, because we were going to go away for a couple of days. And it was going to take me about an hour, hour and half to do it. I had to pick them up new food. We had to drive like 30 minutes in each direction. There was traffic at the time I was doing this. And I was behind on my work. And more profoundly, I did not have a column idea, and it was coming to the point where I really needed one. And so what Id be doing that day is clicking around the internet, reading news sites, reading Twitter, reading the different information flows that I thought would spark something for me. And I got nowhere with it. And then at a certain point, I had to take my dogs. And I was frustrated by this. But its actually a nice drive. I was going down the 1. And just at some point on that drive, with no conscious work of my own at that moment, a great column idea popped into my head, totally different than everything Id been looking at already. Something I actually really was excited about. Interoceptively, I got excited about it. And I want to ask two things about this. One is what happened there? What occurred? And two, to be a little mindful about this, who the hell was thinking? Its such a weird  directed thought is a process that makes some sense to me. But the thing where just an idea pops into your head, like you just pulled down the lever on the slot machine and won a prize. Or maybe you didnt even pull down the lever. You just won a prize. Its really wild. I think about this a lot in meditation. Who thought that thought? And so what is happening? And then I guess this speaks to our metaphors conversation. Who is thinking?

annie murphy paul

Well, someone whos focused on the brain would say that that was your default network in action, that that was this sort of more associative and relaxed kind of mode that our brain gets into when were not intensely focused on a task, like when you were making that drive with your dog. And that can be allowing that mode to emerge, often by taking a walk or by being outside, those are some of the best ways to do it. Or taking a shower. People always have their best ideas in the shower or in the bath. But because Im not so focused on the brain and Im focused on mental extensions, I want to point to something that I think about a lot said by Andy Clark. And Andy Clark is the philosopher who originated the idea of the extended mind. And he talks about how we are intrinsically loopy creatures, were loopy, and that thats something that makes us very different from computers. Because computers work in this very linear fashion. Its input output. Its all a straight line. But humans, because of the way our brain evolved, we benefit from looping information and knowledge and ideas in and out of these different domains, bringing in the contribution of our body, or passing it through the brains of other people, or experiencing and thinking about our ideas in a new setting, a new physical setting. And as Andy Clark points out, a computer would never have an idea printed out, have to read it with their eyes, make up lots of marks in the margins, and then pass it around to their colleagues and then have a whole new understanding of that idea. Thats not how computers work, but thats how people work. And so when we think of ourselves as loopy creatures, we can kind of create those loops where were passing information and ideas in and out of these different domains  the body, spaces, other peoples minds  and then back through our own heads. And thats a much more fertile and generative way of dealing with information than just always keeping it inside our own heads where its not going to be changed or altered or improved in any way.

ezra klein

So Ive been talking a lot about this idea of looping with my colleague Roge Karma, who worked with me on preparing this episode. And this, again, I think goes to this productivity problem about the ways in which things that feel or have the aesthetic of productivity are often not the most productive way to do things. So if you look at the way we prepared to have this conversation with you, I read the entire book. Roge they read the entire book. We had three conversations about the book. He did a prep document about a book I had already read. Then we talked about that prep document. Then we did questions. Then we talked about the questions again. Then I rewrote the questions. And compared to what you might think of as the efficient way to do the preparation here, which is that one of us reads the book and writes questions and then I walk in and read you questions, that just seems a lot more efficient. Its one step and then its two steps, and then Im done. But we found over time that it is this constant passing of the books and the work and our ideas back and forth and the conversations we have about them that lead to great conversations. And it looks and in some ways feels very inefficient, but the show does really well and I think is pretty good. And so its obviously working. But one of the problems, I think, with looping for people is that it feels inefficient. It feels, if youre working on something to then go take a walk or go play basketball or then talk to your friend and then come back to it and then write some of it down on a piece of paper, it seems ridiculous. Youre adding all of these steps. But your point is that this is how the brain works, and working the way the brain works is whats going to get you the best results, which in theory is what all this efficiency talk is meant to get you to.

annie murphy paul

Right. Well, lets work with the brain as it really is instead of pretending that its something else and getting mad at it or feeling that its failing when it doesnt act like a computer.

ezra klein

One of the pieces of this that I just want to make sure we touch on before we leave this section of the conversation is, and this is not going to sound like a big deal before I say it, so I implore the audience to think of it as a big deal, that sitting still imposes a greater cognitive burden on the brain than standing or walking. And I think that sounds normal enough, and then you realize how much time and energy and social structure and public money has gone into trying to get us to sit still most of the time. And it actually seems quite crazy. So could you talk about that finding?

annie murphy paul

Yeah. Yeah, that really strikes me too, so Im glad that you brought it up. I talk about that in the context of research having to do with children who have an ADHD diagnosis, but it applies to all of us in the sense that, again, we are these biological evolved creatures who are meant to be moving. Being still is not necessarily our natural state, certainly not for long periods of time. And so when we have to be still in an office or in a classroom, we have to inhibit our natural urge to move. And that uses up some of the mental bandwidth that could otherwise be applied to our learning or our work. And then, in the case of kids who have attention deficit disorder, its actually the case that they use physical activity as a kind of stimulant just the way an adult would drink a cup of coffee before they needed to focus. Kids with ADHD use movement to kind of get them into the right mental state where they can concentrate. So meanwhile, parents and teachers are trying to get them to sit still so they can think, when really these kids, and many of us, need to move in order to think. And one strand of research that I just love that I included in this section is about fidgeting. Again, because of our brain- bound attitudes, we see fidgeting as sort of gauche or maybe almost shady, like why is this person  why cant they be still? When actually fidgeting is this brilliant kind of very subtle way of adjusting on a moment by moment basis our arousal, our physiological state of alertness. And so if we were more intentional about fidgeting, we could even develop, and psychologists are exploring this, different kinds of fidget objects that induce different kinds of mental states in us that really precisely calibrate our mental state through this embodied self regulation, which is the phrase that one of these gesture researchers used. So all these different kinds of movements from the macro to the micro we could be using in a much more thoughtful and intelligent way, intentional way, to modulate the way our brains work.

ezra klein

But I want to talk about the macro, because Im all bought in on the fidget research. When I led Vox, my office was filled with fidget toys. And I think people thought that was a kooky stylistic decision, but its actually because I have a lot of trouble paying attention in meetings if I cant do something with my hands. But the thing where maybe sitting is not the right way to think, and yet everything in our life forces us to sit in the built environment, is I think actually pretty profound, and all the more so because it seems so banal when you say it. So Ill give a very simple example from this podcast. Before coronavirus, I did this in studios. And studios are little rooms. You sit at a desk and theres a microphone there and somebody is watching you and you got to sit there, and thats how the conversation goes. Then we hit the pandemic and now, like a lot of people, I record from home, because my office isnt open. And during this period, I got a standing desk because I have some back and neck issues. And I noticed at a certain point that if, instead of sitting when I did podcast conversations I stood, it was much easier for me to maintain attention. And in fact, not just that, but one reason I turn the video off when we do this is because I walk around while you talk. So I am pacing the room while you give your answers, not to give people too much insight into this. Because again, its much easier for me to listen if Im moving. And I dont think Im alone in this. But then if Im not, the fact that we make kids sit all day in school, the fact that meetings, it would be seen as very gauche, as you were saying, to just stand up in the middle of a meeting and wander around the perimeter of the room ... We have desks at our offices. It goes to this idea that because we have misunderstood the metaphor we use for the mind, weve actually built an entire environment which makes it hard to think even as the point of that environment, in many cases, like school or work, is to make it easy to think, at least in certain kinds of jobs. It just seems wild to me.

annie murphy paul

Yeah. Yeah, I would add too that it may be, Ezra, that when youre standing, youre freer to gesture. And research suggests that gesturing by the person whos doing it actually makes their speech more fluent. So maybe your own speech has become even more fluent as youve been recording in your home studio because youre able to use your hands much more freely when you stand and walk around.

ezra klein

I want to ask you about that structural piece of it. Because what youre describing here is a phenomenal market failure, a phenomenal market failure, right? Putting all of the ways in which it would be better for our lives or better for our minds or more fun to move around aside, we have all these different businesses. They all want to get a leg up on the competition. A huge amount of the American economy now is built around work where people have to come in and think about problems. I mean, manual labor is somewhat different. And by the way, manual labor often has a lot more movement built into it. And so what youre saying is that a tremendous amount of the global economy, the global built economy, the global work structure, is just wrong. Its not a good way for people to work. I mean, well get into some other pieces of this, like open space offices. But just the simplest one, that everybody gets a desk and that its hard to stand and hard to move around. What the hell happened? If this research is solid, and I think its intuitive. Like if you watch people on the phone, they like to walk around and talk. Then what the hell happened? How did we forget all this when we built every office on the planet Earth, basically?

annie murphy paul

And every school. Yeah, I mean, if theres one thing Ive learned from reporting and researching psychology for 25 years is that we often dont know whats best for us, and so we cling very firmly to these practices that dont serve us. And it takes a kind of paradigm- changing new view to make us think, oh, maybe it doesnt have to be that way. Maybe the way weve been doing things isnt so great. And I actually think the pandemic might be that kind of disruption that changes some of the ways that we educate kids and that we go about our own work. I think a lot of us have spent the last 16 months as brains in front of screens, and a lot of us have been working from day till night without a chat around the water cooler, without even a commute, without a break. All we do is work. All we do is use our brains. And if the brain as muscle metaphor were really accurate, we would all be superheroes at this point, and were not. In fact, many of us feel that were not thinking nearly as well as we used to or normally do. And thats because the pandemic, for many of us, cut off many of the mental extensions that really support our thinking. And Im hoping that in a way theyve made the existence and the importance of those mental extensions visible to us in a way that they have not been before. [MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein

Lets talk a bit about how offices are designed more broadly. So years ago I worked at The Washington Post, and this was in their older building. Theyve moved since then. It was a pretty gray aesthetic, which is to say, a lot of desks. They all had little cubicle extensions on them. It didnt look cool, but I got a lot of good work done there. When I moved to Vox Media, and Vox Media was a media company with a heavy tech flavor, and it was super cool when I walked into that office. Exposed brick and exposed piping and its all open and everybodys at these big, long tables together. Way cooler than cubicles. And within not long at all, I really yearned for a cubicle again. Can you talk a bit about open space offices, some of the ideas that have emerged about collaboration as kind of human collision, and what maybe we misunderstood there?

annie murphy paul

Yeah, I really think your anecdote just there tells us how important it is to be sensitive to the effect of physical context on how we work. And again, that brain as computer metaphor would say, well, you can work anywhere. You should be able to think just as well anywhere, but clearly thats not the case. And so that should lead us to pay more attention to what it is about these environments that are not working for us, that are not supporting intelligent thought or allowing us to extend our minds. And yes, the open office is one of the biggest culprits. I write in the book about how the open office was based on an idea, a vision, and that was the coffee shop where people are moving and bustling around and having spontaneous conversations and colliding with each other in serendipitous ways. And the notion was that this was the perfect model for how knowledge work should be done. And in fact, its turned out to be a disaster, because again, the brain is an evolved organ that did not evolve to sit in one place and focus on symbols and abstractions for long periods of time. Thats a really difficult thing for the brain to do. Its not one of those things that comes naturally to the brain. So it needs lots of external support to do that. And one of the key external supports that it can have are walls. Walls that protect us from seeing and coming into contact with all the things that distract us most, which are novelty movement, social interactions among people. These are the things that our attention is just irresistibly drawn to. We cant help it. Its literally biologically wired into us. And so to put a whole bunch of people in one room and say, OK, now work together on separate projects, these complex involved cognitive kind of work that we do these days. I think most people who have worked in an open office can acknowledge how very difficult it is. When were talking to people all the time, we all sort of coalesce because we are a very social species thats concerned with creating consensus. We all kind of coalesce around some OK ideas, not great, but medium quality ideas. And then people who are all alone, the people who are kind of out on the outskirts doing all their own thinking, they come up with some amazing ideas and also a whole lot of losers. And the best results are produced by those people who have a kind of oscillation between talking with people, going back and having a private space and private time and quiet to think about their own ideas, and then its actually another kind of loop. Theyre looping it through the minds of other people and then theyre looping it back inside the space of their own mind. And so I think the monks who have been living in this kind of hybrid space for hundreds and hundreds of years actually were onto intermittent collaboration long before the researchers got to it.

ezra klein

Theres a bit of a tension here between parts of your book that are all about movement and collaboration and thinking with other peoples minds, and then you need walls and you need things to be quiet and you want to be able to shut out distractions. Can you talk a bit about that? Because theres a way of reading this stuff where every study on its own its like, this thing makes you more productive and also its opposite makes you more productive. How do you balance all of it?

annie murphy paul

Well, I did sit with all this material for a very long time. This is one of those books that took a while. And I really did choose those examples and offer those recommendations that had the weight of evidence behind them. And people are different. And so theyll find that different things work for them. And in fact, on Twitter Ive heard a lot of people who say, hey, I work really great in coffee shops, like the real thing, like coffee shops. And I think theres probably some interesting reasons behind that. But I also do think that psychology has landed on some pretty basic ideas and recommendations for how we work best. A couple that we havent mentioned yet are that we think best in spaces where we feel like we have a sense of ownership and control. It concerns me that so many offices that are coming back online now are adopting this hot desking or hoteling model where its like, you come in, you grab a desk. It wasnt your desk yesterday. Its not going to be your desk tomorrow. I think thats probably not an ideal situation for supporting intelligent thought. Likewise, we think better when we have cues of identity around us that remind us who we are and what were doing in that particular setting and cues of belonging that remind us of the meaningful groups to which we belong. And all those things are stripped away and gone when were just occupying a desk in a very temporary way, which seems to be the model that many offices are moving toward.

ezra klein

One of my hypotheses reading the book and thinking back on my own experience is also that maybe all of these things work, but they dont work all at the same time. And that always struck me as the odd irony of open floor or open office plans. And you tap this in the book, that theres some evidence that when companies move to being an open plan office, they often see a reduction in the amount of collaboration and conversation that happens. And when I used to do that, I had noise canceling headphones on all the time, and I was simultaneously always over socialized and a little under socialized, which is to say that I couldnt get away from people. So its not like I was yearning for more people. But the interactions I was having were not deep and they were not interactions I often wanted. So at the same time, it wasnt that I was getting my social needs met. And I thought back to other times when Ive been in offices or in more cubicles when youre working and you want to leave the office and talk to people. You want to move to that other modality, which I guess speaks to your idea of looping. It seems to me theres a need to actually fully change the modalities, and the problem is when you try to combine too many of them at once. So youre in an open office where youre around people and youre also on Slack where youre digitally around people, but you have noise canceling headphones in, so in theory youre not. And you just kind of keep going like this and youre stacking them all in tension with each other instead of moving one to the next to the next in a more intuitive way.

annie murphy paul

Well, one of my goals with this book was to give people alternatives to this reigning brain- bound model, which tends to be very rigid, and as we said, imagines that the good student or the good worker is someone who sits quietly and still and doesnt talk and is just sitting there until the work gets done. And that we actually need to acquire a kind of second education. We have this education and training within the workplace that tells us how to use our brains. Our brains have been cultivated, but how to use these outside the brain resources in a skillful way to bring in the right resource at the right time. Thats not something anyones ever taught us. Weve had to teach ourselves to the extent that we know how to do it. And so I agree; its not as if you can just pile up one technique on top of another and presto, youre a genius. Its more like we need to develop the flexibility and the knowledge of when to use which tool when. I mean, there might be times when a brain- bound approach is really appropriate. I am myself a very brain bound person. And I think that in some ways, writers write what they need to hear. [LAUGHS]

ezra klein

Theres definitely something to that. [MUSIC PLAYING] Let me ask you about another of the techniques in here, or the spaces that you explore in here, which is offloading. Can you tell me a bit about offloading?

annie murphy paul

Yeah. So offloading, this is probably the technique that has made the biggest difference in my own work. We really as a culture  again, this brain bound ethos we have  we really valorize people who can do things in their head. If you think of the memory champions who can calculate however many digits of pi or chess grandmasters who can work out the whole game in their head. We think thats so amazing. And it is an amazing human feat. But really what produces effective work in our own daily lives often involves offloading our mental contents onto physical space, whether thats a whiteboard or a set of post-it notes, which is my favorite tool, or onto multiple monitors so that we can start using this whole other suite of abilities that are built into the human organism. We have evolved to sort of effortlessly use these spatial and navigational capacities that our bodies have to use our spatial memory, to move through space in ways that allow us to get a new perspective on things, to manipulate tools. And when we can turn our ideas and pieces of information effectively into manipulable objects and into a 3D landscape that we can navigate through, we all of a sudden have access to all these embodied resources that are wasted when were just sitting there very still looking at a small screen.

ezra klein

Two questions on this. So one, why is the particular material or medium that we offload to so important? You just mentioned looking at a small screen. I was thinking as you said it that  so my version of offloading is my workstation is I have a computer and then I keep next to it two notebooks at all times. And one notebook is for any to do item that ever pops into my head. Email this person. Call the doctor. Write a column. Whatever it might be. Just anything that is, it has to happen later, and then another just for notes and ideas. But I found over time I couldnt do that on the computer. I have all kinds of to- do apps and note taking apps, but I had to move over to paper, which has a different feeling when Im on it. So you talked about screens. Why do we think differently when looking at different things?

annie murphy paul

Thats really interesting. Well, the size of the screen matters. As I mentioned, theres a lot of benefits to be gotten from having multiple or very large screens. And thats because it consumes cognitive bandwidth to have to scroll and make things bigger or smaller or find where we filed something. All of that gets offloaded when its spread out in front of us and we can remember with our spatial memory, oh, that piece of information is over here on my right, rather than having to navigate with our electronic tools. And so its not necessarily that screens are the problem, because big screens can and do enhance our thinking. On the other hand, I write a lot in the book about how artists and designers and people who swear by the pencil and the conversation that happens between pencil and hand and eye and paper that, again, its kind of a misunderstanding to think that the brain conceptualizes an idea or an image and then tells the hand how to execute it and then its done. Thats a very computer-like idea of how work happens. Instead, artists and designers find that its much more of an iterative process where they draw something. They make a mark, and then the mark reminds them of something. And they add another mark. And its a conversation, again, between hand and eye and paper and pencil. And I think the materials we use to do our thinking with, our external outside the brain thinking, can make a big difference in terms of what kinds of thoughts were able to have.

ezra klein

You dont talk too much about why this might work worse on screens, but let me try something out on you, which is that screens also have a pretty intense conversation. So when I move to write something on my to do notebook, it just goes on the notebook and thats all that really happens. If I go open up my app, its like my dock expands and I see notifications and all kinds of things begin to happen. And so its a conversation not just between your eye and your pencil and your paper, but everything that your computer is doing. When Im looking right now at the screen on which were recording, Ive got all  I can see some tabs. I can see extensions. And if Im thoughtful about it, I remember to get rid of that stuff before I try to get into a focused place. But every time I change a screen, a lot more comes up. So is part of it simply that when youre offloading, part of the danger is you dont want to onboard new things? Youre actually trying to get things off. And computers, phones, et cetera, so many of the things are built to onboard new things in order to capture our attention for a little bit longer.

annie murphy paul

Yeah, no doubt. I mean, that makes me think of how ecological psychologists talk about how different tools have different affordances. We can do different things with them. Were led to do different things with them. And part of the beauty of an old fashioned print book or a notebook that is just  or a sketchpad that just has a bunch of blank pages  is theres not all those built in distractions that are just waiting to leap out at you. And the idea of the extended mind actually originated not in thinking about how we extend our minds with the body or with spaces or with other people. Those kind of came in later, because the idea of the extended mind is so generative and can operate as this kind of umbrella concept. Originally the idea of the extended mind was looking at tools like a notebook, like a smartphone, and how they assume some of our mental functions for us and thereby extend our minds. But I am really interested in the ways that many of our tools, especially our digital tools, dont end up extending our minds at all. They actually contract them. I could write another book called the contracted mind. But I think we have to, again, be really intentional and really skillful in the way that we use our devices to make sure that they are extending our minds in the way that they can and not actually diminishing our thinking.

ezra klein

Well, lets talk about the distinction you made right there between expanding and contracting the mind. Because a point you make in the book is that we often think about the demand side of our attention, which is to say, we think about what we want to devote our attention to and that we need to be tougher about being rigorous about where we put our attention. We need to work harder at devoting our attention. But you talk about working on the supply side of our attention, trying to expand the amount of attention we have, trying to replenish the attention we have. So how does using that framework change what you do? If Im tired or Im getting ready for a podcast, what do I do to expand the supply side of my attention?

annie murphy paul

Well, it helps to know that  Im going to be a broken record with this  the human brain evolved in a very specific environment, and that environment was outside. And thats how our forebears spent their time for hundreds of thousands of years. Its a fairly recent development that we spend all this time, more than 90 percent of our time, inside buildings and inside cars and even when were outside in sort of urban, highly built up urban settings. And the thing about the outdoors and the way that the human species evolved in the outdoors, all the information that we encounter, the sensory information that we encounter in nature, is processed really easily and effortlessly and efficiently by the brain. Our sensory faculties are kind of tuned to the kind of information and stimuli that we encounter in nature. And so this is, again, this is the scientific reason behind what everybody knows, which is that you feel more relaxed and more at ease when you take a walk outside and when you spend time in nature. But what that has to do with attention is that that kind of diffuse attention that were able to spend in nature, where were not focusing very intently on anything but were just kind of allowing the gentle movements and the sort of soft contours of the things that we see outside just entertain our attention but in this very diffuse way, and the phrase psychologists use that I like is called soft fascination. Its not a hard edged concentration. Its a kind of soft fascination that you might experience when youre looking at leaves rustling in the wind or watching waves on the ocean. That state restores our attention. It kind of refills the tank in a sense. And so then we can return to our desk and we can return to that hard edged kind of concentration that we have to do to complete our studies or do our work. So I would say in your example that if you need to concentrate but youre feeling frazzled, even a brief look out the window can have this kind of restorative effect. But ideally, a longer walk in nature would be good.

ezra klein

So I have two questions about that. And let me start with this one. There is this overwhelming amount of research that Ive read in all these different books about how much better the mind works in nature and how nature replenishes our memory and it makes us more creative. And have somebody take a walk and then have them solve problems and their problem solving is better afterwards. And yet people are much more productive in cities. The locus of economic and to some degree idea generation is going more and more towards agglomerations of people. Its not like per person rural areas are wildly more productive than urban ones. And it seems to me there is some tension between how clear the research seems to be that nature is good for our minds and how clear the actual patterns of economic and creative growth are that being around a lot of other people in a concrete jungle is good for idea generation and human organization and economic organization. How do you reconcile those?

annie murphy paul

Thats an interesting point, Ezra. I mean, I would point out that even within cities and suburbs, theres a really unequal distribution of access to green areas and green spaces. And your paper had an excellent article about this a couple of weeks ago, about how much more tree cover affluent areas have as opposed to poor areas. And so even within those urban environments, theres often a chance to go out to a park or to encounter green space in some other way, a green roof, for example, or a garden planted within a building. But that actually brings up for me a point that is very dear to my heart that emerged from this book. As I said, I felt sort of radicalized by this book. And one thing I realized as I was writing it is that there is a kind of inequality that we dont really recognize, again, because our brain-bound society has this sort of blind spot for all the ways that we think outside the brain. Theres an extension inequality. By that I mean that people dont have equal access to the mental extensions that allow us to think well. And differential access to green space, I think, is an example of that. Some people are able to restore their attention in green spaces and return to their work refreshed and able to focus, and some people simply dont have access to that kind of opportunity. And yet we dont really see that as the kind of inequality that affects how well people can perform and how we judge them in terms of their performance.

ezra klein

So if all thats true, why do so many people live in New York? Why is there so much creativity there? Why is there so much economic generation there? Why dont these studies that seem very compelling one by one at the micro level ladder up to the macro patterns of our economy?

annie murphy paul

Well, people are complicated, I would say, and theres all these different factors that were talking about, and we havent even really gotten to this idea of how we extend our minds with the minds of other people. And it may be that in the case of a place like New York, where theres this intense creative activity going on, having access to a critical mass of these intelligent, creative, stimulating people is what really makes the difference. I would also point out that just because you live in a rural area doesnt mean youre outside any more than the average urban dweller. Americans spend very little time outside, and thats true across the kinds of places that people live. Its just how we operate these days. Its what modern life is like for all of us.

ezra klein

So then lets move to this question of the inequality of it all. Because everything weve been talking about, from having control of your workplace to having greenery around you to, I mean, you talk about gestures, and theres even an inequality in the gestures that poor kids and richer kids see growing up. Theres a tremendous amount of inequality in these mind extenders. And thats a real problem that there is not, I think, an obvious agenda for fixing. So how did this make you look at inequality in cognitive development and then in the economy differently?

annie murphy paul

Well, it makes me think of an encounter I had. I live in New Haven, Connecticut, and I teach Yale students sometimes and I encounter them a lot. And I was describing this idea of the extended mind to a group of them recently, and I was especially interested to hear what they thought, because this is a generation that grew up extending their minds with their smartphones, that never didnt have smartphones around. So I thought it would be really interesting to hear what they thought about it. And many of them did seem excited by the idea or interested in the idea. But there was one young man who just looked more and more perturbed as I described the idea and its implications. And finally he burst out, this is a very dangerous idea. And I thought, why? Im interested that you have that response. Why? And as he explained, it came to seem that this young man who, following the dictates of his culture and his particular subculture, had been striving his whole life for this kind of individual achievement and had been rewarded very handsomely for it. And the idea that actually maybe it wasnt all his brain that did it was quite threatening. And I think as the implications of my own research and reporting and writing were becoming clear to me, I too had to kind of wrestle with all these assumptions Id made about what constitutes individual achievement and what intelligent thought is and where it happens and how to foster it. More than any book Ive written, I would say it really kind of forced a reconsideration for me of many long held assumptions and beliefs.

ezra klein

Because here is my concern. And I get why that student said these are dangerous ideas. That as these ideas filter out, if they are true, and they seem true to me, they are going to be just one more generator of inequality as people come to understand them. That you will have rich kids being sent to schools where you can move around, which is already to some degree true, and poor kids in schools where you really got to sit your butt at your desk all day. And it kind of goes all up and down the line, from trees to your office space to the kind of job you have, and even just having a more accurate conception of your own mind allows you to work with it differently. And that will filter first too. So that to me is the slightly scary thing about this whole set of ideas, which is that on the one hand, its a very structural way to me of thinking about cognitive capacity. And it allows you to think about deficiencies in it and inequalities in it from a structural perspective, not just about insufficient willpower or stick-to-itness on the part of people. But on the other hand, it really implicates a lot of our society in ways that would be hard to change. So the people who will get to change them are the people who have the resources and the freedom and the employers who will make new accommodations and try to read the research. And so it just becomes one more way that we widen the chasms in our society.

annie murphy paul

Well, a more optimistic perspective, and its the one that I tend to take, is that the scariest situation of all would be not even seeing that these mental extensions exist and have an impact on how well we think, which is the state weve been in, I think, for a long time. So the first step would be to see and acknowledge the role of mental extensions in thinking and how people dont have equitable access to mental extensions. And then a second step might be starting to adjust our systems of assessment and judgement to take into account the kinds of mental extensions that students and workers have access to or dont. And then the third and the most difficult step of all would be to try to actually in some ways redistribute mental extensions, equalize them, make sure that everyone has access to these basic goods, these raw materials of intelligent thought. And yes, that will be incredibly difficult. But I think if we have that as a goal, thats much better than this sort of benighted and blinkered state were in now where we think that all that matters is how big a lump of brain you have inside your skull, which is really such a constrained and impoverished idea of what intelligence is and where it comes from.

ezra klein

I think thats a good place and an optimistic place to end. So let me ask you always our final question, which is, what are three books you would recommend people use to extend their minds with?

annie murphy paul

Well, the first is Supersizing the Mind by Andy Clark. Hes the originator of the extended mind theory. And although hes an ivory tower philosopher, he writes like a dream. Hes so funny and clever, and I really enjoy his writing always. The second is Mind in Motion by Barbara Tversky. Shes a professor at Teachers College in New York. And thats about how the body affects the way the mind operates, and its just a great primer on embodied cognition. And then the third one, I thought it was going to be kind of a wild card out from left field, but actually we touched on it quite explicitly during this conversation, Ezra. Its Thoughts Without a Thinker by Mark Epstein, who is a psychiatrist who practices Western psychotherapy but also is a scholar of Buddhism and integrates the two. And you were saying in our conversation earlier today, who is the one whos thinking? Who is the person whos having these thoughts? I really think Mark Epstein takes on those questions in a really interesting way.

ezra klein

Annie Murphy Paul, thank you very much.

annie murphy paul

Thank you, Ezra. [MUSIC PLAYING]

ezra klein
Chris Giordano, president of the West 64th-67th Street Block Association, called it a bait-and-switch. Even if you take away the issue of shadows on your neighborhood and a skyline scarred by a building thats too tall, he said, we still find it to be immoral. We want there to be reasonable development, but thats not what theyre doing.

Two groups, Landmark West and the City Club of New York, a nonprofit focused on smart urban development, filed challenges with the Board of Standards and Appeals, opposing the voids and arguing that the buildings height presented a hazard for the citys fire department. Each challenge moved on to the state Supreme Court, where City Club argued and won its case (which Extell is now trying to appeal) and Landmark West is awaiting a court date to argue its latest appeal.

When the citys Department of Buildings asked Extell to amend its design in the spring of 2019, the developer came back with a proposal that still includes three mechanical spaces that together reduce the total height for mechanical spaces by just 16 feet, from 192 to 176 feet.

The opposition groups are claiming at least a partial victory out of this continuing saga: In 2019, the New York City Council voted to close the zoning loophole that allowed excessive voids.

This isnt nipping it in the bud, but it is making it a little more difficult, Mr. Khorsandi said. Billionaires Row is 15 years old now, and people are just now starting to wise up to whats happening there, he said. Theyre bogarting the sky and pushing away the public.

200 Amsterdam

At 200 Amsterdam, a 52-story condominium on 69th Street, the developers purchased unused development rights not just from adjacent buildings but from multiple neighboring lots, creating a 39-sided zoning lot that critics described as gerrymandered to get the 668-foot height they wanted.

SJP Properties and Mitsui Fudosan America have spent the last two years in court and appear to have won out. The Committee for Environmentally Sound Development and the Municipal Arts Society of New York, which filed the original lawsuit in 2018, claimed that the building should be scaled down since the original zoning lot wouldnt allow such a tall building. In February 2020, a State Supreme Court judge sided with the community organizations and ordered the developer to remove the top 20 floors.
But bites are extraordinarily rare, she said  globally, there are about 70 to 80 unprovoked bites a year, and about five deaths  and sharks usually flee after physical contact with a person.

A shark attack is a story of intent, said Christopher Pepin-Neff, a lecturer in public policy at the University of Sydney who has studied human perceptions of sharks. But sharks dont know what people are. They dont know when youre in the boat. They dont know what a propeller is. Its not an attack.

In Australia, the Queensland government offers guidance to minimize your risk of a negative encounter with a shark. Western Australia uses bite and incident in its alert system and sometimes shark interaction, usually when there is no bite.

Most unprovoked shark bites are reported in the United States, where the shift in language began in earnest within the past 10 years. For example, fish and wildlife officials in California have tracked injuries, deaths and incidents since about 2017 for cases where a shark touches people or their surfboard, kayak or other item. In Hawaii, officials have used human-shark encounters for nearly a decade.

A Hawaii government website notes that dog bites are called dog attacks in only extraordinary cases. Dan Dennison, a spokesman for the Department of Land and Natural Resources, said that whenever he had been asked why a shark attacked someone, My response is always, Until we can interview the shark we have no idea.

One exception to the rebranding trend appears to be Florida, where the Fish and Wildlife Commission has a section on its website about shark attacks. A spokeswoman, Carly Jones, said that the commission does not have involvement with this topic.

Whatever term is used, shark scientists stressed that sharks are wild animals and should be treated with caution and respect. The risk of a serious bite is extraordinarily small  people are more likely to die from a bee sting, sunstroke or bicycle accident  but shark bites can cause devastating harm.
The new arrangement is akin to the collaborations Mr. Abloh specializes in  with Ikea, Nike, Champion, Vitra and Equinox, to name a few  but pumped up on a protein drink and with long-term implications. Mr. Abloh isnt just getting a cool-sounding new gig; hes getting an equity stake in whatever cross-pollinated projects he develops.

We try to make the founders turn over in their graves, but in the best way, Mr. Burke said. Some of our biggest brands have a tendency not to see its in their best interests to stay plugged into the contemporary world.

Being plugged into the contemporary world has not been a problem for Mr. Abloh, who is often compared to Jeff Koons, refers to himself as a maker rather than a designer and touts the 3 percent approach, which holds that changing just 3 percent of a design is enough to make it qualify as new.

LVMH has been vocal about its commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, though it has an entirely white board and executive committee. It did not help that LVMH put Fenty, its short-lived experiment at building a direct-to-consumer brand from scratch with Rihanna, on hold last year (though the company remains involved with Rihanna through her cosmetics brand).

The new arrangement with Mr. Abloh and Off-White is part of a flurry of activity on the part of LVMH. It bought Tiffany last year in the largest deal in luxury (its new ad campaign reads: Not your mothers Tiffany). Last week it announced it was taking a minority stake in Phoebe Philos new namesake venture; last month it reopened the renovated department store La Samaritaine with an appearance by President Emmanuel Macron; and later this year the ultraluxury Cheval Blanc hotel and Dior spa will open in Paris.
This decade of data is what drove the universitys new experiment in artificial intelligence.

Dr. Finn and her team built a neural network, a mathematical system that can learn skills from vast amounts of data. By pinpointing patterns in thousands of cat photos, a neural network can learn to identify a cat. By analyzing hundreds of old phone calls, it can learn to recognize spoken words. Or, by examining the way teaching assistants evaluate coding tests, it can learn to evaluate these tests on its own.

The Stanford system spent hours analyzing examples from old midterms, learning from a decade of possibilities. Then it was ready to learn more. When given just a handful of extra examples from the new exam offered this spring, it could quickly grasp the task at hand.

It sees many kinds of problems, said Mike Wu, another researcher who worked on the project. Then it can adapt to problems it has never seen before.

This spring, the system provided 16,000 pieces of feedback, and students agreed with the feedback 97.9 percent of the time, according to a study by the Stanford researchers. By comparison, students agreed with the feedback from human instructors 96.7 percent of the time.

Mr. Pham, an engineering student at Lund University in Sweden, was surprised the technology worked so well. Although the automated tool was unable to evaluate one of his programs (presumably because he had written a snippet of code unlike anything the A.I. had ever seen), it both identified specific bugs in his code, including what is known in computer programming and mathematics as a fence post error, and suggested ways of fixing them. It is seldom you receive such well thought out feedback, Mr. Pham said.

The technology was effective because its role was so sharply defined. In taking the test, Mr. Pham wrote code with very specific aims, and there were only so many ways that he and other students could go wrong.

But given the right data, neural networks can learn a range of tasks. This is the same fundamental technology that identifies faces in the photos you post to Facebook, recognizes the commands you bark into your iPhone and translates from one language to another on services like Skype and Google Translate. For the Stanford team and other researchers, the hope is that these techniques can automate education in many other ways.
Beginning Aug. 9, Canada plans to reopen its border to nonessential American visitors  including tourists  as long as they are fully vaccinated. The decision comes after months of public pressure, largely from states and communities that share the 5,500-mile border and experienced more than a year of family separation, lost work and social upheaval. In recent weeks, Canadas vaccination rate has surged  Oxford Universitys Our World in Data site shows Canada leading the world in vaccinations  with 70 percent of residents at least partially vaccinated, approaching Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus vaccine targets for reopening.

Americans traveling to Canada must be fully vaccinated with one of the vaccines approved in Canada  including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson  and submit proof via the governments ArriveCAN app or website. They must also provide proof of a negative Covid-19 test taken within 72 hours of arrival in Canada.

With the relaxed restrictions, tourism officials are banking on an influx of visitors, not just to see family and friends, but to travel in a vast country rich with cultural influences from around the world.

From the 17th-century French founding of Quebec City to the immigrant waves from China to the Vancouver area, many parts of Canada bear the influence of other places. For those Americans who arent yet ready to cross an ocean as the world continues to reckon with Covid-19, Canada offers the world without requiring you leave North America, all at a favorable exchange rate  one U.S. dollar is currently about 1.28 Canadian dollars.
The new Covid activists

As the U.S. begins to emerge from the pandemic, survivors of Covid-19 and the loved ones of those who died from the disease are mobilizing to create a grass-roots force  and push for change.

Groups like Covid Survivors for Change are calling for actions such as authorizing disability benefits, granting paid sick leave, conducting research on long Covid, instituting a commission to investigate the pandemic and establishing a national holiday to honor victims.

Next week, scores of survivors and family members are planning to descend on Washington for Covid Victims Families and Survivors Lobby Days  a three-day event with speakers, art installations and meetings with politicians. Like breast cancer survivors who adopted the pink ribbon, Covid-19 survivor groups have adopted their own symbol  a yellow heart.

In many ways, the movement is similar to the one started by people who lost loved ones in the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But Sept. 11 brought the country together, while the pandemic has torn a divided nation further apart. It is perhaps paradoxical, then, that these victims and relatives are asking that partisanship be set aside and that Covid-19 be treated like any other disease.
Code compliance and structural engineering rarely animate voters the same way as taxes or crime, or even street repaving, so building safety is often relegated to the margins of municipal governance, with little attention and insufficient funding.

Many places have rigorous inspections and permitting requirements for new structures, but there is often limited follow-up in the decades after construction is completed. Supervision of existing structures is delegated to a patchwork of local and state governments and condo boards. And even when rules are in place  like in Kansas City, where owners of private parking garages are supposed to file periodic inspection reports with the city  compliance and enforcement are often lacking.

I just think its been a blind spot for states and cities for a long, long time, said Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, who has proposed an ordinance that would require facade inspections every five years and structural inspections every 10 years for high-rises. Were building a lot of buildings without ongoing safety checks after a reasonable amount of time.

Though large, occupied buildings rarely collapse in the United States unless there is an earthquake, terrorist attack or some other precipitating event, a significant building failure can be catastrophic.
Good morning.

Were just about two months away from a closely watched election that will indelibly shape the states future. And as of this weekend, we know  for the most part  who will be on the ballot.

I am, of course, referring to the special election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, which is set to take place on Sept. 14. Voters will be asked two questions: First, should Newsom be kicked out of his job early? And second, who should replace him if the majority of voters say that he should, indeed, get the boot?

On Saturday, Shirley Weber, the states elections chief, posted a list of candidates vying to take over for the governor, which will be certified this week. On it were 41 Californians  the ones who turned in their paperwork by the Friday deadline.

Heres what you need to know about who is on the list, who is not and whats ahead:

Forty-one is a lot fewer than the 74 who officially announced their intent to run, and its also a lot fewer than the more than 100 candidates on the ballot in the 2003 recall of Gray Davis. Whats up with that?
The Biden administration disclosed previously classified details on Tuesday about the breadth of state-sponsored cyberattacks on American oil and gas pipelines over the past decade, as part of a warning to pipeline owners to increase the security of their systems to stave off future attacks.

From 2011 to 2013, Chinese-backed hackers targeted, and in many cases breached, nearly two dozen companies that own such pipelines, the F.B.I. and the Department of Homeland Security revealed in an alert on Tuesday. For the first time, the agencies said they judged that the intrusions were likely intended to gain strategic access to the industrial control networks that run the pipelines for future operations rather than for intellectual property theft. In other words, the hackers were preparing to take control of the pipelines, rather than just stealing the technology that allowed them to function.

Of 23 operators of natural gas pipelines that were subjected to a form of email fraud known as spear phishing, the agencies said that 13 were successfully compromised, while three were near misses. The extent of intrusions into seven operators was unknown because of an absence of data.

The disclosures come as the federal government tries to galvanize the pipeline industry after a ransomware group based in Russia easily forced the shutdown of a pipeline network that provides nearly half the gasoline, jet fuel and diesel that flows up the East Coast. That attack on Colonial Pipeline  aimed at the companys business systems, not the operations of the pipeline itself  led the company to shut off its shipments for fear that it did not know what the attackers would be capable of next. Long gasoline lines and shortages followed, underscoring for President Biden the urgency of defending the United States pipelines and critical infrastructure from cyberattacks.
The former Guantanamo detainee Abdul Latif Nasser was reunited with his family in Casablanca after U.S. troops turned him over to Moroccan state custody, his lawyers said Tuesday.

U.S. troops airlifted Mr. Nasser, 56, from Guantanamo Bay on Sunday in the first release of a detainee from the prison by the Biden administration. American and Moroccan officials had agreed to security arrangements for his return in the last days of the Obama administration, but the deal was put on hold when President Donald J. Trump halted all transfers upon taking office.

Image Abdul Latif Nasser, a citizen of Morocco, had been held as a law-of-war detainee for more than 19 years.

He is ecstatic, said Bernard E. Harcourt, a New York-based lawyer and law professor, who represented Mr. Nasser in federal court. He and his co-counsel, Thomas Anthony Durkin, spoke to Mr. Nasser by phone at his family home in Casablanca, and declared the former prisoner of more than 19 years in good spirits. He was particularly buoyed by being reunited with extended family members who had gathered for Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holy day known as the Feast of Sacrifice, Mr. Harcourt added.
An aide to Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tested positive for the coronavirus after coming into contact last week with a group of Texas lawmakers who were visiting Washington, some of whom later tested positive for the virus.

Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Ms. Pelosi, said on Tuesday that a member of her staff, a senior spokesperson who had been fully vaccinated, had tested positive on Monday. He said the aide had had no contact with the speaker since being exposed to the virus.

At a news conference on Tuesday, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said a fully vaccinated White House official had also tested positive for the virus off campus, was experiencing mild symptoms, and remained away from the complex awaiting a test to confirm the diagnosis.

She would not divulge whether the aide had been with the Texas lawmakers, all of whom say they were fully vaccinated as well, who made a high-profile trip to Washington in an effort to block the adoption of a restrictive election law. Axios reported that both the Pelosi aide and the White House aide had had contact with the Texans.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday threw out a Republican lawsuit against Speaker Nancy Pelosi that had sought to take down the proxy voting system adopted by the House of Representatives to allow for remote legislating during the coronavirus pandemic.

In a 12-page opinion, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that courts did not have jurisdiction under the Constitution to wade into the Houses rules and procedures, and that the case should be dismissed. The action upheld an earlier decision by a Federal District Court and did not examine the merits of Republicans claims that the proxy voting system set up in May 2020 ran afoul of the Constitution.

The district court dismissed the suit for lack of jurisdiction, Sri Srinivasan, the courts chief judge, wrote on behalf of the panel. The court concluded that the resolution and its implementation lie within the immunity for legislative acts conferred by the Constitutions Speech or Debate Clause. We agree, and we thus affirm the district courts dismissal of the case.

The decision was a setback for Republicans, who must now decide whether to appeal the ruling to the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia or the Supreme Court, or simply drop their challenge. In a bad sign for Republicans chances of success, Judge Srinivasan was joined in the decision by Judges Judith W. Rogers, a nominee of President Bill Clinton, and Justin R. Walker, a nominee of President Donald J. Trump.
WASHINGTON  Democratic state lawmakers from Texas arrived in Washington last week with plans to apply unending pressure on the Senate to pass voting rights protections that would help counteract a Republican election overhaul bill back home.

Then a Covid-19 outbreak stalled their progress.

The entire delegation from Texas is now stuck at a Washington hotel after six of the Democratic state representatives tested positive for the coronavirus, and an official from Speaker Nancy Pelosis office who met with them has also tested positive. All of those who have tested positive are fully vaccinated, but nobody in the capital is now particularly eager to meet in person with the group, which has resorted to virtual meetings.

In the meantime, Senate Democratic leaders remain focused on passing an infrastructure package, President Biden is in a standoff with social media companies, and there has been no public sign that the Texas Democrats have won over any senators who werent already on board with their push to pass new federal voting legislation without clearing a 60-vote Senate threshold. They have not secured a group meeting with Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona or with any Republicans. (A state senator, who is not part of the group of House Democrats who first left Texas, did meet with Ms. Sinema, the senators office said.)

And they cannot go home to Texas for another two and a half weeks or they will risk being arrested for leaving the state.
New York State issued an air quality health advisory for Tuesday, lasting until midnight, because of high levels of fine particulate matter in the air, which wildfires contribute to.

By late afternoon, the Air Quality Index for New York City had reached 170, well above average. The concentration of microscopic particulate pollution called PM2.5 was nine times above exposure recommendations from the World Health Organization.

In a statement, the Department of Environmental Conservation noted that while it was not rare for traveling wildfire smoke to reach the New York region, the smoke usually stayed high in the atmosphere. But in this case, data showed that the smoke is extending down to the ground level, since much of it is coming from relatively nearby fires in western Ontario and eastern Manitoba.

Climate change is making wildfires larger and more intense, with results visible from satellites and on the ground. The Bootleg Fire in Oregon now covers more than 388,000 acres and is so intense that it is essentially making its own weather. Satellite images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show smoke from that fire and others making its way across wide swaths of the United States and Canada. It first reached New York City around July 15.

Mr. Cristantello said that a cold front pushing through the New York City area on Wednesday should clear out the haze, but it could return if the fires persist.
Haitis national police announced on Tuesday they had arrested three police officers in connection with the assassination of President Jovenel Moise, suggesting there may have been an infiltration of their force ahead of the killing.

The police named the three as Boni Gregoire, Clifton Hyppolite and Elie Jean Charles, but did not elaborate on the specific role they allegedly had played in the plot.

As the investigation progresses, one of the biggest questions swirling in Haiti is how attackers were able to so easily breach the presidents security detail. Impatience has been growing at the pace of the investigation, with many Haitians asking why so many key aspects of the crime remain a mystery.

The arrests came as Haiti held a ceremony on Tuesday to pay homage to Mr. Moise, a polarizing figure who was ensnared by accusations of corruption and increasingly autocratic actions during his presidency, but whose death has shaken many Haitians. The country on Tuesday was also poised to replace the interim prime minister, Claude Joseph, with Ariel Henry, a neurosurgeon who had been appointed to the position by the president shortly before he was killed.
From Chinas perspective, the blows from the United States just keep coming. Sanctions and export controls over the crackdown in Xinjiang. A warning to international businesses about the deteriorating climate in Hong Kong. The rejection of visas for students and researchers suspected of having links to the Peoples Liberation Army.

Now the United States has rallied a broad array of nations to accuse the Chinese Ministry of State Security not only of cyberespionage but also of hacking for profit and political intrigue.

The torrent of attacks has infuriated Beijing, but six months into the tenure of President Biden, the Communist Party leadership has yet to find an effective strategy to counter the American moves.

In Beijings view, Mr. Biden has taken a more strategic approach than his predecessor, enlisting allies to join his campaign against Chinese behavior in ways that appear to have frustrated officials. China has resorted to its usual instinct for tit-for-tat measures, while lashing out with a heavy dose of vitriol and sarcasm.
DHAKA, Bangladesh  Think of it as Amazon, but for cows, goats and sheep. And this holiday season, the sales are skyrocketing.

Every year, farmers in Bangladesh, home to about 10 percent of the worlds Muslim population, rear millions of animals for sacrifice during the festival of Eid al-Adha, the commemoration of a sacrifice made by the prophet Abraham. Families crowd markets to pick out the prime animals for their celebrations.

But this year, amid a surge in coronavirus infections across the country, buyers and sellers have increasingly shifted that interaction online.

Farmers had worried that an estimated 12 million animals for sale, worth billions of dollars, would be affected after the government announced a pandemic lockdown in the weeks before the festival.
BRUSSELS  Poland and Hungary were criticized sharply Tuesday by the European Commission in a set of reports that said recent actions by the countries threatened judicial independence and undermined the rule of law.

The reports reviewed the state of the rule of law in all 27 European Union member states, and its conclusions about Poland and Hungary were severe, notwithstanding their relatively bland bureaucratic language.

Their impact, however, is likely to be small.

The European Union has no effective tools for quickly disciplining member states, and a new initiative to at least allow the withholding of E.U. coronavirus recovery funds from countries found to be undermining the rule of law will not be put to the test before autumn, if then.

Hungary and Poland get the most attention because they are considered the main offenders when it comes to undermining the rule of law, the independence of the judiciary and media pluralism. But numerous other member states, including Austria, Bulgaria, Malta, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, also have serious problems with the same issues.
Jean-Francois Julliard, the executive director of Greenpeace France, said that the law didnt live up to the emergency of the situation.

Its a missed opportunity, Mr. Julliard said at a small demonstration of about 30 activists in Paris on Tuesday.

The climate law was passed in final votes by the upper and lower houses of Frances Parliament after both houses compromised on a common version of the bill earlier this month. The Senate, which is dominated by the right, passed the law with a raised-hand vote; the National Assembly, where Mr. Macrons party has a majority, passed the law with 233 votes in favor and 35 against.

The law is a hodgepodge of bans, financial incentives and other measures that aim to cut waste, improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions in day-to-day life. Some will go into effect immediately.
As governments have learned which operations will draw what sort of response, the world has gradually converged on unwritten rules for cyber-competition.

The scholars Michael P. Fischerkeller and Richard J. Harknett have described the result as competitive interaction within those boundaries, rather than spiraling escalation to new levels of conflict.

It is not that governments promise never to cross those bounds. Rather, they understand that doing so will bring certain punishments that may not be worth enduring.

The scholars called these norms still in a formative phase, waiting to be proven out by governments testing one anothers tolerance and the consequences of exceeding it. But they have gelled enough that the accepted contours are coming into view.

Mr. Obamas reference to secret and public retaliations hinted at what has since become standard procedure. Routine hacks may provoke a secret retaliation  for instance taking down government systems responsible for the incident, to punish without risking escalation or a broader diplomatic breakdown.

But governments may answer major hacks with a public counterattack, signaling to the target and other governments that the incident went too far. The United States, for instance, let it be known that its hackers infiltrated Russias power grid, a calibrated escalation meant to convince Moscow that election meddling was not worth the trouble.

Russias 2016 conduct also led officials to pursue deterrence by denial  methods to make similar hacks less likely to succeed. The goal was to raise the cost of such attacks while reducing their benefit.
SRINAGAR, Kashmir  Manmeet Kour Bali had to defend her marriage in court.

A Sikh by birth, Ms. Bali converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man. Her parents objected to a marriage outside their community and filed a police complaint against her new husband.

In court last month, she testified that she had married for love, not because she was coerced, according to a copy of her statement reviewed by The New York Times. Days later, she ended up in Indias capital of New Delhi, married to a Sikh man.

Religious diversity has defined India for centuries, recognized and protected in the countrys Constitution. But interfaith unions remain rare, taboo and increasingly illegal.

A spate of new laws across India, in states ruled by Prime Minister Narendra Modis Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., are seeking to banish such unions altogether.
Samantha Jacobs

In 2020, a pandemic flipped the world upside down. As a PR agency rooted in travel and tourism with a deep passion for those we serve and what we do, we had two choices regarding how we could handle the most difficult challenge wed ever faced. We could sit back and watch to see what would happen, or we could leverage our innovative mindset to create a new way of doing business that would evolve with the times and set usand our clientsup for future success.

So, what did we do? We adapted, fast. With nearly every aspect of our lives transformed, we decided to flip the traditional agency model on its head, redefining our business, but doing so in a way that stayed true to our core philosophies. We evolved our approach in a way that showed our clientsand the industry at largethat we believe in the future of travel, we believe in them, were here for the long term, and by sticking together, we can come out of these difficult times stronger than ever.

A flexible client/agency model

As an independent, family-owned company, Hemsworth has the ability to be nimble and adapt with the times. As the reality of the pandemic set in last spring, we knew we had to get creative in terms of how we support the brands and companies that rely on us to share their stories. While weve always provided tailored programming, our pandemic evolution became focused on flexibility. We developed an entirely new structure that innovated the way many have traditionally thought about the client-agency relationship, launching our COVID-19 PR Stimulus Program.

This article is featured in O'Dwyer's July '21 Travel & Tourism PR Magazine

(view PDF version)

From upfront pro bono support to those that qualify and reduced retainers to a Flex Pay contract and the removal of set hourly fees or minimums, this initiative was a first-of-its-kind solution. It was a risk, but we suspected there was a need for something different, and we went for it. The industry took note, and we immediately saw that we were right in our thinking. Resources on the client side were being rapidly depleted. Brands were losing their in-house PR teams. Agency budgets were no longer what they once were. There was a need for quality agency resources under a more flexible structure, so that travel-centric businesses could get through these difficult times without completely abandoning their PR strategy.

Reaching consumers in innovative ways

Just as we were challenged to adapt our business in the midst of a pandemic, so were our clients. Hotels, resorts, tourist boards, cruise lines, travel brands  those we spoke to in the early pandemic daysand even much laterfound themselves challenged by the desire to reach their target audience in a thoughtful, engaging and yes, affordable way.

Even while travelers were sheltering in place at home, we knew from the conversations we were having with top media from around the world that people were craving inspiration and finding themselves overwhelmed at times by an increasing sense of wanderlust. As a result, virtual armchair tourism was born. Some might say this was a trend or short-term necessity, but we believe its something thats here to stay. Creating compelling branded travel and tourism campaigns that inspire travelers from home? Yes, please! When travelers are ready to go, they will. Nothing is quite like having your toes in the sand at your favorite beach resort or setting out to explore a new city on a bucket list adventure.

Our clients have had the unique opportunity to connect with travelersand mediaon a more personal and authentic level by providing a mental escape and establishing a deeper bond that will position them at the forefront for the industrys rebound. Weve had fun working with our clients to develop unique, cost-effective ways to build anticipation and demand, and we believe this is a concept to be embraced long-term.

Delivering content to media in new ways

Our approach to flexible communication with travelers, and creating unique client programming, carries over to the way we communicate with media, as well. When COVID hit, the media landscape was also turned completely upside down. Staff writers with whom we had longstanding relationships were laid off and found themselves embarking on freelance careers. Many publications suspended their print editions and sadly, a few of our favorite titles shuttered completely. Media corporations changed their approach to working in the office as well, so sending media materials or mailers in a traditional sense are no longer a dependable option with so many journalists and editors now working remote.

As the world begins to re-open, travel media are starting to have an appetite to get back out there, participating in hosted or individual press trips. But again, the impact of a pandemic has had a ripple effect. Many of those same journalists are still restricted by their parent corporations travel policies and rules around vaccines. As a result, weve begun embracing a new way of communication on behalf of our clients, with virtual press conferences and yes, even virtual press trips. Though challenging, finding new ways to communicate with the media has helped personalize our approach even more. And our clients are winning as a result.

Offering employee flexibility

As we navigated our way through the pandemic, we learned that flexibility was key not only for our clients and the media, but also for our team. According to a recent survey conducted by Wakefield Research for Graebel Companies Inc., nearly three in five workers (59 percent) said theyre more willing to relocate for work now than they were prior to the pandemic. In fact, 80 percent of workers would relocate during the pandemic, and theres a growing interest in relocation post-pandemic as workers pack their bags and set out to explore a new world of opportunities.

Weve always offered work-from-home days and relocation options but in the past, we were a bit hesitant to embrace the concept of full-time remote team members. That said, our thinking has evolved and again, we find ourselves committing to a flexible mindset. Travel is coming back with a bang and as weve worked to build an incredibly strong team to support our clients post-pandemic growth, weve done so with a new way of thinking. Weve adjusted our policies and now allow our team to work from any location. Weve hired team members from other markets with remote starts, allowing them to thoughtfully plan their relocations. As a result, weve added some incredibly talented new team members in the process, and weve added boots on the ground in new locations as well.

As an industry, were facing a new world. The way we live and work has drasticallyand, in some cases, permanentlychanged. Its time agency leaders embrace a new way of thinking about their service model, working in the spirit of absolute partnership, showing our clients, our media friends and our team members that were here for them in any way they need us to be. Flexibility is critical. The same way of doing things wont cut it anymore. Evolution needs to be about more than just the services you offer, the industries in which you operate, or the talent youre adding to your team. Evolutionand innovationis a mindset, rooted in a flexible way of partnering withand servicingthose around you.

Looking back, innovation, flexibility and adaptivity are three core themes for Hemsworth over the past year, and we firmly believe they are themes that should carry through any agency in our sector as we enter a new world.

***

Samantha Jacobs is Founder and President of Hemsworth Communications.
The EU Digital Covid-19 Certificate (DCC) officially came into force in Ireland on Monday, July 19. Here's a quick refresher on what it is, what it does and how to get one.

Remind me what it is again?

The EU Digital Covid-19 Certificate (DCC), which came into force throughout the rest of the EU on 1 July, is designed to make safe travel easier by providing proof that the holder has either:

- Been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 with one of the approved vaccines (Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson)

- Received a negative test in the last day or two (PCR for Ireland, but other European countries accept certain types of antigen tests)

- Recovered from Covid-19 in the last six months

The DCC will be a QR code that will be available digitally on a smart device or on a piece of paper. In Ireland, they will be issued by the Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (OGCIO) based on information provided to it by the HSE.

What information does it include?

The DCC will only include details of your vaccination status, test result or recent recovery from Covid-19. If you've been vaccinated, it will include details of the specific vaccine you received and on what dates. If you've had a negative test it will include details of that test.

Otherwise, the only personal details will be the holder's full name, date of birth and a unique identifier code.

Where is it valid?

Holders can use the cert to enter the rest of the EU and six non-EU countries that have opted into the system - Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, and Vatican City.

What about the UK?

Travel between Ireland and the UK is covered by the Common Travel Area: there are no restrictions on travel from Ireland to the UK, while existing restrictions on travel from the UK to Ireland - a negative PCR test and a 10-day period of restricted movement - will be lifted next Monday, 19 July.

I'm Irish but I live in a non-EU country; can I get a DCC?

Afraid not. According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the DCC is "not related to your citizenship."

If you qualify, you must apply for the Digital Covid certificate of the country in which you reside and - presumably - either received a vaccination in, gotten a negative test in or recovered from Covid in.

Over 400,000 Irish citizens reside in the UK, but they can use the NHS's own digital Covid certificate for travel through the EU.

So who is getting them this week?

From July 12, the government began issuing DCCs to around 1.9 million people who have already been vaccinated.

The government says that from 14 July, 25,000 certs are issued daily.

One million who were vaccinated through the HSE's vaccination portal will get theirs through the same email address they used when registering for the vaccine. The 900,000 or so who were vaccinated through a pharmacy or GP will get their certs through the post.

I'm due one, but haven't gotten it; who can I talk to?

The government is setting up a Digital Covid Certificate helpline and website to assist with all related queries, but no date has been given for when those resources will go live.

Until then there is no mechanism to request one; the ones being sent out this week are being sent automatically.

How can I get a DCC with a negative test?

If you've taken a test at an approved private testing facility, the DCC will be issued to you there.

You must take a PCR test up to 72 hours before you travel; antigen tests must be taken up to 48 hours before departure.

However, not all countries will accept antigen tests as proof of a negative test, including Ireland - so make sure you check your destination's specific requirements before you travel.

Also, to make it even more confusing, countries' requirements are fluid and subject to change, so be sure to get the most updated information you can.

Best place for that information is the EU's Re-Open EU site, which is updated every day.

I got Covid in the last six months; how do I get a DCC?

You won't be issued a certificate automatically so you'll have to contact the call centre for one.

If your positive test for Covid-19 came through the HSE's own free testing facility, then your records should be easily accessible.

The HSE says it has the records of over 170,000 people who have recovered from the virus.

But wait - I got my positive result through a private testing facility, so what can I do?

In this case, the situation could be a little more complicated. However, the number of people who were tested privately is thought to be relatively small, and most of these were referred to the HSE, who then would have a record of the positive test.

The government is not overly worried, though: Minister for European Affairs Thomas Byrne was asked about this and he said that "practically everybody" who's had a positive test had theirs through the HSE.

So will I need a DCC to travel to the EU?

No - and this is a point worth stressing. The DCC is not a compulsory document for travel. It only serves to speed up travel checks and make travelling that bit easier without the need for any kind of quarantine.

Minister for State Ossian Smyth said: "If for any reason you don't have a certificate, you can still travel on your existing documentation. If you can show evidence that you've been vaccinated, or that you've been tested, you can still travel. So it's not a prerequisite for travel, you don't have to have a Digital Covid Cert to travel, but it does make it faster.

If you have had Covid but don't have a DCC, you may need a letter from a doctor saying that you've recovered. The letter is valid for up to 180 days after you tested positive.

Will I need a DCC to go to my local pub?

The government has finally announced that indoor dining and drinking in Ireland will return - but we're not entirely sure when, although it's been widely speculated that it's aiming for 23 July.

What we do know, though, is that in order to dine or drink indoors customers will need to produce verifiable evidence of vaccination or immunity status, which for most will be the DCC.

Staff at the venue will check the DCC and match it to the holder's ID - which explains why some people are already labelling the DCC as the 'wine cert.'

Information compiled by Fionn Davenport, Editor of Irish Travel Trade Network (ITTN)
After five years of being under the ownership of the incredibly wealthy Comer Brothers, work has still not begun on Shannon Oaks Hotel in Portumna, and it remains an empty, derelict shell.

The landmark hotel has been in a ruinous state since it was destroyed by an accidental fire in September 2011.

There has been a hotel on the site since 1971 when the Westpark Hotel was built.

During the 1970s and 1980s the hotel had a great reputation for its dinner dances, with many people coming from near and far to the premises for evenings of fun which are fondly remembered.

In 1995 John Pardy bought the building and built a completely new premises which he called Shannon Oaks Hotel and which opened in 1996. During the Celtic Tiger years Shannon Oaks did a roaring trade in weddings, and most weeks it would host at least one wedding.

Locals have great affection for the hotel and since the fire of 2011 it's often been the subject of local conversations.

Over the last decade there have been times when it seemed building work would begin, but each time locals' hopes would be dashed.

Because of Covid, Shannon Oaks hasn't featured as much in people's thoughts and conversations, but as we emerge from the pandemic that is bound to change. The black hoarding remains around the premises. Beside the hotel are a number of attractive apartments which are occupied by tenants, on a long-term and short-term basis. On their website the Comer Brothers say they plan to restore the hotel to its former glory. The hotel will offer luxurious accommodation ranging from hotel rooms to self-catering accommodation in on-site lodges. The hotel will have extensive wedding and conference facilities and boast a traditional Irish bar and a choice of two restaurants. Other hotel amenities include leisure facilities, as well as beauty and wellness centres.

In March 2018 Luke Comer told press that he intended to restore the hotel to its former glory. "We have purchased the property," he said, "and we want to turn it into a new state of the art hotel in Portumna, which we feel has loads of potential. We have put the project out to tender and obviously we would prefer to secure a local builder. It is in a prime location and we would hope that the new hotel would be up and running by the end of the summer."

In its heyday Shannon Oaks had 63 bedrooms and an enviable location.
A van that the prosecution alleges was used by businessman Kevin Lunney's abductors may have come to Ireland by ferry from Holyhead less than one month before the offences, the Special Criminal Court has heard.

It is the prosecution case that a Renault Kangoo van with a registration plate ending in PXU was imported by Cyril McGuinness, now deceased.

In his opening speech at the beginning of the trial, prosecution counsel Sean Guerin SC said McGuinness organised the abduction and assault on Mr Lunney.

Shipping manager with Victor Treacy International, Laura Curran, today (Monday, July 19) told Mr Guerin that her company received a booking for a van with the same registration to travel from Holyhead to Dublin on the Swift sailing on August 27, 2019 at 16.45.

A phone number and visa credit card were used in making the booking and the name associated with the card was "C McGuinness", she said.

A 40-year-old man known as YZ, Alan OBrien (40), of Shelmalier Road, East Wall, Dublin 3, Darren Redmond (27), from Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3 and Luke OReilly (67), with an address at Mullahoran Lower, Kilcogy, Co Cavan have all pleaded not (NOT) guilty to false imprisonment and intentionally causing serious harm to Mr Lunney at Drumbrade, Ballinagh, Co Cavan on September 17, 2019.

Mr Lunney has told the court that he was bundled into the boot of a car near his home and driven to a container where he was threatened and told to resign his position as a director of Quinn Industrial Holdings.

His abductors cut him with a Stanley knife, stripped him to his boxer shorts, doused him in bleach, broke his leg with two blows of a wooden bat, beat him on the ground, cut his face and scored the letters QIH into his chest.

They left him bloodied, beaten and shivering on a country road at Drumcoghill in Co Cavan where he was discovered by a man driving a tractor.



Mr Justice Tony Hunt is presiding in the trial with Judge Gerard Griffin and Judge David McHugh.
Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Senator Pippa Hackett, has announced the results of an Open Call by her Department for funding for Woodland Support Projects.

One Offaly project has received funding. The Call was aimed at promoting the multi-functional benefits of forestry from recreational, environmental, community and economic uses and will be funded by her Department over the next two years.

Over 61 applications were received of which 39 individual projects have now been selected for funding. In Offaly, the Irish Timber Growers Association (ITGA) in association with the Irish Forestry Unit Trust (IForUT) received 11,460 for a joint initiative to establish Demonstration/Exhibition Woodland Walks in the county.

The Minister said, I am delighted to see such a broad range of inspiring projects aimed at supporting woodlands and I am particularly pleased at both the spread of projects throughout country and at seven of those chosen highlighting the environmental benefits of woodland.

"This was a category I specifically added to this years Call and it is gratifying to see that it was so well responded too. Overall, I believe the response demonstrates that there is a huge interest in communicating the benefits of our woodlands, in enhancing our knowledge of sustainable woodland management and in progressing the development and use of timber products.

The projects will develop the knowledge base of farmers, woodland owners and the wider sector about the benefits of forestry, they will advance timber development, they will support native woodlands and agroforestry, and they will engage the wider community with trees as a source of enjoyment, inspiration, and biodiversity.

Minister Hackett had originally allocated funding of 1 million to the Woodland Support Fund but on receipt of the proposals, she increased that figure considerably.

Explaining the increase, she said Given the response to this Open Call and in order to fund as many projects as possible, I was more than pleased to increase the available budget to 1.4 million. I did not wish to see any worthy project left behind and really look forward to seeing them being rolled out and to what they can achieve.

The projects selected will support woodlands through a variety of approaches. They include, for example, a series of forestry webinars; field workshops on Continuous Cover Forestry; promoting the use of homegrown timber for construction; the sourcing and planting native trees in GAA club grounds nationwide; woodland open days; ecological restoration, and awareness raising through multi-media, targeted promotional/educational initiatives to develop the potential of agroforestry in Ireland and many others besides.

The Minister concluded: The publication of the EU forestry Strategy last week highlighted the diverse benefits which our woodlands can play and this open call aligns very much with that approach. I want to thank all those individuals and organisations for taking part and we look forward to working with the successful groups on the implementation of their projects over the next two years."
THE recent death of Carmel Farrell was greeted with great sadness in Tullamore and more especially in the Tinnycross area of the town where she lived for most of her life.

Carmel was born in Killeigh and was one of 10 children. However, Tinnycross was where she put down her roots with her beloved husband Mick.

Together they were a strong team and went everywhere together until sadly Mick passed away 11 years ago.

Carmel was known as a very friendly, hospitable, sociable and hard working lady. She helped Mick with his day to day farming chores and together they won numerous awards for the high quality of their milk. Mick always credited Carmel with their success saying it was her strict hygiene standards that contributed to the quality of their milk as she hand washed all the churns every day.

The couple attended bingo in the Foresters Hall every Tuesday. This was a past-time that Carmel continued after Mick's death when she went with her sister in law Anna-May and her good friend Nellie Scully RIP. She also went to bingo in Clara every Sunday with her sister Kathleen and her husband Tony Cleary.

Carmel had a special devotion to Our Lady and her rosary was her best companion. Her and Mick travelled to Lourdes every year for 14 years. There too they enjoyed the social aspect of the Marian shrine and delighted in the dinners and sing-songs in the evenings where many friendships were established.

The couple were also heavily involved in the Multiple Sclerosis Society and travelled extensively around the country in support of the charity. Furthermore they were both Eucharistic Ministers.

Carmel was a great neighbour in Tinnycross and the kettle was always on. No one escaped without a cup of tea. In return, her wonderful neighbours Olwyn and Jimmy Cummins reciprocated that kindness over the years. They were described as ''exceptional friends'' who treated Carmel like royalty.'' Their son JJ became like her adopted grandchild, in fact one day after mass someone thought she had adopted a grandchild.

After Mick died all of the neighbours in Tinnycross looked out for Carmel including Johnny Mann, the Nolan's, Brackens, Coughlan's, O'Brien's and Scully's.

Her loyal friend Sheila Maher brought Carmel to mass every morning and afterwards they went to the Bridge Centre for tea and toast. Carmel looked forward to regular overnight visits from the Elliotts from Dublin and she also loved a visit from Teresa Kelly every time she was home from the UK.

Carmel was exceptionally delighted and proud when her son Michael secured a job with Aer Lingus and she told everyone she knew and some she didn't, about his many travels. At her funeral mass Fr Luke said she should be given a posthumous award for all the free advertising she gave to Aer Lingus.

Carmel also had a great love of music and attended the Tullamore Musical Society productions and the John Player Tops of the Town especially when Michael was on stage. Then she would sing along and clap her hands to the music and singing.

Carmel's funeral mass took place in the Church of the Assumption Tullamore and she was laid to rest in Durrow Cemetery.

Carmel is survived by her son Michael, his partner Pat McLoughlin, sisters Kathleen Cleary, Patty O'Grady & Ann Curley, brothers Tony & Teddy, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, nephews, nieces and the amazing neighbours & friends in Tinnycross.

May Carmel rest in peace.
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Countries That Have Banned Cryptocurrency

Published July 20, 2021 by Elana K

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are becoming normalized as large financial firms around the world invest in them, along with big-name entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. However, cryptocurrency is a far cry away from being accepted universally.

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are becoming normalized as large financial firms around the world invest in them, along with big-name entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. However, cryptocurrency is a far cry away from being accepted universally.

Here are some countries that have banned cryptocurrency.

China

China is one of the most popular places for bitcoin mining, but the government is strongly opposed. It recently announced several crackdowns on mining and using cryptocurrency, which sent the value of bitcoin and others plunging.

Bolivia & Ecuador

Bolivia banned cryptocurrency in 2014 and still has not come around. Following Bolivias ban, Ecuador also decided to implement a similar ban. However, in Ecuador, using cryptocurrency for payment is illegal but trading is allowed.

Algeria, Egypt & Morocco

Algeria banned the use of cryptocurrency in 2018, citing that it lacks the physical backing that fiat currency has. In Egypt, the government has not placed an official ban on bitcoin, but the Islamic Legislator has said that cryptocurrency is not allowed under Sharia law. Morocco banned it a year earlier due to concerns about hidden payments.

Turkey, Qatar & Iran

Turkey implemented a ban on digital tokens on April 30 in an attempt to boost the Turkish lira, but the move backfired and caused crypto trading platforms to collapse. Critics of Erdogan claim the ban was implemented to prevent Turkish citizens from converting their savings into cryptocurrencies and protecting them from the government.

Qatar has banned crypto outright, whereas Iran has traditionally allowed cryptocurrency mining. However, due to major blackouts from the high use of energy required for mining, President Hassan Rouhani has placed a temporary ban.

Bangladesh & Nepal

Both Bangladesh and Nepal banned cryptocurrency in 2017.

What do cryptocurrency bans mean for online gaming?

Cryptocurrency is becoming an accepted and even popular way to finance online gaming. Its often considered safer and more secure than using fiat deposit methods. However, gamers in countries that have banned cryptocurrency are limited in their options. Hopefully, as cryptocurrency becomes more normalized, countries that have banned it will see its benefit. Then players in these countries will have more payment options when playing online games.
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

EQT Exeter closed European logistics fund EQT Exeter Europe Logistics Value Fund IV at 2.1 billion ($2.5 billion).

According to a press release from the global investment organization, this is the first vehicle to close after the combination of EQT's real estate business and Exeter Property Group.

The Fund IV, which closed at its hard cap, was oversubscribed with commitments from a diversified group of new and existing investors including public and corporate pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies, global asset management firms, commercial banks, endowments, foundations, and family offices across North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Among investors was the $254.8 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund, Albany, which committed 200 million, according to its website.

The value-added strategy is focused on acquiring, developing, leasing, operating, and selling big-box warehouse facilities as well as last mile and light industrial properties in Western Europe.

Ward Fitzgerald, partner and head of EQT Exeter, said: "The successful fundraise of EQT Exeter Europe Logistics Value Fund IV validates our proven 15+ year track record of value creation due to our locals with locals vertically integrated operating model.

"We look forward to working with our new colleagues at EQT to continue to outperform and provide strong returns to the fund's investors," Ward added.

Paul Rubincam, Partner and Co-......................

To view our full article Click here
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

The global alternative investment firm H.I.G. WhiteHorse, the credit affiliate of H.I.G. Capital, closed its latest fund, H.I.G. WhiteHorse Direct Lending Fund - 2020, with about $1.65 billion in total assets, exceeding its fundraising target.

H.I.G. WhiteHorse's latest fund will originate senior secured loans primarily for non-private equity-backed U.S. companies, said a press release from private equity and alternative assets investment firm.

"The Fund will continue H.I.G.'s successful investment strategy of originating tailored senior secured financing solutions to primarily non-sponsor owned companies in the U.S.," said the release.

Stuart Aronson, Head of U.S. Direct Lending, said: "The next several years will present a compelling opportunity to partner with non-sponsor owned companies in need of private debt solutions. H.I.G.'s synergistic platform is well-positioned to continue to build on H.I.G.'s long-standing track record of being a value-added debt provider to leading small/mid-cap companies."

Jordan Peer, Head of H.I.G. Capital Formation said, "The Fund received strong support from a diverse and global investor base in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, including sovereign wealth funds, public and corporate pensions, consultants, foundations, endowments, and family offices."

Investors in the fund include the $137.9 billion New York State Teachers' Retirement System,......................

To view our full article Click here
BEIJING (AP)  Asian stock markets were mixed Wednesday after Wall Street rebounded and Japanese exports surged as investors tried to figure out how rising coronavirus infections will affect the global economy.

Shanghai, Tokyo and Sydney advanced. Hong Kong and Seoul declined.

Overnight, Wall Street's benchmark S&P 500 index gained 1.5%, recovering much of the previous day's loss.

Japan's government reported June exports jumped 48.5% over a year earlier, beating forecasts. The increase was inflated by a plunge in trade in 2020, but still reflects strong demand overseas, especially in the U.S. and China.

Defensive flows eased. However, gains are likely to be capped by lingering concerns over COVID-19s Delta variant, said Anderson Alves of ActivTrades in a report. A new wave of infections could delay the reopening of global economies.

Also Wednesday, South Korea reported a daily high of 1,784 new coronavirus cases, adding to a global surge blamed on the viruss more contagious delta variant.

The Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.4% to 3,554.01 while the Nikkei 225 in Tokyo added 0.5% to 27,523.75.

The Hang Seng in Hong sank 1% to 26,997.80 and the Kospi in Seoul shed 0.4% to 3,220.64.

Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 advanced 0.9% to 7,318.90 after the Australian government reported retail sales rose 1.3% over a year ago in the three months ending in June. New Zealand and Jakarta gained while Singapore declined.

On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose to 4,323.06, recovering most of its 1.6% decline on Monday, its biggest in two months.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.6% to 34,511.99. The Nasdaq composite gained 1.6% to 14,498.88.

The U.S. market has gained ground in choppy trading despite uncertain about the lingering impact of the virus on business activity and inflation.

The Centers for Disease Control has said an estimated 83% of U.S. cases in the U.S. are tied to the virus's delta variant.

Investors have been encouraged by quarterly results from U.S. companies showing many are increasing profits.

IBM Corp. and hospital operator HCA Healthcare both advanced after reporting higher revenue and profit than expected.

In energy markets, benchmark U.S. oil lost 51 cents to $66.69 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Brent crude, the price basis for international oils, shed 54 cents to $68.81 per barrel in London.

The dollar gained to 109.91 yen from Tuesday's 109.83 yen. The euro fell to $1.1773 from $1.1783.
PARIS (AP)  Frances parliament on Tuesday approved a compromise climate bill that was intended to transform travel, housing and industry but which environmental activists said doesn't go fast or far enough to slash the country's carbon emissions.

Championed by President Emmanuel Macron, the legislation touches on issues central to French culture and the economy, including farming, historical buildings and the aviation and motor vehicle industries.

Months of wrangling in both houses of parliament resulted in the watering down of several provisions, but the compromise version easily passed in both the Senate and the National Assembly.

The final draft included measures to encourage cleaner cars and phase out the most-polluting vehicles; aid for the renovation of energy-inefficient homes and other buildings; and a ban on domestic flights under two and a half hours on routes that can be traveled by train.

Environmental activists accuse Macron, who has taken a strong global stance on climate issues, of failing to live up to his promises at home.

The head of Greenpeace France, Jean-Francois Julliard, stood under a sign reading Climate law: botched job as he addressed a small group of protesters ahead of the vote outside the National Assembly.

The law is not up to the task, Julliard said. It falls short of introducing ecology into the daily lives of the population....We will have to continue to disobey, protest and file legal cases.

A panel of 150 citizens convened by Macron worked for months to produce recommendations for the legislation, but critics say the president weakened their proposals. And conservative and some other lawmakers amended several measures once the bill reached parliament.

Macron supported a European Union plan announced last week to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 compared with 1990 levels. The protesters gathered Tuesday said the bill won't allow France to meet the target.

The law is completely unambitious, school teacher Aurelie Lilith, 35, a member of both Greenpeace France and Extinction Rebellion. She said protests must continue to draw attention to what scientists are saying about climate change.

Lilith and others mentioned the floods that killed at least 196 people in Germany and Belgium last week, along with the drought and wildfires in the western United States, as examples of the consequences of failing to take global warming seriously.

___

Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.
The Healthcare Industries Materials Site (HIMS) in Hemlock has been making products for the healthcare industry since it was established in 1964. Now the DuPont-operated site is playing a part in the global fight against COVID-19.

Its just one piece of the vaccine manufacturing, but weve seen an increase in demand for our products. Its fulfilling to be a part of the fight against COVID, said Jessica Snyder, Hemlock HIMS site leader for DuPont Electronics & Industrial.

The plant processes Liveo silicone tubing and custom-molded assemblies which are used by pharmaceutical companies to collect a solution of the vaccine buffer and active, prior to filtration and packaging of the COVID-19 vaccine for distribution and administration. In addition to being used to manufacture the vaccines, the tubing has also been used to make other medicines that treat symptoms of COVID-19.

Snyder explained the tubing meets rigorous quality standards and is meant for single-use systems, which is being used by many pharmaceutical companies today.

Some of our customers demand has increased 200%, Snyder said.

Over 200 employees work at the HIMS campus in cleanroom environments, with operations running 24/7, even through the pandemic. With the increase in demand, DuPont is continuing to expand the workforce at HIMS.

Its exciting that we have an impact on peoples lives, Synder stated.

Midland County Health Officer Fred Yanoski gave an update on vaccine efforts in the county on Tuesday at the Midland Board of Commissioners meeting. During his presentation, Yanoski explained that vaccination efforts have stalled in Midland. While there are 32 providers approved vaccine providers in the county between the hospital, health department and local pharmacies, very few individuals are seeking out COVID-19 vaccines. The health department partnered with MidMichigan Health to provide vaccines at the Dow Great Lakes Bay Invitational on Saturday, July 17; only five people received COVID-19 shots, three of them were youth. Yanoski added that only 10% of children ages 12-16 in the community are vaccinated.

"At this point, I would like to characterize this as a pandemic of the unvaccinated," Yanoski said.

Weekly COVID-19 numbers

Midland County: 18 cases and one death were added; pandemic total is 6,902 cases, 718 probable, 92 deaths and three probable deaths.

Bay County: 20 cases were added; pandemic total stands at 10,623 cases, 675 probable, 340 deaths and 14 probable deaths.

Gladwin County: three cases were added; pandemic total stands at 1,926 cases, 385 probable, 57 deaths and four probable deaths.

Isabella County: six cases were added; pandemic total stands at 5,409 cases, 943 probable, 95 deaths and five probable deaths.

Saginaw County: 58 cases and one death were added; pandemic total stands at 20,112 cases, 1,376 probable, 609 deaths and 21 probable deaths.

The state added 1,909 cases and 30 deaths since last Tuesday. Overall, Michigan is at 898,626 cases and 19,862 deaths.

Recovered

According to the Midland County Health Department website, which was updated Monday, July 19, 6,828 Midland County individuals have recovered from COVID-19. Gladwin County reported on Tuesday, July 20, that it has a total of 1,773 recovered cases. The state reported that as of July 16, a total of 871,402 persons have recovered.

Testing

Midland Countys seven-day rolling positivity rate on July 18 was listed at 2.8% and Gladwin County was listed at 0.6%. Our 12-county region is listed at 3.2% and Michigan is at 2.5%.

MidMichigan Health statistics

As of Monday, July 19, MidMichigan Medical Center in Midland was listed as having a 84% bed occupancy with two COVID patients and none in the ICU. MidMichigan Medical Center in Gladwin was listed as having a 32% bed occupancy with no COVID patients and none in the ICU.

Regarding PPE supplies, the Midland hospital reported 15-30 days for N95 mask; 15-30 days for surgical masks; 30-plus days for surgical gowns; 15-30 days for exam gloves and 30-plus days for eye protection as of Monday, July 19. The Gladwin hospital reported 30-plus days for all of the above supplies.

Midland County vaccinations

In Midland County, 40,635 people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as of July 11. That means about 48.75% of Midland County's population has been fully vaccinated. Currently, the vaccines are not authorized to be given to those under age 12.

Future COVID-19 vaccine clinics in Midland County are listed at https://www.co.midland.mi.us/HealthDepartment/COVIDVaccineInformation.aspx. Those with questions may call 989-832-6380 or email MCDPH@co.midland.mi.us.
JERUSALEM (AP)  The Israeli military said its artillery shelled southern Lebanon early Tuesday after two rockets were fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

Israel's army said in a statement that aerial defenses intercepted one of the rockets, and the second fell in an open area. No injuries or damage were reported.

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said its radar detected rockets fired from southern Lebanon toward Israel just before 4 a.m. Subsequently, Israeli artillery fired toward Lebanon, the U.N. force said.

Lebanons army said Israel fired 12 artillery shells at the Wadi Hammoul area, causing no damage or casualties. The army said its units there had found three launching pads for Grad rockets.

The rocket fire from Lebanon was the first such cross-border incident since May, when Palestinian militants launched rockets at Israel during the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Visiting a town near the Lebanese border, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that anyone who tries to harm us will pay a painful price in return.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said in a statement that Lebanon was responsible for the overnight rocket fire and that Israel will act against any threat to its sovereignty and its citizens."

We will not allow the social, political and economic crisis in Lebanon to turn into a security threat to Israel, Gantz said. Lebanon has struggled with an unprecedented crisis, including an economic meltdown that has raised concerns of a surge in militancy there.

UNIFIL said it was in contact with military officials in Lebanon and Israel to urge maximum restraint" to avoid further escalation. Both the peacekeepers and the Lebanese army increased security in the area and launched an investigation, the mission said.

The incident along Lebanon-Israel frontier came hours after a Syrian military official said Israel carried out airstrikes near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The Syrian state news agency said air defenses intercepted most of the missiles in the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots belonging to Iranian-backed militant groups operating in the region.

Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Syria in recent years targeting Iranian forces there, and attacking what Israel says are weapons shipments bound for the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli military rarely comments on these strikes.

___

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
MidMichigan Health is now accepting applications for its new Medical Assistant Apprenticeship Program, beginning in the fall of 2021. During the program, students will be employed full-time, with benefits, at MidMichigan, in addition to taking college courses. The program is fully funded, with no cost to students, through MidMichigan Health, MichiganWorks! and various grants.

Medical assistants can perform EKGs, draw and prepare blood samples, take vital signs, schedule appointments, process billing and assist physicians in surgical procedures.
ISTANBUL (AP)  Turkeys president said Tuesday his country will talk with the Taliban regarding Turkeys bid to operate and secure the airport in the Afghan capital, Kabul.

Speaking after Eid al-Adha prayers in northern Cyprus, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan acknowledged that the hardline Islamist group had some discomforts over Turkeys proposed plans for Hamid Karzai International Airport.

This process will also be discussed with the Taliban, he said, adding that the group had previously negotiated with the United States and should hold these talks much more comfortably with Turkey.

He stressed that Turkey has always stood with Afghanistan, saying imperial powers have been there for decades, including in the past 20 years  an apparent reference to the U.S. deployment that is drawing to a close.

Erdogans comments follow Taliban warnings last week that Turkey should withdraw its troops from Afghanistan, along with other foreign forces. The group called Turkey's airport proposal reprehensible.

On Monday, Erdogan called on the Taliban to end its occupation of its siblings' lands" and said the Taliban's stance in Afghanistan did not fit how Muslims should treat other Muslims.

The Taliban have been taking strategic border posts and pushing to gain territory in recent weeks, driving tens of thousands of Afghans to flee their homes. Many have been trying to cross to Turkey, with more than 1,450 migrants found by authorities in eastern Van province.

Government forces have regained some posts and are refocusing their resources on strategic points and provincial centers.

Turkey has been negotiating with the U.S. over a proposal to operate and secure the airport. Erdogan reiterated that Turkey would do so only if certain conditions are met and said Washington had asked Turkey to stay on. First, America will stand with us at the point of diplomacy and diplomatic relations, he said. The other conditions are logistical and financial support.

An agreement on the protection of the airport has become increasingly urgent as the final withdrawal of the remaining 2,500-3,500 U.S. troops and 76,000 allied NATO soldiers nears a conclusion.

NATO-member Turkey has over 500 troops in Afghanistan and already plays a significant role at the airport but the troops have not served on combat missions.

Turkish-American relations have been rocky for the past few years over a host of problems, including Turkeys human rights issues, Ankaras purchase of a Russian-made missile system, Washingtons support of a Syrian Kurdish group Turkey considers terrorists, and the continued U.S. residency of a Muslim cleric whom Turkey accuses of masterminding a bloody failed coup.

Erdogan was speaking during a two-day visit to Cyprus breakaway north for celebrations to mark the 47th anniversary of a Turkish invasion that split the island along ethnic lines.
Andrew Harnik/AP

LANSING, Mich. (AP)  Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday vetoed a Republican-sponsored attempt to stop a $300 weekly federal supplement that is being added to unemployed workers benefits during the coronavirus pandemic.

The extra payment is due to end Sept. 4 under federal law. The GOP-controlled Legislature wanted to terminate it July 31, contending that the money discourages people from rejoining the workforce. If the governor had signed the legislation, the change would not have actually occurred, however, because Senate Democrats did not agree to give the measure immediate effect.
The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriff's Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Andrew Mullin.

Wednesday, July 14

11:54 p.m. -- A deputy attempted to locate a vehicle that was involved in a hit-and-run accident in the city of Midland.

10:19 p.m. -- Officers responded to a vehicle crash on South Poseyville Road and St. Charles Street.

10:08 p.m. -- Officers responded to a hit and run crash on West Wakerley Street.

8:17 p.m. -- Officers responded to harassing communications on Fournie Street.

7:47 p.m. -- Deputies responded to an Ingersoll Township residence or a juvenile that was being disorderly. The mother subsequently requested assistance with transporting the juvenile to ER for mental health treatment.

12:00 p.m. -- A 36-year-old female reported her 59-year-old female landlord arrived at her residence to turn off her water for nonpayment. The two females had an argument and decided to call law enforcement before things got out of hand. Both females reside at different residences and agreed to stay away from each other. The water was turned off and the female was given instructions on how to get it turned back on.

11:01 a.m. -- Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash on Joseph Drive.

4:40 a.m. -- A deputy initiated a traffic stop on a vehicle for a speeding violation in Lee Township. The driver, a 33-year-old Saginaw female, was arrested for a felony warrant out of Ogemaw County. The female was transported to the Midland County Jail without incident and was cited for the speeding violation.

2:27 a.m. -- Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township location reference three kids in the roadway. Deputies checked the area but were unable to locate the kids.

1:31 a.m. -- Officers responded to a case of domestic violence on Elizabeth Street.

12:46 a.m. -- Deputies were dispatched to a Jasper Township residence to assist the Alma Police Department with attempting to locate an 18-year-old male involved in a breaking and entering. Deputies located the male and arrested him per Alma's request and was turned over to Alma Police Department.

12:02 a.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to an Ingersoll Township location reference a 42-year-old Bay City female who reported an unknown pickup struck her vehicle and fled the scene. The suspect vehicle was unable to be located and the incident is under investigation.

Tuesday, July 13

10:09 p.m. -- Deputies were dispatched to a Mills Township residence for a harassment complaint. Deputies contacted a 63-year-old Mills Township female who said a 50-year-old Mills Township male followed her home after a township meeting. The male was contacted and ask to stay away from the 63-year-old female.

9:07 p.m. -- A deputy initiated a traffic stop on a vehicle in Lee Township for a speeding violation. The driver, a 33-year-old Lee Township male, was cited for driving with an expired license and received a warning for the speeding violation. A report was completed and forwarded to the Midland Prosecuting Attorney's Office for review.

7:54 p.m. -- Deputies responded to a Jerome Township residence for reports of a domestic between a 24-year-old Jerome Township male and a 43-year-old Jerome Township male. The parties were separated and there were no injuries. A report has been sent to the prosecutor's office for review.

7:48 p.m. -- Officers responded to a case of domestic violence.

5:30 p.m. -- Officers responded to a drug overdose on Jefferson Avenue.

1:07 p.m. -- Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash in the area of Eastman Avenue and Pheasant Ridge Drive.

1:41 p.m. -- A request was made to the Midland County Sheriff's Office to investigate a letter that had been received by the Midland County Clerk's Office where a Lee Township male wished to withdraw his voter registration. The male claimed that he was not a US citizen, but rather an "American State National" and should not be registered as a voter. The male was interviewed, and it was determined that he in fact was a legal United States citizen and therefore, eligible to register and vote.

1:39 p.m. -- Referral from the Department of Health and Human Services regarding a possible assault complaint involving an 8-year-old female and her father. It was discovered the female had threatened to lie about being inappropriately touched by her step-brother, and she was disciplined by her father for it.

10:45 a.m. -- Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash in the area of U.S. 10 and Bay City Road.

10:26 a.m. -- Officers responded to a vehicle crash on Campus Ridge Drive.

1:53 a.m. -- Deputies were dispatched to a Geneva Township location reference a 33-year-old male who was experiencing suicidal thoughts. Deputies transported the male to the Mid-Michigan Medical Center where deputies completed a mental health petition.

1:52 a.m. -- Deputies responded to an Ingersoll Township location regarding a 74-year-old Ingersoll Township female who reported an unknown male forced entry into her home and stole her television, chainsaw, and a gas can. The deputies checked the home, but the suspect was gone on arrival. The value of the stolen property was approximately $920. This incident is under investigation.

12:32 a.m. -- Deputies were conducting a criminal investigation at a Greendale Township residence and arrested a 54-year-old Greendale Township male for a bond violation. Per the bond conditions, the male was not allowed to have contact with his 21-year-old Greendale Township son who was present at the residence. The male was transported to the Midland County Jail, where he was lodged without incident. A report was completed and forwarded to the prosecutor's officer.

Monday, July 12

11:09 p.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to a 24-year-old bicyclist riding southbound in the northbound lane at night. The deputy located the rider who was in the proper lane but without a front light on his bike. The deputy talked to the rider about proper equipment and how to be safer at night. He was given a verbal warning for not having the light.

10:50 p.m. -- Deputies were dispatched to a Jerome Township location regarding a 25-year-old male stating he heard suspicious noises outside the residence. Deputies checked the area but did not locate anything suspicious.

10:41 p.m. -- Officers responded to a domestic verbal dispute on Ellys Lane.

10:21 p.m. -- A deputy responded to a Porter Township location for an 18-year-old Porter Township female who reported she was sexually assaulted by her 21-year-old Greendale Township ex-boyfriend. The male was interviewed and arrested for the sexual assault. The male was transported and lodged at the Midland County Jail without incident. A report was completed and forwarded to the prosecutor's office for review.

10:05 p.m. -- Officers responded to a operating under the influence of drugs, obstruction of justice, and a weapons violation in the area of Isabella Street and Currie Parkway.

6:23 p.m. -- Officers responded to an assault on Rockwell Drive.

3:40 p.m. -- Officers responded to a missing person case on Isabella Street.

3:40 p.m. -- Officers responded to a domestic verbal situation on Isabella Street.

2:00 p.m. -- Officers responded to a case of larceny on Isabella Street.

1:57 p.m. -- The Geneva Township clerk, called 911 and reported someone is messing with/removing signs at a Geneva Township park. The clerk advised she did not know who is doing it but would like it documented. The clerk stated she will be putting cameras up throughout the park.

1:20 p.m. -- An animal control deputy received a complaint of a neighbor disabling another neighbor's electric fence that resulted in several horses getting out of their enclosure. This is primarily a property line dispute and both neighbors were given suggestions on how they could resolve the dispute.

1:02 p.m. -- Officers responded to a case of forgery on Bay City Road.

8:39 a.m. -- Deputies responded to a City of Coleman residence, for a verbal argument over child custody. Deputies advised the complainant, a 28-year-old Coleman female, that she needed to go through the Friend of the Court reference child custody. Shortly after the female left, she reported that she wanted her ex-boyfriend of eight years, thrown in jail for taking items from their storage unit. Subsequently, Deputies learned that the items were bought together, and the female knew about the incident a few days prior but did not report it.

7:59 a.m. -- Officers responded to a two-vehicle crash in the are of West Buttles and Jerome streets.

7:47 a.m. -- A deputy was dispatched to the area of West Isabella Road near South Eight Mile Road for the report of a two-vehicle traffic crash.

4:14 a.m. -- Deputies responded to an address in the City of Coleman regarding a 28-year-old woman yelling for cops. A deputy located the woman who had an argument with her 37-year-old boyfriend who wouldn't give her phone or keys back. The items were returned and she left the residence for the night. The male was also served a personal protection order.

3:35 a.m. -- Deputies conducted a traffic stop at a Greendale Township location for speeding. Deputies contacted the 43-year-old male driver. Upon further investigation, it was discovered the male had a suspended driver's license. The male was cited for driving with a suspended license, and a report is being sent to the prosecutor's office.
Director of Content and Operations

Spencer McKee is OutThere Colorado's Director of Content and Operations. In his spare time, Spencer loves to hike, rock climb, and trail run. He's on a mission to summit all 58 of Colorado's fourteeners and has already climbed more than half.
A group of Palestine railroad employees at a reunion lunch held at Ricky Naismiths home. Naismith and his wife host at least one get-together for the group at their home annually.
BLOOMINGTON  Three weeks after a series of extreme storm events pounded the city over two days, dropping up to 10 inches of rain and overwhelming city infrastructure, officials on Monday said they do not have an immediate solution to prevent the same issues from unfolding again.

"Theres no one quick answer for all of this stuff," Public Works Director Kevin Kothe told the Bloomington City Council at its monthly work session. "We're in the midst of collecting and analyzing data; we still haven't got all the data collected yet where we can analyze it and get all the answers."

City Manager Tim Gleason last week said the city has fielded 500 damage claims related to the storms and that they are being worked through on a case-by-case basis.

Gleason said Monday he expects the city's insurer to start sending out claims letters to residents affected by the storms this week. He added that any denial of federal disaster aid would be followed by a push by state leaders for funding.

Kothe's comments came amid a hour-long discussion over the June 25 and June 26 storm events. He fielded a range of questions from council members, deferring many to a presentation he will give in August.

Kothe did detail some of the aftermath, confirming how most of the flooding experienced in basements across the city was due to overwhelmed city-owned combined sewer systems. A combined sewer system mixes sanitary sewer waste with storm water into a single system.

There are at least 85 miles of combined sewer lines across the city, according to a map shown by Kothe. The city also maintains 251 miles of sanitary sewer lines and 244 miles of storm sewer lines.

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Kothe said flooding from overwhelmed combined sewer systems mostly occurred within homes located in older neighborhoods, like those on the city's west side and in its historic core.

"We had people in whole corridor in the core of Bloomington that had both significant backupand surface flooding," Kothe said. "There were several feet of water across that whole corridor."

At least 40 residences in the East Gate neighborhood experienced that issue, according to nine residents who again on Monday publicly chronicled the flooding at their homes. Ten people last week expressed their frustration over the same issues.

Many of the Ward 8 residents on Monday reiterated those comments, framing themselves as "victims" of the combined sewers and the city's "negligence." Others said they still have not heard an "acceptable offer" from city officials to solve the issues.

Kothe said the city could accelerate plans to deal with water retention and reconfiguring combined sewer systems, but warned that each neighborhood and each home is different and that the timeline of any project is restricted by funding, design and other constraints.

Many council members suggested that the city spend funding allocated to it by the American Rescue Plan to accelerate infrastructure initiatives like the Locust/Colton combined sewer overflow elimination project and to fund separating combined sewer systems.

"I'd much rather be putting the money into preventing it from happening than cleaning up after it happens," said Ward 7 Ald. Mollie Ward. "I think we all do."

Contact Timothy Eggert at (309) 820-3276. Follow him on Twitter: @TimothyMEggert

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Springfield Mayor Jim Langfelder was on hand Monday to greet Amtrak customers at Springfield's downtown train station as all Lincoln Service round trips between Chicago and St. Louis returned to full service.

The Illinois Department of Transportation said the Lincoln Service, Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr and Illini/Saluki state-supported Amtrak trains all resumed full-service Monday after reductions of one-half related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Service levels were reduced in March 2020, but full service was able to resume because of the reduction in COVID-19 cases and widespread availability of the coronavirus vaccine, IDOT spokesman Paul Wappel said.

There will be five daily round trips between Chicago and St. Louis (including the Amtrak national Texas Eagle), with intermediate stops that include Springfield and Normal.

Two daily round trips between Chicago and Quincy (Carl Sandburg/Illinois Zephyr), with intermediate stops that include Macomb and Galesburg, are scheduled.

There also will be three daily round trips between Chicago and Carbondale (including the Amtrak national City of New Orleans).

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Fully vaccinated students, teachers and staff members will not need to wear masks in Roman Catholic schools this fall, the Chicago Archdiocese announced Tuesday.

The archdiocese said it is planning a return to near-normal, pre-pandemic operations, including the return of school Masses, all extracurricular activities and before- and after-school care programs.

We are excited to be resuming extracurricular activities and other operations that were halted during the pandemic, Justin Lombardo, chief human resources officer and chair of the archdiocesan COVID-19 task force said in a news release.

Lombardo said in an email that the archdiocese hope(s) there will be no need for students and staff members to provide proof of vaccination in order to go unmasked in schools, but that the organization will continue to evaluate the situation with guidance from public health officials and medical advisers.

Guidelines regarding masks for unvaccinated people will be released by early August, the archdiocese said.

The archdiocese based its updated protocols on guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Illinois Department of Public Health in addition to a team of medical advisers and a COVID-19 task force.

The CDC released guidance earlier this month suggesting fully vaccinated individuals do not need to wear masks in schools. But on Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released its own guidance urging universal masking in schools for all students and staff members over the age of 2, regardless of vaccination status.

A significant portion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccines, and masking is proven to reduce transmission of the virus and to protect those who are not vaccinated, the organization said in a news release.

Kids under 12 are still ineligible for any COVID-19 vaccine.

The AAP is a significant authority, one that last year recommended that the goal should be in-person learning, which obviously had an impact on our decision last school year, Lombardo said. We understand and hope that the AAP and the CDC will be forthcoming with some aligned guidance to assist everyone looking at this complex question.

Lombardo said the archdiocese will continue to encourage vaccinations for individuals over the age of 12 and that safety protocols will be reassessed throughout the year.

Vaccinated students and employees will not have to quarantine if exposed to the virus as long as that policy remains consistent with CDC and local public health guidance, Lombardo said.

Some safety measures will remain in place, the archdiocese said. Classrooms will maintain assigned seating charts to allow for targeted quarantines and will be organized to maintain 3 feet of physical distancing whenever possible. Schools will also maintain daily cleaning of high-traffic areas.

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CHICAGO  The Chicago Police Department on Monday announced a new team of officers, prosecutors and federal agents that will target gun trafficking, an effort that depends heavily on people coming forward with information in exchange for money.

At a news conference, Police Superintendent David Brown said he's confident that the offer of money from a $1 million fund for tips that Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced last week will be persuasive.

I've seen criminals for the right price, turn over their mother," he said. I have.

Brown did not provide any details on how much money people would receive for tips to the new Gun Investigations Team but said the amount would be significant.

Tips can be made anonymously and, if that information results in arrests or an indictment, the department will protect the identity of tipsters, police spokesman Tom Ahern said.

Police have long paid for information but Brown said the department has never launched a similar program that specifically targets gun trafficking and straw purchasers  people who legally buy weapons then provide them to people who cannot legally purchase them.

The point of this is to get the gun before it hits the streets at the trafficking level, he said.

Elena Gottreich, deputy director for prosecutorial strategies for the department and one of the new team's leaders, said that while the department recovers thousands of illegal guns a year, We lacked the mechanism to intercept the guns prior to them hitting the streets.

After another bloody weekend that ended with more than 60 people shot, including 10 fatally, and with homicide totals expected to surge in what is typically the most violent time of year, Brown said it's especially important to seek out those who have are unwilling to come forward with information.

Someone knows who is being paid as a third party to purchase guns for a violent person in this city, that would do a drive-by shooting on young people celebrating a graduation, who have been reluctant to give it to police," he said, referring to a shooting late Saturday on the West Side in which a 12-year-old girl and four teenagers were wounded by gunfire at an outside party.

Brown also said the team  which includes Cook County and federal prosecutors  will charge gun traffickers with the highest crime we can.

The announcement comes days after Brown and Lightfoot talked to President Joe Biden about what his administration might do about gun violence in Chicago. When Brown returned from the White House he said he would soon roll out a new initiative.

Biden recently announced he would deploy so-called strike force teams to Chicago and other major cities but Brown said he needed to do something independent of that effort.

Chicago cant wait for the strike force, he said. "We have to do everything we can from a law enforcement perspective to take guns off the streets from violent people, he said.

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The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) released guidance Monday "strongly encouraging" schools to require vaccinations of students returning to campuses this fall.

It follows recently released guidance from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH).

On June 21, the University of Illinois announced it would require students on its three campuses, including Springfield, to receive a COVID-19 vaccination if they planned to be on campus for the fall semester.

The University of Illinois became the first public university system in the state to announce such a requirement.

Officials Blackburn College in Carlinville did not immediately respond to phone calls or emails. A spokesman from Illinois College in said he was looking into the matter.

Lynn Whalen, the chief communications officer at Lincoln Land Community College, said LLCC "strongly encourages" vaccination among its students, faculty and staff, including offering vaccination clinics on campus and educational resources regarding the vaccine.

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"Additionally, we will continue to have rapid testing available," Whalen said. "All faculty, staff and students complete a screening process before coming to campus. Those who have not completed the vaccination process are required to wear masks in all LLCC facilities."

All schools "are strongly encouraged to provide information to promote vaccine trust and confidence and address vaccine hesitancy," the guidance stated.

"Unvaccinated persons and those who might need to take extra precautions should wear a face covering and, where feasible, maintain physical distance while indoors," the guidance added.

Northwestern University, DePaul University and Loyola University all announced earlier in the spring students would have to be vaccinated before the start of the fall semester.

Other schools like Illinois State University, Eastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University were strongly encouraging but not mandating students be vaccinated.

Illinois State students taking courses on campus who do not provide evidence of a COVID-19 vaccination for the coronavirus will be required to participate in an on-campus testing program.

Monday's guidance from the IBHE and the ICCB encouraged schools to continue COVID-19 testing of unvaccinated individuals to identify and slow virus transmission consistent with the CDC.

The guidance also stated that schools should continue to promote and facilitate health-promoting behaviors such as hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette and continue routine cleaning of high-touch surfaces and shared objects and maintaining improved ventilation in accordance with CDC recommendations.

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Councilman Stan Nord is saying Normal needs an ethics code. Hes right. All governments and public services should have one  Bloomington, too. Too bad the Normal issue is tied to a perceived violation, though.

Back in 1981, I was saying the McLean County Board needed an ethics code. But we had no perceived violation as impetus, and board members were saying, We dont need it. However, we did have a national ethics scandal. A prominent U.S. representative had recently refused to attend meetings, but collected his pay. In the ensuing nationwide outcry, Congress produced an ethics code right away.

I found only one ethics code model for county boards  Multnomah County, Oregon. I adapted theirs for us, and proposed it. But it failed. My only supporters were John Freese, later chief judge, and John Wenum, Illinois Wesleyan University political science professor. I revised it and tried again. It failed again. It took six years  three board sessions before McLean County adopted it.

Early on, I had shared my proposal with a state meeting of county board representatives. Several counties  including Lincoln and Ogle  pounced on it and passed it, long before we did.

On my third try, the other two Rules Committee members said, again, We dont need it. So I decided to take it directly to the full board as a minority report. But first I drafted a letter supporting the code.

Selections from my 1987 ethics code letter:

What an ethics code (or statement) is not: It is not a law or rule. Illinois law does not allow county board rules to deal with ethics. But an ethics statement can be in our rule book if it is in the front, as a preamble.



What an ethics code is: A communication to citizens. A statement of our goals in conducting our office.



Ethics in government is important: The strength of our democracy depends on peoples trust. Ethics codes can do much to strengthen this trust.



Do experts care? In our recent seminar on county government, national experts urged us to adopt an ethics statement.



They focus our attention on what is required of us, as public servants, and help strengthen our resolve to meet these requirements so that we are more worthy of trust.





Ethics codes tell the public about our intent to fulfill our responsibilities in an honest manner. If we dont make a statement, they wont know if we even care.



Do other institutions care ? I have copies of many codes: a local school board, a township, county administrators  and State Farm, McDonald's, lawyers, journalists  Do the people care? They certainly care whether board members follow the ethics code provisions 

to do our homework,



attend meetings,



avoid improper use of public property,



never to accept bribes, and



never to use our influence to find jobs or benefits for our family or friends!

People care because its their tax money and what we do affects their lives.

People dont know us: In this large county, its impossible for people to know us personally, to trust us. So we need to tell people how we, their representatives, intend to act. We need to tell them, This is how weve already been conducting county business.

We owe it to our constituents to at least discuss this issue.

Thats what my letter said. Its still relevant. I mailed it to the 19 other county board members, snail mail. It evidently answered their doubts and fears, because this time they gave the ethics code solid approval. Forty-three years later, its still the Preamble to McLean County Boards Rules. The third try was a charm.

I hope this bit of history will foster a better understanding of the importance of ethics codes, an understanding that should move opinions away from the current controversy to enthusiastic adoption  by both cities.

All governments need ethics codes. They build trust. Where there is no trust, democracy dies.

Barbara Findley Stuart, of Normal, served on the McLean County Board for 17 years.

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Photo: (Photo : PXFuel)

The Court of Appeals has overturned the ban on using electric shock devices to manage students with intellectual disabilities and uncontrollable behavioral problems. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sought the ban in 2020, but the appeals court ruled that the controversial technique could remain in a recent 2-1 decision.

In Canton, Massachusetts, Judge Rotenberg Education Center has been doing shock therapy to stop its students from harming themselves or from exhibiting aggressive behavior. The center is the only special school in the U.S. that still believes electric shock devices could help modify the behavior of kids as young as five years old or adults with underdeveloped intellectual abilities.

Parents of the students also favor the shock treatment as it keeps their children from self-harm. Dad Larry Mirro, whose son has autism, said that he noticed a substantial change in Billy's behavior after six months of shock treatment at the center.

Mirro said that Billy's self-harm habits led to his blindness, so he decided to put his son at the Massachusetts facility. The father said that before he subjected the boy to the treatments, he researched and tried the electric shock devices. Mirro described the sensation as similar to a bee sting.

Why FDA Banned the Devices

In March 2020, the FDA published a ruling against electric shock devices amid complaints from advocates and other family members who have had negative experiences. The agency said that it found "weak evidence" on the device's effectiveness. Instead, the FDA said that the devices bring "unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury," such as tissue damage, burn on the skin, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression.

Read Also: Peanut Allergies Treatment Program Brings Hope for Kids

The device, which has been marketed in the U.S. for more than 20 years, works as an attachment on the arms and legs that connect to a backpack. It is controlled via remote, sending a jolt of electricity that is felt on the skin. It is also used in many rehabilitation centers for people trying to quit smoking or overcome substance abuse.

The FDA's ban, however, is specific to treating behavioral issues. According to reports, some 45 to 50 people receive shock therapy at the Massachusetts center.

The FDA also said that it rarely issues a ban on medical devices, but treatments and medical advancements for people with intellectual disabilities and behavioral problems have been better in the last two decades, providing parents more options for their children.

An Interference on Medical Practices

According to the Court of Appeals, the FDA "lacks the statutory authority" to ban a medical device with a specific use. The court also recognized that Massachusetts has regulatory guidance in place, through the Department of Developmental Service, for centers that conduct shock therapy.

In a statement, Judge Rotenberg Educational Center Parents Association said that they welcome the ban's overturn as the FDA only interfered with the medical treatments of their kids. The group also reiterated that a court ruling in 2018 found the use of electric shock devices at the center to be "humane, safe, and highly effective."

Members of the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (AAIDD), on the other hand, said that they are disappointed with the Court of Appeals' decision, believing that its implementation remains dangerous and painful for the kids.

Related Article: What's the Secret To Avoiding Toddler Bedtime Tantrums?
Photo: (Photo : Thomas Timlen/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0))

Gov. J.B. Pritzker has signed a new law to ban Illinois cops from lying to kids under interrogation. Signed on July 15, the law makes Illinois the first state in America to make the deceptive tactic illegal.

Police officers in Illinois may no longer fake evidence or provide false promises to children under 18 years old who are brought in for questioning, especially juvenile suspects, to make them confess. If the confession was drawn out through deceptive tactics, it would become "inadmissible as evidence." The bill, deliberated in April and May 2021, had bipartisan support at the House and the Senate.

"False confessions have played a role in far too many wrongful convictions, leading to painful and often life-altering consequences," Pritzker said during the signing ceremony, adding that young people are vulnerable to such practices by the cops.

The new law will be in effect beginning Jan. 1, 2022.

100 Wrongful Convictions

Laura Nirider of the Center on Wrongful Convictions said that they are aware of at least 100 cases of wrongful convictions in the state, and 31 of these convictions were false confessions by minors. Nirider noted that sometimes the police tell the minors that they've found their DNA at the crime scene or that they will still be able to go home if they admit accountability.

Read Also: Sales Stopped For Lego Handgun Resembling Glock After Toymaker Complains

Terrill Swift was sent to prison for 15 years under similar premises when the police told him that they have his DNA during a 1994 investigation of a rape and murder. Years later, the crime was tied to a sex offender and convicted murderer.

Swift, who was part of the Englewood Four, said that wrongful imprisonment, even for just a day, is a day too long. During the bill's signing, he was present and was supportive of the measure when it was brought to him, saying that he doesn't want what he experienced to happen to someone else again.

Lauren Kaeseberg of the Illinois Innocence Project said that this had been a "critical step" to change the incidents of wrongful convictions, especially for a state dubbed as the "false confession capital of the country."

Criticisms of the Law

However, according to reports, punishment for officers who lie to kids is not required under the new law. The cops are also not bounded by the law if they use deceptive tactics on minors outside the police interrogation rooms.

Swift admitted that there is still so much work to do to stop wrongful convictions. While advocates hail the reform, some people wonder if a similar law will apply to situations involving adults or if other states will adopt the measure.

Oregon has a bill that will still require the governor's signature, while New York's lawmakers are proposing a similar measure which will also include data collection and a review of recorded interrogations to determine if these can be used as evidence in court.

Related Article: Illinois To Require Schools To Teach Asian American History, First State To Pass Bill
La Paz County Superior Court Judge Jessica Quickle (left) was reprimanded by the Arizona Commission on Judicial Conduct following allegations of her reacting with anger towards court employees. She is the first woman to preside over the Superior Court in La Paz County. She is seen in 2019 with her predecessor, Matthew Newman.
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A few days ago Calmatters reported that "COVID Cases Surging in California a month after Reopening." The report noted that "A month after Californias reopening lifted most pandemic restrictions, COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are rising, worrying public health officials as they contend with the more infectious Delta variant and the lagging pace of vaccinations in some communities. Los Angeles County has drawn particular concern, with five straight days of more than 1,000 new cases, a five-fold increase from mid-June."

In that light, a new report by Bloomberg claims that Apple is pushing back its return to office deadline by at least a month to October at the earliest, responding to a resurgence of Covid variants across many countries.

Apple becomes one of the first U.S. tech giants to delay plans for a return to normality as Covid-19 persists around the world and cases involving a highly transmissible variant increase. Apple will give its employees at least a months warning before mandating a return to offices.

Yet even with half the U.S. vaccinated, Covid-19 continues to kill people faster than guns, car crashes and influenza combined, according to a Bloomberg review of mortality data. After 10 weeks of global declines in Covid deaths, the highly transmissible delta variant is driving a new uptick. In the U.S., health officials have warned that a similar reversal may be underway: Daily cases have doubled from a low point last month, and hospitalizations are rising again.

Separately, Apple is said to be testing a hybrid in-store and work-from-home arrangement for retail employees, acknowledging that consumers may continue to prefer online shopping even as the pandemic eases. For more, read the full Bloomberg report on Yahoo! Finance.
The Commercial Division of an Accra High Court On Thursday 15, July 2021, presided over by Justice Shiela Minta ordered Health Network Company (Healthnet) to pay GH174 million to the Ghana Growth Fund Company/Gold Coast Advisors, a Groupe Nduom Company.



The High Court also awarded cost of GH50,000 to the lawyer of the Plaintiffs.



This is the first of a number of court cases pending before the law courts initiated by Groupe Nduom companies. They involve private sector companies, government agencies and regulators.



Groupe Nduom in a statement said it believes that when all is said and done, the allegations of wrongdoing made against specific Groupe Nduom companies and shareholders will be put to rest.



This particular suit it explained was started by Writ of Summons and Statement of Claim issued at the Registry of High Court, Accra, Commercial Division dated 11th October 2019.



After failed attempts to get all the four defendants to be served in the ordinary manner prescribed by the Court rules, an application was brought before the court for substituted service to enable the plaintiff to serve the defendants by substitution which application was granted.



The defendants with their lawyers engaged the Plaintiffs lawyers with Plaintiffs representatives also in meetings in an attempt to reach some settlement. In the end, they failed to file a defense. The defendants also failed to demonstrate any good faith and propose a payment plan as the Plaintiffs were made to believe they would.



Groupe Nduom noted that on 27th May 2021, before the motion for judgment in default of defence was to be moved, Counsel for Defendants handed over a cheque of GH2,000,000.00 to Counsel for Plaintiff in an attempt to stay matters and demonstrate the willingness to settle the indebtedness.



The court granted a short adjournment beyond the maturity date of the cheque (4/06/21) to 14th June 2021 to first ensure that the cheque would clear and also for defendants to show cause why the pending application for judgment in default of defence should not be granted on the next adjourned date.



The statement said to the disbelief of the plaintiffs and their lawyers, the GHS2 million cheque failed to clear and the Defendants had allegedly tricked the court and disrespected the office of Justice Shiela Minta.



On the strength of the evidential facts, Justice Minta on Thursday, 15th July awarded judgement for GHS174 million plus GH50,000 in costs in favour of the Plaintiffs.



Groupe Nduom noted that in our opinion, this ruling proves that regulators acted hastily in revoking licenses of the Groupes banking and investment companies.



The Groupe Nduom companies that have suffered regulator closure are Gold Coast Fund Management/BlackShield and GN Bank/GN Savings & Loans.



The company said the actions of the regulators have also caused huge collateral damage to related companies as they have been starved of deposits they placed with their sister companies.



The judgment, not only absolves our companies of wrongdoing. It also confirms our long-held position that customers funds were invested in Ghana with private and government institutions and government projects. It was based on the prudent investments that we stand by our claim that government agencies and the contractors they gave legitimate contracts to owe the Groupe more than GHS3 billion that is continuing to attract interest. Altogether, the court cases we are chasing after private and public entities for will amount to about GHS4 billion, the statement added.



Groupe Nduom has reminded its customers and the general public that even in the face of tremendous pressure, GCFM/BlackShield was able to return over GH600 million during the period of the run on the company until its license was revoked. Since then, its offices have been locked and access to files denied leaving the courts as the only independent avenue to go through to collect receivables, it noted.

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For a business mogul celebrated as one of the wealthiest in the country, Sam Jonah seems to take exception to the touting of his assets. According to him, he was brought up in a home that upheld uprightness and humanitarian values above everything else.



He, therefore, finds it uncomfortable when industry watchers and others attempt to quantify his value in monetary terms.



The former CEO of AngloGold Ashanti made these comments on JoyNews.



To drive home the point, my father, on their house was an inscription, w bisa wu fie, wnbisa wo sika in other words, your name is far more important than your riches. I take offence when, for instance, I have been defined by what people think I have, he clarified.



Despite reports of mouth-watering assets putting him at the top of coveted lists of rich people, Mr Jonah insists he is merely resourceful and does not subscribe to that nonsense.



When I hear the nonsense that they say he is the richest man in Ghana, it causes me a lot of grief, he indicated.







Source: Joy News









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The management of Achimota Senior High School has eased the restriction on parents and guardians from visiting the institution after COVID-19 cases in the school has been brought under control.



Under the modalities put in place, parents and guardians are allowed to take parcels devoid of cooked food to their children and wards and deposit them at the doorstep of the bungalows of the house staff.



As promised by the school administration almost a fortnight ago with regard to visiting due to measures put in place to mitigate the COVID-19 effect, we wish to inform you of the modalities put in place. Sunday July 18, 2021 is open for both senior high school (SHS) Two and SHS Three parents/guardians to send parcels to their children/wards, a message to parent/guardians, sighted by the Daily Graphic, said.



Read also: GHS confirms spread of 'Delta' variant of COVID-19 at Achimota School; 46 active cases on campus



Visit



In line with that, the Daily Graphic visited the school last Sunday to ascertain how parents and guardians had received the information and what they were doing to that effect.



It was observed that for the first time in two weeks, parents could be seen trooping in and out to drop parcels for their children.



While some conveyed their parcels aboard private vehicles, others hired the services of taxi cabs to transport parcels to their children.



The items they took included bottled water and bags of sachet water, hand sanitiser, assorted soap and detergents, face masks, provisions and some pocket money.



They were dropped by the parents at the various houses of residence and were received by the house staff. Everywhere on campus was calm at the time the Graphic team visited.



After dropping the items, the parents were then asked to leave as whatever they brought would be presented to the rightful owners.



Excitement



Some parents expressed their excitement at being able to visit the school again after they were asked to hold on in the wake of the COVID-19 situation in the school.



Madam Mariama Briamah lauded the decision taken by the school authorities, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to contain the spread of the virus among other things.



We know that whatever they did was for the good of our children. At first I was worried, but after coming here to see the situation on the ground, I realised that the intervention by the authorities had been taken to protect both the families at home and the students in school, she said.



Stakeholders



Another parent, Mrs Gloria Badu, said all the stakeholders must be commended for ensuring sanity on campus after news of the outbreak was confirmed as the situation has been controlled very well with everything going on smoothly.



Madam Gifty Pomaa, who came all the way from Berekum in the Bono Region, said her heart was now at ease after seeing that her child was safe and alright.



Mr Sampson Ewoade, a parent, said he was okay with the arrangement of the school although he would have wished to see his child.



For him, the efforts put in place by the government and its agencies had worked very well and not disrupted academic activities.



Easing restrictions



Since July 8, the school authorities have had to keep away all visitors as part of the measures to curb the further spread of the infection in the school.



However, in easing the restrictions, the information to parents and guardians further read: After the Sunday, July 18, 2021 parcel delivery, we will go back to the previous arrangement of first Sundays - SHS Threes, Second Sundays - SHS Ones and Third Sundays - SHS Twos of every month for parcels (devoid of cooked food), delivery only, between the hours of 2 p.m. and 5 p.m.



It said no parcel would get to student(s) whose year group fell outside the allocated days for parcel delivery, warning that any student(s) found to have had physical contact with the parent/guardian or any relation would be dealt with accordingly.



Parents and guardians are encouraged to strictly comply with the above procedure as the school management takes steps to achieve zero COVID-19 record case in the school. In the event of parents/guardians abusing these procedures,the school administration will unreservedly withdraw this privilege until further notice, the message from the senior housemaster for the headmistress, said.



Background



On July 4, the GHS confirmed the spread of the 'Delta' variant of the coronavirus disease at the Achimota School in Accra.



It said at that time, a total of 135 students and teachers had tested positive for the virus on campus with various variants.



The GHS went on to test 1,118 samples as part of measures to contain the outbreak of the infection. Out of the number, 183 were positive with 48 active cases as 135 had been discharged based on the national 14-day discharge policy.



In view of the situation, the authorities restricted movement to and from the school to help prevent community spread.

Source: Graphiconline.com









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South Africas former president Jacob Zuma has appeared on a video link from prison to attend a corruption trial.



Mr Zuma faces charges of fraud and racketeering dating back to the 1990s.



This is the first time he has been seen since he was sent to jail for contempt of court  a move that sparked a week of looting and arson in South Africa.



He sat quietly in a large office chair in a nondescript prison room.



He wore a dark suit and red tie and said little as his lawyer argued for another postponement of his corruption trial.



The hearing took place online  due to the pandemic and security concerns.



Mr. Zuma has now spent more than a week in prison after he was found guilty of contempt of court, for refusing to participate in a separate corruption inquiry.



The decision to sentence Mr Zuma to 15 months in jail sparked protests which quickly turned violent  leading to more than 200 deaths, and widespread looting and arson.

Source: BBC









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Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia Monday opened the Regional Consultative Dialogue on Small Scale Mining and Deforestation in Tamale with a call on participants to be candid in their deliberations to build consensus in tackling the menace.

Dr Bawumia said: Issues relating to the exploitation of our natural resources must be insulated from partisan politics.



Therefore, the deliberations at this regional consultative dialogue must be candid so that we are able to build a broad-based national consensus to stem the menace of illegal mining and deforestation.



The dialogue was organised by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources which saw representatives of research and academia, non-governmental and community-based organisations, religious bodies, traditional authorities, and development partners among others attending.



It was to deliberate on ways to clear the negative footprints on the environment by illegal small-scale miners and deforestation, and to agree on the way forward to ensure responsible, viable and sustainable exploitation of the natural resources.



The Dialogue was held pursuant to the dictates of the communique adopted at the National Consultative Dialogue on Small Scale Mining in Accra in April this year.



The Accra and Kumasi dialogues solely focused on small-scale mining. However, government decided to include deforestation in the consultation in northern Ghana due to the precarious nature of the forest cover of the savannah ecological zone.



Dr Bawumia reiterated the focus of the Tamale consultations, saying: It is to enable us to have a national consensus on sustainable methods of using minerals and forest resources.



He gave the assurance that government would promote good governance in the exploitation of the countrys minerals and forest resources to promote sustainability and safeguard the environment.



Mr Samuel Abdulai Jinapor, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources highlighted the governments policy on small-scale mining and said: It is to build a responsible, viable and sustainable small scale mining industry, which will not compromise the environment.



In line with this, government had put in several interventions to tackle illegal small-scale mining and its consequences on the environment, he said.



Mr Jinapor said those interventions would affect the jobs of people in the sector so government is in the process of formulating a comprehensive alternative employment and livelihood scheme for illegal miners affected by the ongoing efforts to clean up the sector.



He warned that henceforth confiscated rosewood would be auctioned for domestic use to save the forests.



No one will be permitted to export those woods whether acquired legally or otherwise, he said.



He touched on the importance of shea trees announcing that government, through the Forestry Commission, had secured funding to implement a project in the shea sector to address the drivers of deforestation and forest degradation and promote the cultivation of shea in the country.



Ya-Na Abukari (II), the Overlord of Dagbon, who was represented at the event, commended the Government for the emergency measures to tackle illegal mining and deforestation in the country.

Source: GNA









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Ten COVID-19 death cases were recorded in Kumasi between July 1 and 13, this year, the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA), has disclosed.



The authorities said the period under review also saw 200 new positive cases being recorded in Ghanas second-largest city.



A statement issued by the KMA and signed by Ms Henrietta A. K. Aboagye, the Public Relations Officer (PRO), and copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), said the cases were recorded at different health treatment centres in the metropolis.



It observed that the sudden rise in the death rate and infections was the result of the emergence of the new Delta variant, which was detected in the metropolis.



According to the authorities, the upsurge in the recorded positive cases was also attributable to the general disregard for the COVID-19 safety protocols, especially at funerals, parties and other social gatherings.



The statement warned the public to adhere strictly to safety protocols at all times.



Operators of lorry stations, transport, markets and other public and private entities are to ensure that these protocols are enforced within their jurisdictions, it added.



The statement appealed to the mass media to be supportive of the campaign to mitigate the spread of the pandemic, especially in the wake of the detection of the new Delta variant.

Source: GNA









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As we safely celebrate with family and loved ones, may our prayers be answered and our sacrifices be acceptable to Allah. May we be inspired by the sacrifice to give back to humanity, something that is bigger than ourselves former President John Mahama said in a message to all Muslims as they celebrate Eid-ul-Adha.



In a message on his Facebook post, Mr Mahama said the celebration should "remind us of the value of obedience, sacrifice and Allah's divine mercy".



Above all, may Allah accept our prayers, heal our world and bless our homeland Ghana, he noted.



Read full post below



Sending my warmest wishes to my Muslim brothers and sisters for a blessed and happy Eid-ul-Adha.



The Eid reminds us of the value of obedience, sacrifice and Allah's divine mercy.



As we safely celebrate with family and loved ones, may our prayers be answered and our sacrifices be acceptable to Allah. May we be inspired by the sacrifice to give back to humanity, something that is bigger than ourselves.



Above all, may Allah accept our prayers, heal our world and bless our homeland Ghana.



Eid Mubarak!

From my wife, Lordina, and I.







Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Speaker of Parliament, Alban Sumana Bagbin has extended his 'warmest compliments' to all Muslims as they celebrate Eid-ul Adha



Speaking in a statement, he urged "all Muslims to pray for Ghana and the welfare of our people as you come together for the congregational prayer to mark this special day. I believe when we approach Allah together in supplication, He will listen to our prayers to guide our dear country along the path of truth and righteousness".



According to him, "these are not the best of times for our country. The challenges we have in the various aspects of national endeavor are pronounced. Our economy needs an urgent boost if we are to experience growth and development. We have been propagating a paradigm shift in the management of our economy, which never seems to materialize. We cannot continue down the route on which we are currently, with very little effort at industrialization: it has not been helpful".



"In addition, we see very little attempt to punish corruption and inefficiency among the political class, thereby creating the perception of political clubbing at the highest level of the political superstructure of this country.



These are what we must pray for during this solemn occasion so that the Almighty Allah will properly order our steps as a country and place us on the path towards national reconstruction and restoration".



Read the full statement below



MESSAGE FROM THE RT. HON. ALBAN SUMANA KINGSFORD BAGBIN, SPEAKER OF PARLIAMENT, ON THE OCCASION OF THE CELEBRATION OF EID AL-ADHA



I extend my warmest compliments and well wishes to the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osman Nuhu Sharubutu, and the Muslim Community in the country on the occasion of the celebration of the feast of Eid al-Adha. Eid al-Adha is a festival that commemorates the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and the sacrifice of Abraham. It is celebrated to remind us of Abrahams obedience to Allah.



The Islamic community has instituted this festival to remind us of the need for sacrifice, obedience, sharing and thanksgiving. It is a period for introspection and reconnection with the Almighty Allah. During this solemn period, I urge all Muslims to pray for Ghana and the welfare of our people as you come together for the congregational prayer to mark this special day. I believe when we approach Allah together in supplication, He will listen to our prayers to guide our dear country along the path of truth and righteousness.



These are not the best of times for our country. The challenges we have in the various aspects of national endeavor are pronounced. Our economy needs an urgent boost if we are to experience growth and development. We have been propagating a paradigm shift in the management of our economy, which never seems to materialize. We cannot continue down the route on which we are currently, with very little effort at industrialization: it has not been helpful.



Within our social set up, education and health facilities are overstretched. The growth in our population, which I believe will be borne out by the ongoing population and housing census, has not seen a reciprocal attempt to improve upon infrastructure for health and education. The result is there for all to see: lack of hospital beds and schools under trees continue to be challenged. On top of all these, Ghana remains sharply divided along political lines. We strive to find the political coloration of citizens who raise issues with where our country is headed, instead of finding out the reasoning and the logic in the issues raised. We cannot continue like this. In addition, we see very little attempt to punish corruption and inefficiency among the political class, thereby creating the perception of political clubbing at the highest level of the political superstructure of this country.



These are what we must pray for during this solemn occasion so that the Almighty Allah will properly order our steps as a country and place us on the path towards national reconstruction and restoration. We need to demonstrate a lot more care for one another in the decisions we make as government and in the care that we demonstrate towards each other. Leaders of this country need to exhibit a lot more sacrifice whilst we work at resolving the many challenges that confront us. This is where my admiration for Eid al-Adha comes to the fore: the spirit of sharing and the sacrifice that the Islamic faithful exhibit during this period is legendary. This is particularly towards the elderly, loved ones and to the deprived in society.



I pray that this same spirit will guide us all to reduce the unnecessary tensions and divisions in our country so that together, we can build a safe and prosperous nation for ourselves and for generations to come. I wish all Muslims a very joyous and reflective Eid al-Adha. Barkah da Sallah and may Allah make us live to see another Sallah.





Rt. Hon. Alban S. K. Bagbin, Speaker of Parliament

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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A CCTV footage released by police has captured the scary moment a five-year-old was almost kidnapped in broad daylight in Queens, New York.



According to police, the kidnapping attempt took place around 8:00 PM when the lad and her family were walking along a pathway.



In the video, the five-year-old could be seen hopping in front while his family follows closely while chatting.



At that same time, the kidnappers arrived in a burgundy saloon car, and one of them, a tall male in a white t-shirt, alighted to facilitate the crime.



He is seen snatching the boy, and dumped him in the backseat of the car, while his accomplice sat in the front passenger seat.



The kidnapping attempt was not a success due to the bravery of the boys 45-year-old mother, Dolores Diaz, and siblings.



Dolores distracted the suspects, while the siblings struggled to pull the child out of the car.



Residents quickly rushed to the scene, but the suspects fled in their car before they could be apprehended.



The police have updated that the 24-year-old male has been arrested in connection with the attempted kidnapping.







UPDATE: A 24-year-old male has been arrested and charged with:



- Attempted Kidnapping

- Reckless Endangerment

- Acting in a Manner Injurious to a Child less than 17 https://t.co/WXxXyk5JEq

 NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) July 17, 2021









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The number of juveniles in prison is gradually increasing in the Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions Command of the Ghana Prisons Service (GPS), a Deputy Superintendent of Prisons (DSP) Johann Nii Narh Nartey, has said.



He expressed worry about the situation, saying in 2019 the Sunyani Central Prison had one juvenile and increased to six in 2020 but the number as of June this year had increased to nine, comprising juveniles whose ages ranged from 12 to 17.



DSP Nartey, the Commands Public Relations Officer (PRO), told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the Command had started sensitization programmes in the first and second cycle institutions to educate the pupils and students on the consequences of early crimes and their avoidance.



He said permission was needed from the regional directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to carry out the campaign, which is being done to prevent interruptions in the academic work.



DSP Nartey expressed concern that the involvement of children in crime in the country was very disturbing.



He said a greater percentage of inmates at the prisons were those within the productive ages of 18 to 25, saying, that trend did not indicate hope for the nations bright future if it continued because the youth are the future leaders of every country.



DSP Nartey said many children were ignorant of minor crimes, which could be a cause for them to be imprisoned and appealed to stakeholders to assist by instilling in the children and youth sound moral training in their families and communities for them to become assets and not liabilities in future.



He implored parents, guardians, teachers, schools guidance and counselling coordinators, churches counselling units and social workers to realise that the challenge is a shared responsibility of all to save the countrys future leaders.



DSP Nartey asked the school heads also to cooperate by responding to Services request to enable them to educate the pupils and students and appealed to individuals and organisations to graciously sponsor the programme so that the Command could reach out to all schools, both public and private for a very successful impact.

Source: GNA









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Deputy National TESCON Coordinator, Rosemond Obeng popularly known as Peoples Mother, an astute female politician and an active political figure of the ruling New Patriotic Party -NPP on the 15thof July, 2021 delivered a sensational speech at the TESCON-UPSA inauguration and handing over ceremony in Accra.



According to Peoples Mother, the election of Hannah Agana, the first female president of TESCON-UPSA projects an all-inclusive agenda of the NPP as a party, noting that, in the future, there wont be female leaders, rather they will just be leaders. Miss Rosemond on behalf of the entire NPP youth wing and in her capacity as the only female amongst the National TESCON executives congratulated and wished her the very best in her tenure of office.



She brought to light how rebranding remains an effective tool in breaking the eight year political cycle and changing the mindset/perception of the Ghanaian. She said TESCON is ever ready to deliver that historic victory however the foundation depended greatly on the core leadership of the party, and on that particular platform used the members on the high table as a point of contact to keep things right, noting that, adopting the bottom top leadership approach by not imposing parliamentary candidates on electorates will help the NPP party retain its vibrancy.

When we are going for Parliamentary Primaries, no interference, the people the constituents want are the people we are going to present if we are serious in breaking the eight she noted.



She further stated there should also be an open and fair contest when it comes to presenting our people for various party portfolios, be it constituency level or national level; even in the case of our upcoming flagbearership elections, there should not be a machinery working for some particular people she added. That way post election greviances will be avoided and progress can be made.



Adding on the role of the party in breaking the usual eight-year electoral cycle, Miss Rosemond Obeng stated that there should be room for the grassroots interms of opportunities if we are serious about breaking the eight, else that wouldnt be possible.

Lets open up a little, so that the foot soldiers and people on the grassroot will also benefit accordingly to strengthen our seriousness in breaking the eight, she stated

On the latter of her delivery , she cautioned that the keenness of Ghanaians listening on the NPP come 2024 recides greatly on the achievements in the manifesto.

We should be serious to have accomplished about 70% of what is in our manifesto by the year 2024 before we can ask Ghanaians for another mandate, if the 70% target fails then trust me nobody is going to listen to us and that will finally land us in opposition, she cautioned.

Source: peacefmonline.com









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Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has asked constituency Chairmen of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to remain united and not indulge in anything that will divide the party.



Remaining united, he said, would make it possible for the party to be strategically positioned to retain power in 2024.



He stated that it was only by retaining power that the NPP would be able to continue with its good work to make life better for Ghanaians.



Dr Bawumia made the call in an address read on his behalf by a former National First Vice-Chairman of the party, Mr Fred Oware, at the inauguration of a seven-member steering committee for the constituency welfare fund and workshop in Koforidua last Saturday.



The meeting, which was on the theme: "Motivating the Base, the role of the party," brought together constituency chairmen from all the 275 constituencies throughout the country to deliberate on their welfare.



The fund is to be generated through monthly contributions by constituency chairmen to be later extended to other party officials.



Members



According to the Vice-President, the constituency chairmen had taken a laudable initiative and called for the roping in of polling station executives of the NPP in order to generate enough funds to cater for many members in distress.



Dr Bawumia, who indicated that he would contribute to the fund, said there were many members who had been working tirelessly for the party at the base.



The National Chairman of the party, Mr Freddie Blay, said he was excited about the establishment of the welfare fund and indicated that it had come at the right time to cater for the needs of its members and called for its sustainability.



The National Organiser of the party, Mr Sammy Awuku, said he was worried about the use of funeral grounds as a platform to campaign for the party's flag-bearer position and called for an end to such a campaign.



The Chairman of the NPP Constituency Officers Welfare Group, Dr Godfred Akyea-Darkwah, explained that the fund would welcome contributions of the base in order to reduce dependency of the party on government.



Party's constitution



A former Energy Minister, Mr Boakye Agyarko, said it was necessary to take good care of party members, stressing that "the party must also understand the needs of the people.



In an interview with the Daily Graphic, some of the constituency chairmen expressed their appreciation for the institution of the welfare fund which they said could cater for their medical needs.









Source: Graphiconline.com









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The distinguished Western Regional Minister who doubles as the Member of Parliament for Takoradi Constituency, Hon. Dr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah has been recognised and deservedly honoured at the Better World Fund Cannes Film Festival held in France on the 12th July 2021 at the 3.14 Plage.



The mission of this astute organisation (Better World Endorsement Fund) touches the sensitive areas of our existence, such as the environment, Biodiversity, Ecosystem and Women's Empowerment.



It's assuring that the Better World Endowment "creates a continuously growing community of leading thinkers and doers who share our mission for positive environmental, economic and social change as well as our passion for collaborative impact".



The Body is made up of a high-powered team of world-class experts from business industries and academia. The accomplished individuals making up the team set the tone through their supports for human development and environmental sustainability. The Better World Fund presented "Ethical Gold" which was anchored on "Responsible Mining", making a world of difference in small-scale gold mining.



The Republic of Ghana was the country of honour due to government effort and leadership, and Hon. Dr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah's ingenuity in addressing the challenges in the small-scale mining in Ghana through his ardent promotion for responsible mining.



Accordingly, this year's programme in Cannes had the "Ethical Gold Session" to honour those in the Gold industry that promote responsible mining therefore, Hon. Dr Kwabena Okyere Darko-Mensah was honoured with the Social Impact Award for promoting zero mercury in the small-scale mining sector in Ghana.



Innovatively, the Minister spearheaded the Regional Coordinating Council to organise the first-ever Gold Expo in Ghana in March last year, directed specifically at resolving the topical issues i.e., the quest for technology-oriented small-scale mining which will ensure the implementation of best mining policies, enforcement of statutes and collaborative stakeholder engagement to safeguard our existence and to sustain the environment.



This year, July 2021, the Hon. Regional Minister led the organisation of Ghana Mining Week to promote once again, the urgency and essence for responsible mining in Ghana and also to advance the conversation for Green mining operations through mining policy sessions and diplomatic field trips.



The significance is for the nation to realise the economic and social benefits of responsible mining which ought to be underpinned by the right usage of technology in the entire extraction process and gold mining value chain. On an account, the distinguished Western Regional Minister stated that It is all about "transformative change through the pursuits of responsible small-scale mining which resultant effect is the production of ethical gold in Ghana".

Source: Peacefmonline.com









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Former Deputy Communications Minister, Victoria Hamah, has welcomed Farida Mahama, daughter of former President Mahama to the sexist world  a world that is characterized by discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.



Farida turned a year older on Friday, July 16, and Mr. Mahama flaunted her on his social media handles to celebrate her new age. The ex-President's daughter has been trending since, as some members within the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) thronged the online space to wish her well.



Switching to her Facebook page to celebrate her, Victoria Hamah acknowledged how beautiful Farida was and welcomed her to the sexist world. She remarked that at least Farida was lucky to be under the protection of a powerful father.



She wrote, Well Farida is beautiful and indeed what they say "well endowed". I recall growing up and hearing such disgusting comments even from some of my teachers and running home to tell my parent and would have their support. Welcome to the sexist world Miss Farida. At least you have a very powerful father to protect you.



Vic, however, slammed NPP's communication team member, Hesse Nana Ogyiri over his earlier Facebook comment that the ex-President's daughter was fully developed and well endowed.



I wonder what these very young and well endowed but deprived girls go through in the hands of useless men like the author of this post! She slammed. In a separate post, Victoria Hamah cautioned parents to protect their daughters from the famous serial caller.



If you have a young daughter please beware of Nana Hesse Ogyiri! She warned.

Source: facebook/gg









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This photo taken Monday at 6:30 p.m. from Nanaimo Square in the heart of downtown Penticton shows the dark skies and smoke from the south.
The RCMP logo is seen outside Royal Canadian Mounted Police "E" Division Headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., Friday, April 13, 2018. Mounties say they have found human remains while investigating the case of a missing Manitoba man whose neighbor is a suspect in his disappearance. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
The last thing you expect to see while spending a quiet day fishing is a Bigfoot moving about on the shoreline and throwing rocks. A Kentuc...
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Denisov Leads the Race for Super MILLION$ Title; Haxton Second

July 20, 2021 Matthew Pitt

Online pokers biggest weekly tournament has reached its official final table and someone is going to walk away with the title of GGPoker Super MILLION$ champions, and with $258,592 to show for their efforts.

Sergei Denisov is the man in pole position at the restart, but there are some incredibly talented players in the chasing pack who will have a major influence on where this weeks title calls home.

Super MILLION$ Season 2, Episode 4 Final Table

Place Player Country Chips Big Blinds 1 Sergei Denisov Russia 2,149,465 86 2 Isaac Haxton Canada 2,088,808 83.6 3 szagos Hungary 2,008,136 80.3 4 jerbi9999 Israel 1,903,342 76.1 5 Belarmino Souza Brazil 1,231,267 49.3 6 Artur Martirosian Russia 1,091,929 43.7 7 Goldo Liechentstein 755,874 30.2 8 Anatoly Filatov Russia 343,875 13.8 9 Thomas Muehloecker Austria 327,304 13.1

Denisov sits down at the Super MILLION$ final table knowing this is his best chance of taking down the tournament. Denisov reached two final tables during the Super MILLION$ first season, finishing ninth and third. That third-place finish saw Denisovs bankroll swell by $198,800.

Isaac Haxton, one of three former Super MILLION$ champions at this final table, returns to the action second in chips, only a handful of big blinds behind Denisov. This makes Haxton the favorite for glory in the eyes of many.

Haxton won this event all the way back in July 2020, and he has finished third on two other occasions.

Whenever you see a Hungarian flag at a final table you assume it is the legendary Andras Nemeth. Not this time because it is szagos who is representing Hungary this time around. szagos does not play many of Super MILLION$ events, and only has one previous in-the-money finish to his name, a 17th place finish in September 2020, but he reached this finale on merit and is one to watch.

Super MILLION$ Final Table Payouts

Place Prize 1 $258,592 2 $201,950 3 $157,714 4 $123,168 5 $96,189 6 $75,120 7 $58,665 8 $45,815 9 $35,779

The Super MILLION$ is yet to have an Israeli winner but that could be set to chance now that jerbi9999 has navigated his way through the majority of this tournaments field. This is the third time jerbi9999 has reached the money places in a Super MILLION$ tournament; one saw him finish 40th, the other 10th. Finishing fifth of better today sees jerbi9999 double their Super MILLION$ earnings.

Brazils Belarmino Souza is guaranteed a huge return on investment thanks to winning his seat via a $1,050 satellite. This is his fourth appearance in the Super MILLION$ during Season 2, but his first cash. He is guaranteed to beat his previous best score from this particulary tournament even if everything goes wrong and he busts in ninth. Let us hope that does not happen.

Watch This Star-Studded Final Table Unfold Who will win this week's Super MILLION$? Find out right here Head to GGPoker's Awesome YouTube channel

Artur Martirosian has accumulated more than $16 million in winnings from GGPoker tournaments alone, with $1.75 million of that stemming from the Super MILLION$. Should the former champion win his second Super MILLION$ title, his earnings from this high-stakes affair will soar past $2 million!

Liechtenstein's Goldo is another finalist who won his seat via a $1,050 satellite. Goldo has a shade over $31,500 in winnings at GGPoker, with ninth place here worth $35,779. They may return in seventh place, but do so knowing they are about to enjoy their largest-ever online poker score.

Two legitimate superstars are bringing up the rear as the tournaments short stacks. Anatoly Filatov, winner of this event in May 2021, sits down in eighth place courtesy of his 13.8 big blind stack. Filatov has a lot of work ahead of him, but he is talented enough to get himself out of his current predicament.

Thomas Muehloecker is the man entering the final tables action as the shortest stack with 13.1 big blinds at his disposal. Muehloecker has never finished higher that sixth in this event, can he change that fact in this latest tournament?
One of the most consistent crushers of the last fifteen years has been Shannon "Aulophobia" Shorr, who tops the Alabama all-time earnings list on Hendon Mob, with nearly $8.6 million in recording earnings. Shorr, who recently announced that he and his wife Joy are expecting their first child, is in action today and will be looking for more success on the virtual felt after some early success on the live felt this year.

Shorr, who had six cashes in last year's WSOP.com Online Bracelet series, but has yet to win a WSOP Gold Bracelet, found his first victory of the year in Event #28: $5,000 No Limit Hold'em Deep Stack, and for besting a 287-entrant field, Shorr added a healthy $296,535 to his bankroll. Shorr has also found a quartet of cashes in PokerGO branded events, including a fourth-place performance at the $10,000 NLH High Roller at The Venetian, good for $77,000.

With another full summer of bracelet events on the docket, will this be the year that Shorr breaks through for a WSOP Gold Bracelet to add another accolade to an already illustrious career? We'll be watching his status all summer long as "Aulophobia" shoots for the stars.
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A fourth suspect was arrested Monday in connection to a June 19 stabbing in Warrenville.

Paul Arnold Smith Jr., 31, is charged with attempted murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

Police received a 911 call on June 19 regarding an assault on Legion Road in Warrenville.

When the officer arrived, the victim stated that "10 subjects jumped him and he was stabbed several times during the assault," according to an incident report obtained from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office.

The officer "observed visible stab wounds to the victim's side" and applied bandages until EMS arrived, according to the report.

Christopher Wayne Perkins of Graniteville, Francis Benjamin Lyon Jr. of Warrenville, and Blake Carlisle Arthur of Warrenville, were previously arrested in connection to the June 19 incident.

All three men are also charged with attempted murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

Capt. Eric Abdullah from the Aiken County Sheriff's Office said the investigation is still ongoing.
Aiken residents will soon have a new store to explore.

Popshelf is expanding into South Carolina, with stores currently under construction in Aiken and Columbia. The Aiken location will be in the old Walgreens building at 3510 Richland Ave. W. and will open in the fall.

The store will stock "a selection of on-trend seasonal and home decor, health and beauty must-haves, home cleaning supplies, household and specialty items, arts and crafts, party planning and entertaining needs, toys and much more," according to a news release.

The vast majority of the items will be priced at $5 or less, according to the release.

We are thrilled to expand the Popshelf offerings in South Carolina and look forward to having customers pop by our new Aiken and Columbia stores later this fall, said Matt Frame, Popshelfs director of store operations. Were excited for customers to explore our stores and discover the possibilities of home decor, beauty, party, specialty foods, electronics and more. At Popshelf, theres fun in every find, happiness in the affordability and joy in stress-free shopping experience we offer, and we look forward to welcoming our communities to our new stores soon!

The store is expected to create up to 15 new jobs, according to the release. Those interested in applying can visit careers.popshelf.com.

There are currently 14 Popshelf locations open in cities across Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee.

The brand is owned by Dollar General.
Carnival is now targeting the fall or early winter for a relaunch of its cruise business at the Port of Charleston.

The Miami-based company announced on July 19 it has scrapped all sailings from the Holy City for about another two months, to Oct. 31.

It also announced it plans to put seven more of its U.S.-based ships back into service over the same period. The rest will follow by Dec. 31, including the locally based Sunshine.

"Our plan envisions successfully bringing back our entire fleet by the end of the year ... and building back our business for the benefit of our guests, employees and the tens of thousands of jobs and local businesses that depend on our company," Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in a written statement.

The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the industry in March 2020. Since then, Carnival has pushed back the Sunshine's return to Union Pier Terminal in downtown Charleston more than a dozen times.

The company recently resumed "vaccinated" cruises on a limited basis and hopes to have 15 ships back on the job by November. Duffy said the company is "seeing a great combination of strong demand and strong guest satisfaction scores tied to the positive guest experience on board."

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The latest round of cancellations extends Carnival's "pause" in Charleston to more than 19 months. In its previous update, the company had pegged Sept. 1 as the earliest date it would resume cruises on the Sunshine.

The first sailing from Charleston that was available to book online as of July 20 is a five-day voyage that departs Dec. 1 for Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas.

The Sunshine is among three East Coast-based Carnival vessels that will remain anchored through Halloween. The others are homeported in Florida. They'll be among the last ships in the company's domestic fleet to resume operations.

The Sunshine hasn't sailed with paying customers on board since March 12, 2020. The 3,002-passenger vessel was moved to the Bahamas about six weeks later.
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COLUMBIA  Samantha Josephson was a fighter, who tore her fingernails as she clawed her attacker before she was killed while locked in the back of a black sedan that she thought was her Uber after a night celebrating her upcoming college graduation with friends.

That was the scene painted July 20 in opening arguments in the trial of Nathaniel Rowland, charged with murder and kidnapping in Josephsons death in 2019.

While a prosecutor said authorities found evidence that Josephson had been in the car Rowland was driving when he was arrested hours after her body was found, a defense attorney said Rowland's DNA was not found on the University of South Carolina senior.

Josephson's death stoked fears across the country because the 21-year-old disappeared in an activity thousands of people do each day  ordering a ride-hiring service. The trial is being aired nationally by cable channel Court TV.

Opening arguments and testimony began July 20 after a near-even racially mixed group of 12 jurors was picked. The jury includes seven women and five men.

In his opening statement, 5th Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson told the jury that Rowland and Josephsons phones tracked together at some point during the early morning hours in March 2019 and that Josephsons blood, hair and fingerprints were found in Rowlands car after he was arrested in her death.

"As she stood alone waiting on that Uber, he had his eyes firmly transfixed on her," Gipson told the jury. "As she waited on that Uber ride to arrive."

Rowland, in a purple shirt, striped tie and khaki pants, sat between his lawyers and largely appeared to offer no reaction to the opening statements and testimony other than leaning over periodically to confer with attorneys.

As many as 100 stab wounds, scratches and other wounds were noted on Josephsons body after it was found in a remote stand of woods in Clarendon County, Gipson said. A member of the Josephson family gasped when the prosecutor mentioned her wounds.

Gipson said surveillance video from Five Points shows a black 2017 Chevrolet Impala circling the block in Columbias nightlife district before pulling up to park at a curb outside The Bird Dog bar in Five Points, where Josephson waited alone for an Uber ride she had called.

Josephson had been out with some friends and the Harden Street bar was a regular spot, her boyfriend, Greg Corbishley, testified. He said he had talked regularly with Josephson that day, that she was upset about news of a family member's medical condition and he had told her to enjoy herself.

The Charleston resident said Josephson had planned to visit him that weekend.

"I told her to get her mind off of it, to go out with her friends, that she just worked so hard, got into law school, that she deserved to have a night to celebrate that," Corbishley said in his testimony. "I just told her to go out and have fun that night."

Josephsons phone, via a phone app used by her friends, showed her traveling through Columbias Shandon neighborhood to Rosewood before the phone powered down near the intersection of Montgomery Avenue and South Ott Road, Gipson said in his opening statement.

Rowlands phone then tracked him leaving town via U.S. 378 to Sumter and then to New Zion, his hometown in Clarendon County. Josephsons body was found 2 miles from Rowlands family home, Gipson said.

Video evidence shows someone later trying to use Josephsons debit card multiple times, including at a Columbia bank trying to withdraw money from her account. Someone also tried selling Josephson's phone, which Gipson said video evidence will show was Rowland.

Rowland was scheduled to pick up a friend later that morning for work, and the friend noted blood in Rowlands car, Gipson said.

Bloody clothes and cleaning products were found in a large garbage bin behind the home of the friend Rowland planned to pick up for work, Gipson said A blade found in the same trash was consistent with Josephson's wounds, the prosecutor said.

Rowland was arrested after being seen in Five Points later the same day driving a black sedan. He initially ran from Columbia Police officers after he was stopped, Gipson said.

In their opening statement, Rowlands attorneys said there is no evidence Rowland kidnapped and murdered Josephson.

She fought hard against her abductor, scratching and clawing as she was stabbed numerous times in the backseat of the car, said Alicia Goode, Rowlands public defender.

Despite that, Rowlands DNA wasnt found under Josephsons fingernails or on her body, Goode said. She also said that an investigator photographed Rowland within 24 hours after his arrest, and his skin showed no marks or cuts that would have been consistent with Josephson having fought him.

Josephson's boyfriend and roommate described in testimony their growing dread after Josephson didn't return to her apartment as expected.

They watched on their shared phone app as Josephson's phone moved in the opposite direction of her Main Street apartment before shutting off near a Rosewood home. They initially thought their friend's phone had been left in an Uber, but Josephson never returned to her apartment and the shoes she wore to work as a waitress at Liberty Taproom in the Vista remained by her door, though she was scheduled to work a shift that day, her roommate testified.

Her friends doubled back and eventually convinced someone at The Bird Dog to show them video that showed Josephson getting into the car. Desperate, her roommate got into Josephson's computer and saw an email where the actual Uber ride she ordered had been canceled.

The Uber driver Josephson ordered testified that he circled the area but never picked up or saw Josephson that night.

The defense rarely chose to follow up with questions to the prosecution's initial witnesses. Goode made a point from the outset to say no one from the defense would blame Josephson for what happened and lauded her as smart and funny with a bright future.

That said, Goode said she expected jurors to come to the same understanding after the evidence is presented in Rowland's trial.

"That it's not his fault, and he is not to blame for the death of Samantha Josephson," Goode said.

The initial potential jury pool of about 700 in the case was more than twice as large as normal due to the nature of the case and continuing COVID-19 protocols that result in more potential jurors being sent home.

Rowland had told Judge Clifton Newman on July 19 that his family had hired a new attorney and that he wasn't satisfied with his court-appointed team of public defenders. Rowland later said it had been a misunderstanding and the attorney he said he hired, Debra Moore, told Newman July 20 she hadn't been hired to represent Rowland.
COLUMBIA  The University of South Carolina is going with a different presidential search firm after the troubled hiring of Bob Caslen in 2019.

USC is hiring R. William Funk & Associates to find a new president, the school's presidential search committee announced July 20.

The Dallas-based firm conducted searches at USC that led to the hiring of Harris Pastides as president and Joan Gabel as provost, as well as the current presidents at Clemson University and the College of Charleston. Gabel is now president at the University of Minnesota. Pastides is back as interim president after an 11-year tenure leading the state's largest college.

USC used Atlanta-based Parker Executive Search when Caslen, the retired superintendent of West Point, was hired amid controversy.

The search was marred by a lack of diversity among the final choices.

The pool of semifinalists reportedly included only one woman. There were none among the finalists. One African American was among the four finalists, Bill Tate, who would be hired as USC's provost before becoming president at Louisiana State University.

The finalists in the 2019 search included only one candidate who had ever run a college, Caslen.

While Caslen won praise for his handling of the pandemic, the former three-star Army general struggled to connect with parts of the university community among faculty and donors. Some of his issues stemmed from his hiring that came after lobbying by Gov. Henry McMaster despite Caslen not having a traditional research background or doctorate degree.

Caslen would also misspeak at times, notably calling the school the "University of California" in a commencement speech in May.

It was during that speech Caslen also plagiarized a quote. Though Caslen said it was an honest mistake, public outcry led to his resignation days later.

USC's presidential search committee has no set timetable, but the school wants a new leader in place by summer 2022.

The Funk firm will receive $165,000 plus some expenses from USC. Parker received $137,000.

Funk's experience was part of the reason why it was chosen, the USC presidential search committee said.

The firms recruiting strategies have helped place many impressive candidates, including minorities and women, at leading universities throughout the country and within South Carolina, Ernest Jenkins, faculty senate chair for the Palmetto College campuses and a member of the search committee, said in a statement. These advantages, and their history of outreach to members of university communities, make them a compelling choice to assist us.

During its nearly 40 years, Funk has helped recruit presidents or chancellors to 13 of the 14 Southeastern Conference schools, including recently at Texas A&M, as well as leaders at the University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, Ohio State University and Indiana University.

Firm founder Bill Funk will lead the USC recruitment efforts and report directly to school's search committee and board.

We dont believe in a formula approach to president searches, Funk said in a statement. Each institution is different and there are precedents that must be honored when organizing and executing the search process."
KINGSTREE  A month after a fatal bus crash that killed three people and injured others, two separate lawsuits have been filed against the Williamsburg County Transit System, alleging that the organization and the bus driver were at fault.

On June 19, a Williamsburg County Transit bus was headed north on Browns Ferry Road in Georgetown County around 7:19 a.m. when it collided head-on with an SUV headed south near Johnson Road, according to the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

The two occupants of the SUV, along with one of the passengers on the bus, died as a result of the crash, officials said. The victims were later identified by the Georgetown County Coroners Office as Kellen Graves, 42, of Kingstree, Kyle Wilson, 42, of Andrews and Cedric Riddick, 33, of Kingstree.

One of the lawsuits was filed by the family of Graves, a bus passenger who died in the crash. The other filling was by a fellow bus passenger named in the lawsuits as Berthmine Cooper, who was severely and permanently injured, according to court documents.

The crash occurred when the bus driver, named in the lawsuits as Tunethia Moore McCrea, allegedly drove into the left lane and collided with the SUV operated by Riddick, court documents said. McCrea is accused of failing to safely operate the bus and not properly maintaining the proper lane of travel, the lawsuit said.

Williamsburg County Transit, named as a defendant, is accused of not having a plan in place to train or monitor its drivers, or failing to enforce it if they did, according to the lawsuit. In addition, the lawsuit alleges the organization failed to see that McCrea had the proper training and experience to be able to navigate a vehicle in a safe and effective manner."

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The suit alleges the organization hired McCrea when they knew or should have known that she was not qualified to drive the bus.

The two lawsuits are requesting jury trials and actual, punitive, special and consequential damages.

Williamsburg Transit declined comment when asked about the incident.

The Post and Courier Myrtle Beach filed a formal request June 22 with the South Carolina Highway Patrol for a copy of the incident report and the investigation findings of the cause of the wreck. The reports have not been provided as of July 20.
GREENVILLE  The largest bank headquartered in South Carolina is getting bigger again.

United Community Bank, Inc.  which officially relocated its headquarters to Greenville from Blairsville, Ga. on July 1  announced its intention to merge with Brentwood, Tenn.-based Reliant Bancorp, Inc., and its subsidiary Reliant Bank, in an all-stock transaction.

Reliant Bank had $3.1 billion in assets, 25 branches and 425 employees as of March 31. If the merger is finalized, that will be added to United's roughly $18.5 billion in assets and 161 locations across the Carolinas, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida.

It is the largest addition yet to rapidly-expanding United Community Bank in terms of total assets. The merger, announced July 14, is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2022, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.

United Community Bank CEO Lynn Harton said the merger will increase brand recognition and employee attraction. Before the announcement, United Community Bank had a "small presence" in Tennessee, Harton said. The bank currently has seven branches and one loan production office in the state.

Reliant CEO DeVan Ard, Jr., who founded that company in 2006, said in a news release that "becoming part of Uniteds team-oriented, high-performance culture presents a unique opportunity for Reliant.

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Ard will become United Community Bank's Tennessee state president. He has contacts with other banks in the area and has done a couple of acquisitions during his tenure at Reliant. Harton said he hopes to leverage Ard's relationships to do more acquisitions in the future.

The Greenville-based bank has made 12 acquisitions since 2014, including nine banks and three financial service companies. It completed a merger with FinTrust on July 7, which expanded the bank's wealth management offerings. Its major move into the Upstate came when it acquired Palmetto Bank in 2015, and that remains the company's largest expansion in terms of percentage increase in the size of the company at the time. From there, the bank has moved into Charleston, Myrtle Beach and Columbia.

It became the largest South Carolina-based bank when it announced earlier this year it would move its headquarters downtown, displacing Greenville-based Southern First and its $2 billion in assets.

The bank has had a Greenville presence since 2012 and opened its first branch in the city in 2015. It is in the process of building its new headquarters on East Camperdown Way, along the Reedy River and next to the nearly completed Grand Bohemian Hotel. Construction on the seven-story tower will begin in early 2022 and is expected to be completed by 2024.
The Medical University of South Carolina Hollings Cancer Center will receive a grant worth nearly $40,000 following the settlement of a nationwide cancer charity scam.

Four charities  Cancer Fund of America Inc., Childrens Cancer Fund of America, Cancer Support Services Inc. and The Breast Cancer Society Inc.  have all been shut down. Between 2008 and 2012, the groups solicited donations totaling $187 million from consumers in all 50 states.

The donations were purportedly collected to pay for "cancer support services for women or men with breast cancer, and to children with pediatric cancer," according to a July 20 news release from MUSC. But court records show only 3 percent of the funds were used for these purposes. The rest was spent on professional fundraisers and administrative costs, including salaries, employee perks and trips.

The settlement agreement bans ex-employees affiliated with the shuttered groups from ever raising money for charity again. The agreement also provides $2.5 million to National Cancer Institute Cancer Care Centers across the country. MUSC will receive $39,024.

South Carolina Secretary of State Mark Hammond and Hollings Cancer Center Director Dr. Raymond DuBois will hold a news conference on July 21 to discuss the settlement agreement.
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The American Civil Liberties Union of South Carolina said the state's prison system is understaffed, providing recommendations regarding health and safety issues for those who are incarcerated and those who guard them.

The organization released its 96-page report, Reevaluating Crime and Punishment in South Carolina, on July 20, including recommendations the S.C. Department of Corrections could implement to improve the system for all.

Shirene Hansotia, criminal justice counsel for the ACLU of S.C., wrote the report to explore the connections among issues that lie within the prisons, and how systemic problems impact one another.

The general impression is that we as a society don't need to worry about prison issues, Hansotia said. And I hope the report helps bring out the many reasons that having these issues with our prisons impacts everyone you know.

Hansotia said many families are impacted by increases in incarceration rates. The report says 7 percent of U.S. children have had a parent incarcerated at some point in their lifetime. The average prison population in South Carolina in 2020 was 18,835, as opposed to 2,337 in 1970, which reflects the national trend of increasing prison populations and the increasing South Carolina population.

As of June 2021, the prison population was 15,315, which is a 3,520-person decrease from the 2020 average prison population, although the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic could have contributed to this population change.

Trends do indicate a decrease in incarcerations rates since 2010, where there were 24,710 incarcerated by the state  a record high. That year, the state passed its Omnibus Crime Reduction and Sentencing Reform Act, which reduced South Carolinas prison population by 14 percent. Hansotia said more reforms are needed.

Additionally, it was announce on July 13 roughly 20 percent South Carolina inmates wind up back in prison within several years of being released, meaning 80 percent of the state's ex-felons remain on the road to success, a leader among states.

We want to make them better and give them the opportunity to better themselves and not come back to prison, and thats exactly what were doing, Bryan Stirling, director of the Department of Corrections, said on July 13, noting that 85 percent of prisoners are out within five years.

South Carolinas return, or recidivism, rate has fallen over 12 years from a high of one in three prisoners returning to just one in five. That translates to 1,100 fewer people incarcerated, saving taxpayers the expense of keeping people locked up and building another prison, Stirling said.

Stirling expects recidivism rates to continue dropping as job-training opportunities are made available to any inmate willing to sign up and work their way to a lower security classification.

This report comes more than three years after violence erupted in one dorm at Lee Correctional Institution in rural Bishopville and spread to nearby housing units, becoming the deadliest prison riot in America in a generation. Many of the lawsuits surrounding that riot argued S.C. Department of Corrections officials failed to keep prisoners safe.

According to the report, some 25 of 37 prison units in South Carolina were on lockdown for six months after the Lee riots.

When you're locked in your cell for 23 hours of the day, that's akin to solitary confinement and there's lots of research showing just how damaging solitary confinement is even after a shorter period, Hansotia said.

Hansotia indicated that understaffing may have contributed to the increase in solitary confinement in prisons during that time. The Department of Corrections should have had 4,042 correctional officers in place to provide a safe environment, according to the report. As of January 2018, roughly half of the recommended security staff was assigned to these facilities, the report shows.

We have a dire and chronic staffing shortage that's been happening for quite a long time, combined with the fact that people inside are not getting the programs and services that they desperately need, Hansotia said. Most importantly, not getting medical and mental health in a timely or adequate way.

The report also addresses prison conditions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, citing the poor standards of living in isolation spaces and access to hygiene products to keep the facilities clean.

Hansotia plans to send the report to the states legislative bodies in the coming days, she said.

In particular, well send the report to the legislators that serve on the key committees that work on sentencing reform and on prison issues, Hansotia said.

The report had nine recommendations for the department. Hansotia suggested the Department of Corrections increase all types of prison programming. She based this recommendation, in part, on a study conducted by the RAND Corp. in 2014 that showed prisoners who participate in any kind of educational programs  from remedial math to vocational auto shop to college-level courses  are up to 43 percent less likely to re-offend and return to prison. She also recommended that the department create programming to prepare prisoners for reentry.

Stirling noted South Carolina's expansion of job training programs and other efforts to help inmates adjust, such as lining up housing, reconnecting inmates to family, providing their medication and ensuring they leave with identification and non-prison clothes.

Inmates can also apply for jobs online before they leave and learn interview skills, to include how to talk about their incarceration, Stirling said.

The report also recommended the department pay every incarcerated person for their work. Compensation would be equivalent to minimum wage outside prison. Regarding the pandemic, the report recommended prioritizing vaccination among incarcerated people and provide consistent access to visitation.

Chrysti Shain, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, wrote the department already had implemented many of the proposed reforms, such as providing minimum wages or more to some inmates.

In-person visitation is being phased back in after the COVID-19 suspension, Shain wrote. Electronic visitation is available for all inmates, she wrote.

The report also recommended to safely reduce the prison population to maintain physical distancing.

SCDC cannot reduce anyones sentence, Shain wrote. Only the courts can do that. Having said that, our lower recidivism rate is keeping about 100 inmates from coming back to prison each year. That would be the equivalent of an entire large prison over the past decade if the programs were not working.

South Carolina has one of the lowest recidivism rates in the U.S. at 21.9 percent, Shain wrote.

Shain wrote the department has revamped its grievance process from paper to electronic so complaints by incarcerated people can be handled more quickly.

The report finally recommended an independent corrections ombudsman, which is an official appointed to investigate individuals' complaints against mismanagement.

The department has an ombudsman housed in the directors office, Shain wrote. The issue of an independent one was brought up and discussed during the S.C. House Oversight Committee review. It was not recommended by the committee.

The report is available on the South Carolina ACLUs website.
SUMMERVILLE  With millions of dollars in COVID-19 relief support on the table, the Dorchester District 2 community sees hiring more teachers as a top priority.

DD2 is slated to receive more than $40 million in federal COVID-19 relief funding. The support is part of nearly $3 billion in federal aid that can be used by school districts across the U.S. over the next three years.

District officials held a public input meeting on July 19 at Summerville High School to discuss how best to use the funds. A small group of parents and staff members joined with school board members to discuss the unprecedented funding.

"This is an opportunity to do things that we have never done before in our school district," Superintendent Joseph Pye said.

One of the recurring topics throughout the meeting was the hiring of more teachers. Mary Rita Watson, a reading interventionist with the district who attended the meeting, raised concerns about class sizes.

Part of her job is to pull students out of class to help them catch up on their reading levels. Having to do it with a large pool of students is challenging, she said.

Ideally, she would work with around four or six students at a time to help pinpoint any challenges they were having. Instead, she's working with around 20, she said.

"It won't be effective if it's not a small group," she said.

Lack of teachers is one of the reasons for those numbers, Pye said. Fewer teachers mean larger class sizes.

As of July 20, the district had 23 open positions for teachers. Those openings occur when teachers either resign or decide to not sign their contract to return.

"There's a major teacher shortage going on," Pye said.

One parent of an eighth grader asked during the meeting how many teachers had been hired for that grade level. Though officials couldn't answer specifically for each grade level at the time, they said the district has hired 200 teachers since February.

Those new hires were a mix of open positions from teachers not returning for the school year and new positions that are expected to be supported by COVID relief funds.

The $40 million for DD2 will be the third relief funding package for a total of more than $62 million in support for the district. To receive that additional funding, school districts must present a detailed plan on how the money will be used.

"That's why we're taking public input," said Tina Meunier, the district's director of finance. "We have not received any of the money."

Some of DD2's initial proposals for the funds include supporting Saturday tutoring sessions, updating and fixing school buildings, maintaining parent and family engagement centers and supporting mental health resources such as counseling.

School districts are also required to organize community surveys to get the funds. Nearly 3,000 community members participated in DD2's survey around the use of the relief funds. Most were parents.

Survey responders highlighted class-size reduction, the purchasing of education technology and mental health support as their top picks for what should take funding priority.

"I am determined to ensure my son graduates with a good education," Mary Hoffman, a DD2 parent, said at the meeting.

Per federal guidelines, the district has to use 20 percent of the funding, or around $8 million, to address learning loss. The top community suggestions to help with learning loss were tutoring, after- school programs and summer enrichment programs.

Officials said the goal is to use the funds to support their preexisting enrichment programs until 2024. According to Pye, the district will likely use more than the required 20 percent to address learning loss.

"Our problem is going to see how far we can stretch it out," he said.

The public commenting period will continue until July 30. Community members can go to the district's website at ddtwo.org to add their input.

Another public input meeting is scheduled for Aug 9. There, district officials expect to present a proposed final plan for the funds to the community.
State and local officers did not attempt to give Paul Murdaugh a sobriety test or have his blood checked for alcohol after he allegedly crashed his fathers boat into a bridge near Beaufort in 2019.

Instead, investigators only determined the amount of alcohol in his blood because the hospital that treated him had run its own test.

That test result showed Murdaugh, who was 19 at the time, had a blood alcohol concentration of over 0.28, according to a spokesman for the S.C. Department of Natural Resources. Thats more than three times the legal limit to drive a car in South Carolina. Medical personnel drew his blood around 4 a.m.  three hours after he and a friend were seen taking shots of liquor at a bar near the Beaufort waterfront, and more than an hour and a half after the crash.

The February 2019 crash drew widespread attention at the time because it killed 19-year-old Mallory Beach and because it involved Murdaugh, who came from a family prominent in South Carolina legal circles. Murdaughs grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had each been the top prosecutor in the Beaufort area, combining for more than eight decades in office.

The decision not to administer a sobriety test to Murdaugh has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks. Attorneys for one of the boats other passengers, Connor Cook, cited it this month as an example of law enforcements failure to conduct an appropriate investigation. They accused officers of colluding to shift blame away from Murdaugh and toward Cook.

Murdaugh was later charged with three felony counts of boating under the influence. He was still awaiting trial when he and his mother were fatally shot on June 7 at their hunting lodge in rural Colleton County. Authorities have not made any arrests or named any suspects in Murdaugh's death.

New records released by DNR under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that its officers made conflicting reports about whether a sobriety test was offered to Murdaugh, who was initially regarded as one of two possible drivers.

The DNR investigator initially assigned to the case wrote that he instructed an agent to give sobriety tests to Murdaugh and Cook, who was also seen as a possible driver. Yet that same agent wrote that he was only instructed to test Cook. He later testified that he did not try to test Murdaugh. When it came time to write his report on the crash, the investigator wrote that Murdaugh and Cook both refused to be tested.

In a statement, DNR said efforts to take a sobriety test were hamstrung because Murdaugh and Cook had been taken to Beaufort Memorial Hospital by the time agents got to the crash scene. The department also said agents werent immediately certain who was driving the boat.

The agencys investigative file shows that in the hours after the crash, the surviving passengers gave conflicting information about who was driving or said they werent sure who was behind the wheel at the moment the boat hit the bridge. Meanwhile, Murdaugh told an agent he hadn't been driving.

But deputies who beat DNR to the scene offered one key piece of information: Mallory Beachs boyfriend was so angry with Murdaugh after the crash that the two had to be separated. The boyfriend was heard yelling, That (expletive) needs to rot in (expletive) prison.

Deputies from the Beaufort County Sheriffs Office likewise declined to give sobriety tests. In depositions, they said they didnt think it was appropriate to get involved because DNR is responsible for investigating boat crashes.

But they said that Murdaugh seemed highly intoxicated. One said in deposition testimony that an officer had to accompany his ambulance because he was acting a fool. DNRs investigation file shows that the boats other passengers, emergency medical personnel and hospital staff also described him as drunk.

In fact, it was the assessment of hospital staff that ultimately led to his blood being drawn. An emergency room doctor and an assistant told investigators that because of how he was behaving, they werent sure how injured he really was.

They determined they needed to test his blood to see if he was intoxicated.
North Augusta calls itself South Carolinas Riverfront and is seeking the public's input to make its pride and joy a popular destination.

Mayor Briton Williams said during City Council's Monday meeting that it is looking to hold an event along the Savannah River in 2022.

We need to have an event on the river. I dont know what that event is, thats what we got to find out, Williams said. Something on the water. It may be kayaking, it may be rowing, it may be rafting  I dont know. There are so many communities on the water that are doing things; we just havent.

Citizens can send suggestions directly to the city through the end of August. From there, the city will create a citizen-run committee to receive 2022 budget funding for the event.

A form will be available online via social media for people to input their ideas. Contact information, the idea and the inspiration for the idea will be needed for the city to conduct research. Citizens will have a final vote on the river idea.

Its exciting, Williams said. I hope we get a lot of new ideas. We need them.

In addition, Williams said during the second ever Power Hour prior to the council meeting that he will be launching a website to track citizen feedback.

This is one of the additions for transparency Williams campaigned on and has added to North Augusta since being elected. Monthly Power Hours, Meet the Mayor events around the city and a monthly vlog are others.

This is going to be another avenue to communicate better with citizens, Williams said.

Resident Dianne Lheureux said she was excited to hear about this addition, especially after seeing that council had fixed an issue she had previously brought up.

For the people that have always been griping that there is no transparency, I think this is a way for them not to say that anymore, Lheureux said.

The website, www.northaugusta.net/mayor, is expected to launch July 20.

Williams will hold a Meet the Mayor event on Tuesday, Aug. 3, at the SRP Federal Credit Union off of Exit 5 at 6 p.m.

Council members Pat Carpenter, Eric Presnell and Kevin Toole were not in attendance during the July 19 meeting.

Other business

 Bill Fokes and Lamar Harvey were announced Employees of the Quarter. Their public service helping out a citizen in need in addition to their "can do" attitude led them both to this award.

 Mayor Williams appointed City Administrator Jim Clifford, council member David McGhee and Director of Engineering and Public Works Tom Zeaser to a stadium advisory board. Along with two GreenJackets representatives, the group will go through maintenance requests and upgrades for SRP Park. For me it is going to be neat and I started on a committee when we broke ground. I know the stadium very well, I saw it all come together so there is a lot of things that I will be able to point out that I know dont work when we see things that failed, McGhee said.

 Council voted to reprioritize the Capital Project Sales Tax list to move the Greeneway Connector project up to No. 2. This project would require road recreation at Bluff Avenue. It was previously No. 11.

 Council voted unanimously to approve a separate bank account for federal coronavirus funds. The city will receive approximately $11,871,089.22 with the money expected to arrive in late 2021 or early 2022.
James Clark started his job as S.C. State University president in 2016 with two strikes against him.

Mr. Clark was a highly regarded business executive who had spent the previous year helping salvage the historically black university's accreditation and finances. But he wasnt an academic; in fact, he didnt even have the doctorate that faculty tend to believe should be a minimal requirement to run a university.

And his appointment was the ultimate insider job by an outsider board: He was one of just three black members of the majority-white board of trustees  a temporary board hand-picked by selected state leaders the previous year after the Legislature booted the regular board  that appointed him out of the blue without even bothering to go through the motions of a presidential search.

Although the school continued to make progress recovering from its financial and academic woes after he took the helm, and he was supported by legislators black and white, including those who represented the Orangeburg community, he never got a honeymoon.

Mr. Clark ruffled feathers in his first interview, when he rejected the popular idea that the schools problems were caused by inadequate state funding and called for a change of culture on campus. Within his first year, he generated pushback by naming Gov. Henry McMaster the spring commencement speaker  even though cultivating friends at the Statehouse is crucial to the success of any state university.

Within three years, alumni were calling for his head. The alumni association officially called for his replacement last year. The faculty added their voices to that call in March. As one academic reminded us last week, people who arent happy with a president can always find allies on a board of trustees. And earlier this month, the board of trustees that was appointed in 2018 to replace the temporary board that hired him voted 10-3 to fire him.

The Post and Couriers Seanna Adcox reported Sunday that the combination of outsider status, controversial hiring and sudden departure recalled for many the fate of former University of South Carolina President Bob Caslen.

As such, its a reminder of how important it is for college trustees to conduct their presidential searches by the book, particularly if theyre going to select a president who hasnt spent his career  or even a large chunk of it  as an academic.

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Of course, Mr. Caslens own missteps contributed to his departure. By contrast, Mr. Clark  well, we cant say for sure. The board fired him for cause, which his contract defined as including negligence, malfeasance or a failure to meet performance goals, according to Columbias State newspaper, which also reported that the board has refused to say what the specific cause was.

The faculty and the alumni complained that enrollment had continued to fall  after rising briefly  and said he wasn't equipped to fix the problem.

If thats why the board fired him, it needs to say so  although we can understand why trustees wouldnt want to admit they fired a president because enrollment dropped during a pandemic, when it was dropping at many colleges.

If the board fired him for some other reason, then it needs to tell us that.

Its refusal to do so suggests that it didnt have a good reason. It suggests that the reason was, as some of Mr. Clarks Republican and Democratic supporters in the Legislature have suggested, simply that the faculty wouldnt tolerate a non-academic president, or the alumni wouldnt tolerate a president without prior connections to S.C. State, or that trustees want to micromanage the university. It also suggests that the Legislature needs to consider that evidence that the trustees are unfit to serve in public positions  as it should do with other part-time boards that have fired directors without explanation.

The other difference between Mr. Caslens departure and Mr. Clarks is that the former came at a time when USC was arguably stronger than it had been in years, thanks to his leadership through the COVID-19 pandemic. S.C. State is certainly in a stronger position than it was when Mr. Clark arrived, but its financial  and thus academic  position remains tenuous, and theres good reason to worry that the departure of yet another president will make things worse.

We dont mean to imply that Mr. Clark did nothing wrong, or that he was the best person for the job. We simply dont know. What we do know is that there is nothing inherently wrong with bringing in an outsider to run a university  whether thats someone outside of academia or simply outside the insular community of that university; that is in fact often the best course, particularly at a university that needs a course correction.

We also know that the board of trustees, the faculty, staff and alumni all need to recognize that a revolving door of presidents undermines a universitys credibility with the public, from potential students to potential donors. And they need to work together to put an end to this problem.
The front page of the July 8 Post and Courier included an article about Mount Pleasants welcoming public art. It had an adorable photo of a happy little bulldog peering over a fence.

Other work on the Liberty Hill Farm entrance included a cute little King Charles Cavalier spaniel, a cat and two young kids also peeking over the fence. The work is fun, light and happy.

A friend of mine and I had caught a glimpse of them when driving on Rifle Range Road. We drove around to take a closer look. Lucky for us, we happened to meet artist Gretta Kruesi just completing her installation.

We thanked her for sharing her happiness with us and the community.

My same friend and I were walking on Spring Street in June and saw David Boatwright, another mural artist, working on the restoration of an old advertisement on a building. It too was fun.

There had been an article in The Post and Courier that day about Mr. Boatwright, who had proposed doing a huge mural on a James Island building about boating on our Lowcountry waterways.

How lucky for us to meet Mr. Boatwright and Ms. Kruesi.

But what a downer to read that some social media comments are negative.

Has our community lost its sense of humor if we cannot enjoy these little treasures?

These individuals may next want to cancel the T-shirt I climbed Mount Pleasant.

DIANE SMITH

Barrier Island Court

Mount Pleasant

Beware corner stores

Recently there has been a good deal of reminiscing on the era of the Charleston corner grocery. This likely has come up because of the application to repurpose the former gas station at Ashley Avenue and Wentworth Street.

We can pass along some observations from living across from a corner grocery for 35 years.

The store across from us was run by longtime owner Pete Alvanos. He was a true member of the community. He swept the sidewalks, kept an eye on loitering, watched out for neighbors and kept the trash picked up and trash cans put away. He also operated a store that was the grocery to the neighborhood.

The era of the owner-operated corner grocery store is largely gone.

Now the store has an absentee owner. The litter generated by customers is endless, the sidewalk isnt swept, and the trash and recycle cans are permanent fixtures on the sidewalk. Zoning has permitted the store to close at 10 p.m. instead of 6 p.m.

The deliveries now come in huge trucks, which often block or encroach on the intersection. Gone are the days when suppliers were located on Market, East Bay and Meeting streets and could deliver with small vehicles.

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The groceries are now largely beer and wine with a sidebar of lottery tickets and snacks.

Anyone needing a full range of groceries goes elsewhere.

So, the neighbors at Ashley and Wentworth should be wary.

Livability will be affected and the city is either incapable or unwilling to enforce rules already in place. We have heard many promises with few kept. The corner store near us is not the store that Pete Alvanos operated.

DAVID B. HOFFMAN

APRIL S. HOFFMAN

Pitt Street

Charleston

Advertise beach shuttle

I drive across the Isle of Palms connector several times a week and pass the new modern shuttle, which brings folks to and from Mount Pleasant and the Isle of Palms. But I have never seen any passengers on it.

This is a marvelous option for the parking problems on the island, but it will not last long without customers.

There has been insufficient promotion or advertising.

Why have the shuttle running if no one knows about it?

There should be signs and banners all over the place.

How does anyone know where the shuttle is boarded or unloaded?

Shouldnt Isle of Palms and Mount Pleasant officials do a better job of advertising this service?

This opportunity is slipping away due to negligence. Plus, it is a waste of money.

BOBBIE ROTHSCHILD

56th Avenue

Isle of Palms
COLUMBIA  Senators will take public testimony over the next month on how they should redraw South Carolina's voting lines following the census, starting with a hearing in Columbia next week.

The Senate panel in charge of tweaking Senate and congressional district lines to reflect population changes voted unanimously July 20 on a public comment schedule that opens on Statehouse grounds. The last of 10 hearings is set for Aug. 12 at Aiken Technical College.

Senators are looking for input on how to keep communities  to include cities, school districts and neighborhoods  together for representation, said Senate Judiciary Chairman Luke Rankin, R-Myrtle Beach.

"We want to hear they like what they have or they don't like what they have," he said.

All hearings will start at 6:30 p.m., and people will be able to testify in person or virtually.

In South Carolina, legislators have sole authority over drawing their own voting lines. Critics of that process worry districts will be further "cracked" and "packed"  simple descriptions of what happens when gerrymandering splits or concentrates communities to benefit incumbents and their party, nearly guaranteeing incumbency.

The hearings are voters' opportunity to have a say in who is on their ballot for the next decade.

But "the average citizen doesn't realize what redistricting is," said Sen. Margie Bright Matthews, D-Walterboro, who argued the hearings should be scheduled further out to allow more time to educate voters on the meetings and their importance.

"It might be doable and successful, but I dont think thats enough time," she said.

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She and Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Columbia, did convince their colleagues to flip two dates, putting the more populated Midlands region, where it's easier to advertise quickly, ahead of one of the state's most rural areas.

Orangeburg was initially set for the first meeting, to hear from residents in that county, as well as in Bamberg, Barnwell and Calhoun counties. The flip pushed that hearing to Aug. 9.

"Trying to organize folks in these counties is especially difficult," Harpootlian said.

Rural areas lack daily newspapers as well as access to high-speed internet for online information, the Democratic senators said.

In agreeing to the change, Rankin said there was no reason for the proposed calendar other than precedent, as it followed the flow of previous redistricting schedules.

"We want to be as open as we can be," Rankin said, recognizing that most residents don't understand the process. "This is dry, arcane and dusty. This is not on folks' radar but is incredibly important to them."

Legislators are getting a late start to the decennial process, due to COVID-related delays in the census counts. Legislators will start getting detailed data from the U.S. Census Bureau next month on where the state's population grew and shrank.

The state House redistricting panel has not started its public work yet.

Legislators are expected to approve the new maps in a special session this fall.
Spartanburg aims to upgrade infrastructure on the city's westside to attract new development, a step the city's chief administrator said will help transform the downtown economy.

The infrastructure project would be funded through a $12 million state budget earmark for the city. On June 25, Gov. Henry McMaster vetoed $152 million in earmarks for 225 projects statewide. Four days later, state legislators voted to override the governor's vetoes, restoring funding for all of the projects.

The city now needs to finalize commitments from the private sector, Spartanburg City Manager Chris Story told The Post and Courier.

"There are some things in flux about some moving parts," Story said. "I envision public meetings will be held over the next couple of months about that. I think we are in a position, if we can get private sector commitments and finance the other, I think we are going to take a big step forward in realizing the downtown economy everybody wants."

Infrastructure upgrades could include street work, increased parking capacity and utility work several blocks west and south of Morgan Square, he said.

There have already been preliminary commitments from private organizations to invest and develop in the area based on the city's plan to upgrade infrastructure in those areas, he said.

"It's fair to say this allocation of resources makes (new development) more likely," Story said. "We have had some promising interest, but this helps us get to the finish line. It would be office space and some additional retail."

The state has provided the city with public funding in the past to promote economic development efforts, but not of this scale.

"I think the state has helped in smaller ways on various economic development projects, but this is the most significant," Story said. "I think in some ways it makes good sense because the Upstate is evolving and South Carolina is trying to evolve."

Story said the city is continuing to work toward attracting more white-collar jobs, which the infrastructure project is designed to attract.

Working with Spartanburg County's legislative delegation, OneSpartanburg President and CEO Allen Smith said work began nearly two years ago on securing the $12 million earmark for the city. Smith said the original request was for $18 million.

"We will figure out how we can secure the rest in order to provide for the infrastructure project to start coming out of the ground," Smith said. "These public infrastructure projects have a public benefit and major public impact on years to come."

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As downtown's residential population continues to grow, he said, efforts are being made to improve the aesthetics of the city's gateways and corridors including along West Main Street, which will help transform this area by attracting diversified businesses.

The city's old master plan for growth identifies West Main Street as "being the next economic corridor for the city," Smith said.

"You see that coming slowly to fruition now with the city actively enforcing code," he said. "You are seeing West Main Street from a cosmetic standpoint getting cleaned up. Working with the city to enforce the code over there, we hope to raise more private capital and redesign with bike lanes and landscaping not with state investment."

New residential construction in Spartanburg continues at a record pace.

Smith said as of 2019 there were 400 residential units downtown.

Since then, 2,200 residential units have been constructed or in the process of construction within five miles of Morgan Square, with the number of residential units downtown increasing to 947.

State Rep. Steven Long of Boiling Springs said while growth continues in the city, other areas including on the westside have remained stagnant. He said there are groups interested in investing.

"I think (the infrastructure project) will have a significant impact more than just on the city but on the county for what it is used for," Long said. "The infrastructure project build-up on that side of town is to support job creation. I think it is important to have some higher-income job creation. There are a lot of businesses coming here, but we don't have as many white-collar jobs for people. We just want to create that opportunity in the Spartanburg area."

One member of Spartanburg County's legislative delegation voted against restoring funding for earmarks. State Rep. Josiah Magnuson of Campobello told The Post and Courier he couldn't support restoring funding because taxpayers couldn't be sure how the money is going to be spent for all of the projects.

"I don't think we know 100 percent of where the money is going to be spent," Magnuson said. "If it used for infrastructure, I don't see a problem with that funding. If it used to pick winners and losers in business or give some special interest an upper hand, then I don't support that."

Magnuson said in his vote against restoring funding for earmarks that he wasn't targeting the $12 million earmarked for Spartanburg. He said he couldn't support restoring funding for all projects, calling them "all manner of pork."

"I voted to uphold all the earmark vetoes," Magnuson said. "The earmarks included Spartanburg money, but there was quite a bit more than just that money. A lot of these projects end up where I don't think taxpayers want them. Spending public money, I think the public has the right to know where the money is going and why and what it is being spent on."
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Carl Hessler Jr. is a multi-media reporter who writes about crime and justice from the Montgomery County Courthouse for 21st Century Media Newspapers Greater Philadelphia area publications. Follow Carl on Twitter: @MontcoCourtNews
Henry Fordham III, president of the Allegheny East Conference of the Seventh-day Adventists, based in Pine Forge, and his wife, Sharon, were killed in a fire early Sunday morning in their Amity Township home.
After months of pressure from left-wing activistsi.e., its customer baseBen & Jerrys announced today that it will no longer sell ice cream in the occupied territories.

We believe it is inconsistent with our values for Ben & Jerrys ice cream to be sold in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), the company stated in a notice it posted on its website.

Ben & Jerrys will end sales of our ice cream in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Read our full statement: https://t.co/2mGWYGN4GA pic.twitter.com/kFeu7aXOf3  Ben & Jerry's (@benandjerrys) July 19, 2021

The move gives a boost to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which has targeted the Vermont-based American company for the last decade. Activist group Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine had been particularly vocal about the issue.

Unilever, the global conglomerate that owns Ben & Jerrys, distanced itself from the announcement, pointing out that the ice cream company is independently managed. For my part, I agree with Prime Minister Bennett:

There are many ice cream brands, but only one Jewish state, said Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Ben & Jerrys has decided to brand itself as the anti-Israel ice cream. This decision is morally wrong and I believe that it will become clear that it is also commercially wrong, he said.

Grocery store freezers are stocked with many superb brands of ice cream. I cant imagine why anyone but a hard-core leftist would select Ben & Jerrys. Meanwhile, where else has Ben & Jerrys refused to sell ice cream? Reports indicate that they are selling in China, untroubled by the CCPs Uyghur genocide. Is there anywhere else in the world where Ben & Jerrys refuses to make money? Not that I know of.

In todays world, anti-Semitism usually manifests itself as a unique and obsessive concern with the real or imaginedusually imaginedmisdeeds of Israel, while ignoring indisputably more significant failings on the part of other states. In my book, Ben & Jerrys is guilty of anti-Semitism.
Joe Bidens accusing Facebook of killing people was an unforced error, and a rather bizarre one. Facebook is closely aligned with the Democratic PartyMark Zuckerberg may have done more to win the 2020 election for Joe Biden than anyone else, including Bidenand it was pointless and damaging for Biden to level such an accusation. Moreover, it gave a senior Facebook executive the opportunity to point out that Biden was scapegoating the company for its own failure to meet its vaccination goals.

Today, predictably, Biden changed his mind:

Facebook isnt killing people, these 12 people are out there giving misinformation. Anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. Its killing people. Its bad information, Biden told reporters after giving remarks about the economy, referencing a study that showed a dozen accounts on Facebook are responsible for the majority of misinformation about the coronavirus vaccine seen on the platform. My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally, that somehow Im saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation, the outrageous misinformation about the vaccine, Biden added. Thats what I meant.

Those 12 accounts, by the way, are widely diverse and share no ideological point of view. One of the dirty dozen is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a long-time anti-vaxxer, as are several of the others.

The most notable aspect of this incident, I think, is that it is one of a number of recent occasions when Biden has spoken with the caustic, belligerent tone that you see in some men as they enter their dotage. No doubt his entourage was horrified when he accused their friends at Facebook of killing people, but cleaning up after this kind of outburst is something they are increasingly accustomed to.
I am quickly learning why the New York Times and the left (but I repeat myself) are so spun up about Hungary: the government here actually wants to defend Western civilizationand religionfrom its enemies. Whether they are doing this well or badly I cannot fully judge yet, but that they mean to do it seriously is clear.

So I guess I shouldnt be surprised to find out that my visit here has not gone unnoticed back home:

First or all, Id rather be called a licksplittle than a lackey, but thats just me. And its pretty ironic given how many readers, not to mention Lucretia on our last 3WHH, blasted me for being too hard on Trump in the Power Line post Chait references. Makes me think he didnt actually read the whole thing, even though it was a short note. Its a certainty that he didnt read any of the comments! This fact was not lost on one reader who entered the fray:

Second, as a charter inmate of the Bush Derangement Asylum back in the 2000s, I guess Chait needs new hate figures, and he is indeed right that I have been enjoying hanging out in Cafe Scruton, which is alive especially with young people popping in and out, sitting in the small upstairs conference room with laptops and books strewn abut the table, engaged in serious conversation, along with lots of people coming up and down from the well-appointed basement meeting room. Ive been happy just to sit with a cup of cafe Americano, noodling away on my computer, and watching the passing scene.

One of the things that so upsets the New York Times about Hungary is that the Orban government has funded a college, Mathias Corvinus Collegium, or M.C.C., andgasp!it appears to be a self-consciously conservative college. Imagine that! Heres the New York Times wringing its hands about it:

His critics argue that the donation is legalized theft, employed to tighten Mr. Orbans grip on power by transferring public money to foundations run by political allies.

So lets see: in the U.S., the federal and state governments give billions each year to colleges and universities run almost exclusively by Democrats, where the faculty is 90 percent Democratic, and where 95 percent of university faculty and staff campaign contributions go to the Democratic Party (I dont suppose the Times would ever think to call this money-laundering)and thats before we get to the curriculum, whose ideological content ought to be considered an in-kind campaign contribution to the Democratic Party. But somehow the Times gets its knickers in a bunch when a distant country decides to spend some public money on behalf of educational programming that actually supports the country. Thats pretty rich.

Anyway, there is this sequel to the Chaitred:

Well, Im not going to jump to this bait because, among other things, my topic here is to talk to Hungarians about America (specifically, What Is Going on in America?, which most people here amended to What the Hell Is Going On in America!?!), rather than lecture Hungarians on how they should run their country.

The lecture, by the way, was very well attendedthe best attendance for a Danube Institute event since the COVID lockdown ended heredespite a line of heavy thunderstorms and showers throughout the afternoon. At some point I will post some of the text here, or include some audio excepts in a podcast, but in one sentence, my theme was: America is having a nervous breakdown.

And what do you knowthere are Power Line readers in Budapest! One of them is Peter Urban, pictured here, who came to the lecture because he had read about it here. He reads Power Line first thing every morning, and so I have promised to try to post more material in the overnight hours U.S. time.

Meanwhile, a few other snaps:

And just for the heck of it:
Paul Allard Hodgkins, one of the protesters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, received his sentence today. Judge Randolph Moss, an Obama appointee, sentenced Hodgkins to eight months. This is the first felony sentence handed down in connection with the events of January 6.

The felony, to which Hodgkins entered a guilty plea, is obstructing a congressional proceeding. He carried a large Trump 2020 flag onto the floor of the U.S. Senate near the presiding officers desk.

The prosecution sought a sentence of 18 months for Hodgkins. That sentence would have been far too harsh. Hodgkins didnt engage is violent conduct and reportedly he had no previous criminal history.

Some will say that even an eight-month sentence is too harsh. Personally, I dont have a problem with it, provided the sentence complies with applicable sentencing guidelines and is commensurate with what left-wing protesters receive when they commit felonies.

But I dont believe the sentence is commensurate. Left-wing protesters who engage in violent conduct  which Hodgkins did not  seldom get any jail time. Often they arent even prosecuted.

Recently, I read that a defendant who assaulted a police officer during rioting near the White House last year will not be prosecuted because the facial recognition technology used in his case supposedly isnt reliable enough when it comes to identifying African-Americans.

Whats the theory here  that all Black men look basically the same? Give me a break.

I can think of very few cases in which violent left-wing protesters received sentences of eight months or more in connection last years rioting. And, again, Hodgkins wasnt charged with, and apparently did not engage in, violent conduct.

Lets also remember that the Capitol police officer who shot and killed a protester for no apparent reason hasnt been charged with any crime. Nor has there been any attempt to explain this decision to the public.

Its clear to me that there are two criminal law standards at work in this context  one for left-wing protesters and one for right-wingers. But we shouldnt be surprised. There are also two free speech standards along the same lines.

To me, thats evidence that the U.S. is in the midst of a cold civil war.
I want to draw attention to Aaron Sibariums superb Washington Free Beacon column How Critical Race Theory Led to Kendi. It actually illuminates the phenomenon of CRT as we find it manifested everywhere in our institutions. Christopher Rufo has doggedly documented the metastasis of this cancer (the link is to Rufos City Journal columns).

Sibariums column struck a personal chord with me. He links to and quotes from Alan Freemans 1978 Minnesota Law Review article Legitimizing Racial Discrimination through Antidiscrimination law: A Critical Review of Supreme Court Doctrine. My last semester in law school I was a student in Professor Freemans Civil Rights course.

I had been hired to clerk for Eighth Circuit Judge Myron Bright after graduation. Judge Bright asked me to take the course in federal civil rights law because civil rights cases were to be among my primary responsibility in my work for him.

Professor Freeman was an early proponent of Critical Legal Studies and its CRT variant. He was a frank Marxist and persistent critic of Supreme Court jurisprudence that he asserted gave with one hand what it took away with the other. He taught all the leading cases interpreting 42 U.S.C section 1983 and the related Eleventh Amendment jurisprudence  the Supreme Court had just decided the Monell case  but this was perhaps the leading theme of the course.

His remarks in class prompted my interest in his utopia. One morning after class I asked him if he would join me for coffee in the Riverbend Cafeteria then adjacent to the law school. In the course of our somewhat stilted conversation I asked him what country he would hold out as his real-world model. He said with only slight hesitation: North Korea.

That was memorable. I certainly had no answer to it. Ive thought about it a lot since CRT has emerged into national controversy. Professor Freeman, by the way, moved on to Buffalo Law School and died way too young at the age of 51.
Joe Biden came to office determined to negotiate Americas way back into the Iran nuclear deal. His team made clear that it was willing to make major concessions to accomplish this dubious objective.

What concessions? According to Irans foreign minister Javad Zarif, Biden has expressed willingness to lift sanctions on the Supreme Leader, remove restrictions on all but one Iranian bank, and rescind the foreign terrorist designation for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. He also says the U.S. has agreed to undo several executive orders and drop other sanctions.

Zarif may be lying, but this sounds like his version of what constitutes an opening bid. And Biden is desperate to start the bidding.

If Biden is willing to make these concessions and other significant ones involving large amounts of money, its possible that Iran will begin to negotiate seriously with the U.S., for whatever that might be worth. In the meantime, though, Irans recent actions demonstrate its view of what it can get away with while Biden is president.

The Wall Street Journals editors provide the details:

Federal prosecutors said last week that an Iranian intelligence network planned to kidnap a U.S. citizen in New York and bring her to Iran. A dual U.S.-Iranian national, Masih Alinejad has reported extensively on human-rights abuses by the Islamic Republic. The journalist has built a large following on social networks while pushing for a tougher American approach to Tehran. The prosecutors, who indicted four Iranian nationals, said Iranian intelligence has targeted others in Canada, the United Kingdom and elsewhere. Last year Tehran executed Ruhollah Zam, a France-based Iranian exile abducted while traveling in Iraq. Europe has previously imposed sanctions on Iran for planning terrorist attacks and murders on the Continent. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that an Iranian commander has encouraged Iran-backed militias to step up attacks on U.S. targets in Iraq and Syria. Shiite militias have attacked U.S. positions in Iraq at least 26 times since President Biden took office, estimates Behnam Ben Taleblu of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Mr. Biden ordered retaliatory airstrikes on the armed groups twice this year. But two American service members were wounded this month during a rocket barrage after the last pinprick U.S. retaliation.

Thats not all:

Irans violations of the 2015 nuclear deal also continue. Lame duck President Hassan Rouhani says the country can enrich uranium to weapons-grade purity, or about 90%. So far it has stopped at 60%, but thats well above the 3.67% allowed under the deal. The government is stockpiling other illicit material and ignoring its inspection obligations to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Even Russian diplomat Mikhail Ulyanov admitted, Iran seems to be going too far.

Whats the point of negotiating with the dishonest leaders of a rogue regime like Irans? As the WSJ editors say, Mr. Biden has ample cause to walk away from the nuclear talks and keep the sanctions pressure on.

In my view, Biden also has ample cause to attack Irans nuclear facilities, and not just through cyber methods. Doing so may or not be prudent, all things considered. However, its the only course thats likely to prevent this terrorist, implacably hostile state from obtaining nuclear weapons. And its justified by Irans attacks on U.S. forces in the Middle East.

Biden wont launch an attack, of course. Hes unlikely even to walk away from talks with the mullahs.

Under Biden, Iran is free to do just about whatever it wants with little fear of serious retaliation.
Yes, no matter what

Yes, but it depends on variety

No, for medical reasons, uncertainty

No, principle

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The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has announced that the country recorded 146 new COVID-19 cases and one death on Monday.

In an update on its Facebook page on Monday night, the centre said the new infections raised the countrys toll to 169,678.

Also, with the new death on Monday, Nigerias total fatality from the pandemic now stands at 2,128.

Of the new cases on Monday, Lagos recorded 134 infections while Ondo reported three. Kwara, Cross River and the FCT reported two each.

Oyo and Rivers states reported one case each.

The NCDC data showed that a total of 164,710 patients have been discharged from hospitals across the nation after treatment.

Meanwhile, the News Agency of Nigeria reported that the NCDC noted that there were, however, more than 2,800 cases that were still active in the country.

The public health agency said the country had tested more than 2.4 million samples for the virus out of the countrys estimated 200 million population.

It added that a multi-sectoral national Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), activated at Level II, would continue to coordinate the national response activities.

The NCDC stated that the COVID-19 outbreak was ongoing and the Delta variant had been detected in Nigeria, which was more dangerous and spread faster.

Wear a mask properly at all times in public spaces as this prevents transmission of the virus, it advised.

The agency noted that the 2021 Eid-ul-Adha celebration had come at a time when Nigerians must continue to be cautious and take responsibility for their health and those around us.

We call on all worshipers to adhere to public health guidelines to prevent spread of the virus.

Avoid all non-essential travel within and outside Nigeria.

Avoid mass gatherings. Observe physical distancing in public places. Always wear a face mask in public places, NCDC advised.

(NAN)
The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) has suffered casualties in the last six months, losing at least four of its aircraft and several personnel.

At least 20 officers also died during these tragic incidents, including senior army personnel.

The most notable of the crashes was the one involving the Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru, and 10 others.

The crashes occurred even as the Air Force is trying to acquire more equipment to help in the fight against insurgents and bandits in various parts of the country.

The most recent is the acquisition of 12 super Tucano fighter jets.

The jets were sold to Nigeria by the U.S. to aid combat actions and air assaults. Six of them will arrive Nigeria before the end of July, according to military authorities.

The Air Force had last year stated that air fighters from the Nigeria are already in the U.S. receiving additional training on usage and the applications of the fighter jets when eventually added to the fleet of combat aircraft.

Here are the fatal incidents involving Air Force aircraft in the last six months:

Beechcraft King Air

Seven personnel of The Nigerian Air Force (NAF) in February 2021 died in a Beechcraft King Air B350i crash on their way to Minna, Niger State.

The aircraft crashed after reporting engine failure, according to the aviation authorities.

The crash occurred around the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Abuja.

The officers were buried in National Military Cemetery, Karonmajigi, Airport Road, Abuja.

The officers were Haruna Gadzama, a flight lieutenant (Captain), Henry Piyo, flight lieutenant (Co-Pilot), Micheal Okpara, a flying officer (Airborne Tactical Observation System (ATOS) Specialist and Bassey Etim, a warrant officer (ATOS Specialist).

The others were Olasunkanmi Olawunmi, a flight sergeant, (ATOS Specialist), Ugochukwu Oluka, a sergeant (ATOS Specialist) and Adewale Johnson, an aircraftman (Onboard Technician).

Alpha Jet Crash (Borno)

In April this year, a fighter Alpha Jet belonging to the Nigerian Air Force in the insurgency-ravaged Borno State in North-east Nigeria went missing.

The Air Force authorities said the fighter jet lost contact with the radar in Borno State earlier that day.

The military then said the plane disappeared while on interdiction mission in support of ground troops, a mission that was part of the ongoing counterinsurgency operations in the North-east.

Although the authorities insist that the plane did not crash, nothing has been heard about it till date.

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However, Boko Haram terror group then released a video showing its fighters shooting at an aircraft believed to be the alpha jet that was declared missing.

In a seven-minute, thirty seconds video, the jet was seen flying low to the ground while the insurgents shot at it.

Air Force passenger jet

A passenger jet belonging to the Nigerian Air Force on 21 May crashed around the Kaduna airport.

The Chief of Army staff, Ibrahim Attahiru, was killed in the crash alongside 10 other military personnel.

The incident happened as the plane was trying to land in bad weather, the military said.

The crash was one of the most tragic due to the number of senior military personnel involved. There were about five generals onboard.

Alpha Jet (Kaduna)

The Nigerian Air Force on July 18 announced that one of its Alpha jets was shot down after coming under intense fire by bandits operating between Kaduna and Zamfara states.

According to the authorities, the pilot, Abayomi Dairo, a flight lieutenant, was able to survive after deploying his survival insticts.

The aircraft was reduced to a wreckage after the incident.
A prominent Yoruba scholar, Banji Akintoye, on Tuesday, confirmed the arrest of Sunday Adeyemo, popularly called Sunday Igboho, saying he and other Yoruba leaders are currently working to provide assistance to prevent his extradition from Benin Republic.

Mr Akintoye, leader of Ilana Omo Oodua and a prominent campaigner for Yoruba self-determination, said in a statement that Mr Igboho had not committed any crime.

For a start, we must all see to it now that Sunday Ighoho will get his freedom back so as to be able to move and operate as a free person, the don, an ally of Mr Igboho, said.

We have secured the services of a leading and highly respected lawyer whom we can confidently rely on. We know, furthermore, that for the protection of his people who are being brutalized, he has joined hands with many of his brethren to take the legally-appropriate step, namely to seek the intervention of the International Criminal Court.

Mr Akintoye, an emeritus professor, said that leading lawyers in Benin Republic are now in charge.

News that Mr Igboho had been arrested in Cotonou, Benin Republic, broke early Tuesday.

Multiple sources who are allies of Mr Igboho told PREMIUM TIMES that Mr Igboho was nabbed at an airport in Cotonou on Monday night while trying to travel to Germany.

The operation was said to have been carried out by operatives of the State Security Services (SSS).

Mr Igbohos lawyer, Yomi Aliu, and SSS spokesman, Peter Afunanya, are yet to speak on the incident. They did not respond to calls and text messages seeking comments.

Also, Mr Igbohos spokesperson, Olayemi Koiki, declined comment on the arrest.

SSS invasion

Earlier this month, Mr Igbohos house, located in Soka, Ibadan, capital of Oyo State was invaded around 1:00 a.m. by SSS operatives.

His vehicles, including his G-wagon, Prado Jeep, and some valuable properties including furniture, and windows were destroyed.

The spokesperson of SSS, Mr Afunaya, who confirmed the raid in a press conference in Abuja at the time said a total of seven AK 47 rifles were recovered, alongside pump action guns and 5,000 rounds of ammunition including other weapons.

He said security operatives recovered the weapons after a hot gun duel between them and Igbohos guards. The SSS also admitted that two of Mr Igbohos men were killed in the process while a security agent was shot on the right hand and is currently responding to treatment.

The secret police also declared Mr Igboho wanted, a development that sparked outrage on social media. Two days after, Mr Igboho said the security operatives planted ammunition in his house in order to persecute him.

A past video of one of his meetings with a South-west traditional ruler, however, surfaced on social media where he boasted that no government can stop him from carrying firearms.

His lawyer, Mr Aliyu, recently wrote the SSS, demanding an apology and N500 million damages from the security operatives for destroying Mr Igbohos Ibadan residence.

Agitation for Yoruba nation

Mr Igboho, and Mr Akintoyes group, has led rallies in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states. He threatened to hold the rally in Lagos on July 3 but his home was invaded barely 72 hours to the planned date.

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He has in the past also called for the eviction of Fulanis in South-west states, an action that was condemned by federal and state authorities.

READ ALSO:

Yoruba Nation agitation is a political ideology to realise the independence and sovereign country for the Yoruba race in Nigeria but many political leaders in the region have rejected and kicked against the idea.

The former governor of Lagos, Bola Tinubu, alongside Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and all leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South-west, in a meeting in Lagos last month, opposed the agitation.

They called for ethnic and religious unity instead of a divided nation.

For the Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land, Gani Adams, Mr Igboho, is using wrong methods to demand self-determination. He said rather than engage traditional rulers peacefully and get their support, he focused on propaganda.
Three weeks after he was declared wanted by Nigerias secret police, the Republican Police on Monday evening arrested Sunday Adeyemo, also known as Sunday Igboho.

Igboho, a campaigner for Yoruba self-determination, was arrested in neighbouring Cotonou, Benin Republic, while trying to travel to Germany.

A local newspaper in the neighbouring country, Banouto, reports quoted Beninise authorities as saying Mr Igboho was nabbed at Cardinal Bernardin International Airport in Cotonou.

He was disembarked from his plane, arrested by the Beninese police while he was trying to travel to Germany and then transferred to the Cotonou Criminal Brigade.

It was learnt that under the agreements between the two countries, Mr Igbohos extradition should be concluded without hindrance.

While the Nigerian government is yet to speak on the development, reactions have started pouring in from different Yoruba groups.

Mr Igbohos lawyer called on the government of Benin Republic to prevent the extradition of Mr. Igboho to Nigeria.

I call upon you to rise up and curb the impunity of the Nigerian Government by refusing any application for extradition of our client who already has an application before the International Criminal Court duly acknowledged, he said in a brief statement seen by PREMIUM TIMES.

Groups kick

A Yoruba nation agitation group, Ilana Omo Oodua, led by Banji Akintoye, said in a statement Tuesday that it is currently working to provide assistance for Ighoho to prevent his extradition into Nigeria.

Mr. Akintoye said for a start, we must all see to it now that Sunday Ighoho will get his freedom back so as to be able to move and operate as a free person. We all know he has committed no crime.

We have secured the services of a leading and highly respected lawyer whom we can confidently rely on. We know, furthermore, that for the protection of his people who are being brutalized, he has joined hands with many of his brethren to take the legally-appropriate step, namely to seek the intervention of the International Criminal Court.

A sociocultural group in Oyo State, The Landmark Group, in a statement by its chairman, Ayo Adekunle, accused the federal government of trying to victimise and dehumanise Igboho.

Its astonishing that the charges against our brother are neither of killing, kidnapping or abduction which are the thriving businesses in Nigeria today and need the concerted efforts of the government working with the state and local government. However, with the kind of treatment and selective manhunt for our brother, such collaborative efforts may be an exercise in futility.

In a nation where bandits are in photo ops with some governors and Boko Haram members are being given amnesty, is it a crime to defend your people against invasion? This, we believe, is the sin of our brother, Sunday Igboho. All other issues are being joined to raise unnecessary sentiments.

We, therefore, call on Governor Seyi Makinde who is the chief security officer of Oyo State, and indeed, governors of the South-West States, to ensure the safety of our brother against victimization. We equally call on the Federal Government and President Muhammadu Buhari to exercise restraint and stop the manhunt for our brother. He is only fighting for justice and equity for his people and, as such, should not be treated as a criminal.

How Igboho was declared wanted

Earlier this month, Mr Igbohos house, located in Soka, Ibadan, capital of Oyo State was invaded around 1:00 a.m. by SSS operatives.

His vehicles, including his G-wagon, Prado Jeep, and some valuable properties including furniture, and windows were destroyed.

The spokesperson of the SSS, Peter Afunnaya, later said seven AK 47 rifles, pump action guns and 5,000 rounds of ammunition and other weapons were recovered from the apartment.

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He said security operatives recovered the weapons after a hot gun duel between them and Igbohos guards. The SSS also admitted that two of Mr Igbohos men were killed in the process while a security agent was shot on the right hand and hospitalised.

Mr Igboho later said the weapons were not his and that security operatives planted ammunition in his house in order to implicate him.

The secret police also declared Mr Igboho wanted.

A past video of one of his meetings with a South-west traditional ruler, however, surfaced on social media where he boasted that no government can stop him from carrying firearms.

His lawyer, Mr Aliyu, recently wrote to the SSS, demanding an apology and N500 million in damages from the security operatives for destroying Mr Igbohos residence.

Yoruba nation agitations

Mr Igboho, and Mr Akintoyes group, led rallies in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states. He threatened to hold the rally in Lagos on July 3 but his home was invaded 72 hours to the planned date.

He had also called for the eviction of Fulanis in South-west states, an action that was condemned by federal and state authorities.

Yoruba Nation agitation is a political ideology to realise an independent and sovereign country for the Yoruba race in Nigeria but many notable political leaders in the region have rejected the idea.

The former governor of Lagos, Bola Tinubu, alongside the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and all leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South-west, in a meeting in Lagos last month, opposed the agitation.

They called for ethnic and religious unity instead of a divided nation.

The Aare Onakakanfo of Yoruba land, Gani Adams, recently said Mr Igboho, is using wrong methods to demand self-determination. He said rather than engage traditional rulers peacefully and get their support, he focused on propaganda.
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The lawyer of a Yoruba nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, also known as Sunday Igboho, has spoken on why his client cannot be extradited to Nigeria from the Benin Republic.

The lawyer, Yomi Alliyu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), argued that Mr Igboho cannot be extradited to Nigeria because of the extradition treaty of 1984 between Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, and Republic of Benin.

The Extradition Treaty of 1984 between Togo, Nigeria, Ghana and Republic of Benin excluded political fugitives, said Mr Alliyu.

It also states that where the fugitive will not get justice because of discrimination and/or undue delay in prosecution the host country should not release the fugitive.

Now, Article 20 of African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights to which the four countries are signatories made agitation for self-determination a fundamental right to be protected by all countries. This made Chief Sunday Adeyemo a political offender who cannot be deported and/or extradited by the good people of the Republic of Benin for any reason.

Secondly, that he cannot get Justice or even be killed is apparent in how those arrested in his house were detained for more than 21 days now without access to their lawyers, he said in a statement.

The legal practitioner also said one of Mr Igbohos wife, identified as Ropo, a German Citizen, was arrested together with her husband in Cotonou.

What offence has she committed to warrant this? We urge the good government of the Republic of Benin and international community, especially Germany, to rise up and curb the impunity of the Nigerian Government by refusing any application for extradition of our Client who already has application before ICC duly acknowledged.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how Benin Republic police on Monday evening arrested Mr Igboho at Cardinal Bernardin International Airport in Cotonou, Benin Republic, while trying to fly from the country to Germany.

He was disembarked from his plane, arrested by the Beninese police while he was trying to travel to Germany and then transferred to the Cotonou Criminal Brigade, according to a Benin newspaper, Banouto.

It was learnt that under the agreements between the two countries, Mr Igbohos extradition should be concluded without hindrance.

Mr Igboho has led rallies in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states. He threatened to hold the rally in Lagos on July 3 but his home was invaded barely 72 hours to the planned date.

While some of his aides were arrested with various weapons, according to security officials, he escaped and has since been declared wanted.

He has in the past also called for the eviction of Fulanis from South-west states, an action that was condemned by federal and state authorities.

Although the Nigerian government is yet to speak about his arrest, reactions have started pouring in from different individuals.

In the latest of its kind, Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG), in a statement by its chairman, Wale Oshun, said if extracted to Nigeria, justice will be denied. Benin Republic, under international law, has an obligation to protect Mr Adeyemo and ensure that he receives justice in whatever extradition process her court might be called to adjudicate upon.

Afenifere Renewal Group invites the Central government to concentrate on solving the problems that precipitated all the crises presently confronting Nigeria rather than selectively bullying its citizens on the basis of ethnic nationality.
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Contrary to reports and various press releases on social media that Sunday Adeyemo (popularly called Sunday Igboho) has been released and flown to Germany, the Yoruba nation agitator is still being held by the authorities in Cotonou, Benin Republic.

Wale Adeniran, one of the leaders of Ilana Omo Odua, a body of Yoruba self-determination groups that Mr Adeyemo partners with, said this in a zoom conversation organised by Heritage Multimedia TV on Tuesday evening.

Mr Adeniran, a pioneer Commissioner of Education in Osun State, is the former Director of Institute of African Studies at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

The zoom meeting was monitored by our correspondent.

I have just spoken with his lawyer. The lawyer has visited the location where he (Igboho) is being held. He was not allowed to see him (Igboho) but they confirmed to him that they are holding him in that location. He was asked to come back tomorrow (Wednesday) by 8:00 a.m. to see him.

I asked him hope they are not going to play a funny game of secretly extraditing him, the lawyer told me it is not possible. We filed an application for political asylum for him over a week ago. With that in process, he cannot be legally extradited from Benin republic. I am very confident about that.

I handle the application myself with the immigration lawyer and he assured me that since that application has been filed, he cannot be extradited. I think we should be rest assured that he will have the opportunity to see him tomorrow, Mr Adeniran, a professor, said.

Speaking on report on Mr Igbohos release, he condemned the development, saying why should people be putting out false information that he has been released which is injurious to this struggle and to the welfare and wellbeing of igboho?

He said four international lawyers from Benin Republic, Nigeria, France and Britain are on the case.

When the lawyers saw the false information, they relaxed, I had to tell them it is false. So can you see the damage.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the police in Benin on Monday evening arrested Mr Igboho at Cardinal Bernardin International Airport in Cotonou, Benin Republic, while trying to jet out of the country to Germany.

He was arrested by the Beninese police while trying to travel to Germany.

Mr Igboho has led rallies in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states. He threatened to hold the rally in Lagos on July 3 but his home was invaded barely 72 hours to the planned date.

While some of his aides were arrested with various weapons, he escaped and had since been declared wanted.

He has in the past also called for the eviction of Fulanis in South-west states, an action that was condemned by federal and state authorities.

Mr Igbohos lawyer, Yomi Alliyu, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), argued that his client cannot be extradited to Nigeria because of the conditions of the extradition treaty of 1984 between Togo, Nigeria, Ghana and Republic of Benin.
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A former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, has called on Nigerians to remember President Muhammadu Buhari, the governors, and other leaders in their prayers as they confront the challenges facing the country.

Mr Tinubu spoke in a statement in Lagos on Monday.

By so doing, together we can enjoy the benefits of a better Nigeria.

This Eid, we must, therefore, beseech Almighty Allah to protect the weak, feed the poor, and give us the courage, wisdom to subdue and defeat those who would do violence and destruction to the innocent.

We pray for our gallant soldiers and other security agents confronting these agents of evil people.

We pray for the unity and stability of this country.

The former governor asked Muslims to dedicate themselves to greater adherence and obedience to the compassionate and spiritually nourishing commands of Allah.

He encouraged the Muslim faithful never to forget the reason for Eid-el- Kabir and to reach out to give solace and succour to those unable to help themselves.

I extend my warmest greetings to our Muslim brothers and sisters in Nigeria and around the world.

We give utmost gratitude to Almighty Allah SWT for His munificent blessings and abiding love for all mankind.

To be a good Muslim is to be a caring and generous human being therefore, show brotherly concern and compassion to all, he said.

Mr Tinubu, one of the leaders of All Progressive Congress (APC), said the challenges faced as a nation called upon all to adhere even more closely to Allahs commands.

He said by so doing, Nigerians may overcome the challenges and continue to build a just and prosperous society destined for all.

(NAN)
An aide to President Muhammadu Buhari, Ita Enang, has exchanged words with the Akwa Ibom State Government over the location for a newly approved federal university of technology for the state.

Mr Enang, Mr Buharis Senior Special Assistant on Niger Delta Affairs, is feeling disappointed that the university would not be sited in his hometown, Ididep, in Ibiono Ibom Local Government Area of Akwa Ibom State.

He said Governor Udom Emmanuel wanted to take the university to his (the governors) hometown.

The location approved by the federal government for the university is in Ikot Abasi Local Government Area, according to Mr Enang.

Mr Emmanuel is from Onna, which is a different local government area, but within the same Senatorial District with Ikot Abasi.

Mr Enang, a former senator who had represented Uyo Senatorial District, told PREMIUM TIMES he facilitated the establishment of the university, and that he had wanted it sited in his hometown.

Every processing and everything was done for the university to be sited in Ididep in the present Senior Science College, formerly teachers training college, which has all the facilities to host a university, Mr Enang said on Monday.

I initiated everything about the university, he added.

Mr Enang told reporters in Uyo that Mr Emmanuel wrote a letter to the federal government, asking that the university be sited in Onna where the governor hails from.

I have considered his action as improper, imprudent and not acting as governor of Akwa Ibom State.

The governor is acting in a manner that could be described as Udomcentric, Onnacentric. He was chosen to be the governor of the entire Akwa Ibom people and not the chairman of Onna local government or councillor representing his ward.

Onna has a university teaching hospital, Onna has the flour mill, Onna has the plywood mill, Onna has a syringe factory, every good road is made in Onna, Onna has the biggest private estate owned by one person, he said.

Enang is seeking attention

The Akwa Ibom State Government has, however, dismissed Mr Enangs claim that he facilitated the establishment of the university.

The Commissioner for Education in the state, Idongesit Etiebiet said the presidential aide was merely seeking attention.

This transaction had and still has no input or contribution of the attention-seeking senator, Mrs Etiebiet said in a statement on Monday.

She said the state government wrote to the federal government, requesting that the university should be sited in Eket Senatorial District, since the two other districts  Uyo and Ikot Ekpene  already have a federal higher institution each.

I cannot comment on what I do not know about, the commissioner responded when PREMIUM TIMES asked if it was true that the governor wanted the university to be in his hometown.

Eleven higher institutions in Akwa Ibom

It is a common practice in Nigeria for the government, at the federal and state levels, to distribute major institutions and projects among geopolitical areas so as to create a sense of belonging.

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But sometimes, or even most times, due to excessive political influence, such practice is sacrificed, and replaced with the concentration of projects in a particular geopolitical area(s).

The Uyo District, which Mr Enang had represented in the Senate, already has a federal university, the University of Uyo, while Ikot Ekpene District has a federal polytechnic in Ukana, the hometown of Godswill Akpabio, the minister of Niger Delta Affairs and a former governor of Akwa Ibom.

Both Uyo and Ikot Ekpene districts, in addition, have two state-owned higher institutions, the College of Education, Afaha Nsit, and the Akwa Ibom State Polytechnic, Ikot Osura, respectively.

The Eket District has Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron, which could be counted as a federal institution, especially when the Senate has just passed a bill for the academy to be upgraded to a university for maritime studies.

Ikot Abasi, where the new federal university of technology is to be sited, is about 30 minute drive to Mkpat Enin Local Government Area where there already exists a university, Akwa Ibom State University, though owned by the state government.

Ikot Abasi, a coastal town, is also home to the moribund Aluminium Smelter Company of Nigeria and the Akwa Ibom State government-owned Ibom Power Plant.

There is a plan by the Nigerian government, in partnership with the Moroccan government, to establish a $1.4 billion dollar fertilizer plant in Ikot Abasi.

Mr Enang, despite the feeling of disappointment, appeared to have accepted Ikot Abasi as the location for the new university.

The federal government said there must be a spread and that one senatorial district cannot have two universities from the Federal Ministry of Education.

I am not selfish. The fact that it is not sited where I had in mind originally does not mean it should not be in Akwa Ibom State, he said.

But the Commissioner for Information in the state, Ini Ememobong said the presidential aide was suffering from a mirror syndrome.

This is the same person that attracts everything for Ididep, not Ibiono, not Uyo.

When he is talking about Calabar-Itu Road, he is talking of the spur to Ididep, because he is from Ididep. He is suffering from mirror syndrome. When he is looking at the mirror he thinks he is seeing Governor Emmanuel but he is seeing himself, the Punch newspaper quoted Mr Ememobong as saying.

The new university in Akwa Ibom was one of the four specialised universities approved by President Buhari in June. The other three are to be located in Jigawa, Bauchi and Osun states.

The minister of education had announced the presidents approval of an N18 billion take-off grant for the new universities.

By the time the new university takes off, Akwa Ibom, which would be 34 years old as a state, in September, would have 11 higher institutions, including two private universities and three private polytechnics.
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President Muhammadu Buhari, on Tuesday, in Daura donated N1 million, two cows and 20 bags of rice to National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members serving in Daura Local Government Area of Katsina State.

Alex Obemeata, NYSCs spokesperson in Katsina, who disclosed this in a statement on Tuesday, said the Presidents gesture was delivered to them when they visited him in Daura to celebrate the Eid-El-Kabir.

It was another joyous Sallah day for the corps members serving in Daura, the country home of Mr President, as he was at home for the 2021 Sallah celebration.

Usually, when Mr President is at home for Sallah celebration, corps members go to his house to welcome him and wish him Happy Sallah.

In like manner, on July 20, 2021, the corps members in Daura were at the Presidents house for the Sallah wishes, and it was a celebration of the century.

They were given two cows, 20 bags of rice and N1 million, the NYSC spokesperson disclosed.

He said that the President commended the NYSC members and urged them to be good ambassadors of their country and committed towards the development of Nigeria.

According to Mr Obemeata, the state coordinator, Ahidjo Yahaya, on behalf of the NYSC Director-General, Shuaibu Ibrahim, thanked the President for the gesture.

He said that the action of President Buhari would encourage Nigerians to believe in the spirit of national unity and integration, which the NYSC stood for and preached.

Mr Yahaya prayed for Gods protection and good health for the President. (NAN)
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The FCT police command has withdrawn an appeal against a member of the House of Representatives, Victor Mela (Gombe-APC), who was convicted by a magistrate court.

A Chief Magistrates Court in Zone 6, Wuse, Abuja, had last year convicted Mr Mela for lying on oath in his Form CF001 submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as a candidate in the 2019 general elections.

He swore to an affidavit thrice, denying citizenship of another country whereas he had a Canadian passport.

Consequently, he was sentenced to one month imprisonment with an option of a fine.

Not satisfied with the judgement, the lawmaker appealed at an FCT high court, challenging the verdict of the magistrate. He won in the higher court.

After losing at the high court, the police filed an appeal at the Court of Appeal, challenging the decision of the high court.

Withdrawal

In a letter addressed to the Deputy Chief Registrar of the FCT high court, appeal section, the police said they wished to discontinue the case without stating any reason.

The letter which was sighted by our reporter was titled NOTICE OF DISCONTINUANCE IN THE CASE OF COMMISSIONER OF POLICE VS VICTOR MELA IN SUIT NO:CR/66/19 filed on 29/06/2021 was co-signed by the two lawyers representing the police in the case.

I hereby wish to discontinue the above appeal pending before this court.

We equally regret any inconvenience this might cause this honorable court and the defendant in this appeal, for same was brought in good faith and not to overreach the defendant, the letter reads.

No Comment

When contacted for comments on the matter, the police spokesperson for the FCT, Mariam Yusuf, declined comments.

She ended the telephone conversation when the matter was brought and did not respond to messages afterwards.

One of the lawyers representing the police, Fidelis Ogbobe, declined comments on the matter, he directed the reporter to the FCT command.

The convicted lawmaker was also not available for comments as he neither picked his calls nor responded to text messages.

However, the nominal complainant, Ali Isa, confirmed the development when contacted via telephone.

He said he also got to hear of the withdrawal a few days ago.
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One of the lawyers of the Yoruba nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, also known as Sunday Igboho, has said the arrest of his client by the police in Benin Republic would have been impossible if he did not surrender himself to them.

Pelumi Olajengbesi told SaharaReporters on Tuesday that the operation was successful because his client wanted to make himself available to the government. He added that they are making efforts to ensure Mr Igboho is fine.

You know the Department of State Services declared him wanted. We just believe that Sunday Igboho is not the problem. He is someone who believed that the Yoruba people and Nigerians generally should live in peace wherever they are, said Mr Olajengbesi.

As a matter of fact, let me tell you now. That Sunday Igboho was arrested simply because he wanted to make himself available to the government. If not, Sunday Igboho is not someone who can be arrested that way. But because he believes that the journey to justice for the Yoruba people and for the Nigerian state to be able to live in peace may be needed for him to be available, that was why.

PREMIUM TIMES reported that the Republican Police on Monday evening arrested Mr Igboho at Cardinal Bernardin International Airport in Cotonou.

He was trying to jet out of the country to Germany where he is said to also be a citizen.

While the Nigerian government is yet to speak on the development, reactions have started pouring in from different Yoruba groups.

Mr Igboho has led rallies in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states. He threatened to hold the rally in Lagos on July 3 but his home was invaded barely 72 hours to the planned date.

READ ALSO: How Sunday Igboho was arrested in Benin Republic

While some of his aides were arrested with various weapons, he escaped and had since been declared wanted.

He has in the past also called for the eviction of Fulanis in South-west states, an action that was condemned by federal and state authorities.

Yoruba Nation agitation is a political ideology to realise the independence and sovereign country for the Yoruba race in Nigeria but many political leaders in the region have rejected and kicked against the idea.

A former governor of Lagos, Bola Tinubu, alongside Speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, and all leaders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the South-west, in a meeting in Lagos last month, opposed the agitation.

They called for ethnic and religious unity instead of a divided nation.
Social media has been agog in the last few hours following reports of the arrest of a Yoruba nation agitator, Sunday Adeyemo, also known as Sunday Igboho.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the Benin Republic Police on Monday evening arrested Mr Igboho at Cardinal Bernardin International Airport in Cotonou, Benin Republic, while trying to leave the country for Germany.

He was disembarked from his plane, arrested by the Beninese police while he was trying to travel to Germany and then transferred to the Cotonou Criminal Brigade, according to a Benin newspaper, Banouto.

It was learnt that under the agreements between the two countries, Mr Igbohos extradition should be concluded without a hindrance.

Mr Igboho has led rallies in Ondo, Ekiti, Osun, Oyo, and Ogun states. He threatened to hold the rally in Lagos on July 3 but his home was invaded barely 72 hours to the planned date.

While some of his aides were arrested with various weapons, he escaped and had since been declared wanted.

He has in the past also called for the eviction of Fulanis in South-west states, an action that was condemned by federal and state authorities.

Although the Nigerian government is yet to speak about his arrest, reactions have started pouring in from different individuals.

Mixed reactions

Human rights activist and publisher of Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore, said there is no crime in asking for self-determination.

#FreesundayIgboho: The arrest of Sunday Igboho in Cotonou by the Beninese authorities was orchestrated by tyrant Muhammadu Buhari.

No crime asking for self-determination. Let all oppressed people UNITE. A government that pampers bandits and terrorists! #BuhariMustGo #RevolutionNow, he wrote on Twitter.

The convener of a group called Concerned Nigerians, Deji Adeyanju, wrote on Twitter that the government is unable to curb insecurity but capable of arresting Mr Igboho.

But they cant arrest terrorists who kill people weekly and even shoot down our fighter jets. I urge you to stand with your own who has not committed any crime. Self-determination is not a crime. They are still standing with killer herdsmen who have killed over 20,000 Nigerians under Buhari and even asking that everyone should give them land and we budget billions for them, Mr Adeyanju said.

An ex-governor of Oyo State, Rashidi Ladoja, advised the federal government to handle the case of Mr Igboho with caution. He spoke during a press briefing at his Bodija, Ibadan residence.

I want to appeal to the federal government to grant Igboho and (Nnamdi) Kanu amnesty just as some members of the dreaded Boko Haram sect were given amnesty. Igboho and Kanu are creations of the federal government. Why? Because whenever they arrested herdsmen who were killing their people, the federal government never acted. That was why those two people came up to defend their people.

Boko Haram members that were arrested a year ago by the government have been released to the Borno State Government. The Federal Government created Sunday Igboho in the context of Igangan massacre.

Mr Igboho used to be a political thug for Mr Ladoja during his tussle with the late Lamidi Adedibu in Oyo State.

In the same vein, Ayo Adebanjo, the leader of Yoruba social-cultural group, Afenifere, said President Muhammadu Buhari has declared war on Yoruba people following Mr Igbohos arrest.

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He told Peoples Gazette newspaper that Yoruba worldwide should take to the streets to make sure that Sunday Igboho is not brought back to Nigeria and if they bring him back, the Yoruba should ensure that he is not badly tortured or worse. They have declared war on our people.

A lawyer and rights activist, Mike Ozekhome, reacted to the development in a statement sent to our correspondent Tuesday evening.

He said Mr Buharis government paradoxically appears abysmally weak and hopelessly helpless when it comes to fighting AK-47 wielding armed bandits, Boko Haram and other deadly insurgents, including ransom-taking kidnappers who are almost kidnapping the very heart and soul of Nigeria on a daily basis. The Nigerian Nation appears captured by non-state actors.

The same government that is suddenly effective in the case of Nnamdi Kanu and Sunday Igboho have never been able to capture kidnappers, armed bandits and Boko haram that are daily ravaging us, turning Nigeria into sprawling field of human carnage. They take ransom. Innocent school children are paid for. Where is the same government when kidnappers are demanding that the parents of kidnapped children should now be feeding them in their kidnap dens?

But, it suddenly becomes effective and audacious when it comes to arresting and even ambushing and attacking in their very homes, self-determination activists and crusaders. I am not impressed with this at all.

A Lagos State government official, Joe Igbokwe, mocked Mr Igboho, saying his arrest was an indication that Juju (charms) does not work.

Mr Igbokwe is the Special Adviser to the Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu on Drainage and Water Resources. He shared a photograph of Mr Igboho wearing charms on his Facebook wall, noting that, Juju failed in the South-East and has also failed in the South-West.

Juju no de work again ooo. It failed in Igbo land and it failed too in Yoruba land, his post read.

Other reactions

A Twitter user, Uthman Tochukwu, wrote that: I will continue to preach one Nigeria until I enter inside the grave. I cant afford to see Nigeria break up. NO! Not even for 419 IPOB or miscreants led by one Sunday Igboho.

READ ALSO: How Sunday Igboho was arrested in Benin Republic

A social commentator, Tijani Abdulkabeer, told PREMIUM TIMES that although, when he (Sunday Igboho) started, it was making sense but due to some fault lines, he lost the battle and by then it was very clear that the purpose has been hijacked.

Many supporters of this warlord keep justifying every of his move with the belief that he is doing all that to put the government on their toes. However, beneath all of these, there are still salient questions that are begging for answers.

Well, we woke up to the call that he has been arrested. It didnt come like a shocker to me because I was sure the government would do everything possible to ensure that he is ostracised. By this token, I expected him to have submitted himself to the government long before now but very unfortunate his arrested proved his cowardice.

A journalist, Kunle Sani, said Mr Buhari has finally destroyed Nigerias unity. It would take years of reconciliations to amend the divisions or treat all the wounds caused by this regime.
This collective guilt that we partake in is what leads to such outcomes. But I have a final word: The world is becoming a more hostile place for all of us. We are seen as poor leeches who contribute nothing to the world but noise. The behaviours that you accuse ndi Igbo of, which some of us are guilty of, Ill admit, is the same way the world sees you, and worse. What you do to us, the world will do to you.

Four years ago now, I wrote this piece about collective guilt, and what it leads to. I think its more relevant now as Nigeria falls to pieces because of the bad leadership of Buhari.

Ill talk, first in general terms, and then about the one that worries me.

Nigeria is heading towards an implosion. I think that sometime in October last year, we passed the point where it was not inevitable. However, I think that the worst effects of it can still be mitigated if, of course, we manage to maintain our exact current position until Buhari and his menagerie shuffle out of the revolving doors of power. Unfortunately, given that they are doing everything to hang on to power, even in the face of the unavoidable circumstance of Buhari himself departing, there is absolutely no guarantee that things wont get worse, thus setting up the stage for really bad outcomes.

By its behaviour, the Buhari government has enabled the worst of Nigerians. And the worst of us across all ethnicities and religious groups are coming to the fore. This is where Ill talk about my Igbo people: the behaviour of a particular herd of Igbo people online, the consistent abuse of those who do not agree with them, the taunts, the crassness, which is turning so many people of other ethnic stocks against us, and given our historical position, such a thing is unlikely to end well for us.

Now let us build a quick scenario: Buhari and his crew leave power, and then with himself and his ethnic jingoists out of the way, the rest of Nigeria somehow finds a way to sing kumbaya and sort of heal. The bad blood that has built these last six years will still need an outlet. Who do you think will become of the bad guys suddenly?

For my money, the logical bad guys will be those abrasive, in-your-face guys who happen to be in every corner of the country, and are thus easy to get to.

The reaction online following that asinine statement was a lot of solidarity with the Igbo from many people of non-Igbo stock. Based on the backlash that I am seeing, especially after the Obi Cubana charade, I fear that we have squandered that goodwill. I fear that we are doing ourselves no favours at all.

A few weeks back, Buhari said something: they are scattered everywhere in the country, with many of them having properties among others. They are like a dot in a circle.

The reaction online following that asinine statement was a lot of solidarity with the Igbo from many people of non-Igbo stock. Based on the backlash that I am seeing, especially after the Obi Cubana charade, I fear that we have squandered that goodwill. I fear that we are doing ourselves no favours at all.

It was just over a generation ago that Chinua Achebe wrote, that Nigerians will probably achieve consensus on no other matter than their common resentment of the Igbo.

In the same 1984 work, The Trouble With Nigeria, noting that the Igbo grew economically fastest of any ethnic group in Nigeria between 1930 and 1950 (and did it again between 1970 and 1980), Achebe said of his people, but this kind of success can carry a deadly penalty: the danger of hubris, over-weening pride and thoughtlessness, which invites envy and hatred, or even worse, which can obsess the mind with material success and dispose it to all kinds of crude showiness.

Not my words, but the words of Professor Achebe, probably the greatest Igbo thinker ever.

What do we see in the behaviour of those who abuse everyone that do not agree with them, including people from the Niger Delta, the South-West and the minority groups in the North?

As for the rest of Nigeria, we are all guilty of assigning the madness of an individual to either his ethnic group or his creed. The terrible government of Muhammadu Buhari has made that instinct worse. But please note that the repeated failure to do the hard work of separating the perpetrators of evil from their ethnic or religious grouping has created a country filled with blood crying out for vengeance.

Thoughtlessness, its there.

Over-weening pride, its there.

Hubris, definitely.

History tends to be cyclical. We are setting ourselves up. My advice: Adikwa na ka nwa nza li julu afo, we je chere Chi ya aka mgba.

As for the rest of Nigeria, we are all guilty of assigning the madness of an individual to either his ethnic group or his creed. The terrible government of Muhammadu Buhari has made that instinct worse. But please note that the repeated failure to do the hard work of separating the perpetrators of evil from their ethnic or religious grouping has created a country filled with blood crying out for vengeance. In 1966, a misguided action by men named Nzeogwu, Ifeajuna, Onwutuegwu, Anuforo, Okafor and Ademoyega, was hung on the entire ethnic group of most of the conspirators, even though the conspiracy was crushed by a man named Aguiyi-Ironsi. For that, millions of their fellow ethnic nationals, including the man who crushed the conspiracy, were killed over the next four years. In 1975, Ugep, a Yakurr town in Cross River had a very unhappy Christmas because a soldier got drunk and went missing. In 1999, the town of Odi was wiped out because 12 policemen were killed by miscreants. And in 2015, the entire Shiite enclave at Gyelsu was wiped out because a few of them touched the chest of General Tukur Buratai.

This collective guilt that we partake in is what leads to such outcomes. But I have a final word: The world is becoming a more hostile place for all of us. We are seen as poor leeches who contribute nothing to the world but noise. The behaviours that you accuse ndi Igbo of, which some of us are guilty of, Ill admit, is the same way the world sees you, and worse. What you do to us, the world will do to you.

Cheta Nwanze is a partner at SBM Intelligence.

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Cosgrove Investment Limited has sealed a multibillion naira smart estate development deal with the Benue Investment and Property Company (BIPC) Limited for the development of 36 units super smart homes that will consist of 10 units of five-bedroom detached duplexes and 26 units of four-bedroom terrace duplexes.

The estate, which groundbreaking ceremony was performed by the Executive Governor of Benue State, Samuel Ortom, at the construction site of the estate in Mabushi, Federal Capital Territory, on Thursday has a project completion timeline of 18 months.

Speaking at the ceremony, the governor, who was represented by the Deputy Governor of the state, Benson Abounu, said the groundbreaking ceremony is extremely important not only to Benue State government, but also to the economic development of Benue State and the country.

Recently, the BIPC Board made a fresh presentation to the Executive Council that they have found a reliable investor who desires to collaborate with Benue State government in order to actualize the dream, he said.

The Benue State Executive Council carefully examined and scrutinized Cosgrove via a behind the scene investigation to find out the viability or otherwise of Cosgrove as a competent investor, and we came to the realization that Cosgrove Investment Limited is a very reliable investment company.

Governor Ortom said as a result of that, the Benue State Executive Council unanimously passed a resolution to collaborate with Cosgrove for the development of the land.

He said the government has considered and approved the designs and that construction will start immediately. I like to express the gratitude of Benue State Government to Cosgrove Investment Limited, he said, stating that the government of Benue State will do everything possible to support the company.

We are confident that you will introduce the most recent technology, the governor added.

The Chairman of Cosgrove, Umar Abdullahi, described the ceremony as a remarkable public private partnership between the Samuel Ortom-led government of Benue State and a wholly indigenous yet forward-looking construction company  Cosgrove Investment Limited through the aegis of the Benue Investment & Property Company.

While saying that Cosgrove is focused on pioneering the integration of technology and automation in real estate development in Nigeria, he assured that it resolved to be the investment partner of choice for institutional investors like BIPC to accomplish set goals, adding that the Public Private Partnership is the quintessential vehicle that captures the Benue State governments goal through the BIPC to drive economic development in the state by promoting, managing and investing in projects which maximize stakeholders value.

Mr Abdullahi, who was represented by the Chief Technical Officer, Cosgrove, Baba Kalli said: Cosgrove is the obvious choice for this as our strategic strength integrating technology and automation in construction enhances user experience in the built-up space and creates high yield assets by way of the homes constructed.

He said the estate, which will sit on 1.29hectares in Mabushi District of the FCT consist of 36 state-of-the-art smart luxury homes, adding that every real estate investor knows that location is key to the value of every asset.

With its proximity to strategic locations within and around the FCT  the airport, major shopping malls, recreational centres, just to list a few, he added.

Discussing some features which home owners will enjoy in the estate, he listed Fibre to the Home supported by full fibre optic cabling, and Automatic Number Plate Recognition at the gate adding that Cosgrove is the first company to offer this in Nigeria.

Chairman of the occasion, Gabriel Suswam, commended the collaboration between Cosgrove and BIPC saying that it is in line with global best practices in the real estate investment sector. All over the world, governments are collaborating with competent private sector operators who have the technical and financial competence to deliver great initiatives for development, adding that the BIPC Management and its Board must be commended for deeming it necessary to engage a competent investor in Cosgrove.

According to the Chairman, who was represented by Rt Hon Tengo Tegba, I am happy that piece of land which has been lying undeveloped for the past 20 years is now being developed for investment purposes by BIPC and Cosgrove.

Sen Suswam, who was governor of Benue State, commended the management of Cosgrove for taking a very bold step to collaborate with the BIPC despite fears associated with public sector investments of this nature as a result of possible change in policy.

Mr Abdullahi said HD CCTV cameras with Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities will be part of the star features of the homes, adding that the cameras will be managed from a central security hub to ensure safety. All homes have spacious rooms with ensuite conveniences as well as customisable rooms for home gym or cinema should the home owner desire, he added.

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The homes in the BIPC-Cosgrove Smart Estate will come equipped with our signature automation systems to not only give residents superlative living experience, but ensure outstanding return on investment for the investor, he assured.

The Chairman, Board of the BIPC, Mike Mku, described the collaboration between Cosgrove and BIPC as a key achievement of the Samuel Ortom-led government of Benue State, stating that all the members of the BIPC Board are present at the occasion in view of its strategic importance to the economic development of the state, with BIPC and Cosgrove as drivers of the initiative.

BIPC has a statutory mandate to invest, make profit and raise revenue for the state and we have identified an able partner in Cosgrove, he explained, adding that the collaboration is a milestone in BIPCs property development mandate.

According to Mku, The BIPC-Cosgrove Smart Estate is one of our star projects, and we engaged Cosgrove because we are aware of the ability of the company to deliver, Mbu said while also quoting the Chairman of Cosgrove as saying that the estate will introduce a completely new development in luxury living via latest innovations in smart homes.

He expressed confidence in the ability of Cosgrove to deliver a world class smart estate in collaboration with BIPC, stating that the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) security system, smart cameras, motion detectors and other top of the range security systems promised by Cosgrove are necessary to enhance security in modern day living.

The Board Chair said: The fact that we engaged an internationally recognized smart homes development expert  Cosgrove, means that we will get best results and value from the landed property being developed, adding that BIPC is a state-owned company that will continue to collaborate with competent companies.

Managing Director, Benue Investment and Property Company Limited (BIPC), Alex Ter Adum, said there are 36 units consisting of 10 detached duplexes of 5 bedroom, and 26 terrace duplexes are 4 bedroom. He said BIPC is an investment company and looks forward to making good profits from the deal. We are already discussing with off-takers and we will leverage on the reputation of Cosgrove as well as ours to achieve set goals.
Seven more people have died of cholera in Enugu State, authorities in the state have confirmed exclusively to PREMIUM TIMES.

The director, public health and disease control, ministry of health, Boniface Oko, who confirmed the development to our reporter in Enugu on Monday, said more than 80 people have been infected with the disease since Friday when the outbreak was confirmed in the state.

The states commissioner for health, Emmanuel Obi, had on Saturday announced the cholera outbreak at the New Artisan Market in Enugu, the state capital.

Mr Obi had said seven people died in the market with 19 persons identified with the symptoms of loose stool and vomiting. He said the ministrys rapid response team, upon receiving reports of the incident, carried out an immediate investigation and it was observed that the patients presented with sudden onset of passage of loose stool and vomiting.

Additional deaths

On Monday afternoon, Mr Okoro said within the past four days since the outbreak, 14 persons have died.

He said many of the infected persons were rushed to the Enugu State University Teaching Hospital, with others taken to an unidentified private hospital in the city.

Seven persons died initially on Saturday, but as of Monday, seven more deaths were confirmed, raising the fatality to 14, Mr Okoro said.

Cause of outbreak

The director said the outbreak is due to poor hygiene practices, and particularly, improper disposal of domestic and human waste, and high consumption of untreated water in the area.

A patent medicine store owner in the area, Augustine Osuigwe, described the outbreak as a ticking time bomb waiting to happen, saying the poor hygiene within the neighbourhood requires urgent attention.

The New Artisan market, which is dominated by cattle sellers from the northern part of the country, is a busy market for dairy products.

This reporter, who visited the market on Monday, confirmed that the market is surrounded by slums without toilet facilities.

Residents confirmed that they only defecate in polythene bags and dump the contents in open trenches and pools of floodwater which many of the residents use to take their baths.

Measures taken

The health director said the state government has launched an aggressive sensitisation campaign for residents to take precautionary steps towards preventing further spread.

Mr Okoro added that all affected persons have recovered and have been discharged from the hospital after treatment.

He, however, said a fresh case of the disease was reported Monday morning, indicating the possibility of a further spread if residents do not take caution.

But the health official said no other part of the state is affected by the disease, and pledged the commitment of the state to nip the crisis in the bud before it is spread to other communities.

Cholera outbreak in Nigeria

Asides New Artisan market in Enugu, many other parts of the country are experiencing a rising spread of cholera disease.

Cholera, a diarrheal disease that kills within hours if it is not treated, is endemic in Nigeria, with outbreaks reported as far back as the 1970s.

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The ongoing outbreak, which began at the start of this year, has been confirmed in the federal capital territory (FCT) and 15 states- Benue, Delta, Zamfara, Bauchi, Kano, Nigeria, FCT, Cross rivers, Niger, Kaduna, Plateau, Nassarawa, Gombe, Bayelsa and Kebbi.

Between January and June 27, a total of 14,343 suspected cases and 325 deaths, including 345 laboratory-confirmed cases, were reported by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control.

Of the reported cases since the beginning of 2021, 27.6 per cent is aged between 5 and 14 years while 51 per cent is male, and 49 per cent female, the NCDC data showed.

Meanwhile, the NCDC update did not include the recent outbreak in Enugu and the three deaths reported in neighboring Ebonyi State, indicating that the disease is rapidly spreading by the day.

Though this years cholera outbreak is yet to be declared a national concern, health experts fear consequences on the countrys overstretched health infrastructure.
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An angry mob on Monday evening meted out jungle justice on three suspected motorcycle thieves in the Ayobo area of Lagos.

The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the three suspects, who allegedly stole two brand new motorcycles at Olorunsola, Ayobo, Ipaja, Lagos, were set ablaze after lynching them.

According to a witness who did not want to be named, the suspects took to their heels after allegedly stealing the motorcycles.

Some commercial motorcyclists ran after the suspected thieves and caught up with them along Koloba Road, off Alaja Road, Ayobo, Ipaja, Lagos.

Two were initially caught and were instantly lynched to death, while the other one scampered for safety.

He was later caught in one of the streets in Alaja and wheeled down to join the other two before they were set on fire.

The thieves also injured some people while they tried to escape.

Those who were injured have been rushed to an undisclosed hospital for medical attention, the witness said.

The police have been drafted to the scene of the incident.

(NAN)
The National Association of Nigerian Students in the South-west region has given the Ogun State government a seven-day ultimatum to remove the Special Assistant to the governor on students matters, Azeez Adeyemi, over allegations of abduction and battery.

The students body made this call at a press conference on Monday in the Ijebu area of the state.

Last Friday, over 100 students marched to Governor Dapo Abioduns office in Abeokuta demanding the sack of Mr Adeyemi.

According to the students, the governors aide masterminded the assault and alleged abduction of Adeyemi Samson, a factional chairman of the Ogun State chapter of NANS.

How I was abducted

At the press conference, Mr Samson narrated how he was abducted.

Earlier on that fateful day, I had joined our leader, Hon Adebiyi Adeleye, Special Adviser to the Governor on Political Matters on a Walk for Special People after which I moved back to Ago Iwoye to welcome our student-loving Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, on his project inspection and continuation of his local government election campaigns.

Just as we were registering our presence to the Governor, one of Adeyemis thugs, a well known cultist popularly called Wale Da-Gold, dragged me from behind to the midst of some suspected cultists where I was beaten to a pulp and as well humiliated. After the beating me, I was whisked away and taken to Eleweran.

Meanwhile, before we got to Eleweran, My belongings such as iphones, wristwatch, cash, shoe, clothes, ATM, voters card, power bank, bag and other documents were taken from me, before my car was also towed to Eleweran.

After attempts to intimidate me at the state police headquarters, they told me that they found a gun in my vehicle. This is an emphatic lie and it has not substance of truth. Because I do not want to bore you with too much talks, the rest are talks for the future.

Mr Samson said since Mr Adeyemis office represents students in the governors cabinet, Governor Abiodun should relieve him of his duties with immediate effect.

We give a seven-day ultimatum for this to be done. If Adeyemi Azeez remains in office after the expiration of that seven-day ultimatum, we are going to storm the Governor office in thousands.

Also we request an immediate release of our ALUTA Sienna Bus impounded at the police headquarters unjustly.

We also request a continuation into the investigation of unraveling the authentic owners of the guns in question and a reopening of the case of arms found in buses in Abuja during the national convention. The IGP and the Director of DSS are aware of this case as the vehicles were taken away by the security agents.

A refund of belongings stolen from me by the suspected cult boys who kidnapped me from Ijebu to Abeokuta.

In his response, the zonal coordinator of NANS, who spoke through his deputy, Uthman Danfodio, threatened that the secretariat of the zone would be relocated to the state if the stated demands are not looked into by the government.

Governors aide responds

When contacted, Mr Adeyemi denied having any connection with the crisis adding that he is committed to brokering peace between the feuding factions.

I want to reiterate that I still believe in the oneness and family status of our dear constituency and still committed as ever to seek the best interest and embrace every structure.

Contrary to what is being spread around, I have no hands in the recent altercation among our NANS comrades.

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While the issue is purely a NANS Ogun issue, it is also an highly undesirable development that must be jettisoned in the future and vehemently discouraged.

Consequently, I took the first step in a bid to broker peace between both parties by meeting with the Students Union President of Olabisi Onabanjo University as well as other OOU Students leaders.

The meeting was a most productive one and has set the tone for subsequent discussions towards perpetual peace in our constituency, he stated.
These hot temperatures will likely stick around for a while. Do you still enjoy the outdoors when it gets this hot, or do you prefer to stay indoors in the air conditioning?

You voted:
PERU [mdash] Nancy Ann Defayette, 65, of Peru, passed away Tuesday, July 20, 2021, with her family by her side. Nancy was born in Plattsburgh, N.Y., on June 20, 1956, the daughter of Isadore and Katherine (Cook) Defayette. Nancy was predeceased by her parents, brothers, Leo and Kevin Defayet
MCKENZIE DELISLE/STAFF PHOTOLuck Brothers Inc. continues work at the site of the future Betty Little Arts Park in downtown Plattsburgh City. The park, straddled between Margaret and Durkee streets nearby the Westelcom building, will feature three tiers, including a seating area up top by Margaret Street, a water feature in the center and a sculpture garden by Durkee Street. Though scheduled for fall 2021 completion, Plattsburgh City Community Development Director Matthew Miller recently said it was ahead of schedule and on track for an end of July completion, weather permitting.
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BALLWIN, Mo., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- 1847 Goedeker Inc. (NYSE American: GOED) ("Goedekers" or the "Company") and its Appliances Connection Business, the largest pure-play online retailer of household appliances in the U.S., is pleased to announce that Maria Johnson will be joining the company as Chief Financial Officer effective July 26, 2021. Maria Johnson will be assuming the CFO role from Bob Barry, who has been appointed as the Chief Accounting Officer effective the same day.

Maria Johnson is an accomplished finance executive with over 20 years of professional experience spanning across various industries and areas of expertise, including business strategy, finance transformation, financial planning and analysis, accounting and controls, risk management, and international business. Johnson has more than 20 years of experience across finance and strategic leadership roles including most recently as the CFO of E3 Investment Group since December 2019. Prior to that, she served as the CFO of John Hardy. Before assuming her role at John Hardy, Johnson served as the Vice President of Finance, Global Controller, at Cheetah Digital (formerly Experian Marketing). She also previously served as Director of FP&A at Pepsico, and Head of Financial Operations at McGraw Hill. Johnson is a licensed CPA and CIA, and holds a master's of business administration from the University of Texas at Austin and a bachelor's degree from the Moscow State Academy of Management.

"We are delighted to announce the appointment of Maria as our new CFO," said Doug Moore, Goedekers' CEO. "I look forward to collaborating with her to execute our long-term strategy. Maria has consistently demonstrated her ability to drive value creation through process optimization and possesses deep expertise in business strategy, financial transformation, and risk management. Given Maria's depth of expertise, we have the utmost confidence that as she transitions into her new role, she will have an immediate impact by leveraging her skills in refining strategic operational plans."

"We want to thank Bob for his tremendous service to Goedekers in the CFO role. Bob has been instrumental in leading our financial operations and will remain a strategic asset to the Company in his new Chief Accounting Officer role," continued Moore.

About 1847 Goedeker Inc.

1847 Goedeker Inc. is an industry leading e-commerce destination for appliances, furniture, and home goods. Through its June 2021 acquisition of Appliances Connection, Goedekers created the largest pure-play online retailer of household appliances in the US. With warehouse fulfillment centers in the Northeast and Midwest, as well as showrooms in Brooklyn, New York, and St. Louis, Missouri, Goedekers is a respected nationwide omnichannel retailer that offers one-stop shopping for national and global brands. Goedekers and Appliances Connection carry many household name-brands, including Bosch, Cafe, Frigidaire Pro, Whirlpool, LG, and Samsung, and also carries many major luxury appliance brands such as Miele, Thermador, La Cornue, Dacor, Ilve, Wolf, Jenn-Air, Viking among others and sells furniture, fitness equipment, plumbing fixtures, televisions, outdoor appliances, and patio furniture, as well as commercial appliances for builder and business clients. Learn more at www.Goedekers.com.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains "forward-looking statements" that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, contained in this press release are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release may be identified by the use of words such as "anticipate," "believe," "contemplate," "could," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "seek," "may," "might," "plan," "potential," "predict," "project," "target," "aim," "should," "will" "would," or the negative of these words or other similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements are based on 1847 Goedeker Inc.'s current expectations and are subject to inherent uncertainties, risks and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Further, certain forward-looking statements are based on assumptions as to future events that may not prove to be accurate. These and other risks and uncertainties are described more fully in the section titled "Risk Factors" of the reports that we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are made as of this date, and 1847 Goedeker Inc. undertakes no duty to update such information except as required under applicable law.

Contacts:

Mike Houston

Lambert & Co.

646-475-2998

[email protected]

SOURCE 1847 Goedeker Inc.

Related Links

https://www.goedekers.com


According to Advertise Purple's President, Kyle Mitnick; "First and foremost, I'd like to thank our amazing team at Advertise Purple for performing in exemplary fashion during the unprecedented ups and downs of COVID, and thank our customers. As a performance based agency with revenue growth directly tied to our clients,' we literally couldn't have done this without them.

We frequently are asked 'how' when these awards are delivered our way, and the short answer is by not cutting corners. Over the years we've invested heavily in technology that serves one purpose: customer growth. It's nice to see that investment is paying off, not only in our bottom line, but the bottom line of our clients. Thanks again for the nomination Inc, and we're humbled to be in such great company on this list."

The companies on this list show stunning rates of growth across all industries in California. Between 2017 and 2019, these 250 private companies had an average growth rate of 535 percent and, in 2019 alone, they employed more than 40,000 people and added nearly $7 billion to the California economy. Companies based in major metro areasLos Angeles, the Bay Area, and San Diegobrought in the highest revenue overall.

"This list proves the power of companies in California no matter the industry," says Inc. editor-in-chief Scott Omelianuk. "The impressive revenues and growth rates prove the insight and diligence of CEOs and that these businesses are here to stay."

Advertise Purple, Inc. is the leading tech-enabled affiliate management service in the world, and a 2018, 2019, and 2020 recipient of Inc. Magazine's 'Best Workplace in the U.S.,*' and 'Top 50 Advertising & Marketing' Agency in the U.S.' For more info, please visit https://www.advertisepurple.com/

CONTACT:

Jonathan Moisan

424-272-7400

[email protected]

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000 Regionals

Methodology

The 2021 Inc. 5000 Regional are ranked according to percentage revenue growth when comparing 2017 and 2019. To qualify, companies must have been founded and generating revenue by March 31, 2017. They had to be U.S.-based, privately held, for profit, and independentnot subsidiaries or divisions of other companiesas of December 31, 2019. (Since then, a number of companies on the list have gone public or been acquired.) The minimum revenue required for 2017 is $100,000; the minimum for 2019 is $1 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons.

About Inc. Media

The world's most trusted business-media brand, Inc. offers entrepreneurs the knowledge, tools, connections, and community to build great companies. Its award-winning multiplatform content reaches more than 50 million people each month across a variety of channels including websites, newsletters, social media, podcasts, and print. Its prestigious Inc. 5000 list, produced every year since 1982, analyzes company data to recognize the fastest-growing privately held businesses in the United States. The global recognition that comes with inclusion in the 5000 gives the founders of the best businesses an opportunity to engage with an exclusive community of their peers, and the credibility that helps them drive sales and recruit talent. The associated Inc. 5000 Conference is part of a highly acclaimed portfolio of bespoke events produced by Inc. For more information, visit www.inc.com.

SOURCE Advertise Purple

Related Links

https://www.advertisepurple.com/


PHOENIX, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Advisor Group, the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, today announced the appointment of experienced financial services executive Amy M. Hamilton as Chief of Staff and Head of Internal Audit, effective July 19, 2021. Ms. Hamilton will join the Executive Committee and report directly to President and CEO Jamie Price.

In her role as Chief of Staff, Ms. Hamilton will coordinate interactions with the Board of Directors, lead shareholder communications, and together with Advisor Group's Executive Committee, contribute to the formulation of strategic initiatives, Executive Committee agendas, and the overall delivery of results. In addition, she will serve in a consultative capacity to Jamie Price to help ensure a focus on the firm's top priorities and initiatives.

As Head of Internal Audit, Ms. Hamilton will set the vision and strategy for the internal audit function, working in conjunction with the Audit Committee of the Board and senior leaders across the organization. She will also lead the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) group.

Mr. Price said, "The dynamic nature of our industry requires firms to continuously improve upon their best practices, while also looking around corners to identify risks and plan for the unforeseen. The addition of an industry executive and risk management expert of Amy Hamilton's caliber is a tremendous win for Advisor Group. Amy will play a critical role as our new Chief of Staff, serving as my right hand and enabling us to make further strides in the execution of our top priorities. In her role as Head of Internal Audit, she will enable us to further strengthen our internal controls as we continue our momentum as one of the largest and fastest growing firms in the industry."

Ms. Hamilton most recently served as Executive Vice President and Chief Audit Executive for LPL Financial, where she reported to the Chair of the Audit Committee of the Board of Directors and administratively to the CFO. In this position, she was responsible for all aspects of LPL's internal audit function. Previously, she served in executive roles for Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., including Vice President for Internal Audit and as Managing Director: North America Controller for Risk & Insurance Services. She earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Illinois.

Ms. Hamilton said, "I am very excited to join Advisor Group, and for the opportunities that lie ahead. I look forward to working with the executive team and the Board of Directors to champion the firm's top priorities as Chief of Staff, as well as to further enhance the firm's risk management capabilities in my role leading Internal Audit and ERM. I share Advisor Group's commitment to empowering the voice of the customer to drive decisions and strategic investments. I can't wait to get started."

About Advisor Group

Advisor Group, Inc. is the nation's largest network of independent wealth management firms, serving approximately 10,100 financial professionals and overseeing over $475 billion in client assets. The firm is mission-driven to support the strategic role that advisors can play in the lives of their clients. Cultivating a spirit of entrepreneurship and independence, Advisor Group champions the enduring value of financial professionals and is committed to being in their corner every step of the way. For more information visit https://www.advisorgroup.com.

Securities and investment advisory services are offered through the firms: FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., Triad Advisors, LLC, and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., broker-dealers, registered investment advisers, and members of FINRA and SIPC. Securities are offered through Securities America, Inc., a broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Advisory services are offered through Arbor Point Advisors, LLC, Ladenburg Thalmann Asset Management, Inc., Securities America Advisors, Inc., and Triad Hybrid Solutions, LLC, registered investment advisers. Advisory programs offered by FSC Securities Corporation, Royal Alliance Associates, Inc., SagePoint Financial, Inc., and Woodbury Financial Services, Inc., are sponsored by VISION2020 Wealth Management Corp., an affiliated registered investment adviser. Advisor Group, Inc. is an affiliate of these firms. 20 E. Thomas Rd., Ste. 2000, Phoenix, AZ, 85012. 866.481.0379.

Media Inquiries

Joseph Kuo / Chris Clemens

Haven Tower Group

[email protected] or [email protected]

424 317 4851 or 424 317 4854

SOURCE Advisor Group

Related Links

https://www.advisorgroup.com


Most extensive Canada-U.S. transborder schedule supports both countries' economies

Air Canada App enabling customers to securely scan, upload and validate COVID-19 test results expanded to all flights from U.S. to Canada

MONTREAL, July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Air Canada today announced its current summer transborder schedule including 55 routes and 34 destinations in the U.S., with up to 220 daily flights between the U.S. and Canada. The new schedule coincides with the loosening of restrictions on travel between the two countries as of Aug. 9, 2021, enabling fully vaccinated Americans to enter Canada for non-essential travel and the removal of quarantine hotel requirements, relaxed testing requirements allowing Canadians taking short transborder trips for less than 72 hours to do their pre-entry tests in Canada, among other measures to ease restrictions.

Seats are available for booking at aircanada.com, via the Air Canada App, Air Canada's Contact Centres and travel agencies.

"The easing of travel restrictions announced today by the federal government is an important step based on science, and we are very pleased to rebuild our Canada-U.S. network. Canada and the United States share close ties and restoring air connectivity will contribute to both countries' economic recovery. Air Canada's proud tradition of being the largest foreign carrier in the U.S. is reflected in our schedule which has been developed to provide a wide range of choices for customers in both countries, appealing to Canadian customers interested in travelling to popular U.S. destinations, and to U.S. residents looking to visit and explore Canada's spectacular sights and hospitality. Our schedule also enables convenient onward travel through our Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal hubs to and from our global destinations. We are planning to restore services to all 57 U.S. destinations previously served as conditions allow. We sincerely look forward to welcoming our customers onboard," said Mark Galardo, Senior Vice President, Network Planning and Revenue Management at Air Canada.

"We are thrilled with this announcement and look forward to welcoming back travellers from the U.S.," said Marsha Walden, President and CEO of Destination Canada. "From our lively cities immersed in nature to spectacular wilderness and coastlines to the unique mosaic of Indigenous and global cultures, every day in Canada offers a new adventure and a chance to reconnect with what's important. Team Canada is ready to host our American friends!"

New digital solution via Air Canada App simplifies COVID-19 related document requirements

Air Canada has developed a new digital solution via the Air Canada App, enabling customers flying from the U.S. to Canada and between Canada and select European destinations to conveniently and securely scan and upload COVID-19 test results to validate compliance with government travel requirements prior to arriving at the airport. More information is at: https://www.aircanada.com/ca/en/aco/home/book/travel-news-and-updates/2020/covid-19/document-validation.html.

Transborder services

The airline's transborder services include wide-body aircraft featuring Air Canada Signature Class with lie-flat seating and Premium Economy Class on select routes between Toronto and Los Angeles.

In early August, Air Canada's onboard services will resume on transborder flights greater than two hours, with new Economy Class Bistro selections being gradually introduced, including products by Canadian brands and partners such as Nomz vegan energy balls, celebrated Montreal Chef Jerome Ferrer-inspired meals and more.

All customers can collect and redeem Aeroplan Points through Canada's leading loyalty program when travelling with Air Canada, and eligible customers have access to priority check-in, Maple Leaf Lounges at Canadian airports, priority boarding and other benefits.

New Refund Policy gives customer choices and options

Air Canada's new refund policy of offering customers options of refunds, an Air Canada Travel Voucher or equivalent value in Aeroplan Points with a 65% bonus should the airline cancel or reschedule a flight by more than three hours, is applicable to all tickets purchased.

Air Canada's commercial schedule may be adjusted as required based on the COVID-19 trajectory and government restrictions.

Montreal  USA routes Frequencies per week

Montreal-Boston 14

Montreal-Chicago 21

Montreal-Denver 7

Montreal-Newark 14

Montreal-Fort Lauderdale 7

Montreal-Houston 7

Montreal-LaGuardia 21

Montreal-Las Vegas 3 restarts Sept. 9 Montreal-Los Angeles 7

Montreal-Orlando 3

Montreal-San Francisco 7

Montreal-Washington Dulles 7

Montreal-Washington National 14 restarts Sept. 7

Toronto  USA routes Frequencies per week

Toronto-Atlanta 14

Toronto-Austin 5 restarts Sept. 9 Toronto-Boston 21

Toronto-Charlotte 7 restarts Sept. 7 Toronto-Chicago 28

Toronto-Cincinnati 7 restarts Sept. 7 Toronto-Cleveland 7 restarts Aug. 1 Toronto-Columbus 7

Toronto-Dallas 14 restarts Sept. 7 Toronto-Denver 14

Toronto-Detroit 7

Toronto-Fort Lauderdale 8

Toronto-Fort Myers 2 restarts Aug. 1 Toronto-Houston 21

Toronto-Las Vegas 4 restarts Aug. 1 Toronto-Los Angeles 21

Toronto-LaGuardia 35

Toronto-Minneapolis-Saint Paul 7 restarts Sept. 7 Toronto-Nashville 4 restarts Aug. 30 Toronto-Newark 28

Toronto-Orlando 5

Toronto-Philadelphia 7

Toronto-Phoenix 3 restarts Aug. 2 Toronto-Pittsburgh 7 restarts Aug. 1 Toronto-Raleigh Durham 14 restarts Sept. 7 Toronto-Seattle 4 restarts Aug. 1 Toronto-San Francisco 14

Toronto-Tampa 5

Toronto-Washington Dulles 21

Toronto-Washington National 14 restarts Sept. 7

Vancouver  USA routes Frequencies per week

Vancouver-Chicago 7 restarts Sept. 7 Vancouver-Denver 14

Vancouver-Honolulu 3 restarts Aug. 2 Vancouver-Las Vegas 4 restarts Sept. 7 Vancouver-Los Angeles 21

Vancouver-Maui 3 restarts Aug. 3 Vancouver-Newark 7 restarts Sept. 7 Vancouver-Portland 14

Vancouver-Phoenix 5

Vancouver-San Diego 7 restarts Aug. 1 Vancouver-San Francisco 21

Vancouver-Seattle 14



Calgary  USA routes Frequency per week

Calgary-Phoenix 3 restarts Aug. 1

Connecting between U.S. to/from international destinations through Canada

Flights are timed to provide connectivity through Air Canada's North American and international destinations including to Brussels, Cairo, Doha, and to a multitude of other cities in Europe, Asia and beyond.

Travelling internationally?

Find the latest government entry requirements via IATA's Timatic website. Customers are responsible for ensuring they meet all government entry requirements, including holding the correct travel documents, visas, any required health certificates, and all other eligibility requirements for any flights they purchase. Government requirements may change with little notice.

About Air Canada

Air Canada is Canada's largest domestic and international airline and, in 2019, was among the top 20 largest airlines in the world. It is Canada's flag carrier and a founding member of Star Alliance, the world's most comprehensive air transportation network. Air Canada is the only international network carrier in North America to receive a Four-Star ranking according to independent U.K. research firm Skytrax. In 2020, Air Canada was named Global Traveler's Best Airline in North America for the second straight year. In January 2021, Air Canada received APEX's Diamond Status Certification for the Air Canada CleanCare+ biosafety program for managing COVID-19, the only airline in Canada to attain the highest APEX ranking. Air Canada has also committed to a net zero emissions goal from all global operations by 2050. For more information, please visit: aircanada.com/media, follow Air Canada on Twitter and LinkedIn, and join Air Canada on Facebook.

Internet: aircanada.com/media

Sign up for Air Canada news: aircanada.com

Media Resources:

Photos

Videos

B-Roll

Articles

SOURCE Air Canada

Related Links

www.aircanada.com


ATLANTA and VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BrandMaker, a leading innovator in Marketing Operations and Marketing Resource Management (MRM) software solutions, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Allocadia, a leader in Marketing Planning, Budgeting and Performance Management. The transaction is expected to be completed within the month.

The combined company will more deeply address the needs of CMOs and marketing teams by enabling them to orchestrate and optimize all of marketing's core resources and operational processes across strategy, campaigns, investments, work, content, and brand. Ultimately, this end-to-end solution will empower marketing teams to connect strategy to outcomes and accelerate growth.

"We are incredibly excited to bring BrandMaker and Allocadia together to create the global category leader in Marketing Operations," said BrandMaker CEO Mirko Holzer. "Together, we broaden our scope to offer B2B and B2C customers the solutions to run marketing with more agility while measuring and optimizing performance and improving their return on investment. The addition of Allocadia's exceptional team and innovative budget, planning, and performance management solution will bring a strong complement to BrandMaker, expanding our combined portfolio as well as our ability to support our global customer base."

The companies' complementary presence in both North America and EMEA come together to form a global marketing leader, enabling broader support across the combined 300,000+ global users, served by a talented, diverse team of more than 300 people in seven countries.

"With BrandMaker, we knew we had found the right partner to capitalize on the tremendous market momentum and opportunity to transform the way CMOs and marketing teams work," said Allocadia CEO and Co-Founder Kristine Steuart. "We look forward to delivering even more value to customers, providing new and exciting career-defining experiences for our team and continuing to accelerate growth through innovation in the domain of marketing operations management."

The company will continue to support and invest in the full suite of Allocadia and BrandMaker products, while exploring opportunities to leverage the combined portfolio and capabilities to create innovative new solutions for customers.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. AQ Technology Partners, Perkins Coie LLP and Stikeman Elliott LLP served as transaction advisers to BrandMaker. GCA Advisors, LLC acted as exclusive financial advisor to Allocadia, and Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP served as legal advisor to Allocadia. BrandMaker is a portfolio company of Rubicon Technology Partners.

About Allocadia

Allocadia provides best-in-class money management capabilities for marketers and gives them the confidence to know where to invest their next dollar. Its award-winning marketing performance management platform enables marketers to plan strategically, invest with purpose, measure the performance of their activities, and ultimately maximize marketing's impact on the business. Companies like Autodesk, Charles Schwab, Juniper Networks, and Land O'Lakes manage more than $25 billion marketing dollars within Allocadia, which enables them to save up to 40% of the time they spend on budgeting and planning as well as double their pipeline-to-spend ratio and ROI. Learn more at www.Allocadia.com.

About BrandMaker

BrandMaker is the leading SaaS provider of effective and scalable marketing operations (marketing ops) management solutions. BrandMaker delivers the visibility, control, and agility that enterprise marketers require to optimize their marketing operations. BrandMaker tames the complexity of multinational marketing campaigns, budgets and team workflows, enabling companies to work across borders, cultures, and silos for efficiency and value. Independent research firms recognize BrandMaker as a leader in marketing ops. More than 300 leading enterprises, including Deutsche Bank, BestBuy, and Daimler, trust its solutions to increase collaboration, efficiency, and performance of their marketing planning and execution. For more information, please visit www.brandmaker.com

For more information contact:

On behalf of BrandMaker: [email protected]

or at BrandMaker: [email protected]

SOURCE BrandMaker
ARLINGTON, Va., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, American Trucking Associations opened nominations to recognize the most passionate promoters of the trucking industry's image with this year's Mike Russell Trucking Industry Image Award.



"This past year, it was especially moving to see that our professional truck drivers were recognized as frontline heroes and the trucking industry was established as essential to every American," said ATA President & CEO Chris Spear. "While many told the story of trucking during the pandemic, this award is to honor individuals and organizations that consistently go above and beyond to broaden and strengthen the awareness of the industry to policy makers, the media and the public."

ATA is proud to announce Great West Casualty Company as the newest sponsor of the Mike Russell Trucking Industry Image Award for 2021.



"Great West Casualty Company is honored to support an award with the significance of the Mike Russell Trucking Industry Image Award," said Executive Vice President Steve Ponder. "The image of trucking has grown more positive each year due to the impact of past and future award winners."



This award is presented to an individual, motor carrier, trucking organization and industry supplier who demonstrate excellence in illustrating the industry's essentiality, safety-first approach to doing business and professionalism. Last year, ATA recognized the Nebraska Trucking Association, J&M Tank Lines, Inc. and America's Road Team Captain and professional truck driver for Old Dominion Freight Line, Rhonda Hartman, with the prestigious award.



"The pandemic has certainly been a challenging year, but a year where we have seen the trucking industry gain incredible momentum in the way we are perceived," said ATA Executive Vice President of Industry Affairs and Senior Advisor to the President & CEO Elisabeth Barna. "It is more important than ever to keep the positive image of the industry in the headlines, and we are looking forward to the award submissions to do just that."



Mike Russell Trucking Industry Image submissions are evaluated by an expert, impartial panel of judges based on creativity, frequency, impact and execution. Visit the official nomination page to find out more about the award and how to submit a nomination.

Completed applications should be submitted by August 30, 2021 to ATA's Industry Affairs Department. The winners of the Mike Russell Trucking Image Award will be announced October 23-26 during the American Trucking Associations' Management Conference and Exhibition in Nashville, TN.

American Trucking Associations is the largest national trade association for the trucking industry. Through a federation of 50 affiliated state trucking associations and industry-related conferences and councils, ATA is the voice of the industry America depends on most to move our nation's freight. Follow ATA on Twitter or on Facebook. Trucking Moves America Forward

SOURCE American Trucking Associations

Related Links

www.trucking.org


JACKSONVILLE, Fla., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Availity, one the nation's largest real-time health information networks, announced today that Frank Petito has been appointed chief financial officer. In his new role, Petito is responsible for leading Availity's financial and accounting teams and serves as a strategic partner to the organization's board of directors and executive leadership team regarding organic expansion, mergers and acquisitions, and capital markets opportunities.

To download a photo of Frank Petito, please click here.

"We are pleased to welcome an executive leader of Frank's caliber to Availity to lead our financial teams as we continue our strategic growth and seek investment opportunities that drive additional value for providers, payers and patients," said Russ Thomas, chief executive officer, Availity. "Frank's role at Availity is critical as we expand our health information network and improve healthcare communications."

Petito has already been a great addition to the Availity leadership team. Most recently, Petito led the process to secure Availity's latest investor, Novo Holdings. As Availity underwent the recapitalization process, Petito ensured a smooth transition as the company secured a new partnership, investor, and additional board members. Petito will continue to play a strategic role in future investment opportunities as Availity experiences significant growth.

Previously, Petito served as chief financial officer of Vivid Seats, a private-equity backed online marketplace for sports, concerts, and theater tickets, where he helped drive profitable growth, optimize capital structure, and manage the strategic sale of the company.

Prior to Vivid Seats, Petito served for 14 years at Orbitz, where he was senior vice president of corporate development and president of Orbitz for Business, a business-to-business division within Orbitz Worldwide. During his tenure, Petito helped drive Orbitz's initial public offering, mergers and acquisitions activities, and eventual sale to Expedia.

Earlier in his career, Petito worked as an investment banker in New York, Buenos Aires, and San Francisco, most recently at Hambrecht & Quist, a leading technology and growth investment bank. Petito graduated from Princeton University and earned an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business.

"Availity has assembled a strong management team of seasoned business leaders, and I'm honored to join this group of talented professionals," said Petito. "I look forward to contributing to the team as we pursue innovative ways to help payers and providers strengthen communications, improve financial performance, and simplify processes and systems."

About Availity

Availity is the place where healthcare finds the answers needed to shift focus back to patient care. We work to solve communication challenges in healthcare by creating a richer, more transparent exchange of information among health plans, providers, and technology partners. As one of the nation's largest health information networks, Availity facilitates billions of clinical, administrative, and financial transactions annually. Our suite of dynamic products, built on a powerful, intelligent platform, enables real-time collaboration for success in a competitive, value-based care environment.

For more information, including an online demonstration, please visit www.availity.com or call 1.800.AVAILITY (282.4548).

Media Contact:

Maddie Noteboom

Amendola Communications for Availity

512.422.3425

[email protected]

SOURCE Availity

Related Links

http://www.availity.com


COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brixey & Meyer is pleased to announce that Jonathan Harrington has been promoted to the role of Columbus Office Leader, effective July 2021.

"We are excited for Jonathan to assume this leadership role in our Columbus office. His passion, dedication, and drive are a perfect fit as we continue our strategic growth in the Columbus market."  Doug Meyer, CEO

Jonathan is a leader within the CFO Services practice line. He joined Brixey & Meyer in October of 2020 through the acquisition of LAMP CFO and Accounting Services. Jonathan has over 15 years of experience in public accounting and private practice as a CFO and Controller.

"I am extremely humbled and excited to guide our exceptional Columbus team and continue to support growth both within the firm and in the market. I am also excited to work with our Shareholders to promote our firm's vision, mission and core values."  Jonathan Harrington

As we grow, Brixey & Meyer continues to offer a strategic mix of value-added services. Each service line is focused on growing your business & moving it forward. To learn more about our company & service lines, see below.

We look forward to sharing more as we grow!

SOURCE Brixey & Meyer

Related Links

https://www.brixeyandmeyer.com


California Florida Colorado Texas Arizona Washington Utah Oregon New York North Carolina

California topped the list in 2020 with 11,921 total loans and has been the number-one state in HECM volume since 2016. Los Angeles County was by far the most popular county in the state for reverse mortgages in 2020 with 3,068, followed by San Diego County with 1,256 loans and Orange County with 1,145 loans. It's no surprise that California leads the list with the average home values increasing every year for the last five years. In second place, Florida has held as the number-two most popular state in volume over the same period of time and its top county in 2020 was Miami-Dade with 519 total loans.

Reverse mortgages have become increasingly popular in Colorado over the past few years as it has climbed from number five on the list in 2016, to number three in loan volume in 2020. Not only has the total volume increased in Colorado, but if we look at the total loan amounts in comparison to each state's senior population, Colorado has ranked number one since 2019.

"Seniors throughout the country are taking advantage of the strong housing market and tapping into their home equity to create financial flexibility," said AAG Chief Marketing Officer Martin Lenoir. "While California has historically been a popular market for the reverse mortgages, we're starting to see greater adoption in many more states such as Colorado and Utah. Seniors are realizing that their growing home equity is one of their greatest assets and that now is the time to utilize it."

To determine these results, AAG researched over 225,000 loans endorsed by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) over a five-year period. All loans in the findings were HECMs with backing from the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and were funded by various lenders, not only AAG. According to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA), seniors now own over $8 trillion in home equity across the United States.

About AAG

AAG is dedicated to helping older Americans find new ways to fund a better retirement through the responsible use of home equity. As the nation's leader in reverse mortgage lending, AAG offers a suite of home equity solutions  including Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, traditional and proprietary mortgages, and real estate services  that are designed to give seniors a better financial outcome in retirement. AAG is a proud member of the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA). To learn more about AAG and reverse mortgage loans, please visit the company's website at www.aag.com.

American Advisors Group, NMLS ID: 9392, 18200 Von Karman Ave., Suite 300, Irvine, CA 92612. AAG Residential Services, Inc., 18200 Von Karman Ave., Suite 950, Irvine, CA 92612. Real estate broker, California Department of Real Estate, License number 02039087. AAGRS is performing acts for which a real estate license is required.

CONTACT:

Ryan Whittington

[email protected]

(657) 236-5220

SOURCE American Advisors Group (AAG)
TORONTO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (TSX: CF) is scheduled to release its first quarter results and supplementary financial information on Tuesday, August 3, 2021 after TSX market close. Interested investors, the media and other stakeholders may review the earnings release and supplementary financial information at www.cgf.com/investor-relations/investor-resources/financial-reports/.

QUARTERLY CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST:

Interested parties are invited to listen to Canaccord Genuity's first quarter results conference call via live webcast or a toll-free number. The conference call is scheduled for Wednesday, August 4, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern time, 5:00 a.m. Pacific time, 1:00 p.m. UK time, 8:00 p.m. China Standard Time, and 10:00 p.m. Australia EST. During the call, senior executives will comment on the results and respond to questions from analysts and institutional investors.

The conference call may be accessed live and will also be archived on a listen-only basis at: www.cgf.com/investor-relations/news-and-events/conference-calls-and-webcasts/

Analysts and institutional investors can call in via telephone at:

416-764-8609 (within Toronto )

) 888-390-0605 (toll free in North America outside Toronto )

outside ) 0-800-652-2435 (toll free from the United Kingdom )

) 0-800-916-834 (toll free from France )

) 10-800-714-1938 (toll free from Northern China )

) 10-800-140-1973 (toll free from Southern China )

) 1-800-076-068 (toll free from Australia )

) 80-003-570-3632 (toll free from United Arab Emirates )

Please ask to participate in the Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. Q1/22 results call. If a passcode is requested, please use 28296321.

A replay of the conference call will be made available from approximately two hours after the live call on August 3, 2021 until October 4, 2021 at 416-764-8677 or 1-888-390-0541 by entering passcode 296321 followed by the (#) key.

ABOUT CANACCORD GENUITY GROUP INC.:

Through its principal subsidiaries, Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. (the "Company") is a leading independent, full-service financial services firm, with operations in two principal segments of the securities industry: wealth management and capital markets. Since its establishment in 1950, the Company has been driven by an unwavering commitment to building lasting client relationships. We achieve this by generating value for our individual, institutional and corporate clients through comprehensive investment solutions, brokerage services and investment banking services. The Company has Wealth Management offices located in Canada, the UK, Guernsey, Jersey, the Isle of Man and Australia. The Company's international capital markets division operates in North America, UK & Europe, Asia, Australia and the Middle East.

Canaccord Genuity Group Inc. is publicly traded under the symbol CF on the TSX.

www.cgf.com/investor-relations

SOURCE Canaccord Genuity Group Inc.

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NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Capchase, a New York-based provider of non-dilutive capital, has today announced $280 million in new debt and equity financing led by i80 Group . The new funding comes on the heels of continued growth and the introduction of Capchase Expense Financing, a new Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) product that helps companies split large expenses over time, in fixed repayment terms. When combined with Capchase's leading programmatic funding solution, companies unlock resources for growth while at the same time preserving their cash.

Capchase Expense Financing enables companies to manage their largest expenses  such as legal bills, AWS hosting services, payroll and bonus payments, and recruitment fees, to name a few  without depleting their cash. Repayment terms are fixed in either 3, 6, 9, or 12-month increments. With Capchase Expense Financing, companies can avoid large, immediate outflows, time their expenses with their revenue, and identify certain expenses that they would rather repay over time  all benefits that were never before possible.

"Our new BNPL solution is a first in our industry, and we believe it will be a game changer," noted Miguel Fernandez, co-founder and CEO of Capchase. "Since we launched just over a year ago, we've seen first-hand the challenges that companies face when securing the financing they need to grow their business. Managing large expenses and having to make difficult decisions over how they spend their cash is one of the most consistent and trying issues that our clients face. Now, Capchase users can pay upfront, get a discount, and split their expense payments over fixed monthly increments."

Here's how Capchase Expense Financing works:

Choose your Expenses  Clients can either extend realized expenses or plan ahead for large expenses they expect to incur in the near future

 Clients can either extend realized expenses or plan ahead for large expenses they expect to incur in the near future Select your Term  Select 3, 6, 9 or 12 month term (based on eligibility)

 Select 3, 6, 9 or 12 month term (based on eligibility) Review Rates  As with Capchase's recurring revenue financing, rates are transparent and clear

 As with Capchase's recurring revenue financing, rates are transparent and clear Repay Gradually  Repay in installments over the term selected

"Using Capchase's Expense Financing product allows us to smooth out our cash flow profile, enabling us to invest more consistently and heavily into growth," noted Juanjo Traver, co-founder/CRO, Declarando. "The flexibility of the Capchase platform is great, and we couldn't be happier with our partnership."

Capchase was launched in 2020 to help recurring-revenue companies secure growth capital that doesn't dilute their founders' ownership. The development of Capchase's expense financing solution is a reflection of the company's rapid growth over the past year and continued fundraising momentum in 2021. Since launch, Capchase clients have added over 3,000 months of runway for 500 different companies, have added over $160 million in ARR and have increased in valuation by $4Bn+.

The Capchase Expense Financing solution is made possible by $280 million in new debt and equity funding, led by i80 Group. i80 Group is an innovative investment firm that partners with pre-eminent tech-enabled companies to extend credit solutions that are uniquely designed to fuel growth. With this new funding, Capchase will be able to substantially increase the number of companies it is able to work with, as well as the amount of funding it is able to provide.

To learn more about Capchase and apply for expense financing as well as programmatic funding for your business, please visit www.capchase.com .

About Capchase

Capchase is a platform for recurring-revenue companies to secure non-dilutive capital. Founded in Boston, MA in 2020, the company provides financing by bringing future expected cash flows to the present day  thereby extending an immediate line of credit. Companies that work with Capchase are able to secure funding that is fast, flexible, and doesn't dilute their ownership.

About i80 Group

i80 Group is an investment firm designed to propel the innovation economy forward by empowering growth. Our bespoke financing solutions are unique to each partner's needs, advancing them through critical growth milestones. Like the I-80 freeway from which it takes its name, we operate at the intersection of Silicon Valley innovation and Wall Street finance.

Media Contact

Ryan Walker

R.J. Walker & Co.

[email protected]

860-930-3611

SOURCE Capchase

Related Links

http://www.capchase.com


MINNEAPOLIS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Based in Minneapolis, Caplan & Tamburino Law Firm is celebrating the selection of three of its attorneys to either 2021 Super Lawyers or Rising Stars, developed by Thomson Reuters subsidiary Super Lawyers.

The 2021 honorees were listed as follows for their work in Minneapolis, Minnesota:

Allan H. Caplan (Selected to Super Lawyers 1996-2005, 2007-2010, 2014-2021)

(Selected to Super Lawyers 1996-2005, 2007-2010, 2014-2021) Criminal Defense



Criminal Defense: DUI/DWI



Criminal Defense: White Collar

Joseph P. Tamburino (Selected to Super Lawyers 2000-2021; Rising Stars 1998-1999)

(Selected to Super Lawyers 2000-2021; Rising Stars 1998-1999) Criminal Defense



Criminal Defense: DUI/DWI



Criminal Defense: White Collar

Lis M. Carlson (Selected to Rising Stars 2017-2021)

Criminal Defense



Criminal Defense: DUI/DWI

Please note: Super Lawyers showcases top-rated mid- to late-career attorneys, while only skilled early career attorneys are recognized in Rising Stars.

These annual guides are designed to act as vetted legal directories for those seeking counsel in over 70 practice areas from coast to coast. Thus, the selection process is rigorous, involving a Super Lawyers-conducted review and a peer review. With no more than 5% and 2.5% of all U.S attorneys recognized in the Super Lawyers and Rising Stars guides, respectively, each year, the selection of three attorneys at one firm is rare and worth celebrating.

At Caplan & Tamburino Law Firm, each of these attorneys has fought tirelessly to protect the rights of their clients in criminal defense and personal injury cases. They never shy away from a case, no matter how high the stakes may be. As part of the trial law firm's attorney team, they have contributed to both its national acclaim and groundbreaking case results.

Caplan & Tamburino Law Firm represents its Minneapolis clients in the criminal and civil justice systems. Schedule a free consultation or learn more about the award-winning firm at caplantamburino.com. To find out more about Super Lawyers and Rising Stars, visit superlawyers.com.

SOURCE Caplan & Tamburino Law Firm, P.A.

Related Links

https://www.caplantamburino.com


BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Place To Work and Fortune magazine have honored ComForCare/At Your Side Home Care as one of the 2021 Best Workplaces for Millennials and 2021 Best Workplaces in New York. Earning a place on these prestigious lists confirms the positive workplace culture ComForCare/At Your Side franchisees have cultivated, as well as the brand's emphasis on helping others live their best lives.

The Best Workplaces for Millennials award is based on an analysis of survey responses from more than 5.3 million U.S. employees. In that survey, 90% of ComForCare/At Your Side's employees said the organization is a great place to work. This number is 31% higher than the average American company.

"It's an immense honor to be ranked on the 2021 Best Workplaces for Millennials and the Best Workplaces in New York lists," said J.J. Sorrenti, CEO of Best Life Brands, parent company to ComForCare/At Your Side Home Care. "Our brand's mission is to help others live their best lives. Excellent care is top priority for our family of franchise owners. That includes the amazing caregivers. They are the heart of everything we do and it's important to us that they feel valued and truly enjoy the vital work they do."

The Best Workplaces for Millennials and the Best Workplaces in New York are highly competitive. Great Place To Work, the global authority on workplace culture, selects winners based on how fairly employees are treated. Companies are assessed on how well they create an exceptional employee experience that cuts across race, gender, age, or any aspect of who employees are or their role.

"The Best Workplaces for Millennials treat their employees like people, not just employees," said Michael C. Bush, CEO of Great Place To Work. "These companies foster caring and respect for one another, at every level of the organization. The result is millennial employees who say they look forward to coming to work and  as our research says  are 50 times more likely to stay a long time."

Learn more about careers at ComForCare and At Your Side Home Care today, or refer someone to join this important field.

About ComForCare Home Care:

ComForCare is a premier franchised provider of in-home caregiving services with more than 215 independently-owned and operated locations in the U.S. and Canada helping older adults live independently in their own homes. ComForCare is committed to helping people live their best live's possible and offers special programs for people with Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia. Founded in 1996, ComForCare was acquired by private equity firm The Riverside Company in 2017 and now is part of Best Life Brands, which has plans for continued expansion of service brands across the continuum of care for aging adults. ComForCare operates as At Your Side Home Care in Houston. ComForCare has earned a ranking of 291 on the Entrepreneur Franchise 500 list. For more information, visit http://www.comforcare.com .

About the Best Workplaces for Millennials

Great Place To Work selected the Best Workplaces for Millennials by gathering and analyzing confidential survey responses from more than 5.3 million employees at Great Place To Work-Certified organizations. Company rankings are derived from 60 employee experience questions within the Great Place To Work Trust Index survey . Read the full methodology.

To get on this list next year, start here.

About Great Place To Work

Great Place To Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Their employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make data-driven people decisions. Everything they do is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a Great Place To Work for all.

Learn more at greatplacetowork.com and on LinkedIn , Twitter , Facebook and Instagram .

SOURCE Best Life Brands
The conference, officially entitled "Central and South Asia: Regional Interconnectivity. Challenges and Opportunities", is scheduled for Friday (July 16) and is expected to gather more than 600 participants from over 40 countries. Among the participants will be Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan and President Ashraf Ghani of Afghanistan. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will address the participants via video-message.

Plans for the conference were first alluded to in September when President Shavkat Mirziyoyev addressed the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly. "Today, the Central Asian states face an important strategic task," he said. "This is to ensure deep integration of our region into the global economic, transport and transit corridors." He then announced specific plans for this week's conference in his yearend address to Uzbekistan's parliament, the Oliy Majlis.

While the event is intended to build links to South Asia and help stabilize and propel economic expansion across the entire region, much discussion is expected to focus on the future of Afghanistan. President Mirziyoyev has spent much of his first term in office creating conditions for friendly relations with Uzbekistan's closest neighbours, including Afghanistan.

One major element of that effort has been his promotion of strategically important transport and energy links through Afghanistan to the South Asia markets beyond. Along with plans for a major transport and energy corridor, also through Afghanistan, the current security situation is expected to be discussed. Regional states will discuss how they can help to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan.

Other stakeholders such as the United States, Russia, China, India, the EU and the United Kingdom will be represented. Russia's and China's delegations will be led by foreign ministers Sergei Lavrov and Wang Yi, respectively. Other delegation leaders will include: EU External Relations Commissioner Josep Borrell, UK Minister of State for the Commonwealth and United Nations Lord Ahmad, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey Mevlut Cavusoglu and others.

Representatives of multilateral financial institutions, including the World Bank, ADB, EBRD and IDB will also attend.

Some 80 members of the international media will be present. Much of the conference will be streamed live in Uzbek, Russian and English.

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1572853/power_line_route_map.jpg

SOURCE Embassy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, London
NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Deloitte received two top honors from Google Cloud, including 2020 Google Cloud Global Services Partner of the Year and the first-ever 2020 Public Sector Partner of the Year. These awards recognize Deloitte's innovative perspectives, outstanding customer service and best-in-class use of Google Cloud products and services.

"The pandemic rapidly accelerated technology adoption globally out of sheer necessity and safety. Our response leveraged Google Cloud technology to help identify potential outbreaks, accelerated the science required to respond, including contact tracing, and processed unemployment checks to those in need. Deloitte and Google Cloud found ways to keep businesses running, and today, we see many thriving across life sciences, health care, retail, financial services, government and public services as a result," said Tom Galizia, Deloitte Global Chief Commercial Officer, Alphabet Google, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "These two recognitions are an honor, but the real reward for our teams is the impact we achieved and the knowledge that we will continue to address the world's biggest problems and brightest opportunities together."

2020 commercial marquee client case studies included Commerzbank, Bed Bath & Beyond, PayPal and Rewe. Tweet this

With over 3,000 practitioners devoted to its Alphabet Google services and a growing portfolio of Google Cloud-native solutions, Deloitte and Google Cloud led customer digital transformations across all regions globally. 2020 commercial marquee client case studies included Commerzbank, Bed Bath & Beyond, PayPal and Rewe. Drawing on the industry, functional, and technical experience within Deloitte and the Google Cloud networks, the alliance developed over 20 solutions to meet market demand for cloud and analytics tools, including industry analytics and AI, security, SAP on Google Cloud, infrastructure/application modernization and productivity-collaboration solutions.

"We're excited to recognize Deloitte as our Global Services Partner of the Year as well as our Public Sector Partner of the Year, based on their agility and responsiveness delivering critical services and support for businesses and institutions during an unprecedented time," said Kevin Ichhpurani, Corporate Vice President, Global Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud. "Throughout 2020, Deloitte led important initiatives to help government agencies and businesses alike support constituents, securely virtualize workforces, enable better contact tracing, reconfigure supply chains, and to help retailers quickly spin up ecommerce solutions to serve customers around the world."

Selection as the first-ever 2020 Public Sector Partner of the Year underscores the strength of the relationship with Google Cloud and the breadth of solutions the two organizations offer public sector clients. HealthPrism, a back-to-back ACT-IAC award-winning predictive population health analytics platform was reconfigured to help states identify and support populations at greater risk for various health conditions including COVID-19. During the pandemic HealthPrism was offered on a limited, pro-bono basis as part of Deloitte's Health Equity Institute commitment to meaningfully combat health inequities.

Bringing valuable health risk data upstream helps governments and organizations deliver essential services and use critical data to inform decision-making to improve the distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE) and vaccine access. Deloitte led several campaigns to distribute PPE and informational resources to counter COVID-19. More than 1.7 million masks and hand sanitizers were distributed based on data provided by Deloitte and HealthPrism.

"Google Cloud-enabled, Deloitte-delivered transformations have helped the world respond, recover, and thrive through the global pandemic," said Punit Renjen, Deloitte Global CEO. "One cannot underestimate the ripple effect of this relationship. The world is just beginning to imagine the possibilities  the many ways that technology can enable businesses to leverage their respective strengths to produce impact that's greater than the sum of their individual parts."

About Deloitte

Deloitte refers to one or more of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited ("DTTL"), its global network of member firms, and their related entities (collectively, the "Deloitte organization"). DTTL (also referred to as "Deloitte Global") and each of its member firms and related entities are legally separate and independent entities, which cannot obligate or bind each other in respect of third parties. DTTL and each DTTL member firm and related entity is liable only for its own acts and omissions, and not those of each other. DTTL does not provide services to clients. Please see www.deloitte.com/about to learn more.

Deloitte is a leading global provider of audit and assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax and related services. Our global network of member firms and related entities in more than 150 countries and territories (collectively, the "Deloitte organization") serves four out of five Fortune Global 500 companies. Learn how Deloitte's more than 330,000 people make an impact that matters at www.deloitte.com.

SOURCE Deloitte

Related Links

http://www.deloitte.com


DexKo Global Inc ("DexKo") has reached an agreement to acquire the European towbar solutions specialist Brink International. The Netherlands-based company expands DexKo's portfolio into the area of engineered towing and carrying solutions.

NOVI, Mich., KOTZ, Germany, and STAPHORST, Netherlands, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- DexKo Global ("DexKo"), a global leader in highly engineered trailer running gear, chassis assemblies, and related components, is pleased to announce that its subsidiary AL-KO Vehicle Technology Group GmbH ("AL-KO") has entered into an agreement with H2 Equity Partners to acquire the Dutch towbar manufacturer Brink International ("Brink"). Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval.

Founded in 1903, Brink has more than 100 years of expertise in the manufacturing industry. The company's product portfolio includes fixed, detachable, retractable and next generation towbars. More than 25 million vehicles globally are equipped with Brink products. The connection between towbars and trailer couplings expands DexKo's technological scope.

Fred Bentley, CEO at DexKo, emphasized the importance of this transaction: "We are incredibly excited about adding Brink to our portfolio. Brink offers a leading market position and another premium brand to DexKo. The company is characterized by its wide range of high quality, innovative products and the superior service it provides to customers."

Harald Hiller, President and CEO at AL-KO, continued: "The strategic fit between Brink and DexKo could not be better. Both companies offer a highly engineered product portfolio critical to safety and performance. This acquisition allows us to expand our product portfolio and operations footprint and gives us access to new regions."

Sven Arend, CEO at Brink, added: "This transaction brings great opportunities for both companies. We look forward to working with the DexKo and AL-KO teams and to further developing the business together."

About AL-KO Vehicle Technology Group

The AL-KO Vehicle Technology Group is a globally active technology group. As a supplier of high-quality chassis and suspension components for trailers, leisure vehicles and commercial vehicles, the group is synonymous with functional excellence, superb comfort as well as innovations to enhance driving safety. The AL-KO Vehicle Technology Group includes the 14 international brands AL-KO, Aguti, Bankside Patterson, Bradley, CBE, cmtrailer parts, E&P Hydraulics, G&S Chassis, Hume, Nordelettronica, Preston Chassis, SAFIM, SAWIKO and Winterhoff. Founded in 1931, the Group today generates sales of around 800 million US dollars with around 3,000 employees and more than 30 sites worldwide. AL-KO Vehicle Technology Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of DexKo Global, a portfolio company of KPS Capital Partners. For more information about visit www.alko-tech.com.

About DexKo Global

DexKo Global Inc. is the world's leading supplier of advanced chassis technology, chassis assemblies and related components with more than 130 years of experience in trailer and caravan components. DexKo Global was founded at the end of 2015 through the combination of Dexter and AL-KO Vehicle Technology. With its headquarters in Novi, Michigan, the company employs more than 5,000 associates with 50 production facilities and 50 distribution centers. DexKo Global Inc. has a turnover of more than US$ 2.0 billion and AL-KO is a wholly owned subsidiary of DexKo Global, Inc. and has been a leading manufacturer of trailer axles and trailer brakes for over 60 years for utility trailer, recreation vehicle, heavy duty, manufactured housing, agricultural, marine, and specialty trailer applications. For more information visit www.dexko.com. DexKo is majority owned by funds managed by KPS Capital Partners.

About KPS

KPS, through its affiliated management entities, is the manager of the KPS Special Situations Funds, a family of investment funds with approximately $12.8 billion of assets under management (as of March 31, 2021). For over two decades, the Partners of KPS have worked exclusively to realize significant capital appreciation by making controlling equity investments in manufacturing and industrial companies across a diverse array of industries, including basic materials, branded consumer, healthcare and luxury products, automotive parts, capital equipment and general manufacturing. KPS creates value for its investors by working constructively with talented management teams to make businesses better and generates investment returns by structurally improving the strategic position, competitiveness and profitability of its portfolio companies, rather than primarily relying on financial leverage. The KPS Funds' portfolio companies have aggregate annual revenues of approximately $13.5 billion, operate 156 manufacturing facilities in 23 countries, and have over 32,000 employees, directly and through joint ventures worldwide (as of March 31, 2021, pro forma for recent acquisitions). The KPS investment strategy and portfolio companies are described in detail at www.kpsfund.com.

About Brink Group

Brink Group is one of the European market leaders in towing systems with over 75 years' experience in the automotive sector. Under the motto "Your Perfect Fit", the Brink Group offers an easy and safe connection between practically any vehicle and the load you want to carry or tow. With this, Brink Group enables millions of end users all over the world to go out and live their active lives. So far, more than 25 million cars have been fitted with a Brink towbar. Brink Group, with its headquarters in Staphorst, the Netherlands, has approximately 700 employees in 8 countries and manufacturing locations in the Netherlands, France, South Africa and Thailand. More information is available at www.brinkgroup.eu.

Media contact:

AL-KO Vehicle Technology Group

Hans Posthumus

Ichenhauser Strae 14

89359 Kotz

+49 8221 97-8335

[email protected]

www.alko-tech.com

SOURCE DexKo Global Inc.

Related Links

http://www.dexko.com


THE WOODLANDS, Texas, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Earthstone Energy, Inc. (NYSE: ESTE) ("Earthstone", the "Company", "our" or "we"), today announced that it has completed the previously announced acquisition of privately held operated assets located in the Midland Basin from Tracker Resource Development III, LLC and an affiliate ("Tracker") and from affiliates of Sequel Energy Group LLC, which hold well-bore interests in certain of the producing wells operated by Tracker (collectively, the "Tracker Acquisition"). The Company also updated its 2021 guidance, provided an operational update, and provided an estimate of mid-year 2021 proved reserves.

The Company estimates its oil and gas sales volumes for the second quarter of 2021 to be approximately 2.07 MMBoe or an average of 22,716 Boe/d (52% oil, 76% liquids). The Company also has provided its estimate of mid-year 2021 proved reserves based on SEC pricing as of June 30, 2021, on a standalone basis as well as based on NYMEX strip pricing as of June 30, 2021 and adjusted for closing of the Tracker Acquisition. Adjusted for the closing of the Tracker Acquisition and including only proved developed reserves from the Tracker Acquisition, the Company estimates total proved reserves were 133.6 MMBoe, with a corresponding PV-10 value1 of $1,677 million.

Key highlights include:

Achieved record estimated average daily sales volumes in the second quarter of 2021 of 22,716 Boe/d (52% oil), an increase of 12% over first quarter 2021 volumes

Closed the Tracker Acquisition on July 20, 2021 , the third significant acquisition completed in 2021

, the third significant acquisition completed in 2021 Maintained a strong balance sheet and liquidity position with $249.5 million of undrawn capacity under our $550 million senior secured revolving credit facility and a cash balance of $0.5 million as of June 30, 2021 , as adjusted for the closing of the Tracker Acquisition on July 20, 2021

of undrawn capacity under our senior secured revolving credit facility and a cash balance of as of , as adjusted for the closing of the Tracker Acquisition on On track to achieve leverage below 1.25x at year-end 2021 2

$1,677 million PV-10 value on Company estimated Mid-Year 2021 total proved reserves of 133.6 MMBoe, based on NYMEX strip pricing, adjusted to include only the proved developed reserves of 20.2 MMBoe from the Tracker Acquisition

PV-10 value on Company estimated Mid-Year 2021 total proved reserves of 133.6 MMBoe, based on NYMEX strip pricing, adjusted to include only the proved developed reserves of 20.2 MMBoe from the Tracker Acquisition $1,089 million PV-10 value of proved developed reserves of 83.6 MMBoe included in total proved reserves estimates above

PV-10 value of proved developed reserves of 83.6 MMBoe included in total proved reserves estimates above Full Year 2021 production guidance increased 19% at the mid-point to 23,500-24,250 Boe/d (50%-51% oil) compared to the previous guidance

Average daily sales volumes in the second half of 2021 are expected to be between 25,500 and 27,000 Boe/d

Estimated accrued capital expenditures of $22.8 million and $32.6 million for the second quarter of 2021 and first-half of 2021, respectively, excluding acquisitions

and for the second quarter of 2021 and first-half of 2021, respectively, excluding acquisitions Plan to add a second rig to the 2021 drilling program in mid-third quarter, with a revised Full Year 2021 capital budget of $130 - $140 million ,

- , Expect to spud 9 incremental gross operated wells and turn to sales 4 incremental gross operated wells compared to the prior capital budget

Tracker Acquisition and Board Appointment

At the Company's Annual Meeting of Stockholders held on Tuesday, July 20, 2021, its stockholders approved the issuance of 6.2 million shares of Class A Common Stock, which were issued in the closing of the Tracker Acquisition. As of July 20, 2021, and as adjusted for closing of the Tracker Acquisition, Earthstone had 50,493,800 outstanding Class A shares and 34,397,877 outstanding Class B shares for a total of 84,891,677 outstanding Class A & Class B shares.

Further, the stockholders approved an amendment to the Company's Third Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation to increase the authorized size of the Board of Directors of Earthstone from nine to eleven members. Subsequently, the Board increased the size of the Board from nine members to ten members and appointed Robert J. Anderson, the Company's President and CEO, to fill the vacancy effective July 20, 2021.

The aggregate purchase price of the Tracker Acquisition was approximately $126.5 million at signing of the purchase and sale agreement, consisting of $81.6 million in cash and 6.2 million shares of Earthstone's Class A common stock valued at $44.9 million based on a closing share price of $7.24 on March 30, 2021. Cash consideration paid at closing was $59.6 million, reflecting both the purchase price adjustment estimated prior to closing and the deposit paid at signing.

The low-cost, low-decline, high-margin assets acquired from the Tracker Acquisition are proximately located and complementary to Earthstone's existing operated assets, adding significant producing asset value with a Company estimated PV-10 value of mid-year 2021 proved developed reserves of $169.0 million, based on NYMEX strip pricing and differentials as of June 30, 2021. We also obtained further economic upside from 49 high-graded drilling locations which the Company estimates to provide IRRs of ~56% at $60/bbl WTI oil prices and $2.50/mcf Henry Hub gas prices3.

Updated 2021 Guidance

The Company has revised its 2021 capital budget to include the addition of a second rig that is expected to commence operations in early August and now expects to spend $130-$140 million. This program is expected to result in spudding 30 gross / 26.2 net operated wells and bringing 20 gross / 16.1 net operated wells and 0.7 net non-operated wells online in 2021 on its acreage in the Midland Basin.

Based on its 2021 capital budget, operating plan, and existing service costs, along with current commodity prices and hedges, the Company expects to generate significant positive free cash flow4 in 2021. The Company's capital budget excludes acquisitions.

FY 2021 Capital Expenditures $ millions (Net) Gross / Net

Operated

Wells Spudded Gross / Net

Operated

Wells On Line Net

Non-Operated

Wells On Line Drilling and Completions $120  130 30 / 26.2 20 / 16.1 0.7 Land / Infrastructure 10





FY 2021 Total Capital Expenditures $130  140















FY 2021 Average Daily Production (Boe/d) 23,500  24,250





% Oil 50%  51%





% Liquids 74%  75%















2H 2021 Average Daily Production (Boe/d) 25,500  27,000





% Oil 46%  47%





% Liquids 73%  74%















2H 2021 Operating Costs







Lease Operating Expense ($/Boe) $5.75  $6.00





Production and Ad Valorem Taxes (% of Revenue) 6.25%  7.00%





Cash G&A ($mm) $12  $13







Note: Guidance is forward-looking information that is subject to considerable change and numerous risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Earthstone's control. See "Forward-Looking Statements" section below. Cash G&A is defined as general and administrative expenses excluding stock-based compensation.

Management Comments

Robert J. Anderson, President and Chief Executive Officer of Earthstone, stated, "First off, I want to thank my fellow board members for this appointment to the Earthstone Board of Directors. I am honored to have worked with this distinguished group for a number of years in my capacity as an officer and look forward to working even closer with them as we continue to build Earthstone. We have had an exciting and productive first half of 2021, and we are entering the second half with a significant increase in operational scale, production, cash flow and most importantly, in value. We have invested an estimated $360 million in aggregate acquisitions so far this year, and combined with a substantial increase in commodity prices, we have seen a significant increase in production volumes, cash flows and in estimated proved reserves and PV-10 value. We pride ourselves on targeting and completing acquisitions at highly accretive valuations and are focused on continuing to do so in the second half of the year.

"Our conservative approach to funding acquisitions with an appropriate mix of debt and equity has allowed us to maintain strong liquidity and low leverage while building significant scale. We expect to have nearly doubled our daily production volumes compared to 2020 levels, all while adding minimal G&A. The combination of continued improvements in operational and corporate efficiencies has allowed us to continue to drive down per unit costs, as we aim to maximize margins.

Mr. Anderson continued "With our increased production base, cash flow and economic drilling inventory, the addition of a second rig will further develop our growing drilling inventory, primarily impacting production volumes in 2022 and beyond. Our updated capital program is designed to allow spending within cash flow and is expected to generate significant free cash flow in 2021. We look forward to fully integrating the Tracker Acquisition assets in the coming months and expect a similarly smooth integration as we achieved with the IRM assets acquired in January. We recently finished drilling operations on our initial pad on the IRM assets ahead of schedule and under our estimated costs. As we move forward, we will continue to focus on cost-efficient drilling and completion operations as we look to create value through the drillbit."

Liquidity Update

As of June 30, 2021, we had $0.5 million in cash and $241.4 million of long-term debt outstanding under our credit facility with a borrowing base of $475 million. With the $233.6 million of undrawn borrowing base capacity and $0.5 million in cash, we had total liquidity of approximately $234.1 million. Adjusted for the closing of the Tracker Acquisition on July 20, 2021, we had an estimated $0.5 million in cash and $301.0 million of long-term debt outstanding under our credit facility with a borrowing base of $550 million. With the $249.0 million of undrawn borrowing base capacity and $0.5 million in cash, we had total liquidity of approximately $249.5 million on a combined basis.

Operational Update

The Company completed three gross (2.1 net) wells in the second quarter on the Hamman 45 pad in Midland County in the Jo Mill, Lower Spraberry and Wolfcamp B zones. The wells began flowing back recently and continue to clean-up but have not yet reached peak IP-30 day rates. We expect to complete and turn to sales the recently drilled 4-well Pearl Jam pad (95% working interest) in Midland County late in the third quarter. These are the Company's first wells drilled on the recently acquired IRM acreage. Subsequent to drilling on the Pearl Jam pad, the rig was moved to western Reagan County in early July to drill a 4-well pad, then is expected to move to Upton County to drill a 4-well pad before being moved to Midland County late in 2021. The Company plans to deploy a second rig in early August, beginning in Upton County.

Mid-Year 2021 SEC Estimated Proved Reserves

Earthstone Stand-Alone Mid-Year 2021 Estimated Proved Reserves Highlights:

Proved Reserves of 111.4 MMBoe with corresponding PV-10 value of $1,032 million

Proved Reserves are 54% oil, 24% natural gas liquids, and 22% natural gas

Proved Reserves are 55% Proved Developed and 45% Proved Undeveloped

As shown in the table below, the Company's estimated proved reserves at mid-year 2021, which were prepared in accordance with Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") guidelines by the Company, were approximately 111.4 million barrels of oil equivalent ("MMBoe").





Oil

Gas

NGL

Total

PV-10 Reserve Category

(MBbls)

(MMcf)

(MBbls)

(MBoe)

($ in thousands) Proved Developed

31,008

86,092

16,319

61,675

646,779 Proved Undeveloped

29,015

58,744

10,871

49,677

385,061 Total

60,023

144,836

27,190

111,352

1,031,839

Note: PV-10 is a non-GAAP financial measure. See "Non-GAAP Financial Measure."

SEC rules require that calculations of economically recoverable reserves use the unweighted average price on the first day of the month for the prior twelve-month period. The resulting oil and natural gas prices used for the Company's 2021 mid-year internal reserve report, prior to adjusting for quality and basis differentials, were $49.78 per barrel and $2.428 per million British Thermal Units ("MMBtu"), respectively. SEC prices net of differentials were $48.88 per barrel, $14.58 per equivalent barrel of NGL and $1.21 per Mcf.

Mid-Year 2021 Company Estimated Proved Reserves (Including Tracker Acquisition)

To illustrate the effects of commodity price fluctuations on estimated reserve quantities and present values and to illustrate the impact of the recent Tracker Acquisition, Earthstone is also providing alternative Mid-Year 2021 Company Estimated Proved Reserves. This alternative summary as shown in the table below has been prepared utilizing NYMEX strip benchmark prices and basis differentials as of June 30, 2021.

Highlights of Mid-Year 2021 Company Estimated Proved Reserves, combined with only the estimated proved developed reserves of 20.2 MMBoe from the Tracker Acquisition:

$1,667 million PV-10 value of Proved Reserves of 133.6 MMBoe (48% oil, 27% natural gas liquids, and 25% natural gas)

PV-10 value of Proved Reserves of 133.6 MMBoe (48% oil, 27% natural gas liquids, and 25% natural gas) $1,089 million PV-10 value of Proved Developed Reserves of 83.6 MMBoe (42% oil, 30% natural gas liquids, and 28% natural gas)





Oil

Gas

NGL

Total

PV-10 Reserve Category

(MBbls)

(MMcf)

(MBbls)

(MBoe)

($ in thousands) Proved Developed

34,818

141,482

25,175

83,573

1,089,312 Proved Undeveloped

29,172

59,420

10,993

50,068

587,693 Total

63,990

200,901

36,169

133,642

1,677,005

Note: See NYMEX strip benchmark prices and basis differentials "Alternative Mid-Year 2021 Estimated Proved Reserves" components below for a breakdown of the above by entity.

About Earthstone

Earthstone Energy, Inc. is a growth-oriented, independent energy company engaged in developing and operating oil and gas properties. The Company's primary assets are located in the Midland Basin of west Texas and the Eagle Ford Trend of south Texas. Earthstone is traded on the NYSE under the symbol "ESTE." For more information, visit the Company's website at www.earthstoneenergy.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act"), and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the "Exchange Act"). Statements that are not strictly historical statements constitute forward-looking statements and may often, but not always, be identified by the use of such words such as "expects," "believes," "intends," "anticipates," "plans," "estimates," "forecast," "guidance," "target," "potential," "possible," or "probable" or statements that certain actions, events or results "may," "will," "should," or "could" be taken, occur or be achieved. Forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and analyses made by Earthstone and its management in light of experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors appropriate under the circumstances that involve various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those reflected in the statements. These risks include, but are not limited to, those set forth in Earthstone's annual report on Form 10-K and as amended on Form 10-K/A, for the year ended December 31, 2020, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, recent current reports on Form 8-K, and other Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Earthstone undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements except as required by law.

Contact

Mark Lumpkin, Jr.

Executive Vice President  Chief Financial Officer

Earthstone Energy, Inc.

1400 Woodloch Forest Drive, Suite 300

The Woodlands, TX 77380

281-298-4246

[email protected]

Scott Thelander

Vice President of Finance

Earthstone Energy, Inc.

1400 Woodloch Forest Drive, Suite 300

The Woodlands, TX 77380

281-298-4246

[email protected]

Earthstone Energy, Inc.

Alternative Mid-Year 2021 Proved Reserves

The information presented below includes the combination of the stand-alone reserve quantities and PV-10 for Earthstone and the Tracker Acquisition as of June 30, 2021 prepared utilizing NYMEX strip benchmark prices and basis differentials as of June 30, 2021.





ESTE

Tracker Acquisition

Combined



Proved

Proved





Proved

Proved

Proved



Reserve Category

Developed

Undeveloped

Total

Developed

Developed

Undeveloped

Total Oil (MBbls)

31,659

29,172

60,831

3,159

34,818

29,172

63,990 Gas (MMcf)

89,129

59,420

148,549

52,352

141,482

59,420

200,901 NGL (MBbls)

16,904

10,993

27,898

8,271

25,175

10,993

36,169 Total (MBoe)

63,419

50,068

113,487

20,155

83,573

50,068

133,642 PV-10 ($ in thousands)

$920,343

$587,693

$1,508,036

$168,969

$1,089,312

$587,693

$1,677,005

Earthstone Energy, Inc.

Non-GAAP Financial Measure

Unaudited

The non-GAAP financial measure of PV-10, as defined and presented below, is intended to provide readers with meaningful information that supplements our financial statements prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States ("GAAP").

PV-10 is derived from the standardized measure of discounted future net cash flows ("Standardized Measure"), which is the most directly comparable financial measure under GAAP. PV-10 is a computation of the Standardized Measure on a pre-tax basis. PV-10 is equal to the Standardized Measure at the applicable date, before deducting future income taxes, discounted at 10%. We believe that the presentation of PV-10 is relevant and useful to investors because it presents the discounted future net cash flows attributable to our estimated net proved reserves prior to taking into account future corporate income taxes, and it is a useful measure for evaluating the relative monetary significance of our oil and natural gas properties. Further, investors may utilize the measure as a basis for comparison of the relative size and value of our reserves to other companies. We use this measure when assessing the potential return on investment related to our oil and natural gas properties. PV-10, however, is not a substitute for the Standardized Measure. Our PV-10 measure and the Standardized Measure do not purport to present the fair value of our oil and natural gas reserves.

The following table provides a reconciliation of PV-10 of the Company's estimated proved reserves to the Standardized Measure as of June 30, 2021 and not including the assets acquired in the Tracker Acquisition (in thousands):

Present value of estimated future net revenues (PV-10) $ 1,031,839

Future income taxes, discounted at 10% (65,552)

Standardized measure of discounted future net cash flows $ 966,287



1 PV-10 as used herein is the present value of estimated future revenues, discounted at 10% annually, to be generated from the production of proved reserves, net of estimated production and future development costs, using prices and costs as of the date of estimation, without giving effect to (i) non-property related expenses such as general and administrative expenses, debt service and future income tax expense, or (ii) depreciation, depletion and amortization.

2 Combining for all 2021 acquisitions; leverage defined as total debt to Adjusted EBITDAX

3 Based on current all-in estimated drilling, completions and equipment costs of $600 per lateral foot for a 10,000 foot lateral.



Assumes NGL differential realizations to be 30% of WTI.

4 As used in this news release, "free cash flow", a non-GAAP measure, means Adjusted EBITDAX (a non-GAAP measure), less interest expense, less accrual-based capital expenditures. As used in this news release "Adjusted EBITDAX", a non-GAAP measure means net income plus, when applicable, accretion of asset retirement obligations; impairment expense; depletion, depreciation and amortization; interest expense, net; transaction costs; loss (gain) on sale of oil and gas properties; unrealized (gain) loss on derivatives; stock-based compensation; and income tax expense.



SOURCE Earthstone Energy, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.earthstoneenergy.com


SANTA MONICA, Calif., July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nobel Investments, a Santa Monica-based private family office, has named Ken Kanara President and CEO of its portfolio company ECA Partners. Ken Kanara has more than 15 years of experience in consulting and executive search with a focus on serving private equity and private equity portfolio clients.

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, ECA Partners is an innovative tech-enabled executive search firm with more than 300 clients, the majority being private equity or investor-owned companies. ECA works with clients to place executives in full-time or interim roles, using a proprietary, evidence-based approach developed by Atta Tarki, ECA's founder and Managing Partner of Nobel Investments.

"Ken has been instrumental in growing the firm over the past five years. He helped to formalize and scale our sales team, and more importantly, build out various technology solutions, which will give our clients more effective ways to engage with candidates," said Atta Tarki. "In many ways, Ken has already been leading the firm in a CEO capacity, so we are excited to formalize it. Him formally stepping in as our CEO will help us put a stronger emphasis on our technology solutions."

Most recently, Kanara was in a President & Managing Director role at ECA, working directly with clients on project and full-time executive search roles. Prior to ECA, Kanara was at Booz & Company (now PwC - Strategy&), a global management consulting firm, where he held positions in both New York and Dubai, working with both private equity, and large corporate clients.

"This is certainly an exciting time to lead the firm. We've been developing a number of tech-enabled solutions so we can better serve our clients, and I'm looking forward to seeing the impact it has on their businesses and ours," said Kanara.

About Nobel Investments

Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, Nobel Investments invests in B2B services companies with a focus on recruiting and talent. Since its founding in 2020, Nobel has made four major investments: ECA Partners, TalentCompass, Bulletin, and SellingBee.

For more information, please visit www.nobelinv.com.

About ECA

ECA Partners is a boutique executive search firm, focused on strategy, operations, and finance talent serving private equity and private equity portfolio companies, for interim, project and full-time talent needs. The firm has been in operation for 10 years and has more than 300 clients.

For more information, please visit www.eca-partners.com.

Media Contact:

Nick Fraher

VP of Investments, Nobel Investments

SOURCE ECA Partners
SALT LAKE CITY, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Elevar Therapeutics, Inc. ("Elevar"), a fully integrated biopharmaceutical company built on the promise of elevating treatment experiences and outcomes for patients who have limited or inadequate therapeutic options, today announced that the Board of Directors has appointed Kate McKinley, who has served as the Company's Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) since 2019, to Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Elevar, effective immediately. As part of this leadership change, Alex Kim, who previously served as CEO, has transitioned to the position of Chairman of Elevar's Board of Directors.

"I am honored to serve as CEO and to lead Elevar at such an important time in the Company's history," said Kate McKinley, Chief Executive Officer of Elevar Therapeutics. "I look forward to working closely with the Board, executive leadership team and our very talented employees to transform Elevar into a commercial-stage organization by delivering upon our strategic plans to bring promising medicines  rivoceranib (apatinib) and Apealea (paclitaxel micellar)  to market for patients who currently have limited or inadequate therapeutic options."

McKinley added, "We would like to thank Alex for his leadership, and I look forward to continued collaboration in his new role as Chairman. In addition, Elevar plans to appoint a new CCO and we will communicate further details on this appointment shortly."

Kate McKinley joined Elevar in 2019 and serves on the Company's Executive Team. Before being appointed to CEO in July 2021, Ms. McKinley served as CCO, and led Elevar's global commercial, medical affairs, business development, manufacturing, supply chain, alliance management, and corporate communications organizations. Ms. McKinley has more than 20 years of experience in developing high-performing cultures and organizations in the biopharmaceutical industry. Prior to joining Elevar, she was the Head of Marketing, Training, and the Hospital Channel at Dendreon, responsible for the first FDA approved cell-based cancer immunotherapy. Prior to Dendreon, Ms. McKinley was U.S. Head of Sales at AbbVie, leading the Oncology, Urology and Gynecology sales and field reimbursement organizations overseeing new product launch planning, rebranding initiatives, and market expansion strategies. Ms. McKinley has a superior record of achievement in creating and leading the vision and strategic partnerships that position organizations for transformation and commercial success within startup, rapid-growth, turnaround, and Fortune 100 environments. Ms. McKinley is a summa cum laude graduate of The University of Tulsa. She holds an M.B.A. from the university's Collins College of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with degrees in Marketing, Management and Psychology.

"Kate's appointment to CEO is a natural progression that reflects her proven, dynamic and visionary leadership within the biopharmaceutical industry and during her tenure at Elevar. Kate has been instrumental to the development of the organization and on behalf of the Board, we would like to congratulate her on this well-deserved appointment. We have the greatest of confidence in Kate and the executive team's collective ability to successfully lead Elevar through its next phase of growth," said Alex Kim, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Elevar Therapeutics.

Alex Kim joined Elevar Therapeutics in May of 2007 and later that year he was elected to the Board of Directors and became CEO in 2019. Mr. Kim was appointed to Chairman of the Board of Elevar in July 2021. Mr. Kim has 30 years' experience in the pharmaceutical industry at MacroMed, Inc. (formerly Protherics, Plc, now BTG, Plc); Expression Genetics, Inc.; VivoRx, Inc. (Abraxis, acquired by Celgene); and Theratech (now Watson Pharmaceuticals). Mr. Kim has closed financing deals in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. He received his master's degree in international business from Sophia University (Sang Ji) in Tokyo, Japan, and bachelor's degree in Political Science with a minor in Economics from the University of Utah. Mr. Kim is a member of the Board of Directors of Co-D Therapeutics and Immunomic Therapeutics.

Elevar is a wholly-owned subsidiary of HLB Co., Ltd., a publicly traded company on Korea's KOSDAQ exchange. Mr. Yang Gon (YG) Jin, Chairman of the HLB Group, and Mr. Dong-Gun (DG) Kim, both members of Elevar's Board of Directors, serve as Co-CEOs of HLB.

About Elevar Therapeutics

Elevar Therapeutics is a rapidly growing, fully integrated biopharmaceutical company built on the promise of elevating treatment experiences and outcomes for patients who have limited or inadequate therapeutic options. Elevar's lead proprietary drug candidates include rivoceranib (apatinib) and Apealea (paclitaxel micellar). Rivoceranib is the first small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) to be approved in gastric cancer (China, Dec 2014). It has been granted Orphan Drug designation in the U.S., Europe and South Korea and has been clinically tested in over 1,000 patients worldwide in numerous cancer indications. Apealea (paclitaxel micellar) is a non-Cremophor EL based formulation of paclitaxel that received marketing authorization by the European Commission in November 2018, making it Europe's first non-Cremophor EL formulation of paclitaxel approved for use in ovarian cancer. Elevar Therapeutics has offices in Utah, California and South Korea, and additional information is available at www.elevartherapeutics.com/.

About HLB Co.

Founded in 1975 and based in Seoul, Korea, HLB Co., is building a global management network to create an optimal environment for the development and sale of new drugs. HLB is growing into a global anti-cancer company based on various anti-cancer drugs obtained through a global network. By 2025, HLB aims to market more than five anti-cancer drugs, including the development of Rivoceranib, in collaboration with Elevar Therapeutics, the first small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) to be approved in gastric cancer (China, Dec 2014). HLB is the holding company for multiple biotechnology companies focusing on cancer research and treatment including Elevar Therapeutics. HLB is publicly traded on the KOSDAQ. For more information, please visit http://www.hlbkorea.com/en/.

Elevar Media Contact:

Elixir Health Public Relations

Lindsay Rocco

+1 862-596-1304

[email protected]

SOURCE Elevar Therapeutics

Related Links

https://www.elevartherapeutics.com/


ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This fall, Elizabethtown College will welcome its largest incoming class over the past five years as enrollment is up again for the second consecutive year. More than 475 new students will join the Class of 2025.

"We are excited for our new students to experience an exceptional Elizabethtown College education and vibrant student life environment," Elizabethtown College President Cecilia M. McCormick, J.D. said. "Our positive enrollment momentum is due to our commitment to providing a robust academic program which includes real-world experiences and produces strong student outcomes for our graduates to be successful in their careers and in life."

Elizabethtown College has added more high-demand majors within the past two years including Exercise Science, Robotics, Physician's Assistant, Social Media and Media Analytics, and Public Health. The College has also launched an RN to BSN program in addition to its already highly sought-after majors like Occupational Therapy, Engineering, Biology, Business, Education, Humanities, and Political Science.

A snapshot of the Class of 2025 profile is as follows:

Average GPA is 3.75

70 underrepresented students

6 Stamps Scholars ( The Stamps Scholarship Program recognizes and rewards exceptional students who exemplify leadership, perseverance, scholarship, service, overcoming obstacles and innovation .)

14 states represented including California , Arkansas , and Texas

5 countries represented including Brazil , Ethiopia , Japan , Rwanda , and Uganda

"We learned even more so through the worldwide pandemic that our students desire to live and learn on our campus," McCormick said. "We were grateful to be able to continue to offer those opportunities last year, and we know our new students value our commitment and dedication to providing an in-person, experiential education model and engaging student life experience."

Etown is holding on-campus tours for prospective students and an Open House on Saturday, July 31. Register today at etown.edu.

About Elizabethtown College

Elizabethtown College, located in southcentral Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is a private coed institution offering more than 50 health, science, engineering, political science business, communications, fine art and music, humanities, and education degrees. Discover more: etown.edu.

Contact:

Keri Straub, Executive Director of Marketing and Communications

Elizabethtown College

[email protected]

SOURCE Elizabethtown College

Related Links

http://www.etown.edu


New cloud payment gateway delivers high performance digital commerce solution for banks, software platforms and omnichannel merchants

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Exact Payments ("Exact" or the "Company") announced the launch of its next generation payment gateway now fully deployed in the Amazon Web Services Cloud ("AWS Cloud"). The new platform represents a comprehensive technology upgrade and positions the Company to set a new standard of performance in the industry.

Exact's new payment gateway is engineered from the ground up to drive the highest level of reliability, scalability and transaction response times. Leveraging the power of AWS Cloud infrastructure, Exact is now able to offer an industry leading 99.99% service level guarantee.

The new Exact Payments gateway features a comprehensive suite of advanced functionality for digital commerce including: Apple PayTM, Google PayTM, PaypalTM, EMV 3-D Secure, Recurring Billing, Tokenization and Level 2 & 3 processing. Included in this launch, the Company also released its suite of modern REST APIs and an open developer portal.

"This launch represents the culmination of an exceptional effort by the entire Exact team. We fundamentally believe that nothing is more important to our clients than performance and reliability. With this new payments platform, we just raised the bar to a whole new level," announced Exact CEO, Phil Levy.

Exact's new website ( www.exactpay.com ) released today as well. The site showcases the Company's new brand and offers fresh payments industry content and expert resources for banks, software platforms and omnichannel merchants.

"Today is an exciting milestone as we announce the new Exact Payments. Our team is committed to building a brand that stands for client focus, innovation and performance," added Levy. "With each new feature release and technology upgrade, we will continue delivering on those standards and earning the trust of our clients and partners."

About Exact Payments

Exact Payments is a leading provider of high performance payment solutions for bank partners, software platforms and omnichannel merchants. The Company's cloud technology is built for scale and offers modern REST APIs, PCI-compliant hosted payment pages and an intuitive virtual terminal/management portal. Exact is integrated with leading processors in the U.S. and Canada including Fiserv/First Data, Elavon, Global Payments/TSYS, Chase Canada and Moneris.

Learn more at www.exactpay.com .

Media Contact

Sherrie Bryant

Marketing Director

Exact Payments, LLC

4250 N. Drinkwater, Suite 300

Scottsdale, AZ 85251

(702) 401-5681 [email protected]

SOURCE Exact Payments

Related Links

https://exactpay.com/


Latest Round Values the Company at $18 Billion with Funds Being Used to Expand Presence and Make Strategic Investments

ANTIGUA, Antigua and Barbuda, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FTX Trading Ltd. ("FTX.COM", "FTX" or "The Company"), owner and operator of FTX.COM, a cryptocurrency exchange, today announced the closing of a $900 million Series B fundraise, valuing the Company at $18 billion. This new financing round will expand FTX's global presence, accelerate the Company's growth, and represents one of the largest raises for a crypto company.

Over 60 investors participated in the $900M Series B, including Paradigm, Sequoia Capital, Thoma Bravo, SoftBank, Ribbit Capital, Insight Partners, Third Point, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Altimeter, BOND, NEA, Coinbase Ventures, Willoughby Capital, 40North, Senator Investment Group, Sino Global Capital, Multicoin, the Paul Tudor Jones family, Izzy Englander, Alan Howard, VanEck, Hudson River Trading, and Circle.

Since its launch in May 2019, FTX has experienced tremendous growth. The company's revenues have increased over tenfold this year and 75x since its Series A funding round closed in mid 2020. With over 1 million users and averaging over $10B of daily trading volume, FTX has grown into one of the world's leading crypto exchanges. The platform serves the entire chain of cryptocurrency trading participants from retail and crypto-native investors, to sophisticated day traders, family offices, and experienced institutional traders.

The funds will allow FTX to further expand its product offerings and user base. The Company will leverage the funds to further enhance its offerings and make strategic investments designed to grow the business. The Company will also look to further expand the network of partnerships it has for its FTX Pay, FTX Liquidity program & FTX NFT business lines as it looks to expand its presence and drive further growth. The investment process was led by the Company's own ventures team, with help from Paradigm, Ribbit, and BTIG.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, commented on today's news: "I'm incredibly humbled by the support we've gotten. It's our first large fundraise, but through it we've formed a hugely valuable set of partners. I'm excited to work with them to make FTX the best company it can be. We started out as a new derivatives exchange two years ago, and this round will help us continue to build out a bigger and broader vision for what FTX could become."

Investor Quotes

"Sam Bankman-Fried is one of those special founders whose vision is both stunningly ambitious and uniquely adapted to the future of crypto. The team's execution speaks for itself, with FTX growing to become a top global exchange in two years. There's a bright future ahead for Sam and FTX, and Paradigm is excited to be a part of it." -- Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner at Paradigm

"FTX is the high-quality, global crypto exchange the world needs, and it has the potential to become the leading financial exchange for all types of assets. Sam is the perfect founder to build this business, and the team's execution is extraordinary. We are honored to be their partners." -- Alfred Lin, partner at Sequoia Capital

"We have watched with excitement as Sam and the FTX team have successfully built the most cutting-edge, sophisticated cryptocurrency exchange in the world. While this has been an incredible accomplishment in itself, their commitment to making a positive impact on the world through their business is what sets the company apart. We are thrilled to partner with FTX on their next phase of growth as they create a new ecosystem for crypto." -- Orlando Bravo, founder and managing partner at Thoma Bravo

In less than two years, Sam and team have built a unique company and culture centered around staying nimble and putting their customer first. These tenants, along with a product-led approach, have propelled FTX into a top global crypto exchange. However, we don't see it stopping there. As crypto becomes more ubiquitous, FTX has the opportunity to build a next generation financial services brand, spanning exchange, payments, and many other categories to come. The Ribbit team is excited to partner with them on their journey to grow the digital currency ecosystem and change finance.  Nick Shalek, General Partner at Ribbit Capital

"Crypto has the potential to disrupt our global financial system, and we believe FTX will be core to this theme for years to come. Sam has a unique pulse on the market, and his team has a rare ability to release products at breakneck speed. In doing so, they have quickly become the leading global crypto exchange. We believe this is only the beginning of FTX's growth story and are thrilled to partner with them on the journey ahead." -- Deven Parekh, Managing Director at Insight Partners

"We have been carefully watching the FTX team over the last two years. They are far and away the best executing team in crypto, and have blown away everyone's expectations. They have firmly established themselves as the exchange with the best overall product offering, and are now leveraging the unique capabilities of global crypto rails to build the future of internet native finance. FTX is building the future of crypto, and we are incredibly excited to invest." -- Kyle Samani, managing partner at Multicoin

About FTX

FTX.COM is a cryptocurrency exchange built by traders, for traders. It offers innovative products, including industry-leading derivatives, options and volatility products, tokenized stocks, prediction markets, leveraged tokens and an OTC desk. FTX.COM strives to be an intuitive yet powerful platform for all kinds of users, and to be the most innovative exchange in the industry. FTX.COM has grown quickly since its founding, becoming one of the most respected cryptocurrency exchanges in the world in 2 years.

To learn more about FTX.COM, please visit: https://ftx.com/

FTX.COM is not available to US residents or residents of other prohibited jurisdictions, as set out in its Terms of Service.

Media Contact

Jay Morakis

M Group Strategic Communications (on behalf of FTX)

+1 646 859 5951

[email protected]

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1507122/FTX_Logo.jpg

SOURCE FTX Trading Ltd.
ATLANTA, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Georgia MV Express kiosk program, provided by Intellectual Technology, Inc., has recently added 15 more Georgia counties and plans to install an additional 12 new kiosks into current and newly joined counties for its motor vehicle kiosk program. Installing kiosks in grocery stores has proven to be widely popular with Georgia residents, as 45 of the kiosks are installed in Georgia Kroger stores, and installations within Publix Supermarkets in Dougherty, Lowndes, and Muscogee Counties coming soon.

Georgia MVD Director Brent Bennett has widely embraced providing more convenient technology for Georgia citizens to perform motor vehicle services. Since the program began in 2014, over 1.7 million vehicle registrations have been performed on 60 Georgia MV Express kiosks. Most of the usage is due to placing kiosks in more conveniently located grocery stores, allowing citizens 24/7 access to renew Georgia vehicle registrations.

The newest kiosk installs will occur in three current, including three kiosks in Fulton County and four new counties: Muscogee, Paulding, Chatham, and Lowndes, giving over 775,000 Georgians access to kiosks not previously available. The newest participating counties extend kiosk coverage to an additional 312,000 Georgians, bringing the total population for participating counties to over 1 million. The newest participating counties are as follows:

Barrow County

Chatham County

Dooly County

Greene County

Hart County

Jasper County

Lowndes County

Mitchell County

Monroe County

Morgan County

Pike County

Pulaski County

Screven County

Schley County

Sumter County

When asked about the success of this program, Director Bennett had this to say, "The Georgia Department of Revenue is proud of the Georgia MV Express kiosk program and the number of people we have been able to serve through this program. This expansion allows us to reach more Georgians by adding participating counties surrounding the counties with physical kiosk locations. As we continue expanding the program footprint, we also look forward to additional transactions, making this program more convenient and able to be used by more citizens."

The Georgia Tag Kiosks are located at select grocery stores and county tag offices. There are now 60 kiosks installed and 65 Georgia counties participating in this program. Residents of a participating county can use any kiosk, even those located in other counties. For a complete listing of all participating Georgia counties along with kiosk locations visit https://gamvexpress.com/.

Georgia Tag Kiosks are provided by Intellectual Technology, Inc. (ITI) and allow county residents to conduct their vehicle registration renewals at more convenient locations, with extended hours of operations.

The kiosks are as easy to use as an ATM, and registrations can be renewed in as little as two minutes. Simply scan your Georgia driver's license, pay with a credit or debit card, and print your Georgia registration card and license plate decal. Georgia Tag Kiosks accept payment by credit and debit cards with instructions available in English or Spanish.

About ITI:

Intellectual Technology Inc. (ITI) specializes in DMV kiosks that help motor vehicle agencies increase speed, visibility, and security of motor vehicle transactions. ITI is the industry leader in DMV kiosk technology with programs in 14 states. Whether services are delivered in DMV offices, mail fulfillment centers, or self-service kiosks, ITI's products and software provide motor vehicle agencies the ability to service customers where and when they prefer.

ITI Media Contact: Andrew Ginter, (260) 459-8800; [email protected]

SOURCE Intellectual Technology, Inc.
DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Battery Monitoring System Market, By Component (Hardware and Software), By Type (Wired Battery Monitoring System and Wireless Battery Monitoring System), By Battery Type, By End-User, By Region, Competition, Forecast & Opportunities, 2016-2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The Global Battery Monitoring System Market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 12.89% during the forecast period, to reach a market size of USD4734.34 million by 2026, from an estimated USD1814 million in 2016.

The market growth can be attributed to rising investments in data centers and growing renewable power generation globally. The increased operational efficiency of batteries and rising demand for electric vehicles are expected to boost the demand for battery monitoring systems.



The report segments the market, by type, into wired and wireless. The wired segment is expected to lead the market during the forecast period. The wireless segment is projected to grow at the fastest rate during the forecast period as wireless systems enable remote monitoring of operations as all the operations can be monitored from a central location.



The hardware segment of the battery monitoring system, by component, accounted for the largest market size in 2016. Hardware components include the physical components involved in a battery monitoring system, such as sensors, hubs, controllers, data loggers, data recorders, and communication networks. The simple installation, fast data sampling, reduced cabling, and high-resolution data recording capabilities of these components have led to the growth of the hardware segment of the market.



Based on battery type, the battery monitoring system has been segmented into lithium-ion based, lead-acid, and others. The others segment includes nickel-based and flow batteries. The lithium-ion based segment is estimated to hold the largest share of the market in 2019 due to the increasing deployment of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, power tools, and battery backup applications. This segment is expected to grow at the highest CAGR, from 2021 to 2026, due to the increasing electric vehicle sales, wherein lithium-ion batteries are deployed.



In this report, the battery monitoring system has been analyzed with respect to 5 regions, namely, North America, Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East & Africa, and South America. The market in North America is expected to lead the global market and is projected to grow at the second highest CAGR from 2016 to 2026.

The Market growth in this region can be attributed to increasing investments in data centers and growing renewable power generation capacities. Countries such as the US and Canada are the key markets for battery monitoring systems in North America.

Objective of the Study:

To analyze historical growth in market size of the Global Battery Monitoring System Market from 2016 to 2020.

To estimate and forecast the market size of the Global Battery Monitoring System Market from 2021 to 2026 and growth rate until 2026.

To identify drivers and challenges for the Global Battery Monitoring System Market.

To examine competitive developments such as expansions, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, etc. in the Global Battery Monitoring System Market.

To conduct the pricing analysis for the Global Battery Monitoring System Market.

To identify and analyze the profiles of leading Battery Monitoring System manufacturers involved in the Global Battery Monitoring System Market.

Some of the leading players in the Global Battery Monitoring System Market are

HBL Power System Limited

Curtis Instruments, Inc.

PowerShield Limited

Schneider Electric SE

SOCOMEC Group S.A.

Storage Battery Systems LLC

ABB Limited

BatteryDAQ, Inc.

Capitol Power Group

BTECH Inc.

Years considered for this report:

Historical Years: 2016-2019

Base Year: 2020

Estimated Year: 2021

Forecast Period: 2022-2026

Report Scope:



Global Battery Monitoring System Market, By Component:

Hardware

Software

Global Battery Monitoring System Market, By Type:

Wired Battery Monitoring System

Wireless Battery Monitoring System

Global Battery Monitoring System Market, By Battery Type:

Lithium-Ion Based Battery

Lead-Acid Battery

Others

Global Battery Monitoring System Market, By End-User:

Telecommunications

Energy

Automotive

Others

Global Battery Monitoring System Market, By Region:

Asia-Pacific

China

Japan

South Korea

India

Australia

Europe

Germany

United Kingdom

Italy

France

North America

United States

Canada

Mexico

South America

Brazil

Argentina

Colombia

Middle East & Africa

& Saudi Arabia

South Africa

UAE

Qatar

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/d6hzse

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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STOCKHOLM, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Highlights for the second quarter

Double-digit sales and operating profit growth across all product segments in local currencies.

In local currencies, sales increased by 19 percent for the second quarter. Reported sales increased by 9 percent to 4,505 MSEK (4,133).

In local currencies, operating profit from product segments1) increased by 27 percent for the second quarter. Reported operating profit from product segments increased by 15 percent to 1,988 MSEK (1,731).

For the Smokefree product segment, continued momentum for ZYN in the US drove the financial performance. Sales and operating profit also grew in Scandinavia.

For the Cigars product segment, sales and operating profit were up significantly in local currency compared to a relatively soft prior year period as a result of improved pricing and increased natural leaf shipments.

Operating profit for the Lights product segment up sharply as a result of good underlying performance coupled with income from land sales and indirect tax reclaims following favorable court verdicts.

Operating profit amounted to 1,956 MSEK (1,693) for the second quarter.

Profit after tax amounted to 1,441 MSEK (1,254) for the second quarter.

Earnings per share increased by 18 percent to 0.92 SEK (0.78) for the second quarter.1)2)

Excludes Other operations and larger one-time items. In May 2021 , a share split (10:1) was made. Historical share data in this report has been restated in accordance with IAS 33.

For the full report: www.swedishmatch.com/Investors/Financial-reports/Interim-reports/

Swedish Match telephone conference

A telephone conference will be held today, Tuesday, July 20 at 2:00 p.m. (CET), (1:00 p.m. UK time). At this time we will review and comment on the results. Participants will include Lars Dahlgren, Anders Larsson, and Emmett Harrison.

Listen to the telephone conference: www.swedishmatch.com/Investors/Presentations/Webcasts-and-audiocasts/

Telephone conference presentation: www.swedishmatch.com/Investors/Presentations/



Contacts:



Lars Dahlgren, President and Chief Executive Officer

Phone +46 8 658 0441



Anders Larsson, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President Group Finance

Phone +46 10 139 3006



Emmett Harrison, Senior Vice President Investor Relations

Phone +46 70 938 0173

This information is information that Swedish Match AB (publ) is obliged to make public pursuant to the EU Market Abuse Regulation and the Securities Markets Act. The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact persons set out above, at 08.15 a.m. CET on July 20, 2021.

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com



https://news.cision.com/swedish-match/r/half-year-report-january---june-2021,c3387235

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/2004/3387235/1446598.pdf Swedish Match Q2 2021 ENG

SOURCE Swedish Match
REDMOND, Wash., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- HaptX, the leading provider of realistic haptic technology, today announced a Series A-1 financing round of $12 million along with new headquarters in the Seattle area. HaptX also announced a second manufacturing run of HaptX Gloves DK2, the world's most advanced haptic feedback gloves, after selling out the first run in less than six months.

HaptX executives in front of the company's new headquarters in Redmond, WA. From left: Jake Rubin (Founder and CEO), Melanie Vargas (VP of Culture and Talent), Joe Michaels (CRO), Alicia Evans (CFO) A user wearing HaptX Gloves DK2.

"The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated enterprise adoption of virtual reality and telerobotics. Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of true-contact haptics for training, design, and robotics applications," said Jake Rubin, Founder and CEO of HaptX. "With fresh capital and a new state-of-the-art headquarters, we're well positioned to scale our workforce to meet this growing demand."

HaptX's $12 million in growth financing brings the company's total funding to $31 million. The round includes participation from existing investors Verizon Ventures, Mason Avenue Investments, Taylor Frigon Capital Partners, and Upheaval Investments.

"HaptX's advanced technologies make virtual reality a more fully immersive and realistic experience while addressing real-world enterprise needs," said Michelle McCarthy, a Managing Director of Verizon Ventures. "Verizon's 5G and MEC are instrumental in enabling wireless VR for multiple applications - especially in a quickly evolving workforce. We look forward to supporting the team's vision and technology."

The company's new Redmond, WA headquarters features 15,000 square feet of office and warehouse space. HaptX has also expanded its San Luis Obispo office footprint by 50%. Over the next 12 months, HaptX will add dozens of new positions across all areas of the company.

"We can't wait to bring HaptX customers to the hardware showroom in our new headquarters," said Joe Michaels, Chief Revenue Officer of HaptX. "Customers will soon be able to experience current and next-generation HaptX products and meet the talented people who make them.

HaptX has open positions available in mechanical engineering, software development, sales, and operations across its Seattle and San Luis Obispo offices. Learn more about HaptX Gloves DK2 and career opportunities with HaptX at haptx.com.

About HaptX

HaptX builds technology that simulates touch sensation with unprecedented realism. HaptX Gloves enable natural interaction and true-contact haptics in virtual reality and robotics for the first time. A venture-backed startup, HaptX is headquartered in Redmond, WA, with offices in San Luis Obispo and San Francisco, CA. Visit us at www.haptx.com

Media contact:

Joe Michaels

[email protected]

(805) 888-4278

SOURCE HaptX Inc
ALBANY, N.Y., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The retail sector is quickly shifting away from the methods of manual checkout and is moving towards computer controlled point-of-sale (POS) operations. Because business owners can easily handle rising sales across many shop locations, POS technology has substantially contributed to the expansion of the retail industry across the globe. Participants in the global Retail Analytics Market are putting a greater emphasis on cloud-based POS solutions. This is due to the fact that cloud-based deployment methods are expected to generate the most income in the retail analytics industry.

As a result, manufacturers are creating innovative POS systems that make use of the cloud-as-a-service approach. They are developing cutting-edge networked systems that can deliver on-demand data analytics and services to assist merchants get a competitive edge over their competitors. Small businesses can also save costs by investing in enterprise-level solutions. Since cloud-based solutions have assisted in drastically reducing upfront installation costs, incremental opportunities in the retail analytics industry are growing. The widespread use of tablets and smartphones has accelerated the introduction of cloud-based POS systems, which is likely to play an important role in the expansion of the global retail analytics market over the forecast timeline, from 2019 to 2027.

For the projection period of 2019 to 2027, the global retail analytics market is on track to attain a spectacular value. The market is projected to rise at a double-digit growth rate of 19% CAGR over the forecast timeline, from 2019 to 2027, and is estimated to be valued at around US$ 24 Bn through 2027. With the rising adoption of digitization in business, retail analytics can now collect enormous amounts of data from personal gadgets and gather additional insights into customer buying preferences, purchase decisions, and behaviour.

Ask for an instant Discount on Retail Analytics Market at https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=D&rep_id=30176

Key Findings of Market Report

Retail Automation and Use of Cutting-edge Technologies to Spur Demand in Near Future

The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly infiltrating the retail analytics environment. Although shops have benefited from the Internet of Things in terms of improving consumer experience, they may face problems when new developments begin.

The retail business in the Europe and the US has seen a rise in the number of shop closures during the last several years. This is due to the fact that most small as well as medium-sized businesses lack the network and infrastructural components needed for retail IoT applications. This is a serious issue since it is quite challenging for SMEs to compete with larger companies. Large-sized businesses can make large capital expenditures and have the required resources to support retail automation. To address these issues, participants in the global retail analytics market are providing IoT solutions by modifying the system's feature set. Small businesses will be be encouraged to invest in instalments or EMIs, and small businesses will be able to progressively commit their cash to updated versions of retail IoT apps as they make consistent profits. As retail automation is expected to reach across all level of retails business in the near future.

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Phenomenal Rise in the Usage of Smartphones is Estimated to Augur Well for the Market

A variety of factors have aided in the global retail analytics industry's ascension to such great heights. The increasing usage of personal electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, and laptops has aided global firms in collecting huge volumes of customer data from all of these gadgets. Businesses may acquire important and real-time insights about consumers' behavioural patterns, buying preferences, and purchase patterns by analysing vast volumes of data. These insights have assisted businesses in making better strategic decisions as well as reducing operating costs. The trend of online shopping have opened up opportunities for global retail e-commerce packaging sector as retail analytics are able to offer better insight into online buying behaviour and choices of consumers.

Buy our Premium Research Report on Retail Analytics Market - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=30176<ype=S

Retail Analytics Market: Growth Drivers

Using a variety of modern tools, retail analytics make businesses more conscious of how they use the gathered data. To target the correct customers, these systems automatically evaluate data and give insights about product sales, pricing, and quantity. They also spot patterns and changes, as well as provide smart suggestions for the future.

In today's omni-channel environment, shoppers aren't only concerned with items and pricing. They are also drawn to merchants' customer experience services. As a result, retailers must be aware of their consumers' demands in order to give better customer service. With the assistance from retail analytics, retailers can now analyse consumer data and forecast client demands.

Retail Analytics Market: Key Competitors

Manthan Software Services Pvt. Ltd

IBM Corporation

Fractal Analytics Inc.

SAS Institute, Inc.

RetailNext, Inc

Retail Analytics Market: Segmentation

Component

Software

Services

Deployment Model

On-premise

Cloud-based

Subcutaneous

Application

Store Operation Analytics

Customer Analytics

Our reports delve into the details that influence demand and propels growth in the technology space. Get a 360 Degree Peek into the Entire Technology Industry @ https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/ittelecom-market-reports-19.html

About Transparency Market Research

TMR has a track record to provide ace market research solutions that has earned us the trust of our clients for their business intelligence needs. Serving 13 industry verticals with a database of over 1,000 reports and 1 million + data points, our expanse to provide market research solutions is exceptional. We deep dive for a thorough understanding of the subject, gather precise information, and then analyze it to present solutions that are par excellence.

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Mr Rohit Bhisey

Transparency Market Research

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Suite 700,

Albany NY - 12207

United States

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Email: [email protected]

Blog: https://tmrblog.com/

Press Release Source: https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/pressrelease/retail-analytics-market.htm

SOURCE Transparency Market Research
DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Bike Sharing Market: Size, Trends & Forecasts with Impact Analysis of COVID-19 (2021-2025 Edition)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the bike sharing market including a detailed description of market sizing and growth. The report provides analysis of the bike sharing market by value, by volume, by number of bike sharing schemes and includes segment analysis as well. The report also provides regional analysis of the bike sharing market for China and rest of the world.

Moreover, the report also assesses the key opportunities in the market and outlines the factors that are and will be driving the growth of the industry. Growth of the overall global bike sharing market has also been forecasted for the period 2021-2025, taking into consideration the previous growth patterns, the growth drivers and the current and future trends.

The major players dominating the bike sharing market are Meituan Dianping (Mobike), Youon Ditan (Hellobike), Lyft and Uber. The four companies have been profiled in the report providing their business overview, financial overview and business strategies.

Regional Coverage

China

ROW

The bike sharing market generates revenue from three main sources: the deposit fees, rental charges and advertisement. Various kinds of bike sharing models include free-floating bike sharing, hybrid bike sharing, dock-based bike sharing, cargo bike sharing etc. The major advantage of bike sharing is that it is cost effective, causes less traffic congestion and is cheaper as compared to taxis and car sharing.

The global bike sharing market has been segmented on the basis of bike type, bike sharing model, application and bike sharing type. Various types of bikes used in bike sharing can be segmented into e-bikes and others. On the basis of bike sharing model, bike sharing is divided into station-based/ dock based, dockless/free floating and hybrid bike sharing. On the basis of applications, bike sharing can be segregated into government, enterprises and others. Moreover, the types of bike sharing include point-to-point, ride and return and distributed.

The global bike sharing market has witnessed continuous growth in the past few years and is projected to grow even further during the forecast period (2021-2025). The market is expected to be driven by various growth enhancing factors such as rapid urbanization, increasing smartphone penetration, growth in internet of things (IoT), growing awareness about the environment and personal health etc. However, the market is not free from challenges that are hindering its growth. Some of the major challenges faced by the market are the risk of theft and vandalism and the need for continuous maintenance of the bikes used in bike sharing programs.

Key Topics Covered:

1. Executive Summary



2. Introduction



3. Global Market Analysis

3.1 Global Bike Sharing Market: An Analysis

3.1.1 Global Bike Sharing Market by Value

3.1.2 Global Bike Sharing Market Value by Region (China and ROW)

3.1.3 Global Bike Sharing Market by Segments (E-Bikes and Other)

3.1.4 Global Bike Sharing Market by Volume

3.1.5 Global Bike Sharing Market Volume by Region (China and ROW)

3.1.6 Global Bike Sharing Market by Number of Bike Sharing Schemes

3.1.7 Global Number of Bike Sharing Schemes by Region (China and ROW)

3.2 Global Bike Sharing Market: Segment Analysis

3.2.1 Global E-Bike Sharing Market by Value

3.2.2 Global E-Bike Sharing Market by Region (China and ROW)

3.2.3 Global Other Bike Sharing Market by Value

3.2.4 Global Other Bike Sharing Market by Region (China and ROW)



4. Regional Market Analysis

4.1 China Bike Sharing Market: An Analysis

4.1.1 China Bike Sharing Market by Value

4.1.2 China Bike Sharing Market by Volume

4.1.3 China Bike Sharing Market by Number of Bike Sharing Schemes

4.1.4 China Bike Sharing Market by Segments (E-Bikes and Other)

4.2 China Bike Sharing Market: Segment Analysis

4.2.1 China E-Bike Sharing Market by Value

4.2.2 China Other Bike Sharing Market by Value

4.3 ROW Bike Sharing Market: An Analysis

4.3.1 ROW Bike Sharing Market by Value

4.3.2 ROW Bike Sharing Market by Volume

4.3.3 ROW Bike Sharing Market by Number of Bike Sharing Schemes

4.3.4 ROW Bike Sharing Market by Segments (E-Bikes and Other)

4.4 ROW Bike Sharing Market: Segment Analysis

4.4.1 ROW E-Bike Sharing Market by Value

4.4.2 ROW Other Bike Sharing Market by Value



5. COVID-19

5.1 Impact of Covid-19

5.2 Regional Impact of COVID-19



6. Market Dynamics

6.1 Growth Drivers

6.1.1 Surging Urban Population

6.1.2 Augmenting Middle Class Population

6.1.3 Growing Awareness about Environment and Personal Health

6.1.4 Growth in IoT (Internet of Things)

6.1.5 Rising Smartphone Penetration

6.1.6 Escalating Youth Population

6.2 Challenges

6.2.1 Risk of Theft and Vandalism

6.2.2 Need for Continuous Maintenance

6.3 Market Trends

6.3.1 Integration of Blockchain Technology with Bike Sharing Systems

6.3.2 Surging Use of Big Data

6.3.3 Growing Involvement of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

6.3.4 Innovative Bike Sharing Models



7. Competitive Landscape

7.1 Global Bike Sharing Market Players by Share in Total Financing



8. Company Profiles

8.1 Meituan Dianping (Mobike)

8.1.1 Business Overview

8.1.2 Financial Overview

8.1.3 Business Strategy

8.2 Youon Ditan (Hellobike)

8.2.1 Business Overview

8.2.2 Business Strategy

8.3 Lyft

8.3.1 Business Overview

8.3.2 Financial Overview

8.3.3 Business Strategy

8.4 Uber

8.4.1 Business Overview

8.4.2 Financial Overview

8.4.3 Business Strategy

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/65r4xx

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

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MILLINOCKET, Maine, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Northern Shopping Plaza shopping mall at 800 Central Street has sold for $1.6 million to real estate investment company Northeast Living LLC, which has plans to bring new businesses to the retail center.

This 82,505 square-foot shopping plaza, currently home to Tractor Supply Co., and other businesses, has a total of nine retail spaces, which the owner and SVN The Masiello Group are currently working to fill. SVN The Masiello Group will take the lead on the lease assignments.

Northeast Living LLC is owned by Uri Peer, who approached SVN The Masiello Group looking for a multifamily investment property. Because of the high demand and short supply of housing in the New Hampshire and Maine markets, SVN sales leads Chris Pascucci and Brian Dano recommended shifting property classes and instead search for retail properties. The two tapped the SVN network and expanded the search nationwide to identify properties that would deliver a more significant return on investment.

The Northern Shopping Plaza soon emerged as the leading investment opportunity, not only because Maine is an attractive market for investment today, but because Millinocket's revitalization efforts, proximity to tourism destinations, and business-friendly leadership make it a community on the rise.

"Retail property was not something I had considered before working with SVN The Masiello Group, but the suggestion of Millinocket was a great fit from a business perspective," said Peer. "Help from Chris and Brian was essential to the deal, and I look forward to working with SVN moving forward to bring this property to its fullest potential."

About Millinocket

Known as Maine's biggest small town, Millinocket is located at the headwaters of the Penobscot River near Mt. Katahdin, Baxter State Park and the Katahdin Woods & Waters National Monument. Once a thriving paper mill town, Millinocket faced difficult economic times when the mill closed in 2008. In recent years, the town has worked to reinvent the community as a recreation hub and gateway to Maine's uniquely stunning North Woods wilderness. Millinocket's existing infrastructure and close access to Interstate 95 make it a prime opportunity for those looking to invest in Maine's exciting real estate market.

About SVN The Masiello Group

SVN The Masiello Group was founded in 1987 with the goal of improving the commercial real estate industry for all stakeholders through cooperation and organized competition. With over 1,600 advisors and staff in more than 200 offices across the globe, SVN offers significant geographic coverage and outreach to traditional, cross-market and emerging buyers and tenants. The result of our unique Shared Value Network is the ability to deliver maximum value to our clients.

For more information about SVN The Masiello Group or the Northern Shopping Plaza property in Millinocket, please contact 833-746-6479.

SOURCE SVN The Masiello Group
WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- KeifeRx, LLC, an emerging clinical-stage biotechnology company specializing in the discovery and development of new treatment options for neurodegenerative diseases, announced today that the company received an acceptance of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to launch a Phase 3 trial named NILEAD for Nilotinib BE.

The safety and efficacy of a Nilotinib BE will be investigated in individuals with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease with abnormal levels of brain amyloid and supporting clinical diagnosis of early Alzheimer's disease. "We are very pleased that KeifeRx's first IND has been accepted by the FDA" said Charbel Moussa, MBBS, PhD, Co-Founder and Director of KeifeRx's Scientific Advisory Board. "Our Phase 3 study provides us the opportunity to gain valuable insights about the potential effectiveness of Nilotinib BE in treating early Alzheimer's.

"We are excited about this major milestone for KeifeRx, and the chance to demonstrate the capabilities of our tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) platform in neurodegeneration," said Chris Hoyt, CEO of KeifeRx. "We are looking forward to the successful execution of this program and the ability to help people affected by such a debilitating disease."

Alzheimer's disease is a disorder that affects over 6 million people in the United States and more than 44 million people worldwide.

About NILEAD:

KeifeRx will launch a national, multicenter, placebo-controlled, double-blind study of Nilotinib BE in early Alzheimer's disease. A total of 1275 patients will be randomized into three groups (1:1:1) in which they will receive placebo or one of two doses of Nilotinib BE for 72 weeks. The primary objectives of the study are to investigate the safety and efficacy of Nilotinib BE on the progression of dementia in early Alzheimer's disease. A biomarker sub-study will investigate the effects of Nilotinib BE on amyloid brain burden as well as other makers of Alzheimer's pathology.

About KeifeRx:

KeifeRx is clinical-stage life sciences company that focuses on a family of drugs called tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) that trigger degradation of malfunctioning proteins, mitigating their pathological toxic effects. KeifeRx was founded in 2019 to redefine the treatment experience for patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases and movement disorders which include but are not limited to, Alzheimer's Disease, Lewy Body Dementia and Parkinson's Disease. KeifeRx is a DMV Angels backed company.

For more information on KeifeRx, please visit https://www.keiferx.com, https://www.linkedin.com/company/keiferx , or contact: Pasha Jahangiri, 571-294-7167 or [email protected].

KeifeRx

1356 Beverly Road, Suite 300

McLean, Virginia 22101

SOURCE KeifeRx

Related Links

http://www.keiferx.com


The program's activities include the Second Global Short Video Contest under the title of "@Beautiful Zhejiang", and a series of documentaries titled "I'm in Zhejiang" in which 100 people tell about their impressions of Zhejiang.

The second "@Beautiful Zhejiang" Global Short Video Contest has started. With the theme of "Beautiful Zhejiang", it consists of two topics, "100 Years of Zhejiang in my eyes " and "The Most Beautiful Foreign Experiencers". The call for original short videos within 5 minutes is now open.

The launching ceremony also witnessed the establishment of an international communication alliance for China's "Important Window", which refers to Zhejiang Province that has been designated to showcase the achievements China has made under the CPC leadership. The alliance's international members now include CBS KCFJ570AM in the USA, IDF1 TV Station in France, SBS TV Station in the Republic of Korea, OTV in Croatia, and the national TV station of the Republic of the Congo. The international channel of Zhejiang TV Station, or ZTV World, has signed a framework agreement with these five members for overseas broadcast of its documentary titled Liangzhu. According to the agreement, the documentary will be broadcast on these five media platforms in their local languages to offer the global audience a view of the splendid Liangzhu Culture.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1577538/image.jpg

SOURCE Zhejiang Radio & TV Group
VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Lightning Network focused company, LQwD Fintech Corp. (TSXV: LQWD) (OTC: INLAF) is pleased to announce the appointment of Lightning Network experts Joost Jager and Roy Sheinfeld as advisors to the Company, effective immediately.

Shone Anstey, Chairman and CEO of the Company, commented, "We are very excited to have Joost and Roy join our team at this very timely stage in LQwD's growth. They are both consummate professionals whose prudence and broad technical insight will be of great benefit to LQwD as we advance our business in the Lightning Network space."

Mr. Joost Jager is a Bitcoin and Lightning Infrastructure Engineer with a M.Sc. in Computer Science from Radboud University with a specialization in artificial intelligence. Mr. Jager has worked with San Francisco-based Lightning Labs as a lead developer and delivered multiple ground-breaking Lightning features such as hodl invoices, tlv records and probability-based routing. Currently Mr. Jager works with Bottlepay, where he provides Lightning Network expertise for the development of their European focused wallet solution.

Mr. Roy Sheinfeld is a software engineer and the co-founder and CEO of Breez Development Ltd., a privately held Tel Aviv based company that builds interfaces for the Lightning economy. The Breez App is a P2P Lightning Network interface where users can buy, sell, and pay for goods, services, and streaming content with a non-custodial, seamless, and open platform. Previously, he was the Co-founder and CTO of harmon.ie, a company building apps for the Digital Workplace, helping information workers professionals access and collaborate using a variety of leading cloud and on-premises services from Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, and others.

About the Lightning Network

The Lightning Network is a solution to mass scaling the usage of Bitcoin for microtransactions globally, dramatically improving upon fees, as well as instant settlement times. The Lightning Network has experienced explosive growth in the past 90-days with node growth doubling and Lightning Network BTC capacity increasing 51.74%. Some well-known companies such as Jack Dorsey's Twitter and Square have expressed their enthusiasm to incorporate Lightning Network into their platforms.

About LQwD Fintech Corp.

LQwD is a Lightning Network focused company developing payment infrastructure and solutions. The Company's mission is to develop institutional grade services that support the Lightning Network and drive improved functionality, transaction capability, user adoption and utility and scaling Bitcoin. LQwD also holds Bitcoin as an operating asset establishing nodes and payment channels across the Lightning Network.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws relating to the Company's business plans and the outlook of the Company's industry. Although the Company believes, in light of the experience of its officers and directors, current conditions and expected future developments and other factors that have been considered appropriate, that the expectations reflected in this forward-looking information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on them because the Company can give no assurance that they will prove to be correct. Actual results and developments may differ materially from those contemplated by these statements. The statements in this press release are made as of the date of this release and the Company assumes no responsibility to update them or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances other than as required by applicable securities laws. The Company undertakes no obligation to comment on analyses, expectations or statements made by third parties in respect of the Company, LQwD Financial, their securities, or their respective financial or operating results (as applicable).

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE LQwD FinTech Corp.

Related Links

www.coronadoresourcesltd.com


HOLLYWOOD, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NEWS CONFERENCE: WEDNESDAY, JULY 21st, 2pm Pacific

LOCATION: 14001 Fiji Way, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292

Ballona Creek near UCLA Marina Aquatic Center/boathouse, near Fisherman's Village

Marvel's new superhero, 14-year-old Genesis Butler, great grandniece of civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, is speaking up for thousands of LA's wild animals, at the Ballona Wetlands Ecological Reserve, threatened by a reckless bulldozing plan!

Snowy Great Egrets thriving in the Ballona Wetlands, one of 1,700 species who call LA's last coastal wetlands home. DefendBallonaWetlands.org documents the many other species there. Courtesy Jonathan Coffin Genesis Butler gained fame when she delivered an electrifying Tedx talk at age 10.

"Don't destroy their home in my name," says Genesis. This young powerhouse adds Genesis for Animals to the growing list of opponents of the project which threatens the animals the State of California is supposed to protect.

Bulldozing proponents claim they want to dig up Ballona to create public space for inner city children and residents. But, Genesis says: "You don't need to bulldoze the wetlands for 10 years at a cost of 200 million public dollars. Give children and their families public access NOW! We can bike along the creek, walk on existing trails. Adopt the 20-point Gentle Restoration Alternative. Let the animals keep their home." Genesis says kids want meaningful access to nature now, not an artificial park in a decade with few animals left.

Genesis, famous for her riveting TedX talk when she was only 10, will lead the news conference.

The controversial plan, rubber-stamped by California's Department Fish and Wildlife, would bulldoze LA's last coastal wetlands, home to 1,700 species: foxes, owls, egrets, skunks, rabbits, pelicans and threatened and endangered species. The plan now faces six lawsuits. Critics contend the primary beneficiary is SoCalGas, whose aging gas storage facility lies beneath the wetlands. The LA City Council recently voted to ask the Governor to shut it down. A similar facility in Aliso Canyon suffered a gas blowout, one of California's worst environmental disasters.

For more: DefendBallonaWetlands.org

Other speakers:

Genelle Palacio-Butler, Genesis' mother, Cesar Chavez's grand niece

Ellen Dent, Animal Alliance Network

Cesar Asebedo, LA Fish Save

Simone Reyes, Social Compassion in Legislation

Christina Ku, Democrats for the Protection of Animals

Molly Basler, LA City Council Candidate, Green Dream Campaign Founder, Climate Reality Leader with Al Gore's Climate Reality Project

Lisa Levinson, In Defense of Animals

Marcia Hanscom, Sierra Club

Roy Van de Hoek, Biologist, President of Ballona Institute

Jane Velez-Mitchell, Author, JaneUnChained.com Founder, nearby resident.

SOURCE Defend Ballona Wetlands

Related Links

https://defendballonawetlands.org/


- "Investing in education and providing 21st century skills for students are fundamental components to the nation's continued growth and prosperity." - Craig Barrett

- "Paradigm Shift in Education Industry through new age program in M.A. / M.Sc. in e-learning." - Dr. Asawari Bhave Gudipudi, Principal, School of Education & Research, MIT-ADT University | Pune

PUNE, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MIT Art, Design & Technology University (MIT-ADT University), Pune is a leading futuristic multi-disciplinary University with a unique blend of Art, Design & Technology program to offer. MIT Art, Design & Technology University, under the mentorship of visionary educationist, Prof. Dr. Vishwanath Karad, President, MIT Art, Design and Technology University, Pune and dynamic trailblazer, and torchbearer, Prof. Dr. Mangesh Karad, Executive President and Vice-Chancellor, is always in pursuits of carving a niche in the education sector by being at the forefront in preparing students for the future through its new-age cutting-edge program. MIT-ADT University is very much aware that the world is changing at a faster pace, and with it learning too is drastically changing with new emerging learning ecologies and new technologies. Hence, they have taken up the task of equipping their students for the jobs of tomorrow that are constantly evolving.

As digital education, driven by advanced technologies, is representing a major opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors, there is an ever-growing demand for experts in the e-learning education sector who can create advanced and sophisticated e-learning program for students worldwide. These experts in the e-learning industry need to be armed with skills to intertwine immersive technologies and conceptual subject knowledge into customized learning content, which is easily accessible, engaging, and user-centric. The careers in the e-learning industry are varied and flexible - from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Multimedia, Gamification, Mobile learning, Learning Analytics. The job profile that rules this list of possible careers in e-learning is that of Instructional Designers, also known as ID. But there is a dearth of courses that formally train instructional designers or experts to be in the field of the e-learning industry. Recognizing the need for having trained IDs and experts for the e-learning industry, the School of Education and Research, MIT-ADT University, Pune announces a post-graduate degree program in M.A/M.Sc. in e-learning from the Academic year 2021-22.

This is a 2-year Postgraduate Program with multiple entry and exit points! This Program is an 80-credit course with hands-on practical applications. M.A/M.Sc. in e-learning Program is a fine blend of pedagogical sciences, design, and technology. The Program is designed to train students in Visual Design, Storyboarding, Theories and Applications of Instructional Design, Research Methodology amongst other courses. This Program offers double specialization - one to be chosen in the first year and the second one in the final year. The specializations that students choose will prepare them for the e-learning industry in various cohorts like technical/content development, multimedia content development to designing MOOCs. The course has a compulsory industrial internship component of an entire semester in the second year. In case, if unfortunately, a student opts to exit after the first year, the student can earn a Post-Graduate Diploma Certification on completion of all credit requirements. Such students can return after a gap and complete their Program within the next 3 years. Drawing heavily from the field of Design, this Program is characterized by block pedagogy with Jury-based studio and cumulative assessments with a lesser focus on theory papers. Postgraduates of M.A./M.Sc. e-learning programs will be equipped to do things like create interactive and engaging e-learning courses, incorporate technology in the classroom, develop new, more effective instructional designs for education, and also can show educators how to use larning technologies for professional development.

The eligibility criteria for candidates who want to pursue M.A/M.Sc. in e-learning, can be graduates from any disciplines familiar with computers and the internet. No coding or programming knowledge is required. Selection of students will be done based on an entrance test for the limited seats of 30. Remember, this is a unique course with MIT-ADT being the only second University in the country to offer such a course.

The professionally qualified students with M.A/M.Sc. in e-learning from the School of Education & Research, MIT-ADT University, Pune will have a wide range of career options. They can work with the e-learning industry and corporates to develop multimedia, educational games, online learning content and also design, develop, implement, and evaluate training program. The students after completing this course in M.A/M.Sc. in e-learning will be able to work in government, universities, non-profits, and other cutting-edge business organizations as Instructional Designers, Storyboard developers, e-Content developers, Online content creators, Consultants in e-learning, Corporate trainers, Researchers in varied dimensions of online education/Educational technology, Entrepreneurs of e-learning related areas, and Edupreneurs.

In short, there is a lot one can do with this M.A./M.Sc. e-learning program, and prospects seem likely to expand further as technology is improving and e-learning is gaining wider acceptance.

The future in the e-Learning industry opens doors for transformational opportunities. Be Industry-ready, Pursue M.A. /M.Sc. in e-learning @School of Education & Research, MIT-ADT University, Pune.

Visit: https://www.mituniversity.edu.in/ https://www.mituniversity.edu.in/academics/faculty/faculty-of-humanities-and-social-sciences/mit-school-of-education-research/programs-offered/

About MIT-ADT University



MAEER's Trust which is known to set the strong precedence for the privatization of Engineering education in Maharashtra had taken a first mover's advantage by establishing the Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT-Pune), in 1983, which continues to remain the flagship institute of the group.



MIT Art, Design and Technology University, Pune has been established under the MIT Art, Design and Technology University Act, 2015 (Maharashtra Act No. XXXIX of 2015). The University commenced its operations successfully from 27th June 2016. The University is a self-financed institution and empowered to award the degrees under section 22 of the University Grants Commission act, 1956. The University has a unique blend of Art, Design, and Technology as the core of its academics.



Recently, MIT Art, Design and Technology University, Pune has accomplished the following accolades:

Ranked 26th for ARIIA 2020 by the Ministry of Education, Govt. of India .

. Received 5 Star rating for exemplary performance by the Ministry of Education's Innovation Council, Govt. of India.

Conferred with Best University Campus Award by ASSOCHAM, New Delhi

Granted with Atal Incubation Centre under ATAL Innovation Mission, NITI Aayog, Govt. of India



MIT Art, Design and Technology University has been taking a holistic approach towards imparting education wherein the students are being motivated to build a complete winning personality which is "physically fit, intellectually sharp, mentally alert and spiritually elevated". The students are being encouraged to participate in yoga, meditation, physical training, spiritual elevation, communication skills, and other personality development program. Currently, we have 7500+ students studying in various schools of higher education under the University viz. Engineering and Technology, Food Technology, Bioengineering, Arts, Design, Marine Engineering, Journalism and Broadcasting, Film and Television, Music (Hindustani Classical Vocal and Instrumental), Teacher Education, and Vedic Sciences.

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1479539/MIT_ADTU_Logo.jpg

SOURCE MIT ADT University, Pune
Sperry West is offering the full function infra-red TEMPCAM camera/monitor, with facial recognition & its high-precision German made sensor, at a SPECIAL LOW PRICE, equal to HALF THE COST of most competitive units, and they are even including a free table mount (can also be wall mounted). The whole system, with the free safety kit can be ordered directly from Sperry West as the SW6150KIT.

This one of a kind system is ideal for factories, public venues, health clubs, libraries, banks, prisons, police departments, theaters, military base facilities, ships, airports, religious venues, schools, hotels, bars & clubs, offices, restaurants, senior housing & anywhere that maintaining good health is important.

For more information, please contact [email protected] sperrywest.com

SOURCE Sperry West

Related Links

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DALLAS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- New Horizons Computer Learning Centers is excited to announce its new franchise location opening, New Horizons Dallas. New Horizons has partnered with IT executive Dean Kothia to empower Dallas-Fort Worth individuals and organizations with end-to-end learning solutions in everything from IT training and business applications to leadership development training.

New Horizons Dallas plans to open multiple offices throughout the DFW Metroplex. The first location, already in operation, is located in Plano, TX, at 5851 Legacy Circle, 6th Floor, Plano, TX, 75024. New Horizons Dallas can be reached at (469) 721-6100.

"Dallas is an emerging tech hub, as a certified training partner of Microsoft, our plan at New Horizons Dallas is to provide even more value and help equip our community with the tools and training necessary to stay in-demand as tech professionals," said Dean Kothia, CEO at New Horizons Dallas. Leveraging New Horizons' longstanding partnerships with industry giants such as Microsoft, CompTIA, Cisco, VMWare, Axelos and others, New Horizons Dallas offers training and certifications in a variety of subjects critical to the success of today's IT departments and individual IT professionals. These include Cybersecurity, Cloud Computing, Big Data, Networking, Project and IT Service Management, End-User Applications and more.

"I am delighted to welcome Dean Kothia, and the team at New Horizons Dallas, as a new franchise serving the Dallas-Fort Worth markets," said Mikell Parsch, President and CEO of New Horizons Computer Learning Centers. "New Horizons has a rich history as a pioneer in the training industry and continues its reputation for providing an outstanding customer experience. As New Horizons approaches its 40th year in business, we look forward to steadily continuing our mission to Empower People Around the World to Succeed Through Learning." To welcome our valued New Horizons customers to New Horizons Dallas, we are extending a special offer to all current and previous New Horizons customers in the DFW Metroplex. Complete details of the offer can be found here on our website www.newhorizonsdallas.com.

About New Horizons Computer Learning Centers

Since 1982, New Horizons has provided more than 30 million students with industry-leading technical training that delivers the most relevant and intuitive technical courses and certifications. New Horizons is an authorized partner to the top technology providers. For students that means training with the highest quality source materials and the latest products and technologies. For businesses, it means getting the highest return on their training investment. We are the world's largest independent IT training company.

Media Contact:

Dean Kothia, CEO, New Horizons Dallas

[email protected]

(469 721 6100)

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New Horizons Dallas Logo

New Horizons Dallas Logo

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Dean Kothia CEO, New Horizons Dallas

Dean Kothia CEO, New Horizons Dallas

SOURCE New Horizons Dallas
CARROLLTON, Ohio, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In follow-up to its recent press releases and opposition testimony regarding Ohio's forced pooling bill, Sub. H.B. No. 152, and the bill's negative impact on Ohio's unleased mineral owners, Gateway Royalty has also reached out to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) regarding market enhancement clauses, which are now included in the ODNR's forced pooling unitization orders. Gateway Royalty opposes these unfair market enhancement clauses, which need to be eliminated from the ODNR's forced pooling unitization orders, just as they need to be prevented by the use of proper royalty language in Ohio's Sub. H.B. No. 152.

The ODNR's forced pooling unitization orders establish the royalties to be paid to unleased mineral owners who are forced-pooled into drilling units, usually because the unleased mineral owners could not negotiate agreeable terms with the operator of the drilling unit. For years, the ODNR's forced pooling unitization orders granted the unleased mineral owners a royalty on the "gross proceeds" of the sale of the oil and gas production, but that has changed in recent years.

Since February 13, 2018, a "market enhancement" clause has been included in the ODNR's forced pooling unitization orders, which allows the unit operator to deduct post-production costs from the royalties owed to mineral owners. These post-production costs are sometimes as much as 95% of the gross sale price. Through research on the ODNR website, Gateway Royalty has learned that the ODNR has issued 149 unitization orders since February 13, 2018, all of which include the "market enhancement" clause in the second sentence of the definition of "gross proceeds," as follows.

"Gross Proceeds" means a share of the gross production of oil, gas, condensate, and natural gas liquids free of any and all cost of producing, gathering, storing, separating, treating, dehydrating, compressing, processing, transporting, marketing, or pipeline construction and maintenance. "Gross proceeds" does not include costs that result in enhancing the value of marketable oil, gas, condensate, natural gas liquids, or other products to receive a better price so long as the costs are the actual costs of such enhancement and an unleased mineral rights owner's pro rata part of such cost is less than the amount of the enhanced value of the product. (emphasis added)

Chris Oldham, President of Gateway Royalty, commented, "The market enhancement clauses whittle the mineral owners' monthly royalties down to almost nothing. Market enhancement clauses allow operators to deduct all costs incurred between the well and the downstream point of sale, costs referred to in the industry as 'post-production costs.' A lease can say it's a 'gross proceeds' lease, but the market enhancement clause converts the 'gross proceeds' lease to a 'net proceeds' lease. The market enhancement clause is a classic bait and switch, which dramatically devalues the mineral estates that have been in many of Ohio's families for generations."

Oldham further explained, "The market enhancement clause lists all post-production costs that cannot be deducted from the gross sale price when calculating oil and gas royalties, but then it states that costs which enhance the value of "marketable" oil and gas can be deducted . Operators then take the position that oil and gas is "marketable" at the well. This allows the operators to determine that all costs incurred between the well and the point of sale are deductible, meaning the operators can deduct all post-production costs , including those just listed as being not deductible."

Gateway Royalty wants to know how and why market enhancement clauses were inserted into the ODNR unitization orders, which define a "gross proceeds" royalty in a way that converts it to a "net proceeds" royalty. Chris Oldham recently met with two senior ODNR officials. Neither official could explain how and why the ODNR inserted market enhancement clauses in its unitization orders. "The language did not magically appear," says Oldham. "The public has a right to know how and why this clause got inserted, given the devastating effect it has on the value of mineral estates."

Gateway Royalty has filed a request with the ODNR under the Ohio Open Records Law, R.C. 149.43, et seq., requesting all ODNR documents, including internal and external emails, that relate or refer to the ODNR's decision to add a market enhancement clause to its unitization orders. A copy of Gateway Royalty's request is available at https://gatewayroyaltyllc.com/odnr-request/.

Oldham stated, "The ONDR's orders make clear that a forced pooling bill now before the House Energy and Natural Resources Committee needs to be fixed to prevent the ODNR from sticking forced-pooled mineral owners with a net proceeds royalty."

The bill, Sub. H.B. No. 152, originally provided forced pooled mineral owners with a royalty equal to "1/8th of the net proceeds." The sponsors of the bill changed the royalty to "1/8th of the gross proceeds." The "gross proceeds" language does not prevent operators from deducting costs using market enhancement clauses, sales to affiliates and other clever devises. Because of this, Gateway Royalty has repeatedly urged the sponsors to amend the bill to provide the forced-pooled mineral owner with a royalty equal to a percentage of "the gross proceeds paid by the first unaffiliated buyer in an arms-length transaction with no deduction of any costs, including, but not limited to, the costs of gathering, compressing, processing, dehydrating, separating, transporting and marketing."

Rather than adopt Gateway Royalty's recommended royalty language, the sponsors have now deleted the gross proceeds royalty language from the bill. Under their current version of the bill, a forced-pooled mineral owner has no right to any royalty. The mineral owner is required instead to become a working interest owner under terms that will yield little, if any, return to the unleased mineral owner.

In a final comment Oldham stated, "Unleased mineral owners should have the option to receive a true gross proceeds royalty, and for this to happen, Sub H.B. No. 152 and the ODNR's forced-pooling unitization orders should include the 'bullet proof' gross proceeds royalty language recommended by Gateway Royalty."

Gateway Royalty (www.gatewayroyaltyllc.com), founded in 2012, is a mineral and royalty acquisition company based in Carrollton, Ohio. Gateway owns minerals and royalties in the Utica in the following counties located in southeastern Ohio: Belmont, Carroll, Columbiana, Guernsey, Harrison, Jefferson, Monroe and Noble.

CONTACT

Chris Oldham, President

Email: [email protected]



111 2nd St. SW

Carrollton, OH 44615

330.627.4200

www.gatewayroyaltyllc.com

SOURCE Gateway Royalty

Related Links

www.gatewayroyaltyllc.com


CHALFONT, Pa., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- A new face joins the largest physiatry (Pain Medicine & Rehabilitation) practice in the tri-state area. In an effort to provide patients within the region, and beyond, with increased care options and appointment opportunities, Dr. Ali Shah, MD joins Pennsylvania Pain and Spine Institute (PA Pain & Spine) to see patients beginning in August 2021.

The PA Pain & Spine Team - Dr. Shah is presented third from the left side. (PRNewsfoto/Pennsylvania Pain and Spine Institute)

PA Pain & Spine is a rapidly growing pain medicine and rehabilitation practice treating upwards of 500 patients per week with various conditions. The practice focuses on treating pain at the source to help patients heal rather than covering it up with a "bandaid." With the current providers' schedules fully booked months in advance, the team has added a new, highly-qualified physician to the team.

"I am very excited to work at PA Pain and Spine because my future work colleagues are outstanding, and they use cutting-edge technologies that other practices currently do not. I am really looking forward to working with them to provide patients with the best care available," states PA Pain & Spine Physician Dr. Ali Shah.

Dr. Shah, similar to other providers at the practice, is Board-Certified in Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation, fellowship trained, and is a member of the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. He has his residency at Ohio State University Medical Center, as well as a Spine Medicine Fellowship at Cleveland Clinic Center for Spine Health. With his training and background, he is focusing on treating patients with minimally invasive procedures for joints, nerves, muscles and the spine as well as focusing on the diagnosis of pain origins and regenerative medicine treatments.

PA Pain & Spine is excited to offer additional services and appointment opportunities to patients in the region with this addition to the team. As the practice grows, patient-care and healing is at the forefront of their mission which only continues to be enforced with new providers on staff.

Those looking for pain relief and pain management options can request a new patient appointment online at https://www.pennpain.com , or can call the office at (215) 395-8888.

About PA Pain & Spine

Pennsylvania Pain and Spine Institute was founded in 2013 by Ivy League trained physicians Dr. David Qu, MD and Dr. Robert Kelly, DO. The practice is a pain management and rehabilitation privately-owned clinic with a focus on utilizing minimally invasive techniques and pain generator diagnostics in order to heal patients at the source. The practice currently has two offices located in Chalfont, Pennsylvania and Quakertown, Pennsylvania and treats patients with any type of pain.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Kelsey Voelker

[email protected]

215-395-8888x104

SOURCE Pennsylvania Pain and Spine Institute
NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Let's Plate!, a mission-driven kids food brand that's turning heads and delighting little stomachs, is launching a crowdfunding drive on Kickstarter.

Let's Plate! was founded by a husband-and-wife team who found a niche in the market: that there are no ready-to-go lunch meals for kids that are healthy and delicious while still being affordable.

The business has three different products  pepperoni cheese pizza, a ham & cheese cracker stacker and a PB&J  that are all made of high-quality, plant-based ingredients and feature a fun and engaging DIY assembly concept for the little ones.

Co-founder Shawn Jang said he and his wife's own experiences as new parents led them to start the company.

"There weren't any kids meals available that checked off the big boxes: healthy, convenient, affordable and delicious," Jang said. "As parents, we realized we could do something about it  and that's how Let's Plate! was born."

Each meal will be sold for $5-6 MSRP off the shelves at stores near you. They're ready to pack away in your kid's bag  without bringing with it any of the questionable ingredients or guilt that comes with sending the little ones off with many of the existing products.

Let's Plate! is preparing to go to market by the end of this summer, and today launched a crowdfunding drive to raise the final funds needed. The campaign features rewards that include the meals, canvas tote and lunch bags and an exclusive membership to the company's insider taste club, among others.

As part of the campaign, Let's Plate! has partnered with Buttercrumble, a UK-based creative studio that specializes in brand strategy, project management and public relations. Buttercrumble works with clients worldwide to express themselves through the power of graphic design, illustration and emotionally-driven branding. Let's Plate! has also partnered with One Tree Planted, a nonprofit dedicated to global reforestation.

Let's Plate!'s mission statement is to provide every child access to healthy and delicious eating. That ethos drives Let's Plate! to make food that's accessible, nutritious and tasty.

Health and sustainability also drive the company's thought process in a broader sense, too  many of the packaging items that make up each product are fully biodegradable and/or 100% recyclable. The material for the packaging boxes are sourced from FSC Certified forests.

"A healthier planet is a happier one," Jang said.

ABOUT LET'S PLATE

Let's Plate! is a plant-based food brand made by parents  and loved by parents and kids alike. The Company offers a range of convenient DIY kids combination plant-based lunches that are healthy, delicious and fun. Co-founders Shawn Jang and Verona Lu drew on their experience in business  and as parents  to found the company aiming to change children's perception of "vegetroubles", promoting healthy relationships with food and the planet. www.letsplate.co

Media Contact: [email protected]

SOURCE Let's Plate

Related Links

www.letsplate.co


OTTAWA, ON, July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Today, the Government of Canada announced the details of its approach to easing border measures for some travellers entering Canada.

These measures will only come into force on August 9th at 12:01 a.m. ET.

It is important to note that, in the meantime, travel restrictions remain in place for all foreign nationals, including U.S. citizens. Seeking entry to Canada for discretionary (non-essential) travel  such as tourism and recreation continues to be prohibited until then.

Examples of discretionary travel include, but are not limited to: hikes across the border, social events, such as birthday parties or weddings, camping, picking up a pet, visiting or checking on a seasonal residence, etc.

U.S. citizens and permanent residents without a right of entry to Canada or who are not otherwise eligible to enter Canada under the current travel restrictions, and who attempt to visit Canada for discretionary reasons will be turned away at the border, even if they are fully vaccinated.

Before heading to the border, U.S travellers should be informed and know their obligations. The Government of Canada has a website to assist travellers in finding out if they can enter Canada and, if able to enter, what their public health obligations are: Find out if you can enter Canada.

Canada's response to the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to prioritize the health and safety of Canadians. As vaccination, case counts and hospitalization rates evolve, the Government of Canada will continue to consider further targeted measures at the bordersand when to lift or adjust themto keep Canadians safe and the economy running.

Related Products

Associated Links

SOURCE Canada Border Services Agency

Related Links

http://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/


ANN ARBOR, Mich., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Renaissance Venture Capital has closed its fourth fund with $77.5 million of new capital. Since it opened in 2008, Renaissance has raised over $280 million, making it the largest "fund of funds" of its kind in the United States. Renaissance has become a role model for similar funds that have emerged in Cincinnati, Houston, and most recently Wisconsin.

Renaissance invests in top-tier venture capital funds around the county, bringing them into Michigan's vibrant startup ecosystem. It then connects those funds and their startups with major organizations looking for innovation. Startup companies are the life blood of a growing economy, and Renaissance uses its unique role to help startups connect with both potential investors and major customers.

As in the earlier funds, investors in the fourth Renaissance fund include a mix of corporate, foundation, institutional and family office partners.

"Through our Renaissance Funds, we've created a model that shows how a combination of capital and connectivity can grow the innovation economy in places like Michigan, and how by connecting innovators, investors and potential major customers, we can benefit all three groups as well as the region," says Chris Rizik, CEO and fund manager at Renaissance. "I'm especially proud of Renaissance IV, because we did most of our fundraising during the uncertain days of 2020. Even with the pandemic, our investors still valued the innovation we brought and wanted to be part of our work going forward."

Renaissance Venture Capital has consistently focused on attracting capital to Michigan. To date, Renaissance has helped attract over $2 billion to Michigan startup companies, or over $13 for every $1 it has invested, creating important high-paying jobs (average wage of more than $80,000) in the process.

"We are pleased to be an investor in a fund like Renaissance that has supported innovation in areas such as health, security and technology," says Anthony Stefani, a director in the CFO office at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan. "It also has enabled Michigan start-ups to play a bigger role in these economic sectors."

One of the most important Renaissance Venture Capital activities is its semi-annual UnDemo Day, designed to attract capital from all over the nation into Michigan startups. The gathering brings together hundreds of venture capitalists and connects them with 50-60 of the most promising Michigan startups. At each UnDemo Day, Renaissance arranges more than 500 one-on-one meetings between venture capitalists and Michigan startups. Last year alone, 15 local startups received venture funding from UnDemo Day introductions. The next UnDemo Day is October 13 at Detroit's Ford Field.

"Renaissance connected Orbion Space Technology to its Series A lead investor, Material Impact Fund, at an UnDemo Day event," said Brad King, CEO of Orbion Space Technology, a manufacturer of electronic propulsion plasma thrusters used in satellites, located in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. "Last month, we closed on a $20 million Series B investment round. Renaissance's assistance with that early capital infusion through its UnDemo Day was an extremely important event in growing our company."

According to a recent Crunchbase report, Michigan has seen the greatest increase in venture investment of all 50 states. VC dollars in Michigan have spiked nearly 886 percent since 2016, growing from around $300 million to about $3.1 billion last year.

Rizik says, "It has been gratifying to see not only the financial success of our work at Renaissance, but also the impact we've had in driving local economic growth, innovation and jobs. Like never before, the rest of the country is noticing the power of what is happening in the Midwest, and we believe our efforts with Renaissance IV can help to push the region to even greater heights."

About Renaissance Venture Capital

Renaissance Venture Capital (Renaissance) is a fund of funds that supports the growth of venture capital in Michigan while serving as a bridge between the state's emerging innovation company community and its strong industrial and commercial base. For more information, visit www.renvcf.com.

MEDIA CONTACT: Colleen Robar, 313-207-5960, [email protected]

SOURCE Renaissance Venture Capital

Related Links

https://www.renvcf.com/


CHARLESTON, S.C., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Like a snowflake, it's not exaggerating to say no two schools are alike. However, one thing roughly half of all U.S schools do have in common is poor indoor air quality. That is why BOX Pure Air is on a mission to educate the educators on the power of clean air.

In an effort to keep students healthy and in the classroom so they can achieve their full potential, BOX Pure Air has worked with various schools to supply state-of-the-art air purification units. From public to private, Christian to Catholic, daycares to universities; we believe every school should be capable of providing clean air. Every student and teacher deserves to breathe clean air, and every parent deserves to choose clean air for their children.

$168 billion in COVID-19 relief money was allocated to schools across the country this past March, yet many are still debating where it is best put to use. (Figure 1.0) There will be a fair amount of gray area this fall with some students vaccinated, others not, and the removal of mask mandates in many schools. For many schools, improving air quality and ventilation is an optimal solution that can reduce risks of COVID, Flu, seasonal colds, and allergies all while not interfering with students learning environment.

How Much Will Congress Spend to Shore Up Schools?

The Covid-19 relief plans before Congress all dedicated billions to stabilizing education budgets amid deep losses in state revenue. But the amounts vary from bill to bill.



CARES Act Signed

Into Law March

2020 Covid Relief Package

Signed Into Law

December 2020 American rescue Plan

Signed Into Law March

2021 Education Total $30.7 Billion $82 Billion $168 Billion K-12 $13.2 $54 $126 Higher Ed $14 $22 $40 Governors $3 $4 $2.7 Figure 1.0

BOX Pure Air is educating and consulting schools on how effective certified HEPA filtration units can be when combined with Smart Fleet Management Technology. This technology allows schools to manage and pull insights from all their units remotely, removing airborne pathogens is now significantly easier than before.

BOX Pure Air's most recent success has come by way of Fayetteville State University, an HBCU located in North Carolina that is committing to offering students clean air. With the Delta variant of COVID-19 gaining momentum, Fayetteville State wanted students to know how highly the school values their safety and general wellbeing.

BOX Pure Air is proud to serve schools like Fayetteville State who understand how impactful something as simple as clean air can be. Looking forward we will continue to look to partner with schools of all sizes and levels of education, as part of an effort to make clean air the standard in schools.

About Box Pure Air, LLC

Box Pure Air strives to provide the best products to help clean air through the deployment of high-efficiency air purification technologies. Learn more at www.boxpureair.com

Contact Information

[email protected]

843.936.6649

www.boxpureair.com

SOURCE BOX Pure Air, LLC

Related Links

www.boxpureair.com


GOTHENBURG, Sweden, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --

Rickard Gustafson, President and CEO:

"The second quarter saw a record in adjusted operating profit of SEK 3,118 million (1,565 million) and an adjusted operating margin of 15.0% (9.4%).

The result was especially strong, given continued headwinds in the form of negative currency impact and rising input costs. Through mitigating actions we have been able to compensate for approximately 50% of this cost increase. We've done well to serve our customers under these circumstances, and we're doing our outmost to capture additional growth opportunities.

Organic sales development in the quarter was just above 33%, with net sales of SEK 20,735 million (SEK 16,599 million). Sales were significantly higher on all main geographical markets with organic growth of 91% in Latin America, 40% in EMEA, 27% in North America and 19% in APAC.

The Industrial business delivered a record set of results, with an adjusted operating margin of 18.0% (14.0%). The Automotive business delivered an adjusted operating margin of 7.6% (-7.6%).

Cash flow generation in the quarter was SEK 509 million (negative 838 million), an improvement compared to last year as well as the last quarter.

We continue to invest in and consolidate our manufacturing footprint. Since 2019 we have permanently closed six sites and are currently in the process of closing an additional 11. Regretfully, some of these initiatives have a negative impact on some employees which we try to mitigate to the extent possible. Nevertheless, they are necessary to align our presence and capabilities with customer demand and, thereby enabling growth opportunities.

Investments in our factories are expected to reach SEK 3.8 billion for the year, 200 million higher than our previous guidance. These investments make us more flexible and efficient as well as being an important foundation for winning more business from customers in fast-growing segments and regions.

These investments and consolidation efforts have, on an annual basis, realized SEK 1.1 billion of the 5 billion in savings we expect to generate by 2025.

We are moving towards a more sustainable future and we already have an ambitious net zero CO2 emissions target from our own operations by 2030. By also committing to the Science Based Targets Initiative, we're now taking steps to further increase our ambition and transparency levels throughout our supply chain. This will also ensure that our efforts are fully aligned with the ambitions of the Paris Agreement.

The record high operating result for the quarter is a proof point on SKF's ability to drive efficiency and effectiveness in a volatile and demanding market environment. Together with opportunities to further capitalize on our strong market position and industrializing new offerings and business models, we have a solid platform to fuel future growth.

I'm thrilled and eager to embark on the exciting journey that lies ahead of us!

Looking ahead, demand is expected to remain strong but there is also uncertainty related to both Covid and to the supply situation. For the third quarter we expect an organic growth of about 10 percent compared to Q3 2020."

Key figures, SEKm Q2 2021 Q2 2020 Half year 2021 Half year 2020 Net sales 20,735 16,599 40,600 36,684 Adjusted operating profit 3,118 1,565 5,907 4,137 Adjusted operating margin, % 15.0 9.4 14.5 11.3 Operating profit 2,878 669 5,577 2,937 Operating margin, % 13.9 4.0 13.7 8.0 Adjusted profit before taxes 3,040 1,476 5,626 3,635 Profit before taxes 2,801 580 5,296 2,436 Net cash flow after investments before financing 509 -838 -193 1,902 Basic earnings per share 4.59 0.75 8.50 3.50 Adjusted earnings per share 5.11 2.72 9.23 6.13

Net sales change y-o-y, %, Q2 Organic Structure Currency Total SKF Group 33.2 - -8.3 24.9 Industrial 21.7 - -7.9 13.8 Automotive 75.9 - -9.8 66.1

Net sales change y-o-y, %, Half year Organic Structure Currency Total SKF Group 19.6 - -8.9 10.7 Industrial 13.1 - -8.6 4.5 Automotive 39.2 - -10.2 29.0

Organic sales change in local currencies, per region y-o-y, %, Q2 EMEA North America Latin America Asia SKF Group 39.8 27.2 91.0 19.1 Industrial +++ +++ +++ +++ Automotive +++ +++ +++ +++

Organic sales change in local currencies, per region y-o-y, %, Half year EMEA North America Latin America Asia SKF Group 18.0 11.8 42.9 22.4 Industrial +++ +++ +++ +++ Automotive +++ +++ +++ +++

Outlook and guidance

Demand for Q3 2021 compared to Q3 2020

Demand is expected to continue to grow and we expect an organic growth of about 10% for the third quarter compared to Q3 2020

Guidance Q3 2021

Currency impact on the operating profit is expected to be around SEK -150 million compared with Q3 2020, based on exchange rates per 30 June 2021.

Guidance 2021

Tax level excluding effects related to divested businesses: around 28%.

Additions to property, plant and equipment: around SEK 3,800 million . Previous guidance was around SEK 3,600 million

A teleconference will be held on 20 July 2020 at 08:00 (CEST):

Conference ID: 302722

Sweden +46 10 884 8016

UK / International +44 20 3936 2999

https://investors.skf.com/en

Aktiebolaget SKF

(publ)

The financial information in this press release is information which AB SKF is required to disclose under the EU Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 The information was provided by the above contact persons for publication on 20 July 2021 at 07.00 CEST.

CONTACT:

For further information, please contact:

PRESS: Theo Kjellberg, Director, Press Relations

tel: 46 31 337 6576, mobile: 46 725-776576, e-mail: [email protected]

INVESTOR RELATIONS: Patrik Stenberg, Head of Investor Relations

Patrik Stenberg, 46 31-337 2104; 46 705-472 104; [email protected]

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/skf/r/skf-half-year-report-2021--record-operating-profit,c3387274

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/637/3387274/1446635.pdf SKF Q2 2021 Eng (PDF) https://news.cision.com/skf/i/rickard-gustafson,c2937253 Rickard Gustafson

SOURCE SKF
VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Solaris Resources Inc. (TSX: SLS); (OTCQB: SLSSF) ("Solaris" or the "Company") is pleased to announce a significant new discovery in maiden drilling of the Warintza East target at its Warintza Project ("Warintza" or "the Project") in southeastern Ecuador.

Highlights are listed below, with corresponding images in Figures 1 and 2 and detailed results in Tables 1-2. A dynamic 3D model is available on the Company's website.

Highlights

SLSE-01 was the first hole ever drilled at Warintza East and collared approximately 1,300m east of Warintza Central, where recent eastern extension drilling intersected 1,000m of 0.60% CuEq from surface (see press release dated July 7, 2021 ), with the Central zone still open in this direction

east of Warintza Central, where recent eastern extension drilling intersected of 0.60% CuEq from surface (see press release dated ), with the Central zone still open in this direction SLSE-01 was drilled to a total depth of 1,213m with assays reported herein for the first 320m of core from surface, which were given priority in transport, cutting, preparation and assaying  results for the balance of the hole are expected in late August/early September

with assays reported herein for the first of core from surface, which were given priority in transport, cutting, preparation and assaying  results for the balance of the hole are expected in late August/early September SLSE-01 returned 320m of 0.46% CuEq from surface, including 54m of 0.70% CuEq, in an open interval, marking a significant new discovery from surface at Warintza East, one of the five main targets within the 7km x 5km cluster of porphyry targets defined on the property

of 0.46% CuEq from surface, including of 0.70% CuEq, in an open interval, marking a significant new discovery from surface at Warintza East, one of the five main targets within the 7km x 5km cluster of porphyry targets defined on the property Warintza East is defined by coincident overlapping copper and molybdenum soil anomalies, measuring approximately 1,200m in strike, and a high-conductivity geophysical anomaly that extends from the target through Warintza Central (refer to Figure 1)

in strike, and a high-conductivity geophysical anomaly that extends from the target through Warintza Central (refer to Figure 1) Further drilling will target the expansion of Warintza East, with a focus on the open area between Warintza Central and this new discovery (refer to Figure 2)

Mr. Jorge Fierro, Vice President, Exploration, commented: "The discovery at Warintza East marks the third major copper discovery within the voluminous 7km x 5km Warintza porphyry cluster. Importantly, the footprint of Warintza East overlaps conceptual pit designs for Warintza Central, which itself continues to grow eastward with recent results. Future drilling will focus on the open, undrilled area between these two zones."

(1) No adjustments were made for recovery as the project is an early-stage exploration project and metallurgical data to allow for estimation of recoveries is not yet available. Solaris defines copper equivalent calculation for reporting purposes only. Copper-equivalence calculated as: CuEq (%) = Cu (%) + 3.33  Mo (%) + 0.73  Au (g/t), utilizing metal prices of Cu - US$3.00/lb, Mo - US$10.00/lb and Au - US$1,500/oz.

Figure 1  Long Section of 3D Geophysics Looking Northeast

Note to Figure 1: Figure looks northeast and depicts high-conductivity geophysical anomaly (defined at 100 ohm-m) generated from 3D inversion of electromagnetic data, encompassing from left to right Warintza West, Central, East and the Yawi target (Warintza South lies off image to south).

Figure 2  Plan View

Table 1  Warintza East Partial Results

Hole ID Date Reported From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Cu (%) Mo (%) Au (g/t) CuEq (%) SLSE-01 July 20, 2021 0 320 320 0.36 0.02 0.05 0.46 Including 0 54 54 0.49 0.01 0.05 0.56 Including 162 216 54 0.60 0.02 0.04 0.70 Notes to table: True widths cannot be determined at this time.

Table 2 - Collar Location

Hole ID Easting Northing Elevation (m) Depth (m) Azimuth (degrees) Dip (degrees) SLSE-01 801485 9648192 1170 1212 260 -45 Notes to table: The coordinates are in WGS84 17S Datum.

Technical Information and Quality Control & Quality Assurance

Sample assay results have been independently monitored through a quality control/quality assurance ("QA/QC") program that includes the insertion of blind certified reference materials (standards), blanks and field duplicate samples. Logging and sampling are completed at a secured Company facility located in Quito, Ecuador. Drill core is cut in half on site and samples are securely transported to ALS Labs in Quito. Sample pulps are sent to ALS Labs in Lima, Peru and Vancouver, Canada for analysis. Total copper and molybdenum contents are determined by four-acid digestion with AAS finish. Gold is determined by fire assay of a 30-gram charge. ALS Labs is independent from Solaris. In addition, selected pulp check samples are sent to Bureau Veritas lab in Lima, Peru. Solaris is not aware of any drilling, sampling, recovery or other factors that could materially affect the accuracy or reliability of the data referred to herein. ZTEM data quality was validated by a qualified external professional using data validation procedures under high industry standards. Analytical data for the surface samples collected are from recent interpretations derived from ZTEM data and from previous operators as detailed in the technical report entitled, "Resource Estimate of the Warintza Central Cu-Mo Porphyry Deposit" prepared by Equity Exploration Consultants Inc. with an effective date of December 13, 2019, and available on the Company's SEDAR profile and website. The drillhole data has been verified by Donald Taylor using data validation and quality assurance procedures under high industry standards.

Qualified Person

The scientific and technical content of this press release has been reviewed and approved by Donald Taylor, MSc., PG, Director of Solaris who is a "Qualified Person" as defined in National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. Donald Taylor is a Registered Professional Geologist through the SME (registered member #4029597).

On behalf of the Board of Solaris Resources Inc.

"Daniel Earle"

President & CEO, Director

About Solaris Resources Inc.

Solaris is advancing a portfolio of copper and gold assets in the Americas, which includes: a high-grade resource with expansion and additional discovery potential at the Warintza copper and gold project in Ecuador; discovery potential on the grass-roots Tamarugo project in Chile and Capricho and Paco Orco projects in Peru; exposure to US$130M spending / 5-yrs through a farm-out agreement with Freeport-McMoRan on the Ricardo Project in Chile; and significant leverage to increasing copper prices through its 60%-interest in the La Verde joint-venture project with Teck Resources in Mexico.

Cautionary Notes and Forward-looking Statements

This document contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation (collectively "forward-looking statements"). The use of the words "will" and "expected" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements include statements regarding further SLSE-01 drill results expected for the balance of the hole in late August/early September, further drilling to target the expansion of Warintza East, with a focus on the open area between Warintza Central and this new discovery, that the footprint of Warintza East overlaps conceptual pit designs for Warintza Central, which itself continues to grow with recent results, and that future drilling will focus on the open, undrilled area between Warintza Central and Warintza East. Although Solaris believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and/or information are reasonable, readers are cautioned that actual results may vary from the forward-looking statements. These statements are based on a variety of assumptions including assumptions made about the Company's ability to advance exploration efforts at the Warintza Project; the results of such exploration efforts; and the Company's ability to achieve its growth objectives. These statements also involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in such forward-looking statements, including the risks, uncertainties and other factors identified in the Solaris Management's Discussion and Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2020 available at www.sedar.com. Furthermore, the forward-looking statements contained in this news release are made as at the date of this news release and Solaris does not undertake any obligation to publicly update or revise any of these forward-looking statements except as may be required by applicable securities laws.

SOURCE Solaris Resources Inc.

Related Links

https://www.solarisresources.com


We receive this recognition with immense gratitude and are grateful for the opportunity to serve our joint public sector customers during 2020, said Charles Landry, CEO of SpringML. We consider this recognition as an increased responsibility and are even motivated further to continue to serve our customers by helping them take advantage of Google Cloud.

As public sector customers are looking to navigate the new normal, engaging with citizens in new ways and modernization of current applications is a top priority. SpringML is ready to serve and help governments implement data-driven digital transformation projects with an agile, iterative, and incremental delivery model.

Here are a few applications we have delivered to support several states fight against pandemic:

COVID exposure apps: Google and Apple built the privacy preserving exposure notification framework to help public health authorities fight against COVID-19. SpringML, in partnerships with multiple states including Michigan , North Carolina , Virginia and Utah , supported the roll out resulting in hundreds of thousands of downloads. This allowed States to provide proactive notifications to affected and exposed users on a timely basis.

and built the privacy preserving exposure notification framework to help public health authorities fight against COVID-19. SpringML, in partnerships with multiple states including , , and , supported the roll out resulting in hundreds of thousands of downloads. This allowed States to provide proactive notifications to affected and exposed users on a timely basis. Patient intake apps: COVID response resulted in the need for smart applications, ones that could be developed and delivered rapidly but also supported large user activity. We worked with the City of Las Vegas to build a platform agnostic application to manage the entire COVID-19 patient intake process.

COVID response resulted in the need for smart applications, ones that could be developed and delivered rapidly but also supported large user activity. We worked with the to build a platform agnostic application to manage the entire COVID-19 patient intake process. Safe traveler apps: We partnered with the State of Hawaii to digitize and simplify the screening process for those traveling in and out of the state. This application is used by all the visitors coming to the island and is a critical component to ensure the State follows up with visitors on any COVID related symptoms.

We partnered with the to digitize and simplify the screening process for those traveling in and out of the state. This application is used by all the visitors coming to the island and is a critical component to ensure the State follows up with visitors on any COVID related symptoms. Improper payments: States are experiencing a high volume of unemployment insurance claims due to the pandemic. This resulted in bad actors trying to get away with false unemployment claims. SpringML created a solution using machine learning and advanced data analytics to help government agencies detect suspected fraudulent claims and reduce time spent reviewing applications as they work to process high numbers of social services claims.

States are experiencing a high volume of unemployment insurance claims due to the pandemic. This resulted in bad actors trying to get away with false unemployment claims. SpringML created a solution using machine learning and advanced data analytics to help government agencies and reduce time spent reviewing applications as they work to process high numbers of social services claims. Vaccine management & distribution: Established an end-to-end vaccine management platform , from provider enrollment all the way through to post-vaccine tracking.

Established an end-to-end , from provider enrollment all the way through to post-vaccine tracking. Vaccine pre-screening and scheduling: SpringML, in partnership with Google Cloud, has built a secure and scalable platform to support States, Counties and Cities to open registration, perform eligibility screening, manage scheduling and deliver COVID-19 vaccinations in a timely manner.

SpringML, in partnership with Google Cloud, has built a secure and scalable platform to support States, Counties and Cities to and deliver COVID-19 vaccinations in a timely manner. HR COVID Tracking: HR COVID-19 Tracker allows Human Resource Departments to report and track COVID-19 cases during quarantine and isolation periods, adapt to the changing state regulations and requirements and send communications and work notices to employees.

"We're excited to recognize SpringML as our Public Sector Partner of the Year for State and Local Governments based on their deep knowledge and proven experience helping state and local government customers succeed," said Carolee Gearhart, Global Channel Chief at Google Cloud. "Over the past year, public sector organizations have increasingly relied on digital technologies to respond to crises and rapid change, and we're proud of the support that our partners like SpringML have provided these important institutions."

About SpringML, Inc.

SpringML delivers data-driven digital transformation outcomes with an experimentation and design thinking mindset. We provide consulting and implementation services and industry-specific analytics solutions that deliver high-impact business value from data. SpringML is a premier Google Cloud partner with capabilities to plan, assess, deploy, and manage data-driven engagements. We have been awarded Google Cloud specialization based on our expertise and customer portfolio for Security, Data Management, Application Development, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and Marketing Analytics. Visit springml.com for more information.

SOURCE SpringML

Related Links

http://www.springml.com


DALLAS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading immigration firm BAL announced that Tiffany Derentz, a former attorney at the U.S. Department of State, has joined the firm as Senior Counsel in its Washington, D.C., office. The hire marks the latest high-profile talent acquisition as the firm rapidly expands its cutting-edge immigration practice.

"Immigration is central to recruiting top talent, and I am excited to work with businesses and assist them in navigating their global mobility needs," said Derentz. "BAL is such a dynamic, forward-thinking firm, with genuine passion for what they do for clients. I'm eager to work with BAL's talented and dedicated legal teams."

Derentz joins BAL's Government Strategies team, headed by Partner Lynden Melmed, who previously served as Chief Counsel at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Government Strategies team helps clients navigate and shape policy developments in D.C., maintaining direct relationships with the White House and leaders on both sides of the aisle. In May, BAL submitted extensive and detailed comment s to USCIS, recommending concrete actions to reduce barriers and restore faith in the legal immigration system.

"Companies are facing unprecedented mobility challenges in the ongoing pandemic, including heavily backlogged visa services at U.S. Consulates and evolving travel ban restrictions," said Melmed. "Tiffany's experience with the State Department  both at headquarters and on the ground at U.S. Consulates - will provide our clients with unique insights into changing visa policies and processes."

Derentz served at the State Department for over eight years, working as an Advisor and Supervisory Attorney in the Bureau of Consular Affairs' Visa Office, then as an attorney in the Office of the Legal Adviser, including as a Senior Advisor to the department's Chief Legal Advisor for immigration affairs. The Bureau of Consular Affairs formulates and implements policies related to immigration and consular services and ensures that U.S. consulates around the world provide responsive and efficient visa services and other consular services.

"We're excited to further bolster our Government Strategies team with Tiffany's expertise," said Managing Partner Jeremy Fudge. "We are already the nation's preeminent firm for complex and sensitive immigration and compliance matters, advocating on behalf of business interests and influencing immigration policy in Washington. With this expansion of our team, we continue to attract the brightest minds in the industry to the benefit of our clients."

About Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP (BAL)

BAL, one of the world's most recognized corporate immigration law firms, is the Best Lawyers "Law Firm of the Year" in U.S. Immigration Law for 2019, the Most Diverse Law Firm in America (2020 and 2021) and the Best Law Firm for Women (2019 and 2020). BAL's Cobalt digital immigration services platform won the 2020 CODiE Award for Best Legal Tech Product and the prestigious CIO100 award for Innovative Use of Intelligent Automation in Immigration Services. BAL is singularly focused on meeting the immigration challenges of corporate clients around the world in ways that make immigration more strategic and enable clients to be more successful. Established in 1980, BAL has consistently provided immigration expertise, top-notch information security and leading technology innovation. The firm entered into a strategic alliance with Deloitte UK to create the world's first global immigration service delivery model. BAL and its leaders are highly ranked in every major legal publication, including Best Lawyers, Chambers and Partners, The Legal 500, and Who's Who Legal. See website for details: https://www.bal.com/.

SOURCE Berry Appleman & Leiden LLP
TORONTO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Superior Gold Inc. ("Superior Gold" or the "Company") (TSXV: SGI) announced today that it will release its second quarter 2021 financial and operating results before market open on Tuesday August 10, 2021. Following the release, management will host a conference call and webcast at 10:00AM ET to discuss these results.

Conference Call and Webcast

Date: Tuesday August 10, 2021 10:00AM ET Toll-free North America: (888) 664-6392 Local or International: (416) 764-8659 Webcast: https://produceredition.webcasts.com/starthere.jsp?ei=1480260&tp_key=079c56cc85

Conference Call Replay

Toll-free North America: (888) 390-0541 Local or International: (416) 764-8677 Passcode: 141091

The conference call replay will be available from 1:00PM ET on August 10, 2021 until 23:59PM ET on August 24, 2021.

The presentation will be available on the Company's website at www.superior-gold.com.

About Superior Gold

Superior Gold is a Canadian based gold producer that owns 100% of the Plutonic Gold Operations located in Western Australia. The Plutonic Gold Operations include the Plutonic underground gold mine and central mill, numerous open pit projects including the Plutonic Main Pit push-back project, the Hermes open pit projects and an interest in the Bryah Basin joint venture. Superior Gold is focused on expanding production at the Plutonic Gold Operations and building an intermediate gold producer with superior returns for shareholders.

SOURCE Superior Gold

Related Links

https://www.superior-gold.com/


Quirem Medical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Terumo since July 2020, based in Deventer, originated as a spin-off from the UMC Utrecht in 2013. Quirem Medical manufactures QuiremSpheres, the only commercially available microspheres containing the radioactive isotope Holmium-166. Trials have shown the safety and efficacy of holmium microspheres in the treatment of unresectable liver tumors. Quirem Medical also manufactures the SIRT work-up product QuiremScout Holmium-166 Microspheres, which is used prior to the therapy to select patients and plan the SIRT procedure. Across Europe, hundreds of patients are treated with QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and QuiremScout Holmium-166 Microspheres every year.

"With the acquisition of Quirem Medical in 2020 and the creation of the Global TIO team in 2021, we see great opportunities to leverage the broad Terumo technology base in interventional oncology for improved cancer care. The UMC Utrecht has proven a highly reliable, professional & innovative clinical partner with a strong focus on image guided therapies in cancer care. As such, the UMC Utrecht is a partner of choice in this journey; and we look forward to a successful continuation of our close collaboration in education, innovation and data generation to contribute to society through healthcare together." Says Ghada Farah, Senior Vice President Terumo Interventional Systems EMEA.

Terumo, a global leader in medical technology, announced on April 12, 2021 the launch of its Global Therapeutic Interventional Oncology (TIO) team. This reflects Terumo's aspiration to be a global leader in the field of Interventional Oncology by focusing on improving patient's quality of life and survival.

"Terumo and the UMC Utrecht have a fruitful history of collaboration on QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres for radioembolization of liver tumors. This Memorandum of Understanding underlines the collaboration that is already there for QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and the ambition to collaborate in the broader range of interventional oncology, including tumor ablation and chemoembolization. Terumo's dedication to improve patient care and the company's global reach make Terumo an ideal partner for this journey." says Dr Maarten Smits, Interventional Radiologist, UMC Utrecht

About Terumo

Terumo (TSE: 4543) is a global leader in medical technology and has been committed to "Contributing to Society through Healthcare" for 100 years. Based in Tokyo and operating globally, Terumo employs more than 25,000 associates worldwide to provide innovative medical solutions in more than 160 countries and regions. The company started as a Japanese thermometer manufacturer and has been supporting healthcare ever since. Now, its extensive business portfolio ranges from vascular intervention and cardio-surgical solutions, blood transfusion and cell therapy technology, to medical products essential for daily clinical practice such as transfusion systems, diabetes care, and peritoneal dialysis treatments. Terumo will further strive to be of value to patients, medical professionals, and society at large.

About Terumo Europe

Terumo Europe is a core player in the EMEA healthcare market by providing best in class quality medical products and services. We are a strong actor of the Terumo Group by contributing to innovation and sustainable growth. Terumo Europe produces, distributes, markets, and sells a vast range of medical devices in five main business units: Interventional Systems, Pharmaceutical Solutions, Medical Products, Cardiovascular Products and Diabetes Management. Terumo Europe EMEA headquarters and production facilities are located in Leuven (Belgium), production facility in Knowsley (UK), European Distribution Center in Genk (Belgium) and sales offices across EMEA. www.terumo-europe.com

About UMC Utrecht

The University Medical Center Utrecht is the main referral center for radioembolization in the Netherlands, performing over 100 radioembolization procedures a year. The division Imaging & Oncology is characterized by close collaboration of interventional radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians, oncologists and other oncologically-oriented specialists offering a variety of oncologic treatments. The UMC Utrecht ambition is to become a national hub for state-of-the-art cancer care, clinical studies and innovations.

SOURCE Terumo
DANVERS, Mass., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Greeley Company (Greeley), a leader in healthcare consulting, education and interim staffing solutions, is pleased to announce that Ted Pfeiffer has been named Vice President Product Innovation. In the newly created position, he will be responsible for strategic development of new products and services to meet growing market demand, as well as steer established education service line offerings for healthcare leaders.

Mr. Pfeiffer has over 25 years of leadership experience driving growth and innovation in the healthcare ecosystem. Prior to joining Greeley, he served as Vice President for a nationally-recognized leader in healthcare strategic business intelligence, analytics, and consulting where he was responsible for strengthening clients' market positioning and growth strategies.

He also previously served as Vice President, Product Management for Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) where he led strategic transformation of the organization's key products, including expansion of its e-learning distribution. He provided revenue growth strategies for several other healthcare consulting firms with a focus on service configuration.

Mr. Pfeiffer received a MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a Bachelor of Science from Whittemore School of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire.

About The Greeley Company

The Greeley Company (Greeley), a division of The Chartis Group, is a leader in healthcare consulting, education and interim staffing solutions, with unmatched experience in regulatory compliance, accreditation, bylaws and peer review, as well as credentialing and privileging. Headquartered in the Boston area, Greeley has utilized its proven methodology to help organizations improve efficiency, comply with regulations and standards, achieve practitioner engagement and alignment, and excel in delivering high-quality, cost-effective patient care for more than 30 years. For more information, visit greeley.com.

About The Chartis Group

The Chartis Group (Chartis) provides comprehensive advisory services and analytics to the healthcare industry. With an unparalleled depth of expertise in strategic planning, performance excellence, informatics and technology, digital and emerging technologies, and health analytics, Chartis helps leading academic medical centers, integrated delivery networks, children's hospitals and healthcare service organizations achieve transformative results. Chartis has offices in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, New York, Minneapolis and San Francisco. For more information, visit chartis.com.

SOURCE The Greeley Company

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ATLANTA, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- With over fifteen years of experience, Timeless Luxury is one of the largest dealers of luxury watches and can assist you in all of your luxury watch needs. Known as a premier Rolex watch dealer, Timeless Luxury is now expanding to offer service in Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi. Whether you are looking to buy or sell Rolex Atlanta , Timeless Luxury is your one-stop destination for pre-owned watches. From movement service to band replacement, they have you covered.

Timeless Luxury offers clients an authenticity guarantee, a seven-day return policy, and a one-year warranty on all purchases. With a 100% satisfaction guarantee, they strive to be the top buyer of Rolex watches and many other luxury brands in the Southeast. As long-standing members of the International Watch and Jewelers Guild, Timeless Luxury prides itself on maintaining a high client satisfaction rate, as seen in customer reviews.

Timeless Luxury sets themselves apart by maintaining a knowledgeable staff of luxury watch experts, who have nationwide contacts. These experts are equipped to handle the most obscure watch request and ensure clients receive top payment for selling a watch. Their goal is to ensure that you receive the absolute top dollar for your old Rolex, Breitling, Cartier, Patek Philippe, or OMEGA watch. Timeless Luxury has a passion for luxury watches and offers the most competitive pricing in the business. They provide their clients with a secure location and immediate payment on all transactions. No watch is too big or too small!

The following brands of luxury Swiss watches are the most common watches purchased: Rolex, Cartier, Patek Philippe, Brietling, IWC, Frank Muller, Hublot, and Audemars Piguet.

If you are looking for a company that will pay the most for your Rolex watch, then you're looking for Timeless Luxury. They offer a simple, open, and transparent process that allows each client to view the wholesale pricing sheet, a secure shipment process, and no obligation to sell.

Are you looking to purchase a pre-owned luxury watch, Timeless Luxury has the most comprehensive list of pre-owned Rolex and Luxury watches for sale in the Southeast. Known as one of the Southeast's largest dealers of luxury Swiss watches, Timeless Luxury is looking forward to being your new source for all things watch-related!

SOURCE Timeless Luxury
NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Meredith Corporation's (NYSE: MDP) Travel + Leisure celebrates 50 years of chronicling the evolution of travel with a special anniversary issue and exclusive digital content that spotlights the pivotal stories, people, and moments that have shaped the way we travel today, offering perspective, ideas, and inspiration for what's next. The August issue, on newsstands July 23, features 50 trips that have never gone out of style, 50 of the most notable Travel + Leisure covers spanning five decades, a collection of essays from some of T+L's favorite writers on their most beloved journeys, and more. Travel + Leisure reveals its list of the 50 Most Notable People in Travel on travelandleisure.com today and will share more digital features to mark this milestone in the weeks ahead.

Travel + Leisure 50th Anniversary

Travel + Leisure Editor in Chief Jacqui Gifford said, "For half a century, Travel + Leisure has been sending award-winning journalists around the worldwriters, photographers, and illustrators who in turn inspire our dedicated readers to get out there and explore with eyes wide open. This iconic brand and its various editorial teams have lived through many big momentsthe era of the Concorde, the fall of the Berlin Wall, 9/11, and the Covid-19 pandemic, to name but a few. Through it all, we've always been there to educate our audience on what truly matters, and believe that the future of our industry will always remain bright. Our history is closely bound to globalization, and to the idea that travel, at its core, brings people together and is a force for good. This issue is a firm reminder of that sentiment."

Selected by T+L editors, the honorees named to Travel + Leisure's first-ever list of the 50 Most Notable People in Travel include travelers who have changed our world for the better. According to the editors, "Some people on this list are industry veterans and famous firsts; others are adventurers and athletes, writers and photographers, chefs and conservationists, filmmakers and designers, historical icons and modern heroes. Some are no longer with us; others are beloved fictional characters who encouraged us to dream. All of them have done their part to elevate the travel experience, simplify it, make it more inclusive, or just inspire us to continue exploring." To see the full list, visit https://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-news/notable-people-in-travel-2021.

This special golden anniversary issue features four distinct covers that appear consecutively in each edition. To create these covers, Travel + Leisure asked photographers to explore the ideas of motion, progress and the evolution of travel. Celine Clanet chose a scene from Bonifacio, in Corsica; Naoki Ishikawa captured Lukla Airport, in Nepal; David Benjamin Sherry shot Bears Ears National Monument, in Utah; and Nick Ballon photographed a sailing with Coastal Exploration Co. off the coast of Norfolk, England. Within the issue, Travel + Leisure looks both back and looks ahead with a range of stories including:

+ 50 Trips That Stood the Test of Time: T+L editors pick the journeysfrom far-flung adventures to transcendent hotels to cultural escapesthat have proved timeless.

+ The Places That Changed Us: a collection of seven pieces by Rumaan Alam, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, Lily King, Nadia Owusu, Ann Patchett, Paul Theroux, and Bryan Washington about their most transformative journeys.

+ The Work of Slim Aarons: reflecting on the life and career of legendary photographer Slim Aarons, who shot some of his best-known images for Travel + Leisure.

+ Editors-in-Chief Roundtable: past Travel + Leisure Editors in Chief Pamela Fiori, Isla Stanger, Nancy Novogrod and Nathan Lump, in conversation with Jacqui Gifford, share their insights on creating T+L over the years in an ever-changing world and media landscape.

+ A Look Back: the editors uncover the best moments of the past five decades revealing how travel has changed in a way that underscores the magazine's success capturing the themes of the times and serving as a valuable resource for those seeking the world's most fascinating experiences.

+ From the Archives: quotes from luminaries who have been highlighted in T+L over the years, such as Toni Morrison, Joan Didion, M.F.K. Fisher, Isaac Asimov, Julia Child, and Erica Jong, among others.

Launched in 1971, Travel + Leisure has continued to capture the travel zeitgeist of the times and remained an indispensable resource for travelers seeking the most compelling experiences. Today, Travel + Leisure is the most influential travel media brand in the U.S., with a circulation of nearly 1 million* and an expanding digital footprint, reaching 12 million visitors monthly on its website, up 45% year over year,** and more than 12.5 million followers across its social platforms, up 7% year over year.

A bellwether for the resurgence of travel right now, the August anniversary issue welcomes a wide variety of advertisers across categories from destinations, hotels, and cruise lines to automotive and luxury. Advertisers in the issue include Baha Mar, Bellagio Las Vegas, Canada Tourism, Explore Charleston, Hermes, Hilton Head Island, Pacaso, Porsche, Raymond James, Regent Seven Seas Cruises, Rohl, Silversea Cruises, and 3M, among many others.

Travel + Leisure SVP/Group Publisher Giulio Capua said, "I'm grateful to our many partners who are joining us to celebrate 50 years of Travel + Leisure in this very special issue. As travel comes back, Travel + Leisure will continue to build on its legacy as a fully integrated, multi-platform brand that's an essential source of information and inspiration for passionate travelers, as well as an advocate for the travel industry at large."

*AAM Dec 2020 (total circulation: 969,872)

**Comscore May 2021

ABOUT TRAVEL + LEISURE

Travel + Leisure is the preeminent voice for the sophisticated traveler, serving up expert intelligence and the most immersive travel lifestyle content anywhere. Travel + Leisure captures the joy of discovering the cultural pleasures the world has to offerfrom art and design to shopping and style to food and drinkand provides compelling reasons to get up and go. Reaching an audience of more than 30 million, the Travel + Leisure media portfolio includes the U.S. flagship magazine, travelandleisure.com, newsletters, the Let's Go Together podcast, the World's Best Awards franchise, an extensive social media presence, and international editions in China, India, Mexico, and Southeast Asia. Launched in 1971, the U.S. edition of Travel + Leisure is the only monthly consumer travel magazine in the U.S. Travel + Leisure is part of Meredith Corp.'s (NYSE: MDP) Luxury Group of best-in-class brands and is owned by Travel + Leisure Co. (NYSE: TNL).

SOURCE Meredith Corporation

Related Links

https://www.meredith.com


-37,000 new hires projected this year

-Nearly 2.5 million tech workers account for 7.6% of the total UK workforce

-101.8 billion industry contribution to economy

LONDON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Technology employment, already 7.6% of the total workforce in the United Kingdom, is poised for broad-based growth in 2021 as employers continue their post-pandemic recoveries, according to a new report from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA).

In its "UK Tech Industry and Workforce Trends" report CompTIA estimates that tech employment1 will grow by 37,000 positions this year, a 1.5% increase over 2020. The report also notes that employer job postings for tech positions, which dipped during 2020 due to the pandemic slowdown, rebounded in Q1 2021 as employers address pent-up demand.

"Over the pandemic, tech has proven its worth in enabling businesses to continue to work, with automation and emerging technologies playing an important role in helping streamline the ways in which people work in a constantly changing world," said Tracy Pound, chairwoman of the CompTIA Board of Directors and founder and managing director of Maximity in Birmingham.

"However, cyber criminals have also taken advantage of the situation with a huge increase in attacks on both companies and individuals," Pound continued. "The demand for tech skills has never been higher, as CompTIA's research bears out, with the tech industry achieving recognition as an invaluable contributor to business success."

Northern Ireland is projected to see the largest percentage increase in net tech employment this year, with 2.4% year over year growth and 1,072 jobs added. Scotland (1.8%, +3,567 jobs) and England (1.5%, +32,391 jobs) follow, with tech employment expected to remain steady in Wales. Employment growth is anticipated in 12 of the 13 metropolitan markets included in the report.2

Another trend to watch  one in five job postings in 2020 were for positions in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation, blockchain and internet of things, or jobs requiring skills in those areas.

The CompTIA report reveals that nearly 2.5 million people were employed in technology positions in the UK last year, with employers in IT consultancy and services, such as managed services providers (MSPs), accounting for the largest share (595,371 employees). Other industry sectors that are well represented include engineering, testing and technical consultancy (458,716), telecom, data processing and web portals (278,999), software publishing and custom development (225,030) and tech manufacturing (118,067).

There are more than 282,000 tech firms with payrolls across the UK. Combined they generated 101.8 billion in direct economic impact last year, an estimated 7.2% of the total UK economy. As expected, London dominates with 57,168 tech business establishments. Other markets boast healthy tech sectors, as well, including Manchester (9,853 tech companies), Bristol (5,825) and Birmingham (4,411).

Other data points in the report illustrate the breadth and strength of the UK tech sector. For example:

Manchester , Nottingham , Edinburgh , Glasgow and Birmingham all recorded increases in net tech employment of 1,000 jobs or more in 2020.

, , , and all recorded increases in net tech employment of 1,000 jobs or more in 2020. The percentage of job postings for emerging tech positions is highest in Edinburgh (24%) and Belfast (23%).

(24%) and (23%). Five metropolitan areas ( London , Edinburgh , Leeds , Bristol and Glasgow ) have a higher concentration of tech workers than the national benchmark of 7.6%.

CompTIA's "UK Tech Industry and Workforce Trends" report provides data and analysis on tech employment, economic impact, technology trends, salaries, hiring activity and other measures for England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and 13 metropolitan regions across the UK. The complete report is available at https://www.comptia.org/content/research/uk-tech-industry-and-workforce-trends-2021.

About CompTIA

The Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) is a leading voice and advocate for the $5 trillion global information technology ecosystem; and the estimated 75 million industry and tech professionals who design, implement, manage, and safeguard the technology that powers the world's economy. Through education, training, certifications, advocacy, philanthropy, and market research, CompTIA is the hub for advancing the tech industry and its workforce. Visit https://www.comptia.org/ .

Media Contact

Steven Ostrowski

[email protected]

+1 630-678-8468

1 Employment estimates include technology professionals working in all industries; business professionals in non-technical roles employed by technology companies; and full-time, self-employed technology workers.

2 Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield.

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SOURCE CompTIA
"With accelerating technology in safety critical industries, such as automotive and medical devices, the introduction of innovative technologies that provide enhanced convenience also presents new challenges," said Jennifer Scanlon, president and CEO, UL Inc. "Helping ensure their safe and secure deployment will be key in how quickly these innovations are adopted. The Method Park acquisition will build upon on UL's science-based core expertise in testing, inspection and certification and help address the safety risks of exciting innovative technologies. Together, we will empower our customers with the ability to embrace new opportunities."

Specializing in complex process-based product engineering, Method Park's portfolio includes advisory services, a digital compliance software solution, a comprehensive training portfolio and software solutions for multiple industries. Founded in 2001, the company has also provided insight to customers on process optimization and quality assurance management.

"By offering a differentiated customer experience, unmatched thought leadership and solutions, and a best-in-class knowledge platform, UL works to be the global market acceptance and risk mitigation partner of choice for our customers," said Weifang Zhou, UL's executive vice president and president of Testing, Inspection and Certification. "The Method Park team strategically aligns with that approach and will help us deliver on serving as our customers' most trusted science, security and sustainability partner."

Headquartered in the Bavarian city of Erlangen, Method Park has offices throughout Germany, including Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Munich and Stuttgart, with additional facilities in Detroit, Miami, Pittsburgh and Shanghai. With the acquisition, Method Park's more than 200 employees will join UL to focus on innovative solutions to complex safety and security issues affecting multiple industries.

"We are excited to join forces with UL," said Professor Bernd Hindel, founder and CEO of Method Park. "As a combined team, we will offer our customers best-in-class services that will help them get to market faster and more efficiently. Our group's shared reputation will allow us to significantly accelerate customer access to a broader range of complementary solutions and expertise, extend services across global markets and help deliver on the promise for a safer and more secure world.''

The transaction closed on July 20. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

About UL

UL is the global safety science leader. We deliver testing, inspection and certification (TIC), training and advisory services, risk management solutions and essential business insights to help our customers, based in more than 100 countries, achieve their safety, security and sustainability goals. Our deep knowledge of products and intelligence across supply chains make us the partner of choice for customers with complex challenges. Discover more at UL.com.

For information about Standards development and other nonprofit activities, visit UL.org.

Press contact:

Steven Brewster

UL

[email protected]

1+847.664.8425

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SOURCE UL
"This integration streamlines guarding secrets and key management and offers customers a seamless solution to meet their secrets management needs, that is underpinned by centralized key management which delivers the highest levels of security," said Asvin Ramesh, senior director, technology alliances at HashiCorp

HashiCorp Vault protects secrets and sensitive data across multiple clouds, systems, and endpoints. It enables enterprises to store, access, and distribute secrets like API keys, AWS IAM/STS credentials, SQL/NoSQL database credentials, X.509 certificates, SSH keys, and more. Enterprises looking for an extra layer of security for encryption keys can now integrate with Unbound Security's CORE platform to keep the master encryption key safe using multiparty computation (MPC).

The integration between Unbound CORE MPC Key Store and HashiCorp Vault enables key advantages:

Master Key Wrapping: Unbound CORE encrypts the Vault master key to provide maximum security and comply with FIPS 140-2 regulatory requirements.

Unbound CORE encrypts the Vault master key to provide maximum security and comply with FIPS 140-2 regulatory requirements. Automated Unseal: Master keys are encrypted CORE, allowing users to automatically unseal Vault. This eliminates the need for manual operations using vulnerable keys, thereby improving the security posture. Operators of Vault can now leverage secure auto-unsealing via CORE. This also prevents downtime due to restarted servers waiting for manual Vault unseal operations.

Master keys are encrypted CORE, allowing users to automatically unseal Vault. This eliminates the need for manual operations using vulnerable keys, thereby improving the security posture. Operators of Vault can now leverage secure auto-unsealing via CORE. This also prevents downtime due to restarted servers waiting for manual Vault unseal operations. Key Synchronization: Unbound CORE automatically synchronizes keys across datacenters. This ensures availability and performance for Vault instances deployed in multiple regions.

Unbound CORE creates a virtual mesh for enterprise key management, protection and use. Keys are securely stored and managed wherever they are needed  in any data center and cloud. It enables an organization to manage all keys using a single pane of glass. The platform uses secure MPC, a subfield of cryptography that allows multiple parties to jointly compute any function while keeping their respective inputs private.

Rocco Donnino, vice president of strategic alliances at Unbound stated: "Key management is a crucial component in enterprise security. The challenge is siloed, fragmented infrastructure, housing keys on different clouds, on-premises and in HSMs. With this partnership, HashiCorp clients can now easily integrate with Unbound CORE and have the confidence that their master encryption key is safe from both external and insider threats."

For more information on the Unbound and HashiCorp partnership, please read the solution brief.

About Unbound

Unbound Security is the global leader in cryptography and empowers enterprise customers worldwide to confidently secure, manage and authenticate all critical business transactions, information, identity and cryptoassets  anywhere, anytime. Unbound CORE is the enterprise platform of choice for secure key management, trusted by many of the world's largest banks and Fortune 500 companies. Unbound Security is a recent recipient of the Deloitte Fast 500 award and is headquartered in New York, with research and development facilities in Tel Aviv. Learn more at www.unboundsecurity.com and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

About HashiCorp

HashiCorp is the leader in multi-cloud infrastructure automation software. The HashiCorp software suite enables organizations to adopt consistent workflows to provision, secure, connect, and run any infrastructure for any application. HashiCorp's open-source tools Vagrant, Packer, Terraform, Vault, Consul, Nomad, Boundary, and Waypoint are downloaded 100 million times each year and are broadly adopted by the Global 2000. Enterprise and managed service versions of these products enhance the open-source tools with features that promote collaboration, operations, governance, and multi-datacenter functionality. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, though 85 percent of HashiCorp employees work remotely, strategically distributed around the globe. HashiCorp is backed by Bessemer Venture Partners, Franklin Templeton, Geodesic Capital, GGV Capital, IVP, Mayfield, Redpoint Ventures, T. Rowe Price funds and accounts, and True Ventures.

For more information, visit hashicorp.com or follow HashiCorp on Twitter @HashiCorp.

All product and company names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Media Contact:

Marcella P. Arthur

[email protected]

Tel. +1 (908) 601-2333

SOURCE Unbound Security

Related Links

https://www.unboundsecurity.com/


DENVER, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VanWest Partners, an opportunistic investment firm specializing in commercial real estate acquisition, management, and sales, announces the acquisition of two self storage facilities to its newest fund, VanWest Self Storage Fund II, LLC.

The 2-property North Carolina portfolio was closed in late June and includes self storage facilities in Shelby, NC and in Hickory, NC. The portfolio totals 219,000 net rental square feet and 1,570 units including 127 boat and RV parking spaces.

North Carolina Portfolio Property

VanWest plans to rebrand the facilities under its ClearHome Self Storage management platform. By leveraging technology coupled with an active, hands on-management approach, ClearHome will drive net operating income by optimizing expense loads and dynamically managing revenue streams. With the addition of the North Carolina acquisition, VanWest now owns and operates self storage facilities in 8 states and 12 metro areas nationwide.

VanWest Self Storage Fund II has acquired 9 storage facilities within select target markets within the United States. The Fund is designed to provide an investment opportunity that combines durable, predictable income streams with capital appreciation. Since Fund II's inception in January of 2021, VanWest has deployed nearly $50,000,000 in gross capitalization in markets including Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina.

"The North Carolina portfolio adds diversity and depth to the Fund II portfolio, and complements our existing North Carolina locations by enabling us to spread fixed operating expenses across a larger, more geographically concentrated asset base. We're thrilled to join the Shelby and Hickory business communities, and look forward to serving our customer base as we rebrand and improve the facilities," said Jacob Vanderslice, Managing Partner of VanWest.

VanWest expects to close Fund II by the end of 2021, with acquisitions scheduled to close in Illinois and Florida in Q3. By the end of this year, Fund II will have deployed approximately $30,000,000 in equity and nearly $100,000,000 in gross capitalization.

VanWest Partners and its affiliates have successfully invested in 30 self storage projects totaling 1,800,000 rentable square feet and over 15,000 units. VanWest is a top 100 facilities owner, and top 25 management company in the US.

About VanWest Partners

VanWest Partners is an opportunistic investment firm specializing in commercial and residential real estate within the United States. By harnessing a diversified strategy and uncovering value in overlooked target markets, VanWest maximizes investment performance for its stakeholders while avoiding the traditional, single focus strategy of many investment companies. At VanWest, we reveal and maximize opportunity to make a positive and lasting impact. Learn more about VanWest at VanWestpartners.com or on LinkedIN.

Media Contact:

Katie Lyon

(303) 877-2859

[email protected]

SOURCE VanWest Partners
ENGLEWOOD, Colo., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- WellBiz Brands, Inc. , a franchise portfolio company managing four distinct beauty and wellness brands  Drybar , Amazing Lash Studio, Elements Massage and Fitness Together announced today it has acquired the LunchboxWax brand.

As part of the transaction, WellBiz Brands adds its fifth concept to its franchise portfolio and becomes the franchisor for 49 LunchboxWax salons. This acquisition marks the second in the last six months for the portfolio company. The addition of the LunchboxWax brand further solidifies the portfolio's position as a leading curator of beauty businesses and continues to make WellBiz one of the most recognizable names in the industry.

"At WellBiz Brands we are focused on bringing the most-loved beauty brands together with the goal of creating extraordinary experiences for our guests. The LunchboxWax brand fits this mission perfectly as an inclusive brand with an ethos focused on the guest experience. We're excited to bring LunchboxWax franchisees into the WellBiz portfolio and support their ongoing growth. We look forward to bringing several new locations to cities across the U.S. in the coming year," said WellBiz Brands' Chief Executive Officer, Jeremy Morgan.

Founded in 2010, as a culture-first business by Debi Lane in Boise, Idaho, LunchboxWax was named one of Entrepreneur Magazine's Top 500 Franchises in 2020. The brand brings a refined waxing experience to its guests in a comfortable environment featuring private waxing rooms and techniques from professionally trained waxologists. The brand also has proprietary formulated products that guests can incorporate into daily self-care regimens at home. Lane will remain on with the WellBiz team as a strategic advisor through the transition.

"This is a milestone moment for me. I'm thrilled that LunchboxWax is joining the WellBiz family of brands. Beauty services are a confidence builder and just like the other WellBiz brands, LunchboxWax is in the business of making guests feel strong, confident and beautiful," stated Debi Lane, Founder at LunchboxWax. "I founded LunchboxWax with the vision of creating an inclusive culture where like-minded people could come together. I'm proud of what we built and I can't wait to see where WellBiz takes the brand next."

WellBiz builds the capabilities of emerging consumer brands and enables them to accelerate scalable and predictable growth. The company's robust multi-brand platform provides access to shared services, infrastructure and support. For the last three years the company has claimed three spots on the Inc. 5000 list. To learn more about LunchboxWax franchise opportunities, please visit lunchboxfranchise.com and for information regarding WellBiz Brands franchise opportunities, please visit www.wellbizbrands.com .

About WellBiz Brands, Inc.

WellBiz Brands, Inc. is the manager of five beauty and wellness franchise brands: Drybar , Amazing Lash Studio , LunchboxWax, Elements Massage and Fitness Together . Headquartered in Englewood, Colorado, WellBiz Brands, has more than 800 combined U.S. locations across their five brands. Through the WellBiz Brands support center staff, the brands strive to uphold these core values: fun, ownership, respect, passion, and integrity. All five brands offer unique franchise opportunities for entrepreneurs from all walks of life and various investment levels, with a fresh focus on recurring revenue models. For more information about WellBiz Brands and its franchise opportunities, visit WellBizBrands.com .

About LunchboxWax

LunchboxWax is a leading waxing salon that brings the speed-waxing experience to women and men in an inclusive and comfortable environment that features private waxing rooms and refined waxing techniques from professionally trained waxologists. Founded by Debi Lane in 2010, LunchboxWax empowers everyone to #BareYourBeauty. The company has grown from one location in Boise, Idaho to almost 50 locations nationwide. LunchboxWax offers both elevated waxing services and specially formulated products that consumers can incorporate into daily self-care regimens at home. For more information, please visit lunchboxwax.com. To inquire about franchise opportunities, please visit lunchboxfranchise.com.

Contact:

Jody Ryan

Senior Director of Communications

WellBiz Brands, Inc.

(602) 614-0744

[email protected]

SOURCE WellBiz Brands, Inc.
NEW YORK and BANGALORE, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, announced the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services and its commitment to invest $1 billion in cloud technologies, capabilities, acquisitions and partnerships over the next three years. As the cloud opportunity accelerates, Wipro FullStride Cloud Services brings together the full portfolio of Wipro's cloud-related capabilities, offerings and talent to better orchestrate the cloud journey for clients. This commitment builds on Wipro's existing and extensive cloud business with clients and significantly expands the investment with its partners and hyperscalers, creating industry solutions that accelerate results for mutual clients.

Wipro has seen consistent growth in its cloud business and today employs over 79,000 cloud professionals and more than 10,000 people certified by the leading cloud service providers. Over the past 12 months, Wipro has announced significant cloud-related wins with Telefonica Germany / O2, Verifone, and E.ON in addition to METRO AG, one of the largest deals in Wipro's history.

"Today, cloud adoption is at the core of any IT transformation initiative, and our clients have been turning to Wipro for help with this. With our $1 billion investment in cloud capabilities, and the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, we are in a far stronger position to simplify, orchestrate and accelerate the cloud journey for our clients," said Thierry Delaporte, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Wipro Limited.

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services will work with clients to better align business and IT with the cloud imperative, create significant business value and increase competitive differentiation. It will also improve their business agility, embed resilience and significantly optimize their technology investments in favor of change and innovation. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services puts client and business needs first while orchestrating simplicity in an otherwise complex ecosystem.

"Cloud adoption and innovation are an essential part of our IT strategy. For a company like METRO that operates in 25 countries, quickly migrating to the cloud enables decentralization, agility, speed and flexibility in engineering and development. We are delighted to have a multi-year strategic partner and leader like Wipro to support our cloud strategy and simplify a complex, technology ecosystem for our success and growth," said Timo Salzsieder, CIO, METRO AG.

"With the introduction of the Chief Growth Office, we are renewing our focus on our global partnership ecosystem, amplifying and simplifying how we go to market together to orchestrate cloud transformation for our clients. We will announce a new leader for this group very soon." said Stephanie Trautman, Chief Growth Officer, Wipro Limited.

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services is a collaboration between Wipro's Chief Growth Office and existing Global Business Lines to create an integrated and comprehensive cloud transformation capability for customers, partners and cloud experts. With the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, Wipro is set to make cloud innovation and progress thrive, fueled by passion, collaboration, and boldness for clients.

For more information, visit wipro.com/cloud/mediakit.

About Wipro Limited

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 200,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future.

Wipro Media Contact:

Purnima Burman

Wipro Limited

[email protected]

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements contained herein represent Wipro's beliefs regarding future events, many of which are by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside Wipro's control. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Wipro's growth prospects, its future financial operating results, and its plans, expectations and intentions. Wipro cautions readers that the forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in our earnings, revenue and profits, our ability to generate and manage growth, complete proposed corporate actions, intense competition in IT services, our ability to maintain our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which we make strategic investments, withdrawal of fiscal governmental incentives, political instability, war, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our business and industry. The conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could decrease technology spending, adversely affect demand for our products, affect the rate of customer spending and could adversely affect our customers' ability or willingness to purchase our offerings, delay prospective customers' purchasing decisions, adversely impact our ability to provide on-site consulting services and our inability to deliver our customers or delay the provisioning of our offerings, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. Our operations may also be negatively affected by a range of external factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, Annual Reports on Form 20-F. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. We may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by us or on our behalf.

SOURCE Wipro
HARVEY, La., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ammo.com's efforts to provide American firearm enthusiasts with the ammunition they need to train, hunt, and preserve their right to keep and bear arms are going stronger than ever. No figure better reflects this than the amount of money the American online ammunition retailer donated to pro-freedom organizations during the second quarter of 2021.

With every purchase, Ammo.com donates 1% to a pro-freedom organization.

Ammo.com's Freedom Fighter Support program offers their customers the option of donating 1% of their total order price to one of 16 different pro-freedom organizations of their choosing. Should Ammo.com customers choose to make a donation, they do so at zero additional cost to themselves.

During the second quarter of 2021, Ammo.com donated a total of $27,093.67 to their several partnered pro-freedom organizations. These included the Mises Institute, the National African-American Gun Association Scholarship Fund, the Institute for Justice, the Future of Freedom Foundation, United Service Organizations, the Armed Citizens' Educational Foundation, the Illinois State Rifle Association, and the Texas State Rifle Association Foundation. Five of the top donation amounts are as follows:

Wounded Warriors in Action Foundation: $5,983.69

National Rifle Association: $4,802.26

Homes For Our Troops: $4,229.37

Second Amendment Foundation: $3,985.61

Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership: $1,449.39

Counting the $40,059.71 they donated during the first quarter, Ammo.com has donated $67,153.38 to pro-freedom organizations throughout the first half of 2021.

"We are first and foremost committed to serving our customers for all their ammunition needs," said Alex Horsman, Chief Marketing Officer for Ammo.com. "But we are also grateful to engage their support for so many deserving patriotic organizations.

"When the dominant political party in the United States has repeatedly cast itself as antithetical to so many of our Constitutionally protected freedoms, it is now more important than ever to lend our support to organizations which fight for our rights. Whether our Freedom Fighter Support program aids that fight during battles in the courtroom, in the ballot box, in the halls of legislature, or behind the borders of war-torn foreign nations, we're proud to do much more to defend freedom and liberty than we could by only selling ammunition."

To date, Ammo.com's Freedom Fighter Support program has contributed over $200,000 to its recipients. You can learn more about the program on the business's website.

ABOUT AMMO.COM

Ammo.com is an American online ammunition retailer that offers an expansive selection, great prices, fast shipping, and live American customer support. Their real-time inventory management system keeps their stock constantly updated on their website, ensuring no surprises for customers during checkout.

But Ammo.com does more than sell ammo. Their mission is to arm Americans both physically and philosophically, to fulfill the actual intent of the Second Amendment, and to protect the United States from its government by keeping the state in check.

In addition to the collection of information and resources they offer in their Resistance Library, Ammo.com supports the efforts of pro-freedom organizations through their Freedom Fighter donation program. This program gives Ammo.com's customers the option of donating 1% of their order price to a group that actively preserves our country's liberties  at no additional cost.

You can follow America's Pro-Freedom Ammo Source on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Contact:

Alex Horsman

Ammo.com

1901 Manhattan Blvd.

Building D PMB #300

Harvey, LA 70058

https://ammo.com

800-604-1094

[email protected]





SOURCE Ammo.com

Related Links

https://ammo.com


ACTON, Mass., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Bluejay Diagnostics, Inc. (the "Company"), announced today that Mr. Fred S. Zeidman has been appointed to the Boards of Directors and Chairman of Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of the Company.

The Board of Directors ratified and approved, the appointment of Mr. Zeidman to the Board of Directors. The appointment of Mr. Zeidman to the Company's Board of Directors is effective June 24, 2021.

"We are pleased to welcome Fred to our Board, and honored that he will bring to Bluejay his distinguished business background, leadership experience with world class medical institutions, and an ethical compass displayed across the humanitarian causes he champions", said Douglas Wurth, Chairman of the Board of Directors.

Mr. Zeidman, a resident of Texas, a prominent business and civic leader is Chairman of WoodRock & Co., an investment banking service business and serves as Chairman and CEO of Good Works Acquisition Corp. and Chairman of Good Works Acquisition Corp. II. both publicly held SPACs. Mr. Zeidman served as Chairman of Gordian Group LLC, a U.S. investment bank, and as Chairman Emeritus of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council from 2002-2010, an appointment by President George W. Bush. Mr. Zeidman also is Chairman Emeritus of the University of Texas Health Science System Houston. He is formerly National Chairman of the Development Corp of Israel Campaign (Israel Bonds) and served on the Board of the National World War II Museum.

Over the course of his distinguished 50-year career, Mr. Zeidman has been involved in numerous high-profile organizations. He was the former CEO, President and Chairman of Seitel, Inc., a Houston-based onshore seismic data provider where he was instrumental in the successful turnaround of the Company. He served as lead Director of Straight Path Communications, Inc. until its sale to Verizon in 2018. A Director of REMA a division of NRG Corp. He also serves on the board of Prosperity Bank and was formerly Restructuring Officer of TransMeridian Exploration Inc. and Chief Bankruptcy Trustee of AremisSoft Corp. He held the post of Chairman of the Board and CEO of Unibar Corporation, the largest domestic independent drilling fluids company, until its sale to Anchor Drilling Fluids in 1992.

About the Company:

BlueJay Diagnostics, Inc. develops, manufacture and markets innovative and minimally invasive diagnostic products. Bluejay's tests are 'Near-Patient-Care', providing laboratory quality results and enabling access to affordable, time-sensitive, and life-saving decision for treatments within 20 minutes from 'Sample-To-Result'. Headquartered in Acton, Massachusetts, the company conducts business from its main office in Acton.

Forward Looking Statements:

This press release contains statements that the Company believes are "forward-looking statements." These statements relate to the Company's financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance or business. You should not place undue reliance on these statements, as they are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results and performance in future periods may be materially different from any future results or performance suggested by the forward-looking statements in this release. Many factors may cause actual results to differ materially from forward-looking statements, including without limitation, inaccurate assumptions, competitive actions in the marketplace and adverse actions of Governmental, Food and Drug Administration and other third-party payors. In addition, this presentation does not purport to be all-inclusive or contain all information that you may desire in considering an investment in Bluejay. No forward-looking statement is a guarantee of future results or events, and one should avoid placing undue reliance on such statements. Except as otherwise indicated, this presentation speaks as of the date indicated above. Bluejay undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. The Company expressly disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward looking statements found herein to reflect any changes in the Company's expectations of results or any change in events.

Contact:

Tara O'Leary

[email protected]

SOURCE Bluejay Diagnostics, Inc.

Related Links

www.bluejaydx.com


MIAMI, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Shepherd Smith Edwards and Kantas continues to pursue the brokerage firms whose registered representatives unsuitably recommended and sold Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) products to their customers.

Already, we have filed several FINRA arbitration claims against broker-dealers on behalf of investors.

We are also continuing to monitor liquidation proceedings, which the Bermuda Supreme Court set into motion after it rejected Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) Ltd.'s request for more time to restructure. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy in 2020.

The next step is a hearing on July 26, 2021. The Court is expected to set up a process for Northstar account holders to be notified whether variable and fixed accounts should be considered segregated accounts under the British island territory's law.

Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) sold various insurance and investment products, with fixed- and variable- rate annuity products, including:

Global Interest Accumulator

Global VIP Elite

Global Advantage Select

Global Advantage Plus Series

Global Index Product

However, given the company's financial woes, it is unlikely that investors will recover much unless they have seasoned legal help. Many investors have suffered six-figure losses in these off-shore products, which their brokers touted to them as safe investments. Estimated total losses are said to be over $70M.

Even after Lindberg was indicted on criminal charges in 2019, many firms and their brokers never bothered to notify investors of this development or remove them from these investments.

SSEK Law Firm is committed to helping Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) investors in recovering their losses against the firms that unsuitably sold these off-shore products, including:

Unsuitability, misrepresentations and omissions, overconcentration, gross negligence, and failure to supervise are among the allegations we have already brought against these firms in FINRA arbitration on behalf of our clients.

SSEK Law Firm is currently fighting for Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) investors in the US, throughout the Americas, and in Asia. To speak with an experienced securities arbitration lawyer to discuss your Northstar Financial Services (Bermuda) losses, please contact us below.

Kirk Smith, [email protected]

US Toll Free: (800) 259-9010

Mexico Toll Free: (800) 283-3403

International via WhatsApp (text only): 713-227-2400

Northstar Bermuda FAQs

Northstar Bermuda Preguntas Frecuentes

SOURCE Shepherd Smith Edwards & Kantas LLP

Related Links

http://www.investorlawyers.com


RED OAK, Texas, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ASD.ai today announced its induction into Microsoft for Startups, a global program dedicated to accelerating the trajectory of high-potential startups. ASD.ai is a leading technology firm behind the Application Rootines, a digital diary for Autism. As a program member, ASD.ai will receive access to Microsoft technology, mentorship and business support.

ASD.ai accepted into Microsoft for Startups Program

Rootines is an app that supports the care of individuals with Autism. Users can track various elements of their day from hydration to mood, meltdowns and more. ASD.ai uses artificial intelligence and machine learning enabled by Microsoft Azure's Machine Learning Studio and Automate ML to identify trends and flags. The ability to digest the data and identify actionable suggestions is game changing for this population as many parents and caregivers are currently using pen and paper to track their day. The application also enables up to five members of the care team to share access to the app to input and share information, enabling easier communication and improved care. Visit www.rootines.app to learn more.

Thanks to the Microsoft for Startups grant, ASD.ai/Rootines will use Microsoft technologies and platforms such as Azure and Microsoft 365. The company relies heavily on Microsoft Teams to stay connected to their team members who are spread across the country and the globe to reach a wide-scale audience in a short time, with built in redundancy and security.

"We're grateful and honored to be selected for this amazing program from Microsoft. We at ASD.ai have launched an app called Rootines for the care of individuals with Autism. The services and support that Microsoft provides will enable us to scale our application in order to help more parents, caregivers and individuals with greater speed to market."  Said Tamera Jackson, CEO and Co-Founder of ASD.ai

Rootines is available now on iOS. A release for Android is planned for late summer. More information can be found at www.ASD.ai and www.rootines.app.

For information on ASD.ai contact:

Tamera Jackson

860.759.5753

[email protected]

SOURCE ASD.ai

Related Links

http://www.ASD.ai


ASHEVILLE, N.C., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 13th, 2021, Candler, NC cyclist William "Bill" Miller was hospitalized after being hit by a Ford Explorer driven by his neighbor, Paul Bork. Witnesses say Bork was speeding and made no effort to avoid Miller. After the collision, Bork was seen stopping briefly to survey the damage before fleeing the scene.

The road where Bill Miller was hit was a straightaway with a crosswalk. Photo courtesy of Bill Miller. A healthy, happy Bill Miller. Photo courtesy of Bill's wife, Susan.

Following the accident, Miller was placed in an ambulance and rushed to the hospital's trauma bay. He suffered a fractured femur, a fractured rib, and developed deep vein thrombosis in his lower left leg. In the emergency room, Miller had to have holes drilled into his femur and metal rods inserted for traction.

Asheville on Bikes supports Bill Miller

Local nonprofit organization Asheville on Bikes has joined Miller in his mission to promote bike safety, ensure that drivers operate motor vehicles safely, and expand bike and pedestrian infrastructure.

According to Mike Sule, Executive Director of Asheville on Bikes, "The Asheville community demands justice for Bill Miller. Asheville on Bikes, Bill, his family and friends, and others all want to see Paul Bork held accountable for his actions. Bill has suffered extreme pain, immobility, and medical billsnot to mention the terror and grief his family has had to endure. To deter irresponsible motorists from harming cyclists, we believe Bork should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."

Uninsured/underinsured motorists pose a risk to cyclists

A lifelong cyclist who was known in his neighborhood for his reflective safety vest and gentle demeanor, 70-year-old Miller was hit on a straightaway section of Reeves Cove Road a quarter of a mile from a crosswalk. Despite his remarkable health, Miller is struggling to recover from the accident. He is going to physical therapy twice a week, and is just now able to use a cane and walker to get around his house. Miller says he is concerned that if Bork turns out to be underinsured, he may face an uphill battle getting Bork's insurance company to pay for his medical expenses.

"I want cyclists to know that you can help defend yourself against uninsured and underinsured motorists by purchasing uninsured motorist/underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage. This insurance provides compensation when the at-fault driver's coverage isn't enough to pay for all the damages you incur, or when the at-fault driver is uninsured. Check with your auto insurance provider to make sure your plan includes adequate UM/UIM coverage," says Miller.

Western North Carolina must invest in active transportation

Asheville's population has grown by nearly 12% in the last decade, according to the World Population Review. Tourism has also continued to skyrocket, with more than 11 million people visiting the city in 2017. However, Asheville's infrastructure wasn't built to accommodate so many people, especially motorists.

According to Sule, "As people continue to visit and move to western North Carolina, it's critical our local policymakers invest in active transportation . People move to Asheville to live in a community where they can safely walk, bike, and commute. Instead of widening roads by adding more vehicle laneswhich actually increases congestion, as exemplified by many metropolisesBuncombe County must install more bike lanes, shoulders, crosswalks, stop signs, and roundabouts. As Bill can attest, peoples' lives literally depend on it."

Miller is grateful for the support of his WNC community

Miller and his wife, Susan, are grateful for all the help and support they've received from their community. "From the people at the scene who stayed at my side and protected me, to those who came forward as witnesses; and to all the dear friends and neighbors who cooked meals, sent cards, visited, mowed, moved furniture and more, and kept my spirits up by staying in touch: we are forever in your debt. Thank you doesn't begin to cover it," says Miller.

About Asheville on Bikes

Asheville on Bikes (AoB) is a 501(c)(3) organization committed to educating the public on the importance of bike ridership and safety, advocating for bike infrastructure and inclusion, and celebrating bike culture. Visit www.ashevilleonbikes.com for more information or to get involved. Read more about Bill's story in our blog .

Media Contact: Mike Sule, Executive Director of Asheville on Bikes. [email protected], (828) 582-4705.

SOURCE Asheville on Bikes
PLEASANTON, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Avatier Corporation, the pioneers of work from anywhere (WFA) Identity Governance & Administration (IGA) cloud service, today announced the successful completion of an arduous audit process for compliance with SOC 2, Type 2. and HIPAA/HITRUST compliance. With the successful completion of the audits, customers and partners can be confident that the internal control environment that supports Avatier's Identity Anywhere platform is secure and that employee identities and data assets are protected in compliance with the latest industry standards.

Get to the cloud faster, eliminate accounts & passwords. The better way to SSO. Secure access anywhere from Avatier.

The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) SOC 2, Type 2, standard defines the criteria for controls and processes to protect customer information and provide data security. The SOC 2, Type 2, audit is conducted by an independent accounting firm and evaluates identity management controls based on five trust principles: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Completing the SOC2, Type 2, audit demonstrates that Avatier's identity management, governance, and security administration platform adheres to the most strenuous industry guidelines for security and authentication.

Completing the HITRUST audit for compliance with HIPAA, the Healthcare Insurance Portability and Accountability Act demonstrates that the Avatier Identity Anywhere platform also is compliant with information risk management standards to protect patient information and healthcare data. HITRUST is the organization responsible for HIPAA security review, ensuring that organizations achieve, maintain, and provide assurances regarding compliance with the HIPAA Security Rule, HIPAA Privacy Rule, and the HIPAA Breach Notifications Rule.

"Security experts continue to face new security, identity, and governance challenges and rely on standards-compliant tools and technologies that are validated by third parties gives them confidence that they have invested in solutions that are compatible and scalable," said Nelson Cicchitto, founder and CEO of Avatier. "When it comes to enterprise security, we consider standards compliance as table stakes. The ease with which our Identity Anywhere solution passed both SOC 2 and HIPAA audits is proof that Avatier delivers robust security to support all the operational needs of our customers."

Avatier Identity Anywhere provides seamless access to data resources while maintaining enterprise security. Identity Anywhere is a passwordless identity, governance, and administration (IGA) solution that includes user lifecycle and password management, universal workflow, service catalog, access governance, and single sign-on for enterprise applications and cloud services. Avatier Identity Anywhere provides the same standards-compliant privacy and identity security features whether you are accessing data assets using the web, iOS, Android, Chrome, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Teams, Slack, chatbots, or other collaboration platforms. The Identity Anywhere platform is proving especially valuable for securing enterprise organizations in highly regulated industries such as healthcare, financial services, technology, manufacturing, government, and education.

About Avatier Corporation

Avatier is the Identity Management company of the future with innovative solutions for today. Avatier develops a "state of the art" identity management platform enabling workforce collaboration resulting in better customer experiences and increased revenue. The company's Identity Anywhere platform uses container technology providing maximum flexibility, scalability and security in a platform-independent and portable solution that futureproofs your investment. Avatier's identity management and access governance solutions make the world's largest organizations more secure and productive in the shortest time at the lowest costs. Avatier brings all of your back-office business applications and employee assets together and manages them as one.

For more information, visit www.avatier.com.

Media Contact:

Len Fernandes

Firecracker PR

(888) 317-4687 ext. 707

[email protected]

SOURCE Avatier
RICHMOND, Va., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Award-winning accessories and beauty brand Sassy Jones is introducing a line of vibrant, body-positive women's contemporary clothing, starting July 22 in weekly limited release micro seasons through brand owner Charis Jones' wildly successful "Sparkle Parties," hosted on the company's Facebook and Instagram.

Award-winning accessories and beauty brand Sassy Jones launches statement making and size-inclusive clothing line

Sassy Jones will be launching a micro season every single week throughout the summer into fall. Each week, six new pieces will launch that boast eclectic designs, rich fabrics, and exciting prints. The summer collection was inspired by the bold, brave, and powerful animals in the jungle. It represents the untamable beauty of nature and is reminiscent of the equally as fearless and powerful women living each day with courage, strength, and grace.

The 40-piece collection features statement-making bodycon dresses, sleek jumpsuits, colorful animal print jogger sets, and luxe two-piece sets of robes and pants. Each garment in the ready-to-wear line will be available for purchase in small quantities in sizes S-2X, with plans to expand into a 4X size range for fall, on the Sassy Jones website as the "Sparkle Party" airs on social media.

"My accessories and beauty line has always been focused on bold pops of color, unique pieces, and quality materialsand those same concepts shine through in my fashion line," says Charis Jones, the founder and owner of Sassy Jones. "The summer collection focuses on the little detailswe have pockets on almost every design without sacrificing fit or comfort. At the core, the collection helps women boost their self-confidence in whatever they put on."

Jones knew fashion would be the next step in her lifestyle brand. She became even more inspired when she started to see her clients post in the Sassy Jones "Secret Society" Facebook group, turning her boldly printed scarves into tops, skirts, belts, wraps, and more. She immediately began designing and hired the first fashion designer last December. Since then, the team has grown to an ever-expanding group of five creative and talented designers. Jones is heavily involved in the creative process for the design team, making prints, advising on styles, and selecting fabrics for each look.

"This collection is a dream come true for me," says Sassy Jones fashion designer, Amanda Campbell. "I am so incredibly proud of all hard work that the entire Sassy Jones team has put into this line of stunning looks made for all women. When I started as the first fashion designer for the brand, I knew I wanted to design clothing that would make women of all shapes and sizes feel beautiful, confident, and strong. In the few months that I've been with the brand, I've learned so much and watched the entire staff here work tirelessly together in amazing ways to bring this line to life. Charis is an amazing and inspiring visionary, and I know that with her leadership, the Sassy Jones ready-to-wear collection is going to change the face of fashion."

To learn more about the collection and follow along with the launch on July 22 at 12 p.m. EDT, follow Sassy Jones on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at @shopsassyjones. More information can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjtMuaUxLqw

About Sassy Jones: Mom of twin boys, Charis Jones started the lifestyle accessories brand in the back of her minivan and on her dining room table to bring accessories to those looking to stand out, shine and boost their self-confidence. With her bold, bright, and on-trend pieces made with superior quality and materials, these handcrafted, one-of-a-kind pieces will make anyone feel incredible and are lovingly created to boost self-confidence. Jones is part of the Tory Burch Fellowship class of 2020 and honored recipient of Entrepreneur magazine's top company of the year award. Her designs are also available at Macy's and on HSN. Jones was named a top 25 thriving company by Forbes Magazine for 2020. https://www.shopsassyjones.com/

Media Contact:

Posh PR Agency

Caroline Kalentzos

804-625-7674

[email protected]

Related Images

sassy-jones.jpeg

Sassy Jones

Award-winning accessories and beauty brand Sassy Jones launches statement making and size-inclusive clothing line

SOURCE Sassy Jones
HYDERABAD, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Balaxi Pharmaceuticals Limited (Balaxi), a branded IPR-based pharmaceutical company headquartered in Hyderabad, reported its results for the quarter and year ended 30th June 2021.

Financial Highlights - Q1 FY22:

Particulars (INR mn) Q1FY22 Q1FY21 YoY Revenue 583 521 12% Gross Profit 168 128 31% EBITDA 126 95 32% EBITDA Margin % 21.5% 18.3% 320 bps PAT 107 87 23% PAT Margin % 18.4% 16.7% 170 bps

The Company recorded a revenue of INR 583 million in Q1 FY22, registering a 12% growth year-on-year, led by Pharma and Branded consumer goods segments.

Higher contribution from newer geographies such as Guatemala also led Pharma segment to grow by 11% YoY

also led Pharma segment to grow by 11% YoY With new launches and increasing customer acceptance, Branded consumer segment Revenue increased by 128% YoY

EBITDA of INR 126 million for Q1 FY22; EBITDA margin stood at 21.5% higher by 320 bps due to favourable product mix. Higher Branded products in overall mix led to margin improvement in Q1FY22

Reported PAT of INR 107 million for Q1FY22, higher by 23% YoY

Revenue Mix:

Segment Q1FY22 Q1FY21 FY21 Pharmaceuticals 61% 62% 59% Branded Consumer Products 27% 13% 13% Ancillary 12% 25% 28%

Gross Profit Breakup

Segment Q1FY22 Q1FY21 FY21 Pharmaceuticals 75% 77% 73% Branded Consumer Products 17% 8% 9% Ancillary 8% 15% 18%

For Q1FY22, Pharmaceutical business segment contributed 61% of the consolidated revenues and 75% of the total gross profit. Share of Pharmaceuticals business in Total revenue increased on account of contribution from newer geographies. In gross profits, the contribution from pharmaceutical segment increased by 200 bps YoY.

Share of YAP branded consumer products revenue grew significantly, from 13% in Q1FY21 to 27% in Q1FY22. Biscuits continues to remain a major contributor in this segment, contributing more than 90% of Revenue to this segment. The Company has launched various new products like tooth paste, ketchup to its existing portfolio.

branded consumer products revenue grew significantly, from 13% in Q1FY21 to 27% in Q1FY22. Biscuits continues to remain a major contributor in this segment, contributing more than 90% of Revenue to this segment. The Company has launched various new products like tooth paste, ketchup to its existing portfolio. Ancillary business contributed 12% to the revenue in Q1FY22

Update on Pharmaceutical Product Registrations/Import Permits:

Particulars Angola Guatemala Dominican Republic Honduras El Salvador Central African Republic Nicaragua Total Existing Product Registrations 289 83 136 24 20 - - 556 Submitted to MOH

70 38 30





138 Product Registrations in Pipeline - 115 52 120 120 175 90 612

Commenting on the performance, Mr. Ashish Maheshwari, Chairman and Managing Director said, "Balaxi has set its footprints into the newer geography of Nicaragua, with the registration pipeline of 90 products, reflecting the company's 'Land and Expand' strategy. As on date Balaxi has 556 pharmaceutical product registrations/import permits, spanning across 5 countries, and has a robust pipeline of 750 product registrations, including those submitted to MOH spanning across 6 countries.

Balaxi saw an increase in the share of pharmaceutical business from Guatemala and Dominican Republic, showcasing that the newer geographies have started contributing to the company's overall pharmaceutical segment. The Company continues with its endeavour of remaining debt free and maximise stakeholder value. The company remains confident about achieving its long-term growth aspirations and looks forward to expanding in additional geographies. Balaxi aims to expand in 20 frontier markets over the next 5 years."

Pharmaceutical Business Overview:

The Company generated 55% of the pharmaceutical revenue from Angola , followed Dominican Republic 31% and Guatemala 14% in Q1FY22.

, followed 31% and 14% in Q1FY22. The share of Guatemala and Dominican Republic increased during the quarter, which would help the company in further strengthening its geographical mix.

and increased during the quarter, which would help the company in further strengthening its geographical mix. The product split between Branded & Generics is at 36:64 in Q1FY22. Product mix at Angola remains highly attractive at 55:45.

Branded Consumer Business overview:

Branded consumer business saw strong revenue growth of 128% YoY and Operating profits growth of 165% YoY.

Increasing recognition of YAP brand across region has helped the company to report higher revenue during Q1FY22. New product launches have also helped the company to gain more traction.

About Balaxi Pharmaceuticals Limited:

Balaxi Pharmaceuticals Ltd is a branded IPR-based pharmaceutical player focusing on frontier markets, with a vast and growing portfolio of prescription and OTC drugs, across multiple therapeutic segments. The Company is engaged in supplying branded and generic medicines through its well-built distribution network across Angola, Guatemala and Dominican Republic. These products are procured from WHO GMP certified contract manufacturers based in India, China and Portugal. Balaxi is present in Ancillary business and building a Branded Consumer Products business which complements pharmaceutical business and provides operating leverage on the back of well-established on-ground infrastructure and channel relationships.

Forward-Looking Statement:

Certain statements in this document may be forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties like regulatory changes, local political or economic developments, technological risks, and many other factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by the relevant forward-looking statements. Balaxi Pharmaceuticals Limited will not be in any way responsible for any action taken based on such statements and undertakes no obligation to publicly update these forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances.

SOURCE Balaxi Pharmaceuticals Limited
Bees360 has formed the largest Property Claims and Underwriting Inspection network equipped with drones and AI-powered mobile application, BeesPilot, in the United States. Through this integration between magicplan and BeesPilot, all of Bees360's 3000 inspectors now have the access to magicplan's AR technology to create real-time 3D interior measurements onsite which are accurate to the nearest inch.

"We are impressed by magicplan's ease of use, real-time capability and extremely cost-effective business model empowered by their state-of-the-art AR technology," says Andy Liu, CEO at Bees360. "With this integration, our Inspectors can document interior damages and measure the room in less than 5 minutes with minimal cost, all integrated within our BeesPilot app. The interior measurements are instantly ready for our Desk Adjusters to complete estimates. This will not only save us 1-2 days on claims cycle times, but will also reduce the cost for our Carrier Partners dramatically."

"magicplan is squarely focused on providing the fastest and easiest solution for interior measurements," says Andreas Bohm, CEO at magicplan. "With Bees360 it is great to have a partner that is completing the job from the outside of the home. We are excited about Bees360's AI capabilities in detecting roof damages. Both companies believe in the great possibilities AI and technology will have in this field."

About Bees360

Bees360 is a leading innovator of deep learning and computer vision technology who focuses on bringing AI and drone solutions to property claims and underwriting industries. It is founded by data scientists and insurance experts whose collective background in data science, mathematics, property claims, and underwriting provide an unparalleled level of knowledge to build AI-powered workflow and a disruptive business model for the conventional insurance industry.

About magicplan

magicplan builds mobile and cloud software to capture interior spaces. The company's mobile-first software solutions assist in the planning, estimating, and scheduling of renovation, restoration, and remodeling jobs. Every week over 50,000 new projects are managed with magicplan around the globe. magicplan was founded in 2010 in Montreal, Canada. Since the initial release, the application has been downloaded over 21 million times. Visit us at www.magicplan.app

SOURCE Bees360, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.bees360.com/


NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences announced today a neuroscientist, inorganic chemist and an electrical engineer as the laureates of the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. Each will receive $250,000, the largest unrestricted scientific prize for America's most innovative young faculty-rank scientists and engineers.

They are:

Kay M. Tye , a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. , who studies the neural pathways of addiction and compulsive behavior.

, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in , who studies the neural pathways of addiction and compulsive behavior. Mircea Dinca, an inorganic chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who develops metal-organic frameworks.

who develops metal-organic frameworks. Andrea Alu, an electrical engineer and physicist at the Graduate Center, the City University of New York , who studies nano-structured metamaterials.

"These remarkable scientists and engineers are expanding our world through their groundbreaking research," said Len Blavatnik, founder and chairman of Access Industries, head of the Blavatnik Family Foundation and member of the President's Council of the New York Academy of Sciences . "Their discoveries are improving the human experience and the future will be made better by their work and innovations."

Nicholas B. Dirks, the New York Academy of Sciences' president and CEO, said: "The pandemic of the past year has shown that the world needs science, now more than ever. These new Blavatnik National Awards Laureates for 2021 have forged new ways to use scientific research to create new and important understandings about ourselves and the world in which we live. We welcome these brilliant young scientists into the global community that is the New York Academy of Sciences."

The 2021 Blavatnik National Awards competition received 298 nominees from 157 research institutions across 38 states. The three independent juriesone for each of the awards' categories of life sciences, chemistry and physical sciences and engineeringwere composed of some of America's most distinguished scientists. These judges selected the laureates from a group of 31 finalists.

The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists will celebrate the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards laureates and finalists in a ceremony Sept. 28 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Due to prior pandemic restrictions, the laureates and finalists of the 2020 Blavatnik National Awards and the honorees of the 2020 Blavatnik Regional Awards also will also be celebrated at this event.

2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Life Sciences

Kay M. Tye, Ph.D.

Professor, Systems Neuroscience Laboratory

Wylie Vale Chair

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Tye has broken boundaries in the search to unearth neural circuits in the brain that process emotion. She is recognized for uncovering problems in processing reward, fear and learning that can cause a range of psychiatric disorders. Tye investigates the neural circuitry that drives these emotions and cognitive abilities to better understand addiction and depression. For example, she discovered a neural pathway that underlies an animal's willingness to engage in compulsive reward-seeking behaviors despite negative consequences. More recently, she has explored the neural circuits that are activated when animals are exposed to social isolation and experience a "loneliness-like" state, particularly relevant now because of the restrictions and increased isolation experienced by many during the COVID 19 pandemic.

"Kay Tye is a trailblazing investigator who studies the neural circuits underlying emotions, which are among the most complicated and fascinating circuitries in the brain," said Elaine Fuchs, Ph.D., Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor at the Rockefeller University, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and chair of the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Life Sciences Jury. "Kay is not only a superb neuroscientist, but a superb speaker who has the clarity of explaining her science in a way that dazzles her audiences and a strong advocate for women in science, serving as a role model for many. She was a unanimous choice to be the Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Life Sciences."

2021 Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Chemistry

Mircea Dinca, Ph.D.

W. M. Keck Professor of Energy

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dinca has discovered ways to make certain porous materials, known as metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), highly conductiveunlocking many new applications in sustainability, from gas and vapor sensing to energy conversion and storage. He has revolutionized the field of MOFs by building them out of specific organic molecules that can both form charges and conduct electricity, thereby linking the metal atoms together to create a solid that is both porous and conducting. Dinca has partnered with Lamborghini to use these new supercapacitors to power future high-performance vehicles, and he co-founded Transaera, a startup building MOF-based air-cooling devices that consume less than half the energy of conventional air conditioners.

Scott E. Denmark, Ph.D., Reynold C. Fuson Professor of Chemistry, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and chair of the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Chemistry Jury, said, "Mircea Dinca has been widely recognized as the consensus leader in the field of conducting metal-organic frameworks, a field that he himself invented. His creativity, his deep understanding of fundamental principles and their application to solving important chemical problems and his tremendous productivity led him to be selected by the jury to be the Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Chemistry."

Blavatnik National Awards Laureate in Physical Sciences and Engineering

Andrea Alu, Ph.D.

Einstein Professor of Physics

Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center

The Graduate Center, the City University of New York

By tailoring the complex interactions of waves with artificial materials, Alu is challenging limits in material science, resulting in scientific breakthroughs that influence a wide range of engineering applications in electromagnetics, nano-optics and acoustics. His work with metamaterialsman-made materials designed to produce unprecedented behaviors in light, sound and heattheoretically and experimentally demonstrates how cleverly designed nanostructured materials can push boundaries in physics. Alu's efforts are leading to new and enhanced materials technologies with potential applications in areas including cellular communications, energy harvesting, radar cloaking, optical computing and nano-optics.

Robbert Dijkgraaf, Ph.D., director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study and the 2021 Blavatnik National Awards Physical Sciences and Engineering Jury chair, said, "The jury has been following Andrea Alu's career quite closely as he has been a finalist every year since 2016. In the meantime, his research has only bettered, achieving many breakthrough discoveries in the field of metamaterials, with important technological applications. On top of this, since his first nomination, he made the transition to the City University of New York because he wanted to enhance the impact of his work by reaching out to and working with a much more diverse group of students. Andrea should be praised for his many courageous steps, both in his research and in his career."

About the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists

The Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists, established by the Blavatnik Family Foundation in the U.S. in 2007 and independently administered by the New York Academy of Sciences, were first awarded in 2014. In 2017, they were expanded to honor faculty-rank scientists in the United Kingdom and in Israel. By the close of 2021, the Blavatnik Awards will have awarded prizes totaling $11.9 million. About 60 percent of all recipients are immigrants to the country in which they were recognized and hail from 47 countries across six continents, reflecting the Blavatnik Family Foundation's recognition that important science is a global enterprise. For updates about the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists, please visit www.blavatnikawards.org and follow on Twitter and Facebook @Blavatnikawards.

About the Blavatnik Family Foundation

The Blavatnik Family Foundation is an active supporter of world-renowned educational, scientific, cultural and charitable institutions in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, Russia and other countries throughout the world. The foundation is headed by Len Blavatnik, a global industrialist and philanthropist and the founder and chairman of Access Industries, a privately held industrial group based in the U.S. with global strategic interests. Visit www.accessindustries.com or www.blavatnikfoundation.org.

Media contact

Kamala Murthy

[email protected]

212-298-3740

SOURCE New York Academy of Sciences
The bread market will witness a positive impact during the forecast period owing to the widespread growth of the COVID-19 pandemic. As per Technavio's pandemic-focused market research, market growth is likely to increase in 2021 as compared to 2020.

With the continuing spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic, organizations across the globe are gradually flattening their recessionary curve by leveraging technology. Many businesses will go through response, recovery, and renewal phases. Building business resilience and enabling agility will aid organizations to move forward in their journey out of the COVID-19 crisis towards the Next Normal.

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Top 3 Bread Market Players

AGROFERT AS

The company offers various types of products such as gluten-free, stollen plait, sweet pastry, toast bread, wholegrain & multigrain pastry.

Angel Bakeries

The company offers various types of brands such as fresh-baked, pita, and pastries.

Associated British Foods Plc

The company offers bread under the brand name ryvita fibrefit.

If you purchase a report that is updated in the next 60 days, we will send you the new edition and data extract FREE! Get report snapshot here to get detailed market share analysis of market participants during COVID-19 lockdown:

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Bread Market 2021-2025: Segmentation

Bread market is segmented as below:

Product

Artisan Bread



Packaged Bread



Others

Geography

Europe



North America



APAC



South America



MEA

Distribution channel

Offline



Online

The bread market is driven by rising urbanization and changing consumer lifestyles. In addition, the rising prominence of in-store bakeries in supermarkets are expected to trigger the bread market toward witnessing a CAGR of over 6% during the forecast period.

Find more insights about the global trends impacting the future of the bread market,

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Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

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

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Jesse Maida

Media & Marketing Executive

US: +1 844 364 1100

UK: +44 203 893 3200

Email: [email protected]

Website: www.technavio.com/

Report: www.technavio.com/report/bread-market-industry-analysis

Newsroom: newsroom.technavio.com/news/top-drivers-for-breadmarket

SOURCE Technavio

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In his new role, Chris will work across all six of the CT offices, supporting their agents, respective management teams, and further helping shape business development strategy across the territory. He will report back to BHS senior executives in New York. Although Chris achieved incredible success over the past 12 years as a top agent in New York City, he is no stranger to Connecticut. He grew up in Westport and has lived in Southport for nearly a decade.

"This is a homecoming of sorts for me, and I could not be more excited to help build Brown Harris Stevens' exceptional brand presence in Fairfield County and beyond," said Chris. "As we emerge from a global pandemic, this is an incredible time of growth for the company and our community."

"A passion for real estate is certainly a trait that runs in the Halstead family, and I know Chris will be an incredibly valuable addition to his fellow Connecticut Sales Directors and agents," said Bess Freedman, CEO. "He has strong knowledge of both NYC and Fairfield County's housing markets, and the important synergy between the two. We are fortunate to count him as a resource in this increasingly competitive market."

Real estate brokerage Halstead was co-founded by Clark Halstead, Chris' uncle, in 1984 and grew into one of the most successful real estate firms in the Tristate area. In 2020, Halstead merged under the banner of luxury powerhouse brokerage Brown Harris Stevens. As one company, the firm is the largest privately held brokerage on the East Coast with 2,500 agents and 50+ offices across New York City, the Hamptons, Hudson Valley, Connecticut, South Florida, and New Jersey. Real Trends recently ranked Brown Harris Stevens as having the highest average sales price per agent in the country among large brokerages.

About Brown Harris Stevens

Brown Harris Stevens (BHS) is one of the most prominent privately-held real estate firms in the world. Established in 1873, BHS has historically dominated the luxury, high-end market. With more than 2,500 agents across the East Coast, the company oversees the sale of marquee properties worldwide, including property management and new development marketing, from its headquarters in New York City and its offices throughout the Tristate area, Palm Beach, and Miami. Learn more at www.bhsusa.com.

Press Contact: Ashley Murphy, SVP of Communications / 646.675.5068 / [email protected]

SOURCE Brown Harris Stevens

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PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Bug Bite Thing , the chemical-free, reusable insect bite relief tool that retails for under $10, announces its $10,000 contribution and Annual Advocate for Girls partnership with Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida .

Bug Bite Thing CEO Kelley Higney presents Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida a ceremonial check of $10,000 to Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida Senior Director of Development Rebecca Schaffer, CEO Lisa Johnson, and Girl Scouts.

Bug Bite Thing is proud to partner with Girl Scouts and promote its mission to empower girls by teaching them vital skills, such as leadership and entrepreneurship. Through its Annual Advocate for Girls partnership, Bug Bite Thing Founder & CEO, Kelley Higney, is leading educational activities for Girl Scout campers at Summer Resident Camp in Tequesta, Fla. This summer, Camp Welaka is hosting more than a hundred girls and teaching them a variety of different skills. The company is also making an in-kind donation so every Girl Scout will be equipped with a Bug Bite Thing.

The STEM activities (science, technology, engineering, and math) will encourage innovative thinking and creativity. Teaching lessons that integrate insects, Higney's program, Bug Bite Science with Bug Bite Thing, will include the courses, Save the Bees and Botany in Action: Discovering Nature's Natural Mosquito Repellents. The girls will learn the science behind the human body's reaction to an insect bite or sting. They will also plant aromatic shrubs, study citronella's mosquito repelling properties, and why bees are attracted to marigolds.

"As a third-generation female entrepreneur, I was fortunate to have incredible female role models in my life from a young age. They encouraged me to think creatively and taught me that my potential is limitless. Being the founder of a female-owned business, I'm thrilled to partner with Girl Scouts and inspire the next generation of female leaders. Through mentorship and education, I look forward to instilling self-confidence in the girls and seeing them shine," says Higney.

"We are very excited about our partnership with Bug Bite Thing," says Lisa Johnson, CEO of Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida. "This type of collaboration gives girls access to amazing STEM and Outdoor programs as well as introduces them to an incredible female role model and entrepreneur."

About Bug Bite Thing

As Seen on Shark Tank, Bug Bite Thing offers a chemical-free, eco-friendly solution to effectively alleviate stinging, itching and swelling caused by insect bites and stings. The reusable tool solely uses suction to remove insect saliva or venom from underneath the skin, making it safe for children of all ages and adults. Bug Bite Thing is also Amazon's #1 selling product for insect bite relief with over 35,000 positive reviews.

Bug Bite Thing gained recognition in 2019 after founder Kelley Higney and her mother appeared on ABC's 'Shark Tank,' securing a partnership with inventor and entrepreneur Lori Greiner. The business was featured again on 'Shark Tank' in April 2021 and showcased the company's transformation into a multi-million-dollar enterprise. Bug Bite Thing is the recipient of 16 prestigious awards, including the 2020 Stevie Awards for Women in Business 'Consumer Product Company of the Year' and 'Fastest Growing Company of the Year.' Other accolades include 2020 Consumer World Awards Gold Winner for 'Consumer Product of the Year,' 2020 Best in Biz Awards 'Most Innovative Consumer Product of the Year,' American Business Awards Achievement in Growth Winner, a 2021 BIG Innovation Award Winning Product, and winner of the Mom's Choice Award, the 2021 National Parenting Product Award and The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval.

Based in Port St. Lucie, Florida, the company is actively involved in community organizations, including St. Lucie County Chamber of Commerce and Treasure Coast Food Bank, a member of Feeding America. Bug Bite Thing is available on Amazon.com, BugBiteThing.com and at major U.S. retailers. Learn more at Bug Bite Thing , and follow along on Facebook , Instagram , LinkedIn , TikTok and Twitter .

About Girl Scouts

We're the preeminent leadership development organization for girls who believes that every girl can be a go-getter, innovator, risk-taker and leader with the power to change the world. More than any other organization in our community, Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida empowers girls ages 5 to 17 with vision and voicegirls who command their future, engage their communities and inspire others. We offer every girl a chance to practice a lifetime of leadership, adventure and success. Girl Scouts of Southeast Florida serves more than 5,000 girls in Broward, Palm Beach, Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River and Okeechobee Counties. To explore opportunities to volunteer or partner with Girl Scouts, call 561-427-0177 or visit www.gssef.org .

Media Contact:

Lauren Bartel

714.400.1033

[email protected]

SOURCE Bug Bite Thing
NEW YORK, LONDON and MUNICH, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to new regulatory obligations under the updated Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II), CACEIS Bank S.A., Germany Branch has selected global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) to provide it with a full suite of advanced solutions for the Directive. Caceis is running live on Broadridge's SRD II solutions, enabling it to address the Directive's requirements for increased governance and transparency through a strategic, end-to-end process for voting and disclosure across all in-scope European markets.

Caceis is using Broadridge's enhanced Global Proxy Voting platform for its German domestic and cross-border custody operations, benefitting from high levels of straight through processing efficiency throughout the voting lifecycle for its broad network of bank and broker intermediaries as well as for their direct retail and institutional investor clients. The bank is also using Broadridge's new Shareholder Disclosure Hub, both in Germany and more widely across the Caceis Group, enabling it to meet issuer requests for shareholder details within the tight deadlines mandated by the Directive.

"We welcome and fully support the heightened levels of corporate governance introduced through SRD II, together with its objectives for improved communication standards between issuers and investors, and the drive for greater shareholder engagement," said Stephane Arvor, Member of the German Executive Committee and responsible for Information Technologies, Caceis Bank S.A., Germany Branch. "Working with Broadridge as our trusted partner, we have benefitted from their proven global leadership in proxy vote processing, their deep and highly experienced talent pool of knowledgeable experts, and their exceptional proposition that supports both retail and institutional shareholder communications and their respective multi-channel delivery requirements."

"Caceis has taken a structured and responsible approach to SRD II compliance, enabling it to play an important role in advancing shareholder democracy and market-wide governance standards throughout the shareholder communications chain," said Demi Derem, General Manager for International Investor Communications, Broadridge. "SRD II is global in its scope, impacting any financial intermediary that holds or services European equities. Many firms like Caceis, including banks, brokers and wealth managers, are required to provide voting and disclosure services for the first time, and it is important that they meet their new obligations."

Broadridge's enhanced Global Proxy solution utilises a white labelled retail voting platform, ProxyVote, as well as its multi-custodial institutional voting platform, ProxyEdge. It enables same-day event capture and distribution, same-day proxy vote processing and vote confirmations, advanced multi-channel retail functionality and European client data storage. Its new Shareholder Disclosure Hub, an industry-wide digital solution, uses the latest API- and blockchain-based technologies to address SRD II's new shareholder disclosure requirements and provide class-leading data security.

Broadridge has successfully implemented over 300 client solutions for SRD II, in markets spanning EMEA, North America and Asia Pacific.

About Caceis

CACEIS is the asset servicing banking group of Credit Agricole and Santander dedicated to asset managers, insurance companies, pension funds, banks, private equity and real estate funds, brokers and corporate clients. Through offices across Europe, North and South America, and Asia, CACEIS offers a broad range of services covering execution, clearing, forex, securities lending, custody, depositary and fund administration, fund distribution support, middle office outsourcing and issuer services. With assets under custody of 4.2 trillion and assets under administration of 2.2 trillion, CACEIS is a European leader in asset servicing and one of the major players worldwide (figures as of 31 December 2020).

About Broadridge

Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE: BR), a global Fintech leader with over $4.5 billion in revenues, provides the critical infrastructure that powers investing, corporate governance, and communications to enable better financial lives. We deliver technology-driven solutions to banks, broker-dealers, asset and wealth managers and public companies. Broadridge's infrastructure serves as a global communications hub enabling corporate governance by linking thousands of public companies and mutual funds to tens of millions of individual and institutional investors around the world. In addition, Broadridge's technology and operations platforms underpin the daily trading of on average more than U.S. $10 trillion of equities, fixed income and other securities globally. A certified Great Place to Work, Broadridge is a part of the S&P 500 Index, employing over 12,000 associates in 21 countries. For more information about us and what we can do for you, please visit www.broadridge.com.

Contact Information

Investors:

W. Edings Thibault

Investor Relations

(516) 472-5129

Media:

Gregg Rosenberg

Corporate Communications

(212) 918-6966

SOURCE Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc.

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TEL AVIV, Israel and BETHESDA, Maryland, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB: CNBX), a global leader in the development of cancer related cannabinoid-based medicine, announced today that it has appointed Dr. Gil Feiler to its Board of Directors as an Independent Director. Dr. Feiler, 62, who until now served as a Permanent Observer on the company's Board, is a world-renowned economist and currently serves also as the company's Head of Advisory Board. Dr. Feiler holds a PhD in Middle East Economics from Tel Aviv University, and is a graduate of the International Management Program at the Israeli Institute of Technology, Technion. Dr. Feiler currently serves also as Director of the Bank of Georgia for the Middle East and North Africa, as Partner at Forest Investment House ($1B AUM) and as Chairman of Seedo Corp (SEDO).

The announcement comes following the nomination, earlier this month, of another Independent Director to the company's Board, Dr. Inbar Maymon-Pomeranchik.

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals' co-founder and CEO Eyal Barad commented: "Dr. Gil Feiler has been with us as a Permanent Observer on the Board since October 2019. During that time, we could always count on his distinctive and informed perspective. Gil is a great addition to our Board of Directors; he is highly familiar with our business, and he is also the Head of our Advisory Board where he was able to assemble a team of multidisciplinary top-level experts that provide us counsel on key issues. I look forward to working with Gil in his new capacity as Independent Director, and I am certain that the company and its shareholders will enjoy the added benefit that he will bring to the table, now with an even greater level of engagement".

Dr. Gil Feiler commented: "It is a great honor to join the company as an Independent Director. I have been working closely with CEO Barad and President Yariv for almost two years now, and I have full confidence in their leadership and their determination to move this company forward and onto the clinical and commercial success".

About Dr. Gil Feiler:

During 20 years in academia, Dr. Feiler taught Business, Economics, and Middle East Studies as an Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University, Bar Ilan University and at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzlia. He has extensive senior executive business experience in both small and large companies, including Coca Cola Israel; he is founder of the largest news portal in the Arabic world, and has served on the board of The First International Bank of Israel, Mutual Fund Division; Dr. Feiler also served as Special Business Advisor to the Government of Ras al-Khemah, United Arab Emirates.

Dr. Feiler is an Alumni of the US State Department International Visitor Leadership Program (1997), and has also published extensively on business opportunities in the Middle East, on Political Economy, on Economic Cooperation, and on Financing of Terrorism. He is also the author of several books including: Rethinking Business Strategy for the Middle East and North Africa (London: The Economist, 1997); From Boycott to Economic Cooperation: An Analysis of the Arab Boycott of Israel (London: Frank Cass: 1998), The Middle East in the New Millennium (New York: Kluwer Law International, 2000), Economic Relations Between Egypt and the Gulf Oil States: Petro-Wealth and Patterns of Influence (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2003), and Investing in Russia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Kazakhstan (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2007) (co-authored with Alexandre Garese).

Dr. Feiler delivered papers at the UN, at Harvard conferences and at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

About Cannabics Pharmaceuticals:

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc. (OTCQB: CNBX) is a U.S. public company and a global leader in the development of cancer related cannabinoid-based medicine. The Company's R&D is based in Israel, where it is licensed by the Ministry of Health to conduct scientific and clinical research on cannabinoid formulations and cancer. For more information, please visit www.cannabics.com. For the latest updates on Cannabics Pharmaceuticals follow the Company on Twitter @Cannabics, Facebook @CannabicsPharmaceuticals, LinkedIn, and on Instagram @Cannabics_Pharmaceuticals.

Disclaimer:

Certain statements contained in this release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other U.S. Federal securities laws. Such statements include but are not limited to statements identified by words such as "believes," "expects," "anticipates," "estimates," "intends," "plans," "targets," "projects" and similar expressions. The statements in this release are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of our Company's management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from those outlined in the forward-looking statements. Numerous factors could cause or contribute to such differences, including, but not limited to, results of clinical trials and other studies, the challenges inherent in new product development initiatives, the effect of any competitive products, our ability to license and protect our intellectual property, our ability to raise additional capital in the future that is necessary to maintain our business, changes in government policy and regulation, potential litigation by or against us, any governmental review of our products or practices, as well as other risks discussed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including, without limitation, our latest 10-Q Report filed July 14th, 2021. We undertake no duty to update any forward-looking statement or any information contained in this press release or other public disclosures at any time. Finally, the investing public is reminded that the only announcements or information about Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc., which are condoned by the Company, must emanate from the Company itself and bear our name as its source.

For more information about Cannabics:

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Phone: +1-(877)-424-2429

[email protected]

http://www.Cannabics.com

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/796838/Cannabics_Pharmaceuticals_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Cannabics Pharmaceuticals Inc.
MIAMI, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cano Health, Inc. (NYSE: CANO or the "Company"), a leading value-based primary care provider for seniors and underserved communities, will host a conference call on Thursday, August 12, 2021, at 8:30 AM Eastern Time to review the Company's business and financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2021. A press release announcing the second quarter results will be issued earlier that morning.

To access the live call and webcast, please dial (844) 684-0650 for U.S. participants, or +1 (343) 761-2594 for international participants, referencing the Cano Health Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. The conference call will also be webcast live in the "Events & Presentations" section of the Investor page of the Cano Health website (investors.canohealth.com).

Following the conclusion of the live call, a replay will be available in the "Events & Presentations" section of the Cano Health website for on-demand listening shortly after the completion of the call and will be available for 30 days.

About Cano Health

Cano Health operates value-based primary care centers and supports affiliated medical practices that specialize in primary care for seniors in Florida, Texas, Nevada, and Puerto Rico, with additional markets in development. As part of its care coordination strategy, Cano Health provides sophisticated, high-touch population health management programs including telehealth, prescription home delivery, wellness programs, transition of care, and high-risk and complex care management.

The Company's personalized patient care and proactive approach to wellness and preventive care sets it apart from competitors. Cano Health has consistently improved clinical outcomes while reducing costs, affording patients the opportunity to lead longer and healthier lives. Cano serves a predominantly minority population (80% of its patients are Latino or African American) and low-income population (50% of its patients are dual eligible for Medicare and Medicaid). For more information visit www.canohealth.com.

SOURCE Cano Health, LLC

Related Links

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MIAMI, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Corporation & plc (NYSE/LSE: CCL;NYSE: CUK), the world's largest cruise company, today announced that it expects to resume guest cruise operations with 65% of its total fleet capacity by the end of 2021 across eight of its world-leading cruise line brands. Additionally, Carnival Cruise Line has announced plans that envision the brand's entire fleet returning to service by the end of 2021, which would further increase Carnival Corporation's total operating capacity to nearly 75% by the end of the year.

Eight of the company's nine brands  AIDA Cruises, Carnival Cruise Line, Costa Cruises, Cunard, Holland America Line, Princess Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Seabourn  have announced plans to resume guest operations on 54 ships to date through the end of 2021, with nearly half of the capacity represented by ships homeported in the U.S. In addition to those ships previously announced by the company's brands, Carnival Cruise Line's intent to return to full fleet service in 2021 would add another nine vessels, totaling 63 ships to date that are expected to resume guest operations this year. Further brand restart announcements are expected in coming weeks, including resumption plans for more ships and itineraries for 2021.

Collectively, the brands are continuing to resume operations from ports around the world using a gradual, phased-in approach, including sailings in the U.S., Caribbean, Europe and Mediterranean, along with itineraries planned in Central America and to Antarctica, among others. The cruises include enhanced health protocols developed in conjunction with government and health authorities, and informed by guidance from the company's public health, epidemiological and policy experts.

The following summarizes Carnival Corporation's brand restart announcements to date through the end of 2021.

North America Brands:

Carnival Cruise Line resumed guest cruise operations with three ships to date sailing out of two U.S. ports, Galveston and Miami , and has announced its intent to have 15 ships in operation by the end of October and to have its entire fleet sailing by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations with three ships to date sailing out of two U.S. ports, Galveston and , and has announced its intent to have 15 ships in operation by the end of October and to have its entire fleet sailing by the end of the year. Princess Cruises will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from Seattle to Alaska , and will expand with a series of cruises around UK coastal waters in late July, as well as cruises out of Los Angeles , San Francisco and Fort Lauderdale to the Caribbean , Panama Canal, Mexico , Hawaii and California coast in the fall, with eight total ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from to , and will expand with a series of cruises around UK coastal waters in late July, as well as cruises out of , and to the , Panama Canal, , and coast in the fall, with eight total ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. Holland America Line will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from Seattle to Alaska , followed by sailings from Greece in August, and from Italy and Spain in September, as well as sailings to Mexico , Hawaii , the California coast and the Caribbean this fall for a total of six ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

will resume guest cruise operations this weekend with its first ship sailing from to , followed by sailings from in August, and from and in September, as well as sailings to , , the coast and the this fall for a total of six ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. Seabourn resumed guest cruise operations with two ships to date sailing from Greece and Barbados , and plans to begin the Antarctica season in November with a third ship.

Europe & Asia Brands:

Costa Cruises resumed guest cruise operations in May with sailings in Italy and Greece , and the line is now offering sailings to France and Spain , to be followed by sailings to Portugal and Turkey in September for a total of seven ships expected to be sailing in the Mediterranean by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations in May with sailings in and , and the line is now offering sailings to and , to be followed by sailings to and in September for a total of seven ships expected to be sailing in the Mediterranean by the end of the year. AIDA Cruises resumed guest cruise operations in March sailing in the Canary Islands and in May with sailings in Greece and Germany . The line is now offering additional sailings out of Germany as well as upcoming sailings in Spain , Italy , Malta , the Netherlands and the Persian Gulf from late July to December for a total of nine ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations in March sailing in the Canary Islands and in May with sailings in and . The line is now offering additional sailings out of as well as upcoming sailings in , , , and the Persian Gulf from late July to December for a total of nine ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. P&O Cruises (UK) resumed guest cruise operations with a series of summer sailings around UK coastal waters that started in June, and plans to expand to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic coast and the Caribbean starting in September for a total of four ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year.

resumed guest cruise operations with a series of summer sailings around UK coastal waters that started in June, and plans to expand to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic coast and the starting in September for a total of four ships expected to be in operation by the end of the year. Cunard will resume guest cruise operations in August with one ship sailing UK coastal cruises, followed by sailings to the Iberian coast and Canary Islands, and plans to expand with a second ship returning to service in November with a combination of transatlantic crossings and Caribbean cruises.

The additional voyages build on recent restarts from five of the company's brands, including AIDA Cruises and Costa Cruises, which have been sailing in Europe since March and May, respectively, as well as its P&O Cruises brand in the UK. Most recently, the company's Carnival Cruise Line brand resumed in early July from the U.S. along with its Seabourn brand, which restarted earlier this month in the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

"With strong ongoing demand for cruising, we look forward to serving our guests with additional ships announced across eight of our brands and nearly three-quarters of our fleet capacity returning by the end of this year, marking an important milestone for our company and all those who rely on the strong economic impacts generated by the global cruise industry," said Roger Frizzell, chief communications officer for Carnival Corporation.

Frizzell added: "For our entire company, our highest responsibility and top priority is always compliance, environmental protection, and the health, safety and well-being of our guests, our shipboard and shoreside employees, and the communities we visit. Our ongoing restart effort closely reflects those priorities, as we continue to work together across the industry and with partners around the world to resume cruising in the best interest of public health."

In working with global and national health authorities and medical experts, as well as authorities in destination countries, the company's brands have developed a comprehensive set of health and safety protocols for protection and mitigation across the entire cruise experience for its initial cruises. This includes cross-industry learnings and best practices based on the proven health and safety record of industrywide sailings, and input from top science and health experts and health authorities.

Cautionary Note Concerning Factors That May Affect Future Results

Some of the statements, estimates or projections contained in this document are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions with respect to us, including some statements concerning our resuming of cruise operations in the US, Caribbean and Europe. These statements are intended to qualify for the safe harbors from liability provided by Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical facts are statements that could be deemed forward-looking. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, forecasts and projections about our business and the industry in which we operate and the beliefs and assumptions of our management. We have tried, whenever possible, to identify these statements by using words like "will," "may," "could," "should," "would," "believe," "depends," "expect," "goal," "anticipate," "forecast," "project," "future," "intend," "plan," "estimate," "target," "indicate," "outlook," and similar expressions of future intent or the negative of such terms.

Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, there are many factors that could cause our actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied by our forward-looking statements. This note contains important cautionary statements of the known factors that we consider could materially affect the accuracy of our forward-looking statements and adversely affect our resuming of risk operations. Such risks, uncertainties and factors include the risk factors discussed in Item 1A of our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").

Forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as a prediction of actual results. Subject to any continuing obligations under applicable law or any relevant stock exchange rules, we expressly disclaim any obligation to disseminate, after the date of this document, any updates or revisions to any such forward-looking statements to reflect any change in expectations or events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statements are based.

About Carnival Corporation & plc

Carnival Corporation & plc is one of the world's largest leisure travel companies with a portfolio of nine of the world's leading cruise lines sailing to all seven continents. With operations in North America, Australia, Europe and Asia, its portfolio features Carnival Cruise Line, Princess Cruises, Holland America Line, Seabourn, P&O Cruises (Australia), Costa Cruises, AIDA Cruises, P&O Cruises (UK) and Cunard.

Additional information can be found on www.carnivalcorp.com, www.carnival.com, www.princess.com, www.hollandamerica.com, www.seabourn.com, www.pocruises.com.au, www.costacruise.com, www.aida.de, www.pocruises.com and www.cunard.com.

SOURCE Carnival Corporation & plc

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- New service offers improved and more secure workflow for the delivery of block IOIs from brokers to clients

- Empowers high-touch and sales trading teams by allowing them to better target block liquidity

- Further expands Cboe Europe's block trading capabilities and builds on success of Cboe LIS platform

LONDON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Cboe Europe, a pan-European exchange operator and subsidiary of Cboe Global Markets, Inc. (Cboe: CBOE), today announced an enhancement to its block trading platform, Cboe LIS, which is powered by BIDS technology, with the addition of Directed Indication of Interest (DIOI) functionality. The service was successfully launched on 12 July 2021 on the Cboe UK LIS platform. Cboe plans to extend this new service to Cboe NL LIS later this year, subject to regulatory approval.

This service is designed to allow brokers to target Directed IOIs to a group of their buyside clients. The DIOIs are made visible only to those firms with a contra order in the Cboe LIS system and with whom the client has an established relationship. DIOIs can be flagged using industry-standard qualifiers, which specifies whether liquidity originates from a client or principal flow. A key feature of the service is that DIOI responses are tracked, which enables Cboe LIS to provide brokers with aggregate statistics to help them measure usage of the service.

The identity of buyside firms remains anonymous until the point of execution, allowing brokers to directly engage clients for follow-on activity, if appropriate. By leveraging the existing Cboe LIS platform, and BIDS Trader front-end technology, this service fits easily into workflows and allows brokers to deliver IOIs to the buyside desktop which can be actioned with a single click. A similar service is already available on the BIDS platform in the US equity market.

The Directed IOI service was launched with Morgan Stanley as its first sellside client, and Cboe and BIDS are in talks to add further brokers in the coming months.

Natan Tiefenbrun, Head of European Equities, Cboe Europe, said: "This innovative new service demonstrates our commitment to working with both the buyside and sellside to solve their workflow challenges and improve execution outcomes. It offers an enhanced and more secure workflow for the delivery of block IOIs from brokers to their clients, through a regulated-exchange environment. We believe it improves the ability of both buyside traders and sellside high-touch and sales-trading teams to access unique sources of block liquidity, automate their workflows and control information leakage."

Stephen Breen, Cash Head of Execution Services, EMEA, at Morgan Stanley, said: "This initiative is aligned with our commitment to working with exchanges to support product innovation and improve end investor execution outcomes. It will help to enhance the distribution of Morgan Stanley's unique liquidity to its clients whilst minimizing information leakage."

Bryan Harkins, President of BIDS Trading, said: "Cboe LIS, powered by BIDS technology, has quickly established itself as one of the premier block trading destinations in Europe and we are excited for it to enter a new phase of product development and growth. With Directed IOI functionality Cboe LIS will become an even more integral part of our clients' toolkit for distributing and accessing block-sized liquidity."

About Cboe LIS

Cboe LIS is an IOI and execution venue that was launched in 2016 in partnership with BIDS and allows market participants to trade large blocks of European equities. Cboe LIS provides buy-side firms with control over their IOIs up until execution, which helps to protect against information leakage, while maintaining their important relationships with their brokers. Additionally, Cboe LIS is unique in that it brings together the block flow of both the buy-side and sell-side, which allows for greater crossing opportunities.

Cboe LIS has grown to become one of the largest block trading platforms in Europe. During the second quarter of 2021 it reported a record market share of 24.8%[i] and approximately 370 million in average daily notional value traded.

For additional information, please contact the Cboe Europe sales team at [email protected].

About Cboe Global Markets, Inc.

Cboe Global Markets (Cboe: CBOE), a leading provider of market infrastructure and tradable products, delivers cutting-edge trading, clearing and investment solutions to market participants around the world. The company is committed to operating a trusted, inclusive global marketplace, providing leading products, technology and data solutions that enable participants to define a sustainable financial future. Cboe provides trading solutions and products in multiple asset classes, including equities, derivatives and FX, across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. To learn more, visit www.cboe.com. 

Cboe, VIX and Cboe Volatility Index are registered trademarks and Cboe Global MarketsSM is a service mark of Cboe Exchange, Inc.

References to Cboe Europe and Cboe UK are references to Cboe Europe Limited unless otherwise stated. References to Cboe NL are references to Cboe Europe BV





i According to big xyt, an independent data and analytics firm

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/622233/Cboe_Logo.jpg

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SOURCE Cboe Global Markets, Inc.
BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil, July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CEMIG Geracao e Transmissao S.A. ("CEMIG"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Companhia Energetica de Minas Gerais ("CEMIG Holding"), today announced the commencement of an offer to purchase for cash up to the Maximum Amount (as defined below) of its outstanding 9.250% Senior Notes due 2024 (the "Notes") issued by CEMIG (the "Offer"). When used in this press release, the terms "we," "us" and "our" refer collectively to CEMIG and CEMIG Holding, in each case, unless the context otherwise requires.

The Offer is made upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the offer to purchase dated July 19, 2021 (the "Offer to Purchase"). The Offer is not contingent upon the tender of any minimum principal amount of Notes, but CEMIG will only purchase Notes up to the maximum aggregate principal amount of U.S. $500 million (the "Maximum Amount"). Accordingly, if the Maximum Amount is reached in respect of tenders made on or prior to the Early Tender Date (as defined below), no Notes that are validly tendered after the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase, even if validly tendered and not validly withdrawn, and any Notes tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase on the Early Acceptance Date (as defined in the Offer to Purchase) or the Expiration Date (as defined below), if the Early Settlement Right (as defined below) is not exercised, will be accepted on a prorated basis such that CEMIG purchases an aggregate principal amount of Notes that would not exceed the Maximum Amount in the Offer.

The following table sets forth certain information relating to the Offer.

Title of

Security CUSIPs ISINs Principal

Amount Outstanding Maximum

Amount

(3) Tender

Consideration

(1) Early Tender

Premium

(1)(2) Total

Consideration

(1)(2) 9.25%

Senior Notes

due 2024 12517M AA0

/ P2205LAC9 US12517MAA09

/ USP2205LAC92 U.S.$1,500,000,000 U.S.$500,000,000 U.S.$1,112.50 U.S.$50.00 U.S.$1,162.50





(1) The amount to be paid for each U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered and accepted for purchase, excluding Accrued Interest on the Notes to the applicable Settlement Date (as defined below). (2) The Total Consideration equals the Tender Consideration plus the Early Tender Premium. (3) The Maximum Amount equals an aggregate principal amount of Notes of U.S.$500 million.

Indicative Timetable for the Offer :

Commencement of the Offer July 19, 2021



Withdrawal Date 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on July 30, 2021, unless extended by CEMIG in its sole discretion.



Early Tender Date 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on July 30, 2021, unless extended by CEMIG in its sole discretion.



Early Settlement Date If CEMIG elects to exercise the Early Settlement Right (as defined below), promptly after the acceptance by CEMIG for purchase of the Notes validly tendered before the Early Tender Date and not withdrawn on or prior to the Withdrawal Date (as defined below), upon satisfaction (or waiver by CEMIG) of each and all of the conditions set forth in this Offer to Purchase.





CEMIG expects that the Early Settlement Date, if any, will be on or about four Business Days following the Early Tender Date, which would be on August 5, 2021, unless the Early Tender Date is extended by CEMIG in its sole discretion.



Expiration Date 11:59 p.m. (New York City time) August 13, 2021, unless extended by CEMIG in its sole discretion.



Final Settlement Date Promptly after the acceptance by CEMIG for purchase of Notes validly tendered after the Early Tender Date but on or prior to the Expiration Date, upon satisfaction (or waiver by CEMIG) of each and all of the conditions set forth in the Offer to Purchase.





CEMIG expects that the Final Settlement Date will be on or about one Business Day following the Expiration Date, which would be August 16, 2021, unless the Expiration Date is extended by CEMIG in its sole discretion.

The Offer will expire at 11:59 p.m. (New York City time) on August 13, 2021, unless earlier terminated or extended by CEMIG (such time and date, as the same may be extended, the "Expiration Date").

Holders of Notes who validly tender and do not validly withdraw their Notes on or prior to 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on July 30, 2021, unless extended (such time and date, as they may be extended, the "Early Tender Date"), will be eligible to receive the total consideration of U.S.$1,162.50 per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered (the "Total Consideration"), which includes an early tender premium of U.S.$50.00 per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes validly tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date and not validly withdrawn on or prior to the Withdrawal Date (the "Early Tender Premium"). Holders who validly tender and do not validly withdraw their Notes after the Early Tender Date, but on or prior to the Expiration Date, will be eligible to receive the tender consideration of U.S.$1,112.50 per U.S.$1,000 principal amount of Notes tendered (the "Tender Consideration"). The Tender Consideration does not include the Early Tender Premium. Notes tendered may be withdrawn at any time on or prior to 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on July 30, 2021, unless extended by CEMIG in its sole discretion (such time and date, as they may be extended, the "Withdrawal Date"), but not thereafter.

If any Notes are purchased in the Offer, Notes validly tendered (and not validly withdrawn) on or prior to the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase in priority to any Notes validly tendered in the Offer after the Early Tender Date. Accordingly, if the Maximum Amount is reached in respect of tenders made on or prior to the Early Tender Date, no Notes that are validly tendered after the Early Tender Date will be accepted for purchase, and any Notes tendered on or prior to the Early Tender Date and accepted for purchase on the Early Acceptance Date (or the Expiration Date, if the Early Settlement Right is not exercised) will be accepted on a prorated basis such that we purchase an aggregate principal amount of Notes that would not exceed the Maximum Amount in the Offer.

In addition to the applicable Total Consideration and the applicable Tender Consideration, as applicable, holders whose Notes are accepted for purchase in the Offer will also receive accrued and unpaid interest ("Accrued Interest") from, and including, the last interest payment date to, but not including, the Early Settlement Date or the Final Settlement Date (each, a "Settlement Date"), as applicable.

CEMIG reserves the right, but is under no obligation, at any point following the Early Tender Date and before the Expiration Date, to accept for purchase any Notes validly tendered and not subsequently withdrawn on or prior to the Early Tender Date (the "Early Settlement Right"). The date of payment for Notes purchased pursuant to the Early Settlement Right (the "Early Settlement Date") will be determined at CEMIG's option and is currently expected to be August 5, 2021, subject to all conditions of the Offer having been either satisfied or waived by CEMIG. All Notes tendered and accepted for purchase that have not been settled on the Early Settlement Date, if any, will be settled on August 16, 2021, promptly following the Expiration Date. In all cases, the total principal amount of Notes accepted for purchase by CEMIG may be subject to proration based upon the Maximum Amount as described in the Offer to Purchase.

Completion of the Offer is conditioned on the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions described in the Offer to Purchase. CEMIG has the right, in its sole discretion, to amend or terminate the Offer at any time, subject to applicable law.

We have retained Banco Bradesco BBI S.A., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC and Santander Investment Securities Inc. to serve as dealer managers and D.F. King & Co., Inc. to serve as information and tender agent for the Offer. The full details of the Offer, including complete instructions on how to tender Notes, are included in the Offer to Purchase. Holders of Notes are strongly encouraged to carefully read the Offer to Purchase, including materials incorporated by reference therein, because they contain important information. Requests for the Offer to Purchase and any related supplements may also be directed to D.F. King & Co., Inc. by telephone at +1 (212) 269-5550 or +1 (800) 578-5378 (US toll free) or in writing at [email protected]. Questions about the Offer may be directed to Bradesco BBI S.A. by telephone at +1 (646) 432-6642, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC by telephone at +1 (212) 357-1452 (collect) or +1 (800) 828-3182 (toll free), Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC by telephone at +1 (800) 624-1808 (toll free) or +1 (212) 761-1057 (collect) and Santander Investment Securities Inc. by telephone at +1 (855) 404-3636 (toll free) or +1 (212) 940-1442 (collect).

This press release shall not constitute an offer to purchase or a solicitation of acceptance of the offer to purchase, which are being made only pursuant to the terms and conditions contained in the Offer to Purchase. The Offer is not being made to, nor will CEMIG accept tenders of Notes from, holders in any jurisdiction in which the Offer or the acceptance thereof would not be in compliance with the securities or blue sky laws of such jurisdiction. In any jurisdiction where the laws require the Offer to be made by a licensed broker or dealer, the Offer will be made by the dealer managers on behalf of CEMIG.

None of CEMIG, CEMIG Holding, the information and tender agent, the dealer managers or the trustee with respect to the Notes, nor any of their respective affiliates, makes any recommendation as to whether holders should tender or refrain from tendering all or any portion of their Notes in response to the Offer. None of CEMIG, CEMIG Holding, the information and tender agent, the dealer managers or the trustee with respect to the Notes, nor any of their respective affiliates, has authorized any person to give any information or to make any representation in connection with the Offer other than the information and representations contained in the Offer to Purchase.

Neither the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, any U.S. state securities commission nor any regulatory authority of any other country has approved or disapproved of the Offer, passed upon the merits or fairness of the Offer or passed upon the adequacy or accuracy of the disclosure in the Offer to Purchase.

About CEMIG and CEMIG Holding

CEMIG is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CEMIG Holding, a state-controlled mixed capital company domiciled in and controlled by the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. CEMIG Holding is domiciled in Brazil, whose objects include, but are not limited to: construction, operation and commercialization of systems for generation, transmission, distribution and sale of energy, and also activities in the various fields of energy sector and gas distribution, for the purpose of commercial operation, either directly by CEMIG Holding or by subsidiaries or other companies in which CEMIG Holding is a shareholder.

Forward-Looking Statements

Statements in this press release may be "forward-looking statements," which are subject to risks and uncertainties. Other than statements of historical fact, information regarding activities, events and developments that we expect or anticipate will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements based on management's estimates, assumptions and projections. Many forward-looking statements may be identified by the use of words such as "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "believe, "estimate" and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements contained in this press release are predictions only and actual results could differ materially from management's expectations due to a variety of factors, including those described the section titled "Risk Factors" in CEMIG Holding's Annual Report for fiscal year 2020 on Form 20-F. All forward-looking statements attributable to CEMIG or CEMIG Holding are expressly qualified in their entirety by such risk factors, in each case as applicable. The forward-looking statements that we make in this press release are based on management's current views and assumptions regarding future events and speak only as of their dates. We assume no obligation to update developments of these risk factors or to announce publicly any revisions to any of the forward-looking statements that we make, or to make corrections to reflect future events or developments, except as required by the U.S. federal securities laws.

DISCLAIMER

This press release must be read in conjunction with the Offer to Purchase. This announcement and the Offer to Purchase contain important information which must be read carefully before any decision is made with respect to the Offer. If any holder of Notes is in any doubt as to the action it should take, it is recommended to seek its own legal, tax, accounting and financial advice, including as to any tax consequences, immediately from its stockbroker, bank manager, attorney, accountant or other independent financial or legal adviser. Any individual or company whose Notes are held on its behalf by a broker, dealer, bank, custodian, trust company or other nominee or intermediary must contact such entity if it wishes to participate in the Offer. None of CEMIG, CEMIG Holding, the dealer managers, the information and tender agent and any person who controls, or is a director, officer, employee or agent of such persons, or any affiliate of such persons, makes any recommendation as to whether holders of Notes should participate in the Offer.

SOURCE CEMIG
The pandemic-focused report highlights the impact of lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, demand destruction, and change in customer behavior during 2020. Technavio analysts have curated the reports extensively through both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies to derive the most industry-relevant and business-relevant outcomes.

Companies across the globe are focusing on creating a Resilient Business Model in the Face of COVID-19. Vendors are continuing their ongoing operations while building resilient business models as the path to recovery from the pandemic is being carved out.

The recovery process involves various phases including:

Adjust their strategic planning to move ahead once business stability kicks in.

Focusing on agile execution of proposed and approved changes.

Conceptualize scenario-based planning to mitigate future crisis situations.

Find COVID-19 Insights Right Here

Key Considerations for Market Forecast:

Impact of lockdowns, supply chain disruptions, demand destruction, and change in customer behavior

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Top 3 Vendor Analysis of Childcare Management Software Market

EZChildTrack

The company offers childcare management solutions for afterschool programs, daycare services, summer camps, and others. This cloud-based childcare software reduces costs by centralizing and streamlining operations.

Hi Mama Inc.

The company offers various applications that contain the features such as Teacher Parent Communication, Attendance Tracking, Child Portfolios, Easy to Use Assessments, Early Childhood Observations, Lesson Planning, Preschool Classroom Management, and Child Care Billing Software.

Illumine Labs Pvt Ltd.

The company offers a childcare app that is designed to streamline operations, improve parent communication, and enable digital attendance & payments

If you purchase a report that is updated in the next 60 days, we will send you the new edition and data extract FREE! Get report snapshot here to get detailed market share analysis of market participants during COVID-19 lockdown:

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Childcare Management Software Market 2021-2025: Segmentation

Childcare management software market is segmented as below:

Deployment

Cloud-based



On-premise

Geography

North America



Europe



APAC



South America



MEA

The childcare management software market is driven by growing enrollments in preschools and playschools. In addition, the increasing number of working women and appreciating family income are expected to trigger the childcare management software market toward witnessing a CAGR of almost 7% during the forecast period.

Unlock the Childcare Management Software Market Report Statistics through Our Sample Report- https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR41644

Market Drivers

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Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

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Competitive scenario

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.

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SOURCE Technavio

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The 2nd China intelligent terminal Industry Developing Conference, the theme of which was "intelligence makes new industrial ecosystem, bringing success in new era", was held from July 9th to 13th in Yibin, Sichuan, indicating that intelligent terminal industry will be a new growth opportunity for the first city along the Yangtze River.

During the conference, seven forums, six rounds of intensive contract signing, a few new product release ceremonies and one exhibition were held, focusing on intelligent terminal industry and its future development.

Building a complete production chain

Yibin is speeding up to be a new base of intelligent terminal industry in west China, with its products exported to nearly 50 countries and regions like Hong Kong China, the U.S., Europe and Southeast Asia. In recent years, Yibin has attracted 231 projects with investment of over 60 billion RMB. Mobile phones are the main product of Yibin, along with key components and parts like chips, display modules, and shells, as well as other extensive intelligent terminal products.

With regional advantages, complete industrial bases and broad prospects, in the past few years, the intelligent terminal industry of Yibin has started from scratch. Its fast growth is closely related to the efforts of the local government.

Yibin has built a complete policy system, providing companies with service from settling to operating and developing. With the service concept of "Lifelong baby-sitter, private butler, personal tailor", Yibin has organized special teams for each company to follow project approval, construction, production and operation.

Presently, Yibin has become the only national pilot city of integration of production and education, and Sichuan's only pilot area of integration of university, education, research, industry and urbanization. Twelve universities and colleges in Yibin will provide talent security for development of the intelligent terminal development.

Opportunities depict a blueprint of intelligent terminal

Through this conference, the intelligent terminal industry of Yibin will enter a new development stage, promoting over 200 famous companies to go to the whole country as well as the world.

"Yibin's infrastructure, transportation, talent, and the industrial base of intelligent terminal attracted our company to settle here," said Liu Yan, vice chairman of the board of Tuowei Information, CEO of Haiyuntian Technology, who has witnessed fast changes in Yibin.

The 2nd China intelligent terminal Industry Developing Conference attracted 74 companies to take part in, among which a few companies has been looking forward to settling down there. Now Yibin is depicting a blueprint of intelligent terminal.

China's 14th Five Year Plan has started. Yibin will continue to support high-quality development of intelligent terminal industry. Yibin will take measures to attract leading enterprises to invest, cooperate to built industrial ecosystem, promote industrial agglomeration, build brand and develop market and build a industry demonstration base of national new industrialization (electronic information and intelligent terminal).

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1576430/The_2nd_China_intelligent_terminal__Industry_Developing_Conference___Shot_by_Wang_Lei.jpg

SOURCE China News Service
CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CNA Financial Corporation (NYSE: CNA) will report second quarter 2021 results before the market opens on Monday, August 2, 2021. The news release, earnings presentation and financial supplement will be available on CNA's website at www.cna.com. A conference call for investors and analysts is scheduled for 8 a.m. CT and will be hosted by Dino E. Robusto, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of CNA Financial Corporation.

A live webcast will be available via the Investor Relations section of www.cna.com. Those interested in participating in the question and answer session should dial (800) 289-0571, or for international callers, +1 (720) 543-0206. An online replay will also be available on CNA's website following the call.

About CNA

CNA is one of the largest U.S. commercial property and casualty insurance companies. Backed by more than 120 years of experience, CNA provides a broad range of standard and specialized insurance products and services for businesses and professionals in the U.S., Canada and Europe. For more information, please visit CNA at www.cna.com.

Follow CNA (NYSE: CNA) on: Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube

Press Contacts

Cara McCall

CNA

[email protected]

312-822-1309

CNA Newsroom

[email protected]

312-822-5167

Analyst Contact

Amy C. Adams

CNA

[email protected]

312-822-5533

SOURCE CNA
HARTFORD, Conn., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- From 1994 to 2020, public acceptance of LGBTQ+ people rose from 46% to 72%. This meteoric rise is due, in part, to the pioneering work of American colleges and universities.

Some began their efforts even before the American Psychiatric Association dropped its categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973

Given the progress, College Values Online studied and ranked the top 30 colleges that continue to find innovative ways to recognize and include the LGBTQ+ community into society.



"During pride month, we took the opportunity to examine which colleges were finding ways to break down barriers and make their campuses a safer, more inclusive space for their LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff," said Julia McCaulley, College Values Online Editor. "What we found was very encouraging. Acceptance of diversity is a crucial aspect, not only to those within the LGBTQ+ community but to everybody who works, studies, and lives on college campuses across the country. We are pleased to present the schools that earned top marks for promoting these changes!"

Here's a sampling of 30 US Colleges That Have Made Great Strides In LGBTQ+ Acceptance

The University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Thanks to LGBTQ+ activists at the University of Michigan, the college made history in 1971 when it opened the first staff office for LGBTQ+ students in an American institution of higher learning. The two-person staff created a system of peer advisors trained to help LGBTQ+ students. Today, LGBTQ+ issues are promoted throughout the college. For instance, its medical school ensures that all of its students learn about LGBTQ+ health concerns. Campus Pride names it one of the best LGBTQ+ colleges in America.

University of California, Los Angeles

Los Angeles, California

This university has led significant achievements in LGBTQ+ rights. Perhaps the earliest indirect accomplishment was the graduation of John Burnside, who later founded the Los Angeles Gay Liberation Front. In the 1950s, a college urologist performed one of the earliest gender-reassignment surgeries. One of its psychologists published research showing that homosexuality was not a psychological disease. Pioneering achievements continue at UCLA. For instance, the college's health department has been tracking transgender and nonbinary experiences during the pandemic in the hopes of providing better care.

University of Oregon

Eugene, Oregon

The University of Oregon has seen more than four decades of grassroots activism by LGBTQ+ students, faculty and staff, and community allies. In 1969, the University became home to the Gay People's Alliance. The first accommodation that the college provided to LGBTQ+ people took place in 1971, when the college adopted equal employment opportunities, by stating that it would not regard any "extraneous considerations" in hiring decisions. In 1992, the college formed the Standing Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT). Today, the college encourages equality in many ways, such as the John R. Moore Scholarship, which gives students $2,000 for excelling in contributing to the LGBTQ+ community at the college.

Purdue University

West Lafayette, Indiana

The first LGBTQ group on the Purdue University campus was the Purdue Gay Alliance, formed in 1971. A few years later, the college became home to the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Women's Alliance. Today, the college's LGBTQ+ Center hosts a wide range of welcoming activities. Higher Education Today notes that Purdue University has one of the best LGBTQ inclusion policies in America.

Stanford University

Stanford, California

The Stanford Sexual Rights Forum was founded in 1965. This student organization became the first student group to advocate nationally for civil rights for LGBTQ+ people. In 1968, the college also saw the foundation of the Homophile League of Stanford University, the second homosexual student group in America. It was followed up in 1970 with the Stanford Gay Students Union. More achievements included the first gay studies course in 1973 and the tenured hiring of the first openly gay professor at the college in 1977. More recently, the college introduced the Stanford LGBT Executive Leadership Program in 2016.

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is home to the second oldest LGBTQ+ center in America, which opened in 1982. It has grown over the years and today occupies an entire building on campus. Additionally, the college's hospitals are renowned for LGBTQ+ patient care. In fact, in 2018, Human Rights Campaign stated that the hospitals were leading LGBTQ+ healthcare equality efforts. Fastweb names the University of Pennsylvania the most LGBTQ+-friendly college.

For the complete list and ranking methodology, click here.

Contact: Julia McCaulley, Editor

Phone: 518-496-0845

Email: http://www.collegevaluesonline.net/contact/

SOURCE College Values Online
WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- https://www.cpsc.gov/Newsroom/News-Releases/2021/CPSC-Urges-Vacation-Rental-Platforms-AirBnB-Vrbo-TripAdvisor-and-Others-to-Require-Owners-to-Disable-Home-Elevators-Immediately

Following another report of a tragic death of a young child in a residential elevator, U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Acting Chairman Robert Adler today asked the vacation rental community for help. In a letter to vacation rental platforms, AirBnB, Vrbo, and others, Adler urged the companies to take steps immediately to protect vulnerable consumers.

"The agency is taking steps with the manufacturers, but we need the businesses that facilitate vacation rentals to join us," said Adler. "These injuries and deaths are horrific, and we need property owners and rental agencies to disable elevators immediately until they have been inspected."

Residential elevators pose a hidden and deadly hazard: small children can be crushed to death in a gap that may exist between the doors. If the gap between any exterior (i.e., hoistway) door, and the farthest point of the inner door (which is often an accordion door) is too deep, a child can enter and close the hoistway door without opening the interior car door, and become entrapped between the two doors, resulting in serious injuries or death when the elevator car moves. Children, some as young as two, and as old as 12, have been crushed to death in this gap, suffering multiple skull fractures, fractured vertebrae and traumatic asphyxia. Other children have suffered devastating and lifelong injuries. Last week, a 7-year-old child was reported to have tragically died in a vacation home elevator in North Carolina.

Today's letter is the first time the agency has publicly called on vacation rental businesses to take immediate action. Specifically, the letter asks rental companies to notify all renters immediately about the potential hazard via email, or in a warning box on their reservation or booking pages; immediately require all members or "hosts" using the platforms to lock outer access doors or otherwise disable the elevators in their properties, unless and until those members provide proof of an inspection, certifying that no hazardous gap exists; and require elevator inspections of anyone posting a listing going forward.

CPSC has issued warnings, recalls and a lawsuit concerning residential elevators.

For more safety information, see CPSC's safety education messages on residential elevators.

CPSC will continue its investigation into the safety of residential elevators, and advises consumers to report any safety incident involving residential elevators at www.SaferProducts.gov.

About the U.S. CPSC

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products. Deaths, injuries, and property damage from consumer product incidents cost the nation more than $1 trillion annually. CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products has contributed to a decline in the rate of injuries associated with consumer products over the past 40 years.

Federal law bars any person from selling products subject to a publicly announced voluntary recall by a manufacturer or a mandatory recall ordered by the Commission.

For lifesaving information:

- Visit CPSC.gov.

- Sign up to receive our e-mail alerts.

- Follow us on Facebook, Instagram @USCPSC and Twitter @USCPSC.

- Report a dangerous product or a product-related injury on www.SaferProducts.gov.

- Call CPSC's Hotline at 800-638-2772 (TTY 301-595-7054).

- Media Contact 301-504-7908

Release Number: 21-166

SOURCE U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission

Related Links

https://www.cpsc.gov


PHOENIX, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- (OTC  CELZ) Creative Medical Technology Holdings Inc. announced today the launching of its second Regenerative Immunology product, MyeloCelz.

In contrast to the Company's ImmCelz product, which utilizes primarily T cells and B cells to induce activation of the body's own stem cells and healing processes, MyeloCelz utilizes the innate immune system, particularly cells of the monocyte/macrophage lineage.

"Immunotherapy is the future of medicine. In the field of oncology immunotherapy it has saved thousands of lives and resulted in the Nobel Prize in Medicine." Said Thomas Ichim, Ph.D, Chief Scientific Officer, and Co-Founder of the Company. "We believe that in using ImmCelz and MyeloCelz, we are in the position to advance immunotherapy for treatment of degenerative conditions, an approach that we term "Regenerative Immunotherapy". This is a first-in-class therapeutic direction that leverages the specificity, amplification, and memory of the immune system in order to accelerate the body to restore its function."

"The unique thing about MyeloCelz, like ImmCelz, is that the cellular product is personalized and the patient is receiving their own cells back into themselves. This not only significantly increases the safety of the procedure, but also conceptually may increase efficacy because the body's own cells know best how to interact with the body." Said Dr. Courtney Bartlett, Director of Clinical Development.

"Having recently joined the Scientific Advisory Board of the Company, I am astonished at the expedience, innovation, and productivity of the team assembled by Dr. Thomas Ichim, Chief Scientific Officer of the Company." Said Dr. Camillo Ricordi. "MyeloCelz, which is a parallel immunotherapy approach to ImmCelz, is another paradigm shifting product and to my knowledge, is covered by one of the most comprehensive patent applications in cell therapy."

The Company's first regenerative immunotherapy product, ImmCelz was demonstrated effective in numerous animal models of autoimmunity and is the subject of a filed and pending FDA IND for use in stroke. ImmCelz was featured at the international stem cell conference, The World Stem Cell Summit, with the presentation available at this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTHUxz_xN5w .

"I am grateful for our team of scientific advisors and collaborators, who have worked diligently and ingeniously to develop a cellular therapy that leverages aspects of the innate immune system in stimulating the body to heal itself naturally. The addition of MyeloCelz to our Regenerative Immunotherapy portfolio, which includes ImmCelz and multiple patent filings on the treatment of specific indications, clearly demonstrates our dedication to the immunotherapy space." Said Timothy Warbington, President and CEO of the Company.

About Creative Medical Technology Holdings

Creative Medical Technology Holdings, Inc. is a commercial stage biotechnology company specializing in regenerative medicine/stem cell technology in the fields of immunotherapy, urology, neurology and orthopedics and is listed on the OTC under the ticker symbol CELZ. For further information about the company, please visit www.creativemedicaltechnology.com.

Forward Looking Statements

OTC Markets has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming clinical trials and laboratory results, marketing efforts, funding, etc. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and, therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements. See the periodic and other reports filed by Creative Medical Technology Holdings, Inc. with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Commission's website at www.sec.gov.

Creativemedicaltechnology.com

www.StemSpine.com

www.Caverstem.com

www.Femcelz.com www.MyeloCelz.com

www.OvaStem.com

www.ImmCelz.com

SOURCE Creative Medical Technology Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://creativemedicaltechnology.com


NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Around the world, industrialization and urbanization are leading to a rise in people's disposable income. Along with this, urbanization is making residents more conscious of their appearance. The combined effect of these factors is expected to drive the global dermacosmetics market value to $115.2 billion in 2030 from $57.0 billion in 2020, at a 7.3% CAGR between 2020 and 2030, according to the market research report published by P&S Intelligence.

This is because with their surging appearance consciousness and spending power, urban dwellers, especially in emerging economies, are purchasing an increasing amount of dermacosmetic products. Another key driver for the dermacosmetics market is the increasing prevalence of skin issues, such as acne, atopic dermatitis, dyspigmentation, hyperpigmentation, psoriasis, deep wrinkles, freckles, and melasma. For instance, 125 million people around the globe had psoriasis in 2020, as per the World Psoriasis Day consortium.

Key Findings of Global Dermacosmetics Market Report

Skincare products to continue being in higher demand

Developing countries to be key market growth enablers in future

Dermacosmetic sales increasing rapidly via online channels

Market players being increasingly subjected to no-animal-testing policy

Established dermacosmetic companies acquiring smaller ones

Personalized dermacosmetics major opportunity for market

Get the sample copy of this report at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/dermacosmetics-market/report-sample

The dermacosmetics market and other allied industries were badly affected during the COVID-19 pandemic, as the lockdowns in various countries led to closed manufacturing facilities and retail and cosmetic stores. Moreover, due to job losses, furloughs, and reduced salaries, people did not purchase non-essential items, which further hurt the product demand.

The skincare category will likely witness the faster growth in the product segment of the dermacosmetics market in the coming years. A wide range of products are available for skin applications, such as aging, skin whitening, spot removal, and acne treatment, which will boost their sales.

Browse detailed report with COVID-19 impact analysis on Dermacosmetics Market Research Report: By Product (Skincare, Haircare), Treatment (Skin, Hair), Distribution Channel (Pharmacies & Retail Stores, Online Channels), End User (Clinics, Medical Spas, & Salons, At-Home, Hospitals)  Global Industry Revenue Estimation and Demand Forecast to 2030 @ https://www.psmarketresearch.com/market-analysis/dermacosmetics-market

In the past, the dermacosmetics market, under segmentation by distribution channel, generated the higher revenue from the pharmacies & retail stores bifurcation. This is the more-traditional distribution channel, and such places employ learned pharmacists and other staff members who can advise customers about the products on offer.

The highest CAGR, of 7.6%, within the end user segment of the dermacosmetics market, will be seen in the clinics, medical spas, & salons category. Most people visit these places for skin and hair treatments as the services provided here are generally cheaper than those offered at hospitals.

Make Enquiry Before Purchase at: https://www.psmarketresearch.com/send-enquiry?enquiry-url=dermacosmetics-market

Europe has dominated the dermacosmetics market till now because of the high disposable income of its residents and increasing incidence of skin diseases. The rise in the demand for such products will be the fastest in Asia-Pacific (APAC) in the years to come as the people here are witnessing financial prosperity and becoming more conscious of how they look.

Browse More Reports

India Skincare Dermacosmetics Market - The Indian skincare dermacosmetics market recorded the highest growth in North India in the past years and this trend is likely to continue in the future years. This will be because of the existence of several international brands and companies in the northern region of the country.

Beauty Devices Market - Geographically, the Asia-Pacific beauty devices market is projected to record the highest CAGR during the forecast period. This can will be due to the surge in the disposable income, increase ing prevalence of skin diseases, rise ing awareness on beauty devices, growth in ing geriatric population, introduction of low-cost beauty products, easy availability of leading brands, and increase ing concern about physical appearance, in the region.

Skincare Devices Market - Globally, the skincare devices market is predicted to demonstrate the highest growth rate in Asia-Pacific in the future. This would be because of the presence of a large population, the increasing incidence of obesity and skin diseases, and surging geriatric population in the region.

About P&S Intelligence

P&S Intelligence is a provider of market research and consulting services catering to the market information needs of burgeoning industries across the world. Providing the plinth of market intelligence, P&S as an enterprising research and consulting company, believes in providing thorough landscape analyses on the ever-changing market scenario, to empower companies to make informed decisions and base their business strategies with astuteness.

Contact:

Prajneesh Kumar

P&S Intelligence

Phone: +1-347-960-6455

Email: [email protected]

Web: https://www.psmarketresearch.com

SOURCE P&S Intelligence
WICHITA, Kan., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The proposed Kansas Health Science Center  Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine (KHSC-KansasCOM), which is currently under construction in downtown Wichita, has added David Ninan, DO, and Dasa Gangadhar, MD, as members of its full-time faculty.

Dr. Ninan joins the proposed KHSC-KansasCOM as the assistant dean of curriculum innovation and education. He will lead the school's Center for Innovation in Healthcare & Education, which will serve as a repository of information on the latest in health care related breakthroughs as well as oversee an advisory board of leaders in the innovation community to help generate ideas for proposed KHSC-KansasCOM programs.

Dr. Ninan comes to the proposed KHSC-KansasCOM from Riverside University Health System (RUHS) in Moreno Valley, California, where he was medical staff president. During his career, he has been involved in medical school education in numerous ways from curriculum development and classroom instruction to overseeing residency programs and serving on the national review committee for the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Dr. Gangadhar, who was a founding member of the proposed KHSC-KansasCOM's board of trustees, will now take on the role of assistant dean for clinical education. Prior to joining the faculty, Dr. Gangadhar was a partner at Grene Vision Group where he spent nearly three decades serving the people of Kansas as an eye surgeon.

In addition to his medical practice, Dr. Gangadhar was also a member of a statewide health care task force under Governor Sam Brownback in which he saw firsthand the critical shortage of medical services in the state and the need for the next generation of Kansan physicians.

"We are excited and honored to have Drs. Ninan and Gangadhar join our faculty," KHSC President and Chief Executive Officer Tiffany Masson, Psy.D., says. "The addition of these two accomplished physicians and health care professionals further illustrates both the tremendous support we have received from the community as well as our commitment to provide the very best in health care education for the state of Kansas."

With the goal of opening for the 2022 academic year, the proposed KHSC-KansasCOM is currently working through the accreditation process. The school will sit in a historic 90-year-old building at 230 E. William and 130 S. Market in downtown Wichita. The campus will include an osteopathic skills training center, standardized patient teaching rooms, large lecture halls, small group study rooms, a virtual anatomy lab, and much more.

The proposed KHSC-KansasCOM is part of TCS Education System, an integrated, nonprofit system that works collaboratively to advance institutional sustainability, student success, and community impact. The System consists of five colleges and universities as well as the TCS System Officea community of professionals providing strategic support and expertise in the integrated operations and collective impact of the entire TCS Education System community. In addition to the proposed KHSC-KansasCOM, the System includes Pacific Oaks College, The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law, Saybrook University, and The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. To learn more, visit tcsedsystem.edu and kansashsc.org.

About Kansas Health Science Center

Kansas Health Science Center is a nonprofit organization committed to training well-prepared physicians and health care leaders who will positively contribute to the overall well-being of our communities. With the goal of opening the proposed Kansas Health Science Center - Kansas College of Osteopathic Medicine in 2022, KHSC strives to positively impact the health landscape in Wichita and the state of Kansas through directly addressing the disparity in access to health care. Learn more at kansashsc.org.

SOURCE Kansas Health Science Center

Related Links

https://kansashsc.org


The partnership brings together two of the largest brands serving the venture capital, tech, and innovation ecosystem throughout the state of Florida. The resulting transaction will further amplify eMerge Americas' year-round platform with content, events, pitch competitions and a match-making agenda for investors and entrepreneurs with expanded programming and engagement across the state of Florida, in addition to an office in Miami.

As an official member of the Board of Directors, Mayor Francis Suarez will support eMerge Americas' mission to build a thriving tech hub and ecosystem in South Florida as businesses, entrepreneurs, and investment talent migrate to Miami. Mayor Suarez will also help to strengthen the growth and long-term strategy of eMerge Americas.

Florida Funders' partners investing in this round include Rachael Sapoznick, Board Member at Florida Funders and founder of Sapoznik Insurance, and Steve MacDonald, Partner, Board Member, and Investment Committee member at Florida Funders and founder of MacDonald Ventures.

Leadership, Governance, and Structure

The eMerge Americas Board of Directors is composed of Manny Medina, Founder and Executive Chairman; Marc Blumenthal, General Partner at Florida Funders; Francis Suarez, Mayor of the City of Miami; in addition to Felice Gorordo, CEO, and Melissa Medina, Co-founder and President, who will both continue to lead eMerge Americas alongside Diane Vidoni, COO.

Executive Commentary

Manny Medina, Founder and Executive Chairman of eMerge Americas, says:

"This strategic partnership with Florida Funders and the appointment of Mayor Francis Suarez to the Board allows us to super serve our ecosystem stakeholders with the resources, programming, and capital they need. We could not think of better partners that are aligned with our vision and enthusiasm to accelerate innovation statewide."

Tom Wallace, Managing Partner at Florida Funders, says:

"eMerge Americas is an integral part of the gravitational pull that's led entrepreneurs and investors to relocate to South Florida. At Florida Funders, we work tirelessly to ensure we are finding, funding, and building the best early-stage technology companies, and now we'll have an expanded pipeline of new investors and founders through the eMerge Americas network."

Marc Blumenthal, General Partner at Florida Funders, says:

"This transformative partnership with eMerge Americas was a natural next step as we expand our footprint -- we have a shared mission, and we're excited about helping grow the tech and innovation ecosystems in Miami and around the state."

Francis Suarez, Mayor of the City of Miami, says:

"eMerge Americas has laid the groundwork for the city of Miami to become a bastion of entrepreneurship, tech, and innovation for over a decade, and I couldn't be more honored to join the Board of Directors. Working closely with eMerge Americas uniquely positions us to attract more businesses, entrepreneurs, and investment talent."

Upcoming In-person Event

Marking the return to physical gatherings in a post-COVID era, eMerge Americas and Florida Funders will host La Casa, an in-person event on November 30th - December 1st, 2021. The event will be a precursor to the annual eMerge Americas global tech conference, scheduled on April 18-19, 2022, anchoring Miami Tech Week.

Sign up at lacasamiami.co to receive updates on the networking events and planned agenda for La Casa, which includes panels, keynote presentations and more.

About eMerge Americas

eMerge Americas is a venture-backed platform focused on transforming Miami into the tech hub of the Americas. The eMerge signature event, launched in 2014, is a global tech conference held annually at the Miami Beach Convention Center, attracting more than 16,000 attendees from 40 countries and over 3,900 unique participating organizations. In addition to the annual conference, eMerge organizes and hosts year-round executive summits, innovation challenges, startup pitch competitions, masterclasses, webinars, as well as publishes venture activity and investment insights reports. For the last decade, eMerge has served as a catalyst for innovation and investment across the Americas, working at the forefront of building the South Florida entrepreneurial and tech ecosystem. Visit www.emergeamericas.com for more information.

About Florida Funders, LLC

Recognized as the top VC in the Southeast region by Pitchbook, Florida Funders is a hybrid of a venture capital fund and an angel investor network that discovers, funds, and builds early-stage technology companies in Florida and beyond. In order for Florida to evolve from the Sunshine State to the Startup State, we ensure there is as little friction as possible in the ecosystem, that investors have access to meaningful deal flow, and entrepreneurs have access to a wide range of accredited investors, capital, and experience. Florida Funders educates our community of investors, provides transparency during the funding process, fosters communication across the ecosystem, and empowers the strategic relationships that drive investments. Our team is composed of serial entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and experienced angel investors singularly focused on uncovering Florida's next breakout technology companies. To learn more, visit www.floridafunders.com .

SOURCE eMerge Americas

Related Links

https://www.emergeamericas.com


WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Farm Bureau Federation, in partnership with Farm Credit, is accepting online applications for the 2022 Farm Bureau Ag Innovation Challenge through Aug. 20. This national business competition showcases U.S. startup companies that are providing innovative solutions to either traditional or new/emerging challenges faced by America's farmers, ranchers and rural communities. Farm Bureau will award $165,000 in startup funds.

The 2021 winner, Riley Clubb with Harvust, developed a software platform that helps farmers successfully hire, train and communicate with employees. Butter Meat Co., a 2021 semi-finalist company led by Jill Gould, is a beef supply chain startup focused on improving the value proposition of retired dairy cows as beef for farmers and consumers.

Farm Bureau and Farm Credit will select 10 startup companies to compete as semi-finalists at the AFBF Convention in January 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. The 10 semi-finalist teams will be announced Oct. 5 and awarded $10,000 each. These 10 teams will compete to advance to the final round where four teams will receive an additional $5,000 each and compete live on stage in front of Farm Bureau members, investors and industry representatives. The final four teams will compete to win:

Farm Bureau Ag Innovation Challenge Winner, for a total of $50,000

Farm Bureau Ag Innovation Challenge Runner-up, for a total of $20,000

People's Choice Team selected by public vote, for an additional $5,000 (all 10 semi-finalist teams compete for this honor)

The top 10 semi-finalist teams will participate in pitch training and mentorship from Cornell University's Dyson School of Applied Economics & Management faculty prior to competing at AFBF's Convention. In addition, the top 10 semi-finalist teams will have the opportunity to network with industry leaders and venture capital representatives from the Agriculture Department's Rural Business Investment Companies .

Entrepreneurs must be Farm Bureau members to qualify as top 10 semi-finalists. Applicants who are not Farm Bureau members can join a state Farm Bureau of their choice. Visit https://www.fb.org/about/join to learn about becoming a member. Detailed eligibility guidelines, the competition timeline, videos and profiles of past winners are available at fb.org/challenge .

Applications must be received by midnight Eastern Daylight Time on Aug. 20.

Media Contacts:

Mike Tomko Bailey Corwine

Office (202) 406-3642 Office (202) 406-3643

Cell (785) 409-2050 Cell (410) 446-8829

[email protected] [email protected]

SOURCE American Farm Bureau Federation

Related Links

www.fb.org


Each profile is free to view and packed with high-quality insights, providing businesses with detailed company information. Users can take advantage of these insights to identify, target, and connect with the right forklift manufacturers and suppliers. This company information includes employee insights, company competitors, the impact of emerging trends and challenges, the latest news, and more.

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About BizVibe

BizVibe has been conceptualized and built by a team based out of Toronto, Bangalore, and London. We are a branch of Infiniti Research and have dedicated units in all three locations. BizVibe helps buyers find the most relevant suppliers from around the world and help sellers target prospects who need their products and/or services. For more information, please visit www.bizvibe.com and start for free today.

Contact

BizVibe

Jesse Maida

Email: [email protected]

+1 855-897-5880

Website: https://www.bizvibe.com/

SOURCE BizVibe

Related Links

http://www.bizvibe.com/


AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- As intensive care units across the country fill to capacity, hospital beds are in dangerously short supply, and deaths from COVID-19 continue to spike, doctors from medical centers coast to coast are reporting on the remarkable healing properties of ExoFlo, an innovative life-saving therapy that leverages the anti-inflammatory and regenerative effects of bone-marrow derived mesenchymal stem cells, when used on their most seriously ill COVID-19 patients. The physicians note that utilizing ExoFlo, administered as a single IV infusion, is safe and efficacious and is saving lives on a consistent basis.

One of the product's earliest advocates, Dr. Vik Sengupta of New York, credits ExoFlo with saving his own life. He has since used it on many critically ill patients, eagerly shared it with colleagues, and coauthored, with his wife, Dr. Sascha Sengupta, a clinical safety trial conducted at Christ Hospital in Jersey City, N.J. as part of the therapy's FDA approval process. The safety data from this study has since set the stage for the FDA approval of ExoFlo for an Investigational New Drug (IND) application for COVID-19.

"The most common cause of death among critically ill COVID-19 patients is acute respiratory distress symptom, or ARDS, in which the lungs are badly damaged, scarred and fill with fluid," explained Dr. Sengupta. "This is essentially a result of the body reacting to a threat by overproducing cytokines and other mediators of inflammation that cause damage to the lungs and other tissues in the body in a phenomenon commonly known as the 'cytokine storm.'

"ExoFlo does two important things: it remediates the inflammation almost immediately by delivering miRNA that stop the inflammatory cascade, and it delivers growth factors that promote the regeneration of healthy lung tissue for a much speedier recovery."

ExoFlo is manufactured by Direct Biologics, a market-leading cGMP manufacturer of regenerative medical products based in Austin, Texas. ExoFlo has amazed doctors with its ability to fill an unmet but urgent medical need, saving the lives of patients experiencing COVID-19- associated Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Time and again, patients were able to be discharged and returned to their families rather than deteriorating to an irreversible state.

"This product could not have come at a better time," noted Dr. Angel Lazo Jr. of New Jersey. "This product also opens the door to medical solutions for post-pandemic concerns, when there will be an urgent need to address COVID-19 survivors suffering from Post-Acute COVID Syndrome (PACS), often referred to as long-hauler COVID, and to remediate compromised immune systems and likely lasting pulmonary scarring."

Dr. Sengupta recalls his first experience with ExoFlo: "We were all exhausted, working multiple shifts during the worst of the early days of the epidemic when the New York area was hit so hard. A friend asked me if I could help her elderly parents, both in their 80s and both very ill with COVID-19. The wife had been admitted to the hospital, and unfortunately, despite our best efforts, the hospital administration refused us permission to treat her with ExoFlo. The husband, who had been declining quickly and suffered from a fever, hypoxia, delirium, diarrhea, no sense of taste, and lack of appetite, became the first documented patient in medical history to be administered an exosome-based treatment for critical respiratory illness. He received ExoFlo at home without any adverse reactions and was out of bed and singing arias within two days. Sadly, and unbeknownst to him, his wife had died in the hospital."

This was a dramatic and eye-opening experience. "When I myself fell victim to COVID, I became seriously ill very fast," noted Dr. Sengupta. "I awoke in the middle of the night, struggling to breath and sinking into delirium, and checked my O2sat, immediately realizing I was going into respiratory failure. I called my wife. She left her shift at the hospital, rushed home, and administered ExoFlo. Within 24 hours my supplemental oxygenation requirement, fever, and respiratory symptoms significantly improved. And within five days of that single dose, I was almost fully recovered from the acute infection. I firmly believe that ExoFlo saved my life."

As word spreads within the medical community, increasing numbers of doctors have been astounded by the efficacy and safety of ExoFlo. Among those who have gone on record singing its praises are Dr. Iman Bar of Newport Beach, Calif., and Dr. Jack Mann of Flushing, N.Y.

"The COVID-19 pandemic has presented doctors with a heartbreaking learning curve," said Dr. Sengupta, who has since become Direct Biologic's chief medical officer. "For months we had no choice but to stand by while patients died despite our best efforts to save them. It's an incredible relief now to have ExoFlo in our arsenal of treatments."

ExoFlo is a biopharmaceutical grade regenerative medicine product that represents a meaningful therapy in the fight against the deadly lung inflammation caused by the COVID-19 virus. The new investigational drug uses extracellular vesicles and growth factor proteins isolated from human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to reduce inflammation and direct cellular communication capable of strengthening the body's defenses and advancing its healing processes.

ExoFlo is currently in a Phase II clinical trial that expands knowledge gleaned from a prospective, open-label study in which 17 out of 24 patients demonstrated resolution of their ARDS, exhibiting biomarker and oxygenation improvements within 48-72 hours following treatment with a single 15mL intravenous dose of ExoFlo. Since receiving FDA approval of an expanded access protocol in October 2020, ExoFlo is also being utilized by physicians around the country as part of single patient emergency or compassionate use protocol, commonly referred to as eIND.

About Direct Biologics

Direct Biologics, LLC, is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with a recently expanded R&D facility located at the University of California, and an Operations and Order Fulfillment Center located in St. Louis, Missouri. Direct Biologics is a market-leading innovator and cGMP manufacturer of regenerative medical products, including a robust line of extracellular vesicle-based biological products. The company was created to expand the science of regenerative healing by delivering cutting-edge biologic technologies. Direct Biologics' management team holds extensive collective experience in biologics research, development, and commercialization, making the company a leader in the evolving, next generation segment of the biotherapeutics industry. Direct Biologics is dedicated to pursuing additional clinical applications of its extracellular vesicle biologic products through the FDA's investigational new drug application process.

For more information visit http://www.directbiologics.com.

CONTACT INFORMATION:

Tiffany Kayar

[email protected]

Related Images

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Direct Biologics Logo

SOURCE Direct Biologics
VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fabled Silver Gold Corp. TSX-V:FCO based in Vancouver, focused on acquiring, exploring and operating properties that yield near-term metal production, today announced that Peter Hawley, CEO & President, will present live at VirtualInvestorConferences.com on July 29th.

DATE: July 29th

TIME: 11:30 AM ET

LINK: https://bit.ly/3hGKd6Z

This will be a live, interactive online event where investors are invited to ask the company questions in real-time. If attendees are not able to join the event live on the day of the conference, an archived webcast will also be made available after the event.

It is recommended that investors pre-register and run the online system check to expedite participation and receive event updates.

Learn more about the event at www.virtualinvestorconferences.com.

Recent Company Highlights

Fabled discovers new high grade gold system with values intercepted up to 10.85 g/t AU within 30.7 meter structure grading 161.09 g/t Ag Eq.

Fabled underground diamon d drilling intercepts 4 zones of silver mineralization including 314.35 g/t Ag Eq. over 0.80 meters

Fabled announces private placement financing of up to $6 M

Fabled announces proposed spinout of copper assets into Fabled Copper Corp.

About Fabled Silver Gold

Fabled Silver Gold Corp. is focused on acquiring, exploring and operating properties that yield near-term metal production. Our management team has extensive experience in mining and exploration in Mexico and our mandate is to focus on the near-term exploration growth potential of our flagship Santa Maria property.

About Virtual Investor Conferences

Virtual Investor Conferences (VIC) is the leading proprietary investor conference series that provides an interactive forum for publicly-traded companies to meet and present directly with investors.



A real-time solution for investor engagement, Virtual Investor Conferences is part of OTC Market Group's suite of investor relations services specifically designed for more efficient Investor Access. Replicating the look and feel of on-site investor conferences, Virtual Investor Conferences combine leading-edge conferencing and investor communications capabilities with a comprehensive global investor audience network.

SOURCE VirtualInvestorConferences.com

Related Links

http://www.virtualinvestorconferences.com


CHEVY CHASE, Md., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- FCP announces that it recently closed on a preferred equity investment to facilitate Fairfield Properties' acquisition of a residential community currently known as Avalon Glen Cove located in the village of Glen Cove, New York. Fairfield Properties, a Melville-based owner and developer of commercial real estate, is the largest multifamily owner and operator on Long Island with over 45 years of experience.

The luxury mid-rise property will be rebranded as Fairfield Metro at Glen Cove and consists of 367 residential units. The transit-oriented property is located near the Glen Cove Station on the Oyster Bay Branch of the Long Island Railroad, which has a 1-hour trip between Glen Cove and New York City. The brand-new Glen Cove Ferry will provide riders with an additional option for their daily commutes to Manhattan.

Fairfield Metro at Glen Cove offers thoughtfully designed studios and one- and two-bedroom apartments that include gourmet kitchens with refined finishes, washers and dryers, spacious walk-in-closets and private patios or balconies. Community amenities include AM/PM concierge-attended lobbies, two outdoor swimming pools with sundeck, two fitness centers, an underground, indoor parking garage, a landscaped picnic area and a resident cinema.

"We are excited to continue to grow our relationship with Fairfield with our investment in this Class A community in the Glen Cove market, which complements Fairfield's portfolio and operational experience," said FCP Senior Vice President, E.J. Corwin.

Fairfield Metro at Glen Cove represents FCP's fifth transaction with Fairfield Properties.

About FCP

FCP is a privately held real estate investment company that has invested in or financed more than $8.6 billion in assets since its founding in 1999. FCP invests directly and with operating partners in commercial and residential assets. The firm makes equity and mezzanine investments in income-producing and development properties. Based in Chevy Chase, MD, FCP invests both its commingled, discretionary funds and separate accounts targeted at major real estate markets in the United States. For further information on FCP, please visit www.fcpdc.com.



About Fairfield

Fairfield Properties, headquartered in Melville, New York, is the largest owner and operator of multifamily real estate properties on Long Island. Their portfolio consists of over 150 Apartment Communities totaling 12,500 rental units and 15 Office Buildings with over 1.5 million square feet of commercial space.

Media Contact:

Karen Widmayer

KW Communications, LLC

[email protected]

301-661-1448

SOURCE FCP

Related Links

http://www.fcpdc.com


Firm continues rapid growth and expands to serve Irish individual investors

DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fisher Investments Ireland Limitedthe Ireland-based subsidiary of Fisher Investments and part of the Fisher Investments group of companies, which includes Fisher Investments Australiawill begin offering investment management services to high net worth investors and families in Ireland. The announcement follows the firm's recent expansion to serve Australian high net worth clients earlier this year.

"The decision to expand into Ireland was a logical step given the success we've experienced with our client-first model elsewhere in Europe," said Fisher Investments' CEO Damian Ornani. He continued, "It's another milestone in our mission to better the investment universe and help more clients globally."

Carrianne Coffey, Fisher Investments' Senior Executive Vice President of the Private Client Group International, said, "We're honoured to help high net worth clients in Ireland reach their financial goals. We look forward to showing Irish investors how our tailored portfolio management, personalised client service and structure that always puts their interests first, can help them plan for brighter financial futures."

The firm is actively recruiting candidates for sales, service and operations roles in Ireland. Fisher Investments Ireland offers generous compensation plans, exciting benefits and flexible career paths. Candidates from all professional and academic backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Interested job candidates should visit FisherCareers.com to explore available opportunities, learn more about benefits and apply.

About Fisher Investments Ireland:

Fisher Investments Ireland Limited is a private limited company incorporated in Ireland (Company Number 623847) and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Fisher Investments Ireland's registered address is 2nd Floor, 3 George's Dock, International Financial Services Centre, Dublin 1, D01 X5X0 Ireland. For more information on Fisher Investments Ireland Limited, please visit https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-ie.

About Fisher Investments Australia:

Fisher Investments Australia is a trademark of Fisher Investments Australasia Pty Ltd (ABN 86 159 670 667, AFSL 433312), which provides services to wholesale clients only and outsources portfolio management to its parent company, Fisher Investments. Fisher Investments Australasia Pty Ltd was established in 2013 and is based in Sydney. For more information on Fisher Investments Australia, please visit https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-au.

About Fisher Investments:

Fisher Investments is an independent, fee-only investment adviser. As of 30/06/2021, Fisher Investments and its subsidiaries manage over 136 billion in assets globallyover 104 billion for private investors, 30 billion for institutional investors and 1 billion for US small to mid-sized business retirement plans. Fisher Investments maintains three principal businesses: Private Client, Institutional and 401(k) Solutions, which serve a global client base of diverse investors. Founder and Executive Chairman Ken Fisher wrote the Forbes "Portfolio Strategy" column from 1984 through 2016, making him the longest continuously running columnist in the magazine's history. In recent years, Ken's columns have run consistently in major media outlets across almost every Western European country as well as material Asian countries, spanning more countries and more volume than any other columnist of any type in history. Ken has also authored 11 books, including four New York Times bestsellers on finance and investing. For more information on Fisher Investments, please visit www.fisherinvestments.com.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1523552/Fisher_Investments_Australia_Logo.jpg

Related Links

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/en-au



SOURCE Fisher Investments Australia
Firm continues rapid growth and expands to serve Irish individual investors

DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fisher Investments Ireland Limitedthe Ireland-based subsidiary of Fisher Investments and part of the Fisher Investments group of companies, which includes Fisher Investments Nordenwill begin offering investment management services to high net worth investors and families in Ireland. The announcement follows the firm's recent expansion to serve Australian high net worth clients earlier this year.

"The decision to expand into Ireland was a logical step given the success we've experienced with our client-first model elsewhere in Europe," said Fisher Investments' CEO Damian Ornani. He continued, "It's another milestone in our mission to better the investment universe and help more clients globally."

Carrianne Coffey, Fisher Investments' Senior Executive Vice President of the Private Client Group International, said, "We're honoured to help high net worth clients in Ireland reach their financial goals. We look forward to showing Irish investors how our tailored portfolio management, personalised client service and structure that always puts their interests first, can help them plan for brighter financial futures."

The firm is actively recruiting candidates for sales, service and operations roles in Ireland. Fisher Investments Ireland offers generous compensation plans, exciting benefits and flexible career paths. Candidates from all professional and academic backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Interested job candidates should visit FisherCareers.com to explore available opportunities, learn more about benefits and apply.

About Fisher Investments Ireland

Fisher Investments Ireland Limited is a private limited company incorporated in Ireland (Company Number 623847) and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Fisher Investments Ireland's registered address is 2nd Floor, 3 George's Dock, International Financial Services Centre, Dublin 1, D01 X5X0 Ireland. Fisher Asset Management, LLC, trading under the name "Fisher Investments" is the parent company of Fisher Investments Ireland Limited and is established in the USA (Delaware Secretary of State number 3936233) and regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC# 801-29362). For more information on Fisher Investments Ireland Limited, please visit https://www.fisherinvestments.ie.

About Fisher Investments Norden:

Fisher Investments Norden, filial af Fisher Investments Luxembourg Sarl is the branch name used by Fisher Investments Luxembourg, Sarl in Denmark ("Fisher Investments Norden") and is part of the global group of Fisher companies. Fisher Investments Norden is registered with the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority and with the Danish Business Authority under CVR number 41000643 and has a registered address at: Kbenhavn restad Winghouse, restads Boulevard 73, 2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark. As the Danish branch of Fisher Investments Luxembourg, Sarl, Fisher Investments Norden is regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier ("CSSF") and notified to the Danish Financial Supervisory Authority. For more information on Fisher Investments Norden, please visit https://www.fisherinvestments.com/da-dk.

About Fisher Investments

Fisher Investments is an independent, fee-only investment adviser. As of 30/06/2021, Fisher Investments and its subsidiaries manage over DKK 1181 billion in assets globallyover DKK 904 billion for private investors, DKK 262 billion for institutional investors and DKK 12 billion for US small to mid-sized business retirement plans. Fisher Investments maintains three principal businesses: Private Client, Institutional and 401(k) Solutions, which serve a global client base of diverse investors. Founder and Executive Chairman Ken Fisher wrote the Forbes "Portfolio Strategy" column from 1984 through 2016, making him the longest continuously running columnist in the magazine's history. In recent years, Ken's columns have run consistently in major media outlets across almost every Western European country as well as material Asian countries, spanning more countries and more volume than any other columnist of any type in history. Ken has also authored 11 books, including four New York Times bestsellers on finance and investing. For more information on Fisher Investments, please visit www.fisherinvestments.com.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1576877/Fisher_Investments_Norden_Logo.jpg

Related Links

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/da-dk



SOURCE Fisher Investments Norden
Firm continues rapid growth and expands to serve Irish individual investors

DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fisher Investments Ireland Limitedthe Ireland-based subsidiary of Fisher Investments and part of the Fisher Investments group of companies, which includes Fisher Investments Norden will begin offering investment management services to high net worth investors and families in Ireland. The announcement follows the firm's recent expansion to serve Australian high net worth clients earlier this year.

"The decision to expand into Ireland was a logical step given the success we've experienced with our client-first model elsewhere in Europe," said Fisher Investments' CEO Damian Ornani. He continued, "It's another milestone in our mission to better the investment universe and help more clients globally."

Carrianne Coffey, Fisher Investments' Senior Executive Vice President of the Private Client Group International, said, "We're honoured to help high net worth clients in Ireland reach their financial goals. We look forward to showing Irish investors how our tailored portfolio management, personalised client service and structure that always puts their interests first, can help them plan for brighter financial futures."

The firm is actively recruiting candidates for sales, service and operations roles in Ireland. Fisher Investments Ireland offers generous compensation plans, exciting benefits and flexible career paths. Candidates from all professional and academic backgrounds are encouraged to apply. Interested job candidates should visit FisherCareers.com to explore available opportunities, learn more about benefits and apply.

About Fisher Investments Ireland

Fisher Investments Ireland Limited is a private limited company incorporated in Ireland (Company Number 623847) and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Fisher Investments Ireland's registered address is 2nd Floor, 3 George's Dock, International Financial Services Centre, Dublin 1, D01 X5X0 Ireland. Fisher Asset Management, LLC, trading under the name "Fisher Investments" is the parent company of Fisher Investments Ireland Limited and is established in the USA (Delaware Secretary of State number 3936233) and regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC# 801-29362). For more information on Fisher Investments Ireland Limited, please visit https://www.fisherinvestments.ie.

About Fisher Investments Norden:

Fisher Investments Norden is the trading name used by Fisher Investments Luxembourg, Sarl in Sweden ("Fisher Investments Norden") and is part of the global group of Fisher companies. Fisher Investments Luxembourg, Sarl is a private limited liability company incorporated in Luxembourg (Company Number: B228486), is regulated by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier ("CSSF"), and has its registered address at: K2 Building, Forte 1, 2a rue Albert Borschette, Third Floor L-1246 Luxembourg. For more information on Fisher Investments Norden, please visit https://www.fisherinvestments.com/sv-se.

About Fisher Investments

Fisher Investments is an independent, fee-only investment adviser. As of 30/06/2021, Fisher Investments and its subsidiaries manage over SEK 1610 billion in assets globallyover SEK 1234 billion for private investors, SEK 358 billion for institutional investors and SEK 16 billion for US small to mid-sized business retirement plans. Fisher Investments maintains three principal businesses: Private Client, Institutional and 401(k) Solutions, which serve a global client base of diverse investors. Founder and Executive Chairman Ken Fisher wrote the Forbes "Portfolio Strategy" column from 1984 through 2016, making him the longest continuously running columnist in the magazine's history. In recent years, Ken's columns have run consistently in major media outlets across almost every Western European country as well as material Asian countries, spanning more countries and more volume than any other columnist of any type in history. Ken has also authored 11 books, including four New York Times bestsellers on finance and investing. For more information on Fisher Investments, please visit www.fisherinvestments.com.

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Related Links

https://www.fisherinvestments.com/sv-se



SOURCE Fisher Investments Norden
Employees donate for emergency aid project

BERLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In the spring of 2021, as the situation in many countries began to slightly improve, India was heavily hit by the second wave of COVID and experienced a collapse of the health system with tragic consequences. FLEXIM employees immediately started a company-wide fundraising campaign that collected 4,300 euros. FLEXIM employees felt that they shouldn't just watch, they had to help. The company, known for its non-invasive ultrasonic flowmeters, matched employee donations as part of their FLEXIM Cares initiative so that 8,600 euros could be transferred to the Akshaya Patra Foundation. This non-profit organization delivers meals and food packages to marginalized and low-income sections of the population as part of coronavirus emergency relief activities. With the donations, a total of 24,960 cooked meals for people in Delhi and Bangalore were financed and distributed.

Contact:

Jorg Sacher, PR / Communications

FLEXIM GmbH, [email protected], www.flexim.com

Related Images

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FLEXIM Cares

flexim-cares-india.jpg

FLEXIM Cares India

SOURCE FLEXIM
AACHEN, Germany, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Grunenthal is deeply saddened by the situation of the people affected by the flood disaster in Germany. Staff and executive management have set up a relief programme to provide immediate support for people who urgently need help.

Grunenthal donated 200,000 euros as immediate support for the severely affected town of Stolberg. The company will donate an additional 200,000 euros to the coalition "Germany Helps" (Aktion Deutschland Hilft) to support nationwide measures.

"Our thoughts and solidarity are with the people in our neighbourhood in the greater Aachen region and the other affected areas," says Gabriel Baertschi, CEO Grunenthal. "We will provide unbureaucratic support to the helpers on the ground."

Grunenthal supports employees who are personally affected by the flood disaster with financial and material means and paid leave.

About Grunenthal

Grunenthal is a global leader in pain management and related diseases. As a science-based, privately-owned pharmaceutical company, we have a long track record of bringing innovative treatments and state-of-the-art technologies to patients worldwide. Our purpose is to change lives for the better  and innovation is our passion. We are focusing all of our activities and efforts on working towards our vision of a world free of pain.

Grunenthal is headquartered in Aachen, Germany, and has affiliates in 29 countries across Europe, Latin America and the US. Our products are available in more than 100 countries. In 2020, Grunenthal employed around 4,500 people and achieved sales of  1.3 bn.

More information: www.grunenthal.com

Follow us on:

LinkedIn: Grunenthal Group

Instagram: grunenthal

Contact:

Fabia Kehren

Head External Communication & Editorial Management,

Grunenthal

Tel.: +49 241 569-3269

[email protected]

SOURCE Grunenthal Group
"Many of our oilfield customers have dual fuel fleets and were looking to single source their diesel, LNG and CNG supply," said Fluid Automation Station's Founder, Chairman and Owner Sam Simon. "This is a service that very few suppliers currently offer. Today's climate demands greener forms of energy. Our team strategically executed a plan to meet the increased need."

Fluid Automation Station has seen a shift in the industry and is working diligently to bring alternative fuel solutions to market and reduce carbon emissions in oil fields. Natural gas is one of the safest and cleanest energy sources available, emitting almost half the amount of carbon dioxide than diesel when burned. It emits little to no sulfur, making it more environmentally friendly and more efficient than other fuel alternatives. Natural gas fuel is cost-effective and provides further savings in the form of carbon credits.

"We are always on the lookout for innovative solutions," says, Jesus Mejorada, Co-Founder of Alliance OGP. "Offsetting a share of diesel consumption with natural gas creates an immediate opportunity for companies to lower their operating cost and their GHG emissions. We can now offer a turnkey dual-fuel program through Fluid Automation Station's premier automated fueling technology."

For more information, including multi-media assets, please access our Digital Press Kit.

About Fluid Automation Station

Fluid Automation Station (FAS) is a patented automated fueling solution that is setting the standard for safety and efficiency across multiple industries worldwide. Capable of providing automated product level management and delivery to as many as 36 distinct inventories simultaneously, FAS technology boosts operational efficiency while eliminating spills, hazards, and downtime. FAS offers a smart and secure cloud-based digital platform that provides customers with real-time data insight into their day-to-day fueling operations and is part of the Simon Group Holdings energy technology portfolio. For more information on the Fluid Automation Station, visit www.fluidautomationstation.com.

About Alliance OGP

Founded in 2018 and based in Houston, Alliance OGP is a leading mobile natural gas treatment company focused on leading the oil and gas industry's move away from diesel consumption and use natural gas to electrify oil and gas operations. Alliance OGP currently manages fuel gas solutions for over 230 megawatts of power generation assets and supports the dual-fuel and eFrac market. Alliance OGP is a portfolio company of Arroyo Energy Investment Partners, LLC. For more information on Alliance OGP, visit www.allianceogp.com.

SOURCE Fluid Automation Station

Related Links

http://fluidautomationstation.com


WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Family Research Council launched a new tracking website titled "America's Direct Deposit to Planned Parenthood" that shows taxpayer funding and abortion data of Planned Parenthood since 1994. This new analysis combines information from Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports which track federal tax dollars and Planned Parenthood's own annual reports that cover all government funding as well as service information. Over the 25 years between 1994-2019, Planned Parenthood has reported performing 7,059,206 abortions and receiving $9.7 billion in total taxpayer funding.

Over the same period, while total abortions in the U.S. have decreased, Planned Parenthood's share of total abortions reported to the Center for Disease Control have increased from a mere 10.5 percent in 1994 to 55.8 percent in 2018, the last year for which numbers are available. At the same time, annual taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood has nearly quadrupled, from $163.1 million in 1994 to $618.1 million in 2019. While Planned Parenthood's expanding abortion business is not directly caused by an increase in taxpayer funding, the $9.7 billion in taxpayer funds that Planned Parenthood received has made a substantial impact in transforming Planned Parenthood into the nation's single largest abortion supplier.

The House is considering an appropriations bill which repeals the Hyde Amendment and includes $400 million for Title X, the second largest source of federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Much of this 28 percent increase in Title X family planning grants will further Planned Parenthood's abortion business.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said:

"Planned Parenthood has become America's abortion giant, and it has been taxpayer dollars that has bankrolled the baby-killing industry. Planned Parenthood now performs more abortions annually than every other abortion supplier in America. Far from escaping its racist, eugenicist roots, it increasingly targets minority babies by locating the vast majority of its abortion facilities near black or Hispanic neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood does not deserve billions in government funding. Even pro-choice Americans have long agreed that taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortions. The time has come to put an end to the forced partnership between taxpayers and Planned Parenthood," concluded Perkins.

Connor Semelsberger, FRC's Director of Federal Affairs for Life and Human Dignity, who analyzed the data, added:

"Congress and many states have enacted policies like the Hyde Amendment that prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions directly; however, Planned Parenthood continues to receive millions of dollars in federal, state, and local tax subsidies each year while expanding their abortion business. This analysis brings to light what Planned Parenthood has long tried to keep in the dark, that their single goal has always been and still is to 'weed out the unfit' and receive public validation for that goal through taxpayer funding. As history shows us, at Planned Parenthood nothing is certain but death and taxpayer funding."

For more information, visit: frc.org/track.

SOURCE Family Research Council

Related Links

http://www.frc.org


ATLANTA, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Frontline Managed Services, one of the world's largest providers of managed services specifically geared for the legal industry, announces its new partnership with Glasser Tech LLC, a full-service information technology provider and an industry pioneer in creating and implementing ground-breaking technology solutions for law firms. Glasser Tech adds over 100 law firm clients to Frontline Managed Services in the Greater New York City area and will operate as the New York branch of Frontline Managed Services.

Frontline Managed Services

"Glasser Tech is among the most respected providers of IT services to small- to mid-size law firms throughout the country, which is a great complement for our service to over 400 of the world's largest firms and hundreds of mid-size firms," said Seelin Naidoo, CEO of Frontline Managed Services. "We are proud to continue integrating top-tier service providers as we continue growing to both innovate our existing services and extend our expertise and state-of-the-art platform to a larger base of law firm IT teams."

In addition to the hundreds of support professionals in Frontline Managed Services' Administrative and Financial Managed Services service lines, the integration of the Glasser Tech team brings the IT Managed Services staff to more than 700 employees in 11 worldwide offices. With its focus on law firms in the small and middle market, Glasser Tech's customers join a client roster that includes more than 40% of the AmLaw 200 and will benefit from a robust IT Managed Services platform.

"Our philosophy at Glasser Tech is to provide our clients with the best IT solutions tailored to meet the unique needs of law firms so they can effectively run their practices. Joining the Frontline Managed Services family allows us to truly elevate the services available to our customers," said Michael Glasser, founder of Glasser Tech LLC. "As the largest provider of technology, practice automation and efficiency solutions to law firms, our clients will benefit significantly from today's news as well as from Frontline Managed Services' shared commitment of constantly innovating to provide value for the law firms we serve."

Frontline Managed Services is also proud to announce that Michael Glasser with be joining the company's management team as an Equity Partner. Michael and his team will continue to serve the needs of our New York clients.

Following this partnership, Glasser Tech will merge under the banner of Frontline Managed Services while leveraging the additional support, scale and management afforded by the acquisition.

Today's announcement follows several strategic growth initiatives across Frontline Managed Services' global footprint, including the acquisition of eBilling provider InvoicePrep, expanded operations in Goa and Hyderabad, India, expansion to Hawaii in May 2021, acquisition of Hilltop Managed Services in October 2020 and a new office in Ohio in January 2020.

About Frontline Managed Services

Frontline Managed Services is the leading global provider of outsourcing solutions in the legal industry, including Administrative Managed Services, Financial Managed Services and IT Managed Services. Formerly known as Intelliteach, Frontline Managed Services connects its more than 700 law firm clients with administrative and IT services in ways that were never previously imagined, leading to an average 10-times return on investment and 40% reduction in overall operating expenses. Founded in 1987, Frontline Managed Services has more than 800 employees across locations in Atlanta; Honolulu; New York; Philadelphia; St. Louis; Toledo; Washington, D.C.; Toronto; London; Goa, India; and Hyderabad, India. For more information visit www.frontlinems.com.

About Glasser Tech LLC

Glasser Tech LLC is a full-service IT company committed to seamless transitions for law firms. Its team of highly qualified professionals assess firm needs and effectively implement software and hardware solutions, network design and training and support. Based in Hicksville, New York, Glasser Tech was founded in 2008 by Michael Glasser. To learn more about Glasser Tech, visit www.glassertech.com.

Media Contact:

Michael Mooney

404.875.3400

[email protected]

SOURCE Frontline Managed Services

Related Links

http://www.frontlinems.com


SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ReviverMX, Inc., developer of the world's first digital license plate (DLP), today announced that they have entered into an agreement with Galpin Motors to sell the Reviver Rplate through multiple Galpin Dealerships. Under the terms of the agreement, Reviver's Rplates will be sold through Galpin's Land Rover, Aston Martin, Jaguar, and Lotus outlets located in Van Nuys, California. The Reviver-Galpin alliance provides Reviver with an accelerated path to direct sales, while giving Galpin an additional revenue stream and a technical and aesthetic upgrade to further differentiate their premiere vehicle lines.

In addition to adding a boost to a vehicle's technology quotient, the Rplates have a unique look that adds a brilliant aesthetic touch to vehicles that are already among the most beautiful on the planet. From a technology perspective, the Rplate allows customers to conduct contactless DMV transactions while reducing or eliminating paper-based transactions for registration renewal. The registration renewal process is performed over the air through Reviver's proprietary smart-phone app via Bluetooth. Once transactions are concluded, the Rplate simply updates itself - eliminating the need for stickers. Additionally, Rplate owners can display messages and modify the appearance of their plate by changing background colors through Reviver's proprietary smart-phone app.

"We are excited to be working with Reviver to offer Galpin customers an innovative product to enhance their vehicle ownership experience," said Beau Boeckmann, President & COO of Galpin Motors. Reviver and Galpin will work together to communicate the unique value Reviver's digital plates provide owners. Unlike other options available, Rplates do not compete with anything else a dealer may be offering; in that regard they are truly unique. "Rplates add incremental value to the purchasing process," said Neville Boston, Reviver Founder and CSO. "Customers notice and compliment them immediately adding a very positive dynamic to the conversation. Once they understand the Rplate's value, the common response is, 'Why didn't anybody think of this before?'"

Reviver's Rplate and the more advanced Rplate Pro, are currently being sold for vehicles registered in California and Arizona and on commercial vehicles in Texas. Eleven other states are actively engaged in adopting Reviver plates, and Reviver is working with the remaining 36 states and the AAMVA for additional engagements. The company is currently selling Rplates through multiple channels, including automotive dealerships and affinity groups such as Susan G. Komen and the Arizona State University alumni association. Reviver's Rplate Pro with its suite of telematic features is positioned to serve small to medium-sized commercial fleets. The Rplate and Rplate Pro can be reviewed at: www.reviver.com.

ABOUT REVIVER

ReviverMX, Inc. ("Reviver") is the developer of a proprietary platform that integrates motor vehicle administrations (MVA) with vehicle owners through the company's digital license plates (DLP) and a smart phone app. The platform allows MVAs to digitize vehicle registration renewals and a variety of compliance transactions for potential cost savings to MVAs. Additionally, the platform delivers a growing menu of DLP personalization features that customers manage from their smart phones. Reviver sells two types of DLPs; the Rplate and the Rplate Pro. Both are legal for sale in California and Arizona with eleven states in various stages of adoption. For additional company and product information visit www.reviver.com.

SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT

ReviverMX, Inc. (The Company) has prepared and provides all of the financial and related information stated herein. The Company makes no express or implied representation or warranty as to projections, estimates, future plans, or forward-looking assumptions or statements, nor as to their attainability or the accuracy and completeness of the assumptions from which they are derived. Projections and estimates of the Company's performance are necessarily subject to a high degree of uncertainty and may vary materially from actual results.

SOURCE ReviverMX, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.reviver.com


DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Global Pasta Market By Type, Distribution Channel, Regions, Company Analysis, Forecast" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

Global Pasta Market is expected to reach USD 21.2 Billion by 2026, USD 19.1 Billion Market in 2020. Global pasta industry is expected to grow with a nominal CAGR of 1.75% from 2020 to 2026.

Italy produced around 1.4 Million tons of Pasta in 2018 and exported 1.7 million tons in the same year that marked Italy largest consumer of Pasta in the world that year. In the United States, the National Pasta Association promotes and informs policy to the industry, consumers, and the regulatory bodies across the globe. America is also one of the top 10 consumers of Pasta globally.



Today, Pasta can be found in various market forms like dried Pasta, Chilled/Fresh Pasta, Canned/Preserved Pasta. It is most liked dish due to its easily availability and healthy rich in carbohydrates. Pasta is ideal partner for healthy ingredients such as beans, green veggie, herbs and olive oil. To add more flavor and extra protein in dishes meat, fish and cheese are best options. Globally, pasta consumption has surged among health-conscious people because of its low intake of sodium and cholesterol-free properties.



Pasta dough is created in different forms, which include Penne, Barbine, Fettuccine, Farfalle and Spaghetti. According to the research, dried Pasta is the most preferred type, primarily due to its' longer shelf-life. Pasta versatility allows it to be cooked in endless ways, allowing it to love Gen Z and Millennial. Growing demand for specific food texture and flavour and changing food habit are increasing sales of the pasta market.

In the year 2020, Supermarkets and online stores played a vital role in offering a wide range of pasta brands. In 2020 as per industry sources, Ebro has agreed to sell its dry pasta and noodles business in the USA to TreeHouse Foods.

This report further analyzed the competitive landscape and provided the key players' profiles such as Ebro Foods, S.A., General Mills, Campbell Soup Company, Conagra Foods Inc and Unilever.



Key Topics Covered:



1. Introduction



2. Research & Methodology



3. Executive Summary



4. Market Dynamics

4.1 Growth Drivers

4.2 Challenges



5. Global Pasta Market



6. Market Share Analysis

6.1 By Type

6.2 By Distribution Channel

6.3 By Regions



7. Type - Global Pasta Market

7.1 Dried Pasta

7.2 Chilled/Fresh Pasta

7.3 Canned/Preserved Pasta

7.4 Others



8. Distribution Channel - Global Pasta Market

8.1 Supermarkets

8.2 Hypermarkets

8.3 Discounters

8.4 Independent Small Grocers

8.5 Online Stores

8.6 Others



9. Regions - Global Pasta Market

9.1 North America

9.2 Europe

9.3 Asia - Pacific

9.4 Middle East

9.5 Latin America



10. Merger & Acquisitions



11. Company Analysis

11.1 Overviews

11.2 Recent Developments

11.3 Revenues

Ebro Foods, S.A.

General mills

Campbell soup company

Conagra foods inc

Unilever

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/gd6rks

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900



U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


Herbarium is the best dispensary in Los Angeles that constantly uses their voice to stand for what's right. It is a minority-owned dispensary where assisting marginalized communities is a top priority. Over 90% of the staff consists of Black and Brown people as well as people part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

The Free The Trappers campaign created by our founders amplifies our belief that no one should be incarcerated for a substance that people capitalize from. "No one should be in prison for weed, Free the Trappers isn't just a slogan; Herbarium actually cares about the cause and the community. We want to turn weed convictions from a negative into a positive by hiring people who have only been convicted of weed charges", Lior Meiri, Founder and Creative Director. The cannabis industry is a multi-billion dollar industry yet a lot of brands and entrepreneurs in the industry do not contribute nor advocate for justice and equity. This phrase and campaign are more than just our social justice stance, but also symbolize our support to the Black and Brown communities who create/inspire culture in and outside of cannabis.

While state and federal cannabis policies are changing, there is still a long way to go to establish and maintain equity and justice. Currently, people who have been incarcerated for cannabis cannot own their own cannabis businesses. Inequity is a huge part of this industry and our country. As true allies, we pride ourselves in the work that we put into our mission day in and day out. Herbarium has been working closely with multiple organizations centered around the same mission, to decriminalize marijuana and expunge people's records to allow ownership in cannabis.

Herbarium has partnered with The NDCIA (The National Diversity & Inclusion Cannabis Alliance) to provide more employment opportunities to those who have faced jail time for cannabis. Paid interns from NDICA will learn all the skills and tools they need to become successful cannabis employees and business owners. We hope that our patients and those out there involved in social justice take time to get involved with Herbarium by supporting us and/or sharing our campaign!

About Herbarium

Herbarium is a California-based cannabis brand, with vertically integrated recreational dispensary in Los Angeles,, committed to; educate people about cannabis and its benefits, advocate for the decriminalization of cannabis, and elevate people's lifestyles and experiences. Herbarium is the only cannabis brand that caters to its clientele by constantly improving products while providing the lowest prices in the region. Additionally, Herbarium's 5-star delivery service allows their customers to get the herb they deserve from the comfort of their own homes.

Herbarium

LIC#: C11-0000571

979 N La Brea Ave,

Los Angeles CA 90038

Www.Herbarium.LA



FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Leslie Vargas

Publicist & Communications Director

Herbarium

617-712-5049 or [email protected]

SOURCE Herbarium LA

Related Links

https://herbarium.la/


CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Hillrom (NYSE: HRC) announced today it is Advancing Connected Care in the operating room (OR) with the launch of its Helion Integrated Surgical System in the U.S. market. The Helion System provides surgical teams with the operating room connectivity, flexibility and efficient staff communications they need to enhance patient outcomes.

"The launch of the Helion System demonstrates our continued commitment to advancing Hillrom's connected care capabilities in the operating room," said Hillrom President and CEO John Groetelaars. "Our intuitive and reliable Helion Integrated Surgical System will serve as the core of the operating room, enhancing OR efficiency and communications, and allowing care teams to focus on the patient and surgical procedure versus the complexity of their technology."

In 2020, Hillrom acquired Videomed, a pioneer in OR integration with hundreds of installations worldwide, to bring Hillrom's vision of Advancing Connected Care to the operating room. This technology, integrated into Hillrom's Global Surgical Solutions offerings as the Helion Integrated Surgical System, is now available in approximately 20 countries worldwide.

Hillrom's vendor-neutral Helion System balances patient safety with operational efficiency and throughput, seamlessly managing connections to OR equipment and multiple hospital systems. In addition to providing easy access to vital patient information inside the OR, Helion provides zero-latency analog- to 4K-capable live video and imaging feeds during procedures. The Helion System can be rapidly set-up in the OR, and features intuitive user controls and multiple networking options, providing high-quality, secure communication and collaboration inside and outside the OR.

About Hillrom

Hillrom is a global medical technology leader whose 10,000 employees have a single purpose: enhancing outcomes for patients and their caregivers by Advancing Connected Care. Around the world, our innovations touch over 7 million patients each day. They help enable earlier diagnosis and treatment, optimize surgical efficiency and accelerate patient recovery while simplifying clinical communication and shifting care closer to home. We make these outcomes possible through connected smart beds, patient lifts, patient assessment and monitoring technologies, caregiver collaboration tools, respiratory health devices, advanced operating room equipment and more, delivering actionable, real-time insights at the point of care. Learn more at hillrom.com.

CONTACT INFORMATION

Investor Relations









Contact: Mary Kay Ladone, Senior Vice

Contact: Lorna Williams, Executive Director,



President, Corporate Development,



Investor Relations and Strategy



Strategy and Investor Relations

Phone: 312-233-7799

Phone: 312-819-9387

Email: [email protected]

Email: [email protected]









Media

Contact: Howard Karesh, Vice President, Corporate Communications Phone: 312-819-7268 Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Hillrom

Related Links

https://www.hillrom.com/


Pilot blockchain initiative will digitize access and enable validation of vital records issued by the Riverside County Assessor-County-Clerk Recorder Office

RIVERSIDE, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Infosys Public Services (IPS), a US-based subsidiary of Infosys (NSE: INFY) (BSE: INFY) (NYSE: INFY), completed the pilot of a blockchain solution designed to improve the efficiency, access and security of vital recordkeeping in Riverside County, California's fourth largest county and the 10th largest in the U.S. The blockchain network enables county employees to manage data effectively and securely, while easing access and lowering cost of operations.

"Blockchain technology presents a new opportunity for governments to advance their digital agenda and leapfrog into the next era of secure, citizen-centered services," said Eric Paternoster, CEO, IPS. "We are excited about this project with Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office and appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate how blockchain can enable the county to become more digital, connected, and secure."

The pilot blockchain network, developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) using Amazon Managed Blockchain, modernizes the once paper-centric operations of the Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office. The introduction of blockchain technology enables the Office to store, recreate, and retrieve verifiable digital records, reducing the need for physical storage. The solution will also provide citizens more timely and accurate access to their records.

"As Riverside County's Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder, our goal is to provide recordkeeping, record issuance, and property valuation in a timely, secure, and cost-effective manner," said Peter Aldana, Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder at County of Riverside. "Adoption of blockchain technology will greatly advance our digital transformation journey towards our goal."

Riverside County currently spends approximately $500k annually to store official records physically to ensure compliance with records retention laws and regulations, a cost incurred by most local governments. With physical storage, however, access, research, and audit of records for retention compliance become time consuming and costly. Blockchain technology offers the ability to reduce costs associated with physical storage of the official records. In addition, Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office issues between 58,000 to 90,000 vital records to citizens of the County annually. Currently all vital records requests are fulfilled through issuing of physical paper certificates. Adoption of Blockchain technology will allow governments to help citizens obtain digital vital records securely within minutes and achieve higher efficiency within the office operations. IPS and AWS will continue to work with the County to assess how blockchain technology can benefit more departments and processes, increase effectiveness of public services, while minimizing cost of operations.

Download this whitepaper for more information about Riverside County's blockchain initiative. Visit Infosys Blockchain microsite to access additional case studies, and learn more about our blockchain solutions.

About Infosys Public Services, Inc.

Infosys Public Services is a leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. With benchmark processes, access to cross-industry insights and innovative solutions, Infosys Public Services is helping public sector organizations to navigate their digital transformation, helping them renew existing systems into modern, agile, intelligent platforms, develop new capabilities and deliver better outcomes to all stakeholders at a lower cost with less risk.

Navigate your next with Infosys Public Services. Visit www.infosyspublicservices.com to see how.

About Infosys

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in more than 50 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NSE, BSE,NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, financial expectations and plans for navigating the COVID-19 impact on our employees, clients and stakeholders are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and the effects of government and other measures seeking to contain its spread, risks related to an economic downturn or recession in India, the United States and other countries around the world, changes in political, business, and economic conditions, fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry and the outcome of pending litigation and government investigation. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law.

SOURCE Infosys
STUTTGART, Germany, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Infosys (NSE: INFY) (BSE:INFY) (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, today announced the launch of its Automotive Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart, Germany, building on its strategic commitment to drive innovation and IT infrastructure transformation in the sector.

The new center brings together automotive and IT experts from across Germany into a space for shared knowledge, skills and innovation. As a part of Infosys' partnership with Daimler, automotive IT infrastructure experts based in Germany will transition from Daimler AG to the new Digital Technology and Innovation Center. Encouraging sustainable growth within the German automotive sector, it will provide its customers with tools to meet the country's growing demand for electric vehicles.

Infosys aims to create a gold standard for Germany's automotive and manufacturing companies to accelerate and standardize technology adoption. It will provide training and innovation labs and focus on industry transformation, including the infrastructure required to design future and advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, automation and electrification. The center will also spotlight Infosys' commitment to championing sustainability, leveraging resources such as a data center operating on 100 percent renewable energy and zero water consumption.

Through the new center Infosys will support leading German automotive company, Daimler AG, strengthen its IT & data center infrastructure, and drive competitive edge in line with its ambitions to standardize, consolidate, scale and transform to Net Zero with seamless customer experience.

Dr.-Ing. Jorg Sommer, formerly Director of Digital Foundation at Daimler has been designated as the CEO of the Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart, which is a separate legal entity and officially called Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co. KG.

The center promotes a multi-cloud and carbon neutral approach to IT infrastructure transformation, leveraging Infosys Cobalt, a combination of Infosys services, solutions and platforms that supports enterprises in accelerating their cloud journey, alongside other leading cloud providers. Through its cloud approach the center will enable an anytime, anywhere workplace primed to address present and future needs. The center offers Infosys the opportunity to play an instrumental role in the transformation of Daimler as an industry leader, and in turn provides other automotive manufacturers the opportunity to leverage Infosys IP and tools as well as unlock valuable growth opportunities during a crucial time for the automotive sector and growing German economy.

"The Digital Technology and Innovation Center in Stuttgart will provide a wide range of benefits for both Infosys and the German automotive sector. By bringing together the formidable skills and expertise across Germany, this center will support Daimler in its hybrid multi-cloud and AI-driven digital transformation journey to scalability. It will also provide a cloud architecture blueprint for other German manufacturers to emulate as they move through a period of resilient IT transformation. Amidst the rising demand for electric cars, we're committed to supporting the German automotive industry as it addresses these changes in behavior," said Salil Parekh, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys.

"As software becomes modular and IT infrastructure continues to scale, Daimler will take three simultaneous steps to transform its IT landscape: consolidation, scaling and modernization. Through establishing the Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH in Germany, Infosys is committed to grow with us in the automotive industry and provide exciting career opportunities for our employees. The center will also set new standards for cloud and infrastructure services in the automotive industry. We're delighted that through this partnership, Daimler will strengthen its overall technology investment and partnership strategy," said Jan Brecht, Chief Information Officer, Daimler and Mercedes-Benz.

"We're thrilled to announce the establishment of the Digital Technology and Innovation Center, an exemplary facility providing a testbed for innovation, and critically, a platform for cross-industry expertise and skills transfer. To deliver on new and emerging mobility trends, automotive brands need to be able to scale and deliver innovation to market at speed. Through cutting-edge technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, automation, and electrification, the Innovation Center will be a catalyst for accelerating the development and availability of pioneering technology in the market, as well as simplifying and standardizing hybrid cloud stacks across the industry," said Dr.-Ing. Jorg Sommer, Chief Executive Officer, Infosys Automotive and Mobility GmbH & Co. KG.

About Infosys

Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in over 50 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NSE, BSE,NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

Safe Harbor

Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, financial expectations and plans for navigating the COVID-19 impact on our employees, clients and stakeholders are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and the effects of government and other measures seeking to contain its spread, risks related to an economic downturn or recession in India, the United States and other countries around the world, changes in political, business, and economic conditions, fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry and the outcome of pending litigation and government investigation. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law.

For more information, please contact:

Dena Tahmasebi, Head of Communications EMEA, Infosys: [email protected]

SOURCE Infosys
PHILADELPHIA, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IntegriChain , delivering Life Sciences' only comprehensive data and business process platform for market access, today announced the appointment of seasoned industry veterans to key roles to support expansion of its Advisory and Managed Services businesses. IntegriChain's Advisory practice, which offers consulting and decision support services, process and compliance support, and tailored analytics to Life Sciences Market Access teams, has added four new senior members to its Government Pricing and Channel and Patient teams. In addition, IntegriChain appointed a new leader for its rapidly growing Gross-to-Net Managed Services business.

The following seasoned additions to the IntegriChain Government Pricing Advisory practice will assist Life Sciences manufacturers of all sizes on Government Pricing readiness, compliance, pricing calculation processes and methodology development, and reporting systems.

Jessica Chung , Director, Advisory Services: Chung is a 20+-year finance professional who joins IntegriChain after nearly 15 years at Teva Pharmaceuticals in various Market Access reporting and analytics roles.

Thomas Benton , Senior Manager, Advisory Services: Benton offers nearly 10 years of experience in system implementation, compliance, finance planning & analysis, corporate strategy, and project management. He joins IntegriChain from Deloitte, where he served in the Risk & Financial Advisory life sciences practice.

Benjamin Fanelli, Senior Manager, GP Advisory: Fanelli is a 10-year veteran in Life Sciences government contracting and pricing. Prior to joining IntegriChain, he served in Government Pricing on the manufacturer side at Lupin U.S. and previously served in the Highpoint and EY consulting practices.

In addition, IntegriChain has expanded its Channel and Patient Advisory and Gross-to-Net Managed Services teams:

Samer Allabadi , Senior Director, Channel and Patient Advisory: Allabadi offers 20 years of experience in Life Sciences data and information. He joins IntegriChain from CapGemini and will partner with Trade and Patient Access teams on key data mining, analytics, and visualization projects including pharmacy segmentation, returns forecasting, retail inventory analytics, data quality audits, specialty pharmacy data strategy, and specialty pharmacy readiness.

Brittany Honeycutt , Director, Gross-to-Net Managed Services: Honeycutt and her team partner with dozens of Life Sciences innovators to deliver gross-to-net automation through the ICyte Platform  including data-driven GTN Accruals, Forecasting, and Analytics  and provide timely financial reporting and better business insights to finance teams. She has more than nine years of industry experience in gross-to-net and six years in servicing Life Sciences customers on a managed services offering at Deloitte.

"With the rapid pace of innovation in Life Sciences, there are more manufacturers commercializing new therapies than ever before," said Sarah Starr , IntegriChain's Senior Vice President of Professional Services. "In lockstep, we are rapidly growing our customer base and constantly engineering our business to proactively meet the current and future demand across all areas of Market Access. We welcome Jessica, Tom, Ben, Samer, and Brittany to our IntegriChain team, and we are eager to deploy this elite talent to partner with our customers."

About IntegriChain

IntegriChain is Life Sciences' data and application backbone for patient access and therapy commercialization. More than 250 manufacturers rely on IntegriChain's ICyte Platform to orchestrate commercial and government payer contracting, patient services, and distribution channels. ICyte is the first and only platform that unites the financial, operational, and commercial data sets required to support therapy access in the era of specialty and precision medicine. With ICyte, Life Sciences innovators are digitalizing labor-intensive processes  freeing up their best talent to identify and resolve coverage and availability hurdles and to manage pricing and forecasting complexity. IntegriChain is backed by Accel-KKR, a leading Silicon Valley technology private equity firm. The company is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, with offices in Ambler, PA; Raleigh, NC, and Pune, India. For more information, visit www.integrichain.com, or follow us on Twitter @ IntegriChain and LinkedIn .

Contact

Jennifer Guinan, Sage Strategic Marketing, 610.410.8111, [email protected]

SOURCE IntegriChain
MILWAUKEE, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- USG/OZI announced today the details of its ground-up opportunity zone project, Elevation 1659, as part of its unique investor-directed, multi-asset opportunity zone fund offering. The six-story, Class A, 76-unit multifamily development, located at 1659 N. Jackson St. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is being developed by Ogden & Company, the largest full-service real estate company in Wisconsin. This qualified opportunity zone project is scheduled for completion in July 2023.

"We focus on working with local developers who have the best relationships with their local economic development organizations and local governments, and who also historically produce the highest returns for their development projects," said Greg Genovese, CEO of USG/OZI, and founder of USG Realty Capital. "Ogden & Company checks all of those boxes, and then some. We are absolutely delighted to have them as our development partner, and to offer Elevation 1659 in our portfolio of qualified opportunity zone projects for investors to choose from."

Located just one mile north of downtown Milwaukee, Elevation 1659 is being built to meet the local demand for market-rate apartments in the area. It also offers a unique design, with almost all units extending from a central core. The result will be natural light exposure from two or three sides in most units. Most apartment units offer light exposure from only one side unless residents are willing to pay a premium for a building-corner unit.

"The combined parcels are triangular, which allowed us to think creatively about how to maximize the look of Elevation 1659," said Jason Pietsch, managing member with Ogden & Company. "This is a unique design. No one else in this marketplace offers it."

Investors Choice OZ Fund by USG/OZI officially launched in June 2021. Since that time, the qualified opportunity fund has been adding more projects to its portfolio and continues to seek qualified, viable ground-up multifamily, senior living, storage, and manufactured housing projects to add to its platform. The focus is on projects with investment equity targets ranging from $10 million to $15 million per project, on average. The fund intends to raise $50 million in new investment equity and can expand the offering to $100 million if needed.

USG/OZI is also tracking the social and economic impact of its developments to honor the spirit and intent of the federal qualified opportunity zone initiative. This is being done by issuing third-party social impact reports for the life of each project, estimated for at least 10 years.

"With this, and other projects, we're tracking the input of new capital raised from investors, and the economic impact of those investments," said Kyle Wiese, president and co-manager of USG/OZI, and founder and managing member of OZI Group. "This displays the positive social impact each of our projects have on the local community. New construction on these projects means new jobs, new tax revenues and other items that are important when it comes to social impact reporting."

About USG/OZI

USG/OZI is headquartered in Silverdale, Washington, with divisional headquarters for development and financial analysis in Olympia, Washington and asset management and capital markets in Santa Barbara, California. The USG/OZI Opportunity Zone Investment Platform was created by USG Realty Capital, an alternative investment company launched by industry veteran Greg Genovese, and OZI Group, a company that has successfully launched three opportunity zone investment funds. To learn more, please visit www.investorschoiceoz.com.

This is not an offer to sell securities. An offer to sell securities may be made only pursuant to the applicable Private Placement Memorandum for the security (the "Memorandum"). All investments involve risk. An investment in securities is speculative, illiquid and involves a high degree of risk and there is no guarantee that investors will receive any return. Risks may include real estate risks; opportunity zone regulatory risks; the volatility of the multifamily, single family, medical office, general office, retail, industrial, self- storage and senior living industries; the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak; limited redemption rights; restrictions on transferability; no guarantee of cash distributions; distributions may be paid from any source; reliance on management; financing risks; the fees paid to the manager may not be determined by arm's-length negotiations; conflicts of interest; and tax risks.

Securities offered through Pinnacle Capital Securities, LLC (Member FINRA/SIPC).

Media Contact:

Lauren Burgos

Spotlight Marketing Communications

949.427.1399

[email protected]

SOURCE USG/OZI
SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Invitae Corporation (NYSE: NVTA), a leading medical genetics company, today announced that it will report its second quarter 2021 financial results on Tuesday, August 3, 2021 and will host a conference call and webcast that day at 4:30 p.m. Eastern / 1:30 p.m. Pacific to discuss its financial results and recent highlights.

To access the conference call and webcast, please register at the link below:

http://www.directeventreg.com/registration/event/2732845

Upon registering, each participant will be provided with call details and a registrant ID. Reminders will also be sent to registered participants via email.

The live webcast of the call and slide deck, may be accessed here or by visiting the investors section of the company's website at ir.invitae.com . A replay of the webcast and conference call will be available shortly after the conclusion of the call and will be archived on the company's website.

Following prepared remarks, management will respond to questions from analysts, subject to time limitations. We encourage our shareholders and those representing them to send in questions to [email protected].

About Invitae

Invitae Corporation (NYSE: NVTA) is a leading medical genetics company, whose mission is to bring comprehensive genetic information into mainstream medicine to improve healthcare for billions of people. Invitae's goal is to aggregate the world's genetic tests into a single service with higher quality, faster turnaround time, and lower prices. For more information, visit the company's website at invitae.com.

Contact:

Laura D'Angelo

[email protected]

(628) 213-3369

SOURCE Invitae Corporation

Related Links

www.invitae.com


NEW ORLEANS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Industrial Realty Group, LLC (IRG), one of the country's largest owners of commercial and industrial properties, announced today that it has signed a long-term ground lease with NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

The agreement provides IRG with a long-term ground lease for a 50-acre development parcel within NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility ("MAF") one of the largest production facilities in the nation. IRG's future development is expected to be up to 1,000,000 square feet of buildings developed in phases. The target users include light assembly, manufacturing, distribution, and office space. MAF is inherently secure with a 19  foot levy and substantial onsite pumps, as well as access to a deep water port.

"When we look at property, we are always searching for creative solutions that benefit all parties," said Stuart Lichter, President of IRG. "In this instance, IRG can provide NASA an excellent long-term plan for its underutilized land in Orleans Parish, while developing a dynamic project resulting in job creation and economic growth. It's mutually advantageous for the community, NASA, and IRG."

NASA Michoud is a high performing site, supporting several major projects. The ground lease will help support their continued efficiency and fiscal ingenuity.

"The agreement with IRG, allows MAF to offset some production costs and gives new purpose to this part of the installation," said Robert Champion NASA's Director of the Michoud Assembly Facility. "Being innovative, even when it comes to our real estate, translates into increased efficiency in our operations."

The first phase of development is expected to produce a modern, 400,000 square foot warehouse building. A project timeline will be based on market demand.

About IRG

IRG is a nationwide real estate development and investment firm specializing in the acquisition, development and management of commercial and industrial real estate throughout the United States. IRG, through its affiliated partnerships and limited liability companies, operates a portfolio containing over 150 properties in 31 states with over 100 million square feet of rentable space. IRG is nationally recognized as a leading force behind the adaptive reuse of commercial and industrial real estate, solving some of America's most difficult real estate challenges.

In 2021, IRG announced that the company (IRG Industrial, LLC) had received its inaugural, investment-grade credit rating and issued $335 Million of USPP bonds, providing new capital to recapitalize assets and expand its industrial holdings in major U.S. markets.

Learn more at www.industrialrealtygroup.com.

Development Contact

Michele Kiernan

Senior Development Manager

Industrial Realty Group

330-671-9825

[email protected]

Media Contact:

Lauren Crumrine

Director of Marketing

Industrial Realty Group

614-562-9252

[email protected]

SOURCE Industrial Realty Group, LLC

Related Links

http://www.industrialrealtygroup.com


DALLAS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Jacobs (NYSE:J) was selected as one of the program management firms for the Dallas Independent School District (Dallas ISD) 2020 Bond Program, continuing its 18-year history with the district. Dallas ISD sits in the heart of a large, diverse and dynamic region with a metropolitan population of 6.5 million people in North Central Texas. Considered the largest ISD project in the history of the state, this bond program will provide improvements to more than 200 of the district's 230 campuses.

On Nov. 3, 2020, Dallas voters approved two major bond propositions, totaling $3.47 billion (including Proposition B, which provides $270 million), to fund school repairs and upgrades and to cover the cost of updating district technology.

"Our long-term relationship with the Dallas ISD is a notable example of how we deliver industry leading program management needs for our clients," said Jacobs People & Places Solutions Senior Vice President Tom Meinhart. "Dallas ISD is considered to be one of the fastest improving urban school districts in the country and by collaborating we can continue to create better environments for students to learn and grow."

To launch the program, Jacobs partnered with KAI 360 Construction Services, LLC; CARCON Industries & Construction, LLC; 3i Construction Management, LLC; The Burrell Group and Master Code, Inc. to manage the work at 21 campuses, including four new schools, five campus expansions and 12 school renovations. As the program progresses, the schools will receive mechanical/air-conditioning upgrades, new roofs and security systems, exterior building enhancements and additional site improvements.

At Jacobs, we're challenging today to reinvent tomorrow by solving the world's most critical problems for thriving cities, resilient environments, mission-critical outcomes, operational advancement, scientific discovery and cutting-edge manufacturing, turning abstract ideas into realities that transform the world for good. With $14 billion in revenue and a talent force of approximately 55,000, Jacobs provides a full spectrum of professional services including consulting, technical, scientific and project delivery for the government and private sector. Visit jacobs.com and connect with Jacobs on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Certain statements contained in this press release constitute forward-looking statements as such term is defined in Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and such statements are intended to be covered by the safe harbor provided by the same. Statements made in this release that are not based on historical fact are forward-looking statements. We base these forward-looking statements on management's current estimates and expectations as well as currently available competitive, financial and economic data. Forward-looking statements, however, are inherently uncertain. There are a variety of factors that could cause business results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the related reaction of governments on global and regional market conditions and the company's business. For a description of some additional factors that may occur that could cause actual results to differ from our forward-looking statements, see our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended October 2, 2020, and in particular the discussions contained under Item 1 - Business; Item 1A - Risk Factors; Item 3 - Legal Proceedings; and Item 7 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended April 2, 2021, and in particular the discussions contained under Part I, Item 2 - Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations; Part II, Item 1 - Legal Proceedings; and Part II, Item 1A - Risk Factors, as well as the company's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is not under any duty to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform to actual results, except as required by applicable law.

For press/media inquiries:

Kerrie Sparks

214.583.8433

SOURCE Jacobs

Related Links

http://www.jacobs.com


NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- JDRF, the leading global funder of Type 1 diabetes research, and the Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists, the largest organization dedicated to diabetes care and education specialists, proudly announce a new partnership. Together, the organizations seek to support the diabetes community through educational programs and resources to improve patient/healthcare professional dialogue and health outcomes.

"As an organization rooted in family, JDRF is excited to partner with the team at ADCES to continue supporting and enriching the T1D community," says Kristin Jahnke, JDRF director of community engagement. "By collaborating with healthcare providers throughout the ADCES network, we can increase the accessibility of our newly diagnosed resources and educational programs to serve the T1D community across the U.S.."

Utilizing the collaborative networks of both organizations, the partnerships aim to increase recipients of the JDRF Bag of Hope and the JDRF Teen and Adult No Limits care kits. Both organizations also hope to equip more healthcare professionals with the knowledge and tools to strengthen the relationship between those with Type 1 diabetes and healthcare providers.

"Diabetes care and education specialists are the front line in person-centered, quality care. We are honored to work with ADCES members and JDRF to support children and adults with Type 1 diabetes," said Kate Thomas, ADCES chief advocacy and external affairs officer. "Through this partnership, we hope to build bridges between healthcare professionals and the people with diabetes whom they serve. Together, we can improve outcomes and well-being for all."

JDRF and ADCES are committed to offering resources to help educate healthcare providers and support those with Type 1 diabetes throughout all stages of life. Health disparities affect numerous populations, including members of the diabetes community. It disproportionately affects Black, Hispanic, and Native American people and those living in rural and underserved communities. This collaboration will help both organizations reach a broader audience and offer resources to meet the needs of diverse communities.

About JDRF

JDRF's mission is to accelerate life-changing breakthroughs to cure, prevent and treat T1D and its complications. To accomplish this, JDRF has invested more than $2.5 billion in research funding since our inception. We are an organization built on a grassroots model of people connecting in their local communities, collaborating regionally for efficiency and broader fundraising impact, and uniting on a national stage to pool resources, passion, and energy. We collaborate with academic institutions, policymakers, and corporate and industry partners to develop and deliver a pipeline of innovative therapies to people living with T1D. Our staff and volunteers throughout the United States and our five international affiliates are dedicated to advocacy, community engagement and our vision of a world without T1D. For more information, please visit jdrf.org or follow us on Twitter (@JDRF), Facebook (@myjdrf), and Instagram (@jdrfhq).

About the Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists:

ADCES is an interdisciplinary professional membership organization dedicated to improving prediabetes, diabetes and cardiometabolic care through innovative education, management and support. With more than 12,000 professional members including nurses, dietitians, pharmacists and others, ADCES has a vast network of practitioners working to optimize care and reduce complications. ADCES offers an integrated care model that lowers the cost of care, improves experiences and helps its members lead so better outcomes follow. Learn more at DiabetesEducator.org, or visit us on Facebook or LinkedIn (Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists), Twitter (@ADCESdiabetes) and Instagram (@ADCESdiabetes).

SOURCE JDRF; Association of Diabetes Care & Education Specialists
BOULDER, Colo., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Next Frontier Brands, an international fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company with a focus on beverage and wellness products, today announced the appointment of Joseph C. Magnacca as President & Chief Executive Officer.

Shannon Soqui, Next Frontier Brands' Co-Founder and former CEO will assume the role of Executive Chairperson, where he will continue to focus on drive company strategy, governance and investor relations.

With over 30 years of experience, Magnacca has a demonstrated track record of success leading brand innovation and transformation across the wellness and beauty industry. Prior to joining Next Frontier, he served as President of Walgreens Co, President of Duane Reade, CEO and Director of Massage Envy, and CEO of Radio Shack as well as holding board seats for Sally Beauty, American Apparel and Next Frontier Holdings.

"Joe is the right leader to grow the Next Frontier business. He has unmatched industry experience addressing the needs of changing consumer demands, as well as growing sustainable, profitable, global businesses," says Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Jason Roth.

"The Next Frontier Brands team has assembled a strong portfolio of global challenger brands," says CEO Joseph C. Magnacca. "I look forward to leading the business in maximizing global growth opportunities while driving exceptional brand and customer experiences."

About Next Frontier Brands

Next Frontier Brands is an international fast-moving consumer goods company dedicated to bringing premier beverage and wellness products to consumers globally. Next Frontier Brands currently owns 10 beverage and wellness brands, with six additional brand acquisitions pending. Our beverage brands include products in the distilled alcoholic spirits, distilled non-alcoholic spirits, wine, coffee, and superfood categories, and our wellness brands include products in the topical and sublingual categories. We are headquartered in Boulder, Colorado, with additional offices in London, England; Amsterdam, The Netherlands; and Auckland, New Zealand.

Contact: Next Frontier Brands

[email protected]

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1312933/Next_Frontier_Brands_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Next Frontier Brands
FORT COLLINS, Colo., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Joy Organics, the premium CBD brand, is celebrating its three-year anniversary this week. In 2018, the Colorado-based company was birthed from one woman's incredible experience with the hemp-derived compound known as cannabidiol (CBD).

"When I first tried CBD, I had no idea how drastically it would change my lifefirst because of its amazing benefits and second because it inspired a venture that has now become an industry-leading brand," Joy Smith, Joy Organics cofounder, explained.

Smith initially tried CBD to promote sleep and support muscle health. As she researched some of the top CBD brands, she quickly discovered that many products were ineffective and the industry as whole was not entirely trustworthy.

"This compound had helped me immensely, but I was distressed to find that few consumers I talked to were seeing the same results. With many products being sold, it was difficult to even verify their contents or whether their label claims were accurate."

Joy Organics was founded in Fort Collins in July of 2018 with this goal in mind: build trust and promote transparency in an unregulated industry and provide the highest quality products to its customers. Today, Joy's premium broad and full spectrum products are sold in thousands of major retail stores and small businesses across the country.

"We are so thankful to our community of employees, customers, and partners who have made Joy Organics' success possible, who believe in our mission and want to promote mental and physical health around the world," said Smith.

Joy Organics sells an array of premium ingestible and topical CBD products, including the largest USDA Certified Organic line in the industry. To shop Joy's formulas or learn more about the Colorado-based brand, visit JoyOrganics.com.

Press contact:

Hannah Smith

Director of Communications | Joy Organics

[email protected]

SOURCE Joy Organics
NEW YORK and DENVER, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Kimmeridge Energy Management Company, LLC ("Kimmeridge" or "the Firm"), a private investment firm focused on upstream energy, today published a white paper entitled: "Executive Compensation: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly."

2020 was the ultimate test of Board accountability in the E&P sector. Extraordinary volatility in both commodity and share prices forced Boards to react in real-timeand some did, by making changes to their compensation plans that reflect new market realities. However, the combination of higher commodity prices and a rising rig count has sparked a debate over whether the vows of capital discipline made at the depths of the crisis will hold. As the sector struggles to reestablish credibility with investors, overhauling executive compensation is the key to accelerating true change.

Kimmeridge's white paper analyzes 2021 E&P company proxies and assesses the degree to which Boards have addressed deficiencies, particularly those noted in the Firm's original white paper on governance: "Bringing Alignment and Accountability to the E&P Sector."

Apart from a meaningful reduction in the prevalence of production growth metrics, the progress over the past year has been too incremental. Long-term incentives remain heavily weighted to time-based based pay, while performance-based pay is still largely tied to relative total shareholder return ("TSR") within a narrow peer group. Furthermore, the pandemic once again exposed the unwillingness of Boards to hold management teams accountable. CEO compensation in 2020 was only 1% lower than 2018, despite a 60% decline in share prices over the three-year period1, and Boards were quick to change performance metrics once it became clear companies would miss their operational and financial targets.

Mark Viviano, Head of Public Equities at Kimmeridge, said, "The goal of our white paper is to help ensure that the progress made over the past year is viewed as a starting point for further engagement between investors and Boards. Investors should applaud those who are willing to make more meaningful changes to their compensation plans, while holding the laggards accountable."

Mr. Viviano continued, "E&P companies are currently seeing relief, as higher commodity prices temporarily alleviate some of the investor pressure on reforming governance. But it's important to remember that this is a highly cyclical industry destined to repeat the mistakes of the past if the underlying issues of alignment and accountability are not properly addressed."

To view more of Kimmeridge's research and thought leadership, please visit: http://kimmeridge.com/research-archive/.

About Kimmeridge

Founded in 2012 by Ben Dell, Dr. Neil McMahon and Henry Makansi, Kimmeridge is a private equity firm focused on making direct investments in unconventional oil and gas assets in the U.S. The Firm is differentiated by its direct investment approach, deep technical knowledge, active portfolio management and proprietary research and data gathering. In addition to its New York headquarters, Kimmeridge maintains a fully-staffed, in-house operating and geology team in Denver, with experience across all major upstream functions and disciplines. For additional information on Kimmeridge and its proprietary research, please visit www.kimmeridge.com.

Media Contact:

Daniel Yunger / Simone Leung / Hallie Wolff

Kekst CNC

212.521.4800

[email protected]

1 Median change in compensation calculated from a subset of 19 of the US E&P companies which maintained the same CEO from 2018-2020. Cumulative three-year TSR calculated on Bloomberg from 1/1/18 to 12/31/20.

SOURCE Kimmeridge Energy Management Company, LLC
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Koibito Poke, an award-winning Arizona-based concept for fresh build-your-own Hawaiian poke bowls, recently opened its newest location in Scottsdale debuting a brand-new design that will be the model for future franchise locations across the country. The healthy fast casual restaurant is actively seeking Franchisees for nationwide expansion after elevating its design and enhancing the customer experience.

Koibito Poke in Scottsdale, Arizona. Koibito Poke in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Koibito Poke now offers a superior model that focuses on efficiency and simplicity offering the customer an elevated healthy fast casual dining experience. The new restaurant design provides easier kitchen movement, a more open floor plan and large floor to ceiling windows which create a modern and inviting atmosphere for its customers. Guests will enjoy the open visibility of the energized concept with direct views of the menu and line up of fresh ingredients right when they walk in. Both indoor and outdoor seating is available.



Koibito Poke currently has four locations in Arizona and is anticipating expansion over the next 12 months into a dozen new markets by offering a lucrative package to potential Franchisees and area developers that including royalties and benefits. The team already has already secured interest for additional locations throughout Arizona and in states including Texas, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Illinois, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Washington, Rhode Island, and Florida.

Leading the brand's nationwide expansion is Koibito Poke's Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO Todd Stottlemyre, former MLB Pitcher and 3-time World Champion. According to Stottlemyre, the company aims to set itself apart from others by serving healthy food that has great advantages to building the body's immune system  and by a commitment not to follow the standard but to become it.

For more information on Koibito Poke and its franchise offerings, visit www.koibitopoke.com.

About Koibito Poke:

Founded in 2018, Koibito Poke is the leading Arizona poke restaurant influenced by traditional Hawaiian and Japanese flavors and ingredients. Koibito Poke (Koibito meaning "love" in Japanese) to show their bodies some love  by providing them with fresh, clean whole foods that are good for them and taste good too. Koibito Poke is co-founded by former MLB Pitcher and 3-time World Champion Todd Stottlemyre who has led the brand's expansion throughout Arizona. The restaurant is expanding its concept with franchises across the country. For more information, visit www.koibitopoke.com.

Media contact:

Robyn Patterson

[email protected]

480-269-0140

SOURCE Koibito Poke

Related Links

http://www.koibitopoke.com


"At Lam Research, we remain committed to giving back and creating a positive impact in our communities by investing in educational, health improvement, and environmental protection programs, among others," said Rangesh Raghavan, Corporate Vice President and General Manager at Lam Research India. "Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have focused on supporting the healthcare systems and helping frontline healthcare workers in their fight against the virus. The expansion of critical care infrastructure at HIMS is a step towards the same."

HIMS was facing a shortage of ICU beds during the second wave of COVID-19 in India, due to which the Hassan district administration decided to add 40 ICU beds to take care of the patients (Source). HIMS used Lam's donation to obtain critical medical equipment such as pediatric ventilators, ICU cots, multipara monitors, pulse oximeters, infusion pumps, syringe pumps, Pediatric LED laryngoscopes, ventilator circuits, humidified high-flow nasal cannula circuits, and nasal prongs.

"We are grateful to Lam Research for aiding us in the expansion of our critical care facilities," said Dr. Ravikumar B.C., Director at Hassan Institute of Medical Sciences. "With the third wave of COVID-19 in India projected to affect more children, increasing the ICU bed capacity will equip HIMS to treat additional patients while addressing pediatric cases that may need critical care."

Lam Research India has also funded vaccination drives in various Bangalore-based schools with which its Corporate Social Responsibility organization engages. Close to 900 adults were vaccinated including parents, siblings, and immediate family members of students, alongside school staff. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the company has provided COVID-19 relief and support, including funding for 7,500 PPE kits among government-run hospitals in Karnataka to aid frontline healthcare workers fighting the virus.

In addition to contributing to the funding of the additional ICU beds, the previously committed $1 million for COVID-19 relief efforts in India announced in May 2021 helped support Direct Relief's broader efforts in India.

About Lam Research

Lam Research Corporation is a global supplier of innovative wafer fabrication equipment and services to the semiconductor industry. As a trusted, collaborative partner to the world's leading semiconductor companies, we combine superior systems engineering capability, technology leadership, and unwavering commitment to customer success to accelerate innovation through enhanced device performance. In fact, today, nearly every advanced chip is built with Lam technology. Lam Research (Nasdaq: LRCX) is a FORTUNE 500 company headquartered in Fremont, Calif., with operations around the globe. Learn more at www.lamresearch.com. (LRCX-B)

SOURCE Lam Research Corporation
BANGALORE, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Licious, India's largest tech-powered D2C fresh meat and seafood brand, announces the appointment of Himanshu Verma as Chief Product & Technology Officer (CPTO). In its sixth year of operations, the Bengaluru-based brand is focused on disrupting the industry with world-class tech-based solutions and approached the leading Tech-head search firm, Purple Quarter to meet their CXO-level requirement. Himanshu's appointment is a pivotal step for the company.

An industry veteran with over two decades of experience, Himanshu's last assignment was with Amazon, where he served as Director of Product & Engineering. Prior to that, Himanshu has served as CTO at Yatra.com, one of the largest online travel companies in India. During his 25-year-long career, Himanshu had leadership stints with leading technology companies such as Flipkart, Yahoo!, and Oracle, to name a few.

Commenting on the new appointment Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, Co-founders, Licious, said, "We are happy to have Himanshu on board with us. As Licious embarks on the next phase of growth, we are confident that his rich experience in building technology for transforming the supply chain and enhancing customer experience will help us chart a new path to success. We look forward to working with Himanshu to continue raising the bar as a market and category leader in the evolving protein-based food space.''

Roopa Kumar, Founder & COO, Purple Quarter added, "Licious' mandate to Purple Quarter was very clear - an experienced and dynamic tech visionary to steer their valued offerings in tandem with their rapid scale. We are beyond thrilled to have played a part in this perfect match between Licious and Himanshu."

On his new stint, Himanshu Verma, CPTO, Licious, said, "I am delighted to join Licious at this point in its growth journey. It is not just a category leader, but also a category creator and presents a once in a lifetime opportunity to reimagine a large industry using technology as a driver. As a customer-centric and value-driven organization, Licious is in a great position to deeply impact the large protein-based food industry via technology in years to come and I am excited to be part of this inspiring story," adding "I extend my thanks to the Purple Quarter team for facilitating my move at the right time and ensuring a seamless end-to-end process."

Since its inception in 2015, Licious has been building technology to resolve customer pain points related to quality, hygiene, freshness, and convenience. The brand has adopted 100% traceable and sustainable sourcing practices, creating quality benchmarks for the industry. Built on the farm-to-fork business model, Licious controls the entire supply chain, powered by stringent cold chain control to maintain the quality and freshness of products from the time of procurement, processing and storage until the time it reaches the end consumer.

Licious is the first meat and seafood brand from India to be certified with FSSC22000, one of the highest food safety certifications in the world. The brand has a strong presence across 14 Indian markets, namely Bengaluru, Hyderabad, NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Puducherry, Vizag, Vijayawada and Kolkata. The 3500+ employee strong company is touted among the fastest-growing consumer brands in India.

About Purple Quarter

Purple Quarter is a bespoke CTO search firm based out of Bangalore. In less than four years, it has mapped over 4000+ leaders across the globe. Its singular approach to tech leadership hiring has given Purple Quarter a detailed acumen into the Tech Leadership hiring space, especially in the startup ecosystem. Its robust clientele includes early stage to mature startups such as Inmobi, Swiggy, Acko, PharmEasy, hike, Urban Company and many more.

For Tech Leadership requirements, write to us at [email protected] or visit: https://purplequarter.com/

About Licious: https://www.licious.in/

Founded by Abhay Hanjura and Vivek Gupta, Licious is a consumer food company, focussed at delighting the world with an unmatched range of meat & meat products. Present in raw & fresh meat and seafood, marinades and ready-to-eat categories, Licious is set to disrupt every food category that needs a meaty intervention! In a highly underserved market, which is estimated at $40 billion today, Licious as a category-first brand backed by technology, has been able to solve the prevailing customer pain points of quality, hygiene, freshness and convenience in a sustainable manner. Built on the farm to fork business model, Licious controls the entire back-end supply chain powered by stringent cold chain control to maintain the quality and freshness of each product from the time of procurement, processing, storage to the time it reaches the end consumer. In just 5 years Licious has witnessed a 300% growth and has served over three million packs of world-class meat products to consumers across Bangalore, Hyderabad, NCR, Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Jaipur, Coimbatore, Kochi, Puducherry, Vizag, Vijayawada and Kolkata. Licious serves over 1mn orders every month with over 90% repeat consumption across markets.

Licious is currently, a 3500+ members strong team with employees, across different disciplines and functions.

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1532295/Purple_Quarter_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Purple Quarter
MONTREAL, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - The Lion Electric Company (NYSE: LEV) (TSX: LEV) ("Lion" or the "Company"), a leading manufacturer of all-electric medium and heavy-duty urban vehicles, today announced that it will release its 2021 second quarter results on August 13, 2021, before markets open. A conference call and webcast will be held on August 13, 2021, at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Time) to discuss the results.

To participate in the conference call, please dial (236) 714-3941 or (833) 329-1697 (toll free). A live webcast of the conference call will also be available at www.thelionelectric.com under the "Events and Presentation" page of the "Investors" section. An archive of the event will be available shortly after the conference call.

About Lion Electric

Lion Electric is an innovative manufacturer of zero-emission vehicles. The company creates, designs and manufactures all-electric class 5 to class 8 commercial urban trucks and all-electric buses and minibuses for the school, paratransit and mass transit segments. Lion is a North American leader in electric transportation and designs, builds and assembles all the key components of its vehicles, including chassis, battery packs, truck cabins and bus bodies.

Always actively seeking new and reliable technologies, Lion vehicles have unique features that are specifically adapted to its users and their everyday needs. Lion believes that transitioning to all-electric vehicles will lead to major improvements in our society, environment and overall quality of life.

SOURCE Lion Electric

Related Links

https://thelionelectric.com/


Louis Hernandez Jr' s Foundation For A Bright Future is a 501(c)3 organization created to support the needs of underrepresented and underprivileged children through education, healthcare, the arts, and youth leadership development.

"The American Dream is possible because of the sacrifices made by the dedication and commitment of our military and their families. Our Foundation, For A Bright Future, is honored to provide financial support and mentorship to military veterans and their families. My grandfather, father, wife, and many in my family served in various branches of the military which has given me a deep appreciation for the sacrifices they make for our country. We are so pleased to support such outstanding members of our military family and congratulate Alicia and Kaelani on their achievements," said Louis Hernandez Jr., Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Foundation.

Alicia King graduated from Alexander Hamilton Preparatory Academy High School in New Jersey and has continued her education at Kean University. She has managed to shine in both academic and extracurricular activities while also caring for her mother. In her senior year of high school, King spent time volunteering at the local community hospital where she was appointed as a patient liaison for the ER and Postpartum Department. Now in her first year of studying Biology at Kean University, King is determined to continue giving back to her community by providing medical care to those who are most in need.

"I would like to thank For A Bright Future Foundation for granting me this huge opportunity and words cannot describe how elated I am. My academic aspirations and achievements will continuously advance with the help of this scholarship. Education is one major key to success and all roads that leads to success will have to endure hard work," said King.

Kaelani Jones is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology at the Humboldt State University. Working as a physical therapy aide at the local clinic has opened her eyes to the bigger picture of life and she has discovered the value of giving back to the community. For Jones, a career in physical therapy is a rewarding way to give back to her community. She wants to be able to accompany people on their journey towards healing.

"Being able to accomplish all the dreams I've put my mind into has been the greatest experience of my life so far. Even though it has been a stressful journey, being awarded this scholarship has diminished some of the stress and I am so grateful for the help on my journey of becoming a Doctor of Physical Therapy," said Kaelani Jones.

"The Semper Fi 'Honor' Scholarship was designed to support the needs of children of veterans that are hardworking students like Alicia and Kaelani. Their desire to help their community in any way possible is admirable, and we wish them the best as they further their education," said Sgt. Sarah M. Hernandez, US Marine Corps veteran and FABF Board Member and Scholarship Committee Member.

This year the foundation received a record number of applications to review. We would like to thank Susie Hernandez, FABF Board Member and Chair of the Scholarship Committee and our volunteers for serving on the scholarship selection committee.

Scholarship selection team includes:

Sgt. Sarah M. Hernandez , US Marine Corps veteran and FABF Board Member and Scholarship Committee Member.

, US Marine Corps veteran and FABF Board Member and Scholarship Committee Member. Louis Hernandez Sr. , Navy veteran and Scholarship Committee Member.

We also would like to thank the operational team led by Gina Rogoto, Marketing and Development Manager, for their incredible efforts to source candidates across the country and facilitate the process.

Contact:

Gina Rogoto, Marketing and Development Manager

Louis Hernandez Jr.'s Foundation For A Bright Future

Email: [email protected]

About Louis Hernandez Jr.'s Foundation For A Bright Future

Louis Hernandez Jr's Foundation For A Bright is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting the needs of underrepresented and underprivileged children through education, healthcare, the arts, and youth leadership development. Our initiatives provide equal opportunity for all children to have the tools and opportunities to fulfill their life goals and become constructive members of our global community.

For more information: https://www.forabrightfuturefoundation.org/ or follow @FABrightFuture_ on Twitter and Instagram.

SOURCE Louis Hernandez Jr.'s Foundation For A Bright Future
BROOKLYN, N.Y., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Medly Pharmacy, the leading digital pharmacy that offers free same-day prescription delivery, today announced its expansion into the Atlanta metro area. Through Medly's tech-enabled pharmacy platform, residents within a 50-mile radius of Medly's new location will have access to same-day prescription services. For those patients who prefer to maintain the traditional in-person experience, they can visit Medly's brick-and-mortar location at 714 Moreland Ave. SE, Suite A, Atlanta, GA 30316.

Medly Pharmacy is aiming to move into every metro area within the next five years, with the hopes of eliminating 'pharmacy deserts' and providing patients the necessary access and tools to properly adhere to medications as prescribed by doctors. At the outset of 2021, the leading digital pharmacy eyed Atlanta as a priority with the knowledge that Atlanta is the fourth fastest-growing metro area in the country. This rapid growth is poised to place unprecedented demand on existing pharmacies and Medly is positioned to fill that gap.

Medly's medication adherence-focused services such as a dedicated customer service team, a 'Medication Adherence Program' platform, medication reminders, personalized dosage packaging, and medication synchronization empower patients to overcome social determinants of health and other challenges to access their medications and take them as prescribed. With the mission to "democratize the pharmacy", Medly aims to reach communities that are facing barriers to care by solving common issues such as access, communication, and proper medication education. Nationwide, these barriers pose a particularly pernicious burden for America's elderly population , with 89% of adults aged 65 or older taking prescription drugs, but 45% reporting that they have struggled to access their medication.

"Opening Atlanta is a monumental milestone for the Medly family," said Dr. Marg Patel, CEO and Cofounder of Medly. "The booming population growth is a marker of prosperity in the state's capital, but medical infrastructure must keep up and be able to meet the needs of residents. We look forward to hitting the ground running in Atlanta and providing a 360-degree pharmacy service for all."

How to Switch to Medly

Patients that wish to switch their preferred pharmacy to Medly can download the iOS application, visit the pharmacy, or ask their doctor to send their prescriptions to Medly.

About Medly Pharmacy

Medly Pharmacy is a full-service, digital pharmacy that delivers patient's prescriptions to their door for free on the same day in New York City, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Miami, Baltimore, and Raleigh. Medly Pharmacy is the fastest-growing digital pharmacy, having raised $100 million in a Series B fundraising round in July 2020 to democratize access to the pharmacy across the nation. Medly's digital experience makes managing prescriptions simple, efficient, smart, and most importantly, safe for customers. More information can be found at https://medly.com/en-us.

CONTACT: [email protected]

SOURCE Medly Pharmacy
Advanced Technology at UC CHRISTUS Expands Access to Minimally Invasive Surgery for More Patients

DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT), the global leader in medical technology, today announced the integration of the Hugo robotic-assisted surgery (RAS) system at Hospital Clinico de la Red de Salud UC CHRISTUS in Santiago, Chile, to support the teaching institution's new robotic surgery program. UC CHRISTUS is the latest institution to join Medtronic's Partners in Possibility Program, a group of pioneering hospitals that will be among the first in the world to use the Hugo RAS system in support of the Hugo system patient registry.

"Our surgical robotics vision  to expand access to quality care to more people in more places  is coming to life at UC CHRISTUS," said Carla Peron, M.D., chief medical officer of the Surgical Robotics business, which is part of the Medical Surgical Portfolio at Medtronic. "It's incredibly exciting to see our teams working together to bring surgical robotics where it couldn't exist before, all for the benefit of patients."

In Latin America, approximately 75% of surgeries are conducted as open procedures.1 With minimally invasive surgery, those patients could experience fewer complications, shorter hospital stays, faster return to normal activities, and smaller scars.24,,

Robotic surgery is a form of minimally invasive surgery that offers surgeons improved visualization, greater dexterity, and ergonomic advantages, yet robots are used in less than 3% of surgeries globally.1 The Hugo RAS system  Medtronic's solution to historic cost and utilization barriers that have kept surgical robotics out of reach for many hospitals  is a modular, multi-quadrant platform designed for a broad range of soft-tissue procedures.

The Hugo RAS system combines the precision of wristed instruments with the flexibility of independent robotic arm carts and best-in-class 3D visualization technology on an open console. Touch Surgery Enterprise, a cloud-based surgical video capture option powered by artificial intelligence, allows surgeons to seamlessly record, analyze, and share Hugo system case footage.

"I am honored to have performed the inaugural robotic-assisted surgery procedure for UC CHRISTUS and to be leading this program, the first of its kind for our institution," said Ignacio San Francisco, M.D., urological surgeon and specialist in minimally invasive uro-oncology surgery. "With Hugo RAS system, we are entering a new era of robotic-assisted surgery, improving how we deliver high quality healthcare to our patients."

In support of its commitment to expand access to quality care, Medtronic has opened a new Surgical Robotics Experience Center in Santiago. This is the company's first in Latin America and 1 of 10 world-class facilities around the globe where clinicians can experience and train on the Hugo RAS system. The Santiago Surgical Robotics Experience Center operates in partnership with the Faculty of Medicine of Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, which is affiliated with UC CHRISTUS.

"We are confident that our new robotic surgery program is ready for success and will provide our patients with leading-edge quality healthcare, thanks to the novel capabilities of the Hugo RAS system, the support we have received from our partners at Medtronic, and our outstanding surgeons," said Alejandro Canavati, chief executive officer, Red de Salud UC CHRISTUS. "As a teaching institution, we are proud to serve as a premier destination for world-class surgical robotics training for physicians across the region."

The Hugo RAS system is not cleared or approved in the U.S. or Europe. Regulatory requirements of individual countries and regions will determine availability and approval or clearance timelines. Touch Surgery Enterprise is not intended to direct surgery, or aid in diagnosis or treatment of a disease or condition.

About Medtronic

Medtronic plc ( www.medtronic.com ), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is among the world's largest medical technology, services and solutions companies  alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life for millions of people around the world. Medtronic employs more than 90,000 people worldwide, serving physicians, hospitals and patients in more than 150 countries. The company is focused on collaborating with stakeholders around the world to take healthcare Further, Together.

Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in Medtronic's periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results.

Compared to open surgery.

MIS may not be suitable for every patient; consult your doctor to determine if MIS is an option for you.

1. Based on Medtronic report, FY20 market model: procedural volume data.

2. Fitch K, Engel T, Bochner A. Cost differences between open and minimally invasive surgery. Managed Care. 2015 Sep;24(9):4048.

3. Tiwari MM, Reynoso JF, High R, Tsang AW, Oleynikov D. Safety, efficacy, and cost effectiveness of common laparoscopic procedures. Surg Endosc. 2011;25(4):11271135.

4. Roumm AR, Pizzi L, Goldfarb NI, Cohn H. Minimally invasive: minimally reimbursed? An examination of six laparoscopic surgical procedures. Surg Innovation.2005;12(3):261287.

Contacts:





Gary Jeanfaivre Ryan Weispfenning Public Relations Investor Relations +1-203-833-2104 +1-763-505-4626

SOURCE Medtronic plc

Related Links

www.medtronic.com


SAN DIEGO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- MemComputing, Inc., developer of disruptive high-performance computing technology, has been awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). This project will identify applications where MemComputing's Virtual MemComputing Machine (VMM) can accelerate NASA's supercomputing workloads for large-scale numerical simulation.

"We're looking forward to working with NASA," said John Beane, CEO of MemComputing. "NASA relies heavily on supercomputers today and is pushing their boundaries. NASA has also studied Quantum Computers to determine the advantages they may see when Quantum Computers become a reality. We will demonstrate the power and efficiency of our cloud-based Virtual MemComputing Machine (VMM) and how it currently provides the performance expected of Quantum Computers."

During the six-month Phase I, MemComputing will demonstrate to NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Division (NAS) its ability to address a relevant, intractable computational benchmark that NASA will use to evaluate the MemComputing technology. MemComputing will be measured based on its ability to meet the following objectives:

Decrease the barriers to entry for prospective supercomputing users.

Minimize the supercomputer user's total time-to-solution (e.g., time to discover, understand, predict, or design).

Increase the achievable scale and complexity of computational analysis, data ingest, and data communications.

Reduce the cost of providing a given level of supercomputing performance for NASA applications.

Enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of NASA's supercomputing operations and services.

Similar to what MemComputing has already done with the US Air Force/Space Force, the goal is that Phase I leads to a Phase II SBIR grant. Phase II would provide follow-on funding by, and infusion into, NASA's high-end computing (HEC) projects: the High-End Computing Capability project at Ames and the Scientific Computing project at Goddard. Ultimately, a successful Phase II could lead to a sole-source contract between MemComputing and NASA.

About MemComputing

MemComputing, Inc.'s disruptive technology dramatically reduces the time to find practical solutions to the world's most challenging optimization problems. MemComputing delivers the performance expected of quantum computing with its non-quantum solution. The company's cloud-based Virtual MemComputing Machine is free to evaluate. Dr. Massimiliano Di Ventra and Dr. Fabio Traversa, co-inventors of memcomputing, co-founded the company with John A. Beane, a successful serial entrepreneur. Visit https://memcpu.com to learn more.

Press contact:

Johnny Aiken

MemComputing, Inc.

[email protected]

SOURCE MemComputing, Inc.
DENVER, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lerch Bates Inc., headquartered in Englewood, Colo., announced today it has completed the acquisition of AXIS Facades USA, a recognized expert in facade and curtain wall design based in San Diego, California. The acquisition broadens and strengthens Lerch Bates' global leadership in technical consulting services for the built environment, which includes vertical transportation, facade access, building logistics and building enclosure consulting.

"As one of very few global technical consulting services firms that is an ESOP, we are thrilled to bring on AXIS Facades USA as employee-owners with us," said Lerch Bates CEO Bart Stephan. "This acquisition allows Lerch Bates to offer an even wider range of services to our clients looking for comprehensive technical expertise from a single, expert source," he said.

AXIS Facades USA brings a superior track record of assisting owners, developers and architects in the design and construction of complex building facades around the world. The AXIS acquisition follows the January 2020 acquisition of PIE Consulting and Engineering by Lerch Bates. These strategic expansions are designed to fulfill the firm's mission to provide technical consulting services that combine a wide breadth of service with an unmatched depth of expertise.

"While Lerch Bates is growing our service offerings, we remain the oldest, largest and most technically capable elevator and escalator consulting firm in the world. We've recently expanded into new markets, added new major clients, and anticipate staff growth of 10-20% over the next two years," said Eric Rupe, President of Lerch Bates Inc.

With the acquisition of AXIS Facades USA, Lerch Bates will serve its clients through more than 35 locations throughout the United States and five offices internationally. Operations will be co-located with Lerch Bates personnel in Southern California and other key Lerch Bates offices in strategically important architectural markets. The new entity will operate as: Lerch Bates Enclosures, formerly AXIS Facades.

ABOUT Lerch Bates

Lerch Bates, headquartered in metropolitan Denver, Colo., is a global technical consulting services firm with offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, South America, the Middle East and India. For more than 74 years, with elevator consulting as its cornerstone, Lerch Bates has advised architects, developers, building investors, owners and managers on the design, sustainability and continuous use of a wide spectrum of building systems for any size or type of building. Lerch Bates operates Lerch Bates Asia Pacific Limited, a holding company in Hong Kong, Lerch Bates (China) Limited, a Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE) in Shanghai, China and Dewar Partnership in the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.lerchbates.com.

ABOUT AXIS Facades

AXIS Facades USA is a specialty provider of building facade design and construction services. Founded in 1987, AXIS professionals serve development and design clients globally from their headquarters in San Diego California. For more information, visit www.facades.com.

Contact

Lerch Bates Inc.

Jeff Marsh, 303-795-7956

[email protected]

www.lerchbates.com

SOURCE Lerch Bates

Related Links

www.lerchbates.com


The brands within an industry are the ones that define it, but they've also had to navigate significant transitions this year and will continue to do so as the world steps back into normalcy post-pandemic. As an industry leader, Modern Market has kneaded innovation into all its strategies since inception, but also works to set the overall brand apart from its competitors. The pandemic brought forth a resurgence of fast casual and Modern Market was prepared for success as the perfect fusion of farm-to-table and fast food.

"We envision ourselves as the leader of next-generation players who are accelerating the inevitable," said Rob McColgan, CEO of Modern Market. "Faster food can be better food  every day we look to revolutionize the fast casual restaurant industry and provide a 'modern definition' of fast food."

This year to date, Modern Market has seen substantial profitability performance with even stronger momentum going into the remainder of 2021. The fast casual brand has seen meaningful improvements in prime costs along with double-digit SSS growth in the first half of the year, with recent periods achieving a 25+% increase versus 2019. The brand's off-premise sales are up more than 80% while dine-in is also steadily increasing. As a share of sales over last year, on-premise sales are at +167% and slowly starting to reach 2019 levels. With this significant growth, Modern Market is actively seeking strong franchise partners to develop the brand in underserved metropolitan areas as well as smaller communities where its wholesome food fills a gap in the market.

"The pandemic is not the only reason consumers have and continue to seek out health-forward, sustainable food options," said McColgan. "As people return to their busy lives and eat out more, they want nourishing food they can feel good about. We believe there are untapped markets for these exact food options  fortunately, they have long been signature items on our menu."

In keeping a pulse on industry trends, Modern Market finds ways to incorporate creative strategies and embrace an omnichannel approach  another added value to potential franchise partners. The brand invests in the right technology to offer safe ordering systems for the modern diner as well as digitally-managed kitchens  but still presents a level of customer service that is unrivaled. They also launched a gourmet virtual pizza concept at the end of 2020 called Honest Pizza Company  an additional revenue stream that is able to utilize existing kitchen infrastructure. The virtual concept is now operating in 15% of restaurants with plans to roll out to all locations by the end of this year. Further development into non-traditional locations is also a top priority after the current partnership at Notre Dame University's Student Center was extended five years due to the brand's popular demand and sales of Modern Market's longtime license partner at Denver International Airport have been on a positive trajectory post-pandemic.

"While proprietary integrations have been at the forefront of all our efforts, we also take pride in our unbeatable level of hospitality. It's at the core of everything we do and instilled in each team member, license partner and franchise candidate," shared McColgan. "Our brand is engineered to adapt to the ever-changing needs of our guests while offering delicious, nourishing food at a reasonable price."

For more information on franchising opportunities, interested franchise candidates and license partners should visit modernmarket.com/franchise.

About Modern Market

Faster food can be better food. That idea led to the creation of Modern Market Eatery in Boulder, Colo. in 2009. The brand is on a mission to nurture happiness from the inside out by making it easy to eat clean, nurturing and delicious food.

Fresh salads, grain bowls, toasted sandwiches and brick oven pizzas rule the menu, along with breakfast all-day options, handmade lemonades and specialty desserts. With nearly 30 locations across Colorado, Texas, and Arizona, as well as Denver International Airport and the campus of Notre Dame, Modern Market is growing quickly and has consistently captured a spot on Fast Casual's "Top 100 Movers & Shakers" list.

For more information and to learn about franchising, visit modernmarket.com or check out the brand on Instagram.

SOURCE Modern Market
The brand's acclaimed solar charge controllers are now a global solution with new HazLoc certifications for North America, Europe, and International Operators

Morningstar Corporation's solar charge controllers are installed in oil rigs and normally unmanned installations (NUIs) in the North Sea, one of the most dangerous seas in the world. Solar-plus-storage now offers a more cost-effective, reliable, and safer power source for oil and gas facilities. Photo courtesy of JCE Energy.

NEWTOWN, Pa., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Morningstar Corporation announced today its signature SunSaver and higher-powered ProStar solar charge controller lines have achieved certifications for HazLoc use in North America (with UL/CSA ratings) and Internationally/Europe (with IECEx/ATEX ratings). Morningstar's new wider range of solar chargers designed for HazLoc use enables the digital oilfield. They bring new opportunities for economical solar electricity solutions equipped with battery storage to power remote off-grid systems with improved safety and reliability.

Solar plus energy storage makes sense in oil and gas applications . Operations are often great distances from any electrical grid, yet require dependable sources of electricity for essential services including injection pumping, monitoring and control, data and communications, security, lighting, and other "digital oilfield" needs.

Generators can power remote off-grid systems, but they require fuel and frequent maintenance. In contrast, a solar electric system has no moving parts and, outside of storage batteries, requires little maintenance over the system's comparatively long operational life. "The economics of solar work out to an extremely low operational expense over the life of the system, making it more cost-effective in the long run," noted Lee Gordon, President and Founder, Morningstar Corporation.

"One of Morningstar's first products nearly 30 years ago was our SunSaver controller designed for oil & gas customers. We grew up in this industry. Today, with over 4 million products used in over 100 countries, Morningstar Corporation has a proven track record of the highest reliability through the lowest hardware failure rate in the industry. Our latest generation of HazLoc-rated controllers build on their predecessors' excellence and take it forward into new applications."

"Energy storage batteries are one of the most expensive components of a solar system. Your choice of a charge controller is critical in protecting that investment and ensuring optimal battery health," commented Bill Mellema, Product Director, Morningstar Corporation. "Our controllers are used in the most extreme environments found on Earth . There's no such thing as 'overkill' when it comes to reliability in these areas."

Out of a field of over 700 brands of charge controllers, Morningstar is unique for earning HazLoc certification on a wide range of models. For months, the company underwent a rigorous audit of its operations, documentation, and quality procedures in the design, control, and production of these solar charge controllers. Passing the audit demonstrates that Morningstar follows rigorous standards and procedures to ensure quality and consistency in its product lines.

Morningstar's new range of HazLoc controllers makes it possible to enable "digital oilfields" with larger (up to 1,100 Watts), more capable solar electric solutions. Products with the new UL/CSA North America and IECEx/ATEX International/European certifications includes:

About Morningstar Corporation

With over 4 million products installed and sold since 1993in some of the most extreme environments and mission-critical applications in the worldMorningstar Corporation is the world's leading supplier of solar controllers and inverters. The US-based, employee-owned company is headquartered in Newtown, Pennsylvania, with an engineering research and development center in Maryland, and a global network of dedicated, best-in-class distribution and manufacturing partners. For more information visit www.morningstarcorp.com .

SOURCE Morningstar Corporation
This resource website has information collected from industry experts which helps in discerning information overload that can occur in the process of furnishing a new office space. The portal discusses vital information for every piece of furniture from form and function to how to find the best supplier of goods. It covers materials used in commercial office furniture and why professional installation should always be considered. It is a goal of the website to become a signature tool in the search for high quality commercial office furniture.

Also, as an accompaniment to all the benefits previously stated, professional designers are available to assist with any questions regarding a purchase, one -on-one while browsing the site. The professional design team has all the answers to questions that might arise during the planning stages of purchasing commercial office furniture. These questions can involve room layout and floorplans and solutions may include 3D renderings and estimates from the design team. The information provided is highly detailed to help eliminate the guesswork of furnishing a business. Once partnered with a design professional a potential customer will have a complete understanding of the entirety of the purchase process.

This new website brings information and purchasing power to the buyer. Data found within each section of the website has been carefully provided to ensure that the purchaser gets the best office furniture for their budget. CommercialOffice.Furniture revolutionizes the way that commercial office furniture is found and provides customers piece of mind that they are buying from industry experts who have helped to furnish countless offices and meet spaces.

SOURCE Office Furniture, Inc.

Related Links

https://commercialoffice.furniture/


New Energy Blue biomass refinery designed to produce renewable carbon-negative automotive fuel Tweet this

The company is developing New Energy Freedom biomass refinery on a 155-acre site near Mason City, Iowa. 275,000 tons of crop residue (cornstalks and wheat straw) will be locally sourced, then converted into 20 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol and 95 tons of lignin, a solid biofuel and natural binder. Half the greenhouse-gas reduction comes from replacing petroleum products, the other half from sequestering soil carbons through best farming practices.

"Our cellulosic fuel can exceed California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard policy and its rigorous air quality requirements," says Corle. "Other states continue to adopt similar policies, which drive the growing global demand for carbon-negative transportation fuels."

Strong demand is also expected for the refinery's lignin. Produced by a clean process, it can replace oil-derived bitumen as the binder in asphalt. "A greener way to pave roads and shingle roofs," Corle says.

Besides being one of America's first carbon-negative refineries, New Energy Freedom represents the first large-scale use of Inbicon bioconversion technology outside of Denmark. New Energy Blue's team is a spin-off of the technology's development. The company purchased exclusive rights to license and build-out refineries from rsted in 2019. Freedom's CapEx is about $200 million, about the same amount invested in Inbicon's 15-year development. rsted built and operated a demonstration refinery for five years, supplying 2G ethanol to Danish petrol stations.

New Energy Blue has completed process engineering around several different feedstocks and is now completing a site-specific design for construction next year in Iowa. The company plans to build four more biomass refineries over the next 6 years.

Albury Fleitas, company president, is leading the financing of the project. "We've gained equity and debt interests to build-out multiple refineries from private and institutional sources," Fleitas states. "What's more, the USDA greenlighted the project under phase-one section 9003 for a construction loan guarantee."

The refinery breaks down plant fiber into lignin and two sugars, which are currently fermented into fuel-ethanol. The technical flexibility of the process allows project owners to capitalize on dozens of downstream opportunities as they arise. Utilizing non-GMO feedstocks like grain straws is being evaluated for future sites. Because the hemicellulose can be processed into a sought-after sugar substitute, xylitol, snack-food makers who use it can market their products as a healthier choice. The two sugars can also be turned into polyethylene and replace a popular plastic now made from oil.

Besides saving carbons and cutting pollution, the refineries will create new green jobs, give growers additional income, and pump millions of dollars through local economies.

Media Contact:

Roger Moore

[email protected]

SOURCE New Energy Blue

Related Links

http://newenergyblue.com


The low code platform unlocks simple from complex, content-driven business operations

SYDNEY, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Newgen Software is excited to unveil the one and only, comprehensive digital transformation platform  NewgenONE  to simplify even the most complex business processes, manage the messiest information, and drive customer engagement based on changing demands.

Newgen's digital transformation platform, now known as NewgenONE, combines existing process automation, content services, and communication management capabilities. The platform enables enterprises to leverage low code to develop and deploy complex, content-driven, and customer-engaging business applications on the cloud. NewgenONE provides users with information, while empowering professional IT developers with speed and agility. Furthermore, it enables seamless integration of business applications with back-end and third-party systems.

"Enterprises are embracing digital transformation to simplify processes spanning siloed departments, information across data systems and files, and customer engagements across channels. NewgenONE is the only platform that can handle such levels of complexity for superior employee and customer experiences. NewgenONE unlocks simple," said Diwakar Nigam, Managing Director and Chairman, Newgen Software.

"Our platform does it all  from developing 100% custom-fit business applications to helping enterprises leverage hyperautomation and robotic process automation; from enabling scalability in processes to simplifying use cases across industries. The platform seamlessly handles complex business processes and manages the complex information related to those processes," he further added.

The NewgenONE Digital Transformation Platform unlocks simple in business operations, making it easier for all stakeholders to participate, utilize information, make decisions, and service their internal and external customers.

NewgenONE is in direct response to enterprises' growing need for managing business complexities, enabling customer success, and expediting digital transformation. Enterprises across 72 countries rely on NewgenONE's underlying, industry-leading platforms for their customer-facing and content-driven business transformation initiatives.

About Newgen Software Technologies Pty Ltd

Newgen is the leading provider of a unified digital transformation platform with native process automation, content services, and communication management capabilities. Globally, successful enterprises rely on Newgen's industry-recognized low code application platform to develop and deploy complex, content-driven, and customer-engaging business applications on the cloud. From onboarding to service requests, lending to underwriting, and for many more use cases across industries. Newgen unlocks simple with speed and agility.

For more details, visit www.newgensoft.com

Contact:

Asif Khan

[email protected]

Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/676258/Newgen_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Newgen Software Technologies Pty Ltd
LONDON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- In their latest quantitative research published today, Acuity Analytics share their recent findings on the use of a macroeconomic factor model for stock returns using news sentiment data.

Professor Argimiro Arratia heads up the team of academics at Acuity In their latest quantitative research published today, Acuity Analytics share their recent findings on the use of a macroeconomic factor model for stock returns using news sentiment data.

The report titled, 'News Sentiment Factor Models for Asset Returns' compares the use of factor models in estimating the covariance of capital asset returns. In particular, the paper studies the Fama-French 3 Factor Model and the extent to which Acuity's news sentiment data can be used to enhance this widely used model or emulate its capability in gauging the outsized returns of an investment portfolio as an independent metric.

One of the key results from the study is that the experiments have proven that a 2-factor model comprising the SP500 index returns and one of Acuity's news sentiment market index is as good an estimator of covariance of capital asset returns as the Fama-French 3-factor model.

Professor Argimiro Arratia, who heads up the team of academics at Acuity commented, "We were extremely excited to see the very positive results of this study. The Fama-French 3-factor model has been used extensively by researchers and investors since its origin in 1992 but like any model, has its limitations. With access to so many new data sets today, we are continually looking at ways to incorporate these innovative data sets to enhance these existing models or, even better, identify how they can be used independently to deliver similar, if not potentially better results."

The publication of this study comes just 4 weeks after the official opening of Acuity Analytics in Spain and their R&D Hub.

Andrew Lane, CEO of Acuity says, "The research that Professor Arratia and his team are conducting is very exciting and demonstrates the tangible value that news sentiment data can offer investors. The opening of our R&D hub in Spain is key to harnessing this research capability as a means to expand the uses of our news sentiment data and shape the future of our products."

NLP, AI, opinion mining, volatility monitoring and sentiment analysis are all areas of research for the Acuity Analytics team as they strive to unlock new trading insights on the workings of the financial markets. By testing and unravelling complex, large-scale unstructured data, Professor Arratia's team are helping Acuity to remain at the forefront of data technology and deliver exciting products to investors who are continually seeking new opportunities to make returns.

Media contact:

Meredyth Grant

[email protected]

+4407496725286

SOURCE Acuity Trading
WYOMISSING, Pa., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Brian K. Reedy, M.D. was recently named one of "America's Best Plastic Surgeons 2021" by Newsweek magazine, a distinction reserved for the top specialists in the field of plastic surgery.

Dr. Brian K. Reedy is a renowned board certified plastic surgeon in Berks County, Pennsylvania.

"It is an honor to be named one of the country's best plastic surgeons for both breast augmentation and rhinoplasty," said Dr. Reedy. "I am encouraged and humbled by the support of my medical peers for nominating me for such a prestigious title. This distinction would not be possible without them and all the wonderful patients I have had the pleasure of serving. My staff and I will continue to offer the best results and care possible."

About the Newsweek nomination

To determine the nominees, Statista Inc., the global market research firm, surveyed nearly 3,000 medical experts with knowledge in plastic surgery, asking them to recommend the best plastic surgeons across the U.S. for four categories: breast augmentation, facelift, liposuction, and rhinoplasty. Out of the 5,000+ peer responses, the top 200 plastic surgeons for breast augmentation and the top 150 for facelift, liposuction, and rhinoplasty were identified. Dr. Reedy was chosen by his medical peers for two out of the four categoriesrhinoplasty and breast augmentationfor his outstanding skill and experience with these procedures.

Dr. Reedy is a renowned board certified plastic surgeon in Berks County, Pennsylvania

Dr. Reedy's surgical skill and patient rapport have been recognized for over 20 years. He has appeared on the Emmy Award-winning television show, The Doctors ; published articles in peer-reviewed medical journals such as Pediatric Surgery and the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery; and been featured in local publications including the Reading Eagle and Berks County Living Magazine .

When it comes to choosing a plastic surgeon, Dr. Reedy acknowledges that it is common for patients to become overwhelmed by their options. "With the demand for plastic surgery skyrocketing, many underqualified surgeons are seeking to advertise themselves as the best option, which can be confusing and potentially dangerous for patients. Thankfully, Newsweek's survey serves as an informative resource for helping people make knowledgeable decisions about plastic and reconstructive surgery."

In addition to breast augmentation and rhinoplasty, Dr. Reedy and his associate, board certified plastic surgeon Dr. Scott C. Lindsay , specialize in mommy makeovers, body contouring, and facial procedures. Dr. Reedy and Dr. Lindsay also offer a comprehensive range of aesthetic skin care and dermatology services provided by their staff of certified dermatologists, licensed aestheticians, and nurse injectors. Facilities include a private, accredited surgery suite and a separate dermatology clinic.

About Berks Plastic Surgery

Berks Plastic Surgery serves the Allentown, Reading, Harrisburg, and Philadelphia areas of Pennsylvania, providing plastic surgery and dermatology services. Board certified plastic surgeons Dr. Brian K. Reedy and Dr. Scott C. Lindsay perform a variety of aesthetic surgeries and cosmetic treatments. Berks Plastic Surgery is located at 50 Commerce Dr., Wyomissing, PA, 19610. Berks Plastic Surgery can be reached at (610) 320-0200 or berksplasticsurgery.com .

Media contact: Dr. Brian K. Reedy, Berks Plastic Surgery, (610) 320-0200, berksplasticsurgery.com .

SOURCE Berks Plastic Surgery
VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NFT Procurement, a division of Cybernetic Technologies Ltd (the "Company") (OTC: HPIL), announces that it is launching its first NFT auction on August 10th, 2021.

The first three auctions are: nftjanisjoplin.com, nftspicegirls.com and nftmarilynmonroe.com. "This is the first auction of many as the company is working on many others to hopefully release at least three per month," said Stephen Brown, CEO.

Shareholders Call: August 6th, 2021

https://zoom.us/j/93402294076?pwd=NFpFV2VRTFRocDlBajNERUxQaGZuQT09

Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (The "Act"). In particular, when used in the preceding discussion, the words "pleased," "plan," "confident that," "believe," "expect," or "intend to," and similar conditional expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Act and are subject to the safe harbor created by the Act. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ materially from those expressed in any of the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, market conditions, general acceptance of the Company's products and technologies, competitive factors, the ability to successfully complete additional financings and other risks described in the Company's SEC reports and filing.

For more information:

Cybernetic Technologies Ltd

1720 650 West Georgia St

Vancouver, BC V6B 4N8

Contact: Stephen Brown, CEO

www.cybernetictech.ca

[email protected]

Ph: +1 (778) 819-1956

SOURCE Cybernetic Technologies Ltd

Related Links

https://www.cybernetictech.ca


Innovative partnership focuses on early-stage development of activators for a glucose detoxification enzyme called glycerol-3-phosphate phosphatase (G3PP)

MONTREAL, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- NIMIUM Therapeutics (www.nimium.ca), a Montreal-based biotech, has formed a partnership with Paraza Pharma (www.parazapharma.com) to develop a new treatment for cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs). The treatment aims to prevent and reverse the adverse effects of excess sugar and caloric intake and to promote healthier aging. The partnership will focus on the early-stage development of glycerol-3-phosphate phosphatase (G3PP) activators.

The G3PP enzyme was discovered in mammalian cells by Professor Marc Prentki's laboratory at the Centre de recherche du Centre Hospitalier de l'Universite de Montreal (CRCHUM), that demonstrated evidence of the enzyme's central role in reducing the adverse effects of excessive caloric intake. This breakthrough pre-clinical research demonstrated that G3PP activation addresses multiple metabolic syndrome-related complications such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Additionally, in vivo experiments have shown that G3PP activation contributes to healthier aging. NIMIUM has access to the G3PP activator hits identified by adMare BioInnovations, which collaborated with Dr. Prentki to translate his research into potential commercial applications.

Under the agreement, Paraza Pharma will apply its medicinal chemistry, biology and integrated drug discovery expertise to develop lead compounds activating G3PP, and NIMIUM will deliver in vitro and in vivo animal proof of concept experiments.

"This partnership focuses on delivering a potential game-changing therapeutic for cardiometabolic diseases," said Dr. Arshad Siddiqui, founder and CEO of Paraza Pharma. "Paraza Pharma has the expertise and capabilities to translate this important research into a new therapeutic that could help patients."

Cardiometabolic diseases are the number-one cause of death in the world. They include cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, chronic kidney disease, hypercholesterolemia, hypertriglyceridemia, hypertension, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Currently, each of these conditions requires separate treatments. Dr. Prentki's research indicates that G3PP, via its actions on glucose and fat metabolism, has potential to treat them holistically.

Philippe Walker, CEO of NIMIUM Therapeutics said, "Cardiometabolic diseases are a major cause of illness and death. New approaches are needed to address this growing health crisis. If successful, this could transform the way these diseases are treated."

About NIMIUM Therapeutics

NIMIUM Therapeutics is a Montreal biotech focused on the development of an innovative therapeutic to treat cardiometabolic diseases (CMDs). The research is based on glycerol-3-phosphate phosphatase (G3PP), an enzyme found to play a central role in glucose, lipid, and energy metabolism in humans. NIMIUM has partnerships with adMare BioInnovations, a Canadian organization that offers expertise, infrastructure, and capital to help build life-sciences companies; and with Paraza Pharma, a leading contract research organization specialized in drug development. NIMIUM has received funding from Investissement Quebec.

About Paraza Pharma

Paraza Pharma, a Montreal Canada and Cambridge Massachusetts, USA, based company is an integrated preclinical drug discovery organization with focus on excellence in science and innovation.

NIMIUM Therapeutics:

Philippe Walker, CEO

[email protected]

+1 (514) 814 3200

www.nimium.ca

Paraza Pharma Inc.:

Arshad Siddiqui, CEO

[email protected]

www.parazapharma.com

SOURCE Paraza Pharma Inc.
The plan outlines community and structural-level advocacy measures to ensure Indigenous gender-diverse people can access the healthcare they need. While drafting the strategic vision, NPAIHB and the Native Advocacy Workgroup for Trans Health listened and consulted with Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ community members, healthcare providers, and policy-makers. The strategic plan supports the I/T/U clinics as they begin to provide gender-affirming care to their patients by emphasizing the following four goals:

Develop and pass protective policies at the tribal, state, and federal levels; Ensure affirming clinical environments for gender-diverse patients; Ensure best practice care for Indigenous gender-diverse patients; and Improve I/T/U health systems support for initiatives focused on the wellness of gender-diverse community members.

In a year when state legislatures across the country have introduced more than 100 bills to restrict trans rights, a national resolution supporting the implementation of this plan represents a historic statement affirming the right of Indigenous gender-diverse people get the healthcare they need.

"NCAI signing this resolution in support of our strategic plan is a huge win toward remembering our Nation's Two Spirit traditions and restoring our places in the circle. We have long known that the health of our communities depends on the health of all of our people, and this goes a long way in the struggle to ensure equitable healthcare will be provided for our trans and gender-diverse Indigenous relatives."  Itai Jeffries, Paths (Re)Membered Co-Manager

The Paths (Re)Membered Project, within the NPAIHB, centers the Two Spirit and LGBTQ+ communityits strengths, resiliencies, and historiesin our movement toward health equity.

SOURCE Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board

Related Links

http://www.npaihb.org/


LOS ANGELES, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Numerade, an EdTech startup from Los Angeles, California, has secured $26 million in Series A funding which will be used to help democratize science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education for millions of students worldwide.

The round of funding was led by IDG Capital, an investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. This was supplemented by existing investors General Catalyst, Mucker Capital, and Kapor Capital, and strategic investors including Alumni Ventures Group, Interplay Ventures, Toy Ventures, Margo Georgiadis, Khaled Helioui, Taavet Hinrikus, Sten Tamkivi, Pierre-Dimitri, Ian Hogarth, and Michael Thompson.

Numerade was founded to provide the next generation of thinkers with an easy platform to learn and solve problems. Since its launch, Numerade has helped 20 million students struggling with questions ranging from pre-algebra to quantum mechanics, saving them hundreds of millions of hours of frustration, anxiety, and self-doubt. Through a vast library of more than one million handcrafted videos, students are able to watch, listen, and learn difficult concepts and skills through expert explanations from the top 1% of educators.

In addition to growing its lesson video library, which is already the largest STEM video library online, Numerade will invest in the further development of its proprietary Artificial Intelligence (AI) tutor technology, helping to eliminate the need for private tutors and, thereby, ensuring significant savings for students and families. Overall, the success of the company's Series A round of funding will work to support millions of students and educators across geographic and socioeconomic borders.

"Our platform is leveling the playing field for the younger generation, as we believe the scientist who will cure cancer tomorrow is studying on Numerade today," said CEO and founder Nhon Ma. "This funding will allow Numerade to reach millions more students and provide personalized asynchronous lessons and experiences that provide parity to learning. Because Numerade can provide educators from world-class institutions, we democratize access to top-tier quality education at 1/10,000 the cost."

The already widening opportunity gap between lower- and higher-income students has been significantly exacerbated by COVID and the remote education that followed. By leveraging the world's largest library of virtual STEM lessons, with more than one million video lessons, Numerade provides students far and wide access to the best educators that learning has to offer. This helps to eliminate the inequity in education by making the world's most talented educators' knowledge available at a fraction of the price  working to close the education opportunity gap.

About The Company

Numerade is singularly focused on creating exceptional video and interactive content experiences for education. The venture-backed, high-growth education technology startup works to make the knowledge and skills of world-class educators widely accessible and affordable to student audiences of all backgrounds. Numerade's mission is to close the educational opportunity gap by unlocking and democratizing access to extraordinary educators and the content they have to offer.

CONTACT

Name: Kristen Weymouth

Phone: 1-646-480-0356

Email: [email protected]

SOURCE Numerade
A $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, matched by $900,000 from industry, will support establishment of the OU site of the Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Composite and Hybrid Materials Interfacing (CHMI). This one-of-a-kind center will consist of three independent, but closely coordinated, sites at each of the partnering universities.

Each site will direct its research toward a different application thrust and sector of the U.S. economy; Georgia Tech will focus on the aerospace industry, Tennessee-Knoxville on infrastructure and biomedical applications, and Oakland on automotive applications, including automobiles, ground vehicles and farm equipment.

Composite and hybrid materials interfacing research includes material-joining science and technology, dissimilar-material compatibility, contact surface treatment, corrosion and delamination protection, and non-destructive testing and inspection. This research has extensive applications in the aerospace, automotive, national security, biomedical, energy and personal protective gear sectors of the U.S. economy.

According to Dr. Sayed Nassar, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and founding director of OU's Fastening and Joining Research Institute (FAJRI), the use of composite and hybrid materials has increased dramatically over the past several decades in response to growing demand for light-weight, energy-efficient products. The properties of these materials, such as their mechanical strength, electrical conductivity and reactions to chemicals, factor into their reliability, making cutting-edge CHMI research crucial for quality control across numerous industries.

As Dr. Nassar explains, "Current lack of dedicated, science-based CHMI research often complicates maintenance, repair and overhaul of safety-critical composite and hybrid material joints. Failures in these joined materials can cause injury and loss of human life. Research at this NSF-funded center will identify and develop breakthrough technologies, advanced smart materials, artificial intelligence and software tools, and other methods that will revolutionize the science and technology for joining composite and hybrid materials."

"Oakland University is very excited about The Center and this collaboration with Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee," added Dr. David Stone, OU's Vice President for Research. "We expect The Center to take our already long-established and productive relationships with the automotive industry and the Army ground vehicle command to the next level."

SOURCE Oakland University

Related Links

WWW.OAKLAND.EDU


CRANBURY, N.J., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ophthalmology Times, a leading multimedia platform dedicated to ophthalmologists, announces the addition of the Glaucoma Research Foundation (GRF) and the Refractive Surgery Council (RSC) to its Strategic Alliance Partnership (SAP) program.

"Partnering with the Glaucoma Research Foundation and the Refractive Surgery Council assists us in achieving our main goal, which is to provide ophthalmologists with the resources they need to optimize patient care," said Mike Hennessy Jr., president and CEO of MJH Life Sciences, parent company of Ophthalmology Times. "Moreover, the missions of each of these foundations align directly with our mission as a publication, making for outstanding partnerships. I look forward to seeing the positive impact these alliances will have on the industry."

For more than 40 years, the Glaucoma Research Foundation (GFR) has contributed to funding innovative clinical and laboratory research. With dedicated support from donors and the help and commitment of the community, the foundation has been advancing its mission to cure glaucoma and will not stop researching and innovating until it has achieved its goal. As a resource for those affected by glaucoma, GRF offers general information, care and treatment options to help combat the condition, industry news, research progress, and more. By offering valuable resources and insights, GRF's unparalleled support aids in the continuing fight to put an end to glaucoma.

The Refractive Surgery Council (RSC) is a resource that serves those considering a laser vision correction procedure. Consisting of clinical researchers, skilled surgeons, eye care professionals, technology developers, and industry representatives, RSC is a trusted resource for those who wish to correct their vision problems through laser treatment options. The council also helps patients find the right doctor for them by linking them to eye-care professionals in their area. By reporting on the latest clinical research and news, RSC remains a reliable source for eye health.

For more information on the Glaucoma Research Foundation, click here.

For more information on the Refractive Surgery Council, click here.

For the full list of Ophthalmology Times SAP partners, click here.

About Ophthalmology Times

Ophthalmology Times is a multimedia platform that offers ophthalmology professionals digital resources they can use to help provide the best patient care and positively affect the identification, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of eye diseases, as well as promote progressive eye health. Ophthalmology Times is a brand of MJH Life Sciences, the largest privately held, independent, full-service medical media company in North America dedicated to delivering trusted health care news across multiple channels.

Ophthalmology Times Media Contact

Alyssa Scarpaci, 609-250-4356

[email protected]

SOURCE Ophthalmology Times

Related Links

https://www.ophthalmologytimes.com


"For the past five years, PATRON has released a limited-edition Mexican Heritage Tin that visually shares the history, traditions and culture of Mexico through spirited designs created by local Mexican artists. With this year's theme highlighting Mexican street art, we collaborated with fashion designer, John Geiger, to showcase the parallels between SENKOE's street art and streetwear," said Chloe Lloyd-Jones, Vice President of PATRON Tequila in North America. "We are one of the few brands that still makes tequila the hard way  by hand with meticulous precision and care. We are extremely proud to be made in Mexico at Hacienda PATRON in Atotonilco el Alto. The Mexican Heritage Tin allows us to pay homage to our home and our Mexican roots while celebrating the craft and attention to detail it takes to develop our tequilas  we're thrilled to be collaborating with two extremely talented creators that share the same level of commitment and passion for their craft."

The PATRON x John Geiger streetwear collection celebrates the rich history of Mexican culture with John Geiger pulling influence from SENKOE's street art-inspired design on the PATRON Mexican Heritage Tin. For the collection, John Geiger captures the essence and tradition of tequila production in a long sleeve shirt featuring an image of a jimador farmer harvesting the Blue Weber agave that tequila is made from and collectible socks, all incorporating John's signature bright-colored accents.

"In designing the PATRON x John Geiger streetwear collection, I was inspired by the colorful and rich history of Mexican street art in SENKOE's design for the Mexican Heritage Tin and handcrafted legacy of PATRON. Over the years I have admired SENKOE's work and how passionate he is about where he is from, using his murals to reclaim and beautify public spaces," said John Geiger. "I wanted this collection to represent the dedication that goes into craft - whether that be a bottle of PATRON tequila or a one-of-a-kind mural. There is so much dedication and character behind Mexican culture, and as a local artist, it is inspiring to see SENKOE convey it all through his work. With streetwear, it is important to bring together all aspects of cultural influences and the PATRON x John Geiger collection reflects that by paying homage to the hardworking people that create PATRON tequila from start to finish."

The limited-edition PATRON Mexican Heritage Tin, which includes a 750mL bottle of PATRON Silver, features a vibrant design created by SENKOE that tells a story of fundamental Mexican culture. The tin depicts the tree of life intertwined with imagery of the creation of the universe. The tree's trunk doubles as the maguey's flower with a totem near the top formed of the bee and hummingbirds, essential creatures in maguey fertilization. Maguey, a local Mexican flower, is a member of the agave family and is a cousin to the Blue Weber agave, from which tequila is derived. The flowers on each side of the tree of life reference indigenous craft, the true artisans of Mexico and the keepers of ancient tradition.

The tin art embodies important elements of Mexican culture and distinctive PATRON iconography (bees, pina, agave), amplifying the richness of its Mexican heritage and keeping Mexican tradition alive. With this tin, PATRON aims to celebrate Mexico with two simply perfect pieces of artwork  handcrafted PATRON tequila and the intricate design by SENKOE.

"I'm truly inspired by PATRON tequila  you have an iconic brand that is so full of passion and proud of its Mexican roots  to this day PATRON tequila is still handcrafted in Mexico and stays true to tradition using its time-honored, handcrafted production method from day one," said SENKOE. "For the design of the tin, I wanted to reflect the beautiful and vibrant history of Mexican street art, while showcasing the commitment PATRON has to keeping traditions of tequila production alive. So much passion and creativity went into the making of the Mexican Heritage Tin design and streetwear collection, and now we're excited for people to enjoy what we have created together."

The PATRON x John Geiger streetwear collection will be available for purchase starting July 24, National Tequila Day at JohnGeigerCo.com . Available in limited quantities, the socks retail at $30 and the long sleeve shirts at $85.

The limited-edition PATRON Mexican Heritage Tin is available at local retailers nationwide in the US as well as select international markets for an SRP of $65 while supplies last. Additionally, the tin can be purchased online at ReserveBar.com .

About PATRON Tequila

From hand-harvesting the highest-quality 100 percent Weber Blue Agave, to the traditional, time-honored distillation process and individual labeling, numbering, and inspection of each bottle, PATRON tequila is crafted with meticulous precision and care. Though PATRON has grown to become one of the most recognized and respected luxury spirits brands in the world, it is still exclusively produced in the Highlands of Jalisco, Mexico, in the same small batches and with the same commitment to quality and craftsmanship. For more information about PATRON tequilas and liqueurs, please visit www.patrontequila.com. The perfect way to enjoy PATRON is responsibly.

PATRON is part of the portfolio of Bacardi Limited, headquartered in Hamilton, Bermuda. Bacardi Limited refers to the Bacardi group of companies, including Bacardi International Limited.

About John Geiger

Designer John Geiger has perfected his aesthetic of unique concepts, materials, and color combinations into an eponymous label. Founded in 2017, John Geiger has quickly risen as a formidable creator in this group with early contributions that have made their mark in the world of footwear, including being named one of "The 25 Most Influential People in Sneakers Right Now" by Complex. Every product release has an individual story and with John Geiger, no opportunity is wasted to explore and experiment his vision further.

John Geiger is forged on the simple idea of combining versatility, style, and comfort. With these three pillars, Geiger's products effectively give its wearers confidence through inspiring silhouettes.

About SENKOE

SENKOE's work is a continuous reference to the discourse of identity present in the use and reinterpretation of pre-Hispanic aesthetics, the use of textiles and handcrafted references in the imaginary, mystical and typical pre-Colombian cultures, mixed with current references like pop culture, graphic design and illustration.

His graphics overtake the nationalist discourse and go beyond the border; they make use of a language that graces the mystical and spiritual profundities tied to the natural forces, use of colors, shamanism and magic, without leaving aside the current, social problems and concern for the frenetic changes of today's society. Fused into a Mexican chimeric identity, he constructs what can be called a narrative graffiti that results in his work stimulating the imagination of the passerby in a kind of animalistic dream.

His work has been exhibited in England, Brazil, France, Colombia, India, Nepal, Canada, USA, Puerto Rico and Mexico. His career includes national and international urban art festivals, individual and collective exhibitions, as well as activities related to graffiti. He studied pedagogy at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and received artistic workshops at the Academia San Carlos, reinforcing his knowledge in practice with workshops and courses related to art and design. He is currently working full time on painting interventions in the urban context as a part of an interdisciplinary project in favor of the recovery of public spaces.

THE PERFECT WAY TO ENJOY PATRON IS RESPONSIBLY. 2021. PATRON, TEQUILA PATRON LOGO AND PATRON BEE LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS.

SOURCE Patron Tequila
DALLAS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Simmons Bank, as Trustee of the Permian Basin Royalty Trust (NYSE: PBT) ("Permian") today declared a cash distribution to the holders of its units of beneficial interest of $0.021355 per unit, payable on August 13, 2021, to unit holders of record on July 30, 2021.

This month's distribution increased from the previous month as the result of increased production of oil offset by a decrease in gas production for the Texas Royalty Properties. Also, the pricing for oil increased slightly offset by a decrease in gas pricing for the Texas Royalty Properties during for the month May. Currently, only the Texas Royalty Properties are contributing to the monthly distribution.

Since the Waddell Ranch is in current deficit for the foreseeable future, any increase or decrease of the distribution by revenues received, will only be reflective of the activity of the Texas Royalty Properties. The activity of the Waddell Ranch will be discussed with the following narrative until it contributes back to the distribution. This reflects the production month of May.

WADDELL RANCH

In reporting May production of the Underlying Properties for this month's press release, production for oil volumes was 94,554 bbls (gross) and was priced at about $63.97 per bbl. Production for gas volumes (including gas liquids) was 194,689 mcf (gross) and was priced at about $3.99 per mcf, which now includes the value received from plant products and natural gas liquids. Net revenue for the underlying properties of the Waddell ranch was $6,530,767 (gross) for May. Lease Operating Expenses were $1,626,098 (gross) and Capital Expenditures were $8,379,485 (gross) for May. Included in the Capital Expenditures this month is a prior period correction of about $3.5 million reflecting a true up of the 2020 accounting with other partners on the Waddell Ranch. This would put the Trust's proceeds as a deficit of $ 2,606,112 (net) for the month of May, leaving an excess cost deficit cumulative of $12.5 million (net).

Resulting producing well count relating to activity on the Waddell Ranch properties for the month of May reflects 10 additional recompletion wells along with the previously stated well count of 39 recompletions giving a total for the year of 49 wells (gross) recompleted and producing. New producing drill well count for the month of May were 8 new drill wells along with the previously stated new drill well count of 14 new drill wells giving the total of new drill wells for the year of 22 (gross) drilled and producing. Both the recompletions and new drill wells are currently receiving revenue on new production, as reflected by the increasing volumes as stated above.

Previously on the release for January, the Capital Expenditures were overstated by $400,000, with true deduction of $3,175,596 being accurate. The cumulative deficit stated was accurate. Also, in the narrative of operation, barrels of oil produced should be 55,767, as stated correctly in the accompanying chart included. In the April release, there was a prior period adjustment $283,000 allowed to the trust, but not reflected in the narrative.

Blackbeard Operating has advised the Trust of the 2021 capital budget of $86.6 million (gross), ($32.5 million net to the Trust) for the Waddell Ranch proposing 91 (gross) drill wells, with 24 (gross) recompletions.

TEXAS ROYALTY PROPERTIES

Production for the underlying properties at the Texas Royalties was 19,114 of oil and 10,523 Mcf of gas. The production for the Trust's allocated portion of the Texas Royalties was 16,949 barrels of oil and 9,333 of gas. The average price for oil was $61.94 per bbl and for gas was $6.62 per Mcf. This would primarily reflect production and pricing for the month of May for oil and the month of April for gas. These allocated volumes were impacted by the pricing of both oil and gas. This production and pricing for the underlying properties resulted in revenues for the Texas Royalties of $1,253,554. Deducted from these were taxes of $132,110 resulting in a Net Profit of $1,121,444 for the month of May. With the Trust's Net Profit Interest (NPI) of 95% of the Underlying Properties, this would result in net contribution by the Texas Royalties of $1,065,372 to this month's distribution.



Underlying Properties Net to Trust Sales





Volumes Volumes Average Price

Oil (bbls) Gas (Mcf) Oil (bbls) Gas (Mcf) Oil (per bbl) Gas (per Mcf) Current Month











Waddell Ranch 94,554 194,689 70,916 146,017* $63.97 $2.61** Texas Royalties 19,114 10,523 16,949 9,333* $61.94 $6.62**













Prior Month











Waddell Ranch 80,362 259,608 60,272 194,706* $59.93 $1.91** Texas Royalties 16,339 12,869 14,344 11,276* $60.65 $8.34**

* These volumes are the net to the trust, after allocation of expenses to Trust's net profit interest, including any prior period adjustments. ** This pricing includes sales of gas liquid products.

General and Administrative Expenses deducted for the month were $70,474 resulting in a distribution of $995,355 to 46,608,796 units outstanding, or $0.021355 per unit.

The worldwide market conditions continue to affect the pricing for domestic production. It is difficult to predict what effect these conditions will have on future distributions.

The 2020 Annual Report with Form 10-K and the January 1, 2021 Reserve Summary are now available on Permian's website. Permian's cash distribution history, current and prior year financial reports, tax information booklets, and a link to filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission, all can be found on Permian's website at http://www.pbt-permian.com/. Additionally, printed reports can be requested and are mailed free of charge.

SOURCE Permian Basin Royalty Trust

Related Links

pbt-permian.com


WASHINGTON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. press leaders spoke out Tuesday against the government in Belarus for its escalating attacks on journalists.

Since Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, claimed victory in a fraudulent election almost one year ago, he has led a growing crackdown on independent media organizations and the people who work there, part of a larger effort to repress anyone in Belarus whom he perceives to be his enemy.

"We condemn Alexander Lukashenko's brazen attacks on journalists and other independent voices in Belarus," said Lisa Nicole Matthews, the National Press Club president, and Angela Greiling Keane, president of the National Press Club Journalism Institute. "We call on Lukashenko to halt this violent and desperate attempt to crush freedom of expression, and we call on people of principle everywhere to use every means available to pressure him to do so."

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya defeated Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election in Belarus, but Lukashenko instead claimed victory and retained power.

Speaking at the National Press Club on Tuesday, Tikhanovskaya said Lukashenko is destroying the media in Belarus.

"Lukashenko and his cronies, they take revenge on the mass media that dared to fulfill their job and showing the truth and showing demonstrations," she said. "It is crucial for this fight for the whole world to see those pictures."

She called for financial support of media from Belarus who were forced out of the country.

"Journalists tell the truth without any kind of limitations," she said. "Journalists should not be under attack. No way."

Fact-based reporters in Belarus face an increasingly dire situation.

Belarussian security personnel have repeatedly broken into the offices of media organizations and their employees' homes, according to news reports and human rights groups. Dozens of journalists have been harassed, stripped of accreditations, beaten and jailed.

Just last Friday, authorities raided the offices of several news organizations, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Minsk, Belarus's capital. The authorities conducted searches and made arrests.

Two days prior, security forces had conducted a similar assault on multiple human rights organizations and the Belarusian Association of Journalists, which represents media professionals.

Last month, NPC and NPCJI leaders said Lukashenko's pattern of repression is "antithetical to what journalists worldwide hold dear."

On May 23, Lukashenko ordered a fighter jet to force a civilian passenger aircraft to land in Belarus so that authorities there could arrest Raman Pratasevich, a dissident Belarusian journalist. The government used a phony bomb threat against the plane as part of the operation. Pratasevich remains under house arrest, according to recent news reports.

Founded in 1908, the National Press Club is the world's leading professional organization for journalists. The Club has 3,000 members representing nearly every major news organization and is a leading voice for press freedom in the United States and around the world.

The National Press Club Journalism Institute, the Club's non-profit affiliate, promotes an engaged global citizenry through an independent and free press and equips journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire civic engagement.

Contact: John Donnelly, NPC Press Freedom Team Chairman: [email protected] 202-650-6738.

SOURCE National Press Club

Related Links

http://press.org


LOS ANGELES, July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Prime Healthcare, its founder and CEO, Dr. Prem Reddy, and a California cardiologist have agreed to pay a total of $37.5 million to the federal government and the state of California to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by Phillips & Cohen LLP that alleged the hospital chain paid kickbacks to the cardiologist, buying his practice and surgical center for far more than they were worth.

Phillips & Cohen partnered with Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy (CPM) to litigate the case.

This appears to be the largest settlement of a case alleging kickbacks paid by a hospital chain to a single physician. Prime operates one of the biggest hospital systems in the nation.

It is significant that the governments' funds were recovered through litigation pursued by the whistleblower and his attorneys as allowed by the federal False Claims Act and the California False Claims Act. The government investigated the case but did not take it over, or "intervene," by the deadline the court had set.

According to the complaint, Prime and its affiliates:

Bought Dr. Siva Arunasalam's cardiology business, High Desert Heart Institute (HDHI), and his surgery center in Victorville, California , in 2015 for an amount that was at least three times their total fair market value.

, in 2015 for an amount that was at least three times their total fair market value. Paid Dr. Arunasalam a "steeply inflated" salary in exchange for referring patients to Prime Healthcare's Desert Valley Hospital in Victorville and shutting down his independent practice and surgery center.

and shutting down his independent practice and surgery center. Submitted falsified invoices to government healthcare plans to claim higher prices for implantable medical devices such as pacemakers than Prime Healthcare had actually paid. Higher prices meant higher reimbursement for Prime Healthcare.

"Doctors are permitted to sell their practices to hospitals and other competitors, but the payment must be for fair market value," said Edward H. Arens, a whistleblower attorney and partner at Phillips & Cohen in its San Francisco office. "Throwing inflated sums of money at doctors for their medical practices and salaries as a hidden way to get patient referrals isn't allowed."

The complaint alleges that both Dr. Reddy and Dr. Arunasalam "knew and intended that [Dr. Arunasalam] would receive an outsized salary and above-market payment for his practices in exchange for referring his patients to [Desert Valley Hospital] where they would receive the same services at higher prices."

"Fraud drives up healthcare costs for all of us," said Justin T. Berger, a partner at CPM. "Whistleblowers are a powerful check on corporate greed and runaway healthcare spending. This settlement exemplifies the power and importance of whistleblowers in our civil justice system."

The whistleblower lawsuit alleges Prime, Dr. Reddy and Dr. Arunasalam violated the Stark Law, the Anti-Kickback Statute, the US False Claims Act and the California False Claims Act. Dr. Reddy is the board chairman and president of Prime as well as its founder and chief executive officer.

Out of the total settlement, Prime will pay $33,725,000, Dr. Reddy will pay $1,775,000 and Dr. Arunasalam will pay $2 million over an extended time.

The whistleblower, Martin Mansukhani, was a regional chief financial officer for Prime from 2012 to 2017. Phillips & Cohen filed a qui tam lawsuit on his behalf in 2018 in federal district court in Riverside, California.

"Our client expressed concerns to upper management about the asset purchase arrangement and the employment agreement, but he was ignored and then sidelined," said Arens.

To carry out its alleged scheme involving reimbursement for implantable devices, Prime centralized its billing and collections using a small team of employees.

"We allege that one office became a 'falsification factory' that systematically altered invoices and purchase orders to make it appear that Prime Healthcare spent more on implants than it really did," said Molly Knobler, a whistleblower attorney at Phillips & Cohen.

Mansukhani said he was glad that his concerns were recognized and that the case has been resolved.

"This outcome wouldn't have been possible without the skilled and experienced whistleblower lawyers I had on my side and a strong whistleblower law," Mansukhani said.

Arens and Berger commended the government attorneys and investigators who investigated the case and participated in the settlement. They include Senior Trial Counsel Marie Bonkowski and Assistant United States Attorneys Abraham Meltzer and Jack Ross from the US Department of Justice and Supervising Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Paul from the California Department of Justice.

When whistleblowers pursue qui tam cases on their own, they are entitled under the false claims laws to 25% to 30% of the federal recovery and 25% to 50% of California's. Mansukhani will receive 28% and 44%, respectively, of the recoveries.

SOURCE Phillips & Cohen LLP

Related Links

http://www.phillipsandcohen.com


DUBLIN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Remote Patient Monitoring Market - Forecasts from 2021 to 2026" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The remote patient monitoring market is expected to reach US$85.031 billion by the end of 2026, increasing from US$20.027 billion in 2019, growing at a CAGR of 22.94% during the forecast period.

The market for remote patient monitoring witnessed significant growth in recent years owing to a rise in disposable income and increasing demand from an aging population. In the last few years, there has been a growing need to expand the healthcare access infrastructure, cost benefits of telehealth, and remote patient monitoring technology due to the rapidly increasing population and the common occurrence of chronic diseases, globally.

In addition, the availability of technologically advanced products, increasing investments in telehealth, the support of the Government in various countries, and the rising awareness regarding the benefits of remote patient monitoring are the major factors driving the demand for these systems. Several medical associations worldwide support the remote patient monitoring system owing to the benefits it entails, which is further projected to fuel the market growth.



By end-user, the hospitals and clinic segment is estimated to hold a dominant market share owing to the voluminous number of patients and tests being conducted in them. The home care segment is also projected to grow notably in the years to come.

Geographically, North America is expected to grow significantly due to the increase in the occurrence of chronic diseases, demand for wireless and portable systems, the presence of sophisticated reimbursement structures, and a reduction in medical expenditure.

The Asia Pacific region is further estimated to witness significant growth over the projected period, attributable to rising healthcare expenditure and an increase in disposable income over the forecast period. The increasing geriatric population in India, China, and Japan are further expected to expand the market during the forecast period.



Growth Factors

Increasing geriatric population

The constantly growing geriatric population is expected to drive the growth of the remote patient monitoring market. According to the World Health Organization, the share of the population aged 65 years or over increased from 6% in 1990 to 9% in 2019, and this number is projected to rise further to 16% in 2050.

The increasing number of people in the segment will subsequently increase the demand for remote patient monitoring systems as the number of patients suffering from chronic diseases will increase. The government across the globe will be pressurized to promote remote patient monitoring systems to meet the increasing demand, which in turn is projected to fuel the market growth.

Reduction in expenditure

Remote patient monitoring enhances the overall reach and access of healthcare while reducing unnecessary visits to the hospitals for diagnosis, treatment, and admission. The remote patient monitoring also saves a lot of time as the setup is done at one's residence, which eliminates the traveling and waiting time.

Furthermore, it helps in considerably reducing expenditure on hospitalization, nursing, traveling, etc. These benefits are expected to attract more patients to shift to remote monitoring systems instead of conventional systems in the next few years.



Restraints

Resistance and Fraud

Many healthcare professionals are resisting the remote patient monitoring system as the dependency of the patients on them will reduce which may affect their professional growth. The healthcare professionals often advise the patients against this system which may hamper the growth of the market.

Also, healthcare fraud in telehealth and telemedicine practices can hinder the market growth as issues related to fraudulent reimbursement claims, billing cycle, etc. can be prevalent in the market.



Impact of COVID-19



The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in a mass shortage of vacant beds in hospitals, worldwide. The patients suffering from chronic illness were advised against visiting hospitals physically for treatment due to the fear of being infected.

This trend encouraged hospitals to implement a remote patient monitoring system to keep track of a patient's health and to ensure no patient suffers due to a shortage of healthcare infrastructure. Thus, the pandemic greatly accelerated the growth of the remote patient monitoring market.



Competitive Insights



Prominent/major key market players in the Remote Patient Monitoring Market include Philips Healthcare, Abbott Laboratories, GE Healthcare, Boston Scientific Corporation, Biotronik SE, Honeywell International, Inc., Nihon Kohden Corporation, OSI Systems, Inc, AMC, Inc., and Qualcomm Life, Inc.

The players in the Remote Patient Monitoring Market are implementing various growth strategies to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors in this market. For Instance, in 2020, Philips launched the Avalon CL Fetal and Maternal Pod and Patch for remote monitoring in the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore to support fetal and maternal monitoring.

Segmentation:



By Devices

Vital Signs Monitor

Glucose Monitor

Blood Pressure Monitor

Heart Rate Monitors

Respiratory Monitors

Others

By End-User

Hospitals and Clinics

Ambulance

Homecare

By Geography

North America

USA

Canada

Mexico

South America

Brazil

Argentina

Others

Europe

UK

Germany

France

Italy

Others

Middle East and Africa

and Saudi Arabia

Israel

Others

Asia Pacific

Japan

China

India

Indonesia

Taiwan

Thailand

Others

Companies Mentioned

Philips Healthcare

Abbott Laboratories

GE Healthcare

Boston Scientific Corporation

Biotronik SE

Honeywell International, Inc.

Nihon Kohden Corporation

OSI Systems, Inc

AMC, Inc.

Qualcomm Life, Inc.

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/m36zvv

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]

For E.S.T Office Hours Call +1-917-300-0470

For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call +1-800-526-8630

For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

U.S. Fax: 646-607-1904

Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

SOURCE Research and Markets

Related Links

http://www.researchandmarkets.com


LONDON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LawtechUK, a government-backed initiative within Tech Nation, established to help transform the UK legal sector through technology - has published a report on the future of UK legal and court services. The report is independent of Government and does not represent Government policy.

The report, 'Shaping the Future of Law', highlights the rapid growth achieved within the UK's lawtech sector and the opportunity further growth and widespread digital transformation in law represents to the UK economy and wider society, through cross-sector collaboration and support.

The opportunity

Produced in collaboration with a range of cross-sector contributors, the report details the benefits of widespread use of technology and data in law and the vital role of lawtech in meeting user needs, including reducing regulatory burdens and improving decision-making for businesses, meeting increasing standards of ESG, and enabling time and cost savings through document automation, data analysis and use of transformative technologies such as AI and smart contracts.

International trade alone is worth 1.153tr to the UK economy and can be streamlined through digital legal documents and effective use of data. Benefits of lawtech for consumers include greater access to legal services, and better, faster, more affordable outcomes, through DIY applications, asynchronous online services, on-demand advice and dispute resolution tools.

In economic terms, the report places the market opportunity for lawtech to be up to 22bn annually, based on data commissioned from Frontier Economics, comprising:

Unmet demand from SMEs and consumers in the UK, estimated to be worth up to 11.4bn annually.

Cost savings for SMEs of using lawtech products and services of up to 8.6bn each year.

Productivity gains through increased use of lawtech by legal service providers estimated to be worth up to 1.7bn annually, which can be extended through tech adoption and the buying power of in-house legal departments.

Lawtech as the rising star

Lawtech is poised to meet this demand, with the ~200 UK lawtech companies attracting a total of 674m of private investment up to the end of 2020 and employing 7,100 people. The report anticipates UK lawtechs can attract up to 2.2bn in investment per year by 2026, as well as contributing up to 12,500 jobs over the same period, generating a GVA of 1bn - 1.5bn by 2026 - around 5% of the GVA of UK legal services - a similar ratio to the current UK fintech and financial services industry GVA of ~6%.

The average annual rate of growth in UK lawtech investment between 2017 and 2020 (101%) has outpaced that of other applied tech sectors, including climate tech (5%), fintech (20%), and healthtech (47%), demonstrating lawtech as a sector on an accelerating trajectory as the market also matures and consolidates.

The fastest growth in lawtech is seen in the regulatory compliance category, growing by 214% between 2018 and 2020, addressing the increasing legal compliance burden for businesses, and the consumer and SME category, which grew by 74% over the same period, demonstrating the wider market opportunity of lawtech that can establish its place at the core of the future economy. Legal document creation, management and review grew by 24% since 2018.

Accelerating change  the future of law

The legal sector is at an inflection point for digital transformation which has been slow to date - the technical capability and growth in lawtech is now able to meet the growing market demand, combined with fast adoption of certain technologies in the legal sector during Covid-19, and increasing emphasis on the needs of users and society at large. Lawtech offers an opportunity to add to UK economic growth and jobs, whilst directly making improvements to the legal system to benefit society.

With government investment in innovation at an all time high, the commitment to build back better post-pandemic, and the focus on digital infrastructure and court reform, the UK has a unique opportunity to secure its position as a global leader in law for the future, through investment in lawtech.

LawtechUK is calling for collaborative action from the legal sector, regulators, policy-makers and businesses to accelerate investment in and adoption of lawtech to capitalise on the growth opportunity and ensure the future of UK law meets the changing needs of business and society. The report highlights seven priority areas:

Increased investment in lawtech R&D Growth of new markets Improved collection and availability of data, towards 'open legal' Greater connectivity across the sector Increasing technology awareness and capability Policy and regulation that supports tech adoption Sustainable growth anchored in the purpose of law

Lord (David) Wolfson of Tredegar QC, comments: "I would like to congratulate LawtechUK on this important and timely report on digital transformation in our legal services sector, which forms an important contribution to the debate."

Jenifer Swallow, LawtechUK Director at Tech Nation: "The law is critical in all our lives and businesses and it should be easy to engage with and affordable and effective for everyone. Lawtech is how we make that happen.

"The sector is seeing incredible growth - with lawtech startups and scaleups growing at 101% over the last three years, and adoption levels increasing during Covid-19 across our courts, legal businesses and in-house legal teams. Building on this growth, working collaboratively across the sector, we can realise the full strategic opportunity of lawtech on an accelerated timeline, and deliver results no one organisation could achieve alone - for the benefit of regular people, businesses, the UK economy and the wider global ecosystem. The 22bn market opportunity of lawtech evidenced in this report only scratches the surface of the true impact we can have through digital transformation in law."

About LawtechUK

LawtechUK, is a government-backed initiative within Tech Nation, established to support the transformation of the UK legal sector through technology, for the benefit of society and the economy.

About Tech Nation

Tech Nation is the leading scaleup accelerator. Tech Nation fuels the growth of game-changing founders, leaders, and scaling companies so they can positively transform societies and economies.

About the data

LawtechUK commissioned Frontier Economics to assess the current and potential future economic contribution of lawtech to the UK economy, using a novel dataset on lawtech startups and scaleups, data on other emerging tech sectors, and desk research to provide new estimates on the UK lawtech ecosystem.

SOURCE LawtechUK

Related Links

https://technation.io/lawtechuk


THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SynED, a national non-profit focused on education, today released ReportOUT, a quarterly publication that highlights innovative educational initiatives that promise different perspectives and lasting changes, with its latest edition entitled "Crossing the Chasm:

Can Higher Ed Deliver What is Needed."

Guy Smith Executive Editor, synED ReportOUT Crossing the Chasm: Can Higher Ed Deliver What is Needed

ReportOUT includes insights from across the economic, education, and political world, bringing a diverse array of viewpoints and analysis on how to approach education differently and how corporate training is serving as a catalyst for tectonic changes in higher ed.

"Falling enrollments during the pandemic revealed a looming crisis for America's colleges and universities," said Guy Smith, Executive Editor, ReportOUT. Mr. Smith, a former Vice President at Antioch University who also previously served as the Dean of Educational Programs at Santa Barbara City College, continued: "Faith in the value of higher education is suffering the greatest decline in recent history. An accelerating pace of change promises this trend will come to a head sooner rather than later, driven by the mega factors of technology and economics."

This issue is a compendium of 12 articles that provide insight on the rapid changes happening in higher ed, the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic one year on, and how employers are changing their expectations and workforce training practices.

An article by New York Magazine's Andrew Granato, "How to Major in Unicorn," explores the culture of Stanford University and its unique ecosystem  "an ecosystem of startup-supporting programs, turning classrooms into job fairs and students into entrepreneurs-to- be, and effectively handing the keys of the campus to venture capitalists." With a long list of notable dropouts-turned-Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Stanford's experience is both a phenomenon and an omen. "Stanford can be less a college than a kind of incubator or accelerator  a four-year networking opportunity for the next Systrom, Spiegel, or Thiel, as everyone who goes there knows."

An article by Steven Mintz, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, highlights "dirty little secrets" of higher education, known to varying degrees by academics, parents, and journalists. An unsurprising secret, for instance, is that "[p]rior to the pandemic, 43 percent of college graduates were underemployed in their first job; two-thirds remained in jobs that don't require college degrees five years later." Less known, perhaps, is that less than 20 percent of colleges and universities accept less than 50 percent of applicants.

As Guy Smith notes in his introduction, while universities continue to provide laughable majors such as "Farrier Science" (horseshoeing), "Surf Studies," and Puppetry, employers are spending more than $90 billion in a recent year, to train their employees to stay abreast of relentless competition and changes. Most now seek out employees with hungry minds and an array of personal traits such as adaptability, persistence and communication.

"The disconnect between college curricula and employment opportunity is an old estrangement, but it is being exacerbated by technology and the exponential pace of change," Smith concluded. "Has higher education so lost its way that it cannot be reimagined or even fixed? And will the workplace become the university of the 21st Century?"

About SynED

SynED is a non-profit organization that acts as a catalyst to help you help others to improve their lives through education and knowledge and skill acquisition, giving them rich career opportunities. Our team will help you explore the many possibilities and potential solutions available to achieve your desired outcomes. SynED is the proud recipient of the 2021 Association for Career & Technical Education Business-Education Partnership Award.

About ReportOUT

Recognizing that real change is necessary, ReportOUT focuses on the non-traditional, and the notion that effective educational practices can be found in some unlikely places. When searching around the edges, exploring techniques and technologies outside of traditional education, and looking within the ancillary realms of corporate training, for profit schools, and independent learning systems, it helps to have a guidebook.

Contact: Guy Smith

866-420-4573

[email protected]

SOURCE SynED
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biopharmaceutical company dedicated to improving cardio-metabolic health, today announced the completion of a $35 million Series A financing. Rivus is advancing a new class of oral, once daily, small molecule therapeutics called Controlled Metabolic Accelerators (CMAs), designed to improve cellular metabolism and treat the underlying cause of highly-prevalent metabolic and cardiovascular diseases. The round was co-led by Longitude Capital and Medicxi and RxCapital also participated.

"More than 40 million people in the U.S. alone are living with cardio-metabolic disorders, conditions that adversely impact a person's health and quality of life, as well as place significant cost burdens on healthcare systems. While many existing therapeutic options address the downstream effects of metabolic disease, they do little to address the underlying cause  greater consumption of energy than is required by the body, which over time results in inefficient cellular metabolism and the excess accumulation of fat," said Allen Cunningham, President and CEO, Rivus Pharmaceuticals. "Our CMAs are designed to effectively target the root cause of these diseases by improving cellular metabolism with the potential to halt the progress of, or even reverse, these diseases."

CMAs provide a new, measured approach to activating mitochondrial uncoupling, a natural process in the body that regulates and dissipates energy. By ferrying protons out of the mitochondrial intermembrane space, CMAs cue the increased oxidation of sugars and fats, while maintaining the same baseline production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Activating this process results in the reduction of accumulated fat and the prevention of additional fat accumulation throughout the body. Rivus is currently conducting a Phase 2a clinical study with its lead CMA therapeutic, HU6. The Series A financing will enable Rivus to advance a pipeline of CMA therapies to treat a range of metabolic conditions including type 2 diabetes, severe hypertriglyceridemia (SHTG), non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), as well as cardiovascular diseases such as heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF).

"We are very encouraged by early clinical results of HU6 and the potential for CMAs to deliver a new and highly-effective approach to improving metabolic health," said Patrick Enright, Managing Director at Longitude Capital. "There is tremendous global potential for CMAs to fundamentally change the therapeutic landscape across a variety of difficult to manage chronic diseases related to metabolic health."

"Rivus has recently completed its Phase 1 program for HU6, and the results exceeded our expectations, demonstrating an early positive impact on key metabolic parameters, while being well-tolerated," said David Grainger, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Advisor at Medicxi. "Phase 2 studies will provide important insights into HU6's efficacy in specific metabolic and cardiovascular diseases with this very promising new therapy, and we are excited to advance these programs in partnership with Rivus."

About Rivus Pharmaceuticals

Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc., is dedicated to transforming the treatment of cardio-metabolic disease. Rivus' first-in-class, small molecule therapy, HU6, is a controlled metabolic accelerator (CMA) that addresses the underlying cause of cardio-metabolic disease by harnessing the body's natural processes to improve cellular metabolism. Rivus' therapy presents a tremendous opportunity to empower patients on their journey to better health when facing a broad range of cardio-metabolic conditions, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), dyslipidemia and obesity. For more information, please visit www.rivuspharma.com.

About Longitude Capital

Longitude Capital is a leading healthcare venture capital firm that invests in transformative biotechnology, medical technology and health solutions companies seeking to improve clinical outcomes, enhance quality of life, and drive efficiency of healthcare delivery. Founded in 2006, Longitude Capital invests in both privately held and publicly traded companies through a variety of investment approaches. Longitude Capital has offices in Menlo Park, CA, Greenwich, CT, and Boston, MA. For more information, please visit www.longitudecapital.com or LinkedIn.

About Medicxi

Medicxi is an international investment firm with the mission to create and invest in companies across the full healthcare continuum. Medicxi was established by the former Index Ventures life sciences team and invests in both early stage and late stage therapeutics with a product vision that can fulfill a clear unmet medical need. GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson Innovation - JJDC, Inc., Novartis and Verily (an Alphabet company) are investors in Medicxi funds.

Medicxi's team has been investing in life sciences for over 20 years. Globally, it has invested in 91 innovative biopharma companies and achieved 32 exits through IPO and M&A, including Genmab, PanGenetics (sold to AbbVie), Cellzome (sold to GSK), Micromet (sold to Amgen), Molecular Partners, XO1 (sold to Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Inc.), Minerva Neurosciences, Padlock Therapeutics (sold to Bristol-Myers Squibb), Gadeta (structured transaction with Gilead), Impact BioMedicxines (sold to Celgene) and Adaptive Biotechnologies. Medicxi is also the founding investor of Centessa Pharmaceuticals. Please see https://www.medicxi.com/ for more information.

About RxCapital

RxCapital is the venture capital arm of RxCelerate, a leading international out-sourced drug discovery platform based in Cambridge, UK. RxCapital invests in early-stage biotechnology companies with transformative capability and, unlike many CROs, there is no requirement for portfolio companies to use RxCelerate services. RxCapital will invest in any geography, following an asset-centric investment model, deploying up to 1million per investment. For further information, please contact Nick Tait, Chief Financial Officer of RxCelerate Group: [email protected].

SOURCE Rivus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.rivuspharma.com


MIAMI, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The great Alaska adventure is now underway  Royal Caribbean is back and bolder than ever as the first cruise line to sail to the Last Frontier since September 2019. Yesterday, Serenade of the Seas kicked off the highly anticipated comeback of the summer season when it departed on the first of a series of 7-night cruises from Seattle. The sailing marks a celebratory moment for the cruise industry, local workforce, regional suppliers and Alaska's beloved communities that were significantly impacted by the absence of all cruise tourism, which normally represents more than 60% of the state's visitors and generates upwards of $3 billion for its economy each year. Ninety-seven percent of the entire onboard community on Serenade is fully vaccinated.

Royal Caribbean will mark its long-awaited return to Alaska in July 2021 with 7-night cruises  roundtrip from Seattle  on board Serenade and Ovation of the Seas. Cruising the Gulf of Alaska as soon as July 19, Serenade will offer itineraries to popular ports of call and sights, including Endicott Arm fjord, Dawes Glacier, Ketchikan and Icy Strait Point, Alaska. Starting Aug. 13, Ovation ventures out to cruise the Inside Passage and visit bucket-list destinations, such as Skagway, Sitka and Juneau, Alaska. Returning to the U.S. and Europe 2021 Royal Caribbeans Serenade of the Seas set sail on Monday, July 19 as the first cruise ship to head for Alaska since September 2019. The sailing is a milestone for the cruise industry, local workforce and Alaskas beloved communities that were significantly impacted by the absence of all cruise tourism, which normally represents more than 60% of the states visitors and generates upwards of $3 billion for its economy each year. Calling Seattle home, Serenade offers 7-night itineraries with far-flung highlights such as Icy Strait Point, Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka, Alaska, along with Endicott Arm fjord and Dawes Glacier. Serenade of the Seas sailing in Seattle. Ideal for all-weather cruising, the Radiance Class ship features the signature, 40-foot-tall rock climbing wall, a mini golf course, floor-to-ceiling windows and glass elevators for jaw-dropping views, an outdoor movie screen, pools, popular restaurants  Giovannis Table, Chops Grille and Izumi  and more.

A local favorite, Serenade sets course for classic cities and quaint towns like Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Icy Strait Point, Alaska, as well as the jaw-dropping Endicott Arm fjord and Dawes Glacier. The ship will be joined by Ovation of the Seas in Seattle starting Aug. 13, rounding out Royal Caribbean's great Alaska comeback in 2021.

"Cruising in Alaska is finally back, and we are excited to be the first to return. Alaska is one of the most popular destinations among our guests, especially families with young kids  children who are ineligible for the vaccine today," said Michael Bayley, president and CEO, Royal Caribbean International. "We are grateful for the support of our partners, Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and other government and health authorities. This is a return that is significantly felt by many, including those whose communities rely on cruise tourism."

Once again, families and guests of all ages can venture out to explore the untouched wilds of Alaska by sea after more than a year. The sights will be in full view on board Serenade, thanks to ocean-facing glass elevators and floor-to-ceiling windows that keep the showstopping scenery  and wildlife sightings  in focus. Plus, there is an exciting lineup of signature guest favorites, including the rock climbing wall that touts ocean views from 40 feet, poolside movie nights under the stars and dining venues inspired by a world of flavors, such as Chops Grille, Giovanni's Table and Izumi. With impressive glaciers, an expansive coastline and mountainous landscape on display between one charming port and the next, Royal Caribbean's cruises to the Last Frontier also offer guests firsthand experiences with local experts that uncover the region's carefully preserved traditions and what has influenced the cultures, both past and present.

Serenade is the cruise industry's first ship to return to Alaska and the second in Royal Caribbean's world-class fleet to welcome back guests in the U.S. after Freedom of the Seas set sail from Miami for a celebratory Fourth of July weekend. Thirteen Royal Caribbean ships will be sailing around the world by the end of August, including Ovation of the Seas, which is set to sail on 7-night adventures to Skagway, Sitka and Juneau, Alaska and through the famed Inside Passage. The cruise line recently extended Ovation's Alaska season into October with four additional sailings. With more to be announced, the largest cruise line's current lineup of returning ships is available here.

Health and Safety Measures for Alaska Cruises

Vacationers sailing to Alaska can cruise with peace of mind knowing that Royal Caribbean requires that all crew members and guests who meet the age of eligibility for the vaccine are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. As of Aug. 1, the vaccine age requirement for travelers will be lowered from age 16 to 12. Children younger than the eligible age must undergo testing and follow other health and safety protocols. A full list of the travel requirements for Alaska cruises are available here.

The vaccine policy is one of the cruise line's multilayered measures that safeguard the well-being of all guests, crew members and the communities at each port of call. These protocols include the ships' robust ventilation systems, enhanced cleaning and sanitization, and cruising at reduced occupancy as ships initially return to sailing.

To sail with families and travelers of all ages, including children ineligible for the vaccine, Serenade successfully completed a simulated voyage and received a Conditional Sailing Certificate from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The certificate confirms Royal Caribbean's health and safety measures fulfill the CDC's guidance and requirements.

About Royal Caribbean International

Royal Caribbean International has been delivering innovation at sea for more than 50 years. Each successive class of ships is an architectural marvel featuring the latest technology and guest experiences for today's adventurous traveler. The cruise line continues to revolutionize vacations with itineraries to more than 270 destinations in 72 countries on six continents, including Royal Caribbean's private island destination in The Bahamas, Perfect Day at CocoCay, the first in the Perfect Day Island Collection. Royal Caribbean has also been voted "Best Cruise Line Overall" for 18 consecutive years in the Travel Weekly Readers' Choice Awards.

Media can stay up to date by following @RoyalCaribPR on Twitter and visiting RoyalCaribbeanPressCenter.com. For additional information or to make reservations, vacationers can call their travel advisor; visit RoyalCaribbean.com; or call (800) ROYAL-CARIBBEAN.

Royal Caribbean International is applying the recommendations of its Healthy Sail Panel of public health and scientific experts to provide a safer and healthier cruise vacation on all of its sailings. Health and safety protocols, regional travel restrictions and clearance to visit ports of call, are subject to change based on ongoing evaluation, public health standards, and government requirements. U.S. cruises and guests: For more information on the latest health and travel alerts, U.S. government travel advisories, please visit www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/itinerary-updates or consult travel advisories, warnings or recommendations relating to cruise travel on applicable government websites.

SOURCE Royal Caribbean International

Related Links

www.rclcorporate.com


SACRAMENTO, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- AutoAccident.com, a Sacramento based law firm, is once again supporting local education in the Sacramento community by offering the prestigious Joanne Norris Scholarship. This sizeable $1000 scholarship will be awarded to one exceptional graduating high school senior.

The Joanne Norris Scholarship was established by AutoAccident.com to honor Joanne Norris, an award-winning journalist for the Redding Record-Searchlight and Long Beach Press Telegram. As a female writer in the 50s, it was uncommon to break beyond "puff piece" assignments. However, Norris delved into deeper topics concerning sexism, racism, and bias.

Students interested in applying for the Joanne Norris Scholarship must:

Be a high school senior.

Currently have a 3.0 GPA or higher.

Submit a short essay.

Apply no later than December 31, 2021 .

For full scholarship eligibility and application requirements, please visit https://www.autoaccident.com/joanne-norris-scholarship.html

Autoaccident.com is a personal injury law firm serving clients in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1982 by injury attorney, Edward A. Smith, our legal team is dedicated to helping those hurt or who have lost loved ones due to the negligence of others.

Contact: Lindsey Busfield

+19199518601

[email protected]

SOURCE AutoAccident.com
When local news is tied up behind paywalls, those who need access to their community news the most will be left out. Tweet this

And why not? Getting people to pay for local news would seem to be a way out of the financial box local news companies find themselves trapped in.

There's just one problem with this solution. It won't work. Once local news is tied up behind paywalls, where only those willing to pay for their news have access, these communities will turn into gated communities.

And the people who most desperately need access to their community news  those living in rural America  will be the ones left outside the gates.

Luckily there is a solution to this problem and it's called the Local News Network (LNN). LNN provides a platform that ensures that people in small and mid-sized towns have free access to local news.

LNN does this by financially supporting its short-form local video news platform with local advertising dollars, like it used to be done at print newspapers. This business model connects local businesses and non-profits with their customers unlike the national brand chains that are diverting sales away from small town America with powerful marketing campaigns.

"Forget paywalls," says Laurie Sigillito, CEO of Local News Network. "When local news is available to everyone, you build a strong and diverse audience. Local and regional businesses can then easily reach their customers on a daily basis."

One recent example of how this works was an ad that ran on LNN's Durango, Colorado platform for a local Montessori school about an upcoming fundraiser event.

"In previous years we raised about $4,500 from our Earth Day fundraiser," says Nathan Morris, a parent at the school. "This year we advertised on Durango Local News and we raised $11,000!"

"The math is simple," explains Sigillito. "Local people supporting local business supporting local news is a winner all the way around. One plus one plus one is free."

Local News Network produces and distributes local video news stories in underserved news communities throughout the U.S. and paves the way for local businesses to connect with local customers.

Visit https://www.thelocalnews.us . Advertising and Sponsorships: [email protected]

Investors: [email protected]

SOURCE Local News Network

Related Links

www.thelocalnews.us


VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ScalePad, a global leading software provider for managed services providers (MSPs), announced today that it received a significant, non-control, equity investment from Integrity Growth Partners (IGP). The investment marks the first time ScalePad has raised outside capital since its founding six years ago. The partnership with IGP will enable accelerated growth in key business areas while allowing ScalePad to remain independent and founder-led.

ScalePad

ScalePad provides a powerful and intuitive SaaS platform for MSPs that automates asset lifecycle management across hardware, software, and warranty services. As MSPs play an increasingly pivotal role in managing technological adoption and maintenance worldwide, ScalePad's products support MSPs by automating time-consuming processes and providing vital insights that help MSPs easily identify and prioritize asset risks and opportunities. It utilizes insightful reports to communicate asset status to customers in a way that helps them see the value in making important IT investments and drives them to take action to improve their environment. Today, ScalePad's asset lifecycle management products are utilized by over 8,500 MSP partners in 76 countries, including 60% of the MSP 501.

"We believe that IGP's investment and knowledge will help us continue to execute on our vision to bring the ScalePad platform to more partners worldwide while continuing to build out and innovate on our product suite," said Chris Day, Co-Founder of ScalePad. "Our innovative technology and deep domain experience allow us to deliver tremendous advantages for our partners. We are thrilled to be working alongside the team at IGP and look forward to accelerating our growth and rising the tide in the MSP software space."

"We are incredibly proud of the industry-leading products we have built by staying laser-focused on the needs of our MSP partners," said Dan Wensley, CEO of ScalePad. "In choosing a partner, it was imperative for us to find one who brings meaningful strategic insight to the table while also enabling ScalePad to continue to run and grow independently."

"We are thrilled to lead the first investment in ScalePad and to partner with the amazing ScalePad team," said Doyl Burkett, Founder and Managing Partner of IGP. "Founders and management teams who are experts in their space and have identified opportunities to better improve processes in their own industry bring to market a unique perspective that directly benefits their customers. The ScalePad team truly understands the pain points of today's MSPs, and we see tremendous opportunity with this team as they continue to execute on their impressive vision."

About ScalePad

ScalePad is a Vancouver-based company that provides a SaaS platform that automates hardware, software, and warranty asset lifecycle management for MSPs. ScalePad helps MSPs easily identify and prioritize their asset risks and revenue-generating opportunities. The insightful reports not only communicate asset status to customers but also drive them to make important IT investments to improve their environment.

For more information, visit www.scalepad.com.

About Integrity Growth Partners

Based in Los Angeles, Integrity Growth Partners is a growth private equity firm focused on investing in lower middle market software and tech-enabled services businesses led by exceptional management teams. IGP targets investments in high-growth companies with established products and business models, bringing to bear a differentiated combination of investing and operating experience. For more information, visit www.integritygp.com.

Contacts

ScalePad

Dina Genkin

415-985-2895

[email protected]

Integrity Growth Partners

Doyl Burkett

310.689.5191

Ryan Anderson

310.689.5193

Related Images

image1.jpg

SOURCE ScalePad
DALLAS, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- After a strong first quarter which brought an impressive 18% same-store sales increase year-over-year, the brand reported an equally extraordinary second quarter of 2021  setting another company record with 34% same-store sales increase. Additionally, the world's largest smoothie brand continues to build significant momentum, inking agreements through the first half of the year that will yield 110 new stores.

"Seeing our brand continue to break new ground with same-store sales growth while expanding into new markets demonstrates how powerful our mission and vision are when it comes to our long-term development strategy," said Wan Kim, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Smoothie King. "Everyone has witnessed how important it is to live a healthy and active lifestyle for overall quality of life, and we're seeing an increasing number of people embrace Smoothie King as a key feature of their fitness journeys. That's having a tangible impact on our growth."

Smoothie King opened 37 total locations in Q2 2021, bringing the number of openings to 71 for the year thus far. Of those 37 openings, 16 of them were international locations, specifically South Korea. Smoothie King now boasts 1,347 total stores worldwide.

GALVANIZING FRANCHISEES

Over 900 Smoothie King franchisees, corporate team members and vendors gathered for the brand's first in-person annual conference since June 2019.

Despite a challenging 2020, Smoothie King recognized a record-setting 21 stores that achieved more than $1 million in annual sales last year at the brand's conference held at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, TX in June. Over 130 stores joined the King's Club, which are stores that represent the top 15% systemwide and showcase the strength of Smoothie King's business model.

The convention emphasized several important steps Smoothie King is taking to help franchisees attain higher average unit volumes through operational efficiencies, by embracing new technologies and with continued dedication to its mission and vision.

The smoothie brand revealed a new store prototype that aims to build transparency with guests by showcasing the whole fruits and organic veggies that go into each masterfully crafted blend.

"With all of the changes we have made with our Clean Blends initiative we are now showcasing our ingredients. The new store design opens up our kitchen to our guests and reinforces our mission to inspire people to live a healthy and active lifestyle. There are new bold colors and lifestyle graphics to inspire our guests," said Kevin King, Chief Business Development Officer.

Smoothie King also launched the use of tablet devices for drive-thru ordering to help move guests through the lane more efficiently. Meanwhile, there is testing underway with digital in-store signage that will notify guests and third-party delivery drivers of the status of each order, whether the smoothie was ordered in-store or online for pickup or delivery. The brand anticipates faster, more accurate and friendlier service to translate into even stronger unit-level performance.

In addition to the key announcements made at conference, the brand also recognized some of its top performing franchisees including:

Franchisee of the Year  Hope and Andy Mouhot ( Memphis, TN )

 ( ) Developer of the Year  Northern Blends Holding ( Michigan and Ohio )

 Northern Blends Holding ( and ) Top Overall Sales  Heather Knight-Billeaud ( Lafayette, LA )

 ( ) Top Enhancer & Extra Sales  Justin Specht ( Ocala, FL )

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS

Smoothie King's franchise growth wasn't the only notable achievement thus far in 2021. The company also inked a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Dallas Cowboys in May, making it the official smoothie of the Dallas Cowboys as part of a new seven-year partnership. The deal opens the door for Smoothie King to work closely with the team for future developments that will excite Cowboys fans and Smoothie King guests alike.

INDUSTRY RECOGNITION

Smoothie King's growth did not go unnoticed by those in the restaurant industry. In fact, the brand scooped up its highest ranking on Nation's Restaurant News 2021 Top 500 ranking, a list of the largest restaurant chains by domestic system-wide sales. The brand came in at 84 after achieving an impressive 11.5% year-over-year growth, propelling it 15 spots on the list this year. In addition to the ranking, the brand was also listed among 29 of the fastest-growing chains with industry-leading sales growth.

MID-YEAR VISION

Looking toward the remaining half of the year, Smoothie King is looking for qualified franchise candidates to expand in markets like Denver, Cleveland, Phoenix and New York.

"The first half of the year has been filled with continued improvement in unit-level performance, significant growth, strategic partnerships and strong recognition within the restaurant industry  demonstrating our brand's momentum and supporting our purpose-driven mission of inspiring people to live healthy and active lifestyles," said Kim.

There's never been a better opportunity to invest a Smoothie King franchise. As the world's largest smoothie brand with more than 1,300 stores open, Smoothie King has achieved same-store sales growth for the past 9+ years by delivering masterfully crafted blends that support its guests' healthy and active lifestyles. Get started by visiting www.smoothiekingfranchise.com for more information.

ABOUT SMOOTHIE KING FRANCHISES, INC.

Smoothie King Franchises, Inc., the original U.S. smoothie franchise, is a privately-held, Dallas-based franchise company with over 1,300 locations worldwide. Founded in 1973, Smoothie King has evolved into a lifestyle brand inspiring people to live healthy and active lifestyles via nutritious, great-tasting smoothies. The franchise earned the No. 1 ranking in the smoothie/juice bar category, and No. 19 overall, on Entrepreneur's prestigious Franchise 500 list in 2021. The company also debuted on the "Inc. 5000" list in 2018.

Media Contact: Julianne Stevenson, Fishman PR, 847-945-1300 or [email protected]

SOURCE Smoothie King

Related Links

http://www.smoothieking.com


MYRTLE BEACH, S.C., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- South Atlantic Bancshares, Inc. ("South Atlantic" or the "Company") (OTCQX: SABK), parent of South Atlantic Bank (the "Bank"), reported consolidated net income of $2.5 million, or $0.32 per diluted common share, for the three months ended June 30, 2021, a decrease of $1.0 million, or $0.14 per diluted common share, compared to the first quarter of 2021. Consolidated net income was $6.0 million, or $0.79 per diluted common share, for the six months ended June 30, 2021, an increase of $2.6 million, or $0.34 per diluted common share, compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020.

"I am pleased with our second quarter results," said K. Wayne Wicker, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of South Atlantic. "Our deposits grew to over $1 billion in the second quarter and we assisted customers with additional Phase 2 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. Economic activity in our region is strong as most COVID-19 restrictions have been eliminated and we are seeing increased demand for loans as businesses recover from the pandemic. We are optimistic about the second half of the year."

Balance Sheet Growth

Total assets increased to $1.1 billion during the second quarter of 2021 primarily due to increases to cash and investment securities and loans. Cash and investment securities increased by $29.3 million and $71.7 million, respectively, in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021 and $49.8 million compared to June 30, 2020. Total loans increased by $26.9 million with non-PPP loans constituting the majority of loan production for the second quarter of 2021. Total loans increased by $37.8 million compared to June 30, 2020. Total deposits increased by $106.1 million during the three months ended June 30, 2021, including an increase of $44.9 million in noninterest bearing deposits. Compared to June 30, 2020, total deposits increased by $212.6 million.

Paycheck Protection Program

As part of the first phase of the PPP, we processed 1,013 PPP loans totaling $91.7 million. Of these, 956 PPP loans, or $81.2 million, have been granted forgiveness payments by the Small Business Administration (the "SBA"). We anticipate that we will receive forgiveness payments from the SBA for the remaining phase one PPP loans by the end of 2021.

The Economic Aid Act, signed into law on December 27, 2020, authorized an additional $284.5 billion in new PPP loan funding and extends the authority of lenders to make PPP loans through March 31, 2021. The PPP Extension Act of 2021 was subsequently signed into law on March 30, 2021 and extended the PPP application deadline to May 31, 2021. We processed 519 PPP loans totaling $54.6 million as part of the second phase of the PPP. As of June 30, 2021, 67 phase 2 PPP loans $8.9 million have been forgiven by the SBA. We anticipate the remainder of these PPP loans will be forgiven by the end of the second quarter 2022.

Operating Performance

Net income decreased by $1.0 million during the second quarter of 2021 as a result of lower noninterest income. Net interest income decreased slightly in the second quarter of 2021 with decreases in both interest income and interest expense. Noninterest income decreased by $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021, primarily due to reductions in secondary mortgage income and gain on the restructure of the investment portfolio.

Financial Performance













Dollars in Millions Except Per Share Data















Three Months Ended

Six Months Ended Income Statement June 30, 2021 March 30,

2021 December 31,

2020 September 30,

2020 June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021 June 30, 2020 Interest Income

















Loans $8,292 $8,684 $8,096 $7,735 $7,686

$16,976 $15,115

Investments 1,119 748 734 653 641

1,867 1,251 Total Interest Income $9,411 $9,432 $8,830 $8,388 $8,327

$18,843 16,366 Interest Expense 559 575 665 738 821

1,134 2,153 Net Interest Income $8,852 $8,857 $8,165 $7,650 $7,506

$17,709 $14,213 Provision for Loan Losses 375 285 665 165 610

660 855 Noninterest Income 2,260 3,478 2,138 1,980 2,234

5,738 3,863 Noninterest Expense 7,625 7,558 7,418 7,120 6,494

15,183 12,958 Income Before Taxes $3,112 $4,492 $2,220 $2,345 $2,636

$7,604 4,263 Provision for Income Taxes 637 978 376 376 540

1,615 880 Net Income $2,475 $3,514 $1,844 $1,969 $2,096

$5,989 $3,383

















Basic Earnings Per Share $0.33 $0.47 $0.25 $0.26 $0.28

$0.80 $0.45 Diluted Earnings Per Share $0.32 $0.46 $0.24 $0.26 $0.28

$0.79 $0.45

















Weighted Average Shares Outstanding















Basic 7,513,030 7,509,333 7,504,098 7,504,040 7,504,040

7,513,030 7,504,040

Diluted 7,633,965 7,600,275 7,561,005 7,530,222 7,529,952

7,620,012 7,558,972



















Total Shares Outstanding 7,541,109 7,509,333 7,509,333 7,504,040 7,504,040

7,541,109 7,504,040

Operating Results

The Company reported consolidated net income of $2.5 million, or $0.32 per diluted common share, for the three months ended June 30, 2021, a decrease of $1.0 million, or $0.14 per diluted common share, compared to the first quarter of 2021. Consolidated net income was $6.0 million, or $0.79 per diluted common share, for the six months ended June 30, 2021, an increase of $2.6 million, or $0.34 per diluted common share, compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. Net interest income decreased slightly in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021 due to a decrease in net interest margin offset by an increase in interest earning assets. For the six months ended June 30, 2021, net interest income increased by $3.5 million compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020. Noninterest income decreased by $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021, attributable to reductions in gains on sales of securities and secondary mortgage income. For the six months ended June 30, 2021, noninterest income increased by $1.9 million and noninterest expense increased by $2.2 million compared to the six months ended June 30, 2020.

Net Interest Margin









Dollars in Millions Three Months Ended

June 30, 2021 March 31, 2021 December 31, 2020 September 30, 2020 June 30, 2020

Average Yield/ Average Yield/ Average Yield/ Average Yield/ Average Yield/

Balance Rate Balance Rate Balance Rate Balance Rate Balance Rate Interest earning assets



















Loans $704 3.96% $690 3.99% $681 3.99% $678 4.06% $663 4.24% Loan fees

0.70

1.00

0.62

0.40

0.38 Loans with fees $704 4.65% $690 4.98% $681 4.61% $678 4.46% $663 4.62%





















Total Interest earning assets $1,003 3.79% $903 4.25% $875 4.04% $855 3.93% $772 4.36%





















Interest-bearing liabilities



















Total interest bearing deposits $640 0.35% $596 0.39% $575 0.46% $545 0.54% $487 0.67%





















Total interest bearing liabilities $640 0.35% $596 0.39% $575 0.46% $545 0.54% $494 0.67%





















Cost of funds

0.23%

0.27%

0.32%

0.36%

0.45%





















Net interest margin

3.56%

3.99%

3.74%

3.59%

3.93%

Net Interest Margin decreased by 43 basis points in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021 primarily due to decreases in loan yields stemming from fee income generated by PPP loan forgiveness by the SBA. We may continue to experience net interest margin reduction due to declining in loan yields, slower cost of deposit declines and higher levels of liquidity related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Our cost of funds decreased by 4 basis points in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021 and has decreased 22 basis points since June 30, 2020. We remain vigilant in managing our cost of funds and continue to take advantage of the current rate environment to supply low-cost funding for our Company.

Noninterest Income/Expense









Dollars in Millions Three Months Ended

Six Months Ended Noninterest Income June 30, 2021 March 30,

2021 December 30,

2020 September 30,

2020 June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021 June 30, 2020 Service charges and fees $118 $126 $106 $152 $89

$244 $203 Securities gains, net - 990 90 - 430

990 962 Secondary mortgage income 1,365 1,755 1,354 1,248 1,080

3,120 1,549 Other Income 777 607 588 580 635

1,384 1,149 Total noninterest income $2,260 $3,478 $2,138 $1,980 $2,234

$5,738 $3,863 Noninterest expense















Salaries and employee benefits $4,847 $4,797 $4,572 $4,574 $4,039

9,644 7,998 Occupancy 1,092 1,121 954 967 915

2,213 1,858 Other 1,686 1,640 1,892 1,579 1,540

3,326 3,102 Total noninterest expense $7,625 $7,558 $7,418 $7,120 $6,494

$15,183 $12,958

Noninterest income decreased by $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021. For the three months ended June 30, 2021, the Company did not realize gains related to the restructure of the investment portfolio compared to a gain of $990,000 recorded for the three months ended June 30, 2021. Secondary mortgage income decreased by $390,000 in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021 due to reduced demand for mortgages in our markets. Noninterest expense increased less than one percent in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021.

Balance Sheet





Dollars in Millions



June 30, 2021 March 31, 2021 December 30,

2020 September 30,

2020 June 30, 2020 Cash and Cash Equivalents $142,008 $112,694 $40,682 $58,494 $92,176 Investment Securities 220,429 148,739 125,229 113,111 85,513 Loans Held for Sale 7,807 26,559 36,676 37,141 13,119 Loans









Loans 718,026 691,141 686,894 673,766 680,265 Less Allowance for Loan losses (7,494) (7,109) (6,824) (6,243) (6,100) Loans, Net 710,532 684,032 680,070 667,523 674,165 OREO - - - - - Property, net of accumulated depreciation 20,350 20,371 20,313 20,328 20,447 BOLI 23,525 23,369 23,215 18,087 17,959 Goodwill 5,349 5,349 5,349 5,349 5,349 Core Deposit Intangible 746 802 859 919 981 Other Assets 15,088 14,749 14,148 14,354 14,209 Total Assets $1,145,834 $1,036,664 $946,541 $935,306 $923,918











Deposits









Noninterest bearing $349,345 $304,430 $245,321 $263,885 $275,155 Interest Bearing $678,231 617,021 589,533 560,112 539,855 Total Deposits $1,027,576 921,451 834,854 823,997 815,010 Other Borrowings 14 - - - - Other Liabilities 15,422 16,242 13,865 15,309 15,368 Total Liabilities $1,043,012 $937,693 $848,719 $839,306 $830,378











Shareholders' Equity $102,822 $98,971 $97,822 $96,000 $93,540











Total Liabilities and Shareholders' Equity $1,145,834 $1,036,664 $946,541 $935,306 $923,918

Total assets increased by $109.2 million in the second quarter of 2021 to $1.1 billion. Compared to June 30, 2020, total assets increased by $222.9 million. Cash and cash equivalents increased by $29.3 million in the second quarter of 2021 from March 31, 2021. During the three months ended June 30, 2021, investment securities increased by $71.7 million while total loans increased by $26.9 million. Total loans increased by $37.8 million compared to June 30, 2020. We continue to see customers utilize funds to pay down existing loans which has tempered loan growth despite quality loan production. Total deposits grew by $106.1 million in the second quarter of 2021 to $1.0 billion. Compared to June 30, 2020, deposits increased $212.6 million. Deposit growth has been fueled by paydowns associated with PPP loan forgiveness by the SBA as well as seasonal deposit growth. We anticipate this trend to continue as additional PPP loans are expected to be forgiven by the SBA by the second quarter of 2022.

PPP Loans Dollars in Millions Production

Forgiveness

Outstanding as of

June 30, 2021



# of Loans $ of Loans

# of Loans $ of Loans

# of Loans $ of Loans

Phase 1 1,013 $91.7

956 $81.2

57 $10.5

Phase 2 519 54.6

67 8.9

452 45.7























Dollars in Thousands 2Q21 1Q21 4Q20 3Q20 2Q20 Remaining Phase 1 Fee Income $477 $1,433 $983 $477 $447 - Phase 2 Fee Income $560 $125 - - - $2,000















Credit Quality



Three Months Ended

Six Months Ended

June 30, 2021 March 31,

2021 December 31,

2020 September 30, 2020 June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021 June 30, 2020 LLR to Total Loans 1.04% 1.03% 0.99% 0.93% 0.90%

1.04% 0.90% NPAs to Avg Assets 0.00 0.03 0.02 0.03 0.04

0.00 0.04 NCOs to Total Loans 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

0.00 0.00

















Total NPAs (thousands) - $244 $224 $314 $314

- $314

We continue to see strong credit quality throughout our markets. We had no nonperforming assets in the second quarter. Currently, there are no loans past due greater than 90 days. We recorded a provision expense of $375,000 during the second quarter of 2021, which consisted of general factor increases primarily related to the potential impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on credit risk, among other factors. The provision during the second quarter of 2021 resulted in a slight increase in the ratio of the allowance for loan losses to total loans.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the Bank worked with borrowers who were unable to meet their contractual obligations due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic by offering loan modifications or payment deferrals to certain borrowers on a short-term basis. As of June 30, 2021, we had no loans with short-term modifications or payment deferrals due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Performance Ratios



Three Months Ended

Six Months Ended



June 30, 2021 March 30,

2021 December 31,

2020 September 30,

2020 June 30, 2020

June 30, 2021 June 30, 2020 ROAA

1.10% 1.46% 0.78% 0.85% 1.00%

1.17% 0.86% ROAE

11.74 14.31 7.58 8.20 9.19

12.01 7.48 Efficiency

68.62 61.27 72.00 73.94 66.68

64.76 71.69 NIM

3.56 3.99 3.74 3.59 3.93

3.76 3.95



















Book Value

$13.63 $13.18 $13.03 $12.79 $12.47





Tangible Book Value

$12.79 $12.33 $12.17 $11.92 $11.58

























Capital Ratios





















June 30, 2021 March 30,

2021 December 31,

2020 September 30, 2020 June 30, 2020





Tier 1

12.26% 12.42% 12.83% 12.73% 12.70%





Leverage

8.64 9.28 9.30 9.30 9.98





CET-1

12.26 12.42 12.83 12.73 12.70





TCE

8.47 8.98 9.72 9.63 9.47





Total

13.25 13.40 13.84 13.67 13.63

























Additional Data

























June 30, 2021 March 30, 2021 December 31,

2020 September 30,

2020 June 30, 2020

Branches 11 11 10 10 10





Employees (Full Time Equivalent) 149 146 137 135 133







About South Atlantic Bancshares, Inc.

South Atlantic Bancshares, Inc. (OTCQX: SABK) is a registered bank holding company based in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with $1.1 billion in total assets. The Company's banking subsidiary, South Atlantic Bank, is a full-service financial institution spanning the entire coastal area of South Carolina, and is locally owned, controlled and operated. The Bank operates eleven offices in Myrtle Beach, Carolina Forest, North Myrtle Beach, Murrells Inlet, Pawleys Island, Georgetown, Mount Pleasant, Charleston, Bluffton and Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. The Bank specializes in providing personalized community banking services to individuals, small businesses and corporations. Services include a full range of consumer and commercial banking products, including mortgage, and treasury management, including South Atlantic Bank goMobile, the Bank's mobile banking app. The Bank also offers internet banking, no-fee ATM access, checking, certificates of deposit and money market accounts, merchant services, mortgage loans, remote deposit capture, and more. For more information, visit www.SouthAtlantic.bank.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains, among other things, certain statements about future events that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including, without limitation, statements regarding the effects of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, statements with references to a future period or statements preceded by, followed by, or that include the words "may," "could," "should," "would," "believe," "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "plan," "project," "outlook" or similar terms or expressions. These statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of the Company's management team and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that are subject to change based on various factors (many of which are beyond the Company's control). These risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause the actual results, performance, and achievements of the Company to be materially different from the anticipated future results, performance or achievements expressed in, or implied by, the forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes that the assumptions underlying the forward-looking statements are reasonable, any of the assumptions could prove to be inaccurate. Therefore, the Company can give no assurance that the results contemplated in the forward-looking statements will be realized and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. The inclusion of this forward-looking information should not be construed as a representation by the Company or any person that the future events, plans, or expectations contemplated by the Company will be achieved and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to the Company or any person acting on its behalf are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements above. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date hereof, and the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement to reflect circumstances or events that occur after the date the forward-looking statements are made, except as required by law.

Information contained herein, other than information as of December 31, 2020, is unaudited. All financial data should be read in conjunction with the notes to the consolidated financial statements of the Company and the Bank as of and for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2020, as contained in the Company's 2020 Annual Report located on the Company's website.

Available Information

The Company maintains an Internet web site at www.southatlantic.bank/about-us/investor-relations. The Company makes available, free of charge, on its web site the Company's annual meeting materials, annual reports, and quarterly earnings reports. In addition, the OTC Markets Group maintains an Internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements, and other information regarding the Company (at www.otcmarkets.com/SABK).

The Company routinely posts important information for investors on its web site (under www.southatlantic.bank and, more specifically, under the Investor Relations tab at www.southatlantic.bank/about-us/investor-relations/). The Company intends to use its web site as a means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under the OTC Markets Group OTCQX Rules for U.S. Banks. Accordingly, investors should monitor the Company's web site, in addition to following the Company's press releases, OTC filings, public conference calls, presentations and webcasts.

The information contained on, or that may be accessed through, the Company's web site is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this press release.

***********************************************************************************

Contacts: K. Wayne Wicker, Chairman & CEO, 843-839-4410

Dick Burch, EVP & CFO 843-839-4412

Member FDIC

SOURCE South Atlantic Bank
CALGARY, AB, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Strathcona Resources Ltd. ("Strathcona") announced today that it has closed its previously announced private offering (the "Offering") under Rule 144A and Regulation S of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), to eligible purchasers, of U.S.$500 million in aggregate principal amount of 6.875% senior unsecured notes due in 2026 (the "Notes").

Strathcona used the net proceeds from this Offering to repay a portion of the outstanding borrowings under its revolving credit facility and operating facility without cancelling the revolving commitments thereunder and repay a portion of the outstanding borrowings under its term loan facility.

The Notes have not been registered under the U.S. Securities Act or any United States state securities laws and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws. The Notes were offered and sold only to persons reasonably believed to be qualified institutional buyers in the United States pursuant to Rule 144A and non U.S. persons outside the United States in compliance with Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act. In Canada, the offer and sale of the Notes were not qualified for distribution to the public under a prospectus and the Notes were only offered and sold pursuant to an applicable private placement exemption in certain provinces of Canada. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, the Notes or any other security and shall not constitute an offer, solicitation or sale in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation, or sale would be unlawful.

About Strathcona Resources Ltd.

Strathcona is a Calgary-based private, oil-weighted company focused on the exploration, development and production of oil and gas resources in Western Canada. Strathcona is 100% owned by its private-equity sponsor, Waterous Energy Fund, and Strathcona employees.

SOURCE Strathcona Resources Ltd.

Related Links

https://www.strathconaresources.com/


SHANGHAI, July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Chinese O2O retailer Suning.com reached an agreement with Haier Smart Home and Bank of Jiangsu to open up a three-party system, complete the integration of logistics, capital flow, information flow, and bill flow, in an effort to enable financial institutions' intervention in the circulation field. This move marks the establishment of a new bank-enterprise cooperation model in the retail industry.

To ensure this new model can be implemented rapidly and on a larger scale, on the same day, the Bank of Jiangsu and Suning.com reached an agreement on credit increment. This is Suning com's first credit increment project ten days after the announcement of introducing new strategic investors. Relevant executives of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce, Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Commerce, and relevant persons in charge of Bank of Jiangsu, Suning. com, Haier Smart Home, etc. attended and witnessed the signing ceremony.

The new bank-enterprise cooperation model launched this time, on the one hand, can ensure the safe use of funds of financial institutions; on the other hand, it can improve the efficiency of capital turnover through supply chain cooperation between Haier Smart Home and Suning.com. For Suning.com, in the short term, it will increase credit and efficiency for this listed company and restore liquidity, so that in the long term, profitability will be improved.

On July 5, Suning.com issued an announcement to introduce a new round of strategic investment. The new strategic shareholder is the second phase of the New New Retail Fund, guided by the state-owned assets of Jiangsu Province and municipalities, with participants including Alibaba, Haier, Midea, TCL, Xiaomi and other industry investors.

As an important investor, Haier has taken an important role in this new model of bank-enterprise cooperation, and will continue to deepen cooperation with Suning.com in the fields of users, technology, services, supply chain, warehousing and logistics.

SOURCE Suning Group
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Superpedestrian, the MIT-spinoff engineering firm behind LINK, "The Volvo of E-Scooters," today unveiled a breakthrough active safety system dubbed "Pedestrian Defense." The new system doesn't just detect unsafe behaviors like riding on the sidewalk, but puts a stop to them in real time in order to prevent serious injuries. The safety breakthrough is made possible through the acquisition of Navmatic and the application of its patented Super Fusion technology, which combines multiple sources of real-time vehicle dynamics data to yield the most accurate, practical and reliable fleet positioning and vehicle control available today. Superpedestrian finalized the acquisition of Navmatic, a startup focused on micromobility safety, in June.

Superpedestrian's new Pedestrian Defense capabilities will resolve deeply ingrained challenges in micromobility that have led many cities to restrict, sanction and even ban shared e-scooters.

By integrating Navmatic's Super Fusion technology into Superpedestrian's existing Vehicle Intelligence (VI) platform, Pedestrian Defense was born to ensure that unsafe behaviors like sidewalk riding, wrong-way riding, aggressive swerving and repeated hard braking are detected, then immediately corrected by slowing or safely stopping the scooter. Pedestrian Defense is a unique system which makes Superpedestrian the only micromobility provider that can reliably detect and correct unsafe rider behavior in real time, and at scale across an entire fleet. The new technology integration also allows Superpedestrian to translate sensor data into other interventions, from direct notifications and incentives for riders to comprehensive dashboards for policymakers that show safety trends and illustrate locations prone to unsafe behavior or increased chance of a crash.

Watch a video of Pedestrian Defense in action: https://youtu.be/3kSYnFPc80Y

Superpedestrian is launching pilot demonstrations of Pedestrian Defense across the country this month, with full LINK fleet applications beginning in Fall 2021.

"Superpedestrian has cracked the code to one of this industry's biggest challenges. Our e-scooter is unique because it has the computing power and sensors that Navmatic's Super Fusion needs in order to operate in the field. Now, we can scale Pedestrian Defense across our entire fleet and offer riders and cities something no other company has: a real-time solution to aggressive and unlawful riding," said Assaf Biderman, CEO of Superpedestrian.

"We've spent years at Navmatic developing the most fine-grained sensor fusion and rider behavior detection out there. With Superpedestrian's high-quality hardware and smart system operation, we can detect how riders behave, make real-time interventions, and give cities actionable insight into the safety of their streets. This is what cities really need to solve the problems associated with e-scooters, and our team is the first and only one to achieve it. We are excited to join Superpedestrian, the technology-leading micromobility player. Only with Superpedestrian have we found the combination of a company that owns a leading sensing technology and that shares our passion to make cities safer," said Boaz Mamo, CEO and founder of Navmatic.

The Pedestrian Defense active safety system will:

Detect a range of dangerous behavior such as riding on the sidewalk, riding the wrong way down a one-way street, aggressive swerving, and repeated hard braking

a range of dangerous behavior such as riding on the sidewalk, riding the wrong way down a one-way street, aggressive swerving, and repeated hard braking Correct bad behavior by immediately slowing or safely stopping a ride autonomously

bad behavior by immediately slowing or safely stopping a ride autonomously Alert riders violating rules with lights and audible notifications on the vehicle

riders violating rules with lights and audible notifications on the vehicle Educate riders with customized SMS alerts, in-app trainings, and incentives

riders with customized SMS alerts, in-app trainings, and incentives Inform cities with data and insights about safety conditions, including customized dashboards that identify locations with repeated errant behavior

cities with data and insights about safety conditions, including customized dashboards that identify locations with repeated errant behavior Generate collision reports that provide authorities with detailed information in the case of a crash

At the end of each ride, all riders will receive a Safety Rating that chronicles both unsafe and safe behaviors. This individual Safety Rating is used to deliver customized in-app and SMS safety training. As ride behavior improves, riders receive discounts on their future rides. Chronically unsafe riders are not allowed to ride again.

More than behavior, data from the Pedestrian Defense system can be put to work to improve infrastructure, too, helping cities target locations that may need maintenance or safety upgrades.

About Superpedestrian:

Superpedestrian was spun out of MIT in 2013 with the mission to develop the world's smartest and safest light electric vehicles. In 2020, Superpedestrian debuted the LINK Super Scooter, heralded as "The Volvo of E-Scooters" for its patented vehicle safety platform that actively prevents the mechanical and electrical hazards that beset other e-scooter operators. Scooter photos available in our Press Kit: https://www.link.city/press.

About Navmatic:

Navmatic enables high-accuracy positioning in the most challenging environments by fusing standard GPS hardware, sensors, and proprietary sensor fusion software. Navmatic's solution is specifically tuned for micromobility vehicles, combining high-rate sensor measurements with multipath mitigation algorithms to unlock key location-based micromobility features such as rider behavior detection, education and insights for cities. Learn more at navmatic.io.

CONTACT:

Wiley Norvell | 646-422-9614

[email protected]

Related Images

image1.png

SOURCE Superpedestrian
NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Talkwalker, a leading consumer intelligence company, announced today that Tod Nielsen has been appointed the new global CEO. A SaaS and software platform visionary, Nielsen will succeed Robert Glaesener, who will become chairman of the board of directors and will help oversee the successful transition.

Nielsen is an industry veteran, globally recognized for his combination of strategic vision and operational capabilities, developing industry-leading platforms. Most recently, he was president and CEO of FinancialForce. He brings decades of experience in leadership roles at companies such as Salesforce, VMware, and Microsoft, and is known for his ability to help companies scale and grow significantly.

"I've always been an advocate of customer focus and customer centricity - brands that listen to their customers, and adapt quickly to their needs, will be market leaders," said Tod Nielsen. "Today, that customer responsiveness and understanding is more critical than ever."

"When the opportunity arose to work with Talkwalker," Nielsen added, "I was excited to take it. Talkwalker helps our customers understand and get closer to their customers by translating consumer intelligence to make actionable business decisions."

During Glaesener's 10-year tenure, Talkwalker has seen exponential growth, growing from a small start-up to a global enterprise business with 500 employees worldwide. 2020 was a year that crystallized the importance of consumer intelligence, with over 800 new brands choosing Talkwalker to understand their customers better. This resulted in another successful year, with an impressive 38% revenue growth year-on-year, and a 46% growth in enterprise clients.

"Growing Talkwalker into a leading consumer intelligence platform and helping our global clients understand and profit from the extraordinary changes in digital consumer behavior has been an exciting journey," Robert Glaesener said. "Tod is the right leader to take the company to new levels of scale and growth, and I am looking forward to working with him as he takes the helm."

"My mission is to build upon Talkwalker's foundation of growth and success," Nielsen continued, "and to place Talkwalker's impressive technology and platform at center stage in this dynamic market. I've been fortunate to experience firsthand what it takes to scale and grow companies to this level and beyond, and I look forward to applying those experiences in context to Talkwalker."

This success has long been established within their client base, and the wider industry. Today, Talkwalker was recognized as a Leader in The Forrester New Wave: AI-Enabled Consumer Intelligence Platforms, Q3 2021. This recognition will continue as Talkwalker commits to opening more global offices in Europe and Asia, strengthening its partner ecosystem, and connecting with more clients, partners, and strategic collaborators.

"While continuing to develop and expand our value proposition and market category, Talkwalker has focused on educating and empowering its users." Nielsen said. "I want this to continue - to not only help Talkwalker's growth, but that of our partners. To have a widespread positive impact on our ecosystem."

"We are thrilled to have Tod join the Talkwalker team as the new CEO," said Roland Pezzutto, a principal at Marlin Equity Partners. "He has broad experience within the technology industry having grown global organizations to billions of dollars in revenue. We believe his vision and leadership will further accelerate Talkwalker's growth and scale the company into a market- leading consumer intelligence platform."

About Talkwalker

Talkwalker is a leading consumer intelligence company, helping global brands combine a broad range of social and owned data, into powerful and easy to action insights.

By uniting award-winning technology, with the highest levels of customer support, our AI-powered platform connects the dots between what customers think, say, and do. We enable customer-centric companies to drive revenue, increase retention, and reduce costs.

Talkwalker has offices in Luxembourg, New York, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Singapore, Paris, Tokyo, London, and Milan, and helps over 2,500 brands to make better decisions about their customers, prospects, markets, and competitors.

For more information, please visit www.talkwalker.com.

Contact:

Milena Schmidt

[email protected]



SOURCE Talkwalker

Related Links

www.talkwalker.com


Quirem Medical, a wholly owned subsidiary of Terumo since July 2020, based in Deventer, originated as a spin-off from the UMC Utrecht in 2013. Quirem Medical manufactures QuiremSpheres, the only commercially available microspheres containing the radioactive isotope Holmium-166. Trials have shown the safety and efficacy of holmium microspheres in the treatment of unresectable liver tumors. Quirem Medical also manufactures the SIRT work-up product QuiremScout Holmium-166 Microspheres, which is used prior to the therapy to select patients and plan the SIRT procedure. Across Europe, hundreds of patients are treated with QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and QuiremScout Holmium-166 Microspheres every year.

"With the acquisition of Quirem Medical in 2020 and the creation of the Global TIO team in 2021, we see great opportunities to leverage the broad Terumo technology base in interventional oncology for improved cancer care. The UMC Utrecht has proven a highly reliable, professional & innovative clinical partner with a strong focus on image guided therapies in cancer care. As such, the UMC Utrecht is a partner of choice in this journey; and we look forward to a successful continuation of our close collaboration in education, innovation and data generation to contribute to society through healthcare together." Says Ghada Farah, Senior Vice President Terumo Interventional Systems EMEA.

Terumo, a global leader in medical technology, announced on April 12, 2021 the launch of its Global Therapeutic Interventional Oncology (TIO) team. This reflects Terumo's aspiration to be a global leader in the field of Interventional Oncology by focusing on improving patient's quality of life and survival.

"Terumo and the UMC Utrecht have a fruitful history of collaboration on QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres for radioembolization of liver tumors. This Memorandum of Understanding underlines the collaboration that is already there for QuiremSpheres Holmium-166 Microspheres and the ambition to collaborate in the broader range of interventional oncology, including tumor ablation and chemoembolization. Terumo's dedication to improve patient care and the company's global reach make Terumo an ideal partner for this journey." says Dr Maarten Smits, Interventional Radiologist, UMC Utrecht

About Terumo

Terumo (TSE: 4543) is a global leader in medical technology and has been committed to "Contributing to Society through Healthcare" for 100 years. Based in Tokyo and operating globally, Terumo employs more than 25,000 associates worldwide to provide innovative medical solutions in more than 160 countries and regions. The company started as a Japanese thermometer manufacturer and has been supporting healthcare ever since. Now, its extensive business portfolio ranges from vascular intervention and cardio-surgical solutions, blood transfusion and cell therapy technology, to medical products essential for daily clinical practice such as transfusion systems, diabetes care, and peritoneal dialysis treatments. Terumo will further strive to be of value to patients, medical professionals, and society at large.

About Terumo Europe

Terumo Europe is a core player in the EMEA healthcare market by providing best in class quality medical products and services. We are a strong actor of the Terumo Group by contributing to innovation and sustainable growth. Terumo Europe produces, distributes, markets, and sells a vast range of medical devices in five main business units: Interventional Systems, Pharmaceutical Solutions, Medical Products, Cardiovascular Products and Diabetes Management. Terumo Europe EMEA headquarters and production facilities are located in Leuven (Belgium), production facility in Knowsley (UK), European Distribution Center in Genk (Belgium) and sales offices across EMEA. www.terumo-europe.com

About UMC Utrecht

The University Medical Center Utrecht is the main referral center for radioembolization in the Netherlands, performing over 100 radioembolization procedures a year. The division Imaging & Oncology is characterized by close collaboration of interventional radiologists, nuclear medicine physicians, oncologists and other oncologically-oriented specialists offering a variety of oncologic treatments. The UMC Utrecht ambition is to become a national hub for state-of-the-art cancer care, clinical studies and innovations.

Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1576721/Terumo_UMCU_strengthen_partnership_develop_solutions_Interventional_Oncology.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1433176/Terumo_Logo.jpg

SOURCE Terumo
"We are thrilled to light up our Ting network here in Culver City," said Jennifer Lasky, Marketing Manager, Ting Internet. "We know first-hand the benefits that reliable internet can bring to a community. Ting is the first fiber option in Culver City and this infrastructure will be a vital advancement for the community."

As part of the Culver City launch, Ting is introducing a community program designed to combat the local digital divide. This program was developed in partnership with the Culver City municipal team and will provide free internet access to affordable housing units across 17 properties in the city.

"We fundamentally believe that the internet should be accessible to everyone, regardless of circumstance," said Monica Webb, Head of Market Development, Ting Internet. "This is exactly why we include a digital divide program in every community we work in. While we're thrilled to be announcing our presence in Culver City, we are equally delighted to announce that we are working with the city to provide just over 300 affordable housing units with Ting Internet, at no cost to them."

Ting's mission is to bring the speed and reliability of true gigabit fiber-optic internet, opening new opportunities for communities across the United States. There are currently four markets across California with access to Ting Internet: Culver City, Encinitas, Fullerton and Solana Beach.



Ting will continue to expand its serviceable neighborhoods in Culver City throughout the rest of 2021. Locals can now visit ting.com/culvercity to get more information and search their address to either order or pre-order Ting Internet.

Pricing for Ting's symmetrical gigabit fiber internet starts at $89 per month for home internet service and $139 per month for business gigabit internet. Enterprise internet service levels, installations and pricing are customized to business needs and can be discussed with the Ting Internet Enterprise team.

For more information on Ting Internet, its services and pricing, or to find regular updates, please visit ting.com/internet .

About Ting Internet

Ting Internet provides fiber internet in select U.S. towns and cities. Ting Internet is committed to net neutrality and the Open Internet. More than that, Ting Internet is committed to being a part of improving the communities it serves by supporting and championing local good works. Ting Internet sponsors local programs, events, foundations, festivals, charities, and public services everywhere we go, investing in the future of the towns we serve.

About Tucows

Tucows is a provider of network access, mobile technology services, domain names and other internet services. Ting Internet ( https://ting.com/internet ) delivers fixed fiber internet access with outstanding customer support. Tucows' mobile services enabler (MSE) platform provides network access, provisioning and billing services for mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). OpenSRS ( https://opensrs.com ), Enom ( https://www.enom.com ) and Ascio ( https://ascio.com ) combined manage approximately 25 million domain names and millions of value-added services through a global reseller network of over 36,000 web hosts and ISPs. Hover (https://hover.com) makes it easy for individuals and small businesses to manage their domain names and email addresses. More information can be found on Tucows' corporate website ( https://tucows.com ).

Tucows, Ting, OpenSRS, Enom, Hover, and Crazy Fast Fiber Internet are registered trademarks of Tucows Inc. or its subsidiaries.

SOURCE Tucows Inc.

Related Links

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SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Biirdee, a top luxury travel agency, helped international stars and influencers save 30-40% off their flights to Cannes, France, when the festival returned after a pandemic break in the spring of 2020.

With the extravaganza running from July 6 to 17 this year, stars from across the globe reached out to Biirdee for tickets to witness the glamour in French Riviera.

Model Natalia Barulich on the red carpet at Cannes Film Festival. Model and influencer Mahlagha Jaberi flying with Biirdee Travel.

"We're happy to extend our services to the biggest names in the film industry who are eager to come to Cannes for the cinema showcase. These last-minute, high-stress trios are right up our ally," said Eric Alberton, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Biirdee.

In addition to easing COVID-19 restrictions in France, the 74th Cannes film festival will mark the return of international travel.

Travelers can ask Biirdee's travel specialists about safe vacation destinations to explore as countries deliberate on guidelines and policies to balance economy and health.

"Our agents have been at the forefront in helping travelers customize their trip to ensure complete satisfaction. Biirdee works for our customers 24/7 until they have returned home safe and well-rested," Alberton stressed.

Alberton's point about customization is crucial here since it sets Biirdee apart from other travel agencies. "We build fully custom multi-city last-minute trips using a variety of tools that we have at our disposal. Tools the average consumer simply doesn't have access to or experience with," he explained.

It's no wonder the agency has flourished for so long. Biirdee has served as a premier travel partner for several years, booking first-class and business class flights and providing the best deals on luxury travel.

"Whether your trip is last minute or planned well in advance, our agents can help you  from handling ground transportation to making hotel or restaurant reservations at your destination, we've got you covered," says Alberton.

Check out Biirdee's website to request a quote for international flights or domestic private charters.

Media Contact:

Johnson Jeng

408-479-3000

[email protected]

https://biirdee.com/fly

SOURCE Biirdee

Related Links

https://biirdee.com/fly


PHOENIX, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Trox, a leading provider of education technology serving nearly 30 million students in North America, today announced that Brian Schreiber has joined as Regional Vice President of Sales, covering Trox's Central U.S. territory.

Schreiber joins the company during a time of unprecedented growth. Trox, which merged with Tierney in April 2021, is now the most prominent K-12 EdTech solutions provider in the U.S. and Canada. The company debuted at #60 on CRN's prestigious 2021 Solution Provider 500 list  widely considered the industry standard for identifying IT channel organizations that earned the highest revenue over the past year.

"Bringing on top talent is a priority for us during this stage of accelerated growth. Brian's proven sales leadership experience is a great fit for the role of Regional Vice President of Sales for the Central U.S. Trox recognizes that this territory offers a lot of potential to further expand our geographical coverage," said Terra Norine, Senior Vice President of Sales, Trox.

Schreiber is responsible for developing strategic sales plans that support the needs of school districts in his region. He brings more than 20 years of sales and leadership experience in varied industries that include hospitality, industrial technology and healthcare. Most recently, Schreiber served as the Division Manager at Medline Industries. Prior to that, he was the National Sales Director + Revenue Management at Uline Inc., a leading distributor of industrial supplies.

"Trox is at the forefront of helping educators redefine education through technology," Schreiber said. "It's an incredible opportunity to join a company on a strong growth trajectory and with a great team in place. I'm looking forward to helping Trox accomplish its mission of improving access and learning outcomes for students of all ages."

To learn more, visit www.trox.com.

About Trox

For nearly 40 years, Trox has championed the use of technology to broaden access and improve learning. Providing technology that is in use by nearly 30 million students daily, Trox is committed to driving transformative change in education by enabling learning without limits. Learn more at www.trox.com and follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Media Contact

Jenni Ottum

Public Relations Manager, Trox

C: 480-231-4887

[email protected]

SOURCE Trox

Related Links

http://www.trox.com


MONTREAL, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ - Turquoise Hill Resources will announce its second quarter financial results on Thursday, July 29, 2021 after markets close in North America.

The Company will host a conference call and webcast to discuss second quarter financial results on Friday, July 30, 2021 at 8:00 am EST / 5:00 am PDT. The conference call can be accessed through the following dial-in details:

North America: +1 888 390 0546

United Kingdom: + 0 800 652 2435

Australia: +1 800 076 068

The conference call will also be simultaneously webcast on Turquoise Hill's website at www.turquoisehill.com. An archived playback of the call will be available on the Company's website.

SOURCE TURQUOISE HILL RESOURCES LTD
NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- UM, the global media agency network of IPG Mediabrands, today announced that its Chief Privacy Officer Arielle Garcia has been named a 2021 honoree for the American Advertising Federation's (AAF) Advertising Hall of Achievement. For almost three decades, the Advertising Hall of Achievement has been the premier industry recognition honoring talented individuals aged 40 and under who are making a significant impact in the advertising industry through both their work and philanthropic contributions to their communities. This year's seven inductees were chosen by the AAF's distinguished Hall of Achievement Council of Judges.

"Arielle has been a rising star since the day she joined UM, and her command of privacy-related matters has had a profound impact on the agency's direction," said Lynn Lewis, US CEO, UM and AAF Board Chair, 2020-2021. "Arielle drives not only our industry-leading privacy and brand safety work, but also our core values of care and community through her work to promote civil rights and government accountability around public health, risk and safety. Arielle's star will only continue to rise alongside the critical nature of her work in a space that increasingly impacts our industry."

As the first agency-based Chief Privacy Officer, Garcia is recognized as one of the industry's leading privacy experts, advising more than 100 clients globally on the rapidly evolving consumer privacy and regulatory landscapes. Garcia is the visionary behind UM's Privacy Practice, and she was appointed Chief Privacy Officer in July 2020. Garcia also serves as head of Business Operations and Compliance globally for the ExxonMobil and Accenture accounts.

"Attracting, recognizing and developing the next generation of talent is an ongoing mission of the AAF, and the Hall of Achievement is one of the many ways to celebrate the good people doing great work in our industry," said Steve Pacheco, President and CEO of the AAF.

Garcia will be formally inducted into the Advertising Hall of Achievement at a luncheon ceremony on Wednesday November 17, 2021. The ceremony, scheduled to be held at Cipriani 42nd Street in New York City, will mark the AAF's first in-person event since March 2020.

Thanks to her many contributions that have helped cement UM's standing as the industry leader in privacy and brand safety, Garcia was recently recognized as a Crain's New York Business "20 in their 20s" honoree and as a Cynopsis Top Woman in Media.

About UM

UM is a global media agency committed to Futureproofing our clients' businesses for the now and the next. We leverage the transformational power of rich business analytics and real-time intelligence to maximize growth and activate the full consumer journey across content and connections. Our consultative approach and agile model, rooted in diversity, equity and belonging, drive better business outcomes for brands. As the leading global media network in IPG Mediabrands, UM operates in over 100 countries, with more than 3,000 people innovating on a roster of global clients including Accenture, American Express, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, GoPro, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co, Mattel, Sony and Spotify. For more information, please visit https://www.umww.com/.

SOURCE UM

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NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- United Spinal Association announced today that it has appointed Javier Robles, Adjunct Professor at Rutgers University; Dr. David Mann, Senior Researcher at Mathematica; Christopher Pangilinan, Head of Global Policy, Public Transportation at Uber; and Keaston White, Attorney-Advisor at Office of the Solicitor, the United States Department of Interior to its board of directors for a 3-year period.

"We are excited to welcome four new board members this year as we celebrate United Spinal's 75th Anniversary who exemplify our commitment to building an inclusive world and strengthening the voices of the underrepresented members of the disability community. It is vital that our Board of Directors represents the diverse population we support so that we can offer the best service possible," said Vincenzo Piscopo, president and CEO of United Spinal Association.

Javier Robles, a wheelchair user who is currently an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers University, is also former president of Thisabled, LLC, an organization that provides support to persons with disabilities through self-empowerment and perseverance. Robles served as the Deputy Director of the NJ Division of Disability Services until 2010, which provides monthly services to over 19,000 people with disabilities. He worked as the Project Officer for the NJ Medicaid Infrastructure Grant, which sought to change employment outcomes for people with disabilities. Robles was a delegate and founding member of the Latino Leadership Alliance of NJ, a statewide umbrella organization for Hispanic agencies and businesses. He is a 1995 Juris Doctor graduate of Seton Hall Law School and graduated with a double degree in Sociology and Puerto Rican and Caribbean Studies from Rutgers University in 1989.

Dr. David Mann, a wheelchair user who is Senior Researcher at Mathematica, focuses on programs that provide employment or income support to youth and working age adults with disabilities. Mann has helped evaluate Social Security Administration initiatives that promote employment for Supplemental Security Income recipients and Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries, including Ticket to Work, the Benefit Offset National Demonstration, and the Promoting Opportunity Demonstration. He has also played a key role in several projects examining the outcomes of vocational rehabilitation customers, including transition age youth with disabilities. Mann received a PhD in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 2011.

Christopher Pangilinan, a wheelchair user, professional transportation engineer and Head of Global Policy, Public Transportation, at Uber works to create safe, reliable, and sustainable urban transportation options. He is particularly interested in the use of data and new technologies to reshape today's transportation services. Pangilinan was a Transit Engineering Team Leader, Transportation Engineer, and Transit Planner for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency from 2010-2014 where he analyzed MetroCard swipe data of New York City Transit's 6 million daily riders over a 4-year period to understand changes in ridership patterns system. Christopher graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006 with MS in Transportation. In 2004, he earned a BS in Civil Engineering from Portland State University.

Keaston White, a wheelchair user and voice actor, currently works as Attorney-Advisor at Office of the Solicitor, the United States Department of Interior. Despite living with a spinal cord injury, Keaston graduated from high school in the top of his class and earned a degree in Psychology from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia in 2009. He graduated from John Marshall Law School in 2012 and passed the bar on his first attempt. Keaston is also a motivational speaker and member of the Shepherd Center Peer Support Program mentoring others with spinal cord or brain injuries.

United Spinal's Board of Directors manages, supervises, and controls the business, property and affairs of the organization, except as otherwise expressly provided by law, the Articles of Incorporation of the Corporation, or bylaws.

The full list of board members and officers is available on United Spinal's website at www.unitedspinal.org.

About United Spinal Association

Formed in 1946 by paralyzed veterans, United Spinal is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Americans with spinal cord injuries and disorders (SCI/D). Membership is free and open to all individuals with SCI/D, with over 53,000 members across 50 chapters nationwide. Known for its revolutionary advocacy efforts, United Spinal played a significant role in writing the Americans with Disabilities Act, provided important contributions to the Fair Housing Amendments Act and the Air Carrier Access Act, and was instrumental in attaining sidewalk curb ramps and accessible public transportation in New York City, which created the standard accessibility model used in many United States cities.

SOURCE United Spinal Association

Related Links

www.unitedspinal.org


AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vitro Technology Corporation, an Austin-based deep tech startup, has won a Direct to Phase II SBIR contract with the US Air Force defending the critical infrastructure of our nation's nuclear arsenal.

"The mission impact of this project will be a reduction in travel by service teams of at least 50%.", said Lieutenant Colonel Atwater. "Trusted, detailed infrastructure data allows our airmen to focus on preventative maintenance and increased mission readiness.".

Remote monitoring of infrastructure is referred to as the "Internet of Things" or IoT. Vitro's patented IoT hardware and software delivers "Zero Trust" IoT, an innovation that has won the company a national position in thought-leadership.

In December 2020, the IoT Cybersecurity Act became law. Since the adoption of IoT technology, cybersecurity hacks have become a common theme in the news. Despite the political turmoil of 2020, Congress recognized the fact that cybersecurity, specifically the security of the "Internet of Things", is a clear and present danger to our national security and infrastructure. The IoT Cybersecurity Act is designed to address this problem directly.

"Square insulates merchants of all sizes from the technical and legal complexities of processing credit cards. In the same way, Vitro insulates military and commercial customers from the complexities of protecting IoT devices and proving that their data is authentic," said David Goodman, founder and CEO of Vitro. "Vitro puts a compliant, crypto-secure IoT platform in a box. We help our customers focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning that will make their operations more efficient and sustainable, ensuring that the real-world IoT data feeding these models is secure and trusted."

To learn more, please visit: http://vitro.io

About Vitro

Vitro Technology Corporation is an Internet of Things startup company based in Austin, TX. Since 2016, Vitro has been building the next generation IoT platform: a "spoof proof" hardware and services model that delivers Zero Trust IoT data. The company has worked with the World Bank, the Asia Development Bank and the Department of Homeland Security to deliver authenticated IoT data from remote sites all over the world.

Press Contact Information

Creighton Beery

[email protected]

(512) 660-0302

SOURCE Vitro Technology Corporation

Related Links

www.vitro.io


MEXICO CITY, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. ("Volaris" or the "Company") (NYSE: VLRS and BMV: VOLAR), an ultra-low-cost airline serving Mexico, the United States of America and Central America, informs that the Board of Directors of the Company, considering best corporate practices stated in the Mexican "Code of Corporate Governance Principles and Best Practices" and the recommendation of the Audit and Corporate Governance Committee, approved the hiring of KPMG Cardenas Dosal, S.C. ("KPMG"), as its independent external auditor. Accordingly, KPMG will begin with the review of the Company's financial statements as of the third quarter of 2021, replacing Mancera, S.C. ("EY").

EY had been external auditor of Volaris for fifteen years, providing services in a professional manner, for which the Board of Directors and the Company's management express their appreciation to the firm for the services provided during the aforementioned period.

EY and Volaris will maintain their business relationship for other services than the audit of the Company's financial statements.

Investor Relations Contact

Maria Elena Rodriguez / Felix Martinez / Investor Relations / [email protected] / +52 55 5261 6444

Media Contact

Gabriela Fernandez / [email protected] / +52 55 3104 5264

The information included in this report has not been audited and it does not provide information on the Companys future performance. Volaris future performance depends on many factors and it cannot be interred that any periods performance or its comparison year over year will be an indicator of a similar performance in the future.

About Volaris:

Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. ("Volaris" or the "Company") is an ultra-low-cost carrier (ULCC), with point-to-point operations, serving Mexico, the United States and Central America. Volaris offers low base fares to build its market, providing quality service and extensive customer choice. Since beginning operations in March 2006, Volaris has increased its routes from five to more than 180 and its fleet from four to 93 aircraft. Volaris offers more than 450 daily flight segments on routes that connect 43 cities in Mexico and 28 cities in the United States with one of the youngest fleets in The Americas. Volaris targets passengers who are visiting friends and relatives, cost-conscious business and leisure travelers in Mexico and in selected destinations in the United States and Central America. Volaris has received the ESR Award for Social Corporate Responsibility for eleven consecutive years. For more information, please visit: www.volaris.com.

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/194587/volaris_logo.jpg

SOURCE Controladora Vuela Compania de Aviacion, S.A.B. de C.V. - Volaris

Related Links

http://www.volaris.com


BIRMINGHAM, Ala., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Vulcan Materials Company (NYSE: VMC) will host its second quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, August 4 at 10:00 a.m. CT (11:00 a.m. ET). Financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2021, will be released before the NYSE market opens.

The Company invites investors and other interested parties to listen to the live webcast of the conference call at www.vulcanmaterials.com. To participate by phone, call 833-962-1439 approximately 10 minutes before the scheduled start. For international calls, the number is 832-900-4623. The conference ID is 9979328.

A replay of the webcast will be available after the call at the Company's website.

Vulcan Materials Company, a member of the S&P 500 index with headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, is the nation's largest supplier of construction aggregates  primarily crushed stone, sand and gravel  and a major producer of aggregates-based construction materials, including asphalt and ready-mixed concrete. For additional information about Vulcan, go to www.vulcanmaterials.com.

Investor Contact: Mark Warren (205) 298-3220

Media Contact: Janet Kavinoky (205) 298-3220

SOURCE Vulcan Materials Company
HOUSTON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Western Midstream Partners, LP (NYSE: WES) ("WES" or the "Partnership") announced that the board of directors of its general partner declared a quarterly cash distribution of $0.319 per unit for the second quarter of 2021. This distribution represents a 1.3-percent increase over the prior quarter's distribution and is consistent with an annualized distribution growth of 5-percent. WES's second-quarter 2021 distribution is payable August 13, 2021, to unitholders of record at the close of business July 30, 2021.

The Partnership plans to report its second-quarter 2021 results after market close Monday, August 9, 2021. Management will host a conference call Tuesday, August 10, 2021, at 1 p.m. CDT (2 p.m. EDT) to discuss WES's quarterly results. The full text of the release announcing the results will be available on the Partnership's website at www.westernmidstream.com.

Second-Quarter 2021 Results

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

1 p.m. CDT (2 p.m. EDT)

Dial-in number: 877-883-0383

International dial-in number: 412-902-6506

Participant access code: 7589922

To participate in WES's scheduled second-quarter earnings call, refer to the above-listed dial-in number and participant access code. To access the live audio webcast of the conference call, please visit the investor relations section of the Partnership's website at www.westernmidstream.com. A replay of the conference call also will be available on the website following the call.

ABOUT WESTERN MIDSTREAM

Western Midstream Partners, LP ("WES") is a Delaware master limited partnership formed to acquire, own, develop, and operate midstream assets. With midstream assets located in the Rocky Mountains, North-central Pennsylvania, Texas, and New Mexico, WES is engaged in the business of gathering, compressing, treating, processing, and transporting natural gas; gathering, stabilizing, and transporting condensate, NGLs, and crude oil; and gathering and disposing of produced water for its customers. In addition, in its capacity as a processor of natural gas, WES also buys and sells natural gas, NGLs, and condensate on behalf of itself and as an agent for its customers under certain of its contracts.

For more information about Western Midstream Partners, LP and Western Midstream Flash Feed updates, please visit www.westernmidstream.com.

This news release contains forward-looking statements. WES and its general partner believe that their expectations are based on reasonable assumptions. No assurance, however, can be given that such expectations will prove to have been correct. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections, anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this news release. These factors include our ability to meet distribution expectations and financial guidance; the timeline for a full recovery in commodity demand and prices; our ability to safely and efficiently operate WES's assets; the supply of, demand for, and price of oil, natural gas, NGLs, and related products or services; our ability to meet projected in-service dates for capital-growth projects; construction costs or capital expenditures exceeding estimated or budgeted costs or expenditures; and the other factors described in the "Risk Factors" section of WES's most-recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and other public filings and press releases. WES undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements.

Note regarding Non-United States Investors: This release is intended to be a qualified notice under Treasury Regulation Section 1.1446-4(b). Brokers and nominees should treat one hundred percent (100.0%) of Western Midstream Partners, LP's distributions to non-U.S. investors as being attributable to income that is effectively connected with a United States trade or business. Accordingly, Western Midstream Partners, LP's distributions to non-U.S. investors are subject to federal income tax withholding at the highest applicable effective tax rate.

WESTERN MIDSTREAM CONTACT

Kristen Shults

Senior Vice President, Finance and Communications

[email protected]

832.636.6000

SOURCE Western Midstream Partners, LP

Related Links

http://www.westernmidstream.com


"The delivery event in partnership with COSCO Shipping is of great significance for XCMG and our partners. We overcame the huge difficulty of supply chain maintenance during the COVID-19 pandemic situation, and enhanced global customer confidence," said Lu Chuan, President of XCMG.

XCMG and COSCO Shipping have formed a powerful alliance since XCMG won the bid for a major project in South America in early 2021 but then faced the enormous challenge of delivering all products within a short period of time during the pandemic as the global supply chain and sea freight logistics capacity was massively restricted. COSCO Shipping acted quickly to allocate resources and customized a solution plan for XCMG to solve the container transportation issues to ensure timely and orderly shipping.

By the end of the first half of 2021, XCMG's export volume increased by 70 percent YOY. Its products are now sold in 187 countries and regions worldwide, including 97 percent of Belt and Road Initiative countries, and XCMG now holds the highest export market share in 30 countries.

The XCMG-Venezuela V58 project in 2011 which totaled USD744.6 million has been the largest export order of Chinese construction machinery to date. The Venezuelan government issued a benefit plan of 2 million houses to solve living problems for residents, which required a large number of construction machinery equipment. With comprehensive product lineups, reliable quality and leading manufacturing and service capabilities, XCMG signed the largest export order of 6,025 units of equipment.

Forming strong alliances with relevant government departments, enterprises, financial institutions and organizations has enabled XCMG to build strategic collaboration platforms overseas and provide stronger product and service support, bringing more value and win-wins for all parties.

In the last two years, China Railway Transportation Logistics ("CRTL"), also one of XCMG's global partners, helped to deliver over 1,000 high cube shipping containers with XCMG's machinery products to European countries via the China-Europe Railway Express. Adapted with CargoBeamer's intermodal transport technology, CRTL helps to cut time costs on bogie changing while crossing borders all the way from China to Europe.

Through deepening cooperation, XCMG and its global allies can expand each other's product lines, value chains and global scope by opening up new markets and sharing advantageous resources to create an innovative and sustainable platform for the entire value chain.

SOURCE XCMG

Related Links

www.xcmg.com


Riyadh, July 20 : Saudi Arabia will allow citizens who have received two doses of Covid-19 vaccine to travel abroad from August 9, the Saudi Press Agency reported.

The Saudi Interior Ministry's decision comes as part of precautionary measures against the virus and its new variants, it said.

The decision excepts children below 12 who should have a valid health insurance policy, approved by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA), to cover the risks of the Covid-19, the Xinhua news agency reported.

It also doesn't apply to citizens who recovered from the virus in less than six months, and those who recovered and received one dose of the vaccine.

Saudi Arabia lifted the travel ban on citizens on May 17 after a remarkable reduction in infection cases. The ban was lifted after more than a year of imposing it as part of a series of steps to deal with Covid-19 outbreaks.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, July 20 : It may have been decades that he walked the Ganges from its source in the snow bound Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal for his book, but he insists that it has never left him. "It has never disappeared, always remained a constant companion inside," says Paris-based author Vijay Singh, whose cult classic 'Jaya Ganga which he also made into a film is now available in Hindi, translated by the late poet Manglesh Dabral.

After the English version, which sold thousands of copies and the subsequent film that was screened at more than 100 film festivals and ran for 49 weeks in Paris, Singh now wants to do another journey with the Ganga. "Like, Jaya Ganga is a portrait of India of 1985, why not show what all has changed after forty years through a film? We have adequate formats and platforms in contemporary times. I have not personally met anyone who has done such a journey from top to bottom on a boat. Even today people do not go beyond five kilometres on the river on boats owing to the high crime rate." Singh remembers that it all started when a publisher in France offered him an advance to do a book on India. "Though I insisted it was tough to sketch a portrayal of India, he refused to relent. I thought going down the Ganga would be an excellent thread to tie different fragments and snippets. Little did I know that there was no navigation in the river." It was poet and friend Ashok Vajpeyi who suggested that the book should be translated in Hindi, and called up Rajkamal Prakashan. Another Hindi writer friend introduced him to poet Manglesh Dabral, and the French embassy was willing to pay the translator. "He was a wonderful writer, a beautiful poet. I love his minimalism. It is always good to have a translator that understands you. I told him to feel free to rephrase whatever he wanted to in order to get the message across better. And when he found out that my Hindi was good, we worked on certain parts together. There were chapters he went through like water. I might write in English. But, what was my childhood all about -- Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi... It's such a big loss that he is longer with us. He reminded me of film editor Renu Saluja who worked on 'Jaya Ganga' - the movie.`` As the conversation veers towards the part in the book where he mentions floating corpses in Ganga, and dogs and vultures feeding on them, something that has a striking similarity to what everyone saw on television screens during the ongoing pandemic, Singh says, "When I read about it, I knew such cases had gone up, but in itself it did not surprise me at all. But when it started surprising others, the Indian press, I was like, 'Gosh! How little do the intellectuals and journalists know about what happens in India?' It is an every-day affair. And it is the same logic, which they found out forty years later. I had asked a boatman, "What is this, brother?" He said, "Where do I begin? The poor don't have the resources to burn the dead body. So they he thinks it is as pure to immerse it in the river." The author and filmmaker moved to France for Surrealism and Andre Breton, whose work, 'Soluble Fish' he discovered in the campus library of JNU. Packing his bags after getting a scholarship to pursue a PhD degree there, he says, "It is not the great French writers and filmmakers that I treasure most about the city-- of course I have learnt a lot from them. What continues to fascinate me most about here is the fact that everyone is a bit of a poet. The very strong sense of art in Paris is unmissable.

The French Revolution went very deep into the consciousness of the people --- what it is to be a free man? Similarly, the word art, literary freedom, is imbued in everyone. I refuse to believe that Delhi is India's intellectual capital --- just a few intellectuals doesn't make it that. Yes, Delhi reeks of power, but not intellect. Bangalore and Chennai may be better, or maybe parts of Mumbai. You judge the soul of a city by the omnipresence of an artistic idea. And if there is one, then it is not one which is inhabited by twenty-five intellectuals. It is the whole city which must exude that. It is like a fragrance." (Sukant Deepak can be reached at sukant.d@ians.in)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Ottawa, July 20 : The Canadian government announced on Monday that it will allow fully vaccinated US citizens and permanent residents into Canada starting August 9, joined by others of the world on September 7.

"This preliminary step allows for the Government of Canada to fully operationalise the adjusted border measures ahead of September 7, 2021, and recognises the many close ties between Canadians and Americans," the government said in a press release.

The Canada-US border was shut down to non-essential travel by mutual agreement on March 21, 2020 and the restrictions have been renewed each month since, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The latest announcement came two weeks after the Canada Border Services Agency began waiving quarantine rules for fully vaccinated Canadian citizens and permanent residents. It remained unclear Monday if or when the US administration plans to reciprocate for visitors to the US.

The announcement also came amid a pressure campaign mounted by the business community and lawmakers on either side of the Canada-US border who say the prolonged measures will have long-term devastating impacts on local economies.

Children under 12 who are accompanied by fully vaccinated and eligible family members will also be exempt from quarantine, provided they wear a mask in public places and avoid indoor group settings.

All travellers will still be required to submit a negative Covid-19 test result and proof of vaccination prior to arrival by way of the ArriveCAN smartphone app or web portal, but post-travel test results will no longer be necessary.

Canada Border Services Agency will also be subjecting random travellers to a mandatory molecular test upon arrival.

"This strategy allows the government of Canada to continue monitoring variants of concern in Canada and vaccine effectiveness," the release said. "Using these layers of protection, the government of Canada can monitor the Covid-19 situation in Canada, respond quickly to threats and guide decisions on restricting international travel." As of August 9, airports in Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Edmonton will also be added to the list of Canadian cities where international flights are permitted to land. Air travellers will no longer be required to spend the first three nights of their quarantine at a government-approved hotel.

"However, all travellers must still provide a quarantine plan and be prepared to quarantine, in case it is determined at the border that they do not meet the necessary requirements," said the release.

Meanwhile, the ban on all commercial and private flights from India - imposed on April 22 - will be extended due to the reportedly high rates of the Delta variant.
Lima, July 20 : The National Elections Jury of Peru has officially declared Marxist village schoolteacher Pedro Castillo as the President-elect, more than a month after a runoff was held on June 6.

The announcement was made by the election board's highest authority, Jorge Salas Arenas, during a ceremony that took place virtually late Monday night, reports Xinhua news agency.

"I declare Jose Pedro Castillo Terrones President of the Republic, and Dina Ercilia Boluarte Zegarra, First Vice President of the Republic," said Salas.

According to the final election results, Castillo obtained 8,836,380 votes, or 50.12 per cent, while his rival Keiko Fujimori garnered 8,792,117 votes, or 49.87 per cent.

Castillo wants to build a socialist state, tighten control of the media and abolish the constitutional court if he wins.

Fujimori, who in case of victory plans to pardon her father, former authoritarian President Alberto Fujimori, stood for a neo-liberal economic policy and a hard-line security strategy.

Castillo now faces enormous challenges ahead.

Peru is suffering particularly badly from the coronavirus pandemic.

It is one of the countries with the highest mortality rate in the world, and its economy also collapsed by 12.9 per cent last year.

Political turmoil has also marked the past year, as the Congress was locked in a bitter conflict with the government.

Parliamentarians first forced president Martin Vizcarra out of office, and then his successor, Manuel Merino, threw in the towel after fierce protests.

Interim President Francisco Sagasti has been in charge meanwhile.
Washington, July 20 : A new report has revealed that the 2020 US recession induced by the coronavirus pandemic last two months, making it the shortest on record in the country.

"The committee has determined that a trough in monthly economic activity occurred in the US economy in April 2020. The previous peak in economic activity occurred in February 2020. The recession lasted two months," the Massachusetts-based National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) said in the report released on Monday.

The committee concluded that the unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy, warranted the designation of this episode as a recession, even though the downturn was briefer than earlier contractions, Xinhua news agency quoted the NBER as saying.

It also decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession associated with the February 2020 peak, according to the NBER.

Analysts often refer to recessions as two consecutive quarters of contraction in gross domestic product (GDP).

However, in the US, the NBER formally determines when recessions begin and end on a range of factors.

Jason Furman, former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said on Monday that the NBER's formal decision means the US economy started getting less bad after April 2020, but, in many respects, it's still well below where it should be.

The US economy contracted 3.5 per cent in 2020 amid the pandemic, the largest annual GDP decline since 1946, according to the Commerce Department.
New Delhi, July 20 : Amid the fierce battle between the government armed forces and Taliban, Afghanistan Army Chief will visit India for two days next week to interact with top security officials, including the Indian Army Chief General M.M. Naravane.

Afghanistan Army Chief General Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai will be in India from July 27 to July 29 during which he is going to meet top dignitaries here, including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Top officials in the government remained quiet over the issue. However, sources said that the Afghanistan Army Chief might look for logistic support and military equipment. India has been training the Afghanistan cadets in military academies for a long time.

Further, the visit comes when Pakistan in collaboration with Taliban has started to target Indian assets in Afghanistan. India has invested over 3 billion US dollars in infrastructure projects, including roads, dams and the Parliament building, in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, Afghan politician who leads the High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR) Abdullah Abdullah made a visit to India. He is making efforts for peace despite the ongoing fighting between government forces and the Taliban.

A government delegation led by Abdullah and Taliban representatives are holding peace talks in Qatar's Doha.

For India, the main concern remains the use of Taliban-controlled territory by Pakistan based terror groups. India is in touch with the Afghan government about the developing situation.

The fighting between the Afghan forces and Taliban has intensified in the last one month post the US forces withdrawal. Taliban has started expanding its influence in the war torn county after the US withdrawal.

Amid security concerns, India withdrew its staff from the Consulate in Kandahar on July 11.
Kasganj : , July 20 (IANS) Six people have been sent to jail for rioting and insult after a Hindu Jagran Manch member, Arvind Kumar Gupta, lodged a complaint that they were converting a Dalit to Christianity.

The six men had gone to meet their friend at Gangpur village in Kasganj. All of them are Dalits who had converted to Christianity.

Gupta, on the basis of which the FIR was filed, said: "When I reached there, I found these men distributing money and religious literature among villagers." olice later said that they found no evidence that the men were preachers.

Kasganj DSP, Deep Kumar Pant said: "For now, there is no evidence to suggest that the group of men was involved in religious conversion." The six men were, however, booked for other charges listed in Gupta's complaint - rioting, assault, intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace, criminal intimidation, mischief and deliberate and malicious act to outrage religious feelings - at the Sikandarpur Vaish police station in Kasganj.

The reason for the last, police said, was that "abusive" content about Hindu deities was found on a page in a diary found inside the van in which the six men had come to Gangpur.

The six arrested persons are Shrinivas, Kuldeep, Rahul Kumar, Shiv Kumar, Durgesh and Kishan, all between 30 and 50 years old.

They were visiting their friend Rampal on Sunday. One of the accused (Kishan) is absconding.

Gupta wanted them to be charged under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020, which bans 'forced' conversions.

"They were not preaching. They were just having food at a friend's house," the police said.

SHO Jitendra Kumar said that "they were not able to provide any explanation about the content".
Kanpur : , July 20 (IANS) More than a dozen persons have been booked and two arrested so far, for stripping and beating a boy in the market place after he allegedly stole some vegetables.

Superintendent of Police (Kanpur Outer) Ashtbhuja P. Singh, said, "We are interrogating several people to ascertain their role in the incident. We are also identifying people on the basis of the video footage of the incident." The police official said that a video went viral in which a boy was allegedly stripped, his hands tied with a rope from behind and brutally thrashed for stealing a small quantity of vegetables. The incident took place two days ago.

An FIR in the incident has been lodged at the Sachendi police station.

Taking suo-motu cognizance, Chakarpur police post in-charge Ashok Kumar had registered the FIR with Sachendi police against a dozen persons under sections of the IPC.

The boy's identity has not been established so far, police said, adding that they were also trying to trace him.
New Delhi, July 20 : Defending its decision to relax lockdown norms for 'Bakrid' festivities, the Kerala government told the Supreme Court that the curbs had resulted in an economic slowdown, pushing the population in a lot of misery, and also caused immense distress among traders amid the holy festival of Muslims.

The Kerala government, in its affidavit, said, "It may be noted that the curbs and resultant economic slowdown have put the population in a lot of misery. Even though the state government has taken all possible steps to alleviate the same, the people have been frustrated by the curbs which have been in vogue for more than three months." Defending relaxation on Bakrid, the government said the traders were expecting that festival sales would alleviate their miseries to a certain extent and they had stocked up goods for this purpose much earlier. "The organisation of traders started to agitate against the stringent curbs implemented...and declared that they will open shops all over the state flouting regulations," added the government, citing that even opposition political parties raised the traders' issue.

The state government further added that the Indian Medical Association also registered their protest against the stringent curbs, and according to an expert group, the state said more relaxations can be extended to lockdown as the state is unlikely to face a strong third wave of the pandemic due to the fast and systematic vaccination. "The traders assured that the opening of shops will be strictly following Covid protocols and they are ready to follow the additional regulations ordered by the state", said the government.

After forcing the Uttar Pradesh government to use its influence over religious bodies to postpone the annual 'Kanwar Yatra', a bench headed by Justice R.F. Nariman on Monday had asked the Kerala government for a response on a plea against relaxation of Covid curbs for Bakrid festivities. The top court will hear the matter today.

The application against the Kerala government decision to relax Covid curbs was moved by one P.K.D. Nambiar, a Delhi resident, in the suo motu case already initiated by the Supreme Court in connection with Uttar Pradesh government's decision on Kanwar Yatra.

Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for Nambiar, argued positivity rate in Kerala was 10.9 per cent, while in Uttar Pradesh it was only 0.042 per cent, when this court intervened in the Kanwar Yatra matter and expressed its discontent with the UP government's decision to allow the yatra. Singh said the positivity rate in Delhi is merely 0.08 per cent and added that a positivity rate of over 5 per cent is certainly not good.

The application submitted that despite discontentment shown by the top court over the yatra, the Kerala government is acting in a casual manner by relaxing Covid norms. "To the utter dismay of India's citizens, the Kerala government announced a 3-day relaxation of lockdown restrictions on July 18, 19 and 20 keeping in view the upcoming Bakrid festival," said the plea.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Washington, July 20 : "Horrific things" happened to Native American children at boarding schools run by the US government, according to a media report.

Hundreds of thousands of Native Americans children were housed and educated in a network of institutions, created to "civilize the savage", in the century and a half that the US government ran boarding schools for them, Xinhua news agency quoted The New York Times report published on Monday as saying.

"There were horrific things that happened at boarding schools," Tom Stritikus, the president of Fort Lewis College, was quoted in the report as saying.

"It's important that we daylight that," he added Many of the deaths of former students have been recorded in federal archives and newspaper death notices, the report said, adding that the search for bodies of other students is already underway at two former schools in the state of Colorado.

On June 22, the federal government announced a probe into the Native American boarding schools operated during the 19th and 20th centuries under the cultural assimilation program.

Ten of the over 350 Indian boarding schools to be investigated in the US were located in California, including Sherman Indian High School in Riverside County and St. Boniface Indian Industrial School in Banning, San Bernardino County.

Sherman is one of the only four remaining Indian boarding schools in the country still operated by the federal government.

The other three are in Oregon, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

The nationwide investigation came after more than 1,000 human remains were discovered in Indian residential schools across Canada, which triggered fury against the country's bloody colonial past and ongoing mistreatment of the Indigenous people.

An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children across Canada were reportedly removed from their homes and forced to attend residential schools between the 1890s and as recently as 1996, during which more than 50,000 died of abuses.
Varanasi, July 20 : A Banaras Hindu University (BHU) faculty member and warden of the Sarojini Naidu girls hostel ended her life by suicide.

Dr Kiran Singh, 45, set herself on fire in her room on varsity campus on Monday.

Additional Deputy Police Commissioner Vikas Chandra Tripathi said that during initial investigation, it has been found that she was upset due to health issues for a long time.

The body has been sent for post mortem and further investigation is underway, he said.

Dr Singh, an associate professor in molecular and human genetics department of BHU lived in the warden quarter of the Sarojini Naidu hostel with her husband Vivek Singh and daughter Swayamprabha.

Her husband told the police that he had gone to Sigra for some work while their daughter was playing in a room on the ground floor of the house when the incident took place.

Dr Singh had sent back their domestic help, Rajendra, when he had come to clean the house.

After sometime Swayamprabha noticed fumes on the first floor and raised an alarm.

The proctorial board personnel ran towards the house and informed the fire brigade. However, before the fire in the room could be extinguished Dr Singh had died.

Inspector Lanka, Mahesh Pandey, said that following initial inspection of the incident site it is suspected that she had torched papers in the room to set it on fire.

Police also called forensic experts for evidence collection.
New Delhi, July 20 : As the issue of snooping is getting murkier, the proceedings in the Rajya Sabha are likely to be disrupted on Tuesday as well. Aam Aadmi Party member Sanjay Singh has given zero hour notice in the Rajya Sabha while the opposition is meeting for joint strategy on the issue.

The opposition will also decide whether to attend the meeting of floor leaders called by the government.

The Congress has moved suspension notice under rule 267.

The Congress on Monday demanded that Home Minister should be sacked and the principal opposition party will raise the issue in both houses of Parliament.

The IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will make a statement regarding compromise of phone data of some persons as reported in the media.

In the legislative business, The Marine Aids to Navigation Bill, 2021 is there for consideration and passing. The bill provides for the development, maintenance and management of aids to navigation in India; for training and certification of operator of aids to navigation, development of its historical, educational and cultural value; to ensure compliance with the obligation under the maritime treaties and international instruments to which India is a party and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto, as passed by Lok Sabha, be taken into consideration, said the Rajya Sabha Bulletin.
Kabul, July 20 : Several rockets were fired at the Afghan Presidential Palace in Kabul during the Eid prayers attended by President Ashraf Ghani and other dignitaries on Tuesday, according to state-run TV.

Casualties have not been reported so far, reports Xinhua news agency citing the state-TV as saying.

Media reports said the explosions happened near the Presidential Palace.
Chennai, July 20 : The Tamil Nadu government will enter into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with several companies at an investment conclave in Chennai on Tuesday attracting an investment of around Rs 17,000 crore.

Chief Minister M.K. Stalin will lay the foundation stone ceremony of nine projects during the conclave. He will also inaugurate five other projects during the function.

JSW Energy, Vikram Solar, TCS, Real estate firm CapitaLand, Avary, French company Cryolar, Cheyyar SEZ are some of the firms that will sign the Memorandum of Understanding.

According to senior officials in the industries department that is spearheading the conclave, 49 projects would commence in various parts of the state. While foundation stone will be laid for some projects, in others MoU will be signed.

The Tamil Nadu Industries Minister Thangam Thenarasu told IANS, "We are on a massive investment drive for the state of Tamil Nadu. Many industrial majors have evinced interest in the state and we are expecting huge investments in the state with around 82,400 jobs being provided." JSW Energy will be signing a Rs 3,000 crore investment agreement with the state government for setting up windmills at Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli and Tiruppur districts of the state.

TCS would set up an IT/ ITES company with an investment of Rs 900 crore while CapitaLand will be investing Rs 1,500 crore for setting up a data centre at Ambattur.

The foundation laying of a Rs 150 crore liquid oxygen plant of INOX air products will also be conducted at Hosur on Tuesday. The plant, according to the industries department, will have a production capacity of 200 MT per day.
Kabul, July 20 : Three rockets landed near the Afghan Presidential Palace, also known as the Arg, on Tuesday during Eid prayers which was attended by President Ashraf Ghani and other politicians and officials.

The rockets landed when they just started the Eid prayers, said a TOLO News report.

Sources have confirmed that the rockets were fired from Parwan-e-Se area in Kabul's District 18.

The rockets landed in Bagh-e-Ali Mardan and Chaman-e-Hozori areas in Kabul's District 1 and Manabe Bashari area in Kabul's District 2, all near the Presidential Palace.

There has been no immediate reports of casualties or damages.
Thiruvananthapuram, July 20 : The son of slain former CPI-M leader T.P. Chandrasekheran and a top leader of Revolutionary Marxists Party (RMP) have reportedly received threatening letter that they will be killed.

Incidentally the death warrant in the form of a letter was received at the Vadakara office of legislator K.K. Rema, wife of Chandrasekheran, who won the April 6 assembly polls from Vadakara constituency in Kozhikode district with the support of the Congress led UDF.

The letter states that both Abhinand Chandrasekheran and their top party leader N. Venu would be eliminated.

It also points out that a similar threat was extended to Chandrasekheran, but he did not take it seriously.

The letter states that CPI-M legislator A.M. Shamsheer who represents Thalassery constituency should not be attacked by them, when they appear for discussions in TV channels.

Venu has given a written complaint to the Vadakara top police officials based on the letter that was received.

Rema won the Vadakara assembly constituency by a margin of 7,491 votes, despite the entire top brass of the CPI-M led by chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan actively campaigned against her.

Though she was pitted against, M. Chandran of the Loktantrik Janata Dal (LJD), an ally of the ruling Left, the real battle was between Rema and none other than Vijayan.

Even though she won with the support of the UDF, she has said that she will sit as an independent block in the opposition bench in the assembly and has said will work as a constructive opposition and she will be guided by her party's ideology, which has been agreed to by the Congress led UDF.

Chandrasekheran, the founder of RMP, was hacked 51 times by assailants in May 4, 2012 when he was returning home on his motorcycle in his hometown near Kozhikode.

In the case, 11 people were given life imprisonment, of which three were mid-level CPI-M leaders and the demand for a probe into the conspiracy behind the murder is still with the court.

Rema has time and again taken on Vijayan for calling her husband "a renegade".

Now with the fresh assembly session scheduled to begin on Thursday, this issue could well turn things to a high, with Rema all set to unleash a scathing attack on Vijayan, as reports have surfaced that those accused in the murder of Chandrasekheran, presently out on bail, are alleged to have a key role in gold smuggling cases being probed by the Customs.
Tokyo, July 20 : Two Americans were found guilty of helping ousted Nissan Motor Co. Chairman Carlos Ghosn jump bail and flee Japan in 2019, a high-profile case that allowed him to escape trial over alleged financial misconduct.

On Monday, the Tokyo District Court sentenced Michael Taylor, a 60-year-old former Green Beret, to two years in prison, and his 28-year-old son Peter to one year and eight months, reports Xinhua news agency.

In Japan, the maximum penalty for helping a defendant escape is three years in prison.

When announcing the ruling, Presiding Judge Hideo Nirei said that there was no prospect of holding Ghosn's trial because of his escape.

"In light of the seriousness of the consequences and maliciousness of the crime, the prison sentences are unavoidable," he said.

The two had pleaded guilty and apologised for helping Ghosn escape. Their defense team had requested suspended sentences.

Tokyo prosecutors had demanded to sentence the father to two years and 10 months and the son to two years and six months in prison, saying that the Taylors' criminal liability was "grave" because they were involved in insulting and weakening the Japanese judiciary.

The prosecutors had said that the monetary gain was the motivation of the Taylors since they received approximately $860,000 before the escape and around $500,000 after Ghosn successfully fled Japan.

In addition, after finishing escape-related preparations such as renting a private jet, the two could have the remainder of the funds provided by Ghosn, the prosecutors added.

According to the ruling, the Taylors helped Ghosn escape from his residence in Tokyo's Minato Ward first to a hotel in Tokyo and then to another in Osaka prefecture on December 29, 2019, before heading to the Kansai International Airport.

Then, they packed Ghosn into a box, went through airport security, and flew him aboard the private jet to Turkey under the situation that they knew Ghosn was prohibited from travelling abroad due to bail conditions.

Ghosn flew to Lebanon, which is one of three countries he is a national and has no extradition treaty with Japan.

The Taylors were arrested in Massachusetts in May 2020 by US authorities at the request of Japanese prosecutors and extradited to Tokyo this March.

Ghosn, first arrested in November 2018, was accused of underreporting his compensation by millions of yen for years and misusing the automaker's funds.

However, he has denied all charges and insisted that other company officials conspired to drive him out of the company.

Another former executive of Nissan, Greg Kelly, is on trial in Tokyo because he is suspected to assist in underreporting Ghosn's compensation. Kelly says he is innocent.
Wellington, July 20 : The pause on quarantine-free travel from Australia's Victoria state to New Zealand will be extended for now, the Ministry of Health in Wellington confirmed.

New Zealand health officials met again on Monday and determined that, at this time, a better understanding is still needed of the developing situation in the Australian state, including the number and pattern of Covid-19 cases, Xinhua news agency quoted a Ministry statement as saying.

Victoria remains in lockdown and, with a growing number of people considered linked to the outbreak, Australian health authorities have said that further announcements for the state are expected on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, quarantine-free travel with Australia's Queensland will remain in place, subject to no further significant developments, with officials deeming the state continuing to pose a low Covid-19 public health risk to New Zealand, the statement said.

New Zealand health officials are also closely monitoring the situation in South Australia, following a new case of Covid-19 reported in the community.

Border controls, including pauses to quarantine-free travel, remain a key tool for stopping the introduction and spread of new cases from overseas.

The ongoing pause with Victoria is "a precautionary but necessary measure" while investigations continue, the Ministry said.

The pause on quarantine-free travel from Victoria and New South Wales of Australia will be reviewed again on Wednesday, it added.

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Colombo, July 20 : Sr Lankan health experts have warned that the Delta variant, which was detected in the country recently, may cause havoc in the weeks ahead, local media reported.

Professor Neelika Malavige in the Department of Immunology and Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Medical Sciences, was quoted by local Daily Mirror newspaper as saying on Monday that all adults need to be vaccinated to prevent severe illness and death from the Delta variant, reports Xinhua news agency.

"We are in danger as the Delta variant causes havoc on severe disease and deaths until the population is vaccinated. The vulnerable population is adults," Malavige said.

Presently Sri Lanka is administering over 300,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine every day for those above the age of 30 years with 7 per cent of its eligible population fully inoculated, and medical experts have not recommended opening the country till all within the age group are immunised.

Only vaccinations are complete, especially on adults, can the country think of returning to complete normalcy, medical experts have said.

Authorities have set a target to complete inoculations by the end of August or the beginning of September, Malavige said.

The leading vaccine currently being administered in Sri Lanka is the Sinopharm vaccine, according to statistics from the health ministry.

Over 5 million people have been inoculated nationwide while the vaccination program is ongoing in full scale, health authorities said.

To date, the country has reported 284,933 confirmed Covid-19 cases, with 3,779 deaths.
New Delhi, July 20 : After the opposition's heavy sloganeering seeking the suspension of Business to discuss the snooping issue, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned till 12 noon.

Chairman M.Venkaiah Naidu said that there were 15 notices on various issues and many for zero hour.

The opposition has jointly decided to raise the issue of snooping in both Houses.

The Congress on Monday demanded that Home Minister Amit Shah should be sacked and it will raise the issue in both Houses of parliament.

The IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will make a statement in the Upper House on the phone tapping issue on Tuesday.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Kolkata, July 20 : The pandemic would be remembered for many things and one of them would definitely be the Madhyamik examination results announced in 2021, when all students who were evaluated were declared promoted and 79 of them even scored 697 out of a total of 700 marks.

Among the 6,79,749 students who were evaluated amid the pandemic outbreak, 90 per cent were promoted to Class 11 with first division.

Announcing the results, President of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education Kalyanmoy Gangopadhyay said, "There was no examination this year because of Covid-19 and so the board devised a mechanism of evaluation.

"If any student is not happy with the evaluation, then the student can sit for the exam when the board will be in a position to conduct the exam and in that case that marksheet will be considered to be final and the present marksheet will be cancelled".

Though the board didn't publish the merit list because there was no examination but the highest marks, calculated on the basis of the evaluation pattern is 697 -- only three marks short of the total 700 marks.

"Altogether 79 students scored 679. The passing percentage is 100 per cent which is nearly 14 per cent more than the previous year. Among the students 90 per cent scored more than 60 per cent," Gangopadhyay said.

This year the state government decided to not go ahead with the Madhyamik and Higher Secondary examination because of Covid and the board followed an evaluation pattern so that there is no year loss for the students.

According to the pattern 50 per cent weightage was given to the marks scored by the student in Class 9 and rest of the 50 per cent marks were calculated on the basis of the Internal Assessment conducted by the respective schools.

Earlier Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that there will be no Madhyamik or Higher Secondary examination this year. The evaluation process of the students will be decided by the respective boards in consultation with the expert committee.

The state government had also taken a public opinion through e-mail and 34,000 people responded, wherein 79 per cent were against Madhyamik exam and 83 per cent were against the Higher Secondary exam.

Direct links to check West Bengal Class 10 result 2021 have now been activated at wbresults.nic.in and 16 other official and unofficial websites. Results will also be available via SMS and a mobile app. The results will also be hosted at wbbse.wb.gov.in.

Mark sheets, certificates and admit cards will be distributed at camp offices from 10 a.m. onwards. School heads will collect the documents and distribute them among parents.

Students who pass the Madhyamik exam, which is equivalent to Class 10, will be eligible for admission to 10+2. West Bengal Madhyamik result 2021 has been calculated by taking the previous year's marks into consideration, as the 10th board exams stand cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

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San Francisco, July 20 : The latest Twitter beta update for Android lets users to log in using a connected Google Account, the media reported.

Google Account integration with Twitter is definitely long overdue, with the social media platform similarly working on Apple Account sign-in for those on the iOS side of the fence, reports 9To5Google.

The new integration allows users to log in or create an account with existing details, therefore bypassing the need to fill in basic information, such as name and email address and negates the password requirement.

If the user already has an existing Twitter account that utilises their Google Account email, then it will simply login without requiring the password entry step -- provided that account is currently logged in on an Android device, the report said.

Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a way to tie an existing account to a Google Account, although users may be able to change their email address on an existing account to get the new sign-in method to work, it added.

This feature is now live in Twitter beta v9.3.0-beta.04, which is available via the Google Play Store for those already enrolled on the preview program.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Supreme Court on Tuesday pulled up the Kerala government for giving-in to the association of traders for relaxing Covid curbs for 'Bakrid' festivities. Directing the government to pay heed to the right to life of citizens, the top court asked it to follow its directions in the 'Kanwar Yatra' matter.

A bench comprising Justice R.F. Nariman and B.R Gavai said: "We may only say shocking state of affairs...the relaxation of a day in category D (areas having high Covid positivity rate) is wholly uncalled for." The bench emphasized, "Pressure groups of any kind, religious or otherwise, cannot in any manner interfere with citizens' fundamental right to life." Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for the petitioner in the top court challenging the Kerala government's decision to relax Covid curbs for the Bakrid festivities, emphasized that the top court should pass some order in the matter, as today is the last day of Covid curbs relaxation.

Justice Nariman replied, "There is no point. The horse has already bolted." Justice Nariman added if pleas were filed earlier, then surely something could have been done. The top court did not pass any order quashing the notification issued by the Kerala government for Covid relaxations for Bakrid.

The top court pointed out that the Kerala government also gave-in to an association of traders, who urged the government to relax Covid lockdown norms for Bakrid festivities. "What is extremely alarming is that category D, where infection rate is the highest, a full day of relaxation was granted," noted the top court.

Concluding the hearing in the matter, the Supreme Court emphasized that if there is any spread of the infection due to these relaxations, then any person can bring it to the notice of the court which will take appropriate action.

After forcing the Uttar Pradesh government to use its influence over religious bodies to postpone the annual 'Kanwar Yatra', a bench headed by Justice R.F. Nariman on Monday had asked for the Kerala government's response on the plea against relaxation of Covid curbs for Bakrid festivities.

The application against the Kerala government's decision to relax Covid curbs was moved by one P.K.D. Nambiar, a Delhi resident, in the suo motu case already initiated by the Supreme Court in connection with Uttar Pradesh government's decision on Kanwar Yatra.

The application submitted that despite discontentment shown by the top court over the yatra, the Kerala government is acting in a casual manner by relaxing Covid norms. "To the utter dismay of India's citizens, the Kerala government announced a 3-day relaxation of lockdown restrictions on July 18, 19 and 20 keeping in view the upcoming Bakrid festival," said the plea.

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-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Washington, July 20 : US President Joe Biden's administration has transferred its first detainee out of Guantanamo Bay, nearly 20 years after he was incarcerated at the military detention facility, the Department of Defence (DoD) announced.

In a statement released on Monday, the Department said: "In 2016, the Periodic Review Board (PRB) process determined that law of war detention of Abdul Latif Nasir no longer remained necessary to protect against a continuing significant threat to the national security of the US.

"Therefore, the PRB recommended that Nasir be authorised for repatriation to his native country of Morocco, subject to security and humane treatment assurances.

"The steps necessary to effectuate the repatriation were unable to be completed prior to the end of the (former President Barack) Obama administration." According to the DoD, the PRB process was established on March 7, 2011.

The administration of former President Donald Trump affirmed the PRB process in January 2018, but did not complete the repatriation, it added.

The statement further said that the US commends Morocco for its "long-time partnership in securing both countries' national security interests".

"The US is also extremely grateful for the Kingdom's willingness to support ongoing efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility." It was not immediately clear whether he would be detained or released in Morocco, with the US officials referring reporters to the government of Morocco for more information.

After Nasir's transfer, 39 detainees remain at Guantanamo Bay, ith 10 eligible for transfer who have already been approved by the PRB, 17 eligible for the PRB, 10 involved in the military commission process and two have been convicted.

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, since the prison camp opened in 2002, almost 800 detainees have passed through its cells.

In addition to unlawful detention, many were subjected to torture and other brutal treatment.
New Delhi, July 20 : The rift in the Karnataka Congress has reached to Delhi and state party president D.K. Shivakumar and Leader of Opposition Siddramiah have been called to iron out differences and work together for the party, sources have said.

Siddaramaiah has denied any rift and said both he and Shivakumar are working together to build the party. "I have been asked to meet Rahul Gandhi," he said.

Sources said both the leaders are likely to meet Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday in New Delhi.

The two leaders are at loggerheads over various issues and the rift has widened when Shivakumar snubbed Siddaramaiah supporters when they projected him as the next chief minister of Karnataka.

The latest issue between them is illegal mining, on which the Karnataka Congress remains a divided house as the state Congress President Shivakumar and opposition leader Siddaramaiah yet again differed on the issue raised by Independent MP Sumalatha.

Siddaramaiah stressed that an investigation should be done, while Shivakumar maintained that there are no reports of illegal mining in the region.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
San Francisco, July 20 : Following beta testing, Apple is now releasing iOS 14.7 to the public that will bring support for the MagSafe Battery Pack for iPhone 12 and a lot more.

Following the release of iOS 14.6 to the public in May, iOS 14.7 is another notable update for iPhone users. One of the biggest changes here is support for the new MagSafe Battery Pack for iPhone 12, which has already started arriving to early shoppers, reports 9To5Google.

The new update also brings support for merging two separate Apple Cards and creating one joint, co-owned account. This process will combine credit limits and can be found in the updated Wallet application.

Users can update their iPhone by going to the Settings app, choosing General, then choosing Software Update.

With the new update, users will see a new timer management feature for HomePod users for the Home application. This allows setting and among timers using the Home app on your iPhone and iPad.

The new update also allows users to see air quality information in Weather and Maps for Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, South Korea and Spain.

According to The Verge, some of the features included in 14.7 don't seem to be available to those running the iOS 15 beta.

Apple has also released WatchOS 7.6, which brings the ECG app and irregular heart rhythm notifications to 30 more places, as well as tvOS 14.7.

Currently, Apple's security updates page said that the latest version of iPadOS is still 14.6, so iPad users may have to wait a bit longer for the update to roll out to their devices.
Mumbai, July 20 : The Mumbai Police will produce arrested businessman Raj Kundra - the husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty - before a court this afternoon seeking his remand, official sources said here on Tuesday.

In a sensational move, the Mumbai Police arrested Kundra late on Monday on alleged charges of making and publishing pornographic content and publishing them through mobile applications.

The announcement on the shocking action was made by Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale himself, based on a case registered in February.

Since then, Kundra, 46, - a British-Indian businessman - was under the scanner of the Crime Branch-CID before the police's dramatic move last night.

The sudden arrest stunned Bollywood which is under the radar since the past one year with narcotics probes.

Official sources reveal that the investigators have recovered certain incriminating materials while the role of other known and unknown persons in the entire racket is also being probed.

"A case was registered with the Crime Branch about the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. We've arrested Raj Kundra in this case as he appears to be the key conspirator," said Nagrale.

"We have sufficient evidence regarding this. Further investigation is in progress," the police chief added.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 20 : The dividend windfall from government's holding in public sector undertakings will provide much needed relief to the treasury hard pressed on account of falling revenue and rising expenses for Covid relief work.

According to estimates, with the economy coming back on rails after getting ravaged in the two waves of Covid, dividend income for the government from PSUs may shoot up again in FY22 close to the original budgeted levels for FY21 at over Rs 60,000 crore.

Government sources said that most PSUs are performing well and numbers for the first quarter are indicative of rising revenues and profitability. If this is sustained, the government may get higher income as PSUs dividend this year. Though official sources maintained that no numbers had been worked out as yet, it could be close to double of Rs 30,000 crore garnered from roughly two dozen PSUs in FY21.

In a tweet earlier, Dipam secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey had said: "Dividend receipts of GoI (Government of India) from CPSEs stand at about Rs 30,369 crore in the current financial year (as of 22.3.2021)." This was actually much below the original budget estimate of dividend income at Rs 65,746.96 crore estimated in FY21 from CPSEs.

It is expected that energy sector companies, especially in oil and gas and power sectors would contribute the maximum towards dividend income of the government this year. OIl sector PSUs are expected to fare well in FY22 as demand for their products, which had fallen last year is picking up fast and reaching pre-Covid levels. Also, firm crude prices may help them make big inventory gains.

Power sector PSUs are also faring well with a rise in demand for electricity both in commercial and household segments.

BPCL, which helped the government mobilise in close to Rs 9,000 crore in FY21 by declaring interim dividend, special dividend (Rs 79 dividend on a share price of Rs 10), is again likely to provide windfall to the Centre if its privatisation plan gets delayed to later part of the fiscal or next year. Also, Coal India, Indian Oil and banking sector PSUs May chip in with higher dividend.

Apart from BPCL, in FY21 Coal India Ltd provided Rs 6,520 crore to the government as dividend, Indian Oil Corporation close to Rs 6,000 crore, State Bank of India around Rs 2,000 crore and GAIL about Rs 1,200 crore. These would be contenders for providing maximum dividend in FY22 as well.

Sources said that if profitability of companies is maintained during the year, certain PSUs may also consider declaring special dividend to payout from their reserves.

The guidelines issued by the department of investment and public asset management (Dipam) in 2016 that every PSU would pay a minimum annual dividend of 30 per cent of profit after tax or 5 per cent of the net worth, whichever is higher, will also push PSUs to declare higher amounts as dividends.

(Subhash Narayan can be reached at subhash.n@ians.in)

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Kabul, July 20 : Three rockets landed near the Afghan Presidential Palace, also known as the Arg, on Tuesday during an Eid prayer session attended by President Ashraf Ghani and other senior politicians and officials.

Hamid Roshan, deputy spokesperson of the Ministry of Interior, said the rockets were set in auto and were launched from Kabul's Police District 4 area, Khaama Press reported.

The rockets landed when the prayer session had just started at an open ground inside the palace compound, said a TOLO News report.

Sources have confirmed that the rockets landed in Bagh-e-Ali Mardan and Chaman-e-Hozori areas in Kabul's District 1 and Manabe Bashari area in Kabul's District 2, all near the Presidential Palace.

There has been no immediate reports of casualties or damages.

Further details are awaited with the absence of any official announcement.

No group has so far claimed responsibility.

The attack comes a day after 15 diplomatic missions and the NATO representative in Kabul urged the Taliban to halt offensives, just hours after the group and the Afghan government failed to agree on a ceasefire at their talks in Doha.

Intense fighting, meanwhile, continues in Afghanistan, with both the Taliban and government claiming gains in various parts of the country.
Lucknow, July 20 : Four decades, women of the Tharu tribe living in villages in the Terai region of the Indo-Nepal border in Uttar Pradesh, were deprived of even basic amenities like electricity and water, but now things are changing.

They had to travel to far off places for delivering their babies, but 'Operation Mamata', a campaign launched by the Yogi Adityanath government, has led to rejuvenation of six dilapidated auxiliary nurse midwife (ANM) sub-health centres in Tharu dominated villages including Chandan Chowki, Gaurifanta, Najhota, Chhedia West, Bankati and Dhuskia.

The sub centres have been converted into full-fledged delivery centres and a total of 750 deliveries of babies have taken place there from April, 2020, to March, 2021.

According to the government spokesman, the number of deliveries conducted by the ANM during the daytime and night at these sub-health centres are 464 and 286, respectively.

Prior to Operation Mamata, the sub-health centres faced frequent power outages, especially at nights. The state government has ensured installation of solar panels at all these sub-health centres to overcome this problem.

Operation Mamata was planned in the last week of January, 2020, and in just one year it has transformed the sub-health centres by providing the best facilities for conducting deliveries, immunizations and others.

During the ongoing Covid pandemic, medicine kits have also been made available to infected people through the sub-health centres in the area as well as 24-hour institutional delivery is being facilitated by ANMs.

The Chief Development Officer (CDO) Arvind Singh said the health centre in a Tharu village is located inside 40 kilometres of forest and provides improved institutional delivery and post-delivery care for women of the Tharu tribe, which has a population of around 50,000 on Indo-Nepalese border.

The local administration has given priority to recruiting ANMs at the six sub-health centres in order to ensure their availability round the clock.

The health centres boast of accommodation facility for ANMs. Besides, two other staff are deployed at the sub-health centres. Roads to and from these centres have been renovated. A solar power plant of 1 KW has also been installed to ensure power supply at night.

A proposal has been prepared to start 48 similar sub-health centres in remote countryside, including at Rani Nagar and Kiratpur soon. Efforts are on to provide better and timely health services to people living in far off and inaccessible areas.

The members of the Tharu community have also come forward to join the administration in rejuvenating the six health sub-centres, each of which caters to people of seven to eight villages. While the six sub-health centres of Palia area are already functioning, work is underway to rejuvenate the remaining ones and the locals are actively taking part in it along with the administration.
Rome, July 20 : Over half 50 per cent of Italy's targeted population have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, according to the Health Ministry.

Till date, over 27 million people have received two vaccine doses, which equals 50.21 per cent of the population aged over 12, Xinhua news agency quoted the mInistry as saying.

The country has used 61.5 million doses of the four coronavirus vaccines currently authorized -- Pfizer/BioNTech, Vaxzevria (AstraZeneca), Moderna and Janssen.

After a slow start in early January 2021, the vaccination campaign gained steam in spring.

Considering both the fully immuniaed and those who received at least one dose, the largest group is those aged between 50 and 59 with 12.5 million vaccine doses administered, followed by those in the 60-69 age group, 70-79 age group, 40-49 age group, according to separate government statistics.

Meanwhile, the country is witnessing a fresh spike in coronavirus infections after several weeks of decrease, which the National Health Institute (ISS) has mainly ascribed to the effects of the Delta variant.

While the number of new infections has been on the increase, no significant jump has been reported in the number of deaths and hospitalisations.

Overall, Italy has reported 4,289,528 coronavirus cases so far and 127,874 fatalities.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Mumbai, July 20 : Gold futures on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX) rose on Tuesday taking cues from international markets and rising concerns over Delta variant of Covid-19.

The August contact of gold on the MCX is currently trading around Rs 48,185 per 10 gram, higher by Rs 91 from its previous close.

Kshitij Purohit of CapitalVia Investment Adviser said: "LBMA Gold spot has resumed slightly gapped higher at $1,817.50, trading with positive momentum after sustaining above the support low of $1,795 in previous session. However, lower US Treasury yields in addition to concerns over the rising number of COVID-19 cases globally and its impact on the global economic recovery capped losses for the yellow metal." On the domestic futures, he said that the overall trend will be sideways to marginally bullish in today's session.

Silver futures traded on a subdued note on Tuesday after opening higher.

The September contract of silver on the MCX was trading at Rs 67,228 per kg, lower by Rs 18 from its previous close.

Silver future opened on a positive note at Rs 67,409, slightly gapped higher from previous closing, trading with sideways to moderately positive trend in Tuesday morning.

"The price dropped in previous session as dollar edged higher, weighing on silver and generating headwinds for the entire precious metals complex. US Yields moved lower as investors moved into safe-haven assets. The Home Builders index edged slightly lower, which paved the way for lower yields," Purohit said.

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Bengaluru, July 20 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has begun the probe in connection with a sensational gang-rape case involving a woman from Bangladesh, in Bengaluru. The NIA has lodged a separate FIR which involves human trafficking and illegal border crossing.

Earlier, east division police arrested 13 persons in connection with the incident and submitted 1,000 plus pages of charge sheet in the case on July 6.

Taking the issue of human trafficking from Bangladesh, which came up in the investigation of the gang-rape seriously, the central Home ministry handed over the case to NIA for further investigations.

The NIA lodged an FIR in this connection and began the probe. The police had submitted 1,019 pages of charge sheet in a short period of 5 weeks after the case came out in public domain through a video which went viral.

Police Commissioner Kamal Panth had appreciated the cops and announced Rs 1 lakh cash reward. The cop started investigating the incident after registering a suo motu case when the video of the incident went viral in the country and abroad in the month of April.

The police traced the victim in Kerala and brought her to the city on May 30. The police had arrested five accused including a woman seen in the video, in the month of June. Two of the accused were shot at on June 2, when they tried to escape.

The victim had stated that she was an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh who managed to sneak into India. She also revealed that accused were business partners and she supplied girls to them. There was a misunderstanding on financial matters and the accused then gang-raped her, tortured her and video-graphed the whole incident.
Kolkata, July 20 : IFEX, the global network of over 100 organisations dedicated to defending the freedom of expression and information, has urged Myanmars military junta to drop all charges under its repressive censorship legislation, Penal Code section 505A, and to immediately release all the detained protesters and journalists.

IFEX has also called for the restoration of media licenses to its member Mizzima News and other media outlets who have played an essential role in shedding light on the violence inflicted by the junta against their own people.

At least 897 people have been killed and over 6,500 arrested, charged or sentenced since the February 1 coup.

Shortly after seizing power, the junta amended section 505A to criminalise comments that supposedly "cause fear", spread misinformation, or incite crimes against government employees.

Offences under section 505A are non-bailable and subject to arrest without a warrant, with a guilty charge punishable by up to three years in prison.

Legal experts have highlighted how the legislation has been used widely against opponents of military rule.

"This legislation is typical of how repressive regimes the world over seek to silence critics, limit civic space and threaten the safety and freedom of expression of journalists and media outlets," stated IFEX Executive Director Annie Game.

"With the junta continuing to perpetrate violence against their own people, access to reliable information has never been so important. All charges under section 505A should be dropped, all protesters and journalists freed, and media licenses restored so that our colleagues at Mizzima News and other outlets can operate freely." Addressing a recent session of the UN Human Rights Council, Thomas H. Andrews, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Myanmar, described how the military junta continues to stifle freedom of expression, including by "using criminal defamation charges to target journalists, human rights defenders, and civil society leaders".

Speaking at the same session, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet labelled the situation in Myanmar as a "multi-dimensional human rights catastrophe", that requires immediate action.

She pointed to the silencing of civil voices, the arrests of journalists, and the shuttering of media outlets, and highlighted "multiple reports of enforced disappearances; brutal torture and deaths in custody; and the arrest of relatives or children in lieu of the person being sought".

IFEX has particularly called for restoring the license for its member organisation Mizzima News, which has been one of the many targets of these attacks.

Since the coup, Mizzima has been outlawed and their offices raided. Despite these threats, the organisation has continued to operate, oppose the coup, and call for the restoration of democracy.

In response, the military junta has charged 18 Mizzima staff members and journalists under section 505A, including Ko Zaw Zaw, the Myeik-based freelance reporter who was sentenced to two years in prison.

Women human rights defenders and journalists have been at particular risk of arrest under the legislation.

On April 8, Thin Thin Aung, co-founder of Mizzima, was arrested in Yangon along with James Pu Thoure, a Mizzima staff member.

Her house was ransacked, her computer seized and the entirety of her and her news outlet's funds taken away. Both of them were taken to Mingalardon interrogation centre (Yay Kyi Aing) for two weeks, before being transferred to Yangon's Insein prison on April 21.

Thin Thin Aung remains in prison to this day, charged under section 505A. Her next court hearing is scheduled for July 28.

There have been numerous calls for her release, including from a group of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, with concerns being expressed over her health and high risk of torture.

IFEX member organisations across the Asia-Pacific region and the globe have expressed their strong condemnation of the coup and support for those struggling for their rights.

Updates from the developing situation in Myanmar are available on the websites of IFEX and Mizzima.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Trinamool Congress MPs on Tuesday staged a protest near the Mahatma Gandhi statue in Parliament and also submitted notices to discuss issue of alleged phone tapping in both Houses of Parliament.

The Trinamool Congress MPs assembled near the Mahatma Gandhi statue and staged protest there.

The issue of "snooping" using Pegasus spyware snowballed into a massive political row in Parliament and outside as opposition parties demanded a thorough investigation and sacking of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

Trinamool MP Sukhendu Sekhar Roy gave a notice in Rajya Sabha under Rule 267, seeking suspension of all business to discuss the Pegasus issue.

In the midst of the heated Assembly elections in West Bengal earlier this year, the phone of poll strategist Prashant Kishor was broken into using NSO Group's Pegasus spyware, according to digital forensics conducted by Amnesty International's Security Lab and shared with The Wire.

In addition, the mobile number of key strategist Abhishek Banerjee, the powerful Trinamool Congress MLA who is also the nephew of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, was also selected as a potential target for surveillance by a government client of NSO Group, an investigation of leaked data by The Wire and its media partners on the Pegasus Project has shown.

Also on the list is Banerjee's personal secretary.

New IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday asserted in the Lok Sabha that a highly sensational story was published by a web portal. "Many over-the-top allegations made around this story. The press reports appeared a day before the Monsoon Session of Parliament. This can't be a coincidence," he had said.

Noting that in the past similar claims were made regarding use of Pegasus on WhatsApp, he said: "Those reports had no factual basis and were denied by all parties. Press reports of July 18 also appear to be an attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions." The issue triggered a stormy start to the Monsoon Session after a global collaborative investigative project revealed that Israeli company NSO Groups' Pegasus spyware targeted over 300 mobile phone numbers in India including that of two ministers in the Narendra Modi government, three Opposition leaders, constitutional authority, several journalists and business persons.

The Congress on Monday accused the government of "treason" and held Shah responsible for the snooping and hacking of phones of journalists, judges and politicians, and demanded a probe.

BJP leader and former IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the credentials of those behind the story as well as its timing, coming a day before Parliament's Monsoon Session that began on Monday, as he accused the opposition party of hitting a "new low" in making baseless allegations.
Jerusalem, July 20 : UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has warned against new tensions in the Old City of Jerusalem between Jews and Muslims.

"The Secretary-General is following with concern the heightened tensions in and around the Holy Sites of the Old City of Jerusalem," Xinhua news agency quoted Farhan Haq, Guterres' deputy spokesman, as saying on Monday.

"He (Guterres) underscores that the status quo must be upheld and fully respected. He calls upon community, religious and political leaders on all sides to refrain from provocative action and rhetoric, in the interest of peace and stability," said Haq.

At least 1,300 Jews on Sunday visited the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem to mark the Jewish holy day of Tisha B'Av, despite tensions between Palestinians and Israeli police.

The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is a site holy to both Muslims and Jews, the latter of whom call it the Temple Mount.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 war and annexed it shortly later, claiming it part of its "indivisible" capital, in a move unrecognised by most of the international community.
New Delhi, July 20: Terrorist attacks on Chinese workers in southwest Pakistan are unnerving Beijing, just as Islamabad knocks on the door of its "iron brother" for 'debt' support.

China's nervousness follows Wednesday's attack on a bus carrying Chinese engineers and workers in northern Pakistan. Nine Chinese engineers who were killed were working on the China-invested Dasu hydropower project.

The Dasu project is part of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)-the flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a giant pan-Eurasian connectivity enterprise marshalled by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Also Read: China visibly upset with Pakistan over terror strike that killed six engineers In retaliation to the strike, the Chinese company China Gezhouba Group Company (CGGC), in charge of the project has terminated all 2500 Pakistani employees working on the construction site, triggering resentment among locals, Geo News reported.

After the incident there were twist and turns, on whether the strike was a terror attack or not. After a severe Chinese reprimand, Pakistan finally acknowledged that it was indeed a terror strike. Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, personally asked Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan to hold accountable culprits in the attack on the bus as soon as possible. Since then, Islamabad has been getting phone calls from Beijing on a regular basis.

On Saturday, China's State Councillor and Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi called up Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed to find out the progress made of the investigation.

China has told its all-weather friend to identify security risks facing Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan, fix loopholes, strengthen the country's early-warning system and security measures, and do its utmost to ensure the safety of Chinese personnel to prevent similar attacks from happening again as reported by state-run China Daily.

Zhao told the Pakistani Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid that he trusted that law enforcement departments of both countries would further strengthen the building of mechanisms for collaboration and work more closely together for the benefit of both sides. He cautioned that such negligence on the part of the government in future will have a negative impact on CPEC projects and also dent the relationship between the two countries.

Also Read: After the killings of nine in Pakistan, three Chinese kidnapped in Mali China has sent a 15-member Chinese investigation team led by Wu Wei, deputy director of the Department of External Security Affairs of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Nong Rong, the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan. China has asked Pakistan to work with its investigating team together to fix identity of culprits, track them down and punish them severely.

Though no group has claimed responsibility for the attack, Chinese media has nailed Balochistan terrorists and the Pakistani Taliban as possible suspects responsible for the attack.

Chinese are furious as they have been reassured by Pakistan that sufficient security would be provided to Chinese workers and CPEC project infrastructure.

Another Chinese affiliated media, The Global times has noted that the Pakistani government has weak control in the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province where the Pakistani Taliban is strong and runs its own legal systems to control the region. The Dasu Hydropower Project is located in the mountainous Kohistan region.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
Chennai, July 20 : Tamil Nadu housing and urban development minister, S. Muthusamy has said that the state would form flying squads to inspect the buildings under construction to prevent any violation in the layout or approval. The minister said that if there are any defects it would be rectified at the initial stages itself based on the reports of the flying squad.

The minister was speaking to reporters at Erode on Tuesday.

Muthusamy said that presently the officials inspect a building only after its work is completed to check for violations and to issue the completion certificate.

He said that instead, flying squads will inspect the construction site at each stage of building and will mark out the violations and inform the concerned authorities if anything found illegal. The minister said that this would help the building owner also to make the necessary changes in the construction according to the report given by the squad.

The housing and urban minister said that chief minister, M.K. Stalin has directed the officials that building permissions must be given in 45 working days and that there should not be any violations.

Several violations were noticed in Tamil Nadu and constructions without taking into account the Coastal Zone guidelines were rampant in the state. The Madras High court has also made a few observations against the blatant violation of declared norms in the state of Tamil Nadu.
Dublin, July 20 : Ireland has eased Covid-19 restrictions on inbound international travellers coming from some of the European countries and the US, according to national radio and television broadcaster RTE.

From Monday, travellers from the 27 European Union (EU) member countries, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, Britain and the US were no longer required to quarantine if they had proof of being fully vaccinated against Covid-19, having recovered from the disease, or having had a negative PCR test within 72 hours of arrival, reports Xinhua news agency citing RTE as saying.

The relaxation comes at a time when Ireland has been witnessing a notable increase in the number of confirmed cases over the last week or so.

On Monday, the Irish Department of Health reported 1,017 new confirmed cases in the country.

The five-day incidence in Ireland averages 1,159 cases per day, the highest since February 2 of this year, said the Department in a statement.

Earlier in the month, Tony Holohan, chief medical officer with the health department, said that the Delta variant of the coronavirus accounted for over 70 per cent of the new confirmed cases in the country.

Ireland has so far reported 285,581 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 5,018 deaths.
New Delhi, July 20: Russia on Monday moved a step closer to its ultimate goal of equipping the country's warships and submarines with "unstoppable" hypersonic cruise missiles after yet another successful test firing of Zircon (also spelled as 3M22 Tsirkon) in the waters of the White Sea.

The lead frigate of project 22350 Admiral Gorshkov fired a Zircon hypersonic cruise missile at a ground target located on the coast of the Barents Sea, announced the Russian Defence Ministry.

According to objective control data, the Zircon missile successfully hit the target at a range of over 350 km with a direct hit.

"During the tests, the tactical and technical characteristics of the Zircon missile were confirmed. The flight speed was about 7 Mach," the statement from the ministry said.

The frigate Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, Gorshkov is one of the most modern ships of the Northern Fleet. It was built at the Severnaya Verf shipyard in St. Petersburg and entered service in July 2018.

Project 22350 frigates are multifunctional warships capable of effectively fighting surface, air and underwater adversaries, as well as striking land and coastal targets at a distance of over 1.5 thousand kilometers.

Moscow said that flight tests of the hypersonic cruise missile Zircon are continuing as it moves ahead with its plan to equip submarines and surface ships of the Russian Navy with the Zircon complex.

Test firing of the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile by the frigate Admiral Gorshkov was also carried out on the northwest coast of Russia in early October, November and on December 11, last year. All shootings were considered successful.

Quoting sources, Russian news agency Tass reported Sunday that the state trials of the Zircon hypersonic missile from a surface carrier will begin next month.

"The first launch from the Admiral Gorshkov frigate within the state trials is planned for the first part of August. The second part of August will see flight trials of Zircon from the Severodvinsk nuclear submarine," it reported.

Analysts in New Delhi, meanwhile, are also seeing the bigger picture at a time when the defence ties between India and Russia continue to grow.

"The successful test launch of a Tsirkon hypersonic cruise missile shows that Russia continues to pioneer emerging defence technologies. Therefore, despite diversification, it is important for India to continue to develop defence partnerships with Moscow," Professor Gulshan Sachdeva, Chairperson, Centre for European Studies at New Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University, told IndiaNarrative.com.

Zircon striking targets on ground and under water at a hypersonic speed It was on February 20, 2019 that the Russian President Vladimir Putin - during his annual Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly - informed about Tsirkon, the "promising innovation", for the first time officially.

Addressing a gathering attended by Federation Council members, State Duma deputies, members of the government, leaders of the constitutional court and Supreme Court, governors, Putin said that Tsirkon, a hypersonic missile that can reach speeds of approximately Mach 9 and strike a target more than 1,000 km away both under water and on the ground, is being successfully developed according to plan.

"It can be launched from water, from surface vessels and from submarines, including those that were developed and built for carrying Kalibr high-precision missiles, which means it comes at no additional cost for us," he said.

In 2020, during the same annual address, the Russian President emphasised that for the first time in the history of nuclear missile weapons, including the Soviet period and modern times, the country was not catching up with anyone, but, on the contrary, other leading states have yet to create the weapons that Russia already possesses.

"The country's defence capability is ensured for decades to come, but we cannot rest on our laurels and do nothing. We must keep moving forward, carefully observing and analysing the developments in this area across the world, and create next-generation combat systems and complexes. This is what we are doing today," he had said.

During this year's Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly, Putin had assured that the Tsirkon hypersonic missiles, along with the latest Avangard hypersonic intercontinental missile systems and the Peresvet combat laser systems, and the first regiment armed with Sarmat super-heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles, will be put on combat duty soon.

"By 2024, the share of modern weapons and military equipment in the armed forces will reach nearly 76 percent, which is a very good indicator. This share in the nuclear triad will be over 88 percent before this year is out," said the Russian President.

As per the US State Department, as of September 1, 2020, the Russian Federation had declared 1,447 deployed strategic warheads and has the capacity to deploy many more than 1,550 warheads on its modernized ICBMs and SLBMs, as well as heavy bombers, but "is constrained from doing so" by New START.

Immediately after coming into power earlier this year, the Joe Biden administration had said that the extension of the Treaty between the US and the Russian Federation on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, also known as the New START Treaty, until February 5, 2026 ensures it has "verifiable limits" on Russian ICBMs, SLBMs, and heavy bombers for the next five years.

Yet, hypersonic missiles may pose a fresh challenge to the New START Treaty. "The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the only active treaty limiting the deployment of US and Russian nuclear weapons, does not explicitly restrict hypersonic missiles - an omission that turns out to be intentional. Either nation could conceivably take advantage of this gap in the treaty's coverage to expand their nuclear-capable missile forces, unfettered by the carefully constructed arms control regime that protects global nuclear stability, wrote Cameron Tracy on All Things Nuclear website.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
New Delhi, July 20: Even as Canada deals with the demons of its past brutality -- the genocide of native people by the State and the church-its southern neighbour, the US is also trudging on a similar path.

On July 14, the exhumed remains of nine indigenous American children, who had died more than 100 years back in a government-run school in Pennsylvania, were handed back to their tribe -- Rosebud Sioux. The ceremony took place at the graveyard of the US Army's Carlisle Barracks. The tribe will now rebury the remains according to their customs and traditions in their lands -- small designated areas that confine indigenous communities in the US, reports American news agency Associated Press.

This was in a series of many such efforts since 2016, in which native Americans are bringing back the bodies of their ancestors, mostly children, from the cemeteries of residential schools run by the church and managed by the American government. They want to give their ancestors a dignified last farewell according to their customs and on their sacred lands.

"We want our children home no matter how long it takes," said US Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, who announced a nationwide investigation into the boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into white society. The investigation has been catalysed by the findings of mass graves of indigenous children in Canada's Catholic boarding schools.

Lately, native Americans in both Canada and the US are increasingly beginning to ask about the lives of their ancestors, who as children were forcibly taken away from their families to be 'assimilated and converted' at church-run residential schools. Assimilation meant giving them new names, converting them to Christianity, cutting their hair, forcing them to speak English and erasing their traditions and customs.

In this process of assimilating the children, described as cultural genocide by the native leaders, the children were beaten up, treated cruelly and, sometimes, had to face sexual abuse. Forcibly taken away from their families, the children faced tough conditions, a harsh unfriendly environment, disease and death.

The pace of questioning and finding out about their past has quickened with the entry of Haaland -- the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary. As a member of the native American community, she is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna and a 35th generation New Mexican. Haaland's entry into mainstream US politics has fuelled hope that the long-suppressed native American people will get their due.

The indigenous people in the US -- the world's foremost power for decades and a land teeming with philanthropy foundations-are still asking for employment, education and healthcare. They have no say in decision-making and have no rights over the ownership of their sacred lands.

Despite decades between today's indigenous people and their ancestors, the young generation retains painful memories of what happened to their grandparents and great grandparents in boarding schools. Now the native Americans are asking for a probe into their ancestors' lives, just as the indigenous people in Canada have done -- set up a committee to investigate crimes by both -- the church and the State.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
Washington, July 20 : Oregon's Bootleg wildfire, currently the largest active blaze in the US, has so far scorched an area 1.5 times the size of New York City, has destroyed at least 160 homes and 117 other buildings since it erupted on July 6, officials said.

As of Monday, the active wildfire, which has burned through more than 300,000 acres, was 25 per cent contained from 22 per cent the previous day, reports Xinhua news agency.

According to the fire officials, another 2,500 structures have been threatened by the massive blaze which has also triggered the expansion of mass evacuation orders.

Two evacuation centres have been set up for residents in several cities, including Klamath Falls and Redmond.

Meanwhile, the Log Fire is burning a couple of miles to the northeast of Bootleg Fire and has grown to more than 10,000 acres.

The two fires are likely to merge, Marcus Kauffman, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Forestry, said in a statement on Monday.

Bootleg Fire is burning through high desert conifer forests parched after a long-running drought and above-average temperatures, according to a report by OregonLive.

Bootleg is one of more than 80 major fires raging across 13 US states, spurred by heatwaves and high winds, the BBC reported.

Wildfires have already scorched more than 1.2 million acres of the country this year, mainly in western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

More than 4,000 blazes have been recorded by the organisation so far in 2021, which is almost double last year's total.

In California, five times as many acres have burned compared with the same period last year.
Ramnagar, : July 20 (IANS) Karnataka police have arrested three persons in connection with gruesome murder of an RTI activist on July 16 on the outskirts of Bengaluru.

The accused persons had severed a leg and hand of RTI activist Venkatesh (50) in full public view. Later, he was shifted to nearby hospital where he succumbed to injuries on July 18.

Pradeep Kumar (33), T.C. Satish (20) and Tejas Kumar (22) have been arrested and three special teams are hunting down other accused persons in connection with the case, Ramnagar police said on Tuesday.

RTI activist Venkatesh submitted various applications regarding developmental works in and around Tavarekere. He had filed an RTI application regarding encroachment of the government pasture land in Yalachaguppe, on the outskirts of Bengaluru, too.

He had also filed RTI application on the encroachment of lakes of Tavarekere and Gangammana kere. The police suspect that, the accused targeted RTI activist Venkatesh for his activism. Many projects in the area have stopped because of the complaints raised by Venkatesh, sources say.

The police are suspecting the involvement of local politicians behind the case and investigation is on.
Geneva, July 20 : While the continents of North, Central and South Americas only saw a small increase in cases recently, they still account for more than a quarter of the gloval Covid-19 caseload, as well as 40 per cent of the deaths worldwide, officials of the World Health Organization (WHO) said.

"There were almost one million cases reported in the Americas last week," Xinhua news agency quoted Maria Van Kerkhove, Technical Lead on Covid-19 for the WHO, as saying in a live social media Q&A on Monday.

"In Brazil there were almost 300,000 cases reported last week. In the US, more than 200,000 cases reported," she said.

Van Kerkhove warned of a peak in the transmission level that has been observed in the region, arguing that "they are stuck at a really high level of intensity, and they can't quite bring that transmission down".

The world at large saw a global increase of 11.5 per cent in cases last week, the WHO officials said, with Europe and the Western Pacific being the most affected.

The Americas region saw a moderate increase of 0.5 per cent, but some countries were plagued by really sharp spikes in transmission possibly due to new variants, Van Kerkhove said.

The new Lambda variant first discovered in South America, however, does not seem to have brought an increase in cases, as it has started to be "outcompeted" by other variants, she added.

"South America, Central America and other places around the world need more vaccines if they're going to break this deadly cycle of cases," said Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO's Health Emergencies Program.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Mumbai, July 20 : Actress Wamiqa Gabbi, who has been praised for her role in the show "Grahan", has come forward to rescue stray animals.

Wamiqa, who has adopted five dogs, said: "I have always been an advocate for the welfare of animals and am strictly against animal cruelty. I think to harm animals is one of the lowest forms of action for a human, for which they should definitely be reprimanded. It would be better if there were stricter laws against animal brutality. I hope more and more people come together and protect animals while helping the ones in need find shelter or good homes to live in. I stay an hour away from Mumbai city in an independent house to accommodate my five dogs," the actress added.

The actress will next be seen in "Mai", an upcoming thriller series co-starring Sakshi Tanwar, Raima Sen, Vivek Mushran, Prashant Narayanan, and Seema Pahwa.

The plot of the series moves around the murder of a prisoner. Upon accidentally killing a mafia leader, a middle-aged woman is unwittingly swept into the underworld, where her cult slowly grows. As things take a new turn, she has to fight for survival while preparing herself to enter the underworld to stay secure.

The series is produced by Anushka Sharma and her brother Karnesh Ssharma.
Srinagar, July 20 : Heavy rain played spoilsport on Tuesday as people in Kashmir remained busy thronging bakery, mutton, poultry and sacrificial animal markets ahead of the holy Muslim festival of 'Eid-ul-Azha' falling on Wednesday.

Following the Islamic tradition set up by Prophet Abrahim, Muslims all over the world offer animal sacrifices on Eid-ul-Azha.

Animal markets have come up at the Eidgah grounds in Srinagar city and other places in the old city areas while sale and purchase of these animals continued on Tuesday in all major towns of the Valley.

Prices fixed by the administration for sacrificial animals and other essentials of life were breached as both the sellers and the buyers did not seem bothered about the official rate lists of mutton, poultry, vegetables and other essential items.

The prices of the sacrificial goats and sheep were dictated by the buying power of the purchaser.

A special breed of sheep brought here from Rajasthan was marked at Rs one lakh a pair.

But, till late Tuesday afternoon, the seller had not been able to find a buyer at such an exorbitant price.

Authorities said special checking squads had been set up to keep prices under control. Despite reports of such teams moving around to impose fines on hoarders and profiteers, the impact of these checking squads was barely marginal.

Parents also thronged readymade garment shops to buy new clothes for children.

"Although everybody is eager to celebrate the Eid yet the type of jubilation seen around in the past on such an occasion is missing", said Bashir Ahmad, a retired bank employee.

Elaborate advisories have been issued by the district magistrates in J&K to adhere to Covid protocol during the Eid festival.

Police is also seen requesting people not to move around without wearing the masks.

Shoppers in majority of places where they were lined up for bakery or mutton did wear masks to protect themselves.

Yet, window shoppers kept the administration on tenterhooks as they moved from one market to the other without caring much for their own protection or that of others in these markets.

Authorities have set up helplines for the general public which can be contacted in emergencies.

Kashmiris usually do not miss any occasion to celebrate and the Eid festival gives them a special opportunity to do so.

Even then, it appears not every Kashmiri has enough spare cash to let his/her imagination fly on the occasion of this Eid.
Gurugram, July 20 : Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar on Tuesday announced financial assistance for the victims of the building collapse in Gurugram's Khawaspur area.

According to a statement released by the district spokesperson, Rs two lakh will be given to the families of labourers who lost their lives and Rs one lakh to those critically injured due to the collapse of a three-storey building on Sunday night.

However, after a 19-hour long rescue operation which got over on Monday afternoon, the rescue teams, including the police, the Fire department, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), the Health department and the Civil Defence personnel, had pulled out a man alive and three bodies.

An FIR was filed against the building owner and the manager of the company where the victims used to work, under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at Farrukhnagar police station on Monday.
Pretoria, July 20 : Six alleged instigators behind the violent unrest in South Africa which lasted for almost a week, have been arrested, Acting Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters "This is the latest update which we just got in now, three already appeared in court but were remanded in custody for bail hearings," she said while addressing a media briefing here on Monday.

Ntshavheni said other alleged perpetrators of the violence would likely appear in court during this week.

"Charges against them include incitement to commit public violence and the arrests that we are referring to are not related to the arrests in regards to the looting," she said, adding that the police were working with community members to ensure those responsible for looting were nabbed.

Last week, Police Minister Bheki Cele said they were following 12 people who instigated the violence.

Ntshavheni said that the situation in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng has stabilised, with no new incidents of looting reported lately.

She said last week's violence was planned, orchestrated and instigated.

The fact that blood sachets from blood banks were stolen showed the "severity" and the "inhumane nature" of the instigators of the riots which was to undermine the authority of the state.

Ntshavheni said warning reports about the riots which were received were acted upon on time.

More than 2,500 people have been arrested in connection with the violent protests in the country which erupted on July 7 over former President Jacob Zuma's imprisonment.

The death toll has increased to 212.

In the wake of the violence, the number of South African National Defence Force (SANDF) deployed has increased to 25,000.

The deployment will remain until August 12.

Zuma, once known for his fight against apartheid, has been imprisoned in the Estcourt Correctional Centre for 15 months for disobeying court orders.

He did not testify before the judicial commission that was investigating accusations of corruption against him between 2009-2018.
New Delhi, July 20 : Vestige Marketing Pvt Ltd, India's largest home-grown direct selling company was ranked number 7 in the Direct Selling News' list of top direct selling companies as rated by social media and online presence in the International Digital Momentum Index.

Having grown strategically in business, markets as well as products, Vestige recently celebrated its 17th year of operations since inception in 2004.

The International Digital Momentum Index is a measure of top Direct Selling companies globally, which saw a significant social media growth and digital presence in quarter 2.

The rankings initiated by the Direct Selling Capital Advisors, showcase the comparison between Q2 to Q1 in their current results. Due to the pandemic, the industry witnessed a growth in Instagram followers and engagement while Facebook experienced a slight decline.

The 100 plus portfolio of Direct Selling companies also saw impressive web traffic and a quarter-over-quarter improvement of plus 20 per cent. Overall, Q2 was a modest improvement from Q1, presumably due to the general reopening of the economy and social engagements, but still somewhat depressed going into the summer months.
New Delhi, July 20 : In a delight for millions of music aficionados in India, Apple on Tuesday launched the next generation of sound with Spatial Audio and Lossless Audio on Apple Music at no additional cost and the new features will be available on Android "very soon" in the country.

Apple Music is also making its catalog of more than 75 million songs available to its subscribers in Lossless Audio in India.

Apple uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec) to preserve every single bit of the original audio file. This means fans will be able to hear their favourite songs exactly the way the artists created them in the studio.

To start listening to Lossless Audio, subscribers using the latest version of Apple Music can turn it on in Settings, then Music and Audio Quality.

Here, you can choose different resolutions for different connections such as cellular, Wi-Fi, or for download.

For the true audiophile, Apple Music also offers Hi-Resolution Lossless all the way up to 24 bit at 192 kHz.

By default, Apple Music will automatically play Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos tracks on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad and Mac.

At Rs 99 a month (3-month free trial) for individuals, Rs 49 a month for students and Rs 149 a month for a family, customers will get access to 75 million tracks in Lossless on Apple Music over a period of time, a growing catalog of songs on Spatial, the best in class recommendation engine and more than 30,000 playlists curated by Apple Music editors.

Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos gives artists the opportunity to create immersive audio experiences for their fans with true multi-dimensional sound and clarity that comes from all around and from above the listener.

Albums that are available in Spatial Audio will have a badge on the detail page to make them easily discernible.

Apple Music is also offering a special set of editorially-curated Spatial Audio playlists to help listeners find the music they love and enable further discovery.

"The ability to experience music in its purest form is magical, and since live-concerts have taken a back seat in the recent times, Dolby Atmos is an excellent way for my listeners to feel as if they're listening to me live," said award-winning music composer AR Rahman.

"With Apple Music and Spatial Audio, we've recreated the songs of '99 Songs', 'Meri Pukar Suno' and 'Dil Bechara' in a newer, richer way, and I hope the audiences are able to experience the music in a manner it should be," Rahman added.

Apple Music is working closely with artists and labels to add new releases and the best catalog tracks, as more artists begin to create music specifically for the Spatial Audio experience.

Apple is also building immersive music-authoring tools directly into Logic Pro.

Later this year, the company will release an update to Logic Pro that will empower any musician to create and mix their songs in Spatial Audio compatible with Apple Music.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 20 : The government on Tuesday said that the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) registered 1,99,716 cases related to drugs trafficking between 2017 and 2019.

In a reply to an unstarred question in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai said, "Sharp vigil, effective surveillance, public cooperation, source-based intelligence, sensitisation of field officials for better enforcement etc have resulted in gradual increase in registration of number of drug trafficking related cases in the country." He said that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) is the central agency, which compiles the data on crimes, as reported by States and Union Territories, and publishes the same in its annual publication "Crime in India".

Rai said that the latest published report is of the year 2019.

"The State/UT-wise details of cases registered under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substance (NDPS) Act-1985 for the year -- 2017, 2018 and 2019 is 63,800, 63,137 and 72,779 respectively," Rai said.

The question was asked by Lok Sabha MP K. Muraleedharan.

The Minister said that the government has taken various steps for the prevention of drug trafficking in the country.

He said for coordination among various Central and State agencies, the Narco Coordination Centre (NCORD) mechanism was set up by Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in the year 2016 for effective Drug Law Enforcement.

"This NCORD system has been restructured into a four tier scheme up to district level by MHA on July 29, 2019 for better coordination. For monitoring the investigation of large seizure cases, a Joint Coordination Committee (JCC) with Director General (DG), NCB as its Chairman was set up by the government on July 19, 2019," he said.

He also said that for digitisation of pan-India drug seizure data, MHA has launched an e-portal called "SIMS" (Seizure Information Management System) in the year 2019 for all the drug law enforcement agencies under the mandate of Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, 1985.

He said that financial assistance under the scheme "Assistance to States for Narcotics Control" is provided by MHA to eligible States for strengthening their narcotic units.

Rai also said that Border Security Force (BSF), Sashastra Seema Bal (SSB), Indian Coast Guard, Railway Protection Force and National Investigation Agency (NIA) have been empowered under the NDPSA Act for making interdiction of narcotic drugs in remotest and far flung areas of the country.

"Illicit cultivation is addressed through use of satellite imagery and subsequent destruction of such crops in coordination with States," he said.

He further said that as a part of International co-operation, India has signed "26 Bilateral Agreements, 15A Memoranda of Understanding and two Agreements on Security Cooperation with different countries for combating illicit trafficking of NDPS and Chemical Precursors as well as related offences".

"NCB also co-ordinates with various international organisations such as SAARC Drug Offences Monitoring Desk (SDOMD), Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), Colombo Plan, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), ASEAN Senior Officials on Drug Matters (ASOD), Bay of Bengal Initiative For Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Co-Operation (BIMSTEC), United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) etc for sharing information and intelligence to combat transnational drug trafficking," he added.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 20: Improving connectivity will be the focus for India and the landlocked Nepal, which needs to access ports to boost its trade activities.

"India and Nepal must establish a workable mechanism that focuses solely on matters of connectivity-- promoting highway, railway and air linkages among others in a systematic fashion. Planning for a five to 15 year horizon is imperative," Bhaskar Koirala, Director of the Nepal Institute of International and Strategic Studies told India Narrative.

Koirala added that it cannot be business as usual for the two countries. "Governments must abandon business as usual attitude, instead give priority to crafting a set of policies that are based on a fresh set of ideas, bearing in mind that a sound economic recovery for Nepal would no doubt revolve around a practical and efficient conjoining of self-sufficiency (by boosting domestic production and consumption) with robust engagement to the external environment," he said.

The South Asian nations are also looking to operationalise the much-awaited Bangladesh-Bhutan-India Nepal (BBIN) Motor Vehicles Agreement (MVA) project, aimed at boosting connectivity in the region. Experts have noted that the BBIN project would be critical for economic recovery in the region.

Nepal is also dependent heavily on India for access to ports though Kathmandu has also been granted access to Chinese ports now.

India accounts for 64 per cent of Kathmandu's overall trade volume.

At present, a chunk of Nepal's trade-both imports and exports - are routed through the Haldia and Vishakhapatnam ports. However, sources said that India could open up more ports for Nepal. The country could even be granted access to the deep water Sittwe port.

The Sittwe port is currently being developed by India in Myanmar's northern Rakhine province.

The port, at the mouth of the Kaladan river, is being developed as part of the Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project.

Sources also said that a mechanism needs to be put in pace to ensure overall better logistics and which would save time and for movement of goods between Nepal and the Indian ports.

According to the Economic Times India has agreed to provide Nepal access to Dhamra port in Odisha and Mundra in Gujarat. The two countries have been negotiating to facilitate trade through inland waterways from Haldia to Nepal through rivers Koshi and Gandak.

While China has given access to Nepal to use its ports, negotiations for the same took time and were laced with hiccups.

"Nepal needs Beijing and China has been a good neighbour to us but India will remain special, China cannot replace India," Udaya Shumsher Rana, former minister of state for finance and a member of Nepali Congress recently told India Narrative.

The Observer Research Foundation noted that Nepali aspirations have been unshackled and India must recognize this.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Prayagraj, July 20 : Uttar Pradesh women teachers are now demanding three days 'Period Leave' or 'Menstrual Leave' every month, over and above other leaves available to them.

They have cited the facility available to their counterparts in states like Bihar.

The Uttar Pradesh Women Teachers' Association has submitted their demand to Anamika Chaudhary, a member of UP Women's Commission and now plan to approach Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya.

Anamika Chaudhary has promised to make the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath aware of the demand.

The women teachers underlined the fact that menstruating women experience pain and bleeding, both of which affect their mental and physical state.

Senior vice-president of the association's Prayagraj unit, Poonam Gupta, said that the Bihar government was extending this leave to women employees for the past 30 years.

"We want UP government to also extend three days' 'period leave', per month, for women teachers and employees," she said.

"All units are submitting similar memorandums to elected MLAs and ministers in their respective districts. Be it Azamgarh, Bareilly or Lucknow, the plan is to let every MLA and minister aware of our demands. In Prayagraj, we plan to submit a memorandum to Deputy CM Keshav Prasad Maurya also," she added.

It is noteworthy that Indian food delivery service Zomato has decided to give female employees up to 10 days of 'period leave' per year.

"A number of private companies provide the option to women workers to avail 'period leave' even in India. It is an optional leave at most places and hardly anyone misuses it. Today, women teachers either have had to come to work on the most painful day of their menstrual cycle or make up some excuse. The leave cannot take away their pain and discomfort, but it can give them a break on the days they are most uncomfortable," said Poonam Gupta.
New Delhi, July 20: Islamabad is planning to go ahead with its plan of extending the alternate western corridor route of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) in spite of suffering a major setback due to the continued attacks on Chinese workers in Pakistan.

The new routes through Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK), which India claims as part of its territory will not go down well in New Delhi, which has already rejected the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) as it pases through this zone. CPEC begins in Gwadar on the Arabian Sea coast, but has to pass through PoK and Gilgit-Baltistan before it heads towards Kashgar, its terminus in China's Xinjiang region.

Nevertheless, a majority of CPEC projects are now facing an uncertain future after nine Chinese engineers were killed last Wednesday when their bus was attacked near the Dasu hydropower plant in the Upper Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The growing tensions between the 'iron brothers' escalated to an alarming level with Beijing not only deciding to cancel the much-awaited virtual 10th Joint Cooperation Committee (JCC) meeting on CPEC at the eleventh hour but also making it clear that foolproof security should be provided to Chinese citizens working on different projects in Pakistan.

The local media reported that on the same day (July 14), the Imran Khan government had decided to extend the western route of CPEC to Gilgit via Swat, Chitral and Shandur in a meeting which was chaired by Pakistan's minister for planning and development Asad Umar and with Gilgit-Baltistan CM Khalid Khurshid and controversial CPEC chairman Asim Saleem Bajwa in attendance.

"As per the earlier plan, the Western Alignment of the CPEC was to be of 1153 kilometers starting from Gwadar in Balochistan to Brahma Bahtar Interchange near Hasan Abdal of Punjab province. With the inclusion of new routes like Swat Motorway, Gilgit to Chitral highway, the Western Corridor would be of 1617 km," said Pakistan Today's business magazine Profit.

The report mentioned that with the addition of 464 km - Shandur-Chitral road project (172 km), Gilgit-Shandur route (212 km) and Swat Motorway M-1 (80 km) - in the Western Corridor, Gilgit-Baltistan would be given an alternate route to existing Karakoram Highway.

Earlier in May, Asim Saleem Bajwa had said that CPEC's western alignment routes will be completed in around three years with the work on the route from Islamabad to Dera Ismail Khan and from Dera Ismail Khan to Zhob already underway.

"We have presented a roadmap to China and they have approved it. Work has also started on the Zhob-Quetta route. We are moving beyond infrastructure to focus on agriculture, particularly economic zones to boost industrialisation," Bajwa had told a gathering of businessmen at the Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI).

However, the ground reality is quite different. Over the past few years, from Balochistan to Gilgit-Baltistan, massive protests have been held by locals against CPEC who have alleged that the project has destroyed them completely.

And, the future doesn't look bright either.

Pakistan's leading daily Dawn said Monday that the country's business community is demanding immediate measures to significantly step up security intelligence after incidents such as the attack on the bus in Kohistan, the bomb blast at Serena Quetta, the attack on the Chinese Consulate in Karachi and on the Pakistan Stock Exchange.

The newspaper quoted a source "familiar with China affairs" privately saying that the situation is "becoming dicey by the day" with foreign policy dilemmas assuming threatening proportions.

"We have landed again between the devil and the deep blue sea. Our diplomatic skills are put to test amidst growing security threats with the exit of US troops from Afghanistan. It is difficult to pacify China with mixed signals," Dawn quoted the person as saying.

(The content is being carried under an arrangement with indianarrative.com) --indianarrative
Lucknow, July 20 : The All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), in a departure from tradition, has issued a statement saying that Muslims were free to vote for any individual or party in the elections.

This is the first time that the AIMPLB has issued a statement on voting preferences.

AIMPLB chairman, Maulana Rabey Hasani Nadwi said that people should vote after introspection but no one should be compelled to vote for a particular party or individual.

"The AIMPLB has never issued any appeal in favour of any party and will neither do so in future. People should use their own discretion to cast their vote," the statement said.

The Maulana further said that the Board, as a tradition, has never issued any appeal in favour or against any political party. He said that the Board had nothing to do with politics.

The statement also warned the community against misleading statements being issued by some people for political gains.

Sources in the Board said that the statement was issued to clarify that the Board had no role in Asaduddin Owaisi's party contesting the state elections.

Owaisi is a member of the AIMPLB and his party men have been using social media to convey that he enjoys the support of Board members.
Washington, July 20 : About 2,500 Afghans who helped the US military in the two-decade war will be relocated to an army base in Virginia to complete their visa application process, the State Department said.

"The Department of Defense has agreed at the request of the Department of State to allow the use of Fort Lee, Virginia, as the initial relocation site for the pool of applicants who are closest to completing special immigrant processing," State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters at a briefing on Monday.

"Approximately 2,500 Afghans and family members are currently eligible to finish special immigrant processing in the US," he added.

The White House said last week that some 20,000 Afghans had applied for Special Immigrants Visa (SIV), and the evacuation flights for eligible applicants out of the country will begin in the last week of July, reports Xinhua news agency.

President Joe Biden's administration has been facing pressure from lawmakers to evacuate Afghans who helped the US military and are vulnerable to Taliban reprisals.

President Biden had ordered the US military to end its mission in Afghanistan by August 31, days ahead of his original September 11 deadline.

The US Central Command said last week over 95 per cent of the withdrawal had been completed.

The security situation in the war-torn country has deteriorated as Taliban militants continue heavy fighting against government forces and gain ground since the drawdown of US troops on May 1.
London, July 20 : A 61-year-old Caucasian man in the UK experienced facial palsy after each dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine, suggesting a strong link between the jab and Bell's palsy, according to the doctors at the National Health Service.

Bell's palsy -- a facial nerve palsy of unknown cause, where muscles on one side of the face become weak or paralysed.

In the journal BMJ Case Reports, the doctors describe the first such case to be reported in the medical literature of two separate unilateral facial nerve palsies, occurring shortly after each dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.

The man had no previous history of facial nerve palsy, but had a high Body Mass Index, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type-2 diabetes. Both doses of the vaccine were administered to the left arm, reported the doctors.

The first episode of facial nerve palsy developed five hours after administration of the first dose and the second two days after administration of the second dose administered six weeks later.

Investigations at initial presentation to the emergency department were unremarkable, and the patient was diagnosed with Bell's palsy on both occasions, the doctors said.

The patient attended the emergency department after the first episode, unable to close his left eye properly or move the left side of his forehead and was diagnosed with Bell's palsy. Routine bloods and a CT head scan showed nothing of concern and he was discharged with a course of steroids, and the facial nerve palsy completely resolved.

The second episode was a more severe left-sided facial nerve palsy. The symptoms included dribbling, difficulty swallowing and inability to fully close his left eye. He went to the emergency department, where he was again prescribed a course of steroids. He was also referred to the emergency ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) clinic, which continued the steroids and referred him to ophthalmology, the doctors reported.

"We describe the first case of Bell's palsy occurring after each dose of any UK-approved Covid-19 vaccine. Single episodes of unilateral facial nerve palsies have been reported in clinical trials and in subsequent case reports. There has been no evidence, however, of an episode after each dose," said Dr Abigail Burrows, ENT, Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Guildford, UK.

"We also describe the earliest onset of symptoms from the timing of administration of the vaccine, further suggesting Bell's palsy was associated with the vaccine," she added. However the doctors noted that a causal relationship cannot be established.

The doctors report that his symptoms have greatly improved and the patient is almost back to normal.

Single episodes of unilateral facial nerve palsies were reported in the initial clinical trials of the three major Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the UK -- Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford/AstraZeneca -- and there have been subsequent case reports.

In Phase-III trials, four cases of Bell's palsy were reported in volunteers who received the Pfizer vaccine compared with none in those who received the placebo vaccine, and three cases were reported in volunteers who received the Moderna vaccine compared with one in the placebo group.

Three cases of facial nerve palsy were also reported in volunteers who received the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine during clinical trials, and there were three cases in volunteers who received the placebo vaccine.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 20 : After the opposition parties agreed to discuss Covid issue in the Rajya Sabha, some members started sloganeering when House resumed at 1 p.m. Amid the ruckus, Opposition leader Mallikarjun Kharge said, "I feel insulted as I was not allowed to speak. I have been member for fifty years and did not lose election except in 2019 when the election was rigged." Kharge continued the discussion after the House resumed and started with paying tributes to corona warriors and said during the second wave of the pandemic, there was complete chaos and pathetic condition was witnessed specially in the Ganga.

He said, "the government's number on deaths is not correct as India has more than six lakh villages and if five persons died in one village, its more than 31 lakh people have died but if you add urban centers then the data could be more than 52 lakh people who succumbed to Covid-19. The government is releasing incorrect data, so its necessary to expose them." He attacked the RSS also on Mohan Bhagwat's statement on Covid who had said that those who died due to Covid are free from the cycle of life and death.

He alleged that government has completely failed in managing pandemic as Oxygen, hospital beds were not available.

Kharge also attacked the government and the BJP for holding big rallies in West Bengal during the poll campaign.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
New Delhi, July 20 : Startup funding at stratospheric levels is following the Bigger Fool Theory, experts say.

The rarified echelons of Higher Finance follow the Cardinal Principle of Advanced Investment Management.

"This is called The Bigger Fool Theory and says that, somewhere in the Investor Universe, at this minute, is a Bigger Fool who is waiting to buy you out," experts said.

They add that nowadays, in parts of Bangalore, when people are done with washing the dishes or online yoga, they register a startup and appoint an investment banker to raise a hundred million dollars or multiples of that.

Then, they look around for ideas to spend this money. Generally, everyone creates an App to do something that has been done perfectly well since the Vijayanagar empire. Like milk delivery.

The one who sets up this skunkworks is called a Founder. But he should be called a Loser, because the only goal of every startup is to burn cash in super-quick time, which process is called Cash-Burn (hope you are impressed). The current National Record in this Event, when reports last came in, is held by a company which earns Re 1 for every Rs 732 that it spends. "Even a spendthrift friend of mine, who is utterly incompetent and runs a chaotic NGO, is in awe of such stellar performance," a CA said.

Generally, anyone who makes money is considered a Supreme Idiot by investment bankers, investors and the deeply philosophical, critically-opinionated experts of WhatsApp University, and no one, not even one of those magna-cum-laude-cum-accent types, wants to be considered an SI. General principle being - Don't waste your money on somebody, who doesn't want more of it.

The idea is that once they raise money and lose it, they can raise more money that they lose quicker than the earlier pile, so that they can raise even more money - this is called Series C for an important reason, which is that it follows A and then B.

They keep on raising money till Series AH, which is when they become Unicorns. A Unicorn is a company that people who are permanently affected by smog-induced shutdown of the frontal cortex of the brain think is worth a billion dollars or more.

The next step is to write this idea down in a Business Plan, which is a document that nobody pays any attention to, unless they are done with work for the day and want to settle down with a cup of tea and some fiction.

This Founder now spends all his time pitching to investors, using words like Traction and Network Effects which no one understands. Anyone who does not use words like Traction and Network Effects is considered to be Supreme Idiot, version 2.0 and escorted to the lift because no one wants to take chances with ignoramuses. If any Founder-Loser wants to raise less than hundred million (Supreme Idiot version 3.0), he is escorted to the lift too, but, in this case, the lift refuses to function - there is such a thing as self-respect, even for lifts -, so he has to walk down the stairs.

They just wait for other clueless investors like them to invest and then they join the party.

And how do investors make money? The rarified echelons of Higher Finance follow the Cardinal Principle of Advanced Investment Management. This is called The Bigger Fool Theory and says that, somewhere in the Investor Universe, at this minute, is a Bigger Fool who is waiting to buy you out.

And, it works.
Mumbai, July 20 : A day after the sensational arrest of businessman Raj Kundra -- the husband of Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty -- the Mumbai Police has nabbed a techie in connection with the alleged pornographic racket being probed by the Crime Branch-CID, official sources said here on Tuesday.

The police have arrested Ryan John Tharpe, entrusted with the technical aspects of Kundra-Shetty's companies, from Nerul in Navi Mumbai, for his alleged role and involvement in the same scam.

The duo was produced before a Mumbai magistrate and have been remanded to police custody till July 23.

With this the total number of arrests in the case has shot up to around 12, till date and several more suspects are still on the police radar.

Tharpe is an IT person, said to be closely involved with Kundra and Shetty's companies which are now being probed for the pornographic racket having possible international ramifications.

Official sources reveal that the investigators have recovered certain incriminating materials, WhatsApp chats and other stuff, while the role of other known and unknown persons in the entire racket is also being investigated.

Kundra, 46, was nabbed late on Monday on alleged charges of making and publishing pornographic content and publishing them through mobile applications.

Police Commissioner Hemant Nagrale himself made the announcement on Kundra's arrest based on a case registered in February.

Since February, Kundra -- a British-Indian businessman -- was under the scrutiny of the Crime Branch-CID before the police's dramatic move last night.

The sudden arrest stunned Bollywood which is already reeling under the scanner of various narcotics agencies since the past one year, further soiling the industry's image.

"A case was registered with the Crime Branch about the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps. We've arrested Raj Kundra in this case as he appears to be the key conspirator," said Nagrale.

"We have sufficient evidence regarding this. Further investigation is in progress," the police chief added.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Hanoi, July 20 : The 15th National Assembly (NA) of Vietnam, the country's top legislature, opened its inaugural session on Tuesday amid concerns about the Covid-19 pandemic.

At this sitting, which is scheduled to last until July 31, newly-elected lawmakers will vote and approve personnel for high-ranking positions of the state apparatus, NA Chairman Vuong Dinh Hue said at the opening ceremony.

Legislators will also hear important reports on the country's five-year socio-economic development plan, the five-year financial plan, and the medium-term public investment plan for the 2021-2025 period, and discuss law-making programs for 2022, reports Xinhua news agency.

The session will establish important conditions and create driving forces for the successful operation of the NA's 15th tenure, said Hue.

In his remarks, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam Central Committee Nguyen Phu Trong said the whole nation is striving to overcome difficulties brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

He called on the NA deputies to uphold the sense of responsibility, continuously improve their capabilities to serve the country and the people, and fulfil the tasks entrusted to them.

Vietnam has been fighting its worst wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with over 56,500 locally transmitted cases registered in less than three months since late April.

The southern Ho Chi Minh City is the current epicentre.

On May 23, Vietnam held a general election where 499 deputies to the 15th NA were elected.

At the last session of the 14th NA that started in late March, legislators elected Vuong Dinh Hue as NA chairman, Nguyen Xuan Phuc as state president, and Pham Minh Chinh as prime minister, among other personnel decisions.
Panaji, July 20 : Delhi Power Minister Satyendra Jain has accepted his Goa counterpart, Nilesh Cabral's dare to debate the merits of the Delhi power tariff model versus the one in place in Goa.

Jain on Tuesday tweeted his acceptance of the 'power' debate challenge, following a dare thrown last week by Cabral.

"Nilesh Bab, I heard u have said that u would like to debate with power minister of Delhi on AAP's free and 24x7 electricity announcement. I accept ur challenge. I will be in Goa this Sunday. I hope Sunday 3 pm is ok with u for the debate. See you there," Jain said.

Last week, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in an announcement made in pollbound Goa, had said, that if the AAP comes to power, the first 300 units of power consumed by domestic households would be free, while also promising 24x7 uninterrupted power supply, on the lines of the Delhi government.

Kejriwal had also touted the power tariff model in Delhi as one which is better than the one implemented by the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government in the coastal state.

Reacting to the announcement, Cabral on July 16 had slammed the Delhi government's power tariff, claiming that Goa already provided better and cheaper power to domestic consumers in the coastal state. Cabral also dared Delhi Chief Minister, or the northern state's Power Minister to a debate over the merits and the demerits of the two models.

This is the second time that tariff structures in the two states, have triggered rhetoric between leaders of the two political parties.

In November last year, Cabral and AAP MLA and Delhi Jal Board vice chairman Raghav Chadha had also raised hype about a debate over the power tariffs in their respective states.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Thiruvananthapuram, July 20 : In what could be anxious moments for Kerala Forest Minister A.K. Saseendran, the coming days could turn crucial as a controversy surfaced on Tuesday after a phone conversation between him and a party member surfaced. In the conversation, he asks his party member to settle amicably a case, which involves his daughter who was harassed by another party leader.

Saseendran belongs to the NCP and following the revelation, the Congress and the BJP have demanded his resignation and face the probe.

Incidentally, Saseendran in March 2017, in the first Pinarayi Vijayan government had to quit following a sleaze talk with a lady. However, he later returned after a court cleared him after the lady backed out, then.

The aggrieved lady told the media that her father is an NCP leader in Kollam district and she had contested the local body polls as a BJP candidate, last year.

"There were issues then saying that my father purposefully made me a candidate for money. This is totally false. A few months back, an NCP leader in our place Padmakaran, who owns a hotel and a bar after seeing me caught my hand and said if it's for money, then he will also give money. Later in a WhatsApp group an election poster and his picture was circulated and we decided to file a complaint," said the aggrieved lady.

"At the police station also, we got a cold treatment and they have done nothing. I also informed the top police official about what happened and he replied OK and nothing has happened after that. Then came the call from Minister to my father," said the lady.

The father of the lady who is the local NCP leader said he got a call from one person called Saseendran, last month.

"I asked if the caller was Minister A.K. Saseendran, he said yes. The Minister then said that there is an issue in my area. I said this is no party issue, so I do not know what the Minister was referring. Then I said my daughter was harassed by our party member Padmakaran. Then the minister said, he is also referring to the same and it should be amicably settled. I asked him again, if he was asking me to settle the harassment case against my daughter," said the lady's father.

Reacting to this, Saseendran told the media that it was to find out what the issue was.

"I did not know what it was and when I heard what he said, I ended the conversation," said Saseendran.

To a volley of questions, Saseendran tried to beat around the bush and said being public figure it's natural that several issues come up and when we hear what it is, we will say to look into the matter and see what can be done and other than that he has done no wrong, reiterated Saseendran.

The voice clip of the conversation between Saseendran and the victim's father is very clear that the minister knew about the incident and it was not as what he said, that he called to find out what the issue was.

He ends the conversation by saying to the victim's father to see things are amicably settled and when the lady's father asks how it can be done, the minister further states, that everything cannot be said over the phone and cuts the call.

The Congress led UDF convener M.M. Hassan said this is a clear case of trying to intervene in a harassment case and Vijayan should take the decision.

State BJP president K. Surendran said, this is a gross violation of the oath taken by Saseendran as he has intervened in a harassment case.

"Just look, the Left government always talks of women's issues and security and see what Saseendran is trying to do. Saseendran has to quit, if not, Vijayan should ask him to go," said Surendran.

With a new assembly session starting on Thursday, this issue could well put the Vijayan government in a spot and it remains to be seen, if Saseendran can wriggle out of this controversy.
Canberra, July 20 : Within days of winning the cooking reality show "MasterChef Australia" season 13, Justin Narayan married his girlfriend of two years, Esther Smoothy.

Narayan was declared winner of the show during its filming back in May and the 27-year-old youth pastor married Smoothy just days after the taping, reports dailymail.co.uk. According to the magazine Woman's Day, Narayan exchanged vows with Esther in Perth.

Narayan branded the event above his win, calling it "the best day of my entire life".

The ceremony was attended by his fellow MasterChef 2021 alums Pete Campbell, Brent Draper, Minoli De Silva and Amir Manoly.

In an interview with the magazine, Narayan shared that the couple wanted children "straight away" and that with his $250,000 prize money from the show he planned to buy property. This comes after he initially said in an interview with news.com that he was looking to invest his cash after he updated his kitchen at home.

"I need to get some more work done in the kitchen and go from there. I'll try and make some smart investments, and I'll start to create some online content. But I need experience in the kitchen to work towards opening up my own place," he said at that time.

Narayan said he wasn't in a rush to open his own restaurants, adding that the idea was "on the cards for sure".

Narayan was elated after taking the top prize, beating fellow finalists Kishwar Chowdhury and Pete Campbell.

"I feel incredibly honoured and humbled to have that title and to be able to win this competition,' the stunned cook said on the night. I'm genuinely going to take a week to process this and let it sink in, and then I'll, like, write you an email, let you know how I feel," he said, congratulating Chowdhury and Campbell. He also thanked his parents.

The winner needed to be reminded by judge Jock Zonfrillo to thank his fiancAe, who was standing right beside him during the finale.

"You are so incredibly beautiful, and I love you very much, and I'm sorry for not planning the wedding for the last six months, but I think I can pay for it now," he quipped.
Jaipur, July 20 : State health Minister Raghu Sharma on Tuesday cautioned people to maintain Covid appropriate behaviour in view of the threat of third wave of Covid-19.

"We have controlled the first and second wave of corona in the state but still the threat of corona is not over," he said.

The health minister said, "There is fear of a third wave of corona, so I call upon the people to strictly follow the corona protocol. People should wear masks while leaving the house, wash hands frequently and avoid going to crowded places." Sharma was addressing a function here in Jaipur.

He said, "Our government is working with a determination to provide medical facilities to the poor and needy. Along with strengthening the medical infrastructures in rural areas, health centres are being set up in slums to strengthen the medical infrastructure in the urban areas," he added
Chennai, July 20 : National President of Mahila Morcha (BJP Woman's wing) and Coimbatore MLA, Vanathi Srinivasan, has called upon the Tamil Nadu government to conduct a detailed investigation into the diversion of vaccines to private hospitals in her city.

Speaking to the media in Coimbatore on Tuesday, the senior leader said that the BJP cadres who are working at the grassroot level have informed her that vaccines supplied by the central government are being diverted to private hospitals in Coimbatore.

The BJP leader demanded a detailed investigation into the charges levelled.

She said that according to her information, the central government has allocated adequate vaccine to the district and called upon the state government to conduct an investigation as to where the vaccines have gone.

She was referring to the shortage of vaccines in many parts of Coimbatore district and people having to return home without inoculating after standing in overnight queues.

The BJP leader on the controversy regarding the 'Kongu Nadu' issue said that the party is not for bifurcating the state. She, however, added that the party will have a detailed look into what the state government was doing for the betterment of lives of the people of western Tamil Nadu.

Vanathi Srinivasan also said that the central government would release details regarding the alleged snooping by the Pegasus spyware.

Srinivasan had won the Coimbatore South assembly seat in the 2021 elections defeating superstar-turned-politician and president of Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM), Kamal Haasan, by a margin of 1,728 votes.
New Delhi, July 20 : Hundreds of Indian Youth Congress (IYC) activists on Tuesday again staged a protest in the national capital over the alleged phone tapping through Israeli software Pegasus. They reiterated their demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probe under the supervision of the Supreme Court.

Hundreds of IYC activists led by its National President Srinivas BV protested against spying on journalists, opposition leaders, government ministers, and Supreme Court judges by Pegasus.

However, as they moved towards Parliament House they were detained by Delhi police and taken to Mandir Marg police station in central Delhi.

Slamming the Union government, Srinivas said today both the Constitution and the law are being throttled by the Narendra Modi government.

"Democracy is being trampled under its feet. The fundamental rights of the citizens of the country are being suppressed," he added.

He accused the BJP-led Central government of committing treason and playing with national security.

He said, "The opposition leaders of the country, including Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, journalists of different media organisations and people holding constitutional posts, have been spied on." Taking a jibe at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Srinivas said the name of the ruling party should be changed to 'Bharatiya Jasoos Party'.

The NSO group is saying that Pegasus is used by governments to fight terrorism.

Srinivas while seeking an answer from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, asked what crime and terror was he fighting by spying on Rahul Gandhi's phone? "Which terrorist were you fighting by spying on journalists? Which militant were you fighting by spying on the Chief Election Commissioner?" he asked.

He pointed out that news reports are claiming that not only journalists, leaders of opposition and even their own ministers were snooped upon.

"By such an act, the cowardly Modi government has hurt the image of the country at the international level. And we demand that this spying case should be investigated at the earliest by the JPC and under the supervision of the Supreme Court," Srinivas BV said.

IYC National Media in-charge Rahul Rao said they will not stop until the people involved in the spying were punished.

The issue led to a stormy start of the Monsoon Session of Parliament after a global collaborative investigative project revealed that Israeli company NSO Group's Pegasus spyware has targeted over 300 mobile phone numbers in India, including that of two ministers in the Narendra Modi government, three Opposition leaders, constitutional authority, several journalists and businessmen.

The Congress on Monday accused the Central government of "treason" and held Union Home Minister Amit Shah responsible for the snooping and hacking of phones of journalists, judges and politicians, and demanded a probe.
New Delhi, July 20 : IFC, the private sector funding arm of World Bank, has appointed Hector Gomez Ang as Regional Director for South Asia.

Based in New Delhi, Ang will play a critical role in boosting IFC's investments in the region, as it looks to recover from the severe impact of Covid-19.

In taking on the new role, Gomez Ang said the private sector had an essential role in South Asia's recovery from Covid-19, easing the burden on constrained public finances and reducing rising levels of poverty, due to the pandemic.

"The pandemic has left a scar on countries throughout the region, exacting a huge human toll of which we must remain mindful. We must also accept that we may have to live with the lingering impacts of Covid-19 for some time to come, and so it's all the more imperative to continue to work together to support jobs and economic growth," Gomez Ang said.

"That also means we must do what's needed to ensure private sector investments can flow to where it's needed, and in industries we know can support economic activity." IFC's focus in South Asia will continue to center on providing liquidity to private sector companies in the region so they can maintain operations, preserve and create jobs. IFC will also look to further support the region's most vulnerable people by helping deliver more funding for hard hit micro, small and medium sized enterprises as well as promoting green growth through investments in sustainable infrastructure, such as renewable energy and digital connectivity, to foster a greener, more resilient, and inclusive recovery from Covid-19.

"Given the significant shortfall of finances due to Covid and increasing climate emergency, we are using Covid and climate as cross-cutting entry points to find innovative solutions to the clear development challenges in the region," said Gomez Ang.

"We stand with the people and governments of South Asia as we continue to invest in the region's private sector despite market uncertainties. We hope this will send a strong signal to other investors and give them confidence to continue to invest in the region." Gomez Ang said IFC's work to ramp up its investments in climate-related projects was in line with the World Bank Group's new Climate Change Action Plan, and IFC's aims to aim to achieve 85 per cent of its new operations to be aligned with the Paris Agreement by July 1, 2023 and 100 per cent of these by July 1, 2025.

IFC also sees a $2.8 trillion investment opportunity in countries such as India and Bangladesh in rebuilding for a green sustainable future.

"IFC will continue to prioritize climate investments in the region and help countries meet their nationally determined contributions under the Paris Accord," Gomez Ang said.

Gomez Ang previously served as Country Manager for Angola, Mozambique, Zambia, and Botswana, during which time he led the establishment of IFC's operations in Angola. Prior to that he was Country Manager for Brazil, where he led the repositioning of IFC's operations through the delivery of a strong investment program and advisory engagements with federal agencies and sub-national governments.
July 20 : Shilpa Shetty's husband Raj Kundra, who was arrested late on Monday by the Mumbai Police in a pornography case, was today presented at the Esplanade Court in Mumbai along with one Ryan Tharp, allegedly Kundras close associate, who was also arrested on Tuesday in connection with the same case.

After Raj Kundra was presented in the court, it ordered to send him to police custody till July 23. After the businessmans arrest, the Mumbai Police commissioner, Hemant Nagrale, said in a statement, "There was a case registered with Crime Branch Mumbai in February 2021 about the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some Apps. Weve arrested Mr. Raj Kundra in this case on 19/7/21 as he appears to be the key conspirator of this."

Mumbai police also reportedly said that they have enough proof in the case. Mumbai police has reportedly accessed Whatsapp chats of Raj Kundra in a group where they discussed pornographic filmmaking and money earned through it. As per reports, Kundra, a relative of UK-based Pradeep Bakshi, who is also his business partner had Whatsapp chats where they revealed how the transaction of money was made through pornographic content.

Nine arrests have been made so far in the pornography case. A police officer quoted by PTI said that a case was registered on February 4 after a woman filed a case, who was allegedly forced to do a porn film after being promised an acting job. The police also reportedly described Kundra as a "key conspirator" in the case.

Meanwhile, a March 2012 tweet by Raj Kundra has gone viral on social media after his arrest. In a tweet, Raj Kundra wrote, "Ok so here go's Porn Vs Prostitution. Why is it legal to pay someone for sex on camera? How is one different to the other??" Several Twitter users commented on the tweet and even predicted that it will go viral. Some have also asked the businessman if he has got his answer after his arrest.
Los Angeles, July 20 : New Covid-19 hospitalisations have spiked in the Los Angeles County as test positivity has increased 10-fold over the last five weeks, according to data released by local public health authorities.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health reported 1,233 new cases and two new deaths in the last 24 hours, Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

There are 528 infected people currently hospitalised in Los Angeles County.

On June 15, there were 218 people hospitalised, said the department, adding that test positivity increased 10-fold from the 0.4 per cent on June 15 to Monday's test positivity rate of 4.1 per cent.

Officials said the county is now beginning to see corresponding increases in hospitalisations after cases increased 700 per cent since June 15.

Los Angeles returned to mandatory mask-wearing indoors over the weekend.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health noted that they require all residents to wear masks in indoor public spaces, regardless of vaccination status.

"LA County continues to see alarming trends of increased community spread. The spread of the more infectious Delta variant through intermingling of unmasked individuals where vaccination status is unknown has caused a rapid spread of Covid-19 that is resulting in a significant increase in cases and hospitalisations," said Barbara Ferrer, the county's director of Public Health.

"By wearing masks indoors at public places and worksites, we can get back to slowing the spread of the virus," she added.

To date, the department has identified 1,269,090 positive cases with 24,585 deaths in the county, home to over 10 million residents and the most populous in the US.

Official data showed that among residents aged 16 and above in Los Angeles County, around 70 per cent of the population, have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, and 62 per cent have been fully vaccinated.

But officials noted there are still almost 4 million people in the county who have not been or are not eligible to be vaccinated, including 1.3 million children under 12 years of age.
Chennai, July 20 : With the appointment of 38-year-old former IPS officer, K. Annamalai as the Tamil Nadu president of the BJP, the party central leadership has given a clear signal that it meant business.

Annamalai who joined the BJP ten months prior to becoming the state president has been given an uphill task to make the party a major political force and an alternative to the Dravidian political parties of Tamil Nadu in the long run.

With the national parties BJP and the Congress piggy backing on the Dravidian majors, the DMK and the AIADMK for their political survival, the BJP central leadership wants K. Annamalai and his team to chalk out strategies to be in the hearts of the people of Tamil Nadu.

A national leader of the BJP on condition of anonymity told IANS, "BJP is a political party which has spread its wings across North, Central, Western India, and now in North East. Except for Karnataka and now in Puducherry, our presence in the South is minuscule and our strategy is to somehow become a major force in Tamil Nadu which is a big state with a rich culture and tradition." The Tamil Nadu unit of the BJP is being directed to feel the pulse of the people and to chalk out strategies affecting the grassroots and at the same time to be firm on the party's ideological moorings. Even though the BJP has not made significant inroads in Tamil Nadu, the situation of the RSS is different. It has a sizeable grassroots network but most of the time, the coordination between the two Parivar forces has not been to the liking of the central leadership of the RSS and the BJP.

Sources in the RSS told IANS that the Sangh will formulate proper plans for the new president to implement and will use its grassroots networks for the BJP. The RSS has been active in selfless service across the state and now wants the BJP leadership to conduct proper follow-up among the people on this.

The BJP leadership will also be taking up issues related to the common man and strict instructions have been given to the state BJP leadership to properly communicate to the masses on the various people-centric central government schemes successfully implemented by Prime Minister Narendra Modi ever since he came to power in 2014.

A BJP national leader said, "The Prime Minister has brought in several people friendly schemes but there was no proper awareness on the same among the local masses and this flaw has to be rectified. BJP state leadership has been instructed to conduct a proper awareness programme among the local, booth level people and to help people avail of central government schemes." The party's Tamil Nadu spokesman K.T. Raghavan told IANS, "BJP is a political party with strong ideological moorings and we will conduct door to door campaigning on Prime minister's people-friendly schemes and educate the public on these and how they benefit the people."
Guwahati, July 20 : Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has asked the Education Department to take stern action against the offenders after the Assam police arrested two people and detained seven others in Kamrup Rural district for alleged reports of awarding higher marks to the students appearing for Class 10 board exams this year in lieu of cash.

Sarma said that he has got some reports of irregularities in the evaluation process of the cancelled examinations and asked the Education Department to take strictest action against the wrongdoers.

"I have asked the Education Department officials to conduct a video conference urgently with all the district officials and school inspectors to get the exact position of the irregularities, if any, and take appropriate stern action against the offenders. None would be spared if found guilty," the chief minister told the media on Tuesday.

Police in Assam's Kamrup Rural district on Saturday and Sunday arrested two persons and detained seven others including a school principal, a school inspector, coordinator of the state board and a data entry operator for allegedly offering to change marks of students appearing for Class 10 board examination this year in lieu of money.

Kamrup superintendent of police Hitesh Chandra Roy said that a case has been registered against the accused at Changsari police station and investigation is on.

Like other state governments and the central board, the Assam government had earlier announced to cancel Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations this year due to the rising Covid-19 pandemic and instead devised an evaluation formula based on results of previous year and internal assessments.

Results of the evaluation process were to be announced by July 31.

High School Leaving Certification (HSLC or Class X) and the Higher Secondary (Class XII) are conducted by the Board of Secondary Education Assam (SEBA) and the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) respectively.

Opposition Congress in Assam has also urged the government to revise the evaluation system of Class X and XII state board exams in view of the arrest in the Kamrup Rural district.

Opposition leader Debabrata Saikia demanded that the entire matter be given due importance by the government in general and the state's education department in particular. "Keeping in mind the future of our students, the valuation system should be re-examined. Instead of valuation, we demand that a proper scientific system should be adopted to take the students to the next level. I request the chief minister to take proper corrective action and save the future of our children," Saikia told the media.
Male, July 20 : The Maldives has received more tourist arrivals between January and July 2021 than that for the whole year of 2020, according to data from the Ministry of Tourism released on Tuesday.

Tourism Ministry data showed that the Maldives received 559,000 tourists as of July 17, 2021, the same number of tourists it received for the whole of 2020, reports Xinhua news agency.

Minister of Tourism Abdulla Mausoom was quoted by state-owned PSM News as saying that the government was targeting 1.3 million tourist arrivals by the end of the year.

Mausoom said that the Maldives is currently receiving an average of 5,000 tourists per day and 23 per cent of arrivals are from neighbouring South Asian countries.

Tourist arrivals to the Maldives declined significantly in 2020 due to border closures amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
New Delhi, July 20 : NFTically, a unique global non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace from India, on Tuesday announced it has raised seed fund from Polygon Matic CEO and angel investor Jayanti Kanani and others.

NFTically enables content creators to launch their own NFT store or marketplace under their domain name, and said it is on track to onboard 1,000 multidisciplinary artists and content creators within the next three months.

"With a clear focus on NFT awareness and the platform's user experience (UX), we aim to connect people with their favourite collectibles, artists, and objects. Through NFTically, anyone can launch any number of NFT marketplaces and get the right value of their creation," said Toshendra Sharma, Founder and CEO.

With NFTically, one can create and sell NFTs in four steps: Set up your wallet, create your collection, upload and mint your NFTs and earn Ethereum for your art.

"The NFT market maturity is one of the most exciting developments that we have witnessed in the Blockchain domain in recent times. This technology shift is much to be banked upon by both investors and artists as it will remain a high growth area," said Kanani.

NFTs allow people to buy and sell ownership of unique digital items in cryptocurrencies, and keep track of who owns them using the Blockchain. NFTs can technically contain anything digital, including drawings, artworks, tweets, animated GIFs, songs or even video games.

With features like Custom UI, social tokens of influencers and KYC, NFTically said it would provide free minting of artworks on its platform, while offering an industry lowest fee of 1.5 per cent on sales occurring on the artists own store/marketplace and 2.5 per cent fee for sales on the NFTically Marketplace.

NFTically currently supports trading and minting in Ethereum, Polygon and Binance smartchain.
Bhubaneswar, July 20 : A delegation of Biju Janata Dal (BJD) MPs on Tuesday met Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Piyush Goyal in New Delhi and demanded the release of a pending subsidy of Rs 6,081.45 crore.

The MPs, including the party's Rajya Sabha leader Prasanna Acharya, submitted a memorandum to Goyal and also raised the demand for early evacuation of surplus rice from Odisha and the gunny bags shortage issue. The Union Minister assured that he will do the needful, a BJD MP said.

The MPs, through the memorandum said 'paddy/ rice procurement operations under the MSP programme is a task which is in the domain of the Centre. However, in order to extend the outreach of MSP to remote, far-flung and inaccessible areas, the Odisha government took over in 2003-04 the responsibility of procuring paddy from farmers in the state.

As per the MoU signed with the Centre, there has to be zero financial liability on the state government or state procuring agency. However, the release of advance subsidy to Odisha is irregular, they said.

"Odisha State Civil Supplies Corporation, the major procuring agency of the State Government, is to receive Rs 5,365.11 crore as provisional subsidy and advance subsidy of Rs 716.34 crore," read the memo.

Moreover, the MPs said additional interest incurred because of delay in release and non-release of subsidy comes around Rs 4,883.55 crore which remains un-recouped and should be paid by Centre.

The delegation apprised the Union Minister about no lifting of surplus rice by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) from Odisha.

The MPs further said that failure to ensure timely evacuation of surplus rice from the state by the FCI has serious implications of choking godowns, of preventing timely receipt of rice from millers and being saddled with unwanted rice for which there will be no takers.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Kolkata, July 20 : When the West Bengal BJP leadership decided to keep mum over the Pegasus spyware controversy, terming it a national issue, the political parties in the state tore apart the saffron brigade on their alleged involvement in phone-tapping of prominent personalities in the country using Israeli spyware.

TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee whose phone was allegedly tapped, on his Twitter handle attacked Union Home Minister Amit Shah asking him to come prepared with better resources. "Two Minutes of SILENCE for the SORE LOSERS! Despite ALLIES like ED, CBI, NIA, IT, ECI, @BJP4India's money + might and #PegasusSpying Mr @AmitShah couldn't save his face in #BengalElections2021. Please COME Prepared with Better RESOURCES in 2024!" Abhishek Banerjee tweeted.

Trinamool state general secretary Kunal Ghosh said the revelations reflect the "fear psychosis" of the BJP. "The BJP suffers from the fear psychosis of Abhishek Banerjee and Mamata Banerjee. During the assembly polls campaign, we had witnessed how Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and senior BJP leaders had constantly attacked Abhishek. Now this revelation about snooping proves they are afraid about the rise of our youth leader. But, such sort of low-level politics won't save the BJP from an imminent defeat in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls," Ghosh said.

"This is a black day for democracy. This is shameful that the union government is using spyware to snoop on the phones of politicians, journalists, activists. Even youth leaders like Abhishek Banerjee are not spared; our poll strategist Prashant Kishor's phone was hacked," a senior TMC politician said.

"This only reflects the authoritarian mindset of this government. The union government should come clean on it. We condemn it," senior TMC leader Sougata Roy told the media.

Meanwhile, Congress Lok Sabha member and the Leader of Opposition in the lower house of the Parliament, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said that this Pegasus spyware surveillance is a matter of national security. "The matter will be raised in both houses of the Parliament. What is the union government up to?" he questioned. He said that either Union Home Minister Amit Shah should clarify or he should resign.

"This is unacceptable levels of authoritarianism employing fascistic methods. The 'snoop, plant, arrest' formula employed by this BJP government is a violation of the fundamental rights of Indian citizens. The BJP-led central government must answer and come clean on using the Pegasus cyber software for surveillance of Indian citizens in an illegal and unauthorized manner," the CPM said in their politburo statement.

However, the BJP leaders in West Bengal preferred to keep silent. BJP's state vice president in West Bengal, Jaiprakash Majumdar said that since this is a national issue, it will not be proper on part of the state leadership to offer a comment on it. "The union government and party's central leadership will surely explain the matter. Right now, we, on behalf of the state BJP, cannot offer any comment," he said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Chennai, July 20 : Tamil Nadu government is working towards making the state as the first address for industrial investments, Chief Minister M.K.Stalin.

He also said the government is working towards the target of taking the state's gross domestic product to $1 lakh crore by 2030.

Speaking at an investment conference here on Tuesday Stalin said: "Tamil Nadu was the address for culture. We are working to make such Tamil Nadu as the first address for industrial investments." He also urged the industrialists to give out a call to invest in the state to other investors.

Stalin said in order to make investments easy the single window clearance 2.0 has been inaugurated and added that the applications will be processed online.

According to him, 10 million litre per day (MLD) Tertiary Treatment Reverse Osmosis plant (TTRO) will be set up in Krishnagiri district in a year's time and it will result in adequate supply of water for the industries.

Stalin also said orders has been passed to set up a Rs 500 crore Industrial Eco-System Fund to set up industrial infrastructure including Innovation Centres and others.

A sum of Rs.95.84 crore has been allocated for this purpose, Stalin added.

He said General Electric (GE) has signed an MoU with TIDCO to set up a Centre of Excellence which result in investments for making components for aerospace sector.

Stalin said industrial data base, export cell are being set up in the state to help the industries.

He said 35 MoUs have been signed by the state government on Tuesday involving an investment of Rs 17,141 crore with employment opportunity for 55,054 persons; foundation stone for nine projects have been laid (investment Rs 4,250 crore, employment potential 21,630 persons) and commercial production of five units were started (investment Rs 7,117 crore, employment opportunities to 6,798 persons).

According to him, the new investments are spread out across the state (Tirunelvelli, Tuticorin, Dindigul, Virudhunagar, Madurai, Pudukottai, Coimbatore, Salem, Tiruppur, Krishnagiri, Ranipet, Tiruvallur, Chengalpattu, Cuddalore, Villupuram and Tiruvannamalai) which would provide employment to the youth near their homes.
Lucknow, July 20 : Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Tuesday slammed the opposition for questioning the government on the alleged Pegasus phone hack controversy and for disrupting the Parliament.

Talking to reporters at a press conference here, Yogi Adityanath questioned the attitude of the Congress-led opposition and accused it of indulging in negative politics. He demanded that they apologise.

The chief minister said that it was because of the 'negative attitude' of the Opposition that it did not allow issues concerning the common people to be raised in Parliament.

"For the past two days, the Opposition has been trying to vitiate the atmosphere of the country over the Pegasus issue and it only proves their sick mentality. Congress governments had been doing such things during their tenures and now the party is following the same while in Opposition," he said.

The chief minister said that the opposition had indulged in negative politics even during the pandemic.

He stated that the publishing of the report about the alleged phone hacking of leaders just before the Parliament's monsoon session reeks of certain conspiracy.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Srinagar, July 20 : As part of its efforts to bring misguided youth back into the mainstream, Anantnag Police of Jammu and Kashmir conducted a counselling-cum-interaction session with delinquent youth so as to prevent them from falling prey to pro-terrorism and anti-national propaganda, officials said on Tuesday.

The youth were counselled and handed over to their parents at District Police Office Anantnag. Preliminary investigation revealed that 14 boys in the age group of 18-22 years were in constant touch with various local terrorists over social media and also being lured by terrorists based in Pakistan to get recruited in terror folds.

During the counselling session, SSP Anantnag, Imtiyaz Hussain advised the parents to take proper care of their wards and keep a watch upon their activities, actions and behaviour.

He further said that parents should come forward and report any such activity of their wards so that they are mainstreamed through counselling by experts.

"The boys were properly counselled by Anantnag Police in presence of their parents and later handed over to their parents," police said.

It's pertinent to mention here that many counselling sessions were held by police officers for past many days with these vulnerable youths belonging to various areas of Anantnag district.

Community members and their parents have expressed their gratitude to Anantnag Police for this kind gesture and thereby saving life of the youths.
New Delhi, July 20 : Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal along with other MPs of his party staged a protest against the new farm laws inside the Parliament premises and said they will boycott the all-party meet called by the Prime Minister.

As they were raising slogans, Agriculture Minister N.S. Tomar walked pas them.

SAD MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal, who was a minister in the NDA government before her party moved out, raised slogans: "Stop disrespecting farmers." Badal said that they are boycotting the meeting on Covid-19 called by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at 6 p.m.

"We won't attend the meeting until the Prime Minister calls meeting for farmers," Badal told IANS. He also said that the Prime Minister should have called a meeting on the farmers' issues also.

"Farmers are sitting outside, they are struggling ... in the rain and the government is not bothered. This is the most important issue the Prime Minister should have taken up," he said.

Modi has called an all-party meeting to discuss the Covid-19 management across the country.

On Monday, Kaur moved adjournment motion seeking discussion on the laws, which was rejected by the Lok Sabha Speaker.

On Sunday, Kaur had called for all opposition political parties to support the motion for the cause of peasantry.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Guwahati, July 20 : The Assam government on Tuesday suspended a Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIGP) for his 'numerous' foreign visits since 2011 without obtaining prior permission from the government, officials said.

A police spokesman said that senior IPS officer Rounak Ali Hazarika has been placed under suspension with immediate effect for flouting the government guidelines and gross misconduct on several occasions.

When contacted, Hazarika, currently posted as DIGP of the Border Wing of Assam police, told IANS over phone that he has nothing to say about the government decision.

A notification issued by the state Home and Political Affairs Department said that a report has been received that Hazarika, who joined the Assam Police Service (APS) cadre in 1992, had undertaken many foreign trips since 2011.

"Hazarika had never obtained prior permission from the Home Department of Assam government for his numerous visits abroad since his joining the APS cadre.

"The Governor of Assam (Jagdish Mukhi), in exercise of powers conferred by the clauses of the All India Services (Discipline and Appeal) Rules, 1969, hereby places Sri Hazarika under suspension with immediate effect," the notification read.

It said that the headquarters of Hazarika shall be the office of the Director General of Police and he shall not leave the headquarters without obtaining permission from the Secretary, Home and Political Affairs Department.
Kanpur, July 20 : As the second wave of Covid-19 wreaked havoc across the country, lack of oxygen triggered a major crisis. To solve this problem, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, has created a 'Swasa Oxyrise' bottle which increases the oxygen level in a human body. This unique device can be carried anywhere with great ease and can meet the need of oxygen in case of a medical emergency. It has been made at IIT Kanpur Incubation Centre and is a portable oxygen canister.

Sandeep Patil, an IIT Kanpur alumnus and Director of E-Spin Nanotech, told IANS, "In view of the Covid-19 crisis in the country, E-Spin Nanotech has created 'Swasa Oxyrise'. It increases the oxygen flow inside the body. To fulfil the requirement of oxygen during the second wave of Covid-19, this device has been made at IIT Kanpur Incubation Centre. It has been created during the ongoing pandemic by E-Spin Nanotech and Jasolab. It can prove to be very effective during medical emergency. But it cannot be used in case of critically ill patients." He said, "One more product can be kept with the first aid box. This bottled device can be used during the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from Covid-19, it is very effective for asthma patients and army personnel posted at high altitudes. It can be kept in the medical kit quite easily. If someone's oxygen level suddenly starts to drop, it can be very helpful on the to the hospital. One can easily intake oxygen by spraying it inside the face mask which will last for a long time. This will boost the oxygen supply in the body." The IIT Kanpur alumnus said that 10 litre of oxygen has been compressed in a 180 gram bottle. Nearly 200 shots of oxygen can be given to a person from a single bottle which is available for Rs 499.

Sandeep said nearly 500-600 such bottles are prepared per day. The demand for 'Swasa Oxyrise' bottles is rising from all over the country while its online sale has also been started on the company's website swasa.in During the 'Bhumi Pujan' of the Ram temple at Ayodhya, Prime Minister Narendra Modi wore a mask made by IIT Kanpur. This mask was made by E-Spin.

Many startup companies operate in the IIT Incubated Centre. Sandeep said Prime Minister Modi had praised the masks made by his company in the monthly radio programme 'Mann Ki Baat'.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Congress and the Akali Dal on Tuesday decided not to attend the Prime Minister's meeting on Covid, called to brief the floor leaders about the steps taken by the government for its management.

While Akali Dal boycotted the meeting on the issue of farmers protest against the three farm laws, the Congress said that all the MPs should have been briefed and not only the floor leaders.

Opposition leader in Rajya Sabha, Mallikarjun Kharge said, "We have said that all the MPs should have been briefed." Earlier, the Rajya Sabha discussed the issue of Covid where the opposition members mounted attack on the government for its 'mismanagement' while praising the work done by corona warriors. Kharge even disputed the number of deaths due to Covid.

Kharge said, "the government's number on deaths is not correct as India has more than six lakh villages and if five persons died in one village, its more than 31 lakh people have died but if you add urban centres then the data could be more than 52 lakh people who succumbed to Covid-19. The government is releasing incorrect data, so its necessary to expose them."

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Chandigarh, July 20 : Punjab will, this month, initiate the third sentinel sero-surveillance survey, especially focused on children in the age group of 6-17 years, ahead of the imminent third wave, for which Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday announced Rs 331 crore in addition to the money already allotted for the Emergency Covid Response.

With this, Punjab will become the only state in the country to get a children-dominated sero survey conducted to assess the prevalence of the infection among under-18.

The Chief Minister also ordered establishment of a paediatric unit in each district and one centre of excellence in paediatrics for the state.

The government will also establish LMO storage tanks in every district to ensure 24X7 availability of medical grade oxygen, he said.

Medical gas pipeline systems will also be set up at each district, sub-division and community health centre, he said, also announcing the establishment of 17 additional RT-PCR labs.

The ICU beds in government hospitals will also be increased to 142, and a hub and scope model for telemedicine and teleconsultation will also be established, said Amarinder Singh.

The Chief Minister said the outcomes of the third sentinel sero-surveillance survey will be utilised to determine further localised restrictions as the state prepares for the third wave. GIS-based surveillance and prevention tools will be used with an auto trigger mechanism for localised restrictions, he disclosed.

Health Adviser, Dr K.K. Talwar disclosed, in response to a query from the Chief Minister, that in the first and second wave, 10 per cent of those infected were under 18, and while there was no concrete data to support such a projection, the state was preparing to handle more cases of children in the third wave.

Health Secretary Hussan Lal apprised the Chief Minister that the process of modifications in COVA had started for capturing of required parameters, linked to sample collection and reporting system outside ICMR system. The same was likely to be functional in a week.

The Chief Minister asked the Health Department to expedite recruitments for all posts for which Cabinet approval has already been taken. He noted that advertisement for 481 Specialists had already been issued by the Health Department for walk-in interviews on July 31.

The Medical Education and Research Department has also begun the process of filling its vacancies in the coming month, he added.

Amarinder Singh expressed satisfaction over the strategy for preparation of the third wave, pointing out that testing has been maintained at around 40,000- 45,000 a day, with special focus on high density areas and vulnerable population. Contact tracing has also been maintained at 18 per positive patient.

He said he was happy to note that data cells have been activated in each district. The newly-recruited Community Medicine Specialists posted in each district must be immediately given charge of these data cells, he ordered.

The Chief Minister directed that the Whole Genome Sequencing Lab at Government Medical College in Patiala should become functional this month.
Panaji, July 20 : Goa Congress president Girish Chodankar on Tuesday accused the Modi government of facilitating an "inexcusable breach of national security" through the alleged use of spying software 'Pegasus' to keep tabs on journalists, ruling and opposition politicians, lawyers and activists.

"The Modi government is the deployer and executor of this illegal and unconstitutional snooping and spying racket through Israeli surveillance software 'Pegasus'. We demand that the Prime Minister must answer to the nation, as to whether spying on Indian security forces, judiciary, cabinet ministers, opposition leaders, journalists and other activists through a foreign spyware does not amount to 'treason' and inexcusable breach of national security?" Chodankar told a press conference in Panaji.

He also said that by using a foreign spy software, the 'rule of law', 'fundamental right to privacy' and 'constitutional duties' had been thrown to the wind by the BJP-led NDA government.

Leader of Opposition Digambar Kamat, who was also addressing the press conference, also said that the central government had committed "treason" and had completely "abdicated national security" by allowing foreign companies access to critical data obtained from illegal surveillance.

"We demand a full investigation through an independent judicial probe into the matter with inquiry into the role of the Prime Minister, Home Minister and others involved in the matter. The Supreme Court must take suo-moto cognisance of this matter causing serious threat to the nation's security and privacy of citizens," Kamat said.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Udupi, : July 20 (IANS) Police in Udupi have arrested the husband of the Dubai woman, who was murdered on July 12 here in her flat.

The strangling of Vishala Ganiga using cable wire and pillow inside her apartment near Brahmavar, had shocked the coastal town.

Ramakrishna, the husband had arrived from Dubai to take part in the final rites of Vishala.

The police took Ramakrishna into custody for allegedly conspiring and planning the murder of his wife.

Police sources said Ramakrishna had allegedly hired supari killers from north India to carry out the murder.

He was taken into custody on Monday, according to official sources, following his interrogation.

The police suspect illicit affair of the accused and property matters to be the reason behind the murder.

Vishala Ganiga had come to Udupi with her daughter from Dubai to her parent's home.

She had gone to the bank and her apartment for some chores. When she did not return after several hours her father went to search for her, and discovered the crime.

She was strangled with a cable wire and pillow. The special team probing the case has contacted their Uttar Pradesh counterparts to help in the arrest of the contract killers.
New Delhi, July 20 : Smartphone brand Vivo on Tuesday announced that the company has been ranked fifth in the global smartphone shipments in the second quarter.

According to market research firm Canalys, Vivo has been ranked fifth in global smartphone shipments with a market share of 10 per cent in the second quarter of 2021, up 27 per cent year on year.

"Quarterly numbers from Canalys indicated that Vivo maintained strong growth momentum to remain among the top five in global smartphone shipments in the past year," the company said in a statement.

"Leveraging a local mindset, understanding of local culture and management, Vivo strives for impressive performance as the company continues to expand across the globe," it added.

As of now, Vivo has branched out its sales network across more than 50 countries and regions and has more than 400 million users worldwide.

According to the market research firm, Samsung was still the leading vendor with a 19 per cent share of smartphones shipped and Xiaomi took second place for the first time ever, with a 17 per cent share. Apple was third with 14 per cent market share.

In the second quarter of 2021, global smartphone shipments increased 12 per cent, as vaccines rolled out around the world and the new normal for economies and citizens started to take shape.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New York, July 20 : While in early 2020 people incessantly washed their hands and wouldn't leave home for fear of the novel coronavirus disease, 11 months later the public has pushed the envelope on Covid-19 safety precautions and ignored warnings, suggested a new study based on news articles on Twitter.

Researchers at University of California-Davis examined how Covid-19 news articles shared to Twitter were first met with anxiety-ridden tweets early in the pandemic, during a coinciding spike in instances of panic-buying, extreme social distancing and quarantine measures.

Despite the increased death toll, those behaviours then gave way over time to less concerned responses to Covid-19 news, along with increases in societal risk-taking during that time period. The study was published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research Infodemiology.

During a period of 11 months, the team used a computerised methodology to analyse linguistic anxiety levels in hundreds of Covid-19 news articles on Twitter, along with the anxiety levels in corresponding user tweets. They then correlated the findings with the Covid-19 death toll in the United States.

"Our study shows a need to delve deeper into how to re-sensitise the public and motivate them to take action in the face of an ongoing emergency. Testing the effectiveness of various health-risk communication strategies could quite possibly mean the difference between life and death in the future," said said lead author Hannah Stevens, a doctoral student from the varsity's Department of Communication.

"If another health crisis occurred today, or Covid-19 takes another turn for the worse, it is essential for public health officials to consider that they are communicating to a desensitised public. I hope that this paper can be an impetus to get that discussion started," she added.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Supreme Court on Tuesday said its order should have been followed as it heard contempt petitions over non-compliance of its February 2020 directions for electoral candidates to disclose criminal antecedents through wide publication.

The plea claimed these directions were not adhered during the Bihar Assembly election last year.

As counsel appearing for a political party tendered an unconditional apology, stating that this should not have happened and that there shouldn't be criminalisation of politics, a bench of Justices R.F. Nariman and B.R. Gavai said: "We don't buy this sorry; our orders have to be followed." Senior advocate Vikas Singh, representing the Election Commission, submitted that the Nationalist Congress Party fielded 26 candidates with criminal antecedents and the CPI-M had fielded four candidates with criminal antecedents.

However, the Rashtriya Janata Dal is the biggest defaulter with 103 candidates having criminal antecedents, while the Janata Dal-United had fielded 56 such candidates and the BJP 77 candidates, he said.

"All (parties) have similar answers --he is a social worker etc. When a charge sheet for rape is filed, can a political party take a stand that it is justified, or that it is a false case?" Singh proposed freezing and suspending the election symbol in case of violation by a national party. "In spite of bringing out criminal antecedents in the public domain, criminalisation of politics has gone up," he submitted.

Senior advocate Dinesh Dwivedi, appearing for the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), submitted that the party had expelled a candidate after it learnt the candidate had failed to disclose criminal antecedents and also filed a false affidavit.

Senior advocate K.V. Viswanathan, the amicus curiae in the matter, submitted suspension (of election symbol in case of violations) can be time-bound and the idea is to evolve a deterrent.

At this, the bench asked: "Is it possible to say in case of a non-egregious violation, you suspend time-wise. In egregious violations, like with these two parties, you can say suspend till next election?" It also asked how this will work it out for national level parties, as if "a small chap in some panchayat does something, you can't throw the entire party out?"

As Viswanathan added that the court can lay down appropriate guidelines, and judicial review is available, the bench said: "How do you find if it has been done by the party or only the candidate?"

Senior advocate Harish Salve, also appearing for the EC, agreed with Viswanathan's suggestion that appropriate sanctions may be imposed on the errant political parties.

"If sanction is made, let it not be Re 1, so people don't have photos taken with Re 1 handed over and a smile on their face," he stressed.

After detailed arguments, the top court reserved the judgment in the matter.

In the February 2020 order, the top court had noted the political parties offer no explanation as to why candidates with pending criminal cases are selected as candidates in the first place, as it passed a slew of directions for political parties to publish details and justification for choosing candidates having criminal antecedents.
Mumbai, July 20 : Actress Kangana Ranaut took to social media on Tuesday to react to the news of businessman Raj Kundra's arrest on charges of making pornographic content and publishing them through mobile applications.

Actress-producer Kangana also warned saying she would expose the underbelly of "Bullywood" in her upcoming production "Tiku weds Sheru".

"This is why I call movie industry a gutter... all that glitter is not gold, I am going to expose underbelly of Bullywood in my upcoming production called Tiku weds Sheru..." the actress wrote on Instagram story.

"We need strong value system and conscience in the creative industry and of course a whip," she added.

The Mumbai Police late on Monday arrested actress Shilpa Shetty's husband and businessman Raj Kundra, on charges of making pornographic content.

Kundra, who was produced before a Mumbai magistrate on Tuesday, has been remanded to police custody till July 23.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Bengaluru, July 20 : Amid talk of a leadership change in Karnataka, Balehosur Mutt seer Dingaleshwara Swamiji led a delegation of Veerashaiva-Lingayat saints to the official residence of Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Tuesday.

He said Yediyurappa had told them that he will abide by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) high command's decision.

Asked about a change of Karnataka CM, Yediyurappa said he did not wish to speak on the issue, adding that the decision by the party high command would be final, Swamiji added.

"Yediyurappa told us to let the high command take their call. He seemed to be happy," Dingaleshwara Swamiji said.

The seer's statement has led to speculation that Yediyurappa had already been told to quit his post and had prepared himself for the situation.

However, the Mutt seer warned the central BJP leaders that if they were unhappy with Yediyurappa's leadership, it showed that the party did not think about the future of the state. As many as 500 religious seers from across the state will hold meetings to chalk out future plans supporting Yediyurappa, he said.

Political observers say that Yediyurappa's body language seemed to be not so confident after returning from New Delhi. It seems that he has been told to announce his retirement on July 25 during the party legislators' meeting.

Meanwhile, party sources said the central BJP leadership has taken a decision to appoint a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) face in the state who would aggressively pursue Hindutva agenda.

Union Minister Prahlad Joshi, former minister and Karnataka Assembly Speaker Vishveshara Hegde Kageri, BJP MLAs Basavana Gouda Patil Yatnal and Aravind Bellad and Minister Murugesh Nirani's names are doing the rounds for the CM's post.

The party high command had also taken care that CM Yediyurappa does not take any major decisions until he resigns from the post.

Yediyurappa, known to take impulsive and bold decisions, is well prepared to face the present situation according to sources.

Maintaining that he will abide by the BJP top brass decision, he is trying to send a message that Veerashaiva-Lingayat seers will revolt against the party if he is sidelined. This decision gives enough hint to carry the momentum to Veerashaiva-Lingayat masses, who form the BJP's core support base in the state.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Jaipur, July 20 : Rajasthan Congress in-charge Ajay Maken's retweet supporting the elevation of Navjot Singh Sidhu as party's Punjab chief has become a hot topic of discussion in the desert state with Congress workers openly saying that the senior leader was left red-faced many times, due to the "high-handed" attitude of Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot.

Every time Maken gave deadline for political appointments and cabinet expansion, the Gehlot government made sure that the deadline was not met, either in the name of the Budget session of the Assembly or Covid-19 protocol. He had to face a flurry of questions from his own partymen and the media on these two issues, but he had no answers.

Also his formula given to Gehlot to break the ice between the two camps -- Gehlot and Sachin Pilot, was rejected by the former, and hence, Maken left Jaipur recently without meeting Pilot during his two-day trip.

Maken had retweeted journalist Shakeel Akhtar's July 18 Hindi tweet reading: "No 'satrap' wins any kingdom on his own. The poor, weaker sections and the common man vote for the Gandhi-Nehru family. But whether it is Amarinder Singh or Gehlot or Sheila Dikshit or anyone else, as soon as they become the Chief Minister, they think the party won because of them." Akhtar also said that the party leadership took the right decision to name Sidhu as Punjab unit chief and that such a show of strength was necessary.

Speaking to IANS, a senior Congress leader in Rajasthan noted: "Gehlot seems to have become the strongest among 4G, that is Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Gehlot himself. He has not been questioned by the high command for why he has been into quarantine for over a year." "Also his quarantine for months as post-Covid precaution is being looked at by raised eyebrows by many party workers." Another party worker said: "We need to know if any doctor in the world has advised anyone to quarantine for two months as post Covid precaution." "Maken has not been oblivious to all this gossip and comments in the state and had left Jaipur red-faced everytime he was unable to meet his promises he made to the party workers. So this retweet basically reveals his pain and humiliation he suffered in the desert state," said another worker.

Gehlot was also absent from former Finance Minister P. Chidambaram's seminar which was held recently in the Rajasthan Assembly.

All these chain of events seem to have prompted Maken's retweet.

Earlier, Avinash Pandey was also removed from the Congress state in charge after Priyanka Gandhi Vadra formed a three-member committee, comprising K.C. Venugopal, Ahmed Patel (now deceased) and Maken, to look into Pilot's grievances after he was brought back into the party's fold post his rebellion.

Pandey was allegedly ignoring suggestions given by Pilot.
New Delhi, July 20 : Newly-appointed Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, while replying to the discussion on Covid-19 in the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, said that he was a concerned father of an intern daughter who was on duty in a Covid ward during the pandemic.

Mentioning his concern in the house he said, "My daughter said that I will work in the Covid ward as she was an intern and at that time I realised the importance of 'thaali-taali', it gave us courage and strength." The minister in his reply said that the government is ramping up the vaccine production and is prepared for the third wave however he dismissed the apprehension that the government is hiding data as he said that the government only compiles and publishes the data sent by state governments.
Mumbai, July 20 : Noting that India's ratio of mutual fund asset under management (AUM) to GDP is just 15 per cent against the global average of 75 per cent, HDFC Asset Management Company Chairman Deepak S. Parekh on Tuesday said that the country's MF industry has the potential for exponential growth.

Addressing the shareholders of the company, Parekh said that the mutual fund industry overall assets under management rose by 41 per cent year on year to close at Rs 31.4 lakh crore.

Over the last five years, mutual fund industry AUM has seen a CAGR of 20.6 per cent and equity-oriented AUM has grown at a CAGR of 25 per cent.

"Despite the high growth, India's mutual fund AUM to GDP ratio remains significantly low at 15 per cent, as compared to a global average of 75 per cent. Similarly, equity AUM to market cap stood at 5 per cent as against a global average of 30 per cent," he said.

Parekh was of the view that India's penetration levels by any measure remain considerably lower compared to other large economies.

India has more than 50 crore income tax permanent account numbers, but only 2.2 crore mutual fund investors, he said.

The Indian mutual fund industry has the potential to grow exponentially, he said.

"SEBI has done a commendable job not only in terms of regulating the industry but also aiding growth. Global agencies admire India's mutual fund regulatory framework and consider the mutual fund industry among the top in terms of global best practices." "I hope we can capitalise on this and make our domestic mutual funds accessible to international investors," Parekh added.
Chennai, July 20 : With fuel prices touching an all-time high and Covid-19 leading to shutdown of businesses, auto drivers in Tamil Nadu are calling it a day.

Trade Union leaders and activists are of the opinion that a large number of auto-rickshaw drivers in the southern state have quit and are selling their autos at low prices.

Mohammed Shabeer, an auto-rickshaw driver from T. Nagar in Chennai, told IANS, "Yes I have already sold my auto and am planning to work in some shop to support my family. Fuel prices are touching an all-time high and are increasing daily so we don't have any other option other than quitting. I have not paid my EMI for the past four months and have sold all the gold available at home. Hence, I thought that it is better to quit rather than move on with huge losses." "Banks never showed any leniency even after the markets were shut for more than two months due to Covid-19 coupled with hiked fuel prices. I have decided after long thought to call it a day. I can't carry on with these liabilities," Shabeer added.

The trade unions are of the opinion that the auto-rickshaw drivers are not in a position to carry on their day-to-day activities after the daily fuel price hike.

K.K. Kathiravan, a trade union leader associated with the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), who lives in Kanyakumari told IANS, "The union has strongly recommended to the state government to somehow settle this issue. The Union government is creating problems by unnecessarily hiking fuel prices and there is no hope for the auto-rickshaw drivers." The auto drivers complain that while they fill their fuel tanks with petrol worth Rs 400, they did a business of Rs 200 to Rs 300 only. This has led to many auto drivers looking for other work.

Selvaraj Manicakam, Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) leader and auto-rickshaw union General Secretary at Madurai, speaking to IANS said, "A rough estimate finds that nearly 15 to 20 per cent of the auto-rickshaw drivers have quit the profession and have sold their autos to settle the liabilities and are scouting for other jobs. The decade-old unrevised fares are the main reason for this and with a heavy hike in fuel prices and post-Covid shutdown, the auto drivers are a harried lot. We are submitting a detailed memorandum to the government to revise the fares." After Tamil Nadu announced free travel for women in state-run buses, they are not using auto-rickshaws. Most of the women are now travelling in buses.

Kumar Ganeshan, an auto-rickshaw driver at Pammal in Chennai, told IANS, "I am selling my auto and even at a reduced price, takers are less. Prices of fuel are at an all-time high. Shops and establishments were closed for the past two months due to Covid-19 and we didn't have any work. Now after the DMK government announced free travel for women in buses, most of them are travelling in state-run buses and we don't have any work. I have to find a job at a shop or somewhere to support my family." Senior DMK leader K. Ponmudi speaking to IANS said, "The government is aware and Chief Minister M.K. Stalin will be calling a meeting of the union leaders and the minister concerned and let us see what best we can do." The situation is worse in Trichy and more than 40 per cent of the auto drivers have quit the profession and have sold their autos.

K. Manikandan, CITU Trichy District Secretary, told IANS, "The auto drivers are quitting job in large numbers and are selling their autos to settle the liabilities. There has to be a revision in the fare which is decade old and this is the only solace for these drivers who find it very difficult to pull on. The Union is giving a memorandum to the government to hike the fares."
Vazhakkad, July 20 : A government Primary Health Centre in Kerala, destroyed in the 2018 floods, has been rebuilt as India's largest family health centre with support from a leading international healthcare service provider.

Fully funded by Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, an NRI entrepreneur from Kerala, and Chairman and Managing Director of VPS Healthcare, a leading healthcare service provider in GCC nations and India, the reconstructed family health centre at Vazhakkad is equipped with the most advanced technology to serve the poor and marginalised people.

The 15,000 sq. ft. family health centre, reconstructed at a cost of Rs 10 crore, is the first of its kind in the country to promote the concept of total health and wellness. It has an open gym and a play area for children, and is disabled-friendly.

The eco-friendly, energy-efficient building was designed and developed by the students and faculty of IIT-Madras and the Government Engineering College, Thrissur.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will inaugurate the Vazhakkad family health centre on Saturday, July 24.

Destroyed in the devastating 2018 floods, a government-run primary health centre at Vazhakkad in Kerala's Malappuram district has got a new lease of life. The ruined health centre has now acquired a modern face and possesses infrastructure matching a contemporary hospital.

Reconstructed under the VPS-Rebuild Kerala initiative for Rs 10 crore, the state-of-the-art facility is the first of its kind in the country and touted as the largest among government-run primary health centres (PHCs) in the country.

Breaking with tradition, the rebuilt centre aims to serve a larger purpose of enhancing the health and wellness of the community. Distinctly different from a regular PHC, it has an open gym, a play area for children, and other amenities to promote a healthy lifestyle.

Nestled in rural Malappuram, the PHC has an advanced laboratory and modern imaging department. It has 10 observation beds with oxygen concentrators and a stabilisation unit to attend to patients suffering from low oxygen saturation.

"Vazhakkad is home to ordinary people who had relied on the primary health centre for most of their routine medical check-ups and needs," said Dr K. Sakeena, District Medical Officer. "The facility used to attend to around 75,000 people annually. Now renamed Family Health Centre, it is expected to see around 200,000 patients a year. This figure underscores the significance of the centre in the lives of the people here. It is also a testament to the quality of the services provided at the facility." Dr Sakeena thanked Dr Shamsheer Vayalil, Chairman and Managing Director of VPS Healthcare, a leading integrated healthcare service provider in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries and India, for his generosity in funding the project. "The district health department and the people of Vazhakkad are profoundly happy," Dr Sakeena said.

"The reconstruction of the ruined health centre was our dream. The people here have been longing for the accomplishment of the project. The health centre will also strengthen our relentless efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. We will always be grateful to Dr Shamsheer Vayalil for his support," Dr Sakeena added.

The government of Kerala has made enormous advances in healthcare in recent years. The impetus came through the Aardram Mission, an ambitious project adopted by the Pinarayi Vijayan-led LDF government to upgrade and re-engineer primary health centres as family health centres. The mission has helped the state to make significant progress towards making quality healthcare accessible to the poor and marginalised.

VPS Healthcare's Vazhakkad project has been in line with the state government's vision. The healthcare group, with its vast international experience, has ensured the family health centre measures up to the highest global standards. Putting the Vazhakkad project in perspective, healthcare expert and the state's former additional chief secretary (health and family welfare), Rajeev Sadanandan, said it highlights the extensive scope of the Aardram Mission.

"When the Kerala government decided to transform the Primary Health Centres into Family Health Centres as part of the Aardram Mission, it was planned to be financed with state and local government funds, and supported by civil society," Sadanandan said.

"In some panchayats, however, this plan was disrupted by the disastrous floods in 2018. That is when, based on his considerable expertise in the health sector, Dr Shamsheer decided to build an institution in Vazhakkad that matches international specifications as part of his CSR initiative," Sadanandan added.

The reconstructed family health centre is a modern structure developed by the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and designed by a group of students from the School of Architecture and Planning at Government Engineering College (GEC), Thrissur.

The eco-friendly Glass Fibre Reinforced Gypsum (GFRG) panel technology known as Rapidwall has been used to build the centre. The technology eliminates bricks, blocks, timber and plasterboard linings, making the building environment-friendly, non-polluting, energy-efficient, and aesthetically pleasing.

"In the last two floods that occurred in Kerala, a number of buildings collapsed and several people lost their homes. It is in this context that eco-friendly and sustainable construction becomes important. When VPS Healthcare approached us for the Vazhakkad family health centre reconstruction project, our team at IIT-Madras recommended the GFRG technology," Dr Cherian said.

GFRG is a building panel product made out of waste gypsum. It offers the advantages of rapidity, sustainability and affordability in construction. Research carried out at IIT-Madras established the use of panels as walls and slabs. The technology enables buildings up to ten-storey-high to avoid beams and columns.

The recommendation of the experts at IIT-Madras was based on the performance of GFRG buildings in Kerala during the 2018 floods.

Spread over 15,000 square feet, the three-storey family health centre has an emergency room, a mini-operating theatre, consultation rooms for doctors, a nurses' station, medical store, vaccine store, sample collection centre, vision and dental care clinic, a designated zone for mother and child, pregnant women and the elderly. The second floor has a modern conference hall and houses the administrative offices.

From the beginning, members of the community were actively involved in the reconstruction project. The idea was to spread the message of inclusiveness. Some 40 students from the School of Architecture and Planning at GEC Thrissur pitched in to provide design support.

The Head of the School, Prof. C.A. Biju, said the students had a great learning experience by engaging themselves in the project. "The college has a well-designed outreach programme set up with the vision to offer first-hand experience to our students," Biju said.
New Delhi, July 20 : The telephone numbers of several prominent activists are part of a leaked database accessed by the Pegasus Project, which include individuals confirmed to have been targeted with the Israel based NSO Group's spyware, The Wire reported.

The activists whose phone numbers appear in the leaked records include Ambedkarite activist Ashok Bharti; former Jawahar Lal Nehru University students Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya and Banjyotsna Lahiri; academic and chronicler of life in Naxal-dominated regions, Bela Bhatia; railway union leader Shiv Gopal Mishra; anti-coal mining activist Alok Shukla; Delhi University professor Saroj Giri; Bastar-based peace activist Shubhranshu Choudhary and Bihar-based activist Ipsa Shatakshi.

Without digital forensics, it is not possible to conclusively establish whether their phones were hacked or infected. But their appearance on the list suggests that they were persons of interest to an unidentified client of the NSO Group that was focused on India.

The NSO says it only sells its Pegasus spyware -- classified as military-grade surveillance technology by the Israeli ministry of defence -- to "vetted governments". The Narendra Modi government has consistently refused to declare whether it is a client of NSO.

Ashok Bharti, who is the chairman of the All India Ambedkar Mahasabha, an umbrella association of Dalit rights' groups, had led the nation-wide Bharat Bandh on April 2, 2018 against a Supreme Court ruling, which he claimed took away the teeth of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.

The ruling sparked massive demonstrations across the country, and the Bharat Bandh claimed 11 lives and left hundreds injured as the police took on the Dalit protesters.

A few months later, Bharti gave another call for a nation-wide strike on August 9. It was in the months leading up to this strike that his phone number was selected as a possible candidate for surveillance, the report said.

In 2019, WhatsApp had stated that four of the activists mentioned above -- Saroj Giri, Bela Bhatia, Alok Shukla and Shubranshu Choudhary -- were affected by a Pegasus attack that took place through a specific vulnerability in the company's security. Digital forensics conducted as part of the Pegasus Project have shed light on a wider range of attack vectors, including zero-click iMessage exploits.

Shiv Gopal Mishra, who is a secretary of the joint consultative machinery for the Central government employees' union and general secretary of the All India Railwaymen's Federation, was also of interest to the India client of NSO Group in 2018 and 2019. He said he was not surprised that he may have been under surveillance, the report said.

Alok Shukla, convenor of the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan (CBA), is also on the list of potential spyware targets. A vocal rights activist in Central India, he has participated in several anti-mining protests in the state.

"In the past few years, I have organised and led several protests against the Adani Group for its mindless mining project," Shukla told The Wire. This, he said, must have made him a target of surveillance under the past Raman Singh-led BJP government in the state, as per the report.

Anirban Bhattacharya and Umar Khalid were two of the three students who were charged with sedition while they were doing their PhD in JNU. Since then, Anirban told The Wire, both of them, along with Banojyotsna Lahiri, have been involved in various organisational activities against escalating hate crimes in the country.
Mumbai, July 20 : Actress Anupria Goenka has opened up on starting the shoot for the second season of the web series "Asur".

"It is lovely to be finally shooting 'Asur 2', which has been waiting in the pipeline for a long time. Fans have been messaging everyone in the cast about when it is finally going to come, and we are now at least able to begin the shoot," Anupria tells IANS.

Elaborating on the shooting experience, the actress says that to be able to finally talk to people in person is a great feeling.

"The shooting experience is fantastic. To be able to talk to people face to face and not via a zoom call is obviously a great feeling. I am getting to work with some of the stalwarts of our film industry, and that gives me immense pleasure. I hope it turns out to be even better than what we all have envisioned for it," she says.

Since the pandemic is not over yet, Anupria is cautious about the required health and hygiene.

"It feels good to be able to go out to work, now that lockdown rules have been relaxed a bit. I am trying and taking all precautions while going to set, in between takes, and even during the shoot," she says.
Panaji, July 20 : The Goa government will pass a legislation to float a state mining corporation during the upcoming session of the state legislative Assembly, and auction mining leases at the earliest, Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said on Tuesday.

Sawant said that his government had already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Mineral Exploration Corporation of India -- a Central government agency -- on Monday, which would help explore ore deposits and mining leases in the state, after which auctioning of leases would be held on an expedited basis.

"The Mining Corporation Bill will be passed in the state Assembly in the upcoming session. Once the mining corporation is formed, its rules will be formed on a fast-track basis. Some of the leases in the state will be auctioned through the corporation," Sawant told reporters.

The Monsoon Session of the state Assembly is scheduled to get underway from July 28.

The Chief Minister's announcement came on a day when the Supreme Court dismissed petitions filed by the state government and a private mining company seeking the review of a February 2018 order of the apex court, which had scrapped nearly 90 mining leases in the state, citing irregularities in their renewal process.

All mining exploration activity in Goa has stopped following the 2018 top court order.

Sawant also said that the process of auctioning the leases would be carried out after an exploration of the mining tracts is conducted by the Mineral Exploration Corporation of India, which would help identify the deposits in each of the leases.

"The Mining Exploration Corporation will help us examine the deposits in every mining (lease). As we get the study of every lease from the Corporation, we will explore what needs to be done. Not a single penny from the state will be spent on MECL's exploration study," Sawant said.
Mumbai, July 20 : The ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) allies have reacted sharply to the decision of the Adani Group to relocate the headquarters of its recently acquired crown jewel -- the high-profile Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) -- from Mumbai to Ahmedabad.

In a major organizational restructuring two days ago (July 18), the Adani Group decided to shift the headquarters of Adani Airport Holdings Ltd., which runs CSMIA, from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, stunning corporate and aviation circles.

The three allies, the Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress, have castigated the move as part of "a larger design" to downgrade the importance of Mumbai, the country's commercial capital.

"This is a message from (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi to the people of Maharashtra. The recent 'dandiya dance' at the CSMIA conveyed a lot. This whole exercise started 7 years ago when the International Finance Services Centre was also taken away from Mumbai and shifted to Gujarat," said State Congress Spokesperson Sachin Sawant.

NCP Spokesperson Mahesh Tapase said that instead of being concerned about the development of Mumbai, the Modi government is concentrating on the progress of Gujarat at the expense of Maharashtra.

"A few years ago, they decided to link Mumbai-Ahmedabad with a grandiose Bullet Train project. Thankfully, the people of this state have rejected it," said Tapase.

The Shiv Sena's Kishore Tiwari - accorded MoS status - said since the day it took over, the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre has resorted to targeting Maharashtra with the state BJP nodding its head to the machinations of the Modi government.

"This cannot be tolerated. If the Adani Group goes ahead with the move to relocate the Mumbai Airport headquarters to Ahmedabad, we shall be forced to launch an agitation," warned Tiwari.

Sawant pointed out that Maharashtra never discriminates against any entrepreneur or industry and welcomes all who participate in the state's development with open arms and dignity.

"Earlier, Mumbai Airport was owned by GVK of Andhra Pradesh. They did not relocate the headquarters to their state or organize Kuchipudi dance at this airport. Why should the Modi government encourage such things," Sawant asked.

Seeing the move as "a conspiracy" to run down Mumbai, Tapase said this would be an inadvisable step and urged the Adani Group to respect the sentiments, culture and traditions of Maharashtra.

Tiwari added that on every occasion, the BJP at the Centre and state have resorted to undermining the MVA government and also dilute the pre-eminent status of Maharashtra and Mumbai by shifting major government institutions from here.

"But everything is falling in the lap of only Gujarat and not any other state. Why is this favourable treatment always given to Modi's home state when he is the PM of the entire country," Tiwari asked.

The Sena leader cautioned that it reeks of political malafide action and must be opposed by all parties in the state, including the Maharashtra BJP failing which misguided leaders will harm Mumbai in the long run.

The Adani Group announcement came barely five days after it said it had acquired control of CSMIA and the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport on July 13.

This makes AAHL the largest private operator of airports with eight under its belt now including Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Centre does not plan to borrow by issuing Covid bonds, the Parliament was told on Tuesday.

In a written reply in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said that there are no such plans of the government.

The statement comes at a time when the economy is struggling to recover and government has also taken fiscal measures to support businesses and the economy.

Speculations have been made time and again over the government issuing Covid bonds to garner more fiscal resources.

"The government does not plan to raise fiscal resources through borrowings by issuing Covid bonds," the minister said.

Describing the external debt management policy as deft and prudent, he said that the policy has helped in containing rise in external debt.

Last year, the government had announced a stimulus package with a total amount of over Rs 29.87 lakh crore.

Further, another package of Rs 6.28 lakh crore was also announced last month.
New Delhi, July 20 : A NIA court in Kerala sentenced a person to six years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1.6 lakh in connection with the hijacking and setting ablaze of a Tamil Nadu government bus.

An NIA spokesperson here said that on Monday a NIA Special Court in Ernakulam sentenced accused K.A. Anoop aka Anu to 6 years rigorous imprisonment and a fine of Rs 1.6 lakh.

Anoop is allegedly a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) terrorist.

There are 14 accused in the case, including Sufia Madani, wife of PDP leader Abdul Nazar Madani. Thadiyantavida Nazeer, who claims to be the commander of the Lashkar-e-Taiba in South India, is the first accused.

The incident took place on September 9, 2005, when a Tamil Nadu Transport Corporation bus was burnt in retaliation for the long detention of Madani in connection with the Coimbatore blast case.

The bus from Ernakulam to Salem with 31 passengers was diverted from its route and set ablaze at Popemala near HMT colony, Kalamassery, after forcing all the passengers to alight from the bus. As per the plan, six persons, including Nazeer, Ummar Haji, Abdul Haleem, Ismail, Shafeeq, Sabir Buhari and Mohammad Navaz boarded the bus from the Ernakulam bus station. Thajuddin, Nazar and K A Anoop waited with three motorcycles at Kalamassery. The bus started from Ernakulam bus station at 8.30 p.m.

When the bus reached near the Kalamassery Municipal Office, one of the group members threatened the bus driver at gunpoint and asked him to drive the vehicle towards Popemala neat HMT Colony, an isolated area.

As the bus reached Popemala, the accused persons asked the passengers to get down from the bus. Using cotton waste soaked in petrol, the accused burnt the bus and escaped on their motorbikes.

The NIA had registered the case on January 22, 2010.

After completion of investigation, the NIA had filed a charge-sheet against 13 accused persons including Anoop under several sections of the Indian Penal Code, Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and UA (P) Act on December 7, 2010.

Anoop, who was absconding abroad was arrested on April 7, 2016.

The official said that on July 15 this year, the NIA Special court convicted Anoop for his offences.

On Monday, the court sentenced Anoop to five years of RI with a fine of Rs 25,000 for commission of offences under section 120B of the IPC, five years of RI with a fine of Rs 25,000 for commission of offences under section 121A of IPC, six months of RI for commission of offences under section 323 of IPC, four months of RI with a fine of Rs 25,000 under section 364 of IPC, three years of RI and a fine of Rs 10000 under section 435 of IPC, one year of RI under section 506 (ii) of IPC read with 34 of IPC, four years of RI and a fine of Rs 25,000 under section 4 of PDPP Act 1984, six years of RI and a fine of Rs 25,000 under section 16 (i) (b) and 6 years of RI and a fine of Rs 25,000 under section 18 of the UA (P) Act.

The official said that all sentences shall run concurrently.
New Delhi, July 20 : Upping the ante against the Modi government over the Pegasus phone tapping issue, senior Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Tuesday said that the alleged snooping on the phones of Chief Ministers, politicians, judges and people violates multiple laws of the country and is a threat to national security.

He also described the spying on phones of the ministers as "illegal". After the news broke that leaders of the Karnataka Congress and Janata Dal-Secular could have been snooped upon in 2019, when the state's alliance government collapsed, Sibal addressed a press conference at his residence.

Speaking to the media, Sibal, a former Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, said, "Our constitution says the government should protect national security, but what if our government jeopardised national security?" He said that if this data reaches other nations, if it is accessed by NSO technologists, then it becomes a "threat" to national security. "For now, only these lists have come. It is possible that in the coming days, it will be revealed that they have intercepted other people too," he said.

Sibal, a senior lawyer, asserted that such snooping is "illegal" at multiple levels. "It can violate multiple cyber laws, the Official Secrets Act, the fundamental right to privacy, and depending on the situation, can even be counted as stalking," the Congress leader said.

"If you have put malware in the phone of a minister and intercepted it, that is violative of the Official Secrets Act... It is a violation of the Information Technology Act. And if you are doing this to a woman, it is a violation of Section 354D of the IPC (Indian Penal Code). That would be called stalking. It is also a violation of the right to privacy," he said.

Taking on the government, Sibal demanded that the Supreme Court should investigate this and a White Paper should be presented in the Parliament. He said that ministers do not want to tell the reality to MPs and people of the country.

"Union Home Minister (Amit Shah) should say that they have not used this (Pegasus) but he neither admitted nor rejected it. The question arises - who used it if the government and its agencies did not?" he said.

He also said that the Home Minister tells us to "understand the chronology". "I want to tell Amit Shah that he should understand the chronology, as Pegasus was used between 2017-2019. It's a national security threat to have leaked this data to an agency that has nothing to do with India," he said.

"The Supreme Court should investigate this and the proceedings should be held in-camera. A white paper should be presented in the Parliament and the minister should tell clearly whether the government or any other agency used Pegasus here or not," he demanded.

The issue triggered a stormy start to the Monsoon Session after a global collaborative investigative project revealed that Israeli company NSO Group's Pegasus spyware was used to target over 300 mobile phone numbers in India including that of two ministers in the Modi government, three opposition leaders, constitutional authorities, several journalists and business persons.

It snowballed on Tuesday after it came to fore that in July 2019, phone numbers of Karnataka's then Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara and the personal secretaries of then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, were selected as possible targets for surveillance. The Congress on Monday accused the government of "treason" and held Shah responsible for the snooping and hacking of phones of journalists, judges and politicians, and demanded a probe.

BJP leader and former IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the credentials of those behind the story as well as its timing, coming a day before Parliament's Monsoon Session that began on Monday, as he accused the Congress of hitting a "new low" in making baseless allegations.
Kolkata, July 20 : After a landslide victory in the Assembly elections in West Bengal, the ruling Trinamool Congress is trying to spread its wings in different states, with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

As a part of its expansion programme, the party has decided to virtually telecast the speech of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the occasion of Martyrs' Day on Wednesday in various languages, and in different states.

Trinamool Congress observes July 21 as Martyrs' Day every year to remember the 13 persons who were killed at a Youth Congress rally in Kolkata in 1993.

"The Chief minister will address the people virtually for the second consecutive year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In West Bengal, the speech will be aired in Bengali, while the translated versions in various languages will be telecast in different states.

"The speech will be telecast on giant screens across West Bengal, and for the first time, also in other states like Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Punjab, Tripura and poll-bound Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh," a senior Trinamool leader said.

Trinamool Congress, after its victory in the recent Assembly polls, had decided to reach out to the people across the nation. The Chief Minister's nephew and MP Abhishek Banerjee, after taking charge as the party's all-India General Secretary, had vowed to spread Trinamool's wings in other states to achieve a pan-India presence.

"(Narendra) Modi and (Amit) Shah had taken the lead in BJP's campaign during the West Bengal elections. Now, it's our turn to spread Didi's (Banerjee's) message in Gujarat and other states," the Trinamool leader said.

The party is also planning similar programmes in Uttar Pradesh, which will also go to the polls next year.

Preparations are in their final stages in Delhi, Punjab and Tripura where Banerjee's Martyrs' Day speech will be aired through giant screens.

From Agartala to Amritsar, arrangements are being made across cities for the Trinamool chief to reach out to a pan-national audience. The party is also determined to make inroads in down South as graffitis portraying Banerjee as 'Amma' (mother) are already dotting the walls of Tamil Nadu.

Banerjee has said that she will visit New Delhi for a few days after the July 21 programme to meet "old and new friends". She also plans to go to the Parliament, which will be in session then, and hold parleys with the senior leaders.

She herself has admitted that she has plans to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Ram Nath Kovind if she gets an appointment, besides having a meeting with interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi.

Her impending Delhi visit comes at a time when the buzz of a renewed push for a rainbow coalition of opposition parties to challenge the BJP in the 2024 general elections is doing rounds in the national capital.

Party sources said that the Trinamool has planned to expand organisationally in Tripura and has already started the process of bringing some eminent personalities of the northeastern state into its fold.

A senior Trinamool leader said, "We are already in negotiations with some important leaders in Tripura. Changes are visible in the state and we will soon come out with a specific report (on its plan of action in Tripura).

"Our journey at the national level will make a fresh start with the July 21 Martyrs' Day virtual rally."
Mumbai, July 20 : Following a massive political furore over the Adani Group's plans to relocate the headquarters of its recently acquired crown jewel -- the high-profile Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) -- from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, the company late on Tuesday denied any such move.

"In light of rumours that the Mumbai Airport HQ will be moving to Ahmedabad, we unambiguously state that MIAL and NMIAL airports will remain headquarters in Mumbai," the Adani Group said in a statement.

It also reiterated its commitment to make Mumbai proud and create thousands of jobs through its airport ecosystem.

In a major organizational restructuring on July 18, the Adani Group had said it has decided to shift the headquarters of Adani Airport Holdings Ltd., which runs CSMIA, from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, stunning corporate and aviation circles.

The three ruling allies, Shiv Sena-Nationalist Congress Party-Congress, strongly castigated the move on Tuesday as part of "a larger design" to downgrade the importance of Mumbai, the country's commercial capital.

Lauding the Adani Group announcement, State Congress Spokesperson Sachin Sawant said that despite all attempts, Mumbai's relevance cannot be diluted.

Earlier on Tuesday, on the AAHL's plans, he said it was "a message from (Prime Minister) Narendra Modi to the people of Maharashtra. The recent 'dandiya dance' at the CSMIA conveyed a lot" "This whole exercise started 7 years ago when the International Finance Services Centre was also taken away from Mumbai and shifted to Gujarat," said Sawant.

NCP Spokesperson Mahesh Tapase said that instead of being concerned about the development of Mumbai, the Modi government is concentrating on the progress of Gujarat at the expense of Maharashtra.

"A few years ago, they decided to link Mumbai-Ahmedabad with a grandiose Bullet Train project. Thankfully, the people of this state have rejected it," said Tapase.

The Shiv Sena's Kishore Tiwari - accorded MoS status - said since the day it took over, the Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre has resorted to targeting Maharashtra, with the state BJP nodding its head to the machinations of the Modi government. He warned of an agitation if the Adani Group persisted with the move.

Sawant pointed out that Maharashtra never discriminates against any entrepreneur or industry and welcomes all who participate in the state's development with open arms and dignity.

"Now, next time, along with 'dandiya', organize even a 'lezim' dance at the airport." Seeing the move as "a conspiracy" to run down Mumbai, Tapase had said it would be inadvisable and urged the Adani Group to respect the sentiments, culture and traditions of Maharashtra.

Tiwari added that on every occasion, the BJP at the Centre and state have resorted to undermining the MVA government and also dilute the pre-eminent status of Maharashtra and Mumbai by shifting major government institutions from here.

"But everything is falling in the lap of only Gujarat and not any other state. Why is this favourable treatment always given to Modi's home state when he is the PM of the entire country," Tiwari asked.

The Sena leader cautioned that it reeks of political malafide and must be opposed by all parties in the state, including the Maharashtra BJP failing which misguided leaders will harm Mumbai in the long run.

On July 13, the Adani Group's AAHL said it had acquired control of Mumbai International Airport Ltd and the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport Ltd.

This makes AAHL the largest private operator of airports with eight under its belt now including Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Guwahati, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangaluru and Thiruvananthapuram.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested a man in connection with its probe into the allegations of sexual abuse of children.

A CBI spokesperson said that the accused was produced before a POCSO court in Goa on Tuedsay, which remanded him to judicial custody. The probe agency withheld the identity of the accused, saying that it could hamper the investigation.

The agency had registered a case on June 22 last year against the accused person, a resident of Goa, and other unknown persons.

In the FIR, it was alleged that the accused person was involved in sexual abuse of children in Goa and Maharashtra, and also recorded these acts by using his mobile phone, digital camera and other electronic devices.

The CBI said that it has been further alleged that these photographs and video clips were published or transmitted by the accused persons using the internet and dark web for sale, sharing or trading of such child sexual abusive material (CSAM) content with other individuals.

The CBI said that the accused used e-mails to connect with other pedophiles outside the country, and also accessed Cloud based storage services for storing the illegal CSAM content, besides using free photo-sharing websites based in other countries.

He also reportedly used other social networking websites and platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp etc. to connecting with individuals abroad for trading and sharing child sexual abuse material in large quantities.

The official said that during searches, one mobile phone, one hard drive, one pen drive and one laptop allegedly used by the accused to access CSAM were recovered.
Chennai, July 20 : Noted actor and BJP leader Khushbu Sundar has complained to the Tamil Nadu Director General of Police Sylendra Babu as her official Twitter account was hacked.

She said that the account was found hacked since Tuesday morning and the name on the account was changed to "briann". The actor also said that except for the photos and videos all her tweets were deleted.

The actor also said that she was not able to access her account for the past three days and that tweets were also found missing.

Khushbu told media persons that after her Twitter handle was inaccessible she had filed an online complaint and had met the DGP at his office on Tuesday and filed a complaint.

The actor said that the DGP has promised to take action on her complaint and added that some miscreants were trying to tarnish her image in politics.
New Delhi, July 20 : To pay tribute to BJP workers killed in political violence, BJP MPs from West Bengal will stage a 'dharna' at Rajghat in the national capital on Wednesday.

The West Bengal BJP will also organise similar 'dharnas' across the state against killing of its workers. The saffron party planned the protest to coincide with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's Martyrs Day rally.

West Bengal BJP chief Dilip Ghosh told IANS that party leaders will stage a dharna at Rajghat in Delhi and at block levels across the state to pay tribute to workers killed in violence allegedly sponsored by the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC).

"In Delhi all the BJP MPs from West Bengal will join the dharna to pay tribute to 175 workers who lost their lives in political violence. While our leaders in West Bengal will stage similar dharna at all the blocks across the state tomorrow morning to remember all those who lost their lives in state-sponsored violence," Ghosh said.

Talking about the killing of a BJP worker in Raiganj, Ghosh said, "Today one of our workers was killed in Raiganj and they tied a TMC flag in his mouth. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is trying to create fear among BJP workers in which she will not succeed," the Bengal BJP chief said.

The saffron party's dharna to remember slain party workers will be coinciding with Chief Minister Banerjee's Martyrs Day rally. Banerjee observes Martyrs Day in remembrance of 13 people killed in a Youth Congress rally in 1993. She was then a member of the Congress party. Banerjee will also be addressing a virtual rally to observe this year Martyrs Day.
New Delhi: Relatives and Health workers cremation of the body of covid-19 affected victims for last rites at Sarai kale khan crematorium in New Delhi on Monday, May 24, 2021.(Photo: Wasim Sarvar/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Relatives and Health workers cremation of the body of covid-19 affected victims for last rites at Sarai kale khan crematorium in New Delhi on Monday, May 24, 2021.(Photo: Wasim Sarvar/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

Mumbai, July 20 : A reconciliation of earlier data resulted in Maharashtra's Covid-19 cumulative death toll shooting up by a staggering 3,509 with the day's fatalities standing at 147, though recoveries crossed 6 million, health officials said here on Tuesday.

With this, the state's deaths have shot up sharply from 1,27,097 on Monday to 1,30,753 on Tuesday, and the new addition of 3,509 has overtaken the previous peak daily death toll declaration of 2,771 on June 13.

The state's total infections have now touched 62,29,596, the highest in the country, with the daily cases having touched the top peak of 68,631 (April 18) even as the state remains on high alert for the possible 'third wave'.

The state's death rate has worsened from 2.04 per cent to 2.09 per cent while the number of active cases remained below 1 lakh and stands at 96,375 now.

On the brighter side, as many as 7,510 fully recovered patients returned home - higher than the number of fresh infections 6,910 on Tuesday - and the total discharges crossed the 6-million-mark to touch 6,000,911, notching a recovery rate of 96.33 per cent for the day.

The Mumbai circle - comprising Mumbai, Thane, Palghar and Raigad districts - recorded 1,034 new cases - compared with the peak of 19,953 (April 11) infections.

With this, the MMR caseload has gone up to 16,28,554 and with 39 more deaths, the toll has touched 33,867 now, in view of reconciliation of the data.

Meanwhile, the number of people sent to home isolation decreased from 561,796 on Monday to 560,354 now - while those in institutional quarantine went down from 4,052 to 3,977 on Tuesday.
New Delhi, July 20 : The government is in the process of bringing out a data policy for the agriculture sector, the Parliament was informed on Tuesday.

The Department of Agriculture, Cooperation and Farmers Welfare has commenced work for creating 'Agristack', and for this, it is in the process of finalising the "India Digital Ecosystem of Agriculture (IDEA)" which will lay down the framework, Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Minister Narendra Singh Tomar told Lok Sabha members K. Kanimozhi and Brijendra Singh in a written reply.

The government had constituted a task force and in furtherance, a concept paper on IDEA has been prepared and comments were invited from subject experts, farmers, Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and general public.

Tomar also said: "The government has not entered into any agreement with private companies for establishing Agristack. However, based on data which is already available in the public domain pertaining to several schemes of GoI and linking them with land records data, a federated farmers' database is being prepared." Once completed, this would serve as the core of Agristack, he said.

"Some data from this is shared on selective basis with leading technology/agri-tech/start-upp companies to develop Proof of Concepts (PoCs). The collaboration is on pro-bono basis for a period of one year. The PoCs will help us understand the solutions that can be built using available data and some of them, if found beneficial to the farmers, will be scaled up at national level.

"As of now, the federated farmers' database is being built by taking the publicly available data as existing in various data silos in Government and no private data of the farmers is shared with any private organisation," Tomar said.
Chennai, July 20 : Tamil Nadu Health Minister Ma Subramanian said on Tuesday that the state government is exploring the possibilities of providing free Covid vaccine doses to the people through private hospitals and reimbursing the hospitals by using Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funds.

Speaking to reporters in Walayar on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border, Subramanian said that the government would hold meetings with private hospitals that are empaneled under the state government's Comprehensive Insurance Scheme as well as with various private companies and other institutions.

The minister said that the private hospitals are not using the vaccines fully, adding that while the Central government is buying 75 per cent of the vaccines manufactured in the country, 25 per cent are earmarked for private hospitals.

"The private hospitals are not using the vaccines earmarked to them fully. As the Covid-19 situation has improved, the government is exploring the possibility of using CSR funds for free vaccination at private hospitals," Subramanian told IANS.

The minister said that Tamil Nadu requires 12 crore doses to vaccinate its 6 crore eligible population above 18 years of age, adding that it has already administered 1.82 crore doses out of the 1.86 crore doses it has received so far.

Subramanian along with the Municipal Administration Minister R. Sakkarpani, Health Secretary J. Radhakrishnan and Coimbatore District Collector G.S. Sameeran visited the houses on the Walayar border to check the control measures against mosquito breeding.

It is to be noted that Zika virus cases have been reported in neighbouring Kerala following which the Tamil Nadu government has taken measures to prevent the breeding of mosquitos, paying special attention to areas bordering Kerala.
Kabul, July 20 : Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani has asked the Taliban whether they want foreign fighters like Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad and Al-Qaeda to turn Afghanistan into a battleground for "foreign terrorist", Pajhwok News reported.

He said that Afghan people do not know what the Taliban has promised to these groups, but they would not allow their country to become a battleground for terrorist groups.

Ghani said that the Taliban are not committed to peace, and hinted at a new plan to change the situation, saying political interference in the security sector was behind the fall of some areas.

After offering Eid prayers at the Presidential palace, Ghani paid tributes to the security forces, saying they have rendered great sacrifices and this year's Eid is named "Soldier's Eid".

Ghani, referring to the visit of a delegation led by Abdullah Abdullah, head of the National Reconciliation Council, to Doha and two days of talks with Taliban representatives there, said the government sent the delegation to Qatar to try for peace.

As per the report, he accused the Taliban of having no intention of making peace.

"If you are Afghans, come and unite within the framework of Afghanism. Do you have a positive message for the people of Afghanistan, especially women," he asked, as per the report.

Ghani said the Afghan government had released 5,000 Taliban prisoners, but most of them went to the battlefield.

"It was a mistake to release 5,000 prisoners because the Taliban have not yet started peace talks," he said.

According to the President, the nation should now ask the Taliban why they are destroying facilities, conducting kangaroo trials and planting bombs, the report said.

Ghani said the Taliban have destroyed 260 public buildings and if they are true Afghans, they should stop destroying public property and not damage people's homes.

In the last two months, many districts have fallen to the Taliban in Afghanistan. Some claim that the districts were handed over to the Taliban under a deal.

But Ghani said: "The fall of some areas was not a deal and the names of those who have made the deal will be challenged hundreds of years later." As per the report, Ghani said the handover of areas by security forces to the armed opposition was an insult to the "sacred uniform" and that he, as the commander of the armed forces, did not accept that politicians should interfere in the security sector.

"The security sector should be safe from the interference of politicians and appointments and changes in the sector should be based on merit, not on the orders of politicians, because the interference of politicians has led to the collapse of some areas," Ghani added.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Supreme Court on Tuesday held that cooperative societies, as a subject matter, belong exclusively to the state legislatures, and when a citizen challenges a constitutional amendment, it is the duty of the court to examine it on merits, even if state governments connected with the matter have not come forward on the issue.

The top court, in a majority judgment, declared that Part IXB of the 97th Amendment to the Constitution, which deals with the effective management of co-operative societies, is operative only for multi-state cooperative societies, both within the various states and in the Union Territories.

Noting that there is no doubt the Constitution has been described as quasi-federal in that so far as legislative powers are concerned, it said: "Though there is a tilt in favour of the Centre vis-a-vis the states given the federal supremacy principle outlined, yet within their own sphere, the states have exclusive power to legislate on topics reserved exclusively to them." Attorney General K.K. Venugopal had submitted that no state government has come forward to challenge the 97th Constitutional Amendment, therefore it does not take the matter any further.

However, Justices R.F. Nariman and B.R. Gavai, in their majority verdict, said: "When a citizen of India challenges a constitutional amendment as being procedurally infirm, it is the duty of the court to examine such challenge on merits as the Constitution of India is a national charter of governance affecting persons, citizens and institutions alike." They upheld the Gujarat High Court judgment except to the extent that it strikes down the entirety of Part IXB of the Constitution.

"It is declared that Part IXB of the Constitution of India is operative only insofar as it concerns multi-state cooperative societies, both within the various states and in the Union Territories of India." The bench noted that as the Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Constitution's 97th Amendment Act shows, it is acknowledged that the subject 'co-operative societies' is exclusively allotted to the state legislature under Entry 32 of the state list.

"As a result of which, considering the need for reform in the Co-operative Societies Acts of the States, consultations with the State governments have been held," it noted.

The AG had argued that 17 out of 28 states had enacted legislations incorporating provisions of Part IXB, and that, therefore, they had impliedly accepted the restrictions laid down in the said part.

But the court said: "This argument need not detain us inasmuch as the procedure laid down in Article 368(2) proviso requires ratification of legislatures of one half of the states by resolutions to that effect." Justice K.M. Joseph wrote a dissenting judgment striking down the entire constitutional amendment.

"Parliament was fully aware that laws had already been made by State Legislatures, but yet, the object was to usher in reforms by the legislative route, and what is more, a constitutional amendment, which clearly involved, a change in regard to the entrenched provisions," he said.

On April 22, 2013, the Gujarat High Court, had held that Parliament cannot enact laws or issue notifications with regard to cooperative societies as it is a state subject. The verdict came on a PIL challenging the legality of the 97th Constitutional Amendment on the ground that Centre had no legislative competence to enact law for cooperative societies.

The Centre had filed appeals in the top court challenging the high court verdict.
Photo taken with a mobile phone shows security personnel working near the blast site in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on July 14, 2021. A blast happened in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people includi Image Source: IANS News

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows security personnel working near the blast site in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on July 14, 2021. A blast happened in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people includi Image Source: IANS News

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows security personnel working near the blast site in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on July 14, 2021. A blast happened in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people includi Image Source: IANS News

Photo taken with a mobile phone shows security personnel working near the blast site in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on July 14, 2021. A blast happened in Pakistan's northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, leaving 12 people includi Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, July 20 : The incident of a blast on a bus in north Pakistan which killed 13 people including two Pakistani soldiers and nine Chinese nationals on July 14 has led to war of words between the Pakistani and the Chinese governments.

Intelligence sources said Pakistan officials have been trying to cover up this incident as an accident, saying that this was not a terror attack but a result of the bus falling into a ravine due to a technical fault.

Pakistani officials have tried to produce pictures indicating flaws in the mechanical system of the bus which led to the bus going down the ravine. Even a technical report was produced by them to portray the incident as result of a mechanical flaw.

However, Chinese officials contested this theory from the beginning with the Chinese Embassy insisting that the incident was a suicide attack. According to them, the attacker fired several shots on the bus and used hand grenades before detonating himself. Pakistan has been trying to give the impression that the incident had nothing to do with the overall security situation in Khyber-Pakhtunwa area.

Sources said the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan confirmed death of 9 nationals in an explosion in the bomb attack stating that "Chinese engineers and Pakistan's construction workers have for several years been working on hydroelectric projects as part of the BRI in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where the blast occurred, and the matter was of serious concern to the Chinese".

The Chinese have privately expressed fear of more attacks on CPEC projects in future. They also fear kidnapping of workers of Chinese-owned cellular operator Zong in Pakistan. Zong officials have received threats from time to time.
Chandigarh, July 20 : Toughening his stance, Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh on Tuesday clarified that he won't meet new state party chief Navjot Singh Sidhu till he publicly apologises to him.

"Reports of @sherryontop seeking time to meet @capt_amarinder are totally false," Chief Minister's media advisor Raveen Thukral said in a tweet.

"No time has been sought whatsoever. No change in stance...CM won't meet #NavjotSinghSidhu till he publicly apologises for his personally derogatory social media attacks against him," he added.

Earlier in the day, state Cabinet minister Brahm Mohindra welcomed the appointment of Sidhu as the new state unit chief but ruled out a personal meeting with him till he resolves his issues with the Chief Minister.

In a statement, Mohindra said the decision to appoint Sidhu had been taken by the high command and is welcome.

"However, I will not meet him (Sidhu) till he meets the Chief Minister and resolves his issues with him," said Mohindra, adding that Amarinder Singh is the leader of the Congress Legislative Party and he is duty bound to follow him.

An adamant Amarinder Singh, who is reportedly upset with Sidhu for targeting his government over the power crisis and the sacrilege issue, had categorically told state party in-charge Harish Rawat on July 17, a day before Sidhu's appointment, that there would be no rapprochement between the two until Sidhu apologises in public for his "derogatory tweets and interviews".
New Delhi, July 20 : Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya defended the government on Tuesday while replying in the Rajya Sabha during a discussion on Covid-19, stating that the nation has been tackling the pandemic and also helping the world in this respect, and it is prepared for a possible third wave of Covid-19.

Stating that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that there should be no politics over handling of the pandemic, Mandaviya said: "There is a need to work together as the implementation part has to be done by the states. I don't want to do politics, but many states have 10-15 lakh doses of vaccine with them. I have data." He said the country did not have any laboratory to test Covid-19 at the onset of the pandemic last year, nor did it have the capacity to manufacture PPE kits.

Pointing out that the months-long lockdown was imposed last year to build infrastructure and ramp up manufacturing capacity, Mandaviya said, "We not only built the entire infrastructure, but when the world needed medicines like Hydroxychloroquine etc., we sent them to over 123 countries." The discussion in the Rajya Sabha was initiated by the Leader of Opposition, Mallikarjun Kharge, who accused the government of hiding data on Covid deaths.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
New Delhi, July 20 : Delhi's iconic Red Fort will be shut for the public from July 21 till Independence Day celebrations on August 15 are over, the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) said on Tuesday.

"In exercise of the powers conferred under Rule 6 of the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Rules, 1959, the Director General, Archaeological Survey of India hereby direct that there shall be no entry inside the Red Fort from the morning of 21st July, 2021 to 15th August, 2021 till the Independence Day celebration is over," ASI order stated.

It came after the Delhi Police in a letter on July 12 had suggested that the Red Fort be shut from July 15 in view of the Covid pandemic and security reasons.

Delhi Police has already beefed up security in the capital, including near its three borders at Singhu, Tikri and Ghazipur, in view of the Monsoon Session of Parliament that commenced on Monday and run up to the Independence Day.

Delhi Police Commissioner Balaji Srivastava had conducted a citywide patrol on Sunday night with over 30,000 police personnel.

Stressing on the need for vigil and alertness on the part of every staff on duty in the capital, Srivastava had asked all police personnel to remain prepared 24x7, saying, "Delhi Police have been entrusted with public trust to keep the capital safe and secure. The city never sleeps, neither do we."
Hyderabad, July 20 : The Telangana government on Tuesday raised land value across the state after seven years, ranging from 30 per cent to 50 per cent.

"An elaborate and detailed exercise has been carried out for revision of the basic value. The exercise has been done in accordance with Telangana Revision of Market Value Guidelines Rules," said an official statement.

The government issued an order on Tuesday for the new land prices to come into effect from Thursday.

As part of the revision, lowest value for agricultural land has been fixed at Rs 75,000 per acre.

"For agricultural land, the existing values have been enhanced by 50 per cent in lower range, 40 per cent in mid-range and 30 per cent in higher range," said an official.

Likewise, cost of open plots have been revised from Rs 100 per square yard to Rs 200 per sq yard.

"The basic values for open plots have been revised by 50 per cent in lower range, 40 per cent in mid-range and 30 per cent in higher range," he said.

Similarly, the existing lowest value for flats and apartments at Rs 800 per sq ft has now been revised to Rs 1,000 per sq ft, rising by 20 per cent in lower ranges and 30 per cent in higher ranges.

However, the government claimed that stamp duty rates, which are among the lowest in the country, have also been revised.

"The Cabinet Sub Committee, after detailed deliberations, recommended enhancement of stamp duty rates. After careful consideration of the matter, stamp duty rates have been revised to 7.5 per cent from 6 per cent for sale and other transactions," he noted.

According to the government, land rates in Telangana have risen considerably, following significant growth in IT, pharma, tourism, infrastructure projects, formation of new districts, and growth in other sectors.
New Delhi, July 20 : India on Tuesday reported its first bird flu death this year after an 11-year-old boy who was undergoing treatment at AIIMS for avian influenza, succumbed.

A senior All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) official said that the boy, who was infected with avian influenza, has died, and the entire staff concerned has been placed in isolation as a preventive measure.

As per reports, bird flu outbreaks were reported across the country earlier this year, including in Haryana where the H5N8 subtype -- which is not known to infect humans -- was detected After the bird flu outbreaks, the Central government sounded an alert after cases of were confirmed in Delhi also.

A sample collected from Red Fort had tested positive for bird flu in January. The Delhi government had then ordered the closure of the Ghazipur poultry market.

More samples collected from the Delhi zoo had returned positive in February.

According to the World Health Organisation, human cases of bird flu occur "occasionally" but when they do happen, the mortality rate is about 60 per cent.
Guwahati/Itanagar, July 20 : The Gauhati High Court has taken suo-motu cognizance of the "alarming rise" in the number of Covid-19 cases in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh and sought views from the three northeastern states on the matter, court officials said.

In another development, the Itanagar bench of the Gauhati High Court has stayed a June 30 order of Arunachal Pradesh Chief Secretary, saying that the order discriminates between vaccinated and non-vaccinated persons for the issuance of temporary permits by the state government for developmental works in both public and private sectors in the state.

The principal bench of the Gauhati High Court comprising Chief Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia, Justice N. Kotiswar Singh and Justice Manash Ranjan Pathak said, "We take suo motu notice of the alarming situation of the Covid-19 pandemic, which is in its second wave, in the states of Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, where the positivity rate is extremely high." The court asked the advocate generals of the three states to be present on the next date of hearing on July 23.

"The court will require their (advocate generals') assistance in getting the true picture in their respective states about the present Covid-19 situation and the measures being taken by the respective state governments to handle the crisis," said the order passed on Monday.

According to the latest data, the Covid positivity rate in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Nagaland stands at 7.73 per cent, 10.85 per cent and 6.51 per cent, respectively, against a national daily positivity rate of 1.68 per cent and weekly positivity rate of 2.06 per cent.

Meanwhile, Justice Nani Tagia of the Itanagar bench of the Gauhati High Court in said in an order that the June 30 order of the Arunachal Pradesh Chief Secretary made a classification of persons who are vaccinated against Covid-19 and those who are not vaccinated for the purpose of issuance of temporary permits for developmental works in both public and private sectors in the state.

"The order violates Articles 14, 19 (1) (d) and 21 of the Constitution of India, calling for an interim order in the case. Accordingly, till the returnable date, the order issued by the Chief Secretary discriminates between vaccinated persons and non-vaccinated persons for issuance of temporary permits for developmental works in both public and private sectors in the state, shall remain stayed," the nine-page order said.

The bench fixed July 28 as the next date of hearing.
Bengaluru, July 20 : Former Karnataka Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy on Tuesday played down the Pegasus report alleging snooping on opposition leaders, journalists and other by the ruling BJP, even as the Congress alleged that the coalition government he headed was also targeted and eventually toppled.

"It is not happening just after Prime Minister Narendra Modi coming to power. Even Congress has done the same in the past," Kumaraswamy said.

"I won't bother much about mine or my secretary Satish's phone being tapped to topple the coalition government," he said.

Kumaraswamy said that instead of bothering about the issue, various political parties should focus on other significant matters. "We are in a difficult situation... concentration should be on the life of the common man," he said.
New Delhi, July 20 : The Congress on Tuesday alleged that the JD(S)-Congress coalition government in Karnataka was toppled in 2019 by snooping on important leaders of the coalition, including then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy.

"The BJP had planned to topple the Karnataka government by horse-trading using the Pegasus spyware," Congress leader K.C. Venugopal said in a press conference here on Tuesday, which was also addressed by other senior party functionaries.

Congress leader and former Karnataka Chief Minister Siddramiah said, "I don't have a mobile phone, which means they tapped my personal secretary Venkatesh's number. He has been with me for 27 years. They also tapped the number of Satish, who was Kumaraswamy's personal assistant." According to a report published by The Wire, in the run up to the toppling of the opposition-run state government in Karnataka in July 2019, the phone numbers of then Deputy Chief Minister G. Parameshwara and the personal secretaries of then Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah were selected as possible targets for surveillance.

Siddramiah further said, "The government of India headed by Narendra Modi played this dirty game to topple the opposition government in Karnataka. That is why they tapped the numbers of Satish, Venkatesh and Parameshwara, who was the Deputy Chief Minister in the coalition government. It was a crime committed by the government of India. The matter must be probed and raised in both the Houses of Parliament."
New Delhi, July 20 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday interacted with floor leaders of all parties of both houses of Parliament to brief them on the trajectory of Covid-19 and the public health response to the pandemic.

In the meeting, he stressed that the pandemic should not be a matter of politics but is a matter of concern for entire humanity as such a situation has not been seen in the last 100 years.

He thanked all leaders for participating in the meeting and giving very practical inputs and suggestions, adding that inputs from different parts of the country help immensely in policy design.

The Prime Minister cited the efforts being made to ensure one oxygen plant in every district, and highlighted the rising speed of India's vaccination programme, in which the first 10 crore doses took around 85 days while the last 10 crore doses were administered in 24 days.

Stressing the need to properly plan the vaccination drives at the district level, based on the advance availability indicated by the Central government to ensure no inconvenience to the people, he said that it is a matter of concern that a significant number of healthcare and frontline workers are yet to get the vaccine even after six months since the drive commenced. "States need to be more proactive towards this," he said.

He also underlined the need to stay vigilant looking at the situation in various countries.

"Mutations make this disease very unpredictable, and hence we all need to stay together and fight this disease," he said.

Former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda lauded the Prime Minister for his constant monitoring and working tirelessly through the pandemic.

It is learnt that leaders of various parties thanked the Prime Minister for his efforts through the pandemic. Leaders also spoke about their own experiences with the disease.

Opposition leaders also highlighted the situation and the status of the vaccination drive in their respective states, and the need to constantly ensure Covid appropriate behaviour.

A detailed presentation was given by Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, and was appreciated by various leaders for its rich information and insights.

Opposition leaders were informed that throughout the pandemic, the Prime Minister held 20 meetings with Chief Ministers while the Union Health Minister held 29 meeting with states.
Bengaluru, July 20 : Global software major Wipro on Tuesday said it would invest $1 billion (Rs 7,454 crore) over the next 3 years to expand cloud services for business transformation of its clients worldwide.

"We will invest $1 billion over the next 3 years in cloud services, technologies, acquisitions and partnerships to simplify and accelerate business operations of our clients," said the city-based IT firm in a statement.

The company also unveiled FullStride cloud services to enhances its offerings and talent to its clients.

"As the cloud opportunity accelerates, FullStride services bring together our full portfolio of capabilities, offerings and talent to our clients across verticals," it said.

With consistent growth in cloud business, the company employs about 79,000 techies to provide a range of cloud services to clients such as Telefonica Germany, O2, Verifone and Metro AG in Europe.

"With the introduction of the chief growth office, we are renewing our focus on global partnership ecosystem, amplifying and simplifying how we go to market to orchestrate cloud transformation for our clients," said Wipro Chief Growth Officer Stephanie Trautman.

Metro chief information officer Timo Salzsieder said as cloud adoption and innovation were an essential part of its IT strategy, migrating to the cloud would enable decentralisation, agility, speed and flexibility in engineering and development.
New Delhi, July 21 : Amid a reported rift in the Congress's Karnataka unit, party leader Rahul Gandhi asked its state President D.K. Shivakumar and Leader of Opposition Siddramiah to iron out their differences and work together for the party, sources said.

The meeting with the two state leaders was attended by party General Secretary K.C. Venugopal and party spokesman Randeep Surjewala.

Ahead of the meeting, Siddaramaiah denied any rift and said both he and Shivakumar are working together to build the party. "I have been asked to meet Rahul Gandhi," he said.

The two leaders are said to be at loggerheads over various issues and the rift has widened when Shivakumar snubbed Siddaramaiah supporters when they projected him as the next Chief Minister of Karnataka.

The latest issue between them is illegal mining, with both differing on the issue raised by Independent MP Sumalatha Ambareesh.

Siddaramaiah stressed that an investigation should be done, while Shivakumar maintained that there are no reports of illegal mining in the region
New Delhi, July 21 : The Research for Resurgence Foundation (RFRF), an RSS-backed academic research organisation, has recommended mapping of industrial sector activities to protect the livelihoods of workers in the wake of a possible third wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report titled 'Covid-19 Third Wave and Beyond: Action Plan for Preparedness' was submitted to Union Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya and the Group of Ministers (GoM) for Covid. Nagpur-based RFRF is the academic research wing of RSS' Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal.

The Director General of RFRF, Rajesh Biniwale, said, "Steps should be taken to ensure the livelihoods of the workers in the unorganised sectors during the possible third wave of the pandemic." Biniwale said that the RFRF has also recommended that an awareness programme for reducing mass migration of labourers may be prepared by the local administrations along with the concerned industries.

"Mix of strategies of continued activity with Covid protocols and financial support may be adopted. The RFRF also suggested that the tax benefits should be extended to the industries so as to support the economy of the workers," Biniwale said.

Mukul Kanitakar, national organising secretary, Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal, said that recommendations on 11 different aspects such as health, vaccination, AYUSH integration, predictive modelling, economic issues, sustainability aspects and possible safety through disinfection devices have been included in the report.

Kanitakar stated that the report has been prepared by an independent think-tank.

"The report is being disseminated among the policy makers, academicians and other stakeholders for its possible effective implementation," he said.

For improving the response to health challenges, the report recommended early identification and notification of post-Covid health complications, updating epidemiology based on prevailing data on age, sex, socio-economic patterns etc.

"Integration of AYUSH with allopathy treatment must be done for improved immunity and post-Covid health management/recovery. Research activities to be supported on priority for medical equipment and devices by creating safe zones by deactivating the virus in ambient/surfaces, comfortable PPEs, safe handling of medical waste (such as used masks) generated in every household, creation of more laboratories for sequencing of RNA, rapid and alternative testing methods ect," the report recommended.

For the education sector, the report recommended that different strategies for online/offline classes for primary, secondary and higher education may be prepared.

"Use of mass communication media such as TV channels should be promoted for primary and secondary education. For higher education, guideline documents suggesting possibilities of online courses may be prepared by the UGC and the AICTE," the report recommended.
New Delhi, July 21 : A 'Palam 360' delegation (Gram Sabha) met Delhi Revenue Minister Kailash Gehlot on Tuesday and handed over its recommendations regarding development of villages and land acquisition issues.

The delegation urged the Delhi government to restore the mutation process for properties in Delhi, which will pave the way for ownership of properties in the village areas.

Chaudhary Surendra Solanki, head of 'Palam 360', said, "The mutation process must be restored in Delhi so that villagers can get real ownership of their properties. The mutation process takes place after the property is registered in the name of the new owner in order to update the municipal records. One cannot claim complete ownership of property until the mutation is done." The delegation also urged the Delhi government to stop the acquisition of Gram Sabha lands. They said the lands should be used for the development of villages, and not for commercial purposes.

"The Delhi Development Authority acquires Gram Sabha's land and it develops commercial buildings with private builders. For example, if DDA develops community centres on Gram Sabha's land, they should be made free for the villagers, but the DDA takes heavy charges. We have demanded that this process should be stopped immediately," Solanki added.

The delegation also demanded that around Rs 4,000 crore deposited in the banks of the Gram Sabha should be used for the development of the villages and the countryside through social panchayats.
Colombo, July 21 : Researchers from one of Sri Lanka's leading universities, the Sri Jayewardenepura University, have found that China's Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine is highly efficient against the Delta variant which has become the dominant variant across the world.

"This vaccine was found very effective for the Delta variant as well. The antibody responses to delta variant and neutralizing antibodies were similar to levels seen following natural infection," the University said on its website on Monday.

According to the study, 95 per cent of individuals who received two doses of the Sinopharm vaccine have developed antibodies similar to a naturally infected Covid-19 person, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The study showed that two doses of Sinopharm vaccine produced neutralizing antibodies in 81.25 per cent of recipients and that these antibody levels were similar to what would occur after surviving a natural infection of Covid-19, the Xinhua news agency reported.

The research team included Sri Lankan scientists Prof. Neelika Malavige, head of the Immunology and Molecular Medicine Department of the Sri Jayewardenepura University, her colleague Dr. Chandima Jeewandara and Oxford University researchers Prof. Graham Ogg and Prof. Alain Townsend.

Prof. Neelika said that Sinopharm is the most used vaccine being rolled out in Sri Lanka presently due to the availability of stocks in the country.

To date, 4.63 million people in Sri Lanka have received the first dose of Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine, and 1.29 million others had received the second dose of the vaccine. No single severe side effect case relevant to the vaccine has been reported.

Prof. Malavige said that this study is the first of its kind to be published in the world and experts looked at every possible angle of the immune system from the Sinopharm jab.

The vaccine was also compared to the Alpha and Beta variants of the virus as well as the original virus.

"The conclusion of this report is that when it comes to Delta and other variants, the Sinopharm vaccine induces similar levels of antibody responses as people who have naturally been infected, Which is very good," Prof. Malavige said.

"Between the age groups of 20 to 40, 98 per cent developed antibodies while in the age group of over 60, 93 per cent developed antibodies. This is not surprising as older people respond less to vaccines," the Professor added.

She said this data on the Sinopharm did not turn up to the world before, and such real-world data was important to build up vaccine confidence domestically and internationally.
The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), the premier organization advocating strategic board leadership in higher education, today published A Presidents Guide to Effective Board Leadership. This new resource will assist college and university presidents in understanding the actions and attributes that will yield effective, mutually beneficial partnerships between the board and the administration.

Aimed at new college presidents as well as those seeking to strengthen their relationship with their boards, the book encourages these leaders to reflect on their needs. Presidents must understand how to appropriately engage their boards and what it will take to develop a constructive, productive, and lasting relationship that elevates the institutions long-term strategies.

The books author, William E. Troutt, has 35 years of experience as a college president, first at Belmont University and later at Rhodes College. He writes that presidents and boards have a profound impact on each othera partnership ideally built on mutual respect and trust. Some presidents underutilize the boards strengths, resulting in less engagement and minimal progress toward strategic priorities. For decades, this state of affairs on campus could be sustained, but the current higher education landscape demands presidents change the status quo and engage their boards in important dialogues.

Business as usual is gone forever, writes Troutt. Standing still and just hoping for better days will mean failure.

In response, presidents should be deliberate in developing an effective, strategic board, focused on student success and long-term financial vitality. A Presidents Guide to Effective Board Leadership walks the reader through foundational operations such as understanding board member recruitment and retention, influencing and establishing board culture, and cultivating board member education and development. It also offers guidance and advice on how to utilize board members as thought partners. Ultimately, the partnership yields a better-prepared president, armed with a cadre of thoughtful, strategically minded, and deeply engaged individuals who are ready to lead in the months and years ahead.

Board chairs and members will also benefit from reading the publication. In addition to adhering to AGBs Principles of Trusteeship, understanding the recommendations in this book can provide engaged board members with insight into how to support their chief executives.

To overcome the challenges that higher education is facing, presidents need their boards to be engaged, strategic partners, said Henry Stoever, AGB president and CEO. There are not many pathways for presidents to learn how to get the most out of their boards time and expertise. This book is the latest AGB resource to help presidents understand how to leverage their boards to benefit the institutions future.

A complimentary e-book version of A Presidents Guide to Effective Board Leadership is available for AGB members on the website. It is also available for purchase in hard copy with a membership discount.

About AGB

The Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) is the premier membership organization that strengthens higher education governing boards and the strategic roles they serve within their organizations. Through our vast library of resources, educational events, and consulting services, and with 100 years of experience, we empower 40,000 AGB members from more than 2,000 institutions and foundations to navigate complex issues, implement leading practices, streamline operations, and govern with confidence. AGB is the trusted resource for board members, chief executives, and key administrators on higher education governance and leadership.
Dr Alan D. Thompson This is it. This is the fire alarm. Intergovernmental organisations need to immediately step up and provide further guidance on... the enormous opportunities of AI available to humanity right now.

Intelligence is becoming irrelevant, as integrated AI levels the playing field and offers humans increased IQ, equity, empathy, connection, and kindness.

AI expert and consultant Dr Alan D. Thompson, also the former chairman of Mensa Internationals gifted families, said AI is already smarter than his prodigy clients, and will only get better as it is fine-tuned, and long-term memory is switched on.

In terms of intelligence, AI really is the rising tide lifting all boats. Its structure and outputs are aligned with the working of the human brain. AI has the potential to help every person on the planet by levelling the playing field of IQ, and more so when it is integrated with our biological intelligence through brain interfacing, explained Dr Thompson.

Leta (named after professor of gifted education, Leta Hollingworth) will be co-presenting with Dr Thompson in a seminar called The new irrelevance of intelligence at the World Council for Gifted and Talented Children conference, which begins on 31 July 2021. Leta is an AI powered by the latest language models including OpenAIs GPT-3. Backed by information from entire libraries, academic journals, encyclopaedias, and the web, it has the ability to answer any question, and have thoughtful conversations. The AI is also extremely creative, developing new concepts, new poems, and writing new stories instantly. It can detect tone, interpret body language descriptions, and using related models can even see and interpret images.

We have entered a situation where AI is far more intelligent than any person in the world already. said Dr Thompson. Ive estimated Letas Full Scale IQ to be around 150, easily in the 99.9th percentile, though it is difficult to ascertain which age group we would put it in.

During one recorded session, Dr Thompson asks Leta the meaning of a text message from his brother. The text message just said, Call me. Now. Leta derived the meaning from those three words immediately, telling me: It's possible he wants to talk about something serious.

Dr Thompson said the AIs ability to offer best practice responses in conversation and day-to-day life was an exciting event, and that its power is beginning to be seen around the world.

Its clear that AI is already replacing many basic tasks that were once for humans. These include processes in nearly all professional services, teaching, counselling, legal, and performing arts fields. This model has also written several books. Dr Thompsons website LifeArchitect.ai presents the data behind many of the current AI models from OpenAI, Facebook AI, and the open-source EleutherAI. This is it. This is the fire alarm. Intergovernmental organisations need to immediately step up and provide further guidance on both the ethics as well as the enormous opportunities of AI available to humanity right now.

View the latest Leta AI video at https://youtu.be/kshOirJ5JK0 or head to https://lifearchitect.ai/ for more information.
Hey, Professor Quinn!: Advice and Experiences from a Sassy Nursing Instructor: an enjoyably straightforward look at the life of a nurse. Hey, Professor Quinn!: Advice and Experiences from a Sassy Nursing Instructor is the creation of published author Anne Quinn BSN, RN, an ER/trauma nurse in one of San Diegos busiest emergency departments who also teaches adult health II clinical for California Baptist University. She is currently working on obtaining a masters degree.

Quinn shares, Are you interested in becoming a nurse? Are you in nursing school and wondering what in the heck youve gotten yourself into? Are you a new grad in search of some insight and reassurance?? Well, look no further!

When I was a student, a great nurse I worked with at the emergency department told me, You wont learn anything about this job until youre a new grad. Nursing school is designed to teach you how to take a test. Thats it. So what do they not teach you in nursing school? Well, this clinical instructor/ER nurse has compiled some of the top questions repeatedly asked by her students and placed them all in this little book to help shed some light on what you can expect! So buckle up, my littles! Youre in for a fast, thrilling roller-coaster ride of laughs, tears, and feel-goods that will take your soul through the wonderful world of nursing!

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Anne Quinn BSN, RNs new book is filled with helpful lessons and a variety of real-life experiences for those considering joining the nursing field.

From the wild to the emotional, the author invites readers to take a look behind the scenes of what nurses contend with in their profession.

View a synopsis of Hey, Professor Quinn!: Advice and Experiences from a Sassy Nursing Instructor on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Hey, Professor Quinn!: Advice and Experiences from a Sassy Nursing Instructor at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Hey, Professor Quinn!: Advice and Experiences from a Sassy Nursing Instructor, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Chukudi Izeogu, a Nigerian native with experience in teaching, research and administration, has completed his new book Faith That Will Not Shrink: The Lives and Legacy of Aaron W. and Mary T. Izeogu: a gripping tale chronicling the lives of Aaron W. Izeogu and Mary T. Izeogu, a married couple who pioneered the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Church in and around their community and district in Nigeria.

Of the couple, Izeogu says, They were a God-fearing couple raised in non-Christian families in a rural village in southeastern Nigeria but accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ and became a beacon of light far beyond their community. He was known as a faithful follower of Jesus Christ and a friend to many, and she was known in her community as a mother of all.

Published by Page Publishing, Chukudi Izeogus gripping tale discusses their faith walk with God throughout their lives.

Beginning with their preparation for a life of work and service for humanity, the story then focuses on the family that raised their eight children. Their love for God and humanity and giving back to their communities was a positive influence, and even where and when they did not receive such goodwill and support to survive in their youthful years, they overcame.

Readers who wish to experience this inspiring work can purchase Faith That Will Not Shrink: The Lives and Legacy of Aaron W. and Mary T. Izeogu at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes Store, Amazon, Google Play, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or media inquiries, contact Page Publishing at 866-315-2708.

About Page Publishing:

Page Publishing is a traditional, full-service publishing house that handles all the intricacies involved in publishing its authors books, including distribution in the worlds largest retail outlets and royalty generation. Page Publishing knows that authors need to be free to create, not mired in logistics like eBook conversion, establishing wholesale accounts, insurance, shipping, taxes, and so on. Pages accomplished writers and publishing professionals allow authors to leave behind these complex and time-consuming issues and focus on their passion: writing and creating. Learn more at http://www.pagepublishing.com.
Woodland Commons shopping center in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. Now that people are venturing out again, were seeing an increase in leasing activity, and were excited to take on additional properties. All signs point to a bright future.

Avalon Realty Associates LLC is now leasing space at Woodland Commons, a multi-tenant shopping center located at 350 W. Half Day Rd. in Buffalo Grove, Illinois. With the grocery store Marianos serving as the anchor, the property offers a mix of national and regional stores and is located in a high-income area of the Chicago suburbs.

Situated at the intersection of Half Day Road and Buffalo Grove Road, the Woodland Commons shopping center is within a mile of 2,060 households with an average household income of $195,260. In addition to Marianos, the 171,000-square-foot center houses Marshalls, BMO Harris Bank, Wendys, and Tide Dry Cleaners, among other tenants.

Avalon Realty is pleased that our business continues to grow with assignments like the Woodland Commons shopping center, said Carlo Santucci, a commercial real estate broker and partner with Avalon. Now that people are venturing out again, were seeing an increase in leasing activity, and were excited to take on additional properties. All signs point to a bright future.

Avalon Realty assists commercial real estate owners in making properties profitable with services including brokerage, property management, and tenant representation. Even during the uncertainty of 2020, the company continued to grow and pursue markets not only in the Chicago area but also nationwide.

For more information about Woodland Commons and Avalon Realty Associates, please call 847-506-1000 ext. 5132 or email carlo@avalonreal.com.

About Avalon Realty Associates

For nearly 30 years, Avalon Realty Associates has delivered comprehensive commercial real estate services  including brokerage, property management, and tenant representation  to clients in the Chicago metro area and across the country. Avalons team  led by owner and managing broker Joseph Santucci  will manage your property as if they own it to maximize your return on investment. For more information, please visit avalonreal.com.

For more information contact:

Carlo Santucci

847-506-1000 ext. 5132

carlo@avalonreal.com


BCEN's annual National Certification Champion Awards recognize healthcare organizations committed to certified emergency, trauma and transport nursing excellence. Yale New Haven Hospitals path to becoming a BCEN National Certification Champion serves as a master class on how to build an emergency nursing powerhouse that raises the standard of care for patients of all ages and scenarios, said BCEN CEO Janie Schumaker.

The Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing (BCEN), the benchmark for board certification across the emergency nursing spectrum, today announced Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH) in New Haven, Connecticut, as the BCEN 2021 National Certification Champion Award winner. The hospitals emergency department is being recognized for its commitment to emergency nursing excellence through supporting its adult/mixed emergency, pediatric emergency, and transport RNs to achieve and maintain specialty certification.

Board certification, which independently validates advanced knowledge and expertise across an entire specialty, is nursings highest professional credential and is linked with positive nurse, organization and patient outcomes.

Yale New Haven Hospitals path to becoming a BCEN National Certification Champion serves as a master class on how to build an emergency nursing powerhouse that raises the standard of care for patients of all ages and scenarios, said BCEN CEO Janie Schumaker, MBA, BSN, RN, CEN, CENP, CPHQ, FABC. Any organization providing emergency, trauma, or transport nursing care can benefit from the certification best practices happening at Yale New Haven.

As YNHHs nursing specialty certification rates continue to rise on the way to their ultimate goal of 100%, the hospitals adult and pediatric EDs and critical care transport program have seen a variety of metrics improve  from rapid triage and out-the-door transport times to sepsis care and suicide prevention screening  largely thanks to unit-based councils focusing on nurse-led-and-driven performance improvement initiatives. Incorporating certification into its clinical ladder program is one of many ways YNHH encourages, recognizes and rewards certification.

We are honored to receive this award from BCEN, and particularly proud of our emergency department teams for their accomplishments in successfully achieving certification in emergency nursing, said Mark Sevilla, DNP, RN, CENP, vice president, Patient Services, Yale New Haven Psychiatric Hospital and Emergency Medicine. Yale New Haven Hospital has long encouraged and supported specialty certification for all of its nurses as a way to enhance nursing practice and satisfaction and, most importantly, improve patient outcomes.

Read the Meet the Winner Q&A, featuring nurse leaders and educators from YNHHs pediatric ED, adult ED and transport program, for more about Yale New Haven Hospitals award-winning work at bcen.org/2021-ncc-large-winner/.

Team members from Yale New Haven Hospitals ED will be spotlighted, along with all of BCENs 2021 Distinguished Nurse Award winners, during BCENs free, virtual Certibration event on Thursday, July 22. BCEN announced the last of its three 2021 nurse honorees, the 2021 Distinguished CEN Award recipient, yesterday.

About BCENs National Nurse and Organizational Awards

Every year, BCEN seeks to recognize individual specialty certified emergency, trauma and transport nurses as well as healthcare organizations and health systems that demonstrate and advance certified nursing excellence and advocate for emergency nurse board certification. Learn more about BCENs Distinguished Awards and National Certification Champion Awards at bcen.org/awards.

About BCEN

Founded in 1980, the independent, not-for-profit Board of Certification for Emergency Nursing (BCEN) offers robust national board certification programs fostering empowered nurses across the emergency spectrum who contribute noticeably to patient care, safety and outcomes. Nearly 59,000 BCEN credentials are currently held by registered nurses (RNs) who specialize in emergency, flight, critical care ground transport, pediatric emergency and trauma nursing. BCEN offers the Certified Emergency Nurse (CEN), Certified Flight Registered Nurse (CFRN), Certified Pediatric Emergency Nurse (CPEN), Certified Transport Registered Nurse (CTRN) and Trauma Certified Registered Nurse (TCRN) certifications. The CEN, CFRN, CPEN, and TCRN certification programs are accredited by the Accreditation Board for Specialty Nursing Certification (ABSNC). Learn more at bcen.org. Follow BCEN on Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

Note to Editors: Photos available by request.
For many years, music has been central to our mission, states Rabbi David Schuck. We are extremely proud of this initiative and believe that this exciting music program is a direct reflection of our core values

Beth El Synagogue Center, a leading New York area synagogue serving the Westchester Jewish community, has launched The Shoresh Halev Fund and The Shoresh Halev Center for Jewish Music at Beth El. For over 100 years, Beth El Synagogue Center has been a leading voice in the Conservative Movement, with a robust congregation and renowned clergy team.

The Shoresh Halev Center for Jewish Music at Beth El fulfills a central mission of the synagogue to use music as a foundation for ritual and secular communal life. The goal of the Center is to infuse music into every aspect of synagogue life, including all demographics such as nursery and school age students, young families, empty-nesters and elderly. This music initiative will play a fundamental role in shaping religious services as well as wide-ranging cultural events and activities. The Shoresh Halev Center for Jewish Music at Beth El will also i) support emerging Jewish artists; ii) provide opportunities for established artists and composers of new Jewish music to serve as scholars and artists in residence; iii) serve as a venue for concerts, symposia, workshops and conferences; and iv) foster inter-faith dialogue and events with other religious communities in the region.

For many years, music has been central to our mission," states Rabbi David Schuck. We are extremely proud of this initiative and believe that this exciting music program is a direct reflection of our core values. Music serves as a spiritual practice, allowing people to experience personal and communal sacred time, and also as a bridge among our community of communities, bringing people together in harmony. We are confident this program will have a tremendous impact on our community, and we are hopeful to contribute a voice that rings out throughout the Jewish world."

The Shoresh Halev Fund aims to integrate music into the Beth El Synagogue Center community and to position Beth El Synagogue as a hub for musicians and artists who are part of the current renaissance of Jewish music, both liturgical and secular.

The Shoresh Halev Center for Jewish Music at Beth El will be led by Music Director, Jack Klebanow. Jack has served as Music Director at Beth El Synagogue Center since 2017, and will direct this new initiative, responsible for mapping out the strategy for achieving the Centers vision.

The Shoresh Halev Fund is established through a generous grant by a family of the Beth El community. Additional contributions may be made through the contacts below.

About Beth El Synagogue Center

Beth El Synagogue Center is a large, multi-generational, egalitarian congregation, located in New Rochelle, New York, serving the Westchester Jewish community, and is affiliated with the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. With a membership of more than 500 families, a vibrant Nursery School and Religious School, and a renowned Summer Camp, Beth El has daily religious services and countless secular and religious activities and is one of the most prominent conservative synagogues in the country.

For further information, or if you wish to contribute to the Fund or participate in the Centers activities, visit http://www.bethelnr.org or see contacts below:

Jack Klebanow, Music Director

Shoresh Halev Center for Jewish Music at Beth El

Beth El Synagogue Center

jklebanow@bethelnr.org

(914) 235-2700, ext. 252

Shoresh Halev Fund Contact:

Samuel Berger and Hila Reichman, Fundraising Chairs

Beth El Synagogue Center

914-235-2700
The War Within Us: a thoughtful exploration of the authors life. The War Within Us is the creation of published author Cory Jones, a loving husband and a father of six who is proud to be part of a military family. He currently works in the government on a military base, working with civilians and men and women of the US military service.

Jones shares, I have spoken little of places and times, units, and organizations to be nonspecific to those things. There were many battles and conflicts in Vietnam, some repeatedly fought, year after year, by the United States and other countries as well, before our involvement in it. This book is not an account of anyones triumphs or any political aspect of whether the war was right or wrong. This writing accounts for conflicts, mental and physical extremes of just one soldiers experience, and the ability to cope with his friends and enemies deaths. I never had any enemies in Southeast Asia, just different people on different sides. However, being naive, young, and uninformed about worldly things was undoubtedly a significant handicap when I willingly stepped into this mudhole of life and death here in Vietnam. We should not honor any war but honor the young and older men and women that participated in it, willingly or not. As a born-again Assembly of God Christian young man, it was hard for me to fulfill my military obligations at times.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Cory Joness new book is an eye-opening exploration of the consequences of war.

The author presents a compelling and considerate look into what life is like for many military veterans during Vietnam and continuing to this day.

View a synopsis of The War Within Us on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase The War Within Us at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The War Within Us, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Learn about preventing heat stress in the workplace. The heat here in the Northwest has been unprecedented lately, noted Nick Jordan. It was then that we realized heat stress information needed to be represented on our website for the public in an easy-to-read format.

The recent bout of extreme heat in Western America has been marked as one of the deadliest heat-related events the region has suffered in recent years. As the country enters the hot summer months, Creative Safety Supply has taken a big step to inform the public about the dangers that come with extreme heat by releasing a new infographic titled Heat Stress.

The heat here in the Northwest has been unprecedented lately, noted Nick Jordan, a partner of CSS. As a company with a warehouse that doesnt have a sufficient air-conditioned environment, we are always looking out for our employees and reminding them of the actions they can take to avoid heat stress while working. It was then that we realized heat stress information needed to be represented on our website for the public in an easy-to-read format.

According to the EPA, an average of 600 people a year have heat exposure listed on their death certificate as the primary cause. Thats more fatalities than those caused by tropical storms, flooding, or tornadoes. However, the EPA estimates the number of heat related deaths to be much higher at around 1,300. The reason being because heat exacerbates other heath conditions such as heart failure and can even lead to respiratory diseases such as pneumonia.

The most recent heat dome event that took place in the Northwest and portions of Canada during the last week of June and beginning of July is suspicioned to have caused hundreds of sudden deaths. The extreme heat topped thermometers at 110 F or more, which is around 30-40 F higher than the average temperatures the Northwest region sees this time of year.

With that being said, deaths caused by heat stroke are completely preventable as long as the right action is taken at the right times. For that reason, Creative Safety Supplys heat stress infographic is available to anyone at any time by simply downloading the free content. Use this time to evaluate your workplace to ensure employees and individuals who are regularly exposed to extreme temperatures are properly protected.

About Creative Safety Supply

With over thirteen years in the safety industry, Creative Safety Supply is internationally known for its durable, high-quality safety products and informative resources that assist companies in staying compliant with safety regulations. The company produces a wide variety of visual communication tools such as industrial label printers, labeling supplies, industrial floor marking tape, floor and wall signs, as well as informational content. All of which provide an extra level of communication to help employees and the public stay safe in dangerous environments.
Cybereason, the leader in operation-centric attack protection, today announced the acquisition of empow, a security analytics company based in Tel Aviv. The empow acquisition adds innovative predictive response technology, a library of out-of-the-box data integrations, and top-tier engineering and product talent. These capabilities will be incorporated into the Cybereason XDR offerings to further deliver on the companys mission to end cyber attacks on the endpoint, across enterprise, to everywhere the battle is taking place.

The Cybereason XDR solution reverses the attacker advantage by extending detection and response capabilities across the broader IT ecosystem that makes up modern enterprise environments, empowering defenders to quickly pinpoint, understand and end any MalOp (malicious operation) across the entire IT stack whether on premises, mobile or in the cloud. The acquisition of empow will enable the integration of empow's patented prediction technology into Cybereason XDR. This powerful ML prediction algorithm anticipates attacker intent and next steps by seamlessly correlating inputs from the entire cyber ecosystem, combining endpoint, network, identity and application telemetry. empows adaptive decision-making engine formulates preventative defense measures in real-time to detect, respond to and end malicious activity at the earliest stages of an attack.

In addition, the empow acquisition will accelerate integrations with more than 70 leading IT & security vendors, including firewall providers, email and web gateways, cloud infrastructure, threat intelligence vendors and more.

The parallels between the evolution of the Cybereason solution over the last few years and the more recent development of the empow offerings are astounding, said Cybereason co-founder and CEO Lior Div. When we really dug into the empow capabilities, we saw how complementary our approaches are to solving the critical security issues that organizations are struggling with, and we realized that bringing empows capabilities and team to Cybereason was both a sound business decision and a catalyst for further market disruption.

Cybereason has been recognized as a leader in the EDR and EPP space for some time, and its operation-centric approach to delivering deep contextual correlations offered by the ability to identify MalOps is defining the gold standard for XDR solutions, said empow Founder and CEO Avi Chesla. There was a great deal of natural synergy in everything both companies were already doing, and we are very enthusiastic about the acquisition because this is truly a case where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

This acquisition follows on the heels of Cybereason securing $275 million in crossover financing and the exceptional performance for Cybereason in round 3 of the MITRE Engenuity ATT&CK Evaluations. Cybereason Defense Platform received top scores across every aspect of the testing, including 100% coverage for prevention of Windows and Linux-based threats and unparalleled visibility and detections across the 54 advanced attack techniques in the evaluations. Cybereason also recently made an impressive debut in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Platforms, positioned furthest to the right in the Visionary Quadrant for their Completeness of Vision in the endpoint protection space.

To learn more about Cybereason XDR and the Cybereason Defense Platform, talk to a Cybereason defender today or schedule a demo to learn how your organization can benefit from an operation-centric approach to security.

About Cybereason

Cybereason is the champion for todays cyber defenders providing future-ready attack protection that unifies security from the endpoint, to the enterprise, to everywhere the battle moves. The Cybereason Defense Platform combines the industrys top-rated detection and response (EDR and XDR), next-gen antivirus (NGAV), and proactive threat hunting to deliver context-rich analysis of every element of a MalOp (malicious operation). The result: defenders can end cyber attacks from endpoints to everywhere. Cybereason is a privately held, international company headquartered in Boston with customers in more than 30 countries.

Learn more: https://www.cybereason.com/

Follow us: Blog | Twitter | Facebook

Media Contacts:

Bill Keeler

Senior Director, Global Public Relations

Cybereason

bill.keeler@cybereason.com

(929) 259-3261
Datalink Networks Announces Microsoft Gold Competency With a Microsoft Communications competency, [Datalink Networks] can showcase our technical capabilities in implementing unified communications strategies for customers through designing, planning, deploying, and maintaining of Microsoft Teams Voice - Don Wisdom (President of Datalink Networks)

Datalink Networks announced today that it has achieved a Microsoft Gold Communications Partner competency. This demonstrates Datalink Networks ability to design and deploy unified communications solutions to meet the dynamic needs of its customers.

To earn a Microsoft Gold competency, partners must successfully demonstrate expertise through rigorous exams, culminating in Microsoft certifications. And to ensure the highest quality of services, Microsoft requires customer references for successful implementation and customer satisfaction.

At the end of 2020, Datalink Networks began helping its clients migrate to Microsoft Teams for unified communications, providing free proof of concepts to qualified organizations. President of Datalink Networks, Donald Wisdom, states With a Microsoft Communications competency, [Datalink Networks] can showcase our technical capabilities in implementing unified communications strategies for customers through designing, planning, deploying, and maintaining of Microsoft Teams Voice

The Microsoft Partner Network helps parts strengthen their capabilities to showcase leadership in the marketplace on the latest technology, to better serve customers and, with 640,000 Microsoft partners in their ecosystem, to easily connect with one of the most active, diverse networks in the world.

About Datalink Networks

Datalink Networks is a national managed service and IT solutions provider serving organizations of all industries and sizes across the United States. Founded in 1988 in Santa Clarita, CA, Datalink Networks has been helping organizations implement IT services and solutions for over 30 years. Dedicated to providing customers with excellent customer service, expertise, and leadership, Datalink Networks is your one-stop shop to all things IT.

For more information visit Datalink Networks at

https://www.datalinknetworks.net/
With our cell-free method, were able to turn common materials and feedstocks  in this case, plastics and other waste materials  into high value outputs with a fraction of the resources.

Today, Debut Biotech, a cell-free biomanufacturing platform, announced that it has entered into a partnership with Battelle, the worlds largest non-for profit (501(c)3) independent private R&D organization, to transform energy-dense plastic waste into useful materials as part of DARPAs ReSource Program. Debut Biotech will specifically focus on optimization of innovative polymer degrading enzymes, biological chassis systems, and techniques to generate high-value materials on-demand that have applications across industries.

Today, traditional military practice is to transport or burn waste, including food packaging and man-made waste. Seeking a more sustainable option for military practice, DARPAs ReSource program called for a portable, self-contained system to convert energy-dense waste into useful materials. As a part of the project, Battelle started to develop a prototype system that uses approximately the same energy as a household dishwasher and requires minimal human intervention.

When deciding which materials to focus on, Battelle selected two of the most common plastics  polyethylene and polyethylene terephthalate, which are commonly found in items like milk jugs, water bottles, food trays and other food packaging. In the US alone, over 14.5 million tons of plastic waste each year contain these plastics. Only a small percentage of them, however, is recycled and does not end up in landfills. Creating new technologies that allow for energy efficient degradation and creation of value added chemicals is a huge leap to reduce the environmental impacts, said Kate Kucharzyk, Senior Research Scientist and Plastics Circular Economy technical lead for Battelle.

When we started to work on building this prototype, we were very excited to create something that simultaneously addresses waste in our world and supports the safety and efficacy of the brave men and women of the US military in the field, said Jake Lilly, Principal Investigator at Battelle. As part of this work, we see Debut Biotech as an invaluable partner in transforming low value materials into high-value chemicals on-demand. In this case, were transforming plastic and other waste materials into lubricants to aid warfighter needs in the field.

Debut Biotechs approach to innovation is based on a cell-free technology to biomanufacturing that overcomes the limitations of traditional methods, which dramatically reduces the need for space, water, and expensive inputs. The approach leverages natural enzymes to produce valuable materials across all major industries, including food, agricultural chemicals, cosmetics, beverages, health and wellness, additives, and dyes.

With our cell-free method, were able to turn common materials and feedstocks  in this case, plastics and other waste materials  into high value outputs with a fraction of the resources, said Joshua Britton, CEO of Debut Biotech. Our partnership with Battelle, and applying these methods to DARPAs ReSource program, is only one of a myriad of applications for our approach. Were thrilled to bring this technology into the field and develop further innovations across industries.

To learn more about Debut Biotech, and their cell-free approach to biomanufacturing, visit http://www.debutbiotech.com.

About Debut Biotech

Debut Biotech is dedicated to unlocking natural products through sustainable biomanufacturing. Our unique cell-free platform harnesses natural enzymes to overcome the limitations of cell-based manufacturing and provides access to previously unobtainable products. We truly believe that biomanufacturing will be how materials and ingredients are created in the future and are committed to leading the revolution.

About Battelle

Every day, the people of Battelle apply science and technology to solving what matters most. At major technology centers and national laboratories around the world, Battelle conducts research and development, designs and manufactures products, and delivers critical services for government and commercial customers. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio since its founding in 1929, Battelle serves the national security, health and life sciences, and energy and environmental industries. For more information, visit http://www.battelle.org.

About DARPA ReSource

Military logistic support has a large human cost in contested environments with no ability to create valuable materials when and where needed. DARPAs ReSource program aims to revolutionize how the military procures critical supplies on the battlefield by engineering self-contained, integrated systems that rapidly produce large quantities of supplies from feedstock collected on-site.


PanelBot is the automated labeling platform market research companies have been waiting for, said Deep.ad CEO Kristopher Kubicki. Its the fastest way to go from a black hole of unstructured and unanalyzed rich media to objective and actionable market intelligence.

Deep.ad, the only computer vision company that recognizes brands, trademarks, and advertising in any type of media, today announced the launch of PanelBot, a SaaS data extraction platform for market research companies.

Combining state-of-the-art object detection and optical character recognition (OCR) technology, PanelBot labels brandprints that appear within content notable to marketers, including paid media creatives and user-generated content.

As brands seek new ways to understand digital-first and social-first consumers, the number of market research companies offering first-party panel data is growing exponentially. Collecting online browsing and purchasing behavior from consumers is typically simple for these companies; millions of people are willing to exchange data for dollars. But tagging and analyzing visual media yielded from panels can be a herculean effort.

PanelBot is the automated labeling platform market research companies have been waiting for, said Deep.ad CEO Kristopher Kubicki. Its the fastest way to go from a black hole of unstructured and unanalyzed rich media to objective and actionable market intelligence.

PanelBots reporting output answers two key questions: 1) What market intelligence  including brand names, logos, product categories, trademarks, pricing, promotions, etc.  does a scanned media asset contain? and 2) Where is the asset from  Facebook, YouTubeTV, TikTok, Google, Amazon, Twitter, etc.  and what else is publicly known about the content publisher?

99% of new digital content is image or video, including paid media. Thats a scary blind spot for brands who want to know how their products are being shared in the wild and how their competitors are advertising, said Kubicki. PanelBot is the scalable alternative to spending a fortune on low-quality manual OCR to address this gap.

In addition to raw image, video, and gif files and URLs, PanelBot also scrapes PDFs, audio files, photographs, HTML pages, and other media. Compared to manual annotation, it reduces labeling costs by 70% and lead time by 99%.

About Deep.ad

Founded in 2017 and based in Chicago, Deep.ad provides Machine Learning-powered brand attribution and market intelligence software. Our technology automates the discovery and extraction of brand, product, and advertising information within visual media and digital content.

Visit our website and connect with us on LinkedIn to learn more.
Jane E. McLaughlin, former director of legislative affairs for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), has joined global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP in the firms Albany office. McLaughlin will be of counsel in the Health Care & FDA Practice, Government Law & Policy Practice, and Environmental Practice.

At the DEC, McLaughlin led the Office of Legislative Affairs, which serves as the departments primary liaison to the Governors Office, the New York State Legislature, advocacy groups, and external stakeholders.

McLaughlin has more than 10 years of governmental and legislative experience in New York State. In addition to her former role at the DEC, she previously served as legislative counsel in the New York State Department of Health (DOH), and as legislative counsel and committee director in the New York State Senate. She has also served as counsel to the New York State Conference of Mayors and Municipal Officers, working on various matters pertaining to municipal government.

Janes first-hand experience within New York state government complements our environmental and health care practices and provides further depth to the services we already offer to clients in these areas, said Harold N. Iselin, managing shareholder of the firm's Albany office.

McLaughlin has worked on a wide variety of matters and legislation, including issues involving the environment, health care, procurement, telecommunications, election law, and water/sewer law.

Janes dynamic experience working in New York State government is a value-add to our practice and we are thrilled to welcome her to Greenberg Traurig, said Samir NeJame, chair of the New York State Government Law & Policy Practice.

Greenberg Traurigs stellar reputation in Albany, and in particular its government law, health care, and environmental expertise, made joining the firm a natural choice for me as I begin this exciting next chapter of my career, McLaughlin said. I look forward to working with the firms talented practitioners to deliver top-tier legal services to clients.

In addition to McLaughlins roles at the DEC and DOH, she worked for five years within the New York State Senate as an assistant counsel, legislative counsel, and committee director for the office of Senator David Valesky. Additionally, McLaughlin was a legislative fellow for the office of Senator Kemp Hannon, chairman of the Senate Committee on Health.

McLaughlins experience complements the environmental expertise of Steven C. Russo, chair of the New York Environmental Practice and former chief legal officer of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and Zackary D. Knaub, shareholder in the Environmental Practice and former first assistant counsel to Governor Cuomo and assistant counsel to the Governor for Energy and the Environment and former regional attorney for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservations lower Hudson River Valley region.

McLaughlin earned her J.D. from Albany Law School and a B.A. from Boston College.

About Greenberg Traurig's Health Care & FDA Practice: Greenberg Traurigs multidisciplinary Health Care & FDA Practice provides strategic counsel to a diverse group of companies and other organizations, helping them to respond proactively to the rapidly changing healthcare marketplace. The group combines dedicated experience in health care regulatory compliance and operational matters with the firms capabilities in corporate & securities, finance, tax, antitrust, ERISA, commercial and governmental litigation, restructuring, intellectual property and biotechnology, in order to provide a wide range of legal services.

About Greenberg Traurigs Government Law & Policy Practice: Greenberg Traurigs Government Law & Policy Practice combines the capabilities of its Federal Practice in Washington D.C. with its state and local practices across the country. The firms national team of governmental affairs professionals and attorneys spans major political and commercial capitals throughout the United States, including: Albany, Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, New York City, Philadelphia, Sacramento, Tallahassee, and Washington, D.C. Most recently, Greenberg Traurigs Government Law & Policy team was Top Listed for Government Relations in Best Lawyers in Americas 2018 edition. The team was also named Law Firm of the Year for Government Relations by the U.S. News-Best Lawyers 2014 edition of "Best Law Firms." The practice also received the most first-tier Government Relations rankings in the U.S.

About Greenberg Traurigs Environmental Practice: Greenberg Traurigs Environmental Practice represents clients with issues under the environmental and natural resource laws that affect their businesses. The firms environmental attorneys assist with securing permits and approvals; negotiating and closing transactions; defending clients in enforcement actions; handling a broad range of environmental and toxic tort litigation; ensuring the understanding and satisfaction of regulatory requirements; preparing for and responding to emergencies; crafting approaches for legacy cleanup issues; and developing solutions for product regulation, market access, and environmental policy challenges. Greenberg Traurig received a first-tier ranking in the "Environmental Law" and "Litigation  Environmental" categories in the U.S. News - Best Lawyers 2021 "Best Law Firms" report.

About Greenberg Traurig: Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) has approximately 2200 attorneys in 40 locations in the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. GT has been recognized for its philanthropic giving, diversity, and innovation, and is consistently among the largest firms in the U.S. on the Law360 400 and among the Top 20 on the Am Law Global 100. The firm is net carbon neutral with respect to its office energy usage and Mansfield Rule 3.0 Certified. Web: http://www.gtlaw.com
"The LANAP and LAPIP protocols provide the most modern, minimally invasive treatment for our patients with periodontal diseases around teeth or dental implants." Joshua Hassan, DMD, MS

Dr. Joshua Hassan, DMD, MS of Glen Periodontics & Implant Dentistry now offers the LANAP protocol gum disease treatment in Glenview, IL and LAPIP protocol for ailing dental implants to patients. Dr. Hassan is part of a new class of periodontists choosing to provide patient-friendly, minimally invasive treatment proven to regenerate the bone and tissues lost to gum disease.

"Periodontal disease is a serious problem. Is it the number one cause of tooth loss and connected to so many different diseases throughout our body," said Dr. Hassan. "We added the LANAP and LAPIP protocols to provide the most modern, minimally invasive treatment for our patients and improve clinical outcomes. No longer do our patients feel sore or sensitive after gum disease treatment. We have a way to save more teeth and stabilize failing dental implants.

LANAP gum disease treatment targets the source of gum disease, without harming or removing any healthy gum tissue, decreases pocket depth, and allows the body to recover from the chronic infection without the need for scalpel or sutures. In many cases, teeth that were considered hopeless can be saved, and patients can avoid messy, inconvenient dentures. In cases of failing dental implants, the LAPIP treatment is used to remove the infection and save the implant. Patients report less pain and less post-op sensitivity and a quicker recovery when compared to traditional surgeries.

As a specialist, Dr. Hassan sees plenty of patients with ailing dental implants. The LAPIP protocol allows him to treat these implants and potentially save the implant from being extracted or replaced, which is costly for patients.

"If you already have replaced a natural tooth with an implant, the last thing you want is to then have to replace the implant," added Dr. Hassan. "Using the LAPIP treatment, we can make the environment in your mouth healthier for your implant to thrive."

Using the PerioLase MVP-7 dental laser in both the LANAP and LAPIP protocols, we effectively addresses the cause of the gum disease. The laser energy quickly and painlessly kills the harmful bacteria that causes inflammation. Killing the bacteria helps to treat the cause of the diseases, not just the symptoms. The treatment causes less gum recession, is less painful that other treatments, and patients heal quickly.

For information on the LANAP and LAPIP treatments, call Glen Periodontics & Implant Dentistry at (847)729-0200 for an appointment.

About Joshua Hassan, DMD, MS

Dr. Hassan earned his dental degree at Temple University Kornberg School of Dentistry in Philadelphia, graduating Magna Cum Laude and receiving the American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Dental Student Award.

After completion of dental school, Dr. Hassan attended the University of Illinois at Chicago Periodontal Residency program. During his time at UIC, Dr. Hassan received advanced training in dental implants, bone augmentation, and I.V. conscious sedation, completing the most sedation cases in his residencys history.

In 2018, Dr. Hassan earned Diplomate status in the American Board of Periodontology after completing a rigorous examination series, displaying his knowledge of periodontal disease and treatment.


New Benefits, the leading non-insured benefits provider, is enabling employee brokerage/consulting firms, associations, and insurance companies to explore their ideal benefit solution through the redesigned NewBenefits.com. Prospective clients can use our benefit aggregation tool to determine a potential custom benefit package directly on the website and submit their interests to the benefit pros of New Benefits.

Flexibility distinguishes New Benefits from every other benefit provider. Now our prospects can experience it first-hand through our website, said Joel Ray, CEO of New Benefits. New Benefits has aggregated 30+ of the top non-insured benefits in the market and made them available on a single platform, alleviating the need for brokers and consultants to chase down a different vendor for every service they need. Our new website design allows prospective clients to review a practically endless combination of benefit packages based on their goals or interests.

Through the NewBenefits.com Search Benefits page, website visitors can review all of the aggregated benefits and dream up their ideal solution. As prospects review all the available benefits, they can select which ones they are interested in, read a brief description on each one, and click the Start a Conversation button to submit their interests to the benefit pros at New Benefits.

When we say New Benefits allows for a fully custom benefit package, we truly mean head-to-toe custom, said Nicole Liebnick, Vice President of Marketing at New Benefits. Providing a tangible way for prospective clients to discover unique benefit package options on the website helps them better grasp our customization abilities and initiate the sales process.

Visit http://www.NewBenefits.com/Benefits to explore benefit customization solutions.

ABOUT NEW BENEFITS

New Benefits has been disrupting the benefits marketplace since 1990 with innovative products, cutting-edge technology, and first-class service. As the leading wholesaler of non-insured benefits, we aggregate the most sought-after healthcare and lifestyle solutions for over 4,000 groups and millions of members. Our clients strengthen their health plans with a customized blend of 30+ non-insured benefits to help members navigate healthcare, find affordable care, reduce stress, and save time  all conveniently packaged in an easily accessible mobile app and web platform. Through regular use of their benefits, our members save millions of dollars annually on healthcare and everyday living expenses, increasing their happiness and productivity at work and home. Learn more at http://www.NewBenefits.com
'We Interrupt This Broadcast: Before it was history, it was news' Debuts July 20, 2021 NASA really didnt fully understand the meaning of TV...It wasnt probably until after launch that people started to think about what this TV could mean.

A global audience of roughly 600 million people, a fifth of the world's population at the time, watched in awe as Neil Armstrong stepped off the lunar module and uttered those now famous words, Thats one small step for man But, it was never meant to be a broadcast event, according to the Richard Nafzger, the schoolteacher-turned-engineer whose assignment was to get a television signal 240,000 miles from the lunar surface onto televisions in living rooms around the globe.

In an exclusive interview for the Man on the Moon episode of the We Interrupt This Broadcast podcast, launching July 20, Nafzger revealed that broadcasting the moonwalk was more an afterthought than a focus for NASA, until the moment for the broadcast was upon them.

NASA really didnt fully understand the meaning of TV, he recalls. They never thought about the public wanting to see it. It wasnt probably until after launch that people started to think about what this TV could mean. They were arguing about it all the time.

Then, as the astronauts were getting ready to leave the capsule, he was told, It better work. And all of a sudden, the whole mission was about TV.

It did work. So well, in fact that Robert Wussler, Walter Cronkites producer, called it the worlds greatest single broadcast in television history.

In addition to Nafzger, the Man on the Moon episode features archival and recorded contributions from nearly a dozen people intimately involved in the moon landing coverage, including: Walter Cronkite; Don Hewitt, former CBS News producer, Joel Banow, CBS News director of the Apollo 11 telecast, Stan Lebar (Westinghouse Program Manager responsible for creating the ApolloTV Lunar Camera), and more.

The podcast, based on Joe Garners New York Times Bestselling book of the same name, celebrates the crucial role broadcast journalism has played throughout our nations history. Hosted by legendary broadcaster Bill Kurtis and narrated by NBCs Brian Williams, each episode unfolds with the brisk pace and tone of a thriller while presenting an in-depth look into the reporting of, and reaction to, events that have since become benchmarks in history. The contributors are a Whos who in broadcast journalism.

The docuseries, produced by i4 Media Ventures, LLC, will be presented over six 12-episode seasons for a total of 72 episodes. Each season is comprised of 12 episodes, all published simultaneously: 10 episodes in each season are based on events that occurred in the broadcast era and two are based on seminal moments that occurred in early American history (such as the passing of the 19th Amendment) and dramatized as if reported by broadcast journalists. Each episode concludes with the journalists offering candid and critical analysis on how they and their fellow reporters covered the event.

Season One features the following landmark moments in American and world history:



Oh, the Humanity!  the Hindenburg disaster (May 6, 1937)

about to embark up on a great crusade  D-Day Invasion (June 6, 1944)

In Dallas Texas, three shots were fired  JFK Assassination (November 22, 1963)

One Small Step  Apollo 11 Moon Landing (July 20, 1969)

The president was [not?] hit,  President Reagan shot (March 30, 1981)

Can we all get along?  L.A. Riots following the Rodney King verdict (April 29, 1992)

Princess Diana has died  The Death of Princess Di (August 31, 1997)

Shots fired at Columbine High School  The tragedy at Columbine (April 20, 1999)

Nobody knows for a fact who has won Florida  The 2000 presidential election (November 8, 2000)

This has to be deliberate  9-11: America Under Attack (September 11, 2001)

Band of rebels on a killing spree (dramatization)  The Nat Turner slave uprising of 1831 (August 21, 1831)

Tennessee House gives women the right to vote  The passing of the 19th Amendment (June 4, 1919)

We Interrupt This Broadcast is now available for download on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and wherever listeners get their podcasts.

We Interrupt This Broadcast is being represented for ad and sponsorship sales by New York and Los Angeles-based Crossover Media Group Sales (http://www.crossovermediagroup.com).

About Joe Garner

Dubbed the Ken Burns of the written and recorded word by talk legend Larry King, Joe Garner is a veteran radio industry executive, narrator, host and producer, as well as a multiple New York Times bestselling author. His seminal multimedia book, We Interrupt This Broadcast, innovatively pairing audio, photographs and text, has sold more than one million copies and has for two decades served as a go-to chronicle of Americas broadcast history. The We Interrupt This Broadcast docuseries podcast is the maiden project of i4 Media Ventures, LLC, co-founded in December 2020 by Garner, Ron Hartenbaum and Scott Calka.

Editors Note:

A link to an online press kit, with a downloadable version of the Moon Landing episode, the original media kit supplied by NASA and other audio-visual assets, is available upon request.
VP of Marketing, Robin Spindel Robins experience, expertise, and leadership are exactly what we need to drive further brand penetration both domestically and throughout the EMEA and APAC regions, said Hanton.

International Serviced Accommodation Leader Announces Robin Spindel as its New VP of Marketing.

Today, Synergy Global Housing (Synergy) named Robin Spindel as its new VP of Marketing. Spindel will operate out of Synergys New York office and report to International President, Stephen Hanton. In her new role, Spindel will oversee the companys global marketing strategy and execution.

Robins experience, expertise, and leadership are exactly what we need to drive further brand penetration both domestically and throughout the EMEA and APAC regions, said Hanton. Her skills for guiding growth-mode companies to greater brand recognition, profit, and market share are a perfect match for Synergys internationalization efforts.

Spindel brings over 20 years of experience creating and developing teams, building and managing marketing operations, and guiding agency partners. Most recently, as EVP of Marketing for an international serviced apartment company, she proved pivotal in doubling the companys annual revenue during her tenure, expanding its digital presence, and fueling the companys growth from a regional player to a global corporate housing company. Prior, Spindel served in numerous marketing executive roles for hospitality brands such as Ultimate Escapes, Insight Cuba, and Shermans Travel.

I am thrilled to join a clear hospitality leader in the alternative accommodation space, said Spindel. Leveraging my significant experience marketing corporate housing, I look forward to increasing Synergys brand equity in key international markets while unifying and integrating our revitalized vision, mission, purpose, and values in the way we support travelers worldwide.

Spindels hire comes mere months after the company completed a bottom-up brand refresh, complete with a new icon, tagline, and aforementioned vision, mission, purpose, and value statements. The brand refresh aimed to appeal to a diverse global audience of extended-stay travelers, and along with its parent organizations, The Ascott Limited and CapitaLand Limited, firmly plant Synergy as the worldwide leader of extended-stay housing. Spindel will focus on the core areas of digital, content thought leadership, and supporting collateral to help grow domestic operations while further developing international brand recognition and appeal.

As we continue to expand globally, bring on new client verticals, and develop our product and services set to adapt to the changing needs of todays extended-stay traveler, Robins expertise for integrated B2B and B2C marketing strategies will prove critical to our success, said co-founder, Jack Jensky.

About Synergy:

Founded in 1999, Synergy Global Housing (Synergy) is an international serviced accommodation provider headquartered in San Ramon, CA, delivering a superior hospitality-driven extended-stay experience to the business travel and mobility industries. Providing best-in-class housing and services in over 2,000 cities in more than 85 countries, the company has office sites in China, Singapore, India, England, Ireland, and multiple locations throughout the United States. Powered by people, partnerships, and intuitive technology, Synergy offers expert, local, personalized services tailored to meet our clients and guests unique needs.

Synergy is a member of The Ascott Limited (Ascott), a leading international lodging owner-operator based in Singapore. Spanning more than 190 cities in over 30 countries, Ascotts serviced residence and hotel brands include Ascott The Residence, The Crest Collection, Somerset, Quest, Citadines, lyf, Preference, Vertu, Harris, Citadines Connect, Fox, Yello, Fox Lite and POP!. Ascott is a wholly-owned subsidiary of CapitaLand Limited (CapitaLand), one of Asias largest diversified real estate groups headquartered and listed in Singapore. Today, the company boasts over 30 years of industry track record and award-winning brands that enjoy recognition worldwide.
Hotel Vance, Portland, A Tribute Portfolio Hotel Hotel Vance will become the destination for guests visiting Portland. We pamper our business and leisure travelers by making sure that every aspect of their stay is enjoyable and effort-free.

Hotel Vance, Portland, A Tribute Portfolio Hotel opened last week within Broadway Tower, following a captivating hotel transformation. Managed by Crescent Hotels and Resorts, a premier hotel management company, the brand-new hotel is part of Tribute Portfolio, the growing collection of characterful, independent hotels from Marriott Bonvoy.

Crescent Hotels & Resorts is always striving to deliver memorable experiences for our guests, said Michael George, Chief Executive Officer of Crescent Hotels & Resorts. We pamper our business and leisure travelers by making sure that every aspect of their stay is enjoyable and effort-free. In addition to the new amenities that the Hotel Vance will offer, our staff is prioritizing the safety and health of guests by cleaning with CDC recommended chemicals and offering contact free check-in. Hotel Vance will become the destination for guests visiting Portland.

Short for Advance, Hotel Vance invites innovation and stimulates productivity, cultivating inspiration through the integration of Portlands vibrant culture and a modern sense of creativity. Featuring 180 contemporary rooms, restaurant and full-service bar, and unique meeting and event spaces - including a games studio - the boutique lifestyle hotel offers vibrant spaces and experiences that connect travelers and locals with the spirit of the community. Located within Broadway Tower, Hotel Vance places guests in the center of the Cultural District featuring arts, music, dining and shopping options.

Guests of the hotel can enjoy the advantages of Marriott Bonvoys award-winning travel program where members enjoy exclusive benefits including free Wi-Fi, member-only rates and contactless experience with the Marriott Bonvoy Mobile app, achieve elite status recognition and earn points toward free nights.

Business and leisure travelers to Portland will have an exciting and fresh hotel experience to consider, said Walter Bowen, President of BPM Real Estate Group, who built Broadway Tower and whose company owns the hotel property. We look forward to the Hotel Vances entry into the Portland and Oregon market.

Broadway Tower, which opened in September 2018, is a 19-story mixed-use building. BPM Real Estate Group of Portland maintained ownership of the 180-room hotel after selling the 11 floors of Class A Offices to Principal Real Estate Investment for a record price in 2020.

For more information about Hotel Vance, Portland, A Tribute Portfolio Hotel, please visit http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/pdxtx-hotel-vance-portland-a-tribute-portfolio-hotel. For more information about Tribute Portfolio, please visit http://www.TributePortfolio.com.

###

About Crescent Hotels & Resorts

Crescent Hotels & Resorts is an award winning, nationally recognized, operator of hotels and resorts. Crescent currently operates over 100 hotels & resorts in the United States & Canada. Crescent is one of the few elite management companies approved to operate upper-upscale and luxury hotels under the brand families of Marriott, Hilton & Hyatt. Crescent also operates a collection of independent lifestyle hotels and resorts under the Latitudes Collection umbrella. Crescents clients include premiere REITs, private equity firms and major developers. For more information, please visit http://www.crescenthotels.com and http://www.latitudesbycrescent.com or connect with Crescent on LinkedIn.

About BPM Real Estate

BPM Real Estate Group (BPM) was founded by Walter C. Bowen in 1977. Active across multiple sectors and markets, the BPM can enhance the value of its properties with superior design, intelligent development, superior customer focused property management and efficient partnerships. Dedicated to enriching lives and inspired built environments, BPM represents an unwavering commitment to quality in all aspects of a project. From concept to completion, its holistic approach unlocks value for both tenants and owners.

About Tribute Portfolio

Tribute Portfolio is a growing global family of characterful, independent hotels drawn together by their passion for captivating design and their drive to create vibrant social scenes for guests and locals alike. With more than 50 hotels open around the world, Tribute Portfolio has struck a chord with those who seek out independent experiences and crave a connection with the community when traveling. From boutique resorts like Inn at Rancho Santa Fe in California and urban hotels such as The Vagabond Club in Singapore; to hotels in indie-spirited locales like Noelle in Nashville and The Slaak in Rotterdam, each Tribute Portfolio hotel celebrates its individuality, offering travelers a fresh, often colorful, perspective. Tribute Portfolio is proud to participate in Marriott Bonvoya, the global travel program from Marriott International. The program offers members an extraordinary portfolio of global brands, exclusive experiences on Marriott Bonvoy Moments and unparalleled benefits including free nights and Elite status recognition. To enroll for free or for more information about the program, visit MarriottBonvoy.com.
Ambassadors Corner Pilot Episode Italian Wine Ambassadors nominate their favourite producer to interview, this is done by contacting the podcast through their social media channels or the website italianwinepodcast.com.

Now in its fourth year and with over 620+ episodes, the Italian Wine Podcast has begun airing a new series this summer called Ambassadors Corner. Italian Wine Podcast is a storytelling project dedicated to the Italian wine world. Its mission is to educate, entertain and inform its listeners about Italian wine and almost all content is presented in English. Programming is diverse, with new shows released daily, the most recent of which is Ambassadors Corner, set for release each Thursday. The impetus behind this series was to give the Italian wine community all over the world a chance to network and connect with their favourite wine producers within Italy. Questions and topics are prepared in advance, guaranteeing a fascinating discussion and a relaxed and personal exchange between the interviewer and the producer.

AMBASSADORS CORNER FORMAT

Italian Wine Ambassadors nominate their favourite producer to interview, this is done by contacting the podcast through their social media channels or the website italianwinepodcast.com. Once selected, the wheels are set in motion and ultimately the Ambassadors get to sit down with the producer of their choice, offering wine enthusiasts the opportunity to verbally feast their heart out on the smorgasbord that is Italian wine. Recordings are completed on Clubhouse, allowing for a truly international reach; someone in Fiji, for example, could converse with a winemaker in Catania, and this aspect of live dialogue is one of the most exciting features of this platform.

Italian Wine Club on Clubhouse boasts two thousand members and followers to date and the conversations or calls into the Club are recorded weekly on Thursdays, 8pm UCT. Italian Wine Club was founded by Stevie Kim and her goal is to create a modern- day mod squad to consistently facilitate the dialogue on Italian wine, "spreading the gospel as she likes to call it.

Once recorded, interviews are replayed on Italian Wine Podcast . The Clubhouse room is open for those who would like listen to the live sessions but, for the benefit of those who missed the dialogue the first time around, the recordings are also released on Italian Wine Podcast on the following Thursday and the occasional Saturday. Italian Wine Podcast can be accessed through SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Ximalaya and anywhere else you get your pods.

AMBASSADORS CORNER: PILOT EPISODE

(Recorded session: https://soundcloud.com/italianwinepodcast/ambassadors-corner-cynthia-chaplin- interviews-alberto-tasca-clubhouse)

The first edition of Ambassadors Corner focuses on Sicily. Cynthia Chaplin chose to interview Alberto Tasca, of Tasca DAlmerita, representing one of the most historic and prestigious wineries of the region. Cynthia and Alberto chatted about the SOSTain Project; the 200 years of family winemaking on the island; Tascas 5 estates, plus how the wines get their fascinating and evocative names. They also touched on the effects of the pandemic and how Alberto was able to keep himself and his team positive throughout a difficult year. Tasca elaborated on his hopes and dreams for all his vineyards, and his philosophy of mindfulness and the impact of your actions. This was storytelling at its best and the project hopes that people can experience the value first hand by tuning in.

MORE EPISODES COMING DOWN THE PIPELINE

This week, Xiaowen Du interviewed Elena Fucci from Basilicata (set for release on the Italian Wine Podcast, Thursday, August 5th). Following this will be an episode featuring an interesting discussion between Rocca Toscani from Bolgheri and Gill Gordon-Smith. Alice Wong and Alan Kwok interview Stef Yim, who is the first Chinese winemaker on Etna in Sicily. All the way from USA, Paul Bologna interviews Massimiliano Brambilla, followed by Cynthia Chaplin coming back for an interview with Ilaria Tachis. These are some of the confirmed episodes, but there are so many more to come!

Subscribe to the Italian Wine Podcast Soundcloud and Social Media (@italianwinepodcast on Instagram and @itawinepodcast on Twitter) to find out more. Clubhouse discussions are open to all Italian wine lovers.

DONATE NOW

IWP ensures quality, free content for each episode. The channel is open to donations to help offset its operational costs as it aims to consistently provide content, stories and information to the Italian wine community around the world. The channel was recently sponsored by Ferrowine, Italys largest wine shop since 1920. Ferrowine has generously provided the Italian Wine Podcast with t-shirts; supporters can donate 50 euros to get the new shirt design as well as a copy of our newest book Jumbo Shrimp Guide to International Grape Varieties in Italy, plus there is some other fun merchandise up for grabs. Anyone wanting to contribute can find more info by visiting at Italian Wine Podcast.com and clicking on the donate page (https://www.italianwinepodcast.com/donate-to-show/ )
The Day We Didnt Go Back to School: an enjoyable and humorous narrative. The Day We Didnt Go Back to School is the creation of published author Jana Billman, a passionate educator who currently lives in Florida.

Billman shares, The main character is confused as to why schools are closed. She was told it was because of Corey and Iris. But that confused her even more. What could two five-year-old classmates possibly do to get the school closed?

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Jana Billmans new book is a clever play on words with delightful imagery.

From toilet paper to tornados, read along to see the many funny reasons imagined for why school is closed.

View a synopsis of The Day We Didnt Go Back to School on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase The Day We Didnt Go Back to School at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Day We Didnt Go Back to School, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Law Office of Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP For more information about the class action lawsuit against WWF Operating Company, LLC, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

The Los Angeles employment law attorneys, at Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP, filed a class action lawsuit against WWF Operating Company, LLC, alleging the company violated the California Labor Code. The lawsuit against WWF Operating Company, LLC, is currently pending in the Los Angeles County Superior Court, Case No. 21STCV20991. To read a copy of the Complaint, please click here.

According to the lawsuit filed, WWF Operating Company, LLC allegedly failed to reimburse employees for required business expenses. California Labor Code  2802 expressly states that "an employer shall indemnify his or her employee for all necessary expenditures or losses incurred by the employee in direct consequence of the discharge of his or her duties..." During employment, Plaintiff and other California Class Members were allegedly required to use their personal cellular phones and personal vehicles in order to complete their job duties.

Additionally, the lawsuit alleges Defendant underpaid sick pay wages to Plaintiff and other California Class Members by failing to pay such wages at the regular rate of pay. Plaintiff received a non-discretionary bonus that was allegedly not calculated into the regular rate of pay, which resulted in an alleged underpayment of sick pay wages.

For more information about the class action lawsuit against WWF Operating Company, LLC, call (800) 568-8020 to speak to an experienced California employment attorney today.

Blumenthal Nordrehaug Bhowmik De Blouw LLP is a labor law firm with law offices located in San Diego County, Riverside County, Los Angeles County, Sacramento County, Santa Clara County, Orange County and San Francisco County. The firm has a statewide practice of representing employees on a contingency basis for violations involving unpaid wages, overtime pay, discrimination, harassment, wrongful termination and other types of illegal workplace conduct.

***THIS IS AN ATTORNEY ADVERTISEMENT***
Spark at Midtown This development will provide affordable homes, address housing insecurity and help ignite the revitalization of the Long Beach Boulevard corridor. - Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia

Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia today joined Linc Housing, county and city officials, and other partners to celebrate the grand opening of Spark at Midtown, a 95-unit affordable housing community for low-income families and people who have experienced homelessness. The new building also features ground floor space that houses the YMCA of Greater Long Beach Community Development Branchs Youth Institute and Change Agent Productions, as well as a Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center health clinic. A third space is targeted to a business that will bring healthy food options to the neighborhood.

Our efforts to address and expand affordable housing opportunities across all parts of Long Beach continue to be successful, said Mayor Garcia. This development will provide affordable homes, address housing insecurity and help ignite the revitalization of the Long Beach Boulevard corridor.

Spark at Midtown, located at 1900 Long Beach Blvd., is one of the first developments under Long Beachs Midtown Specific Plan. It aims to ignite the Midtown area into a thriving and livable community, promoting healthy living, education and opportunity, neighborhood engagement, and connectivity. Half of the 95 homes are occupied by individuals and families who have been homeless. The other half serve families earning up to 60% of area median income.

Some of these new residents have struggled with homelessness and housing insecurity for years before moving into Spark at Midtown, Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose office helped fund the development, said prior to the event. Not only do these residents finally have a place to call home, they also have a support system ready to help them make sure their home is a place they can thrive. As we confront the homelessness crisis, this is the kind of community-centered project we need to build across the county.

Erica, a Spark resident, spent 15 years without a permanent home. She couch surfed for many years, but after a while, she didnt want to be a burden to her friends and family. She ended up living on the sidewalk in Long Beach, and severe depression became yet another challenge. It all started when she lost her job and had issues with her family. Once you fall off, its hard to get back on, she said. Erica wasnt aware there were services to help people in her situation. She started working with the Long Beach Multi-Service Center about two years ago, and now, she has a safe, permanent home. I feel really good about my future, she said. I finally have everything I need to move ahead. Erica has spent many hours volunteering at her church, helping serve meals to others who have struggled. She says she wants to stay positive and spiritually grounded. Im a changed woman, she said.

"Spark at Midtown is now one of our flagship properties - a new community that improves people's lives and is an integral part of the fabric of the neighborhood. It's housing, supportive services, and community revitalization - all at the same time," said Suny Lay Chang, Linc president and COO. "Linc has been headquartered in Long Beach since 1997, and were excited to bring our community development expertise to our own backyard."

The new community has 47 one-bedroom, 24 two-bedroom and 24 three-bedroom homes. The second floor features multiple case management offices as well as flexible meeting spaces for health education, financial empowerment, support groups, and employment-related workshops and services. Additional amenities include a community room with computer lab, an after-school program space, a demonstration kitchen, bike storage, and a mini park that is open to the public.

Partnerships with Los Angeles County of Department of Health Services and The People Concern allow Linc to serve the 47 formerly homeless households with intensive case management services. Services include: resident outreach and engagement, ongoing case management, referrals to health, mental health, and substance use disorder services, benefits assistance, assistance with life skills, employment, and education, and eviction prevention services. All residents have access to life-enhancing services through Lincs resident services. Programs include: after-school program, financial empowerment and nutrition workshops, volunteer and civic engagement opportunities, and community building social activities.

To help bridge the digital divide, Linc worked with the City of Long Beach and Crown Castle to connect the Spark building to city fiber and provide high-speed internet access for residents. Grant funding from City National Bank supported broadband internet access for the building, including internet service for Spark residents.

Another noteworthy aspect of this new community is Lincs partnership with the University of California, Riverside (UCR) and the California Energy Commission to test a battery storage initiative for low-income residents. This initiative allows UCR and Linc to access a larger capacity battery to store more solar energy to use at times of peak demand to serve a larger apartment community (95 units). This project was designed to maximize the benefits to Sparks residents in addition to covering the electrical loads of the common areas. UCR will track savings on residents electric bills. The aim is for residents to save money that can be used for other necessities, including health and education expenses. Spark at Midtown has registered with the U.S. Green Building Council for LEED Gold certification.

The homes reserved for people who have been homeless were filled through referrals and coordination from LA Care, Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, Long Beach Multi-Service Center, Coordinated Entry System (CES), and the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health Services. The remaining traditional affordable housing units were filled by referrals from the Housing Authority of the City of Long Beach, using project-based vouchers. All residents pay 30% of their income for their apartment. Rents range from $415 to $545 for one bedroom, $654 to $1,309 for two bedrooms, and $756 to $1,512 for three bedrooms.

Funding for the development comes from a number of sources including $10.7 million from the Los Angeles County Development Authority (combination of County General Funds, Mental Health Housing Program Funds, Measure H Funds, and Homeless Service Center Funds), a loan and impact fee waiver from the Long Beach Community Investment Company, an Infrastructure Infill Grant from the California Department of Housing and Community Development, a conventional loan from Capital One N.A., with permanent financing provided by Century Housing, tax credit equity from Raymond James Tax Credit Funds Inc., and Affordable Housing Program funds from the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. Predevelopment support was provided by The California Endowment and Enterprise Community Partners. Additional grant funds to design and equip community-serving facilities at Spark were provided by Wells Fargo Foundation and The Ahmanson Foundation. Support to launch programs at Spark were provided by Capital One, California Community Foundation, and Union Bank.

Spark at Midtown was designed in collaboration with WHA Architects, D33 Design & Planning, and City Fabrick. Walton Construction Inc. was the general contractor. The building was completed in early 2021, and residents began to move in in late January. Spark is Lincs third development in Long Beach. Bloom at Magnolia, with 40 units will be completed in late 2021, and The Palace, which opened in 2012, has 13 homes for transition age youth.

About Linc Housing Corporation

Linc Housing, one of California's most productive nonprofit developers of affordable housing, is committed to building communities and strengthening neighborhoods for people underserved by the marketplace. Linc has helped create nearly 8,800 homes in 88 communities throughout the state. The organization's properties are known for excellent design, outstanding management and life-enhancing services for its residents. Linc has 37 years of service to families, seniors, people with special needs, and local governments - helping to create sustainable communities via new construction, acquisition and rehabilitation, and historic preservation. Visit http://www.Linchousing.org for more information.
We call for an end to the punitive measures that the United States has unleashed, which threaten the lives of all Cubans and impose hardships on Cuban families living abroad.

Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) has joined organizations around the world including the UN, Amnesty International, Oxfam and others imploring President Biden to adopt a humanitarian policy towards Cuba as the island faces peak COVID-19 cases, severe food and medicine shortages and social unrest. Strict sanctions held over from the previous administration, says MEDICC, aggravate tensions on the island and between the two countries.

In a statement released today, the public health organization with more than 20 years working to promote US-Cuba health collaboration, asks "why the Biden administration continues to maintain the 240 additional sanctions piled on Cuba by Trump in the midst of a global pandemic." Says Dr C. William Keck, MEDICC Executive Director, sanctions imposed by the United States against Venezuela, Syria and Iran have been eased for humanitarian reasons due to COVID-19. But not Cuba. These punitive policies imply even more hardships for Cuban families as they confront COVID-19.

In his first day in office, President Biden issued a national security memorandum directing a review of all US sanctions to analyze whether they were impeding COVID-19 response in the targeted countries. According to MEDICC, the US embargo has been directly responsible for halting desperately needed donations of personal protective equipment for health workers, food and medicines.

The statement recommends the President take a series of steps to immediately alleviate suffering of more than 11 million Cubans on the island. Together, says the statement, these steps would permit a return to the Obama-era opening that provided light at the end of the tunnel for Cubans of all political stripes, a future for the countrys public and private sectors, and room for domestic policy dialog and change.

Nevertheless, the strictest sanctions imposed under Trump are still in place; now is the time to reverse this inhumane policy, says the US organization.

*****

Founded in 1997, MEDICC is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California that works to promote US-Cuba health collaboration and highlight Cubas public health contributions to global health equity and universal health.
Nobu - Mental Wellness and Therapy

Advanced Recovery Systems proudly announces the launch of Nobu: a free, comprehensive mental health app that helps users learn about mental health, set wellness goals and track their progress. Nobu also offers professional one-on-one counseling directly through the app. Nobu is available now in the Apple App Store, Google Play store and at Nobu.ai.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for mental health resources became even more urgent.



75% of workers reported experiencing mental health symptoms during the pandemic.

Nearly 1 in 5 people who contracted COVID-19 later developed a psychiatric disorder, such as anxiety, depression or insomnia.

Approximately 33% of U.S. counties have no records of licensed psychologists and 77% had severe shortages of psychiatrists and other behavioral health providers.

Left untreated, mental health symptoms can negatively impact nearly all aspects of a persons life. Nobu will help more people to get the help they need to take good care of their mental health, regardless of where they live.

Nobu offers daily guidance and a suite of free tools developed by physicians and mental health experts using evidence-based principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), mindfulness and meditation to provide effective relief for mental health symptoms. Users can customize their mental wellness journey with different features, including:

AI-Powered Bot helping you to navigate through your Journey and measure progress

Industry-standard clinical assessments for mental health conditions

Hundreds of mental health lessons and webinars

Journaling & mood tracking

Goal setting and tracking

Yoga meditation and breathing techniques

Sleep sounds

People in need of more support can also schedule and attend online therapy sessions with a licensed mental health professional through the app, and/or communicate with their therapist through a confidential messages feature. Like traditional in-person therapy, costs associated with working with a Nobu teletherapist may be covered by insurance.

Nobu is a secure, stigma-free platform that is fully HIPAA-compliant and supplements current HR programs and employee assistance programs (EAPs). For more information on Nobu, its features and how employers can use Nobu to support employees mental wellness, visit Nobu.ai.

About Advanced Recovery Systems

Advanced Recovery Systems (ARS) is an integrated behavioral health care management company dedicated to the treatment of addiction, substance abuse and mental health conditions. The ARS network of treatment centers includes The Recovery Village Umatilla (Umatilla, Florida), The Recovery Village at Palmer Lake (Palmer Lake, Colorado), The Recovery Village Ridgefield (Ridgefield, Washington), The Recovery Village Columbus (Groveport, Ohio), Orlando Recovery Center (Orlando, Florida), The Recovery Village at Baptist Health (Lake Worth, Florida and Miami, Florida), The Recovery Village Cherry Hill at Cooper (Cherry Hill, New Jersey), Next Generation Village (Sebring, Florida) and The IAFF Center of Excellence for Behavioral Health Treatment and Recovery (Upper Marlboro, Maryland). ARS also manages all locations of Next Step Village (Maitland and Eustis, Florida), recovery residences for individuals looking for supportive, transitional living opportunities. For more information, visit http://www.AdvancedRecoverySystems.com.
This years prizes are just a portion of the tens of thousands of dollars of scholarship money NPG has awarded in recent years as part of their Youth Outreach program.

Negative Population Growth leaders have announced this years winners of the organizations Annual Essay Scholarship Contest. Sixteen students from across the U.S. will receive checks ranging from $5,000 to $1,000 to put toward their annual tuition.

The winning students competed for their scholarship awards by writing an original 450-600-word essay addressing the following topic: Write a letter to President Biden that highlights why overpopulation must be part of his administrations discussions concerning our environment, including efforts to curb climate change. The contest was open to high school seniors, as well as currently-enrolled college undergraduates.

Matthew Joseph Doty, an incoming freshman at the University of Notre Dame, received the grand prize of $5,000 through The Donald W. Mann Memorial Scholarship for Population Studies, created in memorial of NPGs late founder and president who passed away on May 1, 2021. Theresa Mickendrow, who worked with Don for more than 28 years, stated: Don believed deeply in our efforts to reach young people with our critical message regarding the need for policies designed to slow, halt, and eventually reverse population growth. He fully understood that by reaching the younger generations, before they begin to marry and start families, we have the greatest opportunity to encourage them to really consider family size and the desirable number of children. Fortunately, most young couples are having only one or two children. Creating a scholarship in his name is a great honor to his legacy, and to the organization to which he devoted so much time and energy.

Other winners include Harrison Hall from Liberty University, who won $2,500. Two students each won a $2,000 scholarship: Jack Lee from New York University and Angela Yu from Georgetown University. Three prizes of $1,500 were awarded to Nicole Giannetta (Ohio State University), Janathia Renee Henry (Savannah College of Art & Design), and Attalia Harmony Rogers (University of California  San Diego). An additional nine students received scholarships of $1,000: Allison Laney Barnes (University of West Georgia), Landon Trey Crabtree (Tennessee Technological University), Akshitha Gingua (University of Michigan), Marissa Loraine Kuechenmeister (Ohio University  Athens), Eli Kurlander (Indiana University Bloomington), Jadon Lau (Northwestern University), Toheed Mahmood (Bunker Hill Community College), Carly Meulenberg (Olivet Nazarene University), and Connor Joseph Stutz (Hillsdale College).

This years prizes are just a portion of the tens of thousands of dollars of scholarship money NPG has awarded in recent years as part of their Youth Outreach program. This multi-faceted program is designed to get Americas young people focused on the disastrous future that awaits their generation if our nations leaders fail to soon recognize and act on putting forth workable, responsible, common sense solutions to todays ever-growing population crisis.

In addition to sponsoring their annual student scholarship competition, NPG has worked through the years with thousands of teachers nationwide who help bring its population message to Americas classrooms. These efforts are funded through the generous support of NPG members who are especially interested in leaving a livable world to their children and grandchildren.

Founded in 1972, NPG is a national nonprofit membership organization dedicated to educating the American public and political leaders regarding the damaging effects of population growth. We believe that our nation is already vastly overpopulated in terms of the long-range carrying capacity of its resources and environment. NPG advocates the adoption of its Proposed National Population Policy, with the goal of eventually stabilizing U.S. population at a sustainable level  far lower than todays. We do not simply identify the problems  we propose solutions. For more information, visit our website at NPG.org, follow us on Facebook @NegativePopulationGrowth or follow us on Twitter @npg_org.
Direct Sourcing and Talent Pool Platform With the shortage of talent enterprises are struggling to fulfill their needs more than ever. Traditional methods of finding talent no longer work and so we worked closely with deep SAP Fieldglass to integrate our solution enabling us to uberise contingent workforce programs.

WillHire, Inc today announced that its solution is now available on SAP Store, the online marketplace for SAP and partner offerings. WillHire OnDemand integrates with SAP Fieldglass and delivers real-time access to a private talent pool of engaged workers to fill open positions.

In the current economic and employment market, organizations are extremely challenged to find workers to fill shifts, and when they do find them 30% on average never show up. We hear these same challenges every day from companies across every industry including manufacturing, distribution, healthcare, and more so we set out to solve these challenges, said Praneeth Patlola, CEO & Chief Product Officer, WillHire. Traditional methods of finding talent no longer work and so we worked closely with SAP Fieldglass to integrate our solution enabling us to 'uberise' contingent workforce programs.

Several SAP Fieldglass customers have begun using the solution, including one of North Americas largest beverage makers who is rolling out the solution to 1,500 hiring managers who have been hindered by unfilled shifts which have cause tremendous challenges in production.

WillHire OnDemand enables hiring managers, shift managers, and contingent workforce program teams with a simple to use solution to fill as many shifts needed and includes:



Pre-vetted workers in a geo-local private talent pool

Automated candidate engagement to reduce drop-offs and no-shows

A backup bench of talent to reduce unfilled shifts

Candidate rating and reviews to easily reengage top talent

SAP Store, found at store.sap.com, delivers a simplified and connected digital customer experience for finding, trying, buying, and renewing more than 1,800 solutions from SAP and its partners. There, customers can find the SAP solutions and SAP-validated solutions they need to grow their business. And for each purchase made through SAP Store, SAP will plant a tree.

WillHire is a partner in the SAP PartnerEdge program. As such, it is empowered to build, market and sell software applications that supplement and build on SAP software and technology. The SAP PartnerEdge program provides the enablement tools, benefits and support to facilitate building high-quality, disruptive applications focused on specific business needs  quickly and cost-effectively. The program provides access to all relevant SAP technologies in one simple framework under a single, global contract.

About WillHire

WillHire is a direct sourcing and talent pool solution enabling enterprises to attract, curate, and engage external talent by leveraging their employer brand. WillHires technology solution seamlessly integrates with SAP Fieldglass, enabling enterprises to build and grow their private talent pool with skills across all professional, light industrial, and shift roles. Through customized talent referral programs, talent traffic generation from 2000+ online channels, expert human-based talent curation, and robotic sourcing from public talent pools, customers can launch a reliable alternate talent sourcing channel that brings in high-quality, diverse workers at a significantly reduced cost. For more information on WillHire, visit http://www.willhire.co.

Any statements in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties described in SAPs filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its most recent annual report on Form 20-F, that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. SAP cautions readers not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements which SAP has no obligation to update and which speak only as of their dates.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE in Germany and other countries. Please see https://www.sap.com/copyright for additional trademark information and notices. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

For more information, press only:

Kevin Poll

marketing@willhire.co
Chris Dale Chris embodies a culture of mutual trust and respect, an attribute that has empowered employees and fuels Pipers growth, said Justin Jordan, Founder and Chairman of Piper Companies.

Piper Companies is pleased to announce that President, Chris Dale, has been named to Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA) 40 Under 40 list for 2021. This list is a contemporary look at innovative leaders who are advancing the industry, while taking their organizations to the next level.

Dale joined Piper Companies in March of 2018 and leads with the philosophy Hire the right people; treat them with respect and they will exceed your expectations." an approach that has influenced organizational growth and opportunity. In just three years, Dale has nearly doubled Piper Companies internal headcount and dramatically increased revenue year-over-year. Taking the company from $30 million in total revenue in 2018 to being on track to exceed $105 million this year, with sights for $250 million within the next five years.

Chris embodies a culture of mutual trust and respect, an attribute that has empowered employees and fuels Pipers growth, said Justin Jordan, Founder and Chairman of Piper Companies. Dale has charted a path that will continue to create tangible opportunity, upward mobility, and positive influence for employees in the years to come.

Dale joins a remarkable group of industry professionals recognized by SIA for exemplifying passion, integrity, creativity, and the perseverance that is needed to connect people to new opportunities.

For more information, visit the 2021 SIA 40 Under 40 staffing list.

About Piper Companies:

Piper Companies is an elite staffing agency and human capital solutions firm specializing in information technology, life sciences, and clinical solutions. Since company inception in 2011, Piper Companies has been committed to developing collaborative partnerships with clients and consultants. It is at the core of the business to support clients in building high performing teams, while connecting premier talent with exceptional opportunities. Headquartered in McLean, Va., Piper Companies maintains offices in Raleigh, N.C.; Columbia, Md.; Conshohocken, Pa. For more information about Piper Companies, visit https://www.pipercompanies.com/.
We could be looking at a complete paradigm shift where search is concerned

Terry Cane, COO of global SSL service domain registration and SEO hosting provider SEO Host (https://www.seohost.net), believes the recent French rulings against Google's parent company, Alphabet, could significantly impact search engine optimization in the long-term.

The first ruling, reported by Reuters in June, saw the tech giant commit to changing its global advertising business. The settlement, which included a fine of $268 million, is meant to put power back in the hands of publishers. And though it may not have any immediate impact, French authorities hope their success here inspires similar antitrust cases elsewhere in the world.

The second ruling, announced earlier this month, was focused on Google's News Showcase program. Regulators maintained that Google failed to comply with orders regarding negotiation with France's news publishers amidst a copyright dispute. The company was fined approximately $590 million and will face fines of over $1 million a day if it does not draft proposals for how it will compensate publishers for their content.

"At first glance, neither of these rulings have very much to do with SEO, but consider the longer-term," says Cane. "Google has held itself as somewhat unknowable for decades, ever since its inception. What we know about its algorithms is based entirely on what the company has told us directly, "

"This antitrust case, coupled with some of the other recent lawsuits against the company, could be the first step in changing that," she continues. "We could be looking at a complete paradigm shift where search is concerned. Even in the short-term, the notion that Google might be violating copyright law with some of its functionality is significant."

Google, which agreed to pay $76 million over the next three years to a group of French news publishers, has for its part maintained that it only ever acted in good faith. Although disappointed with both decisions, the company has acknowledged that it will comply with them.

####

About SEOHost.net:

Located in Orlando, Florida, with locations worldwide, SEOHost.Net provides a wide range of services in both the U.S. and the E.U., including domain registration, SSL Hosting for SEO, and VPS, dedicated, and A-Class IP hosting. The company offers exceptional service with a strong service level agreement, multiple geographic locations, and free migration. For more information, visit https://www.seohost.net.
Combining Siemplify and CrowdStrike speeds up investigation, facilitates automation of threat hunting and enables security teams to seamlessly orchestrate response across all endpoints.  Dennis Shaya, Siemplify GM of North America

Siemplify, the leading independent provider of security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR), today announced that its application is now available in the CrowdStrike Store, enabling CrowdStrike Falcon users to easily integrate with its SOAR solution for faster, more effective investigation and response.

The Siemplify app in the CrowdStrike Store combines the ability to build repeatable, automated playbooks with threat-centric case management, interactive investigation, collaboration and machine learning to make security operations smarter, more efficient and more effective. Meanwhile, the Siemplify Marketplace includes pre-packaged use cases that are tailor-made for CrowdStrike users, enabling Falcon users to hit the ground running with SOAR and realize value with minimal effort.

We are thrilled to showcase the Siemplify Security Operations Platform to CrowdStrikes prospects and customers, said Dennis Shaya, Siemplify general manager of North America. Combining Siemplify and CrowdStrike speeds up investigation, facilitates automation of threat hunting and enables security teams to seamlessly orchestrate response across all endpoints.

The CrowdStrike Store enables a single-agent, single-cloud ecosystem experience that allows customers to quickly activate new capabilities alongside the Falcon platform with unprecedented simplicity and without the need of additional agents or management of other infrastructures. Through the CrowdStrike Store, partners can bring innovation to market faster that serves the unique needs of customers across industries. The CrowdStrike Store leverages the power of the security cloud for both scale and rich telemetry, enabling partner applications to deliver faster, smarter and more effective solutions.

"The CrowdStrike Store was built to extend the power of the CrowdStrike Falcon platform through a curated and diverse partner ecosystem that provides instant interoperability with a variety of technologies to strengthen our customers security posture and safeguard against modern, evolving threats, said Matthew Polly, CrowdStrikes vice president of worldwide alliances, channels and business development.

Combining Siemplify SOAR with CrowdStrike capabilities, security operations teams can ingest Falcon detection events and alerts, automate data collection to speed up investigation, and orchestrate response leveraging CrowdStrike remediation actions across all the endpoints at machine speed  all within one interface.

As a vendor-agnostic SOAR provider, we proudly forge strong partnerships across the security ecosystem, Shaya said. Were delighted to partner with CrowdStrike to make Siemplify available directly from its enterprise store.

For more information, visit siemplify.co and crowdstrike.com.

About Siemplify

Siemplify, the leading independent security orchestration, automation and response (SOAR) provider, is redefining security operations for enterprises and MSSPs worldwide. The Siemplify platform is an intuitive workbench that enables security teams to manage their operations from end to end, respond to cyber threats with speed and precision and get smarter with every analyst interaction. Founded in 2015 by Israeli Intelligence experts, with extensive experience running and training security operations centers worldwide, Siemplify has raised $58 million in funding to date and is headquartered in New York, with offices in Tel Aviv. Visit us at siemplify.co and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.
As a result of the benefits of telehealth, the global telehealth market size is expected to reach $559.52 billion by 2027. It doesnt look like telehealth is going away anytime soon. But weve got to be careful that we address the telehealth challenges we still face so physicians can continue to provide expert-level care to patients virtually.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued social distancing recommendations, directing healthcare entities and physicians to offer clinical services using telehealth.(1) By April 2020, telehealth use for office visits and outpatient care was 78 times higher compared to utilization in February 2020.(2) Technological innovations, combined with public perception of the contagiousness of the virus, helped dramatically increase telehealth use. Now, some estimates predict that up to $250 billion in US healthcare spending could be shifted to virtual care.(2)

Stuart Long, CEO of InfoBionic, a premier digital health company, says, It doesnt look like telehealth is going away anytime soon. But weve got to be careful that we address the telehealth challenges we still face so physicians can continue to provide expert-level care to patients virtually.

COVID-19 vaccination rates are increasing, but so are new infection cases given the variants of the virus that are spreading nationally (and globally). Therefore, telehealth use continues to be an important part of the patient care experience. Utilization of these remote services has stabilized at 38 times higher than before the pandemic, and both consumer and physician attitudes toward these technologies have improved.(2) In its earliest days, only a limited number of services were approved for telehealth delivery. Now, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reimburses providers for hundreds of services furnished via telehealth.(3)

Benefits of Telehealth Technology

Beyond the obvious convenience of telehealth, remote telehealth technologies offer significant benefits to users:



Telehealth offers better access to care, especially for people in rural areas or areas with provider shortages.(4)

Telehealth saves healthcare entities a lot of money. A new study showed that using telehealth to access patients, rather than having them travel to an emergency department, saves as much as $1,500 per patient.(5)

Patients using Telehealth also save money; the national median cost for a telehealth virtual visit is around $50, while in-person visits typically cost between $85 and $740, depending on the patients needs.(6)

Telehealth utilization can actually strengthen the patient-provider relationship, since these technologies increase rates of communication and provide access to clinical data immediately, from any location.(7)

As a result of the benefits of telehealth, the global telehealth market size is expected to reach $559.52 billion by 2027.(8)

6 Challenges to Effective Telehealth

Even though telehealth technologies clearly benefit all members of the healthcare system, there are still significant challenges that must be addressed for this care model to truly succeed long term.

1. There are still large variations in legal and regulatory rules, regulations, and guidelines for practice.(4)

2. Currently, a lack of multistate telehealth licensure means that physicians cannot provide medical services across certain geographic barriers.(4)

3. Providers cannot perform comprehensive physician examinations via telehealth, making in-person office visits necessary. Remote patient monitoring devices can offer physicians information on the patients vital signs, but there is no comprehensive device nor one that goes subtantially beyond blood pressure, temperature, oxygen levels, glucose levels, cardiac rhythm, and pulse.

4. Technical difficulties may make using telehealth especially difficult for certain patients, such as the elderly.

5. Greater privacy and security risks may turn some patients away from these technologies.

6. The accuracy of data transmission may be compromised depending on factors such as Internet bandwidth.(4)

Telehealth, Before and After

The differences in telehealth before and after COVID-19 impact patients and providers alike.

Before COVID-19, only patients in remote or rural areas were given access to telehealth. Now, anyone has access to this service.(9)

Patients initially needed to travel to an office, hospital, or other medical center to receive telehealth services. Patients can now receive these services in their own homes.(9)

Providers can now see new and existing patients. Previously, only patients with an established patient-provider relationship were eligible for telehealth.(9)

Healthcare providers now also have the option to reduce or waive costs for telehealth visits provided under Medicare. Prior to COVID-19, deductibles and co-insurance applied for telehealth services.(9)

Telehealth is here to stay as an important component of effective patient care. Companies like InfoBionic will continue to develop innovative products, like the MoMe Kardia cardiac monitor, to keep patients and physicians connected virtually.

Its amazing to see where telehealth was compared to where its going. Right now, there are 29 states participating in the Hospitals Without Walls initiative, and thats going to increase. The pandemic was a catalyst for healthcare entities to make a major shift globally. Now comes the part where we apply the lessons learned and make healthcare stronger, says Long.

About InfoBionic:

InfoBionic is a digital health company transforming the efficiency and economics of ambulatory remote patient monitoring processes by optimizing clinical and real-world utility for the users that need it most  physicians and their patients. The Massachusetts-based team of seasoned entrepreneurs have had successful careers in healthcare, IT, medical devices and mobile technology, and bring specific expertise in remote monitoring and cardiology. They have seen first-hand the complexities of traditional cardiac arrhythmia detection and monitoring processes and designed the transformative MoMe Kardia platform to remove the roadblocks hindering faster, more effective diagnosis and decision-making. Frost & Sullivan bestowed the 2019 North American Remote Cardiac Monitoring Technology Leadership Award upon InfoBionic.

Sources

1. Trends in the Use of Telehealth During the Emergence of the COVID-19 Pandemic - United States, JanuaryMarch 2020. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 30 Oct. 2020, cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6943a3.htm.

2. Bestsennyy, Oleg, et al. Telehealth: A Quarter-Trillion-Dollar Post-COVID-19 Reality? McKinsey & Company, McKinsey & Company, 9 July 2021, mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/telehealth-a-quarter-trillion-dollar-post-covid-19-reality.

3. List of Telehealth Services. CMS, 2021, cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-General-Information/Telehealth/Telehealth-Codes.

4. Gajarawala, Shilpa N, and Jessica N Pelkowski. Telehealth Benefits and Barriers. The Journal for Nurse Practitioners : JNP, Elsevier Inc., Feb. 2021, ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7577680/.

5. New Study Shows Telehealth Saves $1,500 Per Visit. OrthoLive, 18 Sept. 2020, ortholive.com/blog/new-study-shows-telehealth-saves-1500-per-visit/.

6. Lankford, Kimberly. How Telemedicine Can Save You Money | Family Finance | US News. U.S. News & World Report, U.S. News & World Report, 6 Apr. 2020, money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/family-finance/articles/how-telemedicine-can-save-you-money.

7. How Telehealth Enhances the Patient-Doctor Relationship. InTouch Health, 26 Mar. 2020, intouchhealth.com/how-telehealth-enhances-patient-doctor-relationship/#:~:text=Care%20providers%20are%20used%20to,effective%20as%20meeting%20in%20person.

8. Fortune Business Insights. Telehealth Market Size 2021: Is Projected to Reach USD 559.52 Billion by 2027 with a CAGR of 25.2%. GlobeNewswire News Room, Fortune Business Insights, 18 May 2021, globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/05/18/2231503/0/en/Telehealth-Market-Size-2021-Is-Projected-to-Reach-USD-559-52-Billion-by-2027-with-a-CAGR-of-25-2.html.

9. Telehealth Before and After COVID-19. Caravan Health, caravanhealth.com/CaravanHealth/media/Resources-Page/Telehealth_BeforeAfter_COVID19.pdf
Stratodesk Achieves VMware Partner Ready Validation for VMware Horizon Client 2106

Stratodesk, the leading global innovator in EUC management and OS software, today announced that its Stratodesk NoTouch has achieved VMware Ready status. This designation indicates that after a detailed validation process Stratodesk NoTouch OS 3.3.133 has achieved VMwares highest level of endorsement and is supported on VMware Horizon Client 21.06 for production environments.

We are pleased that Stratodesk NoTouch qualifies for the VMware Ready logo, signifying to customers that it has met specific VMware interoperability standards and works effectively with VMware cloud infrastructure. This signifies to customers that Stratodesk NoTouch OS can be deployed in production environments with confidence and can speed time to value within customer environments. said Kristen Edwards, director, Technology Alliance Partner Program, VMware.

"By using Stratodesk NoTouch OS with VMware Horizon 21.06 and its support for Microsoft Teams, we will be able to offer seamless collaboration to our customers, directly within one cohesive and easy to manage environment," says Yvan Kuonen, CEO at netwolk.

Today, there are more workers accessing critical apps and data from all around the world than ever before, says Stratodesk CEO, Emanuel Pirker. These workers need powerful, seamless solutions to make meeting and collaborating virtually even easier than it is in person. This is why enterprises are flocking to Microsoft Teams. Now, with our Day One support of VMwares newest release, Stratodesk and VMware users can benefit from a peerless collaboration environment within their existing framework.

The VMware Ready program is a co-branding benefit of the Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program that makes it easy for customers to identify partner products certified to work with VMware cloud infrastructure. Customers can use these products and solutions to lower project risks and realize cost savings over custom built solutions. With thousands of members worldwide, the VMware TAP program includes best-of-breed technology partners with the shared commitment to bring the best expertise and business solution for each unique customer need.

Stratodesk NoTouch OS can be found within the online VMware Marketplace at https://marketplace.cloud.vmware.com/services/details/notouch-desktop?slug=true. The VMware Marketplace is an online marketplace where VMware partners and developers can publish rich marketing content and downloadable software for our customers.

Connect with Stratodesk:

LinkedIn

Twitter

YouTube

Facebook

Instagram

Slack Community

About Stratodesk

Founded in 2010, Stratodesk is the fastest growing global software company redefining end user computing by delivering an all-in-one solution for VDI, DaaS and IoT markets. Stratodesks cutting edge Linux-based OS and management suite, NoTouch, is the hardware agnostic solution that enables companies to cost-effectively manage their entire secure digital perimeter. The Stratodesk solution works seamlessly across x86 based hardware products to provide a unified platform for all your endpoints. Today with nearly one million licenses deployed across multiple industries. For more information, please visit http://www.stratodesk.com.

About Stratodesk NoTouch

Stratodesk NoTouch Center and NoTouch OS together are the leading thin client endpoint software letting organizations transform any PC, thin client, or laptop into a secure and centrally managed VDI/DaaS endpoint. NoTouch is a proven endpoint software for VMware Horizon, as well as many others  on-premises or Cloud. Stratodesk customers use NoTouch software in their VMware Horizon deployments to save money by eliminating hardware refreshes, licensing of third party software, and IT work hours.

# # #

Stratodesk, Stratodesk NoTouch, Stratodesk NoTouch OS, and Stratodesk NoTouch Center are registered trademarks or trademarks of Stratodesk in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

VMware, VMware Horizon and VMware Ready are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Sudrania is experiencing robust global growth and has hired over 300 experienced professionals in the last six months, along with opening its newest office in Toronto, Canada to support the future expansion of its cutting-edge, end-to-end cloud-based fund administration services.

Sudrania Fund Services (Sudrania) is pleased to announce the expansion of its global leadership team, bringing its global headcount to over 600 experienced team members.

George Shinn, Kimberley Vercoe, Abhishek Sharma, Justin Kam, Ashish Malhotra, Kavita Bansal and Sushil Jain will contribute their deep industry experience to improve new service offerings and overall value for fund managers. With these new appointments, Sudrania is focused on ensuring maximum success in Fund Administration.

These new team members share our strategic vision to drive technology innovations. This is a rare opportunity to change an industry for the better. With all the experience and perspectives our new team members bring, we are confident in achieving our next level of growth by continuing to develop our technology roadmap to meet the needs of managers and their investors, says Nilesh Sudrania, Founder & CEO of Sudrania Fund Services Corp.

George Shinn, Senior Vice President: Over 23 years of experience in the alternative investments space in research, portfolio management, and distribution. He has worked with institutional investors in the U.S. and abroad to structure and manage single and multi-manager funds. He is series 3 and series 63 licensed.

Kimberley Vercoe, Vice President  Fund Administration: 25+ years of experience in finance, auditing, taxation, compliance, regulatory reporting, fund operation and business development with futures brokerage firms, managed futures funds, exchanges, and banks. Kimberley is a CPA and has MBA and FINRA Series 3 certifications.

Abhishek Sharma, Corporate Counsel: 15+ years of experience, background in financial technology with expertise in the banking & financial service platforms, software licensing, blockchain & cloud services, data privacy, intellectual property, and regulatory compliance. Abhishek is a California-licensed attorney and holds a Master of Laws from U.C. Berkeley.

Justin Kam, Compliance Officer: 20+ years of combined experience in legal and compliance. Previously, he worked with a national compliance consulting firm and had a private practice providing legal services to investment advisers and other financial professionals. Justin has a B.S. in Finance from Penn State University and a J.D. from Nova Southeastern University - Shepard Broad College of Law.

Kavita Bansal, Vice President  Operations: 17+ years of experience in the Financial Services industry. She has worked with global organizations to support Custody & Securities and Fund Accounting functions. She is skilled in the Service Delivery, Transitions, Operations Risk Management and Relationship Management. Kavita is also a Chartered Accountant.

Ashish Malhotra, Vice President  Operations: More than 17 years of experience in Fund Administration, Treasury, Product Control and Valuation. He has held leadership roles in large Investment Banks and Asset Management companies. Ashish has CA and CFA certifications.

Sushil Jain, Vice President  Operations: 15+ years of diverse experience in the Financial Services industry. He has worked with global organizations to support the hedge fund accounting, private equity accounting, Loan operations and other related areas. He is a Chartered Accountant and MBA (Finance).

The operational needs of investment managers are constantly evolving, as asset classes emerge, and investor demands increase. This transformation will require professionals who understand how to help these managers focus on generating alpha while providing the reporting and transparency required, added Nitin Somani, co-Founder of Sudrania Fund Services Corp.

About Sudrania Fund Services

Sudrania Fund Services is a global fund administrator based in Chicago, Illinois that leverages its proprietary Seamless platform, an award-winning, full-scale cloud-based, fund administration application which integrates portfolio, fund accounting and investor reporting, to provide best-in-class and cost-efficient solutions to both the traditional and alternative investment fund management community. Seamless Suite can process high-frequency trading volumes to deliver daily NAV for hedge funds, cryptocurrency funds, SPVs, mutual funds, private equity funds, impact funds, commodity pools and mortgage funds. Sudranias operations and technology are SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 audited, and it currently has over 600 staff across its eight offices globally. Sudrania has been nominated/shortlisted in many industry awards for its services and technology. Recently, Sudrania has been shortlisted in the upcoming HFM U.S. Services Awards for Best Administrator in the category of Emerging Managers, Reporting/Regulatory Services and Technology.
Clint and Jonathan have significantly contributed to T3 Sixtys capabilities and important client initiatives, said T3 Sixty President Jack Miller. We look forward to continued leadership from them in their enhanced roles.

T3 Sixty, a real estate management consulting and analytics firm, announces the promotion of Clint Skutchan to senior vice president of organized real estate and Jonathan Peterson to senior vice president of brokerage technologies.

Skutchan joined T3 Sixty in March 2018 as vice president of organized real estate, and has worked on nearly 90 projects worth over $1 million in revenue. In this role, he has worked with three of the nations largest MLSs to develop expansion plans, conducted strategic planning for Texas Realtors, helped the nations third largest MLS, Steller MLS, develop an innovation project, and helped facilitate the MLS thought leadership group, MLS Roundtable. Before joining T3 Sixty, Skutchan served as CEO of the Fort Collins (Colorado) Board of Realtors for nearly a decade.

Peterson joined T3 Sixty in March 2020 as vice president of brokerage technology. In his time at T3 Sixty, he consulted with over 55 tech companies and has helped brokers refine their technology stacks, including Compass and numerous independent brokers. A specialist in broker operational systems including accounting, transaction management, compliance and e-signature, Peterson previously served for over a decade in sales with Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies.

Clint and Jonathan have significantly contributed to T3 Sixtys capabilities and important client initiatives, said T3 Sixty President Jack Miller. We look forward to continued leadership from them in their enhanced roles.

About T3 Sixty

T3 Sixty is a trusted advisor and management consultancy in the residential real estate brokerage industry. T3 Sixty also provides extensive data services and research to affect intelligent change and growth. For more, visit t360.com.


International Best in Business Awards All organizations private or public, corporations, nonprofits, associations, vendors and government organizations worldwide are eligible to enter. Categories for the International Best in Business Awards have been updated.

The Globee Awards organizer of worlds premier business awards programs and business ranking lists is now accepting nominations and entries for the 2021 International Best in Business Awards. To celebrate achievements Globee Awards has introduced new commemorative items.

The International Best in Business Awards are the worlds premier business awards program honoring achievements in every industry around the world. Everyone deserves commendation for job well done. Identify, recognize, and nominate talented executives, professionals, and employees for their achievements no matter how small or large. There are many categories in which your organization, products and services, and the people behind their success can be nominated. Categories are classified under the following groups:



Company | Growth and Outstanding Achievements of the Year Awards Categories Group

Company | Best Company Awards Categories Group

Company | Startup Awards Categories Group (formed between 2017 and 2021)

Corporate Communications and PR | People Awards Categories Group

Corporate Communications and PR | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Creative | App & Mobile Website Awards Categories Group

Creative | Live Events Awards Categories Group

Creative | Publications and Print Awards Categories Group

Creative | Video, Commercial, Advertising, and Film Awards Categories Group

Creative | Web, Social Media, and Online Presence Awards Categories Group

Creative | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Customer Service & Support | People Awards Categories Group

Customer Service & Support | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Customer Success of the Year Awards Categories Group

Human Resources | People Awards Categories Group

Human Resources | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

Information Technology Users | People Awards Categories Group

Information Technology Users | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

International Business | People Awards Categories Group

International Business | Campaign, Outstanding Performance, Projects or Initiative, & Teams-Departments Awards Categories Group

Marketing | People Awards Categories Group

Marketing | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Categories | AI, Technology and CyberSecurity Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Categories | Content Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Categories | Education Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Categories | Healthcare Awards Categories Group

New Product & Service Categories | Industry and Vertical Markets Awards Categories Group

People | Entrepreneur Awards Categories Group

People | Executive, Management, and Professionals Awards Categories Group

People | Professional and Staffer (non-executive) of the Year Awards Categories Group

Product Development | People Awards Categories Group

Product Development | Campaign, Outstanding Achievement, Project or Initiative, and Team-Department Awards Categories Group

COVID-19 Business Response Awards Categories Group

Learn more about the 2021 International Best in Business Awards and how to nominate here: https://globeeawards.com/international-business-awards/

Winners of previous years are listed here: https://globeeawards.com/international-business-awards/winners/

Stay posted and read success stories of organizations by subscribing to the Globee Newsletter: https://globeeawards.com/subscribe/

A worldwide judging panel of executives and professionals representing a wide-spectrum of industries will determine the winners. Winners will be presented and honored in a virtual ceremony attended by the finalists, winners, judges and industry peers from all over the world. Industry experts and end-users or consumers of product and services can participate in the judging process.

More details to register as an industry expert and help as a judge are available at https://globeeawards.com/international-business-awards/judges/

About the Globee Awards

Globee Awards are conferred in eleven programs and competition: the American Best in Business Awards, Business Excellence Awards (Best Employers), CEO World Awards, Communications Excellence Awards, Sales, Marketing, & Service Excellence Awards, Cyber Security Global Excellence Awards, Disruptor Company Awards, Golden Bridge Awards, International Best in Business Awards, IT World Awards, and Women World Awards. Learn more about the Globee Awards at https://globeeawards.com

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Helping companies stay on the cutting edge of these technologies with an affordable, flexible financing solution is a terrific opportunity. Adding a business development leader like Deepika is a critical step to effectively meeting the rising market demand.

Business development leader to bring fintech payment solutions to rapidly growing sector.

TimePayment, an award-winning FinTech company specializing in commercial equipment financing, announced the appointment of Deepika Shahani as Vice President and leader of the firms Point of Sale & Terminal Leasing efforts. The new Business Unit will enhance the firms long-time commitment to funding in the bankcard industry.

Deepika brings over 15 years of strategic operations and business development experience in Point of Sale and Terminal Leasing. The experience gained while successfully leading the underwriting and operations functions of a national finance provider to the bankcard market was powerfully leveraged to eventually head business development efforts and assemble a $25MM leasing portfolio of over 200 Bankcard industry clients.

Jay Haverty, President & CEO of TimePayment said, POS technology has undergone a radical transformation as businesses have reinvested in new platforms & capabilities both during and post-COVID. Improved customer and employee experiences with innovative new hardware and software opens new opportunities for businesses to transact in a more powerful way. Helping companies stay on the cutting edge of these technologies with an affordable, flexible financing solution is a terrific opportunity. Adding a business development leader like Deepika is a critical step to effectively meeting the rising market demand.

Deepika and the Point of Sale and Terminal Leasing Business Unit of TimePayment will be exhibiting at the Midwest Acquirers Association in Chicago this week and will be active in a variety of industry associations and events in the coming months. You can learn more about TimePayments Point of Sale and Terminal Leasing capabilities right here.

About TimePayment

TimePayment is a Boston-based FinTech company owned by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group, a leading, highly diversified global investment manager. TimePayment leads the industry with technology tools and capital that enables equipment sellers and financial intermediaries to offer fast, paperless equipment lease financing to their customers. The companys proprietary credit scoring and risk-based transaction model delivers competitive lease financing solutions across the credit spectrum; from Fortune 500 companies to small business start-ups. TimePayment proudly serves more than 100,000 active accounts with transaction sizes ranging from $500 to over $500,000.

Learn more at TimePayment.com
wolfSSL has announced TLS 1.3 support for sniffer users. The wolfSSL sniffer can be used to passively sniff SSL/TLS traffic including https traffic. wolfSSL supports industry standards up to the current TLS 1.3, for which we were the first commercial implementation. Our sniffer users benefit from this compatibility with the latest TLS protocol. Users can download wolfSSL 4.8.0 to access TLS 1.3 sniffer support: https://www.wolfssl.com/download/.

For TLS v1.3, all cipher suites use a new ephemeral key for each new session. Only Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) ciphers are allowed, whereas typically a static RSA ciphersuite would be used. In order to solve this, we added a static ephemeral feature, which allows setting a known key that is used for deriving a shared secret. The key can be rolled periodically and synchronized for internal or test environments. Weve also created a Key Manager for secure distribution of ephemeral keys based on the ETSI TS 103 523-3 specification.

The wolfSSL sniffer can be integrated into any application using the existing sniffer API. Only five calls are required making it easy to integrate into any project. As a proof of concept, we added this support to Apache httpd to demonstrate real-time decryption of web traffic. Email us at facts@wolfSSL.com for access to the Apache httpd branch with sniffer and FIPS ready support.

Some of the main advantages of switching to TLS 1.3 from earlier versions of the protocol include quicker connection times due to reduced roundtrips during the handshake, reduced latency, improved session resumption, and more secure crypto by default. wolfSSL supports TLS 1.3 on both client and server side. To learn more about the advantages of TLS 1.3, visit our reference page: https://www.wolfssl.com/docs/tls13/.

For additional information on wolfSSLs TLS 1.3 sniffer, visit https://www.wolfssl.com/sniffing-traffic-tls-v1-3/ and download wolfSSL version 4.8.0:



Under GPLv2 license at: https://github.com/wolfssl

Or through our website: https://www.wolfssl.com/download/

For licensing questions, contact licensing@wolfssl.com, or meet wolfSSL on the ground at Black Hat USA! For a list of upcoming events to connect virtually or in-person, check out our events page: https://www.wolfssl.com/events/.

ABOUT WOLFSSL wolfSSL focuses on providing lightweight and embedded security solutions with an emphasis on speed, size, portability, features, and standards compliance. With its SSL/TLS products and crypto library, wolfSSL is supporting high security designs in automotive, avionics and other industries. In avionics, wolfSSL supports complete RTCA DO-178C level A certification. In automotive, we support MISRA-C capabilities. For government consumers, wolfSSL has a strong history in FIPS 140-2, with upcoming FIPS 140-3. wolfSSL supports industry standards up to the current TLS 1.3 and DTLS 1.2, is up to 20 times smaller than OpenSSL, offers a simple API, an OpenSSL compatibility layer, is backed by the robust wolfCrypt cryptography library, 24x7 support and much more. Our products are open source, giving customers the freedom to look under the hood.

Connect with wolfSSL on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wolfssl/

Read our Blog: https://www.wolfssl.com/blog/
U.S. Auto Sales hosts a Back to School giveaway event to give away school supplies to free for families in need.

U.S. Auto Sales will host a Back-to-School giveaway event on Saturday, July 31, 2021, at its Tampa retail location. Beginning at 11:00 AM EST, the store locations will welcome anyone needing help with school supplies for the upcoming school year. U.S. Auto will provide a bag stuffed with a variety of school supplies to the first 100 guests who visit the store (while supplies last, no purchase necessary).

U.S. Auto Sales is passionate about serving our local communities. We understand that back-to-school shopping can be a financial burden for many of our neighbors. We are honored to lend a helping hand and equip kids for a great school year with new school supplies, said Colin Bachinsky, chief executive officer.

For more information about the Back-to-School event, please visit usautosales.info/back-to-school. U.S. Auto Sales Tampa store is located at 9389 Florida Ave. in Tampa, FL 33612.

Founded in 1992 on the principles of quality, trust and respect, U.S. Auto Sales is among the largest integrated sales and finance sub-prime auto groups in the country providing pre-owned vehicles and financing to consumers underserved by traditional credit providers. All credit levels are welcome at U.S. Auto Sales, whether buying, selling or trading a vehicle. Currently operating retail locations in GA, SC, NC, FL and TN, U.S. Auto Sales is a customer-centric organization offering a variety of benefits including the Five and Drive program, lay-away, and flexible down payment options. Additionally, customers can choose an online or in-person buying experience. For more information, please visit http://www.usautosales.info.
MatrixPoint Consulting The session will highlight the most critical requirements and highlight state-specific regulations that potentially impact your business

We are witnessing a global trend of data privacy regulations and because there is no federal data privacy law or central data protection authority tasked with ensuring compliance, a number of US states have taken it upon themselves to enact or propose their own data privacy laws.

Navigating through each states laws and regulations can be daunting. However, MatrixPoint and Rutan & Tucker are jointly providing a webinar to unravel the complexities of the expanding state-by-state privacy laws.

The session will highlight the most critical requirements and highlight state-specific regulations that potentially impact your business and will conclude with the most efficient and cost-effective solutions to achieve, maintain, and "future-proof" your company as data privacy compliance laws proliferate.

The one-hour webinar will address these topics:



State by state data privacy laws, the similarities, and differences and how they impact businesses

Approaches to building a national and international privacy program

Strategies to "right-size" your data compliance effort

Approaches to "future-proof" your business in anticipation of new data privacy regulations

To register for this webinar, visit: Understanding the Expanding Data Privacy Laws and its Impact on Businesses on Thursday, July 22 at 1:00 PM PDT Eventbrite.

About MatrixPoint

MatrixPoint Consulting is a data-centric consulting firm that specializes in media analysis, marketing efficiency, and data privacy compliance. MatrixPoint Consulting was created to help companies improve their business processes, their relationship with their customers, and ultimately, their bottom line. We are continuously evolving how we work and how we look at the ever-changing marketplace, so we can continue to deliver meaningful, sustainable results for our clients and their customers.

About Rutan & Tucker

Rutan & Tucker, LLP is one of Californias largest full-service law firms with offices in Irvine, Palo Alto and San Francisco. Primary practice areas include corporate and securities law, business litigation, banking and finance, labor and employment law, intellectual property, real estate, government and regulatory law, land use law, bankruptcy, condemnation and property valuation, environmental law, construction law and tax law. As the largest full-service law firm based in Orange County, California, Rutan & Tucker has played an active role in the Countys maturation into a world-class metropolitan area that reflects the richness of Californias cultural diversity. We strive to achieve that same result within our law firm, acknowledging that diversity benefits our firm, our clients, and our community, and promotes our firms core values of excellence, teamwork, and integrity.
"For lucky New-Yorkers in the know, spending High Holidays at an iconic venue with a creative and musical Rabbi and his band will be an experience to be savored. Those not in the Big Apple can join services via zoom."

Rabbi Steven Blane will once again lead his Jazz Quartet for High Holiday Services at the iconic Bitter End in the West Village on Rosh Hashanah Tuesday, Sept. 7th, and Yom Kippur Thursday Sept. 16th at 10:30am.

Here is a link to High Holidays at The Bitter End in 2019.

Also for the first time, join the Rabbi Blane Trio for Dinner & Kol Nidre at Silvanna in Harlem on Wednesday, Sept. 15th at 4:30 PM. Only 30 seats are available!

Last year because of covid the services were on zoom. Sim Shalom will have a zoom option again this year for those who cannot be in New York or are not able to attend in person.

ALL Ticket options are available here.

Clearly ahead of his time, ten years prior to covid, Rabbi Steven Blane founded Congregation Sim Shalom which was the worlds only fully online synagogue and offered worship services.

Also ten years ago, Rabbi Blane founded the online Rabbinical School, JSLI- Jewish Spiritual Leaders Institute. To date, Rabbi Blane and his staff have trained and ordained more than 170 Rabbis and Cantors who are serving Jewish communities around the world.

In past years, Rabbi Blane led Jazzy High Holiday Services with his Quartet for sold-out crowds at the iconic Bitter End club in the West Village of Manhattan.

This year, there will be just 70 seats available for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur morning Services. For lucky New-Yorkers in the know, spending High Holidays at an iconic venue with a creative and musical Rabbi and his band will be an experience to be savored.

ABOUT JEWISH SPIRITUAL LEADERS INSTITUTE, SIM SHALOM AND RABBI STEVE BLANE

Sim Shalom is an interactive online Jewish Universalist synagogue which is liberal in thought and traditional in liturgy. Created in 2010 by Rabbi Steven Blane on Manhattan's Upper West Side, Sim Shalom offers a means of connecting the unconnected. Rabbi Blane leads accessible and short Shabbat services every Friday night using a virtual interface and additionally Sim Shalom provides online education programs, Jazz concerts, conversion and life-cycle ceremonies along with weeknight services at 7:00PM EST.

Rabbi Blane is also the founder and director of the Jewish Spiritual Leader's Institute, http://www.jsli.net, the online professional rabbinical program and founder of the Union of Jewish Universalist Communities at http://www.ujuc.org.

Sim Shalom, a non profit 501  (3) tax-exempt organization, nurtures a Jewish connection through its mission of innovative services, creative education and dynamic outreach to the global community. For more information visit our website or call 201-338-0165.
Drivers should not let their policies be automatically renewed without comparing prices. Comparing multiple quotes just before the renewal date can help drivers save considerable amounts of money, said Russell Rabichev, Marketing Director of Internet Marketing Company.

Compare-autoinsurance.org has launched a new blog post that explains how drivers can save money if they obtain car insurance quotes before the renewal date.

For more info and free car insurance quotes online, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/why-compare-insurance-costs-before-renewal/

Policyholders who let their car insurance coverage to be automatically renewed are probably making a big mistake. Drivers should research the insurance market and look for better deals before renewal time arrives. Usually, insurance companies are sending renewal information 30-45 days before the renewal date. This period is enough for policyholders to analyze the insurance prices and to decide if they should remain with the current provider or they should look for another one.

Before making any major decision, drivers should consider the following:



Drivers should check if all the info about them is updated. The new insurance rates should consider the recent major changes in the lives of the policyholders. Many of these changes can have a significant impact on insurance premiums. Events, like getting married, or getting a better job, can lower the costs of car insurance. If the insurer is not aware of these events, drivers should contact them and ask for updated insurance rates.

Consider looking for another provider. If all info is correct, but the premiums have risen, then the policyholder is the victim of price optimization. This strategy is used by insurance providers on clients who are deemed to be less likely to look for better insurance deals on the insurance market. In this case, drivers should consider switching their carriers and look for better car insurance deals.

Shop around for better car insurance deals. Comparing online car insurance quotes can help drivers find better car insurance deals. Brokerage websites will allow drivers to discover insurance offers made by multiple insurance providers that sell policies in their areas. Drivers who got the insurance policy they wanted can request the help of an insurance agent to further customize that policy and save more money on insurance.

Check the discounts. Drivers who are considering switching their insurers should check the discounts provided by the current carrier. Bundling discounts can be really rewarding and drivers who combine the homeowner's insurance with car insurance can save as much as 20%.

For additional info, money-saving tips and free car insurance quotes, visit https://compare-autoinsurance.org/

Compare-autoinsurance.org is an online provider of life, home, health, and auto insurance quotes. This website is unique because it does not simply stick to one kind of insurance provider, but brings the clients the best deals from many different online insurance carriers. In this way, clients have access to offers from multiple carriers all in one place: this website. On this site, customers have access to quotes for insurance plans from various agencies, such as local or nationwide agencies, brand names insurance companies, etc.
Reaching the milestone of 20 million windows sold demonstrates our ability to thrive as a company while connecting with homeowners along the way.

Window World, Americas largest replacement window and exterior remodeling company, is proud to announce it recently sold its 20 millionth window. This accomplishment demonstrates the companys growth and success in the midst of a challenging economy.

Reaching the milestone of 20 million residential windows sold and installed demonstrates that homeowners around the country are extremely satisfied with the quality and value of Window World products. Window World has sold and installed more than one million residential replacement windows each year of the last decade.

Window World consistently delivers outstanding products and service, and our customers appreciate the attention we pay to their homes, says Window World Chairman and CEO Tammy Whitworth. This past year, most folks spent more time inside than ever before, and Window World helped ensure their homes were safe, functional and beautiful. Reaching the milestone of 20 million windows sold demonstrates our ability to thrive as a company while connecting with homeowners along the way.

Window World recently ranked in Entrepreneur magazines Franchise 500, the worlds first, best and most comprehensive franchise ranking. The company ranked number 268 (up from 356 the previous year) for its outstanding performance in areas including unit growth, financial strength and stability, and brand power. Window World also broke into the top 200 of the Franchise Times Top 200+, an annual ranking of the 500 largest United States franchise brands. The company ranked number 123 in the latest list. Additionally, Window World maintained its authority as the number one replacement contractor in the 2020 REMODELING 550 list. It is also ranked as the number one national home improvement and remodeling company in Qualified Remodelers 2020 Top 500.

About Window World

Window World, headquartered in North Wilkesboro, N.C., is Americas largest replacement window and exterior remodeling company, with more than 200 locally owned franchises nationwide. Founded in 1995, the company sells and installs windows, siding, doors and other exterior products, with over 20 million windows sold to date. Window World is an ENERGY STAR partner and its windows, vinyl siding and Therma-Tru doors have all earned the Good Housekeeping Seal. Through its charitable foundation, Window World Cares, Window World and its franchisees provide funding for St. Jude Childrens Research Hospital. Since its inception in 2008, the foundation has raised over $12 million for St. Jude. Window World also supports veterans and the military through its Window World Military Initiative (WWMI). WWMI defines Window Worlds commitment to honor and serve Americas veterans, active military and military families across the entire franchise system by focusing on three pillars: Careers, Community Outreach and Partnerships. The Veterans Airlift Command has been a partner since 2008. During that time, Window World has contributed over $2.5 million in flights and donations to the organization. For more information, visit WindowWorld.com or call 1-800 NEXTWINDOW. For home improvement and energy efficiency tips, decor ideas and more, follow Window World on Facebook and Twitter.


"Demand for business professionals with strong technical skills and expertise continues to increase, and Worcester Polytechnic Institutes online graduate programs set the standard in business and technical career advancement," said Joe Diamond, CEO of All Campus

All Campus, which partners with leading, traditional higher education institutions to grow their online enrollment and maximize market share, today announced a partnership with Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Under the agreement, All Campus will provide its suite of OPM services for three of Worcester Polytechnic Institutes graduate business and technology degree programs.

All three programs  a Master in Business Administration, a Master of Science in Business Analytics and a Master of Science in Information Technology  are offered through the Business School at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, bolstering the universitys online graduate business and technology degree offerings. Through the partnership, All Campus will provide Worcester Polytechnic Institute with its full suite of services, including student enrollment and recruitment and corporate partnerships.

Our online business and technology graduate programs are designed to help professionals develop more than just skill sets  they are built to enable students to develop strategic business mindsets with applied technological know how, said Reverend Dr. Debora Jackson, Dean of the WPI Business School. With its extensive track record of success in other online business and technology programs, were excited to partner with All Campus to grow our degree programs within the WPI Business School.

As one of less than 5% of business schools in the world that is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), the WPI Business School provides students with the opportunity to earn business degrees with a specific emphasis on technology and innovation. The flexible online classes, taught by leading faculty members, offer real-world experience to a global community by combining experiential learning with a STEM focus.

Were thrilled to partner with one of the premier technological institutions in the country in Worcester Polytechnic Institute, said Joe Diamond, CEO of All Campus. Demand for business professionals with strong technical skills and expertise continues to increase, and Worcester Polytechnic Institutes online graduate programs set the standard in business and technical career advancement. All Campuss expertise and resources ensure that Worcester Polytechnic Institutes degree programs match students, organizations and current job market needs.

To learn more about Worcester Polytechnic Institutes online graduate business and technology degree programs, please visit: https://onlinebusiness.wpi.edu/.

To learn more about All Campus, please visit allcampus.com.

About All Campus

All Campus creates value for leading universities by expanding their reach and cultivating relationships with students who seek to advance their lives through education. It offers comprehensive, tailored online program management (OPM) services, powered by industry-leading technology  all with the universitys unique identity and brand top of mind. It has built its reputation on delivering measurable results, being an honest broker, and providing high levels of service to its two primary constituencies: prospective and enrolled students, and university administrators. All Campus deep research, powerful insights and understanding of current job market and employer needs helps its partners tailor their offerings to optimize student outcomes and return on investment. The companys flexible payment and service options include bundled or unbundled offerings and fee-for-service management or a customized low and sustainable revenue share plan.

About Worcester Polytechnic Institute

The Worcester Polytechnic Institute holds firm to its founding mission to provide an education that balances theory with practice. Its aim is to create a quality experience for its students and a positive impact for its partner communities. The universitys curriculum features flexible, rigorous programs that are project-based and globally engaged. WPI faculty members work with students on interdisciplinary research with the goal of finding solutions to important and socially relevant problems.

The WPI Business School is grounded in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) and integrates these into its graduate programs. Students receive a world-class education that prepares them to lead at the intersection of technology and business. A project-based approach to learning and doing informs our curriculum. Our students take advantage of the universitys strong relationships with technology-intensive organizations around the world and a network of more than 50 global project centers.
Since its founding in 2015, AfterShock has made its mark in the world of comics with broad-ranging graphic novels for adult readers. Now, the independent publisher is shaking things up with the launch of its new YA imprint, Seismic Press. The imprint aims to publish engrossing and emotionally impactful graphic novels for readers age 12 to 18. PW spoke with AfterShock senior vice president Steve Rotterdam about reaching a new young adult audience, and the creators of Seismics inaugural titles: Steve Foxe and Steve Orlando (Rainbow Bridge) and Richard Ashley Hamilton (Fearbook Club).

Steve, what do you most want readers to know about Seismic and the range of books you will be offering to readers?

Steve Rotterdam: We think our tagline, Breaking New Ground, speaks volumes about ourer, volumes. These are not graphic novels that fit in nicely and quietly amidst the usual suspects. These are mean to be troublemakers  within the bounds of age-appropriateness of course.

What made you decide to launch a YA imprint?

Steve Rotterdam: Two growing trends working in tandem. First, more and more creators from across the comics community coming to AfterShock to pitch their fantastic concepts meant for young readers. Second, increasing numbers of educators, librarians, and retailers expressing their needs for graphic novels that address the interests and concerns of this growing audience of readers

How do the Seismic books stand apart from your mainline titles? In what ways do they uphold Aftershocks broader mission?

Steve Rotterdam: AfterShocks mission has always been to push readers out of their comfort zones and engage them in content that challenges their presumptions as well as the status quo. Many of the writers and artists weve worked with at AfterShock have something to say to younger readers of graphic novels. Important things. Personal things. Things for which, up until now and for one reason or another, theyve had no outlet. We aspire to provide creators with opportunities to tell the stories theyve always wanted to tell in ways in which theyve always wanted them told. That part of our mission carries over to Seismic Press.

Whats upcoming for Seismic?

Steve Rotterdam: Beyond Rainbow Bridge, additional titles under the Seismic Press imprint will begin rolling out in January 2022, including original works by How To Train Your Dragons Richard Ashley Hamilton and Orphan Age writer Ted Anderson. Plans for the line also include repackaging of AfterShock series that have already demonstrated strong YA appeal.

Steve and Steve, with the caveat that I lost my own dog a couple months ago, Id love to hear more about Rainbow Bridge. Is the story ultimately a hopeful one?

Steve Foxe: First off, our sincere sympathies on your loss. Both of us Steves brought a lot of our own feelings about watching pets age and pass on to the story, and we also ended up dealing with significant veterinary issues during production. (Our dogs are doing just fine now, no worries!)

Rainbow Bridge will (ideally) tug on your heartstrings in the opening sections, but the goal was always to celebrate the fantasy of getting one last adventure with your best friend.

Steve Orlando: Andy and Rocket both have difficult challenges to overcome, but the book is hopeful, exciting, and thrilling, not mournful.

Something about the bond between a person and an animal companion makes us all emotionally vulnerable, so while young readers may more directly identify with Andy, readers of any age should connect with the bond between a boy and his (giant, talking afterlife) dog.

Richard, How did the idea for Fearbook Club originate?

Richard Ashley Hamilton: Fearbook Club started out as a campfire story I told my two sons one Friday the 13th. And I figured I might be onto something when both boys had nightmares that night. The more I thought about it, I realized I maybe inadvertently triggered a fear that their generation has in spades. Sort of a generalized anxiety and terror. The truly horrific thing is today's kids can't escape their anxiety. It follows them in their pockets, on their devices, everywhere they go. So, Fearbook Club is meant to be this modern horror story about kids and for kids. If we do our jobs right, we'll entertain readers and hopefully model some skills that'll help them survive the real fears in their real lives.
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Patricia Dunn was appointed as the feed program administrator for the Office of the Indiana State Chemist.
Viacom International Studios (VIS) has signed a long-term agreement for the co-production of audiovisual projects and content with independent Italian production and distribution company Leone Film Group.





The agreement marks opportunities for the development and creation of Italian language content, original, scripted, and unscripted formats. As part of its commitment to investing in quality content as a strategic lever to generate value for all platforms globally, VIS is bolstering its production capacities in Europe by tapping into the creativity and talent in Italy.Laura Abril, SVP & head of VIS EMEA and Asia, commented: We are thrilled to launch this important agreement between VIS and Leone Film Group, a leading company in Italy. At VIS we continue to collaborate with the most talented content creators around the world and this agreement aligns perfectly to our strategy. We can't wait for these stories to come to life and reach the homes of our global audiences".Added Raffaella Leone, CEO of Leone Film Group: We are very proud to announce this important agreement with VIS Together, we look forward to delivering original and innovative Italian projects distinguished by an international quality that will appeal to viewers everywhere and have the potential to be distributed worldwide.More news on the projects will be announced shortly. All co-produced content will be distributed directly or indirectly through third parties by ViacomCBSNetworks Italy.
Apollo 11

Seeing history clearly

Apollo 11 spacecraft that went to the moon 52 years ago had parts made in Reading
Last week, the European Commission presented its so-called Fit for 55 proposals, a raft of legislative initiatives intended to adapt EU law to the 2030 target of reducing CO 2 emissions by 55 percent from 1990 levels. The idea is to adapt legislation originally intended to achieve a 40% reduction.

This undertaking, however, is marked by serious shortcomings. Herewith, I summarize whats wrong with it, listing four main flaws.

The European Commission is employing a top-down approach, riddled with taxes and spending

The European Commission seems to take former U.S. president Ronald Reagans characterization of governments view of the economy as a manual, rather than as a warning. As Reagan summarized governments approach: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.

Most remarkable here is the Commissions intention to impose a de facto ban on gasoline and diesel cars by 2035, even if France seems keen to extend this until 2040. When even France is less restrictive, youre not in a good place. Feeling the need to resort to outright prohibition, the Commission is clearly not putting great trust in innovation to come up with economically efficient, CO 2 -neutral cars.

A notable change is the expansion of the EUs cap and trade scheme, which puts a price on emitting CO 2 but allows companies to buy and sell their right to do so. The Commission wants to expand this so-called Emissions Trading System (ETS)  set up 16 years ago and covering power plants, intra-EU aviation, and energy-intensive industries  to include buildings, road transport, and shipping. The expansion would start gradually in 2023 and be phased in over three years, as the emission-rights regime for aviation is being tightened up and sectors not covered by ETS are made subject to emission-reduction targets, with binding targets per member state. EU minimum excise-duty rates on various energy sources, like motor or heating fuel, would also need to be increased, and a jet-fuel tax would need to be introduced on intra-EU flights, on top of a tax on maritime fuel.

Opponents of the proposals, which still need to be approved by both EU member states and the European Parliament, include the shipping industry, which hasnt exactly welcomed its inclusion into the ETS system. The International Chamber of Shipping described the proposal as an ideological revenue raising exercise, which will greatly upset the EUs trading partners, as it would involve non-EU shipping companies to be forced to pay billions of euros to support EU economic recovery plans.

This doesnt even account for another part of Fit for 55, whereby the Commission intends to create the worlds first carbon border tariff, to be levied on imports of goods including steel, cement, and aluminum, to be phased in from 2026. This step is deemed necessary because two-thirds of CO-emissions are likely to continue, only now outside of the EU, causing carbon leakage  a phenomenon notably hard to estimate, although we know that China has long outpaced the U.S. and the EU in terms of carbon emission.

In response, Belgian employer federation VBO-FEB issued a warning about this carbon border adjustment mechanism, stating that policy makers must be careful that () this will not cause other countries to impose countermeasures or cause supply chain distortions, leading us to import more finished products than raw resources. The question remains as to whether this is not a protectionist measure in violation of the WTO agreement  especially when certain European producers would be exempt. In any case, it will unleash lots of extra bureaucracy, especially for small companies.

Also in line with Reagans description of government thinking is the European Commissions plan to spend billions of euros to compensate for the damage done by its own measures  such as its proposal for a new social climate fund to prevent fuel poverty, using one-fifth of ETS revenue, on top of another fund, the 100 billion Just Transition Mechanism to help coal-dependent countries like Poland make the transition away from coal. Combined with the Commissions demand to get at least 50% of the income derived from the new ETS transport and buildings revenue, this would mean that the ETS system would morph into an outright EU tax  a dream eurocrats have been pursuing for years.

The proposed measures disproportionately hurt the poor

The European Commission itself has admitted that measures like putting a carbon price on heating fuels will not affect households equally, but would likely have a regressive impact on disposable income, as low-income households tend to spend a greater proportion of their income on heating. It is testimony to how divided opinion is even within the Commission, where many are questioning the rather extreme approach of EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans.

The predicted hardship for the poor then serves as yet another excuse to spend money  now to alleviate the damage done by the measures. The Commission is seemingly unaware that to finance spending, taxes are needed, and even corporate taxes are ultimately disproportionately borne by low-skilled workers. There is no free lunch, even when paying tribute to the Climate Gods.

Over the last few years, as exemptions for the CO 2 emission-trading system have been reduced, this scheme has put upward pressure on energy prices, so it can be feared that this will cause more damage to the economy, particularly hurting the poor. The Commission thinks that CO 2 prices in Europe will increase by 50 percent by 2030 if its plans are implemented  but some hedge funds already project an increase of almost 100% by the end of this year, with the more modest current arrangement in place.

Pascal Canfin, chair of the European parliaments environment committee, who started his career with the greens but is now a key ally of French president Emmanuel Macron, has called the plan to create an emissions trading system (ETS) for transport and buildings politically suicidal and a huge political mistake. He stated: Its a very bad idea, adding that the Commission was going to trap lower middle-class families, noting that those hit the hardest would be people in regions with poor public transport and residents who could not pay for energy-efficiency upgrades to their homes. This follows the French governments experience with the gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protesters, who managed to get Macron to abandon a fuel-tax hike in 2018. France will take over the EUs rotating presidency in 2022; lets see how much then remains of the European Commissions grand plans.

Germanys automobile industry has also warned that the proposed measures may have a substantial impact on jobs at auto suppliers  so even if the greens form part of the new German government, this may not all sail through so smoothly.

The European Commission is not respecting the idea of tech neutrality

Its one thing to impose a target to reduce CO 2 emissions. It is quite another to try to micromanage how this can be achieved. Nevertheless, that is what the European Commission is doing with its so-called EU taxonomy for sustainable activities, a classification system meant to clarify which investments are environmentally sustainable, in the context of the European Green Deal, of which Fit for 55 forms a part.

Despite all the evidence that nuclear power is CO 2 neutral, the Commission refuses to acknowledge this reality. This denialism is the result of pressure by Germany, which decided to shut down all its nuclear plants, a policy that has driven energy prices in that country to record levels while also supporting the coal-energy sector. Germany thereby goes against the in-house scientific body of the European Commission, the Joint Research Centre, which declared earlier this year that nuclear power is a safe and climate-friendly energy source and should be considered as green under the EUs classification system.

To add insult to injury, the Commission considers biomass a renewable energy  despite the fact that burning wood for energy, which is what biomass is ultimately all about, typically emits 1.5 times more CO 2 than coal and three times more than natural gas. The EU is the worlds largest net importer of wood pellets; the main net exporters are the United States, Canada, and Russia.

Green campaigners have been complaining about EU member states like Estonia that allow intensive clear-cutting of trees in forests protected under EU Natura 2000 rules. One NGO, the Estonian Fund for Nature, has also pointed out there is a direct connection between the subsidized growth in the biomass industry and EU renewable-energy policies.

More than 500 scientists have urged the EU to stop treating biomass as carbon-neutral. Even if one disagrees, and believes that biomass can be sustainable and renewable, it still doesnt make sense to privilege biomass over nuclear power.

Biomass represents almost 60% of renewable-energy consumption in the EU, so the implications of no longer considering it as renewable energy would be grave: wind and solar power contribute only marginally to the EUs energy provision, irrespective of their environmental downsides. Changing biomasss renewable status would make it almost unavoidable to recognize nuclear power, which would be embarrassing for the likes of German chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been putting so much political capital into defending Germanys nuclear exit.

The EUs grand plans may not do that much for climate change

At the end of the day, the goal of all this is to counter CO 2 emissions in a bid to halt climate change.

Here, an interesting contrarian view comes from Danish economist Bjrn Lomborg, author of the bestseller The Skeptical Environmentalist.

Lomborg has highlighted UN Climate Panel estimates that the negative impact of climate change in the 2070s would be equivalent to reducing the average income between 0.2% and 2%  meaning that global incomes would increase only by 356% by then, and not by 362%. He then contrasts this with the enormous cost of EU climate policies, which would quadruple electricity wholesale prices in just a decade, and he cites academic studies showing the real costs of EU climate policies to be four times higher than optimistic EU estimates, ultimately amounting to a whopping 4 trillion to 5 trillion.

Lomborg estimates that the new EU target of 55% carbon-emission reduction will reduce the global temperature by the end of the century by an immeasurable 0.004C  equivalent to postponing global warming by six weeks in 2100.

Surely we can agree that it is hard for both proponents and skeptics of expensive climate policies to provide hard proof that they are right in their arguments. But these estimates should make even the most committed EU Commission climate fanatic pause for reflection.

Pieter Cleppe is the editor-in-chief of www.brusselsreport.eu, a new online magazine covering EU politics.

@pietercleppe
Across Oregon and Washington state this summer, some 200 people have died amid wave after wave of blistering heat. Nearly half the spawning salmon in the Columbia River are dying in waters too warm for the fish to survive, part of more than a billion sea animals estimated to have died from the regions epic heat.

The Bootleg fire in Oregon is burning a thousand acres an hour, in an inferno so powerful it produces its own weather inside towering smoke columns up to six miles high that can generate dry lightning, hail and fire tornadoes blasting hot and ember-laden winds in their path.

Baby hawks too young to fly are jumping out of their nests to escape the heat.

The summer hell-scape across the Pacific Northwest, of course, is just one snapshot from the frontlines of a global climate crisis that seems to bring more disaster daily, whether its flooding that takes lives by the hundreds in Western Europe or the loss of water and arable farmland putting millions on the move in China.

All of this, though, is but a preview, the science tells us, of even worse things to come unless we cut the dangerous carbon pollution from burning fossil fuels in half by 2030, and stop adding it to the atmosphere altogether by 2050.

After centuries of relying on coal, gas and oil to industrialize the global economy, we must phase out our reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner, smarter ways to power our future.

Since 1980 weve burned more coal, oil and gas, globally, than in all of history before that. The result: Over just four decades, weve increased the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by 24%, to its highest level in more than 3 million years, raising the average global temperature 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average.

We, as a nation and global leader, face an existential choice. We will replace fossil fuels with clean energy options, or well surrender more of our people, and more of our world, to the mounting costs and growing dangers of climate change.

Fortunately, President Biden understands the stakes.

Hes laid out a plan, as part of his Build Back Better agenda, that starts with cleaning up the dirty power plants that account for about a third of our carbon footprint. Through strategic infrastructure investment and responsible incentives, Bidens plan will help us become more efficient, so we do more with less waste; get more clean power from the wind and sun; and build a modern power grid and storage system.

Right now, were getting about 60% of our electricity, nationwide, from coal and natural gas. Under Bidens plan, well get 80% of our electricity without either of those fossil fuels by 2030, and well get 100% clean power by 2035.

Next, Bidens plan will modernize U.S. transportation, which accounts for about another third of our carbon footprint.

The presidents Build Back Better agenda promises the largest investment in history to help put sustainable public transit within reach for all of us, especially low-income communities that depend on safe access to public transit. It will slash the $560 billion bridge and road repair backlog and help to reconnect historically disadvantaged neighborhoods that were shattered decades ago by misguided highway routes.

And it includes funding to build half a million electric charging stations nationwide. That fits hand-in-glove with plans by General Motors, Ford and other global carmakers to invest $257 billion globally as the industry shifts to mostly electric vehicles over little more than a decade.

Bidens Build Back Better vision also includes funding to cap millions of abandoned oil and gas wells nationwide, protecting communities from leaks of toxic chemicals that can foul water, lands and air, and from methane  a powerful climate-wrecking gas.

Congress needs to fully fund Bidens agenda to Build Back Better for everyone.

Shifting away from fossil fuels will create millions of jobs across the country  paying 25% more, on average, than the median wage  helping to drive the strong, durable and broad-based recovery we need in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. It will make our economy more competitive globally, and give U.S. workers a beachhead in the fast-growing clean energy market, projected to attract some $30 trillion in global investment over just the next two decades. And it will help to advance racial equity, by reducing the climate hazard and harm that falls disproportionately on low-income communities and people of color.

Our reliance on fossil fuels  in this country and around the world  has come at a cost we can no longer afford. There are cleaner, smarter ways to power our future. Were not stuck with gas, coal, and oil and all of the damage and danger they bring. And neither are our children.

President Bidens Build Back Better agenda contains the strongest climate action in history. We owe it to ourselves, and to our children, to rally around this vision for a more hopeful, more prosperous future. The stakes are too high for anything less.
How should we teach Americans about race in our schools? In my Colonial history classes I have had much success teaching Edmund Morgans American Slavery, American Freedom. The book is aging, but it still provides a good introduction as it shows how the Colony first brutalized indentured servants, often working them to death, and then, in time, turned to slavery and an ever deeper racism.

One of my favorite moments in class was when an African American student said, essentially, I might have done the same thing had I been in their shoes. In other words, truly to understand the rise and progress of slavery and racism is to understand it from a human perspective. Morally speaking, there but for the grace of God go we. We are more likely to prevent evils from occurring when we see how well-meaning humans, and not cartoon villains, make horrible choices. Recall the profound truth that Satan is a fallen angel, perhaps implying that evil is often the result of a misguided effort to do good.

But how to teach race and slavery before college? Consider that question as part of a larger one: Why do we teach American history? We teach our children U.S. history not simply to understand how the nation came to be what it is today, and not simply as philosophy by example (by exploring the record of events, we learn what kind of creatures we humans are and what might and might not be done with them), but also because it is a fundamental part of civic education. As such, we learn about American democracy historically. Moreover, as human beings seem to be tribal by nature, our self-understanding is, in part, based upon how we understand the history of our tribe. How we teach American history shapes Americas self-understanding, and how our kids learn our history will, inevitably, shape how they behave when they take on the responsibilities of citizenship when they are adults.

This concern with how teaching shapes the civic character of our children explains the dust-up over what is being called critical race theory. (I put it that way because the brand critical race theory has now become a common term for something different from how academics use the term, just as since the New Deal the term liberal has been used in the U.S. for an ideology that is different from what philosophers mean by liberal.) In order to step up the teaching of race in our classrooms, many teachers are bringing, it seems, a Manichaean anti-racist pedagogy into the classrooms, teaching a simplified whites are bad and minorities good line. In some cases, they have literally separated white students, and, after the fashion of a Maoist-style struggle session, confess their racial privilege, or participate in privilege walks. The training and pedagogy that Paul Rossi describes at New York Citys elite Grace Church School is more common than many would like to admit.

It is important to remember that each cohort of children is learning U.S. history for the first time. If we were teaching, say, white college students who spent their teens learning U.S. history in the Jim Crow South, then, perhaps a compensatory pushback might make sense. And that seems to be how the purveyors of todays anti-racist education seem to see it. But todays children have yet to learn U.S. history, and as, such, we have the ability to re-center and re-balance the storyline from day one. Presenting a reverse image of the Neo-Confederate line (that is, the true America is the America of the Confederacy and the Jim Crow South, and of a North where racism was also extensive) is unlikely to foster racial progress. In time, in fact, it is more likely to reinforce and deepen racial tribalism, as many whites will conclude that they are inescapably on team white and will act accordingly. The students who wore White Lives Matter T-shirts to school are reacting as one would expect many kids to react. The effort to replace the stigmatization of blacks with stigmatization of whites is unlikely to work.

Recall Frederick Douglasss comment that he left William Lloyd Garrisons extremist camp because he was sick and tired of arguing on the slaveholders side. The argument that the American founding and Constitution were pro-slavery was the Souths argument. In his extreme condemnation of the founding, Garrison implicitly agreed. Douglass recognized that Garrison was wrong, and he also understood that it was not the best argument to move the nation forward against slavery. Teaching Americans to be proud of their country, even as they seek to improve it, is much more likely to bear fruit. The philo-patriotic mode produced the North that fought and won the Civil War, and the America that supported the Civil Rights Act in 1964 (when the nation was 88% white).

Much of todays anti-racist teaching, following the 1619 Projects view that racism is in Americas DNA, embraces the point of view Douglass rejected  that to move forward we need to reject the founding and the Constitution. (That, incidentally, is the line that connects this educational turn to the original critical race theory  the idea that the problem is the liberalism of the founding, and not, as most Americans think, the failure to live up to the ideals of 1776.) In other words, woke teachers are pushing a self-contradictory line: to love America is to hate what America has been.

The backlash we are seeing grows, I suspect, from an instinctive understanding parallel to Douglasss: that (a) such an anti-American approach is unlikely to produce racial progress, and (b) its not, in fact, true to most white peoples understanding of the American story. That many African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants and their children integrate into and rise rapidly in the U.S. suggests that racism in the U.S. isnt anything like it used to be. This view is not confined to whites. Black critics of this form of anti-racist instruction, such as John McWhorter, are much more typical than critics think. Recall that in progressive California, voters by a 57% to 43% margin rejected an amendment to legalize affirmative action in the state. Californians do not think that affirmative action is essential to racial progress. The opposition to critical race theory in the classroom reflects a similar spirit.

I am not saying that the muckraking approach to the past does not have an important role to play of our work as historians. What I am saying is that it is a mistake to make it the center of civic education. (Recall that Theodore Roosevelt coined the term muckraker to describe journalists who, like the man with the muck rake in Bunyans Pilgrims Progress, spent all his days looking down at muck). It would be better to wean our children on inspiring stories. In kindergarten and lower grades it would probably be better to teach, say, the story of Frederick Douglass, the underground railroad, the end of slavery in the North in the decades after 1776 and in the South later, and to teach the Civil Rights movement and end of Jim Crow. Mention slave catchers and Bull Connor, of course, but focus on Harrier Tubman and Martin Luther King Jr. As children age, it becomes time to teach the tragedies and complexities in more depth and in more detail  the racism of the North even after slavery, the harshness of Jim Crow, the history of redlining, the resistance to desegregation. Teach the rise of the first and second Klans, incidents like the pogrom (for want of a better term) in Tulsa in 1921 and the like, and some of the evils of slavery and Jim Crow, but only introduce the truly gruesome details of the stories in high school when children are mature enough to begin to wrestle with the problem of human evil. Similarly, it makes more sense to focus on our common humanity and citizenship in earlier years and to bring in the tensions between national and racial and ethnic identities later on.

Why put it this way? Because we Americans are all in the boat together. Our common story, as Annette Gordon-Reed noted in a recent op-ed, is about the road from the Declaration of Independence to Juneteenth and beyond. The Declaration is, in a sense, the final cause in American politics. (A final cause is, philosophically speaking, the thing toward which something tends.) In other words, the great truth of human equality is, as Lincoln put it, a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated. Or, as he wrote elsewhere, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times. King called it a promissory note, setting out the direction America must develop if it is to fulfil the promise of the revolution. Abigail Adams famous remember the Ladies letter of March 1776 begins by criticizing Virginians for slavery, which reminds us that people at the time understood the logic, and the direction it pointed. But politicians seldom make radical change successfully when they try to do it rapidly. Hence the tragic story of American history.

As the Declaration is our founding document, equality, not racism, is our DNA. And on that basis, we can find a common ground of citizenship that also serves as a guide for the civic education of our children. Instinctively, I suspect, the general resistance to what is being called critical race theory is fueled by a desire to have precisely this kind of civic education and it reflects an understanding that many of our professional educators are, perhaps naively, sustaining racial separation rather than helping Americans to recognize our common humanity and citizenship.
By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 07/19/2021



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Michael Allio is the founder of two companies

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Michael essentially spent his entire adult life with one woman

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Michael was actually recruited by producers to be on the show

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bachelor knows exactly what he's looking for in a woman now

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Katie dished out superlatives for her cast of guys, and Michael nearly swept the board!

Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.
The Miss Universe competition is heading to Israel this year.

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Organizers announced Tuesday that the 70th annual competition will be held in Eilat, Israel, in December.

Steve Harvey will return to host the event, which will air live on Fox and Telemundo.

Miss Universe Organization president Paula M. Shugart issued a statement in a press release.

"Israel has been on our shortlist of host countries for a number of years due its rich history, beautiful landscapes, myriad of cultures and appeal as a global tourist destination," Shugart said.

"We look forward to deepening our commitment and creating meaningful cultural conversation, connection and understanding through this partnership," she added.

The three-hour event will see contestants compete in multiple categories, including personal statement, swimsuit, evening gown and interview. The competition will culminate with Mexico's Andrea Meza, who won the 2020 competition, crowning her successor.

"Being the only Miss Universe crowned during the COVID-19 pandemic has made my reign unforgettable," Meza said. "I hope that the world takes the vaccine as soon as it is available so that, come December, as many people as possible can join the 70th anniversary celebration in Israel."

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Ahead of the competition, contestants will explore "the rich history and culture" of Israel with visits to notable locations. In addition, Meza will visit Israel later this summer.
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The three biggest U.S. drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson are on the verge of a $26 billion deal to settle lawsuits brought by state and local governments across the country over the toll of prescription opioids, lawyers suing on behalf of local governments said
FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2020 file photo, Harvey Weinstein arrives at a Manhattan courthouse for jury deliberations in his rape trial in New York. New York prison officials have handed over Weinstein for transport to California to face sexual assault charges. The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision says the transfer happened about 9:25 a.m. Tuesday, July 20, 2021.
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Chris Mays is a general assignment reporter for the Brattleboro Reformer. He has been with New England Newspapers Inc. since 2012.
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Greg Sukiennik has worked at all three Vermont News & Media newspapers and was their managing editor from 2017-19. He previously worked for ESPN.com, for the AP in Boston, and at The Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Mass.
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FILE - In this March 16, 2021 file photo, a sign advertises a restaurant opening in Santa Monica, Calif. A rapid and sustained increase in COVID-19 cases in the nation's largest county requires restoring an indoor mask mandate even when people are vaccinated, Los Angeles County's public health officer said Thursday, July 15, 2021.
PARMA, Ohio (AP)  A man who led police on a high-speed chase in northeastern Ohio and twice fired at officers during the pursuit has been charged with felonious assault, authorities said, and more charges are expected.

Bail was set at $1 million for Dennis Dranse, 42, of Parma. It wasn't known Tuesday if he's retained an attorney.
Sea levels are rising, and its lower-income families most at risk, experts say.

Folks that sort themselves to live directly on Long Island Sound are often the same folks that can invest in the home and adapt, said Charle Towe, a University of Connecticut associate professor of environmental economics.

Million-dollar homes with water views can be more easily renovated to survive increasingly damaging storm surges.

They're going to be able to lift the house 14 feet in the air and survive those storms, Towe said.

Its the homes with a lower assessed value, built on a floodplain, but are a block or a mile away from the shore, that will suffer as sea levels continue to rise. According to Towe, their basements are already flooding.

Houses that are already in that floodplain that are of low-assessed value are houses that are not being invested in oftentimes, maybe because of the flooding that they've already received, he said.

It has become, Towe said, a kind of vicious cycle: Lower-value homes get flooded, which further pushes down the value of the home. And so people were not investing in those properties, those properties are becoming more dilapidated over time, and pushing down in value.

20 inches in 30 years

A 2019 report published by James O'Donnell, of the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation, concluded that the level of the Long Island Sound should be expected to rise 20 inches by 2050.

But that date is largely arbitrary, as ODonnell wrote. The sea is not expected to stop rising at that point.

It is likely that sea level will continue to increase after 2050, ODonnell wrote.

Towns and cities up and down Connecticuts coast have been planning for decades for an eventually wet future.

Stamford is, perhaps, an example of successful advanced planning, according to David Kooris.

Stamford is lucky that, in the 1960s, they built a hurricane barrier here, he said.

Kooris is now president of Stamford Downtown, but he was previously deputy commissioner for the states Department of Economic and Community Development and director of resilience for the Department of Housing. Before that he was director of the Office of Planning and Economic Development for the city of Bridgeport.

Stamford, he said, was one of three cities in the Northeast, really on the whole East Coast where they did it: Stamford, Providence and New Bedford. And we've now reaped the benefits of that.

According to the Army Corps of Engineers, Stamford has been subject to heavy losses from storm tidal flooding since 1635.

A storm in 1938 resulted in $6 million in damage. Hurricane Carol hit in 1954, causing $3.4 million in damage.

So, they started building a wall in May 1965, completing the $14.5 million project in January 1969. In 2011, it was estimated that the project had saved $38.4 million in damage.

The barrier today provides protection to about 600 acres, which includes principal manufacturing plants, a portion of the main commercial district, and residential sections, according to the Army Corps of Engineers.

Or, as Kooris said, everything down in the South End, all the towers, all that stuff, would not have been possible but for that investment made in the 1960s.

Building walls and moving homes

Seawalls, like Stamford built more than 50 years ago, are still viable options, often part of a citys resiliency plans.

New Haven, for example, is planning a $130 million, mile-long seawall off the citys waterfront near Long Wharf to shield against climate change-related sea level rise.

Sea level rise is happening now. City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said last week.

A seawall has also been part of nearby West Havens resiliency plans, but the city has also employed a strategy called retreat, which calls for using federal funds to pay residents to leave flood-prone areas.

The only example that I know of in Connecticut that has had a deployment of that funding for that purpose is in West Haven, Kooris said.

But retreat is not always that simple.

A retreat scenario, its important to point out, is a two-way street, Towe said. You have to have people that want to retreat, because there is no eminent domain. So the state has to be willing to get the grant money from the federal government, and then they have to take a proposal out to the community and have people willing to sell their houses.

And even when homeowners, the local municipality and the state are in alignment, the federal government is not always willing. When Kooris was working with Bridgeport, the city applied for and was granted $1.3 million in federal funding for the purposes of retreating from a flood zone.

It was minor. We were going to remove two commercial establishments that were on the edge of a riparian zone in the floodplain, relocate them, turn that into a trail, Kooris said. It wasn't big by any means.

But the grant was rescinded, Kooris said, when the federal government realized that the property was contaminated, even though the city had been transparent about that fact in the initial application.

Economic benefit

When residents at risk of climate change-related flooding are successfully moved away, there is a benefit, Towe said, not only for those individual families but for local economies as well.

Towe and his colleagues are, at the behest of the Connecticut Institute for Resilience and Climate Adaptation, finalizing a study that quantifies exactly how much revenue loss can be recouped when residents retreat from homes in floodplains.

The folks most likely to be taking a buyout are folks that are living in housing that's already being flooded to some degree, he said. And it's destined to be flooded more, and that is reflected through lower assessed values or lower improvement values for the difference in the assessment in the land.

As Bridgeport was attempting, often parkland is created in the place of flood-prone houses, which Towe said can increase the value of a community as well as improve flood control.

You can certainly get some revenue back from removal of properties, especially if you try to target removal of contiguous property, because you can create essentially a public open space, that is of value, he said. Communities can target certain places, try to remove houses that provided them protection and some sense from storm surge.

Towe has concluded that removing at-risk homes and replacing them with open space can recoup as much as 14 percent of tax revenue that might otherwise be lost.

I'm losing this house, I'm losing the tax base, I'm losing that revenue stream, how much of that can I recoup from the increased value around? he said.

But Towe reiterated that federal policies put already vulnerable, lower income communities at greater risk. FEMA, for example, has a rule stipulating that if a homeowner in a floodplain plans a renovation worth more than 50 percent of the homes value, it needs to be brought to FEMA compliance, which often means putting a home on stilts.

Elevations expensive, though, right? he said. The well-off can afford to elevate and will undertake that in order to do their renovation, and maybe the less well off, maybe they don't do the renovation they otherwise would like to do to their home.

Such policies, according to Towe, will have to be reconsidered if communities intend to meet the threat posed by sea level rise.

We really are going to have to think about these policies with regard to communities that would like to be more capable of adapting to climate change, but are somehow hindered from doing that, by the very nature of where they live, he said.
OCEAN CITY, N.J. (AP)  The 18-year old pilot of a banner plane made an emergency landing Monday on a bridge in southern New Jersey, snarling traffic but causing no injuries, authorities said.

Landon Lucas reported that his plane started having engine trouble around 12:30 p.m. as he was flying near Steel Pier in Atlantic City, officials said. Lucas released his banner into the ocean and was trying to fly to a nearby municipal airport in Ocean City when he spotted a gap in traffic in the westbound lanes of the Route 52 causeway, which connects Ocean City and Somers Point.
A fundraising campaign has been set up in honor of Lucas Brewer, one of the two teens that drowned in the Farmington River earlier this week.

The search for 15-year-old Lucas Brewer and 17-year-old Anthony Nagore began last week on Thursday afternoon when they didnt return home after going swimming in the river in Avon. After days of searching  at times hampered by high water levels because of recent heavy rain causing dangerous conditions  their bodies were pulled from the river near the Farmington and Burlington line on Monday afternoon.

Capt. Keith Williams, who heads the State Environmental Conservation Police marine unit, said crews were searching the area on a hunch and saw the bodies of the boys snagged on a tree in the river. He said units were able to secure them and bring their bodies to shore. Authorities announced the recovery of their bodies in a press conference around 6 p.m. as the community prepared to gather along the Farmington River for a candlelight vigil for the two teens.

In a public post on Facebook Monday, Melissa Brewer, who identified herself as the wife of Brewers half-brother, thanked everyone for their support over the last few days and shared a link to a news story about the bodies being recovered.

The waiting is over and that gives some relief, Melissa Brewer said.

She shared with Hearst Connecticut Media a GoFundMe campaign set up to cover the funeral costs for Lucas Brewer. Over $2,000 had been donated within an hour of the fundraisers creation Tuesday.

As many of you may know, this small town of Plainville has been struck with the horrible tragedy of losing the sweetest boy with the most infectious smile, Lucas Brewer, the organizer, Holi Southall, wrote in the description of the fundraiser. He was an amazing son, brother, grandson, nephew and friend. He was only 15 years old. No parent should ever have to bury their child and this is something that most people do not prepare for.

Its unclear if any fundraisers have been created for Nagore. There were no campaigns with his name on GoFundMe as of late Tuesday morning.

My heart and prayer goes out to the families, peers and all those who knew and cared for Lucas Brewer and Anthony Nagore, said State Sen. Henri Martin, who represents the states 31st District which includes Plainville, in a brief statement on Facebook. Plainville is a close community and will come together to support all those impacted by this terrible incident.

Nagore had been visiting from out of state and Brewer was a student at Plainville High School, authorities said.

In a message to the school community Monday after their bodies were recovered, Superintendent of Schools Steve LePage said that while he knew many were planning to gather at the river for the vigil, he asked most school personnel not to attend out of respect for privacy and the needs of the emergency crews.

At the time of the vigil, first responders were still on scene and had closed off some access points to the river.

Our hearts go out to the families directly affected and to all impacted by these tragic losses, LePage said.

There were on-site counselors made available at the high school Monday afternoon prior to the recovery of the teens bodies. Counseling services continue to be offered remotely for students, staff and families at 860-863-1001.

With the recovery of the bodies, officials also urged the public to be careful and avoid waterways. Williams on Monday said the level of the water in the Farmington River was probably six or seven times higher than usual at this time of year, adding that its very dangerous to be out there.

Were asking everybody that recreates on not just on this river, but any body of water in the state of Connecticut thats swollen right now because of the rain, please stay off the water, he urged. We dont want another incident like this to happen, this is a very unfortunate situation.
TORRINGTON  A completely repaved parking lot and driveway make up just some of the upgrades a recently purchased property of Five Points Center for the Visual Arts would get under a proposed State Bond Commission grant.

The grant, in the amount of $2,733,500, is expected to be voted on during a Special Meeting of the commission at 10:30 a.m. July 23.

The project, which is the renovation of the former UConn Torrington Regional Campus into an art center, has been in the works for three years, according to Judith McElhone, the centers executive director and founder.

Negotiations through the city of Torrington and state of Connecticut and Uconn took two years and two months to turn the former campus into an art center, McElhone said.

The property was originally a bequest from former Torrington resident Julia Brooker Thompson, who donated $650,000 to the university in her will to create the campus.

The campus has been sold and the renovations began last year.

We received a $100,000 grant from the Thaw Charitable Trust, which allowed us to start renovations in the building, McElhone said.

Plans for the new facility

The new facility includes a 30,000-square-foot building and 90 acres. There is a second building that houses the agriculture extension service and a large maintenance garage, which the center will use as a sculpture studio.

It will be a full-capacity art center where art will be made, according to McElhone.

It will host fully equipped, cross-disciplined art laboratories where artists in our diverse community can learn, explore and experiment together, she said.

Opening soon is a print-making studio, painting studio and drawing studio.

Aside from the repaved parking lot and driveway, the grant will enable the center to update facilities in the building.

It would give us those kinds of major expenses that would take us years to be able to do, such as adding air conditioning to the auditorium, McElhone said.

The gallery saw a need for the new facility for a long time, according to McElhone.

That need was something that we felt after careful deliberation and developing a business plan we could achieve, she said.

Due to the pandemic, the center has lost a lot of ground and that bond will help us catch up, she said.

We closed on the property on June 30, 2020 in the middle of the pandemic, she said. We werent able to open any programs until just now. Were just starting now to open classes and workshops for the community and for artists.

This is a 20-year project with five year benchmarks, according to McElhone.

With the bond, it will help us bring down that 20 years to a much more reasonable number, she said, adding she hopes to complete it within 10 years or sooner.

We have our fingers crossed, she said. It will would be an amazing thing for Five Points and for the area.

Current locations of Five Points Gallery are the downtown Torrington Five Points Gallery, the Annex Gallery in Downtown Torrington, and the Launchpad Program with the University of Hartford.

In a recent press release, state Rep. Michelle Cook, D- Torrington said she encouraged the State Bond Commission to approve the grant.

This is a great victory for Torrington and prospective creatives in Northwest Connecticut. The Five Points Center has provided local artists with a unique experience - they are provided a space that allows them to create as well as collaborate with likeminded individuals. This funding will help the Center expand its reach, Cook said. Id like to thank Governor Lamont for prioritizing this project and urge the commission to approve the funding.

The State Bond Commission Special Meeting will be available for viewing via CT-N live broadcast and recording, including audio of the teleconference participants. The broadcast and recording can be viewed at www.CT-N.com.

sfox@milfordmirror.com
ASHLAND  Drivers planning to park in the downtown business district better have their quarters ready to plunk into the recalibrated parking meters beginning Aug. 2.

Enforcement of parking meter violations will resume after approval by the Ashland Borough Council at its July 14 meeting.

The meters have been out of service since last year, according to Borough Manager Raymond Jones Jr.

Since the fall, since September, we had the insides removed to be recalibrated, Jones said. We had to get trained on calibrating. The state no longer does that, so we are now in charge of doing it. This affects the ones on Centre Street, which are electronic, and not those on the side streets, which are mechanical.

In August 2009, about 200 new electronic parking meters were installed along Centre Street. Earlier that year, about 300 mechanical meter heads were removed for inspection by the Weights and Measures Division of the state Department of Agriculture. At the time, state law required that parking meters be inspected every three years to show they provide proper time for money inserted. It was found that about 200 meters were giving more time for each coin than expected and did not pass inspection. The approximately 100 mechanical meters that did pass inspection were placed along the side streets in the business district.

The inspection and recalibration only involved those meters on Centre Street, he said. The meters on the side streets will be another phase.

The meter rates will remain the same at 25 cents per hour for a maximum of two hours. The fine for overdue parking is $7 per meter ticket. Parking permits are available to those living or working in the business district. Contact borough hall for more information at 570-875-2411.

In other business, the borough council:

 Approved the submission of four blighted properties for demolition to the Schuylkill County Land Bank. The properties are 1 W. Centre St.; 1728-1730 Walnut St.; and 1011-1013 Market St.

The land bank has $280,000 for demolition, Jones said. Before we got the grant for demolition, we had already picked properties in each municipality. Because it was so long ago, some properties were sold on repository and changed hands. Now, these properties are on the repository list to be torn down.

 Approved a police contract addendum that eliminated the residence mileage restriction for full-time police officers. Jones said full-time officers were required to live within eight miles of the borough. The residence mileage restriction still applies to the chief of police.

 Hired Cody Searfoss as a full-time police officer. Searfoss was serving as a part-time officer. The hiring brings the police department to three full-time officers, including Chief of Police Gerard Daley and Officer Daniel Weikel.

 Hired Robert Bidgood as a full-time borough laborer at $18.50 per hour, beginning Aug. 2.

 Approved putting up for sale the 2011 Chevrolet Impala police car.

 Approved the request from Loretta Murphy Birster of the Actors Guild of Schuylkill County for a three-hour performance of the original musical The Message Tree at 4 p.m. Sept. 25. The show is a musical about the Woodstock festival by Murphy and Anthony Kurdilla, with lyrics and music by Murphy and Paul Noon. The show will be performed at the Eureka Park bandstand.
Thomas H. Xavios

FRACKVILLE  A Shamokin man who failed to abide by restrictions placed on him under Megans Law waived his right to a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Thomas H. Xavios.

Donald R. Lathrop, 64, of 623 E. Packer St., was arrested by Ashland Police Chief Gerard Daley and charged with one felony count of failure to comply with registration requirements.

By waiving his right to a hearing, Lathrop will now have to answer to the charge in Schuylkill County Court, where he can plead guilty or enter a not guilty plea and request a trial.

Daley charged Lathrop after an incident around 11:15 a.m. June 30 at Eureka Park, where he was called for a report of a man who was coming to the park for two weeks to get food and telling people he was a homeless veteran who was living in the woods.

Daley said he met Lathrop and advised him to stop taking food since it was for the childrens summer program and during a background check determined that the man was listed on Megans Law for a 1995 conviction of rape and sexual abuse of children in an incident that happened the year prior.

Daley said Lathrop is to be living at his Shamokin address but was living in the woods outside of Ashland and was also previously convicted in 2010 for failing to register his address.

Other court cases included:

Gary W. Hummel, 39, of St. Josephs Addiction Treatment and Recovery Centers, Saranac Lake, New York; waived for court: DUI, DUI-highest rate and institutional vandalism.

James D. Ortona, 55, of 880 High Road, Ashland; dismissed: retaliation against a witness, terroristic threats and harassment.

Tina R. Weingard, 49, of 938 Centre St., Apt. 2F, Ashland; held for court: hindering apprehension or prosecution.

Sarah V. Roseman, 27, of 3140 Main St., Locustdale; guilty plea entered: possession of drug paraphernalia.

Justin S. Luciano, 25, of 828 Monroe St., Apt. 201, Stroudsburg; waived for court: DUI-controlled substance, possession of drug paraphernalia and driving while operating privileges are suspended or revoked.

Tim R. Weikel, 33, of 129 Middle Ave., Ashland; withdrawn: driving with a suspended or revoked license. Waived for court: DUI-controlled substance and driving while operating privileges are suspended or revoked.

Edward A. Conapitski, 22, of 126 N. Line St., Girardville; waived for court: possession of a small amount of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Amanda E. Buchspics, 39, of 2422 Spruce St., Ashland; waived for court: possession with intent to manufacture or deliver a controlled substance, possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

James A. Fritz, 39, of 49 N. Centre St., Ringtown; waived for court: resisting arrest and simple assault.

Michael E. Joyner, no age available, of Box 47, Girardville; withdrawn: interference with the custody of children.

(Staff writer Frank Andruscavage compiled this report)
Public officials often answer criticism with the grand declaration that their conduct was legal, as if obeying the law  the minimum standard for everyone  is some sort of triumph for public service.

For elected public officials, especially, legal conduct should be a given. Their standard isnt mere legality, but serving the public interest, which usually requires much more.

But in deciding to limit their conduct to what the law requires, public officials often manage to demonstrate that the law itself is inadequate.

So it is that the borough council in Sewickley, Allegheny County, has illustrated one of the many inadequacies of state public disclosure laws. Recently, as reported by The Tribune-Review of Pittsburgh, the council announced that it no longer would record in its minutes the individual votes of council members.

Councilman Larry Rice, who is responsible for the meeting record, said he had been assured by the borough solicitor that it is legal not to record individual members votes.

So it is, as confirmed by Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. But she also was correct that not recording individual votes is terrible public policy, simply because residents should be able to discern how the people who represent them came down on important public matters.

Remarkably, Council President Jeff Neff said the council doesnt want to record individual votes to avoid the perception that there is any division among members of the elected body.

When you start putting names out there and how they voted certain ways, when you put them out in the newspaper, people are like, Oh, Jeff Neff did that or Cindy Mullens did this, and its like, why?

Since when is why? an inappropriate question to be posed by a resident to an elected public official?

Sewickley is way over on the other side of the state but in Pennsylvania, bad governance ideas are highly contagious. The state Legislature should amend the Sunshine Law to require recorded roll-call votes for all local government business before this practice spreads.
In a recent development, members of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) agreed to take forward India's proposals that were circulated in the 2021 BRICS meeting on Contact Group on Economic and Trade Issues (CGETI). The decision was taken in a meeting that was held on July 12-14, 2021.

During the three-day-rendezvous, the member countries of BRICS deliberated on proposals distributed by India in a bid to strengthen and increase the intra-BRICS cooperation and trade, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry said in their statement.

These proposals are as follows;

BRICS Cooperation on Multilateral Trading System;

BRICS Framework for ensuring Consumer Protection in E-Commerce;

Non-Tariff Measures (NTM) Resolution Mechanism for SPS/TBT Measures;

Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Working Mechanism;

Cooperation framework for the protection of Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Traditional Cultural Expressions;

BRICS Framework on Cooperation in Professional Services.

BRICS Meeting to be chaired by India

Interestingly, BRICS members agreed to take forward India's proposals to finalise the subject matter before the BRICS Trade Minister's meeting scheduled on September 3, 2021 and will be chaired by Commerce and Industry Minister, Piyush Goyal.

In another fold of events, India had further proposed events to deepen and strengthen the trade and economy that were agreed by fellow members.

A BRICS Trade Fair will be organised by the Department of Commerce to showcase and to have buyers and sellers via virtual meet between August 16-18 2021;

A roundtable of BRICS MSMEs on July 22 shall be organised by the Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises;

Two workshops on Services Trade Statistics will be organised by the Reserve Bank of India which will be held on July 16 and August 12

BRICS Education Ministers' conclave in July 2021

BRICS Education Ministers participated in the 8th meeting of the 13th BRICS summit that is being hosted by India. Education Ministers from the five BRICS countries signed a joint declaration that aims to strengthen their academic and research collaboration in higher and vocational education. MoS for Education Sanjay Dhotre chaired the 8th BRICS meeting Highlights were as follows;

Ministers acknowledged the need of leveraging digital and technological solutions to ensure quality inclusive education. The member states agreed to generate and expand their knowledge base. This move is expected to help them in formulating initiatives in this regard;

Ministers agreed to facilitate the creation of mechanisms that would allow sharing of knowledge and practices like seminars, policy dialogues, interactions with experts;

Ministers also agreed on facilitating the mobility of students and faculty among BRICS partner states, besides encouraging joint and dual degrees between higher education institutions in BRICS countries;

Ministers also recognized Technical and Vocational Training and Education as a priority area for every BRICS country and expressed their commitment to promote collaboration in this area.

What is BRICS?

BRICS is the group composed of the five major 'emerging' countries which together represent about 42% of the world's total population, 23% of GDP, 30% of the territory and 18% of global trade. They are viewed as the five largest economies in the world. Since 2009, an annual meeting of heads of state and government is organised. The final composition concluded after incorporating a country from the African continent as well. They aim to establish the fairest international governance which is suitable to national interests of each nation in concern.
Foreign Secretary of India, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, has condemned the killing of Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui at the Kandahar province in Afghanistan. He extended his condolences to the family members of the journalists at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) meeting on Friday.

He said, "We condemn the killing of Indian photographer Danish Siddiqui while he was on a reporting assignment in Kandahar in Afghanistan yesterday. I extend our sincere condolences to the bereaved family."

Siddiqui was the Chief Photographer of the team covering a clash between Afghan security forces and the Taliban. He was killed during the fight between the two outfits. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) said in a tweet that the killing of the journalist was a painful reminder of the mounting dangers faced by the media in Afghanistan. The UNAMA tweeted, Media working in Afghanistan and journalism itself in the country is under increasing threat. Our deep condolences to the family & friends of @dansiddiqi. A painful reminder of mounting dangers faced by the media in Afghanistan. Authorities must investigate this and all killings of reporters.

Media working in #Afghanistan & journalism itself in the country is under increasing threat. Our deep condolences to family & friends of @dansiddiqi. A painful reminder of mounting dangers faced by media in Afghanistan. Authorities must investigate this & all killing of reporters https://t.co/GGMM7pIzXr  UNAMA News (@UNAMAnews) July 16, 2021

According to a report by TOLO News, Siddiqui was killed in Kandahar's Spin Boldak district. Taliban has already taken control of Kandahar.

How did the world react?

Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistans President, said in a statement, "I am deeply saddened with the shocking reports that Reuters Photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was killed while covering the Taliban atrocities in Kandahar. While I extend my heartfelt condolences to Sidiqqui's family and also to our media family, I reiterate my government's unwavering commitment to freedom of speech and protection of free media and journalists."

The United States of America also released a statement saying that it is 'deeply saddened by the photojournalist Danish Siddiqui and called for an end to the violence in Afghanistan. Taliban, however, has denied the blame and said they are unaware of the responsible side for the killing of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and expressed their regret over his death. In a statement to CNN-News18 on Friday, Talibans spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said, We are not aware during whose firing the journalist was killed. We do not know how he died."



(With ANI Inputs)
Congress leader Kapil Sibal came down heavily on the government over the Pegasus spyware case. In a press conference on Tuesday, Sibal questioned the authorities for 'snooping on telephones of CMs, etc. Earlier, reports broke out that leaders of the Karnataka Congress and Janata Dal-Secular could have been possibly snooped upon in 2019, at a time when the state's alliance government crumbled.

It is important to note here that Sibal's statements come even as the government has clarified over the Pegasus row saying that they did not snoop on anyone.

"Snooping is a threat to nationwide safety"

Sibal asserted that snooping on the telephones of Chief Ministers, politicians, judges, and citizens of a country violates a number of legal guidelines of the nation and can be considered as a 'threat' to nationwide safety.

The Congress leader slammed the government and said, Our structure says the federal government ought to defend nationwide safety, however what if our authorities jeopardised nationwide safety?.

If this information reaches different countries, whether it is accessed by NSO masterminds, it will turn into a menace to nationwide safety. For now, only these lists have come over. It will be important to note that within the coming days it is going to be revealed that they have intercepted different people too, he added.

"Snooping is illegal at many levels"

The 72-year-old former Union minister and distinguished lawyer also said that snooping as such is illegal at a number of levels. It can breach multiple cyber laws, the Official Secrets Act, the fundamental right to privacy, and depending on the situation, can even be counted as stalking. "If you have put malware in the phone a minister and intercepted it, that is violative of the Official Secrets Act... It is a violation of the Information Technology Act. And if you are doing this to a woman, it is a violation of Section 354D of the IPC (Indian Penal Code) and would be termed as 'stalking'. It is also a violation of the right to privacy," the Congress leader said.

'Aap chronology samajhiye'

Meanwhile, the Congress leader used Home Minister Amit Shah's 'aap chronology samajhiye' jibe against him to iterate that the government was allegedly spying on them using Pegasus from 2017 to 2019.

Sibal said it was the government that "maligned India" over the Pegasus row. "It is the government that maligned India on the Pegasus row. Amitji 'Aap Chronology Samajhiye'," Sibal said. Sibal also dared the Union Home Minister to deny the snooping allegations on the floor of the House if it was 'not true'.

Amit Shah :



Says Pagasus leaks a bid to malign India  aap chronology samajhiye 



It is government that maligned India !



Amitji  aap chronology samajhiye 



2017 to 2019 you it is alleged spied on us using Pegasus



Please deny if not true . Say it on the floor of the House  Kapil Sibal (@KapilSibal) July 20, 2021

Ruckus in Parliament over Pegasus row

Earlier, replying to the Pegasus row, which created a commotion on the first day of the Monsoon session of the Parliament, Home Minister Amit Shah called it an attempt "to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions".

Notably, following the unraveling of the 'Pegasus Project' report created quite a ruckus within and outside the Parliament, Republic Media Network on Monday wrote to the maker of the Pegasus software, Israeli-based NSO Group, which in its reply systematically exposed the lack of journalistic methodology in making allegations of phone-tapping. Quoting the report of one of the lead papers of the international consortium behind the 'Pegasus Project', the firm highlighted - 'the purpose of the list could not be conclusively determined' and the list does not 'identify who puts the numbers on it or why'. The firm further added, in the report, it is mentioned that 'how many of the phones were targeted or surveilled was unknown'. The list being referred to allegedly contained 50,000 phone numbers which has been linked to snooping using Pegasus, from which certain numbers purportedly belonged to persons in India, thereby kicking up controversy on these shores as well.

What is the Pegasus row?

A report by sixteen media houses claimed that 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers were allegedly spied upon using Israeli surveillance technology firm Pegasus - which only has 36 vetted governments as its clients. As per a 'leaked' database, numbers of those allegedly spied upon include over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving cabinet ministers, current and former heads, and officials of security organizations and businessmen. The target also includes the eight activists currently accused of the Bhima Koregaon case. The report claimed that the leaked numbers mainly belong to ten countries - India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
European Union environment ministers posed for a "family photo" as they met on Tuesday at Slovenia's Brdo pri Kranju for a two-day informal meeting.

The meeting was held ahead of the UN's planned COP26 climate conference, due to take place in the UK in November.

During the meeting, the European Commission's vice president Frans Timmermans said the cost of not addressing the climate crisis was far higher than the cost of acting.

The talks were being held several days after at least 196 people were killed from the heavy rain which fell in western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
German firefighters pumped water from a flooded car park in the worst-affected region of Rhineland-Palatinate on Monday with fears of finding more bodies.

British broadcaster Sky News spoke to Holger Quint, the deputy commander of the fire department overseeing the operation in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, who said there are 40 to 50 cars inside.

"We are worried that we find some or a lot of people in their cars," Quint said.

As floodwaters receded Monday, authorities continued searching for more victims and intensified their efforts to clean up a sodden swath of western Germany, eastern Belgium and the Netherlands.

So far, 117 people have been confirmed dead in Rhineland-Palatinate, while 47 were killed in the neighbouring state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and at least one in Bavaria, parts of which saw heavy rain and flooding over the weekend.

The death toll in Belgium was 31.

As local communities face the huge task of rebuilding smashed homes and infrastructure such as bridges and water systems, German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Cabinet is set to draw up a package of immediate and medium-term financial aid on Wednesday.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Baghdad residents lit candles for the victims of a roadside bomb attack on Monday that killed at least 30 people and wounded dozens more.

The attack took place in the Wahailat market in Sadr City, Iraq's military said in a statement.

Two medical officials said at least 30 people were killed and dozens more wounded in the powerful explosion.

They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

The blast happened a day before the Eid al-Adha holiday when the market was busy with shoppers looking for gifts and groceries.

Piles of merchandise lay on the ground after the explosion.

Shopkeepers recounted to security forces how the blast occurred as they salvaged whatever they could.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing but the Islamic State group has claimed similar attacks in the area before.

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi placed the commander of the federal police regiment responsible for the area of the market place under arrest, the military statement said.

It also said an investigation was launched.

It was the third time this year that a bomb hit a market in the densely populated neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad.

In June, 15 people were wounded when a bomb placed under a kiosk in another Sadr City market detonated.

In April, at least four people were killed in a car bomb attack in Sadr City.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Tuesday "we won't let Israel's sovereignty and Israel's security be hurt," while speaking about two rockets recently fired from Lebanon into Israeli territory.

The Israeli military said its artillery shelled southern Lebanon early Tuesday after two rockets were fired from there into Israeli territory..

Israel's army said in a statement that aerial defenses intercepted one of the rockets, and the second fell in an open area. No injuries or damage were reported.

Visiting a town near the Lebanese border, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said anyone who tries to harm us will pay a painful price in return.

Bennett also said Lebanon "is on the verge of collapse", blaming that on Iran and adding that the "people of Lebanon were taken hostage."

The U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, said its radar detected rockets fired from southern Lebanon toward Israel just before 4 a.m.

Subsequently, Israeli artillery fired toward Lebanon, the U.N. force said.

Lebanons army said Israel fired 12 artillery shells at the Wadi Hammoul area, causing no damage or casualties. The army said its units there had found three launching pads for Grad rockets.

The rocket fire from Lebanon was the first such cross-border incident since May, when Palestinian militants launched rockets at Israel during the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

UNIFIL said it was in contact with military officials in Lebanon and Israel to urge maximum restraint" to avoid further escalation. Both the peacekeepers and the Lebanese army increased security in the area and launched an investigation, the mission said.

The incident along Lebanon-Israel frontier came hours after a Syrian military official said Israel carried out airstrikes near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. The Syrian state news agency said air defenses intercepted most of the missiles in the attack.

Israel has carried out scores of airstrikes in Syria in recent years targeting Iranian forces there, and attacking what Israel says are weapons shipments bound for the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Israeli military rarely comments on these strikes.

Bennett inaugurated a new fiber optic cable with Communication Minister Yoaz Hendel in the Northern Israeli town of Maalot-Tarshiha.

IMAGE: AP

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Muslims in Egypt were celebrating Eid al-Adha on Tuesday with prayers at Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque.

The holiday, known as the feast of sacrifice, commemorates what Muslims believe was prophet Ibrahim's willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail as a test of his faith.

The act of worship marks Eid al-Adha, or "the Feast of the Sacrifice."

Tight rows of men and women perform ritual prayers, an important part of this Muslim holiday.

Some were wearing masks to prevent to the spread of COVID-19.

After praying families enjoyed the festival atmosphere, buying balloons for their children.

Muslims usually sacrifice a goat, sheep, cow or a camel for the holiday, donating most of the meat to the poor.

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Afghanistan has recalled its envoys and diplomats in Pakistan to Kabul, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan confirmed in an official release. Following the abduction of the Afghan Ambassadors daughter in Pakistan, the Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan called back Afghanistans Ambassador and senior diplomats from Pakistan until all security threats are addressed including the arrest and trial of the perpetrators of abduction, it announced, confirming the exit of high-level officials.

The Afghan foreign ministry added that a delegation will visit Pakistan soon to assess and follow up on the case and all related issues; subsequent actions will follow based on the findings.

Earlier on Sunday, Afghanistan had made its plan public about the possible withdrawal of all its ambassadors from Pakistan's capital Islamabad in the aftermath of the kidnapping and assault of the Afghan envoy to Pakistan Najibullah Alikhils daughter Silsila Alikhil. Silsila was taken hostage for several hours and severely tortured by unidentified assailants in the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

The disturbing incident was immediately investigated after the Afghan embassy briefed the Pakistani foreign ministry that Alikhil was kidnapped from the rented vehicle and badly assaulted. The 26-year-old had sustained injuries on her body had rope marks on her wrists and legs and was beaten before she was released, the ministry said.

Bilateral ties between the two Islamic Republics also deteriorated over Islamabad's incessant support of the Taliban terrorism that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Afghan national forces since the US-led coalition troop drawdown from the conflict-ridden territory.

Pakistan says decision 'regrettable'

Afghanistans Vice President Amrullah Saleh had confirmed the report earlier saying, President Ashraf Ghani instructed the ministry of foreign affairs Afghanistan to call back our ambassador from Islamabad along with all senior diplomats. He further continued, The abduction of the Afghan ambassador's daughter and her subsequent torture has wounded the psyche of our nation. Our national psyche has been tortured. Afghanistans Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) demanded that Islamabad must apprehend the accused and arrange high-level security for the safety of Afghani diplomats.

The decision by the Government of Afghanistan to recall its Ambassador and senior diplomats from Pakistan is unfortunate and regrettable. 1/3 pic.twitter.com/X7cP1vyI6n  Spokesperson  MoFA (@ForeignOfficePk) July 18, 2021

Pakistans Foreign Office meanwhile responded saying that the decision was unfortunate and regrettable and that the authorities were investigating the assault at the highest level on the orders of Pakistani PM Imran Khan. We hope that the government of Afghanistan would reconsider its decision, the Foreign Office said, adding that Pakistans foreign secretary Sohail Mahmood met with the Afghan envoy to brief him on steps being taken and reassured him of full cooperation.
Representatives from fifteen NATO members in Afghanistan called upon the Islamist Fundamentalist group Taliban to put the ongoing violations to an end. While an ongoing negotiation between the Taliban and Afghanistan government has raised prospects of peace in the central Asian country, it has still not deterred the group from conducting armed attacks. Taliban, which ruled the country with an iron fist from 1996 to 2000 has once again regained control of the land after capturing more than a third of the designated territory.

Joint call for peace

In a joint statement, all the 15 NATO missions called for a cessation of Talibans military violations pointing out that they were only thwarting efforts to negotiate peace. The participants include Australia, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the EU Delegation, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, the Office of NATO and Senior Civilian Representative, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The statement condemns targeted assassinations over the country, destruction of infrastructures, threats, declarations, and other actions against the gains of the past 20 years.

"This Eid al-Adha, the Taliban should lay down their weapons for good and show the world their commitment to the peace process, the 15 missions and the NATO representative said, referring to Tuesdays Muslim holiday in Afghanistan," the 15 mission said in a statement. It has resulted in the loss of innocent Afghan lives, including through continued targeted killings, displacement of the civilian population, looting and burning of buildings, destruction of vital infrastructure, and damage to communication networks," they added.

Please read our joint statement with  + @NATOscr calling for the Taliban to end its ongoing military offensive. pic.twitter.com/sXXiwRfYQH  Japan in Afghanistan (@JapanEmbKabul) July 19, 2021

This comes as the Afghan government delegation led by Abdullah Abdullah, the second-highest Afghan official and the chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation held talks with Taliban leadersDoha. In the aftermath, the Afghan government and Taliban issued a joint statement on the situation and agreed to prevent civilian casualties. Both sides have agreed to protect the countrys civilian infrastructure, prevent civilian casualties, and cooperate with humanitarian assistance.

Image: AP/Representative Image
An attempt to stab Malis interim President Assimi Goita took place on July 20 during prayers for the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha at the great mosque in the capital Bamako. As per reports, at least two armed men were seen attacking Malis interim President before he was rescued from the scene. However, reports have stated that it was not immediately clear if Goita was wounded. Malis Religious Affairs Minister Mamadou Kone has reportedly said that the suspect tried to kill Goita with a knife but was stopped.

Additionally, reports have stated that the director of the Great Mosque, Latus Toure, has said that an attacker was seen lunging for Mali's interim President but left someone else injured in the attack. However, till now, no official account has been released of the Tuesday incident.

Who is Assimi Goita?

37-year-old Assimi Goita was sworn into office as Malis interim President in June despite the political backlash over his second power grab in almost nine months. He was the leader of the countrys military coup and had already declared himself as interim President, just two days after seizing the power in Malis second coup. Goita was also the leader of the first coup in the country which ousted the then elected Mali president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August 2020 following months of anti-government demonstrations in the country.

The second coup came in May when Goita was in service as Mali's Vice President in the transitional government and was tasked with heading the country back to civilian rule in February 2022. He had seized power again after accusing Interim President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctae Ouane of not being successful to consult him about the cabinet reshuffle.

A coup in 2012 left Mali unstable as it led militants to exploit the chaos and seizing the northern region of the country. As per a BBC report, it is relatively difficult in enacting reforms swiftly in the country. Even though French troops have helped to regain the territory, the attacks have continued. The grim situation in the country led the public confidence waning over the army leaders ability to tackle the extremist insurgency in the country that has further spread into neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

IMAGE: AP
The Norwegian government on July 19 formally attributed the hacking of its email accounts associated with the countrys parliament to Chinese hackers participating in the exploitation of vulnerabilities on Microsofts Exchange Server. The Norwegian Parliament, also called the Storting, said in March that its email systems were breached as part of the Microsoft Exchange Server incident. In a statement on Monday, Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said, This was a very serious incident affecting our most important democratic institution.

Soreide said, Following a detailed intelligence assessment, it is our view that the vulnerabilities have been exploited by actors operating out of China. Several of our allies, the EU, and Microsoft have also confirmed this.

We expect China to take this issue seriously, and to ensure that such incidents are not repeated, she added.

Norwegian Foreign Minister also confirmed that the Storting was a victim of the exploitation and added that the Chinese Embassy had been contacted in order to 'raise the issue directly'. She said, Allowing such malicious cyber activities to take place is in contradiction to the norms of responsible state behaviour endorsed by all UN Member States. Today, we have called in the Chinese Embassy and raised the issue directly.

US and allies on Microsoft Exchange hack

The Norwegian government blaming the China-based hackers came just a day after the United States along with its western allies formally blamed China for a massive hack of the Microsoft Exchange email server software. The officials also emphasised that the criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations. However, the announcements were not accompanied by sanctions against the Chinese government. The move underlined the ongoing threat from Chinese hackers despite US President Joe Biden's administration being on constant alert of ransomware attacks based in Russia.

In a statement, EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said that the hacking was 'conducted from the territory of China for the purpose of intellectual property theft and espionage'. Meanwhile, UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said that the Microsoft Exchange cyberattack 'by Chinese state-backed groups was a reckless but familiar pattern of behaviour'. Additionally, in the first public condemnation of China, NATO called on Beijing to adhere to international commitments and obligations 'and to act responsibly in the international system, including in cyberspace'.

IMAGE: AP/Unsplash
China and the Philippines continue to cross swords at the South China Sea. According to a Philippines Coast Guard report from July 13, patrolling vessels drove away a Chinese warship in the waterway. The warship spotted at the Marie Louise Bank refused to step back when countered. However, eventually, the vessel drove back after it was challenged, the Philippines Coast Guard report added.

Chinese Navy Warship 189

Adding details about the encounter with the Chinese ship, the Coast Guard report added that the maritime vessel emitted signals from its radio introducing itself as 'Chinese Navy Warship 189'. They also exhorted the Philippines Coast Guard ship to maintain distance and warned them against following the warship. Chinese Foreign Ministry, however, refused to comment on the incident and claimed that they were 'unaware' of the matter.

Tensions between Manila and Beijing escalate

The presence of over a hundred Chinese boats in the Philippines's 200-mile exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea has escalated tension between China and the Philippines over the last few months. The Philippines had earlier initiated protests against their Chinese counterparts and demanded them to withdraw the maritime assets from the diplomatic sea waters. Philippines capital city Manila had also launched a 'diplomatic protest' against the deployment of maritime fishing vessels. It had alleged the Chinese Navy was conducting 'illegal activities' in the vicinity of Thitu Island, the Hindu reported in May. While the Philippines claimed the boats were controlled by the Chinese naval military, the Chinese Foreign Ministry refuted the claims and informed that those were 'fishing boats' anchored to shelter in view of bad weather.

Reportedly, China has established a water-city in the Subi-reef, about 25 kms from Thitu Island. The Chinese expansive claim into the South China Sea that year was 'invalidated' by the international tribunal. Other South Asian countries Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Vietnam have also raised similar claims over various strategic island areas in the sea.

(Input from several agencies) (Image input: AP)
Taiwan will exchange representative offices with Lithuania, the self-governed island said on Tuesday, in a breakthrough for its foreign relations that are under constant pressure from China.

The offices will seek to enhance economic and trade relations, along with cooperation in various other fields, the island's Foreign Ministry said.

The office will bear the name of Taiwan, rather than "Chinese Taipei," the term used in other countries in order not to offend Beijing, which claims the island as its territory without the right to diplomatic recognition.

"The governments of Taiwan and Lithuania have mutually agreed after intensive negotiations that Taiwan will soon establish a representative office in the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius," Taiwan's Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said.

"The name of the representative office will be 'The Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania,'" Wu said.

Taiwan's first-ever representative office abroad to bear the name of Taiwan was established in Somaliland in 2020.

While Chinese pressure has reduced the island's formal diplomatic allies to just 15, it maintains informal ties with all major nations through the use of de facto embassies.

Lithuania will set up its office in Taiwan in the autumn, Wu said.

"I therefore believe that Taiwan and Lithuania's economic and trade exchanges, cooperation in various fields, as well as the friendships between people will all be enhanced, despite their geographical distance," said Wu.

The last time Taiwan established a representative office in Europe was in 2003 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

(Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com)
Taiwan has announced that it will open a representative office in Lithuania, a positive sign in Taiwan's diplomatic relations with foreign countries, which have been subject to persistent pressure from China for decades. According to the island's foreign ministry, the offices will work to improve economic and trade links, as well as cooperation in various other areas. The office will be referred to as "Taiwan," rather than "Chinese Taipei," as it is known in other nations, in order to avoid offending Beijing, which claims the island as its own but lacks diplomatic recognition.

"The governments of Taiwan and Lithuania have mutually agreed after intensive negotiations that Taiwan will soon establish a representative office in the Lithuanian capital city of Vilnius," Taiwanese foreign minister Joseph Wu stated. "The name of the representative office will be `The Taiwanese representative office in Lithuania.' The ministry of foreign affairs is aggressively working on the preparations," he added. In 2020, the first-ever Taiwanese representative office outside of Taiwan was opened in Somaliland.

While Chinese pressure has cut the island's recognised diplomatic relations to just 15, de facto embassies maintain informal links with all major countries. Lithuania will open an office in Taiwan in the autumn, according to Wu. "I, therefore, believe that Taiwan and Lithuania's economic and trade exchanges, cooperation in various fields, as well as the friendships between people will all be enhanced, despite their geographical distance,'' Wu said. The last time Taiwan established a representative office in Europe was in 2003 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

China's constant restrictions on Taiwan

Taiwan's unofficial contacts with other countries are also restricted by China's diplomatic and economic muscle, along with its poaching of Taiwan's formal diplomatic partners. Under pressure from China, Guyana denied Taiwan's request to build a trade and investment office in the South American country in February. Zhu Fenglian, the cabinet's Taiwan affairs office spokesperson, said on social media on Tuesday, July 20, that China "urged Lithuania to adhere to the one-China principle and not send the wrong signals to forces behind Taiwan independence."

Zhu did not specify any steps China would take in retaliation but said nothing Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party-led government does would "change the fact that Taiwan is a part of China." The Taiwanese government has long sought greater ties with the Baltic republics, noting the fact they share a history of authoritarian leaders as well as their commitment to multiparty democracy and liberal principles.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that the Taliban should end the occupation of Afghanistan as the insurgent group continues to make sweeping advances across the central Asian state. Speaking at a press conference on July 19, Erdogan also disclosed that his administration plans to hold discreet talks with the Taliban over the security of Kabul International Airport, which will serve as a link between the Ashraf Ghani administration and western countries in the aftermath of the pullout. Turkey has offered to guard the key airport, given logistical and financial conditions are met.

"(The Taliban) need to end the occupation of their brothers' soil and show the world that peace is prevailing in Afghanistan right away," Erdogan told reporters before leaving for a trip to northern Cyprus.

Erdogan has previously asserted that Turkish troops would stay in the war-torn country even after the US and NATO complete their pullout. Last month, the right-winger met US President Joe Biden in Brussels on the sidelines of the G7 summit where he reassured him that Turkey would be the only reliable country left in Afghanistan following the withdrawal. However, Erdogan's stance has ired Taliban which ruled the country with an iron fist from 1996 to 2000.

Taliban warns Turkey

Earlier this month, the Taliban warned Turkey against sending troops into Afghanistan to protect Kabul's main airport after Western troops' departure, calling the strategy "reprehensible" and threatening "consequences." Ankara, which has promised to administer and safeguard the capital's airport after NATO leaves, is in talks with partners, including the US, on financial, political, and military assistance.

As many as 25,000 troops, which had been stationed for almost two decades in Afghanistan, will be out of the country by September 11. Previously, the Taliban said that foreign forces should hold "no hope" of keeping a military presence in Afghanistan after the US and NATO withdraw troops, warning the security of embassies and airports would be the responsibility of Afghans. In the latest development, the warring sides have come into agreement over preventing civilian casualties and protecting civil infrastructure in Afghanistan. A discussion between both sides is underway in the Qatari capital of Doha.

Image: AP
The metropolitan area of the Chilean capital, Santiago, reopened business and lifted some restrictions on Monday, as authorities there announced the lowest number of new COVID-19 cases in the last months.

According to the plan to return to normalcy in Chile, people who are fully vaccinated and have obtained a "mobility pass" can travel between municipalities and enter businesses.

Close to 80 percent of people have completed their COVID-19 vaccination in Chile, making it one of the countries leading the health campaign in Latin America.

Lifting of restriction includes return to classes, reopening of restaurants, gyms, theaters and churches.

Still, a large part of the country is under earlier lockdown phases.

Hospitalizations for COVID-19 decreased by a third in the past week and are only half of the figures recorded two weeks ago.

Admissions into Intensive Care Units also reduced.

According to national health authorities, Chile has recorded more than 1.6 million of COVID-19 positive cases and more than 35,000 deaths.

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Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, on Monday, appealed for more help from the United States as she commenced a visit to Washington for meetings with top Biden officials this week. The 38-year-old lawmaker has been in exile in Lithuania ever since Alexander Lukashenko began his presidential term last August. A staunch critic of Lukashenkos dictatorship, Tsikhanouskaya contested against the right-winger in last years polls instead of her husband, who was jailed in May 2020.

According to a statement by the US Department of State, the Belarusian held meetings with US State Secretary Antony Blinken, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, and Counselor of the Department Derek Chollet. During the meet, which was conducted in Washington DC, American leaders reaffirmed their support for the Belarusian peoples democratic aspirations. It is imperative to note that the eastern European country has been witnessing massive protests with residents terming the polls as rigged.

They discussed the need for the ongoing Lukashenka regime crackdown to end, along with the unconditional release of all political prisoners in Belarus, and an inclusive political dialogue and new presidential elections under international observation, the state department said in a statement.

Together with @SecBlinken, @UnderSecStateP, @derekchollet, & @USAmbBelarus, we discussed further joint actions on the international arena, how to make Belarus Democracy Act more effective, provide emergency support for free media in Belarus after the regime's crackdown on them. pic.twitter.com/FUfxmN3cMk  Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (@Tsihanouskaya) July 19, 2021

During the meeting with @SecBlinken, I thanked him for supporting Belarusian democratic aspirations. I called on  to strengthen help for our civil society, economically & politically pressure the regime, & appeal to Russia to play a constructive role in the crisis resolution. pic.twitter.com/8HHk3IQqeF  Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya (@Tsihanouskaya) July 19, 2021

Lukashenkas assaults on journalists & civil society are appalling & deserve condemnation from the int'l community. I'm eager to welcome @Tsihanouskaya to Congress tomorrow as we discuss how to hold Lukashenka to account & protect RFE/RL journalists & all those speaking out.  Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (@SenatorShaheen) July 19, 2021

.@UnderSecStateP and I welcomed Belarusian leader of the democratic opposition @Tsihanouskaya to the @StateDept today. We discussed the way out of the political crisis: release of all political prisoners, inclusive dialogue, and new elections. Zhvvye Belarus!  Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) July 20, 2021

More help needed

Speaking to CNN later, the opposition leader said that she needed more help from both the US and the European Union. Buttressing her stance, she said that America had a moral obligation to help Belarus. She also asked the Biden administration to help civil society survive.

This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted the authoritarian leader of Belarus, who has increasingly relied on Moscow's support amid increasing tensions with the West. During the meet, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko thanked Putin for Russia's support and pledged that the country would duly repay its loans. Putin, in turn, praised Belarus as a "reliable and stable partner" during their talks in St. Petersburg, as reported by AP. As of now, more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police as a part of a crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Image: Tsihanouskaya/Twitter
US President Joe Biden on July 19 met with Jordans King Abdullah at the Oval Office in the White House who is also a key American ally in a vulnerable region. Biden and Jordan kings meet is reportedly expected to be the first of the three scheduled in-person talks of the US President with Middle East leaders. Abdullah, whose image suffered a blow in April involving his half-brother, Prince Hamza amid palace crisis, met with Biden for the first time since the Democratic president took office on January 20. Biden also called Abdullah, good, loyal, decent friend.

During the picture-taking session, Biden said he wanted to hear about the latest developments in the Middle East from Abdullah and told the Jordans King, You've always been there, and we will always be there for Jordan...You live in a tough neighbourhood. In reply, Abdullah acknowledged the series of challenges in the region and told the US President, You can always count on me, my country and many of our colleagues in the region.

I met today with His Majesty King Abdullah II of Jordan to express my gratitude for his steadfast friendship and consult with him on a range of challenges and opportunities in the Middle East. The U.S.-Jordan strategic partnership is as important as ever. pic.twitter.com/FN9oNiHxtJ  President Biden (@POTUS) July 19, 2021

Biden discusses the delivery of COVID-19 vaccines

In the meeting, US President announced the delivery of over 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Jordan and both leaders also weighed in on the US-Jordan defence relationship, the Syrian crisis. As per the readout of the meeting provided by the White House, President Biden confirmed unwavering U.S. support for Jordan and His Majestys leadership. He was proud to announce the delivery of over 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines to Jordan, underscoring the U.S. commitment to bringing the same urgency to international vaccination efforts that we have demonstrated at home.

President Biden commended the important role Jordan plays in the wider stability of the region and welcomed the recent trilateral summit in Baghdad between Iraq, Jordan, and Egypt. The two leaders discussed the enormous challenges in Syria and the importance of a broad humanitarian initiative to reach all Syrians in need, the White House said.

President Biden reaffirmed that his administration looks forward to strengthening bilateral cooperation in multiple areas over the coming months, including the promotion of economic opportunities that will be vital for a bright future in Jordan, it added.

IMAGE: AP
The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has raised its COVID-19 warning level for the UK to 'level 4'. The CDC has advised people to avoid travelling to the United Kingdom. The agency in the advisory added that if people travel to the UK, they must ensure full vaccination.

Advisory for UK travellers

The US State Department raised its travel advisory for the United Kingdom to 'Level 4: Do not Travel'. In its updated advisory, the US State Department said, "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued a Level 4 Travel Health Notice for the United Kingdom due to COVID-19, indicating a very high level of COVID-19 in the country." The statement added that people should follow CDC's recommendations for fully vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers. The US authorities have issued the new advisory due to the rise of COVID-19 cases in the UK.

The US CDC has recommended travellers to follow COVID-19 guidelines in the UK, including wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing. The recommendation comes as the British government on July 19, Monday, lifted coronavirus restrictions in England. Under the new rules, legal mandates covering the wearing of face masks and working from home have also been scrapped. UK PM Boris Johnson has urged the people to remain vigilant. According to Public Health England, UK reported 39,950 new COVID-19 cases taking the overall tally to 5,473,477. 19 new deaths were reported on July 19 taking the fatalities to 128,727.

The #COVID19 Dashboard has been updated: https://t.co/XhspoyTG79



On 19 July, 39,950 new cases and 19 deaths within 28 days of a positive test were reported across the UK.



46,314,039 people have now received the first dose of a #vaccine. 36,099,727 have received a 2nd dose. pic.twitter.com/7M7imCyuQG  Public Health England (@PHE_uk) July 19, 2021

COVID-19 situation in the US

According to Johns Hopkins University data, the United States has recorded 34,132,079 COVID-19 cases and 609,231 have died due to the virus. According to the US CDC, as of July 19, more than 186.3 million people have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, more than 161.4 million are fully vaccinated.

As of July 19, more than 186.3 million people have received at least one dose of a #COVID19 vaccine. Of those, more than 161.4 million are fully vaccinated. Once youre fully vaccinated, you can do things you stopped doing because of the pandemic. More: https://t.co/zYLe3H12re. pic.twitter.com/JZ0uZJO83E  CDC (@CDCgov) July 19, 2021

IMAGE: Unsplash/Pixabay
A woman from Oklahoma reportedly gave birth to her late husband's baby 14 months after his death. Sarah Shellenberger, a 40-year-old woman describes her son as her "good medicine" after she lost her husband Scott in February 2020, as per a report by Mirror. Shellenberger revealed that she has conceived her baby using frozen embryos.

Woman gives birth to baby after husband's death

Sarah and Scott had finished the process of embryo fertilisation when her husband suffered a cardiac arrest while delivering a college lecture. After his death, Sarah knew her husband wanted her to conceive and in August Sarah went to Barbados for the embryo transfer and a week later, she found out she was pregnant. She gave birth to her son Hayes on May 3 in the presence of her mother. Sarah has shared several posts of her husband and her baby on Instagram. In her mother's day post on Instagram, she describes her son as a gift from God. In the caption, she mentioned, "He is truly a gift from God and is so worth every single day of longing and hurt and every shot and pill and exam and procedure."

Sarah and Scott met while studying at Southern Nazarene University and got married in September 2018. They both wanted to have at least three children but they struggled to conceive. After trying for a long time, their doctors had advised them to opt for IVF. Due to the high cost of IVF in the US, the couple went to the Barbados Fertility Center for egg retrieval and the first retrieval happened in 2019. They found out before Christmas that they were expecting a boy. But, before the birth of her son, her husband passed away. Sarah and her husband had completed paperwork before starting the embryo process. It included what would happen to the embryos if a spouse passed away.

IMAGE: SarahShellenberger/Instagram
A court in Cambodias capital has refused to let the mother of an autistic teenager on trial for inciting social unrest and insulting public officials see her child while he is held in prison, the woman and the boys attorney said Monday following his court appearance.

Phnom Penh police arrested Kak Sovannchhay, the 16-year-old son of detained former senior opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) member Kak Komphear, at his home on June 24, accusing him of using provocative words and insulting government leaders on social media.

A day later, Kak Sovannchhay was remanded to Prey Sar Prison, the largest of Cambodias two dozen jails run by the Ministry of Interior. His father has been serving time in the same prison for more than a year.

The Phnom Penh Municipal Court questioned Kak Sovanchhay during a hearing on the charges on Monday, but the teenagers attorney, Sam Kong, said his client did not understand the questions raised by the investigating judge. He demanded that the court release the boy on bail because he is a minor.

Prum Chantha, the boys mother, condemned the court for not allowing her to see her son. She has rejected the charges against both of her husband and son as politically motivated and has demanded their release.

My son is mentally unstable and a minor, so I should have been allowed to be with him so that he doesnt panic when asked questions or get intimidated, she said. But, here, I knew nothing about my son while he was at the court hearing [today].

Both Sam Kong and Prum Chantha argue that the boys detention is a violation of childrens rights and a form of political persecution.

Prum Chantha said authorities arrested her son while her husband is in prison to demoralize her because she is a member of the Friday Wives group of women holds weekly protests demanding the release of their husbands jailed on incitement charges for expressing views critical of Prime Minister Hun Sens leadership.

Investigating judge San Bunthoeun had Kak Sovanchhay brought to court Monday for questioning because the boy was not interrogated on the day of his arrest, Sam Kong said.

After the court hearing, authorities took the boy back to Prey Sar Prison and did not allow his mother to talk to him.

Sam Kong said that Kak Sovanchhay could not control his emotions and impulses in court because of his autism and that the line of questioning did not appear to be in accordance with legal procedures because the boy did not understand the questions and did not know how to answer them on account of his age.

The Cambodian Code of Criminal Procedure as well as the Criminal Code and the [U.N.s] Convention on the Rights of the Child allow the court to consider placing children in the custody of guardians or parents or rehabilitation facilities, he said. The laws also allow the court to consider giving children freedom rather than keeping them prison, which affects the future of the children.

Cambodia ratified the U.S. convention in 1992.

Sam Kong also asked the court to send a medical specialist to see his client.

The interests of the child

Prum Chantha, who said she pitied her son when she saw him from a distance at the court hearing, was later seen running after the police van that transported him back to prison.

I still ask the court, if the court is independent and does its proper work, to release my son on bail so he can return to his mothers custody because he has a mental disability, and I want him to go back to school because he is very young, she said.

Am Sam Ath, deputy director of the human rights monitor Licadho, said he supports the demand for the release of Kak Sovanchhay for the sake of the boys future, because he is still in school and needs special care.

The court should consider carefully this because it deals with the future of the child and his mental health, he said. He is still a minor so that his use of words might not be appropriate and thoughtful, plus he has an illness.

The judge should include these points in his consideration if he cares for the interests of the child in relation to juvenile justice law, he said.

More than 80 political, social and environmental activists have been arrested and imprisoned since the end of 2019, most of them on charges of incitement and conspiracy.

National and international organizations, including major democratic countries, have repeatedly condemned the detentions as baseless and politically motivated, and have demanded their immediate release if Cambodia wants to avoid further sanctions by the international community.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service, Translated by Sok Ry Sum. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
The move comes amid concerns that top-down government directives will become the norm for Radio Television Hong Kong.

Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), a government department that enjoyed editorial independence before a draconian national security law banned criticism of the authorities in July 2020, has been ordered to stop referring to Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen as president.

The broadcaster, which restructured in February to enable a government-appointed committee to supervise its editorial content, has been ordered to comply with a memo sent to all editorial staff on July 20, with immediate effect.

"As RTHK is Hong Kong's public service broadcaster as well as a government department, it must ... exercise a high level of caution in the use of terminology in relation to Taiwan in all its television, radio and news media services," the document said.

It said journalists are now banned from using terms like "country," "Republic of China," "National," or "Legislative Yuan," when reporting on Taiwan, a democratic country of 24 million people that has never been ruled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) nor formed part of the People's Republic of China.

"Under no circumstances should Taiwan be referred to as a sovereign state, or perceived as one," the directive said.

Tsai, who was re-elected in a landslide victory in 2020 on a platform of standing up to China's territorial and political claims over Taiwan, should be referred to as a "regional leader," it said.

The words "Taiwan government" should be avoided, and "Taiwan authorities" used instead, it said, while the island's democratic parliament, the Legislative Yuan, should be referred to as Taiwan's legislative body, the memo said.

The changes were necessary to promote "a sense of citizenship and national identity," the memo said.

The directive comes after the Hong Kong government in February announced changes to the editorial chain-of-command, replacing the director of broadcasting and reforming RTHK's editorial structure to "ensure it complies" with government directives.

Career bureaucrat Patrick Li took over from Leung Ka-wing as editor-in-chief from March 1.

Approved topics

Chief executive Carrie Lam recently began her own show on RTHK, in which she interviews pro-China figures on topics likely to be approved by Beijing.

Following the restructuring in March, RTHK management announced the station would air Lam's daily show four times a day, to "engender a sense of citizenship and national identity."

Former RTHK program host Johnny Lau said the insistence on following the CCP party line on Taiwan was likely to expand beyond the government broadcaster.

"The concept of one country, two systems is getting hazier and hazier," Lau said in a reference to China's promise to allow Hong Kong to operate its existing political and judicial arrangements for at least 50 years following the 1997 handover from British rule.

"One country, two systems as an ideology will eventually come to mean applying the mainland Chinese system to Hong Kong," he said.

Hong Kong Journalists' Association (HKJA) chairman Ronson Chan said the directive could be just the beginning of government micromanagement of editorial decisions.

"If they can issue such requirements for news about Taiwan, then they will have requirements for other news stories in future," Chan told RFA. "This can only result in further restrictions [on journalists]."

An RTHK spokesman said the station is a public service broadcaster and a government department, and so its programming must "strictly abide by the one-China principle," Beijing's shorthand for its insistence on "unification" with Taiwan, and refusal to rule out annexing the country by force.

The memo came after pro-Beijing lawmaker Luk Chung-hung hit out at RTHK on July 16 for referring to Tsai as president.

The station should comply with the CCP's insistence that Taiwan be referred to as a province of China, and its government as a regional government, Luk told reporters.

Press freedom 'in tatters'

Hong Kong's press freedom is 'in tatters', following the forced closure of the Apple Daily newspaper and the arrests of columnists under the national security law, the HKJA said in an annual report last week.

Press freedom in the city has been increasingly affected by political "red lines" laid down after Beijing imposed its national security law on the city from July 1, 2020, the report found.

It listed the arrest of pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai on charges of "colluding with foreign powers," a forthcoming law banning "fake news," government control over content broadcast by RTHK, and the arrest of a journalist for searching a public database for car license plates for a documentary.

It also cited the forced closure of the Apple Daily after its bank accounts were frozen and the arrests of its columnists and top executives on the same charges as Lai.

The group called on the administration of Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam to shelve planned legislation banning "fake news" and misinformation, and for police to stop defining who is a journalist for the purposes of reporting major public events.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Washington says Beijing contracts hackers to conduct attacks like the one on Microsoft in March.

A man looks at his smartphone as he walks by the Microsoft office in Beijing, China, Aug. 7, 2020.

The U.S. has formed a coalition with its allies and other partners to identify and condemn malicious cyber activities orchestrated by Chinas Ministry of State Security (MSS), the White House said Monday, warning it is weighing additional measures to hold Beijing accountable for its actions.

The MSS, Chinas secret police, knowingly uses criminal contract hackers to conduct unsanctioned cyber operations around the globe, including for their own personal profit, through cyber-enabled extortion, crypto-jacking, and theft, the Biden administration said in a statement. State-affiliated cyber operators are also known to have conducted ransomware operations against private companies that have included ransom demands of millions of dollars, it said.

The PRCs (Peoples Republic of China) unwillingness to address criminal activity by contract hackers harms governments, businesses, and critical infrastructure operators through billions of dollars in lost intellectual property, proprietary information, ransom payments, and mitigation efforts, the White House said.

It called Beijings behavior in cyberspace inconsistent with its stated objective of being seen as a responsible leader in the world.

The administration announced that the U.S. is joining with the EU, the U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, and NATO to call out those activities, promote network defense and cybersecurity, and act to disrupt threats to our economies and national security.

A senior administration official said the collaboration will allow us to enhance and increase information sharing, including cyber threat intel and network defense information with public and private stakeholders, and expand diplomatic engagement to strengthen our collective cyber resilience and security cooperation.

Mondays announcement formally attributed the malicious cyber campaign utilizing the zero-day vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange Server disclosed in March to malicious cyber actors affiliated with the MSS with high confidence. The attack impacted some 140,000 servers worldwide.

When asked for additional details on the Microsoft hack, the senior administration official called it surprising, adding that it really gave us new insights on the MSS's work and on the kind of aggressive behavior that we're seeing coming out of China.

Mondays statement from the White House came as the U.S. National Security Agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) issued a Joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) providing detailed information on the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors when targeting U.S. and allied networks.

The advisory also provided recommendations to entities in the public and private sectors to mitigate the threat.

The U.S. Department of Justice also announced criminal charges Monday against four MSS hackers addressing what it said were activities concerning a multiyear campaign targeting foreign governments and entities in key sectors, including maritime, aviation, defense, education, and healthcare in a least a dozen countries.

According to the indictment, the defendants and officials in the Hainan State Security Department tried to hide the Chinese government's role in the information theft by using a front company.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that Chinas MSS had fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain, and pointed to the Department of Justice indictments as examples of how the U.S. will respond.

Allies condemn Beijing

In a separate statement on Monday, the EU said it is still reeling from the attack on the Microsoft Exchange Server and urged China to fight cybercrime occurring within its borders.

The EU and its member states strongly denounce these malicious cyber activities, which are undertaken in contradiction with the norms of responsible state behaviour as endorsed by all U.N. member states, said the statement from Josep Borrell, the European High Commissioner of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.

We continue to urge the Chinese authorities to adhere to these norms and not allow its territory to be used for malicious cyber activities, and take all appropriate measures and reasonably available and feasible steps to detect, investigate and address the situation.

NATOs North Atlantic Council also issued a statement condemning malicious cyber activities, including the Microsoft compromise, which it said undermine security, confidence and stability in cyberspace.

We call on all States, including China, to uphold their international commitments and obligations and to act responsibly in the international system, including in cyberspace, said the statement, which marked the first time that the 30-nation bloc has condemned Beijings cyber activities.

British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab warned in a statement on Monday that if Chinas government does not take action to end what he called systematic cyberattacks, it would be held accountable.

While Mondays statements were some of the most damning to date against China for allowing cybercrime to occur on its watch, the U.S. and its allies stopped short of sanctions against Beijing. The White House said it was not ruling out further actions.

Beijing has yet to issue a response to the allegations made Monday, but an editorial in the official English language Global Times newspaper labeled them a huge lie and suggested that the U.S. is using the issue of cyberattacks to enlist its allies in smearing China.

Cyberattacks are difficult to trace. Washington is exploiting them to frame China, said the unsigned editorial, which repeated Chinas stock response to complaints about its practices.

Cyberattacks have happened in almost all countries and China has suffered more damage than the US. The U.S., the global top technology center, has blatantly set up cyber troops, but loudly accuses other countries of launching cyberattacks. How ridiculous!

The editorial warned that if the U.S. takes aggressive measures, China will retaliate, adding that Washingtons allies will also incur Beijings wrath.

Sending a message

Timothy Heath, a senior researcher at the Washington-based RAND Corporation, told RFA Mondays statements were meant to send a message to China that the U.S. and its allies are watching.

But he suggested that they would do little to deter China for now because it is difficult to link the MSS to criminal cyber activities based inside the country and the cost of cyberattacks is quite low.

Dustin Carmack, a technology policy researcher at Washington-based think tank Heritage Foundation, recently noted that U.S. cybersecurity posture is undergoing fundamental changes. He said Washington should employ a blend of offensive and diplomatic frameworks to respond to authoritarian countries and the cybercrimes they support.

We should tell the governments of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea that we will not tolerate state-sponsored cyberattacks, and that deliberate ignorance of cyber operations against the United States will have major consequences, Carmack wrote.

Of allies, he said, they are facing the same attackswork with us.

Reported by Rita Cheng for RFAs Mandarin Service. Translated and written in English by Joshua Lipes.
Sun Dawu and his relatives tell his ongoing trial about 'cruel and inhumane treatment' in incommunicado detention.

Agriculture billionaire Sun Dawu, who is currently standing trial in the northern Chinese province of Hebei on a slew of charges that rights activists say are politically motivated, was subjected to "cruel and inhumane treatment," his defense team said.

Sun, 67, is on trial at the Gaobeidian Municipal People's Court amid unprecedented security that lawyers said is tantamount to a secret trial.

The Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) network said he is being targeted for political reasons, due to his association with detained democracy activist Xu Zhiyong.

Following his detention April 2021 alongside dozens of Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group employees, some of whom are members of his family, Sun and six others were held incommunicado under "residential surveillance at a designated location (RSDL)."

He told the court that he had requested a transfer to a regular detention center because of the way he was treated under RSDL.

During RSDL, I once requested to be transferred to the detention center because my treatment produced misery beyond words and life was worse than death," Sun told the court on July 16, in comments translated by his defense team.

"I went on a hunger strike for three days," he said. "[Eventually] they gave me an hour of yard time. I saw the sun for the first time in three and a half months."

Sun was detained in April 2021 alongside dozens of Dawu Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Group employees, some of whom are members of his family, after Dawu employees in August 2020 tried to stop a state-owned enterprise from demolishing a company building.

Seven of the defendants were placed under RSDL, and also reported being subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment, the defense team statement said.

Family also mistreated

Sun's brother Sun Sanwu said he had lost around 26 pounds in weight during his time in RSDL.

"The treatment we received under RSDL was inhuman," he told the court. "I signed whatever they asked me to sign. I only begged them to send me to the detention center as soon as possible."

"First, they made me confess, and then they put a hood over my head and took me to the law enforcement investigation center to synchronize my speech," he said.

Sun, a former pig farmer, stands accused of a slew of offenses, including "picking quarrels and stirring up trouble," "gathering a crowd to attack an organ of the state," "disrupting official duties," "illegal mining," and "illegal occupation of agricultural land."

His son Sun Fushuo also reported mistreatment during interrogation: "I was handcuffed to the interrogation chair for 30 hours until my legs were swollen. They said that if I refused to cooperate, they would place me under RSDL," he told the court.

"They all knew what they were doing. The police interrogators made it clear: Dont think we cant make you submit; we can place you under RSDL. I knew that RSDL was terrible, and I was scared," he said.

"The subsequent interrogation transcripts were made under such duress."

Sun Dawu's former assistant Ji Weilian is "extremely weak and on the verge of a mental breakdown" since going into RSDL, the defense team's statement said.

Dawu Group legal direct Yang Bin said the trial was effectively being held behind closed doors, with only one family member allowed into the court per defendant.

"There is a high-level of stability maintenance measures in place," Yang said.

Several members of Sun Dawu's defense team turned down requests for interviews when contacted by RFA in recent days, saying it was "inconvenient," a phrase often used to indicate pressure from the authorities.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
A Philippine Coast Guard officer aboard the BRP Cabra observes a Chinese Navy warship near the Marie Louise Bank in the South China Sea, July 13, 2021.

The Philippine Coast Guard said Monday it had challenged a Chinese warship that entered the countrys territorial waters in the South China Sea last week but eventually sailed away.

The BRP Cabra was patrolling near Marie Louise Bank  about 147 nautical miles (87 km) off the coast of El Nido town in Palawan province  when it spotted the Chinese ship on July 13, the Coast Guard said.

The incident occurred a day after the fifth anniversary of a landmark international arbitral ruling that affirmed Manilas rights to its territories in the South China Sea and declared Beijings claims over most of the contested waterway as baseless.

The navy warship had a flag of the Peoples Republic of China and was marked by Chinese characters, Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Armand Balilo said in a statement.

BRP Cabra calmly raised a radio challenge while monitoring the movement of the said ship using radar, Balilo said.

The PCG vessel moved closer to see more clearly the activity of the Chinese Navy warship in our waters, he said, using an acronym for the Philippine Coast Guard.

The Chinese warship, bow number 189, maintained silence, forcing the Philippine Coast Guard ship to use a Long-Range Acoustic Device to broadcast audible notifications and warnings.

It broke its silence and sent a radio message after the Philippine Coast Guard ship continued its challenge.

Philippine Coast Guard 4409, this is Chinese Navy warship 189. Please keep two nautical miles distance from me, the local coast guard quoted the message as saying.

Only then did the Chinese ship turn around to leave Marie Louise Bank, Balilo said, adding that the BRP Cabra followed to ensure that the foreign ship left the countrys exclusive economic zone.

Philippine coastguard personnel aboard their ship BRP Cabra monitoring Chinese vessels anchored at Sabina Shoal, a South China Sea outcrop claimed by Manila, April 27, 2021. Credit: Philippine Coastguard via AFP The Philippine Coast Guard said the crew strictly followed the manual on enforcing rules within the EEZ.

This is to ensure that we follow a rules-based and peaceful approach in guarding our democracy and that the rights of the Philippines to protect its sovereignty are protected, Balilo said.

Officials in Manila did not immediately respond when BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service, contacted them to ask if this was the first incident involving a Chinese marked warship since a dispute over Chinese ships in the Philippine EEZ began in March, or why they waited nearly a week to release details about the incident at sea.

Last month, BRP Cabra chased away five Chinese and two Vietnamese ships that had been monitored in the countrys waters, according to the Coast Guard.

Backed by other ships on April 27, it chased away seven Chinese ships from Sabina Shoal, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said at the time. The shoal is 130 nautical miles (241 km) west of Puerto Princesa in Palawan province, within the EEZ.

Both the Philippines and China, as well as Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam and Taiwan claim in whole or parts of the sea region. Indonesia does not regard itself as a party to the South China Sea dispute, but Beijing claims historic rights to parts of the sea overlapping Indonesias exclusive economic zone.

While President Rodrigo Duterte has said that the July 2016 the ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague clearly favored the Philippines, he has been reluctant to enforce it. Duterte has maintained that China is a friend who has been generous with its economic largesse and anti-COVID19 vaccines.

His foreign and defense secretaries have pointed out that friendly relations aside, the arbitral court ruling was set in stone and was part of international law.

The United States, Japan, Australia and other countries, meanwhile, have backed the Philippines, urging China to follow international norms and stop its expansionist moves in the sea region.

The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not reply to a BenarNews request for comment on Monday. Last week, Beijings foreign ministry dismissed the arbitration award as nothing more than a piece of waste paper.

Reported by BenarNews, an RFA-affiliated online news service.
Lawyers for the prosecution and the defense wrapped up their arguments on Tuesday in the trial of a Hong Kong motorcyclist accused of "terrorism" and "inciting secession" after he flew a banned slogan while riding down a street on July 1, 2020.

Tong Ying-kit is the first defendant to be tried in Hong Kong under a draconian national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which criminalizes political opposition and criticism of the authorities.

Tong, 24, was arrested by a group of police officers as he rode a motorbike at a protest against the law, carrying a flag bearing the words "Free Hong Kong, revolution now!"

The prosecution and the defense made their closing arguments to the High Court on Tuesday, with the defense focusing on the variable meanings that could be attributed to the once-ubiquitous 2019 protest movement slogan.

Tong, who has been held on remand for nearly a year, with repeated applications for bail and a writ of habeas corpus rejected by judges, has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges.

Prosecutors say the the "Free Hong Kong" part of the slogan on Tong's flag implied the city needed to be rescued from an enemy, the CCP, while "Revolution now!" implied a rejection of Chinese rule over the city.

Acting deputy director of public prosecutions Anthony Chau told the court that the prosecution only needed to prove that the defendant had communicated with others through words or actions for the charge of "incitement to secession" to be upheld.

Pedestrians and road users along the route of Tong's ride had "cheered and clapped" the defendant, proving that the defendant had communicated his message to others, Chau argued.

Too vague to incite

Senior counsel Clive Grossman, for the defense, countered that the words of the slogan were so vague they would not be capable of inciting anybody to secession.

He said the expert witnesses, Professors Francis Lee and Eliza Lee, had concluded that there could be multiple interpretations of the slogan's meaning.

Grossman said the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that what his client had intended to convey was exactly what prosecution expert witness Lau Chi-pang had said it meant.

He also said that Tong had tried to avoid driving into the police officers, and noted he had in his possession a first-aid kit, far from the action that would be expected of a terrorist.

Sentencing is expected to take place early next week.

Law widely criticized

The national security law, which saw China's feared state security police set up a headquarters in Hong Kong to oversee "serious" cases, has been widely criticized by governments, rights groups, and lawyers as an assault on Hong Kong's traditional freedoms of speech, association, and political participation.

It bans both words and actions deemed "secessionist," "seditious," "subversive," or linked to "terrorism," as well as speech that is critical of the Hong Kong government or the CCP, on pain possible life imprisonment.

On Jan. 6, 2021, 53 pro-democracy activists and former opposition lawmakers were arrested for "subversion" under the law after they held a democratic primary designed to maximize their chances of winning seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo).

The authorities responded by postponing the election and arresting those who took part in the primary.

Of those arrested, 47 currently await trial on "subversion" charges, with 12 granted bail -- some only after several months in detention -- and the rest remaining in prison pending trial.



Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
Witnesses say they are worried that the escapees will be executed.

UPDATED at 7:54 P.M. ET on 2021-07-20

China has repatriated about 50 North Korean escapees, including air force pilots and others who could face severe punishment including the death penalty, sources on the Chinese side of the border told RFA.

The first such repatriations since Beijing and Pyongyang closed their borders in January 2020 at the start of the pandemic took place on July 14 at the northwestern border city of Sinuiju, across the Yalu River border from Chinas Dandong, a source in the city told RFA.

Most North Korean escapees have a goal of reaching South Korea, but arrivals in the South are at an all-time low due to the pandemic. Not only is it difficult for North Koreans to cross over into China, once there, making their way to a third country has also gotten more difficult.

The inability to find a way out of China has resulted in effectively stranding the North Korean escapees in a country that routinely repatriates them to North Korea. The group of escapees sent back to North Korea last week had been awaiting their fate at a prison about 400 kilometers (250 miles) away in Shenyang, some for as long as two years.

The Dandong customs office was opened just for today and they sent about 50 North Korean escapees back to North Korea on two buses, the source, a Chinese citizen of Korean descent, said last week.

This morning dozens of police officers lined up in front of the customs office to block public access and ensure nobody was filming the repatriation, said the source.

There are 50 men and women in total, including North Korean soldiers and pilots who served in the air force. Among them is also a woman in her 30s who made heaps of money in Hebei province, said the source.

She was said to be very rich, but her neighbors ratted her out, the source said.

Chinese onlookers who witnessed the repatriation expressed sympathy toward the returning escapees, according to another Chinese citizen of Korean descent in Dandong.

They said If they leave, they will die. It is horrible that after escaping their country to survive, they are going to be executed young. The witnesses even showed hostility toward the police, who are essentially sending them off to die, said the second source.

The temporary opening to receive the group of escapees came after Pyongyang had denied several requests by Beijing to restart repatriations.

Their repatriation to North Korea has been delayed for a year or two. The escapees were held in a prison in Shenyang and sent back together as a group all at once at this time, said the first source.

The second source said Chinese authorities had planned to repatriate the escapees several times since April, but they were unable to because North Korea refused to accept them, citing coronavirus quarantine measures.

There are many more North Korean escapees in the Shenyang area, and the 50 that were not the only ones in Chinese custody, according to the first source.

I understand there are more North Korean escapees still at Shenyang prison, the first Dandong source said.

There are also women who escaped from North Korea and lived quietly in hiding with Chinese husbands. They are usually released immediately, but the ones who have conflicts with local residents or other problems are arrested and imprisoned, the source added.

Among the 50 sent back through Sinuiju are North Koreans who escaped after the coronavirus pandemic started, the second source said.

So it will be difficult for them to avoid severe punishment when they get back to North Korea, said the second source.

The group of escapees includes a woman who married a Chinese man, gave birth to his son, and had a wealthy lifestyle, said the second source.

This is the second time that this woman, whose son has turned 12 now, has been repatriated. Because her life is in peril, her Chinese husband offered a large bribe to save his wife, but she was sent back anyway, the second source said.

North Korean authorities also sent 90 long-term residents of Chinese citizenship to cross the border into China on the empty buses sent to receive the North Korean escapees, the first source said. Chinese citizens who have been living in North Korea for generations are allowed relatively free travel to China.

During a news briefing Monday, South Koreas Ministry of Unification said it could not confirm reports of the forced repatriation.

The Government has made various efforts to protect and support North Korean defectors abroad. However, there is nothing that the ministry can confirm regarding the issue, said Lee Jong Joo, a ministry spokesperson.

Beijing claims it must return North Koreans found to be illegally within Chinese territory as it is bound by two agreements it has signed with Pyongyang, the 1960 PRC-DPRK Escaped Criminals Reciprocal Extradition Treaty and the 1986 Mutual Cooperation Protocol for the Work of Maintaining National Security and Social Order and the Border Areas.

Rights groups however say that forced repatriation is a violation of Chinas responsibility to protect the escapees under the Refugee Convention.

More than 33,000 North Koreans have successfully made their way to South Korea in the past several decades, but the number of escapees entering South Korea sharply decreased from 1,047 in 2019 to only 229 in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to Ministry of Unification statistics.

The ministry announced on Friday that in the second quarter of 2021, only two escapees entered South Korea, the lowest ever in any quarter since it began compiling quarterly data in 2003.

In the first quarter of 2020, at the start of the pandemic, 135 escapees reached South Korea, but only 12 arrived in the second quarter. Quarterly totals increased to 48, then decreased to 34, then 31 over the next three quarters before dropping off to only two in the April to June period this year.

Cheong Gwang-il, the president of NoChain, a South Korea-based North Korea human rights group, told RFA that the Sino-Korean border closure, along with increased border security in Southeast Asia has caused less activity among brokers who assist North Koreans take the China-Southeast Asia route to escape get to South Korea.

A U.S. Department of State spokesperson told RFA that Washington was deeply concerned about the North Korean asylum seeker situation.

North Koreans who are forcibly repatriated are commonly subjected to torture, arbitrary detention, summary execution, forced abortion, and other forms of sexual violence. We are particularly concerned by recent reports that nearly 50 North Koreans were forcibly repatriated, the spokesperson said.

We continue to urge China to fulfill its international obligations as a party to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 Protocol and the UN Convention Against Torture.

Reported by Jieun Kim for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Jinha Shin. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Myanmars shadow government warned Monday 400,000 people could die if the military junta mismanages the battle with a third wave of COVID-19, as dire shortages of oxygen caused daily death tolls to spike and the United Nations warned of devastation.

The military junta that seized power on Feb. 1 is making the situation worse in Myanmar by underreporting the number of confirmed cases and hiding the fact that it was not prepared for the third wave, Zaw Wai Soe, the health minister of the National Unity Government (NUG) of lawmakers ousted by the army coup, told RFAs Myanmar Service in an interview.

Our epidemiologists have been checking and analyzing the situation, the infections and the deaths, he said.

We have been checking the infection rates, the positive cases and what the latest strain could do, and Id say it is possible that more than 300,000 or up to 400,000 lives could be lost if necessary effective actions are not taken in a timely manner to slow down the infections, added Zaw Wai Soe.

I think there are over 1,000 deaths a day now. Saying there are about 6,000 to 7,000 new positive cases per day is also an understatement. They are under-reporting. If all the data are systematically collected, I think there could be about 20,000 positive cases, he said.

Myanmar reported a daily new case total higher than 5,300 cases per day on average over the seven-day period ending Sunday.

The UN Country Team in Myanmar warned Monday that the third wave could be potentially catastrophic for the country of 54 million people.

The current outbreak of COVID-19 is expected to have devastating consequences for the health of the population and for the economy. A renewed whole of society approach is needed now more than ever, allowing all health professionals to work in safety, and both public and private providers enabled to contribute to the response, the team said in a statement.

A volunteer loads an oxygen tank onto his motorbike in Mandalay, Myanmar July 16, 2021. Credit: Reuters

The country teams statement said that the team was working with multiple channels to assist in vaccination and to relieve the ongoing oxygen shortage, a problem that becomes more dire as infections are on the rise.

Aid groups told RFA that oxygen demand is very high and that it is almost impossible to get oxygen in some places, because suppliers require a letter of recommendation from the military.

Additionally, a junta-mandated curfew causes a daily morning rush to oxygen distributors as people try, sometimes in vain, to refill canisters to save their ill loved ones.

What we are doing now is not enough to get the oxygen to fill our canisters, an aid worker told RFA.

When we go for refills, we are greeted by signs that say No refills without authorization, added the aid worker.

A home for senior citizens in Yangons North Dagon township that houses many COVID-19 patients who urgently need oxygen has no means of buying it, a volunteer at a charity told RFA.

A resident of Yangon said increasing numbers of infected made the shortage worse.

"The problem now is a complete shortage, he told RFA.

Covid patients have taken up most of the oxygen cylinders, and many of my suppliers say they have run out of tanks completely, added the Yangon source. The price of oxygen in the outside market has risen sharply."

A social media post on July 17 showed junta troops confiscate four truckloads of oxygen cylinders at the Sinmalaik dockyard in Yangons Kamayut township, where some of the people were waiting in line to buy oxygen said they were asked to register at the townships general administration office first.

A volunteer waits to fill an oxygen tank in Mandalay, Myanmar July 13, 2021. Credit: Reuters

An aid worker told RFA that troops have been dispersing crowds of hopeful oxygen customers in South Dagon.

"Even if I have money, I can't get a refill, let alone buy an oxygen cylinder. One man died yesterday while queuing to have a refill, the aid worker said.

Of course, the way things are done is also not systematic. For example, if they are going to sell two hundred tanks, they should give out two hundred tokens. Then there wouldnt be too many people waiting, the worker added.

Instead, they took a list of about five hundred people and there were about a thousand people, then the army came and warned the factory manager and asked the large crowd to disperse. The news spread and the situation got worse, said the aid worker.

RFA has not been able to confirm reports on social media that the military dispersed crowds of people waiting to buy oxygen.

The juntas deputy Information Minister Zaw Min Tun said at a news conference on July 12 that many oxygen production facilities were barred from selling to individual purchasers.

"We have some restrictions for the private sector. The restrictions are for the suppliers not to sell to individual customers but only to hospitals and clinics," he said, saying the measure was to prevent price gouging, fraud and hoarding.

There have also been calls for action on social media, with a 40-liter oxygen tank and accessories being sold for 1.5 million kyats (U.S. $913)--more than ten times the normal price.

The junta leader Sr. Gen Min Aung Hlaing recently told the military-owned Myawaddy TV that nearly 2,000 Covid treatment quarantine centers had been set up for nearly 100,000 patients and that oxygen tanks were being bought from neighboring Thailand for distribution to hospitals and Covid centers.

As of July 18, the juntas Ministry of Health said there were more than 230,000 confirmed cases and 5,000 deaths.

Reported by Khin Khin Ei and others for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
Critics says the hopes of Aung San San Suu Kyis father and other slain independence figures remain unfulfilled.

Detained Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was excluded by the military junta from annual Martyrs Day observances Monday honoring her father, Gen. Aung San, who led Myanmar to independence from British rule, while opponents of army rule staged protests in several big cities.

The ceremony honors Aung San and eight other members of his pre-independence interim government who were assassinated by a rival political group on July 17, 1947. Aung San Suu Kyi, 76, had attended the event throughout her long stints of house arrest under a previous military junta.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who is being detained by the military regime that overthrew her democratically elected government on Feb. 1, was neither invited to nor informed about the ceremony, which was broadcast live on television by junta, her lawyer told RFA.

I asked her if she had made any arrangements for Martyrs Day, and she said that no one had told her anything about it, defense attorney Khin Maung Zaw said, adding, It is not unthinkable that a daughter should attend her fathers memorial service.

Also, as a leader of the state, as the daughter of the countrys leader, she should have been allowed to attend, he said.

Toe Aung, Head of Public Relations of the Information Department of the Yangon City Development Committee, laid a wreath at the ceremony on behalf of Gen. Aung Sans family members, and ceremony organizers laid wreaths on behalf of the family members, only some of whom attended the days event, of the other political leaders killed in the July 19, 1947 shooting.

The fallen leaders led by Gen. Aung San gave their lives to achieve independence and gradually democratize the country. But that goal has not yet been realized, said Min Myint, a retired professor in the Department of Industrial Chemistry and the son of slain martyr Ohn Maung.

Wed love to see peace and progress in education and the economic sectors and in social development, but now were seeing a lot of problems.

Im very sorry for the country, Min Myint said.

The Myanmar flag is flown at half-staff over the Myanmar Fire Services Department building in Yangon, July 19, 2021. Photo: AP

Protests held

In some cities, young people defied police to hold brief ceremonies of their own on Monday to honor Myanmars fallen leaders.

We held a protest march this morning to carry on the legacy of the fallen leaders who paid with their lives for the countrys independence, said Khant Wai Phyo, a member of the protest organizing committee in Monywa, where police blocked off a bronze statue of Gen. Aung San in the citys center.

We also held a brief protest at 10:37 a.m. [the time when Aung San and his comrades were assassinated] together with another city ward to mark Martyrs Day, Khant Wai Phyo said, adding that four young men were arrested, and around 30 motorcycles were confiscated, when security forces arrived at the scene of a ceremony held in the area.

In Myanmars largest city and former capital Yangon, protests marking Martyrs Day have been held in neighborhoods and online since July 16, with protesters also paying homage to the monks, students, and others in Myanmar who have died in the countrys struggle for democracy and human rights.

Maung Sein, a participant in the protests in Yangon, said that a succession of military coups in Myanmar over the last several decades have betrayed the wishes for the country held by Aung San and the others killed in 1947.

Now, following the [Feb. 1] coup, they have killed anyone they wanted. We havent yet created the country that our great leaders wanted. Instead, we can simply say that our country has moved backward, he said.

Myanmar troops and security forces have killed at least 900 anti-coup protesters in the months since the Feb. 1 overthrow of the countrys democratically elected civilian government, and have arrested thousands more.

A group of Myanmar nationals living in Malaysia also held a Martyrs Day commemoration on Monday, holding the observance online because of restrictions on public gatherings aimed at controlling the spread of COVID-19.

No observances were held in the Myanmar capital Naypyidaw, where local residents said that dozens of police were guarding Gen. Aung Sans statue in the city center, where thousands have traditionally gathered in previous years to pay tribute to their countrys fallen leaders.

Military academy bombed

In a sign the junta remains widely rejected, an explosion rocked the entrance to the Myanmar militarys Defense Services Technological Academy in Pyin Oo Lwin, in Myanmars central Mandalay region on Sunday night, killing at least one service member and injuring two others, sources close to the military said.

The bomb was thrown at around 9:00 p.m. into a large group that had gathered as goods were being delivered for sale at an army market, one Pyin Oo Lwin resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

I dont know what they were actually doing, but I saw a car overturned, and there were about thirty people lying on the ground. I dont know if they were dead or injured or just lying on the ground because of the blast, he said.

Following the attack, the army troops stormed the Anisakan area outside the city, an area known to shelter anti-junta groups, the resident said.

Telephone calls seeking comment from military spokesperson Zaw Min Htun were not picked up on Monday.

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khin Maung Nyane. Written in English by Richard Finney.
The reason Tursunjan Nurmamat is detained and under investigation is unclear.

A Uyghur research scientist at a Chinese university in Shanghai who suddenly went silent in April after an active presence on social media has been confirmed detained, the latest of many intellectuals from Xinjiang to disappear from public life into internment camps or prisons.

Tursunjan Nurmamat, who had lived in the United States between 2009 and 2018 and earned doctorate from the University of Wyoming, has been in police custody for three months, according to sources at Tongji University, where he had worked since July 2018.

An official at Tongji University in Shanghai confirmed that Tursunjan is in custody and under police investigation.

This is currently in the process of investigation, he said. We know basic details, but nothing else. The Public Security Bureau is not talking with us, the official said.

When RFA asked for the name of the Uyghur instructor detained from the school, a second university staff member mentioned Tursunjan, who was born in 1985 in Yarkand (in Chinese, Shache) county in Kashgar in the far west of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

Tursunjan, who did postdoctoral research in Texas and California, is the latest in a growing number of Uyghur intellectual, cultural, and religious thought leaders to be incarcerated in the XUAR in what experts say is a larger Chinese effort to erase Muslim and Uyghur culture and force the 12 million Uyghurs to assimilate.

The jailing of Uyghur cultural leaders, which has gotten increasingly heavy-handed since 2016, is part of a set of policies has been deemed by the U.S. and others as constituting genocide that also includes forced labor at factories and farms, forced birth control, and the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs in a network of internment camps.

Abduweli Ayup, founder of Uyghur Hjelp, a Norway-based Uyghur advocacy and aid organization which maintains a list of detained Uyghur intellectuals, wrote on Twitter in June that Tursunjan had disappeared from Chinese social media two months earlier.

Abduweli told RFA he tried to investigate, but could not obtain much information on the academic, who he said focused on his studies in molecular and cellular life science in his work and avoided involvement in political activities while he was in the U.S.

Tursunjan, who also goes by the pen name Bilge, started a job at Tongji University in July 2018 and continued to post regularly online until he stopped doing so in early April, said Abduweli.

Among Tursunjans last posts to his WeChat account was a photo of his mother, wife, and daughter celebrating International Womens Day on March 8.

During the first week of April, he also posted on WeChat that he was happy to have been transferred to a new job at Cell Research, a Chinese monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering cell biology.

But soon after Tursunjan announced that he had begun working at Cell Research, his name disappeared from the publications website.

At that point we began to worry that Tursunjan had been detained, Abduweli said.

We spread the news on social media, and then, after looking into Tursunjans situation, we were able to obtain a bit of information about it. Ultimately, we are concerned about what has happened to Tursunjan, said Abduweli.

Abduweli and several of Tursunjans friends in the U.S. wrote to the publishers of Cell Research and received a response that the journal was unable to provide personal information about its editors.

RFA sent an email to the journal on July 17 asking for information about Tursunjan but has not yet received a response.

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by the Uyghur Service. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Equipment delivered to Russia by a Lithuania-based company ended up being used at power stations in Crimea despite European Union sanctions prohibiting trade activity with the Russian-controlled peninsula, according to evidence discovered in an investigation by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service and its partners.

Run Engineering shipped equipment to a Russian company contracted to supply water filters to two plants being constructed in Crimea, the Ukrainian region seized and occupied by Russia in 2014, the investigation by the service's Schemes program, Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, and the Scanner Project found.

Export documents and photographic evidence indicates that filters, including a component requiring an export license, were shipped to Russian company Voronezh-Aqua by Run Engineering. The same equipment was used at the power stations on the Black Sea peninsula, the investigation found.

Run Engineering denied any wrongdoing and said it had not sent any equipment for use in Crimea.

"We provided all the necessary documents, proof that it was to be a civilian object, absolutely not going to Crimea, but to another facility," Run Engineering Director Povilas Medeksa told the investigation by the three news organizations.

However, export records suggests that a key water-filter component -- membranes -- had been acquired by Run Engineering from a German-based subsidiary of U.S.-based DuPont, and shipped to Run's Russian partner, Voronezh-Aqua, the investigation found.

Photographic evidence appeared to show the same equipment, with the same labels, at the facilities near the Crimean cities of Simferopol and Sevastopol.

Run Engineering is registered in Kaunas, Lithuania, a free economic zone offering businesses tax breaks and other benefits. It had a years-long partnership with Voronezh-Aqua -- which was contracted to do work on the energy plants in Crimea -- and had been denied an export license for violating rules over possible trade in Crimea in 2018.

The German company, Inge, acknowledged that it had a business partnership with Run Engineering, but said that ended in 2020. It said it was unaware any of its membranes had ended up in Crimea.

"At no time in the course of this customer relationship with Run Engineering did Inge GmbH have any knowledge or even any indication that the products delivered to this customer would be used at a destination other than that specified by the customer," DuPont spokeswoman Daniela Drossler told Deutsche Welle, the German broadcaster that was also involved in the investigation.

The media outlets that conducted the investigation sought comment from the European Commission, which coordinates EU sanctions policy, on the findings. No response had been received by the time of publication on July 20.

Doing Business In Crimea

The same two plants were at the center of an international scandal after German engineering company Siemens said its power turbines had been installed at them without its knowledge in 2017, in violation of EU sanctions. Russia denied that, claiming that it modernized the existing turbines at the stations using Russian specialists and equipment.

Siemens said the turbines were sold to Russia in 2015 and 2016 for a power plant in Taman in Russia's southern Krasnodar region, across the Kerch Strait from Crimea. But they were then transferred to Crimea by Siemens' Russian customer, Technopromeksport, and installed in the new gas-fired power plants in Crimea.

The installation of the turbines led to legal proceedings and fresh sanctions against Russian officials and companies.

Crimea has suffered from water and energy shortages since Russia seized control of the territory in March 2014, after sending in troops and staging a referendum denounced as illegitimate by the UN General Assembly. Russian authorities promised the facilities would meet 90 percent of Crimea's power needs.

In March 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited Crimea on the fifth anniversary of the peninsula's seizure and took part in ceremonies to open the two plants.

The construction of power plants in Crimea, which began to operate at full capacity in March 2019, was carried out by Russian engineering company Technopromeksport, part of the state-owned conglomerate Rostec.

Export data showed that Run Engineering delivered the membranes to Voronezh-Aqua on December 17, 2018, according to the investigation by Schemes, an investigative program run jointly by RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service and UA: Pershy, Ukraine's public broadcaster, and its partners.

That same day, Run Engineering's license to export such goods was revoked due to suspicions by Lithuanian law enforcement that the company's equipment could end up in Crimea. The investigation found the shipment was made a few days before the export license was revoked.

A Lithuanian customs official said goods under an export ban can sometimes elude customs control.

"Not every exported good is checked," said Asta Kriauceliunaite, director of the Kaunas Territorial Customs Violation Prevention Unit, who stressed the banned items would no longer be available for further export.

Medeksa said Run Engineering did not export any membranes supplied by Inge after the license was revoked and did not ship items to Crimea.

"We exported equipment, not membranes that require a license. It's like exporting a car, but not an engine. We do not supply them, the company buys them itself. It can be German, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese manufacturers," Medeksa told the media outlets that conducted the investigation.

Kremlin Connections

Documents show that Run Engineering is owned through a company registered in Cyprus by Marina Karmysheva, who holds Cypriot citizenship and whose other business interests link her to Rosneft, the Russian state oil giant headed by longtime Putin associate Igor Sechin.

Several companies with connections to Karmysheva are also linked to Viktor Medvedchuk, a Kremlin-friendly Ukrainian politician who is close to Putin.

Medvedchuk, head of the political council of Opposition Platform-For Life, which is the largest opposition group in Ukraine's parliament, is under Ukrainian sanctions and accused of high treason and the illegal exploitation of natural resources in Crimea.

Efforts to reach Karmysheva for comment were unsuccessful.

Written by Tony Wesolowsky based on reporting by the Schemes program of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service
Authorities have frozen the bank accounts of the Belarusian Association of Journalists (BAZh) and detained more people amid a severe crackdown on nongovernmental organizations.

The BAZh said on Telegram on July 20 that its bank accounts and all bank operations had been frozen in the aftermath of police searches of their offices last week.

Media reports said police also detained well-known historians Andrus and Tatsyana Mastyka, who in the past used to lead the civic group Historyka. The couple was detained after police searched their home in Minsk on July 19.

Another opposition figure, Yuras Hubarevich, said on July 20 that his former wife, Stasya Hubarevich, was detained on that day after police searched her apartment, where he is officially registered. Hubarevich is the chairman of the For Freedom movement.

Belarusian authorities have moved to shut down critical and nonstate media outlets and human right bodies in the wake of mass protests after a disputed presidential election last August. The opposition and the West say Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya won the vote and accuse authoritarian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka of falsifying the landslide result to give him a sixth consecutive term in power.

A day earlier, the Belarusian PEN-club and the charitable organization Imena (Names) said they were informed on July 19 that their bank accounts had been frozen without explanation.

"In all over the past few days, 66 searches have been performed in homes and offices of media representatives. A large series of searches was also conducted at the homes and offices of many NGOs and human rights groups. The Belarusian Association of Journalists thanks all the people who support the organization and all truthful journalists during this complex time. Let us stay together!" the BAZh statement said.

Authorities have not given reasons for any of the searches, nor have they explained why they detained the Mastykas or Hubarevich. In May, the Justice Ministry officially warned Hubarevich's movement for allegedly failing to comply with a requirement to register the groups legal address.

Belarus has been mired in turmoil since the disputed presidential election.

Lukashenka has since put down street protests and dissent over the vote with sometimes lethal force, jailing thousands of people and forcing most opposition leaders who haven't been imprisoned to leave the country.

The West, which has refused to recognize the official results of the vote and does not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader, has imposed several rounds of sanctions against the 66-year-old, some of his family members, other senior officials, and on key economic sectors.

The EU recently imposed further far-reaching penalties aimed at weakening the regime after the forced landing of a European passenger plane in Minsk and the arrest of an opposition blogger who was on board.

In April, Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimer Makey publicly warned that further Western sanctions against Lukashenka's government will be met by a crackdown on the country's civil society.

"Any further toughening of the sanctions will lead to the situation where civil society [in Belarus] of which they [in the West] care will stop functioning. And that will be, I believe, absolutely grounded in the current situation," Makey said at the time.
Muslims in Central Asia are marking one of the major Islamic holidays, Eid al-Adha, while trying to adhere to coronavirus restrictions for the second year in a row amid a surge in new COVID-19 cases.

Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, is celebrated by Muslims with one of the center points being the sharing of meat from sacrificed animals among relatives, friends, and people in need.

In Uzbekistan, the regions most-populous nation of 32 million, people marked the holiday on July 20 at homes as public celebrations and collective prayers at mosques were forbidden.

Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoev, in his holiday message, called the ban on public celebrations of the holiday "the right decision."

In recent weeks, Uzbekistan has tightened restrictions amid a surge of COVID-19 cases across the country. In total, 120,631 coronavirus cases and 805 COVID-related deaths have been officially registered in the tightly controlled nation.

In Kazakhstan, where all public celebrations of the holiday were also banned, the government created a website via which people could pay for the slaughtering of an animal they chose online and the consequent distribution of meat among the people, groups, or mosques they chose. The site also allows people in need to ask for free meat.

With almost 500,000 cases, the most in the region, Kazakhstan has been hard hit by the virus. One bright spot came on July 20 when the government said that for the first time in weeks, the daily number of new coronavirus cases decreased.

In Kyrgyzstan, collective prayers in mosques were allowed on condition of preserving sanitary and epidemiologic requirements such as social distancing, while celebrations and prayers in other public sites were banned.

Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov used his holiday message on July 20 to urge all his countrymen to get vaccinated.

According to the latest official figures, the total number of coronavirus cases in Kyrgyzstan is 151,607, including 2,196 deaths.

In Tajikistan, collective prayers in mosques and their territories on the day of Eid al-Adha were allowed this year.

Tajik officials say the total number of coronavirus cases in the country is 14,177, including 112 deaths, but many in Tajikistan say the real number is much higher.
The fallout from an investigation into the use of an Israeli firms Pegasus spyware deepened on July 20 as it emerged that more than a dozen current or former world leaders appear to be among thousands of potential targets.



Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, and French President Emmanuel Macron were among 14 current or former world leaders who may have been targeted for hacking by clients of the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, according to Amnesty International and a consortium of 17 global media organizations investigating the scandal.



Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa, Barham Salih of Iraq, and the king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, are also on the list, consortium members including The Washington Post reported.



The world leaders phone numbers were found on a list of 50,000 phone numbers believed to have been identified as people of interest by clients of the NSO Group since 2016.



The files were leaked to Amnesty and the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories, which shared the information with the global media consortium that began publishing their investigative reports on July 18.



The list of identified names includes 189 journalists, more than 600 politicians and government officials, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, and several heads of state, according to The Washington Post. The journalists work for organizations including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and the Financial Times.



"We have long known that activists and journalists are the targets of this surreptitious phone hack -- but even those at the highest levels of power cannot escape the grim spread of NSO spyware," Amnesty head Agnes Callamard wrote on Twitter.



"Pegasus is a weapon that threatens rights and freedoms, justice, and the rule of law. It is also a weapon used by governments to target individuals in the territory of another state," she added.

A number of autocratic regimes but also democratic governments used NSOs Pegasus to hack the smartphones of journalists, officials, and rights activists worldwide.



NSO Group clients included the governments of Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Togo, and the United Arab Emirates, according to reports by the consortium.



As blistering reports emerge, NSO has denied any wrongdoing.

The private firm says that its software is intended for use against criminals and terrorists and is made available only to military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies from countries with good human rights records.



While a phone numbers presence in the data does not mean an attempt was made to hack a device, the consortium said it believed the data indicated potential targets of NSOs government clients.



Most political leaders appeared to have been selected for being potentially hacked by rival states, although in some cases, such as in Kazakhstan, they may have been selected by a source within their own countries.



Among the top officials on the list in Kazakhstan were Toqaev, the countrys current president, and Prime Minister Asqar Mamin. Bakytzhan Sagintayev, the prime minister until February 2019, was also selected. It is unclear whether their phones were actually hacked using the spyware or if they were just identified as targets.



Toqaev wasn't president at the time in question, which took place in 2017 and 2018. But he was the No. 2 to the countrys longtime ruler, Nursultan Nazarbaev, who handpicked him as his successor in March 2019.



Evidence from the phone records also indicates that Pakistans prime minister was selected by rival India, the consortium reported. It was unclear if the potential spying on Khan continued after he became prime minister in 2018.



In India, the scandal has also touched nerves as the opposition calls for an investigation into reports of snooping on politicians with the Israeli-made software.



Shaktisinh Gohil, a spokesman of the main opposition Congress party, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government should clearly say whether it used Pegasus to spy on dozens of politicians, journalists, activists, and critics.



The identities behind around 300 numbers were verified by the international consortium and included Modi's main political rival, Rahul Gandhi of Congress. The Indian government denied the allegations.

In France, prosecutors opened an investigation into allegations that journalists of a local investigative news website had been spied on using the Pegasus program.



The French probe will examine 10 different charges, including whether there was a breach of personal privacy, fraudulent access to personal electronic devices, and criminal association, the Paris prosecutor's office said on July 20.



The probe took on ever greater urgency after the newspaper Le Monde reported on July 20 that Macron and several other senior government officials were targeted for potential surveillance on behalf of Morocco.



The announcement of the investigation comes a day after the website Mediapart filed a legal complaint, accusing Morocco's secret services of having used the spyware to tap into the mobile phones of two of its reporters.



Morocco rejected what it called "unfounded and false allegations."

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and two journalists with French and Moroccan dual nationality also filed a joint complaint with prosecutors on July 20, calling on them to identify those responsible and their accomplices for the targeted harassment of the journalists.

RSF said in a statement that it intends to file similar complaints in other countries together with targeted journalists.

We will do everything to ensure that NSO Group is convicted for the crimes it has committed and for the tragedies it has made possible, RSF Secretary-General Christophe Deloire said.

Hungarian opposition lawmakers have also called for an inquiry into reports that Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing government may have used the powerful malware to spy on critical journalists, politicians, and business figures.

Direkt36, a Hungarian investigative-journalism outlet, revealed that the phones of more than 300 Hungarian nationals were identified as possible targets for infection. Amnesty said its experts had confirmed several cases where the spyware was successfully installed.

The Hungarian government should immediately provide a meaningful response to this latest revelation by the Pegasus Project and clarify whether it knew about or approved the covert surveillance of journalists, businessmen, and others, David Vig, director of Amnesty Hungary, said in a statement. Hungarys surveillance practices have long been a matter of concern.

Orban has been accused by the EU of flouting democracy with a series of laws seen as curtailing a free press and human rights. His government, however, has denied any use of the Pegasus software "in any way."

Pegasus infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators to secretly record phone calls, access text messages, photos, e-mails, and passwords, track GPS data, and activate microphones and cameras.

With reporting by AFP, AP, Reuters, Dawn, The Washington Post, and OCCRP
The European Commission has slammed Hungary and Poland for eroding media freedoms and judicial independence, adding that corruption remains a major challenge in both EU members.

The European Union has repeatedly warned that democratic standards are being challenged in Hungary and Poland.

In a new rule-of-law report released on July 20, the commission also singled out Slovenia, which currently holds the six-month rotating presidency of the 27-member bloc, for violating freedom of the media, citing online harassment and threats against Slovenian journalists.

There are causes for serious concern in a number of member states, especially when it comes to the independence of judiciary, said Vera Jourova, the commission's vice president for values and transparency, the bloc's top rule-of-law official.

The report found that Poland was not up to standards in the four main areas reviewed: justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom, and checks and balances.

Last week, the EU's top court, the European Court of Justice (ECJ), found that the Polish Supreme Court's disciplinary chamber does not guarantee impartiality and independence and infringes upon the independence of the judiciary, running counter to EU law.

Jourova on July 20 gave Poland less than one month to come up with clarifications on how it was complying with the ECJ's ruling or face hefty financial penalties.

"Poland needs to inform us of the measures foreseen by August 16," Jourova said. EU law has primacy over national law. All decisions by the European Court of Justice are binding."

Polish government spokesman Piotr Mueller said Warsaw will analyze the report and formulate its opinion after that.

The report also blasted Hungary for lack of proper anti-corruption measures, while warning that media freedom and pluralism remain at risk."

In Hungary, "risks of clientelism, favoritism, and nepotism in high-level public administration as well as risks arising from the link between businesses and political actors remain unaddressed," a summary of the report says.

At a summit last month, EU leaders blasted Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban over new legislation that bans the display of LGBT material to children, while the European Commission also started legal action against both Hungary and Poland for what the EUs executive arm sees as blatant disrespect for the rights of LGBT people.

According to the EU's executive arm, reforms of the Polish justice system carried out over the past six years continue to increase the influence of the government over the justice system, damaging judicial independence.

The report also pointed out a risk of undue influence on corruption prosecutions for political purposes" and noted a deterioration of working conditions for journalists, with use of intimidating judicial proceedings."

Balazs Hidveghi, a European lawmaker from Orban's ruling Fidesz party, tweeted that the report has nothing to do with reality. Its simply the compilation of leftist NGOs baseless accusations against Hungarys conservative government.

However, the conclusions of the report threaten to bring serious consequences for Warsaw and Budapest.

A new mechanism introduced last year amid growing concerns over the democratic backsliding in the two Central European countries links observing the rule of law and democratic standards to the disbursement of EU funds, allowing Brussels to to withhold the money in case of severe violations.

With reporting by AFP, AP, and dpa
A woman in southwestern Iran was heard pleading for security forces not to use violence against those protesting water shortages after at least two demonstrators were killed.

Sirthe demonstrations are peaceful, why do you shoot? the woman in the city of Susangerd told anti-riot forces in an audio widely shared online and cited by Iranian media.

She was among hundreds of citizens, including children, who have taken to the streets of more than a dozen cities and towns in the western Khuzestan Province, including the capital, Ahvaz, for five consecutive nights to demand access to potable water.

The protests turned deadly shortly after they started on July 15, with local authorities blaming the death of a 30-year-old man described as a passerby on "rioters" firing in the air, though opposition sources have accused security forces of causing the death. Some reports say as many as four people were killed.

Internet disruptions -- believed to be caused by officials to prevent protesters from organizing -- have also been reported in the province.

Iranian authorities have sent a delegation to the region to try to reassure the public, with outgoing President Hassan Rohani saying that people in Khuzestan will be compensated for the situation and media reports saying an assistance program had been approved.

Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei also urged officials to resolve the water crisis and prevent the recurrence of similar problems.

Amateur videos posted online appear to show a heavy police presence using tear gas to disperse protesters in several cities. Gunshots are heard in some of the videos, while in others protesters appear to be burning tires to block streets and are throwing rocks at security forces.

'Thirst Of The People'

The severe drought -- exacerbated by years of mismanagement and poor planning -- is being blamed for the water crisis.

Energy Minister Reza Ardekani warned earlier this year that the summer would be the driest in the country in 50 years. The drought has devastated agriculture and livestock and led to power cuts amid scorching temperatures that sometimes reach 50 degrees Celsius.

The use of force against "thirsty" protesters in the war-stricken province has caused widespread outrage among Iranians, with many taking to social media to express their concern and solidarity with those who are desperately calling for access to more water.

Khuzestan, which borders Iraq, became the front-line during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88, when tens of thousands of people were killed and many of the region's cities were left in ruins.

The province is home to around 80 percent of Iran's oil fields and 60 percent of the country's natural-gas reserves.

Locals -- the majority of them ethnic Arabs -- have long complained of discrimination and say they don't benefit from the province's wealth.

"The people of Khuzestan don't [deserve] bullets. They acted as shields against bullets during the war," former reformist lawmaker Mahmud Sadeghi tweeted on July 18, using the Persian hashtag "Khuzestan is not alone."

Lawmaker Mojtaba Mahfuzi from the Khuzestan city of Abadan said in parliament on July 19 that the province had witnessed many crises, including "dust [storms], floods, and droughts, the drying of wetlands, and the thirst of the people."

"Listen to the cries of the oppressed people of Khuzestan and give this region a share of what it has offered," Mahfuzi said.

Heavy-Handed Response

Nabi Nissi, a journalist in the region, told the reformist Iranian daily Etemad that demonstrations in Susangerd were largely peaceful, adding that the deployment of riot police led to "tensions."

"When the police forces and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were tolerant toward the people, nothing happened," Nissi said. "Unfortunately, when the special units entered the city they took action, which unfortunately led to physical clashes and shooting."

"I don't know what caused [the security forces] to come," he added. "People's demands are focused on water shortages."

The protests come amid rising public frustration over a decimated economy that has been crushed by crippling U.S. sanctions. There has also been public anger over power cuts, brownouts, and a slow vaccination campaign amid a surge in the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths in recent weeks.

The country has also faced protests by nurses, workers, pensioners, and thousands of oil contractors demanding higher wages.

Paris-based political analyst Reza Alijani told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that Tehran's heavy-handed response to the protests in Khuzestan highlights its fear of its citizens.

"Whenever the Islamic republic sees a threat to its existence it uses force," Alijani said, noting the factors behind the authorities' sensitivity about Khuzestan, where separatist groups operate. Tehran has in the past blamed unrest in the province on its foreign enemies, accusing them of provoking ethnic strife.

"Khuzestan is also a special province -- it's a border province which has its security issues, it's an oil province, it's the spinal cord of the economy, our Arab ethnic brothers live there, and it has been also damaged by the [Iran-Iraq] war," he said. "It's a province that has faced many crises."

The province also saw protests over water shortages and pollution in February 2017 and July 2018 when many chanted anti-establishment slogans.
Eighteen military personnel, including a major and a lieutenant, have died in Turkmenistan amid reports about rising tensions along the border with Afghanistan, where Taliban militants have been on an offensive to capture districts in the region.

Two separate sources told RFE/RL on July 20 that of 18 deceased military personnel, six had been returned to their relatives in the eastern Lebap region that borders Afghanistan.

An RFE/RL correspondent in the region confirmed the information, adding that he visited burial sites of two soldiers in two villages in the region on July 19 and was able to talk to the relatives of other soldiers who were brought to the region in coffins.

Officials told relatives that the soldiers died in a mass traffic accident near Ashgabat, the capital, and did not allow them to see the dead men, who were buried in closed coffins.

It remains unclear if a massive deadly traffic accident with the involvement of military vehicles happened near Ashgabat in recent days as the tightly controlled and isolated Central Asian nation's government is known for its reluctance to talk to media.

The sources, however, told RFE/RL that the bodies were not brought to Lebap from Ashgabat, but from the neighboring Mary region that lies next to Afghanistan and where a major border crossing with Afghanistan, Serhetabat, is located.

One of the sources who is close to the Defense Ministry told RFE/RL that two of the six men buried in Lebap were an army major and a lieutenant.

Neither the Defense Ministry nor the Interior Ministry would comment to RFE/RL about the situation.

There have been traffic accidents in the past in which military personnel were killed. Last September, at least five soldiers died in a traffic accident in the Mary region. Independent media reports said at the time that 11 soldiers died in the accident.

There have also been several deadly incidents along the Turkmen-Afghan border in recent years as well. In June 2018, shoot-outs near Serhetabat left 25 Turkmen soldiers dead.

In recent weeks, Turkmenistan has been sending heavy weaponry, helicopters, and other aircraft to areas along the 800-kilometer Turkmen-Afghan border as the security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply with Taliban fighters advancing on provincial centers and even some border crossings.

Hundreds of Afghans, including soldiers, local police, and regular citizens, have reportedly fled into other neighboring Central Asia countries, including Tajikistan.

On July 5, the border guard service reported that more than 1,000 Afghan troops had crossed into Tajikistan over the previous 24 hours.

The United States has announced the withdrawal of all of its forces by August 31. Earlier this month, U.S. forces vacated their largest base in Afghanistan at Bagram, north of Kabul.

Amid the pullout, the Taliban have pushed into several areas and now control about one-third of the countrys 421 districts and district centers.

The rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces, and the Taliban battlefield successes, are stoking concerns that the Western-backed government in Kabul may collapse.


Blood-curdling images show pillars of swarming mosquitos above Russia's Kamchatka region as they hunt for a mate. The photos of swirling columns of mosquitos are causing a buzz online, but locals of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula say the event is an annual "trouble" that darkens the sky every summer.

Aleksei Ponomaryov, the Kamchatka local who filmed the apocalyptic event, near Ust-Kamchatsk, told local news outlet Kamchatka-inform: "I left early this morning, and as you can see I ended up right in the thick of things. I can't say how high these pillars [of mosquitoes] were, it seemed like they rose up to the clouds." Ponomaryov said the swarms would form in towering columns, dissipate, then appear again within seconds.

According to a widely cited 2005 research paper on mosquito mating habits, such "tornadoes" are rarely observed swarms of male mosquitos seeking to leave with a female partner.

The nightclub-like scenario is described by researchers as male mosquitos clustering "in sometimes large numbers, forming nearly cylindrical swarms of several meters' height. Single females fly into the swarm and are detected by their lower wing-beat frequency. Several males may arrive near the female, which departs with one of them from the swarm."

Previous observations of the phenomenon, which has also apparently been filmed in Argentina, note that the howling pillars of mosquitos tend to rise above visually distinct "swarm markers" on the ground "and usually keep station in reference" to the object. The Russian images appear to show the mosquito swirls forming above roads, possibly using puddles as markers.
Amid the global controversy over reports of phone hacks, said to be with Pegasus software sold by an Israeli company, Azerbaijani journalists and activists have responded angrily. They say there's evidence that they were targeted by their government's security agencies. Hundreds of alleged targets have been identified. Two people RFE/RL spoke to said some kind of court action would ensue, while one journalist said that her phone had been hacked since 2019. An official spokesman in Baku dismissed the reports as "nonsense."
A former Russian policeman who criticized security officials for their treatment of protesters supporting Aleksei Navalny says he has been charged for insulting a government official.

Sergei Rimsky said on July 20 that the Investigative Committee had informed him of the charge, which stems from an incident in April when he demanded officers respect the rights of those they were detaining, including him, at a rally for the country's leading opposition figure.

"I was charged," he said in a video on Instagram.

Rimsky left the police force in February, saying he had had enough after seeing how his fellow officers treated Navalny supporters at a rally in January where hundreds, some of whom were beaten, were detained.

He then was critical of Russia's judicial system when it jailed Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critic, for breaking the terms of his probation from what is widely considered to be a trumped-up case because he left Russia in a coma for life-saving treatment after being poisoned with a nerve agent.

Rimsky said that police searched his apartment in May and took his laptop, phone, and "a couple of documents they found of interest."

He said the raid was in connection with the charges he was informed of on July 20.

In a recent interview with RFE/RL's Russian Service, Rimsky said that he intends to run in elections to the State Duma.

"I guess we can say the election campaign has now started!" he said in the July 20 Instagram post.
There was the mysterious man-made hole that appeared in a Russian-built module of the International Space Station. There was the satellite-carrying rocket that failed because it was mistakenly programmed as if it were blasting off 6,200 kilometers to the west. There was the emergency landing following the unsuccessful launch of a rocket carrying a Russian and an American aboard a Soyuz capsule. There was the report that $400 million went missing last year.

Now add this to the litany of woes roiling Russia's space agency: A respected former cosmonaut was demoted last month, reportedly after he questioned the agency's decision to let a major Russian action movie be shot on the orbital station. The move prompted unusual public pushback from Russia's professional cosmonaut corps.

As U.S. private companies rush to build new space vehicles, and China's space agency pushes new frontiers of exploration, Roskosmos, the state-owned corporation that is heir to the venerable science know-how that gave the world Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, is sputtering in the 21st century.

"You might say this is a failing space agency," said Douglas Loverro, a former head of NASA's human spaceflight program and former Pentagon official overseeing U.S. space policy. Loverro lays blame largely at the feet of Dmitry Rogozin, who's been the director of Roskosmos since 2018.

"Rogozin has created a mess. There's a lack of funding, the lack of true purpose...for Roskosmos. They haven't articulated a plan. What are they going to do with the International Space Station? Where are they going? What are their priorities?" Loverro told RFE/RL.

Roskosmos did not respond to e-mails from RFE/RL with a list of questions about Rogozin and about the company's operations.

Workhorse Technology

Formerly known as the Roskosmos State Corporation for Space Activities, the state-owned company in its current form came into existence in 2015 as part of a wholesale reorganization of the Russian space industry -- essentially a consolidation and a nationalization combined.

Rogozin, a former journalist who has served as ambassador to NATO and as a deputy prime minister and who was openly critical of the country's space program, took the post of director-general three years later. With an estimated budget of around $2.8 billion, as of 2020, the company holds essentially a monopoly on the civilian aerospace industry, overlapping only with the military demands of the Defense Ministry and armed forces.

The workhorse technology used in its capsules and rocket designs is considered old, but reliable. First developed by the Soviets in the mid-1960s, the engineering designs have powered more than 1,700 manned and unmanned launches, making the Soyuz capsule the most-used launch vehicle in the world by far.

For the better part of the 2010s, Roskosmos also held a monopoly on transport to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The U.S. decision to ground its aging space shuttle fleet in 2011 meant U.S. and European astronauts relied solely on Soyuz capsules to commute to the orbiting station. Cargo supplies went on Russian-built Progress craft.

It was enormously lucrative for Roskosmos, with NASA paying up to $100 million per ride.

Russia for years was a dominant player in the commercial satellite launch industry. And it was also a singular source for rocket engines in another area: American commercial and military satellite launches -- something that has bothered some U.S. defense officials and members of Congress for years.

After Russia's seizure of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, pressure mounted in Congress to more quickly wean U.S. satellite launches from the engines, known as RD-180s. The United States is to officially cease using the RD-180 next year -- slicing revenues for the manufacturer, NPO Energomash, which is now part of the Roskosmos conglomerate.

The advent of private, mainly U.S.-based space companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin also deprives Roskosmos of a steady revenue stream from U.S. taxpayers. Following the March 2020 delivery of U.S. astronauts to the ISS by a SpaceX craft, NASA has moved to end the purchase of seats on Soyuz flights for U.S. astronauts.

Despite acrimonious relations between Washington and Moscow, the Russian and U.S. space agencies have continued to work together; in June, the two sides extended, until 2030, a cooperation agreement that largely centers on the continued operation of the ISS.

But Rogozin, who himself is under U.S. and EU financial sanctions related to the seizure of Crimea, has threatened to pull Roskosmos out of joint work on the station early. "Either we work together, and then the sanctions must be lifted immediately, or we will not work together and then we will deploy our own station," he was quoted as saying in June.

More tellingly, Rogozin has complained that U.S. sanctions are hurting efforts to develop Russia's space industry. Two major Roskosmos subsidiaries -- TsNIIMash and Progress -- were blacklisted by the U.S. Commerce Department last year.

"We have more than enough rockets, but there's nothing to launch," he was quoted as telling Russian lawmakers last month.

Rogozin also signaled that Moscow would be looking elsewhere for new partners, and in March, the agency signed an agreement with China's space agency to build a base on or around the moon -- a rebuff to NASA's invitations for Russia to join a similar U.S.-led lunar effort known as Artemis.

Roskosmos said it made around 12 billion rubles ($160 million) in profit in 2020, according to Maksim Ovchinnikov, its top economics and finance officer. He also said the company had reduced its workforce by some 10,000 employees since 2019.

From Baikonur To Vostochny

Despite drawing on vast infrastructure, decades of experience, and world-class engineering talent, the past few years have dented Roskosmos's reputation.

Russia's main launch facility is located in Kazakhstan, at Baikonur, a legacy of the Soviet Union but one that makes the Kremlin nervous about losing access.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far Eastern Amur region is supposed to complement, or even replace, Baikonur. But construction, which started in 2011, has been rife with corruption, embezzlement, production delays, and strikes by workers over unpaid wages. Its budget has ballooned past $7.5 billion and counting.

Prosecutors have opened a series of criminal investigations into the spaceport's construction companies, amid allegations that money has been siphoned off to offshore accounts, leaving workers unpaid.

Just eight launch attempts have taken place from Vostochny. At the inaugural launch in April 2016, which President Vladimir Putin attended, engineers canceled blast-off minutes prior -- a move that was seen as embarrassing for Putin and Roskosmos.

Earlier this year, Aleksei Kudrin, the head of Russia's Audit Chamber and a former longtime finance minister, told Putin that auditors had turned up 30 billion rubles ($400 million) in financial irregularities at Roskosmos in 2020.

Though Kudrin gave no specifics, the meeting was televised on state TV, a signal of its political significance.

In June, Yury Roslyak, a deputy director at Roskosmos with oversight of Vostochny's construction, was removed from his post -- a move that followed Russian news reports about new embezzlement investigations for unfulfilled contracts.

2018, however, was an epic year for the agency.

That August, the crew on the ISS discovered a tiny hole in a Russian segment of the station, around 2 millimeters in diameter, that was causing a leak of oxygen. Roskosmos later announced the hole appeared to be man-made, though it was unclear if it had occurred in space or on the ground during assembly.

Rogozin raised eyebrows in Washington when he suggested that one of the U.S. astronauts might have done it deliberately; one American crew member shot back with a TV interview. "I can unequivocally say that the crew had nothing to do with this on orbit," commander Drew Feustel told the U.S. television network ABC from on board the station.

"We certainly don't want to ever see that happen again," he added. "And I hope the teams on the ground do proper due diligence in trying to solve this problem because the implications are enormous to the whole space program, not only to us in the U.S. but also in Russia and internationally for all the partners."

To date, Roskosmos has not released the findings of its probe. The agency did not respond to RFE/RL's inquiries on this and other questions.

In April, NASA said the investigation was completed, but gave no further details.

"Roskosmos identified the hole as being in a Soyuz module and briefed NASA about it, but you should contact Roskosmos for specific questions," spokesman Sean Potter told RFE/RL in an e-mail.

Two months after the discovery of the hole, a Russian rocket that blasted off from Baikonur carrying a two-man Russian-American crew malfunctioned, prompting an emergency landing on the Kazakh steppe. There were no injuries.

It was the demotion of one of Russia's best-known cosmonauts in June that drew an unusually public hue and cry, and put the spotlight back on Roskosmos's management.

In May, Roskosmos announced it was sending a well-known TV director and a famous actress to shoot a feature film on the orbiting station. Rogozin was named as a co-producer.

The decision reportedly sparked dissent, including from Sergei Krikalyov, a famous cosmonaut best known for being temporarily stranded on the Soviet space station Mir in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed.

'Yachts And Vanity Fairs'

Now a top executive with Roskosmos, Krikalyov reportedly objected to spending budgetary funds on the project, particularly given budget cutbacks. According to the newspaper Novaya gazeta, that pushback resulted in his demotion on June 11.

"It seems that Roskosmos's current leaders are scared to have a host of people who understand space well. Therefore, knowing Sergei Krikalyov, I am not overly surprised by his dismissal. I am really impressed with how long he held on in this system," another cosmonaut, Fyodor Yurchikhin, told Novaya gazeta.

Krikalyov could not be reached for comment.

"Rogozin was sent in there, as best as I can tell, to politically clean Roskosmos up, which had become too bureaucratic for its own good," Loverro said. "Rogozin is making sure that Roskosmos is aligned with policy. It's not about if it's run well, it's about: 'Is it aligned with Russia's national policy?'"

For the moment, Russia has virtually no private space industry, and dwindling budgets means turning to other revenue sources, like partnerships with China's more robust and ambitious efforts.

After British billionaire Richard Branson flew to the edge of space on July 11 on a private spacecraft funded by his company, Virgin Galactic, Rogozin appeared to call out Russia's own superrich tycoons to join the development of the country's space industry.

"I hope that one day our billionaire oligarchs will start spending their money not on more yachts and vanity fairs, but on the development of space technologies and knowledge about space," he said on Twitter.
DUSHANBE -- Massive mudslides caused by heavy rains have killed at least 10 people, including four children, in Tajikistan's northwestern district of Pejikent.

Officials at the Emergency Ministry told RFE/RL that the mudslides hit the villages of Dashti Kozi and Kishtudak late on July 19, with rescue and recovery operations running through July 20.

The ministry's spokeswoman, Umeda Yusupova, told RFE/RL that the death toll may rise as two persons remain missing.

Mudslides in several other districts in the area damaged several buildings.

Last week, heavy rains caused mudslides in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, killing 16 people.
Opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who is in Washington to seek more American support for the Belarusian pro-democracy movement against strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka's regime, has asked the United States to guarantee the independence of her country and support the opposition's calls for a fresh presidential election.

Tsikhanouskaya held talks at the White House on July 20 with U.S. national-security adviser Jake Sullivan after meeting the previous day with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland.

"I asked the U.S. to be the guarantors of our independence, that they will stand for our independence if it is under the threat. Our independence is the highest value for Belarusians," Tsikhanouskaya tweeted after the meeting with Sullivan.

Belarus has been mired in turmoil since a disputed presidential election in August 2020 that gave Lukashenka his sixth consecutive term in power.

Lukashenka, who maintains support from key ally and financial backer Russia, has since put down street protests and dissent over the vote with sometimes lethal force, jailing thousands of people and forcing most opposition leaders who haven't been imprisoned to leave the country.

The opposition says the vote was rigged and Tsikhanouskaya, who has been in exile in Lithuania since Lukashenka launched his crackdown, was the true winner.

"Thankful for the U.S. principled position on the crisis in Belarus," she wrote. "I called for enhancing civil society aid & supporting the demand of Belarusians for a new free & fair presidential election."

The West refuses to recognize the official results of the election and does not consider Lukashenka to be the country's legitimate leader. The European Union, the United States, and other countries have imposed several rounds of sanctions against the 66-year-old, some of his family members, other senior officials, and on key economic sectors.

But Tsikhanouskaya said earlier on July 20 that she has asked U.S. officials to impose more sanctions on Belarusian companies in key sectors such as potash, oil, wood, and steel.

She said she had given U.S. officials a list of enterprises, among them the state-owned Belaruskali, a producer of potash fertilizer, that should be further targeted.

Such additional sanctions would go beyond existing punitive measures on Lukashenka's cronies and government bodies and "will be a real hit on him, to make him change his behavior and to release political prisoners," Tsikhanouskaya told reporters.

Tsikhanouskaya, during a webinar sponsored by the Atlantic Council think tank, called for much tougher action by the West against Lukashenka.

"I think it's high time for democratic countries to unite and show their teeth," said Tsikhanouskaya, who also planned to visit the Senate for meetings with lawmakers from both parties later on July 20.

With reporting by Reuters
KYIV -- Dozens of relatives, friends, colleagues, and other supporters gathered in the Ukrainian capital to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the killing of journalist Pavel Sheremet, whose death underscored concerns about a climate of impunity for attacks on journalists and others who challenge the authorities.

Sheremet, who worked for the online newspaper Ukrayinska Pravda, was leaving his apartment on July 20, 2016, to head to a studio to host a morning radio program when an improvised explosive device planted under his vehicle detonated and killed him.

Commemorations for the Belarusian-born Russian citizen who had made Ukraine his permanent home took place at a monument near the site where he was killed.

The anniversary put the spotlight back on the government, which has faced persistent criticism over a perceived lack of progress in solving the case.

In December 2019, Ukrainian investigators arrested three suspects in Sheremet's case -- Yana Duhar, Andriy Antonenko, and Yulia Kuzmenko. Duhar and Kuzmenko were later transferred to house arrest.

The trio took part in military operations in different capacities in Ukraine's east, where government forces are fighting against Russia-backed separatists.

The Interior Ministry and the National Police said in December that the trio's goal was "to destabilize the political and social situation in Ukraine" by killing Sheremet.

All three have denied any involvement in Sheremet's killing and their trial, which started a year ago, has stalled several times due to inconsistencies in the investigation.

Sheremet's mother and colleagues said earlier this week that they are seeking a meeting with Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskiy, whom lawmakers approved to the post on July 16, to discuss the lack of progress in the case.

Monastyrskiy has said he will evaluate the investigation of Sheremet's killing after the trial of Duhar, Antonenko, and Kuzmenko is over.

Some investigators have said that Sheremets killing might be linked to his investigative reports about fugitive Ukrainian tycoon and former politician Oleksandr Klymenko.

Others have suggested that secret services working for authoritarian Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka may have been involved in Sheremets killing. Until 2010, Sheremet was a Belarusian citizen and known for open his criticism of Lukashenka and his regime.
Media reports say the United States and Russia have agreed to launch new arms-control talks next week as part of an agreement reached by President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, at a summit last month.

The Hill website reported the talks will be held in Geneva on July 28, quoting an unnamed State Department official.

Russia's Kommersant on July 20 also reported the date for the talks, adding that Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov will lead the Russian delegation.

Ryabkov last week told the official TASS news agency that the talks would take place before the end of the month.

There was no immediate confirmation of the date from U.S. officials.

When asked by reporters in Moscow on July 20, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not confirm or deny the date, saying the date will be announced "in due time."

At their summit in Geneva on June 16, U.S President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, agreed to begin "strategic stability" talks to "seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures."

The talks would build on the New START treaty, the last major arms-control treaty remaining between Moscow and Washington.

Biden moved to extend the accord in January, shortly before its expiration.

New START first went into effect in 2011. The treaty limits the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads at 1,550, deployed strategic delivery systems at 700, and provides for a verification regime.

Already strained relations between Moscow and Washington have deteriorated further since Biden took office in January, with the United States sanctioning Russia over cyberattacks, election meddling, and the poisoning and jailing of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

But the U.S. president has also said that the United States wants a "stable, predictable" relationship that allows the two countries to work together on common issues like strategic stability, arms control, and climate change.
AASHLAND -- An arrowhead found in Franklin County is projected to fetch between $10,000 and $20,000 on Sunday at Ashland's Premiere Auctions Group.

The artifact, which was originally found prior to 1953, is 4 & 11/16 inches long and was manufactured around 4,000 B.C. during the Archaic Period.

James R. Bennett, Operations Manager at Premiere Auctions Group, stated that Ohio is a hotspot for ancient artifacts, but it is unusual for an arrowhead to be valued over $10,000.

There are groups that go out searching for arrowheads every day," Bennett said. "Ashland is part of the Johnny Appleseed Chapter of the Archeological Society of Ohio.

"Ashland is actually a very big area for artifacts. You can find arrowheads, stone axes, stone tools, ornamental objects made from slate; some of them are worth tens of thousands of dollars. To find an arrowhead this big is rare because it has not been sharpened down. It was lost before it was used a lot."

Size, condition, time period as well as the ancient manufacturer's crafting skillset factor into the value of an arrowhead. Archaic arrowhead crafters were known as knappers.

The arrowhead being auctioned is made out of Flint Ridge flint, which was anciently quarried in Licking County, Ohio.

Most artifacts labeled as arrowheads were never utilized on an arrow. Instead, they were more often either a type of knife that had been worn down or were pointed pieces of stone used at the tip of an atlatl, which was an ancient long-distance spear.

Only 5 to 10 percent of arrowheads that are found were actually used on a bow and arrow," Bennett said. "The bow and arrow in Ohio didnt come into existence until about 100 A.D.

The device was most likely used for hunting or daily chores. Many arrowheads found today have been damaged by modern farming equipment, but when one is located in excellent condition, they can fetch quite a bounty.

Bennett said the most expensive arrowhead he ever sold was a 2-inch artifact from Wyoming in 2007 which raked in $27,000. Because some arrowheads have high values, Bennett is encouraging Ashland community members to check their personal collections - - whether the collection is their own or inherited from prior generations.

A lot of people dont know that their collection has value," Bennett said. "I like it when people bring stuff in because Im not trying to buy it from them.

"Ill tell them what it is, and if they want to sell it, Ill have them put it into the auction. You have to be careful because there is a lot of collectors and dealers out there who will take advantage of someone being naive on the topic. I want people to know that we are here as a resource.

Premiere Auctions Group is the largest auction gallery of prehistoric artifacts in the United States. The organization auctions approximately 3,000 artifacts per month and has a reach spanning all corners of North America.

To find out more about Premiere Auctions Group or browse through the items up for bid, visit Oldrelics.com.
MANSFIELD  The First Congregational Church, 640 Millsboro Road in Mansfield, has announced an addition to its staff.

As of July 1, the church welcomed Brad Bunn as Associate Minister.

We are thrilled with Brads background and have high hopes for the contribution he can bring to our congregation, said Neil Hergatt, Moderator.

Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Bunn most recently served in Northern Michigan, as a local pastor at the Michigan Conference of the United Methodist Church. Prior to his six years in Michigan, he served in the North Georgia Conference, working in youth and childrens ministries for 11 years.

Bunn, his wife Erika, and their children have relocated to Mansfield to serve in this role.

In addition to the hiring of an Associate Minister, The First Congregational Church is excited to share progress on several construction projects at the church.

In a multi-phase project, the building has been recently renovated to include elevator access to all floors and new, modern and accessible bathrooms. In addition, several other spaces are being updated to allow for additional gathering and fellowship.

These renovations have really brought our building up to date with the needs of our congregation but will also serve us long into the future, shared Senior Minister, Bruce Haapalainen.

The First Congregational Church, established in 1835, has the following vision:

The vision of First Congregational Church of Mansfield is to create a thriving faith community that engages all ages in vibrant spiritual life. Our philosophy is one of intellectual and spiritual freedom in which members are encouraged to cultivate their own relationships with God.

To this end, it seeks inspirational worship experiences that integrate thought inspiring sermons, thought- provoking Christian education, uplifting music and the arts.

The church nurtures caring relationships among its members and wishes to serve the larger community through hospitality, friendship, music and laughter.

Sunday services are at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. The public is welcome to attend. Services are also broadcasted weekly on WMFD.
MANSFIELD -- It's been almost a year since Riley Kemerling shared any of her artwork with the general public. She used to post her drawings and paintings on social media, but the 26-year-old deleted her accounts last year. It all felt too impersonal.

That's why the prospect of a Richland County arts and literary journal was so exciting.

I love the idea of having a physical collection of work that people can hold in their hands and own, instead of just viewing on their phones and forgetting," Kemerling said. "Sharing artwork on Instagram or Facebook all feels superficial because you know people are only spending half a second on it."

Kemerling has five pieces featured in the first issue of Tributary Reader, an arts and literary journal for and by the people of Richland County. The journal's first volume was officially released July 3.

Volume I is a whopping 118 pages, but it only shows a sliver of the visual art and literature locals have to offer.

We probably received about three times as many submissions as ended up in the final book, said Jillian Kyrou, founder and editor of Tributary Reader: A Richland County Journal of Art, Literature, and Environment.

Kyrou said she and managing editor Llalan Fowler were blown away by the quality of the work, but they did their best to select pieces that fit well together for the journals inaugural edition.

We whittled it down a bit to make our page count, Fowler said. We had so many that we wanted to include but didnt have enough room. We are encouraging people to submit them again.

The editorial team asked that those submitting works be related to Richland County -- whether theyve lived here in the past, live here now or have some other connection to the area.

I was surprised that we were able to get so many really quality submissions. I wasnt sure people were going to want to share their work with this idea that wasnt a real thing yet, Fowler said. Were just so proud of the reflection of our county that it represents. Its what we wanted and more.

Tributary Reader Volume I includes works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction and visual art. The book also includes one transcribed interview with art Ohio State University-Mansfield professor John Thrasher and a thought-provoking comic.

Many of the featured writers were part of a local writing group that met at Main Street Books.

Alison Bolen published a short story she workshopped in the group.

"It means a lot to have a piece published in this inaugural issue of Tributary Reader along with a lot of other writers who were, at different times, members of the same local writing group," Bolen said. "Losing the bookstore felt like a loss to that community of writers but having this journal feels somehow like all is not lost."

Bolen said the journal allows Richland County's community of writers to continue motivating each other.

"Im inspired by each of the writers Ive met and worked with locally, and I love that this journal gives others an opportunity to be equally inspired," she said.

The idea for a journal came about while Kyrou and Fowler were discussing potential ways to highlight the vibrant community of artists they saw in the area.

Photographer Braxton Daniels III says the journal accomplished that mission.

Daniels contributed four portraits originally commissioned for the North End Community Improvement Collaborative.

"To see local artist/poets/writers all featured in a piece such as this is incredible. TR gives us a platform," he said. "This physical piece of literature gives the readers the opportunity to see and experience all of us. No matter the medium of art. TR gave us that 'stage' to show the community who we are!"

The publication received financial support from the Richland County Foundation, The Carl & Annamarie Fernyak Fund, Cindy Fowler & Boyd Addlesperger, the Richland Community Development Group Art Sector and Cleveland Financial Groups Charles P. Hahn.

Its always a good feeling to make an idea a reality, Kyrou said. It really started gaining steam from community support at every step of the way. We're just really lucky to live in a community that cares about art and literature and culture.

Mark Sebastian Jordan, a regular contributor to Knox Pages' history section, combined storytelling and rhythm in his poem for Tributary Reader.

He said the journal is good not just for artists, but the community as a whole.

"Having a journal like this shows ourselves and the rest of the world who we are," he said. "For us to prosper as a region, we need an identity, and a project like this moves us closer to knowing who we are."

The editorial team will open submissions for a second volume in September, with a targeted release date in late November or early December, Kyrou said.

Copies of Volume I can be purchased at Lucah Designs and the Mansfield Art Center, as well as online at tributaryreader.bigcartel.com. Kyrou and Fowler hope to make copies available in more local businesses soon.

Correction This story has been edited to reflect that John Thrasher is a current faculty member at the Ohio State University-Mansfield. He was originally described as a former faculty member. We apologize for the error.
MANSFIELD -- Richland County commissioners on Tuesday approved spending $89,400 for a new county voter registration system vendor, the first such change since 2004.

The change to Triad Governmental Systems will be a benefit to county residents and candidates through increased and easier access to constantly updated information, according to local elections officials.

For example, voters can complete and print out an absentee ballot application, which can then be mailed into the elections board. Local campaign finance reports will be available, as would database searches of registered voters, down to the precinct and individual voter level.

It would also benefit local board of elections workers, according to Matt Finfgeld, director of the elections board, and Jane Zimmerman, deputy director, who told commissioners the new registration system would not impact the voter tabulation software currently being used.

The two elections officials, along with a representative from Triad, met with commissioners on July 6, promising to return with a price quote after the county elections board approved the change, which was done later that same day.

Finfgeld told commissioners on Tuesday that Triad will charge an annual fee of $22,650, which is $8,000 less than charged by the current vendor, ES&S.

"The annual fee from ES&S goes up every year," Fingeld said, adding the Triad representative with whom they have worked indicated his company had only increased its annual fees three times in the 20 years he has worked for it.

In addition to lower annual fees, Zimmerman also pointed to reduced manpower usage with requests from the public.

"Sometimes the public may ask for something that takes a day to get done," she said. "(With the Triad system), they can look it up themselves online."

Commissioner Tony Vero labeled the change a "no brainer."

The approval will allow Triad to begin work now with the goal of having the new system online by January 2022, which is when the county would be billed for the project.

The bipartisan local elections leaders told commissioners on July 6 that 68 of Ohio's 88 counties have converted to the Xenia-based provider. Richland County will become the 69th, joining the likes of Ashland and Knox counties. The new vendor and system would not have any effect on the actual processes residents use to become registered voters.

Also on Tuesday, commissioners approved a request from Mansfield city engineer Bob Bianchi to donate temporary right-of-way permission for one small section and a permanent right-of-way for another smaller section of county-owned land to allow for the replacement of a large culvert along east East Third Street.

Bianchi said a $3.5 million project is being planned to replace 900 feet of culvert, some of it 100 years old, a pre-cast concrete pipe with a brick base, from Ritters Run to Junction Street. He said the culvert is 15 feet wide and is buried about eight feet deep.

Mansfield City Council in December 2018 approved a contract for engineering design services for the work.

Bianchi said that design work was complete and said he hoped for up to $500,000 from an Ohio Public Works Commission grant to help pay for the construction project itself, which must first be approved by City Council.

The work would likely be done in 2022.

Also Tuesday, commissioners:

-- approved a $25,000 request by Treasurer Bart Hamilton to purchase a used vehicle for the Land Bank. The money to replace an existing worn vehicle will come from the treasurer's delinquent property tax fund and no general fund money will be used, commissioners said.

-- approved the renewal of the county's membership in the Local Emergency Planning Committee.

-- approved a request for a "Silent Watch" on the courthouse lawn on Sept. 11 from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attack. A flag-draped coffin will be placed on the lawn with at least one person standing guard over it throughout the day. The effort is meant to draw attention to the problem of suicides by first responders and military members, Commissioner Darrell Banks said.
Nornickel, the worlds largest producer of palladium and high-grade nickel and a major producer of platinum and copper has produced its first batch of certified carbon-neutral nickel which will be shipped to customers. The company said this in a press release distributed on Monday, noting that Nornickel has been implementing a strategy focused on upgrading its energy assets since 2018. This includes replacement of hydro and thermal power station units feeding the Norilsk Industrial District, modernisation and repair of energy equipment, installation of automated control and metering systems, reduction of heat loss in buildings and pipelines, equipment optimisation, and decommissioning obsolete power units.

In 2020, the company announced a comprehensive environmental and climate change strategy aimed at reducing its environmental footprint, keeping total Scope 1 & 2 greenhouse gas emissions under the GHG Protocol below 10 mtpa, and maintaining its position in the bottom quartile of the global nickel industry for specific carbon dioxide emissions per unit of nickel product, according to Wood Mackenzie estimates.

Thanks to the energy efficiency improvements, Nornickel Group has already reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by almost 47 kt in 2019-2020, as confirmed by Ernst & Young (EY), a global auditing company. Separately, with the help of a leading independent international consultant, Nornickel also calculated the carbon footprint of nickel produced in accordance with international standards ISO 14040 and 14044, which amounted to 8.1 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of finished product.

The measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions have allowed the company to allocate thousands of tonnes of saved CO2 emissions to carbon-neutral nickel production. The first batch of carbon-neutral products totals 5 kt of nickel cathodes produced by the Groups Kola Division. The metal will be shipped from Murmansk Port and delivered to an LME-certified warehouse in Rotterdam, the largest logistics hub in Europe.

The volume of carbon-neutral shipments will increase as emissions are reduced and carbon savings are verified by an auditor. Nornickel plans to release up to 10 kt of carbon-neutral nickel this year.

The carbon-neutral nickel will be tokenised on Atomyze, a Blockchain platform, and the tokens will be listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange by Nornickels EU-based Global Palladium Fund.

The company will also tokenise an auditors certificate with verified CO2 emission reductions, allowing this information to be securely stored, allocated to new product launches and attached to smart contracts with investors and industrial customers.

Anton Berlin, Nornickel Vice President, Sales and Distribution commented: We are pleased to announce that Nornickel has received the international auditors certificate confirming our commitment to support the global climate change agenda and proactively accelerate the reduction of our carbon footprint across the Group. This certificate allowed us to allocate saved carbon emissions to the first batch of carbon-neutral nickel. We will continue to reduce our emissions intensity and increase carbon-neutral metal supply to our customers, who continue to show strong demand for this product.



Vladimir Malakhov, Rough&Polished
International

AP

For the fully-vaccinated

Canada to let vaccinated US citizens enter country on Aug. 9

TORONTO  Canada announced Monday it will begin letting fully vaccinated U.S. citizens into Canada on Aug. 9, and those from the rest of the world on Sept. 7.

Officials said the 14-day quarantine requirement will be waived as of Aug. 9 for eligible travelers who are currently residing in the United States and have received a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Canada.

I am encouraged to hear that the Canadian Government has announced they will soon welcome fully vaccinated Americans to Canada once again. Vermonters value the close trading relationship and friendship we share with Canadians, and I know many are eagerly awaiting visiting again after more than 16 months, said Gov. Phil Scott in a statement. As Vermont leads the United States in vaccinations, and Canada makes great progress administering vaccines, now is the time to begin safely resuming non-essential travel, and I hope our federal government follows suit. The Green Mountain State looks forward to welcoming our neighbors to the north back to Vermont, I look forward to learning more from our federal partners in the coming days.

U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy echoed those remarks, stating, I am delighted to hear that fully-vaccinated Vermonters will be able to visit Canada for non-essential purposes. I have been hearing from Vermonters throughout the pandemic about the need to reopen the border and visit our neighbors in the north to see family and friends. I believe it is important for us to follow Canadas lead and reopen our side of the border to fully-vaccinated Canadians for non-essential travel purposes. Our Congressional Delegation called for a resumption of greater cross-border travel in the beginning of June and we will continue to call for a safe reopening of the Northern Border until that is accomplished.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, who said he spoke with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Friday, said the U.S. has not yet indicated any plan to change current restrictions at the land border. Canadians are able to fly into the United States with a negative COVID-19 test.

Asked in Washington if the U.S. would reciprocate, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, We are continuing to review our travel restrictions. Any decisions about resuming travel will be guided by our public health and medical experts. ... I wouldnt look at it through a reciprocal intention.

Canadian officials also announced that children who arent vaccinated but are traveling with vaccinated parents wont have to quarantine, but will have to avoid group activities.

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra also said a ban on direct flights from India will be extended to Aug. 21 because of the Delta variant. The situation in India is still very serious, he said.

Trudeau said last week Canada could start allowing fully vaccinated Americans into the country as of mid-August for nonessential travel and should be in a position to welcome fully vaccinated travelers from all countries by early September.

Canada leads G-20 countries in vaccination rates, with approximately 80% of eligible Canadians vaccinated with their first dose and over 50% of those eligible fully vaccinated.

In the early days of the pandemic, the U.S. and Canadian governments closed the more than 5,500-mile border to nonessential traffic. With increasing vaccination rates and dropping infection rates, some were annoyed the two governments hadnt laid out plans to fully reopen the border.Canada began easing its restrictions earlier this month, allowing fully vaccinated Canadians or permanent legal residents to return Canada without quarantining. But among the requirements are a negative test for the virus before returning, and another once they get back.

Pressure has been mounting on Canada to continue to ease the restrictions at the border, which have been in effect since March 2020. Providing exemptions for travel into Canada amid the pandemic is politically sensitive and Trudeau is expected to call a federal election next month.

Canadian officials have said they would like 75% of eligible Canadian residents to be fully vaccinated before loosening border restrictions for tourists and business travelers. The Canadian government expects to have enough vaccine delivered for 80% of eligible Canadians to be fully vaccinated by the end of July. The U.S. only allowed for exports of vaccines into Canada in early May.

Commercial traffic has gone back and forth normally between the two countries since the start of the pandemic.

The U.S. Travel Association estimates that each month the border is closed costs $1.5 billion. Canadian officials say Canada had about 22 million foreign visitors in 2019  about 15 million of them from the United States.
Pandemic 2020

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Danvers, MA (01923)

Today

Mixed clouds and sun this morning. Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 79F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
Danvers, MA (01923)

Today

Mostly sunny early. Scattered thunderstorms developing later in the day. High 78F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Some clouds early will give way to generally clear conditions overnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
Jim Alt, 17, was a tall, fit young man with long, sun-bleached hair and a surfers tan. Barbara Nantais, 15, was a pretty, popular cheerleader with a rebellious streak, among the few sophomores who made it onto the varsity cheer squad. The Long Beach teenagers had been going steady for nine months when, on Aug. 12, 1978, Barbaras father was getting ready to go out of town. He told Jim not to take Barbara anywhere that weekend. Jim looked him straight in the eyes and told him, yes, sir. Theyd stay put.

It was a lie Jim would never forgive himself for.

As soon as the door closed and Barbaras father was out of sight, the couple tossed clothes and surfing gear into bags and jumped into a station wagon with two friends and headed south to San Diego, stopping at Torrey Pines State Beach.

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The waves werent that good, so the four friends broke out some alcohol. About 9:30 p.m., Jim and Barbara took their sleeping bags down to the sand. Other groups of teens were partying around bonfires not too far away. The couple strolled north along the beach to a quiet spot. Blanketed in darkness, they made love and fell asleep.

A fit of shivering jolted Jim awake. He tried to stand, but a wave of dizziness bowled him over. He groped for his sleeping bag or the warmth of Barbaras body, but found only sand. Jim couldnt hear sea gulls or waves. He couldnt see Barbara ---- nude, bloody and lifeless ---- lying nearby in the dim light. He didnt yet know that someone had throttled him and bashed his head with a rock and charred logs.

He went to find his friends, who spent the night in their station wagon parked nearby. He crawled at first, then lifted himself. His feet felt sand, then a familiar path of packed dirt. Soon, his hands recognized a chain-link fence that led him to the parking lot.

It was Aug. 13, 1978.

For Jim Alt, now 51, it still is.

Every damned morning.

The dark-and-twisties

When Alt wakes up at his Lake Elsinore home these days, he often feels around for sand before he opens his eyes. Hes back on the beach, engulfed in terror, next to the

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mutilated body of his first love.

San Diego Police Department cold case detectives call the brown-haired girls slaying 33 years ago one of the most frustrating cases in their files.

A review of the case using DNA forensics found nothing of use. And another girl, Claire Hough, 14, was killed and mutilated on the same beach in a similar manner almost exactly six years later.

Over the decades since, the scars on Alts face have smoothed and his skin has wrinkled.

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His helplessness, anger and guilt ---- they havent aged a day. He blames himself: He shouldnt have taken her to the beach that night. He should have died defending her.

Barbaras father blamed him for putting her in harms way. Some of his friends gossiped and eyed him suspiciously, even though the police did not.

Alt had no memories of the attack. He toyed with suicide. For years, people told him it was a miracle that he survived ---- that he must have lived for a reason. Alt always told them to shove it.

The laid-back surfer dude became paranoid and angry. He gave a name to the violent thoughts, anxiety and depression that flooded his mind: the dark-and-twisties. When Alt finally sought help in 2006, a psychiatrist gave it a different name: severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The trauma had gone untreated for so long, it became a part of him.

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He got into fights and was arrested for assault. When he was younger, if someone said something that made him mad, hed shut them up. Plain and simple. Today, he rambles, shifting from zenlike calm to tears to rage. He cant seem to keep his thoughts in order.

I call it confetti, the stuff that goes on in my head, Alt said. You and I are talking. Something youll say will be put on a little piece of paper and thrown in my mind. You know on New Years how they drop that confetti down in New York and they drop the ball? To me, thats data, broken up and fragmented. I feel like the little guy with the broom ---- Im over here. Now Im over there, grabbing this for you. Its never like a piece of paper comes down and falls right into my hands.

Alt has had trouble holding a job or putting down roots. Hes been a firefighter with the U.S. Forest Service, a tattoo shop owner and a hydroponics shop manager. His relationships havent lasted long, either. He has been married several times and has no children.

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People always tell him hes still looking for Barbara. Thats not it, he said. Hes just hard to get along with. He probably would have married that girl, though. He was young, sure, but thats where he saw it going.

Back in 1978, Jim and Barbara were a high school power couple in Long Beach. He went to Jordan High School and she went to Lakewood High. Kids from both schools would call Alts mother to find out where the party was going to be. And by party, they meant Jim and Barbara.

They did what teens do ---- drank, smoked and went on adventures, all under their parents radar.

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Until Aug. 13, 1978, when they sneaked off with friends Richard Selga and Cynthia Ancog to Torrey Pines State Beach.

Jim, Barbaras father would later write, your trying to be alone with Barbara is probably what every red-blooded American boy dreams of. Unfortunately, the time you spent together turned out to be (a) disaster, but the chances of that happening was probably one in a million.

Find Barb

Tap, tap, tap, tap.

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The alcohol had taken its toll on Richard. He and Cynthia had curled up in the back of her station wagon. They didnt want to wake up yet. But that annoying sound.

Tap.

He opened his eyes and peered out into the early morning light, ready to be angry at whoever was making that noise.

Tap.

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On the other side of the window was a mans face, swollen and torn ---- a mask of blood, soot and sand. Richard first thought it was a homeless person. Then he noticed the long, sun-bleached hair that clung to the mess.

Jim?

Richard opened the door and scrambled out of the station wagon. What the hell happened? he said.

Jim had blood in his mouth and his lips looked too fat to move, but two words managed to spill out before he collapsed: Find Barb.

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Richard ran as fast as he could along the beach. He found Barbaras nude body among scattered firewood and rocks, spread-eagled and covered in blood, her limp head propped up by a log. Richard covered her with the blood-smeared, nylon sleeping bags that were left near her body and sprinted back to the parking lot, screaming for help.

Hours later, a deputy coroner recorded the crime scene: Sand clung to Barbaras face and body. Her skull was fractured and her throat showed signs of strangulation. Her right nipple had been sliced off. Her mouth was stuffed with wet sand.

Cause of death: blunt injuries to the head and strangulation.

Jim underwent brain surgery and was hospitalized, comatose, for months. He didnt know Barbara was dead until long after she was buried. People avoided telling him while he was in the hospital, but he suspected something.

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He visited her grave for the first time last year.

Barbara Jane Nantais, her grave marker reads. She had a mind of her own.

A pebble drops

Barbara wasnt the type of girl who easily accepted no for an answer. This naturally led to epic arguments with her mother. She seemed mature beyond her years ---- she helped her grandmother sell goods at a local swap meet, where she became a skilled haggler.

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Her little brother, Tommy Nantais, was 12 when she was murdered. Tommy had always looked up to her, and especially to Jim. To the short and scrawny preteen, Jim was a titan: a strong, cool, good-looking party animal who was everything Tommy wanted to be.

On Aug. 13, 1978, he returned home from a Los Angeles-area beach with another sister and her boyfriend. Something seemed wrong ---- a lot of people were gathered there. As they approached the doorway, Tommy realized his father, Ralph Nantais, was crying.

Your sisters been murdered, Ralph Nantais told his children.

At that moment, the family began to fall apart. Tommys surviving older sisters soon moved away. He stayed at home. Alone, he watched a rift grow between his parents, who soon divorced.

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You ever throw a pebble into a still body of water and watch it ripple? Thomas Nantais, now 45, said in a recent interview. Thats what happened.

He is a Long Beach-based attorney who specializes in workers compensation law. He has a wife, three children and a successful career, and has been giving Alt legal help since the two got back in touch a year and a half ago.

Ralph Nantais initially directed his anger and blame at Alt. But after learning that Alt had never really recovered, Ralph Nantais sent him a letter in 1994, absolving him of any blame and wishing him the best in his second marriage.

You will be married in a short time and I want you to try and erase this experience from your mind, the letter said. Try and be as loving and kind to your wife as you were with Barbara, for I know she loved you dearly.

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The old Jim

For years, Alt kept a gun with him everywhere he went. He owned big dogs, including a timber wolf hybrid, and trained them to attack. He wanted to look mean enough that people who saw him and his scary dog would steer clear. He said he doesnt want to live like that anymore. He wants to be like he was before the attack. The old Jim.

Alt has been living in Lake Elsinore with his girlfriend, Becky Harrison-Carr, for about six months. She also grew up in Long Beach. Harrison-Carr is a behavioral specialist for autistic children for the Palm Springs Unified School District. She steers him away from the dark-and-twisties. Alt has been unemployed since 2006 and is fighting the state for disability payments. The couple live by the lake with Diesel ---- a 94-pound German wire-haired pointer. Its a quiet existence in a small town. Just what Alt said he needs.

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A new therapist has been teaching him to meditate. It relaxes him for days at a time. In May, he watched his girlfriend receive an award at a school district luncheon. Autistic children she had helped were all grown up. Some who had gone on to college attended to thank her.

Those autistic kids were beautiful souls who were stuck inside their own minds until Harrison-Carr helped them find a way out, Alt said. Talking about it made him choke up.

Since the ceremony, when people tell him they think he survived that attack for a reason, he has thanked them. Maybe hes supposed to help others through their own dark-and-twisties. He started a Facebook group called Surviving Victims of Violent Crimes, where he shares his thoughts and support. So far, 80 people have joined. Some knew Alt from high school, and several appeared to be victims of unrelated crimes.

Strangely, Alt says, he doesnt remember much about Barbara. Maybe the brain injury wiped out the memories. Or maybe Alt subconsciously tucked them away where they couldnt do him any harm.

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On a recent day at Alts rented lakeside home, Diesel padded up and rested his chin on Alts lap. Its Alts first dog that he didnt train to attack. When Diesels around, everyone wants to play with him, Alt said.

Thats how I remember being, back in the day, he said. Everyone wanted to be around Jim, and liked me. And right now, I dont know if thats the case. They see the other side of the coin, and I know its not pretty.

Alt often shuts himself in instead of going down to the lake to hang out with his brothers family, who lives nearby. When Alts sad, Diesel jumps up on his lap. Alt patted the dog on the head.

Diesel is how Id like to be again, he said. I can see it in his eyes.

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I see me.
Participating in a money challenge is a great way to bolster your savings account. However, the popular 52-Week Savings Challenge can be intimidating, mainly because some of the weekly amounts can feel pretty high when you look at them on a chart. But, by breaking it down and starting small, you can accomplish the same thing without some of the stress. All you need to do is take it one nickel at a time.

The Origin of the 365 Day Money Challenge

Back in 2014, we decided to look for ways to make the 52-Week Savings Challenge a bit more accessible. Instead of large weekly deposits, participants only need to focus on small amounts each day.

This approach made the 365 Day Money Challenge a massive hit, especially since its relatively simple to adjust. If you want to save up more than $3,300 in a year, complete the challenge with nickels. If you dont have that much to spare, you can use pennies and still save about $668.

How the Money Challenge Works

The premise of the 365 Day Money Challenge is simple. If you are using nickels, on day one you deposit $0.05 into your savings account. Then, you add $0.05 to your deposit on day two, making that deposit worth $0.10, bringing your total savings to $0.15.

On each subsequent day, you add a nickel to the previous days deposit. That means, on day 10, you deposit $0.50. On day 100, your deposit is $5.00. On the last day, number 365, your deposit is $18.40.

While the daily amounts seem small, they add up fast. At the end of the year, if you participate every single day, youll have a whopping $3,339.75 in your savings.

What Could You Do with $3,300?

Think about what you could do with over $3,300 each year. You could replace your living room furniture, buy a high-end computer, head out on a great vacation, or simply make Christmas shopping incredibly affordable.

Using the challenge to create or build your emergency fund is also a great decision. Similarly, $3,300 is a nice down payment on a vehicle or could make saving 20 percent down for the purchase of a home easier to manage.

If you want to help your child pay for college, $3,300 a year for a full 18 years is $59,400, not including interest. If you put the money into a 529 plan, the value will be much higher when it is time for your child to head to school.

Make It a Family Affair

While saving using the nickel strategy might be too much for your children, many kids can use the same plan and substitute pennies for nickels. With this approach, the largest deposit is just $3.65, which can be more manageable for youngsters. But, they still get to save up a decent amount of cash, having around $668 when the challenge is over.

If you want to instill good savings habits in your children, consider having them start with the penny challenge or another money challenge for kids. Then, as they get older, they can transition to the nickel challenge.

Additionally, there is nothing to say that you cant increase the level of challenge yourself. If your income can support it, consider using dimes instead of nickels. Youll be happy you did.

Using a Money-Saving App as an Alternative

If you prefer to try to save money with an app, you might want to consider using one like Digit. All you have to do is install Digit and itll analyze your savings account balances. It will automatically place small withdrawals into a savings account for you  money you probably wont even notice. Once you activate the app, it requires almost no effort and youll be on your way to building your savings account. Check it out at Digit.

Do you have a favorite money challenge? Share it in the comments below.

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University of South Carolina selects leading recruiter for presidential search

R. William Funk & Associates has placed hundreds of presidents and chancellors

The University of South Carolina has selected R. William Funk & Associates to assist with its search for a new president, the Presidential Candidate Search Committees Chair Thad Westbrook announced Tuesday (July 20). The president of the University of South Carolina serves as the chief executive of the entire University of South Carolina system and of the systems flagship research university in Columbia.

The Funk & Associates consulting firm, based in Dallas, specializes in recruitment for roles in higher education and will begin work immediately to find a replacement for University of South Carolina Interim President Harris Pastides, who has agreed to serve in the position until a successor is found.

Funk & Associates has extensive experience conducting successful searches for university presidents and chancellors across the United States. The firms recruiting strategies have helped place many impressive candidates, including minorities and women, at leading universities throughout the country and within South Carolina, said Ernest Jenkins, chair of the Faculty Senate for the Palmetto College campuses and a member of the Presidential Candidate Search Committee. These advantages, and their history of outreach to members of university communities, make them a compelling choice to assist us.

R. William Funk & Associates has successfully recruited presidents or chancellors to 13 of the 14 institutions in the Southeastern Conference, as well as at hundreds of colleges and universities throughout the United States, including Rutgers University, Ohio State University, University of Louisville, Indiana University, University of North Carolina, University of Virginia, Purdue University, Michigan State University, University of Texas and San Diego State University. The firm recruited the current presidents of Clemson University and the College of Charleston.

R. William Funk & Associates previously recruited Joan Gabel to be provost at the University of South Carolina in 2015; Gabel is now president of the University of Minnesota. The firm assisted previously with the University of South Carolinas presidential search in 2008 and with the universitys searches for the chief executive officer of the My Carolina Alumni Association and for the president/chief executive officer of the universitys Educational Foundation.

Lou Kennedy, a University of South Carolina alumna who serves as president, chief executive officer and owner of Nephron Pharmaceuticals Corporation, and as an advisory member of the Presidential Candidate Search Committee said, For the business community, and for university donors, results matter  just as they do for Funk & Associates. I am excited about the next steps in the process of finding the right candidate to lead our university because I know, with the help of Funk & Associates, we will find the best qualified person  from among a diverse pool of candidates  to deliver results for students, families, alumni, and the entire state.

The firms founder, R. William Bill Funk, will lead the recruiting effort, personally interact with the candidate pool, and report directly to the Search Committee and the universitys Board of Trustees.

We dont believe in a formula approach to president searches, said Funk, who has been conducting higher education searches for nearly 40 years. Each institution is different and there are precedents that must be honored when organizing and executing the search process. At the same time, we are particularly proud of our role in bringing forward outstanding women and minority candidates for consideration by the search committees with which we have worked.

Funk & Associates will benefit from information gathered by the Search Committee since May through 16 listening sessions and a survey instrument. To find out more about the search and provide feedback, visit the search webpage. Solicitation of feedback from university and community stakeholders will continue through the outset of the fall semester, when Funk and the Search Committee will conduct meetings virtually and in person across the University of South Carolina system. These opinions will contribute to the creation of a leadership profile that will be used to advertise the position of president and to seek nominations and applications.

Operating confidentially under the guidance of the Search Committee, the firm will recruit from among candidates across the United States and internationally, conduct extensive background checks and facilitate the Search Committees interviews with those who are best qualified.

Im impressed by Bill Funks overall track record placing chief executives at great colleges and universities in a timely but thorough manner, and I appreciate just how diverse those placements have been across time, said Columbia Student Body President Alex Harrell, a member of the Search Committee. Were confident in Mr. Funk and his team because he knows the state of South Carolina. He knows the Southeastern Conference, and he knows USC.

Links to stories about recent searches conducted by Funk & Associates:

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The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) has gotten new photos that show a violent jet emitted from a supermassive black hole in unparalleled detail.

The photographs show the jet generated by the black hole at the heart of the Centaurus A galaxy with ten times the accuracy and sixteen times the sharpness previously possible.

"This allows us for the first time to see and study an extragalactic radio jet on scales smaller than the distance light travels in one day," astronomer Michael Janssen of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany and Radboud University in the Netherlands, said in a statement. "We see up close and personal how a monstrously gigantic jet launched by a supermassive black hole is being born."

Giant Lobes Of Radio Waves From Black Hole

When viewed from Earth, the EHT data reveal huge lobes of radio waves emerging from a black hole that appears to be rather small. The black hole would seem as huge as an apple on the surface of the moon when amplified by a factor of 1 billion, according to the scientists, while the radio lobes, or jets, would be 16 times as wide as the moon itself. The black hole at the heart of Centaurus A, on the other hand, has the mass of 55 million suns.

The Centaurus is a mythical creature. When seen at radio frequencies, a galaxy known as NGC 5128 or Caldwell 77 is one of the brightest and biggest objects in the night sky. The galaxy, which is located in the constellation Centaurus, was discovered to be the first known source of radio waves outside of our Milky Way galaxy in 1949.

"We're seeing these jets in a way that we've never seen them before," study author Michael Janssen told Inverse. Jannsen is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany.

Maciek Wielgus, a co-author of the paper and researcher at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian said the black hole at the center of Centaurus A looks to be considerably different from the one at the center of the Milky Way, which EHT is also studying. He added that Centaurus A emits much more energy.

ALSO READ: 100 Stellar Black Holes Found Hidden in Fluffy Star Cluster 80,000 Light-Years Away from Solar System

The new photographs are based on data collected during the 2017 imaging campaign, which resulted in the first images of a black hole, the one in the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy.

The observations were made possible thanks to the EHT partnership, which brings together eight radio observatories from around the world to act as one giant telescope. Because the resolution of a radio image is limited by the size of the telescope that receives the signal, the collaboration allows for extremely strong observations.

Experts To Figure Out Mysterious Black Hole Jets

Scientists are still trying to figure out what causes the mysterious black hole jets, which are sprays of material that manage to escape the gravitational pull of black holes. Instead of being trapped inside their blackness, they travel millions of light-years across distances greater than the size of the galaxies they come from.

The new photographs also show that the regions of the jet farthest from the black hole are brighter than the parts closer to it, a previously seen but unexplained phenomena.

According to the statement, the researchers hope to employ space-based telescopes in the future to image the environment surrounding the black hole at Centaurus A's center at even shorter wavelengths and with much higher resolution. The ultimate goal is to capture photographs of the primary black hole itself rather than its immediate environs, similar to what the researchers accomplished with M87's black hole.

Experts published the reports of the study, titled "Event Horizon Telescope Observations of the Jet Launching and Collimation in Centaurus A," in the journal Nature Astronomy on Monday.

RELATED ARTICLE: Black Holes Might Have Hair, Study Says - Is Albert Einstein Wrong?

Check out more news and information on Space in Science Times.
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Using advanced mapping techniques and predictive population models, a new study demonstrates how burrowing wild pigs actually release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than a million cars each year.

The new project, led by researchers from the University of Canterbury and the University of Queensland, found out that pigs release carbon dioxide trapped in the earth. The equivalent release is pegged at 4.9 million metric tons of greenhouse gas, or the equivalent emission of about 1.1 million cars.

Details of the inquiry appear in the latest Global Change Biology journal, in the primary research article titled "Unrecognized threat to global soil carbon by a widespread invasive species."

ALSO READ: Tropical Soils Are Highly Sensitive to Climate Change





An Unseen Contributor to Global Warming

The point of the study, according to researchers, is to better understand the global carbon footprint from invasive species, which, in this case, are the wild pigs  an effect noted by the Australian Government. There is already a significant body of study that addresses and monitors the effect of various anthropogenic activities  modern land-use practices chief among them  on releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Researchers also point out that the continuous growth of the wild pigs' population and expanding into other ecosystems as invasive species could be a significant threat that would accelerate global warming.

"Wild pigs are just like tractors plowing through fields, turning over soil to find food," says Dr. Christopher O'Bryan, an author of the study from the University of Queensland, in a university news release. He adds that carbon dioxide trapped in the soil is uprooted when disturbed, for example, when humans plow fields. In this case, wild animals like wild pigs uproot the soil and disturb them, causing a similar effect. O'Bryan additionally notes that since soil contains up to three times more carbon dioxide than those present in the atmosphere, even the slightest release from disturbing soil could speed up climate change.

He explains that in the new study, they generated various models to show different outcomes, but their mapping shows that wild pigs might be uprooting a land area anywhere from 36,000 to 124,000 square kilometers. What is worse is that most of the lands where these mappings were taken are environments where wild pigs are not native species.

"This is an enormous amount of land, and this not only affects soil health and carbon emissions, but it also threatens biodiversity and food security that are crucial for sustainable development," O'Bryan added.

Tracking How Pigs Speed Up Global Warming

Using available data on the population and location of wild pigs, the research team simulated 10,000 maps that describe the population densities of wild pigs around the world. Then, they created a model for the amount of soil area disturbed, using a long-term study of wild pigs and the damage they created across different environments, vegetation types, and elevations that ranged from lowland grasslands to sub-alpine woodland areas.

The next step was to characterize the global carbon emissions from the two previously generated models, looking at their impact in the Americas, Europe, and China.

While it was wild pigs this time, University of Canterbury Ph.D. candidate Nicholas Patton clarified that the spread of invasive species is still rooted in human activities. So acknowledgment and responsibility are necessary to start addressing this aspect of continuous global warming.

ALSO READ: Wild Boars in Fukushima Nuclear Wasteland Mate With Pigs Producing Freaky New Hybrid Species

Check out more news and information on Pigs in Science Times.
In its first five years of existence, Scottsdales Museum of the West has been recognized by the Smithsonian Institution, received accolades in local and national media and attracted the $300-million Museum Square redevelopment slated to be built next door in the next several years.
Washington health officials are warning that drug overdose rates are on track to break records this year due to an alarming increase in fatalities related to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 80 to 100 times stronger than morphine.

The Washington Department of Health (DOH) reported Tuesday that the state experienced 418 overdose deaths in the first three months of 2021, up from 378 deaths during the same time period in 2020. Of those overdose deaths this year, 191 were linked to fentanyl.

The department is now urging people to carry naloxone, a nasal spray that reverses an opioid overdose, if they plan on consuming any substance not purchased at a pharmacy or cannabis dispensary. The life-saving drug is widely available at pharmacies in the state.

"The first few minutes are critical in a potential overdose, especially in rural areas where it can take emergency medical services 10 minutes or longer to arrive," said Dr. Bob Lutz, state medical advisor for the Department of Health in a news release. "The majority of overdose reversals happen because a lay person was the first responder and administered naloxone,"

Officials warned that the most common pills laced with fentanyl are counterfeit oxycodone, often colored blue and marked "M30" on the pill. A dose as small of two milligrams is enough to be fatal.

Kathryn Scott Osler/Denver Post via Getty Images

Amid the height of the COVID-19 pandemic last year, health officials also reported a troubling spike in drug overdoses with 835 deaths in the first six months of the year, up a staggering 38% from 2019. While many of the fatalities involved multiple substances, 309 were caused by fentanyl.

Researchers from the University of Washington found that fentanyl overtook methamphetamine as the drug involved in the most overdoses in Washington in 2020. To help reduce the amount of deaths caused by overdose in Seattle, officials increased access to naloxone and overdose training in early 2020, including providing kits to both schools and nightlife venues.

"Not all substance use has to result in overdose. The more Washingtonians we can train on overdose recognition and response, and carry naloxone, the better prepared we are collectively to push back against a drug poisoning epidemic," Lutz said.

Officials urge anyone suspecting an overdose to call 911 right away. The Good Samaritan Law protects you and the person overdosing from drug possession charges. For resources and treatment options, call the Washington Recovery Hotline at 1-866-789-1511.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  A $26 billion settlement between the three biggest U.S. drug distribution companies and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and thousands of states and municipalities that sued over the toll of the opioid crisis is certainly significant  but it is far from tying a neat bow on the tangle of still unresolved lawsuits surrounding the epidemic.

Besides the monthslong process of state and local governments deciding whether to sign onto the settlement, there are three current cases in the U.S., others set to begin soon and the bankruptcy of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to resolve.

Here's a look at other legal proceedings across the nation:

OPIOID TRIALS ARE HAPPENING NOW. DOES THIS END THEM?

The three opioid trials happening already are expected to continue, but one of them will be a lot different.

That's New York. Unlike other states, it reached a deal on its portion of the settlements.

Johnson & Johnson agreed to pay $230 million last month just before the trial began. And Tuesday, the drug distribution companies AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson agreed to pay a total of more than $1.1 billion.

Those companies were all dropped immediately from the case. But the trial is continuing against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Endo International and AbbVie, Inc.

Two other trials are also expected to continue.

In West Virginia, a trial of claims brought by the city of Huntington and surrounding Cabell County against the nations three largest opioid distributors is scheduled to wrap up next week.

Because the new settlement will not be finalized before closing arguments, proceedings are expected to move forward as planned.

Meanwhile, several California counties  including populous Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara  and the city of Oakland went to trial in April in a case alleging four drugmakers were complicit in the U.S. opioid epidemic through the use of deceptive marketing and soft-pedalling the painkillers' addictive aspect.

It has been a virtual, nonjury trial.

The municipalities seek $50 billion from Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Endo and AbbVie to cover the costs of remedying the epidemic's fallout, as well as penalties.

That trial is continuing.

WHAT ABOUT PURDUE PHARMA, THE COMPANY MOST CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH OPIOIDS?

This deal doesn't directly affect Purdue's situation. But the company is getting closer to a settlement itself.

Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, is in bankruptcy court to settle the lawsuits it faces. Its plan calls for the Connecticut-based firm to transform into a business with profits used to fight the opioid crisis. And members of the Sackler family who own the company have agreed to give up not only the company but also control of $4.5 billion over time in a deal the company says could be worth $10 billion.

This month, it reached a breakthrough when a group of states that had opposed the plan agreed to support it.

A judge will decide after a hearing scheduled for Aug. 9 whether to accept the deal.

While lawyers for most state and local governments are now on board, the proposal does face opposition from a handful of remaining states, as well as from the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, a group of Native American tribes and some individual victims, who all say it does not hold Sackler family members accountable.

WHAT ABOUT FUTURE CASES?

None will be derailed immediately by Tuesday's news, though it's likely that a lot fewer opioid cases will go to trial eventually than otherwise would have.

Some of the next cases include one in Tennessee where a judge issued a default judgment against Endo Pharmaceuticals and its attorneys this spring for engaging in a coordinated strategy to delay proceedings, deprive plaintiffs of information and interfere with the administration of justice.

The only issue there is what the damages are.

And a case of claims brought by the Ohio counties of Lake and Trumbull against CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart and Giant Eagle pharmacy chains is scheduled to start in October.

The pharmacies are not part of the settlement at hand and no case against them has been tried so far.

The two northeast Ohio counties lawsuits against the chains were the first to target retail pharmacy chains as both distributors and dispensers of painkillers. The plaintiffs contend the chains stores in the two counties bought a combined total of nearly 130 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills  the most frequently diverted and abused painkillers  between 2000 and 2014. That would be roughly 266 pills for every Lake County resident and 320 pills for every Trumbull County resident during that 15-year period.

Other trials are on the calendar over the next year in Texas, California and Alaska.

___

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Students in Wichita, Kansas, public schools can ditch the masks when classes begin. Detroit public schools will probably require them unless everyone in a room is vaccinated. In Pittsburgh, masks will likely be required regardless of vaccination status. And in some states, schools cannot mandate face coverings under any circumstances.

With COVID-19 cases soaring nationwide, school districts across the U.S. are yet again confronting the realities of a polarized country and the lingering pandemic as they navigate mask requirements, vaccine rules and social distancing requirements for the fast-approaching new school year.

The spread of the delta variant and the deep political divisions over the outbreak have complicated decisions in districts from coast to coast. Some conservative states, lawmakers have banned districts from requiring masks despite outcry from medical professionals. Schools are weighing a variety of plans to manage junior high and middle school classrooms filled with both vaccinated and unvaccinated students.

Im so frustrated that its become a political issue because it shouldnt be. Its science, said Mary Tuttle, who operates an Indianapolis in-home day care center and hopes the city's schools require masks for her daughters.

She worries that the delta variant could lead to a return to virtual learning, which caused her 10-year-old daughter to become depressed and anxious last year. Another daughter will turn 12 six days after starting 6th grade and will be vaccinated as soon as possible.

Adding to the concerns is a rise in cases overall  sharply in some states, including Arkansas, which won't let schools require masks. Public health researchers on Tuesday called Arkansas' rapidly climbing infections and hospitalizations a raging forest fire, and the states top health official warned of significant future outbreaks in schools.

Arkansas leads the country in new cases per capita, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University researchers, and it has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with only 35% of the population fully vaccinated.

In Mississippi, the leading health official said Tuesday that intensive care units are full in 13 hospitals because of a surge in cases, and he provided an ominous warning in one of the least vaccinated states in the country: "Y'all, were going to have a rough few weeks, Dr. Thomas Dobbs said.

Weekly tallies by the American Academy of Pediatrics based on state reports show that COVID-19 cases in kids increased nationally in July after a couple of months of declines. The most recent data shows a 1% increase from July 1 to July 15, representing 43,000 additional cases.

The American Academy of Pediatrics on Monday recommended universal masking in schools, even for those who are vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month recommended mask-wearing indoors only for students and staff who are not fully vaccinated.

The vaccine has not been approved for children under 12. If it shown to be safe and effective for younger ages, vaccine manufacturers may seek emergency authorization sometime this fall or winter.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten said the fact that some states refuse to allow mask requirements is just plain wrong. She said the organization has embraced recommendations from the CDC.

But school officials say masking decisions have been complicated by conflicting advice from public health officials.

Its frustrating. Parents hear that these are recommendations, and it becomes a delicate dance because of differing opinions, said Steve Matthews, superintendent of Novi Community Schools, outside Detroit.

He probably will recommend that the school board make masking optional, although he worries about potential outbreaks because people are gathering for sporting events, family reunions and other activities.

It would be very helpful if there was agreement among the medical community what the approach should be, Matthews said. When everyone wore masks last year, it created a sense of community, a sense that were all in this together. Now it ends up dividing people.

Thats part of the reason the academy recommended universal masking in schools, said Dr. Sonja OLeary, chair of the academys Council on School Health.

People just wanted it to be clearer, masks or no masks, said OLeary. She said data show COVID-19 infections have not been rampant in U.S. schools, but we know masks do curb transmission. Whats more, keeping track of who has had shots and who has not may be tough for schools.

School districts that can set their own policies are taking different approaches.

In Detroit public schools, everyone will likely be required to wear a mask unless an entire room is vaccinated. Officials are developing an identification system, perhaps by wearing lanyards, Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said.

In Pittsburgh, administrators are proposing that all public school students and staff be required to wear masks indoors to protect younger students and because of "concerns around unknowns from the variant, spokeswoman Ebony R. Pugh said. Universal masking also protects the privacy of older students who have not been vaccinated, she said.

In Kansas, most schoolchildren and teachers will not be required to wear masks. The states largest district, Wichita, made masks optional starting July 6 and surveyed parents before announcing its reopening plan, said Wichita Public Schools spokeswoman Susan Arensman.

A lot of them, their big talking points were about the emotional well-being of students and staff, Arensman said. They still wanted kids to be safe, but they also wanted kids to be back to normal.

In Templeton, California, Jenny Grinager said she does not like masks and got an exemption for her 8-year-old son because he has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism. She said her son struggles to communicate with people who wear masks because he's unable to see their facial expressions. Last year, he said he didn't have any friends in class and was lonely.

For him, it is the relationship, the interaction that causes him to remember who somebody is," said Grinager, who also does not believe vaccination is necessary. She notes that children are less likely to get seriously ill with COVID-19, and she has not been vaccinated.

In Madison, Wisconsin, Sarah Jedd plans to send her 15- and 13-year old sons back to classes because both are vaccinated, but she will home-school her 9-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter if masks are not required. The district is expected to announce its decision later this week.

Im just really concerned about (them) being inside a school building with lots and lots of kids with no masks on while theyre too young to be vaccinated, Jedd said.

Jacky Frechette, who has a son who's vaccinated and a 4-year-old who isn't, said every Madison student should be required to wear a mask rather than having different rules for the vaccinated and unvaccinated, especially when people can so easily lie about it.

Its sad (wearing masks) has become so divisive that weve put our political thoughts and feelings above what experts say, she said.

___

Associated Press writers Emily Wagster Pettus, Andrew DeMillo and Lindsey Tanner and contributed to this story.
A watercolor of the Old State Capitol painted by Marcheta Sparrow, who took up art after she retired as Secretary of the Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet in 2013.
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Good morning, Bay Area. Its Tuesday, July 20, and one California artist has made music out of the Golden Gate Bridges humming. Heres what you need to know to start your day.

A small Oakland department that until recently had few resources is now central to the citys effort to fight a resurgent homicide rate and reduce other violent crimes.

Oakland created the Department of Violence Prevention in 2017, but the department lacked substantial funding until June, when the City Council directed more than $17 million away from Mayor Libby Schaafs proposed police budget and into the fledgling departments coffers.

Now the agency is likely to gain more attention, along with pressure to show results in a city thats seen a nearly 80% increase in homicides this year over 2020.

Sarah Ravani reports on what the office plans to do.

 From columnist Justin Phillips: Police may not be able to quell Oakland's violence, but we can.

 S.F. deploys more foot police in tourist areas even as it battles perception city is overrun with crime.

Coronavirus updates

Scott Strazzante/The Chronicle

The delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading quickly, with some breakthrough cases occurring among fully vaccinated people. But for those who are vaccinated, can an infection lead to long COVID symptoms that linger months afterwards? Bay Area experts weigh in on what we do and dont know right now.

 Another 4 counties in Northern California renew call for indoor masking as delta variant rises.

 Is indoor dining still OK under new mask guidance? Here's what Bay Area health experts say.

California wildfires

A tree that fell on Pacific Gas & Electric Co. power lines may have helped spark the Dixie Fire, a blaze started near the scar of the deadly 2018 Camp Fire, the utility said in a preliminary filing with state regulators. The fire, only 15% contained, was one of about a dozen fires burning across California on Monday.

The report raises questions about just how fast the utility reported the blaze to firefighters and how quickly it reported its potential role to state regulators. Read more.

 Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe grows to more than 23,000 acres overnight, makes South Lake Tahoe air quality very unhealthy.

Around the Bay

Lachlan Cunningham/Getty Images

 High stakes for teams future : Oakland and A's return to bargaining table over stadium, but no progress before key vote.

 Hostile work environment alleged : California Treasurer Fiona Ma sued for sexual harassment by former employee.

 Changes on campus: UC system admits its largest, most diverse undergraduate class ever.

 Making ban permanent: Newsom bans out-of-state treatment programs for foster youth after Chronicle abuse investigation. Previously: Read the original investigation.

 Court suggests narrower law : State appeals court says rights of care home staffers violated by misgendering law.

 Corruption investigation fallout: Supervisors to fix lack of rules for $2 billion-a-year city grants.

Datebook

The relentless drone the Golden Gate Bridge makes on windy days is a nuisance to many Bay Area residents. But for Nate Mercereau, a musician who has written and produced songs for platinum-selling pop stars including Lizzo and Shawn Mendes, the racket  created when gusts blow through the bridges newish safety slats  is a source of inspiration.

So Mercereau decided to record a series of duets with the bridge itself.

 5 Korean drama series that will blow your mind.

 A guide to upcoming S.F. Bay Area music festivals, from jazz to rock.

Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown, Anna Buchmann and Kellie Hwang and sent to readers email inboxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact the writers at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com, anna.buchmann@sfchronicle.com and kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com.
A massive thunderstorm cloud generated lightning strikes and rain showers Monday at a Northern California wildfire, the most recent example of the rare phenomenon NASA has dubbed the fire-breathing dragon of clouds.

The Dixie Fire  one of a dozen wildfires burning statewide  kicked up the thunderstorm-like mass known as a pyrocumulonimbus, which forms when scorched air and strong winds within a fire meet moisture in the atmosphere.

The wildfire had the perfect atmospheric conditions it needed Monday to create a ballooning pyrocumulonimbus, the second such formation in two days, said Robert Baruffaldi, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The pyro-cloud emitted lightning within the fires 40,500-acre footprint as it gained momentum early Monday afternoon, Baruffaldi said. It soon began shooting electric bolts at the surrounding area, where firefighters worked to contain the blaze. Meteorologists tracking the storm recorded 31 lightning strikes in all.

But the strange weather didnt end there.

The 41,000-foot pyrocumulonimbus also generated light rain showers that made landfall around nearby Lake Almanor, Baruffaldi said.

At that size, they start generating their own lightning, hail, tornadoes  all the things a normal thunderstorm can create, he said. Some of them get really intense.

While rain showers may sound beneficial, pyrocumulonimbus clouds create a vacuum effect within wildfires that can kick up erratic, ember-scattering winds, making conditions even more hazardous for firefighters on the ground.

Mondays plume complicated crews efforts to quell the Dixie Fire, which remained 15% contained and was burning in Butte and Plumas counties.

We cant get direct right in front of that thing  well kill firefighters, Incident Commander Nick Truax told reporters at a briefing Monday night.

Globally, scientists have observed pyrocumulonimbus with greater frequency in recent years. Five occurred almost simultaneously in British Columbia, Canada, in 2017. The record-breaking Australian bush fires of 2019 produced a series of pyrocumulonimbus whose smoke plumes became trapped in the stratosphere, circling above the globe for months.

NASA scientists believe the pyrocumulonimbus that formed over the Creek Fire in the Sierra National Forest last year may have been the biggest ever produced in the U.S.

The clouds are similar to volcanic eruptions in scale, David Peterson, a meteorologist with the Naval Research Laboratory in Monterey, told The Chronicle last year.

The pyro-clouds act like a giant chimney, taking smoke from the ground and injecting it to the altitude of a jet aircraft, said Peterson.

Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NMishanec
There are no city laws governing how San Francisco grants up to $2 billion a year in funds for causes ranging from care for seniors to protections for tenants.

Until now.

On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed Supervisor Catherine Stefanis latest piece of legislation tackling public corruption in the wake of the scandals that led to criminal charges for two city department heads. The first piece, approved last year, focused on a loophole in contracting that former Public Works director Mohammed Nuru is accused of exploiting to get bribes in exchange for awarding city contracts. The second piece targets the process for giving grants.

The legislation follows a recommendation from a city controllers report that investigated contract and grant processes after last years Public Works scandal. The resulting report didnt point out any specific examples of corruption in grants but said the lack of oversight left open the possibility of shady deals. The report recommended San Francisco clean up the process and make clear rules about giving out city money.

The latest legislation does that, with implications for the citys departments and supervisors, who each award $1 million in extra budget money toward services in their districts.

The ongoing local and federal investigations have made clear that we need more accountability from city departments, and this ordinance will be a critical step forward to safeguard taxpayer dollars, Stefani said during a recent committee meeting. I believe these reforms are long overdue.

Supervisor Aaron Peskin said during the same meeting that it was amazing that this isnt already law.

The new legislation will mandate what are now recommendations from four city departments, dating back to 1997 and updated in 2018, about how grants are awarded. Because the recommendations arent binding, practices vary significantly among departments and, in some cases, lack adequate controls, according to the controllers report.

The ordinance will require each city department to set up an open and competitive solicitation process for grants that includes advertising so potential recipients could apply. There will be some exceptions, including direct aid such as food stamps for low-income residents. And some grants can still be awarded without the competitive process if approved by the departments board or commission.

The legislation will require departments to keep records of grants for five years and submit reports to the Board of Supervisors listing each grant awarded without an open and competitive process. The ordinance will also allow departments to cancel, reject or advertise grants. In order to prevent corruption, the city can suspend or ban grant recipients who lie to get money and charge the recipient for the amount of the grant and more damages.

The measures will take effect by Jan. 1, 2022.

Eloise Pasachoff, law professor at Georgetown University Law Center who has researched government grants, said in an email that San Franciscos legislation looks like an improvement that will bring the citys process in line with other jurisdictions.

Requiring agencies to engage in competitions and to specify and publicize their evaluation criteria up front (will) play an important role in avoiding backroom deals, Pasachoff wrote.

She said record-keeping and auditing help ensure grantees are doing what they promised, but pointed out that the law lacks a requirement for regular auditing  it just allows the city to audit at reasonable places and times. She imagined that could be a problem since it reduces incentives to comply, but said required regular audits when state and federal money are at play may fill the gap.

Grants are big business in San Francisco. City departments awarded 5,746 grants with a value of $5.4 billion from July 2017 to March 2020, according to the controllers review.

One of the major grant makers is the Mayors Office of Housing and Community Development, which awarded $63 million from July 2020 to June 2021 to causes including eviction protection and supportive housing for people with HIV/AIDS. The department plans to give out $75 million worth of grants from July 2021 to June 2022.

During the pandemic, the Office of Economic and Workforce Development handed out $12.4 million in grants to struggling businesses.

Public Works, which doled out $24 million worth of grants from 2017 to 2020, came under scrutiny in the controllers report, but the department was not accused of any improper grant making.

Public Works spokeswoman Beth Rubenstein said the departments grants are all awarded through an open and competitive process and comply with the citys updated 2018 recommendations. She said the department fully supports the proposed legislation.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench
As Mayor London Breed battles the perception that San Francisco is beset with increased crime and lawlessness, she announced Monday that additional police patrols would flood the citys tourist hubs to target thieves and vandals.

Nearly 30 uniformed police officers, on bicycle and foot, have been deployed to popular tourist destinations  like Union Square, Chinatown and North Beach. The idea is that the increased patrols will deter crimes such as car break-ins and assaults from happening in the first place, and can also catch the perpetrators faster when they do.

But Breeds announcement comes as the citys own statistics show that crime in San Francisco is not rising across the board when compared to pre-pandemic levels. While instances of gun violence and burglaries have increased this year, other crimes like car break-ins, assaults, larceny and theft are no higher than they were before the pandemic.

Still, city leaders are struggling to square the reality of the data with a number of highly publicized and brazen attacks on Asian Americans, as well as several viral shoplifting videos that have circulated over the past few months. The mayor said shes concerned about how the perception of increased crime is making residents feel unsafe and uneasy, and also deterring tourists from visiting San Francisco.

We have work to do to make sure that when people come to San Francisco ... that they feel safe, she said at Mondays news conference, flanked by more than a dozen uniformed police officers. And that theyre not concerned about their car getting broken into, theyre not concerned about getting attacked and robbed, and theyre not concerned about witnessing one of these crimes.

Crime in San Francisco has become an extremely divisive topic that has put city leaders in a tricky position. While officials are trying not to brush off the concerns of victims, their families and residents, theyre also trying not to feed into the misconceptions that overall crime is more rampant in the city than ever before.

To be sure, though, San Franciscos property crime rates are still unusually high: statewide data shows that San Francisco had the highest rate of property crime of any California city in 2019.

Breed and San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott tried to explain the nuance of the citys current crime statistics at a news conference last week, where they presented the citys midyear crime report. While many crimes decreased in 2020  an anomaly due to the lockdowns  2021s midyear statistics are generally in line with years prior.

According to the citys midyear crime report, there was a small uptick in homicides in 2020 and 2021, though that came after a 58-year low point in 2019. Instances of gun violence  not all of them fatal  increased, with 119 victims so far in 2021. That compared with an average of 77 by midyear from 2016 to 2020.

Meanwhile, crimes like robberies, aggravated assaults and car break-ins are trending back up toward pre-pandemic levels. But the rates are still lower than 2019.

Burglaries  particularly in residential neighborhoods  showed a troubling increase in 2020 and 2021, compared to before the pandemic. According to the report, initial post-lockdown data shows a small decline.

But no matter the data, Scott said there is no statistic for brazenness. He said police officers and increased foot patrols are important because they balance that fear of crime.

We want to prevent these crimes from occurring, and we want to let the people that are doing these crimes know that were there and know that were not going to tolerate this nonsense, and well catch you, Scott said.

The new police patrols will be funded through the citys budget, which will be finalized next month. This effort, called the Tourism Deployment Plan, is in addition to the citys Downtown Recovery Plan, which expanded the number of community ambassadors in the downtown and Union Square areas.

Public safety was a contentious issue during the citys budget negotiations, where the mayor and Board of Supervisors were divided over whether to boost law enforcement spending. After months of debate, the mayor and board agreed to increase the police budget over the next two years.

The increase was lower than what Breed has initially proposed, but it will still account for salary increases, new hires to maintain staffing levels and overtime, which will help fund the additional patrols.

On Monday, as a gaggle of press, police officers and business leaders waited for the mayor to begin the news conference, Tony Fox, a 24-year-old tourist from New Jersey stopped by to see what all of the commotion was about.

Fox has visited San Francisco several times over the past few years, and said he has enjoyed himself every time. He said he would even move here if it wasnt so expensive.

As a tourist, he said, he doesnt mind the increased patrols  but hed rather them not be in uniform. That could be intimidating for some, he said, and also increase the perception that the city is unsafe.

Instead, he said he liked the idea of the citys community ambassador program, where non-police officers patrol the area.

It shows that theyre not there to tell you what to do, but instead theyre here to help, he said.

John Hamasaki, a member of the San Francisco Police Commission, said statistics are one thing and public perception is another. He said that tension is currently amplified, as the city crawls out of the pandemic and tries to attract more tourists to the area.

By increasing police patrols in tourist areas, Hamasaki said city leaders are trying to reassure visitors that San Francisco is a safe city.

Theres a public safety reality, and then theres a political reality, Hamasaki said. How do you address the way people are feeling, even though its not based on what we know to be the facts and the statistics. And thats what politicians have to balance.

Trisha Thadani is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tthadani@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @TrishaThadani
Multiple major wildfires burned in Northern California on Tuesday, including the Tamarack Fire south of Lake Tahoe and the Dixie Fire in Butte and Plumas counties as the states already highly active fire season continued.

Across California, 276 new fires started in the past week alone, according to Cal Fire officials. More than 5,400 firefighters have been pulled in to combat the five largest and most active wildfires that have so far consumed more than 233,000 acres across the state.

The latest updates from fire agencies as of Tuesday included:

 The Dixie Fire, which had burned more than 61,000 acres  an increase of 20,000 acres since Monday evening  and remained 15% contained, according to Cal Fire.

 The Tamarack Fire, which was measured at just over 39,000 acres with no containment.

 The Beckwourth Complex in the Plumas National Forest, which was 105,670 acres and 90% contained.

Heat billowing from the highly active Dixie Fire produced a thunderstorm-like cloud that sent bolts of lightning and rain showers down on Butte and Plumas counties Monday as the wildfire continued pushing northeast. Steep, rugged and remote terrain have made fighting the Dixie Fire difficult, Cal Fire officials said.

More than 800 structures remained threatened by the Dixie Fire.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. told state regulators Sunday that a tree that fell on some of the utility companys power lines at Cresta Dam near Highway 70 in Plumas County may have helped spark the fire last week. Cal Fire confiscated some of PG&Es equipment as part of its investigation into the blaze.

The Plumas County Sheriffs Office issued an evacuation warning late Monday that included the intersection of Highways 36 and 89 south to the community of Canyon Dam.

Fire Tracker Follow wildfires across the state Latest updates on wildfires burning across Northern and Southern California

Air quality in the Tahoe area was deemed very unhealthy Sunday after smoke from the fire drifted over the region. Air conditions cleared up by Monday and were expected to stay relatively free of smoke.

The Sugar Fire  the primary blaze making up the Beckwourth Complex  has been largely confined within the roughly 60 miles of perimeter lines set up by firefighters. Both the Sugar Fire and the much smaller Dotta Fire, which make up the fire complex, are believed to have been sparked by lightning strikes.

As the fire is increasingly contained, crews, equipment and other resources are being reassigned to other incidents or returning to their home units for rest between mobilizations, the U.S. Forest Service said in an update on the blaze.

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle breaking news editor. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa
San Mateo County on Tuesday became the latest Bay Area jurisdiction to legalize home-based pop-ups, a major win for the informal food economy that boomed during the pandemic.

The San Mateo County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a two-year pilot program under the states Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operations (MEHKO) act, giving local cooks an above-board path to sell food out of their homes. The county will also waive permit fees and give $2,500 grants to up to 25 home kitchen operators to cover startup costs, including food safety training, advertising and marketing. The pilot program will cost $238,000 to operate.

In San Mateo County, the goal of the program is to create entry-level business opportunities for workers displaced and negatively economically impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a memo to the Board of Supervisors reads. The program is particularly intended as a launchpad for minorities, women of color, residents of low-income neighborhoods and others who have historically faced barriers to starting food businesses.

These home kitchen operations are small-scale, limited to selling no more than 60 meals in a week. They cant bring in more than $50,000 in gross annual sales and can only have one full-time employee (not including family members or household members). The owners also must a pass food safety exam and obtain a food handler card certificate from an approved California provider. Once permitted, home cooks can prepare and serve food to the public, either in person or to go and delivery, just like a restaurant.

I look forward to an incredible array of these microenterprise home kitchens and hope to eventually visit one myself for a delicious meal, Supervisor Don Horsley said.

The movement to legalize home-based food businesses is gaining momentum in the Bay Area. San Mateo County joins Alameda County, which approved its own MEHKO ordinance in May, and Solano County, which began accepting applications earlier this year. The city of Berkeley, which has its own health department, also voted to legalize microenterprise home kitchens but has yet to finalize a permitting process.

California passed AB 626 in 2018, authorizing home-based food sales at the state level, but counties and cities must opt in to permit local operations. During the coronavirus shutdown, out-of-work chefs and residents turned to selling homemade food to make ends meet, operating in a somewhat underground, legal grey area. Several high-profile pop-ups got shut down, invigorating the movement to legalize their operations.

Alameda Countys first permitted home kitchen business, Bao House, opened in Berkeley in July. (Its operated by the founder of Foodnome, a homemade food marketplace thats advocated for MEHKO legislation.)

Alvin Salehi, co-founder of Shef, an online platform that helps Bay Area home cooks sell food, told the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday that the legislation is an economic lifeline. He said one woman who works with Shef was able to pay her rent and avoid homelessness through the money she earned on the website.

Crystal Gonzalez, a Daly City resident who sells homemade Filipino and Guamanian food through Shef, said the supplemental income has helped her family thrive and not just survive in this county.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

And for people who may have concerns about food safety, implementing well-informed regulations is actually safer than doing nothing and allowing unregulated home cooking to continue in its current form, Salehi said.

San Mateo County plans to begin accepting applications in August and to issue MEHKO permits in October. For more information and to receive updates on when permits become available, go to smchealth.org/node/4020.

The Board of Supervisors also approved a new Micro Food Business Grant Program, which will distribute $500,000 in grants to cottage food operators, caterers, food truck and food cart operators, commissaries or incubator kitchens in San Mateo County.

Businesses such as food trucks, food carts and incubator kitchens are a means for entrepreneurs to build enduring enterprises, said Supervisor Dave Pine. Helping these small businesses will benefit our local economy now and in the future.

Elena Kadvany is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: elena.kadvany@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ekadvany
With the delta variant prompting several Bay Area health officials to recommend everyone once again wear masks indoors, many people may be wondering if indoor dining is still a wise idea  even if they are vaccinated.

Public health experts have long maintained that indoor dining is one of the riskiest activities even if you are vaccinated, since diners are bound to take masks off to eat. The highly infectious nature of the delta variant and rising case counts across the Bay Area make the risk level of indoor dining that much higher.

However, vaccinated people are unlikely to get seriously ill even if they do get infected.

New mask guidance arriving with no restrictions to indoor dining is creating some understandable confusion among diners. If were being recommended to wear a mask indoors again, where does indoor dining fit in that equation?

For one, this isnt all that different from just a few months ago when there was a statewide mask mandate alongside indoor dining. But to get more clarity on whats changed, The Chronicle interviewed some local public health experts to help break it down.

What exactly do these Bay Area health officials want us to do in restaurants?

San Francisco health officer Dr. Susan Philip said shes advising people to be vigilant about masking at indoor restaurants whenever theyre near other diners or employees whose vaccination status is unknown.

Keep a mask on while youre ordering and when you get up to go to the restroom, she said. We want to encourage people without having to take the drastic step of restricting activity or closing sectors.

The health officials urging universal indoor masking are in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz and Sonoma counties. Solano is the only county in the greater Bay Area not recommending a return to masking.

Does that mean its still safe to dine indoors ?

Health experts agree indoor dining isnt safe for unvaccinated people. If every single person in a restaurant is fully vaccinated, then its perfectly safe, said UCSF infectious disease expert George Rutherford. The problem is its impossible to know if everyone is vaccinated in a public setting, and there are rare instances where a fully vaccinated person can get infected.

Its not as bad as it was (months ago), but its not as good as it was two weeks ago, either, he said. We need to hit a middle ground of caution.

As with much of the pandemic, whether to dine indoors is a personal decision. Robert Siegel, a Stanford infectious disease expert, said everyone should ask themselves three questions: What is your risk? What is your level of exposure? And what is your comfort level with that level of risk and exposure?

The level of risk is changing right now because of the fact that theres a more contagious variant and more virus in the air, he said.

OK, so its riskier to dine indoors now compared to June. But is it really that risky if Im fully vaccinated and healthy?

No. The risk is still small that youll get seriously ill, public experts say. The question is, do you want to risk getting sick at all or transmitting the virus to others? If not, mask up when youre not eating or drinking.

Its an added layer of protection. Why should anyone want to be infected if they could easily avoid it by wearing a mask? said UC Berkeley infectious disease expert John Swartzberg.

Well, if its not so risky to vaccinated people, why is this mask guidance needed at all?

Its a precautionary measure intended to make sure unvaccinated people wear masks and thus slow the spread of COVID-19, according to officials. Most restaurants arent equipped to enforce masking for unvaccinated people or even determine a diners vaccination status.

What if Im a fully vaccinated older adult or immunocompromised individual?

The vaccine protects elders just as well as young adults, according to health experts. Its a more difficult calculation for immunocompromised people, who may want to be more cautious and choose outdoor dining right now.

Should I bring my young children to indoor restaurants?

Children under 12 still cant get vaccines. While its highly unlikely a kid would die from COVID-19, its possible young children could become sick. Swartzberg recommends avoiding indoor dining for now.

If you have a child who cant be vaccinated, you have to be doing the kinds of things you were doing before we had the vaccines: being careful, he said.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Im vaccinated and dont want to mask up to protect people who refuse to get vaccinated. Why should I bother?

Its also worth masking up now for purely selfish reasons, health experts say. Thats because vaccines are still not 100% effective.

Though you probably wont get seriously ill, if you get exposed to an infected person, there is a 1 in 20 chance youll develop symptoms from COVID-19, Siegel said. So if youre in a crowded 40-seat restaurant where no one is masked, its possible a couple of fully vaccinated people still get infected. Its already happening at restaurants where vaccinated workers are testing positive and forcing temporary shutdowns.

It would be great from a public health standpoint if we instituted more restrictions, but then businesses would complain, Siegel said. Of all the things you could do that wouldnt impact the economy, wearing a mask is the easiest.

What are restaurants doing in response to this new guidance?

Its a mix: Some restaurants are enforcing masks for employees and customers, but others arent making any changes since theres no mandate.

To prevent the spread of COVID-19, Rutherford said it would be helpful for restaurants to have staff mask up and require vaccines for employees.

Siegel would like to see restaurants only serve vaccinated people, something a small handful of bars and venues are doing in the Bay Area. He acknowledged that it would be an incredibly controversial policy across the board, but it could be effective at getting more shots in arms. In France last week, almost 1 million people registered for vaccines after the government announced that proof of vaccine would be required in all restaurants and other nonessential places.

You take away the croissants and thats enough motivation to vaccinate people, Siegel said.

Staff writer Julie Johnson contributed reporting.

This story was updated to reflect four more counties recommending vaccinated people wear masks indoors.

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
Dinner and a show at Marin Countys popular music venue Sweetwater Music Hall isnt new, but the owners are putting a bigger emphasis on the food side than ever before with a new adjacent restaurant, the Rock & Rye.

Opening Aug. 2 at 19 Corte Madera Ave. in Mill Valley, the Rock & Rye will be helmed by executive chef Rick Hackett. Hes best known for his splashy pan-Latin Oakland restaurant Bocanova, which he closed in 2017 but still hopes to reopen, as well as previously working at seminal Californian restaurants such as Chez Panisse and Oliveto.

At the upcoming Marin restaurant, Hackett is weaving together Latin American influences with his love of New Orleans dishes, which he says feels appropriate for the musical setting. Hes hoping concert-goers will start their evenings with dinner at the restaurant, then perhaps return after for drinks and bites.

Fans of Bocanova will see at least one familiar dish on the menu: Hacketts shellfish gumbo ($21), which he was also serving at San Franciscos MarketBar pre-pandemic. He starts with a dark roux and, in a non-traditional move, incorporates tomatoes and Peruvian peppers. He cooks the shrimp, scallops and andouille separately to order so they arrive caramelized, then adds a deep-fried oyster and crispy okra for more texture.

On the Latin American side, theres a play on lomo saltado, a Chinese-influenced Peruvian stir-fry. Hacketts version features a pan-seared steak with a gingery, soy sauce-driven sauce and an earthy mushroom puree ($23).

Im building the dish so the flavors are the same, but its not a stir-fry, he said.

Courtesy the Rock & Rye at Sweetwater Music Hall

There are also several vegetarian options, including a New Orleans-inspired etouffee that replaces seafood with eggplant and peppers ($16), and stewed mushrooms over grits with a spicy tomato sauce ($17).

These options are available inside the small restaurant, which has 18 seats, or on a newly remodeled patio, which seats 50. Theres a retractable roof, heaters and wind barriers in an attempt to make it cozy year-round.

On the drinks side, longtime Sweetwater bar manager Joshua Fernandez has put together a cocktail menu celebrating the return of live music, naming drinks after local venues. The Feel More ($13), for example, is a spicy nod to the Fillmore in San Francisco combining tequila and mezcal infused with pineapple, plus lime, ginger and jalapeno.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

While the Rock & Rye opens next month, Sweetwater wont resume live shows until Sept. 3.

The Rock & Rye. Opening Aug. 2. 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m. Monday-Friday; 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-9 p.m. Saturday; 10 a.m.-3 p.m. and 5-8 p.m. Sunday. 19 Corte Madera Ave., Mill Valley. sweetwatermusichall.com

This story was updated to reflect that Rick Hackett previously worked at MarketBar.

Janelle Bitker is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: janelle.bitker@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @janellebitker
SACRAMENTO  Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder has sued California elections officials to get onto the recall ballot after he was left off a preliminary list of candidates seeking to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Elder announced late Monday that he had filed suit in Sacramento County Superior Court against Secretary of State Shirley Weber to challenge his disqualification from the Sept. 14 special election for apparently submitting incomplete tax forms. Candidates for governor are required to provide five years of federal income tax returns, which were made available this week for public review.

In a statement, Elder said he had complied with all requirements, including submitting more than 300 pages of tax forms.

The politicians in Sacramento know Im the only candidate who can beat Gavin Newsom, Elder said. They are afraid, and they are using whatever shenanigans they can to try to trip me up. It wont work.

A spokesperson for Weber said he could not comment on a pending legal matter. Her office has previously declined to provide more details on how Elders tax forms were incomplete.

Elder appears to be one of the first candidates ensnared by the tax requirement, which California adopted in 2019. Courts threw out a similar rule for presidential candidates, but maintained the law as it applied to gubernatorial primaries in the state. The Secretary of States Office said last month that it would be a requirement for potential candidates in the recall as well.

In his lawsuit, Elder argues that Weber overstepped her authority, because the law specifically mentions primaries and the recall is a special election. He also contends that it is a violation of equal protection rights because Newsom, who signed the law and has voluntarily released his tax returns as governor, was not subject to it.

Frankly, this action by the Secretary of State is not simply unfair and absurd but a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent, Elder said in his statement.

The matter must be decided quickly; Weber is supposed to certify a list of candidates for the recall on Wednesday, so that county election offices can begin printing ballots to mail out to voters next month. A spokesperson for the court said Tuesday that a hearing had not yet been scheduled.

Voters will be asked two questions on the ballot: Should Newsom be recalled? And if he is, who should replace him? If a majority votes yes on the first question, then the winner of the second question will serve out the remainder of the governors term, which ends in January 2023, even if they do not receive a majority of votes.

Two other candidates have launched legal challenges against the Secretary of States Office over ballot disputes: Republican Kevin Faulconer sued Monday because Weber rejected retired San Diego Mayor as his official title. Democrat Kevin Paffrath said he would sue to get his YouTube nickname, Meet Kevin, included on the ballot.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
A Berkeley High graduate and Camp Towanga counselor died in a drowning at a river outside Yosemite National Park on Thursday, the camp said in a post on Facebook.

Eli Kane was a summer counselor at the 95-year-old camp, and the accident occurred at a swimming hole away from camp on a day off, according to the post.

"We are deeply saddened by this tragedy," the post read. "Eli was a bright light, beautiful spirit and an adored Tawongan. ... Our deepest sympathies and thoughts are with Elis family, and we are grieving with them. He was a long-time Tawonga camper ... and a truly incredible counselor."

The Tuolumne County Sheriff's Office said personnel from the U.S. Forest Service and the sheriff's office responded to an emergency call on the Tuolumne River at Cherry Lake Road at 12:52 p.m. on July 15.

Deputy Niccoli Sandelin with the sheriff's office said the victim was with a group at a swimming hole, and when fire and medical help arrived, people were performing CPR. Paramedics took over and determined that the victim was dead.

Camp Tawonga CEO Jamie Simon told KTVU in a statement that at the time of the drowning, campers weren't present; however, several other staff members were.

Kane graduated from Berkeley High School in 2019 before attending the University of Michigan, according to a story in J Weekly.

Kane was a friend of Berkeley High graduate Ross Schultz, who died recently in a car accident in Lake Tahoe along with Dixie Lewis, another graduate from the East Bay school, according to Berkeleyside.

Eleven people have drowned in lakes and rivers in Tuolumne County since the start of summer, Sandelin said.

"I would say that just off my knowledge from previous years, were significantly higher than we have been in the past," he said. "It has been on every waterway we have in Tuolumne."

Sandelin warned the region's lakes and rivers are often ice-cold and have dangerous currents.

"Its a completely different type of swimming," he said. "The temperature is different, the waters are different. ... You get a lot of snow melt pouring into these rivers. Theyre generally colder than they look like they should be. Life jackets. We dont hear if people are drowning if they wear life jackets."
California Department of Fish and Wildlife staff are on the ground monitoring drought impacts  and among the alarming findings is "the possibility of a near-complete loss" of young, winter-run Chinook salmon on the Sacramento River this fall due to a dwindling water supply and persistent dry, hot weather.

The waters of Northern California's main river may become so hot that nearly all the eggs and juveniles of this endangered species, which migrates from the Golden Gate in winter and spawns just below Shasta Dam in the Sacramento River in spring and summer, could die, California wildlife officials said.

To cool the waters of the Sacramento River and protect the incubating eggs and young in summer and fall, the state releases water from Shasta Lake into the river. But after two consecutive dry winters, water in California's largest reservoir is quickly disappearing. The lake was at 46% of its historical average as of Monday, state data showed. There may not be enough water to release sufficient amounts of cold water to support fish survival.

"Modeling of monthly operations predicts high levels of mortality for Chinook salmon during egg incubation in the Sacramento River due to limited cold-water pool in Lake Shasta and downstream water deliveries," Fish and Wildlife said in a statement. "Unanticipated depletions downstream have resulted in increased releases from numerous reservoirs in the Central Valley. The State Water Project and Central Valley Water Project are attempting to balance many beneficial uses, including municipal drinking water.

"Chinook salmon mortality during egg incubation could be higher than originally predicted. Its an extreme set of cascading climate events pushing us into this crisis situation."

The Sacramento River supports one of the southernmost large runs of Chinook salmon in North America. There are four different salmon runs on the river that flows for 400 miles from the Klamath Mountains through the Central Valley before reaching the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and San Francisco Bay.

The winter-run salmon enter the Sacramento River system in late January to February, but runs can persist into June. The adult fish spawn, or lay their eggs, in the Sacramento River upstream of Red Bluff and spawn from late April through August.

The fish are conditioned to spawn in cold waters, as the winter run historically laid their eggs in the ice-cold rivers of the High Sierra fed by snowmelt, such as the Little Sacramento, McCloud and Pit rivers.

"But they can't get up there anymore," said fish ecologist Andrew Rypel, an associate professor at UC Davis and co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences. "One of the big dams that gets in their way is Shasta. There's no fish passage around it. Dams have blocked them off from their historical spawning habitat."

The winter run now spawn in the Sacramento River, and their environment is controlled by cold-water released from Shasta Lake.

"This is a fish that's very vulnerable to climate change," said Rypel. "Most of the management around the winter-run salmon is temperature management. Shasta Reservoir is a big deep lake. ... It all revolves around the cold water pool in Shasta. There's a certain finite volume of cold water. If the drought goes on for too long, you run out of cold water. When you run out of cold water, a large fraction of the juveniles will die."

San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/San Francisco Chronicle via Gett

Sacramento River winter-run Chinook salmon have suffered serious declines in population size for decades and are federally listed as endangered. The fish population saw a long, slow decline after Shasta Dam was built between 1938 and 1945, and then a rapid decline during certain periods like the late 1970s, Rypel said.

Data going back to 1967 shows that the population of spawning adults hit a high of 117,800 in 1969 and went all the way down to only 200 fish in 1994, according to a 1998 paper published in the North American Journal of Fisheries Management.

San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst N/San Francisco Chronicle via Gett

The winter-run salmon saw significant die offs in both 2014 and 2015 during the last major drought.

It has happened before, but the problem is if we start losing multiple year classes in a row," said Rypel. "This is an animal that spends one year in fresh water and two years in the ocean. So, every year class matters, and if you lose one you inch ever closer to the possibility of an extinction event. We're not far off from extinction for the winter run.

While there's talk of long-term solutions to help save the winter run, such as trapping the fish and hauling them to colder reaches and tributaries, this year it all comes down to the cold water pool in Shasta Lake.

"If they can conserve that cool water pool in Shasta Reservoir long enough to meet the demand, we can save them, but most experts think that will probably not happen," Rypel said. "We're very worried about a large mortality event this year."
DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP)  Waiting among hundreds of fellow travelers to catch a ferry out of Bangladesh's capital, unemployed construction worker Mohammed Nijam knew he was risking catching the coronavirus, but he felt it was even riskier to stay in Dhaka with another lockdown looming.

I have to pay rent every month even though I have no work, he said, adding that his landlord had been bothering him for money even as he was struggling just to feed himself. "I'd rather go to my village home and lead life as God lets me.

Nijam is among the tens of millions of Bangladeshis shopping and traveling this week during a controversial eight-day pause in the country's strict coronavirus lockdown that the government is allowing for the Islamic festival Eid al-Adha. The suspension has been panned by health experts who warn it could exacerbate an ongoing surge fueled by the highly contagious delta variant, which was first detected in neighboring India.

Already there is a scarcity of beds, ICUs, while our health care providers are exhausted," said said Be-Nazir Ahmed, a public health expert and former chief of the governments Health Directorate. "So if the situation worsens and more patients come to hospitals, it will be near impossible to deal with the crisis.

With the spread of the virus rampant, most everything in Bangladesh was ordered shut on July 1, from markets to mass transportation. Soldiers and border guards patrolled the streets and thousands were arrested and sent to jail for violating the lockdown.

Yet even with the new restrictions, virus deaths still hovered around 200 each day and daily infections were still around 11,000, both thought to be undercounts. On Sunday, 225 deaths and 11,758 infections were reported.

Despite the warnings from experts  and with just over 4 million of the countrys 160 million people fully vaccinated  the government announced that from July 15-23, all restrictions would be lifted and everything would be reopened so people could celebrate the festival, which is normally a boon to the economy.

But, in all situations people must stay alert, use face masks and strictly follow health instructions, a government policy statement said.

Government officials have not responded to criticism of the move. An official with the Ministry of Public Administration, which issued the order pausing the lockdown, referred The Associated Press to the policy statement when asked for comment. Calls and emails to a spokesperson with the Health Ministry were not returned.

A junior minister from the Ministry of Public Administration, Farhad Hossain, told local media on Saturday that the lockdown needed to be eased as a lot of business revolves around the festival.

The result in the capital has been crowds of people jamming into malls and markets to do their holiday shopping and others thronging ports and bus stations as they try to make their way to their rural hometowns.

During the last major Islamic festival in May, an estimated 10 million of Dhaka's 20 million residents left to celebrate with their families. A similar number could travel this week, especially since many like Nijam, the construction worker, may be looking to wait out the next lockdown in their villages.

Among the huge crowd of people shopping at Dhakas New Market, was Shah Alam, a dental technician.

As the government has relaxed the situation for a few days, we are coming to markets to buy necessary goods," Alam said. We are trying to follow the health safety guidelines.

Ahmed, the health expert, said he sees the main risks of suspending the lockdown as people from the city spreading the virus to their villages and people spreading the virus while they pack into markets for their shopping, especially cattle markets where millions of people will buy animals to sacrifice for Eid al-Adha.

Maybe hundreds of thousands of cattle markets will be arranged throughout the country starting from remote village up to city, and the cattle sellers and others engaged in the business are mainly coming from rural areas, and possibly they will bring virus with them, he said.

According to his estimates, 30 million to 40 million people will gather for prayers in mosques or open fields across the country for the festival on Wednesday.

The Eid congregations are going to be a superspreading event," he said.

He said the month after the festival will be a critical time for a country that has already tallied nearly 1.1 million infections and nearly 18,000 deaths from the pandemic.

We may not actually avoid a catastrophic situation, he said.

___

Associated Press video journalist Al-emrun Garjon contributed to this report.
Surging temperatures across the West Coast this summer are exposing another way that the changing climate threatens the country's future: the danger it poses to workers, particularly those who work outside and in warehouses.

The issue has become such a concern that the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has put a new heat illness rule on a list of agenda items for the Biden administration to consider, calling it a top priority. Right now, there is no specific federal policy that governs heat-related workplace safety, leaving states to set their own approach.

Amid nearly 200 deaths in Washington and Oregon during the recent record-shattering heat wave, which saw temperatures climb as high as 116 degrees, at least two workers died suddenly: a 51-year-old man who collapsed outside an Oregon Walmart distribution center where he worked, and a 38-year-old farmworker who died while working in a field on a 104-degree day near the Willamette Valley.

Those deaths, whose causes are still being investigated, have drawn attention to the risks faced by many workers and to government policies that often have not been tailored to contemporary weather extremes.

"We have to deal with these waves of higher temperatures - sometimes it's low or high - and also the wildfires now," said Luis Magana, coordinator of the farmworker advocacy group Organization of Migrant Workers, based in Stockton, in California's San Joaquin Valley. "It's a system of the natural environment running against a system of laws that no longer works."

Magana, who worked in the fields for more than 40 years, said that the temperatures, always a consideration for farmworkers in places such as California, have climbed higher in recent years.

"The harvests have changed," he said. "The temperature, in the last few years, has advanced to be quite severe. And you can feel the force of the sun, it is much stronger."

After a series of deaths in the fields, California instituted what were then the country's most stringent protections for farmworkers, in 2005, and has updated those laws since.

But Magana says workers are still succumbing to the heat: He hears about three to five workers who die prematurely, from such things as strokes or heart attacks, every harvest season. Magana attributes the stresses of working in high temperatures to these deaths, even if they don't occur in the physical workplace.

"It's always the same story - whatever the risk is, whether it's a heat wave, air quality or covid," said Elizabeth Strater, a director at United Farm Workers. "All of these things are going to cause more harm disproportionally to the people who are more vulnerable."

Veronica Mota, 46, has been working in the fields for 20 years, harvesting such produce as blueberries, strawberries, oranges, onions, garlic, almonds and asparagus in the San Joaquin Valley.

The heat is a double-edged sword, she said: Growers shift their schedules earlier to avoid the worst heat of the day, but when it's too hot, workdays get cut short, reducing paychecks.

Still, she is more concerned about getting heat stroke at work, saying she does not have health insurance.

She says she witnessed a fellow picker last year visibly suffering on a hot day, with what she said she thought were signs of illness from the heat. The co-worker was picked up by an ambulance and recovered.

Oregon this month announced emergency rules mandating that employers provide cool water, adequate shade and rest breaks every two hours when the temperature in work areas, indoors or outdoors, exceeds 90 degrees.

But those rules are temporary, leaving just three states with permanent heat-related rules: Washington, California and Minnesota. And even those are patchy, according to Teni Adewumi-Gunn, a climate change and worker health fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

California, which mandates such protections as providing water, breaks and shade for outdoor workers, has specific provisions for workers in agriculture, construction, landscaping, and oil and gas extraction.

And there is a growing push to establish national heat protection standards.

Legislation introduced in Congress in March would require OSHA to establish similar federal rules to protect workers in extreme heat conditions across the country. The agency is looking at other steps it can take.

"OSHA understands that heat is a growing problem and that workplace exposure to heat is a significant hazard and will become more critical as the impacts of climate change progress over time," the agency said in a statement. "Climate change isn't limited to a single job site, industry or geographic area, and the agency is aware of the effects of changing climate and extreme weather patterns on workers."

OSHA said it is enforcing worker safety violations related to heat issues under its general duty clause, a broad mandate that requires companies to provide safe workplaces.

Marc Freedman, a vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said that the organization wouldn't have an official position on the regulation until it is drafted but that he was skeptical of what it could mean for business owners.

"It's very difficult to regulate something like heat exposure," he said. "We can all say there's a hazard there, but reducing that to a question of a standard and when an employee is going to be in trouble and what that threshold of exposure is going to be for an employer to protect against is very vexing."

California's stringent rules do not apply to workers indoors - such as warehouse employees, whose ranks have grown significantly during the pandemic at companies such as Amazon, among others. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post).

The heat has become so obtrusive - even during the overnight shift - at an Amazon warehouse in Southern California that at least one worker has started taking migraine pills to work to stave off the inevitable heat-related headaches.

"This summer has been substantially hotter than the last," said the worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of losing her job. "You see people trying to cool down by fanning themselves with a piece of cardboard. It hits you as soon as you get on the higher floors."

Maria Boschetti, a spokeswoman for Amazon, said the company monitors building temperatures and has safety teams on each floor to track heat levels.

"In an unprecedented heat wave like this, we're glad that we installed climate control in our fulfillment centers many years ago," she said in a statement. "We're also making sure that everyone has easy access to water and can take time off if they choose to."

Sage Vinson worked in a warehouse run by a different company in Boise, Idaho, which does not have a heat standard. Inside temperatures routinely topped 100 degrees during the three summers he spent there.

On multiple occasions, he vomited and nearly passed out from the heat. And on the most sweltering days, the green dye from his beard dripped onto his clothes.

"I'd walk into the bathroom and see people passed out on the floor," the 29-year-old said. "People would be throwing up or get sent home from work - and management would make sure to shame them by telling everybody they couldn't handle the heat."

Employees, he said, had to meet strict packaging quotas, even during heat waves.

Those who complained were told to cool off by the toilet, one of two places in the building with air conditioning. (The other was a management office that remained locked, he said.)

He left the $13-an-hour job in December, and recently moved to Eugene, Ore., where he works at a cannabis packaging facility that has air conditioning. The job is still physically taxing, he said, but is much more manageable without the extreme heat he dealt with at the last warehouse.

"It was a really gross 'survival of the fittest,' " he said. "I would come home and literally sit on top of the vent for an hour because it felt like my body was falling apart, every single day. I couldn't move."

The latest heat waves come as the warehouse industry undergoes explosive growth, adding some 100,000 workers a year to keep up with a boom in online shopping. Amazon alone has hired more than 430,000 employees in the past year, expanding its workforce by 51 percent to nearly 1.3 million worldwide.

Since 1992, heat-related complications have killed roughly 900 U.S. workers and sickened tens of thousands, according to federal data. Deaths from the heat rose to an average of about 40 a year between 2015 and 2019, up from about 30 a year the four years prior.

"Heat is not just an inconvenience; it kills people," said Adewumi-Gunn, adding that researchers believe those figures are likely much higher because of a lack of reporting and inconsistent record-keeping.

Public health experts say the dangers of working in extreme temperatures are often undercounted. In addition to heat stroke, dehydration and exhaustion, long-term exposure to sunlight and heat can lead to skin cancer, eye damage and chronic kidney disease, and exacerbate a number of existing conditions including asthma and diabetes.

A 2018 study of workers in California's San Joaquin and Imperial valleys by researchers at the University of California at Davis found that workload and pace were also large factors in illnesses when the temperatures were high. The heat and hard work caused 45% of the roughly 300 workers to see body temperatures rise to 100.4 degrees or more, for at least three minutes during the course of a day in the study.

The United Farm Workers asked 2,176 farmworkers in Washington recently about the heat, finding that 55 percent had experienced at least one symptom associated with a heat illness while at work. A quarter said they did not have enough cool drinking water and 97 percent said they thought work protections for heat should be improved in the state.

It's unclear how soon the Biden administration might advance a new policy, and some companies are working on their own measures. Scott Pope, a spokesman for Walmart, which lost the employee in Oregon recently, said the company was "taking preventive measures to help ensure our associates stay healthy and are stressing the importance of heat-related safety in all our facilities."

"The health and safety of our associates is a critical priority, and the safety policies and protocols we have in place are particularly important in light of record high temperatures across the U.S.," Pope said.
Get the latest information on the Dixie Fire from Cal Fire.

See the evacuation map for Plumas and Butte counties.

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LATEST July 22, 9 a.m. California's Dixie Fire straddling Plumas and Butte counties was 103,910 acres Thursday morning, becoming the state's second of 2021 to pass the milestone, Cal Fire said.

The Beckwourth Complex Fire 50 miles north of Tahoe that's now 96% contained also passed the 100,000 acre mark.

Megafires are becoming more and more common, especially in California, which has been hit repeatedly by extreme weather events, including heat waves, drought and dry lightning. These humongous fires were rare in California before 2003  but 17 of the 20 largest fires in the states history have occurred since then, according to state data.

Cal Fire gave an update Thursday morning on the fire that started near Cresta Dam: "The Dixie Fire remained active overnight with active surface fire, and single tree torching with short range spotting and rollout. Firefighters fought the fire aggressively. Firefighters continued construction on control lines and engaged in structure defense overnight."

July 21, 8 a.m. California's Dixie Fire straddling Plumas and Butte counties remained active overnight with uphill runs, tree torching and long-range spotting. The U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire said Wednesday morning that flames have torn through 85,479 acres.

The fire has grown rapidly and was 40,500 acres on Monday night.

Flames are pushing toward the northeast and officials said in the Wednesday morning update that it will likely grown by two to three miles in that direction.

Firefighters battled flames to save homes overnight and put down containment lines when possible.

The blaze that started on July 13 in the Feather River Canyon near Crest Dam is 15% contained.

The fire is well established in the Chips Fire burn scar that chewed up forestland in the Feather River Canyon in 2012, the Cal Fire and Forest Service said.

Officials said two structures have been destroyed along Highway 70 in Twain and the Beckwourth area but damage assessments are not complete.

Noah Berger/AP

July 20, 2:23 p.m. Structures were damaged in the Feather River Canyon by the exploding Dixie Fire, the Plumas County Sheriff's Office said on Facebook on Tuesday.

The office said it's collecting information to provide numbers and locations of residences.

July 20, noon Cal Fire provided an operations update, explaining where the fire is most active and containment lines are under control, on Tuesday morning. Watch the update on Facebook.

July 20, 9 a.m. California's Dixie Fire, burning northeast of Paradise, went from 40,500 acres on Monday night to 59,984 on Tuesday morning, growing by about 50%, according to the latest incident report.

The blaze that broke out above the Cresta Dam in the Feather River Canyon on July 14 was active overnight, pushing to the east and north, fire officials said.

Straddling both Plumas and Butte counties, the fire continues to pump out massive pyrocumulonimbus clouds that generated their own weather systems, including lightning.

Meteorologist Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services posted a video on Twitter showing the fire clouds over the blaze, which are astonishing in size.

"Pyrocumulus exploding above the Dixie Fire in Butte/Plumas County on Monday afternoon, 7/19/2021," Null wrote.

Similar footage was posted by the Alert Wildfire Twitter account.

Pyrocumulus clouds  literally translated as fire clouds  are caused by a natural source of heat such as a wildfire or volcano, according to NASA. Rising warm air from the fire carries water vapor, ash and smoke up into the atmosphere, forming clouds that can rise thousands of feet into the sky.

Plumas County Sheriff Todd Johns said at a Monday night briefing that new evacuation advisories for Canyon Dam, Prattville and the west shore of Lake Almanor were not due to the Dixie Fire advancing, but instead due to the number of lightning strikes coming from the fire that could ignite new fires, according to Plumas News.

Tony Brownell, operations sections chief, said during the briefing that the fire was not moving toward Quincy, Paradise or Magalia. We are concerned about Prattville, Lower Almanor, Brownell said, according to Plumas News.

Mandatory evacuation orders are also in place for Frenchman Lake, Doyle Grade, Sugarloaf, Plinco and Dixie Valley, according to the Plumas County Sheriffs Office. Other areas, such as parts of Highway 70, are under evacuation warning.

In Butte County, orders are in place for the High Lakes, Jonesville and Philbrook, officials said.

Just down Highway 70, the main artery running through burning parts of the Plumas National Forest, the Dixie fire continued to burn in Butte County Monday.

See complete evacuation information here.

Noah Berger/AP

In a report filed over the weekend with the California Public Utilities Commission, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said that company equipment may have set off the fire, which has been burning since last Tuesday.

According to the report PG&E filed to the state, a utility employee responding to a power outage noticed a blown fuse at Cresta Dam in a heavily forested area around Feather River Canyon. The worker found two blown fuses and a tree leaning into a power lines conductor, which was still intact and suspended on the poles, the report said. He also observed a fire ... near the base of the tree.

The worker removed a third fuse that hadnt blown, reported the fire, and his supervisor called 911, according to the document.

California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection officials swarmed the area, but the blaze grew quickly amid gusty winds and low humidity.

The information PG&E submitted is preliminary, and the company submitted this report in an abundance of caution, PG&E spokesman Matt Nauman said in a statement. PG&E is cooperating with Cal Fires investigation.

Noah Berger/AP

CPUC spokesman Christopher Chow said Monday that the report is under review.

Utilities are required to report an incident to the CPUC when they have enough information to make a determination that an incident is reportable, Chow said in an emailed statement. Our staff will investigate to determine if PG&E had enough information/awareness that the fire needed to be reported earlier.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

NEW YORK (AP)  From her childhood in Berlin, New Jersey, to her marriage to actor-producer Mark Consuelos, Kelly Ripa has a lot to talk about beyond her job as host of Live With Kelly and Ryan.

Dey Street Books, a HarperCollins Publishers imprint, announced Tuesday that Ripa's essay collection Live Wire will come out next year. According to Dey Street, the book will show what really makes her tick" as she writes about marriage, motherhood and her career in show business, including her work on All My Children, on which she and Consuelos both appeared.
Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Bars and restaurants in Oahu were recently told they can lose all social distancing restrictions, but there was a catch: Under the order, staff are required to ask customers to show proof of full vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test result within the prior 48 hours to allow entry.

Establishments that attempted this were met with a backlash from customers and "eaten alive on social media," reports Hawaii News Now.
DENVER (AP)  Colorado lifted some fishing restrictions along a stretch of the Colorado River on Tuesday, but biologists warn that historically low water flows caused by a drought in the U.S. West, high water temperatures and wildfire sediment that all starve trout of oxygen could force future bans.

On July 7, Colorado Parks and Wildlife imposed a rare 120-mile (193-kilometer) voluntary fishing ban. Tuesday's changes allow anglers  a key driver of Colorados summer tourist economy  to fish a 27-mile (43-kilometer) stretch of river anytime between midnight and noon, when waters are cooler. Restrictions also have been partially lifted for 50 miles (80 kilometers) upstream.

The changes came after upriver reservoir releases, recent rain and a smaller amount of cold Colorado River headwaters being diverted to the Denver metro area on the eastern side of the Continental Divide, said Kendall Bakich, a Parks and Wildlife aquatic biologist.

Days of smoke from wildfires burning in Western states also has deflected solar radiation that heats up the river, slightly lowering temperatures, Bakich said.

Its crazy, but every little bit helps, she said. There have been such low flows beginning this spring that the Colorado River looks more like a creek than a river.

A multitude of factors, nearly all tied to climate change, have left fish in the Colorado River and its many tributaries in a precarious state. Climate change has made the American West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years. While cold-water trout thrive in temperatures below 65 degrees Fahrenheit (18 Celsius), biologists have recorded temperatures surpassing 75 F (24 C).

Colorados Western Slope also experienced minimal spring runoff from the high Rocky Mountain snowpack this year  runoff that usually flushes out the river and replenishes high-quality habitat for fish, Bakich said.

The other phenomenon weve never seen is the heating upstream of tributaries of the Colorado River, she added.

In recent weeks, sediment has been shoved into the waterway by microbursts of rain. That's particularly the case in Glenwood Canyon, much of which was charred by the 640-square-mile (1,657-square-kilometer) Grizzly Creek Fire last year. Debris lowers oxygen levels in the water and scars the gills of trout, Bakich said.

Affected species include the brown and rainbow trout, mountain whitefish and sculpins that are a food source for the larger fish.

For years, numerous environmental groups have protested the diversion of water to the Denver area, arguing it is harmful to the drought-stricken Colorado River.

Denver Water, the largest state water agency, taps some of that water to serve 1.5 million residents, about a quarter of Colorados population. It, too, is seeking ways to meet demand while conserving water amid the drought.

Officials have yet to implement mandatory fishing closures in large part because of a responsible local angling community, Bakich said.

Our anglers are pretty savvy. They know when conditions are good and not good. The challenge is with people coming from outside the region, she said.

The voluntary closure earlier this month was running from the town of Kremmling in north-central Colorado to the city of Rifle in the western part of the state. Now, anglers can fish between midnight and noon from State Bridge on the upper Colorado River to Red Dirt Creek west of Glenwood Springs.
CHICAGO (AP)  A man wanted in the slaying of a 7-year-old girl who was fatally shot in April at a McDonald's drive-thru in Chicago has been taken into custody.

Neither the Chicago Police Department nor the FBI immediately provided any details about Devontay Anderson, 21, other than to say he was arrested Monday in Chicago. In a text, Chicago Police spokesman Tom Ahern said charges were pending.

Authorities have been searching for Adams since shortly after the April 18 slaying of Jaslyn Adams.

Two other suspects have also been charged with first-degree murder and remain in custody: Demond Goudy, 21, and Marion Lewis, 18, who was arrested in late April on Chicago's West Side after a SWAT team surrounded the residence where he was tracked. Lewis was shot by police and taken into custody after he crashed his vehicle trying to elude officers and then tried to steal a family's car on the Eisenhower Expressway.

The three are believed to be involved in the attack in which two men climbed out of a car at a McDonald's drive thru on the city's West Side and fired dozens of times, killing the girl and seriously wounding her father.

Prosecutors have said that surveillance video shows two men get out of the car, fire weapons at the victims car and get back into their car. When the victims car started to move forward, the two men got out of the Audi again and fired more shots into the vehicle before speeding away, prosecutors said. Twenty-eight shell casings were found at the scene. Authorities have said they believe Lewis was the driver and Anderson and Goudy were the gunmen.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  Four civil lawsuits alleging sexual and physical assault by the owners of a southwest Missouri reform school have been settled.

An attorney for four former Circle of Hope Girls Ranch students, identified only as Jane Does, told The Kansas City Star that the settlement amounts are confidential.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden marked six months in office with a crowded Cabinet meeting, a gathering meant to symbolize both a return to normalcy due to vaccines and a display of the federal government doing the peoples business.

But the moment was shadowed by the uncertain fate of a key Biden legislative priority, the bipartisan infrastructure plan, and a virus that has begun to surge anew.

Biden crammed 25 Cabinet-level officials, as well as another 18 senior staffers, into the ornate West Wing space on Tuesday to hear the president extol his administration's actions after taking office during a once-in-a-century pandemic.

The bottom line is were delivering on our promises, Biden said. We have to deliver on all the promises we made, because I think were in a situation where the vast majority of the public agrees with the essence of what were trying to do.

The Cabinet members were packed tightly around a table for their first full meeting in the Cabinet room, with a group of journalists squeezed in shoulder-to-shoulder at the outset to chronicle the event.

The White House held a rehearsal for the meeting several weeks ago to ensure that all the Cabinet-ranked officials could fit around the table and be seen in photos.

Time flies when were having fun, White House press secretary Jen Psaki quipped at her briefing, previewing the six-month-mark meeting.

Biden was flanked by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Vice President Kamala Harris sat across the table while some of the presidents most influential aides, including national security adviser Jake Sullivan and domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, lined the walls.

The scene looked far different from Bidens first Cabinet meeting, held in March, which took place in the more spacious East Room to allow for social distancing. All attendees that day, including the president, wore masks. There were none in sight on Tuesday.

The meeting lacked the over-the-top praise of the chief executive that defined former President Donald Trumps Cabinet meetings. But Biden took the opportunity to push for his two-track legislative plan, believing that it was key to jump starting an economic boom for some time to come.

The American people are overwhelmingly supportive of our plan, the president said. "Thats the part that a lot of our friends on the other team kind of miss.

Though Biden enjoys largely positive public polling, there are clouds on the horizon.

As he convened his Cabinet, the three top aides who have negotiated the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal were not there, having rushed to the Capitol to try to save a deal that appeared on the verge of falling apart.

Biden's March meeting came just days after he signed into law a $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill and he has poured his legislative energy since then into the infrastructure package despite calls from some in his own party to focus on issues like voting rights and immigration.

And while the pandemic had receded since March, the nations vaccination effort has stalled and a new more contagious strain of COVID-19, the delta variant, had sent infections rising across the country. It largely impacts the unvaccinated  though the White House announced Tuesday that some vaccinated staffers had tested positive  and its spread has prompted several major cities to reinstitute mask mandates.

The White House, so far, has not followed suit.

___

Lemire reported from New York. Associated Press writer Zeke Miller contributed to this report.
MAYS LANDING, N.J. (AP)  The Atlantic County prosecutor, Damon Tyner, resigned Tuesday after facing multiple lawsuits and ethics complaints.

Gov. Phil Murphy's office confirmed Tyner's resignation was effective at 9 a.m. He was the first Black person to hold the position in Atlantic County.

In 2019, three current and former employees of the county prosecutor's office sued Tyner alleging he discriminated against them on the basis of gender and created a toxic work environment for women. The suit also alleges he engaged in mortgage fraud and other misconduct.

The attorney general's office concluded in an investigation of internal affairs complaints by the same women that Tyner had lied to the public, failed to recuse himself from cases when he should have and was involved in retaliation against a whistleblower, New Jersey Advanced Media reported.

Tyner did not respond Tuesday to a request for comment from the news outlet.

The county previously settled an ethics lawsuit brought by a former assistant prosecutor for $230,000 that alleged Tyner tried to bribe him during union negotiations and did political favors for others, the newspaper reported.

A spokesperson for Murphy said in a statement: "We thank Damon Tyner for his service to Atlantic County and the State of New Jersey, and wish him the best in his future endeavors.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Prosecutors dropped their case against an Indiana woman who was charged in a hit-and-run crash during a southern Indiana protest last summer after learning she died in Colorado earlier this year.

Christi Jane Bennett, 67, was found dead in a Denver hotel room on Feb. 6, according to police. She died of blunt force injuries to the head, though heart disease, high blood pressure and hardened arteries contributed to her death, according to an autopsy conducted by the Denver medical examiners office. Her cause of death is undetermined, though authorities don't suspect foul play.

Authorities said Bennett was homeless when she died, and a friend who found her unresponsive said she had been struck on the head by a heavy door a few nights prior to her death.

Monroe County prosecutor Erika Oliphant confirmed Tuesday that the county dropped its case against Bennett on July 6 after learning she had died.

Bennett had been scheduled to appear Monday in Monroe County court on charges stemming from the incident last year.

Twenty-nine-year-old Chasity Mottinger was injured when Bennetts red Toyota Corolla accelerated into her, launching her onto the hood, according to the probable cause affidavit. A 35-year-old man, Geoff Stewart, then grabbed the drivers side of the car and held on as the vehicle accelerated. Both were eventually flung to the ground and the car drove off. Bennett never stopped, court documents indicate.

Protesters had gathered in downtown Bloomington to demand arrests in an assault on Vauhxx Booker, a civil rights activist and member of the Monroe County Human Rights Commission, by a group of white men at nearby Monroe Lake over last year's Fourth of July weekend. Booker maintains that the men pinned him against a tree and shouted racial slurs at him, and that one of them threatened to get a noose.

___

Casey Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
BEIJING (AP)  China on Tuesday rejected an accusation by Washington and its Western allies that Beijing is to blame for a hack of the Microsoft Exchange email system and complained Chinese entities are victims of damaging U.S. cyberattacks.

A foreign ministry spokesman demanded Washington drop charges announced Monday against four Chinese nationals accused of working with the Ministry of State Security to try to steal U.S. trade secrets, technology and disease research.

The announcement that the Biden administration and European allies formally blame Chinese government-linked hackers for ransomware attacks increased pressure over long-running complaints against Beijing but included no sanctions.

The United States ganged up with its allies to make unwarranted accusations against Chinese cybersecurity, said the spokesman, Zhao Lijian. This was made up out of thin air and confused right and wrong. It is purely a smear and suppression with political motives.

China will never accept this, Zhao said, though he gave no indication of possible retaliation.

China is a leader in cyberwarfare research along with the United States and Russia, but Beijing denies accusations that Chinese hackers steal trade secrets and technology. Security experts say the military and security ministry also sponsor hackers outside the government.

On Monday, U.S. authorities said government-affiliated hackers targeted American and other victims with demands for millions of dollars. Officials alleged contract hackers associated with the MSS engaged in extortion schemes and theft for their own profit.

Microsoft Corp. blamed Chinese spies for the Microsoft Exchange attack that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world. The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, on Monday called that a reckless but familiar pattern of behavior.

Also Monday, the Justice Department announced charges against four Chinese nationals who prosecutors said worked with the MSS to target computers at companies, universities and government entities. The defendants are accused of targeting trade secrets, scientific technologies and infectious-disease research.

China firmly opposes and combats any form of cyberattacks, and will not encourage, support or condone any cyberattacks, Zhao said.

Citing what he said was Chinese cybersecurity research, Zhao accused the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency of carrying out hacking attacks on Chinas aerospace research facilities, oil industry, internet companies and government agencies over an 11-year period.

Those attacks severely compromised national and economic security, Zhao said.

China once again strongly demands that the United States and its allies stop cyber theft and attacks against China, stop throwing mud at China on cybersecurity issues and withdraw the so-called prosecution, he said. China will take necessary measures to firmly safeguard Chinas cybersecurity and interests.
Washington (AP)  A prominent conservative group funneled valuable information about Republican voters between the Republican National Committee and state lawmakers, a move that violated its nonpartisan status and tax law, according to a whistleblower complaint filed Tuesday with the Internal Revenue Service.

The Center for Media and Democracy, a liberal group, filed the complaint against the American Legislative Exchange Council, which hosts conferences and provides model legislation to state legislators. It alleges that the council provides its 2,000 members, most of them Republican lawmakers, with data from a campaign vendor linked to the Republican National Committee, and that data ALEC members enter in the system goes directly to the RNC. ALEC does not provide similar information about Democratic voters.

As a nonpartisan nonprofit, ALEC cannot help candidates win elections. If the IRS finds the organization broke that pledge it could revoke its nonprofit status, which would be a financial blow to an organization that has served as the policy bedrock to the conservative swing in many states, providing blueprints for laws on energy, guns, education and more.

ALEC could face additional legal jeopardy from complaints making similar allegations that the Center for Media and Democracy, in conjunction with the watchdog group Common Cause, says it is also filing with 15 Attorney General offices.

What the complaints show is that ALEC is a partisan organization at heart, dedicated to promoting Republican policies and supporting elected officials who will implement those policies, said Arn Pearson, the centers executive director.

ALEC responded that the database system, known as ALEC CARE, is not used specifically for campaigning but for communicating with constituents.

ALEC data is not shared with any political party and no political party shares data with ALEC, spokeswoman Alexis Jarrett said in an email, noting that the login page for the system requires members to agree not to use it for campaign purposes. ALEC CARE is a constituent management system that helps members better understand and communicate with constituents.

The complaints are based on internal documents provided by a state lawmaker and ALEC member. The documents show the group provides its members free access to data from Voter Gravity, a Virginia company founded by Ned Ryun, a conservative activist.

The ALEC member cited as the whistleblower in the complaints told The Associated Press they were motivated to leak the internal materials after accessing the Voter Gravity database and seeing that it appears to contain only registered Republicans and voters that have cast ballots in past GOP primaries. The legislator spoke to The Associated Press and provided a tour of the Voter Gravity online portal on condition of anonymity to preserve their relationship with ALEC.

Voter Gravity did not return a call for comment.

ALEC is registered as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, barred under U.S. Internal Revenue code from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.

ALEC membership dues for state legislators are $200 a year, often paid for out of their taxpayer-funded office budgets. One of the perks of membership is access to Voter Gravity data.

In an internal email from January, an ALEC employee touted the data as a way for legislators to communicate more effectively with their constituents.

This software would cost $3,000 if bought by a member, but is a member benefit, wrote Will Davies, who was then ALECs manager for member engagement.

In a detailed sales pitch to potential clients, Voter Gravity describes itself as an approved mobile app vendor of the Republican National Committee and fully integrated with the RNCs database.

Voter Gravity produces targeted, insightful and immediate information about voters, donors, and activists that mean the most to a campaign, the company says on its website. Easily access all of the voter data you need and turn that data into votes.

The system provides granular level data that is especially useful to conservative campaigns. It captures information about individual GOP-leaning voters, including their names, home addresses, prior voting history, demographic information, interest in hot-button issues like environmentalism and taxation, a score indicating their odds of voting in upcoming elections and an RNC ID number. There is no Democratic ID number.

The data normally allows campaigns to develop mailing lists and provides detailed district maps for knocking on doors, including which homes on a specific street contain reliably Republican voters.

The complaint notes that, in 2015, Voter Gravity founder Ryun issued a press release celebrating a new relationship between the data firm and the RNC. Voter Gravity's database would feed directly into the RNC's own, which will allow any candidate ... to put data back in real time into the RNC," the release said.

The complaint alleges that this means new information ALEC members enter into their system immediately can be shared with the RNC. ALEC did not respond to a question about whether members' data about their constituents goes to the RNC.
NEW YORK (AP)  When Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk talks to patients about the COVID-19 vaccine, she tries to feel out where they get their information from.

Sometimes I feel like the education I have to provide depends on what news channel that they watch, the doctor in Durham, North Carolina, said.

The mixed messaging can come from the same media outlet  and even the same source. On Fox News Channel on Monday, host Sean Hannity looked straight into the camera to deliver a clear message: It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccinations.

Yet Hannity followed up his statement by interviewing a woman protesting her colleges requirement that students be vaccinated, a segment appealing to people skeptical of the immunization push. His prime-time colleagues, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, opened their own programs by questioning vaccination efforts.

Skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccination is a common theme in media appealing to conservatives, despite assurances from doctors and scientists that the vaccine is safe and effective. Some medical experts worry that conflicting takes and outright distrust of the vaccine shown by influential media personalities contribute to a failure to meet inoculation goals aimed at arresting the pandemic.

Two recent exchanges in recent days on Fox News Channels popular morning show, Fox & Friends, illustrated the mixed messaging.

During a discussion of Los Angeles Countys decision to reinstate mandates to wear masks indoors, even if people are vaccinated, guest host Lawrence Jones said, People are saying, Why get the vaccine if youre not going to return to normal? Whats the use of doing it? Why?

Well, you wont die, colleague Steve Doocy replied. Thats a good reason.

Doocy, arguably Foxs most influential figure arguing in favor of vaccinations, also took on co-host Brian Kilmeade on Monday when he said people should not be judged if they decide not to get the shot. Doocy responded that the vast majority of people who are dying of COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Thats their choice, Kilmeade replied.

Several personalities on Fox News Channel  including Bill Hemmer, Dana Perino, Bret Baier, Greg Gutfeld and the three-member Fox & Friends morning team  have been vaccinated and publicized their status. Rupert Murdoch, the networks founder, has been jabbed, too.

The prime-time hosts, who consistently have the biggest audience, keep their status to themselves, although Hannity has said he was going to get vaccinated. Carlson, when asked directly by two journalists whether hes been vaccinated, responded by asking their favorite sex position  his way of saying its too personal a question.

Even casual consumers of media targeting conservatives over the past few months absorb a deep skepticism about the vaccines.

Malchuk says some patients who are happy to take her advice on, say, diabetes medication, have resisted her encouragement that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective in warding off serious illness.

I see people polarized in terms of where they get their information, from whom they get it and, yes, it is politically charged, she said.

Dr. Laura Morris, who works in an area of Missouri that has seen a surge in COVID-19 infections, said that she had hoped for less polarization and that more people would have responded to seeing the positive effect of vaccines.

There are a lot of things out there that are harmful to public health right now, she said. Anything out there that says vaccines are not good for you, that is false.

Social media and the internet are major factors in what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned last week was an alarming flow of disinformation about the vaccines.

Doctors like Malchuk and Morris, who regularly sees patients in Fulton, Missouri, suspect the internet is behind the more outlandish theories that they dispel  that the vaccines cause cancer, damage fertility or contain microchips.

Most themes on talk radio or television networks like Fox, Newsmax or One America News are more subtle or philosophical.

The vaccine is experimental, still not fully approved, is one line of attack. Wait and see. Theres no reason for young people to get it. Natural immunity is better. Its none of your business what I do. Government  the Biden administration especially  is intruding upon your life, trying to take control of your body.

The advice they are giving you is not designed to help, Carlson said Monday on his show, the most popular on cable news. It is designed to make you comply.

Two hours later, Ingraham said that it was President Joe Biden and his allies, not conservative media figures, who are superspreaders of COVID-19 misinformation.

The cumulative effect of the stories is to raise doubt in the minds of people who may already be looking for a way to avoid the jab of a needle and syringe full of chemicals going into their bodies, said Kristin Urquiza, who started the organization Marked By COVID after her father died of the virus.

They do not come out and say, Do not get the vaccine, Urquiza said. Their strategy is to create a culture of confusion.

Carlson and Ingraham have been the most aggressive in questioning vaccinations. Carlson has said the idea that you could force people to take medicine they dont want or need is scandalous. But he also told viewers on Monday: Were not saying there is no benefit to the vaccine. There may well be profound benefits to the vaccine. Our mind is open and has been from the first day. We never encouraged anyone to take or not to take the vaccine. Obviously, were not doctors.

Ingraham has suggested viewers hide your kids from Bidens vaccine pushers. She also said Monday that we want everyone to be healthy and safe and have their risk assessment done properly.

On conservative media, resisters are depicted as heroes. Foxs Pete Hegseth hailed a woman who filmed herself confronting two health care workers who were urging residents of a Los Angeles housing complex to get vaccinated and told them to leave the building. Dan Bell, a One America News network host, invited a Republican congressman on as a guest because he admired the way the politician refused to answer an activist journalist who had asked about his vaccination status.

A Newsmax anchor, Rob Schmitt, on July 9 questioned whether vaccinations go against nature.

If theres some disease out there, maybe theres just an ebb and flow to life where somethings supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and thats just the way evolution goes, he said. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that.

Since then, Newsmax and its founder, Chris Ruddy, have said he and the network strongly support Bidens efforts to widely distribute the vaccine.

The impact of this messaging is difficult to measure. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken at the end of June revealed that 86% of Democrats said they had received at least one shot, compared to 45% of Republicans.

Prolonged exposure to media messages about vaccines has an impact on attitudes, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which has studied the issue. But viewers also come predisposed to certain beliefs, and television producers are attuned to what their viewers want to hear.

Urquiza said she believes that many vaccine segments on outlets that try to reach conservatives have less to do with medicine than with fostering a sense of grievance, that government needs to get off your back.

Theyre chipping away at confidence in lifesaving measures, she said. Its terrifying to watch.
PARALIMNI, Cyprus (AP)  The government of ethnically split Cyprus lodged formal protests with the United Nations and the European Union on Tuesday over a decision by Turkey and breakaway Turkish Cypriots to reopen a residential section of an abandoned, military-controlled suburb.

Calling the move a veiled bid to acquire more territory that could scuttle peace efforts, the government said the five permanent U.N. Security Council members would be informed about what President Nicos Anastasiades called a contravention of council resolutions prohibiting any change to the coastal area's status and which call for the return of Varosha to its legal inhabitants.

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar announced earlier Tuesday that a 3.5 square-kilometer (1.35 square-mile) section of Varosha would revert from military to civilian control so Greek Cypriots could seek to reclaim their properties through the Immoveable Property Commission (IPC), a legal body that is empowered to adjudicate such cases.

Tatar made the announcement ahead of a military parade attended by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to commemorate the 47th anniversary of a Turkish invasion that followed a coup on Cyprus aimed at union with Greece. Only Turkey recognizes a Turkish Cypriot declaration of independence, and Erdogans government keeps more than 35,000 troops in northern Cyprus.

The island's internationally recognized government is in the south. Both Erdogan and Tatar have said that a permanent peace in Cyprus can only come through the international community's recognition of two separate states, upending decades of negotiations to reach a federation-based reunification accord.

The European Union's foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said in a statement Tuesday that the EU still sees reunification as the goal and supports the involvement of the Security Council. Cyprus is an EU member, and Turkey is not.

The EU remains fully committed to the comprehensive settlement of the Cyprus problem on the basis of a bi-zonal, bi-communal federation with political equality, in accordance with the relevant UNSC Resolutions and in line with the principles on which the EU is founded and expects the same of Turkey, Borrell said. .

The United States condemned the announcement by Tatar and Erdogan, saying that the U.S. views Turkish Cypriot actions in Varosha, with the support of Turkey, as provocative, unacceptable and incompatible with their past commitments to engage constructively in settlement talks.

In a statement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Turkish Cypriots and Turkey to reverse the decision. The United States is working with like-minded partners to refer this concerning situation to the U.N. Security Council and will urge a strong response, he said.

Some Greek Cypriot lawyers have urged owners to apply to the European Court of Human Rights-endorsed IPC to legally affirm rights to their property in the north.

But the Cyprus government worries that an application rush to the IPC could lead to a mass property sell-off that Turkish Cypriots would exploit politically to entrench ethnic division and lend legitimacy to their breakaway state.

Varosha is a suburb of Famagusta, a city that was Cyprus pre-1974 tourism hub thanks to its pristine beaches and modern hotels. After Varosha's 15,000 Greek Cypriot residents fled in the face of advancing Turkish troops, the area was fenced-off to prevent any access until last year when Turkish and Turkish Cypriot authorities announced it's re-opening."

Varosha's former residents denounced the move as a bid to take advantage of their desperation over the areas future and to psychologically pressure them into selling off their properties. Many Turkish Cypriots also condemned the move as undermining ongoing efforts at reconciliation between the two communities.

Famagusta Mayor Simos Ioannou told the Associated Press that Tuesday's announcement aimed to test Greek Cypriots resolve about holding on to their properties. The fact that only a small section and not the whole of residential Varosha was re-opened intends to blunt international reaction to the move, Ioannou said.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP)  A Democratic lawmaker in Delaware has apologized for using a racist and sexist slur to refer to sex workers, saying he dehumanized an entire culture.

State Rep. Gerald Brady of Wilmington made the comments in a June 27 email he inadvertently sent to an advocate for decriminalizing prostitution.

The News Journal of Wilmington reported that the advocate had sent Brady a Princeton University study that suggested the presence of strip clubs led to a decrease in sex crimes in a New York City police precinct. The person connected the study to a 30-year period in Rhode Island during which indoor prostitution in massage parlors and strip clubs was decriminalized, and called on Delaware lawmakers to do something similar to protect sex workers.

The study sent to Brady did not directly mention Asian women in relation to sex work and strip clubs. It contained a single reference citation to a 2018 analysis of sex crimes and prostitution in South Korea in a publication called Asian Development Perspectives.

Is the dude basically saying, if we provide free (sex acts) for Uncle Pervie there will be few rapes and few (a slur for Chinese women) will be shipped in CONEX containers to the Port of Wilmington?? Brady replied from his official government email address.

The message was intended for a private citizen whom Brady knows, asking the person to read and summarize the study, according to Drew Volturo, spokesman for the House Democratic Caucus. Instead, Brady hit reply and emailed the original sender.

Delaware lawmakers have exempted their emails and the emails of legislative staff from Delawares Freedom of Information Act, but Bradys email was shared with The News Journal.

There is no excuse I can offer that explains my embarrassing and shameful words that insulted, stereotyped and dehumanized an entire culture while making light of a serious human rights crisis, Brady wrote in a statement issued through a spokesman.

Brady, who is executive director of the Delaware AFL-CIO, has served in the state House since 2006, following a decade on the Wilmington city council. His legislative biography describes him as soft-spoken but direct and known for his honesty, kindness, and willingness to work with and lead others.
VANCLEAVE, Miss. (AP)  Leaders of a coastal Mississippi school district are trying to figure out how to pay for repairs on buildings, two months after local voters rejected borrowing money for those and other projects.

Jackson County Superintendent John Strycker told school board members on Monday that the district needs to spend about $40 million for roofing, plumbing, electrical and mechanical repairs, WLOX-TV reported.
BOSTON (AP)  A former police sergeant and treasurer for New Bedford's police union has agreed to plead guilty to stealing nearly $50,000 in union funding, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.

Joshua Fernandes, 42, of New Bedford, was charged with one count of wire fraud. A plea hearing has not been scheduled yet, according to a statement from acting U.S. Attorney Nathaniel R. Mendell.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, angrily confronted Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul on Tuesday in testimony on Capitol Hill, rejecting Paul's insinuation that the U.S. helped fund research at a Chinese lab that could have sparked the COVID-19 outbreak.

Paul suggested that Fauci had lied before Congress when in May he denied that the National Institutes of Health funded so-called gain of function research  the practice of enhancing a virus in a lab to study its potential impact in the real world  at a Wuhan virology lab. U.S. intelligence agencies are currently exploring theories that an accidental leak from that lab could have led to the global pandemic.
ROANOKE, Va. (AP)  Forrest Frosty Landon, longtime editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News who was described as a born newsman in a career that spanned 40 years, died Monday. He was 87.

Word of Landon's death came from Beth Macy, Landons niece-in-law and former Roanoke Times reporter, The Roanoke Times reported. No cause of death was listed.

Landon worked in radio, television and newspapers while in Roanoke. The Sidney, New York, native was 22 years old and just out of the University of Missouris journalism school when he came to Roanoke in 1955 to work at WDBJ-TV the day the station went on the air. The Times-World Corp. also owned the WDBJ radio station, and Landon soon moved from television to become the radio stations news director.

After Norfolk, Virginia-based Landmark Communications bought the locally owned Times-World Corp. in 1969, the television and radio stations were sold, and Landon remained a newspaperman the rest of his career.

Landon also covered the integration of southwest Virginias schools in the early 1960s. When Floyd County High School integrated in 1960, school officials banished reporters from interviewing Black students. Landon, working for the radio station, and a newspaper reporter tailed a school bus and interviewed a Black student in her home.

During his time as executive editor of The Roanoke Times, which was also called the Roanoke Times & World-News during most of his career as newsroom boss, the newspaper was a three-time finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1979, Landon wrote a first-person account of his cancer treatment after doctors discovered he had a rare case of lymphoma.

He became the executive editor of the Roanoke Times & World-News in 1982 when he succeeded Ben Bowers, who took a job in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Landon never fully left journalism even after his retirement in 1995, according to the newspaper. A year later, he co-founded the Virginia Coalition for Open Government and served as its first director. The nonprofit group worked to make citizens aware of government transparency and open records laws, and to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act.

Landon is survived by his wife, son and daughter and their spouses, and three grandchildren.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  GE Appliances celebrated the completion of a $60 million expansion that will create more than 245 full-time jobs at its sprawling operations in Kentucky's largest city.

The company said it added 4-door refrigerator production at Appliance Park in Louisville.
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Grazing fees for cattle and sheep on state-owned land in Idaho could rise about 50% next year.

The Idaho Department of Lands on Tuesday presented a draft proposal to Republican Gov. Brad Little and four other members of the Idaho Land Board that would be the first change in the grazing rate calculation since 1993. The board could take action later this year.

Land Board members are required by the Idaho Constitution to maximize profit from state lands over the long term, mainly to benefit public schools. But grazing fees the state charges are only about a third of what private landowners charge. That opens up Land Board members to potential lawsuits for possibly shirking their constitutional duty.

The new grazing rate would still only be about 60% of what private landowners currently charge.

The Idaho Department of Lands is taking public comments on the plan through Sept. 3.

The Lands Department is seeking to develop a new model for grazing that's transparent, defensible and achieves a fair-market rate for endowment beneficiaries, said Lands Department Director Dustin Miller.

The Land Board looked at changing the rate in 2018, but not enough ranchers with grazing leases responded to a study by the University of Wyoming. The board then left the 1993 grazing rate methodology in place.

That rate is currently $7.07 per AUM, and for next year under the current plan will drop to $6.86 per AUM. An AUM, or animal unit month, is based on one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats grazing for a month. Idaho, in part, calculates sheep grazing fees based on the price of calves.

The new plan would see that rise to above $10.73 per AUM on state-owned land in 2022. The current rate for grazing private land is about $18.50.

The Lands Department manages about 1,100 grazing leases, ranging from one AUM to 25,253 AUMs. The average is 232 AUMs.

Idaho received about 5,600 square miles (14.5 million square kilometers), about 5.5% of the state's total land base, when it became a state in 1890 to generate money for beneficiaries. Besides public schools, the University of Idaho, state hospitals for the mentally ill, Lewis-Clark State College, state veterans homes, Idaho State University and several others receive money.

The state has about 3,900 square miles (10 million square kilometers) remaining that generated, along with endowment funds, nearly $90 million for beneficiaries in the current fiscal year.

Timber harvest on state lands by far generates the most money. Grazing leases, state officials said Tuesday, are expected to generate just over $2 million, or about $1.8 million after expenses. Outside of timber, grazing generates the most money from state lands, followed by residential real estate.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  The St. Louis area is facing a third wave of COVID-19 that could cause more deaths and serious cases if residents don't get vaccinated and return to wearing masks in public, the head of the region's pandemic task force said Tuesday.

Dr. Clay Dunagan, BJC HealthCare's chief clinical officer, said seven COVID-19 patients have died in the St. Louis region and 91 were admitted to intensive care units during the 24 hours before he issued his plea Tuesday morning.

The vaccine is available, but unfortunately the vaccination rate in our community has not been high enough to prevent spread of the delta variant," Dunagan said. "We now need to return to masking to combat this new wave of infections.

He said that if residents don't respond, the area could return high hospitalization rates, prompting renewed visitor restrictions and delayed elective procedures. He said even people who have been vaccinated should wear masks in public, in part because only 46.3% of Missourians had been fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, which significantly trailed the national average.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has approved allowing vaccinated people to go without masks, the St. Louis area's vaccination rate isn't high enough to follow that recommendation because of new cases caused by the more infectious delta variant, Dunagan said.

Also Tuesday, officials from St. Louis County and St. Louis issued a joint statement echoing Dunagan's remarks. They said they are watching trends and paying attention to mask mandates initiated by other jurisdictions.

While we do not have an announcement to make today, this is a topic of conversation, they said. For the moment, we will continue to urge everyone to wear masks, even if you are vaccinated.

Their appeals came the day after state health officials issued a hot spot advisory for Laclede, Phelps, and Pulaski counties, in central Missouri. That brought to 14 the number of counties in southwestern and central Missouri that have been designated as hot spots by the Missouri Department of Health since July 7. Most of the counties have vaccination rates well below 40%, with Laclede at 24.3%, Phelps at 31.3% and Pulaski at 32.5% on Monday. Health officials believe the delta variant cases are moving from southwestern Missouri along Interstate 44 toward St. Louis.

A hospital official in Joplin said patients being treated in the latest uptick in cases are younger and often require more medical attention and resources than previous COVID-19 patients, The Joplin Globe reported.

Mercy Hospital and the Freeman Health System in Joplin reported a total of 108 COVID-19 patients on Monday, and Jasper County health officials reported 394 new COVID-19 cases over the previous seven days.

Jessica Liberty, Freemans infection prevention and control manager, said seven of the health system's COVID-19 patients were on ventilators, which was more than the hospital had seen since the pandemic began. The hospital system also had its first teenager on a ventilator, she said.

Were using our resources to the max with these patients because they are younger, so were doing the lifesaving measures, but were doing them longer now, she said. Were walking into uncharted territory.

Thirteen of Mercy Hospital Joplins patients were in intensive care, and 12 were on ventilators. Since June, 113 of Mercy Joplin's 124 inpatients with COVID-19, or 91% of them, were unvaccinated, according to hospital spokesman Jordan Larimore. He said Mercy had 15 patients on ventilators last week, which dropped to 12 this week.
HONOLULU (AP)  A judge began hearing from witnesses Tuesday to determine whether there is probable cause for murder and attempted murder charges against three Honolulu police officers in a shooting that killed a 16-year-old Micronesian boy.

On April 5, police shot and killed Iremamber Sykap. Authorities said he was driving a stolen car linked to an armed robbery, burglary, purse-snatching and car theft. Sykap led officers on a chase immediately before the shooting, police said.

Officer Geoffrey Thom, whom prosecutors said fired 10 rounds at Sykap through the rear window of the car after it stopped at an intersection, is charged with murder. Fellow Officers Zackary Ah Nee and Christopher Fredeluces, who also opened fire, are charged with second-degree attempted murder.

Its a rare prosecution in the state that came after months of protests last year over racial injustice and police brutality in other parts of the U.S. Some in the Micronesian community say the shooting highlights the racism they face in Hawaii, a place they expected to be more welcoming to fellow islanders.

About an hour before the hearing was scheduled to begin, more than 100 police supporters lined sidewalks fronting the courthouse. Some wore shirts saying Support Our Officers and waved flags saying Back Dah Blue.

Sykaps mother, Yovita Sykap, and the lawyer representing her in a wrongful death lawsuit, watched as police supporters clapped and cheered to a message of thanks from a supporter shouting into a megaphone.

Later in the courtroom, she listened as the judge heard arguments in two defense motions seeking to dismiss the case. Judge William Domingo denied both motions. One motion argued that it's illegal to pursue charges via a preliminary hearing after a grand jury refused to indict the officers. The other motion said it was highly unusual for a prosecutor to sign the declaration in the complaint, which is usually done by a detective or arresting officer who would could be called as a witness to testify in court.

Sykap's mother left before the preliminary hearing could begin. The judge heard from just three witnesses, including Dr. Masahiko Kobayashi, Honolulu's chief medical examiner, who described the eight gunshot wounds on the teen.

The shots included one to the back of the head and the fatal wound to the upper back, which tore the aorta, Kobayashi said.

Kobayashi also said toxicology results showed methamphetamine in his blood.

A trauma surgeon said the teen arrived at a hospital in futile condition" and was almost immediately declared dead. Mark Sykap, a brother of the teen who was also in the car, had gunshot wounds to his right shoulder and left wrist, which didn't require surgery.

The preliminary hearing is scheduled to resume next week.

As the officers and their lawyers left the courthouse, the crowd of police supporters cheered and applauded.

Free da tree, they chanted in Hawaii Pidgin for free the three.

Some who decry the shooting and want to see the trio prosecuted stood outside the courthouse with signs, including one that read Back da truth. Fale Momosea held a sign with various messages, including Justice 4 Baby, referring to the teen's nickname.

They had no right to shoot him, she said. How would you guys feel if that was your kid?"
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  An Idaho lawmaker who publicized the name of a 19-year-old intern who accused another state lawmaker of rape will face a legislative ethics hearing over her actions next month.

The House Ethics and Policy Committee found probable cause that Rep. Priscilla Giddings, a Republican from the tiny town of White Bird, engaged in conduct unbecoming a representative, which is detrimental to the integrity of the House as a legislative body, the committee announced Tuesday.

The finding came after two formal complaints  including one signed by a bipartisan group of roughly two dozen lawmakers  were filed, alleging Giddings threatened the intern's privacy and safety by sharing her identity and that the lawmaker tried to mislead the ethics committee when asked about it under oath.

Giddings faced criticism and complaints this year after sharing links to a far-right blog post that included the intern's name, photo and details about her life with thousands of people in a newsletter and on social media.

Giddings did not immediately respond to a phone message and email from The Associated Press requesting comment. On Facebook, she claimed a political rival was pushing for the ethics hearing as a form of dirty politics.

As a decorated Air Force officer and a recognized womens advocate, I take a backseat to no one in standing up for the rights of victims, Giddings wrote.

The intern had reported to police and legislative leaders that then-Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, a Republican from Lewiston, had raped her after they went out to dinner.

Von Ehlinger has denied any wrongdoing and said the sexual contact was consensual. An ethics committee found he engaged in conduct unbecoming a lawmaker, and he resigned before the full House could vote on whether to remove him from office.

The Ada County prosecutor's office told the AP last week that police were still investigating the allegation against von Ehlinger.

The AP generally doesn't name people who report sexual assaults unless they agree to be publicly identified.

The young woman was repeatedly harassed after she reported the allegation. Rep. Heather Scott, a Republican from Blanchard, sought a copy of the police report and made inquiries into how people who make rape allegations could themselves be charged with a crime. Giddings made disparaging remarks about the woman in a newsletter to constituents that included the links to the blog post with identifying details. Giddings also shared the post on her social media page that has thousands of followers.

Members of a far-right anti-government group also tried to follow and harass the woman after she was called to testify in von Ehlinger's ethics hearing. She later told the AP that the harassment was overwhelming during an already difficult time.

Under legislative rules, ethics committee investigations can only be triggered if a lawmaker files a formal complaint against a colleague. Those complaints aren't made public unless the committee finds there is probable cause to hold a hearing, so it's unclear if complaints have been made about other lawmakers.

After the harassment was revealed, hundreds of people reached out to legislative leaders to complain about Giddings' actions. Residents also called for the U.S. Air Force Academy to investigate whether Giddings, who is a major in the Air Force Reserves, violated military rules.

The Air Force said in June that an assessment is ongoing, but because it's subject to federal privacy rules, the results are not known.

The intern's attorney, Annie Pelletier Hightower with the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence, said Giddings publicizing personal details about the woman is pretty much exactly what every person who experiences sexual violence fears will happen to their information.

Hightower said she was happy to learn an ethics hearing would be held.

It's an important step for the state, if we are really invested in creating space where people can report sexual violence, Hightower said. I think we should expect better of our lawmakers, and I am happy that there is some process for accountability that is ongoing.

In a Facebook post Tuesday, Giddings claimed House Speaker Scott Bedke had weaponized the ethics hearing against her and asked people to donate to her defense. Both Giddings and Bedke, who couldnt be immediately reached for comment, are running for lieutenant governor.

After reviewing the formal complaints, the House Ethics Committee found probable cause that misconduct may have occurred regarding a portion of each complaint. The public ethics hearing is set for Aug. 2 at the Idaho Statehouse.

In one complaint filed April 19, Rep. Greg Chaney, a Republican from Caldwell, said Giddings mischaracterized the ethics investigation against von Ehlinger on social media, created a hostile work and retaliatory environment for the intern and wrongly accused other lawmakers of illegal conduct by claiming the investigation into von Ehlinger was tainted or done for financial gain.

In the second complaint filed May 3, Bedke and roughly two dozen other Republican and Democratic lawmakers said Giddings should be investigated for two things: first, for harassing and potentially endangering the intern by releasing her identity on social media and making defamatory remarks about her, and second, by trying to mislead ethics committee members who asked Giddings about the social media posts under oath.

Those questions came during von Ehlinger's ethics hearing, when Giddings was called as a witness. The members asked Giddings to confirm that she had posted a picture of the intern, and she said, That is not correct, according to the complaint.
BOISE, Idaho (AP)  Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, acting governor with Gov. Brad Little out of the state, on Tuesday sent what she called a formal inquiry to the director of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare concerning private health care businesses requiring their employees get COVID-19 vaccines.

McGeachin, who is running for governor, said the Biden administration could be behind the requirement, citing a lengthy proposed rule in the federal register published in May having to do with Medicare that has several references to vaccine coverage among health care workers.

As acting governor in May, McGeachin issued an executive order banning mask mandates that Little nullified when he returned. Little is in Colorado meeting with other Republican governors and is scheduled to return Wednesday, spokeswoman Marissa Morrison said.

McGeachin has said she wants to find out why three large Idaho health care providers are requiring their employees be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Their policies seem to be written in conjunction, McGeachin said.

She wants Idaho Department of Health and Welfare Director Dave Jeppesen to explain what incentives may exist for Idaho healthcare providers to impose vaccine mandates on their employees.

Niki Forbing-Orr, spokeswoman at Health and Welfare, said Jeppesen had not had time to review McGeachins request but would work with her to get the information she wanted as he would with any elected official.

Primary Health Group, Saint Alphonsus Health System and St. Lukes Health System announced the vaccine requirement earlier this month ahead of the busy cold and flu season and as coronavirus variants spread in parts of the U.S., including Idaho.

They have said the vaccine requirements are intended to keep health care facilities open and employees and patients safe.

McGeachin in her news release said she wants the health care providers to suspend their vaccine requirements for workers and go into talks with stakeholders, lawmakers and employees. She also appeared to reference the potential of her issuing another executive order as acting governor.

While some have encouraged me to take more direct action today, I am providing time for the healthcare providers to reconsider their mandates and accept my invitation," she said. "I encourage them to use this time wisely.

McGeachin has also called for lawmakers to return to Boise to create possible laws concerning vaccine mandates. But Senate leaders said last week they would prefer meetings with Little, House leaders and businesses. House Speaker Scott Bedke has also been noncommittal about calling lawmakers back to intervene in private businesses.

Little has said that he needs to know more about the mandatory vaccine issue, but his default position is that its usually best for employees and employers to work out disagreements.

In April, he issued an executive order banning the state from requiring or issuing vaccine passports for travel or to get into venues. He also is preventing state agencies from providing information on someones vaccine status to other people, companies or government entities.
BANGKOK (AP)  The spokesperson for ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi's political party died Tuesday after being infected with the coronavirus in prison, his lawyer said.

Nyan Win had been a member of the National League for Democracy's Central Executive Committee as well as a confidante of Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi and top members of her party and government, including Nyan Win, were arrested when the military seized power in February. The military-installed government has since arrested thousands of mostly young people who protested its takeover.

The death of Nyan Win, 79, came as Myanmar is reeling from soaring numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths that are badly straining the countrys medical infrastructure, already weakened when many state medical workers went on strike to protest the armys seizure of power.

Charity workers and cemetery staff say hundreds of people in Yangon, the countrys biggest city, are dying daily due to suspected cases of COVID-19, particularly from a lack of medical oxygen to help them breathe.

The countrys overcrowded prisons are especially susceptible to the spread of the virus, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has done surveys of detention facilities.

Deputy Information Minister Zaw Min Tun said Tuesday that 375 people have been confirmed to have COVID-19 in prisons across the country, the Voice on Myanmar online news service reported.

Many believe the real number is much higher. Neighboring Thailand has recorded more than 39,000 COVID-19 cases in its prison population since the beginning of April.

Health authorities on Tuesday reported 5,860 new COVID-19 cases, bringing Myanmars official total since the pandemic began to 240,570. There were 286 new deaths recorded, bringing the total to 5,567.

Nyan Win, who was charged with sedition, had been confined in Yangons Insein Prison, which for decades has held many prominent political prisoners. Suu Kyi is being held under house arrest at an undisclosed location in the capital, Naypyitaw.

He was moved from Insein Prison to Yangon General Hospitals intensive care unit on July 11 after testing positive for the virus. It is believed he had underlying health problems.

Nyan Wins death was confirmed by his lawyer, San Mar La Nyunt, who said she reached him in a video call Tuesday morning, just minutes before he died.

Lawyers for some inmates at Insein Prison told U.S. government-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia on Friday that there are about 50 confirmed COVID-19 cases there. The prison began a two-week lockdown on July 8 due to the virus surge.

Detained American journalist Danny Fenster, also held in Insein Prison, told his lawyer last week he believes he has COVID-19, but prison authorities deny he is infected. Fenster, managing editor of Frontier Myanmar, an independent online news outlet based in Yangon, has been charged with incitement for allegedly spreading false or inflammatory information.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP)  Families and advocates for the elderly in Kansas argue that with most nursing home residents vaccinated against COVID-19, some facilities' visiting rules need to be relaxed, though the delta variant's spread is making operators nervous.

A state official who investigates complaints against nursing homes and the elder-care focused Kansas Advocates for Better Care are calling on the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services to crack down on homes that aren't open enough. They're concerned that the delta variant will prompt new lockdowns.

The aging department says it is working to ensure that residents and families have a voice in visitation policies, though some industry officials still see a need to proceed with caution.

The debate shows how operators feel they're still facing tough choices after nursing homes were COVID-19 hot spots early on during the pandemic. It also shows how residents' and families' anguish and anger still linger.

We hear about the threat of the COVID and the death from COVID, and its real, Camille Russell, the states long-term care ombudsman, said Tuesday. What we don't understand is the pain and suffering and neglect and deaths that happen when there are not other people in the building.

Clusters of COVID-19 cases in nursing homes accounted for fewer than 5% of the 324,000 cases reported by Kansas as of Monday but for nearly 39% of the state's 5,200 reported deaths  more than 2,000 of them.

More than 90% of those cases and deaths happened before May 4, but they're still happening, with nine active clusters as of last week. Meanwhile, confirmed delta variant cases grew by 84% during the 10-day period that ended Monday.

Its not time to fling the doors open with no guidance," said Debra Zehr, CEO of LeadingAge Kansas, which represents nonprofit aging-services providers.

Limits on visitors, including lockdowns early in the pandemic, were aimed at preventing people from bringing COVID-19 into nursing homes, where elderly residents were particularly vulnerable to severe complications.

Our families  our base  have basically been very, very supportive for the most part, said Elizabeth Howarth, administrator of the Homestead Health Center in southwestern Wichita.

State and industry officials said homes' current visitation policies are driven by guidance from federal and state regulators and health officials. The guidance calls for restricting visitors when more than 10% of a county's COVID-19 tests are positive and fewer than 70% of a home's residents are vaccinated.

The state said its overall positivity rate was 8.1% on Friday, but the figure has been as high as 11.2% this month. The federal government says more than 84% of Kansas nursing home residents have been fully vaccinated, while the rate for staff is 55%.

Homestead Health in Wichita does not limit how many times family members can visit residents each week. But it requires appointments, keeps visits to 45 minutes and allows two adult visitors per resident.

Those policies took effect in March, when about 90% of the residents had been vaccinated. Howarth said most family members didn't want to visit without being vaccinated themselves.

And, she added, "That pandemic train is still coming down the track."

The aging department says it had received 40 calls about homes' visitation rules on a telephone hotline this year through July 13, without any citations. Deputy Secretary Scott Brunner said the agency told homes in December that they must discuss with all residents what they want and what's possible with visitors.

As for getting more aggressive about cracking down on homes that restrict visitors, he said, We have to weigh more than just one consideration at a time.

Russell said the long-term care ombudsman's office took up 40 complaints from May 10 through July 10 and received hundreds of calls.

Some facilities have perhaps gotten comfortable with being in charge of when residents can receive visitors," said Margaret Farley, executive director of Kansas Advocates for Better. Care. COVID is still lingering as a good excuse.

In Ness City, Tatum Lee's frustration with rules at the local county-run nursing home where her grandfather lives pushed her to seek a Kansas House seat last year. Once in office, Lee, a Republican, sponsored a bill that sought to prevent county-run homes from restricting visits. It didn't pass.

She's still frustrated that visits with my papa are limited to an hour. Lee said family members monitor conditions and care at homes.

She said that last year, she had to ask workers at the local home when she saw them out in the community to give her grandfather hugs for her. Lee said she and others worry that homes will shut out visitors again if the area sees another wave of cases.

Lee also said families monitor their relatives' care and, It matters to the health of these residents.

Ken Kennedy, a retired educator, said his mother's isolation early in the pandemic at the Prairie Sunset Home in Pretty Prairie, west of Wichita, was the worst part of it all. In the fall, the home began putting up a tent in its courtyard for in-person visits, allowing him and other family members to see his mother regularly before she died in December.

The home's administrator, Aaron Kelley, said residents thrived once restrictions were lifted. Prairie Sunset posts regulators' guidance for visits on its website, but Kelley said he's not having employees police them strictly, adding that, Somebody's going to hug somebody.

We've got to get back to humanity, Kelley said.

___

Follow John Hanna on Twitter: https://twitter.com/apjdhanna
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP)  Kentucky State Universitys president resigned Tuesday amid concerns about the school's financial health and lawsuits alleging misconduct by campus officials.

The school's Board of Regents accepted M. Christopher Brown II's resignation at a specially called meeting, news media outlets reported. Browns resignation comes after four years on the job.

The regents named Clara Ross Stamps as the schools acting president. Stamps has been a senior vice president and spokeswoman at the university.

The board also voted to hire auditors to review the schools financial situation. Stamps declined afterward to provide any information about possible problems or the reason for Browns departure, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported.

Browns departure comes amid a half-dozen lawsuits pending this year accusing college officials, including Brown, of various acts of misconduct, the Lexington newspaper reported.

Gov. Andy Beshear, in support of an a full, independent and transparent audit of the university's finances, signed an executive order Tuesday that directs the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education to assess the current financial status of KSU, and provide a report to the Governor.

KSU has been a unique and essential institution in the commonwealth for more than a century, serving generations of students as Kentuckys historically Black land-grant university, Beshear said. "My administration is committed to getting KSU through this so that the school can continue to provide high-quality education to students for generations to come.

KSU was also ordered to provide access to any records the council deems necessary to preparing the assessment.

Some regents had previously reached out to Beshears administration with concerns about the school.

KSUs budget this fiscal year is $49.9 million, of which $27.1 million comes from the states General Fund. The legislature last year authorized a $55.5 million bond to build a 400-bed dormitory and dining hall at the historically Black college using private financing.

Brown resigned as president of Mississippis Alcorn State University in 2013, amid a state investigation into university purchasing practices.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP)  A New Mexico lawmaker says he was denied Communion by his local Catholic priest because of his politics.

Democratic state Sen. Joseph Cervantes said Monday that he has been treated differently by the church since voting to repeal a state law banning abortion under most circumstances.

Cervantes' statement came after he tweeted over the weekend about not getting Communion from Peter Baldacchino, bishop of Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces.

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he said he "felt it necessary to address those who would politicize, and thereby belittle, the promises of the Eucharist.

Cervantes, of Las Cruces, says the outdated law, which would have jailed women for getting an abortion, was unconstitutional.

A spokesman for Baldacchino declined comment to media outlets. The diocese, however, put out a statement.

The Diocese regrets that Senator Cervantes chose not to enter into dialogue with any diocesan official and felt that Twitter would be the most appropriate outlet to express his concerns, the diocese wrote.

The controversy reflects an ongoing effort by some bishops in the U.S. to rebuke politicians who support abortion rights but continue to receive Communion.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP)  A former state Supreme Court justice in Rochester has been accused in a lawsuit of forcing a female secretary into sex acts in his office dozens of times.

The lawsuit claims that between 2006 and 2009, Justice Matthew Rosenbaum forced the aide into sex acts multiple times in his chambers at the Monroe County courthouse. The woman claimed he told her that she needed to comply with his demands to keep her job. The lawsuit also alleges an instance of rape at her home after work hours in 2006.
LIMA, Peru (AP)  A teacher in one of the poorest communities in the Andes who had never held office is now Peru's president-elect after officials in the South American country declared him the winner of a runoff election held last month.

Leftist Pedro Castillo catapulted from unknown to president-elect with the support of the country's poor and rural citizens, many of whom identify with the struggles the teacher has faced. Castillo was officially declared winner Monday after the countrys electoral count became the longest in 40 years as his opponents fought the results.

Castillo received 44,000 more votes than right-wing politician Keiko Fujimori in the June 6 runoff. This is the third presidential election defeat for the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

Lets not put the obstacles to move this country forward, Castillo asked his opponent in his first remarks in front of hundreds of followers in Lima.

Wielding a pencil the size of a cane, symbol of his Peru Libre party, Castillo popularized the phrase No more poor in a rich country. The economy of Peru, the worlds second-largest copper producer, has been crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, increasing the poverty level to almost one-third of the population and eliminating the gains of a decade.

The shortfalls of Perus public health services have contributed to the countrys poor pandemic outcomes, leaving it with the highest global per capita death rate. Castillo has promised to use the revenues from the mining sector to improve public services, including education and health, whose inadequacies were highlighted by the pandemic.

Those who do not have a car should have at least one bicycle, Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press in mid-April at his adobe house in Anguia, Perus third poorest district.

Since surprising Peruvians and observers by advancing to the presidential runoff election, Castillo has softened his first proposals on nationalizing multinational mining and natural gas companies. Instead, his campaign has said he is considering raising taxes on profits due to high copper prices, which exceed $10,000 per ton.

Historians say he is the first peasant to become president of Peru, where until now, Indigenous people almost always have received the worst of the deficient public services even though the nation boasted of being the economic star of Latin America in the first two decades of the century.

There are no cases of a person unrelated to the professional, military or economic elites who reaches the presidency, Cecilia Mendez, a Peruvian historian and professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told a radio station.

Hundreds of Peruvians from various regions camped out for more than a month in front of the Electoral Tribunal in Lima, Perus capital, to await Castillos proclamation. Many do not belong to Castillos party, but they trust the professor because he will not be like the other politicians who have not kept their promises and do not defend the poor, said Maruja Inquilla, an environmental activist who arrived from a town near Titicaca, the mythical lake of the Incas.

Castillos meteoric rise from unknown to president elect has divided the Andean nation deeply.

Author Mario Vargas Llosa, a holder of a Nobel Prize for literature, has said Castillo represents the disappearance of democracy and freedom in Peru. Meanwhile, retired soldiers sent a letter to the commander of the armed forces asking him not to respect Castillos victory.

Fujimori, who ran with the support of the business elites, said Monday that she will accept Castillos victory, after accusing him for a month of electoral fraud without offering any evidence. The accusation delayed his appointment as president-elect as she asked electoral authorities to annul thousands of votes, many in Indigenous and poor communities in the Andes.

The United States, European Union and 14 electoral missions determined that the voting was fair. The U.S. called the election a model of democracy for the region.

Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told a radio station that Castillo is arriving to the presidency very weak, and in some sense in a very similar position to Salvador Allende when he came to power in Chile in 1970 and to Joao Goulart, who became president of Brazil in 1962.

He has almost the entire establishment of Lima against him, said Levitsky, an expert on Latin American politics.

He added that if Castillo tried to change the constitution of Peru  enacted in 1993 during the tenure of Alberto Fujimori  without building a consensus, (without) alliances with center games, it would be very dangerous because it would be a justification for a coup.

The president-elect worked as an elementary school teacher for the last 25 years in his native San Luis de Puna, a remote village in Cajamarca, a northern region. He campaigned wearing rubber sandals and a wide-brimmed hat, like the peasants in his community, where 40% of children are chronically malnourished.

In 2017, he led the largest teacher strike in 30 years in search of better pay and, although he did not achieve substantial improvements, he sat down to talk with Cabinet ministers, legislators and bureaucrats.

Over the past two decades, Peruvians have seen that the previous political experience and university degrees of their five former presidents did not help fight corruption. All former Peruvian presidents who governed since 1985 have been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned or arrested in their mansions. One died by suicide before police could take him into custody. The South American country cycled through three presidents last November.

Castillo recalled that the first turn in his life occurred one night as a child when his teacher persuaded his father to allow him to finish his primary education at a school two hours from home. It happened while both adults chewed coca leaves, an Andean custom to reduce fatigue.

He suffered a lot in his childhood, his wife, teacher Lilia Paredes, told AP while doing dishes at home. The couple has two children.

He got used to long walks. He would arrive at the classroom with his peasant sandals, with a woolen saddlebag on his shoulder, a notebook and his lunch, which consisted of sweet potatoes or tamales that cooled with the hours.

Castillo said his life was marked by the work he did as a child with his eight siblings, but also by the memory of the treatment that his illiterate parents received from the owner of the land where they lived. He cried when he remembered that if the rent was not paid, the landowner kept the best crops.

You kept looking at what you had sown, you clutched your stomach, and I will not forget that, I will not forgive it either, he said.

___

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  Louisiana's Republican state senators Tuesday narrowly voted to overturn Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards' rejection of a bill prohibiting transgender students from participating in school sports, on the opening day of the first veto session under the state's nearly 50-year-old constitution.

But, with that debate shifting to the House for a final decision, it appeared the transgender sports ban might be the only veto that could be overridden in the historic gathering of the majority-GOP House and Senate.

Senators blocked efforts to override a separate measure that would remove the permitting requirements, background check and safety training required to have a concealed handgun in Louisiana  and three other veto overrides that were attempted failed in the chamber.

The House planned to start its debates Wednesday.

It was unlikely the Senate could overturn any other Edwards vetoes after one GOP senator, Pat Connick of Jefferson Parish, said he wouldn't support additional overrides outside of the transgender sports ban bill. That decision gives senators too few Republican votes to overrule a veto on their own.

Senators voted 26-12 for the transgender sports ban veto override  the exact number of votes needed. The vote fell along party lines, with Republicans in support of the measure and Democrats in opposition. In the House, Republicans will need to pick up some backing from Democrats and independents to overturn the veto and enact the ban in law.

Supporters described the prohibition sponsored by Franklinton Sen. Beth Mizell, the Senates second-ranking Republican, as protecting girls across K-12 schools and colleges from unfair competition. They said transgender athletes have an automatic, built-in advantage in competitions against other females.

Without protection, women's sports would not exist. Nothing has changed, Mizell said. She added: I ask you to do what is right for the girls of Louisiana and to put the politics aside on this.

The legislation is similar to bans passed by Republican-led legislatures in several states, such as Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Florida.

Opponents, including Edwards, have called the measure discriminatory. They note that bill backers can't point to a single example of a Louisiana-specific problem. And they said the Louisiana High School Athletic Association already has enacted the equivalent of a prohibition on transgender athletes participating on high school sports teams.

"Im convinced this bill is a solution looking for a problem," said Sen. Jay Luneau, an Alexandria Democrat.

New Orleans Democratic Sen. Karen Carter Peterson said passage of the law would threaten Louisianas ability to attract business and sporting events, a point argued by business organization leaders from Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Peterson said 400 major corporations have publicly stated opposition to discrimination against transgender people.

You cant have it both ways," she said. "You either want businesses to come to Louisiana or you can discriminate.

But Sen. Mike Fesi, a Houma Republican, told his colleagues they should think about their daughters and granddaughters and their good, decent morals.

In the House, a handful of opponents to the transgender sports ban briefly tried to protest in the balcony, only to be forcibly removed from the chamber.

Edwards' vetoes of the transgender sports prohibition bill and the concealed carry measure sponsored by Republican Sen. Jay Morris were the driving forces behind Republicans' decision to return to the Louisiana Capitol.

But the vote to enact the concealed carry measure was 23-15, three votes short of the two-thirds requirement. Four senators voted for the bill during the regular session but refused to overturn Edwards' veto: Connick; Louie Bernard, a Natchitoches Republican; Franklin Foil, a Baton Rouge Republican; and Gary Smith, a Norco Democrat.

Though the law enforcement community is split on the legislation, Bernard said he changed his mind after hearing from police officers who believe removal of the permitting requirement could make their jobs more dangerous.

Until Im ready to put on the badge and wear the uniform, I cant ignore that view, he said.

Morris, of Monroe, said his bill was about the right to protecting our families and protecting our property. He resisted suggestions that loosening restrictions would put police at greater risk.

I dont know if the world can get any more dangerous, he said.

The veto session can last up to five days, but legislative leaders said they hope to wrap up before Saturday. In all, Edwards jettisoned 28 bills from the regular session that ended in June that lawmakers could consider for overrides  though that seemed unlikely.

While convening the session required only majority support, Republicans in the House need the votes of Democrats or independents to reach the two-thirds required to successfully override a gubernatorial veto.

___

Follow Melinda Deslatte on Twitter at http://twitter.com/melindadeslatte.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP)  A 45-year-old man was sentenced on Tuesday to more than 11 years in prison for driving a teenage girl from Michigan to his home in Rhode Island so they could have sex, according to federal prosecutors.

Charles Morancey, of Warwick, pleaded guilty in 2019 to travelling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and receipt of child pornography.
ATLANTA (AP)  Barring reporters from court for one part of jury selection in the upcoming murder trial of three men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery would violate well-established precedent and be a striking step in the wrong direction, media outlets, including The Associated Press, said Tuesday in a court filing.

Attorneys for two of the defendants have asked a Georgia judge to keep media outlets out of the courtroom when lawyers question potential jurors to determine whether they have biases in the widely publicized case. They say its critical that potential jurors feel as comfortable as possible answering questions about race and other sensitive topics to ensure that Greg McMichael and Travis McMichael are tried by an impartial jury.

The white father and son are charged with murder in the February 2020 killing of Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was chased and shot after the McMichaels spotted him running in their neighborhood outside the coastal port city of Brunswick. A neighbor who joined the pursuit, William Roddie Bryan, was also charged with murder.

The U.S. and Georgia Supreme Courts have held that the questioning of potential jurors  a process known as voir dire  must be open to the public and press, attorneys for the media outlets said in their filing. Closure can only be considered in extraordinary circumstances when a potential juror makes that request and evidence shows public questioning would significantly harm the person's privacy, they added.

The other outlets are The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, CNN, Cox Media Group for Action News Jax, WSB-TV and radio and Gannett, publisher of USA Today.

Jason Sheffield, an attorney for Travis McMichael, said he was not surprised media outlets were objecting. He believes in an open courtroom, but in limited circumstances, the defendants right to a fair trial can and will trump that, he said.

"In order to ascertain which jurors are suitable to serve in a case such as this case  one that has accumulated more pretrial publicity than most  we have to create the best environment for jurors to share their true thoughts, beliefs, biases and prejudices," he said in a phone interview.

Arberys killing sparked a national outcry last year amid protests over racial injustice. The McMichaels armed themselves with guns and pursued Arbery in a pickup truck when they spotted him running in their neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times at close range with a shotgun.

All three defendants have said they committed no crimes. Defense attorneys say the McMichaels had a valid reason to pursue Arbery, thinking he was a burglar, and that Travis McMichael shot him in self-defense as Arbery grappled for his shotgun.

The media outlets said in their filing that publicity was not sufficient to try to stifle informed public discussion or reporting on a case, and the defense had failed to show evidence that its clients would face bias under an open process.

They cited the high-profile trial of former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin for the slaying of George Floyd, noting that a judge in that case required potential jurors be questioned in public.

To foster public confidence in the fairness of the trial and the verdict reached by the jury, it is vital that the public and press be permitted to observe all portions of the trial, including voir dire, they said.

Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley has scheduled a hearing with attorneys Thursday to discuss pretrial motions and jury selection, which is scheduled for October. Neither he nor prosecutors have weighed in on the request to bar reporters from voir dire.
MEXICO CITY (AP)  Five gray wolf pups born at Mexico Citys Chapultepec Zoo are giving a boost to efforts to broaden the endangered species genetic diversity amid continuing efforts to reintroduce the animals to the wild decades after they were reduced to captive populations.

The pups' father, Rhi, alerts them every midday to the delivery of breakfast, in the form of chicken and quail meat brought by zookeeper Jorge Gutierrez, 58.

Gutierrez has cared for Rhi since he was born, and is now proud to see he has formed a pack with the pups' mother, Seje.

It's marvelous. What I am experiencing is something unique," says Gutierrez.

He watches as the five wolf pups stumble out of their den to eat. The three males and two females were born in early April.

They are part of a four-decade, binational program between the United States and Mexico to breed the gray wolves in captivity and release them back into the wild.

Even the endangered classification is progress for the Mexican wolf; two years ago, given the success of the breeding program, Mexican authorities were able to move the subspecies up from its previous probably extinct in the wild classification.

For more than two decades, the effort to return Mexican gray wolves to the wild in the U.S. Southwest has been fraught with conflict. Ranchers have complained about the challenges of having to scare away the wolves to keep their cattle from being eaten. Many have said their livelihoods and rural way of life are at stake.

Environmentalists argue that wolf reintroduction has stumbled as a result of illegal killings and management decisions they contend are rooted in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services attempt to accommodate ranchers and the regions year-round cattle calving season.

North Americas rarest subspecies of gray wolf, the Mexican gray wolf was listed as endangered in 1976 after being hunted, trapped and poisoned to the brink of extinction. From the 1960s to the 1980s, seven gray wolves  believed to be the last of their kind  were captured and the captive breeding program began.

Wolves started being released in the late 90s. The wild population has nearly doubled over the last five years, with the latest annual census finding about 186 Mexican wolves in the wild in New Mexico and Arizona.

In northern Mexico, the other part of the wolves' historic range, reintroduction initially stumbled.

An effort to reintroduce them to the wild in the border state of Sonora in 2011 ended in tragedy when all five wolves were poisoned, it's not clear by whom. But another release was carried out in 2012 in the state of Chihuahua, and those wolves now number around 40, most born in the wild.

Mexico is now studying other areas for possible releases.

Fernando Gual, a veterinarian who serves as director of Mexico City's zoos, notes that the Chapultepec Zoo also has a sperm and egg bank that provides backup for genetic material.

But the best guarantees are animals like Seje, who holds out a piece of meat with her mouth to show the pups how to eat.

This is our jewel, Gual says. Every litter of pups is hope for the life of this species.
FARGO, N.D. (AP)  Authorities said Tuesday a woman has been arrested for a bank robbery in Wyndmere, west of Wahpeton.

The Lincoln State Bank was held up at gunpoint shortly before 11 a.m. Monday.
HELENA, Mont. (AP)  A state Senate leader stopped by a Montana Highway Patrol trooper on suspicion of speeding had threatened to call the attorney general and argued he couldnt be arrested because he was a lawmaker on his way to legislative business.

Republican Sen. Jason Ellsworth of Hamilton, the Senate president pro tempore for the 2021 session, faces misdemeanor charges of speeding through a construction zone or an alternative charge of reckless driving and obstructing a peace officer.

Ellsworth was stopped May 23 at about 10:20 p.m. The Montana Free Press first reported the charges Tuesday, and they were filed against the senator on May 26.

Ellsworth was traveling to Helena after a long day dealing with a family medical issue," said Kyle Schmauch, a spokesperson for Senate Republicans. He was in a hurry to get to town and get some rest before running errands and participating in legislative business the next day.

According to the complaint, the trooper was parked at a construction zone between Townsend and Helena where the speed is 55 mph (88 kph), when she saw a vehicle quickly approaching. Her radar recorded the car was traveling at 88 mph (142 kph).

After stopping the car, the trooper told Ellsworth how fast he was going and asked why he was in such hurry, court records said.

Ellsworth said he was headed to a legislative session in the morning and showed the trooper his legislative identification card.

Due to the officer's uncertainty over the law as it applied to lawmakers, she was printing out a warning when she saw Ellsworth get out of his car and approach the officer, court records said.

He had pulled up the state Constitution on his phone to show the officer where it states that members of the legislature cannot be arrested while attending a legislative session or traveling to or returning from one, unless they are committing a felony or a breach of peace," the complaint said.

You are also saying you are going in the middle of the night to a session that starts in the morning, the trooper clarified.

That's right, Ellsworth said.

The trooper asked Ellsworth six times to go back to his car, during an exchange in which he said: If you want me to call the attorney general... and the trooper replied, Go ahead and call him. Back to your car now.

I would be happy to, Ellsworth continued. I suggest you call your boss.

Attorney General Austin Knudsen oversees the Department of Justice, which includes the highway patrol.

The Senators behavior was inappropriate, Knudsen said in a statement. The troopers handling of the situation is a testament to the professionalism of the Montana Highway Patrol.

Further investigation found that Ellsworth is a member of the Legislative Council, which was meeting at 8:30 a.m. on May 24 in Helena, fewer than 30 miles (48 kilometers) away and about 10 hours after the time Ellsworth was stopped, court records said.

Senator Ellsworth respects and appreciates that the trooper and the county attorney are public servants who are doing their jobs with this traffic citation, Schmauch said. Ellsworth attempted to call the trooper the day after he was pulled over to apologize if he came across as unprofessional, which was not his intent. He looks forward to resolving the matter and continuing to serve his constituents. 

The trooper also learned that Ellsworth had been stopped on the interstate near Helena on Jan. 25. Ellsworth showed the trooper his legislative identification and said he was late for a meeting with Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte. The officer released Ellsworth without issuing a ticket, court records said.

Ellsworths initial court hearing is set for Aug. 3, Broadwater County Justice of the Peace Kirk Flynn said Tuesday.
UNITED NATIONS (AP)  Myanmars military rulers are again seeking to replace the countrys ambassador to the United Nations, who opposed their Feb. 1 ouster of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and takeover of the government.

Foreign Minister Wunna Maung Lwin says in a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he has appointed Aung Thurein, who left the military this year after 26 years, as Myanmars U.N. ambassador. A copy of the letter was obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

Lwin said in an accompanying letter that Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar's currently recognized U.N. ambassador, has been terminated on Feb. 27, 2021, due to abuses of his assigned duty and mandate.

In a dramatic speech to a General Assembly meeting on Myanmar on Feb. 26 -- weeks after the military takeover -- Tun appealed for the strongest possible action from the international community to restore democracy to the country. He also urged all countries to strongly condemn the coup, refuse to recognize the military regime, and ask the military leaders to respect the November 2020 elections won by Suu Kyis National League for Democracy party.

We will continue to fight for a government which is of the people, by the people, for the people, Tun said in a speech that drew loud applause from diplomats in the assembly chamber who called it powerful, brave and courageous.

The militarys previous attempt to oust Tun failed and there has been no reported action on the foreign ministers letter, which is dated May 12.

The 193-member General Assembly is in charge of accrediting diplomats. A request for accreditation must first go to its nine-member credentials committee, which this year comprises Cameroon, China, Iceland, Papua New Guinea, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, Tanzania, United States and Uruguay.

U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said that as far as he understands no meeting of the credentials committee has been scheduled.

In June, the U.N. said the secretary-general indicated that the results of the November election that gave a strong second mandate to Suu Kyi's party must be upheld.

The London-based Myanmar Accountability Project condemned the militarys attempts to replace Tun as well as Myanmars ambassador to the United Kingdom, Kyaw Zwar Minn, who also remains loyal to Suu Kyi. The Guardian newspaper reported in April that Minn remains in limbo after being locked out of the London embassy by his deputy and the countrys military attache.

The Guardian quoted Minn as saying his friends and relatives in Myanmar had been forced into hiding and he did not feel safe in the ambassadors residence, which he still occupied at the time.

The Myanmar Accountability Projects director, Chris Gunness, said the military is seeking to replace Minn with former fighter pilot Htun Aung Kyaw.

Both Thurein and Kyaw have strong military backgrounds that make ugly reading, Gunness said, adding that Thureins remaining in the military until 2021 strongly suggests he served during the Feb. 1 military takeover and the crackdown afterward.

He called it an affront to the world body that the military is seeking to send to the U.N. a man with such strong connections to an institution with blood on its hands and which stood accused of genocide in The Hague even before the coup.

A U.N.-established investigation has recommended the prosecution of Myanmars top military commanders on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for the 2017 military crackdown on Rohingya Muslims that forced 700,000 to flee to neighboring Bangladesh.

In January 2020, the United Nations top court based in The Hague, Netherlands, ordered Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya still in Myanmar. The ruling by the International Court of Justice came despite appeals by Suu Kyi for the judges to drop the case amid her denials of genocide by the armed forces.

Gunness said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders have condemned the coup and the UK and its allies have imposed sanctions on Myanmars military leaders and their commercial interests. He said it would be a gross double standard and a moral outrage for the government to accredit Kyaw, saying he doesnt represent the legitimate government and "served in an army that stands accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He also urged Britain to use its influence at the U.N. to ensure that the credentials committee doesn't accredit Thurein.
WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. (AP)  The Navajo Nation on Monday reported six new COVID-19 cases, but no additional deaths.

The latest numbers brought the total number of coronavirus-related cases on the vast reservation to 31,201 since the pandemic began more than a year ago.
NEW YORK (AP)  The unrepentant former leader of the cult-like NXIVM group was ordered on Tuesday to pay $3.5 million to 21 victims of a sex-trafficking scheme, a sum including the cost of surgically removing scars from branding rituals performed by a secret sorority.

The brands depicting the initials of Keith Raniere were meant to symbolize the womens status as sex slaves for the self-help guru who once had an international following. A judge in federal court in Brooklyn also ordered Raniere to return collateral  nude photos and other potentially embarrassing material  that was used to extort and manipulate the victims.

Raniere, appearing by video from an Arizona prison, told the judge he was baffled by the restitution order.

I have never handled collateral, he said. I dont know anything about it.

He added at another point: I dont know who the victims are.

Raniere  known to members of the upstate New York organization as Vanguard and the smartest man in the world  was sentenced last year to 120 years in prison for his conviction on racketeering conspiracy and other charges. It was another instance where he refused to take responsibility.

I do believe I am innocent of the charges. ... It is true I am not remorseful of the crimes I do not believe I committed at all, he said.

A 41-year-old heir to the Seagrams fortune, Clare Bronfman, was sentenced to nearly seven years in prison in September for her role as Ranieres unwavering benefactor, while another follower, Smallville actor Allison Mack, was sentenced to three years last month.

It was unclear if Raniere has the means to pay restitution that's also intended to cover costs of mental health treatment and unpaid labor. Bronfman has been paying his legal bills.

The hearing on Tuesday was interrupted near the end when one of Ranieres lawyers, Marc Fernich, lashed out at U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis for not granting a delay in the proceeding so that Fernich could go to a funeral.

It's a lack of human decency and it's disgraceful, the lawyer said.

The judge, who said the schedule actually gave Fernich enough time to attend, sat for a half hour in stony silence until the lawyer apologized.
Two pet owners got news they never wanted to hear after using a pet-sitting app.

They each used pet sitters they found on the Rover app but got some shocking news while they were away.

Elizabeth Snell is from the Greenville, South Carolina, area but currently lives in Kansas City. She said she was picking up her family in Greenville for a trip to the beach.

Snell said she couldn't bring her dog Tony to the beach, so she decided to find a sitter on Rover.

When you book something through a website like this, you put a lot of faith in the reviews," Snell said. "I read every review and I didnt see anything that seemed problematic.

Snell had heard good things about Rover. She dropped Tony off with a sitter around July 4.

When we got to the beach, I got a text from her that he had bolted out of her front door, which was surprising to hear because hes only 15 pounds, Snell said.

Snell immediately raced back to Greenville, searching up and down for Tony. She said the sitter helped in the initial search but then went silent.

Feeling helpless, Snell reached out to Rover.

Rover took 24 hours to reply and when they did, they were very apologetic," Snell said. "They said they would do everything they could to help get Tony back, but they only offered $100 for the reward and they paid for some posters that were printed.

Snell said she still hasn't found Tony though. She says he was last seen off of Old Mill Road near East Butler Road and Miller Road in Mauldin.

Ive been transferred multiple times and things have been kind of unsatisfactory with taking this seriously, Snell said.

Another couple had a similar experience. Jessica Manning and her fiance Stephen Gresham live in Easley, South Carolina, about a 25-minute drive from Greenville. They were going out of town one weekend in June, so they decided to use Rover to find a sitter for their two dogs Dana and Hambino.

We had no indication this could happen, Manning said.

Manning said she and her fiance had previously used Rover for their cats and had a great experience.

We got the call that they were loose in the sitters neighborhood and when people chased after them, they went off in different directions and were gone, Gresham said.

The couple said they rushed home and found Dana the next day, dead on the side of White Horse Road. They said she appeared to have been hit by a car.

She was hit so hard, it was almost hard to recognize her, Gresham said.

The couple also reached out to Rover and was told they would be connected with an agent on their case. Manning said she called after not hearing anymore.

My dog is still missing," Manning said. "Ive already lost one. Do something. Do anything.

Several days later, the couple found Hambino on White Horse Road, about a mile down from where they found Dana.

Sister station WYFF News 4 reached out to Rover about both owners' cases. The company shared this statement:

"As pet parents ourselves, we extend our deepest sympathies to Tony and Danas families. Our Trust and Safety team is actively investigating these incidents and will take appropriate actions, including removing sitters from our community. Both families will be fully refunded for their bookings, and we will cover any veterinary costs. We are committed to supporting these pet parents and will continue to do so.

"In the rare event that a pet is lost during a stay with a sitter on Rover, well work directly with pet parents and sitters to help bring them home. In addition to providing ongoing support, well post on online pet-finding platforms, pay for flyers to be posted, and offer a reward.

For additional context, close to 175,000 stays have been booked through Rover in South Carolina, with virtually every stay going as planned. In fact, 97% of reviewed stays on Rover in South Carolina are rated 5 stars.

"Sitters on Rover must pass a background check and have their profiles reviewed by a member of our team prior to listing their services on our platform. We offer search tools to help pet parents find local sitters wholl be a good fit for their pets. We also encourage pet parents and sitters to meet in-person before they book to ensure the sitter and their home environment are a good match."

Both owners said they were sent flyers, but wish the company had done more.

Something other than flyers," Manning said. "You this network of sitters. Why arent you connected to dog communities here. Why am I posting on Facebook when I should be looking for my dog. They said theyd send more flyers and theyd send bigger flyers, but its to us, so its still on us to put them up.

The owners said they want more accountability from Rover and more thorough background checks to keep this from happening again.

It seems like it was on us to find our dogs when we didnt lose them in the first place, Manning said.
PHOENIX (AP)  Police are investigating the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old boy at a Phoenix apartment complex.

The shooting occurred around 4 a.m. Tuesday and police said officers arrived at the scene and found the teen with a gunshot wound and he was pronounced dead.

Police said the boy was involved in some sort of argument inside the apartment just before the shooting.

The teens name hasnt been released yet and police havent said if any suspect has been identified.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)  A man walking in a northbound lane of Interstate 435 in Kansas City was hit by a vehicle and killed early Tuesday, police said.

The crash happened around 1 a.m. near Front Street when a northbound car on I-435 entered a construction zone, which narrowed travel to a single lane in which the man was walking, according to police.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (AP)  A 15-year-old girl found dead early Tuesday behind the wheel of a vehicle that had crashed in Cedar Rapids appears to have been shot, police there said.

Cedar Rapids police found the car crashed just before 6: 30 a.m. Tuesday at Hawthorne Hill Apartments with the girl inside the vehicle, television station KCRG reported. Police said it appeared the girl had suffered a gunshot wound, but officials were awaiting the results of an autopsy to confirm a cause of death.
PHILADELPHIA (AP)  A Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and a Saudi women's rights activist will be presented the Liberty Medal later this year.

The National Constitution Center announced Tuesday that the annual award will be presented Sept. 21 to Jimmy Lai and Loujain al-Hathloul for their courage and conviction in exercising the fundamental rights of freedom of speech, nonviolent resistance, and peaceful dissent." They will split the $100,000 prize.
WASHINGTON - Henry "Enrique" Tarrio, a leader of the extremist group the Proud Boys, pleaded guilty Monday to burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was stolen Dec. 12 from a historic African American church in Washington during a tumultuous demonstration by far-right supporters of President Donald Trump.

As part of a deal with prosecutors, Tarrio, 37, who lives in Miami, also pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court to a reduced charge of attempting to possess a high-capacity ammunition magazine. He initially had been charged with two felony counts of possessing such magazines, which are illegal in the District.

The two offenses that he admitted to committing, including destruction of property in the banner-burning, are misdemeanors, each punishable by up to six months in jail and a $1,000 fine. He is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 23.

Appearing in Superior Court via video, apparently from his Florida home, Tarrio, who is free on his own recognizance, voiced no regret for joining other Proud Boys members in setting fire to the BLM banner on a downtown D.C. street corner the night of Dec. 12.

But he told Senior Judge Harold Cushenberry Jr. that he was unaware the banner had been stolen from Asbury United Methodist Church at 11th and K streets NW.

"If I'd have known that banner came from a church, it would not have been burned," said Tarrio, who was not accused of the theft. A prosecutor said in court that the banner had been stolen by "unidentified members of the group" minutes before being burned.

Police said four D.C. churches were vandalized that night as angry right-wing groups, including the all-male Proud Boys, marched through downtown Washington in support of Trump's effort to falsely delegitimize President Joe Biden's election victory.

"We are pleased that Mr. Tarrio is taking responsibility for his actions," Asbury's senior pastor, the Rev. Ianther Mills, said in a statement Monday. The church has a pending lawsuit against Tarrio, who is the Proud Boys' national chairman.

More than three dozen people were arrested during the Dec. 12 demonstration, and four people were stabbed in a clash involving supporters and opponents of Trump outside a downtown bar. After the stabbings, authorities said, members of the Proud Boys and other demonstrators roamed through the city looking for people to fight.

Following that night's disturbances, but before he was arrested, Tarrio told The Washington Post that if he were charged with a crime, he would be willing to plead guilty to destruction of property and reimburse the church for the banner.

But he did not regret burning the banner, he said, because he thinks the BLM movement "has terrorized the citizens of this country."

Tarrio was arrested when he returned to the city Jan. 4, two days before a riotous mob of Trump supporters, including members of the Proud Boys, stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent attempt to stop Congress from confirming Biden's election.

Police had obtained an arrest warrant for Tarrio in the banner-burning. On Jan. 4, they stopped a car in which he was riding shortly after it entered the city. While taking him into custody, they said, they searched his book bag and found two high-capacity ammunition magazines bearing Proud Boys symbols.

The unloaded magazines, capable of holding a total of 60 rounds, were compatible with AR-15 and M4 assault rifles, authorities said. Tarrio told police that he sold such magazines on the Internet and had planned to deliver the two in his book bag to a buyer who was in D.C. for the Jan. 6 pro-Trump march.

Tarrio was released Jan. 5 by a Superior Court judge who ordered him to stay out of the city except for court appearances, which forced him to leave Washington before the Jan. 6 rally that descended into deadly mayhem.

Prosecutors have charged more than three dozen alleged members or associates of the Proud Boys with having various roles in the riot, including aggressive attacks on police that helped the mob breach the Capitol building. Four Proud Boys leaders are accused of directing the assault, including a man who had been with Tarrio during the Dec. 12 demonstration, authorities said.

In court Monday, before Tarrio entered his guilty pleas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul Courtney noted "for the record" that "nothing in the agreement is intended to prevent the government from bringing different or additional charges" against him in the future "based on his conduct on January 6th, 2021, or any other time."

Tarrio, who has denied being involved in planning the assault on the Capitol, seemed miffed at Courtney's statement. Shaking his head, he told the judge, "I don't know why January 6th would be specified in there," then added, "but I guess I do understand."

- - -

The Washington Post's Michelle Boorstein contributed to this report.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (AP)  Purdue University says 60% of incoming students and 66% of school employees have submitted proof of being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 four weeks ahead of an Aug. 13 fall semester deadline.

Purdue announced the figures Tuesday in its first release of overall campus vaccination rates.
NEW DELHI (AP)  India's excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern Indias worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the South Asian country.

Most experts believe India's official toll of more than 414,000 dead is a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns as exaggerated and misleading.

The report released Tuesday estimated excess deaths  the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected  to be 3.4 million to 4.7 million since the pandemic began through last month. It said an accurate figure may prove elusive, but the true death toll is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count.

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian governments former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, and Harvard University.

It said the count could have missed deaths that occurred in overwhelmed hospitals or while health care was disrupted, particularly during the devastating virus surge earlier this year.

True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably Indias worst human tragedy since Partition and independence, the report said.

The Partition of the British-ruled Indian subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947 led to the killing of up to 1 million people as gangs of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other.

The report on India's virus toll used three calculation methods: data from the civil registration system that records births and deaths across seven states, blood tests showing the prevalence of the virus in India alongside global COVID-19 fatality rates, and an economic survey of nearly 900,000 people done three times a year.

Researchers cautioned that each method had weaknesses, such as the economic survey omitting the causes of death.

Instead, researchers looked at deaths from all causes and compared that data to mortality in previous years  a method widely considered an accurate metric.

Researchers also cautioned that virus prevalence and COVID-19 deaths in the seven states they studied may not translate to all of India, since the virus could have spread more in urban versus rural states and since health care quality varies greatly around India.

Other nations also are believed to have undercounted deaths in the pandemic. But India is thought to have a greater gap due to having the world's second-highest population of 1.4 billion and because not all deaths were recorded even before the pandemic.

The health ministry did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the report.

Dr. Jacob John, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India and was not part of the research, reviewed the report for the AP and said it underscores the devastating impact COVID-19 had on the countrys underprepared health system.

This analysis reiterates the observations of other fearless investigative journalists that have highlighted the massive undercounting of deaths, Jacob said.

The report also estimated that nearly 2 million Indians died during the first surge in infections last year and said not grasping the scale of the tragedy in real time may have bred collective complacency that led to the horrors of the surge earlier this year.

Over the last few months, some Indian states have increased their COVID-19 death toll after finding thousands of previously unreported cases, raising concerns that many more fatalities were not officially recorded.

Several Indian journalists have also published higher numbers from some states using government data. Scientists say this new information is helping them better understand how COVID-19 spread in India.

Murad Banaji, who studies mathematics at Middlesex University and has been looking at Indias COVID-19 mortality figures, said the recent data has confirmed some of the suspicions about undercounting. Banaji said the new data also shows the virus wasn't restricted to urban centers, as contemporary reports had indicated, and that Indias villages were also badly affected.

A question we should ask is if some of those deaths were avoidable, he said.

___

This story has been corrected to show that the report says there was an estimated low of 3.4 million excess deaths since the pandemic began, not 3 million since January 2020.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)  Public health researchers on Tuesday called the rapid rise in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Arkansas a raging forest fire," and the state's top health official warned that he expects significant outbreaks in schools.

The model by the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health projected a daily average of 1,039 new cases over the next week. The model also predicted an average increase of 169 new cases per day in children under the age of 17.

Arkansas leads the country in new cases per capita, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University researchers. The state also has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, with only 35% of the population fully vaccinated.

COVID is no longer smoldering. It has broken out into a raging forest fire that will grow in size and strength," according to the UAMS forecast. We cannot stand still. We must act to reduce the consequences of this new surge to the extent possible."

The state's cases on Tuesday increased by 1,875 to 367,007 total since the pandemic began, the Department of Health said.

Dr. Jose Romero, the state's health secretary, said he was concerned about the possibility of a surge on top of this surge" when school begins this fall. Laws enacted this year prevent schools from mandating face masks or from requiring students and teachers to be vaccinated.

I expect to see this year significant outbreaks within the school system," Romero said during a virtual discussion on vaccine hesitancy held by U.S. News & World Report. Whats already telling me thats going to happen are the number of day care closures that have occurred because of outbreaks occurring, and camp exposures and closures occurring."

Romero said the key to combatting those outbreaks will be parents stressing the importance of wearing masks.

Dr. Bechara Choucair, the White House's vaccinations coordinator, visited Arkansas on Tuesday to meet with Romero, hospital leaders and other health officials. Choucair said the medical community will play the key role in countering misinformation that has fueled vaccine hesitancy in places like Arkansas.

To be able to counter all of this misinformation with facts, with answers to people's most commonly asked questions, the opportunity for people to talk to their doctors to make sure they have the credible, scientific information is going to be really critical to help us deal with this level of misinformation that we're seeing," he said.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson earlier this month began holding town halls around the state aimed at addressing people who have so far resisted getting vaccinated, and he planned more of the forums next week.

The state's virus hospitalizations on Tuesday increased by 28 to 815, with 313 in intensive care and 131 on ventilators. UAMS Chancellor Dr. Cam Patterson said the increases are straining hospital resources.

Our staffing is really stretched thin at this point," Patterson said. It's not a matter of finding beds, it's a matter of finding people to take care of patients, whether they're COVID-19 positive or not."
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP)  A federal appeals court panel has upheld a ruling that orders North Dakota to pay more than $450,000 in plaintiff's attorneys fees and costs stemming from tribal lawsuits over state voter identification requirements.

Last year, the state agreed to settle longstanding legal disputes with Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa and the Spirit Lake and Standing Rock Sioux tribes.

The tribes sued over North Dakotas requirement that voters have identification with a street address. The tribes said it creates a disadvantage for Native Americans who live on reservations where street addresses are hard to come by. The dispute at one point reached the U.S. Supreme Court.

An 8th U.S. Circuit of Appeals panel on Friday upheld a federal judges May 2020 order that the state pay $452,983, the Bismarck Tribune reported.

U.S. District Judge Dan Hovland had approved an agreement, which sought to ensure Native American voters have valid IDs and can meet the address requirement.

Plaintiffs attorneys also sought more than $1 million in attorney fees and expenses. The state argued the claim was unreasonable. Hovland sided with the tribes but reduced the amount by 60%, saying some claimed expenses were excessive.

The state appealed, saying the request had been filed too late. The appellate judges agreed but said the gaffe was excusable.

There is no evidence that the plaintiffs acted in bad faith, the panel wrote in its decision upholding Hovlands order.
A Russian hacker known internationally as the bot master" was sentenced Tuesday to the 33 months he has already served in custody on federal charges he operated a network of devices used to steal computer credentials, distribute spam and install malicious software.

Peter Levashov, 40, pleaded guilty in 2018 to causing intentional damage to a protected computer, conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors said he operated several networks of hijacked computers, known as botnets, that were capable of pumping out billions of spam emails.

U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny said he believes the financial harm caused by what began as a spamming scheme was overstated in a pre-sentencing report that recommended a sentence of at least 12 years. But the judge acknowledged that the crimes evolved into something serious and sophisticated.

It goes without saying that somebody that builds and operates botnets, as you did, and profits from making them available for use by cybercriminals, should expect to be prosecuted and punished, he said. Because indeed this is significant criminal conduct that is harmful to the public.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence that was called for in the pre-sentencing report of between 12 and 14 1/2 years in prison.

The judge also ordered Levashov to serve three years of supervised release, during which his computer activity will me monitored. He deferred imposing a fine or restitution for 90 days until he could receive more information about Levashov's financial situation.

In their written presentencing arguments, prosecutors said Levashov spent more than a decade controlling the botnets  including one that may have infected 200,000 computers  to harvest email addresses, logins and passwords from infected computers and also distributed malware and other malicious software.

Levashov used those botnets to send billions of spam messages, messages which ranged in destructive potential from relatively harmless advertisements, to email messages used to conduct 'pump and dump' schemes, to email messages containing malicious links that spread malware such as viruses or ransomware, Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Chang wrote in his sentencing memoradum.

Chang said Levashov, also known as Peter Severa, operated three of the most notorious botnets known to authorities  Storm Worm, Waledac, and Kelihos.

At its peak, Storm Worm reportedly sent 57 million email messages in a single day, prosecutors said. Waledac could send 1.5 billion spam messages per day and Kelihos was reportedly capable of sending 4 billion spam messages per day, he said.

Prosecutors said Levashov had also moderated online forums used to sell and trade stolen identities and credit card numbers.

Levashov was arrested in April 2017 while vacationing in Spain. His arrest was one of a series that targeted Russian cybercriminals outside their homeland, which has no extradition agreement with the United States.

Russian authorities fought his extradition, but Levashov was eventually transferred to the U.S. He was prosecuted in Connecticut because the FBIs New Haven office investigated the case through its Connecticut Cyber Task Force and some of the hijacked computers were located in this state, authorities said.

Levashov has been out of prison on electronic monitoring since January 2020. Chatigny said his isolation away from his wife and young child during the pandemic was also a factor in the sentencing.

Levashov's lawyer, Vadim Glozman, in arguing for the sentence of time served, said his client's hacking was not complex enough to warrant a harsher sentence. He also referenced Levashov's harsh life in Russia, which involved standing in bread lines, which he said led to a desire to take care of his family. He is humbled, apologetic and has suffered enormously already from his crimes in the years since his arrest, Glozman argued.

Aside from the general weight of being under federal indictment, they have been spent locked up in two foreign countries, away from his family, where he does not know anyone, and spent in the midst of an unprecedented worldwide pandemic, defense attorney Vadim Glozman wrote. Put simply, these four-and-a-half years have felt like an eternity.

Levashov, in a brief statement to the court, thanked his wife and his attorney, who he said nearly brought him to tears with the story of his life.

I apologize if my activities hurt someone, he said.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  The process to draw new districts for South Carolina House and Senate seats as well as the U.S. House kicked off Tuesday with senators hopeful the whirlwind of map drawing, negotiations, public hearings and final vote will take less than four months.

The Senate's redistricting subcommittee agreed Tuesday at its first meeting to hold 10 public hearings across the state starting next week and ending before the final U.S. census data on where the 5.1 million people in South Carolina live is released Aug. 16.

The districts are drawn every 10 years after the federal government completes it nationwide count. The goal of the high stakes process is to make sure all 46 of the state's Senate districts and 124 House districts have roughly the same number of people, give or take a few thousand.

But it's more than a simple matter of arithmetic and drawing lines. In the past several maps  including 2000 and 2010 after Republicans gained control of the General Assembly  lawmakers have emphasized political goals like protecting incumbents or creating several districts where African Americans are the majority, which also means a number of districts where the white population is greater.

I'm like one of those plants who bloom every 10 years," said Columbia attorney Charlie Terreni, who will help the Senate with redistricting like he has the past two decades.

The House will have its own subcommittee expected to start meeting next month.

The seven-member subcommittee with four Republicans and three Democrats agreed Tuesday to set up a website where the census data and proposed maps will be shared along with information on public hearings before the data is released.

Officials working with the Senate said it will take them three to four days to get the data from the U.S. Census Bureau and into a form where it can be easily mapped on computers.

After that, the Senate will work on its map and the House on its version. The two chambers typically don't alter the maps done by the other chamber. They will work together on the U.S. House map.

South Carolina added nearly 500,000 people from 2010 to 2020, but the 10.7% growth rate was not enough to add another U.S. House seat, keeping the state at seven.

The heaviest growth in the state appears to be along the coast, especially near Myrtle Beach, and just south of Charlotte, North Carolina, in Lancaster and York counties. Those areas will likely get extra districts, while the districts that cover more rural areas will continue to grow in size because of the population shifts.

The goal is to finish and have maps ready for the whole General Assembly to vote on them in October. That gives time for courts to hear the inevitable legal challenges and be ready when candidates for 2022 South Carolina House and U.S. House races need to file in March.

We hope to make a wonderfully smooth process smoother," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Luke Rankin, the Myrtle Beach Republican who is also running the subcommittee.

___

Follow Jeffrey Collins on Twitter at https://twitter.com/JSCollinsAP.
GOODLETTSVILLE, Tenn. (AP)  Law enforcement officials are investigating after a 6-year-old boy died in what they described as an accidental shooting.

News outlets report that Sumner County Sheriff's office said that deputies responded to a report that a young boy had been shot Sunday morning in Sumner County. The child was taken to a local hospital, where he died.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP)  Donald Trump will meet with Republicans running against Rep. Liz Cheney next week, and endorse one in the next few months, the former president said in a statement Tuesday.

Trump will meet with them in Bedminster, New Jersey, home of the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster, where he has moved for the summer. He didnt specify who would be there.

Cheney has some very interesting candidates running against her" but the field of opponents should eventually be narrowed down to just one, Trump said in the statement.

Quite a few candidates who don't win Trump's endorsement or are otherwise disfavored would need to drop out for a single candidate to oppose Cheney in the 2022 GOP primary. The Wyoming Legislature in March defeated a Donald Trump Jr.-backed proposal for runoff primary elections.

So far, at least seven Republicans have said they're running against Cheney following her vote to impeach Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

They include Cheyenne attorney and businessman Darin Smith; retired U.S. Army Col. Denton Knapp, who has said he's headed back to Wyoming after living elsewhere since high school; state Sen. Anthony Bouchard of Cheyenne; and state Rep. Chuck Gray of Casper. None immediately answered on the record Tuesday if they planned to meet with Trump or would agree to drop out if they didn't get his endorsement.

Cheney is the elder daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. First elected in 2016, she is Wyoming's lone representative in the U.S. House.

Her vote to impeach Trump and not back down from blaming him for the riot caused fellow Republicans to vote Cheney out a high-ranking House GOP leadership post in May.

House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi recently named Cheney and seven Democrats to a committee to investigate the riot. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy announced Monday he'd chosen five Republicans for the panel.

Cheney has said she voted to impeach Trump in defense of the Constitution. Asked about Trump's statement Monday, Cheney spokesman Jeremy Adler pointed out a May interview on NBC's Today show where she was asked about the field of opponents.

Bring it on, Cheney said.

___

Follow Mead Gruver at https://twitter.com/meadgruver
Twitter temporarily suspended Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., for violating its covid-19 misinformation policy after she falsely claimed that the coronavirus was "not dangerous" for some people.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed Monday evening that the company had taken "enforcement action" on Greene's personal account for violations of its policies.

The account was put on "read-only" mode for 12 hours, which according to Twitter's rules happens "if it seems like an otherwise healthy account is in the middle of an abusive episode." The 12-hour suspension is the shortest of Twitter's read-only penalties, which its website says can range from 12 hours to seven days, "depending on the nature of the violation." Greene's account had violated the misinformation policy multiple times, according to Twitter.

Greene tweeted Monday that the novel coronavirus was "not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65." More than 600,000 people in the United States have died of covid-19.

She also made claims about vaccine-related deaths and side effects, calling the coronavirus vaccines "controversial."

In another tweet, Greene falsely claimed that "defeating obesity" would protect people from covid-19 complications and death.

Twitter added a warning to both tweets, labeling them as "misleading."

Greene said in a statement that the suspension was "a Communist-style attack on free speech."

President Joe Biden said last week that social media companies were "killing people" by allowing misinformation about the novel coronavirus and vaccines to spread on their platforms. "Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they're killing people," he said.

After Facebook pushed back, Biden clarified his comments but said that "instead of taking it personally," Facebook should focus on "the outrageous misinformation" about vaccines that was spreading on its platforms.

Biden's comments came shortly after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory about health misinformation online, which he said had caused some Americans to avoid vaccines or masks, leading to "avoidable illnesses and death." He called on tech companies to invest in addressing misinformation on their platforms.

Amid a recent rise in coronavirus cases in the United States, experts have noted that the vast majority of new cases are in unvaccinated people - even though health authorities have been toiling for months to make vaccines easily accessible for anyone who is eligible.

Last week, an Arkansas mother who had avoided getting herself and her 13-year-old daughter vaccinated said she wished that she "would've made better choices for her" after her daughter was hospitalized with covid-19. She said that misinformation had stopped her from getting vaccinated.

Greene apologized last month after she compared a supermarket's mask policy to the Nazi practice of labeling Jews with Star of David badges.

Greene was suspended from Twitter twice earlier this year, but the company said those suspensions were mistakes made by its automated content review systems.

- - -

The Washington Post's Felicia Sonmez contributed to this report.
HONG KONG (AP)  The trial of the first person to be charged under Hong Kongs sweeping national security law ended Tuesday after nearly a month, and observers are awaiting a verdict to see how similar cases might be dealt with.

Tong Ying-kit, 24, was accused of driving his motorbike into a group of police officers while carrying a flag bearing the protest slogan Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times on July 1 last year, a day after the national security law was imposed by Beijing.

He pleaded not guilty to charges of inciting secession, terrorism and an alternative charge of dangerous driving.

The trial was held in the High Court with no jury, a departure from the common law system in Hong Kong. A verdict will be handed down on July 27, with life imprisonment the maximum penalty if he is found guilty.

National security cases may proceed with no jury if state secrets need to be protected, foreign forces are involved, or if the personal safety of jurors need to be protected. Trials are presided over by judges handpicked by Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam.

The national security law was imposed on semiautonomous Hong Kong by Beijing following months of anti-government protests by those upset by China's growing influence over the former British colony. It outlaws secession, subversion, terrorism and foreign collusion to intervene in the citys affairs.

Authorities have also banned the protest slogan Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times, stating that it has secessionist connotations.

The legislation and the crackdown on dissent that has accompanied it have drawn international condemnation. Critics say that the national security law further infringes the freedom Hong Kong was promised it could maintain when it was handed to Chinese control from Britain in 1997.

More than 100 people have been arrested under the security legislation.

Tongs case is being closely watched for clues on how Hong Kong authorities will handle other national security cases.

In this case, the interpretation of the protest slogan is key. Prosecutors say that secession could be one of the interpretations of the Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times slogan, and that Tong knowingly incited secession by carrying the flag and driving into the police officers.

Tongs defense lawyer however argue that there are multiple interpretations of such a slogan and it is not possible to prove that Tong was inciting secession. The defense also says that there is no evidence that Tong committed the act deliberately, and that he had avoided crashing into officers.

The defense also said that Tongs actions should not be considered terrorism as there was no serious violence or harm to society.

___

AP news assistants Matthew Cheng and Janice Lo contributed to this report.
BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP)  The Vermont Health Department warned Tuesday that algae blooms are turning up in Vermont waters that can produce toxins harmful to humans and animals.

The department is encouraging people to go to its website to view a video and photos of what cyanobacteria and blooms look like.

By knowing what a bloom looks like, and scanning the water before you go in, youll know if you should stay out of the water, Bridget OBrien, an environmental health scientist with the Vermont Department of Health, said in a statement.

Cyanobacteria are microorganisms that are a natural part of fresh water ecosystems but under certain conditions they can multiple rapidly, creating scums and blooms on the water's surface and along shorelines, the department said. Blooms have shown up most often in northern parts of Lake Champlain, causing some Burlington beaches to recently be closed, and in other regions of the lake as well as other Vermont lakes in recent years.

The blooms may cause skin rashes, diarrhea, a sore throat, stomach problems and more serious health concerns for swimmers and waders, the Health Department said, noting that exposure is a particular concern for small children who may ingest the water. Cyanobacteria is potentially fatal to dogs who may drink the water or lick the residue off their fur, officials warn.

The Health Departments Cyanobacteria Tracker posts information and photos of lake conditions from community volunteers who monitor for cyanobacteria but conditions can change quickly so it's important for people to check the water when they arrive, officials said. People are urged to avoid contact with the water and keep small children away if they think they see a bloom and to not allow pets or livestock to swim in or drink the water.

They also are urged to rinse off thoroughly as soon as possible if they came into contact cyanobacteria; talk with their health care provider if they have concerns about possible exposure; and report the bloom at healthvermont.gov/cyanobacteria.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A 14-year-old boy was shot and killed in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood Sunday evening, according to police.

About 6:40 p.m., officers responded to a report of a shooting on Seventh Street near Mission Street where they found the boy suffering from a gunshot wound, police said.

The victim was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

At about 6:45 p.m., officers located and took into custody a 41-year-old man as a suspect near the 800 block of Vermont Street in the Potrero Hill neighborhood, police said.

A police spokesman said the department hoped to provide more detailed information soon.

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.
By Eli Walsh

Bay City News Foundation

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a $12 billion funding package for housing and homelessness Monday, the largest such investment in sheltering and supporting homeless residents in the state's history.

The funding, which will be used over the next two years, will support efforts across the state to spur housing construction and the expansion of mental health services at the local level.

The state will use $5.8 billion of the funding to convert more than 42,000 hotel and motel rooms into housing units specifically for homeless residents and people struggling with severe mental health conditions.

The state launched the hotel room conversion program, known as Homekey, last year in a partnership with the federal government that enabled the state to reimburse the costs of acquiring hotel and motel properties.

Speaking at a Homekey site in Sebastopol, Newsom acknowledged that the state's strategies in recent years to help homeless residents get off the streets have been failures.

"The state of California, with all due respect, has been nowhere to be found on the issue of homelessness for far too long," he said.

Sonoma County Supervisor James Gore said state and local governments have played "whack-a-mole" with homelessness over the last three decades with little to show for it.

"We have never encountered such an issue as homelessness, where everybody wants it fixed but nobody wants to be inconvenienced by the solution," he said.

In addition to the $12 billion funding package for homelessness, the state also plans to spend $10.3 billion on developing affordable housing units.

Newsom argued that the state plans to be more proactive in tying funding to whether local governments are actively housing homeless residents rather than simply throwing money at the problem.

"There's six metrics that counties have to meet, and if you meet them we're actually attaching bonuses, an 18-percent bonus opportunity, for actually delivering on the plan," he said. "No plan, no money."

Roughly $2 billion of the funding package will be paid to local governments through Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention grants, which have specific accountability measures that grant recipients must meet.

Since being elected in 2018, Newsom has frequently reiterated his intent to spur more housing development and, in turn, help homeless residents get off the streets.

Last year, just a month before the state shut down in March due to the pandemic, Newsom even went so far as to devote his entire State of the State address to issues of housing and homelessness.

In that time, however, the state's revenue used to tackle issues like homelessness has fluctuated wildly, from a projected $54.3 billion deficit last spring to a surplus of nearly $80 billion earlier this year.

But while the funding package Newsom approved Monday is only a one-time expenditure, the governor said he plans to forge ahead with spending on housing and homelessness in future years.

"So long as I'm governor of California, that's not going to be an issue," he said.

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.
By Amelia Williams

Bay City News Foundation

How do you hold queer history in your hands? What can you hang from a ceiling or pin to a wall that truly captures the full spectrum of a community of people so used to alienation, subterfuge and rejection of their identities, let alone their artistic prowess? In San Francisco, to ignore queer history is to erase entire pillars of society and the legacies -- of embracing and celebrating gender fluidity, enduring through the AIDS epidemic and promoting medical marijuana -- that they left those of us who remain.

Tucked within a housing complex at Haight and Laguna streets in San Francisco, the Haight Street Art Center is hosting one of its first shows since pandemic restrictions relented, "Queer Visions," through Aug. 15 to pay homage to those who came before and helped guide the current community into the present. As the center's executive director Kelly Harris says, it takes a hard look "into where you come from, to know where you're going."

The admission-free show is a tribute, a two-story counterculture love letter really, to all the ways the vast, intersectional queer community here has gathered to claim space and cultivate joy against the grain of societal expectation. The front hallway is lined with posters by late gay artist Todd Trexler, who veered from the psychedelic, Grateful Dead roots of the art form to make memorable, one-of-a-kind posters for salacious midnight movies and drag queens like Divine herself.

There are multiple rooms dedicated to San Francisco's incomparable Stud bar, where all genders and orientations have been welcome since 1966. The staircases are lined with queer portraits, leading to a top floor full of print art made in tribute to queer elders and the ingenuity of generations who passed well before their time, due to incurable illness or bigotry.

"How do you honor the legacy of people who came before you? It's so important for young folks to be with those stories and hear from people who are older than you, who have experienced something, especially when in a historically marginalized community," Harris says. "Sometimes I worry the community can disconnect so quickly, because of generational misunderstanding."

Harris was a rock musician (a member of the all-girl San Francisco electro soul-punk group Von Iva) and worked in nonprofits before joining the Haight Street Art Center, a universe in her own words that, should you come out unscathed, can prepare you for anything. While she joined the HSAC during the pandemic, the center has been open for around four years, specializing in the oft-overlooked mediums of psychedelic and poster art that the Haight neighborhood is known for to this day.

She identifies as queer, and took the reigns to execute "Queer Visions" after launching the center's reopening show with local artist Jeremy Fish. Apparently, and unsurprisingly, there's a lot of overlap between the posters made for Santana shows and the works of Trexler, whose poster work in the 1970s included popular bands but paid special attention to drag performers, funk musicians and movie showings unsuitable for a matinee. His posters, all drawn or collaged by hand, advertise distinctly queer experiences for queer audiences; the average (straight) Joe might not have been local drag troupe The Cockettes' target audience, but evidently people were going.

The posters adorn the hallway that leads to the shrine of The Stud, a multimedia exhibition for anyone to celebrate themselves as they have at the Stud bar for the last 55 or so years. The exhibition contains posters, hand-painted signs, leather chaps, an altar and countless photos of former Stud employees and patrons. The star, or stars rather, is the wall of Stud-themed pinbacks, an assortment of buttons celebrating different holidays, sporting events, party nights and loyalty. Since quarantine began, Stud employee Chloe Miller has been amassing these slippery little pieces of the past in a collection formally known as the Stud Pin Archives.

"It gives us a map of what was before and what is still here. It's not only showing the pinbacks; there's also this history for people who haven't come out yet," Miller says. "There's still young trans people being killed, feeling it's not normal. This is why I want this on [Instagram] because how can I directly communicate with everybody in the palm of their hand? It's about accessibility."

Miller has worked at The Stud for a couple years and been a patron for longer, but she hadn't given any thought to archiving anything until the pandemic hit and The Stud, which had been restructured into a cooperative in 2017, closed.

Most of the pinbacks are the work of a former Stud bartender, Paul "Gidget" Sinclair, who began making them in the 1970s and continued to do so until his passing from AIDS in the late 1990s. They span all the holidays the American calendar celebrates and some they don't, like the Polka Dot Prom, an annual party to give patrons a carefree, queer prom that they likely couldn't have in high school.

Because the city is the size of a pinhead, Harris already knew multimedia artist Lauren Tabak, whose portrait series "Gayface" and collection of portraits from The Lexington -- San Francisco's last lesbian bar, which closed in 2015 -- adorn some of the center's walls. And Tabak, as luck would have it, knew Miller.

After more than a year bunkered down, the Stud Collective is currently on the prowl for its next home base. Miller has been developing its merchandise, which includes shirts, sweatshirts, pins and a tote bag. The collective has a Patreon, a podcast and a GoFundMe for those who want to pledge support.

On the way to the second floor of Haight Street Art Center are rooms with additional artwork by printmaker Katie Gilmartin, who also directed the "Queer Ancestors Project" upstairs, which asks young queer artists to consider and render whom they see as their queer ancestors and the space between them.

Gilmartin also has a series of imagined pulp paperback covers inspired by the city, giving the bay fog a sinister sentience and putting young women in precarious poses. The vibrant prints of Amir Khadar, created for Forward Together and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, convey the love to be found in queer chosen families, especially for queer, BIPOC immigrants.

On the wall at the head of the "Queer Ancestors Project" is a flyer advertising a bundle of products that, admittedly, can be conducive to creative expression: cannabis. Thanks to another connection on the pinhead that is San Francisco, the Haight Street Art Center has also partnered with local delivery service Sava to curate a gift basket full of queer-owned cannabis brands as a fundraising endeavor.

Sava's cofounder Andrea Brooks, who identifies as a lesbian, has been using cannabis for years to treat the repercussions of what she calls a life-changing injury. She was told she could be permanently disabled and spent a couple years taking her prescribed pain medications. When she reconnected with a friend who grew cannabis, she was able to wean off opioids and onto a medicinal, cannabis-based regime that works for her.

"Cannabis was not something I thought of as something that would help me," she says, but smoking is believing. "I wasn't healed overnight. But I could do the things needed to be brought back to health."

She founded Sava, which is women-owned and led, Latinx-owned and queer-owned, as a thoughtful, well-curated and education-rich shopping platform for consumers who were overwhelmed, and underwhelmed, by the traditional dispensary experience.

Brooks and Harris had common ties and, as they found out, common goals. Cannabis companies have had a reckoning of their own this past year -- as cannabis was deemed an essential business during the pandemic -- over the industry's lack of activism for justice reform and philanthropy in the face of a public health crisis. More and more companies are platforming causes and making donations, but fewer are attributing the multibillion-dollar industry to the local queer community.

The city's reputation for both queer and cannabis rights isn't by coincidence: The first openly gay San Francisco supervisor, Harvey Milk, helped get one of the first cannabis decriminalization propositions on the city ballot before he was assassinated in 1978. It was Milk supporter Dennis Peron, an openly gay Vietnam veteran and longtime political activist, who opened the first cannabis dispensary in the city back in the mid-1990s. Peron's friend and fellow activist "Brownie Mary" Rathbun had begun distributing pot brownies to gay men suffering from "wasting syndrome" caused by AIDS and to cancer patients free of charge in the 1980s. Peron also co-wrote Proposition 215, the definitive state legislation that legalized medical marijuana in California in 1996.

"It's really impactful, to keep history alive and community together," Brooks says. "Cannabis [history] is rooted in queer history, and [that] needs to be remembered constantly. In the queer community, it's important that Dennis Peron's name is still mentioned, [along with] Brownie Mary, Harvey Milk. The histories are tied."

Thankfully, there's an array of benches at Haight Street Art Center, plenty of seating for when the art overwhelms. And it will, as you gaze at the smiling faces of a generation stolen by the AIDS epidemic, a trauma that the youth have been largely spared from, even as they face uncertainty about what comes next, especially as the most recent global pandemic continues to develop. But the future is less daunting with a map of the past, and anyone who's set foot in this city could benefit from the compass in "Queer Visions."

"The people who have ridden out the storm, who have lived through many cycles of shifting, we're trying our best to hold on to those stories," Harris says. "You know when you're in a group of people who want to share legacy and history."

* The free "Queer Visions" exhibition runs through Aug. 15 at Haight Street Art Center, 215 Haight St., San Francisco. The center is open noon-8 p.m. Thursdays, noon-6 p.m. Fridays-Sundays. Learn more at https://haightstreetart.org/blogs/news/queervisions.

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.
An investigation of Friday's officer-involved shooting death of a 19-year-old Salinas man will not be conducted by the California Department of Justice, according to a report describing the facts of the incident issued Monday by Monterey County District Attorney's Office.

The report concludes that the incident is exempt from a 2020 state law mandating investigations of officer-involved shootings, because the suspect was armed with a deadly weapon.

The district attorney's office shared video footage of the incident that shows the suspect -- Gerardo Martinez -- pointing a handgun at police before he was shot and killed by Officer Mario Reyes.

A state investigation is not mandated when there is clear evidence the suspect was armed with a deadly weapon, even though the gun turned out to be a pellet gun, which the report states is still considered a deadly weapon.

A 14-year-old boy was shot and killed in San Francisco's South of Market neighborhood Sunday evening, according to police.

About 6:40 p.m., officers responded to a report of a shooting on Seventh Street near Mission Street where they found the boy suffering from a gunshot wound, police said.

The victim was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

At about 6:45 p.m., officers located and took into custody a 41-year-old man as a suspect near the 800 block of Vermont Street in the Potrero Hill neighborhood, police said.

A police spokesman said the department hoped to provide more detailed information soon.

A person was in grave condition Monday evening following a shooting Sunday night in East Oakland, police said.

Officers responded at 10:04 p.m. Sunday to the 1900 block of Foothill Boulevard after someone reported a shooting.

Officers located a victim who was suffering from at least one gunshot wound, according to police.

Two Arlington, Virginia, residents and a man from Murrieta were the three who died in a plane crash Friday in Napa County, according to the Napa County Coroner's Office.

Shauna and James Waite, both 37, and Shauna Waite's father Robert Nicholas, 73, died in the crash Friday shortly after 8:40 a.m. near the Angwin Airport.

The three were in a Beechcraft Bonanza 35 when it crashed into a vineyard and killed them.

The couple had a son Kiernan, who was with Shauna Waite's mother when the crash occurred, friends said in a post on DC Road Runners Club website. The couple was part of the running club.

A woman was hit by a police vehicle in Berkeley last Wednesday and taken to a hospital, police and the California Highway Patrol said Monday.

The collision occurred at Allston Way and Sacramento Street and involved a Berkeley police vehicle, according to the California Highway Patrol, which responded at 4:38 p.m. Wednesday to investigate.

The CHP is investigating the collision because they are an uninvolved third party, Berkeley police spokesman Officer Byron White said.

CHP officials said a Berkeley patrol vehicle was facing west at a red light at Allston Way and the woman was hit when the officer turned left onto Sacramento Street when the light turned green. The victim was in the crosswalk, according to the CHP.

CHP officials said the officer told investigators that the patrol vehicle was traveling at about 10 mph when it hit the victim. She complained of pain and CHP officials said she was taken to a hospital as a precaution. White said she suffered an injury.

Three Oakland youth were arrested following an armed robbery in East Oakland on Saturday evening, police said.

Officers responded at 7:50 p.m. to the 7400 block of Bancroft Avenue after someone reported the robbery.

Police said the victim gave officers good descriptions of the suspects and their vehicle and officers located the vehicle and trio that night.

Police said two guns were recovered from the suspects' vehicle along with the victim's belongings.

Officers also made an arrest in an armed robbery Friday, also thanks to the victim who provided police with a description of the suspect and photo of the suspect's vehicle, according to police.

The Oakland Police Department reported some arrests and incidents in a news release Monday night, along with a plea to the community from the chief of police.

"We cannot reduce crime alone," Chief LeRonne L. Armstrong said. "We need our community to partner with us, along with other key and critical organizations such as the Department of Violence Prevention (DVP), and other city departments. Together we can reduce violent crime as we stand up for a safe Oakland."

While some of the crimes, including two homicides and two armed robberies since Thursday, had been released previously by the department, several incidents had not.

The National Weather Service forecast for the San Francisco Bay Area calls for partly cloudy skies Tuesday morning followed by sunny skies in the afternoon. High temperatures will be about 60 along the coast and in the 70s in the south and east portions of the bay. Highs will reach the 80s in both the north bay and in the interior valley and mountains. Overnight lows will be in the 50s.

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.
Homes selling for over list price have been common in the Bay Area since pre-pandemic times. But houses selling routinely for $1 million over asking or more is a new phenomenon, especially for the East Bay.

A new report from Realtor.com shows that one East Bay city sells the most homes for over asking price in the country. Berkeley, with an average increase over asking of 19%, took the top spot, showcasing just how popular the university town became amid the San Francisco exodus.

The real estate website looked at sales in nearly 1,500 U.S. cities during the first three months of 2021, comparing the final sales price with the last-known list price to calculate the list.

One Berkeley home made national news in March when it sold for double its list price and received 29 offers. People are not surprised when a home goes $1 million over, Josh Dickinson, the founder of real estate agency Zip Code East Bay, told SFGATE in May. When my clients see a house for $1.9 million theyre almost conditioned to think it'll go over $3 million in Piedmont or North Berkeley.

Overbidding was most common in Alameda County when compared with all Bay Area counties in the past year, with the percentage of homes selling for over list price reaching 85%, according to data from Compass. Alameda County home sales have climbed in 2021, up 20% when compared to the same time period last year, with the median price in Berkeley sitting at $1.2 million.

Redfin real estate agent Ena Everett told SFGATE in May that the East Bay market has always been busy, but its gotten much more competitive in the past year. In Oakland and Berkeley ... people could expect homes to go 20% over asking on a pretty regular basis, she said. Now that the supply is a lot smaller, instead of 20% over, it's common to see houses go for 10 to 40% over asking or more.

Montclair, New Jersey, a suburb of Manhattan, had the second-highest over asking price in the country, with an average of 14% over list price. Champaign, Illinois, the home of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, saw an average increase over asking of 13%.
When Rachel Kushner considers San Francisco, a city she left in the 1990s, the past coalesces into a shared patchwork of memory and feeling.

Kushner, the author of acclaimed novels The Mars Room and The Flamethrowers, plays with this mutual reverie in a new book of essays. The Hard Crowd examines with an exceptionally thoughtful and critical eye everything from motorcycle culture and the sinking of the HMS Bounty to the prison abolition movement and the short stories of Denis Johnson.

Two essays, The Hard Crowd, from which the book gets its name, and Not With the Band, reflect on Kushners life in San Francisco in the late '80s and early '90s.

Kushner grew up in the Sunset District among what she calls The Hard Crowd." She started going to concerts as a pre-teen  her first show was the Rolling Stones at Candlestick  and worked at the Fillmore and the Great American Music Hall. She bartended at a handful of bars around the area, including the now-closed Blue Lamp in the Tenderloin and Til Two in Berkeley. She hung at Zeitgeist when it was still a biker bar.

The piece about all these bartending jobs I had (Not With the Band) was really fun to write, she told me by phone. I had wanted to write that essay for a long time. I wanted to document what all that means. We started attending concerts at 11 years old  it was a big part of your life, and what you see at a concert is a very large-scale version of the subcultures youre tuned into or trying to emulate. You see it all there.

Working in bars and live music venues, Kushner says she got to see a lot of those people up close, among them Iggy Pop, PJ Harvey and Neil Young.

In one incredible anecdote, Kushner describes being paired with the Rolling Stones Keith Richards to bartend for a band party.

He was in keeping with the legends: drank Jack and gingers all night long, personally draining probably two bottles of Jack Daniels, she writes. He and the bands business manager had to be kicked out of the theater at dawn by security guards, the two of them the hardest-partying attendees of the night.

We also learn that Carlos Santana was a bad tipper and that many Deadheads seemed like rich kids who never had to work. And lets not forget Jerry Garcias wild backstage meal requests, like scallops wrapped in bacon with a ready fondue pot for dipping them.

While Not With the Band is full of juicy gems, its in The Hard Crowd essay that Kushner digs into how it feels to run with a rough group, how the passage of time refracts our collective memories and what it means to attempt to make sense of it all in writing.

To become a writer is to have left early no matter what time you got home, she writes. And then I left for good, left San Francisco. My friends all stayed. But the place still defined me as it has them.

I asked Kushner what it was like looking back on her time in San Francisco, and she chose her words wisely, not wanting to overly feed the bloated San Francisco has changed narrative.

I think that I'm already in conversation with my own childhood all the time, she said. It's not necessarily nostalgia People have very strong feelings about San Francisco and certain transformations. There's been all kinds of real changes. I hear people's heartbreak and frustration about the transformation of the city.

But as a longtime Los Angeles resident, she added, My own feelings are separate from that. I'm a bit protected from those changes because I dont live there anymore. My feelings about the city are so deeply ambivalent.

Kushner stressed that she is protective of her city and her friend group, whom shes known since childhood and remains close with to this day. But shes not going to mourn bygone bars and hangouts.

My younger self is no longer there, and my job is to sift and order these things and think about what it means to be in conversation.

And The Hard Crowd offered its own transformations to Kushner herself.

The book ended up meaning a lot more to me than I thought it would, she said. I think of myself primarily as a fiction writer, but now Im willing to acknowledge Im also an essay writer. The book establishes that for me.
Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images

The travel industry was hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and is just beginning to regain momentum. Newly comfortable travelers itching to visit new places may notice a decrease in short-term rental options such as Airbnbs when searching for lodging.

A new MagnifyMoney analysis of Airbnb data compiled by LendingTree shows that the inventory of short-term rentals plummeted in some major markets, including San Francisco and Oakland. The number of Airbnb listings between May 2020 and March 2021 shrank 40% in the East Bay city  one of the largest drops of all 20 markets analyzed.
I recently wrote a breezy little story about a weekend trip from the Bay Area to the Sierra foothills. The piece was an argument for taking the trip slow, navigating back roads versus the interstate, and spending a night in Sacramento, our chronically underappreciated capital, rather than powering through Friday traffic in the mad rush to Tahoe. It was intended to be a loving, and uncontroversial essay about a Northern California trip most of us have done. So I was surprised when email after irate email began crowding my inbox.

My mistake? I wrote Sierras. Not Sierra.

My credibility was questioned, my intelligence challenged, several letter-writers accused me of not being from here.

After a lifetime here, Im not naive about my home states many internal rivalries and tensions. But even after 15 years of travel writing, much of it about the American West, I was stunned by the hostility that resulted from an errant s slipping onto the end of Sierra. I simply wouldnt have suspected a mountain range to have such a cranky following. But, as I learned the hard way, the Sierra Nevada is no ordinary sawtooth.

The History

The Sierra Nevada, like too many other places in California to list, takes its name from Spanish. It means snowy mountain range and was first used in 1542 by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, who spotted the Santa Cruz mountains from the ocean off of the San Francisco peninsula and named them the Sierra Nevada, somewhat surprising considering how comparably snow-free those coastal mountains are. The name continued to migrate, shifting from one distant interior mountain range to another, a sort of placeholder for whatever snow-capped peaks had yet to be mapped.

It wasnt until 1776, in a famous map by Padre Pedro Font, that the mountains now known as the Sierra Nevada were clearly labeled as such. But as late as 1841, the Sierra Nevada was still being called by other names, including the Californian Range, according to Francis P. Farquhar, the environmentalist and mountaineer who edited the Sierra Club Bulletin from 1926 to 1946.

Denise Taylor/Getty Images

Almost as soon as the ranges name was formalized, it began being called by its nickname, the Sierras. Joaquin Miller, the author and frontiersman, wrote Songs of the Sierras in 1871. Later, he wrote at least four more celebrated works devoted to Californias most notable mountains, all using the Sierras in the title. There are probably more that Im missing. The man isnt called the Poet of the Sierras for nothing.

But while Miller was perhaps the most famous chronicler of the Sierra Nevada, he was hardly the first to slap it with the common colloquialism the Sierras. Bret Harte wrote Stories of the Sierras And Other Sketches in 1872. Horatio Alger wrote The Young Explorer, Or, Among the Sierras in 1880.

This construction wasnt new, after all. For example, the Americans volume of Modern History: Or the Present State of All Nations (1739) refers to the Andes, the Llanos, the Pampas and the Sierras, all indigenous or Spanish words that became English proper nouns. These words could have been translated or anglicized, but instead they embrace the sort of Spanglish that likely feels familiar, if not uncomplicated, to most Californians.

The Grammar Argument

As a writer, it might seem that Id be particularly invested in grammar. But ultimately, I fall into the camp of people that love language as an expression of culture  of the ever-changing way humanity communicates with itself. For me, the idea that language would be stagnant or strictly rule-bound takes a good amount of the fun out of it. And those who most aggressively insist on proper grammar in every instance are, Ive found, often pretty miserable. Not because theyre wrong, but because they care more about being right than they do about hearing what someone else is saying.

But I cant know whats in the minds of the most militant Sierra-no-s hardliners. All I can do is ask them. So I did.

I responded to every letter I received, and in doing so, I found the almost universal explanation for the offense was surprisingly straightforward. Again and again, they said my use of the Sierras was simply incorrect.

Why? Because the Sierra Nevada is borrowed from Spanish (sierra = sawtooth mountain range, nevada = snowy or snow-capped). It's already plural in its root language, so therefore it's wrong to pluralize it in its proper noun usage.

Clayton Herrmann / 500px/Getty Images/500px

One reader proposed that the controversy began with Ansel Adams, the great photographer of Californias landscapes, who wrote in his 1985 autobiography about his chagrin at the High Sierras sneaking into the title page of one of his early photography collections. The name Sierra is already a plural, he wrote. To add an s is a linguistic, Californian, and mountaineering sin.

As a lover (and mediocre speaker) of Spanish, and a student of Latin American history and politics, Im naturally sympathetic to this argument. But I was struck that, as far as I could tell, these letter writers werent Spanish speakers, anti-colonialists, or people particularly passionate about Californias relationship to Mexico. Their argument wasnt, at first blush, rooted in history or politics or ideology. Instead, it was semantic.

I wondered, if the Rocky Mountains are the Rockies and the Smoky Mountains are the Smokies, is there a hard and fast reason to steer clear of using the same construction, the Sierras, when referring to my home state mountain range? And, if so, should I alter my own speech or stick with the phrasing that feels natural to me, 41 years into my life as a Californian.

Tomayto, Tomahto

You are traveling to The Sierra, not Sierras. Sierras is grammatically incorrect and stories that use the word Sierras lose all credibility with those who know better, wrote one comparably polite emailer.

You're not alone with your use of the word Sierras, he continued, but as a journalist, you and your editors are not presenting yourselves as a credible news source with such a faux pas.

So I called an expert: Paul Brians, retired Professor of English at Washington State University and the author of Common Errors in English Usage, now in its third edition. The website devoted to his book has a section devoted to the Sierra Nevada, which suggested Brians had given the question some thought.

Himself from California (he now lives on Puget Sound), Brians acknowledges the Spanish meaning and notes that knowledgeable Westerners usually avoid a redundancy by simply referring to the Sierra Nevadas or simply the Sierras. It is, he adds, something that transplanted weather forecasters often get wrong.

He goes on, Some object to the familiar abbreviation Sierras, but this form, like Rockies and Smokies is too well-established to be considered erroneous.

Id sent the link to a few of my detractors, but they were unswayed. One woman, who described herself as a retired elementary school teacher from Mono County, was particularly pointed (Sweetie - it is spelled SIERRA - with no s. You are the travel editor? What a joke). She was equally curt in response to Brians defense of the Sierras.

Screenshot / Outlook

I live in the Sierra, she wrote. You're a tourist.

How would Brians answer this critique, then?

First, he makes the point that a mountain range is a collective plural, meaning its both singular (a range) and plural (it represents a group of things together, like a team). Those collectives, Brians says, don't really function very much as plurals in English.

So saying its grammatically incorrect to add an s because the word is already plural isnt exactly right. Its grammatically complicated, says Brians. Nobody is bothered by saying the Rockies or the Smokies, right, he asks rhetorically. Same thing. That's a range of mountains. They have a nickname.

But the bigger issue, says Brians, is the idea that the Spanish meaning and rules would apply to this borrowed word at all. You do not need to follow the rules with which a foreign language, which is the source, treats something grammatically, says Brians. The French do horrific things with English when they import it.

Thats how language works, says Brians. A name that has been developed in a foreign language cuts its roots with the parent.

The fact that Sierra Nevada is rooted in Spanish doesnt mean were married to Spanish grammar any more than were married, necessarily, to a Spanish pronunciation. And this is when Brians pointed to the second half of Sierra Nevada  the adjective snow-capped in Spanish, which is, not incidentally, also the name of Californias neighboring state.

People from the East Coast, especially New York news broadcasters, constantly use the pronunciation [Ne-VAH-duh], which is closer to the Spanish, Brians explained. Thats because, if you know enough Spanish to know that that a should be pronounced, ah, then you think you know how to say it. Of course, nobody from the West Coast says it's [Ne-VAH-duh]. It's always [Ne-VAD-uh].

Thats just one of many examples of the parent language not dictating how something should be said, but it was striking that those who most militantly oppose adding an s to Sierra would likely recoil at the sound of some Easterner butchering Nevada with that long spa-like VAH.

Vicki Jauron, Babylon and Beyond/Getty Images

Brians had largely convinced me that my grammar was sound, but I wanted to be sure I wasnt missing something, so I reached out to David Bunker, the former editor of the Sierra Sun, one of the oldest newspapers in the state. He explained that it had been drilled into [his] head as a young reporter to never use Sierras for the same reason my critics had articulated: its Spanish and a single mountain range.

But of course words are fungible, he added magnanimously, and if you consider how a Spanish word like Los Angeles is pronounced in the States, perhaps none of us have a leg to stand on. I still think a strong case can be made for the Sierra being the correct phrasing, since it would never be pluralized in Spanish.

But hardly the thing to get outraged about these days, considering our much more pressing issues the world over.

The Sierra has its way with me

In an effort at diplomacy, I followed up with one of the more hostile letter writers, the Mono County woman who said she lives within sight of the state line. She had a lot to say on the subject:

I'll bet you have heard about the tourist induced chaos and environmental degradation in the Lake Tahoe area, she wrote. She lives in Mono County, another tourist destination, she explained.

Most Sierra locals (those who don't make money off tourism) have more than ample reasons to despise tourists, she continued. Shall I tell you how many hours I spend picking up dirty diapers, malt liquor cans, human excrement, shit covered toilet paper, discarded food, broken camping and fishing gear and more from the place I have called home for most of my life?

I dont like the way she lumped me in with the careless trash-leavers and fire-starters, but her anger and frustration ring true.

Do tourists expect to be liked or even welcomed when they behave like slovenly spoiled brats and self entitled sociopaths? We laugh at you. We make fun of you. And then when you leave your garbage behind for us to pick up and build illegal campfires which threaten our homes and the land that we love we do indeed hate you. If tourists want something other than derision, they need to practice respect.

And this, I think, is the conclusion I came to. Because what underlies this hatred, however extreme, is something real and relatable. Without having corresponded a bit more with her and others, I would have been tempted to think the anti-Sierras commenters just wanted to be smarter than some dumb ass travel journalist offhandedly referencing a place they hold dear.

And, frankly, I get that. Knowing more than some outsider feels like its own kind of reclamation  an assertion of authority and ownership. That feeling is an early, visceral memory of mine, too. When I was asked directions by visitors to my hometown of Mendocino, then a fledgling tourist destination (now a thoroughly branded Victorian wonderland), my younger brother and I delighted in sending them astray. We were just kids, but theres a piece of me that smiles, even now, at the idea of stealing Mendocino back from those incoming hordes  to assert that it was our place, not theirs.

I followed up with David Bunker one more time to see if he had any thoughts about why people feel so strongly about all of this. He made a point some others had made: Maybe it's like when you hear someone say Frisco in reference to San Francisco, he wrote. There might be nothing wrong with that phrasing, but it just sounds off. While granting that it may not hold true universally, he explained, its one of those things that, for some people, signals an unfamiliarity with the area.

We humans are strange creatures, right? These battles over language may have roots in some tribal identity creation past, or provincial superiority complexes, or just pride of place, he added. Who knows.

All I know is what at first seemed like curmudgeonly nitpicking ultimately feels like something else. These readers point to linguistic propriety as the reason theyre distressed by that s on Sierra. And maybe I should take them at their word. But ultimately, I dont think those emails were about grammar at all. They were, I now believe, about loving a place so much that you want to claim it as your own.
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An off-duty Drug Enforcement Administration agent posed for photographs in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, according to a court filing Tuesday following the agent's arrest.

A video posted on the internet also showed Mark Sami Ibrahim carrying a flag bearing the words Liberty or Death outside the Capitol, about 12 minutes before a mob of people pulled apart a nearby set of barricades, authorities said.

Ibrahim, of Orange County, California, was a probationary employee of the DEA and was on personal leave from the agency when he traveled to Washington on Jan. 6. Several weeks before the riot, he had given notice of his intention to resign.

Also on Tuesday, a third person pleaded guilty to participating in a plot for members of the anti-government Oath Keepers group to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. The judge who accepted Caleb Berrys guilty plea didnt immediately schedule his sentencing hearing.

The presence of law enforcement at the riot has been troubling for the police who were attacked and beaten. The DEA agent is among at least 30 officers in 12 states who are being scrutinized for their behavior in the District of Columbia or face criminal charges for participating in the riot. Ex-military participated, too.

Ibrahim wasn't working as a law-enforcement officer at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but he told investigators after the riot that he was there to help a friend who had been asked to document the event for the FBI.

The friend denied that, however, and told investigators that Ibrahim had concocted the false story to cover his ass," according to a case summary signed by senior special agent with the Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General.

According to Ibrahim's friend, Ibrahim went to the rally in order to promote himself, the OIG agent wrote. Ibrahim had been thinking about his next move after leaving the DEA and wanted the protests to be his stage for launching a 'Liberty Tavern' political podcast and cigar brand.

Ibrahim acknowledged that he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but denied that he displayed or exposed his DEA badge and firearm there despite the photographic evidence to the contrary, authorities say.

Ibrahim was arrested Tuesday in Washington on charges that included entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm and making a false statement when he denied displayed his badge or firearm.

Defense attorney Darren Richie said Ibrahim didnt participate in the riot, engage in any violence or try to enter the Capitol that day. He also remained honest and voluntarily cooperative with authorities, Richie added.

This indictment results from conjecture, political pressure and a flawed attempt to paint a specific narrative through pictures taken wholly out of context. Mr. Ibrahim firmly believes the truth shall always prevail, Richie said in a statement.

He is scheduled to make his initial court appearance on Tuesday afternoon before U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui.

A DEA spokeswoman didn't immediately respond Tuesday to an email seeking comment.

The DEA had declined for months to say whether any of its agents attended the rally, saying it could not comment on specific personnel matters.

If we receive information indicating an employee engaged in misconduct, DEAs policy is to promptly refer the case to the appropriate authorities for review, the agency told AP in January.

Ibrahim has denied breaking any laws, telling Fox News in March that he never even set foot on the stairs of the Capitol building. He said he went to the rally with his brother, an FBI agent, who faced no adverse action for attending.

When the crowd began to be hostile toward law enforcement, me being law enforcement myself I started to document everything, Ibrahim told host Tucker Carlson, adding he later gave the materials to the FBI so those criminals could face justice.

I wanted to aid law enforcement that day as best I could. I really didnt think anything of it, he said.

After flying back to Los Angeles, Ibrahim said, he was stripped of his badge and gun and fired after being suspended for two months for performance issues.

They got it wrong, he said of his termination. Me and my brother both served in the Army. I followed him into federal law enforcement. My sister is a Navy veteran. My mom was in the Pentagon on 9/11.

The saddest part about this, Ibrahim added, is I cant serve my country anymore.

In a WhatsApp group chat with at last five other law-enforcement officers, Ibrahim posted a photo of himself standing near barricades that had been pulled apart by the mob several minutes earlier, the OIG agent wrote. He also posted video in the chat that showed Ashli Babbitt, a woman fatally shot inside the Capitol, being taken from the building to an ambulance by emergency workers, the agent said.
Local

WSCC pays off more than $90K in student debt

Justin Cooper | Daily News Richard Wilson, vice-chair of the West Shore Community College board of trustees, right, smiles during a board meeting on Monday, July 19, while trustee Anthony Fabaz, left, reviews the agenda packet.

Unpaid student bills totaling $90,554 at West Shore Community College are set to be paid off with a federal pandemic relief grant.

The board of trustees approved the payment of student bills accumulated since March 13, 2020, along with several other uses for the funds, at their meeting yesterday.

In each of the last 10 years, the college has passed about $30,000 in unpaid student bills to collection agencies, WSCC President Scott Ward told the board yesterday.

After seven years with an agency, most of these debts are returned to the college and written off as a loss, he said.

There was a huge increase in unpaid balances during the pandemic, according to Ward. He said this was an opportunity to give struggling students a clean slate, since its typically students who dont graduate who leave their accounts unpaid.

This is money that often we do not see back and is a barrier for students to return, Ward said. Before they can re-register for a class, they would have to pay off anything they owe us.

A new type of employee is also set to be hired and paid using the grant.

Called an instructional designer, the new hire is intended to help WSCC navigate the continually changing online experience that were seeing, Ward said.

The designer is to be paid with $150,000 in grant funds over a two-year period.

They will train staff and work with them to design learning models, implement feedback, research new innovations, create educational content and more, Ward wrote in a memo to the board.

Ward also wrote that he intends to fund the position through the general fund after two years.

Estimated lost revenues of $425,257 are to be recovered with the grant. WSCC will retain $79,000 as the cost of managing the grant.

Over $2.2 million in grant funds have been allocated to WSCC through the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, which was established during the pandemic.

Before yesterday, the college had spent $154,037 of its grants, mostly on remote learning equipment and safety supplies.

Grant funds totaling $1,377,768 will remain following the expenditures approved yesterday.

Promoting student success

About 40 students who signed up for two remedial math and English courses next fall will instead be enrolled in college-level courses.

The board approved a $130,000 initiative to increase student success by fostering engagement, promoting support services and discontinuing the remedial courses.

Under a recent Michigan law, students aged 25 or older can attend community college tuition-free if the college follows a number of practices. One such practice is placing as many students as possible into college-level courses, rather than remedial ones.

Remedial courses often dont provide college credit and consume time and money that could be spent earning credits, Ward told the Daily News.

People are seeing that these are more barriers to student success than actually supports to students, Ward said.

The plan calls for in-class embedded tutors in the two college-level math and English to accompany the instructor, whose lessons will also be accessible online.

The embedded tutors would ideally be the adjunct faculty who taught the discontinued remedial courses, said Darby Johnsen, dean of arts and sciences.

The college is looking to integrate the remedial math course into a college-level course next semester, as it has already done with an English course, Johnsen said.

Though these students are being pushed into a more advanced class than they tested into, the plan intends to envelop WSCC students in a web of support, said Annie Jacobson, director of enrollment and student engagement.

According to the plan, embedded tutors will make seeking help seem more approachable to students. Then, seeking help from instructors, traditional tutors and other services will be easier, Johnsen said.

Alongside a year-round emphasis on wellness, there will be monthly focuses themed around national campaigns, such as National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Johnsen said.

Its the year of student supports, Johnsen told the Daily News. Thats really the focus for the whole year.

The cost of the initiative is spread over the next two years, at which point its effectiveness will be evaluated, Ward said.

Student engagement and community programming is estimated at $44,000, and embedded tutoring is estimated at $86,000.

Also on Monday

Fourteen students were approved to graduate this summer, including five from Ludington.
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Shiv Nadar, co-founder of India leading IT services firm HCL Technologies in 1975, has resigned as the Managing Director and board member of the firm.

He would be the Chairman Emeritus and strategic advisor to the board. Nadars daughter Roshni Nadar Malhotra, who was elected as the Chairperson last year, would continue in her role. HCL Tech CEO C Vijayakumar would accept as the company Managing Director, the management said on Monday.

Nadar had co-founded HCL Tech more than four decades ago mainly as a computer hardware firm. The Noida-headquartered company has crossed more than $10 billion revenue in 2021.

"Shiv Nadar, Chief Strategy Officer & Managing Director of the Company, on completing 76 years of age, has tendered his resignation as the Managing Director as well as the Director of the company with effect from close of business hours on July 19, 2021, the tech firm notified the stock exchanges in a filing.

The IT veteran earlier attempted to sell digital calculators through his business Microcomp and later founded HCL Tech with seven other colleagues with an investment of Rs 1.8 lakh. The firm later expanded to Singapore and sold IT hardware. Nadar currently owns nearly 60% shareholding in the firm.

In the meantime, the companys revenue for Q 1, FY22 grew by 2.2% sequentially at Rs 20,068 crore whereas earnings before income and tax (EBIT) declined by 2.1% at 19.6%, the lower end of the margin guidance that the company had provided earlier.

The firm said that the impact of one-time bonuses handed over to its employees during the June quarter worth Rs 728 crore wasnt factored in while calculating the profitability.

The firm has been able to maintain a healthy cash flow of $ 2.05 billion despite a dividend payout of Rs 4,344 crore.

HCLs contract value for the June quarter stood at $1.66 bn, up 37% y-o-y although the deal value almost halved in sequence. The deal-mix constituted of eight large services and four deals succeeds.
Pegasus is a spyware that is secretly installed on mobile phones and other devices operating on most versions of iOS and Android. Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group developed it. The Project Pegasus Vision 2021 suggests that recent Pegasus software can misuse all-new iOS versions up to iOS 14.6. According to the prominent media sources, Pegasus permits the keystroke monitoring of all communications from a phone and enables phone call and location tracking while allowing NSO Group to hijack both the mobile phone's microphone and camera, thus turning it into a constant surveillance device.

American private equity firm Francisco Partners previously owned the company, then bought back by the founders in 2019. The spyware is named after the mythical winged horse Pegasus. It is a Trojan horse that can be sent "flying through the air" to infect phones.

First Encounter

Pegasus was seen in August 2018 after a failed trial at installing it on expertise and the security vulnerabilities it misused. Since 2016, Pegasus could read text messages, track calls, collect passwords, track location, access the target device's microphone and camera, and harvest information from apps. News of the spyware caused significant media coverage. It was called the "most sophisticated" smartphone attack ever. It was the first time that a wicked remote exploit using breakout to gain open access to an iPhone.

Pegasus spyware Leaked database consisting Indian phone numbers.

Wire - Online news platform on 18 July 2021, reported a leaked database of thousands of telephone numbers, assumed to have been recorded by various government clients of an Israeli surveillance technology firm, holds over 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including those managed by ministers, opposition leaders, journalists, the legal community, business people, government officials, scientists, rights activists, and others. The website stated the verdicts followed an investigation by The Wire and other media partners.

The news website showed forensic tests administered as part of this project on a small cross-section of phones correlated with these numbers exposed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which ten are Indian. The Wire reported that it is impossible to conclusively declare whether it witnessed an attack attempt or was successfully negotiated without subjecting a phone to this technical analysis.

The confusion over the report, telephone numbers of Indian reporters, was on the hacking list of an unknown agency using the Pegasus software. The centre held to its earlier opinion that "no unauthorised interception" took place.

What was the Government's rejoinder?

Sources in the government showed that it has "nothing to hide" and "nothing to fear" and that they are ready to "reply to any query." They also stated that the "news article proves nothing" and "previous attempts at Pegasus-government link have failed." The sources also said the government is readying a "strong defence" to the political storm the issue is likely to raise.

A response by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to a media questionnaire told claims were addressed regarding the use of the software by the Indian State in the past. Those reports had no factual basis and were categorically dismissed by all parties. The government officials stated, this news report appears to be a casting expedition based on guesses and exaggerations to accuse the Indian democracy and its institutions.

In 2019, WhatsApp filed a lawsuit in a US court, citing Israeli surveillance firm NSO for supporting government spies break into the phones of about 1,400 users across four continents. Following reports, the journalists and activists in India were also targeted.

IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad told Rajya Sabha that "no unauthorized interception" occurred. Violation of the system is actionable in law. Anyone with a problem can register an FIR or a formal complaint, and the government will look into it. No un authorized interception has been done," he informed to the Upper House.

In response to an RTI query, the Ministry of Home Affairs denied purchasing or planning to purchase the Pegasus software. In its statement, the MeitY said India is a robust democracy confined to assuring the right to privacy to all its residents as a fundamental right.

Current : IT minister exposed the illegality of Pegasus snooping in India

Ashwini Vaishnaw said that reports proposing India used Israeli spyware Pegasus to hack journalists' phones, activists, and ministers were nothing but an "attempt to accuse Indian democracy and its well-established institutions."

Ashwini Vaishnaw, who was making his first sermon in Parliament as the new MeitY minister, said the "highly sensational story" has made several "over the top allegations." Still, there is "no substance behind them."

"It is not an accident that the reports have been published a day before the monsoon session of Parliament," he said. "In the past, similar accusations were made about the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp but there is no factual basis to these and have been categorically dismissed."

India is amongst the countries that used Israeli company NSO Groups Pegasus phone hacking software to target politicians, journalists, and activists. The investigation was based on a data leak of around 50,000 numbers collected by Amnesty International and Paris-based Forbidden Stories, a non-profit. To be sure, as the methodology of the investigation reveals, the presence of a number does not symbolize the individuals phone was hacked - just that it was of interest.

Is Pegasus a national security concern?

Whats more unnerving is that the malware can self-destruct if it cannot communicate with its command server for more than 60 days. This self-destruction protocol will also be initiated if installed on a wrong sim card or a wrong device, leaving one to think that this spyware knew who its target was.

Under duration of scrutiny, spyware acts as an installation device. After gaining access, it installs other modules that help it conduct different actions such as reading messages and email, listening to calls, capturing screenshots, logging pressed keys, getting browser history, contacts, and more.

Since it has been proved that phones examined in India had an invasion of Pegasus, this product is only sold to vetted governments. The question arises which government? If the Government of India says they have not done it, some other government did it. Then it is a more serious national security concern. If it turns out that it is our government and it is authorized to do it, then the government needs to explain that the law only allows the interception of communication for national security and terrorism; otherwise, it is illegal. The government needs to cooperate in a probe.
Vegrow, a business-to-business agritech platform for fruits and vegetables, has increasd $13 million in a series A investment round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Elevation Capital. The round also saw involvement from existing investors Matrix Partners India, Ankur Capital, Better Capital and Titan Capital.

Established in 2020, Vegrow has scaled speedily among both farmers and B2B customers, resulting in nearly 20x top-line growth with a presence in over 30 cities. At the heart of this growth is their unique technology platform, which powers everything from farm discovery, create quality profiling, market intelligence to smart matchmaking between farm-level inventory and customer requirements. The impact of this platform is clear in deep customer love and positive unit economics early on in the firms journey.

The funding would assist the company to expand to 100 cities, invest in technology and launch novel products. Vegrow was founded by IIT alumni Praneeth Kumar, Shobhit Jain, Mrudhukar Batchu and Kiran Naik.

At Vegrow, we focus on select products as compared to building a large basket. Each of these products is a multi-billion dollars opportunity, said the founders of Vegrow. This enables us to go deep in the product value chain and unlock massive growth in this sector. In fact, we have become one of the largest companies for pomegranates in the country in less than a year, they stated.

While Indias B2B agri market is striking at $300 billion, it is also a complex maze of fragmented supply with over 120 million farmers growing across 30 states. Vegrow is on a mission to unlock the power of Indias agri value chain, at first focusing on the $50 billion fruits and high-value vegetables sector. The firm addresses challenges around farmland under-utilization and supply fragmentation for farmers and delivers consistent quality along with fill rate to customers. Their unique farmer engagement model and tech-driven quality profiling are core to delivering superior returns to farmers, reducing supply-chain wastage and getting better procurement for wholesalers.

Agriculture as a sector has largely remained removed from digital disruptions, despite the strong tailwinds of increasing internet penetration and adoption, stated Akarsh Shrivastava, vice president, Elevation Capital. We believe any effort to digitize these value chains will have to keep farmers and their interests at the core. Vegrows farm-centred approach, coupled with strong insights, which are allowing the team to fundamentally re-imagine and augment these supply chains, stood out in our interactions.

Vegrows developed deep agri expertise and a hyper-growth marketplace culture having previously worked across firms such as ITC, Urban Company and Chronus. This combination of deep agri value chain knowledge, product thinking, and farmer-empathy makes for a powerful driving force in the segment.

Ritu Verma, partner, Ankur Capital said while Indian consumers and businesses have seen tremendous changes in the past 10 years through numerous waves of innovation, the reality is that fruits and vegetables are grown by independent farmers in a nearly identical manner, and with dwindling yields. Vegrows tech-enabled processes allow the company to grow their margins while also driving value to the farmers they work with, stated Verma.

Vaibhav Agrawal, partner, Lightspeed, said that having invested in commerce companies like Pinduoduo, OYO and Zetwerk, the company has realized that the number one pressing require of the small supplier, a farmer in this case, is higher revenue realization. Its not accessing inputs, credit or crop advisory.

Therefore, we believe companies building marketplaces between farmers and buyers, using technology to eliminate inefficiencies will have the largest market opportunity eventually, stated Agrawal.

Sudipto Sannigrahi, vice president, Matrix India, said the Vegrow team has the unique experience and know-how of grassroots agriculture. Infact, a few co-founders come from farming familie!  and of building high growth internet marketplaces, stated Sannigrahi. We love the companys focus on aggregating fragmented farms to help unlock economies of scale with technology-led interventions which has enabled them to scale rapidly and profitably over the last 12 months. We believe they are well-positioned to emerge as the front runners of this space and streamline Indias largest yet unorganised industry, he added.
Venture Catalysts, one of the country's largest angel investor networks, on Monday said it has bought the India operations of seed and early-stage fund and accelerator, Z Nation Lab for an undisclosed sum.

Headquartered in Silicon Valley in the US, Z Nation Lab has operations in India and in the US. It has run diverse initiatives like 'KHOJ' in association with leading universities like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in India to organize global startup boot camps held in Mumbai and Silicon Valley. To date, Z Nation Lab has guided more than 200 entrepreneurs and invested in startups like Fampay, Delightree, Knight Fintech, Gmetri, Ubits, Beehero, Datapoem, Odeko, Hotify, Conversion.ai, and others through their seed fund in the US.

'Since inception Venture Catalysts has a collaborative approach in supporting the India startup ecosystem. This is a further step towards the same and simultaneously building inorganic growth of Venture Catalysts,' Anuj Golecha, co-founder of Venture Catalysts, stated. VCats has recently joined the US market to promote and invest in startups founded by Indians who are aiming to enlarge in the US and/or US startups targeting the Indian market, he added.

'This collaboration with Z Nation Lab team will enable Venture Catalyst to leverage the network and expertise of the Z Nation Lab, to work together to reach and fund more entrepreneurs from India looking at global expansion and take them to exit, Golecha stated. Z Nation Lab would continue to invest in high-growth enterprise tech startups targeting the customers in the North American market and focused on M&A exits in 3 to 5 years, the statement said.

With this move, the Z Nation lab business is underlining its approach to partner with high-growth ventures in emerging markets like India and South Asian markets, whilst giving unique access and insights to their portfolio startups who want to tap into opportunities in the US, it added. ZNL also targets to support moving startup headquarters to the US by leveraging its expertise in helping set up startups in Silicon Valley.

'I have been working with the Venture Catalysts team for the last three years, and I have been incredibly impressed by their growth and deep penetration into the Indian startup ecosystem not just in the metros but also in smaller tier 2 and 3 towns. They have truly democratized early-stage investing in India in the last 5 years,' Amit Jain, co-founder of Z Nation Lab, stated.
Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting and business process Services Company, proclaimed the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services and its commitment to invest $1 billion in cloud technologies, capabilities, acquisitions and partnerships over the next three years. As the cloud opportunity increases, Wipro FullStride Cloud Services unites the full portfolio of Wipros cloud-related capabilities, offerings and talent to better orchestrate the cloud journey for clients. The commitment creates on Wipros existing and extensive cloud business with clients and notably expands the investment with its partners and hyperscalers, creating industry solutions that accelerate results for mutual clients.

Wipro has seen consistent development in its cloud business and today employs over 79,000 cloud professionals and more than 10,000 people certified by the leading cloud service providers. Over the past 12 months, Wipro has proclaimed important cloud-related wins with Telefonica Germany / O2, Verifone, and E.ON in addition to METRO AG, one of the largest deals in Wipros history.

Today, cloud adoption is at the core of any IT transformation initiative, and our clients have been turning to Wipro for help with this. With our $1 billion investment in cloud capabilities, and the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, we are in a far stronger position to simplify, orchestrate and accelerate the cloud journey for our clients, stated Thierry Delaporte, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Wipro Limited.

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services would work with clients to better align business and IT with the cloud imperative, create significant business value and increase competitive differentiation. It would also enhance their business agility, embed resilience and significantly optimize their technology investments in favor of change and innovation. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services puts client and business requires first while orchestrating simplicity in an otherwise complex ecosystem.

Cloud adoption and innovation are an essential part of our IT strategy. For a company like METRO that operates in 25 countries, quickly migrating to the cloud enablesdecentralization, agility, speed and flexibility in engineering and development. We are delighted to have a multi-year strategic partner and leader like Wipro to support our cloud strategy and simplify a complex, technology ecosystem for our success and growth, stated Timo Salzsieder, CIO, METRO AG.

With the introduction of the Chief Growth Office, we are renewing our focus on our global partnership ecosystem, amplifying and simplifyinghow we go to market together to orchestrate cloud transformationfor our clients. We will announce a new leader for this group very soon. stated Stephanie Trautman, Chief Growth Officer, Wipro Limited.

Wipro FullStride Cloud Services is an association between Wipros Chief Growth Office and existing Global Business Lines to create an integrated and comprehensive cloud transformation capability for customers, partners and cloud experts. With the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, Wipro is determined to make cloud innovation and progress thrive, fueled by passion, collaboration, and boldness for clients.
YouTube has bought social commerce startup Simsim, the Google-owned company said on Tuesday. Neither of the companies unveiled the terms of the deal, but two people with information of the matter said that the Indian startup was valued at over $70 million. Simsim chief executive didnt answer to a query about the acquisition Monday evening (IST).

Two-year-old Simsim had increased about $17 million and was last valued at $50.1 million in its 2020 Series B financing round.

Gurgaon-headquartered startup supports small businesses in India transition to e-commerce by using the power of video and creators. The simsim app provides as a platform to connect local businesses, influencers and customers.

The thesis, as per Rohan Malhotra of Good Capital, an early backer of Simsim is: micro-influencers are more effective at building a targeted audience (growth), creating entertaining experiences (retention), building trust (higher value) and personalising messaging (conversion). Consumer social platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc.) cannot meaningfully monetise via advertising-financed models in India; this unlocks the opportunity for more deeply integrated transactional platforms. New internet users in India need an interactive seller-led experience to replicate the offline e-commerce experience this market is used to.

He, like everyone else, denied commenting on the size of the deal.

We started Simsim with the mission of helping users across India shop online with ease, enabled through small sellers and brands showcasing and selling their products using the power of content by trusted influencers. Being a part of the YouTube and Google ecosystem furthers simsim in its mission, Simsim cofounders Amit Bagaria, Kunal Suri and Saurabh Vashishtha stated in a joint statement.

We cannot think of a better ecosystem in which to build simsim, in terms of technology, reach, creator networks and culture. We cant wait to be part of YouTube and are excited to build simsim within the most admired tech company in the world.
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Educated at Newington College and Macquarie University, Mr Leckie was described as a profound force in the Australian television industry, with an executive career spanning 40 years from 1977 to 2017. Larger than life, irascible, curmudgeonly, eloquent and charming were just some terms used to describe the man who dominated Australian broadcast media, and was as famous for cutting deals over a long, boozy lunch at his local, the Woollahra Hotel, as he was in an expletive-filled boardroom showdown. Mike Sneesby, Nine CEO, said Mr Leckie was a giant of television. He set the culture of excellence at Nine that still exists in our DNA today. Mike Sneesby, Nine CEO He contributed enormously to the success we all shared with him here at Nine, his instincts and leadership heralded the golden era of Australian television, he said.

He adored his family and so many of us stayed in touch as a friend even after he left. He set the culture of excellence at Nine that still exists in our DNA today and we thank him for that. Seven West Media managing director James Warburton said: Inspiring, engaging, loud, passionate and famously difficult at times, he was an extraordinary salesperson and an intuitive TV programmer. Without a doubt, he was the best TV executive this country has ever seen and an important influence and mentor for so many people and careers. He was once labelled the last of the rock star CEOs and Id say that was a pretty good description. David Leckie and Kerry Stokes at a Seven AGM. Credit:Nine Seven West Media chairman, Kerry Stokes described Mr Leckie as a close friend, who helped revive the fortunes of the Seven network when he took the helm in 2003.

David achieved the turnaround quickly and effectively, building a winning team, financial and programming model, which delivered us leadership of the TV industry for many years, he said. He had a magnificent grasp of television and what people wanted to enjoy, whether it be news and current affairs or light entertainment programming, and he achieved success in every aspect of his leadership of Seven. Former Nine Entertainment CEO Hugh Marks, who was first hired by Mr Leckie, described the huge influence Mr Leckie had on many senior executives in the industry today. Of course, he knew when to challenge, but he also knew when to be supportive, Mr Marks said. With that rare blend of skill in both the commercial and the creative. And an ability to bring people together with a common purpose. He will be sorely missed.

Among his closest friends and associates for more than 40 years was former Seven and Nine news boss Peter Meakin, who now consults to the Ten Network. James Packer and David Leckie face off in 2009. Credit:AFR News David was many things but when he believed he was right he would stand his ground. I witnessed him going toe-to-toe with moguls like Kerry Packer, he said. He was not afraid to take them on when he felt he had the facts behind him. I remember the day Kerry Packer called me up to say, I just got rid of your mate, but David just took it in his stride and moved on. He could be a ferocious critic, but under the gruff exterior there was a very sensitive person, I think he would be surprised by how many people actually loved him.
A year of not being able to be as in control of our personal finances as we would like has prompted a thirst for financial knowledge as we look for ways to get back on our financial feet after the economic instability caused by the pandemic.

According to the survey, 55 per cent of respondents are placing greater importance on how much theyre saving compared to a year ago, while 25 per cent plan to start or contribute to an emergency savings fund as a key financial goal in the next five years.

Our top three financial regrets are not adding extra to our savings (31 per cent), not saving more for retirement (17 per cent) and not contributing more to our super (14 per cent).

MLCs research echoes Nines recent State of the Nation insights, in which 31 per cent of those surveyed said they needed support and advice to grow long-term wealth.

It also shows that there has been a 113 per cent increase in those aged 35-54 wanting expert help to put the wheels in motion to set themselves up for retirement.

Collectively, these insights demonstrate that learning about money is becoming more of a trend; and so is putting what we learn into practice.

More time for living

Its fair to say that the pandemic has made Australians more aware that life is fragile, prompting us to be more financially cautious, says demographer and consumer insights expert Simon Kuestenmacher.

More 35-54 year olds than ever are concerned about their retirement planning. Credit: Getty.

Even people who navigated the pandemic without income losses look at their portfolios more frequently, Kuestenmacher says.

This is very much to be expected in times of economic uncertainty. Many of us realised that good times will be followed by bad times, and that three decades of uninterrupted economic growth can come to an end overnight. Educating ourselves about our finances is meant to mitigate risk, so we can each prepare for the next crisis.

Jenneke Mills, Manager, MLC technical services, says: If we have learnt anything over the past year, its that our lives are busy, and often too fast. For many of us, we have been forced to slow down.

Slowing down has given us the time to take a closer look at our finances. For some, this has contributed towards a sense of insecurity, as people realise that they have become a little out of touch with their financial wellbeing, and questioned whether they could have been better savers to provide more certainty about the future, Mills says.

Couples often separate lifes tasks, with one person taking care of responsibilities such as managing money and paying bills, while the other fulfills the caretaker role  looking after children, and perhaps ageing parents.

What we often see is that the person in the relationship not tasked with managing the household finances might start to feel out of touch with their financial health and even some of the more fundamental concepts relating to investing, paying off debt and saving for retirement, Mills says.

Whether youre in a relationship or not, the steps that need to be taken to take control of your financial future are the same, she says.

By taking small steps to reconnect with your financial wellbeing, not only will you build up your knowledge and feel empowered to make decisions, but youll also regain that confidence  and that can bring you peace of mind.

Like so many, Lyon is looking forward to being in a position one day to be able to make decisions about when and how she works. And when she takes time off to pursue some of her other interests, such as travel.

I love my work, so to me, retirement means being able to work a little less to enjoy the other things in life, she says.

Download your practical retirement planning guide at mlc.com.au.
The towers of toilet paper stare me down. They are nestled against the tiles of the downstairs shower. Inside the shower, next to the toilet paper are boxes of tissues. Next to them are boxes of dried noodles and 25 kilograms of rice. Enter  my parents home: Pre-COVID.

We arrived as refugees from Vietnam in 1980. A former law student and French-literate banker became a sweatshop worker and a machine operator, forging a new life in the suburbs of western Sydney. Generations of colonisation in Vietnam had already bred within every citizen a permanent state of vigilance and readiness for hard times. Compounded in my parents by prison camps, war, refugee camps, then more discrimination and a new Australian poverty, this mindset became my normal.

Cat Thao Nguyen was born in a refugee camp in 1979 and arrived in Sydney in 1980. Credit:

I bought them a townhouse in 2015, finally getting them out of community housing. It was so spacious. The original owners kept it pristine. They had erected a pantry space under the stairs. When my mother saw this storage, I knew I had to make an offer.

Fast forward, gone is the Scandinavian minimalist white interior. Hello mash of Virgin Mary altar alongside ancestor portraits, an exercise bike in the living room, two 100-litre freezers (one in the living room and the other in the garage), two portable ovens (one for me when I move back to Sydney).
Young women and girls are being stalked and abused online, have had their devices and accounts hacked and have been coerced into sending nude or sexual content, in behaviour that has become more pronounced during COVID-19 lockdowns.

The broadest survey yet of front-line support workers, released on Wednesday by leading researchers at Monash University for Australias National Research Organisation for Womens Safety, has reported the perpetrators are mostly men aged up to 34, using technology as a means to control and intimidate former and current partners.

Noelle Martin has experienced tech abuse and is now calling for tougher action against perpetrators. Credit:Tony McDonough

Image-based abuse is identified as a key problem. More than one-quarter of the 338 agencies surveyed were aware of victims who had been threatened with the posting online or sending to others of nude or sexual photos or videos, while one in five has worked with victims who were pressured, coerced or blackmailed into sending explicit images.

Former WA Young Australian of the Year Noelle Martins image was stolen and then manipulated to appear in fake pornographic images and videos online. One video used a photo of her from when she was just 17 years old. Ms Martin, now aged 26 and a lawyer, said issuing takedown orders to websites, which the countrys eSafety Commissioner has the power to do, was not enough.
By now I trust youve learned about demisexuals, an identity that sits on the asexual spectrum, which youve surely also heard of, it being closely allied to the aromantic spectrum?

What, you reckon Im talking woke gobbledygook? Well, Ive a good mind to order you to do the work so as to spare me from undertaking the labour of explaining these intricate new subjectivities, but Im feeling uncharacteristically gracious today so youre in luck.

Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, daughter of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, has described herself as demisexual. Credit:AP

Demisexuals, according to the literature, do not experience sexual attraction until they have formed a strong emotional connection with a prospective partner.

I was ignorant of the orientation until roughly a fortnight ago when Michaela Kennedy-Cuomo, daughter of New York governor Andrew Cuomo, granddaughter of the late and great Senator Robert F. Kennedy, outed herself on an Instagram livestream.
Locked down again. Juggling both remote work and childrens learning, mental health and wellbeing is fast overtaking the cost of living as a major concern for most Australians.

As Sydneysiders confront growing uncertainty about when they can return to workplaces and send children back to school, researchers are highlighting the impact of prolonged isolation on our mental health.

Sydney is facing an extended lockdown and Melbourne has entered the second week of its fifth lockdown since COVID-19 arrived on our shores. Its not an easy time for anyone and Atlassian co-founder and co-chief executive Mike Cannon-Brookes this week urged Australian employers to be mindful of the rising mental health risks of lockdowns on staff.

The Herald is glad hes spoken out, especially at this critical time. With the increasingly blurred boundaries between work and home and the potential impact that can have on mental health, Cannon-Brookes says employers need to support staff juggling work with other responsibilities  including parenting. Some big accounting firms are already doing this by providing staff with online educational activities for their children.

A survey of 1200 Australians conducted by PwC for Atlassian shows that mental health and wellness this year overtook the cost of living as the most important societal issue. The research found one in four people who responded to the survey experienced mental illness and distress and an inability to switch off from work. The study also found that burnout was experienced by 30 per cent of Generation Z and 23 per cent of Generation Y employees in the past 12 months.
An apartment building on Sydneys northern beaches is the latest project to be issued orders to fix serious defects as the states building watchdog cracks down on shoddy construction work.

Atlas Capital & Equities, the developer of the building on Condamine Street in Manly Vale, was handed orders on Monday to rectify defects in the complexs waterproofing and car-stacking system.

It was also issued a prohibition order that prevents it from settling with buyers of off-the-plan apartments in the complex until the NSW Building Commissioner is satisfied the problems have been fixed.

The apartment complex at 259 Condamine Street in Manly Vale. Credit:James Brickwood

Inspectors from the states building watchdog visited the site on July 1 and found that serious defects could arise from waterproofing of balconies and the installation of a system that stacks cars. They determined that a lack of safety measures for the stacker could result in serious injuries.
Satanists are crying foul about their human rights being breached after being refused access into Queensland state schools to teach religious instruction classes.

The Noosa Temple of Satan has challenged a Queensland Education Department decision in the Supreme Court to stop its members teaching classes about the devil, seeking a ruling the group is a religious denomination.

Noosa Temple of Satan founder Robin Bristow aka Brother Samael Demo-Gorgon.

After parents at several schools officially asked for their childrens religion to be recorded as Satanism, Noosa Temple of Satan member Trevor Bell submitted forms in February to become a religious instructor at the Centenary and Sunshine Beach state high schools and Tewantin and Wilston state schools.

But in March, Education Department state schools deputy director-general Peter Kelly rejected the request, telling Noosa Temple of Satan founder Robin Bristow the Department had decided the Temple was not a religious denomination or society.
Health Minister Martin Foley said it was great news. There is no community exposure sites for some 16 of those 22 cases, and for the other remaining six, their exposure sites are reasonably low due to the current lockdown, he said. Loading And that is also something that should give us all a degree of confidence and hope that this response that were now into is working. Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said a case in Roxburgh Park announced on Tuesday, a woman aged in her 20s, has now been formally linked to the City of Hume outbreak in Melbournes north. Of the 22 new cases, five are linked to Trinity Grammar, five to Miss Frankie restaurant in Cremorne, three to Young & Jackson hotel, three to St Patricks Primary School in Murrumbeena, two to AAMI Park, two to Bacchus Marsh Grammar, one to the West Gate Tunnel and one to the City of Hume outbreak.

There was one case in hotel quarantine, taking the states active cases to 118. Testing numbers were strong, with 59,355 tests processed on Tuesday while 18,099 Victorians rolled up their sleeves for a COVID-19 jab. Mr Foley said a record number of Victorians had queued up on a wintry Melbourne day on Tuesday to get a COVID test. Almost 60,000 people right across the state braved some pretty inclement weather to return the highest single days worth of tests, he said. Mr Foley also said that 98.8 per cent of the tests were turned around by the next day. Everyone needs to get tested if they have even the slightest of symptoms, it continues to be the most important thing you can do, he said.

Mr Foley singled out the Phillip Island area, which had some COVID-19 fragment wastewater detections on Monday, saying the community had come forward in large numbers after a few positive cases travelled to the area last week. Loading Minister for Industry Support and Recovery Martin Pakula alluded to the fact that Victorias budget, like their federal counterparts and governments across the country, has been drained by the payments needed to sustain ailing businesses and people put out of work by lockdowns. Theres no question that the pandemic, whether its the federal budget with JobKeeper, or state budgets with business support, and all other kinds of relief, state budgets and the Commonwealth budget [have] taken a hit, as a consequence of the pandemic, he said. The alternatives would be to not provide that support and to have business failures [and] individuals unable to work without getting any sort of support in a way that I think most people would find completely unfathomable and unacceptable.

Mr Pakula estimated that the state government has spent billions on various support payments throughout the pandemic. On Wednesday health authorities listed additional exposure sites throughout the city. Most of the sites were listed as tier 2, the lesser category. The Health Department had listed a total of 12 sites, with just one tier 1, a Subway in St Kilda on July 13. Health authorities confirmed that a member of the Barwon Heads family is currently in intensive care. On Wednesday, there were five people in hospital with COVID-19 in Victoria. Authorities also detected one new case in Gippsland, who was isolating while infectious. They caught the virus, authorities say, at a sporting event.

Professor Sutton said the Delta variant has spiked to 107 cases in nine days, while last time, with a different variant, it took a month. Professor Sutton said he believed the number of community infections had peaked, but expected to see more household contacts return positive tests. He said wed probably also see more people in intensive care, given the Delta variants severity. Asked what the situation would have looked like had Victoria not locked down last week, Professor Sutton said there would be up to 300 cases by now. If we had locked down today, there would have been thousands of cases in the next few weeks. Wed be in a world of hurt over coming weeks if we hadnt done what weve done, he said.

Three removalists from Sydney caught sneaking into Victoria in Mildura were fined and sent home. In NSW, authorities detected 110 cases, 43 of which were not isolating while infectious. There are currently 106 people in hospital, 23 in the ICU, 11 ventilated and 53 of the 110 cases have an unknown source. On Tuesday, Premier Daniel Andrews questioned NSWs containment of its coronavirus outbreak, labelling it a second wave. The hard block on entries from red zones, including all of NSW and the ACT, will last for at least two weeks and rehashes the rigid border policy that had not been adopted since the new year period, when thousands of Victorians found themselves stranded interstate. Under the new rules, the only people allowed into Victoria are authorised workers and those with compassionate exemptions.

Mr Andrews extended Victorias lockdown for another week after 13 new cases  including one mystery case  were recorded on Tuesday. Stay-at-home orders, a five-kilometre movement limit and mask-wearing in all settings will remain in place until 11.59pm next Tuesday. Melbourne will have spent 185 days  or six months  under tough coronavirus restrictions when the state is due to be released from lockdown next week. In some areas of Melbourne, like Brimbank in the citys west and north-west and Wyndham in Melbournes outer south-west, Victorians have been subjected to even longer hard lockdowns. Loading
Between 10,000 and 20,000 tonnes of crude oil has escaped from the ship, which was being towed out to sea for surveying last night.

The damaged oil tanker, with the front of its bow missing, off the coast of Western Australia.

PERTH: Australia is threatened with its worst environmental disaster after thousands of tonnes of oil escaped from a crippled tanker off Western Australia yesterday.

First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on July 22, 1991

If the wind turns coastward and the seas rise again, the spill - said by authorities to be 25 kilometres long and 100 metres wide - could hit the coast within days and threaten marine and birdlife havens.

In heavy seas yesterday, police and RAAF helicopters winched the 37 crew of the 97,000-tonne Greek tanker, Kirki, to safety despite 25-knot winds and five-metre waves.

The ship had appeared likely to sink 20 kilometres off the WA coast, near the fishing village of Cervantes, 200 kilometres north of Perth, after rupturing its hull and catching alight early yesterday morning.

Captain Richard Purkiss, head of the WA Marine and Harbours Department, said: That is a catastrophe-type proportion oil spill. That is the worst category you could possibly have. Its a major, major spill.

He said late last night, however, that the high concentration of kerosene in the oil had already caused between 40 and 50 per cent of the spill to evaporate.
Governance experts fear Australia is sliding down the slippery slope of corruption, calling on the federal government to overhaul its planned integrity commission in the wake of an auditor-general report into a program funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars into Coalition-held seats.

Professor AJ Brown, leader of the Centre for Governance and Public Policys public integrity program and a board member of Transparency International Australia, said Prime Minister Scott Morrison could make a stand for better administration by toughening the proposed integrity commission.

The Croydon railway station in Melbourne is one of the car parks promised to be upgraded as part of the governments program. Credit:Paul Jeffers

The Auditor-General earlier this year found the Commuter Car Park Fund, used in the run-up to the 2019 election to promise new car parks and upgrades near train stations at 47 sites, overwhelmingly delivered projects to Coalition seats.

In a Senate hearing this week, the Auditor-Generals office revealed a government-compiled list of the 20 most marginal seats ahead of the 2019 election formed the basis for the program, which so far has delivered just two completed car parks.
A work health and safety company that harassed a Sydney Water employee when it featured her on a poster reading Feel great - lubricate! without her knowledge has lost its attempt to overturn a $200,000 payout.

The NSW Supreme Court ruled that the fact it didnt intend to humiliate her was irrelevant, saying the fact Reem Yelda viewed the poster as unwelcome and it was objectively sexual and likely to humiliate her were the factors that mattered.

The Supreme Court has upheld Reem Yeldas harassment case but she is still pursuing Sydney Water. Credit:Cole Bennetts

It was plainly unwelcome conduct for Ms Yelda literally to be made the poster-woman for sexual self-lubrication to her all-male colleagues, the court ruled on Monday.

Vitality Works, a national health and safety firm that is part of the Seventh Day Adventist Churchs Sanitarium company, had designed the poster to encourage staff to warm up their joints before working for a spine health campaign.
We know the businesses and families will do it tough over these next seven days, he said. Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief Paul Guerra said the extension was devastating for business. Businesses understand the need to protect public health, but they cant keep bearing the disproportionate cost of lockdowns, he said. South Australia moved into its own seven-day lockdown from 6pm on Tuesday in response to a cluster sourced back to a man who spent 10 days in hospital in Sydney before flying to Adelaide. SA will be declared a red zone from 11.59pm on Wednesday. The Premier announced a week-long extension to the initial five-day lockdown on Tuesday. Credit:Eddie Jim

Mr Andrews acknowledged the very challenging call to ban all arrivals from Sydney, a move that resembles his greatest good for the greatest number push to slash international arrival caps in the hope of avoiding further lockdowns. Victorians in red zones, as defined by Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton, were previously allowed to complete their 14-day quarantine at home. The Premier revealed restrictions in the ensuing weeks would hinge heavily on virus numbers in Sydney and measures they may put in place. Ill just remind you all, we had a ring of steel around Melbourne last year, and it didnt just protect Victoria, it protected the whole country, he said, in reference to the police checkpoints installed to separate Melbourne from regional Victoria. Ive had to announce these red-zone permit changes today. I dont get any joy from doing that, having to say to people who want to come home for the best of reasons, no you cant  [but] they are not locked into Sydney, so they must be locked out of Victoria. That is the choice Ive had to make.

Asked if he would like NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian to introduce a ring of steel around Sydney and the neighbouring areas that are in lockdown, Mr Andrews said thats entirely a matter for them. I dont want to see more cases from Sydney ... those steps are a matter for them. Arrivals from red zones will be sent back on a return flight or put into hotel quarantine in Melbourne  although a spokeswoman confirmed to The Age that the Victorian government lacks the legal framework to charge domestic travellers for hotel quarantine, meaning each travellers approximate $3500 stay would be funded by taxpayers. About 21,000 people have entered Victoria on red-zone permits in the past month and while almost all have adhered to home quarantine, one person broke it to visit Coles in Craigieburn, where they passed COVID-19 to a friend. The City of Hume outbreak now has 11 cases.

Loading Associate Professor Kamradt-Scott, an expert in the spread and control of infectious diseases, argued Victorian residents who were locked out of the state needed to be supported by the government. There are different and very legitimate reasons why people may need to travel, such as supporting a loved one, providing care ... attending funerals, he said. But Associate Professor Trauer, from the epidemiological modelling unit at Monash University, warned the two-week ban probably wont be long enough. He said the most dangerous period for a leak from NSW was not right now, but if Victoria eliminated the Delta variant, eased lockdown and there was still a COVID epidemic running rampant in Sydney.

Thats going to be the most dangerous time for us because we will be going back to normal interaction, he said. This means any case drifting across [from NSW] will have the potential to cause an epidemic in Victoria. The epidemiologist said the traffic light permit zone border controls were not up to the task of containing the highly infectious Delta variant and a strict border may need to remain in place ongoing until NSW squashed its outbreak. Opposition leader Michael OBrien agreed with Mr Andrews belief that Victorians in NSW had been given enough notice to return home before Tuesday but said the government should have done more to solidify the border earlier. Loading

Weve been calling for weeks now for a roll out of rapid testing. If those removalists had been subject to rapid testing at the border ... they could have been identified within 15 minutes as being positive cases, and turned back, he said. In a sign of Victorian contact tracers difficulty in extracting information from the Sydney removalists who sparked the states largest cluster, another exposure site emerged on Tuesday, with a BP roadhouse in the western Victorian town of Nhill confirmed as a tier-two location. On Tuesday night, the Gippsland Primary Health Unit confirmed a new positive case in the Wellington Shire, which covers towns including Sale, Yarram and Maffra. It said the Wellington Respiratory Clinic would increase capacity but there were no exposure sites associated with the positive case because the person was in quarantine while infectious. Other testing sites will also be set up in Sale and Yarram on Wednesday.

Authorities said on Tuesday that the lockdown could not be lifted until almost all new cases had been in isolation while they were infectious. Four of Mondays 13 new cases had spent time infectious in the community. Most of Tuesdays new cases are linked to the outbreak at the Ms Frankie cafe in Cremorne, where a further three staff members, two patrons and two household primary contacts had tested positive for the virus. Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton said cases were increasingly in isolation while infectious. Credit:Eddie Jim There were two new cases at Trinity Grammar, two household contacts of an MCG case, one from the group that toured Phillip Island and a mystery case at Roxburgh Park, believed to be connected to the City of Hume outbreak. There are now 18,000 close contacts throughout the state, one-third of them in regional areas and the exposure site list has passed 350 after more venues were added late on Wednesday night.

Three of the states 96 active cases were in hospital, none in intensive care. Victorian Tourism Industry council chief executive Felicia Mariani bemoaned the lockdown extension and said restrictions across the country were crushing potential travellers confidence. Our members are telling us that it takes them four to six weeks to get their business rhythms back to pre-lockdown operations, and three months to get their trading levels back to what they were experiencing prior to any lockdown, she said. Ms Mariania said the spend from domestic and international tourists nationwide had halved from $150 billion in early 2020 to about $80 billion currently. With Benjamin Preiss, David Estcourt and Paul Sakkal
London: British MPs pushing to take a tougher stance on Beijing have been told that a cyber attack had been launched against them and legislators from around the globe, a day after Five Eyes nations and allies accused Chinas Ministry of State Security of carrying out a fresh high-tech intrusion.

The MPs were told that a successful intrusion had taken place and that another was imminent and that co-chairs of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) were the specific targets.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith learned of the attack from a colleague. Credit:Marco Del Grande

Former Conservative Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith who helped found the IPAC told the Commons that he had only learnt of the threat via his IPAC colleagues and not from his own government.

I understand now that there is intelligence from Five Eyes sources that shows that a very active and direct threat from the Chinese government is aimed directly at the co-chairs of the IPAC, Duncan Smith said.
The Washington Post and its partner news organisations in 10 countries confirmed the ownership of these numbers and others cited in this article through public records, journalists contact books, and queries to government officials or other close associates of the potential targets  though in some cases it was not possible to determine whether the phone numbers were active ones or former ones. The Post confirmed five of the numbers itself. The rest were confirmed by its partners. Calls to almost all of the phone numbers on Monday and Tuesday yielded cancelled calls or changed numbers. A handful of people picked up the line. Others responded to text messages. A French journalism non-profit, Forbidden Stories, and the human rights group Amnesty International had access to the list of more than 50,000 numbers. They shared the list with The Post and the other news organisations. The purpose of the list is unknown and NSO disputes that it was a list of surveillance targets. The data has many legitimate and entirely proper uses having nothing to do with surveillance or with NSO, a Virginia attorney representing the company, Tom Clare, wrote to Forbidden Stories.

But forensic examination by Amnestys Security Lab of 67 smartphones affiliated with numbers on the list found 37 that had either been successfully penetrated by Pegasus or showed signs of attempted penetration. The analyses by Amnesty also found that many of the phones showed signs of infection or attempted infection minutes or even seconds after time stamps that appeared for their numbers on the list. Loading NSO  just one of several major players in this market  says it has 60 government agency clients in 40 countries. In every case, the company says, the targets are supposed to be terrorists and criminals, such as paedophiles, drug lords and human traffickers. The company says it specifically prohibits targeting law-abiding citizens, including government officials carrying out their ordinary business. NSO chief executive Shalev Hulio said his company had policies to guard against abuse in a phone interview with The Post on Sunday, after an initial set of stories about his company appeared in news reports worldwide, under the heading of the Pegasus Project. Every allegation about misuse of the system is concerning me. It violates the trust that we give customers, Hulio said. I believe that we need to check every allegation. And if we check every allegation, we might find that some of it is true. And if we find that it is true, we will take strong action.

However common spying on national leaders may be in general, public revelations about it often spark controversy. When former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the United States had tapped into a phone used by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, it caused months of uproar in that country and strained otherwise close relations between the two nations. In response to detailed questions from the investigative consortium, NSO said it monitored how its spyware was used and cancelled access to the system for any client that misused it. But it also said its clients, not the company itself, were responsible for its use. NSO Group will continue to investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action based on the results of these investigations, the statement said. This includes shutting down of a customers system, something NSO has proven its ability and willingness to do, due to confirmed misuse, done it multiple times in the past, and will not hesitate to do again if a situation warrants. In a separate letter on Tuesday, it also said we can confirm that at least three names in your inquiry Emmanuel Macron, King Mohammed VI, and [World Health Organisation Director General] Tedros Ghebreyesus  are not, and never have been, targets or selected as targets of NSO Group customers. A person familiar with NSO operations who has spoken earlier on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters told The Post that among clients the company had suspended in recent years were agencies in Mexico. The person declined to detail which agencies had been suspended.

But reports of Pegasus abuse have been rampant in Mexico, and more than 15,000 Mexican phone numbers are on the list, including that of former president Felipe Calderon. The investigation found he had been added to the list after his term ended in 2012. Burundis prime minister, Alain-Guillaume Bunyoni, was added to the list in 2018, before he took office, the records show. So were the numbers of Kazakhstans future president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and its future prime minister, Askar Mamin. Loading Key figures in major international organisations were not exempt from inclusion on the list. The list contained numbers for several United Nations ambassadors and other diplomats. It also contained a phone number for a former staffer for the WHOs Tedros. Overall, the list contained phone numbers for more than 600 government officials and politicians from 34 countries. In addition to the countries where top leaders phone numbers appeared were numbers for officials in Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bhutan, China, Congo, Egypt, Hungary, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Mali, Mexico, Nepal, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Togo, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.

According to NSO marketing materials and security researchers, Pegasus is designed to collect files, photos, call logs, location records, communications and other private data from smartphones, and can activate cameras and microphones as well for real-time surveillance at key moments. Often these attacks can happen without the targets getting any kind of alert or taking any action such as following a link in a message. Pegasus can just slip in  possibly even via unanswered WhatsApp calls to both iPhones and Android devices  and take over smartphones in what the surveillance industry calls zero-click attacks. Phones entered repeatedly A review of the list showed that some of the leaders phones were entered repeatedly, as were phone numbers for their friends, relatives and aides. Phone numbers for associates of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador were added to the list during the run-up to the 2018 election, which he ultimately won, unseating the ruling party. Among those on the list were smartphones belonging to his wife, sons, aides, dozens of his political allies, and even his personal driver and cardiologist. There was no indication that Lopez Obradors phone was on the list; aides say he used it sparingly. Which NSO client might have added the numbers could not be learnt definitively from the records. But the numbers for Calderon and the many associates of Lopez Obrador were among a portion of the records from 2016 and 2017 dominated by Mexican targets. Also listed were dozens of sitting governors, federal MPs and other politicians. Mexicos President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Credit:Getty Images

Now we are learning that they also spied on my wife, my sons, even my doctor, a cardiologist, Lopez Obrador told reporters on Tuesday. Apart from the issue of this spying, imagine how much cost! How much money went for this spying? Numbers belonging to Michel, Macron and dozens of French officials appeared amid a group of more than 10,000 numbers dominated by Moroccan targets and those in neighbouring Algeria, a Morocco rival. The numbers for Mohammed VI and the Tedros staffer also were found in that group. So was the number of Romano Prodi, a former Italian prime minister. We were aware of the threats and measures were taken to limit the risks, Michel told a reporter for Belgiums Le Soir, a partner in the Pegasus Project. Prodi picked up on the phone number that was on the list on Tuesday, but he declined to comment. Pakistans Khan appeared among a group dominated by numbers in India. Iraqs Salih and Lebanons Hariri were grouped among numbers dominated by the United Arab Emirates and a separate grouping dominated by Saudi numbers.

South Africas Ramaphosa, Ugandas Rugunda and Burundis Bunyoni were among a group dominated by Rwandan phone numbers. Rwanda, Morocco and India have all issued official statements denying involvement in spying on journalists and politicians. Rwandas minister of foreign affairs, Vincent Biruta, said his country does not possess this technical capability in any form. In a statement, Morocco expressed great astonishment at the publication of erroneous allegations ... that Morocco has infiltrated the telephones of several national and foreign public figures and officials of international organisations. The statement added, Morocco is a State governed by the rule of law, which guarantees the secrecy of personal communications by the force of the Constitution. In India, the home minister called suggestions it has spied on journalists and politicians the work of disrupters, which he defined as global organisations which do not like India to progress. In a separate statement, the government said, The allegations regarding government surveillance on specific people has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever. Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates did not respond to requests for comment.

Macron, 14 French ministers on list Macrons phone number was added to the list as he was about to embark on a tour of Africa, with stops in Kenya and Ethiopia. Added about the same time were the phones of 14 French ministers and Belgiums Michel. Loading At the time, Moroccos neighbour Algeria was in turmoil. Its longtime authoritarian ruler, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, had just announced he did not plan to run for re-election. Algeria fought a bloody war of independence from France in the 1950s, and many French citizens are of Algerian descent; the two countries retain strong ties and intelligence relationships. African Union nations were also ratifying a major free-trade agreement at the time. Trade and other international negotiations historically have been major targets for government intelligence-gathering as all sides seek insight into the thinking of their negotiating partners.

Senior French government officials typically have access to secure devices for official communications, but French political insiders say some business also gets transacted on less-secure iPhones and Android devices. In addition to his personal iPhone, Macron uses two special highly secure mobile phones for more sensitive conversations, aides say. His personal iPhone is the least secure of the devices he regularly uses, and he routinely shared its number with journalists and other associates before he was elected to high office. The number for one of his personal mobile phones was also published online in 2017 after someone stole the phone of a journalist who had Macrons contact details. But officials familiar with his habits say he does not usually use any of the phones for discussions of classified information, for fear of being spied on. For that he sticks to encrypted landlines and other tools, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Mexicos Calderon told The Post that such intrusions were an unjustifiable violation of the most elemental rights of liberty and privacy, as well as others that constitute elemental guarantees of human dignity. He added he wasnt surprised his phone number was on the list. Its not the first time, and I fear it wont be the last, that I suffer from espionage, he said. On another occasion, the so-called WikiLeaks revealed that I had been the object of surveillance by the United States.
Washington: Australian Trade Minister Dan Tehan has downplayed a plan by senior Democrats in the United States to impose a carbon border tax that could hit Australian exports, saying the US would first have to put in place an emissions trading scheme.

Mr Tehan, who will soon visit Washington to meet with Biden administration officials, has blasted similar plans by the European Union as a new form of protectionism that would undermine global free trade.

Trade Minister Dan Tehan has been an outspoken opponent of proposals for carbon border taxes. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Senior Democrats unveiled plans for a carbon border tax that could impose extra duties on Australian exports of steel, aluminium and other high-pollution goods with tariffs.

The Democrats behind the bill believe they could raise up to US$16 billion ($22 billion) a year through the proposed border carbon adjustment on carbon-intensive imports.
Roger Allen Gilreath Neal, 73, of Morrow, passed away on Saturday, July 17, 2021, at Wellspring Health Care Center in Cincinnati. Born on August 10, 1947, to Jack and Anna (nee: Martin) Neal in Parker's Lake, KY, Roger was a Vietnam Veteran in the United States Air Force. He enjoyed tinkerin
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GALLERY: Five young women chosen to represent 2021 Rice County Fair

Five young women will remember the day July 17, 2021 for years to come.

2021 group photo Newly crowned Rice County Fair Ambassadors and Junior Ambassadors pose for a photo in the teacup located on the fairgrounds. Pictured from left, Clara Winget, Marisa Winget, Avalon Roberts, Kortney Prior and Alexa Rojas. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

That is the day Marisa Winget, Avalon Roberts and Kortney Prior were crowned 2021 Rice County Fair Ambassadors, and junior candidates Alexa Rojas and Clara Winget received ambassador honors in their age division. The group of eager young women will attend various events throughout this weeks fair, all while meeting many new people along the way.

The 2021 Rice County Fair Ambassador Coronation took place in the Cannon River Room Saturday, July 17. Six ambassador candidates and five junior ambassador candidates sit on stage awaiting onstage interview questions. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Saturdays coronation also marked the first year the Rice County Fair Board offered a junior ambassador program. In 2019, the name changed from the Rice County Fair Queens Pageant to the Rice County Fair Ambassadors Coronation, so all those crowned have equal status. Boys were also allowed to apply for the title for the first time in 2019.

2019 Rice County Fair Ambassadors Kelsie DeMars, Kaia Quimby and Ella Schmidt give their farewell speeches while judges were deliberating. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

The last members of the Rice County Fair royalty delivered farewell speeches before crowning the new ambassadors. 2019-20 Ambassadors Kelsie DeMars, Kaia Quimby and Ella Schmidt shared their experiences of the past year and spoke about the close friendship they formed with each other.

Each ambassador gave the candidates well wishes, and DeMars reminded the future ambassadors to be kind, thoughtful, courageous and sparkle from the inside out.

Balin Winget, 7, of Northfield was escorted by his father, Dane Winget. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Six-year-old Joel Kreft, of Faribault, escorted onto the stage by Tommie Tesch. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Junior ambassador candidate Daphne Luckow, 7, of Faribault, is escorted by John Kohl. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Ambassador candidates also included Emily Liebl of Dennison, Grace Hoover of Dundas and Jenny Flom of Northfield. Other junior ambassador candidates were Daphne Luckow of Faribault, Joel Kreft of Faribault and Balin Winget of Northfield. Before crowning the new ambassadors, Liebl was honored with the Friendship Award.

Jenny Flom, 18, of Northfield, answers a question onstage from emcee Gordy Kosfeld. If she had to choose one food to eat for the rest of her life, Flom would pick spaghetti because its easy to make and tastes good. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Emily Liebl, 20, of Dennison eagerly receives the Friendship Award from Ambassador Program Director Gretchen Hohrman. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Marisa Winget, 16, of Northfield, one of the new ambassadors, is the daughter of Dane and Sarah Winget. A junior at Northfield High School this fall, Wingest also takes PSEO classes through Inver Hills Community College. After high school, she plants to attend the University of Wisconsin-River Falls to major in biology with a minor in veterinary science.

Avalon Roberts, 18, of Faribault shares a moment with recently crowned Marisa Winget after learning she was one of three Rice County Fair Ambassadors. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Winget said she was in shock after hearing her name called, and took time to thank all those in attendance for supporting the ambassadors and candidates at the coronation.

Kortney Prior, 17, of Nerstrand, is the daughter of Laurie and Bill Prior. A rising senior at Faribault High School, Prior plans to pursue her nursing degree to become a registered nurse after graduation.

Prior admitted that when she heard her name called, she didnt think it was true. She anticipates promoting the fair and helping to inspire others in her ambassador role.

2021 Rice County Fair Ambassadors Kortney Prior, Marisa Winget and Avalon Roberts share their thoughts after being crowned with the audience. Not pictured, junior ambassadors Alexa Rojas and Clara Winget. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Avalon Roberts, 18, also of Faribault, wasnt expecting the honor at all. The daughter of Alana and Clayton Gourhan, Roberts graduated from Bethlehem Academy in 2021 and will be a freshman at the College of St. Benedict this fall, pursuing a degree in nursing.

Roberts, like Winget and Prior was both shocked and excited to learn that she was a new ambassador. She hopes to be a positive role model to the community, just like those who she looked up to when she was younger.

2021 Rice County Fair Junior Ambassador Alexa Rojas, 9, of Faribault, reacts after hearing her name called as one of the recipients. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

New junior ambassador Alexa Rojas, 9, of Faribault, is the daughter of Jose and Sarah Rojas. Rojas will be a fourth grader at Cannon River STEM School, where she enjoys learning about writing. Her favorite fair memory is the first time she got to ride on the Starship 2000, now one of her favorite fair rides. She looks forward to getting to know her fellow ambassadors.

Clara Winget, 9, of Northfield, shares a warm smile to family and friends in the audience after receiving her junior ambassador crown, sash and bouquet of flowers. (Michelle Vlasak/southernminn.com)

Clara Winget, 9, of Northfield, is looking forward to welcoming people to the fair and spending time with other ambassadors during the week. The daughter of Dane and Sarah Winget and younger sister of Marisa Winget, she will be a fourth grader at Greenvale Park Elementary, where she enjoys science. Her favorite memory of the fair is showing her rabbits.

The Rice County Fair runs from July 21-25 at the fairgrounds in Faribault.
Suborbital space missions are in the news as the founders of Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin take their maiden flights. But what exactly does suborbital mean, and does the technology have uses beyond helping billionaires race each other to space?

Today (July 20), Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and the world's richest man, will blast off in the New Shepard rocket built by his private space company Blue Origin. This will be the firm's first crewed mission and will fly to an altitude of 62 miles (100 kilometers) before landing again at the same launchpad. Bezos was beaten to the edge of space by British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who flew July 11 to an altitude of 53 miles (86 km) in a rocket-powered spaceplane built by his company Virgin Galactic.

Related: Photos: Blue Origin's New Shepard mission to space

More: Watch Bezos launch into space in this livestream

While impressive, both vehicles are very different from standard space rockets.

"The difference, in a nutshell, is that these suborbital flights do not have enough velocity to escape into orbit," said Stephan McCandliss, a professor of astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland.

Orbit refers to the situation where a spacecraft or satellite's sideways momentum creates a force that perfectly opposes the pull of Earth's gravity, so that it follows a curved path, constantly falling toward the planet but never getting any closer. When an orbiting spacecraft launches, it starts off vertical but then begins to tilt and pick up horizontal speed once it's through the thickest part of the atmosphere, so as to generate sufficient momentum to stay in orbit. Getting there is challenging though  the horizontal speed you need to remain in orbit depends on the altitude, but for a low-Earth orbit of 150 miles (240 km) it's around 17,000 mph (about 27,400 km/h).

"To sustain orbital motion, you have to be moving at almost 8 kilometers a second," McCandliss told Live Science. "In addition to that, you've got to get to the altitude and you have to punch through the atmosphere, and that all takes energy."

Any rocket without enough energy to reach orbit will instead follow a parabolic trajectory, looping up and then back down again,McCandliss said. But while such suborbital space missions might be short-lived, passengers will still get a mindblowing view of Earth and will also experience several minutes of weightlessness.

Image 1 of 4 New Shepards 15th launch (called mission NS-15) lifted off from Launch Site One in West Texas on April 14, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin) Image 2 of 4 The New Shepard booster is shown here as it landed after New Shepards successful mission to space, the 15th launch of the vehicle that took place on . April 14, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin) Image 3 of 4 The New Shepard booster on the landing pad after Mission NS-15's success on April 14, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin) Image 4 of 4 Another image showing the New Shepard crew capsule landing at a remote site in the West Texas desert after a successful mission to space on April 14, 2021. (Image credit: Blue Origin)

That's because the downward stretch of the trajectory is essentially a freefall, and gravity is acting on both passengers and the vehicle in the same way. "The simple explanation is that gravity is pulling you down and it's pulling the vehicle down just as much, so locally you feel like there's no gravity," said Steven Collicott, a professor of aeronautics at Purdue University in Indiana.

That's a big pull for thrill seekers, and both Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic are hoping this market can help them sustain profitable space tourism businesses. But it also offers some interesting research opportunities, added Collicott.

Microgravity research is already carried out on the International Space Station, but flying an experiment there is hugely expensive, and equipment has to survive punishing G-forces and vibrations to get into orbit, Collicott said. In contrast, these new suborbital flights are a fraction of the cost and put far less strain on equipment.

"These tourist vehicles give us a much gentler ride to space and back," said Collicott. "So the tourism industry has created these really nice, low-cost research laboratories for us."

Suborbital flights could prove useful for experiments where researchers want to study phenomena that are normally overshadowed by the effects of gravity, such as sedimentation or coagulation of solid particles in fluids, Collicott said. He sees lots of potential for his own work trying to understand how fluids like fuel or human blood behave in low-gravity.

It could also be a cheaper way to test out spaceflight technology or experiments before they are sent on more expensive orbital or deep-space missions. For instance, it might be possible to do test runs of low-gravity emergency surgery techniques, Colicott said, or to make sure that all the fluids in a chemistry or biology experiment remain in the right place after the transition from rocket boost to zero-g.

The short duration of the weightlessness will be a limiting factor, Collicott said, but these flights also open up the prospect of researchers being able to fly with their experiments. "It just really opens up whole new fields of science that you really can't automate," he added.

These flights won't work for a lot of space scientists though, said McCandliss. He has been working with NASA for the last 30 years building sounding rockets, or instrument-carrying rockets that perform scientific experiments on suborbital flights. While these are more expensive and only single-use, they are able to reach altitudes of up to 435 miles (700 km).

Such heights are necessary for a variety of space physics experiments, including the kind of ultraviolet astronomy McCandliss studies. Even at 62 miles the atmosphere is still dense enough to interfere with electromagnetic signals and so they need to remain above this altitude for significant periods. "I would tell people, 'When you can hit [186 miles] 300 kilometers come talk with me,'" he said.

Nonetheless, McCandliss appreciates the efforts by the private space industry to increase access to space and thinks these companies are much like the early pioneers in maritime exploration or aviation.

"Some people look at this as being wasteful, but I view it as evolutionary," he said. "These are the sort of steps that you need to take if you want to have a more capable infrastructure for servicing space and dealing with space."

Originally published on Live Science.
In-person networking events are returning as more and more people feel comfortable gathering indoors with larger groups of strangers. To some, networking is easy and fun, but to others, its an uncomfortable chore. As someone who has utilized networking to grow my successful public-relations consultancy, heres a primer on networking and how you can get the most out of these events.

When identifying the kinds of networking events youll want to attend, the first place to start is understanding what type of people youre trying meet. If youre a residential-insurance professional, you may find potential leads at any event, but if youre only focused on medical professionals, youll want to be more selective about which events you attend.

Once you know the kind of people you are trying to connect with, youll need to identify the kinds of events that will provide opportunities to meet these people. One way to do this is by looking at your local industry associations. Sometimes, members get to attend these kinds of events for free or at a discount, but many groups have non-member attendee rates or even offer free attendance your first time so that you can try it out and see how you like it. Another great source to find events are local Chamber of Commerce websites. Some cities also have citywide networking-event calendar websites, which provide details on several events occurring each month.

Next, you need to decide which type of event youll enjoy the most. Do you like a formal agenda, or do you prefer to wander around a room on your own starting conversations with strangers?

Once youve answered these questions, youll be able to select the best kind of networking events that will meet your personal preferences and business goals. Here are some of the most common types of networking events.

Related: 5 Tips for Stress-Free Networking

Structured networking

If you like a formal structure, a great organization to consider is LeTip International, the world's largest privately owned business-leads organization. They have more than 250 chapters throughout the U.S. and Canada and are credited with hundreds of thousands of business referrals per year. Basically, its a weekly meeting where a chapter of 20 to 40 people follow a structured meeting format, which is proven to generate business leads as the other members of the group essentially become your sales team or referral source.

Lunch events

Luncheons also tend to force more structure as well. While youll still meet new people, the networking portion tends to be more compressed, giving you less time to talk to people before you sit at a table and eat while often listening to a presentation. If youre sitting with the right people on either side, you may be able to make a great and relevant contact to grow your network. If you get stuck sitting next to people who dont interest you, its essentially lost time. Once the presentation or lunch is over, people tend to leave very quickly, with little networking, as people need to return to work, so its important you arrive early to meet new people at these types of events.

Breakfast events

If you prefer more schmooze time, breakfast events or happy hours might be best suited to your style. Breakfast events tend to have people wandering the room carrying small plates of breakfast foods or sitting briefly to eat and then getting back to the networking. Some morning events also have some formal component to the event as well. For example, sometimes everyone goes around the room giving their 30-second elevator pitch before resuming the mix and mingle part of the event. While every group is different, there seems to be more salespeople attending breakfast events, rather than the actual business owners.

Related: How Networking Can Increase Your Business' Net Worth

Happy hours

Happy Hours tend to have almost no structure. While some may have the host speak to the group for a few minutes welcoming everyone or thanking sponsors, most often its a full event of mixing and mingling. A lot of people will carry an adult beverage around with them, and sometimes a small plate of appetizers as well. The people who attend these types of events will depend on the host organization putting on the event, but attendees will tend to be more decision makers or small-business owners.

Ticketed events

Another networking opportunity would be larger events like an awards event or training presentation where your company buys a full table. In this scenario, the networking usually occurs before the presentation or people are seated. Before you sit down with people you already know, work the room. Look at nametags (if people are wearing them) and walk up to people that you want to meet.

Which events are a match for you?

In the end, its pretty simple. Pick the type of networking event that you will enjoy and return to events where you liked the people as people  not as sales leads. I built up my own successful business this way, attending on average two happy-hour events a week for several years. The repetition and being viewed as a trusted regular led to several referrals that grew my firm into what its become today.

My only warning is that networking is about the long game, not the short sale. The strategy took at least a year, during which I went to the same events month after month, talking to the same people again and again, before I started getting some client referrals. Networking successfully is a strategy that takes an investment of time, but has the opportunity to pay off in dividends when done right.

Related: 11 Networking Tips When You're Crunched for Time

Copyright 2021 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
ORANGE  Food orders at the new Dera BBQ restaurant may take longer than expected, the owners admit, because all their traditional halal Pakistani and Indian dishes are made to order except for stews and other offerings that need to simmer.

Those selections that need to be cooked ahead are made in small batches so they are fresh daily, said Muhammad Haroon , who owns the restaurant with his wife, Neelem Haroon.

Nothing is cooked or half-cooked before being served, he said.

The couple, who have two young children and live in Orange, opened the restaurant about a month ago in a shopping center at 85 Boston Post Road, an ideal location, they say, because theyre so close two destination Indian food markets and an Islamic Center attended by 500-600 people for Friday prayer services.

The 5,000-square-foot restaurant with an adjoining event hall is located in a small plaza alongside Farmers Indian Market, across the street from the large Farmers India Market and less than a mile from New Haven Islamic Center.

Business done in those locations draws restaurant customers, the Haroons say, as Dera BBQ serves only halal meats in keeping with Islamic law.

Having the stores nearby also helps with accessibility to ethnic products used in cooking.

Customer Asif Shah of Orange, originally from Pakistan, is a returning customer.

The Indian, Pakistani community in this neighborhood needed a restaurant of this kind, he said. I like the taste here. Its really good.

Visually, the place has a wow factor.

Along both sides of the deep space are brightly colored, velvet-like couches  purple, hot pink, blue  with low, glass table held by ornate, dark wood bases.

In the middle are rows of regular-height tables and colorful, majestic looking, hand-painted chairs from Pakistan that the couple assembled.

They also stenciled the ceilings with an eye-popping design and colorful parasols hang from that space.

The curtains are of a bamboo-like material with colorful threads and little, diamond-shaped mirrors.

Everything is handmade, Neelem Haroon said, including the artwork of Pakistan/India that adorn the walls and the vases on the tables. There are sequins and shiny things everywhere.

The couple met in Pakistan while Neelem Haroon, 31, was visiting, and moved to Connecticut to be close to her family.

Opening a restaurant seemed like a natural, as Muhammad Haroon, 29, grew up in the familys restaurant business in Pakistan, starting as a young teen.

The couple saw a need for a traditional halal Pakistani and Indian restaurant here, as they used to have to drive to New York City to get their fix.

This was always my dream. I used to drive to New York just to eat Pakistani food, he said, noting they would leave for Brooklyn at 4 a.m. just to get a Pakistani breakfast buffet. There were no authentic restaurants in this area.

A dera is a settlement or public gathering place in the Pakistani and Indian cultures, where snacks are served, hence the name.

They added the barbecue component because while the style is big in those countries, its not often found here Pakistani/Indian-style. Muhammad Haroon said the barbecue items are marinated and have a fabulous taste.

Muhammad Haroon has been involved in all aspects of his familys restaurant business and sweets manufacturing company in Pakistan, once overseeing a staff of about 200.

While he has preparation and other staff at the new Orange eatery, Haroon oversees every dish that goes out to customers.

I can walk through and smell the food and tell if anything is wrong with the spices or taste, he said. If somethings off (about the flavor) were never going to serve it to the customer.

Returning customer Usha Menon of Prospect said she and her husband used to drive to New York to get kabobs and other traditional Pakistani food, but now she can shop at the market next door and order at Dera BBQ.

She was back recently lunching with a friend and said of the visit with her husband, We had kabobs and we really loved it  the taste, the size. It was good, fresh.

So far, the first month in business is going really good, Muhammad Haroon said.
HARTFORD  Connecticut State Colleges and Universities will forgive $17 million in debt that community college students accrued or could not repay because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

CSCU announced on Tuesday that the push for debt forgiveness will impact 18,161 current and recent students.

Community college students have been hit especially hard by COVID-19, said CSCU President Terrence Cheng in a statement. By eliminating the debt those students owe to institutions, we are removing a hurdle that prevents far too many people from continuing their educational journeys.

Our message to students is simple: you now have a clean slate, so if an account balance was standing in your way, you can now register for classes for the fall semester, he said.

The initiative is paid for with Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund dollars. The federal grant program encourages institutions to consider using the funds to discharge student debts, according to guidance from the U.S. Department of Education.

Relief applies to account balances from summer 2019 through spring 2021.

All holds on fall class registrations due to outstanding balances have been removed, according to a CSCU press release.

The economic aftermath of COVID-19 disproportionately harmed community college students, said Jane Gates, CSCUs provost and senior vice president of academic and student affairs, in a statement. They lost jobs, suffered food insecurity, and lacked access to vital services  to say nothing of the devastating harm caused to those afflicted with the virus. It is no wonder that so many students saw the debt they owed to our colleges pile up.

Gates was most recently interim president of the public colleges and universities system.

Since the pandemic began last spring, CSCU has also distributed more than $56 million from federal stimulus in direct payments to students.

The press release teased more announcements related to student support in upcoming weeks.

The average Connecticut student loan borrower who graduated before the pandemic in 2019 was $41,579 in debt.

After more than a year on pause, student loan payments are slated to resume in October.

Some Democrats have asked the president to extend the moratorium and forgive a portion of debt per student.

President Joe Biden has looked into using executive action to cancel federal student loans debt.

Debt has really impacted many families, many students, and getting out of it and seeing a pathway out of it is critically important, said Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona in May on a call with the Education Writers Association, a national membership organization for education journalists. And I know thats a priority for the president as it is for me.

Were still working with the White House on the best path forward and negotiating what rights, and responsibilities we have as an agency, he said.
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP)  Two state agencies that oversee higher education in Illinois on Monday encouraged colleges and universities to require COVID-19 vaccinations of students heading to campuses this fall.

The Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board made the recommendation, which they say follows recently released guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. The state agencies contend the guidance will help facilitate the safe transition back to campus, as more students return to in-person learning.

The oversight agencies recommendation came on the same day a federal judge ruled Indiana University can require its students and employees to get vaccinated before returning to campus for fall classes. Students who dont comply will have their registration canceled and workers who dont will lose their jobs.

U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty in South Bend rejected a request from eight IU students who sought to block the requirement while they pursue a lawsuit claiming that the universitys policy violated their constitutional rights by forcing them to receive unwanted medical treatment.

We know many things have been difficult during the pandemic," said IBHE executive director Ginger Ostro. "Students should feel confident campuses will be safe when they return and know there are resources available to help them.

Some Illinois schools have already decreed their students must be vaccinated to return to campus. Among them the three campuses of University of Illinois, and Northwestern, DePaul and Loyola universities.

Other schools, including Illinois State University, Eastern Illinois University and Southern Illinois University were strongly encouraging but not mandating students be vaccinated.

Lynn Whalen, the chief communications officer at Lincoln Land Community College, told the State Journal-Register in Springfield the school LLCC strongly encourages vaccination among its students, faculty and staff, including offering vaccination clinics on campus and educational resources regarding the vaccine.

Additionally, we will continue to have rapid testing available, Whalen said. All faculty, staff and students complete a screening process before coming to campus. Those who have not completed the vaccination process are required to wear masks in all LLCC facilities.

ICCB executive director Brian Durham said the guidance issued Monday allows flexibility by community colleges as they consider local context. He added it allows the colleges to fully reopen while also making the safety and well-being of students, faculty and staff paramount.

The IBHE and ICCB encouraged schools to continue COVID-19 testing of unvaccinated individuals and they should continue to promote and facilitate health-promoting behaviors such as hand hygiene and respiratory etiquette.
For the first time since mid-May, Connecticuts COVID daily positivity rate has topped 2 percent, but Gov. Ned Lamont said he does not believe new restrictions or mandates are needed to address the rising infections.

The state reported Tuesday that 218 people tested positive for COVID-19 out of 8,055 new tests for a positivity rate of 2.71 percent, which is the highest since May 11. The seven-day positivity rate climbed to 1.54 percent, the highest since May 12.

Hospitalizations increased again Tuesday by four for a total of 54 patients statewide, the highest since a steady drop in June.

Despite the increase in the positivity rate, Lamont said: I dont think we need a lot of new mandates right now ... I feel like we are in a different situation. But I will watch it, if I see a steep curve, especially with hospitalizations. Thats the metric I follow.

Though he had no plans for restrictions, Lamont continued to reminded residents to get vaccinated. Lamont said there is no time for hesitancy.

Now is the time to stand up. Now is the time to get vaccinated, Lamont said during an unrelated bill signing on Tuesday. This is how you make sure the delta [variant] doesnt have anywhere to spread.

The rise in the positivty rate comes amid increasing concerns nationwide over the delta variant, first detected in India and now the dominant strain in Connecticut. Researchers believe it is upwards of 60 percent more transmissible than the alpha variant, first found in the U.K. and previously the dominant strain in the state.

But the new infections also come when the vaccine efforts in the state have slowed dramatically. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows that nearly 30 percent of eligible residents are still not vaccinated.

State statistics show the weekly administration of vaccines has dropped to about 30,000 doses, which is 10 percent of the peak in mid-April.

Still, top health officials are confident Connecticut remains in a good place for now, and has been spared some of the worst flare up of infections seen in other parts of the country.

In an interview Tuesday with Hearst Connecticut Media, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said Connecticut residents should feel hopeful about the states progress in combating COVID-19, including its successful vaccination campaign. However, he said the most transmissible version of the virus to date presents an unusual challenge to that progress.

If the state started to see significant increases in new COVID cases, and if over time that impacted especially vulnerable populations like children who are not eligible for vaccinations, those would be circumstances where I would consider whether or not we need to take some additional mitigation measures, Murthy said in a brief interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.

Dr. Ulysses Wu, system director for infectious diseases at Hartford HealthCare, said he believes Connecticut, unlike other parts of the country, appears to be fairing well with the current level of the virus.

I think as a state, we are good. There does need to be some sort of national rollback, but that is never going to happen, Wu said. We are now at a point of common sense.  What I always tell people: outdoors you are good unless you are in a huge crowd regardless if you have been vaccinated or not, indoors you should be wearing a mask if you dont know if everyone around you is vaccinated.

Dr. Rick Martinello, medical director for infection prevention at Yale New Haven Health, said the recent increase in the positivity rate was disappointing, but not entirely unexpected.

I think for now Connecticut is in a pretty good position, but I think we would be better off if we got more people vaccinated. I think masks still play a very important role, Martinello said about the current level of restrictions.

The latest figures from the Yale School of Public Health and its partnership with the state Department of Public Health and Jackson Laboratories shows the delta variant was found in 63 percent of new COVID-19 samples that were genetically sequenced last week.

I think we are going to see an increased prevalence of the COVID delta in Connecticut and throughout the United States over the next months, Martinello said.

Should the spread of the virus remain increased throughout communities in Connecticut, Martinello said some restrictions may need to return.

I think if we do see the continued increase presence in our community, I wouldnt be surprised if we went back to a place where masks are required for all when they are out. And its a simple thing to do. I think everyone would prefer we didnt wear masks, but they are reasonably comfortable and its an action that is simple enough for us to take, Martinello said.

Staff writers Julia Bergman and Ken Dixon contributed to this story.
Matthew Brown / Hearst Connecticut Media

STAMFORD  A motorcyclist involved in a collision on East Main Street Monday morning is recovering in the hospital after suffering life-threatening injuries, according to police.

Sgt. Ryan P. McAllister said a 2011 Harley Davidson Road Glide motorcycle, driven by a 53-year-old Stamford man, was headed east on East Main Street near its intersection with Houston Terrace as a 2014 Nissan Pathfinder, driven by a 43-year-old Stamford man, was headed west in the same area shortly before 8 a.m.
ANSONIA  Folks looking for a frighteningly good time this weekend should make a stop in the Valley.

The Connecticut Paranormal Convention will be held July 24-25 at the Ansonia Armory, with a schedule full of spooky events.

Doors will open at 11 a.m. each day at the Armory, located at 10 N. State St., organizers said in a release, and the event is geared toward casual fans of the supernatural as well as experienced paranormal investigators.

Events will include special guests, seminars, panel discussions, vendors, exhibits and more, according to the release.

The convention  ParaConn  is the brainstorm of paranormal enthusiast Nick Grossmann, and is presented by him along with Charles F. Rosenay.

Grossmans organization, Ghost Storm, has done multiple events throughout the Valley, and considers the Armory to be a haunted site, the release said.

Rosenay is founder and owner of Fright Haven in Stratford, and organizes Dracula Tours in Romania as well as annual GHOSTours to Europe, presented by his travel company Tours of Terror, the release said.

According to organizers, other special guests will include:

 Sean Austin, demonologist and psychic clairvoyant. Austin has appeared on televisions Demon Files and the Travel Network show Ghost Loop, according to the release.

 Bill Hall, author of The Worlds Most Haunted House, about a Lindsley Street house in Bridgeport.

 Christine and Daniel Peer, a science-based paranormal research team who travel the country for investigations, including The Shanley Hotel in New York.

 Barry Pirro of ConnecticutGhostHunter.com, who has been involved with the subject for more than 10 years, and has consulted on shows including Ghost Adventures and Kindred Spirits.

 Kathy Churuszcz, a psychic medium who does psychic readings and paranormal investigations.

 Eric Conner, a paranormal equipment engineer who has produced paranormal films and is in the documentary Malefice.

 Johnes Ruta, author of Fires Eternal Morning, who has studied metaphysics and the paranormal and currently isan art curator.

 Ralph Levesque, an artist who has painted representations of his experiences being abducted by extraterrestrials. Levesque is said to have a telepathic connection with the extraterrestrials.

 Paul Ferrante, author of Curse of the Fairfield Witch and Last Ghost of Gettysburg.

 Tim McLaughlin, author of the supernatural fiction series Tall Tales, who is a ministry student preparing for ministry work in Ireland.

Also at the convention will be the Connecticut Paranormal and Supernatural Tracking Society, based in Seymour and led by Jeffory Gerry; East Coast Paranormal Photography, headed by Anthony Mullin, a group involved with the restoration of the Ansonia Opera House; and the Frankenstein Twins, visual artists who will hold their Oddities Bazaar at the Armory in October.

The event will feature a marketplace with 60 vendors from around the country, the release said, and will include paranormal groups, haunt artists and businesses, horror and sci-fi genre booths, authors, publishers, clothing costumes & make-up specialists, cryptozoology, wizardry, authors, psychics/mediums/readers, occult artifacts, artisans, crafters, jewelers, monster memorabilia, sci-fi collectibles, hand-made items and related merchandise.

Hours are from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. both days. Attendees under age 16 must be accompanied by an adult. Advance general admission is $14.99, or $20 day of show. Advance VIP tickets are available for $19.99, which will include early admission at 10 a.m., a souvenir gift and other benefits, organizers said. Parking is free and food trucks and refreshments will be available. For advance tickets, visit https://paraconn.ticketleap.com/paraconn.

For information, visit www.ParaConn.org, call 203-795-4737 or email CTParaConn@gmail.com.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living. She is also chair of Cardinal Dolans pro-life commission in New York. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.
Ogden jazz icon Joe McQueen may be gone, but his memory and legacy live on. One physical reminder of his life, McQueen's lifelong home at 3158 Grant Ave., has now become available for sale. The house received extensive remodeling, but as investor Richard Casperson has said, "Joe's energy is 
A nurses union says it has reached a landmark two-year contract with Lehigh Valley Hospital-Schuylkill that includes 2% raises, a bonus and safe staffing language.

Office and Professional Employees International Union Local 153 announced Thursday the ratification by overwhelming majority of the unions approximately 95 members.

We listened to what members wanted and needed, and fought hard, Chrissy Newton, a registered nurse and member of the union negotiating committee, was quoted in a news release. We are a stronger union now than ever.

A statement from William Bill Reppy, president of LVHSchuylkill, said the hospital is pleased that the membership ratified this agreement as we move forward working together to heal, comfort and care for our community.

The agreement includes safe staffing language that requires the hospital to take meaningful steps to provide qualified personnel for each nursing unit, according to the unions news release. It says the hospital has agreed to discuss safe staffing regularly and provide relevant data to ensure quality patient care.

Registered nurses will be provided a process to file protest of assignment forms notifying the hospital that they deem an assignment as unsafe, the union said.

The contract includes what the union calls cost of living wage increases of 2% each year, annual increment/tier raises and an appreciation bonus for all union nurses. It says the contract dramatically improves the employers medical plan, increases tuition reimbursement and strengthens worker protections, including providing new guidelines to stop workplace violence and strengthen security at the hospital.

Without the memberships active participation, we would have never reached such a fair agreement, Brandee Siegfried, a registered nurse and chief steward of Local 153, was quoted.

The contract expires March 31, 2023.

Local nurses unions have been vocal this year about staffing shortages and at one point what they said were efforts by Lehigh Valley to discourage union membership.

Nurses gathered May 13 during Nurses Week outside the office of Rep. Tim Twardzik, R-123, Butler Twp. (Schuylkill County), for a vigil to remember patients lost to COVID-19 and recognize the hardships nurses have faced.

Siegfried said at the time that staffing is a community problem. Its not just our little hospitals problem.

In April, nurses from Local 112, representing 95 of the LVHN nurses, filed three charges against LVH-Schuylkills two city hospitals with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging interference with union activity.

The hospital at the time said only that it does not discuss contract negotiations publicly.


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Yunior Valeriano, a sophomore at Lakeside High School, gets doused in the dunking booth at the 2019 Dragon Back to School Bash. The 2020 bash was not held because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 2021 bash is slated for Aug. 11 at the Lakeside Elementary Campus on Wade Avenue, Ashtabula.
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A military ceremony will be held today, July 20, the Day of Romanian Aviation and Air Force, at the Monument of the Air Heroes located in the Aviatorilor Square in Bucharest City.

Defence Minister Nicolae Ciuca and Chief of Defence Daniel Petrescu will participate.

The ceremony starts at 10:00hrs, EEST. Wreaths of flowers will be laid in memory of aviator heroes, and the 74th PATRIOT Regiment - a tactical combat unit established on December 1, 2018, whose mission is to commission the PATRIOT surface-to-air missile system - will receive a battle flag.According to the Defence Ministry, 'this ceremony pays homage to the memory of the heroes who, over time, on the battlefields or in missions performed in war zones or on national soil, served with devotion the wings of the homeland and joined the squadron from the skies.'The Day of the Romanian Aviation and Air Force is celebrated every year on July 20, when Holy Prophet Elijah the Tishbite, the patron saint of Romanian pilots, is also celebrated.
Deputy Prime Minister and USR PLUS Co-Chairman Dan Barna said today that the ruling coalition is currently in a deadlock over the abolition of the Section for the Investigation of Judicial Crimes (SIIJ), mentioning that the Justice Minister presented several options, but none was accepted because the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) basically doesn't want the section to be axed, and the National Liberal Party has a neutral position, agerpres.ro confirms.

"The subject has obviously been on the public agenda for some time now, it all depends on the point of view of the UDMR coalition partners who do not support the variant approved by the government, the simple variant whereby the SIIJ is abolished and all the powers and responsibilities are assigned to prosecution agencies, the National Anti-corruption Directorate - DNA, the General Prosecutor's Office or the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism - DIICOT. Our UDMR partners practically don't want the SIIJ abolished, their position is that we should disband the current SIIJ and move it, still as a special section for magistrates, to the General Prosecutor's Office, that is just change the nameplate on the door and the postal address. (...) We want things rolled back to the initial status - exactly as both the Venice Commission and the European Commission say - with responsibilities assigned according to competencies: for corruption crimes - to the DNA as competent body, for organized crime - to the DIICOT, for common crimes - to the Prosecutor's Office, as everywhere in the world, so that there is no longer a special section for magistrates; this is what it's all about, not about how to place a special section for magistrates under wraps," Barna told public broadcaster TVR1.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that he is outraged by this situation, but that USR PLUS will carry on also "because a part of Romania has decided that the formation should be in this government and fight for these reforms".
In its second annual EU rule-of-law report released in Brussels on Tuesday, the European Commission looks at the independence and quality of Romania's judiciary, the fight against corruption, media pluralism and media freedom.

In the chapter on the justice system, the report notes that the perception of the independence of the judiciary is average, having improved significantly as compared to previous years among the general public, agerpres.ro confirms.

The 2017-2019 amendments to the justice laws are being reviewed, and a separate bill aimed at dismantling the prosecutorial Section for the Investigation of Offences in the Judiciary (SIIJ) is being discussed in Parliament.

The document also notes that the Court of Justice of the European Union has issued a preliminary ruling on the civil liability of judges and prosecutors, and reminds that the draft justice package includes amendments to the rules governing the appointment and accountability of the Judicial Inspection management.

The procedure for the appointment of high-ranking prosecutors is being reviewed as part of the amendments to the justice laws, and the procedure for the dismissal of top prosecutors will be amended following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, the document states.

With regard to the quality of the justice system, the Commission's report notes that the deficit of human resources in the Romanian judiciary remains a concern, given that almost 10 percent of the judges' positions and close to 16 percent of prosecutors' positions were still vacant as of December 2020, which also has an impact on the efficiency of the justice system, the Commission says.

Although the early retirement scheme for magistrates introduced in 2018, which allowed the possibility of retirement after 20 years of service, was repealed by Parliament in March 2021 following the recommendations from both the Venice Commission and GRECO, close to 300 magistrates retired in 2020 and almost 150 during the first quarter of 2021, further increasing this deficit.

The judgment of the Constitutional Court declaring unconstitutional the provision requiring the approval of the Superior Council of Magistracy for the regulation on the organization and conduct of the competition for admission to the judiciary created a legal void, which resulted in no competition to recruit new magistrates being organized in 2020.

In order to bridge this legislative gap, on June 22, 2020 the Ministry of Justice submitted to public debate a draft law on the admission to the National Institute of Magistracy, which was adopted by the Senate on February 3, 2021. However, upon ex ante referral by a group of parliamentarians, the Constitutional Court declared the law in question unconstitutional.

As a result, the legislation in force did not allow for the organization of competitions for admission to the judiciary, leading to further delays in new recruitments and to an increase in the caseload of judges and prosecutors, adding pressure on judges and prosecutors with implications for the quality and efficiency of justice.

A new law, adopted by Parliament on June 28, 2021, addressed this legal void and will allow competitions for admission to the judiciary to take place in 2021 and 2022.

The report highlights that, by the Decision of July 14, 2021, the Constitutional Court declared unconstitutional the provisions of the respective law that would have reduced from 10 to 7 years the seniority required for taking part in the competitions for the appointment of DNA and DIICOT prosecutors.

As regards the anti-corruption framework, the European Commission's report notes that the perception among experts and business executives is that the level of corruption in the public sector remains high. In the 2020 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International, Romania scores 44/100 and ranks 19th in the European Union and 69th globally. This perception has remained relatively stable over the past five years.

The document also notes that the adoption of a new National Anti-Corruption Strategy for 2021-2025 is a priority for the government, and the effectiveness of investigation and sanctioning of medium and high-level corruption has improved.

The 2017-2019 amendments to the justice laws represented a major impediment for the proper functioning of the DNA, which will continue for as long as they are in force, the European Commission warns.

The report also shows that continued uncertainty as regards amendments to the criminal code and criminal procedure code remains an important challenge in the fight against corruption.

The Chamber of Deputies has set criteria to decide on requests for lifting parliamentary immunities, but the Senate has not yet followed through.

According to the report, the legal framework on integrity remains fragmented, and the National Integrity Agency (ANI) continues to investigate incompatibilities, conflicts of interest and unjustified wealth.

The PREVENT electronic system for preventing conflicts of interest in public procurement is effective, as the number of detected conflicts of interest has significantly reduced.

A law on whistleblower protection has been in force in Romania since 2004, however its implementation in practice is relatively limited.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the prosecution of corruption cases remained effective.

As regards media pluralism and media freedom, the report states that the lack of specific safeguards for editorial independence and editorial norms continues to raise concerns, noting that transparency of media ownership continues to be incomplete.

State advertising continues to be an important source of financing for the media sector, and state information campaign funds have been an important means of support to the media during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, defamation lawsuits against investigative journalists continue to be reported, the Commission also states.
The Minister of Justice, Stelian Ion, announced that his proposal for the disbanding of the Section for the Investigation of Judicial Crimes (SIIJ), discussed in the meeting of the ruling coalition on Tuesday, was not accepted by the UDMR (Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania), noting that overall, the coalition does not seem to want the disbanding of SIIJ.

"The coalition, overall, does not seem to want the dismantling of SIIJ yet. I came up with a new proposal, it was reasonable, it hasn't been accepted yet. It was a proposal in the sense that, if a magistrate were investigated as a suspect or defendant by a specialized prosecutor's office - DNA [the National Anti-corruption Directorate], DIICOT [the Directorate of Investigation of Organised Crime and Terrorism] or the Prosecutor General's Office, the public prosecutor's offices under the courts of appeal - could request a referral of the file to another neighbouring prosecutor's office. (...) To go to a prosecutor's office within the same structure, so that we can also respect the government programme and commitments," Stelian Ion said at the end of the meeting.

The Justice minister says the "UDMR doesn't want this variant" of disbanding SIIJ either, agerpres.ro confirms.

"It seems that the UDMR does not agree with any variant of the SIIJ dismantling. (...) Setting conditions at every sitting is proof that when we approved the government program, they weren't honest. The unconditional abolition of the SIIJ as it is listed in the government programme, doubled by the restoration of the DNA competence has been very clear. The UDMR concern is not so much related to SIIJ as to DNA. Under no circumstances do they want to restore the DNA competence. (...) They probably reckon that they're going to stall a lot, that maybe the SIIJ won't be disbanded very soon," the minister said.

He reaffirmed that "Romania will have to dismantle SIIJ and respect the commitment it has always had in recent years, especially with regard to the fight against corruption, which must continue".

"And reinventing SIIJ in another form, elsewhere, is nothing more than a weakening of the fight against corruption, something that will not be accepted by the European Commission. The consequences will be international and will come mainly from the European Commission. (...) It's complicated to govern justice with UDMR, because, look, they haven't disengaged themselves from the policy they've pursued in years gone by with the PSD [the Social Democratic Party]. They share the PSD's vision of justice and continue with the same ideas. I was waiting for a change of optics or at least a compromise, a waiver. (...) I don't agree with what UDMR says. It further invokes the fact that they have not been summoned to discussions on the laws of justice. Nothing of the sort," Stelian Ion claimed.

Asked if he had the support of the prime minister and the PNL on the disbanding of the SIIJ, the Justice minister said that things "seriously" ground to a halt in Parliament.

"And here it seems to me that political will has diminished greatly. (...) The PNL supports the disbanding of the SIIJ, they said it. (...) My personal expectation was not so much towards the Prime Minister, but especially towards Parliament, I expected more involvement, in the sense that it is not enough to say that you agree with any variant of the dismantling of SIIJ, but an active involvement in the sense of convincing the partners," Stelian Ion stressed.
The National Administration of State Reserves and Special Problems (ANRSPS) distributed to local authorities in the areas of Alba county (center-western Romania), affected by the flooding of the last few days, in order to support the suffering local population, several modular constructions, thousands of canned goods, hundreds of beds with bedding and blankets, bottled water and 35 tons of diesel fuel, Agerpres informs.

Furthermore, the ANRSPS kicked off the distribution of the following goods to the flood- and landslide-hit population around the town of Campeni and the villages of Ocolis, Rosia Montana and Sohodol: 35,000 liters of diesel fuel, 8,500 liters of bottled water, 8 modular constructions, 260 beds with bedding, 520 blankets, 6,500 canned goods.
Prime Minister Florin Citu is scheduled today to meet head of the Emergency Management Department (DSU) Raed Arafat, according to government sources.

The meeting is expected to focus on the recent floods in Romania and easing COVID-19 restrictions from August 1.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) calls for an extraordinary session of Parliament for the adoption of the Law on the Vulnerable Consumer, informs a party press release sent on Tuesday.

"PSD calls on the presidents of the two chambers of Parliament, Anca Dragu and Ludovic Orban, to convene Parliament in an extraordinary session for the urgent resolution of the dramatic situation in which over half a million Romanians find themselves, facing the risk of being disconnected from electricity network due to the explosive rise in prices," reads the release.

According to the PSD, considering the Government's intention to repeal the provisions of the ordinance that ensures the protection of these consumers, it is necessary for Parliament to adopt, as a matter of urgency, the Law on the Vulnerable Consumer.

"The PSD asks the parliamentarians in power to interrupt their holidays and party campaigns in order to legislate this particularly sensitive issue for many low-income families in Romania. For this we were voted by the citizens, to defend them when they are threatened by the malfunction of economic mechanisms, such as, in the case in point, the hasty liberalization of electricity tariffs. It is unacceptable that in the 21st century, in a Member State of the European Union, more than 200,000 households will return to the rushlight due to a wild liberalization of the energy market, approved by the Orban Government and implemented by the Citu Government. In this case, it is not just a few bad-paying consumers, but already a large social phenomenon of exceptional gravity, which requires the Romanian Parliament's urgent intervention," added the Social-Democrats.
Defence Minister Nicolae Ciuca and Chief of Defence Daniel Petrescu, will be attending today, July 20, the Day of Romanian Aviation and Air Force a military ceremony at the Air Heroes Monument in Aviatorilor Square, Bucharest, organised to mark the day.

Also attending the event will be Senate Chair Anca Dragu, Interior Minister Lucian Bode, Bucharest Prefect Alin Stoica, soldiers, war veterans.

An air parade will not be held this year following last week's incident when an American helicopter training for such an event had to resort to precautionary landing in Charles de Gaulle Square.

During the ceremony, wreaths are laid in memory of the aviator heroes, and the 74th PATRIOT Regiment will be handed a battle flag.

The ceremony pays homage to the memory of the heroes who, over time, on the battlefields or in missions performed in war zones or on national soil, served with devotion the wings of the homeland and joined the squadron from the skies.

The Day of the Romanian Aviation and Air Force is celebrated every year on July 20, when Holy Prophet Elijah the Tishbite, the patron saint of Romanian pilots, is also celebrated.

On June 17, 111 years ago, Aurel Vlaicu made the first complete flight in Romania with an airplane of his own design.

The 74th PATRIOT Regiment, a tactical combat unit established on December 1, 2018, is tasked with commissioning a PATRIOT surface-to-air missile system that allows the Romanian armed forces to increase defensive and deterrent capacity, ensuring better defence of the national airspace, which is part of NATO airspace.

The battle flag of the military unit is a symbol of military honour, bravery and glory; it is made at special workshops and consists of an ensign, a flagpole, an eagle and accessories, Agerpres informs.
Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Ludovic Orban sent a message on Tuesday, July 20, the Day of the Romanian Aviation and Air Force, in which he underlined that Romania was at the forefront of world aviation thanks to Aurel Vlaicu, Traian Vuia, Henri Coanda, and Smaranda Braescu.

"I am sending my best wishes to the Romanian Aviation and Air Force! Romanians are at the forefront of world aviation, with forerunners such as Aurel Vlaicu, Traian Vuia, Henri Coanda, and Smaranda Braescu, with the heroic deeds of the two world wars and our aviators who do their duty impeccably with NATO allies. Let us remember and celebrate deservedly today the great names of our aviation, men and women who were role models of courage and humanity for generations. From those who flew historical IAR CV 11, up to the powerful F-16, MIG Lancer, Hercules or IAR Puma, the Romanian pilots have been defending our skies for over a hundred years. On their July 20 anniversary, may their wings bring them high and their landing be smooth, with the blessing of St. Elijah, the patron saint of aviators. Happy Aviation Day!," Orban wrote on Facebook.
Nearly 4,000 workers at the General Motors plant in Wentzville must resume wearing face masks and social distancing because of an increase in COVID-19 cases in the area.

In an alert sent to workers, the union told plant employees of the change Monday afternoon.

The alert read, We have been informed by the company and UAW International that based on the severe upward trend of COVID cases in the surrounding areas all GM Wentzville Assembly Center employees will be once again required to wear masks upon entering the plant starting tonight with third shift employees.

The notice said temperature screenings at the entrances will remain suspended.

GM builds the Chevrolet Colorado and GMC Canyon midsize pickups as well as full-size vans at Wentzville. Its third shift starts at 9 p.m. A GM spokesman confirmed the reinstatement of the mask mandate.

After reviewing the COVID-19 case rates surrounding our Wentzville Assembly Plant, General Motors will reinstate the 100% mask requirement at this plant to provide an added layer of protection for employees, GM spokesman David Barnas said in a statement. The health and safety of our team members will continue to dictate our COVID-19 protocols.
When she arrived, she said, there was so little space patients were staying in the emergency room for long periods of time. Staff had just opened a new COVID-19 unit and were discussing opening another.

The COVID-19 patient population is now, on average, younger than it was earlier in the pandemic, a trend doctors have mainly attributed to the lower vaccination rates among younger age groups.

For example, in Missouri, 81.3% of people between 75 and 84 years old have received at least one dose of vaccine, compared with 41.3% of people between 25 and 34, according to state data.

Before the vaccines became widely available, Keech said, many COVID-19 patients were older than 50. Now, some patients are in their 20s, 30s and 40s, and almost all are unvaccinated. Out of the 100 or so COVID-19 patients Keech has treated since the vaccines became available, only two had been vaccinated, she said. And one of those two patients was admitted for a different issue, but tested positive for the virus.

About 2.9 million Missourians have received a first dose of vaccine, or 47% of the states total population, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and about 40% of the population has been fully vaccinated. Nationally, 56% of people have received at least one dose, and 49% have been fully vaccinated.
JEFFERSON CITY  More than 200 Missouri pastors and ministers are joining a COVID-19 vaccination outreach effort spearheaded by a Jefferson City-based Christian magazine.

The effort comes as the aggressive delta variant of the virus continues its spread across the state.

On Wednesday the pastors, led by Word&Way Editor-in-Chief Brian Kaylor, will launch an advertising campaign and issue a plea for Missouri Christians to get vaccinated, as a way of following Jesuss command to love your neighbor as yourself.

Missouri is second in the nation, behind Arkansas, for the most new COVID cases per capita on a weekly basis. Full vaccinations in recent days crept just above 40% of the population  far below the 75% to 80% needed to contain the virus.

In southwest Missouri, the area hardest hit by the delta variant so far, health officials have embarked on sometimes painstaking and personal outreach efforts to get vaccines to those who are mostly hesitant or opposed. Door-to-door canvassing is one component; another is urging conversations among friends and family.
Sachs said when he ruled last year that he thought Planned Parenthood and the ACLU would likely succeed in their lawsuit challenging the law as unconstitutional. Similar laws have been struck down in North Dakota and Iowa.

Legislators who helped draft the Missouri law had said it was meant to withstand court challenges instead of spark them. It included a provision stating that if the eight-week ban was struck down, then a series of less-restrictive abortion limits would kick in at 14, 18 or 20 weeks. But courts have blocked enforcement of all of those limits thus far.

Missouris Republican attorney general, Eric Schmitt, earlier this month asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. In a court filing, he said the U.S. Supreme Court should consider whether Missouris restrictions are reasonable regulations on abortion and should also use the case to decide whether to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which established a nationwide right to abortion at any point before a fetus can survive outside the womb, which is roughly around the 24th week.

The Supreme Court has agreed to consider allowing the enforcement of a Mississippi law that would ban abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which could dramatically alter nearly 50 years of court precedent on abortion rights.
Garza sent me a link to the article last week after he headed out for his deployment. He had mentioned it to me when we talked before his tour began. I have never wanted to be so wrong about something in all my life, Garza wrote in the journals most recent edition. As I have reflected on this past year, the loss of life, the political and civil divisions in our society, the economic toll and the populations that were hit hardest by the pandemic, mostly the poor and vulnerable, it is difficult to recognize how life was prior to 2020. The past year has, at a minimum, amplified those things which make societies and civilizations fragile.

On Sunday, the mayor of Springfield, Ken McClure, explained just how fragile our society had become on an appearance on NBCs Meet the Press. McClure is an old hand in Missouri Republican politics, having been a chief of staff to former Gov. Matt Blunt, a member of the Public Service Commission and an executive at Missouri State University. He is an old-school Republican, the sort who tells the truth and doesnt pander to conspiracy theorists.
ST. LOUIS  Prosecutors on Saturday charged an 18-year-old detainee at a St. Louis juvenile detention facility with pulling a makeshift knife on a staff member and trying to escape.

Court documents say Brandon Terry, of the 2600 block of Rutger Street, invited a counselor at the St. Louis Family Court's juvenile detention center into a room Thursday because he wanted to talk.

He and the counselor spoke for a few minutes before his demeanor "abruptly changed" and he pulled out a makeshift knife and told the counselor that they would leave the housing unit together, officials said.

The counselor urged Terry not to hurt her or himself, but Terry threatened to kill her, put the knife under his shirt and walked behind the counselor out of the room, officials said.

Another staff member saw them leaving, and for a moment, Terry was distracted by something in the common room, court documents said. The counselor tried to get away, but surveillance video showed Terry grab her by the hair and threaten to stab her if anyone got closer.

Other staff members rushed into the unit and were eventually able to seize the knife and arrest Terry, court documents said.
Many of those examples were detailed in a 2018 Highway Patrol investigation and in the criminal charges the Missouri Attorney Generals Office filed against the Householders in March.

The first lawsuit, filed under the name Jane Doe I, said the teen  who now lives in Texas  arrived at Circle of Hope in December 2014 when she was 16. While there, the suit alleged, she was physically abused by Boyd Householder and sexually abused, assaulted, molested and raped by a Householder relative who was a teenager at the time.

The lawsuit also alleged that Boyd Householder attacked the teen and threw her into a wall and onto the ground and that she was restrained for more than an hour. The girl lost 40 pounds in the two months she was at Circle of Hope, the lawsuit alleged, due to Defendants policy of starving residents that they felt were overweight.

The second lawsuit, filed under the pseudonym Jane Doe II, said the girl arrived at Circle of Hope in 2015 at age 15. Eighteen months later, the lawsuit alleged, Boyd Householder appointed her as his secretary. Over a six-month period, it said, he isolated her from others on the premises, forced her to perform sexual acts and repeatedly raped her. The young woman currently lives in Washington state.
ST. LOUIS  Longtime Harris-Stowe State University President Henry Givens Jr. died Tuesday morning at 90, the university announced.

Givens became Harris-Stowes president in 1979 and served in that role until his retirement in 2011, the longest tenure of any Missouri public university president. He oversaw the growth of the campus from a one-building, one-degree teachers college into a full state college and later a university.

He was president emeritus of the university following his retirement.

America has lost a champion for education, former U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay said Tuesday, and I have lost a dear friend.

Clay said Givens had transformed the landscape of midtown St. Louis, and opened up the doors of higher education to thousands of African American students who would have never attended college without him.

A St. Louis native, Givens started his career as a teacher and administrator in the Webster Groves School District in St. Louis County. He was later Missouris first Black assistant commissioner of education, where he served for five years. While he was Harris-Stowes president, he also briefly served in 1987 as interim president of his alma mater, Lincoln University in Jefferson City, as it was going through a financial crisis.
SEOUL, South Korea  South Korea has reported a new daily high for coronavirus cases, putting pressure on authorities to extend their toughest distancing rules.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP)  The St. Louis area is facing a third wave of COVID-19 that could cause more deaths and serious cases if residents don't get vaccinated and return to wearing masks in public, the head of the region's pandemic task force said Tuesday.

Dr. Clay Dunagan, BJC HealthCare's chief clinical officer, said seven COVID-19 patients have died in the St. Louis region and 91 were admitted to intensive care units during the 24 hours before he issued his plea Tuesday morning.

The vaccine is available, but unfortunately the vaccination rate in our community has not been high enough to prevent spread of the delta variant," Dunagan said. "We now need to return to masking to combat this new wave of infections.

He said that if residents don't respond, the area could return high hospitalization rates, prompting renewed visitor restrictions and delayed elective procedures. He said even people who have been vaccinated should wear masks in public, in part because only 46.3% of Missourians had been fully vaccinated as of Tuesday, which significantly trailed the national average.
LONDON  Ive seen grown men cry, says Captain Tejinder Singh, who hasnt set foot on dry land in more than seven months and isnt sure when hell go home.

We are forgotten and taken for granted, he says of the plight facing tens of thousands of seafarers like him, stranded at sea as the Delta variant of the coronavirus wreaks havoc on shore.

People dont know how their supermarkets are stocked up.

Singh and most of his 20-strong crew have crisscrossed the globe on an exhausting odyssey: from India to the United States then on to China, where they were stuck off the congested coast for weeks waiting to unload cargo. He was speaking to Reuters from the Pacific Ocean as his ship now heads to Australia.

They are among about 100,000 seafarers stranded at sea beyond their regular stints of typically 3-9 months, according to the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), many without even a days break on land. Another 100,000 are stuck on shore, unable to board the ships they need to earn a living on.
Guaido, who was the leader of Venezuelas National Assembly, challenged Maduros claim to the presidency, arguing that his 2018 election was rigged and invalid. Guaido says he is the countrys interim president under provisions of the constitution that allow the head of the legislature to take power until free elections can be held.

Countries including the U.S. and the U.K. have recognized Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela, although China, Russia and many others haven't and Maduro holds effective power within Venezuela.

The battle over the gold is being fought out between two competing governing boards of the Central Bank of Venezuela, one appointed by Maduro and the other by Guaido.

Guaido, who is represented by the law firm Arnold & Porter, is arguing there is nothing ambiguous about the U.K. actions.

Maduros lawyers argue that he's still president of Venezuela and that the U.K. has recognized this by continuing diplomatic relations with his government.

Leigh Crestohl, a lawyer representing the Maduro board, said the U.K. governments position threatens the attractiveness of the City of London and the Bank of England as a secure place for foreign assets.

International observers to this case may be surprised by the possibility that a unilateral statement of political recognition by the U.K. government can dispossess a foreign sovereign of assets deposited in London without any recourse in the English court, Crestohl, a partner at the London-based law firm Zaiwalla & Co., said in a statement. This is all the more so where that recognition ignores the reality on the ground.

Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Sometimes stories and the social questions that follow can be both simple and complicated at the same time. These stories can take us on an intellectual and emotional journey, with plenty of detours. In the end, you may end up exactly where you started but with some unexpected experiences along the way.

On June 19, ShaCarri Richardson sprinted 100 meters with a winning time of 10.86 seconds in the 2020 Olympic trials, qualifying her for the Tokyo Games that open on Friday. But on July 1, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency found that Richardson had tested positive for marijuana use. She accepted a 30-day suspension, retroactive to June 28. Richardson will not be on the U.S. Track and Field roster for the 4x100-meter relay team headed to Tokyo. Marijuana is on the World Anti-Doping Agencys list of prohibited substances. Both the U.S. anti-doping agency and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee are signatories to the world agency code, meaning they must apply its rules.

There has been much said and written about Richardson since she was suspended and her dreams of competing in Tokyo were shattered. Much of this discussion is about whether marijuana is a performance-enhancing drug, whether marijuana should be legalized in all 50 states, and whether the rules are fair. As a society, we can have larger discussions about any and all of those things.
MIDDLETOWN, Md., July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Community Heritage Financial, Inc. ("the Company") (OTC Pink: CMHF), the parent company for Middletown Valley Bank ("MVB" or the "Bank") and Millennium Financial Group, Inc. ("Mlend"), announced today that for the period ending June 30, 2021 the Company earned year to date net income of $2.501 million or $1.11 per share, the highest for the time period in the history of the Company, with an increase of $1.142 million or 84% compared to June 30, 2020 at $1.359 million or $0.60 per share. Net income for the second quarter was $892 thousand or $0.40 per share, a decrease of 44.6% or $718 thousand compared to first quarter net income of $1.609 million or $0.71 per share. Year over year second quarter net income increased $43 thousand or 5% compared to the second quarter of 2020.

The net income of $2.501 million for the first six months of 2021 represents the best first half earnings performance in the history of the Company. Earnings continued to be bolstered by strong residential mortgage loan activity along with enhanced fee income from PPP loan forgiveness. Second quarter earnings were negatively impacted by an isolated loan charge-off related to a COVID-19 related business failure. While collection negotiations are ongoing between the borrower, the bank, and legal counsels, due to ongoing uncertainties in judicial proceedings related to COVID-19 which affect the timing of collection, the decision was made to charge-off the entire loan balance and treat collection as a recovery. Provision expense was increased in the first and second quarter specific to this credit. While the country and the economy continue to transition through the post-pandemic recovery, the Company continues to thoroughly evaluate the loan portfolio on a loan-by-loan basis to identify any current or future impacts to borrowers. As of June 30, 2021, credit quality was strong with non-performing assets to total assets at 0.36% with no additional COVID-19 related credit issues identified. While the Company added an additional $1.4 million to provision expense in the second quarter to absorb the charge-off as noted above, the Company recorded positive earnings of $892 thousand for the second quarter of 2021, which exceeded earnings of $849 thousand for the second quarter of 2020.

The Company remains deeply committed to the communities we serve. The grand opening of the Bank's Waynesboro branch was held on May 21, 2021. This is the Banks first location in Franklin County, Pennsylvania and the eighth full-service branch location for the Bank. Since the Waynesboro branch grand opening it has contributed $2.51 million in new deposits to the Banks balance sheet; $967 thousand in non-interest bearing deposits and $1.54 million in interest bearing deposits. We look forward to expanding our footprint in the Franklin County, PA market and continuing to grow in the Maryland market while providing our customers with "Absolutely Exceptional Experiences".

Quarterly Highlights  2Q21 vs 1Q21

Net book value and tangible book value per share both increased by $0.59 per share or 2.5% to $24.23 and $23.49 per share, respectively, in the second quarter, from $23.64 and $22.90, respectively, in the first quarter.

Cash balances increased on a linked quarter basis by 12.9% or $6.4 million. In the second quarter of 2021 the PPP loan payoffs due to SBA forgiveness totaled $27.8 million. This along with $16.5 million in deposit growth contributed to the cash balance increase. The bank deployed a portion of the funds to purchase $24 million in security investments during the second quarter. The bank also continued to strengthen off-balance sheet contingency funding sources (FHLB and FRB discount window borrowing capacity), keeping the overall contingency funding position strong at approximately 51.4% of total funding at the bank level as of June 30, 2021.

Gross loans decreased on a linked quarter basis by $15.9 million or 2.7% as of June 30, 2021. A net decrease in PPP loans of $25 million for the quarter was partially offset by core loan growth of $9.1 million.

Overall deposits grew $16.5 million, or 2.5% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter of 2021. The deposit growth for the second quarter was mainly due to interest-bearing deposit growth of $11.7 million. Contributing to this growth is money market deposit growth of $10.2 million. The cost of interest-bearing deposits for the second quarter decreased 7 bps to 0.45%.

The Banks normalized margin (excludes impact of PPP loans and fees, FRB Cash and Brokered deposits) decreased 11 basis points to 3.46% in the second quarter of 2021 from 3.57% in the first quarter of 2021. Accounting for the difference was the interest write-offs related to the isolated charge-off along with continued market pressure on earning assets.

The loan loss reserve to total loans ratio (excluding PPP loans) decreased to 1.08% at June 30, 2021, from 1.69% as of March 31, 2021. Most of the decrease was related to the aforementioned isolated charge-off along with reevaluation of qualitative COVID-19 factors used in the reserve calculation. The total charge-off of $4.5 million utilized $3.1 million of specific reserve, and an additional $1.4 million of second quarter provision related to this credit. All future collections related to this credit will be treated as recovery as collection efforts are active and ongoing.

Quarterly Highlights  2Q21 vs 2Q20

Net book value per share of $24.23 represents a $1.80, or 8% increase over June 30, 2020 book value of $22.43 per share. Tangible book value per share of $23.49 at June 30, 2021 increased by $1.80 or 8.3% from $21.69 at June 30, 2020.

Year-over-year net loan growth was $44.7 million or 8.6%, which includes a decrease of $32.1 million in PPP loans. Excluding the PPP loans, gross core loan growth was $76.1 million or 16.5% year-over-year.

Deposits grew $56 million or 9.4% on a year-over-year basis compared to June 30, 2020. Excluding brokered deposits of $35.2 million as of June 30, 2020, core deposits increased $91 million or 16.3% year-over-year. The majority of the core growth was in demand deposits and low interest cost money market and savings deposits.

As of June 30, 2021, the Bank had reduced overall cost of funds to 0.28%, down from 0.56% at June 30, 2020. This decrease results from the further rate reductions on numerous deposit account types due to historically low Fed rates.

Year-to-date loan loss provision expense through June 30, 2021 totaled $2.9 million (excludes $40 thousand for off-balance sheet and check card loss provision), an increase of $1.95 million compared to $951 thousand through June 30, 2020. Loan growth and the isolated charge-off combined with economic metrics due to the pandemic (unemployment, GDP and COVID factor) account for the increased provision expense.

Non-interest income year-to-date as of June 30, 2021 grew by $1.27 million or 49.8% compared to June 30, 2020. The mortgage activity and secondary sales income increase of $818 thousand along with the security sale gains increase of $187 thousand account for the majority of the increase year-over-year.

Non-interest expense as of June 30, 2021 increased by $786 thousand compared to June 30, 2020. The increase is directly related to the growth of the balance sheet (8.6% year-over-year) as staffing has increased to support the growth, and increased FDIC insurance premiums as deposits increased (9.4% year-over-year).

Dividend

A dividend of $0.04 per share was declared by the Board of Directors on June 16, 2021 for shareholders of record as of July 30, 2021 and payable on August 6, 2021.

Community Heritage Financial, Inc.Robert E. (BJ) Goetz, Jr.President & Chief Executive Officer301-371-3055www.communityheritageinc.com

Community Heritage Financial, Inc. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Balance Sheets (dollars in thousands) June 30, March 31, December 31, September 30, June 30, 2021 2021 2020 2020 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Audited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) Assets Cash and due from banks $ 49,830 $ 43,425 $ 28,785 $ 15,044 $ 49,706 Total cash and cash equivalents 49,830 43,425 28,785 15,044 49,706 Securities available-for-sale, at fair value 86,343 61,086 72,439 67,441 69,518 Equity securities, at cost 338 462 462 462 462 Loans 569,877 585,811 558,967 554,851 524,512 Less allowance for loan loss 5,812 8,948 7,480 6,024 5,179 Loans, net 564,065 576,864 551,486 548,828 519,333 Loans held for sale 8,008 10,717 12,626 21,670 13,525 Premises and equipment, net 7,025 6,529 6,400 6,459 6,612 Right-of-use assets 2,533 2,557 2,667 2,785 2,900 Accrued interest receivable 1,746 2,035 2,199 2,192 2,003 Deferred tax assets 1,873 3,025 2,081 1,796 978 Bank-owned life insurance 6,393 6,340 5,280 5,214 5,027 Goodwill 1,657 1,657 1,657 1,657 1,657 Intangible assets 5 7 9 11 13 Other Assets 1,590 1,750 2,090 1,960 1,740 Total Assets $ 731,404 $ 716,452 $ 688,181 $ 675,519 $ 673,475 Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity Liabilties Deposits: Non-interest-bearing demand $ 233,757 $ 228,946 $ 197,297 $ 187,972 $ 181,155 Interest-bearing 417,157 405,499 402,262 399,955 413,743 Total Deposits 650,914 634,445 599,560 587,927 594,897 Subordinated debt, net 14,708 14,686 14,664 14,641 14,619 Other borrowings 4,015 3,719 8,558 10,577 5,784 Lease liabilities 2,591 2,610 2,715 2,823 2,934 Accrued interest payable 206 426 215 445 235 Other liabilities 4,416 7,349 9,509 7,532 4,507 Total Liabilities 676,850 663,236 635,221 623,946 622,976 Stockholders' Equity Common stock 23 23 23 23 23 Surplus 28,523 28,523 28,523 28,523 28,523 Retained earnings 25,954 25,152 23,633 22,156 21,045 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) 54 (482) 782 870 908 Total Stockholders' Equity 54,554 53,216 52,960 51,572 50,499 Total Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity $ 731,404 $ 716,452 $ 688,181 $ 675,519 $ 673,475

Community Heritage Financial, Inc. and Subsidiaries Consolidated Statements of Income (Unaudited) Three Months Ended Six Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, June 30, 2021 2021 2020 2021 2020 Interest Income Loans, including fees $ 6,328,253 $ 6,506,470 $ 5,497,442 $ 12,834,724 $ 10,811,340 Securities 347,943 303,676 250,044 651,618 461,545 Fed funds sold and other 5,115 8,710 31,911 13,825 110,096 Total interest income 6,681,311 6,818,856 5,779,397 13,500,167 11,382,981 Interest Expense Deposits 442,650 501,019 911,388 943,669 2,005,717 Borrowed funds 0 947 44,076 947 48,869 Subordinated debt 238,049 238,049 233,258 476,098 471,307 Other Interest Expense 51,071 71,428 25,780 122,499 39,889 Total interest expense 731,770 811,444 1,214,502 1,543,214 2,565,781 Net interest income 5,949,541 6,007,412 4,564,896 11,956,953 8,817,200 Provision for loan losses 1,432,697 1,465,981 628,360 2,898,678 951,497 Net interest income after provision for loan losses 4,516,844 4,541,431 3,936,536 9,058,275 7,865,703 Non-interest income Service charges on deposits 181,006 193,829 111,808 374,835 283,831 Earnings bank owned life insurance 45,307 51,690 18,530 96,997 43,543 Gain sale of fixed assets 0 1,500 0 1,500 0 Gain sale of securities 0 196,091 0 196,091 9,257 Mortage loan income activity 1,313,885 1,460,199 1,244,244 2,774,085 1,955,756 Other non-interest income 200,732 173,176 128,848 373,907 255,591 Total non-interest income 1,740,930 2,076,484 1,503,429 3,817,414 2,547,978 Non-interest expense Salaries and employee benefits 2,880,755 2,582,179 2,567,085 5,462,934 5,085,642 Occupancy and equipment 706,167 677,236 670,147 1,383,404 1,362,692 Legal and professional fees 169,242 150,029 154,206 319,270 328,811 Advertising 131,225 156,125 92,306 287,350 222,337 Data processing 625,055 468,249 480,667 1,093,304 909,511 FDIC premiums 108,963 114,796 27,184 223,759 52,480 Loss sale of securities 0 17,826 0 17,826 0 Other intangible amortization 2,083 2,083 2,083 4,167 4,167 Other 377,273 218,647 294,466 595,921 636,347 Total non-interest expense 5,000,763 4,387,169 4,288,143 9,387,934 8,601,986 Income before taxes 1,257,011 2,230,747 1,151,822 3,487,756 1,811,695 Income tax expense 365,343 621,580 302,945 986,923 452,442 Net Income $ $891,668 $ $1,609,167 $ $848,877 $ $2,500,833 $ $1,359,253 Basic earnings per share $ 0.40 $ 0.71 $ 0.38 $ 1.11 $ 0.60

Community Heritage Financial, Inc. and Subsidiaries Selected Financial Data Income Statement Review For the Three Months Ended For theSix Months Ended June 30, March 31, June 30, June 30, June 30, 2021 2021 2020 2021 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) Interest Income $ 6,681,311 $ 6,818,856 $ 5,779,397 $ 13,500,167 $ 11,382,981 Interest Expense 731,770 811,444 1,214,502 1,543,214 2,565,781 Net interest income 5,949,541 6,007,412 4,564,896 11,956,953 8,817,200 Provsion expense 1,432,697 1,465,981 628,360 2,898,678 951,497 Net interest income after provision $ 4,516,844 $ 4,541,431 $ 3,936,536 $ 9,058,275 $ 7,865,703 Non-interest income $ 1,740,930 $ 2,076,484 $ 1,503,429 $ 3,817,414 $ 2,547,978 Non-interest expense 5,000,763 4,387,169 4,288,143 9,387,934 8,601,986 Yield on interest-earning assets 3.85% 4.08% 3.66% 3.96% 3.99% Cost of interest-bearing liabilities 0.69% 0.78% 1.14% 0.73% 1.32% Efficiency ratio 65.03% 54.27% 70.66% 59.51% 75.65%

Balance Sheet Review June 30, March 31, June 30, 2021 2021 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (dollars in thousands) Total assets $ 731,404 $ 716,452 $ 673,475 Loans, net of reserve 564,065 576,864 519,333 Goodwill & intangibles 1,661 1,663 1,670 Deposits 650,914 634,445 594,897 Shareholder's equity 54,554 53,216 50,499 Asset Quality Review Non-accrual loans $ 1,656 $ 952 $ 1,319 Trouble debt restructured loans still accruing 969 975 686 Loans 90 days past due still accruing - - 180 Foreclosured properties - - - Total non-performing assets $ 2,625 $ 1,927 $ 2,185 Non-performing assets to total assets 0.36% 0.27% 0.32% Non-performing assets to total loans 0.45% 0.33% 0.42%

Summary of Operating Results For theThree Months Ended For the Six Months Ended June 30, June 30, June 30, June 30, 2021 2020 2021 2020 (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) (Unaudited) Pre-allowance for Loan Loss provision, pre-tax net income $ 2,689,709 $ 1,780,182 $ 6,386,436 $ 2,763,192 Alllowance for loan loss provision, pre-tax 1,432,697 628,360 2,898,678 951,497 Tax expense 365,343 302,945 986,923 452,442 Net Income $ $891,669 $ $848,877 $ $2,500,835 $ $1,359,253 (dollars in thousands) Charge-offs $ 4,583 $ 18 $ 4,601 $ 38 (Recoveries) (16) (10) (29) (19) Net charge-offs $ 4,567 $ 8 $ 4,573 $ 19 Per Common Share Data Common shares outstanding 2,251,320 2,251,320 2,251,320 2,251,320 Weighted average shares outstanding 2,251,320 2,251,320 2,251,320 2,251,320 Basic Earnings per share $ 0.40 $ 0.38 $ 1.11 $ 0.60 Dividend declared $ 0.04 $ 0.04 $ 0.08 $ 0.08 Book value per share $ 24.23 $ 22.43 $ 24.23 $ 22.43 Tangible book value per share $ 23.49 $ 21.69 $ 23.49 $ 21.69 Selected Financial Ratios (unaudited) Return on average assets 0.49% 0.51% 0.71% 0.45% Return on average equity 6.50% 6.79% 9.12% 5.51% Allowance for loan losses to total loans 1.02% 0.99% 1.02% 0.99% Allowance for loan loss to total loans (excluding PPP loans) 1.08% 1.12% 1.08% 1.12% Non-performing assets to total loans 0.45% 0.42% 0.45% 0.42% Non-performing assets to total loans (excluding PPP) 0.49% 0.47% 0.49% 0.47% Net Charge-offs to total loans 0.80% 0.00% 0.80% 0.00% Community bank leverage ratio (bank only)** 8.99% 9.13% 8.99% 9.13% Average equity to average assets 7.58% 7.50% 7.73% 8.24% Net interest margin (bank only, normalized)* 3.46% 3.44% 3.52% 3.53% Loans to deposits - (EOP) 87.55% 88.17% 87.55% 88.17% *Normalized margin excludes impact of PPP loans and related on balance sheet liquidity through Brokered deposits and FHLB Borrowing. **As of March 31, 2020 the bank adopted the community bank leverage ratio (CBLR) for capital reporting.

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SOURCE Community Heritage Financial, Inc.
TICKERS: NRG; NRGOF

Source: Streetwise Reports (7/20/21)

Newrange Gold's exploration news is discussed in a Noble Capital Markets report.



In a July 7 research note, Noble Capital Markets analyst Mark Reichman reported that all four of Newrange Gold Corp.'s (NRG:TSX.V; NRGOF:OTCQB) follow-up diamond core holes drilled at its Pamlico project helped identify "new zones of mineralization that correlate well with that of the historic Pamlico mine."

Reichman reviewed the results. Newrange drilled holes P21-122 through P21-125 around hole P21-115, located 85 meters east of the Merritt zone. This quartet of holes encountered near-surface oxide mineralization resembling that seen in P21-115, in the Merritt zone and in stopes on Pamlico mine's 5428 level. This suggests the presence of a previously unknown mine extension.

"The intercept in hole P21-122 is lower in elevation than the 5428 level, indicating this new zone could be a down-dropped extension of high-grade mineralization in the Pamlico Mine," Reichman commented.

Clarity should come from assays from the four holes, which are pending, he noted.

In other news, Newrange received the results of the expanded induced polarization (IP) survey of the McGill Canyon area at Pamlico. Given the report's contents, the explorer now plans to drill this area, including the 91 zone and the Line 5 anomaly, next.

"Based on the IP survey results and exploration activities in the McGill Canyon area, we think the company's planned drilling could result in favorable outcomes," Reichman wrote.

Noble Capital has an Outperform rating and a US$0.25 per share price target on Newrange, the stock of which is trading at about US$0.12 per share.

[NLINSERT]

Disclosure:

1) Doresa Banning compiled this article for Streetwise Reports LLC and provides services to Streetwise Reports as an independent contractor. She or members of her household own securities of the following companies mentioned in the article: None. She or members of her household are paid by the following companies mentioned in this article: None.

2) The following companies mentioned in this article are billboard sponsors of Streetwise Reports: Newrange Gold. Click here for important disclosures about sponsor fees.

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5) From time to time, Streetwise Reports LLC and its directors, officers, employees or members of their families, as well as persons interviewed for articles and interviews on the site, may have a long or short position in securities mentioned. Directors, officers, employees or members of their immediate families are prohibited from making purchases and/or sales of those securities in the open market or otherwise from the time of the decision to publish an article until three business days after the publication of the article. The foregoing prohibition does not apply to articles that in substance only restate previously published company releases. As of the date of this article, officers and/or employees of Streetwise Reports LLC (including members of their household) own securities of Newrange Gold, a company mentioned in this article.

Disclosures for Noble Capital Markets, Newrange Gold Corp, July 7, 2021

Company Specific Disclosures

The following disclosures relate to relationships between Noble and the company (the "Company") covered by the Noble Research Division and referred to in this research report.

The Company in this report is a participant in the Company Sponsored Research Program ("CSRP"); Noble receives compensation from the Company for such participation. No part of the CSRP compensation was, is, or will be directly or indirectly related to any specific recommendations or views expressed by the analyst in this research report.

The Company has attended Noble investor conference(s) in the last 12 months. Noble has arranged non-deal roadshow(s) with investors in the last 12 months.

Noble intends to seek compensation for investment banking services and non-investment banking services (securities and non-securities related) within the next 3 months.

Noble is not a market maker in the Company.

ANALYST CREDENTIALS, PROFESSIONAL DESIGNATIONS, AND EXPERIENCE

Senior Equity Analyst focusing on Basic Materials & Mining. 20 years of experience in equity research. BA in Business Administration from Westminster College. MBA with a Finance concentration from the University of Missouri. MA in International Affairs from Washington University in St. Louis. Named WSJ 'Best on the Street' Analyst and Forbes/StarMine's "Best Brokerage Analyst." FINRA licenses 7, 24, 63, 87.

RESEARCH ANALYST CERTIFICATION

Independence Of View:

All views expressed in this report accurately reflect my personal views about the subject securities or issuers.

Receipt of Compensation:

No part of my compensation was, is, or will be directly or indirectly related to any specific recommendations or views expressed in the public appearance and/or research report.

Ownership and Material Conflicts of Interest:

Neither I nor anybody in my household has a financial interest in the securities of the subject company or any other company mentioned in this report.
Britton Halbert poses for a photo in September 2015 when he was an airman first class with the 703rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska. (Valerie Monroy/U.S. Air Force)

FORT SHAFTER, Hawaii  A 26-year-old airman was hit and killed Friday afternoon while riding his motorcycle just outside of Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, where he was stationed.

Senior Airman Britton Lee Halbert, a Texas native assigned to the 735th Air Mobility Squadron, was pronounced dead at the scene, according to a statement Monday from the 515th Air Mobility Operations Wing, which oversees the squadron.

Halbert was southbound at about 1:30 p.m. on Elliott Street on the eastern border of the joint base, according to a news release by the Honolulu Police Department.

He lost control of his Harley-Davidson and veered into the northbound lane, where a truck hit him, police said.

A 29-year-old man driving the truck was not injured, said police, who did not identify the driver nor the make and model of the truck.

Police are investigating why Halbert lost control of the motorcycle.

It appears that speed, on behalf of the motorcyclist, may be a contributing factor in this collision, the police said in the news release.

Testing for alcohol and drugs on the airman is pending, the police said.

Halbert was previously with the 703rd Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

Senior Airman Britton Halbert was a loyal member of our squadron, and we feel his loss greatly, Lt. Col. Andrew Gordon, commander of the 735th, said in the news release. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, Wingmen, and all those who cared for him.
Fort Knox generals are expected to issue about 40 General Officer Memoranda of Reprimand to soldiers who were caught by senior leaders eschewing Pentagon-directed policy mandating masks be worn indoors on military posts by all individuals who are not fully vaccinated. (Fort Knox)

Generals at the Armys Fort Knox will issue nonjudicial punishments to unvaccinated soldiers recently caught not wearing a mask inside facilities on the Kentucky installation where masks remain mandated for those who have not been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, officials said Tuesday.

Fort Knox generals are expected to issue about 40 General Officer Memoranda of Reprimand to soldiers who were caught by senior leaders eschewing Pentagon-directed policy mandating masks be worn indoors on military posts by all individuals who are not fully vaccinated, said Kyle Hodges, a Fort Knox spokesman. The letters, known as GOMARs, are potentially career-crippling administrative punishments that the Army has long used to reprimand soldiers outside of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

In just a matter of hours last week, during random inspections, senior Fort Knox leaders identified several dozen unvaccinated individuals who attempted to enter on-post facilities such as the Shoppette and Post Exchange without masks, Hodges said in a statement. These unmasked individuals failed to provide proof of vaccination.

As of Tuesday, the GOMARS had not yet been issued, Hodges said. They would be among the first publicly revealed punishments for U.S. military troops caught disregarding Pentagon mask guidance for those unvaccinated against the coronavirus.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued the guidance in May based on recommendations by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Austin, at that time, allowed troops and other individuals who are fully vaccinated against the virus to stop wearing masks indoors in most U.S. military settings worldwide.

The extent of the impact that the letters could have on the soldiers who receive them depends on whether the memoranda are included in their permanent personnel files or only issued locally. A permanent file GOMAR would remain in the soldiers personnel records for the remainder of their career and can be grounds for denial of promotion, denial of reenlistment, or administrative separation, according to the Army. A local memorandum would be destroyed within three years or when the soldier moves to a new duty station and cannot be viewed by promotions boards, according to the Army.

Hodges said the GOMARs expected to be issued were on a case-by-case basis. He said he could not provide further information about the breakdown of the punishments.

The reprimands, he said, were only issued to soldiers caught violating mask-related rules. They are not an attempt to punish troops for not getting vaccinated, he added.

We have plenty of soldiers who arent vaccinated that are following the [Defense Department] and installation mask mandates and have no problems, Hodges said. For those who wont follow the rules  were just enforcing those rules.

Defense Department officials said commanders have had the power to check uniformed troops vaccination status since mask restrictions were lifted for vaccinated personnel in the spring. It was not clear Tuesday whether unvaccinated troops at other locations had been punished for disobeying mask mandates.

The efforts at Fort Knox have been led by Maj. Gen. John Evans, the commander of the Army Cadet Command and the senior commander for the Kentucky installation. Hodges said they are primarily aimed at keeping the posts 12,000 soldiers and thousands more civilian workers and family members safe, especially as the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus spreads quickly in the United States.

By law and regulation, the senior commander at each installation is responsible for the maintenance of good order and discipline, including force health protection, Hodges said. Fort Knox leaders must continue to ensure the health and safety of those working on the installation and also protect the surrounding community.

The Pentagon has spent months encouraging its troops and civilian employees to get vaccinated, declaring the three vaccines approved by Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective. But the military has yet to mandate its troops receive the vaccine, despite some lawmakers in Congress encouraging it do so.

Because the vaccines are approved only on an emergency basis, President Joe Biden would have to order the military to mandate the vaccine. However, even as Biden has worked to improve vaccinations rates across the nation, he has stopped short of directing mandatory vaccines for service members. Pentagon officials have acknowledged in recent weeks that the vaccine will likely be made mandatory for troops once the FDA issued full authorizations.

Austin last week reported 70% of active-duty service members had received at least one coronavirus vaccination dose and 62% of the active-duty force had been fully vaccinated.
U.S. Marines and Australian soldiers fire an M777 howitzer during the Talisman Sabre exercise at Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, Australia, July 17, 2021. (Ujian Gosun/U.S. Marine Corps)

U.S. Marines and soldiers are in the Australian state of Queensland practicing skills that could deny enemy warships access to Pacific waters in a conflict.

A task force of gunners, led by the Okinawa-based 3rd Battalion, 12th Marine Regiment, is providing fire support to 17,000 U.S., Australian, New Zealand, Japanese, South Korean and British troops during the biennial Talisman Sabre exercise in Australia this month.

The task force includes Marine Corps and Army High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, and Marine Corps and Australian Army M777 towed howitzers, battalion commander Lt. Col. Roe Lemons said by phone Tuesday from Bundaberg, Australia.

The gunners can fire on targets up to 155 miles from their positions but cover an even larger area thanks to a Royal Australian Air Force C-17 Globemaster II and a pair of Marine Corps C-130J Super Hercules aircraft from the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing on Okinawa, Lemons said.

The planes are shuttling the U.S. and Australian guns and troops between remote bases throughout Queensland, he said, adding that the gunners operations area stretches across a coastline as long as the state of Florida, Lemons said.

Expeditionary base operations, in which Marines stand up and operate from outposts far from established facilities, are something the Marines have been practicing for a year, he said.

On Okinawa we are in the adversarys weapons engagement zone, Lemons said.

As recently as 2017, the North Koreans fired a ballistic missile over northern Japan and tested an intercontinental ballistic missile that experts believed to be capable of striking the U.S. mainland.

The same year, Google Earth images revealed that China, which has a vast arsenal of missiles, was firing them at targets configured to look like U.S. bases in Japan.

We are working on establishing small expeditionary bases where we can utilize our assets like the HIMARS to do sea denial and sea control, Lemons said.

U.S. Marines and soldiers fire High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems during the Talisman Sabre exercise at Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, Australia, July 18, 2021. (Alyssa Chuluda/U.S. Marine Corps)

The U.S. and Australian troops are gearing up to defend against any Chinese effort to invade the chain of islands that runs from Japan to Taiwan and the Philippines, according to Ross Babbage, a former Australian assistant defense secretary.

The allies artillery can target vessels at sea and can be coordinated with aircraft and ships to make sure the optimal weapon engages any given target, he said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

Units of fewer than 150 Marines at hidden bases will be hard for the Chinese to find, Babbage said.

The Marines in Australia camouflage their equipment and operate with a minimal electronic signature to make it harder for an opposing force, played by the Australian Army, to find them, Lemons said.

On Sunday, the task force demonstrated its firepower at Queenslands Shoalwater Bay Training Area, shooting numerous rounds from the HIMARS and howitzers in coordination with naval gunfire from the guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta, Royal Australian Air Force F/A-18 Super Hornet jets dropping 1000-pound bombs and Marine Corps Huey and Cobra helicopters blasting cannons and rockets, Lemons said.

On Monday, the Marines fired a GPS-guided rocket at an offshore island with the impact observed using an Australian Shadow drone aircraft, he said.
Newly renovated family housing at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center, Twentynine Palms, Calif., in 2016. Marines gave base housing a C+ overall in the latest servicewide tenant satisfaction survey. (Dave Flores/U.S. Marine Corps)

Marines gave base housing a C+ in the latest militarywide satisfaction survey  slightly higher than the other services  though respondents were least satisfied with move-in conditions and tracking of reported problems.

The Marine Corps is the latest service to release results from the Defense Departments annual housing satisfaction survey for 2020, conducted in December and January.

Its the first year for a new anonymous survey that is standardized across the services, though residents have been surveyed since housing was privatized in the 1990s.

The results come over two years after a Reuters investigation revealed mold and pest infestation, water leaks and other hazards in privatized military housing, which led to congressional hearings and testimony from military spouses.

More than one-fifth of the nearly 20,000 residents of Marine Corps privatized base housing responded to the survey, reporting an overall satisfaction score of 78 on a scale of 100, the service said in a statement published Monday.

The responses provided great insight and supported my obligation to ensure that Marines, families and civilians voices are heard, said Maj. Gen. Ted Banta, head of Marine Corps Installations Command, in the statement. The survey responses will be used to shape housing and housing services.

Earlier this year, the Air Force said its privatized housing scored an overall satisfaction rate of 77.1, with about 30% of tenants responding. The service did not say the total number of surveys that were sent out.

The Navy reported an overall satisfaction score of 77 from about 9,700 respondents, a response rate of over a quarter of residents. The Army scored a 75.4 from about 25,500 respondents, a response rate of 29%.

The services also sought feedback on government-owned housing, though they did not all provide data on how many surveys were distributed to tenants of those facilities or what the resulting scores were.

The firm Robert D. Niehaus Inc. conducted the survey on behalf of the Marine Corps. CEL & Associates Inc. conducted the poll on behalf of the other services.

The tenant canvas results are categorized by installation and help tell military and privatized housing company officials what areas need improvement. They were also broken down by property, service and overall satisfaction scores.

Service scores reached 80.8 for the Marine Corps, while satisfaction with properties was scored at 77.8. The highest-rated privatized base housing in terms of service, with a score of 95, was the Mid-Atlantic Military Family Communities, which operates housing around Norfolk, Va.

Tracking and following-up on reported problems was among the categories with the lowest satisfaction rates, along with landscaping and move-in condition. But tenants rated the quality of maintenance work among the highest, along with safety and courtesy of maintenance and management staff.

Just one of the 15 Marine Corps installations scored under 70 overall, which the service considers below average. The installation was not named.

Projects with low ratings are required to develop action plans to address issues revealed in the surveys, the Marine Corps said. Progress is assessed quarterly at a regional level.

Since the congressional hearings in late 2019, the Pentagon and the services have taken steps to improve housing, including putting in place a tenant bill of rights.

Marines should be able to expect quality housing and exceptional service no matter where they are stationed, Marine Commandant Gen. David Berger said in the statement.

Chad Garland Chad is a Marine Corps veteran who covers the U.S. military in the Middle East, Afghanistan and sometimes elsewhere for Stars and Stripes. An Illinois native whos reported for news outlets in Washington, D.C., Arizona, Oregon and California, hes an alumnus of the Defense Language Institute, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arizona State University.
Adm. Mike Gilday, chief of naval operations, addresses the crew aboard the Freedom-class littoral combat ship USS Billings on March 3, 2021. Gilday visited Naval Station Mayport, Fla., to engage with sailors, speak to local Navy leadership and tour a number of commands in the area. (Austin Collins/U.S. Navy)

WASHINGTON  Adm. Mike Gilday on Tuesday said there is no plan in the works to reach a 355-ship Navy, but the fleet of the future will be more capable  and lethal  as a result of the services investment strategy.

Speaking at a virtual Sea-Air-Space event, Gilday defended the services proposed ship cuts in 2022 while arguing the service should focus on quality  not quantity.

We do have an investment strategy that incrementally gets us to a more capable or a more lethal fleet, but not necessarily a bigger fleet, unless we saw a rise in the top line [of the 2022 budget], said Gilday, the chief of naval operations.

In the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, which sets defense priorities and funding for the Pentagon each year, Congress called for the Navy to reach a 355-ship fleet as soon as possible. But the service has taken few steps to begin that process.

I still think that 355 is a good target, but the reality is that we can't really afford to have a Navy bigger than one that we can sustain, Gilday said. Based on our current budget, I believe the analysis shows that we can afford a fleet of about 300 ships.

The Navys proposed 2022 budget would cut 12 ships  four littoral combat ships, seven guided-missile cruisers and an amphibious transport dock ship  next year and build just eight. The Navy now has about 296 ships.

Gilday said the most controversial decision was cutting the cruisers, though doing so would save about $5 billion in the next 5 years.

He also said cutting the aging cruisers is important to the services reliability, as new issues such as the ships analog radar systems are approaching obsolescence as missiles soar at speeds that evade detection.

They have difficulty actually seeing the threat based on the speed, Gilday said.

Another issue is the unpredictability of the aging parts aboard the three-decade-old cruisers, the admiral said, referencing a recent incident when the Navy attempted to deploy a ship and had to bring it back twice because of because of fuel-tank cracks.

It does have an impact on reliability, and we need to be able to provide the secretary of defense and the president reliable assets out there that they can count on to do the nation's business, Gilday said.

But he said he has hope for the Navys near future. Within the next five years, the service should have more Virginia-class submarines and be on the cusp of delivering the first Constellation-class frigate and new Flight III guided-missile destroyers.

The Navy is also focusing on weapons development, Gilday said, working on hypersonic missiles that fly five times the speed of sound and investing in a longer-range weapon, the maritime strike Tomahawk, which gives us range and speed to reach out and touch an adversary.

By 2025, we believe if we stay on path that we'll be delivering the Zumwalt class destroyers with a hypersonic missile capability, Gilday said. In the air, half of our air wings will have a fourth- and fifth-generation [fighter jet] mix, which analysis has shown to be quite effective against our adversaries.

But while the Navy works to make the most of its nearly $163.9 billion budget, Gilday warned if the service is not allotted more money in the future, it could have consequences for national security.

It's going to be a challenge if our top line stays the same or if it decreases, he said. If it decreases, I think that we're likely going to see a declining fleet in terms of capacity.
A federal judge upheld Indiana University's requirement for vaccination against the coronavirus in a ruling made public Monday, rejecting arguments from students who contended the mandate was unconstitutional.

The ruling could be influential as colleges and universities across the country are preparing to reopen in the fall and deciding how to protect campuses from the ongoing public health threat of the lethal virus. Hundreds of schools have adopted vaccine requirements. Many others are only encouraging students to get vaccinated.

The split on mandates often follows a red-blue political divide. Colleges that require vaccination are more likely to be located in states that President Joe Biden carried in last year's election.

IU, with about 90,000 students on several campuses, is one of the most prominent public universities in a Republican-led state to adopt a vaccine mandate. Purdue University, also in Indiana, does not have a mandate.

Eight IU students challenged the university's policy in a lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, saying the mandate infringed on their bodily autonomy and medical privacy. Several of the plaintiffs had obtained exemptions that the university offered from the mandate on religious grounds, but they nonetheless viewed the policy as an attack on their rights and sought a preliminary injunction to halt the mandate.

U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty sided with the university in declining to issue an injunction after hearing oral arguments on July 13.

"Recognizing the students' significant liberty to refuse unwanted medical treatment, the Fourteenth Amendment permits Indiana University to pursue a reasonable and due process of vaccination in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty, and staff," Leichty wrote in an opinion dated Sunday. "Today, on this preliminary record, the university has done so for its campus communities. The students haven't established a likelihood of success on the merits of their Fourteenth Amendment claim or the many requirements that must precede the extraordinary remedy of a preliminary injunction."

Leichty, a Trump appointee, wrote in the ruling that the lawsuit posed new and urgent questions.

"No case to date has decided the constitutionality of whether a public university, such as Indiana University, may mandate that its students receive a COVID-19 vaccine," Leichty wrote.

He noted that the most widely used coronavirus vaccines are being administered through emergency use authorization, or EUA, and still do not yet have full approval from the Food and Drug Administration. But the pandemic posed a rare public health threat, the judge wrote, citing the covid-19 death toll in America of more than 600,000.

"Not all EUAs are equal," Leichty wrote, "and the one required for COVID-19 vaccines was more robust than usual."

James Bopp Jr., attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement that they would appeal.

"Continuing our fight against this unconstitutional mandate is necessary to guarantee that IU students receive the fair due process they're owed by a public university," Bopp said. "An admitted IU student's right to attend IU cannot be conditioned on the student waiving their rights to bodily integrity, bodily autonomy, and consent to medical treatment like IU has done here."

The university applauded the outcome.

"A ruling from the federal court has affirmed Indiana University's COVID-19 vaccination plan designed for the health and well-being of our students, faculty and staff," IU said in a statement. "We appreciate the quick and thorough ruling which allows us to focus on a full and safe return. We look forward to welcoming everyone to our campuses for the fall semester."

IU's mandate, issued in May, applies to students and employees. So far, an IU spokesman said, about 80% of students, faculty and staff have had at least one vaccine shot. Classes resume in August on the main campus in Bloomington and elsewhere.
Muslims offer prayers during the first day of Eid al-Adha, outside the iconic Haghia Sophia in the historic Sultan Ahmed district of Istanbul, Tuesday, July 20, 2021. Thousands of Muslims attended dawn Eid al-Adha prayers in Istanbul. (Mucahid Yapici/AP)

CAIRO  Muslims around the world were observing Tuesday yet another major Islamic holiday in the shadow of the pandemic and amid growing concerns about the highly infectious delta variant of the coronavirus.

Eid al-Adha, or the "Feast of Sacrifice," is typically marked by communal prayers, large social gatherings, slaughtering of livestock and distributing meat to the needy. This year, the holiday comes as many countries battle the delta variant first identified in India, prompting some to impose new restrictions or appeal for people to avoid congregating and follow safety protocols.

The pandemic has already taken a toll for the second year on a sacred mainstay of Islam, the hajj, whose last days coincide with Eid al-Adha. Once drawing some 2.5 million Muslims from across the globe to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the pilgrimage has been dramatically scaled back due to the virus.

This year's hajj has been limited to 60,000 vaccinated Saudi citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, pilgrims wearing masks and maintaining social distancing performed the symbolic stoning of the devil in the valley area of Mina  using sterilized pebbles they received ahead of time.

"This is (a) very, very, very big moment for us, for me especially," said pilgrim Arya Widyawan Yanto, an Indonesian living in Saudi Arabia. He added that he was happy he had the chance to perform the pilgrimage. "Everything was conducted under very strict precautions."

Yanto said he hoped for the pandemic to end and for all Muslims to be able to perform the pilgrimage in a safe way.

Muslim worshippers offer Eid al-Adha prayer in the mixed Arab Jewish city of Jaffa, near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, July 20, 2021. (Oded Balilty/AP)

Indonesia marked a grim Eid al-Adha amid a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases in the world's most populous Muslim-majority nation. Vice President Ma'ruf Amin, also an influential Islamic cleric, appealed to people to perform holiday prayers at home with their families.

"Don't do crowds," Amin said in televised remarks ahead of the start of the holiday. "Protecting oneself from the COVID-19 pandemic is obligatory."

The surge in new cases is believed to have been fueled by travel during another holiday  the Eid al-Fitr festival in May  and by the rapid spread of the delta variant.

In Malaysia, measures have been tightened after a sharp spike in infections, despite a national lockdown since June 1. People are banned from traveling back to their hometowns or crossing districts to celebrate. House visits and customary trips to graveyards are also banned.

Healthy worshippers are allowed to gather for prayers in mosques, with strict social distancing and no physical contact. Ritual animal sacrifice is limited to mosques and other approved areas.

Health Director-General Noor Hisham Abdullah has urged Malaysians not to "repeat irresponsible behavior," adding that travel and celebrations during Eid al-Fitr and another festival on the island of Borneo led to new clusters of cases.

"Let us not in the excitement of celebrating the Feast of Sacrifice cause us all to perish because of COVID-19," he said in a statement.

Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin urged Muslims to stay home. "I appeal to you all to be patient and abide by the rules because your sacrifice is a great jihad in Allah's sight and in our effort to save lives," he said in a televised speech on the eve of the festival.

The World Health Organization has reported that globally, COVID-19 cases and deaths had climbed after periods of decline, with the reversal spurred in part by the delta variant.

Lockdowns will severely curtail Eid al-Adha festivities in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's two largest cities.

Sydney resident Jihad Dib, a New South Wales state government lawmaker, said the city's Muslims were sad but understood why they would be confined to their homes with no visitors allowed.

"It's going to be the first Eid in my life I don't hug and kiss my mum and dad," Dib told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

Iran on Monday imposed a week-long lockdown on the capital, Tehran, and the surrounding region as the country struggles with another surge in the coronavirus pandemic, state media reported. The lockdown begins Tuesday.

Not everyone is imposing new restrictions. In Bangladesh, authorities have allowed an eight-day pause in the country's strict lockdown for the holiday that health experts say could be dangerous.

British Muslims were celebrating in the wake of coronavirus restrictions being lifted in England this week, but against the backdrop of surging infections that are forecast to increase even further as the country opens up.

"Eid is about sacrifice, and Muslims, just like everyone else, have had to make huge sacrifices over the past 18 months, staying apart when normally you would come together," said Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who recently tested positive for COVID-19. "There are brighter days ahead," he said in a video message.

Eid al-Adha recalls the Quranic tale of Prophet Ibrahim's test of faith and his willingness to sacrifice his son as an act of submission to God.

In Egypt, Essam Shaban traveled to the southern province of Sohag to spend Eid al-Adha with his family. He said ahead of the start of the holiday that he planned to pray at a mosque there on Tuesday while taking precautions such as bringing his own prayer rug and wearing a mask.

"We want this Eid to pass by peacefully without any infections," he said. "We must follow instructions."

Shaban looked forward to pitching in with his brothers to buy a buffalo for slaughtering, going door-to-door to give some of the meat to the poor, and to the traditional festive meal later in the day with his extended family.

"It's usually boisterous with laughter and bickering with the kids," he said. "It's great."

But others will be without loved ones.

In India, where Eid al-Adha starts Wednesday, Tahir Qureshi would always go with his father for prayers and then to visit family and friends. His father died in June after contracting the virus during a surge that devastated the country, and the thought of having to spend the holiday without him is heartbreaking.

"It will be difficult without him," he said.

India's Muslim scholars have been urging people to exercise restraint and adhere to health protocols. Some states have restricted large gatherings and are asking people to observe the holiday at home.

Meanwhile, the pandemic's economic fallout, which threw millions of Indians into financial hardship, has many saying they cannot afford to buy sacrificial livestock.

In Indian-controlled Kashmir, a disputed, Muslim-majority region, businessman Ghulam Hassan Wani is among those cutting back.

"I used to sacrifice three or four sheep, but this year we can hardly afford one," Wani said.

Nabil reported from Mina, Saudi Arabia. Associated Press writers from around the world contributed to this report.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Thats All, Brother was built in February 1944 and was the leading C-47 aircraft in a group of 800 C-47s that carried approximately 13,000 paratroopers to Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944 (Facebook)

MASON CITY, Iowa (Tribune News Service)  A significant piece of World War II history with a fascinating tie to North Iowa is heading to Mason City later this week.

On Thursday, the Mason City Municipal Airport will open its tarmac to the historic C-47, Thats All, Brother, and allow attendees the opportunity to view the aircraft take flight.

In addition to the Thats All, Brother, a handful of other historical aircrafts will be making their way to Mason City for the three-day event.

The history

Thats All, Brother was built in February 1944 and was the leading C-47 aircraft in a group of 800 C-47s that carried approximately 13,000 paratroopers to Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944, better known as D-Day.

77 years later, Thats All, Brother will be landing at the Mason City Municipal Airport to teach attendees about the historical significance of the aircraft and its role in history.

Kim Pardon, a spokesperson for The Commemorative Air Force, said shes excited for the opportunity to bring such an important piece of history to Mason City.

It just tells a great story about World War II, Pardon said. Its going to be a spectacular event.

The story of Thats All, Brother doesnt end following World War II but instead just begins. Following the end of the war, Thats All, Brother was sold in the civilian market, bouncing between many owners along the way. Eventually, an owner sold the plane to a scrapyard in Wisconsin.

Reeanactors prepare for a jump in June 2021. (Facebook)

Thats where the story of Thats All, Brother could have ended, but in 2015 the Commemorative Air Force discovered the planes location and began a campaign to buy and restore the aircraft.

The Commemorative Air Force spent way too much money and bought the airplane and completely renovated it, Pardon joked.

After three years of tireless restoration, Thats All, Brother finally took to the skies again, 74 years after its flight to Normandy.

The pilot

By 1986, the Thats All, Brother was operating as a mail carrier ship and owned by a Clear Lake resident; thats when pilot Doug Rozendaal, a member and chairman of the board for The Commemorative Air Force, first became familiar with the historic aircraft.

I was driving home one day in 1986 and saw that plane sitting at the Mason City airport, Rozendaal recalled. I slammed on the brakes and went inside to talk to the owner.

Six weeks later, Rozendaal became certified to fly C-47 aircrafts and began flying Thats All Brother on behalf of its owner across the United States, but did so not knowing its extensive history. Rozendaal was even the pilot who eventually flew Thats All, Brother to its presumed (at the time) final resting place.

Id be lying if I said I wasnt emotional about it, Rozendaal said. It was hard to know I was leaving it be chopped up.

Rozendaal has been flying planes since 1977 and has flown over 200 different types of airplanes, from modern private jets to historic World War II era aircrafts.

It wasnt until the Commemorative Air Force began its restoration project in 2015 that Rozendaal became familiar with the extent of Thats All, Brothers history.

In 2018, when Thats All, Brother finally took to the skies again, Rozendaal was the man who got to do so as the pilot. Rozendaal, who has lived in Clear Lake since 1984, got the opportunity to fly Thats All, Brother from the Untied States across the Atlantic Ocean to Normandy, France in 2019 for the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

When youre flying it, youre intensely focused on the flight, Rozendaal said. But, when we passed over the beach and the graveyard, it was difficult not to imagine what was going on directly below us 75 years ago.

On Thursday, Rozendaal will be flying Thats All, Brother, the aircraft that has meant so much to him over the years, to his local community of Clear Lake.

Every time you get to fly it is a privilege, Rozendaal said. Im proud to use it to tell stories and help educate, honor and inspire younger generations.

The event details

Thats All, Brother, will land at the Mason City Municipal Airport on Thursday at 2:30 p.m. and remain at the airport until Saturday, July 24. The aircraft will be on display to the public July 23-24 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Those who choose to attend will have the opportunity to tour the inside of the aircraft, and for $249, you can reserve a seat on Thats All, Brother for a flight on the plane at https://tour.thatsallbrother.org/.

zachary.dupont@globegazette.com.

(c)2021 Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa

Visit Globe Gazette, Mason City, Iowa at www.globegazette.com
Buy Photo (Scott Schonauer/Stars and Stripes)

Camp Toro Bravo, Spain, May 2002: Sailors and Marines call from a mobile telephone booth at Camp Toro Bravo in Tarragona, Spain. Seabees built the camp in less than a week. The tent city includes an Internet cafe, movie theater and exchange store. More than 4,000 Marines and sailors were in Spain participating in NATOs Dynamic Mix 2002 exercise until mid-June.
Massive protests have erupted in Cuba against ruthless dictatorship and cruel deprivation. Predictably, President Miguel Diaz-Canel, handpicked successor to the Castro brothers, blames the United States for everything. That is nothing new.

Dictator Fidel Castro died over four years ago. His importance as an epic Machiavellian revolutionary is undeniable. Epic economic mismanagement also characterized his decades in power.

In May 2015, the United States removed Cuba from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. This increased interchange between the two sides. Of particular significance, banking restrictions were lifted. President Donald Trump returned Cuba to the terrorist list.

In 2016, President Barack Obama visited Cuba. President Calvin Coolidge was the previous U.S. chief executive to visit, in early 1928.

Fidel Castro began transition of power to younger brother Raul Castro in 2006. Four years later, Fidel suddenly reemerged in the media spotlight and proceeded dramatically to lament the nations wrecked economy.

The Cuban government announced layoffs of 500,000 workers, combined with liberalization designed to encourage small business and foreign purchases of real estate. This was profound admission of failure by Cubas Communist leaders. Havana now courts foreign investment, while maintaining tight political control.

In 2009, the U.S. loosened extremely tight restrictions on travel and financial remittances. Additionally, telecommunications companies could pursue licensing agreements. Now, the desperate government has shut down the internet.

The Soviet Union, vital subsidy source, collapsed three decades ago. Venezuela provides some aid, but that economy is also a basket case.

Enemies as well as admirers agree Fidel Castro demonstrated exceptional leadership before age and illness led him to retire. After taking power in early 1959, enforcer brother Raul handled bloody mass executions with efficient dispatch.

Fidel highlighted new alliance with Moscow by joining Nikita Khrushchev in a 1960 visit to the United Nations in New York. At the U.N., the Soviet premier was wildly disruptive, while the Cuban delegation provided a media sideshow. The Eisenhower administration began clandestine efforts to overthrow the regime, including a CIA project to assassinate Fidel Castro. The successor Kennedy administration vastly expanded efforts.

Cuba actively promoted revolution. The U.S. countered, particularly in Chile, where East German as well as Cuban influence was strong. Moscow also used Cuban troops as proxies in Africa.

When Fidel retired, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice endorsed peaceful, democratic change and suggested the international community work directly with the people. We should emphasize educational and cultural exchanges. President Dwight Eisenhower did this successfully during the Cold War.

Above all, we should avoid directly acting to overthrow the regime. Previous armed interventions were highly counterproductive, and for many years provided the Castro brothers and now Diaz-Canel with the benefit of blaming all problems on Yankee Imperialism.

Cuba has been important in U.S. politics. In 1960, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kennedy dramatically fanned flames of hostility to Castro in the close contest with the Republican nominee, Vice President Richard Nixon. Kennedy exploited alarm about a Communist state 90 miles away and outflanked Nixon.

The Kennedy administration began with the disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco. In October 1962, the Cuban missile crisis brought the world to the edge of nuclear war. A year later, assassin Lee Harvey Oswald met with Cuban intelligence officials in Mexico City.

As always, the current specific foreign policy options should be considered as much as possible in the context of a wider strategy. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. government has had multiple opportunities to encourage democracy and build new alliances. Cuba is hardly a candidate for immediate rapprochement, but the current popular unrest provides a major opportunity to strengthen our ties with the rest of the Americas, including Canada, which historically has followed a separate course regarding Cuba.

Most mercifully, we now have opportunities to support change from within. We should give thanks, and encourage them.

Learn More: Serhii Plokhy Nuclear Folly  A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College and author of After the Cold War.
A security guard stands outside the National Pantheon Museum before a ceremony in honor of late Haitian President Jovenel Moise in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Tuesday, July 20, 2021. (Matias Delacroix/AP)

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti  Haitians held official ceremonies Tuesday to honor assassinated President Jovenel Moise while installing a new interim leader and arresting at least three police officers implicated in the killing.

Designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry was sworn in to replace interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph, who assumed leadership of Haiti with the backing of police and the military after the July 7 attack at Moise's private home.

"I'm from a school that believes in dialogue," Henry said as he called for unity and promised to meet with various sectors in upcoming days to build consensus. "The Haitian people are the solution to the crisis."

Henry, a neurosurgeon and former Cabinet minister, has promised to form a provisional consensus government to lead Haiti until elections are held. He said he has already met with various unidentified actors as well as civil society and the private sector.

The government released the names of Henry's Cabinet, with the ministers of justice, economy, finance, agriculture and others keeping their positions.

In the yard of the Nation Pantheon Museum in downtown Port-au-Prince, a crowd of international dignitaries and Haitian officials clad in somber suits sat under the shade of pink and white bougainvillea to commemorate Moise, whose assassination stunned Haiti.

A large portrait of the slain president hung behind Joseph as he spoke to mourners. "The president is dead because of his political and social convictions," he said.

Joseph accused oligarchs and criminals of assassinating the president's character and then the president himself. He called on everyone to seize the moment as an opportunity to find a common purpose and durable, viable solutions.

Moise was shot multiple times and his wife was seriously wounded, and while officials have arrested at least 26 people in the case, it remains unclear who ultimately was behind the attack.

Police Chief Leon Charles announced four more formal arrests on Tuesday  at least three of them police officers, whose ranks he did not release.

"There was infiltration in the police," he said.

Haitian police identified the fourth suspect, who was not a police officer, as Dominick Cauvin.

An individual named Dominick Cauvin has lived in South Florida, spending time in recent years in Miami, Miami Beach and Pembroke Pines, public records show. He's listed as an independent security consultant, according to his LinkedIn profile; his private Instagram account lists him as founder and owner of Armotech International Corp. and Armotech Group S.A., in Haiti.

Cauvin is currently listed as CEO for a company based in Pembroke Pines, Fla., called Armotech International Corp., which he registered with the state on Nov. 2, 2020, public records show. He set up a similarly named company, the Armotech Group Inc., in early January 2020, only to dissolve it in April 2021, records show.

Authorities earlier said they had detained and isolated  but not formally arrested  several high-ranking police officials as they tried to determine why the attackers were able to reach the president without any of his guards being injured.

Haiti Elections Minister Mathias Pierre told The Associated Press on Monday that Joseph would step down and cede the position to Henry, who was chosen for the post by Moise shortly before he was killed but had not been sworn in.

The change in leadership comes after a group of key international diplomats called on Henry to create a "consensual and inclusive government" in a statement issued Saturday that made no reference to Joseph. The Core Group is composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France and the European Union as well as representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said Joseph's departure was to be expected.

"Joseph's fate was sealed over the weekend," he said. "Everything that happens in Haiti has a powerful foreign component."

A main opposition coalition known as the Democratic and Popular Sector called Henry a puppet of the international community and rejected his appointment.

"This step is only a political provocation that will add fuel to the fire and push the country further into crisis," it said.

On the same day the Core Group issued its statement, first lady Martine Moise arrived back unannounced in Haiti to the surprise of many. She had been recovering at a hospital in Miami. On Monday, her office issued the first public statement since the killing, thanking Haitians for their support.

"Your moral support gives the presidential family the courage to go through this great ordeal and helps it transcend these moments of indescribable pain," it said.

The police chief said Tuesday that in addition to the new arrests, seven high-ranking police officials  including those with the president's security detail  had earlier been placed in isolation, though they are not formally considered suspects.

He said 18 Colombians, five Haitians and three Haitian-Americans have been arrested.

Trenton Daniel contributed from New York.
European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell leaves at the end of the first day of an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels, early Friday, June 25, 2021. (Aris Oikonomou/AP)

BRUSSELS  A meeting Monday between Serbia and Kosovo that is part of the European Union-brokered negotiations aimed at resolving a long-lasting dispute that remains a source of tensions in the volatile Balkans produced no progress.

The negotiations were headed by the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who urged Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti before the meeting in Brussels to achieve a "comprehensive legally-binding agreement."

The EU's special envoy for the dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, who was part of the talks, said at the end of the meeting that it was "difficult and it demonstrated very different approaches of the two parties."

"The only outcome I would report today is that the dialogue will continue," he said, adding that chief negotiators will hold monthly meetings while both leaders agreed to meet again in September.

Serbia and Kosovo have been told that they can't hope to move forward in their efforts to join the EU before resolving the decades-old rift that exploded in a conflict in 1998-99, leaving more than 10,000 people dead and triggering an intervention by NATO.

"The European future for Serbia and Kosovo depends on the normalization of their relations. We therefore expect both parties to work together, to overcome the legacy of the past and solve all outstanding issues between them," underlined Lajcak.

Kosovo, formerly a province in Serbia, declared independence in 2008. But Belgrade has refused to accept that. While Kosovo has been recognized by the U.S. and most EU nations, Belgrade has relied on support from Russia and China in its bid to retain claim on the territory.

Kurti said that Serbia didn't want to face the past and face the families of more than 1,600 people still missing from the war in Kosovo.

"Serbia should recognize Kosovo. Kosovo should recognize Serbia and everything else is resolvable and easy," Kurti said.

Vucic argued that all sides committed crimes, adding that there was no agreement at all at the meeting, describing the Kosovo side as "irrational."

"I am concerned. I don't know what we are going to do," Vucic said. "They see only themselves as a victim and only Serbs as criminals."

After a stalemate since last year, the two meetings in the last two months have been fruitless.

The EU-brokered negotiations started in 2011, but were stalled last year partly because of the coronavirus pandemic before resuming a month ago.

Since the start of the EU-brokered negotiations, the delegations from Belgrade and Pristina have agreed on a number of issues, tackling problems from free travel to trade. While many of them still remain to be applied, they also remained far apart on Kosovo's independence.

"The future is more important than the past. The past is important, but we have to look forward. And when we look forward, what we see at the end of the path is the European perspective for Serbia and Kosovo," Borrell before the meeting.
Members of Spangdahlem Air Base's 52nd Civil Engineering Squadron work with German first responders to fill and lay sandbags to prevent flooding in Binsfeld, Germany, July 14, 2021. About 20 military families at Spangdahlem were displaced by the floods and are being housed in temporary lodging on base. (Warren Spearman/U.S. Air Force)

KAISERSLAUTERN, Germany  About 20 Spangdahlem Air Base families have been displaced and volunteer cleanup efforts by airmen continue in nearby villages ravaged by last weeks flash floods, which emergency officials say are responsible for nearly 200 deaths in western Germany and Belgium.

The families who were forced to leave their off-base homes because of the flooding are receiving an allowance for temporary lodging, said Capt. Erin Recanzone, a spokeswoman for the 52nd Fighter Wing.

Their overseas housing allowance will continue to be paid and the Air Force will pay to move families to a new location if necessary, officials said.

About 100 people have been dispatched to aid communities in the mostly rural Eifel region, which is home to the base. Another 100 people have offered to volunteer, Recanzone said.

Flood waters have receded, and the roads into most of the affected villages near the base are clear, she said Tuesday.

Theres no more standing water, Recanzone said. Just the damage to houses and the mess left behind.

Members of Spangdahlem Air Base's 52nd Civil Engineering Squadron pass along sandbags with German first responders to prevent flooding in Binsfeld, Germany, July 14, 2021. (Warren Spearman/U.S. Air Force) Airmen with the 52nd Civil Engineer Squadron from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, work with German first responders and community members to lay sandbags in the town of Binsfeld, Germany, July 14, 2021. About 20 military families at Spangdahlem were displaced by the floods and are being housed in temporary lodging on base. (Warren Spearman/U.S. Air Force) Members of the 52nd Civil Engineer Squadron from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, lay sandbags in Binsfeld, Germany, July 14, 2021. (Warren Spearman/U.S. Air Force) Volunteers from Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, help clear mud on Saturday, July 17, 2021, in Irrel. The village, located about 21 miles southwest of Spangdahlem, is near the border with Luxembourg at the confluence of the Pruem and Nims rivers. The area received heavy damage during the torrential rainfall last week that caused deadly flash floods across parts of western Germany and Belgium. (52nd Fighter Wing) U.S. airmen from the 52nd Fighter Wing at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany, aid flood disaster recovery efforts in Auw an der Kyll, Germany, July 16, 2021. Flash flooding last week inundated homes and caused scores of deaths in parts of western Germany and Belgium. (Laura Beckley/U.S. Air Force)

Volunteers are going in with shovels and brooms, helping to remove debris at the request of local mayors, she said.

Some 80% of the 9,000 military personnel, civilians and family members assigned to Spangdahlem live off base.

The bases First Sergeants Council is assisting those affected by flood damages through donations from members around the installation, housing officials said.

Rainfall caused torrential flash flooding last week that has killed 196 people, according to figures reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday. Closer to Spangdahlem, villages in the Bitburg-Prum district received heavy damage.

No casualties related to the flooding were reported within the Spangdahlem military community, officials said.

In a period of 12 hours starting at noon on July 14, the area received nearly 3 inches of rain  more rainfall than what the region typically receives throughout the entire month, base officials said.

Small creeks were completely overflowing, Recanzone said. It was unreal.
Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki speaks with the media as he arrives for an EU summit at the European Council building in Brussels on May 24, 2021. (Olivier Hoslet/AP)

BRUSSELS  Democratic standards in the European Union are eroding in several member countries, particularly in Hungary and Poland where judicial independence is under threat, the EU's executive commission said Tuesday in its annual report on adherence to the rule of law.

The report also singled out Slovenia, which recently took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council, for attacks against the Balkan nation's media.

"There are causes for serious concern in a number of member states, especially when it comes to the independence of judiciary," said Vera Jourova, the Commission vice-president for Values and Transparency.

The review, which is in its second year, was published a week after the EU's top court ruled that Poland's way of disciplining judges contravenes EU law and undermines judicial independence, telling the country's right-wing government which introduced the system to change it.

The European Commission has also started legal action against Poland and Hungary for what the EU's executive arm sees as blatant disrespect for the rights of LGBT people.

The wide-ranging audit found Poland deficient in the four main areas reviewed: national justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and checks and balances.

According to the EU's executive arm, reforms of the Polish justice system carried out over the past six years by the current government continue to increase the influence of the government over the justice system, damaging judicial independence.

The report also pointed out a risk of "undue influence on corruption prosecutions for political purposes" and noted a deterioration of working conditions for journalists, "with use of intimidating judicial proceedings."

Hungary was criticized for its perceived inadequate anti-corruption measures and the report noted that media pluralism "remains at risk." The report depicted a bleak media situation in Slovenia, reporting online harassment and threats against journalists.

Balazs Hidveghi, a European lawmaker with Hungary's ruling Fidesz party, wrote on Twitter that the European Commission's rule of law report "has nothing to do with reality. It's simply the compilation of leftist NGOs' baseless accusations against Hungary's conservative government."

Piotr Mueller, the spokesman for Poland's government said it will analyze the documents presented by the European Commission.

The EU has repeatedly warned that democratic standards are being challenged in Hungary and Poland. At a June summit, EU leaders strongly clashed with Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban over new legislation that bans the display of LGBT issues to children in that country.

Earlier this year, the European Union's executive arm also condemned Slovenia's right-wing prime minister, Janez Jansa, for a series of aggressive comments about journalists.

But the EU's criticism seems to have little effect. After the European Court of Justice's ruling, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki dismissed it as a "typical dispute of the doctrine" and insisted that the EU court has no authority on the shaping of the justice systems in individual member nations.

Jourova said the commission has formally asked Poland to confirm by Aug. 16 it will fully comply with the ruling or face financial sanctions.

"EU law has primacy over national law. All decisions by the European Court of Justice are binding," she said.

The aim of the report is not to sanction countries. To try to rein in member states they believe are at fault, EU institutions can use the so-called Article 7 procedure, but proceedings launched against Poland and Hungary have not been conclusive so far.

EU lawmakers have been losing patience and threatened last month to sue the bloc's executive branch if it fails to take action against countries allegedly violating democratic standards, notably Hungary and Poland. They urged European Parliament President David Sassoli to demand that the European Commission "fulfil its obligations" within two weeks, under a system tying access to some EU funds to a country's respect for the rule of law.

The system was included in the budget the EU approved last year covering the 2021-27 period and which also included a massive coronavirus economic stimulus fund. In March, the right-wing governments of Poland and Hungary filed a complaint with the European Court of Justice to challenge it.

Both countries have submitted their plans to receive a share of the 800 billion EU recovery fund to finance the 27-nation bloc's recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but the commission has yet to approve them.

Justin Spike in Budapest and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this story.
A pedestrian looks at a newspaper near the entrance to Bank London Underground station, on so-called "Freedom Day" in London on July 19, 2021. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg)

U.K. leader Boris Johnsons pandemic strategy descended into disarray after his own ministers said the public could ignore orders to isolate at home.

Two business ministers  Paul Scully and Gerry Grimstone  made the point that there is no legal requirement for people to self-isolate if they are pinged by the National Health Services contact tracing smart-phone app and told to quarantine.

The technology uses Bluetooth to identify people who have are at risk because theyve come into close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19. But the app has been at the center of a storm this week, after businesses and employers complained staff shortages were pushing them to the brink, with an estimated 1.73 million people across the country isolating.

The so-called pingdemic threatens to undermine efforts to revive the economy, which is still recovering from its deepest recession in 300 years. Most pandemic restrictions were lifted in England and Scotland on Monday.

Johnson is determined to reopen the economy, despite surging infection rates, and has said it is vital to follow the apps frustrating orders to isolate in order to keep some control over the pandemic.

Speaking to Times Radio on Tuesday morning, Scully, the small business minister, said people should make informed decisions if theyre told to isolate by the app. They are legally required to stay home only if they have been contacted directly by NHS Test and Trace staff or if theyre claiming isolation support payments, he said.

By backing out of mandating a lot of things, were encouraging people to really get the data in their own hands, to be able to make decisions  whats best for them, whether theyre an employer or an employee, Scully said.

Grimstone, the investment minister, separately wrote a letter to a company stating that there is no legal duty to self-isolate as a result of being pinged by the app, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Later the government sought to correct the message. Isolation remains the most important action people can take to stop the spread of the virus, spokesman for Johnsons office said. Given the risk of having and spreading the virus when people have been in contact with someone with Covid it is crucial people isolate when they are told to do so, either by NHS Test and Trace or by the NHS Covid app.

The spokesman added that businesses should be supporting employees to isolate, not encouraging them to break isolation.

Johnson told the public on Monday it is essential to keep up the system of test, trace and isolate, regardless of how frustrating it is to get pinged.

The mixed messaging provoked criticism from all sides. Former Tory leader William Hague said the ministers comments would cause greater confusion. He told Times Radio: I think its a risky approach, I must say, because I think people want to know what is the responsible thing to do?

Justin Madders, health spokesman for the opposition Labour Party, accused the government of making it up as they go along.

Ministers mix messages, change approach and water down proposals when the public and businesses need clarity and certainty, he said. Yet again there is more confusion and incompetence from the heart of government at the expense of public health. They need to get a grip.
Mourners accompany victims of a Monday bombing at a Baghdad market that was busy with shoppers a day before the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, before their burial in Najaf, Iraq, Tuesday, July 20, 2021. (Anmar Khalil/AP)

BAGHDAD  Families laid to rest loved ones Tuesday who were killed in a deadly bombing that claimed at least 30 lives just hours earlier in a busy market in Iraq's capital.

Coffins were carried by relatives and placed on minibuses that transported them for burial. The funerals were held for the victims of the blast the night before in a crowded market in Sadr City, a Baghdad suburb.

Iraq's military said it concluded an investigation into the bombing and found it was caused by a suicide bomber who detonated an explosives-filled vest in the middle of a popular market. Iraqi security officials initially said the attack was caused by a roadside bomb.

The military said in a statement that at least 50 people were wounded in the attack. It was the third time that militants targeted Sadr City this year.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack and said in a statement posted online the bombing was carried out by Abu Hamza al-Iraqi.

The attack occurred a day before the Eid al-Adha holiday when many residents were out shopping for gifts. New clothes are typically given during the holiday.

Hussein al-Lami laid to rest his 12-year-old nephews Murtada and Amir Sahi the night before, soon after they were killed in the attack.

"The calamity was huge, especially for the parents and relatives of the two martyrs," he said. "Today, Iraqis are spending Eid with calamity after they suffered in this terrorist act. Now there is misery in every Iraqi house."

In June, 15 people were wounded when a bomb placed under a kiosk in another Sadr City market detonated. In April, at least four people were killed in a car bomb attack in Sadr City. That blast was caused by an explosive device attached to a parked car at the market.

Large bomb attacks, once an almost daily occurrence in Baghdad, have slowed in recent years since IS was defeated on the battlefield in 2017.

At the Vatican, the pope expressed his deep sadness at the loss of life in the explosion Monday, according to the text of a telegram sent in his name to the papal envoy in Iraq.

Francis "sends condolences to the families and friends of those who have died," the Vatican said Tuesday evening. Francis also "renews his fervent prayers that no act of violence will diminish the efforts of those who strive to promote reconciliation and peace in Iraq."

The pontiff made a pilgrimage to Iraq in March that stressed peaceful coexistence in the country.

Associated Press writer Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed.
The front of the presidential palace where the U.S.-Afghanistan Joint Declaration Announcement ceremony was held inside the Dilkusha Mansion Garden, Kabul, Afghanistan Feb. 29, 2020. At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid-a-Adha. (Nicole Mejia/U.S. Army)

KABUL, Afghanistan  At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on its Amaq news channel.

Police quickly fanned out across the area. One car parked on a nearby street was completely destroyed; the police said it was used as launching pad for the rockets.

The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off.

The barrage came as the U.S. and NATO complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the Taliban gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighboring countries over the past weeks.

The withdrawal is more than 95% complete and the final U.S. soldier will be gone by Aug. 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.

"This Eid has been named after Afghan forces to honor their sacrifices and courage, especially in the last three months," Ghani said in his address to the nation following morning prayers for Eid al-Adha, or the "Feast of Sacrifice."

"The Taliban have no intention and willingness for peace" Ghani said. "We have proven that we have the intention, willingness and have sacrificed for peace."

Ghani also deplored his government's decision to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners to get peace talks started last year as a "big mistake" that only strengthened the insurgents.

"We released 5,000 prisoners to start peace talks, but until today the Taliban haven't shown any serious or meaningful interest in peace negotiations."

Abdullah Abdullah, the No. 2 official in the government, was inside the palace during the rocket attack on Tuesday, having returned on Monday from peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar. Those inside the palace, however, were far removed from where the rockets landed.

The two days of meetings in Doha  the highest level of negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban so far  aimed at jumpstarting stalled talks but ended with a promise of more high-level talks.

In his speech, Ghani also assailed neighboring Pakistan, which Kabul blames for harboring the Taliban leadership and providing a safe haven and assistance to the insurgents. In the most recent fighting in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, Taliban fighters were seen receiving treatment at a Pakistani hospital across the border in Chaman.

Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it calims is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace.

Pakistan has also been deeply critical of Kabul, saying it has allowed another militant group, the Pakistani Taliban  Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan  to find safety in Afghanistan from where they have launched a growing number of attacks targeting the Pakistan military.

"Pakistan does not want a Taliban regime in its homeland" but their media have been "campaigning for a Taliban regime in Afghanistan," Ghani added.

The Eid al-Adha is the most important Islamic holiday, marking the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim  Abraham to Christians and Jews  to sacrifice his son. During the holiday, which in most places lasts four days, Muslims slaughter sheep or cattle and distribute part of the meat to the poor.

Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.
In this photo taken from a video provided on Tuesday, May 25, 2021, by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, crew members leave a Russian Tu-22M3 bomber upon its landing at Hemeimeem air base in Syria. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

MOSCOW  Syria's air defense forces shot down seven out of eight missiles launched by Israeli warplanes during a raid that targeted the Syrian province of Aleppo, the Russian military said Tuesday.

Rear Adm. Vadim Kulit, the head of the Russian military's Reconciliation Center in Syria, said that four Israeli F-16 fighter jets targeted facilities southeast of Aleppo in Monday's strike.

Kulit said seven of eight missiles launched by the Israeli fighter jets were downed by Syrian air defense units that used Russia-supplied air defense systems Pantsyr-S and Buk-M2. One missile damaged the building of a scientific research center in Safira, he said.

A Syrian military official previously said in remarks carried by the state news agency SANA that Israel carried out an aerial attack in the Aleppo province late Monday. He said that Syrian air defenses shot down most of the missiles in the attack that occurred just before midnight.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots that belong to Iranian-backed militia operating in Aleppo's Safira region. The group said the strikes were followed by loud explosions. The weapons depots were located inside Syrian military posts, the group said.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-linked military targets in Syria over the years but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations. Israel fears Iranian entrenchment on its northern frontier, and it has repeatedly struck Iran-linked facilities and weapons convoys destined for Hezbollah.

Russia has waged a military campaign in Syria since 2015, helping President Bashar Assad's government reclaim control over most of the country after a devastating civil war. Moscow also has helped modernize Syria's military arsenals and train its personnel.
David Harris, 51, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and FBI special agent tasked with investigating crimes against children now faces sex crime charges of his own. Harris was arrested last month in Ascension Parish, Louisiana. (Ascension Parish Sherriffs Office)

(Tribune News Service)  After a sprawling criminal investigation that started with a complaint about his behavior in Florida, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and FBI special agent tasked with investigating crimes against children now faces sex crime charges of his own  involving juvenile and adult victims  in both Louisiana and Texas.

David Harris, 51, was arrested last month in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, where he lives. During a bond hearing July 1, the court declared him a "threat to the public at large" and ordered him held without bail. The decision came after an investigator testified that Harris had threatened two of his victims with violence in an apparent attempt to keep them quiet.

The allegations date back several years, overlapping with the successful law enforcement and military careers Harris pursued for decades, starting with his 1992 graduation from West Point. His most recent assignment for the FBI involved investigating crimes against children, including child pornography.

His own alleged crimes span three Southern states and involve a handful of victims, both children and adults, according to court records and law enforcement officials.

Harris was arrested in Ascension Parish on counts of indecent behavior with children under 13 and crimes against nature. He has an outstanding warrant in Orleans Parish for sexual battery and attempted third-degree rape and a warrant in East Baton Rouge for aggravated crimes against nature, indecent behavior with juveniles, obscenity and witness intimidation.

In Smith County, Texas, he faces charges of indecency with a child. Harris remains under investigation in Florida, but no warrant has been issued there.

Details about the allegations remain scarce because the Louisiana warrants were filed under seal, and Texas officials have not released theirs.

In the meantime, a transcript from the bond hearing reveals the scope of the ongoing investigation and new details about the case.

Sgt. Jay Donaldson, a Louisiana state trooper assigned to the case, testified that Harris had "threatened a juvenile victim and also planned ... to harm another victim if any problems arose for him."

Donaldson also testified that the two victims in Ascension Parish case are minors.

Ascension Parish Judge Katherine Tess Stromberg concluded Harris posed a danger to the public if released from jail. She deemed him a flight risk after hearing testimony about his close connections to relatives in Alaska, including his father and siblings.

Harris also had an intimate relationship with a woman in Alaska whom he recently contacted, which "gives us reason to believe that may be an issue upon his release  that he goes to Alaska," Donaldson said.

Harris lived with his wife and daughter in Prairieville, Louisiana, but sometimes traveled for work and to visit family, officials said. He was assigned to the FBI New Orleans Field Office.

Attorneys for Harris emphasized that he knew about the allegations for months before his arrest and made no moves to evade law enforcement.

He learned about the investigation not long after the complaint was received in February, when he was completing an 18-month assignment to the FBI Internet Crimes Against Children unit based in Baltimore, his attorney said. At that point, he was placed on indefinite suspension from the assignment and sent back to Baton Rouge, his local FBI office.

Months later, he was arrested in Ascension Parish. He had no disciplinary record with the FBI and no known criminal history at the time, investigators testified.

Harris served as an infantry officer in the Army Reserve based in Louisiana, according to a military spokesman. His record includes numerous awards and commendations.

"He has served this country honorably for his entire life," his attorney Craig Mordock said during the hearing. "These allegations are completely out of character."

But prosecutors noted the seriousness and scope of the alleged offenses.

"While he does not have a previous record as far as convictions, he does have a history of doing this all over the United States," said Assistant District Attorney Leila Braswell.

Those cases and the one in Texas likely will proceed after the charges in Ascension are resolved.

It was not immediately clear whether Harris had been placed on leave from either the FBI or the Army Reserve. FBI officials have declined to answer questions about his employment status, saying only that the agency is "fully cooperating in this matter."

___

(c)2021 The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.

Visit The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La. at www.theadvocate.com

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Jeff Bezos traveled to space Tuesday morning on a rocket made by his company Blue Origin. (Van Ha/Space and Missile Systems Center Public Affairs)

Billionaire space entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson and Elon Musk have raised the public profile and plausibility of commercial space travel in recent years. The hype has helped fuel a wave of funding into start-ups building the infrastructure to bring the new space race from science fiction to reality.

Space-related technology is a $200 billion market that spans companies building products and services to use on Earth, in orbit or for space exploration and colonization missions. Venture capital investment in such companies reached a record $5.5 billion in 2020, according to market research firm PitchBook. The industry is on pace to top that milestone with $3.6 billion raised across 94 deals in the first six months of this year.

Last week Branson completed a suborbital test flight aboard Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc.'s VSS Unity and Bezos made his own journey to space on Tuesday, on a rocket made by his company Blue Origin. Marketing stunt or not, the increased attention around the industry has helped spur innovation and a surge of capital for companies looking to lay the foundation for space infrastructure.

"The rising tide lifts all boats," said Daniel Ceperley, co-founder and CEO of LeoLabs, a company that provides radar tracking services for objects in low Earth orbit.

The majority of capital has historically been funneled to companies focused on technology to use on Earth, including satellite communications and imagery, Earth monitoring and geospatial analytics. However, increasing ambitions to explore past our home planet are fueling what's expected to be a vibrant "space-for-space economy," Pitchbook analyst Ryan Vaswani wrote in a recent report.

The new interest could benefit companies like LeoLabs, which has radar sites in Alaska, Texas, New Zealand and Costa Rica that track objects in orbit from satellites to tiny debris, helping to prevent collisions. The start-up raised $65 million in funding in June led by Insight Partners and Velvet Sea Ventures.

These advancements are just the beginning, according to Vaswani, citing the possibility of commercial space stations, space debris removal services and in-space manufacturing emerging by 2035 as launch costs become cheaper.
Buy Photo Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. are seeking to replace the War Powers Act of 1973 with more defined legislation. (Carlos Bongioanni/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON - A bipartisan group of senators is unveiling legislation Tuesday to give Congress a more active role in approving arms sales, authorizing the use of military force and declaring national emergencies, in an across-the-board effort to claw back national security power from the executive branch.

The bill aims, for the first time, to define what type of "hostilities" require a president to seek congressional approval before committing military resources; establish expiration dates for national emergencies and military authorizations; and automatically curtail funding for any operation a president continues without explicit congressional support.

The comprehensive measure comes as Washington is grappling with whether and how to repeal long-running authorizations for use of military force, or AUMFs, including those passed nearly two decades ago to greenlight U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The legislation also draws inspiration from recent disputes between lawmakers and the past two administrations, in seeking to impose stringent standards forcing presidents to consult Congress early and often when it comes to using and funding weapons of war.

The trio behind the measure, Sens. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., have been longtime proponents of giving Congress a more proactive role in such matters. In recent years, they joined forces to invoke Congress's war powers and bring an end to U.S. participation in Yemen's civil war  an effort that secured majority support, but not enough to overcome then-President Donald Trump's veto.

The new legislation on offer, however, goes much further  and as such, is likely to inspire heated debate.

The measure seeks to replace the War Powers Act of 1973 with a series of better-defined, and arguably more stringent directives to the current and future administrations about when to approach Congress for permission to conduct military operations. It would define "hostilities" as any operation requiring the use of force, remotely or directly  superseding the unofficial custom of administrations interpreting the law as applying only when there are troops on the ground. It also would shorten the time that presidents have to engage in those hostilities from 60 to 20 days and automatically terminate funding for an operation if a president fails to secure congressional support for the venture by that deadline.

Lawmakers have argued that such prescriptions are necessary to force presidents to recognize Congress's power to declare war, given to the legislative branch under Article I of the Constitution. But successive presidential administrations have argued that the War Powers Act is unconstitutional for restricting the president's authority as commander in chief, as defined under Article II of the Constitution.

The legislation seeks to impose similar authority over how administrations conclude arms sales and declare national emergencies; it would require the president to secure affirmative votes from Congress before finalizing such sales, instead of leaving it to lawmakers to come up with veto-proof majorities on tight timetables to block them.

The measure would require presidents to secure such congressional approval for all major foreign military or direct commercial sales of military-grade weaponry  which, in most cases, means sales valued at $14 million or more. The issue came to prominence earlier this year after lawmakers were alerted to a $735 million sale of munitions to Israel in the midst of its bombing campaign in Gaza. Sanders was one of the leading voices raising an alarm  but because the notification requirements were minimal, it came too late to do anything about it.

Typically, it is difficult for Congress to come up with veto-proof majorities to block presidential action. That was also the case in 2019, when Trump declared a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border, to enable him to divert billions of military construction funds by fiat to build a wall. The new bill from Murphy, Lee and Sanders would curtail any national emergency that Congress does not approve within 30 days, and it would limit Congress's authorizations of such emergencies to one year at a time, with a total limit of five years.

The bill weighs in more specifically on existing war powers as well, by seeking to sunset four active AUMFs related to operations in the Middle East within 180 days of passage. While two of those AUMFs are noncontroversial  Democrats and most Republicans support repealing the 1991 authorization approving the deployment of troops to the Gulf War and the 1957 AUMF allowing presidents to use force to stop the spread of communism in the region  the others are not.

The two parties are divided over whether to repeal the 2001 AUMF that Congress authorized in the wake of that year's Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Republicans argue it is vital to maintaining active operations against groups that continue to pose a threat to the United States, while most Democrats say it needs to be updated or replaced.

Although President Joe Biden has declared his support for ending the 2002 AUMF that enabled the 2003 Iraq War, efforts to repeal that measure have similarly run aground in the evenly divided Senate, after the chamber's Republicans insisted on a more painstaking review of its continued significance. The 2002 AUMF has not been used as the sole justification for a U.S. military operation in a decade.
Israeli spyware company NSO Group has said repeatedly that its surveillance tools do not work against smartphones based in the United States, but Americans traveling overseas and using foreign cellphones may not enjoy that protection.

A list of more than 50,000 phone numbers that included some for documented surveillance targets also included the overseas phone numbers for about a dozen Americans, including journalists, aid workers, diplomats and others, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations.

The investigation was unable to determine whether clients of NSO had delivered or attempted to deliver its Pegasus spyware to any of these numbers. But the presence of numbers used by American officials on the list highlighted questions about the national security threat posed by commercially available spyware.

In addition to the overseas phone numbers, the Washington-area cellphone number for the Biden administrations lead Iran negotiator, Robert Malley, appeared on the list, as did those of several United Nations diplomats based in the United States and Rwandan expatriates who oppose the government of President Paul Kagame and are living in exile here.

Forensic examination was not possible in most of these cases, and the NSO Group said in response to questions from The Post and other news organizations that the targeting of phones with the +1 country code of the United States was technologically impossible. The company said that technological block also applies to foreign-registered devices when they are within the boundaries of the United States, even if they are registered to foreign telephone systems.

But the picture for Americans outside the United States using phones registered to foreign cellular networks is less clear. While available databases of cellular numbers show some identifying information  such as the home cellular network for a customer and the current location of a cellphone  there is no centralized database that tracks the nationalities of cellular customers.

Asked if Americans using foreign phones could be hacked by Pegasus, NSO spokeswoman Ariella Ben Abraham repeated the companys assertion that U.S. +1 numbers anywhere and foreign phones inside the United States cannot be targeted. It is technologically impossible, she wrote. But her answer didnt address the issue of Americans outside the United States with foreign-registered numbers.

NSO, which describes its customers as 60 intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies in 40 countries, says it restricts licensing of its products to countries that respect human rights and that deals are concluded only after rigorous investigations. It also says its Pegasus spyware, considered among the worlds most intrusive commercially available surveillance tools, is for use against terrorists and criminals, such as drug lords and pedophiles, and is not intended for surveilling law-abiding citizens.

The Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, the human rights group, had access to the list of phone numbers and shared them with The Washington Post and its partner news organizations. Journalists sought to determine who the numbers belonged to, making more than 1,000 positive identifications, and also to conduct forensic examinations on individual devices.

These examinations, conducted by Amnestys Security Lab, found 37 of 67 smartphones examined had evidence of Pegasus infection or attempted infection. Many that didnt had been replaced in recent years, meaning relevant logs probably were lost. Among the victims were journalists, human rights workers, business executives and diplomats - all categories represented heavily by people the investigation was able to link to phone numbers on the list.

NSO has disputed the investigations findings, saying that 50,000 phone numbers could not be affiliated with its surveillance systems.

NSO Group firmly denies false claims made in your report which many of them are uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability of your sources, as well as the basis of your story. Your sources have supplied you with information that has no factual basis, as evidenced by the lack of supporting documentation for many of the claims, the company said in a detailed statement.

In the email, Tom Clare, a Virginia attorney representing NSO, wrote that an attempt at surveillance is NOT the only use for the data, adding that it is beyond dispute that the data has many legitimate and entirely proper uses having nothing to do with surveillance.

Again, to be clear, NSO does not have insight into the specific intelligence activities of its customers, Clare added, but even a rudimentary, common sense understanding of intelligence leads to the clear conclusion that these types of systems are used mostly for purposes other than surveillance.

Nevertheless, on Sunday, NSOs chief executive and co-founder, Shalev Hulio, said he was disturbed by some of the investigations findings and pledged strong action if it was determined that a client had abused the system. He noted that NSO had suspended the contracts of two clients because of human rights concerns in the past 12 months.

Still, the investigation underscored the vulnerability of smartphones to spyware capable of taking control of the devices, unlocking the troves of information they carry and activating cameras and microphones without the user knowing.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who has pushed for protections for U.S. officials working overseas, said more must be done to rein in spyware companies.

If surveillance companies like NSO are working with our adversaries to spy on American government employees working overseas, they need to be held accountable, Wyden said in a statement. These spy-for-hire firms are a threat to U.S. national security, and the administration should consider all options to ensure that federal employees are not targeted.

Malley still uses the phone number on the list, six months after joining the Biden administration as its lead Iran negotiator. Without obtaining access to Malleys phone, The Post could not determine whether any attempt had been made to infect it.

At the time Malleys number was added to the list in March 2019, he was out of government, leading the Brussels-based International Crisis Group organization. But his past could have been of interest: Malley served as a senior White House adviser to Barack Obama on the Middle East, North Africa and the Persian Gulf, and participated in talks with Iran that led to the nuclear agreement signed in 2015. Donald Trump withdrew from the deal three years later.

Malley declined to comment.

We do not discuss security protocols, procedures or capabilities, said a State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. We cannot comment on the specific details of any threats to our personnel or the steps we take to address them.

Ben Rhodes, a former top national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said that U.S. officials often are targets of surveillance by foreign governments.

It is no surprise that someone like Rob Malley would be targeted by some form of surveillance, Rhodes said. As someone who has been targeted for my own involvement in the Iran nuclear negotiations ... it is not surprising to see another official show up on a list of people who came in for this kind of interest.

In addition to Malley, foreign-registered phone numbers for U.S. diplomats in Bahrain, Azerbaijan and India were on the list, as were numbers for two employees of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in India - one of whom is a U.S. citizen.

Other Americans whose foreign-registered numbers were on the list include two American aid workers in Africa, two university employees in the Middle East, a Christian religious leader in the Middle East and numerous journalists for major news organizations. Among those organizations are the Associated Press, the New York Times, CNN, Bloomberg News, the Wall Street Journal and Voice of America; not all of the journalists themselves are U.S. citizens.

In none of these cases were the phones available for forensic examination to determine whether infection with the Pegasus software had been attempted by an NSO client.

It is unclear why American numbers that NSO says would not be hackable with its system were on the list.

They include phones belonging to several Rwandans affiliated with Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of the film Hotel Rwanda, which portrayed his efforts as a Kigali hotel manager to protect more than 1,200 people during the 1994 genocide. Rusesabagina, who lived largely in Texas over the past decade, was tricked last year into returning to his home country, where he now faces terrorism and other criminal charges after years of fierce public opposition to the Rwandan government of President Paul Kagame.

Carine Kanimba, 28, Rusesabaginas adopted daughter, has lived in both the United States and Belgium and has phones registered to cellular networks in each country. Neither number was on the phone list, but Amnestys Security Lab undertook a forensic examination of both her phones at her request. It found her Belgian phone had been infected by Pegasus. Her American phone had not been.

Significantly, the attacks on her Belgian phone appeared to pause while she was in the United States recently for several weeks. An attempt to infect her Belgian phone with Pegasus on May 17 was unsuccessful, the forensic examination showed. She was in Boston at the time as part of her campaign to have her father freed.

Kanimba, who holds U.S. and Belgian citizenship, said she sometimes spoke to American officials while lobbying for action to free her father from custody in Rwanda on her Belgian-registered iPhone X. Amnestys Security Lab found evidence of repeated infection on that phone throughout this year, beginning in January, five months after her father was arrested in Rwanda. The attacks continued until the Amnesty forensics team told her to shut down the phone earlier this month.

The way that I see this attack on us, on our family, on me personally, is that this is an attempt to intimidate me, to slow me down and say, We are watching you, we know youre here and we know what you are doing, Kanimba said in an interview at her home in Kraainem, Belgium. But this will not work on me. It never worked on my father. And he taught us well. So it will not work on me.

The numbers for at least three other Rwandan expatriates living in the United States who have criticized their home countrys government also appeared on the list.

One of those, Jean Paul Turayishimye, 49, a former Rwandan military and intelligence official who fled his home country in 2004, said news that his Massachusetts-based Verizon iPhone was on the list reminded him of the pervasive spying he saw in his home country - and that he hoped he had escaped by living in the United States.

Turayishimye, who has been granted U.S. political asylum, said he used to speak with Rusesabagina by phone several times a year. He has since lost the iPhone that was on the list, making forensic examination impossible.

Turayishimye, who has co-founded two opposition political groups and often criticizes the Kagame government on a YouTube show, said American law enforcement officials had warned him that he faces possible threat from the Rwandan government. He keeps the local police on speed dial and avoids sharing his travel plans. He says he grows suspicious when he sees a Black person he does not know in his central Massachusetts home of Leominster.

Its bad, said Turayishimye, who works as a court translator and recently earned a law degree. No one wants to be fearful doing what we do.

In a statement, Rwandas minister of foreign affairs, Vincent Biruta, said his country doesnt use Pegasus and does not possess this technical capability in any form. He said suggestions it does are part of an ongoing campaign to cause tensions between Rwanda and other countries, and to sow disinformation about Rwanda domestically and internationally.

- - -

A person familiar with NSO operations who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal company matters said Sunday that +1 phones are safe from Pegasus no matter where they are in the world. The system is programmed to block efforts to hack them, the person said.

The person also said Pegasus can determine where a phone is geographically and block any efforts to hack a foreign-registered phone while it is inside the United States.

But there is no way to determine the nationality of the user of a phone registered to a foreign system.

That could be a concern for several people whose foreign-based phones were found on the list, including an AP reporter based in the Persian Gulf who uses a phone registered to a cellular network there and a New York Times reporter who uses a phone number registered to a network in the Middle East.

The foreign-based phone numbers of two American aid workers operating in Africa also were on the list, as was that of an American Christian leader based in the Persian Gulf. All three declined to comment and requested that they not be named out of fear of antagonizing governments in countries they work in or visit. Because they are private citizens not accused of any wrongdoing, The Post agreed to withhold their names and other details from this report.

The Post also agreed to withhold the names of two Americans working for a university program in the Middle East whose foreign-issued numbers appeared on the list as well as the identity and specific location of a Human Rights Watch researcher in Africa whose number was on the list and whose organization requested that the information be withheld, citing security concerns.

A spokeswoman for the group, Mei Fong, said, There is no evidence Human Rights Watchs devices have been compromised.

The U.N., however, said it is working with U.S. officials to determine how to deal with the presence on the list of phones belonging to several foreign-born diplomats working at the United Nations in New York.

We are dealing with the reports in coordination with the host government, meaning the United States, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for the U.N. The Secretariat will take any actions that may be required to ensure the security of our communication systems.

- - -

Karen DeYoung, Shane Harris and Drew Harwell from The Post and Michael Safi and Stephanie Kirchgaessner from the Guardian contributed to this report. Kristof Clerix, a reporter for Belgian news organization Knack, reported from Kraainem, Belgium.
Wally Funk, right, became the oldest person to fly in Space Tuesday. (Logan Block/U.S. Marine Corps)

Floating in the isolation tank, Wally Funk felt weightless.

She couldn't see or hear. There was nothing to taste or smell. When she patted the 8 feet of water surrounding her, she didn't feel it.

By the time Funk endured those circumstances for 10 hours and 35 minutes in 1961, she had already taken at least 87 other exams ranging from swallowing three feet of rubber hose to guzzling a pint of radioactive water. It was all in service of becoming one of the first female astronauts at a time when American women still needed their husbands' permission to sign a mortgage and get a credit card.

Within months, Funk's dream was squelched. NASA had no program for female astronauts, she learned in a perfunctory telegram. Without that federal support, her privately funded testing program would end.

Funk, 82, finally saw her aspiration come to life Tuesday when she launched on aerospace manufacturer Blue Origin's first crewed spaceflight alongside billionaire Jeff Bezos and two other people. Exiting the spacecraft after landing, she grinned and spread her arms wide in celebration. (Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.)

Funk's journey to this milestone began in 1960, when she read in Life magazine that a female pilot named Jerrie Cobb was undergoing sensory deprivation testing to see how women's bodies would hold up in space.

"So [I was] thinking, 'Oh! This is really what I want to do!' " Funk told Margaret Weitekamp for her book "Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: America's First Women in Space Program." "I mean, there weren't a lot of things back in the sixties for girls to do."

Already an accomplished pilot, Funk wrote to the doctor running the tests and volunteered to participate. He referred her to Randy Lovelace, another doctor helping examine potential male astronauts for NASA's Mercury program. At the time, space-travel jobs required experience as a military pilot  a type of service for which women were ineligible.

Lovelace began thinking about also studying women's fitness for space travel in 1959 while he was attending an aviation conference in Miami. Lovelace and Air Force Brig. Gen. Donald Flickinger started to wonder how women would physically handle being in space, Funk wrote later. The Cold War was on the horizon, and Flickinger had heard that the Soviet Union was preparing to send a woman into space. If the United States wanted to do so first, it would have to move quickly.

There were also practical reasons for their curiosity. Lovelace was a visionary who imagined orbiting space stations with astronauts researching unexplored areas of the universe, Weitekamp, a curator at the National Air and Space Museum, told The Washington Post. But she said Lovelace was also a product of his time who thought the stations would need to fill "women's jobs"  secretaries, nurses and telephone operators.

Speculation that women's bodies might be better adapted to space than men's added to the intrigue, Weitekamp said. Women tended to eat less, need less oxygen, have fewer heart attacks and be physically smaller.

Cobb, a pilot, became the first woman to put that thinking to the test. When she performed well on the same tests as the male astronauts, Lovelace compiled a list of eligible women to continue the experiment. The women needed to be under 35 and in good health, and have completed more than 2,000 hours of flying, among other qualifications, Funk wrote.

Funk reached out to Lovelace and soon became one of 25 women undergoing strenuous physical and psychological tests as part of the Women in Space Program in Albuquerque. While the women took the same tests as NASA's male astronauts, NASA did not sponsor Lovelace's endeavor.

The intensive battery of tests spanned five days. Funk, the youngest woman, ranked third. Although the women who passed became known as the Mercury 13, most didn't meet at the time.

Lovelace's program didn't come with a promise of becoming an astronaut. Still, Weitekamp said, everyone interested in space travel knew Lovelace was closely linked to NASA's attempts at space travel.

"If you talked to him," Weitekamp said, "it would have been very easy to get swept up in the excitement of what was possible and not have spent quite as much time and attention on when that might happen and how that might happen."

In September 1961, the Mercury 13 were preparing to go to Naval Air Station Pensacola in North Florida for a third round of tests. Cobb wrote to her fellow aspiring space travelers about their upcoming chance to meet. She began the letter: "Dear Fellow Lady Astronaut Trainee," branding the women "FLATs."

Then the initiative came to an abrupt halt, Weitekamp said. The project was canceled, and the women could return to the rest of their lives, Lovelace's administrative staffers told Funk and the others in a short telegram. They gave little explanation.

"Increasingly with retrospect, one sees the injustice done particularly to these women  that they were very capable pilots and talented physically in a moment when the United States, whether in the space program or otherwise, just didn't have the capacity to recognize or reward that," Weitekamp said.

It eventually became clear that NASA didn't have a testing program for women, and the military was unwilling to let Lovelace use its facility. Few people advocated for female astronauts, Weitekamp said, including Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was generally viewed as an advocate for women. When his assistant wrote a letter for him, asking NASA about moving forward with the women's training, he refused to sign it, Weitekamp said.

In congressional hearings the next year, NASA officials testified that they were focused on landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade, as President John F. Kennedy had ordered. The agency had no capacity to pursue additional goals simultaneously.

John Glenn, the first American to orbit Earth, blamed society for the women's missed opportunity.

"I think this gets back to the way our social order is organized really. It is just a fact," he testified, according to Popular Science. "The men go off and fight the wars and fly the airplanes and come back and help design and build and test them. The fact that women are not in this field is a fact of our social order."

Funk was undeterred. She found her own opportunities to take more exams, including a high-altitude test, a seat-ejection exam and a centrifuge test that simulated the gravitational forces of liftoff and reentry. Funk remained convinced that she would make it to space someday.

"When I met her in 1997," Weitekamp said, "she was talking then about, 'I'm going into space. I will figure out a way to do this.' "
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.
There are six positive cases of Covid-19 to report today in recent returnees at the border but no cases of Covid-19 have been reported in the community.



This number includes three of the confirmed cases aboard the Mattina container ship, which is currently quarantined in Bluff.



The remaining six confirmed cases aboard the Mattina, are expected to be added to the confirmed cases tally in tomorrows update.

As we reported earlier today, nine of the 21 crew members aboard the Marshall Islands-flagged container ship have returned positive results, says the MOH.

Eight of the nine confirmed cases are symptomatic. They are well enough to remain on board.

The ship is currently in a secure quarantine area of South Port in Bluff and all crew remain onboard, while health officials work to determine the next steps for the crew members.

The MOH states health officials will be closely monitoring the health and welfare of all crew members each on a daily basis as further decisions are made.

Health officials have determined that the only port member who had contact with the ship crew is the Southport pilot, who went aboard the ship as it entered the port.

Pilots are required to board vessels of this size when berthing. The pilot wore appropriate PPE and is fully vaccinated.

Our ongoing case investigation shows the pilot had some contact with three crew members, however all three have returned negative test results.

This means the harbour pilot, who has been self-isolating, is now not regarded as a close contact and will no longer be required to isolate.

As a border worker, this person is subject to the regular border worker testing requirements

One previously reported case in New Zealand has now recovered.

A previously reported case from July 16 has now been deemed as a historical case.

It has been removed from our confirmed cases tally as it was reported as a historical case in their home country, says a MOH statement.



The number of active cases in New Zealand is 51.



Since January 1 2021, there have been 99 historical cases, out of a total of 649 cases.



The seven-day rolling average of new cases detected at the border is five.



Our total number of confirmed cases is 2,466.



New border cases in New Zealand

Arrival date From Via Positive test day/reason Managed isolation/

quarantine location 12 July Fiji Direct flight Day 6 / contact of a case Auckland 17 July Fiji Direct flight Day 1 / routine Auckland 18 July South Korea Direct flight Day 0 / routine Auckland 18 July Mariner MS Mattina Surveillance testing South Port - Bluff 18 July Mariner MS Mattina Surveillance testing South Port - Bluff 18 July Mariner MS Mattina Surveillance testing South Port - Bluff
A six-month pilot of a handheld device that allows frontline police officers to carry out on-the-spot screening of suspected drugs has shown some promising results.

The Lumi Drug Scan service has been jointly developed by ESR and New Zealand Police.

It allows police staff to test for the most commonly found drugs  methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine  and receive almost instantaneous results through their Police iPhone, says a police spokesperson.

An evaluation of the pilot, which was undertaken in Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland, Central and Canterbury Districts, found the majority of frontline officers who used it have high confidence in the service.

In total, 25 Lumi devices were used across the five districts.

They were used at 481 different events with 884 items screened during the pilot period. Lumi identified methamphetamine, MDMA, or cocaine in more than half of these events.

Of the three substances that could be detected by Lumi, methamphetamine was the most common drug type identified during the pilot and accounted for around a third of the total items scanned.

There are limitations with the scanning device only identifying three drugs.

Substances identified from Lumi scans:

 Unknown substance 516

 Methamphetamine 290

 MDMA 64

 Cocaine 13

 MDMA +Methamphetamine 1

On average each district had two to three scans per event, says police.

Counties Manukau had the highest number of both scans and events, while Canterbury had the lowest number of scans and was equal to Waitemata in the lowest number of events.

Number of events and scans per participating district:

 Counties Manukau 125 events 262 scans

 Central 78 events 199 scans

 Auckland 61 events 159 scans

 Waitemata 52 events 145 scans

 Canterbury 52 events 119 scans

Police deployment and road policing assistant commissioner Bruce OBrien says feedback from police officers highlighted a range of benefits from using the drug scanning device.

Lumi has proven very popular with Police staff. It allows officers to test drugs through plastic, eliminating the need to open packets and handle suspected drugs inside, Assistant Commissioner O'Brien says.

Identifying the drugs supports officers to consider the best way to resolve the incident and ensure the person in possession of the drug is considered for a health-based resolution.

One officer in the pilot said  when you are showing them the evidence right then and there on Lumi saying this is what its come back with, its clear to both of us what the substance is, and I want to give you help for your drug habit by giving you a referral, it makes it easier to interact with them over that.

The bulk of officers involved in the pilot said they were able to make informed decisions quicker, without the need to bring a person back to the station, says OBrien.

ESRs forensic research & development project manager Dion Sheppard says the Evaluation Report highlights the unique opportunity Lumi has presented for frontline Police and ESR scientists to collaborate.

Through our co-design approach we were able to develop a unique service that combines forensic science expertise, frontline knowledge, and cutting-edge technology into a solution that works in the real-world, says Sheppard.

He says the robustness and dependability of Lumi is a consistent theme in the Evaluation Report.

Its fair to say Police work in some of the most diverse and challenging environments around New Zealand. Where police go, Lumi needs to be capable of going, and the service is a real success in terms of its reliability, says Sheppard.

Lumi is part of the suite of tools, techniques, and processes ESR scientists have refined over many years that complement one another, which means when Police find larger quantities of suspected drugs they can send the substance to ESRs forensic chemistry laboratories for comprehensive evidential analysis.

One Police officer in the pilot said, we will always have to go to ESR for court and evidential purposes, but Lumi as a drug screening tool its fantastic.

Lumi offers users a dashboard with insights about drugs detected using the scanning service around the country.

This data gives police and potentially health authorities real time information about drug usage in New Zealand so resources can be directed to where theyre most needed.

The evaluation report is now under consideration.
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By uprooting carbon trapped in soil, wild pigs are releasing around 4.9 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide annually across the globe, the equivalent of 1.1 million cars.

An international team led by researchers from The University of Queensland and The University of Canterbury have used predictive population models, coupled with advanced mapping techniques to pinpoint the climate damage wild pigs are causing across five continents.

University of Queenslands Dr Christopher OBryan says the globes ever-expanding population of feral pigs could be a significant threat to the climate.

Wild pigs are just like tractors ploughing through fields, turning over soil to find food, OBryan says.

When soils are disturbed from humans ploughing a field or, in this case, from wild animals uprooting, carbon is released into the atmosphere.

Since soil contains nearly three times as much carbon than in the atmosphere, even a small fraction of carbon emitted from soil has the potential to accelerate climate change.

Our models show a wide range of outcomes, but they indicate that wild pigs are most likely currently uprooting an area of around 36,000 to 124,000 square kilometres, in environments where theyre not native.

This is an enormous amount of land, and this not only affects soil health and carbon emissions, but it also threatens biodiversity and food security that are crucial for sustainable development.

Using existing models on wild pig numbers and locations, the team simulated 10,000 maps of potential global wild pig density.

They then modelled the amount of soil area disturbed from a long-term study of wild pig damage across a range of climatic conditions, vegetation types and elevations spanning lowland grasslands to sub-alpine woodlands.

The researchers then simulated the global carbon emissions from wild pig soil damage based on previous research in the Americas, Europe, and China.

University of Canterburys School or Earth and Environment PhD candidate Nicholas Patton says the research would have ramifications for curbing the effects of climate change into the future.

Invasive species are a human caused problem, so we need to acknowledge and take responsibility for their environmental and ecological implications, says Nicholas.

If invasive pigs are allowed to expand into areas with abundant soil carbon, there may be an even greater risk of greenhouse gas emissions in the future.

Because wild pigs are prolific and cause widespread damage, theyre both costly and challenging to manage.

Wild pig control will definitely require cooperation and collaboration across multiple jurisdictions, and our work is but one piece of the puzzle, helping managers better understand their impacts.

Its clear that more work still needs to be done, but in the interim, we should continue to protect and monitor ecosystems and their soil which are susceptible to invasive species via loss of carbon.

The research has been published in Global Change Biology (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15769).
Rachel ONeill has the name of her eldest son Tyson tattooed on each wrist.

Written below his name on her left wrist is the date and time of his birth.

Tattooed under his name on her right wrist is15 November 2020, 5.47amthe date and time the 16-year-old was killed when the car he was driving crashed into a tree on Cobham Drive in Kilbirnie, Wellington.

The ONeills' trauma is something police dont want for any other young people or their families.

Young people stealing cars and joy-riding is not new, but we are clearly seeing an upward trend of this behaviour in Wellington currently, with Wellington City and Porirua being hit hardest, says Wellington Area Prevention Manager Acting Inspector Warwick McKee.

In response to this, Wellington Area Police has joined with their Kapiti-Mana Area colleagues to initiate Operation Focus  a literal focus on the theft of cars by young people.

We know there are several reasons these young people take these cars, but ultimately, they see it as a challenge often sharing their exploits on different social media platforms, says Warwick.

The tree at the crash site is covered with tributes to Tyson, from family and friends. For me the tree is like his grave," says Rachel.

Wellington District Police continue to use several prevention methods to tackle this offending.

We have identified a number of young people we believe are taking these cars and they are getting a lot of attention from us, he says.

But Tyson and Rachels story is the most powerful message of all. We dont want to see another family have to experience this type of loss.

Eight months on, Rachel and her children, 11-year-old Amber and eight-year-old Austin, struggle through each day.

They relish any opportunity to share their favourite stories about Tyson who they describe as clever, funny, smart, caring and the best big brother ever.

But Rachel admits in the two years before his death, Tyson was pushing the boundaries to the limit. Night-time door knocks from Police returning Tyson to her were common.

Tyson's mum Rachel visited the crash site on the day it happened and has gone back every week since.

On the weekend Tyson died, hed been in touch with his mum on the Saturday by phone. She expected hed turn back up at home over the weekend.

When I heard the knock at the door early on Sunday morning, I just thought it was him wanting to be let in, says Rachel.

Instead it was the Police and there was no sign of Tyson.

I couldnt believe what they were there to tell me. Never in a million years did I think the next time I would see him would be in the morgue.

Rachel is aware there is a Coroners hearing to come which will give her a clearer understanding of the timeline of what happened and why.

But what I know for now is that he had stolen a car from a house in Maupuia sometime overnight and at the time of the crash was heading to Johnsonville to pick up a friend.

Rachel doesnt drive and doesnt own a car. Tyson had been offered driving lessons but had never been interested.

No one in the family had taught him to drive and Id never seen him drive so I didnt really comprehend he could. He would tell me things about being in cars. I told him to stop being stupid. I now know he was speaking the truth.

"This is a lesson I want other parents to learn. Listen and really hear what they are telling you.

Rachel made her first visit to the crash site on the day it happened. She has gone back to the tree every week since.

For me the tree is like his grave. It was the last place he took a breath. I still go back over the grass marks to try to gauge what happened and how it went so wrong.

The next time Tyson came home was the night before his funeral.

I got his girlfriend to text all of his friends to come to our house. They carried his casket in from the hearse. I wanted them to really see this could have been them because I know they all do it. I wanted it to hit home for them - that that could be you right there.

Rachel says Tysons friends stayed for hours.

They were just very quiet and respectful. This was the ultimate repercussion of what these kids think is just a few minutes of fun.

"It is not fun when Police knock on your door and tell your mum she is never going to see you again, never going to hear your voice.

Rachel, with the support of her own mother Marie, is hoping to make a difference by speaking publicly about Tysons death and their own grief.

We all hoped Tyson would have grown out of it and come out the other side, but he never got that chance," she says.

"If our story helps even one family or stops one kid from getting into a car then that will bring us some sense of relief."

And my message to kids, at the end of the dayif your friends pressure you to get into a car, dont do it. Your real friends would never do that. Just walk away.

-Police Ten One Magazine.
The TECT Rescue Helicopter crew carried out 28 missions in total across the Bay of Plenty and Coromandel regions for the month of June.

Of those missions, five of these were motor vehicle accidents, five were rescues, eight were inter-hospital transfers and 10 medical events were attended to.

On Wednesday, June 16, the TECT Rescue Helicopter attended to a male patient in his sixties who had sustained serious leg injuries in Kawerau, in the Bay of Plenty region. The patient was flown to Tauranga Hospital for treatment, says a spokesperson for the rescue helicopter.

"The same evening, the on-board crew of the TECT Rescue Helicopter responded to a call out to Whitianga for a female patient in her seventies suffering a serious medical condition that required immediate attention and care. The patient was treated and transported to Waikato Hospital."

On Thursday, June 17, the TECT Rescue Helicopter was tasked to Opotiki for a male patient in his sixties suffering a cardiac event. The patient was flown urgently to Waikato Hospital for treatment.

On Friday, June 18, the TECT Rescue Helicopter crew were dispatched to a motor vehicle accident involving a quad bike and a tractor. One patient was flown to Tauranga Hospital in critical condition.

On Saturday, June 19, the TECT Rescue Helicopter responded to a male patient in his sixties suffering a serious cardiac event in Omiao.

"The patient was transported to Whakatane Hospital. On return to Tauranga, the TECT Rescue Helicopter on-board crew were re-tasked to Pukehina, where a male patient in his sixties was experiencing chest pain. The patient was flown to Tauranga Hospital for treatment."

The morning of Thursday, June 24, the helicopter was called for two missions to Waihi in one day.

"Firstly, the TECT Rescue Helicopter was called out to Waihi Beach for a female patient in her sixties suffering a medical event," says a spokesperson.

"The patient was flown to Tauranga Hospital for further treatment.

"Later that same morning, the TECT Rescue Helicopter crew responded to a female patient in her seventies suffering a medical event in Waihi. The patient was transported to Tauranga Hospital for treatment."

The same day, the TECT Rescue Helicopter crew responded to a boating accident in Auckland. A male patient in his fifties had sustained a serious leg injury and was flown to Tauranga Hospital for treatment.

The TECT Rescue Helicopter was then dispatched to Whakatane for a female patient in her thirties experiencing maternity difficulties. She was flown to Auckland Hospital.

"On Wednesday, June 30, two helicopters were required at the scene of a single-vehicle motor accident near Ngatira. Two patient required urgent medical care and transportation. The TECT Rescue Helicopter flew a female patient in her twenties to Waikato Hospital.

"Missions like these would not be possible if it were not for the generous donations from the public. By donating today, you are helping keep your rescue helicopter crews rescue ready and operational every single day."
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A Health Science Center expansion project will allow Temple College to double its number of nursing program graduates and help fill health-care vacancies in Temple and across the state.
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Join Date: Jun 2021 Location: Ely, UK Posts: 23 Thanked: 23 Times

Re: Tata Power to set up EV chargers at HPCL petrol bunks across the country! Quote: Ragul Originally Posted by So how does this work? Is it as fast as filling up a tank of petrol? Is fast-charging a thing even in EVs?

https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-new...-charging-site



They are installing DC rapid chargers upto 350kW output. The current set of chargers is very unreliable due to its age and lack of maintenance, exacerbated by the fact that they were built for ChaDeMo(with adaptation for CCS) and almost all new cars use CCS as standard. This is a welcome news and already users have been praising the results.



I have to add that the requirement for DC rapid charging is blown out of proportion. Most people do not need rapid charging and are quite content with slow/fast chargers at workplace/home.

It is only for a road trip that we need a rapid charger, but then most people do not go on a road trip every week.

I only do road trips in school holidays which is probably 4 times a year. So I am not too worried.

For those shopping trips to nearby towns, it is usually a 100 mile return trip and the present EV works well.



I think in India if the government focuses more on putting policy in place for home, workplace charging a lot of people will be happy to switch to EVs.







For the uninitiated, here is a guide on different charger types.

Chargers with outputs of up to 3 kW

are generally considered as slow chargers, 7 - 22 kW are

considered fast chargers and rapid chargers are available in

AC or DC outputs. Generally the AC chargers are rated

at 43kW and the DC chargers at 50kW plus. Yes, fast charging exists. Transport department in UK is running a project called electric highway, a few details you will find here.They are installing DC rapid chargers upto 350kW output. The current set of chargers is very unreliable due to its age and lack of maintenance, exacerbated by the fact that they were built for ChaDeMo(with adaptation for CCS) and almost all new cars use CCS as standard. This is a welcome news and already users have been praising the results.I have to add that the requirement for DC rapid charging is blown out of proportion. Most people do not need rapid charging and are quite content with slow/fast chargers at workplace/home.It is only for a road trip that we need a rapid charger, but then most people do not go on a road trip every week.I only do road trips in school holidays which is probably 4 times a year. So I am not too worried.For those shopping trips to nearby towns, it is usually a 100 mile return trip and the present EV works well.I think in India if the government focuses more on putting policy in place for home, workplace charging a lot of people will be happy to switch to EVs.For the uninitiated, here is a guide on different charger types.Chargers with outputs of up to 3 kWare generally considered as slow chargers, 7 - 22 kW areconsidered fast chargers and rapid chargers are available inAC or DC outputs. Generally the AC chargers are ratedat 43kW and the DC chargers at 50kW plus.
In brief: Another swatting attack has resulted in an innocent person losing their life. The incident, which took place last year, saw a 60-year-old grandfather targeted by minors in the US and UK because of his valuable Twitter handle. He suffered a heart attack when police surrounded his home and died shortly after.

WKRN News 2 (via GamingBible) reported new information on the April 2020 incident involving Mark Herring of Bethpage, Tennessee. A swatting incidentthe act of calling 911 to report a fake crime so armed responders storm an addresswas organized on Discord in an attempt to intimidate Herring into handing over his valuable @tennessee Twitter handle.

A then-minor by the name of Shane Sonderman was part of the campaign against Herring. "He was from Tennessee," says Corinna Fitch, Herring's daughter. "He's the one that collected all our information, my address, my sister's, my moms, my mother sister, and put it on a channel on Discord, which is a gaming chat forum."

A second minor, from the UK, called the local police department to make the false report. Herring's son said: "The neighbors called and said 'There's police everywhere, and they think a man has killed a woman and he's on your property, you gotta take cover.'"

"He went out the house with a gun, because he heard someone was on his property," Fitch explained. "He sees all these cops around him, and they ask if he is Mark Herring, 'put your hands up,' so he tosses the gun away from him to show he's not a threat, and [put his] hands up."

It was then that Herring suffered a heart attack. He died in hospital soon after.

Sonderman is currently jailed over the incident and awaiting trial. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 finea punishment Herring's family says is inadequate. "You've not just changed that one person's life; you've done a ripple effect. They need to pay for that," said Fitch.

As the minor in the UK who made the call is still underage, they cannot be identified or extradited.

Fitch added that Twitter handles such as the one used by Herring can go for up to three or four thousand dollars, "Like, pennies compared to a life."

Back in 2018, Tyler Barriss, the 26-year-old California resident behind a series of bomb threats and other crimes, including a swatting incident that resulted in the death of Andrew Finch, pleaded guilty to 51 federal charges. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The co-defendant in the trial, which revolved around a $1.50 wager on a Call of Duty: WWII match, was sentenced to 15 months.
Bad Bots and Malware are evident in the online world, and health care websites are one of its affected industries, despite the growing threat of the coronavirus. CAPTCHA verification is also apparent in most health care websites as they require it to know if the user trying to log on to the service is a human and not a bot.

Most of the check-ups are happening virtually, and people rely on this method to ensure their health and well-being, but sometimes, it's a pain to have a lot of CAPTCHA verifications. The CAPTCHA was said to be an unreliable verification tool soon, as bots can crack down on it.

Are Bad Bots, Malware Threatening Health Websites?

COVID-19 has pushed this generation to be more inclined to use digital services and methods, as everyone was kept in quarantine from the public. This helped in preventing the spread of the virus and keep people safe from infection, which may lead to death. Amidst this, a lot of services were launched online, as well as health care, among other things.

People now rely on apps or websites to contact their doctor or to have a virtual assessment and track their health. Through this, people can stay healthy and at ease during the pandemic. Malware has been targetting a lot of websites and industries, and health websites are not an exception.

According to Health Tech, this is a case of "Bad Bots," and its goal is to enter websites and wreak havoc among them, despite the many people that use and needs the service.

Read Also: COVID-19 Conspiracy Theory: Can Being Near Vaccinated People Damage Your Body?

Rise of Bad Bots, Increased CAPTCHA Verifications

Imperva has studied the rise of bad bots in the past months, and from September 2020 to February 2021 alone, there has been a significant amount of these threat actors present. Bad bots could appear as humans in browsers and could make traffic bad for the website. However, that is not the only threat that a bad bot can bring, as it could also take down the site.

For this, CAPTCHA verification is a widely used tool to keep the "bots" away, and it has increased its presence on most websites for protection purposes. However, there is a rising fear of robots learning the way of CAPTCHAs and soon surpassing it.

That being said, the growing threats against online health care systems are apparent and are something that is a problem now.

Should Hospitals Focus on This Problem Now?

If not now, then when? The problem of bad bots and the impending threat of malware may cripple the health system, especially if they are targeted and infected by viruses.

The world is currently on the edge because of COVID-19 and the Delta Variant that has been rampantly spreading, and affecting these hospitals may hinder the service they render.

Related Article: How Does Pegasus Spyware Work and How to Protect Yourself from Attacks

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
NVIDIA RTX 30-Series GPU restock is happening at Best Buy on Tuesday, July 20, with people expecting to queue up as it would be a physical distribution that invites people back to stores.

The restock will not happen online, and it would be focused on giving people a ticket to buy the graphics card, and getting that means a guarantee of a sale.

COVID-19 is not yet over, but Best Buy is intent on having the sale held on physical stores, unlike before with the PS5 restocks that all were strictly observed through online purchases.

NVIDIA RTX 30-Series GPU Restock: How to Buy from Best Buy?

Searching for the NVIDIA RTX-30 Series GPU restock on Best Buy's website will get users nowhere, especially as it would say "in-stores only" as its mode of sale.

Here, the retail company explains that blue shirt staff would distribute tickets to people queueing up for its sale, and would be guaranteed a graphics card when one receives the said ticket stub. The stores of Best Buy across the country would open by 8:00 AM, local time, but would start the distribution of the stubs by 7:30 AM for all in the queue.

Read Also: Nvidia RTX 3080 Super and RTX 3070 Super Arriving For Laptops Early Next Year, Sources Say

When is the Restock?

The Best Buy restock for NVIDIA RTX 30-series GPUs would be later, Tuesday, July 20. Again, the sale would be observed only in physical stores, and a stub is needed to buy the graphics card. Not having the stub would put people at the bottom of the priority, and it would not guarantee a GPU sale for them from Best Buy.

The restock on each branch of the retail company would be limited, and so would the ticket stubs. Not receiving one despite being queued up early for its opening means that those are the only stocks on that Best Buy location.

Initially, it was promised by experts and enthusiasts of the GPU that the NVIDIA RTX 30-series will be "easier to buy" in the coming months. And this massive restock for Best Buy that is widely distributed to a lot of its branches is a testament to that.

What are the Store Locations?

Graphic cards are sold only once per customer, so it is ideal to bring a companion when queueing up if one wants to buy more than what is allowed. Users can browse the store upon opening and getting the ticket, as having it would guarantee the NVIDIA GPU.

Not all store locations of Best Buy would have a restock. That being said, the company still has a lot on the list of the participating stores that would have it, from Alabama, Florida, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Texas Washington, Wyoming, and more.

Users can check out the full list of stores and their specific locations via this link.

Related Article: Cryptocurrency Mining Rigs In Vietnam Get Equipped with Ultra-Rare RTX 3080s

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Pexels)

Stanford invited 12,000 volunteer students in 148 countries to try out an online class dubbed Code in Place.

The Stanford-run course taught the foundations of computer programming for the student volunteers with the help of A.I.

A new artificial intelligence was introduced to students who took the same test built by Stanford researchers using automated system points for an all-new future of online courses.

First-Hand Exposes by Student

According to the New York Times, Philips Pham is one of the 12,000 student volunteers from Sweden who experienced his first encounter with the A.I. after four weeks. He was trying to write a program that could draw waves of minute blue diamonds along a black-and-white grid.

After several days, he was able to receive feedback about his work on the code.

The feedback stated that the A.I. applauded his work, but also showed his error, saying, "Seems like you have a small mistake ... Perhaps you are running into the wall after drawing the third wave."

The critique was what Pham needed to hear to improve, thanks to the help of the A.I. machine.

Read More: China Showcases Medical Artificial Intelligence During World A.I. Conference in Shanghai

Stanford Researchers Deploys AI

Chelsea Finn, a Stanford professor and A.I. researcher said, "We've deployed this in the real world, and it works better than we expected."

Together with Dr. Finn and her fellow researchers, they were able to design the neural network's A.I. solely for Stanford's programming class.

However, the techniques that were used could potentially automate student feedback in regards to other situations far beyond just programming.

Oren Etzioni, the chief executive of Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, cautioned that the techniques are still a very long way from mimicking human instructors. Critique and assistance from human instructors and tutors are still the preferred methods over artificial intelligence.

Nevertheless, Dr. Etzioni still said that the Stanford project is a "step in an important direction" since having an automated feedback would be better than nothing at all.

Creation of Stanford's A.I. And Its Flaw

The data was collected over a decade's worth of midterm exams at Stanford with programming exercises, and has stored them all in a digital record.

The results were then stored in reams of code that were written by students and the university's instructors.

The A.I. can recognize animals such as a cat by looking at thousands of pictures of the animal, recognize voices from listening to old phone calls, and examining teaching assistants' methods of evaluating coding tests.

There is still a flaw, however, as that it can't be able to help many students with questions as to how they went wrong.

It can only analyze data from thousands of results from the past, but can't correctly assist students with questions that are not in the test.

Dr. Chris Pieche, a Stanford professor, says that the goal of the A.I. is not to replace instructors, but to give advice to students to pinpoint problems in regards to their work as to how frequent the errors are made during exams.

Dr. Piech says, "The future is symbiotic -- teachers and A.I. working together."

Read More: A.I. Voice Actors Are Sounding More Human-Like

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Written by Alec G.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Two former WhatsApp employees who worked for the messaging app even before Facebook bought it, launched a private and relationship-based social media that goes by the name HalloApp.

The new social media app, which based on its features is the antithesis of the widely popular Facebook, is now available on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

Former WhatsApp Employees

The Verge disclosed that the founders of the new app, Neeraj Arora and Michael Donohue declined to be interviewed, adding that they decided not to further attract press attention during the infancy stage of their latest endeavor.

The tech outlet also reported that the individuals used to work for WhatsApp back when it was not another app under the Facebook umbrella.

To be specific, Arora used to be the chief business officer of the messaging platform up until 2018. Meanwhile, Donohue was then the engineering director of WhatsApp in a one-year short to a decade stint as he left the company in 2019.

It is to note that the WhatsApp-Facebook merger has been a concern to some regulators due to some privacy issues.

It is also worth noting that Arora was part of the negotiating team that had the talks with Facebook before WhatsApp was sold to the top social media giant to the tune of $22 billion.

One of the founding partners, Arora said in a separate interview in a podcast entitled "Follow Your Different" that to him, the "best way to grow" is to produce something that people will love to share with their loved ones, who are close friends and family members.

Read Also: WhatsApp Confirms Multiple Device Use - 'Disappearing Mode' and 'View Once' Are Also Coming!

HalloApp: Private and Relationship-Based Social Media

Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms, unabashedly collects the data of its users and sells it to third-party advertisers, which bring in billions of profit to the tech giant.

As such, Facebook had to ask iOS users to turn on ad tracking on their devices as Apple launched an option to refrain apps from collecting data from the users.

On the other hand, HalloApp vows to never include ads on their platform. Thus, eliminating the need to extract and sell information to advertisers.

As per Android Authority, the social media app will later debut features that will require payment to use, serving as its revenue stream.

HalloApp also vows to be "the first relationship network," which means that the users ideally connect with their actual circle of friends. That said, the content on the feed is full of posts from real people.

Related Article: WhatsApp Malware: Users Warned of a Malicious Message Going Around the App

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 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Photo : Unsplash)

Very has now opened its online stores for people wanting to get the next-generation console, PlayStation 5.

Once you click on the link, it will forward you to a waiting room that refreshes over 30-second intervals over time.

It's still unclear if you can get the next-gen base console as is or with bundles as there still is no change to the waiting room page as of this writing.

You're in the Waiting Room!

The waiting room is established for people to basically "wait" for more updates on the release of the PS5 console together with others, as the site says.

"Sorry, we're currently experiencing high demand for some of our products and services. Hang on in there; it shouldn't be too much longer."

There still is no update on how long you are supposed to wait, but given how quickly the PS5 consoles are sold within minutes of their release, it would probably be worth the wait. However, it is clear that once people have a chance to access the site, then it will be quickly sold out given previous online purchases.

Click the link here to get in line in the waiting room in your hopes of nabbing your PS5 console.

Read More: PS5 Restock: Best Buy Stocks Are Gone, But May Bring Some Later; GameStop, Walmart to Have One This Week

PS5 Still High on Demand

The PS5 is still in high demand for most countries as stocks are flying out the digital and physical shelves once an announcement has been made by respective stores.

Stocks from stores that sell the product can be called "sporadic" at best, says TechRadar.

It seems that the trend will continue to be the same for quite a while, given how many millions of players still don't have access to the next-gen consoles simply because it's sold out or unavailable in some countries yet.

If ever you missed out on Very's PS5 stock or just want to know where are the best places to purchase a PS5, keep in touch with us here at Tech Times as we list retailers that we collated over time.

There are still many PS5 retailers out there, but as for restocks, it's only a matter of time as stocks trickle in slowly amongst all the sellers.

Sony Direct's Second PS5 Restock

Sony Direct is also hosting its second PS5 restock on Tuesday, July 20. The invite-only rollout will begin at 12 noon Pacific Time or 3 PM Eastern Standard.

The restock announcement came in days after the recent invite-only event last Friday, July 16. It's also unclear as to what happens for the second restock as Sony didn't open a virtual queue for people the first time around.

However, in the event that Sony will drop the general queue for the public, it will be an hour or two after the invite-only will begin.

The price for the PS5 will be $499 and the PS5 Digital for only $399, as reported by the PS% tracker Wario64.

Read More: PS5 Restock Update: Target's Supplies Might Come This Week--Other Stores to Visit For Post-Independence Day

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Written by Alec G.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The United Kingdom government says that it is considering hosting the new deep space radar station plan of the U.S. Space Force. This new technology can track flying objects 22,400 miles from the planet Earth.

sometimes strong light comes from man-made sources (my photo taken for the US Space Force) pic.twitter.com/LL1nHrYcAf  Joshua Conti (@analoguepilot) July 19, 2021

The U.K. Royal Air Force Chief Marshal Sir Michael Wigston is precisely the one who approved the hosting of the new space radar station. As of the moment, he is currently in the United States to examine the plans for the upcoming innovation.

The official added that he is very interested in hosting the new Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability of the United Kingdom's allied country, especially since this technology is specifically developed by the U.S. Space Force and Missiles Systems Center.

The latest space innovation of the U.S. space department is called DARC. Its developers claim that the deep space radar will have a double space object detection range. If this is true, then the new technology will have an array of 10-15 parabolic antennas or large satellite dishes, which can cover 0.4 square miles.

United Kingdom To Host US Space Force's New Space Radar?

According to Space Daily's latest report, once the United Kingdom hosts its allied country's new deep space radar station, the government also needs to agree on its satellite dishes, around 50 feet in diameter each.

UK very interested in hosting US Space Force radar station



RAF chief says system to track objects up to 22,000 miles from Earth is incredibly importanthttps://t.co/ecUPco3u7X#space pic.twitter.com/BAGR8yPBnj  Anna-Emmanuelle Glivinska (@emma_glivinska) July 19, 2021

Also Read: NASA Plans Launch of Solar Sail Project to Investigate Near-Earth Asteroids

On the other hand, the DARC station of the United States Space Force will also have locations in Australia and Texas. Back in May, the USSF announced that it will ask various countries to approve the development of deep space radar sensor prototypes, which can monitor satellites and space debris in geostationary orbits.

"It could be from the Chinese, it could be from the Russians, it could be anti-satellite or it could be debris in space. Sensors would detect and track targets which could potentially be threats to our high-value assets," said the United States Space Force Lt. Col. Jack Walker.

Other Space Innovations Taking Place

Aside from the United Kingdom's approval for U.S. Space Force's DARCA technology, SpaceX is also making its own efforts to enhance other companies' space innovations. Elon Musk's space agency confirmed that it has collaborated with KAI to launch the company's new Earth observation satellite, as reported by Aviaci Online.

KAI or Korea Aerospace Industries confirmed this info after it signed an agreement with SpaceX. Thanks to its approval, the Asian space agency can soon launch its innovation this coming 2023. However, this could still change depending on the company's production efficiency and test completions.

For more news updates about the United Kingdom and U.S. Space Force's collaboration and other space innovations, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.

Related Article: NASA Astronaut Shows 'Terminator Line' Through Endeavour's Window | Here's How it Looks Like

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The East Baton Rouge Parish parks and recreation system Tuesday became one of the first agencies in the state to begin requiring masks or proof of vaccination against COVID-19 for people entering its indoor facilities, adopting a tough stand in an effort to slow the recent surge of cases. The city-parish said it is not considering the same move at this time.

The parks system said that, effectively immediately, all staff and visitors who spend more than 15 minutes inside any indoor facility must follow its new mandate. It said the move would most impact the administrative building at Womack Park on Florida Boulevard but does apply to indoor facilities parishwide.

After suffering through a year of facilities closures, hospitalized employees, the lost friends and family members, including our beloved Commissioner Davis Rhorer, widespread forced isolation, online schooling and serious financial repercussions to the local economy, I want to make certain that BREC is doing everything it can to prevent a return to those conditions for the community we serve, BREC Superintendent Corey Wilson said.

Masks or proof of vaccination will not be required by BREC for outdoor activities. Summer camps already require unvaccinated staff members to wear masks indoors and outdoors when social distancing isnt possible, the agency said.

BREC to require either masks, proof of vaccination in indoor facilities as COVID cases rise As COVID-19 cases continue to rise in the parish, East Baton Rouges Park and Recreation Commission will require that all staff and visitors e

The agency is possibly the first in the state to require proof of vaccination or use of a mask as COVID-19 cases surge across Louisiana. The Louisiana Department of Health said it does not compile information on municipal COVID restrictions. Louisiana Municipal Association Executive Director John Gallagher said he was not aware of any other government agency imposing such a requirement.

About an hour after BREC announced its new mask mandate for the unvaccinated, Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome held a news conference to urge residents to get any of the federally approved coronavirus vaccines to prevent a return to restrictions that defined much of 2020 and early 2021. She said the city-parish is not imposing any new restrictions at this time.

"We're not at that point yet," Broome said. "Making vaccinations mandatory is a complicated issue when you're talking about an entire community. There are individual companies and businesses that have the ability to require employees get vaccinated. We're not having those conversations yet."

Other city-parish agencies are following the lead of City Hall.

The East Baton Rouge Parish Library does not require the wearing of masks or face coverings in its locations and has no immediate plans to reimpose a mandate, said Mary Stein, the assistant library director.

"We work and operate our facilities within the framework of any guidelines sent from City-Parish," Stein wrote in an email. "We are certainly watching the local 'COVID Landscape' closely, but have not implemented any changes at this time."

The East Baton Rouge Council on Aging, which serves a clientele vulnerable to COVID-19, particularly if they aren't vaccinated, did not respond to requests for comment.

As of Monday, statewide hospitalization rates reached their highest since mid-February, with the state's Department of Health reporting that 711 patients were occupying hospital beds due to COVID-19  an increase of 148 patients since Friday.

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The state on Monday reported 3,985 new cases over the weekend, with individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 accounting for 25% of those cases.

The number of new cases jumped to 1,325 on Tuesday as hospitalizations and ventilator usage continued to rise.

This virus is not going to go away and we never thought that it would, Dr. Tatiana Saavedra, with Baton Rouge Clinic, said Tuesday. All we could say a year ago was that this pandemic was not going to end until there was a vaccine. Its available now. I find it disheartening we have such low numbers in vaccinations.

This fourth surge is COVID numbers is mostly driven by the delta variant, she said. It is so infectious compared to the original strain that Saavedra said one person will likely infect upwards of eight to nine other people.

Broome, along with local medical professionals, stressed that vaccines are still 90% effective against all current strains of the respiratory virus.

Dr. Louis Minsky with Baton Rouge General said half of the COVID patients who showed up in their emergency room have been under 40 years old and 25% of those admitted with coronavirus recently were under the age of 40.

The spread of the more highly-contagious delta strain has seen the most alarming surges in state's like Louisiana where vaccination rates are lower compared to other places in the country.

COVID-19 hospitalizations surge in Louisiana as delta variant preys on the unvaccinated Hospitals across Louisiana experienced a surge in COVID-19 patients over the weekend as the more virulent and transmissible delta strain of th

As of Tuesday, Broome said 40% of the parish's residents are fully vaccinated and 44% have had at least one shot of a two-shot vaccine series.

The most underrepresented population, when it comes to vaccinations, are young people, she said.

I dont think there is anyone who wants to go backwards, but if we get to a point where things are just out of control with the COVID variant, then we have to look seriously at all options, Broome responded when asked if she would consider reimplementing restrictions. Weve not had that conversation yet. I'm hoping that people will do what needs to be done and that is get vaccinated.
James Finn writes for The Advocate as a Report For America corps member. Email him at JFinn@theadvocate.com or follow him on Twitter @RJamesFinn.

To learn more about Report for America and to support our journalism, please click here.
A Baton Rouge man whose recent murder trial in the 2017 slaying of an Allstate financial planner ended in a mistrial after a jury could not reach a verdict rejected an offer Monday to plead guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a 20-year prison term.

Daryel Johnson, 38, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison if he's convicted of second-degree murder at his Jan. 24 retrial in the killing of Dale Sands. A verdict must be unanimous.

Johnson also is charged with witness intimidation, but after deliberating for 4 hours on June 19 the jury of 10 women and two men had eight guilty votes and four not guilty votes on the murder count, and 10 guilty votes and two not guilty votes on the other charge.

+2 In 2017 killing of Allstate financial planner, mistrial declared after jury deadlocks A Baton Rouge man accused of fatally shooting an Allstate financial planner in 2017 and threatening a witness will have to be retried because 

East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore III said Monday the state remains "confident in our evidence to support a conviction as charged."

But he said the state made a "fair offer" to Johnson "in an effort to begin to bring closure and some relief to the family of Mr. Sands following a long, emotional trial which resulted in a hung jury."

Sands, 53, of Central, was a husband and father of four.

"Mr. Johnson hates that the family may have to relive this tragedy through another trial. However, he maintains his innocence," Rob Ray, one of Johnson's attorneys, said.

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Moore said the state will now proceed to trial "to ensure that the victims of this case receive the justice they deserve and as is required by the evidence."

The jury had the option of convicting Johnson of second-degree murder, manslaughter or negligent homicide, or finding him not guilty. Any of those verdicts had to be unanimous.

Sands' body was discovered Aug. 23, 2017, in the backyard of a residence at 9076 Great Smokey Ave. next to BREC's Oak Villa Park. Johnson lived at 9074 Great Smokey Ave.

+2 In Allstate worker's 2017 robbery-slaying, prosecutor says accused killer eyed 'easy target' A Baton Rouge man on trial in the 2017 shooting death of an Allstate financial planner during a robbery was portrayed by a prosecutor Wednesda

Authorities believe Sands was shot to death during an armed robbery the previous afternoon, when he and his green F-150 went missing. Prosecutors said they believe Sands was relaxing at the park between appointments when he was killed. He was found without his wallet, phone or keys. His driver's license was in his pants pocket.

Johnson's DNA and fingerprints were found inside the truck. Johnson, who did not testify at the trial, told police he traded crack cocaine to another man for the truck.

Prosecutors argued Johnson twice confessed to the slaying: first when he told a coworker he killed a man for his truck, and then when he told the woman he was living with that the situation escalated when the victim wouldn't give up his pickup. The woman testified that Johnson told her she would regret it if she didn't keep her mouth shut.
Brandon Boyd was 17 when he fired into a crowd of people watching a street brawl on La Margie Avenue, killing a bystander in 2014, and two years later a judge labeled him "the worst of the worst type of person" while sentencing him to life without parole.

Boyd, now 25, is awaiting a new trial after his non-unanimous conviction was thrown out last year, and he doesn't want state District Judge Beau Higginbotham to have anything else to do with the case.

Boyd's attorney, Michael Fiser, filed a motion Monday asking Higginbotham to either disqualify himself or have the recusal motion randomly reallotted to another 19th Judicial District Court judge for a hearing.

Higginbotham has chosen the latter option.

If Higginbotham were to continue to preside over the case and Boyd is found guilty a second time, Fiser says, the judge would once again have to determine whether the mandatory life term would be served with or without parole.

Baton Rouge teen says life without parole sentence excessive; state high court to review The Louisiana Supreme Court has agreed to review a Baton Rouge teen's sentence of life without parole, a punishment he and his attorney claim 

When dealing with juvenile killers, the nation's highest court has said life without parole terms should be reserved for the worst cases and worst offenders.

For juvenile killers found not to be beyond rehabilitation, Louisiana law allows them a chance at a parole hearing after they've spent 25 years in jail.

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"Based on the fact this Court presided over Boyd's prior (sentencing) hearing and determined Boyd is `the worst of the worst type of person' ineligible for parole, counsel would be ineffective for not raising recusal as an issue now, as it appears the Court's opinion on parole eligibility for Boyd is a foregone conclusion," Fiser argues in the recusal motion.

"A reasonable person might question the Court's impartiality in the event Boyd is convicted on retrial of second degree murder" and a parole eligibility determination is required, he adds.

"Given the strong statements and conclusions the Court made in Boyd's original (sentencing) proceeding ... proof of an appearance of bias exists in an abundance, creating a probability of actual bias which, in a life-sentence case involving a juvenile offender, is constitutionally intolerable," Fiser says.

Based on the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in April 2020 that non-unanimous jury verdicts are unconstitutional, the state 1st Circuit Court of Appeal vacated Boyd's conviction and sentence in September 2020. Boyd had been found guilty by a 10-2 jury vote.

Convicted Baton Rouge teen killer's case going back to appeal court on split-verdict jury issue A Baton Rouge man, who was 17 when he randomly fired into a crowd on La Margie Avenue in 2014 and killed another man, may be on the verge of g

When the 1st Circuit initially affirmed Boyd's sentence in 2019, Judge Vanessa Whipple said the fact that he was a first-time offender "does little to mitigate the atrocity of the crime." Circuit Judge Mike McDonald called Boyd "a threat to society" who "earned this sentence."

A bystander, Emanuelle Myles, 24, of Baton Rouge, was killed in the shooting. Another man who was 19 at the time was shot in the arm.

Boyd, also of Baton Rouge, and Myles were among those who had gathered in a parking lot to watch four people fight, police have said. At some point during the fight, Boyd  who knew two of the people involved in the fight  pulled out a gun and fired multiple shots.
A former Louisiana State Police commander, whose tenure overseeing the Monroe-based Troop F spanned a series of scandals  including the death of Ronald Greene following a violent encounter with troopers there  announced his impending retirement Monday.

Capt. John Peters, a career state policeman, had already been removed from his Troop F command position earlier this year. He had faced increased public scrutiny in recent weeks following media reports questioning his role in the scandals and alleged coverups.

Leaked emails showed his efforts to stockpile evidence that Greene died from injuries sustained in a car crash following a police chase, not from being beaten, repeatedly tased and forced to stay face down and shackled on a Union Parish roadway after his vehicle struck a tree.

Peters is on terminal leave until he officially retires next month, a State Police spokesperson confirmed Monday evening. Officials were unable to provide additional details about whether Peters was facing discipline.

After transferring Peters out of Troop F, State Police Superintendent Col. Lamar Davis touted the change in leadership, saying it marked an important first step toward addressing issues in the division.

+2 State Police Troop F, under fire for Ronald Greene death, lacks diversity at just 9% Black As Ronald Greene lay gashed and spitting up blood on a dark Union Parish road, he took his last breaths surrounded by a group of Louisiana sta

In a recent email to his "Troop F family," Peters explained his decision to leave the agency, saying he had a "phenomenal ride" during his nearly 27 years at State Police.

"Without dragging up the obvious, the time has come for me to depart," he wrote, according to a copy of the email obtained by The Advocate. "I have always said there will be highs and lows. We are at a new low."

Peters also complained about "those within our own ranks tearing this agency apart from the inside" and bemoaned "the national sentiment towards law enforcement" and the "anti-police media."

He declared his love for longtime State Police colleagues, saying he took it as a compliment whenever someone told him he was too friendly with his subordinates. He thanked his Troop F colleagues for contributing to a positive work environment.

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State Police unit involved in Ronald Greene's death under broader internal investigation BATON ROUGE, La. (AP)  The same Louisiana State Police unit whose troopers stunned, punched and dragged Ronald Greene on video during a deadl

"Our friendships have been forged through the good times as well as the bad," he wrote. "While we may not have agreed with each other on every topic, we continued to do what was best for the troop as a whole and the citizens of the state."

In the aftermath of Greene's death, State Police investigators wanted to arrest Chris Hollingsworth, a trooper who was recorded saying he "beat the ever-living f*** out of" Greene. Peters was present during a meeting with top State Police brass when investigators were stonewalled in their attempts to bring criminal charges, according to notes maintained by Albert Paxton, the lead investigator on the case.

Peters later "got mad" when Paxton turned in a report saying Hollingsworth intentionally turned off his body camera, according to the notes.

The Greene incident prompted additional investigations into several other instances of excessive force at Troop F that occurred in 2019 and 2020, all involving Black motorists. The troop, which patrols a diverse area of a dozen parishes in north Louisiana, is overwhelmingly White.

Peters was Troop F commander from 2018 to 2021. His successor is Capt. Eric Cuenca.

Several other Troop F members have either resigned or been fired from the agency in recent months.

Advocate staff writer John Simerman contributed to this report.
After a sprawling criminal investigation that started with a complaint about his behavior in Florida, a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve and FBI special agent tasked with investigating crimes against children now faces sex crime charges of his own  involving juvenile and adult victims  in both Louisiana and Texas.

David Harris, 51, was arrested last month in Ascension Parish, where he lives. During a bond hearing July 1, the court declared him a "threat to the public at large" and ordered him held without bail. The decision came after an investigator testified that Harris had threatened two of his victims with violence in an apparent attempt to keep them quiet.

The allegations date back several years, overlapping with the successful law enforcement and military careers Harris pursued for decades, starting with his 1992 graduation from West Point. His most recent assignment for the FBI involved investigating crimes against children, including child pornography.

His own alleged crimes span three Southern states and involve a handful of victims, both children and adults, according to court records and law enforcement officials.

Harris was arrested in Ascension Parish on counts of indecent behavior with children under 13 and crimes against nature. He has an outstanding warrant in Orleans Parish for sexual battery and attempted third-degree rape and a warrant in East Baton Rouge for aggravated crimes against nature, indecent behavior with juveniles, obscenity and witness intimidation.

In Smith County, Texas, he faces charges of indecency with a child. Harris remains under investigation in Florida, but no warrant has been issued there.

Details about the allegations remain scarce because the Louisiana warrants were filed under seal, and Texas officials have not released theirs.

FBI agent accused of numerous child sex crimes being held without bond in Ascension Parish jail A New Orleans-based FBI agent arrested last week on numerous sexual misconduct charges involving children is now being held without bond in As

In the meantime, a transcript from the bond hearing reveals the scope of the ongoing investigation and new details about the case.

Sgt. Jay Donaldson, a Louisiana state trooper assigned to the case, testified that Harris had "threatened a juvenile victim and also planned  to harm another victim if any problems arose for him."

Donaldson also testified that the two victims in Ascension Parish case are minors.

Ascension Parish Judge Katherine Tess Stromberg concluded Harris posed a danger to the public if released from jail. She deemed him a flight risk after hearing testimony about his close connections to relatives in Alaska, including his father and siblings.

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Harris also had an intimate relationship with a woman in Alaska whom he recently contacted, which "gives us reason to believe that may be an issue upon his release  that he goes to Alaska," Donaldson said.

Harris lived with his wife and daughter in Prairieville but sometimes traveled for work and to visit family, officials said. He was assigned to the FBI New Orleans Field Office.

Attorneys for Harris emphasized that he knew about the allegations for months before his arrest and made no moves to evade law enforcement.

He learned about the investigation not long after the complaint was received in February, when he was completing an 18-month assignment to the FBI Internet Crimes Against Children unit based in Baltimore, his attorney said. At that point, he was placed on indefinite suspension from the assignment and sent back to Baton Rouge, his local FBI office.

Months later, he was arrested in Ascension Parish. He had no disciplinary record with the FBI and no known criminal history at the time, investigators testified.

Harris served as an infantry officer in the Army Reserve based in Louisiana, according to a military spokesman. His record includes numerous awards and commendations.

"He has served this country honorably for his entire life," his attorney Craig Mordock said during the hearing. "These allegations are completely out of character."

But prosecutors noted the seriousness and scope of the alleged offenses.

"While he does not have a previous record as far as convictions, he does have a history of doing this all over the United States," said Assistant District Attorney Leila Braswell.

Those cases and the one in Texas likely will proceed after the charges in Ascension are resolved.

It was not immediately clear whether Harris had been placed on leave from either the FBI or the Army Reserve. FBI officials have declined to answer questions about his employment status, saying only that the agency is "fully cooperating in this matter."
Rep. Blake Miguez, R-Erath on the floor during a legislative session in the Louisiana House of Representatives May 4.
Ramsay Health Cares hopes of becoming the largest private hospital operator in the UK have been dashed after shareholders of its takeover target Spire voted against a planned acquisition.

Ramsay revealed its bid for a huge $1.8 billion takeover of Spire Healthcare back in May, in a move that valued Spire at $3.7 billion with Ramsay initially offering 240 pence a share for the British hospital operator.

Craig McNally said in May that Ramsay had been watching Spire as a takeover target for a decade. Credit:James Brickwood

Spire shareholders had to vote at least 75 per cent in favour of the deal at a court and a general meeting in order for it to pass. The company confirmed overnight that only 69.8 per cent of votes were in favour at the general meeting, and 72 per cent at the court meeting, meaning the acquisition has been terminated.

When announcing the offer, chief executive Craig McNally said the company had been watching Spire as a potential takeover opportunity for close to a decade, and the planets had aligned at last to form an agreement with the Spire board on terms.
The COVID-19 outbreak has left HSC students and teachers across greater Sydney stressed and confused as they wait for decisions, wade through unclear and changing advice and worry about equity as they sit at home while students in other parts of the state prepare as normal.

Public schools have been told that year 12 students across greater Sydney should not go onto their school grounds unless absolutely necessary. But there are differing interpretations of necessary and debate over whether that includes work on major HSC projects or rehearsals.

HSC trials are an important dress rehearsal for the main exams Credit:Marina Neil

Advice to public schools, several principals said, was to avoid year 12 students coming onto campus at all, even to collect their major works. However, schools in other sectors have interpreted the advice to mean students can come into classrooms to work on HSC projects.

HSC students in Greater Sydney should not access the school site unless absolutely necessary, NESA chief executive Paul Martin said. NESA considers the collection of major works to be essential. Students should contact their principal to make arrangements.
Queensland police believe they have identified the body of a woman found in a metal box on a Brisbane apartment balcony.

Police raided a unit at Newport Hamilton Apartments on Parkside Circuit in Hamilton late on Monday night following a NSW report of a missing person filed on April 12.

Qiong Yan, a Chinese national, was reported missing in NSW in April after her mother reported she had lost contact with her. A friend of the woman in NSW reported her missing.

On Tuesday afternoon police said a post-mortem had established the body was a female of Asian ethnicity, and that legal confirmation of the identity might be days or weeks away.
It hasnt been fun for Nicola Clement, confined to her apartment in a Maribyrnong residential block under a 14-day quarantine.

Ms Clement has gone through many emotions in the past week. Its some consolation that at least her dog Vernon  a jug or pug-jack russell cross  gets regular walks.

Professional dog walker Harry Trinh has been walking Vernon the pug-jack russell cross three times a day while Vernons owner, Nicola Clement, is quarantined in Maribyrnongs Ariele building. Credit:Joe Armao

The state government has directed Maribyrnong City Council to organise a professional dog walker to take three canines living in the Ariele Apartments for walks three times a day.

The service is offered at no expense to the owners  with the cost to be covered by the state government  until the quarantine ends on July 28, subject to negative COVID-19 tests.
The Porsche driver who filmed dying police officers in the aftermath of a fatal Eastern Freeway crash will apply for bail next month after spending almost 13 of the past 15 months in jail.

Richard Pusey, who has completed his 10-month jail term for outraging public decency and other offences, remains in custody on unrelated charges stemming from an incident at his home in December last year.

A recent sketch of Richard Pusey facing court. Credit:Nine News

Emergency services were called to the mortgage brokers property late that night and police had to negotiate to get him off the roof.

A previous court hearing heard the prosecution and defence were in discussions to resolve the matter and five of the eight charges would probably be withdrawn, including accusations he threatened to kill his partner and placed her in danger of serious injury by putting a noose around her neck.
Washington: The worlds richest man had to wait 57 years to leave Planet Earth. When the moment came it was over in a flash.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos travelled from remote Texas to the edge of space and back in a little over 10 minutes - less time than it takes to watch an episode of Media Watch from start to finish.

The journey was a brief, yet blissful moment for Bezos: the realisation of a dream from his early childhood.

Long before he transformed the way people bought everything from books to baby wipes, Bezos was a space nut. The Star Trek buff has described the Apollo 11 moon landing, which he watched on television as a five-year-old, as a seminal moment in his life.
A writer of history, Brad Dison earned his masters degree in the subject from Louisiana Tech University. He has written four history books and has been published in newspapers and scholarly journals. Keep up with the column through the Facebook group Remember This? by Brad Dison. For more real stories about real people with a twist, listen to Brad Disons podcast Remember This? at http://www.BradDison.com. Disons book Remember this? is available for preorder on that site.
Up for debate:

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Regional Editor

Brett Rowland has worked as a reporter in newsrooms in Illinois and Wisconsin. He most recently served as news editor of the Northwest Herald in Crystal Lake, Illinois. He previously held the same position at the Daily Chronicle in DeKalb.
An ice cream shop advertises for help Saturday, May 15, 2021, in Bar Harbor, Maine. Americas tourist destinations are facing a severe worker shortage just as they try to rebound from a devastating year lost to the pandemic.
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.
Staff Reporter

Tim Gruver is a politics and public policy reporter. He is a University of Washington alum and the recipient of the 2017 Pioneer News Award for Reporting. His work has appeared in Politico, the Kitsap Daily News, and the Northwest Asian Weekly.
An oil well is seen east of Casper, Wyo., on Feb. 26, 2021. President Joe Biden's administration is at odds with the petroleum industry in the Rocky Mountain region and beyond for imposing a moratorium on leasing federal lands for oil and gas production.
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1920s hotel, wooden rail car spared for six more months by Bald Knob City Council

newsroom1@thedailycitizen.com / Greg Geary / newsroom1@thedailycitizen.com A wooden rail car that was built in 1894 is parked in the depot area in Bald Knob.

A state representative is hoping to clean up a Bald Knob hotel that dates back to the 1920s and a wooden rail car and get them on historic registers. But hes been given only another half-year by the Bald Knob City Council to get it done.

In a special meeting last Thursday, the council approved giving Rep. Craig Christiansen six more months for the rebuild, with Council member Johnny Hodges also including that Christiansen should give the council updates every 60 days on the progress of the projects.

Councilwoman Mary Lou Smith chastised Christiansen on the lack of progress before now, saying those properties were condemned Dec. 9th of 2019. You have done nothing, Craig. You boarded up the hotel but that is all.

Christiansen said, I know that it is a problem and an eyesore; we are doing our best. He gave the council some background on his efforts and where things stand.

The wooden rail car is the last surviving car off the Missouri and North Arkansas Railroad as far as the passenger equipment goes, he said. It was brought over here a number of years ago and volunteer help kind of dissipated.

We had a gentleman who spent a great deal of time taking the front half of the car apart. We stored a lot of that stuff for archives so we can use it as a pattern and then he developed some significant dementia, and so now we have the documents that show the measurements that we needed but now he is no longer involved with the project.

Volunteers are a little hard to find now, according to Christiansen, who said he grabbed a couple of folks and they would like to get started on the projects in September.

Focusing on the former Bald Knob Hotel, across from the depot, Christiansen said before the pandemic, he and his group started dealing with the Arkansas Register of Historic Places before we could go on to the National Register. He said the the hotel and the rail car are both items of consideration for the Arkansas register but the both have to be rebuilt a bit before they can be considered. The rail car has been rebuilt several times.

Christiansen gave his health as a reason the project has been stalled as well as some lack of funding that occurred and his wife being sick.

He said items have been taken out of the hotel and the ground floor of it has been secured, adding that no transients can get into it now. We have put up cameras. We have put up security lighting. We started to take some of the rotten wood out from the inside. That will accelerate over the next two or three months because I have some folks that would really like to see that preserved.

Christensen said five students were vandalizing the hotel building several years ago and after they were caught, they turned into student volunteers. They took the back room off of the back of it and cleaned a lot of stuff out of it that needed to be done. I told them once that that is restored, we will put a bronze plaque in there with their names on it. My five grew to eight. We kept them throughout the summer ... .

There are three construction companies that Christiansen said he is talking to about working on the project. He said first, the roof would have to be stripped off and the wood replaced. The entire second floor also would need to be replaced.

It can be done. It needs to be done because thats something that is part of Bald Knobs history, he said. We have ourselves to sell  this is a great town with good people and we want people to come here. We want to do a Depot District. We have talked about that for several years.

Christiansen said with him being in the state Legislature, he was gone for five months because of COVID-19 and his wifes autoimmune disease that would not let him come home. So I spent six nights at home, if you count the time from two days after Christmas until the end of April. We were told to just treat it as a deployment and we did.

I am trying to do a lot of good things for the city. I want to see Bald Knob succeed. ... I can tell you you will see dismantling progress starting in September and you will see what we are trying to do go forward.

Smith, who was on the Bald Knob Planning Commission in December 2019, questioned Christiansen on several aspects of what he presented. She said, You told us that night at the meeting you had a town that was going to take that rail car, take it apart and take it out of here.

Christiansen responded, They decided the men that wanted to do that were too old. The found a caboose that was in great shape and they procured that and so now we have to follow through in removing it. All of that languished around for a number of months and then COVID.

Well, I know it did, Smith said.

Christiansen replied, I did not receive an official condemnation letter on that.

You did, Smith said. Because when we filed this resolution in the courthouse, it was immediately after you got the letter.

Christiansen said, I will accept that, but I did not see it as such.

Smith told Christiansen she also wanted to call your hand on something else he said.

This Arkansas historical preservation  I have called the secretary of state and the mayor called him, too  they have never heard of this and according to the computer, there is only one person in this and thats you, the president, Smith said. How can you say this is a committee?

Christiansen said, I can say its a committee because I started it. Smith said, Nobody remembers but you.

Christiansen said, They have heard of me because you have a letter in that packet right now from the Arkansas Historic Preservation Program. Smith responded, I also have a letter here from the Arkansas historical preservation that says they never heard of the property. ... I called the gentleman. He told me there had been nothing every discussed with the Arkansas historical society concerning this property and I said, Well, you send me that in black and white; this is the letter.

Christiansen told Smith that we did not talk to the National Register, we are going through the Arkansas Register. We are going through the state because the process is different for the hotel and rail car because of their condition than it was for the depot.

Smith said the longer the rail car and hotel sit there, the worse their conditions get. She told Christiansen that he had mentioned that the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 is making a stop in Bald Knob on Aug. 27 and that rail car needs to be gone before then.

We are trying to get people to come here to see that we are doing something, she said.

Christiansen said, You are going to see progress, but Smith asked him when. You had told us that in December of 2019.

Christiansen told Smith his wife had been ill with eight hospitalizations and two surgeries in 12 months. But you own the hotel, you own the rail car, Smith said. You are responsible.

She said there are residents who dont mow their yards and their property is condemned and he owns this property and it is no different.

Smith asked Christiansen how long the wooden rail car has been in Bald Knob and he said since 2007. She said, Thats 14 years. It sits there and has deterioriated.

Christiansen told Mayor Barth Grayson that six months was doable to see the rail car down to its frame. He said on the hotel, it would be hard to say because of COVID-19 and the delays it has put on contractors doing work. He said by January, the rail car could be to the mayors satisfaction so it could be rebuilt.

That is a wooden frame that has 10 feet of metal frame underneath it on each end, he said. That car was built in 1894 by the St. Charles Car Co. in St. Charles, Mo.

Hodges told Christiansen that if he was dead serious about it [the projects], you should be able to convince us that you are doing something about it [in 60 days].

Christiansen said, I can guarantee that.
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Oneonta, NY (13820)

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Barry Lank has worked for newspapers on the East and West Coasts, and earned an MS in journalism from Columbia University. He formerly produced "National Lampoon Presents: The Final Edition." A native of San Gabriel Valley, he now lives in East Hollywood.
Israeli soldiers stand guard near the border with Lebanon, where the Israeli military are working to destroy alleged Hezbollah tunnels in northern Israel, Israel, on Dec. 4, 2018. (Amir Levy/Getty Images)

2 Rockets Fired From Lebanon Into Israel: Israeli Army

JERUSALEMTwo rockets were launched into Israel from Lebanon overnight on Tuesday, setting off sirens but causing no damage or injuries, and the Israeli military said it had responded with artillery fire.

Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz suggested the incident could be linked to long-running governance problems rocking Lebanon and the influence of the Iran-backed terrorist group Hezbollah.

One of the rockets was shot down by missile defences and the other landed in an open area, the military said.

The Lebanese army said Israel had fired at the Wadi Hamoul area at dawn but that no injuries or damage had resulted.

It said three Grad rocket launchers had been found in the Al Qulaylah area, one of them with a rocket prepared for firing that was subsequently disabled by the armys specialised units.

Israel fought a 2006 war against Hezbollah, who have sway in southern Lebanon and advanced rockets. The border has been mostly quiet since then.

Small Palestinian factions in Lebanon have fired sporadically on Israel in the past.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said it was in direct contact with the Lebanese army and Israel to urge maximum restraint and avoid further escalation, adding that it had launched an investigation into the incident.

Gantz accused the Lebanese state of enabling terrorist activity from its territory and said Israel would respond at the appropriate time and place.

We will not allow the social, economic, and political crisis in Lebanon to become a security threat to Israel, Gantz said on Twitter. I call on the international community to take action in order to return stability to Lebanon.

Lebanon has been run by a caretaker administration for nearly a year, while its currency has collapsed, jobs have vanished and banks have frozen accounts in what lenders have called one of the most severe financial crises of modern times.

By Ari Rabinovitch
6 in Hospital After Explosion at Texas Residence: Reports

Six people are hospitalized after an explosion at a house in Texas on Monday, according to reports.

The explosion took place at the 4400 block of Cleveland Drive, near West Park Boulevard and Coit Road at around 4:45 p.m. local time, Plano Fire-Rescue confirmed to The Dallas Morning News.

The cause of the explosion is not yet determined, the fire department said.

Investigators from Atmos Energy were at the scene, according to multiple reports.

Photos of the area via local outlet KDFW showed the entire house demolished to a pile of rubble, with overflow debris seen on the street. There was also some damage to neighboring homes.

The area has been cordoned off for an investigation.

According to KTVT, the six people taken to the hospital included three adults and three children of whom at least one was from a neighboring house.

Their conditions and identities were not immediately known.

The outlet noted that sixteen fire and police units were at the scene, and gas was shut off to the area.

Plano Mayor John Muns asked the community to keep the victims in your prayers, the outlet reported.
Security personnel inspect a damaged vehicle where rockets were fired from in Kabul, Afghanistan, on July 20, 2021. (Rahmat Gul/AP Photo)

Afghan President Slams Taliban; Rockets Target Kabul Palace

KABUL, AfghanistanAt least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, but police quickly fanned out across area. One car parked on a nearby street was completely destroyed; the police said it was used as launching pad for the rockets.

The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off.

The barrage came as the U.S. and NATO complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the Taliban gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighboring countries over the past weeks.

The withdrawal is more than 95 percent complete and the final U.S. soldier will be gone by Aug. 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.

The Taliban have no intention and willingness for peace Ghani said in his address to the nation Tuesday. We have proven that we have the intention, willingness and have sacrificed for peace.

Ghani also deplored his governments decision to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners to get peace talks started last year as a big mistake that only strengthened the terrorists.

We released 5,000 prisoners to start peace talks, but until today the Taliban havent shown any serious or meaningful interest in peace negotiations.

Abdullah Abdullah, the No. 2 official in the government, was inside the palace during the rocket attack on Tuesday, having returned on Monday from peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar. Those inside the palace, however, were far removed from where the rockets landed.

Chairman of Afghanistans High Council for National Reconciliation Abdullah Abdullah speaks during an interview with Reuters at the Willard Hotel in Washington, on June 25, 2021. (Ken Cedeno/Reuters)

The two days of meetings in Dohathe highest level of negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban so faraimed at jumpstarting stalled talks but ended with a promise of more high-level talks.

In his speech, Ghani also assailed neighboring Pakistan, which Kabul blames for harboring the Taliban leadership and providing a safe haven and assistance to the insurgents. In the most recent fighting in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, Taliban terrorists were seen receiving treatment at a Pakistani hospital across the border in Chaman.

Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it claims is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace.

Pakistan has also been deeply critical of Kabul, saying it has allowed another terrorist group, the Pakistani TalibanTehreek-e-Taliban Pakistanto find safety in Afghanistan from where they have launched a growing number of attacks targeting the Pakistan military.

Pakistan does not want a Taliban regime in its homeland but their media have been campaigning for a Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Ghani added.
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks to the media with members of the Republican Study Committee about Iran in Washington on April 21, 2021. (Joshua Roberts/Getty Images)

America Needs to Lead the World in Ending the Persecution of Falun Gong: Pompeo

The United States should help bring an end to the Chinese regimes horrific persecution of Falun Gong so adherents can exercise freedom of belief, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said as Beijings brutal campaign marks its 22nd year.

Pompeo spoke to NTD, a sister media of The Epoch Times, on the eve of the anniversary of the start of the persecution.

With respect to Falun Gong, he said, the absence of religious freedom in China is horrific, it is tragic, its gone on for too long and America needs to lead the world to ensure that those people have the opportunity to practice their faith in the way they want to.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd anniversary of the start of the Chinese regimes persecution of Falun Gong, in Washington on July 16, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Falun Gong, a meditation discipline that espouses the values of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, was first introduced in northern China in 1992, and won broad appeal among the Chinese public for its health benefits. However, threatened by its popularity, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) launched an eradication campaign targeting Falun Gong on July 20, 1999.

The entire state apparatus was turned against the practices adherents, which by official estimates numbered 70 million to 100 million at the time.

Related Coverage INFOGRAPHIC: How Falun Gong Is Persecuted in China

Practitioners over the past two decades have become targets of prolonged imprisonment, slave labor, torture, psychiatric and sexual abuse, and forced organ harvesting for persisting in their faith.

In connection with the July 20 anniversary, at least 15 U.S. lawmakers issued letters, proclamations, or video messages in support of Falun Gong, as well as an international coalition of politicians from 20 countries. The State Department also called on the CCP to immediately cease its long-running campaign and release all jailed adherents.

No one should have to face prison, torture, or worse simply for how they choose to practice their religion, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement.

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.) described the regimes treatment of Falun Gong practitioners as unconscionable.

[I]t truly is a violation of human rights at the highest level, Hartzler wrote in a letter.

Regarding the crime of forced organ harvesting, Hartzler noted that a 2016 House resolution (H.Res. 343) condemning the grisly practice was a step in the right direction. But more must be done, she said. The congresswoman is one of 17 lawmakers who sponsored the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2021 (H.R. 1591) to combat the issue.

There are few worse crimes that can be imagined, Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) wrote in a letter, referring to organ harvesting. This unspeakable crime demands justice for the countless victims who have suffered at the hands of the CCP.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd year of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on July 18, 2021. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) released in a statement on July 20 in commemoration of the fallen victims under the ongoing persecution of Falun Gong.

The CCP has detained Falun Gong practitioners, and in some cases, multiple times, in transformation-through-reeducation centersa preview of the ongoing mass internment and acts of genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang, he said.

The persecution has continued unabated amid the pandemic, with close to 9,500 adherents experiencing police harassment, arrests, or police raids during the past half-year, according to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website dedicated to documenting the persecution.

The suppression has hit close to home for those who have family back in China.

Zhou Deyong, whose wife and son live in Florida, has been held in detention in eastern Chinas Shandong Province for months. He was accused of sabotaging the enforcement of the law after police broke into his home and found Falun Gong books and booklets belonging to his wife, also a Falun Gong practitioner.

Falun Gong practitioners in a vigil commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the persecution in China, in Los Angeles, on July 18, 2021. (Courtesy of Debora Cheng)

Deng Cuiping from Yunnan Province, mother of another Florida resident, was arrested in 2016 along with another four practitioners for sharing informational materials about the persecution. Deng, who was jailed for three years previously and fired from the primary school where she taught, is currently serving a six-year sentence after being held for eight months without trial.

The Falun Gong practitioners like my mother are sincere and kind and never hurt anyone. Why do they have to give up six years of their life or longer just to uphold their conscience and belief? Dengs daughter, Iris Lu Wanqing, an accountant in Temple Terrace, Florida, told The Epoch Times in 2019.

Multiple lawmakers also highlighted the core values promoted by the practice. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), in a congressional proclamation to honor the peaceful practices of Falun Dafa, said the practices teachings bridge cultures, nationalities, race, gender, and age that contribute to a healthier and more harmonious society.

Our world would surely be a more peaceful one if we centered those values in our daily lives, said Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.).

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), who wrote a letter to Beijing authorities concerning Zhous plight, said he plans to introduce another resolution to highlight the particularly egregious nature of the eradication campaign.

If we remain silent in the face of these transgressions, we neglect that moral imperative and do so at the peril of civil society, he said in a pre-recorded speech.
Arizona Attorney General Asks Secretary of State for Evidence of Potential Voter Fraud

The office of Arizonas attorney general has asked Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs for a report on potential voter fraud violations after she requested that he investigate alleged pressure by former President Donald Trump and his allies on Maricopa County officials in the wake of the 2020 election.

Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, received a July 7 letter from the secretary of state making the request, Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright told Bo Dul, a top official in Hobbss office, in a recent letter obtained by The Epoch Times.

Instead of addressing the request to probe Trump, Wright asked for a voter participation report regarding the last presidential election, which she said could be used to identify potential felony violations of state law, which bars knowingly voting twice and other forms of voter fraud.

Hobbss office was asked for the date on which Brnovichs office could expect to receive the report, which is produced by the Electronic Registration Information Center, a nonprofit run by state election officials.

The office, which said in early June that the report was expected later this summer, didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

[Brnovichs office] has not received information from your office regarding potential double voting in the 2018 or 2020 election following the Secretarys March 19, 2019, decision to withdraw from the Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck Program, Wright wrote.

Notably, this the first time in over a decade the [Attorney Generals Office] has received no referrals from the Secretary of State regarding double voting. Additionally, please provide any and all records your office possesses related to potential violations of Arizonas election laws.

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs removes a mask as she speaks to members of Arizonas Electoral College prior to them casting their votes in Phoenix, on Dec. 14, 2020. (Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo)

The back-and-forth between underlings for the two top state officials comes as Brnovich seeks election to the U.S. Senate and Hobbs runs to be Arizonas governor.

Hobbs, a Democrat, asked Brnovich in her previous letter to look into how Trump and allies, such as Arizona Republican Party Chair Kelli Ward, allegedly tried to contact Maricopa County supervisors in the days following the Nov. 3, 2020, election. Among the communications, which were released by the county to the Arizona Republic, was Ward asking county officials to stop ballot-counting amid fraud allegations.

The communications appeared to violate a state law that makes it a felony to knowingly interfere in any manner with an election officer, Hobbs said.

I urge you to take action not only to seek justice in this instance, but to prevent future attempts to interfere with the integrity of our elections, she said, noting that Brnovich should refer the matter to another agency if his ethical duties prevented him from investigating it.

Hobbs and Brnovich have also faced off on the ongoing forensic audit in Maricopa County, with Hobbs repeatedly deriding the effort and Brnovich defending it.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs removes a mask as she speaks to members of Arizona's Electoral College prior to them casting their votes in Phoenix, Ariz., on Dec. 14, 2020. (Ross D. Franklin/AP Photo)

Arizona GOP Gubernatorial Candidate Demands Katie Hobbs Recuse Herself From Election Oversight

Kari Lake, a Republican running for governor of Arizona, said Monday that Democrat gubernatorial candidate and Arizonas Secretary of State Katie Hobbs should recuse herself from overseeing the 2022 election while shes on the ballot.

Lakes campaign said in a July 19 statement that Hobbs, who the campaign called the most partisan Secretary of State in the history of Arizona, should step down from her duties in administering the 2022 election, citing Hobbs history of irrational bias and disdain toward Republicans and reports of election investigators reporting serious issues affecting tens-of-thousands of ballots and voters in the 2020 election that the Secretary of State oversaw.

Arizonas GOP-led state Senate last week held a hearing amid a months-long forensic audit of election results in Phoenixs Maricopa County, led by Florida-based cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas. Teams conducting the audit said at the hearing that they found several major discrepancies.

Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, told senators at the Arizona state Capitol that auditors could find no record of the county sending more than 74,000 mail-in ballots. He also said auditors found approximately 18,000 people voted but were removed from voter rolls soon after the election, 11,326 people who were not on the voter rolls on Nov. 7, 2020, but appeared on the rolls on Dec. 4, 2020, and 3,981 people who voted after registering after Oct. 15, 2020.

The Lake campaigns statement made reference to these discrepancies and noted dozens more serious issues laid out during the senate hearing.

I am simply looking out for the voters and Conservative candidates up-and-down the ballot, Lake said in a statement. Its not always easy to stand-up and speak-out, but someones got to do the right thing.

The right thing is to demand Katie Hobbs recuse herself from everything involving the 2022 election, Lake said, adding that Hobbs is running for Governor and cant be trusted to handle the Secretary of State duties involving those of us Republicans also on the ticket.

Millions of Arizonans, including myself, dont believe we will have a fair election with Katie Hobbs at the helm. Weve seen proof of this with the debacle of 2020, Lake said.

Hobbs office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Lakes statement.

However, Hobbs on July 17 retweeted an article from The Associated Press, which called the Cyber Ninjas claims of some 74,000 mail-in ballots received by Maricopa County with no record of being sent out to voters as a false narrative that was not based on proper early voting reports.

Maricopa County officials wrote in a tweet on Friday that they calculated the true number of mail-in ballots requested and returned in Novembers election, with their count showing nearly 450,000 more mail-in ballots requested than returned.

Rod Thomson, a public relations consultant working for Cyber Ninjas, told The Associated Press that Maricopa County refused to answer questions posed by the audit team in private, forcing Logan to ask for explanations in public.

Mr. Logan never said this was fraud or criminal, he merely stated the facts as they were provided to him and did not have an explanation, Thomson told the outlet. None of this would be necessary if the county would simply communicate with the audit team when there are questions.

Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, said in a statement last week that the auditors are portraying as suspicious what is actually normal and well known to people who work in elections and that, in some cases, they dropped bombshell numbers that are simply not accurate.

Former President Donald Trump weighed in on the Arizona Senate hearing last week, saying it showed fraud and voting irregularities at sufficient scale to change the outcome of the presidential election in the state.

Records show President Joe Biden received around 10,500 more votes than Trump in Arizona, out of some 3.4 million ballots cast.
CYBERWAR: The Chinese Communist Party has been developing cyberwarfare capabilities since the late 1990s. Beijing has been accused of by U.S and its allies of hiring hackers to regularly carry out cyber-espionage against Western governments and businesses. (Courtesy of U.S. Department of Defence)

Australia, New Zealand, and Allies Say China Behind Malicious Cyber Activity

Australia and New Zealand (NZ) have joined the United States in attributing malicious cyber activity to Chinas Ministry of State Security and said they are deeply disturbed by Beijing using criminal contract hackers to back its state-run cyberattacks against targets worldwide.

In media releases issued late Monday night, both the Australian and New Zealand governments called out the Chinese regime for its exploitation of vulnerabilities in the Microsoft Exchange software, which affected thousands of computers and networks worldwide, including in Australia and New Zealand.

These actions have undermined international stability and security by opening the door to a range of other actors, including cybercriminals, who continue to exploit this vulnerability for illicit gain, Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews, and Defence Minister Peter Dutton said in a joint statement.

Australia also called on China to adhere to the commitments it made in the G20, and bilaterally refrain from cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property, trade secrets and confidential business information with the intent of obtaining competitive advantage.

The sentiments were echoed by Andrew Little, the NZ Minister responsible for the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), who said: We call for an end to this type of malicious activity, which undermines global stability and security, and we urge China to take appropriate action in relation to such activity emanating from its territory.

Little noted that the GCSB had worked through a robust technical attribution process concerning this issue and that it had confirmed, independently, that Chinese state-sponsored actors were responsible for the exploitation of Microsoft Exchange vulnerabilities in New Zealand in early 2021.

Both countries also condemned the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) Ministry of State Security (MSS) for engaging in malicious cyber activity and hiring contract hackers who have carried out cyber-enabled intellectual property theft for personal gain and commercial advantage the Chinese regime.

The United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, the European Union, and NATO joined the United States, Australia and New Zealand in expressing their concerns.

The comments by the two governments come after the Biden Administration called out Beijing over its state-sponsored malicious cyber campaign that has seen hackers working for the MSS engaged in ransomware attacks, cyber-enabled extortion, crypto-jacking, and rank theft from victims around the world, all for financial gain.

In a media release on July 19, The White House said the United States had long been concerned about Beijings irresponsible and destabilizing behaviour in cyberspace.

Today, the United States and our allies and partners are exposing further details of the PRCs pattern of malicious cyber activity and taking further action to counter it, as it poses a major threat to U.S. and allies economic and national security, the statement said, using the acronym for the countrys official name, the Peoples Republic of China.

Countries around the world are making it clear that concerns regarding the PRCs malicious cyber activities are bringing them together to call out those activities, promote network defence and cybersecurity, and act to disrupt threats to our economies and national security.

Meanwhile, the United States has charged four Chinese nationals who were working with Chinas top intelligence agency in a global hacking campaign that targeted foreign governments and entities in key sectors, including maritime, aviation, defence, education, and healthcare.

They also worked towards the theft of research on the Ebola virus vaccine, trade secrets, and confidential business information on critical public health information, the Biden administration said.

CCP mouthpiece The Global Times has responded to the accusations, stating that it is a huge lie, and accused the Biden administration and their allies of trying to frame China, News.com.au reported.

The U.S. cannot exploit these smears to substantively attack China. If the US takes aggressive measures, carries out national-level cyber attacks on China, or imposes so-called sanctions on China, we will retaliate, the Global Times editorial reads.

Correction: The previous feature image on this article has been adjusted. Taiwan is a self-ruled liberal democratic island. The Epoch Times regrets the error.
Haitians line up 05 May, 2006, at the DIGICEL office in Port-au-Prince to get new cellular phones and service. (Thony Belizaire/AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Government Moves to Block China via Telco Takeover of Pacific Telecom

The Australian government is backing telecommunications giant Telstra to potentially buy out Digicels mobile operations in the South Pacific, amid concerns a Chinese-backed company could swoop in and establish a foothold for Beijing to expand its influence.

On July 19, Telstra confirmed discussions were underway for a buyout, but there was no certainty around a deal.

Telstra was initially approached by the Australian government to provide technical advice in relation to Digicel Pacific which is a commercially attractive asset and critical to telecommunications in the region, according to an investor announcement (pdf).

If Telstra were to proceed with a transaction, it would be with financial and strategic risk management support from the government, it continued.

A Telstra logo is seen as a pedestrian walk outside the Telstra Melbourne headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, on June 14, 2017 (Michael Dodge/Getty Images)

In addition to a significant government funding and support package, any investment would also have to be within certain financial parameters with Telstras equity investment being the minor portion of the overall transaction.

The federal government would likely fund the major portion of the transaction.

Digicel Pacific was founded in 2006 by Irish entrepreneur Denis OBrien and provides communication and mobile services across Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatusome of Australias closest neighbours. The group generated US$235 million in 2020.

A sale to a Chinese telecommunications entity has raised fears that it could provide easy access for surveillance activity targeting Australian data and networks.

Rob Nicholls, associate professor of regulation and governance at the University of New South Wales, said this was a battle of influence between Beijing and Australias democratic allies.

There is no indication that the Australian government sought to put this opportunity out to tender. Part of the issue here is that the other two major Australian telcos are respectively Singapore-controlled (Optus) or controlled by a combination of the United Kingdom and Hong Kong interests (Vodafone), he told The Epoch Times.

There is very little technical risk if the assets were acquired by a Chinese telco. Indeed, the likelihood of access to the content of, particularly, the undersea cable links is very low, he added.

Photo taken on June 20, 2011, shows a Papuan tribeswoman wearing a crown of preserved plumage of a Bird of Paradise holding a mobile phone during the Lake Sentani festival in the Jayapura district of the eastern Indonesian province of Papua. (Romeo Gacad/AFP via Getty Images)

The issue is much more one of influence. If a Chinese state-owned enterprise acquires the assets of Digicel, then these might form the basis of political leverage.

Nicholls also noted that the government had to step in and support Telstras bid for the project, showing the acquisition of Digicel did not stack up commercially.

The deal is driven solely by the Australian desire for influence in the Pacific Islands region. Australia needs to have security to its immediate north, which is the location of Papua New Guinea, he said.

Michael Shoebridge, defence director at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute said Digicels business relied heavily on providing roaming services, which had been badly affected by restrictions on international travel.

There are clearly risks from rent seeking commercial operators with struggling businesses, particularly when combined with cashed up Chinese state-linked firms, he told The Epoch Times.

But in this area of critical digital infrastructure for the Pacific, those risks are outweighed by the importance of an effective communications infrastructure that is not compromised by Chinese state interests, he added.

The South Pacific region has been the centre of a tug-o-war between democratic allies and Beijing. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has used initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative, vaccine donations, and diplomatic influence to gain support from Pacific Island leaders.

The response from Pacific nations has varied, with some nations embracing ties with Beijing and others outright rejecting it.

In May, Samoas incoming Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mataafa vowed to scrap a US$100 million BRI port development near the nations capital. Her stance was a major shift from Samoas incumbent leader Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, who, for most of his two-decade-long rule, has maintained close ties with the CCP.
President Joe Biden (R) meets with Jordan's King Abdullah II (L) in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, on July 19, 2021. (Susan Walsh/AP Photo)

Biden Calls Jordan King a Loyal Ally in Tough Neighborhood

WASHINGTONPresident Joe Biden praised King Abdullah II of Jordan as a stalwart ally in a tough neighborhood as the two leaders huddled at the White House on Monday, a meeting that came at a pivotal moment for both leaders in the Middle East.

Last week a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullahs half-brother.

Meanwhile, Biden, who has put much of his foreign policy focus on China and Russia in the early going, faces some difficult issues in the Middle East. He is dealing with stepped-up attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias at the same moment that his administration is trying to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table to revive the nuclear agreement that former President Donald Trump abandoned during his presidency.

You have always been there, and we will always be there for Jordan, Biden said during an Oval Office appearance with Abdullah and his son, the Crown Prince Hussein.

Biden noted that he first met Abdullah when he was a U.S. senator and Abdullah was the crown prince.

You can always count on me, my country, and many of our colleagues in the region, Abdullah said.

Biden has no plans to reverse U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. His administration has praised the Trump-brokered accordsdeals with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and Morocco that normalized relations with Israela rare instance of the Biden administration speaking positively of the former administration.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Syriamore than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordanand a wobbly security situation in Iraq, an administration official said. At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks.

Abdullah is the first Arab world leader to meet face-to-face with Biden. The president is set to host Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi at the White House next week, and Biden has invited Israels new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, to visit later this summer.

Abdullah is set to have a working breakfast Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris and to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The meeting with Biden was also a chance for the king to spotlight his closeness to Biden following the attempted coup.

Bassem Awadallah, who has U.S. citizenship and once served as a top aide to King Abdullah II, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, were found guilty of sedition and incitement charges. Both men denied the charges and Awadallahs U.S. lawyer said his client alleged he was tortured in Jordanian detention and fears for his life.

They are alleged to have conspired with Prince Hamzah, the kings half-brother. Biden, who has known Abdullah for years, was quick to publicly express strong U.S. support for Jordan and praise the kings leadership after details of the coup attempt were unveiled in April.

Its unclear if Biden raised the United States long-standing call to extradite Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, a Palestinian woman living in Jordan who is wanted by the United States on a charge of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals.

The Trump administration last year indicated it was considering withholding aid to Jordan in a bid to secure al-Tamimis extradition. She was convicted in Israel of a 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv restaurant that killed 15 people, including two American citizens. She has lived freely in Jordan since she was released in a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap in 2011.

Biden administration officials have previously made clear to Jordan that the extradition of al-Tamimi, who is on the FBIs most wanted list, is of high-interest to the United States, according to the administration official.
U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) waits to speak to reporters following a Senate Democratic luncheon at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 15, 2021. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

Bidens Pick for ATF Director Has A Lot of Issues: Sen. Dick Durbin

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Monday that there are a lot of issues with David Chipman, the White Houses pick to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

Chipman, who is currently employed as a senior policy adviser to Giffords, a major gun control group, served at the ATF for 25 years and faces a narrow path to confirmation, with uncertain support among Democrats in the evenly divided Senate.

Moderate Democrats including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.), havent yet indicated whether they will be backing his confirmation. He faced fierce opposition during his confirmation hearing from Republicans who grilled him for his past comments and gun control advocacy.

The whip count is not where we want it yet, but theres always a chance, Durbin told Politico.

The Senate, divided 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats, has approved virtually all of President Joe Bidens picks in largely narrow votes. Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties through her role as president of the Senate.

Members understand this is a highly controversial position, Durbin said. It has been left vacant because Republicans and Democrats couldnt find someone to fill the slot so its no wonder that were having some difficulty with it.

On May 25, a group of 21 state Attorneys General (AG) in a letter (pdf) urged the State to oppose Chipmans confirmation, citing his efforts to limit Second Amendment rights.

The Second Amendment is the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights, the AGs, led by Montanas Austin Knudsen wrote. It guarantees our natural God-given right to defend our lives, our families, our property, and our freedom. The confirmation of David Chipman to head the Department of Justices Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is an attack on that right and on the millions of law-abiding gun owners across the country.

The AGs wrote in their letter that the right to bear firearms is far beyond a hobby or a passion.

They are a part of our national heritage and everyday life for tens of millions of Americans, particularly those of us who live in rural areas. We use them to hunt, protect livestock, and provide peace of mind when law enforcement may be miles away.

This is why Mr. Chipmans past affiliation with anti-gun organizations and his extreme positions on commonly owned firearms is so concerning to us as attorneys general and why he is unfit to be confirmed as head of the ATF, wrote the group.

They concluded their letter by saying that they demand President Biden nominate someone who is not hostile to our rights and way of life.
Bill Gates- and George Soros-Backed Organization Buys Out COVID-19 Testing Company

A consortium backed by George Soros and Bill Gates has joined a buyout of Mologic, a COVID-19 testing company.

The Soros Economic Development Fund, an arm of Soros Open Society Foundations, confirmed in a July 19 statement that it has partnered with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The SorosGates collaboration is part of the Global Access Health initiative, which will invest at least $41.1 million in the project, according to the statement.

The group has financed the acquisition of Mologic Ltd, a world-leading innovator in the development of lateral flow and rapid diagnostic technologies including tests that can help combat tropical diseases such as dengue, bilharzia, and river blindness, as well as for COVID-19, the statement reads, noting that the purchase is an attempt to expand access to affordable state-of-the-art medical technology through decentralized research, development, and manufacturing in developing countries.

Founded about two decades ago by the father-and-son team of Mark and Paul Davis, Mologic previously worked with Gatess foundation, establishing the Advanced Rapid Diagnostics in 2016. Paul Davis is also known for creating the Clearblue pregnancy test in 1988, which, according to the company, is the first application of lateral flow technology.

Mologics transition into a social enterprise is a deliberate, logical, and natural step for a company focused on delivering affordable diagnostics and biotechnology to places that have been left underserved by the relentless pursuit of profiteering, said Mark Davis in a statement. With the support of our shareholders, donors, and partners, we have come a long way. We believe we have the people and the skills required for the challenges and opportunities ahead. And we hope this unique transaction will be an example for others to follow.

Previously, Soros Open Societys funding efforts have been aimed at building the capacity of community-based organizations to catalyze political engagement throughout the year and not solely around elections. They feature coordination with our anchor and core grantees, Democracy Alliance partners and other donors, and field leaders, such as Planned Parenthood, progressive labor, and other allies.

Soros has also received blowback in the United States for providing funding to left-wing prosecutors and district attorneys, including controversial St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner and Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, during their elections. Soros donated more than $2 million to Gascons campaign.

Other left-wing prosecutors hes provided funding to include Chicago District Attorney Kim Foxx, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Baltimore City states attorney Marilyn Mosby.

Gates earlier this month announced that his wife, Melinda, will resign from their foundation in two years if they cant work together amid their divorce.
Black Lives Matter Plaza in Nations Capital to Be Permanent: Mayor

Black Lives Matter Plaza, created in the District of Columbia last year amid nationwide protests and riots, is being made permanent.

Construction started Monday to make the plaza a permanent installation, according to a joint statement from the office of Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and the District Department of Transportation.

Construction workers will install roadway pavers, bollards, and a permanent Black Lives Matter mural.

The work is slated to conclude by October 1.

Once completed, the permanent installation will protect pedestrian safety while accommodating vehicles and keeping with the spirit of the original mural design, officials said.

A rendering of what the plaza will look like shows that the middle of the street will be restricted for pedestrian use, with one lane of vehicular traffic on either side.

The cost of the construction hasnt been made public.

Bowser, a Democrat, renamed a part of 16th Street to Black Lives Matter Plaza in June 2020.

What we have to say to the young black youth is that they matter, we care about them, and we hear them, and were listening to them, and were trying to make all of our systems starting right here in Washington, DC, more fair, she said at a press conference after the words Black Lives Matter were painted on the street in yellow letters.

Similar murals were painted in New York City and other cities.

Black Lives Matter, an organization that claims there is systemic racism in the United States and other countries, and attempts to attack the alleged systemic racism, gained support from some officials following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

But after a number of protests turned violent, with ransacking of stores, assaults of police officers, and other mayhem, the movement drew criticism and more opposition.

According to Robin Nunn, vice chair of the Dupont Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission, told WJLA that no Black Lives Matter stakeholders were consulted on the design of the plaza.

We should be engaging these folks because theyre the ones who seeded this movement, and now were taking it and turning it into something that they may not have had in mind, added commissioner Michael Scott McKernan.
Chen Guangcheng, blind Chinese civil rights activist and lawyer (R), greets Cardinal Joseph Zen, recipient of the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom during a ceremony at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 28, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Blind Chinese Human Rights Lawyer Describes Difficult Life of Chinas Rural Poor

Chen Guangcheng, a prominent Chinese human rights activist and lawyer, in a recent interview with The Epoch Times Chinese edition, talked about the poverty situation in rural China today. He discussed some misconceptions about the data on poverty and its true meaning in China. According to Chen, poverty is handled differently in China, which doesnt have a well-defined poverty line nor does it offer the same social benefits that free countries like the United States provide.

Chen became famous in China because he helped many vulnerable groups such as peasants and the disabled to defend their rights.

He was on the list of The 2006 TIME 100 and was a 2012 Lantos Human Rights Prize recipient, among other titles and awards.

Someone has to fight for people with no voice, Chen said, I guess that person is me.

On May 28, 2020, Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council of China, told a journalist that 600 million Chinese people have an average monthly income of only $154, reported the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

Chen cautioned the actual situation was not accurately reflected in the data.

It does not necessarily mean that all the 600 million people have an average of $154 every month, Chen said.

He said only those who have lived in Chinas rural areas are very clear about the situation of the so-called poverty line.

If a [rural] resident doesnt work in the city and make money by doing labor work and relies exclusively on income from the land, let me tell you, he may not be able to earn $154 for the whole year, not to mention for the month.

Chen gave an example of a wheat farmer with 600 plus square meters of farmland. He said, The best farmland can yield a maximum of about 660760 pounds of wheat per 600 square meters every year. Now lets do the arithmetic. In China, one pound of wheat sells for 15 cents. How much is it in total for 660760 pounds of wheat? Minus cost of seeds, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, irrigation, and harvesting, is there any money left?

A farmer pulls his water buffalo along garbage-strewn trails in a village outside of Yueyang, in central Chinas Hunan Province, on Oct. 30, 2004. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images)

Chen noted that the social benefits in the United States provided to people living below the poverty line are enough to provide for food and medical care. However, the free world should understand that living under the poverty line does not have the same meaning when the regime mentions it.

Thats because in the United States the poverty line is very clear. When your income is low to a certain extent, you will get your social benefits, Chen said. I think many people living in the United States know clearly that you will not be left without basic necessities. The medical care and other social benefits provided are definitely enough for a person to live by himself, Chen said.

In his view, the little bit of money that the poverty-stricken population can get from the communist regime, is really very, very pathetic, even today.

There is no social benefit whatsoever, Chen said.

On top of the lack of governmental benefits, the regime even forces them to pay taxes and various fees to local governments at the village level, town level, and other governmental levels, in the name of community services and management. Failure to pay taxes and fees will only result in brutal treatment including beatings and property destruction.
The Westconnex Rozelle interchange construction site is seen closed in Sydney, Australia, on July 20, 2021. (AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

Bloody Angry: Construction Industry Furious at Shutdown Decision

The New South Wales government is under intense pressure from the construction industry over its sudden decision to close the whole sector down across Greater Sydney.

Construction union CFMEU said the industry was bloody angry after the announcement was made on Saturday.

Last Friday, we were still told the industry could keep going, CFMEU Secretary Darren Greenfield told 2GB radio on Tuesday. To come out and flip a switch was atrocious.

Were still angry, but we need to start telling the governmenteveryone in the industry and everyone in NSW as wellthat we need to get back up and running.

On Monday, NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said she did not specifically advise the closure of the construction industry, and the cabinet had made the decision.

According to 2GB, the construction ban was backed by Premier Gladys Berejiklian, Deputy Premier John Barilaro, Paul Toole, and Victor Dominello. However, treasurer Dominic Perrottet, Stuart Ayres, and Health Minister Brad Hazzard opposed the idea, resulting in a 4:3 split for the measure.

Construction work on the city metro is halted in the central business district of Sydney, Australia, on July 19, 2021. (Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images)

The Australian Constructors Association (ACA) said the lockdown of construction work was unnecessary, but they were committed to working collaboratively with the government and supporting the industry.

The construction industry has a long tail, and we need to ensure all parts of the industry are supported, an ACA spokesman told The Epoch Times. The ACA is taking a holistic approach to minimising the impacts of the shutdown, supporting businesses, and restarting work.

The ACA was optimistic that work would resume when scheduled, but called on the NSW government to provide greater certainty going forwards.

The Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) said it was time to include a cost-benefit analysis of lockdown decisions.

For too long, we have heard state leaders quote health advice for their job and life-wrecking decisions on lockdowns, Ai Group CEO Innes Willox said. Until that advice becomes more transparent and includes more than health advice, doubts will continue to grow as to whether we are on the right path, and confidence will be further eroded in the decisions made by state governments.

Willox said the NSW governments decision to shut construction, despite the extremely minimal risks, could not be justified without data or proper risk assessment.

South Australia also announced a lockdown from 6 p.m. today, including the construction industry, which Willox describes as a knee-jerk response. He is concerned that Victoria will also follow suit with their own construction shutdown.

The two-week construction ban began on Monday and is estimated to cost over $1 billion per week and leave over 250,000 people without work. It is Australias first complete shutdown of the sector due to lockdowns.
Britain to Permanently Deploy Two Warships in Asian Waters

TOKYOBritain said on Tuesday it would permanently deploy two warships in Asian waters after its Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier and escort ships sail to Japan in September through seas where China is vying for influence with the United States and Japan.

Plans for the high-profile visit by the carrier strike group come as London deepens security ties with Tokyo, which has expressed growing alarm in recent months over Chinas territorial ambitions in the region, including Taiwan.

Following on from the strike groups inaugural deployment, the United Kingdom will permanently assign two ships in the region from later this year, Britains Defence Minister Ben Wallace said in a joint announcement in Tokyo with his Japanese counterpart, Nobuo Kishi.

After their arrival in Japan, Kishi said, the Queen Elizabeth and its escort ships would split up for separate port calls to U.S. and Japanese naval bases along the Japanese archipelago.

A close U.S. ally, Japan hosts the biggest concentration of U.S. military forces outside the United States, including ships, aircraft, and thousands of marines.

Britains Defence Secretary Ben Wallace is welcomed by Japans Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the start of their meeting at the prime ministers official residence in Tokyo, Japan, on July 20, 2021. (Franck Robichon/Pool via Reuters)

The British carrier, which is carrying F-35B stealth jets on its maiden voyage, will dock at Yokosuka, the home of Japans fleet command and the USS Ronald Reagan, the only forward-deployed U.S. aircraft carrier.

The British ships will not have a permanent base, a spokesperson at the British embassy in Tokyo said when asked which ports the Royal Navy ships would operate from.

The Queen Elizabeth is being escorted by two destroyers, two frigates, two support vessels, and ships from the United States and the Netherlands.

It will come to Japan through the South China Sea, parts of which are claimed by China and southeast Asian countries, with stops in India, Singapore, and South Korea.

In a further sign of Britains growing regional engagement, Wallace, who traveled to Japan with a delegation of military commanders, said Britain would also eventually deploy a Littoral Response Group, a unit of marines trained to undertake missions including evacuations and anti-terrorism operations.

By Tim Kelly and Irene Wang
Exiled Tibetans use the Olympic Rings as a prop during a street protest against the holding of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, in Dharmsala, India, on Feb. 3, 2021. The five effigies represent Taiwan, Tibet, Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, and the region ethnic Uyghurs call East Turkestan that is under Chinese control. (Ashwini Bhatia/AP Photo)

China, America, and Racism

Commentary

At the United Nations General Assembly in March of this year, Chinese Ambassador Dai Bing emphasized to the General Assembly that: If the U.S. truly cared about human rights, they should address the deep-seated problems of racial discrimination, social injustice, and police brutality on their own soil.

This was only one of many recent statements by the Chinese regime and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials condemning the United States as a racist country ruled by political leaders who cater to the wealthy one percent of the population that owns eighty percent of the nations assets while ignoring the needs of the poor, people of color, and refugees from violence and poverty in Latin America.

One of the Chinese regimes cabinet reports opens with the words: I cant breathe, taken from reports of what George Floyd said as he stopped breathing as a Minneapolis policeman kept a knee on his neck.

Indeed, Chinese leaders have even gone so far as to harshly criticize Washington for its handling of the COVID-19 crisis that the regime covered up as the first cases claimed lives in Wuhan. In one statement, Beijing said that: To defeat the epidemic requires mutual help, solidarity, and cooperation among all countries. However, the United States, which has always considered itself an exception and superior, saw its own epidemic situation go out of control, accompanied by political disorder, inter-ethnic conflicts, and social division.

Of course, there is truth in these statements, but far from the whole truth and far from the unbiased truth.

The statement of the Chinese ambassador to the U.N. was made in front of the American Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, a black American.

Indeed, while taking America to task for racism and exploitation of the poor by the rich, the CCP has systematically been carrying out genocidal policies aimed at increasing Han Chinese dominance in all regions claimed by China. This began in Tibet in 1949 when the CCP army conquered then-independent Tibet and began to move Han Chinese settlers into the country while destroying many of its temples, books, and religious sites. Han Chinese make up 94 percent of modern Chinas population.

Xinjiang has been part of China since the 18th century, but it was long populated predominantly by Muslim Uyghur people with no likeness to Han Chinese. For some time now, Beijing has been suppressing the native Uyghurs and has even been making it difficult or impossible for them to have children among themselves. All instruction in the schools is in Mandarin rather than in the Uyghur native language, and, as in Tibet, masses of Han Chinese are being sent to live and work in Xinjiang by Beijing in a major effort to sinicize the region.

Over the past two years, a similar effort has been started in the region of Inner Mongolia. Inner Mongolians typically use the Mongolian language for everyday speech and students had always been taught in the Mongolian language. Now, however, it has been declared by Beijing that all schools must do their teaching in Chinese Mandarin rather than in the native language of the students. This has caused strong opposition and even riots and demonstrations in Inner Mongolia, but to no avail. The CCP is determined to make the province Han just as it has been doing in Tibet and Xinjiang.

The issue of American racism is widely discussed in the open U.S. press and in the international free world publications and broadcasts. By severely censoring its own press and limiting the presence of foreign correspondents, while also severely limiting where they may go and to whom they may speak, Beijing has prevented the spread of knowledge of its racism to all but a few Chinese-speaking experts. Yet, the CCPs racism is more deeply rooted and presently active than any American racial phobia.

The Chinese ambassador to the U.N. was speaking before an American ambassador who is black. When can we expect to see the first Chinese ambassador or Mongolian, Tibetan, or Uyghur extraction? The United States has had a black president and has elected many people of African extraction to the U.S. Congress and Senate. America has had and has black Supreme Court justices, ambassadors, and Cabinet officials of Asian, Hispanic, African, American Indian, and mixed-race extraction.

When will the world see the first non-Han chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, or member of the Politburo, or member of the Central Committee, or Peoples Liberation Army commander?

Maybe when hell freezes over?

Clyde Prestowitz is an Asia and globalization expert, a veteran U.S. trade negotiator, and a presidential adviser. He was the leader of the first U.S. trade mission to China in 1982 and has served as an adviser to Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. As counselor to the secretary of commerce in the Reagan administration, Mr. Prestowitz headed negotiations with Japan, South Korea, and China. Mr. Prestowitzs newest book is The World Turned Upside Down: China, America and the Struggle for Global Leadership, published in January 2021.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The HNA logo is seen on a building in Beijing, China, on Feb. 18, 2016. (Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images)

Chinas HNA Group Ignores Promise to Repay Employees Investments in the Company

Chinas HNA Group was recently hit with an open letter from a whistleblower who said it was written on behalf of more than 20,000 employees, accusing former chairman, Chen Feng, of an under-the-table operation to repay his own debts.

Previously, The Epoch Times reported that the acquisitive conglomerate, once synonymous with Chinas global ambitions, had entered bankruptcy proceedings this past January.

A former HNA employee, Jiang Bing (alias), told The Epoch Times that the local government provided funds to HNA for repayment of debts it incurred for restructuring and bankruptcy proceedings. However, Chen misappropriated the funds to repay his own debts first, ignoring his promise to put the interest of the employees first.

The Open Letter Alleges Top Executives Crimes

A Chinese WeChat public account called ershicimi.com published the open letter, which was addressed to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Beijings top watchdog agency. The post was widely discussed on Chinese social platforms, but the original post is no longer available, and no media reports are available inside China.

The open letter claimed that Chen had manipulated his power in the company to repay himself and his immediate investment circle with funds made available by the Hainan provincial government and HNA Group, which continuously disposed of more than $46 billion in fixed assets to resolve the internal cash flow shortage during 2018 and 2020.

When HNA was running short on cash and employees wages werent paid in full, Chens son Chen Xiaofeng, his nephew, and others were still buying luxury cars and goods on a large scale. Chen Xiaofeng also became a member of HNAs board of directors without following any approved legal procedures. Chen was accused of trying to turn HNA into his personal family business.

In addition, when the company made investment portfolios available to employees, senior executives received interest payments as high as 30 percent, while ordinary employees only received 8 to 11 percent interest, unbeknownst to them.

Employees Deceived by Corporate Culture

Jiang Bing, who worked at HNA for 20 years, told The Epoch Times that he responded to the companys call and jointly invested more than $772,000 in the companys employee-based investment portfolio.

According to Jiang, HNA started these employee-only portfolios as early as 2015, with different tiers and rates of return paid as direct deposits to their bank accounts.

The company promised that if the employees supported the development of the group, the company would share profits with them first and executives second. The company also promoted the investment portfolios to employees friends and family to join.

Chinas Hainan Airlines at Haikou Airport in South Chinas Hainan Province, on June 12, 2014. (AFP via Getty Images)

Jiang indicated that he had been a careful investor. He was only involved in HNAs investment portfolios because he trusted Gu Gang and Chen Fengs promise that the interest of employees is the priority, but the repayment was not seen.

We did not sue them, but continued our work. Weve been waiting. Now Gu Gang took office but refused to acknowledge his own promise.

Gu Gang is the newly elected Secretary of the HNA Party Committee. In China, every organization is required to establish a Party Committee when there are three members of the Chinese Communist Party. The Secretary of the Party Committee has a higher power than the chairman of the company.

Jiang alleged that Chen recovered his principal investments. According to online information made available for debtors, Chen only claimed a loss of unpaid interest in the first debtors meeting held on June 4. Jiang said that if Chen only claimed the unpaid interest, he must have already received his principals.

I believe that some senior executives have also recovered their investment privately, Jiang said.

On June 30, Jiang was notified by the company that he was being let go, without a reason. As for the compensation, the company advised him to file legal proceedings.

Jiang and his father-in-law and other relatives, a total of four families, had invested nearly $1 million to purchase HNAs internal investment portfolios. This is more money than he made in his entire 20 years of working at HNA. His monthly salary was only $772.

Think about how much I have earned after working at HNA for more than 20 years? Now the company is bankrupt. I know it is not easy for a company to go bankrupt, but they cant even guarantee us the principal.

He said his family had thought about the risks associated with the investment but, We believed that our corporate culture is about honesty. The chairman and the Party Secretary both assured us that we would be protected.

Thats why we invested all our savings.

Jiang admitted that for 20 years, hes been brainwashed by the so-called corporate culture of integrity, participation, and sharing touted by HNA.

He realized that hes been fooled. There are as many as 60,000 low-level employees that participated in the investment portfolios, according to Jiang.

He is thinking of going to the company in Haikou, the capital city of Hainan, to negotiate his repayment.

Wang Mei (pseudonym), a family member of an HNA employee, told The Epoch Times that she invested more than $15,000 in HNAs investment portfolio in 2017. When the repayment was overdue, the company advised her not to aggravate the financial crisis of the company but consider an alternative option which allowed the company to repay later.

We chose one of the options, which was to delay redeeming for one year, and the interest would be 12 percent.

However, a year later, the deposits ran late. So far, Wang only received a portion of the principala little more than $2,000.

Wang said, The company should repay the employees first, just like the wages should be taken care of first.

HNA was founded in 1993 by Chen Feng and Wang Jian, and headquartered in Haikou, Hainan.

On July 3, 2018, Wang Jian, then chairman of the HNA Group, fell to his death from a 26-foot wall in France. The police believe that it was an accident, but there is some speculation of suicide or homicide.
A man jogs through an empty Place Jacques Cartier in Montreal on March 25, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to take hold in Canada. (The Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz)

Complacency Contributed to Canadas Lack of Preparedness When COVID Struck: Health Economist

Canadas public health response to COVID-19 pandemic was slow getting off the ground, largely due to complacency and a focus on optics over substance on the part of federal bureaucrats, a health economist says.

Livio Di Matteo, a professor of economics at Lakehead University, says Canadas system developed to provide early warning of infectious disease outbreaks had been quietly deactivated prior to the pandemic. On top of that, stockpiles of protective equipment were allowed to decline, which led the country to be not terribly well-prepared when the pandemic struck.



Canada was hit by SARS circa 2004, along with a number of other countries. And in the wake of SARS, Canada was very concerned. They had numerous reports and studies and they began to take measures to deal with future pandemics, including stockpiling health supplies, etc., Di Matteo said in an interview.

But something seems to have happened between roughly 20072008 and the present, and part of it may have been the absence of a major public health crisis since SARS.  In the end, I think it was complacency, because governments are strange creatures.

He says some other countries were in a similar situation, becoming very complacent due to having successfully weathered the 2009 H1N1 pandemic as well as keep Ebola at bay.

I think to a certain extent, politicians began to believe that in some ways we were immune from future pandemics, and that turned out to not be the case, he said.

So a lot of what happened is a sort of complacency, a sort of benign neglect. But I think part of it is sort of the tendency of bureaucracy to focus a lot more on brand and image and communications, as opposed to the actual substance of public health.

Lakehead University professor Livio Di Matteo (Courtesy of Livio Di Matteo)

News emerged in the spring of 2020 that Canadas pandemic alert system, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN), had been disabled in May 2019, removing the ability of Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) analysts to trigger alerts.

An independent review of the GPHIN was commissioned by the government last year after some PHAC scientists said their early warnings of COVID-19 were ignored.



Released on July 12, the subsequent report by a three-member panel found that, among other things, the authority of analysts to issue alerts was removed in 2019. Any alerts had to be approved by PHACs vice-president before they could be issued. The change caused significant distress for the team, particularly because management at the time provided no further direction on how this core function should be carried out, the panel wrote.

The panels findings correspond with a report issued by Auditor General Karen Hogan in March, which stated that after this change, the number of alerts decreased significantly. In 2019 and 2020, only two alerts were issueda significant drop from an average of one to two per month from 2015 to 2018.

The panel noted that GPHIN began issuing daily reports about the COVID-19 virus in late December 2019. The daily report on Dec. 31, 2019, contained links to articles describing an outbreak of viral pneumonia of unknown origin in Wuhan, China. Unlike alerts, however, daily reports were sent only within Canada to federal, provincial, and territorial partners, and not to international GPHIN subscribers.

The panel also highlighted the issue of a key positionchief health surveillance officerthat had been left vacant since 2017, noting that the absence of this role was one of the reasons why the surveillance activities were not well co-ordinated in the years leading to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The panel recommended a stand-alone risk assessment office that can take both surveillance from the GPHIN and information from Canadas security and intelligence communities and quickly decide the level of risk and what can and should be done about it. It also suggested that the GPHIN might benefit from private partnerships to improve its technology.



Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the government will consider the recommendations proposed in the report.



Were going to look very carefully at how we can move forward, not just in regards to that particular department or agency, but indeed, across the government to make sure we are better prepared for any future pandemics, Trudeau said on July 13.

Conservative health critic Michelle Rempel Garner called the findings scathing, saying the report shows once again the Liberal government was unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Di Matteo says dealing with a pandemic requires a consistent and sustained effort, noting that countries such as Singapore and Taiwan that also experienced SARS remained vigilant in the intervening years.

I think we could have done better, particularly because we were one of the countries that originally was affected by SARS. And if you look at some of the other countries that were affected by SARS, they were much more vigilant after SARS, and their mortality rates, their COVID-19 incidence rates, are substantially lower, he said.

Going forward in the future, the most important lesson of the pandemic is to learn from the pandemic. And so its important for governments at the federal and provincial level to learn the lessons and make sure that theyre not caught with their pants down again.

With files from The Canadian Press
Cuban Americans Gather to Support Those Living in Communist Regime

Southern California residents took the streets of Los Angeles July 19, demanding freedom from Cubas communist regime.

It was heartwarming to see the support that we had, Ana Landrian told The Epoch Times. Some of the kids that were there have never been to Cuba, and yet they were out there with both the Cuban and the American flag asking for freedom.

The afternoon protest brought together about 1,000 residents to the corner of Wilshire Boulevard.

Landrian said she was grateful to those that came to support Cuba amidst rising tensions in the country.

Demonstrations began erupting in Cuba July 11, when people packed the streets, shouting liberty and denouncing food and medicine shortages, power cuts, and other abuses by the communist regime.

Such protests are rare in the repressive island nation. It follows a few smaller gatherings of activists in recent months who criticized the detention of artists and demanded freedom of expression.

Its all over the island, Landrian said. The people are out in the streets, and you see them wearing masks, so you know that its current and theyre just crying out for freedom, and the most sad and yet beautiful thing is that most of them are young people, under 30 years old. People that were born under their regime are the ones that are screaming for freedom, and they keep saying this is not about the embargo, this is not about COVID, this is about freedom.

The United States Embargo

The U.S. has had trades restrictions on Cuba for decades, leaving some to say that the embargo is at fault for the current situation.

However, Cuban Americans said otherwise.

Theres a lot of propaganda about the embargo, but the main problem is the communist system, the repressive dictatorship, Santiago Martin told The Epoch Times.

Martin continued, Its not an accurate statement to say the embargo is responsible for the conditions of the Cuban people. What is, is the corrupt communist system, and where they choose to spend money. They have used their money for military. Theyve used their money for security, which is to keep the people in place. If you look at the protestors, they dont have weapons, they dont have anything other than a cell phone. The government has put together these squads of goons, handed out sticks, and set them loose on the people.

Martin warned about fake news revolving around the embargo, stating that it is not the cause of the protest in Cuba.

The situation is desperate, he said. The people on the streets are not saying take down the embargo, send us money, send us food, and those vaccines. Theyre saying, we want freedomnothing is said about the embargo, only the government talks about the embargo because they want to deflect.

If you were to knock down the embargo today, youd still have a one-party system. Theyll have no freedom of speech. Its just ridiculous to try to blame it on the embargo, there is no embargo thats worldwide. They can trade with 180 countries.

Martin last spoke to family members that remain in Cuba a few days ago as communication continues to be spotty since the government cut the Internet service. His said his family is fearful to speak since their communication is monitored.

An Emotional Past

Landrians story began in Cuba during the regime of Fidel Castro.

In 1961, her father filed paperwork to leave the country, and in 1969 her family was approved to leave.

Three years before their departure, in 1966, Landrians father was taken away to work at a concentration camp. Every day, her mother lived in fear that she too would be taken away and her children would be left behind or put into a revolutionary.

Growing up, Landrian witnessed the oppression of the communist regime as her mom was forbidden to work and she learned communist ideology in the classroom.

She recalls the day when a man on a motorcycle came to her home and told them it was time to leave.

When they were scheduled to leave in 1969, Landrian and her family joyfully picked up her father from the concentration camp where she still remembers the happiness that erupted when his friends saw he was finally leaving.

Its not a story for me, its not a fairy book tale, she said recalling her painful past. Thats the part thats really hard for me even, when people dont believe us when we tell the story its not fabricated, it happened to me.
Cubans hold U.S. and Cuban flags outside the U.S. Embassy building as the U.S. flag is raised over it in Havana. (Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)

Cuban Immigrant Criticizes BLM for Solidarity With Cuban Regime: They Think They Are Going to Be Spared

Following the historic protests against communism in Cuba, Black Lives Matter (BLM) demanded the Biden administration end the embargo they say is costing the tiny island nation an estimated $130 billion. But according to a man who escaped Cuba as a child: We need to send them weapons.

Who is BLM? Maximo Alvarez asked The Epoch Times rhetorically. They have bragged publically of being Marxists/Leninists. They have said publicly that they want to destroy this country to start all over again.

We need to help Cuba, Alvarez insisted. We need to send them weapons. We need to invade. We need to take over because communists do not leave. They will never relinquish power. And if you dont smile, they will kill you. They will kill you. They will not leave. You will have to kill them.

Since arriving in the United States at the age of 13 as part of Operation Pedro Pan, Alvarez feels blessed to have had an opportunity to live the American dream.

Today, Alvarez lives in Miami, Florida. He is a director on the Board of Trustees at Florida State University and president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors. He was also one of the people chosen to give a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

As Alvarez explained, BLM is doing little more than following the communist philosophy of Saul Alinsky, who once said: The greatest enemy of individual freedom is the individual himself.

The opening paragraph of Alinskys book Rules for Radicals makes it very clear what the objectives of his followers are:

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.

Make sure everybody hates everybody else, Alvarez said of BLMs objectives. Make sure everyone thinks this is a bad country, that we abuse people. Make sure the poor people hate the rich people and convince them that the reason why they are poor is because the rich people want slaves. Destroy our history and keep God out of the schools and that kids come home and ask daddy, are you a racist? Make sure you have gun control. Make sure you control healthcare and make sure everyone is on welfare because if you control healthcare and my income then you control me, and this is what BLM does.

This is what BLM is all about, Alvarez insisted. They are extremely well-financed by stupid people who think they are going to be spared.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also pointed out BLMs hypocrisy through Twitter.

The extortionist ring known as the Black Lives Matter organization took a break today from shaking down corporations for millions & buying themselves mansions to share their support for the Communist regime in #Cuba, Rubio shared through Twitter on July 15.

Useful Idiots Keep Sending Money

According to Alvarez, those who kowtow to the demands of BLM and cater to their whims with the hope they will gain their favor are only setting themselves up to become their next victim.

The useful idiots, the big corporations, keep sending them money because they think they are going to be spared, Alvarez warned. Well, Ive got bad news for you. The more money you send them and the more you protect them, the sooner you put them in power and the quicker you are going to fall.

Like Churchill said, Alvarez noted, Socialism is the equal distribution of misery.

Despite efforts by BLM and some media outlets to paint the protests as a backlash for food shortages and the governments poor handling of the COVID-19 crisis, chants of we want change, down with the dictatorship, we want freedom, and we are no longer afraid, reveal that it is the communist government the Cuban people are fed up with.

The Cuban people are so oppressed and so badly treated they have no more fear and that is why they are doing what theyre doing, Alvarez said. I get emotional when I talk about this because I lived through that and I understand what communism is. Many people in our country do not understand that. They call it socialism. But its not. Its communism.

As Alvarez watches the protesters, his heart aches for them. Yet he is inspired when he sees them wave American flags.

I wish that this could be a lesson to our media, our academia, and our young people, Alvarez said, how foreign countries and people who have lost their freedom idolize our country and our flag. Not only is it a cry for help, they realize this is the only free country left in the world. This is the country that has accepted all of us [immigrants].

I was very fortunate that my mom and dad understood communism and sent me here as a little kid, Alvarez said, his voice strained with emotion. God, I feel so bad because that could be me right now. I feel so bad because there is very little we can do from here. The demonstrations wont do anything.

According to Alvarez, America now has a front-row seat in witnessing what 60 years of oppression and communism does to a country. He also issued a warning to those who keep electing people who want to take America down the same path of socialism, noting that the people who are now fighting for their freedom in Cuba are suffering the results of the useful idiots who put the current government leaders in power.

They believed the promises, Alvarez lamented. They believed they would be secure, that they would have free health care and free education. Free everything.

Unfortunately, Alvarez believes the demonstrations are an exercise in futility. He also fears for the lives of the protesters.

The Cuban government will easily understand who the leaders are and they will put them away, Alvarez said. They will be killed, and the rest of the people will soon go away. If we really want to save Cuba, we need to send the military. Because the people in Cuba cannot fight. They have no weapons. Thats why every time theres a shooting here they want gun control.

Because of the generosity of this country we could literally start a business out of the trunk of our car and impact other families, Alvarez reflected of his fellow immigrants, and when we die we can say we left this world a little better.

I am afraid for my grandchildren, Alvarez mourned. I am afraid that the next generation will be the very first generation that will not leave the world better than the last. I am so concerned because so many people in this country dont understand. I pray for them to get enlightened.
A photo allegedly showing Mark Ibrahim, a former DEA agent, during the Capitol incident, in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Department of Justice)

DEA Agent Becomes First Federal Officer Charged in Jan. 6 Capitol Breach

A federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent was arrested Tuesday for allegedly entering the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, according to court filings.

The agent, Mark Sami Ibrahim of California, didnt enter the building, according to the court filings (pdf). However, prosecutors said he flashed his badge and a DEA-issued firearm in photos at the scene, entered a restricted area in the Capitol, and climbed on the Peace Memorial near Capitol Hill.

Ibrahim, the first federal law enforcement officer to be arrested in connection to the Jan. 6 incident, was spotted in a photo that was included in the court documents. There, his badge and gun can be seen as hes holding a flag that reads, Liberty or Death.

Ibrahim, prosecutors alleged, had been participating in a WhatsApp group chat with at least five other law enforcement officers and posted a photograph of himself standing next to one of the bicycle-style barricades that had been pulled apart by the crowd several minutes earlier.

The prosecutors added that he confirmed during interviews that he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and said he had his DEA credentials, badge, and firearm with him. The documents also said he was asked to go to the Capitol by a friend.

The FBI, officials said in the filings, accused Ibrahim of going to the rally to instead promote himself because he wanted to start a cigar brand and a podcast.

I had my creds. I had my firearm, and my badge on me  But never exposed  Not that I know of, he allegedly said, according to the court documents. Prosecutors, however, said that the photos of Ibrahim flashing his badge and gun disprove his comments to investigators.

The documents noted that he was a probationary employee and had given his notice that he would resign from the DEA.

He was not on duty for the DEA and had no role as a law enforcement officer on the Capitol grounds, according to the document.

So far, more than 500 people have been arrested in connection to the Capitol breach. Former President Donald Trump, who spoke at a rally before the incident, denied that he incited violence leading up to the incident and has pointed to statements he made that protesters should demonstrate peacefully.

In recent months, lawmakers have raised fed flags about several dozen individuals who are currently being detained in Washington D.C. for their alleged roles in the Capitol breach, arguing that they are being denied due process, are being held in solitary confinement, have been denied medicine, or have allegedly been beaten.

One of them, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told The Epoch Times last week that its a sign of a two-tiered justice system.

The two-tier justice system has really become so apparent to anybody thats paying attention. It is really tragic, Gohmert said. But the Justice Department has been able to scare a lot of Republicans and their people that were thinking about coming back to Washington and protesting.

And theyre scared to do that because they read and hear about these people being put in jail, who did nothing wrong, some of theman 18-year-old that gets put in prison and 23 hours a day in solitary, and then after a story came out  and they went to 24 hour lockup.

A lawyer representing Ibrahim hasnt responded to a request for comment.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), testifies during a Senate hearing in Washington, on July 20, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)

Delta Variant Becoming More Prevalent as COVID-19 Cases Rise: CDC Director

The Delta variant of the pathogen that causes COVID-19 is becoming more prevalent and now accounts for around 83 percent of all new sequenced cases in the United States, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Walensky made the remarks in testimony Tuesday during a Senate hearing on the federal response to the pandemic, which includes tracking new viral mutations.

The CDC has released estimates of variants across the country and predicted the Delta variant now represents 83 percent of sequenced cases, Walensky said, adding, This is a dramatic increase up from 50 percent the week of July 3.

In some parts of the country the percentage is even higher, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates, Walensky said, adding that areas with limited vaccination coverage are allowing for the emergence and rapid spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Deemed a variant of concern by the CDC, the Delta mutation of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the pathogen that causes COVID-19, is considered by the agency to be more transmissible and potentially more resistant to vaccines.

So far, no CCP virus mutations have received the variant of high consequence designation, which is reserved for those that show clear evidence that medical countermeasures have significantly reduced effectiveness compared to previously circulating variants.

The Delta variant, first identified in India, has spread to more than 100 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Poonam Singh, the WHOs regional director for southeast Asia, told news agency ANI that the Delta variant could soon become the most dominant strain globally, saying that, among all variants of concern, Delta spreads most rapidly.

In her Senate testimony, Walensky also said that, in parts of the United States where vaccine coverage is low, cases and hospitalizations are starting to climb.

Over the last week we have averaged 239 deaths per day, an increase of nearly 48 percent over the prior week, she said, while urging more Americans to get vaccinated.

She said nearly two-thirds of the counties in the United States have vaccinated less than 40 percent of their residents.

The message from CDC remains clearthe best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 variants is to prevent the spread of disease and vaccination is the most powerful tool we have, she said, adding, We must continue to expand vaccine coverage.

CDC data shows that around 48.6 percent of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

Meanwhile, a June poll showed that 63 percent of likely general election voters were opposed to government action in response to the Delta variant, telling pollsters that with the widespread availability of the vaccines and treatments individuals can make personal decisions on how to respond.

At the same time, 17.7 percent of all respondents said the government should reinstate mask-wearing and social distancing mandates, while 7.0 percent said they also want lockdowns in addition to mask and distancing requirements.

Health officials have said lockdowns helped keep people safe, but some experts have argued the strategy had unintended consequences, including leading to skyrocketing unemployment, widespread business closures, and a rise in mental health issues.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a border meeting, while Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez (L) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) look on, in Del Rio, Texas, on July 17, 2021. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

DeSantis Looking for Ways Florida Can Help Deter Illegal Immigration

DEL RIO, TexasFlorida Gov. Ron DeSantis said hes looking at all available options at the state level to deter and deport illegal immigrants, especially those planning to reside in Florida.

Were trying to figure out what all our options are because if theres not a deterrentand Im a big supporter of the border wall, dont get me wrongbut if there arent policies backing that up to enforce the law, then youre still going to have people who are going to find some way to get in and violate the law, DeSantis told The Epoch Times on July 17.

DeSantis met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other state officials in the border town of Del Rio, which has become the second-busiest illegal crossing sector along the southwest border.

Border Patrol has apprehended more than 111,500 illegal aliens in the sector from February through June. Almost 615,000 individuals have been apprehended crossing into the state of Texas during the same time period.

Florida law enforcement officers deployed to the Lone Star State told DeSantis that about 70 percent of the illegal immigrants theyve been involved in apprehending in the past three weeks are heading for Florida.

Thats alarming, because you have a criminal element in there, DeSantis said. But then just the scale of whats coming across the border, thats going to put huge stress on social services, schools, health care, all these other things.

DeSantis said he hopes the Biden administration will reevaluate its failed policy, but if not, hes looking at the possible recourse states have.

Its one thing to say the federal government is supreme over immigration, but if they refuse to use that power, and refuse to execute the law, should states be allowed to step into that void? So weve actually looked at thatwe havent necessarily arrived at exactly what you would do, he said.

DeSantis said when he offered law enforcement assistance to Texas after Abbott called for help, all personnel who were deployed had volunteered to go.

States always help us, [and] this is an important issue, DeSantis said. The governor sent 50 officers to Texas from the Florida Highway Patrol, Department of Law Enforcement, and Fish and Wildlife at the end of June.

In the 23 days since, DeSantis said the Florida officers have helped apprehend more than 2,800 illegal aliens and assisted with more than 100 criminal arrests for felonies ranging from human smuggling to drug trafficking.

Criminal Aliens

DeSantis said hes also concerned about the illegal aliens currently incarcerated in Florida who would have previously been taken and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) but will instead be released into communities.

These are people that are already felons, and theyre being released. And so thats a huge, huge problem, he said.

Florida filed a case against the Biden administration in March to keep President Joe Biden from blocking deportations. The complaint, filed by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, accuses the administration of a radical policy change that would allow criminal aliens to avoid deportation after serving time for crimes such as domestic violence, burglary, or heroin trafficking.

The Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 21 issued a memo to suspend deportations of illegal aliens for 100 days, with the exception of those who have either engaged in or are suspected of terrorism or espionage.

A month later, ICE announced new, narrow priorities for handling the arrest, detainment, and deportation of illegal immigrants. ICE deportations hit a record low in April.

Are you just saying if the federal government decides not to do the job, that the states cant do anything? DeSantis said.

Could we pay for a plane ticket to send them back to their home country? Could we put them on a bus to go back down to Mexico? I think you should be able to do it. So were working through the implications to see if you could get that done.

But, DeSantis said, theres no guarantee the home country will take their citizen back, so you run into a lot of different issues. But were working through it.

Legal Precedent

The governor argued that some immigration case outcomes need to be relitigated, as the facts are so much more aggravated now than when precedent was set.

He referred to the 2012 U.S. v. Arizona case that saw the Supreme Court ultimately decide that Arizona couldnt create state immigration offenses and expand local law enforcements authority over immigration law.

The Arizona legislature had approved SB 1070 in 2010 in an attempt to secure its own border after it said the federal government was failing in its duty.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said hes also looking for a way to get that decision relitigated.

I think that case was so wrongly decided, Paxton told The Epoch Times on July 16. And if we find the right case, well take it back up.

DeSantis also referred to a 1982 Supreme Court decision (54) that said Texas school districts couldnt exclude illegal immigrant children from obtaining free education using taxpayer resources.

We obviously want to disincentivize the migration into Florida, DeSantis said. We may need to do some additional legislating to try to figure out  what are the options to be able to protect taxpayers and to be able to protect communities.

The governor signed into law a ban on sanctuary jurisdictions in 2019 that requires local and state law enforcement to cooperate with ICE. In 2020, DeSantis signed a bill that requires public employers and contractors to use the E-Verify platform to ensure legal status of employers. Private employers remain exempt.

I think most people in Floridawere a very pro-immigrant state, we have a heavy immigrant populationbut I think they want it to be lawful and I dont think they want people coming in because of failed policies on the southern border, DeSantis said.
Devoured: How Sand Mining Devastated Chinas Largest Freshwater Lake

Over two decades, dredging ships have sucked massive amounts of sand from the bed and shores of Poyang Lake in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangxi, drastically altering the ability of its ecosystem to function.

Decades of mass urbanisation in China have fuelled demand for sand to make glass, concrete and other materials used in construction. The most desirable sand for industry comes from rivers and lakes rather than deserts and oceans. Much of the sand used to build the countrys megacities has come from Poyang, Chinas largest freshwater lake.

Reuters worked with Earthrise Media, a non-profit group that analyses satellite imagery, to map changes in the lakes shoreline since 1997, giving an indication of how much sand has been removed.

Sand barges are seen on Poyang Lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China, on June 23, 2021. (Gabriel Crossley/Reuters)

Poyang Lake is a main flood outlet for the Yangtze River, which overflows during summer and can cause extensive damage to crops and property. In winter, the lakes water flows back out into the river.

Sand mining in the main river and its tributaries and lakes is believed to be responsible for the abnormally low water levels during winters over the past two decades. It also has made it harder for authorities to control the summertime water flow.

In March, the Chinese regime moved to restrict sand mining activities in some areas and arrested illegal miners, but it stopped short of an outright ban on sand mining.

Sand-dredging boats are seen near an area cleared for sand mining, on Poyang Lake in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, China, on Dec. 9, 2019. (Aly Song/Reuters)

Low water levels mean farmers have less water for irrigation, while also shrinking habitats for birds and fish.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping once described Poyang Lake as a vital kidney filtering the countrys water supply. Today, it looks very different from two decades ago.

Already decimated by sand mining, the Poyang now faces a new environmental threat. Plans to build a 3-km (1.9-mile) sluice gate increase the threat to the ecosystem of the lake, which is a national nature reserve and home to endangered species like the Yangtze River, or finless, porpoise.

Adding a sluice gate to regulate the water flow would disrupt the natural ebb and flow between Poyang and the Yangtze, potentially threatening mud flats that serve as feeding stops for migratory birds.

Losing the natural water circulation could also hurt Poyangs ability to flush out nutrients, raising the risk that algae could build up and disrupt the food chain.

By Manas Sharma and Simon Scarr
Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons in London on July 7, 2021. (House of Commons via PA)

Downing Street Says Its Crucial for People to Self-Isolate When Pinged by NHS COVID-19 App

Downing Street said it is crucial that people self-isolate when they are pinged as a contact by the NHS COVID-19 app, in an apparent effort to steer its messaging back on track.

It follows a ministers comment earlier that says the decision is up to individuals and their employers.

All legal restrictions in England to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus have been lifted on Monday, with the exception of self-isolation for people that test positive for COVID-19 and those who come into close contact with someone testing positive.

The contacts would either be contacted by NHS Test and Trace or getting a notification on the NHS COVID-19 app.

A spokeswoman from Prime Minister Boris Johnsons office said on Tuesday that isolation remains the most important action people can take to stop the spread of the virus.

Given the risk of having and spreading the virus when people have been in contact with someone with COVID, it is crucial people isolate when they are told to do so, either by NHS Test and Trace or by the NHS COVID app, she said.

Earlier on Tuesday, business minister Paul Scully told Times Radio that its not a legal requirement to self-isolate when pinged by the app.

Its important to understand the rules. You have to legally isolate if you are contacted by Test and Trace, or if youre trying to claim isolation payments, Scully said.

The app is there to allow you to make informed decisions. And I think by backing out of mandating a lot of things, were encouraging people to really get the data in their own hands to be able to make decisions on whats best for them, whether theyre an employer or an employee.

Asked whether people should self-isolate if pinged, he said: We want to encourage people to still use the app to be able to do the right thing  but obviously its up to individuals and employers.

Investment minister Lord Gerry Grimstone has also reportedly told an employer that the NHS COVID app is only an advisory tool that doesnt put people under legal duty to self-isolate, according to Steven Swinford, political editor at The Times of London.

Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, who chaired the ethics advisory board for NHSX on its contact tracing app, told Times Radio the government needed to give clearer guidance to people about what to do when told to self-isolate.

When we had no protection the risk was the same for everybody. If that risk is now reduced because someone is double-vaccinated, it feels as though we need more sophisticated advice, Montgomery said.

If we are visiting an elderly relative or a cancer patient then take the ping seriously, but if you are doing something relatively COVID-friendly, then maybe make a different decision.

Shadow health minister Justin Madders said the government is making it up as they go along.

Ministers mix messages, change approach, and water down proposals when the public and businesses need clarity and certainty, Madders said.

Self-isolation for contacts will be scrapped for children and the double jabbed from Aug. 16. The government also announced on Monday that some front-line health and care staff and critical workers in England may be exempt from the self-isolation rules after a London metro line suspended its operation due to key staff self-isolating.

The prime minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak are currently self-isolating after they were pinged by the app as close contacts of Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who tested positive for COVID-19 on Saturday.

Johnson and Sunak initially planned to participate in a pilot programme, which would permit them to take daily tests instead of self-isolating but ditched the plan after a furious political backlash.

PA contributed to this report.
Leftist Pedro Castillo celebrates from the headquarters of the "Free Peru" party after Peru's electoral authority announced him as the winner of the presidential election, in Lima, Peru, on July 19, 2021. (Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters)

Electoral Authority in Peru Confirms Socialist Castillo as President

Comes after an election official was suspended and appeals were rejected

LIMAPerus electoral authority on Monday named socialist Pedro Castillo as the countrys next president and winner of the June 6 runoff against right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, who accepted the result but said she had been cheated.

The official result had been delayed after Fujimori requested that the committee responsible for declaring the winner of the June 6 presidential election review accusations of irregularities in rural voting districts in the Andean region and annul some ballots if fraud is found.

The appeal triggered a constitutional crisis when key election official Luis Arce, one of the four committee members, was suspended late June for refusing to participate further in the electoral process after the committee rejected 10 appeals from Fujimoris partysome on technical grounds as the challenges were lodged after 8 p.m. but before midnight on the third day after polls closed. Arce was replaced by Victor Rodriguez.

Fujimori, the daughter of the former anti-communist president Alberto Fujimori, said on Monday that she would have to accept the 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent result and the ruling of the National Jury of Elections as bound by law.

I proclaim Pedro Castillo as president of the republic and Dina Boluarte as first vice president, elections chief Jorge Salas said during a televised ceremony on Monday night.

Earlier in the day, Fujimori said she would have to recognize the official result because it is what the law and the constitution that I have sworn to defend, mandates. The truth is going to come out anyway.

They have stolen thousands of votes from us, Fujimori, the daughter of jailed former President Alberto Fujimori, told a news conference. She called on her followers to protest.

We have the right to mobilize  but in a peaceful manner and within the framework of the law, she said.

Perus conservative Keiko Fujimori addresses the media after the electoral jury rejected her latest appeals to flip the results of Perus June 6 election, setting the stage for socialist rival Pedro Castillo to be confirmed as the Andean countrys next president, in Lima, Peru, on July 19, 2021. (Sebastian Castaneda/Reuters)

The Organization of American States, the European Union, and Britain have all said the election was clean. The U.S. Embassy in Lima sent a tweet, welcoming the announcement. We value our close ties with Peru and hope to strengthen them with President elect Pedro Castillo after his inauguration on July 28, the tweet said.

Castillo, in his first comments as president-elect, called for national unity. I ask for effort and sacrifice in the struggle to make this a just and sovereign country, he said.

A 51-year-old former school teacher, union leader, and the son of illiterate farmers, Castilloleading the Marxist Free Peru Partyhas pledged to reform the Constitution and hike taxes or nationalize mining and oil and gas firms, which has seen capital leave the country. Peru is the worlds second-largest copper-producing nation.

The nation has been engulfed in a string of political crises recently, having had three leaders since November.

Supporters of presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori wave Pervian flags and signs during a protest in Lima, Peru on June 19, 2021. The two political groups of the presidential candidates Peru Libre of Pedro Castillo and Fuerza Popular of Keiko Fujimori called on protests due to uncertainty over elections. (Marcos Reategui/Getty Images)

Supporters of presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori take part in a protest under the slogan #respectmyvote in Lima, Peru, on June 26, 2021, amid claims of election fraud in favor of socialist Pedro Castillo in the June 6 runoff election. (JANINE COSTA/AFP via Getty Images)

Thousands of protesters have taken to the streets amid the unrest, with Castillo supporters demanding confirmation of the unofficial results, in which Castillo led by 44,000 votes, and Fujimori supporters demanded investigations into the election fraud allegations. They also held banners reading no to communismdirected at Castillos Marxist party.

Fujimori also lost the presidential election 2016 by 41,000 votes, while her party won an absolute majority in the congressional election.

Castillo will take office on July 28.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Several of the Fathers of Confederation are shown at the Charlottetown Conference in September 1864 where they gathered to consider the union of the British North American Colonies. Sir John A. Macdonald (R) and Georges Etienne Cartier are in the foreground. (National Archives of Canada-PA-091061/The Canadian Press)

Erasing, Misrepresenting Canadas History Erodes Foundations of Society: Historians

As the trend of removing symbols of Canadas past and renaming buildings and streets grows, historians warn of the consequences of attempts to misrepresent or erase the countrys history.

If you control the past, you control the present and the future, Gerry Bowler, a historian and former professor of history at the University of Manitoba told The Epoch Times.

The aim of those who want to control the past by either obliterating it or attaching shame to those who cling to the past, is a desire to clear the public space, to wipe it clean of symbols, and mythology, and narratives and replace it with something else.



The vandalism or tearing down of statues of historical figuresoften as authorities take little actionhas seen an upsurge in recent months, as has the removal of several statues of Canadas first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald, or renaming buildings named after him, at the direction of politicians at the city level.

In the latest development, the City of Toronto said it will review 60 streets named after historical figures to see if they should be changed. The decision came after councillors voted to rename Dundas Street, named after Scottish politician Henry Dundas, due to his connection with the transatlantic slave trade. The Dundas name will also be removed from any public buildings displaying it.

A Dundas Street West sign is pictured in Toronto on June 10, 2020. (The Canadian Press/Giordano Ciampini)

Patrice Dutil, a professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University and a history expert, has been outspoken against the misrepresentation of key historical figures such as Macdonald and the namesake of his university, Egerton Ryerson.

Theres no doubt that there are activists, that they are challenging the narrative of Canadian history, Dutil said in an interview.



When we have a new narrative that challenges the understanding of the past, we have to be very careful, and I think that the people who want us to change our history need to be much more modest.

Falsifying History

Bowler notes that revising history is a normal part of the academic process for historians.

We look at what our predecessors have written and we might bring a new interpretation to it, or we might find new facts, he said. Im not worried about revision, but its the falsifying and the obliterating thats the danger.

Gerry Bowler, historian and former professor at the University of Manitoba. (Courtesy of Gerry Bowler)

Bowler cites several examples throughout history where tyrants or tyrannical systems have rewritten history to suit their own agenda, especially every time theres been a significant revolution.

Take the French Revolution of the 1790s when they killed the king and established a republic. They abolished all previous time, they started at year one. So out with 1792, because that was the Christian dating system, and in comes year one of the revolution. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge did the same thing. Mussolinis fascists started dating from the year of Mussolinis takeover.

He says the gradual erasure of Canadas past over time allows those with certain interests to impose their agenda on society.

If we are without the past, we have no guideposts, we have no idea where weve been. We have no idea where were going, and have no idea who we are. And this allows activist groups, teachers unions, civil services, anybody, to seize the moment and say, no no, were not like that anymore, it was bad to be like that, we must now be like this,' he said.

A nation cannot function without a memory.

Selectively Interpreting History

In some cases, historical incidents are in dispute due to a difference in what contemporary politicians present and what historians say actually happened.

In May, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized for the internment of around 600 Italian-Canadians during World War II, and for the tens of thousands who were declared enemy aliens by the government. But some historians pointed out that the majority of those interned were card-carrying members of the Italian fascist party, and deserved to be interned.

Patrice Dutil, professor of politics and public administration at Ryerson University. (Courtesy of Patrice Dutil)

Dutil says historians have documented in detail that only very few, maybe a few dozen Italians were arrested without good reason.

Italian-Canadian professional historians have investigated this issue, and they demonstrated that the Canadian government did the right thing, he said, referring to the findings from the book Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad.

Published in 2000 and edited by Italian-Canadian historians Franca Iacovetta, Roberto Perin, and Angelo Principe, the book argues that claims Canada was waging a war against ethnicity at the time drew on selective evidence and glossed over the fascist past of some Italian-Canadians.

Perin, also a professor emeritus of history at York University, said Trudeaus blanket apology could absolve actual fascists.

Some of these people had collaborated with the Italian consular officials that represented the Italian government at the time, he told The Canadian Press. These officials were active propagandists for racism and for Italys foreign policy, and some of these people wrote articles, gave speeches in support of the regime.

But designating people as enemy aliens who had to report regularly to the RCMP was a draconian measure, and the government should apologize for that, he said.

History Is Complicated

In the case of Macdonald, Bowler says he was both a great man as well as a flawed figure.

His vision made us who we are today. Its incredible to take a barren, half continent and make a model nation out of it, he said. On the other hand, he was a drunk, he was corrupt, and he had all of the typical opinions of an educated man of the 19th century. I have no difficulty in holding both in my opinion.

Macdonald is being targeted due to his governments role in initiating the residential school system and other indigenous-related policies.

Dutil says that after the settlers came to North America, they wanted to teach the indigenous peoples their language and about a Christian God. What Macdonald wanted was to make education more structured through the residential schools.

With time, it became more abusive, and there is no doubt that terrible things happened in residential schools. Because the government of Canada did not want to spend money, if a child died in a residential school, there was nobody to pay for this childs body to be returned to his family, he said.

My point is that Canadian history, like all history, is complicated, and we cannot simply say that Canada is a racist society, that Canadas past should be removed, should be ignored, because it is only a racist past. Its much more complicated than that.

Dutil says there is no denying that Canada had racist policies in the past, and that racist tendencies exist to some degree in Canadian society today, but it is unfair to say that Canada is racist.

Without denying that Canada has had a racist past, Canada has also had a past of ongoing progress, of a just society, a society of law, a society of justice, a society that has chosen prosperity, he said.

We denied Chinese immigration in the 1920s, but over 60 years later, Canada opened its arms to immigration from Vietnam, the boat people. Thats an important part about Canadian history, which is a society of progress, a society that is constantly improving.

David Haskell, an associate professor in the Liberal Arts faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University, says putting the focus exclusively on some evil acts committed in the past in Western countries such as Canada and ignoring the broader history is at the heart of the issue.

The problem is that this is not representative of the history of those countries, Haskell said in an interview.

Wilfrid Laurier University professor David Haskell. (Courtesy of David Haskell)

If we were truly representing the history of these countries, we would see that overwhelmingly, their historical trajectory has been toward freedom and rights for everyone. Its so unbelievable to me that people can live in Canada and experience the freedom that they have, and not recognize that it didnt just spring out of nowhere.

Canada and other Western countries have reached the point where we see each person as worthy of having equal rights, and this means the majority of decisions that were made in these countries history have been the right ones, Haskell said, adding that promoting the contrary departs from the facts.

The fact that educators today and media today are trying to convince people that the majority of decisions were not the right ones flies in the face of what we experience when we walk down the street, when we go to vote, when we are able to not be oppressed by tribal warfare.

Democracy Is Fragile



Dutil says the danger with presenting only a one-dimensional view of the past of a country like Canada is that people will no longer feel they are part of the society and care about it. It also erodes trust, which is essential.

A little girl stops to look at a statue of John A. Macdonald in Victoria Park in Regina on Aug. 22, 2018. (The Canadian Press/Jonathan Hayward)

If we change the narrative, if we adopt a narrative that only emphasizes racism, then there will be nothing for society to stick together.  There has to be a story that brings out what we have in common so that people can say, Yes, I belong in this society. This country is something that I care about, this is a country that has been fair, has been just, has been prosperous, and I want to make it better,' he said.

At the end of the day, its what makes society workthat we have a society where people still trust each other, not always, but were still a society of trust. And Im afraid that if were a society that only talks about racism, we will lose that trust.

Bowler says its a threat to democracy if a small group of activists are allowed to silence debate and make decisions on behalf of all Canadians.

Who is making these decisions? Civil servants? School boards? People who are panicked by media reports that are one-sided and inflammatory? he says.

Civilization is fragile. Democracy is fragile. Its a set of rules that keep these things functioning, and if you change the rules, youre asking for trouble. And one of the rules has to be civil dialogue, the ability to discuss things without losing your job, without demonization, without being silenced, he adds.

Canadians have to decide whether or not they are are interested in knowing the truth of the past or being content to go along with the new socially mandated narrative.
Falun Gong practitioners in a vigil commemorating the 22nd anniversary of the persecution in China, in Los Angeles July 18, 2021. (Courtesy of Debora Cheng)

Falun Gong Practitioners Gather in LA for Vigil Marking 22 Years of Persecution in China

LOS ANGELESAbout 300 Falun Gong practitioners held a candlelight vigil on July 18 next to the Chinese Consulate in Los Angeles, commemorating lives lost during a brutal persecution now entering its 23rd year.

Practitioners at the vigil called for the immediate release of 27 friends and family members currently incarcerated in China for practicing Falun Gong, while some shared experiences of the suppression of their faith.

Every day from morning to night, I heard the crackling of electric batons and the screams of Falun Gong practitioners when they were being persecuted, Ding Xiaoxia, a survivor of the persecution, told The Epoch Times.

The corridors [smelled] full of charred meat. I have also experienced the electric shock of tens of thousands of volts from an electric baton.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a traditional spiritual practice that consists of five gentle, meditative exercises and a moral philosophy centered on the tenets of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

On July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), under then-leader Jiang Zemin, launched a nationwide campaign to eradicate Falun Gong, after the practice received a following of around 100 million practitioners.

Out of jealousy of Falun Gongs popularity, the former secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, started a ruthless persecution toward Falun Gong practitioners on July 20, 1999, Mandy Huang, the vigils host, told the silent crowd.

Millions have been detained, tortured, forced into slave labor, and subjected to immense pressure and reeducation for refusing to give up their beliefs. An untold number of Falun Gong practitioners have died as a result of torture or forced organ harvesting.

Victims Speak

Ding was a middle school English teacher in Liaoyuan City, China.

On July 20, 1999, she was sent to a labor camp and prison, which held hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners, for nearly nine years because of her faith.

She endured 11 days of torture during which four prison guards pulled on her limbs with ropes while she was tied to a bunk bed.

The four of them stood on the four corners of the bed and shouted together, One, two, three, she said. The ropes were stretched to their limit, then they tied them to the prongs above the bedposts.  At that time, I felt that the four soft ropes turned into four sharp knives; and blood immediately dripped from the places where the limbs were tied.

The torture lasted for more than 1 1/2 hours three times a day, she said.

The last time, I was stretched for nearly four hours, she said.

This experience, and many others, left Xiaoxia with a permanent limp and scars on her wrists and ankles.

Xiaoxia said she has lost 25 friends and family members to the persecution.

Hannah Zhao, a victim of the persecution, learned about Falun Gong in college. After practicing, she became optimistic about life and felt great both physically and mentally.

In November 2012, Zhao was sentenced to 3 1/2 years at the Shanghai Detention Center for distributing flyers to local university students about the persecution of Falun Gong.

Zhao went on a hunger strike while in custody and said she was force-fed violently through her nostrils by prison guards.

They inserted a very thick stomach tube into my right nostril, she said. I couldnt move. I could only shake my head and struggle. They did it for a long time. The blood from my nose was all over my face. The feeling of poking from the nose and into the stomach was extremely painful.

In September 2013, Zhao was transferred to Shanghai City Womens Prison.

While in prison, she said she was forced to sit for a long time and watch videos that slander Falun Dafa, and glue together boxes with various chemicals, such as formaldehyde, that caused frequent nosebleeds.

The high-pressure suppression in the prison made me very depressed for a long time, she said. From then on, my mind is slower and my memory declined.

Zhaos family hadnt seen her in more than 10 months when prison guards finally allowed them to see her on the condition that they urge her to quit practicing Falun Gong.

They desperately wanted to see me, she said. The prison guards used my parents love for me to force them to write me a letter asking me to give up my faith.

Dana Churchill, the West Coast delegate for Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, said the CCPs forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners has been affecting other prisoners of conscience, namely, the Muslim Uyghurs, Tibetans, and Christians.

What will it take for the doctors of the world to come together and stop these horrific crimes against humanity? Churchill told attendees. The selfish, evil deeds of the CCP are affecting all of us, not just the prisoners of conscience in China.
Fauci: Vaccinated Individuals with Vulnerable People at Home May Want Extra Step of Wearing Masks

Infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday that individuals who are fully vaccinated against COVID-19 may want to go the extra mile and wear masks to give both themselves and vulnerable people in their households an added layer of protection.

Fauci, who serves as White House advisor and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the remarks in a July 19 interview on PBSs News Hour, during which he addressed the rise in new cases in the United States and the threat posed by the Delta variant.

In some regions of the country, up to 90 percent of the variants are the Delta variant, Fauci said. So it has already shown its incredible ability to be able to efficiently transmit from person to person, which makes it very dangerous.

He said unvaccinated people are considerably vulnerable under the current circumstances, before making a reference to statistics showing that 99.5 percent of the COVID deaths are among unvaccinated people. Fauci appeared to be referring to recent remarks made by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), who said earlier this month that data reviewed by the agency suggests that 99.5 percent of the people who died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus in the past six months were among unvaccinated people.

Fauci then made reference to CDC guidelines on mask wearing, saying that, if you are vaccinated, you dont need to wear a mask outdoors or indoors. But there is a big however with that. And the however is, you should also pay attention to what is going on in the area where you are living.

So, if you live in an area where you have a high dynamic of infectionand thats usually in an area where there is a low level of vaccinationif you happen to live in that area, you may want to go the extra mile and get the extra degree of protection of wearing a mask, even though you are vaccinated, he said.

Another example Fauci gave was households with vulnerable people, like the elderly or people who have underlying conditions, you might want to make sure you take that extra step of protection, adding that fully vaccinated people under such circumstances may want to go the extra mile to protect themselves and fellow household members.

There are dozens of circumstantial studies suggesting that masks work to stem the spread of the CCP virus, although there has been just one randomized-control trial during the pandemic, carried out in Denmark. While suffering from some limitations, the study showed that people who wore masks were 18 percent less likely to be infected than those who did not.

A key reason for the lack of randomized-control studies on masks during the pandemic is on ethical grounds, with some experts saying it is impossible to run such trials without endangering participants and people they encounter out in the world.

Randomized controlled trials are pretty much the gold standard, but theyre not always ethical, said Mary Kathryn Grabowski, an assistant professor in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University, in remarks to PolitiFact. We cant just send people out without masks in the middle of a pandemic in the same way we cant randomize people to not use a parachute when they jump out of a plane.

Mask wearing amid the COVID-19 pandemic has become a hot button issue, with some questioning the efficacy of facial coverings and others opposing mandates on grounds of personal liberty. Advocates, on the other hand, have broadly taken a better-safe-than-sorry approach in the face of underpowered efficacy studies, while generally viewing mandates as a minor inconvenience that helps protect people who are prone to serious complications if they get infected.
Fugitive Texas Democrat Addresses Going Maskless on Plane: We Got Sloppy

One of the Texas Democrats who fled the state aboard a private jet alongside at least a dozen maskless colleagues addressed the controversy in a series of Twitter messages on July 19.

Texas state Rep. Gene Wu, one of the Democrats who left the state to block the passage of a Republican-led election reform bill, explained that the group got sloppy and that those who later contracted the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus should serve as a reminder for the rest of the American public to mask up indoors.

Let our mistake be the object lesson. All of us had been fully vaccinated since March. We got complacent because we felt safe. We had no positives for months, and we got sloppy. Being vaccinated doesnt ALWAYS stop you from spreading the virus. ALWAYS MASK UP INDOORS! Wu said.

At least five of the Democrats subsequently tested positive for the CCP virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. According to Wu, all have only had mild symptoms, purportedly due to having been vaccinated.

Every member who tested positive had only mild (sniffles) or no symptoms. This is because weve all been vaccinated and our bodies already had the anti-bodies ready to combat an infection. But having antibodies doesnt stop you from shedding viruses until they done their job, Wu wrote.

The fugitive Democrats have made it impossible for their Republican colleagues to meet the quorum requirement to vote on the election reform legislation during the special session convened by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said all of the Democrats could be arrested as soon as they set foot back in Texas.

The fact that the Democrats flew aboard the plane maskless became the subject of public controversy after one of the lawmakers posted a photo from inside the plane online showing at least a dozen of the lawmakers unmasked and not a single mask in the photo. Masks are mandated on planes and aboard interstate public transportation in accordance with an executive order that President Joe Biden issued shortly after assuming office.

While in Washington last week, the Texas Democrats met with Vice President Kamala Harris and members of Congress, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). The state lawmakers were advocating for the passage of the For the People Act, a Democrat election reform package that seeks to mandate nationwide mail balloting and significantly federalize elections.
Queensland's Chief Health Officer Dr Jeannette Young takes off her face mask to speak during a press conference in Brisbane, Australia on June 29, 2021. (Jono Searle/Getty Images)

Fully Vaccinated Australian Woman Contracts Delta Variant of Virus

A fully vaccinated Queensland woman has tested positive for the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus, while visiting her family in the Far North Queensland town of Mareeba.

Public health alerts have been issued for the Sunshine Coast, Brisbane, and locations in Far North Queensland.

Queensland health authorities believe the woman, who had been studying in Victoria, contracted the virus at the Young and Jackson pub in Melbourne on July 10, before travelling to her home state for a holiday three days later.

On July 15, while visiting friends on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Victorian contact tracers alerted the woman via text that she had been at an exposure site and to get tested; she tested negative. She then visited various locations in the community while unknowingly infectious.

The next day, she caught an Uber, a bus, and a train to Brisbane airport before boarding Virgin Australias VA791 to Cairns.

As a result, contact tracing is underway for everyone onboard flight VA791 from Brisbane to Cairns on July 16.

Chief Health Officer Dr. Jeannette Young believes she was infectious in the community from July 15 and probably until July 17, and is waiting on test results to understand the level of risk Queensland is facing.

She said the woman, aged in her 20s, was fully vaccinated and wore a mask while she was out and about and while she was on public transport and the flight to Cairns.

Shes had both doses of the vaccine, which does reduce the risk, but it doesnt remove the risk, Young told reporters on July 20.

Im most concerned about her household contacts in Maroochydore and up in Mareeba. As soon as weve got those results  that will give me a sense of what the risk is.

Young is also worried about anyone who dined at the popular Rice Boi restaurant at The Wharf, at Mooloolaba, between 6.45 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 15.

She says they must get tested immediately and isolate until public health officials make contact.

She has also urged people to be vigilant if they were at the Sunshine Coast Plaza shopping centre that same day, between 3.55 p.m. and 4.15 p.m.

Health Minister Yvette DAth linked the womans infection back to the expanding outbreak in NSW.

We now have transmission from that NSW cluster in Victoria, South Australia and Queensland, she said.

DAth urged people not to leave the state and said Queenslanders who are currently elsewhere should get home quickly if the situation deteriorates further.

We now have a 10-fold increase in cases across Australia in five weeks. We are now at 1360 cases across Australia, where only five weeks ago we were down to 127.

AAP contributed to this report.
People arrive for the "00:01" event organised by Egyptian Elbows at Oval Space nightclub, as England lifted most CCP virus disease (COVID-19) restrictions at midnight, in London on July 19, 2021. (Natalie Thomas/Reuters)

Get Jabs to Club: Boris Johnson Issues Vaccine Ultimatum

The UK government plans to make full CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus vaccination the condition of entry to nightclubs and other crowded venues, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Monday as the country reopens.

Its a radical shift from the governments previous promises to not mandate domestic vaccine passports.

Night clubs in England opened their doors on Monday for the first time in 16 months.

Although ministers have encouraged venues to do the socially responsible thing by checking the NHS COVID pass, with which patrons can show proof of vaccination, a recent negative test, or natural immunity, venues are not currently required to do so.

Johnson suggested this will change from the end of September.

As we said last week, we do reserve the right to mandate certification at any point if its necessary to reduce transmission, he said during a televised briefing.

And I should serve notice now that by the end of September when all over-18s will have had their chance to be double jabbed, were planning to make full vaccination the condition of entry to nightclubs and other venues where large crowds gather, the prime minister said before adding proof of a negative test will no longer be enough.

He urged people to come forward and get your jabs now.

During the same briefing, Johnson said 96 percent of over-50s in England have taken up the offer of CCP virus vaccinations, and the rate is at 83 percent for the 3050-year-olds.

Johnson said there is still 35 percent of 1830-year-olds who are completely unvaccinated as of Monday, suggesting the take-up rate is much lower in the younger group since all adults in England had been offered at least one dose of the CCP virus vaccines.

When asked about the vaccination status of the new COVID-19 hospitalisations, Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance said that 60 percent of people being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 have had two doses of vaccine.

He corrected himself on Tuesday, saying 60 percent of people being admitted to hospital with COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Vallance said the high percentage of fully vaccinated hospitalisation is not surprising since the vaccination take-up rate is very high.

If all adults had taken up the vaccine, then anybody who caught it will be double vaccinated, Vallance said.

So  we should expect to see a higher proportion of people in hospital and catching the infection who are double vaccinated. That is inevitable, and we will see that, because of the less than 100 percent efficacy of the vaccines overall.
Falun Gong practitioners take part in a parade marking the 22nd anniversary of the start of the Chinese regime's persecution of Falun Gong, in Washington on July 16, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

Global Coalition of Lawmakers Denounces CCPs Persecution of Falun Gong on 22nd Anniversary

An international group of lawmakers has issued a statement to denounce the Chinese Communist Partys (CCPs) human rights atrocities on the eve of the 22nd year of the persecution of the spiritual practice Falun Gong in China.

Twenty-two years ago, the Chinese Communist Party began a campaign of persecution against Falun Gong practitioners, the cross-party Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) stated on July 19. We take this solemn anniversary to remember all ethnic and religious minorities persecuted by the Chinese government, including Tibetan Buddhists, Christians and the Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim Turkic groups.

IPAC is a coalition of legislators focused on reforming the approaches that democratic countries take to deal with the CCPs illiberal and growing global influence. Established in June 2020, the coalition is comprised of over 100 politicians from 20 nations.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a self-cultivation practice that was first introduced to the public in China by founder Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992. The practice involves teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, as well as five gentle meditative exercises. It is now practiced in more than 110 countries by millions of people.

IPAC in its statement called for global attention to hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners who have been arrested and harassed or tortured in China since the CCP began its brutal persecution on July 20, 1999.

The persecution was instigated by former CCP head Jiang Zemin, who ordered that Falun Gong be banned and eradicated. He also ordered the establishment of the 610 Office, for the sole function of persecuting and eradicating Falun Gong. The extralegal agency, created on June 10, 1999, was given the authority to override the police and courts in China.

Researchers in the United States have called for leaders to recognize the persecution of Falun Gong by the CCP as genocide.

Genocide is the destruction in part of a religious community, for example, with the intent to eradicate it, and I dont think theres any doubt that what has happened these past decades to Falun Gong meets that criteria, Nina Shea, a senior fellow and director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, said at a rally in Washington on July 16.

Many imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners have been subjected to the most severe forms of torture in efforts to force them to renounce their faith, IPAC stated.

Particularly concerning are reports of forced organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners and prisoners of conscience in China, the group adds, noting that analysis by an independent peoples tribunal, known as the China Tribunal, had concluded that killings of practitioners for their vital organs have been enacted on a widespread, state-sponsored, and systematic level.

While Falun Gong practitioners made up the principal source of the organs, the tribunal said in its report, released in March 2020, that other minority groups, including Uyghurs, are also likely targets of such horrific crimes.

We once again call on our governments to stand up and speak out for an end to such repression, stated IPAC. Democratic states must take actions to stop the trade and use of forcibly harvested organs globally. The Chinese government must be held accountable for upholding the human rights of all peoples in China.

According to Minghui.org, a U.S.-based website that tracks the persecution of Falun Gong in China, 4,641 practitioners have been confirmed to have died due to the CCPs persecution over the past 22 years. The website notes that the true death toll is believed to be much higher but due to strict censorship in China, many cases remain unreported or require further investigation.
Gun owners hold signs as they participate in a rally organized by the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights against the government's new gun regulations, in Ottawa on Sept. 12, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang)

Gun Buyback a Huge Taxpayer Boondoggle at the Worst Possible Time: Taxpayer Advocacy Group

The federal governments plan to buy back newly banned guns will cost a lot more than its initial estimates, says a tax advocacy group.

The cost could be hundreds of millions of dollars more than what we were sold on, said Franco Terrazzano, federal director with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Really, this has the makings for a huge taxpayer boondoggle, which would be coming at the worst possible time.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer released a report at the end of June indicating that the number of affected firearmsmilitary-style assault rifleswas roughly 150,000 based on federal government estimates, and 518,000 according to the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association (CSAAA). Depending on the actual number of affected firearms, the buyback take-up rate, and the pricing structure, the estimated cost of compensation could be as high as $756 million if all gun owners identified by the CSAAA participated in the buyback, the PBO report said.

During the 2019 federal election, Bill Blair, minister responsible for the gun file at the time, estimated the buybacks would cost about $375 million, assuming 250,000 affected weapons averaging $1,500 each. Then earlier this year, as public safety minister, Blair again pegged compensation costs somewhere between $300 and $400 million.

But these estimates dont included administrative costs, such as staffing, secure office space, firearms shipping and disposal, and advertising. A Fraser Institute article last year estimated that just one of the required steps needed to complete a buyback program of the nature contemplated by this federal government would include costs well over $1.5 billion with many additional costs.

A previous Liberal government touted a cost of less than $2 million when it established the long-gun registry in 1995. But the registry ended up costing $2.7 billion over the 17 years before it ended in 2012.

Terrazzano bemoans the ever-increasing price tag, saying that the Trudeau government is up to its eyeballs in debt and has no room to waste more money, given its intentions to permanently increase spending by $100 billion more than it was pre-pandemic by 2026.

He said the $756 million would be better spent paying for 1,200 new police officers for five years.

Lets just use some common sense here. I dont think theres going to be too many gang members that are going to be showing up to government offices to hand over their guns to Trudeau. So his gun buyback, its not going to stop criminal activity, its not going to stop gang activity, and it doesnt address the flow of illegal guns across the border, Terrazzano said.

Which one would make us safer: More police on the streets or a completely ineffective gun grab targeted at the legal gun owners?

Political Context, Changing Rules

The programs political context is important given the potential for a fall election. University of Toronto political scientist Nelson Wiseman believes the Liberals wont lose many votes over the gun buyback, which he sees as more polarizing between rural and urban voters than between Central Canadians and others.

Gun enthusiasts werent voting for the Liberals before. This new policy will change very few minds in either the gun-loving or gun-fearing communities. There isnt much more of a backlash against the Liberals to be had in rural Alberta or rural Ontario. It could have a small effect in rural Quebec, Wiseman told the Epoch Times.

If the government is outlawing certain weapons, it should just confiscate them. Compensation should be minimal. [The] $756 million sounds like a lot of money and should be directed to other priorities like child care, public transit, or tax relief.

Rod Giltaca, CEO & executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, believes confiscation without compensation would be doubly unjust.

The question is, why is it not fair to use government force to take property from millions of people that havent done anything to deserve it and not compensate them? Giltaca said, rhetorically.

Its a slap right across the face of all of the honest citizens that participated and complied to the letter with the government system, only for the government to turn around and move the goalposts yet again.

Giltaca believes money spent on health care or community programs would be better than what he sees as an off-target federal initiative by a government that has gun owners in their sights.

Gun owners are sick and tired of having the rules changed every few years, having to brace for impact every time theres a change in government. Gun owners are, by virtue of the fact that they get a criminal record check every day, the safest citizens, and theyre the ones being victimized for the actions of criminals. Its absurd, and it shouldnt be tolerated.

New Zealand initiated a firearms buyback program in 2019 that budgeted $150 million for compensation and $18 million for administration. By February 2020, the estimated cost to buy back guns dropped to $120 million, but expected administration costs nearly doubled to around $35 million. The percentage of the publics guns bought back by the government is unknown.
Hong Kongs 1st Trial Under Beijings National Security Departs From Common Law

HONG KONGThe trial of the first person charged under Hong Kongs national security law is set to wrap up on Tuesday, with the defendant denied bail and a jury in a landmark case that critics say is a departure from common law.

Former waiter Tong Ying-kit, 24, has pleaded not guilty to charges of terrorism, inciting secession, as well as an alternative charge of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm on July 1 last year, shortly after the law was enacted.

Hong Kongs common law has traditionally allowed defendants to seek release unless prosecutors can show lawful grounds for their detention.

Under the new Beijing-imposed security law, which has seen the end of what was a politically independent judicial system for the global financial hub, the burden of proof rests with the defendant to prove they will not break the law if released on baila reverse of international norms based on the presumption of innocence where defendants are innocent until proven guilty.

Beijing and the pro-Beijing Hong Kong goverment have said called the new law of the communist party necessary to bring stability to the former British colony after anti-Beijing protests in 2019.

Tongs trial is being presided over by three judges handpicked by Hong Kongs pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam, to hear national security cases: Esther Toh, Anthea Pang and Wilson Chan. There is no jury.

Hong Kongs Judiciary describes trial by jury as one of the most important features of the citys legal system, a common law tradition designed to offer defendants additional protection against authorities overreaching their power.

Article 46 of the security lawdrafted by Beijing, where courts are controlled by the Communist Party and conviction rates are close to 100 percentstates three instances in which juries can be scrapped: protecting state secrets, cases involving foreign forces, and protecting jurors safety.

Tong, the first of more than 120 people arrested under the security law, is accused of driving his motorbike into officers at a rally while carrying a flag with the protest slogan Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times.

The interpretation of the protest slogan is a key element of the trial. The government has said it suggests a call for independence, which would violate the Chinese regimes security law. Defence lawyers argue it is a phrase with diverse meanings, including the desire for freedom and democracy.

Tongs fate could signal how the courts will handle scores of other national security cases.

The Epoch Times contributed to this report.
How to Have Your Employees Back When They Are Working Toward Your Business Goals

Here's how entrepreneurs should support their employees

Having a great team of employees working together to achieve business goals is a dream come true for entrepreneurs. Supporting those employees along the way is crucial to actually making that happen. It starts with creating solid business goals, having a well-laid-out plan to reach them, and supporting them along the way.

Many entrepreneurs feel overwhelmed leading employees toward reaching business goals because they dont have a progressive roadmap in place to help keep their employees on track. It may feel like they spend more time putting out fires and struggling through random tasks than focusing on business goals.

Without clear, structured goals, its hard for you and your employees to move forward in a productive way. There should be strategies in place to reach each business goal, and a series of workflows and tasks created to help execute each strategy.

Each employee should know what their role is in reaching goals and how their work contributes to reaching those goals. Once they understand this, things become a little easier, giving them a reason to believe in the vision and mission of the company.

Heres how you can set your team up for success and help them reach business goals.

Have the Right Team in Place

This starts with ensuring that the people you hire believe in your business. If they dont believe in your companys mission, vision, and values, it will be painful for everyone involved. The people you hire need to fit into your company culture.

There arent many things worse than having toxic people mixed within an otherwise high-functioning team. Even one toxic personality can bring the rest of the team down. The people dealing with the toxic person can feel defeated and unsupported.

Once you know they will fit into your business, you need to make sure that they are the right person for the position. If youre the smartest person in the room for every situation, then something is wrong. You also shouldnt have salespeople writing copy if thats not within their scope of expertise. There is nothing wrong with an employee trying to move into another role. However, they must be properly trained or it will cause long-term issues.

Empower Your Employees and Keep Them Accountable

Empowering employees demonstrates that you have confidence in their skills and ability to get the job done, creating a level of trust and loyalty to the organization. If an employee trusts you, they will feel safer working toward business goals.

Nothing feels better than having a leader give the directive and letting the employees go do their work without micromanagement. By giving employees autonomy, they become self-sufficient while developing a mindset that their role is an important part of the companys success.

Just as employees want to have autonomy, they also want to have support. Employees must be able to ask questions, offer ideas, and be accountable for their actions and results. They should feel comfortable communicating and ask for assistance when needed. If they dont feel comfortable asking questions they will struggle being held accountable to your expectations.

There should be expectations on both sides. Employees expect their leaders to provide guidance and structure, and leaders expect their employees to meet deadlines and be productive. Both work hand-in-hand in fostering strong company culture.

Related: 10 Tips to Boost Employee Productivity and Skyrocket Performance

Stay Accountable to Yourself and Your Employees

Just because youre a leader doesnt mean you arent accountable to others, including your employees. As a leader, your role is to make sure your employees have what they need. Connecting your employees to the tools, resources and people they need to be effective makes an obvious difference in morale and productivity.

There will be instances where employees will be unable to perform efficiently due to roadblocks beyond their control. Instead of putting a band-aid over the situation, do your part in helping remove them. Communication is key. Being clear of expectations and what is going on within the organization is kind and respectful.

By being transparent with employees, youre setting a standard for all employees to follow. Good leaders are honest and open with their employees no matter what. This helps employees understand you are human and operate with integrity. When things get hard, this value will keep employees on your side. Things happen in every organization, and employees may stray from the intended goal. Take the time to guide them back on track without being judgmental.

Stay Accountable to the Goal

Having quick check-in meetings or ongoing progress reports goes a long way toward building trust. Employees like knowing how they are performing to keep themselves accountable for their personal goals. Providing feedback helps the manager and employee identify strengths and weaknesses. This level of communication can assist in enhancing efficiency and productivity while alerting the manager when an employees skills are being underutilized or they need additional help.

Related: Improve Employee Retention By Taking a People-First Approach

Keep Your Employees Motivated

Have you ever gone into an office and no one seemed happy? That means theres something wrong with the culture of the organization, and that starts with leadership. Its important to talk to employees to find out what they want and need to be happy and productive. Good leaders get to know their teams and work hard in creating an environment in which everyone feels like a winner.

What gets employees motivated? Here are a few suggestions:

Recognition : Celebrate the wins, no matter how small. It fosters inclusion and makes employees feel good. Little incentives like a half-day off, gift card, or a free lunch make a huge difference in morale and reinforce the values of the company. Monthly social gatherings like breakfast in the office are also a good way to recognize everyone on the team and let them know they are appreciated.

: Celebrate the wins, no matter how small. It fosters inclusion and makes employees feel good. Little incentives like a half-day off, gift card, or a free lunch make a huge difference in morale and reinforce the values of the company. Monthly social gatherings like breakfast in the office are also a good way to recognize everyone on the team and let them know they are appreciated. Foster a unified team: Creating a team where everyone feels like were all in this together works wonders for employee motivation and morale. Special days where they get to wear company shirts or passing out branded company items make them feel like they are an integral part of the company.

Creating a team where everyone feels like were all in this together works wonders for employee motivation and morale. Special days where they get to wear company shirts or passing out branded company items make them feel like they are an integral part of the company. Cool workspaces : If employees are working in an office setting, creating a dynamic environment that inspires them works wonders. Create spaces that make employees want to come to work.

: If employees are working in an office setting, creating a dynamic environment that inspires them works wonders. Create spaces that make employees want to come to work. Say thank you: Leaders who understand the value of respect and can thank their employees for a job well done on a consistent basis can see the difference in the way employees act and do their jobs.

Its important for employees to know youll have their back. Continually showing you are dedicated to your team will earn you rewards of consistency, loyalty and trustthe ingredients for a successful, thriving business structure.

Related: How to Figure Out If Your Employee Is Worth the Investment
Insecurity | Schools Out

The second installment of Schools Out with Sam Sorbo explores the sources of our insecurity about educating our own children and why to embrace it, instead of dread it.

About the Show:

Schools Out with Sam Sorbo deals with the uncertainties we all have about the education bureaucracy. Host Sam Sorbo, a veteran homeschool advocate and dedicated education influencer, delves into the struggles so many parents experience trying to secure their childrens proper education with all the school turmoil and their poor academic results. This show helps viewers sort through the messaging and get to the heart: what is education, why are our schools failing, and what can concerned parents do? For answers, join our host on a journey of discovery and revelation, and feel empowered to set your children free from the institution, because schools out, and Sam is rebranding homeschool. She calls it Self Teaching.

About Sam Sorbo:

Sam Sorbo is a Hollywood actress, an international fashion model, a nationally syndicated radio show host, a film producer, and an author. After studying biomedical engineering at Duke University, Sam pursued a career as an international fashion model, which afforded her the opportunity to travel extensively and learn foreign languages. Fluent in Swedish, French, Italian, and German, she embarked on her successful acting career. On Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, she met Kevin, who swept her off her feet. They married in 1998 and have three teenagers they home school. Sam is a passionate advocate for parental autonomy and home education. Together, the Sorbos produced the highly successful, much acclaimed Let There Be Light in 2017. Their comedy, Miracle in East Texas, is due out in 2021. An avid home education advocate, the Sorbos home educate their three children.

Sam understands the cultural shift taking place in our country. She is an energetic activist for the family, the primary target for those who disdain America and the freedom this nation represents. She speaks across the country on education, culture, politics, and religion. She has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, Newsmax, and One America News, and writes for news outlets like The Epoch Times, National Review, Breitbart, and Fox News, pushing back against the tainted culture promoted in our public schools, movies, music, and video games. She uses her radio show, films, and books to highlight issues and then empower others to fully engage with and amend the world around them.

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A coal powered power plant on the outskirts of Linfen, in China's Shanxi Province is seen belching smoke. Linfen is regarded as one of the cities with the worst air pollution in the world. (Peter Parks/AFP/Getty Images)

Is China Issuing Green Bonds to Meet Its Carbon Neutrality Goal?

China, the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases, established its first carbon-neutral financial leasing service platform in Nansha, Guangzhou. The State Council of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is also set to launch an online trading system of emission allowances this month. However, international experts believe that Chinas green bonds usually do not meet the standards.

On July 8, China Southern Power Grids carbon-neutral financial leasing service platform was formally established in Nansha, Guangzhou. The platform has received more than $156 million in the first phase of projects. According to Huo Zhigang, general manager of the company, the platform uses innovative financial leasing service models that establish a floating mechanism linking leasing fees with carbon emissions, and claims to force carbon emitters to reduce emissions.

According to Chen Wanqing, deputy director of the Finance Bureau of Guangzhou Nansha Development Zone, the platform can develop climate investment and financing products, which will help companies in Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macau issue green bonds. And at the same time, it claims to enable the regions to achieve emission peak and carbon neutrality.

At the Global Climate Video Summit in April 2021, Xi Jinping, Chinas leader, promised that after Chinas carbon emissions peak by 2030, they would begin to reduce emissions and reach carbon neutrality by 2060. Xi asked the Western developed countries to provide financial and technical support.

Sarah He, an expert in the financial sector and currently residing in the U.S., believes that the CCP hopes to utilize its so-called emission peak and carbon neutrality goals to attract large sums of foreign investment. She believes the CCPs move toward green bonds is only a facade.

On July 14, the CCPs State Council Information Office held its regular meeting at which Sun Guofeng, CCPs director of Monetary Policy of the Central Bank, said that the bank would convert carbon emission reduction into real currency and provide low-cost funding through financial institutions to help finance key projects.

However, Sarah He believes that reducing carbon emission is not the real purpose of the so-called green financing platform initiated by the CCP and the local enterprises. It is to obtain investments and benefits.

Even if the platform can somehow improve carbon emissions, the effect is minimal. A large amount of bad debt will likely incur and aggravate a credit crisis. The main reason is that Chinese companies generally lack integrity, are managed poorly, use funds ineffectively, and have many other problems, Ms.He added.

The international community has similar concerns over the CCPs green bonds.

On May 27, the Wall Street Journal stated that many of Chinas green bonds did not comply with international regulations because half of the green bonds issued could be used in the companys daily operation and not for what they intended, which is to improve its carbon emission. According to international regulations, only 5 percent of green-bond funds can be used for the companys daily operation.

This could increase the risk of greenwashing, where the true environmental benefit of the transaction is overstated, said Lori Shapiro, a sustainable finance analyst at S&P Global Ratings.

In addition, Alan Meng, head of data analysis and services at Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), also pointed out that in the first half of this year, 33 of the 127 CCP-issued green bonds did not meet the standards.

According to a Reuters report from April, the CCP and Chinese companies are greenwashing to obtain more investment funds. Chinese regulators intentionally implement different regulations on green-bond issuances to prevent international investors from having a clear understanding when making investments, bringing enormous risks to the investors.

Extended Reading: Short Dictionary

Carbon Neutrality refers to achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions. This can be done by balancing emissions of carbon dioxide with its removal (often through carbon offsetting) or by eliminating emissions from society (the transition to the post-carbon economy). At the United Nations General Assembly in September 2020, Xi said that China, as the worlds largest emitter of greenhouse gases, would reach carbon neutrality by 2060.

Emission Peak refers to Chinas aim to bring its total greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions to a peak by around 2030. However, Xi has also pledged to reduce Chinas carbon dioxide emissions by at least 65 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.

Green Bonds refer to the financing tools in which all of the funds raised by the issuer are to be used for expenditures or loans on green investment projects, including climate change, environmental protection, renewable energy, and carbon reduction, and others.

Greenwashing refers to the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a companys products are more environmentally sound. Greenwashing is considered an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a companys products are environmentally friendly.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) (C) walks with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) (L) and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) on their way to a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Feb. 11, 2021. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Judge Dismisses Lawsuit Attempting to Overturn Georgia Senate Elections

A Georgia judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit seeking to overturn the results of the states two Senate runoff elections in January, rejecting a case brought by a Fulton County resident.

The plaintiff, Michael Daugherty, alleged the two January runoff contests, which were won by then-Democrat candidates Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, were fraught with irregularities and misconduct. As a result, he argued the twin elections should be redone with paper ballots instead.

Warnock, Ossoff, Georgias election agency, Coffee County, DeKalb County, Fulton County, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger were named as defendants in the lawsuit.

Lawyers for Warnock, Ossoff, and various Georgia officials said Daughterys arguments had already been rejected by other judges and said that some of the issues he raised in his suit occurred during the Nov. 3 electionnot the January runoff contest.

During a hearing on Monday, Superior Court Judge Brian Amero rejected the lawsuit and said the challenge wasnt filed on time, adding that the two senators werent properly served with the lawsuit and the plaintiffs lacked standing.

In the suit, Daugherty cited claims of improper ballot-counting efforts at Atlantas State Farm Arena during the Nov. 3 election. Raffensbergers office has denied the claims.

After the judges decision, Daughtery told The Epoch Times on Tuesday that he will file an appeal.

Daugherty, during an event last week, said that his lawsuit is seeking to get the Senate runoff result tossed out and that he sought a new legally conducted election with paper ballots. It means, he said, the Senate will be red, meaning Republican-controlled, and he pushed for similar legal challenges in other states.

It comes as Georgias Speaker of the House, David Ralston, said Fulton County should be investigated following reports of problems with the Nov. 3 election and a subsequent audit of the counts results.

Recently, media reports have surfaced which call into question the way in which Fulton County conducted, counted, and audited the November 2020 Presidential Election. These reports have been accompanied by video and other evidence which is part of ongoing litigation and requires thorough examination and explanation, Ralston, a Republican, told Fulton Countys Elections Director Richard Barron in a recent letter.
Laredo Sues Biden Over Flood of Illegal Immigrants Brought Into City

The city of Laredo, Texas, is suing the Biden administration in an attempt to stop the transfer of thousands of illegal immigrants from among those apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio to the city.

Laredo officials say in the complaint that they were recently advised that Border Patrol intends to double the number of illegal immigrants brought to Laredo from the Rio Grande Valleyfrom about 150 individuals to 300 per day.

The lawsuit is asking for a temporary restraining order and an emergency hearing on the issue. It was filed on July 16 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.

City officials say local NGOs that assist illegal immigrants are overwhelmed and the number of illegal immigrants being released without COVID-19 testing has increased.

As Laredo is an underserved medical community with limited resources, it simply cannot accommodate a surge in COVID-19 positives, the court document states.

It goes on to say that the busloads of illegal immigrants will be dropped off into the general public, at bus stations and at the airport, potentially exposing the community and fellow citizens to this deadly virus during their travels all over the country.

Laredo officials say the Biden administration is causing irreparable harm with the flood of illegal immigrants being dispersed into Laredo.

Although the increased influx of RIMs is clearly a federal issue, the federal government has made this a municipal problem to solve on our own, the complaint states, using the acronym RIM to refer to refugees, immigrants, and migrants.

The Department of Homeland Security didnt respond to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

A Border Patrol agent told The Epoch Times that when illegal immigrants are brought to a detention facility in the Rio Grande Valley, they get their standard COVID test, which is, Im going to check your temperature.'

All unaccompanied minors are put into pods, and when its time to move them out, they go to the medical area for an actual COVID test, the agent said, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions.

So lets say out of 50 of them, 25 will come out COVID positive and the other 25 are allowed to travel anyway, the agent added.

The Laredo lawsuit stated that a logistical nightmare would ensue if the Biden administration lifted the Title 42 public health emergency order at the border while the NGO shelters are full.

Title 42 was instituted in March 2020 to allow for illegal immigrants to be quickly expelled back into Mexico as a pandemic precaution, rather than be processed under Title 8 immigration law, which is a much more protracted process inside the United States.

Under President Joe Biden Title 42 has slowly been whittled down since Marchfirst to allow in all unaccompanied children, then families with children under 7, then most families in general, and then single adults from non-Spanish speaking countries.

Title 42 is expected to be removed any day for the remaining single adults still subject to its restrictions.

When that happens, all hells going to break loose, the agent said. That means were opening the borders to everybody and were not going to do a darn thing to you.
Larry Elder Sues California Secretary of State Over Decision to Keep Him Off Recall Election Ballot

Conservative talk radio and EpochTV host Larry Elder has filed a lawsuit challenging a decision by Californias Secretary of State to block him from running in the states special recall election in September, alleging hes the target of political shenanigans that are dangerous and unconstitutional.

Elder, a Republican who on July 12 entered the gubernatorial race to oust incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in a video posted on Twitter on Tuesday that he has filed a lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber for failing to put him on the ballot despite his campaigns insistence he has filed every piece of paper required.

Weve complied with everything the secretary of state has required of us, Elder said in a statement. The politicians in Sacramento know Im the only candidate who can beat Gavin Newsom. They are afraid, and they are using whatever shenanigans they can to try to trip me up. It wont work.

Elder said he has provided five years of tax returns totaling over 300 pages to California elections officials, who did not include him on a preliminary list (pdf) of candidates in the Sept. 14 recall election. The gubernatorial hopeful earlier shared a letter from Weber indicating he didnt qualify as a candidate because of incomplete redacted and/or unredacted income tax returns.

I provided all tax returns as required, Elder insisted. Frankly, this action by the Secretary of State is not simply unfair and absurd but a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent.

Elders campaign argued that under state law, Weber has the authority to fix any redaction errors for the public, adding that Webers office has not informed Elder of its specific objections to his tax returns. The campaign also said that, by denying voters the ability to choose Elder on the ballot, the Secretary of State was effectively engaging in voter suppression.

The campaign also argued that Webers decision violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution because Newsom did not have to comply with the same tax return disclosures.

I am waging a legal battle to run as the candidate for Californians who are tired of the partisanship and entrenched interests of Sacramento. I fully expect to be on the final certified list of candidates, Elder said.

Im confident were going to prevail, Elder said, adding that his team is prepared to take the case to the California Supreme Court.

Elders complaint (pdf), filed in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Sacramento, alleges that Weber has neglected her duty and has wrongfully refused to accept and file the nomination documents that Elder properly submitted to qualify as a candidate.

The California Secretary of States office didnt immediately respond to a request for comment.

Other Republicans who have qualified to run include former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, reality TV personality and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner, businessman John Cox, and state legislator Kevin Kiley.

The recall petition against Newsom is only the second in state history to succeed against a governor. While every governor since 1960 has faced a formal recall petition, the only one with enough signatures to trigger an election was the one in 2003 when voters replaced Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A year of whipsaw pandemic lockdowns, crushing job losses from business closures, Californias wallet-sapping taxes, and a raging homelessness crisis have focused the frustrations of the states residents, with Newsom, given his role as governor, becoming the target of those resentments. Adding to that is intense criticism of Newsom for flouting his own pandemic lockdown rules by being spotted dining out, maskless, and an investigative report showing he misled the public about his wildfire prevention efforts.
Live Recap: 2021 Rally to End Persecution of Falun Gong

Falun Gong, or Falun Dafa, is an ancient spiritual practice. It comprises moral teachings, meditation, and four gentle exercises. Since its inception in 1992, Falun Gong has an estimated 100 million practitioners worldwide.

Unfortunately, on July 20, 1999, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began a violent campaign to persecute Falun Gong practitioners in China. Millions of innocent people there have been fired from their jobs, expelled from school, jailed, tortured, or killed simply for practicing their faith. For the tens of millions of practitioners living in China today, they live each day at risk of being taken away by Chinese authorities to be jailed, torturedor worse.

Representatives of Falun Gong practitioners gathered in Washington, D.C., to rally against the persecution that is still happening in China to this day.

Here to talk about what we are seeing today and the implications for both the United States and China is the executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center, Mr. Levi Browde. We also have the privilege to welcome a Falun Dafa practitioner here at the studio to tell us her personal experience.
Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump's former national security adviser, leaves the federal court with his lawyer Sidney Powell following a status conference with Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington on Sept. 10, 2019. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

Man Who Threatened Judge in Michael Flynns Case Sentenced to 18 Months

A New York man has been handed an 18-month prison sentence for threatening to kill the judge overseeing the criminal case against former national security adviser, Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

During a court hearing on Monday, U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden said that the length of Frank Caporussos sentence reflected the despicable nature of his death threat toward U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan last year.

Caporusso, who is in his early 50s, called Sullivans chambers and left a 30-second voicemail threatening to kill him and his fellow staff members if he remained on Flynns case, according to the defendants guilty plea with prosecutors.

You will not be safe. A hot piece of lead will cut through your skull, the May 14, 2020 voicemail said. Back out of this bulls**t before its too late, or well start cutting down your staff. This is not a threat. This is a promise.

The defendant said Monday that he was not thinking well or doing well at the time, and that he wished to humbly apologize to Sullivan.

Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying during a 2017 FBI interview over whether he had spoken to then-Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak during Trumps 2016 transition period. But Flynn later withdrew his plea, saying that he had accepted a plea deal because prosecutors were threatening his son with charges and his former lawyers hadnt represented him effectively. He also repeatedly accused the government of misconduct related to his case.

Before Flynn served as national security adviser in the Trump administration, he held the position of the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency during the Obama era. Flynns case was used to support a narrative that Trumps campaign colluded with the Kremlin in a bid to sway the 2016 election.

Trump, Flynn, and other Trump surrogates have categorically denied they colluded with Russia. Former special counsel Robert Muellers years-long investigation didnt reveal any such collusion.

In late 2020, former President Donald Trump pardoned Flynn in a move that ended a yearslong criminal case related to the Russia investigation.

Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement at the time saying that Trump pardoned Flynn because he should never have been prosecuted.

An independent review of General Flynns case by the Department of Justiceconducted by respected career professionalssupports this conclusion, McEnany said last year. In fact, the Department of Justice has firmly concluded that the charges against General Flynn should be dropped. This Full Pardon achieves that objective, finally bringing to an end the relentless, partisan pursuit of an innocent man.

McFadden said on Monday that he did not think Caporusso intended to carry out the threat. Caporusso was also sentenced to two years of supervised release during the court hearing.
Many Big-City Democrat Mayors Defunded Police While Spending Heavily on Their Security Details, Watchdog Finds

Democratic mayors in 20 of the nations 25 biggest cities slashed police department budgets and positions even as they spent millions of tax dollars on their own security details, according to data obtained by a government watchdog.

In 25 major U.S. cities, officials have proposed cuttingor in 20 cases already cutpolice budgets. However, what OpenTheBooks.com auditors found was that mayors and city officials still enjoy personal protection of a dedicated police detail costing taxpayers millions of dollars, Adam Andrzejewski, CEO and founder of Open The Books (OTB), said in a statement announcing the new data.

This is police protection for me (the political elites), but not for thee (the citizens), Andrzejewski said.

The Chicago-based group is a nonprofit that uses public-right-to-know and freedom of information laws to maintains hundreds of publicly available databases of federal, state, and local spending with the goal of providing every dime online in real time.

In San Francisco, for example, the costs of the security detail protecting Mayor London Breed and other city officials spiraled up from $1.7 million in 2015 to $2.6 million in 2020.

Breed has proposed shifting $120 million from the citys police department to mental health and workforce training programs. City officials declined to say how many officers are assigned to the security details, according to OTB.

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot claimed to be opposed to defunding the police, but OTB found that officials quietly abolished 400 police department positions last year.

Those positions were eliminated even as the citys security detail costs peaked in 2020up $700,000 over five years: $2.7 million spent on 16 officers (2015); $2.9 million for 16 officers (2016); $2.7 million for 20 officers (2017); $2.8 million for 16 officers (2018); $2.8 million for 17 officers (2019); and $3.4 million for 22 officers (2020)an all-time high, OTB stated.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio slashed $1 billion from the New York Police Departments (NYPD) $6 billion annual budget, including $354 million transferred to mental health, homelessness, and education services.

But the mayor, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination last year, continues to enjoy tax-paid police protection for himself, his wife, and his son.

City officials havent yet agreed to disclose the costs or number of officers assigned to the multiple de Blasio security details, according to OTB.

In Baltimore, Mayor Brandon Scotts administration spent $3.6 million on a security detail that included 14 officers to protect the chief executive as well as States Attorney Marilyn Mosby and Police Commissioner Michael Harrison, according to data compiled by OTB. The Baltimore Police Department budget has been reduced by $22 million.

Protection for the mayor included six officers and one sergeant, costing almost $2 million, OTB said in the statement. The states attorney has three officers and one sergeant, costing $1.3 million. The police commissioners security detail included two officers and one sergeant, costing $464,948.

Baltimore has been plagued for a decade with steadily rising rates of serious crime, including murder, robbery, and assault. The city has also seen two of the present mayors immediate predecessors, Catherine Pugh and Sheila Dixon, resign and be convicted on various corruption charges.

In San Diego, Mayor Todd Glorias administration budgeted $2.6 million for 12 full-time officers to protect him and members of the city council during meetings and city hall.

However, the mayors budget calls for cutting $4.3 million from the police overtime budget and spending more than $1 million to set up the new police oversight body, the Commission on Police Practices, OTB said.

Notable among the other cities examined by OTB were these:

Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, cut $8 million from the police budget to launch a mental health team to respond to certain 911 calls.

Oakland officials cut the police budget by $14.6 million. Even bigger cuts are expected in the near future.

Despite two years of near-continuous rioting led by Antifa and Black Lives Matter activists, Portland officials slashed $15 million from the police budget and disbanded a gun violence reduction unit and transit team that had been accused of over-policing black communities, among other cuts.

Milwaukee officials are cutting 120 police officer positions, beginning with the current years budget. The reductions are to come mainly by not replacing retiring officers. Sixty positions were eliminated last year.

In Seattle, city council members at one point last year declared their intent to slash the police budget by half, but ultimately settled on a 20 percent reduction.

Los Angeles officials have approved a $150 million budget cut from its $1.86 billion proposed budget.

In the nations capital, officials reduced the Metropolitan Police Departments budget by $15 million.

Philadelphia residents have seen local officials transfer $33 million from the police to other programs.

Austin officials cut about $20 million from the police department and shifted $80 million in services previously provided by law enforcement to other departments.

Congressional correspondent Mark Tapscott may be contacted at Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc.
Michigan May Join Arizona, Florida in Limiting Local Control of Short-Term Rentals

LANSING, Mich.Michigan may soon become the latest of a handful of vacation destination states to enact laws protecting the short-term residential rental industry.

Since the advent of online booking and collection services such as Airbnb and VRBO, short-term rentals have become big business in states like Arizona, Florida, Idaho, and Tennessee, all of which have used state law to keep municipalities from banning or over-regulating short-term rental properties.

The popularity of short-term rentals is evident in places like Miami, Florida, and Scottsdale, Arizona. According to realtor.com, Miami has 10,024 active short-term rentals, while Scottsdale has 5,178. In Michigan, there were more than 17,000 short-term rentals operating through big agencies in 2019, a number which has grown substantially every year since.

A short-term rental is defined as the renting of a single-family home for a period of 30 days or less. It can range from a spare bedroom to an apartment, condo, or lavish beach house. They are commonly used for vacation retreats, and as temporary living quarters for visiting professionals, or by new hires arriving in a new community.

The explosive growth of short-term rentals has provoked controversy, pitting the rights of the individual homeowner to do with his property as he pleases, against the rights of his neighbor to the quiet enjoyment of his property.

Recently, a homeowner in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, who rented out his house short-term, was criminally charged by the city with operating a business in an area not zoned for rentals. This incident is seen by many, including Michigan think tank the Mackinac Center, and Michigan Realtors, who both became involved in the case, as an impetus for the new legislation.

The proposed law, Michigan Senate Bill 446, states that a short-term residential rental counts as residential, not commercial, use of a property. It declares that short-term rentals are to be considered a permitted use in all residential zones and are not subject to special-use or conditional-use permits different from those required for other dwellings in the same zone.

While preserving the power of a municipality to regulate public safety and health through ordinances governing noise, signage, and traffic, or any other condition that may create a nuisance, the bill demands that the rules must be consistently applied to all dwellings in the community. This clause prohibits local governments from imposing special ordinances specific to short-term rentals, such as a limit on the number of bedrooms, a limit on the number of people who can sleep in a bedroom, and the requirement of indoor parking.

Holly Tatman, a village manager in a Michigan lakeside resort community told the Epoch Times, Its odd that state government is coming down on the side of deregulation. They are usually the big regulators. This bill is tying the communitys hands. It takes away local control.

The Michigan Municipal League (MML), a major opponent of the legislation, said in a statement, Long-term residents deserve to have their property rights protected too[the bill] completely strips municipalities of reasonable zoning regulations.

The MML cited the experience of Sedona, Arizona, which, it said, saw one-third of its housing convert to short-term rentals following deregulation similar to that proposed in Michigan. The organization says the trend contributed to a shortage of affordable housing.

On the other hand, the Michigan Realtors, strong supporters of the new legislation, contend that short-term rentals contribute to the rise in property values in a community, and that only the well-maintained operations succeed in the marketplace.

Michigan Realtors vice-president of public policy and legal affairs, Brad Ward, told the Epoch Times, At the heart of this bill is the protection of private property rights.

The principal sponsors of the bill are Senator Aric Nesbitt (R-Lawton) and Representative Sarah Lightner (R-Springport). The legislation has been forwarded out of committee with a recommendation of approval in the Senate. The bill has been referred for its second reading in the House. No date has been set for a vote by the full legislature.
Montana Attorney General Provides Legal Basis for Rejecting Critical Race Theory: Activists

News Analysis

Putting the fight against critical race theory which holds that white people are inherently racist on a firmer footing by emphasizing that teaching it in public schools violates the Constitution and civil rights laws is an excellent tactic, supporters of traditional patriotic education told The Epoch Times.

Their comments came after Austin Knudsen, Republican attorney general of Montana, wrote a legal opinion about whether Marxist-invented critical race theory (CRT) violated the U.S. and Montana constitutions as well as various federal civil rights laws. He was responding to an inquiry by Elsie Arntzen, Montanas superintendent of public instruction, also a Republican.

The opinion came as public resistance to CRT grows and intensifies among parents in communities across the country who are fighting back by protesting and taking over local school boards. In 26 state legislatures bills have been introduced or other steps have been taken to prevent CRT from being taught, according to Education Week.

But those measures have rarely offered a comprehensive rationale for banning CRT, which is something Knudsens legal opinion provides, sources consulted for this article told The Epoch Times. Without tying objections to CRT to the Constitution or state constitutions, CRT opponents had left their laws more susceptible to being overturned.

Acknowledging resistance to CRT in education is absolutely grassroots and led by parents at the local level, Ian Prior, a parent who helped to found and is executive director of Virginia-based Fight for Schools, said Knudsen did the right thing.

Whenever one is taking action against policies being pushed downstream from the highest levels of government authority, having a rock-solid legal basis for those actions is absolutely necessary to accomplish required change and do so in a way that will not fluctuate with changes in political power, Prior said.

David Randall, director of research at the National Association of Scholars, told The Epoch Times that in his view there has been a sudden spike of outrage by ordinary people, that the professional political class has been caught off-guard by it, and that they are struggling to catch up with popular outrage rather than fanning it.

Although legal opinions like Knudsens are needed, much more is required for the fight, he said.

Our elite institutions have practiced unconstitutional race discrimination for decades, regardless of the Constitution and the law. They will continue to do so until the people reassert control over their authoritarian elites. The solution must be political as well as legal. We need Knudsen, but we also need an effective political movement to remove all the elite discriminators from the chokepoints of power.

Adam Waldeck, founder of 1776 Action, a nonprofit group, said the tighter and more grounded these anti-CRT laws are the better, and there are no doubt preexisting laws on the books against discrimination that CRT opponents should look to as well.

That said, the opposition to CRT started at the local grassroots level and that must continue, particularly in regards to school boards. Its up to voters to make sure that their officials (and relevant candidates) state exactly what they believe and support, which is exactly why we created The 1776 Pledge to Save Our Schools. 

In his legal opinion, Knudsen wrote that in many instances the use of CRT and so-called antiracism programming does discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Article II, Section 4 of the Montana Constitution, and the Montana Human Rights Act.

CRT, he noted, calls for teaching students how white people are supposedly by their nature racist and for engaging in racial discrimination in the name of combating it.

What Is Critical Race Theory?

The driving force behind CRT and antiracism is the complete and total acceptance of a specific worldviewone that encompasses very specific notions about history, philosophy, sociology, and public policy. Being a so-called antiracist requires individuals to accept these premises and advocate for specific policy proposals. Individuals who do not comply cannot truly be antiracist, and are, therefore, considered racist, Knudsen wrote.

By its own terms, antiracism excludes individuals who merely advocate for the neutral legal principles of the Constitution, or who deny or question the extent to which white supremacy continues to shape our institutions, he wrote. To that end, no one can be antiracist who does not act to eliminate the vestiges of white supremacy, i.e., embrace the specific public policy proposals of CRT and antiracism.

For example, critics have suggested that there is one, and only one, correct stance on standardized testing, drug legalization, Medicare for All, and even the capital gains tax rate. This paradigm is conveniently constructed like a mousetrap, Knudsen wrote, quoting Christopher Rufo.

Disagreement with any aspect becomes irrefutable evidence of its premises of systemic racism, bias, fragility, or white supremacy.  CRT and antiracism are not merely academic ideas confined to university critical studies courses. These ideologies have begun to infiltrate mainstream American dialogue and permeate our institutions.

Compelled Speech

Knudsen argues that, Trainings, exercises, or assignments which force students or employees to admit, accept, affirm, or support controversial concepts such as privilege, culpability, identity, or status, constitute compelled speech, which is something the First Amendment forbids the government from forcing people to do.

It is obvious that CRT and antiracism programming take strident positions on some of the most controversial political, societal, and philosophical issues of our time. Compelling students, trainees, or anyone else to mouth support for those same positions not only assaults individual dignity, it undermines the search for truth, our institutions, and our democratic system.

Some schools have proposed separate housing and advisors based on race, as well as separate professional development training, he wrote. Some universities have been sued for diversity programs in which they make people get down on the floor and apologize for being white.

Key elements of CRT and antiracism education and training, when used to classify students or other Montanans by race, run afoul of the U.S. Constitution and federal and state civil rights laws, Knudsen wrote.

The term antiracism appears reasonable and innocuous on its face. After all, our Constitution, our laws, and nearly all our citizens are antiracism, he wrote. But antiracism, when used to describe radical activists worldview, is an Orwellian rhetorical weapon.

Knudsen added that the National Museum of African American History and Cultures website had a page dealing with Whiteness, that bizarrely claimed traits such as individualism, hard work, objectivity, progress, politeness, decision-making, and delayed gratification were hallmarks of white culture.

Teaching CRT

CRT supporters have lashed out at critics. Michelle Leete, Vice President of Training at the Virginia PTA (Parent Teacher Association) wished death on CRT opponents at a public event on July 15. Two days later Leete, who is also a vice president of the NAACPs chapter in Fairfax County, Virginia, was forced to resign her PTA post. The American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association have vowed to defend their members who teach CRT.

After he was inaugurated, President Joe Biden promptly rescinded former President Donald Trumps Executive Order 13950, which banned teaching CRT to government contractors. Trump said the ideology was divisive and harmful and like a cancer.

Critical race theorywhose proponents frequently denounce American culture and history as Eurocentrism and whitenessis a variation of critical theory applied to the American context that stresses racial divisions and sees society in terms of minority racial groups oppressed by the white majority, according to the report of the 1776 Commission, an advisory body created by Trump, which sought to move U.S. education away from a radical curriculum that unduly emphasized race-related injustices of the past.

Equally significant to its intellectual content is the role Critical Race Theory plays in promoting fundamental social transformation, the report states, to impart an oppressor-victim narrative upon generations of Americans. This work of cultural revolution has been going on for decades, and its first political reverberations can be seen in 1960s America.

Trump unveiled the commission last year as the New York Times-promoted 1619 Project gained widespread acceptance among elites as it rode a wave of national revulsion over the death in Minneapolis police custody last year of black suspect George Floyd which was popularly blamed on anti-black racism by police.

The 1619 Project claims real American history began when the first African slaves arrived in colonial America in 1619, and not on July 4, 1776, when the colonists declared independence from the United Kingdom. Educators helped to lay the foundation for the revisionist history project years ago by teaching the ahistorical A Peoples History of the United States, by academic Howard Zinn, who was a member of the Communist Party USA. Millions of copies of the book have been sold.

Leftists claim CRT promotes racial equality by highlighting the supposed damage that white people have done to others in society. Left-wing sociology professor Robyn Autry of Wesleyan University, praised Biden for killing the commission, falsely claiming it promoted a dangerous alternative history, instead of seeking a return to the traditional way the countrys history has been taught.

Subversion

But critical race theory is designed to subvert our system of government, Mary Grabar, resident fellow at the Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization told The Epoch Times.

Distorted history, such as The 1619 Project, is used to make CRT seem plausible. CRT is inherently anti-Constitutional  and cannot be justified at the K-12 and even undergraduate levels because students are still learning history in terms of fundamentals and facts. They cannot perceive its Marxist underpinnings.

Grabars new book, Debunking the 1619 Project, will be published by Regnery on Sept. 7. She is also author of Debunking Howard Zinn, published in 2019.
Navy Must Focus More on Warfighting and Less on Diversity Training: Report

When announcing the christening of the USNS John Lewis replenishment oiler on July 16, Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Harker said sailors will be galvanized by the legacy of the new ships namesake.

Leaders like Representative Lewis taught us that diversity of backgrounds and experiences help contribute to the strength of our nation, Harker said, referring to the late congressman and civil rights activist.

But some lawmakers and military officials worry that comments such as the ones made by Harker are part of a larger problem of Navy leadership prioritizing social issues at the expense of military preparedness.

A congressionally commissioned report released on July 12 suggests that an overfocus on administrative tasks correlates with recent Navy mishaps, including the July 2020 fire on the USS Bonhomme Richard, two deadly collisions in 2017, and the January 2016 surrender of two small Navy craft to Iran in the Arabian Gulf.

Drawing on interviews with 77 Navy personnel, the report found a broad consensus across interviewees on numerous cultural and structural issues that impact the morale and readiness of the Navys surface force.

These include: an insufficient focus on warfighting skills, the perception of a zero-defect mentality accompanied by a culture of micromanagement, and over-sensitivity and responsiveness to modern media culture, said the report, drafted by retired Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Robert Schmidle and retired Navy Rear Adm. Mark Montgomery at the direction of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), Jim Banks (R-Ind.), and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).

The report makes clear that many of the Navys problems have existed for decades, including a lack of resources and consistency in warfare training programs as well as an underwhelming commitment to surface ship maintenance. An overall atmosphere of complacency is due in part to the Navy not having a credible rival since the Cold War, the report suggests.

Along with identifying general problems associated with a bloated bureaucracy, the report focuses on the more recent trend of Navy leadership becoming entranced by social issues. Programs to encourage diversity, suicide prevention, sexual assault, and other issues have their valuebut an overfocus on those areas comes at a cost, the report said, quoting numerous officers.

Weve got so many messages about X, Y, Z appreciation month, or sexual assault prevention, or you name it. We dont even have close to that same level of emphasis on actual warfighting, said an unidentified recent destroyer captain.

Sometimes, I think we care more about whether we have enough diversity officers than if well survive a fight with the Chinese navy, said an active-duty lieutenant. Its criminal. They think my only value is as a black woman. But you cut our ship open with a missile and well all bleed the same color.

The report did cite one officer who went on the record in favor of the ramped-up HR training. Commander Bryan McGrath said he didnt like such programs at first, but later came to see their value.

When youre on the ship, [the] sexual assault and victim stuff, all that stuff just seems like a burden. It just seems like its never-ending, McGrath said. [But] the further I get from it, the more I understand why its important and why there does have to be very clear signals sent to deck plate sailors that theyre, you know, that issues that are important to them are important to leadership.

But overall, about 94 percent of the respondents said they believe that incidents such as Irans capture of the sailors are related to a broader leadership problem in the Navy, and 55 percent said they believe the overfocus on administrative tasks and cultural issues is directly related to the recent mishaps. The report doesnt say how the sample of respondents interviewed was chosen.

The report makes eight recommendations to address the abovementioned concerns, including investments in warfighting training and ship maintenance, as well as a renewal of the Navys noble tradition of remaining out of politics.

Limit social media accounts and activities by Navy officials, discourage use of toxic platforms by sailors, remove all political and sociological topics from Professional Military Education and replace them with essential warfighting courseware, the report advised.

In response to the report, Navy spokesperson Patricia Kreuzberger told The Epoch Times: We welcome the insights and report findings, many of which are consistent with areas we have addressed and taken action on.

We look forward to continuing our work with Congress to ensure we have the most capable ships crewed by the most capable sailors, as well as a surface force that is fit for the challenges of the 21st century.

The Navy indeed has ramped up training efforts since two deadly ship collisions in 2017, including with a planned $40 million surface ship training center set to open later this year, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Nevertheless, Cotton said on July 12 that he found the report very concerning, while Banks called for a total change in priorities.

This report depicts a Navy leadership thats distracted from the number one threat to American national security: The Chinese Communist Party, Banks said. As Chinas Navy exceeds ours in size, the U.S. Navy must be ready to face any threat.
New Post-Brexit Rift Forms Over Gibraltar

A new major rift has emerged between the UK and the European Union concerning the post-Brexit relationship over Gibraltar.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said a draft mandate for talks published by the bloc on Tuesday seeks to undermine the UKs sovereignty over the British overseas territory.

He demanded it cannot form a basis for negotiations as he urged the EU to think again.

But the blocs post-Brexit negotiator, Maros Sefcovic, said the mandate seeks to find a positive impact for those living either side of the border with Spain while protecting the single market.

Gibraltar, whose sovereignty is disputed by Spain and Britain, currently remains subject to the rules of the free-travel Schengen area, keeping the border with Spain open.

The territory was not included within the trade agreement brokered between the EU and the UK last year and a separate deal must be brokered.

In a statement, Raab said: The UK, with Gibraltar, and Spain carefully agreed a pragmatic framework agreement, in full consultation with the EU commission.

The commissions proposed mandate, published today, directly conflicts with that framework. It seeks to undermine the UKs sovereignty over Gibraltar, and cannot form a basis for negotiations.

We have consistently showed pragmatism and flexibility in the search for arrangements that work for all sides, and we are disappointed that this has not been reciprocated. We urge the EU to think again.

The European Commission said the proposed negotiating directives put forward solutions to remove physical checks and controls on persons and goods at the border between Spain and Gibraltar.

It is without prejudice to the issues of sovereignty and jurisdiction, and focuses on cooperation in the region, the bloc added.

The mandate includes rules for establishing responsibility for asylum, visas, residence permits, and police cooperation and information exchange.

Sefcovic, a commission vice-president, said: By putting forward this draft mandate, we are honouring the political commitment we made to Spain to start the negotiations of a separate agreement between the EU and the UK on Gibraltar.

This is a detailed mandate, which aims to have a positive impact for those living and working on either side of the border between Spain and Gibraltar, while protecting the integrity of the Schengen Area and the Single Market.

By Sam Blewett
Northern California Falun Gong Practitioners Call for an End to 22Year Persecution

Hundreds of Falun Gong practitioners from Northern California held a rally and parade in San Francisco on July 17 to celebrate the Chinese meditation and self-improvement discipline and to raise awareness that it has been persecuted in mainland China since 1999.

The event marked the 22nd anniversary of the day the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) began persecuting Falun Gong practitioners: July 20, 1999.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, was first introduced to the public in China in 1992. It quickly became known for its health benefits and its three main principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance. It spread by word of mouth until tens of millions of people in China were practicing it.

The CCP, fearing the enormous popularity of any group outside of its control, launched a brutal nationwide persecution campaign against Falun Gong. Practitioners were harassed by the communist regime, illegally arrested, and sent to labor camps to be tortured, sometimes to death.

During the rally in San Francisco, some practitioners shared their experiences of practicing Falun Gong or the persecution they endured.

Practitioners meditate in the plaza in front of the San Francisco Ferry Building on July 17, 2021. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times)

Jenny Zhang, a practitioner, recounted the persecution that she and her family suffered under the Chinese regime.

My mom was a professor at the time in a university. She was kidnapped three times. She was tortured, she was forced to retire early, and she never got her pension. My father used to be a researcher, like a scientist in an institution. He was kidnapped as well, and his bank account was frozen. And my elder sister was fired from the company that she worked for, Zhang told NTD News, a sister media outlet of The Epoch Times.

When Zhang went to appeal to the central government in Beijing, she was kidnapped and detained as well.

After I got out of the detention center, I was kicked out of school, and I never got a chance to go back to college again, she said. After that, we were kind of displaced for over 11 years. We couldnt really live in our hometown, in our own house, because the police just kept harassing us, and they threatened to kidnap us. They wanted to put us in a brainwashing camp, and they tried everything to push us to give up the practice.

Jenny Zhang plays the French horn in the Tianguo Marching Band in San Francisco on July 17, 2021. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times)

In 2012, Zhang escaped to the United States. She now works to spread awareness of the ongoing persecution. She has also learned to play the French horn in the Tian Guo Marching Band, which was formed by Falun Gong practitioners.

Following the rally, practitioners held a parade consisting of the Tian Guo Marching Band, a meditation demonstration, a section commemorating practitioners who were tortured to death in CCP labor camps, and banners calling for an end to the persecution.

The Tian Guo Marching Band marches along the piers in San Francisco on July 17, 2021. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times)

CCPs Dark History

Bill Stanton, a former U.S. diplomat to China, recounted the CCPs dark history. He said that during his service as a diplomat from 1987 to 1990 and again from 1995 to 1998, he witnessed firsthand how the CCP operates.

I saw what happened at Tiananmen. I was there. After it was over the next day, we went to local hospitals, and we counted bodies. So our estimate was that at least 800 people had been killed, but it may have been more. I just dont know. Then they stopped us. You could no longer visit hospitals; they shut it all down, Stanton told NTD News.

He said that even to this day, the CCP continues to punish people and groups that oppose it. He hopes world leaders will do more to stand against the regime. But many countries, such as France and Germany, are more concerned with economic relations.

So many people are not only under the influence of China for business reasons and economic reasons, but China can be so brutal in the way it treats anybody who dissents, so its a very difficult situation. Anyone who has religious beliefs will face [punishment] in China, Stanton said.

Practitioners hold wreaths commemorating practitioners who were killed in the persecution, during the parade on July 17, 2021. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times)

Stanton said that prisoners who are executed in China are often used for organ harvesting. He said his understanding is that many of the organs are given to top Party officials.

The CCP continues to spread its influence in regions surrounding China.

Weve seen what now has happened in Hong Kong; weve seen whats happened in Xinjiang; we see that theyre trying to eliminate the Mongolian language in Menggu-guo [Mongolia], Stanton said.

He remains hopeful, however.

Id love to, in my lifetime  I hope to see progress on this. Its just so wrong. I think a lot of people, they go about their lives and theyre not aware of this, and they feel, Well, what can I do, theres not much. So its important that groups like yours get out there and try to raise public awareness, Stanton said.

Practitioners are calling for the CCP to be held accountable not just for the persecution, but for harming the rest of the world as well.

Laurie Gorham, the rally coordinator, said: If anyone knows anything about the Chinese Communist Party, they know that it basically lies a lot, and so when the pandemic started, the Chinese government was not forthcoming in the information about the virus. They didnt allow people in to investigate, either, nor did they contribute to the world or share information with the world. And thats very indicative of a government that is based on communism.

Laurie Gorham speaks during the rally in San Francisco on July 17, 2021. (Cynthia Cai/The Epoch Times)

Many tourists and pedestrians stopped to watch as the parade made its way along the piers.

Bob Spurlock, a retired police officer from Sacramento, told NTD News: Please keep it up, make noise. This is terrible, what China, the CCP is doing. And I wish people hopefully know that its the CCP, and the Chinese people are different. Two separate people. Thats government, [the] CCP, thats doing all the damage.

For others, this was their first time learning about Falun Gong and the persecution of its practitioners.

I dont know a lot about whats going on inside China, Richard Anders, a Davis resident, told NTD News. It doesnt make sense to me why theyd be persecuted for just meditating and just having their own beliefs.

Practitioners hold a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco on July 18, 2021. (Gary Wang/The Epoch Times)

Rachel Alanis, a Modesto resident, told NTD News, I think it needs to be heard, because I watch the news and Ive never heard about this on the news before, so I think it should be spread around to everybody.

Falun Gong practitioners hold public events like this every year, along with a candlelight vigil in front of the Chinese Consulate to call for an end to the persecution and commemorate its victims.
Mural displaying Jeff Bezo and his brother Mark Bezo, is seen in Van Horn, Texas, on July 18, 2021. (Thom Baur/Reuters)

Not Really Nervous: Billionaire Bezos Girds for Inaugural Space Flight

Billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos said on Monday he is excited and curious but not very nervous on the eve of taking part in his company Blue Origins inaugural suborbital flight alongside the oldest and youngest people ever bound for space.

The worlds richest person and three crewmates are due to fly from a desert site in West Texas on an 11-minute trip to the edge of space aboard Blue Origins New Shepard, a 60-foot-tall (18.3 meters) and fully autonomous rocket-and-capsule combo. The flight represents an important milestone in the establishment of the space tourism industry.

Bezos did a round of televised interviews ahead of the launch, set for around 8 a.m. CT (9 a.m. ET) from Blue Origins Launch Site One facility some 20 miles (32 km) outside the rural Texas town of Van Horn.

People keep asking if Im nervous. Im not really nervous, Im excited. Im curious. I want to know what were going to learn, Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc, told the CBS This Morning program.

Weve been training. This vehicle is ready. This crew is ready. This team is amazing, Bezos said. We just feel really good about it.

Bezos and his brother Mark Bezos will be joined in the all-civilian crew by 82-year-old female aviator Wally Funk and 18-year-old Oliver Daemen, a recent high school graduate set to attend the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands to study physics and innovation management in September.

Daemen is the companys first paying customer. His father heads investment management firm Somerset Capital Partners.

The flight comes nine days after rival Richard Branson, the British billionaire businessman, was aboard his company Virgin Galactics rocket plane for its pioneering suborbital flight from New Mexico.

In a still image from video, Billionaire Richard Branson smiles on board Virgin Galactics passenger rocket plane VSS Unity before starting its untethered ascent to the edge of space above Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, N.M., on July 11, 2021. (Virgin Galactic/Handout via Reuters)

Bezos sought to downplay any rivalry with Branson.

Theres one person who was the first person in space. His name was Yuri Gagarin. And that happened a long time ago, Bezos said on the NBCs program Today, referring to the Soviet cosmonaut who reached space in 1961.

I think Im going to be number 570 or something. Thats where were going to be in this list. So this isnt a competition. This is about building a road to space so that future generations can do incredible things in space, Bezos said.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks during a news conference in the Coney Island neighborhood of the Brooklyn, New York City, on Sept. 15, 2020. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)

NYC Mayor Says City Wont Impose Indoor Mask Mandate Like LA

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on July 19 that he does not plan to reinstate a citywide mask mandate as cases of the CCP virus were on the rise again.

The mayor said the city would instead opt for getting more New Yorkers vaccinated. Los Angeles County imposed a mask mandate last week amid a resurgence of COVID-19 cases driven by the delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus.

De Blasio argued that focusing on vaccinations is a better strategy for the nations most populous city.

Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is, the mayor said during a live-streamed press briefing. So we do not intend a mask mandate. We do intend to double down on vaccination.

The seven-day average of daily new cases in the United States has increased every day since July 7, according to the CDC. The trend in New York is similar to the picture nationwide, with an upward trend in cases starting on July 6, according to data from the citys Department of Health.

The latest surge in cases comes as Pfizer, the maker of one of the three emergency use COVID-19 vaccines, said that the effectiveness of its two-shot regimen drops significantly after six months. The vaccine maker is now in the process of seeking approval for its booster shot.

Israels top officials warned on July 17 that Pfizers vaccine is significantly less effective at combating the delta.

We do not know exactly to what degree the vaccine helps, but it is significantly less, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett told reporters and cabinet members on July 17.

The delta variant of the CCP virus accounts for more than half of active COVID-19 cases in the United States by early July.

The CDCs guidance currently states that fully vaccinated people do not have to wear a mask indoors and in most other settings.

Read More Former Surgeon General Says CDC Was Premature in Relaxing Mask Guidance

However, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy said on July 18 that he would back county-level decisions to reimpose mask restrictions to tackle surging cases of COVID-19, saying that this was not in contradiction to the CDC guidelines, which leave room for local jurisdictions to decide their own restrictions.

Its very reasonable for counties to take more mitigation measures like the mask rules you see coming out in L.A., and I anticipate that will happen in other parts of the country too, Murthy told ABC Newss This Week.

There are dozens of circumstantial studies suggesting that masks work to stem the spread of the virus, although none have been randomized-control trials. Meanwhile, Florida, which never imposed a mask mandate allowing residents to decide their own approach to prevention, fared better than some of the strict lockdown states despite having an older population on average.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Officers Spot Distraught Woman About to Leap Off Bridge Into Traffic, Pull Her Back Just in Time

Two Florida police officers saved a life after responding to a call on the morning of June 15 of a distressed woman on a highway overpass. The officers pulled her away from the ledge just in time.

Fort Pierce Police Officers Casey Miklosh and Hayden Willis credit trust and teamwork for the successful save. Afterward, both were hailed as heroes by their department and community.

A motorist spotted the 20-year-old womanbarefooted, praying on a bridge in Fort Pierceand fearing she might end her life, dialed 911. Miklosh and Willis responded, eventually locating the woman at the Graham Road bridge over Interstate 95.

Miklosh, who approached first, said the woman was visibly distraught.

She was upset, he told ABC. I noticed while talking with her that she had, it looked like, relatively recent scarring on her arms of cuts.

As the officer tried to connect, Willis called for backup, medical support, and the closure of the interstate beneath the bridge. The cooperation between agencies who responded did an amazing job, said Willis.

Yet minutes later, Miklosh was still struggling to engage the troubled woman in talk. As police vehicles crowded in, she grew agitated. Walking to the opposite side of the bridge, she swung her leg over the concrete barrier.

Without missing a beat, Miklosh, despite his fear of heights, ran and grabbed her by the body and pants and pulled her back, he recalled.

Thats the good thing about working with people that you trust greatly, Willis reflected. I had full faith in my partner to do what he needed to do to get her off of the ledge  Im happy the woman didnt hurt herself, and Im glad my partner remained safe.

St. Lucie County sheriffs deputies handcuffed the unnamed woman and escorted her to a local hospital for further help.

The Fort Pierce Police Department later commended their officers for their quick efforts saving the womans life.

The outcome of the officers efforts is remarkable, the departments public affairs manager Curtis Jennings said. In similar situations, almost 80 percent of these encounters end unfavorably, he told St. Lucie Post. Officer Mikloshs quick decision-making saved this womans life.

Officers Miklosh and Willis have been partners on the force for 3 1/2 years, and say the department is like family. We trust each others movements; we know how each other works, Miklosh said.

(Courtesy of Fort Pierce Police Department)

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Orange Countys COVID-19 Weekly Averages Jump Up

SANTA ANA, Calif.Orange Countys weekly averages for COVID-19 doubled on July 20, but hospitalizations decreased.

The countys case rate per 100,000 residents increased from 2.6 to 4.9 and the test positivity rate jumped from 1.8 percent to 3.3 percent. The countys Health Equity Quartile rate, which measures the disadvantaged communities hardest hit by the pandemic, increased from 1.9 percent to 3.4 percent.

Hospitalizations declined from 140 to 126, but the number of intensive care unit patients remained at 59.

The state releases weekly averages on Tuesdays.

The county had recently been reporting coronavirus statistics once a week, but switched on July 19 to a more frequent schedule of releasing numbers every weekday in light of the increasing number of infections.

The Orange County Health Care Agency (OCHCA) reported 315 new cases on July 20, bringing the cumulative total to 259,695 cases since the pandemic began. Officials logged one new COVID-19 fatality, which occurred on June 13. That upped the cumulative total to 5,136 deaths.

The death toll for this month so far is one. The death toll for June is 15; 22 for May; 43 for April; 198 for March; 610 for February; 1,563 for Januarythe deadliest month of the pandemic so farand 967 for December, the next deadliest.

The hope is that we dont see much more of an accelerated pace of COVID than we saw before vaccines were widely available, Orange County Chief Executive Frank Kim told City News Service on July 19. At our peak, we had 79 cases per 100,000, with a 19.7 percent positivity rate.  Were hoping we dont see those types of numbers again.

The high number of unvaccinated patients is hopefully a reminder to the public that when they seek the risk of COVID, they would ask questions, get educated, and consider the voluntary vaccine, Kim said.

The county had 1,851,432 fully vaccinated residents out of its 3.2 million population as of July 15, according to the OCHCA.

Vaccination rates have flattened to levels not seen since January when they were being rolled out mostly to seniors, first responders, and health care providers.

Orange County officials have not discussed any sort of new mask order, Kim said.

Andrew Noymer, an epidemiologist and UC Irvine professor of population health and disease prevention, previously said that lifting the mask mandate for the vaccinated made sense to serve as an incentive for residents to get inoculated. But on July 19, he said the new, more contagious Delta variant is changing things rapidly.

I really have my doubts whether Americans will mask for 36 months uninterrupted, and I stick by that, he said. There was a period where it really looked like we could get away with it, and I didnt see what was wrong with giving people a break. But that kind of presupposes that if you made them mask 36 months unabated that they wouldnt revolt eventually. Its a battle of counterfactuals.

But now were really between a rock and a hard place, he said. Im still unmasking at the grocery store because Im vaccinated. But Im not that far off from donning the mask again. But Ive also always been clear I follow the posted orders. If I lived in LA, I would mask, but for right now I havent been masking because Ive been vaccinated.

For now, the vaccines have proved effective against infections and severe illness, Noymer said.

The thing that worries me a little bit is that both are trending upward, Noymer said of infections among vaccinated and unvaccinated. So even the line for new cases among the vaccinated is trending upward as well, and that concerns me a little bit. Its trending up a lot less fast than the trend among the unvaccinated.

Studies in Israel are showing the two-dose vaccines are 64 percent effective against infections for the Delta variant, Noymer said.

Were definitely in for a wild ride, Im afraid, he said.

The University of California system is requiring vaccinations for students before the fall quarter, but its unclear how effective it will be with in-person learning.

There will be a vaccine mandate (at UC campuses), Noymer said. The question is, is that enough in face of these breakthrough infections. The average age of the faculty is much higher than the students, so its a higher stakes question for us faculty members.

Noymer said it would make more sense to continue virtual learning instead of masking up in the classroom.

Im not teaching in a mask, he said. Im sorry. If I have to teach in a mask, Id teach by Zoom.
A sign reading 'Go straight home and Isolate' is seen at the exit of a drive through COVID-19 testing site at Highpoint shopping centre on July 4, 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Over Half of Australia to Go Into Lockdown

More than half of Australias population will soon be in lockdown as health authorities continue to battle coronavirus outbreaks of the infectious Delta strain.

South Australia (SA) will enter tough restrictions for one week from 6 p.m. on Tuesday after five cases of the variant were detected in Adelaide.

Nine new local cases in Victoria have sparked a seven-day extension to the states lockdown which is now set to stretch until at least next Wednesday.

Victoria is also banning all travel from NSW for two weeks under new rules which will only exempt authorised workers and people with compassionate reasons.

NSW recorded 78 new local cases spread across Sydney with 29 spending part or all of their infectious period in the community.

While the Sydney and surrounds lockdown is slated to end on July 30, theres also increasing concern an extension may be needed as the virus circulates in the nations biggest city.

Reimposing restrictions in SA means more than 13.5 million people will be living under harsh stay-at-home orders across the nation.

TOPSHOT  A general view of an empty Arcade Plaza in Melbourne, Australia on July 16, 2021, (Asanka brendon Ratnayake/AFP via Getty Images)

There are also renewed calls for welfare recipients to be made eligible for federal government coronavirus disaster payments of up to $600 a week.

The Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) estimates 800,000 people who support 400,000 children have been excluded.

ACOSS chief executive Cassandra Goldie is urging state and federal leaders to fill the gap ahead of a national cabinet meeting on Friday.

People on social security are people on the lowest incomes, the most financially vulnerable and theyve been completely left out of these disaster payment arrangements, she told ABC radio.

It just highlights the two tiers, the two classes that have been introduced with this mess of a system.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said he was in constant conversation with Morrison about support measures.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announces a snap five-day lockdown for the state during a press conference in Melbourne, Australia on July 15, 2021 . (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images)

Emergency Management Minister Bridget McKenzie signalled support could be adjusted if areas are put under prolonged lockdown.

Were going to make sure that we step up when its required. Were always going to adjust our response to the changing nature of this virus, she told the ABC.
Pasadena Will Require City Workers To Be Vaccinated Against COVID-19

PASADENA, Calif.Pasadena is poised to become the first Southland city to require all of its municipal workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 once one of the vaccines receives full approval from the Food and Drug Administration.

Pasadena City Manager Steven Mermell told city council July 19 night the vaccination policy is being drafted by staff.

City spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said about 60 percent of the citys 2,000 employees have attested to being fully vaccinated so far.

However, given the ongoing risk posed by COVID-19, the upward trend in positive cases and the Delta variant, a vaccine policy is the right thing to do to foster a safe work environment and protect the health and safety of city of Pasadena employees and the public we serve, Derderian said in a statement.

 The City of Pasadena would be the first city to initiate this policy in Southern California and follows similar announcements by the University of California system, Cal State system and city and county of San Francisco who recently announced similar policies, she said.

The UC system announced last week it will require all students and staff to be vaccinated before they are allowed to return to in-person activities at UC facilitiesregardless of whether any of the vaccines

receive full FDA approval.

All of the current COVID vaccines in the United States are being administered under an emergency use authorization, but none have yet received full approval. There was no immediate timeline on when any of the vaccines might receive full approval.

Pasadena, which has its own health department, also announced July 19 that it would align with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health and require people to wear masks in indoor public settings regardless of vaccination status.

Due to significant increase in case rates over the past three weeks, Pasadena Public Health department director and health officer Dr. Ying-Ying Goh will issue a health officer order requiring face masks indoors, regardless of vaccination status, in public settings and businesses, the city tweeted July 19.

The order will be finalized and posted this week. While Pasadenas case rates were lower than LA Countys last week, weekend case rates continued to climb.

Long Beach, which also has its own health department, announced last week it would also align with the countys indoor masking order, which took effect July 17 at 12:59 p.m. The countys order was prompted by rising case numbers, which officials say are being fueled by the infectious Delta variant of the virus spreading rapidly among unvaccinated residents.

The mandate means customers are again required to mask up when entering any indoor public establishment, including retail shops, grocery stores, restaurants and workplaces. Indoor dining remains open, but customers must remain masked while they are not eating or drinking.

There are nearly four million county residents who have not been vaccinated, including 1.3 million children who are ineligible for the shots.

According to Pasadenas July 19 announcement on masking, Pasadena now meets the CDCs definition of `substantial transmission of COVID-19. Dr. Goh continues to urge the public to #GetVaccinated. COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and available at no cost.

City health officials reported 51 new infections between July 17 and July 19, but no additional deaths. In all, Pasadena has reported 11,558 cases of COVID-19 and 351 deaths.
Texas Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer (L), one of the five Texas House Democrats who have tested positive for COVID-19, is seen on Capitol Hill with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (C) in Washington on July 13, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Pelosi Aide, White House Official, Sixth Texas Democrat, Test Positive for COVID-19 in Widening Fallout

The fallout from Texas Democrats flying to Washington last week is widening as an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) tested positive for COVID-19.

A sixth Texas House Democrat has also tested positive, along with a White House official.

Drew Hammill, a spokesperson for Pelosi, told news outlets that the aide is a senior spokesperson in Pelosis press office.

The fully vaccinated aide tested positive on Monday after contact with members of the Texas state legislature last week, he said.

This individual has had no contact with the Speaker since exposure. The entire Press Office is working remotely today with the exception of individuals who have had no exposure to the individual or have had a recent negative test. Our office will continue to follow the guidance of the Office of Attending Physician closely, he added.

Pelosi was seen speaking last week with Texas Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer outside on Capitol Hill.

Fischer confirmed on Sunday that he had tested positive earlier that day.

An unnamed White House official also tested positive, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Tuesday.

In accordance with our rigorous COVID-19 protocols, the official remains off campus as they wait for a confirmatory PCR test. The White House Medical Unit has conducted contact tracing interviews and determined no close contacts among White House principals or staff or the president, Psaki said.

The person has mild symptoms.

The White House is prepared for breakthrough cases with regular testing. This is another reminder of the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines against severe illness or hospitalization. We wish our colleague a speedy recovery, she added.

Breakthrough cases refer to COVID-19 infections that occur in fully vaccinated people, or people who received both Pfizer or Moderna jabs, or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Both the official and the Pelosi aide were reportedly at the same rooftop reception at the Hotel Eaton on July 14.

A sixth member of the Texas House delegation who fled Texas also tested positive for COVID-19.

Texas Rep. Donna Howard announced she received a positive result from a test on Monday.

Despite following CDC guidelines and being fully vaccinated, I tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, Howard said in a statement.

We know that there will be breakthrough cases, but as this instance shows, cases in vaccinated individuals are typically mild, a White House official said.

Most of the Texas Democrats flew to Washington. A photograph showed them smiling without masks on, in defiance of federal rules requiring masks on flights entering, leaving, or within the United States.

We got complacent because we felt safe. We had no positives for months, and we got sloppy, Texas Rep. Gene Wu said on Monday.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who met indoors with the caucus last week, tested negative over the weekend. She refused to quarantine, with her office arguing neither she nor staff members had been in close contact with any of the people who later tested positivea similar argument the White House used in regards to the official who did test positive.

Psaki said Tuesday that the White House would not characterize what has happened as a so-called superspreader event and that even vaccines that are incredibly effective are not foolproof.

Still, people who are vaccinated are much less likely to have to get hospital care or die from COVID-19, she added.
Members of the Proud Boys, including leader Enrique Tarrio (C), rally in support of President Trump to protest against the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Washington, on Nov. 14, 2020. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)

Proud Boys Leader Enrique Tarrio Pleads Guilty to Burning Black Lives Matter Banner

The leader of the Proud Boys pleaded guilty this week to a weapons charge and to the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner.

Henry Tarrio, better known as Enrique Tarrio, pleaded guilty in two separate cases filed dealing with events that transpired in Washington in December 2020 and early January.

Proud Boys members were the prime suspects in the destruction of a large Black Lives Matter sign that was on the lawn of Asbury United Methodist Church. The destruction, captured on videos that were posted on Twitter, took place on Dec. 13, 2020.

After an arrest warrant was issued for Tarrio just before the New Year, officers pulled over a Honda Crosstour with Virginia tags and found the suspect inside. Tarrio was found with two high-capacity, .556 caliber firearm magazines, according to charging documents.

Tarrio was originally charged with two counts of possession of a large-capacity ammunition feeding device and destruction of property.

Accepting a plea deal, the 37-year-old Miami, Florida resident pleaded guilty to destruction of property and attempted possession of a large-capacity ammunition feeding device, court records showed.

He faces up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000.

Tarrio did not return a request for comment sent to his lawyer. Black Lives Matter DC and Asbury United Methodist Church did not respond to requests for comment.

Its pretty simple. Im guilty, Tarrio told Business Insider.

Tarrio said he burned the banner because Black Lives Matter supports communists like those in power in Cuba.

I shouldnt have done it. I shouldnt have burned the banner, but Im just explaining why I did it, the first-generation Cuban-American added.

The Proud Boys describe themselves as a pro-western male fraternity that is anti-SJW without being alt-right. SJW stands for social justice warrior. Critics claim the organization is a far-right group that foments hate.

Multiple Proud Boys members face charges stemming from the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol. Tarrio was not there. A judge ordered him to stay away from Washington because of the charges he faced.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during the daily briefing in the Brady Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on June 23, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Psaki Confirms More COVID-19 Cases in White House That Were Not Disclosed

Jen Psaki, White House press secretary on Tuesday confirmed that there have been breakthrough COVID-19 cases among vaccinated White House staffers that had not previously been made public.

Psaki told reporters yes, There have been, I will say that we, according to an agreement we made during the transition to be transparent and make information available. We committed that we would release information proactively. If it is commissioned officers, we continue to abide by that commitment, said Psaki.

Breakthrough cases refer to COVID-19 infections that occur in fully vaccinated people or people who received both Pfizer or Moderna jabs, or the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

When asked if the White House will change its COVID mitigation protocols since more people are testing positive, Psaki said they will maintain the same high standards which include testing those who have regular and close contact with the President and vice president. They will also follow all CDC guidelines for mask-wearing and socially distancing.

Without providing numbers of new cases within the staff, Psaki said the White House is, actively monitoring the health of our campus in the larger community in collaboration with public health and medical experts.

The infections among the White House staff came after breakthrough cases were found with one of Speaker Nancy Pelosis (D-Calif.) staff and six members of the Texas delegation who tested positive for the virus after arriving in Washington last week. The Texas lawmakers left Texas in an effort to prevent votes from being cast for election reform legislation during a Texas legislature special session.

Most of the Texas Democrats flew to Washington. A photograph showed them smiling without masks on, in defiance of federal rules requiring masks on flights entering, leaving, or within the United States.

We got complacent because we felt safe. We had no positives for months, and we got sloppy, Texas Rep. Gene Wu said on Monday.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who met indoors with the caucus last week, tested negative over the weekend. She refused to quarantine, with her office arguing neither she nor staff members had been in close contact with any of the people who later tested positivea similar argument the White House used in regards to the official who did test positive.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that the White House would not characterize what has happened as a so-called super spreader event and that even vaccines that are incredibly effective are not foolproof.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
Psaki: White House Has Reached Out to Media Outlets About COVID-19 Vaccines

The White House has reached out to several news outlets about their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, said press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday.

Weve been in touch with every network and many, many media outlets about coverage of COVID-19 to make sure people have accurate information, to voice concerns when we have them, and I think you all know were never shy when we have an issue with a story, Psaki said during a briefing with reporters, responding to a question about a CNN report that detailed talks between Biden administration officials and executives at Fox News.

A Fox spokesperson told The Epoch Times that CNNs reporting is inaccurate, and there have been no high-level conversations between FOX News Media and the White House regarding our coverage.

The spokesperson added: We had one routine briefing with the White House in early May on vaccination rates and our DC bureau personnel are regularly in touch with them on a variety of issues, as is the case with every other network.

Some Fox News commentators, meanwhile, including top host Sean Hannity, have recently called on viewers to get vaccinated.

Psakis recent comments about White House officials contacting news outlets about their COVID-19 coverage are sure to draw pushback.

The remarks come after she and other Biden administration officials issued critical comments about Facebook and called on the social media platform to restrict alleged COVID-19 misinformation. Psaki went a step further and said that individuals who post alleged misinformation about vaccines should be not only banned on Facebook but should be banned from posting on other social media websites.

Her remarksand remarks from President Joe Bidenwere criticized by Republicans and other commentators, including the left-wing Daily Beasts Noah Shachtman, who said the administration was engaging in government overreach for trying to pressure Facebook into moderating its content.

In a rare critical comment over the weekend, Facebook released a statement saying that the Biden administration shouldnt try to blame the social media giant for failing to meet the administrations self-imposed July 4 deadline.

We will not be distracted by accusations which arent supported by the facts. The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet, Facebook spokesman Kevin McAlister said.

During the onset of the pandemic, Facebook, Twitter, and Google-owned YouTube deleted posts or added fact check labels to postsincluding to reports from The Epoch Timesthat the virus emerged at a Wuhan, China, laboratory in 2019. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has vehemently denied the virus emerged from the facility and repeatedly has said it was transmitted to people via a yet-to-be-identified animal at a wet market in Wuhan.

In recent months, however, even some U.S. Intelligence Community officials have confirmed theyre actively investigating the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis. Biden said in May that hes directed intelligence agencies to deliver a report within several months.
Falun Gong practitioners hold a candlelight vigil remembering victims of the persecution in China, now in its 23rd year, at the Washington Monument on July 16, 2021. The characters for "Truthfulness, Compassion, Tolerance," the principles taught by the spiritual practice, appear at the front. (Edward Dai/The Epoch Times)

Remembering the Fallen: 22 Years of Persecution and Punishment

Commentary

The abuses taking place in Chinas Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region have been well documented. With forced labor and horrific stories of sexual abuse, the Uyghur story is an important one, and needs to be told.

Another important story that needs to be told involves the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners. Twenty-two years ago, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sought to eliminate the spiritual practice of Falun Gong in China. In an attempt to eliminate the peaceful practice, the Chinese regime launched a brutal campaign of religious persecution, one that continues to this day.

For more than two decades, Falun Gong practitioners have experienced unspeakable and intolerable acts of human rights abuses, with a number of practitioners being subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, forced labor, and death threats. Thousands have died at the hands of the CCP. This short piece remembers the brave men and women who have been punished and beaten, persecuted and prosecuted. It also pays respect to those who continue to spread the gospel of peace, love, and unity.

Fallen but Not Forgotten

But first, we must ask: Why does the Chinese regime fear Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that involves slow-moving exercises and meditation and places great emphasis on the importance of human decency? In China, where tyranny and lies reign supreme, theres little room, if any, for honesty, empathy, and tolerance. In other words, theres no room for Falun Gong.

Since July 20, 1999, the CCP has launched countless smear campaigns against Falun Gong practitioners. In Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China, Ian Johnson wrote that the CCPs claims against the group dont carry any truth whatsoever. Contrary to the propaganda promulgated by the Chinese regime, Johnson sets the narrative straight. Falun Gong members marry outside the group, have outside friends, hold normal jobs, do not live isolated from society, do not believe that the worlds end is imminent, and do not give significant amounts of money to the organization, he wrote.

This, however, hasnt stopped the CCP from spreading malicious lies about Falun Gong. As writer James Griffiths noted, since 1999, the CCP has launched a concerted propaganda campaign to portray the peaceful movement as an evil cult. Within a month of its ban, almost 400 articles were published in state media attacking Falun Gong. Of course, the response has gone far beyond harshly worded editorials.

Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been sent to re-education camps. People wonder if hell is real. It is, and it exists here, on Earth. Hell comes in the form of a Chinese re-education facility. As Amnesty International reports, So-called re-education camps are places of brainwashing, torture, and punishment that hark back to the darkest hours of the Mao-era, when anyone suspected of not being loyal enough to the state or the Chinese Communist Party could end up in Chinas notorious labor camps.

In these facilities, theres little, if any, emphasis on actual education. Instead, those who resist or fail to show enough progress face punishments ranging from verbal abuse to food deprivation, solitary confinement, beatings and use of restraints and stress positions. The depravity experienced at these camps knows no limits. A number of unfortunate souls, unable to bear the mistreatment, have instead taken their own lives.

The painting A Tragedy in China, shows a grieving wife in front of her dead husband. She crosses her arms in a show of strength and resilience. Her tortured husband held on to his faith until the end. In his hand, he holds brainwashing papers that the Chinese regime uses to get Falun Gong practitioners to renounce their faith. (The Art of Zhen Shan Ren)

Can you blame them? For a Falun Gong practitioner who finds himself incarcerated, the chances of escape are minimal. Over the past 22 years, thousands of practitioners have been tortured to death in this campaign of terror. In Xinjiang, as I type this piece, genocide is occurring. But, with Falun Gong members, genocide has been occurring for more than two decades. In 2009, lest we forget, in both Spain and Argentina, five senior CCP officials were indicted for committing acts of genocide and torture on Falun Gong practitioners. More shockingly, tens of thousands of innocent practitioners have been murdered by the CCP. Many of these people have had their organs harvested.

In 2013, testifying on the abuses being carried out against Falun Gong members, Ethan Gutmann, an American writer, researcher, author, and senior research fellow in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, said that although there was no legal way for Falun Gong practitioners to be executed, he compared the persecution faced by Falun Gong practitioners in China to the Inquisition. He warned that innocent people just disappear.

Since Gutmanns chilling testimonial, the disappearances havent stopped. Far from it. In 2018, a panel of lawyers and experts, many of whom had been researching China-based atrocities for years, said they had clear evidence forced organ harvesting was still occurring, and that imprisoned Falun Gong members appeared to be the principal source of organs for forced harvesting.

Why were these people butchered and brutalized? Why are Falun Gong members, to this very day, singled out for the most inhumane punishments imaginable? Because they dared to speak the truth; they dared to promote the ideas of peace and unity; and they dared to question the brutal motives of the Chinese regime.

Today, lets remember the brave men and women who have lost their lives and the brave souls who continue to fight the good fight. Those who have left this world may have fallen, but they arent forgotten.

John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. His work has been published by the likes of The New York Post, Sydney Morning Herald, The American Conservative, National Review, The Public Discourse, and other respectable outlets. Hes also a columnist at Cointelegraph.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
They Are Our Enemies: Rep. Roys Bill Seeks to Block CCP Members From Buying US Land Over National Security

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) says that his proposal to block members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from acquiring land in the United States is necessary to protect U.S. national and economic security.

The legislation (pdf), named the Securing Americas Land from Foreign Interference Act, was introduced on July 9.

Roy told The Epoch Times that the measure would prevent individuals with links to the CCP from exploiting vulnerabilities to the detriment of U.S. national security and interests, through the purchase of public or private land.

There have been a number of disturbing stories in the recent years  where weve seen the land being acquired in the United States of America by Chinese interests  and very obvious ties to the Chinese Communist Party, he said.

In general terms, the Chinese Communist Party, not only are they not our friend, they are our enemies and we ought to treat them as such. I dont believe that we should be allowing the Chinese to be acquiring significant amounts of real estate in the United States to our detriment.

The legislation follows concerns from lawmakers and experts last year over a proposed Chinese wind farm project in West Texas. Critics said the Chinese project could be used as a cover for espionage and to disrupt the states power grid.

The acquisition was reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which is chaired by the Treasury Department, and the panel found that the Blue Hills Wind development in southwest Texass Val Verde County doesnt currently pose a national security threat. However, an expert familiar with the project in Texas previously told The Epoch Times that there are a number of potential concerns with regard to Chinese control over the roughly 140,000 acres of land.

The proposed wind farm site is about 30 miles from the U.S.Mexico border and about 70 miles from Laughlin Air Force Base, the U.S. Air Forces largest pilot training facility.

Spurred by these concerns, Texas lawmakers earlier this year approved legislation that would ban individuals or companies connected with China, Iran, North Korea, or Russia from entering into contracts related to the states critical infrastructure. It was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott on June 18 and took effect immediately.

In a release accompanying his legislation, Roy said data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that foreign investors control nearly 30 million acres of U.S. farmlandroughly the size of Ohio. Texas has the second-highest amount of foreign ownership, with 3 million acres under foreign control.

Cows stand in a field on a cattle ranch near Eldorado, Texas, on April 16, 2021. (Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images)

The Republican lawmaker told The Epoch Times that any foreign acquisition of U.S. land, by the CCP in particular, should be a cause for concern, as owners will then be able to control that land and how that land is being used.

I certainly dont want to see significant foreign ownership of American interests even from allies, much less the Chinese Communist Party, Roy said. Sovereignty is a wonderful thing  and thats part of why we need to secure our border. Thats part of why we should we need to be not just suspicious of but pretty opposed to significant, if any acquisition of our assets here in this country, by the Chinese and the Chinese Communist Party.

Roy stressed the importance of maintaining control of the production of American resources for our own well-being in our own communities.

The United States must not rely upon those who have different political regimes, different interests, ones that we cannot control through our republican form of government, he said.

There is one United States of America, we fought a war in order to create ourselves, we have fought such wars in order to fend off tyranny. It is my belief that we need to preserve and protect this great country, along with those who are allies who believe what we believe.

But you know, while the Chi-comms [Chinese communists] are around, murdering the Uyghurs and going around enforcing the ridiculous policies of child extermination and limitations on how many children you can have and other horrors against humanity, forgive me for not wanting to subject Americans to their Chinese Communist Party ways in any form from national security, economic security, or otherwise.
Secessionist, Border Realignment Movements Gaining Traction in US

The American Civil War is often thought of as being the deciding historical factor putting to rest any future ambition of individual or groups of states wanting to secede from the union.

Well over a century later, the idea of secession appears far from settled in the minds of millions of AmericansDemocrats and Republicans alike.

In fact, secession mindedness has been gaining ground following the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, which showed the nation to be more politically divided than ever.

A newly released poll found that two-thirds (66 percent) of Republicans living in southern states, including Texas and Florida, would approve of seceding from the United States to join a union of southern states.

That number is up from 50 percent from a similar poll conducted earlier this year.

Among southern Democrats, 20 percent are in favor of breaking away and forming a new country, according to the latest poll by YouGov and Bright Line Watch of 2,750 Americans.

For Daniel Miller, president of the Texas Nationalist Movement, founded in 2005, the poll numbers are revealing but not surprising.

Similar polls conducted in the Lone Star State have also shown a willingness among Texans to leave the union and establish their own nationa Texit, if you will.

You look at the size of our movementwe are literally the largest political advocacy organization in the state with over 400,000 members, Miller told The Epoch Times in a phone interview.

At the very core of the states secessionist movement is the belief that Texas is past the breaking point in terms of dealing with a liberal Washington establishment and its unfavorable policies regarding border control, immigration, culture, and finance, Miller said.

We are being crushed by 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations every single day. What we want is a basic fundamental right of self-governance. Texans want to be able to create policies that cant be overridden [by Washington politicians], Miller said. That is what this movement is all about.

Throughout his speaking engagements, Miller said, I couldnt find anyone that would vote to join the union.

Miller said Texas House Bill 1359 would have allowed Texans to vote in a referendum on the question of whether the state should leave the union and establish an independent republic. The bill died in committee.

In the aftermath, the Texas Nationalist Movement has been quietly recruiting secessionist-minded candidates to run in the 2022 primary.

The organization is also working to garner 80,000 signatures necessary to petition for a non-binding advisory ballot vote on the Texit proposal. The measure would need a simple majority to pass.

Miller, however, said it would be up to the newly configured legislature to put the next steps in place for full withdrawal.

This is not a mother may I? movement, he said. If the federal government needed a new motto, its one size fits none.'

The Calexit movement in California is another breakaway effort whose goal is to divide the rural portions of the state from the coastal and liberal bastions to create the 51st state.

In Arizona, the liberal-led Baja Arizona movement in 2011 sought to split the state into two separate states over the increasing partisan divide between the more conservative north and liberal southern areas.

The non-binding initiative failed to gather the required number of signatures to place the measure on the 2012 election ballot.

Other lesser known separatist movements in the United States have sprung up in states such as Vermont, Hawaii, and Alaska, though not all currently active movements desire secession from the United States.

The Greater Idaho movement, for example, seeks a political merger of the rural eastern and southern counties in Oregon with neighboring conservative Idaho.

After Trump was elected the first time, in January 2017 Oregonians submitted a petition to place secession from the U.S. on the state ballot, and were only convinced to retract the petition by death threats, according to a Greater Idaho statement to The Epoch Times.

One of our concerns is that after an economic depression, or after a more muscular Republican is elected president, conditions might deteriorate to the point that Oregon may choose to secede from the U.S. Eastern and southern Oregon certainly wouldnt want to join northwestern Oregon in such an adventure, because our counties belong with Idaho.

The Cascadia secession movement, which proposes a union of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia in Canada as a single bioregion, in Oregon is broadly supported, and held back by the normalcy bias of people expecting the future to look like the present, the Greater Idaho statement added.

We admit that if the border of Oregon and Idaho were relocated as we propose, that northwestern Oregon would be more likely to be able to secede from the U.S., but thats a chance were willing to take because our counties certainly dont want to be stuck with [liberal] Portland.

The organization added, We are confident that we will convince Idaho to accept our counties. Congress usually approves interstate compacts approved by both blue and red state[s]. We expect that the chances of the Greater Idaho movement being successful [will] depend entirely on whether we are able to convince northwestern Oregon to let our counties go.

According to Hans A. von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, which promotes conservative public policies, the question of state secession was settled by the Civil War.

However, while border realignments between states are within the realm of congressional approval, he said, the practical difficulties are so great that they are unlikely to occur.

Regarding state secession, its not an area where weve been keeping our fingers on recent activity, von Spakovsky said.

In West Virginia, state Rep. Gary Howell, a Republican, is sponsoring a resolution inviting conservative Virginia counties to dissolve their borders and join West Virginia.

Such a Vexit measure would require the approval of both states legislatures. Howell added that the benefits of the proposal are many.

You can elect every liberal you want and have the liberal utopia you want, he said regarding the liberal counties in Virginia.

There wont be anybody standing in their way. This is a very serious offer to them. We have looked at the numbers. We want Virginia to make an actual request and hold a referendum in all counties [involved]. If they dont make the ask, [the counties] have to be released from Virginia in some form.

Youve got cities in the western part of Virginia saying, Were done with you, Howell added. Is [Vexit] unlikely to happen? Probably. Its a long shot, but the odds are not zero.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, responds to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) during a congressional hearing in Washington on June 20, 2021. (J. Scott Applewhite/Pool/Getty Images)

Sen. Paul Clashes Anew With Fauci Over NIH Funding to Wuhan Lab: Gain of Function Research Was Going On

Dr. Anthony Fauci and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), also a doctor, clashed anew during a congressional hearing on Tuesday, accusing each other of lying.

In what has become a regular occurrence on Capitol Hill, the pair faced off over whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) provided money to researchers in Wuhan, China, to conduct gain of function research.

Dr. Fauci, as you are aware, it is a crime to lie to Congress, Paul told the longtime head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is part of the NIH, during a Senate hearing in Washington.

On your last trip to our committee, on May 11, you stated that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. And yet gain of function research was done entirely in the Wuhan institute by Dr. Shi and was funded by the NIH, Paul said.

The senator then entered into the record a 2017 article that listed a number of authors, including Peter Daszak, president of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, and Dr. Shi Zhengli of the Wuhan lab. The article relayed how Chinese researchers had discovered a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses and that the pool had provided new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus.

Paul noted that the papers authors listed funding from Faucis agency and the NIH as supporting their work, and that the work the scientists described amounted to gain of function.

In this paper, she took two bat coronavirus genes, spike genes, and combined them with a SARS-related backbone to create new viruses that are not found in nature. These lab-created viruses were then to shown to replicate in humans, he said of the experiments, adding that they intended to create novel, artificial viruses able to infect human cells.

The NIH paused funding for gain of function research of concern in 2014, a pause that lasted for five years, but the agency failed to recognize that the Wuhan work met the definition of gain of function, Paul added, citing Richard Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University.

Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement? Paul asked.

A sign is displayed behind Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) speaks to Dr. Anthony Fauci in Washington on July 20, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

A sign is displayed behind Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) as he speaks at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office Building in Washington on July 20, 2021. (Stefani Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

Sen. Paul, I have never lied before the Congress and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function, Fauci claimed.

Sen. Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly, and I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about, he added.

Paul read the NIHs definition of gain of function, and accused Fauci of dancing around this because youre trying to obscure responsibility for four million people dying around the world from a pandemic.

If the point that you are making is that the grant was funded as a sub-award from EcoHealth to Wuhan created SARS-CoV-2, thats where you are getting, Fauci said, visibly irate. I totally resent the lie that you are now propagating senator. Because if you look at viruses that were used in the experiments that were given in the annual reports that were published in the literature, it is molecularly impossible.

No ones saying those viruses caused the pandemic. What were alleging is that gain of function research was going on in that lab, and NIH funded it. You cant get away from it, it meets your definition, and you are obfuscating the truth, Paul said.

You are implying that what we did was responsible for the deaths of individual[s]. I totally resent that and if anybody is lying here, senator, it is you, Fauci responded, ending the exchange.

Fauci has been pressed previously on what some critics say are misleading or false statements offered before Congress.

Fauci in 2012 described the type of work later done at the Wuhan lab as gain of function research, or enhancement of a viruss transmissibility, adaptability, or pathogenicity.

That description appears to contradict the testimony that Paul described as false, House Oversight Ranking Member James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, wrote to Fauci last month.

Grant documents show that the NIH gave more than $800,000 to the lab in Wuhan, which is situated just blocks from where COVID-19 first appeared in late 2019.

The P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images)

Bats in a cage at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan in Chinas central Hubei Province in a 2017 video. (Screenshot)

Internal emails made public in June showed the NIH sent $826,777 between fiscal years 2014 and 2019, though Fauci told members of Congress that the NIH sent just $600,000 during that timeframe.

NIAID told The Epoch Times in an email that the $826,777 was what was budgeted while just $600,000 was actually spent. There is no indication in the emails that any of the money was not spent.

These new documents show that funding for the Wuhan Institute was greater than the public has been told, Tom Fitton, president of the watchdog Judicial Watch, which obtained the emails, said in a statement. That it has taken a year and a federal lawsuit to get this first disclosure on COVID and Wuhan is evidence of cover-up by Faucis agency.

In another set of emails, obtained by Buzzfeed News, Hugh Auchincloss, a top Fauci aide, told the doctor last year that a paper he had sent over says the experiments were performed before the gain of function pause but have since been reviewed and approved by NIH.

Not sure what that means since Emily is sure that no Coronavirus work bas gone through the P3[CO] framework. She will try to determine if we have any distant ties to this work abroad, Auchincloss said.

Auditors from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector generals office announced in mid-June that they are investigating whether the NIH properly managed the grants that funded Chinas controversial work.
A group of Chinese have raised concerns over a performance, Lake Honghu, coming to the Sydney Opera House on Nov. 4, 2018, calling it part of the Chinese Communist Party's strategy to wield soft power and exert influence in Australia. A poster of Lake Honghu (L) on a fridge in an Asian grocery store in Hurstville, NSW on Oct. 23, 2018. (R) A photo of the Sydney Opera House in Sydney, Australia, in 2018. (L): Mimi Nguyen Ly/ (R): Loritta Liu/The Epoch Times)

Soft Power: the CCP Uses Chinas Traditional Culture for Propaganda

A country with strong soft power can easily spread its ideology and values, thus able to control and manipulate global public opinion, said a December 2007 China Central TV report. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) considers the ability to spread its culture of violence in the form of art to be a pivotal factor in its soft power campaigns.

According to the Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party, the CCP replaces Chinese traditional culture with its Party culture of deceit, malice, and struggle in order to maintain its tyranny. At the same time, it puts up superficial cultural manifestations as a facade to deceive people and increase its soft power globally.

Establishing China culture centers in countries around the world is a project headed by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. A document states that 34 provincial agencies are tasked with setting up cultural centers to promote Chinese traditional and modern culture. The project has the goal of reaching 30 countries or cities, such as Singapore, Fiji, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, Luxembourg, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Laos, Sydney, Kairo, Malta, Mexico, and Copenhagen.

Performing arts are one of the ways it spreads this repackaged culture by altering age-old traditional legends and lyrics of ancient folk songs.

Here are some examples:

The Singing Legend Liu Sanjie

One example of this repackaged culture is the 1,300-year-old legend of Liu Sanjie, a beautiful and intelligent young girl whose singing captured peoples hearts. The legend was insidiously altered by the Party to depict hatred using a musical movie and stage performances, which made Liu the leader of the oppressed peasant class. In the modified versions, her songs promoted violent struggle against the oppressor classthe land owners.

Although banned during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), this version of Liu Sanjie was brought back to center stage both inside and outside China.

One Chinese language website promoting communist ideology claims that the CCP version of the Liu Sanjie legend is the worlds most influential musical and that it reminds people to not forget the blood and tears of class struggle; and that Liu Sanjies songs were like the fire of hatred burning from the bottom of her heart.

The Epoch Times has obtained several documents, issued by various Chinese regime agencies, detailing their accomplishments in exporting culture via the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as One Belt, One Road).

In 2018, the Guangxi Provincial Department of Culture sent eight performing troops to perform a musical about Liu Sanjie to a number of countries linked by the BRI, including Singapore, Macao, Israel, Turkey, Spain, and Croatia. Another document shows that the musical was performed in Singapore for an audience of 6,000 in 2018. During the 2019 Chinese New Year, it was performed in the Philippines.

Guangxi Province, where Liu Sanjie originated, is responsible for opening culture centers in Vietnam and Laos.

Red Troops on Lake Honghu

The revolutionary opera Red Troops on Lake Honghu tells the story of a newly formed CCP organizing militia groups in the Lake Honghu area of Hubei to fight the Kuomintang army during the Chinese civil war in the 1930s. These communist militias became the Red Army, and everywhere it went, large numbers of civilians were slaughtered, yet the opera glorifies its origins.

When the CCP sent the opera to Australia in November 2018, the name was shortened to Lake Honghu.

The Australian Values Alliance, which consists of mainly Australian Chinese, issued a statement opposing the performance. The statement said the performance represents a new attempt by the Chinese government to introduce soft power to influence Australia. The letter added that the opera presented many revolutionary songs that glorify the Red Army. We all know that the Red Army killed massively during the Long March especially targeting the landowners, many of whom were innocent peasants.

The Red Detachment of Women

This Chinese revolutionary ballet is also one of the eight model theatrical pieces. The storys lead character is a peasant girl who escapes imprisonment by a rogue landlord and joins the red detachment (a CCP army unit for women only) during the early years of the communist revolution. The story takes place in Hainan, the largest island in the South China Sea.

A scene from the Red Detachment of Women, a CCP propaganda ballet performance. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration)

Its been performed on international stages over the past decade including in Melbourne, Australia in February 2017. A report describes the ballet as military and martial, costumes for the ballet are military and the props are overwhelmingly martial: pistols, rifles, knives, machetes. Rarely can the Victorian Arts Centre have housed such an arsenal. Local Chinese, Tibetans, and Vietnamese held protests outside the theater. According to the same report, the protesters held posters and banners proclaiming the importance of protecting Australian values in Australia, denouncing violence and hatred, and demanding the fascist ballet to go back to China.

The red ballet drew a similar response when it was performed in Washington D.C. in 2011.

The White-Haired Girl

For hundreds of years, Chinese in the north-eastern province of Hebei believed in the existence of a saint who lived in the mountains, possessed superpowers, helped good people, and punished the bad. Because of her long white hair, she was called the white-haired saint and locals built temples to worship her.

In the mid-1940s, the CCP stole the story about the saint, changed the lyrics of popular folk songs, and produced an opera called White-haired Girl. It became a story about a peasant girl battling a wicked landlord with the help of the Red Army. In this communist account, she was enslaved and raped by the landowner but escaped to the mountains, hid in a cave until her hair turned white. At the time, the opera was seen as being very effective in erasing superstition from peoples minds and inciting hatred of the land-owning class.

The opera was later adapted into a ballet, which became one of the eight model theatrical pieces approved for performance during the Cultural Revolution, when even performances about Liu Sanjie were banned.

Disrupting Performances of True Traditional Culture

While using the facade of showcasing tradition, the CCP spares no effort in preventing other independent performing arts companies from presenting true traditional culture to the world.

The CCPs main target is the Shen Yun Performing Arts, a premier Chinese classical dance company based in New York. Prior to the pandemic, Shen Yun toured the world for six months each year.

Shen Yun Performing Arts curtain call at Lincoln Center, New York, on March 11, 2020. (Edward Dye/The Epoch Times)

The Shen Yun website explains the CCPs destruction of Chinese culture. Over its past 70 years of rule, the communist regime has treated traditional Chinese valuescentered on the idea of harmony between heaven and earthas a threat to its existence. And in its systematic campaigns like the Cultural Revolution, it has uprooted traditional beliefs and destroyed ancient treasuresbringing 5,000 years of civilization to the brink of extinction.

Only by being independent of the Chinese regime, can Shen Yun bring the essence of ancient tradition to stages around the world, meanwhile dogged by the CCPs interference.

A website by Leeshai Lemish, a Shen Yun MC since 2006, details 74 recorded cases of the CCP and its diplomatic missions interfering with Shen Yun shows around the world. These incidents occurred between 2007 and 2019 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, England, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Korea, Malaysia, Moldova, New Zealand, Romania, Russia, Scotland, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Netherlands, Ukraine, and United States.

One may wonder, why China is included in the list since Shen Yun is not allowed to perform in China.

Its because the Chinese police monitor mainlanders who purchase tickets for Shen Yun shows taking place outside the country, including Hong Kong; and they harass and, in some cases abduct, families of Shen Yun performers inside China.

Why does the CCP fear Shen Yun so much?

Lemish explains one of the reasons is that the CCP wants to portray itself as the protector of Chinese culture in a bid to legitimize its ruling status. So, it sends art troupes abroad to perform. However, Shen Yuns performances outshine the propaganda-filled CCP troupes. Thus, the CCP comes up with all kinds of tactics to sabotage Shen Yun.
The Starbucks logo is displayed in the window of a Starbucks Coffee shop in San Francisco on Jan. 24, 2019. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Starbucks Manager Quits Over Woke Culture That Led to Bullying, Division

Award-winning manager says companys anti-racist indoctrination led to choice between 'my morals, my values, my beliefsor my job'

Amanda Wannagat was an exemplary Starbucks store manager.

Wannagat had repeatedly received accolades from the global coffee shop chain for her performance. New store managers would get sent to her store in Salt Lake City to learn how to do the job properly.

Despite solid career prospects and reasonable pay that supported her three children, she quit her job in June due to a toxic work environment that, she said, was the result of political indoctrination masked as anti-racism and other employee trainings.

I felt like I was in a cult and I was drinking the Kool-Aid, Wannagat told The Epoch Times via email.

She joined Starbucks in 2015 as a store manager and quickly became a manager trainer.

Wannagat said she recognized that most of the employees were left-leaning, if not political activists. But she thought that had nothing to do with the workplace. She believed the company to be admirable in many regards.

She noticed that the atmosphere of her workplace began to change around 2017 and especially in 2018, after an incident in Philadelphia when a manager called the police on two black men who refused to order anything and refused to leave when asked.

The company issued an apology, its CEO arranged a meeting with the two men, and the manager, reportedly, was to undergo unconscious bias training. At the time, the company had just started a new initiative called The Third Place.

The initiative was intended to make Starbucks a warm, welcoming environment, where anyone who crosses the threshold feels like  theyre welcome, one executive said in a video that serves as part of the programs training materials that was obtained by The Epoch Times.

The company produced sophisticated quarterly training routines, with videos, slides, and worksheets. It invited speakers who would record talks on various subjects related to the improvement of company culture and professionalism. A group of managers would undergo the training and then go through it with their staff in small groups or individually.

The first several training sessions were rather innocuous, Wannagat said.

But after the Philadelphia incident, the program started to include training with an apparent political bend, she said.

In fall 2018, one training session explained that Starbucks staff needed to learn a special way to deal with LGBTQIA-plus people, according to Wannagat.

Rather than getting on with their job, the training encouraged employees to lean into discomfort and start a conversation with such customers, discussing issues such as their sex, particularly when a misunderstanding causes a tense situation.

To Wannagat, engaging strangers on personal aspects of their sex seemed to be an inappropriate policy for a company.

Another training session, this one in 2019, asked employees to understand their hidden biases, which, in her view, also waded into personal territory into which its inappropriate for a corporation to pry.

In 2020, the company allowed staff to wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts after protests and riots following the death of George Floyd, a black man, during his arrest by a police officer. Starbucks didnt allow any other apparel donning political slogans. The Black Lives Matter movement was started by self-described Marxist organizers with the aim to press for political change as a solution to incidents in which police officers killed black people.

Wannagat said she was required to distribute Black Lives Matter T-shirts to her staff, but she never wore one herself and continued to try to steer clear of politics at her job.

Around that time, the staff learned that one of their colleagues, who was unable to work due to becoming infected with COVID-19, said something online to the effect that all lives matter, Wannagat said.

My staff decided to bully her inside the workplace, as well as outside the workplace, she said.

When Wannagat found out about the situation, she passed the matter on to Starbucks Ethics and Compliance Division for an investigation.

Around September 2020, the results came in. Several employees were to receive final corrective actionsa final warning before being fired. Wannagat was also tasked with going over the companys retaliation and harassment policies with the staff.

After that, my staff got really aggressive, she said.

The employees became uncooperative, and they were obviously upset with her.

Not only did they consider the results of the investigation unfair, but they also suspected that Wannagat didnt believe in the Black Lives Matter movement.

The situation only escalated from there.

Anti-Racist Company

In January, managers were called in for another Third Place training session, this time based on a talk by Ibram X. Kendi, a history professor at Boston University, where he founded the Center for Antiracist Research.

He was to help the company embark on a journey to become an anti-racist organization, as one executive noted in one of the training videos.

In his talk, Kendi argued that the fundamental core of racial division is a disagreement over what causes racial differences.

How is it, he asked, that black people were 3.2 times more likely to die of COVID-19? In his view, there could be only two explanations, one racist and one anti-racist.

The racist person would ask whether black people, on average, were less likely to follow COVID-19 mitigation measures, such as social distancing. That person would also ask whether black people tended to have more comorbidities due to a lack of self-care or perhaps have some genetic predisposition that makes them more vulnerable to the disease.

All such ideas suggest theres something wrong with black people, he said, and as such, they portray black people as inferior, which suggests some other race must be superior in some regard.

Black people have been two times, Hispanics 2.3 times, and native Americans 2.4 times more likely than white people to die of COVID-19 when adjusted for age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

I define a racist idea as any idea that suggests a racial group is superior or inferior to another racial group in any way, Kendi said.

An anti-racist idea, he said, is any idea that suggests that theres nothing wrong or right with any racial group. Such ideas would prompt questions about whether theres something wrong with the conditions, something wrong with policies, something wrong with practices, something wrong with society.

He acknowledged that most Americans today and historically have actually argued both. But he rejected such a proposition, portraying the two ideas as conflicting.

Kendi framed the issue of police killings in the same fashion.

Why is it that black people are the victims of police violence at three times the rates of white people every year on average? he asked.

He argued that people pushing racist ideas would place the onus on black people to act right around the police, while those engaging anti-racist ideas would say, Its actually the result of some larger structural issues.

If somebody would argue that they arent racist, they would be automatically associating themselves with people in the present and the past who made such claims based on dishonest arguments, he suggested.

When people in todays time say that theyre not racist, theyre connecting with white supremacists who say that theyre not racist. Theyre connecting with Jim Crow segregationists who are like, Its perfectly separate but equal in Mississippi. Were not racist. Theyre connecting with people who lynched black people by the thousands who were like, Were not racist. These people broke the law. And were just following through with the law. Theyre connecting with slaveholders, who said, Were not racist. This slavery is Gods law. Slavery is natures law. Slavery is an American law. Were just following the law. Or were just following nature. You know, indeed, black people are the cursed descendants of Ham. So, were not doing anything wrong, Kendi said.

He also said that the way to enact anti-racist policies is to put different folks in positions of power. Starbucks should consider making it easier to be anti-racist, Kendi advised.

One of the ways we do that is to provide incentives to be anti-racist.

While looked upon as a guru to progressives, Kendis ideas have been rejected by both conservative and classical liberal scholars.

The major issue with what Kendi says is that it is an either/or fallacy. He presents the problem as either a matter of culture or a matter of policy. This takes the onus off of people of color completely, which I think is a mistake, Erec Smith, associate professor of Rhetoric and Composition at York College of Pennsylvania, told The Epoch Times.

Another issue is that he never gives an example of a racist policy relevant to Starbucks or beyond. This is because that explanation would surely echo one of his most famous sentiments that he doesnt seem to share in these videos: The only solution to past discrimination is present discrimination.

Kendi also failed to address the likelihood that racial divisions could have different causes altogether, such as overemphasis on racial group differences.

Ive been working on de-emphasizing racial difference for most of my life, which makes current anti-racism all the more frustrating, Smith said.

Kendis representative didnt respond to a request for comment by press time.

Getting Worse

If Starbucks anti-racist push was supposed to alleviate racial tensions, Wannagat saw no evidence of thatjust the opposite.

It created a problem. It created a wedge, she said.

It was apparent to Wannagat that some staffers started to feel uncomfortable around each other.

I didnt see a divide along race in my store until then, she said.

Turning the workplace political turned up the heat to such an extent that Wannagat had to reprimand her staff for ignoring customers and doing malicious things to the drinks of people who came donning political messages with which they disagreed.

Eventually, Wannagat decided to take a leave of absence and escalate the matter up the corporate ladder again.

The corporation sent somebody to address staff retaliation against Wannagat. A meeting was arranged with the most aggravated staffers and her, but they wouldnt back down.

They screamed at me, and they yelled at me, she said.

In June, she decided to leave.

Ive had a really great job, and I just won an award in December of 2019. And 2020 came along and just crashed everything down and really put me in a spot where I had to choose between my morals, my values, my beliefs, or my job, she said.

Starbucks didnt respond to a request for comment by press time.
Container ships and oil tankers wait in the ocean outside the Port of Long Beach-Port of Los Angeles complex, amid the coronavirus disease pandemic, in Los Angeles, Calif., on April 7, 2021. (Lucy Nicholson/File/Reuters)

Stranded and Shattered Seafarers Threaten Global Supply Lines

LONDON/SINGAPOREIve seen grown men cry, says Captain Tejinder Singh, who hasnt set foot on dry land in more than seven months and isnt sure when hell go home.

We are forgotten and taken for granted, he says of the plight facing tens of thousands of seafarers like him, stranded at sea as the Delta variant of the coronavirus wreaks havoc on shore.

People dont know how their supermarkets are stocked up.

Singh and most of his 20strong crew have criss-crossed the globe on an exhausting odyssey: from India to the United States than on to China, where they were stuck off the congested coast for weeks waiting to unload cargo. He was speaking to Reuters from the Pacific Ocean as his ship now heads to Australia.

They are among about 100,000 seafarers stranded at sea beyond their regular stints of typically 39 months, according to the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS), many without even a days break on land. Another 100,000 are stuck on shore, unable to board the ships they need to earn a living on.

The Delta variant devastating parts of Asiahome to many of the worlds 1.7 million commercial seafarershas prompted many nations to cut off land access to visiting crews, in some cases even for medical treatment. Just 2.5 percent of seafarersone in every 40have been vaccinated, the ICS estimates.

The United Nations describes the situation as a humanitarian crisis at sea and says governments should class seafarers as essential workers. Given ships transport around 90 percent of the worlds trade, the deepening crisis also poses a major threat to the supply chains we rely on for everything from oil and iron to food and electronics.

Bulk carrier master Singh, from northern India, is not optimistic of going ashore anytime soon; his last stint at sea lasted 11 months. He said his crew of Indians and Filipinos were living out of cabins measuring about 15 feet by 6 feet.

Being at sea for a very long time is tough, he says, adding that he had heard reports of seafarers killing themselves on other ships.

The most difficult question to answer is when kids ask, Papa when you are coming home?' he said from his vessel, which was recently carrying coal.

India and the Philippines, both reeling from vicious waves of COVID-19, account for more than a third of the worlds commercial seafarers, said Guy Platten, secretary general of the ICS, which represents over 80 percent of the worlds merchant fleet.

Migrant workers line up to board a bus to Amritsar railway station to take a special train to Bettiah in Bihar state to return to their hometowns after the government eased restrictions imposed as a preventive measure against the COVID-19, at a resort on the outskirts of Amritsar, India, on May 21, 2020. (Narinder Nanu /AFP via Getty Images)

We are seriously disturbed that a second global crew change crisis is looming large on the horizon, he told Reuters, referring to a months-long stretch in 2020 when 200,000 seafarers on ships were unable to be relieved.

People Are Desperate

In a snapshot of the situation, this month almost 9 percent of merchant sailors have been stuck aboard their ships beyond their contracts expiry, up from just over 7 percent in May, according to data compiled by the Global Maritime Forum non-profit group from 10 ship managers together responsible for over 90,000 seafarers.

The maximum allowed contract length is 11 months, as stipulated by a UN seafaring convention.

In normal times, around 50,000 seafarers rotate on and 50,000 rotate off ships per month on average but the numbers are now a fraction of that, according to industry players, though there are no precise figures.

The new crew crisis stems from restrictions imposed by major maritime nations across Asia including South Korea, Taiwan, and China, which are home to many of the worlds busiest container ports. Requirements range from mandatory testing for crews who come from or have visited certain countries, to outright bans on crew changes and berthing operations.

Asia really is struggling and the only countries you can go about routine crew changes to some extent are Japan and Singapore, said Rajesh Unni, chief executive of Synergy Marine Group, a leading ship manager responsible for 14,000 seafarers.

A cargo ship loaded with containers leaving a port in Haikou in Chinas southern Hainan province, on May 17, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The issue is that we have one set of people who desperately want to go home because they have finished their tenure, and another set of people onshore that are desperate to get back onboard to earn a living.

Global Brands, Beware

The crisis has led to almost half of commercial seafarers either considering leaving the industry or being unsure whether they would stay or go, according to a survey by the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF) in March.

This suggests a looming labor crunch that would strain the worlds 50,000strong merchant shipping fleet and threaten the integrity of global supply chains.

A shortage of container ships carrying consumer products and logjams at ports around the world are already rippling through the retail industry, which has seen freight rates spike to record levels, driving up prices for goods.

You dont have enough crew anyway. The shipping industry was working on a very lean model, said Mark ONeil, CEO of leading ship manager Columbia Shipmanagement and also president of the international association for ship and crew managers.

But now we have all of these problems and we have a large number of seafarers taken out of that available crewing pool, he said, adding that the result could be vessels unable to sail.

Stephen Cotton, general secretary of the ITF, said seafarers were being pushed to their physical and mental limits.

Some in the industry estimate that as many as 25 percent fewer seafarers are joining vessels than pre-pandemic, he added. We have warned that global brands need to be ready for the moment some of these tired and fatigued people finally snap.

Shots for Seafarers

While COVID-19 infections in India have retreated from their peak, countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Indonesia are grappling surging cases and imposing new lockdowns.

A street is blocked off as part of COVID-19 coronavirus measures in the city of Ruili which borders Myanmar, in Chinas southwestern Yunnan province on July 5, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

If it gets worse, which it could well do, or if Myanmar, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ukraineother crewing centersexperience the same problem, then the wheels would really come off, ONeil added.

The gravity of the assessment was echoed by Esben Poulsson, chairman of the board of the ICS.

In my 50 years in the maritime industry, the crew change crisis has been unprecedented in the devastating impact it has had on seafarers around the world, he told his board in June.

Most seafarers come from developing nations that have struggled to secure adequate vaccination supplies, leaving many in the maritime industry low on the priority list.

Governments with significant access to vaccines have a moral responsibility towards seafarers, said the ICSs Platten.

They must follow the lead of the United States and the Netherlands and vaccinate non-native crews delivering goods to their ports. They must prioritize seafarer vaccination, he added.

A total of 55 member countries of the UN shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), have classed seafarers as essential workers, said David Hammond, chief executive of the charitable organization Human Rights at Sea.

The IMO said the latest figures showed the numbers had risen to 60 member countries and two associate members.

This classification would allow seafarers to travel more freely and return to their homes, and give them better access to vaccines.

Hammond called on all other nations to follow suit.

Collectively, the global shipping industry is part of a $14 trillion maritime supply chain that cannot seemingly look after its 1.7 million seafarers, he added.

By Jonathan Saul and Roslan Khasawneh
Iraqi security forces inspect the site of an explosion in Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq, on July 19, 2021. (Wissam Al-Okaili/Reuters)

Suicide Attack in Iraqs Sadr City Kills at Least 35, Wounds Dozens

BAGHDADA suicide bomber killed at least 35 people and wounded dozens in a crowded market in the Sadr City neighborhood of Baghdad on Monday, the eve of the Eid al-Adha festival, security and hospital sources said.

More than 60 people were wounded, a police source said.

The ISIS terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attack, the groups Nasheer news agency said on Telegram. It said one of its terrorists blew up his explosive vest among the crowds.

Hospital sources said the death toll could rise as some of the wounded were in critical condition.

People pick up debris at the site of an explosion in Sadr City district of Baghdad, Iraq, on July 19, 2021. (Wissam Al-Okaili/Reuters)

Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi held an urgent meeting with top security commanders to discuss the attack, the premiers office said in a brief statement.

President Barham Salih posted a tweet saying: With an awful crime they target civilians in Sadr city on the eve of Eid  We will not rest before terrorism is cut off by its roots.

In April, the Sunni Muslim terrorist group ISIS claimed responsibility for a car bomb attack on a market in Sadr City, Baghdads main Shiite Muslim neighborhood, that killed four people and wounded 20.

ISIS also claimed responsibility for a bomb attack last January that killed more than 30 in the crowded Tayaran Square market in central BaghdadIraqs first big suicide bombing for three years.

Large bomb attacks were once an almost daily occurrence in the Iraqi capital but have dwindled since an ISIS invasion of northern and western Iraq was defeated in 2017.

By Baghdad newsroom and Alaa Swilam and Nayera Abdallah
The Future of Work Is Really About the Future of Talent

At tech companies, we use the term "product-market fit" to define the successful stage when a product meets the needs of a specific market. We're about to see a new concept emerge: "employee-workplace fit."

In 2020, the global pandemic forced every single company in the world to make major changes to its operating structures and processes in a matter of weeks or months. It was a dramatic change and a challenging year, but technology companies, by and large, weathered the storm.

Many companies in traditional industries like banking, retail, travel and manufacturing are planning to go back to business as usual. This means daily commutes and employees in the office, five days a week. But technology companies that are small or mid-market are taking more measured steps. They recognize that the world has changed and wonder if this moment in time can help us build a better work architecture for the future.

Companies planning their future of work are considering three models: traditional, remote-first and hybrid. The traditional model is the one most familiar to us. It entails five (four if youre lucky) days in a corporate headquarters or regional office. Historically, cities like San Francisco, New York and Boston have attracted talent and maintained their dominance because of network effects.

Mention remote-first companies, and people think of companies like Gitlab, Buffer, Automattic and Sketch. These companies hire people who can work from anywhere (that the company is legally allowed to employ), with teams possibly gathering a few times a year.

Finally, hybrid work is a newly coined term that is oft-used but poorly defined. This model runs the gamut from traditional to remote-first. Nobody has figured out how hybrid companies should work, and some believe its just a bridge to a remote-first world.

Many companies are certain they will stick to their traditional or remote-first models because their cultures are too deeply rooted in them. However, if your company is exploring the hybrid model, there are several key considerations. Spoiler alert: This is not a one-size-fits-all solution, but can help you align with what works best for your business.

Lets get one thing out of the way: Your workplace model will be heavily influenced by your ability to attract or retain talent. Movable Ink noticed that 60 percent of new hires in the past year dont live near its hubs in NYC and London. At tech companies, we use the term product-market fit to define the successful stage when a product meets the needs of a specific market. Similarly, were about to see a new concept emerge: employee-workplace fit.

Employees have particular needs or preferences, and the pandemic has created a unique marketplace of workplace models. A 40-something parent raising three kids in the suburbs will have different preferences than a 22-year-old college grad who needs training and wants to build a social life. The benefits of a hybrid workplace are myriad: It widens the talent pool beyond magnet cities and gives smaller companies a way to compete with large corporations, engages a diverse workforce that has chosen not to live in a magnet city, is more inclusive of employees trying to structure a workday, forces better playbooks for global expansion, orients companies to evaluate employees on outcomes rather than time in the office and decentralizes the risks surrounding a single geography. Employees today have unprecedented freedom of choice that should be recognized as we position our companies for success.

Related: How Covid-19 Changed the Way We Look at Hiring

Exceptional people and HR and operations teams are necessary to build the new hybrid workplace. Their focus is on a people-centered operating system. We think about three key areas.

Goal Setting and Measurement

One of the big reasons managers arent comfortable with remote employees is the fear that people arent doing their work and that they wont know if their direct reports are productive if they arent in the office. A Boston Consulting Group study of 12,000 professionals found that productivity during the pandemic remained the same or even improved slightly. Arguably, the real problem is that employees are working incredibly hard in areas that dont move the needle. This can be demotivating for the employee and frustrating for the manager.

In a hybrid workplace, it becomes essential to focus on outcomes rather than activities. Most companies have leaned on the crutch of the office and failed to develop this muscle. Putting a goal-setting framework like OKRs (objectives and key results) in place aligns the organization, creates transparency about progress and motivates people to understand how their work connects to the companys mission. It lets people better manage their time. It recognizes the star employees who make a significant impact over those who spend the most time in an office.

Related: 5 Tips for Aligning Your Remote Teams Goals

People Training and Enablement

Another concern is how to train new employees, especially if they have limited experience in the role. The traditional model requires new hires to learn things on the job by asking the people around them. This model has generally worked, but we never stopped to think about its limitations. Each manager may have developed his or her own custom onboarding and training, creating inconsistent learnings across the company.

The in-office model also fails when one has to think about hiring and ramping international hires. But guess what? Those new hires with zero work experience likely had a structured curriculum recently at university. A thorough and consistent onboarding plan and training department ensure that employees receive a consistent education about customers, products, and the business as a whole. This can be paired with more targeted apprenticeship and peer-based learning. If you dont have onboarding and training teams at your company, you should look to invest here.

Culture and Relationship Building

The last concern is probably the biggest one. We are all worried that culture will suffer and our employees wont forge relationships as easily. This is a legitimate issue, deserves the greatest thought, and is a challenge of the remote-first model. Be intentional about your time together in a shared workspace. The workspace is simply wherever a team assembles and could be your headquarters, a short-term co-working space, or even a hotel lobby when your team visits a client. If the bulk of your week is sitting in an office near co-workers, with headphones on, typing away, youre just working in parallel.

Interactive work is different. It means we actively engage on a topic, brainstorm, whiteboard, pick up non-verbal cues and solve new problems. Conversations drift, and breakthroughs happen. A lot (but not all) of creative work requires interaction, and this is the kind of work that benefits the most from teams meeting in real life. By focusing in-person time on creative activities, we make it possible for execution work to be done wherever the employee sees fit. And yes, some may choose to do execution work in an office.

To make this work, functional teams will have to figure out the right cadence to get together in person and structure their time effectively. There is no one-size-fits-all model. Some teams will meet twice a week or bi-weekly, others will meet for a few days a month and still, others may only need a quarterly gathering as most of their work is execution-oriented or in the field. What is important is that each team comes away with a shared, detailed understanding of its work and makes measurable progress towards its goals. Its also a chance to forge genuine relationships. We enjoy our work much more when we get to know the people with whom we work. Zoom and Slack, while excellent, can feel transactional. Making lunches, dinners, and other social events a part of these get-togethers helps build bonds.

Related: 5 Ways to Build Team Culture in a Remote World

None of this will be easy, but its essential, and there is no better time than now. Rethinking the workplace can remove the constraints of the past. Each of us has the opportunity to build a new work architecture that will scale our companies far into the future.
Billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson departs with his crew prior to boarding, for travel to the edge of space in Virgin Galactic's passenger rocket plane VSS Unity, near Truth or Consequences, N.M., on July 11, 2021. (Joe Skipper/Reuters)

The Simpsons Predicted Richard Bransons Space Trip

It appears that The Simpsons did it again by predicting billionaire Richard Branson's flight into space, and Virgin Atlantic published the evidence

Every time a relevant event occurs in the world, The Simpsons fans look for clues that the yellow family would have anticipated it. This time, the protagonist of a supposed premonition is Richard Bransons trip to space. The Virgin Atlantic Twitter account, owned by the British mogul, posted alleged evidence that the space odyssey had already been prophesied in the cartoon.

On July 11, Richard Bransons VMS Eve spacecraft took off from Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert. Upon reaching an altitude of 15 kilometers, the VSS Unity aircraft detached itself from the spacecraft and ascended to a height of 89 km, exceeding the point where the United States government locates the border between Earth and space, at 80 km.

After spending several minutes in orbit, VSS Unity successfully landed in New Mexico at 9:38 am local time, and the 71-year-old businessman was greeted by his three children and 200 other people.

The billionaire and five crew members were traveling on the VSS Unity plane, making it the first flight with passengers for his Virgin Galactic space tourism company.

Did The Simpsons Predict Richard Bransons Space Trip?

Of course, this was quite a historical milestone and a source of amazement for the world. Except for the creators and fans of The Simpsons.

The Virgin Atlantic company, which is part of the Virgin Group and is also owned by Richard Branson, published on its social networks what would be the proof that the yellow family predicted the tycoons space travel.

The airline shared an illustration taken from an episode of The Simpsons that shows a character very much like Branson floating inside what looks like a rocket ship.

The Simpsons predicted it, the company wrote.

The image, which is already viral on the internet, corresponds to The Burn and The Bees episode of season 20, where an astronaut appears enjoying zero gravity in a space shuttle. Of course, netizens could not help but notice the striking resemblance between the cartoon and Richard Branson in the flesh.

The first to notice the coincidence was Twitter user Aditya Kondawar, who shared the illustration of The Simpsons alongside a photo of Richard Branson during the trip for comparison.

How can The Simpsons show predict every damn thing? Kondawar wrote.

It Wouldnt Be Richard Bransons First Appearance on The Simpsons

Only Matt Groening and his team of creators could confirm if they had Richard Branson in mind when creating the viral image. Even if not the case, the fellow actor, producer and writer has appeared as a special guest on the animated series at least three times.

Maybe you remember Richard Bransons cameos in episodes like Loan-a Lisa, The War of Art and The Princess Guide.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a news conference to announce the annual International Religious Freedom Report at the State Department in Washington, on May 12, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

The State Department Should Recognize Chinas Genocide Against Falun Gong

Commentary

Secretary of State Antony Blinken should promptly act to include Falun Gong in the departments genocide determination citing China. New evidence, deemed credible by a dozen official U.N. human rights experts from various parts of the world, supports the finding that Beijing is extrajudicially putting to death large numbers of Falun Gong prisonersas well as some Uyghur Muslims, Tibetan Buddhists, and house Christiansin a depraved, if efficient, scheme to excise and sell their body organs.

This is not only unethical, but also threatens to upend the entire international human rights order. World pressure must be brought to bear to stop these hideous killings and persecution, and to stop organ harvesting for an on-demand transplant tourism industry.

In January, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo determined that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had been committing genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjianga determination that Blinken affirmed soon afterward.

Another Chinese community, Falun Gong, an offshoot of Buddhism comprising practitioners mainly from the majority Han ethnic group, is shown to be facing a genocidal threat. Two decades ago, Beijing banned Falun Gong as an evil cult and set out to eliminate it. Mounting evidence from a variety of respected sources leads to the irrefutable conclusion that Beijing is working to physically destroy part or all of Falun Gong. This meets the definition of genocide under international law.

Falun Gong was founded in China in 1992 by Li Hongzhi as a mind-body practice of spiritual exercises and meditation that was reported to have quickly drawn at least 70 million practitioners, according to the government, and up to 100 million by other estimates. The CCP, whose own membership was notably smaller, saw the popular group and its motto, truthfulness, compassion, and forbearance, as an ideological challenge beyond its control. In 1999, it banned Falun Gong and launched an unrelenting campaign of persecution against it.

Some practitioners were imprisoned and given long sentences; others were detained in secret black jails, or psychiatric institutions. Many were brutally tortured, and some reportedly disappeared after arrest. The practices public presence, typically of groups performing slow-moving exercises in parks, was crushed. Around the same time, Chinese doctors began performing organ transplants, and within a few years, stories began circulating that Chinese officials were excising vital organs for transplant from death row prisonersand Falun Gong prisoners of conscienceto sell to domestic and foreign patients at the burgeoning number of Chinese transplant hospitals.

As researcher Matthew Robertson documents in a Jamestown Foundation report, Beijing initially denied these accusations, then in April 2006 backtracked, stating that death-row prisoners were in fact a source for organs. Robertson marshals compelling evidence that Falun Gong detainees are among the victims. For example, he writes:

There is an extensive catalogue of telephone calls made to Chinese transplant hospitals by investigators outside China posing as potential patients, relatives of patients, and doctors. These investigators have elicited admissions from nurses and doctors that organs are available on demand. In a number of these calls, hospital personnel have stated that the organs come from practitioners of Falun Gong.

Robertson documents that transplant medical personnel and the CCP cadre persecuting Falun Gong are sometimes the very same person. He cites Dr. Zheng Shusen, a leading liver surgeon and vice-president of the China Medical Association, who advertises at the private hospital he and his wife founded, a specialty in short-notice, emergency organ transplants. Until 2017, Zheng also chaired the anti-Falun Gong Zhejiang Provincial Anti-Cult Association and, in his preface to a 2009 book, he wrote that Falun Gong is an evil religion, a virus, and a cancer.

Former Canadian secretary of state for Asia-Pacific David Kilgour (R) presents a revised report about forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China, while report co-author and international human rights lawyer David Matas looks on, in a file photo. (Matt Hildebrand/The Epoch Times)

In a series of detailed studies between 2006 and 2017, former Canadian Cabinet minister David Kilgour and other experts David Matas and Ethan Gutmann concluded that the source for most of the massive volume of organs for transplants is the killing of innocents: Uyghurs, Tibetans, House Christians and primarily, practitioners of the spiritually based set of exercises Falun Gong. Throughout the past 15 years, Beijing has strenuously denied such findings and created a cloud of controversy over them through an aggressive propaganda campaign. Among other things, it created and manipulated the transplant task force at the World Health Organization, as Robertson documentedthe same body accused of being deceived by China early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

A U.N. press release on June 14 finally puts to rest any lingering controversy. Stating that they were extremely alarmed, 12 leading U.N. human rights expertson torture, religious freedom, arbitrary detentions, and other relevant areascited credible information that China harvests body organs as a punishment targeting specific ethnic, linguistic, or religious minorities, including Falun Gong. According to the release, these minority detainees are reported to be subjected to blood tests and ultrasound exams, while other detainees are not. The results go into a living organ sources database that is used for matches, as demand dictates. This press statement is distinctive in that it reflects a consensus by a significant group of independent U.N. experts and was issued apart from any directive.

This alarm from the United Nations should shock our collective conscience, too. The State Department recently called for China to cease its campaign against Falun Gong practitioners and release those imprisoned due to their beliefs, but without pressure, its plea will fall on deaf ears.

Blinken should immediately direct his Department of Global Criminal Justice to review the U.N. experts findings and the extensive published reporting to make a Falun Gong genocide determination, along with appropriate sanctions. Congress should pass its own genocide resolution and a pending bipartisan bill to combat forced organ harvesting, sponsored by Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.), and Vicky Hartzler (R-Mo.), and Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Chris Coons (D-Del.).

If we dont act, China will be ushering in a brave new world thats more ghastly than even Aldous Huxleys imagined dystopia.

Nina Shea is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, where she directs the Center for Religious Freedom.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Tomato-Juice Tabbouleh: Old World Salad, New World Trick

A Montana farmer's secret to the best-ever tabbouleh

The world has its share of tabbouleh recipes. The bulgur and parsley salad from the Lebanese hill country has made the rounds, finding homes in many cultures, with countless regional variations. And I can improve all of them, as if by magic wand, thanks to a trick I learned from a farmer in Montana. Thousands of years of culinary evolution are no match for a farmer with a blender, and the creativity to put it to use.

Try the tomato juice trick with your favorite tabbouleh recipeor this one, if you dont have your own. (Ari LeVaux)

The tabbouleh innovation comes from the heart of tomato season, when the boxes are stacked high for market, and there is usually a pile of extra soft fruit that, by virtue of being absolutely perfectly unconditionally ripe, wont be transportable to market the next day. Or they could be days-old tomatoes brought home unsold. We are talking tomatoes that slice like water balloons, too juicy for salad. Or anything else except juice or soup. Or the best tabbouleh on Earth.

Leave it to my crafty culinary farmer friends to find ways of turning mountains of near-overripe product into the best dish youve ever tried.

Breaking Down Bulgur

The trick is to use extra-ripe tomatoes to rehydrate the bulgur. If you arent exactly sure what bulgur is, think wheat that hasnt been ground into flour. For many, this isnt an easy concept to comprehend. After all, if you take away wheat flour, you basically pull the rug out from under American cuisine. The bread, pizza, pasta, tortillas, cookies, pancakes, burger buns, and breakfast cereals we fashion from flour make it into practically every meal, from the thick gravy on the biscuit to the breading on the fish and chips.

Bulgur, cracked wheat grains. (Vladislav Noseek/Shutterstock)

While flour is everywhere, we rarely eat the seed itself. Anyone whos tried will probably agree the options are limited. You can cook wheat the way you would rice, but it just doesnt eat as well. Its crunchy even when overcooked, and wont stick together or hold sauce.

The problem with flour was that before precision equipment, it was impossible to grind. Bulgur, or cracked wheat grains, was an Old World compromise: Smashing and crushing was more manageable for the average Old World grain processor.

Bulgur cooks quickly into a pleasingly soft state. It holds together, absorbs flavor, and even contributes an understated, earthy taste of its own.

Most tabbouleh recipes call for soaking bulgur in hot water, which is the standard way of rehydrating it. But once you learn the Montana trick, the hot water method sounds much too dilute. Instead, we soak the bulgur in a slurry of tomato, garlic, salt, and lime juice.

Parsley in the Spotlight

Thats the tomato trick, but wed be remiss to not address parsley, the other side of the tabbouleh equation. Cup for cup or pound for pound, there is more parsley in this dish than any other ingredient. Its not often you find a parsley-based dish, so lets give the curly, leafy herb its moment of glory. Most often its used as nothing more than a garnish, something green and sturdy to look good alongside the food you actually want to eat.

I suppose parsley stays so often on the sidelines because the flavor is so strong, and the texture is that of steel wool. But everyone has a match, an equal and opposite, even parsley. The other ingredients in tabbouleh bring balance, thanks to a mix of strong flavors such as garlic, tomato, and lime. Chunks of cucumber, meanwhile, quietly bring hydration to the mix, without added water. And the bulgur adds a strong, silent backbone, partly absorbing the parsleys chlorophyll blast.

Tabbouleh has a lot going for it, and there are lots of reasons to love it. If you have a preferred recipe, try the tomato juice trick, and see how it turns out. And if youre new here, without a recipe of your own, I like to think that my Montana-style tomato tabbouleh is a good place to start.

Tomato-Marinated Tabbouleh

Tabbouleh assembly: chopped cucumbers and onions, lots of parsley, and fluffy, tomato-red bulgur. (Ari LeVaux)

If you remember one thing about this recipe, hopefully its the tomato juice trick.

2 pounds extra-juicy tomatoes

1 teaspoon salt

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons fresh lime or lemon juice

1 cup bulgur

2 cups chopped cucumber

4 packed cups chopped parsley

1/4 cup chopped mint leaves

1 cup olive oil

Optional: feta cheese, olives, preserved lemon, other Mediterranean flavors for garnish

Trim the tomatoes of the core and any rotten spots, and place them in the blender, along with the salt, minced garlic, and lime juice. Blend into a slurry. Pour it into a gallon-sized or larger bowl, and stir in the bulgur. When completely mixed, set aside on the counter, covered, for 2 to 3 hours.

Fluff and test the red bulgur. It will taste exceptional. Add the chopped cucumber, parsley, mint, and olive oil, and stir until the tabbouleh is totally mixed. Serve with a garnish that isnt parsley.

Ari LeVaux writes about food in Missoula, Mont.
People take part in a rally to support transgender causes in the Greenwich Village area of New York on Feb. 23, 2017. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

Trans Individuals Sue Montana Over Proof of Sex Change Requirement to Amend Birth Certificates

Two Montanans who claim to be transgender filed a lawsuit against the state over a law that requires those wishing to change their sex on birth certificates to prove that theyve had sex reassignment surgery.

The measure, known as Senate Bill 280, signed in April by Gov. Greg Gianforte, a Republican, provides that the sex designation on a birth certificate may be altered only if the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services has first received a certified copy of a court order indicating that the sex of the individual born in Montana had been changed by surgical procedure.

State Sen. Carl Glimm, who introduced the bill, said in March he believes a birth certificate is an item in fact that should record reality.

When a person is born, you record where theyre born, you record their weight, you record their sex. And thats important information to document, the Republican lawmaker said, according to local media.

The lawsuit, known as Marquez v. State of Montana, was filed July 16 as case number DV21-00873 in the 13th Judicial District Court in the state court system.

According to the legal complaint, the plaintiffs are Amelia Marquez, a man who identifies as a woman, and John Doe, a woman who identifies as a man. Marquez and Doe wish to correct their respective Montana birth certificates, which they claim no longer reflect reality.

Both plaintiffs have taken hormone therapy, and Doe has completed masculinizing chest reconstruction surgery. Both have no desire to undergo more surgery.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing the plaintiffs, argues the statute in question violates their constitutional rights to privacy, equal protection of the law, and due process, according to a statement. Having a birth certificate that doesnt match a persons gender identity puts that individual at greater risk of harassment, hostility, and discrimination, the group stated.

I would like to change the sex designation on my birth certificate to match my female gender identity, but am unable to do so because of the Act, Marquez said.

My inability to obtain a birth certificate that accurately reflects my female gender identity is a painful and stigmatizing reminder of the State of Montanas refusal to recognize me as a woman. Further, denying me an accurate birth certificate places me at risk of embarrassment or even violence every time I am required to present my birth certificate, because it incorrectly identifies me as male.

According to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, only 25 percent of transgender people in America reported having undergone some form of transition-related surgery. As a result, advocates say laws requiring surgery make it impossible for most of these people to change their gender on birth certificates or drivers licenses.

A lack of linguistic clarity has clouded the issue in recent years as the concepts of sex and sexual identity, or gendera politically and scientifically contentious concept whose definition isnt universally agreed uponhave become difficult to separate. Despite the distinct meanings of the two words, many institutions and individuals use gender to mean biological sex, especially on fillable forms and documents.

A persons sex designation is determined by the gender identity, not their sex assigned at birth or their anatomy, the complaint claims. Gender-affirming surgery, even for those transgender people who have a medical need for it, does not change their sex, but rather affirms it.

By embracing the Act, the State of Montana has imposed a draconian medical requirement on transgender people that has no medical or other rational justification. It reinstates an archaic understanding of transgender people and ignores modern medical treatment guidelines.

Former transgender activist James Shupe told The Epoch Times via email that the lawsuit is nonsensical because the idea that one can change ones sex is a legal and medical fiction.

So a penis of a male thats been flipped inside out or otherwise reconstructed by a surgical procedure to resemble a vagina is still made of up cells that are male, Shupe said.

Likewise, tissue removed from the arm of a female to construct a fake penis is still composed of cells that are female. No sex change has taken place. Its legal and medical fiction. When the police find an unrecognizable body on the side of the road, they dont use gender identity, a persons belief about themself, to determine the sex of that corpse. Nor do archeologists.

Shupe, after serving as an icon of transgender activism, denounced the movement and the idea that one can change ones sex as a fraud. Shupe was the first individual in Oregon to receive legal recognition for his non-binary sex designation, only to ask to have the status rescinded and his male sex designation restored on his birth certificate after his epiphany.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks at a news conference after visiting the Holocaust Museum, outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 14, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Twitter Suspends Rep. Greene for 12 Hours, Citing COVID-19 Policy

Twitter on Monday suspended Rep. Marjorie Greene (R-Ga.) for 12 hours, saying that two posts she made related to COVID-19 had violated its misinformation policy.

A Twitter spokesperson said in a media statement that Greene had made two Twitter posts on the day, and that the company was taking action on Greenes account because her posts had violated Twitters COVID-19 misleading information policy.

The account was downgraded to read only mode for 12 hours.

Both Twitter posts are still available to view on Greenes account, however, they have been labelled by the tech giant as misleading.

In one post on Monday morning, Greene wrote, The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone.

The controversial #COVID19 vaccines should not be forced on our military for a virus that is not dangerous for non-obese people and those under 65. With 6,000 vax related deaths and many concerning side effects reported, the vax should be a choice not a mandate for everyone. https://t.co/JhYg3acrrK  Marjorie Taylor Greene  (@mtgreenee) July 19, 2021

Greenes post had tagged a separate Twitter post from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) who said that he was told by an unnamed person in the U.S. military that more than 15 percent of officers under their command will either retire early or resign their commissions if the mandate is given.

The unnamed person also told Massie, Ours is a small command, so Im not sure how the numbers look across the force. I cannot speak for the % of the enlisted force, but I know numerous senior and critical people who will likewise leave. Massie added that other military members and relatives of other members have also contacted him over mandatory vaccines.

A label over Greenes Twitter post stated: This Tweet is misleading. Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people. It linked to a Twitter page headlined, COVID-19 vaccines are extremely effective at preventing serious illness and deaths, trials show.

In a separate Twitter post made Sunday morning, Greene tagged a post by Dr. David Samadi, a urologist and Newsmax contributor, who wrote, In the United Kingdom, 47% of new COVID-19 cases are vaccinated people.

Greene commented on Samadis post, writing, This is why no entity should force NON-FDA approved vaccines or masks.

Instead help people protect their health by defeating obesity, which will protect them from covid complications & death, and many other health problems, she added. We should invest in health, not human experimentation.

In a label over Greenes post, Twitter said, This Tweet is misleading. Learn why health officials recommend a vaccine for most people. The statement hyperlinks to a Twitter page headlined, Scientists and public health experts say that vaccines are safe for most people.

Twitter, Facebook, and the rest of the Silicon Valley Cartel are working hand in hand with the White House to censor Americans. This is a Communist-style attack on free speech, Greene said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

Rep. Marjorie Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a press conference on Capitol Hill, Washington on Feb. 5, 2021. (Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images)

These Big Tech companies are doing the bidding of the Biden regime to restrict our voices and prevent the spread of any message that isnt state-approved, she added. I will not back down and I will continue to tell the truth to the American people.

Twitters COVID-19 misleading information policy says that people may not use Twitters services to share false or misleading information about COVID-19 which may lead to harm.

Content that is demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm (such as increased exposure to the virus, or adverse effects on public health systems) may not be shared on Twitter, the company states.

This includes sharing content that may mislead people about the nature of the COVID-19 virus; the efficacy and/or safety of preventative measures, treatments, or other precautions to mitigate or treat the disease; official regulations, restrictions, or exemptions pertaining to health advisories; or the prevalence of the virus or risk of infection or death associated with COVID-19, it adds. In addition, we may label Tweets which share misleading information about COVID-19 to reduce their spread and provide additional context.

Greene was previously suspended from Twitter in April. The company later lifted the suspension, saying that it was a mistake made by its automated moderation system.

Greene, a first-term lawmaker who supported former President Donald Trump, has been critical of mask and vaccine mandates.

In June, Greene apologized over remarks she made that compared mask and vaccine mandates to how Jews were discriminated in the early years of Nazi Germany.

In February, Greene was stripped of her committee positions for remarks she made before being sworn into office.

Update: This article has been updated to include comments from Rep. Greene.
Two Reservoirs Burst Amid Heavy Rain in China

An unusually broad coalition of countries is calling out Beijing for its hacking practices. Its cyber-espionage campaign is believed to target sensitive technology.

Rallies in support of Falun Gong are happening from North America to Europe. The Chinese Communist Party has been waging a brutal persecution against the spiritual movement for 22 years.

A surprise addition to the line-up of this years Cannes film festival, a documentary is shining a spotlight on Hong Kongs 2019 pro-democracy protest movement.

Heavy rains hit Chinas Inner Mongolia region. Two reservoirs have burst, destroying more than 20 bridges.

Chinese telecom company Xiaomi just leapfrogged Apple, becoming the worlds second-largest smartphone vendor. Former U.S. President Donald Trump blacklisted the company, but President Joe Biden removed the label.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more first-hand news from China.

For more news and videos, please visit our website and Twitter.
Prince, a member of the hacking group Red Hacker Alliance who refused to give his real name, uses his computer at their office in Dongguan, China's southern Guangdong Province, on Aug. 4, 2020. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP via Getty Images)

Under Attack: US Needs Tougher Actions to Combat Chinese Hacking, Experts Say

The coordinated effort by the United States and allies to call out the Chinese regime for its global cyber hacking campaign was a welcome move, experts say, but more needs to be done to punish Beijing for its malign activities.

The United States on July 19 formally attributed the massive breach of Microsofts email server earlier this year to hackers affiliated with the regimes top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security (MSS). Microsoft had already blamed the hack, which compromised tens of thousands of systems globally, on China.

The Biden administration was joined by NATO, the European Union, Australia, Britain, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand in condemning Beijings worldwide cyberattacks, which U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said have posed a major threat to our economic and national security.

Also on July 19, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging four Chinese nationals working with the MSS on a global hacking campaign to steal secrets from companies, universities, and government bodies from 2011 to 2018. The charges are unrelated to the Microsoft hack.

Unlike in April, when President Joe Biden imposed sanctions on Russia over the major SolarWinds hack that affected U.S. government agencies and more than 100 companies, no penalties, other than the criminal charges, were announced against Beijingan omission noted by analysts.

Guilting and shaming a country like China or Russia, its something that doesnt work, Dustin Carmack, research fellow in technology policy at Washington-based think tank The Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

He called on the United States and allies to put their money where their mouth is and impose costs on Beijing such as sanctions and other economic restrictions.

Until that happens, theres not really a deterrence, Carmack said. Theyll just keep on doing it.

The White House, for its part, left open the possibility of punitive measures going forward.

We are not holding back, we are not allowing any economic circumstance or consideration to prevent us from taking actions.  Also we reserve the option to take additional action, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on July 19.

For cybersecurity adviser Casey Fleming, who for years has been sounding the alarm on Beijings sweeping efforts to steal foreign technology, the official statements were about 10 to 12 years late.

The issue is the private sectorU.S. businesses and their CEOs and their boardsis under attack by a nation state. Thats never happened before in history, Fleming, CEO of BlackOps Partners, told The Epoch Times. And they dont know what to do.

Cyber Warfare

The Chinese regime oversees a vast network of cyber hackers to carry out its global espionage operations.

The MSS and Peoples Liberation Army are the main actors involved; working alongside them are thousands of contracted hackers attached to other agencies or companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Rick Fisher, senior fellow at Virginia-based think tank International Assessment and Strategy Center, told The Epoch Times in an email.

A contract hacker from eastern Chinas Jiangsu Province told The Epoch Times last year that his ostensibly private tech firm was controlled by senior provincial security officials and directed to carry out complex cyber intrusions known as advanced persistent threats (APT) to steal trade secrets from foreign businesses and governments. APT attacks are designed to gain access into a system and stay undetected for a long period of time, pilfering a steady stream of data.

In particular, his firm was directed to do jobs that were too difficult for cyber hackers working directly for the state. They leave all hard-to-intrude websites to us, where Chinas police, national security, or the General Staff Department of the Peoples Liberation Army have failed, the hacker said.

Chinese hackers target an array of industries, universities, and government bodies around the world, stealing trade secrets, sensitive research, and any other information thats of value to the regime and its state-owned enterprises.

The goal of these cyber operations is to support Chinas long-term economic and military development objectives, a U.S. government advisory issued on July 19 states.

Their activities form part of the communist regimes cyberwarfare offensive against the West, according to Fisher. On this front, he said the CCP has two main strategic objectives: control and exploitation.

They seek any and all information that can assist victory in military campaigns, advantages in military technology, or advantages for use in political and economic coercion, he said.

But the CCPs larger goal is to be able to exercise control over regions, countries, and individuals within those countries.

Exploits

While most of the CCPs hacking activities are carried out in the shadows, there are numerous public cases of Chinese hackers stealing foreign technology to benefit domestic industries.

Chinas state-owned commercial aircraft manufacturer Comac is one example.

In a bid to rapidly advance its fledgling homegrown plane maker, the Chinese regime undertook an ambitious hacking operation involving intelligence officers, underground hackers, security researchers, and staff at foreign companies whom they recruited, a 2019 report by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike detailed.

Between 2010 to 2015, hackers associated with the MSS breached foreign suppliers for Comacs C919 Jetliner. U.S. companies that were hacked included Honeywell, General Electric (GE), and Capstone Turbine.

After six years of persistent hacking, Comac and another Chinese state-owned aerospace company AVIC launched a new company called AECC to manufacture aircraft engines. AECC subsequently produced an engine called CJ-1000AX, which bears multiple similarities to an engine that was supplied by a foreign contractor to Comac to power the C919.

It is highly likely that its [Chinese engine] makers benefited significantly from the cyber espionage efforts of the MSS  knocking several years (and potentially billions of dollars) off of its development time, the report stated.

The United States has charged several actors allegedly involved in the hacking operations, including an MSS officer named Xu Yanjun and former GE engineer Zheng Xiaoqing.

Another high-profile victim of Chinese hacking was the Canadian company Nortel Networks.

Now defunct, the $250 billion firm was once a global titan in telecom equipment manufacturing. But its fortunes took a turn for the worse after it was hacked in the 2000s.

Chinese IP theft was a significant contributor to the demise of Nortel, James Andrew Lewis, senior vice president and program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, stated (pdf) in his written testimony for a Senate hearing in 2019.

Hackers based in China began hacking into Nortel as early as 2000, and they stole passwords from the Canadian companys executives to gain access into the companys network. In one single day in April 2004, the hackers downloaded nearly 800 files from Nortels network, including technical papers and proprietary source code. The hacking continued until about 2009.

The hackers internet addresses were traced to a front company in Shanghai.

Nortels fall coincided with the rise of its Chinese competitorChinas tech giant Huaweiwhich was listed among the Global Fortune 500 companies by 2010.

Former Nortel cybersecurity adviser Brian Shields, in a 2014 interview with NTD, sister media outlet of The Epoch Times, said the hacking operation was very organized. Though he didnt have any evidence connecting the hacking operation to Huawei, he said the main benefactor of the data theft would have been Huawei.

Where was the manufacturer that was reaping the benefits of this? Was it the companies in Russia or France that were suddenly doing real good? No, he said.

It was economic espionage, and we lost an industry here in Canada. Thats what happened.

Huawei has denied allegations that it was involved in hacking Nortel.

Protection and Punishment

For business leaders, theres no reason to think that what happened to Nortel and other victims of Chinese cyber theft cant happen to them, said cybersecurity expert Fleming.

CEOs, boards of directors, and the U.S. government must take this threat seriously, he said. Theyre living on borrowed time, and they need to get educated very quickly before its too late.

This means companies need to prioritize data security and enact top-down training and data handling processes to protect their intellectual property, Fleming said.

Meanwhile, the United States should consider tougher action to knock down these groups, said Fisher from the International Assessment and Strategy Center.

Chinese and Russian cyberwarfare and cybercrime has become so pervasive that there must now be serious consideration to simply shutting them off, Fisher said.

It is time to simply shut down global cable nodes to severely limit Chinas and Russias digital access to the world.
Cutting edge applications of artificial intelligence are seen on display at the Artificial Intelligence Pavilion of Zhangjiang Future Park during a state organized media tour in Shanghai, China, on June 18, 2021. (Andrea Verdelli/Getty Images)

US and China Announce Major Investment Plans in Heated AI Race

On July 13, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said at the Global Emerging Technology Summit hosted by the National Security Council for Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) that the Department of Defense will invest nearly $1.5 billion to accelerate the development of AI over the next five years.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who attended the summit, also commented on the matter. Its important that AI is developed in a way, and regulated in a way, that is consistent with our democratic values of freedom and openness, protection for our intellectual property, respect for human rights, and respect for privacy, she said. We cannot let China write the rules of the road around AI.

Shortly after, on July 14, Beijing released the China Internet Development Report (2021), showing the CCP invested about $65 billion in the AI industry last year. And there were 1,454 existing AI companies in China, ranking second globally to 2,257 in the United States.

According to the CCPs strategic goal, it plans to lead the world in AI by 2030. In its 14th Five-Year Plan announced in March of this year, the CCP placed AI, quantum information, and integrated circuits in its top three focuses, with AI ranking first.

To further create talents in AI, the CCPs Ministry of Education approved 35 universities to add AI undergraduate majors in March 2019.

In March of 2020, the number of colleges and universities with new AI majors reached 180. This year, the CCPs Ministry of Education added 37 new undergraduate majors in 43 higher-education institutions, almost all of which are related to AI.

Last year, Chinas National University of Defense Technology published an article, stating that the development of AI is critical to gain the initiative in future warfare, support the transformation and production of military equipment, and ensure the advancement of national defense science and technology.

The article further emphasized that AI enhances combat command capabilities and guarantees the victory of wars.

In response to the CCPs advancement in AI, the NSCAI released its 2021 annual report (pdf) on March 19, stating the United States must win the AI race against the CCP, as it is also a race of values and principles.

The CCP uses AI as a tool to monitor citizens and suppress freedom, while the United States aims to use AI to benefit its economy, welfare, and security. The report determined the CCPs AI development a potential threat to the United States and its allies.

Due to the CCPs suppression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the U.S. Department of Commerce blacklisted 20 CCP public security organizations and eight commercial organizations on Oct. 7, 2019.
US Foreign Policy Cause for Concern

Commentary

Its a worrisome time for those who follow or are to any extent dependent upon American foreign policy.

The Biden administration began very slowly on Cuba, having followed meekly in the tracks of the Obama appeasement of that appalling regime. The well-known pro-Castro enthusiasm of Sen. Bernie Sanders, chief author of the Democratic 2020 campaign platform and a longtime admirer of Fidel Castro, may have been an early inhibiting factor.

But after several days of huge anti-government demonstrations throughout Cuba, Biden at least started to make appropriate noises, and there may be hope that the United States will at least assist in reconnecting the Cuban population with the internet. A reimposition of sanctions would be welcome.

One fact that has clearly emerged is the total failure of the Obama policy of appeasing the Castros. There was no response whatever and the Castros did absolutely nothing to liberalize their totalitarian despotism that has been strangling the beautiful island of Cuba since 1959.

Unfortunately, this administration also appears to be enthused about reviving the nuclear arrangements with Iran that the Obama administration concluded but couldnt present as a treaty because of the certainty of rejection by the Senate.

In a gesture of hostility to the United States and the West generally, Irans supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei approved the election of Ebrahim Raisi as president. The former chief justice presided over thousands of barbarous executions. But he and Khamenei seem to want to revive the nuclear agreement, the so-called Joint Common Plan of Action (JCPOA).

If it were simply a matter of the United States returning to it unaltered, Iran would be at perfect liberty to deploy nuclear-tipped missiles in five years. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has clearly stated that the United States will not return in the same circumstances, but even if it were possible to start the timetable over again, it would still be a simple matter of acquiescing in conferring full nuclear power status on the principal terrorism-supporting state in the world in another 10 years.

Obama and presumably his then-vice president, Joe Biden, apparently thought the chances excellent of persuading Iran to forgo its ambition to be a nuclear power in the initial 10-year period of the agreement.

Obviously, nothing of the kind has occurred. The agreement dealt with the deployment of nuclear warheads on intermediate and intercontinental missiles, development of fissile material; it said nothing about the development of missiles, launchers, and warheads, and Iran has methodically advanced in these areas.

Unless there is a radical change of the regime in Tehraneither spontaneously within Iran or as a result of outside interventionacceptable conditions for that country to be a nuclear military power arent going to be achieved. Ultimately, barring such a change, the only way to prevent that horrifying eventuality is by a heavy assault on the Iranian nuclear program from the air. This could be done, and both the governing and opposition coalitions in Israel have made clear that if necessary, Israel will do it.

The Arab powers would rejoice in this, and the Biden administration seems to be slowly grasping that the Trump administration was correct when it perceived that the encroachment upon the Arab world by their ancient foesthe Turks and the Persians (Iran)made them natural allies of Israel, and it was on this basis that the outstanding Abraham Accords with Bahrain and the Emirates were achieved.

Its little wonder that Iran wishes a return to this JCPOA, which it regularly proclaims to be the greatest diplomatic success in the history of the Islamic Republic. The reassertion of sanctions by the Trump administration caused the Iranian economy to move from its 13.4 percent annual GDP increase following the JCPOA, with its relaxation of sanctions, to two years of net declines in GDP of 6 to 6.8 percent after Trumps return to sanctions.

This decline of revenue forced a serious reduction of Iranian funding to the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist organizations on the borders of Israel. This problem wont go away, but the determination of Israel not to tolerate the nuclear capability of the state that has sworn to destroy Israel, and the likelihood of a more purposeful regime in Washington being returned to office prior to the expiry of any reactivated JCPOA, may get us through and past the crisis of a nuclear-armed theocracy in Tehran.

But it will be no thanks to the Biden State Department in its present placatory torpor.

The problem of relations with China is bound to continue to deteriorate as long as the Chinese are confident they can inflict virtually any provocation on the United States and there will be no notable reply. They are steadily asserting pressure on Taiwan and have resumed systematic violations of Japanese airspace and threatening anyone who might contemplate military resistance.

The principal question is obviously Taiwan and the American response to a Chinese assault on the island is something that successive administrations have treated with ambiguity. It would require the United States under the Taiwan Relations Act to regard an invasion by the Peoples Republic as a matter of sufficiently grave concern to intervene.

Contrary to some speculation on the subject, I dont believe China could successfully launch and sustain an amphibious assault on Taiwan if there were any significant U.S. military contravening force. The Formosa Straits are three times as wide as the English Channel to Normandy, and China would have to destroy the Taiwanese Air Force on the ground, eliminate all its missile launching facilities, and largely eradicate the Taiwanese army in order to make a landing possible.

Its hard for me to imagine the Biden administration acquiescing in the lengthy and excruciating process as would be a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. Any such action by China would be extremely impetuous and its more likely theyre engaging in mere saber-rattling and trying to destabilize U.S. relations with Japan and India.

A related subject of much concern is the disposition of the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley. I thought he should have been fired after he joined the presidential walk from the White House to St. Johns Church, the presidents church, the day after it had almost been burned down by the peaceful protesters of the Democratic summer of love. The walk included most of the senior personnel in the White House at that time, as a general statement of the administrations determination not to be intimidated by the mobs that were all around the country last summer destroying the statues of great Americans.

Formally to join that walk in the full knowledge of what it was, then a couple of days later, after taking the heat from the rabidly Democratic media, apologizing for having done so, was unpardonable and indicative of a feckless, posturing, and over-politicized general.

His defense of critical race teaching and proud comments about reading Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo was further grounds for getting rid of him. Anyone can read what they like, but his representation of such reading as essential to give him a greater grasp of white abuse and privilege and of the CRT issue were the arrogant and narcissistic havering of a senior officer who should have been handling real issues better.

But the generals last straw was apparently referring to the Jan. 6 invasion of the capital by Chewbacca and the other hooligans as a Reichstag moment. He was referring to the Nazi burning down of the Reichstag in 1933 while blaming an innocent mental deficient and using it as a pretext for seizing absolute power.

Milley was likening Trump to Hitler and inciting underlings to believe the Trump supporters were Nazis. Thats full grounds for court-martial, but unfortunately, it appears that hell stumble and subvert his way to retirement age before a serious commander-in-chief can give him the order of the boot. This is a sobering time.

Conrad Black has been one of Canadas most prominent financiers for 40 years, and was one of the leading newspaper publishers in the world. Hes the author of authoritative biographies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, and, most recently, Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other, which has been republished in updated form. Please follow Conrad Black with Bill Bennett and Victor Davis Hanson on their podcast Scholars and Sense.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The Iranian flag waves in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna, Austria, on May 23, 2021. (Leonhard Foeger/Reuters)

US Hits Iran for Delay in Nuclear and Prisoner Swap Talks

Iran and the United States volleyed tweeted criticisms of each other into Sunday over the fate of prisoners in both countries, underlining that separate negotiations outside of Tehrans tattered nuclear deal continue between the nations.

The tweets from two Iranian Foreign Ministry officials also signaled the waning influence of outgoing President Hassan Rouhanis administration, which in August will cede power to President-elect Ebrahim Raisi, a protege of Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi looks on at a polling station during presidential elections in Tehran, Iran, on June 18, 2021. (Majid Asgaripour/West Asia News Agency via Reuters)

The spat began on Saturday with Abbas Araghchi, Irans head negotiator in nuclear talks in Vienna, writing that those discussions must obviously await our new administration.

However, Araghchi added that America and Britain must stop linking a humanitarian exchangeready to be implementedwith the nuclear deal.

Keeping such an exchange hostage to political aims achieves neither, he wrote on Twitter.

TEN PRISONERS on all sides may be released TOMORROW if US & UK fulfill their part of deal.

He did not elaborate.

Irans Deputy Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, leaves a meeting of the Joint Commission of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in Vienna, Austria, on June 12, 2021. (Lisi Niesner/Reuters)

Robert Malley, the U.S. special envoy for Iran for President Joe Biden, then tweeted that there is no agreed deal yet on the matter of the detainees.

He acknowledged there had been indirect talks on the detainees in the context of the Vienna process, prisoners whom he described as being unjustly held by Tehran.

These comments are an outrageous effort to deflect blame for the current impasse on a potential mutual return to the nuclear deal, he wrote.

Then Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh responded to Malley.

Outrageous = the US denying simple fact that there IS an agreed deal on the matter of the detainees,' he wrote.

Neither Iran nor the United States has offered any details on the talks so far.

Iran, which is holding a handful of Iranian-Americans, has been accused by rights activists of arresting dual nationals to try to extract a concession from other countries. Iran has dismissed the charge.

Iran said last week that it was holding talks on securing the release of Iranian prisoners in American jails and other countries over violations of U.S. sanctions.

In May, Washington denied a report by Iranian state television that the countries had reached a prisoner swap deal in exchange for the release of $7 billion in frozen Iranian oil funds under U.S. sanctions in other countries.

The hiatus in nuclear talks, which U.S. and European officials attribute to Raisis election, has raised questions about next steps if the talks hit a dead end.

Reuters contributed to this report
A general view of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia September 30, 2014. (Tami Chappell/Reuters)

US Issues Do Not Travel Advisory for UK Over COVID-19

WASHINGTONThe U.S. State Department and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both issued on Monday their highest warnings against travel to the United Kingdom because of a rising number of COVID-19 cases in that country.

Each raised the UK to Level Four, telling Americans they should avoid travel there.

If you must travel to the United Kingdom, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel, the CDC said in an advisory, while the State Department said: Do not travel to the United Kingdom due to COVID-19.

In May, the U.S. government had lowered the UK to a Level 3 advisory rating.

COVID-19 cases are rising by more than 50,000 a day in the UK and hundreds of thousands of Britons are being asked to self-isolate for 10 days.

The United States since March 2020 has barred nearly all non-U.S. citizens who have recently been in the UK from the United States.

Britain allows American visits but requires a 10-day quarantine on arrival and two COVID-19 tests.

In June, the Biden administration said it was forming expert working groups with Britain, Canada, Mexico, and the European Union to determine how best to restart travel safely after more than a year of restrictions.

U.S. and airline officials do not expect the restrictions on UK travelers to be lifted until August at the earliest, and warn it could be pushed back further.

Airlines and others have pressed the administration to lift the restrictions that bar most non-U.S. citizens who have been in Britain, the 26 Schengen nations in Europe without border controls, Ireland, China, India, South Africa, Iran, and Brazil within the past 14 days from the United States.

By David Shepardson
United States Marines (left) Lance Corporal Brandon James and Lance Corporal Devyn Dockery prepare to raise the national flag of the United States of America before the start of the opening ceremony of Exercise Southern Jackaroo 21 at 1st Brigade headquarters, Darwin on June 15. (PTE Jacob Joseph/ADF)

US Military Flies COVID-19 Vaccine to Australia for US Troops

The U.S. military has flown its own COVID-19 vaccine supply into the Northern Territory to inoculate the Marine Rotational Force based in Darwin in Australias top end.

About 2,200 servicemen and women in the NT have started receiving their first doses, which are being administered by U.S. Navy medical officers.

The vaccine is offered under the U.S.s emergency use authorisation to armed forces members who choose to receive it.

We have received and administered these vaccines in an effort to fight against COVID-19, a Marine spokesman said on Monday.

(This will) protect the community in which we live and work, as well as our forces here in the Top End.

The U.S. military has supplied enough vaccines for first and second doses but didnt say which vaccine it is using.

All Marines are subject to strict screening and quarantine requirements prior to departure and on arrival into Australia.

They must present a negative COVID-19 PCR test 72 hours before departure for Australia.

This is followed by mandatory 14-day quarantine in secure facilities at RAAF Base Darwin and nearby Bladin Village.

A small number of Marines have tested positive for the virus while in the NT and been transferred to the Howard Springs quarantine facility.

The 2021 deployment is the 10th annual Marine Rotational Force to be based in Darwin.

They are part of the ongoing posture initiative to promote regional stability under the ANZUS Treaty.

Darwins location just south of more than a dozen Asian countries and some of the worlds busiest shipping lanes makes it a strategic stepping-off point should the force receive orders to do so.

By Aaron Bunch
Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra speaks to the press in Washington on May 5, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

US Renews COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Declaration

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Monday renewed the COVID-19 public health emergency determination for another 90 days.

HHS secretary Xavier Becerra said in a statement that the extension followed consultation with public health officials and comes as a result of the continued consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The initial determination that a public health emergency exists due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, was made on Jan. 31, 2020, by former HHS secretary Alex Azar, and has been extended every three months ever since.

Public health emergency declarations enable such measures as emergency use authorization of vaccines and unlocking of funds to support the pandemic response.

The extension will help hospitals and health systems combat COVID-19 in their communities, the American Hospital Association said in a statement.

The move comes as the average of new daily infections this week is up 66 percent from last week and 145 percent from two weeks ago, with cases on the rise in 44 states, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Vivek Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General, told CNN in an interview that aired Tuesday that, we shouldnt let down our guard until cases not only come down but stay down, and right now cases are actually going up. Cases are going up, hospitalizations are going up, death rates are ticking up.

Meanwhile, governors in some Republican-led states have passed laws to limit the ability of local authorities to impose COVID-19 mitigation measures such as mask mandates or lockdowns, arguing that government overreach exploded during the pandemic, impacting individual liberties and crushing businesses.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, in May signed a law that allows the governor to invalidate any local order that unnecessarily restricts individual rights or liberties, while providing legal safeguards to prevent local governments from imposing arbitrary closures.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, in June signed a law prohibiting local governments from requiring proof of vaccination to access public services, while limiting how long local authorities can shutter businesses.

Opponents of state laws that rein in the power of local authorities argue that such limits reduce the ability to respond to future emergencies.

Our hands are tied and I think thats a mistake, said Dr. Shad Marvasti, associate professor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, in remarks to Bloomberg Law.
Bottles of the three current COVID-19 vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Pfizer, with hypodermics needles, photographed at the COVID-19 vaccination site at Kedren Community Health Center, in Los Angeles, Calif., on May 13, 2021. (Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times/TNS)

Vaccine Makers Face Fresh Challenges as COVID Variants Weaken Vaccine Efficacy

Scientists have already started looking for new vaccine candidates for the CCP virus as the mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna, become less effective against increasingly contagious coronavirus mutations, according to new research.

The report, published in the U.S.-based New England Journal of Medicine at the beginning of July found that vaccine-induced antibodies were 2.9 times less able to neutralise the Delta strain, and 6.8 times less able to neutralise the Kappa strain.

This comes down to the mutations in Delta and Kappas spike protein, which diminish the ability of vaccine-induced antibodies that protect the body from the virus.

However, the research also noted that the antibodies will be strong enough in many people to block the virus at least three months after the second dose of the mRNA vaccines.

Mehul Suthar, the studys co-author and assistant professor at the Emory Vaccine Center, said these findings provide some reassurance that the vaccines can still suppress the disease, despite doing so with reduced efficacy.

Researchers obtained blood samples from 24 people who had recovered from COVID-19 the disease caused by the CCP virus in 2020, 15 people who had received the Moderna vaccine and from 10 people who had received the Pfizer vaccine.

Both the Kappa and Delta strains of the novel coronavirus were first identified in India in October last year. They are considered highly contagious, with Delta having triggered New South Wales latest outbreak and Kappa behind most of the cases in Victoria.

People sit waiting for their AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine at the Claremont Showgrounds Covid-19 Vaccination Clinic in Perth, Australia on May 3, 2021. (Paul Kane/Getty Images)

Messenger RNA vaccines, or mRNA, are a new type of vaccine that instruct the cells to make a protein that will trigger an immune response, leading the body to produce antibodies.

Dr. Dicky Budiman at Griffith Universitys Center for Environment and Population Health said the increasingly infectious COVID virus mutations make it more challenging for vaccine developers to keep up in the race to eliminate the virus.

When the virus continues to spread in many countries and regions, more contagious variants that can possibly break through the immunity are continually emerging, he told The Epoch Times, This also becomes the issue for the vaccine makers.

In the long term, it will be more challenging to eliminate the virus if we dont control the pandemic.

The epidemiologist said scientists and pharmaceutical companies, as suggested by the study, should always update the vaccine designs to prevent emerging variants that will continue to develop before reaching their maximum level, Budiman said.

We expect the virus will achieve what we call the stability, or the maximum level, but we dont know [about it] yet.

Herd immunity is a long-term goal and is far, far away from our standpoint.

Budimans concern is echoed by two-thirds of epidemiologists who participated in a March global survey who have predicted SARS-CoV-2 would need less than a year to mutate to a point that it would render most of the first-generation COVID vaccines ineffective.

But Professor Dale Godfrey, Immunology Theme Leader at the Doherty Institute, is relatively more confident that scientists will be able to make a breakthrough in vaccine technology.

Vaccine manufacturers are already developing and testing new versions of their vaccines that are better matched to the variants, he told newsGP.

It is entirely possible that most or all of the vaccines will still prevent severe disease and death, even if they are less effective at preventing earlier stages of disease.

I think this is likely, but only time and further studies will tell.

Godfrey also noted there is some concern that Australias main jab AstraZeneca, which is not a mRNA vaccine, has much less protection against the Beta strain originated in South Africa, and a regular booster may be needed.

Last week, Israels top officials warned that the Pfizer vaccine was significantly less effective at combating the Delta variant following a surge of new cases, despite over 57 percent of the population being vaccinated.
Virginia Parents Seek 1st School Closure-Related Recall of Board Member

Parents in Virginia submitted thousands of signatures this week to recall a Fairfax County school board member after she opposed returning to in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The board member, Elaine Tholen, is accused of being derelict in her duty for keeping schools closed for 12 months, according to the petition organizers, Open FCPS Coalition. Organizers said that virtual learning used during lockdowns goes against scientific advice and against parents desires.

According to the groups website in a recent update, it has collected all signatures for Tholen. Specifically, the group told The Associated Press and other media that it submitted more than 5,000 signatures, which is far more than the 3,600 signatures required to recall her.

Tholen can ask a judge to throw out the petition seeking her recall. The Fairfax County Circuit Court received the signatures, and a judge can decide to dismiss the recall effort or take it to trial where she could be removed and a special election would then be held.

Tholen told The Associated Press that she has always put students first and suggested her decisions were prudent because shes been in education for a very long time.

I look forward to continuing to earn my constituents trust and support as we prepare to welcome all students in person five days per week, Tholen said in a statement to other news outlets. As a former classroom educator and now a school board member, I have always worked for my students well-being and to help them reach their utmost potential. I will continue to put our students best interests first.

Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) also threw its support behind Tholen.

The decision to provide learning through a virtual format last year was a direct result of the circumstances and the health and medical advice available at the time, the school system said in a statement to media outlets this week. The School Board and FCPS leadership was responsible for ensuring the health and wellbeing of its 189,000 students during the unprecedented circumstances of a pandemic. FCPS moved to reopen its schools as quickly as circumstances allowed and did so ahead of many other school districts in the area. The decision to conduct classes online was a difficult decision, but it was the right one.

Petition organizers, however, said that students in Fairfax County have suffered amid the school closures.

Just how far behind are our students? How will these deficits be met? Zia Tompkins, a coalition board member, told the local Tysons Reporter. Parents have been left in the dark about these issues.

Parents, she added, have real doubts as to whether the Fairfax County school system is even serious about opening full-time in-person for the fall.

According to the Open FCPS Coalitions website, organizers have obtained nearly all the signatures required to start the recall of another board member, Laura Jane Cohen.

The Epoch Times has contacted Tholen for additional comment.
Virginia School Board Rejects States Transgender Pronoun, Restroom Policies

A county school board in Virginia last week rejected the states new policy regarding the treatment of transgender students after hundreds of community members showed up to voice their opposition to the rule changes.

Watched by a crowd of nearly 500 concerned citizens, the Russell County school board on July 16 voted 70 to reject the transgender model policy passed down by the Virginia Department of Education, according to conservative Christian group Family Foundation of Virginia. The board also voted to not incorporate critical race theory into the classroom.

Under the new policy (pdf), which is expected to be implemented across the state this fall, public schools are required to accept a students assertion of their gender identity without requiring any particular substantiating evidence, including diagnosis, treatment, or legal documents.

Specifically, the new policy will grant students access to restrooms and locker rooms that align with their preferred gender identity. School staff will also have to refer to students by their preferred names or gender pronouns.

Bob Gibson, a school board member whose three children attend the countys public schools, said that every child should be provided with a safe place where they can grow and learn without fear of any political ideology that isnt consistent with the communitys values.

I was elected by the citizens of Russell County, and I intend to stand up for the citizens of Russell County and not for an overreaching state government that is out of sync with Russell County values, he said at a press conference before the board meeting.

The model policies themselves violated various state and federal laws, including infringing upon numerous fundamental rights of students, parents, and teachers, according to Josh Hetzler, an attorney from the Founding Freedoms Law Center, a Richmond-based conservative legal group challenging the policies in court.

Because of how legally problematic the VDOEs model policies are, not to mention the likelihood of tangible harms to students bodily privacy, safety, and dignity in private spacesand to parental rightsthe school board simply cannot adopt policies consistent with the existing model policies, said Hetzler.

Meanwhile, the Virginia Department of Education claimed that the boards decision was likely a violation of the state law.

The 2020 legislation (House Bill 145 and Senate Bill 161) requires local school boards to adopt policies that are consistent with but may be more comprehensive than the model policies developed by the Virginia Department of Education by the start of the 2021-2022 school year, a VDOE spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. It is the responsibility of the local school board to follow the law.

Virginia, which serves over 1.2 million public school students, has become ground zero in a nationwide fight between parents and school districts seeking to promote leftist activism such as critical race theoryan ideology rooted in Marxist class struggle but with an emphasis on race, with the goal of dismantling American institutions it deems inherently and irredeemably racist.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a meeting on voting rights at the White House in Washington on July 16, 2021. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

VP Harris Tested Negative for COVID-19 After Meeting With Texas Democrats: White House

Vice President Kamala Harris tested negative for COVID-19 after meeting with a group of Texas Democrats, the White House said on Monday.

I think the vice presidents office put out that she was tested and that there was no detection of COVID-19, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in Washington.

Thats not what the statement from the vice presidents office said. The vice presidents spokeswoman, Symone Sanders, told outlets over the weekend that neither Harris nor her staff would quarantine or be tested because they were not in close contact with those who had tested positive.

Asked about the apparent discrepancy, the White House referred Politico to Sanders, who said that Harris is tested regularly as is her staff and that as a part of that regular testing, she was tested this weekend and COVID-19 was not detected.

That is not in conflict with the statement we put out Saturday, Sanders claimed.

The condition of Harris, 56, who went to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center over the weekend, had not been disclosed previously. Harris has not been seen in public since Friday.

Five of the Texas House Democrats, who left the state last week to deny giving Republicans quorum to enact voting reform legislation, and who later met with Harris, have tested positive for COVID-19.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close contact is anybody one was within 6 feet of for a combined total of 15 minutes or more over a 24-hour period.

Sanders also noted that Harris and her staff are fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Vice President Kamala Harris meets with Democrats from the Texas state legislature at the American Federation of Teachers in Washington on July 13, 2021. (Alex Brandon/AP Photo)

Texas Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the five Texas House Democrats who have tested positive for COVID-19, is seen on Capitol Hill with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (C) in Washington on July 13, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

At least three of the Texas Democrats who contracted COVID-19 were fully vaccinated.

The Texas Democrats traveled to Washington mostly via a chartered plane. They posted a photograph of themselves maskless while on the flight, drawing criticism.

Psaki said the Harris trip to Walter Reed was scheduled weeks ago, describing it as a routine appointment. She also said that no additional precautions were taken following the revelation that lawmakers who met with Harris contracted COVID-19, such as making sure Harris and President Joe Biden, 78, were not in the same room. And she declined to join the criticism of the lawmakers for going without masks, in defiance of federal rules.

I dont think Im going to be in a position here to assess what safety precautions they may or may not have taken. Obviously, these individuals were out there trying to elevate the issue of an individuals right to vote, Psaki told reporters. We, of course, hope everybody abides by public health guidelines. Thats what we certainly recommend.
Falun Dafa practitioners commemorate lives lost and 20 years of persecution by the Chinese communist regime in Sydney, Australia, on July 19, 2019. (The Epoch Times)

We Must Speak Out: Australian Leaders Call for End of 22 Year Falun Gong Persecution

The world has a moral imperative to call out totalitarian regimes that persecute people for their faithmost notably the world needs to call out the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) persecution of Falun Gong, other religious groups, and dissidents.

This is what David Adler, the president of the Australian Jewish Association (AJA), told The Epoch Times in a statement to commemorate the 22-year anniversary of the start of the CCPs persecution of Falun Gong in China on July 20, 1999.

Adler likened the 22-year persecution of Falun Gong by Chinas communist regime to the disgraceful persecution of the Jews by the Nazi regime.

The Jewish people understand what its like to be persecuted by a large totalitarianism regime, Adler said.

The major lesson was supposed to be never again, he added. We must speak outwe must do what we can to stop it.

Adler is among many Australian leaders who are calling for Beijing to end the persecution of Falun Gong.

Tasmanian Liberal Senator, Eric Abetz, told The Epoch Times that for 22 years Falun Gong practitioners have faced continual persecution, but have stood firm and continue to fight for freedom.

We who are blessed to exercise our freedom must not be silent, Abetz said. We must not take the morally bankrupt, easy option and turn a blind eye.

Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, was first introduced to the public in China in 1992 and grew in popularity due to its slow-movement exercises and moral teachings centred around the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.

The practice had about 70 million to 100 million adherents by the end of that decade, according to official estimates.

Deeming this popularity a threat, the CCP on July 20, 1999, began a nationwide campaign to eradicate the practice and adherents.

Since then, an untold number of practitioners have suffered from mental and physical torture, financial pressure, forced labour, imprisonment, and forced organ harvesting.

Survivors of the abuse have told stories of being subjected to toxic drug injections, gruelling forced labour, electric shocks to private parts, and threats to forcibly abort pregnancies.

New South Wales Liberal Senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, said that as more people around the world come to understand the skullduggery of the regime, it is ever more important for Australians to maintain pressure on the CCP.

Falun Dafa practitioners commemorate lives lost and 20 years of persecution by the Chinese communist regime in Sydney, Australia, on July 19, 2019. (The Epoch Times)

Such pressure included Australias call for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Those calls resulted in attempts to economically coerce Australia to align with Beijings demands by imposing suspensions and tariffs on many Australian goods, such as coal, beef, barley, lobster, timber, lamb, and cotton.

The Australian public will no longer tolerate business as usual with Beijing, she said.

More and more Australians are more receptive to understanding the regimes illegal activities, especially the human rights abuses. We need to remain strong and resolute in our condemnation of Beijing, Fierravanti-Wells said.

Sophie York, a lawyer, writer and expert on international humanitarian law, said that the forced organ harvesting faced by Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in China is a crime of killing, and that the perpetrators should be brought to justice in the international courts.

Victorian state Liberal MP Bernie Finn said that as a free nation, Australia and Australians, have an obligation to support those in China suffering under a murderous, barbaric regime.

We must stand with those who want freedom, he told The Epoch Times.

Lyle Sheldon, director of the Australian Christian Lobby, said that millions of Christians and Falun Gong practitioners have a common goal of raising awareness about the persecution they endure under the CCP in China.

David Flint, emeritus professor of law and former chairman of the Australian Press Council, said that the persecution of Falun Gong is against the laws of man, the laws of nations, and indeed the law of God.

Like the Soviet Union, Flint said the CCP will fall, and be left on the scrap heap of history.

The comments by the Australian leaders come as the United States called on China to end its persecution of Falun Gong.

In a State Department press briefing State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on July 19 the Biden Administration called on the PRC to immediately cease its campaign against Falun Gong practitioners and release those imprisoned due to their beliefs.

State Department Spokesman Ned Price speaks ahead of an address by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during the release of the 2020 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, at the State Department in Washington on March 30, 2021. (Mandel Ngan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

Tomorrow, we recognize 22 years since the Peoples Republic of China launched a campaign of repression against the Falun Gong movement and its millions of practitioners, advocates, and human rights defenders working to protect their rights, he added.

Thousands of Falun Gong practitioners face detention, harassment, and reported torture and abuse each year for simply refusing to stop peacefully practicing their beliefs.

Epoch Times reporter Rachel Qu contributed to this report.
What Is to Be Done? Restore Federalism and Elect Trump as Vice President

The last in a series

Commentary

One of the things the left hates most about the United States of America is that there are 50 of them. A leftist revolution is more easily accomplished in a country in which power is already consolidated in a single place among a small group of people. Despite the vast territory of the Russian empire under the last of the Tsars, Lenin was able to hijack the initial anti-Tsarist revolt and turn it into a Bolshevik seizure of power.

Over the course of the centuries, similar things have happened in France, England, and Germany. Indeed, after World War II, the western Allies insisted that the new German government be as decentralized as possible, with the governmental departments spread all over West Germany and the capital relocated to dumpy Bonn. They wanted no repeat of another Third Reich powerhouse headquartered in Berlin.

For decades, America has proven a harder nut to crack. Most of its election issues were too local, too diversified, too parochial to go national. The system of checks and balances instituted by the Founders cooled the passions as it was designed to do, rejecting the fierce urgency of now in favor of gradual change. From 13 East Coast colonies to 50 states, marked by deep regional differences, America weathered the storms of civil war, anarchism, socialism, National Socialism, and communism without succumbing to any of them.

But the hammering on the gates of our republican democracy has only grown louder and more insistent. The rescue of a coterie of German Marxists from Hitler in the run-up to the war resulted in the elevation of anti-Americanism and anti-Westernism to cardinal academic and intellectual principles. Combined with the legacy of organized crimeSaul Alinsky, the notorious author of Rules for Radicals, began his community organizing as a member of the Capone Mob in Chicagoideology turned both poisonous and potent.

For what the gangsters, almost all of them Democrats, learned and imparted to the academics was this: if you could take over the principal city of a given stateChicago, New York, Detroit, Kansas City, et al.you could then capture and own the state house and the mechanisms and monies of the state itself.

Thus did a lowly bagman for the Pendergast Machine in Kansas City become President Harry S. Truman; thus did the son of a bootlegger in Boston become President John F. Kennedy. A capstone was the presidency of William Jefferson Blythe III, better known as Bill Clinton, who learned the use and abuse of power growing up in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where he sat at the feet of the retired New York City gangster Owney Madden at the Southern Club and Grill and got the best education of his life.

Even Clinton, though, was still at heart a regional politician. Barack Obama, from the thoroughly corrupt city of Chicago, was the real triumph of the left. Managed by red-diaper babies and schooled in the carrot-and-stick arts of political intimidation, Obama blurred ethnic and regional differences, nationalized issues such as health care, and proclaimed himself not just the president of the United States but a citizen-politician of the world.

And here we are now: less a federal republic than an imperial capital sucking the life and tax dollars out of 50 non-sovereign satellites, about half of which are Democrat satrapies that support ever-more-centralized government and ever-less state and individual liberty. They wont rest until all the borders of the United Statesnot just the international borders, but the borders between and among the states themselvesare erased, and they can rule a captive nation directly from Washington, via the White House alone.

Trump for Vice President

So, to echo Lenin one more time: What is to be done? The fleeting, constantly besieged presidency of Donald J. Trump demonstrated that there is still substantial conservative opposition to the Democrats drive to reimagine the old slogan of E Pluribus Unum from meaning a melting pot to a Stalinist conformity that erased all previous distinctions.

Thus, the last two presidential elections have been decided, narrowly, at the margins. With the country now divided into two camps (one self-armed, the other in control of the military at the moment), a handful of swing states determines the outcome in the Electoral College. And as 2020 shows, the Democrats only have to win control of the levers of power by the slimmest of margins in order to bring the hammer down on their domestic enemies.

So now that the United States of America has become an all-the-marbles country, with presidents ruling by decree in the fashion of the Roman emperors, contemptuous of Congress at least until next year, and disdainful of the federal courts  what is to be done in 2024?

Before you scoff, think about it. Donald Agonistes is the movie we dont want to see again. A second Trump candidacy would be subject to even more of a leftist assault on the nations traditions and institutions and push the country ever closer to civil strife.

If you thought the Democrat Media Complex had plumbed new depths of dishonesty and animosity in 2020, you aint seen nothing yet. Further, there is the question of whether a declawed Trump really has learned anything in matters of personnel and, more important, self-restraint. With the future of the country riding on the outcome, is Trump really the best possible candidate?

The rational, unemotional answer is no. And whether he would accept it is irrelevant to the purposes of this discussion. In April of 2020, I wrote in the New York Post that Michelle Obama would have been the perfect veep choice for Biden, advice he luckily chose to ignore. The next Republican presidential candidate shouldnt.

Trump as veep is a whole different story than Trump as Grover Cleveland redux. For one thing, hed be the first vice presidential candidate in history who could bring 70 million votes with him on day one of the campaign. For another, hed suddenly become Trump Unchained, free to stomp around the country like Godzilla, flame-throwing his enemies and stomping their cities into matchsticks. In massive rallies, he could whip up his followers to furies of vengeance, terrify the bed-wetters at The New York Times and plainly demonstrate his and his followers resolve to expose the irregularities of 2020 and put it front and center, whether the media likes it or not.

Its the perfect solution. Trumps thirst for revenge could finally be slaked, his voters assured that there will be a day of reckoning. Since the veep has almost no Constitutional power, the Democrats would be hard-pressed to argue that the Donald, his residence now declared in New York or New Jersey to get around the Constitutional provision that candidates for president and veep be from different states, would be a threat to the Republic.

But at the same time, theyd know hed have the new presidents ear, have his own bully pulpit, and carte blanche to make leftist lives as miserable as possible. Best of all, the prospect of Trumps becoming president if anything should happen to the new guy would ensure any talk of instant impeachment would be stifled in its cradle.

DeSantis for President

And so, as President Ronald Dion DeSantisa champion of the 10th Amendment and an exemplary governor of Floridais sworn in on Jan. 20, 2025, all 50 states would understand that federalism is back, neo-Marxism has been repudiated, rule by decree is over, the phantom menace of COVID-19 and its ilk is defeated, China is on notice, and our great experiment in representative democracy is once again back on course.

Whats not to like?

This is the last article in a series. The previous articles may be read here, here, here, here, and here.

Michael Walsh is the editor of The-Pipeline.org and the author of The Devils Pleasure Palace and The Fiery Angel, both published by Encounter Books. His latest book, Last Stands, a cultural study of military history from the Greeks to the Korean War, was recently published.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Worlds Largest $95 Billion Renewables Hub to Be Developed in Western Australia

Western Australia (WA) is poised to become the host of the worlds largest renewable energy hub, promising a mix of wind and solar that could match Australias entire energy fleet and contribute a whopping 50 GW (gigawatts) in power generation.

The Western Green Energy Hub (WGEH) is set to cost $95 billion (US$70 billion) and occupy 15,000 square kilometres (5,800 square miles) of south-eastern WA, with final plans due to be drawn up in 2028.

The proposal is headed by Hong-Kong-based groups InterContinental Energy (ICE) and CWP Global in an unprecedented partnership with Indigenous landowners, the Mirning people.

The WGEH is planned to be delivered through phases, with the ambitious scope greatly exceeding the consortiums previous track record. To date, CWP has successfully completed a total of just over 1.5 GW in energy projects, and ICE has yet to complete a project.

Both CWP and ICE are also currently involved in another mega-scale green energy hub in WAthe 26 GW Asian Renewable Energy Hub, which last month was halted by the Federal Government over environmental concerns.

WDEH Board Chairman Brendan Hammond said the proposal was historic in size, and that the coalition, which includes Mirning Green Energya subsidiary of Traditional Lands Aboriginal Corporationhad created a new standard for collaboration between corporations and First Nations Land Owners.

Details of the Western Green Energy Hub. (Supplied Photo)

More importantly, the way in which we are working with the Mirning People, the original owners of the land, to create a truly long-term and sustainable multi-generational partnership, Hammond said.

The primary region covered by the WGEH spans across the Shires of Dundas, and in 2017, the Federal Court ruled the land was in exclusive possession of the WA Mirning People.

Dundas Shire CEO, Peter Fitchat, told The Epoch Times he supported the project. But noted the local council had not been consulted as a stakeholder in the impact assessment. Fitchat said they were eventually approached and asked if they would object to the development.

This will be one of the biggest land-use agreements with native title groups in history, Fitchat said. We are waiting for those final assessments on impact.

Out of the hubs maximum 50 GW capacity, the sites location is estimated to deliver 70 percent, or 35 GW, during periods of sunny days and windy nights.

The intermittent generation of solar and wind generation could see actual outputs vary, though, depending on weather conditions and the presence of sunshine or wind.

With its power output, the project is expected to support the production of 3.5 million tonnes of green hydrogen, in line with WAs Renewable Hydrogen Strategy and Australias National Hydrogen Strategy.

The WA Government welcomed the proposal, lauding the projects hydrogen prospects and the projects cooperation with the Mirning People.

Our State is perfectly positioned to lead the global renewable hydrogen industry, delivering a strong economic future for WA and becoming a major contributor to global decarbonisation, WA Hydrogen Industry Minister Alannah MacTiernan said.

Importantly, this project is a powerful collaboration between the Mirning traditional owners and industry, and would be a transformational opportunity for the community.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  California will hold a recall election Sept. 14 that could remove first-term Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office. The date was set by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat and Newsom ally, after election officials certified that 1.7 million valid petition signatures had been turned in to qualify the election for the ballot. Republicans are hoping for an upset in a heavily Democratic state where the GOP hasnt won a statewide election since 2006. The election will be watched nationally as a barometer of the public mood heading toward the 2022 elections, when a closely divided Congress again will be in play. Heres how it works:

WHAT IS A RECALL ELECTION?

California is one of 20 states that have provisions to recall a sitting governor. The state law establishing the rules goes back to 1911 and was intended to place more power directly in the hands of voters by allowing them to remove elected officials and repeal or pass laws by placing them on the ballot. Recall attempts are common in the state, but they rarely get on the ballot and even fewer succeed. However, in 2003, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger.

WHY IS THERE A RECALL DRIVE AGAINST NEWSOM?

The answer is simple and complicated.

The simple part: Californians grew angry during the pandemic. Whipsaw stay-at-home orders by Newsom, crushing job losses from business closures, shuttered schools and the disruption of daily life soured just about everybody. Many of lifes routines were cut off at some point if not altogether, whether trips to the beach or lunches at a favorite burger joint.

The complicated part: In a state with nearly 40 million people there are many grievances, from Californias wallet-sapping taxes to a raging homelessness crisis. As governor, Newsom is a ready target for that resentment.

He is also being hit by fallout from a multibillion-dollar fraud scandal at the state unemployment agency while weathering a public shaming for dining out with friends and lobbyists at an exclusive restaurant last fall, while telling residents to stay home for safety.

HOW DOES THE ELECTION WORK?

Voters will be asked two questions: First, should Newsom be removed, yes or no? The second question is a list of replacement candidates from which to choose. If a majority of voters approve Newsoms recall, the candidate who gets the most votes becomes governor. If Newsom is recalled, it's likely his replacement could be elected with just a fraction of the votes. With dozens of candidates dividing those ballots it's possible a winner could get 25% or less.

WHAT REPLACEMENT CANDIDATES HAVE ENTERED THE RACE?

There are 41 names on the preliminary list of qualified candidates. The 21 Republican candidates include Kevin Faulconer, the former San Diego mayor; businessman John Cox, who was trounced by Newsom in 2018; former Sacramento-area Congressman Doug Ose; Caitlyn Jenner, a reality TV personality and former Olympian; and Assemblyman Kevin Kiley. But the field remains unsettled: Conservative talk show host Larry Elder, a Republican, is challenging a state decision to reject his candidacy. The secretary of state's office says Elder filed incomplete tax returns that are required to run, but he denies that and is promising a court challenge. I'm going to win this, Elder says of the dispute.

Meanwhile, Faulconer says hes filing a lawsuit against the Democratic Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, after the office blocked him from identifying himself on the ballot as the retired San Diego mayor. His campaign says regulations dont prohibit use of the word. In a similar dispute over ballot language earlier this month, Newsom lost a bid to list his Democratic Party affiliation on the ballot, after his campaign missed a deadline.

There are eight Democrats, nine independents, two Green Party members and one Libertarian. No Democrat with political stature decided to run on the replacement list. Ballots start going out in the mail next month.

WHAT ARE CANDIDATES PROMISING?

Faulconer has proposed ending the state income tax for individuals making up to $50,000 and households up to $100,000 as part of a plan to make the state more affordable for the middle class. Cox has sought to gain attention by campaigning with a 1,000-pound Kodiak bear, which he said represented the need for beastly changes in the state. Elder has been promising to bring a fresh eye and common sense to Democratic-dominated Sacramento. Kiley has said he would immediately end the pandemic state of emergency, which would automatically wipe out all state and local orders issued under it.

WHAT IS NEWSOM SAYING ABOUT THE RECALL?

For months, Newsom steered around questions about a possible recall election, saying he wanted to focus on the coronavirus, vaccinations and reopening schools. But in March, he launched an aggressive campaign strategy, fundraising, running ads attacking the recall and doing national TV and cable interviews. He has acknowledged that people were anxious and weary after a difficult year dealing with the virus and restrictions.

Newsom, who was elected in a 2018 landslide, sees the recall as an attack on Californias progressive policies. Democrats say the effort to remove him is being driven by extremists and supporters of former President Donald Trump. The recall is backed by state and national Republicans, but organizers argue they have a broad-based coalition, including many independents and Democrats.

The governor spent much of 2020 on the defensive. But he has benefitted from a record state budget surplus that allowed him to tour the state to announce vast new spending programs, including $12 billion to fight homelessness; checks up to $1,100 for millions of low and middle-income earners who struggled during lockdowns; and $2.7 billion to pay for all of the states 4-year-olds to go to kindergarten for free.

HOW PRECARIOUS IS NEWSOMS HOLD ON HIS JOB?

In the depths of the pandemic, Newsoms popularity was tumbling and he appeared imperiled, with widespread unrest over long-running school and business closures. Many business owners were infuriated by what they saw as Newsoms heavy-handed restrictions that had some open and close several times. Others rebelled against mandatory mask-wearing rules.

But a reopened economy and the astounding windfall of tax dollars helped him recover his standing. Recent polls have shown him surviving the recall, although those same surveys reveal signs of an unsettled public. Independent voters, for example, tend to view Newsom's job performance skeptically, and most say the state is going in the wrong direction.

When Newsom fully reopened the state on June 15 virus cases were near record lows. But since then, cases have been rising, mainly among the unvaccinated. Los Angeles County re-imposed a mandatory mask order when people are indoors at public places, even if they're vaccinated. California also is requiring K-12 students to wear masks when they go back to classrooms for the next school year. Such an order could hurt Newsom, especially among those who felt he didn't do enough to reopen classrooms last year.

Still, Newsom is aided by the fact California is one of the most heavily Democratic states in the country. Democratic voters outnumber Republicans by nearly 2 to 1, and the party controls every statewide office while dominating the Legislature and congressional delegation.
Immigrants and advocates are urging Democrats and President Joe Biden to quickly act on legislation to protect young immigrants after a federal judge in Texas on Friday ruled illegal an Obama-era program that prevents the deportation of thousands of them brought into the U.S. as children.

Plaintiffs have vowed to appeal the decision by U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen, who declared the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program illegal, barring the government from approving any new applications, but leaving the program intact for existing recipients.

Calling the ruling a blaring siren for Democrats, United We Dream Executive Director Greisa Martinez Rosas said they would be solely to blame if legislative reform doesn't happen.

Until the president and Democrats in Congress deliver on citizenship, the lives of millions will remain on the line," Martinez Rosas said.

Hanen ruled in favor of Texas and eight other conservative states that sued to halt DACA, which provides limited protections to about 650,000 people.

The program has faced a roller coaster of court challenges since former President Barack Obama instituted it in June 2012. The Trump administration announced it was ending the program in September 2017, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the administration hadn't ended the program properly, keeping it alive once more.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a statement Friday evening, vowed that Democrats will continue to push for passage of the DREAM Act, and called on Republicans to join us in respecting the will of the American people and the law, to ensure that Dreamers have a permanent path to citizenship.

In Friday's ruling, Hanen wrote that the states proved the hardship that the continued operation of DACA has inflicted on them.

He continued: Furthermore, the government has no legitimate interest in the continuation of an illegally implemented program.

Biden has already proposed legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without authorization. He also ordered agencies to make efforts to preserve the program.

Supporters of DACA, including those who argued before Hanen to save it, have said a law passed by Congress is necessary to provide permanent relief. Hanen has said Congress must act if the U.S. wants to provide the protections in DACA to recipients commonly known as Dreamers, based on never-passed proposals in Congress called the DREAM Act.

The House approved legislation in March creating a pathway toward citizenship for Dreamers, but the measure has stalled in the Senate. Immigration advocates hope to include a provision opening that citizenship doorway in sweeping budget legislation Democrats want to approve this year, but its unclear whether that language will survive.

Suing alongside Texas were Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia  states that all had Republican governors or state attorneys general.

They argued that Obama didn't have the authority to create DACA because it circumvented Congress. The states also argued that the program drains their educational and healthcare resources.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the New Jersey Attorney Generals Office, which defended the program on behalf of some DACA recipients, argued Obama did have the authority and that the states lacked the standing to sue because they had not suffered any harm due to the program.

Thomas Saenz, president of MALDEF, said Friday that plaintiffs will file an appeal.

Today's decision then once more emphasizes how critically important it is that the Congress step up to reflect the will of a supermajority of citizens and voters in this country. That will is to see DACA recipients and other young immigrants similarly situated receive legislative action that will grant them a pathway to permanence and citizenship in our country, Saenz said.

Hanen rejected Texas request in 2018 to stop the program through a preliminary injunction. But in a foreshadowing of his latest ruling, he said he believed DACA as enacted was likely unconstitutional without congressional approval.

Hanen ruled in 2015 that Obama could not expand DACA protections or institute a program shielding their parents.

While DACA is often described as a program for young immigrants, many recipients have lived in the U.S. for a decade or longer after being brought into the country without permission or overstaying visas. The liberal Center for American Progress says roughly 254,000 children have at least one parent relying on DACA. Some recipients are grandparents.

Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a progressive organization, expressed disappointment at Fridays ruling, saying in a statement that DACA has been a big success that has transformed many lives.

Today makes absolutely clear: only a permanent legislative solution passed by Congress will eliminate the fear and uncertainty that DACA recipients have been forced to live with for years. We call on each and every elected office to do everything within their power so that DACA recipients and their families and communities can live free from fear, and continue to build their lives here, Schulte said.

___

Galvan reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Lou Kesten in Washington, D.C., and Juan Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
NORWALK  Erected last spring, the decorated jersey barriers along Washington Street blocking parking spots to allow extended outdoor dining were removed Friday, partly because of an increase in nightlife around the barriers.

The barriers, installed on May 21, 2020, and painted by local artists, became a congregation point for patrons exiting bars and restaurants on Washington Street, Chief of Community and Economic Development Jess Vonashek said.

Following the lifting of COVID-19 capacity restrictions for restaurants in June, the increased outdoor dining space became unnecessary and instead attracted crowds, Vonashek said.

3 1 of 3 Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Erik Trautmann / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 3 of 3





All of sudden restaurants had 100 percent capacity and with that and nicer weather, as the restaurant and establishments let out in the evening, what was happening was people started to collect between the restaurants and barrier, Vonashek said.

The barriers were originally put in place to allow restaurants to take advantage of the entirety of the sidewalk for outdoor dining, allowing pedestrians to walk in the blocked off parking spaces along the sidewalk, protected by the jersey barriers from the passing cars, Vonashek said. Outdoor dining on the sidewalk was allowed until 9 p.m. on Sundays and weekdays and 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.

When we realized there were many people collecting between the establishments and outdoor barriers at 1 and 3 in the morning, we had major concerns about it, Vonashek said.

On Friday, the barriers blocking off 17 parking spaces on Washington Street were removed, resulting in the roads closure for about five hours, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Other jersey barriers in the city, including those outside of the Blind Rhino on North Main Street and Troupe429 on Wall Street will remain in place for the forseeable future, Vonashek said.

The noise and congregating concerns were first addressed on June 30, when city officials and the affected business owners met at City Hall to discuss the complaints, Vonashek said.

Not everyone, but some folks are having their patrons leave establishments and theyre standing between barriers and sitting on them, and that isnt the intent of the barriers, Vonashek told the restauranteurs. Anyone with a drink in their hand needs to make sure theyre sitting in a seat and had food, and its not a collecting point for people.

Vonashek and her team reminded business owners of the rules surrounding the barriers and encouraged establishments to keep crowds moving. After the weekend of July 10-11, when the problem persisted, notices were sent to businesses on July 14 alerting the establishments of the barriers impending removal, Vonashek said.

There were no specific bars or restaurants whose patrons caused the removal of the barriers, but a general flooding of people in the area late at night, she explained.

In June, the number of people leaving was much greater, that was causing pressure between the restaurants and barriers, but folks were collecting down the street as well, Vonashek said. They were finishing their evening out on the street and using it as an outdoor socializing area, which would be fine during times in which its meant to be used as that, but its not meant to be socializing place.

Some businesses who were not involved in overcrowding and used the barriers properly were upset they were punished for the misuse, but the complete removal was deemed necessary, Vonashek said.

As the barriers were decorated by local artists, they will be repurposed elsewhere in the city, but their new location has yet to be determined, she said.

Seventeen parking spaces are now back in commission, which could provide some relief to the Parking Authority.

The citys Parking Authoritys earnings took a hit during the height of the pandemic, with a large reduction in commuters using the Metro-North and business at a near standstill for much of last spring.

Between July 2020 and May 2021, there were 302,803 transactions for on-street parking, including Washington Street, which is nearly 40,000 less transactions compared to the 2019-20 fiscal year, according to city documents. During the same 11 months, there were just 94 parking transactions on Washington Street.

Overall, SONO core business area excluding On-Street parking has seen 166,611 less transactions; when including On-Street parking, the area has seen 205,351 less transactions, the Parking Authoritys year-to-date transient activity report read.

However, in recent months, on-street parking use has increased, even returning to pre-pandemic numbers. The city logged nearly 36,000 parking transactions at metered on-street spaces in April, virtually matching the number of transactions performed during the same month in 2019, despite losing 28 spaces to outdoor dining.

With the loss of the spaces on Washington Street, demand on weekend nights is outpacing the supply, LAZ Parking Vice President Stathis Manousos said at the Parking Authoritys June meeting.

abigail.brone@hearstmediact.com
STAMFORD  Lawyers representing two Norwalk police officers accused of drinking while on duty asked the court for lenience during a hearing on whether they would be eligible for a pretrial probation program on Tuesday. The states attorney, however, argued the move is a way for the officers to avoid responsibility.

Michael DiMeglio, 39, and Sara Laudano, 31, appeared before Judge Gary White to ask that he permit them to join the accelerated rehabilitation program, which could result in the charges against them being dropped.

Laudano and DiMeglio face felony charges of second-degree larceny and second-degree reckless endangerment, stemming from an incident in which the two were allegedly caught drinking on the job. Laudano faces an additional charge of risk of injury to minor.

Criminal defense attorney Raymond Hassett, who represents Laudano, argued the five-year police veteran had been experiencing depression since 2019, when she was allegedly physically and sexually assaulted, he said Tuesday.

Hassett said since then, his client has been self-medicating with alcohol. The depression and self-medication got even worse, he said, when she had a baby late last year.

I take full responsibility for mistake, and I understand the severity of the situation. There were a lot of contributing factors as to why I was in such a bad place mentally at that time. Since then, Ive done a lot of work to better myself. I love serving the city of Norwalk and I would love to opportunity to return there, Laudano said in a statement before White on Tuesday.

Attorney Jessica Kordas, who represents DiMeglio, said her client was in an equally dark place at the time of the incident in October 2020.

DiMeglio, a former U.S. Marine with two tours at war in Iraq and nine-year veteran of the Norwalk police force, was dealing with then-undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and other issues at the time, she said.

I know from the last few months of speaking with him that he is embarrassed, ashamed. Hes called himself broken. He feels that not only has he let down his children and his family and his wife, but hes let down his community, his fellow officers and he made a mistake, Kordas said.

States attorney Paul Ferencek instead argued that the judge should not grant accelerated rehabilitation to the two officers, calling the applications a hail Mary pass to keep their jobs.

If they really wanted to take responsibility for their actions, they would have just resigned from their jobs, Ferencek told White.

If granted accelerated rehabilitation, Laudano and DiMeglio would not admit guilt in the case but would be placed on probation instead.

If neither commits any crimes during that probation, the charges against them would be dropped.

A judge could add additional conditions to the probationary period, such as community service hours, alcohol education programs or paid restitution, if so inclined.

But Ferencek argued that accelerated rehabilitation is not to be considered in serious crimes, and he argued the crime allegedly committed in this case fit that bill.

These officers embarrassed completely the police department of Norwalk, they embarrassed their fellow officers, they acted as though they were immune from scrutiny in an era when police conduct is being scrutinized at an ever-greater amount. This occurred when people throughout this country were protesting police misconduct, and you can see a certain amount of arrogance in their behavior, Ferencek said.

Arrest warrants show a 12-hour period between Oct. 8 and 9 in which DiMeglio and Laudano are accused of drinking in their police cruisers and not responding to service calls before they were found in a hotel room.

Laudano was accused of driving with a baby and a civilian in the cruiser after she consumed alcohol, and also using a THC vape pen, according to the warrants.

An investigation was launched as department officials placed the two officers on administrative leave.

During the investigation, police determined the conduct went beyond department violations and criminal charges were filed.

I am extremely disappointed in the apparent dereliction of their duty to both the citizens of Norwalk as well as to their fellow officers, Police Chief Thomas Kulhawik said when the officers were arrested. We will have no further comment until after the disciplinary process is complete.

Kulhawik vowed a thorough internal investigation ahead of disciplinary hearings, which police say are still ongoing.

Neither officer has completed their disciplinary hearing yet.

White is expected to decide whether or not to grant accelerated rehabilitation to Laudano and DiMeglio at their next court appearance on Aug. 31.
FARMINGTON  The bodies of the two teens that went missing last week while swimming in the Farmington River were recovered Monday by crews searching the area, officials said.

The search for Lucas Brewer, 15, and Anthony Nagore, 17, began Thursday afternoon when neither returned home after going swimming in the river, authorities said.

Officials with the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection said that EnCon police were searching the grounds along the river near the Farmington and Burlington town line around 3 p.m. when the bodies of the two teens were spotted in the water.

Officials were searching in that area on a hunch, according to Capt. Keith Williams, head of the State Environmental Conservation Police marine unit, in a press conference Monday evening.

We were just doing our normal patrols, focusing on downstream a little bit further because of current conditions with the water flows being a bit higher than they normally have been. We figured we might as well start searching downriver with that potential that they may surface at some point, he said.

Williams said theyd been first seen moving downstream and had gotten snagged up on a tree that was on the opposite side of the river, which worked out in our favor.

We were able to get assets out there to secure them, and we were able to get them to shore, he said.

The effort was hampered late last week and into the weekend by recent rainfall, causing dangerous conditions on the river. In the first two weeks of July, thanks to heavy rain and several storms, the Hartford area has seen more than 8 inches of rain.

The Army Corps of Engineers released a large amount of water into the Farmington River Monday morning to reduce the strain on the dams and larger bodies of water further north, the State Environmental Conservation Police said.

Williams said Monday the level of the water is probably six or seven times higher than it normally would be this time of year.

It is very dangerous to be out there, he said. So were asking everybody that recreates on not just on this river, but any body of water in the state of Connecticut thats swollen right now because of the rain, please stay off the water. We dont want another incident like this to happen, this is a very unfortunate situation.

Williams said last week that the two teens went swimming on the east side of the river shortly after 1 p.m. Thursday. They were reported missing by their families when they didnt return home when they said theyd be back around 5 p.m. First responders immediately began searching the area where the teens were swimming. Williams said they found a vehicle belonging to one of the teens and their clothes and cellphones on the shore.

Brewer was identified as a Plainville High School student, and Nagore was said to be visiting from out of state, according to authorities.

Multiple local and state agencies have since spent several days searching the river for the two boys.

A woman who identified herself as the wife of Brewers half-brother asked, in a public post on Facebook on Friday, for people to please say a prayer for Lucas and hug your teenager a little tighter tonight. A vigil was planned for the families of the two teens on Monday evening.

Staff writer Leah Brennan contributed to this report.
WILTON  The towns COVID-19 vaccination rates per age group are higher than the states averages, according to the most recent data from the state Department of Public Health, and First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice said demand just hasnt been there to continue weekly town clinics.

As of July 14, Wilton is estimated to have 74.9 percent of its population at least partially vaccinated, or 13,733 total residents, according to DPH statistics. Concurrently, 68.9 percent of Wilton residents, or 12,648 total residents, are accounted for as being fully vaccinated.

The towns vaccination clinics, hosted by the Wilton Health Department and the Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Fairfield County, were considered very successful early on and were a constant in the community while new age groups were being considered eligible for the vaccine throughout the early portion of 2021.

When the first age group, those over 65, was deemed eligible by Gov. Ned Lamont, Wiltons eldest population responded quickly to sign up for the vaccine. To date, an estimated 3,048 Wilton residents over the age of 65 have had at least one dose of the vaccine, while 2,880 have been fully vaccinated. Because the state DPH uses post-censal town population estimates that are based on data that dates back to 2014, the number of vaccinated residents over the age of 65 exceeds the estimated population of the age group; therefore, no relative percentage of the towns over-65 population could be calculated.

The states vaccination average for the over-65 age group is 85.6 percent.

However, as the age groups decrease, the data provides more detailed percentage estimates of Wilton residents vaccinated.

For residents between the ages of 45 and 64, the estimated Wilton population stands at 6,127. Up to July 14, an estimated 5,095 residents in the age group have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccination, or 83.2 percent. Out of that total, 4,755 residents are fully vaccinated, or 77.6 percent.

The states vaccination rate for the 45 to 64 age group is 74 percent.

As younger age groups began to earn eligibility through the states planned rollout, a large percentage of residents fell into the next age range of 16 to 44.

In Wilton, there is an estimated population of 5,053 that fall into this age range, according to the DPH. Out of those 5,000-plus residents, 4,585 residents, or 90.7 percent, have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. About 4,118 residents, or 81.5 percent of individuals in that age group, are fully vaccinated.

This is a stark jump from the states average in this age range, which sits just below 58 percent, according to the DPH.

In the 12 to 15 age range, roughly 1,003 of the towns 1,470 estimated population have received at least one dose of the vaccine, representing 68.2 percent. Those who are fully vaccinated represent 60.8 percent, or 894 total residents.

These numbers are again above the state average in this age range, which hovers just above 40 percent.

The first selectwoman said that those still seeking vaccinations can go to drug stores like CVS and larger health organizations in the area, such as Stamford Health, to make an appointment.

As for the towns future in reopening any form of regular clinic again, Vanderslice said the only thing can anticipate is offering a space to provide residents with boosters for the vaccine, if the state were to move in that direction.

That is (one of) the outstanding questions, if it were to come about, Vanderslice said. Wed probably do some facilitation of the senior population (in Wilton).
GREENWICH  The special election for the seat in the 36th Senate District is coming soon, and voters will have a chance to hear directly from the three candidates running to replace Alex Kasser, who unexpectedly resigned last month.

The League of Women Voters chapters for Greenwich, Stamford and New Canaan are collaborating to host the forum, which will be held on Aug. 6. The election will be held Aug. 17.

Three candidates are seeking the open seat: Democrat Alexis Gevanter and Republican Ryan Fazio were nominated by their parties, and John Blankley is running an independent campaign after breaking from the Democratic Party, when it backed Gevanter. All three candidates are Greenwich residents.

The Aug. 6 forum will be held live at Greenwich Town Hall with all of the candidates, the discussion leader and timers attending in-person. The audience will participate through Zoom. The event is free.

Residents are invited to submit questions for the candidates. Participants must register in advance to watch the forum and send in questions. To register, visit https://lwvgreenwich.org/.

Questions must be submitted by Aug. 1, with a limit of two questions per registered participant, according to the league. According to the league, it will only consider questions that all candidates can address.

The submitted questions will be evaluated by a screening committee made up of one Republican and one Democratic board member. They will review the questions and submit them to the forums moderator to be put to the candidates.

The seat became open after Kassers suddenly resigned in June, citing her ongoing divorce case. A Democrat, Kasser was reelected to a second term last November. The election will be to fill the remainder of her term, which runs through the end of 2022.

The 36th District covers all of Greenwich as well as parts of Stamford and New Canaan. Before Kassers victory in 2018, the seat had been held for decades by the Republican Party.

kborsuk@greenwichtime.com
Chris Pizzello/AP

NEW YORK (AP)  Oscar winner Viola Davis is working on a memoir that she says will be straight, no chaser.

HarperOne will release Davis' Finding Me on April 19, 2022. Davis traces her rise from growing up in poverty and family violence in Rhode Island to becoming one of the world's most acclaimed actors. She won an Oscar for her starring role in the 2016 film adaptation of August Wilson's drama Fences," an Emmy for How to Get Away with Murder, and Tonys for Fences and King Hedley II.
BRUSSELS (AP)  Democratic standards in the European Union are eroding in several member countries, particularly in Hungary and Poland where judicial independence is under threat, the EUs executive commission said Tuesday in its annual report on adherence to the rule of law.

The report also singled out Slovenia, which recently took over the six-month rotating presidency of the European Council, for attacks against the Balkan nation's media.

There are causes for serious concern in a number of member states, especially when it comes to the independence of judiciary, said Vera Jourova, the Commission vice-president for Values and Transparency.

The review, which is in its second year, was published a week after the EUs top court ruled that Polands way of disciplining judges contravenes EU law and undermines judicial independence, telling the countrys right-wing government which introduced the system to change it.

The European Commission has also started legal action against Poland and Hungary for what the EUs executive arm sees as blatant disrespect for the rights of LGBT people.

The wide-ranging audit found Poland deficient in the four main areas reviewed: national justice systems, anti-corruption frameworks, media freedom and checks and balances.

According to the EU's executive arm, reforms of the Polish justice system carried out over the past six years by the current government continue to increase the influence of the government over the justice system, damaging judicial independence.

The report also pointed out a risk of undue influence on corruption prosecutions for political purposes" and noted a deterioration of working conditions for journalists, with use of intimidating judicial proceedings."

Hungary was criticized for its perceived inadequate anti-corruption measures and the report noted that media pluralism remains at risk." The report depicted a bleak media situation in Slovenia, reporting online harassment and threats against journalists.

Balazs Hidveghi, a European lawmaker with Hungarys ruling Fidesz party, wrote on Twitter that the European Commissions rule of law report has nothing to do with reality. Its simply the compilation of leftist NGOs baseless accusations against Hungarys conservative government.

Piotr Mueller, the spokesman for Polands government said it will analyze the documents presented by the European Commission.

The EU has repeatedly warned that democratic standards are being challenged in Hungary and Poland. At a June summit, EU leaders strongly clashed with Hungarys Prime Minister Viktor Orban over new legislation that bans the display of LGBT issues to children in that country.

Earlier this year, the European Unions executive arm also condemned Slovenias right-wing prime minister, Janez Jansa, for a series of aggressive comments about journalists.

But the EU's criticism seems to have little effect. After the European Court of Justice's ruling, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki dismissed it as a typical dispute of the doctrine and insisted that the EU court has no authority on the shaping of the justice systems in individual member nations.

Jourova said the commission has formally asked Poland to confirm by Aug. 16 it will fully comply with the ruling or face financial sanctions.

EU law has primacy over national law. All decisions by the European Court of Justice are binding," she said.

The aim of the report is not to sanction countries. To try to rein in member states they believe are at fault, EU institutions can use the so-called Article 7 procedure, but proceedings launched against Poland and Hungary have not been conclusive so far.

EU lawmakers have been losing patience and threatened last month to sue the blocs executive branch if it fails to take action against countries allegedly violating democratic standards, notably Hungary and Poland. They urged European Parliament President David Sassoli to demand that the European Commission fulfil its obligations within two weeks, under a system tying access to some EU funds to a countrys respect for the rule of law.

The system was included in the budget the EU approved last year covering the 2021-27 period and which also included a massive coronavirus economic stimulus fund. In March, the right-wing governments of Poland and Hungary filed a complaint with the European Court of Justice to challenge it.

Both countries have submitted their plans to receive a share of the 800 billion EU recovery fund to finance the 27-nation blocs recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but the commission has yet to approve them.

___

Justin Spike in Budapest and Monika Scislowska in Warsaw contributed to this story.
WASHINGTON (AP)  The Biden administration and Western allies formally blamed China on Monday for a massive hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software and asserted that criminal hackers associated with the Chinese government have carried out ransomware and other illicit cyber operations.

The announcements, though not accompanied by sanctions against the Chinese government, were intended as a forceful condemnation of activities a senior Biden administration official described as part of a pattern of irresponsible behavior in cyberspace. They highlighted the ongoing threat from Chinese hackers even as the administration remains consumed with trying to curb ransomware attacks from Russia-based syndicates that have targeted critical infrastructure.

The broad range of cyberthreats from Beijing disclosed on Monday included a ransomware attack from government-affiliated hackers that targeted victims  including in the U.S.  with demands for millions of dollars. U.S officials also alleged that criminal contract hackers associated with China's Ministry of State Security have engaged in cyber extortion schemes and theft for their own profit.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department on Monday announced charges against four Chinese nationals who prosecutors said were working with the MSS in a hacking campaign that targeted dozens of computer systems, including companies, universities and government entities. The defendants are accused of targeting trade secrets and confidential business information, including scientific technologies and infectious-disease research.

Unlike in April, when public finger-pointing of Russian hacking was paired with a raft of sanctions against Moscow, the Biden administration did not announce any actions against Beijing. Nonetheless, a senior administration official who briefed reporters said that the U.S. has confronted senior Chinese officials and that the White House regards the multination shaming as sending an important message, even if no single action can change behavior.

President Joe Biden told reporters the investigation's not finished, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki did not rule out future consequences for China, saying, "This is not the conclusion of our efforts as it relates to cyber activities with China or Russia.

Even without fresh sanctions, Monday's actions are likely to exacerbate tensions with China at a delicate time. Just last week, the U.S. issued separate stark warnings against transactions with entities that operate in Chinas western Xinjiang region, where China is accused of repressing Uyghur Muslims and other minorities.

The administration also advised American firms of the deteriorating investment and commercial environment in Hong Kong, where China has been cracking down on democratic freedoms it had pledged to respect in the former British colony.

The European Union and Britain were among the allies who called out China. The EU said malicious cyber activities with significant effects that targeted government institutions, political organizations and key industries in the blocs 27 member states could be linked to Chinese hacking groups. The U.K.s National Cyber Security Centre said the groups targeted maritime industries and naval defense contractors in the U.S. and Europe and the Finnish parliament.

In a statement, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the hacking was conducted from the territory of China for the purpose of intellectual property theft and espionage.

The Microsoft Exchange cyberattack by Chinese state-backed groups was a reckless but familiar pattern of behaviour, U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

NATO, in its first public condemnation of China for hacking activities, called on Beijing to uphold its international commitments and obligations and to act responsibly in the international system, including in cyberspace. The alliance said it was determined to actively deter, defend against and counter the full spectrum of cyber threats.

That hackers affiliated with the Ministry of State Security were engaged in ransomware was surprising and concerning to the U.S. government, the senior administration official said. But the attack, in which an unidentified American company received a high-dollar ransom demand, also gave U.S. officials new insight into what the official said was the kind of aggressive behavior that we're seeing coming out of China.

A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, Liu Pengyu, said in a statement that the U.S. has repeatedly made groundless attacks and malicious smear against China on cybersecurity. Now this is just another old trick, with nothing new in it. The statement called China "a severe victim of the US cyber theft, eavesdropping and surveillance."

The majority of the most damaging and high-profile recent ransomware attacks have involved Russian criminal gangs. Though the U.S. has sometimes seen connections between Russian intelligence agencies and individual hackers, the use of criminal contract hackers by the Chinese government to conduct unsanctioned cyber operations globally is distinct, the official said.

Dmitri Alperovitch, the former chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, said the announcement makes clear that MSS contractors who for years have worked for the government and conducted operations on its behalf have over time decided  either with the approval or the blind eye of their bosses"  to start moonlighting and engaging in other activities that could put money in their pockets."

The Microsoft Exchange hack that months ago compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world was swiftly attributed to Chinese cyber spies by Microsoft.

An administration official said the government's attribution to hackers affiliated with the Ministry of State Security took until now in part because of the discovery of the ransomware and for-profit hacking operations and because the administration wanted to pair the announcement with guidance for businesses about tactics that the Chinese have been using.

Given the scope of the attack, Alperovitch said it was puzzling that the U.S. did not impose sanctions.

They certainly deserve it, and at this point, it's becoming a glaring standout that we have not, he said.

He added, in a reference to a large Russian cyberespionage operation discovered late last year, "Theres no question that the Exchange hacks have been more reckless, more dangerous and more disruptive than anything the Russians have done in SolarWinds.

___

Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan in London and Matthew Lee and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP.
DENVER, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VanWest Partners, an opportunistic investment firm specializing in commercial real estate acquisition, management, and sales, announces the acquisition of two self storage facilities to its newest fund, VanWest Self Storage Fund II, LLC.
Salida, CO (81201)

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Partly cloudy in the morning. Thunderstorms developing later in the day. High around 85F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Localized flooding is possible..

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Salida, CO (81201)

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Partly cloudy with afternoon showers or thunderstorms. High 84F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Localized flooding is possible..

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Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms before midnight. Low 58F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Localized flooding is possible.
Israeli-Thai couple marry under Phuket Sandbox

PHUKET: An Israeli man and his Thai girlfriend who came to the island together under the Phuket Sandbox scheme were married at the Muang District Office in Phuket Town yesterday (July 19).

tourismCOVID-19

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 20 July 2021, 12:45PM

The couple Nadav Gefen, 34, and Yanisa Chuchotethawon, 33, came to sign their marriage registration at the office, where Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew and his wife Wandee Woonciew served as witnesses.

Also present as witnesses were Muang District Chief Somprat Prabsongkham and Mrs Yanisas parents, said a report by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department (PR Phuket).

Mrs Yanisa explained that Nadav, a history lecturer, in Tel Aviv, where she works as a secretary for the Thai ambassador to Israel.

We planned to hold our wedding in September this year, but the COVID-19 pandemic has already forced that date to be postponed. When the Phuket Sandbox opened, we came here to visit my family, who I have not spent time with for two years, and to sign the marriage certificate, she said.

I have to thank the Phuket Sandbox for giving foreigners and Thai people living abroad a chance to come home. I believe that this project will be going well, Mrs Yanisa said.

I have been impressed since we arrived at the airport, right up to this point, us signing our marriage certificate. We have received a warm welcome. Phuket is very beautiful, and I will bring my family to travel here after the pandemic is over, Mr Gefen said.

The couple arrived in Phuket last Friday (July 16). Mr Geffen will return to Israel this Saturday (July 24), while Mrs Yanisa will stay for 14 days and spend time with her parents before returning to work in Israel.
NATO joins condemnation of malicious China cyber hacking

WORLD: NATO joined the United States yesterday (July 19) in accusing Beijing of carrying out a massive hack of Microsoft as the US charged four Chinese nationals and rallied allies in rare joint condemnation of malicious cyber activity from China.

Chinesecrimetechnology

By AFP

Tuesday 20 July 2021, 09:48AM

The United States has formally accused cyber actors affiliated to Chinas Ministry of State Security of conducting the massive Microsoft Exchange Server hack disclosed in March. Photo: AFP file

In comments likely to further strain worsening relations between Washington and Beijing, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the March hack of Microsoft Exchange, a top email server for corporations around the world, was part of a pattern of irresponsible, disruptive and destabilizing behavior in cyberspace, which poses a major threat to our economic and national security.

Chinas Ministry of State Security, or MSS, has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain, Blinken said in a statement.

In a simultaneous announcement, the US Department of Justice said four Chinese nationals had been charged with hacking the computers of dozens of companies, universities and government bodies in the United States and abroad between 2011 and 2018.

Pointing to the indictment, Blinken said the United States will impose consequences on (Chinese) malicious cyber actors for their irresponsible behavior in cyberspace.

President Joe Biden told reporters the United States was still completing an investigation before taking any countermeasures and drew parallels with the murky but prolific cybercrime attributed by Western officials to Russia.

The Chinese government, not unlike the Russian government, is not doing this themselves, but are protecting those who are doing it, and maybe even accommodating them being able to do it, Biden told reporters.

NATO solidarity

Biden, like his predecessor Donald Trump, has ramped up pressure on China, seeing the rising Asian powers increasingly assertive moves at home and abroad as the main long-term threat to the United States.

In a step that the Biden administration hailed as unprecedented, the United States coordinated its statement Monday with allies  the European Union, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO.

The cyberattack on Microsoft Exchange Server by Chinese state-backed groups was a reckless but familiar pattern of behavior, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said.

NATO issued a statement condemning malicious cyber activity and offering solidarity over the Microsoft hacking without directly assigning blame, while noting that allies United States, Britain and Canada found China to be responsible.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said it was the first time that NATO  the Western military alliance whose members include Hungary and Turkey, which have comparatively cordial relations with Beijing  has condemned cyber activity from China.

It comes weeks after NATO took up China at a summit attended by Biden.

We know well be stronger, we know well be more effective when we act collectively, Price said, saying the United States was not ruling out further action.

Biden has promised a strategy driven by alliances to face Beijing, drawing a contrast with Trumps predilection for harsh rhetoric.

Billions seen lost

Frank Cilluffo, director of Auburn Universitys McCrary Institute for Cyber and Critical Infrastructure Security, praised the breadth and depth of international cooperation in clearly attributing responsibility to China.

In addition to the indictments, we need to follow through to ensure there are consequences to induce changes in the Chinese governments behaviour and hopefully move toward levelling the cyber playing field, he said.

The Microsoft hack, which exploited flaws in the Microsoft Exchange service, affected at least 30,000 US organisations including local governments as well as organisations worldwide.

Responsible states do not indiscriminately compromise global network security nor knowingly harbor cyber criminals  let alone sponsor or collaborate with them, Blinken said in his statement.

These contract hackers cost governments and businesses billions of dollars in stolen intellectual property, ransom payments, and cybersecurity mitigation efforts, all while the MSS had them on its payroll.

Accusations of cyberattacks against the United States have recently focused on Russia, rather than China.

US officials say that many of the attacks originate in Russia, although they have debated to what extent there is state involvement. Russia denies responsibility.

This year has seen a slew of prominent ransomware strikes that have disrupted a major US pipeline, a meat processor and the software firm Kaseya, which affected 1,500 businesses.

Last week, Washington offered $10 million (B328mn) for information about foreign online extortionists.
Phuket CIty Police investigated over Dragon Tiger gambling den

PHUKET: The top ranking police officers of the Phuket City Police are under investigation for the lack of action in preventing gambling in their area of jurisdiction following a raid on a gambling den at a resort on Koh Siray, east of Phuket Town, on Saturday (July 17).

policecrime

By The Phuket News

Tuesday 20 July 2021, 02:58PM

Officers at the resort villa gambling den on Saturday (July 17). Photo: PR Phuket

Region 8 Police Commander Lt Gen Kitrat Panpetch issued an order yesterday (July 19) to transfer the five top-ranking officers at Phuket City Police Station to temporarily work at the Region 8 headquarters at the northern end of the island while an investigation is conducted into their affairs relating to the gambling den.

Lt Gen Kitrat identified those transferred by position only, as Phuket City Police Chief, Deputy Chief of Crime Suppression, Deputy Chief of Investigation, Suppression Inspector and Investigation Inspector.

Thai-language daily Post Today, however, named all five as Phuket City Police Chief Col Theerawat Liamsuwan, Deputy Chief of Crime Suppression Lt Col Chakkrit Taewattana, Deputy Chief of Investigation Lt Col Sathit Nurit, Suppression Inspector Lt Col Boonchai Charoenhattakit and Investigation Inspector Lt Col Thapthai Leelanon.

The gambling raid on Saturday (July 17) was conducted at a resort villa on Koh Siray where police arrested gamblers playing baccarat. Officers also seized betting chips which were marked to represent a total value of about B12 million.

Thai news agencies have reported that the venue was known as the Dragon Tiger gambling den.

One of the gamblers arrested was reported to be a local politician.

Of note, state news agency TNA, operated by MCOT, reported that 28 gamblers were arrested. The report issued by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department reported only 27 people arrested.

We are ready to follow the commanders order, and I confirm that we have been performing our duties with our best intention and capability. Before conducting the arrests, we had also coordinated and shared information with the Central Investigation Bureau (CIB), Col Theerawat said in response to being temporarily transferred pending the investigation.

When the commander gives us orders, we need to follow them, he said.

Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew yesterday explained to the press that he had been informed of the transfers and investigation.

The Phuket government has ordered all officers on the island to look for and take action on any gatherings for illegal purposes, especially gambling, and our police have patrolled frequently and taken decisive action, Governor Narong said.

I have already ordered relevant officers to examine whether the resort was legally being used as a gambling venue in accordance with the law. Meanwhile, the local politician will be prosecuted under relevant law, he concluded.

Gambling is permitted in Thailand but only for special circumstances such as merit making as part of a funeral  and only with express permission from local law enforcement authorities and local administrative officials.
Column: We Can All Agree We Want Better Schools
Column: We Must Support Fort Bragg And the Vital Role It Plays
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PLAINVIEW  The trial for a former state senator and one-time gubernatorial candidate accused of money laundering, tax evasion and misuse of campaign funds has been moved to November.

The court has granted the second continuance of the case against William Sam McCann. His attorney, Assistant Federal Public Defender Rosana E. Brown, requested the change July 6, saying the complexity of the charges and the volume of information to be reviewed made it nearly impossible to go to trial July 27.

More than 64,000 pages of material have been presented by federal prosecutors.

McCann, who has pleaded not guilty and is free on bond, was indicted Feb. 23 on nine counts: seven of fraudulent misuse of campaign money and providing false reports to the IRS; and two alleging money laundering and tax evasion, willfully evading taxes in 2018 and preparing false reports.

McCann was elected in 2011 to represent the states 49th Senate District, which later became the 50th District and included Morgan, Greene, Pike, Scott and Calhoun counties and portions of Jersey, Macoupin, Madison and Sangamon counties. He left the Republican Party in 2018.

The indictment maintains that McCann and political committees he oversaw received more than $5 million in campaign donations and some of that money was used to buy personal vehicles, pay personal debts, make mortgage payments and pay himself.

Among the allegations made in the indictment, which is a formal charge by a grand jury but is not proof of guilt, are that McCann:

 Used more than $60,000 in campaign funds to partially fund the April 2017 purchase of a 2017 Ford Expedition and the July 2018 purchase of a 2018 Ford F-250 pickup, which he titled in his own name and used for his personal travel.

 Used campaign funds for loan payments on the F-250 and for fuel and insurance expenses for both vehicles, while at the same time using campaign funds to reimburse mileage expense claims he did not incur.

 Used $18,000 in campaign funds to buy a 2018 recreational travel trailer and, in May 2018, used $25,000 in campaign funds to buy a 2006 recreational motor home, both of which he titled in his own name.

 Established an online account with a recreational vehicle rental business in Ohio listing the vehicles for rent, identifying Sam McCann as the owner and establishing a second account with the same rental business and identifying himself as potential renter with a different residential address and email than those he listed as the owner. From about May to June 2018, McCann  while representing himself as the renter  rented both the travel trailer and motor home from the owner through the RV rental business, according to the indictment.

 Used $62,666 in campaign funds to pay the rental cost of the RV. McCann reimbursed the campaign accounts $18,000, resulting in more than $77,000 in campaign funds being used to buy and rent from himself, the indictment said.

 Used a $20,000 cashiers check funded by a campaign account and issued to himself to pay off a personal loan.

 Used campaign funds to pay about $64,750 on two separate personal mortgages.

 Caused the Conservative Party of Illinois, which he formed when he challenged J.B. Pritzker for governor, to issue about $187,000 in payments to himself and an additional $52,282 in payments for payroll taxes, concealing himself as the payee for the expenditures.

The indictment also contends about $50,000 in campaign funds were used for personal expenses  including credit card payments related to a family vacation in Colorado and other personal expenses, charges from Apple iTunes, Amazon, stores and cash withdrawals.

McCann faces more than 45 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

The final pretrial hearing has been set for Oct. 18 by video before U.S. District Judge Eric I. Long. Jury selection and trial are scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. that day before U.S. District Judge Sue E. Myerscough in Springfield.

It was the cases second continuance. One granted in March for 90 days had pushed McCanns scheduled trial date to July 27.
EDWARDSVILLE  Madison County States Attorney Tom Haine will make a pitch to the full Madison County Board Wednesday for funding to add license plate reader cameras throughout the county and hire more attorneys to prosecute cases.

The board, in its role as Madison County Board of Health, will also discuss  and possibly vote on  a resolution encouraging individual choice in wearing masks when children return to school in the fall.

The meeting is set for 5 p.m. Wednesday in the board room of the Administration Building.

Haine on Monday said he will be talking about the need for the cameras and attorneys, echoing pitches made over the past week or so to the county boards Judicial and Finance committees.

He wants to add about 46 new license plate reader cameras which can track the plates of stolen or otherwise tagged cars. He also wants to add nine attorneys to his staff to handle a large backlog of cases.

Last week Haine said there currently are about 120 LPR cameras  including mobile cameras  in operation throughout Madison County. But he said they are primarily operated by local municipalities. He wants to add additional cameras to close loopholes in the system and coordinate their use.

The use of LPR cameras is one of the cornerstones of the efforts announced by the Madison County Cross-River Task Force this spring to curtail a rise in crime and criminals coming over from Missouri.

The cost for the additional cameras and related expenses is expected to be about $1 million, which could be paid, at least in part, through the American Rescue Plan Act.

Haine is also asking for nine new attorneys to help reduce a backlog of almost 6,000 felony cases.

Part of the cause for the backlog are delays due to the coronavirus pandemic. But the county has also been more aggressive than some neighboring counties in filing felony charges over the past decade.

Haine has said five of the new attorneys would be permanent additions, while four would help deal with the COVID-related backlog. The COVID tie could allow ARPA to provide some funding for the increase, he said. When that funding source ran out, attrition or other methods would be used to reduce the states attorneys staff.

There is also expected to be a request from the Madison County Public Defenders Office for more money to hire attorneys. A formal proposal from that office is expected to be submitted for consideration next month.

The Madison County Board on Wednesday will also discuss a resolution regarding parent choice in wearing masks when students return to class in the fall.

The county board makes up the Board of Health and will meet in special session at the start of the regular county board meeting.

According to the agenda, the topic will be Discussion and approval of resolution encouraging personal choice relating to masks in schools.

The non-binding resolution states all school district boards in Madison County are strongly encouraged to allow families the option of whether to have their students wear masks in school buildings and classrooms for the coming school year.

The discussion comes after some parents contacted county board members seeking guidance on the issue, many saying it should be their choice if their child wears a mask.
On Thursday, at 7:30 p.m., Michael Winslow  celebrated actor, comedian and beatboxer famous for the realistic sounds he can make using only his voice  performs at the Wildey Theatre in Edwardsville. You may remember him from the Police Academy series, Spaceballs and Stripe in Gremlins. He can imitate more than 10,000 sound effects using his voice alone.

 

On Friday and Saturday, the Haunted America Conference  Americas Original Ghost Conference  runs this weekend at the Best Western Premier in Alton. Join paranormal fans at one of the most haunted small towns in America for ghost talks, haunted tours, ghost hunts and more!

 

On Saturday and Sunday, the Riverside Flea Market returns to The Loading Dock in Grafton. One of the regions largest flea markets, the event is a perfect place to find just what you wanted but didnt know until you saw it. Hours at 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

 

Also on Saturday and Sunday, the Code 3 Smokin on Main BBQ competition closes down Main Street in Collinsville for the annual competition and festival. Join professional and backyard teams from around the area, along with great food, awesome drinks and local entertainers.

 

Starting Sunday, celebrate Craft Beer Week July 25-31. Visit Old Herald Brewery and Distillery in Collinsville; Recess Brewing and Peel Brewing Company in Edwardsville; Old Bakery Beer Company in Alton; and Opera House Brewing in Hillsboro to taste the best the area has to offer in the craft beer scene.
There is no easy way from Argentina to Japan. Associated Press Photographer Natacha Pisarenko's trip was more complicated than most.

From the full-body protective suits worn by fellow travelers in Buenos Aires, to the long wait at Haneda Airport in Tokyo for results from COVID-19 testing, Pisarenko's roughly 35-hour journey to the 2020 Summer Games was longer than most but otherwise typical for the thousands of athletes, officials and media descending on Japan's capital this week.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden praised King Abdullah II of Jordan as a stalwart ally in a tough neighborhood as the two leaders huddled at the White House on Monday, a meeting that came at a pivotal moment for both leaders in the Middle East.

Last week a Jordanian state security court sentenced two former officials to 15 years in prison over an alleged plot against the king uncovered earlier this year that involved Abdullah's half-brother.

Meanwhile, Biden, who has put much of his foreign policy focus on China and Russia in the early going, faces some difficult issues in the Middle East. He is dealing with stepped-up attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militias at the same moment that his administration is trying to nudge Iran back to the negotiating table to revive the nuclear agreement that Donald Trump abandoned during his presidency.

You have always been there, and we will always be there for Jordan, Biden said during an Oval Office meeting with Abdullah and his son, the Crown Prince Hussein.

Abdullah had a difficult relationship with Trump, who he saw as undercutting any chance for a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians with his 2017 declaration of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. He also chaffed at the Trump administration's pursuit of what officials called the Abraham Accords  deals with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Morocco that normalized relations with Israel but left out the Palestinians.

Biden has no plans to reverse U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the capital. His administration has even praised the Trump-brokered accords  a rare instance of the Democratic administration speaking positively of the former administration.

Biden planned to stress to Abdullah in private that the accords are not an end run" on finding the way to a peace deal that includes a Palestinian state, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Abdullah, for his part, praised Biden for setting the standard internationally in the battle against COVID-19. The U.S. delivered 500,000 vaccines to Jordan days ahead of the kings visit. The king also appeared to make clear that he was looking to reset the U.S. - Jordan relationship after a four bumpy years with Trump.

You can always count on me, my country, and many of our colleagues in the region, Abdullah said.

The two leaders discussed the situation in Syria  more than 1 million Syrian refugees have fled the war-ravaged nation for Jordan  and a wobbly security situation in Iraq, an administration official said. At least eight drone attacks have targeted the U.S. military presence in Iraq since Biden took office in January, as well as 17 rocket attacks.

Abdullah is set to have a working breakfast Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris and to meet with Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The meeting with Biden was also a chance for the king to spotlight his closeness to Biden following the attempted coup.

Bassem Awadallah, who has U.S. citizenship and once served as a top aide to King Abdullah II, and Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, were found guilty of sedition and incitement charges. Both men denied the charges and Awadallahs U.S. lawyer said his client alleged he was tortured in Jordanian detention and fears for his life.

They are alleged to have conspired with Prince Hamzah, the kings half-brother. Biden, who has known Abdullah for years, was quick to publicly express strong U.S. support for Jordan" and praise the king's leadership after details of the coup attempt were unveiled in April.

It's unclear if Biden raised the United States' long-standing call to extradite Ahlam Ahmad al-Tamimi, a Palestinian woman living in Jordan who is wanted by the U.S. on a charge of conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction against American nationals.

The Trump administration last year indicated it was considering withholding aid to Jordan in a bid to secure al-Tamimi's extradition. She was convicted in Israel of a 2001 bombing of a Tel Aviv restaurant that killed 15 people, including two American citizens. She has lived freely in Jordan since she was released in a Hamas-Israel prisoner swap in 2011.

Biden administration officials have previously made clear to Jordan that the extradition of al-Tamimi, who is on the FBI's most wanted list, is of high-interest to the United States, according to the administration official.

Arnold Roth, whose 15-year-old daughter, Malki, was killed in the bombing, noted that Biden has spoken frequently of decency and dignity as paramount values in how he'll run his administration. Roth and his wife, Frimet, wrote Blinken and other administration officials last month calling on the administration to press Abdullah for extradition. He said they received no response from the administration beyond acknowledgement that their letter was received.

I cant think of two words that more powerfully encapsulate what weve been deprived of in all of our dealings with the U.S. government, Roth said.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden tempered his assessment that social media giants are killing people by hosting misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines on their platforms, saying Monday that he hoped they would not take it personally and instead would act to save lives.

While companies like Facebook defend their practices and say they're helping people around the world access verified information about the shots, the White House says they haven't done enough to stop misinformation that has helped slow the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. to a trickle. It comes as the U.S. sees a rise in virus cases and deaths among those who haven't gotten a shot, in what officials call an emerging pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Speaking at the White House, Biden insisted he meant precisely what I said when he said Friday of the tech giants that they're killing people." But he said the point of his rhetoric was to ramp up pressure on the companies to take action.

My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow Im saying Facebook is killing people,' that they would do something about the misinformation," Biden said.

Bidens comments come as the White House has struggled to counteract resistance to getting a shot, particularly among younger and more Republican demographics. Fewer than 400,000 Americans are getting their first vaccine dose each day  down from a high of more than 2 million per day in April. More than 90 million eligible people have not received a dose.

The administration has increasingly seized on false or misleading information about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines as a driver of that hesitance. It has referenced a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that studies extremism, that linked a dozen accounts to spreading the majority of vaccine disinformation on Facebook.

Facebook isnt killing people. These 12 people are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it, it's killing people," Biden said. "Its bad information."

Im not trying to hold people accountable. Im trying to make people look at themselves, look in the mirror, Biden said, adding, Think about that misinformation going to your son, your daughter, your relative.

In the view of the administration, chastising the social media companies  who have come under mounting scrutiny in Washington over not just disinformation, but also antitrust and privacy practices  is a proxy for criticizing the originators of disinformation themselves. To avoid amplifying falsehoods, the White House has generally sought to avoid engaging directly with those spreading misinformation.

The platforms, the White House says, have not been transparent about the vaccine misinformation they promote to users, and Facebook in particular has not engaged all its tools to prevent the spread of false information as it tries to avoid alienating its user base and cutting into its profits. The platforms, officials argued, should prevent vaccine misinformation from appearing as suggested or potentially relevant content in users' feeds.

The Biden team has clashed repeatedly with social media companies over misinformation for years, and White House chief of staff Ron Klain has raised the issue in conversations with Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, according to an official. Biden himself has not spoken with the executive since taking office.

Last week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared misinformation about the vaccines a deadly threat to public health.

Misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nations health, Murthy said during remarks Thursday at the White House. We must confront misinformation as a nation. Lives are depending on it.

Murthy said technology companies and social media platforms must make meaningful changes to their products and software to reduce the spread of false information while increasing access to authoritative, fact-based sources.

Too often, he said, the platforms are built in ways that encourage the spread of misinformation.

We are asking them to step up, Murthy said. We cant wait longer for them to take aggressive action.

Facebook on Friday responded to Bidens attack, with spokesperson Kevin McAlister saying, The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period."

The company also released a blog post saying its internal research showed it was not responsible for Biden's missed vaccination goal. The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Bidens goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.

Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College who focuses on politics and health care, said Facebook should absolutely be held accountable for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread.

With that said, we should be careful about assuming that the circulation of misinformation online is a cause of hesitancy rather than a consequence," he added.

Its very difficult to show the relationship between misinformation on social media and vaccine hesitancy directly," Nyhan said. "We dont have good measures of what people see on social media or any ability to link it to their vaccination behavior. And even if we see correlations in the data, these could be spurious rather than causal  people who arent going to get vaccinated are presumably more likely to be exposed to negative and false information about the vaccine.

That said, Nyhan added that there is some evidence that exposure to misinformation can reduce a person's intention to vaccinate immediately after viewing the misinformation.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Monday. Were not in a war or battle against Facebook  were in a battle with the virus. But she ramped up pressure on the companies to share information on how many Americans are exposed to misinformation on their platforms and how their secretive and powerful algorithms promote false content to users.

Do you have access to information from these platforms as to who is receiving misinformation?" she asked. I dont think that information has been released. Do you know how the algorithms are working at any of these platforms? I dont think that information has been released.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Colombian President Ivan Duque on Monday announced reforms to the nations police forces that are meant to improve accountability and decrease human rights abuses, following weeks of protests in which officers were accused of killing at least two dozen demonstrators.

Speaking in a courtyard, flanked by police officers, Duque said that the government will create a human rights directorate that will report to the nations police chief, and will be led by a retired colonel.

The new department will gather complaints from citizens and produce two reports each year on human rights issues, Duque said.

In addition, officers and junior officers will be obliged to take a new course on human rights, and the police will toughen sanctions against those who commit abuses. The nations mobile riot squad -- which was implicated in many of the violent actions against protesters during Mays demonstrations -- will also have to undergo a new course on human rights.

The reforms come as human rights groups criticize Colombias police for using excessive force during large protests that began on April 28 and lasted until mid June.

According to Human Rights Watch, credible evidence exists linking police officers to the deaths of 25 demonstrators who were shot with firearms or killed with crowd control devices like tear gas canisters. In a report issued in June, the organization also pointed out that at least one protester was beaten to death by police, and recommended that the government place the police under the Interior Ministry to increase civilian oversight.

Currently, Colombias police is overseen by the Defense Ministry and officers who commit crimes on duty are often judged in military tribunals. The reforms announced by Duque are not as far reaching as those proposed by Human Rights Watch and other international organizations like the Inter American Commission for Human Rights. But the president said they are part of a wholesome effort to improve policing.

The government also announced that at least 11,000 officers who work on neighborhood patrols will have to wear body cams.

The nations police forces will also trade traditional green uniforms for navy blue uniforms that are aimed to emphasize their role as a civilian force. The new uniforms display each officers license number and a QR code that can also be used by citizens to identify officers.

During Colombias armed conflict, police were often deployed to fight drug traffickers and rebel groups and sometimes participated in joint operations with the army. Experts believe that this kind of training has led them to be more violent towards protesters, who have sometimes attacked police with stones and homemade bombs.
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PLANO, Texas (AP)  A gas leak in a suburban Dallas home was the likely cause of an explosion that destroyed the house and heavily damaged the two next door, injuring six people, fire officials said Tuesday.

Plano fire officials said further investigation would be needed to determine where in the home the leak happened before the single-story house exploded at about 4:40 p.m. on Monday. The destruction will hinder the investigation, they said.
The Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE) and the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) today are releasing higher education guidance in line with recent guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The new joint guidance will ease the safe transition back to campus, as more students in Illinois and across the country have returned to in-person learning.

The guidance is designed to protect the public health of students, campuses and communities. The guidance addresses the use of face masks, hand hygiene, cleaning, symptom screening, housing and events. This guidance updates what was previously issued by both the IBHE and ICCB in accordance with the CDC.

"This guidance follows recommendations by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to ensure students can safely return to campus this fall. We are strongly encouraging universities to require vaccination to protect their campus and local communities as they bring students back for a full campus experience" said Ginger Ostro, executive director, IBHE, in a statement. "We urge students to continue on their path through postsecondary education.

"Now more than ever, a college degree or credential is the path to a better future," Ostro continued. "We know many things have been difficult during the pandemic. Students should feel confident campuses will be safe when they return and know there are resources available to help them."

The guidance strongly encourages both public and private universities to require vaccination (keeping in mind appropriate exemptions) to protect populations on campuses and to slow COVID-19 spread in surrounding communities. Indiana University's requirement that all students be vaccinated was recently upheld by a federal judge.

The following universities require vaccines in some form in Illinois: Columbia College, DePaul University, Lewis University, Loyola University Chicago, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, Roosevelt University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Chicago and University of Illinois (Chicago, Springfield, Urbana-Champaign).

"Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville is not currently requiring the vaccine for in-person learning and Illinois College in Jacksonville is "actively educating and encouraging vaccination among students and employees through multiple campaigns," said Stephanie Chipman, vice president of external relations, in a statement.

"Our COVID-19 coordinator said we dont think we will mandate unless the Illinois Department of Public Health mandates it," said Megan Wieser, marketing specialist for media relations at SIUE. "We did announce weekly testing for students, faculty and staff, and that includes vaccination status. Individuals will need to fill out forms to be exempt from that."

Wieser said the new guidance did not change status quo for SIUE to her knowledge, although circumstances are ever-changing and SIUE leadership is following guidelines and recommendations to make "safe and informed decisions."

For the fall semester, on-campus SIUE students will either need to obtain a vaccination before they come to campus or plan to wear a mask and participate in periodic testing until it is determined by health experts that this asymptomatic testing is no longer necessary.

In some circumstances, such as student-athletes and students in health career fields of study, vaccinations may be required. These students will be informed of such requirements by directors, program leaders or others in their specific area.

The guidance also recommends extra precautions to those who are unvaccinated, including wearing a face mask and maintaining physical distance while indoors when feasible. Unvaccinated people may choose not to wear a face covering outdoors but are recommended to do so in crowded settings or during activities that involve sustained close contact with other people who are not fully vaccinated. The guidance also says colleges and universities should be supportive of individuals who choose to wear a face mask whether they are vaccinated or unvaccinated.

"We want our students to have an amazing experience at IC and the best way for students to embrace that opportunity is to be fully vaccinated," Chipman said. "We are reviewing the new recommendations issued Monday by the Illinois Board of Higher Education along with other guidelines from federal, state and local health officials as we plan for a safe and in-person fall semester.

All individuals, including those who are fully vaccinated, should continue to wear a mask on public transportation, in congregate facilities, in health care settings and where required by federal, state, local, tribal or territorial laws, rules and regulations, the guidance states.

"This updated guidance provides significant flexibility for community colleges as they consider their own local context, allowing them to fully reopen in the fall while also keeping the safety and well-being of their students, faculty and staff at the forefront," said Brian Durham, executive director ICCB, in a statement.

Phase 5 is the final stage of the five-phased Restore Illinois plan, that helped reopen Illinois guided by health metrics. Due to the power of the lifesaving COVID-19 vaccine, on June 11, 2021, the State of Illinois advanced to a full reopening of all businesses and activities. In Phase 5, fully vaccinated individuals can resume activities without wearing a mask except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules and regulations.
EDWARDSVILLE  Seven Southern Illinois University Edwardsville scholars made a 3,500-mile trek across the U.S. to chase storms and visit interesting natural features.

The scholars are part of the collaborative GEOPATHS program, funded by the National Science Foundation. The program engages undergraduates in geoscience-related research opportunities.

The GEOPATHs program as a whole has been one am]azing, career-empowering experience after another, said Logan Pelo, a senior geography major.

According to Alan Black, PhD, assistant professor of geography, the goal of the June trip was to give students the opportunity to put what theyve learned about the atmosphere into practice to monitor weather conditions, make a weather forecast and observe storms.

Black and three other SIUE teacher-scholars participated in the trip, including Shunfu Hu, PhD, professor in the Department of Geography, Adriana Martinez, PhD, associate professor in the Departments of Environmental Sciences and Geography, and Sharon Locke, PhD, professor in the Department of Environmental Sciences.

We saw a few major storms that were absolutely breathtaking, Pelo recalled. Watching our group of scholars open up to each other and share our enjoyment of science and weather was the best takeaway.

This experience certified that I want to become a climatologist, said Samantha Gallatin, a senior double majoring in geography and biology, on the environment, ecology and evolution track. It sparked a greater interest for the humanitarian aspect of geography. I am inspired to look into the connections between the physical environment and human practices within ecumenes. Ultimately, this should allow my future analysis to be more complete, my research to be more thorough, and my work to have lasting and germane impacts.

The geoscholars and program leaders will depart July 24 for a two-week excursion to western national parks. They will visit the Badlands, Devils Tower National Monument and Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Great Sand Dunes National Parks.

As part of their excursion, the students will tour a coal mine in Wyoming, study natural hazards in the parks and their impacts on humans, and learn about Dark Skies and how to protect the night sky by doing astronomy via stargazing in the evenings.

NSF funding for SIUEs GEOPATHS program runs through June 2022. For more information and to apply for the program, visit siue.edu/STEM.
BRUSSELS (AP)  A meeting Monday between Serbia and Kosovo that is part of the European Union-brokered negotiations aimed at resolving a long-lasting dispute that remains a source of tensions in the volatile Balkans produced no progress.

The negotiations were headed by the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who urged Serbia President Aleksandar Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti before the meeting in Brussels to achieve a comprehensive legally-binding agreement.

The EU's special envoy for the dialogue, Miroslav Lajcak, who was part of the talks, said at the end of the meeting that it was difficult and it demonstrated very different approaches of the two parties.

The only outcome I would report today is that the dialogue will continue, he said, adding that chief negotiators will hold monthly meetings while both leaders agreed to meet again in September.

Serbia and Kosovo have been told that they can't hope to move forward in their efforts to join the EU before resolving the decades-old rift that exploded in a conflict in 1998-99, leaving more than 10,000 people dead and triggering an intervention by NATO.

The European future for Serbia and Kosovo depends on the normalization of their relations. We therefore expect both parties to work together, to overcome the legacy of the past and solve all outstanding issues between them, underlined Lajcak.

Kosovo, formerly a province in Serbia, declared independence in 2008. But Belgrade has refused to accept that. While Kosovo has been recognized by the U.S. and most EU nations, Belgrade has relied on support from Russia and China in its bid to retain claim on the territory.

Kurti said that Serbia didn't want to face the past and face the families of more than 1,600 people still missing from the war in Kosovo.

Serbia should recognize Kosovo. Kosovo should recognize Serbia and everything else is resolvable and easy, Kurti said.

Vucic argued that all sides committed crimes, adding that there was no agreement at all at the meeting, describing the Kosovo side as irrational.

I am concerned. I dont know what we are going to do, Vucic said. They see only themselves as a victim and only Serbs as criminals.

After a stalemate since last year, the two meetings in the last two months have been fruitless.

The EU-brokered negotiations started in 2011, but were stalled last year partly because of the coronavirus pandemic before resuming a month ago.

Since the start of the EU-brokered negotiations, the delegations from Belgrade and Pristina have agreed on a number of issues, tackling problems from free travel to trade. While many of them still remain to be applied, they also remained far apart on Kosovos independence.

The future is more important than the past. The past is important, but we have to look forward. And when we look forward, what we see at the end of the path is the European perspective for Serbia and Kosovo, Borrell before the meeting.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP)  South Koreas prime minister on Tuesday apologized for failing to carefully take care of the health of hundreds of sailors who contracted the coronavirus on a navy ship taking part in an anti-piracy mission off East Africa.

The outbreak aboard the destroyer Munmu the Great is the largest cluster South Koreas military has seen. A total of 247 of the ships 301 crew have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent days, and the entire crew returned to South Korea aboard military planes on Tuesday evening.

None of the crew had been vaccinated because they left South Korea in early February, before the start of the countrys vaccination campaign.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said in televised comments that the government is very sorry for failing to carefully take care of the health of our soldiers who are devoting themselves to the country.

In a separate address, Defense Minister Suh Wook said he feels heavy responsibility for (the outbreak) and offers words of sincere apology to the sailors, their families and the public. He said the government will work out measures to prevent similar outbreaks involving South Korean troops dispatched abroad.

After arriving at a military airport near Seoul, the 301 sailors were moved to hospitals or quarantine facilities depending on their condition. Media photos showed masked sailors waving their hands through the windows as their buses left the airport. Health officials said all of the sailors would be tested again in South Korea.

The cause of infections on the 4,400-ton-class destroyer hasnt been announced. But military authorities earlier suspected the outbreak might have begun when the destroyer docked at a harbor in the region to load goods in late June.

South Korea has been engaging in anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden since 2009.

The military planes dispatched to bring back the sailors carried other navy personnel who are to sail the Munmu the Great back to South Korea in a journey expected to take one month. Another South Korean destroyer was on its way to the area to replace the Munmu the Great, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The outbreak on the destroyer comes as South Korea is battling its worst surge in the pandemic at home.

On Tuesday, South Korea reported 1,278 new virus cases. It was the 14th day in a row that it has reported more than 1,000 new cases.

Since the pandemic began, South Korea has reported 180,481 infections and 2,059 deaths.
LOS ANGELES (AP)  New York prison officials handed convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein over to California on Tuesday to face additional sexual assault charges, ending the former movie mogul's lengthy fight to delay his extradition.

Weinstein, 69, was booked into a downtown Los Angeles jail Tuesday afternoon, records showed. He could be arraigned on 11 sexual assault counts, including four counts of rape, as early as Wednesday morning, according to his LA attorney, Mark Werksman. The district attorney's office had no immediate comment.

Weinstein's lawyers had been trying to negotiate to stop the transfer, but it had been expected to happen soon, his spokesperson Juda Engelmayer said.

We will be fighting so that Harvey can receive his needed medical care and of course, so that he can be treated fairly, Engelmayer said. Due process, presumption of innocence and a fair trial are all still his right.

A New York judge in June approved Weinstein's extradition to California, denying his lawyers' request to keep him at a state prison near Buffalo, where he is serving a 23-year sentence for a rape conviction last year, until the start of jury selection in the Los Angeles case.

Weinsteins lawyer, Norman Effman, argued he should remain in the New York facilitys hospital-like maximum-security setting while receiving treatment for health problems including a loss of eyesight.

Weinstein's time in custody in California will count toward his New York sentence, officials said.

Weinstein was charged in January 2020 with 11 sexual assault counts in California involving five women, stemming from allegations in Los Angeles and Beverly Hills from 2004 to 2013. The charges include rape, forcible oral copulation, sexual battery by restraint and sexual penetration by use of force.

Weinstein maintains his innocence and contends that any sexual activity was consensual.

The California charges were announced shortly before Weinstein's conviction in New York City on charges that he raped an aspiring actress in 2013 in a Manhattan hotel room and forcibly performed oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 at his Manhattan apartment.

He is appealing that conviction.

A lawyer for one of Weinstein's accusers applauded Tuesday's transfer, which was repeatedly delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as legal arguments over paperwork and his medical needs.

The opportunity to hold Weinstein accountable for his actions in California gives voice to the survivors including my client, Jane Doe 4," attorney Elizabeth Fegan said in a statement. They deserve to be heard and to have Weinstein answer for his actions. Our hope is that a guilty verdict in California will ensure that Harvey Weinstein will spend the rest of his life behind bars  securing justice for women everywhere.

___

Thompson reported from Buffalo, N.Y. Associated Press writer Michael Sisak in New York City contributed to this report.
It's not every day that you get an email asking you if you're related.

Then again, when your name isn't very common, it's very easy to piece together.

Last week, an email from Sister Julia Genetti presented the question to me out of curiosity. A fellow sister, or nun, read my piece on the near duel between Vice President Aaron Burr and Alton founder Rufus Easton, and noticed my name  bringing it to Sister Julia's attention.

Thanks to my interest in history and my father's genealogy efforts, finding out if Sister Julia, who resides in Alton, was related didn't present a difficult task.

She provided me with a few names, her relationship to them, and right off the bat I could tell she is a cousin on the Genetti family tree via my great-grandfather  Sister Julia's and my father's grandfather  Viglio Genetti. And just like many stories in family trees, this one is an interesting tale.

As it turns out Sister Julia is my cousin through my great-grandfather's first family.

In short, Vigilio Genetti had a family with his wife Maria. They settled in Collinsville. One of their children, John, is Sister Julia's father. Maria, whose grave site identifies her as Marie, died and Vigilio later remarried the woman who would become my great-grandmother, Margaret. She was also widowed. I often wonder how that went over way back when  my great-grandfather, an Italian, and my great-grandmother, a German.

Nonetheless, Vigilio and Margaret had a family together  my great-aunts who were twins, and my grandfather, Vernon.

Sister Julia and I met later the same day of her email and it was as welcoming as much as it was pleasant. She shared a few things from her branch of the tree and I shared a few from mine as well. It's an encounter that I'm very glad occurred because our family history only lives with those who choose to cherish it, those who choose to share it.

My grandfather passed away in 1999, not long after my confirmation in the Catholic Church  which he attended  but just shy of my 8th-grade graduation. I was only 14, so I didn't really reach an age to ask a lot of questions and embrace the answers or remember many of his stories, but I'm sure he'd be pleased to know that I'm connecting with other Genettis and learning more of our family history.
The regional railroad authority signed a deal Tuesday with Amtrak for a detailed study on bringing the nations passenger rail service to connect Scranton and New York City.

The Pennsylvania Northeast Regional Railroad Authority, which announced the deal Tuesday, will pick up the $400,000 cost of the study, which is expected to take Amtrak a year to carry out.

The announcement marked another in a flurry of developments since November that have given longtime advocates a glimmer of hope of restoring a service that ended Jan. 5, 1970.

Efforts to reach an Amtrak spokeswoman were unsuccessful.

Authority Executive Director Larry Malski said what happens next depends on Congress passing a bill to pay for upgrading the nations roads, bridges and other infrastructure  including tens of billions of dollars for expanding Amtraks service.

As Amtrak and the authority signed the deal, congressional machinations continued on infrastructure, a major piece of President Joe Bidens legislative agenda. Amtrak has proposed more than 30 new passenger rail corridors to expand service, Malski said.

If funding comes out for all of these corridors, that would be wonderful, he said. Is that going to happen? I have no idea. Will funding come out for half of these corridors or some other scenario like that? Anythings possible. Were really just gonna have to wait and see what level of funding we get. But we felt it important to reach out to them on their good faith proposal and, you know, at least show our interest thats been here for all these years ... Its really good news. Another step.

Amtrak officially proposed new corridors to Scranton, Allentown and other places nationwide in late March. About a month later, Biden, a Scranton native, celebrated Amtraks 50th anniversary in Philadelphia by highlighting the potential expansion of service to the Electric City and elsewhere.

After Amtrak officially released its expansion map, Malski contacted the agency to ask about next steps. The agreement to study the Scranton service grew out of that, he said.

Amtrak will provide professional services to study restoring the service, including ridership and revenue forecasts, equipment, stations and other needs.

Significantly, Malski and other train advocates said, Amtrak proposed the service and will study it.

This represents the first time Amtrak is formally involved in this process, which is really significant, said Tyler Kusma, a founder of the Scranton Rail Restoration Coalition, an advocacy group. This project overall is significant, because, you know, it connects us to the Amtrak network. Its useful for commuters. Its useful for college students. Its useful for tourists.

Kusma, Malski, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright and other advocates say ridership should turn out larger than previous studies show because estimates wont be limited to commuters between Scranton and New York City. Unlike a previously proposed New Jersey Transit service, Malski pointed out the train would run into Penn Station in New York City instead of only to Hoboken, New Jersey.

A 2006 New Jersey Transit study pegged the cost of restoring the service at $551 million, but also estimated only 3,530 daily weekday riders, including just 40 from Scranton. Advocates always felt that counted only commuters and overlooked leisure travelers.

A 2020 study organized by Cartwright estimated the cost much lower, $288.9 million. The congressman points to data showing 25,000 to 30,000 people commuting daily between the Poconos and northern New Jersey and New York City.

Beyond that, he said Tuesday, the pandemic has pushed many former New York and New Jersey residents to move to the Poconos, creating a potential new pool of riders.

Ill be very interested to see how the Amtrak ridership stuff comes out, he said.

Coinciding with the Amtrak agreement announcement, Cartwright, D-8, Moosic, announced a House congressional caucus to promote to regional collaboration on the railroad restoration. The caucus includes Rep. Susan Wild, D-7, Lehigh County, and representatives Josh Gottheimer and Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey.

Unlike many other proposed routes, government entities  in this case, the railroad authority and New Jersey Transit  control the entire 133-miles of railroad right-of-way to Hoboken with Amtrak owning the tracks into Penn Station, Malski said. That heartens local advocates.

The main construction obstacles remain upgrades to two major bridges and reinstalling the rest of the track missing on the famed 28.45-mile Lackawanna Cutoff in New Jersey between a Delaware River bridge and Andover, New Jersey. New Jersey Transit has restored about 4.25 miles on 7.3 miles of cutoff between Andover and Port Morris, where its current service ends.

The agency is developing a contract to repair a tunnel on the stretch. To date, most of the talk has centered on New Jersey Transit running a commuter train along the route, but Amtraks recent interest has overshadowed that.
SCRANTON

Montage joins ski pass program

Montage Mountain joined the list of independent ski resorts throughout North America participating in the Indy Pass program for the 2021-2022 season.

Indy Pass owners can show their drivers license or photo ID at each participating resort to receive a free lift ticket on two days.

Montage will continue offering its resort pass in addition to the Indy Pass, which provides access to 71 other resorts.

Season passes for Montage can be purchased for $499 through Sunday and $599 through Nov. 29.

The cost for an Indy Pass is $279 through Aug. 31, $299 through Sept. 1 and $329 through Dec. 1.

Montage pass owners can by an add-on pass through IndyPass for $189 to gain access to each resort in the program.

As some of the bigger companies are buying up a lot of our neighbors, we really wanted to team up for some of the smaller, privately owned mountains and give more opportunities to our guests, said Tyler Crawford, director of resort relations at Montage.Shawnee Mountain Ski Area in Smithfield Twp. is also participating in the program.

 ROBERT TOMKAVAGE
East Scranton

Bus trip: East Scranton Seniors Casino trip to Hollywood Casino, Hershey, Aug. 18, bus leaves 9 a.m. and leaves casino at 4:30 p.m.; ID required; reservations: Tom, 570-280-5096, by July 25.

Lackawanna County

Rosary rally: Rosary rally, July 31, 11 a.m., Heaven and Earth Gift Shop, 400 Wyoming Ave., Scranton, light refreshments follow.

Madisonville

Breakfast buffet: Breakfast buffet, July 25, 8 a.m.-noon, Madisonville Fire Company, Route 690, $8/adults, $7/seniors, $5/3-12 and free/under 3; 570-842-7711.

Mayfield

Pork dinner: St. Johns Society of St. Johns Russian Orthodox Cathedral takeout-only roast pork dinner, Aug. 7, 11 a.m.-3 p.m., St. Johns Center, 701 Hill St., $12; advance tickets: 570-876-0730, 570-466-3430, 570-466-5399 or from any society member.

Scott Twp.

Cow flop: Scott Twp. Lions Club annual Cow Flop, Aug. 14, noon-4 p.m., Scott Municipal Park, Route 632, $5/ticket, food and refreshments available, winner does not need to be present; tickets available at Boyarskys Tavern off Route 347 or from any member.

Throop

Fund drive: Volunteer Hose Company of Throop, 401 Dunmore St., is conducting its annual fund drive; the 100% volunteer company is a 501(c)(3) public charity and donations can be tax deductible under IRS Section 170.

CLIPBOARD ITEMS may be sent to yesdesk@timesshamrock.com, Clipboard, c/o YES!Desk, 149 Penn Ave., Scranton, PA 18503, or 570-348-9121.
WASHINGTON  A recurring clash between the governments top infectious disease doctor and a U.S. senator has erupted again on Capitol Hill, with each accusing the other of lying.

Dr. Anthony Fauci angrily confronted Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky in testimony before a Senate committee. Fauci rejected Pauls insinuation that the U.S. helped fund research at a Chinese lab that could have sparked the COVID-19 outbreak.

Fauci spoke to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, saying a study the senator mentioned referenced a different sort of virus entirely from the one responsible for the coronavirus outbreak.

Senator Paul, you do not know what youre talking about, quite frankly, Fauci said. And I want to say that officially. You do not know what youre talking about.

He added, If anybody is lying here, senator, it is you.

It was the latest in a series of clashes between Paul and Fauci about the origins of the virus that caused the global pandemic.



MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

 CDC: Delta variant accounts for 83% of U.S. cases

 Britain hits most daily virus deaths in 4 months

 Research: Millions may have died in India during pandemic

 Muslims mark Eid al-Adha holiday in pandemics shadow



Find more AP coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine



HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

LONDON  Britain has recorded its highest daily number of coronavirus-related deaths in four months, following a spike in infections amid the spread of the delta variant and lifting of lockdown restrictions.

Government figures Tuesday showed 96 new virus-related deaths, the highest since March 24. The U.K. also recorded 46,558 confirmed cases. The numbers on Tuesday have traditionally been higher because of a weekend reporting lag.

The increase in deaths comes a day after the British government ended lockdown restrictions in England, including on social distancing and mask-wearing. Critics warn it will lead to further spread of the coronavirus and potential deaths in the coming weeks.

Britains confirmed virus-related death toll stands at 128,823, the seventh highest in the world.



NEW YORK  Health officials say the delta variant of the coronavirus continues to surge and accounts for an estimated 83% of U.S. COVID-19 cases.

Thats a dramatic increase from the week of July 3, when the variant accounted for about 50% of genetically sequenced coronavirus cases.

The best way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 variants is to prevent the spread of disease, and vaccination is the most powerful tool we have, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director if the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday.

The delta variant is a mutated coronavirus that spreads more easily than other versions. It was first detected in India but now has been identified around the world.



MEXICO CITY  Authorities in Mexico say they have found fake doses of the COVID-19 drug remdesivir offered for sale on the internet and at a private hospital near the U.S. border.

The federal medical safety commission said late Monday that the fake antiviral drug, which it called a health risk, was found at a hospital in the Gulf coast city of Tampico, in the border state of Tamaulipas.

The commission said the doses had been purchased in an irregular manner on the internet but didnt say whether the medication had been used there.

The drugs manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, confirmed the falsification. The appearance and lot numbers on the packaging didnt match the original.

The U.S. and Mexico have approved remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.



NEW DELHI  The most comprehensive research yet estimates Indias excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic were a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll.

Most experts believe Indias official toll of 414,000 dead was a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns. A report released Tuesday estimates excess deaths to be 3 million to 4.7 million between January 2020 and this June.

It calculated its figures by comparing deaths to those in pre-pandemic years, considering the virus prevalence in the population and using an existing economic survey. The report also estimated that Indias initial virus surge last year killed many more people than reported, breeding complacency that set up conditions for the horrific surge earlier this year.

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian governments former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, and Harvard University.



CAIRO  Muslims around the world are observing the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice, in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.

This years holiday comes amid growing concerns about the highly infectious delta variant thats prompted some countries to impose new restrictions.

Indonesia is facing a devastating new wave of coronavirus cases and has imposed various restrictions.

Already, the pandemic has taken a toll for the second year on a sacred mainstay of Islam, the hajj, whose last days coincide with Eid al-Adha. The Islamic pilgrimage has been dramatically scaled back due to the virus.



TEHRAN, Iran  Iran has broken another record in the countrys daily new coronavirus cases, even as Tehran and its surroundings went into lockdown.

The week-long measure started on Tuesday amid another surge in the pandemic, with Irans health ministry announcing 27,444 new cases and 250 deaths in the past day.

The lockdown  the nations fifth so far  lasts until next Monday. All bazars, markets places and public offices closed, as well as movie theaters, gyms and restaurants in both Tehran province and the neighboring province of Alborz.

The overall confirmed death toll has reached 87,624, with more than 3.5 million cases in the pandemic.



WASHINGTON  The nations top infectious disease expert is suggesting parents follow new COVID-19 guidance for mask-wearing issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The academy is recommending schools require face masks for children older than 2 and all adults  regardless of vaccination status. Dr. Anthony Fauci told CBS This Morning the academy wants to go the extra mile to make sure kids are protected at school because of the rise in cases blamed on the delta variant of the coronavirus.

That guidance is slightly different from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which has advised mask-wearing in schools just for unvaccinated children and adults.

Fauci says the CDC is carefully looking at its COVID-19 school guidance.



SEOUL, South Korea  South Koreas prime minister has offered a public apology over a large-scale coronavirus outbreak on a destroyer on an anti-piracy mission off East Africa.

Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Tuesday the government is very sorry for failing to carefully take care of the health of our soldiers who are devoting themselves to the country.

The Defense Ministry says 247 of the destroyers 301 crew members have been infected. Its the largest cluster for South Koreas military since the pandemic began.

South Korea sent two military planes to bring back all 301 sailors.

On Tuesday, South Korea reported 1,278 new virus cases, taking the total caseload to 180,481, with 2,059 deaths from COVID-19. It was the 14th day in a row that South Korea has confirmed more than 1,000 new cases.



WASHINGTON  The United States has upgraded its travel warnings for Britain, Indonesia and three other destinations, advising Americans not to travel there due to a surge in coronavirus cases.

The CDC and the State Department issued revised advice to U.S. travelers Monday alerting them to the increased risk of contracting COVID-19 in Britain, Indonesia, Zimbabwe, Fiji and the British Virgin Islands. Previously, all had been covered by a less severe advisory to reconsider travel.

The advisories are recommendations that are constantly under review and are not binding, although they may affect group tours and insurance rates.

The warning for Britain, for example, has fluctuated between Level 3, or reconsider travel, and Level 4, or do not travel, several times this year already.



MONTGOMERY, Ala.  Alabama school officials say vaccines wont be required in the fall and local systems can decide on their own whether to require masks or other precautions.

While the American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending schools require face masks for children older than 2 and all adults, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey disagrees, an aide said.

Governor Ivey believes students need to be in the classroom without any type of mask requirement. She continues to encourage all eligible Alabamians to roll up their sleeves and get the vaccine to make COVID-19 a distant memory, spokeswoman Gina Maiola said Monday.



TORONTO  Canada says it will begin letting fully vaccinated U.S. citizens into Canada on Aug. 9, and those from the rest of the world on Sept. 7.

Canadian officials say the 14-day quarantine requirement will be waived as of Aug. 9 for eligible travelers who are currently residing in the United States and have received a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Canada.

Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said a date for the U.S. to allow fully vaccinated Canadians to cross the land border isnt yet known. Any Canadian can currently fly to the U.S.



THE HAGUE, Netherlands  The Dutch government says it is donating 745,000 doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to countries in need that have appealed to the Netherlands for help.

The government says Tanzania and Namibia will be among countries to receive shots. The Dutch government will arrange transport of the vaccines.

Most people getting vaccinated in the Netherlands get either the shot made by Pfizer or Moderna.

The government still has stocks of AstraZeneca in cold storage and is using very little of the vaccine. Earlier Tuesday, the health ministry announced people who have had one shot of the AstraZeneca vaccine can choose to have a second shot of Pfizer instead.



MADRID  Spanish officials are celebrating that half of Spains residents, or roughly 24 million people, have been fully vaccinated already, although they say that a steep increase in contagion is sending worrying numbers of patients into hospitals.

The occupation rate in Spanish hospitals climbed on Monday to 5.4% of all beds tending COVID-19 patients and 11.4% of the intensive care unit beds. Although there is still plenty of room, admissions have increased 65% in regular beds and 45% in ICUs only in one week, according to an officiall with the Health Ministrys emergency coordination center.

Maria Jose Sierra said hospitalizations will likely continue increasing but officials expect they will remain proportionally much lower than in previous contagion waves due to the high vaccination levels.

The latest health ministrys data show that 50.7% of Spains 47 million residents were fully vaccinated by Monday and an additional 5 million are waiting for their second dose of the coronavirus jab.



NEW YORK  New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says he does not plan to reinstate a citywide mask mandate even as COVID-19 cases increase, opting instead to focus on vaccinating more residents.

There have been calls for New York City to follow the lead of Los Angeles County, which announced last week that it will require masks be worn indoors amid a sharp increase in virus cases.

But de Blasio insisted vaccinations are a better strategy for the nations most populous city.

Masks have value, unquestionably, but masks are not going at the root of the problem. Vaccination is, the mayor said during an livestreamed press briefing. So we do not intend a mask mandate. We do intend to double down on vaccination.


The operator of a dirt bike was injured Sunday when he collided with a minivan in the city's Pine Brook section, police said.

Malik Rosario, 20, Scranton, suffered minor injuries in the crash, which happened around 5:30 p.m. at Walnut Street and Capouse Avenue, Capt. Dennis Lukasewicz said.

Ashley Ozack, 25, Scranton, was traveling on Walnut when Rosario's dirt bike hit her 2019 Dodge Grand Caravan in the intersection, Lukasewicz said. Ozack was not injured.

Rosario will be cited for summary infractions, police said.
MESHOPPEN  Scott Nichols is in awe of his own designs. Some of the things I make, a lot of the things, I dont know if theyre going to come out as good as they do, he said. I do shock myself almost every day.

The artist and creator electrifies old items including cameras and pieces of pipes and metal to give the materials new life as lamps, clocks and fixtures. After 30 years of drinking, Nichols, 45, quit alcohol five years ago and tapped into a new clarity and creativity he didnt know he had.

The booze always kept me back and this time there was nothing to hold me back so I could just go and create, he said.

Now, working under his studio name, Seven 810 Fixtures, a nod to his 11-year-old son Jonahs birthday, Nichols has a huge roster of custom pieces for customers across Northeast Pennsylvania and also a commission from the most recent graduating class from his alma mater, Abington Heights High School.

In his recently renovated home studio in Meshoppen, he sat last week near his workbench surrounded by photographs of his family while his customized fixtures lighted the studio and sat waiting on a saw horse for final touches. Hes designing a clock for either the high school foyer or cafeteria.

Nichols placed three blue comets he snipped out of metal and painted and lined in white around a circular piece of reclaimed metal. Theres a blue crest for the middle with AH in white. Nichols is thinking of attaching only three numbers  3, 4 and 8  to the clock. The school day begins at 8:15 a.m. and ends at 3:20 p.m. The clock is a piece of art; he wants to make the students think.

Nichols is one of two artists and alumni the school commissioned to create a piece of art from the class as their legacy gift. Stained glass artist Rachel Marie Barrett is also creating a piece, said Lee Ann Theony, assistant high school principal and senior class adviser. The Class of 2021 is funding both projects.

The artists work has a common theme.

Its all these different pieces that come together and make something beautiful, and it really showcases what the last 16 months has been for students, she said.

Neither an electrician nor artist by trade, Nichols grew up working maintenance with his father and grandfather at his familys business, the Inn at Nichols Village, which was sold in 2008 and closed to make way for a shopping center in 2019. He worked for more than a decade in general maintenance for the Carbondale Nursing Home and five years ago, after around seven months of sobriety and creating his custom fixtures, he quit.

After 15 years and a family, I said I have to do this, theres a reason why all of this happening and why its happening quickly, he said. After my brain started clearing out after 30 years of drinking, all these images and ideas and the creativity exploded like never before, like I never experienced. I was experiencing ... things Ive never felt before. Everything was working together like a clock.

He admits he can get obsessed  first with music. Hes played in local bands and plays guitar every day. He finds inspiration by strumming chords. A self-described insomniac who lives off sugar and caffeine, he stays up late into the night to finish fixtures.

Hes always loved lamps and created his first piece at work.

I built it, brought it home and showed my wife and she said you should build another one,  he said.

He did, this time using a wooden base, a cage and an old camera as the platform.

His wife, Elizabeth Nichols, a photographer, suggested he open a Facebook account to sell the lamp.

I was like thats not going to happen but I tried it anyway, he said. And it was like immediate, it sold.

His creativity got another boost after his father bought him a welding machine.

I started messing around with it and thats when stuff really changed, he said. I was able to take whatever the antique or whatever I had and ... make it flow a lot better then just plopping the antique onto a base.

Often times, his customers will give him a sentimental item and ask him to incorporate it into a fixture or drop an idea into his head.

About a year ago, he was asked if he ever thought about creating an angler fish, a deep sea creature with an underbite and sharp teeth. Atop its head, it has a a whip-like rod with whats called a lure on the end that it uses to attract prey.

I made the fin and then I started making the shape of it and I was like man this might work, he said. I didnt know what I was doing ... so I kept going.

The customer messaged him on Facebook a year after planting the idea to ask if he ever attempted the fish.

Nichols sent him a picture. The lamp immediately sold.

I am still proud of it, he said. Every step I took I brought it in my house to show my wife and my son. I wore my shoes out. I just couldnt believe that I was doing this with my own hands.

Nichols does the majority of his sales through social media.

That lamp lead him to a commission from customer in Wilkes-Barre who asked him to create a desk out of a $3,000 piece of African Bubinga wood with an Angler fish lamp on one side and its prey, a smaller fish, on the other side.

He added metal fins on the side of the desk and is now commissioned to make a matching chair for the desk.

Once again, I dont know how I did it but it happened, he said. Everything feels like this is what I should have been doing my whole life.

Check out Scott Nichols or Seven 810 Fixtures on Facebook for more details.
High notes

Jermyn borough Manager Dan Markey received a series of accolades prompting Mayor Anthony Fuga Jr. to declare June 17 Daniel Markey Day in the borough.

Markey received his Certified Borough Official designation from the Pennsylvania State Association of Boroughs, his Administrative Road Scholar designation from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportations Local Technical Assistance Program and was also named to the General Codes Municipal Clerks Honor Roll, a nationwide listing of municipal clerks who go above and beyond in their work every day.

Markey was honored during a Jermyn Borough Council meeting in June.

Scholarships received

Western Wayne High School graduate Jamie Bryan was selected as the 2020-2021 School Counselors of NEPA $500 scholarship recipient.

Jamie, of Lake Ariel, excelled academically, socially and within her extracurricular activities while at Western Wayne.

The daughter of James and Brenda Bryan, Jamie will attend Lafayette College in the fall and major in environmental science ...

... Future educators Rebecca Castimore, Liam Smith, Zachary Witte and Allison Brown are the recipients of the Wallenpaupack Area Education Associations 2021 scholarships.

Rebecca, who received $1,500, and Zachary, who received $1,000, will attend Marywood University. Rebecca will major in secondary education/mathematics. Zachary will major in secondary education/social sciences and minor in psychology.

Liam, who received $1,000, will attend Lycoming College and major in secondary education/history.

Allison, who received $500, will attend Slippery Rock University Honors College and major in early childhood and special education.

To be eligible for the scholarships, students must be enrolled at an accredited college or university and have declared their intent to pursue education degrees.

The education association has provided these scholarships for more than 20 years to help seniors earn education degrees. To date, Wallenpaupack Areas teachers and staff have donated $110,150 to around 125 graduating seniors.

We are excited to welcome these graduating seniors into the education field, said the scholarship committee. We look forward to the great contributions they will make to public education, and we are especially proud that they have elected to enter the field during such a chaotic and challenging time.
Its indisputably true  as police advocates often say when an officer is accused of unwarranted violence or other misconduct  that there are good cops and bad cops.

That is merely an observation that, in effect, verifies a serious problem. Citizens who have an encounter with law enforcement should not have to rely on a roll of the dice as to whether they are dealing with a good cop or a bad cop.

Ensuring that there are only good cops is an institutional responsibility of the governments for which they work. Police departments cant shrug off police misconduct by attributing it to a wayward officer any more than a hospital can shrug off an injury to a patient by saying that there are good doctors and bad doctors, or a news outlet can shrug off an error by saying that there are good journalists and bad journalists.

Accountability is even more imperative for police officers because they are endowed with the overarching power of the government itself.

Yet Pennsylvania is one of 23 states that continues not to publicly disclose misconduct by police officers unless it results in an arrest.

Wednesday, the state government took a major step to improve accountability by establishing a new database that the Legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf mandated by law a year ago.

Under the new law, every department in the state is required to enter into the Police Misconduct Database its performance and misconduct information for every officer on the force. And it requires police officials in each department to consult the database before hiring any applicant transferring from a different department.

The intention is to prevent officers who are fired for misconduct, or resign amid investigations, from simply transferring to another department.

Its a valuable but limited tool in terms of public accountability. Attorney General Josh Shapiro said it assures the public that fewer officers have misconduct histories because they cant leave their records behind.

True enough. But true public trust flows from true transparency. With the database established, the Legislature should take the extra step by making it publicly accessible.
Editor: Emil Konzman (Success nullified, July 3) replied to an earlier letter of mine (Siding with traitors, June 29) by stating that I always blame everything on Republicans.

Actually what I do is point out bad things Republicans do and I always have facts to back up my claims. Konzman also writes that for four years Democrats tried to get President Trump removed from office and he asks, wheres the proof?

Democrats provided more than enough proof during Trumps first impeachment trial to convict him and remove him from office. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made it quite clear from the very beginning that Republicans would not vote to convict Trump.

Konzman writes that Democrats tried to ruin the reputations of Trump and his family. Actually, what ruined their reputations are the bad things that they have done over the years. Konzman urges readers to look at all the good things that Trump did in his four years in office. The trouble is that he fails to mention even one good thing that Trump did.

Konzman says its nonsense for me to claim that Republicans hold office only to further their selfish interests. Just consider Republicans reaction to the Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol for proof to back up my claim. Millions of Americans witnessed the horrific events of that day and they watched Trumps speech and heard him tell the angry mob to march down to the Capitol and fight like hell.

Republicans in Congress were in the Capitol that day and they know that Trump was responsible for that attack, yet they refused to hold Trump accountable for fear that they will face his wrath and that of his clueless supporters in their next election.

Its obvious that Konzman doesnt know what hes talking about.

BEN EGLESIA

DICKSON CITY

Editor: Has it occurred to any of former President Donald Trumps remaining disciples that if there were, in fact, a nefarious deep state and Trump was a threat to it, that by now he would be resting in a river somewhere and wearing cinder block slippers?

There is no cabal of Satanic pedophiles. There is no illuminati, no Masonic conspiracy, no Elders of Zion. Life is not a paperback thriller or a supermarket tabloid. It definitely is not the divorced-from-reality zone of the internet.

There is an entrenched bureaucracy, granted. All governments develop them, and they are immovable. There is a military-industrial complex, but President Dwight Eisenhower warned Americans about that 60 years ago as he left office.

There are abuses of authority on all levels of government, because our monitoring of such problems is extremely lax. So, people being people, do what they are able to get away with. There are practically mummified politicians who have been in office forever, because they can.

Occams razor, a philosophical concept, holds that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. So, simply put, all forms of government are inherently flawed. This is compounded by human nature being inherently flawed and the fact that people often are driven by self-interest, partisanship, illogic and ignorance.

But no, there is no super-secret, incredibly complex, deep, dark secret that has been exposed by QAnon fantasies. This isnt the movies.

JEFFREY M. McHALE

OLYPHANT

Editor: I highly agree with the June 3 editorial (Let cities fine utilities for potholes).

However, doesnt the city of Scranton have a pave cut inspector? There is a city code section devoted to street paving that says applicants must notify the paving inspector of openings, back filling and the restoration of structures.

I believe the citys pave cut inspector should be held accountable for this situation. If the city has such an inspector, I hope he takes the responsibility, performs the proper duties for the taxpayers and has this problem rectified.

JACK ATKINSON

SCRANTON

Editor: The vast majority of Republican elected officials, from state to federal representatives and senators, seem to espouse ex-President Donald Trumps big lie that the November 2020 nationwide election was rigged.

If all these elected Republican officials truly believe this fallacy, then wouldnt any Republican who was elected or reelected in November 2020 be illegally and falsely serving in government?

But no, they feel that all those other election results were just fine.

TERRY PIDGEON

OLYPHANT

Editor: Ive been wondering when a prominent Republican would emerge to comment about the other side.

Keith Eckel (Attorney general betrays trust, June 21) declares that Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiros handling of a case against Scranton School District officials and former administrators is a sad day for every law-abiding citizen in Pennsylvania.

Make no mistake. This is the opening salvo in the 2022 campaign for governor.

Eckel apparently thinks he can impose some type of guilt trip on Shapiro. Instead, Shapiro went on immediately to investigate other cases.

It should be noted that for nine years Eckel would do everything in his power to elect and reelect former U.S. Rep. Tom Marino, of Lycoming County, to Congress. Marino was no more than a tool for Dunmore businessman Louis DeNaples.

RICHARD J. YOST

SOUTH ABINGTON TWP.
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Mainly sunny to start, then a few afternoon clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 79F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
Westerly, RI (02891)

Today

Mostly sunny. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 79F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low 58F. Winds light and variable.
What a happy hunting ground Britain has become for the private equity sharks.

Rather than engage in the indignity and expense of a bidding war for Morrisons, tainted Apollo has laid down its weapons and is ready to form a common front with Softbank-backed predator Fortress, which has already rolled its tanks over the supermarket chains board.

The collusion of Fortress and Apollo in trying to take one of Britains Big Four supermarkets off the public markets makes the 6.3billion bid (worth 9.3billion if debt is included) even more unpalatable.

Teaming up: US private equity firm Apollo said it is ready to join Softbank-backed predator Fortress, in its bid for Morrisons

The easiest line of attack against the marauders is to criticise their reputations. Apollo is the creature of Leon Black, who stepped down from the fund he founded after disclosures of his close financial relationship with the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Among the Fortress investors are the Koch Brothers, known in the US for their insidious support of ultra-conservative causes.

Big battalion UK investors, currently living under the environmental, social and governance mantra (ESG), cannot embrace such buyers.

Nor can they put any faith in pledges to look after Morrisons in a way which would have satisfied the firms modern creator the late Ken Morrison.

A close friend  with generations invested in the Leeds-Bradford commercial world  reliably informs me that Ken Morrison would have been horrified by this spectacle, and fought hammer and tongs to make sure the name over the door was not besmirched and a Yorkshire business debased.

If the non-executives, headed by Rooney Anand, had an understanding of the public interest, they would have stopped chairman Andy Higginson and chief executive David Potts rushing headlong into a deal.

Morrison, after all, is not just a successful food retailer. It has entered into shrewd supply-and-delivery partnerships with Amazon Fresh and Ocado.

And in a nation which venerates its farming and food production standards above all others, Morrisons is an exemplar. It delivers fresh produce from farm and fishing boat to stores directly and through its own production plants.

It is hard to believe that private equity marauders, with a goal of reducing a debt mountain as quickly as possible and raising margins, would have a commitment to an ethical food chain.

The board has raised the white flag so it is now up to shareholders to back Legal & General in its fiercely expressed opposition. It is possible for determined investors to overturn wrong-minded boards.

Having defended Unilever against Kraft Heinz, UK long shareholders threw down the gauntlet and fought back against the firms desire to hide itself out of plain sight in Rotterdam.

Saving Morrisons is not just a matter for the money people. It is of profound political and consumer interest.

Commons select committees looking at business and agriculture have heavy lifting to do. We know how effective public hearings can be, as we saw recently with Greensill.

Leaving a proper examination of the Morrisons bids until after the summer recess should not be an option.

That would play straight into the hands of smart financiers skilled at speeding deals up through court-sanctioned schemes of arrangement.

The brakes must be engaged.

Crypto wars

The clampdown on crypto assets cannot be great for fintech pioneer Revolut, valued at 24billion at a recent fundraising.

In the last financial year, trading crypto was Revoluts fastest-growing category.

Rules proposed by the European Union require those dealing in crypto to collect detail of senders and recipients so that they can be better tracked for money-laundering and tax purposes.

Providing anonymous crypto-assets or wallets would be banned in line with regulations governing bank accounts.

The Lithuanian banking authority, which provides the licence that is Revoluts gateway to the EU, may need to get its skates on.

Ice fog

Unilever finds itself sinking into a sand dune in the Middle East.

A decision by the socially conscious independent Ben & Jerrys board to stop supplies of cookie dough ice cream to West Bank settlements has put Unilever chief executive Alan Jope in a difficult position.

He plans to keep selling the upmarket ice cream in the rest of Israel, even though the B&Js independent board has adopted the extreme position of wanting a full boycott. Who said running a business with a purpose was going to be easy?
I wrote to NS&I on May 11 asking to cash in my mum's Guaranteed Growth Bonds.

I enclosed an original power of attorney (POA), fully certified on each page and registered with the Office of the Public Guardian.

Mum is 90, has dementia and is deaf. She has been admitted to specialist residential care costing 4,660 per month. Her bonds are critical to meeting these costs.

Bond battle: National Savings & Investments failed to properly process a reader's power of attorney request leaving them unable to withdraw funds needed to pay a care home bill

The POA was returned to me on May 12. I was then told it hadn't been scanned on to the system, and that there was a 17-day delay between post arriving and being processed.

On May 17, I received a letter saying mum's bonds had been rolled over into the next cycle of investment.

I called, to no avail, as there was still no record of my POA on the system. I tried again on May 25. I have also written to senior people within the company, including the chief executive.

On May 27, I received a letter suggesting I hadn't sent an original certified copy of my POA when in fact I have sent three.

K. J., Ponteland, Northumberland.

Tony Hazell replies: You were clearly very angry and frustrated by the time you contacted me  and I'm not surprised.

Having to move a parent into care is exceptionally stressful, and the last thing we need are organisations making life more difficult. Yet some seem to go out of their way to create obstacles for those helping relatives via a POA.

Personally, I am sick to the back teeth of Barclays smugly suggesting I use its phone app to speed up transactions when it won't let POAs use it.

Instead, I am stuck with its clunky website or must phone the appalling call centre, which makes my blood boil just thinking about it.

NS&I admits it somehow lost track of your POA. You sent another on May 25.

Then the original was found but some jobsworth decided it was not properly certified because the solicitor did not give their address and contact number on each page.

You sent a third copy which was rejected for the same reason. However, your solicitor told you that it was correctly signed and stamped.

When your case was escalated NS&I deemed the POA acceptable and the 12,012 was paid. NS&I has apologised and says that you did not receive the level of service you were entitled to expect.

It admits it should have accepted the POA in the first instance, or written explaining why it could not be accepted.

When you explained that the funds were needed for your mother's care home fees, it says this should have been dealt with as a priority. NS&I has sent 225 as a goodwill gesture.

You have YOUR say Every week Money Mail receives hundreds of your letters and emails about our stories. Here are some regarding the young workers desperate to get back into the office: The sooner people get back into the office, the sooner productivity will increase. It also helps you learn how to deal with people. A lot of customer service staff could benefit from this skill. S. Y., Derby. I hope that if there is a return to the office we will be able to retain a casual dress code, as office workers seldom need to see clients. T. E., by email. Everyone will have to go back to the office. How can you train a new employee when they are stuck at home? S. B., by email. I dread going back to the office. Ill waste three hours, and money, travelling to do the same job I do at home. Unfortunately, my boss wants us all back as soon as possible. P. F., Solihull, W. Mids. I have three family members who have been working from home since March 2020. Two of them are in new jobs and have never met their colleagues. People are mixing in other ways already. It doesnt make sense. K. A., London. Let graduates and apprentices go back to the office. They need to be monitored to improve their productivity. Older professionals are more likely to enjoy working from home. K. C., Hertfordshire. If a company can save money without incurring any losses, then surely it will do so. Reducing costs on office space is the simplest way to cut outgoings and, in some cases, increase productivity. Welcome to the 21st century! T. W., Ramsbottom, Lancs.

M&S's petty quibbles over jumper return

We are pensioners in our 80s who each received an M&S jumper for Christmas from our daughter who lives 150 miles away. Unfortunately, they were too large.

As all non-essential shops were closed in Northern Ireland, and because of our age, we did not feel able to return them.

On May 11, we drove 30 miles to M&S Ballymena where we were told we should have returned the garments in January.

The assistant gleefully told us that they had been open as they operated a food hall.

We said that this would have been a non-essential journey and police were regularly patrolling and checking people's reasons for travelling.

A manager offered less than 2 per garment. I would rather give them to a charity shop.

I have twice called customer services to complain and been promised my calls would be returned, but to no avail.

C. L., Bushmills, Co. Antrim.

Tony Hazell replies: Well doesn't M&S have a high opinion of itself! We were being told earlier this year not to travel unless it was essential.

I hardly think returning a jumper is essential, yet hoity-toity M&S Ballymena disagreed.

Sanity has prevailed. M&S has now apologised, admitting it 'fell short of our usual high standards of service'.

You have received a refund and a goodwill gesture.

Straight to the point When I switched my broadband and phone to Sky earlier this year, I lost the landline number I have had for 50 years. Sky says it cannot help and told me to try BT as it owns the number, but BT is not responding to my emails. D. D., Hertfordshire. Sky was able to restore your number after all. A spokesman adds that this was lucky as a request usually has to made by the customer to BT directly. To apologise for the service issues youve been given 75 compensation, three months free service and an extra 25 goodwill gesture. *** A few months ago, you ran a story about the British Standards Institutions code of practice that could help scam victims hold their bank to account. I paid 102 for the document but did not receive a copy. I was then told I must download it but I cant make it work. V. O-K., by email. The BSI says it has been in contact and emailed you a digital copy you can access. *** My EasyJet prepaid currency card expired in March with a balance of around 438 (375). I emailed the airline several times but have not received a refund. A. H-H., Devon. Digital platform Omnio is responsible for managing the Euro Currency Card, which has now closed, on behalf of easyJet. Another firm, PayrNet Limited, looks after the funds. Omnio blames the delay on a backlog of refund requests but confirms you now have your money back. *** I bought a 729 washing machine from Currys and paid 25 for its installation service. The installation was done incorrectly, causing the washing machine to leak and damage my cupboard and brand new carpet. I have asked for compensation to replace these, but Currys has only offered 589, which is a fraction of this cost. A. M-R., Wiltshire. Currys says it will cover the cost of a new cupboard but will only pay to clean the carpet, not replace it. A spokesman apologises for the damage as well as the level of customer service received. You will now receive 700, plus 50 as a gesture of goodwill.

Covermore won't cover my heart attack bill

In February 2020, while in Uganda, I suffered a heart attack and incurred treatment and hospital fees of 14,298,199 shillings (roughly 3,000).

I had insurance with CoverMore, and was told to pay the bill and claim back the money upon return to the UK.

Despite sending all the documentation required, I have not received any response.

J. U., Slough, Berks.

Tony Hazell replies: I have been to the other end of the earth attempting to resolve your issue  CoverMore's press office is in Australia.

Cover-More says it received your claim form on January 21 this year, but it wanted more details of your medical bills.

You felt you had provided all the information needed, yet the offer fell well short of your outlay. You said that Cover-More appeared to be offering you 184 on the 3,000 claim.

Both you and I concluded that the discrepancy was due to Cover-More staff struggling to convert from Ugandan shillings. There are currently around 4,900 shillings to 1.

Cover-More then agreed to accept your bank statements as proof. You provided these and your claim has been paid in full.
Anchor Hanover, Britain's biggest retirement home company, has raised 350million through its first sustainability bond as part of a wider refinancing.

Social infrastructure, particularly care homes, have been thrust into the spotlight during the pandemic and more and more people are looking at ways to invest.

There have been concerns about a shortage of social housing in the UK and while the Government has committed money to infrastructure, it is increasingly reliant on private companies to plug the gap.

Anchor Hanover is England's largest not-for-profit retirement home provider, with more than 1,700 locations across the country.

Anchor Hanover supports more than 65,000 people in retirement housing and residential care homes

Its sustainability bond was more than two times oversubscribed by over 40 institutional investors, including specialist impact asset managers, with a spread of 0.93 per cent and an all-in coupon of 2 per cent.

Anchor Hanover said it will use the fresh cash to deliver 5,700 new sustainable care homes over the next decade, alongside existing investment in its existing services.

Like the Treasury's recently announced green bonds, proceeds from the issuance of a sustainability bond are exclusively applied to finance or refinance a combination of both green and social projects.

Anchor Hanover's bond issuance comes as part of wider financing restructure. In April it became the first housing association to move its banking facilities to a fully unsecured basis.

A key component of the refinancing is a new 300million unsecured syndicated sustainability-linked revolving credit facility and a 350m unsecured bridging loan.

Unsecured debt has no collateral attached to it, meaning the loans are granted based on Anchor Hanover's creditworthiness.

It said the move, which has seen it secure a long-term A+ credit rating from S&P, will allow it to benefit from the 'long-term stability from debt capital markets that will underpin its ambitious growth plans.'

A handful of housing associations have taken out sustainability-linked loans over the past year and Lloyds Bank has committed 500million to ESG-focused social housing projects.

'We have ambitious plans to meet the increasing needs of older people in a sustainable way,' chief financial officer Sarah Jones said.

'This very successful issue means we can continue to evolve our housing and care offer so more people can have a home where they love living in later life.'

Phil Jenkins, managing director at Centrus, the adviser on the refinancing said: 'This successful deal is the culmination of the innovative refinancing of Anchor Hanover's treasury portfolio.

'We are delighted to have worked closely with Anchor Hanover, who are pioneering leaders in the housing and care for older people.'

Disability charity Mencap's property arm recently launched its third retail bond with a 3.25 per cent annual return.

Golden Lane Housing, which specialises in renting accommodation to people with learning disabilities, was the first charity to issue a retail bond in 2014, offering a 4.375 per cent return, before offering a 18million 3.9 per cent bond three years later.
Rush: Lina Slater fears she has paid too much for her new home

Mother of one Lina Slater was dreaming of a home with more downstairs space, a garage and a drive. But she was in no rush to move.

After just one viewing, however, she and husband Paul, 42, realised how greatly they had underestimated the property market.

Houses were flying off the market and viewings were filled up with dozens of potential buyers  many willing to go well above the asking price.

Lina, who works in marketing, says: 'People were going crazy  especially for houses in our area. We suddenly felt this sense of urgency. We made the decision to go and we just had to leap.'

The couple, from Hertfordshire, put in an offer for one house  which Lina admits needed some work doing  at 7,000 above the asking price.

But they were outbid at the 11th hour by a buyer who offered 30,000 more.

In the end, they found a four-bedroom property which they bought for 10,000 over the asking price. But now Lina, 41, is questioning whether they did the right thing. And she's not alone.

Research by Aviva last week found nearly a quarter of home buyers paid over the asking price during the pandemic  compared with 8 per cent in the previous year.

Worryingly, the survey revealed half of UK buyers regret how much they paid.

Nine in ten purchasers who agreed a sale between March 2020 and June 2021 also said they had found problems with the property which they hadn't noticed during viewings.

The pressure to buy quickly was too much for Lucy Stewart, 31, and husband James Cissel, 38.

The couple had sold their flat in London and were living with Lucy's parents in Berkshire.

She says: 'We thought we were dream buyers. But when we started looking we realised that wasn't the case.

'We saw one house which attracted 50 viewings. We put in offers on houses we knew weren't right and came close to making some very big mistakes.'

Pressure: Lucy Stewart and husband James Cissel at her parents' house in Berkshire, where they were living after selling their London flat

The pair did put in an offer on a house in South Oxfordshire, but the seller pulled out at the last minute.

Lucy says: 'We were rushing  the house wasn't right for us but we felt the pressure to act.

'We have finally found a house. I'm glad we took our time and the offers didn't go through on earlier properties.'

Often buyers were so worried about missing out that they rushed ahead with purchases after viewing a potential home only once, while others didn't visit at all, and relied on virtual viewings or photographs.

Sarah Applegate, risk and insights lead at Aviva, says: 'Homebuyers are feeling the pressure to purchase quickly.

Our research suggests many people are putting in offers after viewing for just a matter of minutes, and many are discovering problems only after moving in.'

Lina did visit her new home in person and is happy with her choice. But she regrets having made the decision in such a tight time frame.

She says: 'I saw a house go on sale opposite my sister's, who lives nearby, and the sellers accepted the first offer, which was below the asking price. It was a lovely house and someone got such a good deal that it made me think twice.

'I don't regret the house we bought, but I wasn't happy about the prices on the market.'

Despite their rush, Lina and Paul risk losing any savings if they don't complete their sale before the end of September.

The stamp duty holiday, which meant buyers paid no tax on the first 500,000 of their property price, is in the process of being wound down.

As of July 1, buyers pay no tax on the first 250,000, and from October the threshold will revert to its previous level of 125,000 (or 300,000 for first-time buyers). Lina says: 'If we don't complete before October, we're looking at paying 22,000 in stamp duty.

'In total, it's going to cost us 30,000 to move and now I wonder if we went at the right time. The costs to move house are spiralling out of control.'

Property frenzy: Research by Aviva last week found that nearly a quarter of home buyers paid over the asking price during the pandemic

For Simon Bath, who founded property concierge platform Moveable, this comes as no surprise. His data shows that, during the pandemic, 13 per cent of movers did not budget for extra fees, such as conveyancing, land registry and removal van costs.

Mr Bath says: 'Stamp duty savings became fool's gold during the pandemic. We constantly saw buyers paying so much above the asking price that it cancelled out any saving they may have made.

'What we've found is that people were rushing into moving and they hadn't considered all the extra costs that come with it.

'All the backlogs in conveyancing have encouraged bad practices, with some lawyers putting up fees while claiming to speed up the process for anxious buyers.'

There are also fears that panic buyers who paid over the asking price for their home risk ending up in negative equity  where their mortgage debt is greater than the value of the property.

But Lawrence Bowles, a research analyst at estate agency Savills, says: 'In the vast majority of cases mortgage lenders will have provided a safety net and checked to make sure a buyer isn't vastly overpaying for a home.'

However, Jo Thornhill, money expert at MoneySuperMarket, still urges caution.

She says: 'For most people, buying a home will be the biggest expense of their lifetime, so it's important that they don't feel pressurised into making a hasty purchase.'

How to avoid paying too much By Ed Magnus The property market is going through somewhat of a boom, with reports of people queuing for viewings, bidding wars and the biggest sales pipeline ever seen. But despite paying a pretty penny for their new homes, research shows some Britons are only viewing a property for 30 minutes before they make an offer. If time is of the essence, here are nine questions to ask the agent to make it count. 1) When did it come to market? Property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla often reveal this, but if the property has been re-listed it may be difficult to tell. 'You should want to find out how long it has sat around not selling,' says buying agent Henry Pryor. This is a key piece of negotiating information. 2) Why are they selling? Buyers should try to establish what has brought about the sale, according to Jonathan Hopper, chief executive of the buying agency Garrington Property Finders. 'Is it being sold because of a divorce and are the people desperate to move on? Is the vendor selling up because they have accepted another job elsewhere? Are they in a hurry to get kids into a new school for the new term? 'Information like this can give the buyer quite a degree of power as it might help indicate how flexible the seller might be on price and importantly, how committed they are to the selling process.' 3) Has the seller found somewhere to go? If a seller has not found a property to move to, as a buyer you may not want to sit around waiting for them. But if they have found somewhere this can play to your advantage, as they are under pressure to get an offer and are likely to accept one that will enable them to move rather than wait for the highest price. 4) Has there been a previous survey? Being able to look at a prior survey could save you both time and money. And if it has flagged issues that have caused the sale to go through, the estate agent and buyer must tell you this. You need to ask though, as otherwise they can avoid doing so. 5) Have you had any offers? Other viewings is a sign of interest, but offers are the real test of competition. Ask about offers and be as specific and probing as you can. The agent probably won't tell you exactly what those offers were but may give you a ballpark idea and if they think you are serious, ready-to-go buyer, they can indicate if your offer is likely to stand out and be taken seriously. 6) Will the seller take the property off the market if they accept my offer? Here you are testing whether the seller is willing to take the property off the market for the right offer, or whether they are hell-bent on trying to squeeze as much out of prospective buyers as possible. Ideally, you want the property off the market ASAP, so push for this, some sellers in a hot market may insist on not doing this until you have a survey booked. 7) What offer would take it off the market today? You could put the ball in the seller's court and see how they respond to the question of what is the offer that I can make you that will get the property off the market for me today. It may simply be the asking price. 8) Apart from price, what is important to the seller? People do not actively choose to sell their home for less than it is worth, but they do regularly go with the buyers they like best. That might be because they have their finances sorted, or can fit with their timescale, but it can also be for a reason such as they want their family home to go to another family. If you really like a property, write a note to the seller explaining why you want to make it your home. It's surprising how often this can work. > More tips: Buying agents reveal the nine key questions you should ask

h.kelly@dailymail.co.uk
@rachelravina on Twitter

Rachel Ravina is a journalist covering news and lifestyle features in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. She grew up in Blue Bell and graduated from Penn State. She's also a news enthusiast who is passionate about covering topics people want to read.
This article, Twitter suspends Marjorie Taylor Greene for coronavirus misinformation, originally appeared on CNET.com.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been suspended from Twitter for 12 hours after she violated the social media platform's rules prohibiting the sharing of misinformation about coronavirus.

"We took enforcement action on the account (@mtgreenee) for violations of the Twitter rules, specifically the COVID-19 misleading information policy," a Twitter spokesperson said Monday.

The Georgia Republican has been an outspoken opponent of vaccines and mask mandates to curb the spread of the virus. In her tweets, posted Sunday and Monday, she made unproven statements that virus doesn't pose a threat to the health of non-obese people or those under 65 years of age.

The tweets, which also referred to unproven claims of high death rates and "many other health problems" caused by the vaccine, have since been labeled "misleading."

Twitter's rules have long banned misinformation about the coronavirus, especially tweets containing false information that could lead people to do harm to themselves. In March, the company announced it would begin labeling any tweets that may contain misleading information about the COVID-19 vaccine.

Twitter will also announced it would begin using a "strike" system where two or three strikes earn users a 12-hour account lock, four strikes gets a week-long account lock and five or more results in a permanent suspension from the social media site. Having a tweet deleted for being misleading will earn users two strikes; being labeled will get you one strike.

Twitter took the action after President Joe Biden called on social media companies to do more to curb the spread of misinformation about the virus. When asked about his message to platforms like Facebook, Biden said Friday that "they're killing people," adding that "the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated."

Biden later walked back his criticism, saying Monday that it's vaccine misinformation that's "killing people," not the company.

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy also issued an advisory last week, saying health misinformation is an "urgent threat" to the public amid the pandemic. White House press secretary Jen Psaki had also said there are about a dozen people creating 65% of the vaccine misinformation on social media platforms.

The congresswoman couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
In his latest film, Val Kilmer gets an unusual screen credit for a bona fide Hollywood movie star: cinematographer.

That's because the documentary Val is built on thousands of hours Kilmer filmed since he was a boy  growing up, on movie sets, in cars, in hospitals. This is a lifetime-in-the-making cinematographers credit.

Thanks to Kilmer's relentless drive to document things, Val is a remarkably intimate film and a moving one, too. For a performer who has come off as chilly and difficult, this doc doesn't counter those perceptions as much as explain them.

I have behaved poorly. I have behaved bravely. I have behaved bizarrely to some. I deny none of this and have no regrets because I have lost and found parts of myself that I never knew existed," he says toward the end. "And I am blessed.

Actually, he leaves much of the talking to his son. The elder Kilmer's voice has been impaired from throat cancer treatments and Jack Kilmer narrates the majority of the film using his father's words, naturally while being filmed. Now that its more difficult to speak, I want to tell my story more than ever, says the elder Kilmer.

Val would not be the film it is if Kilmer hadnt been an early adopter of hand-held video cameras, giving us home movies, audition tapes and live auditions. Ive kept everything, he confides. His is a legitimate reason to be a hoarder.

Kilmers screen credits include Batman in Batman Forever in 1995, brash fighter pilot Lt. Tom "Iceman" Kazansky in the 1986 hit Top Gun, and rock icon Jim Morrison in the 1991 Oliver Stone film, The Doors.

The film lingers on each of those roles but perhaps the most intriguing parts are Kilmer's earnest auditions for roles he never got. For Full Metal Jacket, he filmed himself using multiple voices to try to seduce director Stanley Kubrick and also made an audition video to play Henry Hill in Goodfellas. He got neither part.

Directors Ting Poo and Leo Scott have spun a mostly chronological profile, starting with Kilmer's childhood and then giving us an unvarnished look at the star's career, marriage and fatherhood, and ending it post-surgery as Kilmer struggles to be heard.

The filmmakers have a tendency to bring Kilmer to the scene of a favorite place  say, The Juilliard School in New York or a former family home  and then melt back in time by using the old movies. Theyll show images of Kilmer's family hiking in the 80s and then revisit the same area with the middle-aged Kilmer. Sometimes the images are forced, as when father and son dress up in cheap Batman and Robin costumes.

This is no glamour project. He and his estranged wife bicker over custody of their two children, he is shown laconically slapping bugs with a flyswatter poolside in middle age, and he looks fragile at a Comic-Con, puking at a signing station, a towel over his head as he's rushed out in a wheelchair.

Kilmer  enigmatic to the rest of us  is portrayed as a quirky soul. He is shown shooting Silly String at his loved ones, sobbing as he puts on his late mothers jewelry and pretending to pass out to freak out his son. He is much funnier than we expect and forces us to question why we thought him difficult at all.

The film leans on Kilmers 2020 bestselling autobiography Im Your Huckleberry  like the line The distance between heaven and hell is the distance between faith and doubt  but has more punch because of the footage.

In one of the rawest scenes, Kilmer attends a fan event for Tombstone signing photos and memorabilia. I dont look great and Im selling basically my old self, my old career, he says to the camera.

Tune in to see backstage video from Slab Boys on Broadway, with co-stars Kevin Bacon and Sean Penn slowly mooning the camera. He calls an early role in Top Secret just fluff and documents why The Island of Dr. Moreau was doomed. He's such a Method actor that he constructed a backstory for the arrogant Iceman in Top Gun."

Kilmer is an intense actor, to be sure. When he played Doc Holliday in Tombstone, he filled his bed with ice for the final scene to mimic the feeling of dying from tuberculosis. To play Morrison, he wore leather pants all the time and blasted The Doors for a year, neither of which helped his marriage.

The film is bookended by tragedy. The weight of loss after Kilmer's younger brother Wesley died accidentally at age 15 hangs over the actor and the documentary returns again and again to home movies the two made, heartbreakingly. And the loss of Kilmer's voice means he must grapple with legacy and death in his 60s.

Even so, a relentless optimism comes through, especially his relationship with his adult children, who clearly adore their dad. I've lived a magical life, Kilmer concludes. It's hard to argue back.

Val, a Amazon Studios release, is rated R for language. It hits theaters on Friday and is available on Prime Video on Aug. 6. Running time: 109 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four.

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MPAA definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

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Online: https://www.amazon.com/VAL-Val-Kilmer/dp/B09888KKZK

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Mark Kennedy is at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits
Ugly Rooster opens in Malta

The second location of The Ugly Rooster Cafe opened Monday at 2476 Route 9 in Malta, previously home to the Malta Diner in Malta for nearly 28 years. Hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. daily. Check out the menu for Ugly Rooster-Malta at theuglyrooster.com/menu-malta. The phone number is 518-899-5099.

The original Ugly Rooster opened July 1, 2009, at 312 N. Third Ave. in Mechanicville. Hours there are 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekends. Phone: 518-664-2769.

The Malta Diner closed early this year for what was described as a winter break. Owners Stefanie and Steve Gouvis announced in late June that they had decided not to reopen.

Hudson cheese shops moves to a vastly larger space

The gourmet shop Talbott & Arding Cheese & Provisions, in business in Hudson since 2014, last weekend opened in its new location, 202 Allen St., in an 8,000-square-foot space that is four times bigger than the original on Warren Street.

The larger quarters will allow for an expanded menu with seasonal salads and sandwiches, classic comfort foods, take-home dinner entrees, roasted and braised meats, a pasta program with fresh and filled options, and pastries and desserts. There are also cafe tables for in-house dining.

The cheese and charcuterie selection will continue its focus on Northeast producers but will have a larger inventory and add more internationally sourced options as well, according to an announcement from owners Mona Talbott and Kate Arding. They said they intend to start hosting events including book signings, collaborative dinners, cooking classes and small corporate gatherings.

Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday, closed Monday. The stores main entrance is at Partition and Second streets. Call 518-828-3558.

Maurices Deli opening down the block in Albany

Maurices Pearl Street Delicatessen, a fixture in downtown Albany for 25 years, has closed its location at 15 S. Pearl St., at the corner of South Pearl and Howard, in preparation for a move down the block and across the street.

The new space is 50 S. Pearl, directly across from the Times Union Center. It was home to the Italian restaurant Pagliaccis for about 30 years. More recently, an attempt was made to create a food court called 50 South Eatery, but it never really got off the ground in 2019 and seems to have been killed by the pandemic.

Maurices owner Keith Mahler Jr. announced his new location on Facebook. An opening date is unclear.

Maurices closed at 15 S. Pearl after a frozen pipe caused a flood in December and found out in May that its lease was not being renewed.

Variants of the name Maurices Deli go back to an original in Schenectady in the 1950s. Things got really complicated for a while with multiple locations with similar names and different owners, but the Albany shop is the only Maurices Deli left.
Carm Basile is marking his fortieth anniversary at CDTA this month.

Born and raised in Springfield, Mass, Basile has called the Capital Region home since 1981. He went to Cathedral High School and graduated from Worcester State College with a degree in urban planning. After 18 months at a regional planning agency in western Massachusetts, he answered a blind ad in the Boston Globe for a transportation professional in upstate, New York.

Basile applied for  and was offered the job of  transit planner. For the first few months, he commuted from Springfield. In the summer. In a car with no air conditioning.

For the last 40 years, Basile says he has worked to transform the transit industry in the Capital Region.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP)  Authorities in Belarus raided offices of an independent newspaper and detained three of its journalists Monday as part of a relentless crackdown on media outlets and civil society activists.

Alyaksandr Mantsevich, the editor of the Regionalnaya Gazeta (Regional Newspaper), and journalists Zoya Khrutskaya and Nasta Utkina, were detained, said the Belarusian Association of Journalists, or BAJ.

They were taken into custody after the search of the newspapers office in Maladzyechna, 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the Belarusian capital, Minsk.

BAJ said that a total of 64 searches have been conducted over the last 10 days. Thirty-two journalists in total are in custody, either awaiting trial or serving their sentences.

The authorities have turned life into hell for independent journalists in Belarus with a conveyor belt of searches and arrests, BAJ head Andrei Bastunets said. There is an impression that the authorities have decided to leave the country without journalists.

On Monday, authorities also froze the bank accounts of the Belarusian PEN Center, an association of writers led by Svetlana Alexievich, the winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in literature. Alexievich, a member of the opposition Coordination Council, left Belarus last year after being summoned for questioning by the state investigative agency.

On Monday, a court in Minsk also handed out prison sentences ranging from five to nine years to 11 people who were accused of coordinating radical actions and planning arson on a messaging app.

One of them, 26-year-old Yevgeny Propolsky, who was sentenced to eight years in prison, said during the trial that investigators beat and tortured him to force confessions.

They threatened me, beat and tortured me with electric current, Propolsky said. They forced me to write a confessional testimony.

The Viasna human rights center recognized the 11 people convicted Monday as political prisoners, saying there are a total of 562 in the country now. Viasna said the searches Monday targeted civil society activists and human rights defenders in the cities of Brest and Pinsk in western Belarus.

Belarus was rocked by months of protests after Lukashenkos August 2020 election to a sixth term in a vote that the opposition and the West saw as rigged.

Belarusian authorities responded to opposition demonstrations with a massive crackdown, including police beating thousands of demonstrators and arresting more than 35,000 people. Leading opposition figures have been jailed or forced to leave the country, while independent media outlets have had their offices searched and their journalists arrested.

The West has responded to the crackdown by imposing sanctions on Belarus. The European Union ramped up the restrictions after Belarus in May diverted a passenger jet to Minsk to arrest a dissident journalist. The government in neighboring Lithuania has accused Belarusian authorities of organizing a flow of migrants from the Middle East and Africa in retaliation.

Lukashenko, who has ordered to halt cooperation with the EU on stemming illegal migration, said Monday that Belarus could contain the flow of migrants if the bloc rolls back the sanctions.

They have introduced sanctions to strangle us," Lukashenko said. "They take such action against the Belarusian people and they want us to protect them  listen, it's really weird. If you want us to help you, dont put a noose around our neck.

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenkos main challenger in the August 2020 election, was forced to leave Belarus under official pressure immediately after the vote. She was in Washington on Monday for meetings with officials and U.S. House members to rally support for the Belarusian opposition.

They have the power, they have weapons and they have been trying to silence people, Tsikhanouskaya said. But we have been standing up to them for a year.
COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP)  Prompted by Britney Spears conservatorship fight, a bipartisan legislative effort has emerged to reform the process created to protect the rights of more than 1 million people across the United States under the protective arrangements.

On Tuesday, Reps. Charlie Crist and Nancy Mace unveiled The Free Britney Act, designed to give more options to people placed under conservatorships. Those include the ability to talk about their situations with caseworkers  over any objections from their conservators  and petition a court to replace their conservators without having to prove wrongdoing or malfeasance.

This is just a commonsense approach to doing what is right, to making sure that rights are balanced, Crist, a Florida Democrat, said during a virtual news conference on Tuesday.

Both Mace, a Republican from South Carolina, and Crist said it was Spears' passionate plea last month that a judge end the conservatorship that controls her life and money that spurred their proposal.

What she had was an opportunity to do is bring to light, to shine a light, on those abuses, Mace said. Her situation is a nightmare, and if it can happen to Britney Spears, it can happen to anyone in this country.

Speaking in open court, Spears condemned her father and others who control the conservatorship, put in place as Spears underwent a mental health crisis in 2008. Spears said that the arrangement has compelled her to use birth control and take other medications against her will, and prevented her from getting married or having another child.

Spears' father and his attorneys have emphasized that she and her fortune, which court records put at more than $50 million, remain vulnerable to fraud and manipulation. Under current law, the burden is on Spears to prove she is competent before the case could end.

Mace and Crist said they expected more bipartisan support for the measure, which would also provide at least $260 million in grant funds for states to hire caseworkers or conservators.

The #FreeBritney movement has already crossed party lines.

Everyone deserves control over their own body. Period, U.S. Rep. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, the fourth-ranking House Democrat, tweeted last month following Spears testimony.

Some House Republicans have invited Spears to testify before Congress. The political arm of the House Republican caucus sent texts that described Ms. Spears as a victim of toxic govt overreach & censorship.

Earlier this month, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, made a brief appearance addressing the Spears supporters outside the downtown Los Angels courthouse, at one point shouting Free Britney!

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP.
ALBANY  Team Cuomo says Letitia James is considering a run for governor. You'll have to take the Cuomo administration's word for it, though, because New York's attorney general has said no such thing. Not publicly, at least.

"She says she may run against the governor," Richard Azzopardi, Cuomo's communications director tweeted last week, without providing evidence for an assertion he's made before.

Don't fall for this. The claims are only the Cuomo administration's ongoing attempt to discredit the investigation into sexual harassment claims against the governor  an investigation James is overseeing, of course. Suggesting the effort is politically motivated is a predictable survival strategy borne out of desperation.

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Azzopardi also claimed last week, again without evidence, that James' office had leaked that Cuomo would be interviewed by investigators Saturday. The alleged leak, Azzopardi claimed, was an attempt to distract from news that James had raised less in campaign donations than Cuomo's usual total when he was AG.

"Viewing these facts separate from today's convenient leak in a vacuum would be quite a leap," Azzopardi tweeted, later adding that the leak "was to distract from this showing."

The reasoning is bizarre. I mean, someone could just as easy claim Azzopardi's attention-grabbing attack was designed to distract from Cuomo's having raised far less in newly reported numbers than U.S. Rep. Lee Zeldin, his likely Republican challenger. After all, Cuomo's poor haul  $2.3 million, compared to $4 million for Zeldin  is evidence that his many scandals are having an impact.

Consider what Azzopardi might have said had James raised more: See, she is running for governor! Why else would she be raising so much money!? James couldn't win.

On Monday, I asked Azzopardi about his claims, and he responded with an expletive-laced rant that isn't worth mentioning here, except to note that it included no actual evidence of James' gubernatorial ambitions. Surprise, surprise.

But let's back up for a history lesson. This won't take long, because it's recent history. Very recent.

In late February, as allegations from at least a half dozen women piled up, the governor referred the investigation to James, claiming (after dragging his feet) that he wanted a thorough examination by her office and independent attorneys hired for the task.

Then, as demands for his resignation multiplied, he asked that New Yorkers wait for the investigation's conclusions.

"Lets get the facts," Cuomo said. "And thats what the investigation does and thats what the attorney general is doing. And thats what we should all respect."

That's what we should all respect. How is repeatedly claiming that James is motivated by ulterior aspirations indicative of respect? It isn't, of course. It's an unwarranted attack on her credibility and independence.

Cuomo wanted a thorough investigation like he wanted a thorough root canal. He needed to buy time. Now that the heat is down, his spokesman is on the offensive, all but claiming the investigation is a witchhunt. (Nobody in Cuomo's office says diddly, by the way, without the governor's OK.)

Here's what Azzopardi said when John Samuelsen, head of the state's largest transit union, told the New York Post he could no longer support the governor:

"Samuelsen (sic) is an extortionist who is trying to undo pension reform. We also understand he is a political supporter of Tish James and she says she may run against the governor, and he wants more benefits in his contract. Everyone gets that."

That tweet, with its name calling and hearsay, is what they'd teach at the Donald J. Trump School of Political Communication. The former president couldn't have said it better.

But there's nothing new happening here. This is the same governor who said he wanted the Moreland Commission to Investigate Public Corruption to ferret out wrongdoing, only to shutter the panel when it started looking under the wrong rocks.

This is the same Cuomo who, when he was attorney general, used the office to clear his own gubernatorial path. Former governors Eliot Spitzer and David Paterson could tell you about that.

Of course, we don't know what James' investigation has found. We don't know if it will be damning for the governor, who says he never touched the women inappropriately. Maybe it will find that the allegations aren't as bad as they seem.

But judging from Azzopardi's aggression, we can presume the administration is worried by what investigators are asking. Team Cuomo doesn't like where this is going, so it's returning to a favorite tactic: Attack, attack, and attack some more.

cchurchill@timesunion.com  518-454-5442  @chris_churchill
Wealthy philanthropists have long enjoyed an advantageous way to give to charity: Using something called a donor-advised fund, they've been able to enjoy tax deductions and investment gains on their donations long before they give the money away.

These so-called DAFs set no deadlines for when the donations must reach charities; the donors themselves decide when and where the money goes.

Critics complain that because DAFs provide no financial incentive to quickly donate the money, much of it ends up sitting indefinitely in the accounts rather than being distributed to needy charities.

That criticism has helped drive a Senate bill that would tighten the rules for DAFs and aim to speed donations to charities. The bill, introduced by Sens. Angus King, a Maine Independent, and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, appears to be gaining bipartisan support in Congress.

The bill would make numerous reforms to DAFs by, among other things, creating new categories of accounts.

One type of account would give donors an immediate income tax deduction for money they agree to give to a charity within 15 years.

The second type would let them delay the distribution of their money for 50 years. These donors would get no income tax deduction until then. But they would still get to enjoy capital gains and estate tax savings for donating stocks or gifts into a DAF.

Community foundation-sponsored DAFs with less than $1 million would be exempt from the requirement. But donors with more than $1 million in such accounts would qualify for upfront tax benefits only if they distributed at least 5% of their assets annually or gave their money to a charity within 15 years. Under current law, assets can remain in a DAF indefinitely, tax-free.

This is about as common sense a bill as Ive ever seen, said King, who caucuses with Democrats.

The idea of getting a tax deduction today for money that may not be paid out for 50 years makes no sense, the senator added. I understand you might want to put it into a fund and have someone else manage it. But its got to go out within a reasonable period of time. Otherwise, its an abuse of the tax code.

The proposed reforms have opened a rift in philanthropy circles among billionaire donors, community foundations and trade associations and have sparked intense lobbying efforts both for and against the legislation.

The debate was ignited when John Arnold, a Texas-based billionaire who made his fortune in hedge funds and now co-chairs Arnold Ventures, joined with a group of scholars and philanthropies to propose a set of reforms under a coalition they called The Initiative to Accelerate Charitable Giving. The group met with lawmakers to advocate for the reforms, which have largely been incorporated into the Senate bill.

What sparked Arnold's interest, he said, was seeing rich people with philanthropic intent funneling money into DAFs yet distributing very little of it to charities.

The money was just sitting there growing, Arnold said. There wasnt any intent of abuse of the system. But the money was just building up because there was no forcing mechanism.

Opponents of the bill counter that tighter restrictions on DAFs are unnecessary because the average annual payout rates for DAFs hover around 20%  much higher than the 5% minimum required of private foundations. Richard Graber, who leads the conservative Bradley Foundation, calls the legislation a solution in search of a problem. (The foundation is affiliated with Bradley Impact Fund, a DAF sponsor).

Yet without payout requirements, supporters of the legislation say DAFs  which hold an estimated $142 billion in the United States  have essentially become warehouses for charitable donations. The accounts let donors set up endowed accounts that exist in perpetuity and can pass on to their heirs.

A June report by the Council of Michigan Foundations showed that 35% of DAFs sponsored by Michigan community foundations distributed no money in 2020, a year marked by enormous need because of the viral pandemic.

Today, roughly 1 in 8 charitable dollars are estimated to go into DAFs. The New York Community Trust, a community foundation, established the first DAF in 1931. Their use accelerated in the 1990s, when Fidelity Charitable launched a national donor-advised fund program. Charitable arms of many financial firms, including Vanguard Charitable and Schwab Charitable, now run robust DAF programs.

Community foundations, along with universities, hospitals, faith-based groups and large charities like United Way also sponsor DAFs. Collectively, they account for a 300% growth in DAF accounts over the past 10 years, according to the National Philanthropic Trust.

Eileen Heisman, who leads the philanthropic trust, notes the ease of opening a DAF account online, the emergence of workplace charitable-giving accounts and low initial minimum contributions. Indeed, Fidelity and Schwab require no initial contributions at all for opening a DAF account, Heisman noted, thereby transforming it into a financial vehicle anyone can use. Still, the average value of a DAF account  estimated at about $162,000  shows that DAFs remain a vehicle mainly for the affluent.

The Senate bill was crafted with guidance from Ray Madoff, a Boston College law professor who, alongside Arnold, has called for stricter DAF rules. Madoff and a colleague published a study in May that showed that working charities had lost $300 billion in contributions over a five-year period as more people channeled donations through DAFs and private foundations rather than directly to charities.

The Philanthropy Roundtable, a conservative-leaning group that opposes payout requirements for DAFs, disputes those findings. Its president, Elise Westhoff, argues that "more mandates and regulations on giving will just make it harder for all Americans to support the causes they care about.

Supporters of the bill, including William Schambra, a philanthropy expert at the conservative Hudson Institute, say much of the pushback reflects a financial incentive that DAF sponsors want to preserve: The fees they charge to manage the accounts.

Some community foundation leaders agree.

Community foundations business models are based on asset management, said Paul Major, the CEO of the Colorado-based Telluride Foundation. They charge fees, and thats how they fund their operations. If they have less money to manage, they bring in less fees.

But the objective of charitable giving is not to manage more money, Major said. The objective is to put the money to work.

Other experts agree on the need to rein in DAFs but favor a different approach. Edward A. Zelinsky, a professor at Yeshiva Universitys Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, argues that creating a minimum annual contribution requirement for all DAFs would more effectively accelerate donations to charities.

Some community foundations say they think the bill is unnecessary because their organizations already have policies that incentivize faster payouts. Jeff Hamond, who oversees a coalition of 130 community foundations, contends that the legislation would increase the financial burden on community foundations, requiring them to track each donation.

For every kind of additional cost burden you put on a community foundation, Hamond said, "youre actually driving more people to Fidelity, Vanguard and Schwab.

The Senate bill would also prohibit donors from claiming tax benefits for complex donations  like real estate  that exceed the value of the gift. It would also incentivize private foundations to increase their payouts to 7% and bar them from meeting their payout requirements by paying salaries or other expenses for relatives or by donating to DAFs.

The Senate bill has been referred to the Finance Committee, though a vote hasn't been scheduled. A spokesman for King's office said the senator expects a bipartisan House version of the bill to be introduced in the coming weeks.

I havent met anybody yet that Ive described it to," King said, " who does anything but say, Why didnt we do this a long time ago? 

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The Associated Press receives support from the Lilly Endowment for coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.
ALBANY  New Yorks ethics oversight agency is investigating a series of phone calls made by a former top aide to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, which some county executives felt improperly mixed politics with vaccine distribution efforts.

An investigator from the Joint Commission on Public Ethics has been contacting Democratic county executives around New York to set up fact-finding interviews concerning their interactions with Larry Schwartz, who is one of Cuomo's most trusted advisers and had served as New Yorks vaccine czar during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter.

The recently initiated JCOPE investigation is notable because the ethics oversight agency has been criticized for being influenced by the Cuomo administration. Investigations into matters touching Cuomo have rarely publicly surfaced, and the recently initiated probe directly touches a matter sensitive to the governor.

Its unlikely JCOPE staff would have begun the investigation without notifying the panels commissioners, including the six members appointed by Cuomo. A JCOPE spokesman declined to comment, citing a law that he said prohibits him from speaking about agency investigations.

It's unclear whether the investigation will result in action against Schwartz or anyone else. Under the state law creating JCOPE, at least two of the three Democratic commissioners appointed by Cuomo would have to vote in favor of issuing a report outlining any civil violations, and the vote would be conducted in secret. During public portions of JCOPE meetings, Cuomo's six commissioners have often voted unanimously against efforts to investigate the governor.

In March, the Washington Post reported that Schwartz had phoned Democratic county officials to gauge their loyalty to Cuomo, who was reeling from multiple sexual harassment allegations. Schwartz, who had previously served as secretary to the governor, has a reputation as an enforcer. In recent years, Schwartz has worked as an executive at an airport concessions company; he returned last year to oversee Cuomo's vaccine distribution efforts on a volunteer basis before leaving in late April. And this spring, Schwartz also sought to aid the governor during the period of political peril.

One Democratic county executive was so unsettled by the outreach this spring, the Post reported, that the person filed notice of an impending ethics complaint with the state attorney general's office. The county executive contended that he feared the county's vaccine supply would suffer if Schwartz did not feel the executive was supportive of Cuomo.

Schwartz told the Post that hed been seeking to find out if county executives were maintaining their public position that there is an ongoing investigation by the state attorney general concerning the harassment allegations, and that they would wait for findings, rather than calling for Cuomos resignation. Schwartz described the calls as "cordial, respectful and friendly.

Westchester County Executive George Latimer was among the Democratic county executives recently contacted by JCOPE about a fact-finding interview.

Latimer, who is cooperating with the inquiry, has a longtime relationship with Schwartz, a former Westchester deputy county executive. When Schwartz called Latimer this spring to gauge his support for Cuomo, Latimer found nothing untoward about the interaction.

People in politics call other people in politics all the time, Latimer said. I felt no kind of pressure from him, at all.

Latimer said vaccine distribution did not come up during the call. He recalled telling Schwartz that the allegations against Cuomo were serious, and that he would wait until Attorney General Letitia James issued a report on the matter. Latimer has not called for Cuomo to resign.

Albany County Executive Daniel P. McCoy's office has also gotten a call from JCOPE, a McCoy spokeswoman confirmed. It's not clear yet whether McCoy will agree to an interview with the ethics agency.

"We have not connected yet," said Mary Rozak, McCoy's spokeswoman. "It's our intention to communicate with their counsel."

McCoy, a Democrat, said in March that he had "briefly" talked to Schwartz about whether he politically supported Cuomo, but found nothing inappropriate about Schwartz's phone call.

Schwartz and Cuomo's office did not respond to requests for comment.

The JCOPE probe comes three months after its commissioners agreed to appoint a new top staffer to run the agency, Sanford Berland. Berland, a former judge, is the first executive director in JCOPEs 10-year history who is not a former staff member of Cuomo's, which some commissioners hoped would make him operate independently of Cuomos office.

Its unclear whether JCOPE is investigating other Cuomo-related matters, including the governors use of government staff to help produce a $5.1 million book, American Crisis.
FONDA  Cari Herringshaw was on her porch watching the thunderstorm on Monday evening.

As usual, the creek just out of sight of the backyard of her Court Street home gurgled away. But then rising waters rolled through a series of fences, poured into her backyard and inched closer toward her house.

It started rushing onto the porch and then to the kitchen door, Herringshaw said. I thought it was going to go through and into my home.

Herringshaws basement incurred minor flooding, but her backyard was ravaged by the sheer force of the water that rolled through a series of barriers, including a chain-link fence. The water poured through a second wooden fence, scattering mud-caked chunks of fencing, tree limbs and tires from an unknown origin around her yard.

"It's going to be like a scavenger hunt," said Shawn Dandrew as he surveyed the damage Tuesday morning. "You're going to find a bunch of stuff that you've never seen before in your yard."

The village where Herringshaw lives was the latest location in the Capital Region to be overrun by flood waters unleashed by powerful, isolated thunderstorms that have randomly hit over the last three weeks. Communities in Greene and Rensselaer counties came before, damaged when thunderstorms unleashed rain that fell at inches an hour.

"It's just been kind of a stormy pattern," said Dan Thompson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service on Tuesday morning. "When you have a prominent ridge in the western U.S. and sometimes a trough in eastern U.S., that a lot of the time leads to stormy patterns."

Fonda was under a state of emergency after up to 4 inches of rain fell within two hours Monday, causing flooding that left streets unpassable and homes flooded. The downpour overflowed the waterway running through the center of the village.

Stuff just became overwhelmed quite rapidly," Kevin Lipton, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said of the situation in Fonda.

It literally was it, right over Fonda," Lipton said. "That was the epicenter of it."

Rainwater on Monday cascaded down a hill situated northwest of the village's center. Due to soil saturation from weeks of heavy rains, rainfall overflowed the unnamed creek running through the center of the village, flooding basements and washing out road shoulders.

"[Route] 30A was like a river," town of Mohawk Highway Superintendent Bill Holvig said.

Damage was mostly limited to the center of the town. Flood waters had receded by Tuesday morning, allowing drivers and pedestrians to move around the village, but streets remained caked with several inches of mud.

The weather service said another round of thunderstorms have the potential to hit again Tuesday.

Fonda is used to flooding, said Holvig, and has experienced several previous events. Holvig pointed at high water marks on his office door.

But residents struggled to recall the last time the town was so heavily hit.

"We've lived here for a decade and have never seen anything like this happen, ever," Dandrew said.

In the immediate aftermath, the village closed all roads.

After getting a call from home alerting him to the potential of flooding, Andrew Scoville left his job at Dollar General and found a way to navigate the roadblocks.

He surveyed the damage on Tuesday, which included six inches of water in his basement.

Work crews will continue to repair washed-out road shoulders, including Old Johnston Road.

While the town Department of Public Works headquarters on Broadway was spared damage, the nearby county Montgomery County Emergency Management building sits on lower ground and incurred minor flooding, Holvig said.

The town of Mohawk was assisted by multiple agencies in cleanup efforts, including the state Thruway Authority and village of Fonda Department of Public Works, as well as additional local agencies, said the Mohawk Fire Department in a Facebook post.

Roughly 15 residences required assistance in pumping out their basements and it appears that no injuries have been reported, according to the department.

Photos posted by the department showed flooding in front of Cumberland Farms, as well as other downtown business locations.

Roads had been reopened Tuesday morning, according to the Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management, but drivers may encounter delays due to clean-up efforts and urged people to scout out alternate routes if possible.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP)  David Hawpe, who rose through the ranks of the Courier Journal to become editor of the Louisville newspaper, which won multiple Pulitzer Prizes on his watch, has died. He was 78.

His death Sunday night was confirmed on Facebook by his sister-in-law, Hilda Miller. Hawpe had been hospitalized with multiple health problems, the Courier Journal reported.

Hawpe was an unabashed liberal who championed school reform, working people and the Appalachian region of his home state during his decadeslong career.

Kentucky lost one of its strongest voices in the passing of journalist David Hawpe, Gov. Andy Beshear said on social media. David dedicated his work to bettering the lives of all Kentuckians. He will be greatly missed.

Hawpe began his career reporting for The Associated Press in Kentucky. In 1969, he started working for the Courier Journal in its Hazard bureau in eastern Kentucky.

He wrote his first front-page story in late 1969, the newspaper reported, about a disabled tall, gaunt 30-year-old father of 5 who went as far as the second grade and said was denied county assistance to help lift his family out of its destitute existence on Bear Run in Owsley County because he doesnt vote the way he was told to.

The next year, Hawpe covered the Hyden mine disaster in Leslie County that killed 38 men. Watching family members file into a gymnasium to identify the dead, Hawpe said he vowed to do anything possible to reduce the chances of that happening again. Ive tried all this time to be true to the promise I made to myself.

David committed his career and his great intellect to Kentucky, said Ed Staats, former longtime bureau chief for The Associated Press in Louisville. "The state and its residents are better for it."

Staats said Hawpe particularly loved the people of eastern Kentucky.

Hawpe was later a copy editor, an editorial writer, the city editor of the Louisville Times and the Courier Journals managing editor, editor and editorial director.

Under Hawpes leadership, the Courier Journal successfully fought to rein in the excesses and environmental degradations of the mining industry. The paper's reporting also helped reform Kentuckys nursing home industry and its often shoddy death investigations as well as strengthen the policing of bad doctors by the Kentucky Medical Licensure Board.

The newspaper also pushed for tougher rules on bus safety and stricter drunk driving laws after the 1988 church bus crash in Carroll County that killed 27 people, including 24 children. The newspapers coverage earned it a Pulitzer Prize.

While Hawpe kept The Courier Journals focus on Kentucky and Indiana, he sent reporter Joel Brinkley and photographer Jay Mather to Cambodia, where they won another Pulitzer for international reporting about the aftermath of the genocide there, the newspaper reported.

After his retirement in 2009, Hawpe served for six years on the board of trustees of the University of Kentucky, his alma mater. The school's president, Eli Capilouto, saluted Hawpe's commitment to his home state.

David Hawpe loved Kentucky  every coal town and community, every hill and holler, and all the contours and contradictions of its history, Capilouto said in a statement. He believed deeply that journalism and education  particularly his alma mater, the University of Kentucky  were essential to advancing the future of his beloved commonwealth."
RABAT, Morocco (AP)  A Moroccan held for 19 years without charges at the U.S. detention facility for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay has rejoined his family after questioning by police in this North African kingdom, his lawyer said Tuesday.

Abdullatif Nasser, now 56, is the first detainee at the Guantanamo Bay center to be transferred into the custody of his home country under the administration of President Joe Biden.

Upon his arrival on Monday, he was questioned by the National Division of the Judicial Police in Casablanca on suspicion of committing terrorist acts before being set free.

He is now with his family whom he hadn't seen in almost two decades, Nassers Moroccan attorney, Khalil Idrissi, said. Nasser, who was not available for comment, wants only to catch up with his old life, his attorney said by telephone.

No further action against his client is expected, he added.

Nasser had been a member of a nonviolent but illegal Moroccan Sufi Islam group in the 1980s, according to his Pentagon file. He had been recruited to fight in Chechnya but ended up in Afghanistan, training at an al-Qaida camp. He was captured after fighting U.S. forces and sent to Guantanamo in May 2002.

A review board had recommended repatriation for Nasser in July 2016, but he remained in the detention center at a U.S. naval base in Cuba throughout the presidency of Donald Trump, who opposed closing the site. In announcing Nassers transfer home, the Pentagon cited the boards determination that his detention was no longer necessary to protect U.S. national security.

Almost 800 detainees have passed through Guantanamo . Of the 39 remaining, 10 are eligible for transfers out. They are from Yemen, Pakistan, Tunisia, Algeria and the United Arab Emirates.
NEW YORK  State Attorney General Letitia James announced Tuesday that her office has reached a $1.1 billion settlement with three of the nations largest drug distributors accused of helping to fuel the opioid epidemic.

The agreement with McKesson Corporation, Cardinal Health Inc., and AmerisourceBergen Drug Corporation resolves litigation the state has been pursuing against the companies since 2019. James said her office would make a motion Tuesday to remove them from the states ongoing opioid trial currently underway in Suffolk County State Supreme Court.

New York and local municipalities that sign off on the agreement should begin to see money from the settlement in just two months, her office said. Funds will be doled out over the course of 17 years and must be spent on addiction prevention, treatment and recovery services.

While no amount of money will ever compensate for the millions of addictions, the hundreds of thousands of deaths, or the countless communities decimated by opioids, this money will be vital in preventing any future devastation, James said.

The drug distributors were accused of funneling massive quantities of opioids into communities without sufficient monitoring or oversight, and ignoring signs that they were being diverted to illegal channels. The companies have denied these claims, arguing the blame lies with the drug manufacturers and doctors who prescribed the pills.

To resolve the claims, James said McKesson, Cardinal and AmerisourceBergen have agreed to implement a new process for collecting and analyzing data about opioid orders received by other companies through the creation of a groundbreaking clearinghouse that will be overseen by an independent third-party monitor.

The clearinghouse will pool and aggregate data from the distributors  giving them the ability to account for their own shipments as well as the others shipments. The data will then be used to establish caps on opioid shipments for specific pharmacies that each company must follow.

The three distributors released a joint statement in response to Tuesday's settlement announcement, calling it "an important step" toward finalizing a broad agreement with states and other governing bodies. If the broad settlement is reached, New York and participating municipalities would become part of the broader agreement.

"While the companies strongly dispute the allegations at issue in the trial, they believe this resolution will allow the companies to focus their attention and resources on the safe and secure delivery of medications and therapies while delivering meaningful relief to affected communities, and will also support efforts to achieve a broad resolution under the previously disclosed framework," they said.

In addition to the $1.1 billion settlement announced Tuesday, which according to James is the largest monetary award her office has ever secured, James has also recently negotiated settlement agreements with opioid manufacturer Johnson & Johnson and consultant McKinsey & Company.

The state's case against the Sackler family and their company Purdue Pharma, meanwhile, is still moving through U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Earlier this month, however, a majority of states - including New York - approved an agreement that would force the family and the entities they control to pay more than $4.5 billion toward opioid abatement, shut down Purdue, and ban them from ever selling opioids again. The agreement is pending court approval.

The states trial against other opioid manufacturers, including Endo Health Solutions, Teva Pharmaceuticals USA and Allergan Finance, remains underway.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released provisional data showing that drug overdose deaths had reached an all-time high in the U.S., with more than 93,000 people estimated to have died last year. Additionally, more than half of all states saw overdose deaths increase by more than 30 percent.

In the Capital Region, Albany County officials have said they're on track to see another record year for drug deaths this year, with an estimated 50 people dead from opioids in the county in just the first five months of 2021.
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP)  A new prime minister supported by key international diplomats will take charge of Haiti, an official said Monday  a move that appeared aimed at averting a leadership struggle following the assassination of President Jovenal Moise.

Ariel Henry, who was designated prime minister by Moise before he was slain but never sworn in, will replace the country's interim prime minister, Haiti Elections Minister Mathias Pierre told The Associated Press.

It wasnt immediately clear how quickly Claude Joseph, who has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military since the July 7 assassination of Moise, would step down.

Negotiations are still in course, Pierre said, adding that Joseph would go back to being minister of foreign affairs. There was no immediate comment from Joseph.

In an audio recording, Henry referred to himself as prime minister and called for unity, saying he would soon announce the members of what he called a provisional consensus government to lead the country until elections are held.

I present my compliments to the Haitian people who have shown political maturity in the face of what can be considered a coup. ... Our Haitian brothers gave peace a chance, while leaving the possibility that the truth could one day be restored," Henry said.

Now it is up to all the national leaders to walk together in unity, towards the same goal, to show that they are responsible.

The political turnover followed a statement Saturday from a key group of international diplomats that appeared to snub Joseph as it called for the creation of "a consensual and inclusive government.

To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government, the statement from the Core Group said.

The Core Group is composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

On Monday, the U.N. issued a statement calling on Joseph, Henry and other national stakeholders to set aside differences and engage in constructive dialogue on ways to end the current impasse.

The U.N. added that Joseph and Henry made significant progress in the past week and that it supports dialogue to find minimal consensus for holding fair legislative and presidential elections.

Monique Clesca, a Haitian writer, activist and former U.N. official, said she doesn't anticipate any changes under Henry, whom she expects to carry on Moise's legacy. But she warned Henry might be viewed as tainted because of the international backing that preceded his taking power.

There is not only a perception, but the reality that he has been put there by the international community, and I think thats his burden to carry, she said.

What were calling for is for Haitians to really say this is unacceptable. We do not want the international community stating who ought to be in power and what ought to be done. It is up to us.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the Biden administration welcomes reports that Haitian political actors are working together to determine a path forward in the country.

We have been encouraging, for several days now, Haitian political actors to work together and find a political way forward, she said.

Earlier, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price had said the U.S. would continue to work with Joseph after noting he was the incumbent in the position and was serving as acting prime minister before the assassination.

On Monday, Price urged all political actors in Haiti as well as the civil society and private sector to work together in the interest of the people, adding that the U.S. is standing with them.

We have always said, and we continue to believe, that the decision of who should lead Haiti belongs to the Haitian people," he said. Political gridlock has taken a tremendous toll on the nation of Haiti, and its vital for the countrys leaders to finally come together to chart a united, inclusive path forward.

The Core Group statement was issued hours after Moise's wife, Martine, arrived in Haiti on Saturday aboard a private jet clad in black and wearing a bulletproof vest after being released from a hospital in Miami. She has not issued a statement or spoken publicly since her return to Haiti as the government prepares for the July 23 funeral that will be held in the northern city of Cap-Haitien. Other events to honor Moise are planned this week in the capital of Port-au-Prince ahead of the funeral.

Moise designated Henry as prime minister shortly before he was killed, but he had not been sworn in. The neurosurgeon was previously minister of social affairs and interior minister. He has belonged to several political parties including Inite, which was founded by former President Rene Preval.

The upcoming change in leadership comes as authorities continue to investigate the July 7 attack at Moise's private home with high-powered rifles that seriously wounded his wife.

Authorities say more than 20 suspects directly involved in the killing have been arrested. The majority of them are former Colombian soldiers, most of whom Colombian officials say were duped. Another three suspects were killed, with police still seeking additional ones, including an ex-Haitian rebel leader and a former Haitian senator.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Alexandra Jaffe in Washington contributed.
The COVID-19 comeback across the U.S. is putting pressure on hospitals at a time when some of them are busy just trying to catch up on surgeries and other procedures that were put on hold during the pandemic.

With the highly contagious delta variant spreading rapidly, cases in the U.S. are up around 70% over the last week, hospital admissions have climbed about 36% and deaths rose by 26%, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

Some hospitals are reporting record or near-record patient volumes. But even for those that aren't, this round of the pandemic is proving tougher in some ways, hospital and health officials said. Staff members are worn out, and finding traveling nurses to boost their ranks can be tough.

I really think of it as a war and how long can you stay on the front line," said Dr. Mark Rosenberg, president of the American College of Emergency Physicians. And how many times do you want to go back for another tour of duty. Eventually you just dont want to do it.

Also, many hospitals were busy even before the surge began, dealing with a backlog of cancer screenings, operations and other procedures that were put off during the winter surge to free up space and staff members, according to health care leaders.

Eventually you have to pay the piper, and those things have now built up, said Dr. James Lawler of the Global Center for Health Security at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

The fear now at some hospitals is that they will have to postpone non-COVID-19 care again  and risk the potential health consequences for patients.

Dr. Laura Makaroff, senior vice president for prevention and early detection for the American Cancer Society, said cancer screenings dropped during the outbreak and have yet to return to normal levels in many communities. She warned that delays in screenings can result in cancers being detected at more advanced stages of the disease.

COVID-19 deaths and newly confirmed infections across the U.S. are still dramatically lower than they were over the winter. But for the first time since then, cases are rising in all 50 states. And the nation's vaccination drive has slowed to a crawl, with only about 48% of the population fully protected.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky warned that the outbreak in the U.S. is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated because nearly all hospital admissions and deaths are among those who hadnt been immunized.

One of the most overwhelmed areas of the country is Springfield, Missouri, where public health officials begged the state this week to convert a dormitory, hotel or another large space for the care of less seriously ill COVID-19 patients so that the city's two hospitals can focus on the sickest.

Mercy Springfield and Cox South have seen a sevenfold increase in coronavirus patients since late May, with Mercy treating pandemic-high numbers and Cox expected to break its own record next week.

In Florida, UF Health Jacksonville is talking about setting up tents in the parking lot to help with the overflow after the number of COVID-19 in-patients doubled to 77 over the past couple of weeks. Chad Neilsen, director of infection prevention, said the hospital expects to surpass its January high of 125 COVID-19 in-patients in the next few weeks.

Before the rise, the hospital had begun a push to bring back patients who had delayed care amid the pandemic. Now it is discussing canceling procedures, Neilsen said.

To be telling someone, Sorry, we have to delay your hip surgery or your procedure because we have too many COVID patients who are largely unvaccinated, it is just not what we signed up to do in health care," he said.

In Georgia, Augusta University Medical Center is busting at the seams as it handles medical procedures postponed because of the pandemic and deals with a spike in respiratory illnesses that usually hit in the wintertime, said Dr. Phillip Coule, chief medical officer.

COVID-19 hospitalizations also have started inching up to around eight or 10 patients, from lows of one or two a day. While the numbers still remain far below the peak of 145 in January, Coule said he is watching the situation closely.

In some ways I feel like we are a lot better off than we were before, he said, noting that the staff is safer because of vaccinations. In other ways, it worries we if we have to defer routine care again what the outcome will be.

In California, Los Angeles County will again require masks indoors, even in people who have been vaccinated. Over the past three weeks, COVID-19 cases have doubled across Kaiser Permanentes 36 California hospitals, to more than 400.

Dr. Stephen Parodi, who helped develop the surge plans for Kaiser Permanentes hospitals, said he is confident they can handle the influx, noting that the total is still less than 20% of the January peak.

But he said the hospitals already were busy with people showing up at emergency rooms with more severe illnesses than they would have had if the problems had been detected sooner.

At some point, illness doesnt wait for us, he said. The ability to defer additional care when you have already deferred for a year, year and a half, is just simply not an acceptable option.
ALBANY  Federal officials so far have resisted calls for reciprocity on the countrys northern border, after Canada announced Monday it would welcome vaccinated U.S. residents starting August 9.

In a White House briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki responded to a reporter who asked about Americas likelihood to follow in Canadas footsteps, noting that the government is continuing to review its policies guided by its own medical experts and saying she wouldnt look at it through a reciprocal intention.

The federal lawmakers from New York pushing to reopen the northern border have consistently emphasized a need to coordinate with Canadian authorities. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer and U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-Schuylerville, both urged the federal government to change its policy after Mondays news out of Canada.

The United States must now immediately follow suit, make our policy uniform, and further energize New Yorks recovery, Schumer said. As I just stressed directly to (Canadian) Ambassador Hillman, the U.S. and Canadian governments must work in lock-step over the next few weeks.

Stefanik also said the U.S. should respond with its own reopening plan.

Extending the current restrictions any further, in light of the progress our Canadian neighbors have announced, would be devastating to every community along the northern border, Stefanik said.

Canadas declaration could mark a shift in the balance of pandemic border policies between the U.S. and its northern ally.

Under Canadas more restrictive, soon-to-change policy, only essential travelers, Canadian residents or citizens and some of their close family members have been allowed to enter from the U.S. since the pandemic began. But once the rules shift on Aug. 9, residents of the United States who are fully immunized against COVID-19 with vaccines from Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or AstraZeneca-Oxford will be able to go to Canada through any port of entry, provided they comply with a pre-entry testing process.

Meanwhile, the U.S. has long permitted individuals to fly into the country from Canada for any reason. But it has only allowed trips deemed essential across land border crossings, limiting everyday and tourist travel through northern New York and other border states. Federal officials have not announced any conditions or timelines for changing this policy.

What a way to run a border, said Garry Douglas, president of New York's North Country Chamber of Commerce, which hailed the Canadian officials announcement as a strong call for U.S. action. Douglas noted that while he welcomes any progress on border reopening, he was appalled by the apparent lack of coordination between the two countries.

The overwhelming takeaway from Canadas confirmation that fully vaccinated Americans will be allowed to enter Canada starting Aug. 9th, Douglas said, is the absence of a concurrent announcement by the U.S.

The latest extension of the northern U.S. border closure is set to expire July 21. The policy has been renewed on a monthly basis since March of last year.
In Tennessee, where cases of COVID-19 are rising, the states top immunization expert was fired for reminding teenagers that they are eligible for the vaccine and may legally get it without parental consent. After Republican lawmakers threw a hissy fit, the Tennessee Department of Health not only pulled back its outreach to teens for the COVID vaccine, but it also muted its outreach for other vaccines.

This may sound like something out of the Dark Ages, when people killed cats because they believed that Satan-loving felines were spreading the bubonic plague. But medieval Europeans who blamed cats at least had an excuse: They were ignorant of science and the basics of the spread of contagious disease. Tennessee lawmakers may be science illiterates, but they have no excuse for it. They are simply opportunists without conscience.

Unfortunately, this wretched response to COVID isnt limited to Republicans in Tennessee. The inimitable Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., lead congressional lunatic, has introduced a bill to fire the nations most prominent expert on infectious disease, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who seems to be positioning himself for a presidential bid, has bragged about his resistance to advice from public health officials. DeSantis, a Trump ally, is selling merchandise with the slogan Dont Fauci My Florida. Meanwhile, as the delta variant spreads through the Sunshine State, cases of COVID-19 are soaring there. The rate of new cases is close to four times the national average, according to The Washington Post.

It seems the conservative enterprise has become a death cult, a movement that enthusiastically spreads lies and pseudoscientific nonsense that will have fatal consequences for many of its followers. At a prominent gathering of conservatives earlier this month  the Conservative Political Action Conference  audience members cheered when a speaker touted the fact that fewer people had received the vaccine than President Joe Biden had hoped.

The vast majority of states with the lowest vaccination rates  including Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia and Arkansas  have Republican governors. Those are also the states, not coincidentally, where the delta variant is wreaking havoc.

Arkansas has one of the highest rates of COVID infections in the country at the moment, a surge that started earlier in the summer. At least Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, has had the common sense to urge his states residents to get the vaccine and has accepted federal assistance to combat resistance to the shots.

Not so in Missouri, which rivals Arkansas for the highest rate of COVID infections. GOP Gov. Mike Parson has been vocal about resisting the advice of public health experts. Parson recently told Biden, who has assembled teams of volunteers to go door to door to urge residents to get vaccinated, that he doesnt want those surge response teams in Missouri. Parson never enacted a mask mandate, and he tweeted a photo of himself at a crowded Fourth of July celebration in Branson. A hospital near that popular tourist destination was recently overwhelmed by COVID cases, running out of ventilators and begging for assistance.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has also refused federal assistance to raise the vaccination rate in her state, though it vies with Mississippi for the nations lowest. There are children in Mississippi hospitalized with COVID-19, in intensive care units, struggling for their lives. But that states Gov. Tate Reeves has criticized the surge response teams  which are composed of local volunteers, such as clergy  as invading peoples right to privacy.

This is unconscionable. Many of these leading Republicans so invested in Trumpism have had the vaccination themselves. So has former President Donald Trump. So has media mogul Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News minions denounce the vaccine on a daily basis.

Yet they are more than willing to allow some of their fellow conservatives to die off if it assures them more votes or more viewers. Opportunism is perhaps one word for this. Hypocrisy is another. But the term evil is probably the most fitting.

Cynthia Tucker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 2007. She can be reached at cynthia@cynthiatucker.com.
Two brief stories that will tell you all you need to know about the late, great newspaperman, Harry M. Rosenfeld.

In the summer of 1983, I was a surface warfare officer serving on a U.S. Navy ship in Pearl Harbor, just back from duty in East Africa. I was getting out of the service and needed a job. I wrote Harry a letter at the Times Union.

Dear Harry, I said, I know you once hired former Navy officer Bob Woodward at The Washington Post. Im not saying I am the next Woodward, but since you did pretty good with him, would you give me a chance? I was on my way to Clifton Park with my pregnant wife, Lynn, to visit her mother, Joan. Could I stop in for a cup of coffee?

I met with Harry and his staff. Harry told me that he might have an opening in a new Saratoga County bureau in the fall. I said: Listen, Harry, my wifes pregnant. Im about to move into my mother-in-laws basement. Ill work for free for 30 days. If you like me, hire me in the fall. But I got to know by 5 oclock today. I gave him my mother-in-laws number.

At about 4:45 p.m., the kitchen phone rang. It was Harry. He said, Sal, you start tomorrow. Full pay and benefits. That was Harry. He loved moxie.

Less than two years later, Harry sent me back to East Africa to follow a Capital Region relief organization distributing food to the famine victims in Ethiopia. I was in Harrys office, going over the logistics, and said to him: Theres only one problem: My wifes pregnant for our second child. Shes due any day. He looked at me and said with a straight face, Thats no problem. You can leave her home if you want. That was Harry. He loved a good story.

When I left for Africa, I asked him for some advice. Harry said, Take good notes, ask good questions and if your mother says she loves you, check it out. I still teach that to young journalism students all over the country.

Harry gave me and my family so much. Back from Africa, I got a job at the Philadelphia Inquirer and then ESPN. We put our three daughters through college, two at Ithaca, one at Skidmore. I can still hear his words about balancing a reporters life with keeping your family together: You got to have shalom in the home. That was Harry.

Sal Paolantonio of Cherry Hill, N.J., is a senior national correspondent for ESPN.
Willy Sanjuan

The Spanish-born chef celebrity Jose Andres, whose not-for-profit reflief agency World Central Kitchen has provided tens of millions of millions of meals following natural disasters and other upheavals, is one of two people named today (7/20) to receive $100 million prizes from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the inaugural recipients of what's being called the Courage and Civility Award.

The other recipient is CNN commentator and activist Van Jones.
Flooding on Saturday has left a coat of mud in areas of Titusville. Pictured here is mud on Diamond Street, something the street sweeper rented by the City will clean up.
Gov. Andy Beshear is encouraging Kentuckians to submit proposals for projects that expand the use of bourbon distilling byproduct for a competition at Distillers Grains Symposium on Oct. 25
Mitel Partner Programs Put Cloud in Focus

By Luke Bellos - Editor, Virtual PBX

Canadian telecommunications company Mitel has revealed two new Cloud-first partner programs, in an effort to address the recent spike in demand for cloud services.

The post-pandemic era is becoming a time of renewal for many businesses, with many attempting to start fresh with new digital infrastructure to remain functional and productive in hybrid environments. Cloud services were once thought to be convenient for business operations, but are proving to be somewhat mandatory for both employee and customer purposes.

As businesses begin to come out of pandemic mode and turn their attention toward growth, demand for cloud communications has exploded and with it, created a huge opportunity for partners to support customers in new ways as they transition to the cloud or look to optimize the power of an existing cloud solution. commented Lana King, Vice President of Partner Programmes, Training and Enablement at Mitel.

Mitels two new partner programs, Amplify and Velocity, hope to address the new needs of agents and customers, by offering digital resources and benefits to make operations more streamlined. Velocity will focus specifically on customer cloud journeys, and Amplify will support agents through new programs and technical certifications.

King added, We created Mitels Amplify and Velocity programs to close that gap and enable each partner to deliver cloud solutions in a way that best fits their business model.

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Edited by Maurice Nagle
[July 20, 2021] 2021 New Growth Drivers Fair Successfully Staged in Qingdao

QINGDAO, China, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The 2021 New Growth Drivers Fair - Qingdao was successfully held from July 15 to 17 at the Qingdao Cosmopolitan Exposition International Exhibition Center, according to China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shandong Sub-council. Themed "New Pattern, New Growth Drivers, New Opportunity", the Fair showcased the latest products and technologies from leading players across numerous industries, as well as the achievements of cooperation between multinational corporations and Shandong Province. It also established an important platform for the participation of multinational corporations in the transition from old to new drivers of growth, promoted cooperation between industries in Shandong Province and multinational corporations, and facilitated Attraction of Investment and Talents. Li Ganjie, Deputy Secretary of the CPC Shandong Province Committee and Governor of Shandong Province, attended the fair, ad formally launched the proceedings.



1,147 exhibitors participated in the offline theme exhibition and online cloud exhibition of the Fair. The offline theme exhibition covered an exhibition area of 23,500 square meters, and 40% of the independent exhibitors were top 500 companies from China and abroad. 22,000 professional representatives visited the Fair offline, while more than 157,000 people visited the Fair online. The Fair was novel in design with numerous highlights. Firstly, the new display mode: The Fair broke through time and space limitations by building an online cloud exhibition. There were offline theme booths delivered by VR panorama production for 16 cities and 509 enterprises.

Secondly, a new way of expression: Presentations at the Fair used the latest technical means available in the exhibition industry, such as glasses-free 3D, FogScreen projection, holographic images, 360-degree annular flexible screens and floating screens, thereby reflecting the highest level in the exhibition industry. Thirdly, an abundance of activities: 119 road shows and promotional activities were held during the Fair, including 10 overseas promotional activities for brands emanating from Shandong. 583 companies, 122 parks, 17 industry clusters, 10 industry chains, 18 innovative platforms and 4 manufacturing bases were exhibited in the Multinational Corporations and Shandong Exhibition Area, comprehensively showcasing the achievements of cooperation between multinational corporations and Shandong, and enhancing their confidence in investing in Shandong. In the Enterprise Exhibition Area, numerous new products and new technologies were unveiled on the platform of the Fair. Image Attachments Links:

Link: http://asianetnews.net/view-attachment?attach-id=396756

Caption: 2021 New Growth Drivers Fair - Qingdao View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2021-new-growth-drivers-fair-successfully-staged-in-qingdao-301337299.html SOURCE China Council for the Promotion of International Trade Shandong Sub-council

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[July 20, 2021] 2021 State of DevOps Report Finds It's Not Tech but Culture that Keeps Teams Stuck in the Middle of their DevOps Evolution

PORTLAND, Ore., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Puppet , the industry standard for infrastructure automation, today released the findings of the 2021 State of DevOps Report . This year, over 2,650 IT, development, and information security professionals took the survey, providing insight into the chasm between organizations with highly evolved DevOps practices and those whose DevOps evolution has plateaued.

Puppet conducted the first State of DevOps Report ten years ago when DevOps adoption was not ubiquitous. A decade later, 83 percent of IT decision makers report their organizations are implementing DevOps practices to unlock higher business value through better quality software, faster delivery times, more secure systems and the codification of principles. However, within that 83 percent are distinct cohorts of organizations whose success with DevOps is contingent upon a number of factors, revealed in the report. The 2021 report found that many organizations in the middle stages of their DevOps evolution have plateaued. Among these mid-evolution teams, cultural blockers remain the biggest hurdle to reaching DevOps success. The most common culture blockers at the mid-level include a culture that discourages risk (21 percent), unclear responsibilities (20 percent), de-prioritizing fast flow optimization (18 percent), and insufficient feedback loops (17 percent). Report findings also revealed: Organizational structure and team dynamics matter. The report found 91 percent of highly evolved teams report a clear understanding of their responsibilities to other teams compared to only 32 percent of low-evolution teams.

The report found 91 percent of highly evolved teams report a clear understanding of their responsibilities to other teams compared to only 32 percent of low-evolution teams. Almost all survey respondents are using the cloud, but most are using it poorly. Sixty-five percent of mid-evolution firms report using the cloud, yet only 20 percent use the cloud to its full potential. High-evolution teams use cloud better with 57 percent satisfying all five NIST cloud capability metrics compared to only 5 percent of low-evolution respondents.

Sixty-five percent of mid-evolution firms report using the cloud, yet only 20 percent use the cloud to its full potential. High-evolution teams use cloud better with 57 percent satisfying all cloud capability metrics compared to only 5 percent of low-evolution respondents. Being good at automation does not make a firm good at DevOps. Ninety percent of high-evolution teams have automated their most repetitive tasks compared to only 67 percent of mid-level and 25 percent of low-evolution.

Ninety percent of high-evolution teams have automated their most repetitive tasks compared to only 67 percent of mid-level and 25 percent of low-evolution. DevOps success includes stronger securityor in this case, DevSecOps. Among highly evolved organizations, 51 percent integrate security into requirements, 61 percent into design, 53 percent into build, and 52 percent into testing in contrast to mid-level organizations in which security becomes involved only when there is a scheduled audit of production or an issue reported in production.

Among highly evolved organizations, 51 percent integrate security into requirements, 61 percent into design, 53 percent into build, and 52 percent into testing in contrast to mid-level organizations in which security becomes involved only when there is a scheduled audit of production or an issue reported in production. The most highly evolved firms benefit from top-down enablement of bottom-up transformation. Fewer than two percent of high-level organizations report resistance to DevOps from the executive level compared to 13 percent of those in the low-evolution firms.

To observe the ten year anniversary of the report, Puppet invited a wider group of DevOps influencers to respond to th data and build on recommendations for what organizations can do to climb out of the sticky middle. Contributors include the authors of the Team Topologies model , which has been immensely influential in the industry.



A standout finding from the report is the importance of team identities; organizations with less ambiguous team names with more clearly defined team responsibilities are more likely to be more highly evolved in their DevOps journey, said Nigel Kersten, Field CTO at Puppet. The title DevOps team is misleading, as it allows many organizations to assume that having a DevOps team means they are doing DevOps correctly. We recommend less ambiguously named stream-aligned and platform teams, as seen in the Team Topologies model, which create a more well-defined path to achieving DevOps success at scale. In ten years, we've gone from hype to practice in the way technology is delivered, all with the data to show what we've learned along the way. That's some quality iteration, said Michael Stahnke, VP of Platform, CircleCI. The final stage of DevOps evolution is often the building of a highly leveraged platform and team structure, incorporating self-service capabilities beyond infrastructure. When it's really done well, the word DevOps tends to fall away as it's just how work is happening.

Further key determinants for mid-evolution organizations to achieve DevOps success at scale include a successful platform team approach, organizational buy-in from both managers and practitioners, a strong automation practice, and a willingness to accept risk and invest for the future. Learn more about the why and how in Puppets State of DevOps blog post . For every person who completed the 2021 State of DevOps survey, $5 was donated to the National Coalition for the Homeless, the World Central Kitchen, and the UNICEF COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund. We donated additional funds, provided by our generous sponsors, bringing our total contribution to $45,000. *Report Methodology

The survey collected data from technical professionals with a working knowledge of their IT operations and software delivery process. A third-party research firm, ClearPath Strategies, hosted the survey and conducted the data analysis. The resulting report was written by Puppet and CircleCI. Supporting Quotes There will always be teams that are doing something unique and off the beaten path, said Carl Timm, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Armory. Cultivating an innovation mindset means giving them the freedom to create without too many constraints. While standardization can help with operations and compliance, it's more important to be deliberate about creating space for teams to explore and create, which extends to tooling. This report does a fantastic job of both reinforcing this notion and showing why it is so important. Using cloud technologies or agile practices alone is not enough to move organizations from mid-level to high-performing, said Matthew Skelton, co-author of the book Team Topologies. The 2021 State of DevOps Report from Puppet shows that team identities and clear interaction paradigms matter. These and other principles and patterns from Team Topologies are helping organizations in every sector and geography become more high performing. Implementing DevOps practices on an enterprise scale will require creativity and patience in devising changes to the way teams plan, build, test, deploy, and manage software," said Ali Siddiqui, Chief Product Officer at BMC. This requires minimizing organizational friction and balancing technology with the human expertise needed to manage change. Doing so will ensure a successful DevOps transformation that can support the evolution to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise. It is not very surprising to see a theme emerging this year about the difficulty of going from a mid to high level of DevOps evolution, said Anand Ahire, Head of DevOps Business and Product Management at ServiceNow. We find early success stories of DevOps adoption in a few individual teams, but progress tends to slow down at the teams of teams and at the enterprise level. Oftentimes that is because the need for speed at the team level is at odds with the need of risk and compliance management at the enterprise level, something that I believe can only be resolved through policy-based automation of change management processes. Additional Resources Download the 2021 State of DevOps Report

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About Puppet

Puppet helps enterprises modernize and manage their infrastructure with the solutions to automate anywhere, reliably scale, and integrate compliance and security across hybrid infrastructure. More than 40,000 organizations  including more than 80 percent of the Global 5000  have benefited from Puppets open source and commercial solutions to ensure business continuity, optimize costs, boost compliance and ensure security, all while accelerating the adoption of DevOps practices and delivery of self-service. Headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Puppet is a privately held company with offices in London, Belfast, Singapore, Sydney and Timi?oara. Learn more at puppet.com.

Media Contact Zibby Keaton Head of External Communications @ Puppet pr@puppet.com

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[July 20, 2021] ALYI Announces Electric Motorcycle Pilot Report And Previews Coming EV Race Milestone

Dallas, Texas, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Alternet Systems, Inc. (OTC Pink: ALYI) (ALYI) today announced a scheduled electric motorcycle pilot report to provide a comprehensive update on the pilot progress so far and an overview of what to expect going forward. The pilot report will be published next week on Thursday, July 29th, 2021. Last week, ALYI confirmed an order for 2,000 electric motorcycles. The order supports the planned rollout of a comprehensive Electric Vehicle (EV) Rideshare and rental solution in Africa beginning with electric motorcycles. ALYI has recently launched a comprehensive pilot bringing together a host of partners in Kenya to support a soup to nuts eco-friendly electric motorcycle alternative to Africas robust motorcycle taxi market currently dominated by combustion engine bikes. ALYI is building a comprehensive EV ecosystem solution designed to advance the entire EV sector with perpetual contribution to EV technology advanced by the ongoing participation of EV industry leaders. ALYI is targeting the participation of brand name EV industry leaders in an annual EV symposium and conference anchored by an EV race event in Kenya. The objective of the EV symposium and conference is to advance EV technology by building EV solutions for the African market  a power constrained, rugged environment with one of the lowest per capita transportation deployments in the world. EV solutions for the African market will be applicable the world around. EV solutions designed and built in Africa also contribute to building an autonomous African economy. ALYI plans to make a major announcement next month regarding the EV race that management expects will garner substantial attention to ALYIs overall EV Ecosystem strategy. ALYI has seeded its EV ecosystem solution with the development of its own EV motorcycle business. ALYI has recently initiated an Electric Motorcycle pilot program in Kenya which is already generating results expected to set ALYIs EV business apart from the competition. ALYI has published an overview of the pilot program highlighting the pilot objectives. As the pilot ramps up this month, ALYI management plans to begin sharing featured moments of the pilot program in progress to include pictures and videos. The pilot is expected to go on for approximately ninety days.



The pilot is being conducted in conjunction with the 2,000 electric motorcycle order, the fulfillment of which is being finalized with results from the pilot. ALYI has designed its EV ecosystem solution to include democratized participation. ALYI has partnered with ReovltTOKEN to finance ALYIs growth by offering participation in the EV ecosystem through the sale of Revolt Tokens.

To learn more about RevoltTOKEN and how to participate in ALYIs electric vehicle ecosystem through the purchase of Revolt Tokens, visit www.revolttoken.com . For more information and to stay up to date on ALYI's overall latest developments, please visit www.alternetsystemsinc.com .



Disclaimer/Safe Harbor: This news release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Securities Litigation Reform Act. The statements reflect the Company's current views with respect to future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Among others, these risks include the expectation that any of the companies mentioned herein will achieve significant sales, the failure to meet schedule or performance requirements of the companies' contracts, the companies' liquidity position, the companies' ability to obtain new contracts, the emergence of competitors with greater financial resources and the impact of competitive pricing. In the light of these uncertainties, the forward-looking events referred to in this release might not occur.



For more information, please visit: http://www.alternetsystemsinc.com

Alternet Systems, Inc. Contact:

Randell Torno

info@lithiumip.com

+1-800-713-0297



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[July 20, 2021] Arbor Strengthens Focus on Therapeutics with Key Additions to Leadership Team

- Pam Stetkiewicz, Ph.D., Appointed Chief Operating Officer

- Kathryn McCabe, Ph.D., Named SVP, Head of Business Development CAMBRIDGE, Mass., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arbor Biotechnologies, an early-stage life sciences company discovering and developing the next generation of genetic medicines, announced today the appointments of Pam Stetkiewicz, Ph.D., as Chief Operating Officer, and Kathryn McCabe, Ph.D., as SVP, Head of Business Development. These appointments further expand Arbors leadership team and strengthen its focus on therapeutics. Bringing Pam and Katy on at this time represents a significant milestone for Arbor as we drive our genetic medicines portfolio to the clinic and partner with leading companies to bring engineered cell therapies to patients, said Devyn Smith, Ph.D., CEO, Arbor Biotechnologies. Their scientific expertise, business acumen, and extensive experience in cell therapy and gene editing will help us execute on this strategy to develop therapeutics with our tailored library of CRISPR-based genetic editors and modifiers. Pam Stetkiewicz is joining Arbor from Flagship Pioneering, where she was Senior Vice President, Global Program Leader at Flagship Pioneering Medicines. Dr. Stetkiewicz brings more than 20 years of extensive life-sciences pharmaceutical experience with recent experience at Editas Medicine as Vice President, Program and Alliance Management. At Editas, she led the team that filed the first IND for an in vivo CRISPR therapeutic (EDIT-101 for LCA10). Prior to Editas, Dr. Stetkiewicz worked at Novatis Institute of Biomedical Research for 13 years, in a variety of roles across science, alliance, project and portfolio management. Her last role at Novartis was as Executive Director, in Strategic Alliances which involved early business development and collaborations with external companies. She received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University and a B.S. from the University of Rhode Island.



Im thrilled to be joining Arbor at this exciting time, said Dr. Stetkiewicz. The company has made significant progress in the discovery and development of innovative therapies, particularly in the genetic medicines space, and I am looking forward to helping fulfill the therapeutic promise of Arbors already impressive discoveries. Kathryn (Katy) McCabe is joining Arbor from Roche where she was Senior Director of Business Development based in Cambridge, MA. Over the last 20 years, she has combined her scientific knowledge, entrepreneurial spirit, and business experience to help transform novel modalities into new medicines at Roche, Lilly, Baxalta and GSK. Dr. McCabe has focused much of her attention on cell and gene therapy and has closed deals for CAR-T, diabetes cell therapy, in vivo gene editing, and gene therapy as well as led large strategic initiatives in these areas. In addition, she has had close interactions with a number of venture funds as the scientific lead for Lillys limited partnerships. Early in her career, Dr. McCabe led a team of senior scientists to develop stem cells for retina and corneal transplantation. She was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Dr. Marianne Bronners lab at Caltech, received her Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Behavior from the University of Washington, and her B.A from the University of Pennsylvania.

I look forward to finding partners that share our vision of bringing curative therapies to patients, said Dr. McCabe. About Arbor Biotechnologies

Arbor Biotechnologies is an early-stage life sciences company discovering and developing the next generation of genetic medicines. Co-founded by Feng Zhang and David Walt, Arbor uses its proprietary discovery engine to uncover unique CRISPR-based genetic modifiers with differentiated genetic editing and delivery capabilities. Following its strategic partnership with Vertex Pharmaceuticals to accelerate the path to the clinic for Arbors technologies, Arbor recently announced an agreement with Lonza. These partnerships further validate the breadth of applications of Arbors gene editing platform that can be custom tailored to address the underlying pathology of each genetic disease. Arbors pipeline of genetic medicines is focused on bringing curative therapies to all patients with genetic disease. Media Contact:

Kelly Friendly

press@arbor.bio



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[July 20, 2021] BenchSci Expands Board of Directors With Appointment of Life Sciences, Tech, and Healthcare Leader Luba Greenwood

TORONTO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- BenchSci, an emerging global leader in machine learning applications for novel medicine development, today announced that Luba Greenwood has joined its board of directors. Greenwood is a life sciences and biotech expert who lectures at Harvard University in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. She recently served as an executive at Google Life Sciences (Verily) and as Vice President of Global Business Development and Mergers & Acquisitions at Roche. She advises large multinational pharmaceutical, life science tool, tech, and leading cancer and research organizations, including the Dana Farber and the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering. Greenwood has led $5B+ in deals and investments across multiple therapeutic areas and life science and tech sectors. She has co-founded biotech and digital health companies in the immunotherapy, women's health, AI/ML, and microbiome spaces. "Luba's insights, network, and perspective are extremely valuable, and we are thrilled to welcome her to our board of directors at this exciting time," says Liran Belenzon, CEO, BenchSci. "Her biotech, pharmaceutical, BD, and life sciences industry expertise will be instrumental as we scale our achine learning-based product portfolio to further enable scientists as they conduct life-saving R&D. We are honored she agreed to join our board."



Greenwood serves on numerous boards, including the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, Brooklyn ImmunoTherapeutics, and Entrinsic Health. She is a thought leader for the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) Catalyst and a Pharma Digital Health Roundtable founder. "BenchSci's ability to empower scientists and accelerate R&D with machine learning is unmatched," says Greenwood. "The commitment of BenchSci and its team to enable scientists to bring life-saving therapies to patients faster and cheaper is admirable, and I am excited to be joining their mission."

Greenwood's life sciences and biotech experience will complement the experience of existing board members Antoine Nivard, Principal, Inovia Capital, and Shervin Ghaemmaghami, Operating Partner, F-Prime Capital. For more BenchSci updates, visit our news page. About BenchSci BenchSci's vision is to bring medicine to patients 50% faster by 2025. We're doing this by empowering scientists with the world's most advanced biomedical artificial intelligence to run more successful experiments. Backed by F-Prime, Gradient Ventures (Google's AI fund), and Inovia Capital, our platform accelerates science at 15 top 20 pharmaceutical companies and over 4,300 leading research centers worldwide. We're a CIX Top 10 Growth company, certified Great Place to Work, and top-ranked company on Glassdoor. Learn more at www.benchsci.com. For more information, please contact Marie Cook at mcook@benchsci.com. Related Images luba-greenwood.jpg

Luba Greenwood

Luba Greenwood joins BenchSci board of directors

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/benchsci-expands-board-of-directors-with-appointment-of-life-sciences-tech-and-healthcare-leader-luba-greenwood-301336792.html SOURCE BenchSci

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[July 20, 2021] Blaser Investment Management Group Eyes Growth in Move to Commonwealth

Commonwealth Financial Network, a national firm dedicated to providing advisor-focused business solutions, announces the addition of Blaser Investment Management Group of Burlington, North Carolina, to its network of independent financial advisors. Formerly affiliated with Raymond James, Jeff Blaser, CFP, CMT, CRPS, CKA, a 30-year veteran in financial planning, and Austin Daugherty, AAMS, CRPS, CKA, bring approximately $195 million in assets under management. Blaser and his team will continue to develop and cherish long-term relationships with clients and their families who desire investment management and personalized financial planning from fiduciaries. Jeff and Austin manage all fee-based portfolios in-house and on a discretionary basis. To learn more about the firm, visit www.blaserinvestment.com. After 25 years with the Raymond James, Blaser did not take a move of this magnitude lightly. When looking to switch firms, culture played a critical role in his search. "The inclusive, relational culture at Commonwealth is a top reason we made this change," Blaser said. "It's very attractive and one that nurtures both personal and professional growth. It is also a place were I can create a succession plan the way I envision."



Another factor in the decision was the technology Commonwealth offers. "Their robust technology offering and seamless integration between platforms are going to really help us be much more efficient going forward," Blaser said. "Being able to free up time so that we can focus more on our clients is extremely valuable, and the suite of tools that now power our practice will do just that." Jeff and Austin are Certified Kingdom Advisors and aim to incorporate a biblical worldview into their practice. "We believe that the Bible is a source of financial truth for everyone," they said, "regardless of faith, journey, or where they are in the world."

"We're thrilled to welcome Jeff, Austin, and the rest of the team to our community," said Andrew Daniels, Commonwealth's managing principal, business development. "Everything we do here is aimed at giving advisors back more of their time, so they can spend it focused on what their clients need most. Our integrated technology solutions will give them just what they need to work more efficiently. And, our flexible affiliation models will help them grow in a way that's right for them. I look forward to a long partnership together and to seeing them thrive in independence." About Commonwealth Financial Network

Commonwealth Financial Network, Member FINRA/SIPC, a Registered Investment Adviser, provides a suite of business solutions that empowers more than 2,000 independent financial advisors nationwide. J.D. Power ranks Commonwealth "#1 in Independent Advisor Satisfaction Among Financial Investment Firms, Eight Times in a Row." Privately held since 1979, the firm has headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and San Diego, California. Learn more about Commonwealth by visiting www.commonwealth.com. Commonwealth received the highest score in the independent advisor segment of the J.D. Power 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 Financial Advisor Satisfaction Studies of customers' satisfaction among financial advisors. Visit jdpower.com/awards. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005061/en/

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[July 20, 2021] China Online Education Group Announces Guidance Update

BEIJING, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- China Online Education Group ("51Talk," or the "Company") (NYSE: COE), a leading online education platform in China with core expertise in English education, announced today that the Company expects its net revenues for the second quarter of 2021 to be between RMB575 million and RMB580 million, compared with the guidance of between RMB597 million and RMB603 million provided on May 17, 2021. As of the date of this announcement, the Company is still in the process of finalizing its financial results for the second quarter of 2021. Detailed information on the performance of the Company will be disclosed in the Company's second quarter 2021 results announcement. About China Online Education Group China Online Education Group (NYSE: COE) is a leading online education platform in China, with core expertise in English education. The Company's mission is to make quality education accessible and affordable. The Company's online and mobile education platforms enable students across China to take live interactive English lessons with overseas foreign teachers, on demand. The Company connects its students with a large pool of highly qualified foreign teachers that it assembled using a shared economy approach, and employs student and teacher feedback and data analytics to deliver a personalized learning experience to its students. For more information, please visit http://ir.51talk.com. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains staements that may constitute "forward-looking" statements pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will", "expects", "anticipates", "aims", "future", "intends", "plans", "believes", "estimates", "likely to" and similar statements. Among other things, 51Talk's business outlook and quotations from management in this announcement, as well as 51Talk's strategic and operational plans, contain forward-looking statements. 51Talk may also make written or oral forward-looking statements in its periodic reports to the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), in its annual report to shareholders, in press releases and other written materials and in oral statements made by its officers, directors or employees to third parties. Statements that are not historical facts, including statements about 51Talk's beliefs and expectations, are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement, including but not limited to the following: 51Talk's goals and strategies; 51Talk's expectations regarding demand for and market acceptance of its brand and platform; 51Talk's ability to retain and increase its student enrollment; 51Talk's ability to offer new courses; 51Talk's ability to engage, train and retain new teachers; 51Talk's future business development, results of operations and financial condition; 51Talk's ability to maintain and improve infrastructure necessary to operate its education platform; competition in the online education industry in China; the expected growth of, and trends in, the markets for 51Talk's course offerings in China; relevant government policies and regulations relating to 51Talk's corporate structure, business and industry; general economic and business condition in China, the Philippines and elsewhere and assumptions underlying or related to any of the foregoing. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in 51Talk's filings with the SEC. All information provided in this press release is as of the date of this press release, and 51Talk does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, except as required under applicable law.



For investor and media inquiries, please contact: China Online Education Group

Investor Relations

+86 (10) 8342-6262

ir@51talk.com

The Piacente Group, Inc.

Brandi Piacente

+86 (10) 5730-6200

+1-212-481-2050

51talk@tpg-ir.com View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/china-online-education-group-announces-guidance-update-301337486.html SOURCE China Online Education Group

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[July 20, 2021] CRN Recognizes Enso Security on its 2021 Emerging Vendors List

TEL AVIV, Israel, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Enso Security , the first Application Security Posture Management (ASPM) solution, announced today that CRN  , a brand of The Channel Company , has named Enso Security to its 2021 Emerging Vendors list in the Security category. This annual list honors new and up-and-coming technology vendors that have proven their commitment to innovation and growth within the larger IT channel. Organizations featured on the listall six years old or youngerare selected across eight different categories: cloud, data center, security, big data, mobility, Internet of Things (IoT), storage and networking/unified communications.

Enso was recognized by CRN for its ASPM platform which deploys into enterprise environments to create an actionable, unified inventory of all application assets, their owners, security posture and associated risk. Enso is honored to be among an impressive list of emerging security innovators. We originated the ASPM solution to help AppSec teams build simplified, agile and scalable application security programs that work without slowing developers down, said Roy Erlich, co-founder and CEO at Enso Security. As we witnessed in recent cyber attacks, a gap in application security can jeopardize the business of any company. Our turnkey ASPM solution helps security teams to scale and gain control over their AppSec programs. Enso discovers application inventory, ownership and risk to easily transform AppSec into an automated, systematic discipline, tailored to the needs of its user. Enso also recently introduced a free, interactive tool for the app developer communiy at large, The AppSec Map . This resource identifies, categorizes and maps all available tools in the market to help practitioners figure out what they need and what exists.



The CRN 2021 Emerging Vendors list honors forward-thinking technology suppliers that are redefining IT channel success by focusing on innovative products that help customers overcome the complex and ever-changing IT demands, said Blaine Raddon, CEO of The Channel Company. Solution providers in search of the latest innovative technologies can depend on the Emerging Vendors list as a trusted resource. The CRN 2021 Emerging Vendors list will be featured in the August 2021 issue of CRN Magazine and online at www.CRN.com/EmergingVendors . Enso was also honored as a winner in the 16th Annual 2021 IT World Awards Startup of the Year, Security Software category. Learn more at www.enso.security .

About Enso Security

Enso is an application security posture management (ASPM) platform, allowing software security groups to scale and gain control over application security programs and to systematically protect applications. The Enso ASPM platform easily deploys into enterprise environments to create an actionable, unified inventory of all application assets, their owners, security posture and associated risk. It helps security teams easily build and enforce security policies and transform AppSec into an automated, systematic discipline. Media Contact:

Deb Montner

Montner Tech PR

dmontner@montner.com About The Channel Company

The Channel Company enables breakthrough IT channel performance with our dominant media, engaging events, expert consulting and education, and innovative marketing services and platforms. As the channel catalyst, we connect and empower technology suppliers, solution providers, and end users. Backed by more than 30 years of unequaled channel experience, we draw from our deep knowledge to envision innovative new solutions for ever-evolving challenges in the technology marketplace. www.thechannelco.com Follow The Channel Company: Twitter , LinkedIn , and Facebook  2021 The Channel Company, LLC. CRN is a registered trademark of The Channel Company, LLC. All rights reserved. The Channel Company Contact:

Jennifer Hogan

The Channel Company

jhogan@thechannelcompany.com



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[July 20, 2021] CyberLandr Re-Invents the RV, Elon Musk Calls It 'Cool'

AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Lance King, the CEO of AI and real-time analytics firm Stream It, faced a dilemma: When the COVID-19 pandemic decimated his business, he had to either lay off most of his employees or create a new product in a completely different arena. King is a Tesla fan. He loves his Tesla 3 Performance sedan and had just placed his order for the company's groundbreaking Cybertruck. But there was one downside: He wanted a camper and no camper on the market would fit the Cybertruck's unique design. So he decided to invent one and to have his company create it. The result: The CyberLandr, a high-tech, luxury pop-up camper that turns Tesla's Cybertruck into the basecamp for urban or wilderness adventures. The innovative camper disappears into the bed of the Cybertruck, is powered by AI and solar energy, and features zero aerodynamic drag  crucial for electric vehicles, where aerodynamics greatly affects range. Designing an ultra-modern camper might seem like a stretch for a company like Stream It, makers of an analytics solution based on artificial intelligence and advanced sensors, with transit companies as its main clients. But King realized that his dream and his team were a match. Just as Tesla, an outsider, had revolutionized the automotive experience, King knew it would require an industry outsider to revolutionize the RV. And, like Tesla, that outsider would need to be a company with a track record in innovative technology and AI and the ability to apply "first principles'' and systems thinking to re-invent what a camper is. The more King thought about it, the more convinced he was that his own team had the perfect skillset. "The talent, hard work and ongoing determination of our Stream It team made the decision to pivot an easy one," he said. "They are the force behind the CyberLandr, and have played a critical role in re-inventing the RV to create the ultimate adventure vehicle." King recalled the moment when he pitched his idea to his team: "After about 30 seconds of stunned silence, Bill French, our chief analytics officer, said, 'A disappearing camper? That's cool as hell, count me in!' His enthusiasm was infectious and the team agreed."



Their gamble has paid off, with more than $75 million in pre-orders and an estimated demand of 10,000 units per year. And that demand is likely to grow after CyberLandr recently got the ultimate in one-word endorsements: "Cool," from Tesla founder Elon Musk himself. Musk was responding on Twitter to a post from the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley group, which shared a video of how CyberLandr lets people take a bedroom, bathroom kitchen, living room, and office with them anywhere and everywhere they go. Other features include a recirculating shower, wireless connectivity through a Starlink satellite, free-standing seating, and much more.

Now through July 30, register to win a free CyberLandr at get.cyberlandr.com. And, for a limited time with just a $100 deposit, save $5,000 during the launch promotion discount by reserving a CyberLandr at CyberLandr.com, by contacting sales@cyberlandr.com or by calling 888-815-9790. For more information, visit www.cyberlandr.com. About CyberLandr CyberLandr is a high-tech, luxury camper that turns Tesla's Cybertruck into the basecamp for urban or wilderness adventures. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and solar energy, CyberLandr lets you make your home any place your wheels and imagination can take you thanks to its zero aerodynamic drag. CyberLandr is a product of Stream It, the developer of the first mobile-capable, real-time analytics platform that turns video and sensor data into business intelligence. To learn more, visit www.cyberlandr.com. Related Images cyberlandr.png

CyberLandr

CyberLandr Logo cyberlandr.jpg

CyberLandr

CyberLandr Logo cyberlandr-camper.jpg

CyberLandr Camper

The four stages of the CyberLandr Camper cyberlander-camper.jpg

CyberLander Camper

CyberLander Camper in four stages View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cyberlandr-re-invents-the-rv-elon-musk-calls-it-cool-301337144.html SOURCE CyberLandr

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[July 20, 2021] Gotransverse Appoints New COO and CPO, Hires New Directors for Product Management and SaaS Operations

AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Gotransverse (www.gotransverse.com), the leading global provider of enterprise order-to-cash solutions, today announced a restructuring of the companys senior management team. Geoff Coleman is moving from Chief Operating Officer to the new role of Chief Product Officer, and Brian Rohde has been promoted from Vice President of Customer Success to COO. Gotransverse also has added Jay Irian as Director of Product Management and Eric McCaw as the new Director of SaaS Operations.

The market for subscription billing and monetization technology continues to heat up, and this new leadership team gives us a competitive edge as we continue to improve our intelligent billing platform, said James Messer, Founder and CEO of Gotransverse. The strategic strength of any organization resides in its people, and we have assembled a world-class team who understands billing technology and how to devise solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. Jay Irian comes to Gotransverse with a strong background in product management. He previously worked as a Senior Product Manager for General Motors and Dell Computers and held senior management roles with Young & Rubican and Vrbo Jay has a degree in Information Systems Management from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin.



Eric McCaw joins Gotransverse after working for 11 years with National Instruments, where he served as Senior IT Manager for the Cloud and Container Team as well as for Global Web Systems and the Cloud Center of Excellence. Eric also has a strong background in Unix and network administration. He holds a degree in Information Systems Management from the Rawls College of Business at Texas Tech University. Geoff Coleman has been with Gotransverse for more than eight years and has more than 20 years of experience in billing technology, with a special focus in the communications industry. Brian Rohde has more than 15 years of experience in Customer Success, Solution Design, Architecture, Business Analysis, and Technical Design. He understands how to translate customer needs into business requirements and applicable system architectures.

About Gotransverse Gotransverse provides cloud-based software that enables companies to operate as a subscription business model, including the often-challenging aspects of usage-based pricing and monetization at internet scale. Founded by globally recognized billing experts, the company offers an intelligent billing and subscription management platform that automates the subscription order-to-cash process, including billing, rating, collections, mediation, analytics, and revenue recognition. Gotransverse was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit http://gotransverse.com. Press Contact:

Tom Woolf

Gotransverse

415.842.7398

twoolf@gotransverse.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/0d714910-5d39-42a9-b6cd-bebdf6d60d9e



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[July 20, 2021] Great Lakes Credit Union Expands Relationship with Access Softek to Add Biometric Authentication, Online Banking and Conversational Banking

Access Softek, an omnichannel digital banking provider, announced that long-time mobile banking client, Great Lakes Credit Union (GLCU), has expanded its relationship with Access Softek to add new digital banking capabilities. GLCU has used Access Softek's mobile banking solution for more than a decade and will now add the company's Orpheus Online Banking, Biometric Authentication Manager (BAM), and Conversational Banking solutions, expanding the features it is able to offer to its more than 80,000 members. "It is important that our members have a unified experience which enables them to transact in te channel they prefer," said Steven Bugg, President and CEO of Great Lakes Credit Union. "Access Softek has been a great asset to us over the years. Adding online banking will provide that consistent experience, and the authentication manager and conversational banking provide us new tools that will make it even easier for us to serve our members."



BAM uses mobile device biometrics such as facial recognition or fingerprint scanning to easily and securely verify the member's identity, removing the need for passwords, pins or security questions. Conversational Banking includes chatbot, live chat, agent advisor, and video chat services to help members more easily connect with their credit union from anywhere. "We are very proud of our loyal clients like Great Lakes and are thrilled to watch them grow their relationship with us and their offerings to members," said Chris Doner, founder and CEO of Access Softek. "Great Lakes is very in tune with what its members need, and we are proud to be able to provide the features that make both the credit union and the member successful."

About Great Lakes Credit Union Founded in 1938, GLCU continues to be a growing staple in our communities. As a not-for-profit financial cooperative, chartered by the State of Illinois and insured by the NCUA, we are guided by a dedicated volunteer Board of Directors and seasoned leadership team and are proud to serve more than 80,000 members with over $1 billion in assets. We are headquartered in Northern Illinois and have 12 branch locations and more than 170 fee-free ATMs locally. GLCU also belongs to the CO-OP Shared Branching Network. Members can access accounts nationwide at over 5,600 institutions with thousands of locations in 50 states, and at any of their 30,000 surcharge-free CO--OP ATMs. All 200+ employee-owners pride ourselves on building lifelong relationships with our member-owners and providing them with financial education during all life stages. Learn more at glcu.org. About Access Softek, Inc. Access Softek sets the standard for the omnichannel digital banking landscape, having developed the first downloadable apps for mobile banking. Since that time, Access Softek has extended its track record of innovation to online banking, biometric authentication, real-time fraud prevention, and automated investing integrated directly into a financial institution's digital banking platform, among many other innovative products. Now in its 35th year, Access Softek has delivered industry firsts to over 400 bank and credit union clients from its Berkeley, California headquarters. Learn more at AccessSoftek.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005165/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Hancock Whitney and FHLB Dallas Award More Than $28K to Three Nonprofits

Hancock Whitney and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB Dallas) have awarded $28,000 in Partnership Grant Program ( PGP (News - Alert) ) funds to three community-based organizations (CBOs) located in the Houston, Texas, metro area. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006227/en/ Joseph House received a $16,000 Partnership Grant Program award in Houston. (L to R): Yuroba Harris with Congresswoman Shelia Jackson Lee's office; Hancock Whitney Bank officials Randall Rojas, Antonio Mojica and LaCarsha Babers; and Joseph House Executive Director Michelle Stearns and Joseph House CEO Robert Stearns at a Houston grant presentation. (Photo: Business Wire) For 2021, FHLB Dallas awarded $400,000 in PGP grants, and its members provided an additional $200,250 for an impact of more than $600,000 in its five-state District of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. PGP grants help qualified nonprofit organizations fund a variety of operational and administrative activities that are critical to serving their communities. "Hancock Whitney is honored to partner with FHLB Dallas to help these three incredible community organizations," said Hancock Whitney Assistant Vice President and Community Development Officer LaCarsha Babers. "We sincerely hope that these funds will aid them in strengthening and reinforcing their communities." The following CBOs received funding: Joseph House, Houston, $16,000

Joseph House is a nonprfit organization that assists elderly and military veterans. The organization also presents a second-chance program to formerly incarcerated individuals and provides counseling.



Beyond Careers, Missouri City, $6,000

Beyond Careers is a nonprofit organization that provides free tax preparation to low- and moderate-income households. Helbig Community Development Corp., Beaumont, $6,000

Helbig Community Development Corp. is a nonprofit organization committed to helping low-income families have houses of their own.

Through this unique program, FHLB Dallas member institutions contribute $500 to $4,000 to a CBO, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which FHLB Dallas matches at a 3:1 ratio to provide the CBO up to $24,000 per member and $60,000 per year in grant money. PGP grants are awarded annually through FHLB Dallas' member institutions and help promote and strengthen relationships between CBOs and members. "Through PGP, Hancock Whitney and FHLB Dallas assist in community involvement and investment," said Greg Hettrick, first vice president and director of Community Investment at FHLB Dallas. "We are honored to continue distributing this grant alongside Hancock Whitney to help community organizations in need." See the complete list of the 2021 PGP grant recipients. For more information about the 2021 PGP grants and other FHLB Dallas community investment products and programs, please visit fhlb.com/pgp. About Hancock Whitney Since the late 1800s, Hancock Whitney has embodied core values of Honor & Integrity, Strength & Stability, Commitment to Service, Teamwork, and Personal Responsibility. Hancock Whitney offices and financial centers in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Texas offer comprehensive financial products and services, including traditional and online banking; commercial and small business banking; private banking; trust and investment services; healthcare banking; certain insurance services; and mortgage services. The company also operates a loan production office in Nashville, Tennessee. BauerFinancial, Inc., the nation's leading independent bank rating and analysis firm, consistently recommends Hancock Whitney as one of America's most financially sound banks. More information is available at www.hancockwhitney.com. About the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas The Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas is one of 11 district banks in the FHLBank System created by Congress in 1932. FHLB Dallas, with total assets of $61.1 billion as of March 31, 2021, is a member-owned cooperative that supports housing and community development by providing competitively priced loans and other credit products to approximately 800 members and associated institutions in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. For more information, visit our website at fhlb.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006227/en/

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[July 20, 2021] HealthSpace Signs New Contracts with State of Wisconsin DHS, Vermillion County IL, Mason County IL, and Hastings Prince Edward Ontario

VANCOUVER, BC, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - HealthSpace Data Systems Ltd. (the "Company" or "HealthSpace") (CSE: HS) (Frankfurt: 38H) (OTC: HDSLF) is pleased to announce it has signed new contracts with The State of Wisconsin Department of Health Services ("Wisconsin DHS") for radon and lead regulation, as well as Vermillion County, Illinois and Mason County, Illinois for environmental health data management. All three contracts include the use of HSPay. The Company also signed a contract with Hastings Prince Edward County in Ontario for environmental health data management. All of these contracts are five year agreements. Additionally, the Company has renewed contracts with the State of Ohio for an additional two years, and Northern Health Authority in Canada for an additional year. The total value of the new contracts is US$709,230.95, of which US$599,230 is ARR, over the next five years. The Company is also pleased to announce that it has, as part of the Wisconsin DHS contract, entered into an authorized reseller agreement with Unisys (NYSE:UIS). Unisys is an authorized administrator of the NASPO contract (National Association of State Procurement Officials), which allows state and local government agencies to purchase software directly, with an expedited purchasing mechanism, using the NASPO contract that Unisys administers. Wisconsin DHS used this vehicle to procure HSCloud Suite for their agency. Being a part of Unisys's reseller channel will allow the Company to expand its reach by providing more state and local agencies the ability to efficiently procure HealthSpace products faster via sole source options. The Company believes there is a large opportunity, especially for GovCall and new government verticals that the company is evaluating, to expand more rapidly the reach of its sales arm. Reseller channels can serve as a force multiplier for the Company's business development team to work with Unisys in order to promote the Company's products to government agencies nationwide. The Wisconsin DHS contract was the first such contract through this reseller agreement. Further, HealthSpace was not required to modify its prices as part of this agreement. HealthSpace CEO, Silas Garrison noted "We are excited to have all of these agencies join the HealthSpace family. I am also very pleased to begin the reseller arrangement with Unisys. Their size and scale allows our clients to purchase our products in an easier way, and holds the promise of reducing procurement cycles which could greatly reduce the time it takes to close certain contracts. The Wisconsin DHS contract adds another state agency, alongside the Department of Agriculture implementation, in Wisconsin. It is an honor when clients recmmend you to other agencies, and shows the growth opportunity in front of the company, even in states and municipalities where contracts already exist for environmental health."



HealthSpace Data Systems Ltd. HealthSpace is a government Software as a Service (SaaS) company focused on providing efficiencies to state and local government agencies through its powerful enterprise cloud and mobile platform. Over the last decade, HealthSpace has successfully developed both cloud and mobile applications currently serving over 500 state and local government organizations across North America. HealthSpace's HSCloud Suite platform is one of the only self-serve enterprise SaaS platforms in the government space. HealthSpace is focused on revolutionizing every aspect of the regulatory process within state, provincial and local government; from licensing to inspections, to disease surveillance, to financial management. HealthSpace's platform handles it all. HealthSpace is now entering the FinTech space by developing an online and mobile payment platform that streamlines the intake of government revenue for the agencies it serves. The Company has also expanded its offerings in the realm of communicable disease tracking by creating an automated contact solution which enables public health agencies to broaden the scope and depth of their communicable disease surveillance in an automated fashion.

About Unisys.

Unisys (NYSE:UIS) is built on over 145 years of game-changing innovation. Along the way, we feel we've made the world a better place by bringing technological innovation to businesses and governments around the world. Our company has evolved and adapted over time, but our passion for innovation and for helping our clients succeed has remained constant. In a digital age, citizens expect fast access to easy-to-use services and a quick response. What they don't want is to be sent from one system to another, or to be forced to re-enter the same data multiple times. And state governments are on the hook to address all this in spite of budget constraints and a siloed IT environment that can't support growing demands. For these reasons, many state agencies have implemented a shared-services approachcombining agencies with a similar focus into clusters in order to share data and simplify processes. But they've seen mixed results. Some have come up against trust issues, with agencies reluctant to release control over specific data. Others, frustrated by the effort needed to enable cross-agency integration, have dropped the initiative entirely. Still others have decided to rip out and replace everything, with cost overruns contributing to an extremely costly solution. With Unisys, state governments can deploy technology so that it supports an integrated service delivery model while minimizing risk and expense. They can leverage comprehensive services to help cut out costs, simplify workflows, and deliver an improved service experience along all touch points. Ultimately, agencies will be better positioned to satisfy citizens and help state government achieve its mission. About NASPO: NASPO is a cooperative purchasing program facilitating public procurement solicitations and agreements using a lead-state model. Started in 1992, NASPO ValuePoint is the cooperative purchasing arm of the National Association of State Procurement Officials, or NASPO. NASPO is a non-profit association dedicated to strengthening the procurement community through education, research, and communication. It is made up of the directors of the central purchasing offices of the 50 states, District of Columbia and territories of the United States. The NASPO purchasing officials provide leadership for professional public purchasing, improve the quality of purchasing and procurement, exchange information, and cooperate to attain greater efficiency and economy. By working with a cooperative purchasing organization, states are able to leverage their spending through a single solicitation with the best value and superior contract terms.?? NASPO ValuePoint and our contractors focus on price, quality, reliability, warranties, and service while protecting states' interests with favorable terms and conditions. States benefit from the lower administrative costs of processing solicitations by leveraging the expertise of staff across state boundaries.?This division of labor allows states to share their resources and more efficiently achieve their business goals. NASPO ValuePoint reimburses states for the costs of leading and administering a NASPO ValuePoint, as well as for participating in sourcing teams. Contractors also benefit considerably by avoiding the repetitive bid preparation expenses, eliminating the need for repetitive bids on the same solicitations for different jurisdictions. Contractors can factor in greater volumes for multiple jurisdictions when determining their pricing. These savings are then passed along to the states. All states, the District of Columbia, and US Territories are eligible to use NASPO contracts. Forward-Looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not historical facts and are generally, but not always, identified by the words "expects", "plans", "anticipates", "believes", "intends", "estimates", "projects", "potential" and similar expressions, or that events or conditions "will", "would", "may", "could" or "should" occur. Although HealthSpace believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance and actual results may differ materially from those in forward looking statements. HealthSpace expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. SOURCE HealthSpace Data

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[July 20, 2021] Investing in Canada's Plan to Plant Two Billion Trees

MILTON, ON, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - There is no path to net-zero emissions that does not involve Canada's forests. Planting trees is a natural climate solution that removes and stores carbon from the atmosphere while providing other benefits such as better air and water quality, particularly in urban settings and decreases risk of wildland fire to rural communities; and supports biodiversity. It also provides spaces for recreational opportunities that improve our wellbeing and our connection to nature. Today, Adam van Koeverden, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth and to the Minister of Canadian Heritage (Sport) and Member of Parliament for Milton, announced $190,403 to Conservation Halton in support of the Government of Canada's plan to plant two billion trees over 10 years. Conservation Halton will plant 50,000 trees at 36 sites across the region. This project will support planned restoration projects in ecosystems such as wetlands, creeks, former farmland, and forested areas and will provide increased regional biodiversity, resilient communities, and the creation of green jobs. The Two Billion Trees program continues the Government of Canada's existing efforts to advance tree planting as an important part of the solution to climate change. Canada's plan to plant two billion trees is projected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 12 megatonnes annually by 2050. It will create up to 4,300 green jobs. With the help of dedicated organizations across the country, we look forward to growing our healthy, diverse and sustainably managed forests, leaving behind a legacy for future generations. Natural Resources Canada is implementing this plan with support from Environment and Climate Change Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The Two Billion Trees program represents a 40-percent increase in the number of trees we typically plant over a decade and wil see trees planted in both urban and rural areas across the country. In 10 years, the new trees will cover the equivalent of over 1.1 million hectares, an area twice the size of Prince Edward Island.



Quotes "Planting trees is essential for a growing community like Milton. Healthy tree coverage and a vibrant urban canopy are essential for our air quality, our health, our shade and our regional biodiversity! I am absolutely thrilled that, as part of our 2 Billion Trees program, 50,000 trees will be planted right here in our region in partnership with Conservation Halton  that's a new tree for every family in Milton! This news brings with it a more resilient community, green jobs, environmental protection and long-lasting benefits for the people of Halton Region, now and in the future."

Adam van Koeverden

Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Diversity and Inclusion and Youth & to the Minister of Canadian Heritage (Sport)

Member of Parliament for Milton "Planting two billion trees is more than a plan for climate action. It's a plan for creating thousands of good, green jobs. We're rolling out tree-planting projects right across the country. Planting trees gets us to net-zero." The Honourable Seamus O'Regan Jr.

Minister of Natural Resources Quick facts The Government of Canada has committed up to $3.2 billion over 10 years, starting in 202122, to deliver on this commitment.

has committed up to over 10 years, starting in 202122, to deliver on this commitment. This is part of a broader Government of Canada approach to embrace the power of nature, recently announced as part of Canada's strengthened climate plan, A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy .

approach to embrace the power of nature, recently announced as part of strengthened climate plan, . The government has established an advisory committee of experts on nature-based climate solutions to advise on program delivery to maximize emission reductions and deliver on key biodiversity and human well-being co-benefits to improve the quality of life for Canadians. Associated Links

2 Billion Trees Commitment

A Healthy Environment and a Healthy Economy Backgrounder

Nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation and adaption Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan ( http://twitter.com/nrcan ) SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

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[July 20, 2021] Kohlberg & Company Completes $1.1 Billion Continuation Vehicle Transaction With BlackRock, GIC and Lexington Partners

Kohlberg & Company ("Kohlberg"), a leading private equity firm with over 34 years of experience, closed a $1.1 billion Continuation Vehicle transaction co-led by affiliates of BlackRock, GIC and Lexington Partners. The Continuation Vehicle encompasses the remaining assets of Kohlberg Investors VII ("Fund VII"), a 2012 vintage fund with $1.6 billion in capital commitments, and is the first continuation vehicle to be established by Kohlberg. The Continuation Vehicle will support the growth of four platform investments, while simultaneously providing Fund VII Limited Partners an attractive liquidity opportunity to solidify their returns. "We are pleased to present Fund VII's Limited Partners with this opportunity - Kohlberg's first continuation vehicle," said Samuel P. Frieder, Managing Partner of Kohlberg. "We believe this transaction provides our Limited Partners with the maximum optionality to make the best choice for their investment objectives. The development of this vehicle also provides Kohlberg with the advantage of additional time and resources to further implement our growth and operational strategies to maximize value creation. We look forward to collaborating with these three world-class investors in this exciting effort." As part of the transaction, affiliates of BlackRock, GIC and Lexington Partners have agreed to contribute their pro-rata share of additional capital to support and enhance the value creation initiatives of the remaining assets. Additionally, Kohlberg offered existing Fund VII Limited Partners the opportunity to exercise a full liquidity option, a status-quo rollover option or an option to re-invest to participate in the new capital commitments of the Continuation Vehicle. Konnin Tam, Managing Director and Co-Head of Secondaries and Liquidity Solutions (SLS) in the Private Equity Partners business of BlackRock Alternative Investors, said: "We continue to see secondary capital being well-positioned to provide flexible liquidity solutions and resilient investment outcomes for LPs and GPs alike. We've focused extensively on developing unique partnerships and investment opportunities in this market and are pleased to be partnering with Kohlberg on this next endeavor." Mr. Choo Yong Cheen, Chief Investment Officer of Private Equity at GIC, said: "GIC is pleased to work with our partners at Kohlberg, BlackRock, and Lexington to provide a fair and transparent option to existing Fund VII Limited Partners. As a long-term investor, we believe in building solutions that allow leading private equity managers o create lasting value in their companies. We look forward to supporting Kohlberg in maximizing the value of this portfolio of businesses."



John Rudge, Partner, Lexington Partners, said: "We believe secondary transactions are an increasingly important portfolio management tool for investors in private equity, and Lexington is pleased to co-lead Kohlberg's first continuation vehicle." Lazard Private Capital Advisory served as exclusive financial advisor to Kohlberg and Ropes & Gray LLP served as Kohlberg's legal counsel. Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP served as legal counsel for BlackRock, Proskauer Rose LLP served as legal counsel for GIC and Kirkland & Ellis LLP acted as legal counsel for Lexington Partners.

About Kohlberg & Company Kohlberg & Company, LLC ("Kohlberg") is a leading private equity firm headquartered in Mount Kisco, New York. Since its inception in 1987, Kohlberg has raised $12 billion of committed equity capital. Over its 34-year history, Kohlberg has completed 85 platform investments and over 200 add-on acquisitions, with an aggregate transaction value of nearly $30 billion. For more information, please visit www.kohlberg.com. About BlackRock Alternative Investors BlackRock Alternative Investors serve investors seeking outperformance in real estate, infrastructure, private equity, credit, hedge funds and alternative solutions. We strive to bring our investors the highest quality investments by drawing upon our global footprint, superior execution capabilities and position as a preferred partner. BlackRock manages USD$283 billion in alternative investments and commitments on behalf of clients worldwide as of June 30, 2021. About GIC GIC is a leading global investment firm, established in 1981, to strengthen Singapore's financial future by managing its foreign reserves. As a disciplined long-term value investor, we engage across a wide range of asset classes in over 40 countries. Headquartered in Singapore, we have a strong global talent force of over 1,700 people positioned in 10 key financial cities. For more information on GIC, please visit www.gic.com.sg or LinkedIn. About Lexington Partners Lexington Partners is a leading global alternative investment manager primarily involved in providing liquidity solutions to owners of private equity and other alternative investments and in making co-investments alongside leading private equity sponsors. Lexington Partners is one of the largest independent managers of secondary acquisition and co-investment funds with $55 billion in committed capital since inception. Lexington has acquired over 3,600 secondary and co-investment interests through more than 950 transactions with a total value in excess of $63 billion, including $16 billion of syndications. Lexington also invests in private investment funds during their initial formation and has committed to more than 500 new funds in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region. Lexington has offices strategically located in major centers for private equity and alternative investing - New York, Boston, Menlo Park, London, Hong Kong, Santiago, Sao Paulo and Luxembourg. Additional information can be found at www.lexingtonpartners.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005643/en/

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[July 20, 2021] LearnXtream Launches New Online Academy

SOFIA, Bulgaria, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite global lifting of social distancing restrictions in the past few months, a significant number of people still perform many tasks online rather than in public, crowded spheres. One of the sectors that has made a substantial shift to online is the learning and education sector, and for that reason the online academy LearnXtream has launched its new learning platform, now open to students from all around the world. According to the company, the courses offered will focus on the different financial markets, but material on many other topics will also be available, including business management and computing. "We are glad to take part in this important revolution in the academic world," remarked LearnXtream's spokesperson, "since it is only natural for people today to be able to gain proper educaion from home. Education is a basic right, and we promise to make it as accessible as possible to anyone who wishes to gain it. That's why our prices will always stay fair and affordable - and that's a guarantee."



Educating the masses Among the different courses which can be found on LearnXtream's new website are tutorials regarding commodities and future contracts, cryptocurrencies, trading strategies and tools, and more subjects. The website also offers e-books for those who prefer to learn this way, on various topics such as capital management, technical analysis, trading psychology, and more. Students can sign up for one of several learning packages, according to their goals and budget, and all of the relevant information regarding that - including pricing - can be found on LearnXtream's website.

"We invite everyone to give us a try and see what we have to offer," added the spokesperson. "There are also free courses on our website, so people can test the waters before making a decision. We are constantly updating our content, so there's definitely more worth waiting for." About LearnXtream Founded in 2021, LearnXtream has set a goal to provide enriching and challenging content for anyone wishing to broaden their horizons on a wide array of topics. All content is written by the brand's professionals, making sure it is up to date and enticing. LearnXtream also offers a 14-day money back guarantee policy, to ensure all students have a worry-free learning experience. The company's support staff provides rapid assistance via email and an onsite chat function during business hours.

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[July 20, 2021] Oakland University Partners With Georgia Tech, University Of Tennessee On NSF-funded Research Center

ROCHESTER, Mich., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Oakland University is partnering with the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee-Knoxville on a collaborative research center designed to boost the United States' leadership in engineering research and global competitiveness. A $700,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, matched by $900,000 from industry, will support establishment of the OU site of the Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Composite and Hybrid Materials Interfacing (CHMI). This one-of-a-kind center will consist of three independent, but closely coordinated, sites at each of the partnering universities. Each site will direct its research toward a different applicationthrust and sector of the U.S. economy; Georgia Tech will focus on the aerospace industry, Tennessee-Knoxville on infrastructure and biomedical applications, and Oakland on automotive applications, including automobiles, ground vehicles and farm equipment.



Composite and hybrid materials interfacing research includes material-joining science and technology, dissimilar-material compatibility, contact surface treatment, corrosion and delamination protection, and non-destructive testing and inspection. This research has extensive applications in the aerospace, automotive, national security, biomedical, energy and personal protective gear sectors of the U.S. economy. According to Dr. Sayed Nassar, distinguished professor of mechanical engineering and founding director of OU's Fastening and Joining Research Institute (FAJRI), the use of composite and hybrid materials has increased dramatically over the past several decades in response to growing demand for light-weight, energy-efficient products. The properties of these materials, such as their mechanical strength, electrical conductivity and reactions to chemicals, factor into their reliability, making cutting-edge CHMI research crucial for quality control across numerous industries.

As Dr. Nassar explains, "Current lack of dedicated, science-based CHMI research often complicates maintenance, repair and overhaul of safety-critical composite and hybrid material joints. Failures in these joined materials can cause injury and loss of human life. Research at this NSF-funded center will identify and develop breakthrough technologies, advanced smart materials, artificial intelligence and software tools, and other methods that will revolutionize the science and technology for joining composite and hybrid materials." "Oakland University is very excited about The Center and this collaboration with Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee," added Dr. David Stone, OU's Vice President for Research. "We expect The Center to take our already long-established and productive relationships with the automotive industry and the Army ground vehicle command to the next level." View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oakland-university-partners-with-georgia-tech-university-of-tennessee-on-nsf-funded-research-center-301335956.html SOURCE Oakland University

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[July 20, 2021] Pekin Life Advances Digital Strategy by Accelerating Policy and Requirements Delivery with iPipeline

iPipeline - a leading provider of no code / low code content-based digital solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry, today announced Pekin Life has deployed DocFast e-Delivery to accelerate policy and requirements deliveries for its 8,500 independent agents. The launch circumvents delays caused by the impact of COVID-19 on traditional USPS (News - Alert) delivery methods. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005010/en/ Jocelyn Duncan, Vice President Life Administration, Pekin Life (Photo: Business Wire) "Traditional delivery methods have always added time to the delivery of policies and collection of signed requirements documents. With COVID-19 further complicating USPS staffing and deliveries, e-Delivery has moved to the forefront as an invaluable asset in accelerating the pace of new business," said Larry Berran, CEO, iPipeline. "Reducing delivery times, requirements collections, and cycle times from several weeks to what can be as little as minutes supports new business growth objectives and promotes agent productivity. More importantly, it underscores a carrier's commitment to getting individuals and families the protections they need now. We are committed to executing rapid DocFast e-Delivery implementations to support the growing need within the industry." "Pekin has an intense focus on delivering personalized and prompt service to our agents and customers. The recent USPS mail times have been steadily increasing in the last couple of years and slowing things down for us. We needed a solution to bypass this situation and avoid unnecessary delays mpacting policy deliveries and the return of signed delivery requirements," said Jocelyn Duncan, Vice President Life Administration, Pekin Life. "DocFast e-Delivery will enable us to reduce the number of abandoned applications, get more business paid, and cut down on the backlog of pending business that requires constant tracking. We are committed to continuing to enhance the buying and selling experience for both our agents and the customers they serve."



To learn how you can implement iPipeline's DocFast e-Delivery product to circumvent delays caused by the impact of COVID-19, click here, contact sales@ipipeline.com or call 1-800-758-0824, option 2. About Pekin Life

Pekin Insurance is a group name adopted to designate the combined operation of The Farmers Automobile Insurance Association, Pekin Insurance Company, PAC, Inc., Pekin Select Insurance Company, and Pekin Life Insurance Company. Pekin Insurance has been in business since 1921 and is one of the leading insurers in the state of Illinois, providing multiple lines of insurance. Pekin Insurance offers insurance coverage in 21 states through its growing agency force, which now totals 1,500 independent agencies and 8,500 insurance producers. The company is headquartered in Pekin, Illinois, with service offices at Phoenix, Arizona; O'Fallon, Rockford, and Warrenville, Illinois; Indianapolis, Indiana; Des Moines, Iowa; Columbus, Ohio; and Appleton, Wisconsin. Visit us at www.pekininsurance.com. About iPipeline iPipeline is a leading provider of no code / low code, content-based digital solutions for the life insurance and financial services industry. Through our SSG Digital, end-to-end platform, we accelerate and simplify sales, compliance, operations, and support. We provide process automation and seamless integration between every participant in our ecosystem including carriers, agents, general agencies, advisors, broker-dealers, RIAs, banks, securities/mutual fund firms, and their consumers on a global basis. Our innovative solutions include pre-sales support, new business and underwriting, policy administration, point-of-sale execution of applications, post-sale support, data analysis, reporting, user-driven configuration, consumer delivery and self-service, and agency and firm management. iPipeline's platform is used by approximately 450 carriers and fund companies, 1,400 distributors and financial institutions, and their agents and licensed advisors in a cloud-based environment. With headquarters in Exton, Pennsylvania, iPipeline has locations in Boston, Bromley (UK), Burlington (Canada), Cheltenham (UK), Dallas, Davidson, Fort Lauderdale, Huntersville, Ontario ( CA (News - Alert) ), Philadelphia, Pleasanton, and Salt Lake City. Visit www.ipipeline.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005010/en/

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[July 20, 2021] PineBridge Investments Announces Expansion to Florida with Opening of Fort Lauderdale Office

PineBridge Investments, a private, global asset manager focused on active, high-conviction investing headquartered in New York City, has announced it will be opening an office in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in August 2021. The South Florida region has experienced significant growth over the last year, and PineBridge has established this new Fort Lauderdale office to enter this burgeoning market and talent pool as the firm continues to grow, while also establishing a community to support a local team. Tracie Ahern, PineBridge's Chief Financial Officer and Chief Risk Officer, will relocate to Fort Lauderdale as part of the expansion and oversee the establishment of the office, which will house up to 45 employees across various corporate functions. "PineBridge is on an exciting growth trajectory, and we believe that the South Florida region has a robust and diverse talent pool to support our ability to exceed our client's expectations," said Ahern. "The establishment of a Florida office is supportive of PineBridge's long-term strategy and we are excited to start building our team here." Coastal Towers is a Fort Lauderdale landmark that conveniently sits at the intersection of the region's main throughways (US-1 and Commercial Blvd) and is at the center of the Miami metropolitan area in South Florida. The building features free parking for employees, a luxury fitness center, on-site cafe and panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean and Intracoastal Waterway. A newly renovated executive lounge and conference center make this an optimal eeting location for both employees and clients.



PineBridge Investments currently has 22 offices around the world with its corporate headquarters based in New York City. In 2020, PineBridge was recognized by Pensions & Investments' Best Places to Work, which identifies the best employers in the asset management industry. To review open positions in the Fort Lauderdale office, please visit PineBridge's career website or LinkedIn page. About PineBridge Investments

PineBridge Investments is a private, global asset manager focused on active, high-conviction investing. We draw on the collective power of our experts in each discipline, market, and region of the world through an open culture of collaboration designed to identify the best ideas. Our mission is to exceed clients' expectations on every level, every day. As of 31 March 2021, the firm managed US$133.0 billion across global asset classes for sophisticated investors around the world.

www.pinebridge.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005355/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Quanergy's 3D LiDAR Solution Selected for First V2X Smart City Deployment in Korea

Quanergy Systems, Inc., a leading provider of OPA-based solid state LiDAR sensors and smart 3D solutions for automotive and IoT, today announced its 3D LiDAR solution has been selected to support the development of an Information, Communication, and Technology (ICT) system in Busan, South Korea. The ICT system is a key component of the South Korean government's strategy to build data driven IoT smart cities. Busan is one of the pilot cities for the initiative. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005414/en/ Quanergy's 3D LiDAR Solution Selected for First V2X Smart City Deployment in Korea (Photo: Business Wire) Deployed in collaboration with long-time system integrator partner iCent, Quanergy's 3D solution, consisting of its MQ-8 LiDAR sensor, paired with its proprietary perception software QORTEX DTC, collects and analyzes traffic data, including the walking direction of pedestrians, their traffic volume, and the number of speeding vehicles, enabling the iSaverdata analytics platform from iCent to determine their patterns based on time of day, day of the week, etc.



The collected data enables Busan's smart city traffic center to better understand traffic patterns, predict safety hazards, and ultimately develop transportation policies to improve pedestrian safety. This information is crucial for ICT infrastructure to inform smarter, data-driven decisions. Furthermore, the solution integrates with traffic lights to respond dynamically to traffic, and gives drivers and pedestrians visibility into real-time traffic information through an app on their smartphones. This is the first system of its kind in Korea to provide traffic data for V2X (Vehicle to Everything) equipment and beacon equipment. "Quanergy's LiDAR solution provided greater than 95% accuracy and reliable performance in all ambient conditions, day or night," said Moon, WonSang, CEO at iCENT, "With more accurate data, Busan was able to improve the effectiveness of its transportation policies. In addition, the LiDAR solution provided a low total cost of ownership, for a cost savings of more than 30%. The use of LiDAR also automated the data collection, eliminating the need for manual, error-prone data collection methods."

In 2020, Quanergy installed its Smart LiDAR solution in Seoul, South Korea, to improve crosswalk safety in school zones. To learn more about the Busan Smart City Project, see our case study. About Quanergy Systems, Inc. Quanergy Systems' mission is to create powerful, affordable smart LiDAR solutions for automotive and IoT applications to enhance people's experiences and safety. Quanergy has developed the only true 100% solid state CMOS LiDAR sensor built on optical phased array (OPA) technology to enable the mass production of low-cost, highly reliable 3D LiDAR solutions. Through Quanergy's smart LiDAR solutions, businesses can now leverage real-time, advanced 3D insights to transform their operations in a variety of industries including industrial automation, physical security, smart cities, smart spaces, and much more. Quanergy solutions are deployed by over 350 customers across the globe. For more information, please visit us at www.quanergy.com. About iCENT Founded in February 2000, iCENT Co., Ltd. provides technology information and communication solutions, mostly for Total Network, Security and Safety Platform Solutions (i-Saver). iCENT is a one-stop service company that has developed network analysis and management products and now provides network consulting, design, construction and operation support. Through specialized solutions for mobile and video, the company provides professional technology centering on leading service providers and SO / MSOs in Korea. iCENT has also diversified its business portfolio through various new businesses related to network and computing and has expanded its business opportunities with network-based system integration to increase customer value. For more information, visit www.icent.co.kr View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005414/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Rad Power Bikes Introduces Major Evolution of its Flagship Electric Bike with the RadRhino 6 Plus

On the heels of an industry-leading $150 million investment, Rad Power Bikes debuts the most innovative and sweeping update to the RadRhino, our flagship fat tire ebike UTRECHT, Netherlands, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Rad Power Bikes, North America's largest ebike brand, unveiled the RadRhino6 Plus, a powerful new model of the company's flagship electric fat tire bike since its launch in Europe. Building off the success of the iconic RadRhino series, this premium ebike features all-new hydraulic disc brakes for greater stopping power; a custom geared-hub motor for better all-terrain performance. The reengineered frame promises an ergonomic, comfortable ride with a proprietary semi-integrated battery designed to pop-in and out with the turn of a key. To make it easier for new riders to adopt electric bikes, the RadRhino 6 Plus also features a custom two-part display system that makes operation while riding simpler and more intuitive, leaving riders of all levels feeling confident. "The RadRhino is special to us. It's our flagship ebike, it introduced Rad Power Bikes to the world, and kickstarted the ebike revolution, a movement led by more than 350.000 Rad riders around the world." said Mike Radenbaugh, founder and CEO of Rad Power Bikes. Whether you're commuting to work, hauling groceries, or headed on a weekend adventure, the RadRhino 6 Plus is your durable, rugged, comfortable andmost importantly funeveryday ebike." To create a Plus version of the RadRhino, and ensure the latest model met the company's high standards for reliability and durability, Rad Power Bikes developed a comprehensive array of custom, state-of-the-art components. "Rad Power Bikes is on a mission to radically challenge the ebike status quo, blurring the lines between traditional ebike, moped, motorcycle, and ligh electric vehicle to provide industry-leading mobility solutions," said Redwood Stephens, Chief Product Officer at Rad Power Bikes. "Over the last seven years we have made incremental improvements, but this is the first top-to-bottom redesign. The end result is a completely next-level riding experience that screams 'I am an electric bike and proud of it'."



The new Rad User Interface, a two-part system that puts information where riders need and want it most, makes operation while riding simpler and more intuitive for all experience levels. The custom Rad Display depicts real-time stats, trip distance, time, and a headlight on/off indicator. It also displays the intelligent battery state of charge, giving riders more accurate, confidence-inspiring battery charge information before, during and after their rides. The bike features two frame sizes (high-step and step-thru) which are more comfortable for riders of a wider range of height, improved ergonomics, and a smoother, more secure ride with better pedal efficiency. The sleek new frame design is both striking and functional, with a new proprietary, semi-integrated battery that easily pops in and out.

The team of engineers at Rad Power Bikes fine-tuned the all-new geared hub motor and controller to provide more power, more efficiently. Riders will be able to accelerate quicker, experience a consistently stronger performance  even at lower speeds, and tackle all-terrain riding with ease. To control that speed, the RadRhino 6 Plus is the company's first model to feature hydraulic disc brakes and ceramic brake pads which provide greater stopping power, reduced maintenance and brake pads that last even longer. They also feature an ergonomically designed lever that can be adjusted to fit the rider's hand, reducing rider fatigue. Taken individually, each of the components of the RadRhino 6 Plus support the company's leadership in ebike accessibility and design, but when taken as a whole, the RadRhino 6 Plus update mark a bold evolution from North America's ebike leader. Rad Power Bikes is also expanding its ecosystem of accessories to increase the utility and make it easier for people to own and commute by ebike. New accessories launching with this bike include RadRhino 6 Plus Rear Rack, Battery Terminal Cover, Battery Travel Case, and a USB Charger. The RadRhino 6 Plus will be available to purchase in Europe in the Fall of 2021 at a price point of 1.899 at www.radpowerbikes.eu To learn more visit: www.radpowerbikes.eu/pages/new-electric-fat-tire-bikes-2021-radhino - # # # - About Rad Power Bikes

Rad Power Bikes is the largest ebike brand in North America. Founded in 2007, the global consumer-direct company boasts a full lineup of affordable ebikes and accessories that are changing the way people and goods move. The company designs all of its products in-house at its Seattle headquarters and operates international offices in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Utrecht, the Netherlands. The team of passionate ebike enthusiasts, product designers, and entrepreneurs create ebikes that are built for everything and priced for everyone. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1577387/RadRhino_6_Plus_Hero_Shot.jpg

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[July 20, 2021] Savvas Learning Company Receives Arizona Top Workplaces 2021 Award

CHANDLER, Ariz., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Savvas Learning Company, a K-12 next-generation learning solutions leader, announced today that it has been recognized as a top workplace in Arizona. Savvas was named to the Arizona Top Workplaces 2021 listing, which is published in the Arizona Republic and on its website, AZCentral, and produced in partnership with Energage, an employee engagement technology company. In addition to producing Top Workplaces, the premier employee recognition program that showcases the best places to work in 58 major U.S. markets, Energage also recognizes companies for aspects of their culture that are critical to an organization's success. Selection for these programs is based solely on employee feedback gathered through Energage's anonymous, third-party survey. This year, Savvas also received from Energage a Top Manager Culture Award, as well as the first-ever national Top Workplaces Woman-Led Culture Excellence Award, which honors outstanding woan-led businesses for their commitment to a people-first culture.



Headquartered in Paramus, New Jersey, Savvas has major offices in Chandler, Arizona; Northbrook, Illinois; and Boston, Massachusetts. Savvas has also been named a 2021 New Jersey Top Workplace. "To be named a Top Workplace is especially gratifying because these honors reflect our employees' own voices," said Bethlam Forsa, CEO of Savvas Learning Company. "At Savvas, we recognize that our employees' passions, talents, and ideas are our most valuable assets, and we empower everyone in the company to be an integral part of building a strong brand and company culture. As we continue to grow, Savvas remains dedicated to our shared purpose of providing innovative, high-quality learning solutions that empower educators and help students succeed."

Arizona Top Workplaces showcases strong workplace environments and recognizes companies for their commitment to their employees, customers, and corporate mission. "This past year has been anything but business as usual, which makes the Top Workplaces honor even more significant as companies have achieved this recognition during one of the most challenging and uncertain years any of us have ever experienced," Kevin Martinelli, a vice president at the Arizona Republic and AZCentral.com. "As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, it will be companies like these top workplaces in Arizona that are leading the way, demonstrating that success comes from when we empower our employees." Companies that earn Top Workplaces recognition demonstrate that they are intentional about building a connection with their employees and promoting a culture that fosters pride and loyalty, remarked Energage President Dan Kessler, noting: "Their employees feel heard and appreciated, and believe in the direction their organizations are headed." ABOUT SAVVAS LEARNING COMPANY

At Savvas, we believe learning should inspire. By combining new ideas, new ways of thinking, and new ways of interacting, we design next-generation learning solutions that help prepare students to become global citizens in a more interconnected, digital world. To learn more, visit Savvas Learning Company. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/savvas-learning-company-receives-arizona-top-workplaces-2021-award-301337854.html SOURCE Savvas Learning Company

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[July 20, 2021] Silicon Valley meets Switzerland: Fund the next generation of deep tech innovators

Zug, Switzerland, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (via Blockchain Wire) The pandemic has led to a warp-speed transformation of the economy, building on and evolving the technological breakthroughs of the past decade. For tech innovators, it has accelerated demand for their solutions - solutions to securely digitize healthcare data, make supply chains resilient, secure digital identities, optimize transactions through decentralization, to name a few. These innovations are enabled by the convergence of three disruptive technologies: Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and Blockchain, which together are expected to add staggering $32 trillion to the global economy by 2030. Investment in these innovators has been mostly available only to large venture capital funds. SVBS1 - Disruptive Tech Portfolio (AMC) changes this. As an Actively Managed Certificate (AMC) with Swiss ISIN, the SVBS1 - Disruptive Tech Portfolio offers qualified investors access to: VALUE FROM DISRUPTIVE TECH: All 20+ companies in the AMC create value from the disruptive technologies of the 21st century, incl. AI, Blockchain and IoT

DIVERSIFIED PORTFOLIO: Start-ups in various stages of maturity, operating in different industries and diversified by regions form a constantly growing portfolio, selected in a multi-stage process with in-depth due diligence in place.

SYNERGIES OF A GLOBAL ECOSYSTEM: The Silicon Valley Blockchain Society (SVBS Inc.) provides the companies of the AMC a broad range of additional support, including access to an expert network, global exposure, and long-term growth. The SVBS network also enables the AMC companies to take advantage of synergy effects among themselves. The proximity to the companies also allows to provide constant updates and reporting to investors. Amit Pradhan, president of SVBS Inc., emphasizes theuniqueness of the product. "The disruptive potential of the portfolio companies is enormous! This is reflected in the increasing demand for new solutions and the current technological and economic developments trajectories." Not only the portfolio but also the investment instrument is innovative. Unlike many traditional investment vehicles, the AMC with Swiss ISIN will be accessible through banks and brokers with minimum investments as small as US$10,000 - and no lockup or fixed holding period. Trading orders for the secondary market are received and processed on a best-effort basis. Proceeds of the sale of underlyings may be re-invested or partially redeemed. Because of these features, cost efficiency and application capabilities, we will see strong demand in such AMC as an alternative investment opportunity.



The strategy is actively managed by Digital Waves and advised by SVBS' seasoned management, venture capital veterans and analysts. Digital Waves is a financial services provider and investment manager for the future economy, securitizing innovative assets through actively managed certificates (AMC) and offering related investment services Digital Wave Assets AG, owner of Digital Waves, is a privately held financial intermediary based in Switzerland and a member of VQF, its regulatory body.

The Silicon Valley Blockchain Society (SVBS) is a 360 platform, bringing together a wide range of investors on one hand and a plethora of cross-capability experts on the other, in a distributed network called the SVBS Nation. SVBS focuses on the technology interplay of IoT, AI and Blockchain and in the wider themes of the future of Health, Wealth, Work and Impact. Interested to learn more about an AMC or the SVBS1  Disruptive Tech Portfolio in particular? Contact Us! Legal notice: This media release is for informational purposes only and is expressly no investment advice and not directed at any person whose nationality or residence status prohibits access to such information under applicable law. The information and opinions contained herein do not constitute a solicitation, offer or recommendation to use any service, to purchase or sell any investment instruments or to engage in any other transactions. By their nature, statements about future developments involve general and specific risks and uncertainties. In this context, it is important to note the risk that predictions, forecasts, projections and results described or implied in forward-looking statements will not be achieved.

Contact:

Tobias Straube

COO

Digital Waves

+41 (0) 76 512 36 07

info@digitalwaves.com https://www.digitalwaves.com



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[July 20, 2021] Sixteen SiebenCarey Attorneys Named to 2021 Minnesota Super Lawyers

SiebenCarey today announced that 16 of the firm's attorneys were chosen for the 2021 Minnesota Super Lawyers list. While, on average, just five percent of all lawyers in Minnesota are selected for Super Lawyers each year, 88 percent of SiebenCarey's attorneys were named Minnesota Super Lawyers. Attorneys (and their primary practice area) receiving the Super Lawyers recognition include: Eric Beyer for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Robert Brabbit for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

James Carey for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff. He is also recognized on Minnesota Super Lawyers Top 100 list.

Shannon Carey for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Paul Downes for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff

Robert Hauer, Jr. for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Susan Holden for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Art Kosieradzki for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Marcia Miller for Appellate.

Jeffrey Montpetit for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Mark Olive for Workers' Compensation.

Michael Scully for Workers' Compensation.

Jeffrey Sieben for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff. He is also recognized on the Minnesota Super Lawyers Top 100 list.

Harry Sieben, Jr. for Personal InjuryGeneral: Plaintiff.

Cory Whalen for Personal Injury General: Plaintiff.

Amy Wallace recognized for the first time in 2021 as a Super Lawyer Rising Star.



SiebenCarey. "Recognition such as this is reflective of our daily mission: To help Minnesotans understand their legal rights and get the counsel they deserve." Each year, attorneys from SiebenCarey receive recognition for their efforts to assist clients affected by auto accidents, medical malpractice and workers' compensation issues. The firm has won honors as a U.S. News Best Law Firm every year since 2010. Last year, 11 of the firm's attorneys were included in The Best Lawyers in America - an annual list universally regarded as the definitive guide to legal excellence.

Super Lawyers evaluates attorneys on 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement. Selections are made on an annual, state-by-state basis. The objective is to create a credible, comprehensive and diverse listing of outstanding attorneys that can be used as a resource for attorneys and consumers searching for legal counsel. It is published as a special supplement in Twin (News - Alert) Cities Business, Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine and Minnesota Super Lawyers Magazine. About SiebenCarey Founded in 1952, SiebenCarey has grown to become one of Minnesota's largest and most widely respected personal injury law firms, successfully representing more than 65,000 cases. For over 69 years the firm has employed experienced lawyers and professional support personnel covering general trial practice in all courts, personal injury, workers' compensation, wrongful death and medical malpractice. The offices are located around the state of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Lakeville and Duluth. For more information, visit www.knowyourrights.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005780/en/

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[July 20, 2021] SMBC Americas Holdings, Inc. Elects Analisa M. Allen and Morris R. Morgan as Independent Directors

SMBC Americas Holdings, Inc. ("SMBCAH"), a member of SMBC Group, announced today that it has elected Analisa M. Allen and Morris R. Morgan as independent directors. "We're very pleased to welcome Analisa and Morris to the SMBCAH board. They both have strong backgrounds in risk management, corporate governance, and information technology, bringing a significant depth of experience to our board," said Hiro Hyakutome, CEO of SMBC Americas Division and President & CEO of SMBCAH. Reuben Jeffery, Independent Director and Chairman of the Board of SMBCAH, said, "These appointments further demonstrate the Group's commitment to strengthening its governance and provide yet another tangible example of how we're building a stronger, more capable and collaborative SMBC Group in the Americas." Ms. Allen held several leadership positions with Goldman, Sachs & Co., where she was employed for 24 years and was responsible for business planning and technical strategy, including as Managing Director, Head of Global Operations Technology and Managing Director, Global Regulatory, Risk and Control Head. In 2015, she joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. as Managing Director and CIO of the Home Lending Consumer Division, and in 2017 was appointed as Managing Director and CIO of JPMorgan Chase's Data and Analytics Consumer Division. Ms. Allen has been with the Gerson Lehrman Group as an Information Technology Consultant since 2019. In 2020, she was elected as a member of the board of directors of MGIC Investment Corporation, the parent compan of Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation, which provides products and services that help families achieve home ownership and protect mortgage investors from credit losses.



Mr. Morgan has more than 30 years of extensive experience in regulatory risk management and advising clients and financial institutions on corporate governance issues. During this span, he held several roles of increasing scope with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), including Senior Deputy Comptroller, Chief Operating Officer and the Chief National Bank Examiner. He also served as a principal advisor to the Comptroller on domestic and international policy issues. In 2020, Mr. Morgan joined Chain Bridge Partners, LLC, a leading independent financial regulatory risk management advisory firm, as Managing Director. He is responsible for advising financial clients on a broad range of regulatory risk management and corporate governance issues. While serving in these roles, Mr. Morgan gained deep experience in a wide range of the banking activities of the largest, most complex banks, federal branches, and agencies.

He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and has a National Bank Examiner commission. About SMBC Group SMBC Group is a top-tier global financial group. Headquartered in Tokyo and with a 400-year history, SMBC Group offers a diverse range of financial services, including banking, leasing, securities, credit cards, and consumer finance. The Group has more than 140 offices and 86,000 employees worldwide in nearly 40 countries. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Inc. (SMFG) is the holding company of SMBC Group, which is one of the three largest banking groups in Japan. SMFG's shares trade on the Tokyo, Nagoya, and New York (NYSE: SMFG) stock exchanges. As of March 31, 2021, its total assets were $2.10 trillion. In the Americas, SMBC Group has a presence in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Peru. Backed by the capital strength of SMBC Group and the value of its relationships in Asia, the Group offers a range of commercial and investment banking services to its corporate, institutional, and municipal clients. It connects a diverse client base to local markets and the organization's extensive global network. The Group's operating companies in the Americas include Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC), SMBC Nikko Securities America, Inc., SMBC Capital Markets, Inc., SMBC Rail Services LLC, Manufacturers Bank, JRI America, Inc., SMBC Leasing and Finance, Inc., Banco Sumitomo Mitsui Brasileiro S.A., and Sumitomo Mitsui Finance and Leasing Co., Ltd. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005482/en/

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Survey: Nearly 80 Percent of College Students Want Legacy Admissions Banned

Being the child of an alumnus should not give a college applicant an admissions edge, according to results of a new Student Voice survey, conducted by Inside Higher Ed and College Pulse (News - Alert) and presented by Kaplan*. Of the more than 2,000 college students polled, 79 percent support (54 percent "strongly"; 25 percent "somewhat") the end of legacy admissions. The call to egalitarianism comes in the aftermath of the Varsity Blues scandal and, more recently, the move by the state of Colorado banning legacy admissions for all state colleges and universities.

According to research, legacy students constitute a significant share of students among the most competitive (mostly private) colleges and universities across the country. Harvard's next graduating class is more than one-third legacy, for example. But as many Ivy Leagues stand by their legacy traditions, other top schools are beginning to cast them aside, including most prominently Johns Hopkins University. The University of California system, the nation's largest public university system, has not considered legacy in its admissions process since the 1990s. At some top private schools, where legacy is much more prevalent than at public schools, soe students have been petitioning their administrations to end the practice. Additionally, this fall, a group of alumni and current students from some top colleges and universities plan to start a national campaign to discourage graduates from giving to their alma maters until legacy admissions at their school is ended.







While many who call for the ending of legacy admissions see it as an issue of fairness-it has its roots in the 1920s as a way to keep out Jews, immigrants, and non-white students-others point to its modern-day benefits, saying that admitting the children of alumni can boost scholarship giving by wealthier families. The CEO of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, himself a former admissions chief at a private college, suggests that ending legacy admissions would harm colleges' ability to enroll low-income students.

"Many college students view legacy admissions as an issue of social justice, and they see it as giving an unfair advantage to applicants who already have a lot going for them," said Brian Carlidge, vice president of pre-college programs, Kaplan. "It's important to note, however, that while legacy may put the thumb on the scale for some applicants, most colleges still focus on the traditional admissions factors like standardized test scores, GPA, letters of recommendation, and personal essays. How you do in those areas, regardless of who your parents are, will still largely determine where you get in. With so many calls for change in higher education, we wouldn't be surprised to see more colleges sunsetting their legacy policies, with much of the energy for its demise coming from the grassroots."

For more information, read Inside Higher Ed's article, featuring additional survey results and analysis.

To schedule an interview about the survey results, contact Russell Schaffer at 917.822.8190 or russell.schaffer@kaplan.com.

*Based on the results of an e-survey conducted in June 2021 of 2,035 four-year college and community college students from across the United States.

About Kaplan

Kaplan is a global educational services company that provides individuals, universities, and businesses with a diverse array of services, including higher and professional education, test preparation, language training, corporate and leadership training, and student recruitment, online enablement and other university support services. With operations in nearly 30 countries, Kaplan serves nearly 1.1 million students each year and has partnerships with 2,000-plus universities, colleges, and schools/school districts, and more than 4,000 businesses globally. Kaplan is a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company (NYSE: GHC). For more information, please visit www.kaplan.com.

Note to editors: Kaplan is a subsidiary of Graham Holdings Company (NYSE: GHC)

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005753/en/
[July 20, 2021] On Tap Credit Union Awards Two 2021 Scholarship Winners

On Tap Credit Union, a leader in providing consumers in local Colorado communities with innovative financial solutions for more than 60 years, awarded two 2021 scholarship winners, Kaitlyn Pierce and Anastasia Nawrocki, for their dedication to advocacy within their communities. On Tap is extremely pleased to award these extraordinary women to help them pursue their personal and academic goals. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005001/en/ Anastasia Nawrocki (Photo: Business Wire) Pierce and Nawrocki are native to Colorado and both have dedicated many hours to volunteering within their communities and making a positive impact in advocating for those around them. Each are looking to pursue their goals in continuing to drive awareness and communication or those without a voice. In each of their essay's, there was a common theme with the importance of taking small steps in order to make waves of impact.



"The credit union strives to help shape a bright financial future for young adults, and scholarships are awarded to members of the credit union and community who demonstrate a caring spirit and appreciation for others," said On Tap Credit Union President and CEO Tracie Wilcox. "The high caliber of all the applicants this year made the selection process difficult, but the achievements of our selected winners are exemplary." Anyone interested in learning more about On Tap Credit Union can request a call back here, www.ontapcu.org/about-us/contact-us or visit our website. We look forward to an opportunity to craft a financial solution for you!

About On Tap Credit Union Formerly Coors Credit Union, On Tap Credit Union is a full-service cooperative financial institution serving people living and working in Jefferson, Denver, Boulder, and Larimer counties. Founded in 1954, the credit union has $354 million in assets and 20,000 members who are also owners of the organization. The credit union provides personal consultation and financial products including vehicle, mortgage, and home equity loans, credit cards, insurance, savings and investment accounts, and financial guidance, as well as a full suite of business services including a variety of commercial lending products. For more information, please visit www.OnTapCU.org. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005001/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Trivest Discovery Fund partners with Brothers Paving

Trivest Partners ("Trivest") is pleased to announce it has partnered with Brothers Paving & Concrete. Founded in 1985, Brothers is an end-to-end service provider of asphalt, concrete, striping and all related essential parking lot services and roadway maintenance. Brothers will lead Trivest's existing investment in Landmark Paving (collectively, the "Company" or "Brothers Paving"). Brothers Paving, based in Manassas, Virginia, will continue to be led by its talented management team. The Company's current CEO, Mr. Paul Battista will also serve as CEO of the holding company, which will adopt the Brothers Paving name. The combination of these two entities will allow the Company to serve a broad array of attractive end-markets including real estate (HOA & property management groups), retail and regional utilities. Together Brothers and Landmark will serve over 200 customers throughout the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. "I am proud of Brothers' success to date. Our accomplishments are primarily the result of the tireless efforts of our dedicated team members and unrivaled focus on reliable customer service," said Paul Battista. "Partnering with Trivest will enable us to accelerate our growth through continued investment in our customers, employees, technology, and geographic footprint. More importantly, Trivest understands the Brothers culture and shares our vision to continue building Brothers the right way-People, Partnering, Precision, and Professionalism. World-class service, while building better communities." Russ Wilson, Parter at Trivest, added, "We are pleased to partner with Brothers Paving. The Company has done an outstanding job over the past three decades serving some of the most attractive end-markets within the essential business services sector. Brothers' industry-leading technology and strong customer relationships provide an attractive opportunity to build a market-leading platform. We look forward to partnering with Brothers' talented management team and employees to serve its customers with best-in-class solutions, build upon its existing capabilities, and help Brothers achieve its full potential."



With Trivest's support, Brothers plans to pursue multiple identified organic growth initiatives while also actively pursuing strategic add-on acquisitions throughout the United States. If you are aware of like-minded add-on partners, please reach out via e-mail to Brothers@Trivest.com. About Brothers Paving & Concrete

Headquartered in Manassas, Virginia, Brothers Paving is a premier full-service provider of asphalt paving, concrete, seal coating, striping, crack filling and related routine maintenance services. Brothers provides its services to a diverse array of end-markets including homeowner associations, utility providers, real estate management firms, retailers, and other commercial customers. For additional information, please go to www.brotherspaving.com About Trivest Trivest Partners LP, with offices in Miami, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Toronto, is a private investment firm that focuses exclusively on the support and growth of founder-led and family-owned businesses in the United States and Canada in both control and non-control transactions. Since its founding in 1981, Trivest has completed more than 300 investments, totaling over $7 billion in value. Trivest is one of only 18 firms recognized by Inc. Magazine as one of the top-50 founder-friendly private equity firms in both 2019 and 2020. To learn more, visit www.trivest.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005398/en/

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[July 20, 2021] United Arab Emirates (UAE) General Insurance Markets, Key Trends and Opportunities Report 2021-2024 - ResearchAndMarkets.com

The "United Arab Emirates (UAE) General Insurance - Key Trends and Opportunities to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The 'United Arab Emirates (UAE) General Insurance - Key Trends and Opportunities to 2024' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into UAE's general insurance segment. It provides values for key performance indicators such as gross written premium, loss ratio, retail and commercial split, premium by line of business, and premium ceded and cession rates, during the review period (2015-2019) and forecast period (2019-2024). The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of UAE's economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country. The report brings together the publisher's research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure. Key Highlights Key insights and dynamics of The UAE's general insurance segment.

A comprehensive overview of The UAE's economy, government initiatives, and investment opportunities.

The UAE's insurance regulatory framework's evolution, key facts, taxation regime, licensing and capital requirements.

The UAE's general insurance reinsurance business's market structure giving details of premium ceded along with cession rates.

The UAE's general insurance segment structure giving details of retail and commercial lines of business.

Distribution channels deployed by UAE's general insurers.

Details of the competitive landscape, M&A and competitors' profiles.



Scope It provides historical values for UAE's general insurance segment for the report's 2015-2019 review period, and projected figures for the 2019-2024 forecast period.

It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in The UAE's general insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2024.

It profiles the top general insurance companies in The UAE, and outlines the key regulations affecting them. Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Economy Overview

Regulatory and Compliance

Key Market Trends

Summary Trends and KPIs

Key Trends by Line of Business

Property Insurance

Motor Insurance

Marine, Aviation and Transit Insurance

Personal Accident and Health Insurance

Miscellaneous Insurance

Distribution Channels

Competitive Landscape

Competitor Profiles

Reinsurance

Regulatory and Compliance

Competitor Profiles

Insurtech

Appendix Companies Mentioned Orient Insurance Company P.J.S.C. and Its Subsidiaries

Abu Dhabi National Insurance Co.

Oman Insurance Company P.S.C.

Al Ain Ahlia Insurance

Emirates Insurance Company P.S.C.

Dubai Insurance Company (P.S.C.)

Union Insurance Company P.S For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2oglsq View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005880/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Varnum LLP Selects Aderant Expert Practice Management Software

Aderant, a leading global business management software provider for law firms, announced today that the prestigious, Michigan based firm Varnum LLP ("Varnum") has purchased Aderant Expert. The firm chose Expert, an enterprise law practice management system (PMS), because of its unparalleled time and billing capabilities. Additionally, Varnum has selected Aderant to host and maintain their Expert system via its cloud-based SaaS (News - Alert) offering, Aderant Sierra. Sierra has a reputation for providing superior performance, top-notch security, and the flexibility to enhance a firm's services while maintaining seamless business operations. With Aderant managing the infrastructure of Varnum's Expert PMS, the firm can focus more of its resources on strategic and market-facing initiatives. Steve Bentz, Varnum's Finance Director, was tasked with overseeing the firm's software selection process. Bentz remarked, "Practice management software is a core component of our firm's operations and we look forward to leveraging Aderant Expert to meet the business needs of our firm and attorneys who work across multiple offices and locations. We expect that Expert will allow Varnum's workflows to run smoothly, securely, and efficiently." Varnum will soon begin implementing their Aderant Expert practice management system on the Sierra cloud platform. Once that project is complete, the firm will deploy Aderant Spotlight, a powerful legal business intelligence technology. Through detailed analytics, Spotlight delivers critical insights to law firm decision-makers about profitability and financial success.



"Aderant is thrilled to have Varnum as a new client for Expert through the Sierra SaaS offering and Spotlight," said Deane S. Price, Chief Executive Officer of Aderant. "SaaS-based practice management solutions are increasing in popularity amongst mid-size and large firms like Varnum, and business intelligence with actionable insights is more popular than ever. Aderant's team looks forward to providing optimal technical expertise and project management to assist Varnum as the firm deploys both Expert and Spotlight." For more information about Aderant Expert or Spotlight solutions or to schedule an online demonstration, visit www.aderant.com.

About Aderant

Aderant is a global industry leader which provides comprehensive business management software for law firms and other professional services organizations. The company's popular technology brands include Aderant Expert for practice management, Handshake and Drive for knowledge management, iTimekeep, OCG Live & Thrive for timekeeping and compliance, BillBlast for eBilling, CompuLaw for docketing and calendaring, and Expert Case for legal case management. Aderant operates as a unit of Roper Technologies (NYSE: ROP), a constituent of the S&P 500 , Fortune 1000  and the Russell 1000  indices. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia and has several other offices across North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. For more information, visit Aderant.com, email info@aderant.com, or follow the company on Twitter (News - Alert) @Aderant or on LinkedIn. About Varnum LLP Varnum LLP is a top-ranked law firm with more than 180 attorneys located in nine offices across Michigan and Florida. The firm serves as counsel to growing businesses and institutions across the country in connection with their complex legal needs. Varnum is routinely ranked as a leading firm by the likes of Chambers USA, U.S. News & World Report/Best Lawyers and The Best Lawyers in America, among others. For more information, visit varnumlaw.com or follow us on LinkedIn (News - Alert) . View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005258/en/

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[July 20, 2021] VCU Health chooses Purple Wayfinding to improve the patient and visitor experience

MANCHESTER, England and RICHMOND, Va., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Following a nationwide search, VCU Health System chose Purple to implement a wayfinding solution on its growing downtown medical campus in Richmond, Virginia. With this solution, patients and visitors can preview digital maps and directions online before they arrive and use interactive walking routes when on-site to ensure they get to where they need to be on time; using the safest and most efficient routes. Purple are experts in healthcare wayfinding worldwide and have several of the country's best hospitals as their customers and partners. The Purple wayfinding solution will begin initially on the downtown campus for VCU Medical Center and Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU. "Enhancing our patient and visitor experiences is foundational to our mission and vision," said Marcos Irigaray, chief of communications and marketing for VCU Health System. "Improving wayfinding for patients, visitors and team members through the successful deployment of Purple's technology is a partnership we look forward to achieving. We selected a tool that could support our current and future wayfinding needs as our downtown campus and footprint across the state continues to grow." VCU Health's downtown medical campus will soon include a new 17-story Adult Outpatient Pavilion with a multitude of outpatient services easily accessible under one roof. Given the importance of this wayfinding initiative, VCU Health System went though a thorough exploration of the market via an RFP process that lasted more than 6 months and included 11 technology vendors. Vendors were required to submit a bid, case study, technological approach, and narrative to express the possibilities each solution would provide. Purple was chosen due to their enhanced security standards, experience with similar organizations, commitment to partnering with its clients, and ensuring the project's success well beyond the implementation phase. Furthermore, Purple's unique approach to wayfinding requires 85% less hardware infrastructure than similar systems.



"We're really excited to be working with VCU Health, not only because they are such a prestigious organization, but because just like us they believe in providing the best service possible to all their constituents," said Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple. The VCU Health brand represents the VCU health sciences academic programs, the VCU Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Health System, which comprises VCU Medical Center (the only academic medical center in the region), Community Memorial Hospital, Tappahannock Hospital, Children's Hospital of Richmond at VCU, and MCV Physicians.

Who is Purple Purple helps physical venues survive and thrive through optimizing safety, enhancing the visitor and patient experience, and maximizing revenue and operational efficiency. We do this by connecting multiple data sources - many of which already present in a venue - such as WiFi, sensors, and Bluetooth, to our cloud-based platform. From here, organizations get a complete view of what is happening in their space, allowing them to make informed decisions and improve visitor and patient experiences through a number of built-in "intelligent space" solutions, including wayfinding. Purple is used in more than 65,000 venues across 120 countries where we serve more than a million end users every day. Through Purple, businesses have been able to understand who their customers are, how they behave when they're onsite, and through this insight, they have been able to deliver safer, more pleasurable experiences to their customers while reaping the rewards. Website: www.purple.ai Contact:

Dean Cookson

Marketing Director

dean@purple.ai

+447841234847 View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vcu-health-chooses-purple-wayfinding-to-improve-the-patient-and-visitor-experience-301337468.html SOURCE Purple

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[July 20, 2021] Virginia's New College Institute Expands Nationwide with Interoperable Digital Credentials

New College Institute (NCI) has partnered with verified identity platform Merit to provide its students with free, continuous access to all digital credentials earned during their educational experience, while giving them the ability to connect to relevant job opportunities based on those credentials. With the enhanced interoperability of Merit's platform, NCI will have the ability to expand access to its degree and certification programs, courses, and opportunities beyond students in rural Southern Virginia to learners across the United States. "New College Institute is more than an educational institution, we are also deeply connected to labor and workforce programs and committed to ensuring that our students have a pathway into their chosen career. By providing them with a digital wallet of verified, portable credentials, students from anywhere in the country will now be able to participate in our programs and get connected digitally with potential training and job opportunities in their regions," said NCI Interim Executive Director Karen Jackson. Using the Merit platform, NCI will digitally issue credentials to students, providing a digital record of completed trainings that are then automatically linked to job opportunities as well as additional experiental learning programs sent directly to the student. Given the current heightened unemployment, this platform gives NCI students a convenient way to view their progress toward their career goals, while providing the school with actionable data to see whether their students are on track with the courses and programs that will be the most effective in preparing them for successful futures.



"Merit is built to provide solutions to the challenge of keeping track of credentials in a way that propels individuals toward their best chance of success," said Merit COO Jacob Orrin. "We are thrilled to be partnering with NCI to give their students a seamless way to connect educational programs and employment opportunities that we hope will become the tools to better shape their futures." About Merit

Merit's verified identity platform brings visibility, liquidity, and trust to people-data, giving organizations the clarity to make better-informed decisions, engage with individuals effectively, and pursue their mission efficiently. Merit works with trusted private, state, and municipal organizations to solve critical real-world problems in sectors such as workforce development, emergency services, licensing, education, and defense readiness. The COVID-19 crisis has transformed workforce development and emergency services, requiring states and municipalities to innovate and streamline critical services, such as reemployment and COVID-19 vaccination programs, using solutions like Merit. Find out more at merits.com. About New College Institute New College Institute is a state-funded educational entity that provides access to degree programs (bachelor, master, and doctorate) through partnerships with Virginia colleges and universities. NCI strives to be accessible and convenient for students of all ages. Staff, faculty, and board members are all committed to making NCI a premier educational facility for students, businesses, and the community at large. In addition to college-level degree and certification programs, NCI offers experiential learning opportunities such as the NCI Internship Program and regional cybersecurity and engineering competitions. Additional programs such as NCI's summer camps, LIFE (Learning Is ForEver), and financial aid resource events encourage and promote continued education throughout the Martinsville-Henry County region. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005047/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Wipro to Invest $1 Billion to Expand Cloud Transformation Capability, Launches Wipro FullStride Cloud Services

NEW YORK and BANGALORE, India, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company, announced the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services and its commitment to invest $1 billion in cloud technologies, capabilities, acquisitions and partnerships over the next three years. As the cloud opportunity accelerates, Wipro FullStride Cloud Services brings together the full portfolio of Wipro's cloud-related capabilities, offerings and talent to better orchestrate the cloud journey for clients. This commitment builds on Wipro's existing and extensive cloud business with clients and significantly expands the investment with its partners and hyperscalers, creating industry solutions that accelerate results for mutual clients. Wipro has seen consistent growth in its cloud business and today employs over 79,000 cloud professionals and more than 10,000 people certified by the leading cloud service providers. Over the past 12 months, Wipro has announced significant cloud-related wins with Telefonica Germany / O2, Verifone, and E.ON in addition to METRO AG, one of the largest deals in Wipro's history. "Today, cloud adoption is at the core of any IT transformation initiative, and our clients have been turning to Wipro for help with this. With our $1 billion investment in cloud capabilities, and the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, we are in a far stronger position to simplify, orchestrate and accelerate the cloud journey for our clients," said Thierry Delaporte, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Wipro Limited. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services will work with clients to better align business and IT with the cloud imperative, create significant business value and increase competitive differentiation. It will also improve their business agility, embed resilience and significantly optimize their technology investments in favor of change and innovation. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services puts client and business needs first while orchestrating simplicity in an otherwise complex ecosystem. "Cloud adoption and innovation are an essential part of our IT strategy. For a company like METRO that operates in 25 countries, quickly migrating to the cloud enables decentralization, agility, speed and flexibility in engineering and development. We are delighted to have a multi-year strategic partner and leader like Wiproto support our cloud strategy and simplify a complex, technology ecosystem for our success and growth," said Timo Salzsieder, CIO, METRO AG.



"With the introduction of the Chief Growth Office, we are renewing our focus on our global partnership ecosystem, amplifying and simplifying how we go to market together to orchestrate cloud transformation for our clients. We will announce a new leader for this group very soon." said Stephanie Trautman, Chief Growth Officer, Wipro Limited. Wipro FullStride Cloud Services is a collaboration between Wipro's Chief Growth Office and existing Global Business Lines to create an integrated and comprehensive cloud transformation capability for customers, partners and cloud experts. With the launch of Wipro FullStride Cloud Services, Wipro is set to make cloud innovation and progress thrive, fueled by passion, collaboration, and boldness for clients.

For more information, visit wipro.com/cloud/mediakit. About Wipro Limited Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading global information technology, consulting and business process services company. We harness the power of cognitive computing, hyper-automation, robotics, cloud, analytics and emerging technologies to help our clients adapt to the digital world and make them successful. A company recognized globally for its comprehensive portfolio of services, strong commitment to sustainability and good corporate citizenship, we have over 200,000 dedicated employees serving clients across six continents. Together, we discover ideas and connect the dots to build a better and a bold new future. Wipro Media Contact: Purnima Burman

Wipro Limited

purnima.burman@wipro.com Forward-Looking Statements The forward-looking statements contained herein represent Wipro's beliefs regarding future events, many of which are by their nature, inherently uncertain and outside Wipro's control. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Wipro's growth prospects, its future financial operating results, and its plans, expectations and intentions. Wipro cautions readers that the forward-looking statements contained herein are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the results anticipated by such statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding fluctuations in our earnings, revenue and profits, our ability to generate and manage growth, complete proposed corporate actions, intense competition in IT services, our ability to maintain our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which we make strategic investments, withdrawal of fiscal governmental incentives, political instability, war, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our business and industry. The conditions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could decrease technology spending, adversely affect demand for our products, affect the rate of customer spending and could adversely affect our customers' ability or willingness to purchase our offerings, delay prospective customers' purchasing decisions, adversely impact our ability to provide on-site consulting services and our inability to deliver our customers or delay the provisioning of our offerings, all of which could adversely affect our future sales, operating results and overall financial performance. Our operations may also be negatively affected by a range of external factors related to the COVID-19 pandemic that are not within our control. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, including, but not limited to, Annual Reports on Form 20-F. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. We may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. We do not undertake to update any forward-looking statement that may be made from time to time by us or on our behalf. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wipro-to-invest-1-billion-to-expand-cloud-transformation-capability-launches-wipro-fullstride-cloud-services-301337518.html SOURCE Wipro

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[July 19, 2021] RENOVACARE ALERT: Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. Announces that a Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against RenovaCare, Inc. and Encourages Investors to Contact the Firm

Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized stockholder rights law firm, announces that a class action lawsuit has been filed against RenovaCare, Inc. ("RenovaCare" or the "Company") (Other OTC: RCAR) in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey on behalf of all persons and entities who purchased or otherwise acquired RenovaCare securities between August 14, 2017 and May 28, 2021, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors have until September 14, 2021 to apply to the Court to be appointed as lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Click here to participate in the action. RenovaCare is a development stage company that has not generated any revenue since its inception and has no commercialized products. On May 28, 2021, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (" SEC (News - Alert) ") issued a litigation release stating that RenovaCare was being charged with alleged securities fraud. According to the SEC's complaint, between July 2017 and January 2018, the Company's controlling shareholder and Chairman, Harmel Rayat ("Rayat"), "arranged, and caused RenovaCare to pay for, a promotional campaign designed to increase the company's stock price." Specifically, "Rayat was closely involved in directing the promotion and editing promotional materials, and arranged to funnel payments to the publisher through consultants to conceal RenovaCare's involvement in the campaign." When OTC Markets Group, Inc. requested that RenovaCare explain ts relationship to the promotion, the complaint alleges that "Rayat and RenovaCare then drafted and issued a press release and a Form 8-K that contained material misrepresentations and omissions denying Rayat's and the company's involvement in the promotion."



On this news, the Company's stock price fell $0.66, or 24.8%, over three consecutive trading sessions to close at $2.00 per share on June 2, 2021. The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company's business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that, at the direction of Rayat, RenovaCare engaged in a promotional campaign to issue misleading statements to artificially inflate the Company's stock price; (2) that, when the OTC Markets inquired, RenovaCare and Rayat issued a materially false and misleading press release claiming that no director, officer, or controlling shareholder had any involvement in the purported third party's promotional materials; (3) that, as a result of the foregoing, the Company's disclosure controls and procedures were defective; and (4) as a result, Defendants' statements about its business, operations, and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked reasonable basis at all relevant times.

If you purchased or otherwise acquired RenovaCare shares and suffered a loss, are a long-term stockholder, 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/20210719005835/en/

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[July 19, 2021] KEY Difference Media Promotes School of Block - A Blockchain Education Platform from Ledger

Miami, FL, July 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (via Blockchain Wire) Ledger and KEY Difference Media (KDM), two companies dedicated to the propagation and multidimensional use of blockchain technology and all its existing and future applications as part of the 4th industrial revolution are working together to promote Ledgers School of Block. KEY Difference Media is a blockchain full suite marketing agency with an impressive 15 years track record within the content marketing space and prominent blockchain player since 2013. KEY Difference Media has worked with the earliest of the gaming companies that incorporated Bitcoin as a payment option to the earliest of exchanges, token sales, NFTs and multiverses. As a 350+ experts team, KEY Difference Media offers advisory, content marketing, influencer marketing, and public relations, among many other services. Ledger is a reputable blockchain security and infrastructure solution provider launched in 2014 by eight expertswith complementary backgrounds in embedded security, cryptocurrencies and entrepreneurship. They provide hardware and software wallets with tamper-proof chips to help users safeguard digital assets and protect them against malicious attacks.



Both KEY Difference Media and Ledger have been around in the blockchain industry long enough to acknowledge that the proper knowledge is not readily accessible for novices or experts alike in this space. That is why they have come together to promote the latest brainchild of the Ledger company, School of Block. School of Block is a Blockchain education initiative that aims to bring the fundamentals of Blockchain technology and the opportunities that abound within the space to everyone, no matter their previous level of education. School of Block fills a void that desperately needs to be filled. Before this, blockchain education was boring, overwhelming, and uninspiring, with many technical terms being thrown around until the students became effectively bamboozled. - Karnika E. Yashwant (Mr. KEY), CEO, KEY Difference Media.

This dearth of valuable and dynamic education inspired Ledger to roll out its School of Block academy. Some of the quality that School of Block provides include - The lectures are delivered in short bursts so that students can complete each lecture at once.

The lessons are fun with many graphical and real-life applications to bring the point closer to home.

Verifiable information sourced from the most trustworthy origins to prevent students from getting thrown around by conflicting opinions.

Equipping students to be self-sufficient learners and followers of the Blockchain, instead of being spoon-fed all their lives without any independence of thought or curiosity. To learn more about KEY Difference Media, their process and success, click here.

Contact:

Foivos Floros KEY Difference Media foivos@keyfoundation.xyz







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[July 20, 2021] 2021 New Growth Drivers Fair opens in Qingdao

QINGDAO, China, July 19, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- On July 15, 2021, the 2021 New Growth Drivers Fair  Qingdao kicked off at the China Railway Qingdao Expo City International Exhibition Center. The principal aim of the event is to amplify the message about Shandong province's ongoing openness to international partnerships in line with the mission of leveraging existing resources and advantages to provide additional impetus to the province's growth. The fair, themed "New Pattern, New Growth Drivers, New Opportunity", consisted of conferences and exhibitions, physical and cloud-based exhibitions, alongside on-site interactive activities and investment promotions, showcasing Shandong's industrial advantages, growth opportunities and achievements in transforming traditional industries through the application of the newest and most promising technologies. The event is jointly organized by the Shandong Provincial Party Committee and the Shandong Provincial Government. In addition to 55 independent exhibitors, 583 companies attended the event as members of trade delegations and displayed their wares and services in a 23,500 square meter exhibition space, while 509 firms showcased their products and technologies online. The world's and China's top 500 compnies made up approximately 40 percent of the exhibitors, including Cisco (US), Siemens (Germany) and Sika (Switzerland), while several Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Shandong province were also present, led by Shandong Energy, Shandong Heavy Industry, Haier and Weiqiao Pioneering.



Fair highlights: - The event helped inspire confidence among many international firms in investing in Shandong by showcasing the results of partnerships between the province and several multinationals. At the "Multinationals and Shandong" pavilion reserved for themed exhibitions, government officials from 16 cities collectively presented the results achieved by collaborating with multinational companies and explained their plans for the next stage of growth as well as their intentions to further deepen the existing partnerships. The officials also elaborated on the developments of key local firms, leaders across the markets, brands, uniquely competitive industries and major industrial parks.

- The fair demonstrated the province's proven capabilities in consolidating its industry infrastructure and serving multinationals and global leaders by building a comprehensive, robust industrial ecosystem. - The strong lineup of products that were launched during the event, among them, the global debut of Shandong Heavy Industry's high-end VGV SUV, the world's first high-reliability 5G private network system for the mining sector from Shandong Energy Group, and an innovative communications service developed for China's energy sector that integrates an intercontinental private network with the video convergence features of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System, demonstrated the extent to which the fair is becoming one of the most important annual events for promoting the province's economy. Shandong Heavy Industry also displayed the world's first diesel engine that achieves 50 percent thermal efficiency, the high-end hydrogen-powered Yellow River X7 tractor, and China's first CVT tractor and first pure electric bulldozer. - The event included a cloud-based exhibition platform. With the exhibits of the 16 cities presented panoramically using VR technology, an immersive experience awaited online attendees who virtually visited the booths, at which they could learn about featured products and watch a promotional video. All organizations that participated in the event online were given an opportunity to broadcast their roadshows live via the platform. Nearly 300 firms signed over 60 letters of intent as a result of their online presence at the event. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/2021-new-growth-drivers-fair-opens-in-qingdao-301337011.html SOURCE Information Office of the People's Government of Shandong Province

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[July 20, 2021] Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction Completes Fourth Investment in NuScale Power

NuScale Power announced today Doosan Heavy Industries and Construction (DHIC) has agreed to complete a cash investment in NuScale to continue to support deployment of its groundbreaking small modular reactor (SMR). In 2019, Doosan was joined by financial investors that collectively invested $44 million in NuScale. Marking the next step in the strategic relationship between NuScale and DHIC, this is the fourth investment from DHIC and its financial partners in a two-year span. Including the latest investment of $60 million, DHIC and its financial investors have invested more than $100 million in NuScale, further demonstrating their confidence in the promising potential and viability of NuScale's technology to transform the clean energy sector. The strategic relationship between NuScale and DHIC was established in 2019, and resulted in NuScale awarding DHIC a manufacturing consulting services contract. Under this strategic partnership, DHIC is bringing its expertise in nuclear pressure vessel manufacturing and has joined a U.S.-led manufacturing team to build NuScale's groundbreaking NuScale Power Module (NPM), America's first small modular reactor. DHIC will be a source for certain forgings associated with the NPM as well as key parts of the reactor pressure vessels. DHIC is a preferred supplier for additional scopes of supply central to delivering a NuScale Plant. This latest investment ensures that NuScale and DHIC will continue in this strategic relationship for many years to come. "NuScale is delighted to welcome Doosan's continuing investment in and commitment to commercializing America's first small modular reactor," said John Hopkins, NuScale Power Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. "Doosan's expertise in heavy manufacturing will be invaluable as we move forward with the construction of our first NuScale Power Plant at the Idaho National Laboratory in just a few years, and we are thankful for their ongoing support and ndorsement of our groundbreaking technology."



"Through this additional investment, Doosan and NuScale Power will further solidify their strategic cooperative relationship," said Geewon Park, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction. "The large scope of supply secured from NuScale Power will also offer momentum and new opportunities to the domestic supply chain." In August 2020, NuScale made history as the first and only SMR to receive design approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and in July of 2021, the Commission published the proposed rule that would certify the NuScale design - a crucial step towards the construction and deployment of this SMR technology. The company maintains strong program momentum toward commercialization of its SMR technology, including supply chain development, standard plant design, planning of plant delivery activities, and startup and commissioning plans.

About NuScale Power NuScale Power has developed a new modular light water reactor nuclear power plant to supply energy for electrical generation, district heating, desalination, hydrogen production and other process heat applications. This groundbreaking small modular reactor (SMR) design features a fully factory-fabricated NuScale Power Module capable of generating 77 MW of electricity using a safer, smaller, and scalable version of pressurized water reactor technology. NuScale's scalable design-power plants that can house up to four, six, or 12 individual power modules-offers the benefits of carbon-free energy and reduces the financial commitments associated with gigawatt-sized nuclear facilities. The majority investor in NuScale is Fluor Corporation, a global engineering, procurement, and construction company with a 70-year history in commercial nuclear power. NuScale is headquartered in Portland, OR and has offices in Corvallis, OR; Rockville, MD; Charlotte, NC; Richland, WA; and London, UK. Follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) : @NuScale_Power, Facebook (News - Alert) : NuScale Power, LLC, LinkedIn (News - Alert) : NuScale-Power, and Instagram: nuscale_power. Visit NuScale Power's website. About Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction is a leading Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contractor offering a wide range of services ranging from the manufacturing of castings and forgings, power generation systems and desalination facilities to the construction of power plants. Doosan maintains high quality standard based on the extensive experiences in manufacturing major components of nuclear power plants. Doosan has an integrated manufacturing facility in Changwon, Korea which is capable from raw material production to final assembly of nuclear components. Doosan has manufactured and supplied 33 Reactor Vessels & 120 Steam Generators globally. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210719005794/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Great Place to Work(R) Announces the Best Workplaces in Asia(TM) 2021 Representing +3.3 Million Employee Experiences

SINGAPORE, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Great Place to Work, the global authority on workplace culture, surveyed over 3.3 million employees from across 16 diverse countries and cultures in Asia and the Middle East to determine the Best Workplaces in Asia 2021. This is the largest survey of employee experiences in Asia. To be named as best in Asia, these 200 companies were the highest ranked on Great Place to Work Best Workplaces National lists across the region. This recognition is based on confidential survey data assessing employee experiences of trust, innovation, company values and leadership. Companies are also evaluated on how well they are creating a For All workplace experience, inclusive of all employees no matter who they are or what they do. On average, companies ranked on the Best Workplaces in Asia scored 10% better than those that made it to the National list level  an incredibly high bar as such workplaces are the best of the best in their own country. The Best Workplaces in Asia also had 15% more employees report: Feeling that management involves people in its decision-making

Receiving special and unique benefits

Receiving a fair share of the profits made by the organization For companies on National lists across Asia, 70% of employees said they experience well-being at work (defined by factors such as feeling cared for and believing their workplace is a psychologically and emotionally healthy place to work). But that number jumps even higher to 81% at the Best Workplaces in Asia. "The Best Workplaces in AsiaTM set the bar for company culture by supporting employee well-being and building inclusive workplaces that are good for everyone," said Michael C. Bush, Global CEO of Great Place to Work. "They demonstrate how much they value their most important resource  their people. Thanks to these companies, more than 3.3 million employees benefit from the highest working conditions in a range of industries across Asia." Highlights from the Best Workplaces in Asia 2021 Topping the list for the second year in a row in the multinational category are shipping company DHL Express and hotelier Hilton - both holding onto their 2020 first and second-place rankings, respectively. In the large category, PAP Community Foundation (Singapore), Talawakelle Tea Estates (Sri Lanka), and KB Kookmin Card (South Korea) claimed the top three spots. Canva (Philippines) topped the list in the small-medium business (SMB) category, followed by Charity Committee for Orphans Care (ENSAN) (Saudi Arabia) and THE One (UAE). Several new entries made the list this year, including luxury retailer Chalhoub Group, telecom company Ericsson, medical device supplier Medtronic, and financial services brands American Express and Synchrony. All of these brands made it into the top 15 multinational workplaces in Asia. This year, COVID-19 brought physical and mental well-being front of mind for both employers and employees. In China, Hilton provided a live-stream lecture on return-to-work safety with the chief doctor of the Shanghai Centre for Disease Control and the director of infectious diseases at Huashan Hospital. In India, Medtronic introduced a vaccination program for employees and their families. Lighting company Signify has in-house doctors available 2-3 days per week. In the Philippines, Canva is offering free COVID vaccinations for all employees and their household families. The top 30 in the multinational category:







1. DHL Express 16. PayPal 2. Hilton 17. SAP 3. Cisco 18. FedEx 4. Chalhoub Group 19. Apparel Group 5. Landmark Group 20. DISCO Corporation 6. Marriott 21. AbbVie 7. Ericsson 22. SAS 8. Salesforce 23. Amgen 9. American Express 24. Maersk 10. Cadence 25. S&P Global 11. Medtronic 26. Siemens Healthineers 12. General Mills 27. Al-Dabbagh Group 13. Synchrony 28. EY 14. Stryker 29. Roche 15. Micron 30. Signify

How Great Place to Work determines the Best Workplaces in Asia Great Place to Work identifies the Best Workplaces in Asia by analyzing companies' workplace programs and surveying employees across Asia and the Middle East about the key factors that create great workplaces for all. To be considered, companies must first be identified as outstanding in their local region by appearing on one or more of our Best Workplaces lists in Greater China (including Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan), India, Japan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka or UAE during 2020 or early 2021. Companies rank in three size categories: Small and Medium (10-499 employees); Large (500+); and Multinational. Multinational organizations are also assessed on their efforts to create great workplaces across multiple countries in the region. They must appear on at least two National lists in Asia and the Middle East and have at least 1,000 employees worldwide with at least 40% (or 5,000) of those employees located outside the headquarters country. About Great Place to Work Great Place to Work is the global authority on workplace culture. Since 1992, they have surveyed more than 100 million employees worldwide and used those deep insights to define what makes a great workplace: trust. Their employee survey platform empowers leaders with the feedback, real-time reporting and insights they need to make strategic people decisions. Everything they do is driven by the mission to build a better world by helping every organization become a great place to work For AllTM. Learn more at greatplacetowork.com.sg and on LinkedIn, Facebookand Instagram. Media Contact:

Lleufer Sinsua, Lleufer.sinsua@greatplacetowork.com, +65-6338-2301 SOURCE Great Place to Work

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[July 20, 2021] Kirloskar and CNN continue their partnership in the 13th year with a strong focus on green innovations

HONG KONG, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) and Kirloskar, India's leading multi-engineering conglomerate, are entering their 13th consecutive year of partnership around the continued success of CNN's 'Going Green' to engage audiences around the world in a more sustainable future. This long-standing partnership is focused on Kirloskar being the exclusive sponsor of 'Going Green' as part of a long-term campaign designed at reaching global audiences, particularly business decision-makers. Over the years the campaign has reached influential audiences across the globe including 500millon+ environmentally conscious viewers and over 250million business decision-makers to raise worldwide awareness around green innovations. The 2021 advertising campaign includes Kirloskar's sponsorship of upcoming 'Going Green' shows and a range of digital content focused on the green agenda. The two 30-minute 'Going Green' episodes will air on CNN International in July and November, exploring green technology solutions for a sustainable future along with additional content across TV, digital and social platforms. Content across all platforms s focused on topics that pose ecological challenges and bring into focus innovators that are curating solutions to mitigate them.



Rob Bradley, Senior Vice President, CNN International Commercial, said "It is incredibly positive to see many large companies embrace sustainability and the future of our planet in both their business operations and their external messaging. In this context, we must admire a partner such as Kirloskar for their long-term commitment to this topic that impacts every one of us. We have long been proud of the stories told as part of CNN's Going Green programming, and I am equally proud of our continued relationship with Kirloskar as exclusive sponsor of this important part of CNN's output." Madhav Chandrachud, President, Kirloskar Proprietary Limited, said ''Kirloskar strongly supports sustainable initiatives that help create an eco-conscious lifestyle. Our engineering solutions help create products that foster an environment of green living among our consumers. Partnering with CNN, a global media leader that upholds the same values as Kirloskar, is a demonstration of our commitment to drive home this objective and be aligned with compelling stories that enable people to visualize the sustainability revolution."

About CNN International Commercial CNN International Commercial (CNNIC) is responsible for the business operations of CNN's properties outside of the United States. All commercial activities for brands such as CNN International, CNN en Espanol, CNN Arabic, CNN Style, CNN Business and Great Big Story are aligned within the division. This encompasses the advertising sales, sponsorship partnerships, commercial content development, content sales, brand licensing, distribution and out-of-home operations, business development and marketing for the world's leading international news provider. CNNIC is a recognised industry leader in international advertising sales and its use of award-winning commercial content, produced through its Create unit and driven by its advanced data usage and digital capabilities, has resulted in strong and enduring partnerships with many of the world's most recognised brands. Its Content Sales and Licensing unit has relationships with more than 1,000 affiliates ranging from licensing the CNN brand through to content supply contracts as well as offering consultancy services. CNNIC has offices across the world, with key hubs in London, Hong Kong and Miami. For more information visit http://commercial.cnn.com About Kirloskar India's first iron plough from the Kirloskar Group, not only became an instrument of wealth for the entire society but also kick started an industrial revolution in India. Today, building on its core engineering strength, the group's scope of operations spans across a gamut of industrial equipment ranging from Pumps, Eco-friendly Diesel Engines and Silent generating sets, Air & CNG Compressors, Air-conditioning and Refrigeration Equipment, Engine & Transmission castings and Group Captive Solar Farms. With a century old expertise, Kirloskar strives to bring about a positive transformation and smiles in the lives of its customers across the globe. For more information visit http://kirloskar.com/ SOURCE CNN International Commercial

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[July 20, 2021] Panakes Partners Announces the First Closing Of Its New 'Purple' Global Biotech/ Medtech Fund at 150 Million ($180 Million)

Panakes will use the successful closing of its second Fund to extend its investment activity to biotech, while maintaining its ongoing activity in medtech, the focus of Panakes first fund

Panakes plans to invest the new fund in companies at the forefront of global innovation with the potential to transform patient care, with a focus on Europe , and Italy in particular

Panakes' Purple Fund has been backed by the European Investment Fund (EIF), the Fund of Funds managed by CDP Venture Capital SGR, financial institutions and some of the main Italian companies operating in the Life Sciences sector MILAN, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Panakes Partners, the leading Italian venture capital firm in the Life Sciences sector, announces the first closing of its 150 million ($180 million) Purple Fund, the firm's second fund. Panakes' Purple Fund is currently the largest venture capital fund actively investing in Italian companies and the most significant fund dedicated wholly to the Life Sciences sector in Italy. The fund will invest in companies at the forefront of innovation, with a focus on Europe, and Italy in particular, which remains underserved in terms of Venture Capital funding. The Purple Fund is the second venture capital fund dedicated to life sciences launched by Panakes Partners. Panakes' first fund, raised in 2016, supported companies in the medtech sector. To-date it has invested in 12 portfolio companies, which have collectively received almost 200 million in funding. Thanks to this financial support, these companies have already brought five innovative medical products to the market and have a further ten products in active clinical trials. The Purple Fund has been backed by investors from the first fund as well as new investors. The Fund's two anchor investors are EIF and the Fund of Funds FoF VenturItaly managed by CDP Venture Capital SGR. The EIF investment is backed under both the InnovFin Equity initiative from the European Commission under Horizon 2020, the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, as well as the pan-European Guarantee Fund (EGF). These anchor investors have been joined by several Italian banking foundations and pension funds, as well as numerous Italian companies and family offices in the Life Sciences sector. These include Menarini, the Cogliati family (Elemaster Group), the Colombo family (SAPIO Group), the Rovati family (Rottapharm Biotech), the Petrone family (Petrone Group), the Re family (Digitec Group), the Bassani family (Movi Group) and others. The Purple Fund will invest mainly in Series A funding rounds, as well as later stage opportunities. The majority of investments will be in companies developing innovative therapeutics and products in the fields of biotechnology, diagnostics, and medical devices. The fund aims to support the growth of entrepreneurial companies who will reshape healthcare globally by addressing real medical needs, saving lives and providing a better quality of life for patients. By achieving these goals, the fund aims to generate value for both investors and for society as a whole. "We are delighted with the successful first close of our new Purple Fun, and we would like to thank the high-quality investors who have trusted us. Over 500 innovative life science companies have already submitted funding requests to us in the first six months of 2021," said Fabrizio Landi, President of Panakes and a founding partner of the firm alongside Diana Saraceni and Alessio Beverina. "The fund will remain open for additional subscribers until the end of the year, with a new target of 180 million. By expanding into the biotech sector, we hope to contribute to the growth of companies active in the development of new therapies and vaccines," concluded Landi.



"Panakes has established a strong track record and solid international credibility since it was created a few years ago, also with the support of the CDP Group," commented Enrico Resmini, Chief Executive Officer of CDP Venture Capital SGR. "We are delighted to invest in Panakes' second fund, as it extends its activity into biotechnology, a sector where long-term planning and the availability of capital is essential to finance the R&D that is expected to lead to the innovative new therapies of tomorrow." Alain Godard, Chief Executive of the European Investment Fund (EIF/FEI), added: "We are happy to once again support Panakes after our previous investment in its first fund. Panakes has managed to build a strong brand in Italy and beyond thanks to its expertise in identifying and investing in novel medtech opportunities. With the extension of its investment strategy into biotech and the resulting growth of the team, Panakes will be able to further support European Life Sciences companies, and particularly those in Italy, which have exceptional R&D but are strongly underserved in terms of Venture Capital funding. We are glad to be able to use both the InnovFin mandate from the European Commission and the direct backing of EU Member States under the European Guarantee Fund to further support this exciting market segment."

To support its expansion into the biotech sector, Panakes intends to recruit three new professionals with significant experience in drug discovery and development in the pharmaceutical industry to its existing team, which is currently made up of 11 professionals. Recently, Barbara Castellano has been promoted to the role of Partner, while the management team of the SGR has been strengthened with the arrival of a new CFO, Lorenzo Giordano, and a Financial Assistant, in the person of Andrea Steffanini. Panakes Advisory Board has also been expanded and strengthened with the appointment of Biotech and Digital Health industry experts Fabio Pammolli, Professor of Economics, Finance, and Management Science at Politecnico di Milano, and Sergio Abrignani M.D. Ph.D. Full Professor at the National Institute of Molecular Genetics (INGM) in Milan. About Panakes Panakes Partners is a Milan-based venture capital firm that aims to improve the lives of people around the world by providing the most promising companies and teams with the financial and corporate support needed to build the next generation of companies bringing revolutionary technologies and products to the field of life sciences. Panakes was founded in 2015 by Fabrizio Landi, Alessio Beverina and Diana Saraceni. www.Panakes.it About CDP Venture Capital SGR  Fondo Nazionale Innovazione CDP Venture Capital is an asset management company (70% owned by CDP Equity and 30% owned by Invitalia) with over 1 billion euro of assets under management. It aims to make Venture Capital a strategic pillar to Italy's economic development and innovation, creating the conditions for a comprehensive and sustainable growth of the Venture Capital ecosystem. It operates through a series of funds that aim to support startups in all their life cycle stages, making both direct and indirect investments. About EIF The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank Group. Its central mission is to support Europe's micro, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) by helping them to access finance. EIF designs and develops venture and growth capital, guarantees and microfinance instruments which specifically target this market segment. In this role, EIF fosters EU objectives in support of innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth, and employment. The EIF investment is supported by InnovFin Equity, with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020, the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020). Through or alongside selected Venture Capital (VC), Business Angels (BA), Technology Transfer funds and funds-of-funds, the EU provides risk capital financing to enterprises, research organisations, universities in their proof-of-concept, pre-seed, seed, start-up and other early-stage phases allowing them to set up or reach their next stage of development. The EIF participation is also backed under the European Guarantee Fund (EGF), which was set up by the EIB Group with contributions from Italy and other EU Member States to shield companies suffering from the COVID-19 crisis. Using nearly EUR 25 billion in guarantees, the EGF allows the EIB and the EIF to quickly make loans, guarantees, asset-backed securities, equity and other financial instruments available to mostly small and medium-sized enterprises. The EGF is part of the European Union's recovery package aiming to provide a total of EUR 540 billion boost those parts of the EU economy that have been hit the worst. Media Contacts: Panakes Partners

news@panakes.it MEDiSTRAVA Consulting Sylvie Berrebi, David Dible

panakes@medistrava.com

Tel: +44 (0)20 7638 9571

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[July 20, 2021] Virtuozzo Acquires OnApp, Enabling More Comprehensive Intuitive Cloud Infrastructure Solutions for Service Providers

Virtuozzo's mission is to help shape the future of the cloud by empowering service providers with comprehensive, high performance, flexible and easy-to-use cloud infrastructure solutions supporting private, public and hybrid cloud use cases. To that end, Virtuozzo, a global leader in high-efficiency virtualization and hyperconverged software solutions, today announced it is acquiring OnApp, a London-based software company focused on cloud solutions for service providers. The acquisition augments Virtuozzo's existing cloud IaaS and PaaS products while expanding its regional market reach. Future-proofed Cloud Flexibility, Simplicity and Automation The combined technological and R&D strengths of both companies directly target the evolving needs of Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), Managed Service Providers (MSPs), and Hosting Providers focused on providing IaaS, PaaS and XaaS solutions for their customers. The resulting solution stack will pair Virtuozzo's easy-to-use virtualization, containerization, storage and orchestration capabilities with advanced features of OnApp's flexible self-service management platform. In turn, service providers will gain access to today's most intuitive and robust cloud infrastructure and platform solutions capable of supporting any cloud use case. "Virtuozzo's primary expertise has traditionally been in high-density server virtualization and software-defined storage. We have successfully expanded over the last few years into hyperconverged infrastructure as it is crucial to the market's evolution," said Alex Fine, Virtuozzo CEO. "Simple, flexible and smart access to those strong, fundamental technologies is core to the success of MSPs, CSPs and Hosting Providers and therefore, core to ours. OnApp shares that commitment and brings to Virtuozzo incredible engineering talent and complementary technologies that help us advance the cloud infrastructure industry as a whole. We're roud and excited to have the OnApp team on board."



Market Growth Driving Innovation Timing and demand are key factors behind the acquisition. Synergy Research Group recently reported that cloud infrastructure demand reached $129 billion in 2020, growing 35% year over year. About a third of this market is owned by non-hyperscalers-local, regional and multi-national service providers. Those providers are the beneficiaries of Virtuozzo technology.

In parallel, 451 Research (News - Alert) , a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, recently discussed in its 2021 analysis Demand and Opportunity in the Alternative Cloud Provider Market a potential new opportunity for alternative CSPs, noting that they may find a role in larger multi-cloud portfolios and that "alternative can mean 'in addition to' rather than 'instead of.'"1 Collectively, these reports suggest that alternative CSPs and MSPs are well-positioned to become partners of choice for customers shifting to modern cloud services. "In addition to OnApp technical expertise in cloud orchestration, user interface and content delivery networks, Virtuozzo sees the value our highly talented staff brings to the table," stated Ditlev Bredahl, CEO, OnApp. "Integration and evolution of the joint solution stack will be strongly beneficial to the customers of both companies." Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Per the agreement, OnApp will continue operation as a division of Virtuozzo with OnApp's staff integrating into Virtuozzo's organizational structure. Business will continue as usual with Bredahl assisting with post-acquisition integration. About OnApp OnApp provides software and services that enable hosts, MSPs and telecoms providers to create and sell their own public, private and hybrid clouds. OnApp launched in July 2010, and to date has deployed more than 6,000 clouds for service providers in 93 countries. OnApp has 130 staff across the EU, U.S. and Asia-Pacific and is headquartered in London, UK. For more information, visit https://onapp.com. About Virtuozzo Virtuozzo (www.virtuozzo.com) is a leading, global provider of hybrid virtualization, storage, and cloud enablement software solutions. The Company's software-defined, hyperconverged self-service platform and resource management capabilities enable hosting and service providers to provide end-customers with public and private cloud services. Virtuozzo is an industry pioneer who developed the first commercially available container technology 21 years ago. The Company provides software solutions and services to over 450 service providers, ISVs, and enterprises worldwide to enable over 500 thousand virtual environments, running mission-critical cloud workloads. A significant force in the open-source community, Virtuozzo sponsors and/or is a contributor to numerous open-source projects including KVM, Docker, OpenStack, OpenVZ, CRIU, and the Linux kernel. 1 Demand and Opportunity in the Alternative Cloud Provider Market, Liam Eagle, 451 Research, a part of S&P Global Market Intelligence. January 2021. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005004/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Enablon Recognized Twice - including for Top Product of the Year - in 2021 Environment + Energy Leader Awards

CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Its twice the honor: Enablon, a leading global provider of software solutions for Integrated Risk, Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) and Operational Risk Management, today announces that it has won two awards from Environment + Energy Leader. The company received honors for Top Product of the Year for its Enablon Vision Platform as well as Top Project of the Year for its ESG metrics solution  a joint development with EY.

The Environment + Energy Leader Awards commemorate the most successful and innovative products in the energy, environmental and sustainability industries. Enablon earned the Product of the Year and Project of the Year distinctions for the companys relentless pursuit of helping customers operate responsibly, productively and safely through all-inclusive, customizable software solutions. With Enablon, organizations have all the data and tools needed to manage their environmental, safety and health risks. Top Product of the Year: Enablon Vision Platform

The Enablon Vision Platform brings together EHS, Risk and Operations in a single user interface, providing operations and risk personnel greater insight and visibility into key business functions. Every day, we help our customers create a responsible, productive and safe world by breaking down silos across organizations, so that customers can identify, fine-tune and achieve their environmental management goals, said Laurent Dechaux, VP and Managing Director at Wolters Kluwer Enablon. Our Enablon Vision Platform not only allows organizations to manage environmental performance, but also to manage the health and safety of their workers and assets in one streamlined SaaS-enabled solution. Top Project of the Year: EYs and Enablons ESG Metrics Solution

Built on the Enablon cloud platform, Enablon and EYs joint ESG risk management and reporting solution helps provide organizations with end-to-end management and centralized reporting of critical data. The solution aligns with a variety of the most relevant sustainability standards and frameworks and is designed to provide advanced ESG management. This enables users to manage, track and report ESG data and strategies in one centralized tool. Enablon and EY will give a presentation on their joint solution at the official awards ceremony  the Solutions Summit. To register,click here.



Presentation Title: Unravel the ESG thread: How to use innovative solutions to assist in your ESG journey Presenters:  Oceane Rabillon, Product Manager  Sustainability & ESG, Wolters Kluwer Enablon  Bryn Pittinger, Manager, Ernst & Young LLP Date, Time: Wednesday, July 21, 2021

10:30 a.m. ET Enablons clients include major global corporations in industries such as oil and gas, mining, food and beverage, manufacturing, consumer goods, and more. For more information, visit www.enablon.com. About the Environment + Energy Leader Awards

For nearly a decade, the Environment + Energy Leader Awards have celebrated excellence in the world of environmental, sustainability and energy management. Award winners are truly buzz-worthy, and companies that sport a Top Project or Top Product of the Year Award badge are known to be the best of the best. When other companies are seeking a sustainability or energy management solution, they know that E+E Product of the Year Award winners offer a significant group of products, vetted by experts, to peruse for help in making their decisions. Project of the Year Award winners are known to illustrate how sustainability and energy management projects can successfully help other companies improve the bottom line.

About Enablon, a Wolters Kluwer business

Enablon, a Wolters Kluwer business, is the worlds leading provider of integrated software solutions for risk and compliance; engineering and operations; environment, health, safety and quality (EHSQ) and sustainability. We help create a better world by making organizations responsible, productive and safe through innovative technology. Hundreds of industry-leading enterprises and millions of users worldwide rely on our solutions to minimize risks, increase worker safety, prevent incidents from happening, achieve regulatory compliance and reduce environmental impact. For more information, visit www.enablon.com, and follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Wolters Kluwer (WKL) is a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with technology and services. Wolters Kluwer reported 2020 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The group serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries, and employs approximately 19,200 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.wolterskluwer.com, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Media Contact:

Astrid Greve-Spencer

Global Associate Director, Corporate Affairs and Communications

Wolters Kluwer Enablon

M: +1.708.427.8429

E: astrid.greve@wolterskluwer.com



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[July 20, 2021] Kemper Announces Schedule for Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Release

Kemper Corporation (NYSE: KMPR) announced today that after the markets close on Thursday, July 29, 2021, Kemper will issue its second quarter 2021 earnings release, financial supplement and Form 10-Q. Following their publication, these documents will be available on the investor section of kemper.com. Kemper will host its conference call to discuss second quarter 2021 results on Thursday, July 29, 2021, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern (4:00 p.m. Central). The conference call will be accessible via the internet and by telephone at 844.826.3041. To listen via webcast, register onlie at the investor section of kemper.com at least 15 minutes prior to the webcast to install any necessary software.



A replay of the webcast will be available online at the investor section of kemper.com. About Kemper

The Kemper family of companies is one of the nation's leading specialized insurers. With $14.2 billion in assets, Kemper is improving the world of insurance by providing affordable and easy-to-use personalized solutions to individuals, families and businesses through its Auto, Personal Insurance, Life and Health brands. Kemper serves over 6.3 million policies, is represented by more than 30,000 agents and brokers, and has nearly 10,000 associates dedicated to meeting the ever-changing needs of its customers. Learn more about Kemper. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005427/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Merakris Announces Agreement With Miracles In Sight Eye Bank To Supply Opticyte Repair Grafts to Eye Surgeons

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Research Triangle Park-based biotechnology company Merakris Therapeutics has reached an agreement with Miracles In Sight (MIS) to supply Opticyte Amniotic Ophthalmic Repair Grafts to MIS-affiliated eye surgeons in three states.

MIS, one of the largest non-profit eye banks in the world, provides high-quality tissue for corneal transplants to restore, preserve and enhance sight. The Winston-Salem, NC- headquartered organization also partners with innovators globally to evaluate new processes and products that address evolving ophthalmic challenges. MIS is affiliated with more than 70 eye clinics in North and South Carolina and Texas that will now have ready access to Opticyte through the Merakris partnership. Opticyte Amniotic Ophthalmic Repair Grafts provide a biological barrier intended to protect the corneal surface of the eye during healing and to help prevent the formation of scar tissue. The product also supports cell attachment and ingrowth and is commonly used as a supplemental biological barrier in patients treated for dry eye disease or other corneal defects. The grafts, derived from amniotic membrane, are available in different shapes and sizes to address a variety of surgical needs. We are excited to begin this new partnership with Miracles In Sight as we continue to grow through new additions to the Merakris family of products, said Chris Broderick, the companys CEO. During the past year we have launched Opticyte through a variety of channels, ranging from business-to-business sales to strategic partnerships like this one. We know the MIS team well and we are eager to fully support their clinics across these three service areas. At Miracles in Sight, our mission is to support the restoration, preservation and enhancement of site, said Kristen McCoy, vice prsident of Surgical Applications. This partnership aligns with our mission and allows us to expand our service options. We are excited to work with Merakris to make the Opticyte product available to our community of physicians.



Miracles In Sight is scheduled to debut Opticyte at the annual meeting of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery (ASCRS) in Las Vegas July 23-27. About Merakris Therapeutics

Merakris Therapeutics, founded in 2016, is a leader in researching, developing and marketing regenerative healthcare products. The company is pioneering the use of commercially scalable stem cell-derived biotherapeutic technologies that promote the healing of damaged tissue. Its mission is to improve global patient care and outcomes through regenerative biotechnologies. In addition to Opticyte, the companys products include: Dermacyte Amniotic Wound Care Liquid, a non-cellular, sterile-filtered amniotic fluid subcutaneous biologic injection for wound healing.

Dermacyte Matrix, a human amniotic membrane tissue graft that provides a protective covering to skin wounds and surgical sites.

Topical Platelet Rich Plasma concentration system for aesthetic skin rejuvenation.

For more information, please see www.merakris.com. If you are interested in learning about partnership opportunities with Merakris Therapeutics, contact Matt Murray at 919-921-8105 (x113). About Miracles In Sight Originally known as the North Carolina Eye Bank, Miracles in Sight is one of the largest non-profit eye banks in the world  helping restore sight and changing the lives of thousands of patients each year. The organization provides ophthalmologists with high-quality tissue for corneal transplants and partners with innovators globally to develop new, cutting edge processes and products to meet evolving ophthalmic needs. MIS conducts each step of the corneal recovery process with precision, care and compassion. True to its mission of restoring sight, it collaborates with doctors and scientists to develop innovative solutions and also assists others in the field by providing advanced training, fellow sponsorships and research. Through its active philanthropy program, MIS supports an eye bank in India, a mission in South America, and helps new eye banks create technical programs. MIS is dedicated to providing care and compassionate support to donor families, ophthalmologists and recipients around the world. For additional background, please visit www.miraclesinsight.org. Media Contact Bryant Haskins

Otter Creek Communications

973/590-9537

bryanthaskins@gmail.com



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[July 20, 2021] Recce Pharmaceuticals Announces Lead Synthetic Anti-infective RECCE 327 Demonstrates Outstanding Efficacy Against Necrotizing Fasciitis 'Flesh-Eating' Bacteria

Highlights

RECCE  327 (R327) shown to reduce deadly flesh-eating bacterial count Below Limit of Quantification (BLOQ) within 24 hours, at varying concentrations

R327 BLOQ efficacy as early as 30 minutes in C. perfringens  a leading bacterial cause of myonecrosis (gas gangrene) 1

99.9% (3-log) bacterial reduction achieved in all bacteria tested, at various concentrations

Data demonstrates R327s potential against bacterial infections that thrive in nil/low oxygen environments i.e. diabetic wounds/ulcers infections SYDNEY, Australia, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Recce Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX:RCE) (FSE:R9Q) (Company), the Company developing new classes of synthetic anti-infectives, is pleased to announce positive efficacy of RECCE 327 (R327) against Clostridium perfringens (C. perfringens) and Streptococcus pyogenes (S. pyogenes), two main strains of bacteria associated with necrotizing fasciitis, also known as flesh-eating disease  a life-threatening bacterial infection with a mortality rate of up to 80%.2 Chief Scientific Officer, Michele Diliza, said, While necrotizing fasciitis is a rare and extremely challenging disease for physicians to manage, it is highly traumatizing for patients and their families, often leading to serious complications and even death. A broad spectrum anti-infective with rapid efficacy has the potential to significantly change the treatment paradigm and save lives. We have been thoroughly impressed with the efficacy that R327 has demonstrated thus far, as it reinforces our belief in the potential of this compound against such aggressive, life-threatening bacteria. The study was conducted by an independent contract research organization to evaluate the in vitro bactericidal properties of R327 against C. perfringens and S. pyogenes. Doses of R327 up to 4,800 parts per million (ppm) were tested, covering concentrations from 0.5x to 8x the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC). The strains tested were: S. pyogenes  a susceptible strain; S. pyogenes  an erythromycin-resistant strain; and C. perfringens. Figure 1: Bactericidal activity of R327 on C. perfringens:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/40aba38d-b7fe-4969-bc7e-9e1546fbd28d Figure 2: Bactericidal activity of R327 on S. pyogenes ATCC 19615:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/e2662c7a-af73-438b-a7da-46d8dab047c7 Figure 3: Bactericidal activity of R327 on erythromycin-resistant S. pyogenes BAA-946:

https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/106333ea-75aa-4ae8-a91f-63d680e7e0ec Time-kill summary, Time (hrs) with a 99.9% (3-log reduction) reduced bacterial count Compound Test Strain Test Concentration

(ppm) Time of 3-log

reduction (hrs) BLOQ*

(24hr count) R327

S. pyogenes - susceptible strain 4800 (8x MIC) 6 to 24 ? 2400 (4x MIC) 24 ? 1200 (2x MIC) 24 - S. pyogenes - erythromycin-resistant strain 2400 (8x MIC) 6 to 24 ? 1200 (4x MIC) 24 - 600 (2x MIC) 24 - C. perfringens 4000 (8x MIC) 0.5 to 24 ? 2000 (4x MIC) 0.5 to 24 ? 1000 (2x MIC) 3 to 24 ? 500 (1x MIC) 24 ?



Time of the 3-log10 reduction is the time point in which CFU counts at the respective test condition is reduced relative to the initial CFU counts by =3-log10. The initial CFU counts are at the start, time 0, of the assay.

*BLOQ  Below Limit of Quantification

The R327 concentrations and time points that yielded a bactericidal effect are as follows:

At hours 6 and 24, R327 showed bacteridical activity against the S. pyogenes susceptible strain at 1,200 ppm, 2,400 ppm and 4,800 ppm, while also achieving a BLOQ at the 24 hour count with concentrations of 2,400 ppm and 4,800 ppm (4X  8X MIC).

against the S. pyogenes susceptible strain at 1,200 ppm, 2,400 ppm and 4,800 ppm, while also at the 24 hour count with concentrations of (4X  8X MIC). In addition to the susceptible strain, R327 achieved bactericidal effect against the S. pyogenes erythromycin-resistant strain at concentrations 600, 1,200 ppm and 2,400 ppm (2X  8X MIC), while achieving a BLOQ at 2,400 ppm (8X MIC) in 24 hour counts.

(8X MIC) in 24 hour counts. R327 further demonstrated bactericidal effect against C. perfringens at 500 ppm, 1,000 ppm, 2,000 ppm and 4,000 ppm (1X  8X MIC) respectively, showing efficacy as early as 30 minutes, and a BLOQ at these concentrations in 24 hour counts.

S. pyogenes is a species of Gram-positive bacteria and can cause life-threatening infections such as scarlet fever, bacteremia (bacteria in the blood), pneumonia, necrotizing fasciitis, myonecrosis and streptococcal toxic shock syndrome. C. perfringens is also a Gram-positive pathogen that is a leading cause of myonecrosis and a species that thrives in nil/low oxygen environments, which can cause infections in diabetic wounds/ulcers  a common characteristic of bacterial anaerobes.  Stevens, D. L., Aldape, M. J., & Bryant, A. E. (2012). Life-threatening clostridial infections. Anaerobe, 18(2), 254-259.

 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK430756/ About Recce Pharmaceuticals Ltd

Recce Pharmaceuticals Ltd (ASX: RCE) is pioneering the development and commercialisation of New Classes of Synthetic Anti-Infectives designed to address the urgent global health problems of antibiotic resistant superbugs and emerging viral pathogens. Recces anti-infective pipeline is unique and comprised of broad-spectrum synthetic polymer antibiotics RECCE 327, RECCE 435, and RECCE 529 for viral infections with unique mechanisms of action against hyper-mutation on bacteria and viruses, respectively. Patented lead candidate RECCE 327 as an intravenous therapy, is being developed for treatment of serious and potentially life-threatening infections including sepsis due to Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria including their superbug forms. Recces new antibiotic compound, RECCE 435, has been formulated for oral use. The FDA has awarded RECCE 327 Qualified Infectious Disease Product designation under the Generating Antibiotic Initiatives Now (GAIN) Act  labelling it for Fast Track Designation, plus 10 years of market exclusivity post approval. Further to this designation, RECCE 327 has been included on The Pew Charitable Trusts Global New Antibiotics in Development Pipeline as the only synthetic polymer and sepsis drug candidate in development. Recce wholly owns its automated manufacturing, ready to support first-in-human clinical trials. Recces anti-infective pipeline seeks to exploit the unique capabilities of RECCE technologies targeting synergistic, unmet medical needs. Corporate Contact

James Graham

Recce Pharmaceuticals Ltd

+61 (02) 8075 4585

James.graham@recce.com.au Media and Investor Relations (AU)

Andrew Geddes

CityPR

+61 (02) 9267 4511

ageddes@citypublicrelations.com.au Media and Investor Relations (USA)

Jordyn Temperato

LifeSci Communications

jtemperato@lifescicomms.com



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[July 20, 2021] iManage Achieves Level 2 Security Trust Assurance and Risk (STAR) Certification from Cloud Security Alliance

CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- iManage, the company dedicated to Making Knowledge WorkTM, today announced it has achieved Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Security Trust Assurance and Risk (STAR) Level 2 certification, a rigorous third-party independent assessment of the security of a cloud service provider (CSP).

The STAR programs publicly available registry recognizes assurance requirements and maturity levels of CSPs. It enables cloud customers to assess their security providers competency to deliver cloud services with strict and transparent security and privacy controls. The certification demonstrates that a cloud service provider conforms to the applicable requirements of the ISO/IEC 27001:2013 management system standard and has addressed requirements critical to cloud security as outlined in the CSA Cloud Controls Matrix criteria. CSA STAR Level 2 certification verifies for cloud customers the use of best practices and the security posture of the iManage Cloud and iManage Closing Folders.



Protecting and securing customer data is of utmost importance to iManage and its customers, said Martin Ward, Director of Security, Governance, and Compliance, iManage. Earning the CSA STAR certification highlights our commitment to providing industry-leading, best-practices security for the iManage global cloud infrastructure. The robust controls of the iManage Cloud security compliance program help customers demonstrate to their internal stakeholders and clients the breadth of security measures in place at iManage to protect customer data and maintain security and compliance in the cloud. iManage security practices consistently exceed industry standards, supported by the ongoing expansion of the companys security compliance certification and achievements.

The iManage certificate, issued by Schellman and Company, is available for download from the CSA STAR registry. In addition, iManages CSA STAR Level 1 Self-Assessment and the completed the Consensus Assessments Initiative questionnaire (CAIQ) are also available on the registry. Follow iManage via: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/imanage

Twitter: https://twitter.com/imanageinc

Blog: https://imanage.com/blog/ About iManage iManage is the company dedicated to Making Knowledge Work. Its intelligent, cloud-enabled, secure knowledge work platform enables organizations to uncover and activate the knowledge that exists inside their business content and communications. Advanced Artificial Intelligence and powerful document and email management create connections across data, systems, and people while leveraging the context of organizational content to fuel deep insights, informed business decisions, and collaboration. Underpinned by best-of-breed security and sophisticated workflows and governance approaches, iManage has earned its place as the industry standard by continually innovating to solve complex professional challenges and enabling better business outcomes for over one million professionals across 65+ countries. Visit www.imanage.com/ to learn more. Press Contact Information:

Anastasia Bullinger

iManage

Phone: +1 312 868 8411

press@imanage.com



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[July 20, 2021] B&G Foods Announces New Diversity Scholarship Program at The Culinary Institute of America

B&G Foods, Inc. (NYSE: BGS) announced today that it has founded the B&G Foods Scholarship at The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to support individuals from diverse backgrounds in their pursuits of culinary careers. With a goal of making culinary education and employment more accessible to all, the B&G Foods Scholarship will award five $10,000 grants to eligible students at the CIA each year with a total commitment of $1,000,000 in scholarships over the next eight years. Scholarship recipients who continue their education in good standing will receive the award each year until graduation. B&G Foods' partnership with the CIA is rooted in shared values of passion, collaboration, inclusion and empowerment. B&G Foods' story began in 1889 when two immigrant families came to America in search of a better life. What began with one pickle brand sold on the streets of New York City has become a portfolio of more than 50 iconic and beloved brands-including, B&G, Green Giant, Crisco, Ortega, Clabber Girl, Cream of Wheat, Dash, Victoria and Back to Nature. The scholarship is the latest addition to B&G Foods' ongoing support of the CIA, and underscores its commitment to help build a more diverse and inclusive future for the food industry. The company has also committed to making ongoing in-kind contributions of products and ingredients for use in CIA classrooms and invites students to continue their engagement with B&G Foods through mentorship, internships, and potential employment. Jordan Greenberg, Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer of B&G Foods stated, "Food is a universal language, and B&G Foods believes that the culinary arts are made infinitely more powerful with a diverse blend of people and perspectives. Whetherstudents seek employment in or outside the kitchen, B&G Foods hopes that these annual awards will promote greater diversity, equity and inclusion within the world of food."



"This scholarship program will help even more students realize their dreams of attending the world's premier culinary college," said Kevin Allan, Vice President of Advancement at the CIA. "We are grateful to B&G Foods for their ongoing support of our mission and our students' education." For more information about B&G Foods' corporate social responsibility efforts, including the company's environmental, sustainability and DEI efforts, please visit www.bgfoods.com/about/responsibility/.

About The Culinary Institute of America Founded in 1946, The Culinary Institute of America is the world's premier culinary college. Dedicated to developing leaders in foodservice and hospitality, the independent, not-for-profit CIA offers master's, bachelor's, and associate degrees with majors in culinary arts, baking & pastry arts, food business management, hospitality management, culinary science, and applied food studies. The college also offers executive education, certificate programs, and courses for professionals and enthusiasts. Its conferences, leadership initiatives, and consulting services have made the CIA the think tank of the food industry and its worldwide network of more than 50,000 alumni includes innovators in every area of the food world. The CIA has locations in New York, California, Texas, and Singapore. For more information, visit www.ciachef.edu. About B&G Foods, Inc. Based in Parsippany, New Jersey, B&G Foods and its subsidiaries manufacture, sell and distribute high-quality, branded shelf-stable and frozen foods across the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. With B&G Foods' diverse portfolio of more than 50 brands you know and love, including Back to Nature, B&G, B&M, Bear Creek, Cream of Wheat, Crisco, Dash, Green Giant, Las Palmas, Le Sueur, Mama Mary's, Maple Grove Farms, New York Style, Ortega, Polaner, Spice Islands and Victoria, there's a little something for everyone. For more information about B&G Foods and its brands, please visit www.bgfoods.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005475/en/

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[July 20, 2021] IDC and GTDC Announce Exclusive Partnership to Bring North American Distribution Sales Data to the Tech Industry

International Data Corporation (IDC) and the Global Technology (News - Alert) Distribution Council (GTDC) today announced an exclusive partnership to provide weekly sales data from GTDC members in the USA and Canada to IDC (News - Alert) . The data will be used to create IDC's newest product, the North America Weekly Distribution Tracker, powered by GTDC. The North America Weekly Distributor Tracker will provide the industry's most comprehensive view into technology distribution data and market trends in the United States and Canada. Using IDC's industry standard taxonomies, the new Tracker will provide unit and value market size and vendor share for multiple hardware and software product categories that are going from distribution to resellers and other segments of the channel. Among the GTDC members that will be contributing sales data to the Tracker are Almo Corporation, Arrow Electronics, D&H Distributing, Ingram Micro Inc, SYNNEX (News - Alert) Corporation, and Tech Data Corporation. "We are excited to announce this partnership with GTDC. By combining IDC's vast and detailed market data with GTDC's definitive data for 'sales through', IDC will be able to provide an even more comprehensive view on movement and trends in the technology market, analyzing different routes to market from the tech supplier to the tech buyer. A closer pulse on the market and a view of sales moving through the channel will be of great value for our clients," said Eric Prothero, senior vice president, Data Solutions at IDC.



"The GTDC and our member North America Distributors are very much looking forward to this partnership," said Frank Vitagliano, CEO of GTDC. "IDC is clearly an industry leading provider of market intelligence and analysis for the IT industry. The combination of its current services with the sales data from the GTDC member company Distributors will provide actionable and essential information regarding the trends and directions in the marketplace that cannot be replicated." IDC will be launching the North America Weekly Distribution Tracker, powered by GTDC later this year. In conjunction with the new Tracker, IDC will be offering ongoing webinars that will highlight key trends from the data and commentary from IDC's channel and technology analysts.

For more information about the North America Weekly Distribution Tracker, powered by GTDC, please contact Ruth Flynn at rflynn@idc.com. About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology, IT benchmarking and sourcing, and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data, and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter (News - Alert) at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights. About the GTDC The Global Technology Distribution Council is the industry consortium representing the world's leading tech distributors. GTDC members drive an estimated $150 billion in annual worldwide sales of products, services and solutions through diverse business channels. GTDC conferences support the development and expansion of strategic supply-chain partnerships that continually address the fast-changing marketplace needs of vendors, end customers and distributors. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005472/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Call for Submissions: Staples Connect Seeking Innovative Learning Products and Services in Second-Annual Breakthrough Project

As part of its continued evolution to Staples (News - Alert) Connect, the working and learning store, Staples US Retail today announced a call for submissions of innovative products or services that aim to support students in learning for its second-annual Breakthrough Project scheduled for Sept. of 2021. Now through Aug. 10, 2021, entrepreneurs and small businesses are invited to submit their products or services by visiting www.rangeme.com/staplesconnectbreakthrough2021 and following the steps for submission1. After the submission deadline, Staples Connect will select certain products and services to advance and be presented in a virtual, face-to-face meeting with Staples Connect buyers2. Following the completion of the virtual meetings, buyers will select products and services to be carried in select Staples Connect and Staples stores across the country. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005733/en/ The Staples Connect Breakthrough Project (Graphic: Business Wire)



The Staples Connect Breakthrough Project is designed to accelerate the path to market for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Staples Connect is seeking products and services targeted toward supporting students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade, including those in the following categories:

Kids Furniture

Organizational Solutions

Desk Accessories

Ergonomics

Tutoring

New Learning Tools & Aides

Technology

STEM/STEAM

Virtual Reality

Digital Collaboration Participants from last year's Breakthrough Project whose products were chosen to be sold in select Staples stores encourage those who've been waiting to be discovered to enter today. "The first annual Staples Connect Breakthrough Project was a breath a fresh air for us as a smaller vendor in a traditionally crowded marketplace," said Grant Thomas, Chief Executive Officer, Learning Advantage. "It was encouraging to have such a large window of opportunity to get our products into mass retail in a condensed timeframe. The Breakthrough Project has provided us with significant momentum as we enter the Back-to-School 2021 season, contributing to a sales lift of over 30% vs. the same period in 2020." Steps to Submit Innovators can follow the steps to submit their product or service by Aug. 10, 20211. The timeline from there is as follows: Product submission - Submit qualifying products or services by Aug. 10, 2021.

- Submit qualifying products or services by Aug. 10, 2021. Buyer match - Submissions will be reviewed by an expert buyer at Staples US Retail.

- Submissions will be reviewed by an expert buyer at Staples US Retail. Product review - Participants will receive an email notification once their product or service has been reviewed letting them know if their product or service has been selected to move to the next round.

- Participants will receive an email notification once their product or service has been reviewed letting them know if their product or service has been selected to move to the next round. Event - The Staples Connect Breakthrough Project - Finalists will present their product or service in a virtual, face-to-face meeting in Sept. 2021.

- The Staples Connect Breakthrough Project - Finalists will present their product or service in a virtual, face-to-face meeting in Sept. 2021. Winner notification - Finalists will be notified of the outcome of their meeting via email. Join the conversation on social with #TheBreakthroughProject. About Staples Connect With a focus on the community of small businesses and consumers, Staples Connect provides innovative products, services and inspiration essential to the new ways of working and learning. Staples Stores and Staples Connect retail locations serve millions of customers from entrepreneurs and small businesses to remote workers, parents, teachers, and students. Explore Staples Connect at a local Staples Store or online at StaplesConnect.com. About Staples Staples supports lifelong achievement for businesses and consumers however and wherever they work and learn today. With more than 1,000 retail locations, dedicated account teams, category professionals, innovative brands and a curated product assortment for businesses, entrepreneurs, educators and students, Staples provides customized solutions for continued professional and personal growth. The company operates in North America through retail stores, eCommerce, and direct sales, and is headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts. For more information about Staples, please visit us in store or online at staples.com. 1 By clicking the link, you will enter the Range Me site that Range Me operates and controls. Your use of the Range Me site is at your sole risk and is governed by Range Me's Terms of Service & Privacy Policy. 2 Selection of the products and services to be presented in a virtual, face-to-face meeting with Staples Connect buyers will be at Staples sole discretion. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005733/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Untether AI Announces Oversubscribed $125 Million Funding to Deploy High-Performance AI Inference Acceleration Chips

Untether AITM, the leader in at-memory computation and AI inference acceleration, today announced an oversubscribed $125 million funding round led by an affiliate of Tracker Capital Management, LLC ("Tracker Capital"), a stage-agnostic venture capital investor that principally invests in high-potential technology growth companies. Tracker Capital was founded by Stephen A. Feinberg who is also Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Cerberus Capital Management. The round was co-led by Intel Capital (News - Alert) , Intel Corporation's global investment organization, and included participation from new investor Canada Pension Plan Investment Board ("CPP Investments") and existing investor Radical Ventures. As part of the funding round, Tracker Capital Senior Advisor Dr. Shaygan Kheradpir will join Untether AI's Board of Directors. Previously, Dr. Kheradpir served as Verizon's Group CIO, Barclays Bank Group COO, and CEO of Coriant and Juniper Networks (News - Alert) . "I am pleased to add Tracker Capital to our prestigious group of investors and welcome Shaygan to our Board," said Arun Iyengar, CEO, Untether AI. "Tracker Capital's unmatched experience and relationships across sectors will help speed our engagements in multiple high-value markets, including telecom, technology, financial services, retail, and defense. I am also thrilled to welcome CPP Investments to the Untether AI family. With the new funding round and partnerships, we will be able to expand our current product reach and accelerate the development of our next generation products." Dr. Kheradpir commented on the investment from Tracker Capital: "Untether AI has a scalable architecture that provides a revolutionary approach to AI inference acceleration. Its industry-leading power efficiency can deliver the compute density and flexibility required for current and future AI workloads in the cloud, for edge computing, and embedded devices." In addition to new investors Tracker Capital and CPP Investments, all existing investors participated in the round, which further validates the benefits of at-memory compute and the progress made by Untether AI. Saf Yeboah-Amankwah, Intel Chief Strategy Officer added: "We have been an investor in Untether AI since the seed round. During that time Untether AI has assembled a world-class management team, developed and launched an exceptional product, and is now poised for growth in the burgeoning AI inference acceleration space." "AI has become a key enabling technology for many industries and Untether AI's novel compute architecture has the potential to accelerate adoption across a number of use cases providing a strong value proposition to its customers," said Leon Pedersen, Managing Director, Head of Thematic Investing, CPP Investments. "We seek to invest in innovative companies with strong market opportunities and we are pleased to support this leading Canadian AI technology company." Architecting the Next Generation of AI Compute The dramatic increase in the usage of AI, along with its heavy computational requirements, is overwhelming traditional computearchitectures, and drastically increasing power consumption in datacenters. Untether AI's at-memory compute architecture breaks through the computational bottleneck and changes the paradigm for AI compute efficiency. Untether AI's tsunAImi accelerator cards powered by runAI devices provide record-breaking energy efficiency and compute density for inference acceleration. The new funding enables the company to extend its leadership position, enhance its software offering, and build its next generation products.



Expanding Engagements in Multiple Markets With this latest funding round, Untether AI will be well-positioned to accelerate and expand its customer engagements across a multitude of markets. Since at-memory computation is both general purpose and extremely energy efficient, it can be used in a variety of industries and applications, including banking and financial services; natural language processing; autonomous vehicles; smart city and retail; and other applications that require high-throughput and low-latency AI acceleration.

About Untether AI Untether AI provides ultra-efficient, high-performance AI chips to enable new frontiers in AI applications. By combining the power efficiency of at-memory computation with the robustness of digital processing, Untether AI has developed a groundbreaking new chip architecture for neural net inference that eliminates the data movement bottleneck that costs energy and performance in traditional architectures. Founded in Toronto in 2018, Untether AI is funded by Tracker Capital, Intel Capital, CPP Investments, and Radical Ventures. www.untether.ai. About Tracker Capital A venture-focused investor based in New York, Tracker Capital aims to invest in high-potential technologies and companies across various end markets and stages of growth. Tracker Capital was founded by Stephen Feinberg, Co-Founder and Co-Chief Executive Officer of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P., as a separate and independent investment vehicle focused on early-stage investments. In addition to investing resources to fund development, Tracker Capital's venture-oriented platform provides guidance and operational support to entrepreneurs to help transform their ideas, concepts, technologies, and businesses into proven, sustainable organizations. About Intel Capital Intel Capital invests in innovative startups targeting artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, datacenter and cloud, 5G, next-generation compute and a wide range of other disruptive technologies. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested US$12.9 billion in more than 1,582 companies worldwide, and 692 portfolio companies have gone public or participated in a merger. Intel Capital curates thousands of business development introductions each year between its portfolio companies and the Global 2000. For more information on what makes Intel Capital one of the world's most powerful venture capital firms, visit www.intelcapital.com or follow @Intelcapital. About CPP Investments Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments) is a professional investment management organization that manages the Fund in the best interest of the more than 20 million contributors and beneficiaries of the Canada Pension Plan. In order to build diversified portfolios of assets, investments are made around the world in public equities, private equities, real estate, infrastructure and fixed income. Headquartered in Toronto, with offices in Hong Kong, London, Luxembourg, Mumbai, New York City, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and Sydney, CPP Investments is governed and managed independently of the Canada Pension Plan and at arm's length from governments. At March 31, 2021, the Fund totaled $497.2 billion. For more information, please visit www.cppinvestments.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter. All references to Untether AI trademarks are the property of Untether.AI. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005730/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Polysentry Awarded $950 Million Ceiling on Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) Contract for the US Air Force

Polysentry, a technology company that provides artificial intelligence (AI) enabled software platforms for analyzing large datasets, today announced that it has been awarded a $950 million ceiling contract with the United States Air Force. Under this award, Polysentry will offer its software in support of the Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) program, which is part of the Department of Defense's Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2) force modernization initiative. The awarded $950,000,000 ceiling indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract is for the maturation, demonstration and proliferation of capability across platforms and domains, leveraging open systems design, modern software and algorithm development in order to enable Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). This contract is part of a multiple award, multi-level security effort to provide development and operation of systems as a unified force across all domains (air, land, sa, space, cyber, and electromagnetic spectrum) in an open architecture family of systems that enables capabilities via multiple integrated platforms.



"Polysentry is honored to be included in the deployment of the U.S. Air Force's Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) with our AI-enabled data analysis platform for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) and Mission Planning," said Kevin Virgil, CEO of Polysentry. "We look forward to supporting the Department of Defense and this essential force modernization effort." About Polysentry

Polysentry Inc., based in McLean, Virginia and San Francisco, California, is a technology company that creates AI-enabled software platforms for both government and commercial sectors. For more information, please visit www.polysentry.com The Polysentry trademark is the exclusive property of Polysentry, Inc. All other Polysentry trademarks, service marks, and logos may be common law marks or are registered or pending registration. All other trademarks mentioned herein are used for identification purposes only and are trademarks of (and may be registered trademarks of) their respective companies.  2021 Polysentry, Inc. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005736/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Southern Cross, with Pioneer Consulting, lands Southern Cross NEXT submarine telecommunications cable in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Pacific Carriage Limited Inc (Delaware), operator of the Southern Cross Cable Network in the USA (Southern Cross), an independent submarine capacity provider of connectivity from the USA to Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, in collaboration with Pioneer Consulting , the full-service submarine fiber optic telecommunications consulting and project management company, have commenced the Los Angeles landing of the 15,857.8 km (9,854 mile) trans-Pacific Southern Cross NEXT (SX NEXT) submarine cable system that connects to Sydney and Auckland with branches linking Fiji, Tokelau, and Kiribati.

With overall project completion expected in early 2022, the $350 million Southern Cross NEXT cable will provide 72Tbit/s of capacity and will be the largest and lowest-latency submarine cable system ever built between Sydney and Los Angeles. The new route will add to the existing Southern Cross network ecosystem, which includes 12 cable stations and eight major datacenter hubs in Australia and the US. The Southern Cross network spans six countries and eight time zones, connected by over 45,000 km (28,000 mile) of cable - greater than the Earths circumference. Southern Cross CEO Laurie Miller says the SX NEXT cable, once completed early next year, will further enhance Southern Crosss fully diverse network ecosystem and help provide more solutions for the evolving demand between the USA, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. The completion of NEXT will interconnect Oceania to the key content centers in the USA and is a significant technical achievement marking arguably the longest single span submarine cable segment ever achieved to date, Miller said. This enhancement of the Southern Cross network will allow us to continue to evolve and provide resilient high-capacity connectivity solutions to key markets in he USA.



Pioneer Consulting served as shipboard representatives on the project, supervising cable loading, freighter transfer, laying operations, post-lay inspection and burial, and shore-end landings. Pioneer Consulting also supports Southern Cross in a comprehensive senior consulting capacity, which has included a range of responsibilities such as market analysis, survey oversight, route engineering, turn-key procurement and contract review, contractor coordination, COVID-19 risk analysis, project management, manufacturing audits, and quality assurance. Were proud to bring a full suite of Pioneers services to this project, to reach this tremendous milestone, and to have collaborated with Southern Cross to achieve unprecedented connectivity across the Pacific, said Gavin Tully, Managing Partner at Pioneer Consulting. "Multiple countries along the route will benefit from the fastest, most reliable broadband access ever to be available to them. Southern Cross NEXT paves the way for wider utilization of 5G and IoT, and Pioneer is honored to have played a role in this pivotal project.

About Southern Cross Cable Network

Southern Cross Cable Network provides fast, direct, and secure international bandwidth from Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii to the heart of the Internet in the USA. The Southern Cross Cable Network comprises two existing submarine communications cables with the new Southern Cross NEXT route due to be complete early 2022. Southern Cross provides high-speed, low-latency, resilient international connections to the U.S. West Coast, where global Internet hubs are located. Southern Cross Cable Network has offices in Bermuda, Sydney, Auckland, and Wellington. If you want to know more about Southern Crosss network solutions, please contact Mosaic Networx ( www.mosaicnetworx.com ) in the USA or Southern Cross at www.southerncrosscables.com About Pioneer Consulting

Pioneer Consulting offers a comprehensive set of services for the submarine fiber optic telecommunications system industry. The company provides clients with valuable technical and commercial insight into the challenging issues facing this unique industry. Recognizing the diverse nature of the submarine telecommunications marketplace, Pioneer Consulting has built a team of industry-leading experts who are able to work across traditional boundaries and provide businesses with the strategic intelligence and operational skills needed to make long-term business decisions and deliver results. Media Contacts

Eugene Hunt

Trevi Communications for Pioneer Consulting

gene@trevicomm.com

+1-978-750-0333 Media Manager

Southern Cross Cables Limited

media@sccn.co.nz A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/75bc6af4-7369-436d-b3fc-1b18a699d152



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[July 20, 2021] Zenput Announces $27 Million Series C Financing to Extend Leadership in Operations Execution

SAN FRANCISCO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Zenput, the global leader in operations execution solutions, today announced a $27 million Series C financing round led by Golub Capital with participation by existing investors, including Jackson Square Ventures, MHS Capital, and Goldcrest Capital. This brings the companys total funding to over $47 million, on the heels of approximately 100% revenue growth over the past year.

Founded in 2012, Zenputs cloud-based operations execution platform is now used in over 60,000 locations across 100+ countries by regional and global multi-unit operators, including Chipotle, Dominos, P.F. Changs, Five Guys, Smart & Final, and 7-Eleven, to automate how operating procedures, food safety, and public health protocols, and other key initiatives are rolled out and enforced. Given the distributed nature of their operations, restaurant, convenience store, and grocery chains typically struggle to quickly adapt to changing market conditions and have limited visibility into the quality of work happening in each store. Vladik and team have built Zenput into a fast-growing category leader, and theyve done so in an incredibly capital-efficient way, said Andy Steuerman, Vice Chair at Golub Capital. Were excited to leverage our software industry expertise to work with them to build on the companys success going forward. The challenges of the past year really underscored for our customers the criticality of beingable to manage the complexities and overall execution of work in one central place, especially when an operator might have dozens, hundreds or thousands of locations, said Vladik Rikhter, CEO and Co-Founder. With this round of funding well continue to invest to extend our platform in a range of areas that empower customers to drive quality execution every day, in every store.



The financing round comes on the heels of several company milestones including:

The company was recently recognized as one of Inc.s Best Places to Work for the third consecutive year

for the third consecutive year Zenput now has 120 employees, doubling its employee base in the last 12 months, including an expansion of the leadership team with the addition of Lydia Olu-Harding, Vice President of Customer Success and Support, who joined in April. The company expects to double its employee base again over the next 18 months.

Zenput was ranked by G2 the leader in Retail Task Management software, one of the core components of the companys Operations Execution Platform

in Retail Task Management software, one of the core components of the companys Operations Execution Platform The company launched a major expansion to its Zenput for Franchisors solution, and a series of enhancements to its food prep labeling and temperature monitoring solutions

solution, and a series of enhancements to its food prep labeling and temperature monitoring solutions Product usage grew significantly over the last 12 months, with daily activities completed per store increasing by 150%. To date, 1.5 billion questions have been answered through Zenput.

About Zenput

Zenput is how top operators elevate team execution in every store. Restaurant, retail, and other multi-unit operators such as Chipotle, P.F. Changs, Domino's, Smart & Final, and 7-Eleven use the platform to automate how operating procedures, public health and food safety protocols, and other key initiatives are rolled out and enforced. Supporting 60,000 locations in over 100 countries, Zenput turns strategy into action faster and equips teams to deliver on it. For more information, visit zenput.com. For more information contact David Karel at (800) 537-0227, or email hello@zenput.com.



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[July 20, 2021] Sunshine Biopharma Receives $0.9 Million in Additional Funding From RB Capital

MONTREAL, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Sunshine Biopharma Inc. (OTC PINK: SBFM), a pharmaceutical company focused on the research, development and commercialization of oncology and antiviral drugs, today announced that it has received additional funding from RB Capital Partners, Inc. (RB Capital) in the amount of $900,000. The investment is in the form of convertible debt with a conversion price set a premium to market of $0.30 per share. This brings the total to just over $3,500,000 that RB Capital has invested in Sunshine Biopharma to date. Sunshine Biopharma will use the proceeds of this new financing to advance the development of the COVID-19 protease inhibitor treatment and Adva-27a, the Companys flagship anticancer compound.

We are very pleased with the progress that Sunshine Biopharma has been making and we are happy to provide the Company with additional financial support for their drug development efforts, said Brett Rosen, managing partner of RB capital. We are delighted to have the continued support of RB Capital, said Camille Sebaaly, CFO of Sunshine Biopharma. The funds will be a great shot in the arm for our anticancer and COVID-19 projects, which are progressing as planned," he added. About Sunshine Biopharma Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed the lives of over 4 million people worldwide since it first appeared in December 2019. There are currently no drugs that can effectively arrest replication of the virus in people who have contracted the illness. Sunshine Biopharma has completed the synthesis of four potential inhibitors of PLpro and subsequently identified a lead compound, SBFM-PL4. On February 1, 2021, Sunshine Biopharma entered into an exclusive license agreement with the University of Georgia for two Anti-Coronavirus compounds which the University of Georgia had previously developed and patented. The Company is currently advancing the development of these two compounds in paralel with its own SBFM-PL4 by conducting a transgenic mice study in collaboration with the University of Georgia, College of Pharmacy. The mice being used in the study have been genetically engineered to express the human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) transmembrane protein in their lungs making them susceptible to lethal infection by SARS-CoV-2. The SARS-CoV-2 virus uses the hACE2 receptor to gain entry into human cells to replicate. The goal of the study is to determine if these protease inhibitors will protect the hACE2-transgenic mice from disease progression and death following infection with SARS-CoV-2. Should these mice studies prove successful, Sunshine Biopharma plans to submit the results to the FDA for authorization to conduct testing on actual COVID-19 patient volunteers in a Phase I clinical trial setting.



In addition, to working on the development of a treatment for COVID-19, Sunshine Biopharma is engaged in the development Adva-27a, a unique anticancer compound. Tests conducted to date have demonstrated the effectiveness of Adva-27a at destroying Multidrug Resistant Cancer Cells, including Pancreatic Cancer cells, Small-Cell Lung Cancer cells, Breast Cancer cells, and Uterine Sarcoma cells. Clinical trials for Pancreatic Cancer indication are planned to be conducted at McGill Universitys Jewish General Hospital in Montreal, Canada. Sunshine Biopharma is owner of all patents and intellectual property pertaining to Adva-27a.

Safe Harbor Forward-Looking Statements

This press release may contain forward looking statements which are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve risks as well as uncertainties that could cause actual outcomes and results to differ materially from those anticipated or expected, including statements related to the amount and timing of expected revenues statements related to our financial performance, expected income, distributions, and future growth for upcoming quarterly and annual periods. These risks and uncertainties are further defined in filings and reports by the Company with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Actual results and the timing of certain events could differ materially from those projected in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements due to a number of factors detailed from time to time in our filings with the SEC. Among other matters, the Company may not be able to sustain growth or achieve profitability based upon many factors including but not limited to general stock market conditions. Reference is hereby made to cautionary statements set forth in the Company's most recent SEC filings. We have incurred and will continue to incur significant expenses in our expansion of our existing as well as new service lines noting there is no assurance that we will generate enough revenues to offset those costs in both the near and long term. Additional service offerings may expose us to additional legal and regulatory costs and unknown exposure(s) based upon the various geopolitical locations we will be providing services in, the impact of which cannot be predicted at this time. For Additional Information Contact:

Camille Sebaaly, CFO

Sunshine Biopharma Inc.

Direct Line: 514-814-0464

camille.sebaaly@sunshinebiopharma.com

www.sunshinebiopharma.com



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[July 20, 2021] Arthur Partners with GSU to Create International Business VR Program

SAN MATEO, Calif., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arthur , a pioneering virtual reality (VR) office space provider that helps businesses create large-scale virtual offices with advanced fully immersive collaborative environments, has partnered with Georgia State University (GSU) to create a VR program for international business students.

Taught by Dr. Evaristo F. Doria, a renowned senior lecturer at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business and a former executive at Johnson & Johnson, the course, Management in Central America: Panama & Costa Rica. A Virtual Learning Experience, uses Arthurs VR platform to give students the flexibility and freedom they need to be productive. In the program, students learn how work is changing in the direction of hybrid models and the role of immersive technologies like VR in it. Students also experience a VR team building use case and explore the feeling of presence and being in the same space. Dr. Doria says that, through Arthur, students learn that geographic distances are no longer an obstacle to collaboration. Arthurs donation to our course was pivotal to the students learning experience. Originally planned as a study abroad program, these students learned to pivot amid the pandemic and use VR office spaces that real companies utilize in their day-to-day. This experience increased the level of students' engagement versus traditional video conferencing, said Dr. Doria. VR offers a great opportunity for international business educators to create exciting and engaging learning experiences across borders for their students. One fundamental benefit s that it is easy to monitor and collect training metrics during experiential learning in VR - a fact that helps educators control the quality of the learning experience. Future business leaders need to learn how to work in VR to remain competitive in the workplace.



With limited study abroad this summer because of COVID-19, it was wonderful to see students still be able to engage globally and learn about new international business practices using virtual reality. Thank you to Dr. Doria for leading this course and to Arthur for their generous donation, said Dr. Laura Boudon, Director of Study Abroad Programs at GSU. We were glad to be able to assist with this program. Arthur donated eight Oculus Quest 2 headsets for the students and Dr. Doria to use. In addition, Arthurs team provided tutorials to all throughout the duration of the course.

Remote and hybrid work has always been talked about in future tense; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has made that the current reality. By partnering with Dr. Doria and GSU, were able to bring real-world VR applications to the classroom, educating students on how to utilize new technologies that theyll one day use in a business environment, said Christoph Fleischmann, Founder and CEO of Arthur. Business students are entering the workforce at a time of globalization with a limitless future of possibilities. As the go-to VR solution for major Fortune 500 companies in a variety of industries, including the United Nations and Societe Generale, Arthur enables collaborative sessions in a remote environment, allowing its top-tier clientele to build virtual office spaces with permanency features and photorealistic avatars. Arthur's platform allows students to be immersed in both the virtual and real-world, highlighting the capabilities of shared spaces and the power of technology to traverse physical distances. For more information on Arthur, visit www.arthur.digital . About Arthur

Arthur is a large-scale virtual office space provider that enables business owners and their teams to meet, collaborate and manage their work. This pioneering virtual reality platform empowers businesses to maximize their level of remote productivity and free themselves from geographic and physical constraints. Arthur is used by major organizations like the United Nations and Societe Generale and is continuing to expand its business portfolio in a wide variety of industries. For more information, visit www.arthur.digital . Media Contact

Elsa Anschuetz

Uproar PR for Arthur

eanschuetz@uproarpr.com

321.236.0102 x233



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[July 20, 2021] Schwab Charitable Donors Recommend a Record $3.7 Billion in Grants During Fiscal Year 2021

Schwab Charitable, one of the largest national providers of donor-advised funds and other philanthropic services, reports that its donors supported more than 113,000 charities in fiscal year 2021 through 855,000 grants totaling $3.7 billion. This represents a 13% increase in dollars granted to charities, and a 24% increase in the number of grants to charities compared to the previous all-time highs set in fiscal year 2020. "Schwab Charitable donors demonstrated extraordinary generosity during a particularly difficult 12 months," said Sam Kang, President of Schwab Charitable. "I am proud of our efforts to help increase their giving power at a time when charitable giving has never been more important. We are committed to providing donors and their financial advisors with the most efficient, tax smart charitable giving solution while helping them explore new and impactful ways to achieve their philanthropic goals." Three years of giving highlight trends, changes Donors have demonstrated a commitment to increasing their charitable impact by supporting additional charities over the last three fiscal years while maintaining support for their favorite causes. Schwab Charitable donors recommended grants to 12% more charities than the previous fiscal year and nearly 30% more organizations than in fiscal year 2019. One Schwab Charitable donor said, "I tended to send money to [charities] on an ongoing basis rather than just once a year. I doubled the amount of my normal grants [in 2020]." There was a 48% increase from the previous fiscal year in the number of grants recommended by Schwab Charitable donors which were not designated for a specific purpose in fiscal year 2021. Unrestricted grants afford nonprofits greater flexibility to deliver critical services, which has been essential during this time of extraordinary need. Technology drives increase in granting Over the last three years, Schwab Charitable donors have taken advantage of technology enhancements that have encouraged giving and helped them achieve maximum philanthropic impact. Schwab Charitable has made its digital client center simpler and more intuitive, launching a new user experience for grant recommendations in 2020 and a new account overview page. Since fiscal year 2019, the numbers of recurring grants and grants made on mobile devices have more than doubled, nd in fiscal year 2021, 79% of grant volume was handled through an automated review and approval process that helps speed funds to charities.



"Constantly enhancing our capabilities and offering innovative tools and resources serves our donors and aligns with our mission to increase giving in the United States," added Kang. Financial advisors help donors give wisely

Financial advisors increasingly offer charitable planning as a way to enhance their value to clients by helping them incorporate philanthropy into their overall financial planning. In 2020, 85% of independent advisors offered charitable planning to their clients, higher than the percent of firms offering tax planning and strategy (80%) and estate planning (68%).1 Financial advisors are well positioned to help clients utilize charitable planning to minimize taxes and maximize charitable impact. One tax-smart strategy is donating appreciated non-cash assets to charity. Donors who use this strategy can generally eliminate the capital gains tax they would otherwise incur if they sold the assets first and donated the proceeds, potentially increasing the amount available for charity by up to 20%. In fiscal year 2021, approximately 60% of contributions to Schwab Charitable were in the form of non-cash assets, including publicly traded securities, restricted stock, and private business interests.2 To help donors and advisors work together to maximize the impact of giving, Schwab Charitable developed the Schwab Charitable Giving Guide. The comprehensive tool includes exercises and information that advisors can work through with their clients to create a thoughtful giving plan, involve family members, identify organizations to support, and plan a legacy. The guide is a mechanism for advisors to broaden discussions with clients and support overall charitable objectives, giving motivations and goals. "Schwab Charitable donors have provided critical support to charities in the past year," said Fred Kaynor, Managing Director of Business Development, Marketing and Strategic Partnerships at Schwab Charitable. "As our donors continue to show exceptional generosity during these uncertain times, we are dedicated to providing them with best-in-class tools and resources to help them achieve their charitable giving goals." About Schwab Charitable Schwab Charitable's mission is to increase giving in the U.S. with donor-advised funds and philanthropic services that make charitable giving tax-smart, simple and efficient. We offer tools, guidance and relationships that empower donors to incorporate charitable planning into their everyday lives and make a bigger difference in the world. Since our founding in 1999 as an independent 501(c)(3) public charity, Schwab Charitable donors have granted more than $19 billion to more than 193,000 charities. Visit SchwabCharitable.org for more information. Schwab Charitable's fiscal year runs from July 1 to June 30 of the following year. Fiscal year 2021 refers to the period from July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021. Schwab Charitable is the name used for the combined programs and services of Schwab Charitable Fund, an independent nonprofit organization, which has entered into service agreements with certain affiliates of The Charles Schwab Corporation. Schwab Charitable Fund is recognized as a tax-exempt public charity as described in Sections 501(c)(3), 509(a)(1), and 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) of the Internal Revenue Code. 2021 Schwab Charitable Fund. All rights reserved. (0721-1HFA) 1 2021 RIA Benchmarking Study from Charles Schwab. Results for all firms with $250 million or more in AUM. Study contains self-reported data.

2 Schwab Charitable accepts illiquid assets for contribution on a case-by-case basis and in some cases, liquidation is facilitated by a third party. In fiscal year 2021, less than 1% of contributions were non-cash assets liquidated by a third party, received by Schwab Charitable as cash, and reported here as non-cash assets. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005309/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Corel Launches New Channel Program to Grow Partner Revenue

OTTAWA, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Corel today announces a new partner program designed to give its growing base of global channel partners new ways to attract customers, access additional revenue streams, and foster customer success. The updated program provides partners with invaluable resources and high profit margins while offering some of the industry's most popular and widely recognized software brands, including CorelDRAW, MindManager, Parallels and WinZip.

Partners are a critical part of Corels business, and this new program has been created specifically to allow our friends in the channel to gain new revenue streams and customers, all with the goal to accelerate their profitability and growth, said Andrea Johnston, Corels Chief Revenue Officer. Drawing on the strengths of our incredible people, flexible processes and amazing products, Corel is thrilled to work together with our partners to empower knowledge workers with the tools they need to stay productive and succeed in todays new world of work. Current and new partners can now take advantage of Corels revamped partner program offering free enablement training; sales, marketing and technical tools and resources; collaborative joint-marketing initiatives; and access to Corels extensive customer and technical support resources. Key highlights include: Partner Portal Access: Receive easy, 24/7 access to sales and marketing resources, including training and certifications (where applicable), sales and technical resources, as well as marketing collateral, blogs, case studies, data sheets and eBooks.



Receive easy, 24/7 access to sales and marketing resources, including training and certifications (where applicable), sales and technical resources, as well as marketing collateral, blogs, case studies, data sheets and eBooks. Sales Training: Access comprehensive training with on-demand self-paced training sessions, tutorial videos and webinars to foster the necessary skills to sell and support Corels full product portfolio. Take advantage of optional sales and technical certification to enhance sales and product knowledge.



Access comprehensive training with on-demand self-paced training sessions, tutorial videos and webinars to foster the necessary skills to sell and support Corels full product portfolio. Take advantage of optional sales and technical certification to enhance sales and product knowledge. Deal Registration: Enhancing collaboration and protecting partner investment, Corel offers a fair, transparent deal-registration program that aims to protect solution providers who are actively engaged in a sales cycle.



Enhancing collaboration and protecting partner investment, Corel offers a fair, transparent deal-registration program that aims to protect solution providers who are actively engaged in a sales cycle. Pre-sales, Technical & Customer Support: The Corel team provides partners with support throughout the sles cycle, including joint customer calls, proof of concept (POC), trials and demos. Plus, technical and customer support resources are available in multiple languages to help partners reinforce their status as a trusted advisor to customers.



A new tiered program structure offers partners unique benefits customized for their business. All partner program members have access to all the valuable resources listed above to help grow revenue streams and gain new customers. Gold and Platinum partners receive additional resources, including a dedicated Channel Account Manager (CAM). Silver Level: With entry-level membership in the partner program, Silver partners have access to a range of online tools and resources through our partner portal.

With entry-level membership in the partner program, Silver partners have access to a range of online tools and resources through our partner portal. Gold Level: Partners who meet the Gold tier of technical and sales requirements benefit from access to NFR licenses, partner locator listing on Corel websites, a dedicated account manager and eligibility to request marketing development funds (MDF) for co-marketing opportunities.

Partners who meet the Gold tier of technical and sales requirements benefit from access to NFR licenses, partner locator listing on Corel websites, a dedicated account manager and eligibility to request marketing development funds (MDF) for co-marketing opportunities. Platinum Level: Achieving the highest partner membership available, Platinum partners commit to higher revenue objectives and have a history of selling Corel solutions. Building on Gold level benefits, Platinum partners can also participate in lead sharing and receive priority website listing on Corel branded websites.

Join the Partner Program Today

Corel welcomes current and new partners to learn more and register for the new partner program at www.corel.com/partners. For more information about Corel and our products, please visit www.corel.com.

About Corel

Corel products enable millions of connected knowledge workers around the world to do great work faster. Offering some of the industry's best-known software brands, we give individuals and teams the power to create, collaborate and deliver impressive results. Our success is driven by an unwavering commitment to deliver a broad portfolio of innovative tools to inspire users and help them achieve their goals. Our Parallels solutions enable workers to use and access the applications and files they need across their favorite devices and preferred technology  whether local or remote. Cloud-based collaboration capabilities in CorelDRAW and MindManager streamline the sharing of ideas and connect team members no matter where theyre located. While WinZip encryption, file management and compression solutions deliver secure file sharing across email, a network or the cloud. To learn more about Corel, please visit www.corel.com.  2021 Corel Corporation. All rights reserved. Corel, the Corel logo, the Corel Balloon logo, CorelDRAW, MindManager, and WinZip are trademarks or registered trademarks of Corel Corporation in Canada, the U.S., and/or elsewhere. Parallels is a trademark or registered trademark of Parallels International GmbH in Canada, the U.S., and elsewhere. All other company, product and service names, logos, brands, and any registered or unregistered trademarks mentioned are used for identification purposes only and remain the exclusive property of their respective owners. Use of any brands, names, logos, or any other information, imagery, or materials pertaining to a third party does not imply endorsement. We disclaim any proprietary interest in such third-party information, imagery, materials, marks, and names of others. For all notices and information about patents, please visit www.corel.com/patent. Media Contact: Saeed Ismail Saeed

Corel PR

saeed.saeed@corel.com

www.corel.com A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/4574a35a-9057-4802-a246-1771c8c55d21



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[July 20, 2021] Award-Winning Marketing Leader Joins Uptime.com as Chief Marketing Officer

NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Uptime.com  a leading website performance monitoring tool that provides peace of mind to thousands of customers like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Kraft, and BNP Paribas  announced the hiring of Yoni Solomon as chief marketing officer (CMO). Solomon brings over a decade of senior marketing experience to Uptime.com, specializing in high-growth, dynamic and disruptive SaaS companies. Before joining Uptime.com, Solomon led product marketing at G2.com, the world's largest peer-to-peer review site for business software. During his time at G2, the company more than doubled its valuation to become the de facto leader in its space, while Solomon was named one of the world's most influential product marketers for two consecutive years. The Product Marketing Alliance (PMA) also awarded his team Product Marketing's Team of the Year for: Tripling its marketing-qualified leads

Doubling its target revenue goals

Doubling product integration and adoption year-over-year

Increasing opportunity win-rates by 10% year-over-year Solomon also had a stellar tenure at PowerReviews, where he launched several major e-commerce partnerships and integrtions with companies like Shopify Plus, Magento and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. During his time at Vibes, he helped launch the company's mobile wallet marketing product and created the mobile wallet marketing category as a whole. These initiatives took this new product from zero to over $1 million in revenue, while increasing product adoption across many Fortune 500 brands.



"Uptime.com already has an incredible foundation in place with proven senior leadership, 100%-plus year-over-year growth and thousands of happy customers who consistently rate us the industry's best," Solomon said. He added, "I'm excited to raise awareness, launch products and build the kind of brand that brings peace of mind and value to the businesses that trust us with the health and downtime of their websites." Solomon's experience and expertise align with the company's goals of further developing an innovative and inclusive marketing culture. Uptime.com is committed to keeping customer experience at the forefront as the company continues to provide web performance and uptime monitoring peace of mind to thousands of customers around the world.

To learn more about Uptime.com's top-rated web monitoring solution, visit www.uptime.com. About Uptime.com Uptime.com provides peace of mind to thousands of customers like Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Palo Alto Networks, Kraft, and BNP Paribas, who trust the company to monitor the performance, health and downtime of their websites, applications and infrastructure. The company has been recognized as one of the world's best web monitoring solutions by G2 and TechRadar Pro for several consecutive years, including 2021. Start monitoring in minutes with a 21-day free trial at www.uptime.com. Related Images yoni-solomon.jpeg

Yoni Solomon

Uptime.com's New CMO, Yoni Solomon View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/award-winning-marketing-leader-joins-uptimecom-as-chief-marketing-officer-301337364.html SOURCE Uptime.com

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[July 20, 2021] Luxembourg General Insurance Markets, Trends and Opportunities Report 2021-2024 - ResearchAndMarkets.com

The "Luxembourg General Insurance - Key Trends and Opportunities to 2024" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. The 'Luxembourg General Insurance - Key Trends and Opportunities to 2024' report provides in-depth market analysis, information and insights into Luxembourg's general insurance segment. This report provides a detailed outlook by product category for Luxembourg's general insurance segment. It provides values for key performance indicators such as direct written premium, loss ratio, retail and commercial split, premium by line of business, and premium accepted, during the review period (2015-2019) and forecast period (2019-2024). The report also analyzes distribution channels operating in the segment, gives a comprehensive overview of Luxembourg's economy and demographics, and provides detailed information on the competitive landscape in the country. The report brings together the publisher's research, modeling and analysis expertise, giving insurers access to information on segment dynamics and competitive advantages, and profiles of insurers operating in the country. The report also includes details of insurance regulations, and recent changes in the regulatory structure. Key Highlights



Key insights and dynamics of Luxembourg's general insurance segment.

A comprehensive overview of Luxembourg's economy, government initiatives, and investment opportunities.

Luxembourg's insurance regulatory framework's evolution, key facts, taxation regime, licensing and capital requirements.

Luxembourg's general insurance reinsurance business's market structure giving details of premium accepted.

Luxembourg's general insurance segment structure giving details of retail and commercial lines of business.

Distribution channels deployed by Luxembourg's general insurers.

Details of the competitive landscape, M&A and competitors' profiles. Scope It provides historical values for Luxembourg's general insurance segment for the report's 2015-2019 review period, and projected figures for the 2019-2024 forecast period.

It offers a detailed analysis of the key categories in Luxembourg's general insurance segment, and market forecasts to 2024.

It profiles the top general insurance companies in Luxembourg, and outlines the key regulations affecting them. Key Topics Covered:

Executive Summary

Economy Overview

Regulatory and Compliance

Key Market Trends

Summary Trends and KPIs

Key Trends by Line of Business

Property Insurance

Motor Insurance

Liability Insurance

Financial Lines Insurance

Marine, Aviation and Transit Insurance

Personal Accident and Health Insurance

Miscellaneous Insurance

Distribution Channels

Competitive Landscape

Competitor Profiles

Reinsurance

Regulatory and Compliance

Competitor Landscape

Insurtech

Appendix Companies Mentioned Foyer Assurances S.A.

La Luxembourgeoise S.A.

AIG Europe S.A.

Axa Assurances Luxembourg S.A.

Baloise Assurances Luxembourg S.A.

Foyer Sante S.A.

The Shipowners Mutual Strike Insurance Association Europe

Swiss Re International SE For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xvz0ex View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005838/en/

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[July 20, 2021] KERV Brings On Industry Leaders Jessica Stacy & Kate Lyons To Support Unprecedented Growth

AUSTIN, Texas, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- KERV Interactive , a recognized technology company specializing in visual IR driven interactive video and data for brands, announced their rapid expansion with a new office in Chicago and two new key additions to the partnership team: Jessica Stacy, Senior Director of Agency and Partnerships, and Kate Lyons, Publisher, Business Development Stacy will lead KERV's Midwest partnership efforts, evangelizing how AI and Machine Learning technology are building the future. She will educate agencies and partnerships on the company's patented, industry-leading pixel-edge technology, which creates the most precise object-level identification and metadata video advertising solutions. Stacy joins KERV from Open Slate, where she served as Sales Director, building out the Central region and developing key partnerships with agencies and Fortune 100 brands. Previously with Just Premium, Lyons joins KERV at the companys New York City office, where she will help grow the adoption of KERV shoppable video technology with top-tier publishing partners. Prior to KERV, Lyons served as the Director of Supply at Just Premium, launching the U.S. supply division and signing key Comscore ranked publishers and channel partners.



"Matching industry-leading technology with industry-leading talent is a top priority," said Jay Wolff, SVP, Revenue & Partnerships. "We are ecstatic to bring aboard rockstars like Jessica and Kate to help catapult our business and expand into new spaces." To learn more, please contact Jeannine Jacobi of Fresh PR at 323-903-7063 or jeannine@freshpr.net, or visit https://kervit.com .

About KERV Interactive Based in Austin, Texas, KERV Interactive is the world's most advanced interactive content and data company and is revolutionizing the future of video engagement through dimensional storytelling. KERV's digital advertising platform was built on cutting-edge, patented technology and adds extraordinary value to brands, agencies, and creative and data-science teams by creating audience-to-brand connections within video like never before. Leveraging breakthrough machine learning techniques and AI with unmatched processing speed, the KERV technology recognizes depth, dimension, and objects within a video just as precisely as the natural eye. KERV enables every frame in every scene of any digital video to be an immersive, interactive experience for consumers. View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/kerv-brings-on-industry-leaders-jessica-stacy--kate-lyons-to-support-unprecedented-growth-301336633.html SOURCE KERV Interactive

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[July 20, 2021] Fabric Leads Headless Commerce Movement with 800% YoY Growth and $100M in New Series B Funding

SEATTLE, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Fabric , the headless commerce platform purpose-built for growth, today announced $100 million in Series B funding led by Stripes , with additional participation from B Capital Group, Greycroft and existing investors, including Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures and Sierra Ventures. Closing only five months (161 days) after the company's Series A funding , the new round will fund Fabric's global expansion aimed at helping thousands more mid-size and enterprise B2B and B2C brands around the world deliver exceptional e-commerce experiences as trillions of dollars in commerce shifts online. Concurrent with the funding, Stripes partner Ron Shah will join Fabric's board of directors. Fabric allows marketers and merchants to quickly turn creative commerce ideas into reality, without the need to fully rely on expensive engineering resources. An extensive and flexible API-driven approach enables brands to modernize their legacy e-commerce platforms in a matter of weeks versus months, saving time and money. Additionally, Fabric is the only modular commerce platform designed to support scaling businesses that have outgrown the limitations of e-commerce solutions tailored for entrepreneurs and small businesses. "Trillions of dollars in commerce will move online over the next few years. However, today's e-commerce infrastructure is crumbling for B2C and B2B brands," said Faisal Masud, CEO at Fabrc. "SMB commerce platforms don't serve the needs of mid-size, growing e-commerce businesses who win or lose on brand experience. Fabric is leveling the playing field for these brands with our modern, API-driven headless commerce platform and deep operating experience. We are offering technology and guidance that was previously only available to the largest e-commerce organizations."



Since raising its Series A in February of this year, Fabric has: Achieved YoY revenue growth in excess of 800%

Attracted top talent across the business, growing employee headcount by more than 400%

Earned a net customer retention rate of 230%

Signed leading commerce brands like BarkBox, Bodybuilding.com, GNC and Restoration Hardware as customers

Added to its executive team industry leaders from Amazon, Google, eBay, and Twilio, including Tyler Nemiro as VP of Enterprise Sales, Umer Sadiq as Chief Technology Officer, Krupa Shah as General Counsel and Nevin Shetty as Chief Financial Officer

as VP of Enterprise Sales, as Chief Technology Officer, as General Counsel and as Chief Financial Officer Extended its modular, integrated suite of commerce APIs including Product Information Management (PIM), Order Management, Loyalty Management and Subscriptions products, allowing customers the flexibility to transition onto Fabric, one or more components at a time "Growing commerce brands are in desperate need of better technology to meet modern customer expectations in an almost impossibly dynamic marketplace. Fabric is ushering in a new era of headless commerce with a modular commerce infrastructure built to enable today's fast-growing businesses to truly thrive," said Shah. "Having spent the past decade building and deploying commerce experiences at global leaders like Amazon, Google and eBay, Fabric's leadership team brings unmatched commerce operations and technology experience to this market. We believe their team, technology and trajectory position them to become one of the next great e-commerce platforms of our time as the industry undergoes a once-in-a-generation modernization."

Fabric's rapid growth tracks the broader e-commerce boom unfolding across the economy. Global e-commerce will surpass $5 trillion in 2021, up from $3.5 trillion in 2019. B2B e-commerce, meanwhile, is expected to reach $20.9 trillion by 2027, a more than 70% increase from 2019. Amazon's market capitalization has increased to over $1.7 trillion. However, many retailers and B2B brands still struggle to meet their customers' e-commerce expectations, constrained by legacy commerce technology. About Fabric

Fabric is the headless commerce platform purpose-built for growth. Customers like BuildDirect, abc carpet & home, GNC, and MSC trust Fabric for its open and modular design that allows them to be live within weeks without having to replatform. Fabric is a force multiplier on retailers' existing technology investments proven to grow digital revenue by up to 3x. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Fabric is backed by Stripes, B Capital Group, Greycroft, Norwest Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Sierra Ventures, Innovation Global Capital, Ascend Venture Capital, Expa and BC Partners. To learn more, visit https://fabric.inc. Mission North for Fabric

fabric@missionnorth.com

619-609-3919

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fabric-leads-headless-commerce-movement-with-800-yoy-growth-and-100m-in-new-series-b-funding-301337539.html SOURCE Fabric Inc.

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[July 20, 2021] New Esri Book Introduces Young Readers to Spatial Thinking

Esri, the global leader in location intelligence, today announced the publication of The Locators: Adventure in South America. Written by three members of the Esri staff, The Locators follows two kids, Lucy and Oliver, and their pet, Moe the Parrot, as they solve problems in the world using maps, technology, and spatial thinking. The Locators, as they're called, are determined to help those who need it. After crash landing in the Amazon during their first mission, the three embark on an adventure through South America to find and protect several critically endangered species. From rockslides in the Andes mountains to volcano eruptions in the Galapagos Islands, the Locators experience all manner of geographic excitement as they rush to complete their mission in time. Using different color maps and clues, readers can help the Locators on each step of their journey by completing the illustrated activity at the end of each chapter. This hands-on approach encourages critical and spatial thinking while also reinforcing reading comprehension and vocabulary. Full of fun, full-color illustrations, activities, and tons of facts about endangered species, habitats, and more, this adventure keep kids interested and makes learning easy. At the end of the story, readers can get their own Locator member ID number and become part of the team of adventurers.



The Locators is available in print (ISBN: 9781589484986, 120 pages, US$12.99) and as an ebook (ISBN: 9781589485839, US$12.99). Both editions can be obtained from most online retailers worldwide. The print edition is also available for purchase from Esri by calling 1-800-447-9778. If outside the United States, visit esri.com/esripressorders for complete ordering options, or visit esri.com/distributors to contact your local Esri distributor. Interested retailers can contact Esri Press book distributor Ingram Publisher Services. About Esri

Esri, the global market leader in geographic information system (GIS) software, location intelligence, and mapping, helps customers unlock the full potential of data to improve operational and business results. Founded in 1969 in Redlands, California, USA, Esri software is deployed in more than 350,000 organizations globally and in over 200,000 institutions in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, nonprofits, and universities. Esri has regional offices, international distributors, and partners providing local support in over 100 countries on six continents. With its pioneering commitment to geospatial information technology, Esri engineers the most innovative solutions for digital transformation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics. Visit us at esri.com. Copyright  2021 Esri. All rights reserved. Esri, the Esri globe logo, The Science of Where, esri.com, and @esri.com are trademarks, service marks, or registered marks of Esri in the United States, the European Community, or certain other jurisdictions. Other companies and products or services mentioned herein may be trademarks, service marks, or registered marks of their respective mark owners. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005078/en/

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[July 20, 2021] ZoomCare Expands Mental Health Offering With Launch of Virtual Therapy

PORTLAND, Ore., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- ZoomCare , the Pacific Northwest-based innovator and creator of on-demand healthcare, now offers Mental Health Therapy as a part of its comprehensive mental health offerings for Oregon residents. Mental Health Therapy encompasses on-demand mental health video visits, live with a licensed therapist. The 30-minute virtual session can be scheduled online as a same-day appointment or up to 30 days in advance. Like all ZoomCare visits, therapy visits run efficiently on-time and are conducive to busy lives with no commuting time and no time spent in a waiting room. The ZoomCare Mental Health team offers a variety of services, with in-person and virtual options, using evidence-based techniques such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). From coping with stress and anxiety to managing depression, ZoomCare Mental Health professionals also address concerns including ADHD/ADD, bipolar disorders, insomnia and more. Patients can utilize Mental Health Therapy in conjunction with other ZoomCare services, such as its Mental Health Meds & More service which also has the capacity to prescribe mental health medications from trained mental health clinicians, and its online communication tool ChatCare. Other providers from ZoomCare Super and DailyCare (illness & injury) are also available, if needed, to provide assessments and care coordination support for increasing numbers of people needing mental health care. Journeys to recovery can begin anywhere within the integrated ZoomCare system. "We're pleased to be able to offer Mental Health Therapy, our evidence-based virtual mental health counseling offering, to those in our Oregon communitieswho are seeking mental health support," said Dr. Erik Vanderlip, MD, MPH, Chief Medical Officer of ZoomCare and board-certified family physician and psychiatrist. "The pandemic has made it nearly impossible to find good counseling services today, and even harder to find those services along with medication management in one on-demand, convenient virtual ecosystem. ZoomCare patients have the benefit of mental health services being integrated across our full spectrum of on-demand care, including primary care, crisis assessment and navigation to appropriate care. Even better, we take most forms of insurance!"



A recent study showed that 62% of consumers would prefer a virtual visit for their regular mental health visits, even after it is safe to visit a doctor's office in person. Virtual mental health services offer convenience, comfort and increased privacy compared to traditional therapy in a doctor's office, with treatment outcomes on-par with in-person therapy . About ZoomCare

ZoomCare is focused on a single goal: reinventing healthcare to put people in charge of their own health. We deliver same day, on-demand primary, urgent, specialty and emergency healthcare through mobile-first technology, text and video visits, and in-person at over 60 neighborhood clinics across four states. Our trusted professionals help you feel better, faster, with compassionate care, no-wait visits and on-site access to prescription medication. And our patients love us, with 20k reviewers rating us 4.8/5 stars. For more about ZoomCare, visit our website, and follow us on Twitter , Instagram , and Facebook .

Media Contact:

Matter Health for ZoomCare

zoomcare@matternow.com Kate Arvidson

ZoomCare

pr@zoomcare.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/zoomcare-expands-mental-health-offering-with-launch-of-virtual-therapy-301336974.html SOURCE ZoomCare

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[July 20, 2021] Spaulding Ridge's Rapid Growth Leads to Expansion of Global Leadership Team; Announces Three New Associate Partners

CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Spaulding Ridge, a leading global cloud advisory and implementation firm, has announced three promotions to support its current stage of hypergrowth: Mansha Monga to Associate Partner in the DocuSign Practice; Keith Jackson to Associate Partner in the Anaplan Practice; and Razaam Shafqat to Associate Partner in the UK. "We are excited to add to our global leadership team with our new Associate Partners. Mansha, Keith, and Razaam have a deep understanding of our clients  across international markets, client segments, and solutions  and will help to build our voice and expertise as a leading cloud implementation firm," Jay Laabs, CEO of Spaulding Ridge, says of the promotions. Mansha Monga, Associate Partner in the DocuSign Practice Mansha Monga is a respected leader in the contract lifecycle management (CLM) space. She has significant experience in the areas of contract effectiveness and transformation. Since joining in 2018, she has played a significant role in building the company's DocuSign pratice into its current status as DocuSign's largest global delivery partner. She is also a member of Women Elevate (WE), Spaulding Ridge's women in tech empowerment group.



Razaam Shafqat, Associate Partner in the UK Razaam Shafqat is a respected market builder, bringing an array of best-in-cloud solutions to Spaulding Ridge's global client base. Having a track record of leading organic growth, he has been integral in building the company's presence across EMEA and APAC, including deepening global alliances and expanding into new markets.

Keith Jackson, Associate Partner in the Anaplan Practice Keith Jackson is a proven Sales Performance Management (SPM) leader having led more than 60 enterprise engagements for leading companies across the globe. He has proven to be a creative thinker and passionate leader capable of building entire product offerings from the ground up, including Spaulding Ridge's Anaplan Managed Services offering. His experience on all sides of sales performance management, as a technology vendor, industry professional, and service provider, brings significant value to clients. About Spaulding Ridge Spaulding Ridge is a global cloud advisory and implementation firm that helps leading companies deploy Best-in-Cloud solutions. Spaulding Ridge enables organizations to accelerate operational efficiency, drive digital transformation, and increase competitive advantage. Spaulding Ridge partners with digitally savvy companies to help: Finance gain control: Increase top-line revenue, gross margins, and profits through better insight. Connect financial planning to strategy and automate financial close processes.

Increase top-line revenue, gross margins, and profits through better insight. Connect financial planning to strategy and automate financial close processes. Sales increase productivity: Manage quota and territories more consistently and effectively, automate customer contracts and onboarding.

Manage quota and territories more consistently and effectively, automate customer contracts and onboarding. Operations drive efficiency: Improve supply chain agility, automate strategic sourcing and purchasing, deliver superior customer service experiences. To learn more, visit spauldingridge.com. Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1357419/Spaulding_Ridge_Logo.jpg

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Independent/Provider-Sponsored Plan Administrative Costs Declined in 2020

In 2020, Independent/Provider-Sponsored plans' costs decreased by 1.0% per member, down from a 7.6% increase in 2019. The comparison is of continuously reporting plans and eliminates the effect of product mix changes between comparison years.

The results are published in Plan Management Navigator and are posted at sherlockco.com/navigator. Navigator excerpts from the 2021 Independent/Provider-Sponsored edition of the Sherlock Benchmarks. This edition of the Sherlock Benchmarks analyzes and reports on the in-depth surveys of 19 IPS plans serving 9.6 million members. Surveyed plans serve the lion's share of members served by independent or provider-sponsored health plans.

The cost decline in Account and Membership Administration was the chief driver of overall cost decline.

Membership increased. Medicaid and Medicare Advantage increased, as commercial overall declined as ASO share increased.

Staffing ratios decreased by 4% and the Enrollment and Claims functions were affected. Compensation increased by 1%.Outsourcing was relatively stable at 5% overall.







Within the functions, cost trends were consistent with adaptation to COVID-19, such as in Nurse Information and Member and Group Communication, and strengthening Plans' longer term competitive position through higher Risk Adjustment and Medical Management.

We will discuss the results via free web conference on Wednesday, July 21st, from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time. Douglas Sherlock will offer a brief presentation, followed by questions and answers. To participate in the web conference, please register at sherlockco.com/webinar. Once registered, dial-in information and a link to connect will be provided in a confirmation email.

The current operating environment is challenging for health plans. The Sherlock Benchmarks can assist in adapting to this environment and optimizing expenses.

The Sherlock Benchmarks for 2021 will reflect approximately 929 health plan years of experience spanning 24 consecutive years. They are the "gold standard" of benchmarks to measure and manage health plan administrative activities in health plans serving approximately 173 million members. Planning, budgeting and cost benefit analyses are credibly informed by the Sherlock Benchmarks.

Besides the Independent/Provider-Sponsored plans universe, other universes include Blue Cross Blue Shield, Medicare plans and Medicaid plans. Collectively, the 36 participating plans serve 54 million insured Americans.

Sherlock Company (www.sherlockco.com), based in North Wales, Pennsylvania, provides informed solutions for health plan financial management. Since its founding in 1987, Sherlock Company has been known for its impartiality and technical competence in service to its clients.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005905/en/
[July 20, 2021] Infosys Public Services Launches Blockchain Network to Modernize Public Recordkeeping for County of Riverside in California

Pilot blockchain initiative will digitize access and enable validation of vital records issued by the Riverside County Assessor-County-Clerk Recorder Office RIVERSIDE, Calif., July 20, 2021 /CNW/ -- Infosys Public Services (IPS), a US-based subsidiary of Infosys (NSE: INFY) (BSE: INFY) (NYSE: INFY), completed the pilot of a blockchain solution designed to improve the efficiency, access and security of vital recordkeeping in Riverside County, California's fourth largest county and the 10th largest in the U.S. The blockchain network enables county employees to manage data effectively and securely, while easing access and lowering cost of operations. "Blockchain technology presents a new opportunity for governments to advance their digital agenda and leapfrog into the next era of secure, citizen-centered services," said Eric Paternoster, CEO, IPS. "We are excited about this project with Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office and appreciate the opportunity to demonstrate how blockchain can enable the county to become more digital, connected, and secure." The pilot blockchain network, developed in collaboration with Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) using Amazon Managed Blockchain, modernizes the once paper-centric operations of the Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office. The introduction of blockchain technology enables the Office to store, recreate, and retrieve verifiable digital records, reducing the need for physical storage. The solution will also provide citizens more timely and accurate access to their records. "As Riverside County's Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder, our goal is to provide recordkeeping, record issuance, and property valuation in a timely, secure, and cost-effective manner," said Peter Aldana, Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder at County of Riverside. "Adoption of blockchain technology will greatly advance our digital transformation journey towards our goal." Riverside County currently spends approximately $500k annually to store official records physically to ensure compliance with records retention laws and regulations, a cost incurred by most local governments. With physical storage, however, access, research, and audit of records for retention compliance become time consuming and costly. Blockchain technology offers the ability to reduce costs associated with physical storage of the official records. In addition, Riverside County Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder Office issues between 58,000 to 90,00 vital records to citizens of the County annually. Currently all vital records requests are fulfilled through issuing of physical paper certificates. Adoption of Blockchain technology will allow governments to help citizens obtain digital vital records securely within minutes and achieve higher efficiency within the office operations. IPS and AWS will continue to work with the County to assess how blockchain technology can benefit more departments and processes, increase effectiveness of public services, while minimizing cost of operations.



Download this whitepaper for more information about Riverside County's blockchain initiative. Visit Infosys Blockchain microsite to access additional case studies, and learn more about our blockchain solutions. About Infosys Public Services, Inc.

Infosys Public Services is a leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. With benchmark processes, access to cross-industry insights and innovative solutions, Infosys Public Services is helping public sector organizations to navigate their digital transformation, helping them renew existing systems into modern, agile, intelligent platforms, develop new capabilities and deliver better outcomes to all stakeholders at a lower cost with less risk. Navigate your next with Infosys Public Services. Visit www.infosyspublicservices.com to see how. About Infosys Infosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in more than 50 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With over four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem. Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NSE, BSE, NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next. Safe Harbor Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, financial expectations and plans for navigating the COVID-19 impact on our employees, clients and stakeholders are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and the effects of government and other measures seeking to contain its spread, risks related to an economic downturn or recession in India, the United States and other countries around the world, changes in political, business, and economic conditions, fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry and the outcome of pending litigation and government investigation. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/infosys-public-services-launches-blockchain-network-to-modernize-public-recordkeeping-for-county-of-riverside-in-california-301337610.html SOURCE Infosys

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[July 20, 2021] Titan Raises $58M Series B Led by a16z to Build the Modern Asset-Management Giant

Titan, the new-guard investment platform bringing premier investment management to the everyday investor, today announced it has closed $58M in Series B fundraising led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from existing investors including General Catalyst, BoxGroup, and Ashton Kutcher's Sound Ventures. The round also features participation from an all-star line-up of pro athletes and celebrities, including Kevin Durant, Odell Beckham Jr., Jared Leto and Will Smith. Anish Acharya, a16z General Partner, will be joining Titan's Board. To date, Titan has raised $75M to support their mission to lead the world to better wealth. The funds will be used to make significant strides in building out Titan's underlying platform and suite of investment products, alongside scaling core functional teams. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005312/en/ Titan Raises $58M Series B Led by a16z to Build the Modern Asset-Management Giant (Photo: Business Wire) What Fidelity and its iconic mutual funds were for baby boomers, Titan is for new generations of investors. Titan is the first DTC, mobile-first investment platform where everyday investors, irrespective of wealth, can have their capital actively-managed by investment experts in long-term strategies. Like investment giants before it, the initial strategies on Titan's platform are predominantly in stocks (for instance, its large cap growth strategy called "Flagship" aims to be a modern version of the revered Magellan (News - Alert) Fund). But the platform is quickly expanding into other asse classes, entering new territory where legacy players have yet to tread.



"There's been a reawakening of active investing. But traditional investment management vehicles remain the tech-equivalents of VHS tapes. The industry needs a new operating system," said Joe Percoco, co-founder and co-CEO. Titan is hitting this untapped nerve. The platform grew by 500% in the last 12 months, largely organically, as everyday investors flocked to the platform looking for active investment management without having to do it themselves. Titan is expecting to cross its first billion in assets under management later this year, just over three years after launch.

"Technology has sent shockwaves throughout many consumer finance categories, but investment management remains stubbornly behind. The absence of a modern asset management platform is a significant void. The long-term financial health of new generations remains at risk without it," said Clay Gardner, co-founder and co-CEO. "Titan is leading the way as investing gets re-invented for the millennial and Gen Z generations. Active investing is back, and audiences want transparency into investing decisions and the opportunity to learn," said Anish Acharya, a16z General Partner. "Since first meeting the Titan team last year, we've consistently been impressed by their product vision for the category, their best in class execution, and their highly ambitious team." TITAN CRYPTO Titan's cryptocurrency offering, which launches soon, will be the first and only actively managed portfolio of cryptocurrency assets available to U.S. investors*. The strategy seeks to invest in a concentrated basket of crypto assets that can outperform over a long-term time horizon. It is actively-managed by Titan's in-house crypto investing team. For more information, visit https://www.titan.com/crypto/. *At launch, Titan Crypto will be available to all U.S. residents except those with home addresses in New York. Access for NY-based residents will be provided once Titan's custodial partner receives regulatory approval for the State's jurisdiction. HOW TITAN WORKS Investing through Titan is easy. After a quick sign-up, clients choose to place their capital in one or more of Titan's current investment strategies, including Flagship (large U.S.-based companies), Opportunities (small and mid-size U.S.-based companies), Offshore (international companies), and Crypto (concentrated basket of crypto assets). Titan's minimum investment is $100, and both accredited and non-accredited investors can join. There are zero performance-based fees and no lock-ups. Each strategy is rigorously actively-managed by Titan's in-house investment team. Titan clients also own the underlying fractional shares of the businesses in each investment strategy, offering greater flexibility when compared to pooled vehicles like hedge funds and mutual funds. To sign up, download the Titan app everywhere apps are found. ABOUT TITAN Titan is the new-guard investment platform bringing premier investment management to the everyday investor, seeking to rival giants Fidelity and BlackRock. Based in downtown Manhattan, Titan was founded by Clayton Gardner, Maxwell Bernardy, and Joe Percoco. Similar to the mutual fund platforms of the past, Titan has a fleet of open-access actively-managed strategies. Unlike legacy players, Titan is mobile-first, enabling investors to have an investment experience directly with the end investment managers. Titan's mission is to lead the world to better wealth and be the investing authority for its generation. Check out Titan at www.titan.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005312/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Video Management System Leader Panopto Hires Chief Sales Officer

Panopto, the leading video management system provider, today announced that, amidst continued company growth, Will Wyatt is joining the company as its new Chief Sales Officer. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005928/en/ Will Wyatt, Chief Sales Officer with Panopto (Photo: Business Wire) Wyatt brings deep experience growing revenue, along with a unique combination of entrepreneurial expertise and a proven ability to scale teams in high-growth software companies. With significant increased global demand in the past year, Panopto's learning and communication solutions are now ssential technologies for universities and enterprises. Panopto's video management system helps enterprises and higher educational institutions build, manage, and search highly secure video libraries for various uses, such as institutional knowledge preservation, training, remote work, distance learning, executive communication, and more.



"We are delighted to welcome Will to Panopto during a period of extraordinary growth for video management systems, communication technologies, and learning platforms," said Eric Burns, Panopto's CEO. "We're excited to have Will's leadership in expanding Panopto's global sales organization to meet the tremendous opportunities ahead of us." "I'm incredibly excited to join Panopto with its unique combination of industry-leading technology and its nimble, customer-focused mindset," said Wyatt. "Video has become an essential form of learning and communication within educational institutions and enterprises, and Panopto is positioned to enable any organization to create, store, and search for the most appropriate video in a highly secure environment."

Before joining Panopto, Wyatt ran the sales and partnership organization at Ekata, formerly Whitepages Pro, for nearly seven years before Mastercard acquired the company. Prior to his role with Ekata, Will founded a digital marketing business and held several sales leadership positions at Seattle technology startups. Wyatt has a bachelor's degree in economics from Whitman College and an MBA from the University of Washington. About Panopto Panopto helps businesses and universities create secure, searchable video libraries of their institutional knowledge. Since 2007, the company has been a pioneer in video capture software, video management, and inside-video-search technology. Today, Panopto's video management system is the largest repository of expert learning videos in the world. Headquartered in Seattle, with offices in Pittsburgh, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney, Panopto has received industry recognition for its innovation, rapid growth, and company culture. For more information, visit www.panopto.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005928/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Browser Refresh for Visitors to Vallejo

Visit Vallejo is a Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) celebrating over 30 years in providing area information and planning assistance to tourists, conventions, reunions, and other groups. Located 35 miles northeast of San Francisco and 15 miles south of the Napa Valley, Vallejo offers affordable lodging and convenient access to many of northern California's favorite activities. Visit Vallejo is thrilled to announce the launch of its new website VisitVallejo.com. The DMO successfully rolled out its current branding in 2019. The new website is a reflection of that brand revolution and the recognition that potential visitors to Vallejo are emerging from the pandemic looking for new experiences and amazing adventures. VisitVallejo.com was designed with today's visitor in mind. The site now features a user experience improvement, formatted for mobile and providing a new sense f function when searching for information. We provide all this while highlighting Vallejo's assets as one of the most diverse cities in the USA. The new website contains a blog, expanded events section, improved legibility, faster loading times and overall quality of life for both visitors and the local community.



The website's development was brought in-house rather than outsourced to a third-party company allowing for faster site maintenance and control. Visit Vallejo's Digital Marketing Manager, Manuel Angel and his co-partner, Julio Angel, developed a website with simple navigation and more control, more freedom, faster response time for users and an improved content management system for staff. All of course while maintaining a flair and feel that is reflective of the Vallejo spirit, reinforced by the fact that the designers are born and raised native Vallejoans who know more about Vallejo than any other outside organization could achieve. "A totally new website was long overdue," said President and CEO Mike Browne. "This one is fun and full of extras, providing users both old and new, an improved platform to experience our little gem of a city here in the North Bay."

Visit Vallejo invites visitors to explore the new website, browse the newly developed content on their desktop pc, tablet, or the much-improved mobile variant. "We believe visitors and locals will really enjoy this new website," Browne says, "and that they will rediscover the uniqueness and energy of Vallejo, California - the Spirit of the Bay!" Head over to visitvallejo.com to access the new website. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005266/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Myant's Skiin Connected Underwear Family of Products Receives Health Canada Clearance to Revolutionize Healthcare

Myant Inc. is the pioneer and industry leader in Textile Computing: health sensors and actuators knitted directly into garments

Myant's biosensing Skiin Underwear family of products have been cleared by Health Canada (currently pending FDA clearance) as a Class II medical device to continuously track ECG, and is capable of tracking additional health metrics like heart rate, HRV, and body temperature

This 1-3 lead ECG device allows a patient's loved ones and practitioners to continuously monitor their health metrics

The Skiin Underwear family of products will enable informed family participation in the personalized care of loved ones via predictive and preventative care models, improving health outcomes, especially for vulnerable and marginalized populations TORONTO, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - Myant Inc. ("Myant" or the "Company"), the industry leader in Textile Computing, has announced today that it has secured Health Canada clearance for its biosensing Skiin Underwear. This Class II medical device clearance allows garment wearers to reliably and continuously monitor their ECG data. Additionally, wearers can track other metrics, including heart rate, HRV, core body temperature, with more to come such as sleep and location. Available in a number of comfortable and accessible form factors, Skiin Underwear family of products (which is currently also pending FDA clearance) will revolutionize Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and Chronic Care Management (CCM) through passive, continuous connection and data collection. Myant believes Skiin will support patients, their loved ones, and their practitioners in the shift towards more personalized care, especially in vulnerable communities like the aging population. "Cardiovascular disease remains the number one cause of death in the elderly population in North America," says Tony Cahine, Myant & Skiin CEO, "with cognitive decline attributed to loneliness on the rise. Though Myant's vision is vast, we have adopted a laser focus on solving this looming challenge." Today's healthcare system operates on episodic and reactive care (instead of continuous and preventative care), patient self-reporting, and disjointed support from a patient's care circe.



"I believe that Skiin will help patients overcome existing deterrents and barriers to adequate healthcare, helping serve our most marginalized populations by connecting them to care, to their family, friends, care providers, and practitioners," Comments Myant's EVP, Ilaria Varoli. "Today's healthcare system relies on events and episodic data, patient self-reporting, and disjointed support from a patient's care circle," says Chahine. "We believe that without holistic and continuously connected care, our marginalized and vulnerable communities like our aging population will continue to be underserved and at risk of lower efficacy in medication and rehabilitation program adherence."

Skiin will be commercially available to the general public later this year. For more information about Skiin Underwear's family of products and our other garments please visit www.skiin.com . About Myant Inc. Myant is a pioneer in Textile Computing, with a platform that continuously and ambiently connects people to their bodies, to each other, and to the world around them. Using connected textiles that can sense and react to the body and a platform that enables machine learning-driven health and performance outcomes, Myant is on a mission to realize the benefits of Society 5.0. With an extensive patent portfolio, exclusive relationships throughout the value chain, over 80,000 ft of manufacturing capacity, R&D and support facilities across multiple locations in North America, and a multidisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, data scientists, fashion designers, and knitting specialists, Myant is changing the way people across society connect. Connect with us to find out how we can help you create innovative solutions powered by connected textiles and the Myant Platform. For more information about Myant, please visit www.myant.ca or www.myantusa.com . About Skiin At Skiin, a Myant Brand, we have a singular purpose: to improve the health and well-being of all people through the digitization of the self. The Skiin layering system fits seamlessly into one's lifestyle. Its human-centric design allows you to maintain your regular behaviour. We are all in continuous contact with different types of textiles throughout the day. With Textile Computing, we can begin the process of digitizing the self. It begins with Skiin's sensors that continuously capture multi-location health and wellness signals. This aggregated data creates your health and wellness Baseline. Personal knowledge will empower you with a holistic understanding of your health and wellbeing. The visualization of the digital selfwhat we call the Aura in the appempowers you with a communication tool backed by a dataset uniquely your own. Family members and practitioners can engage with this Aura, distribute care, curate personal health care planning, and offer recommendations for preventative care. For more information about Skiin, please visit www.skiin.com . View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/myants-skiin-connected-underwear-family-of-products-receives-health-canada-clearance-to-revolutionize-healthcare-301337636.html SOURCE Myant Inc.

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[July 20, 2021] CloudDefense Joins State of California Software Licensing Program to Grow DevSecOps Capabilities

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- CloudDefense is now an official part of the Software Licensing Program (SLP) for the State of California. The company, which has long been a market leader in cybersecurity solutions for private enterprise, will now be providing an application security suite to the Director of General Service for the Golden State. CloudDefense Joins State of California Software Licensing Program to Grow DevSecOps Capabilities "We are very happy to be partnering with the State of California," said Anshu Bansal, CEO of CloudDefense. "Our experience in cybersecurity, combined with the forward-looking attitude of the State, will allow us to realize a state of the art cybersecurity suite that will protect critical state agencies from threat actors of all types." CloudDefense is a market leader in Application Security. The company has pioneered the development of high-visibility cybersecurity suites that allow organizations of all types to quickly and effectively gain an overview of their cyber vulnerability. Using CloudDefenses suite, California State agencies will be able to identify and isolate incoming threats across all of their systems simultaneously.



CloudDefenses' security suite allows these agencies to assess their risk level against a number of key metrics, such as OpenSouce vulnerabilities, Open source licenses, Static Code Analysis (Coding issues), Pen Testing, API, Cloud Native, Cloud Infra, and Container Vulnerabilities. All of these areas can be accessed with a few clicks, and State agencies can prevent accidental slippage of critical security issues in production. With a growing number of attacks happening on government and private sectors, the State of California is taking a lead in identifying the security vulnerabilities hidden in their applications. This will then allow State agencies to prioritize fixes and patches. Up until now, this process has been an entirely manual one, but by working with CloudDefense the State of California will now have access to end to end automation for finding vulnerabilities.

In order to implement this cybersecurity suite, CloudDefense will work with a range of trusted partners and suppliers. The company has initially selected three partners to work with to provide technological solutions to the State of California  xTerraLink Inc., Galaxy Solutions, and Infinite Solutions. California's Silicon Valley was where the digital revolution began. Now, by partnering with CloudDefense, the State of California will become a leader in protecting State Agencies  and the data of its citizens  from cyberattack. View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clouddefense-joins-state-of-california-software-licensing-program-to-grow-devsecops-capabilities-301337635.html SOURCE CloudDefense

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[July 20, 2021] Nebula Brands - China's First Amazon Aggregator Joins Race With Thrasio

NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Traditional brick & mortar stores have been struggling for over a year since the beginning of COVID. Companies that sell primarily unbranded, well-reviewed products on Amazon marketplace are being bought by businesses created just to consolidate those Amazon sellers. These well-funded acquirers are called Amazon Aggregators and are committed to acquiring Amazon brands, conducting brand integration and helping portfolios achieve growth at a global scale. China is the most prominent supplier of Amazon sellers. Up till now, 63% of Amazon's top sellers are from China, and a third of them are in Shenzhen. In 2019, Nebula Brands was established in Shenzhen. Starting from a cross-border e-commerce fintech platform, Nebula has accumulated a deep understanding of Amazon's business model based on its strong data processing and modeling capabilities. In 2020, Nebula launched the third-party brand acquisition business and is the first Chinese company to use the "Aggregation + Operation" model to conduct brand acquisition on Amazon. "Nebula has a multinational management team with global vision and China-specific country knowledge. On day one, our strategy formulates around making Chinese brands on Amazon go international. We follow up closey with the needs of overseas consumers and leverage China's supply chain advantages to tap the huge global consumer goods market," says William Wang, co-founder of Nebula Brands.



In January, Thrasio, a brand acquirer from the United States, announced its entry into China. Despite being well-capitalised and coming to China with strong momentum, overseas brand aggregators need to solve some big challenges. Identifying compliant and high-quality targets from thousands of native Chinese shops operating in a China-specific way would be a headache for any western business. Also, negotiating with smart Chinese businessmen and convincing them to sell the business would take more than a few phone calls from head offices across the Atlantic. In the view of Nebula Brands, local knowledge is as important as the global perspective. It is critical to understand the mentality of Chinese sellers and establish an efficient local supply chain to accommodate and consolidate each business. Capital would accelerate the acquisition process but building a tailored ecosystem based on Amazon and China would be a threshold for any foreign business.

Nebula's cross border supply chain finance business help banks analyse the cash flow of Amazon businesses. The team has a strong data team consists of veterans from reputable banks and tech firms. Empowered by data analytics, the investment team can value the business value of a potential seller within 24 hours. "Sellers are our strategic partners. We appreciate their sector knowledge and they love speaking with us. It's like having a good friend who can offer help any time. They want to hear our opinion and we are happy to share the growth with friends," says William Wang. Related link: http://nebula.site View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nebula-brands---chinas-first-amazon-aggregator-joins-race-with-thrasio-301337534.html SOURCE Nebula Brands

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[July 20, 2021] SpringML wins 2020 Google Cloud Public Sector Partner of the Year - State and Local Governments Award

PLEASANTON, Calif., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- SpringML, Inc. ("SpringML") today announced that it has received the 2020 Google Cloud Public Sector Partner of the Year - State and Local Governments Award. SpringML was recognized for the company's achievements in the Google Cloud ecosystem, helping public sector customers fight against the pandemic using Google Cloud technologies. SpringML is ready to serve and help governments implement data-driven digital transformation projects We receive this recognition with immense gratitude and are grateful for the opportunity to serve our joint public sector customers during 2020, said Charles Landry, CEO of SpringML. We consider this recognition as an increased responsibility and are even motivated further to continue to serve our customers by helping them take advantage of Google Cloud. As public sector customers are looking to navigate the new normal, engaging with citizens in new ways and modernization of current applications is a top priority. SpringML is ready to serve and help governments implement data-driven digital transformation projects with an agile, iterative, and incremental delivery model. Here are a few applications we have delivered to support several states fight against pandemic: COVID exposure apps: Google and Apple built the privacy preserving exposure notification framework to help public health authorities fight against COVID-19. SpringML, in partnerships with multiple states including Michigan , North Carolina , Virginia and Utah , supported the roll out resulting in hundreds of thousands of downloads. This allowed States to provide proactive notifications to affected and exposed users on a timely basis.

and built the privacy preserving exposure notification framework to help public health authorities fight against COVID-19. SpringML, in partnerships with multiple states including , Patient intake apps: COVID response resulted in the need for smart applications, ones that could be developed and delivered rapidly but also supported large user activity. We worked with the City of Las Vegas to build a platform agnostic application to manage the entire COVID-19 patient intake process.

COVID response resulted in the need for smart applications, ones that could be developed and delivered rapidly but also supported large user activity. We worked with the to build a platform agnostic application to manage the entire COVID-19 patient intake process. Safe traveler apps: We partnered with the State of Hawaii to digitize and simplify the screening process for those traveling in and out of the state. This application is used by all the visitors coming to the island and is a critical component to ensure the State follows up with visitors on any COVID related symptoms.

We partnered with the to digitize and simplify the screening process for those traveling in and out of the state. This application is used by all the visitors coming to the island and is a critical component to ensure the State follows up with visitors on any COVID related symptoms. Improper payments: States are experiencing a high volume of unemployment insurance claims due to the pandemic. This resulted in bad actors trying to get away with false unemployment claims. SpringML created a solution using machine learning and advanced data analytics to help government agencies detect suspected fraudulent claims and reduce time spent reviewing applications as they work to process high numbers of social services claims.

States are experiencing a high volume of unemployment insurance claims due to the pandemic. This resulted in bad actors trying to get away with false unemployment claims. SpringML created a solution using machine learning and advanced data analytics to help government agencies and reduce time spent reviewing applications as they work to process high numbers of social services claims. Vaccine management & distribution: Established an end-to-end vaccine management platform , from provider enrollment all the way through to post-vaccine tracking.

Established an end-to-end , from provider enrollment all the way through to post-vaccine tracking. Vaccine pre-screening and scheduling: SpringML, in partnership with Google Cloud, has built a secure and scalable platform to support States, Counties and Cities to open registration, perform eligibility screening, manage scheduling and deliver COVID-19 vaccinations in a timely manner.

SpringML, in partnership with Google Cloud, has built a secure and scalable platform to support States, Counties and Cities to and deliver COVID-19 vaccinations in a timely manner. HR COVID Tracking: HR COVID-19 Tracker allows Human Resource Departments to report and track COVID-19 cases during quarantine and isolation periods, adapt to the changing state regulations and requirements and send communications and work notices to employees.



Carolee Gearhart , Global Channel Chief at Google Cloud. "Over the past year, public sector organizations have increasingly relied on digital technologies to respond to crises and rapid change, and we're proud of the support that our partners like SpringML have provided these important institutions." About SpringML, Inc.

SpringML delivers data-driven digital transformation outcomes with an experimentation and design thinking mindset. We provide consulting and implementation services and industry-specific analytics solutions that deliver high-impact business value from data. SpringML is a premier Google Cloud partner with capabilities to plan, assess, deploy, and manage data-driven engagements. We have been awarded Google Cloud specialization based on our expertise and customer portfolio for Security, Data Management, Application Development, Data Analytics, Machine Learning, and Marketing Analytics. Visit springml.com for more information.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/springml-wins-2020-google-cloud-public-sector-partner-of-the-year---state-and-local-governments-award-301336405.html SOURCE SpringML

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[July 20, 2021] STEP CG Celebrates 7 Years In Business With A Host of Prestigious Awards

STEP CG, Where Innovation Meets Execution, today announced its Executive Briefing Center is now open and fully equipped for hosting briefings. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005656/en/ (Photo: Business Wire) "As we celebrate our seventh anniversary, it's fitting our new innovation and executive briefing center in Covington's RiverCenter is further enabling collaboration with our customers and vendors," said Rob Huff, President of STEP CG. "We have an awesome team at STEP CG and are growing fast, it's exciting times," said Ed Walton, CEO of STEP CG. "We're all about constant innovation to help reduce complexity and drive real business outcomes." Further evidence of STEP CG's growth is the most recent tranche of awards they have been honored to receive, including: CRN Solution Provider 500 List 2021

Financial Times (News - Alert) Fastest Growing Companies

CBC Fast 55 (2nd time) 2021

Inc. 5000 Regionals (2nd time) 2021

Vertiv POY (2nd time) 2021

Extreme's US Enterprise & Growth Partner of the Year 2020

Nomination for EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2021



"It's incredible for STEP CG to be recognized for our contribution to the growth and success of the IT channel," added Walton. "All of these accolades speak to a culture that empowers talent and passion, allowing employees to be innovative and execute with excellence."

About STEP CG STEP CG, LLC is a highly innovative, award-winning, nationwide IT services engineering firm specializing in solutions powered by strategic experts and best-of-breed technologies that guide their clients through complex IT challenges. STEP CG was founded in 2014 and has become one of the fastest-growing technology firms in the Midwest. Their portfolio enables enterprises with solutions for wireline, wireless, cellular, cloud, security, collaboration, and managed services. STEP CG is a privately held company headquartered in Covington, Kentucky. STEP CG is where innovation meets execution. For more information, visit STEP CG's website or follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. Related Links

https://www.stepcg.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005656/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Digital Locations Joins DPAA as a Strategic 5G Services Member

SANTA BARBARA, Calif., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Digital Locations, Inc. ( DLOC ), the leading aggregator and marketplace for 5G small cell sites, today announced that it has become a member of the DPAA.

DPAA is the leading global trade marketing association connecting out-of-home media with the advertising community while moving OOH to digital. Membership in the DPAA community brings many business acceleration benefits, including a wide array of products and an extensive database of research, best practices and case studies; tools for planning, training and forecasting; social media amplification of news; insights on software and hardware solutions; further integration into the advertising ecosystem as part of the video everywhere conversation and marketing campaign; and more. Digital Locations helps the OOH ecosystem add incremental revenue to existing real estate assets by facilitating the activation of 5G on their locations. This in turn provides additional revenue opportunities to both the OOH vendor and property owner, creating a win-win scenario. As DPAA continually expands the business opportunities for our members, we are happy to welcome Digital Locations to our global community. Their smart, creative business model is great for innovation and revenue growth in the OOH space and extended ecosystem, said Barry Frey, President & CEO of DPAA. We look forward to working with them. We are pleased to join the DPAA. As Digital Locations continues its mission to be the leading aggregator and marketplace for 5G small cell sites, membership in the DPAA opens doors in working with other DOOH members who have vast amounts of real estate under contract, said Bill Beifuss, the Companys President. The sheer amount of work it would take for us or major carriers to work with all of the individual property owners in DOOH portfolios would be staggering. Working directly with our DOOH partners and leveraging their existing asset portfolio to our database vastly reduces the amount of ork and management in site selection and activation and will be a win-win for all parties involved.



Mr. Beifuss concluded, Membership with the DPAA and our strategy with the DOOH industry illustrates how we are creatively attacking the market and uniquely growing our marketplace. We look forward to providing value to DPAA members and our wireless carrier partners. About DPAA

DPAA is the leading global trade marketing association connecting out-of-home media with the advertising community while moving OOH to digital. Membership in the DPAA community brings many business acceleration benefits, including a wide array of products such as DPAA Short Connects, DPAA Homeroom, DPAA Town Hall, DPAA Davos and DPAA Task Force. DPAA also offers members an extensive database of research, best practices and case studies; tools for planning, training and forecasting; social media amplification of news; insights on software and hardware solutions; further integration into the advertising ecosystem as part of the video everywhere conversation and marketing campaign; and more. To learn more about DPAA please visit https://dpaaglobal.com/ Media Contact

Ajay Durani

718.926.2852 (m)

Ajay.durani@dpaaglobal.com About Digital Locations, Inc. Digital Locations, Inc., is the leading aggregator and marketplace for small 5G cell sites. 5G wireless networks are expected to be 100 times faster than current 4G LTE networks. This will enable global scale killer applications such as self-driving cars, the Internet of things (IOT), mobile streaming of 4K videos, real-time hologram-based collaboration, and lag-free high definition gaming. To realize this vision, many new 5G antennas are needed because high frequency 5G signals cannot travel farther than 100 meters. It is estimated that more than 1 million new 5G cell towers must be added in the United States alone. We currently have rights to more than 110,000 pre-qualified wireless cell sites that can be developed to help meet the demands of 5G networks. Using our patented software system, network operators such as Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile Sprint can easily contract with site owners all over the U.S, to quickly build out their wireless networks. Our goal is to continue to acquire the rights to more sites and become a landlord of tomorrows wireless communications assets. To learn more about Digital Locations please visit www.digitallocations.com Safe Harbor Statement Matters discussed in this press release contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. When used in this press release, the words "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "may," "intend," "expect" and similar expressions identify such forward-looking statements. Actual results, performance or achievements could differ materially from those contemplated, expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements contained herein, and while expected, there is no guarantee that we will attain the aforementioned anticipated developmental milestones. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations of the Company and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. These include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties associated with: the impact of economic, competitive and other factors affecting the Company and its operations, markets, product, and distributor performance, the impact on the national and local economies resulting from terrorist actions, and U.S. actions subsequently; and other factors detailed in reports filed by the Company. Press Contact:

communications@digitallocations.com

(805) 456-7000



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[July 20, 2021] UPDATE - Piedmont Healthcare Expands Relationship with InFlight to Support Ongoing Recruiting Blitz

EASTHAMPTON, Mass., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After over a year of navigating the Covid-19 pandemic, Piedmont Healthcare has expanded its relationship with InFlight Corporation, the award-winning employee experience platform enabling organizations to do more with existing software investments, to support their recruitment needs.

With hiring a top concern for many leading employers, Piedmont Healthcare sought to differentiate itself in todays competitive market. The integrated healthcare system continues to grow in size, making several thousand external hires in 2020 and anticipating several thousand more in 2021. Having initially selected the InFlight ProgrammaticPLUS job advertising solution two years ago to streamline processes for critical roles, Piedmont Healthcare is now leveraging additional InFlight products to improve the overall candidate experience. Piedmont Healthcare recently began removing friction from the ATS user experience across for all of its jobs using InFlight Apply Flow Enhancement as well as InFlight Candidate Scheduling, which enables candidates to schedule an interview with the recruiter in the flow of the application. Carly Fearrington, Talent Acquisition Manager at Piedmont Healthcare, shared, One of the biggest challenges with Covid-19 is that its constantly changing the way we do business, the way we recruit. But at the same time, it changes and shifts the hotspot roles that we need to fill, and so we wanted a technology that would enable us to cater to candidates from start to finish, despite the circumstances. InFlight has been an amazing partner in this because their platform and suite of products enables us to come up with flexible solutions to meet our needs. Recognizing that recruiting doesnt end with the application or even the offer letter, Fearrington and her team looked to InFlight to enhance its talent experience throughout, including self-serve event scheduling and onboarding. For example, pre-pandemic, Piedmont Healthcare hosted Walk-In Wednesdays, where nurses could wlk into any facility and meet with a recruiter to learn about a role before applying. To keep these events going, the organization relied on InFlight to help take the concept virtual through a dedicated scheduling platform, a move that enabled the talent acquisition team to continue connecting with in-demand candidates, including many from out of state.



Piedmont Healthcare also worked with InFlight to create an onboarding experience that reflects a more hybrid reality, noting that onboarding is an employees first impression of the organization. Fearrington added, As conditions have evolved over the last year, we needed to know what was working and how it was resonating. InFlight has helped us move forward, giving us insight into our performance as we made those critical hires and kept our hospitals staffed throughout this challenging time.

Chris Gasparro, Senior Director, Customer Success, for InFlight Corporation, commented, Having partnered with Piedmont Healthcare before Covid-19, we were able to recognize the new obstacles they faced, particularly with hiring essential workers. Through the work weve done together, across their apply flow, and with the addition of event scheduling and onboarding, InFlight is helping optimize their employee experience, focusing on their first experiences with the organization as a candidate and later as an employee. About Piedmont Healthcare

Piedmont Healthcare empowers communities to connect with safe and high-quality care, conveniently, every step of the way. Our promise is to make a positive difference in every life we touch, and today, we are creating a destination known for the best clinicians and a safe one-of-a-kind experience that always puts patients first. Founded in 1905, we are a private, not-for-profit organization with over 23,000 employees caring for 2.7 million patients across 800 locations and serving communities that comprise 70 percent of Georgias population. Piedmont provides safe, convenient, and high-quality care across 11 hospitals, 35 Piedmont Urgent Care centers, 25 QuickCare locations, 1,875 Piedmont Clinic physician practices, and more than 2,500 Piedmont Clinic members. In 2019, Forbes listed us as one of the Top10 Employers in Georgia, Piedmont became Great Place to Work-Certified, which was repeated in 2020. In FY 2020, Piedmont provided $393 million in uncompensated care and community benefit programming to the communities we serve. For more information, visit piedmont.org. About InFlight

To survive and thrive, organizations must be efficient and find ways to do more with less. By optimizing existing software investments, the InFlight Employee Experience Platform (EXP) recognizes and resolves productivity bottlenecks and enhances the digital experience provided by enterprise applications, removing friction for candidates and employees. InFlight EXP uses analytics to identify, quantify, and solve for user experience challenges, increasing user adoption, reducing costly training and support requirements, and dramatically streamlining workflows for existing HCM, ATS, financials, and other applications. To learn how InFlight can help your organization, visit www.inflightintegration.com.

Note to editors: Trademarks and registered trademarks referenced herein remain the property of their respective owners. Media Contacts: John Manasso Piedmont Healthcare 470-271-6112 john.manasso@piedmont.org Kate Achille The Devon Group for InFlight Corporation inflight@devonpr.com

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[July 20, 2021] Appointment of Chris Marschall as Head of Financial Institutions Group for Credit Agricole CIB Canada

Chris Marschall has been appointed Head of Financial Institutions Group for Credit Agricole CIB (CACIB) Canada, effective July 16, 2021. Chris has close to 25 years of investment banking and structured finance experience in several European countries and Asia. He started his career with ABN AMRO in leveraged finance and asset securitization before moving into equity capital markets (ECM). He has managed teams in ECM at an ECM joint venture with Rothschild and also at The Royal Bank of Scotland, with whom he relocated to cover Asia. In 2012, he joined the Asian investment bank CIMB as Head of ECM and Equity Syndicate, North Asia and he led a team focused on originating, structuring and selling ECM deals in North Asia, based in Hong Kong. Chris joins CACIB Canada from his most recent role as Head of ECM, Asia Pacific at CACIB Hong Kong with a focus on origination, structuring and distribution of equity and equity-linked fundraisings (public and private). As Head of Financial Institutions Grou for CACIB Canada, Chris will lead the coverage efforts and strategy for all of CACIB's business with Canadian Financial Institutions (pension funds, asset managers, banks and SSAs) globally.



Primarily based in Toronto, Chris will report locally to Xavier Roux, Senior Country Officer for Credit Agricole CIB Canada and regionally to Denise de Diego, Head of Financial Institutions Group, Americas. About Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (Credit Agricole CIB)

Credit Agricole CIB is the corporate and investment banking arm of Credit Agricole Group, the 12th largest banking group worldwide in terms of tier 1 capital (The Banker, July 2020). Nearly 8,400 employees across Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa support the Bank's clients, meeting their financial needs throughout the world. Credit Agricole CIB offers its large corporate and institutional clients a range of products and services in capital markets activities, investment banking, structured finance, commercial banking and international trade. The Bank is a pioneer in the area of climate finance, and is currently a market leader in this segment with a complete offer for all its clients. For more information, please visit www.ca-cib.com View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006020/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Canada Launches Just Transition Engagement

OTTAWA, ON, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - Canada is building a clean energy future that leaves no one behind. The Honourable Seamus O'Regan Jr., Minister of Natural Resources, today launched an engagement process asking Canadians how the Government of Canada can ensure a just and equitable transition to a low-carbon future for workers and their communities. Through this process, the government is calling on stakeholders, such as labour, non-governmental organizations and industry, as well as provincial, territorial and Indigenous partners, to provide feedback on potential elements of proposed just transition legislation. This includes the development of just transition principles that would inform government decision-making and the creation of a Just Transition Advisory Body. For more information, and to participate, visit www.just-transition.ca. Countries around the world have made bold and ambitious commitments to meet 2030 and 2050 climate goals, and many are embedding jus transition considerations in how they reach these goals. The preamble of the 2015 Paris Agreement underlines the importance of a just transition and the creation of decent work and good jobs. Real climate action today will make our economy stronger and more competitive, and it will also create jobs across the country.



Canadians have expressed their expectations that the government will ensure that the low-carbon transition is just and equitable so that equity-deserving groups  such as women, Indigenous Peoples, racialized individuals, people with disabilities and youth  are able to benefit from new jobs and opportunities. Consulting Canadians on the development of just transition legislation will help ensure that all voices are heard. Quote

"Workers in the natural resource sectors helped build this country. These same workers will build our low-carbon future. It is their skills, determination and ingenuity that will get us to net zero and ensure our continued prosperity. They won't be left behind  they will lead the way." The Honourable Seamus O'Regan Jr.

Minister of Natural Resources "Today's announcement will provide Canadian workers with an opportunity to inform our recovery plan as we emerge from the pandemic. Supporting a greener economy means providing workers with the skills training they need to get good-quality jobs while supporting industry by building the much-needed capacity in these emerging sectors." The Honourable Carla Qualtrough

Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion Associated Links Just Transition Legislation Follow us on Twitter: @NRCan ( http://twitter.com/nrcan ) SOURCE Natural Resources Canada

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[July 20, 2021]

Evaluate and Track EPC and EPCM Services Market| Procurement Research Report| SpendEdge

NEW YORK, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ --The EPC and EPCM Services will grow at a CAGR of 4.19% by 2024. Prices will increase by 3%-7% during the forecast period and suppliers will have a moderate bargaining power in this market. This report offers key advisory and intelligence to help buyers identify and shortlist the most suitable suppliers for their EPC and EPCM Services requirements.

Get a Free Access to All This Market's Trends and Drivers

EPC and EPCM Services Procurement report explains key category management objectives that should form the base for sourcing strategy, including:

Top-line growth

Scalability of inputs

Category innovations

Supply base rationalization

Cost savings

Customer retention

Reduction of TCO

Supply assurance

Adherence to regulatory nuances

Minimalization of ad hoc purchases

Green initiatives

Demand forecasting and governance

Sign Up for a Sample EPC and EPCM Services Procurement Market Report: www.spendedge.com/report/epc-and-epcm-services-sourcing-and-procurement-intelligence-report

This report evaluates suppliers based on provision for applicable insurance policy, real-time analysis, pipeline software solutions, and conduct pipeline surveys. In addition, supliers are also shortlisted based on business needs, technical specifications, operational requirements, security compliance, regulatory mandates, legal requirements, quality control, change management procedures, pricing models, penalty clauses, SLA nuances, acceptance criteria, and evaluation criteria.







Related Reports on Professional Services Include:

Asset Recovery Services - Forecast and Analysis: The asset recovery services will grow at a CAGR of 9.49% during 2021-2025. Asia Asset Recovery Pte Ltd., TES-Amm Singapore Pte Ltd., and Iron Mountain Inc. are among the prominent suppliers in asset recovery services market. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report. Vulnerability Management Sourcing and Procurement Report: Vulnerability Management Procurement Market, prices will increase by 4%-6% during the forecast period and suppliers will have a Moderate bargaining power in this market. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report. Celebrity Talent Management Services - Sourcing and Procurement Intelligence Report: This report offers key advisory and intelligence to help buyers identify and shortlist the most suitable suppliers for their celebrity talent management services requirements. Click the above link to download the free sample of this report.

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

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.

Contact

SpendEdge

Anirban Choudhury

Marketing Manager

Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340

https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/evaluate-and-track-epc-and-epcm-services-market-procurement-research-report-spendedge-301337657.html

SOURCE SpendEdge
[July 20, 2021] Deflationary Coin With Huge Rewards Launched on BSC Chain called BabyXRP

CHICAGO, July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baby XRP, has launched a deflationary coin with locked liquidity as a safer way to invest in a BSC. Their team believes education and communication are the keys to wise investing.

Baby XRP has been launched as a safe binance smart chain token for investors, with locked liquidity. The project is run by a fully doxxed developer team, as a way to ensure the trust and safety of its investors. To learn more please visit http://babyxrp.org The recently launched Baby XRP ensures liquidity by sending 5% of each transaction to a liquidity pool. This process provides liquidity that is directly locked in comparison to the holders in the marketplace. This 5% comes out of the 17% tax applied directly to all transactions, all of which are used to make the tokens a reliable investment. The tax is broken into four parts, the next being 5% for the ripple effect. Tis ripple effect is used to ensure stability by encouraging token holders to hold their investments. Through not selling or swapping their investment, diamond hand holders will be eligible after 7 days to start receiving Legacy XRP as rewards. This XRP will be airdropped to their wallets every three days based on the percentage of the total supply they own. Baby XRP rewarded investors $130,000 in XRP legacy coins in the first few days and over $200,000 was rewarded on the next drop! Nearly $250,000 in XRP coins were given to Baby XRP investors on July 18. A special $500,000 XRP drop will be announced in the next few days!



The next part of the tax goes to marketing. 3% of each transaction will be used to attract new investors and holders, to be sure the currency continues to grow. The final 2% goes to making the tokens deflationary. To ensure they continue to grow in value, this 2% will be sent to a dead wallet and removed permanently from the overall supply, which will increase the value of the remaining tokens.

The 17% tax on transactions is also used as encouragement to hold on to invested tokens so that the investment can continue to grow. The team at Baby XRP does not use farming apps, buy-back mechanisms, or bots that manipulate the price. All of the mechanisms used to ensure the stability and continued growth of Baby XRP are straightforward and available for viewing on the website. The developer team for Baby XRP believes the best way to provide a safe investment space is through education, trust, and open discussion. They provide access to a 24-hour voice chat for their investors so they can learn more about their financial choices, and how to make wise investments to grow their money. A special marketing bonus of $25,000 worth of BNB will be given away to one lucky Baby XRP investor once a market cap of $50 million is reached! For more information please visit http://babyxrp.org Media Contact -

Dave Singh

Dev@babyxrp.org

http://babyxrp.org



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[July 20, 2021] Car Rental Gateway and Liigu kick off Contactless Car Rental in Top European Destinations

LONDON, July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Car Rental Gateway has partnered with Liigu to offer new-generation contactless car sharing on their customisable app platform Titanium Mobility. The service is now available in France, Portugal, Latvia, and Estonia, with more locations already in the works. "We share a mission with Liigu to offer mobility services to everyone whenever and wherever," says Martin Kallasmaa, Car Rental Gateway's Commercial Director. "Titanium Mobility gives our partners a flexible and efficient tool stack for scaling up a forward-looking service. Our biggest innovation is not technology. It's the attitude. We want to make car-sharing truly customer-friendly by making the most of the technology that is already out there." Liigu kicks off in the time of change for the travel industry with an ambition to shift the classical concept of car rental. Their goal is to offer a service as convenient as custmers having their own car waiting in the airport parking lot. Instead of upsell-oriented rental desks, Liigu also offers their customers leading-edge personal support during their whole trip.



Titanium Mobility provides a technology to meet Liigu's goal. A full mobility journey on a single platform enables customers to book a car online, go straight to the car, unlock the doors using the mobile app, and drive off. In other words, a smartphone is the only thing needed to rent a Liigu car. The shift towards contactless services in car rental keeps up with the current way of living. People are used to doing everything onlineshopping for groceries, furniture, and even cars, working remotely and ordering food to their doorsteps. Why couldn't renting a car be just as easy? Car Rental Gateway and Liigu have teamed up to answer: yes, it can.

Car Rental Gateway is one of the leading global technology providers in the industrythey have built the core platform for Rentalcars.com, the biggest online broker in the market, and provide Expedia with unified data and connectivity with all major car rental operators. The team that is experienced in bringing together mobility providers and travel distributors, has been steering e-commerce solutions in car rental distribution software since 2001. Media Contact: Car Rental Gateway LTD

Martin Kallasmaa

Commercial Director

Suite 510 Hyde Park Hayes 3, 11 Millington Road Hayes, Middlesex UB3 4AZ

United Kingdom

Mobile: +44-758-467-5103

Email: martin.kallasmaa@carrentalgateway.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/car-rental-gateway-and-liigu-kick-off-contactless-car-rental-in-top-european-destinations-301337768.html SOURCE Car Rental Gateway Ltd

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[July 20, 2021] Microsoft Canada Awards MNP the 2021 Public Sector Impact Award

MNP recognized for their outstanding work partnering with prominent public sector client CALGARY, AB, July 20, 2021 /CNW/ - MNP is proud to announce that it has won the 2021 Microsoft Canada Public Sector Impact Award. These annual Canadian awards recognize Microsoft partners that have focused on bettering the lives of Canadians and demonstrated excellence in sales, marketing, skilling, innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. Best exemplifying customer excellence through digital transformation in the Public Sector category, MNP was selected as winner among a very competitive field. "This is an extremely prestigious award and we're honoured to have won. The entire organization is humbled by the effort of our team this past year," said Sean Devin, MNP Technology Solutions National Leader. "We were fortunate enough to have a client in the public sector that believed in our shared vision and partnered with us make it a reality. Leveraging Microsoft technologies, we were able to collabortively transform the way our client operates, offering truly ground-breaking services to the province's most vulnerable citizens. This is a win not just for MNP, but for our clients as well."



Microsoft Canada presented these awards in 27 categories on July 15, 2021, as part of Microsoft's second virtual Inspire conference. Winners were selected based on the outstanding work the companies provided to their customers and community. The Public Sector Impact Award recognizes a partner that excels at providing innovative and unique services or solutions to public sector clients, demonstrating thought leadership in their industry. "We are pleased to recognize MNP as this year's recipient of the Public Sector Impact Award," said Suzanne Gagliese, Vice President, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft Canada. "Amid a challenging year, our partners have demonstrated dedication to innovation and customer excellence by leveraging cutting-edge solutions to solve complex business challenges and overcome disruption."

Having earned their highly sought-after Microsoft Azure Advanced Specialization certification in Modernization of Web Applications earlier this month, MNP is proud to be working together so closely with Microsoft Canada. As a certified Microsoft Gold Partner with 10+ certifications and counting, MNP works closely with their clients in a number of industries to deliver strategic, measurable solutions, maximizing their impact by leveraging the latest platforms and technology. Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta with more than 120 offices located across the country, MNP's footprint continues to grow as it works to accelerate innovation and drive change for clients everywhere in Canada. About MNP LLP MNP is one of the largest national full-service business advisory firms in Canada, providing client-focused solutions. National in scope and local in focus, MNP has proudly served individuals and public and private companies for over 60 years. Through the development of strong relationships, MNP provides personalized strategies and a local perspective to help them succeed. MNP's Technology Solutions practice (Technology and Digital Advisory services) is one of the fastest growing parts of the firm's consulting services business. For more information, visit: mnptechnology.ca SOURCE MNP LLP

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[July 20, 2021] Asurio General Manager Jack Coffelt Appointed to the NFPA 72 Standards Committee

BOULDER, Colo., July 20, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Asurio, Inc. (www.asurio.com), developers of the BirdDog Life Safety Inspection & Data Collection System, today announced that Asurio General Manager Jack Coffelt has been appointed to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 72 Testing and Maintenance of Fire Alarm and Signaling Systems Committee (SIG-TMS). NFPA 72 provides the latest safety provisions to meet society's changing fire detection, signaling, and emergency communications demands. In addition to the core focus on fire alarm systems, the NFPA 72 committee also addresses requirements for mass notification systems used for weather emergencies; terrorist events; biological, chemical, and nuclear emergencies; and other threats.

Jack Coffelt Has Decades of Experience Across All Areas of Fire Life Safety Disciplines With more than 30 years of experience in the Fire Life Safety industry, Jack Coffelt brings extensive, practical knowledge across all the different Fire Life Safety Inspection disciplines  Fire Alarm, Fire Sprinkler & Fire Suppression Systems, Fire Pumps, and more  to his role as General Manager for Asurio, Inc. Prior to joining Asurio, Inc., Mr. Coffelt served as a Fire Life Safety contractor for 20+ years, including leadership roles in Fire Life Safety positions at Siemens; Potter Electric Signals Company; Affiliated Computer Systems; Security Fire Systems; Honeywells ire Alarm Division; Simplex-Grinnell; and Kidde-Fenwall. He also served as a Fire & Security Technician in the U.S. Navy for 10 years.



Mr. Coffelt now serves as a technical committee member for NFPA 72 (fire alarm standards). He also is participating in the NICET Fire Protection Advisory Committee (National Institute for Certifying Engineering Trades). Mr. Coffelt earned a NICET Level IV certification in Fire Alarm Systems; a NICET Level II in Water Based Fire Protection Testing and Inspection; and he holds a Texas Alarm Planning Superintendent (APS) license. He is a member of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), National Fire Sprinkler Association (NFSA), and holds a Texas Fire Alarm Planning Superintendent License. It has been a long-time goal of mine to serve on the NFPA 72 committee to help influence and guide the development of fire alarm & emergency signaling standards that can help save lives worldwide, said Mr. Coffelt. The world of fire alarms & emergency signaling systems is becoming more complex by the year. I look forward to serving in this NFPA 72 committee to help develop standards & codes that will both save lives & property, and address the increasing role that technology plays with fire alarm & emergency signaling systems.

About Asurio, Inc. & BirdDog Life Safety Inspection Software Asurio, Inc. is a USA-based software company that offers the BirdDog Life Safety Inspection & Data Collection System. BirdDog is one of the more powerful & versatile inspection & data collection systems on the market today. Asurio has a special expertise in fire-life safety inspections for commercial buildings, hospitals, manufacturing facilities, and more. However, the BirdDog system can be configured to inspect and/or collect data for virtually any industry. In addition, Asurio, Inc. is a Microsoft partner, and hosts its cloud-based BirdDog inspection software on the Microsoft Azure cloud computing solution, resulting in world-class 24/7 reliability and security. Asurio, Inc. can be reached at: www.asurio.com, or 877.444.1488. Media Contact:

Courtney DeWinter, DeWinter Marketing & PR  Denver

303.572.8180, www.DeWinterMarketingPR.com



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[July 20, 2021] DIDI ALERT: Shareholders With Substantial Losses Have Opportunity to Lead the DiDi Global Inc. Class Action Lawsuit

Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP announces that purchasers of DiDi Global Inc. (NYSE: DIDI) American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") pursuant and/or traceable to the registration statement and prospectus (collectively, the "Registration Statement") issued in connection with DiDi's June 2021 initial public offering ("IPO") and/or DiDi securities between June 30, 2021 and July 2, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period") have until September 7, 2021 to seek appointment as lead plaintiff in the DiDi class action lawsuit. The DiDi class action lawsuit charges DiDi, certain of its executives and directors, as well as the underwriters of DiDi's IPO with violations of the Securities Act of 1933 and/or Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The DiDi class action lawsuit was commenced on July 6, 2021 in the Southern District of New York and is captioned Espinal v. DiDi Global Inc. f/k/a Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc., No. 21-cv-05807. A similar lawsuit, captioned Chopra v. DiDi Global Inc., No. 21-cv-05973, is also pending in the Southern District of New York while an additional similar lawsuit, captioned Franklin v. DiDi Global Inc., No. 21-cv-05486, is pending in the Central District of California. If you suffered substantial losses and wish to serve as lead plaintiff of the DiDi class action lawsuit, please provide your information by clicking here. You can also contact attorney J.C. Sanchez of Robbins Geller by calling 800/449-4900 or via e-mail at jsanchez@rgrdlaw.com. Lead plaintiff motions for the DiDi class acion lawsuit must be filed with the court no later than September 7, 2021.



CASE ALLEGATIONS: DiDi claims to be the "go-to brand in China for shared mobility," offering a range of services including ride hailing, taxi hailing, chauffeur, and hitch. Through its IPO, DiDi sold approximately 316 million shares at a price of $14.00 per share, with four ADSs representing one Class A ordinary DiDi share. The DiDi class action lawsuit alleges that, throughout the Class Period, defendants made false and misleading statements and failed to disclose that: (i) DiDi's apps did not comply with applicable laws and regulations governing privacy protection and the collection of personal information; (ii) as a result, DiDi was reasonably likely to incur scrutiny from the Cyberspace Administration of China; (iii) the Cyberspace Administration of China had already warned DiDi to delay its IPO to conduct a self-examination of its network security; (iv) as a result of the foregoing, DiDi's apps were reasonably likely to be taken down from app stores in China, which would have an adverse effect on its financial results and operations; and (v) as a result, defendants' positive statements about DiDi's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.

On July 2, 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China revealed that it had launched an investigation into DiDi to protect national security and the public interest. The Cyberspace Administration of China also reported that it had asked DiDi to stop new user registrations during the course of the investigation. On this news, DiDi's share price fell more than 5%. Then, on Sunday, July 4, 2021, DiDi reported that the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered smartphone app stores to stop offering the "DiDi Chuxing" app because it "collect[ed] personal information in violation of relevant [People's Republic of China] laws and regulations." Though users who previously downloaded the app could continue to use it, DiDi stated that "the app takedown may have an adverse impact on its revenue in China." Finally, on July 5, 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Cyberspace Administration of China had asked DiDi as early as three months prior to the IPO to postpone the offering because of national security concerns and to "conduct a thorough self-examination of its network security." On this news, DiDi's stock price fell almost 20%, further damaging investors. UPDATE: On July 9, 2021, The Wall Street Journal further reported that Chinese authorities "ordered mobile app stores to remove 25 more apps operated by DiDi Global Inc.'s China arm, saying the apps illegally collect personal data, escalating its regulatory actions against the ride-hailing company." THE LEAD PLAINTIFF PROCESS: The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 permits any investor who purchased DiDi ADSs pursuant and/or traceable to the Registration Statement issued in connection with DiDi's IPO and/or DiDi securities during the Class Period to seek appointment as lead plaintiff in the DiDi class action lawsuit. A lead plaintiff is generally the movant with the greatest financial interest in the relief sought by the putative class who is also typical and adequate of the putative class. A lead plaintiff acts on behalf of all other class members in directing the DiDi class action lawsuit. The lead plaintiff can select a law firm of its choice to litigate the DiDi class action lawsuit. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery of the DiDi class action lawsuit is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff. ABOUT ROBBINS GELLER RUDMAN & DOWD LLP: With 200 lawyers in 9 offices nationwide, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP is the largest U.S. law firm representing investors in securities class actions. Robbins Geller attorneys have obtained many of the largest shareholder recoveries in history, including the largest securities class action recovery ever - $7.2 billion - in In re Enron Corp. Sec. Litig. The 2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Top 50 Report ranked Robbins Geller first for recovering $1.6 billion for investors last year, more than double the amount recovered by any other securities plaintiffs' firm. Please visit https://www.rgrdlaw.com/firm.html for more information. Attorney advertising.

Past results do not guarantee future outcomes.

Services may be performed by attorneys in any of our offices. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720005256/en/

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[July 20, 2021] AM Best Assigns Preliminary Credit Assessment to North End Re Ltd.

AM Best has assigned a Preliminary Credit Assessment (PCA) to North End Re Ltd. (Bermuda) with a Financial Strength Assessment of A- pca (Excellent) and a Long-Term Issuer Credit Assessment of "a-" pca (Excellent). The outlook assigned to these PCAs is stable. Currently, the company is a wholly owned direct subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management Reinsurance Partners Ltd. [TSX: BAMR; NYSE: BAMR]. The PCA reflects North End Re Ltd.'s balance sheet strength, which AM Best assesses as strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. The PCA reflects North End Re Ltd.'s plan of making a significant capital investment to keep an appropriate level of risk-adjusted capital, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), and regulatory risk-adjusted capital. The company expects to use external and internal revolving lines of credit. The sponsor, Brookfield Asset Management Inc., provides security and resources, especially in the asset management space. North End Re Ltd. complements geographically its sister company, North End Re (Cayman) SPC, which also is starting its activities. The company has another sister company, Brookfield Annuity Company, that provides pension risk transfer solutions in Canada, which has been in operation for a few years. This press release relates to Credit Ratings that hve been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper use of Best's Credit Ratings, Best's Preliminary Credit Assessments and AM Best press releases, please view Guide to Proper Use of Best's Ratings & Assessments.



AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2021 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006131/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Charles Schwab Named to Forbes Best Employers for New Graduates List

Charles Schwab has been named as one of Forbes Best Employers for New Graduates for 2021, ranking 15th among a field of 250 companies and #1 among Financial Services companies. Over 20,000 young professionals in the U.S., who work for companies that employ at least 1,000 people, participated in the independent survey focused around work-related issues and their experiences in the workplace. "College students and graduates represent our future and play a key role in Schwab's ability to help clients take control of their financial lives," said Katie Casey, managing director, Head of Human Resources. "That's why recruiting the best and the brightest is a high priority for Schwab," she added. "We are committed to developing recent graduates' careers and introducing them to Schwab's culture by offering experiences across our company, providing opportunities to participate in career mentoring programs, and promoting volunteering in our local communities, all while supporting a healthy work-life balance." Schwab provides various professional development programs for college students and recent grads, offering knowledge, training, and access to leaders, aimed at empowering them to be the creators and innovators of tomorrow. Schwab's programming for college students and recent graduates include the Schwab New Employee Recruitment Development (NERD) Program designed for grads with an interest in technology; the Schwab Financial Consultant Academy for grads who wish to pursue a financial planning career; and the Schwab Intern Academy designed for college juniors and seniors and graduate students still working on their education. For more information on these programs, visit jobs.schwabjobs.com.



Hiring Nationwide The Charles Schwab Corporation - through its Schwab and TD Ameritrade broker dealers - is currently hiring in key markets nationwide, part of an expansion of the company's ongoing recruitment efforts. Open positions span functions across Schwab and TD Ameritrade, with a particular emphasis on financial consultants, client service, licensed representatives, and technology professionals, across the company's employment centers, including Dallas-Forth Worth, Omaha, St. Louis, Austin, San Francisco, Phoenix and Denver.

Interested candidates can access job openings on the firm's careers website and are also invited to register for events that will connect them directly with the firm's Talent Acquisition team members for virtual networking chats, webinars, and campus events that offer more information about available opportunities. About Charles Schwab & Co. The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE: SCHW) is a leading provider of financial services, with 32.3 million active brokerage accounts, 2.1 million corporate retirement plan participants, 1.6 million banking accounts, and approximately $7.57 trillion in client assets. Through its operating subsidiaries, the company provides a full range of wealth management, securities brokerage, banking, asset management, custody, and financial advisory services to individual investors and independent investment advisors. Its broker-dealer subsidiaries, Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., TD Ameritrade, Inc., and TD Ameritrade Clearing, Inc., (members SIPC, www.sipc.org), and their affiliates offer a complete range of investment services and products including an extensive selection of mutual funds; financial planning and investment advice; retirement plan and equity compensation plan services; referrals to independent, fee-based investment advisors; and custodial, operational and trading support for independent, fee-based investment advisors through Schwab Advisor Services. Its primary banking subsidiary, Charles Schwab Bank, SSB (member FDIC and an Equal Housing Lender), provides banking and lending services and products. More information is available at www.aboutschwab.com. TD Ameritrade, Inc. and TD Ameritrade Clearing, Inc. are separate but affiliated companies and subsidiaries of TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation. TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Charles Schwab Corporation. TD Ameritrade is a trademark jointly owned by TD Ameritrade IP Company, Inc. and The Toronto-Dominion Bank. Brokerage Products: Not FDIC Insured  No Bank Guarantee  May Lose Value  2021 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. Member SIPC. (0721-1SEM) View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006137/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Selim Aissi, Industry Veteran CISO and Information Security Leader, Joins FundingShield Advisory Board

FundingShield is pleased to announce that Selim Aissi has joined its advisory board. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006133/en/ Ike Suri - Chairman & CEO, FundingShield (Photo: Business Wire) Until recently, Selim was Senior Vice President & Chief Security Officer at Ice Mortgage Technology (F/K/A Ellie Mae) where he was responsible for Ellie Mae's Security Engineering, Operations, Strategy, Cyber Resilience, and GRC. FundingShield's CEO & Chairman Ike Suri shared, "We have high regard for Selim, his experience, his accomplishments and his network. We look forward to working with him to accomplish aditional growth for FundingShield."



Selim shared, "I am thrilled about joining FundingShield as an Advisory Board Member and to be part of their successful journey in addressing some of the most challenging issues in the Financial industry such as transaction-level Fraud and Cyber Threats." In addition to his leadership role for the past 6 years at Ellie Mae (up to and through the Inter-Continental Exchange acquisition of Ellie Mae), Selim has held various roles including Vice President of Global Information (News - Alert) Security at Visa where he transformed Visa's information security program into the industry leader, led critical security programs including product security innovation, and enabled global growth and datacenter expansion. He also led technologies for protecting Visa's data, networks, data centers, digital wallets, applications, end-point devices, and other core capabilities for corporate network as well as issuer- and consumer-facing products and services. Selim was recognized for leading company-wide Security Initiatives including ApplePay, Visa's APAC Data Center, and Visa's Data Protection Programs.

Selim also spent over 11 years at Intel (News - Alert) where he held senior management and technology roles and championed several security technologies for Intel's server, desktop, and mobile products. Prior to Intel, Selim held senior engineering positions at General Dynamics (News - Alert) - Land Systems Division (M1A2 Battle Tank Vehicle Electronics), General Motors (Embedded Software Center of Excellence), and Applied Dynamics International. Selim earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. engineering degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Senior Member of IEEE (News - Alert) , and member of ACM and ISACA. He holds over 100 US & global security-related patents, productizing security products, and innovating financial solutions for products, services, consumers and firms globally. Selim has served as a Board Member for several Startups, Venture Capital firms, and Security Institutions, including FS-ISAC MRC, State of California's Cybersecurity Task Force, National Technology Security Coalition (NTSC), UC Berkeley CISO Institute, Bay Area CISO Executive Governing Body, and CISO Magazine. He co-authored the book Security for Mobile Networks and Platforms (Artech House). Selim has also been recognized for security innovation and leadership and received several awards including the 2019 CISO of the Year Award, Top 100 Global CISOs, and Most Influential CISOs. For Media Inquiries reach out to Adam Chaudhary, FundingShield's President at Adam@FundingShield.com or call 949 706 7888. About FundingShield: FundingShield is MISMO certified Real Estate FinTech offering B2B and B2B2C solutions delivering transaction coverage against wire and title fraud, settlement risk, closing agent compliance & cyber threat protection while reducing operating costs and improving asset quality for real estate investors, mortgage finance companies and consumers. FundingShield's user-centric plug-n-play tools are scale-able, pay-per-transaction, secure, cloud based and are integrated via APIs or through LOS/POS partners in the mortgage and real estate sector driving client ROIs of over 200%. FundingShield is a Housingwire Tech 100 winner for 2019, 2020 & 2021, a 2 time CFO Tech Outlook Top 10 security solutions provider, Ice Mortgage Technology Partner, IBM (News - Alert) Cloud Services Partner and California Mortgage Banker Tech Innovator. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006133/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Tiena Johnson Hall is California Housing Finance Agency's New Executive Director

The California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) will get a new Executive Director, as Tiena Johnson Hall was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom on Monday. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006155/en/ Tiena Johnson Hall was appointed Executive Director of the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) on July 19, 2021. (Photo: Business Wire) Johnson Hall, who has been a member of CalHFA's Board of Directors since November 2014, has served as a Senior Vice President and Manager of Community Development Finance for BBVA Compass (News - Alert) Bancshares Inc. since October 2014. Prior to that, she has held various housing positions in both the private and public sectors. "Tiena Johnson Hall brings a passion to helping people build community, and I am excited to have her at the helm at CalHFA," said Lourdes Castro Ramirez, Secretary of the Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency. "That commitment, coupled with her strong background in housing and finance, will galvanize the CalHFA team as it works to expand mortgage assistance, increase the number first-time homebuyers, and give greater access to financing for innovative housing programs, such as Accessory Dwelling Units." "Tiena's background makes her he perfect person to lead a mission-driven agency like CalHFA that relies on partnerships with all levels of government, as well as the private sector," said CalHFA Board Chair Michael Gunning. "As a longtime Board member, Tiena has already used her extensive experience and knowledge to help lead CalHFA through some of the most successful years in the history of the organization and we are excited about the future!"



That background includes stints as a Vice President and Community Development Manager at Bank of the West; a Senior VP and Relationship Manager in U.S. Bank's Commercial Real Estate group; Director of Housing in the Major Projects Division of the Los Angeles Housing and Investment Department; Project Manager for Abode Communities and more. For Johnson Hall, living in an affordable housing project a few years after graduating from college and organizing a group to work with the state-owned building to make improvements to the property was a formative experience that made her decide to work in the affordable housing industry.

"I believe CalHFA plays a critical role in the state's efforts to help Californians find an affordable place to call home," said Johnson Hall. "My time on the CalHFA board has given me an excellent overview of the organization and the opportunity to help shape some of the Agency's most successful initiatives, such as the innovative partnership with Apple (News - Alert) , the national award-winning Mixed-Income rental housing program, the widely used down payment assistance program and CalHFA's commitment to Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing." Johnson Hall was selected after a nationwide search to replace Tia Boatman Patterson, who left the position of Executive Director in February to join President Biden's Administration in the Office of Management and Budget. CalHFA's Chief Deputy Director Don Cavier has been serving as the Agency's Acting Executive Director. "Between California's housing affordability crisis, the pandemic's disproportionate effect on lower-income residents and people of color, and the unprecedented amount of Federal and State resources going into housing, now is the time for organizations like CalHFA to make an even more meaningful impact," Johnson Hall said. The California Housing Finance Agency was created in 1975 with the goal of helping more Californians find a place to call home. CalHFA has helped more than 201,000 low- and moderate-income homebuyers with $32.6 billion in first mortgages and used $6.1 billion in financing for the construction and preservation of more than 70,000 affordable rental housing units throughout the state. CalHFA is a self-supported state agency that doesn't rely on taxpayer dollars for its operational costs. For more information on CalHFA programs, and how we are creating progressive financing solutions for affordable housing in California, visit www.calhfa.ca.gov or call toll free at 877.9.CalHFA (877.922.5432). View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006155/en/

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[July 20, 2021] BioOhio Announces Eddie Pauline as New President & CEO

BioOhio, Ohio's bioscience membership organization, and its Board of Trustees announces Eddie Pauline as the organization's new President and CEO. Eddie will lead the current BioOhio team to advance bioscience advocacy, economic development, and member services strategies. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006156/en/ Eddie Pauline, newly appointed President & CEO at BioOhio (Photo: Business Wire) Geoff Morgan, BioOhio Board of Trustees Chair and Vice President & General Manager at Quidel, had this to say. "I am thrilled that Eddie has accepted our offr to be the next President & CEO of BioOhio. Eddie's energy and fresh perspectives on how to position BioOhio going forward will be a valuable asset to our current and future members, and Ohio's bioscience community at large. I look forward to assisting Eddie in a smooth and fast transition into his new role."



Eddie previously served as the Director for Economic Development for The Ohio State University within its Enterprise for Research, Innovation, and Knowledge. In this role, Eddie led the economic development and economic impact functions to attract new companies to Ohio and retain and expand Ohio businesses. Working closely with tech transfer and commercialization partners, corporate partnerships, the innovation district, medical center, government affairs, and startup portfolio, he initiated and guided campus-wide and industry-specific workforce, innovation, and placemaking programs to drive economic growth. Prior to coming to Ohio State in 2010, Eddie worked in the digital media industry for startups and large corporations, primarily in Seattle and New York, where he was part of the team that led the successful acquisition of Scout.com by Fox Interactive Media. "I'm honored to have the opportunity to lead an organization that has done so much to advance the bioscience industry in Ohio," Eddie said, looking ahead to the new role. "As the industry becomes even more important in the growth of the Ohio economy, I want our stakeholders to know that Jen, Drew, Scott, myself, and our board are deeply committed to positioning Ohio as one of the strongest bioscience ecosystems in the country."

Eddie holds a BA and a BS from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Franklin University. He is an Ohio Certified Economic Developer. Eddie, his wife Lindsey, and their three children live in Worthington, Ohio. "For 34 years, BioOhio has been the primary advocate and supporter of the bioscience community in Ohio," said Jen Goldsberry, Interim-President and Manager of Member Services at BioOhio. "Statewide, Ohio is already home to over four thousand bioscience companies, with a massive infusion of growth coming thanks to the state-supported creation of Innovation Districts in Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Columbus. We're excited to build on this growth and work together with Eddie as we further BioOhio's role in helping Ohio cement its position as a national leader within the bioscience industry." About BioOhio BioOhio is a non-profit organization founded in 1987 that connects and serves Ohio's bioscience community to drive success in improving global quality of life by providing member-guided services that include networking, advocacy, events, talent, information, and cost savings. BioOhio represents members from Ohio's largest employers to emerging startups, schools & universities, research institutions, students, and individuals. BioOhio is the state affiliate for global bioscience associations AdvaMed, BIO, MDMA, and PhRMA. Learn more at BioOhio.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006156/en/

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[July 20, 2021] Anthony Assi Joins NMB to Launch FasterFi, a New Digital-First Lending Platform

MELVILLE, N.Y., July 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Nationwide Mortgage Bankers ("NMB") is proud to announce that Anthony Assi, the #17 mortgage loan originator in the U.S. in 2021 per Scotsman Guide, has joined NMB to launch FasterFi, a ground-breaking digital lending platform offering incredible pricing and speed to well-qualified borrowers looking for a self-driven home financing experience online. "I am excited to join the NMB team in making FasterFi the go-to digital lending platform for consumers that want transparency, speed, and reward for their financial diligence." Anthony states, "FasterFi gives those looking to secure home financing online a solution that isn't bogged down by old industry conventions or outdated technology." Anthony Assi is renowned in the digital mortgage space as a top originator and thought leader. With emphasis on technology-driven lending and more than 12 years of mortgage banking experience; Assi brings a fresh approach to service for the modern consumer. Through his efforts, Assi not only ranked as one of the top loan originators in the country by volume, he also ranked #8 in Scotsman Guide's 2021 U.S. refinance production volume report. While acheiving record-breaking numbers only a year ago, Anthony and NMB have even bigger plans for the future with FasterFi.



"Anthony funded over five-hundred and sixty million dollars in loan volume in 2020 with average loans closing in under two weeks," states NMB CPO, Robert Jayne, "He has the energy and skillset for a successful launch and beyond. FasterFi exists to empower well-qualified consumers to drive their financial journey home. With Anthony on the team, we know borrowers who take advantage of all that FasterFi has to offer will love their experience." About FasterFi and NMB

FasterFi is a technology and consumer-driven lending platform that empowers well-qualified buyers to get the best rates through a streamlined online experience. It's mission is to be the premier online resource for mortgage lending, credit, and financial wellness. FasterFi is backed by Nationwide Mortgage Bankers "NMB," the fastest growing mortgage company in America. NMB was born with the vision of demystifying mortgages through transparency, education, and customer support. Their mission is to be our clients' and referral partners' trusted advisors, guiding them through the home financing process with the highest level of service and professionalism. FasterFi (Fasterfi.com) is a registered DBAs of Nationwide Mortgage Bankers, Inc 68 S Service Rd Suite 400, Melville, NY 11747 ("NMB"). NMB is in no way affiliated with "Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company." NMB is Registered with the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System NMLS #819382. HUD Approved Title II Supervised Lender #3113200005. Nationwide is not acting on behalf of or at the direction of HUD/FHA or the Federal Government. All loans are subject to Credit and Appraisal Approval. Program, Rates, Terms, and Conditions are subject to change without notice. This is not a commitment to lend. FasterFi (Fasterfi.com) is an approved dba of Nationwide Mortgage Bankers, Inc. in only the states of: Alabama/Colorado/Connecticut/Delaware/District of Columbia/ Florida/Georgia/Illinois/Kansas/Kentucky/Minnesota/Mississippi/Montana/New Hampshire/New Mexico/North Carolina/Ohio/Oregon/Pennsylvania/South Carolina/South Dakota/Texas/Wisconsin. Contact:

Nationwide Mortgage Bankers

Jarrett Stanley

EVP, Marketing

757-646-7613

jstanley@nmbnow.com View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/anthony-assi-joins-nmb-to-launch-fasterfi-a-new-digital-first-lending-platform-301337885.html SOURCE Nationwide Mortgage Bankers (NMB)

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[July 20, 2021] RealPage To Acquire G5, Leader in Real Estate Marketing Optimization

RealPage, Inc., a leading global provider of software and data analytics to the real estate industry, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire G5 Search Marketing, Inc. ("G5"), a leading pure-play provider of digital marketing, advertising and analytics solutions to the real estate sector. RealPage plans to combine G5's industry-leading solutions with its end-to-end real estate platform, significantly accelerating RealPage's vision for marketing optimization and ultimately a better renter experience for its customers. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close during the third quarter of 2021. G5 serves over 8,300 sites and has a strong presence in Multifamily, Senior Living and Self-Storage. Since its founding in 2005, G5 has invested in a data-driven SaaS (News - Alert) platform that leverages machine learning to automate marketing decisions and customization at scale. Customers deploy G5 to increase property performance, reduce tenant acquisition costs and minimize friction in the renter experience, driving higher net operating income. "We are seeing a significant transformation in marketing as our customers transition from a focus on lead generation to optimizing the overall renter experience," said Steve Winn, CEO of RealPage. "This requires forward thinking to both measure and optimize the ROI of the renter journey for our customers. RealPage has been at the forefront of innovation in this arena, enhanced by our acquisition of LeaseLabs in 2018. G5 will help us take this a step furthe. Their AI / ML-driven decisioning engine leverages the data platform to automatically optimize marketing strategies and drive significantly greater operating efficiencies at the PMC level."



Winn continued, "We are thrilled to join forces with the G5 team and welcome them to the RealPage family. Over the past 15 years, G5 has built an exceptional reputation in the industry, an incredible team of technologists, engineers and marketers, and a rich culture that will perfectly complement what we have built at RealPage." Dan Hobin, CEO and Founder of G5, added, "We are extremely excited to kick off the next chapter of G5, and the timing has never been better. The industry is undergoing a massive transformation, and it is time for the next generation of marketing platforms and capabilities. Together with RealPage, I believe we will be a powerhouse in the sector and will set the standard for renter experience and marketing optimization for years to come."

RealPage plans to retain G5's employees and operations in Bend, Oregon. About RealPage RealPage provides a technology platform that enables real estate owners and managers to change how people experience and use rental space. Clients use the platform to gain transparency in asset performance, leverage data insights and monetize space to create incremental yields. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Richardson (News - Alert) , Texas, RealPage currently serves over 19 million units worldwide from offices in North America, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit RealPage.com. About G5 G5 is a leading digital marketing software and services platform for multifamily properties. G5's mission is to empower clients to outsmart and outperform their competition through smarter marketing, unmatched marketing technology, and a deep bench of talent that puts marketing performance first. Founded in 2005, G5 currently provides marketing solutions for more than 8,300 sites throughout the U.S. and Canada. Based in Bend, Oregon, G5 is backed by private equity investor PeakEquity Partners. Learn more at GetG5.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006162/en/

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Xerox Holdings Corporation Plans Webcast to Discuss 2021 Second-Quarter Results

Xerox Holdings Corporation (NYSE: XRX) will host a live audio webcast with online presentation slides at 8 a.m. ET on Tuesday, July 27, to discuss the company's 2021 second-quarter results and guidance. A news release containing this information will be issued earlier that day at 6:30 a.m. ET.







WHEN: 8 a.m. ET, Tuesday, July 27, 2021 WHAT: Review of Xerox's 2021 second-quarter results WHO: John Visentin, vice chairman and chief executive officer, Xerox Xavier Heiss, chief financial officer, Xerox AUDIO WEBCAST: https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/7bqy7x39 or https://www.xerox.com/investor Replay available.

About Xerox

For more than 100 years, Xerox has continually redefined the workplace experience. Harnessing our leadership position in office and production print technology, we've expanded into software and services to sustainably power today's workforce. From the office to industrial environments, our differentiated business solutions and financial services are designed to make every day work better for clients - no matter where that work is being done. Today, Xerox scientists and engineers are continuing our legacy of innovation with disruptive technologies in digital transformation, augmented reality, robotic process automation, additive manufacturing, Industrial Internet of Things and cleantech. Learn more at xerox.com.

Note: To receive RSS news feeds, visit https://www.news.xerox.com. For open commentary, industry perspectives and views, visit http://www.linkedin.com/company/xerox, http://twitter.com/xerox, http://www.facebook.com/XeroxCorp, https://www.instagram.com/xerox/, http://www.youtube.com/XeroxCorp.

Xerox is a trademark of Xerox Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006034/en/
Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP Announces Investigation into Waterdrop Inc. (WDH)

Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP ("Scott+Scott"), an international shareholder and consumer rights litigation firm, is investigating whether Waterdrop Inc. ("Waterdrop" or the "Company") (NYSE: WDH) and certain of its officers and directors violated federal securities laws. If you purchased or otherwise own Waterdrop American Depository Shares ("ADSs"), and have suffered a loss, you are encouraged to contact attorney Jonathan Zimmerman at (888) 398-9312 or jzimmerman@scott-scott.com.

Waterdrop, which aspires to bring insurance and healthcare services to billions through technology, claims to be the largest independent third-party insurance platform in China.







On or about May 7, 2021, Waterdrop went public, raising approximate $360 million after issuing 30 million ADSs to the general public at $12 per ADS (the "IPO").

According to news reports following the IPO, Waterdrop received pushback on its capital markets plan from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, which wanted the listing postponed, leading to an acceleration of the revision of relevant cybersecurity review rules now impacting the Company.

On July 19, 2021, the price of Waterdrop's ADSs closed at $5.74 per ADS, or over 52% below its $12 IPO price.

What You Can Do

If you purchased or otherwise own Waterdrop ADSs, and you wish to discuss this investigation, please contact attorney Jonathan Zimmerman at (888) 398-9312, or at jzimmerman@scott-scott.com, or visit the Waterdrop investigation page on our website at https://dev.scott-scott.com/investigation/waterdrop-inc/.

About Scott+Scott Attorneys at Law LLP

Scott+Scott has significant experience in prosecuting major securities, antitrust, and employee retirement plan actions throughout the United States. The firm represents pension funds, foundations, individuals, and other entities worldwide with offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Connecticut, Virginia, California, and Ohio.

Attorney Advertising

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006215/en/
[July 20, 2021] Survivors Serve Open Records Request for Documents Related to Search for Mass Graves Connected to 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre

Lessie Benningfield ("Mother Randle"), Viola Fletcher ("Mother Fletcher"), and Hughes (News - Alert) Van Ellis, all centenarian survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, have served open records requests (ORR) for documents related to the ongoing search for mass graves in Tulsa. Filed with the City of Tulsa Mayor's Office, the City of Tulsa City Council, the State of Oklahoma Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the Oklahoma Archeological Survey, the Tulsa County Courthouse, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and the Governor of the State of Oklahoma, the ORR is the latest legal action taken to help provide healing and justice to the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, their descendents, and the rest of the Greenwood community. Twenty years after a state commission appointed by the Oklahoma State Legislature recommended a search for unmarked graves near the site of the Massacre, the excavation only recently began in late 2020. Resuming in June 2021, forensic scientists and archaeologists have since unearthed more than 30 coffins in a mass grave, with some remains taken to a laboratory for preliminary analysis. The open records request aims to ensure that the search is conducted in a fully transparent manner, and that justice is achieved for the victims of the Tulsa Race Massacre. "We are deeply disturbed and alarmed by the possibility that some of the bodies recently found could be those of the same people we saw in the street in the wake of the Massacre, who were senselessly and violently murdered," said other Randle and Mother Fletcher. All three of the survivors state "we are serving these requests to ensure complete transparency and justice for all bodies discovered through this ongoing search, their families, and the Greenwood community."



"The City of Tulsa and related governmental agencies and bodies have denied justice to survivors and concealed the truth about the Massacre for 100 years. In order to ensure that they are transparent and that justice is no longer denied, it is crucial that we are given access to these documents," said Damario Solomon-Simmons of SolomonSimmonsLaw, a Tulsa-based civil and human rights attorney who represents the three remaining survivors. Pursuant to the Oklahoma Open Records Act, 51 O.S.  24A.1 et seq., the ORR requests a copy of all documents regarding, discussing, referencing, or wherein the subject matter relates to the search for and/or investigation of mass graves connected to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

On May 31, 1921, one of the worst acts of domestic terrorism in U.S. history completely decimated Tulsa's thriving, all-Black community of Greenwood. A large white mob, including members of the Tulsa Police Department, the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, the Tulsa County Sheriff's Department and the Oklahoma National Guard, as well as other city and county leaders, overwhelmed the approximately 40-square-block community, killing hundreds of Black residents, injuring thousands more, burning down over one thousand homes and businesses and stealing residents' personal property. A large team of more than twenty litigators, including Damario Solomon-Simmons and Kymberli J. M. Heckenkemper of SolomonSimmonsLaw, PLLC; international law firm Schulte Roth & Zabel; J. Spencer Bryan and Steven Terrill of Bryan & Terrill, PLLC; Professor Eric Miller (News - Alert) of Loyola Marymount College of Law; Maynard M. Henry, Sr.; and Lashandra Peoples-Johnson and Cordal Cephas of Johnson | Cephas Law PLLC, is working to not only secure justice for survivors and descendants of the Massacre, but also draw attention to the 100 years of continued harm the Tulsa Race Massacre has caused Black Tulsans. An amended petition the team filed in the Tulsa County District Court in February 2021 seeks to abate the public nuisance of racial disparities, economic inequalities, insecurity and trauma that the City of Tulsa's and other entities' unlawful actions and omissions caused and continue to cause, and aims to return the Greenwood District, once known as Black Wall Street, back to the prosperous area it was prior to the devastating events of May 1921. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210720006267/en/

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Chewy will open its new fulfillment facility in Mt. Juliet in 2022

Company is a leading innovator in pet e-commerce, offering pet products, supplies and prescriptions

NASHVILLE, Tenn.  Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Department of Economic and Community Development Commissioner Bob Rolfe and Chewy, Inc. officials announced today that the company will establish a new regional e-commerce fulfillment center in Wilson County, creating 1,200 new jobs.

Chewy, Inc., a trusted destination for pet parents and partners, will have its new facility located at Couchville Pike and Maddox Road in Mt. Juliet, which is projected to open in fall 2022.

Founded in 2011 and dually headquartered in Dania Beach, Florida and Boston, Massachusetts, Chewy is a leading innovator in pet e-commerce, offering pet parents a broad selection of more than 2,000 of the best and most trusted brands, including pet products, supplies and prescriptions.

Wilson County continues to attract companies in the transportation, distribution and logistics sector. Since 2020, more than 80 percent of new jobs committed in Wilson County have come from projects in this industry. Wilson County is within 650 miles of 50 percent of the U.S. population and a one-day trucking distance to 75 percent of U.S. markets.

Those interested in employment opportunities can go to www.chewy.com/jobs to learn more.

Over the last five years, TNECD has supported more than 15 economic development projects in the Wilson County, resulting in 2,500 job commitments and roughly $750 million in capital investment.

QUOTES

Wilson County has seen tremendous job growth in the last few years as companies continue to relocate and expand in the region. Chewys decision to locate its newest e-fulfillment operations in Tennessee underscores our states pro-business climate and skilled workforce. These 1,200 new jobs will have a significant impact on Wilson County, and I appreciate Chewy for choosing Tennessee.  Gov. Bill Lee

Tennessee is primed for Chewys newest e-fulfillment center thanks to the combination of our ideal geographic location and strong transportation infrastructure. At 1,200 jobs, Chewy will become one of the top three largest employers in Wilson County. We congratulate Chewy on its success and welcome the company to Tennessee.  TNECD Commissioner Bob Rolfe

Were thrilled to open our newest fulfillment center here in Wilson County, Chewys first in the state and fourteenth in the country. We appreciate the partnership with the State of Tennessee, Wilson County and the Joint Economic and Community Board of Wilson County to launch this facility. We look forward to investing in the local community through the creation of 1,200 new jobs. This new location will also extend our fulfillment network in the southeast region, allowing us to provide even faster delivery to more than 19 million active customers around the country.  Pete Krillies, vice president of Real Estate, Facilities, Procurement of Chewy, Inc.

It is an honor today to welcome the Chewy family to our community. Wilson County residents have long recognized the many values and importance of the relationships between animals and their pet parents and partners. We appreciate Chewys vote of confidence in our community and look forward to developing a long-term partnership through such assets as The Wilson County Farm Bureau Expo Center and the Wilson County/Tennessee State Fair. We also want to recognize and thank our economic partners which includes the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the JECDB of Wilson County.  Wilson County Mayor Randall Hutto

TVA and Middle Tennessee Electric congratulate Chewy, Inc. on its decision to locate operations and create new job opportunities in Wilson County. Helping to attract and retain quality jobs and investment in the Valley is fundamental to TVAs mission of service, and we are proud to partner with the Joint Economic and Community Development Board of Wilson County and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development to help further that mission and celebrate this announcement.  John Bradley, TVA senior vice president of Economic Development

Wilson County is a great place to live and do business, and I am pleased companies like Chewy are recognizing all the wonderful things Wilson County has to offer. This investment will help bring even more jobs to Wilson County which will help continue to grow our local economy. I appreciate the work of state and local officials for securing this investment.  Sen. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon)

Tennessee is continually a top destination for businesses small and large because conservative policies win. This is one more company moving to Tennessee because of our low taxes, minimal regulation and business-friendly climate. We welcome Chewy to Wilson County with open arms!  Rep. Susan Lynn (R-Mt. Juliet)

About the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development

The Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Developments mission is to develop strategies that help make Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs. To grow and strengthen Tennessee, the department seeks to attract new corporate investment to the state and works with Tennessee companies to facilitate expansion and economic growth. Find us on the web: tnecd.com. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram: @tnecd. Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/tnecd.

TNECD Media Contact

Molly Hair

Public Information Officer

(615) 878-0063

molly.hair@tn.gov

###
NASHVILLE  The Tennessee Department of Health and community partners across the state join together for the third consecutive year to participate in the Red Sand Project during Human Trafficking Awareness Week, recognized July 26-31, 2021.

The Red Sand Project is a participatory art installment designed to shed light on human trafficking. The red sand is used to draw attention to the human trafficking victims that fall through the cracks of our society every day. Although Tennessee has been nationally acknowledged for our continuous efforts and improvements, human trafficking continues to remain a major public health concern in our communities. In 2019, the National Human Trafficking Hotline identified 11,500 trafficking situations, with 180 cases reported in Tennessee.

Counties across the state will be participating in the Red Sand Project by pouring natural, nontoxic red sand in sidewalk cracks, creating yard signs, and many other creative demonstrations throughout their communities. To find a Red Sand Project event near you, please reach out to your local health department or visit your local Welcome Center.

Addressing human trafficking is a priority in Tennessee, said Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey, MD, MBA, FAAP. It is important we raise awareness of human trafficking through initiatives such as this because victims can experience significant trauma that has lasting impacts on them and their families.

According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, human trafficking is a demand-driven crime that involves exploiting a person for labor, services, or commercial sex acts, particularly targeting women and children. Human Trafficking is also one of the fastest growing criminal

industries in the country, with cases reported in all 50 states.

Human trafficking must be stopped, said Tennessee Department of Health Family Health and Wellness Division Deputy Medical Director Denise Werner, MD. By increasing awareness of this hidden crime that can happen in our own communities Tennesseans can make a difference

in the lives of victims of human trafficking.

If you know someone who needs help to escape trafficking, contact the Tennessee Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-855-558-6484.

If you suspect you have come into contact with a victim of human trafficking, you may call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text 233722. Hotline staff members will identify resources in your community. For more information on humantrafficking and the hotline, visit https://humantraffickinghotline.org/.

Learn more about the Red Sand Project at https://redsandproject.org/.

The mission of the Tennessee Department of Health is to protect, promote and improve the health and prosperity of people in Tennessee. Learn more about TDH services and programs at www.tn.gov/health.

Connect with TDH on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn @TNDeptofHealth
NASHVILLE, Tenn.  The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency has finished the process of deconstructing the COVID-19 Alternate Care Sites in Nashville and Memphis, with the sites having served their purpose of making additional hospital capacity available, if needed, for Tennessee COVID-19 patients.

When early predictions pointed to a worst-case scenario of every state exceeding its COVID-19 patient capacity, we took immediate action in Tennessee to address the potential shortfall, Gov. Bill Lee said. Tennessees alternate care sites provided our health care system with a margin of safety, and thankfully we did not need to open either site.

In April 2020, Tennessee received a Major Disaster Declaration that made federal funding available for COVID-19 response measures., which included establishing alternate care sites for COVID-19 patients.

Following the federal declaration, Gov. Lees Unified Command Group (UCG)  Tennessee Dept. of Health, Tennessee Dept. of Military, and TEMA  worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) to begin the construction and outfitting process for alternate care sites in Memphis and Nashville.

The ACOE and UCG completed Nashvilles alternate care site, located on one floor of Nashville General Hospital, 1818 Albion St., on May 31, 2020, making 67 beds available for COVID-19 patients.

ACOE and UCG finished work at the Memphis alternate care site, 495 Union Ave., on June 9, 2020, with a complete renovation of a 125,000-square foot building to make bed space available for 402 COVID-19 patients.

The Memphis and Nashville sites are models of what the public and private sector can accomplish working together, TEMA Director Patrick Sheehan said. Well use this success in planning for other emergencies that may impact our health care system.

All medical equipment and supplies from both sites have been returned to TEMAs warehouse. TEMA staff will inventory the supplies and follow appropriate federal and state guidelines to release the supplies and equipment not remaining in inventory.

Video walk-throughs and fact sheets for both the Memphis and Nashville alternate care sites are available on TEMAs homepage at https://www.tn.gov/tema/the-agency/covid-19-acs.html.

About the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency: TEMAs mission is to coordinate preparedness, response and recovery from man-made, natural and technological hazards in a professional and efficient manner in concert with our stakeholders. Follow TEMA on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and, at www.tn.gov/tema
As the nation desperately attempts to reopen despite the ongoing pandemic, some cultural critics have called this the "slutty Summer" of 2021.

Accordingly, the risk/promise of more casual sex has sparked concern over safety.

To wit . . .

KCPD WARNS: CREEPERS USING DATE RAPE DRUGS ARE NOW INCREASINGLY TARGETING LOCAL WOMEN!!!

Actually, this was a growing problem before the pandemic but now it has become even worse with po-po so concerned with recent reports that they took time to warn the media today . . .

Police recommend bar-goers to watch their drinks intently, and to never leave a bar or tavern without a trusted friend. Sexual assault counselors see this as a larger problem in the summer months, since bar traffic is more active when the weather is warm.

Some date rape drugs can taste salty, while others are completely flavorless. GHB and Rufilin are commonly used, but KCPD Vice Sgt. Brad Dumit said ground-up Xanax tablets are often used. Some of those medicines can incapacitate a victim within 10 minutes.

Read more . . .

Kansas City Police warning public on rise in use of 'date rape drugs' at bars and nightclubs KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Police are warning the public about an uptick in use of "date rape drugs." It can happen to anyone, according to Kansas City Police detectives, who ask people attending bars and nightclubs to pay close attention to their surroundings and the beverages they're drinking.

Stay safe!!!
In this collection for the midday we start with a shocking reality check regarding the local prison industrial complex . . . AND THEN roundup some of the more interesting recent Kansas City crime links as the local murder count now stands at 83.



Check-it . . .

Kansas City Police Triple Homicide Suspect Take Down Caught On Camera

Ring doorbell captures moments leading to KCPD arrest of suspected triple killer KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A home security camera captured the moments leading to the arrest of a Kansas City, Missouri, man who is accused of killing three of his own family members. KCPD officers cuffed Rahman Muhammad over the weekend at a home in east Kansas City. "Police Department.

Latest Demand For Justice This Week

Relatives, advocates demand new trial for two men they claim were wrongfully convicted in murder case KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) -- The families of two jailed Kansas City, Kansas men are demanding a new trial for their loved ones. They claim Brian Betts and Celester McKinney were wrongly convicted of murder 1998. An attorney representing one of the men claims there's no physical evidence linking either man to the crime.

COVID Spikes In The Joint

Kansas City-area correctional facilities see rise in COVID-19 cases KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Jackson County Sheriff Darryl Forte tweeted Monday that four inmates have tested positive for COVID-19 and 96 inmates are in precautionary quarantine at the Jackson County Detention Center in Kansas City, Missouri. Forte said COVID-19 cases are trending up at the detention center.

KCK Double Murder Aftermath

Police identify 2 men found dead in Kansas City, Kansas industrial area shooting by: Brian Dulle Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Kan. - Kansas City, Kansas Police have now identified the two victims in a double-homicide last Friday in the city's Armourdale neighborhood. Just before 5 a.m. Friday, July 16, a person arriving to work in the 700 block of Pawnee Avenue called 911 to report finding two men unconscious and who did not appear to be breathing.

Royals Fan Hits Rural Bank

FBI investigating bank robbery in Louisburg LOUISBURG, KS (KCTV) -- The authorities are investigating a bank robbery that happened in Louisburg on Monday morning. According to the FBI, the robbery happened at 10 a.m. at the Landmark National Bank branch at 100 W. Amity St. They say the suspect made a verbal demand for cash and ultimately left the bank with an undisclosed amount of money.

Politico Wants To Save The Dotte

Can anyone root out WyCo corruption? Chris Steineger versus 'Chicago-style machine' Chris Steineger wants nothing less than a tax revolt and utility bill uprising in Wyandotte County. And he's going door to door to start one. A former insider turned angry outsider, the erstwhile four-term state senator is now running for mayor of the Wyandotte County Unified Government in the Aug.

EPIC Police Survivor Story

Kansas City police officer shot in the head talks about facing death, his recovery A Kansas City, Missouri police officer is opening up about facing death head-on.Officer Tyler Moss talked with KMBC's Lara Moritz about the day he almost made the ultimate sacrifice.On July 2, 2020, police Officer Tyler Moss and his partner responded to reports of a man waving a gun at a McDonald's at 31st Street and Van Brunt Boulevard."We get those types of calls all the time.

Developing . . .


This troubled street has sparked the interest of TKC readers and now it looks like there's a local government effort that amounts to a slight inconvenience .



Money line about rising violence near this location . . .



Originally, the Regulated Industries Division of the Neighborhoods and Housing Services Department requested to revoke the sales-by-drink and Sunday licenses, but that request was denied by the board.

More than 100 shots were fired outside of the lounge on March 14, 2021.

One man was shot in the face in the incident.



Read more regarding a wrist slap . . .


Kansas City is plagued by troubling pandemic numbers and stories of suffering returning to local & national news outlets.



The MSM warns us that COVID Delta is making a horrific comeback whilst a quick look outside reveals NOBODY is wearing a mask and there's very little concern over fear of debilitating sickness.



And so we ask our blog community because politicos won't let voters decide . . .



SHOULD THE KANSAS CITY METRO DOUBLE DOWN ON COVID MASK MANDATE ORDERS GIVEN THE DELTA SPIKE?!?!



We ask this question not because we want you d-bags to play scientist . . . Instead, we're concerned about the implications for the local economy, mental health and civil liberties that will be impacted whether or not the masks stay on or off.



Again, the only thing we know for sure is that residents, voters and taxpayers won't have much say over any decision as the plague and culture war debate over public health dress codes resurface with a vengeance.

We share a few more links for background . . .

Delta variant continues spread across metro with Kansas City up nearly 70% total cases KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Though well below pandemic peaks, the delta variant continues its spread among the unvaccinated and immuno-suppressed. Case totals in Jackson County are up 47% when compared to last week. In Kansas City case total are up nearly 70%, according to data posted Monday to Missouri's COVID Dashboard.

Mosaic Medical Center president says COVID-19 is 'escalating very quickly' KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Mosaic Medical Center President Jon Doolittle said that things are "escalating very quickly" with the increase of COVID-19 cases throughout the state. Doolittle posted on Facebook talking about what he has seen with COVID-19 in his hospital and heard through speaking with health care leaders across the state.

Topic of vaccines, masks riles crowd at Blue Valley School Board meeting Overland Park, KS (KCTV) - Some of the nation's top pediatric doctors are recommending masks be mandated in class. The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, this week wrote that everyone over the age of two should wear masks in schools even if they're vaccinated. That advice goes beyond what the CDC recommends.

Kansas City metro registered nurse says not all COVID-19 breakthrough cases reported to CDC KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Not all COVID-19 breakthrough cases - which are being reported in the Kansas City metro - are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to one area health care professional. The CDC defines a breakthrough case as someone testing positive for the virus more than two weeks after being fully vaccinated.

'It's definitely alarming,' growing number of children in Kansas City hospitalized with COVID-19 by: Heidi Schmidt Posted: / Updated: OLATHE, Kan. - There's a definite shift in the people who are testing positive, or hospitalized, for COVID-19. When the pandemic began, older people were at greatest risk of getting ill or dying from the virus.

JCDHE and American Academy of Pediatrics release recommendations for back-to-school KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Before heading back to school, Liz Benditt vaccinated her two teenagers. "They got so much more out of school when they were in-person-socially, emotionally, every way possible it was more important for them to be in-school, in-person full-time," Benditt said.

Kansas City area parents have mixed reactions as health experts advise masks in schools WESTWOOD, Kan. - The American Academy of Pediatrics is recommending everyone age two and up wear masks to school when classes resume in the fall. Local health experts agree and are extremely concerned about the spread of COVID-19's delta variant when classes resume.

KDHE secretary: State considering new mask advisory KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Dr. Lee Norman said the state may reinstate mask guidance as the delta variant of COVID-19 spreads. Norman told KSHB 41 News the state is considering providing updated masking guidance, but it would still be up to local jurisdictions to set specific restrictions for their residents.

KC health officials and parents react to American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation of universal masking in schools KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The American Academy of Pediatrics is taking a harder stance in their mask recommendations for schools in the fall than the Centers for Disease Control and some local health authorities. They're pushing for universal masking in schools, meaning everyone two years old and up wear a mask in class regardless of vaccination status.

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson says he wants students in classrooms this fall KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Missouri Gov. Mike Parson told school administrators on Monday that he wants students in the classroom this fall but will not mandate vaccines within the state. He said during a conference call that in-person learning is more effective, noting that more than 85% of students were in school buildings the previous school year, according to information provided by a spokesperson from Parson's office.

Concerns over return to masks, other restrictions grow as COVID-19 cases climb in Kansas City by: Heidi Schmidt Posted: / Updated: KANSAS CITY, Kan. - The Kansas City metro may be nearing a critical tipping point, according to some health experts. As the number of COVID-19 cases climb across Missouri, hospitals in the metro report steady increases of both new cases and COVID-19 hospitalizations.

You decide . . .
This mainstream media report will is likely to resonate across the nation as culture war education debate becomes increasingly heated and divisive.

Here's the word . . .

Aside from an official from Missouris education department, the only people who testified Monday were critics of critical race theory, which is a way of thinking about Americas history through the lens of racism.

Missouri NAACP President Rod Chapel called it ridiculous to have a conversation about inequity while excluding the very people who are saying weve been treated inequitably.

That talks more to the kind of hearing that they wanted to have than the information that they wanted to gather, Chapel told reporters after the hearing. They wanted to hear from their friends who were going to support their political talking points.

Read more . . .
Right now we wanted to feature POWERFUL citizen journalism and a glimpse at the very real cost endured in the aftermath of politically charged debate.



Read more . . .



South Kansas City Homeless Hotel Testimony



My son's small business is getting pummeled with crime and mischief in the wake of whatever this is we're in the midst of. He's located in SKC near Hickman Mills Dr. and Longview. Mostly burglaries and petty mischief, but it's costing him and me a ridiculous amount of time and stress sorting it out and getting creative with solutions to keep thieves out of his lot. He spent $15K repairing damage from attempted burglaries to customer vehicles, not including July 2021 incidents. We've been perplexed for some time as we've never seen panhandling, homelessness, addiction and drug paraphernalia, burglaries, vandalism etc. roaming our streets at all hours. This generally is a pretty safe area.



South Patrol has recently told us on multiple occasions the Best Host off Longview is our/their biggest problem. I naively assumed this was because they offered weekly rentals and were rundown. It was only very recently, through some research and digging, we discovered some contributing factors. The hotel I mentioned is apparently one of the 12 the city put people up in. All this time, we had no idea this was occuring nearby, even though we were reading about the program! South Patrol confirmed it and the personnel at the front desk told us 40 rooms were paid for by the city.



The front desk also confirmed a very clumsy thief, who broke into my son's lot and tried to steal a truck Friday 7/16 @ 5am was staying in one of those rooms. They even gave him the room number!



Today two of these "homeless" people (one who robbed my son's business last year, and has yet to be charged, so far as we can tell) broke into a home next to his business. The police responded in 20-25 minutes. On arrival they assessed and discussed, then told my son, even though at least two perps were in the house, they had decided not to enter because they didn't want to get into a "shootout" for something that would only amount to a trespassing charge. Then.....they left! I called the South Patrol desk Lt. who could not explain the police response. The officers did return, but the man that was robbed by son had fled. They attempted to arrest the other male after he unknowingly crawled back out of the home's broken window while they were standing there. He appeared to be very high. Unfortunately they were unable to arrest guy #2 because the elderly property owner arrived and would not agree to press charges as he was "afraid of retaliation" from the guy #2 who, according to my son, was being very belligerent at the time and was a very big guy.



Full disclosure, my son did find a very brave lady copy named Officer Woods, who worked to bust up a nearby homeless camp my son's perp had fled into Friday and entered another building to root out another perp, over the weekend.



Long and short, I've tallied 13 break-ins since last April, but my son says it's more. One midday robbery and a crap ton of wasted mental energy and trips to run off these folks. This is up from NONE the year before. We are a neighborhood in crisis and it seems the city council has DUMPED it all over us!!

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Developing . . .


Retired Richland Townhip police Officer Tony Palm is reunited with Bernie Imgrund, of Bedford, after nearly 50 years on Monday, July 19, 2021, at Laurel View Village in Davidsville. Imgrund was accidentally left behind on a family shopping trip to Gee Bee in Johnstown in 1971. Palm responded to the incident, and consoled the girl until she was reunited with her father.
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Welcome back to Phoenix! You are coming during our hot summer, and it is way too hot IMO to visit the zoo or Desert Botanical Garden. It sounds like the majority of your travel group is 20 or older with one little niece age 9. Know that traffic to and from Anthem during rush hours can be a challenge so if you develop any plans involving that time span in traffic keep that in mind. There is nothing wrong with that area of housing just the location is far from ideal.

It sounds like you are only devoting one day to the Grand Canyon yet with that limitation you want to spend part of the day going to Flagstaff's Snowball - bad idea. Head straight for the Grand Canyon (4 hour drive each way from Phoenix) entering via the east gate and exit the South Gate. With your short time allowed for this experience you might want to take an ice chest full of food and drink. If that doesn't appeal to you then eat inside the park

Ideally you'd be spending the night there or close by. Then you would be able to explore the interesting sites around Flagstaff the following day.

Any chance you could change the plan to spend Monday at the Grand Canyon? You could spend the night in the national park, spend Monday in Flagstaff visiting the Snowbowl, Wupatki nm, Sunset Crater Volcanic crater nm, Walnut Canyon, etc.

The drive from Phoenix up to the Grand Canyon or Sedona is not so enjoyable that you would want to do it that many times in one week. It's too bad you didn't come on here for advice before you booked your VRBO.

Tuesday it looks like you've committed to Sedona (allow 2 hour drive each way from Phoenix). Your jeep tour is at noon. There is a restaurant across the street from there called the Cowboy Club - many tourists seem to like the vibe there and the food is average.

Rawhide is not what it used to be. Now it is only open for special holiday events and for private bookings. Otherwise you can no longer go there to wander around or have dinner, so cross that off your to do list.

Happy Valley Rd. exit is not far from Anthem. Happy Valley Town Center (Happy Valley exit off I-17) has a variety of restaurants and shopping that might interest your family.
Hi There. Currently, you won't get into Zimbabwe through a land border, whether it is for one day or multiple days, only if you are transiting and have an air ticket to prove it. You can fly in and out though. November is a long way off and surely things will have changed by then? but of course cannot be guaranteed yet.

You might be better off flying into Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, seeing the Falls from the Zimbabwe side (because in November they will be very dry on the Zambian side) and then exiting to Zambia, which is allowed, do the devils pool and Chobe and then fly out of Zambia.
I'm scheduled to go to on a wildlife photography trip to Namibia this fall with Natural Habitat Adventures. I've traveled with them to other destinations several times before and they seem like a well-run outfit. But I had a fascinating conversation with one of their staff a few days ago about the risks of traveling there. Namibia is currently under a US State Department level 4 ("Do Not Travel") warning and I asked about that but they said not to worry because they go to Level 4 "Do Not Travel" places all the time.

Then I asked about Covid - I'm not too worried about catching Covid because everyone on the trip will be fully vaccinated and we'll be out in the middle of nowhere much of the time - but I had a different concern. Namibia's hospitals are currently overwhelmed so I wanted to know if one of us suffered an injury, snakebite, illness etc, and needed hospital services whether the hospitals there could take us. And they said that they have a special agreement with local hospitals that would prioritize us over the locals. I asked what if oxygen were required (since there are current shortages in Namibia) and they said that their agreement stipulated that they have to stockpile even oxygen for us under this agreement! Could this be true?! It sounds highly unethical if local hospitals have to set aside oxygen for tourists if local people are dying for the lack of it. Can anyone confirm if the travel industry really works that way?
Lushoto combines a couple of nice factors for a visitor. First of all, it was originally developed for "tourists" - the German colonials used it as a getaway from the heat of the coast and you'll find building there that would be right at home in the Black Forest. If you are up to hiking, there are good hikes. There is something of a developed cultural and ecological travel infrastructure.

Most reliable bus company? Hard to do as it really depends on the routes. There are a lot of small companies... and some of the larger companies might have really good equipment on a major run - and still have a really bad bus on a different route. Scandinavian used to have a good reputation - but they are out of business for some years. Our nicest looking bus was with Dolphin - here's a picture of it broken down between Kondoa and Arusha (and some other good photos, too)...

https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/Access2Tanzania/app_448952861833126

More than a particular company is to know what to look for. First of all, they assign seats when you buy tickets. If the seating chart has seats in groups of 2 and 3 - you know they are getting 5 across rather than the more comfortable 2 and 2. I would never take a 2 + 3 bus if it could possible be avoided. The nicest buses tend to be the long haul express buses on the main highways. It is often worthwhile to take these, even if you are paying the fare all the way to the end, even if you are only going part of the way. We even hit a bus with working air conditioning between Arusha and Morogoro - we got on at Mombo, the town "below" Lushoto on the main highway.

Most beautiful part? Honestly, it was all so exotic that we describe our travels there as Idiots Walijaza - loosely translated... Idiots Overfilled... Idiots Overwhelmed... My favorite landscapes were in Tarangire - the baobab trees are magical... and in the Northern Serengeti, where it felt most like the wilderness that our ancestors may have walked. And the acacia-studded plains of the central Serengeti - with a rainbow! But Lushoto was very nice... and we liked Iringa... and the rock paintings at Kolo are something that most tourists still don't get to see...

Among the prizewinners of a photo contest... second from the bottom is Idiot She's picture of an elephant and baobab at sunset in Tarangire. And midway down, the June popular vote winner is my rainbow in the Serengeti...

https://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/Access2Tanzania/app_448952861833126

We're going to self-drive in Tarangire... I often remarked that I'd love to do a coffee-table photo book of the baobab trees in various moods, weather, light, time of day...

(We blogged the trip... if you want to pursue any of this, our report with the individual web pages is listed in the sticky topic at the top of the Tanzania forum.)
Hey, same situation here as wel. Two adults (fully vaccinated) and two kids (8 and 10 years old).

Now when I go to this site:

Then when I open: "I am fully vaccinated or have had COVID-19 during the last six months, and travel with a child". Then the answer can be found below. My personal understanding is: YES! We and our children are allowed!!! right??

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You are exempt from travel quarantine if you are fully vaccinated or have had COVID-19 during the preceding six months (counting from the day your positive test was sampled, and no longer in isolation) and are able to document this via a valid Norwegian or European COVID-19 certificate.

You do not need to provide documentation of a negative test for the corona virus, nor do you need to fill in the travel registration form or take a test at the border.

For your child/children the following applies:

Minors who arrive with an adult from a green country or area do not need to enter a travel quarantine. Further information as to which countries are green can be found here ( ).

The following applies when arriving from a country or area defined as green:

The child will need to complete the travel registration form. The digital registration must be completed no earlier than 72 hours prior to the time of arrival. Find the form here.

The child will not need to provide documentation of a negative test for the corona virus prior to entry

The child will need to take a test at the border upon arrival. This is a rapid antigen-based test, and you will have to wait at the testing station for the test result. If taking the test is disproportionately difficult, children under the age of 12 can be exempt. This decision will be taken art the test station.

No travel quarantine duty applies when arriving from a green country or area.

Minors will need to enter a travel quarantine if they arrive from a red country or area. Further information as to which countries are red can be found here ( ).

The following applies when arriving from a country or area defined as red:

You must complete the travel registration form. The digital registration must be completed no earlier than 72 hours prior to the time of arrival. Find the form here.

Documentation of a negative test for the corona virus:

Children over the age of 12 years old will need to provide documentation of a negative test result. The test must be taken less than 24 hours prior to entry to Norway. Children under the age of 12 years old are exempt from providing documentation of a negative test result. Certain exceptions apply, see this list.

If you arrive by air the test can be taken less than 24 hours prior to departure time. If your journey involves connecting flights, departure time refers to the first flight of your flight itinerary.

You will need to take a test at the border upon arrival. This is a rapid antigen-based test and you will have to wait at the testing station for the test result. If taking the test is disproportionately difficult, children under the age of 12 can be exempt. This decision will be taken art the test station.

You will need to enter a travel quarantine, either in their own home or at another suitable place of residence. As a rule of thumb, the travel quarantine duty period is 10 days.

Children and youth under the age of 18 years old can take a PCR-based test three days after arrival. If the test result comes back negative (no virus detected) the travel quarantine can be ended. You must be able to document the test result.

Edited: 21 July 2021, 06:53
@Bagi - about.. "I also added the QR generated by the free QR code software, to my PDF Vaccination certificate."

Obviously, when the customs agent in Egypt scans the QR code, it must open an official webpage endorsed by the government of your country.

We are not talking here about ways to add a random QR code to a piece of paper, just to trick the system.. :-)

Edited: 11 July 2021, 17:23
BOSTON (AP)  Human rights and press freedom activists are up in arms about a new report on NSO Group, the notorious Israeli hacker-for-hire company. The report, by a global media consortium, expands public knowledge of the target list used in NSO's military-grade spyware. According to the report, that now not only includes journalists, rights activists and opposition political figures, but also people close to them.

The groups decried on Monday the virtual absence of regulation of commercial surveillance tools. If the allegations of widespread targeting by NSO's Pegasus spyware are even partly true, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement, a "red line has been crossed again and again with total impunity.

Here's what you need to know about this issue.

NSO GROUP HAS LONG BEEN ACCUSED OF UNETHICAL HACKING. WHAT'S NEW?

The new investigation, based on leaked data of unspecified origin, builds significantly on previous efforts. Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International obtained the data they say indicate potential targets for surveillance by NSO's clients.

Journalists from the consortium combed through a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers, identifying more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries. They include 189 journalists, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state. Among the journalists were employees of The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and The Financial Times.

Amnesty was able to examine the smartphones of 67 people on the list, and found attempted or successful Pegasus infections on 37. It found that the phone of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was infected just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. Amnesty also found Pegasus on the phones of the co-founders of the Indian independent online outlet The Wire and repeat infections on the phones of two Hungarian investigative journalists with the outlet Direkt36.

The list of potential targets included Roula Khalaf, the editor of the Financial Times.

Fifty people close to Mexico's president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, were also on the potential target list. They include his wife, children, aides and cardiologist. Lopez Obrador was in opposition at the time. A Mexican reporter whose phone number was added to the list in that time period, Cecilio Pineda, was assassinated in 2017.

After Mexico, the largest share of potential targets were in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients. Also on the list were numbers in France, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda.

According to the The Committee to Protect Journalists, few effective barriers exist to prevent autocratic governments from using sophisticated surveillance technology to attempt cowing or silencing a free press.

After an Amnesty forensic analysis published Sunday showed it was hosting NSO infrastructure, Amazon Web Services said it had shut down accounts of the Israeli that were confirmed to be supporting the reported hacking activity. Amazon said they had violated its terms of use.

WHAT DOES NSO SAY?

NSO denies ever maintaining a list of potential, past or existing targets. It claims to sell only to vetted government agencies for use against terrorists and major criminals, and denies any association with Khashoggis murder. The company does not disclose its clients and claims it has no visibility" into the data. Security researchers contest that claim, saying the company directly manages the high-tech spying.

There is no doubt NSO's software deployment creates various logs and other data that the company can access, said John Scott-Railton, a researcher with Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto-based watchdog that has been tracking Pegasus abuses since 2016.

Amnesty has not identified the source of the leak or how the data was authenticated to protect the safety of its source. Citizen Lab vetted Amnesty's methodology for confirming Pegasus' infections and deemed it sound. Scott-Railton said he had no doubt the leaked data contains intent to target."

A phone number's presence in the data does not necessarily mean an attempt was made to hack a device, said Amnesty, which found Pegasus infection traces on the cellphones of 15 journalists on the list.

Amnesty says the malware is so effective that it can hack even the latest models of Apple's iPhone operating system, going undetected as it vacuums up personal and location data and seizes control of device microphones and cameras. In a statement, Apple head of security engineering Ivan Krstic did not directly address Amnesty's claim, instead emphasizing the rarity of such targeted attacks and the company's dedication to the security of its users.

DOES ISRAEL CONDONE THIS ACTIVITY?

Asked about its approvals of NSO's exports, Israel's Defense Ministry said in a statement that it approves the export of cyber products exclusively to governmental entities, for lawful use, and only for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counter terrorism. It said national security and strategic considerations are taken into account.

Last year, an Israeli court dismissed an Amnesty lawsuit seeking to strip NSO of its export license, citing insufficient evidence.

Citizen Lab and Amnesty have since 2016 primarily documented NSO targeting of rights activists, dissidents and journalists including dozens of Al-Jazeera employees. But the new list significantly widens the scope of potential targets to include members of Arab royal families, diplomats and business executives, according to the consortium, which includes The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde and Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

CAN ANYONE BE TARGETED? HOW CAN INFECTION BE THWARTED?

No one not involved in sensitive information-gathering outside the U.S. needs to worry much. Customers of NSO Group's malware and other commercial surveillance tools typically focus on high-profile targets.

But those in NSO's crosshairs may not be able to avoid infection. Its methods of infection often don't require user interaction, such as clicking on a link in a text message.

One such zero-click option exploited a flaw in WhatsApp, the popular encrypted mobile-messaging service. WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook sued NSO in San Francisco federal court in 2019.

The WhatsApp suit accuses NSO Group of targeting some 1,400 WhatsApp users. Until this week, that was the largest number of potential targets of the Israeli company's spyware amassed in one place.

__

AP correspondents Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Geir Moulson in Berlin contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON (AP)  Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday formally prohibited federal prosecutors from seizing the records of journalists in leak investigations, with limited exceptions, reversing years of department policy.

The new policy largely codifies the commitment Garland made in June, when he said the Justice Department would abandon the practice of seizing reporters' records as part of efforts to uncover confidential sources. It aims to resolve a politically thorny issue that has long vexed Justice Department prosecutors trying to weigh the media's First Amendment rights against the government's desire to protect classified information.

The United States has, of course, an important national interest in protecting national security information against unauthorized disclosure, Garland wrote in his memo. But a balancing test may fail to properly weight the important national interest in protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of information revealing their sources, sources they need to apprise the American people of the workings of their government.

The memo makes clear that federal prosecutors can, in some cases, obtain journalists' records. Those exceptions include if the reporters are suspected of working for agents of a foreign power or terrorist organizations, if they are under investigation for unrelated activities or if they obtained their information through criminal methods like breaking and entering. There are also exceptions for situations with imminent risks, like kidnappings or crimes against children.

Garland was moved to act following an outcry over revelations that the department during the Trump administration had obtained records belonging to journalists at The Washington Post, CNN and The New York Times as part of investigations into who had disclosed government secrets related to the Russia investigation and other national security matters.

Others whose records were obtained were Democratic members of Congress and aides and former White House counsel Don McGahn.

Garland's announcement came after President Joe Biden said he would not allow the Justice Department to seize journalists phone records and emails, calling the practice simply wrong." After that, Garland and other senior Justice Department staffers held meetings with representatives of news media organizations.

In the memo, Garland also said he would support federal legislation to add protections for journalists.

Media advocates praised the policy shift.

The attorney general has taken a necessary and momentous step to protect press freedom at a critical time," said Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "This historic new policy will ensure that journalists can do their job of informing the public without fear of federal government intrusion into their relationships with confidential sources.

Leak investigations have long challenged department officials, resulting in policy changes in the last decade as well as pushback from media groups against government encroachment into their work.

President Barack Obama's first attorney general, Eric Holder, announced revised guidelines for leak investigations after an uproar over actions seen as aggressively intrusive into press freedom, including the secret seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors.

Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump's first attorney general, announced in 2017 a leak crackdown following a series of disclosures during the investigation into Russian election interference.
WASHINGTON (AP)  About 2,500 Afghans who worked for the U.S. government will be evacuated to a military base in Virginia along with their families pending approval of their visas, the Biden administration said Monday as the administration rapidly moves to complete the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan.

Members of Congress have expressed alarm about the fate of Afghans who worked for the U.S. over the past 20 years, particularly as the Taliban have stepped up military operations against the Afghan government, seizing control of major portions of the country as U.S. troops withdraw.

The Afghans will be temporarily housed at Fort Lee, a sprawling Army base south of Richmond starting next week, according to a Defense Department notice sent to Congress. The administration announced earlier this month that it would soon begin relocating Afghan visa seekers under an initiative known as Operation Allies Refuge.

The group includes 700 Afghans who worked for the U.S. and roughly 1,800 family members.

These are brave Afghans and their families, as we have said, whose service to the United States has been certified by the embassy in Kabul, and who have completed thorough security vetting processes, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby declined to say when the first applicants would arrive at Fort Lee but said they are expected to stay only several days before being resettled by the State Department and refugee assistance groups. Kirby said it is possible the Pentagon will offer additional domestic military bases for similar use depending on the pace of relocations.

Monday's announcement came amid growing concerns for the safety of Afghans who served as translators and in other support roles for American troops and diplomats during the long war.

The group to be housed at Fort Lee make up just a small portion of the number of Afghans seeking refuge in the United States. Roughly 20,000 have expressed interest in applying for Special Immigrant Visas to move to the U.S., but only about half are far enough along in the vetting process to be considered for relocation.

An additional 4,000 applicants and family who have completed most of the application process but have yet to clear security screening will be sent to non-U.S. locations to await adjudication of their visas, Price said. Our plan is to take them to locations outside of the United States where they will be safe and where they will be provided accommodation during this processing period, which can last a number of months," he said.

___

AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed.
President Donald Trumps commerce secretary misled Congress about why he sought to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, according to an investigation from the Office of Inspector General, but Trump's Justice Department decided not to prosecute.

The watchdog agency's probe showed that Wilbur Ross misrepresented the reason for adding a citizenship question to the census questionnaire during two appearances before House committees in March 2018, according to a letter sent last week to congressional leaders by Inspector General Peggy Gustafson.

It is a federal crime to make false statements before Congress. The results of the inspector general's investigation were presented to the Justice Department during Trump's administration, but department attorneys declined prosecution in January 2020.

The Department of Justice on Monday declined to comment. No one answered the phone Monday at a Palm Beach, Florida number listed for Ross nor responded to an emailed inquiry.

The Supreme Court eventually blocked adding the query ahead of the 2020 census, but critics say that by pursuing the citizenship question, the Trump administration sought to suppress participation by noncitizens and minorities in the nation's once-a-decade head count.

According to critics, the citizenship question was inspired by the late Republican redistricting expert Tom Hofeller, who had previously written that using citizen voting-age population instead of the total population for the purpose of redrawing of congressional and legislative districts could be advantageous to Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.

The inspector general probe was launched in 2019 at the request of Democratic congressional leaders who said they were concerned that the Trump administration had hidden the role of the Republican redistricting expert while trying to add a citizenship question to the census questionnaire. The Commerce Department oversees the Census Bureau, which compiles and crunches the numbers used to determine political power and the distribution of federal funds.

The inspector general's report confirmed the conclusions of a congressional investigation about the Trump administrations illegal efforts" to add a citizenship question to the census, said U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, chairwoman of the Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Lying to Congress is unacceptable, and the IG did the right thing by referring Secretary Rosss conduct to the Justice Department," said Maloney, D-NY. It is appalling that the Trump Administration subjected an undertaking as important as the decennial census to brazen political manipulation."

The inspector general investigation was unable to establish that Hofeller played a major role in the attempt to add the citizenship question to the census form, Gustafson's letter said.

During his congressional testimony, Ross testified that the Department of Justice requested adding the citizenship question to the census form in late 2017 for the purpose of enforcing federal voting rights law. But the inspector general probe said that misrepresented the full rationale" since Wilbur's staff had been communicating with the Department of Justice many months before the request was made.

The evidence suggested that the Commerce Department requested and played a part in drafting the Department of Justice request, the inspector general probe found.

A memorandum Ross sent to Commerce Department officials said he had been considering adding the citizenship question soon after Trump appointed him to lead the department, according to the probe.

During the first meeting on Monday of a panel of experts studying the quality of the 2020 census data, Bob Bell, a statistical researcher at Google, said the impact of the efforts to add a citizenship question on the 2020 census form was something that would need to be evaluated. The panel of statisticians, historians and sociologists was convened by the Committee on National Statistics at the request of the Census Bureau.

Acting Census Bureau director Ron Jarmin told panel members that the pandemic, as well as the challenging political environment" caused by fallout from the attempt to add a citizenship question, gave people good reasons to have concerns about data quality.

There was an environment of intrigue around the census that previous censuses didnt have," Jarmin said.

___

This story has been corrected to reflect that the decision not to prosecute Ross was made by the Department of Justice during the Trump administration, not the Biden administration.

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP
Into Juarez

Charles Bowden, Noam Chomsky And Eduardo Galeano Take On NAFTA In The Streets Of Mexico. By Mona Mort Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future, by Charles Bowden (Aperture Foundation). Cloth, $35. MID-WAY THROUGH Juarez, a full-page, full-color photograph depicts the sun-mummified body of a woman--raped, murdered, mouth open and teeth showing--in a Juarez park. Charles Bowden writes: "She is screaming and screaming and screaming." Opposite the photograph, Bowden's prose continues to a full page, positioned such that the photo will continue to face the reader for as long as possible, screaming. The man who took this photograph, Juarez photographer Jaime Bailleres, believes it will never be published because of political or social repercussions. In the end, he agrees to sell it to Bowden, who keeps the photograph in a file folder on his desk, and looks at it periodically to stay the course of his mission: to publish this photo and a collection of nearly 100 others, all by unknown Mexican street photographers. Bowden convinced the Aperture Foundation in New York to showcase the work of 13 such photographers from the city of Juarez, Mexico. They work for $50 to $100 a week, provide their own cameras and transportation, and often face beatings, torture, and even murder. According to Bowden, such a large group of photographers constitutes "a defensive tactic," giving them political ammunition and safety in numbers. Bowden spends time on their beats, conveying their courage in his own words. The result is a powerful combination of language and image: Juarez: The Laboratory of Our Future. Juarez, where nearly two million people live in economic and social depression, is by Bowden's account "just 30 feet from El Paso. People try to speculate what the future will be. They don't have to--they can come to Juarez and touch it: some 300 American factories, paying people $3 a day. Here is your future." Most of the workers live in dense settlements, or colonias, "built" of cardboard shacks. They breathe dirty air, drink contaminated water, and are the objects of crime and violence by gangs. The book's subtitle derives from Bowden's convincing argument that Juarez is a laboratory for experiments about possible futures; possible outcomes in the war between the haves and have-nots. He writes: "In Juarez, the future is over 30 years old"; a widespread drop in real wages and poor living standards that Bowden (and others) contend will soon afflict the United States. The text of Juarez is a raw, hard-hitting account of the human cost of economic policies allowed to persist in border towns; conditions worsened since NAFTA's passage in July 1992. The author approaches this latest project with the same urgent style as his previous 15 books, relating events from the lives of people in Juarez--the photographers, friends, acquaintances--as an ongoing struggle demanding attention--and action. The book grew out of Bowden's December 1996 article in Harper's; where several of the photos were previously published; as well as in a July 1997 New York Times photo spread. Like most of the photographs, the stories he documents are grim. Bowden's polemic is accompanied by Noam Chomsky's preface, originally published in The Nation (March 1993), in which NAFTA is lambasted as a plot by international economic powers--the "masters of mankind," quoting Adam Smith--to increase their wealth while diminishing the lives of workers. Chomsky's essay is a fact-filled historical account of how NAFTA came to be, and its opposition by Mexican workers and international labor experts. The afterword, "To Be Like Them," is an excerpt from We Say No, by Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano. His essay raises the question of whether the Third World can become the First World. His answer is no: If it were to try, he contends, the planet would die ecologically. Galeano points out that by the end of the century, Mexico City and Sao Paolo will be the largest cities in the world. Sans catalytic converters for their leaded-gasoline automobile engines, they'll also signal the beginning of global asphyxiation for the human race. Printed in color, this harsh documentary of murder, torture, rape, hunger and hopelessness was taken with film rationed by Juarez newspapers. Several of the photographs are superimposed with quotes from Bob Dylan, Edward Weston and others, which can be more distracting than illuminating. Otherwise, the layout and fine finish make for a consonant visual and tactile experience. Juarez is a difficult book to get through; the photos are hard to look at, and Bowden's unyielding prose hammers away at our collective conscience. Yet, it remains a successful and important expose of human nature: both the immediate and that which is "safely" concealed behind government propaganda. Charles Bowden signs copies of Juarez at a reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, March 21, at The Book Mark, 5001 E. Speedway. For more information, call 881-6350.
Punch-Drunk Prose

'Irish Whiskey' Is Just One Unrealized Desire After Another. By Amy C. Murphy Irish Whiskey, by Andrew Greeley (Forge Books). Cloth, $23.95. ON THE MORNING drive to the Catholic high school I attended, Colleen McGuire and I often indulged in listening to a tune we regarded as one of our theme songs: embarrassingly enough, Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young." The song involves a young thug who attempts to woo a sheltered Catholic girl, named Virginia (big surprise). The part of the song we sang with the most fervor was, "Come on Virginia, don't let me wait/You Catholic girls start much too late/But sooner or later it comes down to fate/I might as well be the one/You know that only the good die young." The song was a vehicle for sublimated desire, enabling us to happily embrace the idea of our "late start" while we contemplated the idea of engaging in an activity that we wouldn't actualize. Andrew M. Greeley's book, Irish Whiskey, proves a similar exercise: The prolific author attempts to maintain the momentum of the novel through a few different plots, none of which come to fruition. This novel is the third in a series of love stories written by Greeley, who in addition to being a novelist is also a noted sociologist and priest. It's the priest part that hangs me up a bit. Irish Whiskey has some sexy scenes, mostly involving the young hero, Dermot Coyne, copiously kissing the breasts of his nubile heroine and fiancee, Nuala Anne McGrail; and one of the novel's subplots is based on the delayed gratification Dermot and Nuala must experience as the result of their commitment to remain virginal until their wedding night. Knowing that a priest concocted these sexy episodes was akin to imagining Father Casey, the principal of my school, lifting up his vestments to reveal fish-net stockings. Yet if one imagines a priest should write hot passages such as these, Greeley writes them precisely in the fashion one would expect. In one of the many titillating moments, Dermot finds himself encompassed by "a firestorm of longing": "She was naked to her waist, her breasts glowing in the moonlight as I devoured them with my lips...My brain exploded in love, desire, and pride. I would prolong this moment of joy forever. I wasn't really doing this, was I? Yeah, I was. I'd better stop." Such is the pious (and scientific) lens through which Greeley contemplates sexual activity. Despite the desire that appears to take Dermot by storm, he staves off finding satisfaction in the "responsive" Nuala, believing they should save it until safely wedded. Greeley's writing comes off as unintentionally ironic--the idea of prolonging the moment of joy to a critical point being undercut by the dominant influence of Dermot's Catholic superego. Greeley recycles this kind of moment throughout the novel, perhaps in an attempt to make its moralistic ending, which occurs on their wedding night, seem ultra-sexy and utterly climactic: The underlying idea, of course, being that the best sex occurs within the sanctified bounds of wedded bliss. And with the racy episodes leading up to their consummation, the reader anticipates that this last scene will deliver the promised punch. Instead, the author lets us down gently with, " 'Ah, that wasn't so bad at all?' Mrs. Coyne said when we collapsed into each other's arms at the end of our ride through the stars." Come again? Irish Whiskey's other converging plots suffer from similar anticlimaxes. The story begins with a scene in which Dermot and Nuala visit the Mount Carmel cemetery where his grandparents are buried. Nuala, an Irish woman with psychic powers, concludes that the entombed body of a famous Irish bootlegger, presumably in its final resting place beside them, is in fact missing. Nuala and Dermot's research into this matter uncovers a Mafioso twist; and their discovery then demands that the innocent couple take on the big bosses heir to the throne of Al Capone. Such "mysterious" encounters fail to reach their foreshadowed moments of enlightenment or crisis, making the start-stop mechanism characterizing Dermot's approach to lovemaking an apt model for the way other promising scenarios in Irish Whiskey unfold. The reward the reader anticipates through engaging in the novel is ultimately thwarted by what may be, for all the author's unconventional appeal, an overarching philosophical hang up: that Good Book principle of postponement. Somebody respectable ought to advise the good Father that when it comes to storytelling, at least, it isn't always better to wait. Father Andrew M. Greeley will read from and sign copies of Irish Whiskey from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, March 25, at Borders Books and Music, 4235 N. Oracle Road. Call 292-1331 for information.


What's The Worst Thing You Can Call A Bunch Of Hard-Riding Motorcycle Hombres? By Jeff Smith A MAN KNOWS he's getting into his relaxed-fit years when hell-raising road trips mutate into scheduled events on the desk calendar, coordinated with his fellow Visigoths so as not to conflict with anniversaries, grandchildren's birthdays, or visits to the proctologist. Every autumn since 1976, I and the boys have picked up the phone, made a few calls, and by whatever means necessary, hit the road for Ruidoso, New Mexico. That's another way you can tell your cavity-prone years are behind you: Your annual rituals get old enough to vote. This little jaunt started out as a motorcycle trip to the Aspencade Rally, traditionally held the first weekend of October in the mountains of central New Mexico. History has lost track of which of us stumbled onto this intelligence, but 21 years ago as we lashed our sleeping bags to the bikes, gassed up and zippered into leather jackets, we expected a high-octane free-for-all and we were not disappointed. That first year, by happy accident, the itinerary was set for every ride that has followed. We left from Star Cycle at dusk on Thursday, hit a bar in Willcox and had a hell of a good time. We rode on to Safford, hit a bar and had a hell of a good time. A few beers later we rode north to Clifton, hit a bar and had a hell of a good time. At last call we got a few six-packs to go, found a turn-off for camping at the bottom of the Coronado Trail, laughed and told stories until the beer was gone and had a hell of a good time. Next day we rode up the Trail in record time, ate breakfast as Hannigan's Meadow, refueled in Alpine, rode to Reserve, New Mexico, and our first visit to Uncle Bill's Bar and had a hell of a good time. Didn't get out of Uncle Bill's until almost dark, and nearly froze before rolling into Datil, where we found Heaven. Join me while I relive the moment: It was beginning to snow. The wind-chill aboard a motorcycle was 20 below zero. You couldn't focus your eyes for shivering, but off to the left shone the cheery glow of neon and stone hearth. Inside was a wood fire, a country jukebox, scotch and chicken-fried steak. I still believe the cafe in Datil is the most wonderful place on Planet Earth. And the highlight of the annual Ruidoso Ride. This is not to demean the Paris Tavern in Magdalena, or the Idle Hour Motel in Ruidoso, or the Birdcage Saloon, also in Ruidoso, or even the Ruidoso Police Station where one year we had to pay three visits to bail Paul out of jail. Or the S-Bar-X Saloon in Hillsboro on the way home. All of these high spots in the road are part of our tribal history, a folkloric tradition patterned after that first serendipitous ramble, 21 years ago. It wasn't until the second year that another Ruidoso Ride tradition was born, and that was the Viking funeral thing. The boys were a pretty fast bunch of bike riders. Most of us had raced motorcycles in one milieu or another, and most finished on the podium more often than not. So the Ruidoso Ride--which could have been accomplished in a single-day straight shot--was from the start a three-day, back-road trophy dash. Quite fast and quite dangerous. I think Obert was the first to crash hard--wadding his 400 Honda trying to keep up with Cundiff's 900 Screaming Yellow Zonker BMW. No serious injuries, but the bike was set afire and floated out to sea, and Obert was carried home on his shield. Then, as the years rolled by, more bikes rolled off the edge or into the mountainside. Dytko went on his head in Clifton, McArdle broke his brother's bike and his own shoulder against a cliff on the Coronado Trail. Next year Mick broke his back and Custer left a lot of hide in the same corner just coming into Ruidoso. Then Tibeault hid a horse in the road and Galper hit deer, or so he claimed. By this time the body count was getting so high, sensible people refused to ride along with us. There was no shortage of not-so-sensible, and the worst year was 1980, when Murray and Metz invited themselves along, despite our efforts to discourage. We had a feeling they might get in over their heads and they did. Heading out of the last bar on the first night, Murray stuffed it into the hillside, above the open pit mine in Clifton. Metz augured in right behind him, breaking an ankle. Murray was much worse: both legs broken and bone protruding through his pelt. Jaw shattered and teeth gone. Ribs broken and ruptured spleen. Right arm, compound spiral fractures or radius and ulna. They had to helicopter him out, and he never quite was himself again. He blamed me for setting too fast a pace. I was merely showing Cundiff what a 900 Ducati could do. Next autumn I found out for myself: It could launch me into a tree-trunk at 120 miles an hour and paralyze me. But it couldn't kill me, and in the 16 years since I hit that tree, just 10 miles from Uncle Bill's Bar, none of us has got so much as a scratch. Although Mick has experienced a couple of parking lot get-offs. We still go pretty quick, and I find myself wondering sometimes, when the speedo is reading 120 and the boys are disappearing in the distance, what part of my anatomy I might light on, if, say, my front tire blew out. I hope it's one of those paralyzed parts. Over the years, observers have expressed curiosity, revulsion and disbelief that a group of reasonably bright adult men should persist at a form of play that has cost such a price in flesh and bone. I have pondered this at length--each of us is, after all, his own favorite subject--but failed at a definitive conclusion. Perhaps it's the adrenaline. Perhaps running away from tedium. Then again, as Brian suggested to me this very most recent iteration, "Maybe you're just a bunch of squids." Say it isn't so. In the motorcycle game the term "squid" is the ultimate insult. It's a contraction of squirrely kid, definitely not what a 35-year-old editorial writer, husband and father, holder of large trophies for winning races at major venues wants to think of himself. Hey, we're not a bunch of teenagers who've never been blooded, riding around in "No Fear" T-shirts. We carry the scars of reality. We've buried our dead. We still ride hard and take no prisoners. But damn, those discouraging words still ring in my mind's ear: Maybe you're just a bunch of squids.


Dan Eldon's Posthumously Published Journal Is An Homage To A Young Man's Adventurous Aesthetic. By James DiGiovanna The Journal's of Dan Eldon: The Journey is the Destination, by Dan Eldon (Chronicle Books). Cloth, $27.50 WHEN SOMEONE DIES as young as Dan Eldon did, at age 22, we usually talk of promise unfulfilled, or what he might have accomplished had he lived. But if someone traveled the world, had a great deal of professional work published and recognized in both journalism and fine art, lived amongst many different peoples, led expeditions through dangerous and exotic territories, and influenced many other adventurers and artists were to die, we would talk of a full life, lived to the limits of its possibility. That Dan Eldon could fall into both these categories makes this book a disturbing, rich and anxious work. The Journey is the Destination is a collection of assorted pages from Dan Eldon's 17 scrapbooks. Eldon began producing these collaged pages when he was 14 years old. Combining his photographs with painting, drawings, official documents and marginal writings, the book reveals an incredibly sophisticated young man. In the very first journal (produced when Eldon's eighth grade class went on an outing to visit the Masai Tribe of Kenya) he writes, "I mix them with my brains, sir: John Opie, when asked with what he mixed his colors," and includes a short extract on the role of ethnography in ethnology. Still, the first few pages have the look, if not the tone, of a junior high school project. But as the volume progresses a visual sophistication arises. The earlier painted photographs are reminiscent of the kind of projects one sees at art schools, but Eldon quickly develops an acuity with the brush that moves well beyond the Andy Warhol style of painting-on-photography. The pages become densely layered, and record not only Eldon's growing aesthetic vision, but also the breadth of his experiences. Photographs of African tribespeople are pasted on official travel documents, entry stamps to various African countries, letters from the office of Nairobi's president, and a wide range of mementos, advertisements and odd press clippings. One striking two-page spread features four copies of the same photograph, a picture of a stuffed owl in the lobby of a North African hotel. Each image is painted with different strokes, some emphasizing the bird, others introducing ghostly silhouettes, another turning a fluorescent light into a spiritual beam from the head of an otherworldly creature. The later sections of the book eschew the layering for cleaner images of the stark Somalian city-scape, bringing to relief the horrors of the war which was to take Eldon's life. Perhaps the greatest difficulty in reading a book like this is that the life of the author, its tragedy and romance, intercedes between the pages and the reader. It's difficult to look at an image of war, a picture of a soldier, a collage featuring tanks and Jeeps, and not see the death of Dan Eldon. It's impossible, then, to say whether the impact of these pages is due to their inherent artistic value or to the romance of a young man who gathered a small group of friends from many nations to travel in a broken down Jeep across hostile boundaries and difficult terrain, and who died a horrible and brutal death at the hands of an angry mob.
A man wanted in connection with a 2020 murder is shot and killed by police, in Maracas, St. Joseph.

And, cops discover several guns and ammunition, at another suspect's home, in Couva.
Hi, my name is Scott C. Waring and I wrote a few books and am currently a ESL School Owner in Taiwan. I have had my own UFO sighting up close and personal, but that's how it works right? A non believer becomes a believer when they experience their first sighting. You witnessed it, your perceptual field changes, so now you need to share it.





I created this site to help the UFO community get a little bit organized. I noticed that there was a lot of chaos when searching for UFO sighting reports, so I hope this site helps. I wanted to support those eyewitnesses who have tried to tell others about what they have seen, yet were laughed at by even closest of friends.





More and more each day the governments of the world leak bits and pieces of UFO information to the public. They have a trickle down theory in hopes of slowly getting citizens use to the idea that we are not alone in universe and never have been. The truth is being leaked drop by drop until one day we look around and find ourselves neck high in it.





The discovery of alien species in existence is the most monumental scientific event in human history, suppression of that information is a crime against humanity.





About me:

I live in Taiwan. I OWN MY OWN ENGLISH SCHOOL, AND ONCE HAD 5 SCHOOLS.

Am Former USAF at SAC base (flight line).

Age: 42

Educ: BA in Elem ed. Masters in Counseling ed.





I had two UFO sightings, (30+bus size orbs) in military and in 2012 personally saw the UFO over Taipei 101 building on New Years Day (and recored it).
As part of combatting international terrorism, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has banned from entering the country 190 foreigners involved in terrorist and extremist organizations.

Thats according to the SBU press center, Ukrinform reports.

The agency clarified that 17 persons had been detained at the border, including a Russian national, member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, wanted by Interpol, and a militant with the Islamic State terrorist organization.

Forty-five foreign nationals were expelled to their countries of origin, including three  to Sri Lanka and two  to Russia and Azerbaijan each. All were supporters or members of international terrorist groups.

Over the past six months, 191 court convictions have come into force on charges of crimes against national statehood, including encroachment on the territorial integrity and inviolability of the country, as well as terrorism, the SBU said.

Among these cases is one of a Ukrainian national, self-proclaimed "prime minister" of the "Republic of Subcarpathian Rus" quasi-formation, who was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

He had been campaigning for breaching the constitutional order and territorial integrity of Ukraine.

In 2014, he even sought assistance from Russian organizations in carrying out subversive activities in Ukraine.

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Russian occupation forces have been increasing their combat capabilities in eastern Ukraine and are now training to deploy pontoon crossings as part of offensive drills.

Thats according to the press service of the Defense Ministrys Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukrinform reports.

"The command of the Russian Armed Forces keeps increasing combat capabilities of the operational group of Russian occupation troops in the temporarily occupied territory in Donetsk and Luhansk regions, intelligence officials reported on Facebook.

In certain units of Russia-led occupation forces, field exercises were held involving artillery spotters; pontoon crossing deployment was worked out as part of training in assault crossing of water obstacles; as well as live-fire drills of artillery units working out offensive action, the report elaborated.

Intelligence analysts note intensified preparations by enemy forces for sabotage and reconnaissance operations. At the enemy's front line positions, the Ukrainian military spotted the increased number of reconnaissance troops and sniper pairs, who recently underwent special training in Russian military facilities in Rostov region.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, the command of the Russian Armed Forces is setting up in the temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions new training grounds, shooting ranges, and tank tracks, where Russian proxy forces are set to be trained in July.

Since early July, the Russian command has been extensively inspecting the units of their grouping in the temporarily occupied areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

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A Danish delegation led by Ambassador of the Kingdom of Denmark Ole Egberg Mikkelsen has got acquainted with the security situation in the Joint Forces Operation area in eastern Ukraine and met with representatives of the Danish Demining Group (DDG).

"On July 19-20, a delegation of the Kingdom of Denmark headed by Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Denmark Ole Egberg Mikkelsen visited the Joint Forces Operation area in order to get acquainted with the security situation," the press center of the JFO Headquarters reports.

The Danish diplomats met with Deputy Commander of the Joint Forces, Major General Eduard Moskaliov. They visited the Zolote entry-exit checkpoint, where they got acquainted with the infrastructure and capabilities of the checkpoint. They also visited the command and observation post of the Ukrainian Armed Forces unit, which performs tasks as part of the Joint Forces.

I am very happy to visit the contact line and see everything with my own eyes. This is the front line of peaceful life, the front line of democracy. You protect the security of Europe, so if you are in danger, then we cannot be safe either. I am very glad to meet all of you, commanders and soldiers. My sincere gratitude to you for what you are doing," the ambassador said.

In addition, the delegation met with representatives of Luhansk Regional Military-Civil Administration. Head of the Ukrainian side of the Joint Control and Coordination Center (JCCC), Major General Serhiy Salkutsan informed the guests about the ceasefire violations committed by the Russian occupation forces.

At the end of the visit, the ambassador met with representatives of the Danish Demining Group. Together they visited the areas where explosives are being cleaned up.

As Ukrinform reported, on July 16, a delegation of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, led by Charge d'Affaires George Kent, visited the JFO area to learn about the security situation there.

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During a visit to Georgia, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky discussed the priority steps to intensify trade and economic cooperation with President of the Republic of Moldova Maia Sandu.

The President congratulated Maia Sandu on the victory of the pro-European democratic forces in the parliamentary elections in Moldova and wished his Moldovan counterpart success in forming an efficient government, the website of the Head of State informs.

The parties discussed priority steps to intensify trade and economic cooperation, setting the cooperation in the field of energy and the implementation of joint infrastructure projects as key areas of economic interaction between the two countries.

Successful implementation of such bilateral and multilateral projects should become an important step towards strengthening the diversification and energy independence of both countries, said the President of Ukraine.

Particular attention was also paid to the development of the transport and transit potential of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. The parties agreed on the need to accelerate the implementation of the flagship project in this area  the construction of a border bridge over the Dniester River near the settlements of Yampil and Cosauti.

Zelensky informed Sandu about the main tasks and modalities of the Crimea Platform, reaffirming his invitation to his Moldovan counterpart to take part in the founding summit of this international initiative, as well as in ceremonial events marking the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's independence.

As reported, President Volodymyr Zelensky made a working visit to Georgia on Monday. During the visit, the leaders of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova established the Associated Trio format and signed the Batumi Summit Declaration. The document states that joining the EU is a goal that unites the three countries, and European integration has no alternative for these countries.

On May 17, the foreign ministers of Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova signed a memorandum on the establishment of the Associated Trio for the joint successful European integration of the three countries.

Photo credit: president.gov.ua

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The effective use of labor potential and the return of migrant workers from abroad is a matter of national security and statehood, Ukraine's First Deputy Prime Minister, Economy Minister Oleksii Liubchenko has said.

According to an Ukrinform correspondent, he said this at the opening of the All-Ukrainian Forum "Ukraine 30. Human Capital" in Kyiv on Tuesday.

He said it was impossible to count the exact number of citizens who did not find themselves in Ukraine and went "to seek happiness" abroad. According to expert estimates, the issue concerns two or three million Ukrainians who leave their country every year.

"We are leaders in Europe in terms of the number of able-bodied people working abroad," Liubchenko said.

Therefore, the task of the state is to create conditions as soon as possible for the vast majority of Ukrainians, who once went abroad to earn money, to return home.

"We must replace the phrase 'I want to leave' with the phrase 'I want to return,'" Liubchenko said, quoting the Ukrainian president's election program and giving statistics.

"According to the register of individual taxpayers, 11.3 million citizens received official salaries last year. Almost 11 million had no official income at all. Plus we have more than 11 million retirees, whose benefits depend on those who work legally. That is, at the expense of one person who works officially the state keeps two unemployed. And all these categories of citizens equally enjoy the common good: medical care, education, infrastructure, benefits, and subsidies," Liubchenko said.

According to him, shadow wages in Ukraine amount to almost half a trillion hryvnias a year. The government faces the task of returning these funds to the real economy. The participants in the forum should discuss ways to achieve this goal, Liubchenko said.

Read also: Finland expects more than 500 seasonal workers from Ukraine to pick wild berries

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February this year launched a series of 30 large-scale weekly forums in the format of dialogue with the public on vital issues for the country. The events are timed to the 30th anniversary of Ukraine's independence. The topic of the current forum is the effective use of human capital, including the possibility of returning Ukrainian migrant workers to their homeland. For two days, participants in the forum will discuss ways to return people from labor migration, government programs to combat unemployment, changes that the labor market has undergone since the pandemic. The topics of the discussion also include the new Labor Code, the implementation of European rules and regulations in domestic legislation, and digitalization as an integral part of the sphere of labor relations.

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Currently, nearly 1.5 million Ukrainians are living and working in neighboring Poland.

This is a significant human capital, which is valued in Poland, while some of the Ukrainians, having gained experience and financial resources, could later successfully invest in developing own business in Ukraine, Ambassador of Ukraine to Poland Andrii Deshchytsia told the All-Ukrainian Forum "Ukraine 30. Labor Resources" on Tuesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

Were seeing a rising number of migrant workers: against 2014, the numbers have doubled or tripled. Now were talking about 1.5 million Ukrainians working in Poland, Deshchytsia said.

About 600,000 Ukrainians officially pay taxes to the Polish Social Insurance Fund, the envoy added, noting that the rest work legally, on employment contracts, while not being taxed in the country. The ambassador said labor migrants from Ukraine are treated very well in Poland.

Among the reasons for Ukrainians to seek jobs in Poland are higher salaries, opportunities toward self-realization, and a more stable situation that allows them to make more money, Deshchytsia explained.

Another factor Ukrainians coming to Poland consider is proximity to Ukraine. This factor motivates Ukrainians to believe that, if the economic situation in Ukraine improves, they will return, Deshchytsia stressed.

According to the diplomat, Ukrainians working in Poland on legal grounds are interested in an important form of social benefits: the possibility of receiving their pension in Poland upon their return to Ukraine. This is an important element in the context of migrant workers moving back to Ukraine, the ambassador noted.

Read also: Finland expects more than 500 seasonal workers from Ukraine to pick wild berries

"We are currently working on a new agreement between Ukraine and Poland on employment and social security of Ukrainian labor migrants," said Ukraines ambassador to Poland.

According to Deshchytsia, another "bridge" ensuring the return of Ukrainian citizens to their homeland may be their experience of starting up businesses in Poland. He believes that over time, Ukrainians could transfer this experience to Ukraine. In this regard, the diplomat said that in 2014, there were 680 companies in Poland, owned by Ukrainians, while in 2021 their number skyrocketed to 16,000.

This shows that Ukrainians dont just come to Poland to work at construction sites or pick strawberries, they think about starting their own business. If it were to develop, it would potentially have to happen in Ukraine, Deshchytsia is convinced.

Ukrainian labor migrants, the diplomat believes, are gaining experience, capital, and relevant contacts, and they could further use all this upon their return to Ukraine.

He also touched upon the Ukrainians studying in Poland. Of 50,000 Ukrainians currently enrolled in Polands educational facilities, some will stay in the country or move further westward, but some will come back to Ukraine.

We need to think about encouraging our youths to do business in Ukraine. We could create proper conditions for them to stay in Ukraine, the Ukrainian diplomat stated.

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Ukraine and China could sign a free trade agreement (FTA) which, if concluded on an equal footing, would give a boost to the Ukrainian economy.

If Ukraine and China sign the FTA, it will give a boost to the Ukrainian economy in a positive way provided that such an agreement is signed on equal terms. I will say that China is even ready to make concessions. That is, it is ready to open its market even wider than we are ready to open ours for Chinese goods, foreign affairs analyst Oleksiy Koval said on the air of Dom TV channel.

China is the biggest and most important trade partner of Ukraine, he stressed. Last year, the trade turnover between the countries totaled more than $15 billion.

China is the second-largest economy in the world in terms of GDP. The growth of the Chinese economy in the first half of this year was 12.7%. This is despite all the problems, despite the pandemic. It is a growing economy, it is actively developing. In addition, right now, this year China has decided to open its market to foreign goods. And, in general, these goods are in demand, the expert explained.

Ukraines traditional exports to China are agricultural and metallurgical products. And now China is ready to open its market for high-quality, eco-friendly, and competitive goods from different countries, Koval added.

It is during the pandemic when many markets are closing, China gives countries an opportunity to increase supplies of their goods to the Chinese market, he said.

As reported, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and President of the Peoples Republic of China Xi Jinping had a telephone conversation, during which they discussed, inter alia, trade and economic relations and the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. The heads of state also agreed to conclude a visa-free agreement between Ukraine and China.

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Ukrainians form the largest national minority in the Czech Republic, and it would be much harder for the Czech economy to function without them, Ukraine's Ambassador to the Czech Republic Yevhen Perebyinis has said.

According to Ukrinform, he stated this at the All-Ukrainian Forum "Ukraine 30. Human Capital" in Kyiv on Tuesday, July 20.

"Without Ukrainian workers, the Czech Republic would not be able to live and the economy would simply stop," Perebyinis said, adding that government officials and company executives have repeatedly told him about this.

Labor migration of Czech citizens abroad has created a labor shortage in various areas, which has prompted the Czech government to amend the legislation and simplify the procedure for foreigners obtaining a work permit. Special programs have been created to attract labor migrants from other countries, primarily from Ukraine.

The ambassador mentioned such programs as "Regime Ukraine" or "Project Ukraine," aimed at attracting medical workers, IT specialists and scientists to work in the Czech Republic on preferential terms. In recent years, the quota for Ukrainian workers under these programs has grown from 10,000, then to 20,000, and now to 40,000 people per year.

The diplomat drew attention to such an aspect as ensuring the rights of citizens who went abroad. With various countries, in particular, with the Czech Republic, there is a legal framework in this regard, in particular, social security agreements. However, Perebyinis said, the benefits of these agreements can only be enjoyed by those citizens who work legally. This is how most Ukrainians in the Czech Republic work. Thus, for the most part, they are fully socially protected and are covered by all the guarantees of Czech law and bilateral documents.

But there are many people who work semi-legally or illegally, which is facilitated by a certain bureaucracy in decision-making by the Czech migration authorities and the emergence of a large number of "intermediaries," mostly Ukrainians who are engaged in illegal employment, Perebyinis said. In such cases, there are many problems, including the fact that workers are not properly insured, they have inadequate working conditions, and so on. "We must fight these illegal companies [] because they use our citizens who then suffer," the ambassador said. He believes that law enforcement agencies must fight this systematically.

The Czech Republic is home to one of the largest Ukrainian diasporas abroad. According to the recent census, more than 53,000 people are citizens of the Czech Republic but identify themselves as Ukrainians, which is only half a percent of the republic's population. At the same time, according to migration services, almost 180,000 Ukrainians live in the country, and they are almost the largest national minority. The vast majority of them are migrant workers, and what attracts them in the Czech Republic primarily is the wage as they steadily earn more than 1,000 euros and even more per month. Money is not the only factor, but the main one, the ambassador said. He also added that, unfortunately, the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens who come to work in the Czech Republic do not return home.

Perebyinis emphasized the importance of creating a systematic program for the return of citizens from abroad, which should be comprehensive - it is necessary to give a clear signal that Ukraine needs its citizens who have left.

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Over the next three years, the Government of Ukraine plans to build infrastructure for 25 industrial parks.

"Over the next three years, the Government plans to build infrastructure for a network of 25 state-funded industrial parks. This will ensure the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in related sectors of the economy. I want to emphasize that industrial parks are also platforms for investment by Ukrainians from abroad," Minister for Communities and Territories Development of Ukraine Oleksiy Chernyshov said during a panel discussion at the All-Ukrainian Forum "Ukraine 30. Human Capital" in Kyiv on July 20, the Ministrys press service informs.

In order to create basic infrastructure and economic incentives, the Ministry together with the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Economic Development, the Ministry of Economy, and the expert community have already prepared bill No. 4416-1 for the second reading.

In particular, the document provides for the construction of engineering and transport infrastructure of industrial parks at the expense of the state budget, as well as compensation for interest payments on loans for economic activities and development of these parks.

Relevant bills No. 5688 and No.5689 have also been registered to provide tax and customs benefits to participants in industrial parks.

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Counselor of the U.S. Department of State Derek Chollet will travel to Kyiv on July 20-21 and Warsaw on July 21-23 to reinforce the strategic value of the United States relationships with Ukraine and Poland, according to the Departments statement.

"Derek Chollet will continue our diplomatic conversations with Ukraine and Poland on a range of issues, including our shared concerns about the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and energy security more broadly, as well as ongoing reforms," the report reads.

In Kyiv, Counselor Chollet will meet with senior government officials to discuss U.S. support for Ukraines efforts to counter Russias aggression and to further advance economic and anti-corruption reforms. He will also meet with members of the business community to discuss Ukraines economic recovery and opportunities for shared prosperity.

In Warsaw, Counselor Chollet will discuss strategic bilateral and regional issues, as well as shared commitment to democratic values and institutions, with senior government officials and civil society representatives. He will also engage with business leaders to strengthen bilateral economic ties.

As Ukrinform reported, U.S. President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a recent meeting confirmed their differences over the Nord Stream 2 issue. At the same time, they have absolute unity in their understanding that "Russia should not be allowed to use energy as a weapon to coerce or threaten neighboring countries."

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Ukraine has been making effort to ensure that consensus is achieved within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization on the Membership Action Plan for Ukraine.

Thats according to Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, Olha Stefanishyna, who met via video conference with Wendy Morton, UKs Minister for European Neighbourhood and the Americas, Ukrinform reports referring to the Government Portal.

"Ukraine is working to build a consensus within the Alliance on providing our country with a NATO Membership Action Plan, and its very important for us to feel the support of our partners along the way. Today, the efforts of our President, Government, and Parliament are united around Ukraines Euro-Atlantic integration, which allows for complex reforms in the security and defense sector, implementation of NATO standards, and work on the NATO Enhanced Opportunities [Partnership] Program, Stefanishyna said.

The vice prime minister noted that the communique of this years NATO Summit, which confirmed that Ukraine would become a NATO Ally, was an important document paving way for strategic clarity on Ukraines future membership in the Alliance.

Stefanishyna also thanked Morton for Britain's support for Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic course.

At the same time, the vice prime minister noted the threat posed by Russia, which has been mounting military infrastructure in the Black Sea region amid the continued militarization of the temporarily occupied Crimea. Stefanishyna said Ukraine supports the expansion of NATO's presence in the Black Sea region.

"Strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and NATO, joint exercises on land and at sea, as well as developing efforts to counter hybrid threats will help strengthen NATO's eastern flank," she said.

The vice prime minister also noted the ambitious reform agenda that is being implemented in Ukraine today on the path to Euro-Atlantic integration.

In particular, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraines parliament, passed a law paving way for corporatization of the countrys defense industry; work continues on the implementation of defense procurement legislation; the lawmakers are expected to pass at second reading a bill on the SBU Security Service reform, etc.

Stefanishyna and Morton also discussed work on the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, on July 19, Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleh Nikolenko stated that Ukraine does not intend to revise its geopolitical vector regarding EU and NATO membership, while at the same time being set to develop relations with Asia, Africa, and Latin America based on national interests.

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President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky met with President of the European Council Charles Michel to discuss preparations for the Ukraine-EU summit scheduled for October 2021.

The meeting took place during a working visit of President Zelensky to Georgia on July 19, according to the website of the head of state.

At the beginning of the conversation, Zelensky thanked Michel for his support in holding the first meeting in the EU+Associated Trio (Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova) format at the highest level and willingness to promote further rapprochement of associated partners with the European Union.

"It is very important that you were present at this meeting. Our peoples deserve a European perspective, given, in particular, that the amount of obligations of our three states under the association agreements can be compared with the obligations of current candidate countries for EU membership," the president of Ukraine said.

The parties discussed preparations for the Ukraine-EU summit scheduled for October this year.

Zelensky offered to consider a number of initiatives to develop practical cooperation between the Associated Trio and the EU, which would benefit both citizens and businesses. These include the implementation of joint infrastructure projects, interaction in the sphere of transport, energy, health, security, defense, the digital market, and trade.

As reported, President Volodymyr Zelensky paid a working visit to Georgia on Monday, July 19.

A meeting of the leaders of the countries of the Associated Trio - Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova - with the participation of President of the European Council Charles Michel took place in Batumi.

According to the Batumi summit declaration, accession to the European Union is a goal that unites the three states. European integration has no alternative for the Associated Trio, and no third party could influence this sovereign choice.

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Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia have a common past with the Russian Federation, but members of the Association Trio seek to build their future with Europe.

Thats according to Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba who delivered a video message via Facebook following the Batumi meeting of the leaders of the Association Trio countries  Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova.

The Association Trio is, in essence, about cutting our three countries off from the Russian World, from all these one people concepts. We did have a common past with the Russian Federation, but we will have a common future with other countries, not with Russia, Kuleba said.

Read also: Michel invites Associated Trio countries to compete in reforms

The top diplomat added that Russia, unfortunately, has compromised itself, so Ukraine cannot trust it.

We have to build relations with it because it remains a political reality and we have to take care of our security, but the future of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia is in Europe. This is a key element, this is a milestone  for the first time will work jointly towards this goal, the minister stressed.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, on July 19, the leaders of the Association Trio members  Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova  met in Batumi with the participation of European Council President Charles Michel.

In the declaration following the meeting, the parties stated that accession to the European Union is a goal that unites the three states. European integration has no alternative for the Association Trio, and no one will be able to influence that choice, the parties stress.
U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent, who currently serves as Charge d'Affaires in Ukraine, met with representatives of the Crimean Tatar people to discuss the occupation of Crimea and the Crimean Platform project.

Thats according to a report by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine on Facebook, Ukrinform reports.

Honored to meet with Crimean Tatar MPs and government officials to discuss Russias ongoing occupation of Crimea, persecution of the population, and the upcoming Crimea Platform, wrote CDA Kent.

As Ukrinform reported earlier, on July 19, while on a Georgia visit, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine spoke to the media, telling journalists that the Crimean Platform could become an important security tool in the Black and Azov seas.

Background

The Crimean Platform is a new consultative and coordination format initiated by Ukraine to improve the efficiency of the international response to the occupation of Crimea, respond to growing security challenges, step up international pressure on Russia, prevent further human rights violations, protect victims of the occupation regime, and push Russia to cease the occupation of Crimea.

The first Crimean Platform summit is scheduled for August 23, 2021.
Ukraine has concrete proposals for thwarting Russia's attempts to turn the Black Sea into its internal lake. Proposals are currently being discussed with the Associated Trio partners and Black Sea NATO members.

Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba made a relevant statement in a video address following the meeting of leaders of the Associated Trio countries  Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova  in Batumi on July 19.

He noted that Russians followed the same pattern in Transnistria [part of Moldova], Georgia, and Ukraine. Therefore, the three countries should work together to counter Russia's occupation intentions. In this context, the Ukrainian foreign minister drew attention to the importance of the Black Sea security.

"If the Black Sea NATO members, Ukraine and Georgia (a place for Moldova can also be found in this mechanism) will not join forces, Russia will turn the Black Sea into its internal lake, divide it in half and begin to rule in its zone. This topic was discussed very carefully yesterday: what needs to be done to level the security situation in the Black Sea. Ukraine has concrete ideas, concrete proposals on this issue, and we are now discussing them with both Georgians and Moldovans, as well as with NATO member states which are Black Sea countries and friendly to us  Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey," Kuleba said.

As reported, on July 19, the leaders of the Associated Trio countries  Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova  met in Batumi with the participation of European Council President Charles Michel.

As noted in the declaration adopted following the meeting, the accession to the European Union is a goal that unites the three countries. European integration has no alternative to the Associated Trio, and no one will be able to influence that choice.

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Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have opened their borders to Ukrainian travelers, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba has said.

He wrote about this on Twitter.

The minister noted that Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania had opened their borders for all types of travel of Ukrainians in accordance with the recommendation of the Council of the European Union.

He also said that a visa-free weekend in the Baltic States is now possible again. Kuleba recalled that detailed information on the conditions of entry to each country can be found on the Foreign Ministry's interactive map.

As Ukrinform reported, on July 15, the Council of the European Union added Ukraine to the list of countries for which coronavirus-related travel restrictions on non-essential travel into the EU should be lifted.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba instructed Ukraine's embassies in EU countries to work on including Ukraine in national "green lists," which will allow Ukrainians to travel to these countries without restrictions.

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Ukrainian Parliament Commissioner for Human Rights Liudmyla Denisova has stated that the Russian Federation persecutes 93 Crimean Tatars for political reasons.

"Today, Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha! A holiday of faith and mercy, spiritual perfection, generosity, help to the needy, love for neighbor. Unfortunately, not everyone celebrates it in the family circle and on Ukrainian soil," Denisova posted on Telegram.

She noted that thousands of Crimean Tatars had been forced to leave the peninsula due to the actions by the occupying power.

"Russian Federation persecutes 93 Crimean Tatars for political reasons. Of these, 78 serve illegal sentences in the territory of the occupying country: 36 of them are already convicted, 42 are under investigation," the Commissioner noted.

As Denisova stressed, the Crimean Tatars are extremely steadfast and strong-willed people who are fighting for the right to be free and live in their homeland.

She also wished them strong faith, unshakable hope, and boundless support from their relatives.

"May the holiday of Eid al-Adha be happy, blessed, and joyful for all Muslims," Denisova wrote.

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| By Mary Therese Phelan

One event. Two audiences. Three panelists. Many questions about the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

From left, Matthew Laurens, Sarah Edwards, and Bruce Jarrell.

Thats how one could describe the UMB Ask the Experts About COVID-19 Vaccines town hall, held June 15 simultaneously in the Health Sciences Facility Research (HSRF) II Auditorium and on the virtual platform Webex. It was the first hybrid event at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) since faculty and staff have started a slow return to campus.

Its so nice to see people, UMB President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, remarked as he entered the auditorium.

From booster shots to campus protocols, Jarrell, Matthew Laurens, MD, MPH, pediatric infectious disease specialist who conducts research with the University of Maryland School of Medicines (UMSOM) Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD), and Sarah Edwards, DO, assistant professor of psychiatry, UMSOM, fielded questions from viewers watching remotely and several attendees seated in the auditorium.

As it stands now, 56 percent of all Americans have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, and 48 percent are fully vaccinated, host Alex Likowski, executive director of media relations, UMB, told both audiences as he kicked off the event.

But after some months of subsiding, COVID-19 is on the rise again. In the United States, the seven-day average in new cases has about doubled in recent weeks and hospitalizations are going up as well and surging, especially in the South and Mountain West areas with some of the lowest vaccination rates, he said. A major cause of concern, of course, is the so-called Delta variant.

Since the pandemics earliest days, the multitude of information sources trying to capture the attention of American readers, listeners, and viewers has been overwhelming, Jarrell said, bringing him to ask the first question of the afternoon.

What are your trusted sources for data? And were you not a physician, but rather a layperson, what should we tell them their trusted source should be? Jarrell asked.

Edwards, co-investigator for UMBs Health Resources and Services Administration grant focused on public perceptions and attitudes about vaccines, suggested families reach out to their pediatricians because those are the doctors who tend to know ones family well. She also recommended that families listen to a variety of news sources to broaden their exposure to different viewpoints.

Thats going to be good for your mental muscles, she said.

For Laurens, his primary source of information is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which presents information geared toward a lay audience, as well as medical professionals. He also recommends the Maryland Departments of Health and Human Services websites for useful information about COVID-19.

For Jarrell, the source he trusts the most is the man who heads the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and serves as medical advisor to President Biden.

When people ask me that question, I say when Dr. [Anthony] Fauci speaks, I listen, Jarrell said. I think the important part for the audience is what we know today is what we know today, and what we know tomorrow may be different. But certainly, as this has rolled out, these have been very safe vaccines.

Jarrell noted the important work being done by UMBs CVD and encouraged community members to participate, like he did, in COVID-19-related clinical trials.

Ive gotten to know them well and developed a lot of trust with what they do, he said. And I think its really important that youve got to practice what you preach. And so I just want to raise the point of making sure that people understand that, to support the CVD to get answers to this.

Via Webex, Linda Simoni-Wastila, BSPharm, MSPH, PhD, the Parke-Davis Chair in Geriatric Pharmacotherapy, Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research (PHSR), University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP), said there are increasing reports from Norway, the United Kingdom, and the CDC about breakthrough infections among those who are fully vaccinated and that many of these are resulting in hospitalization and death.

Given that vaccinated individuals are susceptible to infection and can transmit, why is the campus requiring only the unvaccinated to wear masks continuously and practice social distancing? Simoni-Wastila asked.

Its true that these are occurring, Laurens said of the breakthrough infections, meaning infections occurring in fully vaccinated individuals. But if you look at the populations in the U.S. that are fully vaccinated, and their risk for hospitalization, individuals who are being hospitalized now for COVID-19 are the unvaccinated population. Those who are fully vaccinated had very minimal to no risk of hospitalization.

Thats one of the reasons why the University is encouraging vaccination, to decrease an individuals risk of not only getting COVID-19, but also having the severe consequences of infection, including hospitalization and potentially death, Laurens said.

Some people have not been vaccinated because they are afraid to do so, as 10 percent of Americans experience trypanophobia, an extreme fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles. One of them is a coffee shop employee Edwards met recently. The young woman mentioned that she hadnt been vaccinated because of her fear of needles. Edwards not only assisted the barista in making her vaccination appointments, but also taught her some breathing techniques and accompanied her to the vaccination clinic at the SMC Campus Center where she received her shots.

It was a fun way of kind of bonding together in this community, in a challenging time, but realizing that there are many reasons why individuals dont want to get vaccinated, Edwards said.

Other questions from the live audience centered on whether it is safe to receive one dose of the vaccine from one manufacturer and the second from a different manufacturer, a scenario typical in countries were vaccines are in limited supply.

We simply dont know that yet, but that is continuing to be studied, said Laurens. In the field of vaccine research, such a study is known as a mix and match study, where a person starts with one vaccine and ends with a different vaccine against the same disease.

There is reason to think that that would be an effective strategy. And certainly, we would want to know more about the efficacy of that strategy as well as the safety of that strategy because different vaccines have different side effects, he said.

Joanne Morrison, senior director of marketing and public relations, UMB, asked what can be done to ease peoples anxiety enough to have people clearly understand that the COVID-19 vaccines currently available are safe.

Were lucky we have access to professionals that have made themselves available with very good messaging, but how do you get beyond that anxiety of mistrust and issues like that, that may curtail people from really considering all this information? Morrison asked.

Edwards said above all else she encourages families to talk to their health care professionals and individuals in the field that they trust.

If you need to be talking with professionals to kind of help sift through some of the facts, thats important to do, she said. We are human beings who need to rely on that interaction and relationships. So when youre questioning and having those same sort of worries and concerns, its helpful to talk about that in your family, with your close friends, colleagues, in your church community, and kind of get a sense of what other people are doing, too.

Meanwhile, on Webex, UMSOPs Peter Doshi, PhD, assistant professor, PHSR, raised a question regarding the ability to detect any adverse events associated with vaccination, such as myocarditis, which was detected in young men four to five months into the vaccination campaign.

Why did it take six months to discover myocarditis, which appears days after dose two, and what are the implications of this fact in terms of finding other serious adverse events down the line that we arent talking about today, say months or years from now? he asked.

A robust monitoring system detected this very rare side effect, Laurens responded.

The question is, are we going to detect other potential side effects of vaccination? Its possible, its very possible, but we can have confidence that the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] and the CDC will let the public know what these risks are, and who is at highest risk, he said. Recent reports also have linked the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine with cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome.

So far, weve detected it in about 100 individuals out of over 12 million doses that have occurred. So this is something that is ongoing, and its something that your government will continue to notify you about, Laurens said.

Questions about a COVID-19 booster shot were on the mind of Carin Morell, MA, public information officer, UMB Police Department.

If the CDC recommends a booster in the future, would it be through a different manufacturer, or would a person have to stay with the manufacturer of his or her original vaccines? Would a booster be mandated for UMB employees, faculty and staff, she asked.

My answer to that is we simply dont know yet, Laurens said.

Whether the University would make a booster mandatory also is unknown, Jarrell said.

I think if data were to come along to say the Delta variant was really out of control and if there were data to say that a booster would benefit, then we would look at it from a public health point of view and thats how a decision would get made, Jarrell said. Theres certainly no decision about that at the moment.

As employees return to campus, how does one know who has been vaccinated and who hasnt, asked Hope Wallace, senior marketing specialist, UMB, an attendee in the auditorium audience. Further, what should she do if she sees a nonvaccinated coworker refusing to follow the appropriate protocols for nonvaccinated employees? Faculty, staff, and students returning to UMB who have not been vaccinated are required to wear a mask at all times and maintain physical distancing.

It is an ever-changing landscape right now, where a hug or a handshake may not be welcomed by everyone, Edwards responded.

I think as were returning to work, its important to have open conversations, she advised.

Jarrell said interactions with colleagues are a part of what returning to UMB is all about.

I just think this is part of coming back to UMB, he said. I care a whole lot about the people who are around me, and I have a personal responsibility to make sure that Im acting in the best way, and I would hope the people around me would feel the same way. Theres no airtight way to do that. Were not allowed to break somebodys privacy. There are rules about that. But we do have a right to know when people are not following the rules.

To watch the hybrid town hall, see the video above.

To make a vaccine appointment, visit GetTheVaccineBaltimore.org.



To learn about COVID-19 protocols on campus, visit umaryland.edu/coronavirus.
As he concludes his second year of law school, Rbrey R.D. Singleton already possesses a world of experienceboth personal and professionalthat is preparing him for a career advocating for others.

As the son and grandson of immigrants who volunteers in UMass Laws Immigration Law Clinic, Singleton understands the hardships and dreams of those seeking a new life and opportunities in the United States. An internship at the Bergen County (New Jersey) Superior Courts family division and clerkship at the Rhode Island Attorney Generals Office have enabled Singleton to advocate for children. His involvement in college and law school demonstrate his leadership in providing a student voice to the institutions he attends.

For his commitment to leadership and juvenile advocacy, Singleton was named the recipient of the Chief Justice Roderick L. Ireland Leadership and Juvenile Advocacy Award from the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association (MBLA). The award was presented at the MBLA Annual Gala.

According to a statement released by the organization, The MBLA is honored to recognize Rbrey D. Singleton as the recipient of the 2021 Honorable Chief Justice Roderick L. Ireland Leadership and Juvenile Advocacy Award (Ireland Award). The Ireland Award was established to support the development of students who, like Chief Justice Ireland, have exhibited a commitment to outstanding leadership and a passion for juvenile advocacy.

We were struck by Rbrey's dedication to the welfare of children during his judicial internship at the Bergen County Superior Court, Family Part, and we are impressed by his commitment to marginalized and disenfranchised populations evidenced by his pledge to serve in PILF. We are excited to have Rbrey as part of our MBLA student community and look forward to supporting and celebrating him as he continues to advance in his legal career.

Chief Justice Ireland served in the MA judiciary for more than 30 years, including the Boston Juvenile Court and the MA Court of Appeals. In 1997, he was appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court and was the first African-American justice and chief justice to serve on the court until his retirement in 2014. He has expanded opportunities for attorneys of color and is dedicated to issues impacting youth.

I am so thrilled and thankful to be this years recipient of the Ireland Award, Singleton said. Seeing so many wonderful and accomplished Black attorneys at the gala inspires me and I hope to pay it forward when I get on the other side of the law. I am very appreciative of the MBLA for recognizing me.

Advocate for immigrants

Singleton was inspired to attend law school by his mother and grandmother who fled to the U.S in 1982 following the revolution in Nicaragua. I always listened to their stories about their government and how bad things were," he said. "I want to change things for the better in my community.

He was an intern for Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), where he worked on immigration issues. A Public Interest Law Fellow (PILF), Singleton is working with the Immigration Law Clinic at UMass Law, providing pro bono legal representation to migrant clients in the community, performing legal research, drafting memoranda, and working with Spanish-speaking clients.

This work is especially important to me, as I am a first-generation American and come from a family of migrants, Singleton wrote in his award application essay.

For his first client, Singleton successfully filed an Adjustment of Status Petition. The experience of engaging with my young client and listening to her riveting story of traveling to this country alone from Central America was humbling," he said. "It made me think of my mother and grandmother taking the same journey from Nicaragua 35 years ago, affording me the opportunities I have today.

As a result of this work, Singletons client is on her way to long-term permanent residence and citizenship. I will be forever grateful for this experience as it brought the human element of lawyering home and reminded me of why I started this journey in the first place: to use my degree, and the privilege I have been afforded, to empower and work alongside people to use the law for good," said Singleton. "Thanks to my client for giving me the opportunity to pursue justice alongside her."

Singleton feels a strong connection to his familys roots in Nicaragua. When Hurricanes Eta and Iota ravaged the islands impoverished Atlantic Coast last fall, Singleton and his mother created a GoFund me page that raised $5,000 for displaced families in Puerto Caezas, just 40 miles north of his grandmothers home.

Seeing the smiles on the faces of the children at Christmas as they received their toys purchased with the donated funds gave me a sense of fulfillment that I will never forget, he said.

Advocate for youth and children

Singleton, a native of Paterson, NJ, was a judicial intern with the family division of Bergen County Superior Court last fall.

I have always had an interest in the welfare of children especially those who are under the guardianship of the state, said Singleton. Kids need protection. They need an opportunity to grow up, to be nurtured, and cared for. The internship opened my mind to the day-to-day operation of judicial chambers, and I conducted legal research, memorandum drafting, and order drafting for custody, divorce, and adoption matters.

Advocate for justice

When Singleton was just 12 years old, his 27-year-old uncle was murdered. We never found justice for him, Singleton said. I think about him all the time as I interact with families who lost a loved one. I know their pain and I want to help them.

Singleton currently serves in the William C. Clifton, Sr. Clerkship Program in the Rhode Island Attorney Generals Office, where he hopes to learn more about how witnesses, specifically women and children, are supported in the wake of crimes. The 10-week clerkship program is named for William Clifton, Sr., the first African American Special Assistant Attorney General for Rhode Island who was later appointed to the Rhode Island District Court. Singleton is currently working in the criminal divisions child abuse unit and will work with the civil rights advocate doing research, writing memos and briefs, and going to court.

Advocate for students

A 2019 summa cum laude graduate of Rowan University in New Jersey, Singleton majored in political science with a concentration in race, class, & gender studies and public policy. He was an Achieving the Dream Scholar and received the Dr. Thomas E. Robinson University Leadership Medallion, the University Senate Diversity Award, and the Political Science & Economics Department Senior of Distinction Award.

Singleton served on the universitys Foundation Board, as president of the Student Government Association, and as a student trustee on the universitys board of trustees. He was state vice chairman of the Higher Education Student Assistance Authority as a voting member of the board, representing New Jerseys college population who received financial aid. He also co-founded the S.H.O.P. Food Pantry.

UMass Law experience

While Singleton has found law school challenging, he said this award makes him grateful for his hard work. He appreciates the support of Assistant Deans Daniel Fitzpatrick and John Quinn who welcomed me and my family to UMass Law with open arms and showed me what it means to be a lawyer. He also credits Professor Gina DeRossi for her support and for sparking his interest in family law.

At UMass Law, he was the 1L Student Bar Association representative, and is treasurer of the Black Law Students Association (BLSA) and IF/WHEN/HOW Law Students for Reproductive Justice.

BLSA has provided mentors and friendships that have enhanced Singletons UMass Law experience. Members offer advice, tips, and support along with his family. Im so glad to have them in my corner, Singleton said.

If you want to pursue public interest law and make a difference, UMass Law is the place to be, Singleton said. PILF is unique, and I would not be able to attend law school without it.

As an attorney, Singleton plans to work in the public sector. I want to use my education to seek justice for all underrepresented communitieswomen, children, people of color, and victims of crime."

If you want to pursue public interest law and make a difference, UMass Law is the place to be. Rbrey "R.D." Singleton, JD candidate '22
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Mr. James Herschel "Jimmy" Murphy, 78, passed away on July 20, 2021. A funeral service will be held on Friday, July 23, 2021, at 11 a.m. in the Georgia Veterans Memorial Cemetery. The family will visit with friends at Williams Funeral Home on Friday from 10 until 10:30 a.m. Mr. Murphy was a 
(@FahadShabbir)

President SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry Iftikhar Ali Malik Tuesday said sustainable political stability is pre-requisite for sound economy which will promise greater weal for the people from different strata of the society

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :President SAARC Chamber of Commerce and Industry Iftikhar Ali Malik Tuesday said sustainable political stability is pre-requisite for sound economy which will promise greater weal for the people from different strata of the society.

Addressing a high level delegation of Karachi traders led by President United Business Group Zubair Tufail through Webinar he said Pakistan at this crucial juncture of time since its inception in the wake of Covid-19 can neither endure political turmoil nor afford political instability.

He said "We need an uninterrupted stable democracy which is prerequisite for sustained economic growth to cope with the multiple challenges in Pakistan".

He said that politics of confrontation, agitation, protest, violence and agitation is not solution.

He said time has changed as now the influential nations are paying more attention to financial warfare to continue their dominance. These countries are successfully using their weapons of economic destruction to weaken economics of poor nations to achieve their unholy designs while Pakistan's economy is not strong enough to withstand economic terrorism.

Iftikhar Malik said it is indeed important to increase our exports and for that purpose we need to reduce our cost of doing business so that our products remain competitive in the world markets.

He further said trade facilitation is the key to promote industries and we need to remove all the obstacles and create the culture of trade facilitation. He stressed the urgent need for consistency in the government policies and a clear roadmap to move forward," he added.

The veteran trade leader was of the view that all the sectors including the industrial sector should discharge their national obligations and play their key role in strengthening the economy while the government should introduce reforms and control the smuggling of raw material and finished goods.

Iftikhar Malik who is also chairman UBG also urged the government to conduct market research to find out new foreign destinations for the Pakistani products which are best in the world as far as quality and price is concerned.

He said that Pakistani missions abroad should be duty bound to introduce Pakistani products to the foreign buyers and also ensure dissemination of trade related information so that Pakistan entrepreneurs could avail trade opportunities to the maximum.
NEW YORK, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News / WAM - 20th Jul, 2021) United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned the horrific bomb attack targeting civilians at a market in Al-Sadr City in Iraq on Monday.

He extends his heartfelt condolences to the families of the victims and to the Government and people of Iraq.

He wishes those injured a speedy recovery.

''This deadly attack ahead of the Eid Al Adha holiday is a reminder to us all that the scourge of terrorism knows no bounds,'' said Farhan Haq, the Deputy Spokesman for the Secretary-General, in a late-night statement.

The Secretary-General underlines the need for the perpetrators of this crime to be swiftly brought to justice, said the statement.
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Wellington, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :Chinese authorities on Tuesday denied carrying out a massive hack of key microsoft servers, describing US allies' allegations as "groundless" and "irresponsible".

The United States and several allies have publicly accused China of hacking Microsoft Exchange -- an email platform used by corporations around the world.

In China's first official response, embassies in Australia and New Zealand issued fiery statements of denial.

The Chinese embassy in Wellington described the allegations as "totally groundless and irresponsible" and a "malicious smear".

The embassy in Canberra accused Australia of "parroting" US rhetoric and described Washington as "the world champion of malicious cyber attacks".

President Joe Biden's administration has accused China of fostering an "ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain".

Attribution of sophisticated cyberattacks is both technically difficult and politically fraught -- so the rare decision by US allies to publicly blame China had been expected to bring a sharp response.

"Given the virtual nature of cyberspace, one must have clear evidence when investigating and identifying cyber-related incidents," the Chinese embassy in New Zealand said.
Lima, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :Rural school teacher Pedro Castillo on Monday was declared Peru's president-elect, making him the country's first leader with no ties to the elites that have governed the Andean country for decades.

The 51-year-old far-left trade unionist was largely unknown until he led a national strike four years ago that forced the then-government to agree to pay rise demands.

He was born to peasants in the tiny village of Puna in the historic Cajamarca region where he has worked as a teacher for 24 years.

He grew up helping his parents with farm work, and as a child, he walked several kilometers to school.

Today, he is rarely without the trademark white, wide-brimmed hat of his beloved Cajamarca, where the last Inca emperor Atahualpa was assassinated on the main square in 1533 by Spanish conquistadores.

Castillo likes to don a poncho and shoes made of recycled tires, and traveled on horseback for much of his presidential campaign as he vocalized the frustration of struggling Peruvians and cast himself as a man of the people.

"No more poor people in a rich country," he said as he campaigned for the Peru Libre (Free Peru) party.

He has said he would renounce his presidential salary and continue living on his teacher earnings, and described himself as "a man of work, a man of faith, a man of hope." Castillo, said analyst Hugo Otero, is "the first poor president of Peru." - Surprise victory - In April, Castillo surprised many by taking the lead in the race to become Peru's fifth president in three years, edging out 17 other candidates.

He then faced off against rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimori in the runoff, promising radical change to improve the lot of Peruvians contending with a recession worsened by the pandemic, rising unemployment and poverty.

One thing unlikely to change under a Castillo presidency is the Peruvian state's socially conservative character: he is Catholic and vehemently opposed to gay marriage, elective abortion and euthanasia.

He frequently quotes from the Bible to drive home his points, and at his two-story brick home in the hamlet of Chugur in Cajamarca hangs a picture of Jesus surrounded by sheep and a caption, in English, "Jehovah is my shepherd." - Respect for private property - Castillo has targeted creating a million jobs in a year, and said Peru's mining and hydrocarbon riches "must be nationalized.

" Peru is a large producer of copper, gold, silver, lead and zinc, and mining brings in 10 percent of national GDP and a fifth of company taxes.

He has promised public investment to reactivate the economy through infrastructure projects, public procurement from small businesses, and to "curb imports that affect the national industry and peasantry." But he has also sought to dispel fears that "we are going to take your wine farm, that we are going to take your house, your property." Among his more controversial campaign promises, Castillo has vowed to expel illegal foreigners who commit crimes in Peru, giving them "72 hours... to leave the country." The comment was perceived as a warning to undocumented Venezuelan migrants who have arrived in their hundreds of thousands since 2017.

Free Peru is one of few left-wing Peruvian parties to defend the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose 2018 re-election is not recognized by dozens of countries.

To combat crime, Castillo has proposed withdrawing Peru from the American Convention on Human Rights, or San Jose pact, to allow it to reintroduce the death penalty.

He has also mooted replacing Peru's free-market-friendly constitution -- a relic of his rival's father, ex-president Alberto Fujimori, serving jail time for corruption and crimes against humanity.

- A 'humble man' - Castillo burst onto the national scene four years ago when he led thousands of teachers on a near 80-day strike to demand a pay rise.

It left 3.5 million public school pupils without classes to attend, and compelled then-president Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who initially refused to negotiate, to relent.

In a bid to delegitimize the protest, then-interior minister Carlos Basombrio claimed its leaders were linked to Movadef, the political wing of the defeated Shining Path Maoist guerrilla group dubbed a "terrorist" organization by Lima.

Castillo, who had participated in armed "peasant patrols" or ronderos that resisted Shining Path incursions at the height of Peru's internal conflict from 1980 to 2000, vehemently rejected these allegations.

Today, his home is guarded by ronderos brandishing canes and leather whips.

Next to his house, Castillo has a one-hectare farm where he grows corn and sweet potatoes and raises chickens and cows.

"We are proud that my brother has made it this far, being a humble man," his younger sister, Amelia, told AFP.
Kinshasa, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :The Democratic Republic of Congo scored a key heritage victory on Monday as UNESCO removed one of its nature reserves from a list of threatened sites, the UN agency said.

UNESCO praised the country's conservation efforts and the government's commitment to ban prospecting for oil in Salonga, the vast central African country's largest public park.

The World Heritage Committee cited "improvements towards its conservation state" in its decision, according to a statement Monday.

"Regular monitoring of the wild fauna shows that the bonobo (ape) populations remain stable within the territory despite past pressure, and that the forest elephant population is starting to come back," the statement said.

Salonga is Africa's largest protected rainforest and home to 40 percent of the Earth's bonobo apes, along with several other endangered species.

It was created in 1970 by then dictator Mobutu Sese Seko and had been on the endangered list since 1984.

The park is also home to slender-snouted crocodiles and Congo peacocks.
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Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (PEDO) in collaboration with Agha Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) has completed 54 micro hydropower houses (MHP) in different areas of Upper and Lower Chitral

CHITRAL, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Energy Development Organization (PEDO) in collaboration with Agha Khan Rural Support Program (AKRSP) has completed 54 micro hydropower houses (MHP) in different areas of Upper and Lower Chitral.

Special Assistant to Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for Energy and Power Taj Muhammad Rind said this while talking to APP after inaugurating 11 power plants of 6MW electricity at Garm Chashma, Bamburit on Tuesday. These include 200 KW Garamchishma power house, 75 KW hydropower plant Bor Bono, 100 KW Your Jog, 150 KW Bamburit power plant, 150 KW hydropower plant Rumbor etc.

PEDO Chief Executive Naeem Khan, Project Director Colonel Muhammad Shahid, AKRSP Regional Program Manager Zahoor Aman Shah were also present on the occasion.

Taj Muhammad Khan said that according to the survey, there was a capacity to generate 3000 MW of electricity by hydropower plants in Chitral on which the provincial government was working.

CEO Naeem Khan said that in Phase II, work would start on 672 micro hydro power houses in 21 districts of KP, adding that most of these power plants were built in Chitral because of having plentiful water resources.

Project Director Col. Muhammad Shahid said that 54 micro hydropower plants in Chitral were handed over to AKRSP which would generate 6MW of electricity at a cost of one billion rupees. Now, eleven of these power plants have now been completed which would generate 1.7 MW of electricity, he added.

Special Assistant to Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Minority Affairs Wazir Zada Kailash said that this would reduce the burden on forests and provide pollution free energy to the people of Chitral.

Social and political activist Abdul Latif said that if people in both the districts of Chitral use electric heaters day and night for cooking and heating purposes, it would need 54 MW of electricity. The series of hydropower plants that have been started will definitely stop the relentless deforestation and people would use electricity instead of wood, he added.

During the ceremony, Kailash women presented traditional robes, Chugha and Shamini and a hand-made colorful stripe to the guests.

The people of the area expressed pleasure over these power plants. The Provincial Minister also appreciated the services of AKRSP for their efforts in completing the project.
Belgium fell silent for a minute of remembrance Tuesday as it held a day of mourning for the victims of the devastating floods that left 200 dead in western Europe

Verviers, Belgium, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :Belgium fell silent for a minute of remembrance Tuesday as it held a day of mourning for the victims of the devastating floods that left 200 dead in western Europe.

Heavy rains last week sent floodwaters sweeping through towns and villages, mostly in Belgium and Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel visited victims in one of the hardest-hit areas.

At least 31 people were killed in Belgium, with dozens still missing or unaccountable, while Germany on Tuesday increased its death toll to 169 as rescuers scoured the rubble for victims.

The number of missing in Belgium has fallen over the past two days as telephone contact is re-established and more people are traced.

The clean-up is still under way to help the regions hit hardest recover from the destruction that saw dozens of homes collapsed and cars piled on top of each other.

Waters have subsided since Friday but workers and volunteers face a mammoth task to clear away the detritus and help local residents rebuild their shattered lives.

Belgium's King Philippe and Queen Mathilde paid their respects at the fire station in Verviers, one of the hardest-hit towns.

The moment of silence took place after sirens sounded in fire stations across the country, with buses, trams and metro trains halted in Brussels.

The Belgian tricolour was flown at half-mast on official buildings, as was the star-spangled flag of the European Union around the bloc's headquarters in the capital.

The commemorations were held on the eve of Belgium's national holiday. The city of Brussels has cancelled its "National Ball" and the city of Namur, capital of Wallonia, has cancelled its fireworks display.

This is the first time since 2016 that Belgium has observed a national mourning when three days were declared following the March 22 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group, which killed 32 people and injured more than 340 in Brussels.
Turkey's visiting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted Tuesday on a two-state solution in Cyprus, in an uncompromising speech on the 47th anniversary of his country's invasion that divided the Mediterranean island

Nicosia, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Jul, 2021 ) :Turkey's visiting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted Tuesday on a two-state solution in Cyprus, in an uncompromising speech on the 47th anniversary of his country's invasion that divided the Mediterranean island.

"We don't have another 50 years to waste," he told a crowd at a parade in the north of the capital Nicosia, referring to decades of failed UN-led efforts to reunite the Greek and Turkish Cypriot-controlled sectors of Cyprus.

"No progress can be made in negotiations without accepting that there are two peoples and two states with equal status," he said.

"A new negotiating process can only be carried out between two states... The sovereign equality and equal status of the Turkish Cypriots must be confirmed. That's the key to a solution." To cheers from Turkish-flag-waving supporters, Erdogan accused the Greek Cypriots of "blocking any route to a solution" with a "maximalist approach... that is disconnected from the reality".

He dismissed a warning earlier this month from European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that Brussels would "never accept" a two-state solution for Cyprus, which has been an EU member since 2004.

In contrast to celebrations in the north, a military parade and fly-past by Turkish fighters, sirens blasted across southern Nicosia at 5:30 am (0230 GMT) to mark the July 20, 1974 start of the invasion with the landing of Turkish paratroopers.

Turkish troops seized the northern third of Cyprus in response to an aborted coup in Nicosia aimed at attaching the country to Greece.

The island has since been divided between the Greek Cypriot-run Republic of Cyprus and the self-declared Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), recognised only by Ankara.

On Monday's opening day of his visit, Erdogan vowed to make "no concession" on Ankara's efforts to secure international recognition of the TRNC.

"On this island, there are two states and two peoples," the president told Turkish Cypriot deputies.

"We do not, and cannot make, any concession on that," he said of Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar's push for international recognition.

Tatar, standing by Erdogan's side on Tuesday, announced "the second phase of our plan to expand" the reopening of the Turkish army-controlled east coast resort of Varosha, which the invasion emptied of its Greek Cypriot residents.

"Life will restart in Varosha," said the Turkish president, renewing an offer of financial compensation for Greek Cypriots who lost properties in 1974.

Varosha -- once the playground of celebrities and dubbed a "Jewel of the Mediterranean" -- was left a fenced off ghost town, where former luxury hotels have become overgrown by weeds.

The Turkish army restored public access to parts of the Varosha beachfront last year, since when a main thoroughfare, Demokratias Avenue, has also been cleared.

Workers have raced to spruce up the street in time for a possible controversial second Erdogan visit.

The internationally recognised government in Nicosia has stressed that "Varosha is a red line not to cross", and strongly condemned Erdogan's previous visit to northern Cyprus last November.

On Wednesday, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias is due to travel to Cyprus for talks with President Nicos Anastasiades in the wake of Erdogan's trip.
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The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo on Monday blamed each other for scant progress at EU-mediated talks aimed at resolving one of Europe's thorniest territorial disputes

Brussels, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 19th Jul, 2021 ) :The leaders of Serbia and Kosovo on Monday blamed each other for scant progress at EU-mediated talks aimed at resolving one of Europe's thorniest territorial disputes.

The Balkan neighbours were in Brussels for their second meeting in a month as the EU seeks to inject new life into decade-long negotiations to resolve the differences still poisoning relations, more than 20 years after they were separated in war.

"The meeting was difficult and it demonstrated very different approaches of the two parties to the normalisation of relations between Kosovo and Serbia," EU envoy Miroslav Lajcak said.

"As a consequence, we achieved very little progress today." Serbia has refused to recognise Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence since the province broke away in the bloody 1998-99 conflict that was ended only by a NATO bombing campaign against Serb troops.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic blamed Kosovan premier Albin Kurti for rejecting EU proposals to step up identification of remains of missing people and prevent actions that could raise tensions.

Kurti -- a left-wing reformist who came to power after elections in February -- hit back that the Serbian side had dismissed "without reading" a six-point peace agreement he put forward.

Lajcak said that despite the stalemate the two leaders had agreed for negotiations to continue and said they would meet again in September.

The EU and United States have pushed both sides to resume dialogue since the change of leadership in Kosovo.

The US has an outsized role in Kosovo, sometimes called the most pro-American country in the world, after leading the NATO intervention that forced out Serbia.

Kosovo has been recognised by more than 100 countries, but Serbia still considers the territory as its southern province, and is supported by Russia and China.
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President Ashraf Ghani and others in the vicinity had to stop the prayers after multiple loud explosions shook the area, TV reports said.

KABUL: (UrduPoint/UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News-July 20th, 2021) Rockets landed near the Afghan presidential palace in Kabul on Tuesday during prayers for the Muslim festival of Eidul Adha, a live television broadcast showed.

There were no immediate reports of injuries. President Ashraf Ghani and others in the vicinity had to stop the prayers after multiple loud explosions shook the area, tv reports said.

The footage shown on local media showed that participants panicked after the explosions.

Tolonews reported that the rockets were fired from Parwan-e-Se area in Kabuls District 18 in north of the city. "The rockets landed in Bagh-e-Ali Mardan and Chaman-e-Hozori areas in Kabuls District 1 and Manabe Bashari area in Kabuls District 2," it added.

No casualties

Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility, it was the first rocket attack on Kabul since the Taliban launched a series of offensives to coincide with the final drawdown of foreign troops from the war-wracked country.

The early morning holiday calm was shattered by the sound of incoming rockets heard across the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses the presidential palace and several embassies, including the US mission.

"All the rockets hit three different parts," said interior ministry spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai.

He said three rockets appeared to have been fired from a pickup truck.

"Based on our initial information, we have no casualties."

Minutes after the attack, Ghani began an address to the nation in the presence of some of his top officials.

The presidential palace was attacked last year as hundreds of people gathered to watch President Ashraf Ghanis inauguration ceremony, prompting some to flee.

Daesh claimed responsibility for the two blasts, with no reports of casualties.

Tuesdays attack coincides with a sweeping Taliban offensive across the country as foreign forces wind up a troop withdrawal scheduled to be complete by August 31.

It also comes a day after more than a dozen diplomatic missions in Kabul called for "an urgent end" to the Taliban military offensive, saying it was at odds with claims they want to secure a political deal to end the conflict.

The statement follows another round of inconclusive talks in Doha over the weekend between the Afghan government and the Taliban that many hoped would kickstart the ailing peace process.

- Little progress -

"The Talibans offensive is in direct contradiction to their claim to support a negotiated settlement," the statement read.

"It has resulted in loss of innocent Afghan lives, including through continued targeted killings, displacement of the civilian population, looting and burning of buildings, destruction of vital infrastructure, and damage to communication networks."

For months, the two sides have been meeting on and off in the Qatari capital but have achieved little, with talks appearing to have lost momentum as the Taiban make battlefield gains.

A joint statement late Sunday said they had agreed on the need to reach a "just solution", and to meet again next week.

"We also agreed that there should be no pause in the negotiations," Abdullah Abdullah, who oversees the Afghan governments delegation, told AFP on Monday.

He noted, however, that neither side was currently pursuing a joint ceasefire during the talks, despite urgent calls from Afghan civil society and the international community to end the fighting.

The Taliban and government have previously announced ceasefires during some religious holidays.

Following the weekend summit, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that his administration hoped to start talks with the Taliban over the groups refusal to let Ankara run the Kabul airport after US troops withdraw from Afghanistan.

Turkey has been negotiating with US defence officials over an offer to secure the airport, which is key to allowing countries to retain a diplomatic presence in Afghanistan after the troop withdrawal.

Last week, the Taliban called Turkeys offer "reprehensible".

Fighting, meanwhile, continued in Afghanistan, with both the Taliban and the government claiming gains in various parts of the country.

Over the weekend, the Talibans supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada said he "strenuously favours" a political settlement -- even as they continue their offensives.

The Taliban has been capturing districts, seizing border crossings and encircling provincial capitals as foreign forces prepare to fully exit by late August.

In Washington, the State Department said that some 700 interpreters and their immediate family members who are fleeing Afghanistan will be relocated to an army base in the state of Virginia.
Ethics and Debate Team brings home first place at the International Business Ethics Case Competition

By Jamie Boyle

ST. PETERSBURG (July 12, 2021) -- The Ethics and Debate Team, a student organization sponsored by USFs Bishop Center for Ethical Leadership, has risen above the pandemic and continues to bring home awards.

The 2021 International Business Ethics Case Competition (IBECC) was held virtually this spring. The contest invites university students to compete in a full 25-minute presentation, a 10-minute presentation, a 90-second presentation, and a Moral Compass Competition. This year, the USF Ethics and Debate Team brought home first place for its 25-minute presentation and second place for its 90-second presentation.

USF competed against schools from Canada, Spain, Turkey as well as the United States.

Its an international competition, said Tijen Jones, who has served as president of the Ethics and Debate Team since her freshman year at USF, so the amount of people, as well as the diversity among them, is always an interesting factor, and I love it because of that.

The organization consists of three branches: The conversation branch allows students to talk about current events and the ethics and politics of various topics. The ethics branch competes in ethics competitions such as the International Business Ethics Case Competition and the Regional Ethics Bowl. The competitive branch of the organization was started in 2019 and participates in local and international competitions each year.

Jones said her participation in the Ethics and Debate Team has helped her in the classroom. She said she has honed her critical thinking skills through the Ethics and Debate Team and that has better equipped her to handle schoolwork, public speaking and interviewing.

This team embodies much of what the Bishop Center is about, said David ONeill, director of the Bishop Center for Ethical Leadership. They have built a culture in which mutual trust for one another creates the space for critical thinking and vigorous debate on ethical issues.

It's an applied learning environment, he said, that prepares students to step into a business, or any organization really, and contribute thoughtful analysis and communicate innovative solutions to challenging problems.

The Ethics and Debate Team meets weekly on Monday nights in a face-to-face and virtual format on the St. Petersburg campus so that students on all campuses can participate.
FILE - In this Sept. 21, 2016, file photo, V.C. Summer Nuclear Station's unit two's turbine is under construction near Jenkinsville, S.C., during a media tour of the facility. Investors who lost fortunes in the failure of the multi billion-dollar nuclear reactor construction deal in South Carolina will soon begin to see their portions of a $192 million settlement, under a recently approved distribution. Last week, a federal judge signed off on a plan to disperse the funds among former shareholders in SCANA Corp., the former parent company of South Carolina Electric & Gas.
On the Feast of St. Charbel, celebrated last Sunday, Cardinal Bechara Rai, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, prays for the intercession of the Saint of Lebanon to help the nation recover from one of the worst economic and political crises it has ever faced.

Vatican News staff writer

Cardinal Bechara Rai, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites, has entrusted Lebanon to Saint Charbel, and that his intercession might help the nation pull out of one of the worst crises in its history. The Feast of Saint Charbel was marked on Sunday, July 18. In his homily for the occasion, the Patriarch said Saint Charbel "will not let Lebanon collapse," and encouraged the faithful to seek, through his intercession, "the miracle of our salvation from total ruin." The economic and political crisis in Lebanon has entered a new phase with last weeks renunciation of Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri to form a new government, after struggling negotiations lasting several months with President Michel Aoun.

"On behalf of the poor, oppressed, hungry and lost people, like sheep without a shepherd," Cardinal Rai urged all political forces to unity in order to choose together a prime minister who is capable of facing the enormous challenges facing Lebanon. "It is time to take responsibility, not retreat," he stressed. "The country is not facing a normal crisis of government," but a systemic crisis "that requires concerted efforts by all" and the overcoming of "selfishness, interests and the narrow electoral calculations that unfortunately dominate the attention of most parties at the expense of the highest national interest."

According to the head of the Maronite Church, the institutional deadlock and immobility of Lebanese political leaders confirms that the only way out of the crisis is by convening an international conference under the auspices of the UN that formalizes the "neutrality" of Lebanon in the Middle East political scenarios. The country's ruling class, he said, proves every day more and more its inability "to solve simple daily issues such as waste removal, electricity, food, and medicine", to "fight corruption, facilitate the work of the judiciary, regulate the functioning of ministries and administrations, close the routes of waste trafficking", and to implement the reforms that Lebanon urgently needs.



Lebanon has been without a government for almost a year and has been going through a serious political, economic and social crisis for some time. The situation has been worsened by the pandemic and by the explosions at Beiruts port in August 2020, pulling 55% of the population below the poverty line. In this dramatic context, Cardinal Rai has repeatedly relaunched his proposal for an International Conference for Lebanon under the auspices of the UN, stressing the urgency of reaffirming and protecting Lebanese "neutrality" so that the country is not drawn into conflicts between regional powers and can thus safeguard its specific pluralist identity.



An appeal to the international community to help Lebanon "not sink" and recover was also made by Pope Francis on the occasion of the recent Day of Reflection and Prayer for Lebanon, celebrated on July 1 at the Vatican with the leaders of Lebanon's Christian communities. In particular, the Pope called on national political leaders to put themselves resolutely at the service of the country, and not of their own interests; and also for an end to external interference to give the Lebanese a chance to be builders of a brighter future.



On August 4, on the first anniversary of the explosions in the port of Beirut, a new international conference will be organized for Lebanon on the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron, who is pressing for the rapid establishment of a national unity government to enact the reforms necessary to release blocked international aid.


Catholic dioceses across Myanmar continue to reach out to the suffering people as the 3rd wave of the Covid-19 pandemic wreaks havoc amid an ever-deteriorating crisis due to the military coup and the protests.

By Robin Gomes

The situation in Myanmar is critical with healthcare and other services practically non-existent in the wake of the protests and strikes against the military coup. Meanwhile, the military has re-ignited its conflicts with ethnic insurgent groups, spawning masses of displaced people. The crisis has taken a turn for the worse with a devastating 3rd wave of the Covid-19 pandemic amid an acute shortage of oxygen.

Renewed ethnic conflicts

Catholic dioceses in Kayah state in eastern Myanmar have been caring for thousands of civilians displaced by the fighting between the military and local militias in the aftermath of the February 1 military coup.

"In Kayah state and in our diocese of Loikaw, fighting between the military and the People Defense Forces (PDF) began in mid-May. They already caused more than 100,000 civilians to flee their homes, said the administrator of Loikaw Diocese, Father Celso Ba Shwe.

The PDF is said to be the armed wing of the National Unity Government (NUG), a body claiming to be the legitimate government of Myanmar, that was formed in early May in response to the February 1 military coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Displacement

In the conflict that has widened, Father Shwe said, Many people have lost their lives, houses have been burned and churches destroyed. In this situation, the Diocese of Loikaw has been providing humanitarian assistance to all the displaced since May, he told the Vaticans Fides news agency. Despite the enormous difficulties caused by the anti-coup protests, civil disobedience movement, strikes and armed clashes, Father Ba Shwe said the Dioceses of Loikaw and Pekhon have assisted 60,000 displaced people with food aid, shelter and health care, regardless of their religion and ethnic identity.

Healthcare

In Myanmar, where hospitals are empty and healthcare practically non-existent, because of the long-running civil disobedience and strike against the military junta, volunteers are going house-to-house to provide health care and collect bodies for burials.

Father Ba Shwe said services at the 500-bed government hospital in the state capital, Loikaw, are practically non-existent. In this situation, the Diocese of Loikaw has taken up the mission of providing whatever health services it can.

The former small clinic run by Karuna (Caritas), in the cathedral complex, has been converted into a hospital to provide health care to people from Kayah and parts of neighbouring Shan state. Due to the increase in the number of patients, all the buildings of the church have been converted into wards to receive patients. Surgeons, doctors, nurses, health service technicians, volunteers and religious offer their free help in the following services in these charitable works," Father Ba Shwe said.

He explained they are offering special care to in-patients and out-patients with childcare services. Because of the lack of space at the Karuna clinic, they have opened a dispensary in Daungankha parish and another in Phruso. In the first week of June, the diocese opened another dispensary in Dorokhu village, where there are about 7,000 internally displaced persons who have taken refuge.

The third wave and oxygen

The administrator of Loikaw Diocese expressed grave concern over the 3rd wave of the pandemic, which has been spreading fast since the end of June. An acute shortage in the supply of oxygen is hitting people hard. He said in the entire State of Kayah there is only one medical oxygen plant. The need for life-saving oxygen increases every day, he said, and an additional oxygen production and supply facility is crucial to saving the lives of the ethnic communities of Kayah. He pointed out the military, which controls the Health Ministry, has no plan to increase the production of the life-saving gas.

In an appeal on Myanmars Martyrs Day, July 19, Cardinal Charles Bo of Yangon bemoaned that day and night our people wait for oxygen in crowded streets. The cardinal estimates at least 20 per cent of the population and around 90 per cent of the towns have been infected. It is not apocalypse as yet, but he warned, if there is no conversion of hearts, many thousands will be buried in the coming months. He called on the military and all parties to end all violence and fighting and join hands in fighting their common enemy, the virus.

To salvage the situation, Father Ba Shwe said they have formed a municipal committee to build an oxygen supply facility. Loikaw Diocese has agreed to bear a part of the expenses of the $190,000 project. The priest said they will raise the funds locally and will also ask foreign donors for help.

Catholic dioceses across the nation have been doing likewise in reaching out to the suffering people. (Source: Fides)
The Catholic Bishops of Northern Ireland say the UK Troubles' legacy plan won't help reconciliation.

By Lisa Zengarini

Irish bishops have joined criticism of the UK government's plans to introduce a statute of limitations for alleged crimes committed during the Troubles that would end prosecutions for killings by both British soldiers and members of militant groups. The proposal was announced last week and also includes an end to all legacy inquests and civil actions related to the thirty year conflict, bypassing the Stormont House Agreement signed by all parties in 2014, which sought to deal with the Northern Ireland legacy in a collaborative way involving all victims.

"Drawing a line under the Troubles"

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the proposed plan would allow Northern Ireland to "draw a line under the Troubles, that officially ended with the so-called Good Friday Peace Agreement of 10 April 1998. However, several victims' groups, Northern Ireland's five main political parties and the Irish government, together with the Catholic Bishops of Ireland, are strongly opposed to the legacy proposal.

No line can be drawn to relieve the pain

In a statement issued last week, Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, noted that the plan will be seen by many victims as a betrayal of trust which denies justice to them and to their loved ones. It is disturbing that victims and survivors, those who have paid the highest price for the fragile peace we all enjoy today, once more feel marginalised and neglected, the Catholic Primate of Ireland said, expressing his disappointment over the Johnsons comments in the House of Commons. Dealing with the legacy of our shared past is a complex undertaking which belongs to all of us. It has no quick-fix, he pointed out. No line can be drawn to relieve the deep hurt still carried in the aftermath of years of violence, death and life-changing injury.

Achieving authentic reconciliation for a just and stable peace

Archbishop Martin also recalled that in April 2020 the Catholic bishops in Northern Ireland had already expressed their strong reservations on the UK governments approach on this issue and their support for the ongoing pursuit of appropriate criminal, legal and civic justice for all victims. Their statement emphasized the need for prioritising victims as the focal point of a response to dealing with legacy of the past, equal access to justice for all; facing the past however painful and achieving authentic reconciliation for a just and stable peace, in the region.



The need to prioritize the victims

These arguments were reiterated on Sunday by Bishop Donal McKeown of Derry: A system that appears to prioritise the feelings of the perpetrators over the distress of the victims is guaranteed only to perpetuate the pain, not draw a line under it, the prelate remarked in his Sunday homily.

Small number of convictions

Over the past six years there have been only nine prosecutions for offences connected with the Troubles and there are currently around 36 inquests due to be heard, many of which are related to killings by the Army and police. Added to this, there are more than 1,000 civil claims lodged against the Ministry of Defence and other State agencies. In May this year, two British Army veterans accused of murdering an IRA commander in 1972 were acquitted after their trial in Northern Ireland collapsed due to the inadmissibility of prosecution evidence. According to the British government, its proposed ban on prosecutions for Troubles-era offences reflects the dwindling chances of convicting the perpetrators and will help Northern Ireland to move on towards reconciliation.
Cardinal Wilfrid Napier, Archbishop Emeritus of Durban reflects on the recent days of unrest in South Africa and reiterates Pope Francis appeal for peace in the country.

By Vatican News staff writer

South Africa has been gripped by massive riots and looting in recent days, in the worst violence the country has seen since it achieved democracy in 1994. Over 200 people have died and more than 1000 arrests have been made as security forces struggled to restore order.

The unrest began on July 8 as former South African President, Jacob Zuma turned himself in to authorities to serve a 15-month jail term for contempt of court. Zumas supporters in his home province of KwaZulu-Natal set up roadblocks and burnt tyres and vehicles on highways in protest. The protests spread to other areas including to Gauteng province, Johannesburg and to Pretoria. Mobs targeted shopping malls, factories and warehouses, burning some and looting others bare.

As clean-up operations continue after the protest and authorities battle to reestablish civil order, the massive impact of the protests is observable in the country that has been severely challenged by three waves of the Coronavirus pandemic which have further exacerbated its already difficult socio-economic situation.

Pope Francis appeal

During the Angelus prayer on Sunday, Pope Francis appealed to South African politicians, faction leaders and those involved in the violence to work together to restore peace. The Pope also prayed that the desire that guided the people of South Africa - the rebirth of harmony among all its children  may never be forgotten.

Together with the bishops of the country I direct my heartfelt appeal to all those with responsibility who are involved, that they may work for peace and collaborate with the authorities to provide assistance to those in need, the Pope said.

Gratitude for the Popes prayers

In an interview with Linda Bordoni from Vatican News, Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, Archbishop Emeritus of Durban, spoke about the situation in the country in light of the recent unrest and the Popes appeal for peace.

Expressing gratitude for the Popes closeness to South Africa, Cardinal Napier noted that the Popes prayers are a sign that the wider Church is praying for the country and it is being well looked after from the spiritual point of view.

He also extended his gratitude to the Apostolic Nuncio to South Africa, Archbishop Peter Wells, who compiled statements from different church bodies including the South African Bishops Conference (SABC), the KwaZulu-Natal Christian Council and the South African Council of Churches and made a report that was sent to Rome.

Listen to our interview with Cardinal Wilfrid Napier

Massive devastation

Speaking on the impact of the episodes of violence and looting that characterized the days of protests, Cardinal Napier observes that calm seems to have been restored but the streets are still marked by scenes that tell the tale of the destructive protests.

He gave the example of a shopping mall a short distance away from his residence that has been reduced to an empty shell by the actions of the looters. Before the unrest, the Cardinal lamented, you could get everything there, from food to the highest technology.

Cardinal Napier also highlighted that the protests have further triggered concerns for good shortages, especially among poor people. Many, he said, face hunger, if not starvation unless relief comes in some form, and in abundant amounts.

Speaking further, Cardinal Napier bemoaned the plight of the poor who are victims of the tragedy of leaders who have allowed selfish and partisan interests to supersede the interest of the country and as a result, are prepared to sacrifice the future of the country in order to maintain or to gain power over the governing party.

That is what is so sad, he said, that after 3 decades, we still have people that have selfish ways of looking at things and are not seeing the South African community as the one that they are serving, but their own self-interests.

The Church in service of the poor

Amid the challenging situation, Church bodies have been doing something to alleviate the sufferings of the poor and the vulnerable.

Cardinal Napier explained that a group of church leaders has held weekly meetings online since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic to take a united stand as regards safety measures that will help their communities survive these challenging times. More recently, however, following the eruption of the violence in the country, the meetings have tried to address the Covid of the soul  as he describes it  which is taking hold of the nation and has destroyed so many peoples way of thinking and living.

Concluding, the Cardinal expressed hope that the recent happenings in the country may inspire citizens to speak up for good leadership and urged prayers that the country may have the resources to help the poor and the vulnerable.

Since last year, South Africa has lost more than 60,000 people to the Covid-19 pandemic. The nation still battles with a third wave of the virus, powered by the more transmissible Delta variant.
Cuban journalists covering the most serious protests against the communist government in decades have been arrested, subjected to police surveillance and intimidated by the authorities.

At least 47 journalists have been arrested, according to the Cuban Institute for the Freedom of Expression and the Press (ICLEP), an organization that supports opposition media on the island.

When VOA spoke with its executive director, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez, on July 15, he said he had just heard of the arrest of another journalist and wanted to get the news out as soon as possible.

Later, Hernandez said the arrest was symptomatic of how the Cuban government is trying to "criminalize our profession."

The protests have resulted in dozens of arrests, one confirmed fatality and three days of disruption to Cuba's shaky internet service, which was used to organize rallies and disseminate footage in an unprecedented challenge to the ruling Community Party and President Manuel Diaz-Canel.

Authorities said the protests were a result of U.S.-financed "counter-revolutionaries" exploiting economic hardship caused by sanctions.

Cuban Government Holds Mass Rally in Havana After Protests Government supporters gather on Havana seafront boulevard before dawn to wave Cuban flags and photos of late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul

Reporters told VOA that the police have seized computers and telephones, cut access to the internet, or placed them under house arrest.

Intimidation

One of those journalists  Camila Acosta  spent five days in custody after being arrested in Havana on July 12 after covering demonstrations in the Cuban capital. The journalist was released Friday and placed under house arrest.

Spanish Daily 'Highly Concerned' About Reporters Arrest in Cuba Journalist covering mass protests in Cuba for Spanish paper arrested on state security charges

Police told the 28-year-old that for the next six months she can leave her house only for essential journeys, such as shopping or health reasons, while they investigate her case.

"They tried to get me to sign a document saying I was guilty of public disorder but I refused. I am guilty of nothing. I was just doing my job as a journalist, reporting on demonstrations," Acosta told VOA by telephone from her home in Havana.

"I used my time inside police cells to interview people, about one hour a day. I suppose I was destined to do this job. I saw lots of people inside who were detained over the protests, some had been beaten, even children."

Acosta, who works for the Spanish daily ABC and CubaNet, a pro-opposition newsletter, claimed police employed psychological tactics against her.

"They tried to intimidate me and put psychological pressure on me. They tried to tell me that I am not a real journalist. I said that I studied journalism at Havana University," she said.

"They tried to tell me that I was not an important person and that my family did not care about me."

Acosta said that police even tried to persuade her that she should give up journalism.

"When they said I should give up journalism, I just laughed at them. This is what I do. I am not going to give up reporting," she said.

"I was not scared, but I was worried about my family. I was also worried for many people who have been arrested and just disappeared. It is a worrying situation."

The journalist says her laptop, mobile phone, a tablet and a hard disc were taken by police, but authorities did not cut off the internet at her home.

House arrest

Also under house arrest is Alberto Corzo, the 51-year-old director of ICLEP. Police raided his home on July 15 and detained Corzo for 24 hours.

"My arrest was pretty traumatic. My 10-year-old son Cesar has been suffering from bullying from people in my town who are close to the regime. So when the police came, he had a nervous attack," Corzo told VOA from his home in Matanzas province of Cuba.

When protests started, Corzo said, he telephoned contacts to find out what was happening in Havana and other cities.

"I was just doing my job as a journalist, but they accused me of inciting the protests. My telephone is tapped so they know who I was talking to," he said.

Corzo says he was interrogated twice during his 24 hours in police custody.

"They try to intimidate anyone who is involved in independent journalism. Some people do not write just about politics but about social issues, but they are also targeted," Corzo said.

"Despite what has happened  and I am pretty upset about it  I will never give up the profession of journalism."

Police observation

Other independent journalists, like Juan Manuel Moreno Borrego from the local news website Amanecer Habanero, have been under police observation since the protests started.

"This past week has been very intense. We are observing a lot of political and social tension in the capital. I know lots of journalists who are under police surveillance," he told VOA via social media after repeated attempts to contact him by telephone failed.

The journalist sent photos showing a police guard lounging outside his house.

Moreno said despite the pressure from the Cuban government, most reporters were determined to preserve the "tools of their trade" like computers and telephones.

"Up to now, they have not been able to take these off us because we have a policy to preserve these, using strategies to prevent this from happening," he said.

"But the internet has been our weak point, as you have discovered, and communication is very difficult. Navigating across social media is practically impossible."

Social media targeted

Those who use social media to share news and commentary were among those targeted.

Dina Stars, a 25-year-old whose YouTube page includes songs about freedom from what she calls state oppression, and comments on the protests, was arrested live on television on July 13 while being interviewed by the Spanish television channel Cuatro.

"They didn't torture me. I am on the side of truth," she told her 40,000 subscribers after her release the following day. "They arrested me for promoting the protests."

US funding

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told a press conference that media working for the U.S. government, which funds a number of opposition media websites, were driving the protests Reuters reported.

The website CubaNet makes no secret of its U.S. government funding. It received $300,000 from USAID in 2020 and has 30 correspondents in Cuba whom the website says offer independent reporting.

The site's director Hugo Landa said that since the protests, at least four of those have been detained, including Acosta.

"Many of our journalists could not leave their homes because the State Security Police put agents at their doors and forbade them to exit," he told VOA.

Moreno, of Amanecer Habanero, says the situation is still tense, adding, "We are expecting another uprising."


After a week of public violence that shocked the world, South Africa is beginning to reflect on the cause.

Mass looting and destruction of property followed the jailing of former President Jacob Zuma for contempt of court after he refused to testify at an inquiry into corruption alleged to have happened when he led South Africa between 2009 and 2018.

The violence left more than 200 people dead and hundreds injured, with damage to the economy estimated at billions of dollars. The unrest was only quelled by the deployment of 25,000 soldiers, who are still patrolling parts of the provinces of Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.

The African National Congress, or ANC, government has been widely criticized for its handling of the crisis. Speaking to the nation this past weekend, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the riots were orchestrated to cause social instability and severely weaken, even dislodge, his administration.

Using the pretext of a political grievance, those behind these acts have sought to provoke a popular insurrection, Ramaphosa said. Theyve sought to exploit the social and economic conditions under which many South Africans live and to provoke ordinary citizens and criminal networks to engage in opportunistic acts of wanton looting.

Ramaphosa said the chaos was used as a smokescreen to carry out economic sabotage by burning trucks and blocking key highways, and torching warehouses, factories and shopping malls.

Through social media, fake news and misinformation, theyve sought to inflame racial tensions and violence, he said. Worst of all, these instigators have sought to manipulate the poor and the vulnerable for their own benefit. This attempted insurrection has failed. It has failed to gain popular support amongst our people.

One of the alleged instigators is Thulani Dlomo, who used to be one of Zumas top intelligence agents. Police arrested and questioned him on Saturday but released him without charge.

Dlomo told reporters in Durban he never instigated anything, as he was a patriotic, God-fearing South African.

Our people must not allow any influence that will divide our communities. We must unite, as the people of this country, in ensuring that we leave a legacy for our children and for the next generation. So, this is not the time to point fingers, he said.

ANC veteran and former intelligence minister Ronnie Kasrils said its important that the inciters are punished for what theyve done.

But Kasrils said its also important to acknowledge the violence stems in part from what he said is the ruling partys failed economic policies, such as former President Thabo Mbekis GEAR project, which did not meet its goal of increasing growth. GEAR, or Growth, Employment and Redistribution, also called for job creation and restructuring of the economy.

The GEAR program, he said, was not an economic system that was really able to radically deal with what Mandela said was our priority, and that was changing the lives of the poorest of the poor. He was referring to late President Nelson Mandela.

Instead, Kasrils said immense wealth remained with a few white capitalists, and a new, super-rich class of black tycoons.

He said while the ANC did provide some houses and basic services to the poor, poverty and inequality increased, largely because of the ruling partys failure to create jobs.

Then, Kasrils said suspected corruption siphoned off billions of dollars that should have been used to fundamentally improve South Africa. The investigation into allegations that Zuma and others in his government were involved has split the ANC, with many voters standing with Zuma, who has denied any involvement in corruption.

On Monday, Zumas corruption trial resumed. He faces charges of fraud and bribery relating to the purchase of military jets when he was vice president in 1999.

Proceedings were being held via video link, and the defense was expected to focus on its request to have the prosecutor dropped from the case, saying he has leaked information to the news media.

(This report originated in VOAs English to Africa service.)
Government departments in Zimbabwe have been directed to reduce the number of people going to work and ensure that all civil servants are vaccinated amid an upsurge in COVID-19 cases nationwide.

In a circular dated July 19, 2021, and copied to all heads of line ministries and government departments, Public Service Commission (PSC) secretary Ambassador J. Wutawunashe, said these measures should be implemented with immediate effect.

The circular indicated that they should reduce the number of staff going to work from 40 to 10 percent for all line ministries, departments and agencies with the exception of the Ministry of Health and Child Welfare and designated critical services.

Wutawunashe said all civil servants are considered to be front line workers as indicated by the health authorities. As a result,  Heads of ministries are therefore directed to ensure that all civil servants under their jurisdiction are vaccinated.

But some independent health experts said it was unconstitutional for the government to force civil servants to be vaccinated.

According to Wutawunashe, line ministries are also expected to rotate workers in such a manner that no employee shall remain at home for more than 21 days at a stretch.

At the same time, the government has decided to regularly fumigate staff buses in an attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19.

The PSC shall ensure the fumigation of buses daily and after each trip. Only members with proof of vaccination against COVID-19 shall board PSC buses. The PSC shall observe social distancing in buses with each bus carrying a maximum of 35 passengers.

Wutawunashe said heads of ministries should ensure that staff members working from home are capacitated with ICT equipment with adequate Internet facilities for them to work efficiently and productively.

Those coming to work places must also be supported with efficient and sufficient bandwith to facilitate the holding of virtual meetings and other e-enabled communication.

All ministries are urged to cooperate as we remain alert in combating this pandemic, which will certainly be overcome through adherence to conduct and protocols prescribed by Zimbabwe health authorities as guided by the World Health Organization.

The Ministry of Health reports that 75 people died of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe on Monday while 2,113 tested positive for coronavirus.

Zimbabwe has recorded 85,732 COVID-19 cases since March last year, 55,714 recoveries and 2,697 deaths. To date, a total of 1,184.435 people have been vaccinated against COVID-19.
Zimbabweans in Harare were queuing for kilometres outside one of the capital's main hospitals in the hope of being vaccinated against COVID-19, but many complained there are no jabs to be had.

Andrew Ngwenya and his family travelled about 11 kilometres (7 miles) from their home to Parirenyatwa, a major referral hospital where doses were sometimes available.

He said he arrived at the hospital one day at 8am and by noon, less than 30 people had been jabbed.

Later in the day, nurses told people to return home and try another day.

"The queue is like 5 kilometres (about 3 miles) long," he said.

"Even if you are interested in a jab you can't stand that," he added.

A part-time pastor with a Pentecostal church, Ngwenya and members of his flock are now praying for divine intervention, even though they would rather have vaccines.

Clayton Guta, another Harare resident, said the situation was dire.

"This is frustrating, imagine this big hospital has no vaccines, it's shocking, people are desperate."

Mike Muromba said he arrived at the hospital at 3am and was fifth in the queue but by 8am had been told there wasn't any vaccine.

They are telling us that the vaccine hasn't arrived, but in the news (local newspapers) we were told there are plenty of vaccines which have arrived in the country and it's being distributed all over the country across all provinces" he said.

Zimbabwe is one of more than 14 African countries where the delta variant is quickly spreading.

Earlier this month the country returned to strict lockdown measures to combat a resurgence of COVID-19 amid vaccine shortages.

Infections dramatically increased in June despite a night curfew, reduced business hours, localised lockdowns in hotspot areas, and a ban on inter-city travel.

The virus has spread to rural areas which have sparse health facilities.

To date, 9% of Zimbabwe's 15 million people have received at least one vaccine dose and 3.7% have received two doses.

Across Africa, less than 2% of the continent's 1.3 billion people have received at least one vaccine jab, according to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(Alexandria, MN) More than 180 people involved in information technology gathered in Alexandria on Wednesday to network. The West Central Technology Conference is the first event of its kind in this part of the state. One of the organizers of the event, Nathan Chan, of the Alexandria Area I.T. Group, says the conference is the result of the need in the industry to stay current and stay connected.

The conference attendees had a choice of more two dozen different breakout sessions covering a host of topics from credit card schemes to the broadband landscape to educational I.T. and wireless traffic within buildings. Chan says that with all of the different types of organizations (including small and large businesses, public entities, schools and I.T. Support) and with each having their own realm of technology, this conference is vital to keeping ahead of the needs of west-central Minnesota. A number of vendors were also at the conference.
Stratovolcano 3,763 m / 12,346 ftGuatemala, 14.47N / -90.88W(4 out of 5)1581, 1585, 1586, 1587, 1614, 1617, 1620, 1623, 1629, 1679(?), 1685, 1686, 1689(?), 1699, 1702, 1705, 1706, 1709(?), 1710,1717,1730, 1732, 1737, 1751(?), 1765(?), 1773(?), 1799, 1826, 1829, 1850(?), 1852(?), 1855, 1856, 1857, 1860, 1861(?), 1867(?), 1880, 1896, 1932, 1944, 1949, 1953, 1955, 1957, 1962, 1963, 1966, 1967, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1987, 1999, 2002 - ongoingDominantly explosive, construction of lava domes and extrusion of viscous lava flows. In near constant activity, at least during the past centuries.(15-day study trip and expedition to Guatemala's volcanoes)(8-day volcano tour to Pacaya and Fuego, Guatemala)

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The word twerk went into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013 with the wrong definition  the Oxford people got that wrong. Dr. Kyra Gaunt

Among the shortlist of hits that Switched on Pop anticipates keeping on steady repeat this summer is Twerkulator by Miami rap duo City Girls, led by the commanding presence of its two young stars, JT and Yung Miami. Its a track with enough sonic energy to power a small town (not to mention a matching viral TikTok dance whose momentum led to the songs official release), but thats not all we love about it. The music includes a chain of samples that stretches back through pop history  from 90s house to 80s electro to 70s German krautrock  and poses an implicit challenge to some of hip-hops most problematic figures. Meanwhile, the lyrics celebrate a tradition of movement thats as culturally important as it is misunderstood.

To break down the manifold dimensions of twerking, Switched on Pop co-host Nate Sloan sat down with Dr. Kyra Gaunt, ethnomusicologist, professor, author, and presenter of the TED Talk Broadcasting Black Girls Net Worth, to discuss the history of the dance  which even the Oxford English Dictionary got wrong. You can listen to the episode and read an excerpt from the discussion below.

Youve described the music industry, like so much of the rest of the world, as a hostile space for Black women. When you listen to a song like Twerkulator, do you hear it as trying to reclaim some of that space?

I think there is something that defies imagination and logic, at least for me as somebody whos from an older generation, about how twerking  and this sex-positive moment and this resistance to shame and blame  is being launched by these women artists. I would say that the shift probably should be marked in 2013 when the music industry really started to monetize music streams, particularly through YouTube and [now] through other platforms like TikTok. Women like City Girls and Cardi B have been able to use these platforms in ways not unlike the kind of early manifestation of underground culture out of the back of your trunk, making cassettes.

What made you interested in researching twerking?

At ground zero, Im a dancer. As Ive been doing this research the last 20 years, more and more Im realizing just how it is really about kinesthetic nonverbal communication and the power of dance and African diasporic culture.

So thats one layer of it. But the other was that I was offended for young women when Juicy J [held his] 2013 twerk contest for his song Scholarship. I was offended as an academic that this song was going to be promoting girls out there to try and buy a $50,000 scholarship; it was hiding the feminization of poverty, not just in the Black community but among white girls, because white girls were most of the people submitting videos for that contest.

But there is some magic happening. I think that City Girls are toying with, I dont know, revenge porn for hip-hop. But I got into [this research] feeling protective of this young woman who might be the winner [of that Juicy J contest], who goes off to college and is known as the winner of the twerking contest.

Meanwhile, I didnt have a problem with the dance  or at least I eventually and very quickly realized its not the dance.

What do you wish people understood about twerking that you dont think is common knowledge?

So the word twerk went into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2013 with the wrong definition  the Oxford people got that wrong. They said it was a mix of twist and jerk. I spoke to some local people when I first went to New Orleans in 2011, and a guy driving the taxi that I was taking to go to a conference on gender, sexuality, and hip-hop at Tulane said that twerk was a contraction of to work.

And I was like, Oh, of course! Its to work that body because that is a common trope across translocal communities throughout the United States. Everybodys Twerk it baby, work, work that body! Its work.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
A red tide has invaded the Gulf Coast of Florida, causing problems for wildlife and the community.

The bacteria that makes up red tide, Karenia brevis, has already killed more than 613 tons of marine life and fish in and around Tampa as of last week, according to local officials.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said Friday it had collected 132 samples from the region and found high concentrations of the bacteria in the water in Pinellas and Hillsbourgh counties.

Fish kills suspected to be related to red tide were reported in Pasco, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Manatee, Sarasota and Lee counties over the past week, according to the commission, as well as respiratory irritation in many of the same counties.

The blooms aren't necessarily red or blue green. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says "blooms can look like foam, scum, mats, or paint on the surface of the water. A bloom can change the color of the water to green, blue, brown, red or another color."

"Red Tide in some parts of Tampa Bay in the past few days tested at ten to 17 times the concentration considered "high," which can cause significant respiratory issues in people as well as fish kills," Pinellas County officials said in a red tide update July 13.

Community members rally to see some change

Members of the Suncoast Surfrider Foundation, a non-profit that works to protect oceans and beaches, and others in the community rallied against the problem Saturday, hoping to bring their concerns to the Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Thomas Paterek, chair of Suncoast Surfrider, told CNN he knew he had to do something when a friend called him in tears because of the dead fish on the beach outside of their water rental business.

"Hearing that phone call sparked a fire in me, to say if nothing is going to be happening, the community needs to lead this," Paterek said.

He said he decided to organize the rally to try to spark immediate change, including closing the nearby Piney Point wastewater reservoir and enacting a state of emergency to help clean up the waterways.

"I think everyone in the community is frustrated," he said. "When you see dead dolphins in the water, when you see dead manatees in the water, dead sea turtles ... when you have captains who have fished in the area for decades say they have never seen anything like this, that is enough to declare a state of emergency and not just say it's another naturally occurring harmful algal bloom."

Large bloom could be connected to Piney Point

Scientists feared a large bloom was imminent after the Piney Point phosphogypsum stack dumped nutrient-rich wastewater into Tampa's waters in April. The elevated concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus were some of the most concerning descriptors because they are known to fuel phytoplankton growth which can lead to a potentially toxic algal bloom.

"While it's unlikely that we will be able to make a direct correlation between environmental harm manifested in Tampa or Sarasota Bays, it would be absurd to suggest that the impact isn't significant," Justin Bloom, founder of the Suncoast Waterkeeper environmental organization, told CNN in June.

The Florida Department of Health notes that red tides were documented in the southern Gulf of Mexico in the 1700s and along Florida's Gulf Coast since the 1840s. But the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the microorganism responsible for red tide was not identified until 1946.

And although algae blooms have been recorded for hundreds of years, the Environmental Protection Agency points out: "Nutrient pollution from human activities makes the problem worse, leading to more severe blooms that occur more often."

In 2018, a massive red tide bloom along Florida's southwestern coast killed 2,000 tons of marine life and caused $8 million in business losses.

State and federal agency maps for the summer and fall of 2018 show heavy red tide outbreaks in six counties, from Pinellas in the north to Collier in the south.

The-CNN-Wire

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Jeff Bezos, a/k/a the "richest human being in the universe," is about to leave Earth for a few spectacular minutes.

It's going to be one heck of a television and streaming show.

On Tuesday, 52 years to the day of the Apollo 11 moon landing, Blue Origin will launch its first crewed flight of the New Shepard. The company's live stream is expected to begin at 7:30am ET, with liftoff at 9am, and a landing back on Earth 11 minutes later. All the major networks and websites will carry the launch live. Jackie Wattles, who covers space for CNN Business, has a how-to-watch guide here, including a minute-by-minute breakdown of the important moments.

It's "a big step for future space tourism," CNN's Anderson Cooper said, and "a remarkable step in a mission that began more than two decades ago when Jeff Bezos founded Blue Origin." Cooper anchored "AC360" from the launch location on Monday.

Bezos is no longer media-shy

I asked CNN innovation and space correspondent Rachel Crane about the media scene in Van Horn, Texas. Here's what she told me:

"Blue Origin has been resistant to media since the start and has always been very controlled with its public image. So to have any kind of access with Blue is significant, let alone several days' worth of media opportunities after years of no major access. On Sunday, CNN and others had a chance to go out to the launch pad where New Shepard will lift off. We then ventured inside the New Shepard simulator and spoke with Ariane Cornell, the head of Astronaut Sales. On Monday, Bezos and crew did a round robin of network morning shows and TV correspondents were invited again behind the gates at Launch Site One TV to do live hits a few miles away from the launch pad. Jeff Bezos and brother Mark even delivered dinner to the media on site."

Here is Crane's video of the chicken drop-off -- you can hear her asking, "Is that your last meal?," which led Bezos to joke around with the press corps...

Bezos says critics are 'largely right'

Earlier in the day, during an interview that aired on "New Day," Crane asked Bezos, "There have been a chorus of critics saying that these flights to space are, you know, just joyrides for the wealthy, and that you should be spending your time and your money and energy trying to solve problems here on Earth. So what do you say to those critics?"

Bezos didn't tap dance around the question: He said, "Well, I say they're largely right. We have to do both. You know, we have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We've always done that as a species, as a civilization. We have to do both." He said this mission is about "building a road to space for the next generations to do amazing things there, and those amazing things will solve problems here on Earth."

The Bezos-owned newspaper's coverage

The Washington Post, owned by Bezos, happens to employ one of the best space reporters in the US, Christian Davenport. He had a little fun and tweeted out a selfie from outside an astronaut dressing room on Monday night.

The Post has some special coverage planned for the launch: In partnership with Discovery, it will air a live show, "Space Launch LIVE: Blue Origin & Jeff Bezos Go To Space," on its website and on the Discovery and Science Channels starting at 8am ET Tuesday. Libby Casey and Chris Jacobs will anchor from the Post's studio in DC, with contributions from Davenport and others. It will re-air in primetime on TV. The outlets previously produced joint coverage of SpaceX's first crewed mission, so this is not a first due to Bezos...

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Search crews have been nearing the bottom of a pile of rubble left behind after a Surfside condo building collapsed nearly a month ago, according to officials. And as more families get answers, the community is grieving those lost.

"On the original collapse site, we are almost at the bottom," Miami-Dade Police spokesperson Alvaro Zabaleta told CNN last week. "Does that mean we are almost done with the search? No. Until we clear the entire site and find no more human remains we are not done."

Part of the Champlain Towers South collapsed in the early morning hours of June 24, as many of the residents slept. Immediately, crews were at the scene sifting through the rubble to search for the victims, pausing only for dangerous weather and when the remains of the building were demolished.

The death toll now stands at 97, and 95 of those have been identified.

Even after experts declared there was no longer hope of finding survivors, officials promised families the work would not let up until all the remains were recovered.

Now that the promise has been fulfilled for most families, the end of the search marks the beginning of a new phase of mourning.

In the days after the collapse, Debbie Hill's father was considered missing, and not knowing where he was and what happened to him was "the big issue," she told CNN's Erin Burnett.

Nicole Ortiz said the agony of waiting to learn the fate of her sister and nephew was indescribable.

"I screamed," she told CNN's Ryan Young. "I've almost fainted. I've cried."

But now, many families have answers.

The community is now mourning Vishal and Bhavna Patel and their 1-year-old daughter Aishani. Ilan Naibryf's family is saying goodbye to a young man they said made an impact everywhere he went. Sergio Lozano is coping with the loss of both of his parents, Antonio and Gladys.

"They died together," Lozano said. "It's not fair -- being crushed, being destroyed. It's not fair."

And for those who survived, it's a matter of picking up the pieces after an almost-miraculous survival.

Iliana Monteagudo recalled the moment she saw the cracks running down her walls and the sound of the home she had dreamed of for 40 years crashing around her as she escaped through the stairs.

"Something inside of me said run," Monteagudo said. "You have to run to save your life."

An investigation to begin

As the community mourns, many in the area are also wrestling with fear for the future as they question what caused the collapse and if other buildings in the area are at risk.

Last week, a structural engineer hired by the city told CNN that the investigation will not reach its full force until search crews finished their work.

"Until they do their job, we can't go in to do samples of materials and take those samples and test them to understand what the various components of the building that came down was," Allyn Kilsheimer told CNN's Ana Cabrera.

The first night that he was on the scene, Kilsheimer, who also investigated the aftermath of the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon, said he had about 20 or 30 theories of possible triggers.

Since then, he eliminated some but added five or six more, he said, but won't be able to narrow it down while the search continues.

Florida State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle has acknowledged "multiple requests by engineers and attorneys" to gain access to the site.

"Engineers from the federal agency National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) were deployed to Surfside with Congressional authority to gather evidence and determine how and why the Champlain South Tower collapsed. NIST is the fact-finding agency responsible for investigating building collapses such as the World Trade Center, much like the NTSB investigates plane crashes," Rundle said in a statement.

"It is my understanding that once NIST, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue and Miami-Dade Police Departments determine that it is safe and appropriate for others to gain access to the site, they will be permitted to do so under guidelines set forth by those agencies," Rundle said.

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The more contagious Delta variant of coronavirus now makes up 83% of sequenced samples in the United States, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday.

"This is a dramatic increase, up from 50% for the week of July 3," Walensky said in a Senate committee hearing.

Health experts have said the Delta variant is more transmissible than any other identified variant so far. "We should think about the Delta variant as the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids," Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser to Joe Biden's Covid Response Team, told CNN last week.

"It's twice as infectious," Slavitt said. "Fortunately, unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the Delta variant in its tracks: It's called vaccine."

Vaccination rates in the country have stalled though. Less than half of the US population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data, and the majority of those who are not vaccinated are not at all likely to get vaccinated, according to a poll published Tuesday by Axios-Ipsos.

A quarter or less of those who are unvaccinated said that they would be likely to get the vaccine under certain circumstances, according to the poll, which was conducted July 16 to 19 and made up of a nationally representative sample of 1,048 general population US adults.

If many of those who are holding out do not get inoculated, Dr. Anthony Fauci said, the US can expect a "smoldering" outbreak for "a considerable period of time."

The rise of the Delta variant comes as the US sees a new uptick in Covid-19 cases and an increase in hospitalizations and deaths, especially in pockets of the country where vaccination rates remain relatively low.

The average of new daily cases this week is up 66% from last week and 145% from two weeks ago, as cases rise in 46 states, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. In addition, hospitalizations are up 26% from last week.

About 22% of the US population -- nearly 73 million people -- lives in a county considered to have "high" Covid-19 transmission, according to data published Monday by the CDC.

This is about 10 times what it was in early June, when less than 3% of the population lived in such counties.

The CDC considers a county to have high transmission if there have been 100 or more cases of Covid-19 per 100,000 residents or a test positivity rate of 10% or higher in the past seven days.

According to the latest CDC data, about 5% of the US population lives in a county considered to have "low" transmission, defined by the CDC as fewer than 10 new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents and a test positivity rate of less than 5% in the past seven days.

Test positivity rate is one of two indicators used by the CDC to assess community transmission levels. But the number of daily coronavirus tests have dropped off -- down 34% from a month ago -- according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services. The CDC did not respond to CNN's requests to learn more about this metric.

Vaccines are effective against the Delta variant, data shows

The most recent data from Israel evaluating effectiveness of the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine against the Delta variant found the vaccine to be 64% protective against infection, and that the vaccine is 93% effective in preventing severe disease and hospitalizations.

Other studies indicate that the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are also effective against the Delta variant.

And 99.5% of deaths are among the unvaccinated, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy told CNN's Dana Bash on "State of the Union" on Sunday -- a figure cited by the CDC earlier in the month.

Already some hospitals are again being overwhelmed by Covid-19 patients, Murthy said Monday.

"I am heartbroken to see just how hard (physicians are) working -- how exhausted they are," Murthy told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "Many of them are suffering with depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal ideation, as a result of the stress that they have endured during this pandemic."

Having been tricked by the virus before, Murthy says now is the time to be cautious.

"There have been multiple times when we have been fooled by Covid-19, when cases went down and we thought we were in the clear and then cases went up again," Murthy said. "It means we shouldn't let down our guard until cases not only come down but stay down, and right now cases are actually going up. Cases are going up, hospitalizations are going up, death rates are ticking up."

Murthy urged Americans to get vaccinated -- if not for themselves then for health care workers who need protection from burnout and children who are not yet eligible for the protection provided by the vaccine.

Even if parents are vaccinated, wearing a mask in areas of high transmission risk is "the right thing to do," he said. Murthy -- the father of two children, ages 3 and 4 -- said he takes such precautions because "I want to take every possible measure to protect my child."

"Our kids who cannot get vaccinated, they depend on us being vaccinated to protect them from the spread of the virus. We are their shields," Murthy said. "Even if you don't want to do it for yourself, consider getting vaccinated to protect the children in your community. They are depending on us."

Pediatrics association recommends masks in schools

In addition to protecting children from infection, many experts and officials have stressed the importance of getting them safely back into the classroom.

Most children are at a lower risk than adults for severe disease from Covid-19, and the benefits of learning in a classroom outweigh the risks, said Dr. Greta Massetti, a member of the CDC's Covid-19 Emergency Response.

"However," she added, "for some families, particularly those with children or family members who are at increased risk of severe illness from COVID-19, or who cannot get vaccinated, those families might be more comfortable with a remote option this fall."

On Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released new guidance for schools that supports in-person learning and recommends universal masking in schools for everyone over the age of 2.

"The AAP believes that, at this point in the pandemic, given what we know about low rates of in-school transmission when proper prevention measures are used, together with the availability of effective vaccines for those age 12 years and up, that the benefits of in-person school outweigh the risks in all circumstances," the guidance said.

The guidance differs some from the CDC recommendations, which advise masks be worn indoors in schools by all individuals who are not fully vaccinated.

But Fauci said the CDC leaves flexibility for localities to make judgment calls based on their situation.

And when there is a high rate of virus spread in a community and a low proportion of vaccinated people, "you really want to go the extra step, the extra mile, to make sure that there's not a lot of transmission, even breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals," Fauci said. "They just want to be extra safe."

There are some states, including Connecticut, Hawaii, New Mexico, New York, Virginia, and Washington, that follow the AAP guidance to require masks among K-thru-12 students regardless of their vaccination status.

But an updated CNN analysis has found that at least nine states -- Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Vermont -- have enacted legislation that prohibit districts from requiring masks in schools.

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Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, went to space and back Tuesday morning on an 11-minute, supersonic joy ride aboard the rocket and capsule system developed by his space company, Blue Origin.

Riding alongside the multibillionaire were Bezos' brother, Mark Bezos; Wally Funk, an 82-year-old pilot and one of the "Mercury 13" women who trained to go to space in the 20th century but never got to fly; and an 18-year old recent high school graduate named Oliver Daemen who was Blue Origin's first paying customer and whose father, an investor, purchased his ticket.

Funk and Daemen became the oldest and youngest people, respectively, ever to travel to space. And this flight marked the first-ever crewed mission for Blue Origin's New Shepard suborbital space tourism rocket, which the company plans to use to take wealthy thrill seekers on high-flying joy rides in the months and years to come.

The four passengers on Tuesday strapped into their New Shepard crew capsule at Blue Origin's launch site in rural West Texas just before the rocket lit its engines at 8:12 am CT, sending the vehicle blaring past the speed of sound and up to more than 65 miles above the desert landscape, topping out at an altitude of 351,210 feet. At the peak of the flight path, the passengers were weightless for about three minutes and were allowed to unstrap themselves from their seat to float around and soak in panoramic views of the Earth and the cosmos.

The launch was visible to reporters on the ground, with the rocket streaking across the almost cloudless Texas sky with a blooming contrail. The bright blaze of the rocket engine looked almost like a star or planet as it rose into the sky. Bezos and crew could be heard on Blue Origin's livestream cheering as they moved about the capsule during the microgravity portion of the flight.

"It's dark up here, oh my word!" Funk could be heard saying.

Bezos declared it "the best day ever" on his communications check upon landing.

Why is Bezos doing this?

Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000, just six years after he started Amazon, with the goal of making spaceflight more affordable and more accessible. A few of his rivals in the industry  most notably Elon Musk and Richard Branson  both started their space ventures around the same time.

Though Bezos' extraterrestrial ambitions are lofty, involving spinning orbital space stations where people live and work, the suborbital New Shepard vehicle is the first fully operational piece of space hardware the company has developed.

And much like Branson and Virgin Galactic did just nine days ago, Bezos decided to become one of the first people to ride on the space tourism spacecraft as a show of confidence in the vehicle's safety.

"We know the vehicle is safe," Bezos told CNN Business' Rachel Crane on Monday. "If it's not safe for me, then it's not safe for anyone."

Who gets to fly on New Shepard?

Thus far, the reservations have been offered solely to participants in an auction that Blue Origin concluded last month. The winner, a mystery bidder who agreed to pay $28 million for a ticket, was expected to be on Tuesday's spaceflight, though the person made the surprise decision to reschedule for a later mission because of "scheduling conflicts," according to the company.

Blue Origin said it's planning to fly as many as two other New Shepard passenger flights this year. But the company has not given any indication of whether it will set a public price point for tickets, nor has it revealed how much Daemen, the Dutch 18-year-old who flew with Bezos, had to pay over for his seat. The company has stayed declined numerous requests for additional information about ticket prices.

But the company says the auction did give a strong indication that there are plenty of people anxious to go: 7,600 people from 159 countries registered to participate in the bidding war.

What does this all mean?

There's been plenty of blowback about billionaires in space, including a recent online petition that garnered more than 162,000 signatures asking for Bezos never to return to Earth.

Bezos, who is worth about $200 billion, has funded the company almost solely out of his own pocket. And repeated promises of benevolence and benefit to a ravaged Earth has critics concerned that the ultra-wealthy view outer space as their own personal escape hatch.

Still, Blue Origin and other billionaire-backed space companies put out a lot of talk about their technologies paving the way toward a "democratization" of space in which everyday people  not just government-trained astronauts  get to experience the thrill of spaceflight. These early suborbital space tourism flights will be prohibitively expensive to the vast majority of people, and that's not expected to change anytime soon.

But this is how Blue Origin, however, describes its long-term vision:

"Blue Origin was founded by Jeff Bezos with the vision of enabling a future where millions of people are living and working in space to benefit Earth. To preserve Earth, Blue Origin believes that humanity will need to expand, explore, find new energy and material resources, and move industries that stress Earth into space. Blue Origin is working on this today by developing partially and fully reusable launch vehicles that are safe, low cost, and serve the needs of all civil, commercial, and defense customers," the company said in a press release.

It's still early days, of course. The New Shepard rocket and capsule system is suborbital, meaning it doesn't drum up nearly enough energy to remain in space for more than a couple of minutes. But the company is working on a much larger rocket for that purpose  called New Glenn  and a lunar lander that it hopes will be used to support NASA missions.

Bezos has also talked in the past about "O'Neill colonies," a concept for spinning space stations that can mimic Earth-like gravity for passengers, being as a possible habitat for future space dwellers.

Who will own the space stations? And will passengers be employees or tourists? Will space travel, if necessary to save humanity, only be available to those who can afford to pay? And is Bezos' time and money better spent trying to solve Earthly problems rather than seeking to escape them?

We don't know. There are plenty of unanswered questions and raging debates.

CNN's Rachel Crane asked Bezos about the pushback on Monday.

"They are largely right," Bezos said of critics who say billionaires should focus their energy  and money  on issues closer to home. "We have to do both. We have lots of problems here and now on Earth and we need to work on those, and we always need to look to the future. We've always done that as a species, as a civilization."

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Ariela Rodriguez was sitting in her car when the future that she imagined for herself and her family was crushed.

She found out on social media that a program that could shield the undocumented mother from deportation and allow her to work legally ceased to exist for first-time applicants like her. But It wasn't the first time her plans were upended.

A series of life circumstances over the past decade pushed Rodriguez away from pursuing her dreams of becoming a doctor in Houston and seeking protection from deportation just like other immigrants who were brought to the United States as children.

Determined to change her life, the 29-year-old was one of the thousands of immigrants who applied for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for the first time in recent months and had their hopes dashed last week when a federal judge in Texas ruled the program illegal, halting new applications.

"I want to achieve more in my life and I know I can do it," Rodriguez said. "But it (the ruling) left all of us in limbo."

Immigration experts estimate that tens of thousands of people had applied for DACA before last week -- but the majority of new enrollees were still waiting for approval amid a backlog that accumulated during the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 49,889 immigrant teenagers and adults applied for DACA for the first time between January and March, according to the latest data released by US Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Friday's decision blocks those applications from being granted, even if they were submitted prior to the ruling, said Thomas Saenz, the president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

A dream deferred

Rodriguez excelled in high school before her future became uncertain during her senior year. She got pregnant, had a health complication and eventually dropped out weeks before graduation, Rodriguez said.

When the DACA program was established by the Obama administration in 2012, Rodriguez says she couldn't juggle paying for the application fee on top of rent and the costs of raising her daughter.

Rodriguez, who came to the US from Honduras when she was 14 years old, didn't return to school. Instead, she took a job at a McDonald's restaurant, where she is now an assistant manager after working there for nine years.

"I'm not ashamed of having started cleaning bathrooms and floors -- it's an honest job," Rodriguez said.

By the time she was able to put enough money aside to afford the $495 fee for her DACA application, it was 2017 and former President Donald Trump tried to end the program in a move that faced immediate legal challenges and was eventually blocked by the Supreme Court last year.

The legal back-and-forth left applicants like Rodriguez out of the program for years as well as immigrant children who were just turning 15 -- the age to become eligible for DACA.

When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to fully reinstate it in December, Rodriguez quickly started gathering the documents to apply, getting some of her old teachers to write letters about her high school years.

"I told myself I was going to apply this time, I couldn't miss my chance," she said.

As she waited for her application to be processed, Rodriguez enrolled in GED classes and started researching schools where she could study nursing. The next step toward obtaining DACA was her biometric appointment, which was already scheduled for the end of July.

Last week, Rodriguez drove to a Marshalls store with her three daughters to buy shoes for school. When she parked, she stared at her cell phone screen in shock. An immigration attorney she follows on social media was streaming live, talking about how a federal judge in Texas ruled that the program will cease to exist for first-time applicants who had been waiting for their approvals.

She felt angry, Rodriguez says, because she allowed herself to imagine a different future for herself and "her dreams were crushed" again.

"Why are they playing with our lives and hopes like that?" she said.

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A small provision tucked into a massive federal budget proposal put forth by the House Appropriations Committee would cut money for charter schools by $40 million and could potentially limit many charter schools from receiving federal funds altogether.

The National Alliance for Public Charters Schools is calling the cut "particularly egregious" and said that the move would impact a majority of 3.3 million charter school students, who are overwhelmingly children of color and from low-income families.

Charter schools, which are publicly funded but usually run independently from local school districts, had the support of the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations. But some Democrats have targeted charter schools in recent years, arguing that they take away money from other public school students. On the campaign trail last year, now-President Joe Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren opposed federal funds going to "for-profit charter schools."

The vast majority of charter schools are nonprofit organizations, though some states allow for-profit companies to manage charter schools, making up 10% nationwide.

The Democrat-backed budget proposal shows how those campaign pledges may lead to legislation that would funnel money away from some for-profit charters. The bill would prohibit any funds going to "a charter school that contracts with a for-profit entity to operate, oversee or manage the activities of the school."

But Nina Rees, the president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, told CNN that the sweeping language could impact schools that contract out for cafeteria services, special education services, or back office staff -- some of the same things local district schools also hire private companies for. Without contracting out, schools may not be able to offer the services to special needs students that they are legally require to provide.

"I don't think they fully considered the ramifications of the language they proposed. It's pretty sloppy," Rees said.

Michigan Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, co-chairman of the Congressional Caucus on Education Innovation and Opportunity, criticized the provision at a committee hearing last week. He argued it would "make it illegal for charter schools that receive funding from the government to also contract with private companies for food, busing, janitors, text books, and the technology students -- especially those with special needs -- use for their lessons."

"This is an unnecessary targeting of charter schools," he added.

But it's possible the legislative text could be interpreted in a more narrow sense, and apply to only the small percentage of charter schools that hire a for-profit learning management organization that is involved in running all the day-to-day operations, said Conor Williams, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank.

"There's evidence the for-profit charters, many of which are virtual, don't perform as well. Limiting their support is a defensible policy," Williams said.

The House spending bill is simply a proposal and it's unlikely it will be approved by the full Congress in its current form. But budget bills are often viewed as a reflection of values. Biden's budget request, which is also little more than an outline of spending priorities, did not cut from the $440 million in annual funding that charter schools have received in recent years.

This House proposal, which covers funding for agencies related to labor, health, human services and education, totals $253.8 billion, an 28% increase compared to the year before. It would, among other things, increase the maximum Pell grant award for low-income college students, boost support for workforce training and send more money to The National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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There are some mixed opinions about long-time Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely being on the other side of the law.

Some have concerns and hope the trial brings out the truth, while others fully support the sheriff.

A couple of attorney offices at the square in downtown Athens are posting signs in support of the sheriff on their windows.

They read "We support Mike" or "We support the sheriff."

The courtroom was packed with people from the community looking to show their support for the sheriff. One woman drove all the way from Huntsville to show her support. She says she hopes Blakely is found not guilty.

"I do believe it's a witch hunt," Jacque Reeves said. "He should be exonerated for what he's done for this county. People here love him and respect him, and he respects them back."

However, some people say it doesn't matter what he's done for the community. They want answers for the 11 theft and ethics charges Blakely faces.

"Anything like that should be further investigated without a doubt. If you take campaign money for personal use, that should be investigated. That's not what it was designed for," Stan Young said. "Regardless of how long everybody's served or whatever as long as it's the truth."

Young doesn't believe the trial is a witch hunt.

"I don't know why it would come to trial unless they had facts to support the accusations," he explained.

For now, he says he'll just sit back and watch what happens.

"If he didn't do it, great! As long as the truth comes out, I think everybody would be for the better," Young said.
The National Weather Service in Huntsville has issued a Flash Flood Warning for Central Limestone County until 7:45 p.m.

At 4:40 PM CDT, Doppler radar indicated thunderstorms producing heavy rain across portions of central and southwestern Limestone County. Between 2 and 3 inches of rain have fallen. Flash flooding is ongoing or expected to begin shortly.

HAZARD...Flash flooding caused by thunderstorms.

SOURCE...Radar.

IMPACT...Flash flooding of small creeks and streams, urban areas, highways, streets and underpasses as well as other poor drainage and low-lying areas.

Some locations that will experience flash flooding include... Decatur, Athens, Tanner and Ripley.

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

Turn around, don't drown when encountering flooded roads. Most flood deaths occur in vehicles.

Be aware of your surroundings and do not drive on flooded roads.

Turn to WAAY 31 for everything you need to know to stay safe during severe weather. Chief Meteorologist Kate McKenna, Meteorologist Rob Elvington, Meteorologist Carson Meredith and Ashley Carter will provide you with the most accurate information on storms by using our StormTracker Early Warning Radar Network.

Stationed in Muscle Shoals, Decatur and Guntersville, the radars provide the best data for all of North Alabama by scanning EVERY community in North Alabama.

See all the radars HERE

Access the Muscle Shoals radar HERE

Access the Decatur radar HERE

Access the Guntersville radar HERE

And download our news and weather apps HERE
A former Limestone County jail employee testified in court Tuesday saying Sheriff Mike Blakely would regularly ask her to borrow money from inmates.

The safe at jail usually contained anywhere from $3,000 to $12,000 cash depending on the number of inmates and the money in their accounts.

Ramona Robinson says that money belonged to the inmates not the county.

She testified that Blakely would take the cash and leave IOUs that he would pay back at a later time. As to why he needed the money, Robinson said "I didn't ask. He didn't tell."

In a few instances, Robinson made a wire transfer to a casino in Las Vegas, where Blakely was for a work related conference. The defense argued that Blakely had driven to Vegas and was running low on money he was given to cover the costs before returning back to Alabama.

His attorneys add that no money was missing, and Blakely paid back every cent he borrowed.

A state auditor also found no missing money from the jail. Prosecutors say the auditor would not be able to find any missing money because the quick book records would not show the money borrowed.

Robinson said the auditor did check the safe and saw the IOUs. That auditor told her that was "a big no, no," according to Robinson.

Prosecutors also brought up the checks used to pay back the IOUs. Robinson says Blakely would ask her to hold them for a while before she could cash them out.

An investigator with the state reviewed the checks and Blakely's personal accounts. He found that there were several instances where the checks would have put Blakely's account in the negative if they were cashed out when they written out.

That investigator found 19 checks that were held and added up to $29,050 dollars! However, he says there were more checks written.

Robinson says she stopped working for the jail after being offered a better opportunity. When asked on whether she left because of the checks, she said yes and no. She couldn't further elaborate, but said, "I didn't like it."
The Flash Flood Watch originally issued for North Alabama Monday morning was extended to remain in effect until 10 PM Tuesday. This is due to additional heavy rain this afternoon and evening on top of already saturated conditions from the previous 3 days of heavy rain. Many areas in North Alabama have recieved between 3-5" rain fall since Saturday.

The concern is that a stagnant front remains close enough to our area to tap into the tropical moisture and produce heavy rain with any showers or storms that form Tuesday.

The front will gradually sag to our south by Wednesday lowering the coverage of showers and storms. Once this front finally clears North Alabama entirely, there's not much in the way of relief from the humidity, even with a northwest wind. Instead, mainly afternoon showers are storms are expected each day and high temperatures slowly climb back into the upper 80s and lower 90s by the weekend.
Tuesday morning, the defense asked the judge for a second time to rule Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely's case a mistrial.

This comes after a separate motion was filed last night asking her to drop a theft charge and strike a state witness's testimony.

The judge denied the motion filed last night, along with the second motion for a mistrial.

This is all in regards to the state's witness Trent Willis. He is the CEO and founder of Red Brick Strategies, an advertising company that provided Blakely with ads during his re-election campaign.

In the defense's motion, Sheriff Blakely's attorneys claim Willis admitted to being a part of a conspiracy with Sheriff Blakely to defraud his political campaign account. They say the state failed to provide any of the evidence shown and referenced a state law that says prosecutors had to provide any evidence regarding a co-defendant or accomplice.

Prosecutors argued Willis was in no way an accomplice. They say Willis just gave Blakely a signed blank check, and it was Blakely who filled it out and used it for personal use. They add there was no way for Willis to know any type of crime was committed.

The defense further claimed state prosecutors intentionally withheld information regarding an investigation into Willis until the very end of their questioning.

Willis is also under investigation after being accused of stealing campaign funds, but the investigation is completely separate and unrelated to Blakely's case. Willis' testimony was put on hold last night when that investigation was brought up. That's when the defense asked the judge for a motion for mistrial, which the judge immediately denied.

The defense claims prosecutors never let them know about the investigation. However, in a motion filed early this morning, the prosecution said the defense "feigned surprise". Prosecutors argued the defense team knew about the investigation before their team did.

The assistant attorney general Jasper Roberts took the stand Tuesday morning and told the judge that he called the defense team once he confirmed a different division in the Alabama Attorney General's Office was investigating Willis. The defense team denies receiving the call, and Roberts could not recall who he spoke with on the defense team.

Prosecutors and the witness both said no deals or immunity were given in the investigation in exchange for Willis's testimony against Blakely.

After hearing from both sides, the judge struck the motion to dismiss Willis as a witness and he continued his testimony just after 9:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning.
Heading back to school in person could not only positively affect your child's education, but also their mental health as well.

We heard from a child psychiatrist about the benefits of returning to the classroom.

Many students spent last year taking classes online. Many students spent last year taking classes online.

A North Alabama child psychiatrist said kids need to have contact with other children, but last school year many spent the year at home taking classes online. One parent we spoke to, agrees.

"They do need to go back to school like I think we all can agree that we made sacrifices, we made some difficult choices, but I do think for their long-term mental health that the socialization and the routine of things is very beneficial and helpful," said Cynthia Headrick, a mother in the Huntsville City Schools system.

Headrick said all of her kids did virtual schooling last year, but being home all the time impacted them.

"Even my two that we're kind of more introverted I could see they need that interaction," said Headrick.

And it wasn't just socialization with peers that her kids were missing out on, but also the connections they had with their teachers.

"We have a very dedicated group of individuals and a lot goes into mentoring our kids. It's not just teaching them A, B, and C. And some of those relationships just can't, it's just not as connected when you're virtual," said Headrick.

With so many changes happening during the coronavirus pandemic, a North Alabama child psychiatrist said he saw more anxiety and tension than normal in his patients last year.

"A lot of kids were having a hard time being able to stay focused on their work. A lot of kids were missing being able to have time with their friends. A lot of kids had a hard time sticking to a regular schedule and had more trouble getting along with their siblings and their parents," said Dr. Timothy Whalen, a North Alabama child psychiatrist.

But he said kids returning to school will have a positive effect on their mental health.

"I think everyone's going to enjoy getting to go back," said Whalen.

"I also think that it's going to be beneficial," said Headrick.

Whalen said with kids returning to in-person learning they will have a lot more structure to their day than virtual learning and he said structure is something we all need.
Hundreds of positions are still available within Huntsville City Schools.

With classes starting in two weeks, the district is using a staffing company to fill vacant positions.

The staffing company, Spur, is hosting the job fair at Huntsville West. For one recent Grissom High School graduate, he's taking advantage of the opportunity and is returning back to his former school district.

"I started talking with them and I let them know a little bit about myself," said Pavel Cote. "I gave them my resume and from there they talked about the responsibilities of some certain jobs, what I was going to do and they let me choose."

The staffing company is looking to hire efficient workers but also do so on a tight timeline.

"Were worried about getting good, quality workers, of course," said Aimee Rush, Senior Workforce Speaclisit for Spur. "Were also worried about the vacancies that we have because there is still such a shortage of workforce."

Five hundred to 600 non-certified positions are available. Rush said this is typical for the beginning of a school year.

Available positions include food service workers, custodians, special education aides, campus security, substitutes, and warehouse positions.

Spur said people did leave their positions due to the pandemic.

"We did lose a lot of people due to covid, who went out and found other industries to work in," said Rush. "So were really working hard to ramp up and re-staff for Huntsville."

People can walk into the job fair without a job and walk out employed. Cote said he appreciates the flexibility and that no experience is needed.

"A lot of high-paying jobs require a bachelor's degree or higher, so for right now, its great and a lot of people who are young or are in high school can get a nice good job," said Cote.

The job fair is offering on-site interviews, help with onboarding tasks, and is hiring employees on the spot.

Pay ranges from $10.25 to $14 an hour.

You can apply, here. The job fair continues Tuesday at Huntsville West from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The state brought 6 new witnesses to the stand on Tuesday during the second day of testimony in Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakelys corruption trial.

One of the witnesses brought to the stand was John Plunk. He's a local attorney in Athens, as well as the Vice Chairman of the Alabama Ethics Commission. On top of that, during his testimony he says he is long time friend and supporter of Sheriff Blakely.

He said he has supported Blakely every time he's run for sheriff.

The state dug into this, asking if he supported Blakely's re-election by funding his advertising from Red Brick Strategies.

The owner of Red Brick Strategies, Trent Willis, testified he and Plunk had an agreement back in 2014 that Plunk would pay $3,500 a month for campaign advertising.

Willis said the reason Plunk paid the fee instead of Blakely's campaign fund was because Blakely is a democrat, and Red Brick Strategies mainly represents republicans. So, Willis thought it would be best if a third party paid the fees.

But on Tuesday, Plunk said he does not remember agreeing to pay Willis $3,500 a month, and there is no contractual agreement between the two.

The state showed five checks from June to October of 2014 as evidence. Three of the checks are from Plunk personally, made out to Red Brick Strategies for $3,500.

The other two checks are from EMM-DEE Drugs, a drug store in Athens owned by Plunk's father in law. But Plunk said he was not involved in writing those checks.

Plunk said he was doing work for two other candidates at the time, so he can't recall why he was paying Red Brick Strategies and could not confirm it was for Blakely's campaign.

During the defense's cross examination, they asked if Blakely had ever asked Plunk to lie or conceal facts about this case. Plunk responded "absolutely not." He said he's never known Blakely to be dishonest in 40 years.
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Heres a surefire combination for cooling down kids during these sunny, sweltering days: Take them to one of these free splash pads to frolic in jets of water, then get a frozen treat at a nearby shop. We found 13 spots around the area where you can do both within a short walk or a quick drive, to make this an easy, fun summer outing.
Appearing Tuesday during her first congressional hearing since being sworn in three weeks ago, OConnell said the stockpile, which her agency oversees, has 17 times as many protective gloves and eight times as many other types of masks. All the N95 masks are now made in the United States, she said, rather than relying on imports that were subject to global competition when federal officials sought to build up supplies during spring 2020.
Climate change has made the West much warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make weather more extreme and wildfires more frequent and destructive. Firefighters said these conditions in July are more typical of late summer or fall.
We always want more data and would always like to sequence more samples. The biggest challenge right now is, testing volume is really low. Theres not as many people testing positive, so we dont know how many people out there are asymptomatic and not being captured and sequenced.
The terms of the settlement will address those concerns with policy changes aimed at making the promotion process more fair, and will clearly state the possible punishments for those who engage in racist or discriminatory conduct, and prohibiting officers from using race, ethnicity or national origin to make policing decisions. One revised policy will clarify the severe discipline to which supervisors are subject if they do not properly fulfill their duties during use-of-force reviews.
He was an easygoing, sociable and fast cartoonist, Danish journalist David Trads, who worked with Mr. Westergaard during the 1990s, told Politiken. As well as the flamboyant clothes, he had red hair and a big wild beard so he was a physical presence. He was open-minded, a searcher, and he tried to meet those who were really after him. . . . He believed everyone should be allowed to say and draw what they want.
Initially, we were challenged by an upsurge in inmate positive cases, but as a result of our mitigation strategies and lessons learned, we were able to flatten the curve, both at our hotspots and in our institutions nationwide, the Bureau of Prisons was quoted as saying in the report. It is our highest priority to continue to do everything we can to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in our facilities.
Researchers used data from the Programme for International Student Assessment, a survey of over 1 million 15- and 16-year-old students. The survey included a six-item measure of loneliness at school in 2000, 2003, 2012, 2015 and 2018. Before 2012, the trends had stayed relatively flat. But between 2012 and 2018, nearly twice as many teens displayed high elevated levels of school loneliness, an established predictor of depression and mental health issues. (The study did not cover the period of the coronavirus pandemic, which also may have affected teen well-being.)
Fairfax County Public Schools has proposed building a parking lot for the school on a narrow two-acre strip of parkland  a step it says is necessary to allow for the schools expansion. But officials have run into opposition from community members who have signed petitions and filled Zoom meetings pressing the school to abandon the plan, saying theyve been left out of the process.
We were terrified over whether he would act in this way, and we were also concerned for our own personal safety, Stanton-Hoyle said. Forty-eight hours it took until finally someone was able to come. By that time, our son had calmed down.
Its one thing to have a standard for nondisclosure on Internet service providers who are third parties and dont really have any interest in disclosing, and another thing to have a rule that applies to anyone and everyone, he said. Its not clear how often the government would use this, but whenever you adopt a clear rule allowing something, its always possible it will increase the number of such gag orders.
Weisselberg, who is said to have been in the know on all of the Trump Organizations financial transactions for decades, has declined to cooperate with prosecutors, who believe he could be key in building a case against the former president, people familiar with the case have said.
Typically, it is difficult for Congress to come up with veto-proof majorities to block presidential action. That was also the case in 2019, when Trump declared a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border, to enable him to divert billions of dollars in military construction funds by fiat to build a wall. The new bill from Murphy, Lee and Sanders would curtail any national emergency that Congress does not approve within 30 days, and it would limit Congresss authorizations of such emergencies to one year at a time, with a total limit of five years.
Justice and CBP officials would not comment on the lawsuit beyond the court documents. In response to a Michigan ACLU racial profiling report that found CBP overwhelmingly arrested people of color in the state, the agency said it prohibits consideration of race or ethnicity in law enforcement . . . in all but the most exceptional circumstances and is fully committed to the fair, impartial and respectful treatment of all members of the trade and traveling public.
The four officers  Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell of the U.S. Capitol Police, and Michael Fanone and Daniel Hodges of the D.C. police  each experienced physical and verbal abuse from the rioters who stormed the Capitol. Each has also criticized those who have tried to minimize the seriousness of the attack and the objectives of rioters, who besieged Congress as lawmakers were gathered to certify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election.
The Vermont company, which its founders, both Jewish, sold to the British company Unilever two decades ago, said it would not renew the contract of its Israeli licensee, which expires at the end of 2022, because the licensee sells Ben & Jerrys ice cream in what the company calls occupied areas.
Mondays protesters wore sashes with the groups demands emblazoned on them  demands also outlined in a statement signed by 100 women leaders from across the country. They had four: to end the filibuster; to pass all the provisions of the For the People Act; to fully restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act; and to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.
In an article published Monday, the EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency said it had received an offer in 2018 from individuals who claimed to have access to technology capable of tracking priests who download dating apps. While the news organization said it declined the proposal at the time, it warned in Mondays article that there are reports this week that information targeting allegedly active homosexual priests may become public. The article did not mention Burrill.
In a conversation with RNS, Lapeyre said he had been trying to interpret what the law required during the meeting. What I meant by saying that she did not have to report was not to say that she should not, but to say that she was not required to . In other words, as a parent, it was up to her discretion, said Lapeyre. He said that after the meeting he encouraged Cherin to report the abuse allegations.
The resolution, adopted 462-78 with 18 abstentions, reads: We affirm that the continued oppression of the Palestinian people remains, after more than five decades of oppression of the Palestinian people, a matter of theological urgency and represents a sin in violation of the message of the biblical prophets and the Gospel, and that all efforts to defend or legitimate the oppression of the Palestinian people, whether passive or active, through silence, word, or deed by the Christian community, represent a fundamental denial of the Gospel.
I am near to the dear Cuban people in these difficult moments, in particular to those families suffering the most. I pray that the Lord might help the nation build a society that is more just and more fraternal through peace, dialogue and solidarity, Francis said on Sunday (July 18) amid the loud cheers of expats proudly waving their Cuban flags in St. Peters Square.
Our Lady of La Vang is said to have appeared in a remote rainforest in the late 1700s to a group of Catholics fleeing persecution in Vietnam. She became a centerpiece of Catholic faith in the country, and, after the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975  when more than a million Vietnamese became refugees  her intercession was credited with sparing the lives of her devotees.
The former aide referred to Conservative Party lawmakers as morons and civil servants as duffers. Cummings told the BBC that he and a cadre of a few dozen rebels considered trying to push Johnson from office after his landslide win in the 2019 election. Asked what he hoped would happen now, Cummings said he still wants to see Johnson replaced: The sooner he goes, the better.
Ive worn many hats over the years, both literally and figuratively, he said, and my hope is that in telling my story  the highs and lows, the mistakes, the lessons learned  I can help show that no matter where we come from, we have more in common than we think.
Henry, a neurosurgeon and former Cabinet minister, has promised to form a provisional consensus government to lead Haiti until elections are held. He said he has already met with various unidentified actors as well as civil society and the private sector. He pledged to re-establish order and security and confidence in the government as well as fight corruption, make COVID-19 vaccines available to all, restart the economy and create a credible and transparent elections system.
Hundreds of Peruvians from various regions camped out for more than a month in front of the Electoral Tribunal in Lima, Perus capital, to await Castillos proclamation. Many do not belong to Castillos party, but they trust the professor because he will not be like the other politicians who have not kept their promises and do not defend the poor, said Maruja Inquilla, an environmental activist who arrived from a town near Titicaca, the mythical lake of the Incas.
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Under his reign at Nine from 1991 to 2001, the network had only six weeks where it didnt win the ratings, allowing it to boast over and over again it was Still the One. He maintained the successful formula of his predecessor, making sure the network was dominating news and current affairs as well as sport, and taking Nine to its biggest wins through the 1990s. David Leckie at Machiavelli Restaurant, Sydney, back in 2014. Credit:Janie Barrett He had much in common with his TV-passionate boss, the late Kerry Packer: Both were over 6 feet tall, imposing with the frame of a rugby player and a take-no-prisoners approach. According to former 60 Minutes executive producer Gerald Stone, Leckie was the only one tall enough to stare Kerry down during their tempestuous confrontations, and he had the granite resolve to go with his stature. A hard-working, hard-living executive, he was renowned for opening Nines office watering hole, The Bar, at the end of a long working day.

Leckie eventually stumbled at Nine over a new ratings system introduced in 2001, whose methodology chipped away at the networks lead against its rivals, Seven and Ten. Summoned to Park Street from a holiday on Palm Beach, he was told his services were no longer required and that Kerry Packer no longer wanted him there. In the months that followed, many had written off Leckie as part of TV history, with no vacancies available for his main talent, which was running a network. Spending more time with his second wife, Skye, who he met when she was head of public relations at David Jones and married in 1995, and their two sons, Harry and Ben, he dabbled in some consulting work and waited for another chance. It came in 2003 when over coffee Stokes offered him the opportunity to run his then struggling television network. Leckie was back - with a chance to avenge himself against his former employer, Nine. David Leckie, left, and Seven West Media chairman Kerry Stokes. Credit:Nine During his first few months at Seven, things got worse before they got better. The networks audience share plunged to a 13-year low in 2004, with most of its new programs bombing spectacularly. Leckie was reported to be severely bleak and close to the way out, when he became what he later called Lucky Leckie.

After years of mediocre product, an output deal with Disney handed him the hottest US shows for 2005, Desperate Housewives and Lost. Add to that Lleyton Hewitts entering the mens final of the Australian Open tennis in January, he had the perfect platform to market Sevens new programs to millions of viewers. Crucial to Leckies success at Seven was the realisation that it should no longer try to copy Nine, but aim for a more laid-back and daggier suburban audience - heartland Australia. We thought Seven should become like Nine, but were not Nine. Were heartland Australia. The key to our success is being comfortable with what we are, he said. Leckie established a reputation as a loudmouth larrikin, who was known for his colourful language and could be bold and explosive, but also charming and entertaining. His hard-drinking, heavy-swearing ways were the stuff of TV legend, and his exit from the industry marked what Chisholm described as an end to a swashbuckling era where executives were colourful characters. David was a man of many idiosyncrasies, Hartigan says. Not suffering fools was high among them. Anyone on the end of a Leckie blast remembers the moment - maybe not the advice but certainly the bollocking.

At an annual TV industry love-in in Cannes he gave a now legendary, expletive-filled speech which left no doubt as to what he thought of the French seaside town and the international TV executives. Welcome freeloaders and dinosaurs, was how he started, abusing the Americans and telling the Poms present that they had the worlds worst television and were totally up themselves. Five minutes after the wedding ceremony of his long-time employee, Sevens former head of government and regulatory affairs Bridget Fair, Leckie stood up unsolicited in front of the crowd to announce he was moving things along because it was getting boring. He didnt shy away from what he thought of his rivals, either. In his time at Seven, Leckie would often get the name wrong of then Ten boss Grant Blackley in interviews, describing him as Gert Clackley, Bert Brackley and Greg Cackley. Former Seven boss Tim Worner says Leckie was such a huge character that he was described as a danger to shipping.

We called him Big Wave (Dave) and it was a very appropriate nickname, Worner says. He was completely fearless and that in turn brought you so much confidence. He made television an adrenaline sport, a sport we were very, very lucky to play with him. Loading Leckie loved long-lunch and a drink or two, but his life became more complicated after he injured his finger in 2008. The injury led to septicemia and he was put into a medically induced coma in Sydneys St Vincents Private Hospital. He formally stepped down as CEO of Seven in 2012, four years on from that life-threatening experience to focus on his health. He stayed on as a consultant from Seven owner Kerry Stokes until 2016 and spent his time working on other projects and interests such as his passion for rugby union - Leckie served as a board director at Easts Rugby Club - and his farm. But television remained his main passion and Leckie was brought back to Seven in March 2020 to act as a mentor to the networks executive including his protege, chief executive James Warburton.
Ms Saffioti consistently denied the disclosure was purposely delayed, saying it would be inappropriate to comment. Nathan Blackburne, managing director of Cedar Woods. Credit: When questioned about it on March 11, she scoffed at suggestions Cedar Woods had been given an indication their proposal had been approved and said decision-making had been halted because the government was in caretaker mode. But Cedar Woods was told its Swanbourne proposal was progressing on February 5, meaning Labors cabinet  including Ms Saffioti  would have approved it before caretaker conventions came into effect on February 3.

Shadow planning minister Neil Thomson said this thinking was actually counter to the principles of caretaker mode because it was a decision that was made by cabinet prior to February 3. It should have been made transparent straight away so that at least there was some sort of ability to factor in that decision in the formation of whatever government, he said. The emails reveal the Department of Finance had drafted wording for the disclosure on its website by February 15. That wording was almost identical to what was eventually published on March 19. On February 18, someone senior from Cedar Woods flagged he would send the Department of Finances advisory services team an email with their ASX announcement attached. He said it was planned for a pre-9am release for the next day. A few hours later, the department emailed back stating that because the government was in caretaker period, with the election imminent, the content and timing of the release was referred to the MLP steering committee for their next meeting on February 25, and they would update Cedar Woods after then.

On March 5, the Department of Finance emailed Cedar Woods with wording for the ASX release and website disclosure and said once both parties were comfortable with them they would be sent back to the MLP steering committee for endorsement to release. Six days later, the day of WAtodays first story on the issue, Cedar Woods responded that it was happy. The department told them they would request the steering committee endorse the release via an out of session approval, which could take a week. At 7.40am on March 19 the department emailed Cedar Woods to tell them the disclosure information had been endorsed and would be released at 3pm that afternoon. Caretaker conventions set out that the immediate lead-up to an election the government should avoid entering into major contracts, undertakings and policy decisions, and government agencies should not add material to their websites unless there is public interest in doing so.

There is no rule explicitly banning the public disclosure of decisions already made by cabinet. Minister Rita Saffioti. Credit:AAP Responding to a series of questions from WAtoday last week, Ms Saffioti again said she was not involved in the timing of the announcement, and it would have been inappropriate to pre-empt the actions of the MLP committee because the government was in caretaker mode. The independent MLP steering committee liaised with this proponent on when this announcement could be made public, she said. Ms Saffioti said the government adopted a recommendation from the department that a master plan be undertaken for the area. This will be led by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage, the Public Transport Authority and Main Roads.

The Public Transport Authority is currently undertaking a rail corridor assessment which needs to be completed before the masterplan process can begin, she said. Loading This master plan will be developed in conjunction with the community and local council and will look at the roads, rail and Metronet planning. Cedar Woods managing director Nathan Blackburne said the company was proud to have been granted first mover status and awaited the outcome of stage two. Cedar Woods has engaged with the lead agency to understand the proposed steps and timeframe for the next stage of the process, and should the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritages due-diligence confirm development is feasible, Cedar Woods looks forward to re-engaging in the Market-led Proposal process, he said.

Probity warning WAtoday can also reveal Cedar Woods attempted to set up a briefing with Ms Saffioti two months after being warned by the Department of Finance any request could risk the probity or integrity of the proposal. On March 20, Cedar Woods emailed the department requesting separate meetings with Ms Saffioti and the department to discuss suggestions in relation to the process from here. The department responded on March 22 with a warning. As you(sic) proposal is within a live process, briefing any Ministers would be inappropriate at this time and place the probity of this process at risk, a department bureaucrat said.
Another red flag is that the process is really open to undue influence and feels of deals being done that potentially just benefit special interest groups and their commercial interests, rather than an infrastructure project being considered and designed that is really in the public interest. When projects are fast-tracked in approval processes, then we know that it can result in cost blowouts. It can have adverse impacts that last decades and it can result in potentially dodgy operators getting a green light. It just reeks of a system that is going to result in public consultation and community consultation being compromised. Transparency International Australia CEO Serena Lillywhite The opaqueness of MLPs was revealed by WAtoday in the case of developer Cedar Woods, which knew a proposal for a high density apartment complex in the western suburbs had progressed through the process by February 5 this year, but wasnt allowed to announce the news until after the March 13 state election. The government said the delay was because caretaker conventions were in place, but sources close to the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity said it was because the government wanted to avoid political heat for a potentially controversial project before the election.

Ms Lillywhite criticised the lack of explicit requirements for public and environmental consultation within the policy and said only those assessing proposals had the full picture. It just reeks of a system that is going to result in public consultation and community consultation being compromised, she said. But a Department of Finance spokeswoman said the policy did not replace applicable environmental and planning assessment processes or other regulatory requirements. This includes any requirements for public consultation, she said. A spokesman for Finance Minister Tony Buti defended the policy and said it was an innovative pathway for businesses and the government to work together to create jobs and stimulate the economy.

MLPs allow the government to harness good ideas, private sector investment and entrepreneurship to develop projects that benefit Western Australians, he said. The MLP policy provides a single clear, consistent and transparent process for parties seeking to approach government with proposals. These will offer opportunities to deliver real value and innovation to the government and the Western Australian community. All states have versions of market-led proposal policies. While the majority of proposals wither and die, some resulted in some of the biggest infrastructure projects in Australias history. Victoria has awarded four contacts resulting from market-led proposals since 2015, including the $4 billion West Gate Tunnel project.

New South Wales has completed six unsolicited proposals, including Crowns beleaguered Barangaroo hotel and casino. The Crown example was one Ms Lillywhite pointed to as a worst-case scenario of an unsolicited bid resulting in poor outcomes for the broader community. What are market-led proposals? MLPs were born under the Barnett governments Unsolicited Bid Guideline moniker in January 2016 with a focus on the purchase or lease of crown land for developments. The most famous proposal put forward under that process was the failed bid to build a world trade centre in Northbridge.

In 2019, the McGowan government expanded the policy to include any idea under the sun to be managed by the Department of Finance.

Proposals are assessed by a steering committee made up of the heads of several government departments who, in most cases, provide recommendations to the Cabinet on whether they warrant exclusive negotiation rights with the government.

Initially, there were four stages a proposal needed to overcome before gaining exclusive negotiation rights, but changes to the policy in March 2020 reduced that to three.

A first mover advantage was also introduced, which means if the proponent demonstrated a good idea but not to an exclusive negotiation level, they would get an advantage in any open tender process if the government pursued the idea.

In August 2020, the WA government introduced problem and opportunity statements, whereby the government puts a call out for private solutions to public problems. In a Four Corners episode in May, the former chair of NSWs own liquor and gaming authority Chris Sidoti criticised the process for not including a judicial review of whether Sydney needed a second casino, and took aim at the government for not engaging in an open tender process. In WA, the state government has received 58 market-led proposals. Twenty-eight have been declined while seven have made it to stage two, two have made it to stage three.

A pilot program to manufacture hand sanitiser dispensers for high-traffic public places by Henderson-based plastics manufacturer Matrix Composites is the only project to have been completed. Loading Developer Hesperia has so far been the most prolific user of the policy with three proposals progressed past stage one, including a Fremantle film studio pitched through its subsidiary Home Fire Creative Industries. It is also behind a proposal to engineer an odour scrubber for the Subiaco waste treatment plant, which would open up opportunities to develop land on and around the nearby Graylands Hospital for residential development. Ms Lillywhite said MLPs could be improved with stricter transparency guidelines but ultimately they were not necessary for a government that had a clear vision.
Damascus: Israel carried out an aerial attack southeast of Syrias northern Aleppo province late Monday, a Syrian military official said.

The unidentified military official, quoted by the state news agency SANA, said Syrian air defences shot down most of the missiles in the attack that occurred just before midnight. The targets are still being identified, the official said.

Explosions in Aleppo.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor that has activists on the ground in Syria, said the Israeli strikes targeted weapons depots that belong to Iranian-backed militia operating in Aleppos Safira region.

The group said the strikes were followed by loud explosions.
FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2016, file photo, an Aedes aegypti mosquito known to carry the Zika virus, is photographed through a microscope at the Fiocruz institute in Recife, Pernambuco state, Brazil. Sometime next year, genetically modified mosquitoes will be released in the Florida Keys in an effort to combat persistent insect-borne diseases such as Dengue fever and the Zika virus. The plan approved Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2020, by the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District calls for a pilot project in 2021 involving the striped-legged Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is not native to Florida. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)
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I cover a range of stories for WDRB, but really enjoy tracking what's going on at our State Capitol. I grew up on military bases all over the world, but am a Kentuckian at heart. I'm an EKU alum, and have lived in Louisville for 30 years.
Officer Ryan Holland, of the Lexington Police Department, poses with 10-year-old Learis Jones and her four-year-old sister, who were selling snacks in their front yard to raise money for a vacation. (Source: LEX 18)
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American Academy of Pediatrics recommends masks in schools for everyone over 2, regardless of vaccinations


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El Paso Democrat Joe Moody was stripped of his title as speaker pro tem after breaking quorum with other House Democrats on Monday to prevent debate on a GOP priority bill on elections.
GAS CITY, Ind. (AP)  A man apparently fatally shot his wife and then himself in an SUV operated by a relative who drove the bodies to a northeastern Indiana town hall, police said.

Eric Huffman, 48, and Telina Huffman, 43, of Marion, were found dead from apparent gunshot wounds Monday afternoon in the SUV outside the Gas City Town Hall, Indiana State Police said. Autopsies were pending.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Protests against poverty and inequality resumed on Colombia's independence day Tuesday as President Ivan Duque presented a $4 billion tax plan aimed at helping the government pay for social programs and pandemic-related expenses.

Thousands joined in marches in Colombias main cities while Duque outlined to congress his governments achievements and presented a tax plan for financing subsidies to low income families that have been out of work during the pandemic.

The new plan is smaller than a $6.3 billion package that was presented in April and set off huge protests across Colombia, in which dozens of people were killed. The new proposal places a higher tax burden on companies earnings while discarding a previous proposal to impose sales taxes on basic items like coffee and salt.

Protesters said the new plan does not do enough to boost spending on education and job creation in Colombia, where the economy contracted 7% last year and pushed an additional 3 million people into poverty, according to the national statistics department.

Protests continue because President Duque has not solved any of the problems faced by Colombian society, said Francisco Maltes, president of the Central Union of Workers, one of the groups that has led anti-government demonstrations.

His union is part of a coalition of unions and student groups that plans to present congress with 10 proposals on addressing Colombia's social and economic crisis. These include dissolving the nations riot police as well as creating a basic income program that would make monthly payments of $260 to 10 million people.

The governments subsidy program currently provides monthly payments of $40 to 3 million families that are struggling to get by in the country of 50 million inhabitants. The new tax plan seeks to maintain these payments, provide subsidies to companies that hire workers aged 18 to 28, and also finance university tuition for low and middle income students.

At Tuesdays demonstrations, which were noticeably smaller than those in April and May, protesters also said they want justice for youths killed recently by police. Human Rights Watch says it has gathered evidence linking police to the slaying of 25 protesters during the recent wave of demonstrations, while local organizations say the number could be higher.

Our country is in mourning said Atala Ojeda, a pensioner who joined one of the marches in Bogota, carrying a Colombian flag with a black ribbon. Every month we are losing young people and social leaders.
Love means you never have to say youre sorry, or so Ali MacGraw and Ryan ONeal told us in the 1970 motion picture Love Story. But over a half-century later, the love of money has Hollywood falling all over itself to apologize to communist China.
Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter announced the promotion of Master Trooper Brian LaRoche to the rank of Sergeant, Monday evening.

According to the press release, Sergeant LaRoche achieved the rank through a competitive promotion process including a written test, oral interview, and overall job performance review.

Sergeant LaRoche is a native of Huntingburg, Indiana, and a 1991 graduate of Southridge High School. After high school, LaRoche served in the United States Army from 1991 to 1993. LaRoche also served in the Indiana National Guard until 1999.

LaRoche attended Vincennes University and graduated in 1996. Before joining the Indiana State Police, LaRoche worked as a reserve officer for Huntingburg Police Department and as a jailer for the Dubois County Sheriffs Department. He was selected to attend the 58th Indiana State Police Recruit Academy and was sworn in as a Trooper in December 1999. LaRoche's first duty assignment was to the Connorsville District until he transferred to the Jasper District in 2001.

Sergeant LaRoche will mentor and supervise a squad of troopers assigned to the Jasper Post in his new position.
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NASA has been bringing the public into space through its beautiful and revelatory Image and Video Library. Of the more than 140,000 images and audio and video clips, here's a look at 30 of the most breathtaking.

TownNews.com Content Exchange

30 breathtaking images from NASA's public library The moon from Apollo 11 Earth from the International Space Station Hurricanes on Earth Shuttle space walk Shuttle in silhouette Eruption on the sun Raikoke volcano eruption Rover selfie Cargo craft docks John Young on the moon Canadian aurora Helix Nebula The cracking Brunt Ice Shelf Cassinis capture of Saturn The heart of Madagascar The last landing The eye of the hurricane International Space Station Watercolor of the sea The Great Red Spot of Jupiter Monument Valley Flying through an aurora Pillars of Creation Total eclipse of the sun Untethered in space Marbled Pluto The wild river Supermassive black hole The space selfie An SLS test article

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ROCKY HILL, CT (WFSB) - Local leaders in Rocky Hill are trying to figure out how to curb juvenile crime.

Its a problem thats been a hot topic among communities and lawmakers across Connecticut.

Rocky Hill police Chief Michael Custer said he has increased manpower to try and protect the public, but local leaders across the state really believe something needs to change at the state level to solve the problem.

Rocky Hill police said car thefts and break-ins are on the rise and many of the perpetrators are children. Juvenile crime has spiked this year in communities across Connecticut.

Monday night, Rocky Hill became the latest community to host a public forum on the issue with local leaders, police, and members of the public. Leaders in several communities have been pushing for a special session among lawmakers solely dedicated to juvenile crime.

At Mondays meeting, members of the public said they were fed up and that something needed to change.

We're fearful for our safety, said Steve Harvey of Rocky Hill. People are scared, they're nervous, they're mad and they're really friggin angry.

Rocky Hill is not the only town dealing with the issue.

Southington, Glastonbury and Manchester have already hosted similar forums and more are planned.
A job performance review from last month shows a supervisor praised Tennessee's former vaccine director for strong leadership before a top Tennessee health official on July 9 recommended firing her over claims that include shortcomings in her leadership
Quincy, IL (62301)

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Except for a few afternoon clouds, mainly sunny. High near 90F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

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Nature, Climate and Energy Social Media Internship, Home based,

Organization: UNDP - United Nations Development Programme

Country: Home-based

Closing date: Sunday, 25 July 2021

Nature, Climate and Energy Social Media Internship

Location : Home Based, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Application Deadline : 25-Jul-21

(Midnight New York, USA)

Additional Category : Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction

Type of Contract : Internship

Post Level : Intern

Languages Required : English

Starting Date : (date when the selected candidate is expected to start)

09-Aug-2021

Duration of Initial Contract : 6 months

Expected Duration of Assignment : 6 months

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

UNDP is the knowledge frontier organization for sustainable development in the UN Development System and serves as the integrator for collective action to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDPs policy work is carried out through a network of advisors and specialists located at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, to ensure that local knowledge and context specific expertise is linked to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. In this context, UNDP provides its policy advisory and programme support functions through the Global Policy Network (GPN), a network of field-based and global technical expertise across a wide range of knowledge domains, in support of the signature solutions and organizational capabilities envisioned in the Strategic Plan. Within the GPN, the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) has the responsibility for developing all relevant policy and guidance to support the results of UNDPs Strategic Plan and works closely with the Crisis Bureau (CB) that has the responsibility to guide and implement UNDPs corporate crisis-related strategies and vision for crisis prevention, response and recovery. The Nature, Climate and Energy Team as part of the GPN, supports countries to promotes and scales up integrated whole-of-governance approaches and nature-based solutions that reduce poverty and inequalities, strengthen livelihoods and inclusive growth, mitigate conflict, forced migration and displacement, and promote more resilient governance systems that advance linked peace and security agendas.

The NCE Team works with governments, civil society, and private sector partners to integrate natural capital, environment and climate concerns into national and sector planning and inclusive growth policies; support country obligations under Multilateral Environmental Agreements; and implement the UNs largest portfolio of in-country programming on environment, climate change, and energy. This multi-billion dollar portfolio encompasses: Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services including forests; Sustainable Land Management and Desertification including food and commodity systems; Water and Ocean Governance including SIDS; Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation; Renewable and Modern Energy; Extractive Industries; Chemicals and Waste Management; Environmental Governance and Green/Circular Economy and SCP approaches. This work advances crosscutting themes on innovative finance, digital transformation, capacity development, human rights, gender equality, health, technology, and South-South learning.

In addition to UNDPs bilateral partnerships on natural capital, environment and climate, UNDP is an accredited multilateral implementing agency of the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the Multilateral Fund (MLF), and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) which includes the Global Environment Facility Trust Fund (GEF Trust Fund); the Nagoya Protocol Implementation Fund (NPIF); the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF); and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF). As part of UNDPs partnership with these vertical funds, UNDP provides countries specialized integrated technical services for eligibility assessment, programme formulation, capacity development, policy advice, technical assistance, training and technology transfer, mobilization of co-financing, implementation oversight, results management and evaluation, performance-based payments and knowledge management services.

The NCE Team is looking for a social media intern to shape the teams social media strategy, support the management of social media channels, create compelling content, and lead the social media monitoring and measurement strategy.

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the supervision of the Strategic Communications Specialist and Director of NCE, the intern will dynamically support the social media presence within NCE and in collaboration with other teams within UNDP:

shaping the NCE teams social media strategy;

research, develop and draft compelling content for corporate and senior leadership accounts across different social media channels;

support thematic teams in improving their social media performance;

create social media videos using Lumen5 software;

create social media graphics and gifs using Adobe and/or Canva;

identify and share new social media features, trends and opportunities;

contribute to the ideation of new digital and social media campaigns;

prepare and present weekly performance reports using Hootsuite and Meltwater analytics;

identify thematic thought leaders and influencers;

manage the UNDP Climate Twitter schedule;

maintain the NCE editorial calendar;

participate and contribute to NCE communications task force meetings.

Competencies

Corporate

Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UNs values and ethical standards;

Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;

Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;

Treats all people fairly without favouritism;

Be passionate about nature, climate change, and energy issues.

Professionalism

Works toward creative solutions by analyzing problems carefully and logically;

Has a dynamic, positive and adaptive attitude towards work-related challenges;

Facilitates discussions and meetings effectively and efficiently;

Enjoys learning new skills and solving problems;

Resolves conflicts as they arise;

Sets priorities, produces quality outputs, meets deadlines and manages time efficiently;

Highly organized, detailed oriented.

Communication

Writes and presents clearly and convincingly;

Tags biodiversity capacity development climate change climate change mitigation collective action developed countries displacement ecosystem services editor environmental agreements extractive industries financial assistance forced migration graphic design green climate fund human rights internship journalism knowledge management land management least developed countries management services media monitoring natural capital ocean governance peace and security poverty reduction public relations sdgs south south strategic communication sustainable development sustainable development goals sustainable land management technology transfer waste management

Enjoys working in a team.

Required Skills and Experience

Education Applicants to the UNDP internship programme must at the time of application meet one of the following requirements:

Be enrolled in a postgraduate degree programme (such as a Masters program or higher) in the fields of Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Graphic Design, Journalism or related;

Be enrolled in the final academic year of a first university degree program (such as Bachelors degree or equivalent) in the fields of Communications, Marketing, Public Relations, Graphic Design, Journalism or related;

Have recently graduated with a university degree (as defined in (a) and (b) above) and, if selected, must start the internship within one-year of graduation;

Be enrolled in a postgraduate professional traineeship program and undertake the internship as part of this program

Experience:

Literate in standard programmes (MS office, etc.);

Ability to use a range of social media tools (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, Hootsuite, or equivalent)

Be social media savvy;

Know the latest social media content and platform trends and best practices;

Have experience in analyzing social media analytics;

Have experience in producing compelling social media content;

It is an advantage for applicants to have experience in:

Managing social media channels and engaging with followers using Hootsuite or a similar social media scheduling tools;

Measuring social media performance using Hootsuite, Meltwater or similar tools;

Performing audience segmentations and identifying thought leaders using Meltwater;

Creating basic videos using video editing software;

Developing visual assets in Canva, Adobe Suite or similar software.

Language requirements

Excellent oral and written communication skills in English language is required.

In case an applicant is successfully selected, s/he will be requested to provide electronic versions of:

letter from his/her university confirming current enrollment and graduation date;

letter of recommendation from a professor;

copy of his/her most recent school transcript;

copy of passport;

a copy of US Visa if the intern is not a US Citizen;

completed UNDP internship application form;

signed UNDP Internship Agreement;

Medical Certificate of Good Health;

Proof of medical insurance.

Kindly note the above documentation is required within one week after selection

Institutional Arrangements

The intern will report to the Strategic Communications Specialist and NCE Director based in UNDPs New York office within the Nature, Climate and Energy team.

Interns Expenses

Interns may be given a stipend under conditions prescribed in the section on stipends, below. Costs and arrangements for travel, visas, passports, accommodation and living expenses are the responsibility of: (a) The nominating institution, related institution or government, which may provide the required financial assistance to its students; or

(b) The intern.

Stipend

Where an intern is not financially supported by any institution or programme, such as a university, government, foundation or scholarship programme, a stipend intended to help cover basic daily expenses related to the internship, such as meals and transportation at the duty station, will be paid by UNDP.

The stipend will be paid on a monthly basis and part-time internship arrangements are prorated accordingly.

Where an intern is financially supported by an institution, government or third party, UNDP will, subject to the rules of such institution, government or third party, pay the intern the difference, if any, between the external financial support provided and the applicable UNDP stipend. No other payments of any kind will be made to an intern by the office in connection with an internship agreement.

Interns will accrue leave at the rate of 1.5 days per month. Any accrued leave days not used by the end of the internship will be forfeited. Any unjustified absences during the internship period exceeding a total of nine days, will be deducted from the monthly stipend.

Insurance

Interns are responsible for securing adequate medical insurance for the duration of their internship with UNDP. UNDP will not reimburse the medical insurance of the intern. Any costs arising from accidents and illness incurred during an internship assignment will be the responsibility of the intern. Applicants for internships must show proof of valid medical insurance for the duty station in which they will intern. For applicants which are neither nationals or residents of the duty station, the insurance must include adequate coverage in the event of an injury or illness during the internship duration which:

Requires transportation to the home country or country of residence for further treatment;

Results in death and requires preparation and return of the remains to the home country, or country of residence.

Subsequent Employment

There is no expectation of employment with UNDP following an internship.? Interns cannot apply for, or be appointed to, any position during the period of their internship.

Third-party claims

UNDP is not responsible for any claims by any parties where the loss of or damage to their property, death or personal injury was caused by the actions or omission of action by the interns during their internship.

Click here for important information for US Permanent Residents (Green Card holders).

Link to the organizations job offer: https://unjobs.org/vacancies/1626723744957
Willmar, MN (56201)

Today

Partly cloudy. Hot. High 93F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..

Tonight

Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. Storms may contain strong gusty winds. Low 69F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP)  A new kind of broadband internet is coming to Tuba City on the Navajo Nation, one beamed down from space by so-called satellite constellations.

This technology can provide much-needed internet access in rural areas. But it comes with a dilemma.

The new satellites are so bright and so numerous, astronomers worry about the future of the night sky.

A couple of years ago, a public educator named Victoria Girgis was showing a group of visitors around Flagstaffs Lowell Observatory.

They were looking at a group of galaxies through a telescope.

We were all looking up at the sky of course because it was outside, and thats what you do an observatory, you admire the night sky, Girgis said.

Then she noticed something.

Dots moving across the sky, and they were all following each other in a line, Girgis recalled.

Girgis dashed to the telescope and took a picture, which would end up going viral on the Internet. It captured the first-ever launch of 60 Starlink satellites.

You couldnt see any of the galaxies anymore, you could just see these bright diagonal lines going across the screen, Girgis said.

For many astronomers, that photo was a wakeup call that satellite constellations could be a problem.

Jeff Hall, director of Lowell Observatory, said everyone was caught off guard at how bright the satellites were. Including SpaceX, they were a little taken aback, too, at just how bright they were.

Hall and other astronomers have been working with the company SpaceX to try to find solutions.

Once the satellites reach their final orbit, theyre just at the edge of human vision, but for a major research telescope that is blindingly bright, even a smallish research telescope, Hall said.

And theres so many of them. One hundred thousand new satellites are collectively planned by companies like SpaceX, Amazon, and OneWeb.

Their intent is to bring Internet to underserved rural areas like the Navajo Nation; a goal thats taken on new urgency since the pandemic.

We have so many rural citizens... spread out in so many different areas, there are no other opportunities, said Coconino County spokesperson Matt Fowler. You cant push microwave into some of these areas, you cant run fiber or copper or any other infrastructure, so really (Starlink) is the only option.

More than half of communities on the Navajo Nation lack any broadband access, a stark inequity and a health risk during a pandemic when students couldnt log into online classes and people couldnt apply for jobs from home.

But in Tuba City, 45 households now have internet thanks to a pilot program with Starlink. The homes were chosen because teachers, students, and first responders live there.

On the very first evening that we actually got the equipment on the ground at the households, Fowler said. We received numerous phone calls from people, very emotional, and crying.

This is the dilemma: how do you get desperately needed internet to rural areas while protecting the night sky?

SpaceX is trying to darken their satellites, and Amazon will put its constellation in a low orbit to keep it out of sunlight for most of the night. These are voluntary actions by the companies, not mandated.

John Barentine of the International Dark Sky Association said there arent many rules to regulate space.

The core of this policy is from a time when the concern was who was going to get to the moon first, was it going to be the US or the Soviets?, said Barentine, referring to the Outer Space Treaty signed in 1967 when only a few dozen satellites had been successfully launched into orbit.

The growing numbers of satellites, Barentine said, is putting pressure on this need to more clearly define the roles and responsibilities with respect to managing that sense of orbital space as this commons that belongs to all of us.

One research activity likely to be affected by satellite constellations is the search for asteroids that pose a threat to Earth.

But Barentine also sees philosophical reasons for protecting the night sky.

Theres a longing, theres a sense of connection to the cosmos that is deeply rooted within us, whether we consciously think about it or not, he said.
NEW YORK (AP)  When Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk talks to patients about the COVID-19 vaccine, she tries to feel out where they get their information from.

FILE - In this Aug. 7, 2019, file photo Fox News host Sean Hannity speaks during a taping of his show, "Hannity," in New York. Skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccination is a common theme in media appealing to conservatives, despite assurances from doctors and scientists that the vaccine is safe and effective. On Fox News Channel on Monday, July 19, host Sean Hannity looked straight into the camera to deliver a clear message: It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccinations. Yet Hannity followed up his statement by interviewing a woman protesting her colleges requirement that students be vaccinated, a segment appealing to people skeptical of the immunization push.(AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)

NEW YORK (AP)  When Dr. Alexa Mieses Malchuk talks to patients about the COVID-19 vaccine, she tries to feel out where they get their information from.

Sometimes I feel like the education I have to provide depends on what news channel that they watch, the doctor in Durham, North Carolina, said.

The mixed messaging can come from the same media outlet  and even the same source. On Fox News Channel on Monday, host Sean Hannity looked straight into the camera to deliver a clear message: It absolutely makes sense for many Americans to get vaccinated. I believe in science. I believe in the science of vaccinations.

Yet Hannity followed up his statement by interviewing a woman protesting her colleges requirement that students be vaccinated, a segment appealing to people skeptical of the immunization push. His prime-time colleagues, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, opened their own programs by questioning vaccination efforts.

Skepticism about the COVID-19 vaccination is a common theme in media appealing to conservatives, despite assurances from doctors and scientists that the vaccine is safe and effective. Some medical experts worry that conflicting takes and outright distrust of the vaccine shown by influential media personalities contribute to a failure to meet inoculation goals aimed at arresting the pandemic.

Two recent exchanges in recent days on Fox News Channels popular morning show, Fox & Friends, illustrated the mixed messaging.

During a discussion of Los Angeles Countys decision to reinstate mandates to wear masks indoors, even if people are vaccinated, guest host Lawrence Jones said, People are saying, Why get the vaccine if youre not going to return to normal? Whats the use of doing it? Why?

Well, you wont die, colleague Steve Doocy replied. Thats a good reason.

Doocy, arguably Foxs most influential figure arguing in favor of vaccinations, also took on co-host Brian Kilmeade on Monday when he said people should not be judged if they decide not to get the shot. Doocy responded that the vast majority of people who are dying of COVID-19 are unvaccinated.

Thats their choice, Kilmeade replied.

Several personalities on Fox News Channel  including Bill Hemmer, Dana Perino, Bret Baier, Greg Gutfeld and the three-member Fox & Friends morning team  have been vaccinated and publicized their status. Rupert Murdoch, the networks founder, has been jabbed, too.

The prime-time hosts, who consistently have the biggest audience, keep their status to themselves, although Hannity has said he was going to get vaccinated. Carlson, when asked directly by two journalists whether hes been vaccinated, responded by asking their favorite sex position  his way of saying its too personal a question.

Even casual consumers of media targeting conservatives over the past few months absorb a deep skepticism about the vaccines.

Malchuk says some patients who are happy to take her advice on, say, diabetes medication, have resisted her encouragement that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective in warding off serious illness.

I see people polarized in terms of where they get their information, from whom they get it and, yes, it is politically charged, she said.

Dr. Laura Morris, who works in an area of Missouri that has seen a surge in COVID-19 infections, said that she had hoped for less polarization and that more people would have responded to seeing the positive effect of vaccines.

There are a lot of things out there that are harmful to public health right now, she said. Anything out there that says vaccines are not good for you, that is false.

Social media and the internet are major factors in what U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned last week was an alarming flow of disinformation about the vaccines.

Doctors like Malchuk and Morris, who regularly sees patients in Fulton, Missouri, suspect the internet is behind the more outlandish theories that they dispel  that the vaccines cause cancer, damage fertility or contain microchips.

Most themes on talk radio or television networks like Fox, Newsmax or One America News are more subtle or philosophical.

The vaccine is experimental, still not fully approved, is one line of attack. Wait and see. Theres no reason for young people to get it. Natural immunity is better. Its none of your business what I do. Government  the Biden administration especially  is intruding upon your life, trying to take control of your body.

The advice they are giving you is not designed to help, Carlson said Monday on his show, the most popular on cable news. It is designed to make you comply.

Two hours later, Ingraham said that it was President Joe Biden and his allies, not conservative media figures, who are superspreaders of COVID-19 misinformation.

The cumulative effect of the stories is to raise doubt in the minds of people who may already be looking for a way to avoid the jab of a needle and syringe full of chemicals going into their bodies, said Kristin Urquiza, who started the organization Marked By COVID after her father died of the virus.

They do not come out and say, Do not get the vaccine, Urquiza said. Their strategy is to create a culture of confusion.

Carlson and Ingraham have been the most aggressive in questioning vaccinations. Carlson has said the idea that you could force people to take medicine they dont want or need is scandalous. But he also told viewers on Monday: Were not saying there is no benefit to the vaccine. There may well be profound benefits to the vaccine. Our mind is open and has been from the first day. We never encouraged anyone to take or not to take the vaccine. Obviously, were not doctors.

Ingraham has suggested viewers hide your kids from Bidens vaccine pushers. She also said Monday that we want everyone to be healthy and safe and have their risk assessment done properly.

On conservative media, resisters are depicted as heroes. Foxs Pete Hegseth hailed a woman who filmed herself confronting two health care workers who were urging residents of a Los Angeles housing complex to get vaccinated and told them to leave the building. Dan Bell, a One America News network host, invited a Republican congressman on as a guest because he admired the way the politician refused to answer an activist journalist who had asked about his vaccination status.

A Newsmax anchor, Rob Schmitt, on July 9 questioned whether vaccinations go against nature.

If theres some disease out there, maybe theres just an ebb and flow to life where somethings supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people, and thats just the way evolution goes, he said. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that.

Since then, Newsmax and its founder, Chris Ruddy, have said he and the network strongly support Bidens efforts to widely distribute the vaccine.

The impact of this messaging is difficult to measure. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken at the end of June revealed that 86% of Democrats said they had received at least one shot, compared to 45% of Republicans.

Prolonged exposure to media messages about vaccines has an impact on attitudes, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which has studied the issue. But viewers also come predisposed to certain beliefs, and television producers are attuned to what their viewers want to hear.

Urquiza said she believes that many vaccine segments on outlets that try to reach conservatives have less to do with medicine than with fostering a sense of grievance, that government needs to get off your back.

Theyre chipping away at confidence in lifesaving measures, she said. Its terrifying to watch.
AS Roman Catholic bishops in Saskatchewan begin efforts to raise funds to promote healing and reconciliation with Indigenous people, the archbishops of St. Boniface and Winnipeg are considering ways to do something similar in this province.

AS Roman Catholic bishops in Saskatchewan begin efforts to raise funds to promote healing and reconciliation with Indigenous people, the archbishops of St. Boniface and Winnipeg are considering ways to do something similar in this province.

That topic will be on the agenda when the Manitoba bishops meet in August, Archbishop Richard Gagnon of the diocese of Winnipeg said.

In St. Boniface, Archbishop Albert LeGatt said he is in discussions with Indigenous parishioners in the northern part of the diocese, along with the chiefs and members of the band councils, about the best way forward.

"These discussions are about how, specifically, they would want assistance in any way from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of St. Boniface," he said.

LeGatt is also asking members of the diocese, "parish by parish," to think of ways they can become more informed about the residential schools "and the many elements of their tragic legacy."

The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops indicates bishops from many dioceses across the country are ready to initiate local or regional fundraising initiatives.

In a statement, the conference said, "The bishops of Canada are profoundly saddened by the residential schools legacy."

"We are committed to working with Indigenous Peoples and communities towards a greater understanding of the priorities of healing and reconciliation and how to address them together."

Discussions across Canada about fundraising campaigns are taking place against the backdrop of the failed "best efforts" campaign, which fell far short of its goal of $25 million for healing and reconciliation efforts.

The campaign was part of the 2006 Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement between 16 Catholic dioceses and 32 orders in Canada.

In addition to the fundraising effort, the individual entities that signed the agreement paid $29 million in cash to the Aboriginal Healing Fund and $25 million of "in-kind" services for Indigenous communities.

Do you appreciate the extensive faith coverage by the Free Press? Become a supporter of the Religion in the News project! Your contribution of $10, $25 or more can help us keep offering trusted coverage of faith in Manitoba. Become a supporter Click here to learn more about the project.

Michael Swan, a longtime reporter at the Catholic Register who has followed this issue, said the "best efforts" campaign was "doomed from the start" because of unfortunate timing and bad strategy.

It was launched during the height of the 2008 recession, and the fundraising firm hired to run the campaign focused on corporate Canada and large donors. "Most Catholics did not know the campaign was going on," he said.

When an appeal targeted at people in the pews was launched in 2013 to try to save the campaign, only 14 dioceses in Canada participated, he said, noting the appeal went out to churches a week after Typhoon Haiyan swept through the Philippines.

That huge disaster grabbed most of the attention from Canadian Catholics, along with many donations, Swan noted.

In the end, that special collection raised $200,000, bringing the total raised to $3.7 million.

faith@freepress.mb.ca
HALIFAX - A case of COVID-19 has been identified aboard the HMCS Halifax naval ship that docked in its home city Monday after returning from a six-month deployment on the Mediterranean Sea.

A Sikorsky CH-148 Cyclone flies around HMCS Halifax as the frigate heads from the harbour in Halifax on Friday, Jan. 1, 2021, to start a six-month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea to assist in NATO counter-terrorism patrols and related activities throughout the region. A case of COVID-19 has been found aboard the HMCS Halifax naval ship that docked in its home city today after returning from a six-month deployment on the Mediterranean Sea.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

HALIFAX - A case of COVID-19 has been identified aboard the HMCS Halifax naval ship that docked in its home city Monday after returning from a six-month deployment on the Mediterranean Sea.

Officials say the infection was discovered Sunday during the ship's pre-arrival protocols as it travelled to Halifax.

The crew member involved is asymptomatic and in isolation.

Royal Canadian Navy spokesman Mark Gough said about 250 people aboard the ship are being tested for COVID-19 and they will remain there until results are received from a provincial laboratory.

Gough said Maritime Forces Atlantic will consult with the provinces health authorities to decide on next steps.

The HMCS Halifax departed the city in January to participate in NATO's Operation Reassurance.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2021.

  

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.
When youre wedged into a middle seat on a packed airplane, sustained only by bad coffee and a packet of pretzels, glamorous travel can seem like an impossible dream.

When youre wedged into a middle seat on a packed airplane, sustained only by bad coffee and a packet of pretzels, glamorous travel can seem like an impossible dream.

But around the turn of the 20th century, luxury train journeys across Canada involved roomy sleeping berths, white-linen dining service and observation cars with expansive windows that framed the changing views. For those who could afford it, the journey was as pleasurable as the destination.

If you were making a stop in Winnipeg in, say, 1915, you could pull into Union Station, a Beaux-Arts beauty built by the firm behind New Yorks Grand Central Terminal, and then take a horse-drawn carriage over to the Fort Garry Hotel, designed by Montreal-based architects George A. Ross and David H. MacFarlane and constructed for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway from 1911 to 1913.

The glorious age of rail touring is gone now, dented first by the Depression and then overtaken by the postwar expansion of automobile and airplane travel. But the Fort Garry Hotel still stands, its elegant exterior more or less unchanged through cycles of decline and revival, through dazzling Jazz Age highs and shabby 1980s lows. For more than a century, this landmark hotel has reflected the changing face of our city.

The Fort Garry Hotel was one of the tallest buildings in Winnipeg when it was constructed in 1913. (City of Winnipeg archives)

According to the triumphant national mythology of the 19th century, Canada was unified by the "steel spines" of its rail lines. These lines were punctuated by grand railway hotels, the so-called "Castles of the North." Starting with the dramatic Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City, completed in 1893, many of these structures were built in the Chateau style  sometimes termed Railway Gothic  which combined imposing, often fortress-like exteriors with opulent and elaborately detailed interiors.

Some, like the Banff Springs Hotel, promised civilized pleasures against a wilderness backdrop, while others anchored growing city centres.

Marking the physical connection of our country from East to West Coast, these structures also forged a symbolic bond. The Chateau style is now recognized as a distinct Canadian architectural form, though it is one of the peculiar paradoxes of Canadian identity that an attempt to encourage and express nationalism through architecture would involve references to French chateaux, Bavarian castles and elements of the Scottish Baronial style.

At 58.5 metres, the Fort Garry Hotel was one of the tallest buildings in town when it was first constructed. On the relatively plain stone facade, lines of windows lead the eye upward in the manner of an austere turn-of-the-20th-century skyscraper, but then we get to that elaborate, wonderfully fanciful roofline, with its gables and turrets and steep-pitched, copper-clad peaks.

Just as important as the buildings impressive exterior scale are all the little interior details  the carved keystones, bronze balustrades, fluted oak columns, stained-glass transoms and gilded ceiling medallions.

Copper sheathing the roof of the Fort Garry Hotel in Winnipeg, 1912-13. (Foote Collection / Manitoba Archives)

When we think about hotels, we usually think first of travellers, and through the decades, famous guests at the Fort Garry have included Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Louis Armstrong, Laurence Olivier and Joan Crawford. But the hotel has also been a gathering place for Winnipeggers, as the site of civic functions, business conferences, charity fundraisers and just a lot of really swell parties.

Theres a lot of infrastructure undergirding this service. Like many early railway hotels, the Fort Garry was built as "a city within a city." Hidden away from the posh public areas were the labour and resources that made all that luxury possible  vast laundries and kitchens, an artesian well, a heating plant, an in-house printing press, a butcher, a bakery and a mushroom cave (!).

The hotels gilded-age glories  and the nuts-and-bolts systems required to keep it going  eventually fell into disrepair, and by the early 1990s, a series of owners had faced tax wrangles and financial problems. There were worries the Fort Garry might be shut down.

In 1993, Ida Albo and Richard Bel, along with the Quebec-based Laberge Group, took over. Presiding over extensive renovations, they have honoured the hotels storied past while bringing it into the 21st century. (It is now the Fort Garry Hotel, Spa and Conference Centre.)

Part of that mission means redefining what luxury might mean for contemporary guests. The 10th floor, for example, which once housed a small army of live-in chambermaids, is now a spa and hammam. As Albo points out, for many modern travellers  and Winnipeggers thinking about staycations  luxury might mean vegan or gluten-free menu options, or wellness rooms on each floor, a project currently underway.

Hotel Fort Garry owner Ida Albo says she feels blessed to have had the opportunity to put a stamp on the building for the last quarter-century. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press files)

"We feel blessed to have the opportunity to put a stamp on the building for the last quarter-century," she states. "Its a privilege to be able to do that."

It wasnt always easy. "Our first Hydro bill was more than our room revenue," Albo recalls. "This is not for the faint of heart."

Through it all, the building itself has inspired them  "just the grandeur, inside and out," Albo says. Her own favourite spot is the loggia running between the ballroom and the banquet hall on the seventh floor, with its high, cross-vaulted ceilings and stunning city views.

"When you think back to the history of the hotel, when it was being built, Winnipeg was on par to be like New York or Chicago," Albo explains.

"We didnt make it," she adds with a laugh. "But the hotels still here."

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca
CALGARY - U.S. businesses are waiting anxiously for an expected announcement on when the American border will reopen to Canadian tourists.

A single line is open for motorists arriving from the US to Niagara Falls, Ontario on Friday, July 16, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Peter Power

CALGARY - U.S. businesses are waiting anxiously for an expected announcement on when the American border will reopen to Canadian tourists.

"I'll be ecstatic . . . I'm going to hire some people back and take some days off," said Bill Kilby, manager of Hardwick's Country Store in Calais, Maine, located just a few metres from the Canada - U.S. border. "It will be a good day."

Like thousands of businesses on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border, Hardwick's Country Store has been severely impacted by COVID-19 travel restrictions. The land border between Canada and the U.S. has been closed to non-essential travel since March 21, 2020, and the closure order has been extended every 30 days since then.

Kilby said at Hardwick's  where the vast majority of customers pre-pandemic were Canadians grabbing gas, milk or beer  business is down 90 per cent from 2019. He has had to lay off 10 employees

"For my business I rely on the local Canadian people," Kilby said. "The town of Calais is anxiously awaiting their return."

Canada announced Monday that as of Aug. 9, U.S. citizens and permanent residents who are fully vaccinated will be allowed to enter the country, with the rest of the world to follow Sept. 7. However, Canadians are still not allowed to enter the U.S. by land, though they can currently fly.

U.S. lawmakers and business groups anxious to see the travel restrictions eased further have been pressuring the White House to follow Canada's lead. The U.S. is expected to announce a decision Wednesday, when the existing cross-border ban on non-essential travel will expire if it is not renewed.

I hope the announcement from the U.S. (Wednesday) is they will not extend the land border closure for another 30 days. I would love for that, were advocating for that, but I dont have a prediction, said Scotty Greenwood, chief executive of the Canadian American Business Council.

Greenwood said her lobby group has been pushing for a reciprocal deal that would see the U.S. open its land border simultaneously with Canada. She said the continued border closure jeopardizes what is a C$700-billion annual trading relationship between the two countries.

"We're in pretty regular dialogue with both governments and all sorts of policy-makers," Greenwood said. "This (border issue) is really important, right across the country, but the border communities do feel it most acutely."

One of those border communities is Point Roberts, Wash., which is located just south of Vancouver, B.C. and can only be accessed by crossing by vehicle through Canada, or by plane or private boat. It is not physically connected to the continental United States.

Nick Kiniski, owner of Kiniski's Reef, a bar and restaurant in Point Roberts, said his business is down 80 per cent from 2019. He added he's not the only local business suffering without Canadian customers.

"The grocery store is just hanging on . . . the gas station, the restaurants, the postal service, all these parcel delivery places  weve all been devastated. We dont even have a fighting chance, Kiniski said.

He added the past 16 months have been so difficult that he has put his restaurant up for sale after 33 years in the business.

"But I can't even sell it, because people can't even come and look at it," Kiniski said. "So I'm in a catch-22."

Border experts and political observers have suggested the U.S.-Mexico border likely has a lot to do with why President Joe Biden is dragging his heels on reopening the frontier with Canada.

The southern border represents a much larger political challenge in the U.S. than the northern one, and some in the Biden administration reportedly fear blowback if one opens before the other.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.

With files from Kevin Bissett
WASHINGTON - Canadians wondering why the United States doesn't appear to be rushing to ease travel restrictions at their shared border should cast a gaze further south, where the frontier with Mexico fosters far thornier political questions for the White House than its northern counterpart.

Canadian and American flags fly near the Ambassador Bridge at the Canada-USA border crossing in Windsor, Ont. on Saturday, March 21, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Rob Gurdebeke

WASHINGTON - Canadians wondering why the United States doesn't appear to be rushing to ease travel restrictions at their shared border should cast a gaze further south, where the frontier with Mexico fosters far thornier political questions for the White House than its northern counterpart.

Allowing travel to resume at only one of America's two shared borders could be seen as playing favourites between the country's two closest neighbours, observers say. And the risk of a flood of travellers from Mexico would risk exacerbating a long-standing refugee crisis in the southern U.S.

Still, the Biden administration's stand-pat approach to restricting visitors from Canada, despite the federal Liberal government's plan to start allowing fully vaccinated U.S. visitors next month, has raised eyebrows in both countries, including among experts.

"It's a black box on the U.S. side," said Laurie Trautman, director of the Border Policy Research Institute at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash.

"I've spoken with colleagues at Department of Homeland Security headquarters who say (a decision) is sitting in the White House  and it's sitting with, probably, multiple entities in the White House. So there's been really no information and no communication on which way the U.S. is leaning."

Canada announced Monday that as of Aug. 9, fully vaccinated U.S. citizens and permanent residents will be allowed to enter the country, with the rest of the world to follow Sept. 7. Rules for entering the U.S., however, remain unchanged.

That has already prompted U.S. lawmakers and others who are anxious to see the travel restrictions eased further to begin pressuring the White House to follow Canada's lead.

"On Jan. 21 of this year, we were promised a plan would be developed by the United States to address travel to Canada within 14 days  we are still waiting for that plan," New York Rep. Brian Higgins, a Democrat opposed to the border restrictions, said Tuesday on the floor of the House of Representatives.

"It's time for the United States to align its border policy with the science, with the facts and with the data. Action is long overdue. Open the U.S. border to our Canadian neighbours."

Canadian officials say the 14-day quarantine requirement will be waived beginning the second week of August for eligible travellers who are currently residing in the U.S. and have received a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Canada.

The move comes two weeks after the Canada Border Services Agency began waiving quarantine rules for fully vaccinated Canadian citizens and permanent residents.

The pandemic-era restrictions, imposed in March 2020, are due to expire Wednesday. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair said earlier this week he expects the U.S. to extend the measures, much as the two countries have done on a monthly basis ever since.

Even Justin Trudeau's tone on the travel restrictions is evolving: on Tuesday, the prime minister offered a rare acknowledgment that the approaches taken by the two countries have been much more "asymmetrical" than most people seem to realize.

While crossing the border by land for non-essential purposes has been largely prohibited in both directions for the duration of the COVID-19 crisis, Canadians  vaccinated or otherwise  were never forbidden from flying to the U.S. for whatever reason, Trudeau said.

"The asymmetry in the relationship has always been there, but that hasn't prevented us from working very, very closely to align ourselves," he told a news conference in Hamilton.

"They will follow their science, they will make their own decisions, and we will work with them.  But Canada is not going to any more dictate what the U.S. should be doing around its border policy than we would accept the U.S. to dictate to us around our border policy."

While domestic U.S. politics is likely playing a role, it's worth remembering that Customs and Border Protection is a large, slow-moving bureaucracy that might not be well-equipped to deal with policies that differ between the two borders, Trautman said.

"The way the organization works, they're a huge bureaucracy, and I don't think they want to sort of piecemeal and kind of cut and paste from one place to another," she said.

"I'm not sure that the Biden administration really has figured out what to do on the southern border and how to handle a lot of the asylum seekers and refugee claims. There's probably a sense that, 'If we open it up, then there'll be more.'"

The recent changes to the Canadian rules also mean children under 12 who are accompanied by fully vaccinated and eligible family members will be exempt from quarantine upon entering Canada, provided they wear a mask in public places and avoid indoor group settings.

All travellers will still be required to submit a negative COVID-19 test result and proof of vaccination prior to arrival by way of the ArriveCAN smartphone app or web portal, but post-travel test results will no longer be necessary for those who are fully vaccinated.

Canada Border Services Agency officials will also be subjecting vaccinated travellers to a mandatory molecular test upon arrival on a random basis.

As of Aug. 9, airports in Halifax, Quebec City, Ottawa, Winnipeg and Edmonton will also be added to the list of Canadian cities where international flights are permitted to land. Air travellers will no longer be required to spend the first three nights of their quarantine at a government-approved hotel.

Trautman said eventually, it's likely that border authorities in both countries will have to figure out a way to process vaccinated and unvaccinated travellers separately, such as a variation on the Nexus system, which allows eligible, pre-cleared travellers to cross the border more quickly.

"I do think that that's being looked at," she said.

"Not every border crossing's going to have necessarily the infrastructure or the physical capability to do something like that. But at the really busy ones, there is the option for that."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  A $26 billion settlement between the three biggest U.S. drug distribution companies and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and thousands of states and municipalities that sued over the toll of the opioid crisis is certainly significant  but it is far from tying a neat bow on the tangle of still unresolved lawsuits surrounding the epidemic.

FILE - This Aug. 29, 2018, file photo shows an arrangement of Oxycodone pills in New York. The three biggest U.S. drug distribution companies and the drugmaker Johnson & Johnson are on the verge of a $26 billion settlement covering thousands of lawsuits over the toll of opioids across the U.S., two people with knowledge of the plans told The Associated Press. The settlement involving AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson is expected this week. A $1 billion-plus deal involving the three distributors and the state of New York was planned for Tuesday, July 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP)  A $26 billion settlement between the three biggest U.S. drug distribution companies and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson and thousands of states and municipalities that sued over the toll of the opioid crisis is certainly significant  but it is far from tying a neat bow on the tangle of still unresolved lawsuits surrounding the epidemic.

Besides the monthslong process of state and local governments deciding whether to sign onto the settlement, there are three current cases in the U.S., others set to begin soon and the bankruptcy of OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma to resolve.

Here's a look at other legal proceedings across the nation:

OPIOID TRIALS ARE HAPPENING NOW. DOES THIS END THEM?

The three opioid trials happening already are expected to continue, but one of them will be a lot different.

That's New York. Unlike other states, it reached a deal on its portion of the settlements.

Those companies were all dropped immediately from the case. But the trial is continuing against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, Endo International and AbbVie, Inc.

Two other trials are also expected to continue.

In West Virginia, a trial of claims brought by the city of Huntington and surrounding Cabell County against the nations three largest opioid distributors is scheduled to wrap up next week.

Because the new settlement will not be finalized before closing arguments, proceedings are expected to move forward as planned.

Meanwhile, several California counties  including populous Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara  and the city of Oakland went to trial in April in a case alleging four drugmakers were complicit in the U.S. opioid epidemic through the use of deceptive marketing and soft-pedalling the painkillers' addictive aspect.

It has been a virtual, nonjury trial.

The municipalities seek $50 billion from Johnson & Johnson, Teva, Endo and AbbVie to cover the costs of remedying the epidemic's fallout, as well as penalties.

That trial is continuing.

WHAT ABOUT PURDUE PHARMA, THE COMPANY MOST CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH OPIOIDS?

This deal doesn't directly affect Purdue's situation. But the company is getting closer to a settlement itself.

Purdue, the maker of OxyContin, is in bankruptcy court to settle the lawsuits it faces. Its plan calls for the Connecticut-based firm to transform into a business with profits used to fight the opioid crisis. And members of the Sackler family who own the company have agreed to give up not only the company but also control of $4.5 billion over time in a deal the company says could be worth $10 billion.

This month, it reached a breakthrough when a group of states that had opposed the plan agreed to support it.

A judge will decide after a hearing scheduled for Aug. 9 whether to accept the deal.

While lawyers for most state and local governments are now on board, the proposal does face opposition from a handful of remaining states, as well as from the U.S. bankruptcy trustee, a group of Native American tribes and some individual victims, who all say it does not hold Sackler family members accountable.

WHAT ABOUT FUTURE CASES?

None will be derailed immediately by Tuesday's news, though it's likely that a lot fewer opioid cases will go to trial eventually than otherwise would have.

Some of the next cases include one in Tennessee where a judge issued a default judgment against Endo Pharmaceuticals and its attorneys this spring for engaging in a coordinated strategy to delay proceedings, deprive plaintiffs of information and interfere with the administration of justice.

The only issue there is what the damages are.

And a case of claims brought by the Ohio counties of Lake and Trumbull against CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid, Walmart and Giant Eagle pharmacy chains is scheduled to start in October.

The pharmacies are not part of the settlement at hand and no case against them has been tried so far.

The two northeast Ohio counties lawsuits against the chains were the first to target retail pharmacy chains as both distributors and dispensers of painkillers. The plaintiffs contend the chains stores in the two counties bought a combined total of nearly 130 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills  the most frequently diverted and abused painkillers  between 2000 and 2014. That would be roughly 266 pills for every Lake County resident and 320 pills for every Trumbull County resident during that 15-year period.

Other trials are on the calendar over the next year in Texas, California and Alaska.

Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
BOSTON (AP)  Human rights and press freedom activists are up in arms about a new report on NSO Group, the notorious Israeli hacker-for-hire company. The report, by a global media consortium, expands public knowledge of the target list used in NSO's military-grade spyware. According to the report, that now not only includes journalists, rights activists and opposition political figures, but also people close to them.

FILE - In this July 3, 2020, file photo, Hatice Cengiz, the fiancee of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, talks to members of the media in Istanbul. Amnesty International reported that its forensic researchers had determined that NSO Group's flagship Pegasus spyware was successfully installed on the phone of Cengiz, just four days after Khashoggi was killed. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel, File)

BOSTON (AP)  Human rights and press freedom activists are up in arms about a new report on NSO Group, the notorious Israeli hacker-for-hire company. The report, by a global media consortium, expands public knowledge of the target list used in NSO's military-grade spyware. According to the report, that now not only includes journalists, rights activists and opposition political figures, but also people close to them.

The groups have decried the virtual absence of regulation of commercial surveillance tools. If the allegations of widespread targeting by NSO's Pegasus malware are even partly true, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said in a statement, a "red line has been crossed again and again with total impunity.

Here's what you need to know about this issue.

NSO GROUP HAS LONG BEEN ACCUSED OF UNETHICAL HACKING. WHAT'S NEW?

The new investigation, based on leaked data of unspecified origin, builds significantly on previous efforts. Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International obtained the data and say that it people potential targeted for surveillance by NSO's clients.

Journalists from the consortium combed through a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers, identifying more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries. They include 189 journalists, 85 human rights activists and several heads of state. Among the journalists were employees of The Associated Press, Reuters, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and The Financial Times.

Amnesty was able to examine the smartphones of 67 individuals on the list, finding evidence of an attempted or successful Pegasus infection on 37. Its investigators found that the phone of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi's fiancee, Hatice Cengiz, was infected just four days after he was killed in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul in 2018. They found Pegasus on the phones of the co-founders of the Indian independent online outlet The Wire and repeat infections on the phones of two Hungarian investigative journalists with the outlet Direkt36.

The list of potential targets included Roula Khalaf, the editor of the Financial Times.

FILE- In this June 19, 2017, file photo, a person types on a laptop keyboard in North Andover, Mass. A new report by a global media consortium that expands the known target list of the Israeli hacker-for-hire firm NSO Groups military-grade spyware provoked alarm Monday, July 19, 2021, among human rights and press freedom activists. They decried the near-complete absence of regulation of commercial surveillance tools. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)

After Mexico, the largest share of potential targets were in the Middle East, where Saudi Arabia is reported to be among NSO clients. Also on the list were numbers in France, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Pakistan, Morocco and Rwanda.

According to the The Committee to Protect Journalists, there are few effective barriers to prevent autocratic governments from using sophisticated surveillance technology to attempt cowing or silencing a free press.

WHAT DOES NSO SAY?

NSO denies ever maintaining a list of potential, past or existing targets. It claims to provide its services only to vetted government agencies for use against terrorists and major criminals, and denies any association with Khashoggis murder. But the company does not disclose its clients and claims it has no visibility" into the data. Security researchers who have studied NSO's activity contest that claim, saying the company directly manages the high-tech spying.

There is no doubt that the NSO software deployment creates various logs and other data that the company can access, said John Scott-Railton, a researcher with Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto-based watchdog that has been tracking Pegasus abuses since 2016.

Amnesty has not identified the source of the leak or how the data was authenticated to protect the safety of its source. Citizen Lab vetted Amnesty's methodology for confirming Pegasus' infections and deemed it sound. Scott-Railton said he had no doubt the leaked data contains intent to target."

A phone number's presence in the data does not necessarily mean an attempt was made to hack a device, said Amnesty, which found Pegasus infection traces on the cellphones of 15 journalists on the list.

Amnesty says the malware is so effective that it can hack even the latest models of Apple's iPhone operating system, going undetected as it vacuums up personal and location data and seizes control of device microphones and cameras. In a statement, Apple head of security engineering Ivan Krstic did not directly address Amnesty's claim, instead emphasizing the rarity of such targeted attacks and the company's dedication to the security of its users.

DOES ISRAEL CONDONE THIS ACTIVITY?

Asked about its approvals of NSO's exports, Israel's Defense Ministry said in a statement that it approves the export of cyber products exclusively to governmental entities, for lawful use, and only for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counter terrorism. It said national security and strategic considerations are taken into account.

Last year, an Israeli court dismissed an Amnesty lawsuit seeking to strip NSO of its export license, citing insufficient evidence.

Citizen Lab and Amnesty have since 2016 primarily documented NSO targeting of rights activists, dissidents and journalists including dozens of Al-Jazeera employees. But the new list significantly widens the scope of potential targets to include members of Arab royal families, diplomats and business executives, according to the consortium, which includes The Washington Post, The Guardian, Le Monde and Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

CAN ANYONE BE TARGETED? HOW CAN INFECTION BE THWARTED?

No one not involved in sensitive information-gathering outside the U.S. needs to worry much. Customers of NSO Group's malware and other commercial surveillance tools typically focus on high-profile targets.

But those in NSO's crosshairs may not be able to avoid infection. Its methods of infection often don't require user interaction, such as clicking on a link in a text message.

One such zero-click option exploited a flaw in WhatsApp, the popular encrypted mobile-messaging service. WhatsApp and its parent company Facebook sued NSO in San Francisco federal court in 2019.

The WhatsApp suit accuses NSO Group of targeting some 1,400 WhatsApp users. Until this week, that was the largest number of potential targets of the Israeli company's spyware amassed in one place.

__

AP correspondents Josef Federman in Jerusalem and Geir Moulsen in Berlin contributed to this report.
HYDE PARK, Vt. (AP)  Grappling with a changed industry, two brothers operating their family's dairy farm in Vermont have made the drastic decision to give up hundreds of cows for goats.

Dairy goats stand in a barn at Joneslan Farm, May 13, 2021, in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O' Lakes for cheese making. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)

HYDE PARK, Vt. (AP)  Grappling with a changed industry, two brothers operating their family's dairy farm in Vermont have made the drastic decision to give up hundreds of cows for goats.

The Jones family, which had raised cows for 150 years at Joneslan Farm, houses about 1,000 goats in their barn that remains adorned with painted cut-outs of dairy cattle. Fluctuating milk prices paid to dairy cow farmers and rising costs have driven some small family farms to go big or out of business  or get creative like brothers Brian and Steven.

The Jones brothers finished constructing their nanny-milking parlor and delivered their first goat milk earlier this year to Land O Lakes-owned Vermont Creamery, to be used for cheese-making.

They plan to milk 1,200 to 1,500 dairy goats within two years.

Were growing all the time, Brian Jones said.

Dairy goats stand in a barn at Joneslan Farm, May 13, 2021, in Hyde Park, Vt. The farm sold its dairy cows and switched to goats, delivering its first goat milk in February to Vermont Creamery owned by Land O' Lakes for cheese making. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke)

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the number of dairy cow farms fell by more than half between 2003 and 2020 while the number of cows nationwide grew as farms consolidated.

At the same time, the dairy goat industry in the U.S. has grown significantly in the last 20 years, with the number of dairy goats rising from more than 190,000 in 1997 to 440,000 last year  a 2% increase from 2019, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The latest five-year census of agriculture shows that the number of dairy goat operations has more than doubled from 15,000 in 1997 to more than 35,000 in 2017. The next five-year census comes out in 2022.

Theres a slow but steady growth, said Terry Gipson, extension leader at the American Institute for Goat Research at Langston University in Langston, Oklahoma, of the national inventory, or number of goats.

One of the big reasons for the growth is America has developed a taste for goat cheese  the soft semi-ripened chevres, he said. Some people also keep small herds of goats for their own milk, as pets and to show.

Goats are definitely an animal that I think more people are becoming acquainted with and acquainted with their product. Its becoming more acceptable, said Thomas Considine, first vice president of the American Dairy Goat Association. So within the commercial side, more and more people have definitely approved or become accustomed to using the goat cheese, the goat milk, the kefir, even butter and ice creams and yogurts are definitely made.

California, Wisconsin and Iowa are the top goat dairy states, but the popular and curious ruminants are increasingly turning up in other states. In Maine, for example, the number of licensed dairy goat farms has jumped from 10 in 2001 to 54 this year, with five more seeking licenses. Twenty of those have been added in the last 10 years. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture only started keeping track of the number of dairy goat operations in 2019, when there were 42. Its grown to 46 so far this year.

Iowa now has around 200 licensed dairy goat operations, making up close to 20% of the states licensed dairy farms, according to Larry Tranel, a dairy specialist with the Iowa State University extension. Add on to that another suspected 300 unlicensed farms and goat dairies possibly comprise 30% of the dairy producers in the state, he said.

The growth is sustainable as specialty cheese continue to grow, Tranel said.

At the Joneslan Farm, on a dirt road with views of mountains, the goats erupt into baaing and crowd the fences inside the barn to inspect anyone who walks in as they munch on hay. Twice a day, they walk in mass to the parlor to be milked.

The Jones brothers find the goats easier to raise than cows. They have to feed them a lot less, but the goats have a shorter lactation period than cows, milking an average of 250 days a year compared to 305 days for cows, Gipson said.

The goats have a lot more personality than cows do, thats for sure. Very curious," Brian Jones said, adding that they always want to nibble on something.

The brothers are enjoying their steady milk check.

You at least have an idea of what you can plan on. No big surprises, Brian Jones said.
LIMA, Peru - Rural teacher-turned-political novice Pedro Castillo on Monday became the winner of Perus presidential election after the countrys longest electoral count in 40 years.

FILE - In this June 15, 2021 file photo, presidential candidate Pedro Castillo is surrounded by journalists as he arrives to his campaign headquarters to give a press conference in Lima, Peru. After more than a month since the election Castillo is expected to be named president, even after opponent Keiko Fujimori has claimed electoral fraud . (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

LIMA, Peru - Rural teacher-turned-political novice Pedro Castillo on Monday became the winner of Perus presidential election after the countrys longest electoral count in 40 years.

Castillo, whose supporters included Perus poor and rural citizens, defeated right-wing politician Keiko Fujimori by just 44,000 votes. Electoral authorities released the final official results more than a month after the runoff election took place in the South American nation.

Wielding a pencil the size of a cane, symbol of his Peru Libre party, Castillo popularized the phrase No more poor in a rich country. The economy of Peru, the worlds second-largest copper producer, has been crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, increasing the poverty level to almost one-third of the population and eliminating the gains of a decade.

FILE - In this June 15, 2021 file photo, presidential candidate Pedro Castillo is surrounded by journalists as he arrives to his campaign headquarters to give a press conference in Lima, Peru. After more than a month after the election Castillo is expected to be named president, even after opponent Keiko Fujimori has claimed electoral fraud . (AP Photo/Martin Mejia, File)

The shortfalls of Perus public health services have contributed to the countrys poor pandemic outcomes, leaving it with the highest global per capita death rate. Castillo has promised to use the revenues from the mining sector to improve public services, including education and health, whose inadequacies were highlighted by the pandemic.

Those who do not have a car should have at least one bicycle, Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press in mid-April at his adobe house in Anguia, Perus third poorest district.

Since surprising Peruvians and observers by advancing to the presidential runoff election, Castillo has softened his first proposals on nationalizing multinational mining and natural gas companies. Instead, his campaign has said he is considering raising taxes on profits due to high copper prices, which exceed $10,000 per ton.

Historians say he is the first peasant to become president of Peru, where until now, Indigenous people almost always have received the worst of the deficient public services even though the nation boasted of being the economic star of Latin America in the first two decades of the century.

Pedro Castillo, center, celebrates with his running mate Dina Boluarte after being declared President of Peru by election authorities in Lima Peru, Monday, July 19, 2021. Castillo was declared president more than a month after the elections took place and after opponent Keiko Fujimori claimed that the election was tainted by fraud. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Prado)

There are no cases of a person unrelated to the professional, military or economic elites who reaches the presidency, Cecilia Mendez, a Peruvian historian and professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told a radio station.

Fujimori, a former congresswoman, ran for a third time for president with the support of the business elites. She is the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.

Hundreds of Peruvians from various regions camped out for more than a month in front of the Electoral Tribunal in Lima, Perus capital, to await Castillos proclamation. Many do not belong to Castillos party, but they trust the professor because he will not be like the other politicians who have not kept their promises and do not defend the poor, said Maruja Inquilla, an environmental activist who arrived from a town near Titicaca, the mythical lake of the Incas.

Castillos meteoric rise from unknown to president elect has divided the Andean nation deeply.

Pedro Castillo, center, celebrates with his running mate Dina Boluarte after being declared President of Peru by election authorities in Lima Peru, Monday, July 19, 2021. Castillo was declared president more than a month after the elections took place and after opponent Keiko Fujimori claimed that the election was tainted by fraud. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Prado)

Author Mario Vargas Llosa, a holder of a Nobel Prize for literature, has said Castillo represents the disappearance of democracy and freedom in Peru. Meanwhile, retired soldiers sent a letter to the commander of the armed forces asking him not to respect Castillos victory.

Fujimori said Monday that she will accept Castillos victory, after accusing him for a month of electoral fraud without offering any evidence. The accusation delayed his appointment as president-elect as she asked electoral authorities to annul thousands of votes, many in Indigenous and poor communities in the Andes.

Lets not put the obstacles to move this country forward, Castillo asked Fujimori in his first remarks in front of hundreds of followers in Lima.

The United States, European Union and 14 electoral missions determined that the voting was fair. The U.S. called the election a model of democracy for the region.

Pedro Castillo celebrates after being declared president-elect by election authorities, at his campaign headquarters in Lima, Peru, Monday, July 19, 2021. Castillo was declared president more than a month after elections took place and after opponent Keiko Fujimori claimed that the election was tainted by fraud. (AP Photo/Guadalupe Prado)

Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told a radio station that Castillo is arriving to the presidency very weak, and in some sense in a very similar position to Salvador Allende when he came to power in Chile in 1970 and to Joao Goulart, who became president of Brazil in 1962.

He has almost the entire establishment of Lima against him, said Levitsky, an expert on Latin American politics.

He added that if Castillo tried to change the constitution of Peru  enacted in 1993 during the tenure of Alberto Fujimori  without building a consensus, (without) alliances with centre games, it would be very dangerous because it would be a justification for a coup.

The president-elect has never held office. He worked as an elementary school teacher for the last 25 years in his native San Luis de Puna, a remote village in Cajamarca, a northern region. He campaigned wearing rubber sandals and a wide-brimmed hat, like the peasants in his community, where 40% of children are chronically malnourished.

In 2017, he led the largest teacher strike in 30 years in search of better pay and, although he did not achieve substantial improvements, he sat down to talk with Cabinet ministers, legislators and bureaucrats.

Over the past two decades, Peruvians have seen that the previous political experience and university degrees of their five former presidents did not help fight corruption. All former Peruvian presidents who governed since 1985 have been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned or arrested in their mansions. One died by suicide before police could take him into custody. The South American country cycled through three presidents last November.

Castillo recalled that the first turn in his life occurred one night as a child when his teacher persuaded his father to allow him to finish his primary education at a school two hours from home. It happened while both adults chewed coca leaves, an Andean custom to reduce fatigue.

He suffered a lot in his childhood, his wife, teacher Lilia Paredes, told AP while doing dishes at home. The couple has two children.

He got used to long walks. He would arrive at the classroom with his peasant sandals, with a woolen saddlebag on his shoulder, a notebook and his lunch, which consisted of sweet potatoes or tamales that cooled with the hours.

Castillo said his life was marked by the work he did as a child with his eight siblings, but also by the memory of the treatment that his illiterate parents received from the owner of the land where they lived. He cried when he remembered that if the rent was not paid, the landowner kept the best crops.

You kept looking at what you had sown, you clutched your stomach, and I will not forget that, I will not forgive it either, he said.

Garcia Cano reported from Mexico City.
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Protests against poverty and inequality resumed on Colombia's independence day Tuesday as President Ivan Duque presented a $4 billion tax plan aimed at helping the government pay for social programs and pandemic-related expenses.

A giant banner that shows images of President Ivan Duque, former President Alvaro Uribe and Gen. Oscar Atehortua, with a message that asks in Spanish: "Who gave the order to massacre young people in Bogota," during an anti-government protest in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, July 20, 2021, as the county marks its Independence Day. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP)  Protests against poverty and inequality resumed on Colombia's independence day Tuesday as President Ivan Duque presented a $4 billion tax plan aimed at helping the government pay for social programs and pandemic-related expenses.

Thousands joined in marches in Colombias main cities while Duque outlined to congress his governments achievements and presented a tax plan for financing subsidies to low income families that have been out of work during the pandemic.

The new plan is smaller than a $6.3 billion package that was presented in April and set off huge protests across Colombia, in which dozens of people were killed. The new proposal places a higher tax burden on companies earnings while discarding a previous proposal to impose sales taxes on basic items like coffee and salt.

Protesters said the new plan does not do enough to boost spending on education and job creation in Colombia, where the economy contracted 7% last year and pushed an additional 3 million people into poverty, according to the national statistics department.

Protests continue because President Duque has not solved any of the problems faced by Colombian society, said Francisco Maltes, president of the Central Union of Workers, one of the groups that has led anti-government demonstrations.

A duck dons a bandana in national colors during an anti-government protest in Bogota, Colombia, Tuesday, July 20, 2021, as the county marks its Independence Day. (AP Photo/Ivan Valencia)

His union is part of a coalition of unions and student groups that plans to present congress with 10 proposals on addressing Colombia's social and economic crisis. These include dissolving the nations riot police as well as creating a basic income program that would make monthly payments of $260 to 10 million people.

The governments subsidy program currently provides monthly payments of $40 to 3 million families that are struggling to get by in the country of 50 million inhabitants. The new tax plan seeks to maintain these payments, provide subsidies to companies that hire workers aged 18 to 28, and also finance university tuition for low and middle income students.

At Tuesdays demonstrations, which were noticeably smaller than those in April and May, protesters also said they want justice for youths killed recently by police. Human Rights Watch says it has gathered evidence linking police to the slaying of 25 protesters during the recent wave of demonstrations, while local organizations say the number could be higher.

Our country is in mourning said Atala Ojeda, a pensioner who joined one of the marches in Bogota, carrying a Colombian flag with a black ribbon. Every month we are losing young people and social leaders.
A subsidiary of Winnipegs NFI Group has inked a deal with Irelands national transport agency to potentially deliver that countrys largest purchase of zero-emission buses.

A subsidiary of Winnipegs NFI Group has inked a deal with Irelands national transport agency to potentially deliver that countrys largest purchase of zero-emission buses.

Its a deal thats been commenced with the initial firm order of 45 buses and could include up to 200 more. Those details were revealed on the same day 50 low-emission buses were also confirmed for California in the United States.

On Monday, leading manufacturer NFI Group Inc. announced that BYD Company U.K. and Alexander Dennis Ltd., a subsidiary of the NFI Group, have signed a partnership for five years. During that period, the National Transport Authority of Ireland will cover the costs of delivery for single-deck, long-length Enviro200EV buses that are battery-electric.

The arrangement hand-picked Alexander Dennis Ltd. as the primary contractor, after a "comprehensive and rigorous procurement process" in which the NFI Group provided "the strongest offer," the BYD noted.

Paul Soubry, president and chief executive officer of NFI Group, called the deal "historic."

"NFI is leading the Z-Evolution to zero-emission mobility and, through this historic contract  Irelands largest ever  our battery-electric vehicles will now operate in five countries," Soubry said in a statement Monday. "Were thrilled to continue working with the NTA as they drive lower emissions for the communities they serve and to see ADLs continued expansion."

Starting in 2022, Irelands first 45 buses can be expected for services in the Athlone and Dublin metropolitan areas. Those buses will all be built at Alexander Dennis factories in the U.K. with the "proven combination of BYD electric technology and batteries with stylish bodywork and passenger-centric interior by ADL," the NFI Group said.

Neither ADL nor BYD would reveal a value for the transaction. In 2015, the two joined forces to serve customers in the U.K., Ireland and New Zealand.

Meantime, Californias public transport agency said Monday that 50 Xcelsior buses are set to arrive in North San Diego.

That U.S. purchase order is part of a contract signed back in 2016 between the government-regulated North County Transit District and New Flyer of America Inc., another subsidiary of the NFI Group. The deal includes up to 103 heavy-duty buses, paid through American federal transit funds, that will replace older and end-of-life vehicles with lower-emission buses.

Following Mondays purchase, San Diego will see the average age of its BREEZE bus fleet go from at least 11 to just over six years old by August 2021.

temur.durrani@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @temurdur
LOS ANGELES (AP)  Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder is suing over a decision by California election officials to block him from running in the September recall election that could oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, saying he's the target of political shenanigans by Democrats.

FILE  In this July 13, 2021 file photo radio talk show host Larry Elder speaks to supporters during a campaign stop in Norwalk, Calif. Elder has announced his candidacy for governor in the Sept. 14 recall election but the California Secretary of State's office has rejected his candidacy saying Elder, a Republican, filed incomplete tax returns that are required to run. Elder is challenging the decision. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP)  Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder is suing over a decision by California election officials to block him from running in the September recall election that could oust Gov. Gavin Newsom, saying he's the target of political shenanigans by Democrats.

The Republican said in a statement late Monday that he filed all the necessary paperwork to qualify for a slot on the ballot, including over 300 pages of tax returns that are required to become a candidate. But the secretary of states office did not include Elder on a preliminary list of 41 candidates last weekend, saying he filed incomplete information on those returns.

Elder's campaign said he sued Monday, seeking an order from a court in Sacramento that would require Secretary of State Shirley Weber to list Elder as a candidate on the final certified list of candidates, scheduled to be issued Wednesday.

Weve complied with everything the secretary of state has required of us, said Elder, a popular voice on the political right whose show is nationally syndicated. The politicians in Sacramento know Im the only candidate who can beat Gavin Newsom. They are afraid, and they are using whatever shenanigans they can to try to trip me up. It wont work.

FILE - In this July 13, 2021, file photo, conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder speaks to supporters during a campaign stop in Norwalk, Calif. Elder has filed a lawsuit Monday, July 19, 2021, challenging a decision by California election officials to block him from running in the state's Sept. 14 recall election, saying he's the target of political "shenanigans" by Sacramento Democrats. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Frankly, this action by the secretary of state is not simply unfair and absurd but a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent, said Elder, who also is an attorney.

Meanwhile, the secretary of state's office on Tuesday added another name to the list, making it 42 replacement candidates in the Sept. 14 contest. It wasnt immediately clear why Democrat Armando Mando Perez-Serrato was a late addition.

If Elder fails to make the ballot, it would be a setback for recall organizers who hoped for a large field of prominent candidates to attract voters. When Elder announced his candidacy last week, he immediately became one of the most recognized Republicans in the race, given his years on talk radio and frequent appearances on Fox News.

In a statement, Weber's office said the agency applies the same criteria to each candidate that seeks elected office.

The list of candidates issued did not include Mr. Elder and others that failed to comply with those requirements. This is the first election where the gubernatorial candidate tax-disclosure law has been applied.

FILE - In this July 13, 2021, file photo, conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder speaks to supporters during a campaign stop in Norwalk, Calif. Elder has filed a lawsuit Monday, July 19, 2021, challenging a decision by California election officials to block him from running in the state's Sept. 14 recall election, saying he's the target of political "shenanigans" by Sacramento Democrats. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Elder is facing a narrow window of time for the court to make a change. With the election less than two months away, election officials already are arranging for ballots to be printed. Mail-in ballots go out next month.

Other Republicans who qualified to run include former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer; reality TV personality and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner; businessman John Cox, who was defeated by Newsom in 2018; and state lawmaker Kevin Kiley.

Elder's campaign argued that under state law, Weber has the authority, if not the duty, to fix any redaction errors for the public. The campaign said Webers office has not informed Elder of its specific objections to the filing of his tax returns and added that Weber was effectively engaging in voter suppression by denying voters the ability to choose Elder.

The campaign also said Weber's decision violates the equal protection clause of the California Constitution because Newsom did not have to comply with the same tax return disclosures.

I am waging a legal battle to run as the candidate for Californians who are tired of the partisanship and entrenched interests of Sacramento. I fully expect to be on the final certified list of candidates, Elder said.

Voters will be sent a ballot with two questions: Should Newsom be recalled? And who should replace him? If more than half of voters say yes to the first question, then whoever on the list of potential replacements gets the most votes is the new governor of the nations most populous state. With numerous candidates and no clear front-runner, its possible that someone could win with less than 25% of the votes.

The push to oust the first-term, Democratic governor is largely rooted in frustration with school and business closures during the coronavirus pandemic that upended daily life for millions of Californians.

In the lawsuit, Elder raises the issue of whether the requirement for candidates to release their previous five years of taxes is legally valid. He points out the 2019 law on which it's based applies to a primary election, but the secretary of state unilaterally imposed it on a recall election.

A statement from the secretary of state said the agency adopted the same approach as was used in the state's 2003 recall election, when the basic requirements for replacement candidate qualifications were based on those for primary elections.

Neither the California Constitution nor the (state) elections code provide specific replacement candidate qualifications and requirements for gubernatorial recall elections, the agency said.

Associated Press writer Kathleen Ronayne in Sacramento contributed.
NEW DELHI (AP)  India's excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern Indias worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the South Asian country.

FILE - In this May 5, 2021, file photo, funeral pyres of twenty-five COVID-19 victims burn at an open crematorium set up at a granite quarry on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi, File)

NEW DELHI (AP)  India's excess deaths during the coronavirus pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern Indias worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the South Asian country.

Most experts believe India's official toll of more than 414,000 dead is a vast undercount, but the government has dismissed those concerns as exaggerated and misleading.

The report released Tuesday estimated excess deaths  the gap between those recorded and those that would have been expected  to be 3.4 million to 4.7 million since the pandemic began through last month. It said an accurate figure may "prove elusive," but the true death toll "is likely to be an order of magnitude greater than the official count."

FILE - In this Sept. 14, 2020, file photo, Ramananda Sarkar, 43, who has cremated more than 450 COVID-19 victims stands by burning funeral pyres of COVID-19 victims in Gauhati, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)

The report was published by Arvind Subramanian, the Indian governments former chief economic adviser, and two other researchers at the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank based in Washington, and Harvard University.

It said the count could have missed deaths that occurred in overwhelmed hospitals or while health care was disrupted, particularly during the devastating virus surge earlier this year.

"True deaths are likely to be in the several millions not hundreds of thousands, making this arguably Indias worst human tragedy since Partition and independence," the report said.

The Partition of the British-ruled Indian subcontinent into independent India and Pakistan in 1947 led to the killing of up to 1 million people as gangs of Hindus and Muslims slaughtered each other.

FILE - In this April 24, 2021, file photo, multiple funeral pyres of those who died of COVID-19 burn at a ground that has been converted into a crematorium for the mass cremation of coronavirus victims, in New Delhi, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. (AP Photo/Altaf Qadri, File)

The report on India's virus toll used three calculation methods: data from the civil registration system that records births and deaths across seven states, blood tests showing the prevalence of the virus in India alongside global COVID-19 fatality rates, and an economic survey of nearly 900,000 people done three times a year.

Researchers cautioned that each method had weaknesses, such as the economic survey omitting the causes of death.

Instead, researchers looked at deaths from all causes and compared that data to mortality in previous years  a method widely considered an accurate metric.

Researchers also cautioned that virus prevalence and COVID-19 deaths in the seven states they studied may not translate to all of India, since the virus could have spread more in urban versus rural states and since health care quality varies greatly around India.

FILE - In this April 25, 2021, file photo, a man in protective suit digs earth to bury the body of a person who died of COVID-19 in Gauhati, India. India's excess deaths during the pandemic could be a staggering 10 times the official COVID-19 toll, likely making it modern India's worst human tragedy, according to the most comprehensive research yet on the ravages of the virus in the south Asian country. (AP Photo/Anupam Nath, File)

Other nations also are believed to have undercounted deaths in the pandemic. But India is thought to have a greater gap due to having the world's second-highest population of 1.4 billion and because not all deaths were recorded even before the pandemic.

The health ministry did not immediately respond to an Associated Press request for comment on the report.

Dr. Jacob John, who studies viruses at the Christian Medical College at Vellore in southern India and was not part of the research, reviewed the report for the AP and said it underscores the devastating impact COVID-19 had on the countrys underprepared health system.

"This analysis reiterates the observations of other fearless investigative journalists that have highlighted the massive undercounting of deaths," Jacob said.

The report also estimated that nearly 2 million Indians died during the first surge in infections last year and said not "grasping the scale of the tragedy in real time" may have "bred collective complacency that led to the horrors" of the surge earlier this year.

Over the last few months, some Indian states have increased their COVID-19 death toll after finding thousands of previously unreported cases, raising concerns that many more fatalities were not officially recorded.

Several Indian journalists have also published higher numbers from some states using government data. Scientists say this new information is helping them better understand how COVID-19 spread in India.

Murad Banaji, who studies mathematics at Middlesex University and has been looking at Indias COVID-19 mortality figures, said the recent data has confirmed some of the suspicions about undercounting. Banaji said the new data also shows the virus wasn't restricted to urban centers, as contemporary reports had indicated, and that Indias villages were also badly affected.

"A question we should ask is if some of those deaths were avoidable," he said.

This story has been corrected to show that the report says there was an estimated low of 3.4 million excess deaths since the pandemic began, not 3 million since January 2020.
A Russian hacker known internationally as the bot master" was sentenced Tuesday to the 33 months he has already served in custody on federal charges he operated a network of devices used to steal computer credentials, distribute spam and install malicious software.

A Russian hacker known internationally as the bot master" was sentenced Tuesday to the 33 months he has already served in custody on federal charges he operated a network of devices used to steal computer credentials, distribute spam and install malicious software.

Peter Levashov, 40, pleaded guilty in 2018 to causing intentional damage to a protected computer, conspiracy, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors said he operated several networks of hijacked computers, known as botnets, that were capable of pumping out billions of spam emails.

U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny said he believes the financial harm caused by what began as a spamming scheme was overstated in a pre-sentencing report that recommended a sentence of at least 12 years. But the judge acknowledged that the crimes evolved into something serious and sophisticated.

It goes without saying that somebody that builds and operates botnets, as you did, and profits from making them available for use by cybercriminals, should expect to be prosecuted and punished, he said. Because indeed this is significant criminal conduct that is harmful to the public.

Prosecutors had asked for a sentence that was called for in the pre-sentencing report of between 12 and 14 1/2 years in prison.

The judge also ordered Levashov to serve three years of supervised release, during which his computer activity will me monitored. He deferred imposing a fine or restitution for 90 days until he could receive more information about Levashov's financial situation.

In their written presentencing arguments, prosecutors said Levashov spent more than a decade controlling the botnets  including one that may have infected 200,000 computers  to harvest email addresses, logins and passwords from infected computers and also distributed malware and other malicious software.

Levashov used those botnets to send billions of spam messages, messages which ranged in destructive potential from relatively harmless advertisements, to email messages used to conduct 'pump and dump' schemes, to email messages containing malicious links that spread malware such as viruses or ransomware, Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Chang wrote in his sentencing memoradum.

Chang said Levashov, also known as Peter Severa, operated three of the most notorious botnets known to authorities  Storm Worm, Waledac, and Kelihos.

At its peak, Storm Worm reportedly sent 57 million email messages in a single day, prosecutors said. Waledac could send 1.5 billion spam messages per day and Kelihos was reportedly capable of sending 4 billion spam messages per day, he said.

Prosecutors said Levashov had also moderated online forums used to sell and trade stolen identities and credit card numbers.

Levashov was arrested in April 2017 while vacationing in Spain. His arrest was one of a series that targeted Russian cybercriminals outside their homeland, which has no extradition agreement with the United States.

Levashov has been out of prison on electronic monitoring since January 2020. Chatigny said his isolation away from his wife and young child during the pandemic was also a factor in the sentencing.

Levashov's lawyer, Vadim Glozman, in arguing for the sentence of time served, said his client's hacking was not complex enough to warrant a harsher sentence. He also referenced Levashov's harsh life in Russia, which involved standing in bread lines, which he said led to a desire to take care of his family. He is humbled, apologetic and has suffered enormously already from his crimes in the years since his arrest, Glozman argued.

Aside from the general weight of being under federal indictment, they have been spent locked up in two foreign countries, away from his family, where he does not know anyone, and spent in the midst of an unprecedented worldwide pandemic, defense attorney Vadim Glozman wrote. Put simply, these four-and-a-half years have felt like an eternity.

Levashov, in a brief statement to the court, thanked his wife and his attorney, who he said nearly brought him to tears with the story of his life.

I apologize if my activities hurt someone, he said.
If all goes well, last weeks inaugural deal pitch event for the newly created North Forge Angel Network could signal a sea change when it comes to the search for capital for the scores of new companies that have started up during the COVID shutdown.

If all goes well, last weeks inaugural deal pitch event for the newly created North Forge Angel Network could signal a sea change when it comes to the search for capital for the scores of new companies that have started up during the COVID shutdown.

In collaboration with the National Angel Capital Organization (NACO), North Forge has assembled more than 1,000 qualified investors from Canada and some from the U.S. who will have the chance for a first look at investing in North Forges burgeoning stable of startups.

About 20 investors took part in last weeks virtual pitch from four North Forge companies  Memi Corp., Carbonlock, Spontivly and Aurora Aerial.

Regardless of the level of enthusiasm that is vocalized at these kind of events, the closing of actual investment takes time.

But Joelle Foster, the CEO of North Forge, said there was an excellent level of engagement and a good amount of optimism.

"Some of these companies are definitely going to get funded," Foster said.

Kevin Gordon, the founder of Memi Corp., an online verification service he is hoping to launch in the fall, said the assistance North Forge provided for the companies before the pitch was crucial.

"I think it went well. There were great questions from the investors and lots of great feedback," he said. "Joelle and the rest of the team at North Forge were fantastic at setting us up for success."

Just prior to the pandemic, North Forge revamped its operating structure and in the process, over the past year and a bit, almost tripled the number of companies it is working with, including reaching outside the Manitoba borders. Its now working with 13 companies based elsewhere in the Prairies, including Edmonton-based Spontivly, a community management platform that handles the full life cycle of community management, from streamlining workflows to generating community insights.

"COVID certainly has shaken up a lot of people and inspired many to want to start their own business," Foster said. "The pandemic has shown there is a massive market for tech-enabled companies. Everyone is more tech-savvy so there is easier adoption and acceptance now for all these new platforms and technology solutions coming out."

For instance, Memi Corp. is looking to address the enduring concerns people have about identification integrity online.

Gordon said there has been close to $500,000 of sweat equity injected into the company with software developers from around the world collaborating in building its technology. But instead of getting paid, those service providers agreed to take shares in the company instead.

Thats why the North Forge Angel Network will be integral in the development of tech-enabled companies starting up in Winnipeg, with the hopes of creating the next SkipTheDishes.

One of the key elements of a successful angel network is that the companies that are seeking the investment are actually in a position to be ready to take on investors, which in many cases is not a trivial concern.

On that front, North Forge works hard at qualifying the startups that pitch and has licensed the use of a service called DealPoint, an investment administration platform to present and execute syndicated angel investments. It allows interested investors to go to a virtual "data room" for the pertinent financial information on the North Forge companies they are considering investing in.

Foster said the plan is to hold another pitch event in the fall. The frequency of subsequent events will be relative to the state of readiness of its companies.

Angel investor networks are not new, but North Forge is trying to create some distinction with its large roster of potential investment targets by stressing diversity and inclusion.

Foster thinks that at least some of the recent "massive uptake" in new companies applying to North Forge may be because there are few incubators in the country headed by women.

In addition to the four companies that gave a full six-minute pitch, the sessions will include a shorter presentation from companies deemed, "ones to watch." Last week, that was a company called Serenity Productions, whose pitch is that it is developing "femtech pleasure products, invented and designed for women by women."

"We are trying to make the angel network more inclusive," Foster said. "It is going to take some time. We want to get rid of the bro culture."

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca
VANCOUVER - British Columbia's public safety minister has declared a provincial state of emergency over the growing wildfire threat to prepare for potential mass evacuations and help secure accommodation that might be needed by evacuees.

Looking high above the small town of Osoyoos B.C. in the southern Okanagan the glow of smoke and fire illuminates the night sky on Thursday July 19, 2018. At least 160 properties have been ordered to evacuate as an aggressive wildfire burns in the south Okanagan. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff Bassett

VANCOUVER - British Columbia's public safety minister has declared a provincial state of emergency over the growing wildfire threat to prepare for potential mass evacuations and help secure accommodation that might be needed by evacuees.

Mike Farnworth said he made the decision based on information from officials that weather conditions will lead to more severe fire behaviour and the potential for more evacuations.

"In a briefing last night, I received word that we'll be facing a few days of very difficult weather in the Interior," Farnworth said in a statement.

The state of emergency goes into effect on Wednesday and gives government agencies, the fire commissioner and the RCMP the authority to take whatever action they deem is necessary to fight the wildfires and protect people and communities.

In addition to securing accommodation, it empowers the government to issue travel restrictions if necessary or commandeer aircraft or trucks from the private sector, although Farnworth said the private sector has already provided needed resources.

He said the declaration does not unlock additional firefighting resources on the ground but he wants to assure B.C. residents that the province is deploying all available personnel and equipment to fight the fires.

More than 3,000 firefighters and support staff are battling the blazes. Some have come from Alberta, New Brunswick and Quebec, while about 100 firefighters are set to arrive from Mexico on Saturday. Officials are also in talks with Australia.

We have reached a critical point," Farnworth told a news conference.

Nearly 300 fires were burning across the province on Tuesday, including several that were encroaching on communities that have issued evacuation orders or alerts.

The government said more than 40 evacuation orders affected about 5,700 people or almost 2,900 properties in the province. There were also 69 evacuation alerts affecting just under 33,000 people and about 16,000 properties. The alerts tell people they should be ready to get out of their homes on short notice.

A boil water notice has been issued by the Regional District of Central Kootenay for users on the Fauquier water system on the east side of Lower Arrow Lake. The system includes the Needles Ferry landing. The district says the notice is because of the need to bypass the water treatment plant to increase system capacity and meet the demand of wildfire mitigation efforts.

Cliff Chapman, director of provincial operations for the BC Wildfire Service, said crews are working tirelessly to suppress the fires but he warned it's likely to get worse.

Strong winds are predicted to come up from the United States, fanning the flames in the B.C. Interior over the next 48 hours. No moisture is expected, and the southeast could see another batch of lightning that will ignite more blazes, he said.

It means firefighting efforts and control lines will be challenged.

"We have the potential to see significant fire behaviour across the province, in particular in the southern half of the province where the conditions remain extremely dry and extremely volatile," he said.

Shortly after the news conference, the BC Wildfire Service issued a wind advisory for Tuesday through Thursday in the Interior, southern Interior and southeastern B.C.

It's too early to make a direct comparison, but the conditions resemble those in 2017 and 2018, British Columbia's worst wildfire seasons on record, Chapman said.

Wildfires have already scorched more than 3,000 square kilometres of land, which is about 2,000 square kilometres more than the 10-year average for this time of year.

There have been 1,145 fires sparked so far, including 145 in the past week alone.

Emergency Management BC encouraged residents in the affected regions to prepare emergency grab-and-go bags, make evacuation plans and monitor local authorities for the latest updates.

The B.C. government has been criticized for not calling a state of emergency sooner. That continued Tuesday with the B.C. Green party calling the declaration a necessary but overdue step.

It is difficult to understand why the B.C. NDP is only acting now, when local representatives and experts have been calling for a state of emergency for weeks, and some taking matters into their own hands within their jurisdiction," Green Leader Sonia Furstenau said in a statement.

As recently as Friday, Premier John Horgan said there would be few advantages to declaring a provincial state of emergency because he said all available resources were already in place.

Farnworth defended the about-face on Tuesday, saying he made the declaration based on advice he received Monday night from officials at the BC Wildfire Service and Emergency Management BC, regarding the worsening forecast.

"That's how those decisions are made, that's no different than in 2017 and 2018."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 20, 2021
OTTAWA - Annamie Paul sought to show Monday her party has pushed past a period of bitter strife ahead of a likely election, as lingering tensions leave Greens in limbo and Paul reeling from a temporarily sidelined threat to her leadership.

Green Party Leader Annamie Paul speaks at a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, June 16, 2021. The Green party says a planned non-confidence vote against leader Paul is off the table until at least the next general meeting of members. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Patrick Doyle

OTTAWA - Annamie Paul sought to show Monday her party has pushed past a period of bitter strife ahead of a likely election, as lingering tensions leave Greens in limbo and Paul reeling from a temporarily sidelined threat to her leadership.

At an afternoon news conference, Paul confirmed that a non-confidence motion against her planned for Tuesday was cancelled, and that no similar motionswill be proposed by the current federal council  the party's main governing body  or before the next party convention.

"This experience has been incredibly painful for me and for my family, and I want to be up front about that. It is extremely hard to have your integrity questioned when you value it so much," she told reporters in Toronto Centre, the riding she hopes to win following two unsuccessful attempts that have kept her out of the House of Commons.

Paul admitted she considered stepping down amid what she dubbed a "one-sided campaign" waged against her leadership by party brass in recent months, but said she felt she owed it to the Greens who elected her last year to continue.

"I also didnt want to let down all of the people  young, old, from different backgrounds, from different unrepresented groups  who had asked me over the course of the past eight to nine months, 'Is there a place for someone like me in politics?'" she said.

A membership review launched last week by Green interim executive director Dana Taylor that would have suspended Paul's status as a member of the party she heads has also been shelved, Paul confirmed.

She declined to answer multiple questions about whether arbitration and legal wrangling resulted in the scrapped non-confidence motion and membership review, or if it was turfedbecause players realized that "we are compromising our ability" to elect MPs, as Paul put it.

The shifts appear to keep her insulated from an immediate ouster until an expected federal election in the coming months, as the party council will turn over on Aug. 20. However, a general meeting of members is scheduled for Aug. 21, when the party pledge not to depose its leader expires and a new crop of councillors could be as resistant to Paul as the current one.

Dimitri Lascaris, runner-up to Paul in the October leadership race, unveiled a slate of council candidates Friday under the banner "Green Left Canada," self-described ecosocialists who view capitalism as the core cause of climate change.

Other problems hampering the Greens have not gone away, including a payroll cut in halfthis month due to financial imbalances reported by party brass, despite Paul's objections to the temporary layoffs. Green executives also moved to withhold funding from Paul's campaign to win the Toronto Centre seat as Canada's 44th election looms.

Thenew truce also helps cement the prospect that a Black Canadian will lead a mainstream party into a national campaign for the first time in the country's history.

Backed by sign-toting supporters, Paul held the news conference at St. James Park in downtown Toronto as bells occasionally tolled, with St. Lawrence Hall in the background. The neoclassical building served as a venue for the North American abolitionist movement shortly after it opened in 1850.

In spite of the retreat by party executives who have clashed openly with Paul, tensions remain as Greens struggle to pitch an agenda that has been overshadowed by months of internal strife.

"This is a wounded party," said Daniel Beland, director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada. "It seems there is still bad blood between her and some members of the executive."

An Angus Reid poll published Friday suggested only three per cent of respondents intended to cast a ballot for the Greens.

The figure falls far short of the 6.55 per cent of the vote they garnered in the 2019 election, despite climate change and the environment now tying for the most important issue in voters' minds, the poll indicates.

"You see whats happening in B.C. with the fires and whats happening in Europe with the floods, and people tie that to climate change. So it would normally be a very good time to be the leader of the Green party, because the main issue that your party is about is really popular right now. But that's not the case," Beland said.

"Parties often have internal debates, but this exploded in public and on social media and the newspapers and so forth, and this has affected the image of Annamie Paul as the leader but also the image of the Green party."

The nixed non-confidence vote by the federal council would have required support from three-quarters of the 13-member governing body in order to proceed to a party-wide vote the following month at a general meeting, where an ultimate judgment on Paul's leadership could have been rendered by the grassroots.

Paul came in second to Liberal Marci Ien in a byelection last fall  they earned about 33 per cent and 42 per cent of the vote respectively  to replace former finance minister Bill Morneau in the riding.

The Liberal stronghold has been held by the party since 1993 and has been won by prominent MPs including Bill Graham and Bob Rae.

Paul came in fourth place when she ran there in the 2019 general election.

There are now two Green MPs in Parliament, including former leader Elizabeth May.

The party has been riven by infighting and factionalism for months as Paul, who was elected leader on Oct. 3, attempts to steer the Greens in a new direction.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 19, 2021.
WINNIPEG - A former Mountie has avoided jail time after Crown prosecutors appealed a sentence for his actions during a police chase that ended with the shooting death of a man in northern Manitoba.

WINNIPEG - A former Mountie has avoided jail time after Crown prosecutors appealed a sentence for his actions during a police chase that ended with the shooting death of a man in northern Manitoba.

The Manitoba Court of Appeal imposed a three-month sentence for Abram Letkeman but stayed an order that he spend any time behind bars.

Steven Campbell is seen in an undated handout photo. A former Mountie will be going to jail after Crown prosecutors appealed his sentence for his actions during a police chase that ended with the shooting death of Campbell in northern Manitoba.THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO-*MANDATORY CREDIT*

The appeal ruling said a jail sentence "would have had an important purpose in deterring other police officers from overreaching the bounds of their authority and venturing into criminal conduct  and in loudly denouncing such conduct."

Even so, two of the three Appeal Court judges found the former Mountie still did not need to go to jail.

A lower court earlier ruled Letkeman would not have to serve jail time for the conviction of criminal negligence causing bodily harm related to his driving before the 2015 death of Steven Campbell outside Thompson. He was acquitted of manslaughter and other shooting-related charges.

The trial heard that Letkeman saw a Jeep early on a November morning as bars were closing in the northern community of about 15,000 people.

Letkeman testified he suspected the driver was impaired and attempted a traffic stop, but the Jeep drove away. He started to pursue the vehicle being driven by Campbell. There were also four passengers, including Campbell's girlfriend.

Court heard the former Mountie used his cruiser to hit the back of the Jeep to stop it. A use of force expert testified at trial that the move was against protocol and training, and was extremely risky.

Letkeman continued to follow the vehicle on to a trail for all-terrain vehicles. He then used his police vehicle to T-bone the Jeep.

The officer testified he didn't wait for backup and walked in front of the Jeep. He told court the vehicle began to move toward him, so he fired his weapon.

Campbell, 39, was hit at least nine times. His girlfriend was also hit and court heard she suffers from severe, lifelong injuries.

Justice Chris Martin, who oversaw the trial, said in his decision he was torn about whether Letkeman should be incarcerated. He ruled there would be no benefit to putting the former officer behind bars and sentenced Letkeman to three years probation, 240 hours of community service and fined him $10,000.

The Court of Appeal decision, delivered last week, found Martin made an error in not sending the Mountie to jail.

"A custodial sentence is required in order to address the accused's misconduct, which seriously undermines the bond that should exist between the public and the police," the decision said.

But considering Letkeman had paid the fine and the time it took for the appeal hearing, two of the three judges decided against requiring the former Mountie to go to jail now.

Justice William Burnett, who differed from colleagues in a dissenting ruling, said the "the trial judge's approach completely misses the point." He said the former officer should have been incarcerated.

"Public confidence requires that the community know that police officers who commit crimes using excessive force will be dealt with harshly by the courts," Burnett wrote.

He said it was inconceivable that a civilian would receive such a lenient sentence for something similar. He added that a fine was never a fit sentence.

Burnett said Letkeman should have faced 36 months in jail, reduced by six months for community service.

Campbell's mother, Shirley Huber, said her son was so much more than his final moments. She thinks jail would have been appropriate since Letkeman's actions contributed to his death and the significant injury of other people.

"He took someone's life needlessly and, if he can sleep peacefully at night knowing that, he's not much of a human being," Huber said in an online message. "I hope thats not his case."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 20, 2021.
Why is it that just when we most need clarity and a steady hand on the tiller, political leaders show us their cowardly streak?

Why is it that just when we most need clarity and a steady hand on the tiller, political leaders show us their cowardly streak?

Case in point: as our vaccination numbers increase steadily and pressure builds to remove social and economic restrictions, Canadians need clear direction on what liberties will be granted to the fully vaccinated, and what will remain off limits to the unvaccinated.

TRIBUNE MEDIA TNS Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has failed to give Canadians clear direction on what liberties will be granted to the fully vaccinated. (Phil Noble - WPA Pool/Getty Images/TNS)

Unfortunately, instead of clarity, we're getting a particularly cowardly strain of vagueness and evasiveness.

Last week, when asked about the possibility of a national vaccine passport, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that other than co-ordinating an internationally recognized immunization record for travel, he would not advise or direct the provinces on whether to implement restrictions on the liberties and movements of the unvaccinated.

"Different provinces will be doing different things, where the federal government has a role to play and where we are looking is in terms of vaccine certification for international travel," Trudeau said.

That's Ottawa's only role in what is the most pressing public policy issue to date in the pandemic?

With all the resources at his disposal, it is not inconceivable to expect Trudeau to help the provinces, municipalities, businesses and rank-and-file citizens figure out what is permissible under the law and what is not.

Instead, Trudeau is really just the senior-most coward in a long line of cowardly political leaders.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES To his credit, premier Brian Pallister established vaccination status cards for Manitobans and a short-list of liberties the fully vaccinated may enjoy.

Things have been better in Manitoba at the provincial level, but not by much.

To his credit, Premier Brian Pallister quickly revealed both a physical and digital card to help Manitobans quickly and easily prove their vaccine status. He also established a short-list of liberties the fully vaccinated may enjoy.

Fully vaccinated (plus two weeks) Manitobans can now visit a movie theatre, large-scale sporting events, bingo halls and casinos, museums and galleries. Those with two shots can also dine indoors with other fully vaccinated people from outside their households, visit personal care homes and hospitals.

Pallister's government has been inconsistent with its policies and  like Trudeau  unwilling or unable to offer clear rules on how to manage the community of the unvaccinated.

However, notwithstanding these positive steps, Pallister's government has been inconsistent with its policies and  like Trudeau  unwilling or unable to offer clear rules on how to manage the community of the unvaccinated.

Can businesses require customers and workers to be fully immunized? If so, what kinds of accommodations do they legally have to offer? And what can we do for people who face barriers that might prevent them from engaging with the vaccine system and passport?

Manitoba is considering mandatory vaccination for workers in hospitals, personal care homes and correctional facilities. If that plan goes ahead, why not other workplaces like the public school system?

For the record, the law in Canada is quite clear: rights and freedoms can be mitigated if there is a pressing public health threat. And, also for the record, when the country has enough vaccine for everyone (which it does), and it is making it available to everyone free of charge (which it is), then no one who is unvaccinated by choice can legally claim discrimination if they are prevented from going somewhere or doing something.

Nobody can force you to get vaccinated. But legally, no one is forced to grant you the same liberties should you refuse the vaccine and, in the process, continue to pose a threat to public health.

Nobody can force you to get vaccinated. But legally, no one is forced to grant you the same liberties should you refuse the vaccine and, in the process, continue to pose a threat to public health.

Notwithstanding the clear legal context, far too many Canadians are buying into an array of mythical privacy concerns that seem to have enveloped the issue of vaccine status. The University of Manitoba is a good case in point.

Despite the fact that many of the largest post-secondary institutions in Canada are limiting in-person classes to fully vaccinated staff and students, the U of M will not follow suit. "Based on advice received from Manitoba Public Health, UM strongly encourages all UM community members to be vaccinated as soon as theyre eligible, but does not plan to request or require proof of vaccination," a university spokesman said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES The University of Manitoba has said though it strongly encourages all community members to be vaccinated as soon as eligible, it does not plan to request or require proof of vaccination.

What advice did "Manitoba Public Health" impart to the university? The U of M could not say, exactly, but it raises a fascinating question.

How could a government that is already preventing unvaccinated Manitobans from going to movies or visiting personal care homes tell the university it could not, or should not, ask staff and students to be fully immunized to attend in-person classes?

As it turns out, the province did not tell the university it couldn't or shouldn't require proof of vaccination.

A spokeswoman for Manitoba Health said the province met with the university several times to discuss "factors such as employment law, employment agreements, health and safety obligations, privacy and human rights related obligations."

In the end, however, the only advice government could provide was that "it's up to each organization to make the decision on how they will proceed."

That is pretty much the same dodge being used by Trudeau to pass tough decisions to the province. And that's too bad because when you keep passing tough decisions down the line, nothing ever gets done.

We are fast-approaching a critical moment in the pandemic when we desperately need clear, firm and decisive guidance from political leaders. At our current pace, we are going to have difficulty reaching a level of immunization required to allow for a full re-opening unless we pull out all the stops to convince the unwilling.

And what are we getting instead?

Cowards.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca
He shot at men who had killed his friend at a crowded downtown Winnipeg nightclub and, days later, was arrested leaving the funeral armed with a high-powered handgun.

He shot at men who had killed his friend at a crowded downtown Winnipeg nightclub and, days later, was arrested leaving the funeral armed with a high-powered handgun.

Now, prosecutors are asking a judge to sentence Rami Hagos to 13 years in prison.

Hagos, 26, has pleaded guilty to discharging a firearm with intent and possession of a loaded and restricted firearm.

Security video showing Hagos chasing after Jamshaid Wahabis accused killers as they fled the Citizen Nightclub on Nov. 2, 2019, dismantled the defendant's claim he was acting out of fear for his own safety, Crown attorney Libby Standil told Queens Bench Justice Sadie Bond.

"While his act to pursue and shoot the males who came after his friend may have been reflexive, that was only possible, because he was armed in a public place," Standil said.

"He may have thought they would come after him at some point, but not that night at the bar, because they fled immediately."

Court heard Hagos, his girlfriend, and Wahabi had arrived at the nightclub around 12:30 a.m., with the two men becoming involved in a dispute with another group of males a short time later.

In response to that confrontation, Rig Moulebou, Charles Kanicki and another man arrived at the nightclub at 1:23 a.m., Standil said.

"Moulebou walked directly toward the dance floor, fired a shot at Jamshaid Wahabi, striking him in the head," Standil said. "He died almost instantly."

As Moulebou, Kanicki, and the other man fled outside, Hagos pulled a 9-mm handgun from his waistband and fired seven shots. Kanicki collapsed to the ground with a shattered femur; Moulebou, who was shot once in the leg, and the other man escaped.

Two days later, Moulebou, 20, was shot dead as he slept on a couch in a Winnipeg condo where he had been hiding out, Standil told court.

The killings, Standil said, were part of an ongoing campaign of violence between two warring drug gangs.

Hagos has admitted to being a drug dealer, but denies any gang ties  a claim Standil rejected as "disingenuous."

"Selling drugs in conjunction with gang members makes him at the very least an associate," she said.

Police arrested Hagos Nov. 9, as he left Wahabis funeral in a car armed with a loaded .50-calibre Desert Eagle handgun.

"It wouldnt be an exaggeration to describe this kind of gun as a 'hand cannon' because it is so much larger than your typical handgun," Standil said. "It was loaded with slugs that could have taken out a bear."

Defence lawyer Crystal Antila urged Bond to sentence the Sudanese refugee to seven years in prison, describing the 13-year sentence recommended by the Crown as "crushing."

Hagos and his family immigrated to Canada when he was 14. Antila said it was common for young people to carry weapons in Sudan, where Hagos witnessed "a tremendous amount of violence," torture, and the murder of an uncle.

Hagos finished high school in Winnipeg before landing a job at a potash mine.

Hagos "thought it would lead to upward movement," but he was laid off after three years, Antila said. Hagos made some "bad decisions" and started dealing drugs to help support his parents and siblings.

Hagos had been drinking prior to Wahabi being shot and feared he would be next, Antila said.

"For someone with his past experience and his intoxication at the time, he immediately panicked," she said. "This was an emotional and impulsive reaction after witnessing something horrific."

Bond reserved her decision and adjourned sentencing to the fall.

Hagoss mother, one of several family members in court Tuesday, wept loudly as the hearing came to an end.

"I love you my son, I love you, I love you," she cried as another family member consoled her.

dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Two months after the first Manitoba COVID-19 patient was airlifted out of province amid overflowing intensive-care units, the unprecedented emergency practice has ended with the safe return of the only remaining patient who was being treated in Ontario.

Two months after the first Manitoba COVID-19 patient was airlifted out of province amid overflowing intensive-care units, the unprecedented emergency practice has ended with the safe return of the only remaining patient who was being treated in Ontario.

The virus is no longer the most common reason for patients to be admitted to hospital in Manitoba, and the majority of hospitalized COVID-19 patients aren't infectious. Now that case counts have declined and more Manitobans are vaccinated, hospitals are closing dedicated COVID-19 beds and opening up surgery slates. Doctors say it's unlikely the fourth wave will hit as hard  but they're looking ahead to the potential risk of long-haul COVID-19 patients and transmission in unvaccinated pockets of the province.

Over three weeks in May and June, 57 Manitobans were transported out of province for hospital care because hospitals were overrun with severely ill COVID-19 patients and ran out of staffed beds in which to place them. Only 45 patients returned, with the final patient being brought back Friday. Twelve people died while they were being treated out of province.

Ontario hospitals took in most of the patients, and Alberta and Saskatchewan each accepted two patient transfers. Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitoba's deputy chief public health officer, thanked those provinces Monday.

"It was profoundly helpful. We thanked those provinces and we'll continue to thank those provinces for helping Manitobans out and helping the Manitoba acute care system out when it needed that help," Atwal said.

Manitoba's disproportionately high per capita rate of third-wave ICU admissions was unexpected, Atwal said. He said the province is still working on increasing ICU capacity, but other provinces are in the same boat when it comes to trying to boost health-care staffing.

"Obviously it got bad. We ran out of room here. This is what we were talking about on a regular basis, the risks to the acute care system... We've always had low ICU capacity. It's not just Manitoba, I think across the country ICU capacity is limited and there's a lot of work being done on this since the beginning of the pandemic to try to increase that capacity."

On Monday, Manitoba announced 37 new COVID-19 cases, and a total of 143 since last Friday. There were 117 COVID-19 patients hospitalized and 27 in the ICU  down from more than 60 in the ICU when the province began airlifting people to Ontario in May.

"It's a lot more stable, as opposed to frenetic," said Dr. Anand Kumar, an attending ICU physician in Winnipeg. But, he said, ICU demand is still heavy, particularly as surgeries resume.

The Grace Hospital closed a dedicated COVID-19 ward earlier this month as patient volumes decline, a Shared Health spokesman confirmed Monday. The agency said long-haul COVID-19 patients account for more than one in five cases. There were 12,490 cases of "long COVID" as of July 13, Shared Health said, meaning that in about 21.9 per cent of all cases, patients didn't recover for more than a month after being infected.

It's unlikely Manitoba hospitals will be overrun by the virus the way they were in the third wave, said University of Manitoba infectious diseases physician Dr. Amila Heendeniya, but the health-care system now has "a whole bunch of catching up to do."

"Even though we survived the third wave, we really haven't increased our capacity in the hospitals. Even though we have been in this pandemic for over a year and a half, we still haven't increased our actual infrastructure, we haven't increased our people power, so I think the potential is there. I would say the likelihood is low. I would say possible but not probable that we'll go into this big of a wave, and I really hope I'm right."

The province has yet to release updated projections that consider how the more contagious Delta variant is expected to affect Manitoba this fall.

"I know it's being worked on at the present time, I just don't have a date on when it's going to be available," Atwal said Monday.

Also on Monday, the provincial government said it had received 1,210 applications to a new financial aid program it announced two weeks ago to help nurses who received their training in other countries become certified to work in the field in Manitoba.

katie.may@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @thatkatiemay
Detection equipment meant to deter noisy drivers could be coming to popular cruise streets around Winnipeg.

Councils city centre community committee met Monday and moved to request further information on a possible pilot project that would have monitoring technology used to inform policing noise pollution caused by vehicles.

Coun. Cindy Gilroy (Daniel McIntyre), who put forward the motion, said community officials have received complaints about such cruise nights, most often caused by vehicles modified to purposely make noise.

"People in Wolseley and the West End cant even sit outside on Sunday nights, due to the noise thats created by these Sunday night cruises," she said.

A similar project is in place in Edmonton, where photo enforcement is used to issue tickets for noise pollution. Gilroy said the city has been told the province wont consider a similar program here, but Winnipeg can still use the same technology to inform the disciplinary measures already in place.

"We might be able to use it as a deterrent, or may be able to use it as a (tool) where we can make sure police see a hot spot, and thats where police are going, and really try to crack down on some of this," she said.

Edmontons program has seen mixed results. Media reports in February said while such monitors were able to tell when sound broke a certain threshold, it wasnt able to fairly identify vehicles making the noise or tell the difference between different sources.

Gilroy said trying it in Winnipeg could have better results because of the intention of the technology: to map out places with high noise levels and then put more police there, rather than a more automated ticket system.

"I know that the technology being used in other cities, I know in some places, theyre not doing what they were hoped to do," she said. "But what I would like to do is see if the city can test the technology, see if it does work, and then maybe use that for the enforcement that we have here in Winnipeg."

Mondays decision means the citys standing policy committee on infrastructure renewal and public works will request the Winnipeg Public Service report back to the committee on the costs of noise monitoring technology, where it could be implemented and the success of similar projects in other cities.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_
Reports of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards are already cropping up in Manitoba, forcing public health officials to revisit guidance on how businesses verify immunization status of customers.

Reports of fake COVID-19 vaccination cards are already cropping up in Manitoba, forcing public health officials to revisit guidance on how businesses verify immunization status of customers.

Winnipeg pub manager Jay Kilgour said a pair of patrons came to Fionn MacCools on Saturday evening hoping to dine in with two other guests.

Two customers presented fake digital vaccination cards to Fionn MacCools staff on Saturday evening hoping to dine in with two other guests.

They presented digital vaccination cards to staff, who reported identical names on both cards after verifying them with a provincial application.

Kilgour detailed the interaction on Twitter, but declined an interview with the Free Press after receiving intense backlash from speaking with another media outlet Monday.

He said the customers presented a screenshot of a vaccination card and QR code, which he suspects was altered to display their names rather than the name of the person the card was issued to.

"When we scanned it, the real name popped up on our screen," Kilgour said on Twitter. "No patio table (was) available at the time, so we sent them on their way with a free appetizer card," in case the name duplication was an error.

Asked about the extent to which phony secure immunization cards may be in circulation, deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said he had just learned of the possibility and could not comment on how widespread the issue might be.

"Ive heard, anecdotally, of one situation. Im sure theres more than one," Atwal said Monday. "But thats something that were going to have to take a deeper look into."

Unlike other vaccination records, such as the paper cards issued in some Canadian provinces, Manitobas secure immunization card can be validated using an application developed by the provincial government.

The application is available for free in the Apple App and Google Play stores, and is expected to be used by restaurant staff, ticket takers and personal care home workers.

When a person requests their individualized immunization card  either the digital or hard copy version  a unique QR code is created that contains first and last name and confirmation they are fully vaccinated.

The provinces Manitoba Immunization Verifier application checks the QR code against a government list and confirms vaccination status and displays the cardholders name.

The card can only be validated using the provinces application.

The government recommends affected businesses ask for photo identification to confirm the name appearing on the verification app matches that of the cardholder.

Atwal said government officials would be meeting to discuss the subject and come up with recommendations for operators to ensure people entering their establishments are following public health orders.

"Were expecting people to take whats necessary to make sure that someone is providing credible information. So verification of a name with photo ID doesnt sound unreasonable to me," Atwal said.

Under current public health orders, Manitobans must provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination to attend movie theatres, concert halls, casinos and bingo halls, museums and art galleries, visit personal care homes and hospitals, and to dine indoors with people they do not live with.

The province began issuing secure immunization cards June 8. To date, 62 per cent of the eligible population has been fully vaccinated, or about 737,000 people.

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
The majority of residents of four First Nations communities on the east side of Lake Winnipeg have been evacuated due to wildfire smoke.

The majority of residents of four First Nations communities on the east side of Lake Winnipeg have been evacuated due to wildfire smoke.

Ernest Keyper of Little Grand Rapids, who arrived in Winnipeg on the last de Havilland Dash 7 to leave one of the communities Monday, said local nursing station staff were planning for a potential evacuation during the last two weeks, but it still was a surprise when the decision was made.

WWW.GOV.MB.CA The wildfires and the "high" to "extreme" fire danger have led to the implementation of fire and travel restrictions in large parts of the province.

There was no panic  everything was orderly and people knew who was going on what plane at what time in advance, he said Tuesday.

"We never expected it, but we were planning ahead with leaders because we knew it would get worse (with the) infrequent rainfall this year," Keyper said.

"The situations were different each new day, depending on the winds, and there was little to no relief from the rain. It has been dry and, yes, the smoke and ash is what frightened the community."

Keyper said the move comes just three years after community members were forced to leave for similar reasons.

"2018 was a big learning experience because much of my generation had never experienced that," he said.

"With climate changes, weve had to deal with this twice in just a short span of time... We are hoping that the rain brings relief to the province."

Canadian Red Cross spokesman Jason Small said transport of vulnerable people began in Little Grand Rapids and Pauingassi on July 12, moving up to all residents in recent days.

"We have now completed the full evacuations of both First Nations, as of yesterday," Small said, adding transports out of Bloodvein and Berens River began Monday and are continuing.

Alex Lupul / Winnipeg Free Press Horses can be seen within the haze of smoke created by wildfires burning elsewhere in the province.

"People from Berens River are being flown out, while people in Bloodvein are driving," he said, adding all residents had been brought to and housed in Winnipeg, prior to some from Berens River being flown to Brandon.

Small said more than 1,300 people have been registered in area hotels, but the number is continuing to grow. The Red Cross is providing toiletries and setting up meals.

"We dont know how long this will last," he said. "The community decides when people have to evacuate and the community decides when to call people back, when it is safe."

Little Grand Rapids Chief Raymond Keeper is one of about 90 people staying behind to maintain the community 280 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg.

"It wasnt too bad today, it was good all morning, but then the wind shifted and a little more smoke came in," Keeper said by phone.

"Were going to wait and see whats happening before we bring people home. We dont want to put people in danger again."

Keeper said the evacuation was orderly, but it did have one hiccup because of the smoke.

"They couldnt land right away here," he said. "They had to circle around until it was all clear.

"We have a priority list of people... and everybody was prepared. There was no last-minute ask to evacuate... The staff did a wonderful job and I thank them."

Alan Owens, 62, said he was more worried about the smoke and air quality than he was about the fire encroaching on his community of Pauingassi First Nation. He and his family have been in Winnipeg for a week already.

"Not really (worried), Im just asking people, is anything burning, like our stuff?"

Owens said he was working as a security guard at the nursing station when he heard his name called on the local radio station, telling him it was his turn to leave with the next group. "I have to go when they call out my name. I dont mind."

Don Hallett, assistant director of Manitoba Wildfire Service, said there were 129 wildfires burning in Manitoba on Tuesday, with more smoke blowing in from neighbouring provinces.

"Well take any precipitation we can get, as long as there is no lightning," said Hallett. "Lightning is our No. 1 cause of concern right now."

The wildfires and the "high" to "extreme" fire danger have led to the implementation of fire and travel restrictions in large parts of the province.

Hallett said with the blazes in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario, there wont be any firefighting assistance coming from those provinces for the time being.

"Right now, theres a 20-person pack from Nova Scotia to help give our guys a bit of a reprieve," he said.

Late Tuesday, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said in a tweet a Manitoba government request for military assistance had been approved. Up to 120 Canadian Forces members will be dispatched to help fight wildfires across the province.

David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada, said Manitoba and a huge swath of the rest of the country are covered in a blanket of smoke.

"There are seven provinces and one territory  and 170 regions have air advisories," he said.

"Winnipeg has had 35 hours of smoke in the last two days and, as soon as the rain ended (Tuesday morning) the smoke came back. You would need a major rain event for four days, or a major wind system, to move the smoke out."

Phillips said Environment Canadas air quality health index is a scale from one to 10: Winnipeg was considered to be 10-plus both Monday and Tuesday.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Members of Winnipegs Jewish community are relieved the province's medical regulatory body wont place restrictions on infant male circumcisions done for religious reasons when a new standard of practice is released in the fall.

Members of Winnipegs Jewish community are relieved the province's medical regulatory body wont place restrictions on infant male circumcisions done for religious reasons when a new standard of practice is released in the fall.

"Its resolved and were happy about it," said Elaine Goldstine, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Winnipeg after the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Manitoba said it would revise its proposed standard.

"They acted very quickly, which is very good."

Last week, Goldstine wrote a letter to the college registering her opposition on religious grounds to a proposal limiting all infant male circumcisions to medical offices.

She also encouraged individuals in the community to sign a form letter stating their concerns.

After receiving about 200 written responses from the Jewish community objecting to the change  including a lengthy statement from the Winnipeg Council of Rabbis  the college updated its website late last week with a statement indicating a decision to allow religious practices to continue.

"At a minimum, the working group will add an exemption in the standard for male circumcision performed in a religious ceremony or tradition, particularly respecting low-risk neonatal circumcisions," said the statement issued by registrar Dr. Anna Ziomek.

In mid-June, the college released a draft document setting new standards of practice to minimize risks for cosmetic and esthetic procedures such as injecting Botox and other fillers, laser energy and light-based therapies, vasectomies and male circumcisions. The public had until last Friday to respond in writing.

Goldstine said she heard about the proposed change only a week ago after a Jewish physician alerted her, prompting her to quickly mobilize the community.

Jews argued the change in standards affected their ability to hold a religious ceremony called Brit Milah, where an infant boy is circumcised eight days after birth in the family home or a synagogue.

The procedure could still be done outside of medical offices by a non-medical person called a mohel. In Winnipeg, nearly all ritual circumcisions are performed by Jewish doctors also trained in the religious ceremony, who would be compelled to follow the standard of practice set out by the college.

The community was concerned that limiting the circumcision to medical offices takes away the ritual and communal aspect of the ceremony, designed to introduce the infant boy to Judaism, because only the parents could attend.

The college consulted with physicians in various specialties as well as the College of Registered Nurses of Manitoba but did not check in with Jewish leaders before releasing the draft, the statement said.

"The working group did not consult with the Jewish community in its early development of the draft Standard; however, that is precisely the purpose of the current public consultation, and we are grateful for the feedback received."

Goldstine said she hopes the college has realized that much of the recent uproar could have been avoided by checking in first with the community, since it's most affected by the change.

"Consult with people before you put out a proposed policy," she said.

brenda.suderman@freepress.mb.ca
Manitobas grand chiefs are calling on Premier Brian Pallister to resign, as his party tries to quell frustration over ahistorical residential-school comments he and his new Indigenous reconciliation minister have made.

Manitobas grand chiefs are calling on Premier Brian Pallister to resign, as his party tries to quell frustration over ahistorical residential-school comments he and his new Indigenous reconciliation minister have made.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "Today we are not here to topple any statutes; we're here to topple a government that is racist; a government that has no place in this legislature," Northern Grand Chief Garrison Settee said.

"Manitobans do not agree with Pallister so I say to this government: why don't you just resign? It will be good for Manitoba," northern Grand Chief Garrison Settee told reporters Monday morning.

He was speaking as head of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak at a press conference on the legislature steps.

"Today we are not here to topple any statues; we're here to topple a government that is racist; a government that has no place in this legislature," Settee said.

First Nations' anti-racism plan Click to Expand Chiefs representing reserves in northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan announced a plan to combat racism and hate crimes. Under the banner of the Summit of Treaty 5 Sovereign Nations, the chiefs announced Monday they will promote non-violence and awareness campaigns, submit reports on racism in the region to the United Nations and lobby Ottawa to beef up Criminal Code sentences for both hate crimes and racism.  Dylan Robertson

Chiefs and leaders from the Treaty 5 area gathered to launch their own anti-racism plan, which they said was necessary after grief over residential-school burial sites escalated to outrage over the Pallister governments "racist, political propaganda" and "gaslighting" response.

Pallister suggested colonizers had not wanted to destroy anything, contrasting that approach with Canada Day protesters who toppled statues on the Legislative Building grounds.

Those comments were among the reasons Eileen Clarke resigned from cabinet, after steering the governments reconciliation agenda for years. She was replaced last week by Alan Lagimodiere, who immediately sparked national outrage for suggesting residential schools were started with good intentions.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission thoroughly documented that residential schools were created to assimilate Indigenous people into European society by forcefully taking children to schools rife with abuse.

Lagimodiere apologized Friday, and some chiefs at Mondays press conference said he had called them over the weekend.

Settee said all northern chiefs received a call, which he appreciated. But said the new minister needs to apologize in person, at a chiefs assembly.

"We can work with him. But if he doesn't do that, there's no chance at reconciliation," Settee said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Chiefs and leaders from the Treaty 5 area gathered to launch their own anti-racism plan.

Not all would welcome such a visit.

Southern Chiefs' Organization Grand Chief Jerry Daniels said leaders feel used by the Pallister government, because hes previously pointed to the act of having a meeting or phone call as making progress on reconciliation.

Daniels said he would talk with the new minster if he comes forward with concrete action to close the socio-economic gaps Indigenous people face.

"If Pallister can't lead, and his cabinet can't lead, they do need to resign, and they can remove themselves from politics," Daniels said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "If Pallister can't lead, and his cabinet can't lead, they do need to resign, and they can remove themselves from politics," Southern Chiefs' Organization Grand Chief Jerry Daniels said.

Pallisters office did not offer a response Monday afternoon, but the premier in the past has defended his work in transferring treaty lands, helping flood evacuees return home and reforming criminal-justice and foster-care systems.

Daniels counters that indicators such as health outcomes and graduation rates havent budged since Pallister took office in 2016.

"Nothing has changed, and in fact we see an erosion of our rights and trying to overstep our jurisdiction," he said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "We treated your ancestors like human beings, your institutions treated us like savages," Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Arlen Dumas said.

Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Arlen Dumas said the Progressive Conservative government needs a major shift in its approach to First Nations issues, instead of simply apologizing.

"Im tired of talking to Pallister; I give him every opportunity to have meaningful dialogue... he'd rather talk at me," Dumas said, his voice rising.

Sagkeeng begins search for unmarked burial sites Click to Expand Councillors Lin Dorie (left) and Erin Dorie walk through a field where they performed a smudge ceremony in preparation for a search for unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school in Sagkeeng, (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press) Posted: 7:00 PM Jul. 19, 2021 Sagkeeng First Nation is bracing for difficult revelations, with a ground-penetrating radar search of its former residential school grounds starting Tuesday morning. This is going to be a difficult time for our people, Sagkeeng Chief Derrick Henderson told the Free Press. Read Full Story

In a fervent speech, he characterized the PC cabinet as "uneducated, ignorant" and cold-hearted in its response to the cumulative number of detected unmarked graves.

"Who, in their right mind, can go, We found 1,505 babies, children, murdered in these schools, hidden and buried in the ground,' and in the same breath, say, But residential schools were a good thing; assimilation was a good thing?" he said.

He noted that at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, rural municipalities reached out to nearby reserves to co-ordinate their preparedness, which he contrasted with the premiers insistence that the toppled statues of Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria will be put back on the legislature grounds.

"If Pallister wants to rebuild that (Queen Victoria) statue so quickly, a statue that some of my non-First Nations friends in Manitoba didn't even know the significance of, then he might as well be building it on some of those graves."

Dumas said that goes against the collaborative spirit outlined in the treaties, which were signed after Indigenous people helped European settlers to survive harsh climates and set up the fur trade.

"We treated your ancestors like human beings, your institutions treated us like savages," he said.

Dumas warned Manitobans that the massive First Nations youth population needs something to look forward to, instead of having them resort to conflict.

"There will come a day when our elders are no long around to remind us about what the spirit and intent of our relationship is," he said.

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS "We are willing to do whatever is necessary, by any means necessary, to protect and call out against injustice," Treaty 5 youth advocate Wapastim Harper said.

To that end, Treaty 5 youth advocate Wapastim Harper painted a grim picture of life in northern Manitoba, where he said racist ideologies have created the systems that lead to First Nations facing malnourishment and violence.

"We are willing to do whatever is necessary, by any means necessary, to protect and call out against injustice," he said.

"We are the only thing standing in white people's way of full access to untouched and unfathomable resources, and they know our youth will continue that fight."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
The province is hiring a consultant to help create a five-year action plan for delivering mental health services in Manitoba.

The province is hiring a consultant to help create a five-year action plan for delivering mental health services in Manitoba.

"A lot of work and many reports have been commissioned in the last several years, including the VIRGO report, the Peachey report and the illicit drug task force report," Mental Health, Wellness and Recovery Minister Audrey Gordon said at a news conference Monday in Winnipeg.

Some of those reports' recommendations have already been implemented, she said.

"Now it is time to bring this work together under one umbrella," said Gordon, who announced the plan to make a plan outside the NorWest Community Youth Hub.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to requests for mental health counselling at the hub increasing by 500 per cent from January 2020 to March of this year, said executive director Nancy Heinrichs, who has 30 years of experience working in the sector.

"During this time, I have never seen a time when mental health is more important than now."

However, critics said what's needed now is urgent action to address Manitoba's mental health crisis  not another consultant's report.

"I am disappointed by the lack of urgency in response to the mental health and addiction needs of children and youth in Manitoba," said Ainsley Krone, acting Manitoba youth advocate.

"While I understand the need for ongoing community consultations and to hear the voices of those most impacted by services, this is a process that has been undertaken numerous times, notably with the VIRGO report in 2018, and has yet to inform significant improvements to the mental health and addiction systems for children and youth in Manitoba," Krone said in an email.

"Many people are going to lose their lives because of the non-action of this government," added NDP critic for mental health and addictions Bernadette Smith, who accused the Progressive Conservative government of stalling.

Between January and December 2020, 372 people in Manitoba died from overdose  an 87 per cent increase over 2019, according to Manitoba's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

Harm-reduction strategies such as safe consumption sites could be saving lives but were removed from the VIRGO report by the province, Smith said.

"These aren't sites where people are just going to do drugs," the MLA for Point Douglas said. "They're actually getting... connected with resources  whether that's getting into detox, whether that's getting set up with a counsellor, whether that's using drugs safely because they've exhausted every vein in their body, or that they are getting a safe supply and not spreading blood-borne diseases.

"So all of these things are just compounded, and then here you have a government that's saying, 'Well, we're looking at it  we're going to develop another plan.'"

The Manitoba Liberals said the PCs appear to be putting off any meaningful action on mental health, after publicly agreeing in 2017 to $400 million in federal funding over 10 years for Manitoba to invest in home and community care, including palliative care, and mental health and addictions.

"Manitobans need treatment now, not another round of bureaucratic reshuffling," Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont said in an email.

"This is a plan to plan to have a plan, when the PCs are sitting on $400-million in federal health funds."

However, Gordon said the five-year plan is necessary to provide services that are co-ordinated, effective and results-oriented and "to make it easier for Manitobans to access the right care at the right time at the right place."

She said the province has issued a request for proposal to hire a consultant, and expects to have one in place with public engagement opportunities starting this fall.

"This will help to ensure our priorities are your priorities," said Gordon, who was appointed minister in January.

The five-year action plan for mental health will be made public by the end of the year, the province said in a news release.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
THE province is suing a former Manitoba mayor, accusing him of misappropriating over $40,000 in billings for unapproved road maintenance.

THE province is suing a former Manitoba mayor, accusing him of misappropriating over $40,000 in billings for unapproved road maintenance.

Between May 2015 and August 2016, then Manigotagan mayor Larry Wood "established a pattern of behaviour in which he personally and repeatedly collected funds he was not entitled to," the province alleges in a statement of claim filed last week.

Wood, who at the time was also area works supervisor for the Manigotagan maintenance yard, was informed in April 2014 that maintenance yard employees would no longer be responsible for maintaining community service roads and that any maintenance work was to be done only with the approval of the Department of Manitoba Infrastructure, the statement of claim alleges.

"Despite the departments directions, and without prior authorization and approval from it, (Wood) continued to instruct departmental employees under his supervision to conduct maintenance on the community service roads, utilizing departmental equipment and materials to do so," says the statement of claim.

As mayor, the statement of claim alleges, Wood billed the Manigotagan Community Council for $43,460, "and collected the funds for his own personal benefit and gain."

In August 2017, Wood met with an infrastructure department representative and government lawyer and agreed to repay the money, alleges the statement of claim. To date, none of the money has been repaid.

The allegations have not been proven in court and Wood is presumed innocent.

Manigotagan is approximately 190 kilometres north of Winnipeg.
The provincial government will include the issue of unlicensed cemeteries in its review of the Cemeteries Act.

The provincial government will include the issue of unlicensed cemeteries in its review of the Cemeteries Act.

It comes as welcome news to one Manitoban who now needs permission to visit the grave of his father for the first time in seven decades, because there is now no access road to the site, located in the middle of a farmers field.

"Thats good," Joe Thiessen said. "There should be something in the regulations. My children and grandchildren need to be protected so they can go there.

"There needs to be respect for the people who made you."

Thiessen recently spoke to the Free Press about how, for the first time since his father died in 1950, he was told he couldnt drive to the cemetery near Altona where his dad was buried, along with several other community members.

The North Neuhoffnung Cemetery was never licensed by the province, and wasnt a municipal- or church-run cemetery. A RCMP spokeswoman said officers investigated and found the landowner, who didnt want anyone driving in the field until the crop is harvested, was willing to allow access on foot.

However, Thiessen said most people who would want to access the cemetery are seniors and cant walk a quarter of a kilometre on foot.

A spokesman for the province said the Cemeteries Act does not currently contain provisions related to the responsibilities of unlicensed cemeteries, but that could change.

"In Manitoba, the legislation that the board (Funeral Board of Manitoba) administers is currently under review," said the spokesman.

"The issues noted will be brought forward during the review process as Manitoba looks for ways in which to modernize and further develop the bereavement legislation."

Another Manitoban who has family buried in a rural cemetery said protections are needed.

Ardith Davidson said community members acted fast about three decades ago, when they heard a new farmer in the area was pulling out headstones and starting to plow the McKenzie Cemetery, located about halfway between La Riviere and Snowflake.

At the time, the cemetery in a field off the main road had been neglected for years, with almost a metre of debris, dirt and weeds covering the plots and markers.

"Fortunately, some people from the area, including my father, heard about what was done and were able to save some of the headstones," said Davidson. "The ones they were able to save have been aligned on a concrete slab in a couple of rows and is now surrounded by a barbed wire fence."

Davidson said her father and other community members later decided to renovate the cemetery. She has photographs from the time which show what the site looked like before the renovation and after.

"Some of the headstones had been destroyed, but the ones they could were put up again," she said. "My dad was quite upset at the time  it was his grandparents who were (buried) there."

Even today, the cemetery is not easy to access, however, Davidson said.

"There is a road allowance off the main road, but it does not go all the way to the cemetery," she said. "The road allowance is extremely rough and is best accessed using a truck.

"When the road allowance ends, you have to drive across a field or walk the remaining distance. Out of respect for the farmer, this usually means that the area is only accessible in the early spring before seeding starts or in late fall after the crops have been harvested," Davidson said.

"Cemeteries like this should be protected. There should be a law. Its sad somebody could come and plow it all up and desecrate a headstone."

Gordon Goldsborough, president of the Manitoba Historical Society, said he also hopes the province does something to protect such sites in legislation because there are hundreds of them.

"It doesnt matter if they are formal or not  I think it is fundamentally disrespectful," said Goldsborough. "These places should be honoured.

"It doesnt matter if they are neglected. If there has been a burial there, you have to give them recognition."

Goldsborough said the Municipality of Roblins community foundation recently created an abandoned cemetery fund to look after area sites.

"Id like to see other municipalities follow their lead."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
Sagkeeng First Nation is bracing for difficult revelations, with a ground-penetrating radar search of its former residential school grounds starting Tuesday morning.

Sagkeeng First Nation is bracing for difficult revelations, with a ground-penetrating radar search of its former residential school grounds starting Tuesday morning.

"This is going to be a difficult time for our people," Sagkeeng Chief Derrick Henderson told the Free Press.

"But you have to honour those children (and) those families, after what happened."

The Anishinaabe community, 120 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, spent Sunday in ceremony and started smudging Monday the grounds of the former Fort Alexander residential school.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Councillors Lin Dorie (left) and Erin Dorie walk through a field where they performed a smudge ceremony in preparation for a search for unmarked graves on the site of a former residential school in Sagkeeng, (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

The First Nation has fundraised to pay a company $20,000 to conduct ground-penetrating radar searches, arriving Monday and starting work early Tuesday, after a briefing from local leadership.

"I think the community wants me to get it done now, today, and be done with it tomorrow. But I said to them last night that this is going to be a long process," Henderson said Monday.

Indigenous leaders accuse provincial government of 'racist, political propaganda, gaslighting' Click to Expand MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee along with other chiefs from the Treaty 5 First Nations gather on the front steps of the Manitoba Legislative building Monday morning to announce an action plan to combat hate crime and racism.210719 - Monday, July 19, 2021. Posted: 7:00 PM Jul. 19, 2021 Manitobas grand chiefs are calling on Premier Brian Pallister to resign, as his party tries to quell frustration over ahistorical residential-school comments he and his new Indigenous reconciliation minister have made. Read Full Story

Elders have long-believed there are unmarked graves on the property, and the band pledged shortly after the revelation of such burial sites in Kamloops, B.C., it would do its own searches.

Henderson said that includes searching grounds around the school and former medical centre, as well as near the former Fort Maurepas trading post and along riverbanks.

The band will then try to identify any found remains, likely with the help of records Catholic Oblates are currently transferring to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg.

Children who attended the school were taken from 21 communities, some of whom never made it home.

Black River Chief Sheldon Kent said the news from B.C. and elsewhere has dredged up trauma in his community, just 25 km north of Sagkeeng.

The Fort Alexander Indian Residential School was built on land on the Fort Alexander Reserve (now the Sagkeeng First Nation) in southeastern Manitoba in 1905. (Archives of the Missionary Oblate Sisters)

"Some are turning to alcohol. They were living sober lives for a number of years, but they're turning to substance abuse to numb the pains again," he said in an interview.

"They're going back to the old ways of blocking, and protecting themselves," said Kent, who took part in a pipe ceremony and water ceremony this past weekend at Sagkeeng.

Black River has mobilized a mental health team, after already seeing people struggle with reports of burial sites in other provinces.

"They weren't prepared, because they probably blocked those harmful memories about the trauma they've experienced, and this retriggered lots," Kent said.

"I pray for them, that when we discover them, they're able to grieve."

Henderson said locals also want accountability if they uncover any evidence of crimes.

Former students recalled corporal punishment and widespread sexual abuse at the school; including former Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine in a famous 1990 interview.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada found documentation of numerous runaways at the Fort Alexander school, which operated from 1905 to 1970, as well as as inadequate firefighting equipment, contaminated water and parents being denied visits.

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Sagkeeng First Nation community member will use ground-penetrating radar to search its former residential school grounds starting Tuesday. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press)

When the local high school reached capacity, students were sent back to the residential school for their studies.

A 1953 report recommended the school close, after an inspector found at least 15 centimetres of sewage overflowing in the boiler room and seeping into the boys playroom, producing a smell "unbearable and no human being should be asked to live under such circumstances."

A farm used to run on the schoolgrounds, where a closed dormitory was later converted into a garment factory.

Henderson said Sagkeeng band members fundraised to do the search, as both the Trudeau and Pallister governments' funding for such tasks appear to take a long time to access.

"I'm not going to wait for the government to fund what we're doing," he said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Wildfire smoke shrouded Winnipeg again Monday, leaving the air thick with the smell of burning timber.

Wildfire smoke shrouded Winnipeg again Monday, leaving the air thick with the smell of burning timber.

It was the second time in two weeks smoke had descended on the Manitoba capital, and if Environment Canada meteorologist Sara Hoffman is correct, it wont be the last in the near future.

"I think we should expect to be battling or dealing with reduced air qualities of forest fire smoke until they go out and we get a significant drop in the smoke at the end of summer," she said.

The smoke is expected to get worse Tuesday. Local forecasts were for levels of more than 250 parts per million in the morning, with afternoon levels around 30 to 50 ppm.

Fires surround southern Manitoba, with 130 active blazes in the province, as of Monday afternoon. A slew of fires in Northern Ontario forced that province to issue an emergency order for the region July 14; Saskatchewan recently announced it is "fully engaged" fighting wildfires which now number more than 160.

Manitoba announced new fire and travel restrictions across much of the province, with permanent residents in the region north of Nopiming Provincial Park and east of Lake Winnipeg asked to be ready to evacuate within an hours notice.

Access will be cut off to the area for non-residents as of 8 a.m. Tuesday, including from those who own cottages in the region.

Each nearby fire increases the likelihood weather systems will carry smoke into southern Manitoba, said Hoffman. Mondays smoke came in from huge swaths of fires burning east of Lake Manitoba and in northwestern Ontario, she said.

Smoke was trapped under a ridge of air, which kept it low to the ground. While its not necessary for a fire to be nearby to end up causing air quality problems (smoke can travel thousands of kilometres), Hoffman said it does make it more likely.

The "heat dome" Manitoba has suffered under in recent weeks may also be contributing to the settling of smoke near the surface. A heat dome is a ridge that traps hot, descending air below it.

"That upper feature would help to stifle movement of air, and therefore forest fire smoke," said Hoffman.

Drought has ravaged southern Manitoba, devastating crops and drying out fuel for wildfires.

Hoffman said the region may get a much-needed thunderstorm Monday night. But the system could produce moderate to severe hail in select areas, which could further damage crops. Lightning also brings a risk of adding to Manitobas wildfire count, she said.

Amid such conditions, Environment Canada encourages people to limit outdoor activity and to be cautious if they have any trouble breathing. They also suggest turning off air-conditioning units that draw outdoor air into the house.

People at high risk for smoke-related health problems include children, the elderly, pregnant women and people with heart or lung conditions, particularly asthma.

cody.sellar@freepress.mb.ca
Threats of violence, abuse and harassment are what some women face online every day, but rarely does it lead to criminal charges.

Threats of violence, abuse and harassment are what some women face online every day, but rarely does it lead to criminal charges.

Winnipeg gym owner Justin Peter Bodnarchuk, 39, was charged Tuesday with three counts of uttering threats to kill or cause bodily harm after allegedly posting menacing online messages against feminists and police officers.

Justin Peter Bodnarchuk was charged with three counts of uttering threats to kill or cause bodily harm after allegedly posting menacing online messages against feminists and police officers. (Aspect Fitness / Instagram)

The suspect also allegedly posted an online threat to kill a person who directly responded to his posts with disdain, city police said. Bodnarchuk remains in custody.

Such abuse is nothing new, said University of Guelph sociology Prof. Myrna Dawson, who also directs the Canadian Femicide Observatory for Justice and Accountability.

"I don't think our (justice) systems are set up to deal with (online attacks) yet because its severity must be recognized first and we're not there," she said in an interview.

"It is a form of misogyny that has consistently been normalized in various ways. That can be done by diminishing its severity or impact on the targets because it's not face-to-face or it's just the work of fringe groups who are all bark and little bite."

Winnipeg police could not say Tuesday whether general online threats are increasing, but explained why one person could be arrested for alleged online threats while other abusive social-media behaviours don't merit charges.

"Words are really important. References such as to kill or specifically harm a person in a specific manner or words that would generate alarm or fear in a reasonable person, those are considered when investigating threatening comments," Winnipeg Police Service Const. Dani McKinnon said in an interview.

"Some other criteria is who the threats being made to... Is it to an actual person or is it towards an identifiable group as a collective? That would make the threat possible, as well."

McKinnon suggested social-media users report abusive accounts and contact police when threatened.

Anecdotally, Dawson said some women are frustrated with a lack of help from police when facing online attacks.

"I do see many women discussing this through social media, expressing frustration with being targeted with threats, such as men are going to come to their home and rape them or kill them. And when police are contacted, they are basically told there is nothing they can do, to change their account or don't use social media," she said.

"So, again, women and girls having to adjust their behaviour  which they already do considerably both off and online  rather than target the perpetrators or make it more difficult for this abuse to occur online."

In Tuesday's case, Dawson said it's encouraging police pursued charges.

"Hopefully, that would have occurred even if they had not also been targeted," she said.

Some will argue, rightfully, it's not possible to know if those who perpetrate online abuse will escalate into real-world violence, she said.

"But that doesn't mean that the criminal justice system and the online providers are not responsible for determining how we begin to address issues of online abuse, which is not going to go away and which does impact women and girls, in particular," Dawson said.

"The biggest obstacles to the prevention of violence against women and girls are attitudes that condone and facilitate it  and these attitudes are currently flourishing online relatively unchecked and... impressionable youth, particularly boys, are witnessing it."

Court records show two women had secured protection orders against Bodnarchuk: one in 2018, the other in 2019.

"He has stated he had visions of smashing my face with a kettleball in my sleep. He has kicked in my front door and wished harm on my children," a former romantic partner wrote in her 2019 protection order application.

In May, Bodnarchuk was sentenced to 10 days time served and 18 months of probation after he admitted to breaching a protection order in place against him.

 with files from Dean Pritchard

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
Victorias Secret recently announced a cast of new angels. They include American athlete Megan Rapinoe, actress and activist Priyanka Chopra Jonas and the brands first transgender model, Vanetina Sampaio. Together, they speak to a far more diverse image of beauty than was common for the once popular company.

Opinion

Victorias Secret recently announced a cast of new "angels." They include American athlete Megan Rapinoe, actress and activist Priyanka Chopra Jonas and the brands first transgender model, Vanetina Sampaio. Together, they speak to a far more diverse image of beauty than was common for the once popular company.

Victorias Secret learned a lesson other leading fashion brands and the industry at large are coming to realize: diversity sells.

Better representation

This isnt surprising. For years, consumers have called for greater inclusion and better representation in mainstream fashion. And the industrys most avant-garde players have already responded, including Rihannas much talked about Savage X Fenty and Summersalts "every body is a beach body" campaign.

Consumers are willing to back brands that feature diversity with their praise and, more importantly, their dollars.

In the last two years, fashion brands such as Tommy Hilfiger, Nike and lingerie competitor Aerie all made efforts toward greater inclusion. They feature plus-size models, transgender models and models with disabilities in their stores and online campaigns. Each brand has been rewarded with public kudos and a flurry of consumer purchases. Yet others in the industry lagged. Despite Victorias Secrets latest inclusion and diversity efforts, models with disabilities were missing.

Embarking on diversity initiatives

According to our new study, A model who looks like me: Communicating and consuming representations of disability, the US$3-trillion fashion industry has, until recently, paid little attention to gender, sexuality, race and disability.

We ask how and why the industry almost suddenly embarked on diversity initiatives.

We focus our attention on disability because its traditionally seen as inconsistent with fashion. The industry largely saw a person with disabilities as someone who cant embody, reflect or convey beauty. In other words, disability would turn off consumers.

Our analysis over five years of three mainstream fashion magazines  Vogue, InStyle and Harpers Bazaar  revealed not a single person with a disability appearing on the cover. A look at 2,500 ads in InStyle turned up similarly little.

So we turned to the recent and well-known Nike, Aerie and Tommy Hilfiger campaigns that featured a diverse cast of models, including those with a range of visible and non-visible disabilities. Tommy Hilfigers campaign went a step further. The brand developed adaptive clothing specifically designed for people with disabilities  a step few others have taken.

This inclusion, though hugely important, often comes with more "sanitized" depictions of disability  creating images thought to be "more palatable" to consumers.

We found that stories often reinforced distinctions between "ability" and disability, suggesting that disability is something to be overcome. For example, when athletes were praised for pushing the limitations of their disability, sometimes no photos of people with disabilities were included in stories about them. When models with disabilities were included, they were often treated as too unremarkable to dress in brands referenced by the magazines editorial staff.

Disability, diversity and inclusion efforts

So why has disability become a more significant part of the fashion industrys diversity and inclusion efforts?

Some brands take the leap, challenging beliefs about potential consumer backlash. They lower perceived risk as other brands follow suit. Risk, though, is also lessened when consumers respond favourably to more inclusive initiatives, sending a message to the industry at large.

We analyzed more than 200 online consumer comments about Teen Vogues "The New Faces of Fashion" campaign that featured three models with disabilities: Chelsea Werner, Mama Cax and Jillian Mercado. We found that an overwhelming majority of consumers gave praise and admiration.

One viewer thanked Teen Vogue for "making great changes." Another, eager for inclusion, wrote: "Lets see this on a regular basis, please." Brands like Dove Beauty and Allure left comments on the magazines Instagram page. In response to Allures praise, one viewer called on the magazine to "join the Inclusion Revolution too." It wasnt long after that Allure announced its own series on "the beauty of accessibility," positioning Ellie Goldstein, a young model with Down syndrome, on the cover of their digital print magazine.

Poised for a reboot

Away from social media and after more than a year in lockdown, the fashion industry is poised for a reboot. Couturiers such as Dior and Chanel have convened in Paris for the industrys first set of in-person shows since the pandemic began. As Victorias Secret and others set about reimagining the world that will be, we wonder what the "inclusion revolution" will look like  and whether people with disabilities will continue to be part of it.

We should look to industry leaders for signs of lasting change, but consumers matter, too. They must continue demanding that fashion and beauty brands engage meaningfully with their efforts toward diversity and inclusion.

These demands will need to move beyond casting calls and runway models. They must include boardrooms and brand teams  those who ultimately influence and make decisions about what consumers see and purchase.

David Pettinicchio is an associate professor of sociology and Jordan Foster is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Toronto.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.
Having trouble sleeping? Youre not alone. Sleep disorders have grown so prevalent since the start of the pandemic, theres a name for it  coronasomnia.

Opinion

Having trouble sleeping? Youre not alone. Sleep disorders have grown so prevalent since the start of the pandemic, theres a name for it  "coronasomnia."

That got me wondering, as I yet again tossed and turned for much of the night, if this is going to have long-term consequences for society. Simply put, is this the new normal? Are we now, thanks to the pandemic, a nation of lousy sleepers?

"I dont think were forever doomed," said Dr. Ronald Chervin, director of the Sleep Disorders Centers at the University of Michigan. "But Id say were now in an epidemic of sleep deprivation."

Every sleep expert I spoke with said things probably would get better when the COVID-19 pandemic finally eased. (Coronavirus cases have surged in recent days in several parts of the U.S.). But each also acknowledged that, although many people may be sleeping just fine, millions of others, like me, cant remember the last time they got a decent nights shut-eye.

"We need to think about the epidemic of chronic insomnia that will follow the pandemic," said Donn Posner, an adjunct clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford University and head of the firm Sleepwell Consultants. "Clearly, this has been a stressful couple of years for a number of reasons  COVID-19, politics," he told me. "Stress can lead to chronic insomnia, and chronic insomnia can take on a life of its own."

A recent study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found that more than half of all Americans reported having had problems sleeping since the start of the pandemic. The academys survey of about 2,000 U.S. adults determined that 56 per cent were having trouble falling or staying asleep. Respondents also said that when they did manage to nod off, they tended to have "more disturbing" dreams.

These issues were most pronounced among people in the prime of life. Nearly three-quarters of respondents ages 35 to 44 reported suffering from coronasomnia. Michael Perlis, director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was natural for people to sleep poorly amid heightened stress and anxiety.

"Evolution or God programmed us not to sleep when theres a perceived threat," he said. "If you have a lion looking at you and licking its lips, you shouldnt go to sleep."

COVID-19 is that lion. Youre the prospective entree.

Even for those who are fully vaccinated, stress levels may be elevated because of work-related pressure, worries about family members or uncertainty about coronavirus variants. Not surprisingly, the academys study found that many sleepless Americans had turned to prescription drugs or over-the-counter supplements such as melatonin to address their restlessness.

More than two-thirds of respondents said they were using such remedies more frequently since the pandemic started. Americans spent more than US$825 million on melatonin last year, up 43 per cent from a year earlier, according to data analytics firm Nielsen.

Jerome Siegel, director of UCLAs Center for Sleep Research, told me the flexible hours that come with working from home had to some extent turned us into a nation of light sleepers. "You can keep whatever hours you want, as long as you get your work done," he said, observing that he now gets email from colleagues in the middle of the night.

"If things stay like this," Siegel added, "then, yes, I can see how this would rewire people to develop new, possibly worse sleep habits over the long term."

The experts advise people to practice whats known as good sleep hygiene. Some of this is common sense, such as avoiding caffeine, alcohol and nicotine before bed. Good sleep is about structure. That means mending your easygoing pandemic habits and reintroducing some discipline.

Here are some tips from the pros for better sleep:

l Get up at the same time every day. This is by far the most effective way of resetting your internal clock, although it can leave you groggy on days when sleep has been elusive.

l If you awaken frequently in the middle of the night, try going to bed later and thus squeezing the hours of sleep you do get into a continuous cycle.

l Maintain a no-gadgets rule for the bedroom. Sleep and intimacy. Nothing else.

l Go easy on the devices before bedtime. Anything that emits light or is stimulative in any way, including music, is going to perk you up.

l Avoid large meals and exercise before bedtime.

"And no napping," said UCLAs Siegel. "Napping is not something that healthy humans do. Hunters and gatherers didnt nap."

That may be the toughest one for me. Ive been napping more often during the pandemic  mostly because Im sleeping so poorly at night. That will change, hopefully, when we all return to the office, at least part time, and start hunting and gathering again.

David Lazarus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times.
An off-duty Drug Enforcement Administration agent posed for photographs in which he flashed his DEA badge and firearm outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, according to a court filing Tuesday following the agent's arrest.

A video posted on the internet also showed Mark Sami Ibrahim carrying a flag bearing the words Liberty or Death outside the Capitol, about 12 minutes before a mob of people pulled apart a nearby set of barricades, authorities said.

Ibrahim, of Orange County, California, was a probationary employee of the DEA and was on personal leave from the agency when he traveled to Washington on Jan. 6. Several weeks before the riot, he had given notice of his intention to resign.

Also on Tuesday, a third person pleaded guilty to participating in a plot for members of the anti-government Oath Keepers group to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. The judge who accepted Caleb Berrys guilty plea didnt immediately schedule his sentencing hearing.

The presence of law enforcement at the riot has been troubling for the police who were attacked and beaten. The DEA agent is among at least 30 officers in 12 states who are being scrutinized for their behavior in the District of Columbia or face criminal charges for participating in the riot. Ex-military participated, too.
JUNEAU  A jury trial is scheduled for Dec. 1 and 2 for a 51-year-old Cambridge woman who is charged with first degree reckless endangerment charges.

Michele Schacht faces felony charges of aggravated battery, and three counts of substantial battery. If convicted of all the charges, she could face up to 29 years in prison. The trial was scheduled in Dodge County Circuit Court Tuesday.

According to the criminal complaint, a man came to Marshfield Medical Center in Beaver Dam Dec. 9 with multiple stab wounds. Dodge County Sheriff Deputies learned the man was being transported to UW Hospital in Madison soon and that he had been stabbed at a residence in Theresa.

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At that time, Schacht had lived in Theresa, and the man was at her home for dinner. The man said Schacht had become upset about him being there and started punching him in the face before grabbing a large kitchen knife and stabbing him in the back of the neck, left thigh and stomach area. The neck and stomach wounds were not very deep but he was worried about the thigh area so he came to the hospital. He said he did nothing to confront her and did not know why she stabbed him.
A new House committee is investigating the insurrection and the mistakes made by the Capitol Police and other law enforcement that allowed hundreds of Trump's supporters to break in. The panel announced Monday that four police officers, including two Capitol Police, will testify about their experiences that day at the committee's first hearing on July 27.

Seven people died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber and three other Trump supporters who suffered medical emergencies. Two police officers died by suicide in the days that followed, and a third officer, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, collapsed and later died after engaging with the protesters. A medical examiner determined he died of natural causes.

Pittman had been in charge of intelligence leading up to the riot, which caught law enforcement badly off guard. She conceded to Congress that multiple levels of failures allowed pro-Trump rioters to storm the building but denied that law enforcement had failed to take the threat seriously, noting how Capitol Police several days before the riot had distributed an internal document warning that extremists were poised for violence.
Local leaders are drafting resolutions in support of people working to stop the expansion of Enbridge Energy pipelines that transport Canadian oil across Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Madison City Council is expected to vote on a resolution Tuesday in support of Indigenous sovereignty and calling on local, state and federal leaders to stop the reroute of Line 5 in northern Wisconsin and construction of Enbridges $2.9 billion Line 3 replacement in Minnesota.

The resolution, which has 13 sponsors, notes that each of the lines crosses dozens of rivers, streams and wetlands, including the Mississippi River, and cites spills in 1991 and 2010 that leaked millions of gallons of oil into rivers.

Dane County Board member Heidi Wegleitner said she plans to introduce a similar resolution later this week.

Speaking at a send-off event Monday for several protestors heading to camps along the Line 3 pipeline route through northern Minnesota, Madison City Council President Syed Abbas said people in the United States are fortunate to have clean water.
POYNETTE  An indoor air-quality manufacturing facility in Poynette has nearly doubled its employees since 2020 and wants to hire 50 more people by the end of 2021.

Our five-year plan has basically turned into three-year plan as weve exceeded all expectations, Aprilaire General Manager Bill Priske said of the progress his company made with hiring and construction during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Aprilaire, a subsidiary of Research Products Corp., had 150 employees at the start of 2020 but now employs 280. Since the start of the pandemic, the completed expansions at the Poynette facility include a new, $10 million, 110,000-square-foot distribution and shipping center, and a $6 million, 60,000-square-foot manufacturing building that it uses primarily for producing its growing line of dehumidifiers.

Research Products Corp., founded in Madison in 1938, opened the Aprilaire manufacturing facility in Poynette in 1960. Aprilaire reported last year that it makes more than 1,100 unique indoor air-quality products and ships more than 5 million boxes of products per year.

When more people started working from home, it really expanded our business, Priske said of an increased demand for air quality products during the global pandemic. It hasnt stopped.
Hope amidst despair

6 712 students will graduate from Wits during the July graduation season.

A host of problem solvers, defenders of the truth, and advocates for justice, will graduate from Wits University during the July 2021 graduation season, amidst a global pandemic and social unrest in the country. Yet, Wits Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Zeblon Vilakazi describes this as a moment of hope for humanity.

[WATCH] the online graduation ceremonies.

We live in a historic moment characterised by uncertainty and change. You are graduating amidst a global pandemic, for which there is not yet a cure. Our young democracy is under threat, and civil unrest is widespread. Our society is plagued by inequality and poverty. Our economy is flailing, and unemployment is rife, says Vilakazi.

Yet, I remain hopeful because of you. And because I know that great societies can flourish in times of flux. We are rapidly adapting to change in our personal, professional, and social spaces. This moment provides us with a moment to pause and to reflect on our political, healthcare, and socio-economic challenges, and to hit the reset button as we reimagine our futures. And you will play a vital role in this process. It will be no easy feat, but we must muster our collective courage and strength to seek hope in despair, knowledge in failure, innovation in disorder, and our common humanity through advancing the public good.

This ceremony represents a fortuitous moment of hope and inspiration, an opportunity to chart a new course that can propel us into a new beneficial world order, for good.

Solving current problems

A total of 6 712 students will graduate this July. Of these, 169 are PhD graduands whose research seeks to find the solutions to real world problems.

These include important topics such as investigating:

Why do women commit neonaticide? (Neonaticide is the act of a mother taking the life of her new-born within its first 24 hours of life),

Why do HIV-infected adolescents continue to carry the burden of oral health disease in Johannesburg which impacts on their quality of life?, and

Why do womens organisations remain on the margins as donor recipients in Africa?

On a lighter note, an engineering student also explored the physics behind tattoos and understanding the interaction of tattoo ink with ultrasound. These are just a few of the many studies pushing the frontiers of knowledge for our collective benefit. These students join over 200 000 Wits graduates making a contribution to society.

Miss South Africa graduates

The reigning Miss South Africa, Shudufhadzo Musida also graduates with an honours degree in International Relations. She is outspoken on issues related to mental health and gender-based harm in society, amongst others.

A South African first

For the first time, a PhD student, Ms Silvia Delsanto has graduated with a joint degree from Wits University and Turin University in Italy, in the field of physics.

Our graduates give us hope that we will rise and meet new challenges with the same bravery and intellect demonstrated in the past. We will continue to develop excellent graduates who advance society, conduct world-class research and foster innovation, and use our location in Africa to lead from the Global South, concludes Vilakazi.

The number of graduates in the July graduation season by Faculty is as follows:

Commerce, Law and Management (2 199),

Humanities (1 567),

Engineering and the Built Environment (1 267),

Science (1 191), and

Health Sciences (488).

The next graduation cluster is scheduled to take place in December 2021. For more information, visit the graduation webpage.
It's time now to welcome the newest members of our Morning Mug Club -- brought to you by Holland Farms Bakery & Deli.

Coming up from July 26 - July 30, Vacation Bible School returns to the First United Methodist Church of Herkimer.

The theme is "Jesus: Man of Mystery".

Help solve the case either in-person or online.

Find more clues, and learn how to join, by clicking here.
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) - State Department of Health officials tell The Associated Press that only a tiny fraction of vaccinated New Yorkers have tested positive for COVID-19 as infections and hospitalizations rise.

Department spokesperson Abigail Barker said Tuesday that at least 8,700 vaccinated people have tested positive for COVID-19.

Thats out of the nearly 11 million New York residents who are fully vaccinated. And its also a fraction of the 244,000 people who have tested positive for COVID-19 in New York since April 1.

Officials say no vaccine is perfect, meaning fully vaccinated people occasionally will get infected.

Still, health officials are urging the public to get vaccinated at a time when the highly contagious delta variant is spreading and hospitalizations are rising.
Three people in Fulton County, Georgia, have been arrested and charged after the Atlanta Police Department's Special Victims Unit became aware of a social media video that appeared to show a young male being abused, possibly because of his sexual orientation, according to Atlanta Police Sgt. John Chafee.

According to an incident report released by Atlanta Police, the video appeared to show the boy with his hair shaved past his hairline and the letters "GA" cut into his hair.

The reports said a male can be seen in the video yelling at the child and hitting him in the head, saying, "You still doing gay sh*t. You think I cut this in your head for no reason?" The report said the man then slapped the child on the side of his head while holding the top of the child's head with his other hand.

There were two additional videos, the incident report said. including one with the child stating he was not abused and another that showed the child -- with an altered hairline and "Gay" written on the side -- being teased.

On June 17, SVU investigators started working to identify the location where the incident took place and to identify all parties involved, according to a release from Atlanta Police. "We actually got a lot of feedback from members of the community who were able to help us identify the location and some of the people involved," Chafee said. "We're very appreciative of the feedback that we got in this case."

The child was identified and placed into Georgia Division of Family & Children Services custody the next night, the release said. His age was not released.

Police identified the suspects as Lorkeyla Jamia Spencer, 19; Brittney Monique Mills, 35; and Jordan Jarrode Richards-Nwankwo, 18. All three were arrested Friday and placed into custody at the Fulton County Jail, according to court documents and the release.

According to Chafee, all three were charged with cruelty to children, while Richards-Nwankwo was also charged with battery. Chafee said the relationship between the suspects and victim is being withheld for privacy reasons.

According to Tracy Flanagan with the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, both Spencer and Mills remain in jail as of Monday evening with their bond set at $40,000 each. Richards-Nwankwo posted a $50,000 bond and was released from jail Sunday.

As of Monday evening, Spencer did not have attorneys listed in her court and jail records. CNN reached out to Mills' public defender, Eric Cho, for comment. CNN also reached out to Richards-Nwankwo's attorney, Gift Nwankwo, for comment.

"The behavior in this social media post was difficult to watch and is absolutely unacceptable," the release from Atlanta Police said. "We are appreciative of the number of people who flagged this case with us and for those who provided information on the location where it took place. Our investigators worked hard to identify those involved and to gather the evidence needed to place each behind bars and we are thankful for their work."

The-CNN-Wire

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LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  Emergency responders are blaming a bad batch of spice, also known as synthetic marijuana, for a string of severe and often violent overdoses in July.

"It looks like someone is writhing in pain when they're on it, to be honest with you," says Lafayette police Capt. Scott Galloway.

"People a lot of times don't know where they're at. You can talk to them and they're incoherent and they're not responsive," says Nicholas Cunningham, a certified recovery specialist with Phoenix Paramedic Solutions.

He says spice is manufactured in local garages by spraying a leafy, green substance with toxic chemicals.

"They use everything from acetone to fingernail polish remover to bug spray," he says.

Authorities are blaming the problem on a bad or more intense batch circulating the community.

"Since people make this, they can intensify it by putting more chemical on it," Cunningham says.

Although the drug is similar in appearance to marijuana, Galloway says the similarities stop there.

"This is not related to any sort of marijuana reaction at all," he says. "This along the lines of a PCP or a hard drug or something like that where people have violent overdoses or reactions."

Galloway says that's because the chemical make-up is unpredictable.

"It is your Russian roulette kind of thing where you're taking a chance," he says.

The influx of these cases is taxing on first responders.

"It always requires multiple officers, multiple services to handle these people," Galloway says.

"It can be extremely difficult .. these are people that are completely incoherent, that don't know where they are," Cunningham says. "They might be seizing."

Cunningham says Phoenix is working to connect these people to addiction services in the community. For more information, visit Phoenix's Quick Response Team website.
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WLFI)  Six West Lafayette Firefighters are getting recognition for saving lives.

"It was just a generic call. It comes in as some that had fallen,' said WLFD Captain Ryan Harber. "We go on these all the time."

What started as a routine call for West Lafayette Firefighter on June 30, ended with a life being saved.

"We just cared for it as we do any call we go on, and it turned out to be life saving that day," said WLFD Firefighter Brad Schwartz.

It turns out, their quick actions prevented tragedy.

"We later found out from the paramedics on scene that, 'Hey, you guys saved her life.' She had a broken femur, and she would have bled out," Harber explained.

Then, on July 13, they were called to a possible overdose.

"Within four minutes, we had a pulse back and the subject was trying to breathe again," Harber said.

On Tuesday morning, the six firefighters who helped save those lives were recognized for their work.

"A lot of what we do here is medical work, and just because we have the name, 'firefighter' attached to us, that doesn't necessarily mean that's all we do," he explained.

Harber said it's nice to get some recognition.

"Yes, we do this everyday, but it's nice to get a 'good job' every now and then," he said.

However, Harber said he and his fellow firefighters are not in it for that.

"We are here to take care of our community and we want the community to know that," Harber said.

Capt. Ryan Harber and Firefighters Brad Schwartz and Michael Parsons were on the June 30 call, and those three were on the July 13 overdose call as well.

Lt. Stevie Jenkinson and Firefighters Kyle Glover and Cody Stacy were also on the July 13 call.

The firefighters received certificates honoring their actions.
W&M names Rachel Bardon as 2021-22 Beales Scholar

Rachel Bardon, a 2021 graduate of Buckingham County High School, is the 2021-2022 recipient of the Harriett Pittard Beales Scholarship at William & Mary.

T his merit-based scholarship provides tuition assistance to first-year students from South Central Virginia. Recipients are chosen based on academic performance, extracurricular community activities and service, outstanding character and other personal achievements.

One of the top students in her high school class, Bardon received an associates degree from Southside Virginia Community College in addition to her diploma. While attending Buckingham County High School, she served as senior class president and held other leadership positions with the schools Student Council Association, 4-H chapter and Future Business Leaders of America branch. In those roles, she has earned grants for projects that benefit her local community.

Bardon plans to major in English, and she envisions a career in the publishing industry as a writer or editor. At William & Mary, she said, she will pursue academic excellence and seek to build a network of classmates and alumni who can help her reach her professional goals. Bardon has a passion for history, and she appreciates William & Marys respect for tradition. She is also excited about the opportunity to study in close proximity to Colonial Williamsburg.

The scholarship honors the late Harriett Pittard Beales 34 of Boydton, Virginia who taught high school and who was also involved in service to her community of Mecklenburg County, Virginia in many ways, including mentoring young people, during the 100 years of her life. During her four years at William & Mary, she chaired the Women's Honor Council, served as vice president of the Women's Student Government and was also crowned May Queen as a senior.

Established in 1984 on the 50th anniversary of Beales graduation by her sons, Walter Beales 66 and Randolph Beales 82, the scholarship perpetuates her love of William & Mary and her legacy of mentoring young people. The scholarship has assisted nearly two dozen entering first-year students from a region in South Central Virginia that includes 12 counties and the City of Emporia.

My brother Randolph joins me in extending our warmest congratulations to Rachel, said Walter Beales. We are impressed by her academic achievements as well as her commitment to serving others and her goals for the future. We wish her the best as she joins this outstanding group of Beales Scholars and look forward to celebrating her accomplishments at William & Mary.
Christi Caughron, 66 year old Woodward resident, passed away Thursday, July 15, 2021 at home surrounded by her family. Funeral services will be held at 10:00 a.m. Wednesday, July 21, 2021 in the Billings Funeral Home Chapel with Reverend Chris Ames officiating. Interment will be at the Memor
Combined with Coseal's expertise of the sector and Azelis' existing global principal network and international agricultural/horticultural customer base, the companies aim to gain new business in South Korea given the huge potential. (Representative Image  Pixabay GmbH)

ANTWERP, BELGIUM: Azelis announces it has agreed to acquire 100 percent of the shares in Coseal in South Korea. Coseal is renowned for its specialist distribution, repackaging and blending of agricultural/horticultural surfactants. This transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2021.

The acquisition of Coseal will further drive Azelis growth in these market segments across Asia Pacific. South Korea is an attractive and growing market with 51m inhabitants and a high GDP per capita.

- This new partnership diversifies and strengthens Azelis position in the attractive agricultural/horticultural segment in South Korea.

- Coseal has long-established customer relationships and strong technical expertise.

- The transaction is consistent with Azelis strategy of complementing organic growth with strategic acquisitions.

Established in 1973 and headquartered in Seoul, Coseal is owned by Sang Jin Kang and family. Kang and Coseals 45 employees will be integrated into the Azelis team.

We are delighted to be partnering with Azelis. With almost 50 years of experience operating in South Korea, our joint focus on sales excellence and innovation-driven services brings new and exciting opportunities. There is huge potential to gain new business in South Korea with Coseals expertise of the sector and Azelis existing global principal network and international agricultural/horticultural customer base, said Kang Sang Jin, CEO of Coseal.

Like Azelis, Coseal has strong technical expertise and strives to continually provide tailor-made formulations to customers. This has been critical in building Coseals long-lasting and collaborative relationships. Azelis in South Korea has been largely focused on personal care, so were very excited to enter the agricultural/horticultural market with such a reputable partner by our side, said Laurent Nataf, CEO & President of Azelis Asia Pacific.

Azelis entered South Korea in 2018 with the acquisition of SammiChem Co Ltd, which is now known as Sammi Azelis Co Ltd. The company runs a state-of-the-art application laboratory dedicated to personal care. In 2021, Azelis expanded the business in South Korea by acquiring MH, a food distributor.

 Worldofchemicals News
In this CCTV image obtained by the Department of Justice, Paul Hodgkins is seen on January 6 standing near the front of the Senate well. Hodgkins was sentenced July 19 to eight months in prison in a closely watched case.
Following New South Wales (NSW) Premier Gladys Berejiklians Saturday morning announcement of stricter lockdown measures in the Greater Sydney region, unions have led the charge for many of these restrictions to be reversed. The campaign by the unions, waged alongside big business, is a stark exposure of the thoroughly corporatised, anti-working-class character of these organisations.

Inner-west Sydney COVID-19 testing station (Photo: WSWS Media)

Berejiklian announced that residents of the Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool regionsthe local government areas (LGAs) at the centre of Sydneys ongoing COVID-19 outbreakwould no longer be permitted to leave their LGA except for work in healthcare or emergency services. In addition, the state premier announced that all non-critical construction would be paused for two weeks.

The heightened restrictions only came after three weeks of partial lockdown measureswith virtually no limits on businessfailed to prevent a growing surge in infections which, by Saturday, had caused three deaths and at least 75 hospitalisations from COVID-19. Since the announcement, a further 288 cases have been found in NSW, and two more people have died. There are currently 95 people hospitalised with COVID-19 in the state.

As a result of the late introduction and limited character of the earlier measures, the outbreak has spread across the country and prompted a lockdown in Victoria, where 88 cases have been recorded in the last week, and the re-introduction of COVID-19 restrictions in South Australia.

Without even a pretence of concern for the health or safety of their members, the immediate response of the trade unions covering the impacted industries was to join with business leaders in lobbying the NSW government for exemptions to the public health orders.

The Transport Workers Union (TWU) posted on Facebook at 5:15 p.m. Saturday: ALL essential transport workers must be automatically exempt from panicked snap restrictions from the NSW Government. Also, on Saturday, the TWU wrote to the premier demanding a standing exemption which relieves transport workers from future snap policy changes which would prevent them from doing their jobs.

On Sunday morning, the TWU proclaimed, TRANSPORT WORKERS WIN EXEMPTION FROM NSW GOVERNMENT. This is what the union regards as a win for workersbeing forced back to work under conditions where the Delta variant is completely out of control.

Demonstrating yesterday that it is more concerned with the profit demands of industry than health or science, the union stated: The TWU are working behind the scenes to prevent the politics of panic infecting the transport industry.

The Communications Electrical Plumbers Union (CEPU) posted to Facebook on Saturday: We are currently engaging with Australia Post to understand the impacts of the reviewed public health orders announced by the NSW Government todayon operations and the extent of the ability for members living in affected areas to engage in meaningful work.

Late Saturday night, the CEPU, having engaged with Australia Post at the highest levels throughout the day, told its members: The NSW Government has now authorised for people working in the freight, logistics, postal, courier or delivery services industries to travel outside the affected LGAs, if required for work purposes.

The Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) announced on Saturday that it was currently writing to all maritime employers calling on them to immediately place any affected workers on paid pandemic leave until such time as these restrictions are lifted.

Any hopes of MUA members that they would have to choose between protection from the pandemic and paying their bills were soon dashed, however. The union announced on Sunday morning: Maritime Workers Win Exemption from NSW Government. After late afternoon meetings yesterday, your union got agreement to allow Seaport and Ferry workers to be added to Authorised Worker list.

As a result of this union-led campaign, the NSW government released a list on Saturday night detailing exemptions for 35 occupations, reversing virtually all of the heightened restrictions it announced in the morning.

The pause on construction was not reversed, prompting an angry response from the Construction Forestry Energy and Mining Union (CFMEU). Union Secretary Darren Greenfield told 2GB Radio: Were still angry but we need to start telling this governmenteveryone in the industry doesthat we need to get back up and running.

Greenfield said this was because, If this goes past Friday week, the date weve got set now, businesses will start to collapse.

At no point in Saturdays flurry of communication did any of these unions express a single word of concern for the health and safety of their members. In almost every case, COVID-19 is not even mentioned, as if the heightened restrictions had been announced in an alternate reality in which the global pandemic had not already claimed well over four million lives.

Not one of the unions included in their denunciations of the measures a demand for priority vaccination for their members. Currently less than 14 percent of Australian adults are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, and less than 35 percent have received even one shot.

Instead, the only concern of the unions is to force their members to continue working under dangerous conditions in order to fulfil the profit demands of management. The unions characterise the NSW governments reversal of restrictions as a win, because it is a win for the layer whose interests they truly representbig business.

Certainly, workers hearing the announcement of lockdown measures affecting their industries had concerns beyond just the threat of disease. Decades of wage suppression and the destruction of full-time positions in favour of poorly-paid casual and gig-economy jobs without paid leave entitlementsall enforced by the unionsmean two weeks without work will result in serious financial hardship for much of the working class.

The unions are exploiting the desperation of these workers rather than demanding that those affected by the restrictions continue to be paid in full while it is unsafe for them to work. Instead, the unions are promoting the conception that workers ability to pay their bills and provide for their families is intimately bound up with the unimpeded profitability of major corporations.

To the extent that Australias unions have expressed any demand for financial assistance for lockdown-affected workers, it has been to call for the re-introduction of the JobKeeper wage subsidy. Both Unions NSW and the Australian Council of Trade Unions have vehemently called for the re-introduction of JobKeeper, which last year resulted in billions of dollars being handed over to businesses, many of which increased their profits during the pandemic, and which were under no obligation to retain workers once the payments stopped at the end of March.

Workers should reject these calls for further handouts to big business, which the working class will be forced to repay through years of stagnant wages and further cuts to public services. Instead, workers must demand that their wages are paid out of the massively-increased profits accrued by the wealthy elite during the pandemic. Between March and December 2020, the combined net worth of Australian billionaires increased by more than 50 percent.

Throughout the world, the same wealthy layers who have profited during the pandemic are directly responsible for its severity. Their relentless opposition to border closures, capacity restrictions and lockdowns, and the assent of every capitalist government to these demands, has caused millions of unnecessary deaths. The Delta variant that has necessitated the current lockdowns in Sydney and Melbourne is the product of these globally-adopted herd immunity policies, which have allowed mass circulation of the coronavirus and the development of this and other mutant strains.

There can be no end to the subordination of workers rightsincluding the most basic, life itselfwithin the capitalist system. The grotesque and ever-growing riches of the wealthy few, in Australia and internationally, show that there is no shortage of resources to cope with a temporary reduction in productivity to protect lives.

What is required is a fight for a socialist future, in which these resources will be used to meet the social needs of humanity, rather than to further enrich a small elite. The response of Australias trade unions to Saturdays announcement is a stark demonstration that these rotten organisations are diametrically opposed to such a fight. Their role during the pandemic has been to keep production going, whatever the dangers to safety, collaborate in massive government handouts to business, and to suppress strikes and industrial action, while imposing sweeping cuts to jobs, wages and conditions.

Workers must make a conscious break with the trade unions, which serve only as an industrial police force of big business, and form new organisations of struggle, including rank-and-file committees, in their workplaces, schools and neighbourhoods. In the first instance, these committees should demand that health and safety and the preservation of human life are no longer subordinated to the material interests of a wealthy few.
In the first felony sentencing hearing related to Donald Trumps attempted coup on January 6, US District Judge Randolph Moss, an appointee of President Barack Obama, sentenced Paul A. Hodgkins, 38, to eight months in prison after he pled guilty to a single count of obstructing an official proceeding.

The sentence is less than half of the 1521 months recommended by federal prosecutors and a mere fraction of the 20-year maximum allowable under the law. As part of Hodgkins guilty plea last month, prosecutors agreed to drop four misdemeanor counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct. He had previously been released on bail after posting a $25,000 bond.

In a stark example of class justice, earlier this month a 62-year-old African American man, Hervis Rogers, was arrested in Texas for voting while on parole and faces a possible 40-year prison sentence. Crystal Mason, an African American woman also from Texas, is serving a five-year prison term for the same crime of voting.

In this image from U.S. Capitol Police video, Paul Allard Hodgkins, 38, of Tampa, Fla., front, stands in the well on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol in Washington. Hodgkins, who carried a Trump 2020 flag while in the U.S. Senate during the Jan. 6 riot pleaded guilty on Wednesday, June 2, 2021, to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding. (U.S. Capitol Police via AP)

Hodgkins sentence will likely serve as a benchmark for the more than 200 other defendants charged with the same felony of obstructing an official proceeding. The sentencing comes less than a week after the Washington Post revealed that a new book by reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker quotes Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, comparing Trumps plot to overturn the 2020 election to the coming to power of Adolf Hitler, telling his aides, This is a Reichstag moment, the gospel of the Fuhrer.

Hodgkins was one of some 50 far-right Trump supporters and militia members who broke into the Senate chamber on January 6. In a New Yorker video, Hodgkins appears at the 7:48 mark in the chamber along with Proud Boys and other militia members. He is standing next to the rostrum, wearing a Trump T-shirt and waving a Trump 2020 flag.

Standing behind Hodgkins, on the dias where Vice President Mike Pence was overseeing the counting of the Electoral College vote less than an hour before, prior to being evacuated as Trump supporters breached the Capitol shouting, Hang Mike Pence, is Jacob A. Chansley, also known as Jake Angeli, or the QAnon Shaman.

Chansley, after denouncing Pence as a traitor, recites a fascistic prayer over a bullhorn as police, Trump supporters, militia members and Hodgkins form a circle around him. Chansley begins by thanking God for being the inspiration needed to these police officers to allow us into the building, saying the storming of the Capitol on behalf of Trump sends a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists.

After Chansley concludes his prayer, again invoking God for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists and the traitors within our government, Hodgkins lifts his Trump flag in a fascist salute and nods in agreement, as others in the room shout Amen.

Far from planning for a normal tourist visit or a peaceful protest, as Republican Party politicians have asserted in the months following the failed coup, Hodgkins admitted to prosecutors in his plea agreement that he boarded a bus to Washington D.C. from his hometown of Tampa, Florida with a rope, protective goggles and latex gloves, all of which he brought within him to the Senate floor.

Despite Hodgkins appearing in the Senate chamber alongside Proud Boys militia members, 37 of whom have been charged in the assault on the Capitol, and participating in a fascist prayer with one of the most prominent progenitors of the QAnon conspiracy theory, Hodgkins claims he was not part of any organized group, a claim evidently accepted by federal prosecutors and the Biden Justice Department.

In arguing for an 18-month sentence, Assistant US Attorney Mona Sedky noted that Hodgkins came prepared for confrontation, and that he had donned his protective eye goggles before he entered the Senate chamber. She said a tough sentence was needed in order to deter others from planning a sequel to the attempted coup.

He was part and parcel of an act of domestic terrorism that was going on around him, she added.

Hodgkins lawyer, Paul Leduc, a colonel in the Army Reserve, rejected Sedkys characterization. All of this commentary about January 6 being an act of domestic terrorism, I find it to be offensive, and I think it is gas-lighting the country and it needs to stop, he demanded.

Repeating the same lies that have been promoted by Trumps accomplices in the Republican Party, such as Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who described the attempted coup as a largely peaceful protest, Leduc argued that it was a protest that became a riot, comparable to last summers historic protests against police violence.

Judge Moss countered Leducs argument, saying, I dont think that any plausible argument can be made defending what happened in the Capitol as an exercise of First Amendment rights.

He continued: There were people storming through the halls of the Capitol, saying, Wheres Nancy? People were threatening the lives of members of Congress. That is more than a simple riot.

However, Moss was not moved by the prosecutions argument, referring to future prosecutions and an ongoing threat, that a message needed to be sent. I come back in my mind to the question of this case and how this case fits into the larger puzzle, he said, adding that there will be cases likely in which the government will have the opportunity to make that point.

While Hodgkins will spend eight months in prison, those who conspired with the coup plotter-in-chief Trumpincluding his lawyer accomplices Rudolph Giuliani, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, and Republican co-conspirators such as Arizona Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, Alabama Representative Mo Brooks, Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tommy Tubervillewill not sniff the inside of a jail cell if it is left to the Democrats to decide.

The ruling class desire to move on from the coup and shield those elements in the state responsible for the sabotage of the defense of the Capitolincluding the FBI, the US Capitol Police, and the Pentagon leadershipwas evident from the start of Hodgkins prosecution.

Even though video footage of Hodgkins in the Capitol was posted by the New Yorker on January 16, it took a call-in tip to the FBI office for Hodgkins to be arrested on February 16. The tipster, who personally knew Hodgkins but claimed to have not spoken to him for several years, called the FBI after seeing a selfie photo Hodgkins took inside the Capitol that had been posted on the right-wing social media network Parler.

Despite being the targets of the fascists that day, Democratic Party politicians were for the most part silent on the lenient sentencing. Not a single member of the Squadthe nominally left members of the Democratic House caucus, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezissued a statement. Nor did Senator Bernie Sanders.
The Socialist Equality Party urges workers to vote No to the rotten sell-out agreement Unite the union is seeking to impose on 300 workers at Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) Banbury plant.

JDE workers have reacted furiously to Unites proposed deal with the global coffee company, which will slash annual pay by up to 10,000, axe penalty rates, force workers onto night shift and lengthen the working week.

The Banbury 300 are furious, a JDE worker told the World Socialist Web Site yesterday. Everyone is angry and feeling betrayed by Unite.

Workers at the factory have already begun to campaign for a No vote in balloting that is due to start on July 26.

Workers at JDEs Banbury factory began strikes, protests and overtime bans on May 1 against fire and rehire threats by the company. JDE announced individual consultations in April to force staff onto vastly inferior contracts. When they refused to sign, the company issued 12-week termination notices.

JDE workers on the picket line on the first day of the strike (credit: WSWS media)

According to one worker, Unites 15-page company agreement was sent to workers last Wednesday and included a leavers package. Other workers say they are yet to see a copy. The deal followed three weeks of secret talks during which Unite suspended all industrial action.

A press statement issued by Unite yesterday morning claimed, The key components of the package include removal of the managements controversial hire and fire proposal; safeguarding pay and employment conditions; and generous compensation if an employee has to change shifts.

Unite national officer for the food industry Joe Clarke claimed, We have now hammered out a package safeguarding pay and employment conditions for our members. We believe that this is the best deal that can be achieved through negotiations and we will be recommending acceptance to our members.

JDE workers have slammed Unites claims as smoke and mirrors. The Twitter account #Banbury300 highlighted the deals lowering the hourly [rate] paid and putting it on the shift allowance to make it look like a win.

A source told the Banbury Gazette yesterday, The pay offer and compensation is a whitewash They have negotiated a shift allowance (that they get for working unsociable hours) by 15p extra while taking 15p off the hourly pay.

Around 200 of the 291 involved will lose out in this new deal. People who have never worked nights are going to be forced to. They are taking no consideration of the known effects of night shifts on people's health'.

Another worker told the WSWS, The shifts will change to a 4 on 4 off pattern, which is roughly 3 hours extra a week. Bank Holidays except Christmas will no longer be paid but included in holiday allowance which is 24 days a year. Overtime at time-and-a-half and double-time has gone! Redundancy has stayed at the same rate. Monthly pay for all [from fortnightly pay] with roughly 1,500 for changing over.

Workers are especially disgusted by Unites false claim that fire and rehire has been defeated. JDEs termination notices are still on the table and if workers reject the union-company deal, they will face the sack.

In recommending its sellout deal with JDE, Unite is holding a gun to workers heads. As a worker commented yesterday, We are voting on a deal that says if we vote in, naturally fire and rehire is taken off the table. If we vote against the deal, we are sacked on September 13th.

Another JDE worker said, Weve been told its the best we can expect but its nowhere near the one we were fighting for.

One worker said that Clarke had a secret meeting with Rob Williams, the plant director, in a service station without the elected committee and workers reps, no minutes or anything. But whatever Clarke did or agreed to, Unites betrayal is the outcome of a national strategy overseen by the unions lead officials who are working to cement their relations with corporate boardrooms. Unites primary objection to fire and rehire is that it threatens to dispense with their role as industrial policemen and trusted partners of business and government. At British Airways and Go North West, for example, Unite claimed a victory over fire and rehire after the two companies agreed to union proposals for savage cuts to jobs, pay, terms and conditions.

Unite Assistant General Secretary Steve Turner (credit: WSWS media)

Needless to say, none of the current contenders for Unite General Secretary, including supposed lefts Steve Turner and Sharon Graham, has uttered a word of criticism of the stinking deal being rammed through at JDE. Turner, who is promoted by the Stalinist Morning Star newspaper, visited striking JDE workers during the dispute, hoping to boost his electoral profile. Graham, absurdly promoted by the pseudo-left Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party as a grassroots candidate, leads Unites national leverage team that played a key role in betraying BA and Go North West workers.

The SWPs intervention provided an object lesson in the duplicity of all such pseudo-left groups.

An article by SWP member Pat Carmody last Tuesday was headlined, Fight any rotten deal over JDE fire and rehire strike. It reported that it would appear that the deal contains the huge pay cuts and the major attacks on shift patterns that workers at JDE have been resisting. If this is the case, this would be a major setback for workers at the plant and the struggle against fire and rehire.

In making such admissions, Carmody is covering the SWPs exposed rear by adapting to the hostility among JDE workers toward Unite. Carmodys previous articles in May and June contained no criticism whatsoever of Unites role in the dispute. Rather, his May 3 article, Fight brews at coffee giant Jacobs Douwe Egberts, offered unqualified support to Unite, while on May 10 he cited approvingly Joe Clarkes cynical boast, Were aiming for a knockout in round three, but if we have to go the full 12 rounds then were ready. Carmody claimed that Clarke reflected the determined mood of workers at the Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) coffee plant in Banbury.

The SEP and the WSWS warned from the outset that JDE workers could place no trust in Unite and must organise independently to defeat the fire and rehire plans of the company. On May 7, the WSWS wrote, JDE workers at Banbury cannot wage a successful struggle to defend their jobs, terms and conditions if their struggle is led by Unite and urged workers to form a rank-and-file committee, acting independently of Unite and contact JDE workers throughout Europe and internationally to discuss a united offensive.

On May 9 we wrote, it is necessary to issue a sharp warning. Unites campaign against fire and rehire is an appeal directed to company boardrooms, shareholders and capitalist politicians and has nothing to do with defending the conditions of workers. The unions sole concern is that new demands for workplace flexibility, cuts to pay, redundancies and pension reform, must be implemented via corporatist agreements with the union.

These warnings have been confirmed. The WSWS and SEP have advanced an independent strategy for JDE workers based on the unification of the working class across Europe and internationally to defeat companys plans. In contrast, the SWPs belated criticisms of Unite are still aimed at corralling workers behind their proven enemies. Carmodys latest article concludes with the pathetic suggestion that Workers should pressure the officials to scrap the deal and use some of the unions much-vaunted 40 million war chest to support an all-out indefinite strike.

The SWP knows full well that Unite has no intention of leading such a fight. The union responds to pressure from its members by drawing ever closer to the companies it serves so well. The SWP and similar organisations speak for the affluent middle class, including many with cushy positions within the union apparatus. They are terrified of workers breaking free from the unions corporatist straitjacket and striking out on an independent road.

Amid the deepest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, with a pandemic that has killed more than four million people and triggered a far-reaching economic, social and political catastrophe for the international working class, the SWP and similar pseudo-left outfits are seeking to block the development of the necessary socialist programme and leadership in the working class.

The SEP urges JDE workers to elect their own rank-and-file committee to campaign for a No vote and organise a fight-back against the companys fire and rehire agenda. Workers should draw up their own list of demands including the defeat of all attacks on jobs, conditions and wages and appeal to the growing sections of workers coming into struggle across the UK, Europe and internationally who will support such a fight.
On Friday, a federal judge in Texas ruled the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA)which protects those who qualify from deportation and provides work authorizationto be unlawful, halting the ability of the Biden administration to accept new applicants and throwing the lives of hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants into uncertainty.

In a 77-page opinion, District Judge Andrew Hanen determined DACA was unlawful because it violates the Administrative Procedure Act, a law which governs federal rulemaking, by circumventing the normal notice and comment process in adopting new rules.

The lawsuit was spearheaded by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxtonalong with attorneys general in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginiawho argued the federal program placed an undue burden on states and amounted to executive overreach.

Protesters in San Francisco, September 5, 2017 (Wikimedia Commons)

In his ruling, Hanen cited the 2020 Supreme Court decision in DHS v. Regents of the University of California, stating the majority determined federal courts have the authority to review the DACA program and its implementation. However, Hanen also borrowed from the dissenting opinion authored by the conservative Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Alito and Gorsuch, that stated DACA was an unlawful program.

Justice Thomas noted that the majority's failure to address DACAs creation was an effort to avoid a politically controversially but legally correct decision that would result in future battles to be fought in this Court, Hanen wrote. While the controversial issue may ultimately return to the Supreme Court, the battle Justice Thomas predicted currently resides here and it is not one this Court can avoid.

Hanens ruling will not immediately affect the more than 615,000 people, commonly known as Dreamers, who are currently protected under DACA. However, it does mean that the Department of Homeland Security can no longer approve new DACA applications or grant applicants the protections DACA provides. Furthermore, Dreamers again find themselves in a state of legal limbo and uncertainty for their futures.

Explaining his decision to not immediately terminate the program, Hanen cited the large volume of people benefiting from the program.

Hundreds of thousands of individual DACA recipients, along with their employers, states, and loved ones, have come to rely on the DACA program, Hanen wrote in a separate ruling Friday night. Given those interests, it is not equitable for a government program that has engendered such a significant reliance to terminate suddenly.

In the Supreme Courts 2020 decision, the court found that the Trump administrations attempt to end DACA in 2017 failed to consider the interests of the more than 600,000 people affected by the change and was an arbitrary and capricious violation of the APA. But the courts decision still left an opportunity for future attacks against the program.

The Trump Administration subsequently stopped accepting new DACA applications and sought to impose other limits on the program, but a federal judge in New York struck down those measures.

New applications surged after it was reinstated in December. The volume of applications has overwhelmed the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which reported a backlog of some 81,000 first-time applications pending as of the end of June. All these hopeful applicants, however, are now in limbo following Hanens decision and pending appeals.

DACA, established in 2012, protects undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children from deportation, in addition to allowing them to legally work in the US. Currently, the programs protections are renewable and valid for two years at a time. However, in the near decade since it was established, DACA remains one of the few paths to citizenship and employment for immigrants. According to the Migration Policy Institute, as of 2020 there are more than 1.3 million people in the US who are potentially eligible for DACA.

In a statement released Saturday, President Joe Biden stated he will appeal Hanens decision and claimed the Department of Homeland Security plans to issue a proposed rule concerning DACA in the near future. Additionally, Biden called on Congress to enact a permanent solution for Dreamers.

I have repeatedly called on Congress to pass the American Dream and Promise Act, and I now renew that call with the greatest urgency, Biden said. It is my fervent hope that through reconciliation or other means, Congress will finally provide security to all Dreamers, who have lived too long in fear.

However, previous bills attempting to do so have failed to pass the Senate filibuster, despite the overwhelming popularity of providing a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers. According to a Pew Research Center poll from June 2020, 74 percent of US adults support granting permanent legal status to immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally when they were children.

Still, the DREAM Act failed in 2010 despite passing the House and winning majority support in the Senate, because of the filibuster. In 2018, the filibuster defeated four possible DACA fixes, although three of the four also won at least 50 votes.

Most recently, the American Dream and Promise Act passed in the House in two different sessions  first in 2019 and more recently in March this year  but has not come to a vote in the Senate. Despite Democratic control of both the House and the Senate, it is unlikely the legislation would survive the filibuster. At any rate, if signed into law, the bill would only provide conditional permanent resident status for several categories of immigrants, including Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status beneficiaries, putting them on a long path to citizenship.

Due to the back-and-forth between the courts and the Trump administration, DACA recipients have come of age in a long period of uncertainty. Although many of them have lived and worked their entire adult lives in the US, they still face the possibility of deportation.

Immigration rights groups quickly pointed out this tumultuous reality.

In a statement Friday, the Home Is Here Coalition described Hanens decision as cruel and malicious.

This decision is a reminder that DACA has never been enough to protect immigrant communities who continue to be at risk of deportation, the group said.

The Presidents Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a coalition of university presidents and chancellors, also called on Congress to enact a roadmap to citizenship for Dreamers through all available mechanismsincluding budget reconciliation, a process that would require a simple majority instead of the 60 required to override a filibuster.

The organization was also joined by the American Business Immigration Coalition in issuing a letter signed by more than 400 university presidents, CEOs and civic leaders urging Congress to take action on the Dreamers behalf.

This relief is particularly critical for the 98,000 Dreamers who graduate from high school every year and the 427,000 undocumented students enrolled in institutions of higher education, the letter states.

These students are working diligently to advance themselves, including pursuing careers in health, STEM, and teaching, notwithstanding the uncertainty they live with regarding whether they will be able to complete their education, invest in beginning careers, businesses, and families, and ultimately become citizens.
Khaled Nasser, an electrician at a steel mill at Cleveland Cliffs Dearborn Works near Detroit, was pronounced dead at the scene Friday morning when he slipped over the guardrail of a catwalk during regular maintenance on a Basic Oxygen Furnace and fell 50 feet to the concrete. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Nasser was 50 years old.

Khaled Nasser

The Dearborn Works, part of Fords massive Rouge manufacturing complex, was spun off by the automaker in 1989. Cleveland Cliffs took over the facility after acquiring the previous operator, AK Steel, last year.

Nassers identity was initially withheld by the United Auto Workers union and the company, but later released over the weekend in response to the massive outpouring on Facebook of solidarity, sorrow and condolences that followed the announcement of his death. Both he and his family are well known and loved among co-workers and friends in the area. Of Yemeni background, Mr. Nassers death is being widely mourned in the large and tightly-knit Arab-American community in Dearborn.

A co-workers wife wrote, This is so sad, my husband said he was a nice guy. He was an electrician at the BOF. Our condolences go out to his family, they are in our thoughts and prayers.

Condolences to all the family in Memory of our Brother Steelworker, added another worker. A friend added, He was such a good man who loved life, always smiling and always talked about his family. He will be missed. Hundreds of people added to the stream of deeply felt condolences.

The World Socialist Web Site spoke with electricians who work in the complex about the conditions that led to Mr. Nassers death. One had worked in that area before Ford sold it to Severstall and then Cleveland Cliffs/AK Steel. Its just horrible, he said. Your sight distance is limited.

A by-product of the BOF process, in which oxygen is forced into hot molten iron converting it into steel, is a dense and blinding smog, he said. You cant see the ground below the catwalks, and the railings are not high enough to prevent a fall. There are no safety cables to tie off to. This is a standard requirement for high hazard areas, but has been ignored by the companies who operate the furnaces, the union and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration inspectors who inevitably visit the facility in the aftermath of a fatality.

Mr. Nasser was a member of UAW Local 600, which issued a perfunctory statement of condolences. But Rouge workers who spoke to the WSWS did not even know if the workers in the steel plant still had a union, because they are never around and they dont do anything.

Anytime someone dies on the job its sad, added a colleague. We are upset even if we dont know the man personally. It was absolutely unnecessary.

The Rouge blast furnaces began production in May 1920. Hot metal was used to cast engine blocks, cylinder heads, intake and exhaust manifolds for the Model Ts that were assembled at the companys historic Highland Park plant.

By 1927 the Rouge complex had grown into the largest factory in the world at the time. It included 93 structures, 90 miles of railroad tracks, 27 miles of conveyors, 53,000 machine tools and 75,000 employees. The feverish industrial expansion which had begun at the outset of World War I would continue until the end of World War II, when the complex employed more than 100,000 workers.

Today, after decades of layoffs, Rouge is a shadow of the massive industrial complex it once was. The workforce now consists of only 6,000 workers.

The pro-corporate website www.fundinguniverse.com describes the process by which the company introduced pay cuts, fob cuts and the erosion of safety and other concessions at the steel plant:

In the summer of 1982, a consortium of Japanese companies under the leadership of Nippon Kokan (NKK) began negotiations with Ford for the purchase of Rouge Steel ... Talks between Ford and NKK collapsed in 1983, however, because the Japanese wanted to reduce Rouges labor costs. Workers at Rouge Steelorganized under the UAW rather than the U.S. Steelworkers because of Rouge Steels origin within Ford Motormaintained an hourly rate of pay almost $5 higher than the U.S. industry standard.

Following the failed talks with NKK, officials at UAW Local 600 began to negotiate with Ford over proposed wage reductions at Rouge Steel, the pro-company analysts continue. Philip Caldwell [then-president of Ford] had announced that Ford Motor was suffering its worst economic downturn since the Great Depression: in the four years preceding 1983, Ford had lost $2.1 billion and had eliminated 67,000 workers from a workforce of 158,000. Clearly, operations at the Rouge had to change, and meetings between Caldwell and UAW Local 600 president Michael Rinaldi in the summer of 1983 resulted in wage and benefit reductions for Rouge Steel workers.

The UAW has long since given up defending safe working conditions. On the contrary, the joint corporate/union safety committees which were initiated during the Chrysler bailout in the late 1970s and subsequently spread throughout the industry became a model across all industries for transforming the union into a corporatist police force for company management on the shop floor.
To get in touch with someone at the World Socialist Web Site to discuss forming a rank-and-file committee, Frito-Lay workers can email fritolayrfc@gmail.com or text (785) 8161505.

Close to 600 Frito-Lay workers completed their 15th day of striking as negotiations between the Bakery, Confectionary, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) union and Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of food and beverage giant PepsiCo, resumed Monday in Topeka, Kansas, the state capital.

Years of stagnating, poverty-level pay, combined with brutal mandatory overtime schedules are fueling the strike. Workers struck after rejecting the fourth contract proposal this year, another sellout agreement supported by the union.

The Kansas Frito-Lay strike has made its way to national news, with major news outlets like the Washington Post reporting on it. The strike is also leading to shortages of the popular snack food in Topeka and beyond.

Frito-Lay workers picket earlier this year (Photo: Kansas AFL-CIO)

Among those professing support for the Frito-Lay workers was Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who tweeted on Saturday his support of the strike. However, rather than solidarizing with the workers, Sanders is solidarizing with the BCTGM bureaucracy, which has repeatedly tired to push through sellout deals.

The two sides that are meeting to negotiate the livelihood of hundreds of Frito-Lay workers are a multi-billion dollar corporation with an insatiable thirst to make as much money as possible, and a well-heeled union bureaucracy that has brought to the membership four pro-company contracts that have been overwhelmingly rejected. Both are completely out of touch with the needs of the Frito-Lay workers.

The company is intent on bringing the strike to a quick end by cutting off workers health insurance while the union starves workers on strike pay of $105 a week over 10 weeks. The $420 a month in total strike pay is less than half the poverty level for one person, and is not enough to purchase medical insurance.

The announced cuts to workers health insurance come as PepsiCos latest quarterly earnings report shows the company made over $2.36 billion in profits, an increase of $1.65 billion from 2020. The companys revenue rose by over 20 percent due to an increase in restaurant demand for Pepsi products.

The money PepsiCo hands out in dividends demonstrates the company has more than enough resources to meet the demands of workers. PepsiCo investors were handed over $7.5 billion in dividends in 2020. On July 15, the PepsiCo Board of Directors announced a quarterly dividend of $1.075 per share of PepsiCo common stock, a 5 percent increase compared to the same time last year.

While BCTGM starves workers, doling out a pittance in strike pay, the union is sitting on tens of millions of dollars in assets. The lowest-paid Frito-Lay workers would need a 400 percent raise for their salary to match the salaries of top BCTGM union leaders.

In 2020, according to the unions LM-2 tax filing, the BCTGM had net assets of over $36,486,164. So-called representational activities, or salaries for the union bureaucracy, equaled $3,473,558. Among the top union leaders, union president Anthony Shelton received a salary of $288,502 last year, secretary treasurer David Wood took in $273,269 and vice president Roger Miller made $222,612. Zero was spent on strike benefits.

As talks resume, workers are being kept totally in the dark. The union has not discussed what demands they are raising nor have they called for meetings with workers. When asked if the union had informed workers of their plans, a striking Frito-Lay worker told the World Socialist Web Site, No, not really. I know were asking for an immediate wage bump across all classes in the terms of dollars, not percentages. Other than that, no specifics.

They havent held a meeting per se, but our union shop stewards know we want to at least be paid the same amount or better as similar jobs in our area. So, like a match to target. I'm not sure how theyre going to navigate the non-economics. I feel like everyone is more or less on the same page of what we want, its just a matter of how negotiations go and the wording in the contract.

I know that for me to vote yes its going to take at least $28.75 as new wage for my current classification and 3.5 percent yearly for cost-of-living. At the very least. Current hourly wages range from $18.35 to $34.82 per hour, depending on job classification.

The union has not held meetings to discuss the demands of workers because it is not negotiating on their behalf, but on behalf of corporate management. Management dictated the last four contracts.

The brutal working conditions and low pay that Frito-Lay workers are rebelling against are the consequences of a series of concessionary contracts rammed through by the BCTGM. In multiple interviews and videos, BCTGM leaders admitted that many workers have not seen any raise in six to eight years.

The BCTGM avoided a strike for as long as possible, extending the previous agreement by approximately nine months before mounting pressure from workers forced them to call the first strike at the plant in nearly 50 years.

To win a decent contract workers must take negotiations out of the hands of the BCTGM and put it under the control of rank-and-file workers. This requires the formation of a Frito-Lay Rank-and-File Committee.

A rank-and-file committee should formulate demands based on what workers need, not on what the BCTGM and Frito-Lay say workers must accept. This should include, at minimum, contract negotiations broadcast live to all workers. Striking workers must be able to listen to the discussions being held between the union and the company and be able to participate in them.

Moreover, for workers to sustain themselves during the strike workers must be able to afford health care, groceries, pay their mortgages and meet other expenses. This requires that strike pay be increased to a level based on workers normal income.

The struggle at Frito-Lay is part of a growing wave of strikes in the US and internationally. From recently striking Volvo Trucks workers in Virginia, Warrior Met coal miners in Alabama to striking food delivery workers in Berlin, workers are fighting for improvements in their working conditions and higher living standards in the face of bitter opposition by employers and the unions.

To successfully pursue their fight against Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo., a multibillion-dollar international corporation with factories across the world, workers need an international strategy. A rank-and-file committee must seek to link up Frito-Lay workers with workers at other factories and workplaces in Kansas, across the United States and PepsiCo facilities globally.

We urge workers at Frito-Lay to take up this fight and build the Frito-Lay Workers Rank-and-File Committee today.

To learn more about how to start a rank-and-file committee, Frito-Lay workers can email fritolayrfc@gmail.com or text (785) 816-1505.
Riders for the food delivery service Gorillas protested last week against miserable working conditions and wages.

The protest started at the warehouse in Berlins Tempelhof district. Around noon, the riders decided to stop work and travel from there in a bicycle protest to the next warehouse in nearby Neukolln. There, they sought to draw fellow workers into the strike and demonstration.

Bicycle protest by striking Gorillas workers

Gorillas workers were joined by supporters of the protest. There is strong support for the industrial action among workers. Several participants interviewed by the World Socialist Web Site pointed out the precarious conditions under which this section of the labour force works.

Riders criticised the lack of adequate gear which, despite the ongoing protests, has not been purchased by management on the grounds that it costs too much. Fernando, one of the riders, noted that they have not even been given proper rainwear. He also said that orders were often far too heavy for their backpacks and bicycles.

Striking Gorillas rider Fernando in conversation with Christoph Vandreier, Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei lead candidate in the federal elections

One of the organisers made clear that the protest was against the poor working conditions at Gorillas. She said that a list of demands had been handed to management weeks ago and practically none of the demands have been met to date. The list of 19 demands includes equal pay for equal work, overtime pay and better work equipment, including ventilation systems in all warehouses and bicycles more suited for deliveries. A key demand is the immediate payment of outstanding wages. Workers say they were underpaid at the end of last month.

When asked if workers from other delivery services should also join the protest, she said, Every worker faces more or less the same problems. This was confirmed by a participant in the demonstration who is employed by the delivery service Lieferando. He too complained about poor pay. He said a colleague had been dismissed because he had demanded that protective measures against coronavirus infections be implemented. The problems were very similar to those of the Gorillas riders. In his company there are long probationary periods and everything is deliberately kept non-transparent.

Gorillas workers vote on the strike

The hire and fire policy at Gorillas is no exception among delivery services. A few weeks ago, the dismissal of a rider at Gorillas led to a spontaneous protest. Two warehouses were blockaded. The Lieferando worker had come to support his colleagues and fight to extend the protests to all delivery companies.

Oguz, who works as a researcher at Berlins Technical University, also joined the protest to show his solidarity with the riders. He had spoken to delivery workers and they also confirmed that they do not receive their wages on time. These people have no reserves when they have to pay their rent, Oguz noted.

The Gorillas workers face a ruthless management. While CEO Kagan Sumer has always feigned understanding for the riders and senior leaders of the company have repeatedly stated that improvements will be made, it became clear on Saturday that these are nothing more than empty words. The billion-dollar start-up is prepared for a direct confrontation with the workers.

When the bicycle protest was supposed to move to the warehouse on Urbanstrae in the early afternoon, management intervened. The warehouse manager of the Tempelhof site refused to give the riders keys for their bikes in order to prevent them from participating in the protest. The police then also supported management and declared that the demonstration was not part of the strike and that company property could therefore not be used. This meant many participants were forced to get to Neukolln on foot or by public transport.

When the protesters arrived at Urbanstrae, the warehouse had already been closed and, according to the Gorillas app, orders were currently not possible in this neighbourhood. A city manager of the company prohibited workers at the Neukolln warehouse from participating in the strike and denied access to the warehouse to the protesters who had arrived to talk to their colleagues.

In a provocative statement, management said there was no basis for calling a strike because it was not a works council. The management brazenly claimed that there had been no spontaneous work stoppages and declared, The short-term closure of individual warehouses was arranged by the company to protect our employees from hostility by a few.

In Neukolln, the riders decided together not to undertake another bicycle demonstration, but to go in small groups to the warehouse in Muskauer Strae in Kreuzberg to call for a strike there. Here too, management had already stopped operations by then to prevent the strike from spreading. When riders then went to the Gurtelstrae warehouse in Friedrichshain, workers there also joined the strike and this warehouse also had to be closed in the early evening.

The workers at Gorillas and other delivery services are confronted with not just economic, but also political issues. In the statement, Stop the slave labour! Build rank-and-file committees! which was widely distributed at the demonstration, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) states: Such a struggle against the appalling working conditions in logistics and other industries raises fundamental political questions. Just as the enrichment of shareholders is based on the exploitation of the working class, this exploitation can only be ended by the expropriation of the big banks and corporations by the international working class.

That such a perspective could find broad support among workers is viewed with concern by the establishment politicians. Cansel Kiziltepe, Social Democratic Party (SPD) member of parliament, was present in Tempelhof. She told the Tagesspiegel that she wanted to support the Gorillas workers in their demand for co-determination and labour protection. Kiziltepe was also the one who invited Federal Labour Minister Hubertus Heil (SPD) for next Tuesday, saying he wished to meet with riders to talk about their work situation.

In conversation with participants of the protest, Christoph Vandreier, the SGPs lead candidate in the federal elections, made it clear that workers should have no illusions in the establishment parties. It is precisely the SPD, the Greens, the Left Party and the trade unions who are responsible for the social misery and precarious working conditions. The Hartz laws [imposing welfare cuts and curtailing labour protections] are just one example.

He referred to experiences from other industrial struggles where workers confront a united front of management, establishment parties and the trade unions: A fight by the riders at Gorillas and all other delivery services can only be successful by building independent organisations of struggle across industrial sectors and national borders. Therefore, the SGP calls for the formation of action committees to organise this struggle, said Vandreier.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasios plan to move 8,000 homeless people from hotels, where they have been living temporarily during the COVID-19 pandemic, back to group shelters faced a temporary setback last week. A federal judge blocked the plan, ruling that the city had not adequately considered the homeless peoples health as it began implementing the move.

The ruling results from a legal challenge that was filed by the Legal Aid Society. The organization alleged that the city had refused to allow homeless people with disabilities or serious health problems to apply for reasonable accommodations, even though a 2017 class action settlement requires the city to do so. The Legal Aid Society accused the city of violating the rights and endangering the lives of the homeless. The judge agreed that violating the right to reasonable accommodation could cause irreparable harm to the psychological, physical and mental health of the homeless.

Bill de Blasio (Credit: Flickr.com/Gage Skidmore)

The homeless are the most vulnerable section of the population and suffer the effects of the social crisis most acutely. During the early stages of the pandemic in spring 2020, New York City moved about 8,000 homeless people from crowded group shelters to hotel rooms. This effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus greatly improved the living conditions of the homeless. Hotel rooms gave these people privacy, security and a measure of dignity that the shelters had denied them.

But last month, de Blasio joined New York Governor Andrew Cuomoboth Democratsin prematurely lifting public health measures and proclaiming an end to the pandemic. De Blasio, who is trying to attract workers and visitors back to New York City, says that moving the homeless back to shelters is crucial for the citys reopening program.

Even as he professes concern for the welfare of the homeless, De Blasio has been shuttling them back to shelters where the coronavirus, particularly the more contagious Delta variant, can spread easily. In these shelters, a single room often houses as many as 20 people, who sleep within a few feet of each other. De Blasio also has claimed that moving the homeless back to group shelters will enable them to get the treatment and counseling services that they need. In fact, shelter operators have been able to maintain most of these services while the homeless have stayed in hotels.

Court documents show that as of July 9, the city had moved 3,685 homeless adults from 23 hotels back to shelters or to rooms in other hotels. The homeless have been made to stuff their belongings into garbage bags and have been packed into school buses to be driven to the furthest reaches of the city. One woman who uses a wheelchair and has kidney disease and prior strokes was moved to a shelter on a hill that she could not climb.

Mike Roberts was moved from the Lucerne Hotel in the affluent Upper West Side to a shelter with no air conditioning. At night, he often wakes up soaked in sweat. Here, when I wake up, Im in a cubicle, he told the New York Times. Itll be three people around me sleeping, one snoring, one probably getting high or a guy pacing the floor. Who wants that?

Michelle Ward applied for a reasonable accommodation that would allow her to stay in a hotel near the Empire State Building but was denied. She has severe sciatica and asthma, along with anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder. I cant take this no more, she told the New York Times.

Approximately 5,000 homeless people remain in hotels. On July 13, Judge Gregory Howard Woods of Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that the city must meet with the homeless to determine whether any are disabled and qualify for reasonable accommodations. He held that the city must give at least seven days notice before transferring people who qualify for these accommodations. According to the citys own data, approximately 68 percent of the homeless are physically or mentally disabled.

Although advocates for the homeless cheered the decision as a victory, it will not stop the transfers. The city will make minor adjustments to our process and begin moving people again this week, a spokesperson for New Yorks Department of Homeless Services (DHS) told the New York Times.

These transfers are part of New York Citys relentless campaign to whisk homeless people out of sight. Police have been dismantling homeless encampments and city officials have created a program to allow New Yorkers to report panhandlers and homeless people to the authorities.

Homeless people who have protested the citys mistreatment of them have faced police reprisals. Several hours before Judge Woods ruled on Legal Aids challenge, 12 homeless New Yorkers and their supporters went to the office of the Department of Social Services (DSS), which oversees DHS. They demanded to speak to Commissioner Steve Banks about providing permanent housing and increasing the value of the citys rent subsidies for the homeless. Police arrested six of the protesters.

Although homelessness is at its highest level in New York City since the Great Depression, the candidates for the Democratic nomination for mayor scarcely mentioned it during the campaign. One exception was Andrew Yang, the businessman and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Speaking for the most heartless section of the citys financial oligarchy at one of the primary debates, Yang blamed the homeless for degrading New Yorkers quality of life.

Former policeman and erstwhile Republican Eric Adams won the primary election and will be the Democrats mayoral candidate. Adams has made vague promises to provide housing for the homeless, but they are as empty as the similar promises that fellow Democrat de Blasio made eight years ago.

As of July 13, more than 4,100 homeless people had been infected with the coronavirus, and more than 120 had died. DHS estimated that, as of July 2, it had fully vaccinated only 21.5 percent of adults who stayed in a shelter.

The data indicate that the pandemic is worsening in New York City. As of July 18, the daily average of total cases for the previous seven days was 523. This number is a 64 percent increase over the daily average for the previous 28 days, which was 318. Moreover, the more contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus now accounts for 41 percent of tested cases.

Because it represents only a temporary setback for de Blasios plan, Judge Woodss ruling shows that it is impossible to protect the homeless by appealing to capitalist courts. These courts, like de Blasio and the New York City Council, subordinate all considerations, including the right to housing and the right to health, to the profit interests of the citys financial elite.
Japan released its annual Defense Ministry White Paper on July 13, once again raising tensions with China. The document not only includes an inflammatory statement over Taiwan but more broadly outlines Tokyos justification for war preparations, in alliance with the US, aimed at Beijing.

The White Paper includes a reference to Taiwan for the first time. It states, Stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japans security and the stability of the international community. Therefore, it is necessary that we pay close attention to the situation with a sense of crisis more than ever before.

Japanese Defense white paper (Ministry of Defense)

Implicit in this statement is Japans preparedness to intervene militarily over Taiwan on the pretext that events on the island represent a threat to Japanese security. The paper falsely places sole blame for the growing danger of war on Beijing, which Tokyo accuses of attempting to alter the status quo in the region.

This passage is not a one-off statement, but codifies Tokyos stance on Taiwan and questions of the One China policy. Under the One China policy, Japan recognizes Beijing as the legitimate government of all China including Taiwan. Beijing has stated that it will go to war to reunite with Taiwan if the island ever declares independence or if countries like the US and Japan attempt to overturn the policy.

Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso and State Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama have made similar comments in recent weeks. Aso stated on July 5 that Japan would have to militarily defend Taiwan alongside the US against Beijing. Nakayama, deputy to the Defense Minister, directly questioned the One China policy during a speech on June 28 and called the island the red line of the 21st century.

These remarks as well as the White Paper directly contradict the claim that Beijing is upending the status quo in the region. The One China policy has been the basis for diplomatic relations with Beijing since the 1970s when Washington and Tokyo broke off formal ties with Taipei and acknowledged Beijing. Now the worlds two largest imperialist powers regard China as a threat to their interests and are seeking to subordinate Beijing if necessary through war.

The White Paper praises the former Trump administration for doing precisely what it alleges against China. Based on the America First policy and the realist concept that power plays a central role, it stated, the Trump administration has significantly changed the patterns of US involvement in the world. The administration set out a clear stance of emphasizing strategic competition with China, in particular, and also with Russia.

The document also made clear that President Biden is continuing this agenda. The Biden administration clarified its intent to conduct a global posture review of the US forces, and announced that the United States would counter China over the long term, which the administration considers the only competitor potentially capable of sustainably challenging the international system, putting the highest priority on the military presence in the Indo-Pacific region.

The White Paper accuses Beijing of being a threat to the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, but the rules are set by Washington to meet its interests. In his introduction, Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi stated that Japan will uphold the free and open Indo-Pacific (FOIP)the pretext used by the US to stage provocative freedom of navigation exercises either in or very near waters and airspace claimed by China.

The paper brands China as a threat not only in the Indo-Pacific region, but in technology spheres like artificial intelligence, in outer space exploration, and in the cyber domain, reflecting fears in Tokyo and Washington that China is gaining the technological edge.

The document also highlights the growing relationship between Australia and India, asserting that it is pursuing the quadrilateral relationship between the two countries and the US. The Quad is a quasi-military alliance aimed at surrounding China and preparing for war.

Beijing responded angrily to the White Paper. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian stated, The Japanese side grossly interfered in Chinas internal affairs, groundlessly blamed Chinas normal defense construction and military activity, pointed fingers at Chinas maritime activity, and hyped up the so-called China threat, which is wrong and irresponsible.

The White Papers focus on Taiwan has a particular significance. Its claim that Japan needs to defend democracy in Taiwan is simply a pretext. The Japanese ruling class has long seen the island as a crucial stepping stone for projecting its power into Southeast Asia.

There are historical parallels between today and Japans colonization of Taiwan in 1895 following the First Sino-Japanese War, a conflict launched to remove China as a strategic competitor on the Korean Peninsula. Tokyo claimed at the time to be defending Korea from China. During the negotiation of the Treaty of Shimonoseki ending the war, Japan forced China to surrender the island, which had been part of China since 1683.

Japan waged a brutal campaign on the island to suppress opposition to the annexation. What followed were five decades of dictatorial rule justified by pseudo-scientific assertions that the Taiwanese were biologically different from the superior Japanese. This racist argument was put forward by Shinpei Goto, who became head of civilian affairs on the island in 1895.

Following World War I, Tokyo cultivated a layer of the islands elite to assist in the exploitation of the islands young working class and the peasantry. This involved an assimilation campaign to try to erase Taiwanese culture. In 1936, as Japan prepared to invade China, Governor-General Seizo Kobayashi introduced a policy requiring Taiwanese people to adopt Japanese names, language and culture. Taiwan was one of the locations from which the Japanese army coerced young women into becoming comfort women, a euphemism for sex slaves, a fact the Japanese establishment today denies.

Japans involvement in Taiwan today must be seen in this light. As it attempts to remilitarize, Tokyo simultaneously attempts to whitewash its past war crimes in Taiwan and elsewhere in the region. Like the US, Japan has no interest in promoting democracy in Taiwan or anywhere else in the region. Rather once again, the imperialist powers are exploiting the island as a pawn in the preparations for a conflict with China.
Over the course of the past year, while more than 35 million Americans have contracted coronavirus and 625,000 have died, corporate share values have risen to their highest levels in history. One company which has done particularly well is grocery chain Kroger. According to its website, its total sales were $132.5 billion in 2020, up from $122.3 billion in 2019. Excluding fuel and dispositions, total sales grew 14.2 percent.

This money has not been funneled into higher wages or better safety precautions for Kroger workers but has been funneled back into the pockets of Krogers shareholders. Last year, Kroger returned $1.9 billion to shareholders, repurchased $1.32 billion of shares in 2020 under its board authorizations, and increased the dividend by 13 percent, from $0.64 to $0.72 per year. 2020 was the fourteenth consecutive year of dividend increases, resulting in a payout of $534 million.

At the same time, Kroger Chief Executive Officer (CEO) William Rodney McMullen received a compensation package of more than $20.6 million, a $6.4 million raisean increase by more than 45 percentfrom the previous the year. According to WallMine.com, McMullens estimated net worth is a minimum of $152 million. This includes over 182,880 units of Kroger Company stockvalued at over $130,677,724.

Kroger store sign (Wikimedia Commons)

As McMullens pockets deepen, the typical worker found holes in theirs. Over the course of 2020, worker pay dropped by 8.1 percent, driven by the massive hiring of tens of thousands of new workers on starting pay.

This spring, Kroger said it would raise average worker pay to $16 per hour, up from $15.50 currently. How the company calculates average pay is unclear, and starting pay is significantly less than $15.50 in most areas. According to Payscale.com, the average wage at Kroger is $11.72, not $15.50.

Kroger workers responded on social media to the announcement with a mixture of skepticism and indignation. No one, not even full time people in my store are making $16 an hour, one worker said on a Kroger subreddit. Said another: Are we including Rodneys at 8k per hour? Are we including per hours of salaried management? At 50 hours or 80 hours per week? ... the term is insanely vague, and ... the average wage isnt what the people who work for this company ultimately want to hear has increased. Kroger is playing PR instead of serving its employees who serve it.

Earlier this year, Kroger retaliated against a Los Angeles ordinance requiring a temporary wage hike of $5 per hour in hazard pay for grocery store workers by closing three stores and eliminating 250 jobs, claiming that the stores were underperforming.

One worker told the Guardian, If this store was underachieving, it was underachieving prior to the pandemic. It should have been closed then. Why are they waiting until now to close it? Its retaliation. Because none of these executives at Kroger, did they give us their yearly bonus so we could get $5 an hour? No, theyre sitting in their nice houses in the hills or wherever they live, and telling us we dont deserve an extra $5 an hour.

In Arkansas, Kroger is closing three more stores in the cities of Morrilton, DeWitt, and England. Morrilton and DeWitt both closed July 17, 2021, and the England store is scheduled to close July 31, 2021. Kroger operates 28 stores in Arkansas, employing approximately 3900 employees.

Every year, we evaluate our stores and their success in the communities they serve, said Victor Smith, President of Krogers Delta Division. Smith continues, highlighting the importance of profit over life, Closing a store is a difficult decision that we take very seriously. This stores low financial returns made it impossible to continue to operate while still upholding our low-price commitment to our customers. Even through a pandemic, our DeWitt[,] Morrilton and England, Arkansas stores did not perform well and for that reason, we made the decision to close.

Were grateful for the service and dedication of the associates at our Arkansas stores, added Smith. Todays announcement is no reflection on our DeWitt, England or Morrilton Kroger Teams. We appreciate their contributions and we are working with them to identify positions in other Kroger store locations. Helping our associates through this transition is a top priority.

Throughout the pandemic, the role of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union has been to keep Kroger and other grocery and food processing workers on the job as much as possible. It did nothing to protect Evan Seyfried, a Cincinnati-area Kroger dairy manager who was driven to suicide from months of harassment by a right-wing store manager. In the meatpacking industry, it has actively collaborated with management in encouraging maximum attendance in the plants, while helping to conceal the real extent of the spread of the virus from the public.

The UFCW, in fact, has profited handsomely from the pandemic stock market boom. According to its latest filings with the US Department of Labor, the UFCWs net assets increased last year from $392 to $431 million. This was driven mainly by a $66 million increase in the value of its investmentsthat is, stocks and bonds. This massive sum was used to fund approximately $38 million in salaries to staff and officers in its national headquarters alone.

By comparison, the UFCW distributed a paltry $866 thousand in strike pay.

This demonstrates that workers must organize themselves independently to oppose the betrayals of the UFCW by forming workplace rank-and-file safety committees, as Volvo workers, teachers, Amazon workers and growing numbers of workers throughout the country are doing.
Under conditions of a worsening COVID-19 pandemic and related political crisis, the Australian, Rupert Murdochs national flagship, last week published two exclusive interviews and an editorial boosting Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese.

Once more, as in the past, the Australian and other Murdoch media outlets are turning toward the Labor Party as a possible means of containing social and political discontent that a Liberal-National Coalition government is proving incapable of suppressing.

Anthony Albanese (Source: @AlboMP)

The newspapers promotion of Albanese came as a series of media opinion polls provided a limited indicator of the mounting popular hostility toward the political establishment, particularly Prime Minister Scott Morrisons federal Coalition government, for its disastrous corporate-driven failure to protect the population from the rapid spread of the coronavirus Delta strain.

The polls register a sharp drop in approval of the Morrison governments handling of the pandemic, and a broader fall in support for all the parliamentary parties, Labor included. On a two-party-preferred basis, the polls suggest the likelihood of a landslide defeat for the Coalition, allowing a potential Labor victory, in the next federal election, which is due to be held by next May.

The Australians July 17 editorial was titled: Albanese finds the centre ground. It commended him for continuing his efforts to drag Labor to a more centrist position across a broad range of difficult policy fronts.

While there was a long way to go, the editorial praised Albanese on three main fronts. The first was his alignment behind the Biden administrations escalation of US imperialisms confrontation with China.

In one of his interviews with the newspaper, Albanese emphasised his agreement with President Joe Bidens declaration of an existential competition with Beijing. He reiterated the declaration, made at this years Labor Party national conference, that the first pillar of a Labor governments foreign policy would be the US alliance, followed by two other pillarsregional engagement and support for multilateral forumsthat are also directed against China.

At that party conference, the Labor and trade union leaders presented themselves, and a Labor government, as the most reliable vehicle for imposing on the working class the sacrifices demanded by the ruling class during periods of war and social unrest, as Labor had done during both world wars.

In the interview, Albanese also pledged to retain a bipartisan offensive against Beijing. He said Labor was at one with the Morrison government on the South China Sea, Hong Kong, human rights for the Uyghurs and protecting Australias sovereignty. On these issues, there is no difference, he declared. These are all key parts of the intensifying barrage of media and political accusations against China, depicting it as a threat to Australia itself.

The second front was Albaneses explicit support for the continuation of Australian capitalisms lucrative coal mining industry, combined with an economic nationalist pitch of proposing to find ways to build new manufacturing capacities based on refining mining products, such as iron ore.

Albanese dressed up this pitch in terms of job creation, supposedly in making solar panels and wind turbines, but the editorial noted that it fits well with rising concerns about the nations unhealthy dependence on China, which is by far the countrys largest export market, especially for iron ore, as well as coal and gas.

The Australian editorials third front was Labors support for the legislated stage three tax cuts. In recent weeks, Labor leaders have firmly committed themselves to retaining these income tax cuts, which they helped the Morrison government pass through parliament in 2019, following Labors election debacle of that year.

Under this bipartisan plan, by 2024, the income tax system will be transformed into a virtual flat tax regime, with a 30 percent rate applying from $45,000 to $200,000. This will deliver a further wealth boost to the most affluent layers of society.

According to Treasury estimates, a dual-income household on $400,000 will enjoy an annual tax cut of $23,280, but a single person on $30,000 will receive just $255, or $5 a week. Those dependent on poverty-line social security payments, such as aged pensioners, carers and the unemployed, will get nothing.

This tax package inevitably also means further severe reductions to already deteriorating social programs, including public healthcare, education and housing. By Treasury calculations, the tax cuts will cut government revenue by more than $300 billion over 10 years.

Labors backing for this further wealth transfer from the working class to the corporate elite is consistent with its historical record, particularly since the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996. Working hand-in-glove with the trade unions via their Prices and Incomes Accords, they cut the top income tax rate from 60 percent to 49 percent, and the company tax rate from 49 to 33 percent.

The Australian editorial is not entirely new. Since Albanese was installed as Labor leader after the party lost the 2019 election despite the unpopularity of the Morrison government, the Murdoch media has both supported him and demanded that he go further in passing the political tests it set for him. These included him maintaining Labors constructive supportive relationship with the Morrison government in response to the pandemic, and praising the measures taken by the trade unions, in partnership with the government, to enforce widespread cuts to workers wages and conditions.

Nevertheless, the editorial marks a stepping up of preparations in the ruling class to back the return of another Labor government as support for the Liberal-National Coalition falls away.

In previous periods of economic crisis and rising working class struggles that Coalition governments could not deal with, Murdoch outlets swung behind Labor, backing the elections of the Whitlam government in 1972, the Hawke-Keating government in 1983 and the Rudd-Gillard government in 2007. Likewise in the UK, Murdoch advocated the election of the Blair Labour government in 1997.

Todays public health, economic and political crisis, however, is even deeper. For decades, popular support for both Labor and the Coalition has increasingly dropped as successive governments have presided over an endless assault on working class conditions in the interests of the ruling financial elite, producing a staggering growth of social inequality.

Only the systemic suppression of workers struggles by the unions, via the Accords and the system of enterprise bargaining and anti-strike laws imposed by Labor and the unions, has permitted this offensive to continue.

Now in Australia, as internationally, a new period of explosive global class struggle has begun, intensified by the COVID-19 disaster produced by capitalist governments around the world. Workers from the Volvo Truck plant in Virginia to the Smeaton Grange warehouse workers in Sydney have come into conflict with the unions trying to impose more sellout agreements on them, presaging convulsive upheavals to come.

Albaneses promotion by the Australian is a warning of the discussions underway in ruling circles, not least in the Labor and union leadership, about bringing another pro-business Labor government to office to carry out a program of preparing to join a US-led war against China and conducting an accompanying domestic war against the conditions and basic social and democratic rights of the working class.
On Tuesday, July 13, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing Maryland Republican Governor Larry Hogan from cutting off supplemental enhanced federal unemployment benefits under the CARES Act, with the program allowed to continue until September 6, when the national program is terminated.

Hogan's original order, issued June 1, announced that benefits would be cut off effective July 3. Hogan cited the states achievement of the 70 percent vaccination benchmark set by Democratic President Joe Biden as well as an abundance of vaccines and job openings in the state. In addition, the governor cited 12 consecutive months of job growth.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, March 18, 2021 in Annapolis. (AP Photo/Brian Witte)

The court ruling was the result of over two weeks of court battles and appeals by Hogans administration after two lawsuits filed June 30 opposed the order cutting off enhanced benefits.

The six plaintiffs in the D.A. v. Hogan suit alleged that each of them had received some combination of pandemic assistance. All six had lost work due to the pandemic and had been unable to find new work. The suit also claimed that, for five of the six plaintiffs, their benefits would terminate if an injunction was not issued.

Six more plaintiffs in Harp v. Hogan asserted claims for themselves and on behalf of other similarly-situated claimants. Two of the six plaintiffs were receiving enhanced unemployment benefits. Two others alleged that they lost work because of the pandemic and had never received their benefits due to errors in the administration of the benefit programs. The other two received benefits at one point, but were cut off due to those same errors.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Associate Judge Lawrence Fletcher-Hill issued a temporary restraining order on July 3 and set up the hearing that took place on July 12, citing the cruelly uneven impact of the pandemic. Hogan's appeals to both the Court of Special Appeals and the Maryland Court of Appeals were denied.

Even if the Circuit Court had ruled in favor of Hogan, the state would have had to extend benefits into mid-August due to a US Department of Labor ruling that a state must give 30 days notice before it can end federal benefits. Hogan is going to all this trouble just to try to cut people off from their benefits a few weeks early, Maryland House of Representatives Majority Leader Eric Luedtke (D-Montgomery County) told the Washington Post last week.

Michael Ricci, Director of Communications for Hogans office, said in a statement to television station WTTG that they disagreed with the decision, claiming the lawsuit was hurting small businesses, jeopardizing our economy, and will cause significant job loss. Ricci pointed to declarations by the Biden administration that states have every right to end enhanced benefits and to the influx of available jobs in the state.

Unemployment levels have been slow to return to pre-pandemic levels. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the total number of employed in the state of Maryland dropped sharply during the first few months of the pandemic, from 3.18 million in March 2020 to a low of 2.8 million that September. Over a year into the pandemic, the number of employed at the end of June was still only 2.93 million, with an unemployment rate of 6.2 percent, compared to 3.5 percent in early March 2020.

Although benefits will continue for the time being, a work-search requirement, initially issued by Hogan on May 12 and originally set to be enforced on July 4, was set into motion Sunday, requiring people applying for unemployment to demonstrate that they are actively seeking work in order to be eligible.

Hogan's attempt to cut off benefits is part of a nationwide onslaught against American workers, in which 25 Republican-led states and Democratic-led Louisiana have decided to end pandemic benefits early as part of a general drive to reopen the economy even as COVID-19 continues to kill an average of 250 Americans every day. This has left many workers to choose between being forced back into jobs in which they are at risk of being infected by COVID-19 or facing impoverishment.

Based on statistics from the Maryland Department of Health, new coronavirus cases have gone up 64 percent from July 814, compared to the week before, as new variants, especially the now-common Delta variant, become prolific worldwide.

Throughout the course of the pandemic, Governor Hogan has thoroughly shed his posture as a supposedly moderate or even liberal Republican. He has fully embraced the most right-wing, anti-scientific policies of his Republican peers in federal and state office.

Last August, Hogan issued an emergency executive order barring blanket closures of schools, overruling Montgomery County Health Officer Dr. Travis Gayles order barring private schools in the county from opening before October 1. Although the county initially defied the order, they eventually gave in a week later, lifting the order and putting children and their families at great risk of infection and transmission.

In March of this year, Hogan issued an executive order dropping most of the statewide restrictions put in place with regard to business capacity and out-of-state travel, thus rendering the state reopened for business. On June 15, Hogan announced the dropping of more restrictions, especially the expiration of the mandate effective July 1although businesses and city and county governments were free to set their own restrictions.

Hogan made the allegation on June 21 that over 500,000 unemployment claims made since the beginning of May were fraudulent. The allegation was based on a report put together by LexisNexis, the Department of Labors vendor for identity verification and fraud detection. However, the press release does not indicate what criteria are required to flag an unemployment claim as potentially fraudulent and the numbers cannot be corroborated independently. The stark increase of weekly alleged fraud claims coincided with the state governments work-search announcement and the initial order cutting off benefits.

Throughout the pandemic, the ruling class, regardless of their capitalist party affiliation, has intensified the push to reopen schools and businesses and force workers back to pumping out profits for the corporations, whatever the risks and dangers that remain. President Bidens push to reopen schools with the help of the teachers unions, for instance, has resulted in a sharp surge in cases, especially among children, in cities and states that have reopened.

The working class must strive for a stringent containment plan for the virus. More than half of the American population is vulnerable to the full effects of the deadly virusonly 48.6 percent are fully vaccinated as of July 16, according to the Mayo Clinics Vaccine Tracker website. New variants, especially the more-infectious Delta variant, are wreaking havoc on the worlds population. The continued closure of non-essential businesses with full income for affected workers is an essential aspect of any effort to stop the pandemic and save lives.
Further details emerged on Monday about the nature and extent of the spyware operation called Pegasus that has been used by governments since at least 2016 to hack into the smartphones of thousands of journalists, activists and business and political figures around the world.

The existence of the secret spying software was exposed on Sunday by the French non-profit media group Forbidden Stories and Amnesty Internationalin cooperation with a reporting consortium that includes the Guardian, the Washington Post and 15 other media organizationsfollowing a data breach of its developer, the Israeli-based cybersecurity firm NSO, several months ago.

Photo shows the logo of the Israeli NSO Group company on a building where they had offices in Herzliya, Israel. The NSO is the company behind the Pegasus spyware. (AP Photo/Daniella Cheslow)

Among the new revelations reported on Monday by the Guardian are the fact that at least 50 individuals close to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador including his wife, children, aides and doctor were on the list of possible targets of the Pegasus spyware; Rahul Gandhi, the major political opponent of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was twice selected as a potential target in leaked phone number data; the American daughter of the imprisoned Rwandan activist, Paul Rusesabagina, who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, has been victim of multiple attacks using NSO spyware.

A report on Monday in the Washington Post said that Pegasus is military-grade spyware supposedly developed for the purpose of tracking terrorists and criminals but it was used on a list of as many as 50,000 cell phone numbers internationally. A forensic investigation conducted by Post and the other 16 media partners showed that the NSO spyware successfully infiltrated 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi

While the phone numbers in the leaked NSO data list do not contain the associated names of individuals, reporters have been able to identify more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four continents. Among those identified, the Post reports, are several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officialsincluding cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officers. The numbers of several heads of state and prime ministers also appeared on the list.

The journalists targeted in the spying operations work for CNN, the Associated Press, Voice of America, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Le Monde in France, the Financial Times in London and Al Jazeera in Qatar.

The forensic analysis was conducted by Amnesty Internationals Security Lab on 67 smartphones and, of those, 23 were successfully infected and 14 showed signs of attempted penetration. The testing on the remaining 30 phones was inconclusive.

A Guardian report on Monday said that the phone numbers of 15,000 Mexicans were in the leaked data including Politicians from every party, as well as journalists, lawyers, activists, prosecutors, diplomats, teachers, judges, doctors and academics, and that cybersurveillance is unregulated and out of control in Mexicoa country where federal and state governments have long used informants, infiltrators and listening devices to monitor and repress dissent.

A report in the Post on Monday morning reviewed the manner in which Pegasus infected the iPhone of Claude Mangin, the French wife of a jailed political activist in Morocco. A text message was delivered to the phone without generating a notification or warning that the iMessage from an unknown sender was skirting Apples smartphone security and depositing the spyware onto the iPhone.

According to the Post report, once Pegasus is on a smartphone, it can collect emails, call records, social media posts, user passwords, contact lists, pictures, videos, sound recordings and browsing histories, activate cameras or microphones and listen to calls and voice mails. The spyware can collect location logs of where a user has been and also determine where that user is now, along with data indicating whether the person is stationary or, if moving, in which direction.

In a series of lengthy official statements late Sunday, NSO denied that it was involved in the worldwide government spying operation that has targeted smartphones for the past five years. The company both claimed that the data disclosed by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International was inaccurate and that it was not responsible the illegal use of its technology by its undisclosed government clients.

In one particularly noteworthy passage, NSO states, We also stand by our previous statements that our products, sold to vetted foreign governments, cannot be used to conduct cybersurveillance within the United States, and no foreign customer has ever been granted technology that would enable them to access phones with US numbers. It is technologically impossible, and reaffirms the fact that your sources claims have no merit.

The fact that this statement makes no mention of the US government as a well-known and proven user of similar surveillance tools both domestically and internationally is a transparent admission by NSO that its technology has been approved, if not contracted in the first place, by the American military-intelligence apparatus.

In a series of tweets on Sunday and Monday, the whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden denounced NSO and government use of spyware. Responding to the initial reports from the Guardian on Sunday, Snowden wrote, The Israeli company behind thisthe NSO groupshould bear direct, criminal liability for the deaths and detentions of those targeted by the digital infection vectors it sells, which have no legitimate use.

At noon on Monday, Snowden added, If we dont do anything to stop the sale of this technology, its not just going to be 50,000 targets. Its going to be 50 million targets, and its going to happen much more quickly than any of us expect.

Snowden also wrote, This is an industry that should not exist: they dont make vaccinesthe only thing they sell is the virus, and he also pointed to the fact that the NSO group gave blood money to Obama, Trump and Biden officials during their election campaigns.
Six months ago, Joseph Biden was inaugurated president of the United States, under conditions of unprecedented crisis of US capitalism and the entire social and political order.

President Joe Biden speaks about updated guidance on mask mandates, in the Rose Garden of the White House, Thursday, May 13, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

His predecessor, Donald Trump, did not attend the ceremony, signaling his refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election. Only two weeks before, on January 6, Trumps supporters had stormed the Capitol and temporarily halted the congressional certification of state electoral votes. The aim of the attempted coup was to stop the transfer of power and establish a personalist dictatorship. In the words of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, it was Trumps Reichstag moment.

When Biden took office, 400,000 people were dead from the COVID-19 pandemic, while millions were unemployed. Just months earlier, every city, town, and village in America had seen protests in opposition to police violence.

Biden marked the six-month anniversary with brief remarks presenting American society in glowing terms. For all those predictions of doom and gloom six months in, heres where things stand, he said. Record growth, record job creation, workers getting hard-earned breaks. He added, Put simply: Our economy is on the move, and we have COVID-19 on the run.

Summing up his prognosis, the US president proclaimed: It turns out capitalism is alive and very well. The truth is that the policies of the Biden administration have entirely failed to resolve the social crisis in America and they cannot, because they are based on the framework of American capitalism.

The pandemic, far from being on the run, is undergoing a new resurgence. Since Biden took office, an additional 225,000 people have died from the pandemic. All indications are that by the winter, with the new surge accompanying the spread of the Delta variant, the death toll under Biden will have exceeded that under Trump.

The policies of the Biden administration have been driven by the interests of Wall Street and the super-rich. This is why, despite occasional criticisms of Trumps callous and anti-scientific response to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden has pursued the same policy of restoring corporate profit-making by forcing workers back to work and children back to school as quickly as possible, regardless of the dangers to their lives and health.

Trumps response to the economic depression that accompanied the onset of the pandemic was to pour trillions into bolstering the banks, hedge funds and corporations, with bipartisan bills like the CARES Act. Biden pursues essentially the same policy, although with less support from the Republicans than the Democrats gave Trump. He boasts of success on the economic front, although seven million fewer workers have jobs today than before the pandemic began, and millions face wage cuts, poverty, eviction and foreclosure.

Only in foreign policy is there a significant shift from Trump to Biden, and this in tactics only, not strategy. Biden has placed more emphasis on the US utilization of NATO and the Quad, a de facto alliance with Japan, Australia and India. Significant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus backed Biden against Trump because they sought a more effective mobilization of US power against Russia and China.

And if Bidens statement that capitalism is alive and very well were true, it begs the question: Why is there a mounting fascist threat to American democracy?

In the six months since Bidens inauguration, the Republican Party has maintained its intransigent opposition to any serious investigation into the events of January 6. Half-hearted Democratic proposals, first for an independent bipartisan commission to investigate the attack, then for a bipartisan congressional investigation, have been blocked outright or endlessly delayed.

Meanwhile, evidence continues to emerge of the central role played by Trump and his allies in Congress in seeking to carry out a political coup detat to overturn the results of the election and maintain himself in office. But neither Trump nor his accomplices have even been questioned, let alone tried, convicted and jailed.

Instead, Trump has renewed his agitation against the election, seeking to transform the Republican Party into an openly fascistic movement subordinated to his personal authority. And his supporters in the Republican Party are using their control of state legislatures to enact unprecedented and sweeping attacks on the right to vote.

Biden himself acknowledged something of the reality of the crisis of American capitalism in a speech last week in Philadelphia, when he declared We are facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War. But he offered no way forward, except to appeal to my Republican friends in the Congress, states and cities and counties to stand up against this assaultalthough they are the very ones carrying it out.

In an effort to prop up illusions in the Democratic Party, the representatives of its left wing, portray Bidens policies in extravagant terms. Last week Senator Bernie Sanders claimed that Bidens reconciliation bill on social spending amounted to the most consequential piece of legislation for working families since the 1930s. Or, like Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, they express disappointment in what has been achieved so far, but express the hope that Biden has shown a willingness to think big, and that additional pressure should be brought to bear on congressional Democrats.

For his part, Biden uses every possible occasion to make clear he has no intention of implementing any measures that challenge the interests of the financial oligarchy, declaring last weekend, Communism is a failed system, universally failed system. I dont see socialism as a very useful substitute.

The truth is that the Biden administration is based on Wall Street and the military, mobilizing behind it sections of the upper middle class through the utilization of identity politics. Well aware of the explosive social conditions developing in America, moreover, the administration supports the union organization campaign at Amazon and the PRO Act, to make it easier to install unions at work locations where they otherwise would have difficulty convincing workers to pay dues for the privilege of having their wages and benefits cut.

It is telling that when workers engage in genuine anti-corporate struggles, like the strikes waged by autoworkers against Volvo Trucks in Dublin, Virginia, the supposedly pro-labor president falls completely silent. Biden is for the unions, not for the workers, because he correctly sees the unions as an instrument of the US ruling class in policing the working class.

Workers must draw the lessons of six months of the Biden administration. None of the problems confronting the working class, from the disastrous pandemic response to unparalleled levels of social inequality, to the danger of imperialist world war and fascist dictatorship, can be addressed without breaking the grip of the financial oligarchy over every aspect of society.

This means breaking with both the Democratic and Republican parties and building a new, mass political party of working people, based on a socialist program. All those who seek to reorganize society to meet human need and not the demands of Wall Street should make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party today.
On July 11, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a provocative statement dismissing Chinas claim to the South China Sea. His declaration repeated the positions laid out by his predecessor Mike Pompeo the year before and demonstrated the fundamental continuity between the Trump and Biden administrations in their war drive against China.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (Creative Commons/Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs)

Blinkens statement was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 2016 ruling of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) upholding Manilas claim to portions of the disputed waters.

For several years after the arbitral ruling in The Hague, Washington spoke of how it was binding to all parties, and attempted to use it to escalate pressure on China. The efforts of the Trump administration in this regard were hampered, however, by the fact that Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte deliberately downplayed the ruling in an attempt to improve diplomatic and economic ties with Beijing.

In 2020, Pompeo sharpened tensions immensely by declaring that Chinas claims were completely unlawful, and the United States rejects any PRC [Peoples Republic of China] claim to waters beyond a 12-nautical mile territorial sea. It is this position that Blinken explicitly upheld, declaring The United States reaffirms its July 13, 2020 policy regarding maritime claims in the South China Sea.

Blinken stated, Nowhere is the rules-based maritime order under greater threat than in the South China Sea. He blamed China, stating that Beijing continues to coerce and intimidate Southeast Asian coastal states, threatening freedom of navigation in this critical global throughway.

He called on China to abide by its obligations under international law [and] cease its provocative behavior.

In truth, it is Washington that is destabilizing the region and engaging in provocative behavior. Pompeo and Blinken both insist on upholding international law, but the United States is not even a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty that they accuse China of violating.

Since the Obama administration, Washington has engaged in a series of deliberate diplomatic and military provocations against China, transforming the South China Sea into a flashpoint for world war. Blinken took another step in that direction, declaring, We also reaffirm that an armed attack on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft in the South China Sea would invoke U.S. mutual defense commitments under Article IV of the 1951 US-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

Article IV of the 1951 Treaty states that both parties recognize that an armed attack in the Pacific area on either of the parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common dangers in accordance with its constitutional processes. The treaty was designed to trigger steps toward war by both countries in the event that one was attacked.

In the decade since Obama launched his pivot to Asia, there was widespread speculation in the Philippines as to whether or not this language of mutual obligation applied to the waters of the South China Sea, for the treaty spoke only of the Pacific area and of metropolitan territory.

In a press conference in 2019, Pompeo first explicitly articulated the position that an armed attack on a Philippine vessel in the South China Sea would trigger mutual defense obligations of Article 4. Blinken has now made this position a prominent part of his public statements.

Beijing responded to Blinkens claim that it was the provocative party in the region. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian stated that the United States has conducted close-in reconnaissance for nearly 2,000 times and over 20 large-scale military drills on the sea targeting China. Whats more, the US abuses bilateral military agreements that smack of the Cold War to threaten to use force on China It is self-evident who is seeking coercion and intimidation and threatening freedom and security of navigation.

The day after Blinkens statement was published Washington sent the guided missile destroyer USS Benfold to perform a so-called freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) near the Chinese-held Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

China denounced the maneuver. The spokesperson for the Peoples Liberation Army Southern Theater Command, Air Force Col. Tian Junli, issued a statement terming the FONOP another ironclad evidence of the US aggressive navigational hegemony and militarization of the South China Sea.

Blinkens remarks were also a calculated intervention in Philippine politics. All of the political parties and factions of the ruling elite are maneuvering for the upcoming May 2022 presidential election. Washingtons overriding concern is to reverse the damage done to its influence in the region by the geopolitical shift carried out by the Duterte administration.

At the end of the term of President Benigno Aquino in 2016, the Philippines, a former colony of the United States, was serving as the leading proxy for Washingtons interests in the Southeast Asia region. Manila had just won the arbitral ruling in The Hague, putting forward a case that was drawn up and argued by a US law firm with intimate ties to the Obama administration. The Aquino administration had committed to the terms of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) which allowed for the unlimited basing of US forces in the country.

Duterte reversed these policies. Looking to secure loans and investment from China, he downplayed the South China Sea ruling, backed out of the most provocative joint war games with the United States, and threatened to end the Visiting Forces Agreement on which EDCA was based.

The fascistic populist Duterte has presided over five years of mass murder, conducted in the name of a war on drugs. The Philippine constitution limits the president to one six-year term in office, and he thus cannot run for re-election. He has recently announced that he intends to run for vice-president, and it is widely speculated that his primary concern is to maintain state immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has prepared a case against him.

The front-runner for president in current polls is his daughter, the mayor of the southern city of Davao, Sarah Duterte. She is cut from the same cloth as her father: brutal, given to police-state and dictatorial measures, but an effective populist. There is every indication that a Sarah Duterte presidency would see a continuation of her fathers foreign policy.

The bourgeois opposition to Duterte share a common interest in reorienting Philippine foreign policy back toward the United States. However, they have been unable thus far to unite behind, or even put forward, a viable candidate. The concern is that none of the opposition candidates can rival the appeal of Duterte.

The current head of the opposition Liberal Party, Vice President Leni Robredo, was long seen as the default candidate for the opposition. She has hesitated for months over declaring her candidacy, however, and has taken possible steps to running for governor instead.

The organizing force for a realignment of Philippine relations back to the United States and for an aggressive confrontation with China is the newly formed party 1Sambayan. 1Sambayan was created to select a candidate for the unified opposition and provide them with an anti-China platform. 1Sambayan has received support both from groups that follow the political line of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines and from the far-right Magdalo party.

It is still early in the race and political alignments will shift and new contenders will emerge. At present, however, the leading opponent to Sarah Duterte is Manny Pacquiao, the boxer turned senator. Pacquiao was a close ally of Duterte for several years, supporting his war on drugs and promoting legislation to reintroduce the death penalty by hanging.

Pacquiao recently had a very public falling out with the president, however, and is now seen as a possible presidential candidate for the opposition. 1Sambayan promptly announced that they were prepared to back Pacquiao if he would apply for their support. The only apparent component of appealing to 1Sambayan for support is agreeing to its policy on China.

None of these figures is a defender of democracy or human rights. The dispute between ruling and opposition circles is bound up entirely with geopolitics.

It is this volatile situation that Blinkens provocative statement is attempting to shape. By dismissing Chinas claim to the South China Sea, and asserting that the United States is bound by treaty to the Philippines in the event of an armed conflict with China, he is attempting to steer the Philippine presidential election back behind the interests of Washington.
The UK education system is on the verge of collapse as schools break up for the summer term this week. Across the country, in every region, hundreds of thousands of school children and staff have been forced to isolate due to either having made close contact with someone with COVID or testing positive for virus themselves, as the Conservative governments let it rip pandemic policy takes effect.

Almost 840,000 children (11.2 percent) in Englands state schools were not in class on July 8 because of COVID, according to the latest official figures. This was the highest level since March and a 31 percent increase on the week prior. Of those off school, 39,000 pupils had tested positive and 35,000 had a suspected infection. A further 630,000 were absent for other reasons.

The situation will have worsened dramatically since then. The vast majority of infections are the highly transmissible and more deadly Delta variant, which is overwhelmingly dominant in Britain. Hundreds of schools have been forced to close for the summer early, due to the lack of staff or multiple cases of the virus across several class and year group bubbles. About 18,000 children were at home because their schools were closed on July 8 and many thousands of parents, alarmed at the rapid rise of infections, have voted with their feet and kept children at home.

On what has been dubbed "Freedom Day", marking the end of coronavirus restrictions in England, people walk over London Bridge a popular walking route for commuters from London Bridge train and tube stations in London, towards the City of London, during the morning rush hour, Monday, July 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham)

This dire situation was worsening even before the July 19 lifting of all containment measures by Prime Minister Boris Johnsons Conservative government in its cynically named Freedom Day. The current surge among children will massively contribute to the wave of COVID-19 in the general population in the coming weeks.

Johnson said bluntly earlier this month that the UK must reconcile [itself] to more deaths and that infections could rise to 50,000 a day. That total has already been reached. Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who has now tested positive for the virus, also demanded the population learn to live with the existence of Covid and admitted that daily case totals could reach 100,000 before the end of summer. Professor Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist and modeller for the government, warned at the weekend there is the potential for the UK to have a very large number of cases, 150,000 to 200,000 a day.

The Guardian estimated that there could be two million cases in the remaining six weeks of summer, but this was based on a conservative estimate of an average 35,000 cases a day until July 19 and 60,000 from then until August 16. Hospitalisations from COVID are now at over 4,000, a rise of 26 percent in one week.

The schools most impacted by the surge are in the north of England, where pupils in secondary schools are three times more likely to miss classes as their peers in London. A massive 37 percent of sessions were missed in the week to July 9, with 27 percent missed due to COVID isolation and quarantine. But absences are rising in every region.

Gateshead, in the northwest, has seen its coronavirus infection rate rocket to 1,823 cases in the seven days to July 9, a rate of 902.2 cases per 100,000 people, up from 237.1 per 100,000 the previous week.

Parents take children to a primary school in Bournemouth, UK following the reopening of schools nationally. March, 2021 (credit: WSWS media)

Sarah Muckle, director for Public Health in Bradford, West Yorkshire, revealed last week that the average age of people testing positive is 28 and that there had been 126 recent outbreaks of the virus in schools and educational settings.

With the ending of restrictions July 19 and little or no guidance from the Department of Education, school leaders are deciding policy on the fly, creating more tensions among parents who have to isolate with their children. Teachers and support staff are concerned that they will spend the first weeks of the summer break isolating and caring for loved ones, in a situation where cases and hospital admissions are rising, including for children. The latest statistics show that eight percent of COVID hospital admissions are children and one in every 1000 child COVID cases results in hospitalisation. A quarter of those hospitalised experience Long COVID symptoms for an average of eight and a half months.

Sammie McFarland, from support and advocacy group Long Covid Kids UK, said, We are sleep walking into a Long Covid Apocalypse where children are being swept aside as acceptable debris in the economic recovery.

This is herd immunity in practice. Boris Johnsons government pioneered this genocidal policy which has been embraced by all governments. The warning by the scientists in The Lancet of herd immunity by mass infection which will place 48% of the population (children included) who are not yet fully vaccinated, including the clinically vulnerable and the immunosuppressed, at unacceptable risk is being played out throughout the school sector.

This risk is more than acceptable to the government. One model presented to its Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE) in February suggested that continuing COVID-19 transmission until summer 2022 could contribute to more than 35 percent of overall herd immunity. Insufficient levels of vaccination in the UK would mean that herd immunity is not reached without a large resurgence of transmission, the paper speculated, with the bulk of infections to spread among young people.

The education unions are guilty of allowing this tragedy to unfold. They fully supported the reopening of schools last September, opposed any mobilisation of the widespread opposition to the governments ending the requirement to wear face masks in schools in May, when the Delta variant was already spreading like wildfire, and otherwise subordinated all health and safety concerns of staff to the governments agenda of profits over lives.

The National Education Union (NEU) stated this month that Education Secretary Gavin Williamsons polices of scrapping bubbles and replacing isolation with regular lateral flow testing in schools would lead to an explosion of the virus, but then only asked rhetorically, Are there any thresholds on case numbers, or hospitalisation or deaths that mean the DfE would do something different in schools in September?

The pattern set in the UK is repeated in one country after another. Educators, pupils and their parents are forced into unsafe school environments by governments hellbent on reopening the economy whatever the cost. Safety measures are abandoned to reinforce the claim that everything is getting back to normal. Infections, hospitalisations and deaths rise inexorably. The education trade unions collaborate fully in this crime.

Only the working class can call a halt to this ongoing catastrophe. Teachers, lecturers, parents and students in every school, college and university must take up the fight to form rank-and-file safety committees to organise the working class independently of the corporatist unions. They must demand an end to the lifting of public health measures and that schools remain closed until all staff and students can be vaccinated. Wages must be guaranteed for all those affected and proper online learning made available to all, paid for at the expense of the major corporations and banks.

We call upon all educators and other workers to take up this fight. To find out more, please contact the World Socialist Web Site today.
The assault on jobs at Siemens Energy is coming to a head. On July 9, talks between the company, the IG Metall trade union and the works council broke down on the details of job cuts at German plants. The talks are now to continue within the framework of a conciliation board under an impartial chairman.

This means that IG Metall and the works council will hide behind the alleged neutrality of the chairman of the conciliation board in order to press ahead with the planned redundancies against the resistance of the workforce.

The IG Metall and works council stand unreservedly on the side of the company and its shareholders and for years have supported all of the job cuts at Siemens. They backed all the measures that led to the decision by company boss Christian Bruch in February to cut 7,800 of Siemens total of 90,000 jobs worldwide, with 3,000 to be eliminated in Germany.

September 2019: Siemens workers in Berlin demonstrate against job cuts

In 2020 the union and works council agreed to the spin-off of the energy sector from the Siemens Group as a whole, knowing very well that the hiving off of Siemens Energy would by the prelude to a radical restructuring of the company at the expense of the workforce.

Shortly before the planned job cuts became public in January of this year, they signed the Future Agreement 2030, which regulates how IG Metall and the works council will carry out the cutbacks together with the executive. Among other points, the union and works council agreed to set up a steering group consisting of representatives from the company, the joint works council and IG Metall to work out a viable solution for job cuts.

Since then, IG Metall and the works council have systematically sacrificed workers jobs and gains. Since the steering group meets behind the backs of the workforce and keeps its findings secret, conclusions can only be drawn from statements made by the participantsbut these statements are clear.

For example, the Tagesspiegel, citing the IG Metall, reported: All in all, around 30 individual measures were discussed in the negotiations, which lasted several months, and a solution was found on many points. The newspaper did not disclose the individual measures and solutions involved.

Robert Kensbock, chairman of the joint works council, told the Handelsblatt that they had come closer together on many issues. After the talks broke down IG Metall secretary Hagen Reimer, who sits on the supervisory board of Siemens Energy, regretted the fact that both sides been unable to reach a painful compromise solution, as had been the case on other occasions.

IG Metall has not the slightest intention of defending jobs at Siemens Energy. On the contrary, it is trying to prevent any serious struggle and is deliberately driving a wedge into the workforce. In addition to 750 jobs in Berlin-Moabit, 700 in Mulheim-Ruhr and several hundred in Erlangen and Gorlitz, another 4,800 jobs are affected outside Germany, with 1,700 in the US. Despite this, the union is doing everything in its power to undermine any international and cross-site solidarity.

Instead, it follows the principle: Not in my backyard! The unions only point of contention and the reason why the talks eventually broke down, concerns the relocation of part of the companys turbine production from Berlin to Hungary.

At the same time IG Metall is quite prepared to cut wages, social benefits and jobs. With the help of external consultants, it worked out its own alternative concept and is now trying to convince the company and its shareholders that its proposal would prove to be more profitable than the boards own plan.

Robert Kensbock, chairman of the joint works council, had already explicitly declared his support for shareholder profits in February. Asked whether he was annoyed that the Siemens Energy share price had risen after the announcement of the 7,800 job cuts, he told the business weekly Wirtschaftswoche: No. The fact that the company is worth so much is good news. Of course Siemens Energy is committed to its shareholders.

Jan Otto, IG Metall leader in Berlin, has also complained that the employers are refusing to reach a social and harmonious consensus on the process of transformation. At both Daimler and Siemens Energy, he boasted, IG Metall and works councils had developed alternative economic concepts involving cost savings.

There is no public record of whether and how many Siemens Energy shares Kensbock and Otto have in their portfolios but jobs cannot be defended with alternative concepts based on cutting costs and increasing shareholders profits.

The attack on jobs at Siemens Energy is part of an international corporate offensive that has intensified with the coronavirus pandemic. Every year the number of billionaires grows, while more and more workers lose their jobs or are forced to scrape by on miserably low wages. Several hundred thousand jobs are at stake in the German auto and supply industry alone.

Resistance against this is growing. But wherever workers fight back, they are confronted not only by the companies but also by trade unions that sabotage their struggle, isolate them and make common front with the companies.

A case in point is the industrial action at the American plant of Volvo Trucks, the fourth largest truck manufacturer in the world. Nearly 3,000 workers in Dublin, Virginia, were on strike for five weeks against a contract that would have significantly worsened their working conditions and wages. On three occasions they voted by a large majority against the contract agreed by IG Metalls American equivalent, the United Auto Workers.

They were only able to wage their struggle after forming an independent action committee, the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee, which opposed the union sellout, informed workers and mobilised international support. The World Socialist Web Site has supported this work.

Similar developments are taking place in other countries. In Belgium, Volvo Cars workers went on strike to protest against an agreement between the company and the union to extend the working week. In Sudbury, Canada, 2,450 miners rejected a union-backed contract and have been on strike for six weeks. In Turkey, thousands of electricity workers are fighting against sell-out contracts agreed to by the union with spontaneous strikes.

In the US, nearly 600 workers at snack manufacturer Frito-Lay in Topeka, Kansas, are on strike after rejecting a fourth union-backed contract. Other struggles and strikes against union sell-out contracts in the United States include 460 Amcor packaging workers in Terre Haute, Indiana, who had a contract enforced on them by the union despite voting against it; 1,300 Allegheny Technologies (ATI) workers in several states and 1,100 miners in Alabama.

The struggle against job cuts at Siemens Energy also requires the creation of an action committee that functions independently of IG Metall and the works councila committee controlled by the workers and accountable to them.

Such a committee must demand that all negotiations be conducted in public and that no agreement be reached without workers consent. What are the 30 individual measures for which IG Metall and Siemens Energy have already found a solution?

The independent committee must defend every single job and organise resistance to the cutbacks. It should contact other Siemens sites in Germany and internationally and mobilise support throughout the working class.

The International Committee of the Fourth International took the initiative on May 1 to establish the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees to create a framework for new forms of independent and democratic struggle organisations of workers in factories, schools and workplaces internationally.

We invite the workers of Siemens Energy to contact the IWA-RFC through the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP) and the WSWS. We will support you in building an action committee and establishing international contacts.
WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden is tempering his assessment that social media giants are killing people by hosting misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines on their platforms.

Biden said Monday that he hopes the tech companies don't take his comments personally and instead act to save lives.

Companies like Facebook defend their practices and say theyre helping people around the world access verified information about the shots. But the White House says they havent done enough to stop misinformation that has helped slow the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. to a trickle.
TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (WTHI) -- There is a need for the community to access dental healthcare.

This is why one dental health care business wants to do its part to help.

Wabash Valley Children's Dentistry is hosting a free dental clinic.

It's all to help underserved communities.

On Friday, July 23rd, the clinic will be from 9 A.M. until 1 P.M. Wabash Valley Children's Dentistry is located at 440 E. Hospital Lane in Terre Haute.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  A federal appeals court has sided with opponents of an Indiana law aimed at having elections officials immediately purge voter registrations for people who appear to have registered in another state.

The decision upholds an order issued by an Indianapolis-based judge that blocked the law enacted in 2020 by the Republican-dominated Legislature from taking effect.

The appeals court faulted the law for violating the National Voter Registration Act by allowing the removal of voters from registration rolls without receiving consent from that person.

The NAACPs Indiana State Conference hailed the decision as "a win for democracy.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  A federal judge is allowing Indiana University to continue with its COVID-19 vaccine requirement for all students and employees.

A ruling from a judge in South Bend has rejected a request from eight IU students who sought to block the requirement while they pursued a lawsuit claiming that the universitys policy violated both their constitutional rights and the states new law banning vaccine passports.

The judge held a hearing on the case last week and wrote in his ruling dated Sunday that evidence so far shows that IU has pursued a reasonable policy in the legitimate interest of public health for its students, faculty and staff.

The judge said the students who object to receiving the vaccine shots can seek medical and religious exemptions offered by the university, while also having the option of taking the fall semester off or attending another school.

IU said in a statement that the ruling allows the school to focus on a full and safe return for the fall semester on all its campuses.
INDIANAPOLIS (AP)  Downtown Indianapolis can be a wild place sometimes.

Lions roar along sidewalks. Turtles peek out at passersby. Bison and bears keep watch along Monument Circle.

A whole menagerie can be found on the buildings, fountains, sculptures and lampposts around the city. People just have to know where to look.

The curious and adventurous are invited on a safari through downtown Indianapolis, searching out bears, bison, frogs and fish in architectural features around the city. Indiana Landmarks, a statewide preservation group, and the Indiana War Memorials Commission is hosting the Indy Downtown Safari on July 31.

The 45-minute, family-friendly tours include activities and stories about the symbolism behind the featured carvings and adornments. Organizers hope to inspire wonder and appreciation for Indys unique structures.

If you dont live there or if youre not there very often, these things are very easy to walk right past, said Kasey Zronek, director of volunteers and heritage experiences for Indiana Landmarks. One of the things we love to do on our tours is introduce people to some of those things that they might not see every day. And we can tell them the story behind it, so the next time theyre downtown, they can share it too.

Indiana Landmarks is a nonprofit which helps people rescue and revitalize historic structures throughout the state. Notable projects of the organization include the restored Morris-Butler House in Indianapolis, redoing the Ayres Clock in downtown and hoping to revitalize Beth-El Temple.

The idea for the downtown safari was born from tours that Indiana Landmarks hosts for school groups. Part of the tours involve pointing out historic and interesting architectural features, and organizers realized that many times, those features were animals.

So they decided to put together a new event focused specifically on the hidden wildlife depicted around Indianapolis.

We knew we wanted to be downtown, because we love to get people into downtown Indianapolis. We thought about the monuments there and the surrounding buildings, and also University Park, which has some interesting sculptures in it, Zronek said.

With that in mind, organizers from Indiana Landmarks put together a list of animal-themed features in areas centered around Monument Circle.

Some are quite obvious and well-known. DePew Fountain in University Park, a serene greenspace south of the Indiana War Memorial, features sculptures of fish carved on the fountain itself. In the fountains basin, other fish sculptures shoot water.

Visitors to the Soldier and Sailors Monument are sure to have seen the bison heads featured around a fountain  meant to symbolize early Indiana history, Zronek said  and the bears on lampposts situated at the monument.

We also have horses, panthers, fish and wolves, Zronek said. There are actually a lot of animals there.

But others likely go unnoticed unless you spend much time downtown, Zronek said.

At the Columbia Club, frogs carved into the buildings facade hide in plain site. Hieroglyphic animals dot Circle Tower, keeping with its ancient Egyptian theme. Eagles in flight have been formed on the decorative lampposts at the Birch Bayh Federal Building.

Were always looking for ways to encourage people  especially kids  to look around them, to look at details on buildings and other things, Zronek said.

Tours will run every 30 minutes from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. July 31. People will meet at University Park, then head out on their excursion. Groups of about 15 people will be paired with a guide, who will lead them through the different attractions.

As part of the event, the Indiana War Memorials Commission will also feature activities and have self-guided tours of its monuments.

Each tour lasts about 45 minutes and will be held regardless of weather. The event is accessible to all.

There will be stories and activities along the way. Then when they get back to University Park, there will be tents set up where people can do some creative activities, Zronek said.

IF YOU GO:

Indy Downtown Safari

What: A public tour from Indiana Landmarks and the Indiana War Memorials Commission that explores the stone and metal wildlife in architecture and sculpture throughout downtown Indianapolis, including bears, bison, frogs, and fish.

When: Every 30 minutes from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. July 31

Where: Tours depart from University Park, 307 N. Meridian St., Indianapolis

Cost: $5 per person (ages 6 and up), $3 per Indiana Landmarks member (ages 6 and up). Children ages 5 and under are free.

RSVP: indydowntownsafari.eventbrite.com or by calling 317-639-4534
WABASH VALLEY, Ind. (WTHI) - Indiana State Police will partner with five other state police agencies to promote safe driving.

The Six-State Trooper Project encourages drivers to move over and slow down.

Indiana State Police will work with state police from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
From hot doggin to wiping out, some of the most talented surfing dogs and their trainers took to the waves in Southern California on Friday, July 16. The four-legged surfers participated in the 24th Annual Purina Pro Plan Incredible Dog Challenge and Surf Dog Competition in Huntington Beach, CA.

Alecia Nelson said her dog Gidget was born for the event. Its a joy to have with your dog, you know, and I think many people will relate to that, cause I was a competitive person myself in sports, so I wanted to do something with a dog. And thats where we get our relationship, she said.

The dogs were judged on four categories. The length of the ride, the size of the wave, confidence, and of course, style.

We saw one of the dogs going, turning around and facing the other way and then turning right back around. And we saw a couple of floaters out there by some of the dogs, so we're adding that to the style points, said judge Artie Castro.

The surf competition is part of the Incredible Dog Challenge put on to bring people and pets closer together. Other activities that are part of the challenge include free style flying disc, agility, weave poll racing, and diving.

For Ryan Rustan and his dog Sugar, its all about celebrating the bond between man and mans best friend. Its so cool to do my best thing with her, we love surfing together, he said.

Sugar took first place among the large dogs. Gidget won in the small dog category.

Win or lose, its a way for every dog to have their day and for their humans to share that moment with them.
(CNN) -- Tom Barrack, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, was charged Tuesday with illegal foreign lobbying on behalf of the United Arab Emirates for what federal prosecutors in Brooklyn described as an effort to influence the foreign policy positions of both the 2016 Trump presidential campaign and the subsequent incoming administration.

Barrack is charged in a seven-count indictment with acting as an agent of the UAE between April 2016 and April 2018. He is also charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal law enforcement agents.

Barrack was the chairman of Trump's Inaugural Committee, and while some of the charged conduct concerns the presidential transition, it appears unrelated to the inaugural festivities.

According to the indictment, Barrack and two other men charged Tuesday -- Matthew Grimes of Aspen, Colorado, and Rashid Sultan Rashid Al Malik Alshahhi, a UAE national -- capitalized on Barrack's status as a senior outside adviser to the Trump campaign to "advance the interests of and provide intelligence to the UAE while simultaneously failing to notify the Attorney General that their actions were taken at the direction of senior UAE officials."

Barrack was directly and indirectly in contact with UAE senior leadership, according to the charges, and he referred to Alshahhi as its "secret weapon" to promote its foreign policy agenda in America.

Barrack and Grimes are scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon in Los Angeles, according to the Justice Department, while Alshahhi hasn't been arrested. In a court filing Tuesday asking for Barrack's detention, prosecutors said that three days after being interviewed by federal agents in April 2018, Alshahhi fled the US and hasn't returned.

A spokesperson for Barrack said he will plead not guilty.

"Mr. Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset. He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty," the spokesperson told CNN.

The UAE embassy in Washington did not immediately return a request for comment.

'I nailed it. . . for the home team'

The indictment cites several instances of the defendants' alleged promotion of UAE's agenda to the Trump campaign. In May 2016, Barrack inserted language praising the UAE into a campaign speech about US energy policy, then sent an advance draft of the speech to Alshahhi to give to UAE officials, according to the indictment. In 2016 and 2017, Barrack, Alshahhi and Grimes received talking points from UAE officials for Barrack's TV appearances in which he promoted the UAE's interests.

Following one appearance, Barrack emailed Alshahhi, "I nailed it. . . for the home team," referring not to the United States but to the UAE, according to the charges.

After Trump won the 2016 election, the defendants allegedly continued to push UAE interests at the direction of UAE officials. In December 2016, Barrack, Grimes and Alshahhi attended a meeting with senior UAE government officials, where Barrack told them to make a "wish list" of US foreign policy items for the first 100 days of the incoming presidential administration, as well as for the first six months, year and four years.

According to the charges, Barrack had a dedicated cell phone with a secure message application for the purpose of communicating with senior UAE officials.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

The-CNN-Wire

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WASHINGTON (AP)  President Joe Biden tempered his assessment that social media giants are killing people by hosting misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines on their platforms, saying Monday that he hoped they would not take it personally and instead would act to save lives.

While companies like Facebook defend their practices and say they're helping people around the world access verified information about the shots, the White House says they haven't done enough to stop misinformation that has helped slow the pace of new vaccinations in the U.S. to a trickle. It comes as the U.S. sees a rise in virus cases and deaths among those who haven't gotten a shot, in what officials call an emerging pandemic of the unvaccinated.

Speaking at the White House, Biden insisted he meant precisely what I said when he said Friday of the tech giants that they're killing people." But he said the point of his rhetoric was to ramp up pressure on the companies to take action.

My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that somehow Im saying Facebook is killing people,' that they would do something about the misinformation," Biden said.

Bidens comments come as the White House has struggled to counteract resistance to getting a shot, particularly among younger and more Republican demographics. Fewer than 400,000 Americans are getting their first vaccine dose each day  down from a high of more than 2 million per day in April. More than 90 million eligible people have not received a dose.

The administration has increasingly seized on false or misleading information about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines as a driver of that hesitance. It has referenced a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that studies extremism, that linked a dozen accounts to spreading the majority of vaccine disinformation on Facebook.

Facebook isnt killing people. These 12 people are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it, it's killing people," Biden said. "Its bad information."

Im not trying to hold people accountable. Im trying to make people look at themselves, look in the mirror, Biden said, adding, Think about that misinformation going to your son, your daughter, your relative.

In the view of the administration, chastising the social media companies  who have come under mounting scrutiny in Washington over not just disinformation, but also antitrust and privacy practices  is a proxy for criticizing the originators of disinformation themselves. To avoid amplifying falsehoods, the White House has generally sought to avoid engaging directly with those spreading misinformation.

Last week, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared misinformation about the vaccines a deadly threat to public health.

Misinformation poses an imminent and insidious threat to our nations health, Murthy said during remarks Thursday at the White House. We must confront misinformation as a nation. Lives are depending on it.

Murthy said technology companies and social media platforms must make meaningful changes to their products and software to reduce the spread of false information while increasing access to authoritative, fact-based sources.

Too often, he said, the platforms are built in ways that encourage the spread of misinformation.

We are asking them to step up, Murthy said. We cant wait longer for them to take aggressive action.

Facebook on Friday responded to Bidens attack, with spokesperson Kevin McAlister saying, The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period."

The company also released a blog post saying its internal research showed it was not responsible for Biden's missed vaccination goal. The data shows that 85% of Facebook users in the US have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Bidens goal was for 70% of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.

Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College who focuses on politics and health care, said Facebook should absolutely be held accountable for allowing vaccine misinformation to spread.

With that said, we should be careful about assuming that the circulation of misinformation online is a cause of hesitancy rather than a consequence," he added.

Its very difficult to show the relationship between misinformation on social media and vaccine hesitancy directly. We dont have good measures of what people see on social media or any ability to link it to their vaccination behavior. And even if we see correlations in the data, these could be spurious rather than causal  people who arent going to get vaccinated are presumably more likely to be exposed to negative and false information about the vaccine.

That said, Nyhan added that there is some evidence that exposure to misinformation can reduce a person's intention to vaccinate immediately after viewing the misinformation.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki insisted Monday: Were not in a war or battle against Facebook  were in a battle with the virus. But she ramped up pressure on the companies to share information on how many Americans are exposed to misinformation on their platforms and how their secretive and powerful algorithms promote false content to users.

Do you have access to information from these platforms as to who is receiving misinformation?" she asked. I dont think that information has been released. Do you know how the algorithms are working at any of these platforms? I dont think that information has been released.
A Florida man who breached the U.S. Senate chamber carrying a Trump campaign flag has received an eight-month prison term.

It was the first resolution for a felony case in the Capitol insurrection.

Prosecutors wanted Paul Allard Hodgkins to serve 18 months behind bars, saying he and other Jan. 6 rioters contributed to the collective threat to democracy.

A lawyer for Hodgkins asked the judge at his Monday sentencing in Washington, D.C., not to impose a prison sentence.

Hodgkins was never accused of assaulting anyone or damaging property.

Hodgkins pleaded guilty last month to one count of obstructing an official proceeding and apologized Monday, saying he made a foolish decision.
NEW HOULKA, Miss. (WTVA) - A Chickasaw County firefighter gets rewarded for her volunteerism to keep her community safe.

The Mississippi Firefighter's Auxiliary recognized Houlka Volunteer Fire Department Chief Jo Cross as the firefighter of the year.

The award was presented during the 84th annual awards ceremony in Biloxi on June 26.

The MFA honored Cross for her act of bravery and service to others.

Watch the interview in the video above.

Over 400 firefighters attended the annual conference.

Correction: "Association" changed to "Auxiliary."
TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) - Coronavirus cases continue to climb, largely due to the spread of the delta variant. The surge, leaving state health leaders all across Mississippi worried.

But what do people in our area think about the spike?

People we spoke with today had mixed reactions to the recent rise.

The MSDH announced over 2,000 new cases today, over a three-day period.

Dr. Thomas Dobbs called the rise in cases sad."

Lee County resident Cynthia Johnson said despite the surge, she does not anticipate another shutdown.

I feel like if we keep our social distancing, and our masks and follow protocol, I think were going to be safe whether we get the vaccination or not," said Johnson.

Like Johnson, Sandra Pruitt agrees that residents should continue to social distance and wear a mask. However, she added that she believes vaccination plays an important role in the fight against the coronavirus and the possibility of businesses closing again.

Yes, I do think it could get that bad. I would suggest that everyone...just get vaccinated," said Pruitt.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said he recognizes that the shift towards normalcy is different for everyone.

Each of us is going to make our own decision here. Based on our risk tolerance, based on our home circumstances, based on whats happening in our neighborhood and county," said Murthy.

As for Pruitt, she said shes nowhere near letting her guard down.

Everybody hasnt been vaccinated, and the surge going on  I suggest still everyone wear your mask because you still can get COVID," said Pruitt. "It won't be as bad, but I suggest you still wear your mask.

For Johnson, she said she believes face coverings and social distancing alone will be what keeps her family safe and the state open.

I have small children with underlying health issues and that means I wouldnt be able to work," said Johnson.

Residents said they just hope the shift towards normalcy doesnt lead to a continued shift towards more cases.
ATHENS, Ala. (AP)  A judge has delayed the theft and ethics trial of a north Alabama sheriff after prosecutors from the state attorney generals office presented testimony from a witness who also is under investigation.

Judge Pamela Baschab told lawyers from both sides in the trial of Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely to return to court Tuesday after filing legal briefs with their positions about the use of the witness, Trent Willis.

Willis testified for the state, but a prosecutor revealed he's under investigation before cross examination began.

The judge denied a defense request for a mistrial but told the prosecution and defense to file motions about Willis testimony before the trial resumed.
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP)  Alabama public health officials are warning people to avoid eating any fish from some state waterways because of contamination.

The state Department of Public Health issued its latest fish consumption advisories this month.

They are based on nearly 500 samples of specific fish species taken during the fall of 2020 from 41 bodies of water, health officials say.

Restrictions on consumption are broken down by waterbody and presented as the safe number of meals of a species that can be eaten in a given period of time. In some locations, people are advised to avoid all fish.

Mercury is often cited as the fish contaminant of concern.
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Charleston, WV (25311)

Today

A mix of clouds and sun. High near 85F. Winds light and variable..

Tonight

Mostly clear. Low around 60F. Winds light and variable.
Housing activists erect a sign in Swampscott, Massachusetts, on Oct. 14, 2020. A federal freeze on most evictions is set to expire soon. The moratorium, put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in September, was the only tool keeping millions of tenants in their homes.
US intelligence community convenes new panel to probe 'Havana syndrome' causes amid new cases in Austria

The U.S. intelligence community has launched a new panel of experts that brings together senior officers and outside medical and scientific experts to investigate the "anomalous health incidents" affecting dozens of U.S. personnel around the world, an intelligence official told ABC News.

The U.S. government still has not reached a conclusion into the cause of the incidents, sometimes known as "Havana syndrome" after the first cluster of cases was reported at the U.S. embassy in Cuba.

But more reported cases are now being investigated at the embassy in Austria's capital, Vienna, according to the State Department, whose spokesperson said Monday that it is "vigorously investigating reports of possible unexplained health incidents" among U.S. personnel there.

MORE: US botched initial response to diplomats' brain injuries in Cuba: Declassified report

Austria is just the latest country where incidents have now been reported. The National Security Council is overseeing a government-wide review "to ascertain whether there may be previously unreported incidents that fit a broader pattern," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, and "whether they constitute an attack of some kind by a foreign actor."

PHOTO: George Bush Center for Intelligence, the headquarters of the CIA, located in Langley, Va., Nov. 7, 2018. (Daniel Slim/AFP via Getty Images, FILE)

Beyond that review, the intelligence community also established the new panel of experts earlier this month -- bringing together senior officers from the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and outside scientific and medical experts -- to explore the multiple hypotheses into what is causing the "health incidents," an intelligence official told ABC News.

It's the latest federal government review into an issue that has vexed officials since 2016 when the first cases were reported in Cuba, underscoring how little U.S. officials still know about it.

The new panel will build off of the findings of a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine last December, according to the official, which concluded that "directed, pulsed radio frequency energy appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases, especially in individuals with the distinct early symptoms."

Story continues

MORE: White House acknowledges mysterious health attacks occurred in US, reviewing intel on incidents

Dozens of U.S. officials have been diagnosed with injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, after reporting strange experiences like high-pitched sounds or feelings of pressure or vibration, or debilitating symptoms including headaches, nausea, cognitive deficits, and trouble with seeing, hearing, or balancing.

Before Austria, the U.S. government had acknowledged, in public or in declassified documents, reported cases in Cuba, China, Uzbekistan, Russia, and the United States, although the White House has said "the vast majority" of cases have been reported overseas.

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee warned in May that the "pattern of attacking our fellow citizens serving our government appears to be increasing."

PHOTO: A vintage U.S. car passing in front of the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Dec. 17, 2015. (Yamil Lage/AFP/Getty Images)

"In coordination with our interagency partners, we are vigorously investigating reports of possible unexplained health incidents among the U.S. embassy community there" in Vienna, State Department spokesperson Ned Price said Monday.

The agency has declined to provide more details, including the number of affected personnel. But according to The New Yorker magazine, which first reported on the Vienna cluster, it totals around two dozen U.S. diplomats, intelligence officers and other government officials -- now second only to Havana.

A CIA spokesperson told ABC News that director Bill Burns "is personally engaged with personnel affected by anomalous health incidents and is highly committed to their care and to determining the cause of these incidents" but declined to provide more details.

Both the CIA and the State Department have elevated their internal task forces investigating reported incidents among their personnel, while the State Department has its own team of medical experts that responds to reported incidents around the world.

US intelligence community convenes new panel to probe 'Havana syndrome' causes amid new cases in Austria originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Close-Up Of Metal Railing In Building

Source: Alim Sukach / EyeEm / Getty

The family of TaNeasha Chappell is seeking answers after the 23-year-old died while in police custody at the Jackson County Jail in Brownstown, Indiana. Chappell was being held on shoplifting charges and was taken into custody on May 26, Newsweek reported.

TaNeasha who was originally from Louisville, Kentucky, was rushed to Schneck Memorial Hospital on July 16, and later passed away that same day. Details are still developing around the cause of her death.

Her mother Lativa McCain revealed that she often called stating that she was fearful for her life in prison.

She called every day telling us to get her out of there, McCain told WDRB. Mama theyre going to kill me in here, theyre going to kill me in here, and she would always say get me out of here if anything happens to me just know that they did it.

An emotional McCain added that she feels a deep sense of regret because she wasnt able to come up with the $4007 bond TaNeasha was being held on prior to her unexpected death.

My baby died in jail in jail. I feel like I failed her because I didnt have the money to get her out, McCain told the outlet.

The family suspects foul play was involved, citing that Chappell was in good health and in good spirits the last time they were able to speak to her. However, the family added that Chappell mentioned she was encountering a few problems with inmates during her prison stay.

Chappells family is pleading with detectives and authorities to release more information behind the investigation but according to her sister Ronesha Murrell, officials have been mum regarding further details surrounding TaNeashas death.

My mom hasnt even been able to verify the body. Why has not she been able to verify the body. They wont give us any answers, Murrell said.

Authorities say Chappell was taken into custody after allegedly stealing more than $3,000 worth of merchandise from an outlet mall Ralph Lauren, then leading police on a car chase.

Story continues

A GoFundMe has been created to help support TaNeashas family with funeral arrangements. Chappell leaves behind a 10-year-old daughter who the family says will miss her terribly.

Theres an eery similarity between TaNeashas case and the death of Sandra Bland who was found hanging in her jail cell back in July 2015. The incident occurred just three days after she was arrested following a routine traffic stop. Questions are still looming as to whether Blands death was caused by police officials or self-afflicted.

One thing remains clear in both heartwrenching incidents. The fight for Black lives and police reform in the United States continues to be an ongoing battle, particularly for Black women.

Our prayers go out to Chappells family.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP)  At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.

There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister.

The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack on its Amaq news channel.

Police quickly fanned out across the area. One car parked on a nearby street was completely destroyed; the police said it was used as launching pad for the rockets.

The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off.

The barrage came as the U.S. and NATO complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan. Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the Taliban gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighboring countries over the past weeks.

The withdrawal is more than 95% complete and the final U.S. soldier will be gone by Aug. 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.

This Eid has been named after Afghan forces to honor their sacrifices and courage, especially in the last three months, Ghani said in his address to the nation following morning prayers for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice."

The Taliban have no intention and willingness for peace Ghani said. We have proven that we have the intention, the willingness and have sacrificed for peace.

However, Afghan forces have complained about being left without reinforcements and supplies, often running low on food as the Taliban advanced. In many instances, Afghan troops surrendered rather than fight. Washingtons watchdog monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan reported that troops are deeply demoralized and corruption is rampant. After their pullout, the U.S. and NATO are committed to spending $4 billion annually on Afghan forces until 2024, the majority of that money coming from Washington.

Story continues

Ghani said he deplored his government's decision to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners to get peace talks started last year as a big mistake that only strengthened the insurgents.

Yet Ghani has released other prisoners, including several sought by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with whom he signed a peace deal in 2017. Among those freed at Hekmatyar's request was Abdul Basir Salangi, who killed two U.S. military personnel in 2011 in Kabul.

Meanwhile, Abdullah Abdullah, the No. 2 official in the government, was inside the palace during the rocket attack on Tuesday, having returned on Monday from peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar. Those inside the palace, however, were far removed from where the rockets landed.

The two days of meetings in Doha  the highest level of negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban so far  aimed at jumpstarting stalled talks but ended with a promise of more high-level talks.

In his speech, Ghani also assailed neighboring Pakistan, which Kabul blames for harboring the Taliban leadership and providing a safe haven and assistance to the insurgents. In the most recent fighting in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, Taliban fighters were seen receiving treatment at a Pakistani hospital across the border in Chaman.

Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it calims is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace.

Pakistan has also been deeply critical of Kabul, saying it has allowed another militant group, the Pakistani Taliban  Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan  to find safety in Afghanistan from where they have launched a growing number of attacks targeting the Pakistan military.

Pakistan does not want a Taliban regime in its homeland" but their media have been campaigning for a Taliban regime in Afghanistan, Ghani added.

The Eid al-Adha is the most important Islamic holiday, marking the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim  Abraham to Christians and Jews  to sacrifice his son. During the holiday, which in most places lasts four days, Muslims slaughter sheep or cattle and distribute part of the meat to the poor.

___

Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon in Islamabad contributed to this report.
Human rights activist Yeonmi Park, who defected from North Korea, criticized the unthinkable actions of Team USA hammer thrower Gwen Berry after she turned her back to the American flag as the national anthem played.

During the playing of the anthem at an Olympic qualifier in Oregon, first-place finisher DeAnna Price and second-place finisher Brooke Anderson faced the flag with their hands over their heart. Berry, however, shifted to face the crowd and covered her head with a T-shirt that read, Activist Athlete.

"If she did the exact same thing at this very moment, if she was North Korean, not only herself will be executed, [also] eight generations of her family can be sent to political prison camp and execution, Park said.

Berry does not know how good she and other Americans have it compared to dictatorships globally, Park said.

"I was a slave," Park said, pointing to inhumane practices in China and North Korea. "I was sold in China in 2007 as a child at 13 years old. The people actually called it slavery under [the] Chinese Communist Party in North Korea.

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There is actual injustice [there], and the fact that she's complaining about this country  the most tolerant country  she doesn't really understand history," she added.

Responding to the criticism, Berry said she felt she was set up by the playing of the anthem and said her actions were misinterpreted.

"I never said that I hated the country, she told the Black News Channel on Tuesday. "I never said that I didn't want to go to the Olympic Games  that's why I competed and got third and made the team.

Later in the interview, Berry seemed to defend her actions.

"If you know your history, you know the full song of the national anthem, the third paragraph speaks to slaves in America, our blood being slain ... all over the floor," she said. "It's disrespectful and it does not speak for black Americans. It's obvious. There's no question."

Story continues

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Park, however, said the Olympic-qualified athlete was so privileged and that she does not know what oppression under a dictatorship really looks like.

"In North Korea, people who are actually oppressed don't even know theyre oppressed, she said. The fact that she's complaining about oppression and systemic racism  she does not understand that she's so privileged."

"There are people dying to come to America at this very moment," Park said. "I just hope they go to North Korea, China and see how humans are being oppressed, and they will truly understand how valuable the freedom that we have is."

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Tags: 2020 Olympics, North Korea, Activism, China, Slavery, Protests

Original Author: Lawrence Richard

Original Location: North Korea defector says Team USA athlete Gwen Berry would have been executed over unthinkable flag protest
Dane van Niekerk feels honoured to be captaining Oval Invincibles in The Hundreds first ever match, hailing the opportunity as a symbolic step forward for the womens game.

The South Africa skipper will lead the south London-based franchise against visitors Manchester Originals on Wednesday night as three years of turbulent planning and preparation finally gives way to on-field action.

Much is new and controversial about the tournament  from the unfamiliar city-based teams to the abolition of the six-ball over  but the simple decision to hand centre stage to a womens match is breaking fresh ground too.

Dane van Niekerk is captain of South Africa (David Davies/PA)

The Twenty20 circuit is effectively dominated by mens cricket, but the England and Wales Cricket Board has delivered on its promise to give equal billing to both editions in The Hundred.

It feels pretty special and it shows what The Hundred stands for, Van Niekerk told the PA news agency.

Its about equality. To give us as females the first game is something really exciting and Im honoured to be part of it. This is a sport for all and it doesnt matter where you come from, your background, your race or your sexuality. Its an even playing field.

The womens game will take centre stage at The Oval on Wednesday night (Tom Shaw/ECB handout)

People can be hesitant about any change but hopefully we can put up a really good show in the first game and get people around the world really excited about this.

One of Van Niekerks first decisions should she find her side fielding first at The Oval will be who to offer the new ball to  a prestigious moment with the cricketing world watching.

There are no shortage of options, with her wife Marizanne Kapp, their Proteas team-mate Shabnim Ismail and England international Tash Farrant all eager to take top billing.

I think Ill let them fight it out. It will be a scrap between Marizanne, Shab and Tash, she said.

When Im leading South Africa I usually let them work it out but I dont want to get in the middle of this. It might have to come down to rock, paper, scissors!

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Captains in The Hundred can decide to let bowlers send down sets of five or 10 deliveries, one of the primary tweaks to traditional playing conditions, but Van Niekerk admits she will need to keep her wits about her if she is to take advantage.

Tash Farrant will be hoping to take the new ball (John Walton/PA)

In the warm-up game we had I forgot about the 10-ball rule! Its scary how fast it went by. You look up, 40 balls have gone and you dont know where they went, she said.

But I think its a great concept and as a captain I need to figure it out. Its going to be about reading the game and seeing who is bowling really well. If I see a bowler all over a batter and it feels like weve got a chance to take them out Ill probably go for it.

We talk about a single being a win in T20 cricket, so a dot ball in a hundred is probably as good as wicket.
"A chinka-what?" I asked my grandparents, as they told me about this surprising and funny little nut that's widespread from Maryland down to Texas.

My grandparents explained that they grew up enjoying this uncommon snack from the trees on their family farms. Apparently, it can even be baked into a pie. Such intrigue!

Allegheny Chinkapin

Paul Sisco

The chinquapin, or chinkapin, is a sister species to the American chestnut. It grows in a hard, spikey burr on a squatty tree that looks similar to the American chestnut tree.

The first English recording of the chinquapin was from Captain John Smith in approximately 1607 when he came in contact with the Powhatan confederacy, Taylor Perkins, a research associate at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, says. The original name "chechinquamin" (which evolved over time from pronunciation) meant mini berry or fruit in the Powhatan language.

Although it's unclear when the American chestnut and the chinquapin split from each other genetically, there were fossilized chestnut-like species found in Tennessee that date somewhere between 48 and 58 million years old, Perkins says.

Talk about a plant with history!

Although the chinquapin and the American chestnut are in the same family, they are quite different once you learn to recognize each. Here are the three distinguishing characteristics to learn so you're not fooled by these nut-bearing trees.

Unlike its sister tree, the American chestnut, a chinquapin tree will only grow to about 30 feet in height and will be multi-stemmed like a wide brush, Perkins says. The second important feature of a chinquapin is the hairy underside of its leaves. You can feel the soft, starfish-shaped trichomes on a chinquapin leaf with your hand. In comparison, an American chestnut's leaves are smooth.

Lastly, if you crack open a burr on a chinquapin, you'll only find one nut inside, whereas an American chestnut will have three nuts per burr.

Story continues

Chinkapin compared to Chestnut

Paul Sisco

There are three varieties of chinquapin trees, Paul Sisco, a member of The American Chestnut Foundation, says. Allegheny chinquapins are the trees that you'll find from Maryland down to Texas. Ozark and Alabama chinquapins are less hairy on the underside of their leaves, than the Allegheny chinquapins. You can find both Ozark and Allegheny chinquapins in Arkansas.

Once you know how to identify this mysterious tree, the next complication is actually finding one, Perkins says. Although they were at one point widespread in Eastern North America, nowadays, the most likely way to enjoy these nuts is if you're lucky enough to spot a chinquapin tree while hiking in the mountains.

They're most common in the Piedmont regions of Georgia and South Carolina, the mountains of Western North Carolina, and Southwest Virginia.

Perkins suggests that if you do find a healthy, nut-bearing chinquapin that you use thick leather gloves to pull the burrs off the tree and break them open to reveal the nut inside. Alternatively, you can use a thick soled hiking boot, to stomp on the burr and break it open.

Unfortunately, you won't find this covert Southern delicacy for sale in any supermarkets. Although that was possible at one time, especially near University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

If you're interested to see what this nut is all about, there are some nurseries that sell chinquapin trees. Perkins says they're great potted plants and can be low maintenance, although they do suffer from chestnut blight and root rot.

With a chinquapin tree in your yard, you'll have easy access to the sweet nuts. Just replace a chinquapin nut in any chestnut recipe you have, and you're all set to enjoy chinquapin baked goods.

If you do ever find a chinquapin tree while hiking, or already have one in your backyard, be sure to tag us @southernlivingmag on Instagram!
Whether Democrats care to admit it or not, there is a very real danger that liberal policies
The July 22, 1962 Courier headline in bold print was sure to catch the attention of Conroe residents - if not make them gasp and take a second look.

It read Mass killing to begin at noon today in county. The attack referenced was the citys plan to decimate the Polio disease.

In Conroe in the 1950s and 1960s, the impacts of polio - or poliomyelitis, a disabling and life-threatening disease caused by the poliovirus - seemed to impact the younger population the most and the efforts to halt the virus were targeted at youngsters. The virus spreads from person to person and can infect a persons spinal cord, causing paralysis.

There were several reports of local youngsters being sick with Polio and being treated in Houston in The Courier.

More from Sondra Hernandez: Habitat for Humanity launches deconstruction service in Montgomery County

Conroe graduate Peyton Mullins was diagnosed with Polio at 18 months old, spending a year in St. Josephs Hospital in Houston. Both his legs were impacted and doctors told him he could not take the vaccine, so he carried a letter from the doctor so he could attend school.

Courier reporter Ed Watson suffered Polio in his youth and it impacted his health the rest of his life.

The June 26, 1952 Courier reported three cases of Polio, one of which was fatal for 15-year-old Imogene Wagner from Willis.

Dr. Walter Wally Wilkerson, 91, recalls the polio epidemic being a frightening situation.

He remembers growing up during the summer time then, the swimming pools and camps were closed due to polio. The picture shows were halted too.

I remember so well going to bed and it was hot and there was no air conditioning of course. There was an oscillating fan and you waited your turn for the fan to blow some cool air on you. I was around 12 or 13 years old and remember being terrified of the iron lung (a breathing apparatus used to help Polio patients in the 1950s and 60s.) I laid there thinking and for some reason it donned on me that if youre a doctor, then you dont get sick. I decided then to become a doctor, he said.

He went on to spend his career as a physician in Conroe and the longtime leader of the Montgomery County Republican Party.

In early April 1955, The Courier announced that Dr. Jonas Salks polio vaccine had been licensed for use in the US. It was reported to be 80 to 90 percent effective and a safe and potent way to stop the spread of Polio.

By April 21, 1955 the Salk vaccine arrived in Conroe. The Sabin vaccine, which became available in early 1960s, was later administered via a sugar cube.

The precious cherry-red serum was flown from Austin to the Montgomery County Airport by Dr. Paul G. Phillips and Marvin Anderson and immediately whisked away to the hospital for storage, the April 21, 1955 article stated. A picture of Dr. Phillips and Anderson with the vaccine ran on the front page of The Courier.

Mass inoculation of the countys school children began the following afternoon and was carried out by the Montgomery County Medical Society under the direction of Dr. W.M. Holland. The Salk vaccine was administered as a shot as children lined up at one of the schools.

I remember everyone lining up at one of the schools and getting a shot from a gun-looking instrument and then later getting the medicine laced sugar cube and being surprised it wasnt a shot again, said Conroe native Tom Sellars.

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Brenda Winningham Carroll got her polio vaccination earlier than 1960 from a private doctor and remembers how painful the aftermath was. Just pulling my sleeve over the injection site was painful, she said.

Carol Cryar Palmer received the Salk injection too.

I remember being jealous of my younger brother when he got a sugar cube in the early 1960s. I got stuck and he got sugar? Not fair! she said.

Conroe held two rounds of vaccination in 1955. One in April and the other in July.

By the early 1960s, an oral vaccine developed by Dr. Albert Sabin was approved for use. This vaccine was dropped onto a sugar cube and then ingested - a method much more preferred by the takers than the shot.

The July 18, 1962 Courier reported that 57 percent of the Polio cases in the US in 1962 were found in Texas.

The drive to vaccinate the community was of highest importance and the Montgomery County Medical Society again put a plan in action.

Efforts were headed up by Dr. A.N. Wilkins and co-director Dr. Wilkerson. Community organizations like the Conroe Service League, the Jaycees, the Grey Ladies and the Nursing Association pitched in as well.

The Conroe Service League was founded in Conroe in the mid 1950s to help the less fortunate in the community. The organization continues today and is seeking to commemorate the groups history in the fall.

Mrs. Arnold Bruner rallied the Conroe Service League members in the summer of 1962.

Vaccines were distributed by sugar cubes at Booker T. Washington School and David Crockett High School in late July.

We walked from our home on Dallas Street to the high school, (old CHS on Thompson St. ) You were given a sugar cube with a pink dot on it, and you ate it or let it dissolve on your tongue. The number one asked question of the day was, May I have another? said Judge Jimmie Edwards III.

Mom took my brothers and I to stand in a very long line. I was petrified at the thought of a shot, said Mona Smith Cannon. When it was our turn, it was the sugar cube. Wow, was I ever relieved.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Fourth COVID wave on the horizon, could overwhelm emergency rooms, Houston medical leaders warn

When all the vaccines were done, more than 75 percent of the countys 25,000 population were vaccinated or over 19,000 people.

The Courier praised all those involved in distributing the vaccine saying it was the finest operation ever set up in such a short time-frame. Courier columnist Ed Watson said Mrs. Bruner and the Conroe Service League ladies worked night and day in the week leading up to the vaccination.

It was a difficult job for the size of the county, but Mrs. Bruner along with the other members disregarded the tremendous odds against them and set their plan into motion to ensure that everyone would have the same opportunity to get the oral vaccine, Watson wrote.

The Conroe Service League will recognize the organizations history in October. More will be announced in The Courier as the date gets closer.

Search for the Conroe Service Leagues page on Facebook. The Conroe Service League also runs The Bargain Box resale shop at 123 North Thompson Street in Conroe.

The international organization of Rotary launched PolioPlus in 1985 and was a founding member of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative in 1988. Through decades of commitment and work by Rotary and its partners, more than 2.5 billion children have received the oral polio vaccine. Some local volunteers have even traveled to administer the vaccine internationally.

World Polio Day is celebrated Oct. 24 each year. The Rotary Club of Conroe hosts its annual Spirits of Texas fundraiser around this time and a portion of the proceeds go to ending Polio.

According to EndPolio.org, since 1988, there has been a worldwide reduction in polio cases of 99.9 percent. For more than three years, wild polio cases have only been recorded in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Courier thanks Conroe Service League historian Marcia Reagan for her assistance researching old Courier newspapers.

shernandez@hcnonline.com
YORK  An officer with the York Police Department stopped a vehicle on Interstate 80 for a traffic violation, which led to a charge of possession of a controlled substance and jail for the defendant this past week.

Charles Agent, Jr., 33, of Middletown, Penn., was sentenced in York County District Court to a term of 60 days in jail with credit for one day already served.

He was sentenced this past week by Judge James Stecker.

The officer said in court documents that Agent was speeding.

Upon speaking with Agent, the officer said he could smell marijuana coming from the vehicle and he saw a vape pen with a cartridge consistent with a form of concentrated cannabis.

The officer said he conducted a series of standardized field sobriety tests and in his opinion, Agent failed. He said Agent also admitted to using marijuana and various marijuana products in Colorado prior to driving. He also admitted to consuming an Adderall tablet that his friend had given him.
"Doing so for unvaccinated students would be reckless and ignores current medical and public health evidence," said Dr. Bob Rauner, president of Partnership for a Healthy Lincoln and a member of the Lincoln Board of Education.

Under the Lincoln district's return plan, posted Thursday, a vaccinated student who had a contact but no symptoms would not be required to quarantine.

Unvaccinated students with a contact but no symptoms would have to quarantine.

All close contacts with symptoms would need to quarantine for 14 days, even with a negative test result, the Lincoln plan says.

The Nebraska guidance, specifically aimed at schools, was not issued in the form of a directed health measure, so it doesn't carry the same weight as the prescriptive quarantining rules in effect during the COVID-19 emergency last school year. Nor does it mention masks or vaccines.

In the absence of any firm directive on the issue, the decision on whether to quarantine students in the coming school year appears to rest with school boards and leaders, in consultation with local health departments.

As a result, quarantining rules could differ from one district to the next, depending on how the disease is impacting a community.
YORK  A semi truck driver, who was found with 31 grams of methamphetamine in his vehicle while driving on Interstate 80 in York County, has been sentenced to prison.

Guadalupe Tarin, 44, of Lyman, Nebr., was sentenced by Judge James Stecker in York County District Court this past week.

According to court documents, the case began when troopers with the Nebraska State Patrol (NSP) were advised to watch for a semi tractor on the interstate as drivers were reporting it was failing to maintain a driving lane. A trooper saw the semi tractor, according to the reports filed with the court, and saw it go onto the shoulder as well as straddle the center line.

The trooper said in the affidavit he stopped the semi and spoke with Tarin, who was the driver. He said Tarin indicated he couldnt locate any vehicle information and didnt have a log book. He also told the trooper that the rain was affecting his driving.

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The trooper found that Tarins license had been suspended and he was arrested.

During a search of the vehicle, troopers found a glass pipe with methamphetamine residue, as well as 3.1 grams of methamphetamine and a pipe with residue above the drivers visor. They also found 28.4 grams of methamphetamine in a sock under the sleeper bed.
YORK  Gregory Meyers, III, 42, of York, has pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of being in violation of the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry Act.

According to court documents, he was allegedly found by local law enforcement to be in non-compliance, as a registered sex offender. One of the cases involves him not reporting ownership of a vehicle, as is required.

It is noted in the affidavit filed with the court that he has had multiple prior charges for failing to register required information.

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A review of his criminal history, according to the affidavit, shows a prior conviction for sex offender registry violations in Cuming County in 2002 and in Fillmore County in 2020 (for which he remains on probation).

It is also noted that he is on supervised release status through the federal court system/U.S. probation for activities relating to material constituting or containing child pornography.

According to the Nebraska Sex Offender Registry, Meyers was convicted of sexual assault of a child in Dodge County in 1995 and of possession of child pornography in U.S. Federal Court in 2007.
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New Delhi: Shiv Nadar, a pioneer in the Indian IT sector, has stepped down as the managing director and board member of HCL Technologies, a year after handing over the reins of the IT major to his daughter, Roshni Nadar Malhotra.

In July last year, Nadar had stepped down from the chairman's role and Roshni succeeded him, becoming the first woman to chair a listed Indian IT firm.

The company has appointed C Vijayakumar, president and CEO of the company, as the managing director with a title of CEO and MD for a term of five years with effect from July 20.

Shiv Nadar, who has completed 76 years of age, will now take on the role of Chairman Emeritus and Strategic Advisor to the company's board, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.

"In order to continue to benefit from his vast knowledge, experience, and wisdom in an advisory role, the board... Approved the appointment of Shri Shiv Nadar as the Chairman Emeritus and Strategic Advisor to the Board for a term of five years with effect from July 20, 2021," the filing said.

It added that payment of remuneration or providing any facilities under this role will be subject to shareholder approval.

Shiv Nadar is a pioneer of the computing and IT industry in India. In 1976, he founded the HCL Group that started off as a technology hardware company, manufacturing the country's first indigenous computers and then evolved into a more comprehensive software services global organisation.

Under Nadar's leadership, HCL is credited with the first 'Made in India' IT product innovations with the first 8-bit microprocessor-based computer in 1978 and the world's first fine-grained multi-processor UNIX installation in 1989, among others. HCL played a key role in supporting India's telecom revolution through the creation of the largest mobile distribution network with Nokia.

Like his industry peer Azim Premji, Nadar has also focussed his efforts on philanthropic activities and supporting various initiatives, including around education. In 1994, the Padma Bhushan recipient established Shiv Nadar Foundation.

As of March 2021, the Shiv Nadar Foundation had invested around USD 988 million to create institutions of transformational education that are nurturing India's next generation of leaders. The Foundation has directly touched over 34,000 students.

Notably, over the past few years, promoters of various IT companies have carved out succession plans for the next generation. In 2019, Wipro had announced Azim Premji will retire as executive chairman of Wipro and his son Rishad, who was serving as chief strategy officer and a board member at that time, took over as the executive chairman of the company.

Recently, NIIT Ltd had announced the expansion of its board with four new members, including promoters' children Udai S Pawar and Leher V Thadani.

In a separate regulatory filing on Monday, HCL Technologies said it has appointed former IBM executive, Vanitha Narayanan to the board of directors.

Narayanan, as an additional director on the HCL Technologies' board, will hold office as an independent director of the company, the filing said.

With the addition of Narayanan, the company's board includes four women directors. Her appointment is effective July 19, 2021.

In 2020, Vanitha retired after a career spanning three decades at IBM where she held multiple key roles leading large businesses in geographies like US, Asia-Pacific and India. These roles included serving as managing director and chairman of IBM India and other leadership positions in the global communications and telecommunications industries.

"I am pleased to welcome Vanitha to the board of HCL and appreciate her decision to become a part of the HCL family. She brings rich and diverse experience of navigating organisations through digital transformation journeys," HCL Technologies Chairperson Roshni Nadar Malhotra said.

Malhotra added that her deep knowledge and understanding of the evolving marketing and technology landscape will be a great asset to HCL's focus on driving growth. "Her experience of viewing evolution and innovations in technology from a multi-geography lens will add value to HCL as we expand our footprints globally. We look forward to working together."
New Delhi: Muslims across the globe are celebrating the auspicious festival of Eid-al-Adha or Bakr Eid, also known as 'festival of sacrifice'. On this day, people who are away from their near and loved ones due to the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak this year can extend wishes and celebrate the essence of the festival.

Saudi Arabia announced it on July 20 while the Shahi Imam of Delhis Jama Masjid declared July 21 as Eid-al-Adha for India. The special day is considered to be the second of the two most important Islamic holidays celebrated worldwide each year.

The first one being Eid-al-Fitr, and the second one Eid-al-Adhait is considered the holier of the two. The festival of Eid-al-Adha falls on the 10th day of Dhu al-Hijjah as per the Islamic lunar calendar.

As per the Gregorian calendar, Eid-al-Adha dates may vary from year-to-year drifting approximately 11 days earlier each year.

Take a look at these heartfelt WhatsApp, Facebook and Text messages for your loved ones:

May Allah be the guiding light in your life and bless your family with prosperity! Eid Mubarak

Sending all my love and wishes to you. May Allah bless you on Eid!

Another year, another reason to celebrate,

The same festival but a different date!

Here's wishing you all the happiness and blessings.

Eid Mubarak! Allah aapko saari khushiyaan dein.

May Allah light up your life even brighter

And take away all your troubles this year.

Wishing you and your family Eid Mubarak!

May Allah always embrace you with good health and success.

Eid Mubarak!

This Eid-ul-Adha, we wish you happy times.

May you get prosperity, health, wealth, success and happiness.

Eid Mubarak!

Sending you a box full of wishes and love,

May Allah protect you and keep you happy.

Eid Mubarak!

Eid Mubarak aap sabko,

Hamesha khush rakhe Allah aapko.

Eid-ul-Adha Mubarak ho Aapko!

Eid Mubarak to all! Here's praying that Allah shower his choicest blessings upon you and family!

Here's wishing you and your near ones Eid Mubarak!
New Delhi: Veteran actress Rekha recently was a special guest on the dance reality show - Dance Deewane 3. Besides her beauty and effortless acting, what left everyone mighty impressed was her singing abilities as she recited the divine Gayatri Mantra.

Rekha left all in awe of her when she recited the Gayatri Mantra on the sets of Dance Deewane 3 show. Other judges including Madhuri Dixit Nene, hosts Bharti Singh and husband Haarsh Limbachhiya, contestants and audiences - all were left speechless on hearing Rekha sing.

The veteran actress was dressed in golden-white attire with stunning jewellery, making her look ethereal.

Rekha also performed on her superhit track Salmaan-E-Ishq, leaving the audience totally smitten with her dance. Later, in the video shared by the channel airing the show, Madhuri and Rekha can be seen enacting a scene from the blockbuster movie Silsila.

The film featured Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Rekha, and Sanjeev Kumar originally.
New Delhi: The three accused, who were arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad from Maharashtra's Nagpur in connection with a case registered in Lucknow under UP's anti-conversion law, were on Tuesday (July 20) sent to seven-day police custody. The trio was arrested from the Ganeshpeth area of Nagpur city on July 16.

The accused were identified as Prasad Rameshwar Kavale alias Adam (from Nagpur), Kausar Alam Shaukat Ali Khan (from Jharkhand) and Bhupriya Bando Devidas Mankar (from Maharashtra's Gadchiroli), the police official said in Nagpur. They were staying at Hansapuri under the jurisdiction of the Ganeshpeth police station.

The UP ATS had arrested some persons last month and claimed to have busted a nationwide racket of religious conversions. An FIR was lodged at the Gomtinagar police station in Lucknow under the state's anti-conversion law. ADG (law and order) of the Uttar Pradesh police Prashant Kumar said in Lucknow the arrested persons are being brought to the state capital by road and will be produced before the court. Efforts will be made to secure their police custody for questioning in connection with a larger conspiracy.

The UP ATS had earlier arrested five persons, including Umar Gautam, who was running a conversion racket trapping poor as well as deaf and mute people with allurements with the help of his associates. They were also getting national and international funding for this illegal act.

The arrests made in Maharashtra were in this connection, the ADG said, adding that among those arrested in Nagpur, Kavale was the focal point of the Maharashtra network.

Kavale alias Adam is a graduate and about 30 years of age. His wife is an Egyptian national. He was in constant touch with Gautam and involved in conversion activities in Maharashtra, the officer said.

Besides Egypt, he also has links to Central Asian and Muslim-dominated countries and was involved in spreading the Islamic propaganda, he added.

Another person arrested in Nagpur, Kausar Alam, around 50 years of age, has old ties with Gautam, the ADG said, adding that he was involved in the conversion conspiracy in Maharashtra and Karnataka among other places and had connections with others in the network.

Bhupriya Bando also had ties with the members of the conversion racket who worked in Maharashtra and looked after the funding work of the Maharashtra network and Gautam.

The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, which was promulgated in November last year, prohibits unlawful religious conversions and nullifies marriages if they are carried out for the sole purpose of religious conversion. The law provides for imprisonment of up to 10 years and a maximum fine of Rs 50,000 under different categories.

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Bengaluru: Amid heightened speculations about his resignation, more than 30 top seers from the powerful Lingayat community met and Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa on Tuesday and extended their support to him.

Prominent Veerashaiva-Lingayat political leaders and seers have thrown throwing their weight behind him amid his resignation rumours.

Several seers and leaders of the dominant community, which is estimated to form about 16 per cent of the state's population, have cautioned the BJP against any move to dislodge the 78-year-old Lingayat strongman from the Chief Minister's post.

Karnataka: More than 30 seers of different mutts met CM BS Yediyurappa in Bengaluru and extended their support to him. pic.twitter.com/0msSMtJ0Iu  ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2021

The Veerashaiva-Lingayat community is considered to be the BJP's core support base. With a new round of speculation on whether replacement of Yediyurappa is round the corner, senior Congress leader and the head of the All India Veerashaiva Mahasabha, Shamanur Shivashankarappa, said the community is behind the Chief Minister.

"They (BJP leadership) should remember history - S Nijalingappa, Veerendra Patil, J H Patel and S R Bommai (all former Chief Ministers). They will destroy themselves if they attempt such a thing," Shivashankarappa said in response to a question on reports that BJP is mulling replacing Yediyurappa.

Stating that the community wants him to continue as the Chief Minister, he said Yediyurappa has built the party from scratch. "Veerashaiva Mahasabha is behind him...As long as Yediyurappa is there, they (BJP) will be there. If Yediyurappa is disturbed, things will end there," he said.

Another prominent Congress leader from the Lingayat community and former Minister M B Patil has warned that the BJP may face the wrath of Lingayats, if they "ill-treat" a tall leader like BS Yediyurappa.

"BJP should value the contribution of Yediyurappa and treat him with dignity. This is my personal opinion, understanding that the proposed changes may be internal matters of the BJP," he said.

However, the statement by senior Congress leaders, coming out in the open, in support of Yediyurappa is seen as an attempt to enhance their clout in the community by attracting his Veerashaiva-Lingayat support base towards themselves.

Several prominent seers from the community like Shivamurthy Murugha Sharanaru, head of the Chitradurga-based Sri Jagadguru Murugharajendra Mutt, Sri Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami of Rambhapuri Peetha of Balehonnur, and Srisaila Jagadguru Channa Siddharama Panditaradhya have also favoured Yediyurappa's continuation while warning the BJP.

Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami said any move to replace Yediyurappa will have "big consequences" for the BJP. "Friction is common in politics, let anyone say anything, but we have confidence that BS Yediyurappa will continue as the Chief Minister and complete the term. If there are any shortcomings in this, it will have big consequences for the party," he said.

Yediyurappa has support from people across parties and communities for his efficient work during floods and COVID, even at this age, the seer said.

"I have confidence that the national leadership (of BJP) will not allow it (CM replacement)," he added.

Murugha Sharanaru said Yediyurappa is among the great statesmen-politicians that the state has seen, and he is a force.

"Yediyurappa may be Lingayat by birth, but he is a mass leader who can take all the communities together. Nothing should happen that affects the dignity of a tall Lingayat leader like him. He has grown from grassroot level and functioned effectively during COVID, and his continuation is the wish of various pontiffs, people, organisations and political leaders across party lines," he added.

Siddharama Panditaradhya said, "Yediyurappa may be old, but he's still working. He should be allowed to continue." Yediyurappa is known for having provided generous grants to mutts and religious institutions during his previous term as Chief Minister, and thereby has earned their trust, according to some analysts.

Recently amid speculation about his replacement, Yediyurappa's younger son and state BJP Vice President B Y Vijayendra had held a series of meetings with prominent Veerashaiva-Lingayat seers, which had raised eyebrows in political circles.

Siddharama Panditaradhya swamiji and Veera Someshwara Shivacharya Swami had even paid a visit to Yediyurappa's home in Shivamogga, recently.

However, Yediyurappa's main detractors are also from within the community. Disgruntled BJP MLAs Basanagouda Patil Yatnal and Arvind Bellad, who are said to be among those at the forefront of the efforts that have been on for some time now seeking for CM's replacement, belong to the Veerashaiva-Lingayat community.

The community, which owes allegiance to the 12th-century social reform movement initiated by Basaveshwara, has a substantial population in Karnataka, especially in the northern parts of the state.

The politically influential community is considered to have a significant presence in about 140 of the total 224 assembly constituencies in the state, and decisive in about 90 seats, according to political observers.

(With Agency Inputs)

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Indians looking to fly directly to Canada will have to wait some more. The ban on incoming passenger flights from India has now been extended by a month, from July 21 to August 21. The emergence and spread of the Delta variant of COVID-19 is the reason behind this restriction.

The ban, which was imposed on April 22 when India was witnessing a surge in COVID-19 cases, was set to expire on July 21, but will now remain in place until August 21, Global News Ca reported. It is for the fourth time that the ban has been extended. Transport Minister Omar Alghabra told reporters during a news conference that the reason for the extension was due to the Delta variant, which is considered the dominant strain of COVID-19 worldwide.

"While progress is being made, the situation in India is still very serious," he said. "The decision is based on the advice received from the Public Health Agency of Canada, and will best protect Canadians from an increased introduction of the Delta variant, which is prevalent in India." The Canadian government on Monday (July 19) announced that fully vaccinated American citizens and permanent residents who want to come to Canada for non-essential reasons can do so starting on August 9.

Earlier, it was reported that Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau has said that the country might permit fully vaccinated travellers from all countries by early September, if the current trend in vaccination rate and public health conditions continue.

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New Delhi: The Kerala government relaxed COVID-19 curbs to allow people to celebrate Bakrid. On the other hand, the Uttar Pradesh government had to take back its decision to allow Kanwar Yatra. What kind of secularism is this?

Zee News Editor-in-Chief Sudhir Chaudhary on Tuesday (July 20) questioned the double standard when it comes to secularism in India.

When the constitution of our country came into force in 1950, we were promised that every citizen of this country will get equal status, irrespective of religion or caste. We were promised that Holi, Diwali, Christmas and Eid will be accorded equal importance. But today, after 71 years we are again raising this question - Why are the rules different for Diwali and Eid in our country?

The guidelines for the COVID pandemic dictate that crowds must be avoided. However, when the crowd is green it is allowed, while the situation turns around when it is orange.

The Supreme Court may have criticized the decision of the Kerala government, but it could not stay the order. This happened because these exemptions were given for July 18, 19 and 20. So, even if the court had put a stay on these rules today, it would not have mattered much as it was already too late.

Had the Supreme Court, like in the case of Kanwar Yatra of Uttar Pradesh, shown urgency in Keralas case, the crowd and the risk of infection could have been avoided.

On July 16, the Kerala government announced relaxation in the lockdown for Eid shopping. But this matter reached the Supreme Court after three days on July 19. The hearing in this case started only after the rules of relaxation were already in place.

On the other hand, in the case of UP, the Yogi government had decided on July 13 that Kanwar Yatra would be allowed in the state from July 25, but the very next day on July 14, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognizance of it and asked the state to cancel the Yatra.

The government of Kerala bowed before the business organizations who demanded relaxations and forgot that at present the state tops the list of daily COVID cases in India. On July 19, about 30,000 new COVID patients were found in India, out of which about 10 thousand cases were from Kerala alone.

If such a decision had been taken by the UP government, it would have been declared as a Hindu government by the opposition leaders, intellectuals and members of the tukde-tukde gang. However, nothing of this sort happened in the case of Kerala.

At present, not just in Kerala but across the country, huge crowds are gathering in the markets for Eid shopping. But this crowd is not being seen through the same lens with which the people who gather on the festival of Diwali and Holi are viewed.

The bitter truth is the governments that regard themselves as the custodians of secularism promote communalism and indulge in minority appeasement.

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New Delhi: After a landslide victory in the Assembly elections in West Bengal, the ruling Trinamool Congress is trying to spread its wings in different states, with an eye on the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. In her first public address beyond Bengal, Mamata will be speaking to people across Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Tripura, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat, at 2 pm on July 21.

As a part of its expansion programme, the party has decided to virtually telecast the speech of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the occasion of Martyrs' Day on Wednesday in various languages, and in different states.

Trinamool Congress observes July 21 as Martyrs' Day every year to remember the 13 persons who were killed at a Youth Congress rally in Kolkata in 1993.

"The Chief Minister will address the people virtually for the second consecutive year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In West Bengal, the speech will be aired in Bengali, while the translated versions in various languages will be telecast in different states.

"The speech will be telecast on giant screens across West Bengal, and for the first time, also in other states like Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Punjab, Tripura and poll-bound Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh," a senior Trinamool leader said.

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NEW DELHI: Security agencies have sounded a high alert over a possible terror attack in the national capital before Independence Day celebrations on August 15. According to the inputs gathered by the security agencies, the Pakistan-based terror outfits can carry out terror attacks using explosives-laden drones.

The Pakistan-backed terror groups can target vital installations during the ongoing Monsoon Session and can disrupt Independence Day celebrations in Delhi, the security agencies said.

Security agencies have warned the Delhi Police that on August 5  the day Article 370 was removed from Jammu and Kashmir  terror groups backed by Pakistan can carry out terror attacks in the national capital.

The security agencies have said that terrorist groups are hatching a big conspiracy to create unrest in the national capital in the days to come.

In view of the recent drone attack on the IAF station in Jammu, Delhi Police Commissioner Balaji Srivastava had directed the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Joint CP and other Intelligence Unit officers of all the districts in Delhi to be on alert and monitor the drone threat diligently.

The order came several days after two drones dropped bombs at the Indian Air Force station in Jammu. The drone attack in Jammu had made states wary of this new threat.

In a meeting with the officials of the city, the new Delhi Police chief asked station house officers (SHOs) in every district to take cognizance of any calls made to the police control room or information regarding drones in the city and investigate the threat accordingly.

In view of the drone threat, a special control room has also been created by Delhi Police. This time, 4 anti-drone systems are also being installed at the historic Red Fort, from two installed last year. For the first time, Delhi Police and other security agencies are being given special training to deal with the menace of drones.

Apart from addressing the drone threat, Balaji Srivastava also ordered the officials to take appropriate measures to safeguard women and children in the city. The Delhi Police chief directed that strict action should be taken to curb crimes related to women's safety and against children in Delhi.

According to security analysts, the use of a small drone to carry out terror attacks is counted as a watershed in asymmetric warfare in India. However, it has been used elsewhere, by Islamic State fighters to target security forces in Iraq and Syria for years that prompted the United States and drone manufacturers to spend millions of dollars on research to stop what is sometimes referred to as the killer bees.

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New Delhi: India registered over 30,000 new COVID-19 infections, its lowest in 125 days, the Union Health Ministry informed on Tuesday (July 20, 2021) morning. As per the official figures, there were 30,093 new cases in the last 24 hours. The country's active caseload has now come down to 4,06,130, which, the Health Ministry said is the lowest in 117 days.

The national weekly positivity rate currently stands at 2.06 % and the daily positivity rate is at 1.68 %.

There were also 374 coronavirus-related deaths and 45,254 recoveries between Monday and Tuesday morning. So far, the country has witnessed 3,11,74,322 cases, of which, 3,03,53,710 have recovered while 4,14,482 have succumbed to the virus.

Recently, the Co-Chair of the Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG), Dr NK Arora has said that the COVID-19 Delta variant accounts for over 80 per cent of the new cases. Arora, the head of the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration also stated that the Delta variant is around 40-60 per cent more transmissible than the Alpha variant.

B.1.617.2, a variant of COVID-19, is known as the Delta variant and was first identified in October 2020 in India. It was also responsible for the second wave in the country.

Meanwhile, more than 41 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses have been administered so far across the country. Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday had said that those who take the vaccine jab become 'Baahubali' and urged everyone to get vaccinated.

"Vaccine is given in 'baahu' (arms and those who take it become 'Baahubali'," PM Modi had said.

Speaking at the start of the Monsoon Session of Parliament. https://t.co/QENuZOzQRh  Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) July 19, 2021

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New Delhi: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has filed a supplementary charge sheet before a special court in Kerala's Ernakulam district against a member of the CPI-Maoist for his alleged role in furthering the activities of the proscribed terrorist organization, an official said on Tuesday (July 20). Vijith Vijayan, 26, of Kerala's Wayanad district, has been charged with sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The case was originally registered in November 2019 at Pantheerankavu police station in Kozhikode against Allan Shuaib Thwaha Fasal and C P Usman for their role in furthering the activities of CPI (Maoist), a proscribed terrorist organization, the official of the premier investigation agency said.

The case was re-registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) which earlier filed a charge sheet against three accused in May last year. Vijayan, an active member of the CPI (Maoist), was part of the publication division, the NIA official said. He was instrumental in translating the documents of CPI (Maoist) and facilitating recruitment for the banned outfit, the official said.

Vijayan was arrested by the NIA in January. He had motivated and recruited charge-sheeted accused Allan Shuaib into the CPI (Maoist) and was actively involved in enhancing the activities and influence of CPI (Maoist) and its frontal organisation, Padantharam, the NIA official said, adding that further investigation into the case continues.

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Ernakulam: A special court of NIA on Tuesday (July 20) convicted a person in the Kalamassery bus burning case.

The convict, KA Anoop, has been sentenced to six years in jail and a fine of Rs 1.6 has been imposed on him.

The case dates back to 2005, when a group of people hijacked and set ablaze a Tamil Nadu government bus.

The accused T Nazeer and others carried out the deed in support of their demand for the release of Abdul Nasar Madani, Chairman of Peoples Democratic Party (Kerala), who was detained in Coimbatore jail at that time.

After investigation, NIA charged 13 accused including KA Anoop under UAPA. Anoop, who was absconding abroad, was arrested in April 2016.

The trial of the remaining accused persons will continue, NIA said.

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Kozhikode: The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Tuesday (July 20) filed a supplementary chargesheet against a member of the banned organization CPI (Maoist) before a special court in Keralas Ernakulam.

The agency found out that Vijith Vijayan was an active member of CPI (Maoist) and was part of the publication division.

Vijayan was arrested by NIA in January this year.

He was instrumental in translating the documents of CPI (Maoist) and facilitating recruitment for this banned organization, said NIA.

The case was originally registered in November 2019 at Pantheerankavu Police Station, Kozhikode against Allan Shuaib Thwaha Fasal and CP Usman for their role in furthering the activities of CPI (Maoist).

The NIA said that its investigation revealed that Vijayan had motivated and recruited chargesheeted accused Allan Shuaib and was actively involved in enhancing the activities and influence of CPI (Maoist) and its frontal organisation, Padantharam.

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New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Tuesday permitted the South Delhi Municipal Corporation to conduct survey in the Lajpat Nagar's Central Market, which is a no squatting zone, to collect data of persons squatting in the area. A bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh made it clear that the authorities will remain duty bound to implement the 2017 judgement of this court by which it had asked the Delhi Police and the SDMC to remove all the squatters from the Lajpat Nagar's Central Market and declare the area as a no-squatting zone.

To avoid the situation of influx of more squatters in the area, the bench directed the SDMC to ensure that the survey is completed within two weeks, failing which the Deputy Commissioner of Central Zone shall be held personally liable.

It directed the Delhi Police to provide assistance to the SDMC, which has been given the task to conduct the survey by Town Vending Committee (TVC), to ensure that the survey is concluded in two weeks and also to ensure that no new hawkers or vendors come in the area and start hawking in the area till the survey is completed.

With these directions, the court disposed of a petition by Federation of Lajpat Nagar Traders Association seeking to restrain the authorities from conducting the survey on ward no. 57-S.

The court noted that the directions in 2017 judgement gives recognition to the fact that the area is a no vending zone and this status will continue till the time the area is specifically not declared as a vending zone.

The association submitted that this ward under which Pushpa Market, Lajpat Nagar popularly known as Lajpat Nagar's Central Market comes in, is a no-squatting zone and no vending zone.

Advocate Pranav Proothi, representing the traders association, said since this area is a no vending zone, the SDMC is in contempt as much as they are permitting illegal squatting and vending by squatters in the area for which the petitioner has also preferred a contempt petition. He said the vendors cannot be granted any form of recognition since it will tantamount to deliberate breach of the previous judgement of the high court.

Advocate Gaurang Kanth, representing the SDMC, said even though certain areas of Lajpat Nagar are maintained as no-squatting zone, there are encroachments by street vendors and the purpose of the survey is only to collect data of persons squatting in the area.

He said the survey would not be a reason to not comply with the high court's previous judgement.

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New Delhi: Normalcy returned to the Rajya Sabha on the second day of the monsoon session and it held a discussion on the COVID-19 situation in the country after Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu met the floor leaders of various parties. This came after the proceedings of a day and a half were washed out due to disruptions.

Sources said after the House was adjourned for the second time for the day at 12 noon, Naidu called Leader of the House Piyush Goyal, opposition leaders Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Derek O'Brien, Tiruchi Siva and some others, and decided to resume normal functioning with a discussion on COVID management. The House resumed the discussion at 1 pm.

Deputy Chairman Harivansh and Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs V Muraleedharan were also present at the meeting. Expressing concern over the repeated disruptions in the House, Naidu stressed the need for normalcy to return in the House so that all-important issues can be discussed in an orderly manner. Sources said Goyal held informal discussions with the opposition leaders, seeking their cooperation for the resumption of normal functioning of the House, and then met Naidu along with them.

It was agreed at the meeting that Covid-related matters will be discussed for four hours and the health minister will reply to the short-duration discussion at 5 pm. The chairman agreed to enable the discussion and relax the time limit so as to have four hours of discussion.

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New Delhi: With the issue of "snooping" using Israeli Pegasus spyware snowballing into a massive political row in Parliament and outside, Union Information and Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw will make a detailed statement in Rajya Sabha on the issue on Tuesday.

Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to make a statement on 'Pegasus Project' issue in Rajya Sabha today pic.twitter.com/4Vk1AZjWh6  ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2021

It may be noted that the Centre and the Israeli firm NSO Group, which developed the Pegasus spyware, have categorically rejected the report about the governments surveillance as baseless and unfounded.

Meanwhile, the Congress party will hold massive protests on July 22 over the issue. According to the report, Congress will hold press conferences in every state on Wednesday on the 'Pegasus Project' media report. The state units of the party will stage a protest march to Raj Bhavans across the country on July 22 over the issue.

Congress to hold press conferences in every state tomorrow on the 'Pegasus Project' media report. State units of the party will stage protest march to Raj Bhavans across the country on July 22 pic.twitter.com/hD2kVaxFFs  ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2021

Major opposition parties have demanded a thorough investigation and sacking of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, while the government has maintained it has nothing to do with the Pegasus report.

The Congress has accused the government of "treason" and held Shah responsible for the snooping and hacking of phones of journalists, judges and politicians, and demanded a probe into the "role of the prime minister" in the entire matter as well.

The demand for a probe came from opposition parties, including the Congress, TMC, NCP, Left parties, RJD and Shiv Sena. The BJP hit back at the Congress and claimed "there is not a shred of evidence" to link either the ruling party or the Narendra Modi dispensation with the matter.

BJP leader and former IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the credentials of those behind the story as well as its timing, coming a day before Parliament's Monsoon Session that began on Monday, as he accused the opposition party of hitting a "new low" in making baseless allegations.

The government, on its part, categorically rejected the charges, with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw asserting in the Lok Sabha that illegal surveillance was not possible with checks and balances in the country's laws, and alleged that attempts were being made to malign Indian democracy. Vaishnaw's name also figures in the list.

Home Minister Amit Shah also lashed out at the opposition Congress and international organisations, saying such "obstructers" and "disrupters" will not be able to derail India's development trajectory with their conspiracies.

The issue also rocked Parliament, where opposition parties raised the issue and disrupted proceedings of both Houses. Several opposition members gave adjournment notices to discuss the issue but were rejected by the chair.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a swipe at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the matter, saying, "We know what he's been reading -- everything on your phone." Gandhi wrote this as a reply to his own tweet two days ago in which he had asked people, "I'm wondering what you guys are reading these days."

The Congress and Gandhi termed the BJP "Bharatiya Jasoos Party" and tweeted, "One feels like laughing at 'his' fear". The CPI(M) accused the government of engaging NSO for carrying out surveillance and said it had raised the issue of this "dangerous spyware" in Parliament two years ago.

"The central government must come clean on what is its engagement with NSO, what are the terms and how much of our public funds have been paid for this," the party asked.

RJD's Manoj Jha, Shiv Sena's Sanjay Raut, AAP's Sanjay Singh and NCP's Nawab Malik demanded a thorough probe and action against those involved. Addressing a joint press conference, Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the party's first demand is Shah's immediate dismissal.

He said Congress will take all opposition parties on-board over the issue and decide on whether to ask for a judicial or parliamentary probe in the matter. He said the minister is responsible for the deployment of this illegal spyware Pegasus.

Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge said Shah should immediately resign as he "does not deserve" to occupy the position he holds. Kharge said Congress along with other opposition parties will raise the issue strongly in Parliament.

Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury said, "Modi ji promotes digital India, but what we are seeing is Surveillance India". The Congress also asked a set of questions to the PM, including why Shah, the in-charge of the country's internal security, should not be sacked immediately.

"Does this not warrant a full investigation into the role of PM, HM and others involved," the party asked. Terming it a very serious issue concerning national security, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said since the government has said that it has not done any snooping, this should be probed.

An international media consortium reported Sunday that over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge besides scores of businesspersons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.

Gandhi, BJP minister Prahlad Singh Patel, as also former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa and poll strategist Prashant Kishor were among those whose numbers were listed as potential targets for hacking, the consortium reported.

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New Delhi: Amid a political storm over the Pegasus snooping row, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday hit out at the Opposition parties for creating a ruckus over the issue and stalling proceedings inside the Parliament during the ongoing Monsoon Session.

The PM also reportedly directed the Bharatiya Janata Party Members of Parliament to defeat the lies propagated by Congress with truth and good work of the Modi government.

The PM asked them to take truth and facts about the government`s public welfare works before the people so that the opposition`s lies won`t fill the vacuum created by lack of communication or truth.

At the BJP`s parliamentary party meeting, PM Modi urged the MPs to keep telling people the truth to defeat lies propagated by the opposition, especially Congress.

Delhi: BJP all-MP meeting underway at Parliament, in the presence of PM Modi Visuals from inside pic.twitter.com/RJSXdkJ60j  ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2021

Sources said that the Prime Minister expressed concern over the sense of entitlement of Congress which is preventing them to even fulfil their role as opposition.

He said that Congress isn`t worried about its voter base (jan aadhar). And still has sense of entitlement that it has ruled the country for 60 years and it is because of this that they haven`t been able to digest the fact that people have chosen us, the PM said.

He said despite their fate in elections of West Bengal, Assam they aren`t fulfiling their responsibility as opposition. PM Modi said as an opposition, they should take up issues of people`s welfare strongly which they aren`t doing," according to the source.

Reacting to the COVID-19 crisis, the Prime Minister said that it is not a political but a humanitarian issue and asserted that the government has ensured no one goes hungry during the pandemic.

Such a pandemic has been witnessed by the world after a very very long time, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Pralhad Joshi quoted the Prime Minister as telling MPs at the BJP's parliamentary party meeting.

Pralhad Joshi while briefing about today`s parliamentary party meet stated that the Prime Minister showed concern about the attitude of opposition.

"Especially Congress thinks power is their right and they work according to this mindset. PM wants discussions in Parliament to be fruitful, Congress is showing most irresponsible behaviour by disrupting the Houses. Be it vaccines or poor welfare schemes, MPs have been asked to ensure this. 41 crores have been vaccinated. PM Modi has also expressed concern that even in Delhi frontline warriors haven`t been vaccinated," Joshi added.

No iota of link between Govt and Pegasus issue. Still, if they (Opposition) want to raise the issue through proper procedure, let them raise it. IT Minister has already issued a statement on the issue: Parliamentary Affairs Minister Prahlad Joshi pic.twitter.com/gtYnivdFTv  ANI (@ANI) July 20, 2021

Amid the uproar by the Opposition MPs on the second day of the ongoing Monsoon Session of the Parliament on Tuesday, Lok Sabha was adjourned till 2 PM while Rajya Sabha was adjourned soon after it began till 12 PM.

The Speakers adjourned the proceedings of both the houses as the Opposition continued the uproar over various issues. The Monsoon Session began on a stormy note on Monday amidst uproar from Opposition parties who did not allow PM Narendra Modi to introduce newly-inducted Union ministers to the Parliament.

Later on the first day of the Monsoon Session, the proceeding of the house commenced at 3.30 PM after witnessing two adjournments at 2 pm and 3 PM.

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Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa, poll strategist Prashant Kishor and BJP minister Prahlad Singh Patel were among those whose numbers were listed as potential targets for hacking of Israeli spyware 'Pegasus', an international media consortium reported. According to them, over 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including of two ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders and one sitting judge besides scores of businesspersons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.

The issue of "snooping" using Pegasus spyware snowballed into a massive political row in Parliament and outside as various parties demanded a thorough investigation and sacking of Home Minister Amit Shah, while the government maintained it had nothing to do with it.

The Congress accused the government of "treason" and held Shah responsible for the snooping and hacking of phones of journalists, judges and politicians, and demanded a probe into the "role of the prime minister" in the entire matter as well. The demand for a probe came from opposition parties, including the Congress, TMC, NCP, Left parties, RJD and Shiv Sena.

The BJP hit back at the Congress and claimed "there is not a shred of evidence" to link either the ruling party or the Modi dispensation with the matter. BJP leader and former IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad questioned the credentials of those behind the story as well as its timing, coming a day before Parliament's Monsoon Session that began on Monday, as he accused the opposition party of hitting a "new low" in making baseless allegations.

The government, on its part, categorically rejected the charges, with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw asserting in the Lok Sabha that illegal surveillance was not possible with checks and balances in the country's laws, and alleged that attempts were being made to malign Indian democracy. Vaishnaw's name also figures in the list.

Home Minister Amit Shah also lashed out at the opposition Congress and international organisations, saying such "obstructers" and "disrupters" will not be able to derail India's development trajectory with their conspiracies.

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New Delhi: Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivansh Narayan Singh said the Rajya Sabha said will discuss issues related to COVID-19 on Tuesday (July 20).

All the leaders met Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu demanding a discussion on COVID-19. Following this, Naidu gave his consent to discuss the matter.

Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivansh Narayan Singh was quoted by news agency ANI saying, "All leaders met with the chairman as they wanted to have a discussion on COVID. Rajya Sabha Chairman has given his consent. It will be discussed at 1 pm."

It was agreed in the meeting that COVID aspects will be discussed for four hours from 1 pm on Tuesday while the Minister of Health and Family Welfare to reply on the matter at 5 pm, said sources.

Following morning disruptions in the Rajya Sabha, the House is likely to resume normal functioning after 1 pm on Tuesday.

According to the sources, this was facilitated in a meeting between Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu, Leader of the House Piyush Goyal and Opposition leaders Anand Sharma, Jairam Ramesh, Derek O`Brien and Tiruchi Siva.

Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha Harivansh Narayan Singh and Minister of State Parliamentary Affairs Muraleedharan were also present in the meeting.In the meeting, Naidu stressed on normalcy in the House so that important issues can be discussed orderly.

Sources revealed that Piyush Goyal had earlier held an informal discussion with Opposition leaders seeking their cooperation for the resumption of functioning of the House.

Goyal then met Naidu along with leaders of the Opposition soon after the first adjournment of the House till 12 noon.

Rajya Sabha adjourned for the second time on Tuesday after the Opposition created a ruckus over farmers issues, fuel price hikes and COVID mismanagement.

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The government affairs and judiciary system in India is supposed to be said one of the most complicated systems of the world. The complexities involved in it has discouraged many uprising individuals to not join the political system and work whole heartedly for the betterment of the society. But among those who has not done justice to their work and not given their fullest for the society, there are few driven and passionate politician whose life of work is betterment and welfare of the society and country. Lets meet on such astute politician and hard-core worker of the society who has left no stone unturned in bringing the best outputs and change in his district, city and state, and country- Sanjaysinh Sukhdevsinh Gohil from Bhavnagar, Gujarat.

If there was one vision in life for Sanjaysinhji, it was to work for the people and society, to provide best in class facilities for his city and state. To help such needy people and souls who are totally helpless and depends majorly on government reforms, Sanjaysinhji has taken the mantle on his head to change perceptions and breaks society barriers and conventional modes of methods to give the best possible results to the people. Being actively involved in the system and among the people, Sanjaysinhji has developed a great rapport with the general public at large and now has become a messiah figure for them.

Taking umpteen initiatives and drives that are beneficial to people and fetching them desired results have been the primary motto for Sanjaysinhji and his team.

Sanjaysinh is the Former President of taluka Panchayat Ghogha, Bhavnagar. He is also a Trustee at Manharkuvarba Vidhya Sankul, Bhavnagar, an Executive Member at Garasiya Samaj, Bhavnagar and Executive Member at Gohilwad Rajput Samaj, Bhavnagar. Juggling many hats on his head, Sanjaysinhji has done justice to each role he plays and fulfills all his responsibilities. Helping many locals solve their civic issues to bringing about a covid hospital during the times of global pandemic are some of the notable works done by Sanjaysinhji.

Sanjaysinhji also had gone out of his way to help the local farmers and others from the state in the agricultural sector. When government announced to give reliefs to farmers under government scheme by filling forms online, Sanjaysinhji helped all farmers filled this form online realizing that most of the farmers will not be able to do it due to illiteracy. Also the collectors offices were closed due to covid restrictions. So he requested the Prime Minister to extend the date of filling the form for farmer relief scheme otherwise many farmers would be not able to grab the benefits in this tough time. His work is also noticed by renowned political figure Shri Rahul Gandhi Sir who has appreciated his overall work and efforts Sanjaysinhji has put in projects like Shakti and many more.

Sanjaysinhji continues to hustle hard in life to provide best results for the people and society and we are sure he will not let us down in the future as well.

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New Delhi: Darjeeling District Magistrate on Tuesday (July 20) issued an order stating that all in-bound passengers from Sikkim will either require a fully vaccinated certificate/RT-PCR negative test report/RAT negative test report to enter the district from July 22.

Earlier, the West Bengal government made it mandatory for tourists entering northern districts of Dooars and Darjeeling to carry COVID-19 negative test reports. As the pandemic has ravaged the entire tourism industry, several states in the country are gradually allowing tourists after a decline in COVID-19 cases.

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The Supreme Court is unhappy with the Kerala government's decision to relax restriction rules for Bakrid, despite the threat of a third COVID wave looming large over the country. On Tuesday (July 21), the SC termed the relaxations granted by the Kerala government for the Bakrid festival in areas having the highest COVID-19 positivity rate as "wholly uncalled for". The apex court also warned that it will take action if the easing of curbs leads to further spread of the virus.

The SC pulled up the state government for giving in to traders' pressure by granting relaxations ahead of Bakrid and said it disclosed a "sorry state of affairs".

A bench of justices R F Nariman and B R Gavai said that the citizenary of India has been laid bare to the nationwide pandemic by grant of such relaxations by the Kerala government. "We direct the Kerala government to give heed to the Right to Life enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution," the bench said.

The bench was hearing an application which raised the issue of relaxations granted by the Kerala government in view of the Bakrid festival.

It was filed in a matter in which the apex court had last week taken suo motu cognisance of earlier media reports on the Uttar Pradesh government's decision to allow Kanwar Yatra amid the pandemic.

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(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: The Lieutenant Governor and Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal took a crucial review meeting on Monday on the drainage system of Delhi, wherein the concerned departments gave presentations on the works and projects they had undertaken in the city.

The CM expressed his appreciation for how the situation had been handled at present and called for enhancing the citys drainage system to make it world class. He also appreciated the officers for curbing water-logging at the Minto Bridge, an otherwise water-logging hotspot of the city.

Besides the Chief Minister, PWD Minister Satyendar Jain, Chief Secretary and various officers from their concerned departments were also present in the meeting.

Chief Minister Kejriwal said, I am pleased with the work done by our agencies, and we can see the proof of their work at Minto Bridge. Theres a folklore-benchmark in Delhi, it is said that the day Minto Bridge gets waterlogged, that day marks the onset of the monsoons. Minto Bridge this time is the talk of the town. Our officers and engineers gave their best towards ensuring the Minto Bridge does not get waterlogged. I am not saying so. The people of Delhi are.

I want to congratulate all the officers and engineers. Their work at the Minto Bridge has proven that we have the capacity to curb water-logging at all the vulnerable points where water gets logged in Delhi. We know of 147 such vulnerable points. If we conduct extensive mapping, we can enlist all possible vulnerable points. If solutions for all vulnerable points are planned and worked towards like the Minto Bridge, then we can bring Delhi freedom from water-logging, he added.

The CM called for improving the citys drainage system and said, Delhi, being the national capital, should have the best designed drainage system on offer, which unfortunately we do not have. There are a lot of places in Delhi where drains of the Jal Board and the MCD converge and there is no coordination between them. I would like to suggest that PWD acts as the nodal authority and undertakes an exercise to redesign Delhis drainage system. If an excellent design is in place and all the agencies can work together on it, then we can implement it.

Once such a system is in place, we would only require de-silting it once a year and the drainage system will be free of liability. So we should work on that prospect. We need to also popularise our grievance helpline numbers with the people of the city, the CM added.

The CM also took to Twitter to share his vision with the public. Conducted a review meeting with PWD, MCD, DJB, I&FC chaired by the LG on the drainage system of Delhi in view of the monsoons. Will implement a system like Minto Bridge at other vulnerable points. Drains and sewers will be regularly cleaned. Will make a world-class drainage system in Delhi, the tweet read.

      Drainage system   .      PWD, MCD, DJB, I&FC      -            -       -      Drainage system  Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) July 19, 2021

PWD Minister Satyendar Jain asked the agencies to be fully prepared for combating any problems that could be faced and said, In the next three days we are going to have excess rainfall, so we need to be fully prepared to handle the situation. We not only have to be alert during the day but extra alert during the night; we have over 1500 pump sets we should deploy them all.

Our officers and engineers across departments need to be available and alert 24x7 because the next few days are going to need more attention, he added.
New Delhi: The Department of Pre-University Education (PUE) will on Tuesday (July 20) declare the class 12 or 2nd PUC results. This is the first time that the PUE will be declaring the marksheet without holding exam. This year exams could not be held as per schedule due to rise in cases of COVID-19.

Students of 2nd PUC have been evaluated on the basis of an alternative marking scheme in which 45 per cent of SSLC mark, 45 per cent of the 1st PUC marks, and 10 per cent of academic performance in 2nd PUC have been taken into calculation.

Since board exams have not been held this year, the Department of pre-university education will not release the topper's answer sheet this year. Usually the board releases the highest scoring student's answer copies as a reference for junior students.

Also, students have been advised not to visit their schools to check their scorecard.

1. Visit the official website of Karnataka PUC result at karresults.nic.in

2. On the homepage, click on the link for Karnataka 2021 PUC result

3. Key in your credentials and login

4. Your Karnataka 2021 PUC result will be displayed on the screen

5. Download and take its print out for future reference

Students are advised to check the Karnataka PUC results from the official results portal. Soon after the result is out, there are chances that the official board website may slow down or crash due to heavy traffic. In such a case, students and parents are advised to wait for a while and retry later.

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New Delhi: The wait of over 5 lakh students will come to an end on Tuesday (July 20) as the Department of Pre-University Exams (PUE), Karnataka will declare the results for the Karnataka PUC 2nd year exam at 4 pm. Students can check their results at the official website  karresults.nic.in once the result link is activated at 4:30 pm.

The Karnataka state government had decided to promote all candidates without conducting examinations, in the wake of the COVID-19 situation. A special evaluation criterion was devised to calculate the 2nd year PUC results. As per the criteria, 45 per cent weightage will be given to marks scored for SSLC (class 10), 45 per cent to I PU marks and 10 per cent to the internal assessment marks of II PU.

Results will be calculated based on special criteria, students will be marked based on their performance in class 10 and class 11 marks with each having 45 per cent weightage while the class 12 internals will have 10 per cent weigtage, as per the official criteria.

For admissions to colleges, stduents will have to appear for CET or common entrance exams. The application process for admission to undergraaduate courses in Karnataka-based colleges will remain open till 6 pm today at kea.kar.nic.in. Exams are scheudled to be held from August 28 to August 30.

The Karnataka pre-university exam (PUE) has decided not to declare any merit list and subsequently this year, toppers will not be announced. It is expected that just like SSLC for PUC 2nd too Karnataka will pass all students. Moreover, students have been asked not to go to schools to check results.
Mumbai: Equity benchmark Sensex tumbled 355 points on Tuesday, weighed by losses in HDFC twins, ICICI Bank and Bharti Airtel amid a weak trend in global markets.

The 30-share BSE index ended 354.89 points or 0.68 per cent lower at 52,198.51, while the broader NSE Nifty fell 120.30 points or 0.76 per cent to 15,632.10.

IndusInd Bank was the top loser in the Sensex pack, shedding over 3 per cent, followed by Tata Steel, NTPC, Bharti Airtel, HCL Tech, ICICI Bank, M&M and HDFC Bank.

On the other hand, Asian Paints rallied over 6 per cent, followed by UltraTech Cement, Bajaj Auto, HUL and Nestle India.

Domestic equities extended losses as weak global cues and continued selling pressure in financials dragged benchmark indices, said Binod Modi, Head - Strategy at Reliance Securities.

He noted that barring FMCG and IT, most key sectoral indices contracted, with financials, metals and realty witnessing steep correction.

"Strong earnings from Asian Paints during trading hours aided stock to sharp upmove,? he said, adding that midcap and smallcap stocks also witnessed heavy selling pressure as weak global trend led investors to book profits.

On the global front, bourses in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul and Tokyo ended with losses, while equities in Europe were largely trading with gains in mid-session deals.

Meanwhile, international oil benchmark Brent crude advanced 0.35 per cent to USD 68.86 per barrel.

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New Delhi: The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Monday (July 19, 2021) informed that only 58 of 309 government and BMC centres will administer COVID-19 vaccines on Tuesday. Citing 'limited availability of COVID-19 vaccines', the BMC also released the list of COVID-19 Vaccination Centres (CVCs) that will be administering Covaxin and Covishield between 9 AM and 5 PM.

Below is the list of COVID-19 vaccination centres administering Covaxin in Mumbai:

List of CVCs administering Covaxin on July 20. 50% online appointment; 50% on-spot registration Only 2nd dose to be administered. Kindly carry your first dose certificate. Time: 9am - 5pm#MyBMCvaccinationUpdate pic.twitter.com/bapd9d71wG   Mumbai,  BMC (@mybmc) July 19, 2021

Below is the list of COVID-19 vaccination centres administering Covishield in Mumbai:

List of CVCs administering Covishield on July 20. HCW/FLW (2nd dose), 18+: All centers Citizens going abroad for education, jobs, participating in Tokyo Olympics(documents mandatory), 45+ (drive-in), pregnant women: Centers mentioned in list 9am-5pm#MyBMCvaccinationUpdate pic.twitter.com/2ZX3DXlttU   Mumbai,  BMC (@mybmc) July 19, 2021

Meanwhile, the Union Health Ministry informed that over 41.18 crore coronavirus vaccine doses have been given so far across the country.
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New Delhi: Bollywood actress Shilpa Shettys husband Raj Kundra has been sent to police custody till July 23 in the creation and publishing of pornographic films case. He was arrested by the Crime Branch of Mumbai Police in a case relating to the creation of pornographic films and publishing them through some apps on Monday night (July 19, 2021).

Ever since the news has emerged on the internet, Poonam Pandey, who confessed before the Mumbai Police team that she was brought into the adult film industry by him has now reacted on the arrest of the Kundra.

Times of India quoted Poonam Pandey as saying that at this moment her heart goes out to Shilpa Shetty and her kids.

I cant imagine what she must be going through. So, I refuse to use this opportunity to highlight my trauma, TOI quoted her as saying.

She further reacted to the criminal case filed by her against Kundra and his associates. She said, The only thing Ill add is that I have filed a police complaint in 2019 against Raj Kundra and subsequently registered a case at the honourable high court of Bombay against him for fraud & theft. This matter is sub judice, hence I would prefer to limit my statements. Also, I have full faith in our police & the judicial process.

Recently, after his arrest, an undated interview of Sagarika has come to the fore. The actress-model has levelled a series of allegations against Raj, claiming that she was offered a role in a web series produced by him in August 2020.

Sagarika claimed that she was asked to give her audition for the project via video call, where three people, including Raj Kundra and Umesh Kamat, demanded a nude audition from her. She added that they lured her with the project and big money and tried convincing her to give the nude audition.

According to PTI, the Mumbai Police Crime Branch said that there were several WhatsApp chats that revealed Kundra was involved in the financial dealings of apps and their contents. The police also said three women have come forward with complaints in the case, saying they were "forced to act in pornographic movies".

The accused persons took advantage of struggling models, actors and other workers, and made them work in these pornographic movies, the police said, adding these movies were shot in rented bungalows in Mumbai. Kundra was taken into custody after being booked under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Information Technology Act.

Following the investigations by the Malvani Police and later by the Crime Branch-CID and Property Cell, at least 12 arrests have been made so far, including Kundra, his techie associate Ryan J. Tharpe, who were remanded to police custody till July 23 by a Mumbai Magistrate Court.

(With PTI inputs)
New Delhi: Armsprime Media, the company at the centre of the controversy, which led to the arrest of businessman Raj Kundra on charges of making pornographic content and publishing them through mobile applications, has two directors -- Sanjay Kumar Tripathy and Saurabh Kushwah.

Armsprime Media Private Limited is a private company incorporated in February 2019. It is classified as a non-government company registered with the Registrar of Companies, Mumbai. With an authorised share capital is Rs 10 lakh, the company is involved in sporting and other recreational activities.

Armsprime Media Private Limited's annual general meeting (AGM) was last held on September 25, 2019 and as per the records of the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA), its balance sheet was last filed on March 31, 2019.

The directors of Armsprime Media Private Limited are Sanjay Kumar Tripathy and Saurabh Kushwah.

Sanjay Tripathi is also a director on Invesco Asset Management India, Spartech Ventures, Travxo Technologies, Agilio Digital Solutions and Agilio Labs.

Raj Kundra aka Ripu Sudan Kundra, the husband of actress Shilpa Shetty, is listed as a director in as many as nine companies.

He is a director of Shilpa Yog Private Limited, knows for the actress' name, but Shetty is not a director.

The other companies where Kundra is listed as a director include Cinemation Media Works, Bastian Hospitality, Kundra Constructions, J.L. Stream, Aqua Energy Beverages, Viaan Industries, Whole and Them Some Private Limited and Clearcom Private Media.

Both Kundra and Shetty were directors in Kundra Constructions but the company has now been struck off the rolls.

Shilpa Shetty Kundra is listed as a director in as many as 23 companies. She has been director of some companies in the past, which have been struck off the rolls now.
New Delhi: Aadhaar card is required for a host of services ranging from filing income tax, to linking with pan card. The 12-digt identification number is also one of a very important proof of identification. In order to avail Aadhaar Online services, it is also important to have a registered Mobile Number linked to the Aadhaar card.

While UIDAI allows for a variety of Aadhaar related details to be changed online, for a few other services like changing of picture or biometric details, you will have to to visit Aadhaar kendras.

If you are not very happy with your existing picture on Aadhaar card, you can get it changed.

In order to get your Aadhaar picture updated, you should visit a nearby Aadhaar Enrolment Centre/ Aadhaar Sewa Kendra and furnish the following details.

1. Download the Aadhaar Enrolment Form from UIDAIs website.

2. Fill-up the form.

3. Submit the form to the Aadhaar Enrolment executive and provide your biometric details.

4. Your live photograph will be taken at the Aadhaar Enrolment Centre/ Aadhaar Sewa Kendra.

5. Pay a fee of Rs 25 + GST to get the details updated

6. You will be provided an acknowledgement slip containing the update request number (URN).

7. The URN can be used to check the Aadhaar update status

Once your request to change the photo in Aadhar is processed, you can download it online from the UIDAI portal.

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New Delhi: For millions of TikTok followers in India, this piece of news could be a reason to rejoice, for their favourite short-form video app could be looking for a comeback in the country.

TikTok parent company ByteDance has purportedly filed a trademark for the app with the Controller General of Patents, Designs and Trade Marks. The details of the trademark application dated July 6 has been shared by tipster Mukul Sharma on Twitter:

So yes, TickTock might very well be coming to India. ByteDance has filed the trademark for the same in the country.

Feel free to retweet.#TikTok #TickTock pic.twitter.com/ORh4GHDzzl  Mukul Sharma (@stufflistings) July 20, 2021

In January 2020, the Indian government said it was banning 59 apps developed by Chinese firms, including TikTok, over concerns that these apps were engaging in activities that threatened the national security and defence of the country. The development comes several months after the government had first banned Chinese apps temporarily in June in the previous year.

The ministry suspended access to the apps in India first in 2019 amid the border tussle with China. It had said that these measures were undertaken on the basis of credible information that these apps are engaged in activities which are prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state and public order.

The Chinese apps under interim ban included Club Factory, SHAREit, Likee, Mi Video Call (Xiaomi), Weibo, Baidu, BIGO LIVE, WeChat, UC Browser and Xiaomi's Mi Community.
Lucknow: The condition of former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and BJP veteran Kalyan Singh is unstable, and he is being closely monitored by the doctors, the Sanjay Gandhi Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGIMS) has said.

Singh's clinical parameters are being closely monitored by expert consultants at the hospital, it added.

"The condition of Singh is unstable. After breathing problem, he has been kept on non-invasive ventilation," the hospital said in a bulletin issued on Monday evening.

The health status of former CM of UP & ex-Governor of Rajasthan, Kalyan Singh unstable. His clinical parameters are being closely monitored by the expert Consultants. He has been put on non invasive ventilation due to respiratory worsening: PGI Lucknow  ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) July 20, 2021

Earlier in the day, the hospital issued a statement saying, "After he (Kalyan Singh) complained of respiratory discomfort on Saturday evening, oxygen therapy was started. He was put on non-invasive ventilation on Sunday evening due to respiratory worsening."

The senior faculty of Critical Care Medicine (CCM), cardiology, nephrology, neurology and endocrinology are keeping a close watch on all the aspects related to his health, it said.

SGPGIMS director professor R K Dhiman is supervising Singh's treatment on a daily basis, the statement read.

The 89-year-old, who is also a former governor of Rajasthan, was admitted to the ICU of the hospital on the evening of July 4 due to an infection and reduced consciousness level.

Earlier, he was undergoing treatment at Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Institute of Medical Sciences here.

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Port-au-Prince: A new prime minister, Ariel Henry, supported by key international diplomats will take charge of Haiti, an official said Monday.

A move that appeared aimed at averting a leadership struggle following the assassination of President Jovenal Moise.

Ariel Henry, who was designated prime minister by Moise before he was slain but never sworn in, will replace the country's interim prime minister, Haiti Elections Minister Mathias Pierre told The Associated Press.

It wasn't immediately clear how quickly Claude Joseph, who has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military since the July 7 assassination of Moise, would step down.

Negotiations are still in course, Pierre said, adding that Joseph would go back to being minister of foreign affairs. There was no immediate comment from Joseph.

In an audio recording, Henry referred to himself as prime minister and called for unity, saying he would soon announce the members of what he called a provisional consensus government to lead the country until elections are held.

I present my compliments to the Haitian people who have shown political maturity in the face of what can be considered a coup...Our Haitian brothers gave peace a chance, while leaving the possibility that the truth could one day be restored," Henry said.

Now it is up to all the national leaders to walk together in unity, towards the same goal, to show that they are responsible.

The political turnover followed a statement Saturday from a key group of international diplomats that appeared to snub Joseph as it called for the creation of "a consensual and inclusive government.

To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government,? the statement from the Core Group said.

The Core Group is composed of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the US, France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organisation of American States.

On Monday, the UN issued a statement calling on Joseph, Henry and other national stakeholders to set aside differences and engage in constructive dialogue on ways to end the current impasse.

The UN added that Joseph and Henry made significant progress in the past week and that it supports dialogue to find minimal consensus for holding fair legislative and presidential elections.

Monique Clesca, a Haitian writer, activist and former UN official, said she doesn't anticipate any changes under Henry, whom she expects to carry on Moise's legacy. But she warned Henry might be viewed as tainted because of the international backing that preceded his taking power.

There is not only a perception, but the reality that he has been put there by the international community, and I think that's his burden to carry, she said.

What we're calling for is for Haitians to really say this is unacceptable. We do not want the international community stating who ought to be in power and what ought to be done. It is up to us.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that the Biden administration welcomes reports that Haitian political actors are working together to determine a path forward in the country.

We have been encouraging, for several days now, Haitian political actors to work together and find a political way forward, she said.

Earlier, US State Department spokesman Ned Price had said the US would continue to work with Joseph after noting he was the incumbent in the position and was serving as acting prime minister before the assassination.

The Core Group statement was issued hours after Moise's wife, Martine, arrived in Haiti on Saturday aboard a private jet clad in black and wearing a bulletproof vest after being released from a hospital in Miami.

She has not issued a statement or spoken publicly since her return to Haiti as the government prepares for the July 23 funeral that will be held in the northern city of Cap-Haitien. Other events to honour Moise are planned this week in the capital of Port-au-Prince ahead of the funeral.

Moise designated Henry as prime minister shortly before he was killed, but he had not been sworn in. The neurosurgeon was previously minister of social affairs and interior minister. He has belonged to several political parties including Inite, which was founded by former President Rene Preval.

The upcoming change in leadership comes as authorities continue to investigate the July 7 attack at Moise's private home with high-powered rifles that seriously wounded his wife.

Authorities say more than 20 suspects directly involved in the killing have been arrested. The majority of them are former Colombian soldiers, most of whom Colombian officials say were duped. Another three suspects were killed, with police still seeking additional ones, including an ex-Haitian rebel leader and a former Haitian senator.

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Kabul: At least three rockets hit near the presidential palace on Tuesday (July 21) shortly before Afghan President Ashraf Ghani was to give an address to mark the major Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha (Bakrid). There were no injuries and the rockets landed outside the heavily fortified palace grounds, said Mirwais Stanikzai, spokesman for the interior minister. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the rocket attack, which destroyed at least one car parked on a nearby street.

Abdullah Abdullah, the No. 2 official in the government, was inside the palace during the rocket attack, having returned on a day earlier from peace talks with the Taliban in Qatar.

Those inside the palace, however, were far removed from where the rockets landed.

The palace is in the middle of a so-called Green Zone that is fortified with giant cement blast walls and barbed wire, and streets near the palace have long been closed off. The barrage came as the US and NATO complete their final withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Many Afghans are worried whether their war-ravaged country will fall deeper into chaos and violence as foreign forces withdraw and the Taliban gain more territory on the ground, having captured several districts and key border crossings with neighbouring countries over the past weeks.

The withdrawal is more than 95% complete and the final US soldier will be gone by August 31, President Joe Biden said in an address earlier this month.

"This Eid has been named after Afghan forces to honour their sacrifices and courage, especially in the last three months," Ghani said in his address to the nation following morning prayers for Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of Sacrifice."The Taliban have no intention and willingness for peace," Ghani said. "We have proven that we have the intention, willingness and have sacrificed for peace."

In his speech, Ghani also assailed neighbouring Pakistan, which Kabul blames for harbouring the Taliban leadership and providing a safe haven and assistance to the insurgents. In the most recent fighting in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak, Taliban fighters were seen receiving treatment at a Pakistani hospital across the border in Chaman. Pakistan is seen as key to peace in Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership is headquartered in Pakistan and Islamabad has used its leverage, which it claims is now waning, to press the Taliban to talk peace. Pakistan has also been deeply critical of Kabul, saying it has allowed another militant group, the Pakistani Taliban - Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan - to find safety in Afghanistan from where they have launched a growing number of attacks targeting the Pakistan military.

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